RSN: Charles Pierce | Sometimes, Freedom's Just Another Word for Not Giving a Damn
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Charles Pierce | Sometimes, Freedom's Just Another Word for Not Giving a Damn
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "In rural Missouri, the anti-maskers relied on the fact that the pandemic had yet to fill the area hospital beds. That is no longer the case."
ot long ago, in the VIP room of the shebeen, we talked to Kenneth Starnes, an emergency room physician in what he calls "Winter's Bone" country along the border of Missouri and Arkansas. We talked about the unique problems facing rural healthcare workers in a time of pandemic. At the time, the system in which Starnes works wasn't yet completely overwhelmed. Now, as KSMU reports, the time of reckoning has arrived in a place temperamentally and culturally ill-suited to cope with it.
That independent, Ozarks spirit was on full display at an August forum in West Plains, the county seat of Howell County in south-central Missouri. Many residents were there to passionately argue against a mask ordinance, and the theme that emerged centered on freedom. West Plains resident Joyce Oak said the ordinance would be a dangerous precedent. Here’s some audio from that forum from the city’s Facebook page. “We are on a slippery slope to totalitarian fascism, and it needs to be stopped,” Oak said from the podium. Another resident, Clifton Earles, gave a fiery speech, calling City Council members “self-important” and “scalawags” for even considering the ordinance. “Since when do you even have the authority to mandate anything?" Earles asked. "You derive your authority from the consent of the governed. You work for us, you do not rule us, and we do not consent.”
The anti-maskers relied on the fact that the pandemic had yet to fill the area hospital beds. That is no longer the case.
Cases in Howell County have climbed from 40 to about 1,400, and several families are reporting that the local hospital couldn’t admit their loved ones with COVID-19 because it had reached capacity. So far, at least 20 Howell County residents have died from the disease. And according to the public health department, every nursing home in Howell County except one currently has an outbreak of COVID-19...
The World Health Organization has said a general rule of thumb for determining if the virus is under control is if the percent of positive coronavirus tests is below 5%. Missouri’s health department reported Saturday that the positivity rate over the last seven days is 19.7% statewide. Howell County’s positivity rate sits at 29.6 percent. Six counties reported rates above 50%, and all six of those are considered rural.
This is murderous, and it's hard to believe that the situation isn't the same in rural areas all over the country. For decades now, ambitious politicians, most of whom live on either coast, have blown sunshine up the asses of people in the middle of the country, praising their rugged individualism and using them as helpful marketing archetypes in our national political branding competitions. Small wonder that so many of the people now behave like those archetypes in real life, pandemic and their neighbors be damned.
Meanwhile, West Plains resident Susan DeMuria wishes local authorities would issue new restrictions—because leaving it up to “personal responsibility” isn’t stemming the tide. DeMuria has asthma, and she’s spent almost the entire pandemic isolating and gardening at her home. "I have been in the ICU with asthma, and I know what it's like not to be able to breathe. So, for me this is real. I know what this feels like, and I am petrified," she said, on the verge of tears...
She moved to West Plains about 15 years ago with her husband, who’s a cardiovascular perfusionist at a Columbia hospital. The couple decided not to see each other for a while because of DeMuria’s asthma, which is a health risk for COVID-19 complications. She says she feels hurt that people around her don’t believe in masking or other health precautions. “I just really did not feel that they cared about people like me at the city level, at the county level, at the state level," DeMuria said. "And I’m without my husband, who is working every day and doing things to help people, literally keeping people alive, and I can’t even go to the grocery store.”
Freedom's just another word for not giving a damn.
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Federal agents use crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon, on 20 July 2020. (photo: Noah Berger/AP)
NYC, Seattle and Portland Sue Trump Administration Over 'Anarchy' Designation and Threat to Withhold Funding
Veronica Stracqualursi and Kristina Sgueglia, CNN
Excerpt: "New York City, Seattle and Portland filed a complaint Thursday challenging the Trump administration's designation of the Democratic-led cities as 'anarchist' jurisdictions in hopes of blocking the President's threat to withhold federal funding."
In a news conference earlier Thursday, New York City Corporation Counsel Jim Johnson said the city is taking legal action now because the Trump administration has taken "concrete steps" and begun including the "anarchist" designation in applications for federal grants.
"There is no basis in law, there is no basis in fact, for this anarchist determination, and yet they are going to use it to determine who does and who does not get federal funding," he said.
The complaint points to the Federal Transit Administration's announcement earlier this month that it would consider applications for a Covid-19 public transportation research grant based on the Justice Department's "anarchist" designations.
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. Johnson cited the deployment of federal troops in "battledress uniforms in western cities" as his reason why Seattle was the "appropriate" place for the filing.
The cities argue that the administration's actions violates Congress' spending power and states and localities' authority to police and provide public safety as they see fit.
Johnson maintained that the Trump administration is stepping "way over their bounds," adding that Congress "controls the power of the purse, not the Trump administration."
Last month, President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal funding from major US cities -- all in blue states and led by Democrats -- with ongoing protests, on the unfounded accusation that their leaders are allowing "anarchy, violence, and destruction." Notably absent from the list are Minneapolis and Kenosha, Wisconsin, which have also seen unrest over the summer but are located in more competitive states as it relates to the presidential election.
The President's memo directed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to issue guidance to federal agencies on how they can legally withhold grants from localities.
Later that month, the US Department of Justice identified New York City, Portland and Seattle as "anarchy" jurisdictions, claiming that the three cities have "permitted violence and destruction of property to persist" and "refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities."
Several constitutional law experts previously told CNN that Trump's threat to deny federal funding has little legal backbone.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio at Thursday's news conference called Trump's threat a "totally political action" that threatens the lives of New Yorkers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's morally wrong, it's legally unacceptable, it's unconstitutional, and we're going to fight it," the Democratic mayor said, adding later that he's "confident of victory in this case."
In their lawsuit, the cities argued that the DOJ's anarchist designation harms them by putting their federal funding at "imminent risk" during a "time of fiscal crisis" and has caused "severe" budget uncertainty.
Johnson said New York is at risk of losing an excess of $12 billion in funding.
"The Cities rely on billions of dollars in federal funding to provide a range of vital services, including housing, public transportation, and emergency relief," the lawsuit reads. "The funding threat could not come at a worse time, as the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged municipal finances, draining reserves and forcing painful budget cuts.
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Staff and volunteers with Project Cure hold a drive to collect donations of personal protective equipment. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)
'It's Like They're Waiting for Us to Die': Why Covid-19 Is Battering Black Chicagoans
Gloria Oladipo, Guardian UK
Oladipo writes: "In Chicago, Covid-19 is battering Black communities."
Most of the city’s deaths are hyper-concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods, ‘a reflection of structural racism’
hillip Thomas, a Black, 48-year-old Chicagoan, was a “great guy” according to his sister Angela McMiller. He was loved by his family and well-liked by his co-workers at Walmart, where he had worked for nine years.
“I didn’t know about how many friends he had until he passed away,” said Angela. Thomas, who was diabetic, died from Covid-19 this past March.
After being sick for two weeks and self-quarantining at the recommendation of his doctor, instead of being given an examination, Phillip was then rushed to the hospital, where he died the next day.
Naba’a Muhammad, 59, a writer and Chicago South Shore neighborhood resident, with a lung disease, also contracted coronavirus and was hospitalized.
But while he was fortunate to access the necessary care, he immediately noted health disparities facing other Black Chicagoans in his community.
“Here you have [Donald Trump] who’s got a helicopter flying him to a special wing of a hospital for help when Black people can’t even get an Uber to the emergency room or a Covid test,” he said, referring to the president’s world-class care at the Walter Reed national military medical center on the outskirts of Washington DC, after being diagnosed with coronavirus in early October.
In Chicago, Covid-19 is battering Black communities. Despite only accounting for 30% of the city’s population, Black people make up 60% of Covid cases there and have the highest mortality rate out of any racial or ethnic group.
Most Chicago Covid-19 deaths are hyper-concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods such as Austin on the West Side and Englewood and Auburn Gresham on the South Side.
“The racial and ethnic gaps we’re seeing of who gets the virus and who dies from it are not a surprise,” said Linda Rae Murray, a Chicago doctor, academic, social justice advocate and former president of the American Public Health Association as well as the former chief medical officer of the Cook county department of public health.
“They are a reflection of structural racism that exists in our society and inequities that are baked into our country.”
Chicago is a hyper-segregated city, blighted by yawning divides across many socio-economic conditions.
The coronavirus experiences of Black Chicagoans are so starkly different from residents in whiter, wealthier communities it has observers asking: do conditions in majority African American neighborhoods make being Black, effectively, a pre-existing condition there?
Muhammad thinks so: “[It] is very true,” he said, adding: “But that truth demands a response. We can’t simply accept that this is going to happen to us.”
Many Black neighborhoods in Chicago, as elsewhere in America, experience higher rates of unemployment and poverty while also being less likely to receive pandemic aid, giving them even less of a safety net than usual in a disease outbreak.
“We have seen patients who went home after recovering from Covid and required home oxygen, but they simply didn’t have money to pay for it,” said Murray.
Metropolitan Chicago’s essential workers are disproportionately low-income and people of color.
Black Chicagoans are more likely to work as cashiers, hospital support staff and in other jobs that increase their chance of catching Covid. But even with the heightened risk facing residents, permanent testing sites are not widely available in predominantly Black communities.
“There aren’t testing clinics near my home,” said McMiller. “There’s nothing in my neighborhood.”
Once infected, Black Chicagoans are living in neighborhoods that worsen their health because of “an epidemic of inequities”, according to a study from the Chicago Urban League, an advocacy group for Black families.
Healthcare remains unfairly inaccessible, as hospitals are scarce on Chicago’s South and West sides and decreasing further with the planned closure of Mercy hospital and medical center. Fewer hospitals increases the burden on remaining healthcare workers, resulting in a lower quality of care.
Angela McMiller believes that her brother suffered from poor medical treatment after his doctors did not examine him despite his prolonged symptoms and diabetes: “I blame the doctors who didn’t do the best job they could’ve done with my brother.”
Black people are more likely to be uninsured and struggle covering medical costs, forcing them to rely on hospitals versus preventive care.
And so-called safety-net hospitals – hospitals that treat anyone regardless of ability to pay – can become overwhelmed and provide poor care; these hospitals are concentrated on the South and West sides, where there is already a lack of family doctors, meaning all residents receive subpar treatment.
“In a lot of the hospitals where people don’t have private paid insurance, you have a higher volume of people who go there,” said Karen Freeman-Wilson, president of the Chicago Urban League.
“The reality of having to deal with the larger volume is that they aren’t in a position to give the same care that you might get in some of the suburban hospitals.”
Other determinants of health such as access to healthy food are not widely available in South and West Side communities, neighborhoods designated as “food deserts”. Residents can struggle to find nutritious food, contributing to poorer health and causing overcrowding at grocery stores, which increases the risk of contracting Covid.
Many predominantly Black neighborhoods are also hubs of pollution, which is linked to zoning policies that place them in close proximity to contaminants from freight rail yards, heavy traffic and industrial sites.
Exposure to air pollution increases the risk of developing asthma and other lung diseases, coronavirus risk factors. And several studies have similarly concluded that living in communities with more pollution increases the risk of dying from Covid.
Chicago’s leaders, such as the mayor, Lori Lightfoot, have promised to tackle Covid disparities beyond just the short term.
Lightfoot has set up a Racial Equality Rapid Response team (RERRT) that has targeted the most affected neighborhoods, distributing masks and informational material, meals and other aid. The team stepped up Covid testing and focused on partnering with local health and community groups.
“We are all in this crisis together, but we haven’t experienced it in the same way,” Lightfoot said back in April, addressing what she called the “shockingly disproportionate impact” of coronavirus on the hardest-hit, majority Black neighborhoods.
The mayor’s office this week said in a statement that the RERRT has “become a leader in the nation for this type of hyper-local outreach and response to the global pandemic” and that the effort continues.
While some experts have praised efforts, others have argued that suggested policies don’t significantly address decades-long disparities.
“We have to be very clear about getting to the underlying causes. I’m afraid of people putting Band-Aids on things,” said Freeman-Wilson.
Residents who have experienced or witnessed the tragedies in their communities are also skeptical.
“I don’t think Chicago is addressing [the disparities],” said McMiller. “Everybody’s just numb. It’s like they’re sitting and waiting for us to die.”
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A drawing on a medical consent form depicts a woman crying. A number of women allege they were administered birth control and underwent procedures, including the removal of their reproductive organs, without their consent while being held at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. (photo: Innovation Lae Lab/GA Dete)
19 Women Allege Medical Abuse in Georgia Immigration Detention
Molly O'Toole, Los Angeles Times
O'Toole writes: "At least 19 women at a Georgia immigration facility are now alleging that a doctor performed, or pressured them to undergo, 'overly aggressive' or 'medically unnecessary' surgery without their consent, including procedures that affect their ability to have children."
The new report was written by a team of nine board-certified OB-GYNs and two nursing experts, each affiliated with academic medical centers — including those at Northwestern University, Baylor College and Creighton University — who reviewed more than 3,200 pages of records obtained for the 19 women. It comes just a month after a whistleblowing nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center set into motion a series of congressional inquiries and federal investigations into immigrant women’s care at the facility, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The 19 women were all patients of Dr. Mahendra Amin, the primary gynecologist for the Irwin County Detention Center, the report says. The records, including pathology and radiology reports, prescriptions, surgical impressions and consent forms, sworn declarations and telephone interviews, detail and support the women’s allegations of medical abuse by the doctor, according to the report.
The medical experts found an “alarming pattern” in which Amin allegedly subjected the women to unwarranted gynecological surgeries, in most cases performed without consent, according to the five-page report, which was submitted Thursday to members of Congress.
“Both Dr. Amin and the referring detention facility took advantage of the vulnerability of women in detention to pressure them to agree to overly aggressive, inappropriate, and unconsented medical care,” the report states.
The medical team conducted its review in tandem with a coalition of advocates and lawyers representing the women that has been investigating the allegations. The coalition members are from Project South, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Georgia Detention Watch, the South Georgia Immigrant Support Network, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. and Innovation Law Lab.
Many alleged victims, the vast majority of whom are Black and Latino, from the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America, are coming forward for the first time to report their allegations of mistreatment since a nurse at the facility filed the 27-page whistleblower complaint last month, along with the advocacy group Project South. The complaint to the Homeland Security inspector general in turn prompted national outcry, congressional inquiries and federal investigations.
Women under Amin’s care were administered birth control and underwent procedures without their consent, including to remove their reproductive organs, such as the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes, according to the report and interviews by The Times with women whose cases were reviewed by the medical team.
One woman, Amanda, said she awoke from surgery chained to a hospital bed.
The 28-year-old immediately asked a nurse: “Do I still have ovaries? Can I still have kids?”
Amin had performed a cystectomy and “dilation and curettage,” a procedure to scrape tissue from inside her uterus, without her consent, according to Amanda. Her medical records show the procedures were done, but do not include a signed consent.
Danielle Bennett, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency overseeing immigration detention, referred The Times to the Homeland Security inspector general.
“Out of deference to the ongoing OIG investigation, ICE is not providing any new comment or making public any additional data regarding this matter,” Bennett said.
The inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Scott Grubman, Amin’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement to The Times that he is “legally prohibited from responding to anything related to medical care on a specific patient without that patient signing a HIPAA release allowing him to do so.”
“Dr. Amin strongly denies all of the allegations, many of which have already been proven false,” Grubman continued. “We have gathered evidence and spoken with various witnesses ... who confirm that Dr. Amin always acted appropriately with patients, obtained informed consent, and used translators/interpreters whenever necessary.
“Dr. Amin is a highly respected physician who has dedicated his adult life to treating a high-risk, underserved population in rural Georgia. Dr. Amin is fully cooperating with investigators and looks forward to the investigations clearing his good name and reputation.”
Scott Sutterfield, a spokesman for LaSalle Corrections, the private, for-profit prison company that contracts with ICE and operates Irwin, said in an emailed statement that “company policy prohibits comment during pending investigations” but went on to say LaSalle is “fully cooperating” with the investigation.
“We are confident the facts will demonstrate the very malicious intent of others to advance a purely political agenda,” Sutterfield continued. “It is well established that LaSalle Corrections provides high quality medical services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments, and our company strongly refutes allegations to the contrary.”
In September, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy of Homeland Security, said in an interview that an initial review by the department found the allegations of medical malpractice were not substantiated by any documentation, but that it would conduct a broader audit.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in a statement last month that the emerging allegations of medical abuse against the women at Irwin echo “some of the darkest moments in our nation’s history.”
The Homeland Security Department pays independent doctors such as Amin, who practices gynecology in nearby Douglas, Ga., for the procedures they perform on patients in immigration detention.
According to the report, women were referred to Amin even for clearly non-gynecological complaints, such as rib pain or a belly button hernia. Then he “pressured” them into or performed procedures or surgeries that weren’t medically necessary, or to which they never consented, the report says.
In one example, the report notes that Amin performed a transvaginal ultrasound on a 35-year-old woman who’d requested treatment for hot flashes — and had no reproductive organs to examine because she’d previously undergone a total hysterectomy.
If women refused or pushed back on the procedures recommended by Amin, some were retaliated against, the report says, including being involuntarily sent for psychiatric evaluation.
Five of Amin’s patients interviewed by The Times, whose cases were reviewed as part of the report, shared similar stories about their surgeries, and they said the doctor had a reputation at the Georgia facility.
“We found it to be weird that so many women were having the same surgeries,” said Shereace, 34, who asked to be identified by her first name for protection since she’s been deported to Jamaica, a country she left when she was 5.
She requested to see Amin because her previous doctor had told her to monitor her abnormal Pap smears. After she woke up from one procedure, she said, Amin told her that her fallopian tubes were “damaged and no good, and he let me know I’m never going to be able to have kids.”
“I was crushed,” she said. “I was hearing in some of the stories they were saying that he was removing women’s tubes without their permission. I thought: What if he just removed my tubes?”
She says she’s still not sure what Amin did because she hasn’t been able to afford to go to the doctor.
“Even before I went to go see Dr. Amin, I heard a lot of stories about him,” Shamekia McKay told The Times. “I thought, ‘I don’t think I want him to touch me.’ ... Because we’re immigrants, they just did whatever they wanted to do with us.”
Amanda, the woman who said she woke up from surgery in a panic, was born in Guyana, and detained at Irwin for 17 months.
She said that Amin had told her that her life was at risk because of an ovarian cyst that could rupture. She tried to ask questions, she said, but was told if she refused care, ICE would delay or refuse future medical care she may need.
“I felt pressured to do it; I signed the paper,” Amanda said. She said she asked for her records from Irwin officials to give to her attorney, but said she was never provided them.
She said Amin told her he’d just drain the cyst. She consented to neither of the surgeries he performed instead, she said, and no records of such a consent have been provided to her.
Wendy Dowe, 48, who was deported to Jamaica in May after more than 20 years in the U.S., said of Irwin: “They treat you like you’re not human.”
She said she told Amin, “I’ve got the right to know what’s going on with me.” But after surgery, she was surprised to see bandages on her stomach. She had to write to Amin’s medical office, she said, to ask: “What type of surgery did I have?”
Later, she said she refused to get a surprise hysterectomy as Amin and others asked her: “How many kids you got? Well, I don’t see why you can’t take it out.”
The independent medical review of Dowe’s records conducted as part of the report found the recommended procedure was unwarranted.
For most of the women, “Dr. Amin’s ‘findings’ justifying surgery are unsupported by all other available sources of information,” the report states.
According to the report’s authors, as well as the women and their lawyers, several of the women were not given their medical records, which the women and their lawyers characterized as retaliation for their complaints.
Of the records the reviewers did obtain, many were incomplete or inaccurate, the report says, with a number of the surgeries Amin performed not recorded correctly or omitted completely.
Because the records produced by the Irwin detention center, Irwin County Hospital and Amin “appear to be incomplete,” the report says, and because ICE and Irwin officials have obstructed medical records requests, many of the women do not yet fully know what was done to them.
Dr. Ted Anderson, director of the gynecology division at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who helped lead the review, said the most immediate concern from the procedures is “a person’s future fertility.” For example, he said, “if you remove the fallopian tube, it’s a sterilization procedure, even if it was done for some other reason. ... If you remove both of the ovaries, you’re surgically menopausal.”
In the thousands of pages of records for all 19 women, the report’s authors said, they only found one signed consent — in English, for a woman whose primary language is Spanish. “This is unacceptable from a medical ethics perspective,” the report states.
At least 23 of the total number of women so far identified by the coalition as Amin’s patients remain detained at Irwin, and four are detained elsewhere, the women’s lawyers say. The rest have been released, either in the United States or abroad, or deported.
Pauline Binam can never forget what the doctor told her when she came out of anesthesia: “He cut it out, and I wouldn’t have kids naturally anymore.”
“I didn’t have to suspect anything — he told me himself,” Binam, who came to the United States from Cameroon with her family when she was 2, told The Times. According to Binam and her records, obtained by The Times, Amin had removed one of her fallopian tubes without her consent. “I started crying — I was in shock and a daze … him just making that decision for me.”
Binam, the first of Amin’s alleged victims to go public, was pulled off a deportation flight to Cameroon last month after congressional intervention, but remains still at risk of removal.
ICE uses Irwin along with the U.S. Marshals Service as part of an intergovernmental agreement. LaSalle Corrections, which runs the facility, also operates 25 other detention facilities, correctional centers and jails.
Last year, the Homeland Security inspector general found that ICE’s multilayered contracting system “does not adequately hold detention facility contractors accountable for not meeting performance standards.”
Inspection reports from the detention oversight arm of ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the most recent in March, show that Irwin is consistently in violation of national detention standards that “directly affect detainee life, health, safety, and/or well-being.”
The inspection reports also show that Irwin refers more than 1,000 detainees a year for outside medical attention, “far more” than most detention facilities of its size, according to a New York Times analysis.
Lawmakers have accused ICE and LaSalle of “stonewalling Congress by withholding documents.”
Meanwhile, the five women who’ve been released or deported from Irwin are struggling to get by, and awaiting answers. For Dowe and her three U.S. citizen daughters now in Jamaica, “it’s been hard to adjust,” she said.
“Because I am an immigrant, and I’m Black, that’s why this happened,” Dowe said, but added, “No, I am not giving up. I still have hope that I will get some form of justice.”
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Polling shows Trump will lose if there is high youth turnout. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
New Poll Confirms That High Youth Turnout Would Doom Trump
Eric Levitz, New York Magazine
Levitz writes: "Republicans have long known that America's rising generations were going to be a problem for their party."
The only questions have been “How big?” and “How soon?”
The bulk of Americans born between 1981 and 1996 saw Bill Clinton preside over an age of (relative) peace and prosperity — and then George W. Bush steer their nation into failed wars and economic collapse. Zoomers, meanwhile, are coming of age amid, well, [gestures broadly at a landscape littered with foreclosed houses, police executions, pandemic breadlines, and melting ice sheets, all watched over by a billionaire Fox News addict who’s focused on his tweets].
Political science research suggests that a voter’s partisan preferences tend to be deeply informed by their evaluations of presidential performance in adolescence and early adulthood. Americans who came of age during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidencies leaned Democratic for years after. Those who attained a sense of self amid Jimmy Carter’s losing battle against stagflation — and/or Ronald Reagan’s boom times — remained disproportionately Republican as they aged.
Thus, millennials and Zoomers were already likely to lean left, even if their generations hadn’t been more diverse, highly educated, and atheistic than their predecessors. But they are. And since all of those traits correlate with ideological liberalism, it’s none too surprising that the kids are all left (or, almost all left, anyway).
A new poll from Axios and SurveyMonkey-Tableau reveals that — despite our nation’s deeply ingrained regional political divisions — young Americans are rejecting conservatism from sea-to-shining sea, with only a few stray patches of red in between. In a survey of 640,328 likely voters across the country, Axios found voters under 35 backing Biden in 40 of 50 states. Young voters broke for Trump in five, and split their votes about evenly in the remaining states.
In an ominous sign for the GOP’s future viability in the Electoral College, young voters in light-red Sun Belt states are very Democratic, with those in Texas and Georgia backing Biden over Trump by roughly 20 points. In South Carolina, meanwhile, young voters lean blue by 13. Across this year’s most hotly contested battlegrounds — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — Biden’s lead among young voters never dips below 18 percentage points.
Thanks to his strength among seniors, Biden is less dependent on high youth turnout than Hillary Clinton was in 2016. But if younger voters do turnout at a historically high rate, they could deliver Democrats a landslide large enough to flip state legislatures across the country, and deliver Chuck Schumer a Senate majority with a couple votes to spare.
There are a few reasons to believe that “America’s future” will make its presence felt this November. For one thing, the millennial generation is starting to enter its prime voting years. Under normal circumstances, we might be one presidential cycle away from the cohort becoming a reliable turnout bloc. But as the Democratic pollster William Jordan wrote in 2017, there was reason to suspect Donald Trump might accelerate millennials’ political maturation:
[A] voter stops being under-represented in the electorate at about age 40 — which is the age of some of the oldest Millennials in around 2022 … It’s not obvious that the Millennial Reckoning will come in 2018, or even 2020. That said, based on data from past elections, it’s when a cohort starts to nudge up against their fourth or fifth presidential election cycle that they start seeing real improvements in turnout rates — and that’s about where Millennials are now. Looking just at how Boomers and Gen-Xers behaved around a similar time, we’d expect Millennial turnout to increase by around 5 or 6 points between 2016 and 2020.
We haven’t yet seen what it looks like when Millennials come into their own as a voting bloc, and it will almost certainly happen. The only question is, will it happen gradually, or suddenly? Is there anything going on in American politics that might spur an unusual lurch forward among the nation’s youngest, most diverse and most educated generation?
The 2018 midterm results offered evidence for the “lurch” thesis. Millennial turnout in that election jumped 20 points from where it had been in 2014 (the previous midterm). What’s more, in the first midterm that any Zoomers were old enough to vote in, 30 percent of those eligible cast a ballot. That is a notable improvement on the 23 percent rate that Gen X and millennials posted in their respective first midterms.
As of this writing, a record-shattering 45 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 2020 election. This is, of course, partly a reflection of pandemic-induced shift in voting methods, as more Americans avail themselves of mail ballots. But combined with polling data on intention to vote, the early returns suggest that the 2020 election could inspire the highest U.S. voter turnout in more than a century. It is possible that this surge is being driven by infrequent older voters making a point to cast a ballot this year, rather than by a surge in millennial and Zoomer participation. But all else equal, high overall turnout is a positive indicator for unusually high young voter turnout.
On the other hand, the pandemic has dealt a major blow to the Democratic Party’s voter-registration efforts. Recent data from the key swing states of Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania show Republicans are adding voters to the rolls far faster than Democrats. According to Democratic operatives I’ve spoken to, this is partly because their party is more reliant on registering voters when they interface with the state — say, during a trip to the DMV — or else, on college campuses, or in high-school seniors’ classrooms. The drop-off in public congregation at schools and government facilities has thus prevented Democrats from fully capitalizing on generational churn: There are a lot of young, left-leaning adults in the U.S. who would have registered to vote in a year without a pandemic, but will not do so in 2020.
Regardless, the future is coming, if not this November, then one in the near future. (Which is a large part of why the conservative movement has been transitioning from covert attacks on democracy to open advocacy for minority rule.)
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Men and women need to work together for a sustainable marine future. (photo: C3 Philippines)
On a Philippine Island, Indigenous Women Get Their Say on Marine Conservation
Jen Chan, Mongabay
Chan writes: "Fifteen women from the Indigenous Tagbanwa group in the municipality of Calawit have been given ownership of more than 320 acres of ancestral waters where they harvest cachipay, a type of oyster."
n the Philippines, the fishing industry has long been considered male territory, with fathers, sons and brothers taking their boats out to sea each day in hopes of catching tuna, blue marlin, or sea bass. A closer look, however, reveals that women play an equally significant role.
In an analysis of women in select fishing communities in the country, most of the women surveyed say they are active participants in the entire value chain — from fishing, gleaning and picking, to selling and trading. A recent study published in PLOS ONE also shows that catches by women in Asia reach an estimated 1.7 million metric tons per year, which is worth $3 billion. Despite this contribution, women are rarely involved or tapped in important conversations in the community.
This is now being challenged in Calawit, an island that’s part of the Calamianes Islands located in the country’s western Palawan province. There, 15 women from the Indigenous and traditionally male-led Tagbanwa group were given more than 130 hectares (320 acres) of ancestral waters where they can harvest cachipay (Placuna spp.), a type of clam known as windowpane oysters.
Oysters have long been an important source of livelihood for the community, especially during lean fishing seasons or when the weather doesn’t allow fisherfolk to go out to sea. While harvesting them is a task traditionally shared by both men and women, ownership, and consequently, management of the ancestral waters had always been delegated to men. The fact that the women of the tribe have been granted tenurial rights over the domain by virtue of an official resolution signed by the Tagbanwa elders and members of the tribe’s executive committee is a major milestone.
“We are excited because, finally, women can proactively participate in natural resource management,” says Marilou Vergara, one of the women leaders in the community. “I can see that there will be a lot of opportunities for this project that can help us and our families in the long run.”
This initiative is also aligned with the tribe’s Ancestral Domains Sustainable Development and Protection Plan (ADSDPP). Created by each Indigenous group and facilitated by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), these cohesive plans act as a guide for the sustainable and culturally respectful management and development of ancestral domain territories.
“We want to care for our natural marine resources, not just to create a sustainable fishery, but also to preserve our rich culture, which includes the oysters,” says tribe member Rosita Eguia. “The elders believe that we’ll be of help in developing our ancestral waters, which is why they gave the responsibility of managing the cachipay to us women.”
This change didn’t happen overnight. In 2019, PATH Foundation Philippines Inc. (PFPI), a conservation nonprofit, and Community Centred Conservation Philippines (C3 Philippines), a local NGO, were already coordinating with the tribe as part of the five-year USAID Fish Right Program implemented by the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island.
C3 Philippines is at the forefront of the project, directly assisting the women on the ground. It also provides them with training so that they can improve their technical fisheries management skills and decision-making prowess.
It’s a move that appears to be paying off. While the men still ferry the women to where the oysters are found, it’s the latter who are now calling the shots. “The area is now being managed and controlled by women in terms of harvesting schedule and area to be harvested,” says Reynante Ramilo, C3 Philippines program coordinator. “Proper documentation and monitoring of the area, including the rivers and mangroves, are also being done by women.”
The women have acclimatized to their new roles with ease. “The Tagbanwa women are already being seen actively participating in decision-making processes in the community,” Ramilo says. “They are now more confident in terms of voicing out their concerns in different issues in fisheries and health and welfare.”
Recognizing women
The importance of involving women in the marine conservation effort is especially crucial in communities where they manage habitats that are key to the entire ecosystem.
In Calawit, the women have majority control of the mangroves and seagrass beds, where they collect seaweed, salt and tamilok (woodworms), a local delicacy. These aren’t just an additional source of livelihood for the women; they also help mitigate the strain caused by overfishing in the greater waters. Oysters, which have now been turned over to the care of the Tagbanwa women, are also seen as an alternative to fish.
PFPI field program coordinator Vivien Facunla says the mangroves and seagrass beds are “a defense for coastal communities against the effects of climate change such as storm surges and flooding.”
Handing the responsibility of harvesting the oysters over to the Tagbanwa women isn’t just an effort to give them a share of the voice in the community. It’s instrumental in helping increase fish stocks in key marine biodiversity areas in the country.
Destructive fishing habits, along with climate change and pollution, have inflicted serious damage to marine ecosystems all over the world. In Calamianes, the second-largest fishing ground in the Philippines, marine areas are reportedly in poor or degraded states. An analysis of gender roles in Philippine fishing communities, including in Calamianes, found that populations of marine species such as finfish, oysters and corals are declining.
These areas are important breeding grounds for juvenile fish and other marine species. Calawit is rich in biodiversity, and, according to Ramilo, its habitats exhibit interdependence with each other. “Additionally, many of the marine species, such as fish and crustaceans, exhibit lifecycle stages that span more than one ecosystem,” he says.
To strengthen resource governance and conservation in the island municipality, it’s beneficial to establish a more balanced distribution of power among both men and women, says gender specialist Fredo Lazarte.
“It is fundamental to identify women’s roles in biodiversity conservation,” he says, adding that even the community’s council of elders recognize the Tagbanwa women’s innate resource management skills. Through managing the oysters, Lazarte says he believes the women can further enhance their “endogenous skills, knowledge, and attitude.”
Proof that a more balanced workforce is crucial to resource management isn’t limited to the fisheries space. The Regional Agricultural Trade Environment (RATE) assessment conducted among Southeast Asian countries in 2012 found that “giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources could increase production on women’s farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent.” The World Resources Institute also reports that projects in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, another area with a lack of female representation, “can become more effective when women participate.”
Education and awareness campaigns have also been vital to the project, Ramilo says. But navigating projects involving gender equality and environmental conservation with local communities, especially among Indigenous groups with established sets of customs and traditions, requires a delicate balance.
Both the PFPI and C3 Philippines aim to do this by establishing open lines of communications and following prescribed national processes to ensure they don’t unintentionally cross a line or cause offense.
In dealing with the Tagbanwas of Calawit, Lazarte says they have secured the necessary free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of the community with the help of a representative of the NCIP.
Within the Tagbanwas, traditional customs are also opening up to allow more active participation for women in the community. “It’s in the Tagbanwa culture that men preside over our community,” says female community leader Vergara, “but these changes are gradually making our elders recognize our rights to rule as women.”
A positive change
While old-fashioned cultural norms about gender persist across the Philippines, changes are already underway. There are laws and resolutions in place to help address the disparity in power.
The Magna Carta for Women Act of 2009 promotes the empowerment of women, emphasizing that they should have the same rights, protections and opportunities available to every member of society. The Tagbanwa tribe’s ADSDPP also stipulates the importance of involving women in economic opportunities and natural resource management.
The project itself may be a harbinger of positive change beyond the community. According to PFPI’s Facunla, “Data gathered and local monitoring capacity contribute to science-based policies and actions that could bring about improved management of biologically significant areas.” Results from the project also present “potential models for learning and expansion in a larger ecosystems scale,” she says.
In other municipalities, similar projects are also being implemented. One of them is the Twin-Bakhaw project that promotes women as managers of mangroves. “It presents an opportunity for women to participate, lead and influence the decision-making process in managing the designated protected area and to have access to the marine resources,” Facunla says.
Getting women on the same equal ground as men at the community level is crucial to the survival of marine ecosystems, proponents of these initiatives say. And with support from their communities, laws, and environmental agencies, they can take the future of their community into their own hands.
By considering all these complex relationships, communities can implement what is known as an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM), which the U.N. describes as a strategy to “meet human requirements to use natural resources, whilst maintaining the biological richness and ecological processes necessary to sustain the composition, structure and function of the habitats or ecosystems concerned.”
This is only possible with the cooperation of both the men and the women of the community.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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Coast Guard members work to clean an oil spill impacting Delaware beaches. (photo: U.S. Coast Guard)
Mysterious Oil Spill Spreads Along 11 Miles of Delaware Beach
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "Environmental officials and members of the U.S. Coast Guard are racing to clean up a mysterious oil spill that has spread to 11 miles of Delaware coastline."
When the spill was first discovered Monday, it covered only three-fourths of a mile along Broadkill Beach, Delaware Now reported. However, the tides have extended the reach of the oil every day, spreading it along seven miles of Delaware Bay coastline by Tuesday and 11 by Wednesday.
"We are focused on cleanup operations and getting the oil off our beaches and out of our coastal communities as quickly as possible," Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Secretary Shawn Garvin said in a Wednesday press release. "Expediency is key. We want to capture as much of the oil as we can before it disperses further and causes more environmental harm."
DNREC is working under unified command with the U.S. Coast Guard to clean the spill, which now extends from Fowler Beach, which borders the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, to Cape Henlopen State Park. It was estimated initially that more than 215 gallons of oil had spilled, but the actual amount may be larger, CBS Philly reported.
As of Tuesday, recovery efforts had removed around two tons of oily sand and debris, according to DNREC. There are currently more than 75 contractors, DNREC workers and Coast Guard members responding to the spill.
The oil has already impacted some wildlife. Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research had responded to reports of 24 seagulls covered in oil as of Wednesday.
The spill has mostly taken the form of oil patties that range in size from a quarter to a manhole cover, the Coast Guard said Tuesday.
Cape Henlopen park watch volunteer Julie McCall got a first-hand view of the strange black blobs when she was conducting a bird count on Beach Plum Island Monday.
"On the way back, after the tide had gone out quite a bit, I started seeing these bigger patches, and I thought, 'That looks like oil,'" McCall told WHYY. "Some were bigger than my foot."
The Coast Guard said it would use the blobs to try and determine the source of the spill.
"Working with our partners at DNREC and state agencies, we will continue to monitor the future potential to the Broadkill Beach area, continue cleanup operations and conduct an investigation to try and determine the source," Capt. Jonathan Theel, the commanding officer of Sector Delaware Bay, said in a press release.
However, officials think the oil is probably heavy fuel oil that leaked from a vessel, WHYY reported.
McCall said she was worried about how the oil would impact people and animals.
"It's very scary," she told WHYY. "Of course, we're always concerned about the marine animals, and any kind of toxic material in the water. I'm also concerned about birds, any kind of wildlife. A lot of people fish at Beach Plum Island and people walk their dogs and there are kids on the beach. So I'm concerned about exposure to people and animals."
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