08 October 20
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COVID-Riddled Republicans Will Do Whatever It Takes to Confirm Amy Coney Barrett
Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair
Lutz writes: "Republicans had seemed poised to jam through their Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett, in the final weeks of the presidential election. But a COVID outbreak, seemingly stemming from her Rose Garden nomination ceremony, cast those plans in uncertainty."
Don’t think for a second that three senators testing positive for coronavirus will stop Republicans from voting for their SCOTUS pick.
In addition to Donald Trump, several aides, associates, and three GOP senators have so far tested positive for the coronavirus, threatening to delay the last-minute proceedings and maybe even leaving Mitch McConnell short of the votes he needs to confirm the president’s replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But Republicans are brushing aside the idea that a spate of infections at the White House and on Capitol Hill will prevent them from confirming Barrett before Election Day. Perhaps taking their cue from Trump, who has continued to take a cavalier approach to the coronavirus, even as he remains contagious, the GOP is bragging that they’re not not going to let a little coronavirus get in the way of their 6–3 majority. “We will not stop working for the American people,” McConnell said Monday, announcing that Barrett’s hearings will begin next week, “because Democrats are afraid they may lose a vote.”
Barrett’s confirmation, once seemingly a sure thing for the GOP, was abruptly thrown into jeopardy after three Republican senators—Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson and two members of the Judiciary Committee, Mike Lee and Thom Tillis—tested positive for COVID-19. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called for a delay in the proceedings, saying the hybrid hearings McConnell is planning wouldn’t be adequate and that in-person hearings could be dangerous. “If it’s not safe for the Senate to be in session,” he said over the weekend, “it’s not safe for the hearings to go forward.” Ah, but who gives a shit about safety? Certainly not Republicans, who have continued to dismiss the gravity of the virus now spreading through their ranks.
“If we have to go in and vote, I’ve already told the leadership, I’ll go in in a moon suit,” Johnson said in a radio interview Monday. “We think this is pretty important.”
The fight over the late Ginsburg’s seat on the bench had already been ugly, given the GOP’s shameless reversal on confirming justices in an election year and the threat Barrett may pose to abortion rights and gay marriage. (Further raising the stakes was the stinging criticism Monday by conservatives Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of the court’s 2015 same-sex marriage ruling.) But the whole exercise has gotten even more grotesque with the coronavirus thrown into the mix.
Not only does fast-tracking Barrett for a lifetime appointment seem even more slapdash with COVID interrupting the confirmation process, the GOP’s going about business as usual, even as the virus tears through their ranks, taking the party’s dangerous dismissal of the pandemic to new and staggering heights. Trump kept traveling—debating Joe Biden, appearing at campaign events, meeting with donors—after likely being exposed to, and later testing positive for, COVID. After being hospitalized, he subjected his security detail to the deadly virus for the sake of a ride-about to wave at supporters. And on Monday, with his condition unclear but almost certainly still contagious, he returned to the White House and promptly began downplaying the danger of the disease that’s killed more than 210,000 Americans.
Trump’s behavior has gone from extremely dangerous to practically homicidal, but he’s not alone. His aides have continued to flout public health precautions like mask-wearing. Lawmakers who have been infected or been exposed to the virus have gone out in public; Johnson attended a Wisconsin event while awaiting his test results, and a trio of Minnesota Republicans who’d been on Air Force One with the infected Trump flew on a commercial Delta flight Friday, in violation of the airline’s policy. (The three have tested negative.) “There’s a level of unjustifiable hysteria” surrounding the virus, Johnson said in the radio interview. The Trump campaign is also pushing ahead, with Mike Pence set to hold a MAGA rally in Arizona, events that have drawn thousands of mostly mask-less Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the West Wing COVID outbreak continues to grow.
There is, however, at least one Republican who acknowledges the threat COVID poses. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor Monday, warned of the “danger of this terrible virus.” “We all need to remain vigilant,” he said. “We all need to remain careful.” Those may seem uncharacteristically sober words to hear from a Republican, but he does have a Supreme Court seat riding on this, after all.
Vice President Pence speaks during the vice presidential debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Wednesday. (photo: Eric Baradat/Getty)
4 Takeaways From the Mike Pence - Kamala Harris Vice Presidential Debate
Deirdre Walsh, NPR
Walsh writes: "After a raucous debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden last month that was marked by constant interruptions, name-calling and a moderator unable to control the discussion, Wednesday night's vice presidential debate marked a return to a more traditional affair."
It's unclear whether it will be the last debate of the 2020 presidential campaign. Trump, who is recovering at the White House and sidelined — at least for the moment — from the campaign trail after being hospitalized with COVID-19, said Thursday he's "not going to do a virtual debate" after the independent commission that runs the debates announced that the second presidential debate, which had been scheduled for Oct. 15 in Miami, will now be virtual. Trump called the format "a waste of time," adding he had no advance notice of the change.
While most voters don't base their decision on the vice presidential candidates, 2020's contest is possibly different. Biden is 77 and has presented himself as a "transitional" figure to the Democratic Party's next generation. And the president is 74 and has contracted a serious illness.
The vice presidential debate wasn't likely to change many voters' minds or shift the trajectory of the race, but it showed sharp contrasts between the two parties' agendas for the economy, health care and more. Here are four takeaways from the vice presidential debate between Vice President Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.:
1. The 2020 election still hinges on the coronavirus.
From the outset of the debate the pandemic was center stage. Spectators were warned not to remove their masks. The candidates sat at desks more than 12 feet apart and separated by plexiglass shields. It was also the first topic.
Harris was aggressive, seizing on the Democratic ticket's central argument that the Trump administration's handling of the novel coronavirus was "the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country." She accused the president of covering up information about the virus when he was briefed in January by his national security team, and she argued that Trump still didn't have a plan to combat the disease.
Pence defended the president's record and pointed to Trump's decision to restrict travel from China at the end of January as evidence that he took the threat seriously. He noted that the Biden-Harris team's plan to address the coronavirus with testing and the development of a vaccine mirrored actions the administration has already taken. "It looks a little bit like plagiarism," Pence said.
He also attempted to portray Harris' criticism of the administration's response as an attack on the sacrifices Americans have made during the crisis, an answer that seemed to fall flat.
Throughout the debate, whether the question was about the economy or health care, Harris returned to the administration's response to the pandemic.
Pence, in turn, touted what he called record-setting progress on developing a vaccine and pledged, as the president has before, that millions of doses would be available by the end of the year.
Harris said she would take a vaccine approved by medical professionals, but "if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I'm not taking it."
Pence said Harris was seeking to "undermine public confidence" in the effort to develop and approve a vaccine. "Stop playing politics with people's lives," he said.
2. There was an actual debate this time, but not necessarily answers to the moderator's questions.
There was far less interrupting, angry cross-talk and fewer personal attacks than in the presidential debate. Moderator Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA Today, called for a "respectful exchange" and regularly reminded the candidates that answers should be "uninterrupted."
Pence and Harris didn't always comply. And Harris pushed back, calling out Pence when he started to step on her answers or take away from her time. She scolded him with, "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. I'm speaking" — making it clear she wasn't going to let a male debate opponent get away with any intimidation tactics.
Both candidates frequently sidestepped questions altogether. The moderator chose to move on to new topics rather than pose follow-up questions, which was a lost opportunity on some key issues that could have made news or at least educated voters about the candidates' positions. Both ignored a key question that could be top of mind with Biden's age and the president's illness — what would you do if the president became incapacitated?
Pence didn't answer how a Trump-Pence administration would protect preexisting conditions if the Affordable Care Act is struck down by the Supreme Court. He also didn't explain what he would do if the president didn't accept the election results or agree to a peaceful transition of power.
Harris refused to answer a question posed by both the moderator and again by Pence about whether she backed what many liberal activists are pushing: adding justices to the Supreme Court — court packing. Biden dodged the same question in the first debate.
Both also evaded a question about what they thought states should do if the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which would leave the states to write abortion laws.
3. Candidates' strategies reflected the state of the campaign — Pence attacked Biden-Harris as extreme; Harris pivoted to Trump's record on the coronavirus.
Pence's debate style is almost polar opposite of the president's. He was calm and disciplined and came prepared to paint the Biden-Harris ticket as captive to the extreme left of the Democratic Party, specifically on economic issues.
The economy has consistently been the GOP ticket's strongest issue with voters, but that strength has declined as the country struggles with job losses and business closures. The vice president cited an analysis that Harris in 2019 was the U.S. Senate's most liberal member, and he repeatedly linked the Democratic ticket with the Green New Deal, a proposal pushed by progressives in Congress to remake the economy with a new energy infrastructure. Although Harris backed the proposal prior to her nomination, Biden has not.
Pence also asserted that Biden's vow to roll back the president's 2017 tax cuts would translate into tax increases on Americans as soon as he took office, though in fact that would take an act of Congress.
Harris appeared in the crowded Democratic primary debates, but she has had less experience on the debate stage one-on-one. She leaned on her skills as a prosecutor and came with a mission to hammer the case against Trump's handling of the pandemic and the fallout for the economy. She made Pence Trump's stand-in on the subject.
In several exchanges, Harris sidestepped directly answering questions from the moderator and instead shifted the conversation to Trump. She used a question about the Breonna Taylor case in Kentucky to remind the audience of one stunning moment in the Biden-Trump debate, when the president declined to denounce white supremacists.
4. A fly generated the most buzz.
The debate didn't generate much news or many knockout lines, so when a fly landed and remained on the vice president's head for over two minutes, people were transfixed and many took to social media, unable to resist weighing in with jokes. Enormous attention was given to health precautions, ventilation systems and testing of attendees at the debate site. But the appearance of one insect was a scenario no one prepared for, and it was hard to ignore.
Shortly after the debate ended, the Biden campaign posted an ad for a branded fly swatter.
Attorney General William Barr. (photo: Getty)
DOJ Frees Federal Prosecutors to Take Steps That Could Interfere With Elections, Weakening Long-Standing Policy
Robert Faturechi and Justin Elliott, ProPublica
Excerpt: "In an internal announcement, the Justice Department created an exception to a decades long policy meant to prevent prosecutors from taking overt investigative steps that might affect the outcome of the vote."
he Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.
Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.
But according to an email sent Friday by an official in the Public Integrity Section in Washington, now if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.
The email announced “an exception to the general non-interference with elections policy.” The new exemption, the email stated, applied to instances in which “the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency.”
Specifically citing postal workers and military employees is noteworthy, former DOJ officials said. But the exception is written so broadly that it could cover other types of investigations as well, they said.
Both groups have been falsely singled out, in different ways, by President Donald Trump and his campaign for being involved in voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize ballots sent through the postal service, just as the country experiences increased voting by mail spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. He has also raised the specter that the ballots of military members, among whom he enjoys broad support, might be suppressed.
Justice Department spokesman Matt Lloyd said in a statement: “Career prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section of the Department’s Criminal Division routinely send out guidance to the field during election season. This email was simply part of that ongoing process of providing routine guidance regarding election-related matters.” He added that “no political appointee had any role in directing, preparing or sending this email.”
Lloyd declined to say whether political appointees such as the attorney general played a role in the policy change itself.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Experts who reviewed the revision said they were concerned it could be exploited to help the DOJ bolster Trump’s campaign.
“It’s unusual that they’re carving out this exception,” said Vanita Gupta, the former head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It may be creating a predicate for the Justice Department to make inflated announcements about mail-in vote fraud and the like in the run-up to the election.”
In a break from long-standing practice last month, a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania publicly announced that the DOJ was investigating whether local elections officials illegally discarded nine mail-in military ballots. Attorney General William Barr personally briefed Trump on the case before it was publicly announced, The Washington Post reported. Trump later cited it as an example to support his claims of widespread mail-in voter fraud, a false assertion Barr has has helped amplify. It’s not clear where the federal probe stands, but Pennsylvania’s top elections official said early indications point to an error, not fraud.
The new policy carveout, Gupta said, could be designed to both justify the widely criticized Pennsylvania announcement and open the door for more such moves in the coming weeks.
Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division, also expressed concern that the department could be encouraging prosecutors to make more public announcements about incomplete investigations, as they did in the Pennsylvania case.
“It alarms me that the DOJ would want to authorize more of the same in and around the election,” he said. “It’s incredibly painful for me to say, but given what we’ve seen recently, Americans shouldn’t trust DOJ announcements right now.”
The Friday email was sent to a group of dozens of prosecutors around the country known as district election officers. They monitor election procedures and take complaints on Election Day from the public about alleged crimes and serve as the federal points of contact for local election officials.
For decades, the work of federal prosecutors has been guided by a strict policy of non-interference in elections.
A 281-page document titled “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses” is the handbook for district election officers. The latest edition, from 2017, warns against launching public investigations, without approval granted for extraordinary cases, into alleged fraud before an election is over.
Such a step, the handbook says, “runs the obvious risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities. It also runs the significant risk of interjecting the investigation itself as an issue, both in the campaign and in the adjudication of any ensuing election contest.”
One current DOJ official told ProPublica that prosecutors have historically been warned not to allow themselves to be dragged into candidate disputes. “That’s what they drill into us: the policy of non-interference and never, ever, ever announce an investigation,” the official said.
Jonathan Price was killed by a Texas police officer. (photo: Will Middlebrooks)
Texas Police Officer Charged With Murder of Jonathan Price
Sarah Midkiff, Refinery29
Midkiff writes: "On Monday, Shaun Lucas, a white police officer in Texas who shot and killed a black man was arrested and charged with the murder of Jonathan Price. Price, 31, was unarmed at a convenience store when Lucas shot him."
According to CBS Dallas, Texas Rangers booked the officer on Monday evening and an investigation is still underway. While Lucas remains in custody at Rockwall County Jail in East Texas, his bail was already set to $1 million.
The shooting took place on Saturday just after 8:00 p.m. when Lucas responded to a call about a possible fight, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Multiple witnesses say that Price stepped in to help a woman out of a domestic violence situation and that, while things had initially escalated, it was under control by the time police arrived. In a statement from the Texas Rangers currently investigating the shooting, Lucas allegedly attempted to detain Price who “resisted in a non-threatening posture and began walking away.” Lucas then tased Price before shooting him. Shortly after, Price was taken to Hunt Regional Hospital where he died from gunshot wounds.
The preliminary investigation, run by the Texas Rangers in cooperation with Wolfe City Police Department and the Hunt County District Attorney’s Office, indicates that Lucas’ actions were not “objectionably reasonable.” Little more has been said about the investigation, but Lee Merritt, the civil rights attorney representing Price’s family, made it clear that they want to see the surveillance and police bodycam footage, as well as official police reports for themselves. “Why this officer still felt the need to tase and shoot Jonathan is beyond comprehension,” Merritt said.
Following the shooting, Lucas was quickly suspended, but it took two days for authorities to arrest and charge him. “This didn’t happen quickly. It should have happened the day he murdered JP. John should still be here,” Merritt tweeted following Lucas’ arrest. “This is step one. Let’s see it through to justice.”
According to CNN, Price’s father, Junior Price, was visibly emotional when he spoke to reporters saying, “I loved my son, and I tried to bring him up to do the right thing.”
Jonathan Price grew up in Wolfe City, a small town of about 1,400 an hour northeast of Dallas. He worked in the municipal works department for the town and was described as a pillar of the community. “We all love him and think so highly of him and just the nicest guy you could ever meet,” Kyla Sanders, who ran to the scene from a nearby store, told local news outlet WFAA.
Price was also a Wolfe City employee. According to his friends and co-workers, he was describe as a “hometown hero,” “standup guy” and “mentor who worked with children.” Following his death, hundreds marched through his hometown to honor his legacy, while Will Middlebrooks, Price’s childhood friend and former MLB player, set up a GoFundMe page in his honor.
The investigation is ongoing and, so far, there is no news of a scheduled court date. But Price’s family and friends are demanding justice, saying that he was yet another Black man who was targeted and killed by police.
“My friend tried to break up a fight between a man and a woman at a gas station, bc that’s how we were raised. Don’t put your hands on a woman. Yet he was singled out in the fight, shot and killed… unarmed… no weapon… just his skin color,” Middlebrooks posted on Twitter.
Refinery29 reached out to the Wolfe City Police Department.
Workers install one of 123 Vote by Mail Drop Boxes outside a public library, amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Los Angeles, California, U.S., September 11, 2020. (photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
ALSO SEE: With the Map Looking 'Grim,' Republicans Edge Away from Trump
More Than 4 Million Americans Have Already Voted, Suggesting Record Turnout
John Whitesides, Reuters
Whitesides writes: "Americans are rushing to cast ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election at an unprecedented pace, early voting numbers show, indicating a possible record turnout for the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden."
mericans are rushing to cast ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election at an unprecedented pace, early voting numbers show, indicating a possible record turnout for the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.With four weeks to go before Election Day, more than 4 million Americans already have voted, more than 50 times the 75,000 at this time in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.
The shift has been driven by an expansion of early and mail-in voting in many states as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic and an eagerness to weigh in on the political future of Trump, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project.
“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” McDonald said. “People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump.”
The early surge has led McDonald to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.
Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in crucial battleground states indicate a tighter race.
The numbers reported so far come from 31 states, McDonald said, and will grow rapidly as more states begin early in-person voting and report absentee mail-in totals in the next few weeks. All but about a half-dozen states allow some level of early in-person voting.
The percentage of voters who cast their ballot at a voting machine on Election Day already had been in steady decline before this year, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency.
The total number of early or mail-in votes more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, it said, representing an increase from one in five of all ballots cast to two in five of all ballots cast.
Trump has railed against mail-in voting, making unfounded accusations that it leads to fraud. Experts have said such fraud is rare.
Those attacks by the president have shown signs of depressing Republican interest in voting by mail. Democrats have more than doubled the number of returned mail-in ballots by Republicans in seven states that report voter registration data by party, according to the Elections Project.
In the crucial battleground state of Florida, Democrats have requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots and returned 282,000, while Republicans have asked for nearly 1.7 million and returned more than 145,000.
A national Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last week found 5% of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted compared to 2% of Republicans. About 58% of Democrats planned to vote early compared to 40% of Republicans.
McDonald said early voting typically starts strong, then drops before surging just ahead of the election. But in some states, rates of participation already have skyrocketed a month out.
In South Dakota, early voting this year already represents nearly 23% of the total turnout in 2016. It is nearly 17% of total 2016 turnout in Virginia and nearly 15% of total 2016 turnout in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
“That’s just nuts,” McDonald said. “Every piece of data suggests very high turnout for this election. I think that’s just a given.”
Evo Morales in 2008. (photo: Joel Alvarez/Wikimedia)
Evo Morales: We're Still Fighting the Multinationals Who Drove the Coup in Bolivia
Denis Rogatyuk and Bruno Sommer Catalan, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Evo Morales's fate after last November's military coup in Bolivia follows the same dark pattern as that of many left-wing, progressive, and anti-imperialist leaders in the region."
Ousted Bolivian president Evo Morales tells Jacobin about his experience of last November’s military coup — and why his MAS party is poised to win this month’s presidential elections.
vo Morales’s fate after last November’s military coup in Bolivia follows the same dark pattern as that of many left-wing, progressive, and anti-imperialist leaders in the region. Parallels have been drawn with the coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende in September 1973, the attempted military uprising against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in April 2002, and the Ecuadorian police’s bid to oust Rafael Correa in September 2010.
With Morales now in exile in Argentina, he has also been compared to that country’s leader Juan Domingo Perón after the September 1955 takeover by an ultraconservative faction of the army. The military dictatorship implemented a total ban on the Peronista movement, yet the exiled Perón continued to bear enormous influence due to the base he had built through the decade of radical social change and independent foreign policy he pursued under his presidency. Though his name was banned, the Peronist movement remained active, and after its candidate Héctor Cámpora’s March 1973 election victory, Perón was finally allowed to return.
Today, Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism (MAS) find themselves in a rather similar situation. The period since the military coup in November has been marked by repression, massacres of dozens of trade unionists and indigenous activists, and attempts to ban MAS from standing in the presidential election currently slated for October 18. This is combined with an ongoing campaign of media manipulation and fake news designed to smear fourteen years of socialist government.
Despite this, MAS remains Bolivia’s strongest political force, with the latest polls indicating that its Luis Arce Catacora and David Choquehuanca should win the election in the first round with 44.4 percent of the vote — thus achieving the necessary 10 percent margin over second-place candidate Carlos Mesa, also loser of the October 2019 elections. Yet a free and fair contest is seen as increasingly unlikely, given the continual interference from the Organization of American States (OAS) and its secretary, Luis Almagro.
Ahead of the planned vote, Jacobin’s Denis Rogatyuk and Bruno Sommer sat down with ousted president Morales to discuss his record as a trade unionist and as head of state, his experience of the coup, and what MAS can do if and when it returns to government.
BSC: During the Cochabamba Water War of 1999–2000 — a mass revolt against water privatization — you were a union leader resisting the neoliberal government of Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. How can you compare the struggle of those years with the current resistance in the Cochabamba tropics?
EM: It is worth mentioning the group of young peasant and indigenous leaders, active since the end of the 1980s and early 1990s [of which I was part]. We asked ourselves — how long are we going to be ruled from above or from outside? How long would plans and policies keep coming from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank? And when are Bolivians going to govern ourselves?
Bolivia always has had forms of social power, union power, communal power from below. But when we asked how we could nationalize our natural resources and basic services, on the basis of this communal or social power, we could not do so.
So, it was important to promote a political instrument, yes, on the basis of the peasant movement of the tropics, but above all from Quechuas, Aymaras, the more than thirty indigenous nationalities. We proposed a political instrument of liberation, of the people, for the people, and with a program of the people.
At this point, we had to break with the capitalist system. In this system, the social movements are called “terrorists,” and trade unions aren’t meant to be involved in politics. But we said we have political rights and we cannot just be trade unionists only concerned with labor demands. If we want deep transformations, it is important also to produce deep transformations in the state structures. To a certain extent, we had problems with the workers, who insisted on their “trade union independence” and nonpolitical stance.
Then, the governments of Hugo Banzer [1997–2001] and Tuto Quiroga [2001–2002] came along. They privatized Bolivia’s electricity and telecommunications networks, while our natural resources such as gas were handed over to transnational companies. Several times, I went to negotiate with the national leaders of the COB [Bolivian Workers’ Center, the main trade union federation], as well as the peasant confederations, and in the different negotiations with neoliberal governments, we always put the subject of nationalization on the table. Our argument was that when the gas was underground, it belonged to Bolivians, but when it came above ground, it was no longer Bolivian. The unconstitutional contracts that were signed said — literally — that the owner acquires the property right at the wellhead. And who is the owner? The transnational company.
DR: In the 2002 presidential elections, you were defeated by Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada, after a campaign of falsehoods, fear, and intimidation against you and MAS. Today we are seeing something similar. What lessons for the present do you draw from this experience?
EM: In 1997, it was proposed to me that I should be the candidate for the presidency, and I was subject to a lot of defamation by the Sánchez de Lozada government. They said of me, “How can a drug dealer, a murderer be president?” Then, I declined the candidacy. But in 2002, there was a consensus for me to run.
I doubted that I could get a good vote: one international paper said that the MAS could get 8 percent, and all the polls said 3 or 4 percent. Sánchez de Lozada allied himself with the Bolivia Libre (Free Bolivia) Movement, which before, in 1989, had grouped together sections of the Left, the social democrats; this party was based on NGOs and used to receive money from Europe in particular.
The US ambassador, José Manuel Roche, said, “Evo Morales is an Andean Bin Laden and the coca growers are the Taliban — so don’t vote for him.” The anti-imperialist people of Bolivia reacted against this — “Why does the US ambassador accuse Evo Morales of being the Andean Bin Laden?” President Tuto Quiroga had to stay silent; though today he says that there is interference in Bolivia by Argentina and other countries. I said that Ambassador Roche was my best campaign manager for having made those comments. And the result for MAS was 20 percent.
I want to be honest: till that moment, I was not so sure that I could ever be president, but from that point, I thought I could be — and now we really had to prepare ourselves. With a group of professionals, we began to develop a very serious and responsible program for the state, for the Bolivian people.
BSC: The Gas Wars — a popular revolt against the privatization of hydrocarbons in 2003–2005 — were a real turning point, both for Bolivia and for yourself. It was then that we saw the power of the social organizations, mainly in the city of El Alto. How do you compare that historical moment with today — and what role do you think such movements will play in the process of restoring popular sovereignty?
EM: With these struggles, we could win some demands but no structural changes. When I got to the Chapare, in the Cochabamba tropics, [the indigenous peasant front] proposed major changes in the negotiations [over hydrocarbon]. The neoliberal governments’ representatives responded, saying: “No, you are doing politics,” “Politics for you is a crime, a sin,” and “The politics of the peasant in the tropics is ax and machete” — or, in the Altiplano region, the pick and shovel.
Then came the Gas War, a fight concentrated in the city of El Alto. What was the underlying problem? Apart from the question of nationalization, we could not understand why our governments wanted to install an LNG [liquefied natural gas] plant in Chilean territory — not state-owned facilities but private ones — and from there send gas to California. We were lacking in gas, and they were sending it to the United States — but why not first supply Bolivians?
The fight for nationalization was deepening, and there, the people of El Alto were more than ever united, in a single neighborhood council. Now they tell me that it has two, even three neighborhood councils, a weakness in my opinion. But the most combative and the strongest are not only patriotic but anti-imperialist neighborhood councils, based on the Aymara brotherhood.
We are convinced that we are going to overcome all these problems with the people’s struggle, with the struggle of the people of El Alto.
DR: You managed to nationalize the country’s natural resources and create a stable and constantly growing economy. What do you recommend as key policies to solve the current economic crisis in Bolivia created by the coup government?
EM: First, an important fact, of which people should be informed. At the moment we nationalized it in 2005, the [annual] income from oil was barely 3 billion bolivianos. After we nationalized, by January 22, 2019, on the anniversary day of the Plurinational State, we were left with 38 billion bolivianos of oil rent. [In 2005] they left us a GDP of 9.5 billion dollars. By January last year, we left it at 42 billion dollars — imagine the importance of this change.
Bolivia was the bottom country in South America for economic growth, but out of the fourteen years that I was president, for six of them Bolivia was first-placed. When I went to international forums, summits, or to some inauguration, these presidents would ask me: “Evo, this year how much economic growth will there be?” I told them 4 or 5 percent, and they asked me what I had done to achieve this. And I answered: “We must nationalize our natural resources, and basic services must be a human right.”
The privatizations are back again now. The Supreme Decree 4272 [imposed by Jeanine Áñez’s regime] of June 24 this year, proposed a return to the past, reducing the state to “dwarf” size, as the International Monetary Fund wants. The state is not going to invest in public companies, and it will contribute less to the expansion of the productive apparatus for the benefit of the Bolivian people. The idea of this supreme decree is to return to the state functioning only as a regulator and not as an investor in national projects.
The IMF’s recipes are all there in this Supreme Decree: privatizing electricity, telecommunications, health, and education. The privatization of education has already begun, because this year they did not set aside a budget for the creation of new schools. On September 14, they began privatizing energy in Cochabamba; the attorney appointed by Áñez resigned, because that privatization decree was unconstitutional. Basic services are a human right and cannot be a private business, health cannot be a commodity, and education is so important for the emancipation of the people. So, the people rise up in rejection of this.
Unfortunately, Bolivia currently has two pandemics: the pandemic that kills us with the virus — and paralyzes production through the quarantine — but also a government that paralyzes all public works and submits them to capitalist policies.
Our task is to defend the nationalizations and deepen industrialization. That is the goal we must achieve, so we can continue with economic growth. But first we have to recover democracy and take back our country.
BSC: Now we see our indigenous brothers again being persecuted by this racist regime, led by Áñez and her paramilitaries. What do you think the next MAS government should do to help eradicate racism in Bolivia once and for all?
EM: It seems that in Bolivia we are returning to the times of the Inquisition. The racist right has used the Bible to make others hate. They use the Bible to steal, to kill, and to commit genocide. They use the Bible to discriminate, to burn Wiphalas [indigenous flags], to kick the downtrodden and indigenous women. It was racist groups with money that inserted that mentality.
Last December, Republican senator Richard Black acknowledged that the coup had been planned in the United States, taking advantage of this opportunity [opened up by the racist right in Bolivia]. I was surprised by what the owner of Tesla [Elon Musk] said on July 24: he confessed to having taken part in the coup.
So, the coup was directed against us and for [control over] our natural resources, for lithium. We had decided to industrialize lithium, and started on our international reserves. [Commercialization] deals had been signed with Europe, with China. As part of the patriotic agenda marking the bicentenary of our independence, we had planned to build forty-one plants, more than fifteen for potassium chloride, lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, three for lithium batteries, and other plants for inputs but also for by-products. But I said, the United States does not enter here — and that was our crime.
The coup was also directed against our economic model. We demonstrated an economic model that did without the IMF, but that had growth and the reduction of poverty and inequalities. And then came the coup.
So, I think that we are going to have to look for mechanisms to bring Bolivians together, because we cannot have such confrontation. It is very regrettable that there are paramilitaries, armed groups.
Our Movement to Socialism is a political instrument for the sovereignty of the peoples, and this political movement for liberation is not only historic, unprecedented, but unique worldwide. For in colonial times our indigenous people were threatened with extermination — not just racism and discrimination, but extermination. In some Latin American countries, there is no longer an indigenous movement, but our ancestors, such as in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico, fought hard. After five hundred years of popular indigenous resistance, in 1992, we said: “From the resistance to the seizure of power.” And in Bolivia, we kept that promise.
When we began to demonstrate that when we govern ourselves there’s a lot of hope for Bolivia, a coup came along. That is our reality, and so we must seek to end this racism. We should be united, respecting our differences of an ideological and programmatic nature. But that demands politics without violence.
DR: When you were president, you took Bolivia onto the international stage and joined the fight for a multipolar world. Unfortunately, we are seeing that many of these advances have been reversed due to the actions of the coup regime. In your view, what would be the best way to restore Bolivia’s place on the international stage in future?
EM: When I was a trade union leader, I participated in some meetings of heads of state, in Vienna for example, on the fight against drug trafficking. With the help of NGOs that had consultative status, I could participate and listen closely to what my government said in those international forums.
“I associate myself with the proposals of the United States,” “I support the proposals of the United States,” it was just that. Bolivia never had a patriotic policy, a Bolivian proposal. When we arrived [in power], our proposals focused on the defense of Mother Earth and basic services. We brought a proposal to the United Nations that water should be a fundamental right for all human beings and not a private business: everyone backed this proposal, and only the United States and Israel abstained.
I could comment on much of international politics along these same lines. I laughed at the (video-link) intervention of Bolivia’s de facto president in the United Nations attacking Argentina, accusing the Argentine president of interference. What right does she have to talk about foreign interference! But thinking above all of Latin America, in the times of Chávez, Lula, and Kirchner — different times to now — we promoted important continental integration processes such as UNASUR and CELAC. Barack Obama began the process of destroying UNASUR, CELAC, using the Pacific Alliance [alliance of right-wing governments].
The current US president has organized the Lima Group to confront Venezuela. Faced with that, we need greater unity and deep thinking in the Puebla Group and other sectors of ALBA-TCP [Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas]. But we are not alone. I have great hope that our peoples, our social movements, are going to win back democracy.
We would like a plurinational America, because we are so diverse. How good it would be for Europe, for other continents, to recognize that diversity, for that diversity to be recognized by constitutions, by international organizations. We in Bolivia are so diverse — cultural diversity is the wealth of our identity, of our dignity. And based on our diversity, we fight for freedom, for equality — that is the profound struggle we are waging.
However, at this moment, we have really turned back to the past. What the neoliberal right-wing governments do is just to say whatever the United States is saying. That policy from the nineteenth century that states, “America for the Americans” — the Monroe Doctrine — has to end.
The United States and capitalism think that they are sent by God to dominate the world, that the only sovereignty is for the United States. So, when a people liberate themselves, then come military bases, military intervention, and coups.
BSC: What has exile been like for you? What are your feelings about the military that betrayed you, and what will MAS do once it returns to power to ensure that the army is loyal to Bolivia?
EM: I did not want to leave Bolivia. I saw it as a question of “homeland or death.” But a group of assembly members, national leaders, some ministers, told me that first, “to save the process of change we have to save Evo’s life.” I was surprised by that and not so convinced it’s true.
Second, on November 10, before my resignation, after the police mutiny of the previous two days, the social movements were calling on Bolivians to take back the Plaza Murillo [in La Paz], and in the press, I heard that the Armed Forces were demanding my resignation. Following that, some leader of the COB union was also calling on me to resign. What did I think, at that moment? That if I had not resigned, the next day, with such heightened tension, a massacre would happen. To avoid the massacre, I chose to resign, because we are defenders of life.
Up till that moment, there had been so many conflicts, like the opposition strikes in Potosí and Santa Cruz in late August and September. We avoided deaths. Some asked me to militarize things and declare a state of siege, but I refused. I had so many meetings with the military and police commanders, and I told them that bullets are to be used to defend Bolivian territory, not against the people.
Imagine: Evo president, massacres, deaths. How would that have turned out?
Even when I arrived in Chimoré on Sunday afternoon, November 10, I said, “Now I’m going into the jungle.” At that moment, I thought that if I didn’t resign, there would be a massacre in La Paz the next day. The police and military were going to shoot my brothers and sisters who wanted to recover the Palacio Quemado [governmental palace], Plaza Bolivia, and the city’s main square.
They were going to blame me. I resigned so that there would be no deaths or massacre under my administration — for we are defenders of life, of peace, but with social justice. As a parenthesis, I’ll say the fight for peace is a fight against capitalism — if there were peace with social justice, there would be no capitalism, it would be defeated. So, on November 11, I left Bolivia.
That day, South American territory was under US control. They did not let the plane that came from Mexico to pick me up enter Bolivia’s air space. There were three, four presidents, communicating all day long on how to get me out. But for the [post-coup] regime, there were two acceptable outcomes: Evo dead, or Evo in the United States. When I was still in El Alto, the military itself commented that they had to send me to the United States; others compared this to the [1973] coup in Chile.
During my trade union and political struggle, I have been jailed, prosecuted, and confined in Bolivia. But I hadn’t sought asylum before. So now that I’m a refugee, I have completed the full résumé of an anti-imperialist, of a leftist who doesn’t give up. These are the consequences [of what such a person does].
The heritage of the indigenous movement is its anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. In colonial times, they dismembered Túpac Katari, and now in the times of the Republic, they want to “dismember” us, shoot down our political movement, ban the MAS, ban Evo. That is what the United States plans. The United States said, “The MAS must not return to government, or Evo to Bolivia.” But I am sure that one day we will return, in our millions, and restore freedom to the Bolivian people.
DR: If you could go back in time, what would you improve about your governance of Bolivia? And, looking to the future, what do you expect from MAS now — and what role would you like to undertake?
EM: First, forming new leaders itself requires a lot of leadership — so, sharing my experience of trade-union struggle but also of electoral struggle and administration. Politics is a science of service, of effort, commitment, sacrifice for the majority, for the humble. Obviously, politics is a fight among various interests. And what distinguishes us is that we fight for common interests, collective interests, in favor of poor people. Our fight is not to concentrate capital in a few hands, but to redistribute wealth, to ensure a certain equality, social justice, peace with equality, with dignity, with social justice. When we return — and we must return, sooner or later — I really want to share that experience, share a small part of all this struggle.
When I first came to the Chapare to live — indeed, to survive, after my father’s death — suddenly they asked me to be a union leader. I did not want to do this, but there was confidence in me, and so I left my agricultural work. I got into the union leadership, and I was tortured, prosecuted, confined, threatened so many times. Since 1989, I have been put on trial for so many accusations, defamations, that have no argument behind them or basis in fact.
I did not come to the Chapare to be a leader and much less to become president. But my school was the trade union struggle, the social struggle, the communal struggle, not like those who say: “I come from the communist, or socialist, youth.” In living my life, I asked myself how come Evo got to the presidency without an academic education. I answered that I could do so because of our truth and honesty. This government tried to blame me for corruption — but couldn’t do it. After so many defamations against me . . . what is the point of this one?
We are sure that we will win the presidency many more times in the future.
Environmental pollution disproportionately impacts low income communities and Black neighborhoods. (photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images)
Environmental Agencies Are Violating Civil Rights Laws - and the EPA Is Letting Them
Naveena Sadasivam, Grist
Sadasivam writes: "The federal agency was supposed to complete an investigation into the complaint within 180 days. Instead, it took 25 years."
n the early 1990s, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality held a series of public hearings to consider whether or not to grant a permit to the Genesee Power Station, a wood-burning facility that was to be built in a low-income, predominantly Black neighborhood in Flint. The hearings were supposed to be an opportunity for the community to weigh in on the effects that the resulting pollution would have on their neighborhood, but the agency held the hearings 65 miles away, had armed guards present when speakers testified, and prioritized white attendees over Black attendees. The permit was approved, and pollution from the facility later led to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifying it as a “significant violator” of environmental rules.
Flint residents submitted a complaint about the permitting process to the EPA, which is tasked with ensuring that state environmental agencies do not discriminate on the basis of race. (The EPA distributes $4 billion in federal funding to state governments and nonprofit groups every year, binding the recipients to federal civil rights laws.) The federal agency was supposed to complete an investigation into the complaint within 180 days.
Instead, it took 25 years. Not only that: The EPA’s finding that the Michigan agency treated African Americans “less favorably than non-African Americans” remains, to date, its one and only finding of discrimination.
The incident is a stark illustration of the conclusions of a new report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General, which examined the EPA’s enforcement of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. According to the report, most state agencies are doing little to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin — and the EPA is not fulfilling its obligation to get them in line.
Rather than affirmatively assessing whether or not state agencies’ programs were nondiscriminatory, the EPA waited for complaints before investigating compliance, according to the inspector general. As of August, 43 states lacked at least one foundational element in a checklist of nondiscrimination criteria developed by the EPA. (The checklist requires, in part, that funding recipients post nondiscrimination notices in prominent locations in the office, that they provide language assistance services for those with limited proficiency in English, and that they hire a nondiscrimination coordinator.)
“Those procedural requirements are the baseline [at other federal agencies],” said Marianne Engelman Lado, director of an environmental justice clinic at the Vermont Law School. “Recipients are supposed to do that across the board. EPA sits passively waiting for complaints rather than actively requiring compliance with civil rights law. What this report confirms is that EPA needs to have an affirmative compliance program.”
James Hewitt, a spokesperson for the EPA, said that the agency’s civil rights compliance office had “improved” over the last few years “in order to create a more robust and responsive program.” He argued that the inspector general’s report did not account for steps in the right direction made over the last three years, including clearing what Hewitt called “overaged cases,” issuing a new strategic plan, improving timelines for responding to complaints, and increasing training.
Last week’s report is hardly the first time that the EPA has come under fire for accepting few civil rights complaints for investigation, spending years — and sometimes decades — resolving them, and almost never making findings of discrimination. According to a 2015 investigative project by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization, the agency dismissed 95 percent of complaints submitted.
The new inspector general report shows that these issues still have not been fully addressed. The EPA received 57 complaints of discrimination betwteen 2016 and March 2020 — and just 16 were accepted for investigation.
In 2015, community groups sued the EPA for taking unreasonably long periods of time to respond to complaints and missing regulatory deadlines. Engelman Lado, who was then an attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice, represented the groups. A district court in California ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2018. Just last week the judge rebuffed the EPA’s objections to the court’s judgement, which once again requires the agency to meet the 180-day deadline for investigating complaints.
The inspector general’s office issued six recommendations for the agency in last week’s report, calling on it to conduct compliance reviews of funding recipients prior to awarding federal money, train EPA staff to help promote compliance at the state level, and implement a plan to conduct comprehensive compliance reviews of funding recipients.
Engelman Lado acknowledged that the EPA has taken some steps to improve compliance with civil rights law, but she argued that it will take far more robust action to substantively address racial disparities in environmental outcomes.
“Communities have clamored for equal protection, and EPA has neglected its job,” she said.
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