15 December 20
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15 December 20
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Charles Pierce | Our Advanced Democratic Republic Is Greeting the Electoral College Vote With Calm and Maturity. Not.
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Luckily, we have prominent national leaders who work for calm."
Not.
ood morning! Today, in a quaint relic emblematic of the genius of the Founders, in state capitols across this great republic, the Electors will gather for the purpose of helping the president* lose the 2020 presidential election for the 238th time in a little over a month. And all across this great republic, citizens have treated this event with the cool equanimity that comes so naturally to a mature self-governing people.
In Washington, the D.C., via the Post:
One of those arrested was 29-year-old Phillip Johnson of the District, who was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with at least one of four stabbings that occurred. For most of the day, police largely kept opposing factions separated, at times frustrating the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization that supports Trump’s attempts to reverse an election he lost. Confrontations broke out after dark, when Proud Boys and their supporters ventured near Black Lives Matter Plaza and were prevented access by police, many using bicycles as mobile barricades.
And in Washington, the state, from the Olympian:
One person was shot and three arrested after two protest groups clashed near and on the state Capitol Campus in Olympia Saturday afternoon, according to the Washington State Patrol and Olympia police. The shooting suspect, a 25-year-old Shoreline man, has been arrested on suspicion of first-degree assault, according to the State Patrol. The victim was transported to an area hospital by a private party, said Sgt. Darren Wright. Details about the victim were still not known as of Sunday morning.
(Let us pause for a moment and pay homage to the work that "clashed" is doing in that paragraph. This is very similar to the "clash" between me and that car last December.)
And in state capitols in places like Michigan, from the Detroit News:
On Sunday night, House and Senate officials sent notifications about the closures to members and staff. At 2 p.m. Monday, the state's 16 presidential electors will convene in the Senate chamber to cast their votes for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Some are expecting protesters in support of Republican President Donald Trump to gather outside the building, which will be closed to the public.
Amber McCann, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, said Sunday night the Senate closed its offices based on "recommendations from law enforcement." The decision was not based on anticipated protests but on "credible threats of violence," McCann said. "Due to safety and security concerns, the Senate and all Senate spaces in downtown Lansing will be closed Monday, December 14," the Senate notification said. "The Capitol, Binsfeld Office Building, and Senate offices within Boji Tower will be closed."
Luckily, we have prominent national leaders who work for calm.
“Why not look into this if in fact the evidence that we have is true?” Flynn opined. “We definitely believe that it is true. And there is clear, clear evidence. And so what we have to stop doing is saying [there is] nothing to see here, you know, we’re going to continue to march down the road towards a false inauguration, which the country will not allow that right now.”
And religious leaders, too.
“We come to Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day with troubled and heavy hearts. Our nation is going through a crisis which threatens its very future as free and democratic. The worldwide spread of Marxist materialism, which has already brought destruction and death to the lives of so many, and which has threatened the foundations of our nation for decades, now seems to seize the governing power over our nation.”
And so, on Monday, we enact a constitutional vaudeville first instituted to make sure that chattel slavery would continue in perpetuity. It's an amusing little quadrennial ceremony, and it might be a problem if we weren't such a highly developed democratic republic.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event to announce new Cabinet nominations on December 11, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Electoral College Makes It Official: Biden Won, Trump Lost
Mark Sherman, Associated Press
Sherman writes: "The Electoral College decisively confirmed Joe Biden on Monday as the nation's next president, ratifying his November victory in an authoritative state-by-state repudiation of President Donald Trump's refusal to concede he had lost."
The presidential electors gave Biden a solid majority of 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump bragged was a landslide when he won the White House four years ago.
Heightened security was in place in some states as electors met to cast paper ballots, with masks, social distancing and other pandemic precautions the order of the day. The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.
For all Trump’s unsupported claims of fraud, there was little suspense and no change as every one of the electoral votes allocated to Biden and the president in last month’s popular vote went officially to each man. On Election Day, the Democrat topped the incumbent Republican by more than 7 million in the popular vote nationwide.
California’s 55 electoral votes put Biden over the top. Vermont, with 3 votes, was the first state to report. Hawaii, with 4 votes, was the last.
“Once again in America, the rule of law, our Constitution, and the will of the people have prevailed. Our democracy — pushed, tested, threatened — proved to be resilient, true, and strong,” Biden said in an evening speech in which he stressed the size of his win and the record 81 million people who voted for him.
He renewed his campaign promise to be a president for all Americans, whether they voted for him or not, and said the country has hard work ahead on the virus and economy.
But there was no concession from the White House, where Trump has continued to make unsupported allegations of fraud.
Trump remained in the Oval Office long after the sun set in Washington, calling allies and fellow Republicans while keeping track of the running Electoral College tally, according to White House and campaign aides. The president frequently ducked into the private dining room off the Oval Office to watch on TV, complaining that the cable networks were treating it like a mini-Election Night while not giving his challenges any airtime.
The president had grown increasingly disappointed with the size of “Stop the Steal” rallies across the nation as well as efforts for the GOP to field its own slates of electors in states. A presidential wish for a fierce administration defense led to TV appearances early Monday by Stephen Miller, one of his most ferocious advocates, to try to downplay the importance of the Electoral College vote and suggest that Trump’s legal challenges would continue all the way to Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Late in the day, he took to Twitter to announce that Attorney General William Barr was leaving the administration before Christmas. Barr’s departure comes amid lingering tension over Trump’s unsupported fraud claims, especially after Barr’s statement this month to The Associated Press that the election results were unaffected by any fraud.
In a Fox News interview taped over the weekend, Trump said that “I worry about the country having an illegitimate president, that’s what I worry about. A president that lost and lost badly.”
On Monday in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the six battleground states that Biden won and Trump contested — electors gave Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris their votes in low-key proceedings. Nevada’s electors met via Zoom because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump’s efforts to undermine the election results also led to concerns about safety for the electors, virtually unheard of in previous years. In Michigan, lawmakers from both parties reported receiving threats, and legislative offices were closed over threats of violence. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, over Trump.
Georgia state police were out in force at the state Capitol in Atlanta before Democratic electors pledged to Biden met. There were no protesters seen.
Even with the Electoral College’s confirmation of Biden’s victory, some Republicans continued to refuse to acknowledge that reality. Yet their opposition to Biden had no practical effect on the electoral process, with the Democrat to be sworn in next month.
Republicans who would have been Trump electors met anyway in a handful of states Biden won. Pennsylvania Republicans said they cast a “procedural vote” for Trump and Pence in case courts that have repeatedly rejected challenges to Biden’s victory were to somehow still determine that Trump had won.
In North Carolina, Utah and other states across the country where Trump won, his electors turned out to duly cast their ballots for him. Electors in North Carolina had their temperatures checked before being allowed to enter the Capitol to vote. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes withdrew as a Trump elector and was in quarantine because he was exposed to someone with COVID-19.
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated four years ago, were among New York’s 29 electors for Biden and Harris.
In New Hampshire, before the state’s four electors voted for Biden at the State House in Concord, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. He had delivered a moving speech at the Democratic National Convention in August about the struggle with stuttering he shares with Biden.
Following weeks of Republican legal challenges that were easily dismissed by judges, Trump and Republican allies tried to persuade the Supreme Court last week to set aside 62 electoral votes for Biden in four states, which might have thrown the outcome into doubt.
The justices rejected the effort on Friday.
The Electoral College was the product of compromise during the drafting of the Constitution between those who favored electing the president by popular vote and those who opposed giving the people the power to directly choose their leader.
Each state gets a number of electors equal to its total number of seats in Congress: two senators plus however many members the state has in the House of Representatives. Washington, D.C., has three votes, under a constitutional amendment that was ratified in 1961. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, states award all their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state.
Sandra Lindsay, left, is inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccine by Dr Michelle Chester, in the Queens borough of New York City. (photo: Getty Images)
US Covid Deaths Pass 300,000 as First Americans Receive Coronavirus Vaccine
Mark Oliver, Guardian UK
Oliver writes: "More than 300,000 people have now died because of Covid-19 in the United States, with the latest milestone coming amid record daily fatalities and the national rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine."
Grim milestone reached as US starts distributing Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine following FDA approval
The first shot in the US mass vaccination program was given shortly after 9am ET on Monday morning at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York. Intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person not enrolled in the vaccine trials to receive it.
“It feels surreal,” she said. “It is a huge sense of relief for me, and hope.”
New York governor Andrew Cuomo described the vaccine as “the weapon that will end the war”. Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
As hospitals around the US continue to describe a crisis of capacity in intensive care units, experts have described this winter as likely the most perilous time, despite the hopes brought by the recent vaccine progress. It also comes less than a month after the country lost a quarter of a million people to the disease.
The latest figures from Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center show more than 300,456 fatalities in the US, and more than 16m cases. It took just 27 days to go from 250,000 deaths to 300,000 - the fastest 50,000-death jump since the pandemic began. Some models project that hundreds of thousands more people could die before vaccines become widely available in the spring and summer.
The US has the highest death toll from the disease in the world, followed by Brazil, India and Mexico, and the US is among the worst-hit of developed nations in terms of its death rate. Globally, there have been more than 69m cases and at least 1.5m deaths.
Earlier this month the UK became the first country in the world to begin administering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, followed quickly by Canada and the US.
The US government is aiming to distribute the first wave of 2.9 million vaccine doses to 636 locations nationwide by the end of the week. US Army General Gustave Perna said on a Monday press call that severe storms expected in some parts of the country this week could pose challenges to vaccine shipments.
On Sunday, trucks hauling trailers loaded with suitcase–sized containers of Covid-19 vaccine rolled out of Pfizer’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the US.
While progress on the vaccine is being celebrated across America, it also comes amid safety concerns and fears of anti-vaccination sentiments that might hinder the rollout.
Lindsay, 52, who is black, told the New York Times she hoped that by being the first person outside of medical trials to get vaccinated, she would help “inspire people who look like me, who are skeptical in general about taking vaccines”.
There are also worries over a potentially chaotic roll-out with local plans for vaccine distribution that vary widely, lack federal funding, and will not reach everyone even in early, limited populations.
The US, which has recently been reporting around 2,200 deaths per day, recorded more than 3,000 deaths on one day for the first time on 9 December.
Cases have been surging in the US since mid-October to more than 200,000 a day and experts including Dr Anthony Fauci have said the worst of the surge is expected after Thanksgiving – despite official requests not to travel – and likely just before Christmas.
Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, told CNN his fears about Christmas were the same as Thanksgiving: people traveling and not social distancing, “only this may be even more compounded because it’s a longer holiday”.
Dr Michael Osterholm, a member of US president-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, told CNN: “No Christmas parties. There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.
“It won’t end after that but that is the period right now where we could have a surge upon a surge upon a surge.”
Hospitals around the country have reported being under huge pressure. One in 10 Americans – especially across the midwest, south and south-west – live in an area where intensive care beds are either full, or available at lower than 5% of capacity, the New York Times reported.
In California, Fresno county’s interim public health officer, Dr Rais Vohra, told CNN that there was recently one day in the county with zero intensive-care capacity: “I know that those who aren’t in the medical field may not understand or quite grasp just how dire the situation is, but all the things you’re hearing about – how impacted our hospitals are, about how dire the situation with our ICUs is – it’s absolutely true. And that really is the reason that we want everyone to stay home as much as possible.”
Bill Barr. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
'One of the Worst Attorneys General in American History': Criticism of Bill Barr Pours In as He Resigns
Griffin Connolly, The Independent
Connolly writes: "The criticism has been pouring in from all sides for Attorney General William Barr after Donald Trump announced he would be stepping down from the Justice Department before Christmas."
Mr Barr has long been a lightning rod of anger and frustration from Democrats for his handling of the Mueller report, his heavy-handed response to racial justice protests this past summer, and his attempts to investigate FBI and DOJ officials who led probes into Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Recently, the attorney general has become something of a pariah on the right for defying Mr Trump’s claims of election fraud.
Virginia Democratic Congressman Don Beyer summed up his party’s position on the outgoing attorney general with a tweet shortly after the president announced his imminent departure.
“I don't know whether Bill Barr is actually resigning or being fired, but either way he will go down in history as one of the worst Attorneys General in American history,” Mr Beyer said.
And Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal embodied Democrats’ feelings of animus to Mr Barr.
“There should be no sympathy or regret for an Attorney General who trashed the rule of law, caused untold suffering, & enabled a morally depraved president. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Mr Blumenthal tweeted.
Mr Trump wished the attorney general well and said he would be replaced in an acting capacity by Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen.
Last week, Trump and Barr executed Brandon Bernard even though he committed his crime when he was just 18 years old. (photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Trump Is Spending the Last Days of His Presidency on a Literal Killing Spree
Austin Sarat, Guardian UK
Sarat writes: "Donald Trump is on a killing spree. He is turning the anger and resentment which burnishes his brand into a virtually unprecedented string of federal executions."
In disregard for political precedent or basic humanity, Trump has fast-tracked federal executions before Biden takes office
From 14 July 2020, when the attorney general, William Barr, restarted the federal death penalty by executing Daniel Lewis Lee, through last week, the administration has put ten people to death. Three more executions are on the docket in the days leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Last week, Trump and Barr executed Brandon Bernard even though his crime was committed when he was just 18 years old, and they killed Alfred Bourgeois even though his IQ put him in the intellectually disabled category.
Trump and Barr have turned the solemn process of punishment into an assembly line of death. In doing so they have shown themselves to be indifferent to history, inattentive to the troubling problems plaguing the federal death penalty, and out of step with the country they lead.
They are behaving like vigilantes or characters in Clint Eastwood’s movie Dirty Harry, killing not because the executions will make the US a safer, saner, or more just society – but simply because they can.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the last time an outgoing administration did anything remotely similar was more than a century ago, in 1889. Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected president after the civil war and the only one to serve two non-consecutive terms in office, ordered his administration to carry out three executions in the period between his electoral defeat and the inauguration of his successor in March 1889.
It’s also worth remembering that almost 50 years ago, the federal death penalty was held unconstitutional as part of the supreme court’s Furman v Georgia decision in 1972. Like capital punishment at the state level, it was found to be applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner. The federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 and greatly expanded by the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994.
Unfortunately, what was true in 1972 remained true when the federal death penalty was brought back and is true today.
The use of the death penalty continues to be tinged with racism and with the horrifying history of lynching, which has made it more popular in the deep south than in the rest of the US.
A Department of Justice study conducted in 2000 found significant racial disparities in the department’s own handling of capital charging decisions. It reported that from 1995 to 2000, minority defendants were involved in 80% of the cases federal prosecutors referred for consideration as capital prosecutions. In 72% of the cases approved for prosecution, the defendants were persons of color.
Today, members of racial minorities comprise 52% of the inmates awaiting execution at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, a figure only slightly lower than the 55% on state death rows.
But race is not the only source of arbitrariness in the federal system. Geography plays a key role. Federal death verdicts, like those in the states, are concentrated in states from the former confederacy. Three of them – Texas, Missouri, and Virginia – account for 40% of the total.
Recognizing those problems, recent Democratic and Republican presidents showed restraint in using the ultimate sanction. Only three federal executions had been carried out since 1972, all during the George W Bush administration.
Timothy McVeigh was put to death in June, 2001 for blowing up the Oklahoma City federal building and killing 168 people. That same month, Juan Raul Garza was executed for his role in a drug cartel-related mass killing. In 2003, the federal government executed Louis Jones for the 1995 kidnapping, rape and murder of a female soldier.
Today, despite what would Trump have Americans think, his killing spree does not reflect what is going on with capital punishment across the country. Almost everywhere, the grievous errors, discriminatory application and frequent mishaps associated with America’s death penalty are recognized and acknowledged.
The result is that it is being used less and in fewer places. Over the last 30 years, death sentences and executions have declined steeply. In 2019, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34 people were given death sentences and 22 people were executed. This year, in part because of Covid-19, those numbers will be even lower.
Contrast this to the late 1990s, when more than 300 death sentences were handed out annually and almost 100 people were put to death.
Changes of these kinds are seen even in the most conservative states and in the heart of the death belt. Take Texas, which has long been thought of as the nation’s leader in capital punishment. In 1998, 48 people received a death sentence in Texas; in 2019, four. Twenty years ago, the state carried out 40 executions, the most in the United States. In 2019 it was nine.
Covid-19 also shines a light on how out of step Trump’s rush to execution really is. Responding to the pandemic and the special dangers it causes for lawyers, witnesses and the correctional personnel who have to carry out executions, many states have put executions on hold. Indeed, by the end of the year, only seven inmates will have been killed in five states – Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.
But the Trump administration has shown no such compunction or concern. It has ignored the pleas of religious advisors and of families of murder victims who wished to be present at the death of the person who murdered their loved ones but were afraid of being exposed to the virus. They have disregarded the right of the condemned to the effective assistance of counsel, going forward with executions even if defense lawyers were not able to fully litigate outstanding legal issues or meet with their clients to secure their help in mounting meritorious appeals.
Trump’s execution spree manifests yet again his embrace of gratuitous violence as a centerpiece of his mode of governing. It is very much in character for someone who I have elsewhere labelled “America’s first vigilante president.”
Like others in the vigilante tradition, Trump is threatened by cultural diversity and uses violence against people whom he views as outsiders or as less than fully human. Unlike other vigilantes, however, Trump can enlist the apparatus of state violence, most especially the death penalty, against people who in his eyes are “dogs.”
As the president’s parting gift to America, his execution spree will leave behind a trail of dead bodies and a legacy of violence. This country should refuse this inheritance, as Americans come to terms within death penalty’s brutality and seek to “build back better” by creating a culture of dignity, respect, and honor for all who inhabit our land.
A demonstrator waves a Chilean flag on top of a monument during the seventh day of protests against President Sebastián Piñera on October 24, 2019, in Santiago, Chile. (photo: Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images)
Chile's Establishment Is Still Blocking a Real Break With the Past
Octavio García Soto, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Today, social movements are pushing for a new constitution that offers broad welfare and environmental guarantees - but first, they must confront an oligarchy hell-bent on thwarting any fundamental change."
This October's historic referendum in Chile saw a massive 78 percent vote to abandon the Pinochet-era constitution. Today, social movements are pushing for a new document that offers broad welfare and environmental guarantees — but first, they must confront an oligarchy hell-bent on thwarting any fundamental change.
ugusto Pinochet’s constitution is finally on its way out, after the October 25 referendum brought a 78 percent vote to replace his regime’s neoliberal charter. But in that vote, Chileans were also asked a second question: “What type of organ should write the new constitution?” Seventy-nine percent preferred it to be written by a constitutional convention, rather than a “mixed” body including sitting MPs.
We already know some things about what will happen next. April 11, 2021 will see an election to appoint 155 members of the constitutional convention; they will draft a document, which Chileans can then approve or reject in an “exit referendum” slated for mid-2022.
Today, the Chilean senate and congress are still defining the rules for these contests. Indeed, this is not a constituent assembly, created from scratch; and it is already clear that the convention will have limitations such as high quorum requirements, a preference for party-political delegates, and even restrictions imposed by the current constitution.
To shed light on what comes next, Jacobin‘s Octavio García Soto spoke with constitutional lawyer Carolina Parraguez Piña. They discussed the coming election, the themes that the constitution will likely address, and the immense difficulty of forcing change upon Chile’s economic and military elite. October 25 was a massive victory — but there’s still an uphill battle to achieve real democracy.
The explosion of protests last fall put the spotlight on Chile’s social movements, including the feminist and LGBT movements. How will this translate into the constitutional process?
CPP: First, I’ll say, the social explosion didn’t come out of the blue on October 18, 2019. It’s not that people suddenly woke up that week. There was a longer process of social and cultural — and not just political — transformation.
Since at least 2015, the feminist movement has become a real force influencing many other aspects of Chilean politics. And it’s telling that, after approving the drafting of a new constitution, we are also celebrating a paritary constitutional convention — 50 percent made up of women, regardless of their political vision.
The different left-wing forces, as well as feminism, will clearly have an influence. But that also relates to a criticism some of us have: in Chile today we have a united right but many and divided forces on the Left. You have twenty strains of feminism, various strains of LGBT politics, Marxists and Marxist-Leninists, Socialists, the “renewed Socialists,” the radicals; and the new forces that came from the 2006–2011 Penguin Revolution student protests. They are millennials born after the return of democracy: and that age factor also shapes Chilean political realities.
You mentioned the “renewed Socialists,” basically the Concertación (the center-left that governed Chile after the return to democracy). How will they influence popular demands? While social movements look horizontal and leaderless, political parties are clearly still a power within this constitutional process.
CPP: “Renewed Socialists” isn’t a way of saying they have updated their views to the twenty-first century — this label for them is more of a criticism society has leveled against the pro-business Socialist Party which ruled Chile in the early 2000s.
In the constitutional referendum, Chileans voted against the Mixed Convention option, whereby half of the convention would be represented by Congress. This highlights the problem these parties have.
Twenty-first-century Chile is very different from the country that endured the barbaric dictatorship and the return to democracy. Today’s society is critical, and that critical society rejects the parties as well as the representatives of powerful interests in Chile, precisely because they are an oligarchy.
What happens now? What are the nuts and bolts of the processes preparing for the April 11 constitutional convention election?
CPP: Now that we have won this first stage, in which 7.5 million voters approved the principle of drafting a new constitution, comes the second, political stage in which it will be drafted. On April 11, 2021 we will go back to the polls to choose the 155 members of the constitutional convention.
Many of the rules for that body are being discussed in Congress. One issue is the number of seats for Chile’s nine indigenous ethnic groups, who still haven’t received the recognition they deserve.
This also connects to their rights with regard to environmental problems. Many territories belonging to these communities are mixed up in natural resource issues. Water resources in Chile are in serious trouble, precisely because of the mining and forestry industries, whose activities endanger many lives due to drought.
Will these extra seats be approved?
CPP: The Right will fight it — and many say this matter doesn’t need to be regulated at a constitutional level. But I think the convention should also embrace the worldview of Chile’s indigenous communities. Today, we only talk about the right to live in a pollution-free environment, but not about healthy environments or balanced ecosystems. Obviously, this will generate problems for those who own water resources — and in Chile the water is all privatized!
Already-established constitutional rights will not be simply repealed by the new constitution. In their campaign of fear against drafting a new constitution, various populists claimed that such a step would be a blank page for making Chile into “a new Venezuela.” I say that with all due respect for Venezuela, whose image these people so tarnish.
The Right doesn’t want to even consider the indigenous people, and even some in the center-left may agree with them. But Chile is making progress, in this regard.
How can I, as a Chilean, run as a candidate for the constitutional convention?
CPP: It’s clear that political parties and powerful groups are working to make it harder for those without party-political affiliation or financial resources to run. Many administrative procedures have been suspended due to the pandemic and this has had repercussions for citizens not affiliated with existing political forces — thus preventing a real citizen and democratic participation in this process.
To register and be part of any political process in Chile, you need signatures. In Chile everything is done on paper, so if anyone wants to be a candidate, they’ll have to go to the notary’s office with their supporters to register. The minimum number of signatures is not yet defined — currently, it stands at around 0.4 percent of a district’s population. But in the district I live in, there’s three million people!
It’s possible that it may be changed to 0.2 percent. But then, you have to pay for those signatures at the notary’s office. Who’s gonna pay for it? Do you have the capacity as an independent candidate? On top of that, our mobility is limited, due to the pandemic.
We hope that Congress will legislate to make this process as quick and friendly as possible. What other options do you have when you lack financing? You can join a party or remain an independent with party ties, using it as a tool to increase your chances of election. But many people who have historically belonged to a political party and had top positions, today still want to run for the convention.
One school bus driver became famous last year for going to the protests dressed as Pikachu. She has expressed interest in running for the convention, and recently accused the police of violently attacking her. Does she have as much chance of running as anyone else?
CPP: This process is not egalitarian. First of all, we should note this is not a constituent assembly, but a convention. Even though Chile was actually formed by an assembly — the Cabildo Abierto of 1810, which declared freedom from Spain — most conservatives don’t want to talk about creating such a body.
Today, we have the Pikachu Lady, Compadre Moncho (a TV actor), and Anita Tijoux (a rapper), three figures clearly representative of the Chilean popular spirit, who are interested in being delegates, but don’t have the same economic backing, reputation, or networks as a person with a history in politics does.
We’ll have to see how the financing will be determined. Hopefully, Congress decides in favor of the same budget and campaign time for everyone, and political parties understand that they must take a step back.
On referendum night we saw well-known party figures having their photos taken, as if they had achieved this victory — but citizens did! This started with the jumping of the turnstiles, the demonstrations against the privatized pension system, the feminist Ni Una Menos movement. This doesn’t belong to the parties. That’s why the mixed convention proposal did so badly; the parties had lost credibility.
Do you see an ecological potential in this constitution?
CPP: We speak of ecology in order to inspire people to work toward such a constitution. But, as a country that lives on the exploitation of its natural resources, we are in the worst scenario possible. The current definition of the environment in the 1980 constitution has destroyed the glaciers and allowed the exploitation of the Antarctic. We used to have a Mediterranean climate in the Central Zone. Now, we are literally semi-deserted. There is a constant loss of biodiversity.
Chilean society is much more cultured now than in the 1980s and children have a more sensitive view of nature. But we’re still behind. Countries like Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia have already declared nature to be worthy of rights, thus placing greater limits on its ownership.
We environmentalists hope that we can at least lay the foundations for a future, fully ecological constitutional process. That takes a process of building a society with an environmental vision; maybe in twenty years’ time we can define ourselves as an eco-resilient society. Then, we can at least aspire to a future where we won’t have to fight for two drops of water to survive.
Regarding law enforcement and the army, do you think they’ll be subject to change — or even allow it?
CPP: We can summarize what I told you about political parties and the powers that be in one concept: oligarchy. Rather than the Left and Right, we have to talk about normal citizens with no power vs. oligarchic power groups. The armed forces and police are obviously oligarchic. They are not going to give up power.
Look at the military police, the Carabineros de Chile. After the exposure of all their corruption cases, they are the Chilean institution with least credibility. And anyone who goes to demonstrate in Plaza Italia in Santiago is under constant terror of being hit by a bullet, of being arrested, or even tortured in a police station.
There are Amnesty International reports and UN complaints about these brutal attacks on human rights, but the president and the institutions deny them outright. The armed forces don’t want to concede a millimeter of the space they occupy, either.
Many talk about reforming the institutions, or eliminating the current ones. But there’s no visible prospect of the police changing into a new institution with new principles and values.
They are still using human rights protocols from under the dictatorship. Women have been sexually abused in police stations after being arrested. People have been thrown from bridges, like what that policeman did to the young protester a month ago. If he was destroying public property, OK, then the courts should have done what they had to do according to due process. But state forces can’t be enacting corporal punishment — outright torture.
So no, I don’t have any confidence that these institutions will change.
The neoliberal model will most likely be reconsidered…
CPP: It could happen, if the convention’s members lean toward welfare statism — we don’t know yet, it depends on how democracy plays out.
But I don’t believe Chile will change its neoliberal system. It’s very difficult to change, because of Chile’s condition before the international community regarding trade issues. Our economy is based on the exploitation of natural rights and Chile is also hyper-connected to globalization.
But we also have to understand that this country isn’t that stable. There was a reason for the revolts in October 2019. Chileans are not divided between the Left and Right so much as between an oligarchy and the people; before, it was the colonial criollos, now it’s businessmen.
Chile boasted that it did not have Colombia’s drug-related problems, or Argentina’s problems with corruption. But we suddenly realized that there is drug trade and corruption in Chile as well. It’s a very strong blow to the identity that we Chileans have, but it’s also led us to understand that we can no longer maintain a system that was created by a dictatorship based on human rights violations and exclusively neoliberal and Catholic values.
I do believe that there will be greater social security rights. The people aspire to a more advanced definition of social rights, of education, health, and housing. These are fundamental issues for the development of any nation. So, I wouldn’t go so far as to predict that the neoliberal order will fall, but the new constitution is going to include a catalogue of social, cultural, and environmental rights for the twenty-first century.
The fear many people have of their property being expropriated will not materialize, not least given the lack of resources to compensate them. This has nothing in common with the conflicts of the 1960s and ’70s, and there won’t be an agricultural reform to expropriate traditional landowners either.
Many members of the constitutional convention may not be familiar with the necessary legal language. So, who should guide the process?
CPP: This is a constitutional convention, not an assembly. So, its work will be protected by Congress. But we should understand that while some of the convention’s 155 members will be political figures we’re familiar with, and some will be very literate, some will represent very well the interests of their local area but not have a university education. So, there will also be a technical commission, parallel to the 155 convention members.
So, we need to do away with the myth that “all of Chile is going to write the new constitution.” It’s not like that. And with all due respect to people like Pikachu Lady, they will have to be faithful to democracy and be a clear communicator for the group of people they represent. These groups, in turn, will also have to be alert and monitor whether they’re actually being represented.
Many things in this constitutional process have been criticized as trapdoors set by the Right, such as the two-thirds quorum and the aspects related to parties. Is such a high quorum democratic?
CPP: It certainly is a very high and complex quorum. But, on the other hand, if we want to see it more politically, perhaps this quorum will help us understand that the agreements were reached by a large majority. This can give greater legitimacy to the decisions finally translated into the constitutional text to be approved in 2022.
[Since this interview, far-right politician Pablo Longueira has admitted that the two-thirds quorum would allow conservatives to block radical changes in the Constitution. Communist congresswoman Camila Vallejo has introduced a bill for the convention to change the two-thirds quorum to 50 percent + 1]
Recently, former president Ricardo Lagos commented on the political order he would like to see under the new constitution. He said he likes the idea of a president as a head of state, alongside a prime minister.
CPP: That’s another big issue. I believe that there is a good possibility of changing the Chilean presidential system. Let’s not forget that the current focus on a strong presidential figure is influenced by the three-hundred-year-old legacy of the Spanish colony in Chile. The transformation began in 1810, with Independence.
Unfortunately, president Diego Portales’s constitution, from 1833, started the trend of an authoritarian presidential figure with extremely concentrated executive power. Some historians say that the president in Chile is that of a king — you just take off the crown and don the presidential sash.
I feel that this new constitution will not necessarily transform the country into the one dreamt of by the social movements. Perhaps we could see this new charter as a “transitional” one, which reorders the Chilean state’s priorities and paves the way to a future, fairer constitution — if the people’s discontent so wills it.
CPP: Perhaps transition isn’t the right term. But we do need to stop idealizing this process. I think that the current social and cultural levels in our country point to a wonderful transformation, because today we have a far more inclusive society, despite the ever-present racism and xenophobia. But the next constitution will not change everything.
What it will least allow us to do is to tighten the screws and recalibrate Chile for the current century. This new constitution may not be the most avant-garde, nor the most progressive, nor the most inclusive, nor the most beautiful in the world. But at least it will not be out of step with reality.
For the most important thing is where the new document comes from — it will be the result of the proposals of a constitutional convention that represents a democratic body based on citizens’ own participation. And that itself is something new.
Sea otters in waters near Sitka, Alaska. Scientists divide sea otters into northern and southern subspecies, each adapted to its own habitat. (photo: Raul Touzon/National Geographic Image Collection/Getty Images)
Archaeologists Could Help Bring Otters Back From the Dead
Joshua Sokol, The New York Times
Sokol writes: "The sea mammals vanished from Oregon's coast long ago, but a technique from human archaeology offers a clue to restoring them."
rom 1969 to 1971, the United States was testing nuclear weapons beneath one of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, worryingly close to some of the world’s few surviving sea otters. The subterranean explosions prompted conservation managers to carry out a daring plan.
First, they netted some Alaskan sea otters. Then they set 59 free off the coast of Washington State and 93 more near Oregon. This was part rescue mission, part homecoming. Before fur traders hunted them to the brink of extinction, sea otters used to bob and roll up and down North America’s Pacific Coast, gobbling down sea urchins and helping to maintain waving towers of kelp.
In Washington, the transplants took. But within a few years the Oregon otters vanished. “The biggest question is: What happened to Oregon?” said Shawn Larson, a conservation biologist at the Seattle Aquarium, because the answer could inform transplantation efforts.
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