08 December 20
We Have a Funding Crisis on Our Hands
We have donors, many good ones in fact. But the the overall response rate - at a fraction of one percent - is just too low. It is absolutely causing a crisis.
If we did not need the funding we would not spend this much time raising money - would not happen.
What we need really are a few good donors.
See what you can do.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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07 December 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Countdown to a Coronavirus Vaccine
Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker
Excerpt: "The race is nearly complete, but distributing the doses will be a breathtaking challenge."
READ MORE
Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state. Officials last month certified the state's election results that showed Biden defeated Trump. (photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
Armed Pro-Trump Protesters Gather Outside Michigan Elections Chief's Home
Reuters
Excerpt: "Michigan's secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said dozens of armed protesters gathered in a threatening manner outside her home on Saturday evening chanting 'bogus' claims about electoral fraud."
Michigan officials last month certified the state’s election results showing President-elect Joe Biden had won Michigan, one of a handful of key battleground states, in the course of his 3 November election victory.
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud in multiple states. State and federal officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale, and Biden is to be sworn in on 20 January.
The protesters who rallied outside Benson’s home held up placards saying “Stop the Steal” and chanted the same message, according to various clips uploaded on social media.
In a Twitter statement on Sunday, Benson said the protesters were trying to spread false information about the security and accuracy of the US election system. “The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening.”
The Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, in a separate Twitter post, accused the pro-Trump demonstrators of “mob-like behavior [that] is an affront to basic morality and decency”.
“Anyone can air legitimate grievances to Secretary Benson’s office through civil and democratic means, but terrorizing children and families in their own homes is not activism.”
Benson added: “They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s chief election officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me – or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.”
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has clashed publicly with Trump over state coronavirus restrictions, was the target of a kidnapping plot by a far-right militia group during the election campaign, prosecutors said in October.
Michigan, one of a handful of key swing state in the 2020 presidential race, was a target of agitation by Trump and rightwing supporters against stay-at-home orders Whitmer imposed earlier this year to curb coronavirus transmissions.
Dylan in 1981. (photo: AP)
What Bob Dylan Selling His Music Catalog Does and Doesn't Mean
Simon Vozick-Levinson, Rolling Stone
Vozick-Levinson writes: "Universal Music Publishing Group is getting control of Dylan's songwriter income - but it doesn't take over recording rights or future songs."
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Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff (L) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (R) wave to supporters during a 'Get Out the Early Vote' drive-in campaign event. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Latest Georgia Polls Give Ossoff and Warnock Razor Thin Leads
FiveThirtyEight
Excerpt: "Two runoff elections on Jan. 5 will determine which party controls the Senate."
Two runoff elections on Jan. 5 will determine which party controls the Senate
o candidate in either of Georgia’s Senate races won a majority of the vote on Nov. 3, triggering a runoff for both seats, with the top two candidates in each race facing off. Control of the Senate now hinges on the outcome of these two races.
Georgia’s regular Senate election
Republican Sen. David Perdue is running for reelection against Democrat Jon Ossoff in a regularly scheduled election.
Georgia’s special Senate election
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler faces Democrat Raphael Warnock in a special election. Loeffler was appointed to fill former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat after he resigned.
The Senate currently stands at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats. If Democrats win both runoffs, the party will have control of the chamber because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would break any ties. But if Republicans win one of the two races, they will maintain control.
All runoff polls
FiveThirtyEight’s averages use all runoff polls conducted since the Nov. 3 general election. We adjust polls for house effects based on how much each poll differs from the polling consensus.
Police. (photo: Shutterstock)
Family Says Police "Are Lying" About Killing of Casey Goodson Jr. in Columbus, Ohio
Ishena Robinson, The Root
Robinson writes: "Police shot and killed a 23-year-old man in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend, claiming they shot him after he drove by them in a car while waving a weapon."
olice shot and killed a 23-year-old man in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend, claiming they shot him after he drove by them in a car while waving a weapon.
According to a report from The Columbus Dispatch, the Franklin County Sheriff’s office in Ohio said its SWAT team had been unsuccessfully searching for a fugitive on Friday when a young man—identified by his family online as Casey Goodson Jr.—passed by them in a car while waving a handgun.
At a press conference about the incident, U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio Peter Tobin said the deceased was not the target of the search but was confronted by a member of the SWAT task force who shot him after he did not follow a command to drop his weapon.
But Goodson’s family members dispute that version of events. His sister, Kaylee Harper, said that her brother had been in the process of entering his home while holding a sandwich when he was shot by police.
“They are lying,” Harper posted on social media in response to the Franklin Country Sherrif’s office report of the so-called officer-involved shooting. “My brother literally walked across the yard, walked into the back fence to get to the side door, had his subway and mask in one hand, keys in the other.”
“Why did you kill a man walking into his own home? He just wanted to enjoy his Subway after leaving the dentist’s office,” she added.
“Police shot him in the back three times through the door,” Goodson’s mother Tamala Cain said, according to a report from BET. Cain added that her son was licensed to carry a concealed weapon and had no history of trouble with the law.
Police have released little additional details about the incident, outside of saying that a 17-year-veteran of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office shot the 23-year-old and that they believe the shooting was justified. Officials have yet to publicly name Goodson as the victim, but say a police-led investigation will be carried out into the incident and that it will be presented to prosecutors and a grand jury in Franklin County for consideration.
Goodson’s family has launched a GoFundMe to help with the cost of his burial.
The narrator of the War on Cuba documentary, Liz Fernández Oliva. (photo: Belly of the Beast/The Root)
'The War on Cuba' Documentary Tells the Story of the US Embargo
Julia Thomas, NACLA
Excerpt: "The Belly of the Beast collective explains how they are creating responsible media about Cuba and depicting the impacts of U.S. policy."
he War on Cuba” documentary opens along Havana’s iconic Malecón, a long stretch of road winding along the coastline of the Cuban capital. A yellow almendrón, the affectionate term for old cars in Cuba, carries the film’s narrator, Liz Oliva Fernández, down the coast. She is perched on the back seat, wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, and ironically carrying a selfie stick. Fernández’s dialogue debunks the romanticized vision of an idyllic, old Havana that the media often perpetuates.
“People come to Havana looking for the real Cuba and this is what they do,” Fernández says in the first episode of the documentary. “But this is not my Cuba.”
“The War on Cuba” is a three episode documentary telling the story of Cuban people and the impact of the 60-year U.S. blockade. It winds between interviews with Cubans and broader histories of U.S. propaganda, oil sanctions, and the campaign against the Cuban medical system, doctors and medical brigades.
Fernández alternates between Spanish and English in her narration and speaks to fellow Cubans in a casual, conversational tone that makes the film feel deeply personal and at once expansive. She sits in a chair in front of a television and expresses frustration with the media’s one dimensional focus on the U.S. sanctions; at a kitchen table, she asks her mother about her choice to leave Cuba and serve as a doctor in Venezuela when Fernández was 10 years old; she inquires about the availability of various medicines at a pharmacy counter and is told each time that the drugs have run out. The film presents compelling, digestible background information in the spirit of investigative, deeply-researched journalism. But its true draw is its cinematography and the thoughtful, humanizing attention given to the people Fernández speaks with, whose lives have been touched by a devastating blockade for decades. “The War on Cuba” centers interviewees and Fernández as true experts on the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.
The documentary was filmed during the pandemic and released in October by Belly of the Beast, a collective made up of Cuban and U.S.-based journalists and activists that seeks to tell stories about Cuba from a grassroots, independent perspective. The documentary is the collective’s first major project, and an example of its commitment to shape its journalism around Cuban voices and provide context in a media landscape heavily influenced by state interests.
I spoke with members of Belly of the Beast about the process of making “The War on Cuba,” launching an independent media outlet in Cuba, the feedback they get from Cuban listeners, and what stories they are considering pursuing in the future.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
JT: Belly of the Beast launched as an independent collective and began telling people-centered stories by Cubans right around the beginning of the pandemic. What inspired its formation? What were your initial conversations about goals and intentions for the collective like?
Belly of the Beast: Belly of the Beast was inspired by the dearth of responsible and impactful media coverage of Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations. Cuba is a fascinating country due to the unique experience of its revolution–it’s the only country in the Western Hemisphere to have openly defied U.S. hegemony for the last 60 years and as a result it continues to face the longest trade embargo in modern history. Cuba also has an outsized influence around the world and in the United States. In the recent U.S. presidential election, Trump won Florida thanks to support he garnered from Cuban-Americans who favored his hardline Cuba policy.
Despite Cuba’s importance, media coverage of the island is severely lacking. In our initial conversations about starting our own media organization, we decided that we wanted to break with the model of parachute journalism, in which foreign journalists, typically North American or European, descend on countries in the Global South and report on events with a slanted perspective representing their own countries’ interests and with minimal if no input from journalists on the ground.
From the beginning, we sought to create a collaborative space where Cuban journalists and filmmakers would work with their foreign counterparts. We also wanted to reach a young audience in the United States that is not typically exposed to engaging and in-depth stories about Latin America and U.S. policy in the region. Our primary medium is video and we have crafted a dynamic and fast-paced style to reach this audience.
Many of our initial conversations revolved around the fact that we were aspiring to create something that was both ambitious and completely new. We struggled to find examples to follow of successful video-focused independent progressive media aimed at a young audience anywhere in the world, and much less in Cuba.
Our mission was exciting, but also daunting. How could we build an audience online with minimal resources? How should we balance our commitment to adhering to the highest journalistic standards and providing meaningful context with the need to reach an audience with a relatively short attention span? How would we make Belly of the Beast sustainable? We continue to ask these questions.
JT: Your documentary series looks at the implications of U.S. sanctions on Cuba during the pandemic and beyond. What was the process for reporting and deciding on themes for the three-part film? Why did you decide to break up the film as you did, and how did you find a balance between providing context and telling current stories?
Belly of the Beast: We initially planned on producing 10 parts, but due to the pandemic, we were forced to limit the series to three episodes. In the first part, we wanted to provide a broad look at the impact of the barrage of sanctions Trump imposed since he took office, as well as the political interests driving them. The first part was the most challenging in terms of balancing historical context with telling present-day stories, as the inaugural episode, we decided it was necessary to give basic background to an audience that might know little or nothing about Cuba and its history.
The second episode looks at the oil blockade of Cuba and the connection between U.S. policy towards Venezuela and Cuba. We prioritized this issue because the oil blockade has a tangible impact on the Cuban people and because the Trump administration’s policy towards Latin America is inextricably linked to its Cuba policy. We felt the third episode was particularly relevant given Covid and the devastating impact the U.S. campaign to discredit Cuba’s international medical program has had in Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador, whose governments removed Cuban doctors in 2018 and 2019.
JT: "The War on Cuba" features Cubans from many walks of life — baseball players, shop owners, farmers, doctors. How was the film received by Cubans, while you were filming and as a finished product?
Belly of the Beast: Convincing Cubans to participate in the filming of the series was challenging because Cubans both inside and outside of the government are understandably wary of a media organization with foreign journalists aimed at a U.S. audience. The reaction to the finished product in Cuba has been overwhelmingly positive. People seemed to respond particularly well to the personal stories of Cubans whose lives have been affected by U.S. sanctions.
The embargo, or “blockade” as it’s known in Cuba, is a subject Cubans are familiar with because it is mentioned constantly in state-run media and by Cuban politicians.
As Liz Oliva Fernández, the journalist who presents The War on Cuba, states in the first episode: “Our government blames pretty much everything on the U.S. embargo…this gets so old.” By avoiding stale political discourse and focusing on the stories of real people, we realized that Cubans weren’t tired of hearing about the embargo, they were tired of the way they were hearing about it.
JT: Your collective in Cuba is aiming to fill a void in coverage of Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations. What does it mean to be an independent media outlet in Cuba, and what is the current media landscape like? What are the biggest challenges you've encountered?
Belly of the Beast: One of our biggest challenges has been getting access to stories. Due to Cuba’s socialist system and centralized government, many institutions are state-run and thus getting access requires authorization from the government. This is not always so easy. The Cuban authorities are wary of providing unfettered access to foreign journalists, an understandable concern given that the U.S. government has been actively seeking regime change in Cuba for 60 years.
Another major challenge has been convincing supporters and allies in the United States why our work covering Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations is so important. A year ago, in explaining why our “War on Cuba” series was relevant, we argued that Trump’s Cuba policy could have a decisive impact on the outcome of the presidential election in Florida. At the time, some people told us we were exaggerating Cuba’s significance. As it turns out, we were right.
We don’t expect Cuba’s relevance in U.S. politics and in the world will abate in the coming years. If anything, as Cuba continues to transform and its relations to the U.S. government improve under Biden, Belly of the Beast’s role will become even more crucial.
JT: Belly of the Beast has also produced a conversation series, Lessons From Cuba, and other short films. These cover topics like life of a printmaker, what Cuba looks like under quarantine, protests in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, musicians, mutual aid groups, and much more. Looking ahead, what issues and forms do you hope to pursue? What have you learned making "The War on Cuba" that will inform your work as a collective going forward?
Belly of the Beast: There are a myriad of issues we hope to take on in the coming year and beyond. We are working on a documentary series about Cuba’s remarkable success in containing Covid. We plan on continuing to do investigative work into U.S. government policy towards Cuba and its connection to Miami politics. Due to Covid, we’ve been unable to work much outside of Havana the last year and we hope to carry out more films and short videos outside of the capital.
Julia Thomas is a journalist currently working as a Digital Fellow at Democracy Now! In 2017-2018, she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, during which she studied grassroots media and community-centered reporting alongside journalists in Ecuador, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and Nepal. Her work focuses on media, environmental justice, and social movements.
Bridgette Murray looks at an air quality monitor that was installed in her backyard in Houston's Pleasantville neighborhood, on March 19, 2019. (photo: Dan Joyce/Environmental Defense Fund)
Trump Administration Rejects Tougher Standards on Soot, a Deadly Air Pollutant
Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The Trump administration on Monday rejected setting tougher standards on soot, the nation's most widespread deadly air pollutant, saying the existing regulations remain sufficient even though some public health experts and environmental justice communities had pleaded for stricter limits."
“People of color and the poor — that is who gets hit the hardest by this,” one activist says
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler signed the standards Friday, according to two individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The agency retained the current thresholds for fine particle pollution for another five years, despite mounting evidence linking air pollution to lethal outcomes from respiratory diseases, including covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Documents obtained by The Washington Post show the EPA has disregarded concerns raised by other administration officials that several of its air policy rollbacks would disproportionately affect minority and low-income communities.
In its decision, the EPA maintained the Obama-era levels, set in 2012, are adequately protective of human health. Agency scientists had recommended lowering the annual particulate matter standard to between 8 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter in a draft report last year, citing estimates that reducing the limit to 9 could save between 9,050 and 34,600 lives a year.
The current national standards limit annual concentrations of soot and other chemicals to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Emissions on specific days are allowed to be as high as 35 per cubic meter, a standard set 14 years ago. These fine particles — which measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair — can enter the lungs and bloodstream, causing inflammation that can lead to asthma, heart attacks and other illnesses.
Monday’s news came as a gut punch to people like Bridgette Murray, whose neighbors in the historically Black, downtown Houston neighborhood of Pleasantville have long struggled with air polluted by nearby petrochemical manufacturing and a bustling highway. The community erected six of its own monitors starting last fall to cover the neighborhood’s borders and detect pollutants spewing into the air.
A year of data, gathered with the support of the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas Southern University, brought worrisome results: The concentration in the air of fine particle pollution, known as soot, averaged 12 micrograms per cubic meter.
Murray has suffered headaches when the air quality worsens, which is permissible given that daily concentrations are legally permitted to spike up to 35 micrograms per cubic meter. Other residents of the historic Black community have endured various lung ailments and cancer. So, the community went looking for answers. “We wanted to move from that kind of anecdotal posture to actually collect some data,” said Murray, executive director of a community-based organization called Achieving Community Tasks Successfully.
To Murray, the rejection of stricter standards offers fresh evidence that the Trump administration is not doing enough to protect disadvantaged communities.
“It is an artificially high standard that is supportive of industry,” she said, noting her residential neighborhood lies near a massive ship channel where there are several petrochemical plants and heavy truck traffic. “But very little is being done to help those who are exposed to that pollution on a day-to-day basis.”
An EPA advisory committee made up of outside experts split on the question, with some members calling for tighter standards and others arguing the current rules remain sufficient. Ultimately, Wheeler decided this spring to maintain the existing standards for fine particulate matter.
“The United States has some of the cleanest air in the world, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Wheeler told reporters at the time. “We believe the current standard is protective of public health.”
Soot comes from a variety of sources. Among them: industrial operations, incinerators, car and truck exhaust, power plants, smokestacks and burning wood. Poor and minority communities in the United States tend to be exposed to greater air pollution, including soot, often because they are located close to highways and industrial facilities.
A 2019 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that on average, communities of color in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic breathe 66 percent more air pollution from vehicles than White residents. A separate study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences found Black and Hispanic communities in the United States bear a “pollution burden” that far exceeds any air pollution they produce.
Long-term exposure to polluted air has increased the risks Americans of color face when it comes to heart and respiratory illness, including covid-19, which is disproportionately killing African Americans.
“This flies in the face of good science and good public health. It is outrageous,” said Dominique Browning, co-founder and the head of Moms Clean Air Force, an advocacy group that pushes for robust air and climate oversight around the country.
“It builds in years more of assaults on the human body, especially in places where people are breathing the worst of it,” she added. “It just basically sends a message of not caring about people.”
But several major business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute, backed the administration’s decision to retain the existing standards, noting that annual concentrations of fine particulate matter are down by 39 percent since 2000.
Monday’s decision marks the Trump administration’s latest move in a long-running effort to ease industrial regulation. The White House has rolled back more than 125 environmental safeguards during Trump’s time in office, according to a Washington Post analysis, with plans to finish nearly a dozen more by mid-January. Those rollbacks include scaling back automobile fuel-efficiency standards and emissions limits for coal-burning plants, as well as lifting Obama-era methane limits on new oil and gas wells.
In most instances, federal agencies are required to conduct an “environmental justice” analysis to determine how these actions will affect vulnerable communities. But on multiple occasions, the Trump administration has downplayed the impact of its decisions on poor and minority communities.
The EPA recently finalized changes to a rule known as “Once In, Always In,” which requires facilities to always operate the most advanced pollution controls if they annually emit 10 tons or more of a single hazardous air pollutant or 25 tons or more of at least two such pollutants. The updated rule exempts all facilities that have already cut their hazardous air emissions below these levels, which could potentially allow some companies to pollute more as long as they don’t reach the legal threshold again.
In the interagency analysis, according to documents posted online, one White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs official noted the change “raises the potential for an increase in overall hazardous air pollutant emissions and consequent health effects, especially for populations near area sources. It previously has been noted that the burden of cancer risk for hazardous air pollutants falls disproportionately on racially segregated metropolitan areas, contributing to health disparities.”
“The EPA states they are unable to assess the extent to which health may be may be harmed by the regulatory relief provided by this final rule,” the staffer added. “We believe the EPA should conduct a thorough regulatory impact analysis that estimates a set of worst case scenario assumptions in order to be able to convey to the public the potential harms of this rule.”
The Environmental Integrity Project did conduct such an analysis, examining the potential impact on 12 plants in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota. It found they could more than quadruple their emissions of toxic air pollution, from 121,082 pounds in 2018 to as much as 540,000 pounds each year.
In a separate rollback, the agency scrapped limits on leaks of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — from oil and gas operations. During the interagency review, one administration official noted in the margins, “implementing this rule will have adverse human health and environmental effects on racial and ethic minorities, low-income and rural populations.”
In another section, a Health and Human Services Department official noted the rule could cause more ozone, and “ozone pollution exposure may be an important risk factor that increases susceptibility to and severity of infectious diseases, including COVID-19.”
“The Trump administration’s EPA has repeatedly and deliberately hid the harmful impacts of its rollbacks to environmental justice communities, meaning low-income and minority populations,” said Amit Narang, Public Citizen’s regulatory policy advocate.
In the case of the national soot standards, critics are already gearing up to challenge them in court. Most areas of the country have met the annual standards, with the exception of portions of Southern and Central California and parts of Pennsylvania and Idaho — though Environmental Defense Fund senior director for climate and health, Elana Craft, noted that inadequate air monitoring may account for those results.
Craft and her colleagues found roughly 10 percent of the Houston area has concentrations of fine particle pollution above 12 micrograms per cubic meter in 2015, meaning that area failed to meet the current standards. “The case is strong that the administration used flawed science in keeping the standards, and ultimately that will be borne out in court,” she said, noting policymakers lack critical data because there is not a single federal air monitor in all of west Houston.
But even if opponents of the decision eventually prevail in court, or if the Biden administration pursues stricter national standards, the reality is that residents in many places will have to live with dirtier air for longer, said Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator for the Environmental Justice Health Alliance.
“It’s not just a quick fix overnight. These communities are going to be breathing the same air for some time,” Roberts said. “People of color and the poor — that is who gets hit the hardest by this.”
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