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Andrea Mazzarino | Indirect Deaths: The Massive and Unseen Costs of America's Post-9/11 Wars at Home and Abroad
Andrea Mazzarino, TomDispatch
Mazzarino writes: "It seems that we Americans still care more about waging war in distant lands than about protecting our own people right here at home."
Perhaps the strangest thing about America’s “forever wars” is how little obvious impact they’ve had here. A country — an imperial power, in fact, that liked to think of itself as the planet’s last or “lone” superpower — goes to war for so long (and with so little evident result) that even “the longest war” no longer fits as a title. After 19 1/4 years, Afghanistan, where it all began, has truly become a forever war. If you’re living in that country, where the violence is never-ending, that’s undoubtedly a key part of your everyday reality. Living here, however, you can forget that such wars are even still underway. Yes, America’s conflicts are covered by the media in at least a modest fashion most of the time; and sometimes their impact is indeed felt here, however indirectly, as in the militarization of this country’s police, equipped by the Pentagon in these years with weaponry and gear sometimes directly off America’s distant battlefields; and yes, trillions of your tax dollars, which could have gone so usefully elsewhere (think about this country’s long collapsing infrastructure) have disappeared down the gullet of distant wars. Still, most of the time, it’s easy enough for most Americans who, in a draft-less world, have no obligation to deal with the U.S. military or our wars, to pretend that none of it is going on.
In the recent combative election campaign, were those wars even an issue? Barely. And yet what could, or at least should, be more striking than a country, not long ago considered the leading power on the planet, that simply can’t stop fighting in distant lands in a wildly unsuccessful fashion? As it happens, of course, the “costs” of those wars have indeed come home, just not in ways that most Americans have paid much attention to. As TomDispatch regular and co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project Andrea Mazzarino makes clear today, in fact, the indirect damage of those wars to Americans and to the fabric of this society is far higher than we care to imagine.
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were out, and they couldn’t fit in. They had nowhere to work, no one who related to them. And they had these PTSD symptoms that made them react in ways other Americans didn’t.”
This veteran’s remark may seem striking to many Americans who watched this country’s post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere unfold in an early display of pyrotechnic air raids and lines of troops and tanks moving through desert landscapes, and then essentially stopped paying attention. As a co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, as well as a military spouse who has written about and lived in a reasonably up-close-and-personal way through the costs of almost two decades of war in the Greater Middle East and Africa, my Marine acquaintance’s comments didn’t surprise me.
Quite the opposite. In the sort of bitter terms I’m used to, they only confirmed what I already knew: that most of war’s suffering doesn’t happen in the moment of combat amid the bullets, bombs, and ever-more-sophisticated IEDs on America’s foreign battlefields. Most of it, whether for soldiers or civilians, happens indirectly, thanks to the way war destroys people’s minds, its wear and tear on their bodies, and what it does to the delicate systems that uphold society’s functioning like hospitals, roads, schools, and most of all, families and communities that must survive amid so much loss.
Combat Deaths: The Tip of the Iceberg
A major task of the Costs of War Project has been to document the death toll among uniformed American troops from our post-9/11 wars, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. Compared to the 400,000 American deaths (and still climbing) from Covid-19 in less than a year, the approximately 7,000 American military deaths from those wars over almost two decades seem, if anything, small indeed (though, of course, that total doesn’t include thousands of military contractors who also fought and died on the American side). Even for me, as an activist and also a psychotherapist who bears witness to human suffering on a fairly regular basis, it’s easy enough to grow desensitized to the words “more than 7,000,” since my life hasn’t been threatened by combat daily.
Indeed, 7,000 is a small number compared not just to Covid-19 deaths here but to the 335,000-plus deaths of civilians in our war zones since 2001. It doesn’t even measure up to the 110,000 (and counting) Iraqi, Afghan, and other allied soldiers and police killed in our wars. However, 7,000 isn’t so small when you think about what the loss of one life in combat means to the larger circle of people in that person’s community.
To focus only on the numbers of American combat deaths ignores two key issues. First, every single combat death in Iraq and Afghanistan has ripple effects here at home. As the wife of a submarine officer who has completed four sea tours and who, as a Pentagon staffer, has had to deal with war’s carnage in detail, I’ve been intimately involved in numerous communities grieving over military deaths and sustaining wounds years after the bodies have been buried. Parents, spouses, children, siblings, and friends of soldiers who have been killed in action live with survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, and sometimes addiction to alcohol or drugs.
Families, many with young children, struggle to pay the rent, purchase food, or cover healthcare premiums and copays after losing the person who was often the sole source of family income. Communities have lost workers, volunteers, and neighbors at a time of mass illness and unrest just when we need those who can sustain intense pressure, problem solve, and work across class, party, and racial lines – in other words, our soldiers. (And yes, while the storming of the Capitol earlier this month included military veterans, I have no doubt that the majority of U.S. troops and veterans would prefer to be shot before getting involved in such a nightmare.)
Second, as the testimony of the former Marine I interviewed suggests, many people suffer and die long after the battles they fought in are over. Social scientists still know very little about the magnitude of deaths because of — but not in — war’s battles. Still, a 2008 study by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat estimated that indirect deaths from war are at least four times as high as deaths sustained in combat.
At the Costs of War Project, we’ve started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America’s war zones. There, people die in childbirth because hospitals or clinics have been destroyed. They die because there are no longer the doctors or the necessary equipment to detect cancer early enough or even more common problems like infections. They die because roads have been bombed or are unsafe to travel on. They die from malnutrition because farms, factories, and the infrastructure to transport food have all been reduced to rubble. They die because the only things available and affordable to anesthetize them from emotional and physical pain may be opioids, alcohol, or other dangerous substances. They die because the healthcare workers who might have treated them for, or immunized them against, once obsolete illnesses like polio have been intimidated from doing their work. And of course, as is evident from our own skyrocketing military suicide rates, they die by their own hands.
It’s very hard to count up such deaths, but as a therapist who works with U.S. military families and people who have emigrated from dozens of often war-torn countries around the world, the mechanisms by which war creates indirect death seem all too clear to me: you find that, in the post-war moment, you can’t sleep, let alone get through your day, without debris on the highway, a strange look from someone, or an unexpected loud noise outside sparking terror.
If the stress hormones coursing through your body don’t wreak their own havoc in the form of painful chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia or mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, then the methods you use to cope like overeating, reckless driving, or substance abuse, very well might. If you are a child or the spouse of someone who has lived through repeated deployments to America’s twenty-first-century wars, then there’s a significant chance you’ll be on the receiving end of physical violence from someone who lacks the tools and self-control to deal peacefully. We aren’t counting or even describing such injuries and the deaths that can sometimes result from them, but we do need to find a way.
A Gaping Hole in Our Knowledge
My colleagues and I have started to examine the indirect costs of war through interviews with people who have born witness to war or lived through it, as has the U.S. government through its own limited collection of statistics. For example, in 2018, some 18 American active-duty military personnel or veterans died by suicide each day. (Yes, daily.) But all we really know so far is this: self-inflicted deaths from violence, car accidents, substance abuse, and chronic stress that can be traced back to this country’s post-9/11 wars are problems that plague military communities, and they didn’t exist at this magnitude before Washington decided to respond to the 9/11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Still, we have remarkably little information about the scope and nature of such problems. I’ll tell you what I do know with certainty, though: the only consistent and cohesive institutions sustaining troops home from America’s battle zones are the “families,” formal and informal, of servicemembers and the communities in which they live — not just their spouses and children, but also extended families, neighbors, and friends. When it comes to the more formal support structures — Veterans Affairs hospitals and outpatient clinics, providers that accept military insurance, small nonprofits that provide recreational and other forms of support and the like — there just aren’t enough of them.
It’s common knowledge in my community that referral processes and wait times for such aid are often long and stressful. If you’re a veteran seeking help, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself having to switch doctors more than once a year, rather than getting the continuity of care you might need to treat complex physical and emotional trauma. Meanwhile, childcare and other kinds of supportive caregiving that might help control neglect and abuse are laughably sparse.
As the upper-middle-class wife of an officer in a family that enjoys the benefit of dual incomes, I can still offer examples from my own life and community that should raise questions about how someone with fewer resources and already under the stress that accompanies multiple “tours” of America’s battle zones can survive. My husband and I had to pull years’ worth of retirement savings from our bank account to afford a lifesaving prenatal treatment for me that military insurance would not then fund (though it would indeed be covered later) — a problem that could have been avoided had the customer service representatives of the Department of Defense’s health and medical program, Tricare, been appropriately funded and trained.
The wife of an officer we know whose son has autism had to go through months of letter-writing and advocacy to receive care both for that boy and her other young child so she could apply for jobs and travel to her own medical appointments during her husband’s multiple deployments. (Tricare would only fund care for one child, leaving her watching the other.) Active-duty and veteran servicemembers I know regularly drink and use drugs heavily each night to calm their anxieties and post-traumatic stress symptoms sufficiently to sit through family dinners, watch our ever-more-distressing news, or get a few hours of sleep.
Many fear seeking mental-health treatment because of the real threat that, in the military, exposure for doing so will result in professional demotion. We live in an era where so much depends on competent, trustworthy security to shield us from the dual threats of a deadly pandemic and domestic terrorism and yet our security forces often lead lives that are problematic indeed. The toll in such lives — what might be thought of as indirect deaths from combat — that we’ve endorsed by failing to welcome home and provide adequately for the some two million servicemembers who have fought in “our” wars should be a focus of our attention and yet is largely unnoticed.
A Defense Bill That Defends Little
With such human costs of war in mind, it’s a wonder to me that the only bipartisan bill passed by Congress over a presidential veto in the Trump years was the recent monumentally funded $740 billion “defense” bill. It included spending for yet more weapons production, as well as salary raises, among other measures that were meant to shore up the fighting power of our active-duty troops (after 19-plus years of unsuccessful wars abroad).
Most striking to me, however, amid its massive support for the military-industrial complex, is how little that bill does to expand social support for military families. There is indeed a modest increase in daycare assistance for troops’ family members with disabilities, as well as limits to increased copays for those who use their military insurance in their communities. Missing totally, however, are key structural changes like protections for soldiers who seek mental healthcare, more robust job-training programs for those desiring to transition into the civilian workforce, greater accountability for Tricare when it comes to providing accurate information on services available in the community, and expanded childcare support for military families.
Indeed, what’s most notable about that bill’s very existence is how the leaders of both political parties keep funding war spending above all else, especially given that our foreign wars of this century have accomplished little of discernible value beyond making a mess that may never be cleaned up. To me, what that bill truly represented was the massive and unseen costs of America’s post-9/11 wars at home and abroad.
It seems that we Americans still care more about waging war in distant lands than about protecting our own people right here at home. Indirect deaths from our conflicts are a reality, however little noticed they may be. Isn’t it time to begin weaving a genuine safety net, allowing vulnerable Americans who fought in those very wars to be better supported so that, no longer committing senseless violence against others, they don’t commit it on themselves?
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel Frostlands (the second in the Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Andrea Mazzarino, a TomDispatch regular, co-founded Brown University’s Costs of War Project. She has held various clinical, research, and advocacy positions, including at a Veterans Affairs PTSD Outpatient Clinic, with Human Rights Watch, and at a community mental health agency. She is the co-editor of War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Capitol riots. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Lawmakers Are Threatened Ahead of Impeachment Trial That Moves to Senate
Michael Balsamo, Associated Press
Balsamo writes: "Federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the second trial of former President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol."
The threats, and concerns that armed protesters could return to sack the Capitol anew, have prompted the U.S. Capitol Police and other federal law enforcement to insist thousands of National Guard troops remain in Washington as the Senate moves forward with plans for Trump's trial, the official said.
The shocking insurrection at the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob prompted federal officials to rethink security in and around its landmarks, resulting in an unprecedented lockdown for Biden's inauguration. Though the event went off without any problems and armed protests around the country did not materialize, the threats to lawmakers ahead of Trump's trial exemplified the continued potential for danger.
Similar to those intercepted by investigators ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the threats that law enforcement agents are tracking vary in specificity and credibility, said the official, who had been briefed on the matter. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial, according to the official.
The official was not authorized to not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Law enforcement officials are already starting to plan for the possibility of armed protesters returning to the nation's capital when Trump’s Senate trial on a charge of inciting a violent insurrection begins the week of Feb. 8. It would be the first impeachment trial of a former U.S. president.
Thousands of Trump’s supporters descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential race. More than 800 are believed to have made their way into the Capitol during the violent siege, pushing past overwhelmed police officers. The Capitol police said they planned for a free speech protest, not a riot, and were caught off-guard despite intelligence the rally would descend into a riot. Five people died in the melee, including a Capitol police officer who was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Though much of the security apparatus around Washington set up after the riot and ahead of Biden’s inauguration — it included scores of military checkpoints and hundreds of additional law enforcement personnel — is no longer in place, about 7,000 members of the National Guard will remain to assist federal law enforcement, officials said.
The Guard Bureau said that the number of Guard members in D.C. is less than 20,000 as of Sunday. All but about 7,000 of those will go home in the coming days. The Guard Bureau said that the number of troops in D.C. would then continue to decline in the coming weeks to about 5,000. They are expected to stay in D.C. until mid-March.
At least five people facing federal charges have suggested they believed they were taking orders from Trump when they marched on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 to challenge the certification of Biden’s election victory. But now those comments, captured in interviews with reporters and federal agents, are likely to take center stage as Democrats lay out their case.
More than 130 people have been charged by federal prosecutors for their roles in the riot. In recent weeks, others have been arrested after posting threats against members of Congress.
They include a Proud Boys supporter who authorities said threatened to deploy “three cars full of armed patriots” to Washington, threatened harm against Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and who is accused of stockpiling military-style combat knives and more than 1,000 rifle rounds in his New York home. A Texas man was arrested this week for taking part in the riot at the Capitol and for posting violent threats, including a call to assassinate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y
Demonstrators raise their arms and chant 'Hands up, don't shoot' on Aug. 17, 2014, as they protest the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Fatal Police Shootings of Unarmed Black People Reveal Troubling Patterns
Cheryl W. Thompson, NPR
Thompson writes: "Ronell Foster was riding his bicycle through the hushed streets of Vallejo, Calif., one evening when a police officer noticed that the bike had no lights and that he was weaving in and out of traffic."
The officer, Ryan McMahon, went after Foster with lights flashing, siren blaring and the car's spotlight pointed directly at him. Foster stopped. The pair exchanged words before Foster, who was on community supervision for a car theft conviction a month earlier, fled, eventually ditching the bicycle. McMahon caught up with Foster and jumped on top of him. The two struggled. McMahon, a rookie on the force, tasered the father of two and struck him several times with his department-issued flashlight. Gunfire erupted — seven shots total. When it was over, Foster, 33, lay dying in the bushes in a darkened courtyard near an apartment complex.
Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams declined to bring charges against McMahon, who is white, saying the February 2018 fatal shooting of Foster, who was Black and unarmed, was justified. In a Jan. 31, 2020, letter to the Vallejo police chief, Abrams said Foster "posed an immediate and extreme threat" to McMahon and that it was "objectively reasonable for Officer McMahon to defend himself and open fire on Foster."
A year later, he shot again.
This time, the victim was aspiring Black rapper Willie McCoy, who was asleep in his silver Mercedes CLS500 outside a Taco Bell shortly before 11 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2019. An employee called 911 to report that McCoy was slumped over the steering wheel and blocking the drive-thru. When McMahon and other officers arrived — six in all — one of them spotted a semiautomatic pistol in McCoy's lap. As McCoy slowly awoke, he moved his hand to scratch his chest, according to a report by an expert the city hired to review the shooting. Cops believed he was reaching for the gun, so they fired 55 shots in 3.5 seconds. McMahon said he fired after believing that the officers and residents were in "imminent danger." Officials cleared him for his role in that killing too, but he was fired last September for violating department policy during the shooting "by engaging in unsafe conduct and neglect for basic firearm safety," a department official said.
"It's a very sad situation," McMahon said in a brief interview with NPR. "It's something I'm still dealing with. It hasn't gone away."
The deadly shooting of unarmed Black men and women by police officers in the U.S. has increasingly garnered worldwide attention over the last few years. The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparked a week of protests that catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement into the national spotlight. Since then, tens of thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police brutality of Blacks by mostly white officers.
Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, an NPR investigation has found. NPR reviewed police, court and other records to examine the details of the cases. At least 75% of the officers were white. The latest one happened earlier this month in Killeen, Texas, when Patrick Warren, Sr., 52, was fatally shot by an officer responding to a mental health call.
For at least 15 of the officers, like McMahon, the shootings were not their first — or their last, NPR found. They have been involved in two — sometimes three or more — shootings, often deadly and without consequences.
Those who study deadly force by police say it's unusual for officers to be involved in any shootings.
"Many officers will go their entire career without shooting — sometimes without pulling their gun out at all," said Peter Scharf, a criminologist and professor in the School of Public Health at Louisiana State University and author of The Badge and the Bullet: Police Use of Deadly Force. "It's rare."
Not every law enforcement agency releases detailed information about police shootings. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Kansas City Police Department, for example, refused to release specifics such as officer names or their race, citing open investigations.
Still, NPR reviewed thousands of pages of job applications, personnel records, use of force reports, citizen complaints, court records, lawsuits, news releases, witness statements, and local and state police investigative reports to examine the backgrounds of the officers and analyze details of each shooting. We also interviewed use of force experts, criminologists, police, lawyers, prosecutors and relatives of victims.
Among NPR's other findings:
- At least six officers had troubled pasts before being hired onto police departments, including drug use and domestic violence. One officer had been fired from another law enforcement agency and at least two others were forced out.
- Several officers were convicted of crimes while on the force, such as battery, and resisting and obstructing, but kept their jobs. In one instance, officials in a tiny Louisiana parish repeatedly fired and rehired a deputy who got into trouble with the law: three times over 30 years, records show.
- More than two dozen officers have racked up citizen complaints or use of force incidents. A Fort Lauderdale police officer had 82 reviews for use of force incidents but was never found in violation; a Vineland, N.J., officer had more than three dozen use of force incidents over a five-year period.
- Several officers have violated their department policies and been cited for ethics violations, including a Hollywood, Fla., officer accused of trying to steer business to his company, and an Arizona state trooper accused of misuse of state property.
Nineteen of the officers involved in deadly shootings were rookies, with less than a year on the force. One was on the job for four hours; another for four days. More than a quarter of the killings occurred during traffic stops, and 24 of the dead — 18% — suffered from mental illness. The youngest person shot was a 15-year-old Balch Springs, Texas, high school freshman who played on the football team. The oldest was a 62-year-old man killed in his Los Angeles County home. Nearly 60% of the shootings occurred in the South, with more than a quarter in Texas, Georgia and Louisiana, NPR found.
The killings have led to at least 30 judgments and settlements totaling more than $142 million, records show. Dozens of lawsuits and claims are pending.
An examination of individual cases reveals the myriad ways that law enforcement agencies fail to hold officers accountable and allow them to be in a position to shoot again. In many instances, the criminal justice system refuses to prosecute, often resulting in departments putting officers back on the street instead of desk jobs where they have little contact with the public. Other times, police unions protect officers from accountability. And sometimes, departments are so desperate to recruit officers that they ignore warning signs such as an officer's troubled past and hire them anyway.
"Why do they get passes on killing people?" asked Paula McGowan, Foster's mother. "If the system was right...they would hold these people accountable."
"Unnecessary and unreasonable"
Nathaniel Pickett II was walking back to his $18-a-night room at the El Rancho, a seen-better-days bungalow motel along historic Route 66 in Barstow, Calif. It was shortly after 9 p.m. on Nov. 19, 2015, and Nate, as his family called him, often took evening walks. As the 29-year-old former engineering student crossed the street, he caught the eye of Kyle Woods, a San Bernardino sheriff's deputy. Woods made a U-turn into the motel parking lot, jumped out of his cruiser and approached Pickett, police records show.
He demanded Pickett's name and birthdate. Pickett complied. In fact, he did everything Woods asked of him, including taking his hands out of his pockets. When Woods asked him if he lived at the motel and where he was from, Pickett said he didn't know. When Pickett asked if he had done something wrong, the deputy said he just wanted to talk to him.
"What's the problem?" Pickett asked Woods nine different times as the deputy peppered him with questions about whether he had ever been arrested (yes), if he had lived in Barstow all of his life and where he was going.
"There is no problem," Woods responded.
Pickett asked if he could go to his room where he had lived since moving to Barstow seven weeks earlier. Woods would later admit under oath that he knew he had no probable cause to arrest him and that Pickett had the right to walk away. But when he tried, Woods grabbed him and told him to "stop resisting." Woods threatened to tase him. Pickett put his arms up and was running toward his room — Room 45 — when he tripped and fell in the breezeway. As he scooted backward from Woods, the deputy caught him. The two scuffled while a male citizen volunteer on patrol with Woods watched from a few feet away. Woods punched Pickett 15 to 20 times before pulling out his service weapon and threatening to shoot him. He fired, hitting Pickett twice in the chest — once with the barrel of the gun pressed against the man's chest.
"Ow," Pickett moaned. One of the bullets pierced his heart and left lung. Pickett was pronounced dead at the scene.
Woods, on the force for two years at the time but on the street for just a few months, said he shot him because he feared for his life.
Woods, who is Black, didn't give a statement to police about the incident for 28 days. And when he did, he said that he stopped Pickett after seeing him hop the motel fence. He thought Pickett was trespassing; and he was fidgety, like he might be under the influence, Woods said. Pickett had marijuana in his system and his blood alcohol level was 0.01%, far below the level to be considered legally impaired, records show.
The deputy never faced criminal charges for Pickett's death, but the victim's family filed civil charges. And when he testified under oath at the civil trial, Woods told a different story: he said he never saw Pickett jump over the fence and that the gate actually was open. He also said it never occurred to him that Pickett could be mentally ill. Pickett was diagnosed with mental illness during his freshman year at Hampton University in Virginia and had been treated through the Mental Health Court in San Bernardino in 2012 after a conviction for resisting a peace officer and "false personation," records show.
Scott DeFoe, who spent two decades with the Los Angeles Police Department, testified as an expert witness at the civil trial. He said that Woods' use of force was "unnecessary and unreasonable."
"This is probably one of the worst cases I have looked at because of the mental health component," DeFoe testified. "There was no crime... He ran as he had a lawful right to do."
The jury in the civil trial was unanimous. They agreed that Woods had no right to detain Pickett; used unreasonable or excessive force against him, which caused his death; and delayed getting him medical care. They awarded Pickett's family $33.5 million, one of the largest amounts ever awarded in an officer-involved shooting case.
Nathaniel Pickett Sr., 65, said that Nate was the only child he had with Dominic Archibald, a two-time combat veteran and retired Army colonel. After their divorce in 1990 when Nate was not quite 5, the boy went to live with his mom. He became a Boy Scout and fancied Frank Sinatra music, art and sports — except football because he didn't like getting dirty. Archibald eventually enrolled him at the Fork Union Military Academy, an all-boys college preparatory boarding school in Virginia. She agreed to let him transfer in his senior year to Woodrow Wilson High School, a public school in Washington, D.C.
"We just wanted him to be happy," Pickett said.
Less than three years after Pickett's death, Woods was involved in a second on-duty shooting of another unarmed man.
Minutes after starting his 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on Jan. 14, 2018, Woods noticed the man, Ryan Martinez, driving his black Jeep in Barstow without an illuminated license plate. He activated his lights and siren, and hit the gas. During the pursuit, Martinez lost control of the car and ran off the road into a drainage ditch, police records show. The car flipped. Woods said he ordered Martinez to show his hands. He refused. Woods fired two shots at him but missed. Afraid that Martinez might have a gun, Woods tasered him unsuccessfully before drive stunning him in his leg. Woods then shot him in the chest and hand when he said the man "reached for his waistband area." Martinez, 27, survived. No gun was found at the scene, according to police records.
Woods was not wearing a body camera. Martinez did not respond to a request through his mother for an interview.
"He was shot 3 time [sic]," his mother, Kathy Searcy said in a Facebook message to NPR that included photos of his bullet wounds. "Plus, he was being tased at the same time."
Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney at the time of both shootings, declined to charge Woods, saying Woods was justified in shooting both men. He said in a recent phone interview with NPR that he doesn't remember the cases, but said he always adhered to the law when deciding whether to charge an officer with killing someone.
"Each case is different," said Ramos, who was the district attorney from 2003 to 2018, when he lost his reelection bid for a fifth term. "But when you apply the facts to the law, that's what you look at."
Ramos defended officers, saying that they have an impossible job.
"Taking someone's life is not easy," he said. "It's not something they brag about or high-five each other about. It's the last thing they want to do."
When asked if officers who kill unarmed people should be taken off the street, Ramos said that decision should remain with the departments.
"They should be given the resources, counseling and time off, but it's up to the chiefs," he said.
Authorities said that Woods "reasonably believed he had to use deadly force to protect his own life." He was placed on paid administrative leave for at least three days after each shooting, which is routine for officers involved in deadly force, said sheriff's department spokeswoman Jodi Miller.
Woods, 28, could not be reached for comment.
Vincent Ewing, the attorney who represented Woods and the county in the Pickett lawsuit, declined to comment on the record.
Pickett's father said he remains haunted by his son's killing.
"It doesn't ease with time," he said. "It still bothers me."
The most difficult time, he said, is when he occasionally sees Woods at the courthouse in Victorville where the deputy is now assigned.
"He didn't show no remorse," Pickett said. "If he was remorseful, he would have said, 'hey, I'm sorry.'"
Little accountability
The decision not to charge Woods is common. Authorities failed to charge officers in more than 80 cases, records show.
Of the officers involved in the deadly shootings of unarmed Black people over the last five years, 13 were charged with murder. Two were found guilty.
Three others charged with murder were acquitted, and one was found not guilty of murder but guilty of aggravated assault, false statements and violation of his oath of office. Seven murder cases are pending.
Of seven officers charged with manslaughter, two were found guilty.
In 33 shootings, officers were fired or resigned. At least three got their jobs back and five went on to work for other law enforcement agencies, records show.
Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and former police officer in Virginia and New Hampshire, said it's difficult to prosecute cops charged with murder or manslaughter from an on-duty shooting because juries often sympathize with them.
"The courts are very reluctant to second guess the split-second decisions of police officers in potentially violent street encounters that might be life or death situations," Stinson said. "They somehow seem to take everything that's been presented in the case, in the trial, and just disregard the legal standard."
Ronald C. Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., for more than five years during the Obama administration, said that prosecuting police officers who gun down unarmed Black men and women will continue to be challenging until there are more "minorities in the system."
"This is why you need Black prosecutors and Blacks on juries — to hold people accountable," Machen said. "For police officers to have the credibility to do their jobs, they have to be held accountable."
One cop, five shootings
The decision to not hold officers accountable doesn't rest solely with prosecutors. Police unions often make it all but impossible to remove an officer from the force, despite repeated shootings and other infractions.
Jerold Blanding was involved in five shootings — two off duty and three on duty — during his 24-year career with the Detroit Police Department, a review of more than 1,700 pages of agency records shows. One was fatal. He also shot a pigeon and was investigated for assaults on police officers, improper conduct, harassment, excessive use of force, domestic violence and threats. Yet he kept his job.
Known for having a temper, Blanding's troubles started three years after his March 1994 hiring, when he shot a man while off duty at a Detroit nightclub, police records show. The victim survived. A year later, he was involved in another off-duty, non-fatal shooting at an ATM, after a man who was confused mistakenly tried to get into Blanding's car. Blanding was exonerated in both incidents.
An internal affairs investigation in 2001 found that he displayed improper conduct after assaulting a female cop that he was dating at the time. In 2002, Blanding was accused of making threats, and a year later, internal affairs launched another investigation — this time, into his excessive use of force. He had a third shooting in 2004 while working in drug enforcement. That man survived.
In August 2015, Blanding fired 16 shots at a man inside a car during a domestic dispute. The man, DeMar Parker, had gone to the home of his ex-girlfriend, with whom he had a young daughter. An argument erupted and a Detroit police officer, her son's father, was called. He then called for another officer to meet him at the house. That officer brought along Blanding. When Blanding and the other officer arrived, Parker jumped in his silver Cadillac and sped off. He returned minutes later waving a pistol, police records show. Blanding saw the gun and opened fire on Parker's car, claiming that he thought Parker was going to shoot one of the other officers or run him over. The Wayne County prosecutor's office declined to criminally charge Blanding, though the department found that he violated policy. Parker sued and settled with the city for $97,750, according to the city attorney's office.
In February 2017, in the backyard of an abandoned home, Blanding, who is Black, fatally shot 19-year-old Raynard Burton.
Blanding and his partner were patrolling a neighborhood of mostly burned-out and boarded-up houses and overgrown lots on Detroit's west side when a green Pontiac Bonneville whizzed past. The car spun out of control and crashed into a building. Burton, the driver, ran. When Blanding eventually caught him, he claimed he saw the teen "grab at his waist as if he had a weapon," records showed. Blanding grabbed Burton with one hand while holding his department-issued weapon in the other. The pair struggled and Blanding shot him once in the chest, before yelling for his partner, and calling for a supervisor — and his union steward. Burton, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was unarmed.
Blanding was not charged in that case either and returned to his job.
"I don't think there's an excuse for keeping people like that," said Geoffrey Alpert, a police use of force expert and criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, after hearing the details of Blanding's case from NPR. "That's just ridiculous."
Alpert said that retaining troubled police officers is risky and "has enormous consequences."
"The point is you want to get good cops and not fill your coffers with these questionable cops," he said. "Because in the long run, they're going to cost you more money."
Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said police unions play a major role in shielding officers.
"The most immediate obstacle is the union contract," Rosenfeld said. "The unions, all in the name of due process, have made it difficult to remove officers whose records indicate they engaged in serious misconduct."
Isaiah McKinnon, Detroit's police chief from 1994 to 1998, agreed. He said that city officials and police supervisors involved in negotiating the contracts also are to blame for a department's inability to get rid of officers who repeatedly violate policy.
"You terminate them and see if they will fight their way back, and most do because of the union contract," said McKinnon, who also served as the city's deputy mayor. "The unions are there to protect officers, but often they're contributing to what the officers are doing.
Blanding's troubles continued to mount without consequences, records showed. In December 2017, he was accused of being intoxicated on the job and having his gun taken from his lap while he allegedly slept. The weapon was returned "without further action." Two days before Christmas in 2017, he called 911 after a domestic violence incident. He told the dispatcher that he was carrying a gun and to "send someone before he is back on the news."
But in early 2018, while out on stress leave and ordered not to carry a gun, Blanding showed up at the scene of a pedestrian accident and refused to answer questions about who he was or comply with orders given by other officers, records show. He reeked of alcohol and had slurred speech, one officer said. A preliminary breath test indicated that Blanding's blood alcohol content was 0.18%, more than twice the legal limit in Michigan. They found two weapons on him along with his department identification card indicating that he had "no gun status," records showed. He cursed at officers, called them rookies, was handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car. They arrested him for possession of a weapon while intoxicated and violating the concealed pistol license.
Blanding was charged with eight counts of assaulting, resisting and obstructing, eight counts of felony firearm and three counts of possession of firearms while under the influence of alcohol. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of assaulting, resisting and obstructing. He was fined, given probation and ordered to do community service and attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, according to Chris Gautz, the spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. Blanding retired in September 2018 with a full pension, according to a police department spokesman.
When reached at his home recently, Blanding, 51, declined a request for an interview.
"I'm still seeking therapy," he said.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig declined through a spokeswoman to discuss Blanding or why he allowed him to stay on the force after multiple shootings.
"Unions have got to understand that they can't continue to have people over and over again who are doing these things, continue to be police officers," McKinnon, the former chief said.
"He just wasn't the best pick"
Zechariah Presley wanted to be a police officer because it offered him a chance at a career where he could "make a difference." So, in May 2016, he applied to the St. Marys Police Department, a 32-member force in a town of 18,500 residents in southeastern Georgia, not far from the Florida state line.
Officials found that he "did not respond truthfully" to several questions during a truth verification exam and did poorly during candidate interviews, internal reports showed. Department officials rejected him, saying he was "not a good candidate" and "very weak." He also acknowledged that he lost a conditional job offer with a law enforcement agency in Texas after making a "sexual innuendo," records show.
"He just wasn't the best pick," Timothy Hatch, who was St. Marys police chief at the time, said in an interview with NPR. "He didn't come across in our interview process as someone who needed to be behind the badge."
Presley went 8 miles to the next town over and applied at the 40-member Kingsland Police Department a year later. He acknowledged on his background questionnaire of being involved in domestic violence, assault, buying or selling drugs, and other incidents. An internal report found that Presley had 10 red flags and recommended that officials review them before deciding whether to hire him.
They hired Presley anyway in July 2017.
Within months, residents filed complaints about him.
"Officer Presley is the one after I complained to the chief about his conduct, came out the next day and park [sic] in front of my house," one 43-year-old Black man wrote in a complaint. "I'm living in fear of my life because the abuse of power and the constint [sic] harrassment [sic] on triffic [sic] stop [sic]."
A Black female resident wrote that Presley followed her for about a mile and then stopped her for failing to use a turn signal when she changed lanes. She alleged that Presley racially profiled her. Presley is white.
Presley had seven use of force incidents in six months, three involving Tasers, records showed. He once tased a substitute teacher at the county Board of Education office. He was investigated internally twice within two days for misconduct. He received departmental warnings about violating policies and was suspended without pay for a day.
Yet, he stayed on the force.
While on patrol one night in June 2018, Presley pulled into a convenience store parking lot and spotted a white Chrysler Pacifica and a man he recognized, Anthony Green. The two had a previous run in and he knew Green didn't have a valid license. As Green drove off, Presley followed him. Green ran his car onto the shoulder, prompting Presley to activate his blue lights. Green and a passenger jumped out and ran, but Green left his phone and went back to retrieve it, law enforcement records showed. He took off running with Presley in tow, who unsuccessfully tasered Green. When Green pushed him, Presley fired eight shots from his .40-caliber Glock, striking the 33-year-old Black man at least five times, including in his chest and back, according to records from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which handled the case. Green died at the scene.
Presley was charged with voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, and fired from the department. A jury of 11 whites and one Hispanic found him not guilty of manslaughter but guilty of violating the oath of public office in October 2019. A judge sentenced him to one year in prison and four years' probation, and ordered him to pay a $1,500 fine. Presley was released last May after serving seven months in prison.
Presley, 29, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
"The hiring of Zechariah Presley probably would not have taken place in my administration given the information I have," said Kingsland Police Chief Robert Jones, who took over the department in 2019.
Jones and others acknowledged that departments often hire officers like Presley because they're desperate to recruit and are willing to ignore red flags.
"We need bodies," Jones said. "Some places have been willing to lower the standards and bring bodies in, and it's a recipe for disaster."
Rosenfeld said that departments, mostly small ones that lack resources, are "more willing to look past misdeeds."
"Small departments that are strapped for officers take them where they can find them," he said.
Green's death has prompted changes in the department, including mental health treatment for officers and a hiring board to review candidates, Jones said.
"It's more important for us to move forward, train properly and to show that the stigma of what happened with Presley will not be tolerated," he said.
LaMaurice Gardner, a police psychologist in Detroit, said the toll that one shooting — or more — takes on a police officer can be devastating.
"People don't realize the psychological effects a shooting takes on an officer and their family," said Gardner, who has worked as a reserve officer for 26 years in suburban Detroit. "You're investigated like you're a perpetrator. You can't work on the street. You can't get overtime. Your peer support is pulled away."
Gardner acknowledged that departments face difficult issues now with police shootings, including of unarmed Black men and women.
"Are there bad cops out there? Hell, yeah, there are," he said. "Policies need to be changed."
Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, after his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States, U.S., January 20, 2021. (photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters)
Biden Overturns Ban on Transgender People Serving in the US Military
Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Alexandra Alper, Reuters
Excerpt: "President Joe Biden on Monday signed an executive order that overturned a controversial ban by his predecessor on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military, a move that fulfills a campaign promise and will be cheered by LGBTQ advocates."
Flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, Biden signed the executive order in the Oval Office.
“It’s simple: America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride,” Biden said on Twitter after the signing.
Former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2016 allowed trans people to serve openly and receive medical care to transition genders, but Republican President Donald Trump froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
When Trump announced the ban in 2017 on Twitter, he said the military needed to focus on “decisive and overwhelming victory” without being burdened by the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of having transgender personnel.
A November 2020 report by the LGBT-rights think tank the Palm Center co-written by former military Surgeons General said the transgender ban had hurt military readiness.
During his confirmation hearing, Biden’s pick to lead the Pentagon, Retired Army General Lloyd Austin, said he supported overturning the ban.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump transgender policy of 2019 could stand while it faces separate lawsuits in lower courts.
About 1.3 million active personnel serve in the U.S. military, Department of Defense data shows. There are no official figures on the number of trans members but the Rand Corp, a U.S. policy research institute, estimated in 2016 about 2,450 active service members were transgender.
‘COUNTING DOWN TO THIS DAY’
While advocates applaud Biden’s move, the fact that any president can decide whether transgender people can serve in the military is problematic, they say. Any American who is fit and able should have the right to serve, they argue.
“We must make sure that future presidents do not backslide on our values of equality and inclusion, and I intend to add a provision to this year’s defense policy bill to secure a permanent policy of nondiscrimination for our armed forces,” said Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Chair of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee.
Nic Talbott, a transgender man, was forced to drop out of the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) due to Trump’s ban. On Monday, he said Biden’s move had given him and other transgender people an opportunity to once again join the military.
“This is such a huge relief, such a huge weight off my shoulders,” Talbott said.
“I know there are thousands of other people out there just like me who have been counting down to this day, waiting to be able to start our careers and start our lives.”
Once the order is implemented, Talbott said he plans to enter another ROTC.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Democrats' Choice: End the Filibuster or Watch McConnell Win (Again)
End the Filibuster: Calls Grow to Retire Relic of Slavery and Jim Crow to Make Senate More Democratic
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "President Joe Biden has promised swift action on the pandemic, the economic crisis and more, but much of his agenda hinges on whether he can get enough support in the Senate, where an unprecedented number of bills in recent years has required a 60-vote supermajority in order to overcome filibusters."
Many progressives and civil rights groups have urged Democratic leaders to kill the filibuster, warning that if they don’t, Senate Republicans will obstruct Biden’s plans just as they did with the Obama administration. Former Senate aide Adam Jentleson, author of the new book “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy,” says the filibuster has historically been used to stop racial progress and thwart majority opinion. “The framers … did not want the filibuster to exist,” he says. “When they created the Senate, it was an institution that had no filibuster power. It was designed to be a majority-rule body.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Democratic lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to hold an impeachment trial of former President Trump for inciting the deadly January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. House impeachment managers are walking the single article of impeachment to the Senate today. The Senate trial will begin the week of February 8th. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke Friday.
MAJORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: Now, as I mentioned, the Senate will also conduct a second impeachment trial for Donald Trump. I’ve been speaking to the Republican leader about the timing and duration of the trial. But, make no mistake, a trial will be held in the United States Senate, and there will be a vote on whether to convict the president.
AMY GOODMAN: As senators prepare for the impeachment trial, lawmakers are also debating how to move forward on President Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. The Senate is split 50-50, but the Democrats control the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaking vote.
Schumer and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are locked in negotiations over how the Senate will be run over the next two years. McConnell is pushing to preserve the filibuster, which allows any senator to block a bill’s passage unless it’s supported by 60 senators. Critics say the filibuster is a relic of the Jim Crow era that preserves minority rule. A group of civil rights and social justice groups are pushing Democrats to eliminate the filibuster to limit McConnell’s power and give Biden a chance to enact his agenda.
On Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, appeared on CNN and promoted using a process known as reconciliation to quickly pass part of Biden’s COVID relief plan.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks and months and months to go forward. We have got to act now. That is what the American people want. Now, as you know, reconciliation, which is a Senate rule, was used by the Republicans, under Trump, to pass massive tax breaks for the rich and large corporations. It was used as an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And what we are saying is, “You used it for that. That’s fine. We’re going to use reconciliation — that is, 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president — to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now. You did it. We’re going to do it. But we’re going to do it to protect ordinary people, not just the rich and the powerful.”
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the state of the Senate, we’re joined by Adam Jentleson, the public affairs director at Democracy Forward, former deputy chief of staff to Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Jentleson’s new book is titled Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.
So, let’s start with what’s happening in the Senate right now. You say it’s the most unequal body in the U.S. federal government. Explain why, and how that impacts everything from reconciliation to the filibuster.
ADAM JENTLESON: That’s right. And thanks for having me here. It’s great to join you today.
So, you know, the Senate was created to provide a counterbalance to the House, which was supposed to be — the House was supposed to be sort of the direct body that represented the people. And the Senate was always designed to provide sort of an elite counterweight. And it was designed to be a little bit anti-democratic, in its inception.
You know, in the House, apportionment is determined by population, so every district is about the same size, and every state has about the same number of House members proportional to their population, so the bigger states have a lot more representatives. California has many more representatives in the House than, say, Wyoming, which has one representative.
In the Senate, every state gets equal representation. So, Wyoming has two senators, and California has two senators. California’s population is about 39 million people. Wyoming’s population is about 600,000 people. So, by that proportionate representation, it actually creates a disproportionate voting power. So, every citizen in Wyoming has many more times the voting power than a citizen in California.
This was something that the framers were aware of when they created it, but some of them decried it at the time and said this is a big problem. Madison, who’s often cited as the chief framer and constructor of the Senate, actually strongly opposed this kind of equal representation. And when I say “equal,” I mean the same number of senators; the way it plays out is actually, you know, dramatically unequal representation for the actual voters. Madison, at the time, said that it would be a great source of — he used the word — “injustice” to give states equal representation. At the time that he called this an injustice, the biggest state was Virginia, and it was about 10 times as big as the smallest state, Delaware. Madison was right that it creates an injustice, but that injustice is several orders of magnitude bigger now than at the time. You know, Virginia was 10 times the size of Delaware in 1789. Today, California is about 70 times the size of Wyoming. So, it is an unequal body. The way this —
AMY GOODMAN: Seventy times the size. And for people who listen to this globally, each of them, because they’re each a state, have two senators, have equal representation in the Senate.
ADAM JENTLESON: That’s right. And because a lot of — and, you know, the way this plays out is that what that translates to is not just disproportionate representation geographically, but disproportionate presentation in terms of racial, ethnic, minority voting power. California, obviously, is an incredibly diverse state. Wyoming is an incredibly monolithic state demographically. But Wyoming has equal voting power to California. And this continues throughout, if you go down the chamber, because the general pattern is that the more rural states, the lower-population states, tend to be overwhelmingly white. And so, what that translates to in our modern era is a dramatically disproportionate amount of voting power to white conservatives in America.
AMY GOODMAN: So, take this to the history of the filibuster. I want to play just a clip of President Obama speaking about the filibuster at the funeral of the late Georgia Congressmember John Lewis.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.
AMY GOODMAN: “Another Jim Crow relic,” says Obama. You take this back, Adam, to slavery.
ADAM JENTLESON: That’s right. And Obama is 100% right. He’s been consistent on the filibuster. He’s always wanted to get rid of it. In his new memoir, he says he wishes he had started his first administration by rallying Democrats to get rid of it, so that he could have passed more and bigger things. But, yes, he’s absolutely right about the history.
The history, you know, it’s important to understand that the framers, for all their own racism and slaveholding status, even they did not want the filibuster to exist. When they created the Senate, it was an institution that had no filibuster power. It was designed to be a majority-rule body. It was designed to discourage obstruction. They were very clear about this; this wasn’t just sort of a coincidence or sort of a gray area. The reason they were clear about it was that they created the Constitution in the shadows of the Articles of Confederation, and the widespread view at the time was that the reason the Articles of Confederation failed was that its Congress required a supermajority threshold to pass most major legislation. And so, the framers saw that that had been a disaster, and they created a Senate that was majority rule.
And they wrote very clearly in The Federalist Papers, in their own correspondence and other sources that they believed that a minority, a numerical minority, in the Senate should not be given the power to obstruct what the majority wanted to do. By all means, the Senate was supposed to be deliberative. It was supposed to be thoughtful. It was supposed to take things a little slower than the House. But there was a certain point at which debate was considered to have run its course. And at that point, a majority was allowed to end debate, bring the bill up for a vote and pass or fail it on a majority vote.
What happened was, over the course of several decades, after all the framers had passed away, other senators did use some obstructive tactics over the early decades, but it was very rare. John C. Calhoun came along, the “Great Nullifier,” senator from South Carolina, sort of a grandfather of the Confederacy, and he innovated some of the tactics that became known as the modern filibuster. And he did it for the express purpose of increasing the power of the slaveholding class. What he saw at this time — this was around the 1830s and 1840s — was that slaveholders and slave states were becoming steadily outpowered in Congress. And so, he knew that if majority rule was allowed to continue, slavery was going to end. And they needed to — he felt a very compelling desire, from his perspective, to increase their power in the Senate.
And so, what he did was innovate what we would describe as the modern talking filibuster, the sort of Jimmy Stewart-style holding the floor, joining with allies, to delay a bill that he opposed, and, at the same time, doing it all in the service of this lofty principle of minority rights. And what he — the minority that he sought to protect was not a vulnerable population, by any means. It was the planter class, the slaveholders. And so, that was the origin of this essential principle of minority rights being tied to the filibuster. It was a desire to protect not a vulnerable minority, but the minority of the planter class against the march of progress, that Calhoun thought would progress under a majority-rule system.
AMY GOODMAN: So, take that to today and this battle over the filibuster in the Senate, the trajectory you see from slavery to Jim Crow to the new Biden administration and the Democratic majority, and what they’re trying to do —
ADAM JENTLESON: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — whether we’re talking about COVID relief or talking, for example, about impeachment.
ADAM JENTLESON: Sure. So, the key development in the history of the filibuster, from the time of Calhoun to now, is the transition from this talking filibuster, you know, the Jimmy Stewart-style holding the floor, into a supermajority threshold that can be applied to block any bill. And just to underscore, for the first 200 years of its existence or so, the Senate was majority rule. Even as the filibuster started to develop in Calhoun’s time, all that senators could do was delay a bill. They had to talk on the floor, and eventually they had to give up. There was no ability to impose a supermajority threshold.
That didn’t arise until after 1917, when the Senate put a rule on the books that, ironically, was designed to end filibusters. It implemented a supermajority threshold under the principle that after debate had gone for long enough, two-thirds of the body would be able to come together and say, “You know what? This is enough. Let’s cut this off. Let’s move to a final debate — a final vote on the bill.”
It took a long time for this to happen, but Southern senators, in the Jim Crow era — and this gets back to what President Obama was talking about — started to reverse the purpose of that rule, and instead of using it to end debate, as it had been designed to do, started using it as a higher threshold for civil rights bills to have to clear. And it’s important to underscore how transformative the power of racism was in this evolution. The only category —
AMY GOODMAN: And then, we just have a minute.
ADAM JENTLESON: Oh, OK.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute, but I wanted to take this forward to what’s happening now and play a clip of the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, Bernie Sanders, speaking on CNN, defending his call for using reconciliation to pass the COVID relief bill, and then ask how that fits into this paradigm you’re describing.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: And I criticized the Republicans, yeah, for using reconciliation to give tax breaks to billionaires, to create a situation where large, profitable corporations now pay zero in federal income taxes. Yes, I did criticize them for that. And if they want to criticize me for helping to feed children who are hungry, or senior citizens in this country who are isolated and alone and don’t have enough food, they can criticize me. I think it’s the appropriate step forward.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Bernie Sanders, yes, Senator Mittens, for those who have been following the, to say the least, viral meme of him wearing his Vermont mittens at the inauguration. But, Adam Jentleson, if you could end by talking about what this means for the COVID relief bill, who gets helped, and who doesn’t?
ADAM JENTLESON: Sure. So, what Sanders has done is accurately identify a process called budget reconciliation, that is an end run around this supermajority threshold that I was describing. That threshold has gone, from the Jim Crow era, from being only applied to civil rights bills to today being applied to every bill. And this is the primary source of gridlock in the Senate.
As the budget chair, Sanders can use reconciliation to go around it. That can be used for the COVID relief bill. He’s absolutely right about that. That may be where we go. It will enable us to pass COVID relief over the objections of Republicans and not have to clear a 60-vote threshold.
Long term, though, the filibuster will rear its head, because anything involving civil rights, democracy reforms or those types of reforms cannot go through reconciliation. Reconciliation is a restrictive process that has tight rules. They have to be budgetary items to conform with its rules. So, ultimately, we’re going to have to face this question of the filibuster, if we want to do things like D.C. statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, any kind of civil rights expansions, automatic voter registration. All of that stuff can’t go through reconciliation. If we don’t reform the filibuster, it will die by the filibuster. So, that’s where this issue will really come to a head for Democrats.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Adam Jentleson, I want to thank you for being with us, public affairs director for Democracy Forward, former deputy chief of staff to the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid. His new book, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.
Next up, as the number of U.S. COVID cases hits 25 million, we’ll speak to the Reverend Barber about the challenges ahead. He gave the homily at the post-inaugural prayer breakfast. We’ll talk about inequality. And what does unity really mean? Stay with us.
Pedro Pierluisi takes office as governor amid the island's ongoing efforts to claw itself out of an economic crisis and recover from natural disasters. (photo: Eric Rojas/AFP/Getty Images)
Puerto Rico Declares State of Emergency Over Rise in Femicides
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Puerto Rico's Governor Pedro Pierluis Monday declared a national state of emergency due to the increase in gender-based violence and femicide."
In 2020, this Caribbean country registered 6,170 incidents of gender-based violence and 45 femicides.
The initiative came weeks after feminist groups demanded authorities to take measures to curb the femicide's escalation.
At the end of last year, dozens of feminists took to the streets of San Juan to reject the murder of 17 women from September 15 to October 19, the highest number reported in the country in a four-week-long period.
Puerto Rico, with a population of 3.2 million, registered 6,170 incidents of gender-based violence and 45 femicides in 2020, according to the Gender Equity Observatory.
"Another 15 cases of women murdered in 2020 remain under investigation, and there is a high probability that they were femicide," the Observatory assured.
Pierluis also created the Gender-based Violence Prevention, Support, Rescue, and Education Committee (PARE), to strengthen the fight against this scourge.
"All violence is reprehensible, and we have to fight it relentlessly. Gender violence is a social evil, based on ignorance and attitudes that cannot be tolerated in Puerto Rico," he said.
Nurse Angie Gonzalez, 29, last week became the first female victim of gender violence in 2021 after her husband killed her in front of their three daughters.
Flames approach homes during the Blue Ridge Fire on October 27, 2020 in Chino Hills, California. (photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
A 'Disasterologist' Discusses Climate Change
Tara Lohan, The Revelator
Lohan writes: "2020 was so bad that even disasters outdid themselves. Last year the United States alone experienced at least 16 weather and climate disasters with losses topping billion each. That's more than twice the long-term average."
What's worse: Expensive disasters are on the rise. 2020 was the sixth year in a row that the United States saw 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. And as climate change supercharges storms, wildfires and droughts, this trend will continue to climb.
To stave off the worst outcomes, scientists say we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which will require steadfast effort from elected officials, policymakers and businesses.
But since there are no quick fixes for the climate changes already underway, there's one group of experts we'll also need to call on: emergency managers. Unfortunately, although they're tasked with making sure communities are prepared to respond to disasters, they're often left out of conversations about climate change.
Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, and a "disasterlogist," has been working to change that. She's also been calling for emergency management professionals, including government agencies like FEMA, to put the climate crisis and environmental justice at the forefront of their work.
We spoke to Montano about why we need emergency managers involved in climate conversations, whether disasters are on the rise, and how we prepare for a future with climate-supercharged storms.
We often think of emergency management as responding to "natural disasters," but as you wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post, that term is a bit fraught.
Disaster experts don't really use the term "natural disaster" because it's a bit of a misnomer. When we're talking about disasters, we're talking about the actual human toll that they take. Is it the fact that a river, which naturally overflows its banks, has caused the disaster? Or is it that we have built homes right next to the river; that we have not maintained the levees that are meant to protect those homes from flooding; that the people who live in that neighborhood and don't have a lot of money aren't able to evacuate; that there aren't government programs there to help people recover quickly?
All of those things are not natural, right? Those are the human decisions that have ended up making a situation into a disaster. So while a river overflowing its banks may be natural, the fact that it has led to a disaster isn't. So that term "natural disaster" helps to obscure the role of human responsibility in disasters. If everything that happens are just these natural events that we have no control over, then some people may think we can't do anything about it.
This thinking isn't new in disaster research, but it has gotten a bit more attention in recent years as folks try to understand how climate change fits into all of this. The new term that we hear people using is "climate disaster," which runs into a similar problem.
Climate change may be a factor that is contributing to a disaster that happened, but it's certainly, again, not the only factor. But if we understand the root causes better, then we can make different decisions and prevent disasters from happening.
There's ample evidence that climate change is supercharging a lot of weather events. Are emergency managers included in conversations about how to fight climate change?
Within the broader climate change conversation, most of the focus is on carbon emissions and that's very important. And more recently we've seen an uptick in conversations about climate adaptation, which is also important as we begin to experience the consequences of climate change.
But we hear much less about the pretty significant overlap between climate adaptation and what we in emergency management call "hazard mitigation." It feels sometimes from an emergency management perspective like we're reinventing the wheel a little bit.
Flooding and wildfires aren't new. We in the emergency management community have been dealing with these hazards for a very long time and we have a lot of knowledge about them. We want to make sure that, especially because of the urgency of the climate crisis, we are pulling from this base of knowledge and experience that we have.
How much emergency management is integrated into conversations about climate change varies greatly across the country. Maine, for example, just released their plan for a statewide climate council and emergency managers were all on that committee and helped to produce the plan.
This is a great example of trying to bridge emergency management and adaptation work. But there are other places in the country where you have a part-time emergency manager working in a rural community and they don't have the resources or they're not a part of those climate conversations. There's definitely more work that needs to be done to help bring emergency management and climate adaptation work together.
Climate change can help fuel short-term hazards, like a hurricane, or lead to slow-moving threats such as sea-level rise. How do you differentiate between these from a management perspective?
We think about hurricanes, wildfires — these more acute events — as ones that emergency management is very obviously on the front line of managing. But issues like sea-level rise, and even longer-term chronic issues like droughts, are areas emergency management is still involved in because it still has an impact on our overall risk.
Something like an earthquake, which seems pretty far removed from climate change itself, is actually impacted by climate change. Because when we think about the vulnerabilities in our communities that climate change exacerbates, that has an effect on how people are, or aren't, able to respond to an earthquake or the resources that can go toward preparing for an earthquake or mitigating damages.
So even these events that seem more chronic, or don't seem like they have this direct link to climate change, are actually pretty significantly affected from an emergency management perspective.
It seems there's a new disaster almost every day. Are there really more now? And is climate change to blame?
It's pretty difficult to find any part of the country that has been untouched by disaster in the past few years. I also think that the way we consume media now also makes them feel more present.
We watch these disasters unfold live on television in front of us. We get alerts sent to our pockets when a disaster happens. So it's everywhere.
Climate change, though, I think is a huge part of that. I heard people joke around about not being able to wait until 2020 ends. And I get that. It was a really bad year. But these disasters aren't just going to go away. We're not making the changes we need to be to lessen those disasters or prevent those disasters from happening. We're in this for the long haul until we start making some different choices.
The coronavirus pandemic is a different kind of disaster than a weather-related event. What were the biggest lessons you'll take away from our response to it?
The way that we normally approach emergency management in these acute disasters is with help converging from neighboring communities, the state and the federal government. This March, however, was the first time that every single emergency agency in the country at all levels of government was activated simultaneously. So we didn't have the mutual aid, expertise and funding that we can usually send to places in a crisis because everyone was in the middle of their own crisis.
That has never happened before in the United States. It was a unique situation to see the strain on our systems and to start doing research and analyzing the effect that it has had on the response.
I draw the parallel there to climate change. Not that there is going to be a flood happening in every single state at one time, but as we see our risk increase, we'll see these disasters increase. In 2017 we saw hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria all happening nearly at once.
When that happens, what is our ability to meet all of those needs? How does the capacity of the emergency management system handle that? I think COVID has given us a little bit of a window into the future.
As a researcher I'm really hopeful that by studying how emergency management agencies specifically have responded to COVID we'll be able to take that data and take those findings and use it to inform policy changes for emergency management as we go into the climate crisis.
You have a book coming out this summer about climate change and emergency management. Who do you hope it reaches?
The book I'm writing is a combination of my experience going to different disasters and pulls from the disaster research to help the public understand what emergency management is and all that is involved in disasters. But it's also a pretty stark warning about the problem that we are barreling headfirst into in terms of how the emergency management system is unprepared to address the consequences of the climate crisis.
It's a book that will hopefully inspire people to some kind of action, whether locally or nationally, to make sure that disaster survivors across the country, who are the ones on the front lines of the climate crisis, are getting the help that they need. And that we're doing everything we can to prevent those disasters from happening. I'm hoping that it's really an empowering book that gives people the language and the education that they need to play a more active role in their community.
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