16 March 21
RSN HQ Update: Dryers and Heaters and Contractors, Oh My!
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15 March 21
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Charles Pierce | The Immune System Is Resolutely Apolitical, and So Is the Virus
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "I can't imagine being so consumed by my personal political beliefs that I wouldn't protect myself from a stubbornly nonpartisan plague."
eing in the immunological hammock between Dolly Shot I and Dolly Shot II, I have a little more time to despair of my fellow citizens, many of whom are, according to a new Monmouth poll, simply unreachable morons.
Partisanship remains the main distinguishing factor among those who want to avoid the vaccine altogether, with 36% of Republicans versus just 6% of Democrats saying this. Reluctance among these two groups has declined slightly since January (by 6 points among Republicans and 4 points among Democrats), while it has actually grown among independents. Currently, 31% of independents say they want to avoid getting the vaccine altogether – an increase of 6 points since January.
I am fairly political, as should be obvious by now, and even I have to admit that I can’t see a political reason to get (or not to get) vaccinated. My immune system is resolutely apolitical, for which I thank god, because, if it weren’t, I’d go into anaphylaxis at every Republican campaign event, and CPAC might have turned me into one big fever blister. I can’t imagine being so consumed by my personal political beliefs that I wouldn’t protect myself from a resolutely nonpartisan virus. But then again, there has been a conservative backlash against public safety and public health for as long as there has been a conservative backlash against all aspects of the political commonwealth.
When I was growing up, Worcester refused to fluoridate its water for ideological reasons. (Among other opponents was the John Birch Society, which believed fluoridation to be a form of mind control, and the publisher of the local newspaper was a founding member of the JBS.) The controversy was nationwide, and its parameters should sound familiar to all of us today. From Science History:
…right-wing groups like the John Birch Society have long implied dark motives behind fluoridation. But more common are groups raising safety questions. Anti-fluoridation literature goes back over half a century, with titles like Robotry and Water: A Critique of Fluoridation (1959). Members of the Fluoride Action Network and Citizens for Safe Drinking Water have linked the chemical to several varieties of cancer, diminished intelligence, birth defects and declining birth rates, and heart disease—among other maladies. The Sierra Club worries about the “potential adverse impact of fluoridation on the environment, wildlife, and human health.”
Many opponents see fluoridation as a consequence of collusion among industry, government, and a scientific establishment in thrall to both. The scientific evidence—more complicated than revealed during the original Grand Rapids trials—collides with skeptical public opinion. Seven decades of controversy remind us that the two realms are never truly separate.
Nothing is really new. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, stupid is in the saddle and rides far too much of mankind.
Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. (photo: Sicknick Family)
Two Arrested in Assault on Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, Who Died After January 6 Capitol Riot
Spencer S. Hsu and Peter Hermann, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Federal authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick with an unknown chemical spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death."
Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39 of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday and are expected to appear in federal court Monday.
“Give me that bear s---,” Khater allegedly said to Tanios on video recorded at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m., where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say.
About nine minutes later, after Khater said he had been hit with bear spray, Khater is seen on video discharging a canister into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, arrest papers allege.
Khater and Tanios are charged with nine counts including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon — Sicknick, another U.S. Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards, and a D.C. police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors filed charges after tipsters contacted the FBI allegedly identifying Khater and Tanios from wanted images released by the bureau from surveillance video and officer-worn body camera footage, the complaint said. It said the men grew up together in New Jersey, and that Khater had worked in State College, Pa., and Tanios owns a business in Morgantown.
Tanios’s sister, Maria Butros, a real estate agent in New Jersey, said when reached by phone Monday that her brother “was arrested for something he didn’t do. He didn’t do it. He would never do that.”
Khater was arrested Sunday in Newark, N.J., according to an unsealed arrest warrant signed by a magistrate judge on March 6. Family for Khater could not be immediately reached.
Questions remain about whether anyone will be held criminally responsible in Sicknick’s death. Autopsy results for Sicknick were still pending as of Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the deputy mayor of public safety in D.C. Without a cause of death, his case has not been established as a homicide, although charging papers allege that evidence of an assault on Sicknick is clear on video.
An FBI agent alleged in charging papers that publicly available video showed that after Khater asked for the bear spray, Tanios replied, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet … it’s still early.” The agent said the exchange showed that the two allegedly were “working in concert and had a plan to use the toxic spray against law enforcement.”
The agent asserted that the men “appeared to time the deployment of chemical substances to coincide with other rioters’ efforts to forcibly remove the bike rack barriers that were preventing the rioters from moving closer to the Capitol building,” using their hands, ropes and straps.
All three officers were temporarily blinded and incapacitated for more than 20 minutes, and Edwards sustained scarring beneath her eyes for several weeks, charging papers said.
Sicknick died at a hospital about 9:30 p.m. Jan. 7, one day after 139 police officers were reportedly assaulted by an angry mob of Trump supporters wielding sledge hammers, baseball bats, hockey sticks, crutches and flagpoles. At least 800 people entered the Capitol after a smaller number forced entry, police have testified, seeking to block Congress from confirming the November presidential election victory of Joe Biden.
Sicknick, 42, who grew up in South River, N.J., became the third officer to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in early February, where fellow officers, lawmakers and President Biden and first lady Jill Biden came to pay respects to the 13-year Capitol Police veteran and former New Jersey Air National Guard member.
Authorities have included Sicknick among five people who died as a result of the riot. The four others were civilians — Ashli Babbitt, 35, who was shot by an officer, and three others who died in the chaos.
Referring to Sicknick, a House-passed article of impeachment charged Trump with inciting insurrection, alleging that members of a crowd he addressed “injured and killed law enforcement personnel.” Trump was acquitted after 57 senators voted to convict him for inciting the attack, 10 short of the two-thirds majority needed.
Then-acting U.S. attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen said in a statement shortly afterward that Sicknick died of “the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol,” echoing a statement by Capitol Police.
The Capitol Police said that Sicknick “was injured while physically engaging with protesters” and collapsed after he had returned to his office following the riot.
Investigators determined that he did not die of blunt force trauma, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. After more than two months, no autopsy or toxicology report has been made public.
The case remains a top priority for investigators — including the FBI, Capitol Police and D.C. police, which handles all deaths in the District — with Rosen saying authorities would “spare no resources in investigating and holding accountable those responsible.”
The day after Sicknick died, his family issued a statement noting “many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue.”
That statement was in part an attempt to quell rumors circulating on social media that purported to show videos of attacks on Sicknick, and possible suspects.
The family added: “Brian is a hero and that is what we would like people to remember.”
Sicknick’s family has not spoken publicly, and their spokeswoman said in February they decided against conducting interviews.
Sicknick, of northern New Jersey, is survived by his older brothers, Ken and Craig, parents Charles and Gladys Sicknick, and his girlfriend of 11 years, Sandra Garza.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) paid tribute to Sicknick on the Senate floor, saying the officer understood “that wearing that uniform, wearing that badge, that you had a sacred duty to protect this sacred space.”
The senator described Sicknick’s death as a “crime” that “demands the full attention of federal law enforcement.” He said “when white supremacists attacked our nation’s capital, they took the life of one of our officers. They spilled his blood, they took a son away from his parents. They took a sibling away from their brothers.”
Sicknick joined the New Jersey Air National Guard in 1997 and had been assigned to the 108th Air Refueling Wing out of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. The Guard said he deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999 and to Kyrgyzstan in 2003.
Though Sicknick supported Trump, those who encountered him said his political views did not align neatly with one political party. Messages he sent to his congressman, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), were “polite and measured,” according to the lawmaker’s spokesman. He opposed impeachment and favored gun control. He was concerned about animal cruelty and the national debt.
During the ceremony honoring Sicknick at the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) described him as a “peacekeeper, not only in duty but in spirit.”
Ilhan Omar. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)
Ilhan Omar Urges End to Prison Contracts to Fix 'Abuse-Ridden' Immigration Detention System
Amanda Holpuch, Guardian UK
Holpuch writes: "Ilhan Omar has called on the Biden administration to phase out immigration detention contracts between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local jails and prisons."
Representative calls on Biden administration to phase out contracts between Ice and local jails and prisons
In a letter to Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Minnesota Democrat said the contracts perpetuated mass incarceration.
“In order to truly sever the financial incentives causing the expansion of an unnecessary and abuse-ridden system of mass incarceration, we urge you to end contracts between the federal government and localities for the purposes of immigration detention,” Omar wrote, in a letter also signed by other Democratic members of Congress.
Immigration activists have for years targeted such contracts at local levels.
In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering proposals that would prevent counties, municipalities and private prison operators from entering into such contracts or renewing or extending those already in effect. In California in 2019 the governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a law blocking the state from entering into or renewing contracts with private prison companies.
Biden is under pressure to address the sprawling US immigration detention system, the largest in the world and rampant with allegations of abuse.
More than 70 members of Congress, including Omar, have called on Biden to phase out the use of private prisons for immigration detention. Biden signed an executive order to do so at justice department facilities, but not at facilities which detain migrants.
Biden’s administration is also attempting to respond to an increase in asylum-seeking children at the southern border. A near-record 9,457 unaccompanied children were taken into US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody in February, according to the agency, the most since May 2019.
In recent weeks, thousands of children have stayed in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour legal limit, after which they are supposed to be moved to the care of the US health department. Biden is using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to manage and care for the children.
A CBP tent facility in Donna, some 165 miles south of Dallas, is holding more than 1,000 children and teenagers, some as young as four. Lawyers who inspect immigrant detention facilities have said they have interviewed children who reported being held in packed conditions, some sleeping on the floor, others not able to shower for five days.
Biden is using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to manage and care for the children.
Later on Monday, it was reported that the administration plans to use a downtown Dallas convention center to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers.
The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be used for up to 90 days beginning as early as this week, according to written notification sent to members of the Dallas City Council on Monday and obtained by the Associated Press. Federal agencies will use the facility to house boys ages 15 to 17, according to the memo, which described the soon-to-open site as a “decompression center”.
Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, left, talks with Chief Justice John Roberts on the steps of the Supreme Court following his official investiture at the Supreme Court June 15, 2017, in Washington, DC. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
The Sweeping Implications of the Supreme Court's New Union-Busting Case
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes:
Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid isn’t just an attack on unions, it could bar health inspectors from inspecting restaurants.
edar Point Nursery v. Hassid, which the Supreme Court will hear next Monday, March 22, targets a nearly half-century-old regulation in California that permits union organizers to briefly enter agricultural worksites and speak to farmworkers. But the stakes in this case go far beyond union busting.
The plaintiffs in Cedar Point ask the justices to so radically reshape the Court’s approach to property rights that some of the most basic state and federal health and safety laws could fall. Among other things, if the Court accepts the plaintiffs’ argument that farm owners have a constitutional right to kick union organizers off their property, it could also mean that restaurants have a constitutional right to keep health inspectors from entering their kitchens, or that factory owners can prohibit the government from inspecting their machines to make sure those machines are safe to operate.
Cedar Point is one of the most radical property rights cases to reach the justices in a long time. And its plaintiffs ask for a significant reshaping of the American social contract.
The case arises out of the Fifth Amendment’s “Takings Clause,” which provides that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The plaintiffs claim that this clause gives them a broad “right to exclude unwanted persons from private property,” and that this right permits a property owner to forbid a union from entering their land, even if state law permits that union to do so.
If the Cedar Point plaintiffs prevail, California will have to pay farm owners if it wants to enforce its pro-union regulation.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that laws granting unions a limited right to enter an employer’s property and speak to workers are constitutional. As the Court held in Central Hardware v. NLRB (1972), the government may require an employer to allow a union onto its property so long as “the access is limited to (i) union organizers; (ii) prescribed nonworking areas of the employer’s premises; and (iii) the duration of organization activity.”
But the Cedar Point plaintiffs don’t just ask for a decision that could sweep away decisions like Central Hardware. They ask for such a broad power to exclude others from private property that even things like health inspections could be endangered.
How the Takings Clause currently operates
The specific regulation at issue in Cedar Point has been on the books since 1975. It allows organizers to enter a worksite and speak to farmworkers for up to three (nonconsecutive) hours a day — the hour before the start of work, the hour after the end of work, and the workers’ lunch break.
Before a union may do so, it must notify the government and the employer. The union may enter the worksite for up to 30 days, and it may invoke this right to enter a particular worksite up to four times a year.
Thus, union organizers are allowed on a farm’s property for a maximum of 120 days a year, and only for a total of three hours per day.
The Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that this limited intrusion of their property amounts to what is known as a “per se” taking. Current law distinguishes between per se takings, which involve unusually severe intrusions on private property and are treated with particular skepticism by courts, and milder intrusions on property rights that fall under the broader umbrella of “regulatory” takings. Notably, the Cedar Point plaintiffs do not argue that California’s union access rule is a regulatory taking — so they appear to have made a strategic decision to avoid more measured legal arguments in favor of their more radical claim.
Property owners subject to a per se taking will generally prevail in court, while plaintiffs who allege a regulatory taking often lose — even if they challenge a land use regulation that imposes fairly substantial limits on how they can use their property. In one famous regulatory takings case, the Court upheld a New York City law that prevented the owners of Grand Central train station from constructing a high-rise office building on top of the terminal.
Very few cases qualify as per se takings. Under existing precedents, a law doesn’t count as a per se taking unless it deprives a property owner of “all economically beneficial or productive use” of their property, or subjects the property owner to a “permanent physical occupation” of their land.
So, under this framework, California’s union access rule is not a per se taking. Though a union that successfully organizes a workplace is likely to secure a contract that requires the employer to pay more money to its workers, unionization does not deprive an employer of all economic benefits from their land. And California’s rule does not allow anyone to permanently occupy a property owner’s land. It only allows union organizers to enter that land for a few hours a day, and only for about a third of the year.
How the Cedar Point plaintiffs want to remake the law
Before we get into some details about the Cedar Point plaintiffs’ argument, it’s helpful to understand two legal concepts.
The first is the concept of a “license.” Suppose that I hire a dog walker to walk my dog on weekday afternoons while I’m at the office. As part of this arrangement, I give the dog walker a key to my home and permission to enter in order to bring the dog outside for his walk. Under this arrangement, I have granted the dog walker a “license” to enter my home.
Licenses are often temporarily arrangements. And they typically (though not always) can be revoked by the property owner. If I decide that my dog walker is doing a bad job, I can fire them and take away their legal right to enter my home. And if I sell my home, the dog walker doesn’t retain any right to enter my former home once the new owner takes possession.
An “easement” is something else entirely. Suppose that Marge owns a house in a rural area with minimal electrical infrastructure. Now suppose that Big Electric wants to build a power line under Marge’s land that can bring electricity to her neighbors, and that Big Electric also seeks a permanent right to enter Marge’s land and repair this power line if it is damaged. So Big Electric offers Marge money in return for a permanent right to build and maintain this power line.
Big Electric is seeking an easement. Easements typically transfer a portion of a property owner’s rights permanently to someone else. Under ordinary circumstances, a landowner may exclude anyone they want from their property. But under the terms of this easement, Marge would permanently give up her right to exclude Big Electric’s repair crews. Big Electric would own the right to enter onto Marge’s land just as surely as Marge owns her home.
And if Marge someday sells her home to someone else, Big Electric would still own that easement. It would belong to Big Electric, not Marge, and therefore is not something that Marge could transfer to someone else.
This distinction between licenses and easements matters because in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987), the Supreme Court held that, if the government seeks a “public easement across a landowner’s premises,” then the Takings Clause requires the government to compensate that landowner. The Cedar Point plaintiffs rely heavily on Nollan in their brief, arguing that the California union-access regulation “appropriates an easement across the property of all agricultural businesses in California” by stripping those businesses of the right to exclude certain people from their land.
Essentially, they argue that this alleged easement amounts to a per se taking because it permanently gives unions a right to visit certain worksites — even if the unions can only enter those worksites some of the time.
The state concedes that its regulation “is similar to an easement insofar as it affords union organizers a ‘nonpossessory right to enter’ the property of agricultural employers.” But the state ultimately argues that its regulation only grants “some form of license” to union organizers.
It’s a strong argument because, while the California regulation does diminish some property owners’ rights to exclude unwanted visitors, it does not resemble an easement in one very important way. The California regulation does not permanently transfer any of a farm owner’s property rights to unions. The unions do not own anything because of this regulation.
If California were to repeal its regulation tomorrow, the unions would be left with nothing. Had the California regulation actually imposed an easement on farm owners, then unions would retain their ownership of this easement even after the regulation that established it ceased to exist. Under Nollan, if the unions had obtained an easement allowing them to enter private land, then the Takings Clause would forbid California from taking this easement from them without compensating them.
If the Supreme Court agrees that California’s regulation appropriates an easement from farm owners, then the implications are profound
At least in marginal cases, the line between an easement and a license can be blurry. As one California appeals court judge complained in a 1994 opinion, commercial land use arrangements often involve such complicated terms that “it is increasingly difficult and correspondingly irrelevant to attempt to pigeonhole these relationships as ‘leases,’ ‘easements,’ ‘licenses,’ ‘profits,’ or some other obscure interest in land devised by the common law in far simpler times.”
But, to the extent that the Supreme Court is uncertain whether to classify the rights granted to unions by California’s regulation as a “license” (and therefore as more permissible under the Constitution) or an “easement” (and therefore subject to the Takings Clause’s restrictions), there are profound practical reasons to prefer the former option.
The state’s brief in Cedar Point spends several pages explaining just how many laws could become invalid if the government cannot require landowners to allow unwanted persons onto their property.
“The categorical rules proposed by petitioners and their amici would also imperil a wide variety of health- and safety-inspection regimes,” the state’s legal team writes. “These include, among many others, food and drug inspections, occupational safety and health inspections, and home visits by social workers,” as well as a federal law providing that “underground mines must be inspected ‘at least four times a year.’”
States also frequently enact laws allowing non-governmental workers to enter onto private land. “Many States authorize utility companies and similar entities to enter private property, even absent the owner’s consent, for surveys, repairs, connections, and similar purposes,” the state’s brief explains.
And, in what is likely a bid to secure the votes of conservative justices who support strict enforcement of immigration laws, California argues that the rule proposed by the Cedar Point plaintiffs could prevent law enforcement from arresting many undocumented immigrants.
Although longstanding legal principles permit “entries onto private property to make arrests or enforce criminal laws,” these principles “do not appear to apply to entries by Border Patrol agents to enforce noncriminal immigration laws, or by other government officials to enforce other civil laws.”
US laws permitting unwanted persons to enter a property owner’s land, moreover, stretch back to the early days of the American Republic. Indeed, a Massachusetts law from the 1640s, when the state was still a British colony, provided that “‘any man ... may pass and repass on foot through any man’s propriety’ in order to access ‘great ponds’ for the purpose of fishing or fowling, so long as the entry did not damage the property.”
The strict limits on governmental regulation of property rights proposed by the Cedar Point plaintiffs, in other words, are quite novel. And those limits could invalidate countless state and federal laws, preventing health inspectors from investigating potentially unsafe businesses, and preventing workplace inspectors from investigating dangerous factories and other worksites.
The Roberts Court, which now has a 6-3 Republican majority, is often very hostile toward the rights of unions — even when those rights are clearly established by existing law. In Janus v. AFSCME (2018), for example, the Supreme Court overruled a 41-year-old decision permitting unions to collect certain fees from non-members who benefit from the union’s services.
But, to rule against the unions in Cedar Point, the Supreme Court wouldn’t simply need to undermine many years of decisions benefiting unions. Such a decision could profoundly rework the balance of power between landowners and the government, undercutting huge swaths of state and federal law in the process.
A justice who may be inclined to spite the United Farm Workers in Cedar Point, in other words, needs to ask themselves if they also feel safe eating out at a restaurant that is closed to health inspectors.
Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
"Huge Victory": Black Farmers Hail $5 Billion in New COVID Relief Law to Redress Generations of Racism
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The billion is historic in nature."
major provision in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill aims to address decades of discrimination against Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers who have historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support, with about half of that amount set aside for farmers of color, and allocates extra federal funds to farmers who were “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has faced accusations of racism for decades, but little has been done to address the problem of discrimination in farm loans. John Boyd, a fourth-generation Black farmer and president of the National Black Farmers Association, says the new funds begin to address issues he has been fighting for 30 years. “This is a huge victory for Black farmers and farmers of color,” says Boyd.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We begin today’s show looking at a major provision in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that aims to address decades of discrimination against Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American farmers, who have historically been excluded from government agricultural programs. The American Rescue Plan sets aside $10.4 billion for agriculture support and allocates about half the funds to farmers of color who were, quote, “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group,” unquote.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights confirmed, as long ago as 1965, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers, but little was done to address the problem, and the number of Black-run farms dropped 96% in the last century. By 1999, 98% of all agricultural land was owned by white people. In 2010, Congress approved a $1.2 billion settlement for thousands of Black farmers denied USDA loans because of their race. But a 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office, based on the USDA’s own data, shows farmers and ranchers of color continue to receive disproportionately smaller farm loans.
The provision in the new COVID relief package is drawn from legislation introduced by newly elected Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is Georgia’s first Black senator and also the first Georgia Democrat to serve on the Agriculture Committee in three decades. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack welcomed the measure.
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY TOM VILSACK: The history of USDA, unfortunately, involved a level of discrimination against a number of minority producers — Black farmers, Native American farmers, Hispanic farmers. And there is an effort, I think, with this package to try to deal not with the specific acts of discrimination, but the cumulative effect over a period of time. When people are discriminated against, they basically get behind, and it’s really hard for them ever to catch up. And the result, of course, is that we’ve seen a significant decline in the number of minority producers around the country. So, this is providing some debt relief for those minority producers, those socially disadvantaged producers, to impact and affect the cumulative effect of — to offset the cumulative effect of discrimination over a period of time.
AMY GOODMAN: But the effort to address the USDA’s history of racism has come under fire from some Republicans, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who lashed out against the measure during a Fox News interview.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Let me give you an example of something that really bothers me. In this bill, if you’re a farmer, your loan will be forgiven, up to 120% of your loan — not 100%, but 120% of your loan — if you’re socially disadvantaged, if you’re African American, some other minority. But if you’re a white person, if you’re a white woman, no forgiveness as for reparations. What has that got to do with COVID? So, if you’re in the farming business right now, this bill forgives 120% of your loan based on your race. These people in the Congress today, the House and the Senate, on the Democratic side are out-of-control liberals.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Graham’s comments prompted a stern response from House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who’s also from South Carolina. He was speaking on CNN.
REP. JAMES CLYBURN: Mr. Graham is from South Carolina. He knows South Carolina’s history. He knows what the state of South Carolina and this country has done to Black farmers in South Carolina. They didn’t do it to white farmers. We are trying to rescue the lives and livelihoods of people. He ought to be ashamed of himself.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on the fight to end discrimination at the USDA and restore land to Black farmers, we go to Boydton, Virginia, to speak with John Boyd, fourth-generation Black farmer, founder and president of the nonprofit National Black Farmers Association.
John, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Can you start off by talking about this $5 billion and what it means? Give us the history.
JOHN BOYD: The $5 billion is historic in nature, Amy — and thank you for having me again — in what it’s going to do to help Black farmers and farmers of color in this country. You know, as you know, we’ve been suffering. And the $5 billion calls for debt relief. So, that would give many Black farmers a jumpstart, if they can get rid of the debt at the United States Department of Agriculture. And there is $1 billion that’s set aside for technical assistance and outreach and to really dig down into the core of the discrimination at the United States Department of Agriculture.
Both of these measures, I’ve been fighting for for over 30 years, so I don’t anybody who’s watching this show to think that this is some new measure or new idea or concept that happened overnight. I’ve been trying to fix this, this measure, for over 30 years at the United States Department of Agriculture. And, Amy, I probably spoke to you about it 10 years ago. So, we’ve been trying a long time. And this is a huge victory for Black farmers and farmers of color, Native Americans and Hispanics, and other socially disadvantaged farmers.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how, over the last century, Black farmers lost 90% of their land?
JOHN BOYD: Yes. And at the turn of the century, we were tilling about 20 million acres of land, primarily in the Southeastern Corridor of the United States, and we were close to 1 million Black farm families strong. And for those who don’t understand the history, every Black person in this country, we’re one or two generations away from somebody’s farm. And we survived slavery. We survived sharecropping. We survived Jim Crow. And here we are in the year 2021, and I’m talking to you about discrimination at United States Department of Agriculture. We lost this land by discrimination, from receiving discrimination at USDA.
And I was one of those recipients, where the government clearly discriminated against me. I have a 14-page letter from them admitting to the guilt in those egregious acts that I faced by this this county official. The person responsible for making farm loans spat on me and used racial epithets, referred to me and other senior statesmen in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, as “boy.” He came to my farm, wanting me to sign a check over to him personally, with a loaded handgun. And I can tell you, Amy, he didn’t treat white farmers that way in Mecklenburg County. He would only see Black farmers on Wednesday. All of us would be lined up in the hallway with the same date and time on it. And he was referring to these elderly Black farmers — many were deacons and preachers and leaders in the community — as “boy” and talking downward towards them. So, this is deep-rooted discrimination that’s been going on in very pervasive ways for a very, very long time.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to Senator Lindsey Graham?
JOHN BOYD: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the history of Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, when it comes to this issue.
JOHN BOYD: Yes. Well, first of all, I’ve lobbied Senator Graham when he was in the House and in the Senate, and I’ve had meetings with him, in buttonhole meetings, trying to get him to support the Claims Remedy Act of 2010. He has over 6,000 Black farmers in his state. He knows the discrimination that I’m describing. And I’ve spoken to him personally about this discrimination. Amy, he never once used his megaphone to talk about or investigate the acts of discrimination that Black farmers like myself faced.
So, I’m calling for, today, on your show — I want him to apologize to the Black community, to Black farmers, and apologize to this country for his wrong stance on this. Forty-nine members voted on 10 different amendments to strip or lessen the language that was in the COVID spending bill for Black farmers. Forty-nine senators, Republican senators, voted to take that out. And Senator Lindsey Graham was one of them. He has never tried to help. He is divisive. He is wrong for this country. And that message, that concept, the message of hate, hatred and division, that he continues to preach on Fox News, isn’t the American way. That’s not the way to bring America back.
Here we are, for 30 years, trying to get this done. He should have took some time to say, “What can we do to help this measure, to make farming better for Blacks and other farmers in this country?” And he never once spoke about all of the money going to white farmers. Just, for example, under the Trump administration, $29 million — $29 billion, with a B, went to white farmers. What is his definition of that? All of the subsidies and programs and loans and all these incentives at USDA, for all of these decades, have went to white farmers. What is his definition of that?
So, that’s what we’ve been talking about, clearly, for a long time: a system that has discriminated and mistreated and took and stole land from Black farmers for decades. And it went unchecked in this country. If he wanted to check something, he should have been checking about discrimination at USDA. He should have been checking about sharecropping in his historic state, South Carolina. These are things that Senator Lindsey Graham should have been doing.
AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of it being Reverend Warnock, now Senator Warnock, from Georgia, the new Democratic senator, being the one who pushed this forward and sitting on the Agriculture Committee?
JOHN BOYD: Yes. This is a historic nature, and my hat goes off to Reverend Warnock, Senator Cory Booker. For the first time in history, Amy — this is a new day in America — we have two Blacks on the Senate Ag Committee. We have the chairman in the House, Chairman Scott, also from Georgia, a chairman of the [House] Agriculture Committee.
We have now a president, President Biden, and a vice president, who wants to help rectify some of the problems that we’ve faced. And I spoke to the president about this last February. And he committed to me that he would help me fix the issues at the United States Department of Agriculture. So I would like to recognize President Biden for signing that bill and making sure that we stayed in there. So, my hat is off right now to this administration for doing the right thing and having the guts to stand up to people like Lindsey Graham and the other 49 senators, who simply don’t want to help people, Black farmers and poor people in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Tom Vilsack, the new, once again, head, but also past head, of the USDA. The NAACP has noted Vilsack had lied to conceal decades of discrimination against Black farmers. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, responded to Biden’s nomination of Vilsack to head the USDA, calling it “extremely problematic for the African American community.” He cited the 2010 controversy when Vilsack served as agriculture secretary during the Obama administration and fired Shirley Sherrod from her USDA position overseeing rural development, amidst a misunderstanding over racial comments. Vilsack would later apologize. Johnson told The Washington Post, quote, “We think that an individual who unjustifiably fired Shirley Sherrod — who is a civil rights icon, a legend, who worked with John Lewis — should not be considered. … We should not go backward, we should go forward.” Well, in fact, Vilsack is once again the head of the USDA. John Boyd, have you spoken to him? And what are you demanding?
JOHN BOYD: Well, two things. Yes, I have spoken to him. And one of the things that President Biden also committed to me during our one-on-one visit in South Carolina, that there would be change in leadership at USDA. So, when they announced that Secretary Vilsack was coming back to USDA, he was not my pick. And he wasn’t the pick for Black farmers. He was the pick that President Biden wanted to come back. I wanted new blood and new leadership, someone who will take a much more aggressive campaign against this discrimination at the United States Department of Agriculture.
And, Amy, when I lobbied all of those years for the Claims Remedy Act of 2010, that put in place $1.25 billion for Black farmers, Secretary Vilsack was, in my opinion, too slow to act. I didn’t get the help on Capitol Hill, neither in the House or the Senate. And Valerie Jarrett, from the White House, the last five or six months, got on board and began to campaign to help me pass that measure in the House and Senate. So, I didn’t think he was the right person.
But I spoke to him here a couple days ago, and he congratulated me on the measure in the bill. But I also urged him to put in swift action to make sure that these payments and the debt relief and all of these measures, the outreach and technical assistance, reach Black farmers and farmers of color expeditiously, not to sit on it and try to figure out a plan of action. If we can get $1,400 in the mailbox and direct deposit into Americans, then we can disperse and relieve debts for Black and farmers of color expeditiously. And I urged him to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you mentioned the Trump administration and Black farmers, farmers of color. How does it fit in to past presidents? How would you assess the Trump administration?
JOHN BOYD: Worst administration in history for Black farmers, since my 38 years of doing this kind of work, Amy. My visit — and I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with every agriculture secretary, both Republican and Democrat, in the cage at USDA. And Secretary — former Secretary Sonny Perdue, in my visit with him, was the worst conversation I ever had. He said, “Mr. Boyd, it’s your farmers, i.e. Black farmers, are going to have to get large or get out of business.”
And when I urged him to have more Blacks on the county committees and all of the USDA commissions, he said he didn’t need people that were lazy and didn’t want to work. How egregious and — for former Secretary Sonny Perdue to say that. I told him that I didn’t know any Black farmers, that are still farming, that have been treated worse than dirt by USDA, that are lazy and don’t want to work. Now, Amy, I work seven days a week, including holidays and Christmas, and I’ve been working all of my life. And that’s the way many Black farmers have. The issue here is, is we haven’t had access to credit the way that the white farmers have.
And for that type of position from the Trump administration, set us back a little further. And not only just in Black farming, but in race relations in this country, the Trump administration set Black people and divided this country. And former Secretary Sonny Perdue was at the core of that, taking land away from Black farmers. He didn’t even have an assistant secretary for civil rights, a position that I lobbied for and campaigned for, for many years, to get into the farm bill. They didn’t even fill that position. So what does that tell you about the Trump administration’s commitment on civil rights and resolving complaints from Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers? Sonny Perdue gets an F from me. And I hope he heads to retirement in politics, because he really done a bad number on Blacks and other farmers of color in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: John Boyd, I want to thank you so much for being with us, fourth-generation Black farmer, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.
Aws Salahadin, 10, (left) and Mohammad Salahadin, 8, were detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank town of Hizma on February 21, 2021. (photo: Salahadin family)
Increasing Israeli Squatter Violence Against Occupied Palestinians Goes Unchecked by the Israel Military
Kamel Hawwash, Middle East Monitor
Hawwash writes: "While the number of fatal attacks by settlers thankfully remains rare, their violence against the Palestinians is escalating."
s I was reading an article headlined “Israel says 600 children given Covid jab had no serious side effects”, my twitter feed was filled with messages expressing outrage about a video of some other children: Palestinian children.
This told a very different story. Palestinian children aged 7 to 12 were being manhandled violently by fully armed and masked Israeli soldiers equipped to arrest dangerous criminals. The images were obscene. The might of the Israeli army — the so-called Israel “Defence” Forces —being used to terrorise children simply because it can.
Pro-Israelis jumped immediately to the defence of the soldiers, claiming that the children were “stealing” private property; there was little compassion shown for the situation that the children found themselves in. In fact, the children were collecting akkub, an in-season prickly wildflower that is the main ingredient for a Palestinian casserole with the same name as the flower. Their crime, apparently, was to be on “private land” near the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Mi’un in southern Hebron. Those who took the side of the soldiers claimed that the incident was not portrayed accurately — that the video was pure “Pallewood” — and that the children were being taken to a nearby “holding station” before being released to their parents. I wonder if they would have been as forgiving if the children had been Jews caught by soldiers of a foreign army.
The contrast between these two news reports could not be starker. In one, Israel seeks to protect Israeli children from Covid-19; in the other its soldiers terrorise Palestinian children. I want all children to be protected from harm and do not distinguish between Israeli and Palestinian children, but Israel discriminates between them on a daily basis.
Israel’s abuse, mistreatment and, indeed, shooting and killing of Palestinian minors is well documented. It is also worth reminding ourselves that the ordeal of Palestinian children does not end with their arrest; they are usually abused at every stage on the way to the military courts which not only deal with them, but also have an almost 99 per cent conviction rate. Israeli children and their families, even those who live in the illegal settlements, are subject to civil, not military law.
Behind the Israeli soldiers’ capture of the children lies another problem that Palestinians under occupation are encountering; the increasing number of attacks by illegal settlers using the “Defence Forces” as a shield. Put simply, settler violence is on the rise aided and abetted by Israeli soldiers. The most common type of attack is against something that is symbolic of the people of Palestine and an essential part of the economy: the olive tree. Not only has Israel as a state cut down more than a million olive trees in the occupied territories, but settlers also regularly cut down and burn the trees out of sheer spite and as a way of attacking the livelihood of Palestinians to push them off their land.
This is confirmed by a report from Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, which framed the issue of settler violence as “state-backed settler violence”. B’Tselem reiterated that under international law Israel has a duty to protect Palestinians in the West Bank from such violent conduct. “The long-term outcome of settler violence,” it concluded, “is the dispossession of Palestinians from more and more areas in the West Bank, facilitating Israel’s seizure of land and resources.”
The illegal settlers have been emboldened by their certain belief that they will not face any consequences for harassing and attacking Palestinians and their property. They also rely on the belief that Israel considers the land it occupies to be Jewish land to which the indigenous Palestinians have no right. On two occasions recently, notorious and fully-armed Israeli settler Zvi Bar Yosef was emboldened to order Palestinian families to leave their picnic at a tranquil location. He lives in a settlement outpost called Havat Zvi which is illegal under Israeli law as well as international law; it is near the village of Jibiya. On the first occasion, he was accompanied by soldiers who ordered a Palestinian Israeli family to leave what is a public area. The fact that they were Israeli citizens made no difference to the outcome. That is what “equality” means in apartheid Israel.
Settlers regularly attack Palestinian villages during the night, daubing walls and cars with anti-Palestinian graffiti. The illegal outpost of Yitzhar is infamous as a hotbed of hate, home to young Israeli settlers who see it as their mission in life to make the lives of Palestinians as miserable as possible. Settlers from this outpost have even seen their attacks on Israeli soldiers go unpunished, when similar attacks by Palestinians would have resulted in a harsh and possibly deadly response.
It is worth remembering that settler violence has not been confined to damage to property or minor injuries to Palestinians. In 2015, Amiram Ben-Uliel, an Israeli terrorist, firebombed the Dawabsheh family home in Duma village near Nablus, killing 18-month-old Ali and burning his parents Riham and Saad so badly that their injuries were fatal. Four-year-old Ahmad survived with severe burns. Ben-Uliel had spray-painted “Revenge” and “Long Live King Messiah” on the walls of the Dawabsheh’s and another home in the village.
While the number of fatal attacks by settlers thankfully remains rare, their violence against the Palestinians is escalating. Is it coincidental that this has happened since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government threatened to annex vast swathes of Palestinian land last year? While the threat of de jure annexation has been suspended to allow for normalisation agreements with some Arab states, the belief remains among Israelis, especially the fanatical settlers, that all of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to them.
This has encouraged settlers to terrorise Palestinians in an effort to get them to abandon their homes and land. Even though I am confident that Israel and its illegal settlers will fail in that endeavour, the lives of the Palestinians on the front line of settler terrorism will continue to be difficult. If the occupying state of Israel ignores its legal obligation to protect the people under occupation, the international community shouldn’t. The latter should impose sanctions on Israel until it meets its international obligations as an occupier and impose law and order on its illegal settlers. And it should vaccinate vulnerable Palestinian children while it is at it.
Machines are seen removing sand from the Kuakhai River in Bhubaneswar, India, on November 20, 2020. (photo: STR/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Global Sand Mining Is Destroying the Planet and Costing Lives
Ajit Niranjan, Deutsche Welle
Niranjan writes: "Sand, a building block of modern life that sits at the heart of a destructive and sometimes illegal industry, is in increasingly short supply - and nobody knows how soon it will run out."
t makes up the concrete of our houses, the tarmac of our roads, the glass in our windows and the silicon chips in our phones.
But sand, a building block of modern life that sits at the heart of a destructive and sometimes illegal industry, is in increasingly short supply — and nobody knows how soon it will run out.
Sand is the most used material on the planet but also one of the least well monitored. Unlike most other commodities, policymakers only have rough estimates of how much of it is used each year. A landmark report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in 2019 had to rely on data for cement — which sand and gravel are mixed with to make concrete — to land on a ballpark figure of 50 billion tons.
Researchers say that's more sand than can be responsibly used each year, even though more sand can be made by crushing rocks. In some regions, the shortages have already fueled targeted killings and the destruction of habitats.
"The nature of the crisis is we don't understand this material well enough," said Louise Gallagher from the Global Sand Observatory in Geneva, who co-authored the report. "We don't understand the impacts enough of where we're taking it from. Sometimes we don't even know where it's coming from, how much is coming out of rivers. We don't know. We just don't know."
Extracting Sand
What experts do know, though, is that extracting sand in unparalleled quantities comes at a growing cost to people and the planet.
Sand mining destroys habitats, dirties rivers and erodes beaches, many of which are already losing ground to rising sea levels. When miners dig out layers of sand, riverbanks become less stable. The pollution and acidity can kill fish and leave less water for people and crops. The problem is made worse when dams upstream prevent sediments from replenishing the river.
"It has so many other impacts that are not taken into consideration," said Kiran Pereira, an independent researcher who has written a book on solutions to the sand crisis. "It's definitely not reflected in the cost of sand."
Worse, much of the impact may not be immediately visible, which makes it hard to know exactly how bad it is, said Stephen Edwards, who leads research on extractive industries at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). "It certainly is something that is rising to a level that we really need to be paying closer attention to."
According to an article published in the journal Nature in 2019, sand mining has helped push fish-eating gharial crocodiles in the Ganges river to the brink of extinction — fewer than 250 adults remain in the wild — and destabilized riverbanks in the Mekong whose collapse could force half a million people from their homes.
One reason the damage from mining has been ignored is that although sand is in objects all around us, it's "hidden in plain sight," said Chris Hackney, a geographer at the University of Newcastle in the UK, who studies the issue and co-authored the Nature article. "Ask people to name the most important commodity on the planet and sand is probably not the one that gets mentioned."
Concrete Boom
Sand shortages even sound counterintuitive. Although one-third of the Earth's land surface is classified as desert, much of it sandy, Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia import sand from as far away as Canada and Australia. The 830m-tall Burj Khalifa, a skyscraper in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, was built using imports from the other side of the world.
This is because desert sand holds little value for the construction industry.
When winds blow over dunes, they shape sand particles into spheres. These round balls have less grip than the jagged grains found on riverbeds, beaches and sea floors, which have the friction needed to make concrete strong.
"As I grew up in Bangalore, I constantly read reports about the rivers being decimated due to sand mining," said Pereira, the researcher, adding that some of her earliest memories involve waking up at 2:00 a.m. to fetch water from a crowded public tap. "At the same time, I remember seeing hundreds and hundreds of trucks filled with sand flying up and down the roads, supplying all the construction sites."
Most of the demand comes from China, which made more cement in the three years from 2011 to 2014 than the U.S. did in the entire last century. India, the next-biggest cement producer, is projected to overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2027.
As people across Asia and Africa move to cities and the world population swells to 10 billion people by the middle of the century, demand for sand is projected to keep rising.
And it's not just for making concrete. In 2011, 20 million cubic meters of sand was dredged from the sea floor on the coasts of the Netherlands to form a natural barrier protecting against erosion and climate change. Over the last half century Singapore has built artificial islands that have increased its land mass by a quarter using sand imported from Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. Dubai's artificial Palm Islands, visible from space, were made with sand dredged from the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
Sand Mafias
And then there's the human cost.
As sand prices have risen, police officers in countries from South Africa to Mexico have kept reporting dead bodies at the hands of miners.
Nowhere is the violence worse than in India, home to the world's deadliest "sand mafias." Criminal gangs there have burned journalists alive, hacked activists to death and run over police officers with trucks. A report last year from the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an environmental group based in Delhi, counted 193 people who died through illegal sand mining in India over the last two years. The main causes of death were poor working conditions, violence and accidents.
While some miners dive to the bottom of rivers hundreds of times a day without protective clothing, and there are reports of child labor from India to Uganda, their employers are rarely held accountable.
That partly changed in late February, when a special court in Delhi jailed the boss of India's largest sand mining company, V.V. Minerals, and a former director of the environment ministry for bribery. The mining baron, who has denied allegations of illegal sand mining that stretch back decades, had been caught paying the university tuition fees of an official's son in exchange for an environmental clearance, in a case that one local news outlet compared to notorious American mobster Al Capone being jailed for tax violations.
To solve the sand crisis, experts say world leaders need to better regulate the industry and enforce laws against corruption, as well as monitoring global sand production. They would need to cut demand for sand by finding alternatives to concrete and building more efficiently with materials like timber. The waste from demolished buildings could be reused as aggregate for roads, for instance.
Some researchers are exploring ways to make the world's abundant desert sand suitable for building, by heating and crushing the grains, and are now looking to make the processes cheap enough to be practical.
"Our ability to construct does not depend on our need for sand," said Pereira. "We can decouple these two and still build and allow for human prosperity without destroying our ecosystem."
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