It's Live on the HomePage Now: Nina Turner: "Good Ideas Are Not Enough, We Need to Marry Our Ideas to Power" Former state senator and Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner is running for Congress. In an interview with Jacobin, Turner reflects on the heartbreaks and new opportunities of both Bernie campaigns, the left agenda she will bring to Capitol Hill, and why policies like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal are racial justice issues.
Jacobin’s Eric Blanc spoke to Turner about why she is running for national office and about her vision for winning the changes needed by working people. EB: What are the challenges you anticipate facing in your race to win Ohio’s 11th congressional district? NT: Unfortunately, voter turnout will probably be low — this is a special election so it can be a challenge to let people know that an election is going on. Even in the 2020 presidential election turnout was abysmal, especially in the Cleveland area, and it breaks my heart. So we have to awaken the sleeping giant. Another big challenge, of course, is money in politics, especially dark money. I am grateful to have the support of thousands of people across the country who donate what they can. Our average donation is $27. However, as the progressive in this race, in many ways I’m the underdog because I’ve been bumping up against the system for years — and that system is going to bump back at me. But I am hopeful that we’ll win. With our message of building an America as good as its promise, a message about changing the material lives of working people, and with all of the support I am getting within my district and state and across the country, I think progressives see this as their race, also. They know that when I win, I am taking with me not only the voters of my district and people of the great state of Ohio, but also the progressive movement to the halls of Congress. EB: Bernie’s loss in 2020 was heartbreaking for so many people across the country, myself included. What lessons from the campaign, positive and negative, do you think we should draw moving ahead? NT: I too was heartbroken, so I can relate to how Berniecrats across the country felt. 2016 really primed the pump for 2020 because of the issues we were fighting for and the progressive policy agenda that we set. During this election and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our agenda became more popular. The people were even more ready to hear it this time around. The entire 2020 campaign cycle was animated by our agenda. Every single debate, they had to discuss something that our movement put out there, because our ideas were increasingly popular. Though Senator Sanders didn’t win the presidency, the work done in 2016 and then in 2020 changed the game for the progressive movement. When we talk about a minimum wage increase, Medicare for All, canceling student debt, College for All, the Green New Deal, you name it — all of that bubbled up into the mainstream of American politics for the first time. That’s the positive. As far as the negative lessons learned in 2020, number one, the progressive movement has to be more of a unified force — and we need to be able to coalesce quickly. We saw that the status-quo, neoliberal forces came together quickly to get the outcome that they wanted. Our side needs to be able to do the same thing. Number two, good ideas are not enough — we need to marry our ideas to power. We have to win. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr has a great quote about this: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” Sometimes in the progressive movement, we believe that good ideas are enough, because our policies are the ones that will change people’s lives for the better. The reality is that we need to build a lot more power. And that’s not just in the electoral arena: that bubbling up at the grassroots matters — organizing matters. EB: What’s your take on the recently passed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill? It seems like there are a lot of significant gains in it, but also some limitations — and this reflects some of the evolving strengths and weaknesses of the Democratic Party generally. NT: Yes, there are a lot of very good things in the bill. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to help working people. That’s a big deal. It’s got money in there for local and state governments (which will help protect our public schools and other services), survival checks are in there, COVID relief money is in there, I could go on. The bill helps show that poverty is a political decision in this country — it doesn’t have to be this way. Things can be changed for the better. Those are the positives. But Democrats also lost a golden opportunity: the $15 dollar an hour minimum wage increase should have been in there too. The minimum wage in this country has not been increased for twelve years. It’s just not enough to survive on or to be able to take care of your family. So I have a lot of gratitude for those members of the House of Representatives who fou ght like hell to keep the minimum wage hike in there, so that the House did send over a bill to the Senate that included the $15 minimum wage. And I applaud Senator Sanders for forcing the vote in the Senate. Now we know whose side a lot of these people are on. Everything is now out in the open about how far we have to go and who are the impediments standing in the way. The indifference of some members of both parties toward the immense suffering of work-a-day people is rotten and it’s immoral. It can really bring tears to your eyes. EB: It also seems unconscionable that the Democratic establishment is still opposing Medicare for All in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Earlier in the year, there was a big debate over how to win Medicare for All. Could you give our readers your view on the best approach moving forward? NT: We have to continue to organize so that the United States is no longer the only industrialized nation on the face of the earth without universal health care. I understand people’s frustration — it is heartless that we don’t already have this. It is especially heartless in the face of a pandemic — a pandemic in which twelve million people lost their health care tied to their lost jobs — that the power brokers, be they Democrat or Republican, are still unwilling to say that it’s time for a change, despite all this suffering. Our country now has almost a hundred million people who are either uninsured or underinsured. That’s why we’re organizing for Medicare for All all over the country with groups like National Nurse United and others. We have been organizing for a very long time — and we are going to see our labor bear fruit. Every virtual town hall, every conversation, every mailer, all that the confluence of social movement energy is going toward this one goal — and the dam is going to break. On health care, we often point to Canada. I was watching an interview the other day where the interviewee pointed out that their universal health care system started in a particular province of their country, Saskatchewan. When we look today at Canada’s national system, it’s easy to forget that it had to start somewhere. So one important tactic, as we continue to fight for Medicare for All on a federal level, is to continue to advance on the state level and to find those kinds of wins where we can. There’s a big push in California right now to pass a universal single-payer system — and if California does something like that, it will spark things off all over the country. On the federal level, we as a movement need to continue to elect progressive champions who are not going to back off on this demand, so that we can have the additional firepower that we need in Congress to push this through. In terms of my candidacy, everybody knows that I am an unabashed, will-not-relent, Medicare for All champion. EB: How do you see your campaign as contributing to the fight for racial justice today? NT: The policies I am championing will disproportionately help the black community. Take Medicare for All: it won’t end all the racial disparities within the health care system, but it will give black people a fighting chance. Many black people who are uninsured or underinsured can’t afford to go to the doctor, which exacerbates health disparities. We know that COVID has shown us that black people are dying at higher rates and are being hospitalized at higher rates. So the fight for Medicare for All is a racial justice issue. My advocacy for increasing the minimum wage is a racial justice issue. My fight for canceling student debt is a racial justice issue — black women hold the greatest amount of student debt in this country! And the Green New Deal is a racial justice issue. That’s also why I’m very much in support of the PRO Act, which would help us rebuild strong labor unions across the country, and why I stand in solidarity with the struggle of our sisters and brothers to unionize in Alabama — a movement that is being led by black women. We need to continue our outpouring of solidarity with that struggle. The union movement and the Civil Rights Movement historically have moved in tandem — there’s an intersection between them. In the twenty-first century, the same is true. My presence in this race, and the justice platform that I’ve always fought for, cements the fact that electing me as the next congressperson for Ohio’s 11th district will mean positive, structural, material change for the people that I hope again to serve in an elected capacity. Electing me will provide one more power lever in Congress to win a progressive agenda, an agenda of opportunity for working people of all backgrounds. And it will have a disproportionately positive impact on African Americans in particular. EB: What do you think should be done to improve public education? And can you speak in particular to the question of charter schools? NT: I’m a product of public schools, I’ve gone to them all of my life and I believe in them. That’s why I was very proud to have been part of supporting the Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education that the [2020 Sanders] campaign put forward and on which Dr Heather Gautney was the lead. The policies in that plan would positively transform public education for all educators and students across the country, and I am going to continue to fight for them. Winning this fight means ensuring that the starting base salary for every educator is $60,000. Teachers have the future in their hands — their profession should be as respected as doctors and lawyers. This also means getting the federal government to invest more in public schools, so that schools don’t have to rely on local income taxes, resulting in very unequal school funding. It shouldn’t matter what zip code a student comes from or what their parents have or don’t have. Every student, for example, needs to have access to the internet and the latest digital tools. So many students are failing behind, especially during this pandemic, because the system is failing them. We have to invest in their futures and our collective future. In terms of charters, these were started as a way to experiment with different education models to see what worked and what could then be scaled up. But we know that, over time, that process got out of hand and private actors who do not have the best interests of children or educators in mind got a hold of that system. That’s certainly what happened in my state of Ohio. The government needs to not only hold charters accountable, but we need to prioritize reinvesting in our traditional public schools, which don’t get to pick and choose who they educate — they educate everyone. It’s only though that kind of reinvestment that we can finally build the schools that our students, and our educators, deserve. EB: Bernie and the members of the “Squad” argue that we should fight to transform the Democratic Party into a working-class party. On the other hand, some critics say we should immediately, or down the road, break away and form a third party. What do you think? NT: I think it’s a “both and.” What we learned in the campaign of Senator Sanders is that there are a lot of people who supported him not because he was running as a Democrat, but because of the policy agenda and the vision that he has for America. There’s a large and growing number of voters who identify as independents because they see the failure of the two-party system, where both parties represent corporatist interests more than they represent the interests of Ms Jackson down the street. Faced with that, there are people like me who want to stay within the Democratic Party and push it to the left, to make it respond to ordinary people and not just those in the party’s apparatus or its funders. Why should we allow the corporatists and neoliberals to push us out? It is my sincere hope that, if activists continue to fight, this Democratic Party can become a party that answers to working people, a party that can implement an Economic Bill of Rights in the twenty-first century. There are also people who don’t think that the Democratic Party can be transformed, and they have a right to put their hands to the work they see is right. As I see it, these movements are not mutually exclusive. I think they need each other. When you peel back the layers, both are really about changing the system that is rigged against working people. Some of us are working on changing the system from the inside, and some are working on changing it from outside. What brings us all together, what unifies us, are the policies that will change the material conditions of working people. EB: What would you say to those Bernie supporters across the country who’ve given up hope that things can change for the better? NT: I’d say they should look to history, so that they can gather inspiration from past movements that spent decades bumping up against the system before they eventually won. There’s a quote that I really love [from Nelson Henderson]: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” It is a very human feeling to be discouraged and to want to throw up your hands. Once you’ve gone through the stages of grief for our loss in 2020, you’ve got to shake out of it and get back on mission. Hope is an action word. It means that we are going to push for justice no matter how hard it may seem. |
efore becoming the national cochair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, Nina Turner was a Cleveland city councillor (2006–8) and an Ohio state senator (2008–14). Now she is running for Ohio’s 11th congressional district seat in a primary election slated for May 2021.
Kyle Navarro, a school nurse, says he was unlocking his bicycle when an older white man called him a racial slur and spat at him in San Francisco. (photo: Jeff Chiu/AP)
The Long History of Anti-Asian Hate in America, Explained
Li Zhou, Vox
Zhou writes: "Anti-Asian racism is nothing new in America. The pandemic, and Trump, just made it worse."
arassment toward Asian Americans has spiked in the last year: According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that’s been tracking these reports, over 2,800 incidents were documented in 2020. And more recently, a wave of violent attacks against elderly people has renewed focus on this issue.
These incidents — which include everything from getting shunned at work to physical assaults — have been wide-ranging.
In February, a 27-year-old Korean American man was assaulted in Los Angeles and targeted with racial slurs. Last winter, a 16-year-old student in the San Fernando Valley was beaten so badly by his classmates that he had to go to the emergency room. And this past March, a restaurant in Yakima, Washington, was vandalized with racist language.
The reports to Stop AAPI Hate describe other forms of harassment, too, such as getting spat on at a restaurant, verbally attacked at the park and denied service at different establishments. “I was in line at the pharmacy when a woman approached me and sprayed Lysol all over me,” one account reads. “She was yelling out, ‘You’re the infection. Go home. We don’t want you here!’”
Among these attacks, there are notable patterns: Women were more likely than men to say they were targeted, several assaults involved children, and harassment was more likely to occur at retail stores and pharmacies since people have been limiting their activities during the pandemic.
“So many of us have experienced it, sometimes for the first time in our lives,” says Manjusha Kulkarni, the executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a group that helped set up this tracker. “It makes it much harder to go to the grocery store, to take a walk, to be outside our homes.”
is rise in anti-Asian harassment has occurred as the US continues to grapple with Covid-19, and it follows months of xenophobic rhetoric by former President Donald Trump, who frequently used racist names for the virus and associated it with Asian Americans.
The broader uptick in racism, however, isn’t just fueled by the pandemic. Although the uncertainty of the outbreak — coupled with the former president’s rhetoric — has amplified it, this prejudice is rooted in longstanding biases toward Asian Americans that have persisted since some of the earliest immigrants came to the US generations ago.
“I think this surge is [driven by] the rhetoric that political leaders have been using ... but I don’t think we would have seen the spike in anti-Asian bias without a pretty strong foundation rooted in the ‘forever foreigner’ stereotype,” says University of Maryland Asian American studies professor Janelle Wong.
The “forever foreigner” idea Wong references is one that’s been used to “other” Asian Americans in the US for decades: It suggests that Asians who live in America are fundamentally foreign and can’t be fully American. Enduring tropes that have associated Asian Americans with illness and the consumption of “weird” foods, which have reemerged in relation to the coronavirus, are among those that play into this concept.
The revival of these stereotypes and the recent spike in harassment are having a pointed effect: They’re forcing a reckoning about the existence of anti-Asian racism in the US.
The current xenophobia is built on deeply rooted racism toward Asian Americans
Racism toward Asian Americans goes back a long time.
In fact, it was enshrined into law when some of the earliest generations of Asian Americans were immigrating to the United States in the 1800s. The Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, two of the country’s first immigration laws, were designed explicitly to bar Chinese American laborers from entering the country because of widespread xenophobia and concerns about workplace competition.
These laws — along with others that made it impossible for immigrants to reenter the country if they visited China — were among the earliest that tagged Asian American immigrants as foreigners who didn’t belong in the US. “Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof,” read the first lines of the Exclusion Act.
In addition to limiting immigration, the act guaranteed that Chinese Americans could not become US citizens for decades. “Very early on in the history of this country, Chinese Americans were seen as a group of people we wanted to keep out,” says Yale sociology professor Grace Kao.
And immigration policy wasn’t the only place where such discrimination was apparent. As illnesses, including smallpox and the bubonic plague, spread in the late 1800s, San Francisco’s Chinese residents were repeatedly used as “medical scapegoats,” according to San Francisco State public health researcher Joan Trauner.
When the city grappled with a smallpox outbreak in 1875-’76, for example, officials blamed the “foul and disgusting vapors” — and “unwholesome” living conditions of Chinatown — for fueling it, according to Trauner. Even after the epidemic continued following the city-ordered fumigation of all the homes in Chinatown, the blame persisted.
“I unhesitatingly declare my belief that the cause is the presence in our midst of 30,000 (as a class) of unscrupulous, lying and treacherous Chinamen, who have disregarded our sanitary laws, concealed, and are concealing their cases of smallpox,” city health officer J.L. Meares wrote at the time.
Similarly, when the city encountered cases of the bubonic plague in 1900, one of which was detected in Chinatown, San Francisco attempted to quarantine roughly 14,000 Chinese Americans who lived in that part of the city. At one point, city officials proposed sending Chinese residents to a detention camp where they could be cordoned off from other members of the public, though a circuit court rejected this plan.
In both cases, the vitriol toward Chinese Americans was driven by explicit racism, a fundamental lack of medical knowledge, and pushback toward the influx of Chinese laborers competing with white workers for job opportunities. Policy prescriptions were actively informed by assumptions that Chinatowns were a “laboratory of infection,” Trauner explains.
“A common trope in American popular culture was that the Chinese ate rats and lived in filthy, overcrowded quarters,” says Princeton University history professor Beth Lew-Williams. “In the 19th century, San Francisco routinely banned Chinese from public hospitals.”
The recurring association of Chinese Americans with the ideas of being “dirty” or illness-ridden is inextricably tied up with xenophobia — and as Nylah Burton writes for Vox, it’s an association that’s been used to “other” many people of color, including Mexican Americans and African Americans.
Police in front of US Capitol. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty)
Hundreds of People Who Joined the Capitol Riot May Never Face Charges
Zoe Tillman, Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison, BuzzFeed
Excerpt: "Roughly 800 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, but few were arrested on the spot."
he criminal probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection has been described by the Justice Department as likely "one of the largest in American history." But as the investigation matures, it’s becoming increasingly clear that many of the roughly 800 people who breached the nation’s Capitol may never face any legal consequences because they were allowed to simply walk away from the scene.
The US Capitol Police arrested only 14 people that day, while the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department arrested only 25 for unlawful entry. Since then, more than 300 people have been charged in federal court, and late last week the Justice Department said it expects to bring cases against “at least” 100 more.
The Justice Department could end up charging more people over time for their actions in storming the Capitol and delaying certification of the Electoral College. But that new benchmark — suggesting that some 400 people could be permanently beyond the reach of law enforcement — is the clearest measure yet of the lasting impact of the decision not to pursue widespread arrests as the riot was taking place.
A Capitol Police spokesperson did not return a request for comment about its approach on Jan. 6. In February, former chief Steven Sund testified before the Senate that the force was unprepared for the size and violence of the crowd, even though Trump supporters had been organizing on public platforms for weeks in advance.
An MPD spokesperson, asked for comment, referred to testimony from the department’s acting chief, Robert Contee, who said making arrests was at the bottom of MPD’s list of top priorities that day, after stopping rioters from entering the Capitol and removing people who made it inside; ensuring safe passage for members of Congress to reenter; and making sure Congress could resume the joint session.
That approach may have seemed practical at the moment, but it has had significant repercussions, including the costly burden of gathering evidence long after the fact and of tracking down hundreds of individuals scattered across the country or, in at least one case, overseas.
The FBI has not stated how many agents it has assigned to the investigation, but court records show that many working the cases have been pulled away from their normal — and important — areas of focus, such as white-collar crime, sex trafficking, or fraud. Since Jan. 6, agents and officers from more than a dozen federal and local law enforcement agencies have filed some 80,000 reports of witness interviews, reviewed more than 210,000 tips and 15,000 hours of surveillance footage, executed more than 900 search warrants in nearly every state, and extracted data from more than 1,600 phones.
Letting rioters go home also gave them an opportunity to obstruct justice. An analysis by BuzzFeed News found that more than three dozen people charged in the investigation had attempted to destroy evidence or scrub their social media profiles, although not always successfully. In court filings in dozens of cases, prosecutors have described efforts by defendants to scrub social media accounts, erase or destroy other evidence, hide out with family and friends, intimidate potential witnesses, and, in at least two cases, attempt to flee the country. And that’s just for the people who were actually caught.
“I don't think anyone who believes in a functional democracy should applaud the Capitol insurrection slipping through the investigative cracks,” said Seth Stoughton, an associate professor specializing in criminology at the University of South Carolina School of Law who previously was an officer in the Tallahassee Police Department. “The question we have to ask is what resources were available and what discussions were had among leadership about simply arresting folks as they left?”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Asked how many people who entered the Capitol might avoid arrest, an FBI spokesperson referred to comments by Steven D’Antuono, Washington Field Office assistant director in charge, a week after the insurrection, when he said the bureau “will leave no stone unturned until we locate and apprehend anyone who participated in the violence.”
The spokesperson added that the FBI would “defer to the Capitol Police” on any questions about “their decision to not arrest individuals on January 6th.” A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office did not return a request for comment about the latest figures.
The US Capitol Police has conducted mass arrests during political protests in the past. In June 2018, it arrested some 600 people protesting former president Donald Trump’s immigration policy inside a Senate office building. Nearly 300 people were arrested in the same building a few months later during confirmation proceedings for US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Those demonstrations were smaller than the Jan. 6 insurrection and peaceful.
On Jan. 20, 2017, the MPD surrounded and arrested more than 200 people protesting Trump’s inauguration — demonstrations that involved smashed storefront windows and confrontations with police — following a chase through downtown Washington.
But on Jan. 6, faced with a decidedly violent crowd, the two police departments chose to let rioters leave. Video images show scores of people, many kitted out in tactical gear, being allowed to stream out of the Capitol’s entryways — bottlenecks where, Stoughton suggested, they could have been detained, handcuffed, and processed. “At least you could videotape people as they walk out,” he said.
A spokesperson for Sen. Gary Peters, who as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has been leading an inquiry into the events of Jan. 6, said carrying out arrests that day would have been difficult because police had not prepared for such a volatile situation. “Our investigation suggests that just wasn't doable at the moment,” the spokesperson said.
Effectively making mass arrests, experts on policing say, would require officers to carry zip ties, set up staging areas, arrange transportation for detainees, and have a holding area to keep them while being processed. In other words, said David Harris, a professor specializing in policing at the University of Pittsburgh, precisely the kind of foresight and preparation the Capitol Police lacked that day.
“Everything tells me that if they'd had the numbers to make that many arrests, they would have been able to keep people out of the Capitol in the first place,” Harris said. The impact of that failure, he said, is potentially huge. “People will get away. Evidence will be destroyed. The damage was immediate, and it has only sunk deeper as time has gone on.“
The growing court docket provides a glimpse at the challenges of trying to piece together the case after the fact. BuzzFeed News’ analysis found that more than three dozen people charged in the investigation had attempted to destroy evidence or scrub their social media profiles. Agents serving search warrants found smashed phones in the home of one Pennsylvania woman; warrants served to Facebook turned up archives of accounts that had been deleted by their users. At least two defendants have been charged with threatening witnesses.
Guy Reffitt of Texas is charged not only with illegally going onto the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, but also of threatening his family if they cooperated with law enforcement after he got home. He allegedly told his daughter, who is a minor, that he would “put a bullet through” her phone if she posted anything about him online; his wife relayed to the FBI that he’d told both children that if they turned him in they would be traitors and said “words to the effect of … ‘traitors get shot.’ ” Reffitt’s wife and daughter told the FBI they didn’t think he’d actually harm them.
Thomas Caldwell and Graydon Young, two participants in what prosecutors have alleged was a conspiracy to attack the Capitol orchestrated by members of the Oath Keepers and their associates, are charged with tampering with evidence, among other crimes. Prosecutors claim Caldwell deleted photographs from his Facebook account and “unsent” a Facebook message that included a video, and also that he encouraged two codefendants to “stash” the tactical gear they wore on Jan. 6 at his residence; Caldwell has denied that he tried to obstruct the investigation. Young, meanwhile, allegedly deleted his entire Facebook account.
After he was arrested in late January, Jeffrey Sabol of Colorado told police that he had “fried” his electronic devices in a microwave to destroy any content that might incriminate him, according to a Justice Department filing. Sabol also was planning to fly to Switzerland to avoid arrest — he later told law enforcement he thought it would “look natural” if he skied for a few days once he arrived — but grew paranoid when he arrived at the airport and saw police.
Another defendant, Isaac Sturgeon of Montana, flew to Kenya on Jan. 24, according to court documents. Early this month he was deported — court papers don’t provide more details about the circumstances behind that — and arrested upon arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a full month after he had been indicted for participating in the riot.
Physical evidence also went missing. One alleged rioter, Thomas Sibick, accused of assaulting an MPD officer and stealing his badge and radio, changed his story multiple times during FBI interviews. He ultimately admitted taking both items home to Buffalo, New York, and burying the badge in his backyard. Before being arrested, he presented an agent a bag containing the mud-covered badge.
A laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was allegedly stolen by a Pennsylvania woman, Riley Williams, but even though Williams has been arrested, the laptop was never recovered. Williams has denied the government’s allegation that she stole the laptop and planned to sell it to Russian security services.
And all that is from the 300 people who have already been charged. It’s impossible to know how many people will successfully avoid prosecution because they destroyed or hid evidence that could have been used against them, because they were fortunate to not be identified by tipsters or visible in security footage, or because they went into hiding in the US or abroad.
A day after Corinne Montoni, wearing a gray Trump sweatshirt, pushed her way into the Capitol, she traded messages with a friend about deleting her Facebook account and expressing skepticism about the government’s ability to track down everyone who was there that day, according to her charging papers.
“People are like. You’re going to jail…Ok so they’re gonna arrest the 1000 people that went in…Ok,” she allegedly wrote in a private Facebook message.
David Sklansky, a law professor at Stanford University specializing in policing, told BuzzFeed News that it’s not realistic — and may not even be desirable — to round up every potential perpetrator. Mass arrests, he noted, often lead to a surprisingly low rate of prosecution because arresting officers — tasked with processing hundreds of people at once — just don’t have the time to painstakingly assemble the kind of specific, individualized evidence that a team of FBI agents dedicated to charging a single suspect do.
“Perhaps paradoxically, when there are mass arrests, most of the people don’t end up in cases that go toward criminal trial,” said Sklansky, noting that procedural errors at the time of arrest, faulty documentation, or other technical problems often force law enforcement to dismiss charges against people rounded up en masse.
Several of the people arrested by the Capitol Police on Jan. 6 appear not to have been charged with crimes yet, and just one of those arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department for unlawful entry appear on a rolling Justice Department list of Capitol breach cases.
Still, for many, the idea that so many people who stormed the nation’s Capitol could avoid arrest is hard to stomach. “I do think it's a fundamental failure of government and our criminal justice system,” said Stoughton.
President Joe Biden. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
Democrats Could Reverse Years of Neglecting Unions - if They're Bold Enough
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
Beauchamp writes: "Republicans have systematically undermined a key democratic constituency. Fighting back requires a kind of hardball Democrats aren't typically willing to play."
ast week’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill proved that Democrats are willing to go big on policy.
But another bill, a sweeping revision of a labor law called the PRO Act, poses a different kind of test for the party: Just how willing are Democrats to use their newfound power to reshape the foundations of American politics in their favor?
The PRO Act, passed by the House last Tuesday and currently languishing in the Senate, would be the most significant pro-labor legislation passed since the New Deal. Its most politically significant provision is a complete repeal of all right-to-work laws in states — bills that Republican majorities have used to undermine unions, a crucial pro-Democratic constituency, across the country. Their repeal would go a long way toward undoing a deliberate GOP strategy to rig the system in their favor.
The Biden administration has already taken a notably more pro-union stance even by Democratic standards, supporting both the PRO Act and the right of Amazon workers in Alabama to unionize. Acting on this rhetoric would in some ways be as bold for Democrats as the explicit political reform bills in Congress: HR-1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Those bills openly aim to reform the political system; the PRO Act wields labor policy as a vehicle for strengthening a key political ally after decades of neglect.
“I actually have found that, for Democrats, the number one complaint that you get when you talk about [policy in these terms] is that ‘we don’t do this stuff,’” says Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale who studies the political effects of policy. Broadly speaking, “this stuff” refers to the use of policy to change society in one’s political favor. It’s a way of thinking Republicans have long embraced when it comes to unions, but Democrats have seemed uncomfortable even contemplating.
The concerns about using policy for political advantage are real. But is Democratic high-mindedness a problem? Is there a point where restraining yourself from using policy to your political advantage becomes dangerous — especially in the face of a rival party that’s increasingly turning against democracy itself?
Political power and “policy feedback,” explained
The political argument for the PRO Act emerges out of a concept in political science called “policy feedback.” The idea, developed in the 1990s, is that the politics of a particular policy reform extend beyond its poll numbers: that the concrete consequences of the policy itself can reshape political reality.
Policies can change the way people think, create new interest groups, or weaken existing ones. These effects make a policy more likely to survive and expand — and the party that passed them more likely to benefit down the line.
Sometimes, policy feedback effects are really intuitive: Once people started benefiting from Medicare and Obamacare, these policies became more popular, harder to repeal, and more likely to be built upon by future administrations. Sometimes, they’re more subtle: The 2009 stimulus dramatically strengthened the US clean energy sector, which is now using its financial clout to lobby in favor of further renewables expansion in the Biden administration.
In a 2019 paper, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez — a political scientist now serving in the Biden Labor Department — looked at the history of labor law in the US through the lens of policy feedback. He found a clear pattern of asymmetric polarization.
“An increasingly powerful conservative movement within the Republican Party has leveraged cutbacks to union rights to weaken their political opponents even as Democrats have not seen labor policy through this lens,” he writes.
The GOP war on labor has been primarily waged in the states, where a group of three organizations — the American Legislative Exchange Council, Americans for Prosperity, and the State Policy Network (SPN) — have drafted and lobbied for legislation like right-to-work that undermine labor power. Their political intent was far from hidden.
“I believe [our policies] will deal a major blow to the left’s ability to control government at the state and national levels,” Tracie Sharp, SPN’s president, wrote in a 2016 fundraising letter. “I’m talking about...permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle.”
The Republican bills have worked as intended. A 2018 study by Hertel-Fernandez, James Feigenbaum, and Vanessa Williamson compared Democratic electoral performance in counties in right-to-work states with their performance in neighboring counties in states without right-to-work laws. Bordering counties tend to be demographically very similar, so this method makes it much easier to actually isolate the political consequences of weakening unions.
In right-to-work counties, Democrats perform about 3.5 points worse in presidential elections, with “similar effects in Senate, House, and Gubernatorial races, as well as on state legislative control.” To put that in perspective, an additional 3.5 points would have swung Florida and North Carolina — both right-to-work states — into the Biden column in 2020.
Yet despite the political significance of the GOP’s embrace of policy feedback thinking about unions, Hertel-Fernandez argues that Democrats have been reticent to counter the GOP’s attacks.
“The Obama administration notably let the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to support greater labor organizing, fall by the wayside during the short window in 2009 and 2010 when Democrats enjoyed near filibuster-proof majorities in Congress,” he writes in the 2019 paper. “There is no liberal version of state-level right-to-work laws that Democrats have consistently pursued over the years on a scale that matches conservative efforts to retrench labor power.”
Now, Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House. The House has passed the PRO Act and Biden has said he supports it. The Senate majority has the ability to abolish the filibuster, or at least weaken it, and push the bill through.
This might even be popular. A new poll from Data for Progress, conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO and provided exclusively to Vox, found that when the PRO Act’s provisions are described to voters, there was strong support (51-36) for reforming Senate procedure so that a simple majority could pass it.
With a single stroke, they could undo every state’s right-to-work laws and enact a series of other reforms strengthening one of their most important constituencies.
Save labor, save democracy
The fact that Democrats can use power to create policy feedbacks doesn’t mean that they should. And it’s not at all unreasonable for Democrats to be concerned about the moral implications of using policy to strengthen their allies.
One of the hallmarks of a declining democracy, like contemporary Hungary, is the politicization of policy: the use of tools like regulatory and tax policy to weaken the political opposition and consolidate the regime’s hold on civil society. There’s a fine line between policy feedback thinking and abuse of power.
However, there are good reasons to think that enacting the PRO Act is more the former than the latter.
The fundamental story of contemporary American politics is the Republican Party’s increasingly anti-democratic turn. Their approach to labor policy is linked to other policies, like extreme gerrymandering and voter ID laws, that aim to rig the system in their favor. There is a reason why right-wing anti-democrats abroad often go after labor when they consolidate power: Unions are an independent power structure that helps mobilize voters for the political opposition.
Taking an explicitly political view of labor policy is certainly aggressive. But a degree of policy aggressiveness is justified when it’s in service of protecting democracy itself. And protecting an egalitarian sector of civil society from government attacks should be seen as a small-d democratic cause.
The evidence we have about unions’ effects on social attitudes bolster their democratic bonafides.
One of the key determinants of Republican voters’ support for authoritarian attitudes is racial antagonism; the sorting of racially resentful voters into the GOP over the last few decades is one of the most important reasons the party has been able to pursue an increasingly anti-democratic agenda. Organized labor is one of the few social institutions that has been shown to effectively reduce racial hostility at scale.
A 2020 paper, by Princeton’s Paul Frymer and University of Washington’s Jacob Grumbach, tracked a large sample of workers before and after they became union members. They found that, after joining the union, the workers scored lower on measures of racial resentment and became more favorable toward race-conscious policies like affirmative action. A 2018 study on European union members found workers were considerably less likely to support racist far-right parties than non-unionized peers.
The notion that unions are a vital element of democracy, promoting social solidarity and civic commitment, hasn’t always been a partisan claim. In a 2002 speech, Lorne Craner — assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration — argued that the strength of organized labor is vital for preserving fragile democracies from their internal enemies.
“There are countries on every continent that are in danger of backsliding. Demagogues in these countries have skillfully exploited the disenchantment of those who feel marginalized,” Craner says. “Trade unions are one of the institutions that help to ensure the long-term sustainability of newly emerging democracies.”
The United States may not be a “newly emerging” democracy, but experts certainly believe it’s an imperiled one. In the case of unions, Democratic partisan interests and the interests of American democracy are aligned: it is not an abuse of power to act to preserve a politically friendly constituency that also serves as a bulwark of political freedom.
American labor unions are in the midst of a long decline: Only 6.3 percent of private sector workers were unionized in 2020, the lowest figure recorded since the government started keeping statistics on this figure. Despite real evidence that labor unions can be important to democracy’s health — and the Democratic Party’s electoral fortunes — modern Democrats have done little to arrest this decline.
Today, Democrats are increasingly shedding their illusions about the nature of the GOP and the stability of American democracy. If they want to fight back, they need to start thinking more seriously about who their political allies are and what can be done to strengthen them. Reversing the collapse of the labor movement isn’t the only way Democrats can fight here — but it’s one of the most important ones.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks to the press during a tour for a delegation of Republican lawmakers of the US-Mexico border, in El Paso. (photo: Reuters)
Border Patrol Agents Are 'Working to Sabotage the Biden Administration,' According to Insiders
Andrew Feinberg, The Independent
Feinberg writes: "The Trump-supporting Border Patrol labor union is reportedly teaming up with Republicans to launch a PR offensive on Biden’s government. At the same time, officers have chosen to continue to treat migrants at the border like Trump is still president."
n Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused President Joe Biden and his administration of fomenting a “crisis” along the US-Mexico border. Biden’s abandonment of harsh Trump-era policies had created chaos, McCarthy said to news camera while joined by a number of his Republican colleagues. Biden had recently gotten rid of policies such as the one which required immigration officials to prevent unaccompanied children from seeking asylum and the one which allowed immigration officials to arrest and deport undocumented people who attempted to claim underage relatives in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In McCarthy’s telling of events, US Border Patrol agents are catching people from such far-flung nations as Iran, Yemen, and Sri Lanka who are attempting to illegally enter the country. Another House Republican — Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member John Katko — went even further, claiming that a number of those caught by Customs and Border Protection officers are on the Department of Homeland Security’s terror watch list.
But while Republicans and right-wing media outlets are making noise about a “Biden border crisis” in hopes of inflaming the anti-immigrant base that helped Trump win the White House in 2016, insiders who’ve worked at DHS, Border Patrol, and other executive branch agencies have a different view. These insiders say that many of the allegations being made by House Republicans and some of the problems arising at the border — such as the large number of minors remaining in CBP custody longer than court-ordered and statutory limits — have all the hallmarks of a coordinated push by Border Patrol officers, including the leadership of the Border Patrol’s pro-Trump labor union, to undermine the current administration.
“This is a planned, coordinated attempt to sabotage the Biden administration,” said Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent-turned-immigrant rights activist who works with the Southern Border Communities Coalition.
Budd added that the fact that unaccompanied minors are being kept at Border Patrol stations for extended periods of time appears to be “an internal crisis” of the agency’s own creation: “It does not take that long to process children.”
Budd recounted a time when she approached a border station in 2019 and spoke to agents who were aware that she had been part of the agency but were not aware of her current immigration activism: “I asked them why it was taking them so long to process — it didn’t take that long [even] when I had to hand-write everything back in the day — and they would say, ‘We’re trying to teach them a lesson’. So they were intentionally keeping people in there for over two weeks at a time in these conditions to punish them. That is the only reason why they were doing that.”
Budd continued on to say that the same people who responsible for harsh treatment of migrants during the Trump era are still in charge: “They do this on purpose. And none of that has changed in the management has not changed at all. But the same people who separated families and created the last crisis are doing it again.”
But it’s not just Border Patrol management who are undermining the Biden administration’s attempts to roll back Trump-era immigration policies. It’s also those in charge of the labor union that represents rank-and-file agents, the National Border Patrol Council.
While most federal employee unions are traditionally strongly aligned with the Democratic Party, the NBPC did not endorse presidential candidates until 2016, when it threw its weight behind Trump. In return for the endorsement, Trump gave Border Patrol agents a free hand to implement his policies in the harshest way possible. The union’s support for the former president subsequently continued through the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, and since he has since left office, union officials are now allying themselves against his Democratic successor.
Earlier this month, NBPC president Brandon Judd appeared at a joint press conference with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, at which the governor denounced Biden’s reversal of Trump-era policies and announced that he’d be sending Texas Department of Public Safety officers to the border.
“The Biden administration has created a crisis at our southern border through open border policies that give the green light to dangerous cartels and other criminal activity,” Abbott said. “Border security is the federal government’s responsibility, but the state of Texas will not allow the administration’s failures to endanger the lives of innocent Texans. Instead, Texas is stepping up to fill the gaps left open by the federal government to secure the border, apprehend dangerous criminals, and keep Texans safe.”
Budd suggested that Judd’s appearance alongside Abbott was a deliberate attempt to undermine the chain of command that runs from rank-and-file agents to the president. She expressed surprise that he had not yet been fired. But another former DHS official familiar with the NPBC’s machinations said such wink-and-nod arrangements which flout established lines of authority are just part and parcel of dealing with a union that has long stood in the way of any meaningful attempt to reform the American immigration system.
The official, who served in senior roles under the George W Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, said they were “shocked” at how the NPBC’s influence grew to outsized levels under the 45th president because union leaders felt emboldened to take any complaints they had directly to the Oval Office.
“My impression was that Chris [Crane, Immigration and Customs Enforcement union president] and Brandon [Judd] were texting buddies with the president, and we frequently had to scramble… to try to tamp down whatever was ramping them up,” said the official. Trump’s various homeland security secretaries often had to drop what they were doing to address demands made by both union presidents, who frequently went directly to Trump rather than go through proper channels, they added.
“Having a cabinet member have to so frequently engage with these GS-14s was just weird and odd and a waste of a cabinet member’s time, but you had to do that to keep those two satiated,” they said.
Ultimately, Judd’s direct line to Trump and influence over rank-and-file agents meant that any attempt by DHS leaders to effect a change policy that wasn’t to union leaders’ liking was effectively vetoed, the official continued, adding that the dynamic most likely persists even though Trump has left the White House: “You have way too many scenarios where the secretary or the head of CBP issues a directive, and there’s just an absolute recalcitrance in the organization. There is a lack of command and control in a way that is dangerous.”
Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor who served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 to 2017, said the House Republicans’ appearance at the US-Mexico border on Monday is “the same fear-mongering that Republicans gin up when they feel like they’re losing their grip on their base and losing the argument to Democrats,” and an attempt to distract from any positive effects Americans might feel from passage of the Biden-backed American Rescue Plan Act.
Castro said he would not be surprised if the Border Patrol union was colluding with Republicans to undermine Biden because Trump “allowed that agency to go rogue” and allowed the union to dictate policy. “He encouraged their worst instincts, made 1000 different administrative changes fostered a culture of anti-immigrant sentiment, and I believe at the end, administratively, essentially gave them more power over how the operation is conducted,” he said.
Castro, like Budd, believes that there needs to be consequences for agents who actively work to undermine the Biden administration. “It does seem to me that you have a certain group of agents who feel emboldened and empowered to do whatever they want, and that culture absolutely has to be stamped out,” he said. “Folks on the ground should not have the ability to throw a wrench into the gears by slow-walking policy or choosing what policies they’re actually going to abide by… They have a job to do, and they should be respected in that job, but they need to do the job professionally, and in line with the administration’s policy.”
But Budd, the former Border Patrol agent, said even the best attempts at house-cleaning at Customs and Border Protection by newly minted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will be insufficient as long as the Border Patrol’s union continues to exercise an effective veto over policy by “spreading propaganda” with the help of Republican officials.
When asked what Biden and his administration can do to prevent the agency from continuing to operate as if the president doesn’t make policy, her answer was simple. “He has to decertify the union,” she said.
A new bill finally creates age of consent in France. (photo: iStock)
France Moves Toward Setting 15 as Age of Consent. What Took It So long?
Jules Darmanin, POLITICO
Darmanin writes:
Sexual offenders currently cannot be convicted of rape based only on a victim’s age.
rance may soon have a legal age of consent.
The French National Assembly on Tuesday voted to reinforce the country’s legal arsenal against sexual abuse of minors. The subject was reignited after allegations of incestuous abuse rattled the French intellectual elite.
The bill, which still has to go through the Senate, aims to establish an age of consent in a country where the legislation protecting children under 15 from sexual predators is often seen as “ambiguous.”
A long-standing demand by activists, the new law plugs a hole in the legislation that has mystified the international press and contributed to the country’s image — both outside and inside its borders — as a laggard when it comes to fighting sexual violence.
Here’s what you need to know about the bill and the country’s current approach to punishing sexual violence on minors.
What’s considered rape in France?
France, like a majority of European countries, uses “coercion-based” laws when it comes to rape and sexual assault. Rape is defined in French law by sexual penetration through either “violence, constraint, threat or surprise” with the burden of proof being the same for minors and adult victims.
This legal system differs from “consent-based” legislation found in a dozen European countries such as Germany, Belgium, the U.K., Greece or the U.S. These systems define rape as sex without consent from one party.
In some countries, sexual intercourse with a minor under a certain age is treated as rape whatever the circumstances — defined as statutory rape.
NGOs such as Amnesty International have advocated for a switch to a consent-based system in France, since studies show that victims, especially minors, often “freeze” when they are raped, which means that the perpetrator doesn’t necessarily use violence or other forms of coercion.
Does this mean it’s legal to have sex with a child if there’s no coercion?
No. Sexual acts without “violence, constraint, threat or surprise” between an adult and a minor under 15, or a minor between 15 and 18 over which the adult has authority, are not considered rape but constitute another offense called atteinte sexuelle sur mineur, which loosely translates to sexual act with a minor.
Rape and atteinte sexuelle are prosecuted and punished very differently. People convicted of raping a minor under 15 can face up to 20 years in prison, while people convicted of atteinte sexuelle face a sentence of up to seven years. People charged with rape go through a criminal court with a jury, while people charged with atteinte sexuelle face judges in a different, lower court.
The threshold of evidence for an atteinte sexuelle is lower than for rape, which led to the controversial result of some cases being prosecuted as the lesser offence for reasons of expediency.
What would the bill change?
The current text of the bill would not change France’s coercion-based legislation. However “any act of sexual penetration … done by someone above the age of majority on a minor” under 15 would now be considered rape. This effectively creates an age of consent at 15. It is raised to 18 in cases of incest.
A so-called “Romeo and Juliet” provision in the bill states that a five-year gap is required for conviction. “I don’t want to send a 18-year-old kid to a criminal court because he had a consensual relationship with a girl who is 14 and a half,” Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said during the debates at the National Assembly.
The bill also looks to expand the statute of limitation for multiple offenders. If someone is suspected of having raped multiple minors, the statute of limitations is extended to 30 years after the last suspected offense. Currently, each offense has its own 30-years statute of limitation.
What triggered the change?
Several high-profile cases have reignited France’s long-standing debate on age of consent.
In 2017, a criminal court in Melun acquitted a man who was charged with rape after he impregnated a 11-year-old child he had just met in a park. Since there was no violence, constraint, threat or surprise, the jury did not consider it a rape. He was later convicted on appeal.
The same year, Mediapart revealed that a 28-year-old man who had sex with a 11-year-old girl he brought to his apartment was charged with atteinte sexuelle by a prosecutor, after the girl and her family filed a complaint for rape. The criminal court in charge of the case asked for it to be reinvestigated.
Junior Minister Marlène Schiappa, who was then state secretary for gender equality, proposed the establishment of an effective age of consent at 15 in a bill meant to tackle sexual violence. But the related provisions were dropped after the Council of State advised that they could be deemed unconstitutional.
Early this year, allegations of incestual abuse against Olivier Duhamel, one of France best-connected political scientists, and the outpouring of testimonies from victims of incest, prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to push for new legislation protecting minors from sexual abuse.
“We are here. We are listening to you. We believe you. And you will never be alone again,” Macron said at the time.
What comes next?
The bill will now be considered by the Senate, which initially introduced it and could amend the text. In its first draft of the bill, voted in January, the chamber had put the age of consent at 13.
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., is sworn in before her Senate confirmation hearing to be interior secretary last month. Her confirmation makes her the United States' first Native American Cabinet secretary. (photo: Jim Watson/AP)
With First Native Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, Hope Grows US Will Confront Toxic Uranium Legacy
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Haaland will oversee government relations with 574 federally recognized tribal nations and is expected to address the legacy of uranium mining on Indigenous land and other areas."
MY GOODMAN: Deb Haaland is being sworn in today as secretary of the interior. She is a tribal citizen of the Laguna Pueblo. She becomes the first Native American ever to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet. The two-term congresswoman from New Mexico was confirmed by the Senate Monday after four Republicans joined Democrats in voting to confirm her: Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
As interior secretary, Haaland will manage 500 million acres of federal and tribal land. She’ll also oversee government relations with 574 federally recognized tribal nations. During her confirmation hearing, Haaland vowed to work for everyone.
REP. DEB HAALAND: If confirmed, I will work my heart out for everyone — the families of fossil fuel workers who helped build our country, ranchers and farmers who care deeply for their lands, communities with legacies of toxic pollution, people of color whose stories deserve to be heard, and those who want jobs of the future.
AMY GOODMAN: One major issue facing Deb Haaland as interior secretary will be addressing the legacy of uranium mining on Native land and other areas. Thousands of inactive and toxic uranium mines have poisoned Native land and water for decades, many of the mines used to extract uranium for the U.S. massive nuclear arms arsenal. In 2019, a University of New Mexico study found that about a quarter of Navajo women and some infants had high levels of the radioactive metal in their bodies, even though nearby uranium mining had ended decades ago. Last year, Congressmember Haaland was recognized with a Nuclear-Free Future Award for her efforts to address the impacts of uranium mining in the Southwest.
REP. DEB HAALAND: We’ve seen it firsthand in my home state of New Mexico. Uranium mining harms the health of our population, the environment, and has hurt our economy. The U.S. government has refused to clean up the mess they’ve made in New Mexico. In 2018, when I was elected, I knew this would be an issue that I would fight for. I’ve called on the U.S. government to clean up mining sites, compensate uranium workers and rectify the wrong that has been done to Indigenous communities. And I’m not going to let up. I’m committed to fighting for a nuclear-free future.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Deb Haaland, the Interior Department and the legacy of uranium mining, we’re joined by Leona Morgan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Diné/Navajo anti-nuclear activist and community organizer, coordinator with the Nuclear Issues Study Group and organizer with Haul No!
We are here on Democracy Now! It’s great to have you back, Leona. We did a broadcast with you when we were visiting Los Alamos several years ago. Thanks so much for being with us. Can you start off by responding to the history that Deb Haaland is making today, and then talk about the legacy of uranium mines and what you feel she needs to do?
LEONA MORGAN: Thank you, Amy. It’s so nice to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
And yeah, Secretary Haaland has done a lot of good things in our state, and I think a lot of folks are satisfied with her performance as a congresswoman. However, you know, you can’t please everyone. There are some situations where we do need more attention from Secretary Haaland. She’s been excellent at dealing with some of the resource extraction, especially around Chaco Canyon, and also, like you mentioned, highlighting uranium as a core issue. And so, we are very happy. I, as an Indigenous woman, I am confident that she will do what she can as an Indigenous woman to protect our Mother Earth, but it’s impossible to expect one person to correct the centuries of racism and policy that have really devastated our people since the beginning of the Department of the Interior, including genocide and relocation. So, we do hope that she can make some historic changes, and I think lot of people are depending on her. And she will be held accountable.
As for the uranium mines —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Leona Morgan, for —
LEONA MORGAN: Oh, thank you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Leona, for those listeners who are not aware of the history of this issue, could you talk somewhat — this is going back to the 1940s that the Navajo Nation was used by the United States for uranium mining for nuclear weapons development. Could you talk about that history and the impact on the Native peoples of your state?
LEONA MORGAN: Yes. So, there are actually 15,000 abandoned uranium mines across the country. And the Navajo Nation is working with the federal government to address at least 523 distinct mines on Navajo Nation. The most abandoned mines are in Colorado. And so, this is an issue that doesn’t just affect Indigenous peoples, but everyone; however, uranium mining and production does impact Indigenous peoples and communities of color the most around the world. On Navajo, we have had many health issues resulting from the impacts of uranium mining, which, like you mentioned, started in the '40s. A lot of the mines on Navajo shut down in the early ’80s. There is still mining in the country; however, there's no mining in New Mexico currently. And the Navajo Nation has a law against uranium mining and the transport of radioactive materials; however, those laws are always challenged, because there are privately owned lands within the nation and adjacent to the nation.
And so, it’s very difficult to stop uranium mining and the impacts, as the wind and the water carry contamination across the country without — you know, uranium does not discriminate, and, as people say, radiation does not discriminate. However, it does impact women and children the most. And with the mines shutting down in the early '80s, the cleanup that has begun in the early 2000s — let's say, 2008 was when the Navajo Nation started the first five-year cleanup plan with the U.S. agencies, working together. However, this cleanup is poorly funded, and it is not up to standards that would be acceptable in white communities.
Today, we’re dealing with, like I said, 523 abandoned mine sites, but a lot of the issues are the contamination to our water resources, which had implications, of course, with COVID-19. And right now this is one of the major issues, is the lack of water, the contamination of water. So, water quality and water quantity are big issues, because uranium mining was just one industry that impacted us. There was also a lot of impacts from the coal mining that occurred. And so, for the federal government to be depending on settlements from companies is just not enough. The federal government is the responsible party and needs to foot the bill for the mess that it made for its defense purposes and, you know, imperialism around the world.
I work specifically on issues of nuclear colonialism, and right now we are also being targeted because of this idea that nuclear power is going to be a so-called solution to climate change. And people like Bill Gates are talking about new so-called small nuclear modular reactors, which still use uranium and still produce waste, which has — which there is no place to go. I’m sorry, the waste from nuclear power plants, there is no storage or disposal for this waste. And so, right now in New Mexico, we are being targeted with the world’s largest nuclear waste storage for waste from power plants. This is all of the power plants in the United States. And New Mexico doesn’t even have a power plant. They’re saying, you know, to bring it here temporarily, which could be more than a hundred years. And this is not a viable solution for dealing with our national nuclear waste problem. So we need to stop making new nuclear waste. We don’t need to continue mining uranium. And we need to stop using nuclear power. And so, Bill Gates is someone that’s been talking about this a lot recently, and he does not live near an abandoned uranium mine. He doesn’t live near a waste site.
And so, these are issues that our people are still dealing with, over four decades after the uranium mining has stopped. We’re finally getting attention, but the cleanup that’s being proposed, like I said, it’s poor quality. One example is in Church Rock, New Mexico, the site of the world’s largest uranium spill. The proposal for cleanup there, it’s actually in an open comment period right now. There’s this idea that the company wants to scrape up mine waste at the Northeast Church Rock Mine and move it. A million cubic yards of mine waste, they want to pile on top of the mill waste, where the site — where the spill from 1979 originated. And the community is concerned because this is in a floodplain. And in the public meetings that were held in 2019, several community members expressed concern that this could result in a second Church Rock spill. But this is what they’re proposing as cleanup, which is not cleanup. It is basically making 523 permanent waste sites on Navajo Nation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in the context of that, your expectations in terms of what Secretary Haaland will be able to accomplish, given the fact that she is in charge of interior, but the cleanup is largely a responsibility of the EPA, isn’t it?
LEONA MORGAN: Well, on Navajo, it’s five federal agencies working with Navajo Nation, and it is largely EPA Region 9 out of San Francisco. However, the EPA is putting out media that it’s — you know, recently there was an article saying they had received over $200 million for cleanup. And some of the information that’s being put out there is a little bit misleading — or a lot misleading, as according to Navajo Nation EPA Superfund director Dariel Yazzie. I had a long conversation with him about some of the cleanup and the proposals. And what he’s saying is that Navajo has a very limited seat at the table when it comes to making decisions and enforcing our Navajo policy, as well as stronger cleanup standards.
And so, we need Secretary Haaland to help to curb the startup of new mines and then also to work with the agencies. There’s five federal agencies and the Navajo Nation doing this cleanup. But, like I said, that’s only 523 abandoned mine sites, whereas there’s over 15,000 in the whole country. And so, we really need federal dollars and better cleanup standards. Right now there’s a 10-year plan that’s being proposed, and some of the standards for the allowable levels of radiation are much higher than would be acceptable in, let’s say, an urban environment or in a white community.
And this is really going to impact our people, you know, as uranium and radiation cause health impacts. It takes a long time for these health impacts to show up. And so, right now we are experiencing a lot of the residual effects. One health study, called the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, has found high levels of uranium in newborn babies. And these are babies that are born across the reservation, not just near abandoned uranium sites. And so, we do need Secretary Haaland to push for comprehensive cleanup, as well as comprehensive health studies. And this is, specifically, I’m talking about Navajo Nation, but across the country, as well as protections for our sacred places, because a lot of our sacred places have been mined and are targeted for new mining.
AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, we’re going to continue to cover these issues in the months to come. Leona Morgan is a Diné/Navajo anti-nuclear activist and community organizer, coordinator with the Nuclear Issues Study Group and an organizer with Haul No!
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