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20 April 21
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Elizabeth Warren Suggests US Explore Conditional Aid to Israel
Akela Lacy, The Intercept
Lacy writes: "In a speech, the Massachusetts senator proposed the restriction of military aid from use in occupied Palestine."
t today’s meeting of the annual J Street conference, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested that the U.S. consider conditional aid to Israel.
“I support military assistance to Israel,” said Warren’s planned remarks, referring to the aid as “the elephant in the room.”
“But if we’re serious about arresting settlement expansion and helping move the parties toward a two-state solution, then it would be irresponsible not to consider all of the tools we have at our disposal,” her speech went on. “One of those is restricting military aid from being used in the occupied territories. By continuing to provide military aid without restriction, we provide no incentive for Israel to adjust course.”
Warren’s position is consistent with the more progressive stance on Israel policy the senator has taken in recent years. Before the 2020 election cycle, Warren had come under fire for her vote on U.S. aid to Israel during the 2014 Gaza war. At the time, she defended the vote, saying, “America has a very special relationship with Israel.”
But Warren went out of her way during her presidential campaign to position herself among the new class of Democrats not afraid to question that special relationship. In October 2019, she said “everything is on the table” should Israel move away from a two-state solution, and in May 2020, she signed a letter with 18 Senate Democrats opposing Israel’s unilateral annexation of territories in the West Bank. On the campaign trail, the senator said she would push Israel to end its ongoing occupation of Palestine and denounced the country’s decision to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from entering the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Those decisions came with a price. After Warren told activists from the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow that she would push Israel to end the occupation, Republicans blasted her as anti-Israel, and some even labeled her an anti-Semite. Criticisms flowed from within her own party as well. Democratic Majority for Israel, a centrist Democratic PAC working to elect pro-Israel candidates, sent a memo warning other Democratic presidential candidates about IfNotNow, advising them to stick to a script saying they supported a two-state solution.
“Warren’s support of the common-sense idea that US military funding to the Israeli government should never go toward the occupation is a huge sign of the growing support among Democratic voters to take on the foreign policy hawks who no longer have complete control over the debate,” said Morriah Kaplan, spokesperson for IfNotNow.
Mark Mellman, a longtime strategist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, launched Democratic Majority for Israel with several other Democratic strategists in 2019, aiming to curb the growing willingness among the party’s left wing to criticize the U.S. relationship with Israel and human rights abuses in the occupied territories. DMFI was the first Democratic group to run ads — with help from AIPAC — attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., by name in either of his presidential campaigns. Most recently, DMFI came under criticism after a 2018 social media post surfaced from a board member who wrote, “Gaza is full of monsters. Time to burn the whole place.”
After news that Warren’s presidential campaign had hired an IfNotNow co-founder, Mellman made a personal call to her campaign manager. He wanted to make sure the staffer wasn’t working on Israel policy or Jewish outreach; Warren’s campaign assured him the staffer was not.
During the J Street speech, Warren also reiterated support for a two-state solution, condemned the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and called on Israel to help Palestinians access Covid-19 vaccines. She called on the Biden administration to restore access to the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem to Palestinians, to reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation office in Washington, D.C., and to take steps to end the ongoing blockade and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
People gather at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis after police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of two murder charges and one manslaughter charge in the death of George Floyd. (photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Cities Nationwide React to Chauvin Guilty Verdict
Emma Bowman, NPR
Bowman writes: "Scenes of joy and relief erupted across the country after a jury found Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder in the death of George Floyd."
The jury found Chauvin guilty on all three charges in Floyd's death during an arrest last Memorial Day: second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Yet simultaneously in several cities, the celebratory mood was tempered by a sense that the verdict represented just a small degree of accountability in a greater fight against racial injustice and police violence.
Here's a glimpse at how people nationwide are processing Tuesday's verdict.
Minneapolis
In George Floyd Square — a memorial site dedicated to Floyd and the intersection where Chauvin pinned down the 46-year-old Black man for nearly 9 and a half minutes — crowds burst into cheers as soon as the first guilty verdict was delivered.
By the announcement of the third count, B.J. Wilder, 39, had dropped to his knees, tears flowing down his face.
"It's a new day in America," he said. "Everybody saw it. But still you're sitting, thinking back to the Rodney King days — everybody saw that too — those cops got off."
"I was really worried, I was worried about my city. Thank God my city will not burn tonight," he said. "Finally, some little piece of justice."
Houston, Texas
Floyd grew up in Houston, where many of his family members still live.
Near a mural dedicated to Floyd in the city's Third Ward — where he lived with his mother and siblings in a housing project — friends and community members were quietly celebratory, saying they were grateful for the verdict but still grieving that Floyd was murdered.
Larry Masters, 60, said he doubted the jury would return a guilty verdict.
"It's a blessing," he told Houston Public Media. "Justice was served today. Because this is a long time coming. They've been doing this for years and years and years. From generation to generation. We've been screwed over, we've been mistreated, I mean, they just been getting away with crime."
Growing up, 46-year-old Kim Hewitt said she knew Floyd. The verdict alone wasn't enough to make her rest easy — she wants the criminal justice system to treat Chauvin the same way she feels that it has treated the Black community.
"I'm not happy until I get [Chauvin's prison time], and they put him in the population and they treat him like a criminal — like they look at us in the community as criminals," she told the station.
Following what she called an emotional year, Hewitt said she hoped that Houston can come together to focus on the issue of police violence.
Philadelphia
Amid nationwide calls for police reform, Danielle Outlaw, commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, says she's focusing on the work ahead.
After Floyd's death, her department adopted a number of measures to improve police accountability and to prevent potential instances of excessive use of force.
"As a law enforcement official, I find the behavior that took George Floyd's life abhorrent," she said in a statement. "Although a verdict was reached today, I ask for calm. I ask for peace. Let us use this time to reflect on our justice system, what reforms have taken place, and the work still left to do."
Virginia Beach, Va.
Gary McCollum, a local minister in Virginia Beach, said he's afraid that Chauvin's actions will be portrayed as those of "one bad apple" in the criminal justice system rather than a systemic problem.
"Chauvin was not one bad apple," he said. "You have a system that preys on marginalized communities and African Americans and the only reason that he was convicted [is] that it was live and people saw it all over the world."
McCollum said it's time to "reimagine policing," for example, by using technology similar to speed cameras to replace traffic stops.
James Allen, 68, another Black activist and president of Virginia Beach Interdenominational Ministers Conference, said he had no doubt that Chauvin would be found guilty.
"You know why? Because we watched a man get murdered live and in living color on national TV. That's the difference. All of a sudden now, all of my white friends who used to say, 'James, you're being paranoid,' they can't say that anymore."
Washington, D.C.
Rodney Johnson, 65, a Navy veteran, had been glued to the TV coverage over the course of the three-week trial before heading out to Black Lives Matter Plaza following the verdict. He's not confident that one guilty verdict will change much when it comes to the problem of police brutality. Police have to police themselves, he said.
"People think this racial injustice thing is going to go away — it's not. Until everybody, everybody, learns to love each other."
Nearby, Sheila Kyarisiima, who joined the crowds with her 2 year-old son, called the outcome "a glimmer of hope."
"But it also just shows that there's so much more work to be done," she said. "What happens when there's no camera, right?"
Ron DeSantis. (photo: Paul Hennessy/Getty Images)
Florida 'Anti-Rioting' Law Will Make It Much Easier to Run Over Protesters With Cars
Tess Owen, Vice
Owen writes: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law, which includes civil immunity for people who drive their cars into crowds of protesters."
s of Monday in Florida, a gathering of three or more people can be labeled a “riot”—and if they’re blocking the road and you feel frightened, it’s generally OK to run them over with a car. Historic monuments, however—Confederate and otherwise—receive special protection under the law.
These are just some of the stipulations created by Florida’s new controversial anti-protest bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis, flanked by law enforcement officers at the Polk County Sheriff's Office, signed into law on Monday.
“It’s the strongest anti-rioting pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country. There’s nothing even close,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “We’re not going to end up like Portland.”
The “Combatting Public Disorder Bill,” or HB1, is the latest attempt to crack down on First Amendment activity in the wake of the nationwide protest movement that was triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Florida’s bill, as with those introduced in 45 states this year, has been widely criticized by civil liberties groups who fear that the law will be used disproportionately to criminalize Black-led protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
Floyd’s death also sparked a conversation about the limitations of police reform, and galvanized the “Defund the Police” movement.
DeSantis made shutting that conversation down a centerpiece of his legislative agenda.
The bill intends to prevent local governments from taking steps to defund law enforcement by making them liable for any damage that occurs during a protest.
“Obviously in the state of Florida, we’re not going to do that under my leadership, but if the local government were to do that, that would be catastrophic and have terrible consequences for their citizens, and so this bill actually prevents local governments from defunding law enforcement,” DeSantis said.
He added that local officials could also be held liable if damage occurred after they gave “stand down” orders to police. “That’s a dereliction of duty,” DeSantis said.
Florida’s new law also creates civil immunity for people who drive into crowds of protesters, meaning they won’t be sued for damages if people get hurt or killed if they claim self-defense (but they could still face criminal charges). Democrats asked their GOP colleagues whether the neo-Nazi who drove into a crowd of protesters during the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville could have claimed immunity or self-defense. “That person rammed a vehicle into those people to hurt them,” GOP state Sen. Danny Burgess responded, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “He wasn’t defending himself.”
This comes after an alarming surge of vehicle-ramming attacks against protesters across the country. Between May and October 2020, there were over 100 incidents of drivers going into crowds of protesters—about half of which were confirmed to be intentional, according to research by Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago's Chicago Project on Security and Threats.
At least eight of those incidents took place in Florida. For example, a man drove his car into a small group of protesters near downtown Gainesville and pointed a gun at them last May. In a separate incident in Tallahassee, a man accelerated his pick-up truck into a group of protesters.
“We also have penalties for people who commandeer highways,” said DeSantis. “You’re driving home from work and all the sudden you have people out there shutting down a highway. There needs to be swift penalties, that just cannot be something that can happen.”
At least five other states, including Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington are considering similar bills which would extend some degree of liability to individuals who drive through protesters. Oklahoma’s bill goes further than Florida’s new law, by proposing immunity for criminal charges for people who drive into protesters.
Florida’s HB1, which received strong GOP backing and passed the Republican-led Senate on Thursday with a 23-17, also ramps up penalties against protest participants. Anyone who “willingly participated” in a “riot”—now defined as a protest involving three or more people—could be charged with a third-degree felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.
It also makes “mob intimidation”—defined as two or more people trying to compel someone to “assume, abandon, or maintain a particular viewpoint against his or her will”—a misdemeanor.
“People sitting outside eating outside a restaurant and you see this crazed mob circle around them and start screaming and really intimidating them,” said DeSantis. “I'm sorry that's not acceptable. I'm sorry you’re going to be held accountable, mind your own business.”
The bill also prevents people arrested for protest-related offenses from being bailed out of jail until their first court appearance.
Unsurprisingly, the bill has not been received well by Florida’s protest community—or by Democrat-leaning local governments. “For me as an organizer, I don’t want anyone to get a felony,” activist Jalessa Blackshear told the Tampa Bay Times during a protest in nearby St Petersburgh over the weekend. “I don’t want anyone to go to jail.”
“This bill is a direct effort to silence the Movement for Black Lives and the uprisings last summer following the police killing of George Floyd,” said Gainesville Commissioner Gail Johnson in a statement from Local Progress, a network of progressive-minded elected officials. “It keeps no one safe, and undercuts our liberty.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers elsewhere are also seeking extreme solutions to curb protest activity in their states.
In Minnesota, which is again the epicenter for protests against racial injustice following the death of Duante Wright, a Black man, at the hands of a white police officer, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would withhold student financial assistance from anyone who was convicted of a protest-related crime.The bill also proposes withholding other types of state-funded aid, including food stamps, rent assistance and unemployment benefits.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, right. (photo: Getty Images)
Sanders and Top Progressives Push to Make College Free for Most Americans
Kelsey Snell, NPR
Snell writes: "Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., are introducing legislation Wednesday that would make higher education free for most Americans by imposing new taxes on many Wall Street transactions."
The legislation would eliminate tuition and fees at public, four-year institutions for those from families earning up to $125,000 per year and make community college free for everyone. The push comes amid mounting pressure from progressives on President Biden to forgive some existing student loan debt and make higher education more accessible.
"While President Biden can and should immediately cancel student debt for millions of borrowers, Congress must ensure that working families never have to take out these crushing loans to receive a higher education in the first place," Jayapal said in a statement.
There is widespread interest among Democrats in making college more affordable, but there has so far been little agreement on the best path for achieving that goal. Progressives like Jayapal and Sanders have pressed for free college for most students, but many other Democrats say that idea is either too expensive or not feasible.
Sanders and Jayapal propose new fees for common Wall Street activities that they say would raise $2.4 trillion over 10 years. The bill includes a 0.5% tax on stock trades, which would amount to 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock, a 0.1% fee on bonds and a 0.005% fee on derivatives.
The legislation also includes a major expansion of the federal Pell Grant. Sanders and Jayapal propose doubling the existing grant maximum to $13,000 per academic year and allowing students to apply those funds to cover living expenses and other non-tuition costs. Other changes include more funding for underfunded institutions and more support for low-income and disabled students.
"If we are going to have the kind of standard of living that the American people deserve, we need to have the best educated workforce in the world," Sanders said in a statement. "It is absolutely unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans do not get a higher education each year, not because they are unqualified, but because their family does not have enough money."
The bill comes as Democrats are attempting to chart a legislative path for a wide range of priorities, many of which have fallen under an increasingly broad umbrella of infrastructure spending. Biden released the first of two infrastructure plans last month. The first round included many traditional programs, like road and bridge improvement, along with spending for other priorities, like combating climate change and expanding broadband Internet access.
The White House is expected to release details of what is being called a "human infrastructure" proposal in the coming days or weeks. The second package is expected to widely redefine "infrastructure" to include policies that impact an individual's ability to participate in the economy, like access to child care, education and elder care.
Progressives say access to higher education must be part of that plan.
"In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough," Sanders said in the statement. "The time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free for working families."
Brett Kavanaugh. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Supreme Court Justices Push Back on Allowing Temporary Immigrants to Apply for Green Cards
John Fritze, USA Today
Fritze writes:
he Supreme Court's conservatives voiced skepticism Monday over whether immigrants living in the country with temporary protection from deportation should be permitted to apply for green cards and make their stay permanent.
At issue is whether some 400,000 foreign nationals from countries enduring natural disasters or armed conflict who have been granted temporary legal status in the USA meet the requirements for green cards if they initially entered the country illegally.
"We need to be careful about tinkering with the immigration statutes as written, particularly when Congress has such a primary role here," Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh told a lawyer for the two immigrants – a New Jersey couple from El Salvador – who filed the appeal. "You have an uphill climb, textually speaking."
The case centers on Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez, who have lived in the United States legally for two decades under a federal program called Temporary Protected Status. TPS is granted for certain immigrants who the government determines cannot safely return to their home country. When Sanchez and Gonzales applied for green cards they were denied because they had entered the country illegally.
Though technical, the case has significant implications for TPS beneficiaries and it comes at a time when the Biden administration is wrestling with a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, an influx of Central Americans seeking harbor in the United States. The number of migrant encounters on the border increased 71% in March compared with February, according to recent Department of Homeland Security data.
Federal law requires green card applicants to have been "inspected and admitted or paroled into" the United States. Sanchez and Gonzalez say the admission happened when they were granted TPS status. But several justices on Monday asserted that such a reading required courts to infer a meaning not explicitly approved by Congress.
"I can't follow the logic of your main submission," Chief Justice John Roberts told the attorney representing the immigrants. "It doesn't say that you are deemed to have been admitted and inspected; it says that you have non-immigrant status."
Amy Saharia, the attorney representing Sanchez and Gonzalez, countered that Congress deliberately chose "broad language" to achieve "multiple different objectives" so that TPS beneficiaries could adjust their immigration status.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed the attorney representing the Biden administration, Michael Huston, on another point: Aren't TPS beneficiaries who leave the country for travel "admitted" when they return to the United States? Wouldn't that satisfy the statute's requirement that they are "inspected" upon reentry, she asked.
Huston asserted that the immigrants would return to the United States under the same immigration status they had when they left.
"It makes no sense to me," Sotomayor said. "How can you win on that argument?"
Estamos Listas is a grassroots movement founded in Medellín in 2019 building a feminist democracy by redistributing power. (photo: Estamos Listas)
A New Feminist Political Movement Organizes for Change in Colombia
Sophie Foggin, NACLA
Foggin writes: "Estamos Listas supports feminist candidates for public office and is taking action to end violence against women in Colombia."
he last thing that Pamela Lorduy remembers from June 8, 2019 was having an argument with her boyfriend at the time. The following day, she woke up in hospital. She had broken her pelvis in six places, three ribs, four vertebrae, her tibia, fibula, heel bone, ankle, sacrum, and humerus bone.
Lorduy, now 29, believes her ex-boyfriend of 14 years pushed her off the ninth-floor balcony of the home they shared in Envigado, a town south of Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellín. Envigado is in the department of Antioquia, home to the country’s most dangerous municipalities for women.
The year of Lorduy’s attempted murder, one Colombian woman became a victim of violence at the hands of her partner or ex-partner every 13 minutes, according to Sisma Mujer, an organization that works with victims of gender-based violence.
Today, the administrative analyst still suffers from chronic pain, limited mobility, depression, and anxiety, while her ex-partner—after spending 540 days in preventive prison—now walks the streets a free man, having exceeded the legal timeframe for pre-trial detention. His trial is yet to take place.
In 2020, more than 90 percent of family violence cases against women in Colombia remained in the “inquiry” stage, and only seven percent went to trial, according to Sisma Mujer.
“The justice system in this country doesn’t work,” Lorduy said.
Marta Restrepo, a member of Colombia’s first nationwide feminist political movement, Estamos Listas, believes that the existing justice system fails women. “The feminist presence on the interior of the justice system … is practically absent,” she said.
In its current form, according to Restrepo, “the state is occupied by those who insist on maintaining women in a position of subordination and maintaining men in a position of impunity.”
Estamos Listas, or “We’re Ready,” is a grassroots movement born in Medellín in 2019 building a feminist democracy by redistributing power and wealth and achieving justice for women. One of its main priorities is to combat violence against women in Colombia. Estamos Listas is currently endorsing Francia Márquez and Angela Robledo, two progressive feminist precandidates who will run in next year’s presidential elections.
A Feminist Democracy
Feminists in Colombia, Restrepo believes, are at an inflection point. Responding to the state’s failure to serve them, they have spent years building alternative political worlds through independent, non-governmental organizations. But not engaging with the political system means patriarchy still defines the state.
“What Estamos Listas has proposed to Colombia and its feminists is to occupy the state,” Restrepo said. “We see no other alternative.”
The organization recently decided to expand its current base of 800 active members nationwide. They hope to recruit a diverse range of women from another 120 municipalities across Colombia to join the movement. As Estamos Listas is not connected to a political party, the movement is currently collecting a list of signatures to gain representation in the Colombian Senate as an independent political movement.
April 5, Estamos Listas held the country’s first National Feminist Convention, inviting precandidates Márquez, a human rights and environmental activist, and Congresswoman Robledo. Instead of Colombia’s largest cities such as Bogotá or Medellín, they chose Honda, Tolima, for the event—a small town in central Colombia that connects the country’s peripheral departments, to reflect their aim of decentralizing politics.
Márquez is a well-known social leader from a village in Cauca, a victim of Colombia’s half-century-long armed conflict, and the winner of the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize. Robledo is a congresswoman, previously for the center-left Green Alliance in Bogotá and was the running mate of leftist candidate Gustavo Petro in the 2016 presidential elections.
Márquez will be running independently for president, through the political movement Soy Porque Somos (I am because we are). Robledo will be running with the center-left Hope Coalition, comprised of the Green Alliance, and five other centrist and leftist politicians. Although the two women will compete against each other for the presidency, they both, along with Estamos Listas, share a common goal: to feminize the state.
Through their endorsement of Márquez and Robledo’s presidential candidacies at the National Convention, Estamos Listas formed part of a “pact” of progressive female politicians and the Colombian feminists who will vote for them.
This social and political pact, explained Restrepo, will give citizens the ability to advance structural change. “And this is only possible if we remove this minority from political power,” she said.
“We’re Ready”
Since Dora Saldarriaga became the Estamos Listas representative for Medellín’s city council in 2019, the movement has pioneered campaigns to track down disappeared women, support the families of feminicide victims, and reduce soaring levels of violence against women.
Their members, or “militants,” wear purple neckerchiefs to identify themselves around the city. They fight to change the unequal power dynamics between women and men in all areas of society and put women’s lives at the political center, as opposed to economics or private property.
According to Restrepo, the movement’s manifesto focuses on recognizing the gradual decline of the state, acknowledging the political and economic value of reproductive and care-orientated work, defending life, and opposing the anti-rights agenda.
“The advancement of an anti-rights agenda is a fundamental nod to those backward political sectors who want us to retreat in what we have earned through years of fighting, not only for women, but also for sexual and gender diversity, and for the groups historically deprived of power in our country—Afro-Colombians, Indigenous people, rural farmers, and the working class,” Restrepo said.
The women who experience the highest levels of violence in Colombia are racialized, explained Márquez in an interview.
“As an Afro-descendant woman, I want to aim for the precedency and vie for a position that has been a place of privilege for white men,” she said. “I represent the voices of some women who, although they don’t stand out in feminism, are taking action against the injustice we live through in society.”
Violence Against Women in Colombia
According to Colombia’s Feminicide Observatory, so far in 2021 there have been 106 feminicides. The United Nations defines feminicides as homicides of women killed by gender violence. Last year, there were 630 feminicides, an increase of more than 10 percent from 2019. However, the ethnicity of the victim was only specified in 125 cases during 2020.
Restrepo believes the “tremendous deficit” in information systems for reporting these crimes is due to state corruption and a lack of coordination between government agencies, which often restrict access to these databases.
In Colombia, violence against women also goes underreported because it is normalized, dissuading women from speaking out, explained a recent Sisma Mujer report. State institutions often stigmatize or revictimize women, meaning they refrain from telling their stories out of fear.
“I feel a responsibility to raise my voice for the other women who couldn’t raise theirs,” said Lorduy. “I’m raising mine for me and for all of them.”
Like in Lorduy’s case, the majority of violence against women happens in the home, and according to Sisma Mujer, mostly at the hands of a partner. For Adriana Benjumea, Director of Corporación Humanas Colombia, a research center that works to defend women’s rights, these numbers are a cause for concern because the home should be a safe space for women.
While women were confined to their homes during the pandemic, violence against them worsened. From March 2020 to February 2021, calls to Colombia’s domestic violence helpline increased by approximately 85 percent.
In a recent report on the impact of the pandemic on women across the world, the United Nations attributes this increase to five factors: security, health and money worries, cramped living conditions, isolation with abusers, movement restrictions, and deserted public spaces.
But in Colombia, Benjumea believes prevention fell short. “During the pandemic, the Colombian government was late in generating a rapid response to reports of violence against women,” she pointed out.
In Latin America, the pandemic has also set back women’s participation in the labor market by a decade, according to the United Nations.
“This sector of society … is the weakest link in the chain,” said Benjumea. “They’re the women who used to work in domestic service and were laid off, the sex workers unable to work during the pandemic, the female informal workers,” she reeled off the list.
City Councilwoman Saldarriaga believes the only way to remedy the gender pay gap is through political determination. Márquez hopes to drive this change.
“Economic empowerment driven by public policies that put care for life at the center is a priority,” Márquez said.
But before she can do this, Márquez believes she must heal the wounds of Colombia’s armed conflict first. “Armed conflict has served as a distraction for the state to avoid concentrating its actions on its basic purpose,” she said.
Restrepo of Estamos Listas says that it is significant that two women will run for president and Colombian feminists must rally behind them. Estamos Listas is hoping to build the necessary political and strategic unity to overcome the barriers to a woman being elected.
“It will be the biggest ever bet to change the hegemonic power structures,” said Saldarriaga, reflecting on the prospect of a feminist presidency. “It would be the first time that two women … would change the discourse of war that we have heard for so many years for a discourse of life, one which structurally modifies inequality.”
Cliff Lake, part of the area where Hecla Mining Co. proposes to mine copper and silver on existing mining claims in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in the Kootenai National Forest, near Noxon in northwestern Montana. (photo: Kootenai National Forest/Idaho National Statesman)
Judge Halts Trump Era Mining Project in Cabinet Mountains Wilderness
Matthew Brown, The Idaho Statesman
Brown writes: "A judge has struck down the government's approval of the first phase of a long-stalled copper and silver mine that an Idaho company would construct beneath a northwestern Montana wilderness."
The decision against the Rock Creek Mine, east of the Idaho border and north of Kellogg, Idaho, is the latest in series of legal setbacks for a project first proposed in the late 1980s.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy sided with opponents who said an environmental review by federal officials was insufficient because it considered only exploration work and not full-scale mining.
Rock Creek is one of two mines proposed by Coeur d’Alene-based Hecla Mining Co. that would tunnel beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, an area rich with wildlife including trout, grizzly bears and wolverines.
Sporadic mining has occurred in the area since the early 1800s, according to the U.S. Forest Service. But there are worries the large-scale projects proposed by Hecla could drain groundwater supplies, damaging the habitat of federally protected bull trout.
The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness is protected under federal law, but mining is allowed on existing mining claims.
Kootenai National Forest officials in 2019 approved plans for Hecla to begin exploration work after conducting a review in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The company did not immediately proceed because of court challenges.
Hecla Vice President Luke Russell said the company was reviewing Molloy’s April 14 ruling and has not decided if it will appeal.
“We were disappointed and surprised,” Russell said. “We thought the agencies had done the right thing here.”
A representative of one of the groups that sued over the project said the government’s decision to limit the scope of its environmental review to exploration work only “was a pretty clear attempt to downplay the impacts on grizzly bears and bull trout.”
“This approach of piecemealing a project has been rejected by courts multiple times in the past,” said Andrea Zaccardi, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Rock Creek mine would employ about 300 people and cover almost 500 acres.
A spokesperson for the Department of Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency was not commenting on the ruling.
A final decision is pending on Hecla’s second mine in the Cabinet Mountains, known as the Montanore Mine.
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