25 June 21
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First Nation in Canada says it has found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, at least the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country again confronts one of the darkest chapters of its history.
The Cowessess First Nation made the “horrific and shocking discovery” at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in the southeastern part of the province, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan.
The announcement comes less than a month after the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation said a ground-penetrating radar specialist had uncovered evidence of unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
In the days following the announcement that graves had been discovered at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Indigenous leaders and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there probably would be more discoveries as other such sites were searched.
The announcement from Saskatchewan was met with expressions of sadness and outrage.
“The news that hundreds of unmarked graves have been found in Cowessess First Nation is absolutely tragic, but not surprising,” tweeted Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “I urge all Canadians to stand with First Nations in this extremely difficult and emotional time.”
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.
The commission identified more than 3,000 students who died at the schools, a rate that was far higher than for non-Indigenous school-aged children. That number has since grown. Officials say the total number of children who died or went missing at the schools might never be known.
Children often died of diseases that spread rapidly in unsanitary living conditions, in accidents and in fires, the commission said. Some disappeared while trying to escape. To save money, authorities often buried the bodies on or near school sites, rather than send them back to their families.
The Cowessess First Nation had long suspected there were many unmarked graves at the site, which is about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.
The Marieval Indian Residential School was founded in the 1890s by Catholic missionaries. The federal government began funding the school in 1901 and took over its administration in 1969 before turning it over to the Cowessess First Nation in 1987. It closed in the 1990s.
The First Nation received a federal grant to bring in an underground radar detection team from a local educational institute. The planning for the project began two years ago, but it was delayed until a few weeks ago by the coronavirus pandemic, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told the Regina Leader-Post last month.
“The pain is real, the pain is there and the pain hasn’t gone away,” Delorme told the newspaper. “As we heal, every Cowessess citizen has a family member in that gravesite. To know there’s some unmarked, it continues the pain.”
The First Nation planned to identify all the remains and build a monument to honor the dead, he said.
The findings have rekindled appeals for accountability, particularly from the Catholic entities that ran most of the schools. Officials say some of them have not turned over records that might help identify missing children or locate the graves.
The findings have also fueled calls for monuments to the Canadian leaders who set up the residential school system to be removed from public view.
The Vatican has come under pressure from residential school survivors and from Trudeau to make an official apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system. Trudeau made a personal appeal to Pope Francis in 2017, but the pontiff has stopped short of an apology. The leaders of the United and Anglican Churches in Canada, which also operated schools, have apologized.
Experts believe that the Delta variant, which was first detected in India, is far more contagious than the virus that tore through the world in 2020. (photo: Raj K. Raj/Getty)
One half of America is protected. The other is approaching a perilous moment in the pandemic.
ineage B.1.617.2, now known as the Delta variant, was first detected in India, in December, 2020. An evolved version of SARS-CoV-2, Delta has at least a dozen mutations, including several on its spike protein that make it vastly more contagious and possibly more lethal and vaccine-resistant than other strains. In India, the Delta variant contributed to the most devastating coronavirus wave the world has seen so far; now, it has been detected in dozens of countries, including the United States. In the U.S., it accounts for a minority of cases—but it is rapidly outcompeting other variants, and will likely soon become our dominant lineage.
Much of what we know about Delta is preliminary, and based on reports from India and, more recently, the U.K., where it now accounts for more than ninety per cent of new cases. Four-fifths of British adults have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and more than half are fully vaccinated—but the variant has spread widely enough among those who remain vulnerable to fuel a quadrupling of cases and a doubling of hospitalizations in the past month. The vast majority of Delta-variant cases seem to have occurred in adults under fifty, whose rates of vaccination remain lower than those of older people. Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the U.K.’s full reopening, originally scheduled for June 21st, would be postponed.
Earlier this year, scientists estimated that lineage B.1.1.7—the Alpha variant, first isolated in England—could be some sixty per cent more transmissible than the original version of SARS-CoV-2. Now, experts believe that the Delta variant is sixty per cent more transmissible than Alpha—making it far more contagious than the virus that tore through the world in 2020. It hasn’t yet been conclusively shown that Delta is more lethal, but early evidence from the U.K. suggests that, compared to Alpha, it doubles the risk of a person’s being hospitalized. Even if the variant turns out to be no deadlier within any one person, its greater transmissibility means that it can inflict far more damage across a population, depending on how many people remain unvaccinated when it strikes.
In this regard, India’s apocalyptic surge is Exhibit A. In May, at the crest of the wave, the role of the Delta variant was still unclear. A number of factors—the return of large gatherings, a decline in mask-wearing, and a sluggish vaccination campaign—had made a disaster of some kind more or less unavoidable. But it now seems likely that the rise of Delta accelerated the crisis into a shockingly rapid and widespread viral catastrophe. In the course of weeks, millions of people were infected and tens of thousands died; the country’s medical system buckled under the weight of a mutated virus. One of the most disturbing aspects of India’s surge was that many children fell ill. And yet there is currently no data to suggest that Delta causes severe illness in a greater proportion of kids; instead, it seems likely that the sheer transmissibility of the variant simply resulted in a higher absolute number of infected children.
One vitally important finding to emerge from the U.K. and India is that the COVID vaccines are still spectacularly effective against Delta. According to one study from the U.K., a full course of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is ninety-six per cent effective at preventing hospitalizations due to the Delta variant; AstraZeneca’s vaccine is in the same ballpark, reducing the chance of hospitalization by ninety-two per cent. But these findings come with caveats. The first is that, with Delta, partial immunization appears to be less effective at preventing disease: a different study found that, for people who have received only the first shot, the vaccines were just thirty-three per cent effective at preventing symptomatic illness. (A first dose still appears to offer strong protection against hospitalization or death.) The second is that even full courses of the vaccines appear somewhat less effective at preventing infection from Delta. This may be especially true of the non-mRNA vaccines. A team of scientists in Scotland has found that both doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine reduced the chance of infection with Delta by just sixty per cent—a respectable showing, but less impressive than what the same vaccine offers against other strains of the virus. (The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine demonstrated seventy-nine per cent efficacy against Delta infection—a significant, but smaller, decrease.)
Taken together, these findings have led some experts to propose adjustments in vaccination strategy. Muge Cevik, an infectious-diseases expert at St. Andrews University and an adviser to the British government, told me that, given the arrival of Delta, it was important to ask “what our main aim of vaccination is.” She went on, “If our primary objective is to reduce hospitalizations and deaths, a first dose still gives very good protection. If it’s to stamp out transmission, then the second dose becomes quite important. I think that, especially in hot spots, we need to expedite second shots.” Others have proposed the idea of mRNA-vaccine booster shots for Americans who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which, like AstraZeneca’s, uses non-mRNA technology. The C.D.C.’s official guidelines tell Americans that “the best COVID-19 vaccine is the first one that is available to you. Do not wait for a specific brand.” But that advice was minted when vaccine supply was constrained. The accumulated evidence has led many people to wonder whether the mRNA vaccines, from Moderna and Pfizer, are preferable to the one offered by Johnson & Johnson, and whether the Delta variant makes them even more so.
“It’s likely that J. & J. offers strong protection against severe disease, but because it’s a one-shot regimen it might not offer the same protection against infection for a highly transmissible variant like Delta,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, told me. “A second shot reëxposes the immune system to the vaccine, and allows the body to make even better antibodies.” Rasmussen received the J. & J. vaccine; she lives in Canada, where health authorities have encouraged people to mix and match the vaccines. “I’m considering topping off my immune system with a dose of Pfizer,” she said. “It’s something worth thinking about.”
To a significant degree, the emergence of a variant like Delta was predictable, and, with rapid and widespread immunization, the threat that it poses can be subdued. But its arrival is still incredibly consequential. Delta drives an even wider wedge between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. They have already been living in separate worlds, facing vastly different risks of illness and death; now, their risk levels will diverge further. People who’ve been fully vaccinated can, by and large, feel confident in the immunity that they’ve received. But those who remain susceptible should understand that, for them, this is probably the most dangerous moment of the pandemic.
“The good news is that we have vaccines that can squash the Delta variant,” Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told me. “The bad news is that not nearly enough people have been vaccinated. A substantial share of Americans are sitting ducks.” He went on, “We haven’t built a strong enough vaccination wall yet. We need a Delta wall”—a level of vaccination that will prevent the new variant from spreading. “There are still large unvaccinated pockets in the country where this could get ugly,” Topol added. Because about half of Americans are vaccinated, and millions more have some immunity from prior infection, the Delta variant “won’t cause monster spikes that overwhelm the health system,” Topol said. But Delta spreads so easily among the unvaccinated that some communities could experience meaningful increases in death and disease this summer and fall.
In America, the speed of vaccination is slowing. In some states, mainly in the South, only about a third of the population has been fully vaccinated. Big differences in the COVID-19 toll are already visible: cases and hospitalizations have plummeted in some places with higher vaccination rates but are holding steady or rising in others. Fortunately, nearly ninety per cent of older Americans—the group most at risk for severe COVID—have received at least one shot, and three-quarters are fully vaccinated. But, as is clear from the Indian and U.K. experiences, the Delta variant could still lead to major spikes in infection among younger, unvaccinated people.
In a recent piece, I likened a society that’s reopening while partially vaccinated to a ship approaching an iceberg. The ship is the return to normal life and the viral exposure that it brings; the iceberg is the population of unvaccinated people. Precautions such as social distancing can slow the speed of the ship, and vaccination can shrink the size of the iceberg. But, in any reopening society that’s failed to vaccinate everyone, a collision between the virus and the vulnerable is inevitable.
Because of its exceptional transmissibility, the Delta variant is almost certain to intensify the force of the collision. The U.K., by postponing a full reopening, is trying to soften the blow. But the U.S. is pressing ahead—perhaps out of hubris, or because officials hope that our vaccination campaign can outrun the spread of Delta. Last week, New York and California, among the pandemic’s hardest-hit states, did away with virtually all restrictions. Meanwhile, states with half the vaccination rates of New York or California have been open for weeks. A lot depends on where, and how fast, Delta is spreading.
Federal, state, and local officials are trying to accelerate vaccination. Governors have announced incentives such as lotteries, college scholarships, gift cards, and free beer for those who get immunized; California alone plans to spend more than a hundred million dollars on vaccine incentives. The Biden Administration has made immunizing seventy per cent of American adults by the Fourth of July a central priority, and has declared June a “national month of action.” The Administration has offered tax credits to employers that provide paid time off for people to get immunized, erected mass-vaccination sites, sent funds to community health centers, and partnered with local organizations, celebrities, and volunteers to get shots in arms. The White House recently announced that four of the nation’s largest child-care providers would offer free services to parents who want to get immunized before July 4th; Uber and Lyft have been offering free rides to vaccination sites for weeks.
And yet, the pace of vaccinations hasn’t picked back up. Topol, for his part, believes that a major impediment to wider vaccination is the fact that the F.D.A. has not yet fully approved the COVID vaccines; right now, they’ve received only an emergency-use authorization, or E.U.A. About a third of unvaccinated Americans say that F.D.A. approval would make them more likely to get immunized. Full approval could also pave a clearer path for vaccine mandates in schools, businesses, and the military. Topol argues that mandates would allow us to build a Delta wall more quickly—along with walls for Epsilon, Zeta, and the rest of the Greek alphabet. Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for F.D.A. approval, but it’s unclear how soon they will receive it; the usual process takes six to ten months. “Hundreds of millions of people have safely taken these vaccines, but there’s still a perception among some that they’re experimental,” Topol said. “E.U.A. versus full approval may sound like semantics, but it’s actually a B.F.D.”
Globally, more people died of the coronavirus in the first half of this year than in all of last year—an astounding fact, given the emergence of the vaccines. The tragic truth is that, for much of the world, the vaccines may as well not exist. On the one hand, the U.S. is vaccinating children as young as twelve; on the other hand, health-care workers, elderly people, and cancer patients in many other countries remain defenseless. Three-quarters of COVID-vaccine shots have been administered in just ten countries, whereas the poorest nations have received less than one half of one per cent of the supply. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director-general, has called this a “scandalous inequity.”
The Biden Administration recently announced that the U.S. would donate half a billion doses to the global vaccination effort; it hopes to deliver two hundred million by the end of the year. The U.K. and other European countries have also committed hundreds of millions of doses to COVAX, the international initiative to distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. These efforts are important, and they will help immensely—but not for months, and perhaps not until 2022. In the meantime, many countries will continue to grapple with the social and economic challenges created by variant-catalyzed surges and the public-health measures needed to thwart them. Even where the political will for continuing such measures exists, it’s not infinite; countries can’t remain in lockdown forever.
In a sense, Delta is the first post-vaccination variant. Pockets of the human race—perhaps five hundred million people out of 7.6 billion—are protected against it, despite its transmissibility; for them, the pandemic’s newest chapter is something of an epilogue, since the main story has, in effect, already concluded. But, for those who remain unvaccinated, by choice or by chance, Delta represents the latest installment in an ongoing series of horrors. It’s a threat more sinister than any other—one that imperils whatever precarious equilibrium has taken root. In a partially vaccinated world, Delta exposes the duality in which we now live and die.
Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin III (D-WV) talk after an infrastructure meeting Wednesday with White House officials on Capitol Hill. (photo: Jabin/The Washington Post)
group of bipartisan senators announced an agreement on a framework for an infrastructure proposal on Wednesday evening, even as the White House and congressional Democrats continue to pursue two tracks in passing President Biden's multi-trillion dollar plan.
The group of 21 senators, 10 Democrats and 11 Republicans, previously reached an agreement on an infrastructure proposal costing roughly $1 trillion, with $579 billion in new spending — although the proposal did not include details about funding. Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a lead negotiator, told reporters on Wednesday evening that negotiators have "agreed to a framework" that they would present to the White House.
Several of the lead negotiators from both parties traveled to the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the new framework, which includes pay-fors. Funding for the bill had been a sticking point in negotiations.
"President Biden is the ultimate person that will have to sign off on this and make sure he's comfortable. And he wants a bipartisan deal, he said that from day one. His negotiators were with us the whole time that we've that we've negotiated," Democratic Senator Joe Manchin told reporters on Thursday.
The new framework comes after White House legislative team met with this group of senators twice on Wednesday. Senators faced a time crunch in their negotiations, as the Senate has a two-week recess beginning next week, leaving only a few days for them to reach a deal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that the Senate will "concurrently" take up the bipartisan deal and a large budget reconciliation bill, which would only require 50 votes to move forward, to address Mr. Biden's other infrastructure priorities.
"I look forward to holding the first votes when we return for the July work period," Schumer said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that the House will not take up the bipartisan bill until the Senate passes both that measure and the larger reconciliation bill.
"We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill," Pelosi said during her weekly press conference.
Although 21 senators have signed onto this bipartisan measure, it will need the support of 60 senators to advance to a full vote on the Senate floor. Several progressive Democratic senators have warned that they will not support the bipartisan bill unless they get a firm commitment that issues such as climate change and "human" infrastructure, including child care and health care, will be addressed in a larger reconciliation bill.
But other moderate Democrats, most notably Manchin have not committed to supporting a reconciliation bill. Manchin has raised concerns about its size, which is reported to be around $6 trillion. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Manchin would not commit to supporting a reconciliation bill until he sees it.
"I know what's in this plan, and we have the responsibility and obligation to make sure that all the Congress on both sides know what's in this plan. To say that one's being held hostage, that doesn't seem to be fair to me," Manchin said.
However, multiple Democratic senators said Thursday that they could not support the bipartisan bill without that commitment to a larger reconciliation bill.
"Way too small. Paltry. Pathetic. It has to be combined with a second much more robust, adequate package to be deserving a vote," Senator Richard Blumenthal said.
Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters that "we are not leaving childcare behind, we are not leaving home health care behind, we are not leaving the green energy changes that we need to save our planet behind, and we are not going to make America's middle class families pay for this package."
"We need assurances from all 50 people in our caucus that we have a deal and it is not just a deal on numbers. It is a deal on what gets covered," Warren said.
The bipartisan proposal would be narrowly focused on "traditional" infrastructure priorities such as roads, bridges, funding transportation and expanding broadband, with some spending on electric vehicle charging stations, a priority for Mr. Biden. The reconciliation bill, which is being crafted by Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders, is expected to include provisions like Medicare expansion, as well as the remainder of Mr. Biden's $1.7 trillion American Jobs Plan and his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan not covered in the bipartisan proposal.
"It's not going to be a bipartisan agreement without a major reconciliation," Sanders told reporters.
When asked how he would convince all Democrats to support the bill, Manchin urged his progressive colleagues to "not let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Senator Jon Tester, another one of the lead negotiators, said that "I'll say 'please.'"
Mr. Biden has rejected the Republican suggestion of indexing the gas tax to inflation, while GOP senators remain staunchly opposed to the president's proposal to raise the corporate tax rate.
The White House has also floated tax gap enforcement as a potential source of funding, although there is some disagreement over how much revenue that would yield. A report by the Congressional Budget Office found that $40 billion in enforcement spending could net $63 billion in revenue.
Republicans have suggested using unspent funds from previous coronavirus relief packages, but this has largely been rejected by the White House.
The court concluded that Rudolph Giuliani had made 'demonstrably false and misleading statements' about the 2020 election. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
udy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in the state of New York due to his false statements about the 2020 election, according to a court filing.
Driving the news: A New York court ruled that Giuliani made "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump."
- "These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client," the court wrote.
- "We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee."
Zoom in: The court examined a number of instances in which Giuliani made false statements about alleged election fraud in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. Each were found to be in violation of various provisions of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.
What they're saying: The Attorney Grievance Committee, which brought the complaint against Giuliani, "contends that respondent’s misconduct directly inflamed tensions that bubbled over into the events of January 6, 2021 in this nation’s Capitol," the court notes.
- "Respondent’s response is that no causal nexus can be shown between his conduct and those events. We need not decide any issue of “causal nexus” to understand that the falsehoods themselves cause harm."
- "This event only emphasizes the larger point that the broad dissemination of false statements, casting doubt on the legitimacy of thousands of validly cast votes, is corrosive to the public’s trust in our most important democratic institutions."
The big picture: Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, led a nationwide campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the wake of Joe Biden's victory.
- He is currently facing multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, two voting-machine companies that were the target of baseless conspiracy theories from Giuliani and other Trump allies.
- Giuliani is also under criminal investigation by the Southern District of New York — the office he used to run — for his dealings with Ukraine.
Flashback: June 24 is the 35th anniversary of the disbarment of another high-profile former Trump lawyer — Roy Cohn (h/t CNN's Terrence Burlij).
THERE'S ALWAYS HUMOR IN GHOULIANI LUNACY!
RUDY GHOULIANI CAN STILL WORK FOR FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING:
When he was a U.S. senator from Alabama, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was among Donald Trump's earliest supporters in the 2016 campaign. (photo:Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Judiciary committee wants to know if officials violated policies in issuing secret subpoenas against congressional Democrats
op Democrats in the House are investigating whether Trump justice department officials ran an unlawful shadow operation to target political enemies of the former president to hunt down leaks of classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is centering his investigation on the apparent violation of internal policies by the justice department, when it issued subpoenas against Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell in 2018.
The use of subpoenas to secretly seize data from the two Democrats on the House intelligence committee – and fierce critics of Donald Trump – would ordinarily require authorization from the highest levels of the justice department and notably, the attorney general.
But with the former Trump attorneys general Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions denying any knowledge of the subpoenas, Democrats are focused on whether rogue officials abused the vast power of the federal government to target Trump’s perceived political opponents, the source said.
That kind of shadow operation – reminiscent of the shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that led to Trump’s first impeachment – would be significant because it could render the subpoenas unlawful, the source said.
And if the subpoenas were issued without proper authorization from the attorney general level, it could also leave the officials involved in the effort open to prosecution for falsely operating with the imprimatur of law enforcement.
The sharpening contours of the House judiciary committee’s investigation into the Trump justice department reflects Democrats’ determination to uncover potential politicization at the department.
Current and former justice department officials have described the subpoenas as part of a fact-gathering effort that ensnared Schiff and Swalwell because they had been in contact with congressional aides suspected of leaking classified information.
As the justice department investigated leaks, they obtained records of House intelligence committee staffers, as well as the records of their contacts. Schiff and Swalwell were not the target of the investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But Democrats are also concerned about the denials from Barr and Sessions and are set to look at whether they made publicly misleading representations to obfuscate the extent of their involvement.
The two former attorneys general appeared to issue very carefully worded denials, the source said, which raised the prospect that they may have been at least aware of the leak inquiries into Schiff and Swalwell.
Barr said in an interview with Politico that while he was attorney general, he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case”, while Sessions also told associates he was never briefed on the subpoenas.
In examining the denials, Democrats could demand testimony from Barr and Sessions, as well as other Trump justice department officials. Nadler told the Guardian he would also consider deposing the former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
But the committee is not expected to issue subpoenas for their testimony for some time, in large part because Democrats and counsel on the committee are not yet certain what information they need to compel.
The committee took its first step in trying to establish what testimony it needed for its investigation last week, when Nadler sent a lengthy document request to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and demanded a briefing before 25 June.
Democrats on the House judiciary committee are not likely to receive a briefing until next month, the source said. But the House inquiry is sure to be the most potent investigation into the data seizure after Republicans vowed to stymie a parallel inquiry in the Senate.
Although justice department investigations into leaks of classified information are routine, the use of subpoenas to seize data belonging to the accounts of sitting members of Congress with gag orders to keep their existence secret remain near-unprecedented.
Justice department investigators gained access to, among others, the records of Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and now its chairman, Swalwell and the family members of lawmakers and aides.
President-elect of the Peru Libre party Pedro Castillo talks to supporters during a rally in Lima, Peru. (photo: Raul Sifuentes/Getty)
Peru’s presidential campaign between leftist Pedro Castillo and right-wing Keiko Fujimori has been an epic struggle. When it was clear that Castillo would win with a razor-thin margin, Fujimori — like Donald Trump — cried fraud and is now trying to carry out an electoral coup. While international observers, and even the US State Department, agree that the elections were free and fair, Fujimori’s legal maneuvers have managed to delay the official declaration of the winner, sow even more division among the public, and embolden the far right.
As an elementary school teacher from an isolated rural village, Pedro Castillo, is unlike anyone who has ever governed Peru. The fifty-one-year-old Castillo gained prominence when he led a nationwide teachers’ strike in 2017. In January 2020, the leftist Peru Libre (Free Peru) party asked him to be their presidential candidate. He was one of the least known among eighteen contenders in the first round, which is why it was so shocking that he came out on top, making it into the run-off election.
I was part of an election observer delegation organized by Progressive International, and we joined with a group from Democratic Socialists of America. We had an opportunity to meet with Castillo on June 4, just two days before the election. Below are excerpts from our discussion with him.– Medea Benjamin
was born and raised in a small town called Puña, in the northern region of Cajamarca. I became a teacher in the same rural grade school where my father first registered me; I spent twenty-four years working in the same school.
It has been a great honor for me to be a teacher, a leader in the teachers’ union, a farmer, and a rondero [member of a volunteer neighborhood patrol], where we’ve fought crime, delinquency, and many problems facing our rural communities.
Since I was young, I have always fought to get an education. My parents are illiterate. My father barely writes a line that he uses as a signature, my mother doesn’t know the letters of the alphabet. I am one of nine siblings. It was a great accomplishment for me to finish high school, which I did thanks to the help of my parents and my brothers and sisters.
I continued my education, doing what I could to earn a living. I worked in the coffee fields. I came to Lima to sell newspapers. I sold ice cream. I cleaned toilets in hotels. I saw the harsh reality for workers in the countryside and the city.
After returning home to teach, I became the principal of the school. We struggled together to help our families because in Puña, we had no help from the state. We built that little school by ourselves. We built our own road, which you can only get through during the summer, and even then, it’s not easy.
This year we are celebrating the bicentennial of Peru as a republic, yet after two hundred years, we still have a high level of illiteracy, and the homes of my parents and neighbors don’t have electricity, lights, or running water. There’s a totally abandoned health center where once in a while a nurse comes by and maybe you can find a bandage or a few pills for all the families.
As I traveled in rural areas across the country, I found conditions similar to my hometown. Further into the Amazon, conditions are even worse. People there have nothing; they are totally abandoned by the state.
That’s why there have been so many protests. There are fewer people out in the streets recently because of the pandemic, but people have been out for years demanding justice and shouting that all politicians should resign. We have a congress with almost no approval or legitimacy. Our institutions do not care about the great needs of the country. There are many open wounds in our society that go unaddressed. There are the female victims who were forcibly sterilized under the regime of Alberto Fujimori, people massacred by government militias such as the young students from the university in La Cantuta or people in Barrios Altos. There are mothers and girls who are victims of violence. Now with the pandemic, there are thousands of people who lost their jobs and are demanding work.
Peru currently has hundreds of social conflicts and when people have taken their complaints to the government, the best the government does is hold a dialogue to appease people but they don’t solve any problems. The government does not have the will or the capacity to solve the great problems the country faces.
With the pandemic, it has become clearer to people that we need structural change in the country. The problem of the pandemic in Peru isn’t just a health problem. It is a structural problem. It’s a crisis that has been building for a long time.
Peru is such a wealthy country but so much of the wealth, such as copper, gold, and silver, goes to foreigners. At the ports, you see an endless stream of trucks taking away the resources of the country and just two hundred meters away, you see a barefoot child, a child with tuberculosis, a child full of parasites. That is why we must renegotiate the contracts with big companies so that more of the profits remain in Peru and benefit the people. We must reexamine the free trade agreements we have signed with other countries so that we can promote local businesses.
That’s why we have to change the Constitution. Our present constitution was written in 1993 under the Fujimori dictatorship. It treats health care as a service, not a right. It treats education as a service, not a right. And it is designed for the benefit of businesses, not people.
When I went from town to town, I would ask: “Raise your hand if any person from this town was summoned to help draft the 1993 Constitution?” So far I have not found any. Our current constitution was not written for or by the people and it doesn’t protect us.
If you go to court to demand that the state provide poor communities with water, education, or health care, the court says that it’s unconstitutional because these are services, not rights. You go to court to demand good roads so that farmers’ products don’t rot and can get to market, the courts will say it’s unconstitutional to demand this kind of help from the state.
So we have gone to the communities and we have said that we, the Peru Libre party, propose the following: Let’s hold a referendum and ask Peruvians if they want to rewrite the Constitution. We talk to people about our alternatives. We encourage them to make a leap and participate with us in the democratic process so that we can finally change our constitution.
We encourage them to join us fighting the tremendous problem of corruption, which has become institutionalized in Peru. We can’t support a state controlled by drug cartels and organized crime.
The elites and corrupt forces have thrown everything at us, trying to create fear in the minds of people so that they would hold their noses and vote for my corrupt opponent. They called us terrorists. They said that we are going to take people’s homes away, that we are going to take away their land, their savings. Due to these accusations, the price of the dollar has risen, so has bread and even chicken. Everything has gone up in price.
And the press has either lied about us or ignored us. There have not been any reports, written or televised, that have talked honestly about our proposals.
So we have great obstacles, including in Congress. But if Congress tries to stop us from making the changes we need, we will continue to mobilize people in the streets. I come from these grassroots struggles. I still carry the marks of the pellets and bullets on my back and legs. This fight has touched me personally in many ways and that is why I am here. I’m not motivated by any other kind of interest. I’m here for the people of this country and our fight will not end until we achieve dignity for all.
As I have said throughout the campaign, “No more poor people in a rich country. I give you my word as a teacher.”
Sarah LittleRedfeather of Honor the Earth dances with an eagle feather in front of the construction site for the Line 3 oil pipeline near Palisade, Minnesota, on January 9, 2021. (photo: Kerem Yucel/AP)
In a legal brief filed Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that the Army Corps of Engineers’s 2020 approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline followed its legal obligation to consider the project’s environmental impacts.
“The Corps met its ... obligations by preparing Environmental Assessments (EA), which included consideration of the impacts from the Corps’ authorizations, including to wetlands, the climate, low-income and minority populations, Tribal rights to hunt, fish, and gather, and all of the issues to which Plaintiffs draw special attention,” the department argued.
It asked the court to reject arguments brought by tribes and environmentalists that the federal government didn’t adequately assess the project’s environmental impacts and instead affirm the pipeline’s approval.
The project’s opponents criticized the decision, saying that support for the pipeline goes against President Biden’s promises on environmental justice.
“Allowing Line 3 to move forward is, at best, inconsistent with the bold promises on climate and environmental justice President Biden campaigned and was elected on,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.
“The president must listen to frontline communities, defend the right of all people to clean water and a healthy climate, and act immediately to shut down this dirty tar sands pipeline,” he added.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment, but it has said in the past that it will try to keep its judicial branch independent.
Indigenous groups have raised concerns about Line 3, saying it will negatively impact land and water where tribes hunt, fish and gather wild rice. They have staged protests that ended in numerous arrests.
The pipeline’s backers have argued that it will create jobs and contribute to the nation’s energy supply.
At issue is not the entire pipeline, which imports carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada, but a segment being built along a new route that the company is calling a replacement.
Similarly, the Justice Department earlier this year declined to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, dealing another blow to Indigenous and environmental groups who opposed it.
However, President Biden did scrap an important permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, ultimately leading to its cancellation.
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