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14 February 22
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Are we so numb we can't see what just happened? Republicans don't even pretend to believe in democracy anymore
Last week the Republican National Committee dropped any remaining pretexts of patriotism or love of democracy with its now-infamous statement that those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse." Reports suggest that a draft version of that RNC statement was even bolder in its embrace of right-wing terrorism.
Last Friday's statement of support for fascism announced that the Republican Party has birthed a monster that will ultimately eat it alive. But looking beyond outrage and disgust, what does this tell us about America in this moment of existential crisis?
In terms of the mainstream news media and America's political class, it reveals how deep the capacity for denial goes. Many of the same voices who insisted that the Republicans were not fascists and did not pose an existential threat to democracy also downplayed or outright dismissed the obvious evidence that Donald Trump and his cabal were going to attempt a coup to nullify the 2020 presidential election.
Many of these same gatekeepers and boundary keepers then claimed that the Jan. 6 coup was a one-off, a disorganized and spontaneous "riot," and that the long-term existential dangers were exaggerated. Why? Because they were invested in the idea that "the institutions" had worked, and that Trump's coup was doomed to fail from the beginning, thanks to "democratic norms" and the "rule of law."
Now, more than a year after the attack on the Capitol, there is a mountain of evidence that confirms what was obvious at the time, and even before: Trump's coup attempt was a highly coordinated nationwide effort, whose ultimate goal was to overthrow multiracial democracy and install Trump as de facto dictator.
Ultimately, the Republican Party's embrace of fascism as a now-indispensable part of its identity should not be a surprise. This devolution was years in the making. In a recent essay for the New Republic, Michael Tomasky summarizes this:
- The conservative movement that started in Barry Goldwater's time was once an element within the GOP. Then along came Newt Gingrich, the key figure who intensified the culture war, and in time the conservative movement swallowed the party whole — and moved hard to the right while doing it.
- And now, in the Trump era, it has become what it's been in process of becoming for some time: an extremist, pro-violence party. The Anti-Defamation League recently released a report finding that more than 100 Republican candidates on various ballots in 2022 have explicitly embraced extremism or violence — House candidates boasting about having the backing of white supremacist leaders, at least 45 candidates giving credence to QAnon conspiracy theories.
- This is not some aberration that time will correct. It is a storm that will continue to gather strength, because it's where the action and the money are, and no one in the GOP is opposing it — except the two people who were just essentially read out of the party (Kinzinger is retiring after his current House term).
- The Republican Party, like Michael Palin's parrot, has ceased to be. It has become an appendage of Trump dedicated to doing his will and smiting his enemies.
A week or so after the fact, the mainstream news media has already moved on from the Republican National Committee's embrace of fascism. If the American mainstream news media was truly the "guardian of democracy," it would explain how the Republican fascist movement is an indictment of the country's political culture.
The headlines of the month and central narrative of the year should be grappling with the following damning question: How did one of the country's two main institutional political parties come to embrace fascism and right-wing terrorism? What does this mean for the future of the country? These questions are not being asked in a sustained way. Instead, the media is defaulting to the story of the day: "hot takes," horserace reporting, Beltway gossip and both-sides-ism, amounting to a refusal to take any moral stand on the country's democracy crisis and the Republicans' responsibility for creating it.
More than 50 years ago. Hannah Arendt described the role that today's Republican Party plays as a front organization for fascism and authoritarianism in her essential work "The Origins of Totalitarianism":
- The front organizations surround the movements' membership with a protective wall which separates them from the outside, normal world; at the same time, they form a bridge back into normalcy, without which the members in the prepower stage would feel too sharply the differences between their beliefs and those of normal people, between the lying fictitiousness of their own and the reality of the normal world.
- The ingeniousness of this device during the movements' struggle for power is that the front organizations not only isolate the members but offer them a semblance of outside normalcy which wards off the impact of true reality more effectively than mere indoctrination….
- The world at large, on the other side, usually gets its first glimpse of a totalitarian movement through its front organizations. The sympathizers, who are to all appearances still innocuous fellow-citizens in a nontotalitarian society, can hardly be called single-minded fanatics; through them, the movements make their fantastic lies more generally acceptable, can spread their propaganda in milder, more respectable forms, until the whole atmosphere is poisoned with totalitarian elements which are hardly recognizable as such but appear to be normal political reactions or opinions.
As a front organization for American neofascism, the Republican Party's long-term strategy and goal is to normalize right-wing violence as a means of creating a "state of exception," in which they can impose their will on others without restraint by usurping civil and human rights, free speech, the rule of law, the Constitution and finally democracy itself.
The Republican Party's open declaration that it supports terrorism and other political violence offers an opportunity to remind the American people of the power of lists and keeping accurate records and accounts of this crisis. What is fascism, on its most fundamental level? An assault on reality, time, facts and truth. Correctly documenting reality and the facts are a practical way of staying grounded and refusing to be overwhelmed by this tsunami of events.
Americans who support democracy must now accept that elites and other political leaders will not save them. In fact, they must pressure the country's elites through a range of actions, perhaps including national strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and other forms of direct action. They should consider joining (or even forming) local organizations and other civil society groups to make possible the grassroots organizing that can resist and then defeat American neofascism. Those who have the material resources to support such efforts must consider how best to use them.
Pro-democracy Americans need to understand that the struggle against American neofascism will be long and difficult. There is no rapid or easy solution to this crisis. Defeating fascism will require personal and collective sacrifice.
Writing at the Atlantic, Linda Hirshman offers these lessons from American history and the Black Freedom Struggle, which merit being quoted at length:
- The fault lines of today's political chasm go back to the decades that preceded the Civil War. One can see them in our geography — most of the states that will recriminalize abortion, for example, are in the old Confederacy and the rural or deindustrialized regions it influenced — and in our racial division, which continues to render the country into, more or less, two camps. ...
- Today's challenges are different — and no offense can be compared with the slavocracy of the antebellum period — but anyone who cares about basic principles of democracy can see that our struggle is much the same. In 2013, the Supreme Court put the Democrats at an enormous disadvantage by gutting the Voting Rights Act and handing back elections to the minority-party-dominated rural-state legislatures. Despite repeated efforts of most of the Democratic senators, Congress has refused to pass a new voting-rights act. In several key states, Republican legislatures have set up new systems that may overturn future election results. Sometime in June, the Supreme Court is likely to rule that American women no longer have a constitutional right to refuse to bear a child, despite the fact that polls regularly show that the overwhelming majority of Americans support some level of abortion rights.
- These are dark times, but dark times do not always prevail. Four decades after Black spokesmen told their white so-called friends in the execrable American Colonization Society that they would not be returned to Africa, and just 30-plus years after the Black activist David Walker published an "appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World" promising that "the blacks," once started, would form a "gang of tigers and lions," the newborn Republican Party won the presidency on a platform of restricting slavery. Ten years after Garrison torched his copy of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. How did they do it?
- The specifics of their fight are not identical to what prodemocracy Americans now face. But the work of the abolitionist movement is comprehensible and replicable. It is the closest thing we have to a blueprint for how to rescue our democracy.
- Almost every tactic the mostly white abolitionists used derived from methods that Black organizers tried first. Walker's appeal, published in 1829, inspired Garrison. There was a Black convention and Lodge movement well before the first white or interracial antislavery society. But one lesson emerges loudly from history: Neither Black nor white Americans could have done it alone.
- They made an alliance, and they dug in for the long haul. And they left a playbook.
Americans who believe in democracy must balance optimism and realism, but without succumbing to fatalism. The fight has hardly begun, and too many people are exhausted and have preemptively surrendered. Most important of all, pro-democracy Americans should resist the temptation or urge to compromise with their enemies or appease them. There is no room for "bipartisanship," compromise or truce with the Republican fascists and their allies. That only normalizes evil and all but guarantees the fascists an eventual victory.
Unfortunately, the leaders of the Democratic Party have not learned this lesson. President Biden recently spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, one day before the Republican National Committee's official embrace of the Jan. 6 insurrection. At the breakfast, Biden spoke directly to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, saying, "Mitch, I don't want to hurt your reputation, but we really are friends. And that is not an epiphany we're having at the moment. You're a man of your word, you're a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend."
In the midst of an existential threat brought on by the Republicans and their followers, the president of the United States told the most powerful Republican legislator, with evident sincerity, that he was a friend. That crystallizes all the ways the Democratic leadership is not reacting with the urgency of now to save American democracy. Biden's words suggest that he and his party are simply not up to the challenge of defending American democracy from the fascist onslaught.
As so often occurs in moments of great struggle and challenge, the few must save the many. And that salvation, if it comes, will not come from the so-called leaders in Washington. Who will step forward?
A painted mural of Ahmaud Arbery is displayed on May 17, 2020, in Brunswick, Ga., where the 25-year-old man was shot and killed in February. Arbery was shot and killed by two men who told police they thought he was a burglar. (photo: Sarah Blake Morgan/AP)
But jurors heard little about race during the murder trial of Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan last November. Now a second trial will put the issue front and center.
The three men, who were convicted of murder in state court, are charged with federal hate crimes, accused of violently interfering with Arbery’s right to use a public street because he was Black. Opening arguments are expected Monday in Brunswick, Ga.
What happened in the murder trial?
A Glynn County jury found the McMichaels and Bryan guilty of charges including aggravated assault, false imprisonment and felony murder — meaning the defendants committed felonies that caused Arbery’s death. They also found Travis McMichael guilty of malice murder, which involves intent to kill.
The verdict was especially striking because local authorities initially declined to arrest anyone involved, concluding that the McMichaels and Bryan were carrying out a valid “citizen’s arrest” and opened fire only after Arbery “attacked” Travis McMichael. Then Bryan’s cellphone video of the incident spread online, drawing nationwide scrutiny and demands for consequences.
At trial, prosecutors called the McMichaels “vigilantes” who grabbed their guns and chased down an unarmed man they suspected of break-ins. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck after Arbery fled past his porch.
For five minutes, prosecutors said, Arbery tried to run away. But eventually he was caught between the two trucks.
Travis McMichael testified that he fired in self-defense after Arbery grabbed his gun, while prosecutors said the defendant was not trustworthy and that if anyone had the right to self-defense, it was Arbery.
Moments earlier, Greg McMichael had called 911.
“All of this, and what does he say his emergency is?” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the jury. “ ‘I’m out here in Satilla Shores, and there’s a Black male running down the street.’ That’s the emergency.”
Much of the state trial focused on whether the McMichaels and Bryan had legal grounds to chase Arbery, who had entered an under-construction home in Satilla Shores a few times in the months leading up to the shooting. Travis McMichael said he suspected Arbery of theft. But there was no evidence that Arbery did more than walk around the site, and prosecutors said the defendants’ suspicions were not enough for a “citizen’s arrest.”
The McMichaels and Bryan were sentenced in January to life in prison, as required by Georgia law. A judge granted Bryan the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Why is there another trial?
The McMichaels and Bryan were charged with federal hate crimes in addition to the murder charges prosecuted in state court. State prosecutors focused on proving that the defendants committed crimes rather than showing why they attacked Arbery.
A federal indictment accuses the McMichaels and Bryan of interfering with Arbery’s rights because of his race, using “force and threats of force.”
Georgia did not have a law specifically targeting hate crimes at the time of Arbery’s death. So the hate-crimes case against the McMichaels and Bryan relies on federal law, which forbids interfering with someone’s ability to use public accommodations because of their race, color, religion or national origin.
With the defendants already serving life in prison, the federal case will have little impact on their sentencing. But many advocates see this second trial as an important opportunity to finally litigate allegations of racism.
Hate-crime convictions for the defendants would send a powerful message, said Jeannine Bell, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law in Bloomington who has studied hate crimes. She linked Arbery’s killing to a broader phenomenon of “move-in violence” targeting Black people because they are in White neighborhoods.
“Attacking someone because they are African American in a White neighborhood — because that’s absolutely what happened here — needs to be recognized as a violation of our norms,” Bell said.
What evidence could jurors hear?
Federal prosecutors have signaled they will bring evidence that the defendants shared racist views in messages and on social media. Travis McMichael, for instance, has referred to Black people as “savages” and “monkeys” and used slurs such as the n-word, prosecutor Tara Lyons said in a pretrial hearing last month. She said he also has “expressed a desire to see African American people, particularly those he viewed as criminals, harmed or killed.”
Bryan’s attorney sought in a court filing to keep jurors from hearing testimony “that would suggest Bryan did not approve of his adopted daughter dating an African American man.”
But proving that the defendants are biased is not enough. Prosecutors will also need to show that bias fueled the attack on Arbery.
They may emphasize Greg McMichael’s reference to Arbery’s race in his 911 call, or contrast the defendants’ attitude toward Arbery with their attitude toward White people. Lyons has said that Travis McMichael blamed Arbery for a prior theft of his gun, even though a White person was suspected in a similar theft of a neighbor’s firearm.
It is not clear whether jurors will hear about the most explosive allegation linking Arbery’s killing to racism — Bryan’s claim to investigators that Travis McMichael swore and said the n-word over Arbery’s body.
Defense lawyers in the state trial argued the allegation was inadmissible because Bryan exercised his right not to testify, meaning that Travis McMichael could not cross-examine Bryan about the out-of-court claim. The evidence was never introduced. Attorneys for the younger McMichael have also suggested that Bryan fabricated the accusation about the racial slur as he sought to become a witness for the prosecution. The slur was not recorded on a 911 line left open after the shooting, defense lawyers said.
Didn’t two of the defendants agree to plead guilty?
The McMichaels reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors last month, agreeing to admit to hate-crime charges and serve 30 years in federal prison before returning to state custody.
But U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected the deal after Arbery’s family members protested. They said it would let the McMichaels serve their time in better prison facilities. Wood said she needed to learn more before deciding on a sentence.
Travis McMichael had already entered his guilty plea but withdrew it after the deal imploded, days before jury selection began. His father, who had yet to enter his guilty plea, also changed course.
The fact that the McMichaels were prepared to admit racial motives will not be admissible at trial, and jurors have been urged to set aside any prior knowledge of the case.
Is this trial the end of litigation over Arbery’s death?
Other court cases stemming from Arbery’s killing are still pending.
Former Brunswick Judicial Circuit district attorney Jackie Johnson has yet to be tried on charges that she violated her oath of office and obstructed police while handling Arbery’s case. Johnson recused herself from the investigation early on because Greg McMichael had recently retired from her office, but she is accused of taking actions to try to protect the defendants.
Johnson has denied wrongdoing. Voters ousted her in 2020 amid outrage over the case.
Activists and Arbery’s family have also called for charges against George Barnhill, the local prosecutor who argued in 2020 that Arbery’s death was not a crime. Barnhill remains in office. Announcing the indictment against Johnson last fall, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said that “our file is not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice.”
In addition, Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the McMichaels and Bryan. A judge put the suit on hold while criminal trials in Arbery’s killing proceed.
V-Day rally. (photo: VDAY.org)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: “Wings,” produced by Siân Pottok in solidarity with One Billion Rising, in collaboration with more than 30 vocalists, musicians and dancers from around the world over the span of 18 months with the desire to create and deliver a song of freedom, a song of love and support to women and girls. The music video was released on Friday. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Today is February 14th, celebrated as Valentine’s Day by some, and by many others as V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women — cisgender, transgender, gender nonconforming — girls, women and the planet. In a minute, we’ll be joined by V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, who’s the founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising, along with two other leading activists from some of the more than 70 countries who are planning to rise in 2022. First, this is a video about this year’s theme of revealing the power of art and activism to change culture and systems.
V: What space is your body allowed to occupy?
EMMA THOMPSON: Instead of grieving my mother’s aging, instead of envying my daughter’s youth, I find I am buoyed up and calmed down by turn.
CHANEL DASILVA: I let my body get lost in this foot chant that it’s building, enjoying the ride of the beat.
KAITLIN CURTICE: It is from her that we learn what it means to be human, to be dependent on the things of the Earth.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Our power and the power of Earth are intrinsically bound in generosity and regeneration, not scarcity and sacrifice.
DAMARIS B. HILL: Blood enough to make friends with the witches among ordinary women.
DOMINIQUE JACKSON: I will not allow myself to suffer, to feel shame for my truth.
REV. AMANDA HAMBRICK ASHCRAFT: Hear me say that an abortion is an act of love.
MADGE DIETRICH: [singing] And I could cry power!
JUDITH CLARK: I want to talk about how sex and sexuality and touch are human needs and human rights, that are arbitrarily denied and distorted, criminalized and repressed when we enter prison.
MADINA WARDAK: Women are paying the price for having dreams because of their bodies, bodies many believe are only made for fulfilling men’s lust.
SARU JAYARAMAN: Many male customers made it clear they believe they have the right to control female servers’ bodies.
AGNES PAREYIO: I went back to my family and explained I will not be mutilated.
MARTHA REDBONE: [singing] Which side are you on, boy? Which side are you on?
V: Bodies are now remembering, reattaching, returning, becoming bodies for maybe the first time.
REV. DR. JACQUI LEWIS: On Valentine’s Day, join us for a Body Love Uprising.
KALISWA BREWSTER: Just the right healing for just the right moment.
REV. DR. JACQUI LEWIS: We will be heard.
TAÍNA ASILI: [singing] To those who expose the truth and break the silence.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, today marks V-Day and the start of the ninth year of One Billion Rising, with events continuing through April. The Guardian newspaper has published a special issue on “Living in a woman’s body” that features essays and poems from a number of the voices featured in the video, including actor Emma Thompson, dancer Chanel DaSilva and author Terry Tempest Williams. Some are reading from their essays today at 1 p.m. Eastern during a global rising event.
The issue is curated by V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, the playwright, activist, founder of One Billion Rising, who’s joining us now. Also with us, Colani Hlatjwako, women’s rights activist and Africa director of One Billion Rising campaign. She’s based in Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. And in Manila, Philippines, Monique Wilson is with us, the global director of One Billion Rising.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! V, we’re used to having you in studio, but this is during the pandemic. This is COVID times. Can you talk about the One Billion Rising campaign and the shape it’s taking this year?
V: Yes. Thank you, Amy. I’m so happy to be with you. Happy V-Day! Happy rising!
I think the campaign this year really grew out of — we make all our decisions as a council, a world council. And I think what we know is that women and girls everywhere in this world, unfortunately, see their body as a site for danger, a carrier of shame, a poison in charred landscape, something to hide, to flatten, to hurt, something exploited, something sacrificed or sold. So, this year in One Billion Rising, we are rising for all women’s bodies in the Earth, so that they may move in the motion of light, that they may stand without apology or fear in their power and grace, and that they may soar in freedom and release the energy that the world so desperately needs. And it’s been amazing, to be honest with you, to see how this theme has caught fire around the world.
I think what we know is that COVID has ushered in a very strange and perplexing time for women. We are on the frontlines everywhere, whether it’s nursing or teaching or having to mother our children at home. We are the people who are caretakers. We are the farmers. We are the restaurant workers. We are the people working in plants and factories. And yet, as this has been going on, our rights have been radically being eroded, whether it’s reproductive rights, whether it’s restaurant workers who still can’t get on fair wage and their customers are demanding they take down their masks so they can see their face in order to decide whether they’re pretty enough to get a tip, whether it’s nurses who are on the frontlines and taking care of people who refuse to wear masks or be vaccinated, whether it’s farmers, women farmers, who are still being exploited in the fields. We are just seeing an — or whether it’s women and girls who have been locked up in really tight spaces, where we’re seeing the levels of violence against women escalating. So, I think women everywhere know that this is the moment for them to rise, to speak out, to take this energy of this global solidarity and move it into their own communities.
AMY GOODMAN: And, V, we’re talking at a time of — well, the U.S. keeps talking about an imminent war in Ukraine. Even Ukraine — the Ukrainian officials are saying, “Stop saying that. This does not have to be inevitable.” But this whole feeling of war, working toward war — you, for so long, have talked about rape as a weapon of war.
V: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: Your concern for the atmosphere now in this country as the drums of war are beating?
V: I’m terrified, and I just can’t even believe that we have learned nothing from our past. Nothing from our past. I mean, we just have had the most horrific withdrawal from Afghanistan, where we — as you said in your news report, where we have left people in the worst humanitarian crisis ever. We have seen the desecration in Iraq. We have seen years and years of our interventions, our illegal interventions, and here we are again, cranking up the machines for war.
And I think what we’re seeing across the world is this anti-democratic, fascist buildup of wars that are leaving women always, and children, on the frontlines, which I think Colani will address, because we’re certainly seeing that throughout Africa. We’re seeing that in India. We’re seeing that everywhere in the world, where there is fascism, where there is this buildup towards this patriarchal, militaristic domination, which we know puts women on the frontlines and destroys their bodies through rape and all kinds of terrible things that begin to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: I do want to bring Colani Hlatjwako into the conversation, from Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. You are the Africa director of One Billioni Rising. If you can talk about the organizing that’s going on on the continent, in Africa? I mean, in the last year or so, we have seen one coup after another, particularly in the Sahel, unfortunately, with U.S.-trained soldiers involved.
COLANI HLATJWAKO: Thank you so much for having me on your show.
The campaign in Africa, I’ll say the campaign is amplifying the voice of women in Africa in calling for bodily autonomy, justice and a restoration and strengthening of democratic values and practices where women’s rights will be protected and their fulfillment enhanced. I can also say One Billion Rising Africa believes in promoting a feminist perspective in social and governance system structures so as to break down patriarchal norms that continue to suppress women. Our risings use creativity to take our power back, and currently we have 21 countries who are part of the campaign in Africa.
Talking on the issue of democracy, I would like to reflect on that. Democracy in Africa seems to be regressing as conflict ravages different parts of the continent and causes the collapse of democratic institutions, economic and social infrastructure, and creates a fertile environment for the violation of human rights with impunity. For instance, the sexual and gender-based abuse related to conflict has seen women’s bodies being violated through the use of weapons of war in countries such as Congo or Mozambique, where rape and femicide has been used as tools used by warring parties in Cameroon. There is the new inter-community conflict that has erupted in the far north of Cameroon, and the displacement has affected livelihoods and women’s ability to provide for their families and their children. And here in Eswatini, we have experienced and we are currently experiencing a political unrest which has seen women injured, arrested and even killed, while women also bear the additional burden of injured families and deaths that were involved in the conflict. So, in rising for women’s bodies in the context of such conflicts, the One Billion Rising campaign in Africa, I’d say, it brings hope by seeking to reposition women from being victims to being active agents in protection of their rights.
And in terms of addressing the issues of underrepresentation of women in decision-making position, which is also a serious issue, as women, we want to ensure that we do not allow people to make laws on our bodies. And what we have seen, ever since the campaign started, we have seen women, women who have been part of the movement, emerging to contest for parliamentary positions, women like Agnes from Kenya, who is an advocate against female genital mutilation, who is running for a Parliament position in Kenya.
And I would love to also highlight on that, the campaign’s work also includes promoting women’s rights at the community and national level, which calls for calling for accountability for duty barriers and also basic — giving basic support to survivors of violence. We have seen what is happening in South Africa. There will be a faith safe house for the LGBTI, which is an amazing thing to have. In Eswatini, we have established community-based protection strategies, wherein community members develop strategies that will be used to combat GBV. But more importantly —
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about — mentioning Eswatini, your own country, where you’re speaking to us from, in Manzini — the Sexual Offenses and Domestic Violence Act of 2018 and the role of One Billion Rising in getting this act passed.
COLANI HLATJWAKO: Thank you. One Billion Rising, with other same-minded organizations on the ground, has been — spearheaded the passing of this law, the passing of this law in 2018. What I want to highlight is that this law was a bill for more than a decade. And what delayed it to be passed into law, it was misunderstood as a law that will limit the power to propose love relationships to women and challenge certain cultural practices or traditions. As you know, Eswatini’s government or Parliament is dominated by men. So it was easily seen as a threat to their power they have on women’s bodies. So, hence, through the solidarity, working together, building agency and working together with different organizations through the campaign, it was managed to be passed into law in 2018.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Colani, how have the LGBTQ+ communities participated in One Billion Rising across Africa this year?
COLANI HLATJWAKO: I would say we have seen a huge transformation in terms of the growth of the campaign, actually not on the LGBTI community only, but we have seen countries like South Africa and Namibia who are leading, where we see the LGBTI community leading, and even in different countries, because, as a campaign, we don’t discriminate. We work with everyone. So we see all of them coming in the forefront. And also what I’d love to highlight is how the youth has been put in the forefront in the different countries towards the rising, and seeing the increase in grassroots rising, where rural women are leading the risings in different countries.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Monique Wilson into this conversation, the global director of One Billion Rising, joining us from Manila, in the Philippines, the capital of the Philippines. Monique, you have a powerful piece in the series that was done in The Guardian, about living through COVID as an immunocompromised person. Talk about that.
MONIQUE WILSON: I think it’s been very difficult to be dealing with COVID in this time, when I am immunocompromised. I have blood cancer. But I think it really also reflects the really bad governance of our governments, because I think if governments really started to take ownership of health and just give women and people immunocompromised, but also the population at large, rights and security, then we wouldn’t have to be locked up. I mean, we have seen, this year, lockdowns, wave after wave after wave of COVID. And I think a lot of our risings this year are also an insistence and a demand that people want to get back to normal. But, you know, we’re largely left to our own devices, as always.
So, we really — it’s a call towards our governments to prop up the healthcare systems, educate the people on healthcare and really give services to the people, because I think what One Billion Rising has been pushing for forever, and what COVID has shown us, is that we have been severely neglected by all our governments for a long, long time. And I think COVID has really raised that. So, a lot of our risings now are really a demand for that, a demand for our rights to be reinstated, as well as our security and the safety, because people will not be able to live with thriving life and with aspirations if we continue to stay locked down, no matter if you’re immunocompromised or if you’re impoverished or if you’re just not in a country or a city where you have a healthcare system solid enough to really protect you and back you up.
AMY GOODMAN: And how has vaccine inequity affected women and girls?
MONIQUE WILSON: In the Philippines? Well, we saw a very delayed response with giving us our vaccines. I think this — you know, I was just sharing with people that I’ve just come, actually, from our three-hour One Billion Rising event here in Manila, which was amazing. It was a huge creative resistance event. And it was really the first year, after two years, where we were able to dance with each other, 2,000 people, were able to hug each other. Of course, here, we have to all wear masks, we have to follow all the protocols, because we’re not yet — we’ve not yet reached the vaccination level that we want to. It’s being rolled out now, but it’s still a bit slow. There’s still, of course, some vaccine hesitancy. But I think it’s also part of government neglect that they have not really pushed also education around it.
So, today was really very powerful in a way, because, you know, we’ve risen every year, thousands and thousands of people, and now we are really kind of wanting to not do it online anymore. We want to be with each other. And we will do it as much as we can protect each other. The protection is really at the forefront of everything. And we will do it with all the protocols. But we will insist now on gathering and dancing together, because the energy of that is just different. It’s just — it’s the energy of One Billion Rising that gives hope, as Colani said. It allows for transformation. It’s colorful. It’s vibrant. It’s really what creative resistance looks like.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you —
MONIQUE WILSON: So, I think —
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about —
MONIQUE WILSON: — COVID or no COVID, people are out.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how climate is being more and more included on the issues being addressed by One Billion Rising, you in the Philippines, of course, the Philippines hard hit by the climate emergency?
MONIQUE WILSON: Yeah. You know, one of the most interesting things about our risings, every year, but this year in particular, is that we have a lot of Indigenous community-led risings, certainly here in Asia, but everywhere around the world. Here in the Philippines, I was with Indigenous leaders today. In Thailand, Indigenous communities are leading the risings, also in Bangladesh, also in India.
And it’s really because we have to rise against the destruction of the Earth, the pillaging, the mining, the fracking. It’s really a resistance against the broken systems of capitalism and neoliberalism that, of course, are putting profit over people. So, Indigenous people, of course, are leading the way. They’ve always led the way with these protests, but they’re leading the One Billion Rising activities and protests around the issue of the Earth, because they’re the ones who can very easily put together what this means. You know, when you destroy the Earth, you destroy the women and the girls.
And here, for example, in the Philippines, we have highly militarized mining sites, 200 of them, right? And so, we have also to rise against militarization, because it’s the military that are protecting the mining sites from the people, because they are only serving the interests of the capitalists, that are of course supported by our government. So, tied to that is we have to rise to protect the Earth, rise against all extractive industries, that are pillaging the Earth and also destroying, of course, the Indigenous communities. These are, of course, led by rural women, Indigenous communities.
But we also have to rise against, as V also said, our fascist governments, because it’s our fascist governments who are the ones putting these systems eternally in place. And so, we, for example, in the Philippines, our big rising today is really because we have our national elections coming up in May. And we have to ensure that our One Billion Rising is focused on making sure that we have a much better government, not an authoritarian government, not a pro-business or pro-capitalist government and not a government that is run by fascists, misogynists, patriarchs, who are just hell-bent on destroying, as opposed to allowing things to continue to live.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in the Philippines, the presidential elections that will be taking place in May, you’ve got Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late Philippine dictator of the same name, and the daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte widening their lead in the latest opinion polls for president and vice president. Your response?
MONIQUE WILSON: Well, that’s why our Gabriela Women’s Party, that has been sitting in Congress for many, many years now, and they’ve also been leading the One Billion Rising events, we’re working very, very hard, because we have to really raise the consciousness of people that we cannot fall back into tyrants, you know, a tyrannical rule. We cannot allow children of fascists and tyrants to continue governing this country.
So, we have to do everything we can to rise. We have to also revisit all the revisionism that has happened about our martial law years, you know, when the late Marcos really killed so many people. So many people were placed in prison. So many people were killed. We had a tyrant in place. So we have to make sure that we have to make the people rise, to really ensure that we have a much, much better government. So we have to rise fiercely. We have to rise with honesty, rise with truth, rise with courage, because here, as in many, many other countries, we also get very, very badly vilified by the sitting government, because they’re very authoritarian. We see political prisoners everywhere. We have many, many risings also that are rising for political prisoners, like what’s happening in Belarus now, what’s happening in Myanmar, what’s happening here in the Philippines.
So, the One Billion Rising really can center our focus and our energy into not allowing social media, for example, and revisionism to allow untruths and fake news to promote people who are not really able to govern, but also give people an alternative of what a future can look like. And I think that’s what One Billion Rising has always done. It’s allowed us to see the future, because we are an art and activism movement. We are a creative resistance movement. And we are allowing the imagination to be at play, that, you know, we don’t have to get stuck in these kind of oppressions and this kind of tyranny. We can rise for more, rise for better. But we need collective unity. We need collective power, collective energy to do that. And we need art to do it, too.
AMY GOODMAN: And on that note, we have to wrap. And I want to thank you so much for being with us. We’ve been speaking with three women who are part of the global One Billion Rising: Monique Wilson, speaking to us from Manila, in the Philippines; before that, speaking with Colani Hlatjwako, Africa director of One Billion Rising; and, finally, V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, the founder of One Billion Rising in 2013. We will link to all of the risings, including today’s event at 1 p.m. Eastern, at democracynow.org.
Coming up, “Climate and Punishment.” We’ll look at how the climate emergency is putting incarcerated people across the United States at risk of extreme heat, flooding and wildfires. Stay with us.
A robot dog operating alongside ATVs in the southwest U.S. (photo: Courtesy Ghost Robotics)
As if the border isn’t surveilled and militarized enough, the Department of Homeland Security wants to go full Black Mirror
But it’s just TV, right? Not exactly. The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried.
The latest example came on 1 February, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled “Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border”. DHS dressed up their statement with the kind of adorable language made to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. “The Science and Technology Directorate (S…T) is offering US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) a helping hand (or ‘paw’),” read the release. Isn’t that cute? A picture of the “four-legged ground drone” accompanied the release, and the “Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicle”, as it’s called, looked remarkably (and scarily) similar to the monstrous quadrupeds seen in the Black Mirror episode. But let’s not judge based on appearance. The real issue is that we keep rushing to militarized and technological solutions to what ultimately are human and political questions, creating more problems along the way.
These particular robot dogs are made by Ghost Robotics, which claims that its 100lb machine was “bred” to scale “all types of natural terrain including sand, rocks and hills, as well as human-built environments, like stairs”. Each robot dog is outfitted with a bevy of sensors and able to transmit real-time video and information feeds. The devices are not yet in operation on the US-Mexico border, but a testing and evaluation program is under way in El Paso, Texas.
To listen to DHS, it all sounds so utterly charming and so very next-gen – until you realize that what we’re talking about is the further encroachment of government surveillance on our daily lives. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, “people who live along the border are some of the most heavily surveilled people in the United States. A massive amalgamation of federal, state and local law enforcement and national security agencies are flying drones, putting up cameras and just generally attempting to negate civil liberties – capturing the general goings-on of people who live and work in proximity to the border.”
Then there’s the question of lethal force. These specific ground drones may not be armed, but Ghost Robotics is already infamous for the combination of robot dog and robot rifle. In 2021, small arms manufacturer Sword International (must these companies choose such dystopian names?) outfitted a robot dog from Ghost Robotics with a custom-made weapon, called a “special purpose unmanned rifle” or Spur. This darling invention was unveiled at the annual conference of the Association of the United States Army.
Incidentally, US policy not only does not “prohibit the development or employment” of killer robots (officially known as “lethal autonomous weapon systems,” or Laws) but also opposes any international preemptive ban. Meanwhile, as the Congressional Research Service notes, Israel has already exported what many consider a lethal autonomous weapon system to Chile, China, India, South Korea and Turkey. We’re fast running out of time for robust international dialogue on this issue.
Domestically, the short history of the use of the robot dogs in our cities is also troubling. The Honolulu police department used about $150,000 of pandemic funding to buy their robot dog, which they then used to scan the eyes and take the temperatures of unhoused people to check for symptoms of Covid. The practice raised the alarms of advocates who said the practice was fundamentally dehumanizing. Needless to say, no housed person was treated that way.
And after public outcry in 2021, the New York police department returned its $94,200 robot dog, Digidog. That robot was deployed to a home invasion in the Bronx and to a tense situation in a public housing building in Manhattan, attracting the angry notice of New Yorkers. Once again, many Black and brown New Yorkers felt over-policed, over-surveilled and under-resourced.
“You can’t give me a living wage, you can’t raise a minimum wage, you can’t give me affordable housing; I’m working hard and I can’t get paid leave, I can’t get affordable childcare,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman in a video he posted to Twitter. “Instead we got money, taxpayer money, going to robot dogs?”
Bowman is hardly alone. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized both the NYPD’s robot dog in 2021 and the recent news of robot dogs at the border. “It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization,” she recently tweeted. “From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS.”
She’s right, of course, as is Bowman. Where exactly are our priorities?
The Biden administration has a chance to stop this program in its tracks before the border becomes even more of a militarized, technological dystopia. We’re so easily mesmerized by the massive capabilities of technology, but the fact is that techno-military solutions to human problems too often create more problems than they solve. Just ask the unhoused populations in Honolulu, the urban poor in New York, and – if the program’s not cancelled – asylum seekers on the border. These are the people whose daily realities are increasingly being militarized by this technology. And because they are vulnerable and without political clout, they’re the ones closest to living in a Black Mirror episode. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sold a hi-tech bill of goods that unites everything that Americans love – technology, dogs and guns – and told to believe it’s all for the best.
Look, I love my tech and all it can do as much as the next person, but when our embrace of technology reduces rather than enhances our dignity, then we have a problem. Humans deserve better. And frankly, so do dogs – even robot ones.
Physician Joe Nelson, center, talks with staff at Whole Women's Health in Austin in September. (photo: Julia Robinson/WP)
With Texas’s strict abortion ban still in effect, patients have been forced to wait weeks for an appointment — disqualifying many who otherwise would have been able to access abortion
She was a single mother with two kids at home, experiencing a rare pregnancy condition that had left her too nauseous to work, said Nelson, a doctor at Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion clinic in Austin. The woman was over the legal limit established by Texas’s restrictive new law, Nelson said, but just barely. A few days earlier, he could have performed the abortion.
Then she said something that made Nelson’s heart sink: “I called two weeks ago.”
This was the first available appointment.
When Senate Bill 8 took effect in September, banning abortions in Texas at six weeks of pregnancy and empowering private citizens to enforce the law, abortion providers expected patient traffic to plummet. Knowing that less than 20 percent of abortions in the state took place before the six-week mark, some clinics adjusted accordingly, and chose not to replace the large group of staff members who left their jobs in the fall for reasons related to the new law. The impact of S.B. 8 was immediate: The number of abortions performed in Texas fell by half.
But then something surprising happened. As news of the law spread, patients eager to receive treatment before the six-week deadline started calling clinics earlier in their pregnancies, sometimes even before a positive pregnancy test. The influx maxed out capacity at clinics that had started operating with what Nelson called a “skeleton crew.” Patients started waiting as long as two weeks for an appointment, doctors said, a delay that has disqualified many who otherwise would have been able to access abortion.
People seeking abortions in Texas were already up against an extremely tight deadline with the new six-week limit imposed by S.B. 8. Once they miss their period — if their menstrual cycle is regular, and they’re tracking it carefully — they have less than two weeks to schedule an appointment, come in for an initial consultation, and come back, at least 24 hours later, as required by law, to get their abortion.
Now, the appointment backlog means the window for abortion care has narrowed even further.
“If there is a two-week waiting period, you would have had to schedule your abortion before you missed your period,” Nelson said. “How can we possibly expect patients to do that?”
With new six-week abortion bans surfacing in at least 14 state legislatures, ahead of a key Supreme Court decision that could overturn or significantly weaken Roe v. Wade, GOP leaders continue to argue that a six-week window leaves patients with enough time to access abortion. But the situation on the ground in Texas suggests a different reality, where overstretched clinics are unable to meet the need, and even patients who detect their pregnancies early are cut off from abortion care.
“They will time out and be too far along,” said Kathy Kleinfeld, the director of Houston Women’s Reproductive Services, an abortion clinic in Houston.
Recently, she said, she has seen a marked uptick in patients traveling more than three hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Even with five abortion clinics in that area, Kleinfeld said her patients have cited wait times as long as three weeks.
“They simply do not have two or three weeks to wait,” she said.
Some Texas providers have recognized the problem and are already working to correct it.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, one of the largest abortion providers in Texas, said she became aware of the delays at her clinics in January. To try to fix the problem, she said, she has recently hired several new staff members across her Texas clinics. Clinics are already seeing shorter wait times because of the new hires, she said.
Still, she said, the decision to go on a hiring spree amid S.B. 8 was a risk.
“I don’t have the income to support it right now,” said Hagstrom Miller, whose business has suffered considerable financial losses since S.B. 8 took effect.
The six-week ban sparked an “exodus,” with doctors and staff leaving Texas abortion clinics even before the law took effect, said Hagstrom Miller. Nine of her network’s 17 doctors in the state stopped performing abortions under the new law, and several other key staff members quit, with many fearing the costly lawsuits almost anyone could now file against them.
Hagstrom Miller decided not to rehire for the vacant positions, she said. Unsure of what the Texas abortion landscape might look like in the future, she said, she was wary of having to hire people, and then lay them off.
Patient demand for abortions has been hard to predict. Blair Cushing, a doctor who works in McAllen, where patients are waiting up to two weeks to be seen, said she was surprised to see so many people coming into the clinic before their fourth week of pregnancy, before an ultrasound can detect a fetus, and too early to get an abortion. Some patients come in even before they have a positive pregnancy test, she said, worried their birth control might have failed.
“It seems ridiculous but that’s how scared people are,” Cushing said.
Staff members at crisis pregnancy centers, organizations that are largely faith-based and antiabortion, have noticed the same trend. Advertising free or discounted ultrasounds, these centers have attracted large numbers of people seeking abortions since S.B. 8 took effect, with patients desperate to determine whether they’re under the six-week limit.
At the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi, Tex., about half of patients identified by the center as “at risk” for choosing abortion are now coming in before the fetus is visible on the ultrasound, said executive director Jana Pinson.
In her eight years working there, Pinson said, the pregnancy center has never seen so many patients this early in their pregnancies.
While Pinson is thrilled that S.B. 8 has prevented so many abortions in Texas, she worries that people are having a “knee-jerk reaction” to the new law, scheduling ultrasounds and abortion appointments before they’ve had time to really consider their decision. She said she wishes people would “slow down” and wait to see how the baby is forming in their uterus.
“But instead they’re going in at four weeks,” she said.
At Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, a network with five abortion clinics across the state, staff members are only scheduling a few days of appointments at a time, to get patients in as soon as possible, said spokeswoman Autumn Keiser. This is only feasible, she added, because Planned Parenthood has so many health centers across the state: If they don’t have room at the clinic closest to the patient, they send the patient to another location. Occasionally they’ll send patients to other clinics as well, she said.
Keiser said Planned Parenthood may not always be able to find another location with available appointments nearby. In January, she said, some Planned Parenthood clinics were forced to close temporarily for coronavirus-related reasons. Those closures may have forced patients to drive across the state, she said, or even leave Texas.
Texas patients who can afford to travel out of state will also face delays. Schedules are backed up in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Colorado, as clinics struggle to absorb the surge of patients traveling from Texas. Patients are waiting two weeks for an appointment in Oklahoma, where abortion is legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, said Zachary Gingrich-Gaylord, a spokesperson for Trust Women, a network of abortion clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas. Wait times are up to four weeks in Louisiana, which also has a 22-week limit, said Kleinfeld, who regularly checks in with clinics in neighboring states to assess how she should advise her patients.
At Whole Women’s Health in Austin, Nelson said he used to work alongside eight or nine other staff members, including sonographers, patient advocates and medical assistants. These days, he said, he is often in the clinic with only two or three other employees.
“Everyone is working with a skeleton crew at this point,” he said. “We’re all having to do more than we’re used to doing. It slows everything down.
Half of the staff members at his clinic left when S.B. 8 took effect — and since then, he added, it’s “only gotten worse.”
Abortion clinics are experiencing the same staff shortages as the larger health-care industry, Hagstrom Miller said, for many of the same reasons. The pandemic has led people to quit their jobs, and the omicron variant prompted a wave of unexpected absences, she said.
Some reasons behind the staff shortages are specific to abortion clinics. If the Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer, Texas would immediately ban all abortions with a “trigger law” that’s already on the books. In that scenario, Nelson said, many clinics would be forced to close — and staff members are worried about job security.
“When the future of abortion is so uncertain that you don’t know if you’re going to be operating in a week or two, who’s going to want to stay in that job?” Nelson said.
“Nobody.”
A teenager was killed in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers after troops arrived to demolish the home of a man accused of shooting dead an Israeli. (photo: Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)
ALSO SEE | Occupied Palestinian Territory: Israeli Army
Shoots Boy in Head
Confrontations took place after Israeli forces demolished the home of a man accused of killing an Israeli last year.
The health ministry said Mohammed Abu Salah was killed in the village of Silat al-Harithiya as troops arrived late on Sunday to demolish the home of Muhammad Jaradat, a man accused of killing an Israeli settler late last year.
Israeli forces were accompanied by a military bulldozer and prevented the entry and exit of vehicles.
According to local media sources, dozens of Palestinians from neighbouring villages and towns went to Silat al-Harithiya on foot once they heard of the Israeli raid.
The Palestinian health ministry said dozens were injured by live ammunition and rubber coated bullets fired by the Israeli army.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its ambulances were prevented from accessing the village.
Witnesses said soldiers and Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire.
Hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks and petrol bombs at the soldiers, who responded with “riot dispersal equipment and also fired at gunmen they had spotted”, a statement by the Israeli military said, without commenting directly on the teenager’s death.
“The troops identified a number of armed rioters, and fired towards them in order to neutralise the threat,” the statement.
Jaradat has been charged with killing an Israeli in a shooting attack on a car near the illegal Jewish outpost of Homesh on December 16. The former settlement was evacuated as part of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
The floor of the house where Jaradat’s family lived was demolished by explosives.
Israel says demolitions carried out at assailants’ homes can help deter future assaults.
Rights groups have condemned the tactic, which often targets homes where other family members also live, as collective punishment.
In the past year, Israeli demolishment and seizure of Palestinian structures across the occupied West Bank increased by 32 percent from 2020, with demolitions average two per week. At least 656 Palestinians were displaced as a result, including 359 children.
Elephants. (photo: Karl Ammann)
Genetics can reveal the shared origin points of separate ivory shipments, which should help make it easier to prosecute elephant poachers and smugglers.
The new study, which tested more than 4,000 African elephant tusks seized over 17 years in 12 African nations, shows the grave extent of illegal ivory trading across the world. But it also provides some insights that could help authorities shut down these trade networks and bolster efforts to protect elephant species in Africa.
“These methods are showing us that a handful of networks are behind a majority of smuggled ivory, and that the connections between these networks are deeper than even our previous research showed,” Samuel Wasser, a UW biologist who led the new study, said in a statement.
Wasser and his team aren’t new to this work—they released findings in 2018 that used genetic testing to identify tusks that came from the same elephant but were separated and smuggled into different shipments before seizure. Armed with the knowledge of how shipments in different parts of the world came from the same origin point, authorities were able to pin down popular illegal trade routes involving three African ports (Mombasa, Kenya; Entebbe, Uganda; and Lomé, Togo.)
The new study is a significant step up from there. Wasser and his team used genetic testing to identify not just if tusks came from the same elephant, but also if they came from the same family of elephants—be they parents and offspring, siblings, half siblings, or other relationships.
Through testing of more than 4,320 tusks from 49 shipments seized from 2002 to 2019, the team showed that most poachers are hunting the same elephant populations year after year, and that it’s likely the same handful of cartel networks that are acquiring and smuggling these tusks out of Africa.
A deeper analysis also showed how these cartels shifted the bulk of their operations from Tanzania in the early 2000s, to Kenya and Uganda. Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are also newer hotspots for ivory smuggling, and there’s been a new shift of illegal exports from Togo to Nigeria.
Wasser expects the new data to help make it easier to prosecute illegal ivory traders and nail down their responsibility for a broader array of seizures, which would lead to more severe penalties.
“By linking individual seizures, we’re laying out whole smuggling networks that are trying to get these tusks off the continent,” said Wasser.
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