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07 May 22
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The supreme court draft ruling on abortion shows how desperate some are to control our bodies. But we are never going back
What is it about our bodies that makes you so afraid, so insecure, so cruel and punishing?
Is it their singular autonomy or mere existence?
Is it their capacity for immense and unending pleasure – orgasms that can multiply orgasms inside orgasms? Is it our skin? Is it our desire?
Is it our openness that rattles you and reminds you of where you are closed?
Is it the pure strength of our bodies that allows us to bleed and birth and bend and carry and continue on in spite of all the ways you have reduced us and objectified us, humiliated us and disrespected us and tried to shape us into baby-making machines? Our strength that is inherent and doesn’t need to prove itself or show off or rely on weapons or violence to control and terrorise? Doesn’t need to abolish laws, or lie to become supreme court judges or president or rig the decks when they get there.
Do you know this power? Can you imagine it? A power that comes from respecting life, caring for others before oneself, holding communities together?
Do you think we are naive enough to believe that you are motivated by your care for life when you have shown so little respect for it and us? Instead you spend your days unravelling and resisting all that makes life possible for those mothers and people with babies you claim to protect – fighting against free universal healthcare, parental paid leave and child allowance. Where’s your outrage that the US has the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world?
Do you think we have forgotten that some of those (Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas) who are making the most crucial decisions about millions of our bodies and the one (Donald Trump) who chose three of the people on the court currently making these decisions, are men who have been accused of violating other women’s bodies, harassing women’s bodies, humiliating and proudly bragging about grabbing the genitals of women’s bodies?
What is it about our bodies that make you think you have the right to invade them, determine them, control and legislate them, violate and force them to do anything against their will?
Perhaps you mistake our generosity for weakness, our patience for passivity, our vulnerability for fragility.
This might be why you are unable to see that there is no chance in hell that we are ever going back. This is not a law yet and we will never accept this ruling.
Perhaps because you have never known what it is like to have your body controlled by the vindictive anonymous state, to be raped and forced to keep your baby, to be so desperate that you destroy your uterus with a hanger or bleed to death in a back alley, you do not understand that once you have tasted the sweetness of freedom, of choice, once you have come to know your body as your own, once you have freed yourself and felt the expanse of your body, the aliveness in every pore that rises from autonomy, there is no way you will ever give that up. Ever.
And because you do not know this, you do not know how dangerous we are, how organised we are, how willing we are to go any lengths to preserve our freedom.
It’s been 50 years. We have summoned our due. We actually have bank accounts now. We have credit cards and we can buy a house. We can serve on juries. We hold offices and are lawyers. We write for newspapers and we run them. We host TV shows and direct movies. We run hospitals and universities and non-profits and write plays about vaginas and books about fascists and fascism. We can’t be tossed aside.
This is our world now. And these are our bodies. We know what you are up to – this is just the beginning of your diabolical plan to rob us of contraception and marriage equality and civil rights and on and on. This is all part of your desperation to prevent the future that is on the verge of being born – a future where we know our past and begin to reckon with it, a future where we teach critical race theory and the truth about white supremacy and sexism and transphobia.
A future where we care for our Earth and devote our lives to protecting air and water and forests and animals and all living things, a future where people have autonomy over their bodies and wombs and gender and marry who they want to, and don’t get married if they don’t want to, and have babies if they want to, and don’t have babies if they don’t want to. Despite all your lies, strategies and devious ways you are simply never going to stop us.
You have unleashed our fury, our solidarity, our unity.
We know that our future and everything we have fought for is at stake. I am willing to lay my body down for this freedom, for every freedom and I know there are multitudes who will do the same.
Youth pro-abortion rights demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on May 5, 2022. (photo: Bryan Dozier/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Republicans say they don’t want to punish people who get abortions. Their bills say otherwise.
The bill comes just days after the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Without Roe as a guardrail, experts predict that roughly half of U.S. states would ban abortion.
Tennessee is one of those states, which may initially make this new law seem unnecessary in a post-Roe United States. However, as legal access to abortion clinics dwindles, people will likely turn to self-managed abortion and order abortion-inducing pills online. After Texas last year enacted a law that banned abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, requests for help from a service that ships abortion-inducing pills spiked by 174 percent, a study found in February.
Self-managed abortion, using pills and early on in pregnancy, can be safe, medical experts say. But it does carry legal risks: If/When/How, a group that runs a legal defense for people facing criminal investigations for self-managed abortions, has discovered that since 2000, more than 60 people have faced criminal consequences for self-managing their own abortion or helping someone else manage theirs.
Abortion patients are shielded from criminal and civil penalties under the new Tennessee law. However, experts say that if prosecutors want to go after someone for a self-managed abortion, they will often find a statute that’s pliable enough to do it.
An abortion restriction that advanced this week in Louisiana does explicitly aim to penalize people who get abortions—by classifying abortion as homicide. In Louisiana, homicide is punishable with the death penalty.
The bill is headed to the full Louisiana House for debate.
Anti-abortion advocates have long grappled with the question of what do with people who get abortions: Are they deliberately murdering their own children, or are they being hoodwinked by predatory medical professionals? Successful abortion restrictions have long leaned towards the latter answer, and focused on penalizing abortion providers rather than patients. The infamous Texas abortion ban lets people sue anyone who “aids or abets” an illegal abortion—not the individuals who undergo them.
But legislation that directly targets abortion patients has occasionally surfaced. In 2021, a Texas legislator introduced a bill that would charge women and doctors who perform abortions with homicide, which in Texas is punishable with the death penalty. Another Texas lawmaker had previously introduced similar bills.
“Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail,” read a messaging memo drafted this week by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s campaign apparatus. “Mothers should be held harmless under the law.”
If Roe falls and states are able to regulate and punish abortion as they see fit, that may not be true.
Vladimir Putin. (photo: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)
Russian troops have begun sharing tips with one another on how to deliberately damage Russian tanks and disobey orders, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
"I don't follow stupid orders, I simply refuse,” one fighter can be heard telling a comrade. “The motherf*cker sent me to tanks, motherf*cking piece of shit. I f*cked it up and that's it.”
When the fellow Russian soldier on the other end of the line heard the unit wasn’t punished for the insubordination, he indicated he might repeat the tactic later in his own unit.
Another Russian fighter shared with a family member that he and his comrades deliberately damaged their tank—the last one left in their regiment—to interfere with an attack plan, as well, according to another intercept the SBU shared.
“We have one tank left in the regiment,” he said. “In short, we broke our tank ourselves in the morning so as not to go.”
Throughout the invasion, Russian battle plans haven’t gone the way Putin has wanted them to, leaving Putin frustrated and on edge, according to a senior U.S. defense official. One of his major goals was to capture the capital, Kyiv, and install a pro-Putin puppet government. But his troops faltered outside of the capital for days and had countless logistics problems, and in particular had troubles with the fueling, according to the defense official.
And while some U.S. officials have said for weeks that it’s at times been unclear if Russia’s military’s failings are due to lack of planning or just poor execution of plans, the intercepted calls suggest in some cases the answer is much simpler. The troops themselves are disobeying orders and sabotaging the war effort on purpose.
A mainstay of the war has been images of Russians abandoning their equipment and weapons. Russian military morale has been low from the beginning of the invasion, and it’s not getting any better; Russian troops have begun posting on social media begging for donations to the war effort, showing a side-by-side comparison between their dismal first-aid kits and the Ukrainians.
The Russian war effort isn’t only being hampered from the inside. Inspired by the Russians’ intercepted phone calls, Ukraine’s government encouraged other Russian troops to disobey orders and refuse to attack, echoing earlier calls to surrender and abandon the war path.
“The SBU welcomes this practice,” the SBU said in a statement Friday. "But even it can be improved—just ‘give up’ and leave the war in Ukraine!”
Ukrainians have been putting up a stiff resistance from day one of the war, surprising Putin along the way, according to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, too, has been providing key intelligence that has helped the Ukrainians target key Russian assets, including the Russian warship the Moskva, which sank in the Black Sea after Ukrainians hit it in a missile strike in April, according to The Washington Post.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby has acknowledged the intelligence-sharing effort but said the U.S. had no part in the targeting.
Greg Abbott. (photo: Joel Martinez/The Monitor/AP
The Austin American-Statesman reports that Abbott on Wednesday said Texas “will resurrect” a 1982 Supreme Court case requiring states to provide free public education to all children, including the children of undocumented immigrants.
“Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler vs. Doe,” Abbott said on a conservative talk radio show. “And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue. … I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”
Public education has been increasingly demonized by the right, particularly surrounding sex, gender, and racial issues. Conservative candidates running in contested primaries have been hammering the issues of critical race theory and gender education in state-run schools to rounds of applause, while singing the values of private education. State legislatures are passing bills that hamstring school discretion over how to educate children, arguing that parents should be the ones controlling curriculums. The backlash has grown to the point that some on the right are questioning whether public schools should exist at all.
It seems ludicrous, but it’s clear that after the Supreme Court’s draft decision on Roe v. Wade leaked earlier this week, conservatives are plotting out which other cases they can turn out to advance their broader goals. Justice Alito’s draft decision on Roe specifically referenced both Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized sodomy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage, saying that “none of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.” Abbott, meanwhile, is licking his chops over Plyler vs. Doe. Conservatives control the Supreme Court by a 6-3 margin. The GOP sees the draft decision on Roe as a green light to abuse their advantage as much as possible.
Abbott framed the potential of overturning Plyler v. Doe as a way to lessen the costs of educating undocumented immigrants, giving the plan a convenient spin that dovetails with a common conservative talking point. But overturning Plyer v. Doe may result not just in relief for overburdened school systems; it could create a gateway for their abolition, further crippling education in America and shuffling more children into a privatized system with few common standards. It would be a disastrous turn not just for children of undocumented immigrants, but for children all across America.
Abbott is one of the nation’s most extreme right-wing governors, and though he may be the first to suggest axing Plyler vs. Doe, other Republican governors, statehouses, and national administrations are liable to follow his lead. They already did so with the state’s abortion ban.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (C), Texas Solicitor General Judd E. Stone and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt walk out of the U.S. Supreme Court after arguments in their case about Title 42 on April 26 in Washington, DC. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
But the Texas attorney general is hardly alone in his enthusiasm for litigation. Because Congress has failed to act meaningfully since the 1990s to reform the U.S. immigration system, immigration policy has been increasingly shaped by court challenges. In recent years, liberal and conservative attorneys general, nonprofit organizations, and individual plaintiffs have filed an avalanche of immigration-related suits in federal courts, resulting in a profusion of complex and often-contradictory court rulings, experts tell TIME. With Congress on the sidelines, federal judges are now on the frontlines of interpreting and dictating the scope of executive actions, federal guidelines and agency rules—thereby determining how U.S. immigration policy actually works.
“This is a manifestation of our broken immigration system,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law at Cornell University, tells TIME. Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform has resulted in an explosion of agency rules and executive actions—which, in turn, lead to more legal challenges, he says. “Today, almost every executive action on immigration is being challenged in the courts.”
This ad-hoc system has resulted, both at the U.S.-Mexico border and within government agencies, in “peak confusion,” says Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a Washington think tank. New federal rules or guidances are often blocked, terminated, or forcefully reinstated, sometimes with additional restrictions or requirements, just days or weeks after they were announced. Government officials, immigration lawyers, and lay people are often baffled about the contours of U.S. law, says Elora Mukherjee, professor of law at Columbia University and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.
Giving judges so much power to determine immigration policy also puts the U.S. judicial system in a delicate spot, Yale-Loehr says. Federal judges are often wary of being drawn into issues of national sovereignty or of ruling in a way that impinges on the executive branch’s authority to conduct foreign policy. But, these days, they often have no choice. “Courts are loath to weigh in,” Yale-Loehr says.
Recently, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer questioned the role of his own court in deciding a case about the Trump-era policy, Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires the Biden Administration to negotiate with the Mexican government over sending migrants back to Mexico to await asylum hearings. During April 26 oral arguments, Breyer warned his fellow justices to move gingerly. “Foreign affairs is involved,” he said. “And, Judges, this is above your pay grade, okay? Stay out of it as much as you can.”
How did we get here?
Immigration-related litigation has been around for decades, but many experts point to a moment, in 2016, when the floodgates opened.
On June 23, 2016, the Supreme Court voted 4-4 on a case brought by Texas challenging whether a key Obama Administration executive action known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), could move forward. (Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016, had yet to be replaced.) DAPA, an expanded version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), would have granted some parents of those who arrived unlawfully in the U.S. as children protection from deportation. The tie vote meant the lower court’s decision blocking DAPA remained in place—a very high-profile win for Texas. The victory provided a key roadmap for other attorneys general in the years that followed.
When President Donald Trump was inaugurated, it was the liberals’ turn at bat. Within days of Trump taking office, the ACLU brought a suit challenging the new Administration’s ban on foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the U.S. Over the course of his tenure, the Trump Administration was sued hundreds of times over immigration policies. Overall, the Trump Administration was sued 110 times by then California Attorney General Xavier Bacerra, a Democrat, according to an analysis by CalMatters, and at least 400 times by the ACLU in lawsuits. The lawsuits contested a range of immigration, environmental, and other types of executive policies.
Another reason for the recent explosion of court challenges was the pace at with the Trump Administration moved on immigration issues. Over the course of his presidency, he enacted 472 immigration policy changes according to the Migration Policy Institute, a bipartisan research institution. That “unprecedented pace” begot an unprecedented wave of new lawsuits. “That really accelerated the legal challenges,” Yale-Loehr says.
After President Biden was inaugurated, conservatives picked up where liberals had left off. “Conservative states are suing every chance they get to challenge everything that the Biden Administration is doing on immigration,” Yale-Loehr says.
An explosion of confusion at U.S. borders
Texas Attorney General Paxton’s most recent lawsuit targets the Biden Administration’s tweak to asylum processing designed to eliminate immigration court backlogs. The idea is that, by allowing asylum officers to decide straightforward asylum cases, rather than always relying on an immigration judge, authorities can drop the wait time for asylum cases from an average few years to a few months. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) first announced the shift on March 24, saying it would go into effect on May 31. Texas filed suit on April 28.
The asylum tweak coincides with the Administration’s attempt to end Title 42, a controversial COVID-19 health measure implemented in March 2020 that the government has used to immediately expel thousands of migrants, including those planning to claim asylum. Title 42 expulsions are slated to end on May 23, and DHS says it expects an uptick in migration flows as a result, including an increase in people seeking asylum. Granting asylum officers the authority to decide some cases, DHS says, will help address growing migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But at this point, that entire policy—the Administration’s move to end Title 42, as well as its move to mitigate the effects of ending Title 42—are mired in court. On April 4, Louisiana, Missouri, and Arizona sued to block the Administration from ending Title 42 at all. The states’ challenge came on the heels of another lawsuit, brought by the ACLU and other organizations, demanding that the Biden Administration end Title 42 immediately.
This fog of judicial warfare has resulted in a confusing patchwork of temporary policies. On March 4, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that DHS can expel migrants under Title 42, but could not return families to a country where they faced fear of persecution or torture. That same day, Texas District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled that the Biden Administration can’t exempt unaccompanied migrant children from Title 42 expulsions.
“That kind of back and forth is just terrible for any sort of consistency or continuity in any policy,” Cardinal Brown says.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will weigh in this summer on whether the Biden Administration can end MPP, also known as “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Congress fails to pass any real immigration reform
President Joe Biden sent an immigration reform bill to Congress on his first day in office, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. On Sunday, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the bill’s lead sponsor, told Politico that there is “zero” chance immigration reform will come this year, even though Democrats hold a slim majority in the House and Senate.
The odds of passing Biden’s comprehensive immigration reform bill may worsen after the midterms, when Democrats are widely expected to lose seats.
Last week, a bipartisan group of Senators including Dick Durbin, Ill., Alex Padilla, Calif., Thom Tillis, N.C., and John Cornyn, Texas, resumed discussions of passing immigration measures, according to Roll Call. Even their efforts are unlikely to go anywhere, many Americans may be happy to see that discussions are taking place. According to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, 75% of Americans say they support Congress creating a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented people, including 57% of Republicans or those who lean Republican, and 89% of Democrats or those who lean Democratic.
“The American public overwhelmingly supports immigration,” Mukherjee of Columbia says. “The challenge is that our Congress is not functional.”
Protesters march to the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority offices in Pretoria, on June 25, 2021. They were demanding that vaccines from Russia and China be supplied to South Africans. (photo: Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty Images)
A conversation with South African public health activist Tian Johnson about outrageous global inequalities in access to Covid vaccines, tests and treatments.
But in the year since, the Biden administration has failed to deliver. U.S. representatives have dragged their feet at the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the body that oversees intellectual property rules at the WTO. The Biden administration declined to support the version of the waiver (commonly referred to as a TRIPS waiver) that was initially proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020, and has not done enough to stop the European Union from obstructing progress on an agreement that has teeth. A new proposed agreement on intellectual property now circulating at the TRIPS Council has been blasted by global health activists for excluding tests and treatments, cutting off entire countries (like China and all “developed” nations), and imposing new barriers to the production of generics. Alongside the European Union, the United States bears responsibility for some of the harmful provisions in this proposal, though the Biden administration has not yet said whether it endorses the text.
Overall, the picture is grim: The WTO seems far from passing a satisfactory intellectual property waiver, though global health activists aren’t giving up. In the meantime, U.S. funding for global vaccinations and pandemic aid has dried up, in the face of outright GOP obstruction, and the Biden administration has fallen woefully behind in delivering on vaccine pledges. With other wealthy countries failing as well, global vaccine inequalities are staggering. Just 21.3% of the population of the entire continent of Africa has received at least one vaccine dose. This compares to 79% in the United States and Canada. In Burundi, just 0.1% of the population has been fully vaccinated, and in Haiti, just 1.1%. Researchers have identified 120 manufacturers in Asia, Latin America and Africa that have the ability to start making mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, but are unable to because Moderna and Pfizer will not share the recipes and technological know-how. And as efforts to free intellectual property falter, it’s looking increasingly clear that governments will not compel those companies to do so.
In These Times spoke with Tian Johnson, founder and strategist at the African Alliance, which works to secure social justice and dignified healthcare across the continent of Africa. Johnson is also community co-chair of the African Vaccine Delivery Alliance, which is an initiative of Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and was “set up to ensure the rapid deployment of vaccines and associated supplies/equipment,” according to its organizational description. Johnson, who is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and does work across the continent, has been an activist for 20 years, focusing on public health support for people with HIV and AIDS, reproductive health and prevention of gender-based violence.
What would the concrete effect of having a real robust TRIPS waiver be on vaccine supply across the Global South?
Tian Johnson: A meaningful TRIPS waiver equals a step towards independence. A meaningful TRIPS waiver means that we are able to take our destiny into our own hands sooner. It means that we will no longer be beholden to pharmaceutical companies of the Global North.
But I think, also, we have to focus our energies on initiatives like the WHO mRNA hub. The hub has already been undermined by Moderna, which has applied for patents in South Africa relating to its Covid-19 vaccine, meaning the company could seek to prevent the hub from making its own version of the mRNA shot.
We cannot go into the next wave of the pandemic relying on Johnson … Johnson, relying on Moderna, to be benevolent, to be generous — not even generous, but to treat us as beneficiaries of their good will. That’s not how justice works. We’ve never demanded charity, we’ve always demanded justice. And that means if you have the answer to reducing death and hospitalization, if you have the answer to reducing severe illness as a result of the pandemic, and you are refusing to share that with us, that tells us you are not on the side of humanity — you’re not on the side of saving lives.
We’ve known this: These are the same pharmaceutical companies that took the government of Nelson Mandela to court when we were struggling for access to antiretrovirals in this country. So we are not holding our breath. We’re not waiting for pharma to have an “Aha!” moment. We’re not waiting for the secret number — X billion dollars — of profits to be reached before Moderna says, “Okay guys, we’ve reached the peak of our profits. Let’s now help everyone else stay alive.” We’re under no illusions that they will have a moment of reckoning, or that they will develop a conscience. This is what they do. They’ve shown us this with HIV, and now they’re showing us this with Covid. And if we don’t act drastically to destabilize the current status quo, this pattern will be repeated in the next pandemic.
[Editor’s note: In 1998, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa and 39 pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Merck, sued the South African government, accusing it of violating the TRIPS agreement through its legislative reforms aimed at expanding access to life-saving AIDS medicines. The lawsuit named Mandela as the first defendant. The companies eventually dropped the lawsuit, following bad publicity.]
One year ago today, the Biden administration said that it was going to support an intellectual property waiver. Do you feel that the administration has delivered on the spirit of that promise?
Tian: I think absolutely not, and it’s a reflection of how weak the leadership has been, from all quarters, whether the Global North or the Global South. There’s been leadership shown by South Africa and India in really pushing for this waiver, and when we heard that Biden had stated his support of the waiver, it really gave us hope.
But 12 months later, it’s very clear that the current Biden administration is under pressure by pharmaceutical companies not to share tech, not to share know-how. You can’t help but make the links and begin to think, “How much influence and pressure does big pharma have on the White House?”
It will be interesting to see how this second Covid summit next week manifests. It’s stunning to us that the Biden administration can convene a global summit and not bring anything to the table. How are you expecting all of your so-called guests to put funds for the global Covid response in a bucket when your very own Congress is not only cutting Covid relief spending, but pushing back against funding the global response?
We are ready to call on Congress to have a reality check: Your third or fourth doses are great, but in Africa, where we have yet to vaccinate even half of our healthcare workers, what does that mean? This pandemic cannot be over with Africa sitting here facing our fifth wave. It’s a fifth wave of death, it’s a fifth wave of destruction of livelihoods. This pandemic is anything but over.
In the United States, there is a growing perception that the pandemic is over. Can you talk a little bit more about how it isn’t over for people in South Africa and for the continent of Africa?
Tian: In a continent where we have yet to vaccinate even half of our healthcare workers, how does anybody with a functioning mind say the pandemic is over? The reality is, the next variant will teach America, the next variant will teach Europeans — all of whom have stood in the way of expediting the end of the pandemic, and in complicity with pharma in their lust for profits over lives — that the pandemic is not over.
So, despite all the boosters, the fact that Americans are vaccinating their zoo animals, while we do not even have access to a first shot, tells us everything we need to know about the perverted global health system. It tells us all we need to know about the urgency to decolonize global health, and reminds us again that “global solidarity” is a lie. So within that context, we would say to folks in America, to the world really, that it’s spectacularly naive, it’s spectacularly short-sighted, and it’s totally unscientific to say that the “pandemic is over” with such large portions of this continent being unvaccinated. It’s absolutely staggering that we should even have to advocate for this.
And we’re seeing key players — from U.S. lobbyists to Bill Gates — pushing a narrative that ’we all just need to move on now.’ Gates just launched a book titled, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.” So, in his mind, we’ve already moved on. And so what does that mean in a continent like ours?
Some seek to justify vaccine apartheid by making the argument, “We’re giving the vaccines at the African continent, but countries are not distributing them and there was vaccine hesitancy.” What is your response to those arguments?
Tian: One of our biggest failings in the pandemic has been communication: We’ve left communities behind. We’ve seen global summits, we’ve seen press junkets, we’ve seen these high-level meetings, we’ve seen multi-billion dollar funding and donations to multilateral bodies. But none of them can convincingly stand in front of us and explain how they brought communities along.
Back in the day, I used to run programs on reproductive health. We would advocate for every dollar that you spend on a condom, you need a dollar to spend on programming it. People don’t just magically uptake these health interventions, right? And so, one of the biggest injustices is the lack of resources that have gone to community engagement, to ensure that those vaccines get into arms. And I think that’s one of our biggest tragedies.
It’s the double standard that is shocking. No one called for a halt on vaccine supply to the U.S. or the E.U., which have significant anti-vax populations. Instead, the opposite happened. America was flooded with vaccines to the point where you had no idea what to do with them. But the minute Africans started demanding the same? “They’re hesitant? Can they absorb it? Can they handle it? Do they know what to do with it? What will happen to the cold storage? Will they steal the fridges?”
What are the demands that you have for the Biden administration?
Tian: First of all, we want leadership. That means the American public calling on their elected representatives to demand that a vaccine that has been developed using their money — not Moderna’s goodwill fund, not personal funding of Moderna’s shareholders — their money. It is your American taxpayer dollars that have made the Moderna vaccine possible, and it should be shared if you truly believe that your destiny is tied in with mine.
We want the Biden administration to show some leadership and take urgent and aggressive action to allow that recipe, tech and know-how to be shared. The success of the WHO’s hubs depends on it. Part of our future, and part of the way we respond to the next pandemic, depends on it. Moderna needs to share the recipe because it’s not theirs to keep.
We want you to get angry about the fact that this private pharmaceutical company, that is churning out billionaires, is refusing to share a life-saving technology with the rest of the world. And if that’s not good enough to move you, think about your next safari to Africa. Think about your next visit to Table Mountain. Think about the next time you go to Kenya to see the giraffes. And then think about that variant that will stare you in the face. Think about how your voice could have ensured that we never have to face another variant.
The second issue is around Congress. And it’s around ensuring that Congress meaningfully funds the domestic and the international Covid response. The fact that your Congress can refuse to support an international response to a pandemic that has done the damage it has done, and will continue to do, wave after wave after wave, is something that needs to deeply concern Americans.
Do you have any demands around the TRIPS waiver? Would you like to see Biden support the version that was initially proposed by India and South Africa?
Tian: Well, we would call on the U.S. to reject the leaked text. What we would like Biden to support is what South Africa and India have called for in October 2020 — a full TRIPS waiver. Anything less will lock us into this pandemic. What it practically means is that we will not be able to manufacture vaccines, tests, and diagnostics to the scale that we need to.
In this continent, if you are a teacher in Zimbabwe, half of your salary goes to a Covid test. It’s unacceptable that, in the same year, a primary school child, a seven-year-old in Germany, arrives at the primary school and they’re given a self test and they test themselves. And at the end of that testing period, the class raises their hand and they say who’s tested positive, who’s tested negative. And the children who have tested positive, they go home to rest. But the rest, they stay in that classroom and they move on with their day. So why is the right of that seven-year-old German child not comparable to the rights of a 34-year-old teacher in Harare, Zimbabwe who cannot afford a test, and who has to make the choice between knowing their Covid status or buying bread?
Why is it such a difficult equation for the world to understand that until we have vaccine equity, testing equity, treatment equity, we will be here, year after year after year? And that is why we fight and will continue to fight for justice.
The Cerro Pelado fire in New Mexico, seen on May 6 from Cochiti, burns in the Jemez Mountains. (photo: Robert Browman/Albuquerque Journal/AP)
The National Weather Service in Albuquerque is calling it a “dangerous, long duration and potentially historic critical fire weather event.” Tinderbox conditions conducive to the rapid spread of blazes are expected to persist well into next week. Sunday may present the most extreme combination of high winds and hot, dry air.
“New Mexico is facing 100 straight hours of the worst possible set of fire conditions, with high temperatures … extreme winds,” tweeted Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Friday. “It is critically important to abide by evacuation orders. Your life … safety is top priority.”
She added: “I ask every New Mexican to do everything you can to prevent any additional fire incident, anything that could cause a spark. No open flames, no campfires, no open grills, no welding, no tossing cigarette butts — please work with us to prevent fires and preserve resources.”
As it is, a number of ongoing fires will continue to burn and be made worse by this weekend’s weather. New ignitions are also anticipated, which could rapidly grow out of control.
Earlier this week, the Calf Canyon fire became New Mexico’s second-largest on record. In late April, it merged with the Hermit’s Peak fire just to the east, a prescribed burn that crews lost control of amid strong winds. The cause of the Calf Canyon blaze is under investigation.
Located in the higher terrain east of Santa Fe in Mora and San Miguel counties, the Calf Canyon fire has already torched 170,665 acres and is 21 percent contained. More than 1,400 personnel from three states are actively involved in combating the blaze, which has destroyed at least 276 structures and forced an estimated 4,000-plus evacuations.
Andy Lyon, public information officer with the Southwest Incident Management Team, told The Washington Post that 15,000 residences could be threatened over the weekend all the way around the perimeter of the fire.
The Calf Canyon fire is among six large blazes burning in New Mexico. The fires prompted President Biden to declare a major disaster for parts of the state Wednesday so that federal assistance can reach affected residents.
Red-flag warnings, for dangerous fire weather conditions, cover all of New Mexico, as well as west Texas, eastern and northern Arizona, southern Nevada, the Inland Empire and deserts of California and much of southern and eastern Colorado.
The Weather Service in Albuquerque is urging residents to be ready to evacuate, telling them to “remember [their] ps” — people, pets, prescriptions, pictures, papers, personal computer and phone.
In addition to fanning flames, the high winds are also projected to stir up areas of blowing dust, limiting visibility. And the dust and smoke will degrade air quality.
The turbulent weather pattern is the result of a large dip in the jet stream — the river of high altitude winds — in the western United States. This dip will remain entrenched through at least the middle of next week, directing a torrent of winds from the west and southwest over the Southwest and southern Rockies.
The most intense winds through the weekend will rush over the high terrain of Colorado, where gusts topping 70 mph are possible. Elsewhere, widespread 40-to-55 mph winds are likely in the mountains through Monday, slackening some each night but returning in full force during the daylight hours.
Meanwhile, low pressure will eject out of the Colorado Front Range on Sunday, tugging a shot of dry air eastward. That will reinforce a “dry line” in western Texas and Oklahoma. To the east, tropical humidity will reign, but desert air will overspread areas to the west.
The combination of abnormally high temperatures, soaring to 95 to 100 degrees in west Texas and eastern New Mexico, and “downsloping” air rushing down the Rockies will contribute to relative humidity percentages in the single digits. Computer models are suggesting the humidity could dip to just 4 percent in the Permian Basin of Texas.
That’s added atop a Level 4 out of 4 “exceptional” drought already in place, the bull’s eye of which is centered in eastern New Mexico and parts of the Texas Panhandle and Hill Country.
Conditions may improve some as the upcoming week wears on, but a glance at the extended pattern shows little influx of moisture into the water-starved region. “More critical fire weather conditions are expected Tuesday through the rest of the week, although coverage will likely be less overall,” the Weather Service in Albuquerque wrote.
Blazes in New Mexico have burned over 270,000 acres so far this year, the second most in the past decade, and the fire season is just now entering its peak period. The unusually active season is tied to the persistence of strong winds, the drought and warmer-than-normal temperatures. Several of the blazes are burning in areas where winter snowpack was much below normal.
Across the United States, wildfire activity is running 78 percent above the 10-year average so far this year, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.
Research links rising temperatures and intensifying droughts from human-caused climate change to longer, more severe fire seasons. Hot, arid conditions dry out vegetation quickly, making the land surface more combustible. This year’s conditions may portend a fiery future for not only New Mexico but also much of the Southwest.
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