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“Alvin Bragg, who is a disgrace, should have arrested me by now,” Trump said. “He has treated me very unfairly.”
Trump said that he had made repeated calls to Bragg’s office to demand that he be arrested but has received no response.
“There’s something going on,” Trump said. “Obviously George Soros is telling Bragg not to arrest me. This should never be allowed to happen in this country.”
Issuing an ultimatum to Bragg, Trump said that, if he is not arrested by Friday, “I will perform a citizen’s arrest on myself.”
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Trump said. “The easy way would be for Alvin to keep his promise and arrest me, but time is running out.”
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Protesters set garbage on fire in Paris, prompting police to use tear gas and water cannons to disperse the groups. (photo: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in France, where unions say more than 3 million people took to the streets in a nationwide general strike Thursday to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular move to unilaterally raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without giving the French Parliament a chance to vote on the plan. On Monday, Macron survived a vote of no confidence by just nine votes. In Bordeaux on Thursday, the town hall was set on fire. And in Paris, police fired tear gas at protesters, who included transportation workers, garbage collectors, teachers, students and more.
CARL LEFRANCOIS: [translated] We are here today because it’s out of the question to once again raise the retirement age. You have to understand that some people work in difficult conditions, and today these people are told that not only do they have to work longer, but also nothing prevents the government in the future to restart this type of bill. It’s time for them to understand that people also want to enjoy their lives. We’re not here to die on the job. We’re here to be able to enjoy life one day, too.
AMY GOODMAN: As protests continue, a visit by British King Charles to France has just been postponed. Striking workers had said they’d refuse to roll out the red carpet for him. France’s eight largest unions have called another nationwide protest.
For more, we go to Marseille, France, to speak with the journalist Cole Stangler, whose guest essay in The New York Times today is headlined “France Is Furious.”
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Cole. Can you describe the level of mass protest and disgust in the streets right now throughout France? And talk about how this was pushed through.
COLE STANGLER: Yes. So, you know, I think there’s really two things going on here, if you want to simplify it, as you were just explaining. You have, on the one hand, his pension reform that’s extremely unpopular just on itself, on the merits. Polls show about anywhere from two-thirds to seven out of 10 French people have opposed this reform from the very beginning, so going back to January at the very first protest that we saw. They see it as unfair, hurting the least well-off in French society, disproportionately hurting manual workers, hurting women. So, a lot of opposition to the reform itself. Going on now for two months, we’ve had this wave of mobilization, wave of strikes.
And then, as you were mentioning, what has sort of energized the movement further is the way that the government has gotten this reform done, the way they’ve gotten it across the finish line. Last Friday, there was supposed to be a vote in the National Assembly on this unpopular bill. The government, when they realized they didn’t have the votes to actually get it approved in the National Assembly, deployed this constitutional measure that allows them to approve the vote with — approve the bill without a vote in Parliament. And so, then, on Monday, Macron survived this motion of no confidence. So, in theory, this bill is now going to be taking effect.
There’s a couple of ways to perhaps block it, which we can maybe get into, but that — the way the government has carried out this reform, I think, has given the movement new life. It’s why unions have called for another day of mobilization on Thursday. And it’s why we have another one set up next week, because people see that as really unfair. Not only is the government trying to do this pension reform that people see as fundamentally unfair, but they’re ignoring historically large protests even by French standards. They’re ignoring the opinion polls. They’re ignoring moderate labor unions that have said, “Let’s negotiate something.” And so, all of this is fueling this movement. And right now it feels very similar to the yellow vests movement back in late 2018, early 2019, where you had this government that doesn’t seem to understand the anger that it’s unleashed.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the ways where it’s possible this would be rolled back, Cole?
COLE STANGLER: Yes. So, there is a precedent that a lot of people have in their minds, which is the 2006 youth employment contract. At the time, you had mass mobilization from student unions, from labor unions to oppose this reform. The National Assembly actually passed this bill in February 2006. The movement continued. And then, a couple months later, the prime minister, under the guidance of then-President Jacques Chirac, thought maybe this was not the best time to be approving this extremely polarizing, unpopular law that was creating mass protests. And so the government actually did not apply the law that had been passed, and they actually — then the National Assembly passed a law repealing it. So that’s one method. That’s one route. And that’s why we have protests that are continuing. It’s why we have unions that are saying, you know, this isn’t over yet, trying to give the government a sort of exit ramp if they wanted to deescalate things. That’s one route.
The other route, the most significant route, would be the French Constitutional Council, the equivalent, rough equivalent, of the Supreme Court, examining this law and deciding that — deciding to invalidate parts or all of the bill. There’s a lot of questions over that specific measure that the government has deployed, again, to get this bill across the finish line, Article 49.3 of the French Constitution. Critics say that it wasn’t really meant for a reform of this nature. The government attached this massive pension reform to a very particular budget bill. And so there’s a sort of technical argument to be made that this article was applied inappropriately. And, you know, the Constitutional Council will be meeting, as well, amid this upheaval, amid these mass protests, that, as you mentioned, are not dying out. We have another wave scheduled for next week.
AMY GOODMAN: And who is supporting the president in this? I mean, clearly, overwhelmingly, the population is against this.
COLE STANGLER: Emmanuel Macron has a base of voters that’s very real. I don’t want to — you know, we shouldn’t forget that. The Macronist base tends to be wealthier. They tend to be older voters. They tend to vote more, as well. We saw this in the legislative elections last summer. So you have a small chunk of the French population, about a third, according to polls, that supports this reform, but they’re really in the minority.
And I think if you’re looking forward to — if we’re looking ahead to sort of who’s going to benefit from this, I think it’s important to stress, as well, that if you look at France from abroad, there’s often a tendency to look at simply Emmanuel Macron, the president, and then his opposition on the far right, so represented by Marine Le Pen. It should be stressed that Le Pen and the National Rally have play effectively no role in this protest movement. The movement is led by labor unions, going from moderate labor unions to more militant left-wing labor unions, and it’s being led by the parties of the left. I think it’s an important point to stress here. People that sort of expected or thought that maybe the French left was dead or that labor unions in France couldn’t mobilize anymore have been proven wrong by this movement. You have a mass movement that’s really — that’s being led by labor, that has shown it continues to have the sort of cultural appeal, the sort of power to mobilize the French workforce.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Cole Stangler, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Paris-based journalist, speaking to us, though, from Marseille.
Coming up, Congressmember Ro Khanna on the banking crisis, on the attempts from Republicans to Democrats to ban TikTok, and more. Stay with us.
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Some of the 400 National Guard troops sent to the border in El Paso, Texas, are seen from the Mexican side of the border, Dec. 2022. (photo: James Keivom/New York Post)
Republican lawmakers are making a bid to challenge the federal government’s monopoly on immigration enforcement at the Supreme Court.
“They’re voting with their feet,” Phelan said of the newcomers. “They know we’re a conservative state. They know we value the Second Amendment. They know we value life, and they know we value religious liberty.” These people are “fleeing states like California, New Jersey, New York, and Illinois for a very good reason,” the speaker argued, because Texas is “the land of opportunity.”
The news wasn’t all good though. The promise of opportunity had consequences, which would require a stiff response from the state’s residents. “In southeast Texas we care about four things, which is God, the Second Amendment, babies, and the border,” Phelan said. While Texas was doing great in the first three categories, “we have a long way to go on the border.” Luckily, the party has a plan. “Sometime next week,” Phelan vowed, “we are going to file a bill that is, I hope, going to make national headlines and change the conversation on border security, and hopefully take the battle all the way to the Supreme Court and allow Texas to protect its own border.”
By seeking to create a state security force that would include private citizens amassed to “repel” border crossers and do battle with “cartel operatives,” the proposal — House Bill 20 — did make news. If it passes, Texas will field a new unit under its Department of Public Safety to track down, arrest, and deport undocumented people.
Stationed at the border, the unit will be run by a chief serving at the pleasure of the governor, who will oversee a mix of locally recruited law enforcement and ordinary citizens “without a felony conviction.” Unit members will have immunity from criminal prosecution and lawsuits in pursuing their mission to “arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border illegally including with the use of non-deadly force.” They will also “use force to repel, arrest, and detain known transnational cartel operatives in the border region.” Private citizens will be given arrest powers if they are “trained and specifically authorized by the governor.”
Companion legislation in the Texas Senate, if passed, will make undocumented entry into Texas a state crime — with first-time offenders facing a year in prison, second-time offenders facing two, and offenders with a prior felony conviction facing life behind bars. The new unit will exist until at least 2030, at which point Texas lawmakers will decide on its reauthorization. Republicans have called the bill the “Border Protection Unit Act.” Texas Democrats have gone a different direction, dubbing the proposal the “vigilante death squads policy.”
“This dangerous, radical, and unconstitutional proposal which empowers border vigilantes to hunt migrants and racially profile Latinos is going to result in the death of innocent people,” Victoria Neave Criado, the Democratic chair of Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said in a statement last week. “MALC is going to do everything in our power to kill this legislation just as Latino State Representatives for the past 5 decades have fought against Klan-like proposals.”
Aiming for the Supreme Court
By seeking to legalize state-run deportation squads, Texas Republicans have created a dilemma for their ideological foes: accept the existence of the new border unit until at least 2030 or challenge the law and roll the dice with a conservative Supreme Court. The lawmakers clearly like their odds with the high court justices, three of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump, and have their sights set on undoing one of the most important bodies of borderland precedent in recent history.
Eric Gamino, an assistant professor of criminology and justice studies at California State University, Northridge, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, the South Texas epicenter of national-level border discourse and ground-level border militarization. For eight years, he was a police officer there. He now researches the way the border policing intersects border life. Gamino sees two important components to the Border Protection Unit Act: the immediate changes that would come to Texas if the bill is passed, and the long game Republicans are playing in angling for a Supreme Court fight.
On its surface, he said, the bill is an escape hatch from a costly and ineffective border blitz. In 2021, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched “Operation Lone Star,” a massive state-led effort that has surged thousands of National Guard troops and various law enforcement officials from across the state to the border. In the two years since, the more than $4 billion program has been riddled with scandal — including the deaths of National Guard personnel and allegations of systemic civil rights violations that have led to a Justice Department investigation — while making no discernable impact in slowing the illicit movement of drugs or people across the border.
“It’s a rebranding campaign,” Gamino told The Intercept. “The governor has recognized that Operation Lone Star is ineffective, that it’s a failed operation. They want to send these individuals back home, but they need to replace the bodies — meaning these individuals who are hyper-militarizing the borderlands — they need to replace them with people that have arrest authorities.”
Phelan, the Texas House speaker, made precisely that argument in Austin earlier this month, telling Texas Public Policy Foundation attendees: “We can bring our troopers home. We can bring home our game wardens. We can bring home our National Guard and take the fight to the border ourselves.”
If the bill passes, Gamino expects that most of the Border Protection Unit’s arrest operations will be carried out by locally recruited law enforcement officials, with civilians aiding in surveillance and border wall construction. The inclusion of civilians, which has featured prominently in coverage of the bill, still concerns him. “They might vet these individuals by providing training through DPS,” Gamino said, referring to the state’s Department of Public Safety, “but they know the type of individual that they’re going to attract.” The likelihood for zealous, anti-immigrant recruits is high. Gamino’s deeper concern, however, is the shrewd, and potentially precedent-setting, power play Republicans are making in proposing the bill at all.
“They know that it’s unconstitutional, that it’s bound to get challenged in the courts, and that is what they’re purposely doing,” he said. If the gambit is successful, he said, “It will change the complexity of enforcement on the borderlands for the entire Southwest region.”
Past and Precedent
In Texas, raising citizen armies against particular populations of people has a dark, not-too-distant history. In the early 20th century, the state was the site of widespread lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The work of Monica Muñoz Martinez, a historian at the University of Texas and author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” examines a particularly bloody period from 1910 to 1920.
“That was a period where you saw the militarization of the border in response to calls to secure the border and to protect Anglo Americans from Mexicans that were profiled as criminals, as dangerous, as a threat to democracy, whether they were American citizens or Mexican nationals,” Muñoz told The Intercept. “It was this period of what you would call today racial profiling.”
At the time, lawmakers were clamoring — as they are today — for military force against Mexico. The state activated posses that worked with local law enforcement to hunt down purported threats from the borderlands. Historians estimate that thousands of men, women, and children were killed. The specter of vigilante violence returned in the 1970s, when Louis Beam, an infamous white supremacist, built a paramilitary “Klan Border Watch” compound in Texas. Beam trained hundreds of border vigilantes over several years. “When our government officials refuse to enforce the laws of the country,” he said, “we will enforce them ourselves.”
While it was Phelan who teased the Border Protection Unit Act in Austin, the proposal was written by fellow Republican Rep. Matt Schaefer, the founder and chair of the arch-conservative Texas Freedom Caucus. The east Texas lawmaker, who did not respond to an interview request, has dismissed his bill’s alleged reflection of a dark history of racial terror and violence.
“The Texas Border Protection Unit will be an organization of professional men and women hired/trained under the authority of the Dept of Public Safety to protect Texans,” Schaefer tweeted last week. “Many will be licensed peace officers, others trained and specifically authorized by the Governor to make lawful arrests. Exactly as the Nat’l Guard … DPS operate now under Operation Lone Star.”
Schaefer’s bill is part of a wider movement within the GOP. Since losing the White House in 2020, Republicans have made one legal effort after another to wrest control of the border from the federal government by arguing that the Southwest is in the grips of an “invasion” aided and abetted by the president of the United States and his administration. Under these conditions, GOP lawmakers say they are duty-bound to assert unusual wartime powers.
The argument is in part the brainchild of the Center for Renewing America, a right-wing Washington think tank. Populated by former Trump administration officials, including Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the group has spent the past two years lobbying hard for a legal theory that challenges broadly accepted constitutional understandings of the separation of powers between the federal government and border states.
In Arizona last year, the Center for Renewing America’s work set in motion former state Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s filing of a legal opinion declaring that the state was being invaded. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who recently left office, used a similar line of reasoning in a lawsuit last fall, which argued that a strip of the border that has belonged to the federal government since before Arizona statehood in fact fell under state jurisdiction. Ducey said a state of emergency meant that he could ignore all federal laws concerning construction on those lands. He then attempted to build a 10-mile border wall of shipping containers in defiance of federal authorities. The project, which is estimated to have cost Arizona taxpayers more than $200 million, was blocked by local community resistance and Ducey agreed to remove the containers in December.
In Texas, Abbott has leaned on the states’ rights invasion argument to justify Operation Lone Star, though he has faced criticism from the Center for Renewing America for not going far enough. Up until now, Abbott has stopped short of authorizing his forces to boot undocumented people out of the country themselves, a critical component needed to trigger the kind of constitutional challenges the nativist Republicans would like to see before the nation’s highest court.
Whether the Center for Renewing America played a role in the creation of Border Protection Unit Act is unclear, and the think tank did not respond to a request for comment. It appears, however, that the most hard-line elements of the Republican Party have finally gotten at least part of what they want: a powerful border state moving forward with a plan to conduct its own immigration arrests and deportations.
They have, in other words, created a constitutional provocation that seemingly cannot be ignored.
The Arizona Case
Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, has been prodigious in his legal war against the Biden administration. With a string Trump-era appointments to the federal bench, his efforts have been effective, so much so, though, that some constitutional law experts have accused the attorney general of “judge shopping.” (Paxton has denied the allegation.) In a state Senate hearing last year, Paxton’s deputy, First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, highlighted his office’s “wild success” in suing the White House.
“We have a 93 percent win rate right now against the federal government,” Webster testified. But there was a problem: “Our hands are somewhat tied in what we can legally do in Texas regarding immigration. And that is because of a case called Arizona v. U.S.”
The case is among the most important in the recent history of the border. It stems from a 2010 Arizona law, known as S.B. 1070, that — like the Border Protection Unit Act in Texas — expanded the state-level government’s authority over border and immigration enforcement. The law empowered local officials like former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who then created a now infamous regime of racial profiling. The backlash to S.B. 1070 fueled massive protests across the country. In 2012, the core components of the law were struck down in a 5-3 Supreme Court decision.
“Our office doesn’t agree with that ruling,” Webster testified to Texas lawmakers last year. “We welcome laws that might allow us to have a new case we could go up on to readdress this issue, because the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed and because the situation has changed.”
As if he weren’t clear enough, Webster spelled it out. “Look at the laws that we can pass to go up and, again, challenge the current precedent regarding Arizona v. U.S.,” he said. “We ask for you guys to consider laws that might enable us to go and challenge that ruling again.”
A year later, nearly to the day, the Border Protection Unit Act was introduced. For Texas Democrats, the bill is a road map to a “show me your papers” police state and a sign of the Republican majority’s posture going into the final weeks of lawmaking. “HB 20 is a tinderbox waiting to explode that will leave this Session in flames,” Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, said last week. “House Republicans have been warned.”
Texas immigration advocates are now in a delicate place. “This bill is the most dangerous proposal we have ever seen on border issues,” Roberto Lopez, of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told Texas Public Radio. But he cautioned that if a legal challenge led to the Supreme Court overturning federal control of immigration policy, the state-led regime that would take its place could be more dangerous for immigrants. “We need to make that very challenging and difficult decision on whether or not we want to risk upsetting or removing prior precedent that was beneficial to our communities.”
It’s a no-win situation, said Gamino, the border cop-turned-researcher. The Border Protection Unit Act would be bad in practice, he argued, and it would be the law of the land for several years at least. A Supreme Court decision upholding its legality, paving the way for its replication across the border, would be even worse.
“When you look at Arizona and you look at the decision that was handed down, that was 5-3. And now you look at the makeup of the Supreme Court, where it’s a conservative majority, who’s not to say that they will side with the state of Texas?” Gamino asked. “I’m not trying to minimize the concerns of the greater public with regards to what’s going to happen with this Border Protection Unit, but I think what should raise concern is the ultimate goal of these politicians.”
“You can’t play to their hand,” he said, “because if the Supreme Court sides with the state of Texas, it’s not going to be pretty.”
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Portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on fire in February. (photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)
Test relies on visual inspection of ash to then check soil for toxins, which is ‘unlikely to give a complete picture’ of contamination
Initial soil testing already revealed dioxin levels hundreds of times above the threshold that Environmental Protection Agency scientists have found poses a cancer risk, but that sampling was limited in scope.
Regulators have said further testing being conducted by the Norfolk Southern-funded contractor Arcadis US will provide a broader picture than the initial samples. But, among other problems, the plan relies on what experts characterized as an “unconventional” process to check for dioxins, and the results are “unlikely to give a complete picture”, of contamination in East Palestine, said Stephen Lester, a toxicologist with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.
“It is very limited and I don’t think it’s going to answer the questions people in East Palestine have about dioxin exposure and the risk they have from dioxin exposure,” Lester added.
Arcadis noted its plan was developed “in consultation with” the EPA, but, among other concerns, dioxin researchers who reviewed the plan noted:
- Arcadis will largely rely on visual inspections of the ground to find evidence of dioxins, instead of systematically testing soil samples that may contain the compounds, which is standard protocol.
- The plan does not say how low the levels of dioxin the company will check for will be.
- Testing will only be conducted up to two miles from the accident site when ash has been found up to 20 miles away.
- The testing is limited to soil and does not include food or water.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency’s response to the train crash has drawn intense criticism from the town’s residents and public health advocates who say it has failed to protect East Palestine from toxic chemicals spilled from the cars, as well as dioxins probably released from a controlled burn of vinyl chloride days after the wreck.
After resisting calls for weeks to test for dioxins, the EPA on 3 March announced it would order Norfolk Southern to do so. Dioxins are a class of chemicals that are a byproduct produced when chlorine is burned. Chlorine is a common industrial ingredient used to make products like PVC.
Dioxins are highly persistent and can accumulate and stay for years in the environment or human bodies. The compounds are linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, nervous system disorders and other serious health problems. Soil and food contamination are considered to be among the most common exposure routes.
Dioxin researchers who reviewed the plan were most “troubled” by how Aracadis plans to visually inspect the ground for evidence of ash. If ash is found, then soil in that area will be tested.
“Visual inspection results will guide sample collection, with samples collected from both visible ash material and shallow soil if ash material is present,” the testing plan states.
But the controlled burn occurred about six weeks ago, and experts say most of its ash will have been blown away or washed away by precipitation.
“They’re not likely to find very much, if anything, because that is a very unusual approach for testing an area that has been contaminated,” Lester said.
The testing plan should include “structured sampling” in which a grid is created around the site and soil samples are taken about every 10 meters, said Linda Birnbaum, a former head of the US National Toxicology Program and EPA scientist.
The plan also limits testing to two miles around the site, but ash has been reported as far as 20 miles away, and dioxins are known to move long distances through the atmosphere.
“Why would you limit sampling to where you see ash on the ground … and why are they limiting it to two miles at max? Air travels further,” Birnbaum said.
The plan also limits testing to soil, but food is the main dioxin exposure route, noted Mike Schade, a public health advocate with the Toxic Free Future non-profit. Dioxins in soil are taken up by crops and build up in the tissue of animals that eat the crops. Humans are exposed via contaminated meat, eggs, milk or farm products, and the chemicals can also accumulate in fish.
“They need to significantly expand the scope of testing to determine if other environmental media such as farms and bodies of water have dioxin,” Schade said.
Lester noted that the plan characterizes the visual inspections as the first phase of testing and seems to leave the door open for more sampling in media other than soil, if dioxin is found, but the test seems designed to find little dioxin, Lester said.
“I’m very leery about that because if the testing is done by a visual inspection then they probably will not find anything and will have no reason to do more testing,” he added.
In the previous round of testing, Indiana’s government checked several soil samples because it was storing contaminated soil from the Ohio derailment in its landfills.
Regulators establish the toxicity of dioxins in a soil sample by calculating the “toxicity equivalence” of all dioxins in the soil compared with the most toxic dioxin compound, called 2,3,7,8 TCDD. East Palestine soil showed levels of “2,3,7,8 TCDD toxicity equivalence” of 700 parts per trillion (ppt).
The contamination level at which the EPA will initiate cleanup action in residential areas is 1,000 ppt. But EPA scientists in 2010 put the cancer risk threshold for dioxins in residential soil at 3.7 ppt, and the agency recommended lowering the federal cleanup trigger to 72 ppt. The Obama administration killed the proposed new triggers.
Meanwhile, many states will act on a cleanup at much lower levels than the EPA, including at 90 ppt in Michigan, and 50 ppt in California. Federal cleanup standards of 1,000 ppt apply in Ohio.
Those who reviewed the dioxin testing plan said they could not speculate on why it was designed as is. But Schade noted Norfolk Southern “has a vested interest in not finding dioxin” and the company long ago lost the trust of East Palestine residents and public health advocates. He said East Palestinians need to be involved in the decision making process, and EPA needs to do its own testing, for the results to be viewed as legitimate.
“I’m not saying Norfolk Southern’s consultants are going to purposely do a poor job, but if this data is going to be trusted by the community, then the EPA needs to take over and do the work,” he said.
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A photograph of Manuel Terán is seen at a memorial site at the entrance to the park near Atlanta. (photo: Cheney Orr/Reuters)
Several Cop City activists have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism—something that has long been a legal and rhetorical weapon of state power.
Reporting for In These Times over two decades ago, journalist Eric Laursen described how the U.S. government used terrorism charges to suppress environmental protests. His subject, Long Island activist Connor Cash, was eventually acquitted in 2004.
As people continue to mourn Tortuguita with vigils and protests, this piece reminds us that, while their death is shocking, government intimidation is nothing new, and domestic terrorism charges have long been a legal and rhetorical weapon of state power.
In 2001, Eric Laursen wrote:
NEW YORK — Fallout from the September 11 terrorist attacks hit Long Island’s activist community just eight days later when Connor Cash, a member of the island’s lively anarchist collective, Modern Times, was charged with aiding terrorists. Cash had already been indicted earlier this year for conspiring to help members of the shadowy Earth Liberation Front torch a suburban housing development — a charge that could put him in prison for decades if convicted.
Friends of Cash worry that the 19-year-old activist could become a political victim in the climate of fear that has developed since the attacks in New York and Washington. They believe the new charge, which could net Cash additional decades in jail, was lodged primarily to induce the public and, later, a jury to regard him as equivalent to the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks. The charge was amended just as Congress and the White House were hammering out a new anti-terrorism law that some say will make it easier for federal prosecutors to lodge similar charges of aiding terrorism against activists.
“The new legislation is clearly designed to make it easier to bring people into the sweep of terrorism statutes,” says Donna Lieberman, interim director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It’s drafted in a way that may lead them to be applied to intimidate people who are engaged in perfectly lawful activities.”
A local newspaper account cited sources saying the fact that the new indictments came down just on the heels of the terrorist attacks was only a coincidence. But friends of Cash assert that the U.S. Attorney’s office had offered several times to let him plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for information — offers he had refused. “This is a desperate attempt to get him to plead out,” one friend, who asked to remain nameless, says of the terrorism indictment. Cash and his attorney, civil rights lawyer Fred Brewington, declined to comment on the case.
The anti-terrorist bill, which passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Bush in late October, makes it far easier for law enforcement to pin terrorist associations on persons engaged in innocent political activity, according to civil rights lawyers, especially if they were born in another country. A provision that would directly affect cases like Cash’s allows the FBI to demand the personal records of any person under investigation for terrorism, including medical and educational records. “Under this provision, the government can apparently go on a fishing expedition and collect information on virtually anyone,” says Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), the lone Senate vote against the bill.
Meanwhile, prosecutors’ claim that the animal rights movement’s “campaign of violent crime” had come to an end when it charged Cash with arson conspiracy earlier this year has been belied by a new campaign on Long Island by the Animal Liberation Front, an ELF offshoot. Last month, the ALF took credit for smashing the windows of a Bank of America office — which was targeted because the bank runs a mutual fund program through Stephens Inc., an investment firm that backs the research giant Huntingdon Life Sciences. No charges have yet been filed in that attack.
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Worker housing at the Furukawa Plantaciones CA company, province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas, Ecuador. (photo: Reuters)
Dozens of current and former workers who harvested fibre for Furukawa Plantaciones say their human rights were violated.
The pair, who spoke with Al Jazeera on condition that their last names be withheld, met during that time and spent most of their lives together, eventually getting married and having eight children. Maria had to work during her pregnancies, she said, and did not receive medical care during childbirth.
“There was no light. We used lighters and candles to light up the night,” Maria recalled, speaking on the patio of the family’s small, stifling home in Luz de America, Ecuador. “We could not get clean water and bathrooms. We were enslaved and mistreated. The camps were full of families, so we had no room to sleep in. Sometimes we had to sleep in the kitchen.”
Carlos, who began working at Furukawa Plantaciones in the 1980s when he was just seven, said he was unable to attend school, since the closest one was 10km (6 miles) away on foot.
“We lived like animals,” he said. “We requested changes, but we never received them. The only thing they cared about was money, not workers. We had no insurance or legal benefits. Our living conditions were inhumane.”
The couple, who said they were dismissed from their jobs after protesting against working conditions in 2019, are part of a group of more than 100 current and former workers seeking legal compensation from Furukawa, a Japanese company that has operated in the Ecuadorian cities of Santo Domingo, Los Rios and Esmeraldas for around six decades. The workers, mostly of Afro descent, harvested abaca, a plant that yields a type of fibre used in products such as tea bags and currency.
Workers say that despite the company raking in millions of dollars in profits, they earned less than minimum wage and were denied basic benefits and labour protections. In 2019, the Ecuadorian Ombudsman’s Office issued a report citing a pervasive system of servitude and “modern slavery” at Furukawa’s plantations. It detailed numerous violations, including child labour, inadequate pay and a lack of safety protections.
Subsequent investigations by the state culminated last month, when an Ecuadorian judge ruled that a criminal trial on charges of “human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation” against Furukawa could proceed, in what observers say is a landmark decision for labour rights in the country and beyond.
Long road
According to Alejandro Morales, a lawyer representing the affected workers, the case has the “potential to eradicate modern slavery and colonial practices” that continue to this day.
“The significance of this case cannot be overstated, as it brings to light the persistent existence of … modern-day slavery in this country since colonial times,” Morales told Al Jazeera, noting that the case “is not an isolated incident in the agribusiness industry”.
The workers he is representing, who will participate in the upcoming trial, say they are seeking financial compensation for the years they spent enduring harsh conditions.
The road to this juncture has been a long one. After the 2019 ombudsman’s report and subsequent government investigations, Ecuador’s Ministry of Labour ordered Furukawa to temporarily halt operations, and the state issued a public apology over its failure to prevent human rights abuses at the plantations.
A Santo Domingo court in 2021 ordered the company to compensate workers who had filed complaints. But workers who spoke with Al Jazeera last month said they had yet to receive any compensation, while the company continues to operate.
For its part, Furukawa maintains that it followed all protocols and made reparations after past complaints, including the demolition of camps. Lawyer Pedro Jerves, who is defending one of the company’s managers, told Al Jazeera that workers had agreed to the terms of their employment, adding that Furukawa has taken numerous steps to ensure its operations adhere to all relevant standards.
“We have complied with safety protocols, and today, we have installed potable water tanks and electricity. We have carried out social work that demonstrates that people are indeed living well,” Jerves said. The company has consistently rejected allegations that conditions at its plantations were akin to modern-day slavery.
‘Brighter future’
For members of the Afro community in Ecuador, the case is about protecting fundamental human rights.
Jaqui Gallegos, an activist of Afro descent, told Al Jazeera that the treatment of workers is “deeply rooted in structural racism that persists in the culture”, with Afro-Ecuadorians facing widespread discrimination across the country. More than 40 percent of Afro-Ecuadorians reportedly live below the poverty line, and they face challenges in accessing education and employment.
Meanwhile, former Furukawa workers are hopeful that justice will prevail, and that they will someday receive compensation.
Adela, a 67-year-old woman who spent most of her life working in the plantations, told Al Jazeera that she hopes children in her community today “can go to school and have a brighter future, and … prevent this story from being repeated”.
Carlos and Maria, who still struggle to make ends meet, are also determined to break the cycle and ensure a better future for their own sons and daughters. As they speak, their young children play nearby with a handful of old toys, occasionally interrupting their parents to ask for snacks or drinks.
“Abuses by the company still pierce our hearts like daggers … [but] despite the many lives lost, we, the survivors, will continue to wage this war,” Maria said. “We will not rest until justice is served.”
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Ocean-based renewable energy could play a big role in decarbonizing the U.S., and healthier oceans can help stabilize the climate, the Ocean Climate Action Plan suggests. (photo: David Will/Pixabay)
Ocean-based renewable energy could play a big role in decarbonizing the U.S., and healthier oceans can help stabilize the climate, the Ocean Climate Action Plan suggests.
Many of those problems are either directly or indirectly linked with climate change, and the first-ever U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan released today recognizes that the planet can’t have a carbon-neutral future without healthy oceans—and that the oceans won’t be healthy unless the climate is stabilized.
“In developing the Ocean Action Plan, we recognize that the ocean, land, and atmosphere are inherently interconnected,” the plan’s introduction concludes.
Oceans cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface. They generate 50 percent of the atmosphere’s oxygen, capture more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and absorb between 25 and 30 percent of human-caused carbon emissions, so their role in stabilizing the climate is critical.
“This Ocean Climate Action Plan is the first comprehensive approach that the U.S. has taken to leveraging the power of the ocean in the fight against climate change,” said Jean Flemma, director of Ocean Defense Initiative. The plan could inspire a ripple of powerful climate actions that could reduce emissions, she added.
“Still, a plan is only as strong as its implementation. We look forward to working with the Biden Administration to ensure strong ocean climate action policies are adopted across federal agencies and help the communities that need it most.”
Parts of the plan, like expansion of marine protected areas, could be implemented with executive actions, while others could be subject to legislative action or review. It also directs other agencies to focus funding from federal climate legislation toward some of the plan’s targets, like studying the potential for carbon sequestration in depleted oil and gas reservoirs.
Critically for conservation advocates, the plan calls for establishing new strictly protected marine sanctuaries, and for connecting all of the conservation zones in a network to make them more resilient to warming oceans. And it promotes public engagement, tribal consultation and use of Indigenous knowledge to advance climate-resilient marine protected areas.
In a letter announcing the plan, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Arati Prabhakar wrote, “This plan should not be viewed as an exhaustive list of ocean activities, but rather a plan focused specifically on ocean climate action.”
They promoted the new plan as a chance to advance the Biden Administration’s ocean-climate priorities, like “advancing climate solutions, promoting environmental justice and ensuring sustainable coastal communities and ocean economies.”
The Ocean Action Plan was released as part of a broader conservation push for American lands and waters announced today, including a proposal to designate marine sanctuaries in U.S. waters around the Pacific Remote Islands. If completed, the White House said it would meet the Biden Administration’s goal of conserving at least 30 percent of ocean waters under American jurisdiction by 2030.
The plan sets three overall goals: creating a carbon-neutral future; accelerating nature-based solutions that protect and support coastal and ocean ecosystems that capture and store greenhouse gases; and enhancing community resilience to ocean changes.
Ocean Solutions?
Despite all the signs that oceans are in an ecological crisis, the plan first mentions objectives like increasing offshore wind and marine energy, including energy from tides and waves.
Producing more renewable ocean-based energy could cut greenhouse gas emissions, but also puts pressure on some of the very marine resources that the administration wants to protect, so pursuing those plans will require a delicate balancing act.
The White House Ocean Policy Committee also included decarbonization of ocean shipping and marine carbon dioxide and storage technologies as significant steps toward carbon neutrality. Finally, the plan mentions the climate benefits of “blue carbon,” which is the CO2 sequestration resulting from conserving and restoring coastal and marine habitats.
The European Union launched a similar plan last month, but with a stronger focus on protecting and restoring marine ecosystems, with a strong emphasis on eliminating bottom-fishing, which indiscriminately captures both wanted and unwanted species and disturbs ocean-bottom sediments that are natural carbon sinks.
The U.S. plan was shaped by a committee including representatives from nearly every part of the executive branch, including military and intelligence, NASA, the State Department and the Department of Agriculture.
In its first meeting in 2021, the committee targeted three strategic priorities: maximizing ocean environmental, economic, and social benefits; developing ocean-based mitigation for climate change; and identifying a strategic direction for ocean science and technology.
Renewable energy production is definitely a place to start. The plan estimates that ocean energy could produce more than half the country’s needed electrical power generation if fully harnessed. That includes well-proven offshore wind turbines, as well as turbines driven by waves, tides or ocean currents. A few tide-powered projects are providing electricity at a small scale, but research suggests there is huge power potential in those sources.
Even if only a small portion is captured, it would make significant contributions to the nation’s energy needs. In the short term, “marine energy could serve U.S. coastal communities and provide local, clean power to rural and remote island communities, which often rely on expensive shipments of fossil fuels.”
The plan also directs various agencies to study how feasible it would be to capture greenhouse gas emissions from coastal industrial sites and store them in seabed formations, including “depleted oil and gas reservoirs.”
One part of the plan certain to draw sharp scrutiny calls for studying ways the ocean could take carbon out of the atmosphere by fertilizing ocean areas with minerals to promote the growth of organisms that capture CO2 through photosynthesis. Stimulating plankton growth at a scale that would benefit the climate could disrupt natural cycles that are critical for fish, birds and marine mammals.
The plan covers ocean areas under United States jurisdiction, but was released just a week after 195 countries agreed in principle on a high seas treaty that aims to establish similar science-based environmental management for oceans outside national zones.
In those zones, there are similar concerns about possible ocean geoengineering projects, said marine scientist Rebecca Helm, a marine scientist at Georgetown University’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability.
“You’ve probably seen those geoengineering proposals, like, we’re gonna solve climate change by pumping all the deep sea water up to the surface,” she said, adding that such proposals or plans need to be evaluated by strict scientific criteria for protecting ecosystems, she said.
Ocean projects may be well-meaning, but haven’t been subjected to adequate environmental review, she added.
“There is this company that is collecting plastic on the high seas,” she said. “So they’ve got these two giant ships and this big fishing net and they’re sort of cleaning up plastic.”
In that case, she said she knew of two environmental impact assessments, one that completely missed the surface ecosystem, and a second that threw up some “huge red flags,” she said. With better rules in place, those conflicting results would have been public, and reviewed by scientific and technology panels.
Good ocean management rules, whether in the high seas or in national waters, also empower affected parties to raise meaningful concerns, from the very beginning of the process, especially communities that have long been excluded from rule and decision making.
The Ocean Climate Action Plan marks a new way to think about ocean management and to avoid past mistakes like the annihilation of whales and degradation of mangrove forests and coral reefs, said Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“It harnesses the power of the ocean to fight climate change and enhance the resilience of marine ecosystems to climate stresses,” she said.
But Goldfuss urged a go-slow approach when it comes to manipulating ocean chemistry to try to remove unwanted carbon from the climate system, saying that “a cautious approach is warranted to prevent repeating ocean and community health stewardship mistakes of the past.”
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