And even though the Virginia elections are still on folks’ minds (… or maybe just mine), it’s important to remember that there’s still a lot of trash being perpetrated by GOP state lawmakers across the rest of the country.
So let’s warm our chilly hands by these garbage fires.
We Didn’t Start The Fire: So while I was super focused on Virginia (and … other things), various state legislatures and commissions across the country started their respective redistricting processes.
As an erudite consumer of this missive, you’ve probably surmised that, with Republicans in charge of the process in the vast majority of states, it’s NOT GREAT, BOB.
Here are some specific bits of that awfulness (and you should always check out my amazing Daily Kos Elections colleagues’ work for the latest and smartest takes on this):
Alabama: Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed Alabama’s new congressional and legislative maps last week. The congressional plan preserves the state’s current delegation makeup—which sends six white Republicans and one Black Democrat to Congress.
Colorado: The Colorado Supreme Court has approved the map adopted by the state’s independent congressional redistricting commission in September.
The end result is a map that could easily result in equal representation for Republicans and Democrats, despite the fact that the state voted for Joe Biden by a comfortable 55-42 margin last year. That’s because the new 8th District, based in the Denver suburbs, would have gone for Biden 51-46 and in fact would have voted for Donald Trump 46-45 in 2016.
Thanks to Colorado’s 2018 amendments creating its congressional and state redistricting commissions, the legislature and governor no longer play a role in redistricting, meaning that the new congressional map is now law.
The state Supreme Court is also reviewing the commission’s legislative proposals, but after the congressional map’s success, they’ll likely pass muster.
Delaware: Democratic Gov. John Carney has signed Delaware’s new legislative maps. Democrats currently control both the state House and Senate and will almost certainly remain in charge in this solidly blue state that voted for native son Joe Biden 59-40 last year.
Despite the wide bipartisan support it received, the map could face a legal challenge according to redistricting expert Michael McDonald. Iowa law requires the drawing of “reasonably compact districts” that are “square, rectangular, or hexagonal in shape, and not irregularly shaped.” But as you can see here, the new districts are anything but “regular.”
Massachusetts: Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has signed Massachusetts’ new legislative maps, which passed both Dem-controlled legislative chambers last month almost unanimously. A congressional map remains pending before lawmakers.
North Carolina: North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature passed new congressional and legislative maps last week, so they’re now law because redistricting plans do not require the governor’s approval. All three are extreme GOP gerrymanders designed to lock the party into power for years to come, despite the state’s perennial tossup status.
With North Carolina gaining a seat due to redistricting, the new congressional map would create 10 safely red districts and just three that would be safely blue, with one swing seat currently held by a Democrat that’s been trending hard to the GOP. By comparison, the map used in last year’s elections—which Republicans had to repeatedly redraw thanks to intervention by the courts—sent eight Republicans and five Democrats to D.C.
The new map notably undermines Black representation by making a Democratic-leaning district held by African American Democrat G.K. Butterfield whiter, turning it into a pure swing district that could elect a Republican favored by white voters in next year’s midterm environment.
North Dakota: North Dakota’s Republican-run state legislature has passed a new legislative map, sending it to Republican Gov. Doug Burgum for his signature. Both chambers use the same districts, with each electing two representatives and one senator, though the new map adds two exceptions to that pattern: Two House districts based around Indian reservations would now be divided in half, with each half electing its own member, to improve Native representation.
Ohio: Republicans in Ohio’s Senate and House have each released a draft congressional map, both equally extreme gerrymanders. The House version would likely send 13 Republicans and just two Democrats to Congress next year, while the Senate plan would do the same, just with districts configured a little differently.
South Dakota: In an … unusually bipartisan development, a group of Republicans in the (GOP-controlled) South Dakota House banded together with Democrats to pass a new legislative redistricting plan over the objections of a sizable bloc of conservative GOP dissenters. All seven Democrats present voted in favor of the map, along with 30 Republicans, while 31 Republicans were opposed, meaning Democrats provided the winning majority. The plan, which originated in the (also GOPP-controlled) Senate, easily passed the upper chamber 30-2, with all three Democrats likewise in favor.
The Republican objectors complained that the map would double-bunk some of their members and undermine their ability to elect far-right legislators. But at issue as well was the matter of Native representation. The proposed map preserves two districts that are split in half in order to give Native voters a better opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
The map now goes to Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who has not yet indicated whether she will sign it into law.
Texas: Three lawsuits were filed last week by Democrats and advocates for voters of color that are challenging various parts of the gerrymanders that Republicans adopted last month. Two of the suits were filed by Latino voter advocates, one in state court arguing that the state House map violates a state constitutional limit on splitting counties and another in federal court challenging the congressional, state House, and state Board of Education lines for racial discrimination. Meanwhile, Democratic state Sen. Beverly Powell and several voters filed an additional federal lawsuit arguing that the GOP’s redraw of Powell’s 10th District discriminated against Black and Latino voters.
Virginia: Virginia’s redistricting drama was largely eclipsed by the election, but here are the broad strokes of this tragicomedy:
In 2020, Virginia voters (not me, literally saw this coming) approved of the creation of a 16-member redistricting commission divided equally between Republican and Democratic lawmakers and other appointees.
But actually reforming redistricting involves more than merely taking the power to draw new legislative and/or congressional districts away from the actual legislature, and no one should have been surprised when the process swiftly devolved into partisan factionalism.
Paralyzed by the resulting (and predictable) deadlock, the commission failed to produce new maps for Congress or for either chamber of the state legislature. In accordance with that voter-approved constitutional amendment creating the commission, the body was dissolved, and the task passed to the state Supreme Court … which is mostly filled with GOP appointees (a 5-2 conservative majority, to be specific).
I mean, of course Republicans blew up the commission process. With the fallback option being a court dominated by their own appointees, it was in their clear interest to do so.
But of course state supreme court justices are rarely also experts in cartography, so these judges will rely on the skills and resources of two “special masters” chosen from a list of three submitted by each party.
Both the law and the court’s own rules specify that those nominees “shall have no conflicts of interest.”
One was paid a $20,000 consulting fee in September by the state Senate’s Republican Caucus. Another directs the National Republican Redistricting Trust and previously held a series of other jobs with the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Republican Governors Association. The third has supported Republican redistricting efforts in (notoriously GOP-gerrymandered) Wisconsin and currently is doing this work in Texas, where he reports to the Republican chairman of the state’s redistricting committee.
Democrats, adorably, chose highly credentialed scholars in line with state law and the court’s rules and without those pesky conflicts of interest. One is a Stanford Law School professor who has been appointed by courts to help with redistricting in various states. Another is a political science professor at Stanford University who has also served as a court-appointed redistricting expert in Arizona. The third is a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine and has worked on redistricting for Virginia courts in the past.
At least now we can stop pretending GOP lawmakers ever had any interest in actually nonpartisan, fair redistricting. Virginia Republicans enthusiastically supported the new map-drawing process because they—correctly—saw it as an opportunity for partisan political exploitation.
Wisconsin: A committee in Wisconsin’s Republican-run state Senate has passed the GOP’s proposed congressional and legislative maps, but they’re certain to be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers due to their extreme partisan gerrymandering. We can look forward to shameless Republican maneuvering and savage court battles over this debacle.
Okay, a few more notes on redistricting generally before I leave it behind for the week:
There’s an emerging media narrative that this redistricting cycle is a bit of a partisan wash—GOP and Democratic maneuvering and gerrymandering are balancing each other out.
A. This is bullshit.
The existing maps were mostly drawn by Republicans a decade ago, so they start from a place that already skews GOP.
Only about 14 states have completed their process, and places like Georgia and Ohio are going to start blowing up that alleged “balance” in very short order.
B. This is a Congress-centric view of redistricting.
As an erudite consumer of this missive, you know that some of the most extreme gerrymandering out there occurs at the state legislative level.
Where Republicans locked themselves into artificial majorities via map-drawing a decade ago.
Which Republicans will use to further entrench themselves into artificial majorities for the next ten years with this new set of maps.
Urban planners and community advocates have long noted that the interstate highway system was designed to separate and isolate poor Black and brown communities from the economic hearts of their cities. A new measure tucked inside the massive Biden-backed infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives on Friday sets out to address this “racist infrastructure” by rebuilding the highways and overpasses that have split these neighborhoods for generations.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Monday that the new plan, dubbed the Reconnecting Communities Act, would mean that some highways and overpasses will be torn down in the coming years. The Department of Transportation will consider local needs as it identifies areas across the country to delegate portions of the $1 billion in funds.
“It’s going to vary by community and we have to listen to the community,” Buttigieg said during a White House briefing on Nov. 8. He also noted that as highway design varied from region to region, so do potential solutions. “Sometimes it really is the case that an overpass went in a certain way that is so harmful that it’s got to come down or maybe be put underground. Other times maybe it’s not that way. Maybe the really important thing is to connect across, to add rather than subtract.”
Experts say the Reconnecting Communities Act is only a start when it comes to addressing such a longstanding problem.
“During the ‘50s when a lot of money was going into building highways and interstates from the federal government, there was a deliberate strategy of using highways to wall off or isolate redlined communities or communities of color from the rest of the city,” said Joan Fitzgerald, a professor of urban and public policy at Northeastern University. “You can find quotes from transportation planners, being quite open about how [cutting of communities of color] was the intention.”
In addition to displacing community members and disconnecting neighborhoods from the rest of the city, these highways and overpasses also negatively impacted both the health and economic wealth of residents who lived near them. The location of the highways “was on top of them not being able to get down payments or not being able to access government programs for housing,” Fitzgerald noted. “So you’re losing wealth on housing and then on top of that there are environmental hazards.”
Studies have shown that children who grow up near highways are more likely to have asthma and other respiratory conditions, which have also affected how those neighborhoods have fared during the COVID-19 pandemic because of the high rates of preexisting conditions in those regions. “People that had all of these preconditions for respiratory disorders, did not fare well under COVID,” Fitzgerald said. “You could correlate that with where people live.”
During his press conference, Buttigieg specifically noted the impact of the construction of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York, which cut through a historically Black neighborhood in the city’s South Side, a move that displaced thousands. As The Guardian noted earlier this year, the interstate is now seen as a “symbol of segregation” in the community and the consequences of its construction have been dire. An analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) found that Black Syracuse residents were more likely to have asthma and be exposed to lead than their white counterparts. New York state recently proposed a new $2 billion plan to rebuild I-81 and redirect traffic to the nearby Interstate 481.
The severity and complexity of the problems created by these highways and overpasses also mean that the $1 billion designated by the infrastructure bill is not nearly enough to address the problem nationwide.
“I’ll say it’s a drop in the bucket,” Fitzgerald said, noting that when President Joe Biden originally proposed a plan to address racist infrastructure, he said he wanted to delegate $20 billion to the program. “With a billion dollars, probably a couple of cities will get to tear down some segments of highway. I can understand why it wasn’t a real priority and how these negotiations take place in Congress but, nevertheless, it was a disappointment to see that this won’t be a major, major initiative.”
As one example of what a reconstructed highway could look like, Fitzgerald points to what the city of Boston did with the former “Big Dig,” a major project that began in 1991 and reconstructed the previously elevated I-93 elevated roadway so that it now ran underground. In 2008, the area above the now-underground highway was declared the Rose Kennedy Greenway and consists of 17 acres of parks and green spaces that run throughout downtown Boston.
“It essentially became the world’s largest green roof, because we put a park on top of the [roadway] and so it’s a whole ribbon of Parkway that is widely used today,” she said. But, she added, the most important thing to do when it comes to designating the $1 billion of funds for the Reconnecting Communities Act is for the government to work with local governments and organizers in order to identify what the needs of individual neighborhoods are.
“The intention would be not just to say, ‘Okay, now we’ve got this land for development,’ but to say, ‘What are the needs of these communities?’” she said, naming increasing affordable housing, new first-time homebuyer programs, and walkable neighborhoods as items a community might be advocating for. “There’s just enormous potential, if done right with that intentionality that would be part of a green revitalization.”
Lakshmi Gandhi is a reporter, editor, and social media manager based in New York City. She is currently a freelance journalist who specializes in literature, identity, and pop culture.
Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Maira Oviedo-Granados, an asylum-seeker living in Knoxville, Tennessee, dialed 911 for help when a jealous and previously violent boyfriend tried to attack her on Nov. 7, 2020. She managed to lock herself and her three children in a bedroom as she told the operator through an interpreter that he was armed.
The operator asked if the boyfriend had struck her. “Interpreter on behalf of Oviedo-Granados: ‘No, not the kids, but he has me,’” Knox News reports. She told the operator he hadn’t hit her at that time because a friend was there. But once officers arrived, it was Oviedo-Granados who was eventually detained under a flawed, racist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program. She’s now suing.
That program, 287(g), allows local law enforcement to act as mass deportation agents. ICE purports that the policy serves “tremendous benefit to public safety,” when it actually does the exact opposite, harming people like Oviedo-Granados.
She was initially detained after her boyfriend, an Anglophone, claimed she hit him. WBIR reports a judge dismissed that charge after reading the 911 transcript. Knox News reports Oviedo-Granados would be “separated from her three children from November 2020 through early January, mostly inside a detention facility in Louisiana, causing severe trauma, according to the lawsuit.” She should not have been targeted in the first place, with a pending asylum claim.
”For years, immigrant activists said 287(g) would make residents less safe because they’d be afraid to call 911,” tweeted Knox News reporter Tyler Whetstone. But sheriffs “dismissed this fear.” Knox News additionally reports that the sheriff’s 287(g) agreement might have been unlawfully implemented, because these agreements first require local approval. “Here that would mean the Knox County Commission. The commission never approved it.”
287(g) agreements across the country shouldn’t exist period, having resulted in “widespread” racial profiling in addition to family separation, the American Immigration Council has said. The group’s report said a Justice Department investigation “found that deputies of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely conducted ‘sweeps’ in Latino neighborhoods, and that Latino drivers in certain parts of Maricopa County were up to nine times more likely to be stopped than non-Latino drivers. Following the investigation, the Obama administration terminated Maricopa County’s 287(g) agreement.”
The Immigrant Defense Project’s ICE Out of Courts Coalition said in 2019 that it had found a nearly 80% surge in abusers weaponizing ICE against their victims, in yet another reason to end these agreements (and the agency itself). While President Joe Biden campaigned on ending 287(g) agreements implemented by the previous administration, “the promise remains unfulfilled,” Immigration Impact said in June. Biden’s nominee to officially lead ICE, Texas Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, would the next month say that it would “not be [his] intent to end the policy,” calling his own decision to terminate his agreement a “local decision.”
Dozens of House Democrats have previously joined immigrant rights advocates in urging an end to the policies, saying they “turn local law enforcement agencies into a gateway to deportation.” The Biden administration should listen. ”People should not risk being jailed or criminalized for seeking help,” the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted in response to Oviedo-Granados’ story. “The 287(g) immigration programs are ineffective, outdated, and wrong. They must end immediately.”
As we continue to face the novel coronavirus pandemic, we’ve seen countless conservatives push anti-vaccine rhetoric. Some folks have argued it’s all about personal choice, while others say parents should make health decisions for their children, and others still say it’s no one else’s business if they’re vaccinated or not. Some folks have argued that policies at restaurants or businesses that ask for proof of vaccination are discriminatory (they’re not). And there are, of course, the people who full-out believe and push conspiracy theories about vaccines in general.
Vaccine hesitancy, however, is not a one-size-fits-all cultural experience. According to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), there are subsets of the LGBTQ+ community that have unique and under-discussed concerns and questions about the COVID-19 vaccine, as highlighted by LGBTQ+ outlet them.
The HRC released this report on Tuesday, and it’s being covered as the first of its kind. In this report, which included more than 1,500 American adults surveyed in July 2021, about 20% of folks who are undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are concerned about how the COVID-19 vaccine could affect them. Similarly, about one-third of respondents who take medication for prevention or treatment of HIV said they were worried about how the vaccine might interact with their medication.
More than one-third of Black LGBTQ+ respondents expressed concerns about the vaccine impacting HIV medications, as did more than one-third of Latinx LGBTQ+ respondents. From other research, we know that Black trans women are disproportionately more likely to live with HIV and that new diagnoses most often affect Black and Latinx queer men.
About one in six LGBTQ+ adults surveyed said they feel very confident in the research that went into developing the COVID-19 vaccine, which is considerably more than the average non-queer adult in the U.S. That said, just over one in four Black LGBTQ+ respondents said they had a lot of confidence in the vaccine, and just over half of Latinx LGBTQ+ respondents did.
Interestingly, vaccine confidence varied depending on which vaccine it was. For example, less than one-third of respondents said they’re very confident in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while more than two-thirds of respondents said they’re very confident in both Moderna and Pfizer.
According to this data, one in five respondents said they either tested positive for COVID-19 or feel confident they had it in spite of not getting an official diagnosis. More than 20% of all bisexual respondents, as well as more than 20% of all trans respondents, said they either tested positive for COVID-19 or feel positive they had it.
For trans folks in general, accessing basic medical care can be a nightmare when it comes to identifying documents (say, a photo ID with your current name or accurate sex) and verbal abuse from health care workers. It’s sad, but not terribly surprising, that this sort of barrier could prevent trans folks from getting the vaccine.
According to this data, more than 65% of respondents said they had to show a government-issued photo ID at their vaccine appointment, and more than one-third had to show an insurance card. 15% said they had to show their social security card. About 30% of respondents said they were vaccinated at a mass vaccination site, while 23% went to a pharmacy, 12% went to a mobile vaccine site, and 11% were vaccinated at a hospital.
In the end, only about 6% of LGBTQ+ adults say they are not vaccinated against COVID-19 and don’t intend to get vaccinated in the future. Of these respondents, the most common reasons given are that they don’t want to be forced to be vaccinated, they’re worried the vaccine isn’t as safe as is being advertised, and they worry about moderate or severe side effects. Some respondents are also worried about having to miss work to get the vaccine, possible issues related to immigration status, and concerns about future fertility.
By now, most folks have heard about “Missing White Woman syndrome,” a term which was coined by PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill. Recently we’ve seen this in full force with the case of Gabby Petito. However, let us not forget that in May 2005, another missing white woman, Natalee Holloway, propelled the island of Aruba into U.S. headlines, where it stayed for years. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley called for a boycott of Aruba, and was joined by fellow Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia.
For an island dependent on tourism, these boycott calls had an impact, though how much impact they caused over the long term has not been determined. Recently, former Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren has attempted to revive her crusade against the island.
I find it unconscionable and racist to hold an entire people responsible for the death of one person. This is what Van Susteren has done and continues to do. Period.
I read this tweet below from @Aruba and think, if you are thinking of honeymooning in Aruba, ‘bring security’ https://t.co/MhGz1QP0j7
In light of this smear campaign, let’s talk about Aruba and its colonial Caribbean brothers and sisters. Aruba is part of what is often referred to as “the Dutch Caribbean,” or the “Dutch West Indies,” which includes the territories, colonies, and countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. They include the constituent countries of Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Maarten, and the special municipalities of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba. Take a look at this map and the graphic below.
Aruba, Curaçao, St Maarten, Bonaire, Saba, St Eustatius and The Netherlands
For those in the U.S. who have not had the opportunity or funds to vacation to these six islands, very little is known, taught in school, or covered in mainstream media (with the exception of the aforementioned Natalee Holloway case).
I did get an education at home about the history of enslavement because three-quarters of my more recent ancestors were enslaved in the U.S., but I don’t remember learning much, if anything, about the powerful Dutch West India Company or its role in sustaining the slave trade. That history is the genesis of what is now the Dutch Caribbean.
The short documentary Going Dutch: The Role of the Netherlands in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, produced by Perry Leenhouts in 2009, gives a good introduction to how the Dutch colonial properties in the Caribbean came to be.
The Dutch took possession of the Windward Islands in the 1630s, but colonists from other European countries also settled there. Sint Eustatius was a trade center until 1781, when it was punished for trading with the North American independents. Its economy never recovered. On Saba, colonists and their slaves worked small plots of land. On Sint Maarten, the salt pans were exploited and a few small plantations were established. The abolition of slavery on the French part of Sint Maarten in 1848 resulted in the abolition of slavery on the Dutch side and a slave rebellion on Sint Eustatius. On Saba and Statia, slaves were emancipated in 1863.
The establishment of oil refineries on Curaçao and Aruba marked the beginning of industrialization. The lack of local labor resulted in the migration of thousands of workers. Industrial laborers from the Caribbean, Latin America, Madeira, and Asia came to the islands, along with civil servants and teachers from the Netherlands and Surinam. Lebanese, Ashkenazim, Portuguese, and Chinese became important in local trade.
Industrialization ended colonial race relations. The Protestant and Sephardim elites on Curaçao maintained their positions in commerce, civil service, and politics, but the black masses were no longer dependent on them for employment or land. The introduction of general suffrage in 1949 resulted in the formation of nonreligious political parties, and the Catholic Church lost much of its influence. Despite tensions between Afro-Curaçaoans and Afro-Caribbean migrants, the process of integration proceeded.
My formal education didn’t teach me about any of the Dutch islands until I was in graduate school for anthropology, and we studied Papiamento in a sociolinguistics class. Papiamento (also spelled Papiamentu) is spoken throughout the Caribbean Kingdom of the Netherlands, as Simon Romero wrote for The New York Times in 2010.
Papiamentu, a Creole language influenced over the centuries by African slaves, Sephardic merchants and Dutch colonists, is now spoken by only about 250,000 people on the islands of Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba. But compared with many of the world’s other Creoles, the hybrid languages that emerge in colonial settings, it shows rare signs of vibrancy and official acceptance.
Most of Curaçao’s newspapers publish in Papiamentu. Music stores do brisk business in CDs recorded in Papiamentu by musicians like the protest singer Oswin Chin Behilia or the jazz vocalist Izaline Calister.
“Mi pais ta un isla hopi dushi, kaminda mi lombrishi pa semper ta derá,” goes a passage in Ms. Calister’s hit song “Mi Pais.” (That roughly translates as “My island is a lovely place, where my umbilical cord forever lies.”)
You can learn more about Oswin Chin Behilia here, and take a listen to Calister’s song to her country below.
Spoken in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, Papiamento presents a history of resistance and strong sense of identity among the people of the beautiful islands located in the so-called Dutch Caribbean. It sounds like Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and African Creole, but the combination of those languages created one of the most intriguing idioms in the world.[…]
“While English and French Creoles get more attention, the extension of Papiamento into different domains like writing, education and policy is incredibly high,” said Bart Jacobs,a Dutch linguist who studies Papiamento, to the New York Times. “This bodes very well for the language’s chances to survive, and possibly even thrive well into the future.”
It took almost 200 years for Papiamento to gain the status of official language in the Islands. Aruba came first.In May 2003, the Aruban government declared Papiamento an official language. Curaçao was the second country, turning Papiamento into an official language in 2007.
YouTuber Sheedia Jansen, who is from Curaçao, shares a few words in Papiamento below.
There are quite a few folks tweeting in Papiamento; Twitter, which typically provides an option to translate tweets, has not included Papiamento in this service.
Though islanders present smiling faces to tourists, who fuel a major part of their economies, there have been turbulent times in recent history. Consider this labor uprising in Curacao in 1969, which was dubbed a series of “riots.”
Today we also remember the uprising that took place in Curaçao May 30th 1969. “Trinta di Mei (Thirtieth of May in Papiamentu) became a pivotal moment in the history of Curaçao, contributing to the end of white political dominance” pic.twitter.com/o0dOwhf9Yh
More recently, the role of South American drug cartels, as well as the organized crime and money laundering via online gambling in Curacao, have been under investigation, and political officials have been arrested.
Former Curacao politician George Jamaloodin today sentenced to 28 years for for involvement in murder of fellow politician. Suspicions that organised crime/illegal gambling involved. How gambling interests bought a country https://t.co/o6YNU4eSMn
I raise these negatives not to disparage the people of Curaçao, but to point to the vulnerabilities faced in countries with small economies. Far be it for me to point fingers, given we are dealing with a corrupt former president and his minions’ coup attempts here at home. Most Americans experience the Netherlands Antilles through a cruise ship visit or a stay in a tourist hotel; rarely is there any interest in looking past the pristine surfaces of beautiful beaches and sunshine.
Yet even those beaches, as well as scuba diving locales, are also facing a major threat: climate change.
Coral reefs support extraordinary biodiversity. Covering less than 1% of the ocean floor, reefs support an estimated 25% of all marine life. But #ClimateChange is taking its toll. Ocean takes us to Bonaire to discover new coral restauration techniques.#COP26#COP15#OceanEUpic.twitter.com/q0zQp9uPQD
I’ve barely scratched the surface of these islands today; please feel free to correct any errors I’ve made, or add to the discussion with your knowledge of the area in the comments below.
“Mashi Danki” (“thank you very much” in Papiemento) for reading! See you next week!
Read the first installment of Caribbean Mattershere, and last week’s entry on Barbados’ PM Mia Mottley at COP26 here.
As cities and states nationwide continue to implement COVID-19 vaccine requirements for specific positions, many are refusing to comply. As a result, individuals are not only being let go from their jobs but contracting the coronavirus. In one incident an officer from California reportedly died from coronavirus complications after missing the city’s deadline of being vaccinated by Nov. 1. The officer, identified as Officer Jack Nyce of the San Francisco Police Department, died Saturday at the age of 47.
Prior to his death, he was among 41 officers placed on administrative leave for not meeting the city’s immunization deadline for officers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Several civilian workers have also been placed on leave. While he and the others were placed on paid administrative leave if not vaccinated by Nov. 13, the officers will be placed on unpaid administrative leave until further notice.
“A widely respected colleague most recently assigned to Park Station, Jack served our City and our department honorably and well for more than 17 years, in roles that included a variety of assignments,” Chief Bill Scott said in a statement. “I will share more information about plans for his remembrance as they become available. In the interim, please keep Jack, his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.”
According to his wife, Melissa Nyce, Jack Nyce tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 2. “He loved being a cop,” she told the Chronicle. The symptoms of the 17-year veteran of the department becamesevere on Saturday after which he was transported by the ambulance to a local hospital and died later that day, Melissa Nyce said.
According toThe Washington Post, Nyce’s death comes at a time in which many police departments across the country are struggling to enforce city vaccination mandates. While several officers have threatened to resign over vaccine requirements, some even have protested and urged others to ignore the deadline with them under the movement “hold the line.” Lawsuits have also been filed by police officials who are requesting exemptions to the vaccine requirement.
According to theChronicle, almost 200 members of the San Francisco Police Department have applied for a religious exemption from the city’s employee vaccine mandate, the highest number of waiver requests from any city department across the country.
As of Monday, the city’s human resources department confirmed that 98% of employees are now vaccinated. Nationwide studies have shown that COVID-19 is the No. 1 killer of law enforcement officers in 2021.
COVID is the #1 killer of LEOs in 2020 and 2021 with more than 300 confirmed/presumed cases, and 170+ under review. Please get vaccinated. Share in roll call and on your dept’s social media @ODMPpic.twitter.com/g8iRsNwbto
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, there were at least 269 officer deaths reported due to COVID-19 in 2021. Gunfire was listed as the second leading cause of death in officers, with 54 deaths.
Remember back in August 2020 when former unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf presided over a political stunt that used immigrants as human props as part of an effort to reelect the previous president? A number of the immigrants who were sworn in as U.S. citizens in that White House naturalization ceremony would later say they weren’t informed prior to the stunt that it would be broadcast as part of the Republican National Convention.
Plenty of experts at the time said it was a corrupt and illegal act. We didn’t need an official investigation to figure that out. It was right there in front of our eyes. But we do have one now.
Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner reported on Wednesday that the Office of Special Counsel has determined that at least 13 officials with the previous administration violated the Hatch Act, “illegally mixing campaign and government events.” Among those named is, unsurprisingly, Unlawful Chad. The Office of Special Counsel said in the report that the administration had been warned repeatedly that such an event would be unlawful. The stunt went on anyway.
“As late as 10 a.m.on the morning of the ceremony—just 45 minutes prior to the event—the DHS ethics official emailed DHS leadership, including the [DHS General Counsel] stating that Acting Secretary Wolf should not participate in the ceremony.” Unlawful Chad feigned ignorance in his written statement to the Office of Special Counsel, claiming he “did not know whether video of the ceremony was going to be made publicly available or that it would be used at the Republican National Convention.”
“Although the OSC could not prove that Wolf knew the ceremony would be part of the convention, it makes very clear that Wolf would have been hard-pressed not to know that,” notedThe Washington Post’s Philip Bump. The Office of Special Counsel does note that “circumstantial evidence strongly supports the conclusion that he knew, or should have known, of its intended use by the White House.”
Why are we giving crooks the benefit of the doubt anyway? This would not be the only time Unlawful Chad would corruptly use his (unlawfully appointed) office to campaign for the previous president, basically carrying out a tour in the final days leading into the 2020 election. In Arizona, he falsely claimed the inhumane and unlawful Reman in Mexico policy created “a safer and more orderly process along the Southwest border.” Human rights advocates have documented the policy, which resulted in over 1,500 instances of violence against asylum-seekers. In Texas, Unlawful Chad held a campaign event next to updated border wall. That was just five days before Election Day, Border Report said.
”Taken together, the report concludes that the violations demonstrate both a willingness by some in the Trump administration to leverage the power of the executive branch to promote President Trump’s reelection and the limits of OSC’s enforcement power,” the Office of Special Counsel said in a release. None of this even gets into how the previous administration used the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ceremony for this political stunt after spending years decimating the office.
Following the previous president’s electoral defeat, USCIS was reportedly among the agencies forbidden from having any contact with President Joe Biden’s transition team. It would not be until Biden’s administration that USCIS would have a Senate-confirmed director for the first time in two years.
One other character found to have violated the Hatch Act is former aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, who during a media appearance “mocked candidate Biden as being under the control of ‘23-year-old’ campaign staff.” It’s a scant mention in the report for someone who was the architect of some of our nation’s most inhumane immigration policies—and has never been held accountable for it. And likely will never be. “I think Stephen Miller should be behind bars,” Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar said earlier this year. Instead, there’s an active campaign to block any justice for separated families.
Affordable child care is one of the major ways the Democrats’ Build Back Better will help families with young children. So, naturally, Republicans are revving up the disinformation machine. The party that specializes in coming between a woman and her doctor is falsely accusing Democrats of trying to come between families and their churches, or, specifically, their church-based child care.
“Democrats are ending decades-old, bipartisan protections for religious preschools and child care centers that will pressure facilities to choose between federal funding and their faith,” Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted. According to The Washington Examiner, “If you want to send your children to a church daycare or a pre-K program, again, the Democrats offer you nothing.”
These are lies. In reality, the bill plainly reads: “Nothing in this section shall preclude the use of such [subsidies] for sectarian child care services if freely chosen by the parent.”
And, as HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn points out, “this is one of those rare moments when you can glimpse a lie in its infancy, before it’s taken hold.” Top Republicans are starting to tell the lie, but memes about it aren’t yet flooding Facebook.
It’s not just the language of the bill that says child care money from Build Back Better could go to religious programs, as Cohn shows.
“Religious providers are absolutely eligible, and we’re excited for them to be part of this,” Sen. Patty Murray’s communications director told HuffPost. University of Virginia law professor Micah Schwartzman confirmed to HuffPost that it “is, in effect, a federally funded voucher program to be administered by state governments. The program explicitly includes religious providers.”
And here’s the director of a church program: “The whole idea is for it to be a system that’s open to everybody, so it’s mixed delivery, whether it’s faith-based or [secular] private child care, or Head Start, or public school preschool.”
Faith-based programs would therefore benefit from the added funding. Under the plan, many families would get free child care, while families earning up to 250% of their states’ median incomes would pay no more than 7% of their income. That means lots of families would be able to afford to send their kids to good child care programs for the first time.
As of 2018, the average cost of center-based infant care in the U.S. was $1,230 per month. The Center for American Progress reported, that, “On average, a family making the state median income would have to spend 18% of their income to cover the cost of child care for an infant, and 13% for a toddler.” Build Back Better proposes to fix that major cost, and pay early childhood caregivers more. Currently, early childhood care providers, “more than nine in ten of whom are women and more than four in ten of whom are women of color,” a Biden administration fact sheet noted, “are among the most underpaid workers in the country and nearly half receive public income support programs. The typical child care worker earned $12.24 per hour in 2020—while receiving few, if any, benefits, leading to high turnover and lower quality of care.” That high turnover, and the resulting lower level of care have led to a crisis for the child care industry during the pandemic.
Improving that system improves things for the entire industry, and for the parents who need care for their young children.
It’s true that faith-based programs might have to comply with some new requirements. For instance, livable wages for teachers. Additionally, the universal pre-K component of the plan does phase in new requirements for lead teachers to have bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. But those requirements would apply equally to all programs.
So would anti-discrimination requirements, which—even with some loopholes allowing religious organizations to hire people exclusively of their religion for certain roles—might cause some religious providers to howl and file lawsuits. But that would be a minority of programs. Specifically, the ones that want to violate anti-discrimination policies.
Additionally, Cohn notes, according to the legislation, “eligible child care providers may not use funds for buildings or facilities that are used primarily for sectarian instruction or religious worship.” But “you can’t build a new church with public child care money” is miles away from Cotton’s “Democrats are ending decades-old, bipartisan protections for religious preschools and child care centers that will pressure facilities to choose between federal funding and their faith.”
Republicans are starting to build the framework of another culture war lie. Don’t believe it for a moment. But if Sen. Joe Manchin wants to demand, as one of his requirements for voting for Build Back Better, that religious child care centers have to be included in the funding, his fellow Democrats can absolutely say yes to that. They don’t even need to tell him that it was already in there—wouldn’t want to strain his brain too much.
The final declaration of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow has yet to be approved. But unless a big surprise happens in the next few days, that document will move the world inches forward in combatting the climate crisis when we need to move miles.
Not that the summit has been without strong warnings about the impacts of inadequate action. Those have come from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, from leaders ranging from Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and former President Barack Obama to European Commission President Ursula von de Leyen, and from Indigenous protesters like Ponca elder Casey Camp-Horinek and climate activists like Kenyan Green Generation Initiative founder Elizabeth Wathuti.
Kenyan climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti
And there have been a few moments of promise—more than 40 nations calling for a phase-out of coal, a 130-nation vow to cut back on methane production, the agreement of fierce rivals China and the United States to work together to reduce their prodigious methane emissions, two dozen nations announcing they will stop funding fossil fuel projects in other countries in 2022, and seven nations and a Canadian province signing onto Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance’s moves to end oil and gas exploration and production. But encouraging as these developments are, their goals are non-binding, and no deadlines are set.
It was certainly satisfying for Americans who accept the science behind the warnings to see the U.S. rejoining the Paris agreement. President Joe Biden’s speech at the summit was heartening after four years of grotesque climate lies, and the destruction or undermining of many of the modest climate-related policies in place before Biden’s predecessor in the White House got his hands on them. Biden said:
My friends, if we’re to recognize that a better, more hopeful future, every nation has to do its part with ambitious targets to keep 1.5 degrees in reach and specific plans of how to get there, especially the major economies. It’s imperative we support developing nations so they can be our partners in this effort. Right now we’re still falling short. There’s no more time to hang back or sit the of the fence or argue amongst ourselves. This is a challenge of our collective lifetimes, the existential threat to human existence as we know it. And every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.
Exactly so.
But there is a significant disconnect between his words and the action Biden took just days before he left for Glasgow—plans to lease hundreds of millions of new oil and gas operations in seven states in February. Next week, as announced in August, the Interior Department will also put 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico on the auction block for new drilling. Emily Portecorvo reports:
“This oil and gas ‘megasale’ will rank as the largest ever in U.S. history and more than breaks Biden’s campaign promise” to end drilling on public lands and waters, said Brittany Miller, press officer for Friends of the Earth, which sent a letter signed by more than 250 groups asking Biden to cancel the sale.
Last month, a U.N. report found that fossil fuel production plans of the world’s major nations will be producing 110% more coal, oil, and gas in 2030 than would align with keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C. Another study published in September found that holding the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees requires 60% of oil and gas reserves to stay in the ground. Opening up millions of acres for continued exploration and production is contrary to every nation doing “its part with ambitious targets to keep 1.5 degrees in reach and specific plans of how to get there …”
Right now, there is the additional problem with the pandemic inflation, which is reflected pretty much across the economy—and not just in the United States. Besides at the grocery store, this inflation has been particularly apparent at gasoline pumps because oil prices have soared. This has generated calls for Biden to do something to drive those prices down. In July, he asked the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates to increase their oil production. Fearful of the potential impacts of higher gasoline prices on the 2022 midterm elections, a number of Democrats have called for Biden to ban oil exports.
On Wednesday, Chris Cuomo, one of CNN’s news anchors, suggested that Biden immediately summon oil CEOs to the White House and get them on board to lower prices by cranking up supply. It’s hard to imagine a more cognitively dissonant way to send these executives away high-fiving each other and to flip the bird at our desperate need to get ourselves off the fossil fuel teat that is feeding global warming. We have a long way to go before words mesh with actions.
ECO-TWEET
Just boggles the mind that @POTUS & @Interior are planning to EXPAND oil drilling in the Gulf and lease MORE areas for drilling. Pardon my French but, WTF https://t.co/lFkCxSh5Tg
The names of coal miners whose lives were cut short by the mine are carved into a memorial on Aug. 25, 2019, in Cumberland, Kentucky. In Harlan County, the heart eastern Kentucky’s coal region, Cumberland has lost nearly half of its population since 1980 primarily due to disappearing coal jobs.
Last month, Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and 11 Democratic co-sponsors introduced S.2966, the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act of 2021. Last week, Michigan Congressman Andy Levin introduced a companion bill in the House with 15 Democratic co-sponsors. The idea is to include this as part of the Build Back Better bill. As noted in a press release from Brown’s office:
We propose a worker-driven transition plan for fossil-fuel workers. Congress would provide billions in investment over a span of 10 years to assist workers who are laid off as the nation shifts to cleaner, renewable energy sources. This temporary energy worker transition program would provide a wage supplement, health care benefits, education and training funds, as well as an additional education benefit for children. The proposal would also prioritize employers who plan to hire eligible workers for the clean energy grants created under the Build Back Better plan.
An eligible worker under the bill is one whose job was terminated from a coal mine, coal-fired power plant, coal transport, or oil refinery, provided that the worker was employed continuously full time for at least 12 months before being laid off. Such workers would receive wage replacements or supplements in addition to assistance to maintain health benefits and contribute to retirement. Workers would also be eligible for grants for education and training up to and including a four-year degree. Children of dislocated workers would receive direct grants allowable education and training up to and including a four-year degree.
The bill is endorsed by: United Steelworkers (USW), United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA), AFL-CIO, BlueGreen Alliance, National Wildlife Federation, League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund.
When you examine the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) through a historical lens, it looks pretty damn good. Throughout US history there has actually been pretty strong support for robust government investment in people and infrastructure so long as the beneficiaries of said largesse were white. The New Deal and the GI Bill enjoyed broad support, but, as Ira Katznelson wrote in When Affirmative Action Was White, “the GI Bill did create a more middle-class society, but almost exclusively for whites.”
As people of color began to demand their fair share of the public pie (which they helped bake through back-breaking, wealth-creating work by, among other things, picking cotton and grapes and laying railroad tracks), the political will for public investments dropped dramatically.
From Prince Edward county, Virginia, shutting down its schools entirely rather than desegregate in 1959 to the fierce resistance to Obamacare, getting support for any public investments has been a Herculean task. As a result the infrastructure has atrophied in ways that endanger the public in general and poor people and people of color in particular.
The Flint, Michigan, water crisis showed how aging lead pipes can create a health crisis. Every lead pipe in the country will now be replaced. The pandemic laid bare the digital divide of who has access to high-speed internet and who doesn’t, and now rural areas can get broadband access.
Politically, you don’t have to look far back into history to understand the importance of the infrastructure bill. No legislation at all would be coming out of Congress had Stacey Abrams and the Georgia civic engagement groups not flipped the two Senate seats in the January runoff elections. Given where we were, I’m feeling that the BIF is a BFD.
Joe Biden’s infrastructure legislation, even in its scaled-back form, is an obvious policy success. Its $1.2tn in funding for roads and bridges, mass transit and rail service, as well as upgrades to ports, the electric grid and water infrastructure will pay dividends for generations to come.
The real questions rest around the political aspect of this policy victory. This is the second major piece of legislation from the Biden administration, along with the important withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Yet somehow Biden and the Democrats appear weak and ineffective to many Americans. […]
From the perspective of this socialist, the pending Build Back Better bill may actually try to do too much, throwing money at problems that require more coordination, planning and state capacity to properly solve. Biden would be far better able to sell his agenda if it centered around a few big, fully funded and universal programs.
Of course, the design of the emerging BBB bill is not Biden’s fault alone. It reflects the varied (and sometimes rotten) interests of the Democratic caucus and the unwieldiness of the American political system.
For now, Biden has a much-needed political win. But I, once again, can’t help feeling that the best days of Bidenism might already be behind us.
The announcement in 2016 that Diablo Canyon, the three-decade-old operation that is California’s last nuclear power plant, will be shuttered by 2025, brought cheers and objections. “This is an historic agreement,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, one of several groups who pushed for the shutdown, “It sets a date for the certain end of nuclear power in California and assures replacement with clean, safe, cost-competitive, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage.” But some critics decried the move, pointing out that the plant provides 1,500 jobs and $1 billion a year to the local economy. Other objections came from pro-nuclear environmental advocates who worry that the state cannot achieve a full transition to clean energy if the plant switches off its two 1.1-gigawatt reactors too soon. The shutdown process has nonetheless moved forward, not least because the plant is surrounded by geological fault lines.
Now, a new study—An Assessment of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant for Zero-Carbon Electricity, Desalination, and Hydrogen Production—argues in favor of keeping the plant running until 2035 and “would reduce California power sector carbon emissions by more than 10% from 2017 levels and reduce reliance on gas, save $2.6 billion in power system costs, and bolster system reliability to mitigate brownouts.” Continuing operations to 2045 and beyond, the authors says, could save up to $21 billion in power system costs.
The plant, they assert, could add significantly to freshwater supplies through desalination and at much lower cost than that provided by the environmentally problematic Delta Conveyance Project. It could also produce clean hydrogen and do so more cheaply than solar or wind, the authors assert. It also could increase the reliability of the grid as wind and solar provide an increasing percentage of the state’s electricity.
Said former U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has long cautioned against a “premature” shutdown of nuclear power plants, “We are not in a position in the near-term future to go to 100% renewable energy. We will need some power that we can turn on and dispatch at will, and that leaves two choices: fossil fuel or nuclear.”
Reversing direction on the shutdown would require undergoing the lengthy process of renewing Nuclear Regulatory Commission operating licenses for the reactors, which expire in 2024 and 2025. It would also require overcoming the political clout of the forces that spurred Pacific Gas & Electric to agree to the shutdown in the first place.
• Nations, automakers pledge no new fossil fuel cars by 2040: “As representatives of governments, businesses, and other organizations with an influence over the future of the automotive industry and road transport, we commit to rapidly accelerating the transition to zero-emission vehicles to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the declaration stated. Signed by 33 countries, six automakers, 40 cities, and a handful of financial institutions and investors, the pledge is non-binding. Among those not signing: the United States, China, and Japan, three of the world’s top four auto markets. The fourth, Europe, did sign on.
Crew of a whaling ship check a whaling gun or harpoon before departure at Ayukawa port in Ishinomaki City on April 26, 2014.
• The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind. “The mass slaughter of whales destroyed far more than the creatures themselves. In the 20th century, the largest animals that have ever existed almost stopped existing. Baleen whales—the group that includes blue, fin, and humpback whales—had long been hunted, but as whaling went industrial, hunts became massacres. With explosive-tipped harpoons that were fired from cannons and factory ships that could process carcasses at sea, whalers slaughtered the giants for their oil, which was used to light lamps, lubricate cars, and make margarine. In just six decades, roughly the life span of a blue whale, humans took the blue-whale population down from 360,000 to just 1,000. In one century, whalers killed at least 2 million baleen whales, which together weighed twice as much as all the wild mammals on Earth today.” By Ed Yong
Flames consume multiple homes as the Caldor fire pushes into the Echo Summit area,in California on Aug. 30, 2021.
•Why fire experts are hopeful. Wildfire scientists dispel common misconceptions about forest management, detailing what needs to change and why it’s urgent, by Kylie Mohr. “A team of more than three dozen people from universities, conservation groups, and government labs published an unusual trio of scientific papers in August in the journal Ecological Applications. Together, the studies are meant to provide a roadmap for how land managers and policymakers can move from passive to proactive wildfire and forest management.”
• A billion people will suffer extreme heat at just 2°C heating: A new study says the deadly combination of temperature and humidity could increase the number of Earthlings exposed to extreme heating by 15 times over what is today the case. The U.K. Met Office assessed wet-bulb temperature, which combines both heat and humidity. At 35°C, the human body can no longer cool itself by sweating. Even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours. Damian Carrington reports, “The deadliest place on the planet for extreme future heatwaves will be the north China plain, one of the most densely populated regions in the world and the most important food-producing area in the huge nation, according to 2018 research.”
