But most of all, Georgia’s notoriety is due to a series of controversial so-called “election integrity” measures put in place by the state’s Republican-run legislature. The most infamous of these is the Election Integrity Act, also known as Georgia Senate Bill 202, passed in March of this year. SB 202 is basically an assemblage of changes to the administration of voting, put in place purportedly to increase election integrity and security. The new law calls for additional ID requirements for voting by mail. It stops the practice of automatically mailing ballots to voters. It gives the state election board added power to take over any county election office for “underperforming”—giving the state board, currently fully controlled by the Republican legislative majority, power to unilaterally disqualify ballots across the state. It’s not hard to understand why handing so much power over local election authorities to any political party is so worrying.

SB 202 also includes a stunning prohibition against passing out water or food to voters standing in line. By equating this practice to electioneering, legislators turned a kind act into a misdemeanor, punishable by arrest.

Much has been said and written about the overall impacts of the law. Some, including Abrams, have called it “Jim Crow 2.0.” Others believe the bill was intended to do nothing more than appease Trump supporters who believe the 2020 general election was stolen. But there hasn’t been enough public conversation about the implications of this criminalization of kindness. Over the last few years in Georgia, as part of my work as a faith-based community organizer, I’ve recruited more people of faith to pass out water, snacks, ponchos, and crossword puzzles to Georgia voters standing in long lines than anyone else; some 300 volunteers across the state, from Savannah to Macon to Rome, have participated in this act of civic kindness. That’s why it is particularly heartbreaking and infuriating for me to see this prohibition become a law in our state.

I began showing care to voters in long lines in 2010, when I was the pastor of an Atlanta congregation that also happened to be a polling precinct. On election days, lines to get into the fellowship hall where people voted sometimes stretched down the church’s long educational wing hallway onto the outside sidewalks. Whenever that happened, the church staff and I passed out water and offered chairs to voters. We also passed out umbrellas when it rained. Obviously, this was not our responsibility as a polling site. But I had experienced the horrors of Georgia’s long voter lines when I waited 8-and-a-half grueling hours to vote in 2008’s general election. I’ll never forget arriving at my polling place at 8:30 a.m., thinking I’d be in and out in a couple hours max, and ending up in a several hour battle to cast my vote, with only water from a public fountain to drink and candy from a nice lady next to me in line to eat. From then on, I saw it as my duty to help make the process more bearable.

It’s worth noting that the main reasons for these long lines in our state are poor election administration and intentional neglect. Georgia has experienced rapid population growth, but the secretary of state and boards of elections have failed to add more polling places. In fact, they’ve actually sought to close polling sites in some of these high volume and under-resourced precincts—many of which are in Democratic-leaning, non-white communities. This is why many see long lines as the result of GOP voter suppression.

Whatever the cause of the long lines, many people have stepped up to make standing in line easier, as a matter of humanitarian necessity. I started to expand my efforts in 2018, as director of faith and civic organizing for the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan organization founded by Abrams and led by noted civic leader Nse’ Ufot, that has registered and engaged Georgians since 2013. I built up a large network of faith leaders who provided care to voters all over metropolitan Atlanta. Clergy showed up at crowded, overwhelmed polling precincts to pass out water, snacks, ponchos, fans, and books. We instructed volunteers to pass out only comfort-related resources, and to tell voters nothing more than, “Thank you for coming.” Talking about candidates, political platforms, or parties was always strictly prohibited.

By the 2020 elections, our voter care program was well-known and well received. We partnered with organizations and prominent ministers from several denominations to expand it, sending hundreds of people of faith to the polls to provide these resources for Georgia voters. We conducted several trainings for volunteer poll chaplains in Georgia, and in several other states as well. People who attended our trainings never heard anything remotely close to electioneering. Instead, we emphasized that this was a faith-inspired, nonpartisan act of civic engagement. To my knowledge none of our volunteers, or any other faith-based groups, ever violated this principle.

Now that SB 202 is law, care providers will have a much harder time helping voters in long lines. Undoubtedly precinct managers and state election officials will be zealous to enforce the new prohibitions. They may try to drive voter care providers farther and farther away from election lines, overpolicing polling sites and causing unnecessary conflict. All this happens as Atlanta, the state’s largest city, prepares for a hotly contested mayoral election this November and statewide elections in 2022 that will feature a U.S. Senate race between Warnock and a Republican challenger—and, most likely, a gubernatorial rematch between Abrams and Gov. Brian Kemp.

With blockbuster elections like these around the corner, you can see why temperatures are rising in our state around voting rights. The stakes are high, with lasting implications for state and national politics! But there are also moral implications at stake. If people of goodwill can’t show compassion to fellow citizens in onerous voter lines, what does that say about the moral state of our society? Has political identity and beating the other side become more important than showing common decency? And what are people of faith to think about a system that would rather jail people for committing faith-inspired acts of kindness than fix an obviously broken system?

To be clear, I don’t think SB 202 was intended to target clergy and people of faith. We are simply unintended collateral damage in a broader voter suppression effort. I believe the originators and supporters of this law view all organized efforts to give relief to voters in long lines to be part of the Georgia Democratic Party turnout machine—efforts that don’t serve their interests as Republican lawmakers. As a result, they see no problem with criminalizing a benign act of civic kindness, without taking time to understand the citizens of goodwill it will negatively impact. They reply that groups like mine can still hand out water 150 feet away from the polling precinct. The problem with that rule, which already applies to partisan groups at polling sites, is that some polling officials bend the rules, extending the boundary well beyond 150 feet if they so choose. What’s more, once voters are in line they cannot step out to receive resources without losing their place. Effectively, we can no longer help them.

Despite my disappointment I’m encouraged by the response of the faith community to what amounts to a war on kindness. Many leaders who have passed out water to voters in long lines in the past, such as longtime activist Pastor Timothy McDonald, are vowing to continue the practice in coming elections as an act of civil disobedience. Pastor McDonald and the Concerned Black Clergy of Atlanta have also joined with Bishop Reginald Jackson of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a group of ministers in Dekalb County (the state’s largest predominantly-Black county) to form a coalition that’s calling for boycotts, public demonstrations, and legal action in resistance to the new voting law. Others, like myself, are focusing our efforts on putting public pressure on the federal government to intervene and stop this discriminatory and suppressive new law. The Department of Justice’s decision to sue the state of Georgia over its voting laws may be a sign that our efforts are bearing fruit. Regardless of what happens, people of faith will not soon forget how their efforts to show compassion at the polls were attacked and maligned for petty partisan gain.

The post You Can’t Hand Out Water in Georgia Voting Lines Anymore. What Does That Say About Us? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Originally from Alabama, a state with no shortage of divides, I have lived all over the world—four continents and counting. But I have never experienced a society so divided over the very nature of reality. As a country, Ukraine has seen three revolutions in the last quarter century, which has left an indelible emotional stamp on the inhabitants that manifests itself in unpredictable and creative ways on a daily basis. Spending much of my time here, I always feel like I am teetering between overbearing collectivism and out-of-control individualism, between the past and the present, and between Ukraine and a Russia that constantly meddles in internal politics.

With this uneasy reality as a backdrop, Ukraine struggles with COVID. After three quarantines and lockdowns and one of the highest infection rates in Europe, Kyiv is split between those who will wear their masks and think of their fellow citizens, and those who behave as if they are immune from the ravages of the virus, and call mask requirements an infringement of their rights. People here openly say that COVID is nothing more than a mass government attempt to control our minds.
 
Such attitudes, combined with Russian disinformation campaigns, have plunged public support for vaccinations here to record lows. Politicians have gained attention by playing on these public fears that vaccinations are unsafe; some fear is rational. Fake COVID tests have become commonplace, and many people see the haves vaccinating themselves, while the have-nots struggle to survive. At the current vaccination rate, Ukraine’s population of 43 million won’t be immune until 2030!
 
As an American living here, people assume two things about me: that I have money, and that I have some magical power to secure visas to the U.S., which became increasingly difficult to get during the Trump Presidency. My daily routine, when I am on the streets, involves explaining just how powerless we Americans really are in navigating the bureaucracy.
 
I have mostly avoided crowds during the quarantine. Rather than take mass transit, when I need to get around, my preference is to walk. A beautiful city on the surface, Kyiv’s infrastructure is a fragile and deteriorating holdover from the Soviet era. Gig companies like Uber prosper because you cannot count on the metro or the buses. I find it is easier—and often faster—to cover Kyiv on foot, given its terrible traffic jams.
 

Each morning, I walk to my favorite breakfast place, while watching the social structure of this city that was a Soviet Union gem until 1994 play out on the dilapidated streets of the city. One can’t help but notice the unusual number of Bentleys and high-end Mercedes Benzes speeding by, driving as if no laws can constrain them, next to the 30-year-old Russian-made Ladas that meander slowly, carrying their occupants to their jobs in the concrete jungle of Soviet-era office buildings. Likely, 75 percent of the cars I will see on my morning walk are from the U.S., totaled for insurance purposes with no chance of a life on the streets of most American cities. But given the horrendously low salaries of even Kyiv’s best and brightest, this is the only way to afford a dependable and respectable car in the country, since new cars are simply financially out of reach.

No matter the driver or quality of the car, one must watch carefully crossing the street, since the green man signaling that it is safe to walk bears no semblance to reality. Cars here are notorious for ignoring traffic lights, and in a city where parking on sidewalks is the norm, pedestrians are simply viewed as the equivalent of a cockroach that must be crushed when they get in the way.

The Sikorsky Family home, Kyiv. Photo by M. Dane Waters.

I won’t disclose the name of where I eat my breakfast since, like many establishments in the city, it has put paper in the windows so as not to be seen as open for business during quarantine. I see the same papering-over when I go by the gym, try to get a haircut, or stop by a local store or mall.

This quasi-openness, especially of the restaurants for their regular customers, is possible because the local police reportedly receive a bribe to look the other way—most of the time just from the restaurant owner, but occasionally some overzealous officers target the patrons as well. In some cases, the show of law enforcement at a restaurant is not because of violations of the quarantine, but simply a continuation of the culinary war in the city between the restaurants backed by either a Russian or Ukrainian oligarch. But regardless of who the owner is, it must be noted that the quality of the food in Kyiv is some of the best in Europe. That fact alone warrants a trip to Kyiv and the occasional intrusion of a mafia-related culinary conflict.

The Russian and Ukrainian mafias here operate collaboratively—though when at odds, they have no problem showing their unhappiness with the people being the sacrificial pawns in the conflict. Wealthy oligarchs fund both legal and illegal enterprises, and toy with Ukraine’s future prospects, sometimes aligning with Europe to the West, and sometimes with Russia to the East, depending on what is best for their political and financial interests.
 
Prior to the pandemic, tourism to Kyiv was on the rise due to its close proximity to Chernobyl—the site of one of the worst nuclear power plant disasters the world has seen. Day trips to Chernobyl were easy from Kyiv, and the numbers were increasing daily given the success of the HBO series by the same name. The Chernobyl disaster, only 60 miles from Kyiv, could have wiped out this city of millions if the wind had simply been blowing in a different direction the week of the explosion. Chernobyl continues to be a gift from Russia that keeps giving: It has not only cost the country and the world billions of dollars to contain, but Ukrainians west of Chernobyl continue to experience cancer-related deaths at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country to this day because of the deadly radiation cloud from the disaster.
 
But Ukrainians are strong in will and spirit. They are some of the most adaptable to challenges that I have seen, having continued to be put through trials that show their resilience and desire to survive—from Stalin starving 10 million Ukrainians to death in the Terror-Famine of 1932 to the Revolution of Dignity, which took place in Maidan in the heart of Kyiv in 2014. This revolution pitted everyday Ukrainians—men, women, and children—against Putin-supported President Viktor Yanukovych. Before it was over, a hundred civilians in the city had been killed by Russian-trained snipers. But many argue that this revolution was what finally set the country on a path toward full Europe integration.
 
Since the revolution, Maiden has become the true heart of this sprawling capital city. It has been the major place for the citizens to hang out during the three COVID quarantines the city has imposed during the pandemic. It is a great place to find strength to weather the growing economic and emotional challenges caused by the seemingly never-ending pandemic.

While I want to believe COVID is in its waning days here, belief is no more a protection against COVID’s spread than hanging pieces of paper in your restaurant’s windows is. Eating my breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and the occasional vatrushka behind a thin piece of brown paper, I can temporarily forget the reality of the situation, but it’s reawakened when I hear another ambulance siren that is likely carrying a COVID patient to the hospital.

It’s a stark reminder of our obligation to the health and safety of each other. The best way to rid Kyiv—and the rest of Ukraine—from this deadly virus is to recognize the importance of keeping our fellow Kyiv residents safe by respecting the quarantines, the basics of wearing masks, social distancing, and washing our hands. But is it possible to get a place so divided culturally and politically that we no longer have shared realities to agree on this? Let’s hope!

The post A Letter From Kyiv, Where Reality Is Being Papered Over appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

For the last 14 days, my city and state have been under lockdown. My computer has become my window to the world. Every hour or so, I use it to write condolence messages for friends who have lost family members. My wife, a frontline worker, will step out a bit because she works with waste pickers and runs children’s libraries in informal settlements. When she is home, she is on calls, coordinating relief efforts because the virus has started reaching poor neighborhoods.

The official number of cases and deaths in India has surpassed all other countries; as I write this, India has recorded over 22 million cases and over 245,000 deaths. But each day, those numbers increase. Daily Coronavirus cases have been exceeding 400,000, with more than 3,500 deaths. Currently, our country makes up nearly half of the world’s new COVID-19 cases and a quarter of its deaths.

But those numbers don’t even reflect the full picture; reports from hospitals and cremation grounds vastly contradict the projected figures of cases and deaths. One of the reasons is that given the acute shortage of beds in hospitals, many patients never reach them, and their deaths are not registered or counted. There is also massive under-reporting with the government deliberately fudging numbers.

This is a blind fall from where the country was this winter, when it was averaging about 12,000 cases and 100 deaths a day. On January 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi patted himself on the back at the World Economic Forum, held virtually in Davos, Switzerland, announcing India had ducked the dire predictions on the pandemic. On February 21, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) passed a resolution “unequivocally hailing its leadership for introducing India to the world as a proud and victorious nation in the fight against COVID-19.” These premature assertions sent the wrong message: abandon caution.

While all experts agree that pandemics have second, even third waves, the Indian leadership chose to ignore science. This, despite the fact that the Standing Committee of the Parliament on “Outbreak of Pandemic COVID-19 and its Management,” clearly said it was an “unpredictable pandemic with [a] possibility of [a] second wave” and had dwelled upon the lacunae in the country’s health infrastructure in a report issued to the Upper and Lower House this February. Similarly, a high-level laboratory consortium—whose daily reports go to the health ministry—has been warning the government about the second wave since early March. Both were ignored.

Instead, taking its so-called victory over COVID-19, the government announced elections in five states. In one of these states, Bengal, which the BJP desperately wanted to win, the government pushed the Election Commission to conduct elections over eight phases to showcase BJP’s ability to draw huge crowds to its rallies. (To put this in perspective, the last two country-wide general elections included a maximum of seven phases.) Marshaling all resources to the elections, the government ignored early signs of the second wave.

Meanwhile, eyeing the upcoming state elections next year in neighboring Uttar Pradesh—the biggest state in India—as a populist measure, the government permitted the Kumbh Mela—a Hindu festival held every 12 years in which millions of devotees participate and ritually bathe in the Ganges river at Haridwar in Uttarakhand. The last Kumbh Mela was conducted in 2010. Technically, this one should be in 2022, but it was advanced by a year for astrological reasons. RT-PCR tests, mandatory masks, and physical distancing were not enforced, leaving the 3.5 million people from all over the country who made the pilgrimage vulnerable to what would become a super-spreader event. The day after the final ritual bath of the Kunbh Mela was observed, the local government clamped a curfew on the city, but the damage was already done. Devotees took the virus with them across the length and breadth of the country.

The country’s inadequate health infrastructure has predictably become overwhelmed in the aftermath. A few days ago, seven people died here, in a Bangalore hospital, due to the shortage of medical oxygen. Deaths because of oxygen shortages have taken place in other cities, too; in some, patients have also died in hospital fires. The country’s cremation grounds are becoming a major issue, as well. Overcrowded and understocked with firewood, crematoriums are unable to process new corpses. Because of this, my state government has begun allowing private cremations in farm lands.

While no country’s healthcare system was ready for COVID-19, India’s was especially vulnerable. Neo-liberal policies that the government adopted in the early 1990s allowed haphazard private investment with hardly any regulations. Compounding the issue, the country’s public health spending has been incredibly low. Because of the pandemic, in 2020-’21, India spent 1.8 percent of its GDP on health, which raised funds just slightly above previous years, where health made up anywhere from 1-1.5 percent of the budget.

Making matters worse, last year’s COVID-19 facilities had also already been dismantled in many states by the time the second wave hit. Old bills to vendors have still not been settled. And while the government did invite bids for pressure swing adsorption oxygen generation plants last fall (with a total of 262 plants sanctioned under the PM-Cares fund), to date, less than 33 of those plants have been installed. Meanwhile, while many countries have recently donated liquid oxygen, canisters, and concentrators, the supplies ended up stuck at the Delhi airport for more than 10 days because no policy had been established on how to distribute the supplies to states in proportion to the devastation the virus has caused.

While India is the world’s largest manufacturer of medicines and vaccines, we are also currently dealing with a huge shortfall of vaccines in the country. That’s because, in August of last year, when many countries placed huge orders with the Serum Institute of India, the country’s largest vaccine-producing company, India placed a woefully small number of orders and is now scrambling for vaccines. Currently, about 12 percent of India’s population has been vaccinated with one dose. The population that is fully vaccinated is far smaller.

People who are 45 and older are able to receive a free vaccine at government centers, but the central government has left it to the state governments to decide whether they want to make the vaccine free for those who fall under the minimum age requirement or make them purchase it on the private market. This move has been criticized by health experts because India is a poor country, and it is impossible for majority population to pay for vaccines especially when many daily wagers have lost their jobs.

As we wait on a national plan to deal with the unfolding public health emergency, the government does not even have the integrity to acknowledge the tragedy that’s occurring. There’s the country’s home minister who says there’s no shortage of oxygen or beds, the minister of commerce and industry who tells patients to conserve oxygen, and the health minister who promotes mumbo-jumbo cures by gurus. As this goes on, the government has tried to shut down Twitter handles and news reports of what is happening, file police cases on people seeking help, and target relief agencies.

Throughout the crisis, it is these citizen groups and organizations who have stepped up their efforts to save lives. In city after city, they are the ones setting up oxygen centers, food services, and even hospital facilities. But there are issues; many lists are duplicated, phone numbers do not work, and patients and care givers are harassed. The least the government could do is coordinate with relief agencies to create a central system—whether it’s city-wise, district-wise, or state-wise—that could be updated regularly and give citizens a sense of an administration doing its job. Especially because, unlike last year, the virus has now spread to tier-2 and -3 cities and villages, which are accounting for half the deaths in the country. But that would contradict the government’s stated position.

Instead, in a mark of arrogance and apathy, the government moves forward with the construction of the $2.8 billion Central Vista Project (which includes a new Parliament and PM’s residence), recently declaring it an essential service in COVID-devastated Delhi, with construction to conclude in 2024 when the country goes to elections again.

Locked in my home, I watch the world around me collapsing. While my city announces another lockdown for the next 14 days because the previous one did not break our cycle of transmission, I read a newspaper report about how top government officials spent their time attending a workshop on perception management and how to project positive stories.

Every night, I check the day’s numbers hoping that something has changed. Before I look, I always send up a prayer that they have decreased. But when I check this evening, once again I see that they have not. The graph of cases and deaths continues to rise.

The post A Letter From India, Where the World Is Collapsing appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

India today has about 100 million farmers, more than 86 percent of whom own small, marginal properties of one or two hectares of land. This number of farmers, multiplied by the number of family members, plus those engaged in allied activities, means that the agrarian sector makes up over half of India’s population.

For the last half-century, subsequent governments have neglected the sector, resulting in a vastly misregulated system where farmers accrue huge debts and routinely commit suicide—an estimated 300,000 in the last two decades alone. Though the nation is supposedly enjoying a food surplus, the mismanagement of storage and distribution of grains has led to India to rank 94 out of 107 among the countries on the World Hunger Index. There is a need for better regulation. Instead, in the name of free markets, in June 2020, under the cover of the pandemic, as coronavirus cases were spiraling, the BJP issued three Ordinances which had a far-reaching impact in the nation’s agrarian sector.

They included the Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, which will usher in a parallel system of procurement of farm produce where farmers will likely never get a fair price for their crop. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, which sets up a framework for contract farming through an agreement between a farmer and a corporate entity, and bars farmers from seeking any recourse in the courts in case of conflict—practically, this means the corporate entities will dictate terms without being challenged in any meaningful way. And the Essential Commodities Act, an amendment to an earlier law created in the 1950s when India faced a huge food crisis. It delists cereals and other items allowing private players to stockpile goods and cause artificial market inflation.

When the laws were passed in September, farmers from the state of Panjab, in the north west of the country, were the first to respond. Panjab, known as the granary of the nation, is one of the most agriculturally advanced states of India. In past decades, at the height of India’s Green Revolution, Panjab produced food grains for nearly 70 percent of the country; today it still produces for about 40 percent. For about two months, farmers there, under the leadership of unions, carried out blockades of trains and a boycott of highway toll booths, petrol pumps, and warehouses owned by the rich corporations that would benefit from the new laws.

Since the government did not pay attention to the farmers and their strike in one corner of the nation, the farmers from Panjab decided to march to Delhi on Constitution Day, November 26. Farmers from neighboring state Haryana and Uttar Pradesh joined in. The police sought to stop them with tear gas and water cannons, and by digging trenches and placing barricades. But the farmers broke through the barricades with their tractors, reached Delhi and camped on its outskirts. On the same day, another section of society—250 million industrial workers held a day-long strike demanding employment opportunities, against new anti-worker labor codes, and to stop privatization of public sector undertakings. Together, the workers’ and farmers’ actions became arguably the largest strike anywhere in the world.

The biggest provocation to date in the protests came on Republic Day, January 26, when the farmers organized a Tractor March in Delhi. Only days before, the 11th round of negotiations between the protestors and the government had broken down. When cornered by union leaders, government officials had first offered to amend the laws, and when farmers insisted on repeal, they offered to postpone the implementation of the laws by 18 to 24 months. The farmers rejected the stay, insisting, again, on repeal. So the atmosphere the day of the march was especially charged. Panjab also has a long history of confrontation with Delhi, specifically the Red Fort, which has been the seat of power, dating back to Mughal and British rule.

Events took a turn when some protesters reached the Red Fort and unfurled the Sikh flag, or the Nishan Sahib, along with other farmer union flags. Since farmers from Panjab are mostly from the Sikh religion, India’s news media—which has often sided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his seven-year rule—portrayed the act as an affront to the nation flag, which went untouched, and used the event to frame the protests as being organized by anti-national Khalistan supporters.

But the smear campaign isn’t working. Despite ongoing government propaganda—from the very beginning of the protests, the government launched a fierce counterattack to blunt, exhaust, coerce and divide the farmers, calling them Khalistani, rich farmers, foreign hand, urban naxals, anti-nationals, and so on—the protests have continued to gain strength and have now moved beyond north India, spreading across 20 states. In Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, in large meetings, thousands of people are vowing to boycott the government until it repeals the Farm Laws and legalizes the minimum price guarantee (MSP). Specific calls to block roads or trains are being carried out throughout India. The farmers are now planning a foot march to the Parliament in May.

The Sikh tradition of langar—communal eating—has served as the heart of the protests. Men and women join in cooking meals for the whole community. The tradition of sewa—selfless service—is also a core tenet, and it extends to running full-fledged libraries in tents, some of which double as informal classrooms for children of the adjoining slums, and to keeping the camp sites neat and clean. Panjabiyat—the sense of belonging to Panjab—has a cultural appeal beyond religious differences, which may also explain the boost of Muslim solidarity to the movement.

To date, more than 375 people have lost their lives mostly through heart attacks, accidents and some suicides. While national English media and television continues to blank out the protests, local media in languages other than English continue to focus on them. International media, too, has been paying attention; in early February, the Barbadian pop star Rihanna put a viral spotlight on the protests when she tweeted: “Why aren’t we talking about this? #FarmersProtest.” The farmers themselves have started their own YouTube channels, their own Twitter cells, and independent media, as well. The protests have even led to a new genre of protest music—with singers producing about 500 songs in three months.

The farmers are prepared for a long fight. In the winter months they fashioned tents with tarpaulin on their trolleys, and now with harvest season upon them, trolleys are going back and huts with grass and straw roofs, equipped with desert coolers and refrigerators, are coming up for the scorching summer. There is plenty food supply though never enough mobile toilets. The villages around the protest sites provide fresh milk and vegetables. In the villages, rosters of men, women and elderly, are maintained so that people can take turns at the protest sites. Depending on how much land a farmer owns, each home supplies rations and fire wood for the protest kitchens.

Since the last round of negotiations in January stalled, the government has not talked to farmers. Repealing the laws would shatter its strong-arm image. There is the pressure from the crony corporate lobby that sponsored the government’s election campaigns, which now backs the laws because they stand to benefit. The larger dimension is the pressure from the World Trade Organization which since the Uruguay round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 1986-93, has been pushing to liberalize the agrarian sector.

In March, the Supreme Court of India’s committee assigned to look into the laws submitted its recommendations in a sealed envelope, but no details have come forward yet on the confidential process. As of now, the protests can have three likely outcomes: government agrees to repeal the laws; government uses armed action to evict the protesters; government continues to prolong the protests hoping they crack due to internal pressures, they turn violent giving the government an excuse to crack down on them, subside as they run out of steam, or the government manages to buy out union leaders.

Much also depends on the ongoing elections in five states. But as of now, the protests are growing strong and have become the longest stand-off since India achieved independence; to the protesting farmers, they view this as a second wave of the independence struggle.

The post Dispatch From India’s Farmers Protest appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The high expectations surrounding Chile, population 19 million, now reflect just how distinct its history and present are. It was the first country in the region to elect a Marxist as president (Salvador Allende in 1970), but also one of the last countries to transition fully to democracy. Its economic reforms made it the toast of neoliberals (Chile has been called “The Tiger of South America”), putting the country on a wealthier plane than Argentina, Brazil, or my home country of Uruguay.

I arrived in Chile in 2003 to take an academic job. Chile wasn’t my first choice, but the economic situation was too dire then in Uruguay and Argentina. Settling in Santiago, I immediately appreciated the higher incomes, the controls on inflation, the growth and sober political leadership. But as I built a family and life here, I’ve come to see Chile as both a challenge to the conventional wisdom that economic growth strengthens democracy, and as a paradox of rising expectations that has yet to be resolved.

The heart of the contradiction is that the economic reforms in Chile—which brought many Chileans out of poverty, enriched some middle-class people, and made some Santiago neighborhoods as glossy as Manhattan—have also stratified society and destabilized democracy. As some Chileans’ economic situation improved and the image of the country as a wealthier place went global, people expected better healthcare, retirements, and other services than governments could deliver. And meeting higher expectations—for more education or a better quality of life—cost more money and produced more debt, leaving Chileans increasingly vulnerable to the international economic shocks of recent years.

The growing spread between expectations and reality has led to rising public anger—and more of a focus on the failures of Chile’s still young democracy and its inflexible constitution.

Chile’s political system provided stability, but not representation or vehicles for change. Chile was divided into 60 districts, each of which elects two members to Congress. That setup effectively made elections predictable; with proportional representation, almost every district elected one member of the ruling party, and one member of the opposition. There was no room for a third party or outside political force to win representation. Over the years, political parties, knowing they didn’t need to talk to voters, lost touch with the street, and politicians became older than the national population. Most Chileans stopped bothering to vote (for example, in the last presidential election of 2017 less than half of registered citizens voted).

A popular explosion of anger was inevitable. The ignition could have been anything. It turned out to be an October 2019 decision by the government to increase the price of subway fares by the equivalent of six American cents. Here was a clear case of an unaccountable government adding to the burdens of citizens. Protests were started by high school students at a subway station, and soon took over the streets, with university students, unions, and unorganized people participating. Police and citizen violence ensued. (One of my students was among the first to be shot.) By November, the military and its tanks were in the streets. I was afraid of a societal collapse.

Protestors were demanding more than a rollback of the subway fare; they wanted a democratic change in the system, and among their requests was a public vote on a new constitution. The inherited charter feels more like a straitjacket rather than a consensual agreement.

The government dealt with the upheaval as a foreign-import movement that tried to destabilize the country. Yet, the public embraced the call with such force that the authorities, who had long protected the system, couldn’t say no.

The pandemic slowed the protests, but the drive for constitutional change continued. In an October 2020 plebiscite, 78 percent of voters supported a new constitution, and 79 percent voted for a completely elected constitutional convention as the way to do it (instead of a mixed body of parliamentarians and elected citizens).

That verdict raised hopes that real change was coming to Chile, and global headlines ensued. But it was only the beginning of a long journey across a democratic minefield, and a new constitution remains far from assured.

One of the main obstacles is all of the different votes that will take place before a constitution can be drafted and presented to voters for ratification.

As I am writing this note, the first complication is evident: COVID. If parliament approves the government’s measures, elections for the convention will be delayed by more than a month to mid-May. Concurrent with Chile’s municipal elections, there will also be a national vote to elect the 155 members of the convention—138 will be elected by districts, and 17 elected by Chile’s Indigenous people in a nationwide constituency.

The election is full of novelties. There are about 1,400 candidates for these convention posts; refreshingly, 80 percent are first-time candidates for office, and nearly half are younger than 40. The slates emphasize independence; among the groups running are “Independents Like You,” “Independents for Chile,” and even “Independents Without Godparents” (a way of saying they belong to no one).

This election also opens the door for a truly revolutionary change. Candidacy lists must be headed by women and then gender is alternated (woman-man-woman-man, etc.). Moreover, parity is a requirement in the results. (If, in a given district of four members, four men are elected, the two men with the least votes will lose their positions in favor of the two women with the highest vote totals in their respective lists.) If this whole process arrives at a safe harbor, Chile will have the first gender-equally drafted constitution in human history at the national level.

The members of the convention will have one year—from mid-2021 to mid-2022—to draft a new constitution. Once they are done, there will be a plebiscite to approve or reject it.

A new democratic constitution could be a game-changer for Chile, especially if it’s short, simple, and allows enough flexibility for elections and democratic politics to spark change within the system. But the situation is risky, and the final outcome on a constitution is deeply uncertain—because of all the elections that are set to happen between now and the 2022 plebiscite.

The May elections for the convention members will coincide with local elections. Then, an already intensive electoral year must be compressed even further. During this year Chileans will also have a second-round vote in elections for regional governors. In July, we will have national primaries. In November comes the general election (for Congress and the Executive). In December is the run-off for the presidency.

Every single one of these elections has the opportunity to raise new conflicts and open up new debates that could undermine support for the process of creating a new constitution. Officials elected in 2021—from the national president to local mayors—may be wary of changing the governing system of the country in 2022. The right wing is already opposed to deeper changes.

And the political inexperience of the convention delegates—so appealing now to a country starved for change—could become a liability. These newcomers might be inclined to draft a document that is ideologically polarizing or makes too many mistakes. The young convention delegates might also be outmaneuvered by more experienced officeholders and interest groups in the 2022 contest over a new constitution. The people themselves—after so many elections, the pandemic, and the popular uprising—could became wary and reject further change.

Conflicts on the streets could also change the political context. Police violence remains a big and polarizing issue; so is illegal immigration and asylum seekers, who are mostly from Venezuela and Haiti. And the country has no single unifying figure, or institution, that has credibility with all the political players. Chile is a minefield, and every step could bring an explosion.

My hopes for this process are fewer than my fears.

I fear greater social conflict in the year ahead. I fear that if our constitutional project fails, Chile will waste this unique high-profile opportunity to remake itself. And I fear that, if adopted, a new constitution will be badly flawed—and might ultimately disappoint Chileans when it doesn’t solve all of our structural problems.

The post A Letter From Santiago, Where Chileans Are Seeking a New Constitution appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We’re more than a year out from #TheMoment, March 17, when the first lockdown in France began. At that crossroads where countries made different political decisions, France chose to put health first.

Now, as we settle into a third lockdown, to encounter someone without a mask in the street is startling. Every few streets or so, outside every pharmacy, there are little collapsible huts where people can get a rapid antigenic test. It’s also easy to get PCR tests, which are carried out in labs. All COVID-19 tests are free, and people are encouraged to get tested if they have the slightest doubt of infection.

After a very slow start, France is speeding up its vaccination campaign. Now besides vaccination centers, pharmacies and doctors can administer the Astra Zeneca jab and will soon be able to do the same with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations. At first, a sizeable portion of the population was resistant to being vaccinated. Then, when vaccine supplies were slow to arrive in the European Union, the joke was that the contrarian French suddenly all wanted to be vaccinated.

Political figures and personalities were vaccinated publicly in order to encourage those who were reticent. In a moment of delightful silliness, when Olivier Véran, the Minister of Solidarity and Health, was vaccinated in public with his shirt half open, Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot (who was more recently hospitalized with COVID) commented on television that she had given him the nickname “Jolitorax” referring to a character in the comic, Asterix. “Jolitorax” is translated into “Anticlimax” in English Asterix editions, but in French, the name literally means nice-looking chest.

Such moments of levity are important in a country where we haven’t been able to go to a bar or restaurant since last October, and probably won’t be able to until May.

Because France is part of the European Union, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to our neighbors (most often Germany). France’s first lockdown of nearly two months was one of Europe’s strictest, and we had a second lockdown which lasted a month and a half in the fall. We have been wearing masks any time we leave the house since July 20, and have undergone two successive curfews. One began on December 15 and included New Year’s Eve; it kept people inside from 8 p.m. until the morning. The second curfew started January 16, and it required people to stay off the streets from 6 p.m. until morning. Despite these efforts, one year later we’re approaching 95,000 deaths from COVID.

Now, France has locked down for a third time, due to the British variant which accounts for three-quarters of the new cases. As the EU and the UK spar over vaccine doses, Boris Johnson’s government is in discussions as to whether France should join their “red list” from which travel into the UK is banned—“Now that they’ve given us their variant,” sniped my neighbor. On the bright side, we did gain one hour this time around: curfew begins at 7 p.m.

Surprisingly the French—who are famous for being grumblers—have been quite reasonable on the whole, compared to some of their neighbors, from Belgium to Austria, who have staged anti-curfew riots, even though they have had fewer restrictions imposed on them. But patience is starting to wear a little thin.

Instead of rioting, Parisians have spent the past year reading. With all cultural venues and festivals closed or canceled, people turned to books, and despite France’s 3,300 independent bookshops being closed for three months during 2020, losses were only 3.3 percent compared to the previous year. Teenagers made a comeback hit of the classic Arsène Lupin series by Maurice Leblanc, set in the early 1900s about a gentleman thief, following the success of the Netflix series, Lupin, based on the books. A recent decree passed that gave bookshops the status of “essential businesses,” meaning that, along with food shops and pharmacies, they can remain open during the current lockdown. Curiously, record stores, florists, hairdressers, and chocolate shops have been allowed to stay open as well.

We’ve also been cycling. According to the organization Vélo et Territoires, the number of bicyclists in Paris has increased by 70 percent since last May. It helped that city officials transformed an additional 50 kilometers of traffic lanes used by cars into bike lanes. There are evident growing pains; as amateur or aggressive cyclists vie for space with pedestrians and scooters it’s led to encounters that can degenerate into shouting matches.

Still, the heart of Parisian daily life is its cafés, and without them, Paris doesn’t seem like itself. The most recent closure of bars and cafés was October 6, while restaurants closed for service October 30, leaving only the option of takeaway and delivery.

But eateries have not been abandoned. Restaurants and cafés can choose between government aid of up to 10,000 euros per month or compensation equal to 20 percent of their revenues from 2019 with a limit of 200,000 euros per month. Most of the larger bistros and restaurants are closed, but neighborhood bistros are often open.

The enterprising owner of our café downstairs, a Kabyle man born in Algeria, reinvented his establishment with grace and humor over the various lockdowns, first offering frankfurters and sandwiches, then adding to the takeaway menu homemade couscous and mulled wine. During the winter months, in fact, while Germans were deprived of their glühwein in Christmas markets, Parisians converted to drinking mulled wine in order to linger in front of cafés offering takeaway beverages.

Now that it’s spring, people often congregate outside the takeaway window drinking beer. This is technically illegal and defeats the purpose of the closures, but at least they’re outside, and it gives us a semblance of normalcy. This March, during a wave of spring-like weather, the police banned alcohol in certain areas of Paris, such as the Canal Saint-Martin, where large groups had begun to gather.

Masked Parisians have been getting together legally throughout the year—to continue a tradition of demonstrating. There have been protests against police brutality, sexual harassment, poverty, nuclear weapons, and working conditions, and demonstrations in support of medical staff or teachers, climate change policy, and of political prisoners in Turkey, Algeria, or Saudi Arabia. A motley crew of conspiracy theorists, and groups against restrictions and mask-wearing, pop up in various cities to have their say as well.

Paris real estate remains expensive, and unless you’re very wealthy, apartments are small. The chic neighborhoods, for the most part on the city’s Left Bank, have emptied, their inhabitants having decamped temporarily to second homes in Brittany, Normandy, or the south of France. The first lockdown led to a rush of families deciding to leave the city permanently, often for the northern suburbs, expediting a trend that began with the extension of metro lines going just outside the city’s perimeter.

But most Parisians are still stuck at home in confined spaces. In my north-eastern neighborhood of Belleville, however, which is rapidly gentrifying but remains ethnically and socially mixed, the streets are packed with people going about their daily business or enjoying one of the largest parks in Paris, the 19th-century Buttes-Chaumont. Small children, all masked, skip along joyfully holding hands as their teachers take them for a walk.

Childhood is one area where France stands out: following the first lockdown, the government made it a priority to keep schools open to avoid disrupting education. According to statistics gathered by UNESCO, France’s schools were among the European schools least likely to close over the past year. Children ages 6 and up are required to wear masks, and classes are held in person as usual (except for high schools where classes can be also be attended via Zoom). This has been a godsend for most parents, especially those who can’t work remotely. A recent poll showed that 73 percent of parents and 89 percent of children considered their experience together during the pandemic a positive one for their family.

University courses, however, have all been online, which has been particularly difficult on foreign students who are new to France and are stuck in front of their computers in tiny rooms. And many French students have lost part-time jobs with parents unable to help out. A group of restaurants that had served meals to hospital staff a year ago is now offering meals to students in need. In January, President Macron announced that students could have two meals a day at the price of 1 euro.

Despite being provided with as much uninterrupted schooling as possible, the French are currently experiencing what is called a “baby crash.” This is also surprising. France has Europe’s highest fertility rate, and at the beginning of the first lockdown some specialists predicted a baby boom. But statistics show that nine months after the first lockdown, birthrates were 7 percent lower than in 2019.

Last but certainly not least, culture, an essential component of city life, is still on hold. Lucas Destrem, who specializes in urbanism and political and cultural geography, recently re-designed the iconic Paris metro map in support of cultural venues waiting to open. His approach was to replace the metro stops with names of museums, art centers, cinemas, theatres, libraries, or music conservatories. The map won media coverage and wide praise in the cultural milieu.

In the meantime, some Parisians are soothing themselves in an unusual way: by behaving like the tourists who typically crowd our streets. It’s become more common for Parisians to treat themselves to a weekend in a hotel, and hotels, in turn, are turning to locals for business, such as the new Hotel Paradiso. Operated by the production company and movie theatre chain MK2, the hotel offers giant screens in each room, and an open-air cinema on the roof, with popcorn, snacks, and a restaurant that delivers meals to rooms. For Parisians who are already avid movie-goers and have 200 euros to spare for a rare treat, this could provide a way to fill this unusual, and temporary, cultural void while we wait for what will happen next.

The post A Letter From Paris, Where the New Normal Is Less Grouchy Than You’d Expect appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

COVID-19 hit our side of the world relatively late. That meant that Mexico City, where I live, had one month’s notice to prepare after seeing what was happening in Asia and Europe. Unfortunately, we did not use that advance warning well, and now we are still paying for it. Almost a year after COVID-19 hit us, we have reached approximately 600,000 confirmed cases and 30,000 deaths.

As the city continues to suffer under the pandemic—even as other parts of the world have COVID-19 under control, or are well on their way to getting vaccinated—I find myself thinking back to that time last February and early March when life went on as usual in Mexico. It seems strange in the memory: Why did we think we could be spared?

It took until March 23, 2020, for Mexican authorities to officially urge people to stay home. Still, they noted the low number of reported cases and said there was nothing to be afraid of; we would be out of confinement by April 19. Then that date was pushed back to June. After that, the government stopped estimating when lockdown would be over.

It’s still not over. We residents of Mexico City have been officially on lockdown for nearly a year, since March 23. Or to be more accurate, we are supposed to be on lockdown.

At first, people stayed home and followed the protocols. So, at least for the first two or three months, we experienced unprecedented silence in our urbanity. The city was eerily quiet, especially at night. The number of cars (both parked and moving) in the streets was reduced dramatically, which gave some streets a post-apocalypse aura.

I had never experienced such a feeling of solitude in Mexico City before. One night in last year’s spring—I can’t remember exactly when, since keeping track of time’s passage has been challenging—I was walking home at around 9 p.m., and it felt like the world had suddenly stopped. I was the only person walking in the street and the only noises were my footsteps. I remember thinking how unaccustomed we are, in a city of 20 million people, to being utterly alone. It gave me the creeps and I hurried my steps back home.

While the usual city sounds were muted, confinement wasn’t entirely quiet—it brought the audible singing of birds. A family of butterflies surprised me by making a home among the leaves of the plants in my balcony. I’m not sure if the butterflies or the birds are new; it was having silence and the time to actually notice both of them that made them remarkable.

But the peace and quiet did not last.

Early on, a traffic light system was employed by authorities to tell us what’s what. Red light meant a total lockdown. Green meant a total lift of lockdown measures—or at least that’s what we’ve been told, because we have yet to experience green. The pandemic traffic light has since gone from red to all different shades of orange to red again… and then once more into “orange with caution.”

As time passed, and the traffic light stayed at red or orange, many grew tired of staying home and gave themselves the unofficial green light. There wasn’t much the authorities could do to stop them. With every increasing day since last spring, I’ve seen more people on the streets—day and night—from my window. One day last the summer, the street vendors came back and never went back home again—not even during the deadliest weeks of the pandemic at the very end of last year.

The parties started last summer too. You could hear loud music and singing from more than one rooftop on any given night. Traffic on the streets also came back around that time, though it would not be until December that it returned to pre-pandemic levels.

December and January would prove to be the worst of the pandemic, and not just because of the spikes in cases and deaths. In those months, people lost all sensitivity and returned to their lives. It is still hard for me to believe what I witnessed, but the juxtaposition was real. Hospitals—private and public—became so full that people were being treated on the waiting area benches, and sometimes even on the streets. People were queueing for five or six hours every day in order to get oxygen tanks filled up for sick relatives, and social media channels were full of ads featuring oxygen providers and resellers. Everyone had a sick friend or relative.

And yet parties and gatherings did not stop. They accelerated in number and grew in size. Some private companies even held year-end parties—maskless, massive indoor parties. This was the case of TV Azteca and several other enterprises owned by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, one of the most influential businessmen in Mexico. Salinas did not care about the backlash he and his employees received through social media, claiming they were just living without fear and were ready to face the risks of contracting COVID-19.

This was not shocking or surprising. Ours is a country where the president has openly refused to wear a mask or take any measure to enforce lockdowns since the beginning of the pandemic. In his own words: “Everything here is optional. Nothing is mandatory.” It was not a surprise either when he contracted COVID-19 at the end of January. Being sick didn’t even convince him to mask up; while infectious, he had a TV crew come to his house so he could record a message to the nation about his health condition.

Some ten days after his contagion, the president returned to his daily routine, without adjustments. At that time, which was just over a month ago, the COVID-19 traffic light in Mexico City was still red. But you would never know that by walking the bustling early February streets. All formal businesses remained closed, but many business owners resorted to selling their wares on the sidewalks just outside their formal establishments. Who could blame them? Given the lack of government support for businesses, this fend-for-yourself mood permeated throughout the city. Life was not the same as before the pandemic, but this was as close as it could get.

February was a very strange month. We had been on red light since mid-December when hospitals were completely full. Even private hospitals used by the rich were denying new admissions. There were many reports of oxygen canisters being stolen (at gunpoint) from the delivery services. But cases started declining slowly, and restaurants and shops were pushing for reopening. The government announced that the first vaccine doses for elderly people would soon be administered. Most of us spent all day on February 1 trying to get our elders registered at the vaccination website. Most of us failed and had to wait until some days later, when the site started working properly.

By the month’s end, vaccination of the elderly had started in earnest, with a bit less than a million vaccines applied in a week or so. Many elders had to stand in line for more than five hours to get their shots. Despite the obvious need for a better vaccination strategy, it was a great relief to watch people finally get immunized.

Restaurants with outdoors seating space have now been allowed to reopen. So have stores, with capacities limited. Public transportation is as crowded as ever (and no social distancing is possible inside a metro wagon or urban bus at rush hours). I am glad to report that most people on the streets are wearing masks (and around 70 percent actually wear it over the nose and mouth). More bicyclists are using the roads than ever before.

Not everything has opened up yet. Schools and non-essential workplaces are still shut down, though recently the public has been pushing for school reopening. It doesn’t appear people will tolerate home schooling and virtual classes much longer.

Mexico City may be treating the pandemic like it’s over, but the traffic light system remains at “orange with caution.” The road ahead of us remains a long one. Vaccination efforts are falling way short of their goals, and herd immunity won’t be reached anytime soon. But citizens want to resume their normal lives, even if it means risking new outbreaks.

I have been watching this year-long unraveling from my window, for I am privileged to have a job and family life that allow me to stay confined. I am not sure what to think about the future. Perhaps we have learned new ways of resilience that will be important to dealing with other emergencies when the pandemic recedes. But the government also has demonstrated a failure to lead, communicate clearly, and enforce its own rules in a crisis. And too many people here have shown too much indifference and stubbornness.

When this is over, I hope that we will be more sensitive to suffering and more willing to compromise, and to support each other.

The post A Letter From Mexico City, Where We’re Still Supposed to Be on Lockdown appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I’m a freelance writer who lives in the historically Black and Brown community of South Phoenix. After a long day covering the inequities of over-policing Black communities and the overuse of force against Black people, I watch the sun finally set on the desert horizon facing my office window. I cannot make out the houses on South Mountain because a lethal industrial and waste facility and highway pollution have erased them from view.

Suddenly the neighborhood app repeatedly beeps, alerting me to gunshots in the surrounding area. It’s a routine summer night here in the Wild West, where gangs, graffiti artists, sex workers, and thieves set the 100-plus-degree nights ablaze.

I hear the gunshots themselves, too, cracking as they penetrate the air. Red, white, and blue flashes illuminate the housing projects, two city blocks away. Sirens and ghetto birds are part of the city’s soundtrack. In the morning, news websites report the body counts from yesterday’s COVID-19 data, protests, police violence, and overnight street battles.

In Arizona, the stay-at-home executive order lasted only about three weeks until white conservatives decided that the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, had held them and their “right to work” hostage long enough. Their actions catapulted Arizona to one of the top five COVID-19 hot spots in the United States over the summer, alongside more populous states such as California, Florida, and Texas.

But even before Gov. Ducey signed the stay-at-home executive order, my wife and I decided to keep our daughters, who are Afro-Mexican—Jade, age 5, and Naimah, who will turn 2 in November—from the public. There was no evidence that children were less susceptible to contracting COVID-19, and we did not want to risk their health.

On the day the mayor of Phoenix made it mandatory to wear masks in June, I went to a gas station and witnessed two customers shouting at each other in a crowded shop:

Customer 1: “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”
Customer 2: “Why are you walking the store with a backpack—going to steal something?”
Customer 1: “No, but they should check your pockets! Hey, yo, check her pockets!”
Customer 3: “He is so rude.”
Customer 2: “I know.”

The exchange confirmed my suspicion that there is no need to risk bringing my girls out where COVID-19 has exacerbated already existing tensions.

My anxiety and depression, which usually govern my daily life, have taken on new life in this COVID-19 hellscape.

As a husband and father, I feel helpless, unable to promise my wife and daughters safety from these dangers. As a service-connected disabled veteran with PTSD, it especially hard not to feel inundated with news and conversations about unarmed Black or Brown men, women, and children fatally shot by law enforcement.

Racial disparities mean that both COVID-19 and unemployment are disproportionately deadly to Black people, as are police-involved shootings.

One in 920 Black Americans have died of the virus, twice the rate of white Americans. Black folks also experience America’s highest unemployment rate, at 12.6 percent. And Arizona remains in the top five states for police-involved shootings; its rate of people shot by the police is 39 per million.

We live in South Phoenix’s 85041 zip code, a historically low- to middle-income community that remains a hotspot for COVID-19. Cases here are more than triple the per-capita cases in more affluent neighborhoods such as Scottsdale.

At 27th Ave & Southern Ave, where new homes are going to be built soon. Photograph by Maria Nancy Thomas

During the Segregation Era prior to the 1960s, the city of Phoenix designated South Phoenix as “hazardous land.” But today, the city government is selling this “hazardous land” to developers, along with significant tax breaks. Each new shopping complex and gated community built in our neighborhoods drives home values, rents, and property taxes higher. This rapid inflation is forcing families from the neighborhoods where they have lived in for generations.

On Sunday, April 19, 2020, I woke up to a report in the Detroit News about a 5-year-old girl named Skylar Herbert who developed a rare complication from coronavirus and became the first child from Michigan to die of the disease.

As I read the article, Jade’s face flashed through my mind. Then I thought of Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones.

Aiyana, a 7-year-old Black girl sleeping on her grandmother’s couch, was shot and killed by a Detroit SWAT team as the crew of an A&E true-crime reality TV show, The First 48, filmed. Police kicked in her grandmother’s apartment door, threw in a flash-bang grenade, and lit her blanket on fire. Then Officer Joseph Weekley fired a single shot that drilled through her head and out of her neck.

America has already added Skylar and Ayiana to its kill rate. Jade is in its crosshairs.

In the first week of July, we finally purchased a mask for Jade. Because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that children younger than 24 months not wear protective masks due to potential breathing issues, we have not had Naimah wear a mask, but we get mean side-eyes when people in public notice.

Jade holding her first mask. Photograph by Maria Nancy Thomas

We have talked to Jade about the pandemic, and she is very conscious of social distancing and the importance of wearing a mask in public. She also knows she won’t be able to go to school with her friends until the spread COVID-19 slows. Because I work from home, I am blessed to be able to care for my daughters during this time. My wife, Nancy, and I do not have to bear the added stress of finding daycare as many working parents do.

The girls’ smiles keep our spirits up amidst the ongoing social chaos.

Jade has adapted. Her friend, Z, lives next door, and lately his head appears above the 6-foot-high brick wall dividing his family’s back yard from ours. Both he and Jade have a ladder, and they take turns: Z sits on his ladder while Jade stands on the ground, or vice versa. It is their form of social distancing.

It is normal for my daughters and I stay inside our house to escape outside’s devilish heat, but this summer we added another step to our plan and constructed forts to protect ourselves from COVID-19. When Nancy returns home from her job as an operations manager at a fine arts installation company, the day is beginning to cool into the evening, and we can finally go outside. The Arizona sun and heat are harsh on our skin. Both my daughters have light brown skin. In less than ten minutes, they turn pinkish-red, even with sunscreen.

Lately, when I wake up, my heart swells, pushing against my chest. I wonder: “How can I avoid dying by the hands of the police or COVID-19?”

I am a member of one high-risk group because I live with genetic chronic hypertension and must avoid COVID-19’s potentially fatal symptoms. My body and mind fight each other. Mostly, I can’t sleep. Sometimes, I can’t eat. When I am able to eat, my internal organs are lethargic and the food moves too slowly. Every day, I feel uneasy.

I am scared to be a Black father who is genetically vulnerable to the novel coronavirus and socially vulnerable to the racism pandemic. My fear holds me hostage. But my fear is also a tool that keeps me vigilant. It feeds my physical and mental energy to fight for my daughters, for my family, and for my community’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

When friends and family ask me how I am, I answer, “My wife and daughters are healthy and happy. That is all that matters.”

The post A Letter From South Phoenix, Where Two Pandemics ‘Have Turned American Life Feral’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Sound like a lot? It’s one small part of Sweden’s extensive “Vision Zero” project, an initiative begun in the late 1990s to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from traffic accidents. Coordinated across multiple government agencies, Vision Zero ambitiously prioritizes the safety of residents from preventable tragedies. And while it’s paying off—the clear trend is decreasing deaths and injuries—we’re not at zero yet. In 2009, 358 people died in traffic accidents in Sweden; in 2019, that number was 221. (By comparison, the U.S. states Georgia and North Carolina, which—like Sweden—have a population of approximately 10 million, had more than 1,500 and 1,400 traffic deaths, respectively, in 2018.)

As an American immigrant in Sweden, I find this focus on safety admirable, even utopic. Similar examples of Swedish regulatory cultures around safety abound. Every new private home is required to have a locked medicine cabinet. Employers pay for protective glasses for workers suffering from too much screentime. Alcohol is highly taxed and only available at the federal store known in Swedish as “the System.” And hitting closer to my own crunchy, homesick-for-Whole-Foods-Market tastes: Only whole flax seeds are sold in Sweden (even though our bodies can’t take in their beneficial nutrients that way). Alas! The crushed ones carry a tiny risk of cyanide poisoning.

In Swedish society, the precautionary principle reigns: When we lack evidence for the safety of a given issue, we proceed with caution to protect the public from harm. This bedrock principle informs all of the safety regulations above, and more—especially when it comes to health care. Sometimes infuriatingly so, doctors here are cautious in prescribing everything from hydrocortisone to antibiotics, and unless there is clear evidence a treatment will not cause you harm, you will have a hard time finding a Swedish doctor who will prescribe it.

Soon after our family moved here for work in 2015, I fell in love with the sensible, progressive attitude of most Swedish governmental policies, gladly shedding my distrust of institutions. A chronic worrier about immigration matters (among other paperwork stressors), I adopted the comforting, if naïve, mantra: “If it’s wrong, Sweden will find a way to make it right.”

All of which is why, when the novel coronavirus began to break into the news cycle early in 2020, I watched the Swedish response with curiosity. Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room on February 28, a small, professionally printed (and impeccably designed) cardboard table tent informed me that the overall risk level for an outbreak in Sweden was “relatively low.” I felt soothed by this news. Sweden was taking care of it. The authorities had said so. And they had time to make table tents!

Just 12 days later, the first person died of COVID-19 in Sweden. The infection rate, here as elsewhere, climbed steeply. At the end of March, one month after the table tent, Sweden reported 4,834 people had documented cases of COVID-19; by the close of April, that number had jumped to 21,602 cases. (It’s worth noting that Sweden did not offer widespread testing until late June; in the spring, only those admitted to the hospital were offered COVID-19 tests, so these numbers are likely an undercount.) In the fall, following six weeks of population dispersal into the Swedish countryside, case numbers dropped significantly. Starting in September, about two weeks after school resumed, cases appear to be climbing again—albeit slowly, while intensive care beds occupancy and deaths are way down compared with the spring.

Sweden’s pandemic approach has garnered outsized attention in the English-speaking press considering its relatively small population of 10 million. I watched with incredulity as tiny Social Democrat-ruled Sweden was celebrated at home by Trump supporters who urged, “Be like Sweden!” Meanwhile, on the left, our high death rate became a cautionary tale for the dangers of “herd immunity.” When a community achieves herd immunity through prior infection or vaccination, vulnerable individuals (even the unvaccinated) gain protection because the disease can’t find new hosts and thus can’t spread as easily. Explained in this way, herd immunity sounds quite Swedish: Collectively, we can protect the members of our “herd” unable to protect themselves. (Yet interestingly, Sweden does not mandate vaccinations for newborns, relying on parents to make that decision for their children. Compliance is reliably around 97 percent.)

Officially, Sweden never adopted a herd immunity strategy, although several of its policies seem to have it in mind, at least as a side effect. Sweden in fact chose a mitigation strategy: The Public Health Agency (FHM) aimed not to stop the virus but to control its spread so that the health care system, especially intensive care beds, would not be overwhelmed. In the beginning, this mitigation strategy—aka “flatten the curve”—was the goal of many nations, but as we learned more about the dangers of surviving COVID-19 (including sustained damage to the heart, lungs, and kidneys), and more about its transmission, many nations similar to Sweden (such as its neighbors, Denmark, Norway, and Finland) shifted course to a “crush the curve” strategy of “test, trace, and isolate.” FHM, however, persisted in emphasizing mitigation measures (wash your hands, keep your distance, stay home if you’re sick), avoiding panic, and protecting our most vulnerable, those who are over 70 years old and/or those with risk factors that exacerbate COVID-19.

But at the time I write this, Sweden has one of the highest death tolls per capita in the world: 57.3 deaths per 100,000 residents, just under the United States’ 57.39. By comparison, in Italy, ground zero for the European pandemic, that number is 58.77; in Norway, a more comparable nation to Sweden in terms of demography, that number is 4.97. Perhaps more alarming is Sweden’s high case fatality rate (6.9 percent), more than double that of the United States. Some of the most vulnerable in Sweden—those in nursing homes—were not protected under the mitigation strategy. In fact, of the 5,731 people killed by COVID-19 in Sweden, 5,137 were older than 70, and 2,855 of those deaths were people over age 85.

Reports have emerged in Swedish media of family members being informed their loved ones were being placed in palliative end-of-life care instead of being treated for COVID-19 in the hospital. According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, a mere 17 percent of Swedish elders in care homes were provided hospitalization, and public documents show that instead of attempting to fight the virus, the National Board of Health and Welfare advised health care workers to treat these patients with anti-anxiety medications as well as morphine and other opioids. As I watched this failure of compassion and infection containment in real time, I became saddened. Then enraged, then disillusioned by my adopted country, or my idea of it. I asked Swedish friends, “Would your reaction to these deaths be different if it were children who suffered disproportionately instead of elders?”

Their silence was informative. And the policies around education followed suit: Schools remained open for the under-16s throughout the pandemic. FHM has also advised parents to send children to school even if someone in the household has a confirmed case of COVID-19, so long as they are symptom-free. At first, FHM reasoned, and most Swedish media agreed, that if the children stayed home, we’d suffer from lack of personnel in essential services, particularly in health care. (Never mind the extensive child-care system in place for school breaks designed just to meet this purpose). But recently, leaked emails between state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and other high-level public health advisors belie this public position. On March 14, Tegnell wrote, “One point in favor of keeping the schools open is to reach herd immunity faster.”

Yet these leaked emails, and the assumptions they make about the more vulnerable relatives and school staff to whom children could transmit the virus, barely made a splash with the stoic Swedish public.

It may be that elementary school-aged children face a relatively low risk of serious health consequences from COVID-19. But since we don’t know the long-term effects the virus has on young people, and we also don’t know their role in spreading the disease to the adults in their lives, shouldn’t the precautionary principle apply?

Apparently not: Parents who in good conscience wished to protect their children or themselves by educating them at home were not only denied that opportunity, but they were also in some cases threatened with reports to social services for neglect for violating the skolplikt requirement. Literally the “duty to school,” skolplikt prohibits homeschooling and mandates education of all school-aged children. Like much Swedish public policy, it’s meant to provide a common standard for education and health, regardless of socioeconomic status. Skolplikt is there for the greater good of children, and thus, for the whole of Swedish society.

But during the pandemic, exactly whose greater good is Sweden considering?

COVID-19 is serving as a magnifying glass of our societies’ vulnerabilities. And what is magnified in Sweden is that this question of the greater good requires constant focus, revision, and holistic framing in the face of new challenges.

In the face of a deadly virus with unknown long-term consequences, why didn’t caution reign here? Where was and is the Swedish regulatory state in this question of safety? (For this virus is surely more deadly than crushed flaxseeds, and even more deadly than traffic accidents.) In a country where the good of the many often supersedes the rights of the few, why are Swedes content with a policy that instead puts so many burdens on individuals, particularly the most vulnerable? And, most disturbingly, why do so many accept, without question, the government’s policy to allow an unknown virus to spread freely through our shared society?

Even after five years in Sweden, I can only begin to speculate on answers to these questions. I know I’m not alone: Thousands of Swedes are members of secret Facebook groups advocating for changes to the Swedish strategy, and more than 7,000 have signed a Change.org petition asking the World Health Organization to intervene in Sweden’s relaxed policies.

My own love affair with this nation has finally encountered its first real conflict. As Sweden’s National Day approached in June, I looked for speeches acknowledging the thousands of lives lost or for Swedish flags at half-mast. Finding none of these, I grieved privately for the souls lost. I grieved for the soul of a nation lost. I grieved for the Sweden, or the idea of Sweden, that I had proudly embraced: of a nation that cares, equally, for all.

The post A Letter From Sweden, Which Deems Flax Seeds More Dangerous Than the Pandemic appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It was about 3 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 27, and my husband Tom and I were asleep. My nose twitched and I thought, How odd to smell something burning. I assumed I was dreaming and kept my eyes closed.

Then I heard the wind through the open bedroom window: Whooooooosh, whoooooosh, whoooooosh!

I immediately opened my eyes—a burning scent and a boisterous wind do not a good combination make. I looked out the window and glimpsed the last thing I wanted to see: small embers falling in air. I recognized them as embers because they were orange. An intolerably pretty orange. A color not associated with the darkness of a normal night.

I didn’t yell, only because I didn’t want to accept what I recognized. But I did speak loudly enough to wake my husband: “Fire!” Later, I’d learn that the conflagration had a name—the Glass Fire—that it had started in our neighborhood, and that it was devastating tens of thousands of acres across Northern California’s Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

Tom jabbed the fire alarm buttons. We threw on yesterday’s clothes and rushed out of the bedroom. I stopped in front of the windows overlooking the courtyard when I saw flames perhaps 75 feet away. I was stunned. The hillside facing our house was on fire. Tom sprinted to the front door. He ran outside to turn on the fire suppression system’s sprinklers.

I forced myself to move, running to the basement to grab the cat carriers. We have three dogs and three cats. While the confused dogs remained by my heels, the fire alarm’s reverberating wailing din had sent the cats scurrying to various hiding places.

I looked, but I couldn’t find the cats. I opened the front door and found myself facing flames larger than they’d seemed moments before. I ran across the courtyard yelling for Tom, but the gray smoke filled my mouth, made me cough, and muffled my voice. I had to run back inside the house to breathe.

As I coughed, I mentally exhorted myself: Stay. Calm. Perhaps I would have panicked, but I faced three worried dogs I needed to evacuate: Ajax, Neo, and Nova.

I inhaled, pushed open the front door again, and ran back across the courtyard to the garage.

The flames looked even larger and, offensively, prettier. I backed the car out and pulled up to the front door. I screamed again for Tom—he later told me he’d been watering flames near one end of the house—and when I finally saw him, I shouted, “We have to leave!”

I kept the car running as we both rushed back into the house. Tom scooped up an empty cat carrier and began to look for Tarzan, Addie, and Suki. I was already holding another carrier when Tom suggested I take the dogs and go. He would stay to find the cats, and follow separately in his car.

I paused to look at him. This time, I didn’t just stay calm. I became cold. I assessed the risks while Tom searched the room. I’d turned 60 earlier in the month. Sixty is an interesting number of years—one hopes to live longer, but it also suffices as a full life. I realized that if I expired at that moment, I would have had a great run because of Tom’s contributions to our shared life.

If I left ahead of Tom, I might have a better chance of survival, but I didn’t prefer a life without him. Suddenly, I understood why couples who’d lived long lives together sometimes died in short succession.

Coldly and firmly, I announced, “I am not leaving without you.” I raised my voice and said it again, with a silent apology to the nearby dogs I presumably could save: “I won’t leave without you.”

But though I’d thought to apologize to the dogs, I really should have apologized to the cats whom Tom would not, on his own, have left behind. Forced to choose between his wife and three dogs on one hand and three cats on the other, however, he received a reason not to stay.

We rushed back into the courtyard. Tom helped put the dogs in my car, then ran to the garage to get his car and lead our drive down the winding, one-third-mile road from our house to the gate. As it turned out, I might not have been able to make it on my own. I couldn’t see through the gray, ashy haze. But I could see the dim yellow tail lights on Tom’s car and stuck to him like… well, like white cat fur on a black sweater.

Later, Tom told me he also couldn’t see through the smoke, which was why we crept forward at about one mile per hour despite desperately wanting to rush away. It would have been disastrous for our cars to veer off of the asphalt road cut into the mountain. Tom said he felt the car wheels nearly slip off the edge a few times. He made it down safely, partly through muscle memory and partly because he understood that those of us in the car behind him depended on him.

Tom led us through the gate, and we continued on to the parking lot of our local Safeway. He then told me he was going to return to the house to find the cats and show our fire suppression system to the firefighters, who had converged near our gate at the bottom of the mountain.

This time, I didn’t protest—he would be in the company of well-equipped firefighters. I also understood he needed to make another attempt; it was not in Tom’s character to give up easily.

Tom later returned with the cats. It required half an hour to find them all. Addie had stowed away in a cabinet, Suki had burrowed in a closet, and Tarzan had hidden under bed cushions.

Tom also returned with the depressing news that while our primary residence was safe, our guesthouse had burned down. The “guest house” was actually a library that happened to contain a bed. In this library were critical components of my archives as a writer, poet, artist, editor, and publisher.

The author’s guest house before the Glass Fire. Courtesy of Eileen R. Tabios.

Here are some of the items that burned:

—two decades of notes for, and various false starts on, what will be my first novel, DoveLion, which will be released in 2021;

—about a thousand books, including inventory from Meritage Press, a literary and arts publisher I created in 2001;

—the entire series of The Asian Pacific American Journal, for which I was editor in the 1990s;

—nine personal diaries focused on encounters I had with poets and artists, including original work by some of them, like a bird drawing by the late poet Philip Lamantia, scribbled over lunch at a cafe near City Lights in San Francisco;

—drawings, small sculptures, and photographs from my poetry performance, and exhibitions related to my project “Poems For/From the Six Directions”; and

—copies of and correspondences for Black Lightning, a book I’d edited that is significant for being the first anthology of Asian American poets detailing and discussing the progress of poems from first to last drafts.

There was more, as well, in my library’s six floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and dozen four-foot-wide file cabinets. Recalling my library’s contents, I realize again that Tom has given me a great life, but so has another love: the love for, thereby the love of, poetry.

We (like other evacuees) have not yet found housing for the months ahead; it will take time to address the toxic aftermath of what’s burned and make our property livable again. We are temporarily in San Francisco. As I write, Tom is on the phone dealing with the insurance company and contractors for rebuilding. At our feet lie three sleeping dogs, and on the bed three sleeping cats.

The Glass Fire still burns, and our house—with even more books and archives—remains at risk. But looking around, my legs itching from wearing the same pair of jeans in which I fled the fires five days ago, I am moved by how much that has formed my life has been love—making me even more thankful and humbled to be alive. No wonder everything I write is fueled by love—a love that burns hotter than fire.

The post A Letter From Napa Valley, Where Love Burns Hotter Than Fire appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.