Everything you need to know about the treaty protecting environmental defenders in Latin America.
In 1988, threedays before Christmas,Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filhowent to take a showerin his yardwhen he was assassinated by local cattle ranchers with a .22rifle.
Mendeshad been a Brazilianleaderof the rubber tapper workers’ union, who advocated for Indigenous people’s rights and defended the Amazon rainforest against exploitation. The cattle ranchers who’d killed him were rural landowners, hoping to continue deforesting it. This wasn’t the first killing of an environmental defender in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and it wouldn’t be the last. In 2016, almost 30 years after Chico Mendes's murder, Berta Cáceres,a HonduranIndigenousenvironmental defender, was killed by sicarios for her opposition to the construction of a dam in the Gualcarque River. Two different causes, two different countries, and two different times, but one motivation: to silence those who fought and defended the environment in Latin America.
Environmental defenders have contributed to halting 11% of environmentally damaging projects across the planet. However, the role comes with a high cost to their safety: Constant threats, violence, and hundreds of assassinations make their work incredibly dangerous. These attacks are mainly related to land disputes and environmental damage, and 70%are for defending forests.
Chico Mendes and his wife, Ilsamar, in 1988. Courtesy of Miranda Smith / Wikimedia.
The UN defines environmental human rights defenders as “individuals and groups who, in their personal or professional capacity and in a peaceful manner, strive to protect and promote human rights relating to the environment, including water, air, land, flora and fauna.”They use non-violent methods to protect the environment, contributing to preserving biodiversity and Indigenous rights. In 2000, the Human Rights Commission established the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, which included promoting environmental defenders' protection within their mandate. In 2019, the UN General Assembly recognized the contribution of environmental defenders to ecological protection and sustainable development,urging states to develop and appropriately fund protection initiatives for human rights defenders.
But this has proven tricky in Latin America. According to a 2021 Global Witness report titled “Last Line of Defence,” 165 environmental defenders were killed in LAC in 2020,a frightening number that illustrates how vulnerable activists are in the region. In addition, these attacks made up 73% of all attacks against environmental defenders in the world, making Latin Americaan especially hazardous area to protect the environment. The reason behind the frequency of these attacks is closely related to the region’s long history with extractive industries as a means of economic development. LAC is largely made up of developing countries, and many have opted to prioritize economic growth over environmental regulation. Vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous communities and poor local communities, have suffered the impacts of this the most, and in parallel, also act as the last line of defense when it comes to protecting the environment.
The regional response for protecting environmental defenders: The Escazú Agreement
Even though environmental regulations in Latin American countries have progressed in recent years, activists are still being murdered and attacked, and regional cooperation is required to ensure their protection. In 2012, a collective of LAC nations decided to draft an agreement implementing Principle 10 of the UN’s Rio Declaration on Environment and Development,with the goal of creating the LAC version of the Aarhus Convention. The agreement was adoptedon March 4, 2018, in Escazú, Costa Rica—giving the treaty its name: the Escazú Agreement, or Acuerdo de Escazú. On April 22, 2021, nearly a decade after discussions first began, the Escazú Agreement went into effect, becoming the first environmental treaty in LAC.
The primary purpose of the treaty is to improve and guarantee the procedural human rights of access to information, public participation, and justice. Latin America is a region with severe economic inequalities that directly affect the political participation of the most vulnerable populations, excluding them from most decision-making processes. The Escazú Agreement, acknowledging this exclusionary situation and the numerous socio-environmental conflicts across the continents, sets new human rights standards, guaranteeing the most vulnerable communities are involved in environmental decision-making.
Concerning environmental defenders, the Escazú Agreement also seeks to change the dangerous circumstances they suffer across Latin America. First, the treaty states in Article 9 that “each [signing] party shall guarantee a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organizations thatpromote and defendhuman rights in environmental matters” In practice, this allows environmental defenders to act freely and safely, without fear of threat or harm.
The treaty also indicates that signing countries “shall take adequate and effective measures to recognize, protect and promote”the human rights of environmental defenders. This clause focuses on civil and political rights, reinforcing their right to life, freedom of opinion, freedom of movement, personal integrity, and peaceful assembly, among others. In addition, due to the historical impunity of the criminals who have perpetrated crimes against environmental defenders, the treaty reinforces due process for preventing and punishing attacks or threats made against them.
To further effectively protect environmental defenders, in April, the first Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Escazú Agreement established an ad hoc working group to create an action plan to be presented at the next COP. According to the initial COP, this working group would allow for significant public participation, “endeavouring to include persons or groups in vulnerable situations,” especially Indigenous people and local communities. This could mean that environmental defenders who have experienced attacks or threats themselves can now be a part of creating the action plan to prevent more attacks from happening in the future.
The purpose of all these rules is to protect the legitimate political work of environmental activists across Latin America. This progress is essential for making LAC more democratic and ecological; and indeed, defending those who risk their lives to protect the environment is vital for continually improving our democracies.
The problem, however, has been getting signatories to ratify it.
The vital need to adopt the treaty
Twenty-five countries have signed the Escazú Agreement so far, but only 13 have ratified it. Some have resisted signing it based on reasons of sovereignty or the vagueness of the treaty’s obligations. For instance, before Chilean president Gabriel Boric ratified the treaty, the former government of Sebastian Piñera decided to not sign it because he believed specifically protecting environmental activists would affect equality before the law.
Colombia, however, might be the most notable country to have not yet ratified the treaty, despite having the world's highest number of murdered environmental defenders (65)in 2020. Hopefully, the newly elected President, Gustavo Petro,will ratify Escazú,complying with his campaign promise to do so;because as long as countries continue not to honor it, the murders will continue to happen. Months ago in Brazil—another country that has not ratified the treaty—two environmental defenders were murderedin the Javari Valley: Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira,a Brazilian Indigenous rights defender. Since Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2019, environmental regulations have diminished in the country, as the Brazilian president continuously opens Indigenous reserves for commercial purposes, triggering environmental conflicts and putting defenders at risk. In addition, Bolsonaro's government legitimized armed land grabbers dedicated to attacking Indigenous and local communities and deforesting the Amazon by weakening all the environmental institutions focused on protecting the environment and Indigenous rights.As a result, the biggest country of LAC has aligned itself with extractive interests over human ones.
Although the situation with environmental defenders in LAC is critical, right-wing political parties and economic groups see Escazú as an obstacle to economic development. For decades, they have rejected increasing protective measures for those who oppose extractivist expansion. Political negotiations and effective treaty implementation by state parties are crucial elements for incorporating more nations into Escazú. One way to help do this is by increasing awareness of the treaty’s existence, and the goals it hopes to accomplish.
Courtesy of Camilo Freedman / APHOTOGRAFIA / Getty Images.
The Escazú Agreement: An example of defending the defenders
Following the Escazú Agreement's example, the interest in strengthening protections for environmental defenders is expanding to other continents. For example, Asia and Africa do not have any regional treaties to protect environmental defenders, but have organized cooperative networks to defend the defenders on the ground. In Africa, Natural Justice is supporting a powerful initiative, African Environmental Defenders,which aims to protect environmental defenders though an “emergency fund” to support their work. In Europe, environmental defenders are also taking priority. In 2021, the EU Parliament called its member states to take action to protect environmental defenders' human rights,showing that the threats and attacks on these activists are not only happening in the Global South.
As we face the ever-growing climate crisis, protecting the environment and our delicate ecosystems is crucial. Globally, the role of environmental defenders has been vital to stopping the ecological degradation of the planet. However, their silent and voluntary work is not recognized, despite risking their own lives to preserve the environment for the benefit of present and future generations. Therefore, it is fair and necessary to protect them and stop the impunity of those who abuse and attack activists for exploiting the environment to make a profit. By establishing the Escazú Agreement, Latin America contributed to showing an institutionalized path for protecting environmental defenders, a priority that every government should have—not only to protect the environment, but also democracy itself.
Additional fact checking by Sophia Cleary.
You Should Give a Sh*t About is an ongoing column highlighting local stories with a global impact.
[post_title] => You Should Give a Sh*t About: The Escazú Agreement
[post_excerpt] => Everything you need to know about the treaty protecting environmental defenders in Latin America.
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => open
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => escazu-agreement-explainer-latin-america-environmental-treaty
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=4815
[menu_order] => 109
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
A round table with a few members of the Abolitionist Library Association.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by then-police officer and now-convicted killer Derek Chauvin in 2020, a large swath of people who’d never paid attention to systemic, anti-Black racism began, for the first time, to acknowledge its existence. Something shifted. Folks who had never spoken out chose to engage; to actually do something. While the Black Lives Matter movement had existed for nearly seven years before Floyd’s death—and abolitionism for many years before that—the widespread protests of 2020 seemed to give these movements new momentum. At the height of a raging pandemic, during a time of mass isolation and fear, hundreds of thousands of people across the world took to the streets, standing up against racist police violence and the prison-industrial complex it fuels.
In the two years since, the greater outrage has waned. Those privileged enough to not have paid attention before largely went back to not paying attention; while the people who had already been doing the work continued to do the work. But that initial uprising—that newfound awareness, and solidarity, and, in some cases, radicalization—was nonetheless significant, and provided necessary support for longtime activists to realize long-held needs, giving community spaces and organizations more resources to work towards collective liberation and even, perhaps, some policy change.
One of those spaces was the library.
In the spring of 2020, the Library Freedom Project published a piece on Medium titled, “It’s not enough to say Black Lives Matter—libraries must divest from the police.” The post set the library world ablaze, and before long, a group of library workers gathered over Zoom to discuss what they could do to further their message and their agenda. From this meeting—and from decades of work before it—the Abolitionist Library Association, or AbLA, was born.
More than two years after AbLA’s inception, we sat down with four of its members*—Lawrence M. (they/them), Megan R. (she/they), Jen W. (she/they), and Les D. (they/she)—to discuss the intersection between abolitionism and library work, the importance of creating safe public spaces, and the power of the collective.
*In respect of their privacy both online and off, we’ve opted to include only their first names and last initials.
~
Gina M.
To kick things off, I feel like an obvious question, but an important one, is: What is an abolitionist library worker? What does that mean, in action?
Lawrence M.
I think it's important to foreground abolition as a specific political ideology that stems from the Black radical and Black revolutionary tradition. Dr. Joy James talks about the plurality of abolitionism, right? So I'll speak for myself: When I think about abolition, I think about this long tradition that started with the desire and the demand to end Black chattel slavery. Today what that looks like is seeing how carcerality permeates through our social structures here on occupied Turtle Island, or the United States. Abolitionists are committed and dedicated to disrupting and ending the way carcerality works, and really carcerality in general.
Megan R.
That's a really good starting point and really important background that not necessarily everybody is conscious of when they're coming to abolition. Recently, I have been doing a lot of reading around the idea of the carceral habitus, and just the structuring of society in this punitive, carceral way, and how it presents itself as a natural occurrence, or a natural way of being a society when, in fact, it's not. By human nature, we're not necessarily punitive. Our interactions don't have to be based around punishment. So I think that abolition just offers such beautiful possibilities for life outside of this carceral framework, and that's the attitude that I try to bring to my library work.
Jen W.
Yeah—this is work that Black women have been leading for a very long time, and so all the work of our association is really built on their shoulders. That's important to acknowledge. You also might not necessarily think abolitionist and librarian go together. But the library world is not immune from carcerality. I mean, the stereotypical image of a librarian is literally someone shushing people. And I think that there's a lot of ways that people are policed in library spaces, or that libraries play into the prison-industrial complex. There are very practical issues that come up in all library spaces, not just public libraries, where you'll have a security guard be the first person you see when you walk in. Some libraries have security gates that literally beep if you didn't check out a book.
Megan R.
I want to really quickly touch back on the archetypal image of the librarian as shushing or performing some sort of policing behavior. Because I really want to emphasize that that archetype, or that archetypal image, is usually a white woman. So it's really crucial to be aware of the history of libraries as institutions that continue to uphold white supremacy through this policing of behaviors, and their role in the Americanization of immigrants and inculcating the youth. Even if you're not necessarily thinking about it in terms of penal abolition, just thinking about the ways in which social reproduction happens in libraries, especially public libraries, and who is allowed to be in those spaces, and what behaviors are allowed to occur in those spaces.
Gina M.
All of you are touching on something that I was going to ask, which is, if there’s a Venn diagram, right, between library work and library spaces, and abolition work and the prison-industrial complex, what's in the in-between? Libraries, at their best, should be these incredible public spaces and resources for people—but even they have been subjected to the carceral state that we exist in. Which leads very nicely into the origins of AbLA. I would love to hear a little bit more about your origin story. And, out of curiosity, was it a conscious choice to lead with abolitionist in your name?
Lawrence M.
So, Alison, right?
Jen W.
Yeah. AbLA got started in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings. Alison Macrina and some people from the Library Freedom Project had written a piece that was published on Medium. And that was kind of the birth of this association. The reason that it's the Abolitionist Library Association—as Lawrence said, that'swhat we want to foreground. And also, a little bit of mockery of ALA [American Library Association]. There's also the fact that the Abolitionist Library Association is more inclusive to library workers who might not necessarily be a degreed librarian.
Megan R.
Yeah, we actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to call ourselves. Because, like Jen mentioned, not everybody who works in the library is a librarian. I tend to use the term library workers, just to be as inclusive as possible. But we also wanted it to be a space where library patrons and community members can get involved, as well. We jokingly called ourselves the "good ALA" for a while, which was not really sustainable—which is how we ended up with AbLA.
Lawrence M.
We still are the good ALA, by the way.
Megan R.
I feel like maybe [Alison] put out a call on Twitter or something along those lines. I don't remember exactly. But I remember that we all ended up on Zoom.
Jen W.
I think we called it a town hall, to discuss the Medium article, because it had gotten a lot of attention. And there was clearly a need for a space to talk about it.
Lawrence M.
Yeah, no, we can't talk about AbLA without talking about Alison. The call went out on Twitter, and we were looking at this uprising, and everyone was thinking about the field—or, everyone who gave a shit was thinking about the field—and it was like, Okay, well, what the fuck are we going to do?
And that was the first time we all got together, reviewed the statement, and went from there. But I don't know—there's a part of me, a big part of me, that wants to be like, that first meeting was not so much the origin but the culmination of a lot of things. Gina, you brought up the library being a public space, right? Well, just seeing historically how that public space wasn't available for Black people specifically, and Indigenous and racialized non-white people in general—for me, it was a start, but also the apex of what was going on during spring 2020.
Megan R.
On that note, I feel like the town hall and then the subsequent meetings that eventually morphed into AbLA, what also facilitated it, in a lot of ways, was COVID forcing everything to be online. So all of these different organizing projects that have been running parallel to each other in a lot of ways—like Cop-Free NYC and things like that—people all had a chance to connect with each other.
Gina M.
What has the work looked like so far? Or, put another way, what are the biggest goals of AbLA? I’ve read your website, of course, and the four tenets you laid out. But in your own words, what do you hope to accomplish with it?
Lawrence M.
You know, I think first and foremost, AbLA is rooted in a liberatory ideology. That's in our mission statement, if I'm not mistaken. So off the bat, reforms to liberal approaches to carcerality—I won't say we’ll outright reject, but we'll heavily scrutinize.
Megan R.
I really quickly want to backtrack to AbLA’s origins and mention that the listserv, I think, has been one thing that's really kept momentum going. Like, it's being used in ways that I didn't anticipate, including people sharing job openings and things like that. So that's been really helpful. I like listservs—it's kind of old school, but I think it's helpful.
Lawrence M.
About AbLA and the listserv, too: We have “Association” in the name, but we're not an association. Like, I think the term that could best describe us is a political formation, and I’m not even loosely using that term, [that’s] as accurate as I can be. And in terms of listservs, I'm typically not a fan of them, but AbLA is the only listserv that I know in which the conversations that are happening on this listserv—I don't see those conversations anywhere else.
Gina M.
Your listserv is open to everyone too, right?
Lawrence M.
Yeah, it's open to everyone.
Megan R.
Which you know, is a double edged sword in that everything that is happening there is essentially public.
Lawrence M.
It's open to everyone, but not cops. I will say, for sure: If I find out there's a cop on the listserv, they're gone. You can put me on the record for that!
Gina M.
It sounds like it’s this public resource in itself, the listserv.
Jen W.
The listserv is certainly very active. There are probably like 1000 people on our listserv at this time. And I think the listserv has been a great space for people who are dealing with specific in-the-moment issues with policing, to come to our group and be like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get my administration to realize this is bad, and to be able to find support and practical advice for how to divest from policing in our spaces.
Megan R.
I mean, this idea of community self determination and working towards liberation is really important. And what goes hand in hand with that for me is rethinking what we mean by public safety in public places. Obviously not just for patrons, but for workers.
Thinking on the recent news, I don't know if you saw that there was a retired cop that shot and killed a library—what do they call them—a special library police officer, in the DC Public Library during a training yesterday. And I was just seeing so many comments on Twitter, like, Wait, there are cops in libraries? Why are there cops with guns in libraries? And I think it's one of those things that's not even flown under the radar, it's just that, in the United States, the presence of police officers goes so unremarked upon, that trying to foreground the “Abolitionist” in the Abolitionist Library Association is really important in even just becoming aware of the ways in which the carceral has intruded into public space, or shaped public space.
Jen W.
On a practical level, just to give a general overview of some of what the work has looked like: There were a couple of divestment campaigns that really got off the ground in 2020. And as a group, we were able to support those campaigns throughout the country. And then we also have some specific working groups, [which] will have their own meetings and their own agendas. We have a special collections working group that is very active—you might have seen the Ivy+ divestment statement that came out from there. And then we also have our working group focused on information access for incarcerated people. That group was born out of a specific attempt to ban one of Mariame Kaba's books in Washington, but has since become a place for people who are doing work to make information accessible, to come together and talk about the challenges that they're facing.
I think the exciting thing about libraries is that we do have the possibility of being liberatory spaces in a way that many spaces don't. But we aren't inherently liberatory spaces. Because we are state institutions under capitalism, we replicate the same oppressive dynamics as other institutions. But having the space where we can come together, and be real about that, and find other people who have the political goal of abolition, to talk about like, Okay, we're doing this work at my library, how do I do it through this lens? I think especially with prison library work, it can be hard, because you're often doing it through the state library, partnering with the state Department of Corrections. And it's like, how do you do that work in a way that is abolitionist?
Les D.
Speaking to what Jen was saying as far as sharing notes, and that sense of community and support—it especially meant a lot to me when I was in my last position, in western Kentucky. You kind of feel alone out there, and this is a space that I could turn to to get the feedback I was looking for and build some strategies and carry through and such. From my rural organizing background, [I] definitely see the importance of decentralized social spaces on the internet. We have people involved with AbLA who are from all over, and being able to exchange notes has been really crucial. Those of us who've become friends through the work, as well, that's just as important. Because not only are we achieving and winning battles, and pushing for these wins, but we're also supporting one another.
Megan R.
You're [raising] a good point of not just [providing] mutual support for one another, but the idea of joy and play and friendship in this work, as well, because so much of it is really heavy. And a lot of it is done on our own time, as volunteer work—like those of us who do reference by mail for incarcerated people, that's usually volunteer work with PLSN [Prison Library Support Network]. Just being able to—the work itself isn't necessarily fun all the time, but that you can find joy as a result of it.
Gina M.
It’s really interesting to hear you talk about the community aspect of it, which feels so essential—being able to be in community with each other, both on the abolitionist side, and on the library work side. Especially because, all of you keep bringing up this idea of the promise of the public space versus the reality of the public space. Lawrence, I think you were saying, traditionally, libraries were not actually that inclusive at all. You could argue a lot of library spaces still aren't, to unhoused people, and to Black and brown and Indigenous people. And in spaces where the work is very heavy and very difficult, there is—to your point, Megan—value in having people who are in the boat with you, and to feeling like you aren't alone in the work. Has that been a driving force for AbLA?
Les D.
I was going to add to that. Like, some of us have pushed back in ways that did put our jobs at risk. I mean, we are fighting for abolition under capitalism, and health care is tied to employment. So we are building power in this formation to be able to push for things, while still balancing [the fact that] we work for the state. And there's a tension there, right? And it's dangerous at times. So to varying levels, there is some risk, and being able to be in relationship with one another in that strategy and building that strategy accordingly has been really powerful.
Megan R.
Yeah, I think this idea of tension is a really important one, too, because that's working on a lot of different levels. Especially these days, with the current political climate around libraries, and the very real possibility of physical danger, not just job security. Les mentioned the decentralized formation that we use for AbLA. But at the same time, because we have a name now, it validates us [and] our work in a way, in that we have been cited in some academic pieces, or at conferences and things like that. So [there’s] this tension between being a formal organization, but then at the same time, at least for me, this resistance to this formalizing and institutionalizing of the work that's being done.
Jen W.
I want to piggyback off of that. Because we have built a network, we were able to mobilize to support Amy Dodson, [for example]. She had to go before her library board for a hearing to determine whether or not she was going to lose her job, and we wrote a letter that was presented to the board. And, you know, I don't want to give AbLA too much credit here, but we did a lot to really make sure that there was public outcry and that it was very clear that she had a lot of support, and not just in her county or her state, but nationally. Having been able to have that kind of collective influence was very valuable, and we've been able to replicate that a couple of times. Recently, we had some of our members who put together a statement pushing back on the Michigan Department of Corrections' decision to censor language learning books, and not allow Spanish or Swahili language books to be sent to their prisons. And again, I can't necessarily credit AbLA for reversing it. But I think that we did help to make sure that there was a lot of public attention, and that people across the country saw what they were doing and thought it was bad. Thankfully, the Michigan DOC has also walked back the policy.
Gina M.
What’s next for AbLA? How do you want to see it grow? What’s the ideal for you of what AbLA can do and what it can become?
Lawrence M.
Ideally, our way of seeing the political structures that reinforce the library becomes the norm, right? Just in my work alone, I'm seeing more and more people who are new to the field, realizing the same shit we've known. And [I want] AbLA to continue to be a space for new library workers to feel welcomed into. But also, I'm going to do what I always do and quote Fred Moten, because once you get rid of the police, you have to take care of policy, because all the police are is just an embodiment of policy. So in terms of growth, that's what I would like: I would like for more and more people to just be like, No, AbLA is the fucking standard. You're getting into this field. You're committed to making things better for everybody except cops and capitalists and fascists.
Megan R.
I agree with what Lawrence's saying. Even thinking about policy, within the library world—Emily Drabinski winning the election for ALA president is really exciting. Because she's somebody that I know has done reference work with incarcerated people. She's really strong on labor, which, I feel like you can't really talk about safety and library work without also talking about the labor aspect of it. And I don't know, I feel like a lot of AbLA people—not necessarily in the context of AbLA—were involved in [that] campaign. It's hard to say how that's gonna turn out because ALA is such a large organization and pretty conservative, but building power is important however we can do it right now.
In terms of where I'd like to see AbLA go, it feels like a lot of people's energy has become focused on their working groups, which is really good, because when we first started having regular meetings, I think people were really fired up and ready to go, but it becomes an issue of sustainability and burnout. And it seems like it's settling more into a place where people have a better understanding of their own capacities, with the work that they can do in a way that is going to keep the work going. For myself, really just focusing more on the information access for incarcerated people working group has felt really sustainable for me, and encouraging other folks to participate in ways that feel sustainable to them is the best way that I would like to see it grow.
Les D.
Yeah, the sustainable engagement is really important, especially to longevity of the movement and actually making sustainable change. That's how it's looked for me, as well. Also doing some research on deescalation tactics in libraries, in order to avoid calling the police—that's something I've been working on. But knowing everyone's out there doing the work, and that solidarity there, is pretty powerful. Having the support and the tools to do that work is really important. More skill sharing, as we have been doing all along, is a key concept, I think.
Jen W.
My answer would probably just echo a lot of what everyone else has said. [But] I also want to say that, I think we're in a moment where, every day, fascism's stronghold is growing. And we're seeing that in libraries a lot, as well. We’ve seen a lot of push for censoring collections; we've seen fucking white supremacist militias showing up to drag queen storytime and interrupting; and people trying to destroy pride displays or make sure that those books aren't available. And ALA is nowhere to be found.
Often, more bureaucratic or conservative organizations like ALA, or library administrators, the people in power in libraries—their default response to a fascist attack is to be like, Okay, well, we need [more] security, we need police. Like, the answer is basically more fascism. So I hope that AbLA will continue to be a space where people can see that we can push back in ways that are still centering the safety of our Black and brown patrons, that are still keeping libraries a space that is open to everyone, except for cops and Proud Boys. I feel a little corny because everyone quotes Mariame Kaba all the time, but her words are so valuable, and she always reminds us that hope is a discipline. In this day and age, it can be really easy to feel hopeless and to feel like we don't have the power to push back. And having a space that helps us remember that, actually, there is hope, and we can push back, and it doesn’t have to default to carceral solutions—I think that's incredibly valuable. I hope that people will continue to see that value and continue to keep that space alive, so that we can continue to collectively push back.
Gina M.
How can people who aren’t library workers best support your work?
Les D.
I can run with this one because this is what my research work is on. As far as just anyone goes, building conflict navigation skills—deescalation skills—are really important. In [the] public library context, what I'm working on is toolkits for library staff to use to not only deescalate a situation where a patron is having a bit of a mental break, and is being loud or argumentative—being able to engage with them in a compassionate way to then bring down the situation and make sure they're taken care of in that moment, as well as deescalate surrounding patrons so they don't react in a way that makes the situation worse and thus more unsafe, all with the intention of discouraging calling police because we know how dangerous police are in mental crisis moments. All that to say, if anyone wants to engage with this work, learning how to do bystander intervention, learning how to even just breathe through a moment, calm down people around you, and approach tension with compassion [and] patience. If everybody in the space can agree, Okay, we're gonna try to get through this as smoothly as possible, that makes it a lot easier for library staff.
Jen W.
Libraries are institutions that are meant to serve our community. So I think encouraging our community to show up and tell us what they like and what they don't like; white people [especially] have to have a voice in helping us push back on having cops or security in the library. You know, if enough people say, Hey, this doesn't feel great, then maybe administrators will listen and be willing to make a change. Showing up in solidarity—a lot of people have already been doing that—[and] showing that, as a community, we can protect ourselves, we can take care of each other, we don't need the cops. I hope that we, as library workers, can make it clear that the stereotypical power dynamic of that white lady librarian shushing people—that's not how we want to be, that's not what libraries want to be, and we want to know how we can make these spaces better for everyone. We want people's voices to be heard.
Lawrence M.
Yeah, off the top of my head, what can people do? Your library has a Friends of the Library—see what they're up to. If you want to join, it'd be cool to join. I mean, shit, get on the Library Board of Directors, if your library has one.
Megan R.
Run for your local library board if you can. I know that’s not something that everybody feels comfortable doing but if that’s something in your capacity, go for it! Otherwise even just attending the meetings and letting your library board know that people in the community are invested in what happens with the library is really powerful. And give public comment, if you feel so inclined. But I think probably the most basic is learning about abolition and what that means and what it entails.
Lawrence M.
The type of person I am, I just want [people to] study. I think analysis is key in this specific historical moment, because what we know, what informs our ideology, affects how we move [and] defines our praxis. Read Angela Y. Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete? Read Mariame Kaba's We Do This Until We Free Us. Specifically looking at abolitionist texts, and committing to an abolitionist praxis, will help people figure out where they best fit in. So you know, the typical person who's reading this, we can always put out great suggestions, but at the end of the day, figure out where you stand politically and who you want to be in this moment, because you, dear reader, are ultimately going to know where you best fit.
Jen W.
Libraries have lied to you about neutrality being a thing. It's not a thing.
Lawrence M.
Yep. Essentially, pick a side. Going back to the start of our conversation, we are part of a long historical tradition here that is still ongoing. And I think study and analysis is key.
Gina M.
And get those books from the library?
Les D.
Yes, please. I was gonna elaborate as far as tactical, action steps, if you can get something submitted—like good feedback that can go on someone's record, in-house—that's a structural way to have our backs. I've been in those situations where the record comes up, and if you've got good marks [as a library worker], then you have a little bit more wiggle room to push back. So giving good feedback about your library, on paper, is a great move for just regular ol' library users, because it does matter. You do have a lot of power as the user in that situation.
Gina M.
My last question for all of you, just to end things on a joyful note—I imagine you were all drawn to library work for your own personal reasons. I'd love to hear why.
Lawrence M.
I'm just good at it. And I figured I may as well get paid to help people find information. And also, I've seen the consequences. I've seen the consequences when people, especially marginalized people, do not have access to the information that they need. I used to work with teenagers in Long Beach Unified School District, talking about, like, missed deadlines for college applications, or lost opportunities for scholarships. But also, deportations, just because somebody didn't know that ICE needed a warrant to come into somebody's place. I'm good at finding shit (information), and I'm good at communicating it and conveying it to people. So I just figured I should get paid for this. And I am and it's great.
Gina M.
Do you like the work?
Lawrence M.
Oh, yeah. I mean, what I love most is disrupting fascism. It's great. I sleep comfortably at night, knowing that ICE has a few less people to surveil online.
Gina M.
Jen? Les? Megan?
Megan R.
I started library school back in 2011, right after undergrad, mostly because I didn’t really know what to do with my Comparative Literature degree. But I dropped out after a quarter, and ended up working for a while, and then went back seven years later—and I’m really glad I waited, because it gave me a lot better of an idea of what I wanted to do with my degree. I just got really interested in precarious labor in libraries and archives. I considered myself an abolitionist prior to library school, [and] I think library work just has so much potential in terms of realizing, or working towards, a more radical, liberatory vision for our communities and collective liberation. And that just feels like the right place for me to be right now.
Jen W.
So, I don't have my MLIS. I don't even have a bachelor's degree—I'm working on that now. But I tried to get a library job out of high school, because of romanticizing the idea of working at a library. Like Lawrence said, I love information. And once I started working in a library, I realized it was such a perfect intersection of my favorite thing—information—and an opportunity to hate cops. I wanted to stay in it. I've had a lot of jobs, and I always tried to find work that felt like it fit with my values, and was often disappointed. And certainly, libraries can also be disappointing in those ways. But I've been so energized by finding community and having found AbLA because I didn't start working in libraries until 2019. And when I was able to find these like-minded people, that has really kept me wanting to do this work, because it feels like there is possibility—there's opportunity—to transform these spaces. And like Lawrence said, as well, you can really change people's lives by making sure that they have access to information.
Les D.
I got into library work because it was a part-time summer job, and I fell in love with it, took a break to do community organizing for a bit, got burnout. I did a political campaign in western Kentucky, and that was rough. Working in community organizing nonprofits was like, I'll fight like hell, but it just never ends. The burnout was not manageable. So I ended up coming back to libraries. I ended up in outreach, and I realized I could fight like hell but more subversively, especially being able to call shots on how resources are allocated. One of my favorite projects that I was able to push through with grant funding was our reentry toolkits. It was an expansion on our digital toolkits program, [where] people could check out hotspots and laptops that we reworked to meet the specific needs of people who were coming out of jail. We added a phone, added a resource booklet. And it was mostly just a way to respond to needs in our community, and build up that relationship with folks who were impacted by the carceral state. Even though it's a nightmare at times, especially how entrenched neoliberalism's veins are—it's a good lane to fight in. As Lawrence mentioned, [it’s] the very tangible daily ways that people get their needs met: We can keep them out of ICE's claws, get them fed, get them housing, all those daily things. Just little needs met by the community or for the community really keeps me in the game, and is why I fell in love with it.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
*The Footnotes
Editor’s Note: At The Conversationalist, we understand that no story exists in a vacuum, and every story is built on the work of others before us, whether in ways big or small. We are likewise dedicated to spotlighting the voices of those who have been or continue to be oppressed, disregarded, and/or otherwise silenced, in an effort to reverse centuries of often intentional erasure. Because of this, we have opted to include “footnotes” on certain stories to give readers additional context and reading material where it feels relevant and beneficial.
Pregnancy and parenting will never "just work out” for everybody.
Nine years ago, I told my mother that the man I was seeing didn’t want children. I wasn’t yet sure what I wanted, and at the time his certainty was both comforting and concerning: I appreciated that he knew his own mind but wanted to keep my options open. “Oh, well,” my mom said. “Sometimes certain people meet, and someone gets pregnant, and—BOOM!—everybody's happy.” She was sort of joking, and sort of not. I knew she hoped that he, and I, would change our minds about becoming parents. Nine years later, for a variety of reasons, we haven’t.
Despite her Catholic education, my mother is fervently pro-choice. Having suffered a difficult miscarriage and carried three pregnancies to term, she is not cavalier about the toll pregnancy and labor take on the body and soul. She recognizes what most people—including anti-abortion activists, who get abortions when they need them—intuitively know: that forcing someone to remain pregnant and give birth is an act of brutality.
Yet, like many Americans, my mother also wants to believe that even unexpected pregnancies can sometimes turn out for the best, especially when those involved are ready, willing, and able to become parents.
It’s not wrong to wish this were always the case. It would certainly be better if it were impossible to make a baby unless you were ready and willing to parent, and always possible when you were; if every pregnancy and delivery were complication-free; and if every baby were painlessly ushered into a stable and functional family unit at birth. But that’s not the world we live in, and pregnancy is not the peaceful, glowing, rose-tinted fantasy so many want to believe it is.
Even under the best of circumstances, pregnancy can be grueling. Some people, including celebrities like the comedian Amy Schumer and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, experience hyperemesis gravidarum, or extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting. In 2019, Schumer, then in her second trimester, estimated thatshe’d vomited around 980 times since becoming pregnant. The Duchess, meanwhile, described her own experience with the condition as “utterly rotten.” And while hyperemesis gravidarum is relatively rare, around 70% of pregnant people still experience nausea and vomiting.
Pregnancy can also lead to a host of other debilitating symptoms, including depression, insomnia, and/or difficulty concentrating. “My body was heavy, tired from the insomnia that kept me awake from three until seven in the morning, exhausted from the constant vomiting, and bloated from all the eating, which fended off the unrelenting nausea,” writer Miriam Foley wrote in an essay for Parents.com. “I felt sick all day and woke up to be sick or eat during the night. I vomited in public on street corners, at roundabouts, beside parked cars, in the bin, in basins, in the toilet, in the sink…emotionally I was even worse; delicate, jumpy, tearful.”
This was Foley’s second pregnancy, one she and her husband had “very much wanted.” Imagine dealing with those symptoms when you don’t want or aren’t ready to be pregnant, give birth, or raise a child.
In the U.S., we force those who undergo childbirth to choose between solvency and recovery. Because the overwhelming majority of people who become pregnant and give birth are women, and we take women’s pain and suffering for granted, we have largely failed to ease it via public policy. Many see pain and danger as inescapable conditions of women’s lives, particularly Black and brown women, as demonstrated by our maternal mortality rates. In 2015, I wrote a column about the shocking number of U.S. women who return to work just two weeks after giving birth, a decades-long problem we lack the political will to solve. I’ll never forget the stories I heard. Two weeks after giving birth, one mom told me, she still looked six months pregnant and felt like her vagina was “inside out.” A then 34-year-old mother of two said her first baby tore her perineum, anus, and sphincter muscles “badly"; it was 10 days before she could even walk. Her legs and feet were so swollen she thought her skin was going to split open, and she developed mastitis in her left breast, which felt like the “jaws of life” were ripping her chest apart. Pregnancy and childbirth may always involve some degree of discomfort. But they could certainly be easier to endure and recover from than they are in the U.S.
The everyday agonies people who choose to be pregnant are expected to tolerate become a form of torture when those who had no choice are forced to endure them, too. A surprising number of well-meaning but clueless Americans join the right-wing religious fanatics in proffering adoption as a seamless alternative to abortion, despite the fact that the former is far riskier, costlier, and more physically and psychologically painful than the latter. As was true before Roe, and will keep happening in the wake of its repeal, many birth parents in states where abortion is illegal are forced to carry pregnancies to term and undergo childbirth against their will—a trauma with potentially life-long consequences for birth parents, babies, and adoptive families.
Even those who want and consciously decide to become parents know how hard it is to raise kids in an atomized, every-family-for-itself country with no universal health or child care, no paid family leave, and no guaranteed income. They suffer near-constant levels of stress, anxiety, and fear, both about big-picture existential threats and everyday survival. There are only four countries in the world where couples with young children who earn the average wage spend more than 30 percent of their salary on child care, and the United States is one of them—along with New Zealand, the U.K., and Australia. (By contrast, the average couple in Austria, Greece, Hungary, and Korea spends less than four percent.)
The same Republican officials who worked so tirelessly to overturn Roe have also fought tooth and nail against providing basic public goods and services to ease the considerable burdens the U.S. imposes on women and families. The states most hostile to abortion rights have no paid family leave and some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation. All except Louisiana are run by anti-abortion Republicans; meanwhile, Louisiana’s legislature is Republican-dominated, and its governor, a nominal Democrat, is staunchly anti-abortion, in defiance of his party’s platform. Earlier this year, the state’s lawmakers tried to classify abortion as homicide under state law and allow prosecutors to criminally charge patients. If anti-abortion legislators wanted to make it safer, easier, and more inviting to raise a family, they would have done so. Instead, they’re busy trying to figure out how to jail pregnant people.
When even the willing feel ensnared by the increasingly unmanageable demands of pregnancy and parenting, no one is free. Not every accident is a happy one, nor can it always be made so through sheer force of will. If individuals and families were not buried, alone, under the crushing burdens of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, more Americans might choose to start families. And others still wouldn’t. As New York Magazine reporter Sarah Jones recently wrote, “I am childless because that’s what I’ve chosen for myself...Congress could pass Medicare for All tomorrow, and paid family leave, and all the other policies I support, and if I became pregnant right now I would still have an abortion.”
And that is her right, whether or not a stranger or a state legislator or a Democratic governor approves it.
How McDonald's, KFC, and other American eateries spread around the world.
Even before the war, Aban Pestonjee’s business was doing rather well.
In the 1970s, Swedish and American home appliances were the kind of thing that lots of people in Sri Lanka wanted, but hardly anyone knew how to get. In response to a series of economic shocks, the government largely barred imports, including luxury goods like washing machines and dryers. But Pestonjee had an idea. She bought used appliances at embassy auctions and sold them at a markup out of a corner shop in the capital city, Colombo. Even with the economy largely restricted, business was good on the Indian Ocean island. But when Sri Lanka descended into civil war in the 1980s, it exploded.
Pestonjee started importing appliances from Korea and offering environmental cleanup services. Later, she expanded into tourism and property. Her three children joined the business, making her family a dynasty and her company, the Abans Group, one of the most powerful in Sri Lanka. In 1998, with the war mostly relegated to the north and east of the country, Colombo slipped into an eerie calm, and at the urging of one of her sons, Pestonjee made her biggest move yet.
She opened the first McDonald’s in Sri Lanka.
~
It’s easy to forget when looking at it through the nostalgic lens that often filters our view of the era, but American fast food was also born in the aftermath of war. When Richard and Maurice McDonald built their namesake restaurant chain in the Southern California desert in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the area was the frontline of a profound economic disruption. The industrial economy that had ended the Great Depression and closed out the Second World War had turned inwards, building prefabricated homes and four-door sedans instead of tanks and planes. In short order, this inverted war economy had also transformed American agriculture: When chemical manufacturers stopped making munitions and started making fertilizer, they supercharged corn production, setting off a livestock explosion which has never abated. As a business that sold meat to car-bound customers in new suburbs, McDonald’s and the industry it launched were ideally positioned to get ahead in an era of chaos.
As the same systems which made it thrive in the United States spread internationally, fast food rushed headlong for the rest of the world. In 1996, the New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman argued the industry’s global nature pointed to a deeper trend about the state of the world. As he summarized it, “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” Friedman said his idea was “tongue in cheek,” and as a hard-and-fast rule, it was always a little shaky, before coming apart entirely with Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. But as an observation about the conditions necessary for capitalism, not an axiom of world affairs, Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” pointed to a real correlation between a nation’s international fast food offerings and its stability. If a country was at peace (at least in its urban centers, like Colombo in the late 1990s), was prosperous enough to sustain a consumer class, and was integrated with the world economy, it was likely ready to host a McDonald’s or some other global fast food chain. Seen the other way around, fast food was evidence of a country’s stability.
The last few years have made that observation especially relevant, as the global fast food boom has reached countries which were at war in living memory. You can find Burger King in Côte d’Ivoire, Dairy Queen in Cambodia, and KFC in Sudan, a country that was heavily sanctioned as recently as 2017 for committing acts of genocide in Darfur. In these and other nations, fast food’s arrival is nothing if not an indication of peace and a rejoining of the international order.
Yet even as fast food continues to evidence stability, its global expansion has depended on entrepreneurs—like Aban Pestonjee—who sharpened their business acumen in chaotic times, including times of war and occupation.
~
If you know much about the business of fast food, you’ve likely heard about the franchise system. Since McDonald’s’ early days in the Southern California desert, fast food has depended on independent businesses and entrepreneurs, or “franchisees,” to buy into their system. For a fee and a cut of the revenues, a fast food company (i.e., McDonald’s Corporation, or CKE Restaurants, owners of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s brands) gives the franchisee a regional monopoly, allowing them to use its likeness and adopt its methods of doing business. In the industry’s early days in the 1950s and 1960s, franchising allowed fast food companies to expand wildly across the United States on the backs of countless smaller, independent businesses—all with only marginal investments of their own capital. As they’ve plotted expansions around the world, fast food companies have found additional benefits to franchisees, as these local entrepreneurs typically bring local contacts and knowledge to the endeavor which their corporate overlords generally lack.
As an entrepreneur who made her fortune in war, Pestonjee was perfectly suited for the role. She had grown up as a child of an immigrant family and a member of Sri Lanka’s tiny Parsi community. In a war that pitted the nation’s two biggest ethnic groups against each other, she was an outsider. Conflict was little more than minor disruption and background noise as she grew her business.
“You get used to it,” she told a researcher many years after her business first took off. “Knowing that one bomb has gone off here, then everything goes down, business gets slack for a month or two, people forget it and then again it starts.”
Den Fujita, the Japanese entrepreneur who brought McDonald’s to Japan, similarly navigated a messy period in history to amass a fortune. Fujita’s father was an engineer for a British company, and he had picked up some English at home. He studied English in high school, and, at the end of the Second World War, with much of the country leveled and his father and two sisters having been killed in American bombing raids, Fujita left home to translate for the former enemy at the seat of their occupation, the General Headquarters, or GHQ, in Tokyo.
Soon after, Fujita started an importation company. It was a simple business model: He figured out what the American occupiers wanted, and then he figured out how to get it to them. As the Americans left, he expanded his business, importing luxury goods for the Japanese themselves. When McDonald’s first began laying plans for an overseas expansion two decades later, Japan looked difficult, if not impossible, to enter. The bureaucracy was dense, the culture was perplexing. But Fujita was the perfect partner in a country fraught with risk—a bridge between those American corporate executives and the Japanese people, whom they knew nothing about. In 1971, his company, Fujita & Co, became McDonald’s’ first franchisee in Japan. Before long, its first location, in the Ginza district in Tokyo, became the world’s busiest McDonald’s.
There are stories in the rubble of every conflict of shrewd entrepreneurs building a fortune as the nation rebuilds itself. In the early 1990s, as Cambodia recovered from years under Khmer Rouge rule, a refugee named Kith Meng returned from his adopted Australia to take the reins at his family’s company and tap some of the billions of dollars in international aid then flowing into the country. Kith’s Royal Group became a source of basic provisions for UNTAC, the United Nations’ body managing Cambodia while the national government assembled itself. Crucially, for the sprawling, multilingual force inundated with paperwork, Royal also imported copy machines.
As UNTAC packed its bags and left in 1993, Royal invested in a slew of other money-making ventures, some of which, such as a cellular network, a bank, and some TV stations, proved useful to a country getting on its feet, and some of which, such as a casino and a lottery, mostly served to line the budding tycoon’s pockets. Meng’s many ventures put him at the center of a vast network of his own creation, making him an ideal middleman for foreign companies looking to break into Cambodia. In the early 2000s, one of those companies was a Malaysian KFC franchisee. Soon after, Royal founded a separate company with it to bring KFC to Cambodia. The first location opened in 2008.
So, what does war have to do with running an international fast food chain? No matter when or where they take place, wars are times of creation as much as they are times of destruction. When war-ravaged people find that the commercial networks which once supported their purchasing habits have collapsed—because of sanctions, a shifting frontline, or because a manufacturing base was obliterated the night before—their usual consumer preferences evaporate. They don’t care who they bought from in the past. They’ll just go to whoever can navigate the tumult to deliver the goods, now.
When opening in developing countries, fast food’s corporate giants are similarly lackadaisical, if only because they have to be. In countries where industrial-scale beef and poultry production (let alone french fry-ready potatoes) don’t exist, they can’t work within existing systems to meet them, even if they would prefer to. Instead, they have to build new systems, and to do that, they need locals who understand these places intimately. Often, entrepreneurs who cut their teeth in war have exactly the skills they’re looking for.
War has another effect: It reveals the artificiality of old social hierarchies. Meng, Pestonjee, and Fujita were all ambitious and hungry for opportunity. But they were also outsiders—Pestonjee because she was a Parsi; Fujita, because his mother was a Christian and the Japanese he spoke was actually a dialect of his native Osaka; Meng, because he had spent most of his youth abroad. In an era of peace and stability, determination might have only led to modest success. But the social-leveling effects of war and occupation offered chances that would have never existed otherwise.
It’s fitting, then, that after the bombs and gunfire went quiet in their countries, all three would gravitate to fast food. Even though they promote their goods as luxuries in developing countries, fast food brands still retain the welcoming spirit of undiscerning capitalists wherever they operate. Through their doors, the old hierarchies have no place. Everyone is welcome, just as long as they have the money to pay.
Additional fact checking by Apoorva Tadepalli.
[post_title] => The Wartime Roots of the Global Fast Food Boom
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => open
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => the-wartime-roots-of-fast-food
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=4783
[menu_order] => 114
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
A survey of 12-year-olds to early 20-somethings in the US.
This article is a companion piece. If you’re curious to learn how older people feel about the state of the world, click here.
We’re more than two years deep into a pandemic, and if it feels like we’re moving backwards, it’s because in many ways, we are.
In 2022 alone, there have been over 300 mass shootings in the US. Earlier this summer, in a historic decision, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, immediately impacting the reproductive rights of millions. Meanwhile, global temperatures have reached dangerous, record-breaking highs, and if we squint into the horizon, all signs point to an imminent recession, where young people seeking employment will undoubtedly be among those hit the hardest.
Oh, and did we mention we’re still living amid a deadly virus that continues to take lives each day?
The Conversationalist asked young people from various parts of the country their thoughts on the state of the world right now. Which issues are overwhelming them the most? What kinds of discussions are they having with their friends? How do they feel about the future? Is it all doom and gloom?
Here’s what they had to say, in their own words.
~
“Turning on the news and seeing the violence in this world is not a surprise anymore. It's not even sad because I expect it. What scares me now is going to places where I can't find the nearest exit if I need to flee quickly. My home city of Chicago is now looked down upon by America as crime central. When I tell people I live in the suburbs of Chicago they gasp as if I'm in danger.
I remember flinching at school when I heard a student squeeze open their chip bag, resulting in a loud popping noise. My heart skipped a beat and my mind immediately thought of the worst. Within seconds I was asking myself, Where is the noise coming from? Is it safe to stay where I am? How did the intruder get into the school? All from a kid’s chip bag making a loud popping noise. I shouldn't be thinking that way. It shouldn't be a habit for me, a 17-year-old, to look for the nearest exit in every public place I go to.
I just want to be shocked when I turn on the news channels again.”
—Amanda, 17, suburbs of Chicago
“Not only is there more fear in the world with monkeypox currently, specifically in New York, climate change is also only giving us about eight more years before there is no turning back. This is extremely worrisome because Americans aren’t doing anything about this and we only have so much time before our ecosystems become more fragile than ever.
Overall, as someone within the generation that has to suffer most from these current issues, this is very concerning for not only our well-being but our physical health. We need to take the appropriate measures to prevent further conflict.”
—Juliette, 15, New York, NY
“I’m finishing up my senior year in the fall at Penn State University. From my vantage point, the recent Dobbs decision has stirred up an immense amount of emotion from all sides of the spectrum and both sides of the coin, so to speak. College-aged women and female students that I interact with are overwhelmingly disturbed and frightened—they are fired up and want to help right the ship to protect abortion access for themselves and, in the case of the few pro-life women, for others. I work in local political organizing and one way to communicate with pro-life women in particular is to remind them that while they may not choose to have an abortion, their friends may face situations where they need one—and bringing the hot-button issue to a hyper-personal level really helps some people understand that they should not be so anti-choice.
For men, a general sense of confusion and passive worrisome behavior is the vibe that I’m getting. My guy friends in particular tend NOT to be split among party lines with abortion—a lot of them think it’s stupid to tell women they can’t do something, while others are afraid that their female partners may not have the birth control/contraceptives they need to continue a sexual relationship.
My fear is that despite the level of concern and anger at this decision, people my age will not care enough to vote in the large numbers that we need to actually change things. [We] can’t change SCOTUS, but can sure as hell change our state legislatures and Congress. That’s why I’m getting as involved as I can to spread the word to students and folks my age that this election is undeniably the most important of our lifetimes, and that at the very least you need to vote.”
—Josh, 21, State College, PA
“With everything happening in our political climate, the one word that can't escape my mind is 'division.’ With all of the constant discord going about through the media, it's hard to ignore.
I've noticed that the in-person conversations I've shared with people of differing views from me have been much more productive than online ones, whether it be in my classes or at group hangouts. I believe a considerable problem our generation is facing is a lack of personal connection stemming from social media playing a much more significant role in our day-to-day lives. The more that I've realized the adverse side effects of social media, the more attempts I've made to stray away from it. I've deleted Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook with the goal of doing away with it entirely. It's too stressful and time-consuming, and I've also found my mental health to be better in my time away from it.
I can't help but have my worries about our society's collapse. It's very taxing on me to see so much nonstop negative news.”
—Tommy, 18, Worthington, OH
“I’m feeling a bit agitated with how we talk about mental health on the internet and social media lately. I’m not saying that mental health awareness is bad. I just think that with anything that becomes mainstream, it loses any much-needed nuance and seriousness. And that’s what has happened with mental health awareness. You can see it happening in so many forms, whether it’s brands trying to capitalize off of it, down to those stupid ‘Little Miss Whatever’ memes, or any other insert-yourself-here gimmick. All of it totally downplays how serious mental health is and buries any useful resources, turning mental health awareness into another throwaway talking point.”
—Margot, 19, Boston, MA
“I live in Jacksonville, Florida but attend school in Ohio. I’m pursuing a degree in fashion and am thankful that most opportunities in fashion do take place in more blue states like New York and California. However, that doesn’t take away my fear of what the future holds.
While New York, specifically NYC, and California are states that I believe do well in protecting the rights of their citizens, they are also some of the most expensive places to live. Fashion is not one of the best industries in terms of high salaries and affordable wages––at least compared to the cost of living in the places where the industry is best established.
But even more than that, reproductive rights are a major concern for me. The mere thought of me unintentionally getting pregnant and not even having the option to decide how I want to go about my health has me petrified and runs through my mind constantly. I’m truly at the point where I don’t think I’m even going to consider looking into jobs and companies that are located in red states. To make matters worse, we’re living in a system ruled by a Supreme Court that just took a major blow to combating the climate crisis and agreed to hear a case that heavily impacts voting rights, which would just be another major step in the seemingly decline of democracy.
I’m very worried about the future, which really sucks because I feel like this is the time that I should be looking forward to it the most.”
—Janelle, 21, Jacksonville, FL
“Over the past few years, the world has felt pretty bad and it’s not getting much better. The government is corrupt; politicians are bad. I’m just resigned to it. I don’t really know how I could change anything. All politicians suck (sorry). It feels like things have been bad forever.”
—Charlotte, 12, Los Angeles, CA
“Everything and everyone right now is so polarized. Most people are arguing for or against things that they don’t know the half about. We are being served all of our information through the media and most of it is altered and incorrect. People form opinions on misinformation and stick to them while being blind to any opposing information. We have to be more open to hearing others' ideas in order to function as a united front.”
—Kate, 18, East Lyme, CT
“It's pretty easy to feel despair about the big national issues as it really seems like there is nothing we can do to stem the flow of environmental and human rights catastrophes coming down from a federal and corporate level. That said, I feel hopeful about local politics.
I hear a lot of talk about urban issues in my peer groups, mainly how to deal with cars-as-default politics in urban planning and policy while promoting alternatives for local transport. While this also feels futile sometimes, there are always silver linings and improvements being made to help bring American cities up to snuff, which in turn seems like a way to help the battle against climate change AND improve quality of life across the board.”
—Nicholas, 21, Memphis, TN
“After the events of the last few months I have really felt a crushing fear settle under my skin, wherever I am––at a parade, my school, or the grocery store. It has become harder and harder to listen to the news, to force myself to feel the reality of the crushing headlines, both afraid of the state of the country and afraid of becoming numb to it.
Being a teen right now is a minefield of double edged swords; between finding comfort in social media and absorbing yourself in saddening discussions, and learning how to become an adult while having massive gaps in the teen experience from the pandemic. I feel young and afraid to grow up in a world where my rights are in question and where there is not a path in sight leading to true freedom. I am as helpless as our elected president, sadly tweeting about what I wish I could fix about our country.”
—Carley, 17, Romeoville, IL
“I feel like the world is moving forwards and backwards in different ways. Some things are being improved such as tech and medicine, and some things may be struggling to improve such as plastic in the ocean or people littering. [But] I believe that people should still take precautions with COVID.”
—Spencer, 13, New York, NY
“I think it’s impossible not to feel somewhat hopeless at the moment, especially if you’re an activist or politically ‘in-the-know’ circle. I work in education consultancy and research and have done so since I was 15, so I am no stranger to a challenge. Kentucky was not exactly the most conducive environment to the work I was attempting to do. So I guess today's current state of affairs does not strike me as too abnormal.
I understand this is not the prevailing view amongst my peers, especially in California. But I honed my chops in this work when Kentucky had a governor who openly wondered about drowning teachers, who loosened gun restrictions, and who attempted to gut our teacher pension system. Today's battles are not any different from yesterday’s; they are just as severe and not any more severe. But that assumes you were fighting yesterday’s battles and a lot of my peers weren’t. A lot of them gained political and social consciousness relatively recently and have nothing to compare today's climate to. I would never blame them for that, and I do not think that lessens the importance of their voices. But it does mean these activists need to take a step back from their work to frame it in historical context.
The Civil Rights Movement, the LGBTQ movement, the fight for Roe; these movements led to large scale social changes in the face of unprecedented challenges. We should be taking strategic guidance from these movements to provide us with that roadmap to social change. It’s like if we were playing chess and constantly losing to the same guy, yet when we stopped and looked at the table next to us, we see the same guy losing to someone else. By taking that step back, we are able to observe a successful strategy to counter that would not have come out of our frustration. If we just keep attempting the same strategies over and over to create social change, without drawing from successful historical examples, we are destined to lose.
This is why I have hope in the midst of such despair. Because I understand much of our despair has to do not with the particular situation we find ourselves in and more with our outlook on this situation.”
—Will, 21, Somerset, KY
[post_title] => How Do Younger People Feel About the State of the World?
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => open
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => how-do-younger-people-feel-about-the-state-of-the-world
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
https://conversationalist.org/2022/08/31/how-do-older-people-feel-about-the-state-of-the-world/
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=4811
[menu_order] => 124
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
A survey of late 60-somethings to 80-somethings in the US (mostly).
This article is a companion piece. If you're curious to learn how younger people feel about the state of the world, click here.
Every day is an exhausting day of dealing with unprecedented events. From multiple pandemics, out-of-control gun violence, the rollback and continued endangerment of human rights and bodily autonomy, and the aggressive creep of fascism, it is valid to feel overwhelmed and hopeless. These issues are enormous and wicked problems. And as a younger generation learns to grapple with them and find a way forward, there is also a growing understanding that these issues are not new, and are built upon the decisions and actions of the generations before us.
In consideration of this, The Conversationalist spoke to numerous people around or over the age of 70 about their hopes, concerns, and feelings regarding the current state of the world. What became apparent is that our collective experience of feeling overwhelmed by unprecedented times is not a new or unique one; and that historical texts and teachings are often a neatly organized version of events that can flatten the truth of living through them.
The conversations didn’t necessarily provide solutions— but they did offer a sense of meaningful and gritty hope. The kind of hope that suggests a hard push and insistent effort can elicit change over time. Not only of policies, but also of communities and people.
Here’s what they had to say, in their own words.
~
“Being a kid in the ‘50s, we had duck and cover. We were learning how to duck and cover [in case] a nuclear bomb goes off. [But] even as a kid, I [remember thinking], I don't think that's going to help. When [my family] was first looking for a house, a lot of homes had bomb shelters. I remember being eight or nine years old, some bomb shelter[s] had arsenic in [them], so that if all else failed, you wouldn't suffer. I mean, it's just a weird way to grow up and weird things to think about at that age. Now kids are, you know, learning what to do when there's an active shooter.
I'm hopeful. Otherwise, the alternative is too horrible. I've seen huge changes in my life, so I feel like change is possible. I just look at it like this: my mother was really homophobic. And then I came out and got a divorce, and had to go through this horrible custody battle and almost lose my kids. It took a few years, she was devastated, [it] was awful. [But] I saw her make these amazing changes. As freaked out as she was when I came out to her, and when my next brother came out, years later, and then my other brother came out, you know, she started to come around. Three out of four of us are gay and she went from being very homophobic and upset to being like a three-star general in PFLAG and she was on the speaker's bureau. I think, because of that, it helps me be more optimistic, because I really do think people can change in drastic ways that you would never imagine. I mean, I would never ever have imagined that I would have a relationship with her and I became very close to her. So that makes me optimistic.”
—Allison Akana, 71, Half Moon Bay, California
“As far as the political climate, [it] was actually much worse in the late 60s and 70s. [In] the 60s, you had [John F.] Kennedy's assassination. You had his brother, [Robert F. Kennedy’s] assassination. You had Martin Luther King's assassination. We had the Mỹ Lai massacre. Nixon was in Cambodia and Laos and wasn't supposed to be there. John Mitchell, the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer was in federal prison. It's really nothing new. There's more information [now]. It's available faster. [But] human behavior hasn't changed at all.
And I would think for young people, they're worse [off] now. I graduated from high school in 1971. In the Detroit area, you could go to work at Ford's Chrysler or GM after you graduated from high school and you could make as much money as your dad. Now, how many kids can do that now? No one, no one.
[I] used to work the first two weeks of the month, seven days, 10 hours a day. [For] the last two weeks of the month, I would work five days, eight hours a day. Because [I] made so much money in the first two weeks, I couldn't spend it all. My rent was $200 a month, which I split with my friend. I think our electric bill was maybe 12 bucks. My car payment was $190 per month, because I put no money down. The last time I bought gas in high school was 19 cents a gallon. So tell me, who’s got it worse?”
—Robert T., 68, Las Vegas, Nevada
“When you go [get] medicinal herbs, you pick a little piece from the east side, pick some from the south side, the west side, the north side, and you say a prayer, you say thank you. With what you've given me, I will get well—that's respect. And what I have seen in the world that we now live in, there is no respect. There is no sense of providing dignity to the things all around us. We don't care about the pollutants that we're putting into the rivers. All we're interested in is how we're going to make additional money, make more profits. I’m now seeing, like in California, all the wildfires are happening. And the water is drying up in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. That's because we did not pay attention. The larger world, the larger society has just totally knocked everything off balance. And now we're sitting with all of these fires that are raging, we have all these polluted waters. We have people that are talking about running a pipeline from Canada down to New Orleans, for this dirty oil that's going to be coming down from up there. And people go, Oh, but they'll provide jobs. They'll give them an income. You can't eat money. You know, and that pipeline is going through a very important aquifer for the Cheyenne and the Lakota people up in North and South Dakota. If that pipeline bursts it is going to pollute that aquifer. And what are they going to drink? They can't drink oil.
What we have been saying for years as Indian people, the outside world [is] finally realizing our relationship as human beings, to the worlds that we live in. We’ve been talking about polluting energy sources for a long time. [The outside world] should have listened to us 100 years ago. They could learn something from us. But we were ‘savages.’
But, you know, there is hope. That's my nature. We have all of these negative things that are happening, but there are little flashes of brilliance out there. That's why I'm working where I'm working. I am working with the elderly. I'm one myself. But I look at the elderly as a walking encyclopedia. The elderly still know our language, they know the history, the culture, traditions, customs, the ceremonies, all that keeps us in balance.
Those elderly people are precious to me. They are the hope for the next generation.”
—Larry Curley*, 73, Navajo Nation/Albuquerque, New Mexico
“You know, everything I'm seeing, it's just stuff that has happened before. I was a young adult during the Vietnam crisis and now we’ve got the Russian/Ukraine crisis. Every day, you're seeing bombings and body counts, and the news is covering it. [It’s] the same with that civil rights stuff. I mean, it's all the same kind of stuff we were dealing with then. So it'll pass, I guess, eventually. I'll do what I can. But I don't know if I have any power to do anything except vote on November 8, you know? You can go and join marches and protests and write letters and do all that. But I think voting is where people might have some power.
In a representative democracy, voting is the only thing that you can do. Because if you don't vote, you're just throwing up your hands and saying, ‘What the hell, nothing's gonna change.’ But I think it can change, and I think it will change, but you have to have an informed public and you have to have people willing to vote.”
—Barbara Walters, 77, Punta Gorda, Florida
“I remember getting the talk about pandemics and infectious diseases. It may have been kindergarten or first grade, and we all went to the school gym and we got the [polio] shot. It was during World War Two when penicillin came along and antibiotics. And it was kind of this miracle age where all these infectious diseases and dreaded pandemic diseases of childhood and beyond, were kind of behind us.
The 70s were the sexual revolution. It was a time of a lot of sexual freedom, which we hadn't had before. You know, straight people had got it wrong for so long and told us [gay people] all this crap about what we could do, and what we couldn't do, and how we were bad people, and what we did was perverted. [There was] a kind of release, which I think led to a lot of happy, free sex all the time. So when AIDS came in, it really put a damper on things, and shut a lot of people down—it shut me down a lot.
You’ve lived through Polio, AIDS, and now COVID and Monkeypox. What’s been the experience of living through those moments?
My reaction has been what [is the government] waiting for? Why is it taking so long? There have been many points when it could have been contained. They've been dragging their feet and when will they ever learn? So I find that very discouraging.
[Overall,] I'm very pessimistic. I mean, there’s always been these fascist elements. I remember the George Wallace campaign, which was quite strong, but it never felt overreaching. The Trump election was a major thing. I guess maybe I was naive. I remember when Obama ran, and I couldn't decide whether I wanted to support him or not, because I didn't think he was progressive enough. Of course, I voted for him and when he got elected I remember the whole thing on TV and crying. I remember thinking, well maybe it’s not as progressive as I like but at least we’re going to get past some of this racial shit, finally. And now I think back at how stupid and naive I was to think that, because it really had the opposite effect and there was a huge reaction to it. I mean, you know, when I was very young, I heard the stories of how it happened in Germany and how it could never happen here in this country. But it's happening.”
—David Lebe*, 74, Upstate New York
“[When I was teaching,] I worked with boys with severe emotional and behavioral problems, they taught me more than I ever could teach them. [Eventually,] I ended up getting a doctorate in technology, studying media and informational technology. And I see a real connection between all the changes, big changes in history, they're very much related to how we communicate. The Protestant Reformation—which was a great movement—started with the printing press when people started learning that they could read these scriptures rather than just look at the pictures in the cathedral. [By reading it] for themselves, [they started] making decisions for themselves. That was all traumatic for the church and the aristocracy at the time because they were in control of everything. Anyway, that's been repeated over and over with the Enlightenment and all this other stuff. Today with the internet, mainly, I think it's the biggest [form of] digital communication. [We’re] learning how to use this new way of democracy and communicating with one another. But we got a lot of learning to do. As we’ve had to do time and time again. I'm very hopeful. The more you give individuals responsibility for their life and for the life of their community, the better things happen.
—Daniel O’Donnell, 77, Chicago, Illinois
“I think the main thing that's different is that for the early part of my life a lot of us got our news from the same places. We watched ABC, CBS, and NBC. And we watched people like Walter Cronkite, or [The Huntley–Brinkley Report]. So we got kind of a similar perspective on what was going on in the United States and the world. And that's good and bad, and probably white supremacy shaped some of those messages. But on the other hand, it was easier to feel like you were part of one fabric of a nation.
Around the time that Newt Gingrich was elected and became Speaker of the House, and Karl Rove started to shape this slash and burn style of politics that has become the norm, the country bec[a]me increasingly polarized into red and blue silos. Folks just don't trust those that live in the other camp or have any other label, and often self sort themselves so that they don't spend much time with people that are different from them. I think that's the most dangerous thing going on. I'm hopeful that part of what's going on right now is the oppressive system[s] that I grew up with—white supremacy, or patriarchy, or, you know, whatever you want to call it, the status quo—that basically, enough liberation movements have happened that [it’s] kind of in its death throes. And what we're seeing could be considered kind of a death rattle.
I'd like to believe that liberty and justice and equity are going to prevail, but I don't believe that's automatic. I think we have to make that happen by our choices and by our actions [and] by living responsibly. So I'm hopeful that a more inclusive vision for how to live [and] a more compassionate set of social policies will prevail.
When I was young, I felt a lot of fear. I can remember when I was in seminary, I got anonymous mail from the Ku Klux Klan because I had volunteered with an LGBT organization, and they had a P.O. box. When I picked up the mail, there was a letter from the KKK letting me know that they were watching me and that they knew our organization existed and that they were organizing in our area. And then, when I came out during seminary, a story about me wound up on the first page of the [newspaper] in 1988. I was worried that someone might shoot me because there really was a lot of hate and hostility out there in the world.
What I've seen has made me perhaps more hopeful than when I was younger. Not only have I changed, but I've also seen things [change]. Legal discrimination [has] become illegal now. I couldn't legally marry when I was younger, I can legally marry now. Black people were having to pay poll taxes and guess how many jelly beans were in a jar [to vote] when I was a child and that's illegal now. Not that [the government] hasn't found [an] incredible number of ways to discriminate against African Americans still. But my own resilience and the things that I've seen change—we've had some wins over the years, some things have happened that are important and good and that at least move[d] the needle somewhat in the right direction.”
—J-Mo*, 68, St.Louis, Missouri
“There's going to be climate integration. For sure. The number of refugees from Ukraine right now is over 5 million. Can you believe that? That's more than 10% of the population; 15% have already left. Certainly, the wars in the Middle East created millions of refugees. These are just the tip of the iceberg. My understanding—or my belief, is that the Biden Administration is following the lead of the Trump Administration in drastically cutting back the immigration from Central and South America, and looking for technically competent immigrants from South and East Asia and Europe.
It's heartbreaking. It's a crucifixion, because I feel more and more guilty about being a poster boy [of refugees and immigrants] while people who managed to get into this country are working with leaf blowers at $5 an hour.
There are all kinds of things we could do as a country if we had the will to do [it]. And we certainly have the wherewithal to absorb a lot more people. This is still an underpopulated country by almost any standards. And we don't have quite—although Florida will be underwater the day after tomorrow—we certainly don't have the same immediate climate problem. Although we are without any doubt the worst climate criminals in the world.
It’s extremely complicated. I vote in every election, I show up for jury duty. I just returned to the United States, so I have an American passport. I believe that if I accept the citizenship I have certain obligations. But it's terribly confusing.
In terms of the context of this conversation, it’s important to mention that I survived the Holocaust. As a five- and six-year-old boy, this is profound childhood trauma. It's probably helpful for people to understand you as you're talking to somebody who has very severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
[But] I now have, at the age of 84, a four-month-old grandson. He's beautiful. He's gorgeous. One-fourth of him is made of me. As long as there are people there is hope. It's not good to get cynical or bitter. It doesn't help anyone, whatsoever, ever. That's a statement from a very old man who was delighted to have his first grandchild come into the world.”
—Joseph B. Juhász*, 84, Boulder, Colorado
“I have a lot of concerns about how expensive it is to live. That's like a big, big one. That was one of the differences in the 70s, and even the 80s, we weren’t putting all our money towards rent, and all of these gadgets and all this stuff. Towards the end of my teaching—I left Portland in 2006 for Salt Spring Island, and was able to retire with some benefits—I could feel the pressures the students are under with having to work full time, or even work part-time and being so economically challenged, that they wouldn't be able to be as prepared. I don't know how a lot of people do it. And the tendency not to read. I feel like reading is not as valued. And that's a problem. I mean, reading is just, it's one of the life forces for me, and not having to teach has given me a lot of freedom to read. I have some younger friends, [who are a] range of ages and some people have kids—which I don’t have—and they have to devote a lot of time to earning money. That's pretty antithetical to being able to have a lot of time to do other kinds of organizing and community involvement. But I think that people are always going to find ways to do that.”
—Wendy Judith Cutler*, 70, Salt Spring Island British Columbia, Canada
“See, I had seen the police do terrible things. Okay. In the neighborhood [in Philly], I had seen them beat up a playmate of mine, just to beat him up. And then [they] jumped away and said, ‘We beat the wrong n-word.’ I couldn't believe that. To see this and I'm a kid. He's a kid. He had to be about a year or two older than me. We were all kids. So I didn't like the police.
The oligarchs of America do not care about people, or the welfare of common people. Do you understand? [In the 60s,] we were tearing this country apart. And I don't necessarily even mean just physically, you know.
We had Black people, just courageous Black people, who said you know what, these laws are not good for us. They're not even good for the poor working whites. They're not good for any working person in this country. So we aren't going to obey the laws, we're not going to do it, we’re gonna patrol our own communities. And so what would happen? There would be standoffs with the police, shootouts with the police, and people were willing to give their lives, go to jail, or whatever so that we can move forward as a people. And we did. So what I see now is a hesitancy. Now, there are certainly demonstrations of sorts going on now, we know that. But I don't see the kind of strategic cohesiveness that I would like to see, as an extension of what we did in the 1960s.
I know America is a criminal country. You got to understand that. I was exposed to the despotism of America for so long, that the protests, and the young Black girl filming George Floyd being killed [right] before our fucking eyes—I said, Okay. I'm sorry George was killed that way. But I also knew something like that needed to happen, because the youngsters are too complacent with the crimes of America. When I saw the protests, I watched, and I knew that it was going to be different from what it had been previously. I knew that it would spark, I'll call it a revolutionary thrust, that had not been there before. This is what I knew. And you see this country, it's very good at masquerade and camouflage. It's excellent. We want to spread democracy around [the world]. Really? With all of the homeless that are strewn across this country? But you're spreading democracy? With the inequality that regular Americans are facing?”
—Dr. Regina Jennings*, 72, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
~
*The Footnotes
Editor’s Note: At The Conversationalist, we understand that no story exists in a vacuum, and every story is built on the work of others before us, whether in ways big or small. We are likewise dedicated to spotlighting the voices of those who have been or continue to be oppressed, disregarded, and/or otherwise silenced, in an effort to reverse centuries of often intentional erasure. Because of this, we have opted to include “footnotes” on certain stories to give readers additional context and reading material where it feels relevant and beneficial.
Larry Curley is currently the Executive Director of the National Indian Council on Aging and has worked for the Navajo Nation, of which he is a member, for most of his life.
David Lebe is a photographer known for his experimental representations of the gay experience and living with AIDS. His monograph is Long Light: Photographs by David Lebe.
J-Mo was the first openly lesbian elected official at the state level in Missouri, where ze served as Missouri House Representative.
Joseph B. Juhász is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Colorado. He is a survivor of the Holocaust and was a refugee to the United States at 13 years old.
Wendy Judith Cutler is a teacher, writer, and lesbian feminist who has been involved in feminist, leftist, social justice, and queer politics, community-building, and culture for many decades. She co-authored Writing Alone Together: Journaling in a Circle of Women for Creativity, as well as the play An UnDutiful Daughter.
A non-exhaustive list of cruel, corrupt, and extreme actions taken by Republicans of late.
With so many overlapping global crises happening at once, and Democrats in charge of the Presidency and Congress, it's especially hard to keep track of all the ways the US GOP continues to radicalize. This is partly by design. The cascade of oppressive laws and disinformation from Republican legislators and media is meant confuse and overwhelm. The following is a list of GOP and related far right news worth your attention.
Jamelle Bouie, Ezra Klein, Jane Coaston and Lulu Garcia-Navarro discuss how the GOP fringe took over American politics for the New York Times.
Gabriel Rosenberg, Duke Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, wrote aTwitter threadabout how the latest "groomer" panic is categorically different and more violent than what we've seen before.
Writer Jude Doyle does a deep dive into the growing connections between anti-trans feminists and the far right. “It’s a grim irony that, by insisting on a ‘feminism’ without any trans women in it, TERFs have wound up constructing the tool by which fascists aim to destroy feminism altogether.”
Roxanna Asgarian writes in NY Mag about how Texas became the most virulently anti-trans state in America, including directing the state’s child-welfare agency to conduct abuse investigations of parents who provide their children gender-affirming care.
For the Editorial Board, Mia Brett writes about how Republicans are close to legalizing child marriage in Tennessee.
Also in the Editorial Board, John Stoehr speaks with NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray about Ginni and Clarence Thomas and how their relationship affects perceptions about the Supreme Court's legitimacy.
The editorial board of the Boston Globe wants the January 6 Committee to subpoena Ginni Thomas already.
Elie Mystal argues in The Nation that post-Roe, Republicans are coming for marriage equality next.
Gerren Keith Gaynor interviews Preston Mitchum about the harm to Black LGBTQ youth of the "Don't Say Gay" Laws.
The Oregon GOP is running three QAnon and Proud Boy candidates.
Trump admitted to speaking to key Republican figures at the time of the riot on 1/6. Greg Sargent argues that Merrick Garland should use this admission to launch a full investigation into Trump's communications that day.
Speaking of which, there are 7 hours missing from Trump's phone records that day. Historian Tim Naftali writes in The Atlantic that Trump can't just erase history like Nixon did.
On the bright side, the DOJ plans to investigate the boxes of records Trump illegally brought with him to Mar a Lago.
The Child Tax Credit expiring is pushing voters towards the GOP. Meanwhile the GOP plus Joe Manchin are why it expired in the first place.
[post_title] => What has the radicalized GOP been up to?
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => media-roundup-what-has-the-radicalized-gop-been-up-to
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
https://www.editorialboard.com/while-republicans-in-florida-debate-dont-say-gay-republicans-in-tennessee-are-close-to-legalizing-child-marriage/
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:28
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=4008
[menu_order] => 126
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson performed admirably before the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite attacks on her historic nomination to the Supreme Court by Republican conspiracies, racism and sexism.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the appointment of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black female justice to sit on the Supreme Court. The hearings were a circus of QAnon conspiracies and racist dog whistles, with little pushback on Republicans from Democrats. This week Executive Director Anna Lind-Guzik highlights recurring themes in the commentary on Jackson's nomination: Republican abuses and complicity, Jackson's unwavering composure and respectability politics, Democrats' abandonment of their nominee, rampant misogynoir (misogyny specifically targeting Black women), and in spite of everything, pride at Jackson's historic nomination, both as a Black woman and a former public defender.
Republican misbehavior, politicization and complicity
So far the only one Republican, Susan Collins, has said she will vote to confirm Judge Jackson. Longtime Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse writes for the New York Times: "every Republican who votes against her confirmation will be complicit in the abuse that the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee heaped on her." She concludes, "the Republicans’ role in the Jackson hearing was not remotely about Ketanji Brown Jackson. It was about concocting a scary version of a Black woman to serve up to their base."
Also in the New York Times, Emily Bazelon refutes Republican attacks on Judge Jackson for her sentencing decisions in child pornography cases, even citing the National Review for calling Senator Hawley's line of questioning “meritless to the point of demagoguery.”
Related Posts
Democrats' failure to support Judge Jackson
Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate about how Democrats stranded Ketanji Brown Jackson at her hearings. "Jackson looked alone fending off the QAnon smear brigade for much of these hearings because she was alone, at least until Sen. Cory Booker took it upon himself in his last colloquy to offer up a powerful corrective to the hatred being leveled at her."
Here is a video of Cory Booker telling Judge Jackson that no one will "steal his joy" at her nomination. When Black women were asked how they felt watching the hearings, many expressed a range from pride and hope, to pain and disgust.
Racism, misogyny, and misogynoir
In Teen Vogue, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Katie Camacho Orona argue that the attacks against Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson mirror those used against Justice Sonia Sotomayor. They compare the disingenuous critical race theory attacks on Judge Jackson to accusations of "reverse discrimination" made against Sotomayor.
In Oprah Daily, legal scholars Madiba Dennie and Kate Kelly speak to the misogynoir Judge Jackson faced at the hearings. "Misogynoir is a term coined by queer feminist scholar Professor Moya Bailey that encapsulates the specific hatred directed toward Black women, who face discrimination on the basis of both race and gender."
Composure and respectability in predominantly white spaces
Coming on the heels of Will Smith and Chris Rock's dust-up at the Oscars, Roxane Gay wrote an essay "In defense of thin skin"where she describes her pain watching Judge Jackson's hearing. She notes, "the Senate Judiciary Committee apparently valued decorum over Judge Jackson’s dignity."
For The Nation, Elie Mystal delves into Judge Jackson's pause after Ted Cruz rudely asked her, “Do you agree…that babies are racist?” He writes, "In that pregnant moment, everybody in the whole country who was watching got to see whiteness at work. Everybody knew that Ted Cruz got to stand up there and call Ketanji Brown Jackson whatever he wanted to, and nobody would stop him. Everybody knew that Jackson could not respond in kind if she wanted the job. And everybody knew that, in the same situation, Kavanaugh could and did sneer at his questioners, threaten the Senate with political retribution, and declare his undying love for beer, without hurting his chances at unaccountable lifetime power. Power he now holds."
Celebrating Ketanji Brown Jackson's accomplishments and experience
In the New York Times, Erica Green reports on how Ketanji Brown Jackson reacted to Confederate flag displays in her time at Harvard.
One month into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, amid rampant disinformation, the fog of war, and rapidly shifting geopolitics, The Conversationalist's Executive Director has put together an overview of the latest reporting and analysis.
Despite being at war with Ukraine in Donbas since 2014, Russia's invasion of its neighbor on February 24 took many by surprise, including experts on and from both countries. It's not that people disregarded Putin's threats, but many couldn't stomach the thought of another land war in Europe, nor what that rupture would mean for two such interconnected peoples, not to mention the world order. As both the daughter of a Ukrainian Jew from Odessa, and a historian of the Soviet Union, I've been unable to look away. For The Conversationalist, I've gathered some of the best reporting and analysis from inside Ukraine and Russia on war crimes, sanctions, repressions, Nazis, refugees and racism.
Reporting from Ukrainian cities under bombardment
The most harrowing accounts of the war have come from cities in eastern Ukraine, especially the port city Mariupol, which has been flattened in the space of a few weeks. For 20 days, AP journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka documented the siege of Mariupol, including mass graves and the now famous photo of a pregnant woman being carried through rubble on a stretcher after Russia targeted Mariupol's maternity hospital. They later escaped Mariupol to avoid capture by Russian forces.
Russia says it is liberating Russian-speaking Ukrainians from imagined oppression. But who is doing the actual fighting? Historian Robert Crews writes in the Washington Post about Muslims fighting on both sides of the war, and how these divisions threaten stability in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Recent reports of Syrian mercenaries being recruited by Russia triggered righteous anger in many already distressed at the disparate treatment of Syrian refugees by the international community.
What do The Conversationalist contributors have to say?
The Conversationalist is proud to have published standout scholars and journalists covering Ukraine and surrounding countries.
Natalia Antonova has been covering Russia, Ukraine, and Putin for The Conversationalist since our founding. Her December 2021 analysis in Foreign Policy on the Russian delusions motivating the invasion anticipated current events better than most. For The Conversationalist she wrote a compelling piece on sanctioning Putin's inner circle, and warning of the destabilizing effects of a Russian invasion.
David Remnick interviewed historian Stephen Kotkin for The New Yorker. The result is a mixed bag. Kotkin's sharp insights and depth of knowledge are undermined by essentialist characterizations of East and West.
Language around migration can be confusing, and the way it’s used can impact meaning. When is someone an immigrant? When are they a refugee?
Immigration. It’s a topic at the heart of political arguments and family dinner table rows all around the world. It drives tabloid headlines. But it’s an issue that’s poorly understood by many people. What makes someone a refugee, and what’s an economic migrant? Why do people leave their homes? How easy is it to cross a border?
This is your immigration cheat sheet — an introduction to how humankind migrates. It’s the why, how, and where. The emotional toll many have to face, and the opportunities others enjoy. The changing policies that are impacted by the world in which we live.
What is immigration?
Language around migration can be confusing, and the way it’s used can impact meaning. When is someone an immigrant? When are they a refugee? Meanwhile, the word migrant is often used as an umbrella term for everybody moving somewhere new, regardless of the reason — it isn’t specific to refugees. Here’s a breakdown of some key terms.
Immigration vs. emigration
The difference between immigration and emigration is about whether you’re coming or going. People immigrating are moving into a new country to live, where they become immigrants. Whereas emigration relates to those leaving.
People might also talk about net migration. This is a calculation to show whether more people are moving into a country, than out of it, affecting the overall population. If there are more immigrants to a country than people emigrating, it’s known as positive net migration.
Immigration vs. migration
Moving into a new place is known as immigration. Migration, on the other hand, is the actual act of moving. It’s when people (or birds) leave one location and journey towards another. People might cross multiple borders, or they might even stay in the same country and migrate to a different area.
Immigration under duress
Not all migration is through choice. Many people are forced to move away from their countries, leaving behind homes and loved ones.
Refugees
There are 84 million people in the world who have been forcibly displaced, either within their own countries or beyond its borders. People forced to flee their home countries for fear of being persecuted are known as refugees, and they’re often at risk due to their political beliefs, religion, race, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or sexual orientation. They might be facing war or violence in their home countries. Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people are guaranteed the right to seek asylum in another country. They’re also protected from refoulement, where states must not return refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be under threat.
Asylum seekers
Refugees who have made an application to stay in a new country, but have not yet received a decision, are known as asylum seekers. They can only make that application once they’re in the new country. As of 2021, there are 4.4 million people waiting on asylum applications across the world. Some travel through several nations before making an application — there is no obligation for people to seek asylum in the first country in which they arrive. Asylum procedures can be complicated, involving interviews, lengthy legal processes, and even detention-like accommodation.
Trafficked people
Human traffickers take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. Those escaping risky situations, or deceived into believing strangers can find themselves in disastrous situations. Victims of human trafficking can be forced into sexual exploitation, slavery, marriage, or crime. It happens both across borders and within people’s home countries.
Immigration: a brief history
People have migrated throughout the whole of history, from early human movement out of Africa to periods of colonialism. It’s nothing new. But the ways migrants are treated and the factors that drive movement are ever shifting. Climate change is forcing more people to leave their homes, and technological advances mean those who want to work from anywhere often can. The Coronavirus pandemic forced countries to close their borders, and some governments used it as an excuse to turn away people.
Immigration laws
Here’s a snapshot of how immigration laws have changed in recent history, and the moments that made big impacts:
United Kingdom
During World War II, the UK took in around 70,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. British children from cities and towns, known as evacuees, were sent to live in the British countryside, or even in other nations, away from the threat of bombs.
After World War II, the country needed help rebuilding cities and staffing the healthcare system, and invited people from the Commonwealth to move to the UK. Those arriving from the Caribbean were known as the Windrush generation. They were automatically British subjects. However, in 2017, it became clear that the Home Office had wrongly deported commonwealth citizens, after destroying documentation which would have proved their right to live and work in the UK.
The introduction of the Immigration Act in 1971 put an end to Commonwealth citizens enjoying more rights in the UK than those from other nations.
In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union. On 31 January 2020, Brexit came into force, putting an end to freedom of movement for British citizens in the EU.
The European Union and Schengen area
In 1951, six European countries joined together with the key aim of preventing further war and furthering economic growth. Through the European Economic Community, workers were eventually given the right of free movement in 1968.
In 1992, the European Union (EU) was created. Freedom of movement for all EU nationals was enshrined in law. Two years later, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Sweden were also included in free movement measures.
The creation of the Schengen Agreement means that citizens can now travel across 26 European countries (four of which are non-EU) without facing border controls. It is a passport-free zone.
United States
The United States has long been known as a country of immigrants. In 1892, the country’s first immigration station opened — Ellis Island.
The Immigration Act of 1924 brought big changes. Fears of communism were spreading, and many Americans wanted to separate themselves from other nations after the horrors of the First World War. Racism and discrimination increased and the new law limited migration based on nationality. In the same year, the US border patrol was established to stop illegal immigrants crossing into the country.
In 1965, the nationality-based quota system finally came to an end with the Immigration and Nationality Act.
During the Trump administration, the environment for refugees became more hostile. People were forced to wait in Mexico, and anyone traveling through other countries before arriving in the US was denied the right to claim asylum. Some refugees are sent to Guatemala in a “safe third country” agreement.
Japan
Japan has a reputation for strict immigration controls. For much of history, the country has been fairly isolated, with little mix of other ethnicities.
Between 1905 and 1945, a large number of people from Japanese territories migrated to the mainland - they were Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese. After World War II, controls tightened.
The 1952 Immigration Control and Refugee Act made it difficult for foreigners who wanted to live and work long-term in Japan.
In 2021, the government shelved a bill which would have allowed asylum seekers to be pushed back to their home countries when their applications were under appeal.
Uganda now has the largest number of refugees across the whole of Africa. It has an open-door policy, and people from neighboring East African countries arrive to seek safety. Refugees are given plots of land on arrival, access to healthcare and education, and the right to work - it’s known as a self-reliance model. This isn’t the whole story, and there are many challenges, but Uganda’s refugee policies are largely considered progressive. Nearly 1.5 million refugees now live in Uganda.
Immigration visas
Variations of passports and visas have existed throughout history, but up until World War I people could move fairly freely — although the opportunities might not have been as numerous. Following the war years and subsequent security fears, passports as we know them now came into being.
In 1920, the League of Nations set a global standard for the documents. While Western countries were keen for these identity documents, many other countries were against the idea and saw them as restrictive. With the introduction of passports, came entry visas, with the same goal of national security. Just a year after the League of Nations meeting, the US introduced an act that put a quota on the number of immigrants allowed into the country.
How different nations approach immigration visas is constantly in flux. EU citizens don’t require visas to move to other EU states, while nations like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada are pickier in who they welcome into their countries. There’s a large expat population in Singapore, and depending on which country you come from, getting a visa could be fairly straightforward.
World events impact visa restrictions. The coronavirus pandemic means some countries require anyone entering to be vaccinated. Technological advancements and a rise in working from home have created changes too. Estonia, Cape Verde, and Barbados are just some of the countries offering digital nomad passports, allowing people to enjoy residency in a new place, while their career continues from a laptop.
What immigration is like today
United Kingdom
Immigration laws are in a state of flux in the United Kingdom. Since Brexit, this island nation no longer allows people from the EU to live, study, or work in the country visa-free, as was the case before. In the rest of the EU, citizens can move freely.
Following Brexit, the UK has a points-based immigration system.
The government wants to change the asylum laws and push back people arriving via irregular routes. Many are forced to cross the English Channel on dangerous boats or stowed in lorries, for a lack of a safe alternative.
The UK granted British citizenship to 146,483 people in 2021 and gave residence documents to 10,135 people from EEA (European Economic Area) countries. The nation gave protection to 13,210 asylum seekers in the same year.
United States
People who want to call the United States home must first get an immigrant visa. When they land on US soil, they become a Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR), allowing them to apply for jobs and live in the country. After five years, they can apply for US citizenship.
There are different rules for immediate family members of US citizens, who have to meet certain eligibility criteria. Skilled workers can also get special visas on a temporary or permanent basis.
Refugees can apply to become LPRs one year after arriving or receiving asylum. They go through a complicated system.
Japan is facing a labor shortage and a shrinking population. For a country long-averse to immigration, things might be about to change. The country plans to start welcoming skilled workers to stay in the country indefinitely. Until now, their visas have only been valid for five years and didn’t extend to family members. Many of the workers come from Vietnam and China.
The country operates on a points-based system for foreign professionals. Most people need a Certificate of Eligibility, applied for by their sponsor in Japan.
People between 18 and 30 can apply for a working holiday visa, which lasts for a year.
Japan has a low rate of accepting asylum seekers, compared to other wealthy countries.
After working in the country for five years, people can apply for permanent residency. Those partnered with or related to a South African citizen can also apply, as well as some other categories.
Different European countries have different refugee policies. Sweden had a welcoming refugee policy until 2016, and offered permanent residency visas to refugees. Since then, the number of applications being granted has declined. In 2021, the new government replaced the offer of permanent visas with temporary ones. However, the country continues to accept 5,000 quota refugees a year, who are people that UNHCR (the UN’s Refugee Agency) select to be housed in safe countries.
The country does not recognize dual citizenship, so taking two passports could mean you get one confiscated. Anyone who’s visited Israel might face problems entering Saudi Arabia.
877 people applied for asylum in 2020 and while very few applications have been processed yet, they’ve all been accepted. It’s worth noting that 247 people from Saudi Arabia applied for asylum in other nations.
Why people migrate
Whether choosing to set up home in a new country or forced to make journeys across borders, there are many reasons people migrate. Economic need or opportunity is a huge driver, while war and violence displace millions every year. People move to join family, study abroad, or retire. And throughout history and today, Indigenous communities have been forced from their native lands.
Migrating for economic reasons
Money is a huge driver of migration. Many people are forced to move, because of a complete lack of opportunity to earn a living in their region. Economic migration is often viewed as a choice, but poverty, dangerous working conditions, or food insecurity can mean some people have little choice but to leave their homes. For these people, migration is a case of survival.
Others choose to migrate because they can earn higher wages in other countries, find more opportunities, or follow particular career paths. Professionals from all over the world take opportunities to make homes in new countries.
Some migrant workers face economic insecurity in their own nations. For these people, the jobs on offer when they migrate are often the ones that nationals don’t want to take on. These industries can be unregulated and migrant workers are at risk of exploitation.
Demographic changes also impact migration. Aging populations come hand-in-hand with labor shortages, leaving a need for young workers. As of 2018, Japan is facing the greatest skills shortage in the world, followed by Turkey, Greece and India.
There are 26.6 million refugees worldwide, with a further 48 million people displaced within their own countries, according to UNHCR. More than two thirds of these people have traveled from Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. In these countries and others, people face war, violence, and persecution. Syrians have witnessed executions in the street and had their towns and villages bombed. Politically-driven violence and food insecurity in Venezuela forces people to leave. The recent fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has put people in serious danger.
In Ethiopia, the Oromo people face violence and persecution, as do other specific groups of people across the world. LGBTQIA+ people are often forced to leave countries that outlaw homosexuality, or face prison, violence, or even death. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, unrest and fighting between different groups means people are forced to flee. In some nations, citizens face mandatory military service. In Eritrea, that service sometimes becomes indefinite.
In North Korea, human rights barely exist. There is no access to media from outside the country, famine is rife, and citizens are conditioned to devote themselves to the ‘Great Leader.’ Defectors have little choice but to put themselves in the hands of smugglers. If they are caught escaping, they face forced labor camps. China does not recognize North Koreans as refugees, and so those who are caught are returned.
Many people who become refugees for safety reasons are forced to choose between leaving family behind in dangerous situations, or putting their loved ones at more risk on perilous journeys. It is an impossible decision. For those making the journey alone, they may have to wait years for an asylum decision before accessing family reunification channels, where some can be reunited with their families.
Migrating for family reasons
Many people cross oceans to be closer to their families. Some refugees aim for specific countries because they already have family connections, which they hope will make integration easier. Others are the partners or children of migrant workers. Then there are people who have been apart from their families, and choose to reconnect with them: they might be caring for elderly parents, seeking comfort after changes of circumstance, or moving in with different family members. Some have new family ties — through marriage, long-term relationships, or adoption.
Depending on which country they’re applying from, some people with refugee status can go through family reunification channels to bring their loved ones into their new home country.
In 2018, around 1.9 million people moved to OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation) countries for family reasons. Around 40 percent of family migrants live in the US.
Climate migration
The climate crisis is a growing concern. So too is climate migration. As our planet heats up, geography and weather patterns are disrupted. Island nations like Tuvalu are witnessing rising sea levels before their very eyes and people are reluctantly making migration plans. Storms, droughts, and floods are battering communities across the world, forcing people to relocate. To adapt to climate change, people are moving. Most people are displaced within their own countries, others are crossing borders.
Papua New Guinea is one nation under threat from climate change. Between 2008 and 2013, 151,000 people were displaced in the country, and two thirds of those were due to environmental hazards.
In Peru, people’s livelihoods are impacted by climate change. Glacial melting and temperature extremes mean fishers and farmers are facing new challenges — as are the people relying on these food sources. People are forced from rural areas into cities. Many face floods, landslides, cold, and drought.
Australia was hit by bush fires in both 2019 and 2020, forcing thousands of people from their homes and causing huge destruction to the environment.
Immigration isn’t easy. Once geographical and emotional barriers have been navigated, there are those conditions imposed by governments. And when people are accepted into countries, they might face new challenges — language and cultural barriers, racism, and finding work. The coronavirus pandemic has put another barrier in the way, causing backlogs and closing borders.
Government paperwork
For people who’ve been forcibly displaced, one of the first barriers to immigration can be a lack of passport. People who’ve fled their homes with nothing have difficulty proving their identity or crossing borders safely. When it comes to accessing jobs and education, it can be hard to prove education levels without physical certificates. Once people have applied for asylum, complicated processes, technicalities, or a lack of support can leave people with rejected claims or facing deportation.
Migrants who have relocated willingly are still at the hands of bureaucracy. Lengthy forms or restrictive visas can dissuade people from migrating, or they might be rejected for visas. For people on temporary visas in certain countries, accessing permanent residency can be a stressful process that takes years. I could mean staying in unpleasant jobs just to hold on to a sponsor, or paying out vast sums of money.
There are other pieces in the paperwork puzzle. Criminal record checks, medical reports, and vaccination certificates, to begin with. Couples and families might need to prove that they’re in genuine relationships.
Language
People applying for citizenship in some countries have to prove their knowledge of language and culture.
Asylum seekers can be acutely affected by language barriers. A lack of suitable translators leads to some claims being misinterpreted. People can be, and are, returned to unsafe countries due to being misunderstood or not being given enough opportunity to represent themselves. Accessing services and assimilating into wider society can also prove tough when people are learning a new language from scratch, all whilst dealing with the impact of trauma.
Financial requirements
Immigration can come with a huge price tag. Aside from the usual costs of moving home (along with flights and international haulage), there might be expensive visa fees.
Beyond this, some countries impose further financial requirements, like the salary that migrant workers need to earn. Those applying for family visas in countries like the UK and Canada might have to prove that they can financially support the people they want to bring over. In Australia, those applying for student visas need to prove that they can financially support themselves. In South Africa, anyone who wants a retired person’s visa needs to prove that they earn at least R37,000 (nearly $2,500 US) per month.
Restrictions on migrants
Migrants don’t always have the same rights as nationals. Asylum seekers in many countries are prohibited from working or studying while their applications are being assessed, which can make supporting themselves difficult, as well as impacting their wellbeing. Even though many have been through traumatic experiences, some asylum seekers are held in detention centers. They can be unsanitary and crowded.
In some countries, immigrants are required to pass a language test, undergo medical tests for things like Tuberculosis, or pay extra to access healthcare systems.
People arriving on some visas might be advised not to leave the country again — for example fiancé(e)s arriving on a family visa before the wedding takes place — or risk having to reapply.
The future of immigration
The climate crisis, a health pandemic, and political tensions are all playing into how migration is changing. People stayed put as borders closed to stop the spread of a virus, while others were forced to flee their homes regardless. Technological advances offer greater opportunities for global citizens, while far right politics threaten freedom of movement. How countries respond to refugees is in constant flux, and there are at the same time both positive and worrying trends.
According to Move by founder of FutureMap, Parag Khanna, throughout history we humans have been driven to migrate by five forces: climate change, demographics, politics, economics, and technology. Climate change, now more so than in recent centuries, is going to have a huge impact on migration. It is already happening.
As the US moves further away from the Trump administration, which was famously hostile towards migrants, the UK closes its borders to many. The effects of Brexit are coming into being. Tension in Russia casts a shadow over Europe and beyond. And people left at risk in Afghanistan are still awaiting the refuge that so many countries have promised.
Whether the world chooses to build more bridges, or more walls, is yet to be seen.
[post_title] => A beginner’s guide to immigration
[post_excerpt] => When is someone an immigrant? When are they a refugee? Meanwhile, the word migrant is often used as an umbrella term for everybody moving somewhere new, regardless of the reason — it isn’t specific to refugees.
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => a-beginners-guide-to-immigration
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
http://refugeehome.uk/eritrean-students-forced-into-indefinite-military/
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3951
[menu_order] => 132
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
Fired from their jobs, their bank accounts frozen, facing death threats, the country's 270 female judges are in exile or in hiding.
Only six months ago Tayeba Parsa, 34, a female judge in Afghanistan, was determined to keep advancing women’s rights despite threats that Kabul would soon fall to the Taliban.
“There were times when I was really scared, but I always went to work,” Parsa tells me by phone from Warsaw. She has been living there with her elderly father and husband since last August, when the Taliban took over Kabul, waiting for news of a student visa from a country willing to take her in. “It was my profession, I loved my job, I studied for years to become a judge. I didn’t want to give it up.”
In the six months since the Taliban took over, the rights of women in Afghanistan have been all but eliminated. Girls older than 12 have few opportunities to obtain an education, while women fighting to hold on to any progress made over the last two decades face threats, prison, and often death. In this reality, women who not only have a higher education than most, but also practiced law in a position of authority over men, run the risk of execution without trial. In January 2021, unknown assailants on a motorcycle gunned down two Afghan women judges who were on their way to work.
When Parsa fled Afghanistan she gave up not only her career, but her entire life as she knew it.
“I was at home for three days when we heard news that the Taliban were at all checkpoints,” she says. “I collected all my documents and started destroying case notes to hide my identity.”
A former judge in the commercial division of the appeals court of Kabul province, Parsa is a member of the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) and volunteered to act as communications officer for the local branch. This association automatically placed her at higher risk.
“The Taliban consider every Afghan who collaborates with foreigners an infidel, a traitor,” she says. “When I was a judge, I was receiving constant anonymous death threats.” To avoid being targeted by the Taliban, Parsa and her fellow judges hid their identities when going to work and avoided riding in officially marked cars. She says she knew the dangers and accepted them.
“You never knew if you were going to come home,” she said.
In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, all women and girls are at risk. But no one is more in danger than women lawyers, judges, journalists, and police officers. Women in key positions of power were especially targeted by this regressive militant group, which seeks to enforce an extremist interpretation of Islam. As soon as the Taliban took over, the women lost their jobs and saw their bank accounts frozen. They knew their lives were in imminent danger.
Afghan women judges were instrumental in challenging their deeply patriarchal society by demonstrating that violence against women and girls is not only wrong, but a punishable criminal offence. Putting aside fears for their own safety, they convicted and sentenced the men who stood trial in their courtrooms for rape, kidnapping, murder, forced marriage, or preventing women from going to school.
The new Taliban government has released criminals whom Parsa, and approximately 270 other female judges, had sentenced to prison after they were convicted of crimes. With these men now free to take revenge, the women were in grave danger.
Nabila, who requested that her last name be withheld, was a family court judge who granted divorce petitions to many women.
“Afghan law stipulates that a wife can request a divorce if her husband has been jailed for more than five years,” she tells me. “Some of these men were dangerous criminals who had committed serious crimes like murder and kidnapping. I granted these divorces according to the rule of law, but when the Taliban arrived, they released many of these criminals who came looking for me. I was no longer safe.”
Nabila is one of 26 female Afghan judges and lawyers who, along with their families, arrived in Athens from Afghanistan via Georgia this past September. While she, her husband, and their three children were eligible for evacuation, their immediate families remain behind. They fear reprisals against them and worry about their day-to-day living conditions, with a worsening humanitarian crisis on the ground.
“We’re always calling them, always checking up on them,” she said, adding that her relatives have had to change homes frequently for their safety.
International sisterhood
The International Association of Women Judges, which represents more than 6,500 judges in over 100 countries, has been instrumental in helping their Afghan colleagues get out of the country and in amplifying their message.
Mona Lynch, a Supreme Court judge in Nova Scotia and regional director of the International Association of Women, emphasized the urgency of getting those women out of Afghanistan.
“We have been trying to assist them in any way we can over the past few months,” she says. “These brave women have contributed for 20 years to maintaining the rule of law and stable governance in Afghanistan.”
“None of them wanted to leave their country, they simply had no choice,” said Judge Lynch. “And the ones still left behind are getting more and more desperate as the circumstances deteriorate. They need help and we need to be their voice.”
Education is everything
While waiting in Poland, Parsa has been using her free time to improve her English. After applying for scholarships at German, French, and American universities she obtained a visa for the UK, which she accepted—but at a cost.
“I’m happy because it’s an English-speaking country, and I can’t imagine the additional hurdle of learning another language right now, but the visas are only for me and my husband. I would have to leave my father behind. I don’t know what to do.”
She hopes to return to Afghanistan one day and help rebuild the country, but right now it’s only a vague dream, fueled by cautious optimism.
“The situation as it is right now won’t stand,” she says. “It’s intolerable, there’s no rule of law. Trials are being conducted by illiterate people. I want to be the voice of all Afghan women judges, those who are still there, still in hiding, still in danger, and those who have been evacuated but haven’t been offered visas,” she said, making a plea for the international community to help extricate the women still in hiding in Afghanistan, and to help settle permanently the women who got out but are still waiting for visas.
Nabila’s husband Asadullah, who is a construction engineer, has been translating parts of the conversation in his fluent English. In answer to the interviewer’s question, he described Afghanistan’s immediate future as “dark,” adding that this was the case “especially for women."
“I believe in women’s rights, they’re half of society,” he says. “I have three daughters and I saw a dark future for them there. My girls would not have been able to attend school. The Taliban may have promised that they can go, but I don’t believe them.”
Life in Limbo in Athens
Some 200 female Afghan judges, Nabila among them, are hoping Canada will fast-track their arrival, since they qualify under a resettlement program for Afghan refugees in danger for having held leadership or human-rights positions.
Greece has welcomed more women fleeing Afghanistan than any other country so far. Amed Khan, an American philanthropist who was instrumental in helping many Afghan judges find a temporary home in Greece, said in an article for The Greek Reporter that it reflected an openness he saw from smaller governments that was missing from the world’s biggest economic powers.
“The only political leadership I’ve seen is from smaller countries like Greece, Albania, Qatar, North Macedonia; it’s not the G7,” said Khan. “A lot of countries made a lot of money in Afghanistan and now they want to wash their hands and look for the next opportunity.”
Despite her gratitude, Nabila wants to put down permanent roots and is waiting eagerly for news of permanent resettlement. She is worried about the children being unable to attend school in Greece, because they are in the country on temporary visas.
A painfully slow process
Few countries have provided easy pathways for these women. They are scattered with their families in more than 17 countries around the world, and only a small number have been resettled permanently in their final destinations.
The American Bar Association has created the Afghanistan Response Project and the International Association of Women Judges has launched a fundraising campaign, but these efforts rely more on individual goodwill than government assistance.
The Canadian government has expanded its special immigration program to include women leaders and human rights defenders, as well as persecuted minorities, but advocates say the process is too slow. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently suggested that it could take up to two years for the government to meet its promise of resettling 40,000 Afghan refugees. Fewer than 7,000 have arrived in Canada so far.
And so these women wait, stuck in limbo. They can’t dream or plant roots in a temporary home. They worry about their future.
“These are professional, talented, brave women,” Parsa tells me. “They fought for the rule of law in Afghanistan. They stood strong against threats and political pressure. They’re educated and driven, they deserve to be offered scholarships and a new life, they are the future of Afghanistan.”
[post_title] => Afghanistan's female judges lost everything when the Taliban took over
[post_excerpt] => In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, all women and girls are at risk. But no one is more in danger than women lawyers, judges, journalists, and police officers. Women in key positions of power were especially targeted.
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => afghanistans-female-judges-lost-everything-when-the-taliban-took-over
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3908
[menu_order] => 135
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
After two years of living under stringent pandemic protocols, Canadians are fed up. They might not agree with the freedom convoy's politics, but they understand their feeling of resentment.
“You’re taking the swastika out of context!”
I sat there wondering if someone had dosed my coffee with LSD.
“Excuse me?”
I could feel her seething on the other end of the telephone as she prepared to walk me through the ins and outs of Nazi iconography etiquette. Annette is a patient woman. She runs a private daycare in the suburbs north of Montreal — the kind of place that teaches toddlers to use sign language so they can tell their parents when they’re thirsty or need a fresh diaper.
But the swastika thing is testing her limits.
Two weeks ago, when a group calling itself the “Freedom Convoy” flooded downtown Ottawa with tractor trailers and an estimated 8,000 protesters, people were seen flying a Canadian flag with swastikas etched into it. There were a few, actually.
When I mentioned this to Annette, asking her why a protest about ending vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions seemed like such an inviting place for extremists, she took a deep breath. Annette, who supports the convoy, told me the symbol of the Third Reich on Parliament Hill wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
“It’s not a Nazi swastika, well it is but it’s not a pro-Nazi swastika. Okay, that sounds bad. It’s a comment on how Canada has become a fascist state with all these COVID restrictions.”
“So it’s an ironic swastika?” I replied.
“Yes,” she said, sounding relieved.
“But what about the actual Nazi flag?”
I swear I heard Annette’s palm hit her forehead. We agreed to change subjects.
The problem with Canada’s Freedom Convoy isn’t people like Annette. Well, it is and it isn’t.
Annette is triple vaccinated. She respects all of the COVID protocols and even voted for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government three times. But after two years of living with the ebbs and flows of a virus and restrictions that can feel improvised at the best of times, Annette is fed up. Which is understandable.
In Quebec—which has the most stringent COVID protocols of any province—an estimated two million people have contracted the Omicron variant since it arrived last fall. That’s roughly a quarter of my home province’s population. Of course, this is just an estimate since the latest wave wiped out Quebec’s testing capacity.
Annette’s frustration is perfectly normal. Where things get more complicated is that while the Freedom Convoy is supported by a small but sizeable minority of Canadians from all walks of life, it’s being led by a coalition with ties to American extremists like the Three Percenters militia, QAnon and even one former Trump staffer who’s helping with strategy on the frontlines.
But there are distinctly Canadian elements to the convoy as well. Alberta’s ultra-conservative “WEXIT” secessionists and Quebec’s Europe-inspired far right are both flying their colours on Parliament Hill. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention sightings of a few Proud Boys at the rally two weeks ago. Founded by Canadian Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys were recently designated a terrorist group by Trudeau’s government because of their penchant for insurrection and political violence.
The convoy’s logistics and messaging is handled by a group called Canada Unity, which is a mishmash of classic Canadian grievances — the Liberal government has never had a strong presence in Conservative strongholds like the prairies and rural Ontario, which only fuels a sense of mutual resentment — the French populist gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement and American-style alt-right tactics.
Far-right activist Pat King is a major figure in the WEXIT campaign, which advocates for Alberta to secede from Canada; many in the oil-producing province resent their tax dollars going to the federal government’s coffers. Western alienation has been a central theme of Canadian politics since Trudeau’s father Pierre Elliot Trudeau was prime minister in the 1970s.
What’s different from past western protest movements is that Albertans are finding common ground with Quebec conservatives. Traditionally, these two groups aren’t even on speaking terms—partly because they speak different languages, but also because each sees the other as taking up too much space in the national conversation. But they appear to be finding common ground over their shared resentment of Trudeau and his multiculturalist view of Canada.
King also organized attacks on anti-racist demonstrators last year in northern Alberta, referring to his roughneck crew as “Patriots” — which certainly rings a bell to American ears. He says Muslim immigration will lead to the “depopulation of the caucasian race” which is a common theme for both the American and European far right. James Bauder, a leader of the far-right movement Canada Unity (in which King is also active), authored a “Memorandum of Understanding” that would force Canada’s unelected head of state, Governor General Mary Simon, and its unelected senate to negotiate with protesters and ultimately force Canada’s elected government to “resign their lawful positions” if they don’t meet the convoy’s demands.
A constitutional lawyer friend who looked through the document called it “somewhere between political witchcraft and January 6 fan fiction.”
Here, too, Canadians feel the influence of their southern neighbours, where far right activists and conspiracy theorists justified their attempt to overturn the presidential election on January 6, 2021 with an archaic and inconsistent reading of the U.S. Constitution.
And then there’s the question of who’s funding this thing. Political parties in Canada don’t raise money at nearly the rate of their American counterparts. Elections are almost entirely funded by the state and overseen by a robust arms-length entity, Elections Canada. For context, the Conservative Party of Canada raised $13 million in the second half of 2020 — more than any other party in the country during that period.
In the U.S. that kind of cash barely finances a down ballot congressional race.
So how is it that Canadians, who are notoriously thrifty when it comes to politics, put together a $10 million war chest for the Freedom Convoy in under two weeks? Most of that money, raised on the American GoFundMe platform, was frozen by the company because there was no way of tracking how it would be spent.
The federal government has since called on GoFundMe executives to testify before Parliament as to the source of this cash.
Determined not be thwarted by financial oversight, the Freedom convoy turned to GiveSendGo — the Christian platform that collected millions in donations for Kyle Rittenhouse — to keep their movement alive. It didn’t take long for millions more in donations to pour into the Convoy’s cause. This isn’t typical of Canadian politics.
QAnon slogans like “Free the Children” and “WWG1WWA” are scattered throughout the Ottawa site, alongside signs calling for Trudeau to be jailed and tried for treason, which bring some real “lock her up” vibes.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the Freedom Convoy is the ease with which journalists are harassed, attacked and threatened by supporters. In Alberta—where satellite protests are being staged—a reporter from CTV News tweeted a picture of himself removing the station’s logo from its TV truck to avoid being targeted by mob violence.
“It’s just not safe right now,” CTV reporter Justin Thompson wrote.
In Ontario, supporters of the convoy smashed the windows of a van belonging to Radio Canada, the French-language national broadcaster. The Quebec-based TVA Nouvelles started sending security guards alongside its reporters when covering the convoy’s Ottawa encampment. Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Journalists reports that members covering the protest have been spat on and shoved, and have received countless death threats since the outset of the movement.
Last week, during a “press conference” organized by the convoy’s leaders, CTV News was barred from the event because organizers wanted to “(teach) the fake news industry what news is.” Again, this must sound familiar to Americans.
For the residents of Canada’s notoriously boring capital city, life has been upended. A friend of mine, who works as an interpreter on Parliament Hill, told me she doesn’t feel safe at night walking past the encampment. But she also says she’s been so angry that she flips them off on her way to work every morning and struggles to suppress the urge to instigate a fight with them.
“I’m just looking for an excuse to throw a punch,” she said.
Here’s something an American audience might not realize. Canadians are perfectly capable of committing political violence independently of any outside influence. Though we may not have the American appetite for revolution, this country’s wealth is derived from stolen Indigenous land and ongoing colonial violence. But I digress.
Which brings me back to Annette.
We grew up in the same small town, where a huge percentage of our parents worked in the machine shops building airplanes for Bombardier, an aeronautics giant based out of Quebec. That changed after 9/11, when Canada’s aeronautics industry collapsed. Thousands of workers were laid off and while unemployment approached historic lows ahead of the pandemic, the years of a steady, well-paid job and access to home ownership feel like something that’s dying with our parents’ generation.
So a lot of people — like Annette’s machinist husband — are living through an endless cycle of being laid off, hired again and then tossed back to the wilderness when the economy takes a dip. Meanwhile, companies like Bombardier get giant government bailouts even though they fail to meet benchmarks, continue laying off workers and rewarding their inept executives with millions in bonuses.
Add two years of COVID-19 to that and it seems only to have accelerated the frustration in Annette’s household.
“It’s time for this to end, I don’t recognize life in this country anymore,” she said. “We’re told to put our lives on hold and then start again and then put them back on hold. We have a set of rules that are constantly changing. Some of us have been vaccinated three times. What’s the end game here? Why are we being treated like idiots?
“I’m not a violent person, I am against the violence in the Freedom Convoy but I’m also angrier than I’ve ever been.”
U.S. influence among supporters of the Freedom Convoy is obvious but much of the anger fueling these protests has elements of western-Canadian alienation, resentment for a Liberal government that’s been in power 21 of the last 30 years and anxiety over a rapidly changing Canadian economy. Some of the far right elements of the movement have an American feel to them but there’s an anti-immigrant, Islamophobic segment of the protest that mirrors European conservative movements like Brexit, Front National or Éric Zémmour’s ultra nationalist Reconquête party.
The most worrisome aspect of the protest is how rapidly it was embraced by American conservatives with deep pockets, access to weapons and a wealth of knowledge about attacking democratic institutions.
Perhaps it’s just the LSD in my coffee making me paranoid but that seems like a dangerous combination. After all, we share the world’s longest international border.
[post_title] => The Freedom Convoy's politics are fringe, but the average Canadian's frustration is real
[post_excerpt] => Here’s something an American audience might not realize. Canadians are perfectly capable of committing political violence independently of any outside influence.
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => open
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => the-freedom-convoys-politics-are-fringe-but-the-average-canadians-frustration-is-real
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:29
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3855
[menu_order] => 138
[post_type] => post
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
