Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

H. Bradford

12/6/22

People on the internet are fighting over the Rosetta Stone.

Everyone on the thread said it belongs in Britain.

Finders keepers

Egyptians would lose it

Muslims can’t be trusted

The French found it first

Those Egyptians aren’t REAL Egyptians.

We owe so much to Western academics.

****

When I wish upon a shooting star,

Sometimes I wish it was a giant rock,

A Rosetta stone that spells cataclysm

To Islamophobes, Imperialists, and ignorance

But asteroids aren’t as precise as drones and missiles.

****

If there were such a stone,

It would certainly be written in English

And in blood

So the language is easy to understand for colonists and apologists.

****

It’s dark to think about.

Maybe this isn’t everyone,

Quiet, kind people don’t post online.

And when has justice ever come from the heavens?

If history is long enough,

Will wrongs be made right?

Because the oppressed are many

*****

And eventually they fight

Feral Brain

Feral Brain

a poem by H. Bradford

Everything feels foreign.

A house full of strange objects.

A body shaped by strange rules.

People are rituals.

That one’s a party,

but where’s the surprise?

Meaning is the meat of domestication,

It softens the teeth

and shortens the jaw.

The world is roads

and prisons

and wars.

But there must be some wilderness left in the frontier of

our genes.

A germ or a seed.

Some small part that wasn’t commodified,

colonized,

or atomized.

There is still some flight and fight

in the feral brain.

For now,

we only howl

at the absurdity of it all.

The Devastating Effects of Wildfires on Indigenous Communities

7/23/21

H. Bradford

The summer of 2021 has been marked by catastrophic drought, heat, and fires across the United States and Canada. The Bootleg Fire, one of the largest fires in Oregon history, has incinerated an area larger than the city of Los Angeles and forced the evacuation of over 2,000 people. It is one of nearly eighty major fires in thirteen U.S. states. The Bootleg Fire is so large that it generates its own weather and has impacted air quality on the east coast of the United States, 2,500 miles away. The Bootleg fire is the third largest in Oregon history and just one of several large fires in Washington, California and Oregon. The largest Oregon fires were the 2002 Biscuit Fire and the Long Draw Fire in 2012. However, by the time the fire is extinguished, it will likely exceed them in size. These fires are an obvious and apocalyptic result of climate change, as the Western United States has grown hotter and drier over recent decades. As unfettered fossil fuel driven capitalism continues to warm the planet, massive fires are becoming an unsettling norm. These fires impact broad swaths of society, but indigenous people are often on the front line of their most devastating effects.

Although the Bootleg Fire has mostly destroyed rural, forested areas and has spared cities, the blaze is decimating tribal lands. Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribal Council reported that the fire threatens the tribal lands of the Klamath Tribes. The Klamath Tribes consist of three Native American tribes, including the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahoosin and the fire is just 25 miles from their tribal headquarters. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that last September, wildfires destroyed at least one home, a cemetery, and land used by the Klamath Tribe for hunting, gathering, and fishing. These fires are the latest in their struggle for survival, as in the face of drought conditions, they have fought to preserve minimum water levels in Upper Klamath Lake. The Guardian reported that farmers also draw water from the lake, which threatens two species of endangered sucker fish that are central to Klamath culture and history. The Klamath Tribes have also sought to demolish dams that imperil salmon runs on the Klamath River.  The fires are burning their ancestral homeland. Gentry said that the area has been their home for 14,000 years and is also home to 500 year old growth Ponderosa Pine. The Klamath Tribes historically used controlled fire to periodically destroy the fuel for larger fires. James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, reported to NPR that along with climate change fueled heat and drought, poor forest management has contributed to the fires. Fires have not been allowed to burn for 125 years, resulting in a buildup of excess fuel.  

In Washington, residents of Nespelem, part of the Colville Reservation, were evacuated due to fires.  Residents were able to evacuate before the fire burned seven homes. In response to the Chuweah Creek Fire, The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, a community of 9000 descendants of a dozen tribes, declared a state of emergency and closed the reservation to the public and to industrial activity. The Spokesman-Review reported that it was the third major wildfire on the Colville Reservation in six years. In 2015, 20% of the reservation was destroyed by fire. These fires have destroyed elk, deer, traditional plants, and timber that the tribe relies on for sustenance. The tribe derives 20% of their income from timber, which goes toward per capita payments. Elsewhere, last year’s Slater Fire in California destroyed over 200 homes belonging to the Karuk tribe and disrupted ceremonies and hunting. Many of those who lost their homes did not have insurance, owing to the rising cost of insuring homes in fire prone areas. Aside from houses, the Karuk people also lost important cultural artifacts such as animal hides and century old baskets. The tribe has advocated for more prescribed fires to control future wildfires. 

The destruction of forests, bear, elk, deer, cemeteries, homes, and cultural artifacts are just a few of the ways that the wildfires have inflicted loss upon Native Americans of the Western United States. The losses of Native Americans are not prioritized. For instance, FEMA refused to call the wildfire that destroyed the Karuk community at Happy Camp a disaster. This denied the tribe access to additional resources that would have enabled residents to return to their homes. At the same time, when the historical artifacts of the dominant colonizer culture is imperiled, the government goes to great lengths to protect them. When The Mitchell Monument was recently endangered by fire, the monument was saved by the efforts of firefighters to use aerial dropped flame retardant, protective wrap, and fuel reduction. The Mitchell Monument commemorates the death of six Americans killed by a Japanese balloon bomb during WWII. Native American losses barely make the news. 

The Western United States is not the only area where fire, heat, and drought are destroying Native American communities. In Manitoba, smoke from wildfires has caused the evacuation of several First Nations communities. According to the CBC, as of July 20th, over 1,600 people were being evacuated, including the entire populations of Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi First Nations communities. Bloodvein and Berens River First Nations near Lake Winnipeg are also being evacuated to Winnipeg. There were 130 fires burning in Manitoba, of which, over two dozen were considered out of control by officials. Ellen Young, a Bloodvein First Nations Band Counselor, reported to the CBC that the fires were only six kilometers from the community. In a CBC radio interview, Blair Owens, a member of the Little Grand Rapids First Nations argued that not enough resources are being mobilized to fight the fires. In part, this is due to the fact that Manitoba’s forest fire fighting service, including its water bomber fleet, was privatized in 2018.  

CBC also reported on July, 21st that there were 167 active wildfires in northwestern Ontario. Of these, 57 were located in the Red Lake District. The Poplar Hill First Nation community, located four miles from the fires, was evacuated. Deer Lake First Nation, located 15 miles from the fire, was also evacuated. On Tuesday July, 20th the provincial government announced the partial evacuation of Cat Lake and North Spirit Lake First Nation communities. 500 people from Deer Lake were flown to Cornwall Ontario. Residents could only bring a single suitcase weighing under 28 lbs and some remained behind to care for pets. The Red Cross has housed evacuees in hotels in Winnipeg, Selkirk, and Thunder Bay, but families must sometimes share rooms with others. Evacuations are a grim reality of wildfires, but impose trauma upon indigenous people who already bear generational trauma from being forcibly removed from their lands and later torn from their families and put into deadly boarding schools.  

As Canada burns, construction continues on Line 3. Enbridge, a Canadian company, is racing to complete the 330 mile long Line 3 “replacement” pipeline. Despite fierce opposition from water protectors in Minnesota, the pipeline is nearly 70% completed. On Tuesday, July 20th, activists from a variety of indigenous and environmental organizations gathered at the headwaters of the Mississippi River to speak out against the project, for treaty rights, and to draw attention to water issues. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had designated 72% of the state in extreme or severe drought.  The Mississippi River was low and serves as a source of drinking water to many communities. The driest parts of the state are where the Enbridge Pipeline is currently being constructed, drawing from scarce water resources in the process. Wild rice, a culturally and economically important food to the Anishinaabe people, has been threatened by both the drought and potential leaks from the Line 3 project. On June 4th, the Minnesota DNR issued a permit to Embridge allowing the company to pump up 5 million gallons of water for the remaining 145 miles of pipeline construction. This was nearly 10 times the amount of water that they originally requested. Activists oppose this out of concern that during the drought, dewatering construction sites can put stress on wetlands, lakes, and streams. The DNR considers the state prime for wildfires on account of the drought. There have already been 250 wildfires in the state this summer, when 50 is more typical for June or July.

The recent and increasingly frequent wildfires indicate that even a shred of self-determination of indigenous people is impossible within capitalism. Treaty rights mean nothing if the land that sustains indigenous communities is charred by climate change driven fires. Indigenous struggles against corporate interests for fishing rights, clean water, wild rice beds, land access amount to little of the land itself is too parched by drought. Fire does what capitalism has always done, separate people from land and the means of sustenance outside of wage labor. The fact that Line 3 continues to be built through Native American lands in the face of drought, fire, and pandemic illustrates the cruelty of the profit motive. Climate change threatens the entire planet, but those who are the poorest, most marginalized, and most dependent upon hunting, gathering, and farming will feel its impacts the hardest. This environmental racism is genocide. The lands that are burning are not empty forests, but indigenous lands with the remnants of indigenous communities that have survived 500 years of genocide. More resources must be mobilized to fight these fires and manage forests in ways that are informed by indigenous knowledge and under their control. The privatization of land, fire fighting resources, and water resources and rights must be stopped. For the survival of the planet, fossil fuels and capitalism must be abolished.   

The Struggle for Abortion Rights in Poland Continues

 

The Struggle for Abortion Rights in Poland Continues

Heather Bradford

11/8/20

A version of this article can be found here: https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/11/04/the-struggle-for-abortion-rights-in-poland-continues/

Abortion rights are once again under attack in Poland and women have turned out in full force to fight back. On October 22nd, the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s highest court, ruled that abortion in the case of severe fetal abnormalities was unconstitutional. Poland already has the most resitrctive abortion laws in the European Union. Prior to the court’s decision, abortion was only permissible in cases of rape and incest, threat to a mother’s life, or severe fetal abnormality. Fetal abnormality accounted for 97% of the 1,100 legal abortions performed in 2018. This effectively bans abortion in the country. The decision arose from an initiative by MPs of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) to review the law. The party has made several previous attempts to ban abortion. Reproductive rights advocates argue that the new law will force women to endure non viable pregnancies. On account of hundreds of thousands of people joining in protest, the government announced on November 3rd that it would delay publishing the ruling to offer more time for discussion. 

The public backlash against the ruling was immediate and massive. On Sunday October 25th, activists converged on churches to express their outrage over the restriction. CNN reported that protestors at Poznan Cathedral proclaimed that Catholics need abortions too. They also took to the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual in Warsaw with a slogan calling upon parishoners to pray for the right to abortion. Around the country, mass was disrupted and canceled, with sits-in staged at some cathedrals, statues of Pope John Paul II defaced, and some churches graffitied with slogans such as “Women’s Hell.”  Protesters also poured red paint on Warsaw’s Lazienkowski Bridge. Demonstrators wore Handmaid’s Tale robes and carried coat hangers. In actions rich in symbolism, women have also donned a red lighting bolt, which is an emblem of the Women’s Strike movement. The protesters targeted the church to demand separation between church and decry the church’s support of the government and its support of abortion restrictions. Women’s Strike, the main organizing force behind the protests, called for continued demonstrations on Monday, October 26th and a strike on Wednesday, October 28th.

Protests on Wednesday October 28th were held in over 400 cities and by police estimates numbered over 430,000. Across the country, women left work to join the strike and in Warsaw, activists blocked traffic. Warsaw alone had over 100,000 protesters turn out. Some carried umbrellas, a symbol from the 2016 mobilization to defend legal abortion. Military and riot police were deployed against the Wednesday marches.  The New York Times reported that the massive demonstrations that occurred later in the week on Friday October 30th were the largest since the Solidarity movement of the 1980s. One popular slogan was “I think, I feel, decide.” Another slogan was, “this is war.” Young women make up the largest demographic of these abortion activists. Demonstrators gathered in front of the government headquarters, headquarters for the ruling party, main square, then city center. The main demand of the Women’s Strike has been for the ruling to be declared invalid.  Protesters have also come out against the Law and Justice government, which won last year’s parliamentary elections, with slogans such as fuck off and fuck PiS (Law and Justice Party).  In response to the largest protests on Friday, President Andrzej Duda suggested that he was open to compromise and that terminal fetal abnormalities might be permissible and the government missed a November 2nd deadline to enact the decision by publishing it.

The protests have been marked violence from right wing extremists. During the Friday protests, military police guarded Warsaw’s Church of the Holy Cross and the far right protesters within the police cordon. Anti-choice activists played the sounds of crying babies on a megaphone as abortion rights marchers passed. Of the 37 people arrested in Warsaw Friday, 35 were nationalists. Black clad men attacked one of the protesters, but demonstrators fought back with what appeared to be pepper spray.  Some of the men arrested were carrying batons and knives. The New York Times reported that abortion rights activists have been attacked with flares. Two female reporters from Gazeta Wyborcza were attacked earlier last week. On Monday, October 26th, two women were struck by a car, which to observers looked intentional, as they participated in the protests. During the Sunday, October 25th protests, a woman was thrown down steps at Church of the Holy Cross in central Warsaw as abortion rights activists clashed with far right militants. Men from the group All Polish Youth attacked activists in Wroclaw, Bialystok, and Poznan on Wednesday the 28th. All Polish Youth have been behind attacks on LGBTQ marches. In 2019, the group attacked a pride march in Biyalastok with bottles, rocks, and firecrackers. Robert Bakiewicz, a right wing extremist leader, threatened that his supporters would form a national guard of a Catholic self-defense force to confront what he called “neo-Bolshevik revolutionaries.” The far right group Falanga has also made threats of violence. The Law and Justice Party has encouraged and empowered the far right since coming to power in 2015. Early last week, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the party, called upon supporters to defend the church at any cost. This rhetoric has been criticized as a call to arms to violent right wing extremists. He later stated that even fetuses with no chance of survival should be born so they can be named, baptized, and buried. Activists have been called leftwing fascists on state television. CIVICUS and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) have both stated that protests have been met with excessive force from both the state and far right groups.

The Law and Justice Party (PiS) is a right wing populist party which won the 2019 elections by running on a socially conservative platform which includes nationalism, opposition to migration, traditional family values, Catholicism, Islamaphobia, homophobia, anti-communism, and anti-Semitism. They have increased the teaching Catholic values in public schools, attacked LGBT rights, and ended state funding of in-vitro fertilization. Yet, they won over less reactionary voters and the support of labor by making promises such as doubling minimum wage by 2023, increasing payments to retirees, and had already enacted a popular subsidy to low income families called 500 plus. In July, Andrzej Duda, of the PiS, won a second presidential term by a narrow margin of 51% of the vote over 49% for Rafał Trzaskowski, Civic Platform (PO). Like the U.S. political elections, these are not vastly different parties, though the PO was framed as the more liberal party. When PO was last in power, it increased retirement age and lowered pensions and ran a campaign that was mostly against PiS rather than for any particular program. 

Law and Justice Party (PiS) has made several effots to ban abortion, including an attempt in October 2016 to pass a law which would have banned abortion and imposed prison terms on abortion patients and providers. Hundreds of thousands of black clad women joined a “Black Monday”general strike from work, school, and domestic labor to defeat the legislation. According to Madeline Roach reporting for Foreign Policy, in July 2017 the government passed a law making emergency contraception available only by prescription. In 2018, school textbooks were issued which called embryos unborn children and claimed that contraceptives were a health hazard. Even without the government’s anti-abortion campaign, due to the clause of conscience, doctors do not have to perform abortions on moral grounds. In the region of Podkarpackie, more than 3,000 doctors signed the clause, which renders abortion unavailable in that area. Only 10% of hospitals perform abortion according to FEDERA. In 2014, Dr. Bogdan Chazan refused to perform an abortion on a deformed fetus on moral grounds nor tell the mother that the abortion would be illegal after 12 weeks.  Because of this, she was forced to give birth to a baby without a skull which died nine days later. Abortion is certainly a contentious issue in Poland, yet according to Rueters, a 2018 opinion poll showed that only 15% of the population supported tightening the already restrictive abortion laws.

Despite public opinion against this, in April 2020, Law and Justice Party lawmakers again debated banning abortion, this time in the case of fetal abnormaities. The government also considered citizen initiated legislation which would have equated homosexuality with pedaephilia and criminalize sex education for minors with up to three years imprisonment. In response, activists held socially distanced actions with their cars, social media, and bicycles. This forestalled the passage of the legislation, as the lower house of parliament sent the bill back to a parliamentary commission for more work.  Previous attempts to ban abortion through legistlation have failed due to the efforts of abortion rights activists, which may be why the Law and Justice Party sought a review from the constitutional tribunal. Fourteen of the fifteen judges on the court were chosen by the Law and Justice Party to serve nine year terms. Three judges are believed by legal scholars to have been appointed by illegal means. Aside from the this new tactic of using the high court to ban abortion, some activists believe that the abortion ban was a reward to the Catholic church and far right for its support in the previous elections and a distraction from the government’s poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 has presented serious challenges to abortion access and activism. According to Euronews, when the Polish government closed its borders, Justyna Wydrzynska, an activist with Aborcyjny Dream Team reported the phones of the organization were ringing non stop. The organization normally receives ten calls a day.  Many callers were worried about accessing abortion pills, which are illegal in Poland. According to Hannah Summers for The Guardian, Polish hospitals have already turned women away who are seeking abortion. The Federation of Family Planning has been inundated with phone calls from panicked women who have had their appointments cancelled and whose fetuses have abnormalities. Abortion without Borders, an organization formed in December 2019 to help Polish women access abortion but has been challenged by border closures and quarantine. The thousands of women who travel to Germany, Czech Republic, and Slovakia have been blocked off from this access. Nevertheless, Abortion without Borders has managed to help twenty one women access abortion in other countries since the ruling. It should be noted that offering assistance in obtaining an illegal abortion can result in a three year prison sentence. Yet, the vast majority of abortions in Poland are illegal, with activists estimating that although the number of legal abortions is only around 1,000, there are over 150,000 illegal abortions each year. Aside from travel, abortion is accessed through doctors or other providers who provide high cost abortions in secret.

With 20,000 new Covid-19 infections each day, politicians have been quick to shame activists for protesting the court ruling.  Like Trump, even President Andrzej Duda has been diagnosed with Covid-19. Large gatherings are prohibited and bars and universities are closed. The government issued a ban on gatherings of more than five people, which was implemented the same week of the court ruling. Organizers have been threatened with eight years imprisonment for violating the ban and causing what the government has deemed an epidemiological threat. Activists have been told to consider the elderly or vulnerable people they may sicken. At the same time, Poland has the lowest ratio of health workers to population in the EU. Over the years, austerity and privatization has gutted the Polish health care system, rendering it incapable of meeting the pressures of the pandemic in terms of staffing, testing, and intensive care beds.  

Law and Justice Party’s aggressive attacks on abortion rights are only the most recent and certainly won’t be the last. According to Wanda Nowica in the book SexPolitics: Reports from the Front Lines, the end of communism in Poland marked the beginning of attacks on reproductive rights. The current laws are actually similar to the 1932 Criminal Code in Poland, in which abortion was only legal if the pregnancy was result of a crime or if women’s life and health was a risk.  These laws remained in effect until 1956 when abortion was decriminalized,but required the signatures of two doctors. At the time, abortion was legalized on the basis of the health risks imposed by illegal abortions. Abortion law was further liberalized in 1959 when abortion became available upon demand. This ended in1993 with the Act on Family Planning, Human Embryo Protection and Conditions of Permissibility of Abortion, which removed the social grounds for seeking an abortion. Doctors also played an important role in ban, as the General Assembly of Physicians ning abortion, adopted the Code of Medical Ethics, which only allowed abortion on medical and criminal grounds. The was an effort to organize against abortion restrictions, as the Committee for a Referendum on the Criminalization of Abortion garnered 1.3 million signitures demanding a national referendum on abortion, but this was ignored by the Parliament in 1992. Lech Wałęsa vetoed an attempt to liberalize abortion laws in 1994.  In 1996, when abortion laws were amended and and abortion was again briefly legal on social grounds. The Solidarity Trade Union challenged the new law through the Constitutional Tribunal, which determined that abortion on social grounds was indeed unconstitutional. In the early 2000s, Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union promised to liberalize the law, but never made good on the promise. Parliament refused to take up the issue in 2005. Recent years have seen attacks on abortion rights, but the decades since communism have been marked with broken promises, compromises, neoliberalism, and pandering to the Catholic church. This is not to idealize communism in Poland, but to highlight that abortion was a casualty in the transition to capitalism and that liberals, social democrats, and conservatives have upheld abortion restrictions.   

The spectacular turn out of Polish women has temporarily suspended the enforcement of the court ruling, but there is a long battle ahead. In Poland, as in all capitalist countries, there will always be social pressure for women to reproduce. In this sense, reproductive rights are never secure so long as capitalism persists. Capitalism requires the oppression of women as this ensures workers are cared for, babies are born, and children are raised with unpaid labor and the most meager social provisioning. Nowica noted that in 1988, the fertility rate in Poland was 2.4, in 1993 it was 1.8 and by 2005 it was 1.22. In 2020, it is 1.39.  Replacement fertility is 2.1, but forced birth combined with austerity is a particularly brutal method of ensuring social reproduction. This brutality is masked by the sanctity of life rhetoric of the Catholic church, but this itself has changed over the centuries with different theological debates regarding ensoulment. The hardline stance against abortion after conception only came about in 1869. It seems that women in Poland have had enough and are willing to stand against both the church and the state, which in Poland are deeply interconnected. Both of these things are malleable and can be changed through struggle. Ultimately, this struggle must tear up the economic roots of oppression for reforms to be lasting.  It is little wonder that the Law and Justice Party seeks to divide, pitting reproductive rights against the rights of people with disabilities to be born. But it is capitalism, not women, which ultimately devalues the lives of people with disabilities. It is within the framework of capitalism that impairment is made into disability, as it is a system which cannot accommodate different needs and places value on regimented labor capacity above all else. The struggle in Poland is part of a struggle for all oppressed people to control their bodies and destinies.  

Birding in Suchitoto

Birding in Suchitoto

H. Bradford

6/14/20

In January 2019, I traveled to Central America with Intrepid Tours.  I had a great time, as there were plenty opportunities for free time exploration, choices of things to do, and included group activities. One of the highlights of the tour was time spent in Suchitoto, El Salvador.  The time spent there was marked by an extensive walking tour, visit to the columnar basalt formations of Los Tercios, and a hiking and historical tour of Cinquera Rain Forest Park to learn more about the civil war in El Salvador from an ex-FMLN fighter turned park ranger.  Suchitoto is a great place to learn about history, see colonial architecture, go for a stroll, spend time in nature, enjoy  local art, eat pupusas, and learn about the history of indigo.  If that isn’t enough, another highlight of Suchitoto was two birding tours that I participated in!

Los Tercios

The two birding tours that I enjoyed were organized through Intrepid with a local tour operator.  I believe the local tour operator was called Suchitoto Adventure Outfitters. One tour involved a birding boat trip around Lake Suchitlan and the other was a kayaking birding trip also on the lake. It is important to note that Lake Suchitlan is an artificial lake which was created in the mid-1970s to serve as a reservoir for the Cerron Grande Hydroelectric dam. The lake bed was once served as a home and farmland to over 13,000 people who were displaced by the project. Thousands of acres of land were flooded in a project that the government claimed would solve the country’s energy problem. The life of these farmers was meager to begin with, as they worked subsistence plots in an area dominated by large sugar cane estates. They attempted to organize for land distribution, price controls on agricultural inputs, and better wages during the 1960s and early 1970s. Organizers were imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes murdered. The thousands of displaced peasants were compensated poorly or not at all, so it is little wonder that the area became a stronghold for the FMLN.  During my visit, many houses and streets in Suchitoto waved FMLN flags. Thus, although Lake Suchitlan is a tranquil haven for birds, it is not a natural lake and is a lake connected to the political and economic struggles of El Salvador.

Decades later, Lake Suchitlan is the largest freshwater body in El Salvador and consists of over 100 miles of inlet pocked of shoreline and 33,360 acres of water surface area.  It provides habitat for many native and migratory birds, including the largest duck populations in El Salvador. The first tour that I participated in left early in the morning. Participants were offered coffee, juice, and a light snack, as well as binoculars, life vests, bilingual guides and access to bird guide books. I kept a list of the birds that we saw during our journey around the lake.  Among the first birds that I saw were a large number of barn swallows, mangrove swallows, and a few Gray breasted martins. It is honestly difficult for me to differentiate these quick moving birds, which perched on a line across the lake. The branches hanging over the lake hosted a few species of kingfishers, including Amazon kingfishers and the more familiar Belted kingfishers. Several species of flycatchers also made an appearance, such as the Great kiskadee, Tropical kingbird, and Scissor tailed flycatcher.  I have seen Scissor tailed flycatchers in the southern United States and they are always an amazing bird to see. Various species of herons were also easily spotted along the shoreline,  including Green herons, Great blue herons, Cattle egrets, Snowy egrets, and Great egrets.  The lake is home to twelve of the fourteen species of native fish found in El Salvador, which provide a tasty meal to many of these birds.

There were also many raptors spotted during the boat ride.  A Laughing falcon, ospreys, Black hawk, and Roadside hawk were among the raptors we saw. Innumerable Neo-tropical cormorants, Black vultures, and turkey vultures were also seen. Another highlight was a White-bellied chachalaca.  As a matter of reference, I brought the Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Northern Central America with me. This was one of the same guides that the birding guides used in the tour. The guides were very knowledgeable about birds and seemed to be glad to have someone who was excited about birds on their tour.  The other guests on the tour were not avid birders nor as interested in birds, but seemed to enjoy helping me spot birds and the opportunity to enjoy nature.  As for myself, I had tried to study the bird guide before and during the tour, so I was happy that I was able to identify some birds I had never seen before. In all, we were on the lake from before 6am to nearly 10 am.

A not so great photo of a Laughing falcon

The second tour included another early morning adventure, this time combining bird watching and kayaking. I found this a little harder to balance, as it was hard to paddle, use my binoculars, take photos, and take notes of the birds that I saw.  We used tandem kayaks and explored a different area of the lake. I was unable to multitask.  Again, this was a morning tour. Highlights of this tour included large numbers of Red winged blackbirds. Although this is a common bird in Minnesota, it was a treat to see and hear these familiar birds in early January. While Minnesota was enveloped in the silent cold of winter, the beloved birds of spring and summer were enjoying their winter in the warmth of El Salvador. Trees of wood storks, orioles, warblers, flocks of pelicans, shy Northern jacanas, and many of the birds seen the previous day marked the morning journey.  The kayaking adventure ended with a trip to a hot spring, where I searched for more birds as others in the group enjoyed the springs.  Near the springs, I found a Turquoise-browed motmot, Golden fronted woodpecker, Ruddy ground doves, and parakeets. The Turquoise-browed motmot is the national bird of El Salvador.

 

Lake Suchitlan is an important wetland area, but it is also heavily polluted. Several rivers empty wastewater and sewage into the reservoir, including the Suquiapa, Sucio and Acelhuate rivers. Untreated sewage from at least 154 municipalities flow into the lake, resulting in an astonishing monthly flow of 8.5 million tons of fecal matter. This is a sad testament to the underdeveloped water and sewage management systems in El Salvador, where this waste typically flows into bodies of water. Scientists have found mercury, copper, cadmium, and aluminum in the water, plants, and fish.  According to The Social Life of Water, 90% of rivers in El Salvador are polluted with industrial waste.  Water issues, such as insufficient waste management, lack of access to clean water, and industrial waste are connected to neoliberal policies imposed upon El Salvador by the World Bank and Inter-American Development bank since the 1990s.  Neo-liberal policies seek to reduce the role of the government in providing and regulating socially important services in the interest of privatization and corporate profits. Lake Suchitlan is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in Central America.  The pollution has resulted in overgrowth of invasive water hyacinth and algae.  I would also be suspicious of the safety of swimming and fishing in the lake, even though locals do fish on the lake.  Investment in the infrastructure and regulations that can keep the water clean, provide ongoing habitat for wildlife, and secure a healthy life and potable water for residents means challenging to the dominance of the neoliberal policies and institutions which advance U.S. imperialism.

Birding in Suchitoto was a wonderful experience. The area is abundant with bird life.  At the same time, it is a location of resistance. From farmers who were removed from their land to FMLN fighters who hid in the local mountains,  the area is a geography of exclusion. Today, it is a tourist destination and upcoming birding destination, but submerged beneath the surface of fun and recreation is struggle. In 2007, Suchitoto residents peacefully protested the privatization of water and demonstrators were attacked with rubber bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas.  Seventy five people were injured. In 2008, a local water rights activist named Hector Ventura was stabbed to death after meeting with the mayor.  This is always the dilemma of being a tourist.  A tourist passes through the world, enjoying nature, birds, historical sites, art, foods, or any number of the wonders this world offers. But for all the wonders the world offers those who can enjoy them, it is also a world of suffering and struggle.

 

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Fighting the Plagues of Locusts and COVID-19

a version of this article can be found at: https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/04/17/fighting-the-plagues-of-locusts-and-covid-19/

Fighting the Plagues of Locusts and COVID-19

H. Bradford

Written 4/17/20

Posted 4/20/20

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, parts of Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East are facing another plague. A dangerous outbreak of locusts has ravaged multiple countries since last year, laying waste to crops and threatening millions of people with food insecurity. The current wave of locusts is the second this year and scientists predict it will not be the last. Currently, the hardest hit area is East Africa, where in February eight countries faced an initial swarm and now are hit by a second wave of the voracious insects. It is the largest locust infestation in the region in seventy years. This pestilence arose from the perfect storm of climate change, war, austerity, and imperialism.

The insect behind this scourge is Schistocerca gregaria or the desert locust. Desert locusts are a species of grasshopper found in North Africa, the Middle East, and Indian subcontinent. Owing to accounts in the Bible, Koran, and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, they are the most famous species of locust, though various species are distributed around the world, such as the Australian plague locust, Migratory locust, South American locust, and High plains locust. Like other grasshoppers, locusts are often solitary, but under the right conditions they become gregarious. In their gregarious phase, they band together in large, devastating swarms which have plagued humanity for thousands of years.

Typically, swarming occurs when food becomes abundant due to wet conditions, resulting in a population boom. The perfect conditions for an outbreak of locusts began in 2018 when Cyclone Mekunu struck an area of the Arabian peninsula called the Empty Quarter or Rub’ al Khali, a sand desert which includes portions of Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Normally, this area of desert would dry out, controlling locust populations. However, according to a February article in National Public Radio the Empty Quarter was struck by a second cyclone in late 2018 and another in December 2019. “PBS NewsHour” noted that there were a total eight cyclones in 2019, an enormous deviation from the annual occurrence of one or zero. Prior to a year of flooding and heavy rains, there was three years of drought. Beyond the unusually wet conditions of the Empty Quarter, Space.com reported that the Horn of Africa received four times more rain than usual between October and December, in the wettest short wet season in 40 years. These conditions also fostered locust breeding once the insects moved into the region.

The rare and climate crisis driven bombardment of cyclones to an otherwise arid area increased vegetation and resulted in an explosion of the locust population. The Guardian reported that the second cyclone alone resulted in an 8000 fold increase in the locust population. Locusts reproduce with unstoppable speed as a single female can lay 300 eggs, which hatch in as little as two weeks and take only two additional weeks for larvae to mature and begin reproducing. Once mature, locusts can travel up to 90 miles a day. Their population grows exponentially, increasing 400 times every six months.

The locusts spread from Yemen, hitting Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia the hardest. National Public Radio reported that the locusts crossed the Gulf of Aden last year, arriving first in Somalia and Ethiopia.They were later spotted in Kenya in December 2019, some forming a swarm of over 192 billion insects in a mass three times the size of New York City. The United Nations has cautioned that a swarm the size of ⅓ of a square mile can eat as much food as 35,000 people in one day. The Guardian warned that East Africa is currently being hit the hardest, though owing to climate change and war, Yemen has also been hit hard. According to “PBS NewsHour” the latest wave of insects is 20 times larger than the February swarm, owing to heavy rains in March. It is currently planting season in East Africa and another wave of locusts is expected to hit during June, which is harvest time. Already, 33 million people in the region endure food insecurity.

The impacts of the infestation are already catastrophic. Al Jazeera reported that a half million acres of farm land in Ethiopia has been ravaged and 8.5 million Ethiopians experience acute food insecurity. As of early April, over 74,000 acres of crops were destroyed, including coffee and tea which make up 30% of Ethiopia’s exports.  In a Los Angeles Times report, Somalia had already lost 100% of  staple crops such as corn and sorghum loss by January. In Kenya, 30% of pastureland has been lost and as of mid-March, the pests had destroyed 2000 tons of food in the country. Over 173,000 acres of cropland in Kenya has been decimated, including corn, bean,and cow pea crops. Agriculture accounts for 25% of Kenya’s economy. Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda are among the African countries currently under attack by locust swarms. As of late March, swarms were forming elsewhere in Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.140,000 acres of crops have been destroyed in Pakistan. The swarms are expected to hit Pakistan’s cotton industry hard, as the textile industry is the country’s largest employer and accounts for 60% of exports. In Pakistan, it is the worst locust outbreak since 1993.

Efforts to stop the spread of locusts have been hampered by COVID-19 and the social problems already facing these countries. Locusts are usually controlled with pesticides, which are either applied by aircraft that target adult locusts through aerial spraying or by ground crews which target eggs and young locusts that can not yet fly. Closed borders and a global slowdown of shipping has slowed the transportation of pesticides. Reuters reported that in Somalia, an order of pesticides expected in late March was delayed. Surveillance of locust swarms is conducted by helicopters, but lock downs have made helicopters harder to secure. In Kenya, helicopter pilots from South Africa have had to quarantine for fourteen days before they could begin work. On the economic side, 60% of Kenya’s GDP went to servicing debt before COVID-19 and locusts hit.The economic impact of both plagues makes this debt even more punishing than it was before. As of 2017, nineteen African countries were spending more than 60% of their GDP on debt.

Somaliland, a self declared republic in Somalia, has no resources to fight locusts. Keith Cressman of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN said that South Sudan and Uganda also lack programs for outbreaks. In South Sudan, 200,000 people live in UN camps, already in close conditions and at risk of food insecurity and COVID-19. Cressman noted that social distancing makes it hard to train new people to tackle the problem as this involves gathering people together in classrooms. Despite lockdowns and curfews, workers tackling the locust outbreak have been given exemptions for travel. Thus far, nearly 600,000 acres of land have been treated with pesticides and 740 people have been trained to do ground locust control. The FAO has obtained $111.1 million of $153.2 million it requested to fight the swarms. Because most of the world is focused on fighting COVID-19, additional aid to combat the locusts has been hard to come by.

Pesticides are an imperfect solution to the problem. When the pesticides are applied, villages must be warned to move livestock. According to a Kenyan news source, Daily Nation, one of the pesticides that the FAO recommends is Diazinon, which the U.S. banned from residential use in 2004. The pesticide works by affecting the nervous system of insects. However, human exposure can result in symptoms such as watery eyes, stomach pain, vomiting, coughing, and runny nose. Longer exposure can cause seizures, rapid heart rate, and coma. The Pesticide Action Network (Panna) warned that it can be harmful to children and can cause birth defects. A Pakistani news source named lambda cyhalothrin, chlorpyrifos, and bifenthrin as pesticides against locusts and cited worries that the chemicals could impact drinking water, cause respiratory problems, and irritate skin. Ground crews responsible for spraying the pesticides may be at risk. In the face of the COVID-19 outbreak and strained supplies of PPE, workers may not have necessary protections.

According to Science, the FAO has also used biopesticides in the form of fungus in Somalia. An article in the Zimbabwe news source, The Herald expressed concern over both pesticides and biopesticides, which mainly rely on spores from Metarhizium sp. The spores may not be as effective because they work best in moderate temperatures and high humidity, conditions that are not common in the areas most impacted by the locusts. The spores take fourteen days to take effect and are mainly used against young locusts. While it is unknown if this is the current practice, the French research program LUBILOSA, which developed the fungus, suggested that the spores should be dissolved in paraffin or diesel, both of which are carcinogens. Pesticides and biopesticides also risk harming other insects. Linseed oil and neem may have some potential as safer, natural insecticides. Likewise, The Locust Lab of Arizona State University has found that locusts prefer carbohydrate rich foods and lower carb crops may deter locusts. For instance, locusts do not care for millet. In the face of such the immediate, cataclysmic attack of locusts and the risk of famine, research into less harmful alternatives is something for future exploration.

A socialist solution to tackle locust outbreaks should begin with prevention. Unusually wet conditions and the bizarre frequency of cyclones last year was a catalyst for the current crisis. To stop the climate crisis, capitalism must end. Anything short of this will only result in more frequent and severe natural disasters and less predictable weather patterns. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that Africa will experience a 20% increase in cyclones, coupled with 20% decrease in precipitation. These conditions will make future locust swarms more likely. Droughts, mudslides, floods, and infectious diseases are all predicted to increase with climate change. Agriculture that relies on water could drop 50% in some countries and wheat production could disappear by 2080. Climate change will only make the continent more food insecure at the cost of countless lives.

Another immediate concern to socialists should be organizing against imperialist wars. The locusts spread from Yemen, which could have played a crucial role in halting their migration towards Africa. Yemen was in no position to tackle this problem because it has been beleaguered by a brutal war lasting over five years between the U.S. supported Saudi-led coalition and Houthi fighters. The country has suffered through outbreaks of cholera, diphtheria, measles, dengue fever and now COVID-19. According to Human Rights Watch, there have been two million cases of cholera since 2016. Last fall, when the locust population exploded, ten million people in Yemen needed food aid and were already at risk of starvation. When the swarms appeared, people in Yemen actually began to collect them in bags, sell them, and eat them. Locusts are eaten by people outside of starvation conditions, but after experiencing the worst famine in the world in 100 years, they were a welcome bounty to some.

The war has cost at least 90,000 fatalities and the U.S. is complicit in the destruction. The U.S. has provided weapons and logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its allies which have conducted over 20,000 airstrikes, of which ⅓ were against military targets. Hospitals, ports, mosques, and schools are among the civilian targets. Prior to the war, the Ministry of Agriculture was usually able to control outbreaks of locusts. Presently, control of locusts is divided by government and Houthi forces. Both lack the resources to adequately address the problem. Locust infestations must be caught early and perhaps with better infrastructure or the plethora of other social problems faced in Yemen, it might have been addressed more effectively. Several of the countries now facing the desolation of locusts have similarly been destabilized by wars. This hampers their ability to organize a response.

All of the countries impacted have been saddled with debt and stunted by their economic dependency to wealthier nations. The plague hits the economies of these nations particularly hard because of their high debt and dependence on agricultural exports such as coffee, tea, and cotton. The reason these countries lack the medical infrastructure to combat COVID-19 and means to fight locust swarms is a direct result of colonization and the subsequent export economies, austerity, and debt that maintain dependency. Africa will always be a continent of crisis as long as hefty profits can be extracted from it. In this moment, all international debt should be forgiven and aid given unconditionally to prevent the threat of starvation. But, development of impoverished countries cannot happen within the framework of capitalism. The wealth that has been taken from Africa should be reinvested with a commitment to build infrastructure and capital based upon relationships of solidarity over dependency.

Locusts are often imagined as an act of God, but they exist in a material reality like everything else. The reality is that the climate conditions of the planet are increasingly unstable. One hundred year floods, one hundred year storms, and even, one hundred year locust hatchings are becoming frighteningly normal. The ability to mobilize resources to alleviate hunger and fight these pests is obstructed by war, economic dependency, and a global pandemic which already demands what few resources might be marshaled. In a brighter, socialist future, this insect that has tormented humans for thousands of years might again be minimized to a solitary grasshopper, controlled by sustainable and diverse agricultural practices, early detection, and stable climate conditions. In the case of a swarm, food would be abundant enough to be shared, rather than left to rot in the anarchistic, false abundance of capitalism.

Chernobyl Fires Threaten to Unleash Radiation

a version of this article can be found at: https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/04/13/chernobyl-fires-threaten-to-unleash-radiation/

(It should be noted that yesterday the fires drew dangerously close to Pripyat and that conditions can change rapidly. )

 

Chernobyl Fires Threaten to Unleash Radiation

Written 4/12/20

Posted 4/14/20

H. Bradford

April 26 marks the 34th anniversary of Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history. By some estimates, the ruins of the Chernobyl reactor will remain highly radioactive for 20,000 years. Decades after the catastrophe, the dangers of radiation persist as forest fires rampage across the exclusion zone. The recent forest fires are only the latest in recent years to threaten the region with radioactive ash and smoke. This problem is compounded by the dual impacts of climate change and capitalist profit motives.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster occurred in the early morning of April 26th, 1986 when a safety check to test if the Uranium 235 fueled reactors could remain cool during a power outage went catastrophically wrong. At the time, there were four graphite-moderated nuclear reactors at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, with two more under construction. The reactors were situated two miles from Pripyat, a Soviet city of 50,000 people. Pripyat was constructed in 1970 with amenities such as quality schools, a supermarket, and sports stadium. The reactors were nine miles away from Chernobyl, a city of 12,000. In all, there were over 115,000 people living within an 18.6 mile radius of the power plant and five million people living in contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. During the fateful test, Reactor Four experienced a meltdown resulting in two explosions that unleashed 400 times the radiation of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The accident shrouded 77,000 square miles of Europe and Eurasia in radiation.

It took ten days for emergency workers to extinguish the graphite fueled fire, resulting in the deaths of 28 workers from acute radiation syndrome in the months immediately after the accident. Over 200,000 people were mobilized to clean up the disaster, exposing these liquidation workers to high levels of radiation. In all, 600,000 people in Soviet Union were subsequently exposed to high levels of radiation, including radioactive isotopes such as Iodine-131, Plutonium-239, Strontium-90, Cesium-134, and Cesium-137, which were unleashed during the explosion. As a result, there have been 20,000 thyroid cancer cases between 1991 and 2015 in people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the accident. 115,000 people were evacuated in 1986 and another 220,000 people were later evacuated and resettled. A 30 kilometer (approximately 18.6 miles) exclusion zone was established around the reactor. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, trees near the reactor died off, becoming what was called a “Red Forest” to denote the russet tone of dead pine. In the decades since, the exclusion zone has become a refuge for returned wildlife and a collection of desolate ghost towns slowly vanishing into the overgrown forest.

The cautionary tale of Chernobyl does not end with the return of nature or the story of countless generations tasked with stewardship over the sarcophagus encased Reactor Four. Recent wildfires threaten to release Chernobyl’s radiation. According to NASA Earth Observatory, wildfires in the exclusion zone began in early April and firefighters have been working to put out the blaze since April 4th. The impacted areas include Denysovets, Kotovsky, and Korogodsky forests. On April 8th, the fires blew towards Kiev, which is located about sixty miles to the south. On April 9th, people were evacuated from the village of Poliske. Poliske is a sparsely inhabited village located within the exclusion zone. A few hundred people, mostly elderly women in their 70s or 80s, reside illegally within the exclusion zone. According to BBC News, conflict in the Donbass region has sent some families to seek safety in the area just outside of the exclusion zone, where the housing is the cheapest in Ukraine. The New York Times stated that as of Saturday April 11th, 400 firefighters had been deployed to the area and 8,600 acres had burned the previous week. The article further mentioned that the blaze has increased radiation levels in Russia and Belarus. Live Science reported that the fire is near the abandoned village of Vladimirovka. According to Ukraine’s Ecological Inspection Service, radiation readings near the blaze are 2.3 microsievert per hour. Typically, the exclusion zone’s ambient radiation is .14 microsievert per hour and .5 microsievert per hour is the threshold considered safe for humans. This calls into question the safety of firefighters working to extinguish the blaze as well as the people living in the region.

At the moment, fires are not located near the entombed reactor. However, Uranium-238, Cesium-137 and other radionuclides jettisoned from Reactor Four and have since been absorbed by vegetation and dirt. Fires can unleash these from the environment and ash condenses the radionuclides sequestered within vegetation. NASA Earth Observatory stated that smoke plumes can carry radiation long distances and that the severity of wildfires has only increased over the years. According to a study published in Ecological Monographs by Timothy Mousseau of University of South Carolina, wildfires that broke out in 2002, 2008, 2010 redistributed 8% of Cesium-137 released by the original Chernobyl disaster. Wildfires in 2015 came a mere 12 to 15 miles from Chernobyl’s reactors.

The most recent wildfire has been attributed to local farming practices, wherein fields are burned in spring and fall. While this may contribute to fires, climate change is certainly the main culprit. A report released by the Atlantic Council in January 2020 noted that the 2019-2020 winter in Ukraine was mild with little snowfall. According to the report, 2019 was the warmest year on record for Kiev and the yearly average temperature in Ukraine was 2.9 degrees celsius higher than average. In 2019, 36 temperature records were broken. Last year, there was 25% less precipitation than average. Droughts have nearly doubled over the last 20 years in Ukraine. In 2015, an article in the New York Times anticipated increased wildfires in the exclusion zone due to drier conditions. Likewise, in 2015 New Scientist reported that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted more fires near Chernobyl in the future.

Climate change driven droughts are one of the catalysts for the fires, but radiation itself contributes to the problem. Radiation slows the decay of leaf litter and inhibits growth of microorganisms, which creates more fuel for fires. In the absence of people, forests have expanded, which also generates more combustible material. The danger is amplified by the fact that local firefighters have seven times fewer crews and equipment than elsewhere in Ukraine. The IPCC predicted a similar outcome for Fukushima, which also has significant forests. They also posited that there is no threshold of radiation with zero effect. Climate change driven droughts, expanded forests, slow decay, few local resources, and strained water resources to fight fires create a recipe for disaster.

Behind the climate crisis is capitalism itself. All manner of environmental problems can be traced back to the profit motive in capitalism. The drive for lower wages, unsafe working conditions, fewer environmental regulations, the endless creation of waste, the lack of storage for the waste created, the generation of pollution itself, the shuttling of hazardous production and wastes to the third world and oppressed communities, the anarchy of too much production, and the insatiable need for growth are all connected to endless drive for profits. Therefore, sustainability and safety are anathema to capitalism. In the context of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, logging trees within the exclusion zone garners tens of millions of dollars in profits. Since 2004, limited amounts of timber can be cut from the exclusion zone as long as it is scanned for radiation. 90% of this timber is used for furniture. According to a January 2020 article in Al Jazeera, fires within the exclusion zone are started purposefully to justify the sale of timber. In a report released after the 2015 wildfires, Mykola Tomenko, head of parliamentary environmental commission stated that fires can conceal illegal logging. Two thirds of illegal profits derived from the exclusion zone are from timber. In 2007, state inspectors also found radiation contaminated charcoal sold in Ukrainian supermarkets. While the more recent fires have not been connected to the timber industry, the search for profits brings capitalists to the radioactive wilds of the exclusion zone to extract resources no matter the impact on consumers or the threat of unleashed radiation.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident is a horror story in the closing chapter of the Soviet Union. It is a tale that will last for thousands of years, written in elements with the potential to outlive humanity itself. If there is a moral of the story, it is that nuclear power is dangerous. Despite the threats, there is little motive within capitalism to mitigate the dangers. The only motive, as always, is the profit motive. Fires will certainly revisit Chernobyl and potentially visit Fukushima, once again spreading radiation. Beyond Chernobyl, wildfires have threatened the Hanford Site, a former nuclear production facility in Washington several times. In 2000, the Department of Energy declared an emergency when fires neared a building where nuclear waste was stored. In 2017, a wildfire burned part of the Hanford Site,though no buildings were threatened. Again, in 2019, wildfires burned more than 40,000 acres near the site. The Hanford Nuclear Waste Site is the largest nuclear waste dump in the U.S. and contains 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. The danger of aging nuclear reactors in the United States, the question of where nuclear waste is stored, the connection to terrifying weapons of war, and the catastrophic consequences when things go awry are just a few of the many reasons why nuclear energy must be nationalized and ultimately abolished.

Our Reproductive Rights Won’t Be Handed to Us

a version of this article can be found at: https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/03/06/womens-reproductive-rights-under-attack-as-abortion-restrictions-tighten/

Our Reproductive Rights Won’t Be Handed to Us

Heather Bradford

Written 3/06/20

Posted 4/12/20

According to Planned Parenthood, in 2019 there were over 300 abortion restrictions filed across 47 states. Some of these were the strictest since the passage of Roe v. Wade. The most alarming were restrictions, such as the one passed in Alabama on May 15, 2019, which made abortion illegal at all stages and without exceptions for incest or rape. These restrictions were made even more terrifying by the threat of 99 years of imprisonment for abortion providers. Restrictive laws, like those passed in Alabama and six week abortion bans or “heartbeat bills” passed in Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri (eight weeks), and Mississippi have been blocked or delayed by federal judges. But, their aggressive nature sets the tone for the struggle ahead as reproductive rights activists enter a new year and new decade.

An early set-back for reproductive rights this year was the passage of a minor consent law in Florida on February 21. The Florida law requires minors under the age of 18 to obtain written and notarized consent from a parent in order to seek an abortion. It also requires government issued identification and proof of guardianship or parentage and makes no exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or trafficked youth. The consent requirement can be bypassed by a judge, who can determine if the minor is mature enough to have an abortion. The previous law already required parental notification, but not consent. Parental consent, notification, or both is required in 37 states. Consent and parental notification laws put youth at risk of illegal abortions, parental abuse, denies their right to bodily autonomy, and creates barriers for youth whose parents may be absent or deceased. It disproportionately impacts immigrants and racial minorities, as consent and notification laws require documentation, such as birth certificates and identification cards. Despite the barriers consent and notification laws impose upon youth, Florida Democrats were divided over the law. Democratic representatives James Bush, Kimberly Daniels, Al Jacquet, and Anika Omphroy voted to support the bill.

Another concerning development in the struggle for reproductive rights is June Medical Services v. Gee and Gee v. June Medical Services. There are two issues at the heart of these cases, which the Supreme Court will hear in March. The first is the issue of admitting privileges, which is part of larger TRAP laws. TRAP laws, or targeted restrictions on abortion providers, are laws passed under the guise of patient safety, but meant to curtail abortion access by imposing unnecessary regulations on abortion providers. Admitting privileges mean that abortion doctors must be able to admit patients into a hospital near the abortion clinic. Because many hospitals are religious, profit driven, and do not wish to be tied to the controversy around abortion, it can be difficult for abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges to local hospitals. For instance, doctors at the only abortion clinic in Mississippi were unable to obtain admitting privileges because seven local hospitals refused. Requiring admitting privileges effectively shuts down abortion clinics. The Supreme Court already struck down the requirement of admitting privileges in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt because abortion complications are so exceedingly rare ( .025% of cases) that admitting privileges are not necessary for patient health and impose a significant obstacle to access. June Medical Services v. Gee revisits the question of if admitting privileges are constitutional.

The second issue at the heart of these cases is third party standing. Currently, lawsuits against abortion restrictions can be filed by third parties. In 1976, Singleton v. Wulf  granted abortion doctors legal standing in challenging abortion restrictions. This has expanded the circumstances under which restrictions can be challenged. For instance, when an Idaho woman named Jennie Linn McCormack filed a lawsuit against the state over its 20 week abortion ban and restriction against self administered abortion, it was determined that because she was not pregnant she did not have the legal standing to do so (even though she was arrested for illegally taking  RU 486). However, the lawsuit was able to move forward when brought forth by Dr. Richard Hearn, who as a doctor had standing, and the Ninth Circuit court decided that the criminal charges against abortion patients was unconstitutional. Without third party legal standing, the lawsuit would not have moved forward. Lawsuits by third parties has been one of the tools that reproductive rights advocates have relied upon to challenge abortion restrictions. Like the recent parental consent law in Florida, Democrats are complicit in this recent challenge to abortion rights. The Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, the Louisiana law at the center of the Supreme court hearings, was sponsored by Senator Katrina Jackson, a Democrat who is anti-abortion.

Following a tumultuous year of abortion restrictions, President Trump attended the March of Life on January 24, 2020, where he gave a speech in which he claimed that he was White House’s best defender of the unborn. He was the first sitting president to attend the event. But, in the shell game of U.S. politics, Trump once declared himself pro-choice, even calling himself very pro-choice in 1999 and stating that the issue hadn’t been important to him on the Howard Stern show in 2013. While it is unlikely that he has convictions beyond courting anti-abortion voters, the Trump administration has been undeniably aggressive in its attacks on abortion. A particularly alarming strategy to reproductive rights activists has been the fact that one in four lifetime seats of federal appellate court judges have been filled with individuals hostile to choice. With standing potentially under attack by the Supreme Court,the strategy of challenging abortion laws in courts may become increasingly limited. But, this should not be the onus of activist strategies to begin with. The lifelong tenure of federal judges and Supreme Court Justices should have no place in a democratic society, generates a sense of dependency on the good will and judgement of powerful individuals, and places false hope in electing a Democratic party president so this positions can be filled with pro-choice judges. Aside from the aforementioned examples of parental consent laws in Florida and TRAP laws in Louisiana, electing Democrats has not ensured abortion access.  Bill Clinton ran for president with the slogan that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Hilary Clinton also said “by rare, I mean rare.” Obama also said he wanted to reduce the number of abortions. Over 1,200 abortion restrictions have been passed since Roe v. Wade, each seeking to make abortion rare through restriction. The decades of limits to abortion were not passed by Republicans alone.

Despite the ongoing attacks on abortion access, 2019 also saw the passage of pro-choice protections. In 2019, 29 states and Washington D.C. introduced 143 bills to improve abortion access. Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont passed laws which codified abortion as a fundamental right. Nevada removed pre-Roe laws which criminalized abortion and it also decriminalized self managed abortion. Maine guaranteed that both private and public insurance would have to cover abortion. Massachusetts lawmakers are working to pass the ROE act, which would guarantee abortion no matter one’s income or immigration status and improve youth access to abortion (ACLU). It is also important to remember that in response to abortion bans passed in May, 2019, thousands of activists took to the streets in protest. Across the U.S., more than 400 events were held on National Day of Action on Tuesday May 21, with other events spread out across that week. More than fifty organizations were involved with organizing the nationwide events against the abortion bans which, at that time, had passed in Ohio, Mississippi, and Alabama and were being considered in Louisiana and Missouri. While judges are often credited with halting these bans, mass action gives momentum to lawsuits, raises public awareness, shifts discourse, pressures politicians and judges, and is important practice for broader, bolder, revolutionary actions.

Abortion victories elsewhere in the world attests the power of mass action.  Between 2000 and 2017, 27 countries broadened the legal grounds for abortion. In 2019, Oaxaca, Mexico,  Northern Ireland, and New South Wales, Australia decriminalized abortion. Another success was in South Korea, where Supreme Court struck down the country’s 66 year old abortion ban as unconstitutional. Under the longstanding ban, abortion seekers faced one year in prison and a $1780 fine. Although the laws were over six decades old, they were not enforced until 2005 and this was a specific government response to demographic decline. The fertility in 2005 rate was 1.08, the lowest in the world. This demonstrates the economic function of abortion restrictions in capitalism, which is to force the births necessary for a new generation of workers. The overturn of these laws was won through the efforts of coalition called the Joint Action for Reproductive Justice (Joint Action), which was established in 2017 and brought together feminist, medical, disability rights, youth, labor, LGBT+, and religious groups. The coalition published materials, told stories, and hosted educational events, which all culminated in the first mass protest in Seoul on October 15, 2016. When thousands of Polish activists united in Black Protests for abortion rights, Korean activists hosted their own “Black Protest Korea”  Joint Action lobbied politicians and government agencies to take the matter to the Constitutional Court. In 2017, 235,000 people signed a petition to legalize abortion. They also organized a large rally attended by 5000 activists in July 2018. Joint Action also held a daily one person protest outside of the court building. They also held a press conference outside of the Argentine Embassy to support legal abortion in Argentina. Another large protest was organized in March 2019 before the court decision. Uniting in a variety of organizations and activists, including labor, international solidarity, and protest combined with legal work helped to make legal abortion a reality in South Korea.

In 2018, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets of Argentina to demand that senate pass an abortion bill. Abortion is illegal in Argentina and can result in a prison sentence. The Argentine government estimates that 350,000 illegal abortions occur in the country each year. The bill narrowly lost, but the activists continue to fight to make legal abortion a reality. Tens of thousands of abortion rights activists in Argentina protested on February 19, 2020 to once again demand legal abortion for Green Action Day. Day of action events, wherein activists wore green scarves to represent the demand for abortion, were hosted in over 80 locations across Argentina. The most recent push for legal abortion in Argentina began in 2015, with the anti-femicide movement No Una Menos, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of women against violence (including illegal abortion). In 2017, thirty women in Argentina were reported to have died from illegal abortion, so the issue is absolutely a matter of femicide. In March 2019, an 11 year old girl and rape victim named “Lucia” was forced to give birth via cesarean section after Argentine officials denied her to the right to abortion. She was raped by her grandmother’s boyfriend. A similar situation occurred earlier in 2019 in which a 12 year old girl was also forced to give birth to a baby that later died several days later. Doctors refused to perform an abortion, even though the strict abortion laws in Argentina allow for abortion in the case of rape or potential death of the mother. The green bandanas were also worn during the elections last October to spotlight their demand. President Alberto Fernandez has vowed to legalizing abortion on the basis of public health. Undoubtedly, it would not have been possible for a centrist politician to put abortion on the agenda without the efforts of abortion activists. Likewise, without the demands and efforts of U.S. activists, politicians like Bernie Sanders would not frame abortion as healthcare nor would Elizabeth Warren claim she would wear a Planned Parenthood scarf to her inauguration. This support of reproductive rights and retreat from the discourse of abortion “rarity” would not be possible without the millions of women who marched in women’s marches or thousands who came out last spring against abortion bans.

The 1917 February revolution, which began with striking women at the Aivaz factory in St. Petersburg and International Women’s Day protests over WWI and the high cost of food, overturned three hundred years of Romanov rule. But, the Provisional Government would not grant women the right to vote nor exit the war. In response, Alexandra Kollontai told women that their rights would not be handed to them. In the summer of 1917, women’s suffrage was won after a march of 40,000 protestors. Another revolution was necessary to secure such things abortion rights, the right to divorce, civil marriage, property rights, public kitchens, day cares, public laundries, maternity leave, and an end to the war. Over one hundred years later, many of these things have not yet been won in the United States. But, as Alexandra Kollontai advised, our rights will not be handed to us. Neither by judges nor Democrats will these rights be won. They will be won by the strength of the people united in strike and protest and secured only by revolution. That is the lesson of February, October, International Women’s Day, Black Protests, the Green movement, and the history of all our struggles and victories.

Abortion and COVID-19

 

a version of this article can be found here: https://socialistresurgence.org/2020/04/06/politicians-use-covid-crisis-to-restrict-womens-abortion-rights/

Abortion and COVID-19

H. Bradford

written 04/04/20

Posted 04/06/20

As the COVID-19 crisis deepens, so does the suffering of the oppressed. The oppression of women has worsened during the crisis as they are confined to their homes with their abusers. Within the home, women shoulder the burden of unpaid labor cooking, cleaning, and caring for children who are no longer in school or at day care. As waged workers, women are on the front line of the crisis, as according to CNN, 70% of healthcare and social service workers are women. As women face increased violence, as well as hazardous and exhausting work, reproductive rights are also under attack.      

Around the country, the COVID-19 has been used to legitimate restrictions on abortion access. The first states to ban abortion during the crisis were Texas and Ohio. Ohio Deputy Attorney General Jonathan Fulkerson announced that abortions were non-essential medical procedures which should be suspended for the duration of the pandemic. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott ordered a suspension of non-essential medical procedures, which included abortions. Both abortion bans, as well as those which followed, were opportunistically framed as measures to preserve scarce medical resources. Abortion providers which failed to comply with the Texas order were threatened with a $1000 fine or 180 days of jail time. According to the New York Times the ban included both medical and surgical abortions. As a result, Whole Women’s Health in Texas had to cancel 150 appointments on Monday, March 23rd at their three locations. Some patients had already completed ultrasounds before the order went into effect, but could not have an abortion because of Texas’ mandatory 24 hour waiting period. 

Texas patients were referred to Oklahoma for abortions, but on Friday, March 27th, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced that abortions were included in his executive order banning all elective surgeries and minor medical procedures. Also on March 27th, the office of Iowa Governor, Kim Reynolds, announced that abortion was among the states’ suspended elective medical procedures. Elsewhere in the U.S. and also on March 27th, Kentucky attorney General Daniel Cameron called upon governor Andy Beshear to restrict abortion. Cameron pressed the state’s Cabinet for Health and Human Services to certify that abortion providers within Kentucky were in violation of the emergency ban on elective medical procedures. EMW Women’s Surgical Center is the only abortion provider in the state. The clinic continued providing abortions last week, as the governor’s order to halt non-emergency medical procedures did not specifically include abortions. Kentucky’s general assembly is currently considering legislation to expand the powers of the attorney general over abortion laws. The legislature is still open and currently pursuing eight abortion restrictions. Alabama also banned abortions on March 27th under the guise of pandemic response. As in Texas, patients had to be notified that their appointments were canceled. Finally, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves threatened action against the single abortion provider in the state if they did not follow the health department directive to halt abortions as elective procedures. While the pandemic grinds much of society to a halt, there is no end to the assault on abortion rights.

In response to the restrictions, on Monday, March 30th, federal judges blocked Texas, Alabama, and Ohio enforcing abortion bans. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU filed emergency lawsuits against the orders, arguing that they were unconstitutional. Lawsuits have also been filed in Iowa and Oklahoma. Yet, just a day after U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yankel had granted a temporary restraining order on the Texas abortion ban, conservative judges in the US Court of Appeals ruled that the ban on abortion would be reinstated. Once again, patients were informed that they would be unable to obtain an abortion and referred to other states. As other states move to ban abortions as medically unnecessary, these measures will continue to be challenged in courts. Even if the bans are successfully forestalled by court orders, they create barriers for patients who face uncertainty, confusion, and canceled appointments. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement that abortion should be considered an essential service. The statement asserted that a person’s life, health, and well being can be profoundly impacted by inability to access abortion and because abortion is time sensitive, suspension of services means that it can become riskier or unavailable due to legal restrictions. In addition to Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, on Monday March 31, Xavier Beccara, California’s attorney general, sent a letter signed by 21 attorney generals to the US Department of Health calling for expanded telemedicine during the COVID-19 crisis. The letter demanded that the abortion medication mifepristone could be dispensed at pharmacies rather than requiring that clinics give the medication directly to patients.

Even without the efforts of anti-choice politicians to exploit the pandemic to limit abortion, the COVID-19 pandemic presents obstacles to reproductive rights. Economists at the Federal Reserve estimate that the pandemic could result in a 32% unemployment rate. With millions of Americans already out of work, many people seeking abortions will be unable to afford the the procedure. Because employer based health insurances may not cover the cost of abortions and increased unemployment will result both in loss of health insurance and the financial means to afford an abortion, many people may be unable to afford the procedure. As of 2018, eleven states banned private insurance from covering abortions and twenty two states ban insurance coverage of abortions for public employees. Due to the Hyde Amendment, federal funds cannot be used to cover the cost of abortions in circumstances other than rape, incest, or life endangerment. Thus, only sixteen states provide coverage for abortion through state Medicaid programs. The cost of an abortion already poses an enormous barrier. Now, more than ever, the Hyde Amendment must be repealed.      

Abortion funds are one way that activists and advocates for choice have sought to overcome the financial bariers to obtaining an abortion. However, these funds are already feeling the financial strain of the economic crisis. Alabama’s Yellowhammer fund reported increased need for funds due to job loss. Yellowhammer has begun sending gift cards to patients to reduce barriers to food access and transportation. Fund Texas Choice, another abortion fund, reported that because of canceled appointments, some patients must travel further to find an abortion provider. With fewer flights, bus tickets, and available hotel rooms, patients who must travel to get an abortion face increased financial costs of travel and a lack of ability to travel. Northwest Abortion Access Fund relied upon volunteers to house and transport patients, but now must rely on hotels and ride share companies. These funds are adjusting to the conditions, but the safety measures will certainly increase the financial strain on the organizations. Because the funds rely on donors, who themselves may be financially pinched, donations will likely diminish as the economy crashes. Finally, many abortion funds rely on fundraising through social events, such as the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) annual Bowl-a-thon. The NNAF Bowl-a-Thon, or Fund-a-Thon, is a national fundraising effort which occurs each spring between February and April. Around seventy funds have participated in the Fund-a-Thon, but this year many have had to suspend their fundraising efforts due to social distancing measures and economic uncertainty.    

Aside from funding, travel restrictions make it harder for patients to access abortion. Many parts of the country are abortion deserts, or areas which are not served by abortion clinics. For instance, patients living in remote or rural areas of Montana, Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota must travel over 300 miles to the nearest abortion clinic. Half of women living in Alaska are over 750 miles from the nearest clinic. Banning abortion as part of the response to COVID-19 will only increase these travel distances during a time when it is unsafe to travel due to potential viral exposure and the resources to travel are more limited. Already, patients in Texas must look to clinics in New Mexico and Colorado to get an abortion. In addition to the barrier of travel, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 27 states require patients to wait a specific period of time between counseling and their abortion procedure. This generally ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Waiting periods, which are medically unnecessary and often require in person counseling, increases the risk of COVID-19 exposure and prolongs travel time. 

Travel restrictions also impact abortion providers because many rely on traveling doctors. Doctors may provide services to multiple clinics. For instance, Whole Women’s Health, which provides abortions in Austin, McAllen, and Fort Worth relies upon traveling physicians. The McAllen clinic is the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles. Flattening the curve of COVID-19 requires social distancing and restrictions travel, which is why it is essential that laws restricting telemedicine, mandating in person counseling, and requiring waiting periods be suspended. This protects patients, clinic staff, and physicians while ensuring abortion access. Texas Governor Abbott loosened telemedicine restrictions on other health care, but this did not include abortion. Texas is one of the states that requires a physical visit to a clinic. Ohio’s senate passed a telemedicine ban on March 4th, which is awaiting a House vote. Abortion is an essential service and should be available by telemedicine. An accompanying demand is expanded access to medical abortions. In an article in the New York Times, Dr. Daniel Grossman, a gynecology professor from the University of California argued that the need for personal protective equipment could be reduced by providing medical abortions up to 11 weeks, ending the requirement that doctors must meet with patients physically, and if physicians could send abortion medications via the mail. Currently, 18 states require that doctors be physically present when abortion medication is taken. Expanding who can legally prescribe mifepristone would also ensure abortion access during the crisis.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased reports of domestic violence as women are made to stay home due to state mandates, social distancing measures, unemployment, and the need to care for children who are no longer in school. Women are at increased risk of sexual and domestic violence during the crisis. Although the exact number of abortions due to domestic violence is unknown, an article in Re.Wire suggested a range between 6-22%. Denying reproductive autonomy is one way that abusers control victims. Domestic violence often escalates during a pregnancy and according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 20% of women have experienced violence during a pregnancy. It is barbaric to restrict abortion during a time when women are at greater risk of violence, isolation, and control. It is inhumane to restrict abortion any time, as abortion is an essential service that is necessary for the health, well being, autonomy, and equality of women. While patient safety, the safety of health workers, preserving medical supplies, and preventing the spread of COVID-19 are vital concerns, there are many ways to maintain and even expand abortion access during the crisis. Telemedicine, removing barriers to funding, expanding the means of dispensing mifepristone, overturning medically unnecessary restrictions such as waiting periods and in clinic visits, and expanding the social production of medical supplies are a few ways to improve access during the pandemic. Public safety should not be pitted against reproductive rights. There are ways to secure both. Arguments to the contrary exploit the crisis to deepen the oppression of women.