25 September 21
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LOSING RSN RIGHT NOW IS A DANGEROUS DIRECTION — Hang in there Marc and friends. For years I've been an irregular regular contributor, pitching in roughly quarterly for my own accounting purposes. I've rarely missed, but don't mind your justified vitriol. You are performing an invaluable service to our country. Wake up folks. Losing RSN right now is a dangerous direction.
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Charles Pierce | The January 6 Commission Must Remain Merciless in Investigating Trump and His Lackeys' Roles
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "News never sleeps any more. I was sitting on my porch, taking the night air, when there was a palpable stirring in the cyber realm. Paper was flying in all directions."
If they want to duck and cover and plead the Fifth, let them do it on live television.
They shall be a portion for foxes. Too mean to be fit food for the lions, the foxes shall sniff around their corpses, and the jackals shall hold carnival over their carcasses.
—Psalms 63:10
News never sleeps any more. I was sitting on my porch, taking the night air, when there was a palpable stirring in the cyber realm. Paper was flying in all directions. From the New York Times:
The subpoenas, the first the panel has issued, seek information from Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Dan Scavino Jr., who was a deputy chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser; and Kash Patel, the former Pentagon chief of staff. The committee is demanding that the four men turn over documents by Oct. 7 and submit to depositions the following week…
…The subpoenas come as the committee has demanded detailed records about Mr. Trump’s every movement and meeting on the day of the assault, in requests to federal agencies that suggested it was focusing on any involvement the former president might have had in the attack’s planning or execution. Their swift issuance indicates that the panel is moving aggressively on its investigation, without pausing to negotiate with key witnesses who could furnish important information.
I have no illusions that the targets of these subpoenas won’t fight them tooth and nail, although Kash Patel’s comments in response have some interesting shards of daylight in them.
“I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the committee tried to subpoena me through the press and violated longstanding protocol — which I upheld as a congressional staffer — by resorting to compulsory process before seeking my voluntary cooperation,” Mr. Patel said in a statement. “I will continue to tell the truth to the American people about the events of Jan. 6.”
Would that were true.
They will try anything, but none of it will work if this commission remains merciless. The people served on Thursday night are unworthy of being treated as anything more than criminal defendants. If they want to duck and cover and plead the Fifth, let them do it on live television. El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is already squealing, which should be an inspiration to all right-thinking people to continue to jump up and down on his last nerve.
The “Unselect Committee” of highly partisan politicians, a similar group that perpetrated the now proven lie of Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and many other Scams, has sent out Harassment Subpoenas on Jan. 6th so that the Government of the United States can continue wasting time while Russia, China, and virtually every other country that deals with our Nation can continue to “eat our lunch,” and laugh at the stupidity of what is going on at our Southern Border, and the worst withdrawal from a war zone by any Nation in history—all of this while the Democrats persecute and prosecute Republicans which is, together with Rigging Elections, essentially all they know how to do. We will fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America.
That is what my mother used to call HIGH-sterics. We need more public tantrums, not less. The commission owes them to us. Any serious recovery from the depredations of the previous administration* is necessarily going to require painful cauterization of all our institutions because, while some of the shrapnel has been removed, the infection remains and is spreading. There’s no cure for it better than sunshine and fresh air.
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Demonstrators protest anti-abortion laws in front of the Governor's Mansion in Austin, Texas. (photo: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune)
House Passes Legislation Protecting the Right to an Abortion, but Bill Faces Unlikely Prospects in the Senate
Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY
Behrmann writes: "The House passed a piece of legislation Friday which would codify the right to an abortion into federal law."
The House passed a piece of legislation Friday which would codify the right to an abortion into federal law.
The House passed the Women's Health Protection Actwith a vote of 218-211. The legislation would guarantee a pregnant person's right to access an abortion, along with ensuring providers would be permitted to perform abortions.
The vote came after a controversial new law in Texas banning abortion after six weeks has re-ignited the debate over reproductive health across the nation.
The bill would codify into law protections provided under the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion across the country in 1973. The bill would do this by establishing a statutory right to perform or receive the procedure, free from restrictions that single out abortion care.
But the bill's future is uncertain in the 50-50 Senate. It would need at least 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, which would require the support of at least 10 Republicans. But not every Democratic-voting senator has signed on yet, either.
Effects of the Texas abortion ban
The legislation was introduced earlier this month after a divided Supreme Court denied an effort by abortion rights groups to halt a new Texas law that bans people from having the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Texas law doesn't include exceptions for rape or incest but allows people to have the procedure for "medical emergencies."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday morning the legislation is about "freedom."
"About freedom that women have choice about the size and timing of their families, not the business of people on the court or members of Congress," Pelosi said.
An uncertain future
The bill's future chances dimmed even further Tuesday after Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins,who is supportive of abortion rights, told the Los Angeles Times she opposes the legislation because it is "harmful and extreme."
“I support codifying Roe. Unfortunately the bill … goes way beyond that. It would severely weaken the conscious exceptions that are in the current law,” Collins said, according to the Times.
Collins said it would weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits the government from burdening the exercise of religion.
Following the Supreme Court's decision, reproductive rights moved back to center stage once again with abortion access advocates decrying the law and many conservative states leading a nationwide push to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In response, the Women's March, which turned up thousands of protesters in 2017 and 2018 across the country, announced they are hosting events nationwide again in early October in support of reproductive rights.
The Supreme Court's work on abortion isn't over. The court is expected to hear a blockbuster challenge to Mississippi's ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
That dispute, which could be argued at the court later this year and decided next summer right before the elections, is expected to address central questions about the constitutionality of abortion and restrictions on it imposed by states.
Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., sponsor of the Women's Health Protection Act, said Friday that "Congress must protect the rights of women and pregnant people in every zip code, putting an end to an attack on abortion once and for all."
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'The fire burned 56,388 acres and destroyed 204 buildings.' (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Manslaughter Charges Again Filed Against PG&E in Fatal California Wildfire
Dale Kasler, The Sacramento Bee
Kasler writes: "PG&E Corp. is facing criminal charges again, this time in connection with last year's fatal Zogg Fire in Shasta County."
ALSO SEE: PG&E Confesses to
Killing 84 People in 2018 California Fire
PG&E Corp. is facing criminal charges again, this time in connection with last year's fatal Zogg Fire in Shasta County.
The Shasta County district attorney, Stephanie Bridgett, said Friday that her office filed 31 felony and misdemeanor charges against California's largest utility, including four counts of manslaughter — one count for each of the four people who died when the fire broke out in September 2020.
"We have sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is criminally liable for the ignition of the Zogg Fire and the deaths and destruction it caused," she said at a press conference.
The fire began when a tree came into contact with a power line; Bridgett said the tree had been marked for removal two years earlier. The fire burned 56,388 acres and destroyed 204 buildings.
"They failed to do their legal duty," she said.
PG&E pleaded guilty to 85 counts of manslaughter after the 2018 Camp Fire destroyed most of Paradise — the deadliest wildfire in California history. The company paid a fine of $4 million — and the judge said he wishes he could have exacted a more severe penalty under the law.
Bridgett acknowledged that her indictment won't yield a prison term but she said it was necessary to hold the company accountable for its "repeated pattern of causing wildfires."
The charges aren't a surprise; Bridgett announced in late July that she planned to bring a criminal case against PG&E.
Earlier this year the Sonoma County DA filed criminal charges against PG&E over the 2019 Kincade Fire, which didn't kill anyone but prompted the evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents.
Prosecutors also investigating how Dixie Fire started
Separately, Bridgett and several other district attorneys are investigating whether PG&E should face criminal charges in connection with this year's Dixie Fire — the second largest in state history. Investigators believe the fire may have been started when a tree came into contact with PG&E power equipment.
PG&E was driven into bankruptcy by the Camp Fire and several others. It successfully emerged from Chapter 11 last year and has been spending billions on enhanced tree-trimming programs and other measures designed to reduce wildfire risk. It also overhauled its leadership at the insistence of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Bridgett said she doesn't think the utility has learned any lessons. "It appears that they haven't changed," she said.
In a tape-recorded video message released by the company, Chief Executive Patti Poppe said "my heart aches" for the death and damages but contested the DA's accusations.
While PG&E accepts Cal Fire's determination that the Zogg Fire was caused by a tree making contact with a power line, "we did not commit a crime," she said.
Dressed in a yellow safety vest and standing in front of a utility truck, Poppe said two arborists inspected the tree before the fire and both "determined the tree could stay."
Poppe, who became CEO last November, said the company is doing everything it can to reduce fire risks.
"We are not sitting idly by," she said.
The company believes its civil liabilities from the Zogg Fire could reach $375 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in July.
PG&E also was charged with 10 misdemeanor counts of "negligent emission of air pollution" over the smoke and ash generated by the Zogg Fire. In addition, the company was charged with three felony counts of recklessness in connection with three smaller fires in the county — last year's Daniel and Ponder fires and the Woody Fire a month ago.
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A woman uses her phone. (photo: Getty Images)
Former Apple Engineer Says the Button on iPhones Asking Apps Not to Track You Is a 'Dud' That Gives Users a 'False Sense of Privacy'
Hannah Towey, Business Insider
Towey writes: "Johnny Lin, a former Apple engineer and co-founder of the software company Lockdown Privacy says Apple's 'Ask App Not To Track' button is a 'dud' that gives users 'a false sense of privacy,' according to a Washington Post report."
Johnny Lin, a former Apple engineer and co-founder of the software company Lockdown Privacy says Apple's "Ask App Not To Track" button is a "dud" that gives users "a false sense of privacy," according to a Washington Post report.
Even if users request apps not to collect their activity across other companies' apps and websites, popular iPhone apps like Subway Surfers still collect personal data, a new study by Lockdown Privacy determined.
"We found that App Tracking Transparency made no difference in the total number of active third-party trackers," the study says. "We further confirmed that detailed personal or device data was being sent to trackers in almost all cases."
Sybo, the company that makes Subway Surfers, told The Washington Post that "in order for the game to function properly, some data is communicated to Ad Networks," but did not explain why detailed personal information was required. "As a company, we do not track users for advertising purposes without their consent," Sybo added.
"When the user selects 'Ask App Not to Track,' the app is informed that the user would not like to be tracked by any means, and all developers - including Apple - are strictly required to comply with the user's choice," an Apple spokesperson told Insider. "If we discover that a developer is not honoring the user's choice, we will work with the developer to address the issue, or they will be removed from the App Store."
Lockdown Privacy's findings are in stark contrast to Apple's privacy-focused marketing campaigns, highlighted in advertisements like this giant billboard in Las Vegas claiming "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone."
Critics of the ad have called it misleading. Much of what users do on their iPhones and the data they generate doesn't stay on their devices. iPhones routinely send some data to wireless carriers, websites, app developers - and to Apple's own servers and services.
Apple recently announced plans to update its iOS software to scan iPhones for child sexual abuse imagery, but has since delayed the plan after criticism from privacy advocates.
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Visitors watching Beehive Geyser eruption. (photo: Jacob W. Frank/NPS)
Yellowstone Had 1 Million Visitors in July Alone. That's Unsustainable for US National Parks
Kim Heacox, Guardian UK
Heacox writes: "National parks have been called America's best idea, and for good reason. Unlike the castles and cathedrals of Europe, they belong to everyone."
National parks are a victim of their own success. They have too many tourists – and too little funding
National parks have been called America’s best idea, and for good reason. Unlike the castles and cathedrals of Europe, they belong to everyone. They are democracy writ large, where a people otherwise fiercely devoted to capitalism say: no, not here. Here the meadow does not become a mall. Here we safeguard the beauty and sanctity of nature. Not as a potted plant or a manicured garden, but as vast, wild, largely untrammeled nature. Our original home.
Mountains, canyons, glaciers, forests, rivers, bison, bears, birds and more. National parks provoke and inspire us. They give us stories, educate us, change us. “For my life to matter, for me to do the work I’m meant to do in the world,” the wildlife biologist and author Mary Beth Baptiste writes in her park-inspired memoir Altitude Adjustment, “I have to spend my days in mountains and forests like these, among people committed to their flourishing. And all they ask in return is a simple renunciation of everything I’ve ever known to be true.”
We save national parks so they in turn might save us.
How refreshing that we who can alter any landscape on Earth should leave a few as we found them. And how ironic that we should diminish them.
A century ago, Stephen T Mather, the first director of the US National Park Service, worked hard to create new national parks, and to promote them as part of our national experience. Forget Europe, he said: “See America first.”
Yellowstone, the nation’s – and world’s – premier national park, was established in 1872 to provide what one supportive senator called “a great breathing place for the national lungs”.
It seemed enough … at first. America had its national park, something as original as baseball and the Bill of Rights. Good for us. Now, time to resume the march of capitalism, buying and selling, ditching and damming, felling forests and stringing barbed wire to make the land safe for cattle and sheep. But Yellowstone had power. Soon other parks followed: Yosemite, Sequoia, King’s Canyon, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Wind Cave, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, Olympic, Zion, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Acadia, Hawaii Volcanoes, Mount McKinley (Denali), Grand Canyon and more. A magnificent system was born, and began to grow, one that colored the maps and imaginations of people everywhere.
In 1920, when annual visitation to the parks topped 1 million, Mather celebrated. His dream was here to stay.
Fast forward 101 years to this last summer. Mather would have been astounded – chagrined, perhaps – to witness more than 1 million visitors crowd into Yellowstone in July alone.
Bumper to bumper, pandemic-weary people came in search of beauty and open space; shoulder to shoulder, they sought solitude and fresh air. And what did they find? Traffic, litter, crowds, noise, oppressive heat and long lines; America’s lungs congested with what singer-songwriter Greg Brown might call “the beautiful too many”.
“Visit Yellowstone, Zion, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky, and many other national parks this crowded summer,” wrote Kurt Repanshek, the founder and editor-in-chief of National Parks Traveler, “and you can see firsthand how the crowds are impacting not just the natural resources in these special places, but literally stomping on the national park experience.”
Several parks have introduced congestion management plans – mostly timed-reservation systems – and now, with summer over, will analyze the results.
The crowding problem has been worsening for decades. In 1978, Congress directed park superintendents to identify visitor carrying capacities. It’s a daunting task, always ongoing.
Testifying before a Senate committee in 2002, Hope Sieck, representing the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, said, “For half a decade now, fresh air has been pumped into ranger booths at the West Entrance to prevent headaches, nausea, burning eyes and other health problems caused by snowmobile exhaust … Instead of a quiet, peaceful winter wonderland, visitors today are welcomed by extreme noise, choking pollution, noxious odors and rangers in respirators.”
In his classic memoir Desert Solitaire, the author Edward Abbey recounts his two summers as a park ranger in Arches (then a national monument, in the 1950s). One day, as he’s “watching the flow of evening over the desert … the birds coming back to life, the shadows rolling for miles over rock and sand to the very base of the brilliant mountains,” he hears a “discordant note”. A jeep. Three dusty men drive up and ask for water. Abbey obliges them. They’re a survey crew, staking out a new road – to be paved, of course – that will accommodate 30 times more visitors than are here now. The head surveyor asks a skeptical Abbey what his answer is to that. Abbey’s reply: “‘Have some more water,’ I said. I had an answer all right but I was saving it for later. I knew that I was dealing with a madman.”
Today, Abbey’s Arches – a place of quiet summer solitude – is gone.
Granted, the National Park Service (NPS) has an impossible mandate – a 1916 “Organic Act” – that says it must conserve the parks and provide for their enjoyment while leaving them “unimpaired” for future generations. The NPS is also starved for money, with a maintenance backlog estimated at $13bn that grows by more than $300m each year. During the disastrous 34-day government shutdown of 2018-19, when the parks remained open but understaffed, visitors died, toilet paper blew like confetti through campgrounds, and off-road vehicles left scars that will take years to heal.
How to fix this?
Increase the NPS budget. If the US can spend roughly $300m a day for 20 years on a war in Afghanistan, it can fix its national parks. Save America first.
In Deb Haaland, we have our first Native American secretary of the interior. If the Senate confirms Charles “Chuck” Sams, a navy veteran and member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, we’ll have our first Native American director of the NPS, which could help imbue park management with indigenous sensibilities. A new directive could prioritize the scenic, historic, cultural and ecological integrity of all parks in part by establishing carrying capacities, visitor limits, a national reservation system, electric-powered public transportation, and increased opportunities for the underprivileged.
Many national monuments could be elevated to national parks. Other new parks could be carved from national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands. Neighboring state parks could be enlarged, and private lands purchased. All to help take pressure off our existing marquee national parks.
None of this will be easy, or impossible.
Our finest concert halls do not seat people in the aisles or stand them along the walls. They invite us to a later performance.
We love our national parks and want them safeguarded today and tomorrow. It will take sacrifice and patience, democracy writ large.
America’s best idea – made better.
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Haitian migrants use a dam to cross to and from the United States from Mexico, Friday, September 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. Thousands of Haitian migrants have assembled under and around a bridge in Del Rio. (photo: Eric Gay/AP)
Why America Keeps Turning Its Back on Haitian Migrants
Fabiola Cineas, Vox
Cineas writes: "The images left many sickened and outraged: Border Patrol agents on horseback hounding Haitian migrants near the US-Mexico border, more than 14,000 of whom were camped under the Del Rio bridge on September 19."
ALSO SEE: Texas Border Camp Emptied
as US Continues to Deport Haitians
The Biden administration is continuing a long history of exclusionary policy against Haitian asylum seekers.
The images left many sickened and outraged: Border Patrol agents on horseback hounding Haitian migrants near the US-Mexico border, more than 14,000 of whom were camped under the Del Rio bridge on September 19. The uniformed men swung their long horse reins — which many interpreted as whips — to keep the migrants from crossing into Texas. In one photo, an agent grabbed the T-shirt of a migrant, while another shouted in a video, “Get out now! Back to Mexico!”
Condemnation of the agents’ behavior was swift, with advocates drawing parallels to slave patrols, or the white men on horses who whipped enslaved people in cotton fields. But inhumane treatment of Black migrants, particularly Haitian migrants, is not new; it’s closely linked to the history of immigrant detention in the United States.
Haitians have sought asylum at US borders for decades, but every presidential administration since the 1970s has treated Haitians differently than other migrant groups, rejecting asylum claims, holding them longer in detention, and making it harder for them to settle down in safety. In the early 1990s, for example, when the United States detained more than 12,000 Haitian refugees at Guantanamo indefinitely, Immigration and Naturalization Services denied the vast majority of them asylum.
According to Carl Lindskoog, the author of Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the Rise of the World’s Largest Immigration Detention System, the United States’ inhumane treatment of Haitian refugees, whom the country has often cast as criminals, unskilled, diseased, and poor, has been a central part of the immigration detention story.
“Policies were specifically designed to deter Haitians from coming in. These policies became the prototype for what became a global system of migrant incarceration,” says Lindskoog, a professor of history at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey.
The current wave of Haitian migrants is fleeing a country that has experienced compounding crises. This summer, Haiti suffered a magnitude 7.2 earthquake and tropical storm that killed an estimated 2,200, with thousands more missing or injured. The July assassination of President Jovenel Moïse worsened violence and instability.
Haitians are still reeling from the January 2010 earthquake that affected 3 million people, causing irreparable damage to homes and infrastructure. Gangs have since risen in power, leading many Haitians to live in fear for their lives and families.
As Lindskoog says, what Haitians are experiencing is the kind of calamity that asylum was designed for in the period following World War II: “It is their legal right to seek asylum.”
However, some migrants hoping for asylum are instead being chased down and shut out at the border — images show them being removed from airplanes in Port-au-Prince with their belongings scattered on the airport’s tarmac — while an undisclosed number are being allowed into the United States. Biden’s decision to fly Haitians back to deadly circumstances, under a Trump-era policy, underscores the United States’ longstanding animus toward Black migrants.
I talked to Lindskoog about the history of Haitian migrant detention in the US and why America has consistently rolled out harsh policies for Haitians, without displaying compassion for immigrants from the embattled Caribbean nation. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Fabiola Cineas
This week, images and video of Border Patrol agents mounted on horseback rounding up Haitian migrants at the southern border sparked national outrage. The images depicted officials using horse reins, which many likened to whips, to control the movement of the Haitians. Can you tell me what came to mind when you saw those images?
Carl Lindskoog
The images are horrible. I agree with everyone who said it was so terribly resonant of the long history of anti-Black racism and racial violence. Those images bring a lot of strands of history together, from why the Border Patrol was created, to how violent that institution has been, to how our modern policing system comes from the enforcement of slavery. And then there is how our immigration system has been criminalized and merged into our criminal justice system, both of which have anti-Black elements. What’s happening at the border is horrifying and fits into the long intersecting history of anti-Black, anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Haitian exclusion.
Fabiola Cineas
Let’s talk more about the Border Patrol’s racist history, which has been well documented and began with its formation in the early 1920s as a kind of brotherhood with KKK members and racist Texas Rangers. Can you tell me more about how these origins were likely at play in Del Rio with Haitian migrants?
Carl Lindskoog
There is a really good book about this by Kelly Lytle Hernández called Migra! A History of The U.S. Border Patrol, in which she describes how the creation of the US Border Patrol in 1924 happened amidst a much broader anti-immigrant moment. There was the national Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 that placed new racist immigration quotas and exclusions as part of American immigration policy.
It was the gatekeeping mechanism at the time for keeping out who we don’t want to come across on American shores. [Author’s note: For example, the law favored migration from Northern and Western European countries and decreased the annual immigration cap from 350,000 to 165,000.]
Simultaneously, the Border Patrol — which evolved out of a longer history of anti-migrant, anti-Mexican white supremacist violence along the US borderlands — was introduced to police to control the movement of Mexican migrants in particular, but also other people who might cross the southern border.
Fabiola Cineas
Yes, many people tend to only think of Mexican migrants trying to cross the southern border. But there are people from Caribbean countries taking long, arduous treks across water and through numerous nations and terrains to seek American asylum. For example, reports have suggested that many of the more than 14,000 Haitian migrants who were camped under the Del Rio International Bridge had actually left Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and had stopped in places like Brazil and Chile but have been on the move to Mexico due to various circumstances. What kinds of conditions have these migrants faced in the past 10 or so years?
Carl Lindskoog
From what I’ve learned from organizations like the Haitian Bridge Alliance and from reporters who have gone down to places like Brazil to report on conditions, especially after the economic downturn and other crises in Brazil, is that they couldn’t stay there. So they went to Chile and didn’t have the greatest reception there and sometimes faced a harrowing journey through jungles and across borders.
There’s a gigantic immigration detention facility in southern Mexico, where Mexico does a lot of the dirty work of the United States by detaining people who’ve crossed the border with Guatemala. If they got out of there, and were able to make it through the dangerous terrain up to the US-Mexico border, that is a major act of survival because of everything that they had to face in coming so many miles and facing so many police forces, prisons, and natural challenges. And then to see the images and read the reports that they’re living in that large encampment now, and just trying to get food and water and then to face that violent reprisal by the US Border Patrol — it’s just unimaginable.
Fabiola Cineas
And how does this modern-day situation compare to the kind of treatment Haitian migrants have traditionally received over the past couple of decades, whether they’re entering through the southern border or trying to get to Florida’s shores by boat?
Carl Lindskoog
They have, for most of history, been met with exclusion. During the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, most Haitians were coming on student visas or tourist visas, and then if they didn’t have authorization to stay, they were overstaying their visa. There were also a number of political exiles. So they weren’t really on the radar and seen as a big problem. They were establishing themselves in neighborhoods in New York primarily, and in Boston and elsewhere in Canada.
It’s really in the early to mid-1970s when the so-called “boat people,” which is a different demographic — more working-class, urban, displaced Haitians — started to come by boats and ships, trying to make it to American shores. When they tried to put in asylum claims was when they started to be more on the radar of American authorities.
That triggered this racist backlash, especially in South Florida, because it was at a moment when there was already a racist backlash to the civil rights movement. So to have all these poor unauthorized migrants who don’t speak English, that are Black, showing up, there’s this really racist reaction.
South Floridians started to put pressure on their local officials, who then turned to Washington, and there was a very concerted effort to keep Haitians out. The Carter administration introduced something called the Haitian Program — a punishing set of policies designed to deter Haitians from coming in. And if they were already here, it tried to keep them out of the mainstream population. That meant putting them in detention facilities and local jails, basically denying them carte blanche their asylum claims and just sending them back.
There was a big legal challenge in 1980, Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti, where Haitian migrants and their advocates got a federal judge named James Lawrence King to recognize in a ruling that this practice was not only discriminatory but also racist. Haitians were being excluded because they were Black and because they were Haitian. King overturned the Haitian Program, but the Carter administration worked to circumvent it like subsequent administrations would.
When the Reagan administration came into power, they introduced a new Haitian detention program and the policy of interdiction, in which Coast Guard cutters would intercept boats of Haitian asylum seekers before they could even reach land and send them back, often to violence and death in Haiti. That process continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
The Biden administration’s mass denial of asylum claims, which they’re doing by invoking Title 42 — a 2020 Trump administration coronavirus policy that has been used to expel more than a million migrants without hearings before an immigration judge — is not something new. This is something that both Republican and Democratic administrations have done, and it very much fits with the long history of the US government denying the legitimacy of Haitians’ asylum claims and sending them to a dangerous and often deadly situation.
Fabiola Cineas
It seems presidents of all backgrounds and in both parties have engaged in harm toward Haiti and Haitian migrants. US involvement in Haiti has often led to periods of instability there, but then the US has at times in the past turned around and interned Haitians at Guantanamo.
Carl Lindskoog
The coup d’état against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, happened when George H.W. Bush was in power, and he sort of paid lip service to the illegitimate military government that was ruling after Aristide was put out of office. But Bush refused to accept Haitian asylum seekers and did everything the US government could to keep Haitians from being able to seek safe haven, even though the human rights atrocities after the coup were well-documented.
There was another set of legal challenges and legal battles in the courts to give Haitians asylum, some of which were somewhat successful, but that’s the period when Guantanamo was first established as an offshore prison to try to serve as a buffer for people whom you don’t even want to allow to get to American shores to seek asylum. And Haitians were the first Guantanamo detainees.
When Bill Clinton was running for president and trying to defeat George H.W. Bush, he promised to reverse that. A lot of Americans and people around the world were indignant about the Bush administration’s treatment of Haitians. “Of course we’re gonna let Haitians in,” Clinton said. But after he was elected, he reversed course and turned his back on the Haitians and said, “Well, we don’t want to trigger another humanitarian crisis by taking people because then more people will go out on this perilous journey across the ocean.” He was trying to invoke humanitarian reasons for still denying people the right to seek asylum.
Meanwhile, more Haitians filled up Guantanamo, some of whom were HIV positive and had AIDS. That began another chapter in what one scholar calls the carceral quarantine of Haitians for medical reasons. This was similar to what’s happening today because Title 42 is built on the basis of public health mandates to exclude people. While many people were forcibly returned from Guantanamo to Haiti, a number of those Haitians who remained at Guantanamo were able to make it to the United States after intense political and legal struggle.
Fabiola Cineas
There’s historically also been a difference between how Cuban migrants and Haitian migrants have been treated, which many scholars point out is based on skin color. Is it useful to compare the plight of various migrant groups trying to make it into the United States?
Carl Lindskoog
I think it is useful. I think there are a lot of interesting polarities in the experience of Haitians and Cubans in how they come to the United States. The best example of course was the summer of 1980 when more than 100,000 Cubans came by boat seeking asylum, and so did approximately 15,000 Haitians.
The Refugee Act of 1980 had just passed, but it didn’t have clear instructions for how to treat vast numbers of asylum seekers, so initially, both Cubans and Haitians were placed in refugee camps on military bases across the United States. But pretty quickly, Cubans, for the most part, were released and allowed to be with family members and the Cuban community. Haitians languished in detention much longer.
For the Haitians that came after, a special piece of legislation was passed to adjust their status known as the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Act of 1980. But the Haitians that came after the act were again treated just like the ones that came before — excluded and barred. Cubans never suffered the same kind of exclusion or mass detention that Haitians did, despite the fact that they’re both coming from Caribbean nations and seeking asylum.
Fabiola Cineas
How do these exclusionary policies translate to how Haitians are treated once in America?
Carl Lindskoog
For the Haitian community and Haitian migrants in particular, they’ve repeatedly been targeted as disease carriers, which historically has also been a racialized notion not only of the foreign-born but especially of the nonwhite foreign-born. In the 1970s, their incarceration exclusion was sometimes justified on the basis that they were carrying tuberculosis. In the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, it became the notion that they were carrying AIDS. But Haitians said all along that singling them out is discriminatory because they aren’t any more likely to be diseased than other people. It is racialized stigmatization.
The same thing goes for criminalization. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration has documented how Black immigrants are much more likely to be incarcerated, how they spend much more time in detention, and how their asylum cases, deportation cases, and immigration appeals are much more likely to be denied. That’s part of how immigration enforcement blends into the criminal justice system and policing — now that there’s a criminalized racial immigration system, often a migrant’s first point of contact in this country is with law enforcement.
A lot of municipalities and localities have an agreement between their local law enforcement in the immigration system that they will refer any unauthorized or undocumented person or someone with some kind of immigration issue over to the immigration system. They then get put into the immigration system based on some racialized reading about who they are and are disproportionately likely to be detained or deported.
Fabiola Cineas
So it’s clear that Haitian migrants are particularly demonized and criminalized, but I also think another element to their story is erasure. It feels like not many people know about this history. Even in the past decade or so, conversations about immigrants tend to leave out Black immigrants in general. Research from the nonprofit organization RAICES found that 44 percent of families that ICE locked up during the pandemic last year were Haitian and that this information was underreported.
A February 2021 report from the American Immigration Council stated that at one detention center in 2020, nearly half of the families threatened with family separation were Black and originated from Haiti, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Afro-Latino communities in Latin America. What does the erasure signify?
Carl Lindskoog
Black migrants, Black immigrants, and Black asylum seekers are often left out of discussions of immigration, immigrant rights, and immigrant justice. In the media, when we are having these big national debates, we tend to think more about Central Americans and other Latin Americans, not the Caribbean so much. And, of course, in recent years, there were large numbers of displaced people coming from Central America — and that’s part of why that drew the attention.
But it’s also true that Haitians only appear from time to time in conversation, and it’s not understood that their experiences track really closely to a lot of other asylum seekers.
Fabiola Cineas
Even with the current attention being paid to the treatment of Haitian migrants, it’s still unclear how the United States is going to decide which Haitians they allow in and which they don’t. The Biden administration’s initial response was to schedule seven flights a day to send Haitians at the border back. But then the Associated Press reported that Haitians were being released to El Paso, Texas; Arizona; and other places for 60 days before they’d have to appear at an immigration office. There’s not much transparency about how these decisions are being made.
Carl Lindskoog
The Biden administration is under intense political pressure from different sides and from different interests, just as previous administrations have been. The administration is trying to maintain its image as being very different from the Trump administration, especially when it comes to racism and anti-immigrant nativist xenophobia, but I don’t believe that his policies have yet proven to be very different.
[Vice President] Kamala Harris can stand there and say she is horrified, and [press secretary] Jen Psaki can say the same. But the whole reason the inhumane treatment of Haitians is happening is because the Biden administration is continuing the Trump administration’s illegitimate and unjustified use of Title 42, which is a way of denying the asylum process to which Haitians and all other people are entitled, by both our own federal law and international law.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorcas made a strong statement to migrants saying that if they come here illegally, they’re going to be removed, that they are going to fail. But it’s not illegal to claim asylum. It is a legal right to claim asylum. Migrants have to have a legitimate fear of past or future persecution in their home country on the basis of a number of categories — if they can prove that, then they’ve proven their asylum case and are supposed to be allowed to stay.
Fabiola Cineas
Many activists have used the phrase “Haitians are owed.” There’s this idea that the world owes Haiti and has played a role in its plight. What do you think about this in the context of what took place at the border this week?
Carl Lindskoog
We do all owe Haitians for the Haitian Revolution, which successfully ended in 1804 and was the most sweeping human rights revolution in all of human history. Haitian liberation, first from slavery and then from colonialism and achieving independence, was a victory for all enslaved, oppressed people, including Black Americans.
In many ways, Haitians, sadly, because they’ve so often been targeted by racism and injustice, have kept fighting in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s in this country and in others. Their determination to liberate themselves and other people they’ve struggled alongside continues to be a model for how all incarcerated, enslaved, and otherwise abused people can find their liberation. That’s one major reason we owe a debt of gratitude to Haitians.
That’s even more reason to fight alongside them for justice today at the US-Mexico border and wherever they encounter racism and discrimination.
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Hundreds of schoolchildren take part in a climate protest. (photo: Kin Cheung/AP)
Inspired by Greta Thunberg, Global Climate Activists Take to the Streets Again
Andy Eckardt and Rhea Mogul, NBC News
Excerpt: "Climate activists allied with Swedish teen campaigner Greta Thunberg were on Friday demonstrating in some 70 countries to demand global action ahead of a key summit in the United Kingdom."
"We want leading politicians to publicly declare that Germany is in a climate emergency," Henning Jeschke, 21, said.
Climate activists allied with Swedish teen campaigner Greta Thunberg were on Friday demonstrating in some 70 countries to demand global action ahead of a key summit in the United Kingdom.
"We can still turn this around," Thunberg, 18, told thousands of protesters in front of Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin.
Thunberg and prominent German climate activist Luisa Neubauer also accused politicians of falling short, saying the programs of the country's political parties were not far-reaching enough to limit global warming.
“There are natural disasters all over the world,” said fellow protester Quang Paasch, 21. “We are frustrated and angry. We need structural change, a social plan and actions that are based on scientific evidence.”
The protests organized by Fridays for Future, which was inspired by Thunberg, were the first such mass action since the coronavirus pandemic began.
In Germany, activists' calls have taken on renewed urgency after heavy rains in July killed at least 180 people and devastated cities across Western Europe. Global warming has made these kinds of events between 1.2 and 9 times more likely, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution initiative, which assesses the role of climate change in the aftermath of the extreme weather events.
The climate crisis prompted Henning Jeschke, 21, to declare a hunger strike three weeks ago.
"Nothing has been done," he told NBC News in a makeshift camp near the protest two days ahead of Germany's federal election. "We want leading politicians to publicly declare that Germany is in a climate emergency."
Awareness about the climate crisis in Germany is higher than ever, with young protesters hoping to pressure candidates to discuss the issue with them.
Thunberg also joined Friday’s demonstrations in Berlin, and planned to address protesters in front of the Bundestag.
The protests were taking place five weeks before the United Nations COP26 summit, which has been billed as the last chance for world leaders to commit to dramatically cutting greenhouse gas emissions — vital to prevent the most disastrous effects of global warming.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Tuesday that the world was “seemingly light years away” from reaching climate targets.
According to him, there needed to be 45 percent cut in emissions by 2030, but per current national trends, emissions are expected to go up by 16 percent.
A study by Britain's University of Bath also found that 58 percent of children and young people surveyed said they were "being betrayed" by governments over climate change inaction, while 64 percent said their political leaders are not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Elsewhere, Disha Ravi, an Indian climate activist who became a symbol for the nation’s crackdown on dissent during mass farmers’ protests, demonstrated in the southern city of Bengaluru on Friday. Protests also took place in the nation's capital, New Delhi.
In the Philippines, dozens of protesters gathered in the capital Manila, according to Fridays for Future. In Japan, several protesters held signs and slogans supporting the movement. New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, also joined calls for the strike, with Fridays for Future sharing video from the demonstrations on Twitter.
Also Friday, Paralympian gold medalist James Brown was sentenced to 12 months in prison by a judge in a London court after being found guilty of public nuisance for climbing on top of a plane at London City Airport during an Extinction Rebellion climate protest in 2019, the organization said in a statement.
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