A surge in killings by police roils Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Gabriel Stargardter. Reuters. October 9, 2019


Just before leaving her teaching job on the afternoon of May 17, Alessandra Mattos received a panicked voice message.


“Alessandra!” a relative said. “There’s been an accident with Brayan.”


She grabbed her things, flagged a motorcycle taxi and rushed to a slum in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of São Gonçalo. There, dead in a pool of blood, lay Brayan Mattos dos Santos, the 19-year-old nephew she helped raise.


She tried to get closer, but a policeman blocked her advance.


“It wasn’t me,” Mattos said the officer told her. “It wasn’t me.”


The “accident,” Mattos soon learned, was the sort of fate dreaded by families of young, dark-skinned men across South America’s most populous country. Black and mixed-race youths like dos Santos long have been disproportionately represented among homicide victims in Brazil, the country with the world’s highest number of murders. Now, amid a crackdown on suspected criminals championed by President Jair Bolsonaro, they are increasingly dying at the hands of police.


No weapons, narcotics or other illegal materials were found on dos Santos, a car and motorcycle enthusiast who had recently begun driving for Uber. He appears, instead, to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time — near a street stall for illegal drugs just as a police raid went down. His death, in a state where killings by police have climbed by 16% this year, according to government figures, is being investigated by Rio prosecutors.


The raid is one of many lethal operations that human rights activists, some Rio residents and opposition lawmakers see as part of a bloody and illegal campaign to clean up historically violent neighborhoods across Latin America’s biggest country. Emboldened by victories last year of far-right politicians with aggressive law-and-order agendas, Brazil’s police forces are surpassing their own longstanding reputations for being among the most violent in the world.


The slain include victims like dos Santos, who had no known criminal ties. In late September, hundreds gathered in northern Rio to grieve the death of an eight-year-old girl who was shot, according to bystanders, by a policeman who missed when aiming at a motorcyclist. Her death, one of several children allegedly shot by police this year, is still being investigated.


Two top commanders of Rio’s military and civil police forces, which together are responsible for security in the state, told Reuters that police have never received or issued orders to kill. Officers, rather, are finding themselves in more violent confrontations because of a nearly 50% increase in the number of raids, a response to higher crime.


“An officer never has the objective of killing,” said Fábio Barucke, operational head of the civil police. “But we have a responsibility to defend ourselves.”


Rio, a state of 17 million people that includes the seaside metropolis of the same name, has long been known as a hotbed of conflict between criminal gangs and sometimes trigger-happy police. Now, with Bolsonaro and a like-minded governor urging lawmen to get even tougher, tensions, violence and the death toll are mounting.


Bolsonaro is seeking to boost legal protections for police who kill on the job, proposing in a bill to lessen sentences for officers who shoot because of “excusable fear, surprise or violent emotion.” He has said criminals should “die like cockroaches.” Wilson Witzel, Rio’s governor, has ordered snipers to fire on suspects from helicopters. Witzel recently told foreign journalists that suspects, when confronted by police, should “surrender or die.”


The police feel authorized to kill. The discourse stimulates violence.”


To some in the political opposition, the rhetoric of Brazil’s new leaders is reminiscent of Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president whose offensive against drug dealers has led to thousands of killings by police. “The police feel authorized to kill,” said Marcelo Freixo, a congressman from Rio and veteran researcher on violence and organized crime. “The discourse stimulates violence.”


Reuters found no evidence that Bolsonaro, Witzel or other right-wing leaders elected in a wave of populist protest last year have ordered police to break laws or methodically kill criminal suspects. Bolsonaro’s justice minister, Sérgio Moro, told Reuters that the administration doesn’t advocate police violence.


“Confrontations between police and criminals are always undesirable,” he said in an interview in Brasília, the capital. “You don’t resolve public security with confrontations, but with intelligence, strategy, due process and state presence.”


Between January and August 2019, Rio police killed 1,249 people, according to official figures, nearly a fifth more than a year ago. The rate amounts to 5 people per day, more for the period than any since the state began keeping its current database in 2003. By contrast, 14 police officers have died in operations this year, down from 24 killed on duty between January and August 2018.


LETHAL ENFORCEMENT


Recent nationwide figures aren’t available, but killings by police have also climbed in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous state, and other major urban areas.


Like dos Santos, most victims of police killings are dark-skinned, a reflection of the socioeconomic and racial makeup of poor neighborhoods where most drug traffickers and other criminal gangs operate. Although whites make up half the population in Rio, they accounted for 12% of those killed by police early this year, according to government data obtained by Reuters via a freedom of information request.


It’s impossible to calculate how many of the victims are believed to have been innocent bystanders. Human-rights activists, however, say they believe that the surge in killings indicates some police are out to kill, regardless of any evidence or the risk of collateral damage.


“These numbers aren’t those of a few murders,” said Freixo, the congressman. “They are numbers of execution, of extermination.”


Officially, many of the deaths in police operations are attributed to “resistance” by suspects. Police, wary of heavily armed gangs, argue they have little choice but to shoot in self defense, especially in labyrinthine slums where gangs can easily ambush them. But local and international activists have for decades decried excessive force and outright executions by police.


The problem predates Bolsonaro.


After a 2003 visit to Brazil, a special rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights wrote that she was “overwhelmed with information about human rights violations.” She criticized Brazil’s government, especially some state administrations, because they “fail to fully accept the existence of extrajudicial and summary executions.”


In early September, Michelle Bachelet, a former Chilean president who is now the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, criticized Brazil for “discourse legitimizing summary executions.” In response, Bolsonaro criticized Bachelet for pursuing the agenda “of criminals” and “attacking our valiant police.”


Dos Santos died at the hands of Rio’s 7th Military Police Battalion, the state’s most lethal. The unit, one of 39 battalions in Rio, since 2003 has killed 1,055 people. Through August, 137 civilians this year have died in operations involving the 7th, 35 more than any other battalion in the state.


The 7th operates “in very complex geography,” said Rogério Figueredo, commander of Rio’s military police force. “There are various communities with several criminal factions all disputing the territory.”


According to a police report reviewed by Reuters, dos Santos’ death may have been accidental. Officers, the report said, returned fire after being shot at by suspects. Dos Santos died because of “intervention by a state agent.”


To understand his killing and the recent rise in the body count, Reuters spoke to police and government officials, security experts, human rights researchers, and friends and family of dos Santos. The picture that emerges, including exclusive details about the May raid in São Gonçalo, is that of an entrenched conflict worsening amid the law-and-order agenda of a new populist leadership.


“WHAT WE WANT TO HEAR”


The very structure of Brazilian police forces has long been controversial.


After a two-decade military dictatorship that ended in the 1980s, a new constitution gave responsibility for most law enforcement to each of Brazil’s 26 states. Rather than reinvent their forces, the states kept a military format for police charged with everyday law enforcement. A “civil police” force were made responsible for investigations and working with prosecutors. But the beat cops and routine patrols that most Brazilians encounter still operate within a highly regimented, militaristic structure.


As a result, everything from the fortresslike architecture of police stations to the language used by officers still reflects a barracks mentality. Training is often phrased in terms of “us” against “them.” Criminals are “the enemy.”


“The mold is that of the military,” said Fernando Salema, a former commander of the 7th battalion who is now a lawmaker, from Bolsonaro’s party, in the Rio state assembly. “We inherited that culture.”


That culture is often in sharp relief in Rio.


Clashes are as much a part of the landscape as its verdant hillsides and dramatic juxtaposition of rich and poor. Shootouts and the hum of police helicopters are a daily reality for many in a state where haphazard planning led slums and wealthy neighborhoods to co-exist in a dense urban tangle.


São Gonçalo, a hardscrabble suburb across the bay that carves Rio’s coastline, in recent decades became one of the state’s most violent areas. Per capita income, about $4,000 a year, is similar to that of El Salvador and less than a third the level in the city of Rio.


Once an industrial center, São Gonçalo has increasingly become a base for criminal gangs who smuggle drugs and weapons through the bay and hijack nearby highway cargo. It’s also one of many areas around Rio where so-called “militias,” violent criminal enterprises made up of retired and off-duty police, control extortion rackets and other illegal ventures.


In 2011, Patricia Acioli, a state judge who jailed dozens of corrupt São Gonçalo police, was shot 21 times outside her home. Eleven officers from the 7th, including its chief, were convicted of planning and executing the murder.


“São Gonçalo is a giant favela,” or slum, said another recent commander of the 7th. The officer, who now leads another battalion and spoke on condition of anonymity, said crime is so common it seeps into the force. “It has a corrupt population, and the officers come from the same.”


Earlier this decade, as Rio prepared to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, locals in São Gonçalo complained yet more criminals were moving in because of a police cleanup near beaches, hotels and sporting venues. When a deep recession took root shortly thereafter, crime worsened across Brazil. In 2017, a record 64,000 murders were reported nationwide, more than in any other country.


Already exasperated with the downturn and a far-reaching corruption scandal, voters swung sharply right, electing Bolsonaro and other populist conservatives last year. A former fringe congressman with little record as a lawmaker, Bolsonaro was best known for incendiary comments, including a 2015 quip in which he said police “should kill more.” Witzel, a former judge, was unfamiliar to most of Rio’s electorate until he too outmaneuvered veteran rivals with promises to purge crime.


After taking office in January, the two politicians embraced their law-and-order mandate. Witzel rode along with rifle-wielding police in a helicopter and posted the video online, promising to “bring peace back.” In an opinion piece in a local newspaper, he said the surge in police killings “isn’t difficult to justify.”


Some police say they felt invigorated. “It’s what we want to hear,” Salema, the former commander turned assemblyman, told Reuters.


“NO OTHER OPTION”


On Salema’s old beat, police this year began struggling with an internecine war within the local branch of the Comando Vermelho, or CV, one of Brazil’s most powerful drug gangs. After one CV boss in April killed a rival, fighting between factions spilled onto the streets. Gun battles erupted across São Gonçalo, and schools, hospitals and bus routes shut down.


The violence soon spread to other parts of Rio, prompting operations by police seeking to track down those responsible. In Maré, a slum near Rio’s international airport, a police helicopter on May 6 flew overhead and began shooting, according to local residents.


By the end of the operation, police had killed eight suspects, including four who had been surrounded after running into a home. A resident of the home told state prosecutors she hid in another room and heard the confrontation. A prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave Reuters details of her account.


When police entered, the resident told prosecutors, two of the men gave up. But the officers rejected their surrender, according to the resident, replying, “our order is to kill.” The police then shot the two men and, finding the other two suspects on the roof, shot them, too. Before a forensics team could arrive, the resident told prosecutors, the police dragged the four bodies outside.


The officers, the prosecutor said, told investigators they only fired after being shot at. Rio’s civil police force, which ordered and conducted the operation, said it is still carrying out its own investigation and couldn’t comment on specifics of the raid.


Eleven days later, in São Gonçalo, officers from the 7th battalion conducted the raid that killed dos Santos. As part of their efforts to curb gang activity, police had targeted a point of sale for drugs in the São Gonçalo slum of Chumbada.


Around 4:40 p.m., according to the police report reviewed by Reuters, at least four officers neared the drug stall and split into two teams. One team, Captain Renato de Souza and Sargent Andre Ricardo Mendes, took one path toward the stall. A second, Corporal Erik Ribeiro and Corporal Alex Dias, took another.


Reuters was unable to confirm the details of the police report independently. Police officials declined a request to speak with the officers.


As the operation got underway, dos Santos had gone to a shop in Chumbada to buy clothes for a party that evening, according to Mattos, his aunt. She showed Reuters a credit card receipt for the purchase, which she said came from dos Santos’ telephone, valued at 217.79 reais, or about $53.


“It’s expensive here,” dos Santos texted a friend in a message, seen by Reuters, about 10 minutes before the raid began.


According to statements the officers gave civil police investigators, Ribeiro and Dias were approaching the stall when gunfire burst from a group of about six people. It isn’t clear from the report who within that group is alleged to have fired. The officers, carrying high-caliber rifles made by Imbel, a Brazilian state-owned manufacturer of military weaponry, said they returned fire. Ribeiro fired 23 times, Dias 31.


During the firefight, Ribeiro told investigators, one person fell to the ground “near a shop.” Two others fled on a Honda motorcycle; several more escaped on foot. Another man, his shirt stained by a bullet wound in the shoulder, put his hands up and dropped to the ground.


Ribeiro and Dias approached the drug stall as the other two officers pursued the motorcycle. The injured man, still prone and unarmed, told police he had gone there to buy marijuana. Several meters beyond the stall, on a residential street, lay dos Santos.


Renato Perez, a civil police chief in São Gonçalo with knowledge of the raid, told Reuters he suspected dos Santos had gone there to buy marijuana. He offered no evidence or documentation to support that claim. Mattos, the aunt, denied the assertion, saying her nephew didn’t use drugs.


“They always have to invent something,” she said.


Mendes and de Souza, the officers who chased the motorcycle, caught up with the two suspects on a nearby street. According to the police report, one of the men carried 65.2 grams of marijuana and a 9 mm pistol with two bullets and its serial number scraped off. The other carried 49.7 grams of cocaine and a walkie-talkie.


The two were detained and charged with resisting arrest and possession of narcotics. They are awaiting trial, according to Rio’s public defenders’ office and state court filings. No other suspects were apprehended and no other weapons were found.


Danielle Costa, the civil police investigator who authored the report, concluded the officers had acted legitimately. They had “no other option,” she wrote, but to “use their firearms, in legitimate defense and to overcome resistance posed by lawbreakers.”


The civil police declined to make Costa available for an interview.


State prosecutors are probing the operation.


Andrea Amin, a Rio prosecutor who investigates police killings, in an interview told Reuters the law-and-order rhetoric risks legitimizing excessive force and a lack of due process. “A rise in deaths can’t be seen as a successful public security policy,” she said.

Oil contaminating Brazil's beaches 'very likely from Venezuela', minister says

Anna Jean Kaiser. The Guardian. October 10, 2019


Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.


Brazilian authorities have been investigating the growing disaster for more than a month, as the oil has spread to more than 130 beaches across nine states.


On Wednesday, the country’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, told a congressional hearing that a study by the state oil company Petrobras had concluded that the oil “is very likely from Venezuela”.


He said that a foreign ship near Brazil’s coastline appeared to have caused the spill “accidentally or not”.


Salles said that more than 100 tonnes of oil had already been collected from the coastline since 2 September, but said that the disaster was proving “enormously difficult to contain”.


There was no immediate response from Venezuela, but the Brazilian assertion is likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, is a longstanding critic of Venezuela’s embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, and has close relations with rightwing Venezuelan groups seeking his overthrow.


Earlier this week, Bolsonaro dismissed speculation that the spill had been released by a sinking ship. “If it was a shipwreck, oil would still be coming up. It is more probable that something was dumped there criminally,” he told reporters.


Bolsonaro said he did not want to blame another country without proof, but hinted darkly: “We have a country on our radar screen that could be the origin of the oil.”


Petrobras’s chief executive, Roberto Castello, said on Tuesday that the amount of oil spilled so far – approximately 500 barrels – was far too much to have been from the result of a routine tank cleaning.


Social media users have shared shocking images of the spill, showing kilometers of white sand stained with oil blotches and dead, oil-covered turtles and dolphins. One video shows thick black oil lapping up against a rocky jetty.


The oil’s appearance came shortly after Brazil became the focus of international criticism over record wildfires and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest – both of which have surged since Bolsonaro came to office.


Environmentalists and indigenous leaders say that Bolsonaro’s stripping back of environmental legislation and protections has stoked a fresh assault on the country’s ecosystems.


“The oil spill that’s reached over 132 beaches in the north-east is criminal. Removing the residue from the ocean can take 10 to 20 years,” said the former environment minister Marina Silva in a tweet. “This is a warning that we need to strengthen and not suffocate the environmental monitoring institutions in the country.”

US, in reversal, does not support Brazil's entry to OECD

JUSTINE COLEMAN. The Hill. October 10, 2019


The U.S. government has reportedly rejected Brazil's attempt to enter the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in a reversal after backing its bid for months.


Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied a petition to consider opening up the OECD to Brazil, according to a letter sent to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria on Aug. 28 that was obtained by Bloomberg. Pompeo said in the letter the U.S. only supported Argentina and Romania joining the 36-member group.


“The U.S. continues to prefer enlargement at a measured pace that takes into account the need to press for governance and succession planning,” Bloomberg reported the letter said.


President Trump had announced in a March press conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro that he backed Brazil entering the OECD. Brazil submitted its application in May 2017. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross confirmed Trump's announcement when visiting Brazil, according to Bloomberg.


A senior official told Bloomberg that the U.S. is supportive of an eventual Brazilian entry to the group but wants to prioritize Argentina and Romania because of their economic reform and free market commitment.


Membership in the nearly 60-year-old OECD is typically viewed as a sign of a country's developed economy.


OECD spokesperson in Washington confirmed that six prospective members have applied and are under consideration but declined to comment on the "confidential" discussions regarding the application approval.


The Hill reached out to the State Department for comment.

'A New Normal That Is Not Normal': 2.5 Million to Lose Power Across Northern California to Prevent Wildfires

"Climate change isn't tomorrow. Climate change is now. This is it."

Julia Conley, staff writer

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/10/new-normal-not-normal-25-million-lose-power-across-northern-california-prevent

The reality that an estimated half million people or more across North California on Thursday entered the second day of planned power outages in order to prevent a repeat of deadly and extreme wildfires in the region is prompting outrage across the region as critics condemn the failures and greed of PG&E, the state's largest utility, as unacceptable in this age of climate-related disasters.

The scheduled power outage over the coming days could affect 34 of California's 58 counties and 2.5 million people by the time it ends.

In the Sacramento Bee, columnist Marcos Breton wrote an op-ed calling the controlled outage, the largest blackout in California history, "a new normal that is not normal."

"Climate change isn't tomorrow," Breton wrote. "Climate change is now. This is it. We're living it now. And if that sounds like stating the obvious, well, then it's still worth repeating because not enough people believe the obvious."

PG&E commenced the blackout amid 20 to 45 mile-per-hour wind forecasts that were similar to those which affected the area two years ago and contributed to wildfires that tore through 1.2 million acres of forested land. Last year, historic wildfires in California destroyed at least one town and killed 86 people.

In a scathing editorial in The Mercury News, the newspaper argues that only PG&E, which it calls the state's "least trusted utility," could make such an epic mess of a public safety issue like this.

"Safety, of course, comes first," reads the editorial. "No one wants a repeat of the deadly blazes of 2017 and 2018. But the utility's plan for a massive shutdown of 800,000 customers cannot become the new normal."

It continues, "the size of the shutdown is an admission that PG&E has yet again failed to adequately maintain its power lines. Consumers should be outraged that the utility, a convicted felon, has subjected them to some of the highest rates in the nation and then routinely failed to meet basic safety standards."

The outage has already been linked to a number of traffic accidents as Californians navigate intersections where stop lights are not working and grocery store customers reported hours-long lines as they attempt to stock up on essentials. Lines at gas stations "were 20 cars deep on Tuesday night" as residents prepared for shortages, the New York Times reported.

Rafael Navar, California State Director for Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, released a statement Wednesday saying Sanders's Green New Deal proposal and plan to invest $526 billion in a modern electrical grid could prevent PG&E from using controlled blackouts as a means to stem the deadly impact of the climate crisis.

Sanders "is the only candidate with a plan that will end the greed in our energy system and will distribute power through public power districts, municipally- and cooperatively-owned utilities with democratic, public ownership, and other existing utilities that demonstrate a commitment to the public interest," Navar said.

"No one in this country should be losing power in their home because large corporations have failed to invest in a smart, safe, and modern electrical grid," he added.

Earlier this year, a federal judge slammed PG&E for doling out $4.5 billion in dividends to its shareholders while spending insufficient funds on its tree-trimming budget in an effect to prevent forest fires.

But Breton warned that to solely blame PG&E for its neglect and its handling of the blackout was akin to ignoring the true culprits behind more frequent and destructive wildfires as well as other extreme weather events:

Do we fully understand what is amiss here? If your answer stops at PG&E then the answer is no. We don't get it.

Too many of us—myself included—have viewed climate change as a tomorrow problem. Or as a partisan argument.

But that's where we've been wrong—terribly, frighteningly, mortally wrong.

At Slate, April Glaser expressed hope that millions of Californians who could be without power for days would help convince lawmakers of the numerous present-day effects of the climate crisis and continued investment in climate-warming fossil fuels.

"What we do need is for our federal, state, and local politicians to feel immense pressure now to realize this problem is only going to keep getting worse, unless they do something," Glaser wrote. "We can't keep hopping from crisis to crisis like this. We need to realize that we are living in climate change, and this is the cost. But my fear is that once the lights go back on, things will go back to normal until the next disaster strikes again." 

Breton pointed out that while the phrase "new normal" has been used in recent years for drought, extreme heat, and wildfires, it must now be applied to "going dark."

"We have a new normal in which our lives are disrupted by climate change," Breton wrote. "The science is irrefutable and the impacts are being felt by Californians today. They are sitting in darkened houses. They are stuck at intersections where the signal lights are off. They are paying through the nose for generators. They are frightened by high winds, praying for rain."

Law Professor's Advice to House Democrats: Arrest Rudy Giuliani

"The House arresting someone would be explosive and clearly should not be undertaken lightly. But the very explosiveness of it would be a way for the House to signal the seriousness of White House obstructionism to the public."

Eoin Higgins, staff writer

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/10/law-professors-advice-house-democrats-arrest-rudy-giuliani

Faced with an intransigent White House unwilling to cooperate with an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's pressuring of the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival former Vice President Joe Biden, the House should take aggressive action including arresting Rudy Giuliani, a law professor argues in a column for The New York Times Thursday. 

"The answer is unlikely to be found in a courtroom," writes law professor Josh Chafetz. 

The White House has repeatedly refused to answer subpoenas and on Tuesday afternoon, as Common Dreams reported, announced in an eight page letter that the administration will flatly refuse to cooperate in the inquiry, a move that could set up a constitutional crisis.

"There is no legal basis for Trump's position," NBC analyst Katie Phang said on Twitter Tuesday. "Hard stop."

House Democrats need to think outside the box, Chafetz argues.

"The House should instead put back on the table the option of using its sergeant-at-arms to arrest contemnors—as the person in violation of the order is called—especially when an individual, like Rudy Giuliani, is not an executive branch official," Chaftez writes.

Chafetz acknowledges that the move was extreme, but said that the net benefits of taking things to that level would outweigh the possible negatives of such an action and allow for the House to open the door to other punitive actions seen as less radical.

"The House arresting someone would be explosive and clearly should not be undertaken lightly," says Chafetz. "But the very explosiveness of it would be a way for the House to signal the seriousness of White House obstructionism to the public."

On Thursday, Common Dreams reported that two associates of Giuliani's were arrested for campaign finance violations due to their contributions to Trump in 2016 and 2018.

A number of legal observers endorsed the theoretical framing of Chafetz's piece while urging readers to manage expectations. 

"An aggressive strategy might work in Congress's favor, or it might backfire," tweeted George Mason University political science professor Jennifer N. Victory. "We cannot underestimate the importance of public reaction for providing legitimacy to government actions when we're in uncharted water."

University of Denver professor Seth Masket said he saw the logic in that but inaction could prove more costly. 

"Agreed that this is a risky strategy, but the idea of doing nothing, and letting congressional subpoenas become voluntary, is likely far more dangerous in the long run," said Masket. 

In his conclusion, Chafetz recognizes the pitfalls of an aggressive approach, but posits that taking such an action is necessary given the administration's behavior.

"In the end, whether the House wins that fight, like whether it wins a fight over arresting a contemnor, would be a function of which side best convinces the public," writes Chafetz. "But President Trump is deeply unpopular, and the public supports impeachment. If necessary, the House should be willing to have these fights."

'Heaven Help the Opposition': Team Bernie Says Progressive Champion Emerging From Minor Heart Attack Stronger Than Ever

"He is the most effective possible weapon we have against Trump, and his presidency would be an opportunity for an unprecedented transformation of the political system."

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/10/heaven-help-opposition-team-bernie-says-progressive-champion-emerging-minor-heart

If the emerging corporate media narrative is to be believed, Sen. Bernie Sanders's minor heart attack last week dealt a devastating, and possibly insurmountable, blow to the Vermont senator's bid for the White House.

But prominent campaign surrogates, advisers, and supporters in recent days have forcefully pushed back against that notion and argued Sanders—with his grassroots army as enthusiastic and motivated as ever—is well-positioned to compete for and ultimately win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

In a video statement released on Thursday, Sanders himself spoke to supporters and the American public directly about his recent heart attack and said that he's "feeling really good and getting stronger every day."

Watch:

Thanking supporters for their well-wishes, Sanders said his recovery and rest time has allowed him to reflect on the kinds of adversity that tens of millions of Americans face each and every day.

"But at the end of the day, if you're going to look at yourself in the mirror and you're going to say, 'Look, I go around once. I have one life to live, what role do I want to play?'" Sanders says in the video. "It speaks to the need to create the kind of country that we can become, where people are working hard to serve each other—to understand each other. That is the country we can become—we really can. But we have to have the courage to take on some enormously powerful special interests."

James Zogby, a committed Sanders backer and president of the Arab American Institute, said that when the senator returns to the campaign trail after fully recovering from his heart stent procedure, he will be greeted by "an invigorated campaign with a staff and a support base that has doubled down in their efforts to make this happen."

"Because they realize that for them—and for me—he's the critical choice," Zogby told HuffPost.

Speaking to reporters outside of his Vermont home Tuesday, Sanders said he plans to make adjustments to his schedule—which, before his health scare, frequently included three or four rallies per day on top of other campaign activity—to ensure he can sustain his presidential bid over the long haul.

"We're gonna probably not do three or four rallies a day," Sanders said, adding that he will likely attend two rallies a day.

Pundits and major media outlets quickly seized upon the senator's remarks as evidence that he is dramatically dialing back his campaign activity or even, in the words of FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver, "entering a phase where his goal is to pull the nominee to the left and/or to build a movement rather than to actually win."

The campaign, and Sanders himself, quickly and aggressively disputed both claims.

"As Bernie said, we are going to have an active campaign," Faiz Shakir, Sanders's campaign manager, told Common Dreams. "Instead of a breakneck series of events that lap the field, we are going to keep a marathoner's pace that still manages to outrun everyone else."

In an interview with NBC News Wednesday, Sanders said he plans to "start off slower" once he hits the trail again "and build up and build up and build up."

"We're going to get back into the groove of a very vigorous campaign," Sanders said. "I love doing rallies and I love doing town meetings."

The senator also dismissed the notion that his campaign was not sufficiently transparent about his health, a line some political reporters pushed after the campaign announced last Friday that Sanders had a heart attack.

"That's nonsense. I don't know what people think campaigns are, you know we're dealing with all kinds of doctors and we wanted to have a sense of what the hell was going on really," Sanders told NBC. "So the first thing that we're trying to do is understand what's going on and not run to the New York Times and have to report every 15 minutes. You know, this is not a baseball game. So I think we acted absolutely appropriately."

David Welch, a recently retired cardio rehab nurse in California who supports Sanders for president but has no affiliation with the campaign, wrote in a Common Dreams op-ed Thursday that the senator's heart attack is not a concern for him.

Based on his 36 years as a health professional working with cardiac patients, Welch said that given what is known about Sanders' heart attack and the stent procedure which followed, there's no reason to be worried about his ability to return to full health and the campaign.

"Remember, those arteries had been narrowed for a long time," writes Welch. "Even with narrowed arteries the senator has been keeping up a pace that most younger people couldn't hope to match.  Now, they are wide open and he's probably had no significant heart damage...  Honestly, the people who should be most worried right now are the campaign staff who will have to keep up with him now that the arteries are fully open."

In an op-ed for CNN Wednesday, Adam Kassam and Ben Eschenheimer wrote that "of course" Sanders could still serve as president following his heart attack.

"The suggestion that Sanders should stand down and endorse another candidate because of a health condition that many Americans live and work with is not only callous, but carries a bitter flavor of discrimination," wrote Kassam and Eschenheimer. "Indeed it scans as ableism, a shameful undercurrent that has pervaded discussions of the 2020 election, along with ageism."

While Sanders has been off the trail for several days to rest after his procedure, his grassroots campaign operation does not appear to have lost any momentum. Last week, just hours after news of Sanders' heart stent procedure, the campaign worked the senator's health scare into the case for Medicare for All.

"As you see the headlines about Bernie today, send him your good vibes—and remember how important the fight for Medicare for All really is," said Sanders speechwriter David Sirota.

On Tuesday, the campaign announced that volunteers made 1.3 million calls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma, easily hitting their goal of a million calls over a 10-day period.

As HuffPost's Daniel Marans reported, the campaign surpassed its goal after experiencing "a spike in volunteers" in the wake of news last Wednesday that Sanders had been hospitalized after experiencing chest discomfort on the trail in Nevada.

The campaign said the senator also received 8,000 donations on Wednesday, just a week after team Sanders announced it raised $25.3 million from an average donation of $18 in the third quarter of 2019—the largest haul in the Democratic field, fueled by contributions from teachers and employees of Starbucks, Amazon, and Walmart.

"It was like a rallying cry. It was incredible," RoseAnn DeMoro, former executive director of National Nurses United and prominent Sanders backer, told HuffPost of the flood of support for Sanders following his procedure. "That's the difference between having a movement as opposed to just a campaign."

Speaking to the Associated Press, DeMoro stressed that Sanders's heart attack was "minor" and that the "stents will be extremely helpful in terms of blood flow."

"I assume he'll be far more vigorous," DeMoro said. "Heaven help the opposition."

For Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs magazine and unabashed Sanders supporter, the senator's health scare brought into sharp relief the urgency of nominating Sanders to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.

In an article titled "Why Bernie Has to Win," published just days after Sanders's hospitalization, Robinson echoed a prescient argument he made in the midst of the 2016 Democratic primary: Sanders represents the best chance to both defeat Trump and enact a transformational progressive agenda.

"I actually feel like Bernie's hospitalization is a sign that we have to do more to get him elected," Robinson wrote. "He is the most effective possible weapon we have against Trump, and his presidency would be an opportunity for an unprecedented transformation of the political system."

Robinson continued:

To be honest, Bernie shouldn't have to be exerting himself in the way he has been. Because this campaign isn't about him. In fact, if Bernie is elected, he shouldn't have to be doing the bulk of the work. He is a vehicle for the creation of a people's presidency. We are not nominating him because he is a messianic leader who will solve our problems and personally guide us to the promised land. We are nominating him because his is the name we put on the ballot in order to achieve power. This campaign isn't about Bernie Sanders, it's about getting the Bernie Sanders agenda passed: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, free college, workplace democracy.

"We have one last shot," Robinson concluded. "Are we going to sit and Raise Questions from the stands or are we going to commit ourselves to making sure that this time, we do not let Donald Trump win the presidential election? Bernie will fight until his very last breath to make this a humane country that cares for its people... That's what he will do. So what will you and I do to help?"

New Study Warns 5 Billion People Could Face Higher Risk of Climate-Related Coastal Storms, Water Pollution, and Crop Losses by 2050

"If we continue on this trajectory, ecosystems will be unable to provide natural insurance in the face of climate change-induced impacts on food, water, and infrastructure."

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/10/new-study-warns-5-billion-people-could-face-higher-risk-climate-related-coastal

By 2050, five billion people across the globe—disproportionately those in poorer communities—could face a higher risk of enduring coastal storms, water pollution, and crop losses linked to the human-caused climate crisis, warns a study published in the journal Science and reported on Thursday by The Scotsman.

"Our analyses suggest that the current environmental governance at local, regional, and international levels is failing to encourage the most vulnerable regions to invest in ecosystems," said study co-author Unai Pascual, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

"If we continue on this trajectory," Pascual added, "ecosystems will be unable to provide natural insurance in the face of climate change-induced impacts on food, water, and infrastructure."

According to The Scotsman:

The research team set out to understand and map where nature contributes the most to people's lives, and how many people might be impacted by climate change and changes in the way fossil fuels are used.

They focused on three areas in which nature is considered to be hugely beneficial to people—water quality regulation, protection from coastal hazards, and crop pollination—and analyzed how they might change using open-source software.

People in Africa and South Asia were projected to be most disadvantaged by "diminishing contributions" from nature.

"Determining when and where nature is most important is critical to understanding how best to enhance people's livelihoods and well-being," said study co-author Stephen Polasky of the University of Minnesota.

The researchers have developed an online, interactive map for their findings. Lead author Becky Chaplin-Kramer of Stanford University said the group hopes the study will help inform and "further galvanize global action."

"We're equipped with the information we need to avert the worst scenarios our models project and move toward an equitable, sustainable future," she added. "Now is the time to wield it."

The study's warnings echo findings from previous research about the near-future consequences of human-driven global warming—such as a study from September on climate-related droughts and wheat production—and come as people around the world have taken to the streets since Monday for Extinction Rebellion's two weeks of action to pressure policymakers to pursue bolder climate action plans.

Alongside demands from scientists and activists that governments worldwide urgently work to transition energy systems away from fossil fuels to fully renewable sources, experts and campaigners are now promoting the restoration of nature to help prevent more catastrophic impacts of rising temperatures.

One such effort is the Natural Climate Solutions campaign, which launched in April and received renewed attention during last month's global climate strikes. It calls for protecting and restoring ecosystems such as forests to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it away to prevent further warming.