HOW USAID CREATED NICARAGUA’S ANTI-SANDINISTA MEDIA APPARATUS

By Ben Norton, The Grayzone

June 3, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/how-usaid-created-nicaraguas-anti-sandinista-media-apparatus-now-under-money-laundering-investigation/



Now Under Money Laundering Investigation.

With tens of millions of dollars over years of work, CIA front USAID helped create and train Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition. At the center of its operations is the elite Chamorro Foundation, which stands accused of money laundering.

The US government has spent years cultivating a ring of right-wing media outlets in Nicaragua that played a central role in a violent 2018 coup attempt. This network is now being investigated by the Nicaraguan government on allegations of money laundering.

These publications are an integral part of a political opposition that Washington has carefully managed, trained, and funded with millions of dollars over the past decade. While relentlessly accusing Nicaragua’s leftist government of corruption, they have been suspiciously obscure with their own finances and record-keeping.

The institution at the heart of the US-backed influence network is called the Fundación Violeta Barrios de Chamorro para la Reconciliación y la Democracia, or Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation for Reconciliation and Democracy – often referred to simply as the Chamorro Foundation.

Run by one of the richest and most powerful family dynasties in Nicaragua, the Chamorro Foundation is perhaps the most important domestic organization in coordinating the political opposition to the Central American nation’s socialist-oriented Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The Chamorro Foundation is a central vehicle for Washington’s massive financial, technical, and logistical support to the Nicaraguan opposition, acting as what the CIA refers to as a “pass-through” – a third-party organization that serves as a seemingly independent channel for US government funding to foreign political groups and media outlets.

Since the Sandinistas came to power in 2007, the United States has funneled tens of millions of dollars to opposition groups in Nicaragua through its soft-power arm the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a CIA front that has long been used as “humanitarian” cover for operations to destabilize independent left-wing governments, especially in Latin America.

Internal reports from USAID show that the agency does much more than just fund anti-Sandinista political organizations, NGOs, and media outlets in Nicaragua; it births them, nurtures them, and trains them in every aspect of politicking, from electoral strategies and public relations to outreach and social media messaging, branding and marketing to organizing and building broad alliances, developing technology skills and navigating legal issues to managing finances and accounting.

This Grayzone investigation illustrates how USAID has helped to create Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista opposition from the ground up. The right-wing political forces that comprise it are anything but organic; they are the product of an enormous campaign of foreign meddling by US government interference at every single level of Nicaraguan society.

The US astroturfing has been especially effective in forming Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. Publicly available records show that USAID has spent at least $10 million specifically on opposition media outlets in Nicaragua since 2009. Of that money, USAID sent more than $7 million to the Chamorro Foundation from 2014 to 2021.

Given that much of the information that USAID discloses about its support for the political opposition and media outlets in Nicaragua is redacted, these figures are likely conservative estimates.

Western European governments have supplemented Washington’s efforts in cultivating the anti-Sandinista opposition, with a special emphasis on the press.

European Union member states have handed out millions to the Chamorro Foundation, using the influential opposition group to fund right-wing news outlets. In 2020 alone, the foundation received €831,527 (more than $1 million USD) from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), an arm of Madrid’s soft power that is modeled after USAID.

The Western funding has been bolstered with millions of dollars from Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – another CIA front that exists to push regime change across the globe. Between 2016 and 2019, the NED provided at least $4.4 million to Nicaraguan opposition groups, including media organizations, according to public records – although this is likely an underestimate as well.

These are exorbitant sums of money in Central America, one of the poorest regions of the world, where the minimum wage amounts to around $200 per month. Such foreign funding is the main force keeping Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition afloat – especially given that polling show it has mere single-digit support among the general population.

Many of the media outlets bankrolled by USAID in these programs traffic in blatant fake news and extremist content, while inciting violence against the Nicaraguan government and supporters of the Sandinista Front.

The prominent tabloid opposition network 100% Noticias, for instance, which is funded by USAID through the Chamorro Foundation, regularly transmitted calls for Nicaraguans to overthrow their elected government during the violent 2018 coup attempt.

The director and founder of that US-funded station, Miguel Mora, stated in an interview with Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal that he wanted the US military to invade Nicaragua, violently remove the elected Sandinista Front party from power, and capture President Daniel Ortega. He cited Washington’s 1989 invasion of Panama as a model.

“What I see from the United States is it doing a Noriega-style operation, like in Panama,” Mora told Blumenthal in an interview in Managua, days after the putsch fizzled out in July 2018.

“They come, they grab the [Ortega-Murillo] family, they take them away, and the army is not involved. In two days, 24 hours, this is solved, if there were US intervention like that,” the US-funded 100% Noticias director said.

“So what I see, instead of the United States giving weapons, like what it did with the Contras, is that they come and do a Noriega-style operation,” Mora added.

While USAID bankrolled violent, far-right, coup-plotting elements like Mora, internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone show that it was simultaneously supporting liberal NGOs that exploited issues like LGBT equality, women’s empowerment, and Indigenous rights, to provide the rightist anti-Sandinista opposition with progressive cover.

The USAID-backed coordinator of many of these opposition groups, the Chamorro Foundation, was accused of fiscal improprieties this May, and the Nicaraguan government launched an official investigation on suspicion of money laundering, stating that it had found “serious financial inconsistencies in the reports presented to the government and the amounts received by the foundation.”

Serious questions about the Chamorro Foundation remain unanswered. This February, the organization announced that it had voluntarily suspended its operations in Nicaragua as a form of protest against a law passed in October 2020 by the nation’s democratically elected National Assembly that requires NGOs funded by foreign governments to register as foreign agents. (The legislation was harshly condemned by Washington, although it was modeled after an 83-year-old US law.)

However, while the foundation claimed to have legally shut down in Nicaragua, it still continued receiving large sums of money from foreign governments. In 2020, Washington gave the Chamorro Foundation at least $1.3 million, and as of this May, the US government sent the group at least $419,000 more for 2021.

Exactly where this money has gone is not clear, and what happened with the millions in its bank accounts when the foundation shut down is not known.

The Chamorro Foundation has denied the charges by pointing to a 2020 audit done by an accounting firm called Baker Tilly Nicaragua S.A. (a company that is closely linked to the country’s right-wing opposition). But the USAID inspector general’s office admitted in an internal memo that there was no external peer review of the audit, noting that it did not meet Washington’s own Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS) requirements.

A high-profile elected member of the National Assembly from a left-wing party allied with the Sandinista Front, Wilfredo Navarro, accused the Chamorros of using a money-laundering ring to fund the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua.

“Between the Chamorro Foundation, the Grupo Cinco [another Western government-funded media organization run by the Chamorro family], and other NGOs, they laundered money and sent more than $30 million to pay the killers and torturers, the authors of the pain, destruction, and death in the failed 2018 coup,” Navarro alleged. “Neither justice in heaven or on Earth will forgive them. Their hands are full of blood.”

For its part, the Chamorro family has thus far stonewalled, refusing to publicly provide concrete answers to the lingering questions about its finances.

In a revealing response to the allegations of financial malpractice, the founder and director of the foundation, opposition politician Cristiana Chamorro – the elite daughter of the right-wing former president of Nicaragua after whom the foundation is named – rejected the investigation by immediately citing the authority of her patrons in the US government.

Cristiana Chamorro insisted in an official statement, “The US State Department rejected the charges of money laundering against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation based on audits they conducted that did not find evidence of money laundering or diversion of funds.”

Managua’s Public Ministry replied by politely reminding Chamorro that Nicaragua is a sovereign country and the US government does not control its justice system. “The statement by the State Department is not relevant to the investigative process taking place in Nicaragua, which is being carried out according to the Constitution and laws of the Republic,” the ministry wrote.

Cristiana Chamorro appeared to have forgotten that she was a citizen of Nicaragua, not the United States. Her confusion was perhaps understandable, however, given that her foundation – and the Central American nation’s right-wing opposition as a whole – has been not only financially sustained by Washington, but created, cultivated, and propped up by the US government over the course of a decades-long foreign meddling operation.
Nicaragua’s Oligarch Family Tries To Retake Control, With Help From Washington

The Chamorro family has long been one of Uncle Sam’s most reliable assets in the region. An oligarchic clan descended from Spanish colonialists, the Chamorro dynasty boasts seven former presidents of Nicaragua, tracing back to the very first head of state of the republic in the 1850s.

The modern history of the Chamorro family clearly reflects Washington’s role as the guiding force behind Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition.

Cristiana Chamorro’s mother, and the namesake of her foundation, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, was the first opposition president to come to power after the 1979 Sandinista Revolution that toppled Nicaragua’s decades-long US-backed military dictatorship.

In the 1980s, Washington poured millions of dollars into violent far-right death squads, known as the Contras (short for “counterrevolutionaries” in Spanish), which resorted to terrorist tactics in a failed bid to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government.

One of the most important leaders of the Contras was Edgar Chamorro – another member of the same oligarchic family. He later turned against the murderous paramilitary groups, and published a revealing letter-to-the-editor in the New York Times in 1986 titled, “Terror Is the Most Effective Weapon of Nicaragua’s ‘Contras’.”

“The ‘contras’ were, and are, a proxy army controlled by the U.S. Government,” Edgar Chamorro wrote. “If U.S. support were terminated, they would not only be incapable of conducting any military activities against the Sandinistas, but would also immediately begin to disintegrate. I resigned rather than continue as a Central Intelligence Agency puppet.”

Edgar Chamorro’s description of the anti-Sandinista opposition in Nicaragua as a proxy of the US government that would collapse were it not for Washington’s enormous economic, political, and logistical support remains true today.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro only came to power in 1990 thanks to a presidential campaign that was directed and financed by the US government. Her victory reflected the exhaustion of a population sapped by a decade of Washington-sponsored terrorist war – compounded by an economic crisis created by an illegal US blockade of their country, as well as an implicit US threat to levy even more sanctions on the impoverished nation if Ortega won.

Violeta Chamorro’s presidential campaign was one of the first projects of the US government’s newly created National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front that still bankrolls the anti-Sandinista opposition today.

Her presidential tenure was an unmitigated disaster, and the horrors that working-class Nicaraguans suffered through during that period, which they now call the “neoliberal era,” are seared into their collective sociocultural memory. Despite massive economic assistance from the United States and debt forgiveness by its financial organs the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Violeta’s Chicago Boy-style policies led to skyrocketing poverty and inequality, unleashing an epidemic of organized crime, drug-trafficking, and prostitution in Nicaragua, creating one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Violeta Chamorro’s departure in 1997 was followed by another decade of neoliberal rule that continued the trend of widespread poverty and inequality. To perpetuate her legacy, she founded the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation the year she left office.

When the leftist Sandinista Front won Nicaragua’s 2006 presidential election and returned to power a year later, the Chamorro Foundation became the central pass-through for US government funding to the opposition.

The foundation is run by Violeta’s daughter, Cristiana, who is the top opposition choice for Nicaragua’s November 2021 presidential election, and the preferred pick in Washington. Although she has no real political experience, Cristiana’s sponsors in Western governments and corporate media outlets frequently refer to her as an “opposition leader.”

Cristiana has been aggressively boosted by mainstream corporate media outlets, becoming a regular fixture on CNN en Español, which lavishes praise on her as the “woman who promises to save Nicaragua.”

The scion of a veritable aristocratic clan, Cristiana has marketed herself as the second-coming of her mother, making it clear that she hopes to inherit the presidency with her aristocratic last name – and a little help from her friends in the US government.
USAID-Funded Chamorro Foundation And NED Sustain Coup-Mongering Nicaraguan Right-Wing Media

In addition to their enormous political and economic influence, the Chamorro dynasty has significant control over Nicaragua’s media. The country’s two largest newspapers, La Prensa and Confidencial, are run by Chamorros – and funded by the US government. And the Washington-backed Chamorro Foundation is used to sustain other right-wing outlets in the country.

Western governments and corporate media outlets often accuse the Sandinista government of opposing freedom of the press and freedom of speech, but the reality is that the majority of Nicaraguan media outlets are neoliberal and viciously anti-Sandinista.

The opposition’s media apparatus in Nicaragua consists of newspapers such as La Prensa and Confidencial; TV channels Canal 10, Canal 11, Canal 12, and Vos TV; the outlet Radio Corporación and radio show Café con Voz; as well as online outlets 100% Noticias, Artículo 66, Nicaragua Investiga, Nicaragua Actual, BacanalNica, and Despacho 505, to name just a few. This is further supplemented by dozens of right-wing social media influencers.

These domestic outlets receive heavy amplification from foreign-based corporate media networks, which broadcast nonstop anti-Sandinista propaganda – and quite a bit of fake news – day in and day out.

Sustaining most of the Nicaraguan opposition outlets is a steady flow of US government money through the Chamorro Foundation.

These media platforms played a key role in the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. The Washington-funded outlets spread fake news, openly incited violence against Sandinistas, and even called on opposition supporters to attack the government and kill President Ortega.

As mentioned above, the founding director of the influential right-wing network 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, called for the US military to invade his country and overthrow President Daniel Ortega in a “Noriega-style operation,” in his July 2018 interview with The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal.

With the help of USAID funding through the Chamorro Foundation, 100% Noticias also sent its reporter Lucía Pineda Ubau to the violent barricades erected by armed coup-plotters, known as tranques, where she encouraged viewers to join them and take up arms against the elected government.

Another fanatical right-wing Nicaraguan media personality who advocated for the coup attempt in 2018, host Jaime Arellano of Radio Corporación, openly broadcasted his support for former US President Donald Trump.

Arellano, known as “El Pingüino,” posted a photo on Facebook in 2020 of himself wearing a Trump hat, accompanied by the text “Nicas for Trump.”

Arellano and 100% Noticias staff were among the media figures who were called in for questioning by the Nicaraguan justice system in May 2021 as part of its investigation into alleged money laundering.

Nicaragua’s top two newspapers, La Prensa and Confidencial, are slightly more measured in their messaging, but essentially espouse the same extremist viewpoints.

For her part, Cristiana Chamorro – who was educated in the United States and has never had a real job other than positions she inherited from her family – is not only director of the Chamorro Foundation; she is also vice president of La Prensa.

Both institutions are funded largely by Washington, which effectively makes Cristiana an unofficial employee of the US government.

La Prensa is directed by Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, Cristiana’s uncle. Following the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the newspaper served as Washington’s key propaganda weapon. During the US terror war in the 1980s, the NED used La Prensa to spread pro-Contra disinformation.

The Chamorro family also ran the leading newspaper El Nuevo Diario, which closed down in 2019. Meanwhile, the other major Nicaraguan opposition news outlet, Confidencial, is run by Cristiana’s brother, Carlos Fernando.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro is essentially the Rupert Murdoch of Nicaragua. Thanks to the many millions of dollars he has received from Western governments over years, Carlos Fernando has built a veritable media empire.

The most important weapon in Carlos Fernando’s information warfare arsenal is Confidencial. He uses it to churn out non-stop propaganda against the government of President Daniel Ortega, while pushing an aggressively neoliberal editorial line that makes Fox News look like a bastion of journalistic rigor.

Confidencial refers to Nicaragua’s elected government as a “dictatorship” and “regime,” and often pushes dubious stories and disinformation with little basis in fact.

This May, for instance, Carlos Fernando’s publication sought to distract from the government’s investigation into his family’s alleged money laundering by running an absurd story that claimed an attempt by the Managua mayor’s office to collect unpaid back taxes owed by Nicaraguan corporations was part of an “extortion scheme.” Confidencial has also accused the mayor’s office of “fiscal terrorism” for forcing wealthy elites to pay taxes.

The institution that bankrolls this disinformation factory is the US government. Confidencial is funded by the NED, through the companies Invermedia and Promedia, which Carlos Fernando owns.

Confidencial is also financed by the Swiss government, an appropriate patron given that Carlos Fernando has employed a Swiss bank-style strategy to create a panoply of de facto shell companies to rake in foreign funding for anti-Sandinista media outlets.

In addition to Confidencial, Invermedia, and Promedia, Carlos Fernando runs an influential group called the Centro de Investigaciones de la Comunicación (CINCO).

The Grupo CINCO, like his sister Cristiana’s Chamorro Foundation, is funded by another EU member state, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

Carlos Fernando Chamorro helps run Grupo CINCO with the prominent opposition activist Sofía Montenegro. They are allied with the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, or Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), an ostensible social-democratic opposition party founded by upper-class NGO activists and academics who claimed momentary loyalty to the Sandinista movement in the 1980s, but broke with it when it lost power in the 1990s.

When the Sandinista Front returned to power in 2007, wealthy liberal intellectuals like Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Montenegro emerged as some of the government’s most vehement opponents. They allied with the Washington, reaping substantial paychecks from the United States’ regime-change entities.

Nicaragua-based journalists Nora McCurdy and Stephen Sefton uncovered photos showing Montegro holding friendly meetings with the US embassy, alongside MRS leaders.

The MRS has never been able to earn more than 2% in a presidential election, but its petite-bourgeois members dominate Nicaragua’s NGO sector, media, and academia. The MRS was a significant player in the violent US-backed coup attempt in 2018, helping to organize and supply the various elements vying to topple the elected government.

In January 2021, MRS leadership shed any pretense of loyalty to Sandinismo and rename their party the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Democratic Renovation Union), or UNAMOS.

The website NicaLeaks published a leaked internal USAID document revealing that Montenegro and the Grupo CINCO that she helps run with Carlos Fernando Chamorro are funded by the US government.

In 2016, USAID gave Montenegro a one-year grant of $80,000 to fund her anti-Sandinista media work.

Other shell organizations run by Carlos Fernando Charmorro include the little-known Fondo de Apoyo al Periodismo Investigativo, as well as the Costa Rica-based Asociación Productora de Periodismo Independiente. Then there is his radio station Onda Local, and his TV shows, “Esta Semana” and “Esta Noche.”

The closeness that Carlos Fernando and Cristiana Chamorro enjoy to the US government was reflected in the fact that they were both invited to sign an open letter in 2020 organized by the NED, which accused “authoritarian regimes” of exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic “tighten their grip on power.” They were joined by a slew of powerful right-wing political leaders from across Latin America.
US And EU Baselessly Accuse Nicaragua Of Money Laundering While Funding Rich Elites Accused Of Money Laundering

Among average working-class Nicaraguans, it is well-known that the Chamorro oligarchs control myriad shell companies, front groups, and political NGOs, and have many millions of dollars flowing into their multiple bank accounts from a variety foreign sponsors. The family is notorious for its financial murkiness.

The government’s investigation into alleged money laundering by the Chamorro Foundation comes at a time when Nicaragua is trying to crack down on rampant tax evasion by local elites.

This May, Nicaragua’s National Assembly voted to strengthen the laws on money laundering, in order to better combat the crime, noting that new technologies like cryptocurrencies have made it easier for plutocrats to hide their wealth from taxation.

The increased enforcement of laws against money laundering and tax evasion is partly aimed at boosting Nicaragua’s tax base, which has been hard-hit by the 2018 coup attempt and the subsequent, aggressive US sanctions that effectively locked the country’s economy out of the Washington-controlled international financial system.

In February 2020, Nicaragua was placed on the “greylist” of the Financial Action Task Force, an instrument created by the G7 nations ostensibly to reduce money laundering, but which is, in fact, an economic arm of NATO designed to punish countries that refused to toe the neoliberal line demanded by Washington and Brussels.

That same year, the European Commission added Nicaragua to its short list of “high-risk third countries” – another economic attack on the Sandinista government disguised as a measure against money laundering.

While Western governments employ dubious accusations of money laundering to economically strangle Nicaragua, they continue funneling tens of millions of dollars to conservative Nicaraguan elites who are infamous for shady book-keeping.
USAID’s Explicitly Stated Goal In Nicaragua: “Political Transition”

The main financial sponsor of Nicaragua’s political opposition has been the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Most grassroots Sandinistas are familiar with USAID’s dark history in the country, and the organization’s name has become synonymous with meddling and destabilization.

During the 1980s, USAID helped the CIA run covert operations to arm and fund the far-right Contra death squads. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams admitted that the Reagan administration sent weapons to the Contras on so-called “humanitarian aid” flights.

Today, USAID plays a similar role in Washington’s attempts to topple the democratically elected leftist government not only in Nicaragua, but also in Venezuela.

USAID was used to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to a parallel Venezuelan coup regime led by Juan Guaidó. The agency was also integral to a violent US coup attempt against Venezuela in February 2019. In 2021, the US government’s own inspector general’s office acknowledged that USAID committed fraud in order to fund regime-change efforts in Venezuela.

The fact that USAID wants regime change in Nicaragua as well is hardly hidden. The agency admits on its own website that USAID has run a program in Nicaragua sponsored by its Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).

The OTI’s goal is simple: to overthrow governments that challenge Washington’s political and economic domination of the world. It states this quite clearly on its website, explaining that the office “supports U.S. foreign policy objectives” and “provides fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key political transition.”

USAID/OTI boasts of supporting “Independent civil society, independent media, and human rights defenders” – or in other words, the right-wing opposition – in Nicaragua during and after the failed 2018 coup d’etat, pushing for an “exit from the current political crisis” and an end to the democratically elected government of President Daniel Ortega.

USAID/OTI was exposed for running a similarly putschist plot to overthrow Venezuela’s elected President Hugo Chávez. A secret 2006 US State Department cable published by WikiLeaks shows that the USAID/OTI regime-change strategy was aimed at “Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, Dividing Chavismo, Protecting Vital US business, and Isolating Chavez internationally.”

In Nicaragua, USAID is advancing the same goals: penetrating the Sandinista Front’s base, dividing Sandinismo, isolating President Ortega internationally, and of course, advancing the interests of US corporations.

In 2020, The Grayzone exposed USAID’s latest regime-change scheme in Nicaragua by exposing a leaked internal document revealing the agency’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) program. This project calls openly for the overthrow of the Sandinista government, as well as imposing neoliberal reforms based on a “market economy” and the “protection of private property rights,” and purging the military, police, and all state institutions of any trace of Sandinismo.
USAID’s $9.4 Million “Media Strengthening Program” Bankrolls Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Outlets

As the recipient of at least $7 million from USAID from 2013 to today, the Chamorro Foundation is the central node in contemporary USAID operations in Nicaragua.

Much of the information surrounding USAID grants for Nicaragua is redacted from documents, citing the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016 as justification. The redactions have become more comprehensive since the failed 2018 coup attempt exposed the extent of US penetration of Nicaraguan civil society.

In 2020, for instance, an organization in Nicaragua received $2.82 million from USAID, but the agency redacted the recipient’s name and the nature of its activities. In 2021, USAID again obscured the recipients of and reasons for a $1.6 million grant, as well as another $1.2 million grant.

This means that this $7 million figure given to the Chamorro Foundation is likely just a conservative estimate, and the actual sum of US financial support for the foundation and other anti-Sandinista opposition organizations could be significantly higher.

The public records that do exist show that USAID ran its programs supporting the opposition in Nicaragua through various contractors, including the following:
National Democratic Institute (NDI), which also trained opposition forces against socialist President Rafael Correa in Ecuador
International Republican Institute (IRI), which played a key role in US-backed coups against Haiti’s progressive elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Freedom House, a regime-change lobby group
US Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS)
World Bank’s International Finance Corporation
International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)
RTI International
Global Communities
Creative Associates International
FHI 360
Chamorro Foundation

Internal USAID data reviewed by The Grayzone shows that USAID has a decade-long, multimillion-dollar program with the Chamorro Foundation to create, fund, and train right-wing media outlets in Nicaragua.

Titled the “Media Strengthening Program,” the initiative is highly secretive. However, USAID records show that, in 2014, the agency signed a $9.4 million agreement with the Chamorro Foundation to oversee the program, which was earmarked to run through 2023.

As of May 2021, more than $7 million of that allotted $9.4 million has been delivered to the foundation.

There are no internal reports exposing the scope of USAID’s Media Strengthening Program, and almost no mention of it on the internet, aside from two audit reports published by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

USAID does, however, operate a similar “Media Strengthening Program” in Mozambique, another formerly colonized country that is governed by the revolutionary party that overthrow the colonial regime – in its case, FRELIMO, or the Liberation Front of Mozambique.

In Nicaragua, the website NicaLeaks published leaked internal documents showing that at least 12 opposition media outlets were “partners” of the Chamorro Foundation, and therefore received funding from USAID.

Among the USAID/Chamorro Foundation’s key partners is the right-wing network 100% Noticias, which played a key role in the failed 2018 coup attempt, spreading fake news, inciting violence against Sandinistas, and encouraging viewers to take up arms against the elected government.

The head of 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora, who called for the Panama-style US military invasion of Nicaragua in 2018, personally received $43,100 from USAID through the Chamorro Foundation in 2015. And this grant is from just one year in a decade-long program.

Another recipient of USAID money through the Chamorro Foundation is La Prensa – the same newspaper where foundation director Cristiana Chamorro serves as vice president.

This means that Cristiana has double-dipped USAID money, using it not only to fund her Chamorro Foundation, but also to pay her family and herself.

This is a clear conflict of interest; as head of the Chamorro Foundation, Cristiana controlled how much money would be sent to the newspaper she helped run.

NicaLeaks obtained another USAID document showing the agency approving the foundation’s disbursement of USAID money to La Prensa. This meant that the US government knew Cristiana was using its citizens’ tax dollars to enrich herself and her family members, and took no measures to impede her corruption.

Given its shady financial dealings, it should be no surprise that the Chamorro Foundation is being investigated on suspicions of money laundering.

Washington claims its support for media outlets in Nicaragua is a means of supporting “independent journalism” and the freedom of the press. In reality, the records clearly show that the United States seeks to destabilize the Sandinista government by propping up and promoting the country’s leading right-wing political operatives.
USAID Trained And Funded Nicaraguan Opposition Leaders, Holding In-Person Meetings To Coordinate With Media

While precise details about USAID’s $9.4 million Media Strengthening Program through the Chamorro Foundation are redacted, a look at an array of USAID operations supporting opposition groups in Nicaragua can shed critical light on the foundation’s activities.

Between 2013 and 2018, USAID simultaneously oversaw a separate operation to support anti-Sandinista groups in Nicaragua, earmarking more than $6 million in funding for Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy (CBCSA). USAID’s partner for this program was the Dexis Consulting Group, which in turn subcontracted the work out to Chemonics.

Chemonics is a for-profit company that contracts with US government agencies in sensitive areas around the globe, specializing in destabilization and intelligence operations. The founder of the firm openly admitted he created it to “have my own CIA.”

The Grayzone documented how Chemonics was used to provide millions of dollars in US government funding to the White Helmets in Syria, while also helping to destabilize the government of Ecuador’s democratically elected socialist President Rafael Correa.

Publicly available data show that USAID gave Dexis/Chemonics at least $6,117,000 to run the Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy initiative.

When the CBCSA program concluded in 2018, Dexis/Chemonics prepared an internal report summarizing the successes of the initiative. The publicly available document shows how USAID not only funded opposition leaders in Nicaragua, but drilled them in methods to undermine the Sandinista government.

USAID said one of the program’s principal objectives was to “Improve the capacity of CSOs and individuals to increasingly coordinate and network with one another, the private sector, and media outlets to promote awareness, advocacy, and activism.” In other words, CBCSA aimed to cultivate opposition leaders and build an anti-Sandinista alliance uniting US-funded NGOs, powerful business interests, and the press.

USAID took credit for creating 126 “alliances and partnerships” and supporting 224 civil society organizations as part of the five-year CBCSA program.

Using an acronym to refer to anti-Sandinista civil society organizations (CSOs), USAID said “CBCSA worked with CSOs to establish partnerships with the private sector.”

One of the main so-called civil society organizations that USAID’s CBCSA program utilized was the Chamorro Foundation. Using another acronym to refer to the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH), USAID boasted that it “worked with FVBCH … to ensure increased dissemination of the CSOs’ activities through independent media outlets.”

CBCSA even organized quarterly “in-person networking and outreach” meetings in Nicaragua, bringing together US-funded NGOs and opposition media outlets for sessions on improving anti-Sandinista messaging.

USAID boasted, “These meetings provided CSOs the opportunity to coordinate with one another and with media outlets.” It added that a majority of attendees had “increased press coverage because of the meetings.”

The report singled out the Chamorro Foundation specifically as a group that helped “ensure increased dissemination of the CSOs’ activities through independent media outlets.”

The USAID report published a photo showing Nicaraguan opposition figures meeting to share tactics under US tutelage.

In addition to training opposition activists and connecting them with businesses and the media, USAID boasted that “CBCSA designed digital and media campaign materials, including posters, Twitter messages, and Facebook pages” for the anti-Sandinista groups.

In other words, a noted CIA front helped create and run social media accounts for Nicaraguan opposition organizations.

As cover for these anti-Sandinista operations, USAID cynically exploited issues like sexual violence against women, LGBT equality, and Indigenous rights. It even helped launch a campaign called “Let’s raise voices against child sexual abuse” as cover for opposition activities.

USAID highlighted in its report that CBCSA’s work creating, cultivating, training, and funding the anti-Sandinista opposition was complemented with help from the Central American branch of the Kellogg corporation, as well as the Catholic Church.

In an unintentionally comical section demonstrating the total subservience of Nicaragua’s opposition to Washington, the report noted that “CBCSA provided guidance and training to RED LOCAL and FVBCH to purchase air tickets for consultants and staff to ensure compliance with the Fly America Act, including how to document an exemption for individual travel. RED LOCAL and FVBCH now have the knowledge to compliantly purchase U.S.-funded travel in the future.”

Cristiana and her Chamorro Foundation can now sleep comfortably with the assurance that, whenever they want to fly to Miami or Washington, Uncle Sam has it covered.
USAID’s $2.8 Million “Nicaragua Media Program” Designed “To Advance U.S. Interests”

USAID’s Media Strengthening Program and Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy initiative were just two of the agency’s many operations aimed at attacking Nicaragua’s leftist government.

From 2010 to 2013, USAID ran a very similar project called the Nicaragua Media Program, with $2.8 million in funding.

While the 10-year Media Strengthening Program was run out of the Chamorro Foundation, the three-year Nicaragua Media Program was run by a contractor called Family Health International (FHI) 360.

At the end of the project in 2013, USAID produced a final performance evaluation report, which stated clearly, using an acronym for the Nicaragua Media Program, that the “NMP sought to advance U.S. interests.”

The document noted that the USAID program was actively promoted by then-US Ambassador Robert J. Callahan, and added, “The broad dissemination of USAID messages served to promote the United States Government (USG) presence [in Nicaragua].”

The report revealed that the Nicaragua Media Program ultimately awarded 45 grants ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 each year to anti-Sandinista media outlets, for a total of $2.8 million over the three years.

This is a substantial sum of money in a region where the minimum wage is around $200 per month.

USAID’s Nicaragua Media Program carried out operations in 12 cities and two autonomous regions across Nicaragua.

Among the main goals of the program, USAID admitted in the report, was “promoting economic growth, with equity to private sector-led growth and market-led agriculture” – in other words, advocating for neoliberal economic reforms.

Another openly stated USAID goal was “implementing the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).” This placed the program directly at odds with the Bolivarian Alliance, or ALBA, that President Daniel Ortega joined when he returned to power in 2007, an economic bloc unifying Nicaragua with fellow leftist governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

One of the cornerstones of US foreign policy in Latin America since the ALBA was created in 2004 has been to force countries to leave the alliance. Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing former President Manuel Zelaya explained to The Grayzone that the US government threatened him, warning Honduras could not join the ALBA; and when he did so, he was soon overthrown in a Washington-sponsored military coup.

Many of the opposition outlets funded by the Nicaragua Media Program received multiple grants, and the report boasted that “NMP funding helped several media outlets remain in business.”

The report surveyed recipients and found “75% of the interviewed grantees believe that NMP support was essential for them to stay in business.”

One of the striking features of the evaluation is that USAID compiled a list of influential Twitter users in Nicaragua. Many of those named are recipients of US government funding, and almost all are opposition supporters.

The list is a bit dated, given the report was published in 2013, but it is proof that the US government is watching influential foreign voices on social media.

USAID also compiled a list of Nicaraguan general media influencers, demonstrating the agency’s careful monitoring of the country’s press and identification of those who best serve US interests.

Noticeable in both of these lists was that nearly all of the influencers identified at that time were supporters of the political opposition. USAID is clearly not interested in pro-Sandinista influencers, only in amplifying anti-Sandinista voices.

The contractor that ran the Nicaragua Media Program for USAID, FHI 360, boasts on its website that it was not the only project it was running for the agency.

FHI 360 had another USAID contract for a neoliberal initiative called “Market-Based Opportunities for Conservation and Sustainable Tourism in Nicaragua.” One of the prominent young Nicaraguan “entreprenuers” who was trained in this USAID program and publicly promoted by the firm, Nestor Bonilla, is a die-hard anti-Sandinista opposition figure who now lives in Panama.
USAID, Chamorro Foundation, And Nicaraguan Corporations Exploit Women To Boost Anti-Sandinista Opposition

Before it launched the Media Strengthening Program in 2013, USAID ran another operation in Nicaragua through the Chamorro Foundation, exploiting the issue of women’s rights to strengthen the anti-Sandinista opposition.

In 2009, USAID incorporated the Central American nation into a larger international soft-power project, launching what it called Voces Vitales Nicaragua, or Vital Voices Nicaragua.

Voces Vitales Nicaragua was the local manifestation of the Vital Voices program that emerged out of the US government under the Bill Clinton administration. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used the initiative to support female opposition leaders in countries targeted for regime change, and to push neoliberal economic policies that benefited US corporations behind the guise of women’s empowerment.

In Nicaragua, the project was run by the Chamorro Foundation – the obvious choice for any neoliberal US initiative – with Cristiana Chamorro as one of its leaders.

In addition to the funding the Chamorro Foundation received from USAID for this program, it raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from large corporations like CitiBank.

The Clinton-led Vital Voices program states clearly on its official website that its goal is “to promote the advancement of women as a U.S. foreign policy goal.”
USAID Wages Multi-Million Dollar Hybrid War On Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government

The programs described above represent just the surface level of the unconventional war that Washington has waged on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

The minute details of most of these USAID programs are not known because the specifics are redacted. However, data on the agency’s website show tens of millions of dollars more have been poured into supporting opposition groups.

One of the largest projects run by the US government in Nicaragua is its Municipal Governance Program, which received a whopping $29,999,763 from USAID between 2010 and 2020.

USAID’s Municipal Governance Program in Nicaragua was run by the US-based NGO Global Communities, which notes on its website that, in addition to functioning as a government contractor, it “partners” with corporations like Chevron, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and Walmart.

USAID says this program “promotes the effective engagement of citizens with municipal governments to influence decision making, demand accountability and transparency, and improve management of public resources,” by “strengthening networks of key civil society organizations (CSOs)” and helping them “conduct better oversight of the government-funded projects.”

In other words, USAID’s Municipal Governance Program is a massive, $30 million, decade-long project to support and develop anti-Sandinista forces in local governments in Nicaragua, in order to weaken the authority of the central government.

USAID’s description also hints that its Municipal Governance Program was aimed at bolstering opposition NGOs in their activism against the Sandinista government’s infrastructure projects. And at the top of the list of Nicaraguan infrastructure projects that Washington has worked to sabotage is the long-awaited construction of an inter-oceanic canal that could challenge the monopoly of the US-created Panama Canal.

Nicaraguan government officials have said they believe the canal project – which was being built with help from Chinese companies – was a major reason for the violent US-backed coup attempt in 2018. The project is currently on hold.

Another enormous, decade-long operation run by the US government in Nicaragua is called the Democratic Leadership Development Program. This initiative is technically not run by USAID, but rather by another US regime-change arm, the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

The NDI is one of the main branches of CIA front the National Endowment for Democracy. Overseeing both of these outfits is USAID, which ultimately funds the NED through the State Department budget approved by Congress.

USAID’s public records include figures spent by NDI projects. They show that in the 10 years from 2010 through the end of 2019, the NDI spent more than $21 million on its Democratic Leadership Development Program (DLDP) in Nicaragua.

There is almost no information publicly available about the Democratic Leadership Development Program. USAID’s website has a brief summary that says it “brings together respected Nicaraguan and international institutions and experts to support democratic political processes by strengthening democratic leadership of youth,” and “supports the development of a core group of young political leaders that fosters a more transparent, participatory and democratic society.”

This description makes it clear that the program was aimed to create, train, and cultivate anti-Sandinista opposition leaders in Nicaragua. Such an interpretation is reinforced by one of the only other places on the internet that mentions the Democratic Leadership Development Program: the LinkedIn profile of the former NDI country director for Nicaragua, Julian Quibell.

His page shows that Quibell, in his words, “Oversaw the design and implementation of a 10 year $22.9 million dollar USAID democracy and governance project focused on youth leadership and citizen participation in a challenging environment with increasingly closed political space.” That reads as a fairly clear implication that NDI was training young anti-Sandinista leaders to undermine the leftist government.

In case it wasn’t clear that NDI’s work in Nicaragua was explicitly partisan, Quibell revealed that he managed “relations with media, civil society and political party leaders, private sector, international cooperation and diplomatic corps.”

This enormous NDI program helped set the stage for the attempted 2018 coup d’etat. And soon after the failure of the violent regime-change operation in Nicaragua, Quibell moved to Ecuador, where he become country director for NDI’s operation there.

The Grayzone has documented how the NDI was used to train and fund opposition parties and leaders in Ecuador to oppose the leftist Correísta movement founded by former President Rafael Correa. The fact that Quibell transferred to Ecuador in 2020 is significant, because these NDI-cultivated forces were integral in handing the 2021 presidential election to right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso.

Before he worked in Nicaragua, Quibell was also NDI country director for Mexico, where he admits on LinkedIn that he “cultivated and maintained relationships with Mexican government officials at the federal, state, and municipal levels, as well as key civic and political leaders.”

Another US regime-change front and NED subsidiary, the International Republican Institute (IRI), has also been active in Nicaragua.

USAID data show that the IRI has spent at least $8 million to fund Nicaragua-based projects since 2013, although what exactly these programs are is not known because the information is redacted.

As The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has documented, the IRI played a significant role in a 2004 US-backed military coup against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, left-wing liberation theology advocate Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

USAID’s own website transparently illustrates its role as arm of US political power that aims to advance neoliberal governance and shatter any political movement or party that presents an alternative economic model.

In 2019, the year after the failed coup, for instance, more than 90% of USAID grants for Nicaragua-related programs were classified under its “Government and Civil Society” sector, whereas spending on public health, agriculture, and the environment was almost non-existent.

Of the $34 million that USAID allotted for Nicaragua-related programs in 2020, $22 million – nearly two-thirds – were classified as “Government and Civil Society” spending. Another $5.2 million, or 15%, went to USAID’s own operating expenses.

The fact that USAID uses its supposed “aid” money to support right-wing opposition forces in Nicaragua is reflected most explicitly by the record-breaking surge in its budget in 2006.

That year, the neoliberal President Enrique Bolaños was very unpopular, and opinion polls showed that Daniel Ortega and his socialist Sandinista Front were on the verge of returning to power after 16 years in the opposition.

Washington was desperate to beat back the so-called Pink Tide, or wave of progressive movements that were winning elections across Latin America at the time. So the US government returned to a strategy it had used with President Violeta Chamorro: attempt to bribe the Nicaraguan people with enormous offers of aid.

In 2006, USAID poured a staggering $260 million into projects in Nicaragua. Most of that funding went into an infrastructure, rural development, and transportation project run through Washington’s Millennium Challenge Corporation.

But the windfall spending failed, Ortega won the 2006 election, and Nicaragua shifted back to the left. By 2009, USAID spending had shrunken from $260 million down to $45 million, and by 2012 to just $34 million.

USAID’s own data make it clear without a doubt: it not a humanitarian entity, but a mechanism for political infiltration and destabilization that cultivates and funds right-wing opposition to the Sandinista government.

It is therefore not hyperbole to say that the US government in essence created Nicaragua’s political opposition, and directs its activities today.

As a product of foreign meddling, Nicaragua’s opposition reflects an extraordinary case study of Washington’s toxic legacy in the region and across the globe.

NEW YORK CITY: CLOSED DOOR NEGOTIATIONS COULD PRIVATIZE WORKERS’ MEDICARE

By Paul Becker, Portside.

June 4, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/new-york-city-closed-door-negotiations-could-privatize-workers-medicare/



New York City Workers Are Worried Their Healthcare May Be Privatized.

A hush-hush operation between New York City and the Municipal Labor Council (MLC) to essentially privatize the health care coverage for thousands of retirees has exploded into public view in the past several weeks. The internet has been buzzing with protests against the closed-door negotiations that would take retirees out of traditional Medicare and place them in a Medicare Advantage program run by private insurers, with all its traps and pitfalls.

The MLC is composed of the leadership of about 100 unions with members employed by the city. The city continues to pay for part of their health care coverage, under union negotiated contracts, after they retire.

“What they’re doing is using public money to subsidize a private operation,” said Norm Scott, who was an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn for 35 years. He is now active in Retiree Advocate, a caucus in the United Federation of Teachers, the New York affiliate of The American Federation of Teachers. “Ninety percent of the doctors in the United States take Medicare,” he pointed out, “but with these private insurers, you have to choose from their panel of doctors.” He noted that his wife, a hospital health care provider during her career, had spent countless hours on the phone hassling with companies who had turned down payments for patient treatments that doctors at her hospital deemed essential. “They’re just in it to save money so they can earn higher profits. This is not the rule with Medicare.”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicare uses only 1.3 percent of the funds it collects on administrative costs (costs not related to medical reimbursements). Medicare Advantage insurance companies average nearly 15 percent on administrative costs, the result of hefty profits and seven and eight figure executive compensation packages.
Opposition To Privatization Of Medicare Growing Among Retirees

The behind-the-scenes negotiations, which have been going on for some time, came to light only a few weeks ago and have aroused a storm of protest from rank-and -file union members who have heard about them. “More and more retirees are looking at it and talking about it on Facebook and other internet outlets,” declared Gloria Brandman, one of the leaders of Retiree Advocate, who taught in Brooklyn for more than 30 years.” We’re in a new world now and this issue has generated lots of concern among rank-and-file retirees.”

While the opposition took shape with teacher retirees in the UFT, retirees in other unions, like the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), representing the faculties of colleges in New York City, and District Council 37, representing other groups of city workers, are also raising deep concerns. The Delegates Assembly of PSC on April 15 unanimously (150 to 0) passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on any agreement between New York City and the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) to move retiree healthcare coverage from traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage and asking that the PSC bring the moratorium call to the MLC. The NYC Managerial Employees Association Executive Board adopted a similar motion on May 18.

And two weeks ago, retirees from several unions held a press briefing covered by some media outlets like New York’s Channel 11 and radio station WBAI and attended by about 150 retirees calling public attention to the issue.
Evading A Crucial Question

The growing opposition to the unfolding events compelled UFT President Michael Mulgrew to stage an online audio event, earlier this month, spending 45 minutes trying to assure his members that the union would not settle for any agreement that would reduce the benefits they now enjoy. He took a number of questions from listeners. But he evaded a question from one member who asked if he could keep his doctor under the new arrangement or would he have to switch to another doctor if his doctor was not on the insurance company’s panel.

A Feb. 21 article in The New York Times by Mark Miller vividly described why this question is vital to understanding a key aspect of the issue. Ed Stein, a retiree in Colorado who had been a newspaper editorial cartoonist, chose a Medicare Advantage plan over traditional Medicare when he turned 65. “The price was the same,” he recalled. “I liked the access to gyms, and the drug plan was very good. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be facing a crisis like the one I’m having now.”

At 72, Stein was diagnosed with aggressive bladder cancer. He needed a complex surgical procedure and chemotherapy but the doctor in his area that he decided was best for the treatment was not on the panel of his Medicare Advantage plan. He tried to switch to traditional Medicare which would allow him to have a doctor of his choice but came up against a fact that is little known by the general public: the decision to choose Medicare Advantage is effectively irrevocable. “We were just shocked to learn this,” Stein recalled. In response to this issue, UFT President Mulgrew said that UFT retirees will be able to switch back to Medicare during the period of time a few weeks each year when retirees are allowed to switch their health plan coverage. But if they do so, they will have to pay for supplemental coverage.
Pushing Privatization While More People Lean Toward Medicare For All

Up until now, the UFT and most city unions were advising members approaching 65 to choose traditional Medicare, noting the traps and pitfalls of the Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurance companies. The motive of the city in these new proposals is clearly to try to save money at the expense of retirees. The motive of the unions who are basically changing their position is unclear.

At present, the city-MLC negotiations are at a stalemate with two insurance companies bidding for the goodies. A facilitator has been appointed to mediate between the two companies.

The Advantage plans around the country are growing, sparked by aggressive marketing campaigns that tout “extras” like gym membership and other incentives. Their growth has also been aided by quiet changes in federal law and regulation in recent years. And under the Trump administration, Medicare administrators have been tipping the scales improperly in favor of Advantage.

The aggressive campaign to essentially privatize health care and weaken Medicare comes at a time when more and more people are seeing the advantage of government run health care, as is the case in virtually all other developed countries. Medicare for all became an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign and currently, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill in Congress that would establish a universal Medicare system. And in New York, a bill in the State Legislature which has majority support will make healthcare a right by establishing a universal single-payer healthcare system. Everyone would have quality healthcare regardless of age, employment, or immigration status. All healthcare would be covered (including dental, mental healthcare, long-term care and prescriptions). If it passes it would be a huge step towards health justice in New York and around the country.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the future of the issue is currently up in the air. It seems that the only barrier to the effort to turn city retirees’ medical coverage over to private insurers is a rising tide of opposition by members of city unions and perhaps the public at large.

WHAT’S UP WITH THE SUDDEN ATTACKS ON SCHOOLS THAT TEACH CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

By Jeff Bryant, LA Progressive.

June 4, 2021



https://popularresistance.org/whats-up-with-the-sudden-attacks-on-schools-that-teach-critical-race-theory/




When North Carolina public school teacher Justin Parmenter penned an opinion piece for the Charlotte Observer about the difficulties of teaching in hybrid mode during the pandemic, with students both in-person in the classroom and remote online, he didn’t expect to get called out by a legislator on the floor of the state House of Representatives.

The main point of his editorial, Parmenter told me in a phone call, was that teaching his seventh-grade class in the hybrid model isn’t sustainable because it forces teachers to make compromises that limit the learning opportunities of their students.

But that point was not what Iredell County Republican Representative Jeff McNeely was compelled to comment on. Instead, he attacked Parmenter, who was named a finalist for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Teacher of the Year in 2016, for attempting to “indoctrinate” his students about “environmental pollution.”

As Parmenter explains on his personal blog, McNeely’s remarks referred to a piece of writing Parmenter asked his students to respond to that happened to be about pollution, and McNeely made his comment in the context of a discussion in the House about a new bill, HB 755, that “would require schools to post online a comprehensive list of all teaching, classroom, and assignment materials used by every teacher in every class session,” according to WRAL. McNeely spoke out in support of the bill in the House Education Committee meeting because he felt it would “help the parents going to the next grade be able to look and see what that teacher taught the year before” and, apparently, avoid having their children exposed to teachers who would “teach ’em in a certain way to make ’em believe something other than the facts.”

Aside from pollution being, indeed, a fact, what HB 755 proposes is impractical, to say the least, Parmenter told me. “Teaching is an art form,” he said, with multiple opportunities for “teachable moments” to arise spontaneously during every lesson. Having to document that would not only be tedious busywork, but it could also discourage teachers from tailoring instruction to students.

Parmenter suspects that McNeely’s comment, rather than being an honest discourse on pedagogy, is more likely a ham-handed attempt at making a “cheap political point.”

“It’s not surprising,” Parmenter said, “given the current national context.”

The national context he was referring to is the wave of agitation drummed up by right-wing political organizations and Republican politicians over the perceived “indoctrination” of students that occurs in public schools.
‘None Of This Is Really About Critical Race Theory’

A prominent flashpoint in this upheaval is the supposed infiltration of the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in public school curricula. The controversy “exploded in the public arena this spring,” reports Education Week, “especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban… [CRT’s] use in the classroom.”

The bills have surfaced in at least 15 states, according to Education Week. That includes North Carolina’s version, which debuted in May, NC Policy Watch reported.

The bills repeat a nearly identical set of prohibitions on “how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and other social issues,” according to Education Week, using language similar to that of an “executive order former President Donald Trump put in place to ban diversity training for federal workers.” President Biden has rescinded that order, but efforts to ban diversity training are continuing in universities and school districts, according to the Washington Post, where the focus of legislation has extended beyond employee training to include school curricula and teaching practices.

The specifics in these bills ban teachers from addressing concepts related to race and gender, for instance, prohibiting teachers from making anyone “feel discomfort or guilt” because of their race or gender. But the list of transgressions seems purposefully vague and general, almost as if to invite a lawsuit, explains Adam Harris in the Atlantic. And proponents of the bills have adopted critical race theory, an academic idea dating back to the 1970s, as a “shorthand” for their concerns.

“But none of this is really about CRT,” James Ford told me in a phone call. Ford is a former North Carolina Teacher of the Year who currently represents the Southwest Education Region on the North Carolina State Board of Education and serves as the executive director of the Center for Racial Equity in Education.

“First, in these calls to stop the teaching of CRT,” he said, “there is no clarification of what CRT really is. There’s no argumentative critique of the actual concept.” Indeed, many of the bills don’t even mention the term.

The real target, Ford explained, is “divisiveness.” For the people who criticize teachers and promote these bills, Ford believes, there can be “no nuance at all” in discussing “matters of religion and customs and the values of rugged individualism and free-market ideology.” There can be no challenges of assumptions and no revising of long-standing mythologies about America and American society.

According to Ford, these people see education as a process about “making kids assimilate,” and “simply talking about a subject like pollution takes on a heightened sense of alarm about society being undermined.”
Outlawing ‘Divisiveness’ In Schools

Many of the bills specifically target the banning of teaching “divisive concepts,” according to Politico, with one bill, in West Virginia, going so far as to call for teachers to be “dismissed or not reemployed for teaching… divisive concepts.”

Proposed laws against “divisiveness” in schools prompt Ford to question, “Divisive for who?” and he notes that the people behind all these bills are overwhelmingly white, wealthier folks who have generally benefited most from the nation’s education system. Ford suggests they may be provoking white resentment against public schools because schools are now more populated with Black and Brown children who may express doubts about a prevailing narrative about the country that may not include people who look like them.

Ford also finds it ironic that people who are intent on outlawing school “indoctrination” have chosen to impose their own agenda by attacking critical thinking and questioning of cultural norms, which, to him, is what truly sounds like indoctrination.

From a practical standpoint, it would be nearly impossible to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. And it’s hard to imagine how teachers of American history would steer clear of violating these laws while teaching about the Trail of Tears, slavery, the Civil War, and the suffragette and Civil Rights movements, or how English teachers could engage students in writing while avoiding current events and topics that are apt to elicit meaningful responses from students.

Because these concerted attacks on public schools and teachers make little sense academically, they have prompted many observers to consider whether there is more of a political intent behind the effort.

Parmenter suggested that attacks on schools and teachers are an attempt to change political momentum at a time when national leadership under a Democratic presidential administration enjoys high approval ratings.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg seems to agree, writing, “Part of the reason the right is putting so much energy into this crusade [against the teaching of CRT] is because it can’t whip up much opposition to the bulk of Joe Biden’s agenda.” She concludes, “Telling parents that liberals want to make their kids hate their country and feel guilty for being white might be absurd and cynical. It also looks like it might be effective.”

But that argument makes sense only if you ignore the other education agenda right-wing politicians have rolled out at the very same time they are whipping up white resentment over diversity in schools.
School Choice’s ‘Best Year Ever’

It’s certainly no coincidence that in many states where there are bills attacking the teaching of divisive topics—including Georgia, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, and West Virginia—state lawmakers are also considering or enacting new “school choice” laws to create or expand programs that give parents vouchers so they can remove their children from public schools and send them to private schools at taxpayer expense. Other school choice acts create or expand programs that give parents taxpayer dollars to spend on homeschooling and other educational expenses they incur for their children.

The 2020-2021 school year has been the “best year ever” for school choice advocates, says Alan Greenblatt on Governing: The Future of States and Localities. Greenblatt notes the proliferation of new laws has created education savings accounts that give parents public funds to pay for “a wide range of education-related services.” Other laws create or expand state tax-credit programs that funnel donations from businesses and wealthy people into school vouchers for parents.

Many of these new provisions have been passed in states that had previously resisted school choice programs—such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia—or that—like Georgia, Maryland, Montana, and South Dakota—had very small programs that are now ballooning into massive redistributions of public funds for education.

“States that were long resistant [to school choice] have now opened up,” Greenblatt observes, and once the programs start up, regardless of how small, “they tend to expand, not contract.”

Greenblatt credits the pandemic for creating a lot of the momentum for this expansion of school laws. But he also quotes education historian Jack Schneider who notes that the drive for more school choice was accelerating long before COVID-19, during the expansions of charter schools under former President Barack Obama and through the fiery denunciations of “government schools” by former President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Indeed, school choice proponents like the conservative Manhattan Institute have long contended that a public school system funded by government, but with private entities providing the education services, should be “the democratic norm” for the nation. They call privatization of the school system “educational pluralism,” as opposed to the apparent divisiveness of publicly operated institutions.

“Public schooling forces zero-sum conflict such as we are seeing over CRT,” writes Neal McCluskey, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, in RealClearPolicy. Of course, this “conflict” is “zero-sum,” as James Ford points out, only if you insist it is.

But school choice proponents like McCluskey argue that having a public system that allows people from different backgrounds to come together and share varying points of view is not “diverse” at all because it might open a window to a critique of America that potentially “demonizes” the country.

Instead, in this up-is-down and down-is-up view of the world, the only way to solve divisiveness, according to McCluskey, is by “letting millions of families and educators choose for themselves” by funding a system of privately operated schools that cater only to those parents who already share the same ideologies.

McCluskey might be correct that such a system could “end heated disagreement over ideas like CRT” in schools, but it certainly would guarantee these conflicts spill over into other arenas for these students later in life, when they become adults whose views have hardened and become more resistant to change because they never experienced real diversity of thought during their formative years.

“[A] new era of school choice vouchers may be parents’ best defense against public school curricula,” warned former Attorney General William Barr, according to Just the News, in his first public speech since leaving office under the Trump administration in December.

“Barr suggested,” Just the News reports, that “some of the new woke curricula pushed by the left might infringe religious and speech freedoms and impose a secular theology that violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause prohibiting government from imposing religious beliefs.”

No doubt, as the effects of the pandemic wane in many places due to vaccinations, fearmongering over supposed divisiveness in public schools will only grow. It is likely that there will be a ratcheting up of the rhetoric for greater school choice to enable parents to escape the supposed adverse consequences of being exposed to anything other than long-accepted narratives about subjects, regardless of a changing world.

A new nonprofit launched in March, Parents Defending Education (PDE), has targeted “woke indoctrination” in schools, Fox News reports. PDE “is just the latest” organization to take up the cause, according to the article, which also lists Discovery Institute, Oregonians for Liberty in Education, and Parents Against Critical Race Theory.

According to Education Week, PDE has already targeted school districts around the country with federal civil rights complaints against schools that address systemic racism. The article notes that “[PDE] staffers work or previously worked at organizations such as the Cato Institute,”—where McCluskey works—the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Coalition for TJ. The Cato and Fordham institutes are ardent proponents of school choice, and Coalition for TJ has filed a lawsuit to stop changes to admission standards that would allow more enrollment diversity at a Virginia high school.

Ford agrees that these attacks on “woke” indoctrination in schools are “unequivocally related to efforts to privatize education,” and he points out that many of the same people orchestrating these new laws targeting public education are strong proponents of school choice. “Historically, there is a pattern connecting race issues and privatization,” he says.

Numerous studies have found evidence supporting Ford’s argument, but it’s not at all hard to imagine that an effective strategy for pushing white families out of public schools is to raise fears that their children are being indoctrinated with values and beliefs that could divide them ideologically or emotionally and draw a wedge between them and their families and neighbors.

Nor is it a stretch to believe that families of color, seeing white families become enraged about the teaching of structural racism, would consider fleeing a public school to find a privately operated alternative that would be more culturally affirming for their children.
‘I Don’t Think That’s Funny At All’

In the meantime, public school teachers will be increasingly scapegoated by conservative advocates who are stigmatizing the idea of addressing controversial topics in schools. Proponents of these laws seem to not know teachers “have to leave our politics at the door,” Parmenter told me, and these conservative advocates seem to believe teachers “don’t have the integrity and professionalism to understand that [they] know there are lines you simply don’t cross.”

Parmenter senses that the negative impact these laws will have on the teaching corps, already reeling from the stress caused by the pandemic, may discourage future teachers from entering a profession where they’re constantly under the watchful eye of people who may not respect them and understand how they do their job.

“Less mysterious” to him are the negative impacts these attacks on public schools and teaching will have on students.

“For children to learn how to read and write, they need to engage with a variety of different texts,” he says, and while he found Representative McNeely’s accusations of “indoctrination” somewhat comedic—“like because I just happened to mention that the piece of writing my class focused on was about pollution, that made him think, ‘I just caught one of these Commies admitting what they are up to’”—Parmenter fears any new law that is so “invasive of teachers” will ultimately be harmful to their students. “And I don’t think that’s funny at all.”

BIDEN IS ANTI-HAITI

By Pascal Robert, Black Agenda Report.

June 4, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/biden-is-anti-haiti/



And His Haitian-American Press Person Doesn’t Give A Damn.

The current Haitian president is perhaps the most ineffectual US stooge to date, but Joe Biden and his Haitian American press person couldn’t care less.

On Wednesday May 26, 2021 Haitian American Karine Jean Pierre, principal deputy press secretary for the Biden White House, took the podium to address questions from the press. Because the corporate Democratic Party establishment realizes that showcasing racial diversity is necessary in the face of its almost 30 year history of supporting bone crushing policies like NAFTA, GATT, financial deregulation, and the 1994 Crime Bill, Democrats use demonstrations of neoliberal diversity as their only talisman to keep the fealty of their more ethnically diverse constituency.

The irony of Karine Jean Pierre being celebrated as the latest manifestation of Black Girl Magic for Empire is that Jean-Pierre’s Haitian family background will obscure the fact that Joe Biden is currently supporting a political regime in Haiti almost universally loathed by the Haitian people. Jovenel Moise, the current strong man president of Haiti, rules by brutality and executive decree amid charges of massive financial corruption, as terror, kidnappings, political assassinations and insecurity proliferate throughout the land. Many Haitians argue his official term in office is over and that Moise now governs unconstitutionally. Because Moise has been a willing dupe to America’s hard line agenda against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, he has been viewed by the United States as a valuable check against a potential left leaning tide in Latin and South America.

Compounded with Biden’s support for Moise, Biden’s administration has carried out an even more extensive Haitian deportation agenda than Donald Trump. In the early months of Biden’s presidency more Haitians have been deported than in the whole last year of Trump’s presidency. Now, because of obvious pressure from the Haitian-American activist community, Biden has agreed to extend Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to Haitians while not only supporting the regime causing the current immigration surge, but also after having ramped up Haitian deportation to numbers unseen even under Trump. This should surprise no one as Joe Biden at one point in his political career remarked, “The whole Island of Haiti could drop into the ocean and it would mean nothing to the United States.” Yet now we are all supposed to applaud Biden and American Empire because a tool like Karine Jean Pierre has been chosen to blur the Democratic Party’s long treacherous relationship with Haiti going back to the Obama and Clinton regimes.

The vile utility of Karine Jean Pierre as Biden’s Haitian-American mouthpiece will be unclear to many Haitians who will fall into the same tragic trap of “Black faces in High Places” that has so treacherously plagued Black American politics. Ridiculous Blackface compradors for the ruling class like Obama and Kamala Harris have been a normative part of the political game for some time now. However, those seeking clarity will hopefully come to realize that this con game is running its course and enemies of the people can come in a whole rainbow of colors and variations of gender and sexual orientation. The Democratic party’s identity politics charade is the last card they have to maintain their position as guardians of the left flank of capital. The masses of people need to become more aware of how this liberal charade of identity inclusion is merely a smoke screen to keep people in check as the current American reality becomes more and more precarious. Let us all become aware of these contradictions and fight the Empire regardless of the multi-colored players used to control the levers of destruction.

US COVID-19 vaccination campaign drastically slowing

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/05/covi-j05.html




Benjamin Mateus
15 hours ago







President Joe Biden has set July 4 as his goal to see 70 percent of all adults in the United States with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines. However, he is confronting a lagging vaccination rate that has been declining week to week since the peak in vaccinations in mid-April. In a plea to all unvaccinated people last month, he declared, “This is your choice. It’s life and death.”

Syringes filled with Pfizer vaccines sit at the ready at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center Thursday, June 3, 2021, in Bellingham, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)




On June 3, the seven-day average of reported vaccine doses administered fell below the threshold of one million doses per day. On June 2, only a half-million doses were given. There has been a 33 percent decline from the previous week.

With 2.05 billion doses of the vaccines thus far administered across the globe, almost 298 million doses (14.5 percent) have been given just in the US, a rate of 90 doses per 100 people. More than 368 million doses have been distributed throughout the country, indicating 70 million doses waiting for recipients.

In a sleight of hand, the more than 60 percent vaccinated figure being heavily promoted by the White House does not reflect the population as a whole but only those over 18 with at least one dose. In reality, 50.9 percent of the population has received at least one dose and only 41.2 percent have been fully vaccinated. Of those 18 years or older, 63 percent have received at least one dose and it is this figure that is being advertised. According to the White House’s calculations, another 20 million more adults need to be inoculated for Biden to reach his goal in the next month.

However, this is a meaningless figure in that the theoretical herd immunity threshold of 70 percent would require 70 percent of the population to be vaccinated and this does not account for the new strains of the more transmissible coronavirus that are quickly becoming dominant, which would raise this threshold. In reality, the herd immunity threshold remains unknown and scientists speculate it may be unattainable.

Breakthrough infections with the new variants such as the B.1.617.2 Delta variant may be considerable among individuals with only a single dose, according to recent studies on neutralization antibodies against variants. Though full vaccination is critical to prevent serious disease, breakthrough infections may be much higher with these newer variants. Recent reporting indicated new variants of interest have also been detected in Vietnam.

Also, those 18 years old and younger can very well become infected, become very ill and die, as well as transmit the contagion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Friday through their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that there has been an increase in the rates of hospitalizations among teenagers in March and April. Dr. Rochelle Walensky remarked, “I am deeply concerned by numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation.”

The Delta variant has been estimated to be 50 to 70 percent more transmissible than the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant. Individuals infected with the Delta variant also have a 2.7 times higher risk of needing hospitalization than those with the Alpha variant. While the Delta variant is now the dominant strain in India and the UK, genetic sequencing is demonstrating a sharp rise in this variant in the United States.

States across the US are now moving to incentivize unvaccinated residents to get vaccinated with prizes and giveaways. Governor Jim Justice, Republican from West Virginia, announced during a news conference on Tuesday that the state would run a lottery program from June 20 to August 4 that would include prizes of money, firearms and vehicles. On Father’s Day the state planned to give away five custom hunting rifles and five custom hunting shotguns, according to The Hill. Other prizes included custom outfitted trucks, lifetime hunting and fishing licenses and a $1 million lottery cash prize on June 20.

Anheuser-Busch, the giant brewing company, released a statement announcing the company “will unlock its biggest beer giveaway in history: when we reach the 70 percent milestone, America. Your next round will be on us!” CEO Michel Doukeris added, “At Anheuser-Busch, we are committed to supporting the safe and strong recovery of our nation and being able to be together again at the places with the people we have missed so much. This commitment includes encouraging Americans to get vaccinated, and we are excited to buy Americans 21+ a round of beer when we reach the White House goal.”

Other states engaging in these gimmicks include California, New Mexico and Ohio, who have started similar lottery drawings in the hopes of spurring the vaccination effort.

However, little effort has been taken to explain why these sharp declines have occurred, preferring to blame people based on political ideology. Rhetoric aside, this question was studied and reported on by the CDC in their May 28 MMWR release.

They sought to look at the patterns in COVID-19 vaccination coverage by social vulnerability and urbanicity. They found that disparities in county-level vaccination coverage by social vulnerabilities had increased despite expanding vaccine eligibility, especially in large fringe metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties. They wrote, “By May 1, 2021, vaccination coverage among adults was lower among those living in counties with lower socioeconomic status and with higher percentages of households with children, single parents, and persons with disabilities.”

States in the Deep South, with high rates of poverty, have barely given at least one dose to a third of their populations while those fully vaccinated are just reaching 30 percent. A significant section of the population in the poorest areas remains vulnerable as the vaccination initiative is reaching a ceiling.

Mississippi has fully vaccinated just 27.5 percent and vaccination rates have declined five percent from a week ago. Alabama, with 29.3 percent fully vaccinated, has seen a 73 percent drop in vaccinations from the week prior.

While North America and Europe, where the majority of the vaccines have been distributed, are seeing COVID-19 infection rates continue their steady declines, across Southeast Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, Western Pacific and Africa, cases remain high or have remained precariously steady.

Cases are on the rise again across South Africa where four of nine provinces are facing a brutal third wave. The winter season in conjunction with an increase seen in travel and the loosening of restrictions is leading to concerns from the World Health Organization (WHO).

A WHO Africa statement released on June 3 noted, “African countries must urgently boost critical care capacity to prevent health facilities from being overwhelmed. This comes as vaccine shipments to the continent grind to a near halt… In the last two weeks, Africa recorded a 20 percent increase in cases compared with the previous fortnight. The pandemic is trending upwards in 14 countries and in the past week alone, eight countries witnessed an abrupt rise of over 30 percent in cases. South Africa is reporting a sustained increase in cases, while Uganda saw a 131 percent week-on-week rise last week, with infection clusters in schools, rising cases among health workers and isolation centers and intensive care units filling up. Angola and Namibia are also experiencing a resurgence in cases.”

The regional director for WHO Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, sounded the alarm. “The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising. Our priority is clear—it’s crucial that we swiftly get vaccines into arms of Africans at high risk of falling seriously ill and dying of COVID-19. While many countries outside Africa have now vaccinated their high-priority groups and are able to even consider vaccinating their children, African countries are unable to even follow up with second doses for high-risk groups.”

Less than two percent of Africa’s population has received a COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, some of the vaccines that are arriving have waited so long to be shipped in storage that they have expired, necessitating they be destroyed.

After months of promising to send COVID-19 vaccine doses to the waiting world, just 80 million doses may eventually leave the US. In a hypocritical statement so commonplace with US leaders, President Joe Biden said, “The United States will be the world’s arsenal of vaccine in our shared fight against this virus. In the days to come, as we draw on the experiences of distributing the vaccine doses announced today, we will have more details to provide about how future doses will be shared.”

Los Angeles Times promotes right-wing parents’ group that advocates lifting of mask mandates for students

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/05/scho-j05.html




Angelo Perera
14 hours ago







On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times featured an article titled, “Parents frustrated by pandemic education launch activist group to raise their voices.” The article sympathetically portrays the fringe right-wing parents’ group “OpenSchoolsCA,” which has established a non-profit to lobby for an even more aggressive opening of schools this fall, including the abandonment of all safety measures such as masks, quarantines of classrooms where COVID-19 outbreaks occur, and more. While not stated explicitly, the Times article makes clear that the group will also promote charter schools, school choice and other efforts to privatize public education.

Los Angeles Unified School District students stand in a hallway socially distance during a lunch break at Boys & Girls Club of Hollywood in Los Angeles – Aug. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The Times writes that the group “coalesced around parent anger over how long it was taking to reopen California campuses that were closed for a year or more amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Their discontent simmered for months when reopenings offered students much less than a full five-day-a-week school experience.”

A similar right-wing group, Reopen California Schools, recently launched a campaign to sue the California Department of Public Health for mandating these safety measures, which they describe as “barbaric.”

The Times article is only the latest example of the bourgeois media uncritically presenting such right wing fringe groups as the voice of the majority of parents, when in reality the vast majority continue to keep their children learning safely at home. According to data from Chicago Public Schools, only 22 percent of students attended in-person classes the week of April 19. In New York City, 61 percent of students are still attending remotely. In Los Angeles—as the LA Times article itself is obligated to note—the parents of roughly 70 percent of children are keeping their kids at home.

While the founding member of OpenSchoolsCA, Oakland parent Megan Bacigalupi, insists that her organization does not back charter schools, at least two of its advisers are prominent right-wing advocates for charter schools: David Castillo, a charter school consultant and advocate, and former Oakland Unified School District board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge, a virulent promoter of charter schools.

During the pandemic, the American ruling class has doubled down on its efforts to expand charter schools by diverting funds from public schools. An analysis by Good Jobs First, which tracks stimulus spending at Covid Stimulus Watch, shows that private and charter schools received roughly six times more funding per school than public schools from the CARES Act: $855,000 per facility on average, compared to $134,500 for public schools. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) under the CARES Act, which was not open for public entities, allocated $5.7 billion in PPP loans to charter and private schools.

Following the worst year in living memory for educators and the entire working class, when masses have been forced to return to deadly working conditions, the efforts to defund public education will provoke further opposition within the working class. To counteract the growing class consciousness among workers, the ruling class utilizes its bought-and-paid-for media to uncritically air the views of a frustrated group of middle-class parents. A close examination of the backgrounds of these individuals makes clear the class forces for whom they speak.

Megan Bacigalupi’s public LinkedIn page highlights a career with police agencies in New York, before she relocated to California. Serving first as a lawyer in the Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator under former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, she went on to become the Deputy Commissioner for Intergovernmental Affairs at the New York City Business Integrity Commission. Megan and her husband John Mellott Bacigalupi, who is currently a senior vice president at Cantor Capital, are a “power couple” intent on jockeying for privileges within the upper-middle class.

Jumoke Hinton Hodge has a long record of being a shill for charter school corporations. In 2012, she was endorsed by Go Public Schools, an organization backed by advocates for charter schools like the Walton Family Foundation. Go Public Schools provided Hodge with almost $63,000 in the 2012 Oakland School Board race, and then almost $105,000 in 2016.

In 2012, Hodge voted to close five elementary schools in Oakland, resulting in the displacement of an estimated 900 elementary students. The vote led to a three-week occupation of Lakeview Elementary, forcing the superintendent to resign. In 2019, ignoring the pleas of students, teachers, and community members, Hodge voted along with the majority of the school board to close Roots International Academy, forcing students to relocate to a school over a mile away. Shortly thereafter, during the 2019 Oakland teachers strike, Hodge viciously attacked and choked a kindergarten teacher, Danisha Right, a brutal assault for which she received no punishment.

OpenSchoolsCA also has the support of a few medical professionals that have distorted science for political purposes during the pandemic. Replying to their own tweet on the formation of the non-profit, the organization expressed their solidarity with three scientists that the organization considered to be “public health guiding lights.” All three scientists—Vinay Prasad, Monica Gandhi and Tracy Beth Høeg—have been promoted by the ruling class in their reckless drive to reopen schools.

Gandhi is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. On May 27, she spoke on Democracy Now, adding weight to the scientifically discredited claim by the US intelligence agencies that SARS-CoV-2 may have been leaked from the Wuhan Virology Institute in China. She then supported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance to lift restrictions on vaccinated populations. Throughout the spring, Gandhi has also been brought on the broadcast media to push for school reopenings, recently going so far as to advocate the complete lifting of mask usage among all children in schools, long before most are vaccinated.

Tracy Beth Høeg is a physician at Northern California Orthopaedic Associates who promotes the scientifically disproven claim that the infection in schools is merely a reflection of infection in the community. Similar to statements made by Gandhi and advocated by OpenSchoolsCA, Høeg recently opined in the Washington Post that “children should return to their normal lives this summer and in the upcoming school year, without masks and regardless of their vaccination status.”

A recent tweet by Høeg states: “The message that schools are overall safer than the community for kids both in terms of COVID and overall health and safety needs to get out and can’t be emphasized enough.” On Twitter, she argues against providing adequate ventilation in classrooms, and claims that it is “very safe” for teachers to work in poorly ventilated rooms with unmasked students.

Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Prasad frequently argues that schools must stay open and that it is up to the individual to take appropriate action to not be exposed to the virus. He completely ignores the fact that schools have been major centers of outbreaks across the US, and that students have acted as transmitters of the virus, leading to an unknown number developing “Long COVID,” while thousands are being treated for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). Prasad recently stated, “Unless the local healthcare system is approaching overload or collapse, schools should remain open.”

American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) features an interview between Prasad and Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kulldorf was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) that argued for a policy of natural herd immunity, which became the de facto policy of the Trump administration and continued under Biden, as the vaccines have been gradually distributed.

The AIER, a libertarian think tank which posits as their aim “a society based on property rights and open markets,” is engaged in a highly reactionary, anti-working class and anti-socialist enterprise. The GBD had the backing of right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, who hosted a private soiree of scientists, economists and journalists to provide the homicidal declaration a modicum of respectability and formulate herd immunity as a necessary global policy in response to the pandemic.

The elevation of figures like those involved in OpenSchoolsCA has a definite political aim. The American ruling class, having done essentially nothing to curb the pandemic through public health measures, stands exposed in the eyes of broad masses, while the pandemic itself is far from over.

In order to undermine mounting opposition among workers, the ruling class relies on a fringe minority in the medical and scientific community, the capitalist media and a privileged layer within the upper-middle class that itself is utilizing the crisis to advance its own material position within the top 10 percent of American society. The ruling class fears above all a social explosion from below, as the simmering anger of broad masses threatens to erupt to the surface.