Industry Insiders Question Louisiana Regulators Over Cleanup

https://popularresistance.org/industry-insiders-question-louisiana-regulators-over-cleanup-on-exxonmobil-land-amid-corruption-claims-and-pollution-fears/


Amid Corruption Claims and Pollution Fears.

As billions in federal funds start flowing to state orphan well programs, a DeSmog investigation raises questions about whether oil-friendly states will put industry interests ahead of the environment.

If you had ventured down a dirt road running through remote marshland along the Gulf Coast in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, at just the right time back in late February, you might have come across a pit of gray muck. Down in that pit, you’d find a contractor welding a steel cap about the size of a dinner plate onto a stub of pipe jutting up from the mud below.

That pipe was the last visible sign of an old oil and gas wastewater well that once dropped over a half-mile deep into the earth, now plugged up and sealed by contractors hired by the state.

For decades, oil and gas companies disposed of millions of barrels of waste down that hole, ringed with cement and steel, dubbing the wastewater well Freshwater City SWD 01, according to state records.

Experts told DeSmog the well was defective and that using it put underground supplies of drinking water in the area at risk.

“It’s a mess,” said Cornell engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who reviewed public well records provided by DeSmog and found that Freshwater City was riddled with flaws.

That means the process of “abandoning” the old well creates new problems. “If they just do the usual plugging job, and now there’s a suspicion that this well was leaking over some period of time and contaminating the water supply,” he said, “you’ve lost the opportunity to do the diagnosis.”

Properly plugging and abandoning oil and gas wells is vital to protect the environment and stop methane leaks – but for decades, oil operators have often slipped away without paying to clean up, leaving millions of deteriorating abandoned wells across the U.S.

The abandonment of Freshwater City played out amid a firestorm of infighting and allegations of public corruption surrounding Louisiana’s orphan well plugging program, documents show. The tangle of fights between Louisiana officials over this one site offers a preview of battles that could be on the way across the U.S., potentially affecting the ultimate fate of millions of abandoned oil industry wells.
Ranking Louisiana’s Orphan Wells

Freshwater City has ties to some of the world’s biggest oil giants but wound up on Louisiana’s orphan well list, putting the burden on the state to fund its cleanup and attempt to recoup costs later.

The wastewater well sits on land that’s owned by ExxonMobil, was drilled by ConocoPhillips, and eventually wound up run by a tiny start-up called Black Elk Energy that specialized in wringing out the last dregs of oil from aging wells.

Black Elk went belly-up in 2015 after a deadly explosion on one of its offshore platforms — leaving a bankruptcy judge in Texas to decide how the company’s remaining assets should be split between workers and the families of those killed and those to whom Black Elk owed money, including contractors hired to plug and abandon its wells.

DNR currently lists over 4,600 orphan wells in Louisiana, including oil and gas producing wells and injection disposal wells where oil and gas industry waste is gotten rid of deep underground.

The environmental threat from orphan wells and the difficulty and expense of plugging varies radically across the U.S., and regulators in different drilling regions face different issues. Done right, plugging can stop climate-warming methane emissions and other environmental issues like water contamination. In some cases, plugging wells removes a costly obstacle to companies that want to exploit the surrounding land, like nearby oil and gas drillers, who may need the wells to be plugged first.

Regulators in Louisiana – like those all across the U.S. – lack enough funding to properly plug and abandon every orphan well. Even with the influx of federal funds, only a small fraction of the wells can be cleaned up, leaving a large number behind.

So how do state regulators decide which sites to choose first? It’s different in each state, but in Louisiana there is no strict ranking system that dictates the order wells should be plugged, as oversight commission meeting transcripts show. As part of its Oilfield Site Restoration (OSR) program, Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) scores each site, adding points for a variety of red flags, in an effort to identify which sites are particularly problematic or slated for “potential economic development.”

At a heated April meeting of this program’s oversight commission, Commissioner David Levy demanded to know why the Freshwater City disposal well was plugged before actively polluting oil and gas wells. Companies had already stopped pumping in more wastewater years ago – and if Freshwater City had leaked when it was in use, as experts feared, those leaks would have flown into aquifers deep underground where inspectors couldn’t see them.

Levy, owner of Petrotechnologies, a company that makes specialty parts for the oil and gas industry, charged that DNR didn’t follow its own standard operating procedures when it bumped Freshwater City up the list. DNR added points to Freshwater City’s score for a “missing or damaged” wellhead, Levy pointed out, even though the inspection report the score was based on indicated no wellhead damage and no leaks found at the surface.

“This is taxpayer money that was expended on a false document,” Levy, the most recent commissioner appointed, told the other oversight commissioners, pointing to over a half million dollars in costs for the project. “I’m astounded. I don’t know where — what to do with this.”

The final bill for Freshwater City isn’t yet in, DNR told DeSmog, but a spokesperson estimated costs might have reached up to $700,000. That would mean that the project cost nearly ten times the roughly $71,000 it cost DNR to restore an average orphan well from 2008 to 2019, state records show.

Some of the state’s highest scoring orphan wells have obvious methane leaks, have no wellhead left, or are close to habitat for endangered species.

Levy was puzzled to find lower-scoring wells were slated to be plugged before wells that were more dangerous to the environment and public when he reviewed DNR’s choices. Freshwater City jumped out at him, he said, because it consumes a large chunk of the fund’s annual budget and it is located on ExxonMobli’s land.

At the April oversight meeting, Levy asked if DNR had updated their standard operating procedures, a revision due in 2018. DNR said the agency likely had not, but would look into it.

DNR spokesperson Patrick Courreges told DeSmog that the agency’s decision to plug Freshwater City was based on damage to its storage tanks from Hurricane Laura in 2020 and not just the score at the heart of Levy’s objections. “If you look at our checkboxes, ‘migrating tanks’ is not on there,” he said about the decision to add points for a damaged wellhead. “So we think what our inspector did was just say, ‘okay, that’s part of the well set up, so I’m going to count it as that.’ We didn’t have a way to check a box and say okay, ‘tank batteries have left the building.’”

But Levy, who took aerial photos of the site, dismissed DNR’s claims that the storm damaged tanks represented a threat to the public. He told DeSmog that, like Cornell’s Ingraffea, he’d also become concerned that by plugging Freshwater City, state regulators had made it much more difficult and expensive to trace any possible past water contamination back to the companies responsible.

Registered drinking water wells nearby include both shallow wells and others reaching over 600 feet down, state data shows.

When asked if there was reason to be concerned the well could have caused water contamination below ground during the decades it was used to dispose oilfield waste, Ingraffea replied: “Absolutely.”

DNR, which permitted the injection well back in 1972, oversaw its use for decades, and ultimately arranged for its plugging and abandonment, told DeSmog it believes water contamination was unlikely. “Our folks aren’t seeing a good pathway for injection fluids to have gotten out,” Courreges told DeSmog.

“If you tried to get us to permit a well in that configuration today, we would not permit it,” he said, saying the well had been grandfathered in by DNR during the early 1980s. He said the agency was looking into allegations that DNR should have caught problems at Freshwater City in the 1990s, when the well underwent another review to see if it met federal standards. He agreed that Freshwater City had some problems but disputed others, saying that it “would probably pass” those federal standards, in DNR’s view.

Courreges confirmed DNR does not test for groundwater contamination when injection wells are plugged. “Unfortunately, we’re not set up to do that,” he said, noting that testing adds costs. “That probably would be one for the landowner to try and take up with the operators up the chain, if they can.”

“Nobody’s complained to us,” about their drinking water, Courreges noted. “That’s not the same as saying that it’s not possible.”

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips did not respond to questions from DeSmog, including when asked if the companies were aware of any groundwater pollution related to Freshwater City.
A Trip To Freshwater City

As with so many oil industry orphans, the story of Freshwater City runs from riches to rags, a Horatio Alger tale spun in reverse.

About a century ago, famed businessman E.A. McIlhenny, whose family made its fortunes producing Tabasco Sauce, bought up a 150,000-acre swath of swampland in Vermilion Parish along the coast of southern Louisiana.

It was “all part of this grandiose vision that he had to set up a great hunting and fishing and recreational facility,” Judge William P. Edwards III, then-president of Vermilion Corp., one of a host of corporations that eventually grew out of McIlhenny’s plans, explained to historians, “a place for northerners to come down and sort of snowbird.”

Enticed by the discovery of oil and gas in the region, Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) bought up Vermillion Corp.’s land in 1958, then leased the surface rights back to Vermilion.

Some of Humble Oil’s executives seem to have found their way to living out McIlhenny’s dream themselves. In 1958, Humble wound up being offered ten memberships in the private club that leased the property’s best hunting grounds, Judge Edwards said, adding that Humble divided those memberships among the oil company’s executives.

For decades, a blend of crude and water flowed from offshore oil wells to Freshwater City, drilled in 1975 by ConocoPhillips right where Exxon’s land met the Gulf of Mexico. A web of subleases fed Vermilion Corp. and Exxon income, legal filings show.

Those companies reported injecting at least 3.6 million barrels of wastewater piped to shore from a half-dozen Gulf oil and gas platforms into Freshwater City from 1982 to 2008 (records from earlier years were unavailable).

Black Elk purchased Freshwater City an oil company called W&T Offshore in late 2009, as part of a larger deal. But trouble lay ahead for the Houston-based start-up, founded just two years earlier.

Fueled by a New York-based hedge fund, Black Elk had embarked on a buying spree in the Gulf — and not just for oil assets. Black Elk bought up aging oil wells – and also boats, helicopters, and even a cigar room for the firm’s offices, the company’s chief financial officer would later say under oath.

Then, in November 2012, a deadly explosion rocked Black Elk’s West Delta 32 platform off Louisiana’s coast, an incident that would ultimately lead to Black Elk being convicted of eight felonies and a misdemeanor. Two of the hedge fund’s executives were later convicted of securities fraud related to Black Elk.

By 2015, Black Elk was bankrupt, brought down by creditors who dragged the company into bankruptcy court with an involuntary chapter 7 petition.

Freshwater City had fallen into disuse long before Black Elk’s bankruptcy – in fact, largely before the start-up even arrived on the scene.

By the time Black Elk collapsed, Freshwater City had seen little use for at least seven years. The well sat unused in 2006 and 2007 — “shut in due to Hurricane Rita,” records show — then was used to inject less than 5,000 barrels of wastewater shortly before the sale to Black Elk in 2009. No other volumes were reported after Black Elk took over.

Environmental groups have long criticized Louisiana regulators for allowing the oil and gas industry’s wells to linger unused and unplugged for years (unlike other states that require companies to plug and abandon wells after they’ve fallen out of use for a set period of time).

“Each storm brings more wells from ‘shut-in’ into the orphan category,” Scott Eustis, Louisiana organizer for environmental nonprofit Healthy Gulf, wrote in a March letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior, noting that 26,000 inactive oil and gas wells dot Louisiana. “These wells are ill-maintained, and we have found that coastal wells in this category are the majority of wells that leak oil and gas in storms, such as Hurricane Ida.”

After Black Elk’s bankruptcy, state inspectors who visited would find the Freshwater City disposal well site overgrown with vegetation, its massive storage tanks increasingly unsound.

Finally, in 2020, Hurricane Laura tore through Vermilion Parish, breaking Freshwater City’s storage tanks from their moorings and scattering them in the surrounding swamp. One roughly 25,000-barrel tank landed nearly a mile away. A 500-barrel tank traveled twice as far.

Not long after, Freshwater City landed on the state’s list of orphans to plug.
States Gear Up For Billions In Federal Orphan Well Funding

By the time a well is abandoned, complications may have layered on for decades — and meanwhile, any revenue generated by the well has dwindled away. But since the dawn of the oil era, the nation’s patchwork of rules governing plugging and abandonment has left important and expensive decisions until the very end of most wells’ lifespans.

The result? At least 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells across the U.S. have never been properly plugged, a 2020 Reuters investigation reported, a number that doesn’t include the wastewater wells used by the oil and gas industry like Freshwater City. Gaping loopholes make it possible for companies to slip away, leaving the mess of millions of these inactive wells.

A 2021 McGill University study estimated that one-tenth of the U.S. emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, comes from abandoned oil and gas wells, accelerating the alteration of Earth’s climate already underway. Unplugged oil and gas wells have contaminated groundwater and been responsible for deadly home explosions. And then, in Texas, there’s a sixty-acre stew of corrosive brines, dubbed Lake Boehmer by locals, from which deadly hydrogen sulfide gas wafts. The toxic lake is fed by wells the oil industry drilled decades ago — but never properly plugged.

Billions in taxpayer funds are now being aimed at cleaning up those wells — a move President Biden says will combat the climate crisis and create jobs while tackling “super-polluting” methane emissions.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed this past November set aside $4.7 billion in federal funding to plug orphan wells, which are abandoned wells without links to any solvent company that is both liable and available. Those billions are just a drop in the bucket compared to the $280 billion that watchdog group Carbon Tracker estimates it will eventually cost to plug those wells.

Federal regulators immediately reported “overwhelming interest” in orphan well funding from states.

But industry insiders like Levy, who also consider themselves stewards of the environment, and fiscal watchdogs warn that without tighter rules, billions in public funds that lawmakers said would help fight climate-altering methane leaks from orphan wells will be dished out to the same regulatory agencies that oversaw the rise in orphan wells. If those funds are misspent, they warn, they could even wind up promoting more fossil fuel production and undermining climate goals.

“We should have a new federal agency that actually does this work. An Abandoned Well Administration would directly employ people, would have the actual equipment, so we’re not renting from Halliburton during record oil prices,” said Megan Milliken Biven, former U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management staffer and founder of the energy transition nonprofit True Transition. She added that she has drafted model federal legislation to do the job.

“In the U.S., oil and gas regulation is delegated to the states, where lax rules have conspired to swell the nation’s inventory of discarded and orphaned oil and gas wells,” Biven and two co-authors wrote in a June 15 American Prospect op-ed.

“The states should not be doing this because the states are co-creating the issue,” she told DeSmog, explaining that the ground rules states set over the years wound up allowing drillers to avoid liability. “We would not have orphan wells if state regulators did not create them. They are orphan [well] creators.”

Louisiana DNR is expected to receive roughly $48 million in the first phase of the federal funding, which was billed as addressing climate pollution. The state’s inspectors do not currently own methane meters for field use during orphan well visits, Courreges confirmed on a call.

“It is beyond me why that is not taking place,” Commissioner Levy said at the most recent commission meeting in late April. “They’re like $120 off of Amazon.”

This gap leaves the field inspectors who are examining abandoned wells to rely on little more than listening for the sound of hissing gas to detect leaks of colorless and odorless methane.

“You may see us moving to that,” Courreges said about the state possibly investing in methane detectors. “I think a lot of regulatory agencies — and we’re one of them — are dealing with a shift in the way we approach dealing with methane.”

Courreges added that DNR had begun looking into collaborating with local universities to help develop techniques to identify high risk orphan wells, explaining that effort could help the state figure out which wells to plug first and to demonstrate that DNR’s work reduces methane emissions.
Claims Of “Corruption Within The Government Agency”

Levy isn’t the first oversight commissioner to raise concerns about how Louisiana spends its orphan well funds in recent years, documents obtained via open records requests show.

“I recently began to observe what appeared to me, and in my opinion, [was] corruption within the government agency I was trusted to serve,” then-Commissioner John Connolly wrote in a March 31, 2021 email to Mark Cooper, chief of staff for Governor John Bel Edwards, who had appointed Connolly. The email asked the governor to accept Connolly’s resignation.

Just one day earlier, documents show Connolly and other Oilfield Site Restoration Commission members had been informed by a DNR representative that the state was “seeking opportunities presented by the federal legislation” to fund orphan well plugging and abandonment.

Shortly after Connolly’s resignation, in May 2021, DNR opened bidding for the Freshwater City project.

DNR confirmed that no formal investigation into Connolly’s allegations was ever launched by the department. A legislative auditor did ask a few questions, he noted, but DNR didn’t hear more about it afterwards. “As far as we could tell, we couldn’t see anything founded by it and he didn’t get into any specifics, he just said there’s corruption, he just said that ‘you’re not doing it right,’” Courreges said.

“He didn’t agree with the way the program was carried out,” the DNR spokesperson continued, “and seemed to view anything that was done in a way that he didn’t agree with to be corruption.”
Oversight Commissioner Told To Pay For State Records

Connolly’s resignation email had pointed to “recent” disputes over access to information and data he said he needed from DNR to fulfill his duties.

Courreges said that no other oversight commissioner asked for as many documents on the program’s spending as Connolly had.

Commissioner Connolly, DNR decided, would have to pay for copies or to come into DNR’s office and review them like any member of the public.

“If he had said, ‘okay, the board needs this,’ and got a majority of the board to vote, yes, we want the staff to turn that over, we’d turn it over to everybody,” Courreges said, “but if it’s just him asking, then by the law, we’re supposed to be charging so much a page – and he balked heavily at that.”

Connolly declined to comment, including on the reasons for his resignation from the oversight commission, when contacted by DeSmog.

Levy, who took Connolly’s seat on the oversight commission, has raised much more public concerns about DNR’s choices by airing those concerns in a public forum.

“It’s like, when I ask, ‘why did you say that the wellhead was damaged and this picture shows this wellhead, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he told DeSmog. “And they just start talking nonsense.”
DNR Takes Lead On Federal Funds

When it comes to the new influx of federal funding to clean up orphan wells, DNR plans to leave the state oversight commission on the sidelines, Courreges said.

“The OSR commission is not going to have a role in the federal dollars. That’s going straight through, being managed through the office of the secretary” of DNR, Courreges said.

The commission will continue to oversee the state’s orphan well fund, Courreges said, explaining that the agency’s program staff will handle much of the legwork created by the influx of federal funds.

“The oversight is basically, ultimately going to be the federal government.”

The ten-member oversight commission, by state law, includes four members nominated by industry groups and one by a landowners association (plus two from DNR, two nominated by environmental groups, and one at-large member). This setup positions commissioners to oversee spending that might benefit the corporations that employ them. “I work for Apache Corporation,” Commissioner Tim Allen said during an OSR commission meeting in January, referring to a Houston, Texas-based oil and gas company. “We have a plethora of these types of wells on our property, and I’m anxious to work with everybody and let’s make this problem go away for the state of Louisiana.”

In May, Louisiana enacted a state law designed to position the DNR to capture an estimated $200 million in federal orphan well grants — by giving DNR more discretion and allowing it to spend more on plugging low-priority wells.

Separately, DNR also recently asked federal regulators to give the state more authority over permitting new injection wells in the future – giving the state power over so-called “Class VI” injection wells, used for carbon capture. But critics say the feds should be providing more oversight of state regulators, not less.

“Both Texas and Louisiana are applying,” for that new authority over carbon capture wells, Biven said. “And really both Texas and Louisiana are in a state of crisis with their injection wells.”

The Houston Chronicle editorial board penned an editorial this month opposing approval for Texas state regulators. “Might as well let the bank robber guard the vault,” they wrote.
Getting Off The Road To Freshwater City

Orphan well watchdogs have been urging the Interior Department to act now and adopt rules to get out in front of many of the issues on display in the Freshwater City controversy.

For example, federal programs should first test for existing leaks and casing problems and then plug the wells, Ingraffea, the Cornell engineering professor, told DeSmog.

That process, he suggested, can preserve vital evidence – and help regulators figure out which wells actively pose hazards and should jump to the front of the line. He called on federal regulators to adopt that plan in public comments on the new pot of cleanup money in March, he noted.

Guidance released by the Interior Department in April for the first round of funds encouraged states “as a best practice” to inspect for leaks and to “measure or estimate” water contamination before plugging wells – but fell far short of requiring states to do the sort of testing Ingraffea described. States should report on water contamination and other pollution, Interior wrote, but they will be allowed to rely on estimates rather than measurements.

The guidance also allows well plugging programs to rank orphan wells based on factors including “other land use priorities” – a phrase that opens the door to plugging old wells to make it easier and cheaper for oil companies to drill new ones nearby.

Maps of the Louisiana coast show the land surrounding Freshwater City is largely owned by oil and gas giants including ExxonMobil and is located near Henry Hub, Vermilion Parish’s famed pipeline hub, making the area potentially prime acreage for carbon capture projects that play a major role in the oil and gas industry’s favored response to the climate crisis.

Interior wrote that federal rules may be “further refined” after the first round of grants – meaning the debate over prioritization and pollution is hardly over.

Watchdogs have said it’s crucial for federal plugging and abandonment programs to start making oil and gas wells that are actively polluting a top priority.

Because plugging Freshwater City proved so expensive, DNR will be able to seek repayment from two of the oil companies that previously used the wastewater well, making Freshwater City an outlier in that respect. State law allows regulators to seek repayment from earlier operators – but only if costs exceed $250,000. (In general, the capped OSR fund is replenished with fees from oil producers, which bring in about $4 million a year.)

Courreges told DeSmog he didn’t have readily available figures for how often DNR ultimately recouped those costs.The problem too, environmental advocates say, is that it can take time to fight over who pays once things hit that point – and timing matters, particularly when it comes to climate-altering methane leaks and other pollution. They are calling for structural changes across the U.S. to make it harder for drillers to walk away from cleanups – including making drillers pay into trust funds to cover plugging up front. A recent Carbon Tracker report details ideas on how to prevent games of hot potato both on land and offshore.

Right now, the oil and gas industry is relatively flush with funds amid surging oil and gas prices. But the emerging energy transition — as well as the shale industry’s struggles with profitability over the past decade — suggests this won’t always be the case.

Environmental advocates remain deeply concerned about the possibility that funds meant to combat climate change could wind up being used to prepare old oil and gas sites for more drilling or fossil fuel infrastructure. If cleanup funds aren’t prioritized with climate in mind, they warn, the result could be that billions in spending winds up fueling today’s climate fires, rather than fighting them.

“They have all of the information in the priority systems,” Levy said, “but they don’t choose to pick them according to the priority system.”

“It’s a complete fraud on the Louisiana citizens that expect this operation to protect them,” he said.

Time Is Running Out For Julian Assange

 

https://popularresistance.org/time-running-out-for-julian-assange-as-tories-introduce-law-to-savage-our-human-rights/ 

 

As Tories introduce law to savage our human rights.

As reported by The Canary, on 17 June, home secretary Priti Patel gave her approval to a court ruling to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. He will face 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Assange’s lawyers are planning to appeal Patel’s approval of extradition and cross-appeal on other grounds – including a breach of client-lawyer confidentiality. But the High Court will have to approve those appeal requests. A judicial review of Patel’s decision is also possible.

In addition, Assange may appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). However, proposed UK legislation could make such an appeal problematic – and not just for Assange.

ECHR Rulings Easier To Override

A British Bill of Rights (BBR) has been introduced by UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister Dominic Raab and is currently at the second reading stage. The bill is bypassing measures for pre-legislative scrutiny, which will allow it to “avoid demands from parliamentary committees”.

If enacted, the BBR will replace the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated rights defined by the European Convention on Human Rights (the ‘Convention’).

The ECHR is the judicial wing of the Council of Europe, which the UK joined in 1949 with Winston Churchill as a prime mover. Raab has made it clear that the UK will not leave the ECHR. However, the BBR as written would allow UK courts to more easily override rulings by the ECHR. Indeed, the BBR makes “explicit that the UK Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial arbiter”. In a press release, it emphasises “that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights does not always need to be followed by UK courts”.

ECHR Role Weakened

Alongside the BBR, a government memorandum specifically addresses future UK dealings with the ECHR. For example, it states there will be a change in approach as to the: “interpretation and application of Convention rights (clauses 3 – 8)”.

The memorandum also makes it clear that “the Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial authority on questions arising in domestic law in connection with the Convention rights”. And the bill adds that “the new clauses [in the bill] are intended to lead to a greater willingness by the domestic courts to decline to follow Strasbourg jurisprudence”.

The BBR further intends that human rights claimants will have to demonstrate they have “suffered a significant disadvantage” before permission is granted for their claim to be heard in court.

All in all, the clauses listed in the bill appear to weaken the role of the ECHR, while providing greater opportunities for parliament to intervene.

“Rights Removal Bill”

Law Society president I. Stephanie Boyce said that the proposed legislation “would make it harder for all of us to protect or enforce our rights”. She added:

Dismantling [the Human Rights Act] will have far-reaching consequences, conferring greater unfettered power not just on the government of today, but also on future ruling parties, whatever their ideology.If the new Bill of Rights becomes law, it would make it harder for all of us to protect or enforce our rights. The proposed changes make the state less accountable. This undermines a crucial element of the rule of law, preventing people from challenging illegitimate uses of power.

UK chief executive of Amnesty International Sacha Deshmukh commented:

Ignore the name of this new legislation. It is a rights removal bill, and it will leave us all the poorer.

Case Study: Julian Assange

Assange’s defence lawyer Jennifer Robinson said that he will cross-appeal in the UK courts on grounds of free speech, the inability to get a fair trial in the US, the political nature of the case, and the spying that took place on Assange and his legal team.

If necessary, she adds, he will also appeal to the ECHR:

Back in August 2020, Lawyers for Assange published an open letter that outlined the articles of the Convention and other bodies that the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder would arguably contravene.

For example, in regard to the breach of client-lawyer confidentiality, it stated:

Mr. Assange’s legal privilege, a right enshrined in Art. 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and long recognised under English common law, was grossly violated through constant and criminal video and audio surveillance at the Ecuadorian embassy carried out by the Spanish security firm, UC Global. …The surveillance resulted in all of Mr. Assange’s meetings and conversations being recorded, including those with his lawyers. The Council of Bar and Law Societies of Europe, which represents more than a million European lawyers, has expressed its concerns that these illegal recordings may be used – openly or secretly – in proceedings against Mr. Assange in the event of successful extradition to the US. The Council states that if the information merely became known to the prosecutors, this would present an irremediable breach of Mr. Assange’s fundamental rights to a fair trial under Art. 6 of the ECHR and due process under the US Constitution.

In February 2020, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights issued a strongly-worded statement on the Assange case, concluding:

In view of both the press freedom implications and the serious concerns over the treatment Julian Assange would be subjected to in the United States, my assessment as Commissioner for Human Rights is that he should not be extradited.

But should an application to the ECHR be lodged after this act is passed, and the court rules in Assange’s favour, the BBR as currently worded, will enable UK courts to more easily ignore that ruling.

Dangerous Times

Rather than enhance our rights, the BBR will serve to diminish them. For example, UK courts will be better positioned to ignore ECHR rulings in relation to the offshore processing of refugees, which will no doubt please Johnson’s xenophobic constituency.

The BBR also comes at a time when other contentious bills are being examined. They include the National Security Bill, which seeks to jail journalists, and the Public Order Bill, which seeks to further criminalise protests.

These are dangerous times

 

 

 

 

 

How Maryland Is Preventing Prisoners From Getting College Degrees

https://popularresistance.org/how-maryland-is-preventing-prisoners-from-getting-college-degrees/




“Atiba” Demetrius Brown is taking correspondence courses while incarcerated in Maryland.

But because of a new decree by the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services, he can’t take his exams.

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Education is one of the few rehabilitative options available to incarcerated people, yet all across America prisoners are prevented from pursuing their education. “Atiba” Demetrius Brown, for instance, has been dedicated to improving himself and his post-incarceration prospects by taking correspondence courses while incarcerated in Maryland, but thanks to a draconian new decree by the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services (DPSCS), Atiba can’t take his exams. In this installment of Rattling the Bars, Victor Wallis joins Mansa Musa to discuss the case of “Atiba” Demetrius Brown and the calculated cruelty of the prison-industrial complex.

Victor Wallis is a professor in the Liberal Arts Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has been involved in prisoner support activities since the 1970s in Indiana, and he is the author of numerous books, including Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on US Politics, which has been used in prison education projects.

To contact “Atiba” Demetrius Brown:

Demetrius Brown #401226
sid #2642892
MCTC
18800 Roxbury Rd.
Hagerstown, MD 21746
Transcript

Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition Rattling The Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-host with Eddie Conway. And before we get started, let me update you all on Eddie Conway. Eddie Conway is doing great. He’s recovering at a remarkable speed, and we hope to have him back in the space in the near future.

When we think of education and the education of people, or the lack thereof, very rarely do we look at the impact that education would have on changing a person that’s in the criminal justice system. Or, more importantly, the impact that education will have on changing people that are incarcerated. This is not the case within the Maryland Department of Corrections.

We have a situation where a prisoner, Demitrius Brown, also known as Atiba, has taken initiative to acquire an AA degree. He has taken initiative to have the discipline to study. He’s taken initiative to put himself in a position financially to make sure that he can get the corresponding course. He’s done everything along these lines to better himself. But the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service has thrown a roadblock in his way, and is preventing him from not only obtaining an education that might lead to a better opportunity for punished release, but also in this policy that they’re putting into effect, will have collateral consequences. Here to talk with me today about this is Victor Wallis.

Victor has a political science degree from Berkeley College in Boston. He’s been active in working with prisoners’ issues since 1970. His book, Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on US Politics, has been used to teach classes within prison. Welcome, Victor, to Rattling the Bars.

Victor Wallis: Thank you, man. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mansa Musa: Victor, let’s start out by giving our viewers and our listeners an overview of Demetrius Brown, also known as Atiba. Who is Atiba?

Victor Wallis: Atiba is a… It’s hard to describe him. I would say he’s a model of someone who is forming himself. He’s not only educating himself, but he has built a tremendous prestige, I think, a tremendous degree of respect. I would say one of the things that most impresses me about him is the accounts he’s given of situations where conflict has arisen and where he’s served as a kind of mediator or peacemaker.

But the other thing he does also, to a tremendous extent, is educate other prisoners while he’s educating himself. And he’s led study groups. It’s getting a little more difficult now. He finds the prisoners there now less motivated than when he started. But he’s very eager to, let’s say, help them educate themselves. Obviously with a political thrust, because it’s a recognition of the kind of injustices of the system as a whole, which are felt with particular strength in the prisons. But that’s a motivational factor, and he builds on that, and makes it possible for prisoners to begin to discuss among themselves what to do about this situation that they’re in. I don’t know what else… He’s from Baltimore.

Mansa Musa: Okay.

Victor Wallis: He’s been in prison for the last 10 years or so, since he was in his early 20s, I believe.

He’s highly motivated, when he comes out, to continue doing constructive work of some kind. I mean, in the sense of whether it’s counseling or political work, certainly. But he’s very dedicated, I would say, to improving himself.

Mansa Musa: And so let’s pick up on that. So all things considered, he’s one person that has taken initiative to better himself at the exclusion of anything that’s going on within the system. Let’s talk about his education. You spoke on the fact that he’s done a lot in terms of educating himself on different levels. Let’s talk about his formal education. Prior to coming to prison, what was his formal education?

Victor Wallis: He graduated from high school several years before he was arrested. That was the extent of his formal education, but in prison he’s done an enormous amount of reading. Like many prisoners, George Jackson was a tremendous inspiration. But he’s branched out from there in every direction, especially the history of socialist movements, of popular struggles of various kinds, the history of Black people’s liberation movements, and various topics. But stretching very widely, and I would say going into the philosophical aspects of things in depth, I would say.

Mansa Musa: And now based on this, he wanted to take a correspondence course. He went about taking this correspondence course. Walk us through what the course is and what type of degree he was trying to get, or was planning on getting.

Victor Wallis: Well, the correspondence course was possible through Adam’s State University, which is located in Colorado. He’s going towards an associate degree. He’s just starting it. And the two courses that he’s enrolled in right now, one is history of civilizations, and the other is called the sociological imagination.

Mansa Musa: And this correspondence course, is it funded by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service? Do we have a Pell Grant for it?

Victor Wallis: No. The Correctional Services has nothing to do with funding. It’s private support.

Mansa Musa: So he’s got private support to get an AA degree, which is two years. How much time does he have left before he’s released to society?

Victor Wallis: I would say three or four years, approximately.

Mansa Musa: So his plan is to get a degree, or AA degree. Is the credits transferable, to your knowledge?

Victor Wallis: I presume so.

Mansa Musa: All right. So he is going to get a degree, a AA degree. Two to three years left on his sentence, get a AA degree, that has transferable credits that would allow him upon his release to be able to get a BA degree. Is that correct?

Victor Wallis: Well, it could count towards a BA degree.

Mansa Musa: It could count towards a BA degree. What is the problem with him obtaining this degree, or continuing this correspondence? What exactly is the problem?

Victor Wallis: The exact problem is that all of a sudden, in the middle of his first semester of study, the prison refused to provide proctors for him to take exams for his courses. And this is a service which they previously had done routinely, but without any advanced warning, they suddenly stopped the process. And they said that it was because of a decree in effect from the Department of Public Safety that prohibited the prisons from cooperating in any way with external correspondence courses.

It set him back tremendously. It was tremendously demoralizing, because here he was doing very well in his courses, and suddenly they’ve put this roadblock in his way. So fortunately at the present moment, Adams State may be able to accommodate him and allow him to complete the courses without having proctored exams. But the only reason that they’re doing that is that they are still operating under a regimen having to do with the COVID pandemic, which allowed for certain flexibility. But they said when that is ended, they’ll go back to insisting that the students take proctored exams. And the proctoring has to be provided by someone in the prison.

Mansa Musa: In that regard, the proctor examiner – And full disclosure, I was incarcerated for 48 years. I’m familiar with the institution, [was housed] at Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown. So I’m familiar with that system, and I’m familiar with the educational system. But in terms of offering the proctor, exactly what would that entail? What would that look like? Educate our listeners and viewers on what that actually would entail.

Victor Wallis: Proctoring just means that you have some person in an official capacity who’s sitting there while you’re taking the exam, making sure that you’re not looking at notes, and setting a time limit for you to answer the questions. That’s all it is.

Mansa Musa: And I’m familiar with that. And the reason why I was asking that is because I’ve been in the space, and this is really all the proctor does. The system that they had set up when I was incarcerated was you go to the school, they put you in the classroom, and the proctor sits there while you take the exam. When you finish taking the exam, you hand the exam in, and you leave. The time it takes for the proctor to do its job is the time it takes for the person that’s taking the exam to finish.

So if the person can finish in 40 minutes, the proctor takes the exam, and the person will leave. And in most cases I’ve known from experiences that, because correspondence courses are rare in the prison system because of the ability for a prison to finance it, you have very few people in that environment that would be a classroom size, where you might have 15-20 people, where you have to have a proctor in that regard.

But let’s dial down on why you think they’re doing this to Atiba? Because you outlined a lot of things that’s going on with his character in terms of him being an impactful individual within the prison environment, and being a person that’s there to educate and raise the prisoners’ consciousness about their environment, and try to get them to change their thinking. Why do you think they’re doing this to him in particular?

Victor Wallis: Well, they’re not doing it just to him. It’s a general ruling that applies to anyone. And there I see it as part of a general phenomenon that’s taking place all over the country of making things more and more difficult for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves in every way, especially in the form of disrupting their contacts with people in the outside world.

I’m in communication currently with a prisoner in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia. In both those states, in order to write to them, you have to write to an address in Florida, where they photocopy it and send it back. Now, I just heard from a prisoner in Missouri. I just got this letter today. He says the state of Missouri has started a new system where mail has to be sent to a digital scanning system after August 1. You’ll no longer get mail into the prison. It says all you can send in is books and literature.

It’s incredible what they’re doing. I’ve heard of other states… Well, in Indiana, they’ve [privated] greeting cards and other places like that. They’re doing everything they can to make it more punitive, more isolating for the prisoner to be in the system. They don’t recognize, or at least they don’t care that separating someone from society is itself punishment. But they have a kind of philosophy, it’s not in their official idea. Correction means you’re improving someone, supposedly. But their working philosophy is punishment, punishment, punishment, and more punishment. And this is one aspect of it.

Mansa Musa: And we recognize that the prison-industrial complex overall is the new plantation, and the prisoners are the chattel. This is a recognition that we see throughout the United States of America. 2.5 million people are incarcerated. Beyond that point, it’s over 10 million people that’s locked into the criminal justice system in the form of parole, probation, the county jail, detention center. So your observation is correct in regard to… And this being a concerted effort on the part of the establishment and the prison-industrial complex and these bloodsuckers in terms of minimizing or dehumanizing or relegating prisoners into a sense of hopelessness.

But in terms of Atiba, how has he responded to… I heard you say earlier that it brought on a sense of depression. But how is he doing thus far in regard to him maintaining his focus and continuing to educate himself and others around him?

Victor Wallis: Well, his immediate response in terms of the courses is that he’s writing to his instructors, requesting them to accommodate him and to allow him to complete the course without having to take proctored exams. And for the moment, that’s possible in terms of Adam State ruling, but it may not be possible after they lift the special rulings they had during COVID. So he’s doing that. But it was a terrible disruption and very demoralizing at first. And so he’s apprehensive. The moment the COVID rules get lifted, Adam State will once again insist on having their exams proctored. Which means, in addition to what I said about their being present in timing, that all the correspondence about the exams is through the proctor. In other words, the institution sends the exam to the proctor, and the proctor sends the exam back to the institution.

So there’s going to have to be that kind of collaboration. And again, this is not just for Atiba, but for everyone, for anyone who would be taking correspondence courses. As far as Atiba is concerned, he’s highly motivated, and he’s continuing to read and study on his own. But this was a big setback for him. He told me for the couple of weeks after it started, he wasn’t sleeping. He was so angry that they were doing this totally arbitrary interference with what he was trying to do to improve himself.

Mansa Musa: And it’s a recognition that the prison-industrial complex is primarily used for warehousing people, and that very few institutions in the United States of America… And rural, I know for a fact in particular has a lot of programs, often a lot of program services. So when someone takes the initiative to better themselves and have this impediment, it will be demoralizing. But I want to look at the collateral consequences of this decision. Because like you said, it affects everybody. Have you looked at it in terms of the overall impact it would have on the Department of Corrections in general or the Division of Correction in general?

Victor Wallis: Yeah. Well, of course the immediate thing in Maryland, what’s important is to put pressure on the Department of Public Safety to lift this ban. This is something that really is a responsibility for anyone who is concerned about the prisoners in Maryland. And in a wider sense, what this kind of practice reflects is a general increase in the repressive responses of those in power to anything in the nature of a threat that they perceive just in people preserving their humanity.

They would love to have the people in prison fighting each other in gangs, spaced out on drugs, and so on. What they don’t want is purposeful prisoners who are developing a consciousness and who can become effective organizers both in the prison and later when they get out. And the repressive measures that they’re taking are just horrendous. Of both this interference with the correspondence by having to send letters to another state, and then only sending the prisoner the photocopy, and then digitizing the incoming mail, and so on. And another thing… You mentioned some of the things with… Well, for example, in some jails, they don’t even allow direct visits anymore. You have to do it through video. It’s all also a money making opportunity for these outfits that provide these services.

But I was also saying that the repressive aspect is consistent with the wider phenomenon of repression that’s manifested in the voter suppression methods, preventing people from voting because you’re afraid that what they would vote for would be programs and people that would push the society in a more… Let’s say just direction, a more redistributive direction. And that would take power away from those with privilege. So the prison system is a part of this larger apparatus which controls and limits the capacity of citizens, of ordinary people, working people, to speak for themselves effectively in an organized way, and not just in the form of random protests or frustrated acts of despair.

Mansa Musa: Right. And [inaudible] educated prisoners or educated persons is dangerous. We know that slaves weren’t allowed to read, and the prison-industrial complex being the new plantation and prisoners being the new chattel, it seems consistent with the thinking of the establishment, the fascist government, that anyone educated, any person is more likely to resist the oppression and the dehumanization that capitalists are inflicting on people throughout the world. But Victor, you have the last word on this. What’s your last word on this?

Victor Wallis: Well, just picking up on that point of education, where education is dangerous to the ruling elite, to this ruling class, is when it takes the form of consciousness raising among the people who have suffered injustice, especially in the prison context, who can communicate with each other about it. In a way, the prison is an ideal learning environment because people are surrounded by demonstration or proof of the injustice of the society. And they’re thrown together with others who are experiencing the same thing at the same time, and they may even have time to engage in study. While it’s a terrible situation to be put into, there’s a way in which it can backfire on those who are doing it. And as people have said, prison can become a school of liberation.

And I always remember George Jackson’s statement that, it’s not an exact quote, but it’s roughly to the effect that prison will either break you or make you indestructible. Something along those lines. And that’s educating oneself within the prison context, in the light of all these conditions, is exactly what’s necessary and what’s important. But I think, more generally, education is a basic right, and people shouldn’t be prevented from pursuing it. And it’s not necessarily the case that every prisoner will educate himself or herself in a political direction, but it’s important that this be allowed. And this is part of the process of rehabilitation, of reentering society.

Mansa Musa: Talk about what can be done to support not only Atiba, but anyone that’s confronted with this situation.

Victor Wallis: I mean, I would say of course, on the one thing that they should contact the… I guess the Department of Public Safety, but whoever oversees the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, that this is an outrage. That should be made a public issue in itself.

But in the wider sense, it involves all the general things we talked about, that the changes that are needed in the society to… Since this is part of a national repressive trend, it can only be fought politically at the widest level. People have to get involved in revolutionary struggle of some kind or other, in whatever situation they find themselves in.

Mansa Musa: And there you have it, the real news about the prison-industrial complex’s continued oppression and repression of people. The new plantation, they are constantly inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on people throughout the United States.

Here we have another example of something as basic as education. They want to control that. Atiba might be an individual, but he’s the face of how repressive the prison-industrial complex is when it doesn’t allow a person to educate himself and spend his own money or solicited support to educate himself by taking a correspondence course. To block him from doing that, they block him from being able to take the exam and putting a hardship on not only him, but the institution that wants to support him.

There you have it, the real news about the repressive educational system policy in the Division of Corrections and Department of Public Safety and Correctional Service in Maryland. Thank you very much, Victor. We enjoyed this conversation. Can you send the information where people can contact Atiba if they want to correspond with him and interact with him?

Victor Wallis: Yes. I will send it to you and you can post it.

Mansa Musa: Yeah. Please, I’d appreciate that.

Victor Wallis: Thank you so much, Mansa. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Mansa Musa: Definitely. Thank you.

The UN Refugee Agency Is Exaggerating The Number Of Nicaraguan Refugees

https://popularresistance.org/the-un-refugee-agency-is-exaggerating-the-number-of-nicaraguan-refugees/



Managua, Nicaragua – Two years ago, COHA reported on the manufactured “refugee” crisis around Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica. Now the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is saying that “102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica” in 2021. As this article shows, this statement is inaccurate, adding further to the myth that Nicaragua is suffering a refugee crisis.

On June 20, a group called “SOSNicaragua” which is based in Costa Rica, held a conference to mark World Refugee Day. Called “Breaking down walls, building hope,” it was addressed by the head of the Costa Rican government’s Refugee Unit, Esther Núñez. She confirmed that, since 2018, Costa Rica had received 175,055 applications for asylum, the majority from Nicaragua. However, the rest of her message must have been less welcome to the participants. Her unit had limited capacity to deal with these cases, she said, but in any case “a large proportion” of the people who apply for refugee status in Costa Rica do so “because they need to regulate their migratory status, but they do not really qualify for asylum” [my emphasis].
A closer look at asylum claims of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica

Núñez was repeating a point made by the then president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, when numbers of asylum claims first began to grow, after the violent, US-backed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. He declared that more than 80% of recent asylum requests came from people who had been living in Costa Rica without documents before Nicaragua’s crisis. In the four years since this statement, Costa Rica has made a decision on just 7,803 asylum claims from Nicaraguans and has rejected 60% of them. Even getting an initial appointment to make a claim means a wait of two to three years, according to a Costa Rican NGO that assists refugees.

Yet the UN behaves as if all the asylum claims are not only justified but are made by people who have recently crossed the border, driven by political persecution in Nicaragua. On June 16, the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, warned that “sociopolitical, economic and human rights crises” in Nicaragua are forcing thousands to leave their homes, in a wave of migration that is growing in “unprecedented numbers.” Bachelet said that over the last eight months “the number of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum seekers in Costa Rica has doubled, reaching a total of 150,000 new applicants since 2018.″ She made no reference to the Costa Rican government’s assertions that most of these claims come from Nicaraguans already living there before 2018. Nor did she explain that claims have only “doubled” because significant numbers of them have reached the formal stages after sometimes waiting for years to be processed.
Costa Rica and Nicaragua are economically interdependent

As Jeff Abbott points out in The Progressive, “Nicaraguans have been migrating to Costa Rica for decades. The two countries are historically and geographically tied together, with seasonal migration filling important jobs within the Costa Rican economy.” He quotes the coordinator of Costa Rica’s Nicaraguan Links Association, describing the “economic interdependence between the two countries.” In fact, around 385,000 Nicaraguans are officially residents in Costa Rica, with perhaps another 200,000 there without official documents, totaling about 10% of the population. In a typical year, there are more than 900,000 official cross-border movements by Nicaraguans, with similar numbers leaving as there are entering the country: principally, migrant workers traveling back and forth, according to Costa Rica’s seasonal job opportunities (see table). Thousands more make unofficial crossings to avoid paying the border fees.

However, official cross-border movements fell by two-thirds in 2020, during the pandemic. Costa Rica was desperate to keep its Nicaraguan workers, with the then vice-president urging Nicaraguans to stay. But the country was hit hard by COVID-19, which badly affected its tourist trade: The Economist reported that government debt reached one of the highest levels in Latin America and, in return for loans to bail out the government, the IMF insisted on spending cuts. Poverty now affects nearly one-third of Costa Rican households. In 2021, over 5,000 more Nicaraguans left Costa Rica than entered it. Although traffic has increased in the first months of 2022, it is still less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Lack of job opportunities in Costa Rica, for Nicaraguans who have historically worked there, is one of the factors leading to more migration north to the United States.

Of course, Nicaragua was also affected by the pandemic, as well as the additional damage caused in November 2020 by two devastating hurricanes. Its economy grew by 10% in 2021, which returned it to pre-pandemic levels, but growth was still not sufficient for the country to recover from the harsh economic effects of the 2018 coup attempt. It is therefore not surprising that, while far fewer Nicaraguans are traveling to Costa Rica to work, a proportion of those already there are looking to regularize their immigration status by seeking asylum, as Esther Núñez pointed out.
Migrants are instead heading to the United States

The temporary breakdown of the historic economic ties between the two countries has almost certainly given extra impetus to Nicaraguan migration northwards, to the United States. Some 163,000 Nicaraguans have been encountered after crossing the U.S. border since January 2020, while before then numbers amounted to a few hundred each month. While (again) this increase is blamed (by the BBC, for example) on the “atmosphere of terror” in Nicaragua, the reality is more mundane.

As Tom Ricker points out, writing for the Quixote Center, while political instability may be a factor, it is certainly no more of a factor than it is for the larger migration flows from the “northern triangle” countries (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala). Post-COVID economic problems are also as great, perhaps greater, in the northern triangle. But there are factors unique to Nicaragua: reduced job opportunities in Costa Rica, the growing effect of U.S. sanctions, and the relatively more favorable treatment which Nicaraguans have received after crossing the U.S. border. Indeed, the BBC quotes the case of a Nicaraguan who declared himself to the U.S. border patrol, was detained for a few weeks and then released to await a court hearing on his case. Many new arrivals get travel permits to join relatives elsewhere in the U.S., and the government pays for bus and air transport. The perception that well-paying U.S. jobs are readily available to Nicaraguans has been created by advertising in social media and the activities of the “coyotes” who facilitate the journey north.
The UN Refugee Agency gets it wrong – again

However, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) appears to be blind to economic factors driving migration, and ever keener to claim that Nicaraguans are escaping political repression. In its recently issued report on Global Trends 2021, it picks out Nicaragua on a world map showing forced displacement, and a chart shows Nicaragua ranked #2 in the world for asylum applications last year, below Afghanistan but ahead of Syria (see chart).

Of the 111,600 claims attributed to Nicaraguans in 2021, almost all (102,000) are made in Costa Rica. However, the official Costa Rican figure for claims registered by Nicaraguans in 2021 is only slightly more than half of this, at 52,894. How does UNHCR arrive at the higher figure? Key to understanding the statistics is awareness of the extreme slowness with which Costa Rica deals with asylum applications. By the end of 2021, it had dealt with fewer than 7% of the 116,970 applications from Nicaraguans received over the previous four years. In addition to these formal claims, there are around 50,000 more applications at various stages before registration, many of them lodged before 2021. In correspondence with the UNHCR statistics office, they revealed that “In agreement with the Government of Costa Rica,” they added this backlog of what might be called “pre-applications” to the official tally of registered claims, to produce a total of 102,000. But the Global Trends report, far from making this clear, treats this number as relating to new claims in 2021 alone, and concludes that 102,000 Nicaraguans “fled” their country last year (see picture). The caption maintains: “In 2021 some 102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica.”
Disinformation, used by opposition media

Why the UNHCR wants to portray Nicaraguans as being as much at risk as people fleeing Afghanistan and Syria is a question only they can answer. It is a convenient ploy for the Costa Rican government, since it receives UN financial assistance to respond to the plight of Nicaraguans. However, it also gives added momentum to the media message that Nicaraguans are fleeing persecution. Because the increase in Nicaraguan migration northwards is a focus of media attention, exaggerating the flows southwards to Costa Rica adds to the impression of a country in crisis. This adds fuel to the flames for Nicaragua’s opposition media, of course. For example, Confidencial, a web outlet much cited by international media, gives ever more exaggerated versions of the migration figures. It claimed in June that some 400,000 Nicaraguans had left the country since the beginning of 2020. Yet even adding together the encounters over that period at U.S. borders (163,000), with the accumulation of asylum applications in Costa Rica over the same period (93,000), only produces a total of 256,000. And as we have seen, this does not compare like-with-like.

The empirical evidence indicates that migration to Costa Rica has almost certainly fallen sharply, while there has been a matching increase in migration to the United States. Economic motives are likely to be predominant, although there are political factors too. However, it is far from an “exodus” and it is ridiculous to create a headline (as the BBC does) suggesting that most people would “rather die” than stay in Nicaragua. Unfortunately, and irresponsibly, the UN Refugee Agency is adding to the scare stories, rather than sticking to the facts.

Colombia Votes For Vivir Sabroso: Chronicle Of An Historic Election

https://popularresistance.org/colombia-votes-for-vivir-sabroso-chronicle-of-an-historic-election/


The election victory of Colombia’s Historical Pact was the culmination of years of struggle in that country.

To the memory of Viejo Manué, for his practical lessons in the politics of love!


“After 214 years we achieved a government of the people, a popular government, the government of the people with calloused hands, the government of ordinary people, the government of the ‘have nots’ of Colombia.” – Francia Márquez

“The change means that the government of hope has arrived” Gustavo Petro

The night before the elections, Gustavo Petro participated in a ceremony in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, where indigenous spiritual leaders–Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogui, and Yukpas peoples–from the “navel of the world”, tuned him with ancestral and natural powers to be president. After the dynamic duo of the “Historic Pact”, Petro for President, and Francia Márquez for Vice President, obtained the highest number of votes in a first round in all of Colombian history, on May 29, with 8.5 million, the road to the final election turned into three weeks of high tension, of contending wills and sharp suspense.

Immediately, the Colombian corporate media began a campaign in favor of presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernández. They presented him as the possible winner despite having obtained 2.5 million less than Petro, adding his 6 million to the 5 of Federico Gutiérrez, a right-wing candidate who quickly supported Hernández in the second round. The right-wing chorus for Hernandez was orchestrated by former president and political chief Álvaro Uribe, in concert with the whole conservative political establishment.

The mainstream magazine Semana and large television and radio networks such as Caracol and RCN, positively projected Rodolfo Hernández as an “outsider” of the political class, allegedly wielding a program against corruption, ignoring the fact that he had to resign as mayor of Bucaramanga due to cases of corruption to be elucidated in court on July 21. To a large extent, they made Francia Márquez—Afrocolombian candidate to vice-president of the Historic Pact–invisible in the corporate media, while presenting Marlene Castillo, Hernández’s vice-presidential partner, as an “educated” Afro-descendant woman, with graduate degrees and administrative experience in the university world, overlooking her political inexperience, as well as her lack of proposals and arguments.

The climax of the mass media campaign revolved around the so-called “Petrovideos”, a series of leaked “clips” of private meetings of the Historic Pact where tactics were proposed to defeat political contenders. These were denounced by the corporate media and Petro’s opponents as examples of a “dirty campaign” and even described as “criminal”. In the U.S. they would be equivalent to “Watergate” and hence evidence to investigate those who infiltrated Petro’s campaign. Nonetheless, they did not have the intended effect because they did not prove any illegal act. Petro even offered to withdraw from the candidacy if they could reveal any ethical flaw. The controversy was fueled on social media where many people criticized the corporate media for intending a kind of communicational “political murder” against Petro and Francia.

Social media became a political and ideological battlefield. The growing division of the country was strongly deployed through the social web. Hernández had campaigned on Tik Tok, but now all the networks were flooded with memes and conflicting dialogues. Anti-communist fears of Petro’s alleged “Castrochavismo” where contrasted with videos of Hernández declaring admiration for Hitler or dancing on a luxurious yacht in Miami with a group of young women in a party sponsored by Pfizer. Topics such as the economic model, the character of democracy, the prospects for peace, racism, sexism, and the possible paths of change were discussed. Banality was combined with argumentative debate in a daily practice of political controversy that nurtured the polarized Colombian electoral scene to the extent that all political sectors expressed concerns about a perceived environment of civil war.

The police arrest of young activists from the so-called “front line” in several cities a few days before the elections, along with an alleged mock test where the Colombian electoral registry announced Hernández as the winner a day before, fueled fears of fraud. An air of collective vigilance was breathed to enforce the popular will. Petro and Francia’s campaign had become a sort of deep search, looking into and linking the plurality of territories and regions that make up the country. After the first electoral round, the people came out to the streets to campaign, a number of strategies were created from below by the “have nots”, including humor, music, art, performance, and dozens of public gatherings in which women played a leading role. In recent weeks, Petro and Francia traveled to various places across the national territory, from Chocó to Los Llanos, from the Amazon to the Sierra Nevada, to meet with miners, sugar producers, ranchers, coffee growers, urban dwellers, etc., sleeping in working-class homes, listening to petitions and aspirations, getting to know better a deep-rooted Colombia that for this reason celebrated their victory with enthusiasm and hope on June 19. In Bogotá, people hugged each other in the streets, while in coastal Black communities at Chocó and Timbiquí the majority came out drumming in carnivalesque mood to dance on the streets.

Petro and Francia won 11,281,013 votes in the final election, the highest number in the country’s history. As we now see, hear and read throughout the world, Petro is the first president of the left and Francia the first Afro-descendant woman vice president in Colombia. Their alliance reveals the richness of the Historic Pact, the most powerful coalition of communities, currents, movements, peoples and parties that has ever existed in Colombia. A bird’s-eye view of the trajectories of Petro and Francia helps us draw a sketch of the character and composition of the Historic Pact.
Colombian Counterpoint: Petro and Francia

Gustavo Petro, an economist by trade, has come a long way from being an urban community organizer and later a member of the M-19, to being mayor of Bogotá, senator of the Republic and now President. The M-19 was a political-military organization formed as a sui generis “guerrilla” that rebelled against electoral fraud in 1970 in its quest to restore the democratic order. The M-19 gave-up arms through a peace process in 1990,and was a key force for the constitutional change of 1991. As a senator, Petro was a leading voice against the “corruption regime” that combines right-wing politicos with paramilitarism and narco-politics, a fact that makes him an archenemy of the conservative elite. As mayor of Bogotá and in his 2018 presidential campaign he launched the slogan for a “Human Colombia” that now translates as “Colombia world power for life.”

In turn, Francia Márquez Mina has been an activist since her adolescence, standing out as the leader of her community council in Suárez, Cauca. She was formed in the Process of Black Communities-PCN, a social movement organization of national reach, linked to Black liberation networks throughout the Americas and beyond. Her political and intellectual leadership has led Francia to obtain Colombia’s National Prize for Human Rights in 2015, the prestigious Goldman Prize for Environmental Justice in 2018, and the presidency of the National Commission for Peace in 2020. In 2014 she was lead organizer of the “Black Women’s March for Life and in Defense of their Ancestral Territories” a week-long pilgrimage across Colombia. She has a law degree that has been a tool of struggle. During the 2021 national strike Francia became vox populi of the cry of protest and plea for change of Afro-descendants, indigenous people, women, LGTBQ+, youth, students, artists, intellectuals, peasants, and urban barrios. That broad constellation of struggles nurtured the “I’m Because We Are” movement that propelled her presidential candidacy.

“I am because we are” is a translation of “Ubuntu” a key category in African philosophies to name the “good life”. It expresses an African communitarianism that recognizes that individual identity only exists because of its social nature, based on belonging to an ancestral lineage, harmony with nature, and liberation against all injustices. Ubuntu served as the ethical-political principle for the constitution of South Africa after the abolition of the apartheid regime and now serves as a banner for black movements throughout the world. In Francia Marquez’s campaign, Ubuntu was translated into “vivir sabroso”, a vernacular category of the territory-region of Choco that expresses an Afro-diasporic conception of “good living”.

Francia and Petro competed in their aspiration to get the presidential nomination of the Historic Pact, in the March 13, 2022, election that combined legislative polls with party primaries to determine executive candidates. In March 13, Petro, with 4.5 million votes, was the candidate with most votes of any party, while Francia came second in the Historic Pact ballot. However, her 800,000 votes were the most innovative phenomenon of the poll, surpassing the numbers of established politicians such as Sergio Fajardo of “Centro Esperanza” party, thus earning the ethical and political right to be Petro’s vice-presidential formula in the ballot of the Historic Pact.

Once declared a candidate for vice president, Francia Márquez became the most commented political figure in Colombia. The forceful presence of a black woman of rural origin, who enunciates a vernacular discourse denouncing structural racism, patriarchy and the neoliberal model of development as the main motives for the armed conflict, aroused racist and classist expressions in the public sphere, as well as a growing accumulation of admiration and respect for Francia. In her continuous crusade across the country, Francia emerged as the articulating voice of the archipelago of communities and movements that formed the base of the Historic Pact. Along the way, she transformed the country’s political language and the national project itself, popularizing expressions such as “the have nots” as political subjects of a new democracy, fostering a societal movement from “resistance to power until dignity becomes customary.” The “have nots” of Francia are equivalent to “the wretched of the earth” of Franz Fanon.

The Petro and Francia couple redefined the political scene. While Petro brought together the political energies of the left and center of the political spectrum, Francia became a spokesperson for groups and territories excluded from social and political power. Standing from her identity as a grassroots black woman from “ancestral territory”, Francia raised the flag of the “have nots” as a radical democratic project to reconfigure the nation through a new historic pact of broad inclusion and systemic change. Together, Francia and Petro convened a historic bloc capable of overthrowing more than two centuries of bourgeois elite governments in Colombia.

The memorable Bogotazo with the assassination of the radical populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, inaugurated a repertoire of annihilations of viable candidacies leading national-popular coalitions. It seemed as if progressive electoral change was doomed to fail in Colombia. Six presidential candidates of the left were killed since Gaitan. In the nineties, thousands of militants of the Patriotic Union—a broad popular front from the left–and the M-19 were assassinated. Against the current, Petro and France survived election days under constant death threats, with cautious custody and rigorous security operations. They were guarded not only by their escorts but also by the “indigenous guard”, the “maroon guard”, and public surveillance. An ancient death curse was literally overcome to be replaced with a robust politics of life.
Programs and Horizons of the Politics of Love and Life

The program of the Historic Pact is represented in two slogans pointing to the future, Petro’s call to transform Colombia into “a world power of life” and Francia’s invitation to build a country where we can “live joyfully”. In concert, both Petro and Francia have characterized their praxis and project as a “politics of love.” What are the concrete proposals and ethical-political principles, and how do their actual politics correspond to these titles and slogans?

In his victory speech, Petro summed up the project in three principles: peace, social justice, and environmental justice. In the program, these principles entail a set of structural changes, among which I highlight the following: 1) prioritize commitments to build peace, this implies implementing the 2016 peace accords beginning with an agrarian reform, dialogues with the ELN guerrillas, combating paramilitarism and narco-politics, cultivating restorative justice and reconciliation; 2) move from an extractivist neoliberal economy to a productive ecological economy, based on knowledge, food sovereignty and care; 3) promote national agriculture and industry based on trade protectionism, progressive taxation, energy transition from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energies, regional development and local entrepreneurship, foster universal health and education; 4) extend the citizen franchise and human rights with recognition, representation and resources to sectors excluded by their race and ethnicity, gender, generation, sexuality, territory, disability, and social class; 5) redistributive social policies to attack poverty and hunger with short-term state policies such as buying crops to distribute food and provide income, as well as medium-range strategies to generate wealth and full employment.

In a country where more than 90 annual massacres take place (so far in 2022 there are 45), where more social and union leaders are murdered in the Americas, which has one of the worst rates of inequality and highest number of internal exiles in the world, this program represents a blueprint for a politics of life against the prevailing necropolitics. Such politics of death is the offspring of a neoliberal regime based on the despotic power of the state in partnership with transnational and Colombian capital. In counterpoint, when Petro bets on turning Colombia into “a world power of life”, he signals an epochal change in the country, a turning point of great relevance for the Americas and the planet. That’s why the eyes of the world are attentively watching the new era marked by this election of Petro and Francia.
Possibilities and Challenges of the Government of the Historical Pact

During the recent so-called Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, convened by President Biden, Gustavo Petro noted that he belongs to an emerging current that includes Mexico, Chile and the possible Lula government in Brazil. Such group is defined as a “new progressivism” to which Peru and Honduras are added. It is important not to fall into generalizations that do not distinguish national scenarios and historical projects, as happened in much of the analysis of the so-called “pink wave” of progressive governments at the beginning of the 21st century. We must also recognize the emergence of a tendency in the political pendulum moving toward defeats of the right and electing governments committed to a new Latin Americanism that defends national and regional sovereignty, but without enunciating strong anti-imperialist discourses. In that vein, Petro spoke of a relationship “of equals” with the United States and of an interamerican order “without exclusions”, in clear allusion to the refusal to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to Biden’s Summit. Nonetheless, the fact that Biden called Petro two days after being elected, to have a “friendly” and “equal” conversation, as Petro said in a television interview, reveals results of the “realist” foreign policy of the new Colombian administration. It remains to be seen the unfolding of a series of potentially controversial issues in the relationship between Colombia and the United States, such as the policy of emission of toxic gases, the fumigation of illicit crops, migration policies, and the economic and geo-political independence of a South American country where there are nine North American military bases installed.

The platform of the Historical Pact is a combination of realpolitik and a set of principles defining the horizon to be pursued, of the politics of the possible with the politics of the desired. Realism in foreign policy is combined with a neo-developmentalist tendency in economic policies. When Petro said in his victory speech that they were going to “develop capitalism in Colombia”, to end “pre-modern serfdom and slavery regimes”, he was not only giving a signal of non-expropriation to national capital in order to avoid announced capital flight, he also affirmed a vision of a path of change. Capitalist national economic development has historically proven that it has its limits. The viability of national development, along the path that Samir Amin called “auto-centered accumulation” in the nation-state, is one of the great challenges for the realization of Petro’s program. Minimally dealing with the problems of hunger, unemployment and inequality, in the short and medium term, will be one of its acid tests. Above all, in the midst of a global crisis of western capitalist civilization and a thorny economic situation in Colombia which is the fourth largest economy in Latin America.

A key issue in the government program of the Historic Pact will be the role of Francia Márquez as Vice President. Humberto de la Calle, a respected figure who was vice president of the republic, once said that in Colombia the vice presidency is a lame position without powers comparable to “a porcelain in the freezer.” Francia breaks that mold, in light of what she embodies, represents, enunciates and proposes. Her grassroots origin, transformative vision, and ethical integrity, endows her leadership with particular power. In her speeches she shows a clear critique of systemic oppressions and uncompromised commitment to a transformative project of liberation rooted in her lived experience and therefore in the needs and aspirations of the dispossessed majority. As William Mina argues, Francia’s intervention constitutes a “radicalization of racial democracy”, transforming the very terms of politics, not only with her presence that transgresses the class, race and gender that presides over the national scene, but also with the rhetoric, the categories, and the contents of what she says and proposes.

The continental and global significance of Francia Marquez’s election as the first Black woman elected as Vice President of Colombia is a matter of much celebration. Many equate such achievement to the current tenure of two Black Women as Vice Presidents in the Americas, Kamala Harris in the United States, and Epsy Campbell in Costa Rica. However, without denying the importance of the rise of a wave of Black women as executives in the Americas, it is also imperative to highlight their differences. Kamala Harris is Vice President of an imperial state, clearly committed to imperial geo-political and military power in the Americas and the world, and advocate of a neoliberal economic paradigm, without a flesh-out anti-racist politics. In turn, Epsy Campbell came to be Vice President of Costa Rica, a small country in Central America, as a leader of a social-democratic political party, and as a long-term activist of national and international networks of liberal feminist anti-racist politics, largely based on lobbying governmental and transnational institutions such as the United Nations and the Interamerican Development Bank, for liberal-minded sexual and racial justice. In contrast to both, Francia Marquez came to the national scene as a grassroots activist of the Afrocolombian social movement, defending a radical program of social change that challenges the establishment, seeking to radically democratize the terms of politics and redefine the social contract by effectively empowering the “have nots”.

In her victory speech, Francia Márquez said: “After 214 years we achieved a government of the people, a popular government, the government of the people with calloused hands, the government of ordinary people, the government of the ‘have nots’ of Colombia”. Here, Francia upholds a radical populism whose political subject, “the have nots”, bursts in like a storm to substantively change the character of Colombian politics in search of transforming power relations and the social contract. With her vernacular, frank and genuine, powerful and creative word, that clearly questions the order of power, invoking “the ancestral embrace”, promoting “joyful living”, Francia rises as a connecting voice of the national-popular, seeking to reinvent the social tissue and the national project. It is worth highlighting her formation and vocation in grassroots decolonial black feminism—as many women from the Black Communities Process-PCN say—with an intersectional politics that combines a myriad of liberation struggles against all oppressions.

Concretized in the public policy agenda, such a search to combat entangled inequalities building bonds of liberation, will be organized through a new Ministry of Equality and Women that will be headed by Francia Márquez. Among the initial tasks of said ministry are the regulation and remuneration of domestic labor, and the creation of a national Afro-reparations fund and program that would be the first established in a state institution anywhere in the world. Some examples, now extinct, with their positive and negative lessons, are the Secretariat of Racial Equity of Brazil, the Secretariat of Peoples and Citizenship of Ecuador, the Ministry of Decolonization and Depatriarchalization of Bolivia, and the Ministry of Social Rights of Uruguay. We wish this Ministry of Equality and Women to become a laboratory to develop policies and means for “living joyfully”.

The call to “vivir sabroso”, so trivialized and folklorized in the corporate media, enunciates a project of “good living” on Africana beat. At the core there is a will of cultivating harmony between humans and with nature. It is a maternal commitment to the care of the “big house” as Francia calls it, of plural solidarity to build scenarios of peace and justice at the national and global levels. It expresses a search to link the satisfaction of basic needs -education, health, food, security, territory- with the cultivation of happiness and enjoyment. With an Afro-Colombian expression from Chocó, a radical vitalism, a politics of eros, of life, desire and hope, is advocated with humor and mischief. For this reason, Colombia voted for “vivir sabroso”.

In a country where the corporate media have normalized daily social and political homicide, in which the ubiquity of violence motivated the creation of a field of knowledge called “violentology”, the commitment to turn Colombia into a “world power of life” to cultivate “joyful living” is a revolutionary proposal in so far as it demands deep changes.

Playing that drum, Gustavo Petro characterizes his praxis and project as a “politics of love”. In keeping with his Catholic tradition of liberation theology, Petro posits that “the politics of love is a politics of solidarity” that seeks to forge peace with social justice. For this reason, it seeks to “defeat hatred and fear of change” and to “end the enormous inequality that exists among Colombians.” In this key, Petro argues that “in times of hatred only tyranny will come”, in contrast to his determined commitment to build a “multicolored democracy”.

Petro’s political polychromy is largely due to the pedagogical values of Francia Márquez’s decolonial black feminism. The centrality of the critique of racism, heteronormativity, and sexism in Petro’s current discourse expresses refreshing changes in his ways of the politics of love. How to build that multicolored democracy, to forge a nation articulating its pluriverse–territorial, ethnic, racial, sexual, generational, etc–is one of the great challenges of the new era opened with the triumph of the Historic Pact.

President Petro’s call for a national dialogue is a significant start. The desire for dialogue indicates an avatar of the politics of love, the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation. In a deeply ideologically polarized country, where violence still prevails throughout the national territory, where almost 50% of the electorate did not vote, there are no guarantees that the kind of hegemony that Antonio Gramsci described as “an unstable equilibrium of compromises” will be sustained. After the honeymoon that comes with victory, come the challenges of keeping alive the historic bloc that elected Petro and Francia, which is now a government alliance. In the broad government coalition, some see this moment of alliances and commitments between diverse actors as composing a transition government towards more radical changes, while others view it with more skepticism and less expectations of profound transformations.

A week after the elections, fissures can already be seen in the coalition of the Historic Pact. The selection as President of the Senate of Roy Barreras, a senator who has gone through various vicissitudes of conventional Colombian politics, above various leftist leaders in the legislative body, has turned out to be controversial. In contrast, the appointment of Aurora Vergara Figueroa, a respected Afro-descendant intellectual, as representative appointed by Francia Marquez to the Joint Committee between the past administration and the new government team, has raised broad support, especially in the academic community and Afro-Colombian scenarios. Aurora has stood out both in the intellectual field and in the public sphere, occupying high-ranking government advisory positions as well as accumulating experience with international organizations. Her irreproachable ethical integrity and enormous intellectual talent have led many to advocate that she should be appointed as the new Minister of Education.

It is undeniable that we won. The lovers of radical democracy and people’s power in Colombia and in the world obtained a great triumph, embodied in the executive authority of Francia and Petro. For the Colombian right-wing, and in particular for its political chief Álvaro Uribe and his misnamed “democratic center”, these elections marked the “autumn of the patriarch”. The big loser was the right. That’s why the Colombian right is now internally embattled and already looking for ways to reinvent himself.

In a documentary titled “Gustavo Petro: The Politics of Love,” the now president-elect says that his father taught him to read Rousseau, who is still one of the main references in Petro’s conception of democracy. In his victory speech, Petro affirmed that the project of effective change of the Historic Pact seeks to build a “multicolored Republic”, inclusive, egalitarian, and pacifist. In this pathway, the politics of love is based on a radical republicanism seeking to facilitate the conditions of possibility for a national project where all can “live joyfully”. This should imply, as Jane Gordon would say, a sort of “creolization of political theory”, where we could “read Rousseau through Fanon”. In other words, this means to establish a dynamic dialogue between Petro’s “Colombia world power of life” and Francia’s “vivir sabroso“.

In one of the first interviews after being elected as vice president, Francia Márquez, responding to a journalist who tried to trivialize the meaning of “vivir sabroso”, said that “living joyfully” means living with dignity, without fear, with basic goods, with happiness and solidarity. Playing that drum, with Francia Márquez, the time has come for grassroots decolonial black feminism as political common sense, the time has come for the rebellion of the “have nots” to reinvent the nation and refound the state, to maroon power “until dignity becomes customary”.

A literal translation of “vivir sabroso” will be “living tasty”. Given that “vivir sabroso” is an expression from the predominantly Black region of the Choco, Colombia, to signify the “good life”, I translate it as “living joyfully”. I will use both “vivir sabroso” and “living joyfully” interchangeably through this article.

Franz Fanon (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove.

Samir Amin (1974). Accumulation on a World-Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press.

William Mina Aragón (2022). “Francia Márquez Mina: La radicalización de la democracia racial”. https://revistaviveafro.com/francia-marquez-mina-la-radicalizacion-de-la-democracia-racial/

It’s also begs the question of why not Black women presidents. Here, it is germane to observe that the official memory in Colombia whitewashed that Juan José Nieto Gil, a Black leader of the radical sector of the Liberal Party as President of Colombia in the period 1859-1864.

Jane Gordon (2014). Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon. Fordham University Press.