This is not some established nonprofit organization taking up a popular cause. It's just people doing their best to honor their local martyr for justice. They depend on a small GoFundMe. If you can, you know what to do ...Our primary focus is to help the people lovingly preserving George Floyd’s memorial, and make it a safe and comfortable space to visit. ... The process of helping maintain the Memorial has been organic. There has been no planning, and as of now we are only getting by with volunteer help and limited financial support from the community.
I grew up in the neighborhood where George Floyd was killed. As a college student and someone who is biracial, I experience firsthand the unfortunate obstacles of skin color. I am the proud daughter of an interracial marriage, and I can't imagine what someone with a darker complexion endures, not to mention a black man in America.
If you have visited the memorial of George Floyd, you have probably seen a number of groups distributing food, water, and masks for those who need it. We are collecting donations to ensure the sustainability of the memorial and support those actively working to do so.
We are in this together! #BLM #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd
Please continue to share with your friends and family!
We are not done yet, and we won't stop until there is justice.
If anyone you know has extra masks, we could use them at the entry point sanitation stations.
That is, we need more and better data collection and smart observation from a scientific community that is both over-burdened and sometimes prone to squabbling over credit for new insights. Only coherent political leadership could avert the worse of this. And we know we're not going to get it in this country.It is time we consider setting up COVID-19 long term recovery centers so patients with ongoing mysterious symptoms can be treated and studied.
The symptoms that emerge post-hospitalization or among many younger people with initial light symptoms is a scary and not understood part of the disease.
More people will survive COVID but like past viruses like SARS-Cov-1 and AIDS, surviving doesn’t mean a symptom free life.
We can eventually beat and treat many diseases but our scientists need data and patients require support.
One out of 1000 Americans at this point have been hospitalized with COVID-19. Neurological, respiratory, immune system, and clotting and damage to the kidney, pancreas and lungs have all been experienced.
As the virus spreads more people will become ill and more will survive. We should take advantage of the time to increase our understanding.
Many more people will get COVID and not require hospitalization — by the end of the Summer, it could total 15% of the population.
Some number of these people, even if they didn’t experience symptoms, will find the virus has stayed in their system causing new or nagging sensations. With SARS-Cov-1, chronic fatigue & mental health disorders are still a problem with 40% of people who have recovered.
The answer to this phenomenon begins with more widespread testing still. And in particular in hard hit communities.
Special clinics and ongoing treatment should be set up.
Some COVID recoverees report being stigmatized already as we often do with things we don’t understand. People treat them as if they’re infectious. And suggest the only thing that matters is if people die or not. We can do better than that.
Normally the CDC would be enlightening us here. I hope they step up but since the pandemic has begun, leadership has had to come from elsewhere in the country. And it should again.
We can climb out of this hole we dug for ourselves by passing Weber's constitutional amendment.Enacted in 1996, Proposition 209 — which was deceptively marketed to voters as a civil rights initiative — removed essential tools to fight discrimination against women and people of color. Far from leveling the playing field, it set up obstacles to success for millions. In the six years that followed Proposition 209’s passage, contract awards to women business enterprises dropped significantly from 6.7% to 3.8%. In the following two decades, California’s minority and women business enterprises lost the potential equivalent of $1 billion annually in public contracts.
Since Proposition 209’s passage, California has become one of only eight states that do not allow race or gender to be among the many factors considered in hiring, allotting state contracts or accepting students into the state’s public colleges and universities.
Despite our position as a global leader, this law has allowed discriminatory hiring and contracting processes to flourish in California. The result is that the number of women and Latinos employed by the state of California has decreased significantly relative to population growth.
In 1994, Latinos were admitted to the UCs above the average rate, and African-Americans at 6 points below average; in 2019, they were admitted at 6 points and 16 points below average, respectively. Asian American admission rates went down, and have not returned to previous levels, especially at the most selective campus in the UC system. For example, before Proposition 209 in 1996, the Asian American admissions rate at UC Berkeley was 32%. Two years later, it was 30%. Currently, it is 21%.
Varsha Sarveshwar is the president of the University of California Student Association. She graduated this year from UC Berkeley and she believes voting for ACA 5 in November will be acting for equal opportunity for all:My race is an essential part of who I am – both in my pride as a Chinese American and in the very real challenges my family and I have faced because of it.
Assemblywoman Weber took her repeal initiative to the legislature by speaking to the moment we're in:Simply put, we can no longer pretend that race does not exist or that it doesn’t matter.
Students are far more complex than race alone, but race is undeniably an important part of who we are. This shapes the rich perspectives and experiences we bring to an academic environment.
Today, colleges can consider whether you’re from the suburbs, a city or a rural area. They can consider what high school you went to. They can consider your family’s economic background. They can look at virtually everything about you – but not race. It makes no sense – and is unfair – that schools can’t consider something that is so core to our lived experience.
California can affirm that race matters in November. Let's get on with it."I'm so grateful I didn't have to convince you that racism is real, because George Floyd did that," said ACA 5's author...
And when our political leaders dither and plead poverty, it's up to all of us to remind them they are lying. What's the wealth of a nation for but to assure the well-being of its people? There's only one morally acceptable answer -- and that's the meaning of the cry that Black Lives Matter.Wealth begets wealth, and white Americans have had centuries of government assistance to accumulate wealth, while the government has for the vast history of this country worked against black Americans doing the same.
... Wealth, not income, is the means to security in America. Wealth — assets and investments minus debt — is what enables you to buy homes in safer neighborhoods with better amenities and better-funded schools. It is what enables you to send your children to college without saddling them with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and what provides you money to put a down payment on a house. It is what prevents family emergencies or unexpected job losses from turning into catastrophes that leave you homeless and destitute. It is what ensures what every parent wants — that your children will have fewer struggles than you did. Wealth is security and peace of mind. It’s not incidental that wealthier people are healthier and live longer. Wealth is, as a recent Yale study states, “the most consequential index of economic well-being” for most Americans. But wealth is not something people create solely by themselves; it is accumulated across generations.
... Brown v. Board of Education did not end segregated and unequal schools; it just ended segregation in the law. It took court orders and, at times, federal troops to see any real integration. Nevertheless, more than six decades after the nation’s highest court proclaimed school segregation unconstitutional, black children remain as segregated from white kids as they were in the early 1970s. There has never been a point in American history where even half the black children in this country have attended a majority-white school.
... The Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination in housing, but it did not reset real estate values so that homes in redlined black neighborhoods whose prices were artificially deflated would be valued the same as identical homes in white neighborhoods, which had been artificially inflated. It did not provide restitution for generations of black homeowners forced into predatory loans because they had been locked out of the prime credit market. It did not repay every black soldier who returned from World War II to find that he could not use his G.I. Bill to buy a home for his family in any of the new whites-only suburbs subsidized by the same government he fought for. It did not break up the still-entrenched housing segregation that took decades of government and private policy to create. Lay those redlining maps over almost any city in America with a significant black population, and you will see that the government-sanctioned segregation patterns remain stubbornly intact and that those same communities bore the brunt of the predatory lending and foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s that stole years of black homeownership and wealth gains.
... Making employment discrimination illegal did not come with a check for black Americans to compensate for all the high-paying jobs they were legally barred from, for the promotions they never got solely because of their race, for the income and opportunities lost to the centuries of discrimination. Nor did these laws end ongoing discrimination any more than speed limits without enforcement stop people from driving too fast. These laws opened up opportunities for limited numbers of black Americans while largely leaving centuries of meticulously orchestrated inequities soundly in place, but now with the sheen of colorblind magnanimity.
With Covid-19, black Americans face a financial catastrophe unlike any in nearly a century. Black Americans had already lost the largest share of their wealth of all racial groups as a result of the last recession and have struggled the most to recover. They are the only racial group whose household median income is less than it was in 2000. Today already more than half of black adults are out of work. Black businesses are withering. Their owners were almost completely shut out of the federal paycheck-protection program — just 12 percent of black and Latino business owners who applied for the small-business loans received the full amounts they requested, according to a Global Strategy Group survey last month. Nearly half the respondents said they would most likely shutter permanently within six months. Black children are expected to lose 10 months’ worth of academic gains because of school closures, more than any other group, and yet they attend the schools with the least resources already, schools that will have even fewer resources as states slash spending to make up for budget shortfalls. One in five black homeowners and one in four renters have missed at least one home payment since the shutdowns began — the highest of all racial groups.
Race-neutral policies simply will not address the depth of disadvantage faced by people this country once believed were chattel. Financial restitution cannot end racism, of course, but it can certainly mitigate racism’s most devastating effects. If we do nothing, black Americans may never recover from this pandemic, and they will certainly never know the equality the nation has promised.
So we are left with a choice. Will this moment only feel different? Or will it actually be different?
... It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.
He's telling the younger folks to get in there and push for what ought to theirs.Our public policies tilt toward the economic interests of older Americans. This imbalance must be righted lest an entire generation of Americans — your generation — be weighed down for the rest of its working life by the aftereffects of this moment.
Older people do well in the policy wars partly because they vote in large numbers (another incentive for young people to turn out). Our social insurance programs for older people, principally Medicare and Social Security, are not matched by similarly comprehensive protections for the middle-aged and the young. Also: Older people are wealthier, and our political system leans hard toward the haves over the have-nots.
The extraordinary influence of old people on election outcomes is not going to change unless participation from younger people increases. That's just a fact.America’s upper governmental reaches are remarkably old—older, in fact than the much-mocked Soviet Politburo at the time of Leonid Brezhnev’s death, when its median age was a comparatively sprightly 71. There are a variety of reasons for this, including the aging of the Baby Boom and great health strides in recent decades for the over-70 set.
But the real determining factor, I think, is that the voting population is very, very old. In 2016, voters age 65 and older represented only 15 percent of the electorate but accounted for nearly 30 percent of all ballots cast, thanks to their 71 percent turnout. In 2020, this cohort will represent nearly one-quarter of the electorate—and consequently could account for one-third or more of all ballots.
So wrote the U.S. government's Office of the Historian. This website comes with a note:The ensuing Philippine-American War lasted three years and resulted in the death of over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease.
An expanded note, defensive in tone, takes pains to explain that a review of the Office of the Historian was underway in 2016. But apparently the decision to retire this material was part of the Trump administration's cuts to the State Department. I suspect we have here historical revisionism to project a story more in tune with "Making America Great Again."“Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations” has been retired and is no longer maintained.
What is documented in San Francisco is that the disease is tearing through Latinx and Black communities and disproportionately killing infected people of various Asian origins, while not being nearly so deadly to white residents.If you are in Belgium and have COVID-19, your odds are not good: About one in six Belgians who have contracted the disease have died. If you are in Rwanda, a former Belgian colony with a per capita GDP about 1/60th of Belgium’s, your odds are superb. Rwanda has reported 339 cases, and none has even required admission to an ICU. Rwandans are younger than Belgians, but zero is a very small number.
In Switzerland, a country with excellent universal health care, a French-speaking Swiss with COVID-19 is 1.6 times more likely to die than a German-speaking Swiss. An Italian-speaking Swiss is 2.4 times more likely to die than a German speaker. The magnitude of these disparities is comparable to the magnitude of the disparities among white, Latino, and black people in the United States—even though there is no modern history of enslavement and genocide of Switzerland’s Italian-speaking population. (Ticino, the center of Italian-speaking Switzerland, ranks seventh out of 26 cantons in per capita GDP.) You might be tempted to attribute the disparity to the Italian speakers’ connections with the death zone of northern Italy. That could account for the difference in the incidence of the disease—but why the difference in the likelihood that you’ll die, if you already have it?
“Policymakers’ natural instinct is to think this correlation is because of income disparities, or having health insurance, or diabetes, obesity rates, smoking rates, or even use of public transit,” [M.I.T. economist Chris] Knittel said. “It’s not. We controlled for all of those. The reason why [Black people] face higher death rates is not because they have higher rates of uninsured, poverty, diabetes, or these other factors.”
The Sutter study, too, adjusted for age, sex, comorbidities, and income; the higher hospitalization rate for Black patients wasn’t explained by any of those.
That leaves other factors. “If I were a policymaker,” Knittel said, “I’d be looking at things like the systemic racism that affects the quality of insurance African Americans have and the quality of the health care they receive.”
The county-by-county analysis of Covid-19 death rates in the U.S. comes as more and more studies shift from the initial focus on individual-level factors that seem to increase people’s risk of dying to population-level ones, too, said experts in public health, demographics, and infectious disease.
Meanwhile, in its own casually imperial way, the U.S. government has been contributing to global confusion and likely unnecessary deaths.... the language being used by the mainstream media against Muslims was designed to dehumanise them. To paint an entire community as “corona jihadis” during this pandemic, when there is a pre-existing atmosphere of violence against Muslims is to create a genocidal climate.
... It was terrifyingly similar to how, during the rise of the Third Reich, Nazis began accusing Jews of being spreaders of disease, carriers of typhus. And the tone of the media – particularly channels like Zee TV and Republic TV began to sound like Radio Rwanda. These channels are specially rewarded by the [President Nahrendra] Modi coterie, granted exclusive interviews by him and his terrifying home minister. The horror show is ongoing. ...
After this expose was published, the funding was cancelled. Thank you, alert reporters!US-funded website spreading COVID misinformation in Armenia
Medmedia.am was established with money from the Democracy Commission Small Grants programme, awarded to the NGO by the US embassy in Armenia last year. These grants, intended to “promote democracy”, are worth up to $50,000 a year.
In May, the site’s most-read page called on Armenians to “refuse all potential [COVID-19] vaccination programmes”. It has had 131,000 views and 28,000 social media likes (big numbers in a country with a population of less than 3 million).
The second most popular piece claimed, incorrectly, that a morgue offered 100,000 AMD ($205) to a dead patient’s relatives to sign a document saying the death was caused by COVID-19. Other recent pieces have described COVID-19 as a “fake pandemic”.Open Democracy, May 28, 2020
Yes, they call out Trump. After all, they speak science.Leaders who are more concerned with preserving a macho public image put our lives at risk as they prove their manhood by showing resistance to experts’ opinions, hypersensitivity to criticism and constant feuding with anyone who seems to disagree with them.
He's looking for further contributions for this study which can be uploaded at Pandemic Religion.As far as I can discern, the vast majority of American congregations have responded in responsible ways and demonstrated a concern for public health. Many congregations, moreover, have continued on with their efforts to feed the hungry and to assist the needy.
Dreams, realized and deferred. Struggle is long. That's why they call it struggle.This is a day that my grandmother taught me to honor as the beginnings of a new life for the African diaspora. She was very close to her African-American heritage and wanted to impart that quality to me. So much so that she would replace my Hooked-on-Phonics books with ones she felt were more suitable -- like Imani and the Flying Africans -- a fantastic tale of a band of Africans taking to the sky to escape to freedom.
When I think of Juneteenth, I often imagine those winged, black faces breaking their chains and finding freedom. But the true American tale of how slaves were freed is more grounded in a nuanced, complicated, and painful struggle for freedom that has continued for 155 years (read: that means ‘til today).
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day the last of the enslaved Africans in America were freed from their chains, having continued to work in bondage for a full two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
In many ways, Juneteenth is a bittersweet reminder of what was promised but never delivered to Black folks post-emancipation. It's a reminder of delayed justice. Every year, even after my nana passed away, we celebrated this holiday. And every year, we do so in honor of progress as much as for a continually delayed sense of justice and equality.
If you look around, it's obvious that some projects are chugging along -- but also that something is wrong.Construction sites are coming back to life throughout San Francisco, but the surge in activity may not last long.
Builders pulled 334 permits last week, up from zero 10 weeks earlier as the coronavirus shutdown took effect. That puts construction activity at about 58% of normal. In the year leading up to Mayor London Breed’s mid-March order for construction to cease, City Hall received about 580 permit applications a week.
That's still too much for an awful lot of us. And some of the techies whose affluence drove up property values and rents have figured out they can work from home anywhere, including locations that are much cheaper than the City by the Bay. This won't help a lot of people who are here and trying to stay.This month the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco dropped 9.2% from a year earlier, to $3,360, according to apartment-listing site Zumper. It was the biggest decline since 2015.
Folks who aren't working aren't going to be able to pay the rent which landlords who acquired their properties at inflated values need to stay in business.In April, almost 6% of city tenants were unable to pay rent because of financial hardships related to the COVID-19 pandemic and local order to shelter in place, according to an internal survey by the San Francisco Apartment Association. A study by the California Policy Lab found that nearly 18% of the city’s workforce filed for unemployment insurance benefits between March 16 and May 9.
We're properly pre-occupied by the horror and the glimpse of opportunity for real change let loose by local and national revulsion at George Floyd's murder. Humanity is enhanced when Black lives matter. And we're still captured within the unabated coronavirus emergency, even though the Quitter in Chief has gone out to lunch on disease response. All this amid this crashed, still not fully revealed, diminished economy.Pre-pandemic, Sherratt made between 50 and 100 sales a day, she said as she arranged the store’s brightly colored cards on the shelves. On Monday, she made 10.
“It used to be perfectly profitable,” Sherratt said.
It’s not only sales that have set her back. Already, Sherratt missed April and May’s rent. Her landlord cut her June rent by 75 percent and asked her to pay just under half of July’s. Still, she’s uncertain of the store’s future. She is currently the store’s sole employee.
“Today I am paying $20 an hour for a babysitter and I am not earning anything,” Sherratt said.
Well, maybe. Most people in my circles keep groaning about the pounds they have put on, but some probably are acquiring improved food habits. This author reports that 45 percent of us said we were cooking more at home, not surprisingly. And many people report eating better, consuming less salt and sugar while adding fruit and vegetables.Dietitians report that clients are less interested in dieting, and more interested in sustainable eating patterns that enrich their long-term health. The search term “weight loss diets” fell sharply in March and April, according to Google Trends.
“I have definitely seen less talk and fewer questions about fad diets” says Melissa Nieves, a dietitian with Fad Free Nutrition based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “I think people have rightfully put their attention on their protection, survival and well-being during this pandemic. That also includes eating habits becoming more practical and less centered on what diet culture says we should or shouldn’t eat to reach a socially constructed body ideal.”
Yes, Congressional action is needed -- and Republicans refuse to move on this. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has sent a proposed relief and stimulus bill to the Senate, but the GOPers there are just sitting on it.“COVID-19 has created the perfect storm, releasing a downpour of difficulties on Ohio families,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks. “High unemployment rates and loss of income from jobs has led to a massive surge in demand at our foodbanks at a time when we’re facing significant operational challenges, including declines in volunteers, fundraising revenue and donated foods.”
Foodbanks across the country rapidly shifted operating models to meet skyrocketing demand while mitigating the spread of COVID-19, and they haven’t seen demand ease off for three months. Meanwhile, disruptions to the supply chain have meant fewer retail donations and a surge in food prices putting additional pressure on family food budgets.
“Congress attempted to put an umbrella over families’ heads by means of expanding SNAP aid and increasing unemployment benefits, but it hasn’t been enough,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “The increase in food prices makes the current SNAP benefit amounts even more inadequate to meet basic food needs. Our foodbanks simply cannot keep up with this level of demand – congressional action is needed now.”
This would not satisfy me if I were a San Diegan, but it sure is a step up from what most Pride committees have chosen to do about police participation in their festivities in the last 30 years or so.A Path to Healing & Safer Communities
San Diego Pride asks the City of San Diego to stand with us in support of our Black LGBTQ and ally community. We are asking you to join us in support of the following actions as a further step towards unity.
STEP 1: Law enforcement agencies will no longer have contingents in the San Diego Pride Parade or booths in our Pride Festival. This may be reassessed after the completion of Step 4.
STEP 2: The City of San Diego will recognize the San Diego Pride Parade as a free speech event and no longer bill the organization for road closures and safety.
STEP 3: The City of San Diego will immediately adopt the #8CantWait Campaign recommendations [for police reform from Campaign Zero.]
STEP 4: Support a phased approach to policy reform recommendations centering Black LGBTQ San Diegans.
I first lost a fight about including police without even critique in what I thought was a radical gay/feminist institution in 1982. This will go until we broadly understand that the purpose of police, as constituted in this country, is not "public safety," but repression of Black people, of all people of color, and of anyone who transgresses straight gender norms.“Pride began as a protest, and it’s turned into a parade,” said Malkia Devich Cyril, the executive director of MediaJustice and an activist based in Oakland. “I think what’s happening now is simply a return to its roots.”
The national abdication of leadership in the face of some people's demand to "re-open" leaves each individual responsible for calculating their own risk. We each, individually, are left to decide which constraints we'll place on ourselves. For myself, I'm into masks, getting outside as much as possible, and seeing people only six feet apart. Your mileage may vary.“None of us are at peace. We’re sort of bracing for it to come back. All of us are wondering, can we go through this again?”
... "We risked our lives to save as many lives as possible, and people can’t wear a mask — they can’t stay six feet apart.”
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| Murder of George Floyd as seen from Mexico |
ICE, which runs this jail, tried to say it wasn't so."We, the detained people of dormitories A, B, and C at Mesa Verde ICE Detention Facility, are protesting and on hunger strike in solidarity with the detained people at Otay Mesa Detention Center. We begin our protest in memory of our comrades George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, and Tony McDade. Almost all of us have also suffered through our country’s corrupt and racist criminal justice system before being pushed into the hands of ICE."
Video via the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.When Immigration and Customs Enforcement first announced the hunger strike at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, Calif., on Friday, they alleged that detainees were being coerced — both internally and externally — into a hunger strike, and detainees reportedly said they were told that the purpose of the hunger strike was to protest the repetitive cycle of the menu.
Further investigation revealed that detainees began refusing meals as a show of solidarity for Floyd, who died while being detained by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25 and whose death sparked protests against police brutality that continue across the nation.
Walker has lined up four other old-line, extremely affluent, charitable foundations to follow his lead. This is old money stepping up.In 2019, the Ford Foundation handed out $520 million in grants. [Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation,] quickly realized that was not going to be anywhere near enough in this crisis-engulfed year.
His solution: Borrow money, spend it quickly and inspire others to follow Ford’s lead. The Ford Foundation plans to announce on Thursday that it will borrow $1 billion so that it can substantially increase the amount of money it distributes.
