alternet--2020-11-13--Our future of fire: Here’s how to protect the country's increasingly imperiled landscapes

As of late fall , wildfires are still smoldering under snowfall in Colorado .
I am hoping that the cold and snowy weather over the last few days will finally put to bed the 2020 fire season in my state .
Through much of October , great pillars of smoke rose in the sky and ash rained down from at least four major fall wildfires , affecting millions in the urban corridors east of the Rocky Mountains .
October wildfires are rare in Colorado , especially large ones that burn more than 1,000 acres .
Only about a dozen that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 335 in the state over that period .
This fall 's major blazes are a signal of climate change in the here and now .
And they 're not the only such evidence in a record hot and dry 2020 fire season , where states across the West are still putting out hot spots and mopping up the blazes .
Wildfires have shaped the Earth for hundreds of millions of years and play key roles in many of its ecosystems .
And humans have used fire for landscape management for millennia .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ our modern relationship with fire .
As a fire scientist based in the West , I see reason for hope .
By making changes now , I believe that we can help shape the types of fire we live with in the future .
Pathways to living with more fire More than 8.7 million acres – an area larger than the state of Maryland – have burned across the U.S. just in 2020 .
Tens of millions of people have suffered from the resulting toxic smoke .
Hundreds of thousands have been forced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 pandemic .
Thousands of homes have burned to the ground , and dozens of people have lost their lives .
The science is clear : Earth 's warming climate has doubled the area in western U.S. forests that has burned since the 1980s .
And this increase comes at a high price .
The most devastating wildfires have caused US $ 76 billion in damage since 1980 , with most of those losses occurring in the past 20 years .
And the 2020 fire season is n't over yet .
Fire is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humans need to respond faster .
Based on my own research and work by others , here are six pathways that I believe will help the U.S. get ahead of its wildfire crisis .
• Build better .
Across the U.S. , tens of millions of homes have been built in the wildland-urban interface , where development runs up against forests , shrublands and grasslands .
These communities need to retrofit flammable homes and build new ones that are fire-resistant .
Mapping zones where fire is likely in a changing climate is critical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Agency produces maps of flood-prone areas , the U.S. needs national firescape maps , coupled with national policies to guide development and insurance decisions .
To catch up with increasingly frequent and intense wildfires , the U.S. needs more innovative ways of detecting , preventing and fighting fires .
Congress passed an omnibus bill in 2018 that mandated wildfire hazard potential mapping , but this effort will require concerted scientific support and funding .
The maps should incorporate how warming temperatures affect the likelihood of wildfires , and should tie into a national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's way .
• Emphasize backyard management .
Local communities and federal and state land management agencies should focus on reducing flammable trees and brush near where people live .
Mechanical removal , raking and logging in the middle of the woods to reduce fire risk is way too expensive and ineffective .
It would cost billions of dollars to clean up 150 million dead trees in California .
There 's also a need for more research on how homes ignite and how fire progresses through neighborhoods .
The U.S. has had mandatory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limit fires indoors and protect occupants .
Today we need similar measures for outdoor areas around homes .
• Bring Smokey Bear to the suburbs .
Many human activities bring fire .
Virtually all of the wildfires that threaten homes anywhere in the lower 48 states are started by human actions , either deliberate or accidental .
For decades the U.S. Forest Service 's Smokey Bear public education campaign taught Americans that “ Only you can prevent forest fires . ''
Today there 's a need to raise awareness of how daily activities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or operating yard equipment , can generate sparks .
Power lines , which can blow over during extreme weather conditions and start deadly wildfires , should be a major focus .
• Use fire to fight fire .
Studies show that the U.S. is not setting enough prescribed fires to reduce flammable materials on the ground , especially in western states .
The only federal agency that has been able to increase prescribed burning in the past two decades is the Bureau of Indian Affairs .
This may reflect growing recognition that Native @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fire-prone communities .
Science-informed policies to delineate when and where to implement prescribed burning could help agencies manage smoke more effectively and support ecosystem restoration .
• Understand whom wildfires harm most .
A 2018 study estimated that 12 million socially vulnerable Americans who are poorly equipped to respond to fire due to low incomes , language barriers or other factors live in areas where there is substantial wildfire potential .
Further , people of color , based on majority Black , Hispanic or Native American census tracts , may be more vulnerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ urgent to better pinpoint whose lungs and homes are in harm 's way , who receives and acts on evacuation notices , and how well fuel treatments and firefighting protect the most vulnerable communities .
Answering these questions would help to reduce disproportionate wildfire risks borne by vulnerable communities .
• Stop fixating on “ megafires '' and “ gigafires . ''
Big fires matter for smoke , small fires matter for homes and fast-moving fires matter for lives .
There are better ways to delineate why wildfires matter to society .
New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to social media are providing a wealth of opportunities to learn more about wildfire behavior and how it threatens people and affects ecosystems .
These data could be linked with information on why fires are becoming so costly , damaging and deadly , leading to astronomical fire suppression budgets .
[ Deep knowledge , daily .
Sign up for The Conversation 's newsletter . ]
The U.S. spends over $ 2 billion on average fighting wildfires every year .
I believe it 's time to abandon our emergency response mindset and start investing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In my view , we will never get ahead of the threat without a better understanding of how to manage flammable landscapes and adapt to increasing wildfire threats .
Jennifer Balch , Associate Professor of Geography and Director , Earth Lab , University of Colorado Boulder This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license .
Read the original article .

by Jennifer Balch, University of Colorado Boulder
As of late fall, wildfires are still smoldering under snowfall in Colorado. I am hoping that the cold and snowy weather over the last few days will finally put to bed the 2020 fire season in my state. Through much of October, great pillars of smoke rose in the sky and ash rained down from at least four major fall wildfires, affecting millions in the urban corridors east of the Rocky Mountains.
October wildfires are rare in Colorado, especially large ones that burn more than 1,000 acres. Only about a dozen that size have burned since 1984, out of 335 in the state over that period.
This fall's major blazes are a signal of climate change in the here and now. And they're not the only such evidence in a record hot and dry 2020 fire season, where states across the West are still putting out hot spots and mopping up the blazes.
Wildfires have shaped the Earth for hundreds of millions of years and play key roles in many of its ecosystems. And humans have used fire for landscape management for millennia. But we are just starting to understand our modern relationship with fire. As a fire scientist based in the West, I see reason for hope. By making changes now, I believe that we can help shape the types of fire we live with in the future.
Pathways to living with more fire
More than 8.7 million acres – an area larger than the state of Maryland – have burned across the U.S. just in 2020. Tens of millions of people have suffered from the resulting toxic smoke. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to evacuate in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of homes have burned to the ground, and dozens of people have lost their lives.
The science is clear: Earth's warming climate has doubled the area in western U.S. forests that has burned since the 1980s. And this increase comes at a high price. The most devastating wildfires have caused US$76 billion in damage since 1980, with most of those losses occurring in the past 20 years. And the 2020 fire season isn't over yet.
Fire is responding quickly to climate change, so humans need to respond faster. Based on my own research and work by others, here are six pathways that I believe will help the U.S. get ahead of its wildfire crisis.
Mapping zones where fire is likely in a changing climate is critical. Just as the Federal Emergency Management Agency produces maps of flood-prone areas, the U.S. needs national firescape maps, coupled with national policies to guide development and insurance decisions.
To catch up with increasingly frequent and intense wildfires, the U.S. needs more innovative ways of detecting, preventing and fighting fires.
Congress passed an omnibus bill in 2018 that mandated wildfire hazard potential mapping, but this effort will require concerted scientific support and funding. The maps should incorporate how warming temperatures affect the likelihood of wildfires, and should tie into a national program that directs development out of harm's way.
Emphasize backyard management. Local communities and federal and state land management agencies should focus on reducing flammable trees and brush near where people live. Mechanical removal, raking and logging in the middle of the woods to reduce fire risk is way too expensive and ineffective. It would cost billions of dollars to clean up 150 million dead trees in California.
There's also a need for more research on how homes ignite and how fire progresses through neighborhoods. The U.S. has had mandatory fire codes for over a century to limit fires indoors and protect occupants. Today we need similar measures for outdoor areas around homes.
Bring Smokey Bear to the suburbs. Many human activities bring fire. Virtually all of the wildfires that threaten homes anywhere in the lower 48 states are started by human actions, either deliberate or accidental.
For decades the U.S. Forest Service's Smokey Bear public education campaign taught Americans that “Only you can prevent forest fires." Today there's a need to raise awareness of how daily activities, from camping to setting off fireworks or operating yard equipment, can generate sparks. Power lines, which can blow over during extreme weather conditions and start deadly wildfires, should be a major focus.
Use fire to fight fire. Studies show that the U.S. is not setting enough prescribed fires to reduce flammable materials on the ground, especially in western states.
The only federal agency that has been able to increase prescribed burning in the past two decades is the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This may reflect growing recognition that Native American burning practices offer a model for fire-prone communities. Science-informed policies to delineate when and where to implement prescribed burning could help agencies manage smoke more effectively and support ecosystem restoration.
Understand whom wildfires harm most. A 2018 study estimated that 12 million socially vulnerable Americans who are poorly equipped to respond to fire due to low incomes, language barriers or other factors live in areas where there is substantial wildfire potential.
Further, people of color, based on majority Black, Hispanic or Native American census tracts, may be more vulnerable than others. This disparity makes it urgent to better pinpoint whose lungs and homes are in harm's way, who receives and acts on evacuation notices, and how well fuel treatments and firefighting protect the most vulnerable communities. Answering these questions would help to reduce disproportionate wildfire risks borne by vulnerable communities.
Stop fixating on “megafires" and “gigafires." Big fires matter for smoke, small fires matter for homes and fast-moving fires matter for lives. There are better ways to delineate why wildfires matter to society.
New sources ranging from satellites to government records to social media are providing a wealth of opportunities to learn more about wildfire behavior and how it threatens people and affects ecosystems. These data could be linked with information on why fires are becoming so costly, damaging and deadly, leading to astronomical fire suppression budgets.
[Deep knowledge, daily.Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]
The U.S. spends over $2 billion on average fighting wildfires every year. I believe it's time to abandon our emergency response mindset and start investing in proactive measures to reduce risks. In my view, we will never get ahead of the threat without a better understanding of how to manage flammable landscapes and adapt to increasing wildfire threats.
Jennifer Balch, Associate Professor of Geography and Director, Earth Lab, University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


alternet--2020-11-13--Why 2020 was the 'precarity election'

Why 2020 was the 'precarity election'

While Joe Biden will be America 's next president , the 2020 election demonstrated that the basic building blocks of our electorate are evolving .
What were 20th-century political anchors of meaning— '' working-class '' or `` white-collar '' —are increasingly flimsy labels that obscure critical political tensions and splits .
America 's two main political parties will not be able to produce national majorities unless they consider the changing electorate trends when fashioning their strategies .
Race , gender , and rural-urban identity politics clearly remain important dividing lines , but the 2020 election highlighted a greater amount of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consensus allowed for .
Most importantly , these simplistic silos obscured the big political question , namely , to find a party that best can tend to the politics of the precariat—a massive pool of voters sharing very similar experiences , relating to employment security ; the rising costs of health care , housing , and education ; and the corresponding degradation in the quality of public services ( which are increasingly rationed by income and employment , rather than provided with universal access ) .
The phenomenon of economic precarity is truly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combination of automation , globalization and cuts in social provision has generated massive economic instability for ordinary citizens—for men and women , young and old , Black and white , skilled and unskilled workers , middle class and poor alike .
The challenge is to build a more stable , secure and sustainable society , which means explicitly addressing the issue of economic precarity that largely characterizes today 's capitalist system in the United States and abroad .
As one of us has written before , if any election were ripe to achieve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coalition that had `` sustained the Democrats electorally for decades , it was this one .
But the most striking takeaway from the 2020 election is how much it mirror [ ed the profound splits ] of the 2016 election , literally give or take the shift of a hundred thousand votes or so in a few key Rust Belt and Sun Belt states .
… [ And ] despite Trump 's direct appeals to racist fears , '' he and the New York Post claimed that `` more than a quarter of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 'the highest percentage for a GOP presidential candidate since 1960 . '
'' As with many of Trump 's boasts , this may be overblown ; however , the Brookings Institution reports that as of exit poll results through November 11 , in some non-battleground states , `` the Democratic margins for each of the major nonwhite groups… [ were ] somewhat reduced .
The Black Democratic margin—while still high , at 75 percent—was the lowest in a presidential election since 2004 . ''
Perhaps even more surprising , among Latina women , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent in 2016 to 30 percent in 2020 .
This may seem strange to some , but keep in mind that anxieties related to threatened livelihoods can overshadow issues of ethnicity , gender and race .
According to a pre-election AP VoteCast survey , for 28 percent of Americans , the economy and jobs were more important than other issues in this election—and some 80 percent of this group favored Trump .
Joe Biden 's presidential victory is now secure in terms of the Electoral College and impressive in terms of the popular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than 77 million votes , the largest popular vote in the country 's history ) .
However , as one of us has written before , `` the coattail effect… [ was ] minimal ( ironic , considering that this was one of the ostensible rationales for Democrats selecting a moderate like the former vice president , as opposed to a progressive , such as Bernie Sanders ) .
[ The GOP remains favored to ] … retain control of the Senate , and while the 'Democrats will keep their majority in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ABC News reports , `` after all the votes are counted , they could wind up with the slimmest House majority in 20 years . ''
And Donald Trump himself registered more than 72 million votes .
As one of us has written before , `` It was n't supposed to be this close .
Against the backdrop of a [ n ineptly managed ] pandemic , depression-like levels of unemployment , and a president whose approval rating never rose beyond 50 percent during his entire time in the White House , 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conditions for a so-called 'blue wave , ' both nationally and in the statehouses . ''
The disappointment to Democrats is rooted in a failure to accurately diagnose the nature of the working class and its grievances .
While 20th-century Democrats strongly depended on the working class for their majorities , the current version of the party is rather oblivious to what has given rise to the precariat .
In many ways , they are expanding it through the continuum of neoliberal policies the party still favors .
Case in point is California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of legislation from the bluest of blue states that has effectively entrenched economic precarity for a large chunk of the state 's workers by undermining traditional employee protections and benefits included in California 's existing labor law .
The Golden State has long been viewed as a leading indicator regarding future social , economic , and political trends , starting in 1978 with Proposition 13 ( a property tax-cutting provision that prefigured Reagan 's supply-side fiscal policy two years later ) .
If it is still true that `` as California goes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today 's economic precariat ought to be very concerned about the passage of Proposition 22 , a regressive union-busting measure that allows Uber and Lyft to continue classifying their drivers as contractors , not employees , thereby exempting them from a California labor law that seeks to outlaw the practice .
Although both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris explicitly opposed Proposition 22 , it certainly did n't help the Democrats ' brand that Kamala Harris ' brother-in-law and adviser , Tony West , who is the chief legal officer of Uber , led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; her niece , Meena Harris , is on Uber 's diversity team ; and her ex-campaign strategist , Laphonza Butler , advises Uber on labor relations .
After the passage of Proposition 22 , workers at gig economy firms will continue to be classified as contractors , without access to employee rights such as minimum wage , unemployment benefits , and health insurance .
There is no doubt that other states will take note .
This kind of development potentially creates a huge opening for the Republican Party , especially if it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of work and relinquish trickle-down economics policies its donors demanded for the past 40 years .
Trump clearly understood how to exploit the anxieties of the rural identity crisis , and he made inroads into what seemed to be certainties about voting patterns with regard to race and sex .
If Republicans can deliver leadership about giving security to the precariat , it will be equivalent to the achievement that the Democrats made during the Great Depression for blue-collar workers under the New Deal , a period when Franklin Delano Roosevelt developed policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic crisis and sustained a winning governing coalition for over half a century .
Today , the Democrats are losing a lot of what is left of what we understood to be the traditional working class .
They are losing what remains of these voters , at the same time that this label is losing its meaning : The traditional working class is disappearing , having been eviscerated through a combination of automation , globalization , attacks on private-sector unions and cuts in public services .
Until the party realizes that work is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increasingly wo n't be , it will be hard for them to offer credible solutions .
At the same time , if the Republicans are to become a more broadly based multiracial party of blue-collar conservatism , as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley , for one , has advocated , they too will have to understand that what constitutes blue-collar—work , life , existence , identity—is quite different now from the 20th-century blue-collar of the Democrats ' coalition , and is going to be even more different in 10 to 20 years .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is beginning to recognize this—but the party needs to reverse its positions on taxing the wealthiest , punishing and preventing the expansion of organized labor , reversing their position on outsourcing manufacturing , and addressing economic precarity .
The GOP 's own historic corporate constituencies create some challenges for the party if it wishes to secure this rapidly changing precariat vote .
A trade policy whereby American reindustrialization is ultimately married to national security concerns may be part of the answer .
Given its historically stronger ties to the defense establishment , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenario for the GOP , a recent example being Senator Tom Cotton 's new bill focusing on the domestic production of semiconductors .
But that will not be enough .
There are only so many homegrown strategic industries required to sustain U.S. military supremacy that also provide blue-collar jobs , especially given the degree of automation and the requirement of advanced degrees in industries such as semiconductors ( even allowing for the knock-out impacts ) .
Traditional concepts of work will have to be expanded as we ponder how to address the problems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precarity .
This will also mean discarding a lot of old neoliberal shibboleths , recognizing that national industrial policy will be required not simply to reduce prevailing inequality , but also to promote American economic growth and security in the fullest sense of the word—i.e.
, by addressing existing global supply chain vulnerabilities and discarding the silly notion that economic and employment security can be achieved simply by creating a bunch of serf-labor jobs designed to serve the interests of the oligarch class .
The outrage against inequality has been a calling cry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Ohio .
Here , poverty is a result of broader industrial decay caused by automation and the offshoring of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor , which has in turn entailed urban decay and rising criminality .
Those states responded well to Trump 's campaign rhetoric in 2016 .
And even though the president lost Michigan in 2020 , the results were still close .
Likewise , Ohio has increasingly become a red state , as opposed to a swing state .
All of this suggests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the Democratic Party 's solutions , which entailed redistribution from the winners to the losers , but little in the way of structural change to address the precarity problem .
Tellingly , the states where Trump made inroads among the working class ( Alaska , Oklahoma , Wyoming , Iowa , Utah ) saw the smallest increases in inequality nationwide since 1989 , but their troubled economies have not generated good and stable employment , suggesting that precarity , and not inequality , is the central voter concern driving the working-class vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red , because here too the Democrats still have no policies that address their specific pathologies : Alaska , Oklahoma , and Wyoming were 20th-century resource economies that saw declines in reserves , or devaluation from global competition .
But policies such as the Green New Deal have hitherto failed to make the case among workers in those states , even though numerous studies illustrate that green manufacturing jobs are inextricably linked to higher-quality employment and enhanced economic security .
Economic instability nurtures psychological affinities for stabilization—which the cultural conservatism and law-and-order affinities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to satisfy , at least on a cultural or social level .
The capacity to attract the vote of the growing precariat has been crucial for the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party .
Unsurprisingly , on the eve of Election Day , while Joe Biden issued an appeal for hope , decency and unity , Donald Trump , reportedly against the advice of his communication experts to appeal to moderate voters , chose to focus on his base of supporters with incendiary rhetoric of fear and anger .
Judging from the close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : The GOP benefited from a law-and-order backlash against protests and flag burning much as in the 1972 race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern .
The cultural disconnect that manifested itself in the wake of last summer 's marches was in part a product of the fact that , as Thomas B. Edsall writes in the New York Times , `` low-income white voters without college degrees on the Democratic Party side , high-income white voters with degrees on the Republican side—have switched places , '' referring to a phenomenon outlined by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their 2019 paper , `` Secular Partisan Realignment in the United States : The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of White Partisan Support since the New Deal Era . ''
If anything , the pandemic accentuated the trends outlined by Kitschelt and Rehm : growing numbers of university-educated Democratic voters had economically secure positions as members of the professional-managerial class .
In sharp contrast , Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus , but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue , as they appealed to many workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemically induced government restrictions placed on economic activity .
Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward pandemic mitigation , and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations .
But they remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans , whose jobs were being destroyed for good , whose household debts—rent , mortgage , and utility arrears , as well as interest on education and car loans—were rising inexorably , even allowing for the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August .
Yet the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relief packages did not appear to unduly penalize Republicans , if one is to judge from the congressional results .
Equally significantly , it did n't help the Democrats either .
This suggests that lingering fears about COVID-19 are being matched by economic anxiety from the many millions of American workers who are coming to realize that their jobs are simply not essential .
The struggle for the precariat vote will define the transformation of both parties in the next four years , and that 's an excellent thing , as it will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that begin to address their concerns .
Until this group 's longstanding economic grievances—jobs , health , safety , pollution , the public purpose , and above all , relative stability and employment security over long periods of time—are addressed , the United States will remain a profoundly divided and divisive country at war with itself .
Albena Azmanova is an associate professor of politics at the University of Kent 's Brussels School of International Studies and author of Capitalism on Edge : How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College , a fellow of Economists for Peace and Security , and a regular contributor to Economy for All , a project of the Independent Media Institute .
This article was produced by Economy for All , a project of the Independent Media Institute .

by Albena Azmanova and Marshall Auerback
While Joe Biden will be America's next president, the 2020 election demonstrated that the basic building blocks of our electorate are evolving. What were 20th-century political anchors of meaning—"working-class" or "white-collar"—are increasingly flimsy labels that obscure critical political tensions and splits.
America's two main political parties will not be able to produce national majorities unless they consider the changing electorate trends when fashioning their strategies. Race, gender, and rural-urban identity politics clearly remain important dividing lines, but the 2020 election highlighted a greater amount of fluidity and ideological heterogeneity than the media consensus allowed for. Most importantly, these simplistic silos obscured the big political question, namely, to find a party that best can tend to the politics of the precariat—a massive pool of voters sharing very similar experiences, relating to employment security; the rising costs of health care, housing, and education; and the corresponding degradation in the quality of public services (which are increasingly rationed by income and employment, rather than provided with universal access).
The phenomenon of economic precarity is truly the hallmark of contemporary capitalism: the combination of automation, globalization and cuts in social provision has generated massive economic instability for ordinary citizens—for men and women, young and old, Black and white, skilled and unskilled workers, middle class and poor alike.
The challenge is to build a more stable, secure and sustainable society, which means explicitly addressing the issue of economic precarity that largely characterizes today's capitalist system in the United States and abroad.
As one of us has written before, if any election were ripe to achieve this goal and reestablish the kind of coalition that had "sustained the Democrats electorally for decades, it was this one. But the most striking takeaway from the 2020 election is how much it mirror[ed the profound splits] of the 2016 election, literally give or take the shift of a hundred thousand votes or so in a few key Rust Belt and Sun Belt states. … [And] despite Trump's direct appeals to racist fears," he and the New York Post claimed that "more than a quarter of his votes came from nonwhite Americans, 'the highest percentage for a GOP presidential candidate since 1960.'" As with many of Trump's boasts, this may be overblown; however, the Brookings Institution reports that as of exit poll results through November 11, in some non-battleground states, "the Democratic margins for each of the major nonwhite groups… [were] somewhat reduced. The Black Democratic margin—while still high, at 75 percent—was the lowest in a presidential election since 2004." Perhaps even more surprising, among Latina women, the vote for Trump rose from 25 percent in 2016 to 30 percent in 2020. This may seem strange to some, but keep in mind that anxieties related to threatened livelihoods can overshadow issues of ethnicity, gender and race. According to a pre-election AP VoteCast survey, for 28 percent of Americans, the economy and jobs were more important than other issues in this election—and some 80 percent of this group favored Trump.
Joe Biden's presidential victory is now secure in terms of the Electoral College and impressive in terms of the popular vote (in which Biden received more than 77 million votes, the largest popular vote in the country's history). However, as one of us has written before, "the coattail effect… [was] minimal (ironic, considering that this was one of the ostensible rationales for Democrats selecting a moderate like the former vice president, as opposed to a progressive, such as Bernie Sanders). [The GOP remains favored to]… retain control of the Senate, and while the 'Democrats will keep their majority in the House of Representatives,'" as ABC News reports, "after all the votes are counted, they could wind up with the slimmest House majority in 20 years." And Donald Trump himself registered more than 72 million votes.
As one of us has written before, "It wasn't supposed to be this close. Against the backdrop of a[n ineptly managed] pandemic, depression-like levels of unemployment, and a president whose approval rating never rose beyond 50 percent during his entire time in the White House, 2020 created what should have been the ideal conditions for a so-called 'blue wave,' both nationally and in the statehouses." The disappointment to Democrats is rooted in a failure to accurately diagnose the nature of the working class and its grievances.
While 20th-century Democrats strongly depended on the working class for their majorities, the current version of the party is rather oblivious to what has given rise to the precariat. In many ways, they are expanding it through the continuum of neoliberal policies the party still favors.
Case in point is California's Proposition 22, a neo-feudal piece of legislation from the bluest of blue states that has effectively entrenched economic precarity for a large chunk of the state's workers by undermining traditional employee protections and benefits included in California's existing labor law. The Golden State has long been viewed as a leading indicator regarding future social, economic, and political trends, starting in 1978 with Proposition 13 (a property tax-cutting provision that prefigured Reagan's supply-side fiscal policy two years later). If it is still true that "as California goes, so goes the country," then today's economic precariat ought to be very concerned about the passage of Proposition 22, a regressive union-busting measure that allows Uber and Lyft to continue classifying their drivers as contractors, not employees, thereby exempting them from a California labor law that seeks to outlaw the practice. Although both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris explicitly opposed Proposition 22, it certainly didn't help the Democrats' brand that Kamala Harris' brother-in-law and adviser, Tony West, who is the chief legal officer of Uber, led the campaign in favor of Proposition 22; her niece, Meena Harris, is on Uber's diversity team; and her ex-campaign strategist, Laphonza Butler, advises Uber on labor relations. After the passage of Proposition 22, workers at gig economy firms will continue to be classified as contractors, without access to employee rights such as minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and health insurance. There is no doubt that other states will take note.
This kind of development potentially creates a huge opening for the Republican Party, especially if it can also adapt to the new realities of work and relinquish trickle-down economics policies its donors demanded for the past 40 years.
Trump clearly understood how to exploit the anxieties of the rural identity crisis, and he made inroads into what seemed to be certainties about voting patterns with regard to race and sex. If Republicans can deliver leadership about giving security to the precariat, it will be equivalent to the achievement that the Democrats made during the Great Depression for blue-collar workers under the New Deal, a period when Franklin Delano Roosevelt developed policies that mitigated the worst ravages of the economic crisis and sustained a winning governing coalition for over half a century.
Today, the Democrats are losing a lot of what is left of what we understood to be the traditional working class. They are losing what remains of these voters, at the same time that this label is losing its meaning: The traditional working class is disappearing, having been eviscerated through a combination of automation, globalization, attacks on private-sector unions and cuts in public services. Until the party realizes that work is nothing like what it was, and increasingly won't be, it will be hard for them to offer credible solutions.
At the same time, if the Republicans are to become a more broadly based multiracial party of blue-collar conservatism, as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, for one, has advocated, they too will have to understand that what constitutes blue-collar—work, life, existence, identity—is quite different now from the 20th-century blue-collar of the Democrats' coalition, and is going to be even more different in 10 to 20 years. There are some recent indications that the GOP is beginning to recognize this—but the party needs to reverse its positions on taxing the wealthiest, punishing and preventing the expansion of organized labor, reversing their position on outsourcing manufacturing, and addressing economic precarity.
The GOP's own historic corporate constituencies create some challenges for the party if it wishes to secure this rapidly changing precariat vote. A trade policy whereby American reindustrialization is ultimately married to national security concerns may be part of the answer. Given its historically stronger ties to the defense establishment, that would seem to be a more plausible scenario for the GOP, a recent example being Senator Tom Cotton's new bill focusing on the domestic production of semiconductors. But that will not be enough.
There are only so many homegrown strategic industries required to sustain U.S. military supremacy that also provide blue-collar jobs, especially given the degree of automation and the requirement of advanced degrees in industries such as semiconductors (even allowing for the knock-out impacts). Traditional concepts of work will have to be expanded as we ponder how to address the problems of automation, rising inequality and economic precarity. This will also mean discarding a lot of old neoliberal shibboleths, recognizing that national industrial policy will be required not simply to reduce prevailing inequality, but also to promote American economic growth and security in the fullest sense of the word—i.e., by addressing existing global supply chain vulnerabilities and discarding the silly notion that economic and employment security can be achieved simply by creating a bunch of serf-labor jobs designed to serve the interests of the oligarch class.
The outrage against inequality has been a calling cry for the Democratic Party, especially in Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Ohio. Here, poverty is a result of broader industrial decay caused by automation and the offshoring of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, which has in turn entailed urban decay and rising criminality. Those states responded well to Trump's campaign rhetoric in 2016. And even though the president lost Michigan in 2020, the results were still close. Likewise, Ohio has increasingly become a red state, as opposed to a swing state. All of this suggests that the electorate was not fully persuaded by the Democratic Party's solutions, which entailed redistribution from the winners to the losers, but little in the way of structural change to address the precarity problem.
Tellingly, the states where Trump made inroads among the working class (Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Iowa, Utah) saw the smallest increases in inequality nationwide since 1989, but their troubled economies have not generated good and stable employment, suggesting that precarity, and not inequality, is the central voter concern driving the working-class vote to the right. They remained firmly red, because here too the Democrats still have no policies that address their specific pathologies: Alaska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming were 20th-century resource economies that saw declines in reserves, or devaluation from global competition. But policies such as the Green New Deal have hitherto failed to make the case among workers in those states, even though numerous studies illustrate that green manufacturing jobs are inextricably linked to higher-quality employment and enhanced economic security.
Economic instability nurtures psychological affinities for stabilization—which the cultural conservatism and law-and-order affinities of the Republican Party appear better equipped to satisfy, at least on a cultural or social level. The capacity to attract the vote of the growing precariat has been crucial for the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party. Unsurprisingly, on the eve of Election Day, while Joe Biden issued an appeal for hope, decency and unity, Donald Trump, reportedly against the advice of his communication experts to appeal to moderate voters, chose to focus on his base of supporters with incendiary rhetoric of fear and anger. Judging from the close election result, that gamble paid off: The GOP benefited from a law-and-order backlash against protests and flag burning much as in the 1972 race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern.
The cultural disconnect that manifested itself in the wake of last summer's marches was in part a product of the fact that, as Thomas B. Edsall writes in the New York Times, "low-income white voters without college degrees on the Democratic Party side, high-income white voters with degrees on the Republican side—have switched places," referring to a phenomenon outlined by Professors Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm in their 2019 paper, "Secular Partisan Realignment in the United States: The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of White Partisan Support since the New Deal Era." If anything, the pandemic accentuated the trends outlined by Kitschelt and Rehm: growing numbers of university-educated Democratic voters had economically secure positions as members of the professional-managerial class. In sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus, but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue, as they appealed to many workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced government restrictions placed on economic activity.
Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations. But they remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans, whose jobs were being destroyed for good, whose household debts—rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as interest on education and car loans—were rising inexorably, even allowing for the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August. Yet the inability of Congress to secure extensions on relief packages did not appear to unduly penalize Republicans, if one is to judge from the congressional results. Equally significantly, it didn't help the Democrats either. This suggests that lingering fears about COVID-19 are being matched by economic anxiety from the many millions of American workers who are coming to realize that their jobs are simply not essential.
The struggle for the precariat vote will define the transformation of both parties in the next four years, and that's an excellent thing, as it will force both parties to offer competing policies that begin to address their concerns. Until this group's longstanding economic grievances—jobs, health, safety, pollution, the public purpose, and above all, relative stability and employment security over long periods of time—are addressed, the United States will remain a profoundly divided and divisive country at war with itself.
Albena Azmanova is an associate professor of politics at the University of Kent's Brussels School of International Studies and author of Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia (2020).
Marshall Auerback is a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, a fellow of Economists for Peace and Security, and a regular contributor to Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


alternet--2020-11-13--'A coup is under way': Experts warn Trump and GOP leaders could unleash a wave of violence

Historians and other experts on Thursday warned that President Donald Trump 's attempt to remain in power despite his loss in the 2020 election is growing increasingly dangerous as Republican leaders willingly participate in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and back the president 's refusal to accept the election results .
In an op-ed at The Hill , journalist Albert Hunt wrote that Trump 's `` deceitful charge '' that the Democratic Party stole the election and allowed `` illegal votes '' to be cast—claims that have yet to be backed up by evidence— '' undermines confidence in our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threaten to unleash a dangerous wave of violence . ''
Quoted in Hunt 's piece , white supremacy and terrorism expert Kathleen Belew , a history professor at the University of Chicago , warns that after Trump 's courting of violent white supremacist groups—in 2017 when he refused to denounce neo-Nazis at a rally in Virginia where an anti-racist protester was murdered , and weeks ago when he offered tacit approval of the Proud Boys at the first presidential debate—the president 's rhetoric and actions in recent days `` could also be invitation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 . ''
`` If these white power advocates double down on the idea this was a rigged election , history tells us there will be major spikes in violence , deliberate attacks , '' Belew said .
The willingness of some on the far right to take violent action in order to defeat Trump 's political opponents has been made clear in recent weeks .
The FBI last month arrested more than a dozen people in connection with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov .
Gretchen Whitmer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's coronavirus safety protocols , which have come under fire from Trump .
Last weekend , as Americans across the country celebrated Trump 's defeat in the election by President-elect Joe Biden , armed supporters of the president attended counterprotests , decrying so-called `` illegal votes '' and claiming the election had been stolen .
On Tuesday , actor and right-wing activist Jon Voight posted a video on social media which was retweeted more than 43,000 times , accusing `` leftists '' of corruption and calling on fellow Trump supporters to prepare for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War . ''
`` There will be a price to pay , '' Voight said .
`` The ones who are jumping for joy now are jumping toward the horror they will be in for ... We must fight the corruption that has taken over ... Let us fight this fight as if it is our last fight on Earth . ''
Twitter included a warning on the post saying it contained claims about `` election fraud '' that are `` disputed . ''
`` Everyone knows that when the federal courts repeatedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laughable bullshit , you can simply use a video of Jon Voight insisting it 's all actually true , '' tweeted historian Kevin Kruse .
But Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder warned against laughing off what he called a clear attempt at a coup .
`` Underestimating Donald Trump is a mistake that people should not go on making , '' Snyder wrote in the Boston Globe on Wednesday .
`` Laughing at him will not make him go away .
If it did , he would have vanished decades ago .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in U.S. history but not in countries that have been recognized as authoritarian regimes , that Trump and the Republican Party have taken so far to undermine the will of American voters : Snyder pointed to the assassination of centrist Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz in 1922—days after he won the presidency and after his victory was not accepted by right-wing nationalists—and claims by Nazis that Germany had lost the World War I due to a `` stab in the back '' by leftists and Jews , as historical precedents for the violence that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly if Republicans continue to support the president .
In a Twitter thread , Snyder expanded on the danger of assuming Trump 's actions wo n't escalate to such violence in the United States .
`` In an authoritarian situation , the election is only round one .
You do n't win by winning round one , '' Snyder wrote .
`` It is up to civil society , organized citizens , to defend the vote and to peacefully defend democracy . ''

Historians and other experts on Thursday warned that President Donald Trump's attempt to remain in power despite his loss in the 2020 election is growing increasingly dangerous as Republican leaders willingly participate in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and back the president's refusal to accept the election results.
In an op-ed at The Hill, journalist Albert Hunt wrote that Trump's "deceitful charge" that the Democratic Party stole the election and allowed "illegal votes" to be cast—claims that have yet to be backed up by evidence—"undermines confidence in our Democratic system, but it could also threaten to unleash a dangerous wave of violence."
Quoted in Hunt's piece, white supremacy and terrorism expert Kathleen Belew, a history professor at the University of Chicago, warns that after Trump's courting of violent white supremacist groups—in 2017 when he refused to denounce neo-Nazis at a rally in Virginia where an anti-racist protester was murdered, and weeks ago when he offered tacit approval of the Proud Boys at the first presidential debate—the president's rhetoric and actions in recent days "could also be invitation for drastic action and mass murder like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995."
"If these white power advocates double down on the idea this was a rigged election, history tells us there will be major spikes in violence, deliberate attacks," Belew said.
The willingness of some on the far right to take violent action in order to defeat Trump's political opponents has been made clear in recent weeks. The FBI last month arrested more than a dozen people in connection with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, over her government's coronavirus safety protocols, which have come under fire from Trump. Last weekend, as Americans across the country celebrated Trump's defeat in the election by President-elect Joe Biden, armed supporters of the president attended counterprotests, decrying so-called "illegal votes" and claiming the election had been stolen.
On Tuesday, actor and right-wing activist Jon Voight posted a video on social media which was retweeted more than 43,000 times, accusing "leftists" of corruption and calling on fellow Trump supporters to prepare for "our greatest fight since the Civil War."
"There will be a price to pay," Voight said. "The ones who are jumping for joy now are jumping toward the horror they will be in for... We must fight the corruption that has taken over... Let us fight this fight as if it is our last fight on Earth."
Twitter included a warning on the post saying it contained claims about "election fraud" that are "disputed."
"Everyone knows that when the federal courts repeatedly dismiss your claims of voter fraud as laughable bullshit, you can simply use a video of Jon Voight insisting it's all actually true," tweeted historian Kevin Kruse.
But Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder warned against laughing off what he called a clear attempt at a coup.
"Underestimating Donald Trump is a mistake that people should not go on making," Snyder wrote in the Boston Globe on Wednesday. "Laughing at him will not make him go away. If it did, he would have vanished decades ago."
Snyder outlined the steps, unprecedented in U.S. history but not in countries that have been recognized as authoritarian regimes, that Trump and the Republican Party have taken so far to undermine the will of American voters:
A coup is under way, and the number of participants is not shrinking but growing. Few leading Republicans have acknowledged that the race is over. Important ones, such as (Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo, appear to be on the side of the coup... The transition office refuses to begin its work. The secretary of defense, who did not want the army attacking civilians, was fired. The Department of Justice, exceeding its traditional mandate, has authorized investigations of the vote count. The talk shows on Fox this week contradict the news released by Fox last week. Republican lawmakers find ever new verbal formulations that directly or indirectly support Trump's claims. The longer this goes on, the greater the danger to the republic.
Snyder pointed to the assassination of centrist Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz in 1922—days after he won the presidency and after his victory was not accepted by right-wing nationalists—and claims by Nazis that Germany had lost the World War I due to a "stab in the back" by leftists and Jews, as historical precedents for the violence that could arise from Trump's claims, particularly if Republicans continue to support the president.
In a Twitter thread, Snyder expanded on the danger of assuming Trump's actions won't escalate to such violence in the United States.
"In an authoritarian situation, the election is only round one. You don't win by winning round one," Snyder wrote. "It is up to civil society, organized citizens, to defend the vote and to peacefully defend democracy."


alternet--2020-11-13--Why Trump's downfall is a serious blow for the global right-wing movement

The White House has ordered agencies not to cooperate with Biden 's presidential transition team , and President Donald Trump continues to refuse to accept defeat in the 2020 election , which means Biden can not receive security briefings or access government funds for the transition .
But while the standoff continues in the U.S. , other countries are already preparing for a new administration .
For more on how the historic U.S. election is playing out internationally , we speak with analysts from around the world , including Maria Luísa Mendonça , director of the Network for Social Justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has not acknowledged Biden 's victory .
`` The progressive movements in Brazil can also be inspired by that election here , '' says Mendonça .
`` I think that the U.S. can play a much more positive role in Latin America . ''
This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : As President Donald Trump continues to refuse to accept President-elect Joe Biden 's victory in the 2020 presidential election , the White House has ordered agencies not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team .
Joe Biden is not yet receiving daily intelligence briefings , five days after he was declared the winner .
At this point after Trump 's victory in 2016 , Trump was receiving those daily briefings .
The holdup hinges on the little-known-to-the-public General Services Administration , which officially begins the transition and has refused to sign the paperwork to do so .
Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said Wednesday he will intervene if Biden is not receiving the briefings by Friday .
This comes as the State Department is refusing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world leaders , and Biden 's transition team is coordinating Biden 's calls without State Department support .
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has refused to acknowledge Biden 's win and said there would be a `` smooth transition to a second Trump administration . ''
Today , we 'll get response to the historic U.S. election from around the world , from Brazil to South Africa , from Turkey to United Kingdom .
First , we go to Brazil , where staunch Trump ally President Jair Bolsonaro has not acknowledged Biden 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's COVID death toll passed 162,000 , second only to the United States , Bolsonaro again downplayed the virus and attacked concerned Brazilians , using an offensive term for the LGBTQ community .
AMY GOODMAN : The word Bolsonaro actually used was far more derogatory than the one that we translated here .
Well , for more , we 're joined by Maria Luísa Mendonça .
She is director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil , a visiting scholar at the City University of New York Graduate Center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democracy Now !
If you can talk about the significance of the Biden victory and the close relationship between Jair Bolsonaro and President Trump , what the ending of that alliance can mean , and what Jair Bolsonaro is doing right now in Brazil , especially when it comes to COVID ?
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : Yes , that was a very important victory for Brazilians , because the progressive movements in Brazil can also be inspired by this election here .
It 's important to remember that the result of this election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work of grassroots movements here that elected Biden .
And now Bolsonaro in Brazil is even more isolated .
And I think that he also plays this game of a fake nationalism when he defends that there should be no regulation , no environmental regulation , and the environmental destruction in the Amazon , in the Brazilian savanna , is increasing .
But that is a fake nationalism , because the fires and the destruction of the Amazon really benefits large multinational cooperations , mining , agribusiness , financial corporations .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the social movements in the U.S. to make sure that Biden will have a different foreign policy in relation to Latin America , because we have to remember that Bolsonaro is actually a result of a parliamentary coup against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 that opened the space for this far-right government .
So I think the U.S. can play a much more positive role in Latin America , and we need to hold the administration accountable now .
And I think — but , in general , there is a global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of .
And I think that the election here in the U.S. , the result of the election , will have a positive impact not just in the U.S. , but in other parts of the world .
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : And then , in terms of the — yes .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : No , please , go ahead .
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : Yeah , in terms of the coronavirus response , Trump and Bolsonaro have very similar policies .
They really do n't believe in science .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They put the population at risk .
They do n't express any solidarity for the suffering of the millions of people who have been infected and so many people who have died .
So , also , Bolsonaro even has played down the vaccine .
You knoww , he is doing everything he can to postpone a vaccine in Brazil .
And Brazil actually has a very good infrastructure for mass vaccination .
Historically , the country always had very mass vaccination campaigns .
And Bolsonaro is even trying to avoid that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advance the implementation of the vaccine in Brazil .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Maria Luísa , can you talk a little bit more about that , the fact that Bolsonaro has just rejected a vaccine that Brazilian scientists — it 's a vaccine from China , but Brazilian scientists have also been working on that vaccine .
Why did Bolsonaro do that ?
I mean , it does n't make any sense for Bolsonaro to be opposed to these vaccines , given especially the death toll in Brazil , second only to the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID .
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : Yes , exactly .
Brazil has very good scientists that have a lot of experience with mass vaccination .
But that 's all ideological .
You know , the Bolsonaro position is based on xenophobia , racism and ignoring science .
And that , in a way , is similar to Trump , as well .
They both have promoted drugs that have no evidence of being effective for the treatment of coronavirus .
And , you know , he 's putting the Brazilian society at risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vaccine is something very extreme .
And that 's the result , of course , of the influence of the evangelical movement in his government .
And so , this is not based on science .
It 's just based on far-right ideology .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And , Maria Luísa , could you say a little more about the relationship between Trump and Bolsonaro ?
I mean , not only has Bolsonaro not yet congratulated Biden , but his son , Eduardo Bolsonaro , wore a hat with the logo `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election .
And in the days following the election , as the vote count was happening here in the U.S. , he questioned publicly on social media how Biden 's votes were going up so quickly .
That 's a highly extraordinary move for someone in a foreign — in another government to make about internal elections elsewhere .
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : Yeah , this is also a very big change in terms of the tradition of foreign policy in Brazil .
Brazil has had a tradition of being independent , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you know , the Brazilian diplomacy has had this tradition historically , and now this position of Bolsonaro and his sons of basically allying with Trump and making Brazil be so dependent on whatever Trump talks about .
They have the same discourse .
And they also are part of this global organization that is — one of the leaders is Steve Bannon , for example .
So , the discourse is very similar between Bolsonaro and Trump .
The policies are very similar .
So , of course , there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advance those views .
But that goes against the history of Brazilian foreign policy .
So , I think that now with a change in administration here in the U.S. , that can even influence perhaps the position of mainstream media in Brazil , that plays a key role also in manipulating information .
And so , you know , I think , hopefully , the decision here , whatever happens here , will have — with the Biden administration and if Biden really has a different type of policy for Latin America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will advance progressive forces in Brazil , as well .
AMY GOODMAN : Very quickly , Maria Luísa , I wanted to play one more clip of the Brazilian president indirectly swiping at Joe Biden during an event on Tuesday .
Bolsonaro 's comments come after Biden criticized the far-right leader 's handling of deforestation in the Amazon .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that 's Bolsonaro saying `` there must be gunpowder . ''
You know , as we watched in the western United States as the fires enveloped parts of California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually dwarfed by the fires in the Amazon , the lungs of the world .
If you , in 30 seconds , can talk about what he is getting at , and what you think is most critical for Biden to do ?
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA : Yeah , I think it 's very important for us to boycott four Brazilian commodities that are the main cause of deforestation and destruction — timber , sugar , soy and beef from Brazil — because these policies , the destruction of the Amazon , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. agribusiness corporations .
So , it 's not about protecting the Brazilian society .
It 's protecting large agribusiness corporations , timber companies and mining companies .
So , we need to have solidarity , you know , the environmental movements in Brazil and here .
We need to build an international environmental movement and make sure that the world also can help Brazil by boycotting these four commodities .
AMY GOODMAN : Maria Luísa Mendonça , we want to thank you for being with us , director of the Network for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When we come back , we 're going to Durban , South Africa , to speak with the former head of Greenpeace and Amnesty International , Kumi Naidoo ; we 're going to Turkey ; and we 're going to Cambridge , England .
Stay with us .

The White House has ordered agencies not to cooperate with Biden's presidential transition team, and President Donald Trump continues to refuse to accept defeat in the 2020 election, which means Biden cannot receive security briefings or access government funds for the transition. But while the standoff continues in the U.S., other countries are already preparing for a new administration. For more on how the historic U.S. election is playing out internationally, we speak with analysts from around the world, including Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, where far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has not acknowledged Biden's victory. "The progressive movements in Brazil can also be inspired by that election here," says Mendonça. "I think that the U.S. can play a much more positive role in Latin America."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As President Donald Trump continues to refuse to accept President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election, the White House has ordered agencies not to cooperate with Biden's presidential transition team. Joe Biden is not yet receiving daily intelligence briefings, five days after he was declared the winner. At this point after Trump's victory in 2016, Trump was receiving those daily briefings. The holdup hinges on the little-known-to-the-public General Services Administration, which officially begins the transition and has refused to sign the paperwork to do so. Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said Wednesday he will intervene if Biden is not receiving the briefings by Friday.
This comes as the State Department is refusing to pass on messages to Biden from world leaders, and Biden's transition team is coordinating Biden's calls without State Department support. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has refused to acknowledge Biden's win and said there would be a "smooth transition to a second Trump administration."
Today, we'll get response to the historic U.S. election from around the world, from Brazil to South Africa, from Turkey to United Kingdom. First, we go to Brazil, where staunch Trump ally President Jair Bolsonaro has not acknowledged Biden's victory. On Tuesday, as Brazil's COVID death toll passed 162,000, second only to the United States, Bolsonaro again downplayed the virus and attacked concerned Brazilians, using an offensive term for the LGBTQ community.
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: [translated] Everything now is the pandemic. We have to put a stop to that. I'm sorry for all those who have died. I'm sorry. All of us are going to die one day. Everyone is going to die. You are going to die one day. There is no point in escaping from that, escaping from reality. We have to stop being a country of sissies. I'm giving the press a full plate.
AMY GOODMAN: The word Bolsonaro actually used was far more derogatory than the one that we translated here.
Well, for more, we're joined by Maria Luísa Mendonça. She is director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil, a visiting scholar at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Maria Luísa, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about the significance of the Biden victory and the close relationship between Jair Bolsonaro and President Trump, what the ending of that alliance can mean, and what Jair Bolsonaro is doing right now in Brazil, especially when it comes to COVID?
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: Yes, that was a very important victory for Brazilians, because the progressive movements in Brazil can also be inspired by this election here. It's important to remember that the result of this election in the U.S. is because of the work of grassroots movements here that elected Biden.
And now Bolsonaro in Brazil is even more isolated. And I think that he also plays this game of a fake nationalism when he defends that there should be no regulation, no environmental regulation, and the environmental destruction in the Amazon, in the Brazilian savanna, is increasing. But that is a fake nationalism, because the fires and the destruction of the Amazon really benefits large multinational cooperations, mining, agribusiness, financial corporations.
So, I think that it's important also for the social movements in the U.S. to make sure that Biden will have a different foreign policy in relation to Latin America, because we have to remember that Bolsonaro is actually a result of a parliamentary coup against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 that opened the space for this far-right government. So I think the U.S. can play a much more positive role in Latin America, and we need to hold the administration accountable now.
And I think — but, in general, there is a global far-right movement that Bolsonaro and Trump are part of. And I think that the election here in the U.S., the result of the election, will have a positive impact not just in the U.S., but in other parts of the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Maria —
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: And then, in terms of the — yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: No, please, go ahead.
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: Yeah, in terms of the coronavirus response, Trump and Bolsonaro have very similar policies. They really don't believe in science. They don't promote any type of protection. They put the population at risk. They don't express any solidarity for the suffering of the millions of people who have been infected and so many people who have died.
So, also, Bolsonaro even has played down the vaccine. You knoww, he is doing everything he can to postpone a vaccine in Brazil. And Brazil actually has a very good infrastructure for mass vaccination. Historically, the country always had very mass vaccination campaigns. And Bolsonaro is even trying to avoid that, you know, the Brazilian science advance the implementation of the vaccine in Brazil.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Maria Luísa, can you talk a little bit more about that, the fact that Bolsonaro has just rejected a vaccine that Brazilian scientists — it's a vaccine from China, but Brazilian scientists have also been working on that vaccine. Why did Bolsonaro do that? I mean, it doesn't make any sense for Bolsonaro to be opposed to these vaccines, given especially the death toll in Brazil, second only to the U.S. Over 160,000 people have died now of COVID.
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: Yes, exactly. Brazil has very good scientists that have a lot of experience with mass vaccination. But that's all ideological. You know, the Bolsonaro position is based on xenophobia, racism and ignoring science. And that, in a way, is similar to Trump, as well. They both have promoted drugs that have no evidence of being effective for the treatment of coronavirus. And, you know, he's putting the Brazilian society at risk, because even ignoring the effects of a vaccine is something very extreme. And that's the result, of course, of the influence of the evangelical movement in his government. And so, this is not based on science. It's just based on far-right ideology.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Maria Luísa, could you say a little more about the relationship between Trump and Bolsonaro? I mean, not only has Bolsonaro not yet congratulated Biden, but his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, wore a hat with the logo "Trump 2020" leading up to the election. And in the days following the election, as the vote count was happening here in the U.S., he questioned publicly on social media how Biden's votes were going up so quickly. That's a highly extraordinary move for someone in a foreign — in another government to make about internal elections elsewhere.
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: Yeah, this is also a very big change in terms of the tradition of foreign policy in Brazil. Brazil has had a tradition of being independent, of not interfering in foreign affairs. So, you know, the Brazilian diplomacy has had this tradition historically, and now this position of Bolsonaro and his sons of basically allying with Trump and making Brazil be so dependent on whatever Trump talks about. They have the same discourse. And they also are part of this global organization that is — one of the leaders is Steve Bannon, for example. So, the discourse is very similar between Bolsonaro and Trump. The policies are very similar. So, of course, there is a coordinating effort that is global to advance those views. But that goes against the history of Brazilian foreign policy.
So, I think that now with a change in administration here in the U.S., that can even influence perhaps the position of mainstream media in Brazil, that plays a key role also in manipulating information. And so, you know, I think, hopefully, the decision here, whatever happens here, will have — with the Biden administration and if Biden really has a different type of policy for Latin America, that will have an impact and will advance progressive forces in Brazil, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Maria Luísa, I wanted to play one more clip of the Brazilian president indirectly swiping at Joe Biden during an event on Tuesday. Bolsonaro's comments come after Biden criticized the far-right leader's handling of deforestation in the Amazon.
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: [translated] I recently heard a presidential candidate from a country say that if I don't put out the fire in the Amazon, he is going to raise trade barriers against Brazil. How do we deal with all of that? Diplomacy is not enough. When there is no more saliva, then there must be gunpowder. But they have to know that we own the Amazon. That's what the world is like. Nobody has what we have.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's Bolsonaro saying "there must be gunpowder." You know, as we watched in the western United States as the fires enveloped parts of California, Oregon and Washington, they're actually dwarfed by the fires in the Amazon, the lungs of the world. If you, in 30 seconds, can talk about what he is getting at, and what you think is most critical for Biden to do?
MARIA LUÍSA MENDONÇA: Yeah, I think it's very important for us to boycott four Brazilian commodities that are the main cause of deforestation and destruction — timber, sugar, soy and beef from Brazil — because these policies, the destruction of the Amazon, is really benefiting large agribusiness corporations, including U.S. agribusiness corporations. So, it's not about protecting the Brazilian society. It's protecting large agribusiness corporations, timber companies and mining companies. So, we need to have solidarity, you know, the environmental movements in Brazil and here. We need to build an international environmental movement and make sure that the world also can help Brazil by boycotting these four commodities.
AMY GOODMAN: Maria Luísa Mendonça, we want to thank you for being with us, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil.
When we come back, we're going to Durban, South Africa, to speak with the former head of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, Kumi Naidoo; we're going to Turkey; and we're going to Cambridge, England. Stay with us.


alternet--2020-11-13--Biden is set to erase 4 years of Trump's abysmal record at the Justice Department

To say the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is about pivot under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden is an understatement .
The beleaguered division is about to go through a dramatic overhaul after suffering through four years of Donald Trump 's white supremacy agenda .
Enforcing anti-discrimination laws in housing , education , and the workplace will once again be at the forefront of the division 's priorities .
According to Bloomberg News , the agenda will also include a push toward better local policing after a succession of instances over the past several years in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hands of police , sparking protests and unrest .
Specifically , the division will likely return to reviewing local police departments for discriminatory practices that perpetuate systemic racism , an initiative that was entirely abandoned under Trump .
`` This will be an even bigger pivot because of what the Trump administration represents , '' said Vanita Gupta , who led the division under Obama and now heads up the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights .
`` It 's been a kind of systematic erosion of civil rights enforcement that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent times or recent administrations . ''
The Trump-era Justice Department marked an outright betrayal of the original mission of the division , which originated in 1957 as part of the Civil Rights Act with the specific intention of enforcing laws that newly prohibited bias on the basis of race , color , sex , disability , religion , and national origin .
But under the disgraceful leadership of Trump 's attorneys general , the division has been wielded as a weapon targeting disadvantaged minorities .
The Justice Department sued to protect white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it all but abandoned protecting the voting rights of minorities ; it took aim at sanctuary cities that bar local law enforcement officials from coordinating with federal immigration agents .
And it ultimately found itself on the wrong side of a historic Supreme Court ruling that found the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination .
In other words , the Trump-era Civil Rights Division systematically worked to further the oppression of already marginalized groups .
Those injustices and more are about to come to a screeching halt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ `` undo the Trump years , '' according to Linda Chavez , who served as the White House director of public liaison for former President Ronald Reagan .
Good riddance .
Do n't let the door hit you on the way out , Bill Barr and Donald Trump .

To say the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is about pivot under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden is an understatement. The beleaguered division is about to go through a dramatic overhaul after suffering through four years of Donald Trump's white supremacy agenda.
Enforcing anti-discrimination laws in housing, education, and the workplace will once again be at the forefront of the division's priorities. According to Bloomberg News, the agenda will also include a push toward better local policing after a succession of instances over the past several years in which people of color have died at the hands of police, sparking protests and unrest. Specifically, the division will likely return to reviewing local police departments for discriminatory practices that perpetuate systemic racism, an initiative that was entirely abandoned under Trump.
"This will be an even bigger pivot because of what the Trump administration represents," said Vanita Gupta, who led the division under Obama and now heads up the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "It's been a kind of systematic erosion of civil rights enforcement that is unlike anything we've seen in recent times or recent administrations."
The Trump-era Justice Department marked an outright betrayal of the original mission of the division, which originated in 1957 as part of the Civil Rights Act with the specific intention of enforcing laws that newly prohibited bias on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. But under the disgraceful leadership of Trump's attorneys general, the division has been wielded as a weapon targeting disadvantaged minorities. The Justice Department sued to protect white students from alleged discrimination in admissions; it all but abandoned protecting the voting rights of minorities; it took aim at sanctuary cities that bar local law enforcement officials from coordinating with federal immigration agents. And it ultimately found itself on the wrong side of a historic Supreme Court ruling that found the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination.
In other words, the Trump-era Civil Rights Division systematically worked to further the oppression of already marginalized groups.
Those injustices and more are about to come to a screeching halt as the Biden administration works to swiftly "undo the Trump years," according to Linda Chavez, who served as the White House director of public liaison for former President Ronald Reagan.
Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Bill Barr and Donald Trump.


alternet--2020-11-12--Trump's own administration just brutally debunked his claim about deleted votes

President Donald Trump has a problem .
His disinformation campaign intended to cast doubt on the 2020 election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden is being debunked , in part , by the very government he runs .
On Thursday evening , a statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency , a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security , along other officials explained that there is no reason to believe the election 's vote count has been altered or tampered with .
`` When states have close elections , many will recount ballots .
All of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential race have paper records of each vote , allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary , '' it said .
`` This is an added benefit for security and resilience .
This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors .
There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes , changed votes , or was in any way compromised . ''
[ emphasis original ] This stood in contrast to Trump 's own efforts to insist the election was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been furthered by his allies , including Rudy Giuliani and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany .
Other Republicans have continued to express doubt about the results of the presidential election , despite no serious evidence of malfeasance or error in the conclusion that Biden has won .
Earlier in the day , Trump shared a bogus claim alleging that millions of votes in the election were deleted , which was promptly flagged by Twitter : It 's not clear if the statement from CISA was a direct response to Trump 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply meant to address the claims that had been floating around before they were elevated by the president .
But either way , it stood as a clear refutation of the president 's lies .
`` While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections , we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections , and you should too , '' the statement said .
`` When you have questions , turn to elections officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . ''
It also noted : `` The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history . ''
PolitiFact , too , rated the president 's claim as a `` Pants on Fire . ''
`` The president 's tweet traces back to an unsubstantiated claim on a pro-Trump website that cited Edison Research , '' the site explained .
`` But Edison Research told us they have found no evidence of voter fraud .
Dominion , state election officials and federal officials say there 's no evidence that millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is inaccurate and ridiculous . ''

President Donald Trump has a problem. His disinformation campaign intended to cast doubt on the 2020 election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden is being debunked, in part, by the very government he runs.
On Thursday evening, a statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along other officials explained that there is no reason to believe the election's vote count has been altered or tampered with.
"When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary," it said. "This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." [emphasis original]
This stood in contrast to Trump's own efforts to insist the election was rigged against him, a claim that has been furthered by his allies, including Rudy Giuliani and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Other Republicans have continued to express doubt about the results of the presidential election, despite no serious evidence of malfeasance or error in the conclusion that Biden has won.
Earlier in the day, Trump shared a bogus claim alleging that millions of votes in the election were deleted, which was promptly flagged by Twitter:
It's not clear if the statement from CISA was a direct response to Trump's sharing of the conspiracy itself or was simply meant to address the claims that had been floating around before they were elevated by the president. But either way, it stood as a clear refutation of the president's lies.
"While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too," the statement said. "When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections."
It also noted: "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."
PolitiFact, too, rated the president's claim as a "Pants on Fire."
"The president's tweet traces back to an unsubstantiated claim on a pro-Trump website that cited Edison Research," the site explained. "But Edison Research told us they have found no evidence of voter fraud. Dominion, state election officials and federal officials say there's no evidence that millions of votes were miscounted. Trump's claim is inaccurate and ridiculous."