truthout--2020-05-12--COVID-19 Took Chicago Black Lives First and Exposed Structural Racism

We look at the coronavirus pandemic ’ s disproportionate toll on African Americans through the story of Chicago ’ s first 100 recorded deaths .
A report by ProPublica found that 70 of the first 100 people to die were African American .
Black people account for 30 % of Chicago ’ s population and 72 % of COVID-19 deaths .
We speak with ProPublica reporter Adriana Gallardo , who contributed to the report “ COVID-19 Took Black Lives First .
It Didn ’ t Have To.
” She says the story paints a picture of “ sophisticated structural racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
As top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares to remotely testify today before a Senate panel opening up the country prematurely will lead to , quote , “ needless suffering and death , ” we look at how the pandemic has already taken a disproportionate toll on African Americans in cities like Chicago , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city ’ s population , 72 % of COVID-19 deaths .
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke to CBS News ’ Face the Nation about the disparity .
AMY GOODMAN : That ’ s the Chicago mayor .
A new report by investigative news outlet ProPublica examined the first 100 recorded deaths in Chicago and found 70 of them were African American .
Reporters obtained a Cook County Medical Examiner ’ s database that listed the names , health and location information of COVID-19-related deaths , and reached out to the families and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ultimately focusing on 22 of the victims .
For more , we ’ re joined by the newly Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica engagement reporter Adriana Gallardo , part of a ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News team that just won the 2020 Pulitzer for the investigative report “ Lawless , ” about sexual violence in Alaska .
We hope to talk to her about that , as well as her piece on “ Los New Yorkers : Essential and Underprotected in the Pandemic ’ s Epicenter.
” But first , the story that you did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on your Pulitzer .
Talk about the significance of what you found in your hometown , in Chicago .
ADRIANA GALLARDO : Sure .
Thank you for having me .
Good morning .
And like anything at ProPublica , it was a team effort , both the story and all of the other accolades .
The story in Chicago , that happens when you peel back all of the jargon and the numbers and the overrepresentation , is one of losing the fabric of the city .
In the 22 families that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really learn how much , A , they loved Chicago , how much they did for the city .
We ’ re talking about veterans , teachers , nurses , everyday folks that are really the workers at the heart of what makes the city so great .
And so , in examining these first 70 deaths , we were able to understand how sophisticated structural racism exists in a place like Chicago and how it ’ s quick to sort of throw off the arrows in trying to understand how entrenched things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just say , “ Well , these folks just were sicker and worse off than other folks , and that ’ s an inevitable consequence.
” And what we learned is that it looks very different when this is your lived experience .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Adriana , specifically , what did you learn in terms of why there was such a disproportionate impact in the African American community compared to the general White community ?
ADRIANA GALLARDO : Sure .
There were three things that we learned from speaking to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Chicago .
One was that the one-size-fits-all approach to COVID care doesn ’ t necessarily work for everyone , especially those that are already facing other complications .
And so many folks waited until their symptoms were very severe to seek care .
That was one thing that really gleamed .
The second thing was , you know , the thing that most Chicagoans know , which is the uneven distribution of hospitals throughout the city .
Many of the folks who were among the first to die lived in neighborhoods that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — they ’ re called safety net hospitals .
And particularly the South and West Side , they serve low-income populations with fewer resources .
And many of the folks that became ill would either travel 30 minutes , 40 minutes to the nearest hospital that they trusted , or they got so sick that by the time that the paramedics arrived , they had to go to the nearest location , which is often a hospital that they didn ’ t trust or that wasn ’ t equipped to serve them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ heartbreaking thing is that the social connections that made their lives so strong , that make them integral to the beat of the city , really were then weaponized and were often a trace of how they became sick .
So , those three things were really — stand out for us in this story .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And were there any particular impacts , for instance , of the kind of work that people did before the pandemic struck or during the pandemic ?
Because , obviously , in terms of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as I understand it , now already makes up the largest portion of any demographic in Illinois that has been struck by COVID-19 , but many of them work in frontline situations .
They ’ re janitors .
They work in restaurants or in hospitals as maintenance people .
Were there any particular , among the African American community , employment situations that may have contributed to their contracting the virus and dying ?
ADRIANA GALLARDO : Yeah , of course .
These are the city ’ s frontline workers , right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ industry workers .
Many of those connections , of course , had lots to do with who died first in the pandemic .
AMY GOODMAN : Your specialty , Adriana , your love , your passion for journalism , is around engagement and bringing out the voices of the people that you ’ re covering .
Can you tell us some of the stories , like Philman Williams , who was 70 years old and loved to travel and was in Mardi Gras in New Orleans ?
ADRIANA GALLARDO : Yes , yeah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think — I ’ m very interested in understanding the — in between the disparity that they long lived with and their sudden deaths .
There ’ s so much that happens in between and so many people that were a part of their lives .
And that ’ s something that doesn ’ t always happen in obits and doesn ’ t always happen in how we talk about these — AMY GOODMAN : Adriana , you just froze for a second .
AMY GOODMAN : Oh , there , go ahead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oh , sorry .
Yeah , no , I mean , like any story that I think , especially in the ones that our newsroom covers , it ’ s important to really understand what ’ s at stake for those that are most affected by whatever issue we ’ re talking about .
And then , in learning from them as the experts of their own experience , we ’ re able to really tell fuller stories that are actually representative of what ’ s at stake and who ’ s let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this case , it was a very fast-moving target .
You know , the pandemic was probably the only new factor in things that people already knew were happening in their lives and weren ’ t necessarily had any control over , until — ADRIANA GALLARDO : Yes .
John Hill was a man that grew up in Cabrini-Green , met his wife down the street at the Rock ‘ n ’ Roll McDonald ’ s — and Chicagoans will know exactly where we ’ re talking about — met his wife @ @ @ @ @ @ @ small catering business , catered to many of the local politicians .
And among his proudest accomplishments was cooking for the Obamas in 2008 .
You know , folks that can ’ t get more Chicago than that .
And , you know , Philman ’ s family , Philman Williams ’ family , was proud of him .
He was a doorman at Michigan Avenue and was very well loved by his colleagues , by the people in his building , had a long career in the service industry and in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so , for many of these families , this was a complete betrayal from the universe they weren ’ t expecting .
John Hill who was 53 years old and was out campaigning for a friend on Election Day last March in Chicago .
And so , for a lot of these families , when you call them and talk to them about COVID , you know , they don ’ t speak of it in the terms that we might write about it .
They speak of it as a sudden and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who they were .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re going to break , Adriana , and when we come back , we want to talk about “ Los New Yorkers , ” talk about people in the epicenter of the epicenter of the pandemic , who gets counted in their deaths , who doesn ’ t , what kind of support does the state give , especially for the undocumented .
Adriana Gallardo , Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with ProPublica .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Quarantine Trio Improvisation ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rohin Khemani , friends playing together alone in their homes , from Los Angeles to New York City .

We look at the coronavirus pandemic’s disproportionate toll on African Americans through the story of Chicago’s first 100 recorded deaths. A report by ProPublica found that 70 of the first 100 people to die were African American. Black people account for 30% of Chicago’s population and 72% of COVID-19 deaths. We speak with ProPublica reporter Adriana Gallardo, who contributed to the report “COVID-19 Took Black Lives First. It Didn’t Have To.” She says the story paints a picture of “sophisticated structural racism” in Chicago.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. As top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares to remotely testify today before a Senate panel opening up the country prematurely will lead to, quote, “needless suffering and death,” we look at how the pandemic has already taken a disproportionate toll on African Americans in cities like Chicago, where Black people account for 30% of the city’s population, 72% of COVID-19 deaths. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke to CBS News’ Face the Nation about the disparity.
MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT: This is an issue that’s not unique to Chicago, unfortunately. We’re seeing similar kinds of numbers reported across the country in large urban centers. And the answer that we believe is right is because of the underlying conditions that people of color, and particularly Black folk, suffer from, whether it’s diabetes, heart disease, upper respiratory illnesses. The kind of things that we’ve been talking about for a long time that plague Black Chicago, that lead to life expectancy gaps, this virus attacks those underlying conditions with a vengeance.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Chicago mayor. A new report by investigative news outlet ProPublica examined the first 100 recorded deaths in Chicago and found 70 of them were African American. Reporters obtained a Cook County Medical Examiner’s database that listed the names, health and location information of COVID-19-related deaths, and reached out to the families and friends of each person who died, ultimately focusing on 22 of the victims.
For more, we’re joined by the newly Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica engagement reporter Adriana Gallardo, part of a ProPublica and Anchorage Daily News team that just won the 2020 Pulitzer for the investigative report “Lawless,” about sexual violence in Alaska. We hope to talk to her about that, as well as her piece on “Los New Yorkers: Essential and Underprotected in the Pandemic’s Epicenter.”
But first, the story that you did, Adriana, on Chicago. Congratulations on your Pulitzer. Talk about the significance of what you found in your hometown, in Chicago.
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Sure. Thank you for having me. Good morning. And like anything at ProPublica, it was a team effort, both the story and all of the other accolades.
The story in Chicago, that happens when you peel back all of the jargon and the numbers and the overrepresentation, is one of losing the fabric of the city. In the 22 families that we were able to speak with, you really learn how much, A, they loved Chicago, how much they did for the city. We’re talking about veterans, teachers, nurses, everyday folks that are really the workers at the heart of what makes the city so great. And so, in examining these first 70 deaths, we were able to understand how sophisticated structural racism exists in a place like Chicago and how it’s quick to sort of throw off the arrows in trying to understand how entrenched things are. And it is easy to just say, “Well, these folks just were sicker and worse off than other folks, and that’s an inevitable consequence.” And what we learned is that it looks very different when this is your lived experience.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Adriana, specifically, what did you learn in terms of why there was such a disproportionate impact in the African American community compared to the general White community?
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Sure. There were three things that we learned from speaking to these families and looking at the data in Chicago. One was that the one-size-fits-all approach to COVID care doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, especially those that are already facing other complications. And so many folks waited until their symptoms were very severe to seek care. That was one thing that really gleamed.
The second thing was, you know, the thing that most Chicagoans know, which is the uneven distribution of hospitals throughout the city. Many of the folks who were among the first to die lived in neighborhoods that are served by less-equipped hospitals, what — they’re called safety net hospitals. And particularly the South and West Side, they serve low-income populations with fewer resources. And many of the folks that became ill would either travel 30 minutes, 40 minutes to the nearest hospital that they trusted, or they got so sick that by the time that the paramedics arrived, they had to go to the nearest location, which is often a hospital that they didn’t trust or that wasn’t equipped to serve them.
And then, thirdly, the other heartbreaking thing is that the social connections that made their lives so strong, that make them integral to the beat of the city, really were then weaponized and were often a trace of how they became sick. So, those three things were really — stand out for us in this story.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And were there any particular impacts, for instance, of the kind of work that people did before the pandemic struck or during the pandemic? Because, obviously, in terms of some of the Latino community, which, as I understand it, now already makes up the largest portion of any demographic in Illinois that has been struck by COVID-19, but many of them work in frontline situations. They’re janitors. They work in restaurants or in hospitals as maintenance people. Were there any particular, among the African American community, employment situations that may have contributed to their contracting the virus and dying?
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Yeah, of course. These are the city’s frontline workers, right? The transit workers, the service industry workers. Many of those connections, of course, had lots to do with who died first in the pandemic.
AMY GOODMAN: Your specialty, Adriana, your love, your passion for journalism, is around engagement and bringing out the voices of the people that you’re covering. Can you tell us some of the stories, like Philman Williams, who was 70 years old and loved to travel and was in Mardi Gras in New Orleans?
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Yes, yeah. No, I mean, I think — I’m very interested in understanding the — in between the disparity that they long lived with and their sudden deaths. There’s so much that happens in between and so many people that were a part of their lives. And that’s something that doesn’t always happen in obits and doesn’t always happen in how we talk about these —
AMY GOODMAN: Adriana, you just froze for a second.
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Like —
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, there, go ahead. Go ahead.
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, like any story that I think, especially in the ones that our newsroom covers, it’s important to really understand what’s at stake for those that are most affected by whatever issue we’re talking about. And then, in learning from them as the experts of their own experience, we’re able to really tell fuller stories that are actually representative of what’s at stake and who’s let who down in the equation. And in this case, it was a very fast-moving target. You know, the pandemic was probably the only new factor in things that people already knew were happening in their lives and weren’t necessarily had any control over, until —
AMY GOODMAN: So, John Hill and Philman Williams?
ADRIANA GALLARDO: Yes. John Hill was a man that grew up in Cabrini-Green, met his wife down the street at the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s — and Chicagoans will know exactly where we’re talking about — met his wife and built a family, started a small catering business, catered to many of the local politicians. And among his proudest accomplishments was cooking for the Obamas in 2008. You know, folks that can’t get more Chicago than that.
And, you know, Philman’s family, Philman Williams’ family, was proud of him. He was a doorman at Michigan Avenue and was very well loved by his colleagues, by the people in his building, had a long career in the service industry and in his neighborhood, in his community.
And so, for many of these families, this was a complete betrayal from the universe they weren’t expecting. John Hill who was 53 years old and was out campaigning for a friend on Election Day last March in Chicago. And so, for a lot of these families, when you call them and talk to them about COVID, you know, they don’t speak of it in the terms that we might write about it. They speak of it as a sudden and incredible loss to their families and to who they were.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, Adriana, and when we come back, we want to talk about “Los New Yorkers,” talk about people in the epicenter of the epicenter of the pandemic, who gets counted in their deaths, who doesn’t, what kind of support does the state give, especially for the undocumented. Adriana Gallardo, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with ProPublica. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Quarantine Trio Improvisation” by Sonny Singh, Jonathan Goldberger and Rohin Khemani, friends playing together alone in their homes, from Los Angeles to New York City.


truthout--2020-05-12--Cheyenne River Sioux Refuse Governor’s Demand to Remove COVID Checkpoints

There ’ s a standoff brewing in South Dakota , where two Native American Indian tribes are upholding their sovereignty by defying orders by Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories .
The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities , which are not equipped to handle an outbreak .
The governor says the checkpoints — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal .
We speak with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe ’ s Chairman Harold Frazier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people ’ s “ right to live.
” This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : We begin today ’ s show with the standoff in South Dakota , where two Native American Indian tribes are defying orders by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories .
The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities , which are not equipped to handle an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal .
On Friday , she gave the tribes 48 hours to remove them and threatened legal action .
Both the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux have refused , and the checkpoints are still running .
In a Facebook Live video Saturday , Oglala Sioux Tribe President Julian Bear Runner said that Governor Noem was threatening the sovereignty of the Oglala people .
AMY GOODMAN : Seventeen South Dakota lawmakers signed a letter over the weekend urging the South Dakota @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tribes .
As of Monday , the state had not yet filed any lawsuit .
South Dakota has a COVID-19 death toll of at least 34 and has had more than 3,600 confirmed cases .
For more , we go to Eagle Butte , South Dakota , to the reservation , where we ’ re joined by Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier .
Chairman , welcome to Democracy Now !
Thank you so much for joining us .
Can you explain what ’ s happening now ?
How many checkpoints , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
And what are they for ?
What are you doing when the cars are stopped ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Yeah , good morning .
Right now we have nine checkpoints on our reservation .
And , you know , one of the biggest concerns we have is safety .
And we are looking , and as soon as we get more equipment , we intend to put up another checkpoint .
You know , the main purpose of these checkpoints is to try to , number one , keep the virus out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it comes in , because we ’ ve always been saying that the virus does not travel , it ’ s the people with virus that travel .
So , we know that that ’ s the only way that that virus will get into our homes , is if it ’ s brought in from the outside .
And that ’ s the main purpose of these checkpoints , is to keep our people safe and also to ensure that [ inaudible ] have the right to live .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the governor ’ s perspective or viewpoint that these checkpoints are illegal ?
What ’ s your response to that ?
Could you talk about your treaties , the existing treaties between your nation and the federal government , that might have some bearing on this or do have bearing on this ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Well , you know , we kind of look , you know , and , number one , my — the people who elected me to this position , they ’ re the ones that are , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The governor is not my boss , or the federal government .
It ’ s the people that live here .
That ’ s who I work for , and that ’ s who I take directives from and such .
But they haven ’ t — you know , we stepped up to do this .
We feel that we have every right to do this .
We have a treaty , the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty , Article 16 .
In that article , it says that , you know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reside on our lands , they must get consent from the Indians first .
In addition to our treaties , there ’ s case law .
There ’ s even our Constitution , that we swore to uphold against all enemies foreign and domestic , that they give us all the legal right to do what we ’ re doing .
You know , a lot of times — and we ’ ve been studying the laws of this country for quite a while .
How can somebody own something without paying for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way we look at it , that these lands , these roads , they are ours , because we were never paid for it .
So we have every legal right to do that .
And it doesn ’ t matter , you know , what comes today , tomorrow .
We ’ re still going to be here .
We ’ re still going to have and maintain our checkpoints .
AMY GOODMAN : Chairman Frazier , can you describe what happens at a checkpoint ?
And have you been at one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopping the cars and what they ’ re doing when they stop them .
HAROLD FRAZIER : Well , yeah , I ’ ve been there to all of our checkpoints numerous times .
You know , if a driver rolls up — and it all depends .
You know , if a driver rolls up , they ’ re asked some health questions .
There ’ s a questionnaire that they have to be filled out , and they ’ re filled out by our deputies .
So , there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve seen some motorists where they just roll down their window partway and answer the questions .
If they ’ re coming in for essential travel , if they ’ re a resident of the reservation or a member of the tribe or family to a resident or a member , they ’ re asked the questions , and they come in .
If you ’ re a motorist coming from a hot spot , your license plates show that , every day we monitor that , where are people — where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve got to be concerned with .
And if their vehicle is coming from that , then they will be asked to reroute their travel and not come through our lands .
But we allow any commercial vehicles coming , because we need to have supplies just like everyone else .
Medical people , they definitely are rolled in .
But also , too , essential , and that ’ s the Postal Service , the agriculture .
That ’ s a big thing on our reservation .
So , things like that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and go , but they ’ re all stopped and asked to fill out these questionnaires .
And to expedite a lot of locals , particularly the agriculture , numerous times they come and go to — sometimes they have land in other areas .
So , they — what we put together was a process to obtain a permit , an agriculture permit or essential travel permit .
And them motorists usually just roll up , just show their permit number , and they ’ re allowed just to keep going .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ minute to a minute and a half .
And if you ’ re not coming from a hot spot , you ’ re generally just allowed to just roll on .
So , it ’ s not really any , in my opinion , hindrance of any motorist .
And again , the main purpose is to try to save lives .
And I know there was [ inaudible ] that we should work together .
And that ’ s something that I agree with .
But with our population , with our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , we know , and we just look to our relatives to the south , the Navajo Nation , and see what ’ s going on there .
And that could easily be us .
And we ’ ve been watching that , so that ’ s why we stepped up to do these type of actions , to try to keep our people safe and definitely save their lives .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Chairman Frazier , you mentioned the lack of medical facilities .
Could you talk about that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strict stay-at-home measures , while the governor of the state did not , of South Dakota did not .
What is the situation ?
You only have eight hospital beds and one ICU , as I understand it , on your lands ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Well , we have eight hospital beds .
We don ’ t have no ICU .
There are six ventilators .
We have one respiratory therapist .
And I ’ m being told by our medical people that generally they monitor two to three ventilators , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s pushing it .
The nearest facility for critical care is in Rapid City , and it ’ s about a three-hour drive just to get to Rapid .
And that has always been the practice of the Indian Health Service , is to get the care that some of our people need , they generally get referred out .
But when we started this , we started looking at numbers and the number of residents .
And when we broke it down , that maybe 50 % would possibly get the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were saying that 80 % can be handled at home , and that left 20 % .
And we looked at the numbers , and we realized that there is a potential that we may need 1,200 beds .
And when we only have eight , I mean , that really woke up a lot of people here at home .
AMY GOODMAN : Chairman Frazier , can you talk about the one confirmed COVID case you have had on the reservation and how the checkpoint led you to be able to identify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That patient come in , I believe , like on a Thursday .
And they knew where they come from .
Our command center , which works directly with the checkpoints , they knew the patient come from an area that what we called a hot spot .
Our medical people immediately started monitoring every day , you know , being in contact and so forth .
And then , that following Tuesday is when the patient wasn ’ t feeling well .
They took her into the hospital .
They ran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a matter of less than probably eight hours , I would say , because the very next morning they already knew the contact , of who they were , and then people were put into quarantine .
And right now the patient is doing well , and we ’ re pretty happy about that .
But that ’ s the whole purpose of that , because if we didn ’ t know any of that , and the individual come and they didn ’ t realize that they were infected by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and , you know , immediately that could have went into a community spread , which is something that we know we ’ re definitely not capable of handling .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Chairman , the governor has threatened to take your tribe to court over the checkpoints , while other lawmakers have urged her to try to negotiate and reach a common agreement .
Could you talk about the state ’ s relationship to your tribe over the years ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Well , you know , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fact , I was just reading something last night .
Rapid City , a lot of our members live out there , from us , Oglala , Rosebud .
A lot of our Sioux relatives live out there .
And there ’ s a IHS service unit out there .
And they ran some tests , and there were 16 positive cases .
And I was just reading that , and I was going to get some verification later today .
But it sounded like one of the individuals that tested positive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t even contact that individual ’ til three days later .
So , you know , we ’ ve been — we know the treatment we get from the state and the federal government .
And that ’ s why we ’ re really doing these things , because we know when times get tough , all we have is each other .
AMY GOODMAN : I mean , this is a very significant situation .
HAROLD FRAZIER : And it ’ s important that we step up and — yes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the South Dakota governor .
I mean , when you look at the meatpackers in Sioux Falls , for example , the mayor was begging the governor to shut down the plant .
This is before Trump ’ s executive order that said the state couldn ’ t .
You had hundreds and hundreds of workers , mainly immigrant , overwhelmingly immigrants , who were testing positive .
And yet the governor refused to do this .
This is the same governor now that is saying she will challenge you , demanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what are you willing to take this to , Chairman ?
Could this lead to a showdown , a standoff , not just legally , but between the state and your tribe ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Well , you know , we have no other alternative .
We won ’ t back down , no matter what they do .
Whether it ’ s through the court or they come by force , we will be still there , because we live here .
And , you know , we looked at everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ready back in early March , that ’ s some of the scenarios we threw out at our plans , was for legal , as well as medical .
So , I ’ m confident that , you know , if you want to — if she wants to take us to court , go ahead and do it .
And I believe in my heart that we ’ re going to be successful .
And the main reason why is we ’ re doing these things for the right reasons .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or we ’ re not doing this to destroy somebody ’ s business , their lives .
I mean , we ’ re doing it for the good , you know , the good of God .
And what we ’ ve been saying is , you know , the number one right is the right to live .
I know that I ’ ve seen words being thrown out there about liberties and civil rights and First Amendment rights , Second Amendment rights and so forth .
But the right to live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of them .
And that ’ s what we want to do : ensure that our residents here have that right to live .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Chairman Frazier , you mentioned courts .
Could you talk about the recent victory of the Cheyenne River Sioux over the Trump administration , where the Trump administration attempted to use some federal COVID-19 moneys that were intended for the tribes to go instead to the Alaska Native corporations ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Yeah .
You know , it was nothing against the Native @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporations , that ’ s chartered under the state , that is not federally recognized — we felt that they shouldn ’ t get that , because we believe that that money was set aside for Native Americans .
And , you know , the interesting thing , as of today , we still have not been notified how much we ’ re going to receive here on Cheyenne River .
I know a lot of our relatives in North Dakota and the other South Dakota tribes have received or been at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to receive .
But as of this morning , we have not been notified what we ’ re going to receive .
So , we ’ ve been kind of thinking , well , I guess they ’ re pretty upset for us taking them to court ; maybe they ain ’ t gon na give it to us .
But , I guess , hopefully by today , we would know if we ’ re going to receive any of that funding .
AMY GOODMAN : That ’ s from the CARES @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like $ 20 billion , ultimately was settled on $ 8 billion , but that ’ s been very slow to make its way out to the various nations .
Finally , Harold Frazier , very quickly , if you can talk quickly about the significance of a legal battle here and what it could mean , for example , for the future of ongoing struggles , like your fight against the Keystone XL pipeline ?
HAROLD FRAZIER : Oh , yeah , I mean , most definitely .
And , you know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law .
The recent one in reference to roads and highways was in 1990 .
And I just can ’ t think where they ’ re coming from , you know , reading what the lawmakers at the state Legislature put out there .
I mean , and then , even that , the governor has been on briefings saying that they have no jurisdiction .
So , I mean , I ’ m just kind of totally shocked , and almost unbelievable what ’ s going on , because there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s just no way .
And , yeah , and then , too , we ’ re trying to focus and stay prepared for this pandemic , and just to have another issue is kind of unbelievable .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , I want to thank you so much , Harold Frazier , for joining us , Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe chairman , speaking to us from Eagle Butte in South Dakota from the reservation .
When we come back , we go to Chicago , where COVID-19 took Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to .
And then we talk about Los New Yorkers , those New Yorkers who are undocumented at the center of the pandemic , who are essential yet underprotected .
We ’ ll speak with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with ProPublica .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : Valerie Adrian , an Oglala Lakota in Sweetwater , Idaho , participating in the Quarantine Dance Specials .

Image Credit: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Law Enforcement
There’s a standoff brewing in South Dakota, where two Native American Indian tribes are upholding their sovereignty by defying orders by Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities, which are not equipped to handle an outbreak. The governor says the checkpoints — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal. We speak with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s Chairman Harold Frazier, who says he is defending his people’s “right to live.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with the standoff in South Dakota, where two Native American Indian tribes are defying orders by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to remove COVID-19 checkpoints from their territories. The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes say the checkpoints are the best way to protect against the coronavirus entering their communities, which are not equipped to handle an outbreak. The governor says the checkpoints — which are set up on highways on tribal land — are illegal. On Friday, she gave the tribes 48 hours to remove them and threatened legal action. Both the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux have refused, and the checkpoints are still running. In a Facebook Live video Saturday, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Julian Bear Runner said that Governor Noem was threatening the sovereignty of the Oglala people.
PRESIDENT JULIAN BEAR RUNNER: South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, threatened the sovereign interests of the Oglala people when she issued an ultimatum to us on May 8, 2020. … Governor Noem miscalculates our level of dedication to protect our most vulnerable people from crony capitalism, threats to force us to open our economy as they chose to do so. There is no way to place a value on what we have to lose if we let them insult us this way. My relatives, we have been here for millions of years. Whatever they brought to our lands has proven to be poison. Related Story News | Environment & Health South Dakota Governor Aims to Force Tribal Leaders to Ease Stay-at-Home Orders Noem has refused to issue a statewide stay-at-home order. Truthout
AMY GOODMAN: Seventeen South Dakota lawmakers signed a letter over the weekend urging the South Dakota governor to seek a resolution with the tribes. As of Monday, the state had not yet filed any lawsuit. South Dakota has a COVID-19 death toll of at least 34 and has had more than 3,600 confirmed cases.
For more, we go to Eagle Butte, South Dakota, to the reservation, where we’re joined by Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier.
Chairman, welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. Can you explain what’s happening now? How many checkpoints, COVID checkpoints, have you set up? And what are they for? What are you doing when the cars are stopped?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah, good morning. Right now we have nine checkpoints on our reservation. And, you know, one of the biggest concerns we have is safety. And we are looking, and as soon as we get more equipment, we intend to put up another checkpoint.
You know, the main purpose of these checkpoints is to try to, number one, keep the virus out. And number two is track if it comes in, because we’ve always been saying that the virus does not travel, it’s the people with virus that travel. So, we know that that’s the only way that that virus will get into our homes, is if it’s brought in from the outside. And that’s the main purpose of these checkpoints, is to keep our people safe and also to ensure that [inaudible] have the right to live.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Chairman Frazier, what about the governor’s perspective or viewpoint that these checkpoints are illegal? What’s your response to that? Could you talk about your treaties, the existing treaties between your nation and the federal government, that might have some bearing on this or do have bearing on this?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, we kind of look, you know, and, number one, my — the people who elected me to this position, they’re the ones that are, I guess, so-called my boss. The governor is not my boss, or the federal government. It’s the people that live here. That’s who I work for, and that’s who I take directives from and such.
But they haven’t — you know, we stepped up to do this. We feel that we have every right to do this. We have a treaty, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, Article 16. In that article, it says that, you know, before any White man can travel or reside on our lands, they must get consent from the Indians first. In addition to our treaties, there’s case law. There’s even our Constitution, that we swore to uphold against all enemies foreign and domestic, that they give us all the legal right to do what we’re doing.
You know, a lot of times — and we’ve been studying the laws of this country for quite a while. How can somebody own something without paying for it? And that’s the way we look at it, that these lands, these roads, they are ours, because we were never paid for it. So we have every legal right to do that. And it doesn’t matter, you know, what comes today, tomorrow. We’re still going to be here. We’re still going to have and maintain our checkpoints.
AMY GOODMAN: Chairman Frazier, can you describe what happens at a checkpoint? And have you been at one? Talk about the people who are stopping the cars and what they’re doing when they stop them.
HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, yeah, I’ve been there to all of our checkpoints numerous times. You know, if a driver rolls up — and it all depends. You know, if a driver rolls up, they’re asked some health questions. There’s a questionnaire that they have to be filled out, and they’re filled out by our deputies. So, there’s really no — you know, I’ve seen some motorists where they just roll down their window partway and answer the questions.
If they’re coming in for essential travel, if they’re a resident of the reservation or a member of the tribe or family to a resident or a member, they’re asked the questions, and they come in. If you’re a motorist coming from a hot spot, your license plates show that, every day we monitor that, where are people — where’s the areas that we’ve got to be concerned with. And if their vehicle is coming from that, then they will be asked to reroute their travel and not come through our lands.
But we allow any commercial vehicles coming, because we need to have supplies just like everyone else. Medical people, they definitely are rolled in. But also, too, essential, and that’s the Postal Service, the agriculture. That’s a big thing on our reservation. So, things like that, they’re allowed to come and go, but they’re all stopped and asked to fill out these questionnaires.
And to expedite a lot of locals, particularly the agriculture, numerous times they come and go to — sometimes they have land in other areas. So, they — what we put together was a process to obtain a permit, an agriculture permit or essential travel permit. And them motorists usually just roll up, just show their permit number, and they’re allowed just to keep going. Usually, it just probably takes a minute to a minute and a half. And if you’re not coming from a hot spot, you’re generally just allowed to just roll on.
So, it’s not really any, in my opinion, hindrance of any motorist. And again, the main purpose is to try to save lives. And I know there was [inaudible] that we should work together. And that’s something that I agree with. But with our population, with our lack of medical facilities, things like that, we know, and we just look to our relatives to the south, the Navajo Nation, and see what’s going on there. And that could easily be us. And we’ve been watching that, so that’s why we stepped up to do these type of actions, to try to keep our people safe and definitely save their lives.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman Frazier, you mentioned the lack of medical facilities. Could you talk about that? Because you issued a stay-at-home — strict stay-at-home measures, while the governor of the state did not, of South Dakota did not. What is the situation? You only have eight hospital beds and one ICU, as I understand it, on your lands?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, we have eight hospital beds. We don’t have no ICU. There are six ventilators. We have one respiratory therapist. And I’m being told by our medical people that generally they monitor two to three ventilators, and they could do four, but that’s pushing it. The nearest facility for critical care is in Rapid City, and it’s about a three-hour drive just to get to Rapid. And that has always been the practice of the Indian Health Service, is to get the care that some of our people need, they generally get referred out.
But when we started this, we started looking at numbers and the number of residents. And when we broke it down, that maybe 50% would possibly get the virus. And when we — they were saying that 80% can be handled at home, and that left 20%. And we looked at the numbers, and we realized that there is a potential that we may need 1,200 beds. And when we only have eight, I mean, that really woke up a lot of people here at home.
AMY GOODMAN: Chairman Frazier, can you talk about the one confirmed COVID case you have had on the reservation and how the checkpoint led you to be able to identify that person?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah. That patient come in, I believe, like on a Thursday. And they knew where they come from. Our command center, which works directly with the checkpoints, they knew the patient come from an area that what we called a hot spot. Our medical people immediately started monitoring every day, you know, being in contact and so forth.
And then, that following Tuesday is when the patient wasn’t feeling well. They took her into the hospital. They ran a test and was tested positive, in a matter of less than probably eight hours, I would say, because the very next morning they already knew the contact, of who they were, and then people were put into quarantine. And right now the patient is doing well, and we’re pretty happy about that.
But that’s the whole purpose of that, because if we didn’t know any of that, and the individual come and they didn’t realize that they were infected by the virus, they could have easily went, and, you know, immediately that could have went into a community spread, which is something that we know we’re definitely not capable of handling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman, the governor has threatened to take your tribe to court over the checkpoints, while other lawmakers have urged her to try to negotiate and reach a common agreement. Could you talk about the state’s relationship to your tribe over the years?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, it’s just — as a matter of fact, I was just reading something last night. Rapid City, a lot of our members live out there, from us, Oglala, Rosebud. A lot of our Sioux relatives live out there. And there’s a IHS service unit out there. And they ran some tests, and there were 16 positive cases. And I was just reading that, and I was going to get some verification later today. But it sounded like one of the individuals that tested positive, the state Department of Health didn’t even contact that individual ’til three days later. So, you know, we’ve been — we know the treatment we get from the state and the federal government. And that’s why we’re really doing these things, because we know when times get tough, all we have is each other.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is a very significant situation.
HAROLD FRAZIER: And it’s important that we step up and — yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You have Governor Noem, the South Dakota governor. I mean, when you look at the meatpackers in Sioux Falls, for example, the mayor was begging the governor to shut down the plant. This is before Trump’s executive order that said the state couldn’t. You had hundreds and hundreds of workers, mainly immigrant, overwhelmingly immigrants, who were testing positive. And yet the governor refused to do this. This is the same governor now that is saying she will challenge you, demanding you take down these checkpoints. So what are you willing to take this to, Chairman? Could this lead to a showdown, a standoff, not just legally, but between the state and your tribe?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Well, you know, we have no other alternative. We won’t back down, no matter what they do. Whether it’s through the court or they come by force, we will be still there, because we live here. And, you know, we looked at everything. When we started planning and getting ready back in early March, that’s some of the scenarios we threw out at our plans, was for legal, as well as medical. So, I’m confident that, you know, if you want to — if she wants to take us to court, go ahead and do it. And I believe in my heart that we’re going to be successful.
And the main reason why is we’re doing these things for the right reasons. It’s not to benefit economically, or we’re not doing this to destroy somebody’s business, their lives. I mean, we’re doing it for the good, you know, the good of God. And what we’ve been saying is, you know, the number one right is the right to live. I know that I’ve seen words being thrown out there about liberties and civil rights and First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights and so forth. But the right to live, I believe, is above all of them. And that’s what we want to do: ensure that our residents here have that right to live.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chairman Frazier, you mentioned courts. Could you talk about the recent victory of the Cheyenne River Sioux over the Trump administration, where the Trump administration attempted to use some federal COVID-19 moneys that were intended for the tribes to go instead to the Alaska Native corporations?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Yeah. You know, it was nothing against the Native villages, but we felt that business corporations, that’s chartered under the state, that is not federally recognized — we felt that they shouldn’t get that, because we believe that that money was set aside for Native Americans.
And, you know, the interesting thing, as of today, we still have not been notified how much we’re going to receive here on Cheyenne River. I know a lot of our relatives in North Dakota and the other South Dakota tribes have received or been at least notified how much they’re going to receive. But as of this morning, we have not been notified what we’re going to receive. So, we’ve been kind of thinking, well, I guess they’re pretty upset for us taking them to court; maybe they ain’t gonna give it to us. But, I guess, hopefully by today, we would know if we’re going to receive any of that funding.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s from the CARES Act. The tribes were demanding something like $20 billion, ultimately was settled on $8 billion, but that’s been very slow to make its way out to the various nations. Finally, Harold Frazier, very quickly, if you can talk quickly about the significance of a legal battle here and what it could mean, for example, for the future of ongoing struggles, like your fight against the Keystone XL pipeline?
HAROLD FRAZIER: Oh, yeah, I mean, most definitely. And, you know, there’s already been case law. The recent one in reference to roads and highways was in 1990. And I just can’t think where they’re coming from, you know, reading what the lawmakers at the state Legislature put out there. I mean, and then, even that, the governor has been on briefings saying that they have no jurisdiction. So, I mean, I’m just kind of totally shocked, and almost unbelievable what’s going on, because there’s no way that they can win. There’s just no way. And, yeah, and then, too, we’re trying to focus and stay prepared for this pandemic, and just to have another issue is kind of unbelievable.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much, Harold Frazier, for joining us, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe chairman, speaking to us from Eagle Butte in South Dakota from the reservation.
When we come back, we go to Chicago, where COVID-19 took Black lives first. It didn’t have to. And then we talk about Los New Yorkers, those New Yorkers who are undocumented at the center of the pandemic, who are essential yet underprotected. We’ll speak with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with ProPublica. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Valerie Adrian, an Oglala Lakota in Sweetwater, Idaho, participating in the Quarantine Dance Specials.


truthout--2020-05-12--After 18 Memorial Days of the “War on Terror,” Will We Ever Learn?

“ Every day is a copy of a copy of a copy.
” That meme , from the moment when Edward Norton ’ s character in Fight Club offers a 1,000-yard stare at an office copy machine , captures this moment perfectly — at least for those of us removed from the front lines of the Covid-19 crisis .
Isolated inside a Boston apartment , I typically sought new ways to shake the snow globe , to see the same bubble — the same stuff — differently .
Quarantine has entered a new season .
The month of May has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Day is just around the corner .
And every Friday at 7:00 PM , residents in my neighborhood hang out of their windows to bang pots and cheer until they get tired ( usually , about two minutes later ) .
It ’ s a nice gesture to healthcare workers , a contemporary doff of the cap , but does it change anything ?
Perhaps it ’ s just another permutation of that old American truism : if you ’ re getting thanked for your service , you ’ re in a job @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The war against President Trump ’ s “ invisible enemy ” spasms on and we ’ re regularly reminded that healthcare workers , dangerously ill-equipped , must beg for personal protective equipment .
But this Memorial Day , the 18th during America ’ s War on Terror , our national focus is likely to shift , even if only momentarily , to the soldiers who are still fighting and dying in a self-perpetuating war , now under pandemic conditions .
Reflecting on my own time as a soldier deployed to combat in Afghanistan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to redefine what “ patriotism ” and “ national security ” really should mean .
My suggestion : If you want to honor soldiers this Memorial Day , start by questioning the U.S. military .
With this on my mind , and all alone in that apartment , I knew exactly where to look for inspiration .
Just before deploying to Kandahar , Afghanistan , in May , 2009 , I bought a journal .
It was brown , faux-leather , and fit in the hip pocket of Army combat trousers .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something you might pick up at Office Max .
Nonetheless , my soldiers ribbed me for it .
“ Dear diary , ” they snickered .
“ No , no , this is a war journal , ” I would reply , imagining such a distinction as sufficiently manly to overcome whatever stigma they had when it came to this self-appointed diarist .
At first , journaling was a distraction .
I captured images of my platoon , a lovable assemblage of misfits and Marlboro men .
But soon , that journal acquired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ filling with stories of roadside bombs , shootouts , amputated limbs , and funerals playing out in a page-by-page street fight of scribbles and scratch-outs .
On a humdrum route-clearance patrol on our fourth day in-country , before the unit of soldiers we were replacing even had a chance to depart , my squad leader ’ s vehicle was catastrophically destroyed by a roadside bomb .
We loaded four broken , bloody , ketamine ’ d soldiers onto an Air MEDEVAC helicopter en route to urgent care at Kandahar Airfield .
( At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platoon of 28 would be wiped out within a month . )
I reassured the soldier who was most coherent that he was “ going to be okay.
” Truth was : I didn ’ t know .
And what did “ okay ” in battlefield injury-speak even mean ?
A quadruple amputee with a pulse ?
Years of horrific facial reconstruction surgeries ?
Or maybe , with luck , merely a traumatic brain injury or a single leg amputation below the knee , which my wounded friends from Walter Reed Hospital called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ soldier , okay turned out to mean broken bones and lacerations bad enough to send him home , but not bad enough to keep him there .
He was stitched-up and sent back to war five months later .
When he finally returned to America , in Oregon , he murdered and dismembered someone he didn ’ t even know in a bathtub .
Then he stole the dead man ’ s car to rob a bank .
He ’ s currently serving life in prison .
But such stories , however raw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We were , after all , just one platoon in a big , ugly mess of a war , committing acts of political violence against people we didn ’ t know for reasons we didn ’ t fully understand .
Although I was told that I ’ d be “ fighting terrorism ” in Afghanistan , most of the people our unit was killing turned out to be teenagers or angry farmers with legitimate grievances , people tired of America ’ s never-ending occupation of their land , tired of our country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And frankly , when I searched my own soul , I couldn ’ t blame them for fighting back .
Had I been in their shoes , I would have done the same .
You probably won ’ t be surprised to learn that the U.S. military did not encourage me to think too much or too deeply about the morality of the war I was fighting .
A popular military aphorism was : “ stay in your lane.
” And so I jotted down my real thoughts in private and continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was , since there appeared to be no coherent plan or strategy , something fully substantiated when , late last year , the Washington Post released “ the Afghanistan Papers , ” secret and frank interviews by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan with top U.S. commanders and officials .
That brown journal of mine lived through a lot and , at the end of my deployment , it earned a just retirement at the bottom of a cardboard box — until recently , when , in the midst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I excavated it from its resting place and brought it into the light of day as if it were so many dinosaur bones .
The cover was a wreck , the pages , earth-stained and dog-eared .
Nonetheless , my chicken-scratched entries were enough to reconstruct old , long-buried memories .
Those pages cast into relief how far I ’ ve come .
Physically , I ’ m 6,632 miles away .
Temporally , I ’ m a decade older .
But morally , I ’ m a completely different person .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t add up to much .
I ’ ve returned home .
I ’ ve gotten older .
But what about the third ?
Why do I look back on my role in that still never-ending war not as a hero or as a well-intentioned participant , but as a perpetrator ?
And why , now , do I feel like I was a genuine sucker ?
In a sense , I already knew the answers to those questions , but I wanted to revisit the journey I ’ d taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and even dried blood .
And here ’ s what I found : I crossed my moral threshold on a dusty road , a glum bit of terrain I watched over for 15 hours straight .
The mission ’ s apt nickname , scrawled in that journal , was “ Operation Highway Babysitter.
” It worked like this : we , the infantry , secured a road in Kandahar Province , allowing logistics convoys to resupply the infantry , so that we could secure the road , so that the logistics convoys could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perpetuity .
Such a system was mockingly derided by my troops as a “ self-licking ice cream cone.
” Despite the effort we put into stopping IED — that is , roadside bomb — emplacement , we neither stopped them , nor created anything that might have passed for “ progress.
” The problem with IEDs was simple enough : we could watch some of the roads all of the time or all of the roads some of the time , but never all of the roads all of the time .
Wherever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the next one would be emplaced .
Quickly enough , we saw the futility of it all , yet what alternative did we have ?
We belonged to the Army and so were destined to spend our Afghan tour of duty playing human minesweepers .
Ox , my platoon sergeant , internalized his frustration .
During Operation Highway Babysitter , he cut a striking image of Oscar the Grouch , with a fat dip of chewing tobacco puckering his cheek .
Just above that egg-sized wad was a small scar from a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iraqi pavement during the 2003 invasion of that country .
One could say that Ox carried the war with him in the most literal sense .
And if we weren ’ t getting blown up by insurgents , we were getting shot by the Afghan National Police .
No kidding .
One hot afternoon , an Afghan policeman , visibly high , shot my team leader , Brody , from six feet away with a machine gun .
The 7.62 mm bullet hit him in the torso , a spot not covered by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discharge and Brody lived , but my whole platoon wanted to murder that policeman .
We didn ’ t , which seemed rather commendable .
Even as we became increasingly disillusioned , we remained soldiers , trained to execute , however ludicrous the task .
If we had to stay in our lane , though , at least we wanted the satisfaction of fighting our enemy face-to-face .
It ’ s hard to explain if you haven ’ t been there , but the desire to fight hadn ’ t left us and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got our chance on Halloween 2009 — a day caught vividly in that brown journal of mine .
A couple of hours into highway babysitting that day , our stakeout was interrupted by the sound of gunfire .
We buttoned up the trucks and set out for danger .
When we arrived , the shooting had stopped .
All we saw were a few men — maybe farmers , maybe insurgents — in a large grape field .
It was hard to make out what they were doing , but there were no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with speculation , there were no grounds ( under the rules of engagement we lived by ) to shoot them , so our G.I .
Joe energy began to melt away and we were distinctly disappointed .
I concede that it ’ s a strange emotion to actually want to kill someone , knowing there will be no repercussions for doing so — except possibly praise and maybe even medals if you ’ re successful .
What ’ s first degree attempted murder in the United States is just another day at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In five months , however , my platoon had yet to run into a real firefight and we were aching to kill some of those responsible for the plague of roadside bombs that had decimated our battalion .
We were amped , hungry for payback .
About 10 of us dismounted from the trucks .
We moved into the field , using a V-shaped , wedge formation , hoping the Afghans there knew something about the resistance fighters .
Fifteen seconds later our world erupted in gunfire .
Machine-gun rounds cut through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us .
Immediately , I was mainlining adrenaline .
We pressed inward , shooting as we went , hoping to suppress the resistance fighters and gain fire superiority .
Some of my soldiers hunkered down behind the remnants of a crumbly mud wall , others found what cover they could : a little ditch , a mound of earth , anything amid the grapevines .
I turned to my forward observer , Brock .
“ Can we get rotary-wing assets on station ?
” Finally , real kinetic combat !
I paused to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profusely and sucking wind , but miraculously there were no casualties .
The sound of the approaching OH-58 Kiowa attack helicopters , codenamed “ Shamus , ” confirmed our survival .
Jaws unclenched , lips loosened , eyes relaxed .
My sweat-slick soldiers chortled with relief .
Today , we live .
We talked the birds on station , marking our position in the grape field with fluorescent VS-17 panels , visible from the air .
The pilots acknowledged .
Then the two Kiowas race-tracked around the grape fields , evidently spotting their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rockets on a nearby village .
They followed by strafing the area with their .50-caliber machine guns until they had expended all their ammunition .
My soldiers erupted in cheers and I felt smug .
It was evening when we returned to Forward Operating Base Wilson after that 15-hour patrol .
I was haggard , worn , bleary-eyed .
Ox walked over to me .
I had given him the day off because the patrol schedule was killing us .
“ Ox , how was the rest ?
” “ I didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day .
It was great.
” “ Oh , yeah ?
You heard about the big firefight we got into ?
” “ I heard you guys were in contact , so I went to battalion headquarters to watch the live video feed from Scan Eagle [ an unarmed drone ] .
They had a TV screen so we could watch you guys in the fight.
” “ You see how many guys were shooting at us , where were they located ?
” “ Nope .
I showed up a bit late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kiowas could actually see the enemy.
” My heart sped up .
“ Well , what the fuck were they shooting at ?
We had no idea where the insurgents fled to — only a general direction.
” Ox offered a version of his nervous , graveyard-humor laugh .
“ Yeah , the helicopters didn ’ t have PID [ positive identification ] on anything .
Scan Eagle was zooming in on some dead lady in a blue burka and the battalion XO [ executive officer ] said to Shamus , ‘ What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Shamus said , ‘ Uhhhhh… we had reports of small-arms coming from this direction.
’ The XO gets back on the radio to yell at the pilots , ‘ Did you see weapons or have PID on anything at all ?
’ Shamus obviously didn ’ t , so the response was , ‘ Uhmmmm… negative.
’ The XO was pissed .
He said , ‘ Well , I ’ m looking at three dead civilians right now .
Do you want to explain that ?
’ Shamus said , ‘ Uhhhhh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re enemy KIA [ killed in action ] . '
” Anxiety turned to dread .
How could they have made a mistake like that and then justified the dead as “ enemy KIA ” ?
I dropped my equipment in a heap inside my tent and walked to the company headquarters to fill out the debrief paperwork .
First , I looked at the SIGACT ( significant activity ) whiteboard to see what the Army chose to report and it was vague indeed : small-arms fire , grid location , calling for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ column — the punch line — left me fuming .
Its header was “ BDA , ” or “ Battle Damage Assessment.
” And there , in bold capital letters , was : “ UNKNOWN.
” No mention of civilian casualties .
The Army had covered it up .
I felt urgently sick .
Where was the honesty ?
Where was our morality ?
Where was the “ integrity ” — an Army value I was taught at West Point ?
I wanted to give the military the benefit of the doubt .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ unknown ” had been a clerical error , even if made at the exact moment when it would cover up homicide .
But I had already given so many other incidents a pass .
All the things that I ’ d let slide and tucked away suddenly shifted in their hiding places .
Standing before that whiteboard , I felt a crisis of conscience .
Repressing , forgetting , or deluding myself was no longer an option .
And that was my awakening , faithfully recorded in that brown journal still in my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that incident either .
It didn ’ t matter that I personally raised it with my battalion commander .
I felt betrayed and ashamed of my once-boyish excitement for war .
In places like Zhari District in Afghanistan , it was now clear to me that the prevailing truth was whatever the U.S. military wanted it to be .
When I returned home seven months later , I felt grateful but empty .
Just about everything in America looked the same , which felt rude , given how much we had changed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ return from war , thudding back slaps and free beers from well-meaning civilians numbed my sense of betrayal .
But over time , I realized that all of this “ thank you for your service ” stuff was just a culturally ingrained reflex , like saying “ bless you ” to someone who sneezes .
When it comes to our military , the mantra of the public is : thank , don ’ t think .
To most of them , war — the war my friends died for — is elevator music @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , almost 19 years after the Afghan War began , numbers , names , and percentages don ’ t go in the graveyard , people do .
While serving in the U.S. Army Honor Guard , I helped bury Tyler Parten , one of my best friends from West Point , in Arlington National Cemetery .
Like so many other fallen American soldiers , he was a good and gentle man — not a violent man — and yet he died a violent death on a mountain escarpment in Afghanistan , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presented the folded flag to Tyler ’ s crying mother .
After the family left , I looked around and noticed all the freshly dug graves that did not yet contain their occupants .
And with more time and more wars , those headstones will become just like all the other headstones .
And here ’ s the thing with Memorial Day : my memories don ’ t resemble the tidy sacrifices that this country memorializes on that day each year .
Soldiers know the slaughterhouse ; America knows chicken nuggets — lifeless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sold on the cheap , and always worth whatever they cost .
Twenty-first-century American patriotism is crass , slippery , and gross .
It isn ’ t about moral courage or speaking out ; it ’ s about protecting and preserving corporate image and individual reputations .
American patriotism is sad-button Facebook emoticons and 20 % -off Memorial Day mattress sales .
But blithely tolerating a yearly moment of silence to think abstractly about dead soldiers — and assume that their deaths are part of an unfortunate but necessary exchange to preserve American-style @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It never has been .
Soldiers and veterans don ’ t need priority boarding , 10 % discounts at gimmicky chain restaurants , or a few crinkled bills stuffed into a charity ’ s coffee can .
What they need is a nation that can find the courage and conviction to stop misusing their service .
For 18 Memorial Days , the American public has been complicit in allowing our troops to be sent into a series of wars that everyone knows to be costly and self-defeating , while simultaneously maintaining the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they “ support the troops.
” Believe me , that ’ s not patriotism .
The most intimate betrayal is to be sent to kill or die for nothing by your countrymen .
Maybe 2020 is the year when we finally look ourselves in the mirror and admit it — that we are really a nation of 330 million bumper-sticker patriots willing to sell-out future generations to pay for endless war , no matter who gets killed , as long as someone in the Pentagon believes they deserve it .
Maybe this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the war on terror drags on because the United States is perfectly arranged to give us that outcome , because Americans are not allowed to question the military or military spending .
The act of doing so is taboo or , as I titled my new book , Un-American .
If we don ’ t like this reality , it should be our civic responsibility to change the forces that guide this nation .
We must redefine what patriotism and national security truly stand for .
To confront real threats to humanity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grow in our capacity for cooperation , not conflict .
Maybe 2020 will finally be the year .
After 18 Memorial Days , When Will We Ever Learn ?
After an hour , I realized that I was still sitting on the carpet hunched over my journal .
Yes , I had shaken the metaphorical snow globe .
No , I did not feel better .
I thumbed through it one last time and a quote suddenly caught my eye : “ These stupid people , ” I had recorded one sergeant first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is violence and force.
” That did it .
The journal went back in the box and I closed the lid .
I got up , flicked off the light , and shut the door .
As that door clicked tight , my mind returned to that quote : “ These stupid people — all they understand is violence and force.
” I wondered : Was he referring to the people of Afghanistan or to us ?

If you want to honor soldiers this Memorial Day, start by questioning the U.S. military.
“Every day is a copy of a copy of a copy.” That meme, from the moment when Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club offers a 1,000-yard stare at an office copy machine, captures this moment perfectly — at least for those of us removed from the front lines of the Covid-19 crisis. Isolated inside a Boston apartment, I typically sought new ways to shake the snow globe, to see the same bubble — the same stuff — differently.
Quarantine has entered a new season. The month of May has brought daffodils and barbeque grills. Memorial Day is just around the corner. And every Friday at 7:00 PM, residents in my neighborhood hang out of their windows to bang pots and cheer until they get tired (usually, about two minutes later). It’s a nice gesture to healthcare workers, a contemporary doff of the cap, but does it change anything? Perhaps it’s just another permutation of that old American truism: if you’re getting thanked for your service, you’re in a job where you’re getting shafted.
The war against President Trump’s “invisible enemy” spasms on and we’re regularly reminded that healthcare workers, dangerously ill-equipped, must beg for personal protective equipment. But this Memorial Day, the 18th during America’s War on Terror, our national focus is likely to shift, even if only momentarily, to the soldiers who are still fighting and dying in a self-perpetuating war, now under pandemic conditions.
Reflecting on my own time as a soldier deployed to combat in Afghanistan, I hope that Covid-19 causes us to redefine what “patriotism” and “national security” really should mean. My suggestion: If you want to honor soldiers this Memorial Day, start by questioning the U.S. military.
With this on my mind, and all alone in that apartment, I knew exactly where to look for inspiration.
The Journal
Just before deploying to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in May, 2009, I bought a journal. It was brown, faux-leather, and fit in the hip pocket of Army combat trousers. It wasn’t particularly nice — just something you might pick up at Office Max.
Nonetheless, my soldiers ribbed me for it. “Dear diary,” they snickered.
“No, no, this is a war journal,” I would reply, imagining such a distinction as sufficiently manly to overcome whatever stigma they had when it came to this self-appointed diarist.
At first, journaling was a distraction. I captured images of my platoon, a lovable assemblage of misfits and Marlboro men. But soon, that journal acquired a more macabre tone, its lines filling with stories of roadside bombs, shootouts, amputated limbs, and funerals playing out in a page-by-page street fight of scribbles and scratch-outs.
On a humdrum route-clearance patrol on our fourth day in-country, before the unit of soldiers we were replacing even had a chance to depart, my squad leader’s vehicle was catastrophically destroyed by a roadside bomb. We loaded four broken, bloody, ketamine’d soldiers onto an Air MEDEVAC helicopter en route to urgent care at Kandahar Airfield. (At this rate, I realized, my platoon of 28 would be wiped out within a month.)
I reassured the soldier who was most coherent that he was “going to be okay.” Truth was: I didn’t know. And what did “okay” in battlefield injury-speak even mean? A quadruple amputee with a pulse? Years of horrific facial reconstruction surgeries? Or maybe, with luck, merely a traumatic brain injury or a single leg amputation below the knee, which my wounded friends from Walter Reed Hospital called “a paper cut.”
For this soldier, okay turned out to mean broken bones and lacerations bad enough to send him home, but not bad enough to keep him there. He was stitched-up and sent back to war five months later. When he finally returned to America, in Oregon, he murdered and dismembered someone he didn’t even know in a bathtub. Then he stole the dead man’s car to rob a bank. He’s currently serving life in prison.
But such stories, however raw and urgent they felt, were small. We were, after all, just one platoon in a big, ugly mess of a war, committing acts of political violence against people we didn’t know for reasons we didn’t fully understand.
Although I was told that I’d be “fighting terrorism” in Afghanistan, most of the people our unit was killing turned out to be teenagers or angry farmers with legitimate grievances, people tired of America’s never-ending occupation of their land, tired of our country’s contemptuous devaluation of Afghan lives. And frankly, when I searched my own soul, I couldn’t blame them for fighting back. Had I been in their shoes, I would have done the same.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the U.S. military did not encourage me to think too much or too deeply about the morality of the war I was fighting. A popular military aphorism was: “stay in your lane.” And so I jotted down my real thoughts in private and continued with the “mission,” whatever that was, since there appeared to be no coherent plan or strategy, something fully substantiated when, late last year, the Washington Post released “the Afghanistan Papers,” secret and frank interviews by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan with top U.S. commanders and officials.
“Operation Highway Babysitter”
That brown journal of mine lived through a lot and, at the end of my deployment, it earned a just retirement at the bottom of a cardboard box — until recently, when, in the midst of self-isolation in the Covid-19 moment, I excavated it from its resting place and brought it into the light of day as if it were so many dinosaur bones.
The cover was a wreck, the pages, earth-stained and dog-eared. Nonetheless, my chicken-scratched entries were enough to reconstruct old, long-buried memories. Those pages cast into relief how far I’ve come. Physically, I’m 6,632 miles away. Temporally, I’m a decade older. But morally, I’m a completely different person.
The first two — distance and time — don’t add up to much. I’ve returned home. I’ve gotten older. But what about the third? Why do I look back on my role in that still never-ending war not as a hero or as a well-intentioned participant, but as a perpetrator? And why, now, do I feel like I was a genuine sucker?
In a sense, I already knew the answers to those questions, but I wanted to revisit the journey I’d taken by flipping those pages past coffee-ring stains and even dried blood. And here’s what I found: I crossed my moral threshold on a dusty road, a glum bit of terrain I watched over for 15 hours straight. The mission’s apt nickname, scrawled in that journal, was “Operation Highway Babysitter.”
It worked like this: we, the infantry, secured a road in Kandahar Province, allowing logistics convoys to resupply the infantry, so that we could secure the road, so that the logistics convoys could resupply us, ad nauseam and in perpetuity. Such a system was mockingly derided by my troops as a “self-licking ice cream cone.”
Despite the effort we put into stopping IED — that is, roadside bomb — emplacement, we neither stopped them, nor created anything that might have passed for “progress.” The problem with IEDs was simple enough: we could watch some of the roads all of the time or all of the roads some of the time, but never all of the roads all of the time. Wherever we couldn’t patrol was precisely where the next one would be emplaced.
Quickly enough, we saw the futility of it all, yet what alternative did we have? We belonged to the Army and so were destined to spend our Afghan tour of duty playing human minesweepers.
Ox, my platoon sergeant, internalized his frustration. During Operation Highway Babysitter, he cut a striking image of Oscar the Grouch, with a fat dip of chewing tobacco puckering his cheek. Just above that egg-sized wad was a small scar from a bullet fragment that had skipped off an Iraqi pavement during the 2003 invasion of that country. One could say that Ox carried the war with him in the most literal sense.
And if we weren’t getting blown up by insurgents, we were getting shot by the Afghan National Police. No kidding. One hot afternoon, an Afghan policeman, visibly high, shot my team leader, Brody, from six feet away with a machine gun. The 7.62 mm bullet hit him in the torso, a spot not covered by body armor. It was a negligent discharge and Brody lived, but my whole platoon wanted to murder that policeman. We didn’t, which seemed rather commendable.
Even as we became increasingly disillusioned, we remained soldiers, trained to execute, however ludicrous the task. If we had to stay in our lane, though, at least we wanted the satisfaction of fighting our enemy face-to-face. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been there, but the desire to fight hadn’t left us and, as it turned out, we got our chance on Halloween 2009 — a day caught vividly in that brown journal of mine.
The Sound of Revenge
A couple of hours into highway babysitting that day, our stakeout was interrupted by the sound of gunfire. We buttoned up the trucks and set out for danger. When we arrived, the shooting had stopped. All we saw were a few men — maybe farmers, maybe insurgents — in a large grape field. It was hard to make out what they were doing, but there were no weapons to be seen.
Armed only with speculation, there were no grounds (under the rules of engagement we lived by) to shoot them, so our G.I. Joe energy began to melt away and we were distinctly disappointed.
I concede that it’s a strange emotion to actually want to kill someone, knowing there will be no repercussions for doing so — except possibly praise and maybe even medals if you’re successful. What’s first degree attempted murder in the United States is just another day at the office for an infantryman in combat. In five months, however, my platoon had yet to run into a real firefight and we were aching to kill some of those responsible for the plague of roadside bombs that had decimated our battalion. We were amped, hungry for payback.
About 10 of us dismounted from the trucks. We moved into the field, using a V-shaped, wedge formation, hoping the Afghans there knew something about the resistance fighters. Fifteen seconds later our world erupted in gunfire. Machine-gun rounds cut through the grape vines, trimming the hedges around us. Immediately, I was mainlining adrenaline.
We pressed inward, shooting as we went, hoping to suppress the resistance fighters and gain fire superiority. Some of my soldiers hunkered down behind the remnants of a crumbly mud wall, others found what cover they could: a little ditch, a mound of earth, anything amid the grapevines.
I turned to my forward observer, Brock. “Can we get rotary-wing assets on station?”
“Roger. Two Kiowas. Ten minutes.”
Finally, real kinetic combat! I paused to look around. My soldiers were sweating profusely and sucking wind, but miraculously there were no casualties. The sound of the approaching OH-58 Kiowa attack helicopters, codenamed “Shamus,” confirmed our survival.
Jaws unclenched, lips loosened, eyes relaxed. My sweat-slick soldiers chortled with relief. Today, we live. We talked the birds on station, marking our position in the grape field with fluorescent VS-17 panels, visible from the air. The pilots acknowledged. Then the two Kiowas race-tracked around the grape fields, evidently spotting their targets because they released a salvo of rockets on a nearby village. They followed by strafing the area with their .50-caliber machine guns until they had expended all their ammunition.
My soldiers erupted in cheers and I felt smug.
The Awakening
It was evening when we returned to Forward Operating Base Wilson after that 15-hour patrol. I was haggard, worn, bleary-eyed. Ox walked over to me. I had given him the day off because the patrol schedule was killing us.
“Ox, how was the rest?”
“I didn’t do shit yesterday. Slept all day. It was great.”
“Oh, yeah? You heard about the big firefight we got into?”
“I heard you guys were in contact, so I went to battalion headquarters to watch the live video feed from Scan Eagle [an unarmed drone]. They had a TV screen so we could watch you guys in the fight.”
“You see how many guys were shooting at us, where were they located?”
“Nope. I showed up a bit late, but neither Scan Eagle nor the Kiowas could actually see the enemy.”
My heart sped up. “Well, what the fuck were they shooting at? We had no idea where the insurgents fled to — only a general direction.”
Ox offered a version of his nervous, graveyard-humor laugh. “Yeah, the helicopters didn’t have PID [positive identification] on anything. Scan Eagle was zooming in on some dead lady in a blue burka and the battalion XO [executive officer] said to Shamus, ‘What the hell are you shooting at?’ Shamus said, ‘Uhhhhh… we had reports of small-arms coming from this direction.’ The XO gets back on the radio to yell at the pilots, ‘Did you see weapons or have PID on anything at all?’ Shamus obviously didn’t, so the response was, ‘Uhmmmm… negative.’ The XO was pissed. He said, ‘Well, I’m looking at three dead civilians right now. Do you want to explain that?’ Shamus said, ‘Uhhhhh . . . I guess they’re enemy KIA [killed in action].'”
Anxiety turned to dread. How could they have made a mistake like that and then justified the dead as “enemy KIA”? I dropped my equipment in a heap inside my tent and walked to the company headquarters to fill out the debrief paperwork. First, I looked at the SIGACT (significant activity) whiteboard to see what the Army chose to report and it was vague indeed: small-arms fire, grid location, calling for helicopter air support. But the final column — the punch line — left me fuming. Its header was “BDA,” or “Battle Damage Assessment.” And there, in bold capital letters, was: “UNKNOWN.”
No mention of civilian casualties. The Army had covered it up. I felt urgently sick. Where was the honesty? Where was our morality? Where was the “integrity” — an Army value I was taught at West Point?
I wanted to give the military the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps logging the civilian deaths as “unknown” had been a clerical error, even if made at the exact moment when it would cover up homicide. But I had already given so many other incidents a pass. All the things that I’d let slide and tucked away suddenly shifted in their hiding places. Standing before that whiteboard, I felt a crisis of conscience. Repressing, forgetting, or deluding myself was no longer an option.
And that was my awakening, faithfully recorded in that brown journal still in my hands.
The Army never would investigate that incident either. It didn’t matter that I personally raised it with my battalion commander. I felt betrayed and ashamed of my once-boyish excitement for war. In places like Zhari District in Afghanistan, it was now clear to me that the prevailing truth was whatever the U.S. military wanted it to be.
The Price of Unquestioning Patriotism
When I returned home seven months later, I felt grateful but empty. Just about everything in America looked the same, which felt rude, given how much we had changed.
For those first six months after my return from war, thudding back slaps and free beers from well-meaning civilians numbed my sense of betrayal. But over time, I realized that all of this “thank you for your service” stuff was just a culturally ingrained reflex, like saying “bless you” to someone who sneezes. When it comes to our military, the mantra of the public is: thank, don’t think. To most of them, war — the war my friends died for — is elevator music. Perhaps Americans have generally forgotten that, almost 19 years after the Afghan War began, numbers, names, and percentages don’t go in the graveyard, people do.
I don’t forget.
While serving in the U.S. Army Honor Guard, I helped bury Tyler Parten, one of my best friends from West Point, in Arlington National Cemetery. Like so many other fallen American soldiers, he was a good and gentle man — not a violent man — and yet he died a violent death on a mountain escarpment in Afghanistan, according to an officer from his company.
I presented the folded flag to Tyler’s crying mother. After the family left, I looked around and noticed all the freshly dug graves that did not yet contain their occupants. And with more time and more wars, those headstones will become just like all the other headstones.
And here’s the thing with Memorial Day: my memories don’t resemble the tidy sacrifices that this country memorializes on that day each year. Soldiers know the slaughterhouse; America knows chicken nuggets — lifeless things processed and commoditized, marketed and sold on the cheap, and always worth whatever they cost.
Twenty-first-century American patriotism is crass, slippery, and gross. It isn’t about moral courage or speaking out; it’s about protecting and preserving corporate image and individual reputations. American patriotism is sad-button Facebook emoticons and 20%-off Memorial Day mattress sales.
But blithely tolerating a yearly moment of silence to think abstractly about dead soldiers — and assume that their deaths are part of an unfortunate but necessary exchange to preserve American-style “freedom” — is not enough. It never has been.
Soldiers and veterans don’t need priority boarding, 10% discounts at gimmicky chain restaurants, or a few crinkled bills stuffed into a charity’s coffee can. What they need is a nation that can find the courage and conviction to stop misusing their service. For 18 Memorial Days, the American public has been complicit in allowing our troops to be sent into a series of wars that everyone knows to be costly and self-defeating, while simultaneously maintaining the audacious idea that, in doing so, they “support the troops.”
Believe me, that’s not patriotism. The most intimate betrayal is to be sent to kill or die for nothing by your countrymen.
Maybe 2020 is the year when we finally look ourselves in the mirror and admit it — that we are really a nation of 330 million bumper-sticker patriots willing to sell-out future generations to pay for endless war, no matter who gets killed, as long as someone in the Pentagon believes they deserve it. Maybe this year the American public will finally realize that the war on terror drags on because the United States is perfectly arranged to give us that outcome, because Americans are not allowed to question the military or military spending. The act of doing so is taboo or, as I titled my new book, Un-American.
If we don’t like this reality, it should be our civic responsibility to change the forces that guide this nation. We must redefine what patriotism and national security truly stand for. To confront real threats to humanity — like climate change — we must grow in our capacity for cooperation, not conflict. Maybe 2020 will finally be the year.
After 18 Memorial Days, When Will We Ever Learn?
After an hour, I realized that I was still sitting on the carpet hunched over my journal. Yes, I had shaken the metaphorical snow globe. No, I did not feel better.
I thumbed through it one last time and a quote suddenly caught my eye: “These stupid people,” I had recorded one sergeant first class saying, “all they understand is violence and force.”
That did it. The journal went back in the box and I closed the lid. I got up, flicked off the light, and shut the door. As that door clicked tight, my mind returned to that quote: “These stupid people — all they understand is violence and force.”
I wondered: Was he referring to the people of Afghanistan or to us?
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.


truthout--2020-05-12--Trump Labor Dept. Pushes States to Help Employers Report Workers Who Stay Home

With the stated goal of rooting out “ waste and fraud ” in the unemployment insurance system , President Donald Trump ’ s Department of Labor is openly encouraging ongoing state efforts to help employers report workers who refuse to return to their jobs out of fear of contracting the coronavirus .
In guidance ( pdf ) issued Monday as several states across the U.S. continue the dangerous process of reopening their economies amid the pandemic , the Labor Department said “ states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continued eligibility for benefits.
” “ We also strongly encourage states to remind employers and the public about the claimant and employer fraud resources within each state , ” the guidance reads .
In a statement accompanying the new guidelines , the Labor Department ’ s Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training John Pallasch said “ states and localities have an obligation to spot and detect waste and fraud in the unemployment insurance system and report it to the U.S. Department of Labor ’ s Office of Inspector General and other appropriate channels.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ refuse “ suitable work ” are ineligible for unemployment benefits .
In a frequently asked questions section on its website , the Labor Department says that “ general concern ” about contracting Covid-19 is not sufficient grounds to refuse work and still receive unemployment benefits .
Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Project told CNBC that workers could attempt to “ argue that the conditions are no longer safe and try to refuse work ” if they believe their employers are not taking sufficient steps to ensure a safe workplace .
Despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Labor Department has not issued emergency standards requiring employers to follow the CDC ’ s coronavirus safety guidelines .
Marcia Brown , writing fellow at The American Prospect , reported last week that Ohio and Iowa have set up websites designed to help employers report workers for committing “ unemployment fraud ” by declining to return to work amid the Covid-19 pandemic .
Labor advocates in Texas — which is currently in the process of reopening its economy — have urged the state to continue providing unemployment benefits to those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jobs out of fear of contracting the virus .
In a private call with lawmakers earlier this month that was leaked to the media , Texas Gov .
Greg Abbott admitted that reopening the economy “ will lead to an increase and spread ” of Covid-19 .
More than 30 million people in the U.S. have applied for unemployment benefits since mid-March , but — as HuffPost reported last week — some governors are working to cut off the expanded unemployment benefits that were authorized under the CARES Act before many people have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CARES Act ’ s expansion of unemployment insurance — an additional $ 600 per week on top of state benefits — is set to expire at the end of July .
As many workers risk losing their unemployment benefits to stay home out of fear of infection , the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to protect corporations from legal responsibility for employees who contract Covid-19 in the workplace , an effort that has drawn outrage from labor unions and progressive advocacy groups .
Mary Kay Henry , president of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Financial Times on Monday that corporations and governments are endangering the lives of workers by pushing them to return to their jobs before it is safe .
“ Healthcare workers are concerned that , without PPE and training for the retail and restaurant workers who are going back , we ’ re rushing into another spike , ” Henry said .
“ It feels like governments and corporations feel that some lives in this nation are worth sacrificing .
”

With the stated goal of rooting out “waste and fraud” in the unemployment insurance system, President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor is openly encouraging ongoing state efforts to help employers report workers who refuse to return to their jobs out of fear of contracting the coronavirus.
In guidance (pdf) issued Monday as several states across the U.S. continue the dangerous process of reopening their economies amid the pandemic, the Labor Department said “states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits.”
“We also strongly encourage states to remind employers and the public about the claimant and employer fraud resources within each state,” the guidance reads.
In a statement accompanying the new guidelines, the Labor Department’s Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training John Pallasch said “states and localities have an obligation to spot and detect waste and fraud in the unemployment insurance system and report it to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General and other appropriate channels.”
Under current law, those who refuse “suitable work” are ineligible for unemployment benefits. In a frequently asked questions section on its website, the Labor Department says that “general concern” about contracting Covid-19 is not sufficient grounds to refuse work and still receive unemployment benefits.
Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Project told CNBC that workers could attempt to “argue that the conditions are no longer safe and try to refuse work” if they believe their employers are not taking sufficient steps to ensure a safe workplace. Despite demands from nurses and other frontline workers, the Labor Department has not issued emergency standards requiring employers to follow the CDC’s coronavirus safety guidelines.
Marcia Brown, writing fellow at The American Prospect, reported last week that Ohio and Iowa have set up websites designed to help employers report workers for committing “unemployment fraud” by declining to return to work amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Labor advocates in Texas — which is currently in the process of reopening its economy — have urged the state to continue providing unemployment benefits to those who do not want to return to their jobs out of fear of contracting the virus. In a private call with lawmakers earlier this month that was leaked to the media, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that reopening the economy “will lead to an increase and spread” of Covid-19.
There’s a plague outside but the Trump administration is strongly encouraging states to solicit employer tips on workers staying home. From the just-released Labor Department guidance to states: pic.twitter.com/4z98SjsyUb — Arthur Delaney (@ArthurDelaneyHP) May 12, 2020
More than 30 million people in the U.S. have applied for unemployment benefits since mid-March, but — as HuffPost reported last week — some governors are working to cut off the expanded unemployment benefits that were authorized under the CARES Act before many people have even received their first checks.
The CARES Act’s expansion of unemployment insurance — an additional $600 per week on top of state benefits — is set to expire at the end of July.
As many workers risk losing their unemployment benefits to stay home out of fear of infection, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to protect corporations from legal responsibility for employees who contract Covid-19 in the workplace, an effort that has drawn outrage from labor unions and progressive advocacy groups.
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told the Financial Times on Monday that corporations and governments are endangering the lives of workers by pushing them to return to their jobs before it is safe.
“Healthcare workers are concerned that, without PPE and training for the retail and restaurant workers who are going back, we’re rushing into another spike,” Henry said. “It feels like governments and corporations feel that some lives in this nation are worth sacrificing.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.