thenation--2020-06-03--Covid-19 Is Straining the Concept of the Family. Let’s Break It.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown , the realities of both the human body ’ s interconnectedness and private property ’ s deathliness have become inescapable .
Doctors in the before-time were already known , on occasion , to prescribe food , money , companionship , abuse-free shelter , or a holiday from housewifehood to their patients .
Today , however , the concepts of reproductive justice , family inequality , compulsory domesticity , and the “ right to the city ” have taken on even more force , as officials instruct populations to maintain “ social distancing ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to “ shelter in place ” ( in whose place ?
Your family ’ s ) .1 Let us briefly survey the scene .
Abusers everywhere are battering and molesting their partners and young relatives in the privacy of their properties with increased impunity , since it is more difficult than ever , physically and financially , to flee a home .
As with AIDS in the 1980s , the itinerant houseless , the sexually deviant , and the unconventionally housed are once again the object of public suspicion .
Meanwhile , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States are either crowded or under-inhabited , even empty .
The pathways of love and care-labor ( paid and unpaid ) running between them , were they to be diagrammed , would resemble an impenetrable web.2 But now , with urban movement so constrained , the already desperately limited legal frameworks of marital union and biogenetic “ next of kin ” ( which are used to gatekeep hospital visits , triage the dead , determine custody , calculate life insurance , and allocate inheritance ) are straining at the seams .
There is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep chosen kin from seeing one another , treat children like property , and shore up wealth ( or poverty ) within a class—which is not to say there is a quick fix.3 Finally , the interruption of global supply chains in the care and service economies is rubbing the classed and racialized character of capitalism ’ s division of reproductive labor in the global bourgeoisie ’ s unwilling face .
Oblivious , a clutch of well-heeled white British feminists , working from home , have loudly asserted their feminist right to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not only in the UK , have visibly come to the startled realization that the private nuclear household is a fantasy of universality , propped up either by the mutual aid of “ othermothers , ” or by an extractive hierarchy of outsourced wife-work .
We have hence been treated to “ critiques ” of the nuclear family that pay mildly rueful homage to the modern “ village ” ( as in , “ It takes a village to raise a child ” ) and yearn for the labor of the subordinate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and paid cleaners the woman of the house must now do without.5 How to Survive an Apocalypse and Keep Dreaming More in this series The principle that a child has only one or two real parents goes unchallenged , as does the principle that people should live in atomized car-dependent boxes , each kitted out with its own kitchen and laundry , with extremely few companions , ideally linked by some fiction of “ blood ” or biological identity .
We can do better than these non-critiques .
What the unfolding of Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , among other things—is that the family , as the property logic and mode of social reproduction central to capitalism—is killing us.6 Editors have been asking me to tell what might happen next .
Could 2020 mark the beginning of the end of class society , via a perpetuation of the riotous nationwide insurgency currently underway for black lives , a general strike that gives rise to a giant archipelago of protest kitchens that , in turn , leads to the overthrow of exploitation , and the founding of a million co-housing projects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will all the cleaners , nannies , carers , wet nurses , babysitters , gardeners , sex workers , cooks , au pairs , and chauffeurs move in with their employers , adding their names to the property deeds , the car insurance documents , the children ’ s birth certificates ?
Will children themselves advance their liberation , emancipating themselves in the name of chosen survival , and together develop their vision of democratic transgenerational cohabitation ?
Could a vast new federated institution of social care spring up—a crèche for people of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we are the makers of one another , and we can learn collectively to act like it ?
7 Amid the turmoil of Covid , unsurprisingly , oracular thinkers of the home and household are suddenly in high demand .
I have received a dozen requests myself , for comment on the future of domestic arrangements , post-pandemic .
This is because , in March 2019 , the leftist publishing house Verso Books launched my book Full Surrogacy Now , a call for “ the gestational commune , ” which I hoped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ utopianism inspired by the Marxist rallying cry “ Abolish the family.
” 8 Indeed , for several years now , together with a number of other trans-liberationist Marxists and mothers—notably Michelle O ’ Brien , Kate Doyle-Griffiths , Madeline Lane-McKinley , and Jules Joanne Gleeson—I have been doing my best to raise the profile again of that old dream “ family abolition , ” to clarify what it is and isn ’ t , and to restore the private ( repro-normative or patriarchal ) nuclear household to its proper place as the principal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And here , critique really means critique : recognition that the family as we know it is , simultaneously , an anti-queer factory for producing productive workers , rife with power asymmetries and violence , and the sole source of love , care , and protection against the brutalization of the police , the market , work , and racism , many of us have got.9 Our idea is to rethink presently existing family forms ; this means , to quote O ’ Brien , “ preservation and emancipation of the genuine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with each other in the midst of hardship : the fun and joy of eroticism ; the intimacy of parenting and romance.
” As Sophie Silverstein clarifies in openDemocracy , “ Thinking about organizing intimacy and care beyond the family is less about taking away safety and coziness than it is about extending those very same conditions to everyone regardless of how they live and love.
” The goal is “ a society where mutual nurturance and support are not dependent on a genetic lottery.
” 10 The effect of our efforts on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For my part , I was most surprised not by the antipathy but by the surprise that greeted our immodest proposal , in all but a few tiny pockets of the left .
In the 19th century , as well as the sex-liberationist 1970s , to call for abolishing the family in favor of the classless poly-maternal commune was a common anticapitalist practice .
In 1892 , for example , Karl Kautsky was vexed that “ one of the most widespread prejudices against socialism rests upon the notion that it proposes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contemporary socialists ’ institutional amnesia about this controversy , via the quashing of the radical imagination in the ’ 80s , is something I had underestimated.11 Yet , besides incredulity , ridicule , and heated opposition ( some of it from the white-nationalist far right ) , the message of “ feminism against the family ” has also faced a more insidious response .
Namely , there has been a centrist embrace of a superficial critique of the nuclear family ; this recuperation of supposedly “ anti-family ” discourse utterly defangs our tenets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what this new strain of nuclear-family critique actually calls for—and why it isn ’ t enough.12 There is a folksy sense in which nobody can disagree with the “ village ” line .
To be sure , any discussion of the blackmail , overwork , and scarcity that private households breed , as well as of the falsity of their claim to being autonomous organisms , is a good thing in my book .
Care-labor is always flowing into a home from myriad outside sources .
In a Slate article on parenting under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not Enough , ” one journalist astutely observed that “ the irony of the American nuclear family ideal , so near and dear to advertisers and politicians , is that having a kid usually teaches you that it ’ s not real.
” In The Guardian , soon after , another agreed : “ This pandemic has exposed the myth of the nuclear family , ” even as “ we have gone back to the ground zero notion ” that it exists.13 All right .
But who is this “ we ” ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” is more a disciplinary image ( an image of self-reproducing whiteness ) than it is a lived reality .
In fact , I sometimes give Full Family Now as an alternative title for my book , for this reason , and talk about “ the dialectic of real families against The Family ” —in particular , of colonized kin against the colonial state .
However , it is one thing to notice that what one had thought were supports—commodified and not—propping up one ’ s family are in fact integral to its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this disciplinary image elevates some lives while devaluing others , and therefore needs to be abolished.14 We can look to the expected places to see the human cost of government health departments ’ making a norm of the private nuclear household : to working-class and sex-working communities , queer and trans communities , and black communities , where children tend to circulate between homes in “ constellations.
” In The Nation , Dani McLain recently outlined how black co-parents are “ adapting self-quarantine guidelines to their own situations.
” Nevertheless , black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the pandemic , and the most violently brutalized by the police for defying stay-at-home directives .
The nuclear family is rarer in black America , partly because it does not support black thriving , having been explicitly installed in America ( as Hortense Spillers showed decades ago in “ Mama ’ s Baby , Papa ’ s Maybe ” ) to distinguish whites from chattel slaves , for white supremacist purposes .
During this 21st century pandemic , then , the very source of marginalized groups ’ survival in the wake of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across multiple homes—seems to have confounded the biopolitical rationality of the medical authorities , leading to institutional neglect , and a tragic body count.15 If the commentariat has a new penchant for criticizing the nuclear family , in most cases these criticisms are still animated by a structurally anti-black , no doubt unconscious contempt for forms of “ chosen family ” that eschew marriage ( rather than , say , weaving a web of civic relationships around a proper marital-genealogical core that can ensure “ prosperity ” ) .
In other words , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear family , ” carefully defined as a single-generational living unit ( rather than a property logic ) —the better to guard against more radical contestations of bourgeois reproduction .
In February 2020 , for example , The Atlantic published a 9,000-word feature by David Brooks , titled “ The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.
” The piece is a case study in marriage fundamentalism , offering lip service to “ forged ” kinships among tribes in Micronesia but ultimately making a litany of unwarranted excuses for the “ chaos ” of contemporary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. returned to the marriage rates of 1970 , child poverty would be 20 percent lower , ” Brooks avers , as though marriage were what makes children poor.16 Want to Dismantle Capitalism ?
Abolish the Family Brooks ’ s article mounts a plea for “ our ” ( implicitly white ) civilization to return to “ the extended family , ” based on marriage , for capitalism ’ s sake .
Americans in general became individualistic in the leftist ’ 60s , he contends ; consequently , they are nowadays leery of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family.
” He wishes his peers would stop being so hypocritical and stand up for the marriage-centric “ philosophy of family life ” they clearly harbor in their souls : “ Highly educated progressives may talk a tolerant game on family structure when speaking about society at large , but they have extremely strict expectations for their own families.
” But lest you detect any moralism at work , Brooks explains toward the end of his piece that he ( and , presumably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a “ forged family ” in D.C. , in that they participated in dinners organized by their friends Kathy and David ’ s nonprofit , All Our Kids Inc .
While the predictable paleoconservative feathers were ruffled by “ The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake ” —the only real point of contention being that title—the outpouring of admiration for it across the political spectrum has been copious.17 In a similarly revanchist opinion in The Washington Post , for example—positioned under the heading , “ The coronavirus might break the nuclear family .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing ” —a writer declared this April that “ Americans should reclaim the joys , advantages , burdens and pains of multigenerational living.
” Brooks himself endorsed this nostalgia for the time when “ sisters-in-law shouted greetings across the street at each other from their porches.
” 18 Let us not spend our energies trying to develop “ a progressive philosophy of family life.
” The ideology of the family can not , without exploding , stretch so wide that it encompasses , with equal dignity , the vast tapestry of human kinning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be experiencing local coronavirus lockdowns as a kind of loose , unevenly distributed form of house arrest requiring think pieces in praise of “ extended family , ” many indigenous , poor , unemployed , and working-class people are—by necessity , as well as by choice—pooling their resources , opening their homes to the houseless , forming home-schooling hubs and mini-crèches , and holding their bosses to ransom.19 With every act of Covid-era solidarity among strangers , with every expropriation of a hotel to shelter the evicted or the sick , every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it becomes clearer : “ Family values ” are not what ’ s called for in this situation .
“ Treat your neighbors as family ” is a popular and well-meaning sentiment ( it is also the slogan of David Brooks ’ s “ social fabric project , ” Weave™ ) .
It happens to be utterly wrong .
If we want to make it into the next century as a species worthy of the name “ human , ” we will have to do much better than that .
Be it as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political economy , or a metaphor , it is blindingly obvious : Family is failing us .
If anything , after Covid , we must never treat each other “ like family ” again .
We must treat each other , instead , with all the tenderness and responsibility due to strangers or , dare I say , comrades.20

Since the beginning of the coronavirus lockdown, the realities of both the human body’s interconnectedness and private property’s deathliness have become inescapable. Doctors in the before-time were already known, on occasion, to prescribe food, money, companionship, abuse-free shelter, or a holiday from housewifehood to their patients. Today, however, the concepts of reproductive justice, family inequality, compulsory domesticity, and the “right to the city” have taken on even more force, as officials instruct populations to maintain “social distancing” (from everyone… except family) and to “shelter in place” (in whose place? Your family’s).1
Let us briefly survey the scene. Abusers everywhere are battering and molesting their partners and young relatives in the privacy of their properties with increased impunity, since it is more difficult than ever, physically and financially, to flee a home. As with AIDS in the 1980s, the itinerant houseless, the sexually deviant, and the unconventionally housed are once again the object of public suspicion. Meanwhile, a huge proportion of households in the United States are either crowded or under-inhabited, even empty. The pathways of love and care-labor (paid and unpaid) running between them, were they to be diagrammed, would resemble an impenetrable web.2
But now, with urban movement so constrained, the already desperately limited legal frameworks of marital union and biogenetic “next of kin” (which are used to gatekeep hospital visits, triage the dead, determine custody, calculate life insurance, and allocate inheritance) are straining at the seams. There is no justice in these rules, which keep chosen kin from seeing one another, treat children like property, and shore up wealth (or poverty) within a class—which is not to say there is a quick fix.3
Finally, the interruption of global supply chains in the care and service economies is rubbing the classed and racialized character of capitalism’s division of reproductive labor in the global bourgeoisie’s unwilling face. Oblivious, a clutch of well-heeled white British feminists, working from home, have loudly asserted their feminist right to the labor of their cleaners.4
The wealthy everywhere, not only in the UK, have visibly come to the startled realization that the private nuclear household is a fantasy of universality, propped up either by the mutual aid of “othermothers,” or by an extractive hierarchy of outsourced wife-work. We have hence been treated to “critiques” of the nuclear family that pay mildly rueful homage to the modern “village” (as in, “It takes a village to raise a child”) and yearn for the labor of the subordinate villagers—the aunties, in-laws, cooks, and paid cleaners the woman of the house must now do without.5 Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Time to Think Big The Suburban Commute Is a Soul-Crushing, Environment-Destroying Invention Elie Mystal How to Survive an Apocalypse and Keep Dreaming Julian Brave NoiseCat A Call to Revolt Mike Davis
The principle that a child has only one or two real parents goes unchallenged, as does the principle that people should live in atomized car-dependent boxes, each kitted out with its own kitchen and laundry, with extremely few companions, ideally linked by some fiction of “blood” or biological identity. We can do better than these non-critiques. What the unfolding of Covid-19 in the United States makes more palpable, among other things, is that the family—as the property logic and mode of social reproduction central to capitalism—is killing us.6
Editors have been asking me to tell what might happen next. Could 2020 mark the beginning of the end of class society, via a perpetuation of the riotous nationwide insurgency currently underway for black lives, a general strike that gives rise to a giant archipelago of protest kitchens that, in turn, leads to the overthrow of exploitation, and the founding of a million co-housing projects, co-ops, and communes? Or will all the cleaners, nannies, carers, wet nurses, babysitters, gardeners, sex workers, cooks, au pairs, and chauffeurs move in with their employers, adding their names to the property deeds, the car insurance documents, the children’s birth certificates? Will children themselves advance their liberation, emancipating themselves in the name of chosen survival, and together develop their vision of democratic transgenerational cohabitation? Could a vast new federated institution of social care spring up—a crèche for people of all ages, perhaps—devoted to the principle that we are the makers of one another, and we can learn collectively to act like it?7 Current Issue View our current issue
Amid the turmoil of Covid, unsurprisingly, oracular thinkers of the home and household are suddenly in high demand. I have received a dozen requests myself, for comment on the future of domestic arrangements, post-pandemic. This is because, in March 2019, the leftist publishing house Verso Books launched my book Full Surrogacy Now, a call for “the gestational commune,” which I hoped might contribute to a revival of queer utopianism inspired by the Marxist rallying cry “Abolish the family.”8
Indeed, for several years now, together with a number of other trans-liberationist Marxists and mothers—notably Michelle O’Brien, Kate Doyle-Griffiths, Madeline Lane-McKinley, and Jules Joanne Gleeson—I have been doing my best to raise the profile again of that old dream “family abolition,” to clarify what it is and isn’t, and to restore the private (repro-normative or patriarchal) nuclear household to its proper place as the principal object of feminist and queer radical critique. And here, critique really means critique: recognition that the family as we know it is, simultaneously, an anti-queer factory for producing productive workers, rife with power asymmetries and violence, and the sole source of love, care, and protection against the brutalization of the police, the market, work, and racism, many of us have got.9
Our idea is to rethink presently existing family forms; this means, to quote O’Brien, “preservation and emancipation of the genuine love and care proletarian people have found with each other in the midst of hardship: the fun and joy of eroticism; the intimacy of parenting and romance.” As Sophie Silverstein clarifies in openDemocracy, “Thinking about organizing intimacy and care beyond the family is less about taking away safety and coziness than it is about extending those very same conditions to everyone regardless of how they live and love.” The goal is “a society where mutual nurturance and support are not dependent on a genetic lottery.”10
The effect of our efforts on the culture has been difficult to gauge. For my part, I was most surprised not by the antipathy but by the surprise that greeted our immodest proposal, in all but a few tiny pockets of the left. In the 19th century, as well as the sex-liberationist 1970s, to call for abolishing the family in favor of the classless poly-maternal commune was a common anticapitalist practice. In 1892, for example, Karl Kautsky was vexed that “one of the most widespread prejudices against socialism rests upon the notion that it proposes to abolish the family.” The extent of contemporary socialists’ institutional amnesia about this controversy, via the quashing of the radical imagination in the ’80s, is something I had underestimated.11
Yet, besides incredulity, ridicule, and heated opposition (some of it from the white-nationalist far right), the message of “feminism against the family” has also faced a more insidious response. Namely, there has been a centrist embrace of a superficial critique of the nuclear family; this recuperation of supposedly “anti-family” discourse utterly defangs our tenets. It’s important to identify what this new strain of nuclear-family critique actually calls for—and why it isn’t enough.12
There is a folksy sense in which nobody can disagree with the “village” line. To be sure, any discussion of the blackmail, overwork, and scarcity that private households breed, as well as of the falsity of their claim to being autonomous organisms, is a good thing in my book. Care-labor is always flowing into a home from myriad outside sources. In a Slate article on parenting under Covid titled “The Nuclear Family Is Not Enough,” one journalist astutely observed that “the irony of the American nuclear family ideal, so near and dear to advertisers and politicians, is that having a kid usually teaches you that it’s not real.” In The Guardian, soon after, another agreed: “This pandemic has exposed the myth of the nuclear family,” even as “we have gone back to the ground zero notion” that it exists.13
All right. But who is this “we”? I agree that “the nuclear family” is more a disciplinary image (an image of self-reproducing whiteness) than it is a lived reality. In fact, I sometimes give Full Family Now as an alternative title for my book, for this reason, and talk about “the dialectic of real families against The Family”—in particular, of colonized kin against the colonial state. However, it is one thing to notice that what one had thought were supports—commodified and not—propping up one’s family are in fact integral to its functioning. It is another to recognize that this disciplinary image elevates some lives while devaluing others, and therefore needs to be abolished.14
We can look to the expected places to see the human cost of government health departments’ making a norm of the private nuclear household: to working-class and sex-working communities, queer and trans communities, and black communities, where children tend to circulate between homes in “constellations.” In The Nation, Dani McLain recently outlined how black co-parents are “adapting self-quarantine guidelines to their own situations.” Nevertheless, black Americans are by far the hardest hit by the pandemic, and the most violently brutalized by the police for defying stay-at-home directives. The nuclear family is rarer in black America, partly because it does not support black thriving, having been explicitly installed in America (as Hortense Spillers showed decades ago in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”) to distinguish whites from chattel slaves, for white supremacist purposes. During this 21st century pandemic, then, the very source of marginalized groups’ survival in the wake of slavery—their counter-familial kinning strategies and generational overlap across multiple homes—seems to have confounded the biopolitical rationality of the medical authorities, leading to institutional neglect, and a tragic body count.15
If the commentariat has a new penchant for criticizing the nuclear family, in most cases these criticisms are still animated by a structurally anti-black, no doubt unconscious contempt for forms of “chosen family” that eschew marriage (rather than, say, weaving a web of civic relationships around a proper marital-genealogical core that can ensure “prosperity”). In other words, some pundits are now slamming “the nuclear family,” carefully defined as a single-generational living unit (rather than a property logic)—the better to guard against more radical contestations of bourgeois reproduction. In February 2020, for example, The Atlantic published a 9,000-word feature by David Brooks, titled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” The piece is a case study in marriage fundamentalism, offering lip service to “forged” kinships among tribes in Micronesia but ultimately making a litany of unwarranted excuses for the “chaos” of contemporary black family life. “If the U.S. returned to the marriage rates of 1970, child poverty would be 20 percent lower,” Brooks avers, as though marriage were what makes children poor.16 Related Article Want to Dismantle Capitalism? Abolish the Family Rosemarie Ho
Brooks’s article mounts a plea for “our” (implicitly white) civilization to return to “the extended family,” based on marriage, for capitalism’s sake. Americans in general became individualistic in the leftist ’60s, he contends; consequently, they are nowadays leery of losing their independence in wedlock and “less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family.” He wishes his peers would stop being so hypocritical and stand up for the marriage-centric “philosophy of family life” they clearly harbor in their souls: “Highly educated progressives may talk a tolerant game on family structure when speaking about society at large, but they have extremely strict expectations for their own families.” But lest you detect any moralism at work, Brooks explains toward the end of his piece that he (and, presumably, his wife) were long part of a “forged family” in D.C., in that they participated in dinners organized by their friends Kathy and David’s nonprofit, All Our Kids Inc. While the predictable paleoconservative feathers were ruffled by “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake”—the only real point of contention being that title—the outpouring of admiration for it across the political spectrum has been copious.17
In a similarly revanchist opinion in The Washington Post, for example—positioned under the heading, “The coronavirus might break the nuclear family. That wouldn’t be a bad thing”—a writer declared this April that “Americans should reclaim the joys, advantages, burdens and pains of multigenerational living.” Brooks himself endorsed this nostalgia for the time when “sisters-in-law shouted greetings across the street at each other from their porches.”18
Let us not spend our energies trying to develop “a progressive philosophy of family life.” The ideology of the family cannot, without exploding, stretch so wide that it encompasses, with equal dignity, the vast tapestry of human kinning. While the middle and upper classes may be experiencing local coronavirus lockdowns as a kind of loose, unevenly distributed form of house arrest requiring think pieces in praise of “extended family,” many indigenous, poor, unemployed, and working-class people are—by necessity, as well as by choice—pooling their resources, opening their homes to the houseless, forming home-schooling hubs and mini-crèches, and holding their bosses to ransom.19
With every act of Covid-era solidarity among strangers, with every expropriation of a hotel to shelter the evicted or the sick, every anti-deportation action, every prison protest, it becomes clearer: “Family values” are not what’s called for in this situation. “Treat your neighbors as family” is a popular and well-meaning sentiment (it is also the slogan of David Brooks’s “social fabric project,” Weave™). It happens to be utterly wrong. If we want to make it into the next century as a species worthy of the name “human,” we will have to do much better than that. Be it as a biologistic ideology, a fiction of political economy, or a metaphor, it is blindingly obvious: Family is failing us. If anything, after Covid, we must never treat each other “like family” again. We must treat each other, instead, with all the tenderness and responsibility due to strangers or, dare I say, comrades.20


thenation--2020-06-03--Could Covid-19 Mean the End of Asylum Law in the United States?

The decision to flee one ’ s country is never made easily , and leaving is rarely simple .
In northern Mexico , along the United States border , we ’ ve met Hondurans who spent years saving up the money to make the trip ; Salvadorans who walked for months ; Haitians who crisscrossed countries to make it to the border .
Every year , thousands of asylum seekers from countries like Russia , China , Romania , and India travel tens of thousands of miles to try to cross the border in northern Mexico .
One of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : We ’ ve met people escaping ethnic violence in Cameroon who flew into Quito , the mountainous capital of Ecuador , and then trekked hundreds of miles north through swamp and jungle to make it to the United States .
For almost all of the people who made this kind of journey but were unlucky enough to complete it in the past two months , their time in this country has lasted less than a few hours before they were summarily—and illegally—deported back into Mexico .
Since March 21 , the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the border , thousands of whom would have otherwise sought refugee protection .
In that same time , only two people were allowed to stay to seek asylum .
One of the earliest victims of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was the country ’ s refugee system .
On March 20 , the Trump administration announced a sweeping and unprecedented order : Instead of processing new arrivals for asylum , the Border Patrol was encouraged to deport them as rapidly as possible .
The United Nations said the decision was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and elected officials called the new policy a travesty .
The administration defended the move , claiming it was only a temporary , 30-day measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus .
But the rapid expulsion policy remains in place , almost two months later .
It has not yet been challenged in court .
While the administration has justified the end of asylum on the border as a necessary public health measure , it ’ s not hard to see the ways in which the pandemic is merely the pretext for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ From its earliest days , one of the Trump administration ’ s chief objectives has been overturning and circumventing US laws that were designed to protect refugees and people seeking protection , as well as unaccompanied children , ” says Eleanor Acer , the senior director of refugee protection for Human Rights First .
“ It ’ s now using the pandemic as yet another weapon to try to circumvent US asylum law.
” On May 13 , Human Rights First published a detailed report exploring the effects of the new effective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interviews with asylum seekers in Mexico and legal experts on both sides of the border .
The report found that the United States has forced over 1,000 unaccompanied children back into Mexico to fend for themselves ; it also discovered that many people have been kidnapped , raped , or assaulted once returned to Mexico .
The legal analysis was unambiguous : The expulsion policies “ violate U.S. asylum , immigration , and anti-trafficking laws , due process protections , and binding treaty obligations .
U.N .
Refugee Agency ( UNHCR ) legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency can not justify ‘ blanket measure [ s ] ’ blocking asylum seekers.
” Why , despite its clear illegality , has the total asylum ban remained in place ?
Scholars of immigration say the administration has capitalized on two things : the current crisis , and over 100 years of anti-immigrant propaganda casting immigrants as diseased .
Organizations that would typically challenge the law , such as the American Civil Liberties Union , are in disarray , as they deal with the shock of multiple emergencies and a pandemic that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ However , even after the intensity of the shutdowns and quarantines wear off , advocates worry that fears of “ diseased ” outsiders will make Americans—including those who otherwise support the institution of asylum—more willing to give up on refugee law : Foreigners will simply be seen as too dangerous to admit , no matter the circumstances .
Immigration policies have often become more restrictive in the wake of crisis .
After the September 11 attacks , refugee resettlement was briefly halted .
Less than a year after the attacks , two new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detain both unauthorized immigrants and asylum seekers : Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection .
Worldwide , the 2008 economic crisis and the 2015 European migrant “ crisis ” led to massively increased hostility towards migrants and the abrogation of EU obligations regarding migrants .
“ Crisis produces an instinct to close the border and keep people out , ” says Charanya Krishnaswarmi , Amnesty International ’ s advocacy director for the Americas .
But the Covid-19 pandemic might create long-term damage to refugee law in ways other crises have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mask xenophobia .
Even in the best of times , immigrants are seen by those seeking to limit immigration as a threat to “ our ” culture , “ our ” economic well-being .
Now , the risk of a deadly virus means the outsiders can be presented as an existential threat as well .
Historically , anti-immigration proponents have often used the threat of illness to justify calls to end both refugee protections and immigration .
An outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco ’ s Chinatown was one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ motivated Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 , which all but barred Chinese immigration .
On New York ’ s Ellis Island , European immigrants underwent medical exams and those deemed disabled or diseased were summarily deported .
Chinese immigrants , when they were able to make it to the United States at all , often fared far worse : In the first half of the 20th century , Angel Island , in the San Francisco Bay , was used to quarantine Chinese and other Asian immigrants , subjecting them to humiliating medical exams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prove they were free of parasites and diseases .
More recently , Stephen Miller , President Donald Trump ’ s chief adviser on immigration , has encouraged the president to play up fears of disease among Central American migrants to restrict asylum .
During the 2014 West African Ebola crisis , conservative Republicans—without any evidence—accused Mexican and Latin American migrants of bringing the disease over the southern border .
When two prominent migrant “ caravans ” arrived on the southern border last fall , one Fox News guest fanned fears that the Central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the country .
In the last two decades , across the world , political leaders seeking to limit immigration have found success in playing up public health fears , a strategy human rights scholars have studied for years , and which we call “ medicalized migration.
” Fears of both migrants and disease have led to the medicalization of borders on six different continents , with the implementation of medical examination , required vaccines , testing , and quarantine .
In the current crisis , these supposedly “ medical ” fears haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the United States moved to ban asylum seekers in the early days of the pandemic , hundreds of thousands of Americans were permitted to return from abroad , often through airports with little to no screening measures in place .
It goes without saying that medical measures such as quarantines and inspections are vital tools in the current pandemic , but doctors are clear that the implementation of such measures is useful only when guided by public health science and not politics .
As US citizens living abroad have flown home without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigrants and refugees have been subjected to draconian medical measures—a difference that betrays the administration ’ s politicization of medical responses to the pandemic .
The administration ’ s hesitance to place the same measures on citizens and noncitizens hampered its handling of the pandemic , wasting precious time that could have been used to help contain the virus .
This unequal and punitive application of medical screenings has therefore been just one more way the administration has botched its response to the virus , and may be one with the most lasting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic , travel restrictions to and from China became widespread , with some 96 countries instituting travel restrictions .
Now , almost 90 percent of the world ’ s population live in countries with some kind of travel restriction on travelers who are neither citizens nor residents .
Widespread testing on arrival and mandated quarantine or self-isolation measures have been implemented from Japan to Australia .
Although governments the world over have cited concerns about health and safety when announcing Covid-19 policies , they have clearly prioritized the health and safety of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries .
The suspension of asylum hearings in the United States , along with the continued deportation of migrants , and the refusal to shut detention centers , demonstrates a willingness to imperil the health and safety of noncitizens in the name of public health .
On April 21 , the president announced plans to “ temporarily suspend immigration into the United States ” in a move Democrats have called “ xenophobic scapegoating.
” Covid-19 has made tangible the parallels the president himself has drawn between migrants and disease , and given such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ migration reinforces this connection between immigrant and threat , while simultaneously buttressing the inequalities between citizens and noncitizens .
What does this mean for the future of refugee law ?
Human Rights First ’ s Acer , like other refugee experts we spoke to , suspects that the new , total asylum ban will last long after the coronavirus pandemic ends .
“ I expect they will fight to make it last as long as this administration , however long that is , ” she says .
“ The fear is these measures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ends , ” Krishnaswarmi , of Amnesty International , said .
However , even if asylum is reinstated on the southern border ( for instance , under a hypothetical Democratic administration ) , Acer worries that the pandemic-inspired exclusions policy might have already done significant damage to international refugee protections .
“ What I ’ m worried about now is how countries like Hungary and Turkey will be emboldened to further refuse refugees , ” she says .
The language of public health creates a convenient narrative for anti-immigrant zealots like Hungarian President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rhetoric with the language of medical necessity .
The Trump administration ’ s cynical use of the pandemic to further its anti-immigrant agenda is not unique : Far-right groups in Italy , Austria , France , and Germany have all drawn links between foreigners and Covid-19 in an attempt to pressure governments into more-discriminatory immigration policies .
With dwindling supplies of PPE and no vaccine in sight , such policies are likely to continue as governments and panicked populations face the economic and biological impact of reopening borders .
The existential threat of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation-state , at the cost of international human rights , as countries rush to fly their own citizens home while keeping others out .
This has produced a slow-moving crisis in the making : As devastating as the impact of Covid-19 has been on the Global North , its spread into the Global South threatens suffering on a scale not yet seen , and could fuel the next generation of mass movement out of Latin America and Africa .
Now , those seeking to escape the economic , social , and medical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come up against immigration policies unprecedented in their hostility and suspicion of foreigners .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The decision to flee one’s country is never made easily, and leaving is rarely simple. In northern Mexico, along the United States border, we’ve met Hondurans who spent years saving up the money to make the trip; Salvadorans who walked for months; Haitians who crisscrossed countries to make it to the border. Every year, thousands of asylum seekers from countries like Russia, China, Romania, and India travel tens of thousands of miles to try to cross the border in northern Mexico. One of the most established refugee routes starts further south: We’ve met people escaping ethnic violence in Cameroon who flew into Quito, the mountainous capital of Ecuador, and then trekked hundreds of miles north through swamp and jungle to make it to the United States.
For almost all of the people who made this kind of journey but were unlucky enough to complete it in the past two months, their time in this country has lasted less than a few hours before they were summarily—and illegally—deported back into Mexico. Since March 21, the Trump administration has sent over 20,000 people back across the border, thousands of whom would have otherwise sought refugee protection. In that same time, only two people were allowed to stay to seek asylum.
One of the earliest victims of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was the country’s refugee system. On March 20, the Trump administration announced a sweeping and unprecedented order: Instead of processing new arrivals for asylum, the Border Patrol was encouraged to deport them as rapidly as possible. The United Nations said the decision was illegal under international law; advocacy groups and elected officials called the new policy a travesty. The administration defended the move, claiming it was only a temporary, 30-day measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the rapid expulsion policy remains in place, almost two months later. It has not yet been challenged in court.
While the administration has justified the end of asylum on the border as a necessary public health measure, it’s not hard to see the ways in which the pandemic is merely the pretext for the order, not the motivation. “From its earliest days, one of the Trump administration’s chief objectives has been overturning and circumventing US laws that were designed to protect refugees and people seeking protection, as well as unaccompanied children,” says Eleanor Acer, the senior director of refugee protection for Human Rights First. “It’s now using the pandemic as yet another weapon to try to circumvent US asylum law.” Read Next The Other Epidemic Jack Herrera
On May 13, Human Rights First published a detailed report exploring the effects of the new effective asylum ban, with research based on interviews with asylum seekers in Mexico and legal experts on both sides of the border. The report found that the United States has forced over 1,000 unaccompanied children back into Mexico to fend for themselves; it also discovered that many people have been kidnapped, raped, or assaulted once returned to Mexico. The legal analysis was unambiguous: The expulsion policies “violate U.S. asylum, immigration, and anti-trafficking laws, due process protections, and binding treaty obligations. U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) legal guidance makes clear that a public health emergency cannot justify ‘blanket measure[s]’ blocking asylum seekers.” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Why, despite its clear illegality, has the total asylum ban remained in place? Scholars of immigration say the administration has capitalized on two things: the current crisis, and over 100 years of anti-immigrant propaganda casting immigrants as diseased.
Organizations that would typically challenge the law, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are in disarray, as they deal with the shock of multiple emergencies and a pandemic that is impacting their lawyers across the country. However, even after the intensity of the shutdowns and quarantines wear off, advocates worry that fears of “diseased” outsiders will make Americans—including those who otherwise support the institution of asylum—more willing to give up on refugee law: Foreigners will simply be seen as too dangerous to admit, no matter the circumstances. Current Issue View our current issue
Immigration policies have often become more restrictive in the wake of crisis. After the September 11 attacks, refugee resettlement was briefly halted. Less than a year after the attacks, two new militarized agencies were created to apprehend and detain both unauthorized immigrants and asylum seekers: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Worldwide, the 2008 economic crisis and the 2015 European migrant “crisis” led to massively increased hostility towards migrants and the abrogation of EU obligations regarding migrants.
“Crisis produces an instinct to close the border and keep people out,” says Charanya Krishnaswarmi, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Americas.
But the Covid-19 pandemic might create long-term damage to refugee law in ways other crises have not: Sickness provides a convenient pretext to mask xenophobia. Even in the best of times, immigrants are seen by those seeking to limit immigration as a threat to “our” culture, “our” economic well-being. Now, the risk of a deadly virus means the outsiders can be presented as an existential threat as well.
Historically, anti-immigration proponents have often used the threat of illness to justify calls to end both refugee protections and immigration. An outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown was one of the precipitating events that led to the racially motivated Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which all but barred Chinese immigration. On New York’s Ellis Island, European immigrants underwent medical exams and those deemed disabled or diseased were summarily deported. Chinese immigrants, when they were able to make it to the United States at all, often fared far worse: In the first half of the 20th century, Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay, was used to quarantine Chinese and other Asian immigrants, subjecting them to humiliating medical exams that included analyzing a stool sample to prove they were free of parasites and diseases.
More recently, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s chief adviser on immigration, has encouraged the president to play up fears of disease among Central American migrants to restrict asylum. During the 2014 West African Ebola crisis, conservative Republicans—without any evidence—accused Mexican and Latin American migrants of bringing the disease over the southern border. When two prominent migrant “caravans” arrived on the southern border last fall, one Fox News guest fanned fears that the Central American migrants would bring “leprosy” into the country.
In the last two decades, across the world, political leaders seeking to limit immigration have found success in playing up public health fears, a strategy human rights scholars have studied for years, and which we call “medicalized migration.” Fears of both migrants and disease have led to the medicalization of borders on six different continents, with the implementation of medical examination, required vaccines, testing, and quarantine.
In the current crisis, these supposedly “medical” fears haven’t been equally applied: Even as the United States moved to ban asylum seekers in the early days of the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans were permitted to return from abroad, often through airports with little to no screening measures in place.
It goes without saying that medical measures such as quarantines and inspections are vital tools in the current pandemic, but doctors are clear that the implementation of such measures is useful only when guided by public health science and not politics. As US citizens living abroad have flown home without so much as a temperature check, immigrants and refugees have been subjected to draconian medical measures—a difference that betrays the administration’s politicization of medical responses to the pandemic. The administration’s hesitance to place the same measures on citizens and noncitizens hampered its handling of the pandemic, wasting precious time that could have been used to help contain the virus. This unequal and punitive application of medical screenings has therefore been just one more way the administration has botched its response to the virus, and may be one with the most lasting effects.
In the initial phase of the pandemic, travel restrictions to and from China became widespread, with some 96 countries instituting travel restrictions. Now, almost 90 percent of the world’s population live in countries with some kind of travel restriction on travelers who are neither citizens nor residents. Widespread testing on arrival and mandated quarantine or self-isolation measures have been implemented from Japan to Australia. Although governments the world over have cited concerns about health and safety when announcing Covid-19 policies, they have clearly prioritized the health and safety of their own citizens over those of other countries. The suspension of asylum hearings in the United States, along with the continued deportation of migrants, and the refusal to shut detention centers, demonstrates a willingness to imperil the health and safety of noncitizens in the name of public health.
On April 21, the president announced plans to “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States” in a move Democrats have called “xenophobic scapegoating.” Covid-19 has made tangible the parallels the president himself has drawn between migrants and disease, and given such claims a veneer of legitimacy. Medicalized migration reinforces this connection between immigrant and threat, while simultaneously buttressing the inequalities between citizens and noncitizens.
What does this mean for the future of refugee law? Human Rights First’s Acer, like other refugee experts we spoke to, suspects that the new, total asylum ban will last long after the coronavirus pandemic ends. “I expect they will fight to make it last as long as this administration, however long that is,” she says.
“The fear is these measures will be in place long after pandemic ends,” Krishnaswarmi, of Amnesty International, said.
However, even if asylum is reinstated on the southern border (for instance, under a hypothetical Democratic administration), Acer worries that the pandemic-inspired exclusions policy might have already done significant damage to international refugee protections. “What I’m worried about now is how countries like Hungary and Turkey will be emboldened to further refuse refugees,” she says. The language of public health creates a convenient narrative for anti-immigrant zealots like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán to obscure racist and Islamaphobic rhetoric with the language of medical necessity.
The Trump administration’s cynical use of the pandemic to further its anti-immigrant agenda is not unique: Far-right groups in Italy, Austria, France, and Germany have all drawn links between foreigners and Covid-19 in an attempt to pressure governments into more-discriminatory immigration policies. With dwindling supplies of PPE and no vaccine in sight, such policies are likely to continue as governments and panicked populations face the economic and biological impact of reopening borders. The existential threat of Covid-19 has prompted a swift retreat to the nation-state, at the cost of international human rights, as countries rush to fly their own citizens home while keeping others out.
This has produced a slow-moving crisis in the making: As devastating as the impact of Covid-19 has been on the Global North, its spread into the Global South threatens suffering on a scale not yet seen, and could fuel the next generation of mass movement out of Latin America and Africa. Now, those seeking to escape the economic, social, and medical ravages wrought by Covid-19 are likely to come up against immigration policies unprecedented in their hostility and suspicion of foreigners.


thenation--2020-06-03--‘Justice Does Not Equal Convictions’

‘Justice Does Not Equal Convictions’

tlanta—Christian Wise Smith ’ s earliest memory of police is watching helplessly as officers arrested his mother when he was 5 years old .
Two years later , he witnessed his grandmother being strip-searched after she was caught shoplifting .
“ I grew up in the justice system .
I grew up seeing a lot of my friends and family destroyed by crime , violence , drugs , ” he told me over the phone in late April .
“ I know from personal and professional experience what will work to make us safer and better overall.
” On June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with seven years ’ experience as a prosecutor and a background in management and policy , will be on the ballot for district attorney of Fulton County , which Atlanta straddles .
He is the first progressive candidate in recent memory to run for the office .
His campaign represents the local touchdown of a nationwide movement that has seen progressive prosecutors winning elections on promises to steer their communities away from mass incarceration and the criminalization of people of color .
But Wise-Smith faces an unprecedented hurdle .
Georgia ’ s stay-at-home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three weeks when we spoke , and I was wondering how the shutdown would affect his campaign .
Local elections suffer from low voter awareness in the best of times .
During the pandemic , they ’ ve receded even farther from public consciousness .
How do you get the word out when you can ’ t knock on doors and shake hands ?
Smith ’ s Instagram page is full of selfies , his black beard and glasses framing a surgical mask as he plants campaign signs all over town .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He ’ s participated in Zoom candidate forums and livestreamed discussions with local hip hop artists , nonprofit leaders , and elected officials .
The stakes of the Fulton DA race are high .
“ It ’ s about the future of criminal justice in Atlanta , ” Jonathan Rapping , president of Gideon ’ s Promise , a public defender organization , said .
“ Atlanta suffers from all of the symptoms of mass incarceration .
If you walk into a courtroom in Fulton County Superior Court , you almost wouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breaking the law in Atlanta .
Everyone being sent to jail is poor .
And that ’ s under Paul Howard ’ s tenure.
” Howard , the incumbent , took office in 1997 , and has run unopposed in every election since 2004 .
He has maintained a tough-on-crime approach that has deepened racial disparities .
Perhaps the most egregious example is the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case .
Howard charged 35 educators with racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly changing students ’ answers on standardized tests : 34 were black ; white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never charged .
For the first time in the nation , educators accused of cheating were slapped with charges that carry decades-long sentences .
Seven years and millions of dollars later , that case is still playing out , as seven educators appeal convictions in perhaps one of the biggest boondoggles Georgia ’ s criminal legal system has ever seen .
The third candidate in the DA race , Fani Willis , was a lead prosecutor on the cheating case , and her politics hew closely to Howard ’ s .
“ Bullies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talked about his opponents and their role in the case .
“ RICO charges are for mobsters and gangsters , not teachers.
” “ It still hits a nerve , ” he said .
“ A lot of people felt that the justice system , and Paul Howard and Fani Willis specifically , abused their power .
People who committed violent crimes didn ’ t get the treatment that those educators got.
” A video he released on that theme is his most watched , with thousands of views across his social media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ending cash bail , a reform that officials across the country are increasingly embracing to try to level the playing field between poor people , who get stuck in jail awaiting trial , and wealthy people , who can buy their way out .
The County Jail and its annex have become chronically overcrowded , with deplorable conditions , prompting human rights groups to sue .
Covid-19 has made the situation worse .
In early April , Southerners on New Ground staged a protest demanding a mass release .
Women in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described being on lockdown with eight people to a cell , with overflowing sinks and toilets , and no masks , hand sanitizer , or soap .
In an e-mail , a spokesperson for the DA ’ s office said Howard recommend the release of more than 300 of the 2,600 people in Fulton County jail facilities .
Ultimately , Wise Smith said , this race is about the values behind the policies .
“ Justice does not equal convictions , ” is how he summed his up .
“ I want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people than conviction rates.
” That ’ s a major departure from the prevailing notion that a prosecutor ’ s job is to rack up guilty verdicts like home runs .
With 2.3 million people locked up nationwide , the need for a different approach is plain .
Now , protests are rocking Atlanta , along with dozens of cities across the country , sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis .
It has been an outpouring of rage matched by police aggression .
Alarmed by blazing police cars and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made an impassioned speech Friday night , imploring protesters to go home .
“ If you want change in America , go and register to vote , ” she said .
While national media declared Bottoms a rising star and possible Democratic vice presidential nominee , many of her constituents were angered by a directive that seemed to downplay the suffering underlying the protests .
Those will take more than an election to rectify .
For years , the over-policing of black communities in Atlanta has gone hand-in-hand with gentrification , which Bottoms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city council .
In the last mayoral election , many people affected by poverty and displacement rallied for a progressive candidate only to end up with two front-runners propelled by corporate backers .
When it comes to the Fulton DA , voters haven ’ t had a real choice for 16 years .
Protesters are rejecting the false dichotomy Bottoms presented between protesting and voting .
On social media , young people in Atlanta are expressing their intentions to do both .
When we caught up earlier this week , Wise Smith said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this moment will go further .
“ These riots are a response to generations of frustration and anger built up .
I echo the frustrations of people being told to just go vote .
I ’ m taking it a step beyond and actually running for office , and I encourage other people to do the same .
If we are frustrated with the only option that we have had , let ’ s be that next option.
” Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , offering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends .
Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
A tlanta—Christian Wise Smith’s earliest memory of police is watching helplessly as officers arrested his mother when he was 5 years old. Two years later, he witnessed his grandmother being strip-searched after she was caught shoplifting.
“I grew up in the justice system. I grew up seeing a lot of my friends and family destroyed by crime, violence, drugs,” he told me over the phone in late April.
“I know from personal and professional experience what will work to make us safer and better overall.”
On June 9, Wise Smith, an attorney with seven years’ experience as a prosecutor and a background in management and policy, will be on the ballot for district attorney of Fulton County, which Atlanta straddles. He is the first progressive candidate in recent memory to run for the office. His campaign represents the local touchdown of a nationwide movement that has seen progressive prosecutors winning elections on promises to steer their communities away from mass incarceration and the criminalization of people of color.
But Wise-Smith faces an unprecedented hurdle. Georgia’s stay-at-home orders had been in effect for about three weeks when we spoke, and I was wondering how the shutdown would affect his campaign.
Local elections suffer from low voter awareness in the best of times. During the pandemic, they’ve receded even farther from public consciousness.
How do you get the word out when you can’t knock on doors and shake hands? Smith’s Instagram page is full of selfies, his black beard and glasses framing a surgical mask as he plants campaign signs all over town. Some feature supporters expressing approval from a distance. He’s participated in Zoom candidate forums and livestreamed discussions with local hip hop artists, nonprofit leaders, and elected officials. Current Issue View our current issue
The stakes of the Fulton DA race are high. “It’s about the future of criminal justice in Atlanta,” Jonathan Rapping, president of Gideon’s Promise, a public defender organization, said.
“Atlanta suffers from all of the symptoms of mass incarceration. If you walk into a courtroom in Fulton County Superior Court, you almost wouldn’t know there are white people breaking the law in Atlanta. Everyone being sent to jail is poor. And that’s under Paul Howard’s tenure.”
Howard, the incumbent, took office in 1997, and has run unopposed in every election since 2004. He has maintained a tough-on-crime approach that has deepened racial disparities.
Perhaps the most egregious example is the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case. Howard charged 35 educators with racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly changing students’ answers on standardized tests: 34 were black; white teachers implicated in the initial investigation were never charged. For the first time in the nation, educators accused of cheating were slapped with charges that carry decades-long sentences. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Seven years and millions of dollars later, that case is still playing out, as seven educators appeal convictions in perhaps one of the biggest boondoggles Georgia’s criminal legal system has ever seen.
The third candidate in the DA race, Fani Willis, was a lead prosecutor on the cheating case, and her politics hew closely to Howard’s.
“Bullies,” Wise Smith said when we talked about his opponents and their role in the case. “RICO charges are for mobsters and gangsters, not teachers.”
“It still hits a nerve,” he said. “A lot of people felt that the justice system, and Paul Howard and Fani Willis specifically, abused their power. People who committed violent crimes didn’t get the treatment that those educators got.” A video he released on that theme is his most watched, with thousands of views across his social media channels.
Wise Smith is also committed to ending cash bail, a reform that officials across the country are increasingly embracing to try to level the playing field between poor people, who get stuck in jail awaiting trial, and wealthy people, who can buy their way out.
The County Jail and its annex have become chronically overcrowded, with deplorable conditions, prompting human rights groups to sue. Covid-19 has made the situation worse.
In early April, Southerners on New Ground staged a protest demanding a mass release. Women in the jail annex, they said, had described being on lockdown with eight people to a cell, with overflowing sinks and toilets, and no masks, hand sanitizer, or soap. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said Howard recommend the release of more than 300 of the 2,600 people in Fulton County jail facilities.
Ultimately, Wise Smith said, this race is about the values behind the policies.
“Justice does not equal convictions,” is how he summed his up. “I want to create a system that cares more about people than conviction rates.”
That’s a major departure from the prevailing notion that a prosecutor’s job is to rack up guilty verdicts like home runs. With 2.3 million people locked up nationwide, the need for a different approach is plain.
Now, protests are rocking Atlanta, along with dozens of cities across the country, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It has been an outpouring of rage matched by police aggression. Alarmed by blazing police cars and smashed storefronts, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms made an impassioned speech Friday night, imploring protesters to go home. “If you want change in America, go and register to vote,” she said.
While national media declared Bottoms a rising star and possible Democratic vice presidential nominee, many of her constituents were angered by a directive that seemed to downplay the suffering underlying the protests. Those will take more than an election to rectify. For years, the over-policing of black communities in Atlanta has gone hand-in-hand with gentrification, which Bottoms has championed since her days on the city council. In the last mayoral election, many people affected by poverty and displacement rallied for a progressive candidate only to end up with two front-runners propelled by corporate backers. When it comes to the Fulton DA, voters haven’t had a real choice for 16 years.
Protesters are rejecting the false dichotomy Bottoms presented between protesting and voting. On social media, young people in Atlanta are expressing their intentions to do both.
When we caught up earlier this week, Wise Smith said he hopes people who are galvanized in this moment will go further.
“These riots are a response to generations of frustration and anger built up. I echo the frustrations of people being told to just go vote. I’m taking it a step beyond and actually running for office, and I encourage other people to do the same. If we are frustrated with the only option that we have had, let’s be that next option.”
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, offering scenes from a pandemic—a series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends. Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.