thenation--2020-07-08--Why the US-China Rivalry Is Thwarting Transnational Solidarity

At a peaceful protest in Hong Kong in January , Keisha Brown saw few other Black faces amid the chanting protesters , colorful banners , and national flags from across the world .
Although Brown , a scholar focusing on Chinese history and Sino-Black relations , couldn ’ t understand many of the speeches or song lyrics , she was unexpectedly moved to tears .
“ It was powerful .
In Hong Kong and the US , people are fighting for their rights and pushing back on these political systems that are not functioning and asking : ‘ How do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brown , an assistant professor at Tennessee State University , comparing the Hong Kong protests to the Black Lives Matter movement .
As China imposes a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong and the Black Lives Matter protests enter into their second month , governments in Washington and Beijing have put the movements into conflict .
While protesters have made a few attempts to build transnational solidarity , the political struggle between China and the United States has largely stymied and subsumed these efforts .
Trump is increasingly using Hong Kong to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back against the national security law that could send activists to life in prison , the Trump administration announced that it will begin to strip Hong Kong of its special economic and trading status and will cancel visas for thousands of Chinese students .
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said the administration will restrict visas for Chinese officials responsible for “ undermining Hong Kong ’ s high degree of autonomy.
” Since the start of Hong Kong ’ s current pro-democracy movement last June , Republican and Democratic politicians have expressed their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act , which requires the State Department to deliver a report on the status of Hong Kong ’ s autonomy .
These policy interventions in Hong Kong come amid a broader confrontation against Beijing that spans diverse areas such as trade , media , and telecommunications .
In many cases , this China-versus-the-West campaign is part of a push for a Cold War–style foreign policy that hawkish politicians hope will consolidate US hegemony .
Conservatives like Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the forefront of these efforts .
Meanwhile , the Chinese government has used Black Lives Matter as evidence of America ’ s decline and to highlight the hypocrisy of US foreign policy .
It has also referred to US authorities ’ crackdowns on Black Lives Matter to justify its own violent response to protest .
In recent months , Beijing has launched a massive propaganda campaign on Chinese and international social media to extol China ’ s political and economic system and expose the American one as racist and unstable .
On June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ removing 23,750 active accounts for being part of “ coordinated information operations ” from China .
Shortly after the release of the video of a white police officer killing George Floyd , The People ’ s Daily , the Communist Party ’ s flagship newspaper , published a cartoon showing the Statue of Liberty cracking open to reveal a police officer kneeling on a crumbling , burning White House .
The editor in chief of China ’ s state-owned Global Times accused Hong Kong “ rioters ” of exporting violence and vandalism to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hua Chunying tweeted Floyd ’ s last words , “ I can ’ t breathe , ” while spokesman Lijian Zhao retweeted numerous posts accusing the United States of double standards , including one from UN Russian deputy representative Dmitry Polyanskiy asking : “ Why US denies China ’ s right to restore peace and order in HK while brutally dispersing crowds at home ?
” China has repeatedly claimed that Washington was behind the Hong Kong protests , with Hua last year asking America to “ withdraw their black hands ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are only a hypocritical cover for Western interference in Hong Kong affairs.
” Of course , this type of geopolitical one-upmanship is common between rival powers .
For years the US government has presented itself as the moral compass standing in opposition to China on various political and human rights issues from Tibet to the South China Sea .
And China has a history of accusing Western powers of interference and defending its abuses by pointing to Western foreign policy .
The West should fix its own backyard before criticizing China , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to maintain stability—or so Beijing ’ s narrative usually goes .
While the United States assumed a low profile on the issue of Hong Kong in the years of transition from British to Chinese rule , it has become outspoken on human rights in the territory since China ’ s rapid economic rise .
On the other side , despite China ’ s own problems with anti-Black racism , Beijing has long claimed to support the American civil rights movement .
In 1963 Mao Zedong condemned racism against African Americans and called for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which he tied to the global emancipation of Black people .
More recently , China has also sought to position itself in Africa as a nonracist , non-imperialist trade partner—an alternative to meddling Western powers .
While these dynamics are not new , they ’ re creating fresh challenges in Hong Kong and derailing solidarity efforts .
In Hong Kong , residents who attempted to hold a Black Lives Matter solidarity march in June drew the ire of some pro-democracy protesters , who criticized organizers for communicating with police about the event @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illegal unless they have been officially approved .
A demonstration about police brutality in the United States spiraled into a critique of the organizers—and the expat community some view them to represent—for turning a blind eye to state violence in Hong Kong .
The rally was canceled less than 24 hours before its planned start .
The White House ’ s support of Hong Kong ’ s pro-democracy protesters while it tries to quash the Black Lives Matter movement highlights the uneasy relationship between Trump and Hong Kong activists , who have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This may be true of a small number of Hong Kong protesters : After right-wing Australian politician Avi Yemini tweeted that the Hong Kong protesters should not be compared to Black Lives Matter activists , whom he characterized as “ violent thugs attacking innocent business owners , ” pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai thanked him for “ speaking up ” for Hong Kongers .
These complications , along with a general lack of understanding about the US civil rights movement among some Hong Kongers , has led to a muddled and muted response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some are opportunistically seeking superficial solidarity with Black activists , while others are distancing themselves from the looting and vandalism in the United States , despite similar actions by Hong Kong protesters in the past .
Such rhetoric and misunderstandings are preventing protesters in both places from recognizing the universality of their respective struggles .
The movements have much they can learn from each other , and participants could unite to create mechanisms of mutual support and fight together against global oppression and inequality .
The pro-democracy movement has always relied on international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beijing .
Protesters , for instance , court foreign governments by waving other country ’ s flags during protests and launching lobbying campaigns abroad .
But the pro-democracy movement has much to learn both practically and ideologically from Black Lives Matter , a campaign rooted in the civil rights movement and that has a rich history of resistance and abolitionist reimagining .
While Hong Kong protesters have begun to call for disbanding the police , establishing more intricate mutual aid networks , and harnessing the power of unions , Black activists have decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hong Kong protesters also need to confront racism within the movement and society at large .
Without that , Hong Kong ’ s activist community will never live up to the values of inclusivity it espouses .
Plus , with the passing of the national security law , activists say it is more crucial than ever for Hong Kong to strengthen transnational solidarities with other resistance groups .
The Hong Kong protests also have a lot to offer Black Lives Matter .
Although the latter does not depend on international support in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sustain momentum and form permanent structures that can challenge state authoritarianism—as well as reconcile issues of class and gender that threaten to divide participants .
In Hong Kong , protesters have waged year-long protests in the face of intensifying police brutality , arrests , and a pandemic .
They ’ ve done so largely by adopting a decentralized structure that uses social media platforms like LIHKG , similar to Reddit , and the encrypted app Telegram to manage a “ leaderless ” movement .
From the Umbrella Revolution , a 2014 push @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hierarchies can increase the visibility of leaders , leaving them vulnerable to prosecution , and result in power struggles that can fracture the movement .
When the current protests took off last year , many pledged unity above discord , and took to voting online to determine which actions to take .
This provided protesters on the ground with agency , while also creating accountability .
Through these platforms and citizen conferences , protesters have been able to hold transparent discussions and rein in those vandalizing , looting , or launching attacks for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a recognized government body to check the police , Hong Kong protesters have also taken it upon themselves to document and archive evidence of police brutality and record the names of possible minors who have been arrested .
Volunteer medics , translators , and others have stepped up to fill the gaps leftover by the state : servicing those hurt in protests , creating English-language materials for non-Chinese speakers , sourcing materials like masks from overseas , and circulating coronavirus-related information .
In addition to forming unions and holding strikes , they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circle , ” a set of businesses that support the protests , to throw money as well as momentum behind the movement .
Last year , efforts to publicize local elections also paid off , resulting in a landslide victory for pro-democracy parties .
There are lessons here that could be exported into the Black Lives Matter movement .
Last Wednesday , just after the law took effect in Hong Kong , Lausan—a collective sharing decolonial left perspectives on Hong Kong—held a rally in New York in solidarity with Black Lives Matter .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hong Kong protests—black clothes , face masks , and hard hats—about two dozen protesters chanted “ Black Lives Matter , ” and held yellow umbrellas as they marched under cloudy skies .
As the rally reached the Chinese consulate , Black socialist Robert Cuffy addressed the crowd through a speakerphone held by a Hong Kong protester .
He explained that both Chinese and Black workers have been exploited by the global capitalist economy and that activists need to work together to build a new society that focuses on addressing human need .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around the world is changing techniques , learning from each other , ” Cuffy said .
“ Well—we ’ re learning from each other too .
”

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At a peaceful protest in Hong Kong in January, Keisha Brown saw few other Black faces amid the chanting protesters, colorful banners, and national flags from across the world. Although Brown, a scholar focusing on Chinese history and Sino-Black relations, couldn’t understand many of the speeches or song lyrics, she was unexpectedly moved to tears.
“It was powerful. In Hong Kong and the US, people are fighting for their rights and pushing back on these political systems that are not functioning and asking: ‘How do we fix them?’” said Brown, an assistant professor at Tennessee State University, comparing the Hong Kong protests to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As China imposes a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong and the Black Lives Matter protests enter into their second month, governments in Washington and Beijing have put the movements into conflict. While protesters have made a few attempts to build transnational solidarity, the political struggle between China and the United States has largely stymied and subsumed these efforts.
Trump is increasingly using Hong Kong to escalate the US-China rivalry. To push back against the national security law that could send activists to life in prison, the Trump administration announced that it will begin to strip Hong Kong of its special economic and trading status and will cancel visas for thousands of Chinese students. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said the administration will restrict visas for Chinese officials responsible for “undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.”
Since the start of Hong Kong’s current pro-democracy movement last June, Republican and Democratic politicians have expressed their support for the protesters. Last November, Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which requires the State Department to deliver a report on the status of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Related Article The Infinite Heartbreak of Loving Hong Kong Wilfred Chan
These policy interventions in Hong Kong come amid a broader confrontation against Beijing that spans diverse areas such as trade, media, and telecommunications. In many cases, this China-versus-the-West campaign is part of a push for a Cold War–style foreign policy that hawkish politicians hope will consolidate US hegemony. Conservatives like Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have pushed the Hong Kong cause to the forefront of these efforts.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has used Black Lives Matter as evidence of America’s decline and to highlight the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. It has also referred to US authorities’ crackdowns on Black Lives Matter to justify its own violent response to protest. 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 Current Issue View our current issue
In recent months, Beijing has launched a massive propaganda campaign on Chinese and international social media to extol China’s political and economic system and expose the American one as racist and unstable. On June 12, Twitter disclosed that it was removing 23,750 active accounts for being part of “coordinated information operations” from China.
Shortly after the release of the video of a white police officer killing George Floyd, The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, published a cartoon showing the Statue of Liberty cracking open to reveal a police officer kneeling on a crumbling, burning White House. The editor in chief of China’s state-owned Global Times accused Hong Kong “rioters” of exporting violence and vandalism to American rallies.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” while spokesman Lijian Zhao retweeted numerous posts accusing the United States of double standards, including one from UN Russian deputy representative Dmitry Polyanskiy asking: “Why US denies China’s right to restore peace and order in HK while brutally dispersing crowds at home?” China has repeatedly claimed that Washington was behind the Hong Kong protests, with Hua last year asking America to “withdraw their black hands” and declaring that “democracy and human rights are only a hypocritical cover for Western interference in Hong Kong affairs.”
Of course, this type of geopolitical one-upmanship is common between rival powers. For years the US government has presented itself as the moral compass standing in opposition to China on various political and human rights issues from Tibet to the South China Sea. And China has a history of accusing Western powers of interference and defending its abuses by pointing to Western foreign policy. The West should fix its own backyard before criticizing China, and any unrest proves China’s need to maintain stability—or so Beijing’s narrative usually goes.
While the United States assumed a low profile on the issue of Hong Kong in the years of transition from British to Chinese rule, it has become outspoken on human rights in the territory since China’s rapid economic rise. On the other side, despite China’s own problems with anti-Black racism, Beijing has long claimed to support the American civil rights movement. In 1963 Mao Zedong condemned racism against African Americans and called for the end of US colonialism and imperialism, which he tied to the global emancipation of Black people. More recently, China has also sought to position itself in Africa as a nonracist, non-imperialist trade partner—an alternative to meddling Western powers.
While these dynamics are not new, they’re creating fresh challenges in Hong Kong and derailing solidarity efforts. In Hong Kong, residents who attempted to hold a Black Lives Matter solidarity march in June drew the ire of some pro-democracy protesters, who criticized organizers for communicating with police about the event. In Hong Kong, protests are illegal unless they have been officially approved. A demonstration about police brutality in the United States spiraled into a critique of the organizers—and the expat community some view them to represent—for turning a blind eye to state violence in Hong Kong. The rally was canceled less than 24 hours before its planned start.
The White House’s support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters while it tries to quash the Black Lives Matter movement highlights the uneasy relationship between Trump and Hong Kong activists, who have been accused of allying with far-right extremists. This may be true of a small number of Hong Kong protesters: After right-wing Australian politician Avi Yemini tweeted that the Hong Kong protesters should not be compared to Black Lives Matter activists, whom he characterized as “violent thugs attacking innocent business owners,” pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai thanked him for “speaking up” for Hong Kongers.
These complications, along with a general lack of understanding about the US civil rights movement among some Hong Kongers, has led to a muddled and muted response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Some are opportunistically seeking superficial solidarity with Black activists, while others are distancing themselves from the looting and vandalism in the United States, despite similar actions by Hong Kong protesters in the past.
Such rhetoric and misunderstandings are preventing protesters in both places from recognizing the universality of their respective struggles. The movements have much they can learn from each other, and participants could unite to create mechanisms of mutual support and fight together against global oppression and inequality. Related Article The American Left Is Failing Hong Kong Rosemarie Ho
The pro-democracy movement has always relied on international support to pressure the local government and Beijing. Protesters, for instance, court foreign governments by waving other country’s flags during protests and launching lobbying campaigns abroad. But the pro-democracy movement has much to learn both practically and ideologically from Black Lives Matter, a campaign rooted in the civil rights movement and that has a rich history of resistance and abolitionist reimagining.
While Hong Kong protesters have begun to call for disbanding the police, establishing more intricate mutual aid networks, and harnessing the power of unions, Black activists have decades of experience in exercising similar strategies. Hong Kong protesters also need to confront racism within the movement and society at large. Without that, Hong Kong’s activist community will never live up to the values of inclusivity it espouses. Plus, with the passing of the national security law, activists say it is more crucial than ever for Hong Kong to strengthen transnational solidarities with other resistance groups.
The Hong Kong protests also have a lot to offer Black Lives Matter. Although the latter does not depend on international support in the same way, it is now seeking to sustain momentum and form permanent structures that can challenge state authoritarianism—as well as reconcile issues of class and gender that threaten to divide participants.
In Hong Kong, protesters have waged year-long protests in the face of intensifying police brutality, arrests, and a pandemic. They’ve done so largely by adopting a decentralized structure that uses social media platforms like LIHKG, similar to Reddit, and the encrypted app Telegram to manage a “leaderless” movement.
From the Umbrella Revolution, a 2014 push for greater democracy, protesters learned that hierarchies can increase the visibility of leaders, leaving them vulnerable to prosecution, and result in power struggles that can fracture the movement. When the current protests took off last year, many pledged unity above discord, and took to voting online to determine which actions to take. This provided protesters on the ground with agency, while also creating accountability. Through these platforms and citizen conferences, protesters have been able to hold transparent discussions and rein in those vandalizing, looting, or launching attacks for personal gain.
In the absence of a recognized government body to check the police, Hong Kong protesters have also taken it upon themselves to document and archive evidence of police brutality and record the names of possible minors who have been arrested. Volunteer medics, translators, and others have stepped up to fill the gaps leftover by the state: servicing those hurt in protests, creating English-language materials for non-Chinese speakers, sourcing materials like masks from overseas, and circulating coronavirus-related information.
In addition to forming unions and holding strikes, they’ve also established a “yellow economic circle,” a set of businesses that support the protests, to throw money as well as momentum behind the movement. Last year, efforts to publicize local elections also paid off, resulting in a landslide victory for pro-democracy parties. There are lessons here that could be exported into the Black Lives Matter movement.
Last Wednesday, just after the law took effect in Hong Kong, Lausan—a collective sharing decolonial left perspectives on Hong Kong—held a rally in New York in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Dressed in the trademark outfits of the Hong Kong protests—black clothes, face masks, and hard hats—about two dozen protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” and held yellow umbrellas as they marched under cloudy skies.
As the rally reached the Chinese consulate, Black socialist Robert Cuffy addressed the crowd through a speakerphone held by a Hong Kong protester. He explained that both Chinese and Black workers have been exploited by the global capitalist economy and that activists need to work together to build a new society that focuses on addressing human need.
“We heard about how the ruling class around the world is changing techniques, learning from each other,” Cuffy said. “Well—we’re learning from each other too.”


thenation--2020-07-08--In Mississippi’s Covid Island, Trying Not to Get Wet

ackson , iss.—Before Covid-19 , I would travel around the country , listening to people ’ s stories as we walked their block , or plotted the “ beautiful next ” in some center or meeting room .
Now we are all in little boxes , trying to connect , trying to make it more human .
People with wild virtual backgrounds or cute hats .
It reminds me of freshman year moving into the dorms .
There you are with your teddy bears and your posters to make your room feel a little less like the drab , institutional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s crazy hard out here for so many of us .
Covid has shifted racism and inequity into hyperdrive .
Shuttered hospitals and limited testing in communities hardest hit .
The intentional delay in distributing “ stimulus ” checks to indigenous nations while slashing funds for health services .
A young Black woman tells me a story—from her box to mine—about how the white children in her trailer park , not far from Chicago , come by her family ’ s home to spit and chant , “ Covid is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were taught that our disproportionate death related to Covid is an opportunity for ethnic cleansing .
This is a season of wild contrasts .
The joyful exuberance of seeing our movements on the precipice of so many significant victories .
It ’ s beautiful .
I am breathless and giddy to live to see this moment that I had every confidence would come .
And I am also anxious , as the nation is riveted by global protests to address Black lives taken by police violence , that we have normalized the deaths @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victims of state violence but in a different form .
Police shootings are literally a gun to the head of Black America , while the government ’ s use of the pandemic to facilitate Black and Indigenous death is a full-on carpet bombing .
And although they don ’ t exhibit the glee of those children in the trailer park , much of government appears to be on the same team .
Food for Hard Times and Pleasure—Kimchee Out of Anything More in this series I ’ ve watched testimony in city councils @ @ @ @ @ @ @ require protective masks in public .
I ’ m struck by how often progressive frames are appropriated for conservative use : phrases like “ crime against humanity ” or “ human rights violation , ” along with the old tropes opposing public health protection as a matter of “ freedom.
” On May 19 , the birthday of Malcolm X ironically , Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves gave churches explicit permission to reopen .
They were never officially closed in Mississippi , but this bit of grandstanding was part of the governor ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right-wing faith base .
The governor insisted on lifting restrictions for businesses , too .
There were 535 new Covid cases and 42 deaths that day .
On June 22 there were 1,646 new cases and 40 deaths .
Progressive mayors had instituted public protection rules in an attempt to “ flatten the curve , ” but as Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said in a recent interview about the “ reopening ” of the state : “ It was clear that we [ Jackson ] are becoming an island .
And if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s hard not to get wet.
” On June 30 , with new cases spiking , the mayor announced that wearing face masks would be mandatory in the city .
Covid is revealing all of the cracks and fissures in our systems—of care , of connection , in our economy .
As cities like Jackson are left to fend for ourselves , Covid is also revealing how “ we keep us safe.
” In my South Jackson neighborhood , masked volunteers sweat under the Mississippi sun as they hand out food @ @ @ @ @ @ @ folks in line brave the heat hoping to be among the lucky ones to get a mobile Covid test before kits run out .
The volunteers are friends and neighbors who have stepped up as part of the Jackson Community Covid Response .
It ’ s a local coalition that includes Jackson State and Tougaloo College students ; organizing groups like Poor People ’ s Campaign , Mississippi One Voice , People ’ s Advocacy Institute , Mississippi Immigrant Coalition , Democratic Socialists of America , and Black Youth Project 100 ; neighborhood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Strong Arms of Jackson , MOVE Church , and Bad Boy Tree Services ; social service projects like Clean Slate Behavioral Health Collective ; and multimedia outlets like the local branch of Black With No Chaser , which has a popular podcast in the community .
This coalition is one of the hundreds of mutual aid networks springing up across the country to fill the gaps that the state refuses to address .
The work is hard , but it ’ s also adaptive , innovative , and generous .
There ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-related death as young and old die needlessly in prisons and detention centers .
There is also vision as organizers move progressive district attorneys to release “ nonviolent offenders ” by the thousands .
In Jackson , Mayor Lumumba enacted an agreement to end arrests for misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses that activists believe will keep hundreds out of jail .
Yet hundreds more languish in detention centers and jails throughout the state .
Activist Rukia Lumumba told me about a man bailed out by the Mississippi Bail Out Collective .
He had spent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he didn ’ t have $ 150 .
Thanks to the collective ’ s efforts , he is out now .
These are just a few examples of the silo-busting work on the ground that makes the connections between culture , policing , health , immigration rights , and so much more .
It ’ s a politics for our whole lives .
This work , these victories , are sunbursts in the midst of storms .
We breathe .
We listen .
We plot .
We dream .
And we remember that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ storm to make rainbows .
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
This series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , and appears 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.
J ackson, M iss.—Before Covid-19, I would travel around the country, listening to people’s stories as we walked their block, or plotted the “beautiful next” in some center or meeting room. Now we are all in little boxes, trying to connect, trying to make it more human. People with wild virtual backgrounds or cute hats. It reminds me of freshman year moving into the dorms. There you are with your teddy bears and your posters to make your room feel a little less like the drab, institutional rectangle it is.
The truth is, it’s crazy hard out here for so many of us. Covid has shifted racism and inequity into hyperdrive. Shuttered hospitals and limited testing in communities hardest hit. The intentional delay in distributing “stimulus” checks to indigenous nations while slashing funds for health services. A young Black woman tells me a story—from her box to mine—about how the white children in her trailer park, not far from Chicago, come by her family’s home to spit and chant, “Covid is a n***a killer!” These children were taught that our disproportionate death related to Covid is an opportunity for ethnic cleansing.
This is a season of wild contrasts. The joyful exuberance of seeing our movements on the precipice of so many significant victories. It’s beautiful. I am breathless and giddy to live to see this moment that I had every confidence would come. And I am also anxious, as the nation is riveted by global protests to address Black lives taken by police violence, that we have normalized the deaths of the many others who are also victims of state violence but in a different form.
Police shootings are literally a gun to the head of Black America, while the government’s use of the pandemic to facilitate Black and Indigenous death is a full-on carpet bombing. And although they don’t exhibit the glee of those children in the trailer park, much of government appears to be on the same team. Scenes From a Pandemic Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually Patricia J. Williams The Art of the Meal Mary Lewis Maybe We Shouldn’t Go Back to Normal Bri M.
I’ve watched testimony in city councils around the country against local ordinances to require protective masks in public. I’m struck by how often progressive frames are appropriated for conservative use: phrases like “crime against humanity” or “human rights violation,” along with the old tropes opposing public health protection as a matter of “freedom.”
On May 19, the birthday of Malcolm X ironically, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves gave churches explicit permission to reopen. They were never officially closed in Mississippi, but this bit of grandstanding was part of the governor’s pandering to support Trump in solidifying his right-wing faith base. The governor insisted on lifting restrictions for businesses, too. There were 535 new Covid cases and 42 deaths that day. On June 22 there were 1,646 new cases and 40 deaths. Progressive mayors had instituted public protection rules in an attempt to “flatten the curve,” but as Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said in a recent interview about the “reopening” of the state: “It was clear that we [Jackson] are becoming an island. And if you’re on an island, it’s hard not to get wet.” On June 30, with new cases spiking, the mayor announced that wearing face masks would be mandatory in the city. 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
Covid is revealing all of the cracks and fissures in our systems—of care, of connection, in our economy. As cities like Jackson are left to fend for ourselves, Covid is also revealing how “we keep us safe.” Current Issue View our current issue
In my South Jackson neighborhood, masked volunteers sweat under the Mississippi sun as they hand out food and toilet paper. Many of the folks in line brave the heat hoping to be among the lucky ones to get a mobile Covid test before kits run out. The volunteers are friends and neighbors who have stepped up as part of the Jackson Community Covid Response. It’s a local coalition that includes Jackson State and Tougaloo College students; organizing groups like Poor People’s Campaign, Mississippi One Voice, People’s Advocacy Institute, Mississippi Immigrant Coalition, Democratic Socialists of America, and Black Youth Project 100; neighborhood groups and businesses like Operation Good, Strong Arms of Jackson, MOVE Church, and Bad Boy Tree Services; social service projects like Clean Slate Behavioral Health Collective; and multimedia outlets like the local branch of Black With No Chaser, which has a popular podcast in the community. This coalition is one of the hundreds of mutual aid networks springing up across the country to fill the gaps that the state refuses to address.
The work is hard, but it’s also adaptive, innovative, and generous. There’s deep grief in the face of rising Covid-related death as young and old die needlessly in prisons and detention centers. There is also vision as organizers move progressive district attorneys to release “nonviolent offenders” by the thousands. In Jackson, Mayor Lumumba enacted an agreement to end arrests for misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses that activists believe will keep hundreds out of jail. Yet hundreds more languish in detention centers and jails throughout the state. Activist Rukia Lumumba told me about a man bailed out by the Mississippi Bail Out Collective. He had spent two months in a DeSoto jail because he didn’t have $150. Thanks to the collective’s efforts, he is out now.
These are just a few examples of the silo-busting work on the ground that makes the connections between culture, policing, health, immigration rights, and so much more. It’s a politics for our whole lives.
This work, these victories, are sunbursts in the midst of storms. We breathe. We listen. We plot. We dream. And we remember that it takes both the sunburst and the storm to make rainbows.
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.


thenation--2020-07-09--Not Catharsis but Vengeance: The Startling Fiction of Fernanda Melchor

Earlier this year , police on the northern outskirts of Mexico City encountered a grisly scene : A 46-year-old man , Francisco Robledo , was covered in blood , with the mutilated body of Ingrid Escamilla , a 25-year-old woman , laid out before him .
Activists across Latin America have been sounding the alarm about femicide since at least the mid-1990s .
In the past few years , however , the # NiUnaMenos movement ( from the phrase Ni una mujer menos , ni una muerta más— “ Not one woman less , not one more death ” ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women has reached staggering figures in the Americas .
In Mexico , the United Nations now estimates that 10 women were killed each day in 2019 , up from seven per day in 2017 .
For many activists in the movement , the focus of their ire encompasses not only the men who do the killing but also the society that sanctions such widespread violence against women .
Crucially , the question of how to see this violence is at the heart of the demand for justice .
In the case of Escamilla @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the decision by local newspapers to publish lurid images of her body accompanied by headlines like cupid ’ s fault , which frame Robledo ’ s violence as a twisted act of love , reducing his actions to nothing more than a romantic attachment gone terribly wrong .
In highlighting a single murder , the newspapers obscure the far less sensational—and far more terrifying—web of misogynist violence that envelops women .
When tens of thousands of women took to the streets a few weeks later , on International Women ’ s Day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ song that has spread from Chile across the world : “ El Violador Eres Tú ” ( “ The Rapist Is You ” ) .
The Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor ’ s debut novel , Hurricane Season , is the story of a woman killed by her lover .
At first , the book ’ s structure seems to match that of a police procedural , with each chapter circling closer to establishing motive , method , meaning .
But much like the activists , Melchor burrows so deeply into the circumstances of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raise much more discomfiting questions about the everyday—and intimate—nature of violence against women .
The novel ’ s language , deftly rendered into English by Sophie Hughes , matches the claustrophobic enclosure of a small town in rural Mexico , yet it crackles with expansive gestures to the outside world .
While Hurricane Season ’ s characters are trapped in place , stuck in repetitive cycles of violence and self-harm , malevolent forces—a raging mudslide , drug-and-people traffickers , the foreign companies who operate nearby oil wells—lurk just beyond the page .
Rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witness to this violence , however , Melchor ’ s virtuosic deployment of slang and bitter insults—of weaponized speech—transforms the violence of her novel and , by extension , the violence of femicide into what Cathy Park Hong calls “ an artwork of vengeance.
” Hurricane Season is a novel that refuses the call to come together , to overcome , to heal .
It insists on being heard .
Hurricane Season is set in the tiny town of La Matosa , which is all but swallowed by the surrounding sugarcane fields that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skinny state that lies along the Gulf of Mexico .
The air is thick and humid in La Matosa , its populace marked by the legacy of a devastating hurricane and a subsequent landslide that buried much of the town in the years before the novel takes place .
The town ’ s destruction , relayed in near-biblical terms by Melchor , did not result in a holy cleansing ; instead , the government has taken advantage of the tragedy to build a new highway connecting the recently discovered oil fields north of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , south of it .
Opportunistic outsiders begin to arrive , lining the highway with cheap bars , restaurants , hotels , and brothels .
Hurricane Season ’ s characters either work in these roadside establishments or they don ’ t work at all ; they are quite literally stuck between one place and another .
The novel opens with a discovery , “ the rotten face of a corpse floating among the rushes and the plastic bags swept in from the road on the breeze.
” The dead woman , known only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daughter of another Witch , a woman loathed , feared , and respected in equal measure by the town ’ s women , who sought out her herbal remedies and spells responsible , among other things , for having “ plucked so many seeds…from the bellies of bad women.
” But where her mother , who disappears in the aftermath of the hurricane , had scorned the men who wrought endless misery upon the women to whom she attended— “ all she did was talk shit , call them drunks and deadbeats , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —the new Witch wanders the endless fields after her mother ’ s death , “ paralyzed with longing ” by the appearance of young male workers .
These young men , fueled by the lukewarm beer , braggadocio , and thrumming cumbia blaring in the bars , eventually begin to venture out to her huge , unfinished house , where they “ fool around with the shadow who would wait for them each night.
” The boys receive not only sexual favors from the Witch but a few pesos too , part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planter her mother lived with .
One of these young men , Maurilio Camargo Cruz—known as El Luis Miguel , or Luismi—is spotted by his cousin Yesenia carrying a body out of the Witch ’ s house and into his stepfather ’ s van .
When she learns of the Witch ’ s murder the next day , Yesenia decides to turn in Luismi to the police .
Over successive chapters , we are introduced to Munra , Luismi ’ s alcoholic stepfather ; Norma , a teenage pregnant runaway who crafts a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whose seething sexual frustration sets the murder in motion .
Hurricane Season is broken up into eight sections , each with a distinct point of view .
Yesenia , Munra , Norma , and Brando ’ s chapters make up the novel ’ s heart , their stories relayed in a stunning feat of free indirect discourse .
Melchor shifts between tones , registers , and tenses effortlessly , striking an extraordinary balance somewhere between pure stream-of-consciousness and chatty conversationalism .
The style recalls Thomas Bernhard in its dexterity and vicious humor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single characters , Melchor continually breaks outside the confines of individual consciousness , pushing her characters to inhabit , if only briefly , the thoughts and lives of others .
The result is stunning , a tapestry of interwoven lives in which even the most righteous character is shown to be capable of enormous cruelty—and of suffering dearly for it .
Melchor ’ s language hems the reader in with an unspooling , unforgiving wall of text that relies minimally on periods and not at all on paragraph breaks .
Her prose unfolds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the thoughts and speech of a wide range of characters .
She pushes the language to a place of extremity , her astonishing arsenal of bitter insults and slang perfectly capturing a time and place while also serving as a continual reminder of the impossibility of rendering horror and violence into “ polite ” speech .
The “ right ” words might fail us , and they might fail the characters in the book , but they never fail Melchor .
Hughes ’ s translation is excellent , swift and sure-footed as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rhythm and structure of Melchor ’ s fervid prose .
Yet reading the novel in English , one is reminded again and again of the relative impoverishment of Standard English when compared with Melchor ’ s loamy Veracruz slang .
All the “ fucks ” and “ sluts ” and “ assholes ” in the world can not possibly hope to match her devastating linguistic pyrotechnics .
A “ devil child ” is simply not the same thing as a “ pinche jija del diablo.
” Still , the combined effect in either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nightmare-inducing , and extraordinarily clear-eyed account of the ordinary horrors men inflict upon women .
Melchor refuses to look away , refuses to indulge in fantasy or levity—even in the moments when the novel is laugh-out-loud funny .
And lest the far-off reader think the horror is contained to the lives of others , Melchor repeatedly threads the reminders of the long reach of these crimes—and their causes—throughout the narrative .
The trucks that rumble past La Matosa and the oil fields to the north ferry drugs and people to the US border @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The name given to the local narcos , grupo sombra ( the shadow group ) , evokes the ever-present , haunting nature of violence—how what happens in a tiny town in a sleepy corner of Mexico belongs to people everywhere .
Hurricane Season is the latest work by a contemporary writer to take on the demand to look beyond individual crimes and see instead the broader failures that are killing women across Latin America .
This demand has animated the # NiUnaMenos movement since its origin in Ciudad Juárez in the mid-1990s , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the area were found murdered or disappeared .
The femicides in Juárez—which were , then as now , accompanied by half-hearted ( at best ) police and judicial investigations—spurred the work of Sergio González Rodríguez , a journalist and novelist whose investigation into the local government ’ s laughable claim that a single serial killer was responsible for the killings quickly spun out into a much larger and grimmer story that suggested hundreds of killers to match the hundreds of deaths .
As Marcela Valdes wrote in these pages , Roberto Bolaño transformed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dark heart of his masterpiece 2666 ; the novel ’ s third section is a long litany of the dead , written in a dry , forensic style that both mimics the tone of police investigations and points to their utter futility when facing a crime of such magnitude and scope .
Both writers ’ work deals with the central contradiction at the heart of the murders : The public spectacle of each murder tends to obscure the larger story behind it .
González Rodríguez ’ s reporting led him , over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highest levels of the Mexican government , fueled by the drug and arms trade with the United States and the liberalization of the economy under NAFTA .
Bolaño ’ s work led to one of the most celebrated epic novels of recent memory .
Both writers , in telling this story , sought to paint a wide , devouring picture , to push beyond the limits of a single case and into a society-wide indictment .
Both eschew writing about or identifying with “ the killer ” —the individual who pulled the trigger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scale and scope of the crimes , gesturing to the horror vacui that lies at the heart of capitalism .
Yet this is not the only way to tell such a story .
Susana Chávez , a Juárez-based poet , had long participated in the social movement demanding justice for the murdered women in her hometown .
Chávez , in fact , is responsible for coining the phrase Ni una mujer menos , ni una muerta más , helping to name the mass movement that soon spread across Central and South America .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ accounts of the murders led to international accolades , Chávez ’ s writing and work received outside recognition only in 2011—when she was murdered by a man .
Melchor blends these approaches in writing a novel that speaks to the intimacy of so much violence , to how close it lies .
Unlike the newspaper that reports on femicide as a “ lover ’ s quarrel ” as a way to deflect responsibility , however , she highlights violence ’ s proximity to love as a way to show the horror that takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and familial structures meant to represent warmth , happiness , love .
There is no peace to be found in Hurricane Season , no relief afforded the reader , no happy ending for the survivors .
What Melchor offers instead is something more along the lines of what Paul Celan accomplished in his poetry written after the Holocaust—as Cathy Park Hong describes it , not catharsis but vengeance .
In an interview after Hurricane Season was released in Mexico , Melchor described literature as trench warfare : If the newspapers insisted on describing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , transformed by love into something evil , she would write a book revealing the everyday monstrousness of violence .
Noting the fact that a motive is never established for the Witch ’ s murder , Melchor stated that for many men , femicide is often a form of “ rebellion , ” a reaction to “ accumulated rage ” and dispossession .
The women , in this formulation , just so happen to be the ones standing nearby .
In the aftermath of the murder , Melchor turns to these women—or at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In Hurricane Season ’ s penultimate chapter , they gather and talk , “ telling stories with one eye to the sky , ” reading their environment for signs of further looming violence .
The Witch ’ s house lies empty , ransacked by the boys who killed her and then the police who extracted the boys ’ confessions through torture .
The only thing left , the women say , is “ a searing pain that refuses to go away.
” This refusal to go away , to stay quiet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lasting gift to the reader .
It is a reminder that the wound is there and that it belongs to us , whether we choose to acknowledge it or not .

Earlier this year, police on the northern outskirts of Mexico City encountered a grisly scene: A 46-year-old man, Francisco Robledo, was covered in blood, with the mutilated body of Ingrid Escamilla, a 25-year-old woman, laid out before him. Books in Review Hurricane Season By Fernanda Melchor; Translated by Sophie Hughes Buy this book
Activists across Latin America have been sounding the alarm about femicide since at least the mid-1990s. In the past few years, however, the #NiUnaMenos movement (from the phrase Ni una mujer menos, ni una muerta más—“Not one woman less, not one more death”) has increased in urgency as violence against women has reached staggering figures in the Americas. In Mexico, the United Nations now estimates that 10 women were killed each day in 2019, up from seven per day in 2017.
For many activists in the movement, the focus of their ire encompasses not only the men who do the killing but also the society that sanctions such widespread violence against women. Crucially, the question of how to see this violence is at the heart of the demand for justice. In the case of Escamilla’s murder, activists quickly mobilized against the decision by local newspapers to publish lurid images of her body accompanied by headlines like cupid’s fault, which frame Robledo’s violence as a twisted act of love, reducing his actions to nothing more than a romantic attachment gone terribly wrong. In highlighting a single murder, the newspapers obscure the far less sensational—and far more terrifying—web of misogynist violence that envelops women. When tens of thousands of women took to the streets a few weeks later, on International Women’s Day, many of them sang the protest song that has spread from Chile across the world: “El Violador Eres Tú” (“The Rapist Is You”).
The Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor’s recent novel, Hurricane Season, is the story of a woman killed by her lover. At first, the book’s structure seems to match that of a police procedural, with each chapter circling closer to establishing motive, method, meaning. But much like the activists, Melchor burrows so deeply into the circumstances of the murder as to shatter them and raise much more discomfiting questions about the everyday—and intimate—nature of violence against women.
The novel’s language, deftly rendered into English by Sophie Hughes, matches the claustrophobic enclosure of a small town in rural Mexico, yet it crackles with expansive gestures to the outside world. While Hurricane Season’s characters are trapped in place, stuck in repetitive cycles of violence and self-harm, malevolent forces—a raging mudslide, drug-and-people traffickers, the foreign companies who operate nearby oil wells—lurk just beyond the page. 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
Rather than a simple testimonial or act of witness to this violence, however, Melchor’s virtuosic deployment of slang and bitter insults—of weaponized speech—transforms the violence of her novel and, by extension, the violence of femicide into what Cathy Park Hong calls “an artwork of vengeance.” Hurricane Season is a novel that refuses the call to come together, to overcome, to heal. It insists on being heard.
Hurricane Season is set in the tiny town of La Matosa, which is all but swallowed by the surrounding sugarcane fields that line a valley in Veracrúz, the skinny state that lies along the Gulf of Mexico. The air is thick and humid in La Matosa, its populace marked by the legacy of a devastating hurricane and a subsequent landslide that buried much of the town in the years before the novel takes place.
The town’s destruction, relayed in near-biblical terms by Melchor, did not result in a holy cleansing; instead, the government has taken advantage of the tragedy to build a new highway connecting the recently discovered oil fields north of town with the capital city, Xalapa, south of it. Opportunistic outsiders begin to arrive, lining the highway with cheap bars, restaurants, hotels, and brothels. Hurricane Season’s characters either work in these roadside establishments or they don’t work at all; they are quite literally stuck between one place and another.
The novel opens with a discovery, “the rotten face of a corpse floating among the rushes and the plastic bags swept in from the road on the breeze.” The dead woman, known only as the Witch, is the transgender daughter of another Witch, a woman loathed, feared, and respected in equal measure by the town’s women, who sought out her herbal remedies and spells responsible, among other things, for having “plucked so many seeds…from the bellies of bad women.”
But where her mother, who disappears in the aftermath of the hurricane, had scorned the men who wrought endless misery upon the women to whom she attended—“all she did was talk shit, call them drunks and deadbeats, a pack of dogs, shameless pigs”—the new Witch wanders the endless fields after her mother’s death, “paralyzed with longing” by the appearance of young male workers. These young men, fueled by the lukewarm beer, braggadocio, and thrumming cumbia blaring in the bars, eventually begin to venture out to her huge, unfinished house, where they “fool around with the shadow who would wait for them each night.” The boys receive not only sexual favors from the Witch but a few pesos too, part of the mysterious inheritance from the wealthy planter her mother lived with.
One of these young men, Maurilio Camargo Cruz—known as El Luis Miguel, or Luismi—is spotted by his cousin Yesenia carrying a body out of the Witch’s house and into his stepfather’s van. When she learns of the Witch’s murder the next day, Yesenia decides to turn in Luismi to the police. Over successive chapters, we are introduced to Munra, Luismi’s alcoholic stepfather; Norma, a teenage pregnant runaway who crafts a fragile love with Luismi; and Brando, whose seething sexual frustration sets the murder in motion. Related Article Transfixing and Repellent: Susan Steinberg’s Fictions of Insidious Masculinity Kyle Paoletta
Hurricane Season is broken up into eight sections, each with a distinct point of view. Yesenia, Munra, Norma, and Brando’s chapters make up the novel’s heart, their stories relayed in a stunning feat of free indirect discourse. Melchor shifts between tones, registers, and tenses effortlessly, striking an extraordinary balance somewhere between pure stream-of-consciousness and chatty conversationalism. The style recalls Thomas Bernhard in its dexterity and vicious humor, but where Bernhard offers vivisections of single characters, Melchor continually breaks outside the confines of individual consciousness, pushing her characters to inhabit, if only briefly, the thoughts and lives of others. The result is stunning, a tapestry of interwoven lives in which even the most righteous character is shown to be capable of enormous cruelty—and of suffering dearly for it.
Melchor’s language hems the reader in with an unspooling, unforgiving wall of text that relies minimally on periods and not at all on paragraph breaks. Her prose unfolds in great looping circles, relentlessly tracking the thoughts and speech of a wide range of characters. She pushes the language to a place of extremity, her astonishing arsenal of bitter insults and slang perfectly capturing a time and place while also serving as a continual reminder of the impossibility of rendering horror and violence into “polite” speech. The “right” words might fail us, and they might fail the characters in the book, but they never fail Melchor.
Hughes’s translation is excellent, swift and sure-footed as it takes on the challenges posed by the rhythm and structure of Melchor’s fervid prose. Yet reading the novel in English, one is reminded again and again of the relative impoverishment of Standard English when compared with Melchor’s loamy Veracruz slang. All the “fucks” and “sluts” and “assholes” in the world cannot possibly hope to match her devastating linguistic pyrotechnics. A “devil child” is simply not the same thing as a “pinche jija del diablo.”
Still, the combined effect in either language is a stomach-churning, molar-grinding, nightmare-inducing, and extraordinarily clear-eyed account of the ordinary horrors men inflict upon women. Melchor refuses to look away, refuses to indulge in fantasy or levity—even in the moments when the novel is laugh-out-loud funny. And lest the far-off reader think the horror is contained to the lives of others, Melchor repeatedly threads the reminders of the long reach of these crimes—and their causes—throughout the narrative. The trucks that rumble past La Matosa and the oil fields to the north ferry drugs and people to the US border and return with shipments of guns. The name given to the local narcos, grupo sombra (the shadow group), evokes the ever-present, haunting nature of violence—how what happens in a tiny town in a sleepy corner of Mexico belongs to people everywhere.
Hurricane Season is the latest work by a contemporary writer to take on the demand to look beyond individual crimes and see instead the broader failures that are killing women across Latin America. This demand has animated the #NiUnaMenos movement since its origin in Ciudad Juárez in the mid-1990s, when hundreds of female factory workers in the area were found murdered or disappeared. The femicides in Juárez—which were, then as now, accompanied by half-hearted (at best) police and judicial investigations—spurred the work of Sergio González Rodríguez, a journalist and novelist whose investigation into the local government’s laughable claim that a single serial killer was responsible for the killings quickly spun out into a much larger and grimmer story that suggested hundreds of killers to match the hundreds of deaths. As Marcela Valdes wrote in these pages, Roberto Bolaño transformed González Rodríguez’s reporting into the dark heart of his masterpiece 2666; the novel’s third section is a long litany of the dead, written in a dry, forensic style that both mimics the tone of police investigations and points to their utter futility when facing a crime of such magnitude and scope.
Both writers’ work deals with the central contradiction at the heart of the murders: The public spectacle of each murder tends to obscure the larger story behind it. González Rodríguez’s reporting led him, over the years, to uncover corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government, fueled by the drug and arms trade with the United States and the liberalization of the economy under NAFTA. Bolaño’s work led to one of the most celebrated epic novels of recent memory. Both writers, in telling this story, sought to paint a wide, devouring picture, to push beyond the limits of a single case and into a society-wide indictment. Both eschew writing about or identifying with “the killer”—the individual who pulled the trigger or thrust the knife—instead tracing the vast scale and scope of the crimes, gesturing to the horror vacui that lies at the heart of capitalism.
Yet this is not the only way to tell such a story. Susana Chávez, a Juárez-based poet, had long participated in the social movement demanding justice for the murdered women in her hometown. Chávez, in fact, is responsible for coining the phrase Ni una mujer menos, ni una muerta más, helping to name the mass movement that soon spread across Central and South America. And unlike her male peers, whose accounts of the murders led to international accolades, Chávez’s writing and work received outside recognition only in 2011—when she was murdered by a man.
Melchor blends these approaches in writing a novel that speaks to the intimacy of so much violence, to how close it lies. Unlike the newspaper that reports on femicide as a “lover’s quarrel” as a way to deflect responsibility, however, she highlights violence’s proximity to love as a way to show the horror that takes place behind closed doors, in societal and familial structures meant to represent warmth, happiness, love.
There is no peace to be found in Hurricane Season, no relief afforded the reader, no happy ending for the survivors. What Melchor offers instead is something more along the lines of what Paul Celan accomplished in his poetry written after the Holocaust—as Cathy Park Hong describes it, not catharsis but vengeance.
In an interview after Hurricane Season was released in Mexico, Melchor described literature as trench warfare: If the newspapers insisted on describing men who kill women as aberrant monsters, transformed by love into something evil, she would write a book revealing the everyday monstrousness of violence. Noting the fact that a motive is never established for the Witch’s murder, Melchor stated that for many men, femicide is often a form of “rebellion,” a reaction to “accumulated rage” and dispossession. The women, in this formulation, just so happen to be the ones standing nearby.
In the aftermath of the murder, Melchor turns to these women—or at least to the ones who have survived. In Hurricane Season’s penultimate chapter, they gather and talk, “telling stories with one eye to the sky,” reading their environment for signs of further looming violence. The Witch’s house lies empty, ransacked by the boys who killed her and then the police who extracted the boys’ confessions through torture. The only thing left, the women say, is “a searing pain that refuses to go away.”
This refusal to go away, to stay quiet, to disappear, is Melchor’s lasting gift to the reader. It is a reminder that the wound is there and that it belongs to us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.


thenation--2020-07-09--What It Means When You Wear a Mask—and When You Refuse To

Covid-19 spread is accelerating across the country .
In states as politically divergent as Texas , Oregon , Florida , California , and Arizona , daily case counts are soaring and test positivity rates are up—indicators that portend the grave possibility of an ensuing increase in Covid-19-related deaths .
And yet , some people are still refusing to mask .
At a time when other nations , even those with fewer resources and larger populations , are taking elaborate measures to control the spread of Covid-19 , some Americans refuse even the most rudimentary precautions , exposing themselves and others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is partly why the United States now boasts the highest number of Covid-19 cases and more than a quarter of global deaths .
But anti-maskers are not just a reflection of governmental or personal apathy toward pandemics .
They reveal a deeper antipathy that is worth exploring .
When the president or vice president refuses to wear a mask that protects others , in a pandemic known to disproportionately kill Black and Latinx populations , masks are not only being politicized .
They are also being racialized or used to further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crowds of largely unmasked protesters , some armed , take to statehouses to rally against the most basic public health advice—or refuse to mask while shopping—they are not just signaling their political affiliations .
They are also performing their racial dominance , manifest , in this case , as selective exemption from the imposition of governmental control .
And while protesters in states like Texas , where case counts have now reached record highs , declare that “ Bar Lives Matter , ” at a time when others are marching to confront the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives , they evidence more than a difference in priorities .
They are illustrating a certain disdain .
This is how racialization works .
It assigns risks and rewards to racial or ethnic groups and engages political processes to enshrine those inequalities in laws .
In this way , opposition to public health interventions , like masking , have also become a material manifestation of America ’ s racism , particularly anti-Black racism .
Some of the most insidious and harmful manifestations of anti-Black racism are laws and policies that codify the separation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outside conceptions of who is deemed “ the public.
” This dehumanizing practice is often done to place Black people outside the shared benefits of collective , public investments .
Thus “ the public ” becomes coded as white , and public investments empower , privilege , normalize , and favor predominantly white neighborhoods , schools , and workplaces .
This undermines the mutuality all public goods depend on for efficacy , and ultimately , places the entire population , not just Black people , at greater risk .
Because the root of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exclude Black folks from the security of public supports also erode the structures on which everyone relies .
For example , anchoring notions of “ public safety ” in militarized police powers and outsize police budgets doesn ’ t just contribute to greater violence against populations of color , particularly Black people .
It enables violence against all civilians , limits available resources for critical public services like infrastructure and education , and corrodes public trust in vital systems like health care .
Similarly , while distorting notions of “ public benefits ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threatens access to those benefits for certain groups , it also reduces support for universal public programs like Medicaid .
This is a historical pattern .
When pandemics strike , state violence and neglect are used to racialize death and disease , shape public conceptions of risk , propagate notions of scarcity , and distribute resources in ways that widen racial inequities .
This is what occurred in cities like Chicago during the “ Spanish ” influenza .
And it is what is occurring across the United States right now .
A stark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid risk .
And as this pandemic intensifies and the racial gaps in its impact widen , efforts to skirt public precautions like masking seem to closely follow .
In April , a Pew research study found that Latinx and Black adults are far more concerned about Covid hospitalization and unwitting spread than white adults .
This racial divergence may arise , in part , from early messaging that attributed risks for Covid-19 to race , underlying illness , and age .
Many of these messages have since been clarified .
Public health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race , as a major risk factor for Covid-19 racial health inequities .
They have reported the links between social conditions , environmental racism , and underlying disease that likely render populations , particularly communities of color , at risk for Covid-19 complications .
And they have identified the greatest racial gaps in Covid-19 mortality rates not among the elderly , but rather between Black and white Americans aged 34–45 .
Yet despite these shifts in understanding , Covid-19 risks and dangers continue to be inaccurately assigned to racial or ethnic groups , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain racial or ethnic groups at greatest risk unacknowledged , underfunded—and ultimately unaddressed .
These are the enormous consequences of racializing public health .
Because while some may choose not to mask out of inconvenience or ignorance , the harrowing effects remain the same .
At this point , some families have lost multiple members ; unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression ; and restrictions on gatherings prevent many from fully grieving their losses .
Yet , month after month , as this pandemic rages on unchecked , unmasked protest continues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who—unlike the vice president , who has since supported masking—continues to stoke opposition while appealing to the iconography of white supremacy , despite its ’ placing his base , and as a result , everyone in the country , at greater risk of disease and death .
Even Twitter sarcastically announced that it will finally allow its users the long-requested ability to edit tweets—but only when “ everyone wears a mask.
” And this is where the United States may continue to fail .
The enforcement of public health ordinances resurrects age-old tensions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and public investment .
This fight has never been race-neutral .
In a country built on a political economy that racially orders rights and resources , life and liberty have always been racially distributed as well .
Dependence on that racialization is the root of our nation ’ s greatest inequalities , and it may continue to render every one of us , all the more exposed .

Covid-19 spread is accelerating across the country. In states as politically divergent as Texas, Oregon, Florida, California, and Arizona, daily case counts are soaring and test positivity rates are up—indicators that portend the grave possibility of an ensuing increase in Covid-19-related deaths.
And yet, some people are still refusing to mask.
At a time when other nations, even those with fewer resources and larger populations, are taking elaborate measures to control the spread of Covid-19, some Americans refuse even the most rudimentary precautions, exposing themselves and others to extraordinary, and unnecessary, risks. This is partly why the United States now boasts the highest number of Covid-19 cases and more than a quarter of global deaths.
But anti-maskers are not just a reflection of governmental or personal apathy toward pandemics. They reveal a deeper antipathy that is worth exploring.
When the president or vice president refuses to wear a mask that protects others, in a pandemic known to disproportionately kill Black and Latinx populations, masks are not only being politicized. They are also being racialized or used to further dangerous racial divisions.
When predominantly white-led crowds of largely unmasked protesters, some armed, take to statehouses to rally against the most basic public health advice—or refuse to mask while shopping—they are not just signaling their political affiliations. They are also performing their racial dominance, manifest, in this case, as selective exemption from the imposition of governmental control.
And while protesters in states like Texas, where case counts have now reached record highs, declare that “Bar Lives Matter,” at a time when others are marching to confront the intersecting forms of violence that shorten Black lives, they evidence more than a difference in priorities. They are illustrating a certain disdain. 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 Current Issue View our current issue
This is how racialization works. It assigns risks and rewards to racial or ethnic groups and engages political processes to enshrine those inequalities in laws. In this way, opposition to public health interventions, like masking, have also become a material manifestation of America’s racism, particularly anti-Black racism.
Some of the most insidious and harmful manifestations of anti-Black racism are laws and policies that codify the separation, or segregation, of Black populations outside conceptions of who is deemed “the public.” This dehumanizing practice is often done to place Black people outside the shared benefits of collective, public investments. Thus “the public” becomes coded as white, and public investments empower, privilege, normalize, and favor predominantly white neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. This undermines the mutuality all public goods depend on for efficacy, and ultimately, places the entire population, not just Black people, at greater risk. Because the root of anti-Blackness is anti-humanism. And efforts to exclude Black folks from the security of public supports also erode the structures on which everyone relies.
For example, anchoring notions of “public safety” in militarized police powers and outsize police budgets doesn’t just contribute to greater violence against populations of color, particularly Black people. It enables violence against all civilians, limits available resources for critical public services like infrastructure and education, and corrodes public trust in vital systems like health care. Similarly, while distorting notions of “public benefits” through racialized and gendered tropes about beneficiaries threatens access to those benefits for certain groups, it also reduces support for universal public programs like Medicaid. This is a historical pattern.
When pandemics strike, state violence and neglect are used to racialize death and disease, shape public conceptions of risk, propagate notions of scarcity, and distribute resources in ways that widen racial inequities. This is what occurred in cities like Chicago during the “Spanish” influenza. And it is what is occurring across the United States right now.
A stark racial divide is emerging surrounding perceptions of Covid risk. And as this pandemic intensifies and the racial gaps in its impact widen, efforts to skirt public precautions like masking seem to closely follow. In April, a Pew research study found that Latinx and Black adults are far more concerned about Covid hospitalization and unwitting spread than white adults.
This racial divergence may arise, in part, from early messaging that attributed risks for Covid-19 to race, underlying illness, and age. Many of these messages have since been clarified. Public health experts have named racism, and not race, as a major risk factor for Covid-19 racial health inequities. They have reported the links between social conditions, environmental racism, and underlying disease that likely render populations, particularly communities of color, at risk for Covid-19 complications. And they have identified the greatest racial gaps in Covid-19 mortality rates not among the elderly, but rather between Black and white Americans aged 34–45.
Yet despite these shifts in understanding, Covid-19 risks and dangers continue to be inaccurately assigned to racial or ethnic groups, leaving the conditions that endanger or place certain racial or ethnic groups at greatest risk unacknowledged, underfunded—and ultimately unaddressed.
These are the enormous consequences of racializing public health.
Because while some may choose not to mask out of inconvenience or ignorance, the harrowing effects remain the same. At this point, some families have lost multiple members; unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression; and restrictions on gatherings prevent many from fully grieving their losses. Yet, month after month, as this pandemic rages on unchecked, unmasked protest continues, undeterred. This includes the president who—unlike the vice president, who has since supported masking—continues to stoke opposition while appealing to the iconography of white supremacy, despite its placing his base, and as a result, everyone in the country, at greater risk of disease and death. Even Twitter sarcastically announced that it will finally allow its users the long-requested ability to edit tweets—but only when “everyone wears a mask.”
And this is where the United States may continue to fail. The enforcement of public health ordinances resurrects age-old tensions regarding who is worthy of public sacrifice and public investment. This fight has never been race-neutral. In a country built on a political economy that racially orders rights and resources, life and liberty have always been racially distributed as well. Dependence on that racialization is the root of our nation’s greatest inequalities, and it may continue to render every one of us, all the more exposed.


Protest and Survive!

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 .
Let ’ s face it .
We ’ re on a Covid-19 Republican death march heading into the rest of the summer and fall .
We can not wait for January 2021 to shift course .
Our lives depend on disruption now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making it impossible for our leaders to ignore us : We have to shift the political terrain ourselves .
We have to be the earthquake .
We simply can not “ live with ” the virus—as the Trump administration suggests—nor simply accept the hundreds of thousands of cases coming over the next six months .
There are tactics like the ones we used years ago in ACT UP to fight HIV/AIDS—like swarming institutions from New York ’ s City Hall and the New York Stock Exchange to the National Institutes of Health , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the offices of pharmaceutical executives .
Or putting a giant condom on the late Senator Jesse Helms ’ s home in Virginia .
However , these tactics were possible because there was a large group of people capable of pulling them off .
They were also linked to a deep strategy about how to end the AIDS epidemic and a national and international mobilization against the disease , with ACT UP chapters all over the world .
But we don ’ t have to look back decades for inspiration .
The Black Lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the largest movement in US history , with 15 million to 26 million people participating in demonstrations around the country , are pointing a way forward for all of us to survive both this pandemic and the epidemic of police violence in our communities .
Nadine Bloch from Beautiful Trouble and Folabi Olagbaju from Greenpeace write in Waging Nonviolence that “ the unfolding insurrection has been a master class in creative protest , ” racking up reforms that just a few months ago would have seemed impossible and serving as a model for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even Beginning to Be Over This Pandemic ’ When Police and Public Health Collide in the Age of Covid-19 The Pandemic Is a Threat .
The President Is Worse .
Bloch and Olagbaju point out that such massive demonstrations could happen only because “ Black-led organizations and networks were already in place and ready to lead.
” Movement building doesn ’ t happen overnight , but we ’ ve got no choice and have to figure out a way to jump-start an uprising right now on Covid-19 .
Because as ACT UP cofounder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago about political inaction and apathy in the face of HIV/AIDS , “ We are in the middle of a fucking plague !
… Until we get our acts together , all of us , … we are as good as dead !
” With no time to lose , we need to find the organizations that are ready to lead , those that have the DNA of protest in their genes , those that aren ’ t afraid of making beautiful trouble and are doing so right now .
They may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Rise and Resist and the Center for Popular Democracy , which have already been organizing on health , or big ones like the unions representing teachers , nurses , and Stop & Shop workers , which have turned to direct action over the past few years .
Meanwhile , some of the millions of dollars being spent on electoral politics between now and November needs to be channeled into an immediate , massive , sustained , and coordinated national emergency campaign of disruption targeting politicians who tell us to “ live with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media , and other institutions that prop them up .
If activists are going to take risks in direct action and civil disobedience , they need the resources and support to take them safely—legally , physically , and epidemiologically .
Each day that our politicians refuse to do what ’ s right on Covid-19 should be met with resistance , defiance , and creativity to keep them off-balance , on the defensive , and uncertain about what we ’ ll do next .
Get your friends together .
Find groups near you that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help .
If nothing is happening locally , start planning and plotting on your own .
Civil resistance works .
It just may be what saves us from this pandemic .
So wear your masks , wash your hands , maintain social distance , and get ready to act up .

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.
This article appears in the July 27/August 3, 2020 issue.
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Let’s face it. We’re on a Covid-19 Republican death march heading into the rest of the summer and fall. We cannot wait for January 2021 to shift course. Our lives depend on disruption now. Indeed, our survival hinges on making it impossible for our leaders to ignore us: We have to shift the political
terrain ourselves. We have to be the earthquake. We simply cannot “live with” the virus—as the Trump administration suggests—nor simply accept the hundreds of thousands of cases coming over the next six months.
There are tactics like the ones we used years ago in ACT UP to fight HIV/AIDS—like swarming institutions from New York’s City Hall and the New York Stock Exchange to the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the offices of pharmaceutical executives. Or putting a giant condom on the late Senator Jesse Helms’s home in Virginia. However, these tactics were possible because there was a large group of people capable of pulling them off. They were also linked to a deep strategy about how to end the AIDS epidemic and a national and international mobilization against the disease, with ACT UP chapters all over the world.
But we don’t have to look back decades for inspiration. The Black Lives Matter protests, which have now become the largest movement in US history, with 15 million to 26 million people participating in demonstrations around the country, are pointing a way forward for all of us to survive both this pandemic and the epidemic of police violence in our communities. Nadine Bloch from Beautiful Trouble and Folabi Olagbaju from Greenpeace write in Waging Nonviolence that “the unfolding insurrection has been a master class in creative protest,” racking up reforms that just a few months ago would have seemed impossible and serving as a model for us all. 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 More From Gregg Gonsalves These New Alzheimer’s Drugs Are a Travesty July 27, 2023 It's Not “Unreasonable” to Want to Change Our Rotten Health Care System June 1, 2023 Now More Than Ever, We Need to Fight, Not Despair May 11, 2023
Bloch and Olagbaju point out that such massive demonstrations could happen only because “Black-led organizations and networks were already in place and ready to lead.” Movement building doesn’t happen overnight, but we’ve got no choice and have to figure out a way to jump-start an uprising right now on Covid-19. Because as ACT UP cofounder Larry Kramer reminded us all those years ago about political inaction and apathy in the face of HIV/AIDS, “We are in the middle of a fucking plague!… Until we get our acts together, all of us,… we are as good as dead!”
With no time to lose, we need to find the organizations that are ready to lead, those that have the DNA of protest in their genes, those that aren’t afraid of making beautiful trouble and are doing so right now. They may be small groups like New York City’s Rise and Resist and the Center for Popular Democracy, which have already been organizing on health, or big ones like the unions representing teachers, nurses, and Stop & Shop workers, which have turned to direct action over the past few years. Meanwhile, some of the millions of dollars being spent on electoral politics between now and November needs to be channeled into an immediate, massive, sustained, and coordinated national emergency campaign of disruption targeting politicians who tell us to “live with” the virus and the corporations, media, and other institutions that prop them up. If activists are going to take risks in direct action and civil disobedience, they need the resources and support to take them safely—legally, physically, and epidemiologically. Each day that our politicians refuse to do what’s right on Covid-19 should be met with resistance, defiance, and creativity to keep them off-balance, on the defensive, and uncertain about what we’ll do next. Get your friends together. Find groups near you that are already organizing. Find out how to help. If nothing is happening locally, start planning and plotting on your own.
Civil resistance works. It just may be what saves us from this pandemic. So wear your masks, wash your hands, maintain social distance, and get ready to act up.