thenation--2020-06-16--The Deep Roots of Our Housing Crisis

The Deep Roots of Our Housing Crisis

After the fifth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries , The Washington Post published one of its infamous fact-checks highlighting those moments when , in the paper ’ s estimation , someone got too loose with the truth .
Among the 10 claims flagged by the Post was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ’ s remark that the United States has “ 500,000 people sleeping out on the street.
” This statement was “ exaggerated , ” the Post admonished , because while it ’ s true that in 2018 the Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homelessness in America , not all of them were technically on the streets ; some 360,000 were in shelters or transitional housing .
Putting aside that many experts believe HUD grossly undercounts the homeless , the Post ’ s finger-wagging exemplified some of the peak absurdities of America ’ s housing crisis .
The United States is the richest country in the world , but millions of its people struggle to afford housing or find it at all .
Instead of ensuring that there are enough units in areas where people want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades and made excuses for why things can ’ t be different—or even claimed they really aren ’ t so bad .
Golden Gates , a new book on the housing crisis by New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty , dives straight into these problems , skillfully exploring everything from the yes in my backyard ( YIMBY ) movement , which promotes more housing development , to anti-gentrification activism , the normalization of homelessness , and the factors that have made it so prohibitively expensive to build anything new .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ books on housing that have come out over the past few years , including Richard Rothstein ’ s The Color of Law , Matthew Desmond ’ s Evicted , Ben Austen ’ s High-Risers , Matthew L. Schuerman ’ s Newcomers , and Peter Moskowitz ’ s How to Kill a City .
These books have explored various aspects of housing discrimination , especially the burdens borne by the nation ’ s poor and people of color , but Dougherty ’ s is among the first to look squarely at the politics of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ By examining the inertia and ineffectiveness of political leaders who largely agree on what needs to be done , he makes a sobering case for how and why our politics have failed .
While not so much a book of specific policy prescriptions , Golden Gates helps clarify why we have a housing crisis in the first place .
As suggested by the title , Golden Gates focuses on California , especially on San Francisco , where the housing troubles are particularly extreme .
California has the distinction of having one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of the highest-paying jobs .
It also has , using HUD ’ s metric , more than 150,000 people experiencing homelessness—far more than any other state in the country .
But California ’ s problems , Dougherty insists , are not anomalous : They are merely “ an exaggerated example of the geographic inequalities ” that we see in almost every American city as urban centers grapple with the increasing concentration of economic opportunity and the rising cost of living near it .
As higher-paying industries like tech and consulting consolidate in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as lower-paying retail and health care jobs replace those in manufacturing , the competition to find housing near the good-paying jobs has grown more acute .
To tell this story of housing scarcity and political inaction , Dougherty focuses on a diverse set of people , including Jesshill Love , a longtime Bay Area landlord wrestling with how to raise rents , and Rafael Avendaño , the director of a youth center who tries to teach teenagers in Redwood City how to fight their evictions .
We hear from housing developers like Dennis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the byzantine barriers they face to build more homes and from state Senator Scott Wiener , who has struggled to get his housing reform bills approved .
And we hear quite a bit from leaders in the YIMBY movement , like the teacher turned housing activist Sonja Trauss , who moved to the Bay Area in 2011 .
Since then , the Bay Area has created roughly eight new jobs for every new housing unit , far beyond the 1.5 jobs per new unit recommended by planners .
Trauss and her fellow YIMBYs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shortage in metro areas with highly sought-after jobs has led to soaring rents and home prices and justified fears of displacement .
One of the most sobering aspects of Dougherty ’ s narrative comes from his historical findings .
Many people are familiar with the current affordability crisis in San Francisco , which is often blamed on greedy tech CEOs and venture capitalists .
But fewer are aware of its deeper roots .
Digging through the archives , Dougherty shows just how long California leaders have been aware of the housing crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t alter course .
“ Changing San Francisco Is Foreseen as a Haven for Wealthy and Childless , ” read one New York Times headline in 1981 .
Two years earlier , an MIT urban planning professor blasted the Bay Area for its “ arrogant ” and “ self-serving ” land-use policies and traced how developers were routinely stymied by environmentalists and homeowners opposed to new people moving in .
Delivering a 1981 commencement speech at UC Berkeley , the university ’ s top economics student warned that the Bay Area ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rising prices and that homeowners were likely to keep fighting any efforts to address that .
The commencement speaker was right , yet too little was done in the years that followed .
This lack of reform around land use was largely rooted in the failure of leaders to take on entrenched interests who profited from the status quo—from the investors , developers , and building trades to the homeowners who were fortunate enough to move to a desirable area first .
Today politicians are trying to tackle these structural problems more directly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build 3.5 million homes to get serious about solving its housing crisis , and in 2017 , California Governor Gavin Newsom committed to reaching this goal by 2025 .
But this is a tremendous task that would necessitate building roughly 500,000 units a year , when over the past decade , on average , fewer than 80,000 homes were built in the state annually .
And there are , as Dougherty observes , considerable impediments that stand in the way , including soaring costs for construction and land .
The cost of building @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had increased from $ 265,000 per unit in 2000 to almost $ 425,000 by 2016 .
And that ’ s an average .
In cities like San Francisco , it can cost upward of $ 850,000 to build a single subsidized unit .
When California ’ s legislature passed a $ 4 billion bond to build affordable housing in 2017 , it was hailed as a serious step forward , one that would amount to a nearly $ 12 billion effort when paired with private money .
But $ 12 billion divided by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or 0.8 percent of the 3.5 million goal .
As Dougherty writes , “ This sort of math could make a joke of any new funding effort.
” Voters across California have been more supportive of new funding packages for affordable housing over the past few years , but the quiet dread among advocates is that once the public realizes how little effect each influx of money has on the crisis , their appetite for new taxes might wane .
“ Behind each new affordable housing bond and the additional billions for homeless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were being generous , when really the new taxes were nothing in comparison to a problem that was getting worse faster than cities could deploy the money , ” Dougherty writes .
While the political leaders in Sacramento and on city councils continue to squabble , renters are doing what they can to organize , and Dougherty gives voice to their experiences too .
In particular , we hear from teenager Stephanie Gutierrez , who studied every Tuesday night with other community members how to protest gentrification and eviction .
One day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family ’ s rent would be jumping by 45 percent .
Gutierrez and the activists she worked with did their best to raise hell .
“ No hay peor lucha que la que no se hace , ” another tenant insisted—there is no worse fight than the one that isn ’ t fought .
But Dougherty doesn ’ t sugarcoat the hurdles that renters face .
“ Protests could make [ housing ] flips more expensive , but not nearly by enough , ” he writes .
Despite the occasional bad headlines , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money , and landlords were well within their legal rights to raise rents .
Dougherty also follows the YIMBY activists as they mobilize for new subsidized and market-rate housing .
Their build-everything philosophy often pits them against anti-gentrification groups , which view new for-profit development as housing policy moving in the wrong direction .
But activists like Trauss insist that more housing will help reduce prices for everyone by relieving pressure on strained markets .
Dougherty is sympathetic to this argument , but he also notes some of the real limits faced by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as they struggle to build a multiracial and cross-class movement .
Perhaps one reason Dougherty is more sympathetic to the YIMBY movement is that unlike many others , it has been more willing to confront the reality that you can ’ t stop people from moving to dense , crowded cities , no matter how much you wish they ’ d stay away .
As Wiener , who is aligned with the YIMBYs , once vented , “ There is a strain of self-described progressive politics in San Francisco that says : ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t build more housing—just lock it down , and maybe if we dig a moat around the city and put crocodiles in it we can just stop people from coming.
” Despite finding some hope in local activism , Dougherty doesn ’ t end his book on a particularly optimistic note .
The rising costs to build , the increasing polarization , and the failure to take on entrenched special interests , he suggests , could leave California in much the same place it has long been .
And yet he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the legislative level , not just in California but across the country .
Since 2017 , rent-control bills and ballot initiatives have cropped up in roughly a dozen states , and in February 2019 , Oregon became the first to pass rent control statewide .
In June 2019 , New York legislators beefed up rent control for nearly 1 million apartments in New York City , and California approved statewide rent control a few months later .
Meanwhile , the Minneapolis City Council voted to end single-family zoning , a measure intended to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shortly followed suit .
In the DC area , where planners say at least 320,000 new units are needed in the next decade to accommodate demand and population growth , lawmakers are considering measures to expand rent control and reduce barriers to construction .
Yet a crucial question in Golden Gates remains unanswered : What can governments do to help those who need housing now without enacting policies that could make the situation worse in the long term , whether by exacerbating displacement and segregation or by contributing to an even more severe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ housing ideas have emerged recently on the left , such as building more housing that would be kept off the market for speculation and profit entirely .
The homes guarantee movement , launched in September 2019 , seeks to do for housing what Medicare for All would do for health care .
While some homes guarantee advocates object to the idea of expanding Section 8 vouchers because they ’ d like to reduce reliance on the private rental market , others maintain that these policies are not necessarily in conflict with each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both a homes guarantee and making Section 8 vouchers available to all who are eligible .
“ Mixed solutions can feel like a cop-out , ” Dougherty writes , “ especially in polarized times .
And yet , over and over , in city after city , it ’ s always where people end up and what seems most likely to work.
” He has a point .
To move forward , movements will have to find ways to break out of their particular communities and build strength across class lines .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might need , as was the case with Medicare for All , to find new language to address existing policy demands .
One think tank in Seattle tested YIMBY messaging and found that the word “ homes ” worked better than “ development ” and the phrase “ walkable and convenient ” was more appealing than “ density.
” In Minneapolis a YIMBY group has opted for the warmer name Neighbors for More Neighbors .
These are all worthwhile steps , but the politics won ’ t be solved by friendlier rhetoric alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll need to build more power .

This article appears in the June 29/July 6, 2020 issue.
After the fifth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, The Washington Post published one of its infamous fact-checks highlighting those moments when, in the paper’s estimation, someone got too loose with the truth. Among the 10 claims flagged by the Post was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s remark that the United States has “500,000 people sleeping out on the street.” This statement was “exaggerated,” the Post admonished, because while it’s true that in 2018 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated that there were 553,000 people experiencing homelessness in America, not all of them were technically on the streets; some 360,000 were in shelters or transitional housing. Books in Review Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America By Conor Dougherty Buy this book
Putting aside that many experts believe HUD grossly undercounts the homeless, the Post’s finger-wagging exemplified some of the peak absurdities of America’s housing crisis. The United States is the richest country in the world, but millions of its people struggle to afford housing or find it at all. Instead of ensuring that there are enough units in areas where people want to live, we’ve dawdled for decades and made excuses for why things can’t be different—or even claimed they really aren’t so bad.
Golden Gates, a new book on the housing crisis by New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty, dives straight into these problems, skillfully exploring everything from the yes in my backyard (YIMBY) movement, which promotes more housing development, to anti-gentrification activism, the normalization of homelessness, and the factors that have made it so prohibitively expensive to build anything new. It’s the latest addition to a slate of books on housing that have come out over the past few years, including Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Ben Austen’s High-Risers, Matthew L. Schuerman’s Newcomers, and P.E Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City. These books have explored various aspects of housing discrimination, especially the burdens borne by the nation’s poor and people of color, but Dougherty’s is among the first to look squarely at the politics of trying to respond to this disaster. By examining the inertia and ineffectiveness of political leaders who largely agree on what needs to be done, he makes a sobering case for how and why our politics have failed. While not so much a book of specific policy prescriptions, Golden Gates helps clarify why we have a housing crisis in the first place.
As suggested by the title, Golden Gates focuses on California, especially on San Francisco, where the housing troubles are particularly extreme. California has the distinction of having one of the highest housing costs in the nation and some of the highest-paying jobs. It also has, using HUD’s metric, more than 150,000 people experiencing homelessness—far more than any other state in the country. But California’s problems, Dougherty insists, are not anomalous: They are merely “an exaggerated example of the geographic inequalities” that we see in almost every American city as urban centers grapple with the increasing concentration of economic opportunity and the rising cost of living near it. As higher-paying industries like tech and consulting consolidate in and around a few dense areas and as lower-paying retail and health care jobs replace those in manufacturing, the competition to find housing near the good-paying jobs has grown more acute. 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
To tell this story of housing scarcity and political inaction, Dougherty focuses on a diverse set of people, including Jesshill Love, a longtime Bay Area landlord wrestling with how to raise rents, and Rafael Avendaño, the director of a youth center who tries to teach teenagers in Redwood City how to fight their evictions. We hear from housing developers like Dennis O’Brien and Rick Holliday about the byzantine barriers they face to build more homes and from state Senator Scott Wiener, who has struggled to get his housing reform bills approved. And we hear quite a bit from leaders in the YIMBY movement, like the teacher turned housing activist Sonja Trauss, who moved to the Bay Area in 2011. Since then, the Bay Area has created roughly eight new jobs for every new housing unit, far beyond the 1.5 jobs per new unit recommended by planners. Trauss and her fellow YIMBYs want more homes built, arguing that the shortage in metro areas with highly sought-after jobs has led to soaring rents and home prices and justified fears of displacement.
One of the most sobering aspects of Dougherty’s narrative comes from his historical findings. Many people are familiar with the current affordability crisis in San Francisco, which is often blamed on greedy tech CEOs and venture capitalists. But fewer are aware of its deeper roots. Digging through the archives, Dougherty shows just how long California leaders have been aware of the housing crisis that the state faced if it didn’t alter course. “Changing San Francisco Is Foreseen as a Haven for Wealthy and Childless,” read one New York Times headline in 1981. Two years earlier, an MIT urban planning professor blasted the Bay Area for its “arrogant” and “self-serving” land-use policies and traced how developers were routinely stymied by environmentalists and homeowners opposed to new people moving in. Delivering a 1981 commencement speech at UC Berkeley, the university’s top economics student warned that the Bay Area’s housing shortage would result in sharply rising prices and that homeowners were likely to keep fighting any efforts to address that.
The commencement speaker was right, yet too little was done in the years that followed. This lack of reform around land use was largely rooted in the failure of leaders to take on entrenched interests who profited from the status quo—from the investors, developers, and building trades to the homeowners who were fortunate enough to move to a desirable area first. Current Issue View our current issue
Today politicians are trying to tackle these structural problems more directly. Policy analysts say California needs to build 3.5 million homes to get serious about solving its housing crisis, and in 2017, California Governor Gavin Newsom committed to reaching this goal by 2025. But this is a tremendous task that would necessitate building roughly 500,000 units a year, when over the past decade, on average, fewer than 80,000 homes were built in the state annually. And there are, as Dougherty observes, considerable impediments that stand in the way, including soaring costs for construction and land. The cost of building a 100-unit affordable housing project in California had increased from $265,000 per unit in 2000 to almost $425,000 by 2016. And that’s an average. In cities like San Francisco, it can cost upward of $850,000 to build a single subsidized unit. When California’s legislature passed a $4 billion bond to build affordable housing in 2017, it was hailed as a serious step forward, one that would amount to a nearly $12 billion effort when paired with private money. But $12 billion divided by $425,000 equals just 28,235 units, or 0.8 percent of the 3.5 million goal. As Dougherty writes, “This sort of math could make a joke of any new funding effort.”
Voters across California have been more supportive of new funding packages for affordable housing over the past few years, but the quiet dread among advocates is that once the public realizes how little effect each influx of money has on the crisis, their appetite for new taxes might wane. “Behind each new affordable housing bond and the additional billions for homeless services was a public who thought they were being generous, when really the new taxes were nothing in comparison to a problem that was getting worse faster than cities could deploy the money,” Dougherty writes.
While the political leaders in Sacramento and on city councils continue to squabble, renters are doing what they can to organize, and Dougherty gives voice to their experiences too. In particular, we hear from teenager Stephanie Gutierrez, who studied every Tuesday night with other community members how to protest gentrification and eviction. One day, Gutierrez returned home to discover that her family’s rent would be jumping by 45 percent.
Gutierrez and the activists she worked with did their best to raise hell. “No hay peor lucha que la que no se hace,” another tenant insisted—there is no worse fight than the one that isn’t fought. But Dougherty doesn’t sugarcoat the hurdles that renters face. “Protests could make [housing] flips more expensive, but not nearly by enough,” he writes. Despite the occasional bad headlines, developers saw easy opportunities to make more money, and landlords were well within their legal rights to raise rents.
Dougherty also follows the YIMBY activists as they mobilize for new subsidized and market-rate housing. Their build-everything philosophy often pits them against anti-gentrification groups, which view new for-profit development as housing policy moving in the wrong direction. But activists like Trauss insist that more housing will help reduce prices for everyone by relieving pressure on strained markets. Dougherty is sympathetic to this argument, but he also notes some of the real limits faced by these mostly white, highly educated activists as they struggle to build a multiracial and cross-class movement.
Perhaps one reason Dougherty is more sympathetic to the YIMBY movement is that unlike many others, it has been more willing to confront the reality that you can’t stop people from moving to dense, crowded cities, no matter how much you wish they’d stay away. As Wiener, who is aligned with the YIMBYs, once vented, “There is a strain of self-described progressive politics in San Francisco that says: ‘Lock down the city’…. Don’t build more housing—just lock it down, and maybe if we dig a moat around the city and put crocodiles in it we can just stop people from coming.”
Despite finding some hope in local activism, Dougherty doesn’t end his book on a particularly optimistic note. The rising costs to build, the increasing polarization, and the failure to take on entrenched special interests, he suggests, could leave California in much the same place it has long been. And yet he writes that there is growing momentum on the legislative level, not just in California but across the country. Since 2017, rent-control bills and ballot initiatives have cropped up in roughly a dozen states, and in February 2019, Oregon became the first to pass rent control statewide. In June 2019, New York legislators beefed up rent control for nearly 1 million apartments in New York City, and California approved statewide rent control a few months later. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis City Council voted to end single-family zoning, a measure intended to boost the housing supply, and Oregon shortly followed suit. In the DC area, where planners say at least 320,000 new units are needed in the next decade to accommodate demand and population growth, lawmakers are considering measures to expand rent control and reduce barriers to construction.
Yet a crucial question in Golden Gates remains unanswered: What can governments do to help those who need housing now without enacting policies that could make the situation worse in the long term, whether by exacerbating displacement and segregation or by contributing to an even more severe shortage down the road?
Some new housing ideas have emerged recently on the left, such as building more housing that would be kept off the market for speculation and profit entirely. The homes guarantee movement, launched in September 2019, seeks to do for housing what Medicare for All would do for health care. While some homes guarantee advocates object to the idea of expanding Section 8 vouchers because they’d like to reduce reliance on the private rental market, others maintain that these policies are not necessarily in conflict with each other. In fact, Sanders campaigned on both a homes guarantee and making Section 8 vouchers available to all who are eligible. “Mixed solutions can feel like a cop-out,” Dougherty writes, “especially in polarized times. And yet, over and over, in city after city, it’s always where people end up and what seems most likely to work.”
He has a point. To move forward, movements will have to find ways to break out of their particular communities and build strength across class lines. In other cases, activists and political leaders might need, as was the case with Medicare for All, to find new language to address existing policy demands. One think tank in Seattle tested YIMBY messaging and found that the word “homes” worked better than “development” and the phrase “walkable and convenient” was more appealing than “density.” In Minneapolis a YIMBY group has opted for the warmer name Neighbors for More Neighbors. These are all worthwhile steps, but the politics won’t be solved by friendlier rhetoric alone. To build more housing, we’ll need to build more power.


thenation--2020-06-16--How the New York City School System Failed the Test of Covid-19

When Mr. Smith , a teacher at Crotona International High School on the Grace Dodge Campus in the Bronx in New York City , started to feel sick , he thought it might be because he ’ d been training hard .
( Smith is a pseudonym , to protect the teacher from reprisals . )
An avid runner , he didn ’ t at first think that his achiness might be the novel coronavirus he ’ d been hearing about .
That was Monday , March 9.1 When he got to school , Smith said , a teacher who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sick with flu-like symptoms .
The next day , Tuesday , that teacher was out sick again , and another teacher wasn ’ t feeling well and went home early because her daughter was ill , too .
On Wednesday that teacher texted her colleagues , “ My daughter tested positive.
” 2 “ That is when I kind of freaked out , ” Smith said .
He went to an urgent care center near his house and told the doctors there that a colleague had a child who had tested positive for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me in an isolation room , ” he said .
The next day , he got his test result : positive .
Yet when he informed school administrators of the news , the school was not closed , he said ; rather , the next morning , after school had begun , the administration told the staff that the school would remain open because the city ’ s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene ( DOHMH ) did not have the case on record ; it was self-reported.3 “ I ’ m like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got to be kidding me , ’ ” Smith said .
“ ‘ I sent you a fax that was sent to me with the results directly from the hospital .
How are you going to say that this is self-reporting ?
’ Somebody dropped the ball , and somebody dropped the ball big.
” 4 Nearly three months since Smith took sick , countless other Department of Education employees have fallen ill with Covid-19 , and at least 74 have died .
They were as young as 29 and came from all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They include teachers ( 30 ) , paraprofessionals ( 28 ) , guidance counselors ( 2 ) , facilities employees ( 2 ) , and administrators ( 2 ) .
The disproportionately high number of paraprofessionals killed has raised serious questions about inequalities in the system .
Teachers ’ aides , said Ms. Jones ( also a pseudonym ) , another teacher at Grace Dodge , “ have fewer protections within the school system.
” 5 The DOE began releasing these numbers on April 13 , amid mounting pressure from educators and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toll of Covid-19 on the school community .
The department collected the numbers from reports by educators ’ family members , but many teachers said the real number could be larger .
As it is , the death toll for education workers has been notably high—though in an early April statement , the DOE , in conjunction with the DOHMH , cautioned against linking coronavirus infections to the school system , saying , “ School buildings are not a place of greater exposure than any other part of our city.
” 6 The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t so sure .
As public health experts have begun publishing analyses of the early days of the US outbreak , raising the possibility that the number of deaths could have been reduced by as much as 50 to 80 percent had governments instituted social distancing a week or two earlier , the question of how many school workers could have been saved has haunted New York City educators .
For many , the high number of deaths has served as yet more evidence of the great cost educators have paid for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drawn-out decision to close the public schools .
The deaths , wrote Manhattan teacher Ellen Schweitzer in an e-mail , were “ horribly tragic and not surprising .
It ’ s what we knew would happen .
It ’ s what drove us to take the actions necessary to close the schools.
” 7 Now , as the conversation turns to reopening , they worry that the same lack of care will characterize any return to the classroom .
Their experience thus far leads them to fear that budget cuts from the coronavirus- @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the public schools and leave them overstretched and underprotected.8 For teachers like Schweitzer , the first two weeks in March remain fateful , a moment when the DOE could have acted boldly but didn ’ t .
On March 1 , the first case was confirmed in New York City ; by March 12 , the number of confirmed cases in the city had ballooned to 95 .
During this period , school systems in cities and states that were far less affected—from San Francisco to Philadelphia , from Ohio to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nonetheless , New York Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted that New York City schools would remain open .
“ We are going to do our damnedest to keep the schools open , ” he said as late as March 13.9 For its part , the DOE continued to broadcast calm , reiterating its protocols for schools in e-mails to teachers and parents .
As late as March 10 , those protocols , outlined in a letter to families , consisted primarily of “ strongly encouraging ” handwashing throughout the day and promising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nurse , which was not the case before the coronavirus outbreak .
The guidelines further stated that each school would be supplied with face masks to give to students and staffers who displayed Covid-19 symptoms .
But those masks never materialized , according to Ms. Johnson ( also not her real name ) , another teacher on the Grace Dodge campus.10 In a statement to The Nation , the DOE also said it had directed custodians to perform “ deep cleaning ” of the schools “ twice a week.
” And it said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ non-public schools buildings to ensure they had a sufficient supply of hand soap , paper towels , and anti-viral disinfectant inventory.
” 11 But Johnson said her school didn ’ t have sufficient supplies .
“ Finally , when a group of teachers came together to start sanitizing our laptops regularly and our desks regularly , we quickly ran out of Clorox wipes and any materials to do that with , ” she said .
“ There was just such neglect.
” 12 Perhaps most alarming of all to school staffers was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ member of a school community got sick with Covid-19 .
Under New York state guidelines , schools would be closed for 24 hours only after a case had been confirmed by the health department ; the problem was , it was almost impossible for anyone to get tested at that point .
Even more confounding , as cases clearly mounted in the city , DOE officials sent an internal memo to staffers telling them not to call the DOHMH to report cases of Covid-19 among teachers and staff.13 In a response to questions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ DOHMH and DOE had two-way communication on these issues at all times ” and that the department had “ escalated ” reports of potential cases to “ both City and State.
” As a result , “ there was no need for individuals to call the DOHMH hotline which was set up to handle information from testing labs—we were directly checking.
” 14 Yet as Smith ’ s case suggests , this process was , if nothing else , slow and cumbersome at a time when every moment counted .
While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ immediately looked into this [ case ] when it was brought to our attention ” and “ took steps in accordance with applicable State guidance…and notified the school community ” when the positive result was confirmed , that notification did not arrive until Monday evening , March 16 ; that was four days after Smith got his positive test result .
Moreover , the notice went only to staff , teachers said , not the whole school community , which remained in the dark about the test result.15 ‘ We Have No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guidance given to teachers and schools was “ nonsensical , ” City Councilmember Brad Lander said .
One school , which his children had attended , had identified a parent as positive for the virus .
“ They had a policy that if a student or a teacher was a positive ID ’ d case , they would close the school for 24 hours and clean it , but if a parent had been positively ID ’ d—even if the whole family was housed together—then nothing happens .
The school is just open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It bore no relationship to the science.
” 16 In a statement to The Nation , DOE spokesperson Miranda Barbot defended the department ’ s handling of the crisis .
“ Since the beginning , the Department of Education issued near-daily updates aligned to federal , state , and local guidance that adjusted to the rapidly changing public health landscape , ” she wrote .
“ All of our decisions are informed by public health experts in order to protect the health and safety of our students and staff.
” 17 By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Richard Carranza decided to close the schools on March 15 , there was a sense that the city had already fallen behind the curve .
But by many accounts , the decision might have been even more delayed , the deaths more numerous , if not for a robust pressure campaign waged both inside and outside the government .
On the inside were staffers at the DOHMH , who reportedly threatened to resign , as well as de Blasio ’ s own advisers , who fought bitterly with him .
On the outside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city ’ s failure to act more aggressively to keep educators , students , and their families safe reached a boiling point in the days before the shutdown announcement.18 For Smith , that point came shortly after he told the school of his Covid-19 diagnosis and his school ’ s administration opted to keep the school open .
“ It wasn ’ t about me anymore , ” he said .
“ I am 50 years old , but I am pretty healthy .
I am a lifelong athlete .
Forget about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week , and those kids are with other teachers .
It is my duty to make sure that this does not become worse.
” 19 Smith wasn ’ t alone .
Frustrated with the slow response , rank-and-file teachers began to talk to one another about what they were experiencing , and they came to the same conclusion : They had to do something to pressure elected officials to close the schools.20 Schweitzer , who teaches at Stuyvesant High School and came down with symptoms similar to Covid-19 ’ s after the schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a sense that even if the virus wasn ’ t a problem for young people , they could nonetheless be carriers , tracking it from school to home and home to school .
“ We were very concerned about the health of our more vulnerable colleagues , ” she said .
“ We could all name particular people who work in the school buildings we know have vulnerable health conditions or are older .
When you can put a specific name and a face to somebody who is high risk , how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to try to protect that person ?
” 21 From there , the discussion about taking action came together very quickly , Schweitzer said .
“ There were people , certainly by [ March ] 10 and 11 , who were walking around saying , ‘ This is crazy .
The schools should be closed.
’ As soon as people started talking about it out loud , it was kind of like an emperor ’ s new clothes thing , like , ‘ Yes , why aren ’ t we ?
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school in the high-risk environment that we ’ re in ?
’ ” 22 With little sign of movement from the de Blasio administration , teachers began trying to take their concerns public .
One teacher , whose wife is an emergency physician , wrote a piece published in the New York Daily News on March 13 ; three others cowrote an op-ed published by The New York Times on March 14 , all calling for schools to be closed.23 The teachers began to use an existing e-mail list for union members to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversations , the idea of a sick-out—an unofficial work stoppage in which workers call in sick in an organized fashion—became popular .
“ You start looking at those exponential graphs , and it becomes really clear that every day is crucial , ” Schweitzer said.24 Strikes by public employees are banned under New York ’ s Taylor Law , and although the United Federation of Teachers ( UFT ) —which represents New York ’ s 75,000 teachers , 19,000 classroom paraprofessionals , and other education and care workers—called for schools to be closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plans for a job action .
But regardless of that , the teachers were becoming active.25 “ We were pretty aware that we were going to be in classrooms as long as possible , ” said Jones .
Despite the promises in the letters to parents that there would be frequent handwashing and a nurse present , she said , “ we had to advocate to get soap in the bathrooms because there wasn ’ t soap in the bathrooms .
The school nurse was only there a couple of days a week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downstairs.
” 26 By March 13 , rumors had begun circulating on the Grace Dodge Campus , where Jones works , that someone had fallen sick .
The same was true at schools across the city ; according to the mayor , only 68 percent of students showed up that day .
“ They are really active on social media , and they are highly connected , ” Jones said of her students .
Parents , too , had begun expressing their anger on social media , using the hashtag # CloseNYCSchools.27 Over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone conversations with other teachers , including a call with over 400 educators organized by the Movement of Rank and File Educators ( MORE ) , a reform caucus in the union that was formed in the wake of the successful 2012 Chicago teachers ’ strike .
While many MORE members are longtime activists , Schweitzer noted that people “ came out of the woodwork ” to get involved in pushing for school closure.28 “ The people who are the regular organizers , obviously , they made it happen , ” she said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many rank-and-filers , who hadn ’ t necessarily been that involved before , just sprang into action seeing that this was urgent , that others needed to step in and take charge and that a sick-out would work.
” 29 Over the weekend , Schweitzer said , teachers started reporting to the city ’ s automated system for requesting a substitute that they would be absent on Monday ; they did so early on so the numbers would be available for officials to see .
Even before the planned sick-out , there was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the system .
Finally on Sunday , de Blasio and Carranza announced that the schools would close .
The announcement arrived in the late afternoon , leaving parents scrambling to figure out how to navigate the coming week.30 In resisting shutting down the schools for as long as he did , de Blasio returned again and again to the idea of equity and his concern that closing them would inflict enormous harm on the city ’ s millions of vulnerable families .
The schools should remain open , he insisted , so that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care providers had somewhere to go during the day—not only a place to learn and be safe but also to receive free meals.31 To many teachers , like Jones , this idea made a certain sense .
“ I know that a lot of people are concerned about getting access to essential services for the most-needy students , and that is a real issue , ” she said.32 Yet then as now , they wondered what might have happened had the mayor channeled his rightful concern for equity into preparing the system to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely shutdown rather than stubbornly fighting it and , in the process , putting those same students and their families at risk .
There was no way , Jones said , that keeping a million students in packed buildings for hours at a time would have been safe , but the buildings could have been used to distribute food and even provide health care .
Johnson agreed , saying , “ I am not a nurse , but I am happy to hand out food , lunches .
Or teach me how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] .
There is a role for us to play rather than acting like we are part of the problem.
” 33 As it was , the transition to the country ’ s largest experiment in remote learning was bumpy .
For Smith , who is healthy once again , remote teaching has been a source of both gratification and frustration .
“ It is very rewarding , ” he said , when students ask how he is doing , and he wants to make sure the students are still learning so it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the summer lag , the loss of learning during summer break.34 But of course , online classes in these circumstances are far from normal .
“ For a lot of us , we are finding it more difficult than going in and just doing our regular job , ” said Schweitzer , who when we spoke June 1 was suffering a relapse of what still had not been confirmed as Covid-19 .
“ It seems to be very uneven , by school and by district , exactly what and how much teachers are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are expected to make the students do .
I have some fear about how this is going to be used long term.
” 35 According to the DOE , it has given out 255,000 Internet-enabled iPads in addition to 175,000 school laptops , tablets , and Chromebooks to make sure all students can access remote learning .
Yet that process has been incomplete .
Only about two-thirds of Jones ’ s students are able to connect to online classrooms , she said .
And even with all the equipment in place , translating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been challenging.36 “ Online learning is no substitute for classroom learning , ” City Councilmember Lander said .
Despite the DOE ’ s impressive if troubled attempt to distribute the necessary technology to students , he said , online learning has exacerbated the existing disparities within the school system .
“ It is no good for middle-class white students , either , but it also amplifies inequality.
” 37 Teachers didn ’ t expect the district to be fully prepared to go all online , yet they were still frustrated about how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We should be able to expect the administration of the DOE to provide helpful guidance and support as we do our jobs , ” Schweitzer said .
“ But sadly , many teachers don ’ t have much evidence that the DOE does this even under normal circumstances , so while we are angry that leadership has done so little , it ’ s also not the case that we are really so surprised.
” 38 Now , as the school year comes to a stuttering end , educators face a new set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question of when and how the schools will reopen , and there is the threat of dramatic changes to the education system : In April , Governor Andrew Cuomo promised more education cuts—as much as a 20 percent reduction—and on May 5 , he announced that he plans to partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a new normal for the schools .
“ The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class and you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all across the state , all these buildings , all these physical classrooms , ” Cuomo told reporters .
“ Why ?
With all the technology you have ?
” 39 New York State United Teachers , the statewide teachers ’ union federation , reacted immediately , condemning Cuomo ’ s plan .
“ If we want to reimagine education , let ’ s start with addressing the need for social workers , mental health counselors , school nurses , enriching arts courses , advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statement from NYSUT president Andy Pallotta.40 Yet even as they scramble to respond to this latest attempt at top-down reform , the teachers are in the difficult position of trying to prevent a premature reopening and fighting the imposition of long-term remote learning—which the teachers who spoke with The Nation stressed would be bad for teachers , students , and overstretched parents .
Right now , the question of when the city ’ s schools will reopen remains unanswered .
Will students and teachers return to their schools in September and resume traditional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some modified program that involves staggered attendance—with students alternating which days of the week they attend—along with temperature checks and other public health protocols ?
Or will they hold off until the arrival of a vaccine ?
The DOE told The Nation that it is “ considering many options for a successful and safe reopening in the fall and will always follow the guidance of our public health experts.
” 41 At the time this article went to press , the UFT had not endorsed a specific proposal , but it has released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reopening schools must include : widespread access to regular testing , temperature checks , rigorous cleaning protocols , protective equipment , and “ an exhaustive tracing procedure.
” For its part , MORE is calling for a memorandum of agreement around the crisis , laying out clearly what teachers ’ responsibilities and rights are in these extraordinary circumstances .
“ This MOA , ” the caucus said in a statement , “ could also serve as the basis for future crises , which are only going to become more common as the effects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Because teachers ’ conditions vary widely from school to school , MORE wants teachers to have discretion over the form their instruction takes , control over their working hours , and relief from the evaluations that make their jobs more difficult.42 “ I think these kinds of things are more important to attend to than unrealistic fantasies about reopening school buildings , ” Schweitzer said .
“ But of course , everyone is loath to point out the reality that schools can ’ t be safely reopened for such an indeterminate amount @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reopening in New York City is a logistical nightmare , Schweitzer noted in an e-mail .
“ Every time I hear someone talk about spacing students out in the classroom , I roll my eyes for several reasons , but mainly I just think it ’ s an irrelevant conversation for New York City due to the transit situation… .
[ I ] t is largely a waste of time to imagine ways of keeping us ‘ safe and healthy ’ in the school building when we have no safe and healthy way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place , ” she said.44 But teachers are beginning to have those discussions , she added , to prepare for the battles ahead .
Schweitzer wrote , “ The question is , what do UFT members overall think—what are they willing to fight for , what are they willing to refuse to do.
” 45 Those questions have taken on even more urgency as protests against police violence and white supremacy have rocked New York .
“ The collapse of the NYC school system in the face of coronavirus exposes the tremendous pressure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the slack of a destroyed social safety net , ” said Kevin Prosen , an English teacher at IS 230 in the borough of Queens who is also a UFT delegate and a member of MORE .
“ Now , with the NYPD mobilizing their multibillion-dollar annual budget to counter protests against police brutality and no doubt attacking some of our students , the priorities of our liberal city and state governments are there for everyone to see .
There is no way out of this that doesn ’ t include redirecting major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other social services.
” 46 As this article went to press , MORE was working on a health justice agenda for the schools , based on three tenets : anti-racism , public health , and full funding for education .
The aim , said Marilena Marchetti , an occupational therapist at a number of Brooklyn schools and a member of the team working on the agenda , was to consolidate the values of the broad movement for education justice , involving not just UFT members but also parent , student , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We can not go back to the way things were , with conditions that allow for the bare minimum , simply surviving .
Once the dust settles from this unforeseen yet totally predictable trauma , we want more from schools .
We want every school to be a place where students truly thrive , ” she said .
“ The fact is , that will require a redistribution of wealth and taxing the rich .
We ’ re here for that , we ’ re fighting for that.
” 47

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 June 29/July 6, 2020 issue.
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?
When Mr. Smith, a teacher at Crotona International High School on the Grace Dodge Campus in the Bronx in New York City, started to feel sick, he thought it might be because he’d been training hard. (Smith is a pseudonym, to protect the teacher from reprisals.) An avid runner, he didn’t at first think that his achiness might be the novel coronavirus he’d been hearing about. That was Monday, March 9.1
When he got to school, Smith said, a teacher who “is never absent” was out sick with flu-like symptoms. The next day, Tuesday, that teacher was out sick again, and another teacher wasn’t feeling well and went home early because her daughter was ill, too. On Wednesday that teacher texted her colleagues, “My daughter tested positive.”2
“That is when I kind of freaked out,” Smith said. He went to an urgent care center near his house and told the doctors there that a colleague had a child who had tested positive for Covid-19. “Immediately, they put me in an isolation room,” he said. The next day, he got his test result: positive. Yet when he informed school administrators of the news, the school was not closed, he said; rather, the next morning, after school had begun, the administration told the staff that the school would remain open because the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) did not have the case on record; it was self-reported.3
“I’m like, ‘Self-reporting? You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Smith said. “‘I sent you a fax that was sent to me with the results directly from the hospital. How are you going to say that this is self-reporting?’ Somebody dropped the ball, and somebody dropped the ball big.”4
Nearly three months since Smith took sick, countless other Department of Education employees have fallen ill with Covid-19, and at least 74 have died. They were as young as 29 and came from all five of the city’s boroughs. They include teachers (30), paraprofessionals (28), guidance counselors (2), facilities employees (2), and administrators (2). The disproportionately high number of paraprofessionals killed has raised serious questions about inequalities in the system. Teachers’ aides, said Ms. Jones (also a pseudonym), another teacher at Grace Dodge, “have fewer protections within the school system.”5
The DOE began releasing these numbers on April 13, amid mounting pressure from educators and elected officials to share information about the toll of Covid-19 on the school community. The department collected the numbers from reports by educators’ family members, but many teachers said the real number could be larger. As it is, the death toll for education workers has been notably high—though in an early April statement, the DOE, in conjunction with the DOHMH, cautioned against linking coronavirus infections to the school system, saying, “School buildings are not a place of greater exposure than any other part of our city.”6 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
The teachers who spoke with The Nation aren’t so sure. As public health experts have begun publishing analyses of the early days of the US outbreak, raising the possibility that the number of deaths could have been reduced by as much as 50 to 80 percent had governments instituted social distancing a week or two earlier, the question of how many school workers could have been saved has haunted New York City educators. For many, the high number of deaths has served as yet more evidence of the great cost educators have paid for what they consider the city’s drawn-out decision to close the public schools. The deaths, wrote Manhattan teacher Ellen Schweitzer in an e-mail, were “horribly tragic and not surprising. It’s what we knew would happen. It’s what drove us to take the actions necessary to close the schools.”7
Now, as the conversation turns to reopening, they worry that the same lack of care will characterize any return to the classroom. Their experience thus far leads them to fear that budget cuts from the coronavirus- related economic crisis will take a bite out of the public schools and leave them overstretched and underprotected.8
All’s fine! Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio ressure the public as they confirm the first case of Covid-19. (David Dee Delgado / Getty Images)
For teachers like Schweitzer, the first two weeks in March remain fateful, a moment when the DOE could have acted boldly but didn’t. On March 1, the first case was confirmed in New York City; by March 12, the number of confirmed cases in the city had ballooned to 95. During this period, school systems in cities and states that were far less affected—from San Francisco to Philadelphia, from Ohio to Florida—had announced that they would be closing. Nonetheless, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted that New York City schools would remain open. “We are going to do our damnedest to keep the schools open,” he said as late as March 13.9
For its part, the DOE continued to broadcast calm, reiterating its protocols for schools in e-mails to teachers and parents. As late as March 10, those protocols, outlined in a letter to families, consisted primarily of “strongly encouraging” handwashing throughout the day and promising to ensure every school building had a nurse, which was not the case before the coronavirus outbreak. The guidelines further stated that each school would be supplied with face masks to give to students and staffers who displayed Covid-19 symptoms. But those masks never materialized, according to Ms. Johnson (also not her real name), another teacher on the Grace Dodge campus.10
In a statement to The Nation, the DOE also said it had directed custodians to perform “deep cleaning” of the schools “twice a week.” And it said it had “surveyed both public and non-public schools buildings to ensure they had a sufficient supply of hand soap, paper towels, and anti-viral disinfectant inventory.”11
But Johnson said her school didn’t have sufficient supplies. “Finally, when a group of teachers came together to start sanitizing our laptops regularly and our desks regularly, we quickly ran out of Clorox wipes and any materials to do that with,” she said. “There was just such neglect.”12
Perhaps most alarming of all to school staffers was the plan for what would happen if a member of a school community got sick with Covid-19. Under New York state guidelines, schools would be closed for 24 hours only after a case had been confirmed by the health department; the problem was, it was almost impossible for anyone to get tested at that point. Even more confounding, as cases clearly mounted in the city, DOE officials sent an internal memo to staffers telling them not to call the DOHMH to report cases of Covid-19 among teachers and staff.13
In a response to questions about the memo, the DOE said, “DOHMH and DOE had two-way communication on these issues at all times” and that the department had “escalated” reports of potential cases to “both City and State.” As a result, “there was no need for individuals to call the DOHMH hotline which was set up to handle information from testing labs—we were directly checking.”14
Yet as Smith’s case suggests, this process was, if nothing else, slow and cumbersome at a time when every moment counted. While the DOE told The Nation that it “immediately looked into this [case] when it was brought to our attention” and “took steps in accordance with applicable State guidance…and notified the school community” when the positive result was confirmed, that notification did not arrive until Monday evening, March 16; that was four days after Smith got his positive test result. Moreover, the notice went only to staff, teachers said, not the whole school community, which remained in the dark about the test result.15 More on Covid-19 ‘We Have No Nurses and No Isolation Room’ Ross Barkan America Never Valued Care Workers. Then a Pandemic Hit. Bryce Covert Reopening: A Chronicle of Needless Deaths Foretold Gregg Gonsalves
The guidance given to teachers and schools was “nonsensical,” City Councilmember Brad Lander said. One school, which his children had attended, had identified a parent as positive for the virus. “They had a policy that if a student or a teacher was a positive ID’d case, they would close the school for 24 hours and clean it, but if a parent had been positively ID’d—even if the whole family was housed together—then nothing happens. The school is just open. It was totally an incoherent policy. It bore no relationship to the science.”16
In a statement to The Nation, DOE spokesperson Miranda Barbot defended the department’s handling of the crisis. “Since the beginning, the Department of Education issued near-daily updates aligned to federal, state, and local guidance that adjusted to the rapidly changing public health landscape,” she wrote. “All of our decisions are informed by public health experts in order to protect the health and safety of our students and staff.”17
School’s out: Students depart Stuyvesant High School on March 13, the last day before the schools were shut down. (Bebeto Matthews / AP Photo)
By the time de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza decided to close the schools on March 15, there was a sense that the city had already fallen behind the curve. But by many accounts, the decision might have been even more delayed, the deaths more numerous, if not for a robust pressure campaign waged both inside and outside the government. On the inside were staffers at the DOHMH, who reportedly threatened to resign, as well as de Blasio’s own advisers, who fought bitterly with him. On the outside were the teachers, whose concern about the city’s failure to act more aggressively to keep educators, students, and their families safe reached a boiling point in the days before the shutdown announcement.18
For Smith, that point came shortly after he told the school of his Covid-19 diagnosis and his school’s administration opted to keep the school open. “It wasn’t about me anymore,” he said. “I am 50 years old, but I am pretty healthy. I am a lifelong athlete. Forget about me. I teach 90 kids a week, and those kids are with other teachers. It is my duty to make sure that this does not become worse.”19
Smith wasn’t alone. Frustrated with the slow response, rank-and-file teachers began to talk to one another about what they were experiencing, and they came to the same conclusion: They had to do something to pressure elected officials to close the schools.20
Schweitzer, who teaches at Stuyvesant High School and came down with symptoms similar to Covid-19’s after the schools closed, recalled that early on there was a sense that even if the virus wasn’t a problem for young people, they could nonetheless be carriers, tracking it from school to home and home to school. “We were very concerned about the health of our more vulnerable colleagues,” she said. “We could all name particular people who work in the school buildings we know have vulnerable health conditions or are older. When you can put a specific name and a face to somebody who is high risk, how do you not do everything you can to try to protect that person?”21
From there, the discussion about taking action came together very quickly, Schweitzer said. “There were people, certainly by [March] 10 and 11, who were walking around saying, ‘This is crazy. The schools should be closed.’ As soon as people started talking about it out loud, it was kind of like an emperor’s new clothes thing, like, ‘Yes, why aren’t we? This is ridiculous. Why are we reporting to school in the high-risk environment that we’re in?’”22
With little sign of movement from the de Blasio administration, teachers began trying to take their concerns public. One teacher, whose wife is an emergency physician, wrote a piece published in the New York Daily News on March 13; three others cowrote an op-ed published by The New York Times on March 14, all calling for schools to be closed.23
The teachers began to use an existing e-mail list for union members to talk to one another; in those conversations, the idea of a sick-out—an unofficial work stoppage in which workers call in sick in an organized fashion—became popular. “You start looking at those exponential graphs, and it becomes really clear that every day is crucial,” Schweitzer said.24
Strikes by public employees are banned under New York’s Taylor Law, and although the United Federation of Teachers (UFT)—which represents New York’s 75,000 teachers, 19,000 classroom paraprofessionals, and other education and care workers—called for schools to be closed, the union did not officially endorse plans for a job action. But regardless of that, the teachers were becoming active.25
“We were pretty aware that we were going to be in classrooms as long as possible,” said Jones. Despite the promises in the letters to parents that there would be frequent handwashing and a nurse present, she said, “we had to advocate to get soap in the bathrooms because there wasn’t soap in the bathrooms. The school nurse was only there a couple of days a week, even though there is a clinic downstairs.”26
By March 13, rumors had begun circulating on the Grace Dodge Campus, where Jones works, that someone had fallen sick. The same was true at schools across the city; according to the mayor, only 68 percent of students showed up that day. “They are really active on social media, and they are highly connected,” Jones said of her students. Parents, too, had begun expressing their anger on social media, using the hashtag #CloseNYCSchools.27
Over the weekend, Jones was involved in phone conversations with other teachers, including a call with over 400 educators organized by the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), a reform caucus in the union that was formed in the wake of the successful 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike. While many MORE members are longtime activists, Schweitzer noted that people “came out of the woodwork” to get involved in pushing for school closure.28
“The people who are the regular organizers, obviously, they made it happen,” she said. “But it was also so many rank-and-filers, who hadn’t necessarily been that involved before, just sprang into action seeing that this was urgent, that others needed to step in and take charge and that a sick-out would work.”29
Over the weekend, Schweitzer said, teachers started reporting to the city’s automated system for requesting a substitute that they would be absent on Monday; they did so early on so the numbers would be available for officials to see. Even before the planned sick-out, there was an increase in absences that Friday across the system. Finally on Sunday, de Blasio and Carranza announced that the schools would close. The announcement arrived in the late afternoon, leaving parents scrambling to figure out how to navigate the coming week.30
Suspended: Richard Carranza, the chancelor of the New York City Department of Education, announces the closure of the nation’s largest school system, March 15. (Lev Radin / Pacific Press / Sipa USA via AP Images)
In resisting shutting down the schools for as long as he did, de Blasio returned again and again to the idea of equity and his concern that closing them would inflict enormous harm on the city’s millions of vulnerable families. The schools should remain open, he insisted, so that low-income residents and the children of health care providers had somewhere to go during the day—not only a place to learn and be safe but also to receive free meals.31
To many teachers, like Jones, this idea made a certain sense. “I know that a lot of people are concerned about getting access to essential services for the most-needy students, and that is a real issue,” she said.32
Yet then as now, they wondered what might have happened had the mayor channeled his rightful concern for equity into preparing the system to help the most vulnerable families weather a likely shutdown rather than stubbornly fighting it and, in the process, putting those same students and their families at risk. There was no way, Jones said, that keeping a million students in packed buildings for hours at a time would have been safe, but the buildings could have been used to distribute food and even provide health care. Johnson agreed, saying, “I am not a nurse, but I am happy to hand out food, lunches. Or teach me how to give the swab [for coronavirus testing]. There is a role for us to play rather than acting like we are part of the problem.”33
As it was, the transition to the country’s largest experiment in remote learning was bumpy. For Smith, who is healthy once again, remote teaching has been a source of both gratification and frustration. “It is very rewarding,” he said, when students ask how he is doing, and he wants to make sure the students are still learning so it doesn’t worsen what teachers call the summer lag, the loss of learning during summer break.34
But of course, online classes in these circumstances are far from normal. “For a lot of us, we are finding it more difficult than going in and just doing our regular job,” said Schweitzer, who when we spoke June 1 was suffering a relapse of what still had not been confirmed as Covid-19. “It seems to be very uneven, by school and by district, exactly what and how much teachers are expected to do and how much they are expected to make the students do. I have some fear about how this is going to be used long term.”35
According to the DOE, it has given out 255,000 Internet-enabled iPads in addition to 175,000 school laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks to make sure all students can access remote learning. Yet that process has been incomplete. Only about two-thirds of Jones’s students are able to connect to online classrooms, she said. And even with all the equipment in place, translating real-world education into its remote counterpart has been challenging.36
“Online learning is no substitute for classroom learning,” City Councilmember Lander said. Despite the DOE’s impressive if troubled attempt to distribute the necessary technology to students, he said, online learning has exacerbated the existing disparities within the school system. “It is no good for middle-class white students, either, but it also amplifies inequality.”37
Teachers didn’t expect the district to be fully prepared to go all online, yet they were still frustrated about how the rollout of online learning went. “We should be able to expect the administration of the DOE to provide helpful guidance and support as we do our jobs,” Schweitzer said. “But sadly, many teachers don’t have much evidence that the DOE does this even under normal circumstances, so while we are angry that leadership has done so little, it’s also not the case that we are really so surprised.”38
Now, as the school year comes to a stuttering end, educators face a new set of challenges. There is the looming question of when and how the schools will reopen, and there is the threat of dramatic changes to the education system: In April, Governor Andrew Cuomo promised more education cuts—as much as a 20 percent reduction—and on May 5, he announced that he plans to partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a new normal for the schools. “The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms,” Cuomo told reporters. “Why? With all the technology you have?”39
New York State United Teachers, the statewide teachers’ union federation, reacted immediately, condemning Cuomo’s plan. “If we want to reimagine education, let’s start with addressing the need for social workers, mental health counselors, school nurses, enriching arts courses, advanced courses and smaller class sizes in school districts across the state,” read a statement from NYSUT president Andy Pallotta.40
Yet even as they scramble to respond to this latest attempt at top-down reform, the teachers are in the difficult position of trying to prevent a premature reopening and fighting the imposition of long-term remote learning—which the teachers who spoke with The Nation stressed would be bad for teachers, students, and overstretched parents. Right now, the question of when the city’s schools will reopen remains unanswered. Will students and teachers return to their schools in September and resume traditional classes? Or will they open under some modified program that involves staggered attendance—with students alternating which days of the week they attend—along with temperature checks and other public health protocols? Or will they hold off until the arrival of a vaccine? The DOE told The Nation that it is “considering many options for a successful and safe reopening in the fall and will always follow the guidance of our public health experts.”41
At the time this article went to press, the UFT had not endorsed a specific proposal, but it has released a public petition with demands for what reopening schools must include: widespread access to regular testing, temperature checks, rigorous cleaning protocols, protective equipment, and “an exhaustive tracing procedure.” For its part, MORE is calling for a memorandum of agreement around the crisis, laying out clearly what teachers’ responsibilities and rights are in these extraordinary circumstances. “This MOA,” the caucus said in a statement, “could also serve as the basis for future crises, which are only going to become more common as the effects of climate change continue to be unaddressed.” Because teachers’ conditions vary widely from school to school, MORE wants teachers to have discretion over the form their instruction takes, control over their working hours, and relief from the evaluations that make their jobs more difficult.42
“I think these kinds of things are more important to attend to than unrealistic fantasies about reopening school buildings,” Schweitzer said. “But of course, everyone is loath to point out the reality that schools can’t be safely reopened for such an indeterminate amount of time.”43
The reality of reopening in New York City is a logistical nightmare, Schweitzer noted in an e-mail. “Every time I hear someone talk about spacing students out in the classroom, I roll my eyes for several reasons, but mainly I just think it’s an irrelevant conversation for New York City due to the transit situation…. [I]t is largely a waste of time to imagine ways of keeping us ‘safe and healthy’ in the school building when we have no safe and healthy way of getting to school in the first place,” she said.44
But teachers are beginning to have those discussions, she added, to prepare for the battles ahead. Schweitzer wrote, “The question is, what do UFT members overall think—what are they willing to fight for, what are they willing to refuse to do.”45
Those questions have taken on even more urgency as protests against police violence and white supremacy have rocked New York. “The collapse of the NYC school system in the face of coronavirus exposes the tremendous pressure our schools were under to pick up the slack of a destroyed social safety net,” said Kevin Prosen, an English teacher at IS 230 in the borough of Queens who is also a UFT delegate and a member of MORE. “Now, with the NYPD mobilizing their multibillion-dollar annual budget to counter protests against police brutality and no doubt attacking some of our students, the priorities of our liberal city and state governments are there for everyone to see. There is no way out of this that doesn’t include redirecting major parts of the police budget to schools and other social services.”46
As this article went to press, MORE was working on a health justice agenda for the schools, based on three tenets: anti-racism, public health, and full funding for education. The aim, said Marilena Marchetti, an occupational therapist at a number of Brooklyn schools and a member of the team working on the agenda, was to consolidate the values of the broad movement for education justice, involving not just UFT members but also parent, student, and community groups around the city. “We cannot go back to the way things were, with conditions that allow for the bare minimum, simply surviving. Once the dust settles from this unforeseen yet totally predictable trauma, we want more from schools. We want every school to be a place where students truly thrive,” she said. “The fact is, that will require a redistribution of wealth and taxing the rich. We’re here for that, we’re fighting for that.”47


thenation--2020-06-16--The Long Blue Line Connecting Police Brutality to Drone Strikes

In early February of this year , 18-year-old Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar was blown to smithereens by American air strikes as she sat down for dinner with her family in Jilib , Somalia .
Hurled indiscriminately by the US Africa Command ( Africom ) in its hunt for al-Shabaab militants , the bombs also injured Abukar ’ s younger sisters Fatuma , age 12 , and Adey , age 7 , as well as their 70-year-old grandmother , Khadija Mohamed Gedow .
A few weeks later , on February 24 , Africom lobbed a Hellfire missile that killed 53-year-old banana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ village of Kumbareere .
As the murders of Abukar and Mohamud tragically demonstrate , the US military has inflicted some of the most grotesque forms of violence on Africans under the pretext of protecting Americans .
According to Amnesty International , the United States has conducted over 170 aerial raids since 2017 , triple the number of the previous three years , killing between 900 and 1,000 Somalis .
And while there has been almost no public uproar about black African civilian casualties of America ’ s War on Terrorism abroad , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement at home .
Months after Africom ’ s bombardments in Somalia , many of us watched and wept in horror as George Floyd was asphyxiated on the streets of Minneapolis , his immobile body pinned down by the knee of a white police officer .
The irony that Floyd ’ s demise occurred on Africa Day , May 25 , which commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity , was not lost on those of us who see the continuities of anti-black racism on both sides of the Atlantic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Floyd lies a glaring connection : While US militarization in Africa frames the black body as an “ enemy without , ” American policing deems the black body an “ enemy within.
” As with the deadly shelling of Somalia , American “ shadow wars ” in Africa are fought covertly and violate international law .
The highly secretive and advanced nature of these military operations—which rely on artificial intelligence , drones , and surveillance technology—renders them invisible to American citizens .
Yet they persist .
Day after day , year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” of the United States make manifest a desire to control territories far away , to exploit and extract their resources , and to subdue their people ; the “ security needs ” of white America make manifest a desire to police black bodies into submission , to push them to the fringes , and in many cases to annihilate them .
In both instances , the rhetoric of “ keeping America safe ” is a vision that regards racialized bodies as threats to be eliminated .
According to this white supremacist line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only dangerous but also disposable .
It must be shackled and suffocated , caged and contained , burned and bludgeoned .
Police brutality in America and US militarization in Africa operate under similar logics .
America ’ s military parades around Africa like a peacock brandishing its plumes .
Since Africom commenced in 2008 with active combat missions in over a dozen African countries—including Ethiopia , Kenya , and Uganda—it has “ conducted more than 1,500 air attacks , commando raids , and other ground missions in Libya and Somalia alone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the United States has pelted Libya with at least 776 strikes since 2011 , many during the first round of assaults unleashed by NATO and the Obama administration in “ support ” of the rebels who executed Moammar El-Gadhafi .
We Africans are all too familiar with this outward expression of American aggression and its structural dismissal of black life—from the use of machine guns and tanks to drones and rocket-propelled grenades .
Now , according to the American Civil Liberties Union , much of this wartime weaponry has been transported as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States in a covert move to militarize law enforcement .
And so when active duty troops were deployed in the District of Columbia to squash protests prompted by Floyd ’ s death , we were not surprised .
While a group of 89 former American defense officials declared that “ the military must never be used to violate constitutional rights , ” the human rights of Africans are flouted regularly by the United States ’ militarized foreign policy .
Since 9/11 , in fact , the US military has used a range @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pads in Niger and airfields in Kenya and Djibouti to running training exercises meant to beef up the repressive capacity of affiliate governments—to expand its footprint in the continent .
Yet , even though African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat aptly denounced racialized police violence in the United States , there hasn ’ t been a similarly forceful condemnation of the militarization of American engagement in Africa .
In fact , some African leaders have even been the greatest threats to black life in the continent .
Just these last months , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , police and military have killed innocent citizens of Liberia , Kenya , Nigeria , Rwanda , South Africa , and Uganda .
These acts of cruelty follow a long history of anti-black violence .
Euro-American whites in particular have weaponized state-sanctioned hostility against people of black African descent for as long , it seems , as the earth has titled on its axis .
Myriad examples stain our histories with blood : from the torture and execution of Mau Mau revolutionaries in 1950s Kenya by British colonizers to the assassination in 1961 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the aid of Belgian and American collusion ; from the 1999 shooting of unarmed Guinean national Amadou Diallo by four white officers on his New York doorstep to the scorching to death of Sierra Leonean Oury Jalloh while in German police custody in 2005 ; from the 2016 murder of Malian Adama Traoré by French law enforcement to the 2018 gunning down of Afro-Brazilian feminist activist and politician Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro by the “ Crime Bureau.
” Militarization Has Become Our National Religion Death From Above : US Air Strikes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Inside the Secretive US Air Campaign In Somalia Indeed , anti-black brutality is a global affliction , and it ’ s not just confined to the four corners of the United States .
The forces of racism have been kneeling on the necks of black people in Africa , Asia , Australia , Europe , and Latin America for centuries .
The righteous rage exhibited by Africans on the streets of Lagos , Lusaka , Monrovia , Nairobi , and Tripoli in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in D.C. , Chicago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York has been powerful to witness .
But this must not remain a unidirectional show of support .
When innocent African lives are snuffed out as a result of America ’ s War on Terrorism in the Sahel , the Horn of Africa , and the Gulf of Guinea , we must also rise up .
Although the Movement for Black Lives ( # BlackLivesMatter ) has rightly demanded the divestment and defunding of American police forces , and “ a cut in military expenditures , ” added to this appeal should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presence in Africa and formal investigations into atrocities already committed .
This moment is an important inflection point for global black solidarity , for a return to the black internationalism of a bygone era , which clearly defined the continuities between civil rights struggles in America and demands for decolonization in Africa .
While condemning modern-day lynchings in the so-called “ land of the free , ” we must also denounce America ’ s militarized massacres abroad .
The murders of George Floyd , Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar , and Mohamud Salad Mohamud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black lives will never truly matter in the United States unless they also matter in Africa and its diasporas .

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?
In early February of this year, 18-year-old Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar was blown to smithereens by American air strikes as she sat down for dinner with her family in Jilib, Somalia. Hurled indiscriminately by the US Africa Command (Africom) in its hunt for al-Shabaab militants, the bombs also injured Abukar’s younger sisters Fatuma, age 12, and Adey, age 7, as well as their 70-year-old grandmother, Khadija Mohamed Gedow. A few weeks later, on February 24, Africom lobbed a Hellfire missile that killed 53-year-old banana farmer Mohamud Salad Mohamud in the nearby village of Kumbareere.
As the murders of Abukar and Mohamud tragically demonstrate, the US military has inflicted some of the most grotesque forms of violence on Africans under the pretext of protecting Americans. According to Amnesty International, the United States has conducted over 170 aerial raids since 2017, triple the number of the previous three years, killing between 900 and 1,000 Somalis. And while there has been almost no public uproar about black African civilian casualties of America’s War on Terrorism abroad, they parallel black civilian casualties of domestic law enforcement at home.
Months after Africom’s bombardments in Somalia, many of us watched and wept in horror as George Floyd was asphyxiated on the streets of Minneapolis, his immobile body pinned down by the knee of a white police officer. The irony that Floyd’s demise occurred on Africa Day, May 25, which commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity, was not lost on those of us who see the continuities of anti-black racism on both sides of the Atlantic.
In the fate of Abukar, Mohamud, and Floyd lies a glaring connection: While US militarization in Africa frames the black body as an “enemy without,” American policing deems the black body an “enemy within.”
We can’t breathe. Current Issue View our current issue
As with the deadly shelling of Somalia, American “shadow wars” in Africa are fought covertly and violate international law. The highly secretive and advanced nature of these military operations—which rely on artificial intelligence, drones, and surveillance technology—renders them invisible to American citizens. Yet they persist. Day after day, year after year.
The “security needs” of the United States make manifest a desire to control territories far away, to exploit and extract their resources, and to subdue their people; the “security needs” of white America make manifest a desire to police black bodies into submission, to push them to the fringes, and in many cases to annihilate them. In both instances, the rhetoric of “keeping America safe” is a vision that regards racialized bodies as threats to be eliminated. According to this white supremacist line of reasoning, the black body is not only dangerous but also disposable. It must be shackled and suffocated, caged and contained, burned and bludgeoned. Police brutality in America and US militarization in Africa operate under similar logics. 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
America’s military parades around Africa like a peacock brandishing its plumes. Since Africom commenced in 2008 with active combat missions in over a dozen African countries—including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda—it has “conducted more than 1,500 air attacks, commando raids, and other ground missions in Libya and Somalia alone,” according to The Intercept. Indeed, the United States has pelted Libya with at least 776 strikes since 2011, many during the first round of assaults unleashed by NATO and the Obama administration in “support” of the rebels who executed Moammar El-Gadhafi.
We Africans are all too familiar with this outward expression of American aggression and its structural dismissal of black life—from the use of machine guns and tanks to drones and rocket-propelled grenades. Now, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, much of this wartime weaponry has been transported as excess equipment to police departments across the United States in a covert move to militarize law enforcement.
And so when active duty troops were deployed in the District of Columbia to squash protests prompted by Floyd’s death, we were not surprised. While a group of 89 former American defense officials declared that “the military must never be used to violate constitutional rights,” the human rights of Africans are flouted regularly by the United States’ militarized foreign policy. Since 9/11, in fact, the US military has used a range of systems and strategies—from operating drone launching pads in Niger and airfields in Kenya and Djibouti to running training exercises meant to beef up the repressive capacity of affiliate governments—to expand its footprint in the continent.
Yet, even though African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat aptly denounced racialized police violence in the United States, there hasn’t been a similarly forceful condemnation of the militarization of American engagement in Africa. In fact, some African leaders have even been the greatest threats to black life in the continent. Just these last months, under the guise of enforcing Covid-19 lockdowns, police and military have killed innocent citizens of Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda.
These acts of cruelty follow a long history of anti-black violence. Euro-American whites in particular have weaponized state-sanctioned hostility against people of black African descent for as long, it seems, as the earth has titled on its axis. Myriad examples stain our histories with blood: from the torture and execution of Mau Mau revolutionaries in 1950s Kenya by British colonizers to the assassination in 1961 of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba with the aid of Belgian and American collusion; from the 1999 shooting of unarmed Guinean national Amadou Diallo by four white officers on his New York doorstep to the scorching to death of Sierra Leonean Oury Jalloh while in German police custody in 2005; from the 2016 murder of Malian Adama Traoré by French law enforcement to the 2018 gunning down of Afro-Brazilian feminist activist and politician Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro by the “Crime Bureau.” Militarization Militarization Has Become Our National Religion William Astore Death From Above: US Air Strikes in Somalia Could Constitute ‘War Crimes’ Amanda Sperber Inside the Secretive US Air Campaign In Somalia Amanda Sperber
Indeed, anti-black brutality is a global affliction, and it’s not just confined to the four corners of the United States. The forces of racism have been kneeling on the necks of black people in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America for centuries. The righteous rage exhibited by Africans on the streets of Lagos, Lusaka, Monrovia, Nairobi, and Tripoli in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in D.C., Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York has been powerful to witness. But this must not remain a unidirectional show of support. When innocent African lives are snuffed out as a result of America’s War on Terrorism in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Gulf of Guinea, we must also rise up.
Although the Movement for Black Lives (#BlackLivesMatter) has rightly demanded the divestment and defunding of American police forces, and “a cut in military expenditures,” added to this appeal should be the complete demilitarization of the US presence in Africa and formal investigations into atrocities already committed.
This moment is an important inflection point for global black solidarity, for a return to the black internationalism of a bygone era, which clearly defined the continuities between civil rights struggles in America and demands for decolonization in Africa.
While condemning modern-day lynchings in the so-called “land of the free,” we must also denounce America’s militarized massacres abroad. The murders of George Floyd, Nurto Kusow Omar Abukar, and Mohamud Salad Mohamud must remind us again and again that black lives will never truly matter in the United States unless they also matter in Africa and its diasporas.