thenation--2020-05-13--Judith Butler on the Violence of Neglect Amid a Health Crisis

Judith Butler has achieved a status that few other living academics have acquired : For each published work that she issues , reams of discussion and critique are produced in response , so much so that they have engendered microdisciplines in the many fields in which she is an expert : gender , politics , literary studies , and more .
Her argument for gender as performative , which first gained attention through her 1990 book Gender Trouble , established her as a leading gender theorist before subsequent works directed greater focus toward the exercise of state power via , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the wake of the 9/11 attacks , Butler began working on a series of essays , later collected into Precarious Life : The Powers of Mourning and Violence ( 2004 ) , in which she elaborated her thesis on “ grievability.
” She argued that the loss of certain communities—generally First World , white , middle class , heterosexual—produces a national mourning that is recognized and amplified—in obituary pages , news channels , and public commemoration services .
Others seen as weak or different ( such as people with AIDS in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coalition attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan ) , conversely , lack that grievable quality that is central to generating a sense of solidarity with those we do not know .
The process , she wrote , works to exclude certain people from consideration as human : “ They can not be mourned because they are always already lost or , rather , never ‘ were.
’ ” In February of this year , Butler published The Force of Nonviolence , which advances her argument for a nonviolent ethic to take hold through forms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difference .
Drawing on Michel Foucault , Frantz Fanon , and others , it examines violence in its many complex forms , encouraging recognition of the insidiousness of violent acts beyond “ the blow ” —those that are issued through , for instance , political , economic , or legal institutions .
To respond , she argues , nonviolence must be understood not as passive but as an active politicoethical position , one that materializes through recognition of the interdependency of humans in forms of protest and acts of solidarity , which states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violent .
Butler—who is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California , Berkeley—spoke to The Nation as the Covid-19 pandemic continued to reveal deep structural inequalities in many Western nations , bringing into sharper focus the words of the French philosopher Étienne Balibar , whose work she refers to in the book : “ Our world is one marked by…the radical inequality of the forms and experiences of death itself.
” The Trump administration ’ s response to the effects of the pandemic among low-income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ examine forms of nonphysical violence—in particular , those of neglect and discrimination—that Butler seeks to throw greater light on .
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length .
Francis Wade : There is , as your book argues , a clear problem with the tendency to view violence as a physical act , for it ignores the more institutional forms of violence playing out right now in the US and beyond .
What would the adoption of a wider view allow us to see ?
Judith Butler : A single act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for structural or institutional forms of violence .
The physical blow is most graphic and imaginable , and when violence takes that form , it is easier to find and hold the person accountable for its delivery .
Accountability becomes more complex and no less urgent when the person who strikes the blow claims to be following an unjust police or prison policy or acting in the name of national security .
And it is complex in another way but still no less urgent if whole populations are “ left to die , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into small housing spaces and deprived of medical care are exposed to serious illness and death under the present conditions of pandemic .
Something quite similar could be said about the population of Gaza , where confinement is imposed by force and where a slow genocide may well take place .
In such cases , we also hold to account the state , the conditions of siege , carceral institutions , the policy-makers , and even the economic system that treats some workers as dispensable and replaceable .
The way I see it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who is a friend and who is an enemy but who counts as a life that matters and whose lives are regarded as dispensable .
Prisons tend to keep those populations inside the nation but with a disenfranchised status , and in the US they are instruments for containing and suppressing black and brown lives to a disproportionate degree .
With migrants , they are meant to be kept outside .
But the border and its modes of indefinite detention are neither quite inside nor outside .
That kind of threshold can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : One the surface at least , the phrase “ left to die ” seems somewhat passive—a form of neglect .
Members of black and/or poor communities in the US who are dying at a disproportionately higher rate from Covid-19 are experiencing the final result of , among many other things , neglect .
Should neglect therefore be read as violence , the active rather than passive work of a state that prioritizes certain lives over others ?
JB : As the pandemic became widely recognized , some policy-makers seeking to reopen the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the idea of herd immunity , which presumes that those who are strong enough to endure the virus will develop immunity and they will come to constitute over time a strong population able to work .
One can see how the herd immunity thesis works quite well with social Darwinism , the idea that societies tend to evolve in which the most fit survive and the least fit do not .
Under conditions of pandemic , it is , of course , black and brown minorities who count as vulnerable or not destined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being black is a “ preexisting condition , ” by which she clearly meant that black people in the US have been among those who have been disproportionately deprived of basic health care .
The elderly also belong to this group who are most vulnerable ( and the elderly black community , especially ) —as do the poor , the disabled , the incarcerated , the homeless , the detained migrant , as well as all those with preexisting medical conditions whose social existence belongs to all or most of this list of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immunity does not contain in itself a death verdict , and yet its implementation would certainly lead to the increased isolation , unemployment , and ostracism of those considered to be most vulnerable—it also makes explicit assumptions about mortality rates linked with rates of productivity .
These populations are considered as on their way to death anyway , not worth safeguarding , and a metric is implicitly or explicitly adopted that determines whose life is valuable and whose is not .
How Poetry Can Bear Witness to Crisis and Revolution Any policy or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a group is engaged in a form of death dealing .
When that group is black , it is a racist form of death dealing with clear links to other forms , including the carceral ones .
Once the rationale for herd immunity is accepted by those who wish to open up industry and even universities , the assumption going forward is that the young and healthy will get sick and recover , increasing the number of people with antibodies [ who will be ] ready to work .
What that rationale does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student in the prime of life without any medical issues will spread the virus , affecting people who belong to the vulnerable class .
The result is that the vulnerable class is left to die by a policy that has decided in advance which lives are valuable—productive , useful—and which lives are dispensable .
And the markets remain open through adopting an epidemiological strategy that brushes off social Darwinism for the present .
This is not an explicit death sentence of the kind that judges make .
But death is a known and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the recovery of economic growth and profit as its explicit aim .
I would not call this move passive .
And it is something more than complicity with someone else ’ s violence .
It is , rather , a eugenic calculation that depends on dispensable and replaceable workers to realize its aim of revitalizing a productive industry in the midst of pandemic .
There is a good chance that it may become normalized in the course of restarting the economy .
FW : The act of deprioritizing vital services to already vulnerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in legitimate spheres—policy , legal , health , and so on .
That makes it and the forces reproducing it harder to detect and therefore counteract .
JB : Recently an increasing number of articles have drawn attention to the structural racism that has produced disproportionate suffering in black communities in the US .
Many reasons are given—redlining , poverty , access to health care , insurance and the kinds of jobs that provide insurance , and racist practices in testing and communication .
The failure to collect racial data on who has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racist practices in health care .
The formulation of racism given by Ruthie Gilmore has fresh relevance : “ Racism , specifically , is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.
” She was thinking about prisons , but it is also true about pandemics and especially true about the devastating loss of black and brown lives in prisons .
It is tempting to hold accountable a single person for racism , but when racism is structural , it is always many people who are reproducing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the disease , to test adequately , especially in areas where many black people live , is a way of letting people get ill and letting them die .
The failure to provide universal health care is also a way of potentially sacrificing all those who have no affordable access to health care .
The opposition to universal health care is a tacit agreement to let people die , and to make distinctions between who can be more easily left to die than others .
This calculation is both insidious and brutal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state is ostensibly there to protect us from violence in its various forms .
Yet in The Force of Nonviolence , your argument is that , by using semantic trickery , it reframes its own violence—in all its forms—against citizens or noncitizens as acts of safeguarding and thus shifts the violent narrative and perhaps a portion of public support in its favor .
How does that aid its status as the sole legitimate guarantor of our safety ?
JB : Of course , it all depends on what kind of state we are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the key tasks of the modern state is to provide laws that settle conflicts that occur in prelegal settings is one that is regularly accepted within liberal political theoretical understandings , dating back at least to Hobbes .
In that mode of thought , the state puts an end to “ natural ” violence by transforming violent conflict within the state of nature into juridical processes .
That transition requires a story line from violence to law , and yet it can not account for the violence of the law .
State @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regimes governed by racist aims—including laws , policing , and incarceration—can and do constitute forms of legal violence targeting minorities .
So if those targeted by legal violence turn to the law to seek relief from violence , they find that the accused and the arbiter are the same .
And that story follows a nightmarish circularity worthy of Kafka .
The semantic trickery to which you refer appears in its most obscene form in those trials or proceedings in which white policemen in the US explain why they killed , choked , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unarmed , constrained , or running away with their back to the police .
Under what conditions can such a police officer claim to be exercising legitimate self-defense ?
If the police say that their use of force was legitimate ( and hence not violence ) , they have to narrate a scene in which a blatant act of murder is understood as a necessary security precaution or an act of self-defense .
That narration has to prove plausible in a court of law or before a review board .
It does so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always interpreted as potential or imminent violence .
Those racist presuppositions run deep , and they facilitate accepting the wanton destruction of a life as justifiable .
The violence that the state inflicts against migrants at the border or that European states have inflicted against migrants at sea—very often letting them die rather than permitting them to enter the territory under international law—justifies itself by claiming that migrants are threats to the nation , sometimes figured as a violent threat , and that denying them their rights and , indeed , their lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All these examples point to the fact that both violence and self-defense have to be understood as legal terms used in specific fields of power to achieve certain clear aims .
To criticize those strategic uses , we have to be able not only to define violence but also to situate the definitions we accept within a field of conflicting and contradictory usages .
FW : Before any progress can be made toward a less violent world , you argue , the emphasis that liberal thought places on individualism must be challenged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ societies , historical or contemporary , in which liberal individualism isn ’ t perhaps as strong a force as communitarianism yet where violence is no less ?
JB : The book makes two related arguments , one about individuals and another about groups .
Both of these arguments are meant to highlight the problem of setting up exclusionary boundaries of selfhood .
Nonviolence requires understanding a relational version of selfhood , one that seeks to sustain social bonds beyond communitarian and national limits .
The critique of individualism reengages feminist critiques of liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dependency prove to be essential components of masculine norms of self-sufficiency .
Nonviolence demands that we understand relations to others as constituting who we are .
Individualism is based on the denial of that relationality .
If we impose regional , national , religious , racial , gendered limits on the relations by which we are defined , we adhere to group identifications that reproduce the exclusionary logic that nonviolence opposes .
It has to be the stranger—the one I have never known , the one who lives at a great distance from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language I do not know—to whom I have an ethical obligation .
An understanding of global interdependency , manifest now in acute forms in the pandemic world , brings to the fore these kinds of global obligations .
In my view , an ethics and politics of nonviolence must be global in character , recasting the border as a vexed but crucial site of relationality .
FW : But even in many advanced democracies , this idea of a self as fundamental to the good of a whole carries little weight .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ societies are in some way already conditioned against that notion of interdependence , what might it take for this kind of ethic to take hold ?
JB : Of course , the highly bounded and exclusionary versions of selfhood pertain mainly to those parts of the West where markets are supported by liberal precepts .
But something similar surely happens with groups that may well depend on individualism than on forms of group identity that are internally relational .
In other words , a group may well conceive of itself as interdependent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that interdependency .
Of course , in many religions we can find spiritual versions of interdependency .
This breath is mine but also not my own , always drawing from the air , which is filled with the exhalations of absent and unknown others .
The virus makes this truth clear in a potentially frightening way , but it is important to remember that it is an interrelationship that connects our bounded selves and proves them to be less bounded than those of us formed within individualism might believe .
Life exceeds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we should all learn to affirm , even though that condition may well seem imperiling at the moment .
I am also mindful right now of many of the indigenous communities at risk of destruction in the Brazilian Amazon .
The relation to land , to ancestors , to others , to the world makes reference to a bounded self , and that surely seems like a paradigmatic Western imposition .
Indeed , the practice of deforestation is an attack on the community not only because it requires the forests to live but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extended sense of selfhood and belonging .
It would be important to understand food distribution , deforestation , and health care not only in light of the idea of global interdependency but also in relation to the rights of migrants to cross borders and petition for asylum or residency .
For the most part , we have good reasons to understand dependency as a condition of exploitation , but it can , when recast as interdependency , become a global ethic and politics committed to social equality .

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.
Judith Butler has achieved a status that few other living academics have acquired: For each published work that she issues, reams of discussion and critique are produced in response, so much so that they have engendered microdisciplines in the many fields in which she is an expert: gender, politics, literary studies, and more. Her argument for gender as performative, which first gained attention through her 1990 book Gender Trouble, established her as a leading gender theorist before subsequent works directed greater focus toward the exercise of state power via, among others, rhetoric and violence.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Butler began working on a series of essays, later collected into Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004), in which she elaborated her thesis on “grievability.” She argued that the loss of certain communities—generally First World, white, middle class, heterosexual—produces a national mourning that is recognized and amplified—in obituary pages, news channels, and public commemoration services. Others seen as weak or different (such as people with AIDS in the US and the Muslim casualties of Western coalition attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan), conversely, lack that grievable quality that is central to generating a sense of solidarity with those we do not know. The process, she wrote, works to exclude certain people from consideration as human: “They cannot be mourned because they are always already lost or, rather, never ‘were.’”
In February of this year, Butler published The Force of Nonviolence, which advances her argument for a nonviolent ethic to take hold through forms of solidarity that cut across lines of difference. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, and others, it examines violence in its many complex forms, encouraging recognition of the insidiousness of violent acts beyond “the blow”—those that are issued through, for instance, political, economic, or legal institutions. To respond, she argues, nonviolence must be understood not as passive but as an active politicoethical position, one that materializes through recognition of the interdependency of humans in forms of protest and acts of solidarity, which states often seek to undermine by reframing as violent.
Butler—who is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley—spoke to The Nation as the Covid-19 pandemic continued to reveal deep structural inequalities in many Western nations, bringing into sharper focus the words of the French philosopher Étienne Balibar, whose work she refers to in the book: “Our world is one marked by…the radical inequality of the forms and experiences of death itself.” The Trump administration’s response to the effects of the pandemic among low-income communities provided a lens through which to examine forms of nonphysical violence—in particular, those of neglect and discrimination—that Butler seeks to throw greater light on. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
—Francis Wade
Francis Wade: There is, as your book argues, a clear problem with the tendency to view violence as a physical act, for it ignores the more institutional forms of violence playing out right now in the US and beyond. What would the adoption of a wider view allow us to see?
Judith Butler: A single act cannot stand for repeated patterns or for structural or institutional forms of violence. The physical blow is most graphic and imaginable, and when violence takes that form, it is easier to find and hold the person accountable for its delivery. Accountability becomes more complex and no less urgent when the person who strikes the blow claims to be following an unjust police or prison policy or acting in the name of national security. And it is complex in another way but still no less urgent if whole populations are “left to die,” as Foucault put. Farmworkers crammed into small housing spaces and deprived of medical care are exposed to serious illness and death under the present conditions of pandemic. Something quite similar could be said about the population of Gaza, where confinement is imposed by force and where a slow genocide may well take place.
In such cases, we also hold to account the state, the conditions of siege, carceral institutions, the policy-makers, and even the economic system that treats some workers as dispensable and replaceable. The way I see it, it is less a matter of who is a friend and who is an enemy but who counts as a life that matters and whose lives are regarded as dispensable. Prisons tend to keep those populations inside the nation but with a disenfranchised status, and in the US they are instruments for containing and suppressing black and brown lives to a disproportionate degree. With migrants, they are meant to be kept outside. But the border and its modes of indefinite detention are neither quite inside nor outside. That kind of threshold can be a special kind of hell.
FW: One the surface at least, the phrase “left to die” seems somewhat passive—a form of neglect. Members of black and/or poor communities in the US who are dying at a disproportionately higher rate from Covid-19 are experiencing the final result of, among many other things, neglect. Should neglect therefore be read as violence, the active rather than passive work of a state that prioritizes certain lives over others?
JB: As the pandemic became widely recognized, some policy-makers seeking to reopen the markets and recover productivity sought recourse to the idea of herd immunity, which presumes that those who are strong enough to endure the virus will develop immunity and they will come to constitute over time a strong population able to work. One can see how the herd immunity thesis works quite well with social Darwinism, the idea that societies tend to evolve in which the most fit survive and the least fit do not. Under conditions of pandemic, it is, of course, black and brown minorities who count as vulnerable or not destined to survive.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez remarked that being black is a “preexisting condition,” by which she clearly meant that black people in the US have been among those who have been disproportionately deprived of basic health care. The elderly also belong to this group who are most vulnerable (and the elderly black community, especially)—as do the poor, the disabled, the incarcerated, the homeless, the detained migrant, as well as all those with preexisting medical conditions whose social existence belongs to all or most of this list of categories. One could say that herd immunity does not contain in itself a death verdict, and yet its implementation would certainly lead to the increased isolation, unemployment, and ostracism of those considered to be most vulnerable—it also makes explicit assumptions about mortality rates linked with rates of productivity. These populations are considered as on their way to death anyway, not worth safeguarding, and a metric is implicitly or explicitly adopted that determines whose life is valuable and whose is not. Related Article How Poetry Can Bear Witness to Crisis and Revolution John Washington
Any policy or institution that creates increased mortality rates for a group is engaged in a form of death dealing. When that group is black, it is a racist form of death dealing with clear links to other forms, including the carceral ones. Once the rationale for herd immunity is accepted by those who wish to open up industry and even universities, the assumption going forward is that the young and healthy will get sick and recover, increasing the number of people with antibodies [who will be] ready to work. What that rationale does not consider is that the worker or student in the prime of life without any medical issues will spread the virus, affecting people who belong to the vulnerable class. The result is that the vulnerable class is left to die by a policy that has decided in advance which lives are valuable—productive, useful—and which lives are dispensable. And the markets remain open through adopting an epidemiological strategy that brushes off social Darwinism for the present.
This is not an explicit death sentence of the kind that judges make. But death is a known and acceptable consequence of a policy that has the recovery of economic growth and profit as its explicit aim. I would not call this move passive. And it is something more than complicity with someone else’s violence. It is, rather, a eugenic calculation that depends on dispensable and replaceable workers to realize its aim of revitalizing a productive industry in the midst of pandemic. There is a good chance that it may become normalized in the course of restarting the economy.
FW: The act of deprioritizing vital services to already vulnerable communities is especially insidious because it begins in legitimate spheres—policy, legal, health, and so on. That makes it and the forces reproducing it harder to detect and therefore counteract.
JB: Recently an increasing number of articles have drawn attention to the structural racism that has produced disproportionate suffering in black communities in the US. Many reasons are given—redlining, poverty, access to health care, insurance and the kinds of jobs that provide insurance, and racist practices in testing and communication. The failure to collect racial data on who has been tested makes it harder to expose racist practices in health care. The formulation of racism given by Ruthie Gilmore has fresh relevance: “Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
She was thinking about prisons, but it is also true about pandemics and especially true about the devastating loss of black and brown lives in prisons. It is tempting to hold accountable a single person for racism, but when racism is structural, it is always many people who are reproducing the structures. The failure to communicate information about the disease, to test adequately, especially in areas where many black people live, is a way of letting people get ill and letting them die. The failure to provide universal health care is also a way of potentially sacrificing all those who have no affordable access to health care. The opposition to universal health care is a tacit agreement to let people die, and to make distinctions between who can be more easily left to die than others. This calculation is both insidious and brutal in its racism.
FW: The state is ostensibly there to protect us from violence in its various forms. Yet in The Force of Nonviolence, your argument is that, by using semantic trickery, it reframes its own violence—in all its forms—against citizens or noncitizens as acts of safeguarding and thus shifts the violent narrative and perhaps a portion of public support in its favor. How does that aid its status as the sole legitimate guarantor of our safety?
JB: Of course, it all depends on what kind of state we are talking about. The notion that one of the key tasks of the modern state is to provide laws that settle conflicts that occur in prelegal settings is one that is regularly accepted within liberal political theoretical understandings, dating back at least to Hobbes. In that mode of thought, the state puts an end to “natural” violence by transforming violent conflict within the state of nature into juridical processes. That transition requires a story line from violence to law, and yet it cannot account for the violence of the law. State violence is very real, and legal regimes governed by racist aims—including laws, policing, and incarceration—can and do constitute forms of legal violence targeting minorities. So if those targeted by legal violence turn to the law to seek relief from violence, they find that the accused and the arbiter are the same. And that story follows a nightmarish circularity worthy of Kafka.
The semantic trickery to which you refer appears in its most obscene form in those trials or proceedings in which white policemen in the US explain why they killed, choked, or tortured a black person who was unarmed, constrained, or running away with their back to the police. Under what conditions can such a police officer claim to be exercising legitimate self-defense? If the police say that their use of force was legitimate (and hence not violence), they have to narrate a scene in which a blatant act of murder is understood as a necessary security precaution or an act of self-defense. That narration has to prove plausible in a court of law or before a review board. It does so under imaginary conditions in which blackness is always interpreted as potential or imminent violence. Those racist presuppositions run deep, and they facilitate accepting the wanton destruction of a life as justifiable.
The violence that the state inflicts against migrants at the border or that European states have inflicted against migrants at sea—very often letting them die rather than permitting them to enter the territory under international law—justifies itself by claiming that migrants are threats to the nation, sometimes figured as a violent threat, and that denying them their rights and, indeed, their lives, is a matter of national self-defense. All these examples point to the fact that both violence and self-defense have to be understood as legal terms used in specific fields of power to achieve certain clear aims. To criticize those strategic uses, we have to be able not only to define violence but also to situate the definitions we accept within a field of conflicting and contradictory usages.
FW: Before any progress can be made toward a less violent world, you argue, the emphasis that liberal thought places on individualism must be challenged. How does your argument apply to societies, historical or contemporary, in which liberal individualism isn’t perhaps as strong a force as communitarianism yet where violence is no less?
JB: The book makes two related arguments, one about individuals and another about groups. Both of these arguments are meant to highlight the problem of setting up exclusionary boundaries of selfhood. Nonviolence requires understanding a relational version of selfhood, one that seeks to sustain social bonds beyond communitarian and national limits. The critique of individualism reengages feminist critiques of liberal individualism, maintaining that forms of disavowed dependency prove to be essential components of masculine norms of self-sufficiency. Nonviolence demands that we understand relations to others as constituting who we are.
Individualism is based on the denial of that relationality. If we impose regional, national, religious, racial, gendered limits on the relations by which we are defined, we adhere to group identifications that reproduce the exclusionary logic that nonviolence opposes. It has to be the stranger—the one I have never known, the one who lives at a great distance from where I live, who speaks another language I do not know—to whom I have an ethical obligation. An understanding of global interdependency, manifest now in acute forms in the pandemic world, brings to the fore these kinds of global obligations. In my view, an ethics and politics of nonviolence must be global in character, recasting the border as a vexed but crucial site of relationality.
FW: But even in many advanced democracies, this idea of a self as fundamental to the good of a whole carries little weight. So if most, if not all, societies are in some way already conditioned against that notion of interdependence, what might it take for this kind of ethic to take hold?
JB: Of course, the highly bounded and exclusionary versions of selfhood pertain mainly to those parts of the West where markets are supported by liberal precepts. But something similar surely happens with groups that may well depend on individualism than on forms of group identity that are internally relational. In other words, a group may well conceive of itself as interdependent, but [it limits] the scope of that interdependency. Of course, in many religions we can find spiritual versions of interdependency. This breath is mine but also not my own, always drawing from the air, which is filled with the exhalations of absent and unknown others. The virus makes this truth clear in a potentially frightening way, but it is important to remember that it is an interrelationship that connects our bounded selves and proves them to be less bounded than those of us formed within individualism might believe. Life exceeds the person in forms of interdependency that we should all learn to affirm, even though that condition may well seem imperiling at the moment.
I am also mindful right now of many of the indigenous communities at risk of destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. The relation to land, to ancestors, to others, to the world makes reference to a bounded self, and that surely seems like a paradigmatic Western imposition. Indeed, the practice of deforestation is an attack on the community not only because it requires the forests to live but also because the forest belongs to an extended sense of selfhood and belonging. It would be important to understand food distribution, deforestation, and health care not only in light of the idea of global interdependency but also in relation to the rights of migrants to cross borders and petition for asylum or residency. For the most part, we have good reasons to understand dependency as a condition of exploitation, but it can, when recast as interdependency, become a global ethic and politics committed to social equality.


thenation--2020-05-13--We Really Can’t Screw Up Disaster Season This Year. Global Health Depends on It.

In one of the first natural disasters to strike the United States since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic , severe storms and tornadoes battered Southern states on Easter Sunday .
Two days later , more than 30 people had been killed , hundreds of homes had been destroyed , and several thousand lost power .
Many families now have to choose between staying in structurally unsafe homes and sheltering in crowded spaces where social distancing may be impossible .
For those evacuees who are among the 17 million people who have recently lost their jobs , finding permanent housing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , April 13 , President Donald Trump insisted in a White House briefing that he was on top of the situation .
“ FEMA is already on its way , ” Trump stated , “ I said , ‘ Get out there.
’ So FEMA is there and you know the great job that FEMA does .
It ’ s really something very special.
” But the federal government ’ s track record in handling natural disasters and , in particular , its lack of interest in assisting renters , is precisely why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will mark the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina ’ s landfall on the Gulf Coast .
The federal government responded to the crisis with almost criminal incompetence : The administration of George W. Bush failed to deliver medical supplies and personnel , abandoned vulnerable residents , placed survivors in trailers built with toxic materials , and lavished funds on local governments that blatantly discriminated against poor communities of color and occupants of affordable rental housing .
Since this catastrophe , federal agencies have made some progress .
Today , much of the paperwork @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( FEMA ) from enlisting the military during Katrina is prepared in advance ; hospitals and nursing homes that receive certain federal funds are required to have emergency evacuation plans ; FEMA stocks and positions emergency supplies in advance of disasters ( although the aftermath of Hurricane Maria demonstrated that the supplies can ’ t distribute themselves without effective leadership ) ; and , thankfully , directing FEMA requires at least five years of “ significant experience in crisis management.
” ( Michael D. Brown , who oversaw FEMA during Katrina , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Horse Association from 1989 to 2001 . )
Yet federal agencies have yet to internalize one of Katrina ’ s most important lessons : that renters need direct disaster relief even more than homeowners , small landlords , and commercial developers .
The stakes are high for anyone in the path of a natural disaster .
For homeowners and renters alike , calamities can lead to bankruptcy , foreclosure , or eviction , and homelessness—but renters are especially vulnerable .
Affordable and accessible homes are more susceptible to destruction , and less likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 82,000 rental units damaged or destroyed in Louisiana by Katrina , 20 percent had been affordable to extremely low-income households .
The aftermath of a major disaster often triggers rent hikes as the housing supply diminishes , demand increases , and cheaper units are replaced by higher-end units .
One year after Katrina , rents in New Orleans were 40 percent higher than before the hurricane .
Three years out , the city ’ s homeless population had doubled to 12,000 .
When the hurricane hit , half of all renters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After Katrina , the US Department of Housing and Urban Development ( HUD ) provided rental voucher assistance through three programs , but vouchers did not reach everyone who needed support .
The first set aside $ 390 million to evacuees who had received federal assistance or were homeless before Katrina ; that program ended on January 31 , 2006 .
The second program was an extension of the first and lasted 18 months .
This version , however , excluded people who were homeless before Katrina .
The third program began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ declining rental subsidy to low-income households that had not previously received help from HUD .
Around 36,000 households participated in the voucher programs .
With HUD approval , the states affected by Katrina initially opted to give homeowners $ 13 billion in tax incentives , loans , and grants—but did not set aside proportionate aid for renters .
The omission was so egregious that Congress released an additional $ 1 billion , along with explicit instructions to rehabilitate rental housing .
With a second green light from HUD , the states set out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ renters , except all the funding was reserved for public housing authorities , developers , and small landlords .
The states moved excruciatingly slowly .
It would take Louisiana two years to rehabilitate the first rental units under its federally funded program .
By 2010 , a mere 18 percent of the state ’ s damaged rental units had received federal funds compared to 62 percent of homeowner units .
HUD watched idly as Louisiana localities obstructed the new construction of affordable rentals , and discriminated against lower-income residents with housing vouchers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ left with nothing : Of the total $ 1.8 billion ultimately allocated to the rental housing stock , not a single cent went directly to renters .
HUD ’ s track record does not bode well for the upcoming season of hurricanes , tornadoes , and wildfires—not to mention the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic .
For starters , the disbursement of funds remains drawn out .
Despite a record spike in unemployment and the need to shelter in place , governments have been timid in addressing the concerns of renters .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paused evictions of certain federally assisted rental properties or tenants for nonpayment through July 25 .
Cities like Los Angeles , San Antonio , and New York implemented 30- to 90-day moratoriums on evictions .
Right now , though , landlords in Arkansas and West Virginia can still kick out their tenants .
Even where evictions are temporarily suspended , officials have not stopped rent from accruing .
The pandemic response has bought renters time , but without a significant financial intervention from the government , thousands of renters could find themselves on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are lifted .
Extreme weather will only exacerbate this impending crisis .
But the federal government does not have the luxury of time : Hurricane season opens on June 1 .
Here , again , the precedent that the federal government has set is troubling .
When Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017 , HUD took 17 months to provide Puerto Rico with the first $ 1.5 billion in disaster mitigation .
It then took another 11 months for the second tranche of $ 8.2 billion .
These delays have harsh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ direct rental assistance , as a stopgap between the disaster and HUD funding being put to work .
But the upper cap for receiving individual assistance is 18 months , and in most cases , it works out to about two months .
For many households , the FEMA application can prove daunting .
Rates of denied applications are high .
The direct assistance is also capped at the fair-market rent cost of the disaster location , regardless of whether rents climb post-disaster or survivors have relocated to a more expensive area .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , FEMA assistance is no substitute for the kind of longer-term assistance given to homeowners and developers .
In Puerto Rico , the effect of these delays increased the amount of uninhabitable housing and swelled the rate of emigration to the mainland to 160,000 .
For Maria evacuees , this came to a head in September 2018 when FEMA abruptly gave 987 families two days to check out of the mainland hotels where they had been housed .
Without federal assistance , many of these families had nowhere to go .
Even where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ direct rental assistance , months of delays can mean large waves of displacement and exposure to homelessness before the funding becomes available .
When a fire ravaged the northern California town of Paradise in November 2018 , Butte County lost 14,000 homes .
HUD moved quickly by its own standards , allocating millions in disaster funding in January 2020 .
But 15 months is a long time to be displaced .
The Paradise area was facing a severe shortage of rental units even before the fire .
Fourteen months after the fire , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ older had moved more than 30 miles away .
Members of lower-income households were particularly likely to have relocated far away .
Meanwhile , the rate of homelessness in Butte County grew by 16 percent in 2019 .
Immigrants Know All About Disaster Preparedness In addition to acting slowly , HUD continues to approve state action plans that exclude renters from direct disaster payments .
Evidence shows that this disproportionately harms poorer communities of color .
At the root of this is the reality that much of the country remains segregated by race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nonwhite neighborhoods reflects years of systemic disinvestment .
It ’ s not simply that affordable housing tends to be shabbier .
In many places , low-income and minority neighborhoods are often concentrated in floodplains , or located near open-ditch sewage systems or close to environmental polluters , exposing residents to chemical spills and leaks .
These factors make poorer residents of color more vulnerable to extreme weather than their wealthier , white counterparts .
Unequal social relations further exacerbate the impact of natural disasters .
Complex eligibility criteria , limited access to documentation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and delays in setting up state programs to distribute federal funds can put applicants with less education or facing language barriers at a greater disadvantage .
The result is that disaster relief funding disproportionately benefits whiter , higher income neighborhoods .
Sociologists Junia Howell of the University of Pittsburgh and James Elliott of Rice University have found that “ as local hazard damages increase , so does wealth inequality , especially along lines of race , education , and homeownership.… the more aid an area receives from [ FEMA ] , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was renting a townhouse with her two children when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston on August 25 , 2017 .
The Category 4 hurricane lingered for five days , shaking Southeast Texas with 132-mph winds and five feet of rainfall—the highest on record for the United States .
Like 20 percent of her predominantly black neighborhood , Oaks lived below the poverty line .
She was also significantly disabled ; her primary source of income was a monthly disability check for $ 771 .
Without the resources to evacuate , Oaks opted to shelter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Water crept under the door of Oaks ’ s unit and damaged the walls , floor , carpet , kitchen cabinets , fridge , and stove .
A 2014 survey of all the open drainage ditches in Houston revealed that 88 percent were located in majority-minority neighborhoods and that most of these ditches failed to provide even modest flood protection .
Oaks and her children lost what food , furniture , and clothes they owned .
Housing advocates estimate that the storm damaged up to 71,000 rental units .
Congress responded to Hurricane @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 5.7 billion , and Texas allocated $ 1.13 billion of this to renter programs ( again , indirectly ) .
The remainder went to homeowner assistance .
HUD approved this plan , too .
To date , Oaks has received $ 800 from FEMA for her car and nothing from HUD .
On November 19 , 2019 , she joined five other plaintiffs in suing HUD and the Texas General Land Office for distributing federal funds in a manner that perpetuates racial discrimination .
Indeed , HUD of all agencies ought to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ renters like Oaks .
The agency is in charge of enforcing Title VI of the Fair Housing Act , which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race , color , and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance .
It has a legal obligation , in reviewing these state action plans , to identify potential violations of Title VI .
Thus far , though , the federal agency has provided little reassurance to renters .
A HUD guide addressing tenant concerns related to the pandemic opens with the words rent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are temporarily suspended only for nonpayment and only for tenants living in HUD multifamily housing or FHA-insured housing .
Public housing residents enjoy no such guarantee .
On March 18 , HUD Secretary Ben Carson tweeted that he was seeking authorization from Congress to prevent evictions in public housing programs .
But there has been no indication , from either Carson or HUD , of any parallel effort to expand aid to the majority of renters through disaster relief .
( The White House has not declared the pandemic a major disaster .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ call for extraordinary responses .
With no vaccine and an uneven government response , the scientific consensus is clear : Our best chance to contain the coronavirus is to all stay home .
But within a few months , the season of major weather events will return : hurricanes , tornadoes , wildfires .
And when it does , the disaster relief machine will roar back into action .
This time HUD really can ’ t botch its response .
There can be no evacuees crammed in the Superdome for days or left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has to prepare now to guarantee each person a speedy access to a safe home , no matter their property ownership status .
Global health depends on it .

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.
In one of the first natural disasters to strike the United States since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, severe storms and tornadoes battered Southern states on Easter Sunday. Two days later, more than 30 people had been killed, hundreds of homes had been destroyed, and several thousand lost power. Many families now have to choose between staying in structurally unsafe homes and sheltering in crowded spaces where social distancing may be impossible. For those evacuees who are among the 17 million people who have recently lost their jobs, finding permanent housing may prove challenging.
The following Monday, April 13, President Donald Trump insisted in a White House briefing that he was on top of the situation. “FEMA is already on its way,” Trump stated, “I said, ‘Get out there.’ So FEMA is there and you know the great job that FEMA does. It’s really something very special.” But the federal government’s track record in handling natural disasters and, in particular, its lack of interest in assisting renters, is precisely why we should be concerned.
August 29 will mark the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast. The federal government responded to the crisis with almost criminal incompetence: The administration of George W. Bush failed to deliver medical supplies and personnel, abandoned vulnerable residents, placed survivors in trailers built with toxic materials, and lavished funds on local governments that blatantly discriminated against poor communities of color and occupants of affordable rental housing.
Since this catastrophe, federal agencies have made some progress. Today, much of the paperwork that impeded the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from enlisting the military during Katrina is prepared in advance; hospitals and nursing homes that receive certain federal funds are required to have emergency evacuation plans; FEMA stocks and positions emergency supplies in advance of disasters (although the aftermath of Hurricane Maria demonstrated that the supplies can’t distribute themselves without effective leadership); and, thankfully, directing FEMA requires at least five years of “significant experience in crisis management.” (Michael D. Brown, who oversaw FEMA during Katrina, had been a commissioner at the International Arabian Horse Association from 1989 to 2001.)
Yet federal agencies have yet to internalize one of Katrina’s most important lessons: that renters need direct disaster relief even more than homeowners, small landlords, and commercial developers.
The stakes are high for anyone in the path of a natural disaster. For homeowners and renters alike, calamities can lead to bankruptcy, foreclosure, or eviction, and homelessness—but renters are especially vulnerable. Affordable and accessible homes are more susceptible to destruction, and less likely to return to the market. Of the 82,000 rental units damaged or destroyed in Louisiana by Katrina, 20 percent had been affordable to extremely low-income households. The aftermath of a major disaster often triggers rent hikes as the housing supply diminishes, demand increases, and cheaper units are replaced by higher-end units. One year after Katrina, rents in New Orleans were 40 percent higher than before the hurricane. Three years out, the city’s homeless population had doubled to 12,000. 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
When the hurricane hit, half of all renters in Louisiana were already overburdened by housing costs. After Katrina, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided rental voucher assistance through three programs, but vouchers did not reach everyone who needed support. The first set aside $390 million to evacuees who had received federal assistance or were homeless before Katrina; that program ended on January 31, 2006. The second program was an extension of the first and lasted 18 months. This version, however, excluded people who were homeless before Katrina. The third program began January 2007 and provided a time-limited, declining rental subsidy to low-income households that had not previously received help from HUD. Around 36,000 households participated in the voucher programs. Current Issue View our current issue
With HUD approval, the states affected by Katrina initially opted to give homeowners $13 billion in tax incentives, loans, and grants—but did not set aside proportionate aid for renters. The omission was so egregious that Congress released an additional $1 billion, along with explicit instructions to rehabilitate rental housing. With a second green light from HUD, the states set out to distribute the federal money to benefit renters, except all the funding was reserved for public housing authorities, developers, and small landlords.
The states moved excruciatingly slowly. It would take Louisiana two years to rehabilitate the first rental units under its federally funded program. By 2010, a mere 18 percent of the state’s damaged rental units had received federal funds compared to 62 percent of homeowner units. HUD watched idly as Louisiana localities obstructed the new construction of affordable rentals, and discriminated against lower-income residents with housing vouchers. But the vast majority of renters were left with nothing: Of the total $1.8 billion ultimately allocated to the rental housing stock, not a single cent went directly to renters.
HUD’s track record does not bode well for the upcoming season of hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires—not to mention the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
For starters, the disbursement of funds remains drawn out. Despite a record spike in unemployment and the need to shelter in place, governments have been timid in addressing the concerns of renters. At the federal level, the stimulus bill paused evictions of certain federally assisted rental properties or tenants for nonpayment through July 25. Cities like Los Angeles, San Antonio, and New York implemented 30- to 90-day moratoriums on evictions. Right now, though, landlords in Arkansas and West Virginia can still kick out their tenants. Even where evictions are temporarily suspended, officials have not stopped rent from accruing. The pandemic response has bought renters time, but without a significant financial intervention from the government, thousands of renters could find themselves on the street the moment social distancing restrictions are lifted. Extreme weather will only exacerbate this impending crisis. But the federal government does not have the luxury of time: Hurricane season opens on June 1.
Here, again, the precedent that the federal government has set is troubling. When Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017, HUD took 17 months to provide Puerto Rico with the first $1.5 billion in disaster mitigation. It then took another 11 months for the second tranche of $8.2 billion. These delays have harsh consequences on renters.
FEMA provides some direct rental assistance, as a stopgap between the disaster and HUD funding being put to work. But the upper cap for receiving individual assistance is 18 months, and in most cases, it works out to about two months. For many households, the FEMA application can prove daunting. Rates of denied applications are high. The direct assistance is also capped at the fair-market rent cost of the disaster location, regardless of whether rents climb post-disaster or survivors have relocated to a more expensive area. To the extent that it is distributed, FEMA assistance is no substitute for the kind of longer-term assistance given to homeowners and developers.
In Puerto Rico, the effect of these delays increased the amount of uninhabitable housing and swelled the rate of emigration to the mainland to 160,000. For Maria evacuees, this came to a head in September 2018 when FEMA abruptly gave 987 families two days to check out of the mainland hotels where they had been housed. Without federal assistance, many of these families had nowhere to go.
Even where localities propose to use HUD funds for direct rental assistance, months of delays can mean large waves of displacement and exposure to homelessness before the funding becomes available. When a fire ravaged the northern California town of Paradise in November 2018, Butte County lost 14,000 homes. HUD moved quickly by its own standards, allocating millions in disaster funding in January 2020. But 15 months is a long time to be displaced. The Paradise area was facing a severe shortage of rental units even before the fire. Fourteen months after the fire, the majority of evacuees aged 65 and older had moved more than 30 miles away. Members of lower-income households were particularly likely to have relocated far away. Meanwhile, the rate of homelessness in Butte County grew by 16 percent in 2019. Related Article Immigrants Know All About Disaster Preparedness Liana Aghajanian
In addition to acting slowly, HUD continues to approve state action plans that exclude renters from direct disaster payments. Evidence shows that this disproportionately harms poorer communities of color.
At the root of this is the reality that much of the country remains segregated by race, and that the infrastructure in many nonwhite neighborhoods reflects years of systemic disinvestment. It’s not simply that affordable housing tends to be shabbier. In many places, low-income and minority neighborhoods are often concentrated in floodplains, or located near open-ditch sewage systems or close to environmental polluters, exposing residents to chemical spills and leaks. These factors make poorer residents of color more vulnerable to extreme weather than their wealthier, white counterparts.
Unequal social relations further exacerbate the impact of natural disasters. Complex eligibility criteria, limited access to documentation, lengthy applications, inadequate Internet access, and delays in setting up state programs to distribute federal funds can put applicants with less education or facing language barriers at a greater disadvantage. The result is that disaster relief funding disproportionately benefits whiter, higher income neighborhoods. Sociologists Junia Howell of the University of Pittsburgh and James Elliott of Rice University have found that “as local hazard damages increase, so does wealth inequality, especially along lines of race, education, and homeownership.… the more aid an area receives from [FEMA], the more this inequality grows.”
Angenitta Oaks was renting a townhouse with her two children when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston on August 25, 2017. The Category 4 hurricane lingered for five days, shaking Southeast Texas with 132-mph winds and five feet of rainfall—the highest on record for the United States. Like 20 percent of her predominantly black neighborhood, Oaks lived below the poverty line. She was also significantly disabled; her primary source of income was a monthly disability check for $771. Without the resources to evacuate, Oaks opted to shelter in place until the storm passed. Water crept under the door of Oaks’s unit and damaged the walls, floor, carpet, kitchen cabinets, fridge, and stove. A 2014 survey of all the open drainage ditches in Houston revealed that 88 percent were located in majority-minority neighborhoods and that most of these ditches failed to provide even modest flood protection. Oaks and her children lost what food, furniture, and clothes they owned. Housing advocates estimate that the storm damaged up to 71,000 rental units.
Congress responded to Hurricane Harvey with a disaster relief package of $5.7 billion, and Texas allocated $1.13 billion of this to renter programs (again, indirectly). The remainder went to homeowner assistance. HUD approved this plan, too. To date, Oaks has received $800 from FEMA for her car and nothing from HUD. On November 19, 2019, she joined five other plaintiffs in suing HUD and the Texas General Land Office for distributing federal funds in a manner that perpetuates racial discrimination.
Indeed, HUD of all agencies ought to be more alert to the needs of renters like Oaks. The agency is in charge of enforcing Title VI of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. It has a legal obligation, in reviewing these state action plans, to identify potential violations of Title VI.
Thus far, though, the federal agency has provided little reassurance to renters. A HUD guide addressing tenant concerns related to the pandemic opens with the words rent is still due and emphasizes that evictions are temporarily suspended only for nonpayment and only for tenants living in HUD multifamily housing or FHA-insured housing. Public housing residents enjoy no such guarantee. On March 18, HUD Secretary Ben Carson tweeted that he was seeking authorization from Congress to prevent evictions in public housing programs. But there has been no indication, from either Carson or HUD, of any parallel effort to expand aid to the majority of renters through disaster relief. (The White House has not declared the pandemic a major disaster.)
The reality is that extraordinary times call for extraordinary responses. With no vaccine and an uneven government response, the scientific consensus is clear: Our best chance to contain the coronavirus is to all stay home. But within a few months, the season of major weather events will return: hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires. And when it does, the disaster relief machine will roar back into action. This time HUD really can’t botch its response. There can be no evacuees crammed in the Superdome for days or left to sleep on the street. HUD has to prepare now to guarantee each person a speedy access to a safe home, no matter their property ownership status. Global health depends on it.


thenation--2020-05-13--What’s Next for Asia’s Social Movements?

Last year , students , workers , and activists took to the streets across much of Asia to demand political rights , civil liberties , labor protections , and more .
While the fight for democracy in Hong Kong grabbed the most attention , there were mass movements throughout the region .
In Indonesia , tens of thousands of people marched against a proposed omnibus bill that would violate labor , environmental , and civil rights ; these were the largest public demonstrations since the 1998 uprising that overthrew its military dictatorship .
In India , millions protested against the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excluding Muslim migrants from becoming citizens that was rushed through Parliament in December .
Malaysia , too , seemed on the cusp of popular revolt after backdoor political maneuvering in February allowed the former ruling coalition—thrown out in a historic election just two years prior—to regain power against the people ’ s will .
While the 2019 protests across Asia did not topple any governments , it was widely expected that 2020 would follow in 2019 ’ s steps .
But then came Covid-19 , which has halted social life—and mass demonstrations—almost entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of put everything on hold , ” said Iqra Anugrah , a postdoctoral fellow at the center for Southeast Asian studies at Kyoto University in Japan , who focuses his research on social movements .
“ The sense of confusion is real , and people don ’ t know what to do.
” One the one hand , the Covid-19 crisis is giving increasingly authoritarian governments opportunities to cement power .
But on the other , it exposes the governments ’ failures to protect public safety and health , which could fuel even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future .
With tens of thousands of people crossing the border from mainland China every day , Hong Kong was one of the early front lines of the pandemic .
And when the severity of the outbreak in China began to become clear , the Hong Kong government seemed committed to inaction .
“ During January and February , despite very high voices from the residents and health care givers demanding the government to shut down the border , the government was very hesitant on responding , ” said Klavier Wong , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Education University of Hong Kong .
Many Hong Kong residents have vivid memories of the 2003 SARS outbreak that killed 286 people in the city and was , like the Covid-19 crisis , initially covered up by Chinese authorities .
One result is that many consider any hesitation far too risky .
Mask wearing , working from home , and social distancing rapidly have become nearly universal , even without any government mandates in place .
The massive gatherings that had characterized life in the city since June 5 , 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few smaller protests , often on behalf of health care workers , which eventually forced the government to close borders and institute mandatory quarantines for incoming residents .
Health experts believe that Hong Kong has seen relatively few cases primarily because of the action of residents and civil society .
“ Hong Kongers keep telling ourselves , we ’ ve done reasonably well not because of the government , but because of our own alertness .
We knew the government is not to be trusted , ” said Claudia Mo , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kong legislative council .
At the same time as Hong Kong police were beating demonstrators and launching teargas canisters into crowds , protests began in Indonesia .
They started because President Joko Widodo , who handily won reelection last April , aims to use use his mandate to rewrite the criminal code .
The supposedly pro-business measures include removing requirements for environmental impact assessments around large-scale infrastructure projects , limiting workers ’ rights , and making blasphemy against the president a punishable offense .
The scale and extent of protests , which took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It was pretty impressive initially .
They gained a lot of momentum , a lot of support , ” said Anugrah .
“ They managed to create some noise in mainstream media and political discourses.
” After a slowdown in late 2019 , public rallies began picking up in January when labor unions started organizing to fight the anti-worker reforms .
That quickly got scaled down—and then eliminated entirely , once the danger to public health posed by the coronavirus became clear .
One concern activists and observers have across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states to clamp down on the opposition and pass unpopular laws .
Activists are particularly fearful in India , where last August , Narendra Modi ’ s Hindu nationalist government put all of Kashmir in lockdown for political reasons .
The pandemic is also being used to smear Muslims , who are being falsely blamed for spreading the virus .
But even in Indonesia and Malaysia , there are worries that restricting freedom of assembly to combat a virus could easily morph into an excuse for governments to repress civil liberties or pass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right to assemble peacefully has been suspended for now , ” said Thomas Fann , chairperson of Bersih 2.0 , an Malaysian NGO coalition calling for fair , free , and clean elections .
“ We are concerned that this mode of operation would continue even after the lifting of the movement control order.
” In Malaysia , in early March , the police questioned activists speaking out against the new , unelected government—a sign , many worried , that the government would use Covid-19 as an opportunity to crush dissent .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we saw how the police were extremely tough on activists that were holding small protests , ” said Fann .
“ Even the freedom to voice out and express oneself has largely been curtailed.
” Meanwhile , Indonesia has begun parliamentary deliberations on the omnibus bill , raising fears that public input will be curtailed by health concerns .
One of the challenges is that , unlike Hong Kong , with its active online communities , Indonesia lacks the infrastructure and capacity to translate an in-person social movement into an effective presence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high-speed Internet access , moving protests online is a challenge because bots and state-supported digital “ armies ” are increasingly active : They ’ re currently spreading Chinese misinformation about Hong Kong and denigrating the ongoing uprising in Indonesia ’ s occupied region of West Papua .
“ The activists and members of various grassroots movements are not on the offensive , ” said Anugrah .
“ People are confused about what to do with regards to their advocacy efforts.… So far I haven ’ t seen any major actions or breakthroughs as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While it limits their ability to mobilize in the streets , the pandemic is also a chance for protesters to show solidarity with their communities , especially those who are vulnerable to Covid-19 .
In Hong Kong , pro-democracy leaders took a lead in procuring medical supplies and shifted their communication channels from organizing to disseminating information of the coronavirus .
“ Social media sites , which used to be filled with movement-related information , turned into hubs of anti-coronavirus resources , such as how to get and distribute masks , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Political groups like Demosisto and activists related to movement groups turned their resources to the war against the coronavirus.
” The Hong Kongers Building a Case Against the Police In India , organizations that were active in the recent protests have started to provide aid for the thousands of migrant workers now jobless and homeless as a result of the government ’ s sudden , poorly planned shutdown .
Similarly , Indonesian labor unions and civil society groups are working to get medical aid , food , and social services to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent weeks , most of the focus of activists and community organizations and unions is to prevent the spread of the pandemic , including donation efforts , ” said Anugrah .
“ My sense is , in these visits to the most marginalized communities , they also try to discuss and communicate about the impact of the omnibus law.
” In Malaysia , too , Bersih 2.0 has been gathering donations and giving grants to feed vulnerable communities , including migrant workers who have been all but abandoned by the state .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vulnerable amid government blunders or inaction , it could theoretically expand their political base in the future .
“ The public in general can see that the work that all of these movements and civil society have been doing , but whether there will be higher public support for these movements ’ agendas , that is still up in the air , ” said Anugrah .
While the pandemic worsens across much of the region , Hong Kong looks to be returning to semi-normalcy .
Small protests are taking place again , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mass response , even after the government arrested 15 pro-democracy leaders .
Many demonstrators felt the police timed the arrests to occur when protests would still be difficult to convene .
Since then , modest , socially distanced protests have started up in malls and other social spaces—with disproportionate response from the police , who are tearing down memorials to protest victims and using pepper spray to disperse even small crowds .
Besides any post-Covid-19 protests , the key event to watch in Hong Kong will be the upcoming legislative elections , planned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fully democratic—the system is stacked in favor of the current , pro-China elite , with a significant number of seats not open for direct election , but there is a chance to claim a majority if pro-democracy turnout is overwhelming .
“ After our district election landslide victory last year , Hong Kongers are now hoping for a majority in the democrats ’ number of seats , ” said Mo .
“ If we can manage that , we should be able to chart a new course for proper political reform in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fight will likely be a long one .
The next election is not due for another two and half years , and it might take that long to build a popular movement .
“ We are not optimistic that this new government will be much into institutional and electoral reform—basically they are the old government , ” said Fann .
For Bersih 2.0 and others in Malaysian civil society , this is nothing new .
They ’ ve been fighting for fair elections and transparency for more than a decade .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ India and Indonesia , which both had elections last year , meaning voting the governments out of power in Jakarta and New Delhi is not possible until 2024 .
The fight for social justice in Asia will be a long one .
The pandemic and growing economic crisis will only create more tension—but whether the outcome is greater democracy or more autocracy remains to be seen .

Last year, students, workers, and activists took to the streets across much of Asia to demand political rights, civil liberties, labor protections, and more. While the fight for democracy in Hong Kong grabbed the most attention, there were mass movements throughout the region. In Indonesia, tens of thousands of people marched against a proposed omnibus bill that would violate labor, environmental, and civil rights; these were the largest public demonstrations since the 1998 uprising that overthrew its military dictatorship. In India, millions protested against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, a law explicitly excluding Muslim migrants from becoming citizens that was rushed through Parliament in December.
Malaysia, too, seemed on the cusp of popular revolt after backdoor political maneuvering in February allowed the former ruling coalition—thrown out in a historic election just two years prior—to regain power against the people’s will. While the 2019 protests across Asia did not topple any governments, it was widely expected that 2020 would follow in 2019’s steps. But then came Covid-19, which has halted social life—and mass demonstrations—almost entirely.
“This pandemic, it sort of put everything on hold,” said Iqra Anugrah, a postdoctoral fellow at the center for Southeast Asian studies at Kyoto University in Japan, who focuses his research on social movements. “The sense of confusion is real, and people don’t know what to do.”
One the one hand, the Covid-19 crisis is giving increasingly authoritarian governments opportunities to cement power. But on the other, it exposes the governments’ failures to protect public safety and health, which could fuel even stronger and better organized movements in the future.
With tens of thousands of people crossing the border from mainland China every day, Hong Kong was one of the early front lines of the pandemic. And when the severity of the outbreak in China began to become clear, the Hong Kong government seemed committed to inaction. “During January and February, despite very high voices from the residents and health care givers demanding the government to shut down the border, the government was very hesitant on responding,” said Klavier Wong, an independent media researcher who got her post-doc from the Education University of Hong Kong.
Many Hong Kong residents have vivid memories of the 2003 SARS outbreak that killed 286 people in the city and was, like the Covid-19 crisis, initially covered up by Chinese authorities. One result is that many consider any hesitation far too risky. Mask wearing, working from home, and social distancing rapidly have become nearly universal, even without any government mandates in place. The massive gatherings that had characterized life in the city since June 5, 2019, have stopped. There were still a few smaller protests, often on behalf of health care workers, which eventually forced the government to close borders and institute mandatory quarantines for incoming residents. 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Health experts believe that Hong Kong has seen relatively few cases primarily because of the action of residents and civil society. “Hong Kongers keep telling ourselves, we’ve done reasonably well not because of the government, but because of our own alertness. We knew the government is not to be trusted,” said Claudia Mo, an independent democrat and member of the Hong Kong legislative council. Current Issue View our current issue
At the same time as Hong Kong police were beating demonstrators and launching teargas canisters into crowds, protests began in Indonesia. They started because President Joko Widodo, who handily won reelection last April, aims to use use his mandate to rewrite the criminal code. The supposedly pro-business measures include removing requirements for environmental impact assessments around large-scale infrastructure projects, limiting workers’ rights, and making blasphemy against the president a punishable offense. The scale and extent of protests, which took place around the country, surprised many. “It was pretty impressive initially. They gained a lot of momentum, a lot of support,” said Anugrah. “They managed to create some noise in mainstream media and political discourses.”
After a slowdown in late 2019, public rallies began picking up in January when labor unions started organizing to fight the anti-worker reforms. That quickly got scaled down—and then eliminated entirely, once the danger to public health posed by the coronavirus became clear.
One concern activists and observers have across the region is that the lockdowns will allow states to clamp down on the opposition and pass unpopular laws.
Activists are particularly fearful in India, where last August, Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government put all of Kashmir in lockdown for political reasons. The pandemic is also being used to smear Muslims, who are being falsely blamed for spreading the virus. But even in Indonesia and Malaysia, there are worries that restricting freedom of assembly to combat a virus could easily morph into an excuse for governments to repress civil liberties or pass pro-business, anti-labor legislation. “The right to assemble peacefully has been suspended for now,” said Thomas Fann, chairperson of Bersih 2.0, an Malaysian NGO coalition calling for fair, free, and clean elections. “We are concerned that this mode of operation would continue even after the lifting of the movement control order.”
In Malaysia, in early March, the police questioned activists speaking out against the new, unelected government—a sign, many worried, that the government would use Covid-19 as an opportunity to crush dissent. “That week or so before the lockdown, we saw how the police were extremely tough on activists that were holding small protests,” said Fann. “Even the freedom to voice out and express oneself has largely been curtailed.”
Meanwhile, Indonesia has begun parliamentary deliberations on the omnibus bill, raising fears that public input will be curtailed by health concerns. One of the challenges is that, unlike Hong Kong, with its active online communities, Indonesia lacks the infrastructure and capacity to translate an in-person social movement into an effective presence on the web.
Even with widespread high-speed Internet access, moving protests online is a challenge because bots and state-supported digital “armies” are increasingly active: They’re currently spreading Chinese misinformation about Hong Kong and denigrating the ongoing uprising in Indonesia’s occupied region of West Papua. “The activists and members of various grassroots movements are not on the offensive,” said Anugrah. “People are confused about what to do with regards to their advocacy efforts.… So far I haven’t seen any major actions or breakthroughs as far as advocacy strategies are concerned.”
While it limits their ability to mobilize in the streets, the pandemic is also a chance for protesters to show solidarity with their communities, especially those who are vulnerable to Covid-19. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy leaders took a lead in procuring medical supplies and shifted their communication channels from organizing to disseminating information of the coronavirus.
“Social media sites, which used to be filled with movement-related information, turned into hubs of anti-coronavirus resources, such as how to get and distribute masks,” said Wong, the Hong Kong–based media researcher. “Political groups like Demosisto and activists related to movement groups turned their resources to the war against the coronavirus.” Related Article The Hong Kongers Building a Case Against the Police Rosemarie Ho
In India, organizations that were active in the recent protests have started to provide aid for the thousands of migrant workers now jobless and homeless as a result of the government’s sudden, poorly planned shutdown. Similarly, Indonesian labor unions and civil society groups are working to get medical aid, food, and social services to urban and rural poor.
“In recent weeks, most of the focus of activists and community organizations and unions is to prevent the spread of the pandemic, including donation efforts,” said Anugrah. “My sense is, in these visits to the most marginalized communities, they also try to discuss and communicate about the impact of the omnibus law.”
In Malaysia, too, Bersih 2.0 has been gathering donations and giving grants to feed vulnerable communities, including migrant workers who have been all but abandoned by the state. If these groups are seen as aiding the vulnerable amid government blunders or inaction, it could theoretically expand their political base in the future. “The public in general can see that the work that all of these movements and civil society have been doing, but whether there will be higher public support for these movements’ agendas, that is still up in the air,” said Anugrah.
While the pandemic worsens across much of the region, Hong Kong looks to be returning to semi-normalcy. Small protests are taking place again, though it will remain difficult to mobilize a mass response, even after the government arrested 15 pro-democracy leaders. Many demonstrators felt the police timed the arrests to occur when protests would still be difficult to convene. Since then, modest, socially distanced protests have started up in malls and other social spaces—with disproportionate response from the police, who are tearing down memorials to protest victims and using pepper spray to disperse even small crowds.
Besides any post-Covid-19 protests, the key event to watch in Hong Kong will be the upcoming legislative elections, planned for September. They aren’t fully democratic—the system is stacked in favor of the current, pro-China elite, with a significant number of seats not open for direct election, but there is a chance to claim a majority if pro-democracy turnout is overwhelming. “After our district election landslide victory last year, Hong Kongers are now hoping for a majority in the democrats’ number of seats,” said Mo. “If we can manage that, we should be able to chart a new course for proper political reform in the years to come.”
In Malaysia, the fight will likely be a long one. The next election is not due for another two and half years, and it might take that long to build a popular movement. “We are not optimistic that this new government will be much into institutional and electoral reform—basically they are the old government,” said Fann. For Bersih 2.0 and others in Malaysian civil society, this is nothing new. They’ve been fighting for fair elections and transparency for more than a decade.
It’s an even steeper climb in India and Indonesia, which both had elections last year, meaning voting the governments out of power in Jakarta and New Delhi is not possible until 2024.
The fight for social justice in Asia will be a long one. The pandemic and growing economic crisis will only create more tension—but whether the outcome is greater democracy or more autocracy remains to be seen.