fortune--2020-06-03--As protest roil the U.S., Beijing seizes the moment to call out ‘hypocrisy’

Nationwide unrest over the death of a black man named George Floyd in police custody has roiled the U.S. for more than a week, and China’s state media apparatus is in full gear.
State-owned media in China are highlighting President Donald Trump’s violent anti-protest rhetoric and U.S. lawmakers’ denouncement of the demonstrations and riots, alternately calling out U.S. “hypocrisy” over prior support of protests in Hong Kong and pointing to the U.S. police tactics as proof of Hong Kong cops’ relative restraint.
Trump on Monday described the protests and looting as “acts of domestic terror” in his first White House speech since the nationwide demonstrations kicked off, and said he would send in the U.S. military to cities and states that do not contain the unrest. Police sprayed a chemical agent to disperse mostly peaceful protesters near the White House on Monday so the President could pose for a photo at a nearby church.
“Quelling protests with troops self-contradictory for U.S.,” one headline by the Global Times, a state-run outlet, read. “U.S. elites backing [Hong Kong] riots snub grassroots protests on their soil,” read another. The article criticized U.S. politicians for their “hypocrisy” and “double standards” over Hong Kong.
“What is happening right now [in the U.S.] once again shows the seriousness of racial discrimination and violent law enforcement by the police, and the urgency for the U.S. to address them,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday.
U.S. Congress overwhelmingly supported a Hong Kong–focused human rights bill last year, and U.S. politicians have been vocal in their support of antigovernment protesters in Hong Kong whose dissidence prompted Beijing to push for a controversial new national security law.
The charges of U.S. hypocrisy—officials’ opposition to domestic protests versus their support of those in Hong Kong—are Beijing’s attempt to undermine Washington’s assertions of moral authority on the issue of Hong Kong and on the matter of human rights more broadly. Pointing out unrest and violence in the U.S. is a way for China to score points in the growing strategic and economic rivalry between the two countries.
“News coverage about bad things happening in the U.S. is quite a normal thing in Chinese media, especially in Chinese official media,” said Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Every time bad things happen in the U.S., the Chinese propaganda machine will seize that opportunity.”
But comparing the U.S. to Hong Kong is a “new strategy” that achieves “two goals simultaneously,” Fang said. It helps “portray the U.S. in a negative sense but also question[s] some [U.S.] politicians’ response to Hong Kong protests last year.”
Hong Kong in the crosshairs
In Hong Kong last year, opposition to an extradition bill, now withdrawn, saw millions of city residents join peaceful marches in June that morphed into an antigovernment movement that engulfed the city for the rest of 2019 and early 2020 in marches, strikes, street battles between demonstrators and riot police, and university campus sieges.
The Hong Kong protests attracted vocal support from many U.S. politicians and prompted the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in November. “The police violence against protesters in Hong Kong is unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), one of the prominent pro–Hong Kong U.S. politicians, said on Twitter last year.
On Monday, Cotton voiced support for sending in the U.S. military to quell the domestic protests and said, “We should have zero tolerance for anarchy, rioting, and looting.” Chen Weihua, the European bureau chief for state-owned newspaper China Daily, called Cotton a “hypocrite” in response. “That just contradicted what you said about rioting and anarchy and petrol-bombing-throwing mobs in Hong Kong for months and months.”
The U.S. protests were sparked by the death of Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. Derek Chauvin, the white officer who was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes before Floyd died, has been charged with third-degree murder.
“To some extent, [U.S. and Chinese politicians] are blaming each other to gain legitimacy domestically, and this strategy is very similar to each other,” Fang said.
Chinese state media selectively amplifies U.S. politicians whose remarks on the U.S. protests conflict with previous stances on Hong Kong, like Trump’s and Cotton’s, Fang says, while passing over commentary focused on the underlying structural causes of the U.S. protests, like that of former President Barack Obama, who has written about broader systemic issues.
“I don’t think the Communist Party’s propaganda will highlight those arguments because that would also remind people of other structural problems in Hong Kong and in China,” Fang said.
A “sensitive” anniversary
The U.S. protests, and China’s efforts to seize on them, come at a time of year that recalls Beijing’s troublesome history with unrest. June 4 marks 31 years since the Chinese government declared martial law and violently suppressed demonstrations in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, resulting in hundreds—if not thousands—of deaths. (The actual toll is not known.)
Beijing will have to toe the line of capitalizing on ongoing U.S. demonstrations while not drawing attention to its own infamous crackdown, which its state media does not publicly acknowledge.
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam echoed Chinese state media sentiment on Tuesday in her first press conference since Trump said the U.S. will remove some of Hong Kong’s trade privileges as retaliation for the national security law.
Lam, who is currently in Beijing to discuss the national security law with the central government, criticized Washington for “double standards” toward protests in the U.S. compared with those in Hong Kong.
There is usually a candlelight vigil every year on June 4 in Hong Kong—the only commemoration of the event on Chinese soil—but authorities in the region banned the vigil for the first time this year, citing the risk of the coronavirus. Pro-democracy activists said the ban was an “excuse to suppress our rally.”
“A sensitive date is coming,” Fang said, “so [state media] must act very carefully not to remind people of any memories of 31 years ago.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Sweden chose a looser lockdown. The scientist behind the strategy now says the death toll is too hig

Sweden chose a looser lockdown. The scientist behind the strategy now says the death toll is too high

As protest roil the U.S. , Beijing seizes the moment to call out ‘ hypocrisy ’

Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight COVID-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown.
“If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.
Tegnell is the brains behind Sweden’s controversial approach to fighting the virus, and the government of Stefan Löfven has deferred to the epidemiologist in its official response to the pandemic. Gatherings of more than 50 people continue to be banned, but throughout the crisis Swedes have been able to visit restaurants, go shopping, attend gyms, and send children under 16 to school.
The laxer approach to containing the virus has drawn both praise and indignation from around the globe. What is beyond debate, however, is the effect the strategy has had on the country’s death toll.
At 43 deaths per 100,000, Sweden’s death rate is among the highest globally and far exceeds that of neighboring Denmark and Norway, which imposed much tougher lockdowns at the outset of the pandemic.
Now, Tegnell has for the first time admitted publicly that the strategy is resulting in too many deaths.
“Clearly, there is potential for improvement in what we have done in Sweden,” he said.
Falling behind
Until now, Tegnell had argued that the long-term nature of the COVID-19 pandemic required a more sustainable response than severe and sudden lockdowns. Despite criticism from abroad, Tegnell’s strategy enjoyed widespread support in Sweden.
But with many other European Union countries now rolling back their lockdowns after appearing to bring COVID-19 under control, there are signs that Sweden may be left behind. That includes the freedom of movement of its citizens, as some EU countries restrict access to people coming from what are deemed high-risk COVID zones.
What’s more, there’s so far limited evidence that Sweden’s decision to leave much of its society open will support the economy. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson recently warned that Sweden is facing its worst economic crisis since World War II, with GDP set to slump 7% in 2020, roughly as much as the rest of the EU.
The government has started to grow concerned at the apparent missteps taken to fight the spread of the virus in Sweden. On Monday, Löfven promised there’d be an inquiry into the handling of the crisis before the summer.
Some lawmakers in Sweden’s parliament were quick to weigh in. Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, tweeted that the comments by Tegnell are “astonishing.”
“For months, critics have been consistently dismissed. Sweden has done everything right, the rest of the world has done it wrong. And now, suddenly, this,” Akesson said.


fortune--2020-06-03--The ‘reopening relief rally’ continues as investors send stocks higher on recovery hopes

Sweden chose a looser lockdown .
The scientist behind the strategy now says the death toll is too high

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Good morning, Bull Sheeters. The global rally in stocks continues this morning. Investors again are pinning their hopes on big fiscal stimulus packages and the further reopening of the global economy.
Let’s see where investors are putting their money.
Markets update
Asia
The Asian indices are all in the green in afternoon trade, with Japan’s Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng leading the way.
in afternoon trade, with and Hong Kong’s leading the way. There’s big optimism that Japan and South Korea will unveil new spending plans to launch their economies out of recession.
and will unveil new spending plans to launch their economies out of recession. Brent is climbing again this morning. All signs are that Saudi Arabia and Russia will agree to further output cuts on a June 9 conference call.
Europe
European bourses climbed out of the gates again this morning, with London’s FTSE and France’s CAC up roughly 1% at the open.
bourses climbed out of the gates again this morning, with and up roughly at the open. Angela Merkel didn’t get the €100 billion stimulus plan she was seeking yesterday to reinvigorate Europe’s biggest economy. Talks resume in the German capital. The Dax is trading as if it’s a done deal.
didn’t get the stimulus plan she was seeking yesterday to reinvigorate Europe’s biggest economy. Talks resume in the German capital. The Dax is trading as if it’s a done deal. Staying with Germany… Volkswagen agreed to invest $2.6 billion in Argo AI, a self-driving car startup backed by Ford Motor Co.
agreed to invest in Argo AI, a backed by Ford Motor Co. First-in-first(ish)-out. Italy today lifted the last of its major lockdown restrictions, permitting nationwide travel and flights from abroad. (My in-laws have already called the house twice this morning. They want to know when we’ll cross the border to visit.)
U.S.
U.S futures are climbing again, looking to extend the equities rally to a fourth straight day. The curfew orders and protests, the coronavirus case load (more than 20,000 American cases were reported yesterday), the huge social divisions and massive unemployment… meh, that’s all occurring on a different planet. Or so it seems to this markets observer.
are climbing again, looking to extend the to a fourth straight day. The curfew orders and protests, the coronavirus case load (more than 20,000 American cases were reported yesterday), the huge social divisions and massive unemployment… meh, that’s all occurring on a different planet. Or so it seems to this markets observer. You know what the global economy needs about now? A new wave of tariffs . That’s apparently the thinking of the Trump Administration as it prepares a tough policy response against the many European and Asian countries eyeing taxes on digital commerce , a measure that would hit FANG stocks.
. That’s apparently the thinking of the as it prepares a tough policy response against the many European and Asian countries eyeing , a measure that would hit stocks. Zoom (ZM) is having a good pandemic. The video conferencing company reported a sales boost of 169% last quarter, led by a surge in business customers.
Elsewhere
Gold is down. As is the dollar . It’s another risk-off day.
is down. As is the . It’s another risk-off day. Crude is gaining. Brent is now up above $40/barrel.
Reopen sesame
The markets are looking forward. COVID-19? That was yesterday’s news. GDP collapse? Depression-era unemployment levels? Ancient history. New trade tensions with China? Okay, not so fast. That could still be a big deal, but for now equities investors are shrugging off the possibility, sending stocks on a rally that, in some places, is greater than 30%.
The global economic rebound is, at best, a U-shaped affair. The global equities rebound though is very a much a V-shaped phenomenon.
And what’s driving the upward leg of the “V”? Things like oil, copper, banks and Italian mid-cap stocks—what BofA Securities calls its “reopening portfolio.” These beaten-down assets are way off their lows, and driving much of the rally in recent weeks. They should be the first to rebound when lockdown measures ease, and people start to resume something resembling a normal life. You can see some of the “reopening” assets in BofA’s table below (right-hand column).
What’s in the “lockdown portfolio”? Things like gold, discount retail, biotech, Big Pharma and Big Tech. You can see them in the left-hand column above.
During this current rally, the “lockdown” assets are still holding their own, but the “reopening” assets are beginning to close the gap, as this second BofA chart below shows. (The BofA chart was published at the end of last week; the gap has narrowed further over the past three trading sessions.)
That yellow squiggly line is what’s largely driving the markets higher in recent days. For example, financial stocks yesterday had a good day, led by American Express and Goldman Sachs.
These reopening assets are still far from their February highs, but they’ve been roaring back.
***
Have a nice day everyone. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
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Today's reads
Half shares—big deal. The Amazon (AMZN) share price closed yesterday at $2,472.41. Too pricey for your portfolio? A number of Fintechs and brokerages are here to help. Increasingly, they're selling "fractional" shares in the markets' high-fliers. It's a move that's particularly popular with one group of investors in particular, Fortune's Lucinda Shen reports.
IPO watch. After weeks of inactivity, there are a quintet of big initial public offerings scheduled this week, with Warner Music, biopharma firm Applied Molecular Transport and payment processor Shift4 Payments all slated to price. If these debuts go well, "a host of companies are likely to follow in the coming months," the Wall Street Journal reports. That "if" is already being tested as Warner Music was forced to delay pricing its shares yesterday.
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
Market candy
$16 trillion
So much for a quick recovery. The Congressional Budget Office now forecasts the economic hit from the coronavirus will linger for another decade or so. By 2029, the cost to the U.S. economy could top $16 trillion. That's trillion with a T.


fortune--2020-06-03--Trump promised to revoke Hong Kong’s privileged trade status. 4 ways it could alter U.S. relations

On Friday, President Donald Trump instructed his administration to “revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.” The decree came days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reported that Hong Kong could no longer be said to have “a high degree of autonomy” from Beijing because of the Chinese Communist Party’s move to implement a national security law on Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s special economic privileges were set out in the U.S.’s Hong Kong Policy Act 1992—a bill designed to ensure the economy of the former British colony continued as normal after its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Details on which privileges will be revoked have yet to be announced, and the White House hasn’t provided a timeline for implementing the change. While the world awaits more specifics, here’s what could and could not be affected as Hong Kong’s special status is revoked:
1. Tariffs
Currently, exports to the U.S. from Hong Kong are exempt from the tariffs the White House has loaded upon imports from China. The White House could decide to now extend those tariffs to goods from Hong Kong, too, although it would impact relatively few items. According to Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan, only 2% of Hong Kong’s exports went to the U.S—accounting for 0.1% of the city’s total exports.
Despite the minimal impact, Iris Pang, chief economist at ING Greater China, says imposing tariffs on Hong Kong exports would also hurt U.S. consumers by raising the cost of those goods.
The World Trade Organization also continues to recognize Hong Kong as a separate entity from mainland China so, although the U.S. is revoking its own recognition of Hong Kong’s autonomy, other countries will continue to trade with the city under WTO rules.
2. Free dollar exchange
Currently, the Hong Kong dollar can be “freely exchanged” with the U.S. dollar. The free flow of currency is the foundation of Hong Kong’s financial services industry (which accounted for 20% of the city’s GDP in 2018). Eliminating the city’s access to the dollar could jeopardize $72 billion in value added to the economy.
However, most economists think Washington will not opt for the “nuclear option” of prohibiting the exchange of Hong Kong and U.S. dollars. For one, even mainland China has free access to the U.S. dollar, so there’s no logic to denying the same right to Hong Kong.
More importantly, doing so could damage U.S. interests, as businesses in Hong Kong would likely switch operations to another major currency, such as the euro or possibly the yuan, weakening the status of the U.S. dollar in Asia.
It’s also worth noting that the U.S. can’t interfere with Hong Kong dollar’s peg. The Hong Kong–U.S. dollar exchange rate has been set at roughly 7:1 since 1983, and maintaining the peg is the Hong Kong government’s own decision. In 1998, the Hong Kong government spent $15 billion maintaining the peg as short-sellers, led by George Soros, tried to break it.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) chief executive Eddie Yue Wai-man said the HKMA has $440 billion in reserves available to maintain the peg, which will “remain the bedrock of [Hong Kong’s] financial system.”
3. Restricted tech
The U.S.’s 1992 Hong Kong bill says the U.S. should continue to “support access by Hong Kong to sensitive technologies”—a category of tech that could include components for developing A.I. or military weapons.
“Knowledge-intensive products from the U.S. only make up around 5% of Hong Kong’s total imports. But restricting the ability of Hong Kong–based firms to source sensitive products would remove one of Hong Kong’s distinct advantages as a business location relative to mainland China,” Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note last Thursday.
Some technology imported to Hong Kong is reexported to mainland China, so blacklisting Hong Kong would close that loophole. However, denying Hong Kong businesses and universities access to cutting-edge tech could jeopardize the city’s ambitions to become an “innovation hub” too.
4. Sanctions
In addition to rolling back Hong Kong’s privileged status, Trump also said the U.S. would “sanction PRC and Hong Kong officials directly or indirectly involved in eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy.”
Such vague parameters mean that any member of Hong Kong’s current administration could be subject to sanctions, as could the head of the Hong Kong Macau Affairs Office or the Hong Kong Liaison Office—both of whom are officials appointed by mainland China to oversee Hong Kong affairs.
According to the U.S. Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, passed last year, sanctions could include freezing the U.S. assets of a targeted individual or denying that person entry to the U.S.
Response from China
On Monday, Beijing issued a measured rebuff of Trump’s decree. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a regular press conference that any “words and deeds from the United States that harm the interests of China will be resolutely counterattacked by the Chinese side.”
Meanwhile, markets reacted strongly to the news; investors were pleased with Trump’s relatively measured response. On Monday Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index posted its highest gains since March, rising 3.4%, while the Shanghai Composite grew 2.2%. “The collective sigh of relief in Asia is palpable this morning,” OANDA senior market analyst for APAC, Jeffrey Halley, said in a note.
“As expected, the President withdrew Hong Kong’s special status over the new China imposed security law. What he did not do, however, was withdraw from the U.S.-China phase 1 trade agreement signed in January. Nor did he impose sanctions on Chinese officials or persons connected to the regime.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Prime Minister Boris Johnson says U.K. will offer Hong Kong residents refuge from Beijing

On Wednesday, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson published an op-ed in Hong Kong’s largest English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, that directly warned Beijing against imposing a national security law on Hong Kong by threatening a major reform to the visa rights of some Hong Kong residents.
“If China imposes its national security law [on Hong Kong], the British government will change our immigration rules and allow any holder of [British National Overseas] passports from Hong Kong to come to the U.K. for a renewable period of 12 months and be given further immigration rights, including the right to work, which could place them on a route to citizenship,” Johnson wrote, claiming the move would be “one of the biggest changes in our visa system in British history.”
There have been calls in recent weeks, from within U.K. Parliament and elsewhere, for the British government to respond to what critics see as Beijing’s erosion of the “one country, two systems” principle enacted when Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Under that principle, Beijing pledged Hong Kong’s “current social and economic systems” would remain unchanged for 50 years and that Hong Kong would maintain a “high degree of autonomy.”
Beijing’s pledge was enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration—a binding UN treaty—which a chorus of international observers say Beijing has now violated by unilaterally imposing a law against “treason” on Hong Kong.
“Many people in Hong Kong fear their way of life—which China pledged to uphold—is under threat. If China proceeds to justify their fears, then Britain could not in good conscience shrug our shoulders and walk away; instead we will honor our obligations and provide an alternative,” Johnson said.
British National Overseas (BNO) passports were created in 1985 specifically for Hong Kong citizens born prior to Hong Kong’s handover in 1997. However, BNO passports afford holders few rights as “British nationals.” Currently, BNO holders can visit the U.K. for six months without a visa but are denied the right of abode—meaning BNO holders have to go through regular immigration channels if they want to settle permanently in the U.K.
According to Johnson, there are currently around 350,000 BNO holders in Hong Kong and a further 2.5 million people who “would be eligible to apply.” Many BNO holders have let their passports expire, since holding one offers few advantages. However, as both pro-democracy protests and the pro-establishment response intensified last year, applications for BNO passport renewals surged. There were 120,000 applications last year, compared with 14,000 in 2018.
Yet Johnson’s announcement on Wednesday falls short of calls made by some members of Parliament to grant BNO holders the right of abode. Johnson also doesn’t say whether family members of BNO holders will be eligible to apply for BNO status, too. (Currently, they are not.)


fortune--2020-06-04--4 ways companies can thrive in the COVID-19 economy, according to philanthropy strategists

People harmed by OxyContin have more time to file claims

Companies are under an intense microscope during the COVID-19 crisis, and many that survive will be radically transformed by the experience. The global economic outlook is grim, no doubt. Companies are fighting for their survival.
In this era, approaches to corporate citizenship can no longer be palliative. They must be integral to a company’s purpose in order for it to survive.
The companies that succeed will be those that balance the need to look both inward and toward the horizon, and act with the empathy, courage, and vision this moment demands. They should keep four priorities in mind as they do so.
First, businesses should use this moment to radically shift the social contract between them and their people. Businesses leading through this acute relief stage are those that are, first and foremost, taking care of people closest to home—employees, contract workers, and small businesses across corporate supply chains that depend on these relationships.
Companies that lead through the economic recovery will be those that go further to address structural deficiencies in our workforce and develop holistic solutions to the vulnerabilities of workers around the world who live on the edge of serious financial hardship. Even in the midst of significant financial pressure, tomorrow’s leaders will begin to institutionalize a living wage, enhance paid-leave policies, launch new support services, give employees a meaningful role in company decision-making, and boost the resiliency of businesses in their supply chain.
This is not about corporate altruism; this is about redesigning a system so it produces greater returns for everyone. Employees who feel safe, supported, and informed make a workforce of creative, thoughtful, and effective decision-makers. And it is these workers who will drive economic recovery.
Second, companies should scrutinize their responsibilities to society, not least because consumers and investors alike will demand it. A company’s social footprint—how it measures up on a host of indicators, from pay equity and supplier diversity to digital privacy and indigenous rights—is taking center stage in an unprecedented way.
Vanguard companies are taking notice and working to assess their business and the range of possible impacts it has on stakeholders, both today and into the future. This requires a rigorous assessment of their social footprint, looking for opportunities to create stakeholder value, and weaving social impact into the fabric of corporate decision-making.
Third, private enterprise should double down on opportunities to make a global impact. The coronavirus has unveiled long-standing systemic scourges: from the risk of disease owing to receding natural environments to the complexity and fragility of our food systems and the cracks in our health care infrastructure. Through this crisis, we are witnessing what’s possible when companies tap their core businesses, talent, and resources to address a humanitarian crisis: cutting vaccine development timelines, shifting production capacity to urgent needs, and reskilling workers to provide new essential functions within days.
There is no going back. As companies are propped up by government stimulus packages, taxpayers will demand that their recovery benefit not just some, but all of us. Charity won’t cut it—we know that giving away goods and services doesn’t solve a broken system. It’s time to fix the system, and the businesses that boldly step into this space will be creating long-term value for the company and for society.
Fourth, companies should help shepherd in an era of post-competitive collaboration. The transformation of partnerships from flashy headlines to consequential collaborations has been a path almost as long as the ongoing journey of corporate citizenship itself. Public-private partnerships, shared value partnerships, and most recently, pre-competitive partnerships have paved the way for uniting unlikely actors, overcoming competitive inclinations and historic rivalries to benefit the greater good.
But to truly address the symptoms of larger structural challenges, we must begin an era of radical alliance-building—one that looks at entire ecosystems of organizations who have deep and complex interdependencies. Pioneering companies will recognize that our most intractable problems require them to craft alliances across systems, not just at their edges. Closing the digital divide is but one example; this work begins by pulling together disparate issue-based coalitions around education reform and online learning, economic development and the future of work, and rural health care.
Thinking about the future in the middle of a crisis might feel like a luxury of time and resources. But tomorrow’s business leaders recognize this moment as being as transformative as it is fluid. They are acting early to channel their humanity, ask soul-searching questions about the purpose of their business, and prioritize the contract among the C-suite, workers, and communities. In so doing, they are positioning themselves to be architects of their industries’ futures and challenging others to follow in their footsteps.
Jen Butte-Dahl is senior director of the Tembo Group, an APCO Worldwide company.
Denielle Sachs is senior director and global lead at the Tembo Group.


fortune--2020-06-03--People harmed by OxyContin have more time to file claims

4 ways companies can thrive in the COVID-19 economy , according to philanthropy strategists

People injured by the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin have another 30 days to file legal claims against the manufacturer.
A federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday agreed to extend the filing deadline to July 30. Purdue Pharma and some of the governments suing the company requested the extension because the coronavirus pandemic might have prevented some people from making claims by the original deadline.
Some groups wanted a three-month deadline extension, but Judge Robert Drain rejected that, noting that every month of delay means another $700,000 would need to be spent advertising the fact that individuals can file claims. He and some of the attorneys also expressed concern that attorneys fees will erode the company’s value the longer the claims process takes.
By May 28, nearly 8,200 people had filed personal injury claims against Purdue. The company is in the midst of a $22 million campaign to let people know they can file the claims.
Purdue, based in Stamford, Connecticut, is going through bankruptcy court as part of its effort to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits from state and local governments. They claim the company had a role in sparking the opioid addiction and overdose crisis, which has killed more than 430,000 Americans since 2000.
A company lawyer said in court Wednesday that Purdue is planning to file a reorganization plan with the court by sometime in the fall. The company has proposed becoming a public trust, with profits going to deal with the opioid crisis.
Under the proposed deal, members of the Sackler family that own Purdue would contribute at least $3 billion in cash over time.
Information about making a claim is at purduepharmaclaims.com.


fortune--2020-06-03--Movie theater chain AMC warns it may not survive the pandemic

Movie theater chain AMC warned Wednesday that it may not survive the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered its theaters and led film studios to explore releasing more movies directly to viewers over the internet.
It’s the latest danger sign for the theater business in North America, which was under pressure even before the pandemic. It has gotten a boost by raising ticket prices and revamping theater-going into a more luxurious experience with drinks and meals, but admissions have been gradually declining since 2005. The box office has become home mostly to blockbuster films: Sequels, remakes and superhero movies dominate. Meanwhile, the rise of streaming services — Netflix and a growing stable of rivals — is providing new competition.
The coronavirus pandemic threw in more challenges. U.S. cinemas shut down in March, so their owners haven’t been taking in money. Hollywood halted film production, which is likely to delay movies once theaters reopen and may limit consumer eagerness to spend money at the multiplex. The pandemic has prompted entertainment companies to release some movies directly to consumers, raising concerns that more will bypass theaters in the future. And when theaters do reopen, it’s not clear how many customers will want to be in enclosed, crowded spaces for hours at a time.
AMC, the largest U.S. chain, said it has enough cash to reopen its theaters this summer as planned. But if it’s not allowed to reopen, it will need more money, which it may not be able to borrow. Film delays are another concern. AMC noted that people may be afraid to go to theaters, but hopes the desire for social distancing is temporary and that people will want to go to the movies again.
“Due to these factors, substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time,” AMC wrote in a regulatory filing. The publicly traded company, controlled by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, has 1,000 theaters in the U.S. and Europe.
Cinemark, another major movie chain that is on more solid financial footing, plans to begin reopening U.S. movie theaters on June 19. It said in a Wednesday filing that it believes it has enough cash to last it the rest of the year, even if its theaters remain shut. The company’s CEO, Mark Zoradi, said he doesn’t expect the industry to return to normal until 2022.
Cinemark on Wednesday said it’s taking a slew of measures to tempt back moviegoers as it reopens. Those include discounting and vigorous cleaning protocols for theaters, like disinfecting seats in the mornings and before each showtime. It will also require employees — but not customers — to wear masks and will stagger showtimes to thin out crowds.
The company also said it would stay in the black even if local governments only allow it to sell half of its seats to keep customers separated, which the company expects governments will allow for most places in the U.S. by mid-July. Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi said that even “below that level,” the chain’s theaters can be “very, very profitable.”
Local rules for theaters vary across the U.S. New York City has not even begun to reopen, and California hasn’t gotten to that phase of its reopening yet. In Texas, theaters are allowed to be at 25% capacity.
Theater chains are also concerned that film studios could push more movies straight to the streaming services that they own. Since the pandemic shut down theaters, entertainment companies have delayed most movies. But Comcast’s NBCUniversal released “Trolls World Tour” on video on demand in April, triggering an angry response from the theater industry, and Disney will release “Artemis Fowl” to its streaming service, Disney Plus, in June, rather than theaters.
Research firm MoffettNathanson expects box office receipts in the U.S. and Canada to drop 50% in 2020, to $5.5 billion from $11.4 billion in 2019, and then to rebound to $9.7 billion in 2021. Box office hasn’t been below $10 billion since 2008.
“There is no denying that production delays, social distancing protocols and a general feeling of caution by movie patrons is going to pose challenges,” said Comscore media analyst Paul Dergarabedian in an email. “This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint for the industry.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Why Zoom is leaving its free videoconferencing with weaker encryption

In the contest to win over consumers, many tech giants have taken to offering end-to-end encryption as a default safeguard. The security measure helps prevent interlopers and would-be eavesdroppers from snooping on people’s conversations.
End-to-end encryption has become such a fixture of chat and video-calling apps in recent years that it can easily be taken for granted. Free products such as Facebook’s WhatsApp, Apple’s FaceTime, and Alphabet’s Google Meet all support the feature, which prevents even the companies themselves from scrutinizing the contents of users’ communications.
Not so at Zoom Video Communications. The company, whose videoconferencing software became ultra-popular as the coronavirus pandemic started forcing people to shelter at home, plans to reserve the heightened form of encryption solely for its paying customers.
Eric Yuan, Zoom’s CEO, confirmed the decision, first reported by Reuters last week, in an earnings call with investors Tuesday. (The company blew financial analysts’ expectations out of the water, nearly doubling its annual revenue forecast.)
“We think this feature should be a part of our offering” for business and professional customers, Yuan said. He added that the company doesn’t plan to offer free users the same luxury, “because we also want to work together with the FBI, with local law enforcement, in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose.”
Stuck in the middle
While end-to-end encryption can be a boon for privacy-conscious consumers, it can be a headache for governments. Law enforcement argues that the technology prevents investigators from following leads and collecting evidence in cases ranging from terrorism to child abuse.
Quashing end-to-end encryption remains a high priority for the Justice Department. U.S. Attorney General William Barr has repeatedly blasted Apple for failing to help unlock the phone of a terrorist—a confrontation that calls to mind the Apple vs. FBI fight of 2016. In the fall, Barr cosigned a letter with peers in the U.K. and Australia asking Facebook to delay its rollout of end-to-end encryption across all its messaging products.
The encryption technology is under fire in Congress too. The Senate is currently entertaining a bill, called the EARN IT Act, which could force tech companies to install “backdoors” in their code. The proposed law is designed to allow the government to gain access to suspected criminals’ communications, but it could end up thwarting end-to-end encryption protections for everyone.
End-to-end encryption differs from other forms of encryption in that it encrypts data using a secret cryptographic key, essentially a password, stored on a person’s personal device. Since only the parties privy to a conversation have the special codes required to decipher the data, no one but the intended recipients can read the contents of messages.
For everyone else, the encrypted data looks like gobbledygook.
Slow and steady
Zoom’s decision to enable end-to-end encryption for some, but not all, customers can be interpreted as a compromise.
When the company was under fire for security and privacy lapses earlier this year (Zoombombing, anyone?), CEO Yuan promised to pause all other engineering work for 90 days while his team concentrated on fixing the “trust” issues. On the one hand, Zoom had to balance the privacy of its users; on the other, it sought to remain on the right side of regulators.
For all Zoom’s zoomph, the company faces legal headwinds. Already, the Federal Trade Commission has indicated that it is probing Zoom for potentially misleading people about its privacy. And Zoom’s service has also appeared in federal lawsuits concerning child abuse; one federal prosecutor, who was quoted in a recent New York Times investigation, described the service as “the Netflix of child pornography” in a closing argument at court.
By rolling out end-to-end encryption for only paying customers, Zoom assures that it can maintain records on people who enjoy the strongest privacy settings. The move, which leaves freeloaders more exposed, has the added benefit of encouraging people and businesses to shift to the paid product, bolstering Zoom’s rocketing business.
Max Krohn, cofounder of Keybase, an encrypted messaging app that was recently snatched up by Zoom for an undisclosed amount, said in a paper posted to the code-sharing site GitHub that the company would seek public comment and continue to “refine” its encryption plan over time.
One could interpret Zoom’s decision as offering weaker security by default. But it also boosts the business, potentially keeps regulators at bay, and provides cover that the company is doing something about abusive users of its platform from whom it had nothing to gain. As Jon Callas, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters, the strategy seems to be a reasonable way for Zoom “to get rid of the riffraff” and the people who do “real horrible stuff.”


fortune--2020-06-03--5 companies to keep an eye on following the world’s largest cancer conference

The American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) marquee annual meeting went forward this past weekend—albeit digitally because of the coronavirus pandemic.
ASCO usually attracts some 30,000 attendees who span the gamut, including life sciences executives, academic experts, investors, scientists, and patient advocates from around the world.
The sheer amount of content can be head spinning. Major pharmaceutical giants and startup biotechs alike present data about their existing and experimental cancer treatments. So what stood out at ASCO 2020?
Cell therapies shine
So-called cell therapies have taken greater prominence in cancer drug development over the past few years. These are the kinds of treatments that leverage the body’s own biological machinery, in some shape or form, to ward off malignancies. For instance, cancer immunotherapy drugs may activate defense mechanisms to home in on malignant cells. Technologies such as CAR-T, which involves reengineering the body’s immune cells to become targeted cancer killers, have shown promise in the sick and desperate patients who haven’t improved with more traditional treatments.
Two companies that stood out on this cell therapy front are Johnson & Johnson and the lesser known biotech Allogene, according to investor Brad Loncar, who created an index fund dedicated to cancer immunotherapies in 2016.
Johnson & Johnson is working on a type of CAR-T treatment for the rare blood cancer multiple myeloma—and it has shown some impressive results so far. The drug giant shared data showing that 25 out of 29 patients in a trial of the experimental JNJ-4528 had what’s called a “complete response,” which means that all signs of their cancer had disappeared through a certain period of time (though that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily cured permanently).
“But the response seems pretty durable based on the data they have,” says Loncar. “That’s pretty important because so far there’s been a pretty high relapse rate for this specific type of CAR-T treatment compared with others.”
That could set Johnson & Johnson up for an advantage against rivals like Bristol-Myers Squibb, which are working in the same treatment space. “There are competitive implications. I’m not sure if Bristol-Myers and its partners will be able to catch up,” he says.
And then there’s Allogene. Although the company’s ASCO data is quite preliminary, it comes with a twist that could have massive practical implications for the CAR-T field.
CAR-T is complicated, and there are different approaches you can take to using such technology: autologous or allogeneic. Let’s break that down—autologous CAR-T treatments, several of which are already on the market, require extracting cells from individual patients, reengineering them to become cancer killers, and then reinserting them into a patient’s body.
That’s a time-consuming and difficult process. “You have to draw blood, put it on an airplane, ship it, and then it takes a few weeks to restructure and process the cells, and then it has to be sent back from the lab to where the patient is,” says Loncar. And these patients are the sickest of the sick, meaning time is of the essence. “It’s just an expensive and cumbersome process.”
An allogeneic approach could change all that. This is what’s considered an “off-the-shelf” process: It’s dependent on using cells from donors rather than individual patients. “So it’s being mass-produced in a factory like a more traditional therapy, which cuts out a lot of the manufacturing hassles and expenses,” Loncar explains.
Allogene’s experimental CAR-T (in admittedly early-stage studies) is one of the rare instances of this approach working on a similar level to the more hard-to-make existing treatments.
A path forward for combination therapies
Drug companies typically stack treatments on top of each other to see if a cocktail of therapies works better than just one. But in the case of cancer immunotherapies, that hasn’t always worked. There are dozens upon dozens of trials testing approved immuno-oncology drugs in combination with other experimental ones—with little to show in the way of results so far.
Swiss drug giant Roche may change that. The firm is one of the major names in the cancer therapy sector, with blockbuster treatments such as its immunotherapy Tecentriq. At this year’s ASCO, it highlighted early data for a combination of Tecentriq and a so-called TIGIT inhibitor, the experimental tiragolumab, in certain patients with advanced lung cancer.
That early data showed that the combo therapy shrank tumors in 31% of such patients compared with those who received Tecentriq alone. “I think you’re going to see a lot of companies invest in TIGIT drugs post-ASCO,” says Loncar.
AstraZeneca may be the “winner” of this year’s meeting
It may seem glib to paint a cancer conference in terms of winners and losers. But that’s often the reality at ASCO, where investors and companies latch on to the most hopeful science.
This year, two firms that stood out were Merck (a perennial titan in the cancer space, especially with its bestselling immunotherapy Keytruda, which has shown to help patients with everything from melanoma to advanced lung cancer live longer), and AstraZeneca.
“I would crown AstraZeneca as the winner this year,” says Loncar. The company shared promising data for multiple treatments, but the most significant one may have been for its already approved drug Tagrisso in the “adjuvant” setting.
Here’s what that means: When patients have a cancer that needs to be dealt with via surgery, they often have to take a drug to make sure that the cancer doesn’t come back after the tumor has been removed. Late-stage trials showed that Tagrisso was staggeringly effective in achieving this “adjuvant” goal, with “a 79% reduction in the risk of disease recurrence or death” for lung cancer patients with a certain genetic mutation.
Dive into stories from Fortune’s print edition:
—The trillion-dollar question: How far will GDP fall?
—How each industry is fueling the U.S. unemployment rate in one chart
—What we can learn from China’s color-coded apps for tracking the coronavirus
—The retailers that are smartest about tech will finish on top after the coronavirus
—Big Pharma has the chance to come to the world’s rescue
—More surveillance and less privacy will be the new normal after the coronavirus
—WATCH: Why the banks were ready for the financial impact of coronavirus
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fortune--2020-06-03--Walmart pushes forward with new HQ plans to help staff collaborate post-pandemic

In contrast to the many tech CEOs viewing work-from-home as the new standard well after the pandemic eases, Walmart’s chief executive says face time at the office will remain crucial to how the retailer’s corporate employees function when things get back to normal—and once its new campus opens.
Walmart last year heralded a new 350-acre home office project expected to open in its hometown of Bentonville, Ark., in stages and be completed by 2025, revamping an outdated facility in hopes of more easily attracting and retaining talent for which it has to compete with the likes of Amazon, Google, and Apple.
But the plan was announced well before anyone could imagine a pandemic like COVID-19 would have people working from home for months on end. Yet despite that, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon firmly believes the value of in-person collaboration with colleagues will endure and says it won’t change the future home office’s design much.
“As this crisis has gone on, we’ve noticed things that were missing,” McMillon said on a webcast of Walmart’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. “How do you get to know people? How do you get a sense for what the culture is like? Culture inside a company is such an important aspect.”
The future Walmart headquarters will boast features of modern-day office life including mass timber construction, ample biking paths (the company wants 10% of employees to commute by bike), green space, and outdoor meeting rooms to position itself as a high-tech, cutting-edge company worthy of today’s biggest tech and retail talent, and not just a mammoth discount chain.
Walmart, the largest private U.S. employer with 1.4 million workers, has a staff of about 14,000 at its headquarters. The current campus is made up of a decentralized series of 20 nondescript buildings, many with one floor only in deference to founder Sam Walton’s aversion to flash. The new campus will be made up of offices and cafés with smart building design, solar panels, and regionally sourced materials, surrounded by outdoor spaces.
Still, the pandemic has led countless companies to rethink whether they really need people come into the office as much. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently told Fortune that most of the Canadian e-commerce company’s employees would work from home from now on.
“One thing we’re not going to get back to, at least in the tech industry, is office-centricity,” Lütke said. Twitter and Square have also given employees the option to work from home permanently, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks half of his employees could be working remotely in five to 10 years.
Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, said the new office project was still in the design stages, so changes could be made to reflect any longer-lasting impacts of the pandemic and how Americans like to work without “disrupting the overall time frame of the project.”
The company was long afflicted by a silo culture in which different divisions didn’t work together well enough. That was notably the case with its e-commerce and retail divisions for years. But now Walmart has emerged as a strong No. 2 to Amazon, and the retailer is benefiting from more harmony across its divisions, a crucial advantage in the retail and e-commerce wars.
“In a post-vaccine world we’re going to need office space, and people are going to collaborate,” McMillon said. “Being present with each other is going to matter over time.”


fortune--2020-06-03--The RNC was expected to bring Charlotte $188 million, but now Trump has changed his mind

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Republicans would no longer hold their 2020 convention in Charlotte, N.C., this August because of size restrictions and safety protocols put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Millions of dollars and 18 months of work had already been put into the convention, which was expected to bring $188 million in economic development into the city.
The President was reportedly angry about North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s insistence that convention attendees wear face masks and use social distancing measures. Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday evening to blame Cooper for refusing “to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena.”
In a series of tweets, the President wrote that “Governor Cooper is still in Shelter-in-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised. We are now forced to seek another state to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.”
A Republican official confirmed that the event would be held in another city, but did not say where.
Hours later Cooper responded, “We have been committed to a safe RNC convention in North Carolina, and it’s unfortunate they never agreed to scale down and make changes to keep people safe. Protecting public health and safety during this pandemic is a priority.”
Convention chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that there was no clarity on what a scaled-down convention would look like, which prevented the RNC from being able to plan events. “Currently, you allow 10 people to gather indoors. Is that what scaled down means? Or is it 100 people? 1,000 people? Total lack of clarity from you,” she wrote to Cooper on Twitter.
Fortune visited the Spectrum Center and RNC offices in Charlotte in February. There, a full staff worked to prepare the four-day convention with an expected 50,000 visitors, 15,000 members of the media, 2,500 delegates, and 3,200 events. The RNC was also closing in on its goal of raising nearly $70 million to fund the events. Contracts with local restaurants and a number of partner hotels had been signed, and custom-made podiums and lighting had been designed for the arena.
During the visit, RNC staff stressed how integrated they had become with the city of Charlotte, moving their families and putting their children in local schools.
The location of the convention was also carefully curated to aid Trump in the 2020 election. North Carolina is an important swing state for Republicans: Trump won there in 2016 by 173,315 votes (3.67 points), and polling shows that Biden and the President are currently tied in the state. Trump’s chief of staff, former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, has called the state a “must-win” to ensure 2020 success.
But Trump has a history of conflict with the city of Charlotte, and this isn’t the first time there’s been discussion of canceling the convention.
Last summer, the Charlotte city council voted, nine to two, to condemn Trump’s “racist and xenophobic social media posts and comments” and “all hate speech, bigotry, racism, and discrimination wherever it may occur, especially in the highest levels of government.” The vote came after a crowd at a Trump rally in Greenville, N.C., shouted “Send her back” in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
At the time, the council also discussed ending the RNC contract and stopping the convention. City attorney Patrick Baker, however, concluded that it would be impossible. “I don’t believe you will be able to walk away from this contract even if you were willing to pay the financial penalties,” he told the council. “I don’t believe you would be allowed to walk away.”
Now, it’s the RNC walking away from the contract, and Baker who will explore legal action. On Tuesday evening the City of Charlotte wrote in a tweet: “We have a contract in place with the RNC to host the convention, and the City Attorney will be in contact with the attorneys for the RNC to understand their full intentions.” The City of Charlotte also noted that it had “yet to receive any official notification from the Republican National Committee regarding its intent for the location of the convention.”
COVID-19 has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States. North Carolina is currently experiencing a surge in the disease, with more than 30,000 confirmed cases.


fortune--2020-06-03--All four former Minneapolis officers involved in George Floyd’s death are now facing charges

Prosecutors on Wednesday expanded their case against the police who were at the scene of George Floyd’s death, charging three of the officers with aiding and abetting a murder and upgrading the charges against the officer who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck to second-degree murder.
The most serious charge was filed against Derek Chauvin, whose caught-on-video treatment of the handcuffed Floyd spurred worldwide protests. Three other officers — Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao — were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All four were fired last week.
The new charges were sought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who called the protests unleashed by the death “dramatic and necessary” and said Floyd “should be here and he is not.”
“His life had value, and we will seek justice,” Ellison said.
Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Floyd’s family, called it “a bittersweet moment” and “a significant step forward on the road to justice.” Crump said Elison had told the family he would continue his investigation into Floyd’s death and upgrade the charge to first-degree murder if warranted.
Chauvin was initially charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter
The move powerfully punctuated an unprecedented week in modern American history, in which largely peaceful protests took place in communities of all sizes but were rocked by bouts of violence, including deadly attacks on officers, rampant thefts and arson in some places.
Earlier Wednesday, in a visit to a makeshift shrine at the street corner where Floyd died, his family had again called for the arrests of Lane, Kueng and Thao, a demand echoed by their attorney.
“We are demanding justice,” Crump said.
Some of the rockiness of the days since Floyd’s death May 25 dissipated on Tuesday night, with demonstrations continuing around the country, but without major reports of violence.
Curfews and efforts by protesters to contain earlier flare-ups of lawlessness were credited with preventing more widespread damage to businesses in New York and other cities overnight.
“Last night we took a step forward in moving out of this difficult period we’ve had the last few days and moving to a better time,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
New York police said about 280 people were arrested on protest-related charges Tuesday night, compared with 700 a day earlier. Nationwide, more than 9,000 have been arrested in connection with unrest.
At least 12 deaths have been reported, though the circumstances in many cases are still being sorted out.
Some tense incidents continued Tuesday night, but were far less prevalent than in preceding days. Police and National Guard troops used tear gas, flash-bang grenades, nonlethal rounds and other means of dispersing crowds near a police precinct in Seattle, near Centennial Park in Atlanta and at demonstrations in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida.
Minnesota has opened a civil rights investigation into whether the Minneapolis Police Department has a pattern of discrimination against minorities.
Floyd’s death sparked protests around the world.
Pope Francis called for national reconciliation and peace, saying he has ‘’witnessed with great concern the disturbing social unrest’’ in the U.S.
“My friends, we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life,’’ he said Wednesday.
President Donald Trump has pushed the nation’s governors to take a hard line against the violence, saying Tuesday that “lowlifes and losers” were taking over New York’s streets.
He again tweeted Wednesday: “LAW & ORDER!”
More than 20,000 National Guard members have been called up in 29 states to deal with the violence.
In Philadelphia, a statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo was removed by the city early Wednesday after repeatedly being targeted by vandals. Rizzo presided over a police force widely accused of racism and brutality in the 1970s.
Some protesters framed the burgeoning movement as a necessity after a long list of killings by police.
“It feels like it’s just been an endless cascade of hashtags of black people dying, and it feels like nothing’s really being done by our political leaders to actually enact real change,” said Christine Ohenzuwa, 19, who attended a peaceful protest at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul.
“There’s always going to be a breaking point. I think right now, we’re seeing the breaking point around the country.”
___
Sedensky reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press journalists across the U.S. contributed to this report.


fortune--2020-06-03--How to reopen your business so it’s safe for both employees and customers

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As regions across the world begin to reopen for business, employers and managers are now tasked with considering and prioritizing health factors to determine if they’re even ready to welcome back employees.
According to CDC guidance, the first step is to develop a plan for those employees who may have higher medical risk factors or complications if they were to contract COVID-19. These employees might not be infectious, but they could be more susceptible to the novel coronavirus owing to pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or a history of cancer.
“If you don’t have a plan to address that, then stop,” said Dr. Raj Behal, chief quality officer for One Medical Group, during a virtual Q&A on Wednesday hosted by Fortune. Behal has been practicing internal medicine for more than 20 years and is trained in public health. As chief quality officer over the past three years at One Medical, his role includes overseeing the quality and value of care delivered to patients.
“If you look at why rates are declining, the biggest driver of why we’re seeing fewer deaths and fewer cases is shelter in place. We haven’t been connecting with fellow human beings for a few months now,” Behal said. “As we start to come back and start to cluster without masks and protections, the virus does what the virus does. It’s not smart, but it’s social. It thrives on human contact.”
So this is the part, Behal underscored, that is sometimes hard for public health agencies to get across: The need for masks is greatest right now when the case numbers are lower. “This is how we mitigate the spread. If we don’t take these precautions, we’ll see a second spike,” he said.
While it’s not conclusive about COVID-19, coronaviruses tend to weaken during summer months. But approaching winter, if we start to slow down with precautions, Behal warned, we’ll see another spike. The flu season also starts to gear up in October, peaking in December and January. So if we mitigate risks for COVID, we may also mitigate for the flu. The question then is: How do we instill these habits in the general population?
When it comes to setting requirements and protocols for employees, employers have a lot more control. But it’s more complicated when customers or clients want to walk in. It’s difficult to reassure them that an indoor location—whether it be an office space, a retail store, or a restaurant—feels safe.
If a client walking in sees some visible mitigation efforts indicating the manager is taking precautions seriously—whether it be the requirements of face masks or markings on the floor to enforce social distancing—he or she might feel more at ease to conduct transactions.
And while it is not possible for all jobs, allowing employees the option to work from home is a sensible long-term strategy to keeping the business moving while also indicating you are being considerate and mindful of their needs. If employees do come into their place of work, they should be symptom-free, and if testing is readily available in your region (which it is much more now than a few months ago), then employees could and should be tested before coming in. If employees have any symptoms at all, they should stay home.
Then there’s the added anxiety of coming back to the workplace, including the concern about the chances about getting infected upon return. To ease employee fears, employers should communicate sanitizing protocols and changes being made before anyone goes back. Behal reiterated that the virus doesn’t live forever, and after a few hours, it dissipates in strength. That said, a new cleaning protocol shouldn’t just be spraying a surface with a disinfectant. (You have to clean the surface first, and then disinfect.)
“What the virus needs to transmit is human interaction and close interaction,” Behal said. So the higher the density, the higher the risk of transmission. There are a lot of ways to mitigate that, from social distancing to face masks to sanitizing.
Having some constraints in office buildings can be useful. Behal said he has seen some reopening plans that involve hiring elevator stewards, who will only let, for example, four people in at a time. Say a fifth person tries to squeeze in, the steward will be tasked with managing the situation so safety limits are kept.
“I’ve seen pictures of elevators with four spots painted or stickers in each corner, and they direct you to stand with your face to the wall in the elevator. So it’s like a time out for kids,” Behal said. “There are things like that that employers are trying with good intentions.”
Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy, and some businesses have different needs. Restaurants require more consideration as people will have to take their masks off to eat and drink. With that in mind, tables will need to be kept farther apart, and servers should be wearing masks. There could also be customer experiences in which customers either forget to or choose not to bring a mask, so it would be wise for businesses to keep masks on hand for one-time use.
“We know the risk of transmission outdoors, at least theoretically, is lower,” Behal noted. “So if you have outdoor seating, make sure there is distancing.”
The silent pandemic
Not all health problems have obvious symptoms, and employers will need to be mindful of what employees have had to endure over the past several weeks and months.
“There’s a silent pandemic going on that we’re not talking about enough, and that’s the pandemic of mental health. People are really stressed,” Behal said.
At first, Behal noted that for many, it was novel to work from home. But after time, that practice gets on people’s nerves. He predicted there will be a rise in PTSD as the pandemic continues amid reopening, and that combined with the economic crisis as well as social unrest across the nation, all of that is just going to add to the mental health burden.
“The most important thing employers can do is recognize that,” Behal said, cautioning against any kind of “macho” or “tough” responses in which employees are encouraged to say they can handle it. “Let’s talk to people and make sure they understand there is support for that.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Most areas of Florida will enter reopening phase 2 Friday with some businesses still at limited capa

Most areas of Florida will enter reopening phase 2 Friday with some businesses still at limited capacity

Florida will enter the next phase of its reopening Friday, allowing businesses including bars, movie theaters and bowling alleys to reopen in most parts of the state for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic triggered a shutdown.
The establishments will initially operate with capacity limits, Governor Ron DeSantis said Wednesday in Orlando. For now, the next phase will exclude the three most populous counties—Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach—where the outbreak has been most pronounced, according to DeSantis.
Florida began its phased reopening on May 4.
DeSantis has repeatedly made the case that the state dodged worst-case scenarios for its population, which includes one of America’s largest communities of retirees. He also argued that the key going forward is to focus on protecting the vulnerable, while paving the way for more flexibility among the broader population.
In his presentation Wednesday, he noted that the state has had no Covid-19-related fatalities among residents 18 and under, while 85% the deaths have occurred among residents 65 and older. Of the state’s 2,566 deaths, 1,306—or 51% percent—have occurred at long-term care properties including nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Overall, Florida has confirmed 58,764 cases of Covid-19, with daily increases mostly running under 2% daily since mid-May. Still, a report Wednesday showed the numbers climbed 2.3% from a day earlier, above the previous 7-day average of 1.4%.
DeSantis said Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach need to submit a written request to enter Phase 2 of the reopening, if they decide they’re ready to do so. Together, they account for 54% of Florida’s confirmed coronavirus cases among all 67 counties.
Going forward, restaurants can now seat people at bars with appropriate social distancing, while bars, pubs, bowling allies and concert venues must operate at 50% indoor capacity. Bar service will only be available to seated customers to discourage large standing crowds.
Retail will now be able to operate at full capacity, removing prior caps on traffic.


fortune--2020-06-03--Airline ETF JETS has seen assets soar 2,930% thanks to ‘bored’ millennial day traders

A once-obscure ETF tracking airlines soared past $1 billion, largely bolstered by day trading.
The US Global Jets exchange-traded fund, ticker JETS, posted its 64th consecutive day of inflows on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its growth has been staggering: The ETF held just $33 million in early March as the coronavirus pandemic grounded global air travel. The fund’s top holdings are the four major U.S. airlines, though it said last week that it will begin investing in Canadian carriers as well.
Much of that explosive growth in assets can be credited to day traders looking to “catch the bottom” in airline stocks, according to Frank Holmes, chief executive officer of JETS issuer U.S. Global Investors. After speaking with newly minted JETS holders, he says the boredom of being stuck at home and the strong rebound in carriers after the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis are luring young traders.
“All these millennials, being stuck at home with no bars to go to and no beaches to travel to, took their money and became day traders,” said Holmes. “They’re bored, they want to make money.”
In particular, the growing popularity of JETS on retail trading platform Robinhood has “shocked” Holmes. The number of users holding JETS surged to nearly 30,000 this week, according to Robintrack, a website unaffiliated with the site that uses its data to show trends in positioning. That compares to 500 at the beginning of March.
Not even a warning from billionaire investor Warren Buffett has deterred the army of day traders. Buffett said in early May that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. completely exited its positions in airlines, cautioning that the prospects have changed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Since then, JETS has taken in roughly $294 million worth of inflows.
Despite a nearly 21% rebound over the past month, JETS is still nursing a year-to-date plunge of over 45%. The bulk of the fund’s losses came after mid-February once lockdown measures took effect around the globe in an effort to contain the spread of infections.
JETS’s recent recovery has further evaporated demand to bet against it. Short interest as a percentage of shares outstanding on JETS — a rough indicator of bearish bets on the fund — is currently 0.5%, according to data from IHS Markit Ltd. It reached 7.8% in February 2019.
However, JETS’s methodology deserves a second look from investors pouring into the fund, according to DataTrek Research.
Instead of using a market-cap based weighting system employed by most sector-focused ETFs, JETS seeks to assign a 10% weighting to the top four largest U.S. or Canadian airline companies. Additionally, the fund doesn’t have Boeing, despite holding General Dynamics and Airbus, co-founder Nicholas Colas noted.
“JETS may work from here, or it may not, but the important thing to know is that it’s not a passive fund with weightings based on market caps and it can entirely exclude mega-cap companies associated with air travel,” Colas wrote in a note Tuesday. “While the whole airline group may trade with a correlation of 1.0 for some time to come, you can’t just assume you know what’s in this product.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Pilgrims Pride CEO charged by U.S. in price-fixing conspiracy

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.’s chief executive officer was charged with conspiring to fix prices by U.S. prosecutors as part of an antitrust investigation of chicken-processing companies.
Jayson Penn was indicted by a grand jury in Colorado along with Roger Austin, a former vice president of the company, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
“Executives who cheat American consumers, restauranteurs, and grocers, and compromise the integrity of our food supply, will be held responsible for their actions,” Makan Delrahim, the head of the department’s antitrust division, said in a statement.
The case is part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of price fixing by chicken processors that came to light last year. Pilgrim’s, along with rivals Tyson Foods Inc. and Sanderson Farms Inc., have been accused in civil lawsuits of conspiring to raise prices for broiler chickens.
Pilgrim’s Pride shares fell as much as 16% on the news. Tyson fell as much as 7.6% and Sanderson Farms fell as much as 14%.
Also charged Wednesday were Mikell Fries, the president of Claxton Poultry Farms, and Scott Brady, a vice president.
Pilgrim’s Pride didn’t respond to a request for comment and Claxton declined to comment.
–With assistance from Michael Hirtzer.


fortune--2020-06-03--Snapchat stops promoting Trump, saying his comments ‘incite racial violence’

Snapchat will no longer promote President Trump’s account on its service, adding to the pushback by social media companies against his inflammatory posts.
Trump’s account will no longer appear on Snapchat’s Discover tab, an area where news sites, celebrities, and politicians are showcased. Trump’s account will, however, remain publicly accessible on the service.
The decision by Snapchat’s parent, Snap, was based on Trump’s recent posts on rival Twitter in which he lauded the Secret Service for protecting the White House from people protesting the death of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis resident who died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck. In the tweet, Trump said if protesters had breached the fence they would’ve been met with “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”
Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService. They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe. They let the “protesters” scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
….have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
“We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” a Snap spokesperson said. “Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society, and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”
Snap is the second social media company to take action against Trump in recent days. Last week, Twitter placed one of his tweets behind a warning telling viewers that the posts had violated the service’s rules against “glorifying violence.” That was shortly after the company had labeled Trump’s tweet about mail-in ballots as misinformation.
The move enraged Trump, who reacted by signing an executive order aimed at removing legal protections that keep social media companies from being held liable for what their users post. On Tuesday, the tech advocacy nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology challenged that order in federal court, calling it “a direct attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.”
In contrast to Twitter and now Snapchat, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken a conspicuously hands-off approach to Trump, saying the President hasn’t crossed the line into inciting violence. Zuckerberg’s explanations unleashed huge criticism both outside Facebook and inside. A number of Facebook employees aired their displeasure on Twitter and staged a virtual walkout, marking an unprecedented public rebuke of Zuckerberg by his staff. Adding to the pressure, two Facebook employees quit, citing the episode as part of the reason for their departures.
Snap disclosed its decision on Sunday when CEO Evan Spiegel sent an internal memo, later posted online, saying the company will no longer promote accounts linked to “people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform.”
“We will make it clear with our actions that there is no grey area when it comes to racism, violence, and injustice—and we will not promote it, nor those who support it, on our platform,” Spiegel said.


fortune--2020-06-03--NBA set to approve July return with 22 teams in Orlando: Report

The National Basketball Association appears to be back. The league’s board of governors is gearing up to approve a return-to-play plan on Thursday, according to reports.
The officials will vote on a call at 12:30 p.m. ET with the intention of approving a plan that will see 22 of the NBA’s 30 teams compete in Orlando, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports.
The competition would run from July 31 to October 12, according to ESPN, as a resumption of the 2019/20 season that was interrupted by the novel coronavirus pandemic in March.
The league has not yet responded to the report.
The 16 teams currently sitting in a playoff position in the league’s standings—eight each from the Eastern and Western conferences—gain an automatic invite to the Orlando competition. Joining them are six others: the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trailblazers, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, and the Washington Wizards.
Each of those 22 teams would then play eight regular-season games for seeding into the playoffs, according to ESPN.
The play-in format requires a double-elimination format for the 8th seed, a single-elimination for the 9th seed, per sources. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 3, 2020
If the plan is approved, the NBA could become the first major American sports league to return to competitive play in the wake of the pandemic. The NHL plans to open training camps no earlier than July 10 but has not set a specific date to resume official competition.
Elsewhere, England’s Premier League announced plans to finish its season beginning on June 17. Germany’s Bundesliga restarted on May 16.


fortune--2020-06-03--Cannes announces lineup for 2020 festival canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic

From an empty movie theater in Paris, organizers of the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday announced the films that would have played at there in May had it not been canceled by the pandemic.
The selections were an exercise in what-might-have-been for Cannes, the premier international film festival that for the last 73 years has been the most prestigious and glitzy annual gathering of the global movie industry. The French festival, originally slated for mid-May, initially considered postponing to July but ultimately gave up on a 2020 edition.
Hearing what would have premiered on the Crosiette this year offered a tantalizing picture of a canceled Cannes. Two films by “12 Years a Slave” filmmaker Steve McQueen — “Mangrove” and “Lover’s Rock” — had been headed to Cannes, said festival director Thierry Fremaux, as was Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and Pete Docter’s Pixar film “Soul.”
Fremaux announced 56 movies that were selected from a record 2,067 submissions that poured in despite the health crisis. “I can see that film is alive and kicking,” said Fremaux, sitting on the stage of the UGC Normandie cinema in Paris alongside president Pierre Lescure.
From left: Cannes Film Festival’s director Thierry Fremaux and president Pierre Lescure reveal the 73rd Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, in Paris, on June 3. Serge Arnal—Starface/AFP/Getty Images
The selection announcement, usually made in an April press conference before teaming throngs of international journalists, was instead presented during a TV interview that aired on Canal Plus. Lescure noted the unprecedented situation had some upside: It was much quieter and Fremaux didn’t have to fend off questions from various nations whose films were overlooked.
Fremaux didn’t distinguish between which films had been slated for its main selection, in which some 20-25 films compete for the Palme d’Or, the Un Certain Regard sidebar or out-of-competition premieres. Some films, he noted, opted to wait until next year’s Cannes.
The announced selection included 16 films directed by women, an increase of two from 2019. Cannes, where only one female filmmaker (Jane Campion) has ever won the Palme, has often come under criticism for not selecting more movies directed by women.
Spike Lee, whose previous film “BlacKKKlansman” premiered at Cannes, had been set to preside over the jury that would select Cannes’ top prize. Last year, it went to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards.
“This time, everyone will be able to give his or her own Palme d’Or,” Fremaux said.
Also among the selections: Francois Ozon’s “Summer of ‘85″; Naomi Kawase’s “True Mothers”; Hong Sang-soo’s “Heaven”; Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round”; Maïwenn’s “DNA”; and Sang-ho Yeon’s “Peninsula.”
The films will be able to brand themselves as part of the official 2020 Cannes Film Festival selection. If accepted elsewhere, the films can still have their premieres at other fall festivals — should they happen — like those in Toronto, Telluride, New York and San Sebastian. The Cannes label will be particularly helpful for films from lesser-known filmmakers; 15 of the films announced Wednesday were directorial debuts.
“We will support them,” said Fremaux. “Their names are on the map now.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Europe’s reaction to George Floyd’s death highlights racism at home as well as in the U.S.

On a cloudy Wednesday afternoon in Hyde Park, 22-year-old Londoner Tyra held up with gloved hands a sign that read “Justice for Belly Mujinga.”
The sign refers to a black ticket officer at London’s Victoria train station who died from COVID-19, two weeks after a man who claimed to have the virus spit on her while she was working. Mujinga’s name, painted on cardboard signs, appeared next to George Floyd’s throughout a crowd of thousands who had gathered to protest police brutality and racism following Floyd’s death.
Floyd died after he was pinned to the ground by a white police officer. For Tyra, who did not give her last name, the fact that Floyd’s death occurred in Minnesota was beside the point.
“[Racism] is something that’s affected me all my life,” she said, visibly emotional. Regardless of where she lived, “I’m always going to be a black person first.”
It was a sign of how deeply Floyd’s death and the wave of demonstrations that have followed it have touched young Britons and Europeans. Protests in sympathy with those in the U.S. have taken place across Europe this week, with many demonstrators seeking to call attention to local issues of police brutality and racism as well as expressing outrage about what has happened in America.
In Paris, nearly 15,000 demonstrators took to the streets to protest police violence on Tuesday night, defying police orders to stay home to prevent possible coronavirus infections. In Amsterdam on Monday, Dam Square was packed with demonstrators holding signs saying “Police violence is not an accident” and “Racism is a pandemic.” And thousands held a rally against racism outside the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
In London, there have been a series of marches and demonstrations. A large rally, estimated at a few thousand people, was held on Sunday in Trafalgar Square and outside the U.S. Embassy. Another protest, drawing several hundred, was held in Hyde Park on Wednesday. More rallies are planned for the weekend. And the Stand Up to Racism campaign is asking U.K. citizens to “take a knee for George Floyd” outside their front doors on Wednesday night.
Videos of Floyd’s death and subsequent protests and civil unrest in American cities have been featured prominently in news coverage in Europe and widely shared on social media, shocking many Europeans.
But protesters were quick to point out the global nature of racism and biased policing. “It happens everywhere. It’s not just the U.S.,” said Cass, a 31-year-old who was attending the Hyde Park rally. Like many protesters, he declined to provide a last name.
“The U.K. is not innocent,” said protester Gary Tatham, noting that the U.K. has also seen police brutality. “Every black person, every person of color in this country has faced racism.”
Alice Mensah, another protester, said that “there is a real sense of hopelessness” in the U.K. over the death of Floyd. Racism in the country is not as “overt” as in the U.S., she said. “It’s tied up in a bow.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Mensah also said that Floyd’s death, coming as it did during the U.K.’s nationwide lockdown, when there have been few other distractions, seemed to have shocked even some white Britons out of their complacency. To her, she said, the uproar over Floyd’s killing feels different from responses to previous instances of injustice. “This is alien to me,” she said. “This is the first time my white friends are coming to me and wanting to know more.”
For British members of the Black Lives Matter movement, the coronavirus’s disproportionate toll on those of black, Asian, and minority ethnic origin (often referred to collectively by the acronym BAME) has become a key issue. Many accuse the government of failing to do enough to protect members of those groups, and of trying to prevent data showing how much greater the death toll has been among BAME individuals from becoming public.
In Hyde Park on Wednesday, many protesters expressed disgust with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s record on race, chanting an expletive followed by his first name.
Speaking in Parliament Wednesday, Johnson called Floyd’s murder “appalling, inexcusable” and said, “I perfectly understand people’s right to protest what took place there,” although he added that protests should be “lawful and reasonable.”
Drawing parallels
The references to Belly Mujinga are just one example of how the protests have sought to draw parallels between racist incidents in the U.S. and alleged racism closer to home.
At the Hyde Park rally, protesters also carried signs referencing Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old London man who was shot and killed by police in August 2011, sparking a week of rioting throughout the city. And during Sunday’s demonstration, some protesters marched to the site of Grenfell Tower, the apartment block where at least 72 people, most of them ethnic minorities, died in a raging fire in the summer of 2017. The local government, which owned the tower, was found to have ignored repeated expressions of concern about the building’s safety.
In Paris, in addition to Floyd’s murder, protesters sought to draw attention to the case of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black construction worker who died after being arrested by French police in 2016. Traoré’s death sparked a French version of the Black Lives Matter movement, and many saw clear parallels to Floyd’s case: Investigators found Traoré had suffocated after officers stood on his back.
“We don’t have the same history with the U.S. or the same history as African-Americans, so it’s complicated to compare,” Madjid Messaoudene, a municipal official from the diverse Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, told the Washington Post. “But the point in common is the impunity of the police.”
European reaction to the George Floyd protests has been filtered through local grievances as well as through perceptions of both the United States and President Donald Trump.
Many Europeans dislike the U.S. President, and there is a long-standing strain of anti-Americanism among European elites. But many Europeans also cherish the U.S. as an ally that has traditionally shared its democratic values. Many have said they want to see the U.S. live up to those ideals and that they have been horrified not only by Floyd’s death, but by the heavy-handed police reaction to the protests and by Trump’s call for the U.S. military to be used to quell the unrest.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Tuesday that the U.S. protests were “understandable and more than legitimate.” He said he hoped the protests would not spark additional violence, but hastened to add that he wanted to “even more express the hope that these protests have an effect in the United States.”
Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the U.S. who chairs the Munich Security Conference, told The New Yorker that “people all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where ‘I have a dream’ is a real and universal political program.” He said he hoped demonstrations around the globe would remind Washington that U.S. soft power sets it apart from China, Russia, and even the European Union: “It would be tragic if the Trump administration turned a huge opportunity for the U.S. into a moral abdication.”


fortune--2020-06-03--Julián Castro urges the Biden campaign to work with local politicians to draw in protesters

America is in a state of extreme unrest, and leadership has been virtually nonexistent.
Emotions are heightened, as is confusion, and eyes will inevitably turn to elected leadership to frame the deluge of horrors that have befallen the country and to build some sort of levee to stop them, yet Washington has been slow to act.
Democratic officials, meanwhile, say that the best chance of instituting real change is by voting this November—five months from now.
“The best way we can change things in the United States is through utilizing the Democratic process,” former presidential candidate and secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro told Fortune. “If we’re going to change things for the better for all of those people who are experiencing pain and displaying that out there on the streets, it means that we need to get to the voting booth.”
But how do Democrats channel momentum that is demanding immediate action into an event nearly half a year away?
A global pandemic has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States, and over 40 million are unemployed. Many newly unemployed Americans can’t afford to pay rent and don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
The death of George Floyd, a black man, by excessive police force has led to nationwide protests and marches against racial inequality and police brutality. These have often turned violent: Police cars drove into masses of protesters; rubber bullets were shot at journalists; tear gas and pepper spray, known to worsen the spread of COVID-19, were used to disperse crowds. Major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, are under curfew.
Black people in America are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white people, and less than 50% of black adults now have a job. Systematic failures and institutionalized racism have contributed to those numbers, and many in Congress acknowledge that. The House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on police brutality next week and will look through 40 proposals for policy action. Still, much of this is action in optics only: The full body of Congress will remain out of session until at least June 30, and no actual legislation can be voted on until then.
On a Monday call with Democratic leadership, a “day of mourning” or a march was proposed but no agreements on policy changes were made. Senate aides, meanwhile, have indicated that Republican leader Mitch McConnell will continue his focus on nominating conservative judges to the bench.
“For a while now there’s been a logjam in Congress,” said Castro, “but at every single level of government, elected officials that care about making a difference in the lives of their constituents and in drawing in more people to vote have an incentive to make these things real by making progress on policy. So Congress isn’t the only place where the action is.”
By bringing attention to local politics for the time being, said Castro, Democrats can work to draw in young protesters and show them that policy can be quickly enacted and effective. They can then leverage those successes nationally as November draws closer.
“On this issue of police reform there are a lot of young people watching, and what happens here will determine if people get involved in the democratic process,” he said. “You have mayors and city council members across the United States that today can introduce local legislation that will pass to change disciplinary procedures, to change use-of-force standards, to change recruiting and promotion policy for police departments.”
The Biden campaign, he said, needs to work on messaging, targeting, and mobilizing the vote, but it also needs to show that it’s working with local officials on “real policy outcomes that people can see and that impact their lives.” Those actions, he said, will also bring in voters who feel alienated by the political process in general.
Partnering with local governments to enact social change too progressive for Congress, said Castro, was a tactic used regularly in the Obama White House and one that Biden is familiar with. “When we wanted to raise the minimum wage or wanted to see marriage equality come to pass, we worked on gaining the support of Congress, but it was also [done by] working with local and state officials across the country,” Castro explained, “to try and get [things] done [by] hospitable states or receptive mayors and city councils.”
At the highest level of government, President Donald Trump has responded to protesters by threatening military force and walking to St. John’s Church, which had been damaged in D.C. protests, to take photos holding a Bible. Before his walk, the National Guard used pepper spray and chemicals similar to tear gas on peaceful protesters to disperse them from his path.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, meanwhile, delivered a speech in Philadelphia condemning Trump and his actions on Tuesday afternoon. “I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate. I’ll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gain. I’ll do my job and I’ll take responsibility—I won’t blame others,” Biden said.
The former vice president pressured Congress to outlaw police choke holds, ban the transfer of “weapons of war” to police departments, and increase police accountability overall. He also promised to create a national police oversight task force within 100 days of taking office.
The comments come one week after Biden went on popular radio show The Breakfast Club and said to host Charlamagne tha God that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” The comments led to an immediate backlash, and Biden eventually walked them back by apologizing for being “cavalier” and a “wise guy.”
Still, Castro is optimistic about November. “I believe the things that we’re going through in this country right now make people more likely to vote, not less likely. It provides us with fertile ground out there with those resources to reach out and register people, to act on what they feel with their heart and see with their own eyes across the country,” he said. “I feel good about the next few months in terms of the viability of getting more people registered to vote because they’re ready to go.”
Biden, who often compares himself with and speaks of his close associations with President Barack Obama, has seen a surge in fundraising in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Sources say a fundraiser featuring both Obama and Biden is in the works. A Real Clear Politics average of polling shows Biden currently beating Trump by eight points.