theintercept--2020-06-15--Maria Ressa's Libel Conviction Is a Blow to Press Freedom

But Monday ’ s ruling is a major blow to Ressa ’ s efforts to fend off Duterte ’ s legal assaults and marks a significant setback for press freedom in the Philippines , where last month Duterte effectively shut down the country ’ s largest broadcast television network , ABS-CBN .
Ressa and Rappler have so angered Duterte with their unstinting coverage of his brutal drug war , which has left thousands dead , that since 2017 , Duterte has used one trumped-up legal charge after another to try to silence them .
Ressa ’ s efforts to fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to report on his government have earned her international acclaim .
In 2018 , she was named a Time magazine person of the year .
The libel case is part of a broad campaign by Duterte to manipulate the country ’ s legal system in order to persecute Ressa and her online news organization , Rappler .
Journalist Maria Ressa , who has long resisted efforts by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte to throw her in jail and shut down her Manila-based news organization , was found guilty on criminal libel charges in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who has come to symbolize the global fight for press freedom now faces the prospect of up to six years in prison , even as she continues to fend off other legal assaults from the Duterte regime .
I ’ ve followed Ressa ’ s case closely as director of the First Look Press Freedom Defense Fund , a unit of First Look Media , The Intercept ’ s parent company , which helped fund her legal defense .
In an interview over the weekend , Ressa described the Filipino government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her as “ the weaponization of the law.
” Journalists in the Philippines know they are under attack , she told me , “ but this cements it and codifies it.
” To bring its libel case against Ressa , the Filipino government went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the country ’ s libel law .
She and a Rappler colleague , Reynaldo Santos Jr. , were charged in connection with a 2012 article about links between a businessman and a former Filipino chief justice .
The case wasn ’ t filed until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was published and just as Duterte was launching a broader legal campaign against Rappler and Ressa .
She and Santos were charged under a “ cyber libel ” law that was enacted four months after the article appeared , but the Filipino Justice Department ruled that the law could be used because the online story was updated after publication when someone at Rappler fixed a typo .
“ It is clear to any reasonable observer that criminal charges for this do not stand up , ” Amal Clooney , Ressa ’ s lawyer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps it should come as no surprise that the authorities would be so brazen .
Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has himself warned that journalists are spies who are not exempted from assassination.
” In a press conference following her conviction , Ressa said that Rappler would continue its work .
“ I appeal to you , the journalists in this room , the Filipinos who are listening , to protect your rights , ” she said .
“ We are meant to be a cautionary tale .
We are meant to make you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t be afraid , because if you don ’ t use your rights , you will lose them .
”

Photo: Dante Diosina Jr/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Journalist Maria Ressa, who has long resisted efforts by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte to throw her in jail and shut down her Manila-based news organization, was found guilty on criminal libel charges in a Filipino court on Monday. The editor who has come to symbolize the global fight for press freedom now faces the prospect of up to six years in prison, even as she continues to fend off other legal assaults from the Duterte regime.
The libel case is part of a broad campaign by Duterte to manipulate the country’s legal system in order to persecute Ressa and her online news organization, Rappler.
Ressa and Rappler have so angered Duterte with their unstinting coverage of his brutal drug war, which has left thousands dead, that since 2017, Duterte has used one trumped-up legal charge after another to try to silence them. Ressa’s efforts to fight Duterte’s legal attacks while continuing to report on his government have earned her international acclaim. In 2018, she was named a Time magazine person of the year.
But Monday’s ruling is a major blow to Ressa’s efforts to fend off Duterte’s legal assaults and marks a significant setback for press freedom in the Philippines, where last month Duterte effectively shut down the country’s largest broadcast television network, ABS-CBN.
I’ve followed Ressa’s case closely as director of the First Look Press Freedom Defense Fund, a unit of First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, which helped fund her legal defense. In an interview over the weekend, Ressa described the Filipino government’s use of the criminal libel case against her as “the weaponization of the law.” Journalists in the Philippines know they are under attack, she told me, “but this cements it and codifies it.”
To bring its libel case against Ressa, the Filipino government went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the country’s libel law. She and a Rappler colleague, Reynaldo Santos Jr., were charged in connection with a 2012 article about links between a businessman and a former Filipino chief justice. The case wasn’t filed until 2017, five years after the story was published and just as Duterte was launching a broader legal campaign against Rappler and Ressa. She and Santos were charged under a “cyber libel” law that was enacted four months after the article appeared, but the Filipino Justice Department ruled that the law could be used because the online story was updated after publication when someone at Rappler fixed a typo.
“It is clear to any reasonable observer that criminal charges for this do not stand up,” Amal Clooney, Ressa’s lawyer, wrote last week. But “perhaps it should come as no surprise that the authorities would be so brazen. Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has himself warned that journalists are spies who are not exempted from assassination.”
In a press conference following her conviction, Ressa said that Rappler would continue its work.
“I appeal to you, the journalists in this room, the Filipinos who are listening, to protect your rights,” she said. “We are meant to be a cautionary tale. We are meant to make you afraid. So I appeal again: Don’t be afraid, because if you don’t use your rights, you will lose them.”


theintercept--2020-06-16--Philadelphia Bungled Its Vote Count, and Republicans Took Note

Still , the story had gone viral on the right and helped set a narrative of a lack of Democratic enthusiasm .
Even more troubling for Democrats , it was a preview of how Republicans will respond to election night results in November .
If the same pattern holds , Trump could carry a massive lead in Pennsylvania when America wakes up the morning after the election .
Every day that goes on heightens the chances of the courts getting involved to settle the matter — a U.S. Supreme Court , it shouldn ’ t be forgotten , that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago , threw a contested election to the Republican candidate .
The story turned out to be 180 degrees wrong .
Once the votes were actually counted in Philadelphia , where a delay was caused by a large volume of mail-in ballot requests and mail-in votes , it turned out that Biden had pulled more than Trump statewide , even as Sen. Bernie Sanders gobbled 18 percent of the vote .
The internet had a good laugh at Zito , and the world moved on .
Philadelphia County had barely counted any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Salena Zito , a writer known for her loose relationship with reality , jumped out with a story on June 6 proclaiming that President Donald Trump had gotten more votes than former Vice President Joe Biden in the Pennsylvania primary — a phenomenon she suggested should hearten Republicans for the fall .
Following the primary , Philadelphia County took upward of two weeks to tally its votes and counted “ mail-in ballots in a dramatically slower pace than any other county in Pennsylvania , ” Pele IrgangLaden , campaign manager for Rick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The thing that ’ s alarming is , Republicans are watching this failure.
” Krajewski and Nikil Saval , both local organizers with Reclaim Philadelphia , finally declared victories on Monday : — Krajweski in the race for a state Assembly seat in West Philadelphia , and Saval , a socialist and the former editor of n+1 magazine , in a South Philly state Senate race .
Both won against entrenched incumbents .
In the days following the primary , election officials told Philadelphia candidates that it could take more than 30 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where thousands of voters who had applied for mail-in ballots also showed up to vote in person .
Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were turned in after the deadline , the Philadelphia Inquirer reported .
This year , for the first time in Pennsylvania history , any voter could vote by mail , a change that Democratic Gov .
Tom Wolf signed into law last year as part of a sweeping set of voting reforms .
Philadelphia County voters requested more mail-in ballots than the entire state did in 2016 .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials in several counties , including Montgomery County , which sent the wrong ballots to 2,000 voters .
In that case , county officials worked with the U.S .
Postal Service to resend ballots in time for the June 2 deadline .
Requests for mail-in ballots continued to surge , and it became clear that many people would not be able to return ballots on time due to extenuating circumstances impacting travel and postal services during the coronavirus pandemic .
On June 1 , Wolf signed an executive order extending to June 9 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six counties : Philadelphia , Montgomery , Allegheny , Delaware , Erie , and Dauphin .
Saval and Krajewski , who had spent years agitating in the city , led a slate of progressive candidates that took on the local Democratic machine in Pennsylvania this year , energized by a local grassroots movement that found new energy after the 2016 election .
But their victories carry a significance beyond just increasing the number of progressives in Harrisburg — they have the GOP worried about the November election .
The GOP controlled most counties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state flipped red for the first time since 1988 .
Counties in Trump country counted June primary votes much more swiftly than Philadelphia , in places like Allegheny and York , along with an additional remaining Democratic stronghold , Lehigh .
By June 5 , Philadelphia County had only counted 9 percent of mail-in ballots , 15,000 of 157,000 .
Allegheny had counted 207,000 , and York and Lehigh counties had counted 40,000 each , IrgangLaden said .
“ Rick got a call from the city commissioner ’ s office saying it would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added , noting that other candidates received similar calls .
By Monday , they ’ d counted enough to call it .
According to IrgangLaden , counting picked up after election officials successfully struck duplicate votes from people who had requested mail-in ballots , and then also voted in person .
While enthusiasm and raw vote totals have been lopsided toward Democrats in every election since 2017 , including the most recent primary , the capacity to distribute and count ballots is a weak spot .
States across the country have already struggled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ programs for elections taking place during the coronavirus pandemic .
Republicans are watching closely , particularly in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania , which already bungled distribution of mail-in ballots in a number of counties .
If that lack of organization persists in November , Republicans will have an upper hand in what ’ s expected to be a tight race between Trump and Biden .
The president and fellow Republicans have spread the false claim that mail-in voting leads to rampant voter fraud , and right-wing groups are suing to remove voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ahead of November , The Intercept reported .
Philadelphia ’ s disorganization plays into that fearmongering .
Republicans sent paid staffers from the party ’ s national committee to oversee parts of Philadelphia ’ s vote count .
The vote-counting process is open to one official observer from each campaign .
Krajewski ’ s campaign had a volunteer in the room every day , alongside observers from the Republican National Committee , he said .
A local Fishtown lawyer , Jordan Rushie , was also there .
He previously managed the campaign for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Rushie did not immediately respond to a request for comment .
“ I don ’ t know what it means , ” Krajewski said .
“ I don ’ t know why they were there , but we can conjecture that they were there because they want to figure out how well Philadelphia — which is one of two Democratic strongholds in the state — how well we ’ re gon na be prepared if we have to do vote-by-mail for the general election.
” “ Whether it ’ s increased funding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office needs more capacity to count these votes in a timely manner , and we need a much better mail-in voting process for November , ” he said .
“ Philadelphia County must be able to count mail-in ballots on pace with the rest of the state , otherwise we risk a result in November that excludes Philadelphia voters on election eve.
” The idea that Trump might not take a loss so quietly in November is “ not alarmist anymore , ” Krajewski said .
That outlook becomes even bleaker if there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it looks like Trump won Philadelphia for six weeks post-election day .
“ You initiated fascism .
He already said , ‘ When the looting starts , the shooting starts.
’ I think at this point , we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that he ’ ll try to hijack democracy .
Because he can .
”

Philadelphia County had barely counted any mail-in votes from its June 2 primary when Salena Zito, a writer known for her loose relationship with reality, jumped out with a story on June 6 proclaiming that President Donald Trump had gotten more votes than former Vice President Joe Biden in the Pennsylvania primary — a phenomenon she suggested should hearten Republicans for the fall.
The story turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. Once the votes were actually counted in Philadelphia, where a delay was caused by a large volume of mail-in ballot requests and mail-in votes, it turned out that Biden had pulled more than Trump statewide, even as Sen. Bernie Sanders gobbled 18 percent of the vote. The internet had a good laugh at Zito, and the world moved on.
Still, the story had gone viral on the right and helped set a narrative of a lack of Democratic enthusiasm. Even more troubling for Democrats, it was a preview of how Republicans will respond to election night results in November. If the same pattern holds, Trump could carry a massive lead in Pennsylvania when America wakes up the morning after the election. Every day that goes on heightens the chances of the courts getting involved to settle the matter — a U.S. Supreme Court, it shouldn’t be forgotten, that is controlled by conservatives and, just 20 years ago, threw a contested election to the Republican candidate.
Following the primary, Philadelphia County took upward of two weeks to tally its votes and counted “mail-in ballots in a dramatically slower pace than any other county in Pennsylvania,” Pele IrgangLaden, campaign manager for Rick Krajewski, complained to The Intercept. “The thing that’s alarming is, Republicans are watching this failure.”
Krajewski and Nikil Saval, both local organizers with Reclaim Philadelphia, finally declared victories on Monday: — Krajewski in the race for a state Assembly seat in West Philadelphia, and Saval, a socialist and the former editor of n+1 magazine, in a South Philly state Senate race. Both won against entrenched incumbents.
In the days following the primary, election officials told Philadelphia candidates that it could take more than 30 days to finish counting mail-in ballots, where thousands of voters who had applied for mail-in ballots also showed up to vote in person. Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were turned in after the deadline, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
This year, for the first time in Pennsylvania history, any voter could vote by mail, a change that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law last year as part of a sweeping set of voting reforms. Philadelphia County voters requested more mail-in ballots than the entire state did in 2016. The massive increase in mail-in ballots overwhelmed election officials in several counties, including Montgomery County, which sent the wrong ballots to 2,000 voters. In that case, county officials worked with the U.S. Postal Service to resend ballots in time for the June 2 deadline. Requests for mail-in ballots continued to surge, and it became clear that many people would not be able to return ballots on time due to extenuating circumstances impacting travel and postal services during the coronavirus pandemic. On June 1, Wolf signed an executive order extending to June 9 the deadline to receive mail-in ballots for six counties: Philadelphia, Montgomery, Allegheny, Delaware, Erie, and Dauphin.
Saval and Krajewski, who had spent years agitating in the city, led a slate of progressive candidates that took on the local Democratic machine in Pennsylvania this year, energized by a local grassroots movement that found new energy after the 2016 election. But their victories carry a significance beyond just increasing the number of progressives in Harrisburg — they have the GOP worried about the November election.
The GOP controlled most counties in Pennsylvania in 2016, when the state flipped red for the first time since 1988. Counties in Trump country counted June primary votes much more swiftly than Philadelphia, in places like Allegheny and York, along with an additional remaining Democratic stronghold, Lehigh. By June 5, Philadelphia County had only counted 9 percent of mail-in ballots, 15,000 of 157,000. Allegheny had counted 207,000, and York and Lehigh counties had counted 40,000 each, IrgangLaden said. “Rick got a call from the city commissioner’s office saying it would take about 30 days,” he added, noting that other candidates received similar calls. By Monday, they’d counted enough to call it. According to IrgangLaden, counting picked up after election officials successfully struck duplicate votes from people who had requested mail-in ballots, and then also voted in person.
While enthusiasm and raw vote totals have been lopsided toward Democrats in every election since 2017, including the most recent primary, the capacity to distribute and count ballots is a weak spot. States across the country have already struggled to rapidly scale up decrepit mail-in voting programs for elections taking place during the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans are watching closely, particularly in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, which already bungled distribution of mail-in ballots in a number of counties. If that lack of organization persists in November, Republicans will have an upper hand in what’s expected to be a tight race between Trump and Biden.
The president and fellow Republicans have spread the false claim that mail-in voting leads to rampant voter fraud, and right-wing groups are suing to remove voters from rolls in a number of states ahead of November, The Intercept reported. Philadelphia’s disorganization plays into that fearmongering.
Republicans sent paid staffers from the party’s national committee to oversee parts of Philadelphia’s vote count. The vote-counting process is open to one official observer from each campaign. Krajewski’s campaign had a volunteer in the room every day, alongside observers from the Republican National Committee, he said. A local Fishtown lawyer, Jordan Rushie, was also there. He previously managed the campaign for a Republican candidate for sheriff in Philadelphia. Rushie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I don’t know what it means,” Krajewski said. “I don’t know why they were there, but we can conjecture that they were there because they want to figure out how well Philadelphia — which is one of two Democratic strongholds in the state — how well we’re gonna be prepared if we have to do vote-by-mail for the general election.”
“Whether it’s increased funding or more staff, the commissioners’ office needs more capacity to count these votes in a timely manner, and we need a much better mail-in voting process for November,” he said. “Philadelphia County must be able to count mail-in ballots on pace with the rest of the state, otherwise we risk a result in November that excludes Philadelphia voters on election eve.”
The idea that Trump might not take a loss so quietly in November is “not alarmist anymore,” Krajewski said. That outlook becomes even bleaker if there’s a similar situation, where it looks like Trump won Philadelphia for six weeks post-election day. “You initiated fascism. He already said, ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ I think at this point, we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that he’ll try to hijack democracy. Because he can.”


theintercept--2020-06-16--Trump's New Favorite Channel, OAN, Keeps Lying About Buffalo Protester Assaulted by Police

More egregiously , Sharp went on to claim , falsely , that Gugino “ had a reputation in the town as being someone who caused trouble , and even the mayor of Buffalo , Byron Brown , a Democrat , called him ‘ an agitator ’ and ‘ a key and major instigator ’ for those involved in the looting of the city.
” That is entirely false .
Gugino had no such reputation and Buffalo ’ s mayor said nothing negative about him at all .
If Sharp had bothered to check the quote , he might have discovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , used those words while talking about a different protester , Myles Carter , who was also knocked to the ground by police in Buffalo — in his case , while being interviewed on live television , with his hands in the air and his back to officers .
The mayor ’ s comments about Carter were initially misheard by a reporter for a local radio station who thought they were about Gugino .
That mistake was then repeated by other outlets , including Fox News , The Hill and The Independent in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that had to be corrected or retracted once the massive error was discovered .
Sharp ’ s report , which shows The Independent ’ s incorrect version of the story on screen , aired two days after the mistake had been acknowledged and corrected by other news organizations .
Although The Independent deleted the article from its website on Tuesday night , after being made aware of the error by The Intercept , OAN has still not corrected Sharp ’ s report .
Instead , Sharp repeated the same error in two subsequent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same close-up of the article The Independent had retracted days before .
Sharp ’ s attempt to frame Gugino as an anarchist agitator relies heavily on a brief video clip recorded during the demonstration against police violence he took part in on June 4 .
That video is a 30-second excerpt from a Facebook live stream recorded by a young protester named Austin Marrano , about half an hour before the veteran activist was knocked down by the police .
What it shows is that one of the other protesters , a young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cap , suspected that the old man might have intended to start a fight , because he arrived at the protest carrying a helmet .
The man was also miffed because , he said , Gugino supposedly called protesting “ fun.
” What the OAN report fails to show is how Gugino responded to questions from other protesters who wanted to know why he had a helmet and what he planned to do .
Fortunately , the end of that conversation was caught on camera by Antonio Wells , another young protester who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstration to Facebook .
In that video , which was streamed just before 7:45 p.m. that night from outside Buffalo ’ s City Hall , where about three dozen protesters had gathered after an earlier protest , another demonstrator can be seen talking to Gugino .
At the end of the conversation , she and another protester turn away and the woman can be heard explaining to the group that the soft-spoken Gugino told her that his plan was simply to challenge the city ’ s 8 p.m. curfew , by staying until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he could ask officers why it was being enforced only against protesters .
“ He said what he wants , ” the young woman explained to other protesters , “ is he wants the police to explain to him why the curfew is being enforced for protesters , and not for anybody else.
” At that point , Wells nodded to his own camera in agreement , and pointed out that the police were still allowing people to go shopping after curfew .
“ He wants to know why they ’ re enforcing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woman added .
In a part of Marrano ’ s video OAN did not air , another young protester could be heard accepting Gugino ’ s explanation for why he wanted to challenge the curfew by saying loudly , “ That ’ s okay.
” Marrano also captured one of the leaders of the protest group explaining that Gugino said he brought the helmet , which had a clear plastic face shield , to protect himself against Covid-19 , not because he intended to start a riot .
None of that information was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ OAN .
The channel similarly failed to mention that Marrano had also streamed video , a few hours earlier from the same spot , which showed two leaders of the protest loudly accusing each other of being “ agitators , ” as they disagreed over tactics .
The day before the protest , Gugino had explained on Twitter that he planned to bring a helmet because he was concerned about the risk of police violence and of getting infected with the coronavirus .
“ Yes COVID is a factor , ” Gugino wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to counteract the background rate .
There is a background rate of getting pummeled .
A helmet with a clear face shield serves both.
” After the video of the police injuring him went viral , Gugino made his Twitter account private , which seems like a reasonable response to suddenly becoming a target for internet conspiracy theorists .
Sharp , the OAN correspondent , tried to use this against Gugino too .
“ His Twitter account is , suspiciously , no longer available , ” Sharp told viewers .
Aerial footage of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a drone by a local filmmaker , James Grimaldi , and posted on YouTube , shows that the veteran activist carried the helmet , but never put it on .
The footage also seems to show that Gugino made an effort to maintain proper social distance from the other protesters , standing away from the steps where others had gathered , leaning against a bollard for most of the time .
Gugino also set up a discussion thread on RocWiki in 2010 for participants in the anarchist reading group that met at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is no evidence that he contributed to that conversation .
This minimal evidence of an association between Gugino , anarchist books and the community center a decade ago was enough for Sharp to claim that the veteran activist was somehow linked to a recent post on The Flying Squirrel ’ s Facebook page , which promoted the annual “ Anarchist Summer School ” conference in Worcester , Massachusetts .
Sharp then informed OAN ’ s viewers that a poster for that anarchist conference , “ featured the logo for Antifa.
” Given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in February by a community center Gugino mentioned online 10 years earlier — is the only evidence Sharp presents for his claim that Gugino “ appears to have ties to Antifa , ” he really should have looked more carefully at the detail from it he showed OAN viewers .
in the video streamed to Facebook by Antonio Wells from the steps of Buffalo ’ s City Hall on the night on June 4 , Martin Gugino could be heard telling a fellow protester that the image of some police officers taking a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night before , at the same location , had given him the idea to ask them to say the Catholic prayers known as the rosary with him .
Remarkably , the Buffalo police officer who led that action the previous night , Detective John Losi , ended up playing a central role in the assault on Gugino .
Losi , who agreed to take a knee with protesters on June 3 , in exchange for them agreeing to honor the curfew , can be seen in video streamed by Wells the next night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ included Gugino at 7:50 p.m. That video appears to show that Losi got most of the remaining protesters to agree that they would leave a few minutes after 8 p.m. Gugino , Wells and one other protester , a man holding a “ Black Lives Matter ” sign , were the only three demonstrators who decided to stay on the steps of City Hall to challenge the curfew .
Video Wells began streaming at 8:11 p.m. showed that shortly after the other protesters left , dozens of police in riot gear moved in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Gugino got up from the City Hall steps walked up to the officers .
Video of the encounter , shot by Mike Desmond , a reporter for the local NPR affiliate WBFO , shows that the first officer Gugino approached initially hesitated to use force .
Losi , who was directing the operation , came up behind that officer and shoved him , just as he was attempting to push Gugino back .
The video suggests that Losi ’ s push increased the force with which Gugino was shoved , causing him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the pavement .
That video also shows that it was Losi who then stopped the same officer from stopping to help Gugino after he fell .
Losi pulled him back and ordered him to help arrest the man with the sign and Wells , who was still livestreaming .
Losi ’ s sudden switch from peacemaker to aggressor was noted by some supporters of the protest movement on Twitter , who suggested that he had just taken a knee as a way to trick protesters into obeying the curfew .
As Wells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ switched his camera off as he ran down the block .
He turned it on moments later , as the man in the camouflage shirt , who had been among the protesters minutes earlier , began harassing him .
As Wells filmed , the man loudly ordered him to go home , and then cursed and insulted him for not complying .
“ Why don ’ t you get the fuck out of here , you fucking little pussy bitch , ” the man said to Wells , who was still stunned by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head had hit the pavement minutes earlier .
“ Get the fuck out of here .
Go home !
” the man shouted at Wells , as a police car rolled up .
“ Did you all hire him ?
” Wells asked a uniformed officer in the police car .
“ Go home !
” the man bellowed from in front of the statue of Grover Cleveland , a former mayor of Buffalo , outside City Hall .
“ Do you guys understand how angry we are , ” an emotional Wells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” “ Go home !
” the man in the camouflage shirt shouted again , as none of the uniformed officers replied .
“ I don ’ t think you do , ” Wells said , his voice cracking .
“ Stop acting like a victim .
Get the fuck out of here , you pussy , ” the man shouted .
“ All of history , ” Wells said , before he was interrupted again by abuse from the man in the camouflage T-shirt .
“ What are you crying about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
” the man screamed again .
As the uniformed officers waved him away , a stunned Wells left the square and turned off his live stream .
Wells told The Intercept in an interview that he remains convinced that the man was un undercover officer who was just pretending to support that demonstration against police brutality that night .
If the Buffalo Police Department did have an undercover officer among the protesters that night , he should be able to confirm to investigators looking into the incident what is clear from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ streams of the protest : that there was no reason to suspect Gugino or the other two remaining protesters posed any threat of violence .
That in turn raises serious questions about the force ’ s decision to clear the square with a full contingent of police officers in riot gear , moving aggressively forward in lockstep military formation to confront a 75 year-old Catholic peace activist and two young protesters sitting on the steps of City Hall .

One America News , a far-right cable channel that rounds up internet conspiracy theories for its viewers, has spent the past week trying to smear Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old Catholic peace activist who was assaulted by Buffalo police officers at a protest against police brutality, and remains hospitalized with a brain injury.
The channel’s obsessive focus on Gugino is part of a wider effort to tarnish protests against racism and police violence that OAN has pursued for years. In 2016, one of its hosts denounced the Black Lives Matter movement as “a farce.” On Monday, a black college football star, Chuba Hubbard, described his coach’s decision to wear an OAN T-shirt as “unacceptable” and “completely insensitive to everything going on in society.”
Although OAN’s reporting on Gugino has been filled with glaring factual errors, misleading characterizations and innuendo scraped from the lower depths of the internet, its smears have been amplified on Twitter by President Donald Trump.
Echoing an OAN report that treated the musings of a conspiracy theorist in Florida as evidence, Trump told his millions of followers that the elderly protester who was shoved to the ground by the police on camera might have been a high-tech, “ANTIFA provocateur,” who had thrown himself to the pavement to make the officers look bad, after trying to jam their radios.
Although there is no evidence for any of that, the channel was so thrilled by the president’s attention that it rushed to produce three follow-up reports further smearing Gugino and boasted to viewers that “even President Trump is relying on our reports.”
While that might be true, it is also deeply troubling, given how little of OAN’s reporting on Gugino is accurate. In one follow-up report, OAN claimed to have uncovered “new details” about Gugino which supposedly prove that he is a “member of radical groups like Antifa,” but in fact show no such thing. Two days later, the channel tried to cast doubt on the severity of his injury, claiming unidentified medical experts who viewed video of the assault said the blood seen pouring from Gugino’s ear after the fall could only have been caused by a fractured skull, which they somehow concluded was unlikely, despite the very audible thud when his head hit the pavement. Gugino’s lawyer, Kelly Zarcone, told CNN on Monday that “his skull was fractured.” In its third report, OAN suggested, falsely, that it had evidence Gugino “was an active member on anarchist messaging boards.”
All of those segments were produced by Pearson Sharp, an OAN correspondent whose previous reporting from Syria — in which he suggested that a chemical attack on rebel-held Douma had not been carried out by government forces — was praised by Russia’s foreign ministry and replayed on a loop on Russian state television.
Last Friday, Sharp dismissed criticism of the channel’s reporting on Gugino and demanded proof that it was wrong. “We challenge the media to answer this question,” Sharp said, “Is anything we reported untrue?”
That question turns out to be depressingly easy to answer, given the influence the channel appears to have on the nation’s president.
Sharp’s first report on Gugino veered off the rails at the very beginning, with his opening claim that “official records show he was arrested at least four times in the past.” The document Sharp presented on screen, however, was not an official record, it was what Gugino had written about himself on the profile page of his Blogger account. To introduce himself to readers of his blog, Gugino listed acts of civil disobedience he had engaged in during the Obama administration — including protests at the U.S. Capitol and the White House, where he dressed in an orange jumpsuit to demand that Obama keep his promise to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The result of that activism, Gugino noted proudly, was: “Four arrests, no convictions.”
Startling new details reveal Martin Gugino may be an anarchist with ties to radical left-wing terrorist group Antifa. Video from before the event also suggests he was actually trying to provoke police. One America's @PearsonSharp reports.@realDonaldTrump https://t.co/gqnqXJje99 — One America News (@OANN) June 9, 2020
More egregiously, Sharp went on to claim, falsely, that Gugino “had a reputation in the town as being someone who caused trouble, and even the mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, a Democrat, called him ‘an agitator’ and ‘a key and major instigator’ for those involved in the looting of the city.” That is entirely false. Gugino had no such reputation and Buffalo’s mayor said nothing negative about him at all.
If Sharp had bothered to check the quote, he might have discovered that the mayor had, in fact, used those words while talking about a different protester, Myles Carter, who was also knocked to the ground by police in Buffalo — in his case, while being interviewed on live television, with his hands in the air and his back to officers.
The mayor’s comments about Carter were initially misheard by a reporter for a local radio station who thought they were about Gugino. That mistake was then repeated by other outlets, including Fox News, The Hill and The Independent in London, which published articles on Gugino that had to be corrected or retracted once the massive error was discovered.
Sharp’s report, which shows The Independent’s incorrect version of the story on screen, aired two days after the mistake had been acknowledged and corrected by other news organizations. Although The Independent deleted the article from its website on Tuesday night, after being made aware of the error by The Intercept, OAN has still not corrected Sharp’s report. Instead, Sharp repeated the same error in two subsequent reports, both of which included the same close-up of the article The Independent had retracted days before.
Sharp’s attempt to frame Gugino as an anarchist agitator relies heavily on a brief video clip recorded during the demonstration against police violence he took part in on June 4. That video is a 30-second excerpt from a Facebook live stream recorded by a young protester named Austin Marrano, about half an hour before the veteran activist was knocked down by the police. What it shows is that one of the other protesters, a young black man in a black Buffalo Bills cap, suspected that the old man might have intended to start a fight, because he arrived at the protest carrying a helmet. The man was also miffed because, he said, Gugino supposedly called protesting “fun.”
What the OAN report fails to show is how Gugino responded to questions from other protesters who wanted to know why he had a helmet and what he planned to do. Fortunately, the end of that conversation was caught on camera by Antonio Wells, another young protester who was also streaming live video of the demonstration to Facebook.
In that video, which was streamed just before 7:45 p.m. that night from outside Buffalo’s City Hall, where about three dozen protesters had gathered after an earlier protest, another demonstrator can be seen talking to Gugino. At the end of the conversation, she and another protester turn away and the woman can be heard explaining to the group that the soft-spoken Gugino told her that his plan was simply to challenge the city’s 8 p.m. curfew, by staying until the police moved in, so that he could ask officers why it was being enforced only against protesters. “He said what he wants,” the young woman explained to other protesters, “is he wants the police to explain to him why the curfew is being enforced for protesters, and not for anybody else.”
At that point, Wells nodded to his own camera in agreement, and pointed out that the police were still allowing people to go shopping after curfew. “He wants to know why they’re enforcing it only on us,” the woman added.
Photo: Antonio Wells, via Facebook
In a part of Marrano’s video OAN did not air, another young protester could be heard accepting Gugino’s explanation for why he wanted to challenge the curfew by saying loudly, “That’s okay.” Marrano also captured one of the leaders of the protest group explaining that Gugino said he brought the helmet, which had a clear plastic face shield, to protect himself against Covid-19, not because he intended to start a riot. None of that information was included in Sharp’s report for OAN.
The channel similarly failed to mention that Marrano had also streamed video, a few hours earlier from the same spot, which showed two leaders of the protest loudly accusing each other of being “agitators,” as they disagreed over tactics.
The day before the protest, Gugino had explained on Twitter that he planned to bring a helmet because he was concerned about the risk of police violence and of getting infected with the coronavirus. “Yes COVID is a factor,” Gugino wrote. “I can take extra measures to counteract the background rate. There is a background rate of getting pummeled. A helmet with a clear face shield serves both.”
After the video of the police injuring him went viral, Gugino made his Twitter account private, which seems like a reasonable response to suddenly becoming a target for internet conspiracy theorists. Sharp, the OAN correspondent, tried to use this against Gugino too. “His Twitter account is, suspiciously, no longer available,” Sharp told viewers.
Aerial footage of the small protest, which was recorded with a drone by a local filmmaker, James Grimaldi, and posted on YouTube, shows that the veteran activist carried the helmet, but never put it on. The footage also seems to show that Gugino made an effort to maintain proper social distance from the other protesters, standing away from the steps where others had gathered, leaning against a bollard for most of the time.
In another segment of his OAN report, Sharp also made the false claim that Gugino “appears to have ties to Antifa” — an antifascist movement opposed to white supremacy which the correspondent wrongly described as, a “violent terrorist group responsible for attacking innocent civilians.” The supposed evidence for Sharp’s claim that Gugino has “ties to Antifa” that OAN flashed up on screen at that point turns out to be just a list of edits Gugino made, between 2009 and 2013, to RocWiki, a guide to local events in Rochester, New York which was maintained by volunteer editors.
One of the RocWiki pages Gugino edited was for a Rochester community center, The Flying Squirrel. According to Sharp, Gugino’s work on this page proves that he was “active in the Flying Squirrel Community Space, a group for anarchists.”
But The Flying Squirrel is not “a group for anarchists,” it is a community center. While it did provide space for meetings of an anarchist book club in 2010, the center has also hosted, according to its website: “gallery space exhibiting regional art; community workshops and classrooms; ‘open-mic’ and poetry readings; practice spaces for musicians; live local music and dance shows, film screenings; community craft production and craft exhibits; small academic conference space and public lecture space; and a community kitchen.”
Looking at the actual edits Gugino made to The Flying Squirrel page on RocWiki, he appears to have made just a handful of changes between December 2009 and January 2010, most of them about a midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” accompanied by live performers.
Gugino also set up a discussion thread on RocWiki in 2010 for participants in the anarchist reading group that met at the community center that year, but there is no evidence that he contributed to that conversation.
This minimal evidence of an association between Gugino, anarchist books and the community center a decade ago was enough for Sharp to claim that the veteran activist was somehow linked to a recent post on The Flying Squirrel’s Facebook page, which promoted the annual “Anarchist Summer School” conference in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Sharp then informed OAN’s viewers that a poster for that anarchist conference, “featured the logo for Antifa.” Given that this poster — shared on Facebook in February by a community center Gugino mentioned online 10 years earlier — is the only evidence Sharp presents for his claim that Gugino “appears to have ties to Antifa,” he really should have looked more carefully at the detail from it he showed OAN viewers.
There are two logos on the poster promoting the anarchist conference — which, to be clear, there is no evidence Gugino was even aware of — but neither of them is the iconic two-flag symbol, devised in 1932 for Antifaschistische Aktion, the anti-Nazi paramilitary wing of the German Communist Party, which is used by modern antifa groups in Europe and the United States.
Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA via AP
The poster for the anarchist conference instead features two symbols: the letter A inside a circle, a common anarchist sign, and three arrows pointing down and to the left, which was the logo of the Iron Front, a paramilitary group formed by German social democrats in 1931, who defined their three enemies as Nazis, conservatives and communists.
The German Social Democratic Party used the image in its 1932 election campaign. The party’s poster showed the three arrows plunging into a monarchist crown, a Nazi swastika and a Communist hammer and sickle, under the slogan: “Against Papen, Hitler, Thälmann,” naming the leaders of the three rival parties. So the three arrows symbol was originally used by a rival of the first Antifa, which was dominated by members of Ernst Thälmann’s German Communist Party.
While the three arrows symbol has recently been adopted by some antifascists, including Portland Timbers soccer fans, it has never been the logo of the antifa movement.
Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA via AP
At another point in the video streamed to Facebook by Antonio Wells from the steps of Buffalo’s City Hall on the night on June 4, Martin Gugino could be heard telling a fellow protester that the image of some police officers taking a knee in solidarity with the demonstrators the night before, at the same location, had given him the idea to ask them to say the Catholic prayers known as the rosary with him.
Remarkably, the Buffalo police officer who led that action the previous night, Detective John Losi, ended up playing a central role in the assault on Gugino. Losi, who agreed to take a knee with protesters on June 3, in exchange for them agreeing to honor the curfew, can be seen in video streamed by Wells the next night approaching the small group of protesters that included Gugino at 7:50 p.m. That video appears to show that Losi got most of the remaining protesters to agree that they would leave a few minutes after 8 p.m.
Gugino, Wells and one other protester, a man holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign, were the only three demonstrators who decided to stay on the steps of City Hall to challenge the curfew. Video Wells began streaming at 8:11 p.m. showed that shortly after the other protesters left, dozens of police in riot gear moved in to clear the area. Seconds later, Gugino got up from the City Hall steps walked up to the officers.
Video of the encounter, shot by Mike Desmond, a reporter for the local NPR affiliate WBFO, shows that the first officer Gugino approached initially hesitated to use force. Losi, who was directing the operation, came up behind that officer and shoved him, just as he was attempting to push Gugino back. The video suggests that Losi’s push increased the force with which Gugino was shoved, causing him to lose his footing and fall backwards to the pavement.
That video also shows that it was Losi who then stopped the same officer from stopping to help Gugino after he fell. Losi pulled him back and ordered him to help arrest the man with the sign and Wells, who was still livestreaming.
Losi’s sudden switch from peacemaker to aggressor was noted by some supporters of the protest movement on Twitter, who suggested that he had just taken a knee as a way to trick protesters into obeying the curfew.
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1268760680569532419
In his own unsettling video of the assault on Gugino, and what happened next, Wells can be heard screaming at officers who moved to arrest him that he was leaving, before he turned and ran down the block. He then had a very odd confrontation with a man who was dressed like a protester, and had been among the demonstrators outside City Hall as curfew approached.
That man’s behavior and abusive language baffled Wells and convinced him that he must have been an undercover officer, disguised as a protester, who had infiltrated the protest.
While the Buffalo Police Department has refused to say if the burly white man — who wore a camouflage shirt and a black Buffalo Bills cap, with his face masked — was a member of the force, his behavior in the immediate aftermath of the assault on Gugino, when he was caught on video ordering Wells, who is black, to go home, and cursed and insulted him for not complying, seems more consistent with that of an undercover law enforcement officer than a Black Lives Matter protester.
Photo: Antonio Wells, via Facebook
As Wells retreated from the officers, he briefly switched his camera off as he ran down the block. He turned it on moments later, as the man in the camouflage shirt, who had been among the protesters minutes earlier, began harassing him. As Wells filmed, the man loudly ordered him to go home, and then cursed and insulted him for not complying.
“Why don’t you get the fuck out of here, you fucking little pussy bitch,” the man said to Wells, who was still stunned by the violence with which Gugino’s head had hit the pavement minutes earlier. “Get the fuck out of here. Go home!” the man shouted at Wells, as a police car rolled up.
“Did you all hire him?” Wells asked a uniformed officer in the police car. “Go home!” the man bellowed from in front of the statue of Grover Cleveland, a former mayor of Buffalo, outside City Hall.
“Do you guys understand how angry we are,” an emotional Wells asked the officers. “Do you?”
“Go home!” the man in the camouflage shirt shouted again, as none of the uniformed officers replied.
“I don’t think you do,” Wells said, his voice cracking.
“Stop acting like a victim. Get the fuck out of here, you pussy,” the man shouted.
“All of history,” Wells said, before he was interrupted again by abuse from the man in the camouflage T-shirt.
“What are you crying about? Get the fuck out of here!” the man screamed again.
As the uniformed officers waved him away, a stunned Wells left the square and turned off his live stream.
Wells told The Intercept in an interview that he remains convinced that the man was an undercover officer who was just pretending to support that demonstration against police brutality that night.
If the Buffalo Police Department did have an undercover officer among the protesters that night, he should be able to confirm to investigators looking into the incident what is clear from the extensive video evidence found in the live streams of the protest: that there was no reason to suspect Gugino or the other two remaining protesters posed any threat of violence. He should also be able to confirm that the explanation offered to the public that night by Buffalo’s mayor — who said that the police moved in on the protest “after a physical altercation between two separate groups of protesters participating in an illegal demonstration beyond the curfew” — was completely wrong. None of the video of the protest shows any such physical altercation, although one witness, Mike Desmond, said that one of the protesters who left before the police moved in was dragged away by other demonstrators.
That in turn raises serious questions about the force’s decision to clear the square with a full contingent of police officers in riot gear, moving aggressively forward in lockstep military formation to confront a 75 year-old Catholic peace activist and two young protesters sitting on the steps of City Hall.
Updated: Friday, June 19, 2:30 p.m.
This article was updated to report that Buffalo’s Mayor Byron Brown said on the night on June 4 that when the police injured a 75-year-old protester, they were responding to “a physical altercation between two separate groups of protesters.” Video of the protest shows that there was no such altercation.


theintercept--2020-06-16--"We Need Protein" — Coronavirus Pandemic Deepens New York's Hunger Crisis

on the line just after 7 a.m. Three hours later , she was still waiting , inching her way down 95th Street in the Brooklyn humidity .
She was tired .
Her knees hurt .
And Louis , who is 61 and suffers from diabetes and hypertension , worried that being out among people — some masked and some not — might increase her chances of being infected with the coronavirus .
Still , she had no intention of getting off the queue that snaked around three blocks of modest homes in Canarsie .
She was finally close enough to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pantry , where fresh fruits , vegetables , and , she hoped , some protein awaited .
“ We need protein , ” said Louis , gesturing toward her cousin , who was waiting alongside her and said that she , too , was hoping for groceries to put in her empty pantry .
“ Most of the days now , we don ’ t get protein .
We ’ re living off vegetables and rice , ” said Louis , who has worked as a home health aide for years .
While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past she ’ s usually earned enough to put food on the table .
But since the pandemic began , she hasn ’ t worked and her savings dried up weeks ago .
“ I don ’ t have a dime , my bills are piling up , and rent is due right now , ” she said .
Canarsie , where Louis lives , has the highest death rate from the coronavirus in New York City .
And though several of her friends have gotten sick with Covid-19 , and she still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focus has recently shifted to getting enough to eat .
And she ’ s not alone .
Across the city , in neighborhoods that have been most devastated by the virus — which also happen to be the neighborhoods where poverty is greatest — hunger is emerging as the primary concern .
In Canarsie , where the median household income is $ 26,275 , the need is overwhelming .
“ I ’ ve never seen anything like this in my life , ” said Gardy Brazela , chair of the local community planning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after distributing 700 boxes to people in front of the local police precinct on a recent Wednesday .
“ It ’ s bad , bad , bad , bad.
” The pandemic has caused historic levels of hunger nationwide .
Drone footage of seemingly endless lines of cars waiting to pick up food from pantries in Pennsylvania , Florida , and Texas convey the scope of our new reality , in which food insecurity is meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is comparable data , as a study by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report , more than 1 in 5 households in the U.S. were food insecure by the end of April , the most recent month for which data is available , as were 2 in 5 households with mothers of children ages 12 and under .
In New York City , still the hardest hit part of the country , some 2 million residents — 1 in 4 — are food insecure , according to an estimate Mayor Bill de Blasio shared at a press briefing in late May .
Already , by mid-April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarantine , 38 percent of parents in New York City reported cutting the size of meals or skipping meals for their children because they did not have enough money for food in the previous month , according to a survey Hunger Free America released at the time .
The survey also found that 34 percent of adults in New York City skipped meals or cut their portions because they didn ’ t have enough money for food .
Organizations have been expanding and forming anew to meet the enormous need .
A colorful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that houses the Children of the Light Food Pantry says that it is only open for a few hours on certain days and specifies that it operates “ by appointment.
” But since late March , as the demand for food has swelled , the pantry has been open seven days a week and has fed between 500 and 700 people per day — well over twice the usual number .
Children of the Light rented a port-a-potty for the people who line up as early as 5 a.m. And according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rush , the volunteers regularly run out of the fresh food before the line is done .
Deborah Hoyle , program director of the Ocean Bay Cornerstone Community Center , anticipated the hunger crisis as soon as lockdown began .
The neighborhood has no grocery stores , and some residents were already struggling with hunger before the pandemic .
“ This community has been riddled by a lot of things , ” said Hoyle , who began thinking about how the center could help with food distribution as soon as the pandemic hit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Campaign Against Hunger and City Harvest , among other organizations , procured tables and tents that she set up in front of Ocean Bay Apartments housing complex on Beach Channel Drive , gathered a crew of volunteers , and made sure that there enough was personal protective equipment and hand-washing supplies for everyone .
“ I ’ m good at logistics , ” she told me .
Still Hoyle wasn ’ t prepared for the intensity of the demand for food that became apparent as soon as they began giving out dry and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8 .
“ When we opened , I turned around and said , OK , there are 10 people on line .
OK .
I can handle that .
But then I looked up again and the line was down the block .
And the next thing I knew , I heard it went all the way from 58th to 54th Street , ” she said .
And that was just the first week .
Since then , the group has also begun giving out fresh vegetables , milk , and eggs .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has gotten bigger.
” at food distribution sites around the city are only the visible part of the problem .
Whether because they ’ re ill or just particularly at risk of getting sick , many of the people who need food can ’ t stand in line for hours to get it .
Recently , Hoyle saw an elderly woman shaking as she waited for hours at her distribution site .
“ I told her , ‘ Don ’ t come out here again , ’ ” said Hoyle , who added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to whom her volunteers deliver free food .
In the Vandalia Houses , two New York City Housing Authority buildings for seniors between Canarsie and East New York , a small group of volunteers and staff members for a local nonprofit get brief glimpses of the need as they deliver groceries and face masks to elderly residents .
Millie Marelle , a 70-year-old Vandalia Houses resident , wore a face mask as she opened her apartment door a few inches to accept the donation of bread and vegetables .
Marelle said she hadn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and sometimes doesn ’ t have enough money to buy food .
Down the hall , 85-year-old Annie Marcello said she has only ventured out of her apartment to deposit her Social Security check since the pandemic began .
Marcello expressed her gratitude for both the food and the human contact before closing and double-locking her apartment door .
Invisible Hands , a volunteer-run organization that was formed to bring food to immunocompromised and elderly people during the pandemic , got a measure of the intensity of financial need soon after it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organization had been to simply transport food that people purchased themselves online , since grocery delivery services like Fresh Direct and Instacart were overwhelmed .
But in mid-March , Invisible Hands introduced a subsidy program that paid for up to $ 30 of food for those who needed it .
“ It became very , very , very overwhelming very quickly , ” said Simone Policano , one of the group ’ s three founders .
“ We were getting hundreds of calls a day , from social workers , from shelters.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which it gave out more than $ 31,000 of food , the group decided that it could no longer provide subsidies .
“ It was a Band-Aid for a bullet wound , ” said Policano .
“ We had to make a painful and hard call to run ourselves into the ground or stop the program .
We were just this baby organization .
And our system was entirely overrun.
” Invisible Hands now delivers food paid for by pantries and other organizations but doesn ’ t subsidize the purchases .
Some longtime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years about the hunger the pandemic has exacerbated .
“ I wish I could say I was shocked by this , but it ’ s all utterly predictable , ” said Joel Berg , CEO of Hunger Free America .
“ Most people don ’ t understand how many people were already at the edge.
” Berg , who has worked on alleviating hunger for more than 30 years , is all too familiar with the underlying issues .
Nationwide , a quarter of Americans have either no savings or negative savings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a million people were already hungry before the pandemic struck .
And many more were living only a few paychecks away from it .
The sudden loss of jobs and the increase of food prices due to the pandemic and the shutdown meant that many people need help paying for food for the first time in their lives .
But the recent changes also mean that the hunger crisis that already existed in New York City has become only graver .
“ A boatload of people just went from hungry to hungrier , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huge provider of food , has dramatically amped up its food distribution to respond to the crisis .
In March , de Blasio named Kathryn Garcia the city ’ s Covid-19 food czar to manage the effort .
And in April , he announced a $ 170 million emergency plan to combat hunger , which has involved opening more than 400 food hubs where any New Yorker can get food .
Taxi and Uber drivers help deliver the food .
The city has expanded its Office of Food and Nutrition Services , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York City public school students , making it second only to the U.S. military as the nation ’ s biggest food procurer .
Now that office is feeding both students and their parents .
“ People need to appreciate that they ’ ve done in a few weeks what government normally would take a few years to do , ” said Berg .
“ They ’ re delivering over 1 million meals a day to people ’ s homes .
Some are halal and kosher.
” Berg described himself as “ livid with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” but nevertheless acknowledged that the scaling up of food distribution that de Blasio has overseen has been “ an enormous frigging undertaking.
” Still , even the most admirable responses from government and nonprofits throughout the city isn ’ t enough to meet the current need .
“ The demand is endless , ” said Liz Accles , executive director of Community Food Advocates .
Accles said that Pandemic EBT , which will bring the families of every New York City public school student $ 420 for groceries , should help .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ And she worries about what will happen after that money runs out , as state and federal budgets tighten .
“ The austerity budgets are of a concern on so many levels , ” said Accles .
“ We don ’ t know if there will be significant relief for food programs .
The fear is that all the people who were struggling day to day before will be struggling even more and harder , and there will be a whole new group of people on top of them who need food.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are going backward .
The Nutrition Outreach and Education Program , which contracts with organizations that help people apply for federal benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program , or SNAP , recently notified its grantees that it had not received an expected renewal of its five-year contract with New York state , which is set to expire on June 20 .
Without a contract , 45 organizations throughout the state may have to lay people off or shut down entirely just when their services are needed most .
Some are hoping that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the causes of hunger , even while it ’ s causing vast suffering .
Jahi Chappell , executive director of the advocacy organization Food First , said the roots of our current crisis lie in both the “ barely-there social safety net ” and the larger food system in which big agriculture and retail companies have too much power and farmers aren ’ t paid a living wage .
“ It all connects , ” said Chappell , who described hunger as a structural injustice that , like police violence , need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is addressed , hunger , like police violence , is also one of the few things that can get people to emerge from their homes during a deadly pandemic .
On a recent Wednesday , a small crowd gathered around a table piled with potatoes and apples on a dead end in Far Rockaway .
The beach , which was just down the street , was empty .
But on the block , music was playing as volunteers unloaded and stacked produce from boxes .
Several passed around a cellphone on which they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founder of a local church who organizes the food distribution at the site remotely because she is undergoing chemotherapy .
Others at the pop-up food relief station were also responding to the food crisis with a generosity that seemed to defy the dark times .
Desiree Hicks , a mother of four who lost her job in medical billing , was helping give out food because , she said , “ I know what it is to be hungry.
” Sharmaine Anderson , who drove an Uber before the shutdown and has little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her stimulus check on food that she distributed to neighbors .
And Ron Halyard , a pastor , was preparing to fill the back of his black pickup truck with groceries .
“ We just keep loading it up and going through the neighborhoods , ” said Halyard .
“ Every time we find someone who needs food .
”

Annie Louis got on the line just after 7 a.m. Three hours later, she was still waiting, inching her way down 95th Street in the Brooklyn humidity. She was tired. Her knees hurt. And Louis, who is 61 and suffers from diabetes and hypertension, worried that being out among people — some masked and some not — might increase her chances of being infected with the coronavirus. Still, she had no intention of getting off the queue that snaked around three blocks of modest homes in Canarsie. She was finally close enough to see the Children of the Light Food Pantry, where fresh fruits, vegetables, and, she hoped, some protein awaited.
“We need protein,” said Louis, gesturing toward her cousin, who was waiting alongside her and said that she, too, was hoping for groceries to put in her empty pantry. “Most of the days now, we don’t get protein. We’re living off vegetables and rice,” said Louis, who has worked as a home health aide for years. While the wages are low, in the past she’s usually earned enough to put food on the table. But since the pandemic began, she hasn’t worked and her savings dried up weeks ago. “I don’t have a dime, my bills are piling up, and rent is due right now,” she said.
“I don’t have a dime, my bills are piling up, and rent is due right now.”
One zip code in Canarsie, where Louis lives, has the highest death rate from the coronavirus in New York City. And though several of her friends have gotten sick with Covid-19, and she still fears infection, Louis’s main focus has recently shifted to getting enough to eat. And she’s not alone. Across the city, in neighborhoods that have been most devastated by the virus — which also happen to be the neighborhoods where poverty is greatest — hunger is emerging as the primary concern. In the zip code in Canarsie with the city’s highest death rates from Covid-19, the median household income is $26,275 and the need is overwhelming. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” said Gardy Brazela, chair of the local community planning board, who ran out of food after distributing 700 boxes to people in front of the local police precinct on a recent Wednesday. “It’s bad, bad, bad, bad.”
The pandemic has caused historic levels of hunger nationwide. Drone footage of seemingly endless lines of cars waiting to pick up food from pantries in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas convey the scope of our new reality, in which food insecurity is meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is comparable data, as a study by the Brookings Institution found. According to that report, more than 1 in 5 households in the U.S. were food insecure by the end of April, the most recent month for which data is available, as were 2 in 5 households with mothers of children ages 12 and under.
In New York City, still the hardest hit part of the country, some 2 million residents — 1 in 4 — are food insecure, according to an estimate Mayor Bill de Blasio shared at a press briefing in late May. Already, by mid-April, after just a few weeks of quarantine, 38 percent of parents in New York City reported cutting the size of meals or skipping meals for their children because they did not have enough money for food in the previous month, according to a survey Hunger Free America released at the time. The survey also found that 34 percent of adults in New York City skipped meals or cut their portions because they didn’t have enough money for food.
Organizations have been expanding and forming anew to meet the enormous need. A colorful sign festooned with vegetables on the storefront that houses the Children of the Light Food Pantry says that it is only open for a few hours on certain days and specifies that it operates “by appointment.” But since late March, as the demand for food has swelled, the pantry has been open seven days a week and has fed between 500 and 700 people per day — well over twice the usual number. Children of the Light rented a port-a-potty for the people who line up as early as 5 a.m. And according to the pantry’s director, Pastor Maureen Rush, the volunteers regularly run out of the fresh food before the line is done.
Photo: José A. Alvarado Jr. for The Intercept
“Each week, the crowd has gotten bigger.”
Deborah Hoyle, program director of the Ocean Bay Cornerstone Community Center, anticipated the hunger crisis as soon as lockdown began. The neighborhood has no grocery stores, and some residents were already struggling with hunger before the pandemic. “This community has been riddled by a lot of things,” said Hoyle, who began thinking about how the center could help with food distribution as soon as the pandemic hit. She arranged for food donations through Campaign Against Hunger and City Harvest, among other organizations, procured tables and tents that she set up in front of Ocean Bay Apartments housing complex on Beach Channel Drive, gathered a crew of volunteers, and made sure that there enough was personal protective equipment and hand-washing supplies for everyone. “I’m good at logistics,” she told me.
Still Hoyle wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the demand for food that became apparent as soon as they began giving out dry and canned goods and root vegetables on April 8. “When we opened, I turned around and said, OK, there are 10 people on line. OK. I can handle that. But then I looked up again and the line was down the block. And the next thing I knew, I heard it went all the way from 58th to 54th Street,” she said. And that was just the first week. Since then, the group has also begun giving out fresh vegetables, milk, and eggs. “And each week, the crowd has gotten bigger.”
Yet the surging crowds at food distribution sites around the city are only the visible part of the problem. Whether because they’re ill or just particularly at risk of getting sick, many of the people who need food can’t stand in line for hours to get it. Recently, Hoyle saw an elderly woman shaking as she waited for hours at her distribution site. “I told her, ‘Don’t come out here again,’” said Hoyle, who added the woman to the list of people to whom her volunteers deliver free food.
Valerie Woodford, a retired correctional officer, senior citizen, and active member of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), leads an employee of the nonprofit Millennium Development on the food drops for residents of the 8th floor in building 77 of the Vandalia Avenue Houses. Photo: José A. Alvarado Jr. for The Intercept
In the Vandalia Houses, two New York City Housing Authority buildings for seniors between Canarsie and East New York, a small group of volunteers and staff members for a local nonprofit get brief glimpses of the need as they deliver groceries and face masks to elderly residents. Millie Marelle, a 70-year-old Vandalia Houses resident, wore a face mask as she opened her apartment door a few inches to accept the donation of bread and vegetables. Marelle said she hadn’t worked since the pandemic began, and sometimes doesn’t have enough money to buy food. Down the hall, 85-year-old Annie Marcello said she has only ventured out of her apartment to deposit her Social Security check since the pandemic began. Marcello expressed her gratitude for both the food and the human contact before closing and double-locking her apartment door.
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Invisible Hands, a volunteer-run organization that was formed to bring food to immunocompromised and elderly people during the pandemic, got a measure of the intensity of financial need soon after it formed. The original idea for the organization had been to simply transport food that people purchased themselves online, since grocery delivery services like Fresh Direct and Instacart were overwhelmed. But in mid-March, Invisible Hands introduced a subsidy program that paid for up to $30 of food for those who needed it.
“It became very, very, very overwhelming very quickly,” said Simone Policano, one of the group’s three founders. “We were getting hundreds of calls a day, from social workers, from shelters.” So, after just three weeks in which it gave out more than $31,000 of food, the group decided that it could no longer provide subsidies. “It was a Band-Aid for a bullet wound,” said Policano. “We had to make a painful and hard call to run ourselves into the ground or stop the program. We were just this baby organization. And our system was entirely overrun.” Invisible Hands now delivers food paid for by pantries and other organizations but doesn’t subsidize the purchases.
Photo: José A. Alvarado Jr. for The Intercept
Even more established organizations are struggling to keep up with the need. Citymeals on Wheels, which typically delivers more than 2 million meals to frail and elderly New Yorkers each year, expects to deliver an additional 1 million meals by the end of this year. The demand “has been unbelievable,” said Rachel Sherrow, associate executive director of Citymeals on Wheels, who said the group recently had to rent a new warehouse to store the additional food and has had to devise new procedures so that volunteers can remain socially distant while keeping up with the increased demand.
Some longtime advocates say they have been warning for years about the hunger the pandemic has exacerbated.
Some longtime advocates say they have been warning for years about the hunger the pandemic has exacerbated. “I wish I could say I was shocked by this, but it’s all utterly predictable,” said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America. “Most people don’t understand how many people were already at the edge.”
Berg, who has worked on alleviating hunger for more than 30 years, is all too familiar with the underlying issues. Nationwide, a quarter of Americans have either no savings or negative savings. In New York City, more than a million people were already hungry before the pandemic struck. And many more were living only a few paychecks away from it. The sudden loss of jobs and the increase of food prices due to the pandemic and the shutdown meant that many people need help paying for food for the first time in their lives. But the recent changes also mean that the hunger crisis that already existed in New York City has become only graver. “A boatload of people just went from hungry to hungrier,” said Berg.
The city government , already a huge provider of food, has dramatically amped up its food distribution to respond to the crisis. In March, de Blasio named Kathryn Garcia the city’s Covid-19 food czar to manage the effort. And in April, he announced a $170 million emergency plan to combat hunger, which has involved opening more than 400 food hubs where any New Yorker can get food. Taxi and Uber drivers help deliver the food. The city has expanded its Office of Food and Nutrition Services, which serves 850,000 meals a day to New York City public school students, making it second only to the U.S. military as the nation’s biggest food procurer. Now that office is feeding both students and their parents.
“People need to appreciate that they’ve done in a few weeks what government normally would take a few years to do,” said Berg. “They’re delivering over 1 million meals a day to people’s homes. Some are halal and kosher.” Berg described himself as “livid with the mayor over the policing issues,” but nevertheless acknowledged that the scaling up of food distribution that de Blasio has overseen has been “an enormous frigging undertaking.”
Still, even the most admirable responses from government and nonprofits throughout the city isn’t enough to meet the current need. “The demand is endless,” said Liz Accles, executive director of Community Food Advocates. Accles said that Pandemic EBT, which will bring the families of every New York City public school student $420 for groceries, should help. But it is a one-time payment. And she worries about what will happen after that money runs out, as state and federal budgets tighten.
Under the instruction of Pastor Maureen Rush volunteers of the Children of the Light Food Pantry arrange boxes of various groceries for needy Canarsie residents, New York City, New York, U.S., May 29, 2020. Photo: José A. Alvarado Jr. for The Intercept
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“The austerity budgets are of a concern on so many levels,” said Accles. “We don’t know if there will be significant relief for food programs. The fear is that all the people who were struggling day to day before will be struggling even more and harder, and there will be a whole new group of people on top of them who need food.”
Already some programs aimed at alleviating hunger are going backward. The Nutrition Outreach and Education Program, which contracts with organizations that help people apply for federal benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recently notified its grantees that it had not received an expected renewal of its five-year contract with New York state, which is set to expire on June 20. Without a contract, 45 organizations throughout the state may have to lay people off or shut down entirely just when their services are needed most.
Some are hoping that the pandemic will spark a greater understanding of the causes of hunger, even while it’s causing vast suffering. Jahi Chappell, executive director of the advocacy organization Food First, said the roots of our current crisis lie in both the “barely-there social safety net” and the larger food system in which big agriculture and retail companies have too much power and farmers aren’t paid a living wage. “It all connects,” said Chappell, who described hunger as a structural injustice that, like police violence, need to be addressed systemically.
Until it is addressed, hunger, like police violence, is also one of the few things that can get people to emerge from their homes during a deadly pandemic. On a recent Wednesday, a small crowd gathered around a table piled with potatoes and apples on a dead end in Far Rockaway. The beach, which was just down the street, was empty. But on the block, music was playing as volunteers unloaded and stacked produce from boxes. Several passed around a cellphone on which they were FaceTiming with Cynthia Bryant, the founder of a local church who organizes the food distribution at the site remotely because she is undergoing chemotherapy.
Others at the pop-up food relief station were also responding to the food crisis with a generosity that seemed to defy the dark times. Desiree Hicks, a mother of four who lost her job in medical billing, was helping give out food because, she said, “I know what it is to be hungry.” Sharmaine Anderson, who drove an Uber before the shutdown and has little savings, had just spent much of her stimulus check on food that she distributed to neighbors. And Ron Halyard, a pastor, was preparing to fill the back of his black pickup truck with groceries. “We just keep loading it up and going through the neighborhoods,” said Halyard. “Every time we find someone who needs food.”