theintercept--2020-03-19--Banks Pressure Health Care Firms to Raise Prices on Critical Drugs, Medical Supplies for Coronavirus

investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus , including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms , to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis .
The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices .
But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic , as do the bankers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Over the past few weeks , investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices .
In some cases , bankers received sharp rebukes from health care executives ; in others , executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis .
Gilead Sciences , the company producing remdesivir , the most promising drug to treat Covid-19 symptoms , is one such firm facing investor pressure .
Remdesivir is an antiviral that began development @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nile virus , and Zika , as well as MERS and SARS .
The World Health Organization has said there is “ only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy in treating coronavirus symptoms ” — namely , remdesivir .
The drug , though developed in partnership with the University of Alabama through a grant from the federal government ’ s National Institutes of Health , is patented by Gilead Sciences , a major pharmaceutical company based in California .
The firm has faced sharp criticism in the past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charged $ 84,000 for a yearlong supply of its hepatitis C treatment , which was also developed with government research support .
Remdesivir is estimated to produce a one-time revenue of $ 2.5 billion .
During an investor conference earlier this month , Phil Nadeau , managing director at investment bank Cowen & Co. , quizzed Gilead Science executives over whether the firm had planned for a “ commercial strategy for remdesivir ” or could “ create a business out of remdesivir.
” Johanna Mercier , executive vice president of Gilead , noted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and “ manufacturing at risk and increasing our capacity ” to do its best to find a solution to the pandemic .
The company at the moment is focused , she said , primarily on “ patient access ” and “ government access ” for remdesivir .
“ Commercial opportunity , ” Mercier added , “ might come if this becomes a seasonal disease or stockpiling comes into play , but that ’ s much later down the line.
” Steven Valiquette , a managing director at Barclays Investment Bank , last week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major health care distributor of N95 masks , ventilators , and pharmaceuticals , on whether the company would raise prices on a range of supplies .
Valiquette asked repeatedly about potential price increases on a variety of products .
Could the company , he asked , “ offset some of the risk of volume shortages ” on the “ pricing side ” ?
Michael Kaufmann , a vice president at Cardinal Health , said that “ so far , we ’ ve not seen any material price increases that I would say are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health , Kaufman said , would weigh a variety of factors when making these decisions .
“ Are you able to raise the price on some of this to offset what could be some volume shortages such that it all kind of nets out to be fairly consistent as far as your overall profit matrix ?
” asked Valiquette .
Kaufman responded that price decisions would depend on contracts with providers , though the firm has greater flexibility over some drug sales .
“ As you have changes on the cost side , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adjustments , ” he noted .
The discussion , over conference call , occurred during the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference on March 10 .
At one point , Valiquette joked that “ one positive ” about the coronavirus would be a “ silver lining ” that Cardinal Health may receive “ less questions ” about opioid-related lawsuits .
Cardinal Health is one of several firms accused of ignoring warnings and flooding pharmacies known as so-called pill mills with shipments of millions of highly addictive painkillers .
Kaufmann noted that negotiations for a settlement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company has told local officials that discharging the litigation would allow his company “ to distribute free goods.
” Owens & Minor , a health care logistics company that sources and manufactures surgical gowns , N95 masks , and other medical equipment , presented at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference the following day .
Valiquette , citing the Covid-19 crisis , asked the company whether it could “ increase prices on some of the products where there ’ s greater demand.
” Valiquette then chuckled , adding that doing so “ is probably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort of dynamic , ” but said he was “ curious to get some thoughts ” on whether the firm would consider hiking prices .
The inquiry was sharply rebuked by Owens & Minor chief executive Edward Pesicka .
“ I think in a crisis like this , our mission is really around serving the customer .
And from an integrity standpoint , we have pricing agreements , ” Pesicka said .
“ So we are not going to go out and leverage this and try to ‘ jam up ’ customers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AmerisourceBergen , another health care distributor that supplies similar products to Cardinal Health , which is also a defendant in the multistate opioid litigation , faced similar questions from Valiquette at the Barclays event .
Steve Collis , president and chief executive of AmerisourceBergen , noted that his company has been actively involved in efforts to push back against political demands to limit the price of pharmaceutical products .
Collis said that he was recently at a dinner with other pharmaceutical firms involved with developing “ vaccines for the coronavirus ” and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under limited drug price intervention , were among the industry leaders — a claim that has been disputed by experts who note that lack of regulation in the drug industry has led to few investments in viral treatments , which are seen as less lucrative .
Leading firms developing a vaccine for Covid-19 are based in Germany , China , and Japan , countries with high levels of government influence in the pharmaceutical industry .
AmerisourceBergen , Collis continued , has been “ very active with key stakeholders in D.C. , and our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact of policy changes , ” with a focus on “ rational and responsible discussion about drug pricing.
” Later in the conversation , Valiquette asked AmerisourceBergen about the opioid litigation .
The lawsuits could cost as much as $ 150 billion among the various pharmaceutical and drug distributor defendants .
Purdue Pharma , one of the firms targeted with the opioid litigation , has already pursued bankruptcy protection in response to the lawsuit threat .
“ We can ’ t say too much , ” Collis responded .
But the executive hinted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role in responding to the pandemic crisis as leverage in the settlement negotiations .
“ I would say that this crisis , the coronavirus crisis , actually highlights a lot of what we ’ ve been saying , how important it is for us to be very strong financial companies and to have strong cash flow ability to invest in our business and to continue to grow our business and our relationship with our customers , ” Collis said .
The hope that the coronavirus will benefit firms involved in the opioid crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York Attorney General Letitia James announced last week that her lawsuit against opioid firms and distributors , including Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen , set to begin on March 20 , would be delayed over coronavirus concerns .
has encouraged large health care firms to spend billions of dollars on stock buybacks and lobbying , rather than research and development .
Barclays declined to comment , and Cowen & Co. did not respond to a request for comment .
The fallout over the coronavirus could pose potential risks for for-profit health care operators @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control of private health care providers , including privately run hospitals , to manage the demand for treatment for patients with Covid-19 .
But pharmaceutical interests in the U.S. have a large degree of political power .
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar previously served as president of the U.S. division of drug giant Eli Lilly and on the board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization , a drug lobby group .
During a congressional hearing last month , Azar rejected the notion that any vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 should be set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable , but we can ’ t control that price because we need the private sector to invest , ” said Azar .
“ The priority is to get vaccines and therapeutics .
Price controls won ’ t get us there.
” The initial $ 8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill passed in early March to provide financial support for research into vaccines and other drug treatments contained a provision that prevents the government from delaying the introduction of any new pharmaceutical to address @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislative text was shaped , according to reports , by industry lobbyists .
“ Notwithstanding the pressure they may feel from the markets , corporate CEOs have large amounts of discretion and in this case , they should be very mindful of price gouging , they ’ re going to be facing a lot more than reputational hits , ” said Robert Weissman , president of public interest watchdog Public Citizen , in an interview with The Intercept .
“ There will be a backlash that will both prevent their profiteering , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on their monopolies and authority moving forward , ” Weissman said .
Weissman ’ s group supports an effort led by Rep. Andy Levin , D-Mich. , who has called on the government to invoke the Defense Production Act to scale up domestic manufacturing of health care supplies .
There are other steps the government can take , Weissman added , to prevent price gouging .
“ The Gilead product is patent-protected and monopoly-protected , but the government has a big claim over that product because of the investment it ’ s made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government has special authority to have generic competition for products it helped fund and prevent nonexclusive licensing for products it helped fund , ” Weissman continued .
“ Even for products that have no connection to government funding , the government has the ability to force licensing for generic competition for its own acquisition and purchases.
” Drug companies often eschew vaccine development because of the limited profit potential for a one-time treatment .
Testing kit companies and other medical supply firms have few market incentives for domestic production , especially scaling up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instead , Levin and Weissman have argued , the government should take direct control of producing the necessary medical supplies and generic drug production .
Last Friday , Levin circulated a letter signed by other House Democrats that called for the government to take charge in producing ventilators , N95 respirators , and other critical supplies facing shortages .
The once inconceivable policy was endorsed on Wednesday when Trump unveiled a plan to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel private firms to produce needed supplies during the crisis .
The law , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a price ceiling for critical goods used in an emergency .

In recent weeks, investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis.
The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.
Over the past few weeks, investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices. In some cases, bankers received sharp rebukes from health care executives; in others, executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis.
Gilead Sciences, the company producing remdesivir, the most promising drug to treat Covid-19 symptoms, is one such firm facing investor pressure.
Remdesivir is an antiviral that began development as a treatment for dengue, West Nile virus, and Zika, as well as MERS and SARS. The World Health Organization has said there is “only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy in treating coronavirus symptoms” — namely, remdesivir.
The drug, though developed in partnership with the University of Alabama through a grant from the federal government’s National Institutes of Health, is patented by Gilead Sciences, a major pharmaceutical company based in California. The firm has faced sharp criticism in the past for its pricing practices. It previously charged $84,000 for a yearlong supply of its hepatitis C treatment, which was also developed with government research support. Remdesivir is estimated to produce a one-time revenue of $2.5 billion.
During an investor conference earlier this month, Phil Nadeau, managing director at investment bank Cowen & Co., quizzed Gilead Science executives over whether the firm had planned for a “commercial strategy for remdesivir” or could “create a business out of remdesivir.”
Johanna Mercier, executive vice president of Gilead, noted that the company is currently donating products and “manufacturing at risk and increasing our capacity” to do its best to find a solution to the pandemic. The company at the moment is focused, she said, primarily on “patient access” and “government access” for remdesivir.
“Commercial opportunity,” Mercier added, “might come if this becomes a seasonal disease or stockpiling comes into play, but that’s much later down the line.”
Steven Valiquette, a managing director at Barclays Investment Bank, last week peppered executives from Cardinal Health, a health care distributor of N95 masks, ventilators and pharmaceuticals, on whether the company would raise prices on a range of supplies.
Valiquette asked repeatedly about potential price increases on a variety of products. Could the company, he asked, “offset some of the risk of volume shortages” on the “pricing side”?
Michael Kaufmann, the chief executive of Cardinal Health, said that “so far, we’ve not seen any material price increases that I would say are related to the coronavirus yet.” Cardinal Health, Kaufman said, would weigh a variety of factors when making these decisions, and added that the company is “always going to fight aggressively to make sure that we’re getting after the lowest cost.”
“Are you able to raise the price on some of this to offset what could be some volume shortages such that it all kind of nets out to be fairly consistent as far as your overall profit matrix?” asked Valiquette.
Kaufman responded that price decisions would depend on contracts with providers, though the firm has greater flexibility over some drug sales. “As you have changes on the cost side, you’re able to make some adjustments,” he noted.
The discussion, over conference call, occurred during the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference on March 10. At one point, Valiquette joked that “one positive” about the coronavirus would be a “silver lining” that Cardinal Health may receive “less questions” about opioid-related lawsuits.
Cardinal Health is one of several firms accused of ignoring warnings and flooding pharmacies known as so-called pill mills with shipments of millions of highly addictive painkillers. Kaufmann noted that negotiations for a settlement are ongoing.
Owens & Minor, a health care logistics company that sources and manufactures surgical gowns, N95 masks, and other medical equipment, presented at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference the following day.
Valiquette, citing the Covid-19 crisis, asked the company whether it could “increase prices on some of the products where there’s greater demand.” Valiquette then chuckled, adding that doing so “is probably not politically all that great in the sort of dynamic,” but said he was “curious to get some thoughts” on whether the firm would consider hiking prices.
The inquiry was sharply rebuked by Owens & Minor chief executive Edward Pesicka. “I think in a crisis like this, our mission is really around serving the customer. And from an integrity standpoint, we have pricing agreements,” Pesicka said. “So we are not going to go out and leverage this and try to ‘jam up’ customers and raise prices to have short-term benefit.”
AmerisourceBergen, another health care distributor that supplies similar products to Cardinal Health, which is also a defendant in the multistate opioid litigation, faced similar questions from Valiquette at the Barclays event.
Steve Collis, president and chief executive of AmerisourceBergen, noted that his company has been actively involved in efforts to push back against political demands to limit the price of pharmaceutical products.
Collis said that he was recently at a dinner with other pharmaceutical firms involved with developing “vaccines for the coronavirus” and was reminded that the U.S. firms, operating under limited drug price intervention, were among the industry leaders — a claim that has been disputed by experts who note that lack of regulation in the drug industry has led to few investments in viral treatments, which are seen as less lucrative. Leading firms developing a vaccine for Covid-19 are based in Germany, China, and Japan, countries with high levels of government influence in the pharmaceutical industry.
AmerisourceBergen, Collis continued, has been “very active with key stakeholders in D.C., and our priority is to educate policymakers about the impact of policy changes,” with a focus on “rational and responsible discussion about drug pricing.”
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Later in the conversation, Valiquette asked AmerisourceBergen about the opioid litigation. The lawsuits could cost as much as $150 billion among the various pharmaceutical and drug distributor defendants. Purdue Pharma, one of the firms targeted with the opioid litigation, has already pursued bankruptcy protection in response to the lawsuit threat.
“We can’t say too much,” Collis responded. But the executive hinted that his company is using its crucial role in responding to the pandemic crisis as leverage in the settlement negotiations. “I would say that this crisis, the coronavirus crisis, actually highlights a lot of what we’ve been saying, how important it is for us to be very strong financial companies and to have strong cash flow ability to invest in our business and to continue to grow our business and our relationship with our customers,” Collis said.
The hope that the coronavirus will benefit firms involved in the opioid crisis has already materialized in some ways. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced last week that her lawsuit against opioid firms and distributors, including Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, set to begin on March 20, would be delayed over coronavirus concerns.
Market pressure has encouraged large health care firms to spend billions of dollars on stock buybacks and lobbying, rather than research and development. Barclays declined to comment, and Cowen & Co. did not respond to a request for comment.
The fallout over the coronavirus could pose potential risks for for-profit health care operators. In Spain, the government seized control of private health care providers, including privately run hospitals, to manage the demand for treatment for patients with Covid-19.
But pharmaceutical interests in the U.S. have a large degree of political power. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar previously served as president of the U.S. division of drug giant Eli Lilly and on the board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a drug lobby group.
During a congressional hearing last month, Azar rejected the notion that any vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 should be set at an affordable price. “We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest,” said Azar. “The priority is to get vaccines and therapeutics. Price controls won’t get us there.”
The initial $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill passed in early March to provide financial support for research into vaccines and other drug treatments contained a provision that prevents the government from delaying the introduction of any new pharmaceutical to address the crisis over affordability concerns. The legislative text was shaped, according to reports, by industry lobbyists.
Joe Grogan, director of the Domestic Policy Council, listens during a coronavirus briefing with health insurers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As The Intercept previously reported , Joe Grogan, a key White House domestic policy adviser now serving on Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force, previously served as a lobbyist for Gilead Sciences.
“Notwithstanding the pressure they may feel from the markets, corporate CEOs have large amounts of discretion and in this case, they should be very mindful of price gouging, they’re going to be facing a lot more than reputational hits,” said Robert Weissman, president of public interest watchdog Public Citizen, in an interview with The Intercept.
“There will be a backlash that will both prevent their profiteering, but also may push to more structural limitations on their monopolies and authority moving forward,” Weissman said.
Weissman’s group supports an effort led by Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., who has called on the government to invoke the Defense Production Act to scale up domestic manufacturing of health care supplies.
There are other steps the government can take, Weissman added, to prevent price gouging.
“The Gilead product is patent-protected and monopoly-protected, but the government has a big claim over that product because of the investment it’s made,” said Weissman.
“The government has special authority to have generic competition for products it helped fund and prevent nonexclusive licensing for products it helped fund,” Weissman continued. “Even for products that have no connection to government funding, the government has the ability to force licensing for generic competition for its own acquisition and purchases.”
Drug companies often eschew vaccine development because of the limited profit potential for a one-time treatment. Testing kit companies and other medical supply firms have few market incentives for domestic production, especially scaling up an entire factory for short-term use. Instead, Levin and Weissman have argued, the government should take direct control of producing the necessary medical supplies and generic drug production.
Last Friday, Levin circulated a letter signed by other House Democrats that called for the government to take charge in producing ventilators, N95 respirators, and other critical supplies facing shortages.
The once inconceivable policy was endorsed on Wednesday when Trump unveiled a plan to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel private firms to produce needed supplies during the crisis. The law, notably, allows the president to set a price ceiling for critical goods used in an emergency.


theintercept--2020-03-19--U.S. Airstrike in Somalia Killed Two Civilians, Relatives Say

Mohammed ’ s 13-year-old son Abdi Farhan Mahmoud was on his way to school when a U.S. missile struck a mini-bus taxi he was riding in .
Mahmoud was decapitated in the strike , his father said .
He could hardly bear to look at the boy ’ s charred face .
A U.S. Africa Command press release issued the day of the strike near Janaale , a town about 60 miles south of the Somali capital Mogadishu , said that five “ terrorists ” were killed and that there were no civilian casualties .
But Farhan Mahmoud Mohammed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Intercept by phone last Friday , told a different story .
The airstrike on the minibus and the civilian deaths were corroborated by Mahad Dore , a member of the Somali parliament , who spoke to The Intercept .
Local media reported that between four and six civilians , including 13-year-old Mahmoud and 70-year-old Waadhoor , were killed in the attack .
Another passenger in the minibus , 70-year-old Abdirahman Ali Waadhoor , was also killed in the attack , according to his son Abdullahi Abdirahman Ali .
“ My father is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a problem with anyone.
” said Ali , who lives in London and saw pictures of his father ’ s corpse on his phone .
Asked how he felt when he saw the images , Ali replied : “ That ’ s not my father .
It ’ s only meat .
Brown meat.
” The airstrike is another in an escalating campaign of U.S. attacks in Somalia that have skyrocketed under the Trump administration .
While U.S. Africa Command , or AFRICOM , has publicly acknowledged only 28 airstrikes this year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AFRICOM did not issue press releases about three of the strikes because “ we either assessed no casualties or damage to infrastructure or vehicles was minor , ” command spokesperson John Manley told The Intercept .
There have already been more U.S. airstrikes in 2020 than there were declared attacks by AFRICOM in 2015 and 2016 combined .
The latter year marked the height of the Obama administration ’ s assault on al-Shabab , with 19 declared airstrikes .
Under President Donald Trump , attacks have increased markedly to 47 in 2018 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve continued to see a heavy tempo of U.S. strikes in Somalia , ” said Chris Woods , the director of Airwars , a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group .
“ Civilian harm allegations are also running high , with seven locally claimed incidents so far this year.
” The group ’ s recently unveiled assessment of U.S. attacks in Somalia since 2007 found that civilian deaths may be 73 times greater than AFRICOM contends .
AFRICOM has launched hundreds of air and ground attacks in Somalia since 2007 , but the command has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a single incident in the last 13 years .
However , Airwars recently identified 65 individual events in which civilians were allegedly harmed by U.S. military action since 2007 .
Of these , 33 attacks were either confirmed by AFRICOM or by Airwars , citing two or more credible sources , often coupled with photographic evidence and likely or confirmed military action nearby for the date in question .
All told , the monitoring group found that between 76 and 146 civilians have been killed in U.S. strikes in Somalia since 2007 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Janaale , allegations of civilian casualties began circulating on social media .
“ We are aware of the reports you mention and are currently assessing the strike , ” Manley told The Intercept last week .
“ At this time , we assess no civilians were killed or injured in that strike.
” It takes at least four weeks for AFRICOM to assess civilian casualty allegations , Manley said .
Last year , researchers from the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School ’ s Human Rights Institute conducted a civilian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reviewing their civilian casualty assessment process .
The researchers found that , between 2016 and 2019 , the command has failed to conduct even a single interview with civilian witnesses of its airstrikes .
“ We have not directly engaged civilian victims or witnesses in Somalia for various reasons , including a lack of access to locations in al-Shabab strongholds and because we are able to assess civilian casualty allegations through multiple methods , ” AFRICOM ’ s Manley told The Intercept.
” The situation looks different to many Somalis .
“ When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the Pentagon is on steroids and could care less about human life and dignity , ” said Hussein Sheikh-Ali , former national security and counterterrorism adviser to the current president of Somalia .
“ Somalis welcome the elimination of dangerous guys , but they don ’ t appreciate it when their own lives are taken in the process.
” Brian Castner , Amnesty International ’ s senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations , said the latest airstrike echoes earlier U.S. attacks that have killed civilians .
“ Based on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this looks like another example of AFRICOM not fully knowing who they are targeting and killing , ” he told The Intercept .
“ Somalis deserve a rapid admission of responsibility , and then compensation for the surviving families.
” AFRICOM regularly announces that its airstrikes are conducted in coordination with Somalia ’ s federal government .
That ’ s where Farhan Mahmoud Mohammed , whose 13-year-old son was killed in the attack , focused his fury .
The pain was evident in his voice as he spoke about his child and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abetted the boy ’ s death .
“ My son was very open minded , ” he told The Intercept .
“ He loved me so much.
” Update : March 19 , 2020 , 3:03 p.m .
ET This article has been updated to include the most recent figures for U.S. airstrikes in Somalia this year .

A U.S. airstrike targeting al-Shabab militants in Somalia last week killed a child and an elderly man, relatives of the dead and a Somali lawmaker told The Intercept.
A U.S. Africa Command press release issued the day of the strike near Janaale, a town about 60 miles south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, said that five “terrorists” were killed and that there were no civilian casualties. But Farhan Mahmoud Mohammed, a resident of Janaale who spoke to The Intercept by phone last Friday, told a different story.
Mohammed’s 13-year-old son Abdi Farhan Mahmoud was on his way to school when a U.S. missile struck a mini-bus taxi he was riding in. Mahmoud was decapitated in the strike, his father said. He could hardly bear to look at the boy’s charred face.
Another passenger in the minibus, 70-year-old Abdirahman Ali Waadhoor, was also killed in the attack, according to his son Abdullahi Abdirahman Ali. “My father is a disabled man. He never had a problem with anyone.” said Ali, who lives in London and saw pictures of his father’s corpse on his phone. Asked how he felt when he saw the images, Ali replied: “That’s not my father. It’s only meat. Brown meat.”
The airstrike on the minibus and the civilian deaths were corroborated by Mahad Dore, a member of the Somali parliament, who spoke to The Intercept. Local media reported that between four and six civilians, including 13-year-old Mahmoud and 70-year-old Waadhoor, were killed in the attack.
Photo: Courtesy of the family
The airstrike is another in an escalating campaign of U.S. attacks in Somalia that have skyrocketed under the Trump administration. While U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, has publicly acknowledged only 28 airstrikes this year, the command has actually conducted 31. AFRICOM did not issue press releases about three of the strikes because “we either assessed no casualties or damage to infrastructure or vehicles was minor,” command spokesperson John Manley told The Intercept.
There have already been more U.S. airstrikes in 2020 than there were declared attacks by AFRICOM in 2015 and 2016 combined. The latter year marked the height of the Obama administration’s assault on al-Shabab, with 19 declared airstrikes. Under President Donald Trump, attacks have increased markedly to 47 in 2018 and 63 in 2019.
“We’ve continued to see a heavy tempo of U.S. strikes in Somalia,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. “Civilian harm allegations are also running high, with seven locally claimed incidents so far this year.” The group’s recently unveiled assessment of U.S. attacks in Somalia since 2007 found that civilian deaths may be 73 times greater than AFRICOM contends.
AFRICOM has launched hundreds of air and ground attacks in Somalia since 2007, but the command has admitted to killing only two civilians in a single incident in the last 13 years. However, Airwars recently identified 65 individual events in which civilians were allegedly harmed by U.S. military action since 2007. Of these, 33 attacks were either confirmed by AFRICOM or by Airwars, citing two or more credible sources, often coupled with photographic evidence and likely or confirmed military action nearby for the date in question. All told, the monitoring group found that between 76 and 146 civilians have been killed in U.S. strikes in Somalia since 2007.
Shortly after the March 10 attack near Janaale, allegations of civilian casualties began circulating on social media. “We are aware of the reports you mention and are currently assessing the strike,” Manley told The Intercept last week. “At this time, we assess no civilians were killed or injured in that strike.” It takes at least four weeks for AFRICOM to assess civilian casualty allegations, Manley said.
Last year, researchers from the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute conducted a civilian casualty workshop with AFRICOM personnel that involved reviewing their civilian casualty assessment process. The researchers found that, between 2016 and 2019, the command has failed to conduct even a single interview with civilian witnesses of its airstrikes. “We have not directly engaged civilian victims or witnesses in Somalia for various reasons, including a lack of access to locations in al-Shabab strongholds and because we are able to assess civilian casualty allegations through multiple methods,” AFRICOM’s Manley told The Intercept.”
The situation looks different to many Somalis. “When I see daily air raids, I see the Pentagon is on steroids and could care less about human life and dignity,” said Hussein Sheikh-Ali, former national security and counterterrorism adviser to the current president of Somalia. “Somalis welcome the elimination of dangerous guys, but they don’t appreciate it when their own lives are taken in the process.”
Brian Castner, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations, said the latest airstrike echoes earlier U.S. attacks that have killed civilians. “Based on the initial reports we’ve seen, this looks like another example of AFRICOM not fully knowing who they are targeting and killing,” he told The Intercept. “Somalis deserve a rapid admission of responsibility, and then compensation for the surviving families.”
AFRICOM regularly announces that its airstrikes are conducted in coordination with Somalia’s federal government. That’s where Farhan Mahmoud Mohammed, whose 13-year-old son was killed in the attack, focused his fury. The pain was evident in his voice as he spoke about his child and the Somali government that he believes aided and abetted the boy’s death. “My son was very open minded,” he told The Intercept. “He loved me so much.”
Update: March 19, 2020, 3:03 p.m. ET
This article has been updated to include the most recent figures for U.S. airstrikes in Somalia this year.


theintercept--2020-03-19--While Top Democrats Waffle, GOP Rolls Out Plans for Coronavirus Cash Handouts. Is Pelosi Leading Fro

While Top Democrats Waffle, GOP Rolls Out Plans for Coronavirus Cash Handouts. Is Pelosi Leading From Behind?

Democratic Party leaders with their plans to put cash directly into the pockets of working Americans in response to the coronavirus pandemic .
As Washington scrambles to put together an economic relief package , President Donald Trump ’ s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been dubbed Washington ’ s crisis negotiation team .
But , while Republicans and Democrats in Congress have swiftly put forth plans to immediately give Americans extra cash , Pelosi and her fellow Democratic leaders have moved more slowly , saying that they want to ensure payments benefit Americans most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash .
Trump wants to send checks to Americans beginning on April 6 , and again on May 18 , Vice reported Wednesday .
Documents from the Treasury Department lay out a plan to disburse a total of $ 250 billion to taxpayers in two rounds of direct payments .
On Monday , though , Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized GOP calls to issue immediate $ 1,000 checks to people in response to the virus .
“ This is not a time for small thinking , ” he said .
“ A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay their landlord in March .
But what happens after that ?
” He added , “ A thousand dollars goes by pretty quickly if you ’ re unemployed.
” Schumer said expanding unemployment insurance would help people for a longer period of time and provide a bigger safety net .
“ If we ’ re going to provide direct payments , they need to be bigger , more frequent , more targeted .
Millionaires shouldn ’ t get them , ” he said .
At a House Democratic caucus meeting last week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash payments because she didn ’ t want them to go to rich people .
“ Which is a strange opposition to it , because rich people don ’ t want $ 1,000 , ” said one House Democratic staffer , who asked for anonymity .
“ Democrats treated this pandemic like it was any other legislative business , ” the staffer added .
“ There ’ s a lack of leadership.
” On Wednesday evening , the Senate passed an emergency relief package , including free coronavirus testing , paid sick leave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is working on another plan to pass additional measures to send immediate cash to families .
On Tuesday , Pelosi ’ s deputy chief of staff Drew Hammil tweeted that the speaker believed that Congress should look into refundable tax credits , expanded universal income , and direct payments , but wanted to ensure those relief plans were targeted to communities that need it the most .
Some progressives questioned that messaging .
“ If we agree that the crisis is stark and immediate , and we know that precise targeting takes time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a requirement when you can simply disburse the funds *now* and collect from high-income recipients *later* ?
” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Twitter .
Rank-and-file Democrats in Congress have proposed several plans in recent days , few of which surpass the payout proposals put forward by Republicans like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton .
But as Trump and the GOP have worked to undercut protections and wages for working people , analysts and pundits say Democratic leadership is squandering their best chance in recent memory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important to their base .
The Hill staffer told The Intercept that after Romney announced his plan , some Democratic House members felt more comfortable coming out with their own .
A few had worried Trump and the Republicans wouldn ’ t get behind the idea , particularly after having to walk back original plans for paid family and sick leave .
“ I think all of that happened because Romney came out the day before , ” the staffer said .
“ And now Democrats look way behind.
” side , members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with few hangups .
Romney and Cotton both called Monday to give people emergency cash .
Romney proposed a one-time $ 1,000 check , and Cotton wanted to add $ 1,000 to monthly paychecks for people in low- and middle-income brackets , up to $ 4,000 a month for a family of four .
Cotton rolled out an official plan on Tuesday to immediately send $ 1,000 checks to every person making under $ 100,000 .
Former presidential candidate and Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California on Tuesday proposed giving Americans up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the same amount Harris proposed adding to Americans ’ pockets with a 2018 tax credit plan .
Democratic Sens .
Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey , himself a former Democratic presidential candidate , sent a letter on Tuesday to the Senate majority and minority leaders — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Schumer , respectively — calling for immediate payments of $ 2,000 to adults and children in families making under $ 90,000 per individual , and $ 180,000 per couple , with subsequent payments decreasing over time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Connecticut , Brian Schatz of Hawaii , Michael Bennet of Colorado , and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine , also signed the letter .
In the House , Democrats including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts , who ’ s also running for Senate , have put forward promising plans .
On Friday , Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio proposed an emergency Earned Income Tax Credit in the form of checks of up to $ 6,000 to Americans who made under $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office said in a press release .
More than three-quarters of American workers would qualify for the package .

Republicans are outmaneuvering Democratic Party leaders with their plans to put cash directly into the pockets of working Americans in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
As Washington scrambles to put together an economic relief package, President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been dubbed Washington’s crisis negotiation team. But, while Republicans and Democrats in Congress have swiftly put forth plans to immediately give Americans extra cash, Pelosi and her fellow Democratic leaders have moved more slowly, saying that they want to ensure payments benefit Americans most in need rather than indiscriminately giving out cash.
Trump wants to send checks to Americans beginning on April 6, and again on May 18, Vice reported Wednesday. Documents from the Treasury Department lay out a plan to disburse a total of $250 billion to taxpayers in two rounds of direct payments.
On Monday, though, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized GOP calls to issue immediate $1,000 checks to people in response to the virus. “This is not a time for small thinking,” he said. “A single $1,000 check would help someone pay their landlord in March. But what happens after that?” He added, “A thousand dollars goes by pretty quickly if you’re unemployed.”
Schumer said expanding unemployment insurance would help people for a longer period of time and provide a bigger safety net. “If we’re going to provide direct payments, they need to be bigger, more frequent, more targeted. Millionaires shouldn’t get them,” he said.
At a House Democratic caucus meeting last week, Pelosi opposed proposals to send immediate cash payments because she didn’t want them to go to rich people. “Which is a strange opposition to it, because rich people don’t want $1,000,” said one House Democratic staffer, who asked for anonymity. “Democrats treated this pandemic like it was any other legislative business,” the staffer added. “There’s a lack of leadership.”
On Wednesday evening, the Senate passed an emergency relief package, including free coronavirus testing, paid sick leave, and unemployment benefits. The chamber is working on another plan to pass additional measures to send immediate cash to families.
“There’s a lack of leadership.”
On Tuesday, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff Drew Hammil tweeted that the speaker believed that Congress should look into refundable tax credits, expanded universal income, and direct payments, but wanted to ensure those relief plans were targeted to communities that need it the most.
Some progressives questioned that messaging. “If we agree that the crisis is stark and immediate, and we know that precise targeting takes time and administrative effort, why make that a requirement when you can simply disburse the funds *now* and collect from high-income recipients *later*?” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Twitter.
Rank-and-file Democrats in Congress have proposed several plans in recent days, few of which surpass the payout proposals put forward by Republicans like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. But as Trump and the GOP have worked to undercut protections and wages for working people, analysts and pundits say Democratic leadership is squandering their best chance in recent memory to truly lead on the issues most important to their base.
The Hill staffer told The Intercept that after Romney announced his plan, some Democratic House members felt more comfortable coming out with their own. A few had worried Trump and the Republicans wouldn’t get behind the idea, particularly after having to walk back original plans for paid family and sick leave. “I think all of that happened because Romney came out the day before,” the staffer said. “And now Democrats look way behind.”
On the Republican side, members of Congress have proposed plans quickly and with few hangups. Romney and Cotton both called Monday to give people emergency cash. Romney proposed a one-time $1,000 check, and Cotton wanted to add $1,000 to monthly paychecks for people in low- and middle-income brackets, up to $4,000 a month for a family of four. Cotton rolled out an official plan on Tuesday to immediately send $1,000 checks to every person making under $100,000.
Former presidential candidate and Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California on Tuesday tweeted: “I introduced the LIFT Act to give working families up to $500 a month. We need it now more than ever.” Almost an hour later, after a raft of twitter responses criticized the low number, Harris added, “Let me be clear—I wrote the LIFT Act in 2018 because I believe we have always had a duty to help working families. My bill provides up to $500 not once, but every. single. month. During this crisis, we must do much more. I’m working to shape a robust new bill to help families.”
Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey, himself a former Democratic presidential candidate, sent a letter on Tuesday to the Senate majority and minority leaders — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Schumer, respectively — calling for immediate payments of $2,000 to adults and children in families making under $90,000 per individual, and $180,000 per couple, with subsequent payments decreasing over time. Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Michael Bennet of Colorado, and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, also signed the letter.
In the House, Democrats including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, who’s also running for Senate, have put forward promising plans. On Friday, Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio proposed an emergency Earned Income Tax Credit in the form of checks of up to $6,000 to Americans who made under $65,000 last year, Khanna’s office said in a press release. More than three-quarters of American workers would qualify for the package.
Update: March 20, 2020
This story has been updated to expand on Sen. Kamala Harris’s tweet about reviving her 2018 cash payout proposal and then a subsequent tweet about how more must be done in the current crisis.


theintercept--2020-03-19--Organizer Mariame Kaba: We Need a People’s Bailout to Confront Coronavirus

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Many people across the United States are finally facing the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic. On the latest Intercepted: After weeks of downplaying the seriousness of the virus and at times implying it was a hoax, the Trump administration has announced a series of government responses to the crisis. While some actions, such as expanded testing, emergency aid to states and production of medical supplies, are aimed directly at protecting public health, serious questions abound about the economic survival of millions of people. Organizer Mariame Kaba discusses the realities facing some of the most vulnerable people in our society, from poor and working families to prisoners and immigration detainees and beyond. While the virus does not discriminate in who it infects, it will have a disproportionately devastating impact on communities that already faced dire crises before coronavirus. Kaba discusses “mutual aid” actions taking place across the country where ordinary people are pooling resources and offering direct responses to those in the most need.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Jeremy Scahill: This is Intercepted.
[Music interlude.]
JS: I’m Jeremy Scahill coming to you from my basement in New York City and this is Episode 122 of Intercepted.
Steven Mnuchin: The payroll tax holiday would get people money over the next six to eight months. We’re looking at sending checks to Americans immediately. And what we’ve heard from hard-working Americans, many companies have now shut down whether it’s bars or restaurants. Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now, and I mean now in the next two weeks.
Reporter: How much?
SM: I will be previewing that with the Republicans. There’s some numbers out there. They may be a little bit bigger than what’s in the press.
JS: As more and more people in this country wake up to the grave reality that we are facing in the United States and across the world, there is a lot of discussion right now about what the federal government should be doing to address the urgent needs of so many people. Yes, we need more tests and test sites. Yes, we need more ICU beds, and hospitals, and respirators. Yes, we need to do everything possible to create the conditions to survive this pandemic safely in the face of the coronavirus and its spread. But the reality is that the coronavirus situation does discriminate, not in who it infects, but in how it impacts the lives of those who are most vulnerable. We all, I hope, know the grave risks to older people in our society or people with pre-existing respiratory conditions. But what about people stuck in prisons? What about people in ICE detention centers right now? What about older people who live alone? Workers who lost their jobs? What about people who live in poverty? This virus is going to hit them hard.
There are people right now living in this country who are scared and alone, and they literally can’t go to the grocery store. It is the responsibility of all of us, as human beings, to simply not just retreat to defend our nuclear families. Across this country and the world, there are people who are not waiting for governments to take action, or to work out a response that’s acceptable to horrible people like Mitch McConnell. I’m talking about people organizing mutual aid projects inspired by anarchist thinkers and activists throughout history. People who believe in identifying a problem and then using whatever resources they have at their disposal to try to address it, to try to help those who are suffering.
One such organizer is Mariame Kaba. You may know her on Twitter as “prisonculture.” Mariame is an organizer and educator, a curator who is active in movements for racial, gender and transformative justice. She’s also the founder and director of Project NIA, which is a grassroots organization with a vision to ending youth incarceration completely. Mariame is right now coordinating a mutual aid redistribution fund with the aim to give urgently needed aid to vulnerable communities and people by placing it in the hands of individuals or groups who are doing the work on the frontlines of this virus. Mariame, welcome back to Intercepted.
Mariame Kaba: Thanks for having me.
JS: So I want to begin by asking you to sort of layout the bigger picture of your understanding of the issues that are arising from the coronavirus pandemic, specifically for some of the most vulnerable people in our society, people in prisons, people in low-income communities, people who are facing domestic abuse, people who are old, people who are poor, just give an overview of how you see this crisis impacting those communities and what you’re doing about it.
MK: For me, capitalism is the crisis. It always has been. And I think what we’re being exposed to in this moment is all of the contradictions and the violences of capitalism, bringing things to light in stark relief. For example, the fact that we’ve had a few years now of a conversation in the country around the need for improved Medicare for All. Every single person is impacted where you can have conversations across differences, where seemingly we could all agree that it would be good to be able to be healthy. And I think we’ve seen just in the current presidential election, a very stark difference in what people are offering as a response to the needs of the community as it relates to health care.
So enter this pandemic, which I think has caught so many people off guard though years and years of the study of epidemiologists and other people suggest that we should not have been surprised about this. The fact that we had Ebola and that we’ve had SARS and we’ve had these other scares that I think Americans or U.S.-ians, in particular, found themselves very disconnected from, that we were in this position of thinking this happens to people elsewhere. It doesn’t affect “us” here in the U.S. And I think that made people very complacent in asking the questions of, you know, are we prepared? What does preparation mean? Who would be most at risk? How would we handle that in a country where some people aren’t seen as having lives that really matter? How are we going to navigate that when we were all hit in this kind of way?
So for me, I think a lot obviously, because my work has been rooted in anti-criminalization work for a long time, people who are incarcerated are at incredible risk for so many reasons. The first is that prisons and jails make you sick. The frailties that are created by the very nature of you being locked up. That makes you even more at risk for things like this. In a closed confined area, these are unsanitary conditions that breed all kinds of illnesses in a situation of a pandemic where you’re supposed to have social distance. I mean, you’re literally on top of each other.
We’re in a country where we have a bunch of old people locked up in prisons, a lot of elderly people over the age of 50. And yet here we are in a position where we’re in New York State, we’ve got a governor who is up on television every day giving big pronouncements and saying that, you know, he is caring for people. He’s yelling at the feds about their response. And people are applauding that, while at the same time, he’s not using his complete discretion, enormous power, incontrovertible power to issue clemencies in this moment, to release at least the most vulnerable people from prison.
So many commutation applications on his desk right now, well over 7,000. He could just go to all those would be like, I’m just gonna open up the doors right now, all folks who are over the age of 50 and who are sick, you get to come home. So people are really motivated, action-oriented. People are doing incarcerated mutual aid drives and sending soap because people can’t have hand sanitizer within prisons because of the alcohol level within those products and so sending soap in so at least people could wash their hands. Because it’s expensive in the commissary, because they’ve run out in commissary, because people have no money in prisons.
I just want people to understand the importance of this moment is to not be paralyzed by it. It’s so, so important not to just succumb to: We have to wait to see what the government is going to do. Is everybody paying attention? The federal government is completely derelict in its duties right now. We have somebody at the head of government who, I’m not kidding, eight days ago was suggesting this whole entire thing is a hoax. Literally, we’re gonna put our survival in the hands of people like this? No, I refuse.
JS: The nation of Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran is being hit incredibly hard by coronavirus. And what is making it even more of a nightmare for the Iranian population is that the United States has imposed murderous sanctions on Iran that are absolutely, scientifically exacerbating the crisis. And even in the face of this, with everything that both Democrats and Republicans say about the nature of the Iranian regime, Iran has released at last count 85,000 prisoners because of the risks to them for coronavirus.
MK: Yes, absolutely. And what are we told about Iran? We are told that these authoritarian regimes supposedly are the enemies of the U.S. and are terrorists. But that suggests that these are immoral people, right? It’s not the people who run the countries even that are the targets. It’s the entire country, the people, the civilians. And I think what we’re seeing is that in the countries that have been called the shithole countries, the countries that have been called the authoritarian, non-human rights supporting countries are actually addressing the rights of their people, the human rights of their people in ways that the United States can’t even think about doing in this moment.
We’re told here in this country, we are the freest, we have the best, we’re exceptional, and we cannot produce test kits to test the population for a pandemic. And yet, in the country where my mother was born, in Senegal, the scientists over there have made kits available to the public that allows folks to be tested and four hours later to receive their responses. And now they’ve improved that, according to news I’m reading to potentially getting results within 10 minutes, shithole country, right?
Maybe this is going to prompt U.S.-ians to start thinking differently about their government, what it does around the world, how inept it is here, how much it has disinvested from the material needs of its own people, and how much it’s siphoned off to wage wars, immoral, and illegal wars all around the world, harming other people. Maybe people will be asking questions about how it is that we can find trillions of dollars on a dime, turn around, when people are begging for Medicare for All for generations in this country, for universal health care, not health insurance.
I’m hopeful that what this moment is going to do is shape a lot of people, radicalize a lot of people, ask people to connect dots that maybe they haven’t been connecting between their existence in this country and the world. And should we not be learning from other countries in this moment? Should we not be asking the South Koreans how they did what they did? You know, we’ve got China, which has been dealing with its own issues over a period of time. What are they doing? Sending kids to all parts of the world, sending their own doctors to Iran. Cuba, sending doctors all over the world. All these countries that are being fear mongered and they’re doing moral things in the midst of their own struggles.
JS: Also, in the case of Cuba, we’ve seen in this election cycle, Democrats, so-called liberal media demonizing Cuba for political purposes to try to attack Bernie Sanders. Even though what Bernie Sanders stated about Cuba and literacy was 100% accurate, and in fact, Sanders has been criticized by people on the left in the United States for being too strong in his condemnation of Cuba. But set that aside for a moment and recognize that all throughout history since the Cuban Revolution 1959, 1960, Cuba has sent its doctors and scientists to the most dangerous situations around the world to provide some of the highest quality scientific and health care available. And Cuba even under the punishing U.S. blockade, the economic embargo, even while being called evil by Democrats and Republicans alike have emerged as one of the greatest humanitarian forces in the world right now. We’re talking about an island of 11 million people. It is doing more internationally to try to address the epicenters of the coronavirus than the most powerful nation on earth the United States.
MK: We are living these contradictions, aren’t we? We’re seeing them play out in full view. I know people are scared. Like I talk to people who are scared all the time in my own family, my comrades, my friends. I see it on social media. And sometimes right, what ends up happening when you’re afraid is that you’re easily demagogued. I want all of us to you know, sit with our fear, understand it, but kind of start looking outside ourselves for a minute right now too to say, what are we being told about other people? What are we being told about the responses that are going on? What’s really happening?
You know, ferret out our own information, make up our own minds, and not just kind of sip the kool-aid of the propaganda that’s been said to people in this country for generations now about, “the communists and the socialists” and all these other people. People are people. People are trying to live. And I think when you look at yourself and you think like, I’m just trying to live, so are people everywhere on this planet trying to do the same. This is an opportunity for global solidarity in a way that we’ve never really practiced. If people think that the United States is going to be able to get out of this by itself, they’re sorely, sorely mistaken. It’s not going to be possible.
JS: I think that we will look back in the not too distant future on what has happened during this era of Trump and realize that we could have listened to the social movements. We could have listened to the climate movements. We could have listened to the racial justice movements. We could have listened to the movements to end the carceral state in this country, which you’ve been so central, and we could have listened to all of the millions of people in this country who were voting for Bernie Sanders, not because they love Bernie Sanders but because the emergency was here before any of us had heard the term coronavirus. And there were people in this country who saw it and begged others to listen, and what the Democratic Party did just in the micro-situation of this past week’s primary I’ll say it openly: They are going to be responsible for deaths. What they did, by openly telling particularly older people, go out and vote if you’re not exhibiting symptoms, or if you’re “not at risk.” We are all at risk.
But what they did, in their short-sighted effort to try to put a crown on Joe Biden’s head to own the progressives or own the social movements, we are going to look back in shame and horror at what we did in this moment when we had a movement, many movements saying if we don’t address this now, we are all going to die. And so it’s not about Joe Biden versus Bernie Sanders. It’s that we had millions of people in this country, begging everyone to listen to what we are saying. And they didn’t, and they didn’t listen. And I think that a prophet is not someone who can see the future. A prophet is someone who understands the present. And what we have done is we have scorned, shunned, shamed, made fun of the prophets of our time and we are going to pay a heavy, heavy price for not listening when we actually could have done something.
MK: I do hear you Jeremy. This moment for me, I’m questioning electoral-ism as an energy suck and as a vehicle for transformation. I understand that voting was a tactic of harm reduction. I don’t know. I think the energy that goes into these presidential campaigns, everybody’s focused on them, actually might be to the detriment of the work that needs to be getting done for our survival on a bigger scale. I know what the Democratic Party is for me. They don’t represent me. Like, I’m not their constituency in the least. And like, as the years have gone on, I’m less and less and less that for them. They don’t need to listen to me. I’m not their audience. And they definitely don’t cater to my politics and my politic. And as that’s becoming clearer and clearer to me, I’m just wondering, what else is there for us to be doing? If we’re going to engage in electoral organizing, what does it mean to do that work? What should we be focusing on and pushing? Can we be using the resources that are devoted to this in different kinds of ways?
What’s clear to me in this cycle and in the cycles that have come before is that most people aren’t paying attention to policy. They’re just not. And I don’t know that political education over the course of just a year shifts that markedly enough. For me, it makes no sense. Honestly, I’ve just been thinking about it more and more. We’ve got a pandemic right now. And that everybody hasn’t turned on a dime and said, approve Medicare for All, free at the point of use. I mean, look, I don’t understand how that’s possible, right? But it’s clear that something, there’s a disconnect somewhere. I think this question of normalcy is so strong, maybe we don’t quite grapple with that enough. Maybe we haven’t actually understood like, what that does, the seduction of saying that people yeah, 10 years ago was the norm and normal for you. And that means that you’re now wanting to go right back to that moment as things are more chaotic for you in the world, just conversations I’ve had with people who I love, and they’re just unwilling to move from: “We just got to get back to the Obama years. I hear you, you know, we just have to get back to that, I don’t care.” You know, we have to contend with that if we want to do the work that I think both of you and myself are committed to in the world.
JS: I think that one of the things that has been remarkable to watch is that so many people whose work exists outside of the horse race, Democrat, Republican primary every four years, every two-year election is that regardless of the outcome, people like yourself, and so many social movements, they’re going to continue doing their work. The Sanders’s campaign represented an attempt to engage these issues and demand these agendas be taken seriously through the state’s lens of how power is wielded.
I think that what this, unfortunately, has shown us is that if the choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this system is rotten to the core, and many people already knew that, and they hoped against hope that maybe, maybe, just maybe they could convince enough people in this country of the dire emergency that they witness in their at-risk communities every day that we could actually win at the state’s game. But the state is fierce in protecting its own interest, and the amount of money that is spent just to get a couple of votes. I mean, the per-vote dollar amount is a crime against humanity, how much money is spent just to win one vote in this country through ads, and robocalls and all of that. It’s just a colossal waste of money that could be immediately used to address human need.
MK: I agree with you on so much about what you just said around the fact that so many folks who joined the Sanders’s campaign weren’t necessarily even joining it to push Bernie Sanders, but have a vision, are already embedded in movements. There’s something here about this moment where the campaign actually can pivot to using all of the resources that it has marshaled, which are human resources, which are ideas, which are people, the networks that have been built could be transformed in this moment towards supporting the work that’s happening to help people and to address people’s material needs in this moment of this pandemic. And knowing some of the folks who are affiliated with that campaign, I have no doubt that that’s being thought of right now.
And so all I say is that oftentimes we can feel despondent in the moment, obviously with good reason the money, organized money is definitely against us, all we have is organized people and right now we’re not very organized as people. It’s tempting to be seduced into a sense of not just frustration and anger, that’s normal and right, you know, rage all fine, but a sense of despondency that I worry about. And I’m thinking a lot about how this campaign can actually help people to feel less despondent by providing new avenues for people to channel their energy in this moment.
So there’s stuff that we can’t even imagine, you know, they say what was at the Henry Adams quote, a teacher affects eternity. They never know where their influence ends. I think that’s really true about movement work. And that’s really true about even electoral organizing campaigns. We don’t know where the influence is going to end. And all these young folks and other people who have been mobilized over the last couple of years of that campaign to do all this work have skills. They have skills they have like concrete things that they can use and turn around and actually put to good use in this moment.
JS: Explain the organizing principle of mutual aid, what it is, but also how you and others are utilizing it during this pandemic.
MK: Basically, its cooperation for the sake of the common good, is what people have used as a large frame around this. Over 100 years ago, a Russian kind of zoologists/philosopher named Kropotkin [wrote] a book called “Mutual Aid” that was really focused on the fact that as the human race and the species, we have to cooperate with each other in order to survive that, you know, and it was kind of a push back to Darwinism which was taking over in terms of the scientific and philosophical fields of life. We are interdependent. That’s the only way human beings have been able to survive. And so we have to take that seriously in order to be able to preserve our survival. So that has gotten taken, that concept, that idea as characterized in that specific way, by him by anarchists for generations. [A] lot of the way that I came to mutual aid work was through friends of mine who were anarchists who were doing things like writing to incarcerated people, Food Not Bombs. So these are things that people may know of and hear of and think, oh, OK, yeah, that makes sense.
The second aspect of mutual aid has always been tied to organizing for systemic and structural change. If we could get people together to address their own needs, we ask the question of how can people be in power to meet their own needs. Through those relationships that get built, we’re creating new social relations that we’re going to need into the future to disrupt the structural violences and oppression in the systems. Particularly in this moment when the presidential election can feel so oppressive and passive at the same time, it’s out of our hands, all we can really do at this point is to obsess actively consume news about every last detail, every last thing that’s going on. But meanwhile, people are feeling more and more passive, less and less engaged, more and more depressed.
So what mutual aid says is no, we can make the most difference locally, which is where we live, you know, we live locally, even though we’re within a global space in a global world, right? And so we can actually coordinate to provide survival needs for each other. And that coordination actually mobilizes us also to then be able to respond to how our landlords and our employers and how the people at the local level or our politicians how they’re operating and allows us to build power so that we can actually be in a position to directly respond to them who have the most immediate impact on our lives on a daily basis. So right now, with this pandemic, I think people are just kind of watching things go sideways, and getting further and further anxious and worried and demobilized as a result of it.
So mutual aid says actually plug yourself in, however, you can. Find out whether you can coordinate some fundraising for people who are out of work. How can you be advocating for what I talked about at the beginning for the release of prisoners and incarcerated people, figuring out who is isolated just in your community, in the house next door? Are there elderly people who need support, who need somebody to go grocery shopping for them, who needs somebody to take them to the hospital, not because they’re, you know, infected with the coronavirus, but because they desperately need to go and get their heart tests or something else that’s going on. How do we make sure that people have enough to eat in terms of their groceries? And how do we — all that stuff is mutual aid work.
If people don’t know what that looks like, in actual reality, I want them to think of Occupy Sandy. If people remember what happened here with Hurricane Sandy in 2012, specifically, where, you know, the local government, the state government left people on their own. It ended up being other people who stepped up to literally remove debris from people’s backyards to ensure that people could get food and supplies and needed things. And what that showed us, right, was, think about where that came from the networks that were built to respond to the disaster of Hurricane Sandy, those came out of the networks that were built to occupy wall street, that movement. Those folks came right back together when needed to actually come up with a people’s response to this disaster that had occurred for people in their lives. So there have been just a history of that, of people who share resources, who figure out who’s vulnerable in the community, and then go and support that.
So in a pandemic, that’s harder because we have to practice these social distancing measures. We have to figure out, make sure we do all of this in a safe manner to not put ourselves at risk, and therefore put our own families at risk as well. But there really are effective measures that we can take to actually do that.
And right now, some of the effective measures that people are taking is creating things like neighborhood pods — PODS — creating neighborhood networks on Slack channels, to make sure they can check on each other and figure out who needs help the most vulnerable people. Folks are doing all sorts of really creative things to try to figure out how to make sure that their communities are safe and they’re safe in those communities. We just have a lot of opportunity right now, I think, to help ourselves and help each other along the way if we don’t succumb to the fear, if we don’t succumb to the despondency that comes from looking at how things are operating and not operating at the federal level, we’re really all we’ve got.
JS: Explain the idea behind your redistribution fund and the kinds of efforts that you set it up to support.
MK: Yes, thank you for asking about it. You know, I’m that kind of person, as you can imagine, where I try to think about where is it that I can uniquely help? What can I be doing? And not just what can I be doing, but what can I ask other people to join in to do with me so we can do it together. How do we engage together? How do we get a sense of solidarity going? I also always think about who’s already doing work that we ought to be supporting, for God’s sake? So many people doing such incredible work that need resources that aren’t tied to any billionaires that aren’t even nonprofit organizations, but are collectives and groups that are unaffiliated with anybody, but are just in their neighborhoods trying to do the best they can for each other. Those are groups that almost never get resourced to do the work they’re doing. They are just cobbling it together through the skin of their teeth and their own sweat and their hands and all the stuff that it takes to be able to do that.
And you know, for a group like that, an infusion of $1,000 is the difference between being able to pay somebody to put the gas in their car, so they don’t have to do it themselves, giving somebody a Metro Card so that they can go around, being able to go to the grocery store right away and just buy stuff for people who need it. Friend of mine was saying, putting on Facebook, that a young person that we’re working with needed $25 to go and get the prescription for her grandmother, could anybody support that? You know, these kinds of things that make a difference in the immediate needs — relief that people need in the moment. So I wanted to find a way like what’s a fast way? And frankly, for me, because I’ve been plugged into work for a long time, I know a lot of folks around the country. I hear about what’s going on, friends of mine reach out and are like, hey, we’re doing this thing right now. We need support. I hear a lot of those stories.
Also being on social media, I get so much information. So what I will do, what I said I would do with the redistribution fund would be if people are having a hard time figuring out where to put that money right now and frankly don’t have the time to be thinking about that as they’re just trying to meet their needs or taking care of their elderly parents or you know, homeschooling their children, that if they wanted to put the money into this PayPal pool, I would take the money and I would redistribute it out and I would be super transparent about where the money’s going, what’s come in, you can see it in the pool. And then what’s going out, I put in all the receipts of the money that’s gone to which places and I link to the actual projects. So that if people want to give on their own and didn’t trust, you know, for whatever reason which is totally fair, don’t trust that I’m [not] gonna take the money and abscond somewhere. I don’t know where I’ll go [laughs] but whatever, that they can give the money directly to the project themselves, as well.
I’ve been sharing that in the last two and a half days or three days, we’ve given away $20,000 to about 22 different mutual aid projects around the country. And we’ve given to like tons of states right now. So in the Midwest, in the South, on the East Coast, on the West Coast. I’m trying to make sure that we get regional diversity in terms of being able to support things, that we get diversity of vulnerable populations that are being helped. So we’ve given to projects that are giving money to queer writers of color, artists of color, but also groups that are supporting undocumented people, groups that are supporting, specifically African American and black folks around the country, groups that are supporting the elderly and people who have compromised immune systems, just every kind of different space that can use $1,000 or $1,500 and can do a lot with that money on a short notice without having to do a whole big application.
That’s what I’m trying to do with that redistribution fund. I did say that when it gets to $50,000, I think we’re about $10,000 away now, that I would have to close it down and figure out some other way of doing it because as you know, the government does not allow for people to be getting money without them taxing it in some way, and I think my accountant was like, if you get past $50,000 then you’re going to probably be on the hook for a bunch of taxes. So that’s where we’re at.
JS: I hesitate to ask this because of that situation, but I think it is vital, where can people, if people do want to contribute to this redistribution effort and mutual aid, is there a central place that they can look for information on this?
MK: You know, right now, I’m just really holding it down on my Twitter account, which is @prisonculture. But if people go to my page, then they can hook up and see it. And it’s been retweeted in different places as well. And also if people want to give, they can email, my email at jjinjustice1@gmail.com. And let me know and I can send them the link to the PayPal directly. That’s another option.
JS: So that’s jjinjustice1@gmail.com
MK: Yes, exactly.
JS: In particular, I want to ask you about something that Chuck Schumer, who is the top Democrat in the Senate, said, and I’m just gonna read you his tweets, he said, “What we’re proposing if you’re disabled or chronically ill, we would provide health care and support services in homes and communities, nutrition assistance, access to medications, caregiver support and a large increase in Medicaid funding. What we’re proposing if you’re a small business owner suddenly facing cash flow problems, we would allow you to apply for low-interest loans and other forms of financial assistance that can offer relief quickly.” Now, I grew up in a Catholic household being raised by liberation theology parents, and I knew from a very early age what usury is. This is the most despicable form of usury that I can imagine at a time of a pandemic, hey, we’re going to help you but you’re going to have to pay us to help you in interest.
MK: Can I just say, this is, I don’t want, you know, it’s so easy to beat up on the Democratic Party, particularly the centrist kind of establishment of that party. I’ll use the term establishment because right now a bunch of dis-ingenuousness is happening about that when people are saying the establishment, they mean the leadership, of course. When I saw that, and I saw that trending hashtag which was related to that, like yesterday or the day before, I just thought to myself, it’s just a complete lack of imagination that’s tied to craven attachment to neoliberal policy. Everything has to be means-tested. If we can’t just cut checks to people in this moment, when are we going to do it? When is the right time ever going to be for just cutting checks to people? I see people saying things like, I don’t need the thousand dollars, give it to someone else. Well, no, everybody should get the money and then we should tax the rich people to actually get the money for the commons, right? We should up the taxes on the people who can afford to pay the taxes. And make sure that other people have what they need in terms of material relief.
If you don’t need it, then give it away once you get it. I don’t want to have the government right now in the business of rationing. Give people money, #givepeoplemoney. That’s all. That is not hard. The government, the Fed is literally doing quantitative easing every other day right now. First, it’s $1.5 trillion, then it’s $500 billion, then it’s another $500 billion. No questions asked. Nowhere are we going to pay for this? How’s the money? You know what, maybe that’s even the correct thing to be doing right now. I don’t know, right? At the very least we ought to be doing on the other end, double that amount. If it is going to actually help individual people to survive, there should be no questions asked right now. I want a party that goes out there and just says give people money, cut the checks.
Can we get to that? How about the people’s bailout? Like, what can we all get on the same page? I was thinking about this the other day. What Bernie Sanders went out and said, every single American should get $2,000 a month until this thing is supposedly over, right? At least a year guarantee, $2,000 a month. What is that? What does that come to? $24,000? Who can live off of $24,000? Right, but that would be $24,000 more than a lot of people are going to have. This is a sensible thing. It’s a sensible thing. We should be doing that right now. And my question that I think we can leave with is, why aren’t we all pushing for people to just get the checks cut right now? Like can we all just agree on that? Can’t that be a demand? Like we could just on Friday, we could just decide this week, we’re going to do a #givepeoplemoney, people’s bailout. And we’re going to ask everybody around the country to take themselves or write something, or whatever saying what $2,000 a month would do for themselves and their family.
And just have, oh, like, what all of the social media possibilities Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, just telling those stories over and over again, tagging each member of Congress, calling them, writing to them, emailing to them, just that, can we do that for a week sustained, right? Like that’s something that actually can get done right now. Let’s get around a demand. Let’s get around a demand that is going to actually provide material relief for our people, that will allow them to breathe for enough time so that we can make them move for the future things that are going to come that need to happen. So that we can get towards the organizing for the larger systemic and structural change.
But people need money right now. People need things. People need food. People need shelter. Houseless people need opportunities to get out of the elements so that they don’t get sick. They’ve always needed that we’ve always needed these things. But now more than ever. So I want all of us to like, move in a direction together on at least one thing so we can see how we do and get encouragement from that for the next fight, to the next fight, to the next fight. And we can do it. I am not despondent. I remain hopeful, not optimistic, but hopeful, a different thing altogether, which is a discipline. You gotta keep doing it daily. It’s a practice.
JS: Well, you are extremely disciplined, Mariame Kaba, and I want to thank you for being you and for doing the work that you’re doing, and I hope a lot of people, check out the modeling that you’re doing for how they can replicate it in their communities with a keen eye to the people who are suffering the most and are the most vulnerable. Mariame Kaba, thanks so much for being with us.
MK: Thank you for having me.
JS: Mariame Kaba is an organizer and educator, a curator who is active in movements for racial, gender and transformative justice. Mariame is coordinating a mutual aid redistribution fund to get urgently needed aid to vulnerable communities and people. You can find more information and links on her Twitter feed. It’s simply @prisonculture.
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JS: And that does it for this show. You can follow us on Twitter @Intercepted and @interceptedpodcast on Instagram. I want to urge everybody to stay as safe as possible and please, please consider what you can do to help your friends, your neighbors, and especially those who are most vulnerable right now at this urgent and dire moment.
Intercepted is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our lead producer is Jack D’Isidoro. Our producer is Laura Flynn. Elise Swain is our associate producer and graphic designer. Betsy Reed is editor in chief of The Intercept. Rick Kwan mixed the show. Transcription for this program is done by Nuria Marquez Martinez. Our music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky. Until next time, I’m Jeremy Scahill.