theintercept--2020-12-30--Reality Winner Endures Holiday Hardships as Advocates Turn to Biden for Reprieve

before Christmas , National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner ’ s family got together to decorate their homes and celebrate the birth of her sister ’ s new baby .
For Winner , the young Air Force veteran , the holiday brought a different sort of gathering : Her federal prison in Fort Worth , Texas , had yet another Covid-19 outbreak , prompting her unit to go into lockdown .
The restrictions meant that there were no religious services for the incarcerated women to attend .
Likewise , Winner would miss out on much of her holiday mail .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing to a gift that Winner gets her hands on — her friend and advocate Wendy Meer Collins said they mean “ everything ” to her — but many letters were being rejected by her prison for what her mother , Billie Winner-Davis , said appeared to be objections as capricious as being typed rather than handwritten .
Leading up to the holiday season , Winner had even lost her phone privileges for a month after hugging a fellow incarcerated person on a day she was battling severe anxiety , a move that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy , according to her mother .
Though the privileges were restored on Christmas Day , Winner spent much of the holiday season losing touch with the outside world .
The communication breakdowns marked a tough end of year for Winner .
She lost a series of legal cases for compassionate release amid the coronavirus pandemic and seemed increasingly unlikely to be granted clemency by President Donald Trump .
After all , the document she allegedly released to the public — for which she received the longest-ever Espionage Act sentence for a leak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interference in U.S. elections , a Trump bête noire .
( The NSA report detailed phishing attacks by Russian military intelligence on local U.S. election officials and was published in a June 2017 article by The Intercept , whose parent company , First Look Media , contributed to Winner ’ s legal fund through the Press Freedom Defense Fund . )
Things could look up in the Biden administration — her allies were beginning a push for early release under the new government , with some signs of hope — but Winner was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vagaries of incarceration and missing the things she loved most .
The Winner family usually spends a whole day together in the kitchen to bake Christmas cookies , but during lockdown , she had to rely on meals delivered to her unit .
The meals often weren ’ t plant-based , her mother said , defying Winner to choose between sustenance and keeping a diet she maintains for ethical and health reasons , stemming from an eating disorder that developed during her time working in the drone program .
As Winner endured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned across America ’ s vast carceral state , Trump issued a flurry of pardons to his wealthy cronies and politically connected defendants .
Some of the beneficiaries included former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort , who was convicted of tax and bank fraud ; the father-in-law of Trump ’ s daughter Ivanka , Charles Kushner , who served prison time for tax evasion and attempting to blackmail his own brother-in-law , a federal witness ; and former Blackwater contractors imprisoned for massacring Iraqi civilians .
Collins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to raise awareness of the whistleblower ’ s harsh sentence , said the pardons highlight the injustices reserved for the powerless : “ These people were out to harm .
Reality Winner was out to help.
” of confinement left in her record-breaking sentence for whistleblowing and a series of recent defeats in the justice system , Winner ’ s supporters are reinvigorating her campaign for a pardon or clemency .
And , in a recent boost , several influential parties have joined their ranks .
Seeking to get Winner into home confinement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — something that would not only have brought peace of mind to her and her family but that also was in line with pandemic policy guidance to prisons from then-Attorney General William Barr — her defense team looked to the courts .
When a federal judge declined to hear her bid for compassionate release in April , he ominously said that her prison , officially a medical facility , would be “ presumably better equipped than most to deal with any onset of Covid-19 in its inmates.
” Just four days after that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death of an incarcerated person from the disease .
Winner ’ s compassionate release appeal languished as the virus surged in her prison , claiming six incarcerated people ’ s lives and infecting hundreds of women , including Winner , by July .
A three-judge appeals panel that included two Trump appointees heard her case , brought pro bono by attorney Baruch Weiss , and , earlier this month , upheld the lower court ’ s decision .
But they equivocated on whether the nonviolent offender who had already served the lion ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to spend the rest of the pandemic behind bars .
“ [ T ] here will be occasions in which we affirm the district court even though we would have gone the other way had it been our call , ” Judge Beverly Martin wrote , citing an applicable past ruling .
Alison Grinter , Winner ’ s Dallas-based attorney , saw some redemption in that hand-wringing statement .
“ I think that nobody ’ s really eager to say , ‘ Here ’ s a woman that belongs in prison , ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cool , I guess , but not a lot of comfort to a woman who ’ s in prison.
” FMC Carswell , the facility where Winner is held , and the Bureau of Prisons did not respond to written questions from The Intercept about Winner ’ s food , access to religious services , mail delivery , and the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine in her prison .
However , some people in federal detention reportedly began receiving the vaccine in late December , and Winner ’ s mother says some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first vaccinations .
have spurned her requests , a diverse array of political actors called on the incoming Biden administration to turn its pardon power on an Air Force veteran who been given the most severe punishment by the federal justice system for whistleblowing to the media , an act that the government acknowledges was done with the intent to send it to journalists , and therefore warn the American public , rather than for personal gain .
In December , Michigan Rep. Justin Amash , a libertarian , became the first sitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to receive clemency , calling her punishment “ unjust ” because of the “ the abusive application of the Espionage Act , ” the World War I-era legislation used to prosecute her and similar defendants , even though they share information not with foreign adversaries but with the U.S. public .
Shortly after that , Republican J. William Leonard , a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and former director of the Information Security Oversight Office — the “ secrecy czar ” responsible for overseeing classification procedures during the George W. Bush presidency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s first pardon when he takes office .
In a Washington Post op-ed , he wrote that the public interest of Winner ’ s actions “ far outweigh [ s ] any claims of damage ” by the government .
“ At a time when this sacred process of our democracy is being attacked by party partisans , the ability of local , state and federal government officials to attest to the security of our election process has a profound impact upon the well-being of our nation and its democratic institutions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these same officials first became aware of the vulnerability of our elections only after Winner ’ s leak to the media.
” At least one incoming member of Biden ’ s Cabinet has expressed support for Winner .
His nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget , Neera Tanden , wrote about Winner on Twitter in 2018 , asking : “ Has everyone just forgotten this woman is languishing in jail ?
” Marianne Williamson , a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination , frequently calls for Winner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And , in an unexpected twist , former Trump confidant-turned-informant Michael Cohen has also become a supporter , telling Business Insider it would be part of his atonement for his former support of the president .
A military advocacy group , Military Families Speak Out , has also joined the fray , planning a letter-writing campaign around the inauguration to get her name on the president ’ s radar .
“ We believe Reality did what she believed was right and acted in defense of her country , which is what our troops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alviso , Military Families Speak Out ’ s national coordinator , said in a statement .
“ Her continued imprisonment sends a message to all military families , and that is : When your loved one comes home , our government is not going to protect them or give them the slightest consideration they deserve.
” leading Winner ’ s social media campaign , thinks the time is right for a broad coalition to back Winner ’ s bid for clemency or a pardon , since even national security hawks can say that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the veteran has served enough time .
Looking ahead to the inauguration , Collins said , “ Two weeks before , we ’ re going to hit it as hard as we ’ ve ever hit it.
” Grinter , the attorney , is optimistic that the administration will listen to her campaigners .
“ I believe that a pardon for Reality , or at the very least commutation for Reality , will be something that we ’ ll see before the spring.
” Even as she looks to the 46th president , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of the tools in her kit to also target the current one .
“ I continue to come to write to the White House every single day , asking for her release , ” Winner-Davis said .
“ Even though people tell me that Trump is not going to do this , I can ’ t stop asking .
This is my daughter ’ s life .
”

In the days before Christmas, National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner’s family got together to decorate their homes and celebrate the birth of her sister’s new baby. For Winner, the young Air Force veteran, the holiday brought a different sort of gathering: Her federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, had yet another Covid-19 outbreak, prompting her unit to go into lockdown.
The restrictions meant that there were no religious services for the incarcerated women to attend. Likewise, Winner would miss out on much of her holiday mail. Letters from her supporters are the closest thing to a gift that Winner gets her hands on — her friend and advocate Wendy Meer Collins said they mean “everything” to her — but many letters were being rejected by her prison for what her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said appeared to be objections as capricious as being typed rather than handwritten.
Leading up to the holiday season, Winner had even lost her phone privileges for a month after hugging a fellow incarcerated person on a day she was battling severe anxiety, a move that violated the prison’s unauthorized contact policy, according to her mother. Though the privileges were restored on Christmas Day, Winner spent much of the holiday season losing touch with the outside world.
The communication breakdowns marked a tough end of year for Winner. She lost a series of legal cases for compassionate release amid the coronavirus pandemic and seemed increasingly unlikely to be granted clemency by President Donald Trump. After all, the document she allegedly released to the public — for which she received the longest-ever Espionage Act sentence for a leak to the media — was about Russian interference in U.S. elections, a Trump bête noire. (The NSA report detailed phishing attacks by Russian military intelligence on local U.S. election officials and was published in a June 2017 article by The Intercept, whose parent company, First Look Media, contributed to Winner’s legal fund through the Press Freedom Defense Fund.)
Things could look up in the Biden administration — her allies were beginning a push for early release under the new government, with some signs of hope — but Winner was, for the moment, dealing with the vagaries of incarceration and missing the things she loved most.
The Winner family usually spends a whole day together in the kitchen to bake Christmas cookies, but during lockdown, she had to rely on meals delivered to her unit. The meals often weren’t plant-based, her mother said, defying Winner to choose between sustenance and keeping a diet she maintains for ethical and health reasons, stemming from an eating disorder that developed during her time working in the drone program.
“These people were out to harm. Reality Winner was out to help.”
As Winner endured especially poignant daily hardships, along with the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned across America’s vast carceral state, Trump issued a flurry of pardons to his wealthy cronies and politically connected defendants. Some of the beneficiaries included former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who was convicted of tax and bank fraud; the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Charles Kushner, who served prison time for tax evasion and attempting to blackmail his own brother-in-law, a federal witness; and former Blackwater contractors imprisoned for massacring Iraqi civilians.
Collins, who leads a social media campaign to raise awareness of the whistleblower’s harsh sentence, said the pardons highlight the injustices reserved for the powerless: “These people were out to harm. Reality Winner was out to help.”
With a year of confinement left in her record-breaking sentence for whistleblowing and a series of recent defeats in the justice system, Winner’s supporters are reinvigorating her campaign for a pardon or clemency. And, in a recent boost, several influential parties have joined their ranks.
Seeking to get Winner into home confinement in the early weeks of the pandemic — something that would not only have brought peace of mind to her and her family but that also was in line with pandemic policy guidance to prisons from then-Attorney General William Barr — her defense team looked to the courts. When a federal judge declined to hear her bid for compassionate release in April, he ominously said that her prison, officially a medical facility, would be “presumably better equipped than most to deal with any onset of Covid-19 in its inmates.” Just four days after that statement, the prison recorded the first death of an incarcerated person from the disease.
Winner’s compassionate release appeal languished as the virus surged in her prison, claiming six incarcerated people’s lives and infecting hundreds of women, including Winner, by July. A three-judge appeals panel that included two Trump appointees heard her case, brought pro bono by attorney Baruch Weiss, and, earlier this month, upheld the lower court’s decision. But they equivocated on whether the nonviolent offender who had already served the lion’s share of her sentence really needed to spend the rest of the pandemic behind bars.
“[T]here will be occasions in which we affirm the district court even though we would have gone the other way had it been our call,” Judge Beverly Martin wrote, citing an applicable past ruling.
Alison Grinter, Winner’s Dallas-based attorney, saw some redemption in that hand-wringing statement. “I think that nobody’s really eager to say, ‘Here’s a woman that belongs in prison,’” Grinter said. “That’s cool, I guess, but not a lot of comfort to a woman who’s in prison.”
FMC Carswell, the facility where Winner is held, and the Bureau of Prisons did not respond to written questions from The Intercept about Winner’s food, access to religious services, mail delivery, and the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine in her prison. However, some people in federal detention reportedly began receiving the vaccine in late December, and Winner’s mother says some people at her facility are among the first vaccinations.
Even as courts have spurned her requests, a diverse array of political actors called on the incoming Biden administration to turn its pardon power on an Air Force veteran who been given the most severe punishment by the federal justice system for whistleblowing to the media, an act that the government acknowledges was done with the intent to send it to journalists, and therefore warn the American public, rather than for personal gain.
In December, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian, became the first sitting member of Congress to call for Winner to receive clemency, calling her punishment “unjust” because of the “the abusive application of the Espionage Act,” the World War I-era legislation used to prosecute her and similar defendants, even though they share information not with foreign adversaries but with the U.S. public.
Shortly after that, Republican J. William Leonard, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and former director of the Information Security Oversight Office — the “secrecy czar” responsible for overseeing classification procedures during the George W. Bush presidency — said that Winner should be Joe Biden’s first pardon when he takes office. In a Washington Post op-ed, he wrote that the public interest of Winner’s actions “far outweigh[s] any claims of damage” by the government.
“At a time when this sacred process of our democracy is being attacked by party partisans, the ability of local, state and federal government officials to attest to the security of our election process has a profound impact upon the well-being of our nation and its democratic institutions,” Leonard wrote. “Many of these same officials first became aware of the vulnerability of our elections only after Winner’s leak to the media.”
At least one incoming member of Biden’s Cabinet has expressed support for Winner. His nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, wrote about Winner on Twitter in 2018, asking: “Has everyone just forgotten this woman is languishing in jail?”
Marianne Williamson, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls for Winner’s release on social media. And, in an unexpected twist, former Trump confidant-turned-informant Michael Cohen has also become a supporter, telling Business Insider it would be part of his atonement for his former support of the president.
“We believe Reality did what she believed was right and acted in defense of her country, which is what our troops are trained to do.”
A military advocacy group, Military Families Speak Out, has also joined the fray, planning a letter-writing campaign around the inauguration to get her name on the president’s radar.
“We believe Reality did what she believed was right and acted in defense of her country, which is what our troops are trained to do,” Pat Alviso, Military Families Speak Out’s national coordinator, said in a statement. “Her continued imprisonment sends a message to all military families, and that is: When your loved one comes home, our government is not going to protect them or give them the slightest consideration they deserve.”
Collins, the advocate leading Winner’s social media campaign, thinks the time is right for a broad coalition to back Winner’s bid for clemency or a pardon, since even national security hawks can say that, after three-and-a-half years behind bars, the veteran has served enough time.
Looking ahead to the inauguration, Collins said, “Two weeks before, we’re going to hit it as hard as we’ve ever hit it.”
Grinter, the attorney, is optimistic that the administration will listen to her campaigners. “I believe that a pardon for Reality, or at the very least commutation for Reality, will be something that we’ll see before the spring.”
Even as she looks to the 46th president, Winner’s mother is still using all of the tools in her kit to also target the current one.
“I continue to come to write to the White House every single day, asking for her release,” Winner-Davis said. “Even though people tell me that Trump is not going to do this, I can’t stop asking. This is my daughter’s life.”


theintercept--2020-12-31--Biden’s “Cabinet of Firsts” Betrays a Cynical Approach to Diversity

has made diversity the watchword for the formation of his incoming administration .
From his pick of Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate to his mission to assemble “ a Cabinet of barrier-breakers , a Cabinet of firsts , ” it ’ s evident that Biden ’ s emphasis on diversity is his opening bid to secure a historic presidential legacy before he ’ s even taken office .
On paper , this agenda is laudable .
But in practice , Biden has at times demonstrated a thoughtless and vulgar attitude toward diversity , one that degrades its meaning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can use the language of multiculturalism without taking bold steps to help marginalized people .
The increasing salience of antiracist practices and optics in blue America is driving much of Biden ’ s attention to achieving historic levels of diversity among his personnel .
Over the course of the Trump era , the Democratic Party ’ s commitment to inclusiveness of marginalized communities intensified in response to the emergence of mainstream white nationalist politics .
After the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of a new wave of Black Lives Matter protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developed a more pronounced interest in thinking of institutional staffing and leadership as critical sites for elevating Black voices .
And voters of color played a crucial — and conspicuous — role in Biden ’ s victory on Election Day .
Yet the president-elect ’ s actual execution of his promise to make history with diversity has ranged from questionable to cynical .
Many of the most influential and prized positions in the White House , like chief of staff , have gone to the typical lot of white men that embody Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been haphazard in his job offerings to people of color .
On multiple occasions , Biden offered Cabinet positions to women of color that plainly function as consolation prizes , after declining to give them jobs they ’ re interested in and qualified for .
While some of Biden ’ s personnel decisions deserve praise , and the process of nominating Cabinet secretaries is still ongoing , his understanding of diversity too often appears to be sterilized and gamified .
Diverse appointments seem to be reduced to quotas and fodder for bragging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy that actually shapes marginalized communities is neglected .
The result is a conflation of diversity with physical appearance , unmoored from the substantive reasons that diversity enriches the institutions embracing it .
to diversity can be seen in his choices for top White House staff .
Key personnel like incoming chief of staff Ron Klain , deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed , counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti , and national security adviser Jake Sullivan are white men who have worked with Biden before .
They are , broadly speaking , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendencies .
( Other senior staff positions in the White House also skew notably white and male . )
It ’ s difficult to overstate how critical a president ’ s inner circle of advisers is .
Historian Richard Norton Smith once observed that “ every president reveals himself by the presidential portraits he hangs in the Roosevelt Room , and by the person he picks as his chief of staff.
” A president ’ s top advisers play an indispensable role in shaping their worldview , determining who has access to them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The senior staff will often literally be in the room to counsel a president as they make many of the defining decisions of their presidency .
A true diversity fanatic would consider this set of personnel a key opportunity to use diverse backgrounds to guard against groupthink and to grapple with the rapidly shifting contours of American politics as the neoliberal consensus crumbles .
Biden has largely elected not to do so .
Biden ’ s handling of his Cabinet selection has also raised red flags .
Marcia Fudge , a prominent Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ openly angling for heading the Department of Agriculture .
Fudge ’ s congressional career has placed a great deal of focus on agriculture and SNAP benefits , or food stamps , which are a primary responsibility of the Agriculture Department .
Biden , though , offered the agriculture secretary job to Tom Vilsack : a white man who held the exact position throughout the Obama administration and has since become a lobbyist for corporate agricultural interests loathed by many American farmers .
Fudge was then offered up the position of secretary for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a gig which , as Vanessa A. Bee put it for The Intercept , has long been seen as the “ short straw ” of Cabinet positions — and one which Fudge has no particular qualifications for .
Indeed , Fudge explicitly said in November that she believed Black leaders were pigeonholed into HUD .
Moreover , the pick also gives the short shrift to HUD itself , an agency that provides housing assistance vital to the welfare of many communities of color and would benefit from an expert executive who can hit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A similar ill-fitting , consolation-prize dynamic arose , David Dayen pointed out in The American Prospect , when Michelle Lujan Grisham , the Latina governor of New Mexico , was offered a position she had no interest in : secretary of the interior .
The Biden team wanted to give her something instead of her desired post of secretary of health and human services , a position her previous role as secretary of health for New Mexico gave her experience for .
Grisham turned the Interior job down .
The drama around the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though .
Biden ’ s team gave anonymous quotes to the media to try to swat down the popular candidacy of Rep. Deb Haaland , a Native American progressive and a well-rounded pick for the job .
Haaland was enthusiastically supported by dozens of tribal leaders and organizations representing Indian Country , and received vocal support from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress .
Biden ’ s team , though , seemed to favor another Native American candidate — Michael Connor , a former Interior official who then went on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appear to garner support from the Native communities he ’ d be engaging with on the job or generate much excitement in Congress .
Biden eventually decided to concede to the enthusiasm surrounding Haaland and picked her — and deserves credit for it — but in the absence of popular pressure , it seems unlikely that it would ’ ve happened , especially if the Cabinet position was a higher profile one .
Then there was Biden ’ s decision to assign Susan Rice , one of the most prominent foreign policy figures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House ’ s Domestic Policy Council , appearing to be another example of the incoming administration trying to awkwardly shoehorn women of color into ill-fitting jobs .
Domestic policy is not only outside of Rice ’ s wheelhouse , it ’ s a position where many other individuals of color or women could have taken the reins more naturally .
Why would a national security vet be the best option for coordinating policy on racial injustice , immigration , health care , and combating the coronavirus pandemic ?
Biden chose to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stocking up on nonwhite and nonmale personnel — where they can be squeezed in — over meaningful diversity .
isn ’ t that any specific individual deserves a specific job ; the reality is that there are nearly always a number of viable candidates across different demographic backgrounds who are qualified for leadership positions .
It ’ s that jamming people of color into positions they don ’ t care for and perhaps don ’ t have appropriate experience for is both policy malpractice and poor optics .
It debases the jobs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of nonwhite faces .
If you really believe in the payoffs of diversity — the organizational and policy benefits to be reaped from embracing variation in experience , social power , community background , information networks , career path , ideology , and more in staffing — then you would seek to set people up to succeed with your nominations .
Biden ’ s maneuvering should be seen as a symptom of a broader malady afflicting liberal political culture .
Major newspapers have created incentives for crude face-counting with white-guy quotas and shamefully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purely on identity .
A crucial part of this ecosystem is congressional caucuses and advocacy groups that reductively insist a specific position must be filled by someone of their preferred marginalized community , and then decline to couple those demands with any kind of policy commitment or meaningful program .
An example of how this produces a rather backwards worldview can be seen in the way Politico reported on Biden ’ s pick for secretary of defense as purely a matter of choosing between a Black man or a woman , while neglecting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provide insights into how they would govern their department .
These trends in our political culture have a way of distracting us from discussion of ideology entirely — and it is advantageous for a figure like Biden , who would rather keep the spotlight on quotas than reckon with the widening ideological rift between moderates and progressives in the Democratic Party .
A true commitment to diversity that would fulfill Biden ’ s oft-stated commitment to fostering unity might have pursued a Lincoln-esque team of rivals : the assembly of a Cabinet that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the party .
Instead , skirmishes over candidates ’ identities have helped distract from the fact that Biden ’ s Cabinet , with a handful of exceptions , has so far been fairly moderate and not to the liking of left-wing leaders .
Nowhere was the power of substituting identity for ideology more evident than Biden ’ s vice presidential pick : After a summer of protests , Biden addressed concerns about racism in the American criminal justice system by choosing a Black former prosecutor with a particularly harsh record .
It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diversity in government leadership .
As a matter of principle , having an administration that demographically mirrors the population is a positive symbol of commitment to multiracial democracy .
And diversity of backgrounds enhances a government ’ s ability to understand its citizenry , contemplate complex challenges , and adopt a pluralist attitude toward addressing its problems .
When diversity is treated as an expedient tactic in a game or a weapon of distraction , its purpose is unraveled .

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP
President-elect Joe Biden has made diversity the watchword for the formation of his incoming administration. From his pick of Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate to his mission to assemble “a Cabinet of barrier-breakers, a Cabinet of firsts,” it’s evident that Biden’s emphasis on diversity is his opening bid to secure a historic presidential legacy before he’s even taken office.
On paper, this agenda is laudable. But in practice, Biden has at times demonstrated a thoughtless and vulgar attitude toward diversity, one that degrades its meaning and purpose — and illustrates how Democrats can use the language of multiculturalism without taking bold steps to help marginalized people.
Biden has at times demonstrated a thoughtless and vulgar attitude toward diversity, one that degrades its meaning and purpose.
The increasing salience of antiracist practices and optics in blue America is driving much of Biden’s attention to achieving historic levels of diversity among his personnel. Over the course of the Trump era, the Democratic Party’s commitment to inclusiveness of marginalized communities intensified in response to the emergence of mainstream white nationalist politics. After the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of a new wave of Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, liberals and the left developed a more pronounced interest in thinking of institutional staffing and leadership as critical sites for elevating Black voices. And voters of color played a crucial — and conspicuous — role in Biden’s victory on Election Day.
Yet the president-elect’s actual execution of his promise to make history with diversity has ranged from questionable to cynical. Many of the most influential and prized positions in the White House, like chief of staff, have gone to the typical lot of white men that embody Democratic establishment thinking. In contrast, Biden has been haphazard in his job offerings to people of color. On multiple occasions, Biden offered Cabinet positions to women of color that plainly function as consolation prizes, after declining to give them jobs they’re interested in and qualified for.
While some of Biden’s personnel decisions deserve praise, and the process of nominating Cabinet secretaries is still ongoing, his understanding of diversity too often appears to be sterilized and gamified. Diverse appointments seem to be reduced to quotas and fodder for bragging rights, and in the process, policy that actually shapes marginalized communities is neglected. The result is a conflation of diversity with physical appearance, unmoored from the substantive reasons that diversity enriches the institutions embracing it.
Biden’s uneven attention to diversity can be seen in his choices for top White House staff. Key personnel like incoming chief of staff Ron Klain, deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan are white men who have worked with Biden before. They are, broadly speaking, moderate and corporate-friendly Democrats with some conservative tendencies. (Other senior staff positions in the White House also skew notably white and male.)
It’s difficult to overstate how critical a president’s inner circle of advisers is. Historian Richard Norton Smith once observed that “every president reveals himself by the presidential portraits he hangs in the Roosevelt Room, and by the person he picks as his chief of staff.” A president’s top advisers play an indispensable role in shaping their worldview, determining who has access to them, and executing their political agenda. The senior staff will often literally be in the room to counsel a president as they make many of the defining decisions of their presidency. A true diversity fanatic would consider this set of personnel a key opportunity to use diverse backgrounds to guard against groupthink and to grapple with the rapidly shifting contours of American politics as the neoliberal consensus crumbles. Biden has largely elected not to do so.
Biden’s handling of his Cabinet selection has also raised red flags. Marcia Fudge, a prominent Black member of Congress from Ohio, was openly angling to head the Department of Agriculture. Fudge’s congressional career has placed a great deal of focus on agriculture and SNAP benefits, or food stamps, which are a primary responsibility of the Agriculture Department. Biden, though, gave the agriculture secretary job to Tom Vilsack: a white man who held the exact position throughout the Obama administration and has since become a lobbyist for corporate agricultural interests loathed by many American farmers. Fudge was then offered the position of secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a gig which, as Vanessa A. Bee put it for The Intercept, has long been seen as the “short straw” of Cabinet positions — and one which Fudge has no particular qualifications for. Indeed, Fudge explicitly said in November that she believed Black leaders were pigeonholed into HUD.
Moreover, the pick also gives the short shrift to HUD itself, an agency that provides housing assistance vital to the welfare of many communities of color and would benefit from an expert executive who can hit the ground running on day one.
A similar ill-fitting, consolation-prize dynamic arose, David Dayen pointed out in The American Prospect, when Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Latina governor of New Mexico, was offered a position she had no interest in: interior secretary. The Biden team wanted to give her something instead of her desired post of secretary of health and human services, a position her previous role as secretary of health for New Mexico gave her experience for. Grisham turned the Interior job down.
The drama around the Interior Department pick did not end there, though. Biden’s team gave anonymous quotes to the media to try to swat down the popular candidacy of Rep. Deb Haaland, a Native American progressive and a well-rounded pick for the job. Haaland was enthusiastically supported by dozens of tribal leaders and organizations representing Indian Country, and received vocal support from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress. Biden’s team, though, seemed to favor another Native American candidate — Michael Connor, a former Interior official who then went on to represent mining interests and did not appear to garner support from the Native communities he’d be engaging with on the job or generate much excitement in Congress. Biden eventually decided to concede to the enthusiasm surrounding Haaland and picked her — and deserves credit for it — but in the absence of popular pressure, it seems unlikely that it would’ve happened, especially if the Cabinet position was a higher-profile one.
Then there was Biden’s decision to assign Susan Rice, one of the most prominent foreign policy figures of the Obama era, to run the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, appearing to be another example of the incoming administration trying to awkwardly shoehorn women of color into ill-fitting jobs. Domestic policy is not only outside of Rice’s wheelhouse, but also a position where many other individuals of color or women could have taken the reins more naturally. Why would a national security vet be the best option for coordinating policy on racial injustice, immigration, health care, and combating the coronavirus pandemic? Biden chose to value some combination of personal connections and stocking up on nonwhite and nonmale personnel — where they can be squeezed in — over meaningful diversity.
The takeaway here isn’t that any specific individual deserves a specific job; the reality is that there are nearly always a number of viable candidates across different demographic backgrounds who are qualified for leadership positions. It’s that jamming people of color into positions they don’t care for and perhaps don’t have appropriate experience for is both policy malpractice and poor optics. It debases the jobs and makes diversity look like a crude tally of nonwhite faces. If you really believe in the payoffs of diversity — the organizational and policy benefits to be reaped from embracing variation in experience, social power, community background, information networks, career path, ideology, and more in staffing — then you would seek to set people up to succeed with your nominations.
Jamming people of color into positions they don’t care for and perhaps don’t have appropriate experience is both policy malpractice and poor optics.
Biden’s maneuvering should be seen as a symptom of a broader malady afflicting liberal political culture. Major newspapers have created incentives for crude face-counting with white-guy quotas and shamefully vacuous reporting on nominations as newsworthy based purely on identity.
A crucial part of this ecosystem is congressional caucuses and advocacy groups that reductively insist a specific position must be filled by someone of their preferred marginalized community, and then decline to couple those demands with any kind of policy commitment or meaningful program. An example of how this produces a rather backwards worldview can be seen in the way Politico reported on Biden’s pick for secretary of defense as purely a matter of choosing between a Black man or a woman, while neglecting to discuss their actual track records or provide insights into how they would govern their department.
These trends in our political culture have a way of distracting us from discussion of ideology entirely — and it is advantageous for a figure like Biden, who would rather keep the spotlight on quotas than reckon with the widening ideological rift between moderates and progressives in the Democratic Party.
A true commitment to diversity that would fulfill Biden’s oft-stated commitment to fostering unity might have pursued a Lincoln-esque team of rivals: the assembly of a Cabinet that deliberately leaned into the ideological wars defining the party. Instead, skirmishes over candidates’ identities have helped distract from the fact that Biden’s Cabinet, with a handful of exceptions, has so far been fairly moderate and not to the liking of left-wing leaders. Nowhere was the power of substituting identity for ideology more evident than Biden’s vice presidential pick: After a summer of protests, Biden addressed concerns about racism in the American criminal justice system by choosing a Black former prosecutor with a particularly harsh record.
It is both virtuous and valuable to enthusiastically embrace diversity in government leadership. As a matter of principle, having an administration that demographically mirrors the population is a positive symbol of commitment to multiracial democracy. And diversity of backgrounds enhances a government’s ability to understand its citizenry, contemplate complex challenges, and adopt a pluralist attitude toward addressing its problems.
When diversity is treated as an expedient tactic in a game or a weapon of distraction, its purpose is unraveled.


theintercept--2020-12-31--World Faces Covid-19 "Vaccine Apartheid”

recently heaped praise on “ the almost 44,000 people who selflessly raised their hands to participate in our trial.
” “ Each of you has helped to bring the world one step closer to our shared goal of a potential vaccine to fight this devastating pandemic , ” Bourla wrote in an open letter to volunteers who took part in Pfizer ’ s Covid-19 vaccine research , which was conducted in Argentina , South Africa , Brazil , Germany , and Turkey as well as the U.S. His letter was published on November 9 , the same day Pfizer announced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent effective at preventing the disease , and Bourla laid this considerable accomplishment at the feet of the medical volunteers : “ You are the true heroes , and the whole world owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude.
” But Argentina , South Africa , Brazil , and Turkey will have to be satisfied with Pfizer ’ s gratitude , because ( like most countries in the world ) they won ’ t be receiving enough of the vaccine to inoculate their populations , at least not anytime soon .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Canada and the rest of the European Union — have contracted for enough doses of various Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate their populations several times over .
While the U.S. is struggling with the logistics of its vaccine rollout — fewer than 3 million people have received the first dose so far — adequate supplies should eventually be available .
The U.S. pre-purchased 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine for $ 1.95 billion in the summer ( and reportedly passed on the opportunity to secure another 100 million doses ) .
Last week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Services announced a deal to buy another 100 million doses of the vaccine by July 2021 , and the government has the option to purchase an additional 400 million doses .
The U.S. has also purchased 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine , which is also extremely effective against Covid-19 .
Those doses are due by the second quarter of 2021 , and the government may buy up to 300 million more doses .
And the U.S. has contracts for additional vaccine doses from Ology , Sanofi , Novavax , and Johnson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier stages of development .
Pharmaceutical companies and individual executives are already profiting handsomely from their medical breakthroughs .
On the same day that he sent his open letter , Bourla , whose net worth is estimated at more than $ 26 million , sold more than $ 5 million worth of his shares of Pfizer stock .
Pfizer has already made an estimated $ 975 million from the vaccine this year and is expected to earn another $ 19 billion in revenue from the vaccine in 2021 , according to Morgan Stanley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vaccine is estimated at between 60 and 80 percent .
Moderna is projected to make more than $ 10 billion from its vaccine next year .
That desperation is only part of the reason that pharmaceutical companies do the majority of their research in less affluent countries , according to Washington , who pointed to a relative lack of oversight and lower operating costs as additional reasons that the industry is drawn to those places .
The Covid-19 vaccine research participants in South Africa , Argentina , Brazil , and Turkey “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the U.S. and Germany , ” she said .
The ethical problem this creates — that people in developing countries have less access to medical breakthroughs despite shouldering a disproportionate share of the risk that enables their development — far predates the coronavirus pandemic .
“ There are inherent inequities that are repeated in every epidemic , ” said Washington .
“ It ’ s a consistent pattern ; you ’ ll see it as far back as you want to go.
” Whether they participate in drug research or not , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack access to lifesaving medical breakthroughs , which are sometimes priced out of their reach .
Gilead , which holds the patent on the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir , has provided a clear and tragic illustration of how deadly this dynamic can be .
Only about one in seven people who needed the company ’ s lifesaving drug in Brazil had received it as of June 2019 .
In that country alone , thousands died of the treatable disease , according to the nonprofit group Make Medicines Affordable .
Though many drugs eventually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for people in developing countries , as was the case for lifesaving HIV medications , which are still unavailable to some 15 million infected people around the world and arrived in some poorer countries more than a decade after they were used in wealthier ones .
“ We see lags occur in almost every intervention in the world whether it ’ s a new drug or medical device , ” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar , founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center .
“ There ’ s not as much money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle-income countries.
” As a result , in much of the world , access to lifesaving developments often depends on funding from donors , “ which is always less than you ’ d like , ” he said .
The deadly consequences of delayed access to the Covid-19 vaccine will be on display in the coming year .
The number of people vaccinated worldwide in 2021 will depend partly on whether other potential vaccines candidates are successful and whether they ’ re delivered as one dose or two .
But it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will not have enough , while rich countries are hoarding vaccine supplies .
Some international health activists have become frustrated with Gavi .
“ On day one , when the first person was vaccinated in the U.K. , we should have been seeing the equivalent in a developing country , ” said Kate Elder , senior vaccines policy adviser for Médecins Sans Frontières .
“ But we didn ’ t .
And we don ’ t have any precision about when we can expect those doses in developing countries.
” Elder pointed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ providing equal access , the international vaccine distribution effort is hindered by the global power and wealth imbalance .
“ Gavi will never call out vaccine nationalism because its biggest donors — like the U.K. government — are the most powerful members of their board , ” she said .
The World Bank is providing additional aid for the delivery of vaccines , but it is in the form of loans , which poor countries will need to repay .
As a result of the delays , many people in low-income countries will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or 2024 , which will result in an unknown number of deaths .
“ We ’ re facing a global vaccine apartheid , ” said Zain Rizvi , law and policy researcher at Public Citizen , who predicted that the delay in vaccine access will prove “ calamitous.
” Public Citizen has proposed several ways that the U.S. could expand access to the vaccine , including building new production facilities and taking advantage of an obscure statute that allows the government to override companies ’ patents on inventions they fund .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put forward a measure at the World Trade Organization that would waive some intellectual property rights for coronavirus-related products , including vaccines .
The proposal , which was supported by 99 countries , has yet to pass after being opposed by wealthy countries , including the U.S. , European Union members , Japan , the U.K. , and Australia .
But the waiving of patents is only the first step in ensuring global access to vaccines .
“ Know-how is the bigger problem than patent rights in the shorter run , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International .
Love pointed to Moderna , the federally funded vaccine maker that has already pledged not to enforce the patent on its vaccine .
“ But you still can ’ t go out and make their vaccine unless you know how they did it , ” said Love .
“ You need to force the people who have the know-how to share the know-how because it ’ s a fucking pandemic.
” While the U.S. government and the companies it funded to make vaccines are already getting credit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a big hole in that success story : that taxpayers wound up paying for deals that limited global access .
“ Some people are going to say this is a massive success because the innovation story is pretty good , ” said Love .
“ But the reality is the government took our money , gave it to the companies , and wrote terrible contracts so we ended up with very few rights over the inventions that we financed.
” The problem was entirely avoidable , according to Love .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know-how built into each of its contracts so the technology transfer would have started as soon as these vaccines were in clinical trials , ” he said .
“ That did not happen .
And one of the consequences of these giveaways is that we ’ ve condemned developing countries to delayed access to vaccines.
” The Trump administration has been particularly generous with the pharmaceutical industry , removing standard protections from some of their contracts , and has shunned international efforts to pool resources to fight the pandemic .
But it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reverse course .
“ President-elect Biden has the power to change that , ” said Public Citizen ’ s Rizvi .
“ He can think bigger and share the vaccine recipe and help ramp up production and manufacturing capacity to further expand vaccine supply quickly.
” The ethical dilemmas raised by conducting Covid-19 vaccine research in countries that may not have their own supply for years are fixable too , according to Washington .
“ The inequities are easy to address , ” she said .
“ You simply treat people in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treat everyone else .
”

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla recently heaped praise on “the almost 44,000 people who selflessly raised their hands to participate in our trial.”
“Each of you has helped to bring the world one step closer to our shared goal of a potential vaccine to fight this devastating pandemic,” Bourla wrote in an open letter to volunteers who took part in Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine research, which was conducted in Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey as well as the U.S. His letter was published on November 9, the same day Pfizer announced that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective at preventing the disease, and Bourla laid this considerable accomplishment at the feet of the medical volunteers: “You are the true heroes, and the whole world owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
But Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, and Turkey will have to be satisfied with Pfizer’s gratitude, because (like most countries in the world) they won’t be receiving enough of the vaccine to inoculate their populations, at least not anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Germany — along with Canada and the rest of the European Union — have contracted for enough doses of various Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate their populations several times over. While the U.S. is struggling with the logistics of its vaccine rollout — fewer than 3 million people have received the first dose so far — adequate supplies should eventually be available. The U.S. pre-purchased 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine for $1.95 billion in the summer (and reportedly passed on the opportunity to secure another 100 million doses). Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a deal to buy another 100 million doses of the vaccine by July 2021, and the government has the option to purchase an additional 400 million doses. The U.S. has also purchased 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which is also extremely effective against Covid-19. Those doses are due by the second quarter of 2021, and the government may buy up to 300 million more doses. And the U.S. has contracts for additional vaccine doses from Ology, Sanofi, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson, whose candidates are in earlier stages of development.
Pharmaceutical companies and individual executives are already profiting handsomely from their medical breakthroughs. On the same day that he sent his open letter, Bourla, whose net worth is estimated at more than $26 million, sold more than $5 million worth of his shares of Pfizer stock. Pfizer has already made an estimated $975 million from the vaccine this year and is expected to earn another $19 billion in revenue from the vaccine in 2021, according to Morgan Stanley. Pfizer’s profit margin on the vaccine is estimated at between 60 and 80 percent. Moderna is projected to make more than $10 billion from its vaccine next year.
A coronavirus vaccination center at the fair grounds in Hamburg, Germany, on Dec. 8, 2020. Photo: Axel Heimken/AFP/Getty Images
The estimated $100 billion in sales to be made from a Covid-19 vaccine was clearly part of what attracted pharmaceutical companies to vaccine research. For the participants in that research, the calculus is different. In developing countries, “you find people who don’t have medical care and are desperate for medical attention and will grasp at the straws of medical research,” said Harriet Washington, a medical ethicist and author.
A relative lack of oversight and lower operating costs are some of the reasons that pharmaceutical companies do the majority of their research in less affluent countries.
That desperation is only part of the reason that pharmaceutical companies do the majority of their research in less affluent countries, according to Washington, who pointed to a relative lack of oversight and lower operating costs as additional reasons that the industry is drawn to those places. The Covid-19 vaccine research participants in South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Turkey “will work more cheaply than the people in the U.S. and Germany,” she said.
The ethical problem this creates — that people in developing countries have less access to medical breakthroughs despite shouldering a disproportionate share of the risk that enables their development — far predates the coronavirus pandemic. “There are inherent inequities that are repeated in every epidemic,” said Washington. “It’s a consistent pattern; you’ll see it as far back as you want to go.”
Whether they participate in drug research or not, people in low- and middle-income countries often lack access to lifesaving medical breakthroughs, which are sometimes priced out of their reach. Gilead, which holds the patent on the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir, has provided a clear and tragic illustration of how deadly this dynamic can be. Only about 1 in 7 people who needed the company’s lifesaving drug in Brazil had received it as of June 2019. In that country alone, thousands died of the treatable disease, according to the nonprofit group Make Medicines Affordable. Though many drugs eventually become available, access is often delayed for people in developing countries, as was the case for lifesaving HIV medications, which are still unavailable to some 15 million infected people around the world and arrived in some poorer countries more than a decade after they were used in wealthier ones.
“We see lags occur in almost every intervention in the world whether it’s a new drug or medical device,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. “There’s not as much money in products reaching markets in low- and middle-income countries.” As a result, in much of the world, access to lifesaving developments often depends on funding from donors, “which is always less than you’d like,” he said.
The deadly consequences of delayed access to the Covid-19 vaccine will be on display in the coming year. The number of people vaccinated worldwide in 2021 will depend partly on whether other potential vaccines candidates are successful and whether they’re delivered as one dose or two. But it’s already clear that the majority of countries will not have enough, while rich countries are hoarding vaccine supplies.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
An international initiative to ensure equitable access to the vaccine, called the COVAX Advance Market Commitment and governed by the public-private health alliance Gavi, aims to provide participating countries with enough vaccines to inoculate up to 20 percent of their populations by the end of 2021. But even under the best-case scenario, this goal would leave the vast majority of the population unvaccinated — and is “subject to funding availability,” as the group’s website makes clear.
A health care worker injects a syringe of the Phase 3 vaccine trial to a volunteer at the Ankara University Ibni Sina Hospital in Ankara, Turkey, on Oct. 27, 2020. Photo: Dogukan Keskinkilic/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Some international health activists have become frustrated with Gavi. “On day one, when the first person was vaccinated in the U.K., we should have been seeing the equivalent in a developing country,” said Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for Médecins Sans Frontières. “But we didn’t. And we don’t have any precision about when we can expect those doses in developing countries.”
Elder pointed out that, despite its stated goal of providing equal access, the international vaccine distribution effort is hindered by the global power and wealth imbalance. “Gavi will never call out vaccine nationalism because its biggest donors — like the U.K. government — are the most powerful members of their board,” she said.
The international vaccine distribution effort is hindered by the global power and wealth imbalance.
The World Bank is providing additional aid for the delivery of vaccines, but it is in the form of loans, which poor countries will need to repay. As a result of the delays, many people in low-income countries will likely not get the vaccine until 2023 or 2024, which will result in an unknown number of deaths.
“We’re facing a global vaccine apartheid,” said Zain Rizvi, law and policy researcher at Public Citizen, who predicted that the delay in vaccine access will prove “calamitous.”
Public Citizen has proposed several ways that the U.S. could expand access to the vaccine, including building new production facilities and taking advantage of an obscure statute that allows the government to override companies’ patents on inventions they fund. Meanwhile, Kenya, India, and South Africa put forward a measure at the World Trade Organization that would waive some intellectual property rights for coronavirus-related products, including vaccines. The proposal, which was supported by 99 countries, has yet to pass after being opposed by wealthy countries, including the U.S., EU members, Japan, the U.K., and Australia.
But the waiving of patents is only the first step in ensuring global access to vaccines. “Know-how is the bigger problem than patent rights in the shorter run,” said James Love, who directs the nonprofit advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International. Love pointed to Moderna, the federally funded vaccine maker that has already pledged not to enforce the patent on its vaccine. “But you still can’t go out and make their vaccine unless you know how they did it,” said Love. “You need to force the people who have the know-how to share the know-how because it’s a fucking pandemic.”
Do you have a coronavirus story you want to share? Email us at coronavirus@theintercept.com or use one of these secure methods to contact a reporter.
While the U.S. government and the companies it funded to make vaccines are already getting credit for ending the pandemic, Love points to a big hole in that success story: that taxpayers wound up paying for deals that limited global access.
“Some people are going to say this is a massive success because the innovation story is pretty good,” said Love. “But the reality is the government took our money, gave it to the companies, and wrote terrible contracts so we ended up with very few rights over the inventions that we financed.”
The problem was entirely avoidable, according to Love. “The government could have put mandatory sharing of know-how built into each of its contracts so the technology transfer would have started as soon as these vaccines were in clinical trials,” he said. “That did not happen. And one of the consequences of these giveaways is that we’ve condemned developing countries to delayed access to vaccines.”
The Trump administration has been particularly generous with the pharmaceutical industry, removing standard protections from some of their contracts, and has shunned international efforts to pool resources to fight the pandemic. But it’s not too late for the country to reverse course.
“President-elect Biden has the power to change that,” said Public Citizen’s Rizvi. “He can think bigger and share the vaccine recipe and help ramp up production and manufacturing capacity to further expand vaccine supply quickly.”
The ethical dilemmas raised by conducting Covid-19 vaccine research in countries that may not have their own supply for years are fixable too, according to Washington. “The inequities are easy to address,” she said. “You simply treat people in the developing world the same way you treat everyone else.”