Monthly Archives: April 2020

By the time President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor, her credentials for that role were impeccable, but critics still doubted if she could do the job because of her gender. As Downey documents in her book, some Labor Department staffers even threatened to resign rather than report to a woman.

But Perkins had learned to press on in spite of sexism. Even as a much younger woman, she had adopted a matronly wardrobe and worn tricorn hats, thinking that if she reminded men of their mothers, they would take her more seriously.

Perkins told FDR she would take the job only if he would commit to pursuing seven key policies: a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker's compensation, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized federal employment service and universal health insurance.

Perkins became the longest-serving labor secretary in history, holding the role from 1933 to 1945. During that time, she accomplished all but one of her original goals: universal health care.

Speaking in a radio address in 1935, Perkins explained "It has taken the rapid industrialization of the last few decades, with its mass-production methods, to teach us that a man might become a victim of circumstances far beyond his control."

Read the rest here:

She came to the rescue during the Great Depression. Now her work is still aiding jobless Americans - Mason City Globe Gazette

On the same mid-March night that Bernie Sanders' presidential ambitions were snuffed out, the movement for which he is an icon also happened to enjoy perhaps its most significant triumph. The voters in Chicago's suburbs who backed former Vice President Joe Biden by more than 20 points over the Vermont senator for the top of the Democratic ticket also traded in their eight-term congressman, Rep. Dan Lipinski, for 55-year-old abortion-rights activist Marie Newman.

Newman ran on a campaign of Sanders' greatest hitsMedicare For All, a $15 minimum wage, the Green New Deal, free college, the abolition of ICEand is a shoo-in to win in November.Her victory, more even than other prominent Sanders disciples who have attained federal office since Sanders' unexpectedly competitive 2016 primary run, represents a substantial leftward shift for the Democratic caucus. She replaces a significantly more conservative Democrat who voted against the Affordable Care Act, and now she's poised to occupy a safe seat for a long time.

Many observers point to Sanders' inability to crack 35 percent among Democrats in most of the 27 states and territories that voted in 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic short-circuited the process) as proof that his ideas are not as popular as he proclaims. But that's not the whole story. It's true that most of Sanders' proposals remain light years from the sort of popularity required to get them through Congress, even if Democrats retake the Senate and White House, and doubters make a strong argument that the failure to become law means Sanders wasted everyone's time and attention with unworkable solutions to serious problems.

But there are other signslike Newman's victory and some recent policy shifts by the now-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Bidenthat suggest the Sanders movement is simply outgrowing its need for Sanders himself and his purist approach.

Sanders all but acknowledged as much after Newman's victory and his shellacking in the Illinois, Arizona and Florida primaries on March 17, emailing supporters the next day to say, "While our campaign has won the battle of ideas, we are losing the battle over electability to Joe Biden." He hammered the point even harder Wednesday as he announced he was suspending his campaign: "It was not long ago that people considered these ideas radical and fringe. Today these are mainstream ideas and many of them have already being implemented in cities and states across the country. ... The future of this country is with our ideas."

The 78-year-old Democratic Socialist will almost certainly never become president of the United Statesbut that's largely irrelevant. It many ways it is Bernie Sanders' Democratic Party nowan irony, given that he has never joined the partywith all of the major presidential contenders in the 2020 cycle supporting some form of expanded or universal health insurance coverage, efforts to make college affordable and aggressive new actions to slow or reverse climate change. "Bernie Sanders might not end up being the nominee, but he has pushed almost every major candidate this cycle, including Joe Biden, to adopt his policies and vision for what the president should do," says Stephen O'Hanlon, the 24-year-old spokesman for the Sunrise Movement, an environmentalist group that helped Sanders and Sanders acolyte Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez write the Green New Deal. O'Hanlon says he became interested in politics through the 2016 Sanders campaign.

Biden echoed this notion himself in a Medium post appealing to Sanders fans to support his effort to unseat President Donald Trump: "Senator Sanders and his supporters have changed the dialogue in America. Issues which had been given little attentionor little hope of ever passingare now at the center of the political debate. Income inequality, universal health care, climate change, free college, relieving students from the crushing debt of student loans. These are just a few of the issues Bernie and his supporters have given life to." Even before Sanders quit the race, the former vice president had softened his opposition to universal free college, a signature Sanders proposal, by coming out in mid-March for eliminating tuition at public universities for students from families making less than $125,000 a year. Biden had previously supported only free community college.

"Sometimes getting elected is beside the point," says Gordon Weil, former press secretary to Democratic Sen. George McGovern, who was demolished by Richard Nixon in the 1972 election. "The movement, to the degree it was concerned about getting Bernie elected? Sure, it's hurt. He's not going to be elected president. I don't think he was ever likely to win the election. And I don't think that undermines the success or the influence of his ideas. He's very influential. He doesn't need to go back to the Senate feeling, 'Well, I didn't do anything for having run twice.' He did do something."

There are, of course, many Sanders skeptics who believe, as Bill Scher wrote in POLITICO Magazine on Wednesday, "It's hard to see Sanders' presidential campaign as anything other than a defeat." Democratic primary voters, in choosing Biden, were rejecting several specific Sanders proposals, from Medicare For All to certain elements of the Green New Deal, even as they were broadly supportive of both universal health coverage and aggressive action to combat climate change, Scher argued. And even Biden, while offering respect and admiration for Sanders' movement, stopped short of endorsing any of its dogma. "While Bernie and I may not agree on how we might get there, we agree on the ultimate goal for these issues and many more," wrote Biden, avoiding explicit commitment to a Sanders solution.

Sanders progressives have plenty of work left to do before they can really declare victory, and some of what happens next for them depends on which historical precedent the Sanders movement follows. Will it be that of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the aggressively small-government Republican crushed in the 1964 election, or McGovern, who loomed large for young voters as an icon of the anti-Vietnam War effort? Both men, like Sanders, drew legions of young intellectuals into their political campsbut Goldwater partisans built a durable infrastructure of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and publications like National Review, and seeded the Republican Party with devotees. Eventually, those low-level party functionaries took control and helped another charismatic leader, Ronald Reagan, make the Goldwater creed broadly popular with the mainstream.

McGovernism, however, faded into the background after the war ended. Many former McGovernites did remain in politicsBill Clinton was his campaign manager in Texasbut the party itself moved to the center and consigned the failed candidate to a past it needed to overcome, Weil says. University of Virginia post-doctoral fellow Joshua Mound, a Sanders supporter and frequent writer for the democratic-socialist journal Jacobin, sees the Goldwater model at work in the Sanders legacy.

"If you listen to or read about the personal narratives of people like Karl Rove, they were teenagers who really became engaged by the Goldwater movement and became true Goldwater believers, and that's what got them involved in politics and wanting to take over things like the College Republicans," Mound says. "You're seeing that with Sanders because it's gone beyond just being about Sanders: it's about him and the young people who were pretty disenchanted with politics and who now see a model of politics and a set of idea that they believe in. That has pushed some of them to run for offices and get involved in grassroots politics in a way that's hard to see them doing absent Sanders' 2016 run."

Several organizations and media outlets have been founded or boosted by veterans of Sanders' 2016 effort. Besides Jacobin and the Sunrise Movement, there's also the activist group Indivisible as well as progressive political action committees Our Revolution, Democracy for America and Justice Democrats. "There was not an organized Socialist movement before Bernie's campaigns," says Meagan Day, a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America, which grew from 6,000 members in 2016 to about 60,000 now. "It really was Bernie's willingness to say, 'I am a Democratic socialist' in 2016 and to run on a platform of Medicare For All, environmental justicewhat we now called the Green New Dealcollege for all and so many other demands that center people over profit, that showed people that there was another political tradition that did really value people and workers."

But even some liberal activists warn that the notion that Sanders' policies are now mainstreamas he declared in his statement Wednesdaymay not yet be true. Sean McElwee of Data For Progress, a think tank aiming to provide the intellectual underpinnings for progressive arguments and generating polling data to aid with electoral strategies, says Sanders misunderstood his own 2016 popularity as an endorsement for "very liberal economic and social policies" when it appears to have been largely a reaction to Hillary Clinton's personal unpopularity. Polls show Medicare For All is only narrowly popular and loses support when some details, such as the loss of private health insurance, become known to voters.

"You had a sea change between the 2018 Congress and the 2010 Congress. I think every Democrat elected last cycle with very few exceptions supported a public option for health insurance at minimum, and some would say their goal ultimately is to eventually get to a Medicare For All plan," McElwee says. "It would be unfair to say Bernie gets no credit for that. But Sanders has too expansive an agenda to ever be fully passed. The question is, who actually makes the deals to get some of that across the finish line and where will Sanders be when those deals are made."

That Sanders managed to attain this level of prominence in the first place was a surprise in and of itself. For most of his career, he was seen as an eccentric, fringe player, a peculiarity with his antipathy for capitalism, whose Bernifesto about the ills of the nation barely changed from the talking points that he used to get elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. His campaign in 2016 seemed to exist to shove Hillary Clinton to the left but found real traction with a generation of new adults drowning in student debt and struggling in careers stunted by the Great Recession. To them, this cranky, unvarnished, wild-haired messenger's long history of espousing his ideas felt authentic and appealing where Clinton's more cautious approach felt focus-group-tested and insincere.

"Bernie is singular in America political history in his consistency and history," says Abdul El-Sayed, 35, who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan's Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2018 as a Sanders-endorsed candidate. "He's been on this page since before I was born. He's been able to cut through a lot of the noise to talk consistently, forthrightly and loudly to a generation for whom the private sector has failed over and over and over again. He comes through that with his integrity intact, with a clairvoyance of moral perception of this moment and what's required. You're going to follow that person."

This is where victories like those of Newman, Ocasio-Cortez or Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts come in. Sanders skeptics within the Democratic Party argue that the party retook the House in the 2018 midterm elections by putting forth palatable centrist candidates in competitive Republican-leaning districts who would never have won on a Medicare For All message. But Mound says that's a short-term view: it's those Sanders-esque leaders who can count on winning easily over and over who will eventually come to rule the party itself.

"Taking over the party in terms of progressivism really isn't a contest of winning swing districts with left-leaning people or even the presidency," Mound says. "It's really about winning over safe districts with the Sanders platform and building a durable party infrastructure of elected officials who are always going to win their election and always going to in leadership."

Eventually, though, the Sanders movement will need a Reagan, a figure so personally popular and politically effective as to persuade nervous moderates of the righteousness of these ideas, McElwee says. Ocasio-Cortez seems poised to be a long-term presence, although she upset purists in February by suggesting compromises may have to be made on the road to Medicare For All; two other below-the-radar Sanders disciples include New York State Sen. Julia Salazar and Virginia state Delegate Lee Carter, both avowed Democratic Socialists who surprised many by winning office in recent years.

"There are a lot of young leaders in the progressive movement," O'Hanlon says. "Our generation is running for office thanks to Bernie, they're taking politics seriously and they're ready to fight for the soul of this country. I don't think we have any shortage of new people to carry this fight forward."

Read more:

How the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped the Democratic Party Forever - Newsweek

Policy

Snarled traffic. Sky-high rents. And entire neighborhoods that soon may be underwater. Our city planners have steamrolled over communities and failed to build a city that is livable for us all. Is there still a chance to get it right?

Like a scene out of The Departed, a pinched old white man in a black jacket leans across the passenger seat of a car to collect a fan of fresh $100 bills from the driver. Its such a blatant setup. Theres no envelope. The Benjamins are in full view. The whole choreography of the handoff seems designed to get him in front of a dash caminstead of a quick drop through the drivers window, the briber forces the man to reach into the car, his pink face nicely centered in the frame. But John Lynch, the assistant director of real estate at the Boston Planning & Development Agency, doesnt notice. He is wholly focused on taking whats his, lips drawn in a taut smile, the crisp new bills within his grasp. In fact, if you look closely at the surveillance photo, he seems relaxedat ease, even, like hes done this before.

Across Boston, critics of the citys billion-dollar real estate bonanza viewed that single 2018 photo of a bribe given and received as indisputable proof that the city still runs by J.M. Curleystyle rules. But for those who know how city planning happens here, it was merely the tip of an iceberg of troubles at the BPDA, arguably Bostons most powerful agency.

Whether or not cash is changing hands, Bostonians should be outraged at how the BPDA functionsor doesnt. If you think, for instance, that Boston is unaffordable, mired in traffic, and chronically unprepared for climate change, you can mostly blame the BPDA. The citys entire development process, from zoning to planning to project approval, is controlled by this single agency on the ninth floor of City Hall. In fact, it holds a concentration of power not seen in any other American city, shaping every square inch of our town, yet it is not accountable to the elected members of the city council. Its operations, meanwhile, are plagued by shortsightedness, ineptitude, and misplaced priorities.

This is nothing new. In fact, seven years ago I argued in this magazine that the BPDA (then known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority) had a mission that was so riddled with conflicts of interest that it should be abolished. So why am I at it again? Because despite Mayor Marty Walshs promises to reform the agency after audits in 2014 and 2015 revealed that it was a hot mess, not much has changed on the ninth floor since he took office. Worse still, this agency has overseen a larger building boom since 2014 than has ever occurred in a six-year period in Boston since the city was founded in 1630. Over the past decade, the citys planning agency has systematically squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to steer well-planned, equitable, and climate-change-ready growth, and has instead focused on a single goal: approving as many projects as quickly as possible.

This build-more, build-fast mindset has had grave consequences. Thousands of high-margin luxury condos have been approved and completed, many of which, bought by entities hidden behind LLCs and shell corporations, sit in unoccupied splendor while driving up the regions real estate values and costs. The BPDAs failure to plan, and its deep faith in market forces, has helped balloon the cost of living to the breaking point because everythingfrom food to payrolls to servicesis in one way or another linked to our inflated housing prices. Thousands of Bostonians have been displaced through eviction or aggressive rent increases, and middle-class families are getting pushed farther and farther out of the city, in some cases all the way to New Hampshire. The agency has lost the trust of the community to carry out the planning process with competence and integrity, wrote City Councilor at Large Michelle Wu in a recent report demanding the BPDAs abolition.

Never before has the need to break up the BPDA been more urgent. Right now, the agency is poised to approve the largest private development in its historymillions of square feet at the former Suffolk Downs racetrack. The agency has barreled ahead as if this were just another downtown office tower, aligning with the developer at the expense of the community, and repeating every unforced error that got us to where we are today. Unless the BPDA is abolished before the project breaks ground, Boston will likely lose its last big chance to do development right.

The BPDAs John Lynch (left) leaves federal court in Boston with his lawyer after pleading guilty to accepting a $50,000 bribe, allegedly from a real estate developer. / Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe via Getty Images

Cranes in full swing over the foundation of 115 Winthrop Square. / Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe via Getty Images

The BPDA announced its arrival in Boston 63 years ago with the roar of an army of bulldozers. Founded to funnel federal money toward urban renewal efforts, the agency, known back then as the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), evicted thousands of minority and immigrant families and razed neighborhoods, including the West End, to make way for office buildings and luxury high-rises.

A seemingly minor tweak in 1987 created the all-powerful BPDA we have today. That year, Mayor Ray Flynn removed the agency from the city budget, arguing it could sustain itself financially using the fees it collects from real estate developers. After that, the agency no longer had to answer to the city council, and ever since then, it has been servile not only to the whims of the mayor, but to the people who keep its lights on: developers.

Walshs predecessor, Tom Menino, used the freshly off-the-books agency as the base of his power. To Menino, everything was personal; he made sure that all development decisions went through him, rendering the BRA as little more than a rubber-stamping agency where he could park his political supporters who needed jobs. Not much got built under Menino, but everything that did had his fingerprints all over it.

Walsh ran for mayor in 2013 as a BRA reformer. As a former trade union leader, he also wanted to keep those cranes busy. Once in office, he commissioned an audit that revealed the agency was in shambles. Few staffers, it showed, had any idea what their actual duties were. Records were so shoddy that the BRA didnt even know what land it owned or what fees and rents were due. Consequently, the city may have failed to collect millions of dollars on leases and linkage fees from developers to fund affordable housing.

Despite grand promises made in the heat of the mayoral campaign, as well as a $675,000 rebranding initiative that included a name change from the BRA to the BPDA, Walsh has done little more than replace the drapes and repaint the house. On the positive side, BPDA head Brian Golden says that 60 percent of staff members are new, and the planning department has grown from 32 to more than 54 employees. Hes hired some multilingual staffers, and employees are learning how to work within Bostons many different communities. The agencys overhauled website is easy to navigate and loaded with helpful documents available to the public. The press office is very responsive.

Still, the BPDAs most problematic featuresthat its beyond city council control and was designed to be developer-responsive rather than planning-orientedremain locked in place. Most egregiously, unlike many other major American citieswhich have laws mandating implementation of a master planBoston hasnt drawn one up since 1965. By law, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, and Vancouver systematically update their master plans and have clear protocols for incorporating those plans into urban development. In California, by law, master-plan updates must be codified into zoning. The city of Boston doesnt have a master plan because the BPDA isnt designed to do that kind of work, and also, possibly, because it would undercut the BPDAs power. According to BPDA director Golden, Mayor Walshs Imagine Boston 2030 initiativewhich provides a roadmap for 21st-century growthis the citys master plan. Still, the plan lacks teeth because the BPDA has neither the mandate nor the protocols to make it anything more than a wish list.

The BPDA says nearly one-third of the citys land is covered either by active or relatively recent planning efforts. Indeed, the agencys staffers have conducted community-based planning sessions in nearly every neighborhood over the decades. But when a developer brings a project proposal to the ninth floor, theres no formal mechanism for incorporating what was learned in those planning sessions into the approval process. There are no standardized metrics board members can use to evaluate a projects value or impact. Instead, the BPDA merely serves as an adviser to the developer, escorting a project through the process while keeping an eye on the clock.

The fact that the agency is partly funded by developers is the fundamental problem, says City Councilor Lydia Edwards. You shouldnt be incentivized to develop because your paycheck depends on it, she says. You should be incentivized to develop because the city, and the future, and equity depend on it.

Supporters of the BPDA say Bostons vocal communitieslabeled as NIMBYsare the single biggest obstacle to progress in the city and that we need an all-powerful planning agency because it is the only way to get anything done in the face of their opposition. In fact, I would argue the opposite is true: Bostons planning and approval process is so inverted that the BPDA has created the NIMBYs.

By the time a development team arrives in a neighborhood, the BPDA already has skin in the game. The agencys staff has spent considerable time working with the developer to prep for community meetings, and during this period, the BPDAs and developers interests often align. Armed with inside knowledge, legal expertise, and the mayors backing, they make a formidable team. Once the public process begins, communities dont have much time to react and often feel blindsided by the proposals. They have to scramble to understand their rights, determine what negotiating power they have, and figure out which tools they can use to steer the impact of a project. Lacking the background and unity to negotiate concessions with a powerful developer and the BPDA, many communities resort to outright opposition.

They have good reason to be wary, given that any amenities won by neighbors have historically had a bad habit of disappearing once a project is approved. Case in point: When Millennium Partners bid for the privilege of building 115 Winthrop Square, a $1.3 billion multi-use tower now going up downtown, the developer promised Bostonians a three-story Great Halla glorious, multifunctional civic space sold as Bostons living room, as well as a space for startups that would be as large as 8,000 square feet. Just three years into the complex process of approving such a large project, Millennium submitted its notice of project change. Among the revisions, 100,000 gross square feet of residential space had evaporated. The initial 500 housing unit count had shrunk to 387. Gone were about seven affordable units. Public conference space seemed to disappear. Two grand staircases designed to elevate the look of the Great Hall were obscured by walls. Bostons living room became a hallway. The startup space was no longer mentioned.

Even the Boston Civic Design Commission (BCDC)a voluntary board run by some of the citys finest architects that has the ability to review all large projects in Bostonlacks any statutory power to rein in poorly designed, unwieldy development. As a result, it has scored only a very few small victories in the way of improving projects.

Theres a better way: Plan for growth in a neighborhood before the developer arrives on the scene. Then incorporate that arduous community work into law by updating zoning. Establish which amenities the neighborhood needs and tie those projects to land use. Break planning out of the BPDA and fund it with city money so that its accountable to voters. Its how Americas finest cities handle demand and growth. Why does Boston deserve anything less?

A birds-eye view of construction in the Seaport District. / Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe via Getty Images

Activists protest to demand that developers make half of the units at Suffolk Downs affordable housing. / Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe via Getty Images

When Steven Turner allegedly handed all of that cash to Lynch, he owned a one-story South Boston warehouse on a 10th of an acre. Turner knew he could make a pile of dough if he could get a permit extension allowing construction of multifamily housing on that site. So, in exchange for $50,000, Lynch agreed to convince a Boston zoning board member to extend the permit to redevelop the property. Once he secured it, Turner sold the warehouse for a $1.6 million profit in 2018 without developing it. The cost for Turners gains will get passed along to condo buyers to the tune of an additional $146,000 per unit. (Turner has not been charged with any wrongdoing.)

Lynch wasnt the only guy looking to use zoning adjustments to turn a buck. Over the past 15 years, small-time developers have fanned out around South Boston, knocking on doors, offering longtime homeowners loads of money for their triple-deckers. One by one, families have been selling off their homes for huge profits and moving out.

Some developers, like Turner, received permission to build higher than existing zoning allowed. Others did not. Thats why South Bostons zoning map now looks like a crazy quilt. Single-family and multifamily homes, apartments and condos, and industrial, mixed-use, and institutional buildings are jammed together side by sidethe result of hundreds of individual petitions approved by the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA).

Perhaps all of this side-dealing would be acceptable if Boston were truly booming. In fact, the city is being crushed under the weight of poorly regulated development geared to enrich a few at the expense of the many. Based on current stats, more than 34,000 households are cost-burdened, meaning that out of every dollar they earn, 50 cents goes to rent or the mortgage. Subtract taxes, and theres not much left for food. Over the past decade, the number of homeless families in Greater Boston has increased by 27 percent and the number of homeless individuals by 45 percent. A 2020 report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council revealed that the majority of large units in Greater Boston are occupied by roommates (who can pool resources) or a handful of retirees rattling around in big apartmentsnot families.

Walsh says hes concerned, but the one thing he hasnt been able to confront is Bostons development machine. And because the mayor would like to have his development and eat it, too, hes demanding that the BPDA solve Bostons housing crisis the only way it knows how: by building more.

In the six years that Walsh has been mayor, 18,607 residential units have been built around the city. Sounds good, until you consider that most of them are small and expensive. Notably, more than half of these units are in luxury or ultra-luxury buildings, many of them in the South Boston Waterfront neighborhood. Records show that only a slim majority of all new units built since 2012 are owned by people who claim them as their primary residences. Many were bought by LLCs or shell corporations as a way to park wealth or launder money.

Of course, solving the housing crisis isnt merely about simple math, and yet the BPDA is still chasing numbers, furiously approving every proposal that comes its way to reach a quotathe mayor wants 53,000 new units built by 2030without much consideration given to equity. When I met with Councilor Edwards, I repeated the administrations argument that more housing will eventually satisfy demand.

Where? she asked me. When I laughed, she said, No, Im serious. Where has that happened? You show me where building a bunch of luxury studios helped house working-class families. You show me where it happened, and Ill shut up.

The BPDA argues that we can build our way out of the crisis because when developers need variances (and nearly every project requires a variance because the citys zoning is so outdated), they must either build affordable units into their projects or pay so-called linkage fees that go into a fund for affordable-housing construction. For example, Jonathan Greeley, BPDAs director of development review, defends Seaport Squarea huge South Boston Waterfront projectby pointing out that in return for approval, We got significant investments inaffordable housing, significant investments in the arts, a whole bunch of different things.

The BPDAs build-more-to-get-more-affordable-housing argument might make sense at first blush. Over the past decade, developers incorporated 2,983 affordable units into their market-rate projects (though the definition of affordable is up for debate). Other developers paid the one-time fee instead, contributing $93 million to the citys housing fund. But when you crunch the numbers, youll see that $93 million doesnt buy much in Boston. Over that same decade, federal, state, and city governments have spent an additional $2 billion in Boston to finance 5,286 new affordable units and refurbish existing ones, which cost the city an average of $450,000 a pop.

Based on these figures, its clearly more economical for the city to have developers fold affordable housing into new developments or just build for the mid-market than to conjure such housing from scratch via linkage fees. (The latter also further segregates the city, building by building, neighborhood by neighborhood.) For example, if real estate developer Millennium had made 15 percent of its massive new downtown tower affordable, it would have created 66 units. Instead, the developer paid $1.9 million to the city, a sum that, without state and federal subsidies, will cover the cost of only four such units.

Regardless of how affordable units get built, there are consequences to pursuing luxury housing in formerly middle-class neighborhoods. Rampant speculation. Evictions. Aggressive pricing out. Joseph Michalakes, a housing attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, has worked for several years defending hundreds of families from eviction in East Boston, one of the most recent battlegrounds of development and displacement. Michalakes argues that if projects in Boston continue to be approved without bringing a fair housing perspective to the planning process, then what weve seen happen in East Boston over the past five years, and really longer, is going to keep happening until theres nowhere left.

He knows the market-oriented response to people getting priced out: If you cant afford Boston, then move someplace cheaper. But, he says, Where is that place? Where are people going to live? People who dont have a car and make between $20,000 and $50,000 a year, where are they going to go?

Tom OBrien, the former director of the BRA, is currently overseeing the development of Suffolk Downs for the HYM Investment Group, where he is the managing director. / Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe via Getty Images

Suffolk Downs may feel like the hinterlands, over there in Eastie beyond the airport. But if you think our traffic is bad now, if you think the cost of living is high now, if you think Boston is the countrys most segregated city now, just wait until our last affordable neighborhood vanishes.

On a freezing January afternoon, I met Councilor Edwards at Maverick Station in East Boston to drive to Suffolk Downs, where we sat in the car and looked over the abandoned racetrack and clubhouse while the winter wind whipped across the vast, open expanse. This is the site where a massive, multi-phase project is slated to be built. Of the 161 acres before us, 122 of them lie in Edwardss backyard in East Boston, with the remainder in Revere.

For Edwards, the 16-million-square-foot project proposed for the site is a potential threat for the mostly Latinx, renter-heavy, lower-income population that she represents. For local developer HYM Investment Group and 33-year-old Texas billionaire William Bruce Harrison, who together bought the land in 2017 for $155 million, its a potential gold mine.

Although the BPDA had plenty of warning that the racetrack was shutting down and was potentially ripe for development, the agency had few thoughts about how this enormous piece of land might be used, or about how development might affect the local community. Those questions were left to the marketor, more specifically, Harrison and Tom OBrien, HYMs managing director and a former head of the BRA. They drafted their own plan, complete with new zoning that would allow office, residential, and retail space. Anticipating some pushback, the developer preempted impact fees by proposing that his team pay for some roads and infrastructure improvements. Most of these so-called improvements, however, are streets within the development itself.

So far, the project has been designed like a Houston office park, with chunky buildings looming around a yet-to-be-defined open space, linked by wide streets designed to get cars in and out of the development. It is nothing like Easties existing street grid, in no way resembles the Boston 2030 vision, and certainly looks nothing like the citys most livable neighborhoods. The project is so inconceivably big that the 65,300 to 76,500 additional vehicle trips per day its expected to generate would hopelessly snarl traffic on Route 1A. Its shocking, opponents of the development argue, that the BPDA has once again escorted the developer through the usual steps, using the standard large-project timeline, without regard for the many serious problems that the project is bound to create.

During a pair of four-month-long public-comment periods in 2019, in fact, objection letters poured into City Hall, many several pages long and carefully crafted by lawyers working for nonprofit advocacy organizations such as Boston Lawyers for Civil Rights. The letters argued that the BPDA did not properly prepare the community, failed to do sufficient outreach in the multiple languages of the community, and, most important, failed to understand the impact this enormous development would have on the people of Eastie, the environment, and Greater Boston. The complaints repeatedly noted that the affordable units being proposed were not affordable enough, large enough, or numerous enough to accommodate even a fraction of those living in the neighborhood who would likely be displaced. Other complaints came from environmental stewards, who warned that raising the land to protect the immediate Suffolk Downs development from flooding would exacerbate drainage issues throughout the surrounding area within a few years.

Leading the charge was Edwards, who invoked the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to demand that the BPDA take concerns about equity more seriously. Appalled at the fast-track approval process and lack of consideration for her vulnerable constituency, she directed her office to draft Planning for Fair Housing, a document that details how the city could use planning and zoning to create a better Boston for everyone. The report calls for the BPDA to join the 21st century by embracing a holistic equity lens in its planning decision and negotiating for public interest concessions from development projects to impose fair housing obligations on private developers.

Although its been just three years since HYM and Harrison bought the racetrack, Greeley says the BPDA has put in the necessary work to sign off on the largest private development ever proposed in Boston. If we were in a rush, which were often accused of being, Greeley says, we would have done this thing a long time ago. But were not. We have slowly, iteratively, tried to figure this out. In the BPDAs defense, Greeley adds, If you were to sit with Tom OBrien, hed tell you how many hundreds of meetings [with the community] hes had.

Meetings, though, are useless if the two sides arequite literallyspeaking different languages. On February 3, Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development against the BPDA, citing the lack of translated materials available to community members with limited English throughout the process. The complaint also asserted that the BPDA, using archaic tools, had failed to properly assess the larger impact on the region. Suffolk Downs will fundamentally change the character, cost, and composition of every neighborhood it touches and all surrounding communities, it states. Simply put, the stakes for affected communities in Boston, who are primarily Limited English Proficiency residents of color, are enormous. For those reasons, the group requested that the BPDA immediately halt its review process. The BPDA says it did provide the necessary translations required by law, and as of press time, the agency was still formulating a response to the letter, but it continues to usher the project along.

Regardless, the project is so huge and its impacts so unfathomable that it may finally provide city councilors and civil rights advocates with a big enough platform to shine a spotlight on the BPDAs shortcomings. It seems to be working: Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted about Suffolk Downs ahead of the March 3 primary, saying, We need affordable housing for all instead of more gentrifying luxury developments for the few.

Edwards, for her part, decided that the only way to rein in the BPDA was to change the law. In January, her office submitted a lengthy amendment to the Boston Zoning Code designed to incorporate equity-based impact analyses into the approval process. Her proposed amendment is now going through working sessions in the city council. She admits it may not get passed soon enough to save the city from Suffolk Downs.

In the meantime, the wheels of justice continue to grind away elsewhere in Boston. There was considerable fallout after Lynch was charged with (and later convicted of) bribery involving an organization receiving federal funds and filing a false federal tax return. Though no one else was charged, one member of the Zoning Board of Appeal stepped down after the scandal. In February, Walsh issued an executive order tightening the conflict-of-interest rules for those who sit on the board.

Still, some see Walshs response as akin to trying to fix the cracked foundation of a house with paint and spackle. The ZBA isnt the problem; it is just one feature of a city planning and development structure that is fatally flawed. What Walsh needs to do with the BPDA is what his administration has done besttake a wrecking ball to the old agency and build something shiny and new and modern where it once stood.

See the original post here:

The BPDA: Paved and Confused - Boston magazine

The most insidious tactic of COVID-19 is to get a persons body to attack itself. In the worst cases, the bodys autoimmune system essentially goes haywire as it tries to fight off infection. Thiscytokine stormcan lead to serious inflammation in the lungs and ultimately to major organ failure.

COVID-19 seems to have had a similar effect on the international system. Instead of working together, the global community started to attack itself. The mechanisms designed to facilitate international cooperation borders, trade began to work against this cooperation. In the worst cases, countries began to fight over the very medical supplies that, shared equitably,could save the largest number of people.

This geopolitical cytokine storm will have long-lasting consequences. One of its casualties may ultimately be the European Union.

In an ideal world, the outbreak of COVID-19 in China would have precipitated a uniform international response. Every country would have implemented the same protocols the World Health Organization developedafter the SARS epidemic, and a global team of experts would have helped China contain the crisis. Then perhaps the world could have dodged the latest pandemic threat and avoided going into the current health and economic tailspin. Absent a coordinated global response, different regions of the world could still have banded together to fight the infectious disease.

In Asia, each country approached the challenge its own way, virtually all of them better than the US response. Taiwan, despite its proximity to mainland China, haskept the number of infectionsin the triple digits. South Korea has deployed a sophisticated technological response to flatten the curve after an initial outbreak.

READ MORE

What Asian countries didnt do, however, was pull together as a region. Even putative allies Japan and South Korea took the opportunity to amplify their longstanding feud by trading accusations and imposing mutual travel restrictions. Only recently have China, Japan and South Koreabegun to coordinatetheir pandemic response.

Latin America, riven by numerous ideological splits, has hadwildly divergent responsesto COVID-19, from the denialism of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to a strict quarantine in Peru. Having beaten back several outbreaks of Ebola, African countries have shown a bit more of a cooperative spirit, thanks to institutions like theRegional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement project.

Given Donald Trumps erratic behavior during this crisis, forget about a coordinated North American strategy. In fact, there hasnt even been a coordinated US strategy coming out of Washington. Europe should have been different. For decades, the European Union has built up institutional cooperation across economy, politics and culture. Surely, it would take on an external threat like the coronavirus in a unified manner. It didnt.

Italy was the first hotspot to emerge in the European Union. Within a few days of its first reported case of infection in Lombardy on February 20, COVID-19 was putting an enormous strain on the hospitals of northern Italy. The EUs response was largely bureaucratic more consultations. When it came to concrete assistance, the EU had little to offer Italy.

On March 10, only a couple weeks after the appearance of its first case, Italys permanent representative to the European Union, Maurizio Massari,wrotein no uncertain terms inPolitico: Italy has already asked to activate the European Union Mechanism of Civil Protection for the supply of medical equipment for individual protection. But, unfortunately, not a single EU country responded to the Commissions call. Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity.

Worse, a number of European countries like France and Germanyactually imposed export limitson critical medical supplies for fear that they would need them in the coming days. The eventual intervention of the European Commission to impose region-wide export restrictions in exchange for EU members rescinding their national bans might have alleviated some shortages within the bloc butat the expenseof poorer countries outside of it. In early April, Italy is stillnowhere near securing the 90 million masksit needs.

For many Italians, the failure of European solidarity was nothing new.Writes Luigi Scazzeriat the Centre for European Reform:

Over the past decade, Italy has gone from being one of the most enthusiastic supporters of greater European integration to one of the most eurosceptic member-states. Many Italians felt that Italy did not receive much European solidarity during the eurozone crisis, and that the Union served as an enforcer of damaging austerity policies. The damage to Italians view of the EU was then compounded by the blocs response to the migration crisis. Italy took in 650,000 migrants between 2014 and 2018, and efforts to distribute these among other EU countries were largely symbolic.

Okay, so the EU screwed up its response to COVID-19. It certainly isnt alone in misjudging the extent of the crisis and failing to act in the best interests of all. It now has a second chance to make good as a bloc in addressing the economic crisis developing in the wake of COVID-19. Yet it seems on the verge of repeating an earlier set of mistakes.

When Europe was in the depths of its sovereign debt crisis a decade ago, some countries called for eurobonds. This common debt instrument, floated by the eurozone as a whole, could have provided access to cheaper credit for all members, but especially those hardest hit by the financial crisis. The most indebted nations like Greece and Italy supported the idea. The Germans and the Dutch, worried about subsidizing what they considered bad economic behavior, nixed the idea.

Virtually the same argument has reemerged today as eurobonds have become corona bonds, with the same countries in favor and the same countries against. Infuriated at the opposition to such corona bonds, Bloomberg reported, some Italian politicianspaid for a full-page adin a German newspaper accusing the Dutch of a lack of ethics and solidarity, and unsubtly reminding the Germans of the solidarity Europe showed them after [World War II], when Germanys debts were forgiven or restructured at a conference in 1953.

The EU has taken some dramatic measures in response to the economic shock of the shutdowns. It has relaxed the rules on government spending to permit large-scale stimulus packages. The European Central Bank has made$820 billion availableto buy up European bonds, which will reduce the cost of borrowing for the worst hit countries. The Eurozone has its European Stability Mechanism, designed to help countries in trouble with 400 billion ($438 billion) at its disposal. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen alsoannounced last weekthat the EU will allocate up to 100 billion euros ($110 billion) to the hardest hit countries, starting from Italy, to compensate for the reduction in the wages of those working on shorter hours.

There are other proposals including aEurope-wide stimulus package, which would come on top of the bailouts that each of the national governments has enacted, and aEuropean Guarantee Fundthat could reach 200 billion. Thats a lot of money available to members of the club. Perhaps its enough money to buy er, guarantee the loyalty of even the most euroskeptical.

So, why are Italy, Spain and other countries still pushing for corona bonds? They want debt mutualized i.e., shared rather than dumped on the shoulders of the most adversely affected. And theyre worried that the other deals come with strings attached that will resemble what was required of them during the last financial crisis. What the Germans and Dutch prefer, which would indeed include some conditionality, might seem to make economic sense. But it also might deepen the fissures already present in the EU and push the eurozone, if not the larger bloc, to breaking point.

Before the coronavirus struck, it looked as if Europe was spinning off in many different directions. The United Kingdom was on its way out. Hungary and several other East European countries were heading in a distinctly authoritarian direction. Italy was flirting with right-wing populism. On the economic front, Germany remained a powerhouse, Greece had not made up for all the ground it lost in the 2009 crisis, and the countries of Eastern Europe had not yet closed the gap with the Western half of the continent.

The far right, which was gaining strength in the European Parliament, had decided not to follow the example of Brexit but instead work within the system to transform the EU. The coronavirus could very well be their best ally in this struggle to devolve power from Brussels to the individual member states.

First came the reimposition of national border checkpoints within the Schengen Area, with Germany the last tofollow suiton March 16. Ten days later, Europe was supposed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Schengens abolition of border controls. Instead, there arenew gates and road barrierswhere not long before travelers could pass between countries without even knowing it. Its not clear when these intra-European travel restrictions will be lifted.

Then came the more restrictive policies toward migrants still desperate to get into Europe. On March 17, the EU closed its borders to non-nationals. Greece hadalready sent troopsto its border with Turkey to stop refugees from crossing over by land. But people are still attempting to reach Europe by sea. Of the800 who left Libyain March, 43 made it to Italy and 155 landed in Malta. The Libyan coast guard gathered up the rest and returned them to Libya. Now that the first cases of infection areappearing in refugee campsin Greece, the containment efforts are turning inward.

By contrast, Portugalhas boldly givenall migrants and asylum-seekers full citizenship rights on a temporary basis so that they can access health care during the pandemic.

Throughout Europe, national policies are trumping region-wide rules and regulations. The most extreme case is Hungary, where Viktor Orban has declared a state of emergency that gives himnearly unlimited powerfor an unknown period of time. Other states like Spain and the UK have declared states of emergency but without comparable flouting of the rule of law. And some countries, like Romania, Estonia and Latvia, haveinvoked Article 15of the European Convention on Human Rights that permits states of emergency in times of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation.

Hungarys authoritarianism, Portugals generosity, Italys call for solidarity, Germanys tightfistedness: European responses to the current crisis are literally all over the map. This does not bode well for the future of the European Union. As Nathalie Tocci, a former adviser to the EU foreign policy chief,toldThe Guardian: This is definitely a make-it-or-break-it moment for the European project. If it goes badly this really risks being the end of the union. It fuels all the nationalist-populism.

Right now, Europe is in the midst of a cytokine storm. The doctors are hooking the patient up to the ventilators of economic bailout. Its uncertain whether this strategy will save the patient or just prolong the agony. For sure, however, if the EU survives its intubation, it will emerge on the other side a different, and possibly much weaker, survivor.

*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

Link:

Will the EU Survive the Coronavirus? - Fair Observer

Nearly seventy-fiveyears ago in August 1945, at least 150,000 people may have been killed in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Although another 75,000 were killed in Nagasaki when the second atomic bomb was dropped there just days later, it should be remembered that another 120,000 people survived the two blasts.

Among them was Tsutomu Yamaguchi, whosurvived both atomic bombs. He was thus both the unluckiest and luckiest man to survive the Second World War.

Consider it a case of being in the wrong place at the worst possible time twice!

On August 6, 1945, Tsutomu was working on a 5,000-ton oil tanker for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and here is where his unique mix of bad luck turned out to be good luck. He had been on the job for three months but on that sunny summer day had forgotten his "inkan," a personal stamp for use on documents. Instead of boarding a bus or streetcar (reports vary) to go to work, he returned to his rented room to retrieve it.

As he walked along the road he witnessed an American B-29 overhead. That plane was the Enola Gay, and it dropped the atomic bomb known as "Little Boy."

According to his accounts, Tsutomu was less than two miles away from ground zero and while some accounts say he saw a flash of light, it is generally agreed that his navy air-raid training kicked in and he dove into an irrigation ditch, covered his eyes and plugged his ears.

The blast was powerful enough to send him flying several feet through the air, and when he opened his eyes he saw only blackness. He wasn't blinded from the flash, but rather it kicked up an enormous cloud of dust. As the sky cleared he saw the infamous "mushroom cloud" over the city.

Tens of thousands were dead, but Tsutomu lived. His arms and face were badly burned and his eardrums were ruptured.

With the city in ruins, Tsutomu spent a fitful night in a shelter, before heading to the train station, which had been located on the edge of the city and survived. He was able to then take a several-hour journey to his home to reunite with his wife and young children. His hometown was Nagasaki.

When he reached his house his wife and young daughter didn't recognize him at first as he had been so badly burned.

On August 9, just a day after making it to Nagasaki and three days after the first atomic bomb had been dropped, Tsutomu reported to work to inform his superiors at Mitsubishi on what he had seen. When he told of the massive weapona single bomb that could wipe out an entire citythey didn't believe him.

But then during that meeting, the sky was once again lit up with a brightness that rivaled the sun. The building was destroyed, and another Japanese city was instantly raised to the ground. The B-29 Bockscar had dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb, killing some 35,000 to 40,000 people outright while at least 75,000 would die in total including from long-term health effects.

However, Tsutomu wasn't among them. In just three days he survived two atomic bomb blasts. Fortunately for Tsutomu, his family also survived, and Japan surrendered six days later.

While heslowly recovered from his wounds and was deaf in one ear, he lived until the age of ninety-three. He passed away peacefully in the city of his birth, Nagasaki. In the years between the bombings and his death he worked for American occupation forces, became a teacher and even returned to work at Mitsubishi.

He became a vocal supporter of nuclear disarmament, and at the age of ninetypleaded for the abolition of nuclear weapons to the UN.

According to reports there may have been as many 165 twice-bombed peopleknown as "nijyuu hibakusha"but Tsutomu is the only one to be officially acknowledged. He may have been among the

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and website. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Wikipedia.

Follow this link:

The Man Who Survived the Atomic Bombings of BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki - The National Interest

The coronavirus has spread to 184 countries, according to Johns Hopkins University, but while the COVID-19 virus is something nearly every country in the world shares, national responses to the pandemic have had wildly disparate outcomes. Comparing these responses suggest best-path approaches for suppressing the spread of the virus, while simultaneously highlighting systemic weaknesses on both the national and international level. But while nation-states are composed of overlapping economies, social institutions and bureaucracies, they also embody a national identity, made of its collective people and their thoughts.

Without recognition in the international ordersometimes without even geographical territorythe world's micronations are made almost entirely of this intangible spirit. Their response to the coronavirus pandemic can't be waged with medical resources, PPE supply lines and police-enforced social distancing. Instead, they have each other, and the identity they've built collectively. Through diplomatic channels (email), we reached out to micronations founded in the United States, to see how they're weathering the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and to hear what good tidings they bring to the people of the country that surrounds them.

Each had their own purpose behind founding their own country, and they weren't always what you might expect. While often the creations of eccentrics who have built for themselves a fantastic excuse for colorful costumes and elaborate titles, micronations aren't just for individualists and property-rights political gadflies, demonstrating instead a thoughtful and international inclination.

With territorial holdings within the states of California and Nevada, the 11-acre Republic of Molossia has its own currency (the Valora, which is valued against the price of chocolate chip cookie dough), postal service, national parks, volcanological institute, connection to Arthurian legend, national musical instrument (the kazoo-like molossaphone), rockets program and railroad.

President Kevin Baugh has been the leader of Molossia since 1999, except for a few days in 2010 when the country was overthrown and renamed Kickassia (Baugh subverted the short-lived dictatorship in his disguise as advisor Baron Fritz von Baugh). While embodying a light spirit and a certain brand of political satire, Molossia nurtures a surprisingly robust civic life and emulatesin miniaturemany of the functions of the modern state, with outreach via an online radio show, newsletter and state visits with fellow micronations.

Molossia does, however, rely on the larger surrounding nation for health care and other resources, paid back in "foreign aid," i.e. taxes"They need it - have you seen their roads?" a Molossian government website says. As in the surrounding United States, Molossians are adhering to standard practices in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Currently most resident Molossians are on a form of lockdown, with only a couple traveling to their place of employment outside our nation to work. Thus far we have not had any Molossians fall victim to the virus, which is excellent news and shows that our basic plan of lockdown and social distancing is working." President Kevin Baugh of the Republic of Molossia told Newsweek. "Hopefully it stays that way, not just for us here in Molossia, but over the border in the U.S. and all over the world."

Azul from Talossa!

The Greater Talossan Area roughly overlaps with the East Side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the Kingdom itselffounded in 1979, when 14-year-old Robert Ben Madison, first in a line of elected kings and queens, declared his bedroom a sovereign stateis one of the earliest and most successful examples of a primarily online micronation, with more than a hundred active citizens around the world. Since 1995, Talossa has developed an elaborate government and culture, with a two-chamber legislature, cabinet ministers, political parties and its idiosyncratic invented language.

"We are like any other micronation out there in that what we do is very tongue-in-cheek and gives our participants a chance to make a difference in a unique societal framework," Talossian Jeffrey Ragsdale told Newsweek.

According to Talossan Prime Minister Daphne Lawless, Talossans haven't had an in-person meet up for several months, ensuring that "community transmission of COVID-19 in Talossa is zero."

"Talossans are pioneers at social distancing," Prime Minister Daphne Lawless told Newsweek, citing the exclusively online nature of their government and civic life. "For our Big Neighbour, the United States of America, I wish nothing but the best of health and welfare."

The Prime Minister ended our email correspondence with a Talossan proverb: "Voastra soleu ispu da srvivon, c' despasar acest malignh crisomileu din la Cas Bianc."

Using their online lexicon, their proverb translates loosely to, "Your only hope for survival is to get rid of that orange goblin in the White House."

"I come before you in a time of great uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic, now upon us, has touched every continent in the world, except for Antarctica," Grand Duke Travis McHenry said in a video address to the citizens of Westarctica, the micronation he founded in 2001. "However, this does not mean we are not affected, for Westarctica is a global community, with citizens in every corner of the Earth."

Westarctica claims as its sovereign territory a 620,000 square mile slice of West Antarctica called Marie Byrd Land (named for the wife of Antarctic explorer Richard Byrd), which is still considered by most nations to be the largest unclaimed territory on the planet.

Its leader sporting a uniform somewhere in the nebulous zone between Napoleonic and tinpot dictator, Westarctica emphasizes martial valor, heraldry and pomp, but aims it all at service-driven ends, particularly combating climate change. Citing its self-interest as an Antarctic country (if so far uninhabited), Westarctica pursues environmental causes via a scholarship grant, initiatives encouraging reduced meat consumption and the Westarctican Civilian Corps, which structures on-the-ground ecological work with military-style honors and awards. By creating their nation in Antarctica and a flag to rally around, Westarctica sees itself as providing a voice for a fragile ecosystem and bringing attention to the state of the Western Antarctic ice sheet.

As for their response to coronavirus, Grand Duke Travis suggested his citizens follow the recommendations of local health services, while emphasizing Westarctica's service-oriented national character.

"Our Foreign Minister, based in Germany, has been activated by the German military to assist with medical operations," Grand Duke Travis told Newsweek. "Aside from a bit of fatigue from the long hours, he's in good spirits."

Westarctica has also appointed the head of their national orchestra, Jon Langer, to the position of Kapellmeister, who will now have the duty of creating Westarctican music for the enjoyment of those sheltering in place.

While COVID-19 has yet to spread to Antarctica and no Westarctican yet lives on the southernmost continent, Grand Duke Travis expressed hope that "scientists at research stations across the continent are taking proper precautions."

The unusual nature of The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia have made coronavirus precautions a cinch for the microstate. The nation's founder, Grand Marshal Caro Yagjian, took concrete steps against the pandemic, closing "the national briefcase" days before U.S. states began instituting shelter in place ordersthe landmass comprising The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia consists of a medium-sized volcanic rock, broken into two chunks. Weighing about the size of a large pineapple, the transportable nation is sometimes displayed alongside a sign that reads, "Please feel free to touch country."

"Obsidia sees the U.S. federal response as a complete disaster," Grand Marshal Yagjian told Newsweek. "It is truly a failure of the American system in every way."

Her nation is calling for the United States to provide healthcare, hazard pay, PTO and sick leave for all frontline workers, including agricultural workers and those working at grocery stores and other ongoing food services.

"In times like this micronation activities can feel frivolous," Grand Marshal Yagjian said. "Many of our members are affected by job losses or having to put themselves at risk because they work the low-paying jobs that were not deemed essential until a few weeks ago."

While bordered on all sides by Oakland, California, the Ambulatory Free States were formed as a matriarchal "anti-state," Obsidia models LGBTQ and feminist-led alternatives to capitalism by promoting self-expression in pursuit of new concepts for ideal governance. An artistic collective in spirit, Obsidia citizens have made their own responses to coronavirus, including this guide to sewing your own face mask"

"My only hope is that we will come out of this with an energy that says working people will not tolerate abuse any longer," Grand Marshal Yagjian said. "Our embassy is closed, but our spirit of mutual aid and strength remain the same."

"The whole Zaqistan thing is not necessarily to talk to you here and pretend it's a 100 percent functioning country," New York artist and Republic of Zaqistan founder Zaq Landsberg told Newsweek. "It's a tool to make people question what is a 'real' country."

The Republic of Zaqistan is one of Landsberg's many large-scale creations, which often present as playfully interactive while subtly (or not-so-subtly, as with the NYPD mobile surveillance tower Landsberg transformed into a menacing spider) highlighting internationalist struggles or critiquing American militarism. Zaqistan is populated by robot sentinels, who stand guard over the Victory Arch, a monument to an unspecified victory ("When it happens, we'll have it ready," Landsberg said).

Landsberg created Zaqistan to explore how national sovereignty, and particularly diplomatic recognition, can be used as a tool to delegitimize people and populations. While initially inspired by how the sovereign status of Taiwan has been systematically delegitimizedincluding by the United Nationsthe creation of Zaqistan raised questions about his own relationship with the United States. Landsberg recalled a sense of shame hanging over his first visit to the land that would become a new micronation, which coincided with the George W. Bush administration's failure to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina.

"Who decides what American is? If American stuff is happening and we don't agree with it, can we go someplace else? Can we disavow that?" Landsberg said. "Can I create my own country and my own identity?

In some ways, an uninhabitable micronation out in the desert, surrounded by the United States, highlights the absurdity of believing it's possible to fully separate our identities from our national origins"If you and I are born in America, everything we write and do is going to be American," Landsberg said.

But Landsberg came to believe it was possible to consciously transform a national identity, with Zaqistan as a model in miniature of how this process of self-conceiving operates. As he issued Zaqistan passports to a widening circle of friends and traveling companions, Landsberg found surprising power in the assertion of a joint sovereignty independent from modern nation-states. While in India, Landsberg extended Zaqistani citizenship to stateless Tibetan exile friends, who found their new citizenship in the micronation darkly hilarious.

"They travel on Indian residency cards. Literally to this day, Zaqistanwhich is kind of a joke countryis the only country they hold citizenship too," Landsberg said. "That change did it for me, because at first it was a tongue-in-cheek thing, but that made it turn. There was an actual thing that affected their lives, that was a little hard to describe or even for Americans to think about, because there aren't many stateless people in the United States."

Together, they were creating Zaqistani art, "joke or not," and collectively building a Zaqistani worldview. This same worldview informed Landsberg's response to the coronavirus pandemic, who largely dismissed the status of his micronation and instead explored how concepts of nationalism, both micro- and macro- could either become a great strength or a great impediment to how humanity weathers the COVID-19 virus.

"Zaqistan is in the middle of the Utah desert and there's a couple of robot sentinels out there," Landsberg told Newsweek. "In that sense the virus doesn't affect the land, but there are hundreds of Zaqistani citizens throughout the world and I worry about how they are."

Landsberg pointed out how national identity can play a surprising role in how effectively we as a country can combat the virus. For example, undocumented immigrants are more at risk for having less access to healthcare and employment opportunities, but the decision to keep them in this relegated status endangers everyonea problem created by our conception of national identity.

"The virus doesn't discriminate, it just attacks human hosts," Landsberg said. "When it's 'my country or yours' it can make both countries sicker in the long run."

Just as advocates for policies like Medicare for All have held up the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as evidence of the need for universal healthcare that won't endanger or bankrupt the millions of American workers freshly unemployed and without insurance, Landsberg sees in COVID-19 the failures of nationalism and the potential benefits in constructing more fruitful and open identities.

"These are problems of nationality and countries working together," Landsberg said. "Not even in a kumbaya sense, but how as humans we need to figure this problem out. The more we work together, the better it's going to be for everybody. Sectioning and dividing ourselves off could potentially make things worse."

Rather than the abolition of nationalist affiliations, Landsberg sees in micronations the potential for people to self-select identities that can bring them together. While nations in their composition, micronations lack a monopoly on force, making them voluntary associations capable of embodying a collective will. Rather than throwing out national identity, in the micronation model we can see the possibility of improving and better coordinating separate collectives, an activity which has become surprisingly literal in our atomized, shelter-in-place isolation.

"What if everybody starts coming up with a flag and ruling from their quarantine zone and their little identities?" Landsberg asked.

Original post:

Micronations in the United States Prepare for Coronavirus, Send Messages of Goodwill to the American People - Newsweek

Actress Janina Melehova with daughter Anna-Maria in the mode of self-isolation since March 16. From the day when was signed the decree that closed the theatres cancelled performances, stop a shooting. At the same time announced that the gathering of more than 50 people is impossible.

this was announced some 15 hours, and within minutes, my body workaholic took a break. Im sick. And it is strong, with a high temperature. So in isolation I didnt do baby, as she me.

Seven-year-old daughter of actress Anna Maria grows very sympathetic and caring girl. Seeing mom exhausted, she nearly cried, but quickly pulled myself together. According to the memoirs of Janina, she doesnt remember her body so much had gone wrong.

. I couldnt get out: we needed something to feed the baby. Hardly understand how I ever will. Annie saw me in this state said, mom, dont worry, Ill prepare myself. And left. From the kitchen came the sound of the cartoon and the thunder of dishes. Well, let plays I thought. Like 15 minutes later she came to me with the shapers, which was covered with the dough. In her hands there were two kinds of cupcakes with sea-buckthorn jam and chocolate. However, she still apologized when the jam broke in the test. And came to me not for help, and for permission to go to neighbor our friend to put the cupcakes in the oven. We have no oven. The dessert was very tasty. Asked: how you did that. What Annie was surprised, and said, Well, what of it? Took flour, milk, sugar, mixed to the consistency of liquid sour cream, I went and baked. Since then, the baking of the cupcakes was for my daughters most favorite pastime in quarantine.

the Cold Melekhova not passed and she passed the test coronavirus. Fortunately, he turned out to be negative and the whole family gasped. Then the actress with a calm soul had sent our daughter to a country house to his parents. Itself completely isolated themselves from them so as not to infect. With his girka continues his studies, deals on-line, playing in the yard in the fresh air. And seeing as my mother is sick and worried about the abolition of work, Anna began to do for her so-called antistress or dampers.

Take balloons and fill them with sand, pebbles, beads. While I can see it all on video calls, but I feel that when we meet, I will stress for the year ahead laughed Janina.

the Famous designer Mila Marcel wished everyone good health, warmth and love. She firmly believes that we need to be together for some time in their homes and apartments, where you can always find something to their liking, and thus help it to stop this process.

During the quarantine, we of children and adults turned into a full family of seven people: three children Anna, Sasha and Masha, and four adults: me, husband, my mom and our helper says Mila. A large family required strict rules. First, we live on the regular schedule and not on vacation. The children get up at 8 in the morning, brush my teeth, eat Breakfast and sit down for lessons. My husband has also organized a working day mode, to remotely run and dont turn into pajama animals. Second, a strict rule: in order to avoid panic at the family table are not discussing any topics related to the coronavirus. My husband and I read only the official press, the orders relating to the work and also with the forecasts in the business.

In school, son Sasha, canceled even deleted lessons, so my parents had to educate ourselves. Mom found a lot of interesting activities online, which makes now not only the son, but the eldest daughter, and the younger one tries to join.

We all love to cook, but it was so busy that doing it once. Now found and remembered lots of interesting recipes that everyone likes, and cook them together. For example, the children kneaded the dough, cut circles with glass, adult thingsUte meat. Of course, all help each other. Then sculpt the whole family dumplings. Its very common. I try to introduce low-calorie recipes in food for the whole family. For example, Mary loves cows milk as I know how in adulthood, it is poorly absorbed by the body, translating it into almond and coconut. Wheat flour for the dumplings model on a buckwheat and almond.

Follow this link:

The star told how not to become a pajama animals - The KXAN 36 News