FEARS GROW OF US CORONAVIRUS SURGE FROM GEORGE FLOYD PROTESTS (31 MAY 2020)
The Guardian: Governors, mayors and public health officials across the US are raising fears of a surge in coronavirus cases arising from escalating protests over the death of George Floyd.
THE ASIAN AMERICAN REPLY TO PANDEMIC-ERA RACISM MUST BE CROSS-RACIAL SOLIDARITY (31 MAY 2020)
Truthout: Violence against Asian Americans and Asian immigrants has surgedin response to COVID-19. Anti-Chinese rhetoric and racist misinformation spews from the top leaders of the U.S. as Asian communities are vilified as scapegoats for Trump’s “Chinese virus.”
PUSSY RIOT AND CHILEAN GROUP JOIN FORCES AGAINST STATE REPRESSION (29 MAY 2020)
The Guradian: Governments around the world are using the coronavirus as an excuse to step up repression and push back civil liberties, warns a new song by Pussy Riot, released alongside a new manifesto written with the Chilean feminist collective Lastesis.
Global Forest Coalition: One important lesson that we can draw from the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted almost every country in the world is that agro-industrial livestock production is causing grave illness for us, forests, and the planet overall. As experts have said, in order to understand why viruses are becoming more dangerous, one must look at the industrial model of agriculture, and more specifically, livestock production.
STUDIES ADD TO ALARM OVER DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL UNDER BOLSONARO (28 MAY 2020)
The Guardian: Two studies have raised further alarm about deforestation in Brazil during the first year of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s government. One study showed the country lost 12,000 km2 (4,633 sq miles) of forest last year and also provided important information about those behind deforestation. The other research flagged a 27% increase in the destruction of tropical forests in eastern Brazil.
IF COVID-19 FRIGHTENS YOU, YOU SHOULD BE TERRIFIED BY CLIMATE CHANGE (27 MAY 2020)
EarthBeat: “It is worse, much worse, than you think.” This is how journalist David Wallace-Wells opens his 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth, about global climate change. This sentence aptly describes the dire circumstances our planet faces now and in the coming years, but it is an equally suitable descriptor for the current and future consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the wake of political inaction and personal irresponsibility.
HAWAII CONSIDERS AN EXPLICITLY FEMINIST PLAN FOR COVID-ERA ECONOMIC RECOVERY (26 MAY 2020)
Truthout: “The road to economic recovery should not be across women’s backs,” reads the first sentence of Hawaii’s Feminist Economic Recovery Plan. As states put forth dozens of recovery plans that all aim to redress the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Hawaii’s remains the first and only that is explicitly “feminist.”