Archive for category: News

Yusuf Kabba remembers clearly the first time he heard about the coronavirus. It was 5am and he was listening to the BBC World Service when it announced news of a novel disease outbreak in Wuhan, China. It was still January, months before the World Health Organisation would declare a pandemic, but already Kabba felt a wave of shock and déjà vu.

As the broadcaster spoke of quarantine, isolation and infection rates, his mind raced back to the last time he’d heard those words: the Ebola outbreak of 2014-16. That epidemic led to over 11,000 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and his home country of Sierra Leone. It almost killed Kabba himself.

“It brought back flashbacks to the time I became infected with Ebola,” he told African Arguments, almost in tears. That was a deeply traumatising time for the affected communities. Kabba survived but he knows many who did not, including the girl in the bed next to him in the hospital whom he was too weak to help.

Anthony Naileh, in Liberia, was similarly disturbed when he first heard about the coronavirus. He is also an Ebola survivor, having caught it in 2014 from his wife, who in turn got the virus from her nephew, a nurse, who died. When he heard about  a new deadly virus, Naileh started having sleepless nights.

“It reminded us of 2014,” he said. “I was even nervous about going out, and I was worried for my wife and three children.”

Kabba and Naileh were not the only ones reminded of the Ebola epidemic. In their roles as presidents of the Sierra Leone Ebola Survivors Association and Liberia Ebola Survivors Network respectively, they started receiving calls from their thousands of members. Communities for whom the devastation of the Ebola outbreak was still fresh feared what might happen if COVID-19 reached their countries.

Both Kabba and Naileh called urgent meetings at which it was agreed that they would tell all their members to take every possible precaution in terms of following health guidelines and avoiding crowded places.

“I told all my members that we were no longer safe and that we should all stay at home, and not to interact with anyone outside of our family,” Kabba said.

Helping themselves but also helping others 

Alongside protecting themselves, however, the survivors also wanted to help others, drawing on their experience of having caught and survived a virulent disease. Their initial reaction had been to stay at home, but they eventually decided they had a role to play.

Naileh and his membership in Liberia organised a sensitisation programme. Ebola survivors went from house to house across different communities to raise awareness about COVID-19 and to help with contact tracing of probable cases.

“We have been into the various communities using our own stories to tell the people to be safe,” said Naileh, who tells people “do not deny that the virus is real, maintain the health protocols, and take care of yourself”. In Freetown, where survivors have similarly spread the word, Kabba tells people to be hopeful. “They have to stand as conquerors of the virus,” he said.

The survivors associations have also reached out to their states – both of which declared states of emergency and imposed lockdown measures – to offer their contributions in more formal ways. “We the survivors can support the government’s efforts in curbing the coronavirus through social and community mobilisation programmes,” said Kabba. “We have the expertise. There are survivors that are ambulance drivers, healthcare workers and other support staff who could be on the frontlines. We have also done a paramedic preparedness training.”

In Liberia, the Ebola Survivors Network sent a proposal to the government to raise awareness in Lofa County, an area that was particularly vulnerable during the Ebola outbreak. The group wants to organise outreach programmes there and requested state support in terms of transportation, accommodation and food in addition to information materials (flyers, posters, megaphones) to do so.

However, neither group party has received a positive response. “We are a potential resource base, but it’s sadly just impossible without some form of external resources,” said Kabba.

Deserving of government support

For the networks in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the government’s lack of response feels familiar to many of their members.

In Sierra Leone, for instance, the government has given a cash transfer of 250,000 leones ($27) to around 8,000 people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, but Ebola survivors were not included. “We deserve government’s support, but it is not happening,” said Kabba. “A lot don’t understand our vulnerabilities. They include orphans and widows.” Kabba says he raised the survivors concerns with the government but is yet to receive a response.

According to Alpha Sesay, a human right lawyer and advocacy officer at Open Society Foundations, survivors require special support due to their particular economic vulnerabilities. “Ebola survivors continue to deal with life-changing health complications which warrant continuous attention,” he said.

In Sierra Leone and Liberia, Kabba and Naileh continue to worry about the wellbeing of their membership. Lockdowns have added hardships on the communities and cases are continuing to rise. Sierra Leone has 1,547 confirmed cases and Liberia has 917 cases at the latest count. The Ebola survivors continue to pray for a cure.

Source: African Arguments 

Do you expect wider acceptance of Black activism on college campuses?

Will some number of colleges and universities that did not embrace Black student activists previously do so now? Perhaps a few. However, I believe more will work, directly and indirectly, to ensure these students never set a foot on their respective campuses.

According to a recent Pew poll, 60% of whites support the Black Lives Matter movement. That means 40% do not. Certainly, some of those whites opposed or indifferent to Black Lives Matter work in higher education.

And the 60% who do support Black Lives Matter is likely somewhat inflated due to social desirability bias, which is when people give socially acceptable answers to research questions instead of saying how they really feel. In sum, there is good reason for Black Lives Matter student activists, especially those who have a high profile, to have reservations about the degree to which historically and predominantly white colleges and universities truly desire their presence on campus.

Many institutions have not even made a meaningful commitment to make significant anti-racist changes. Some of the anti-racist statements that colleges and universities have made since the torture and execution of George Floyd have been described by some academics as “toothless.”

Could activism actually help students?

Perhaps, at some institutions. There may be a net increase in the number of enthusiastic administrators and admissions counselors. But these might be at places that were considerably further along their way to becoming truly racially diverse, equitable and inclusive – in a word – anti-racist. To the extent that Black student activism is now viewed more favorably on campus, it might also depend on what kind of college we’re talking about, what part of the country it’s located in and the size and demographics of its student body.

How might COVID-19 come into play?

To the extent COVID-19 has increased predominantly white colleges’ and universities’ need for the tuition revenue generated by Black and brown bodies – whether in physical or virtual seats – they may accept a greater number of Black students than is typical for them. Still, while admission counselors are reviewing students’ files, I would expect that many will still view most favorably those Black students who are the least explicit about being racially conscious.

Some Black students may choose to hide their activism because they understand that most whites, including admissions counselors, likely view it in a negative light. In this instance, they would be doing so tactically, solely for the purposes of gaining admittance. Still, I suspect that Black students who are the most committed to Black Lives Matter activism will refuse to hide or downplay their activism.

Lastly, just because colleges might operate fully or largely online in the fall due to COVID-19, does not mean that racism will magically disappear from higher education. Racism is as likely to appear in the virtual classroom – and other parts of college that move online – as it did on the physical campus, so anti-racist activism will likely have to take place in the digital realm as well.

Source: The Conversation

Panic about a second wave of coronavirus cases is “overblown,” Vice President Mike Pence wrote in June, implying the U.S. has COVID-19 under control. On the other hand, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warns that the U.S. is still firmly within a first wave of cases.

As media broadcast information about daily increases in the number of cases, it’s hard not to wonder which way the country is headed. Have the weeks and months of lockdown really helped? What do the trends in diagnoses and deaths mean for the course of the pandemic? Is the U.S. stuck in a first wave? Through the worst of it? Headed for a second round?

Six months into the pandemic, people are looking for ways to make sense of what’s happening. Talking about waves of disease, with the implication of predictable rises and falls, is part of that. As an epidemiologist, I know that disease waves aren’t scientifically defined. But looking to the history of previous epidemics and other countries’ current COVID-19 outbreaks can be useful.

Characterizing a wave

There’s no strict definition for what is or is not an epidemic wave or phase. A wave implies a rising number of sick individuals, a defined peak, and then a decline. The word “wave” implies a natural pattern of peaks and valleys; it hints that even during a lull, future outbreaks of disease are possible.

Historical outbreaks of infectious diseases offer some models for how the course of a disease like COVID-19 might unfold over time.

Some diseases come in somewhat predictable seasonal waves, with higher transmission rates at some times of the year than at others. Seasonal coronaviruses, like 229E or HKU1, which cause the common cold, have a high point from around December through March, according to research in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Several factors influence whether a particular disease is seasonal in nature. Some pathogens may spread less well with greater humidity. Annual epidemics, like of influenza may occur because of climate or patterns of social mixing – often driven by the school year or people staying inside more during the winter.

It’s possible that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, spreads more efficiently under certain weather conditions. But recent outbreaks in Florida, Arizona, Texas and Southern California suggest that warm or humid weather is not sufficient to stop the spread of the disease. Some scientists model that SARS-CoV-2 will eventually become seasonal like other coronaviruses.

Waves and seasonal dynamics are also affected by levels of immunity in the human population. As more individuals become immune to a pathogen, its spread slows and eventually stops as the virus runs out of new people to infect. The U.S. is nowhere near what epidemiologists call herd immunity in the general population, however; mathematical modelers suggest at least between 43% and 60% of people would need to be immune to SARS-CoV-2 for that to be the case.

Ebb and flow, 150 years of influenza waves

Some of the current talk of coronavirus waves likely stems from comparisons with past epidemics that did show these peaks and troughs of infections.

University of Oxford scholars of evidence-based medicine Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan have summarized past waves in respiratory virus pandemics over the previous 150 years. For example, the 1889-92 influenza outbreak had three distinct waves, which differed in their virulence. The second wave was much more severe, particularly in younger adults.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is often compared to the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, which had three distinct waves over the course of a year. The proportion of influenza patients who were severely ill or died was much higher in the last two waves compared to the first. It’s unclear whether being infected earlier on protected individuals during later waves.

More recently, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, though mild, had two distinct waves; this virus still commonly shows up in seasonal influenza outbreaks. A study of H1N1 influenza in 2009-2010 found that the second wave affected more older people, with underlying conditions.

Insight from the past suggests that discrete waves result as a disease spreads into and out of a population. Different waves can have different features, too, regarding factors like disease severity or which populations are most affected.

What’s happening now in the US

SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. are on the rise. Some of this increase may be driven by more widespread testing now. But the increases felt in many large states – Texas, California, Florida – are a result of more community transmission.

Currently, even with an increase in the number of cases in many parts of the U.S., there has not been a corresponding increase in the number of deaths.

The story from Iran may offer a cautionary note. From a peak of over 3,000 cases confirmed per day in early April, it declined to less than 1,000 by May, from which it has climbed to hover around 2,500 daily confirmed cases as of the end of June. The rise in the number of deaths did not occur until the second half of June. This is likely due to the time lag between when someone is infected and when they die.

Accordingly, U.S. states currently experiencing an uptick in COVID-19 confirmed cases could see a notable increase in deaths within a few weeks. The average age of those infected is getting younger, though, complicating predictions about a death toll.

The U.S. is not yet in a second wave and increasingly it looks like the country may not see one. Instead, the U.S. may sustain a constant first wave that just continues to crest. The political willpower necessary to limit transmission through robust, ongoing lockdown measures seems, unfortunately, to have been snuffed out.

But arguing about whether the U.S. is in a second wave, the first wave, or wave 1.5 ultimately doesn’t matter. Whichever it is, the commonsense actions everyone can currently take to limit the spread of infection remain the same: Staying home when possible, wearing a mask and socially distancing when out, and frequently washing hands will help speed our way beyond this pandemic, regardless of what wave we’re in.

Source: The Conversation 

When women are involved in peace processes – not as an afterthought but as acknowledged experts – there is a greater chance of achieving longer-lasting peace. From Northern Ireland to Yemen, understanding and working with the local community is key, says Irish Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney.

IT IS NOW 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement opened up a new landscape of peace in Northern Ireland. Today, we share our experience in building and sustaining peace with others seeking to end conflict and the terrible suffering that accompanies it. One element of the Northern Ireland peace process of keen interest to peacebuilders is its remarkable focus on cross-community initiatives, and in particular the crucial role that women played throughout the peace process negotiations.

While there is a powerful story to tell about women’s engagement in the Northern Irish peace process, our example is far from perfect. Women were neither institutionally supported nor intentionally involved in the peace process by the main parties in the negotiations. The women of Northern Ireland had to win their seats at the table through their own determined efforts. The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition was born across a dinner table in April 1996. It was a grassroots, cross-community initiative that wanted to ensure women were “written into, rather than out of” the peace process. In the space of six weeks it founded a political party and succeeded in gaining two seats for women at the peace table. Those two women drafted language on crucial issues such as integrated housing, mixed schooling, victims and reconciliation that has had a lasting impact on Northern Irish society.

In 2019, it is understood that when women are meaningfully involved in peace processes, there is a far more significant chance of a longer-lasting and more inclusive peace. The fact that we do not always see this understanding translated into action on the ground is both baffling and frustrating. Nowhere is this missed opportunity more evident than in the current peace process underway in Yemen, which remains perhaps the gravest country situation on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council.

The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition’s expertise was rooted in a firm understanding of the local community. Beyond the formalized network of the coalition, women from all communities and backgrounds at every level of society in Northern Ireland were and continue to be agents for change and peacebuilders in their everyday lives. Likewise, Yemeni women’s groups are working within communities and across political divides. They have called for an immediate cease-fire. They have activated local truce committees for local security. And they have led efforts to restore educational and health facilities.

Similar to the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, Yemeni women’s groups have also advocated for a broadening of the agenda, calling for due attention to be given to gender-aware disarmament, demobilization and the reintegration of female and child soldiers into society.

Integrated schooling was introduced into the Good Friday Agreement because these Northern Irish women knew how much further they had to walk to bring their children safely to school. Similarly in Yemen, knowing the lay of the local land, women have facilitated access for humanitarian deliveries, working to improve the dire situation facing the population.

These groups have much in common, but with one crucial difference: Yemeni women are not at the table. They do not have a formal and recognized voice with which they can influence the peace process. They are not completely excluded, and the work of the Special Envoy of the U.N. Secretary General for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, in creating the Yemeni Women’s Technical Advisory Board is certainly commendable. Yet proximity is not enough. Yemeni women cannot be left on the sidelines, on the outside looking in. These highly qualified women need to be formally involved in all stages of the process.

Following 20 years of sustaining peace in my country, the case study of the women of Northern Ireland remains the exception in peace processes, not the norm. The work of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition continues to inspire many. Its leaders have gone on to share their experiences across the globe, from Colombia, where women played an important role in the peace process, to Syria, where women activists hope they, too, can take their rightful seat at the negotiations table. Recent developments underline for us the importance of maintaining cross-community and cross-generational experience sharing.

We will continue to share the stories of women peacebuilders, but this is not an area where Ireland wants to stand alone. More needs to be done to systematically involve women from the beginning; not as an afterthought and not as a token; not focused solely on women’s issues but seen as equals, experts in their respective areas.

Source: News Deeply 

The sound of Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power” blared as face-masked protesters in Washington, D.C. broke into a spontaneous rendition of the electric slide dance near the White House.

It was the morning of June 14, and an Instagram user captured the moment, commenting: “If Trump is in the White House this morning he’s being woken up by … a Public Enemy dance party.”

Coming amid widespread protests over police brutality and structural racism in the United States, the song is an apt musical backdrop. It opens with a quote from civil rights activist Thomas “TNT” Todd before going into a sample-laden funk rap track referencing past black protest songs from the Isley Brothers and James Brown.

Demonstrators in other parts of the country similarly used hip-hop as a form of sonic protest. In New York, protesters chanted the hook to Ludacris’s 2001 song “Move B—-” as they were penned in on the Manhattan Bridge by police officers.

Footage of the crowd singing, “Move b—-, get out the way. Get out the way b—-, get out the way” to uniformed officers seemingly got the approval of Ludacris, who reposted a video on his Twitter account accompanied by a raised fist emoji.

No one who has listened to hip-hop since its origins in the 1970sshould be surprised that rap music has become the soundtrack to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis on May 25 while in police custody.

Hip-hop artists have protested police violence in their music for decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rappers from different corners of the United States described the brutal and discriminatory police tactics they witnessed in their communities.

Most famous perhaps is N.W.A.’s “F— tha Police” from 1988. Fellow Los Angeles rapper Ice T faced backlash after his metal band, Body Count, released “Cop Killer” in 1992.

In the Geto Boys’ “Crooked Officer” from 1993, the Houston rap group bears witness to racial profiling and police violence in the so-called Dirty South, before asserting: “Mr. Officer, crooked officer, I wanna put your ass in a coffin, sir.” In the same year, New York’s KRS-One referenced the racist origins of American policing in “Sound of da Police,” connecting the violent tactics used against enslaved Africans to the NYPD of the late 20th century and referring to an officer as a “wicked overseer.”

Minneapolis goddam?

As a cultural historian who studies connections between race and music, I know that the rich history of protest in Black American music started much earlier than hip-hop. The tradition is as old as Southern blues and continued through jazz and rhythm and blues.

Take, for example, the “Joe Turner Blues,” a song that likely originated in the late 1800s. According to folklorist Alan Lomax, Black residents of the Mississippi Delta used the earliest versions of the song to describe a white sheriff named Joe Turner who sent Black men to chain gangs or to work on building levees.

The lyrics recount a lover’s tale of loss: “They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone. Got my man and gone.” References to police officers in songs like “Joe Turner Blues” also link that tradition to the songs of enslaved Africans who warned about the slave patrols who combed the South in search of runaways.

As with hip-hop, protest against law enforcement came from communities of color in different parts of the country.

From east Texas, blues musician Texas Alexander describes false accusations of murder and forgery in “Levee Camp Moan Blues.” He laments, “They accused me of forgery; I can’t even write my name” – a statement that indicts both the segregated public school system of Texas and corrupt law enforcement officials.

Soul rebels

In the 1950s and 1960s, jazz musicians contributed to the emerging civil rights canon through songs like Charles Mingus’ “Original Faubus Fables” and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.”

Black musicians also made direct references to racial profiling and police brutality. Marvin Gaye tackled police violence on his 1971 album, “What’s Going On.” “Trigger happy policing” is one of the many social problems mentioned in “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” and he demands, “don’t punish me with brutality” on the album’s title track.

Protesters also co-opted seemingly nonpolitical Motown songs as part of their struggle against police brutality. As uprisings against violent police tactics erupted in places like Watts, Detroit and Newark between 1965 and 1967, “Dancing in the Street” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas became part of the soundtrack for urban protest.

Expressing anti-police sentiment in song is not exclusive to the Black American experience. Texans of Mexican descent have detailed their run-ins with law enforcement in Spanish for centuries through Southwestern corridos – narrative ballad songs.

Like much of the blues played by Black Americans, the corridos that emanated from the Rio Grande Valley in the 19th and early 20th century often described conflicts between Anglo-American law enforcement and Mexican Americans. “El corrido de Gregorio Cortez” recounts an actual event from 1901, when an Anglo-Anerican sheriff shot a man named Romaldo Cortez. His brother Gregorio then shot and killed the sheriff before eluding the Texas Rangers for 10 days.

Gregorio is celebrated as a hero who resisted Anglo-American domination: “They had a shootout and he killed another sheriff. Gregorio Cortez said with his pistol in his hand, ‘Don’t run you cowardly Rangers, from one lone Mexican.’”

New protest songs

Whether emanating from blues or corridos, Mexican and Black American music protested the ways that police buttressed white political, economic and social power. Similarly today, Latino activists point to shared concerns over race and law enforcement in their support for Black Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, recording artists are continuing the tradition of using music to protest police violence in communities of color. Los Angeles rapper YG released a single called “FTP” on June 4, in a nod to N.W.A.‘s “F— tha Police.” And hip-hop producer Terrace Martin likewise dropped a track, “Pig Feet” commenting on the current unrest: “Helicopters over my balcony. If the police can’t harass, they wanna smoke every ounce of me.”

Source: The Conversation