Innehållsförteckning för March 22/29, 2021 från The Nation

BEWARE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE COVID-19 TUNNEL. EVOLUTION IS PLAYING nasty riffs on the coronavirus, and falling infection rates could be reversed if the more transmissible and virulent British and South African variants become fully naturalized—or if a dangerous California strain, awkwardly known as B.1.427/B.1.429, spreads to the rest of the country. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington recently warned that the national Covid death toll could rise as high as 654,000 by May Day. Other estimates are rosier, but we must remember that current mortality is more than twice as high as what was modeled last spring as a worst-case scenario. By the end of next summer, the viral book of the dead will almost certainly have as many or…

WHAT’S BEING DONE TO ENSURE MEMBERS OF THE SQUAD are protected from future attacks by violent white terrorists? No, really—I’m asking. This group of Black and brown congresswomen has long been the target of right-wing terror. In 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib received so many death threats that they asked to be informed only if they were “credible and imminent.” In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol coup attempt, one of the MAGA insurrectionists issued a call on social media for fellow terrorists to “assassinate” Ocasio-Cortez. Questions still remain about whether the panic buttons in Pressley’s office—which her staffers discovered had been torn out—were removed under sinister circumstances or as an egregious error that could have proved fatal. Threats against Ilhan Omar have been so prolific that…

SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE EVEN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC HIT, THE FEELING WAS PERVASIVE: WHEN we’re raising children in America, we’re going it alone. Demands for more support are growing, but the persistent lack of interest by our government in the essential work of child-rearing has fueled the sense that launching children safely into the world is something we have to figure out on our own. We were struggling—some much more than others—even before Covid-19 roared into our lives. But the pandemic has fully exposed the brutal logic of modern parenting. Too many families entered the crisis with too little. With schools shuttered, many of these children lost access to meals, counseling, and clean clothes. Suddenly without child care, thousands of mothers were pushed out of the workforce. Shut inside our homes,…

I AM A PROUD PRODUCT OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS, which is to say that despite the controversy and corruption that have plagued the nation’s third-largest school district throughout its history, I think I fared pretty well within its halls. I was privileged to attend what were then high-performing magnet institutions from first through 12th grade. My elementary school had a nearly 100 percent Black student population, and the majority of the teachers, staff, and administrators reflected that. In high school, my Black classmates and I were about 60 percent of the student body; today, my alma mater has the same Black woman principal who had to call my mom when I smoked an herbal cigarette inside a school building just a few weeks after she’d written a recommendation for…

WILLIAM ANDERSON, then 64, breathes a tiny sigh of relief when he sees his youngest son, Naeem, sitting across the table from him. His son looks back with the same wide brown eyes he’s always remembered. At 23, Naeem(a pseudonym, as are all the names of the family members in this article) still has a baby face, more pronounced now that he’s cleanshaven, his coiled locks no longer sprouting wildly from his head. Unlike the many times before, however, he isn’t visiting his father in prison; this day, he’s housed in the same facility. William and Naeem have only this on one face-to-face visit to connect in real time before Naeem embarks on his own long sentence. William hopes to mentally and emotionally prepare his son for “the life inside.”…

WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE, ALL I WANTED IN THE WORLD was a pair of shiny Umbro soccer shorts. I didn’t play soccer; I just wanted to wear the shorts so I could be like all the other kids in my class. My parents did not buy me the shorts. It wasn’t a question of money or ideological objection. My parents didn’t buy me the shorts because they didn’t know where they were sold and weren’t interested in finding out. They were not adept consumers. Buying new things was of so little interest to my parents—my dad especially—that most consumer behaviors were foreign to them. Requiring my dad to navigate a shopping mall would have been like asking him to speak a language he didn’t know. I don’t blame…

FOLLOWING AMY CONEY BARRETT’S ASCENSION to the Supreme Court, the Federalist Society finally has a case before the court that could roll back large swaths of the regulatory state and civil rights laws. On March 22, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on an appeal from a corporate farm seeking to void California regulations giving union organizers access to its property to talk to farmworkers. The farm owners argue in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that the regulations violate their Fifth Amendment right to exclude unwanted visitors. Both the California Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have ruled that the state’s regulations are constitutional. So if the US Supreme Court is bothering to take the case, there’s a reasonable likelihood that, with Barrett,…

TOWARD THE END OF A WEEKEND TRAILER VISIT TO MY INCARCERATED FAther in New York State in 1992, when I was 12, I had an emotional meltdown—and not for the first time. Trailer visits are occasional overnight accommodations provided to family members of people serving long sentences who’ve kept a good disciplinary record. On that particular weekend, I’d brought a stack of homework that I had to complete before school on Monday. We’d had a couple of happy days together, cooking epic meals of fresh vegetables, tofu, and brown rice, playing chess and cards, watching movies—even as I refused his advice to do my homework the whole time. (Sound familiar?) On the second and last night, I had a temper tantrum: I didn’t want to do my homework, or at…

I COULDN’T PERSUADE MY 6-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO CHANGE OUT OF HER FLANNEL footie pajamas even though it was the height of summer, but at least I got her to put her mask on. We threw the other kid, 3, on the cargo bike alongside her stubborn, sweating sister, taped on our homemade Black Lives Matter sign, and headed to the high school down the street. Our kids looked at us, bewildered, as we got closer. Their wide eyes essentially asked: Why are we deliberately heading into a crowd of thousands after avoiding even our closest neighbors for months? Because it matters this much, we told them. Because we have to be willing to risk something if we want the country to be different when you grow up. We also promised…

ANA BRUSHES HER HAIR IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR WITH A HAUNTED LOOK in her eyes. Minutes pass; her hair is still wet. She feels cold and realizes she was lost in her own thoughts again. In a rush, she puts her hair in a ponytail and leaves her small bedroom. Her head is spinning. I have to take the children to school, clean the house, go to the supermarket, worry about money… and lunch! Will my husband find work today? The pandemic hit Ana’s family hard. Her husband, Isai, goes weeks without picking up work. Sometimes they have to borrow money and stretch supplies to cover household expenses. God will provide, she likes to think. They are healthy, and for now, that is enough. She smiles, as she always…

“Push, push, push, Mama; push,” my wife, Joia Crear-Perry, implored. Quiana, angled upright on the birthing bed, replied with grunts of effort. Quiana’s husband, Dooley, offered his support from where he stood at the head of the bed. I stood on the opposite side. It was my first time seeing my wife in action as a gowned and gloved ob-gyn. “He’s almost here—push, Mama.” Joia sat on a rolling stool between Quiana’s legs, which were hoisted in stirrups. The attending physician stood behind Joia, who repeated the same exhortation to push that was nearly a chant: “Push, push, push, Mama; push.” I couldn’t see the particulars because of the gown, but I watched in amazement as Quiana birthed Robeson Perry, my biological son with Joia. My wife had assisted in…

Sundays, my brother returns as a trapezoid of lightinching across the fading rug, showing me again thatwindows need cleaning. He returns each time a breezebrings the unpleasantness of rabbits in a half-shingledhutch, their timid ears pinned in place. Once, hikingthrough scrub oak, he pulled at a stalk of stubborncheatgrass which sliced his palm open and his fistdripped blood all the way home. I ask if he remembersthat or the forts we built of bedsheets. We secured eachcorner with volumes on the spider, the mummy, thesolar system, and then used box fans for roof raising.How long was it, I ask, before the wind was too much?When did we grow bored? I sometimes forget that mybrother’s bones are now ash and the rest of him a cloud.The fact is, my only memory…

Time to Choose Again Re “End Notes,” by Daniel Luban [Feb. 8/15]: My longheld belief is that the system itself matters less than the values and history that underpin it and animate it. For example, Russia was never going to be a free and fair society under any system without overcoming its dark medieval past of serfdom and czars. And it hasn’t yet, despite radical attempts to do so in the early 20th century. The story was different in the United States. The Great Depression forced a reckoning, and that resulted in a reaction that manifested variously around the globe. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal saved capitalism by counterintuitively taming its wilder impulses and instead federalizing the respect and support of ordinary people. This legacy remained even as the ’80s…

Even if the dream of getting a Medicare for All champion into the White House ended with Bernie Sanders’s defeat in the 2020 presidential primaries, the fight to win single-payer health care is far from over. The House and Senate Medicare for All bills have more than 100 Democratic cosponsors, and Congress’s insurgent left flank is growing. Voters continue to voice strong support and prioritize health care above nearly every other political issue. Meanwhile, a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, the inequalities at the heart of the market-driven health care system have never been more apparent. In a new book, Drs. Abdul El-Sayed and Micah Johnson argue that the meteoric rise of Medicare for All ought to galvanize advocates to keep building the movement. Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide…

WHY DOES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WANT THE Cold War back? Senator Mark Warner and Representative Adam Schiff tell us that Russia is the destroyer of democracy at home and abroad. Vladimir Putin, in their view, is seeking more than reasonable elbow room in Eastern Europe. He aims to subvert and conquer America. In a podcast conversation with Nancy Pelosi after the January 6 Capitol riot, Hillary Clinton said she would “love to see” Trump’s phone records from that day to find out if he was consulting with Putin. This fantastical supposition was greeted by Pelosi with instant credulity: “All roads lead to Putin.” Where would they be without an enemy? These Democrats have already formed an implicit alliance with Republicans Liz Cheney, Tom Cotton, and Nikki Haley, as well as…

GUARDIANSHIP ONLY MAKES THE NEWS when something goes terribly wrong. Take Rebecca Fierle-Santoian: Acting as a professional guardian, she placed a do-not-resuscitate order on an elderly man who said that he wanted to live. He died. Fierle-Santoian served as the guardian for some 450 people, and it was later discovered that many of them were placed under DNRs or denied life-sustaining medical care without their input or permission or that of family members or the courts. Or consider the case of William Dean, who was placed under state guardianship after his mother’s death. Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services sold his home for below market value, got rid of his beloved musical instruments, and euthanized his cat, Caterpillar. Most famously of all, there is Britney Spears and the ongoing…

IT WAS A CHILLY WEDNESDAY IN JANUARY WHEN KAYLYNN BEGAYE, six months pregnant, walked into the lobby of the Changing Woman Initiative, her mother, Christine, by her side. Begaye, 33, found herself in this clinic in Santa Fe, N.M., after one too many doctor visits in nearby Albuquerque had left her stressed out. Since giving birth to a son eight years ago, followed by a daughter five years later, Begaye, who is Dine (Navajo), said the treatment she endured during both of those deliveries left her dreading having to go through it all over again: getting separated from her newborns at birth without her consent, being rushed out of her hospital room while still in postpartum recovery, seeing her family treated poorly by a mostly white staff. The birth of…

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or go to TheNation.com/StartMakingSense to listen today. STACEY ABRAMS MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES M. BLOW SHERROD BROWN NOAM CHOMSKY GAIL COLLINS MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW BARBARA EHRENREICH DANIEL ELLSBERG FRANCES FITZGERALD ERIC FONER THOMAS FRANK HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. MICHELLE GOLDBERG AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE O’DONNELL LAURA POITRAS KATHA POLLITT ROBERT REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH ARUNDHATI ROY BERNIE SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET TALBOT CALVIN TRILLIN KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL YANIS VAROUFAKIS JOAN WALSH AMY WILENTZ GARY YOUNGE…