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With Hamilton

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Hamilton Cast Zoom Surprise: Some Good News with John Krasinski (Ep. 2)

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Debbie Allen's live dance class on Instagram. Credit... Amy Lombard for The New York Times

Our writer hadn't thought much about fun or joy, or about the bawdiness that comes out of a funk beat. But Ms. Allen had.

Debbie Allen's live dance class on Instagram. Credit... Amy Lombard for The New York Times

It was a gray Wednesday afternoon when I stepped onto my Brooklyn rooftop, balanced my phone gingerly on a tub of tar and a chimney railing, and began to dance.

Debbie Allen was guiding my moves. "Head to the right, to the left," she said warming up, as she blasted the theme song from "Fame." Ms. Allen, the choreographer, director, producer and actor - she does those last three on "Grey's Anatomy" - was in her studio at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy in Los Angeles. In loose black sweats and a white ball cap, she was running her first Instagram Live dance class. It lasted an hour, and more than 35,000 people tuned in. "I see you, Ellen Pompeo!" she shouted to the camera.

The moves were mostly basic - slides and two-steps that wouldn't be out of place at a wedding reception. But the aspiration was to connect on a much bigger scale. "Give something to the world," she called one move, as she stepped a foot back and reached her outstretched arms forward, in a gesture of bounty. I raised my arms to the sky.

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Credit Credit... Photographs by Amy Lombard

A floor below me, my apartment - arguably too small for my family of four on a good day - was extra crowded with anxieties. My 3-year-old and his babysitter were sick, with alarming symptoms that somehow didn't warrant getting tested, our doctors said. We were quarantined nonetheless. (A week later, they were feeling better, but we were still locked indoors.)

Then there was the whole working-from-home-while-running-a-sudden-preschool scenario, with my husband hustling double-time in an industry, restaurants and food service, that was among the hardest hit. And the prospect, of course, of all of this continuing, grimly, for months. We are fortunate, over all - we have jobs, insurance and a support system - but it was still an onslaught.

Hip rolls didn't seem like they could help. And yet. "There's a party going on in your living room, in your bathroom, wherever you are," Ms. Allen cheered. "Put your hands together!" At a moment of panic, when everyone was focused on survival, just enduring, I hadn't thought much about fun or joy, or about the bawdiness that comes out of a funk beat. But Ms. Allen had.

On the roof, I was alone, mercifully and surprisingly, with a squinting view of the Manhattan skyline. As Ms. Allen moved from a bouncy backstroke to a glide, with a soundtrack of Bruno Mars, Chaka Khan and Beyoncé, I noticed that cherry blossoms were in bloom on a tall tree in a neighbor's yard. Birds traveled in formation above me. There was a sense of release - nature! - and the confidence that comes with choosing to move a body, actively, through space. I felt, for the first time in days, hopeful.

"That makes me so happy," Ms. Allen said, when I called her a few days later to talk about the class. "We can stop the interview now - it's about that idea right there: At peace and confident, feeling like we're going to be OK. That's the goal."

"I could just cry right now," she added, and I could hear her getting teary. "Because you know, we all have to do what we can, and this is what I can do."

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Credit Credit... Photographs by Amy Lombard

That first class, archived on Instagram, now has more than 105,000 views, with many commenters awed about participating, calling it an experience they would otherwise never be privy to. That thousands of others followed along too gives it a double distinction: It is both communal and rarefied, like virtually partying with Michelle Obama on DJ D-Nice's feed. No matter your speed, there's a dance pro online for you now: The pop choreographer Ryan Heffington (who has created dances for Sia and FKA Twigs videos) is also teaching on Instagram.

Ms. Allen has planned lessons for Wednesdays, when she leads - a salsa class was her latest spin - and Saturdays, when she gives space to her staff to teach kids. The idea came to her a couple weeks ago, on the day she temporarily closed her dance academy, which serves about 300 children, and thousands more at one-off events.

"I was sitting with my staff, coming up with my verbiage," she said. "And I just decided, I'm going to do a class on Instagram."

"Everybody's going to be so bottled up, and feeling compromised and insecure, and not knowing what's going to happen," she added. "But I always say, there's light on the dance floor. I call my dance academy my church. It's a very spiritual thing to do, to come together, to push and sweat and keep plowing."

Her staff helped her set it up - Ms. Allen had never done anything like this before, and there were the attendant technical glitches. At one point in that first class, her phone rang. Grumbling - "Who's calling me now? Go away!" - she rushed to a laptop to turn it off, which took longer than it should have. ("I'm going to become technologically literate after this experience," she said later. "I thought I turned off all the devices. Your phone is ringing on your computer? Come on. It's enough already!")

Then she returned to her spot in front of the mirror and her step turns. She thought more about her playlist for the class, she said, than the choreography. "It was in the moment," she said. "Nothing was rehearsed."

Like millions of artists around the country, Ms. Allen has seen her professional trajectory shift because of the coronavirus. Shooting on "Grey's Anatomy" was suspended on the same day she closed up her studio, and the inaugural Los Angeles International Dance Festival, a major 16-day affair she was creating with the producer Nigel Lythgoe ("So You Think You Can Dance"), which was scheduled for April, is on hold. "We had worked for two years," planning it, she said.

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Credit Credit... Photographs by Amy Lombard

Her main concern now, she said, was for others in her dance community; dancers, she noted, often don't have insurance or any kind of conventional safety net. "We dance anywhere for a hot meal and a per diem," she said.

"When I closed my studio I gave everybody a week's salary," she added, "and now I'm trying to figure out: What is the new model?" Online classes might factor into that, but for now, hers are free.

"I'll do it as long as I need to," she said, "until they tell me I can't. Even if they tell me I can't drive to my studio, I can do it in my backyard if I have to." She imagined a tap class, flamenco, Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics. "We're just gonna keep going."

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Can Hip Rolls Help? Finding Uplift in Debbie Allen's Instagram Class

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Our writer hadn't thought much about fun or joy, or about the bawdiness that comes out of a funk beat. But Ms. Allen had. Debbie Allen's live dance class on Instagram. Credit...

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Fredrick Echols, a doctor who serves as health director for the city of St. Louis, has disclosed that, as of Wednesday, all 12 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the city were African Americans.

In a piece published by The St. Louis American on Wednesday, Echols wrote that the "coronavirus pandemic has brought to light what many healthcare providers in the St. Louis region already know: the communities with the highest health disparities and lack of access to health care will be hit the hardest by COVID-19."

His comments come as state officials have faced increasing pressure to release the racial breakdown of coronavirus cases and deaths in their states in recent weeks. Early data that has emerged has already shown that black and Latino communities are being disproportionately affected by the outbreak across the country.

Though several states and Washington, D.C., have begun to release the racial data surrounding COVID-19 cases among their residents, Missouri is not among them.

However, Randall Williams, the director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, said he is putting pressure on medical providers to record racial information for COVID-19 cases, The Associated Press reports.

"We sent out a directive today to reinforce that we do want that demographic, because we think it's really important," Williams told the news agency.

So far, the latest data from the state's health department shows over 3,500 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the state, with 77 deaths. In St. Louis, where past U.S. census data shows African Americans account for roughly 45 percent of the population, 514 cases have been reported so far, data provided by the city also shows.

When speaking to reporters about the data earlier this week, Echols said, "If you look at the health disparities in the city of St. Louis, they're not unique," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"Inequities exist across the U.S. and across the world, and it's posed a challenge for public health agencies, [which] have to address those issues and ensure all individuals, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, income, or educational attainment have access to quality health-related resources," he also said, according to the paper.

Echols said, based on the number of cases being reported, it's likely officials will extend the stay-at-home order that was originally set to end on April 22.

"However, things may change. We will continue to monitor the situation," he continued.

The Hill has reached to Echols for comment.

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St. Louis health director: 'All 12 COVID-19 deaths' in St. Louis have been black

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Fredrick Echols, a doctor who serves as health director for the city of St. Louis, has disclosed that, as of Wednesday, all 12 COVID-19 deaths recorded in the city were African Americans. In a piece published by The St. Louis American on Wednesday, Echols wrote that the "coronavirus pandemic has brought to light what many healthcare providers in the St.

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When Sean Petty walked into the emergency room of Jacobi medical center in the Bronx, at the start of his nursing shift on Monday, he was assailed by a catastrophic scene. About 60 people, almost all of them African Americans or Latinos from the surrounding area of New York City, all displaying classic symptoms of Covid-19, were gasping on stretchers everywhere he looked.

"Every nook and cranny of the emergency department was full of patients attached to portable oxygen tanks, people so sick they needed beds. The stretchers filled the room and spilled down the corridors, 10 patients in just one hallway," he said.

The dreadful sounds of sickness filled the room. "It's like a chorus, a cacophony of coughing."

Petty, a pediatric emergency nurse who now spends much of his time caring for adults with coronavirus, could not help envisaging the thousands of contagious micro-droplets being expelled into the air with all that coughing. "I felt like I was walking into a cloud of poison," he said.

Coronavirus has exposed New York's two societies; one rich, one poor

Petty is on the frontline of the frontline: New York City. The metropolis has become the focus of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, just as in 2001 it became the focus of the worldwide al-Qaida terrorist threat on 9/11.

Day by day, the statistics tell their own grim story. On Tuesday, the New York City death toll overtook that of 9/11 and now stands at 3,602 (2,753 died in the city in the 2001 terrorist attacks). On Wednesday, it was announced that New York had suffered its highest number of fatalities in a 24-hour period - 806 lives snuffed out in just one day.

Even that was almost certainly an undercount, as those New Yorkers who die at home are not being included in the figures.

The attack is coming in waves - not just on one sunny morning in September as when the Twin Towers came down, but over days and relentless weeks. There are Ground Zeros dotted throughout the city, like Jacobi, one of 11 major public hospitals that are all now pushed to, and beyond, the limit.

As the crisis thickens, a picture of how the virus is ravaging the city has come into view carrying with it a sobering realization. Coronavirus may not in itself discriminate, but its outcomes certainly do. It has inflicted its terrible toll not so much on New York City, but on the two cities it contains.

"Coronavirus has exposed New York's two societies," Jumaane Williams, the public advocate who acts as the official watchdog for New Yorkers, told the Guardian. "One society was able to run away to the Hamptons or work from home and have food delivered to their door; the other society was deemed 'essential workers' and made to go out to work with no protection."

Different boroughs, even different neighborhoods within each borough, are experiencing coronavirus almost as though it were two different contagions. In wealthier white areas the residential streets are empty; parking spots that are fought over in normal times now stand vacant following an exodus to out-of-town weekend homes or Airbnbs.

We have almost 100% people of color in our emergency room.

In places like the Bronx - which is 84% black, Latino or mixed race - the sidewalks are still bustling with people making their way into work. There is still a rush hour. "We used to call them 'service workers'," Williams said. "Now they are 'essential workers' and we have left them to fend for themselves."

The public advocate pointed out that 79% of New York's frontline workers - nurses, subway staff, sanitation workers, van drivers, grocery cashiers - are African American or Latino. While those city dwellers who have the luxury to do so are in lockdown in their homes, these communities have no choice but to put themselves in harm's way every day.

If you superimpose a map of where frontline workers live within New York over a map of the 76,876 confirmed cases in the city, the two are virtually identical. In Queens, the most intense concentration of Covid-19 infections are in precisely those neighborhoods with large numbers of essential workers.

One telling detail: at least 41 subway and bus workers have died from coronavirus. A diversity review by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 2016 found that 55% of its 72,000 employees were black or Latino, and 82% were male - which is also telling as more men than women are dying from the virus.

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A Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) driver wears a protective mask while driving a bus in the Bronx, New York, on 2 April. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"We put people out there and said you got to go to work, but we didn't give them protective gear or additional testing to keep them safe. It was almost as though these groups were expendable to keep the city moving," Williams said.

This week a tiger tested positive at Bronx Zoo. It generated plenty of headlines, but few media articles made the point that Williams highlighted.

"A tiger tests positive - that's good to know. If we have enough diagnostic test kits for tigers, shouldn't we have enough for our own frontline humans?"

Two miles away from Bronx Zoo, back in the ER of the Jacobi medical center, Sean Petty sees the impact of New York's two societies every day. "We have almost 100% people of color in our emergency room," Petty said.

Most of the adult Covid patients he cares for are also wrestling with underlying health conditions that make them far more vulnerable to the disease.

"Our patients are coming in with all of the comorbidities associated with poverty and racism - diabetes, asthma, hypertension. We have patients who are sicker and more likely to die because their lives have been conditioned by these chronic illnesses."

Reliable data has been hard to come by, as both city and state authorities resisted for several weeks releasing official figures on the grounds that the subject of disparities was less important than keeping hospitals afloat. Journalists at the independent not-for-profit news site the City were driven to do their own analysis of NYC department of health data and found that in the Bronx people are dying at twice the rate of New Yorkers as a whole.

On Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio finally caved to pressure and posted preliminary findings that unambiguously underline the racial breakdown of coronavirus's deadly toll. Black and Latino New Yorkers are dying at double the rate of white and Asian New Yorkers, following precisely the public advocate's narrative of two societies.

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New York police department officers wear protective masks at the Fordham bus hub in the Bronx on 2 April. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"There are clear inequalities, clear disparities in how this disease is affecting the people of our city," De Blasio said.

In recent days Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, has tentatively suggested that the crisis may already have reached its apex and could be plateauing as the curves for new cases, hospitalizations and ICU admissions all show signs of flattening.

There is no good news story here.

If there are indications that the city may be starting to prevail against the disease, it certainly doesn't feel like that to Sean Petty. When he looks out of the window of the staff room during shift breaks he sees the refrigerated truck lined up to receive the bodies of Covid victims - one of 80 parked outside hospitals around the city.

"There is no good news story here," he said.

Already Jacobi has lost two frontline health workers, an educator in the psychiatric department and a nurse's aide. On top of what he sees as preventable tragedies, Petty said what rattled him most was when a Jacobi emergency room resident aged 27 was admitted into intensive care.

"That was a huge wake-up call for me. To see a 27-year-old person sent to ICU who was working a hundred yards from me, that shook me."

Petty said he has never felt as angry towards the US healthcare system and towards government - the Trump administration as well as city and state leaders - for failing to protect the city's frontline workers. Through his union, the New York State Nurses Association, he has had to fight every step of the way to secure basic personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep him and his colleagues safe.

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Nurses hold signs during a demonstration for increased personal protection equipment outside Montefiore hospital in the Bronx on 2 April. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the virus claims more victims, the city is having to think the unthinkable. Rikers Island, the notorious New York jail complex that is fighting its own Covid-19 outbreak and saw the first death of a detainee on Sunday, has been paying prisoners $6 an hour to dig mass graves on a nearby island in the Bronx though recently they switched to contract labourers.

This week a New York city council member revealed in a tweet that has since been deleted that mass burials were being considered in local parks, 10 caskets per grave. He later backtracked and said it was a "contingency plan".

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A tale of two New Yorks: pandemic lays bare a city's shocking inequities

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When Sean Petty walked into the emergency room of Jacobi medical center in the Bronx, at the start of his nursing shift on Monday, he was assailed by a catastrophic scene. About 60 people, almost all of them African Americans or Latinos from the surrounding area of New York City, all displaying classic symptoms of Covid-19, were gasping on stretchers everywhere he looked.

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Press Release:
BookCon, the event where storytelling and pop culture collide, today unveiled the lineup for its first-ever virtual Read-a-Thon on Saturday, April 11 th. The Read-a-Thon will feature more than 25 fan-favorite authors across all genres giving 15-minute readings while also answering questions from readers across the globe. This all-day live event is part of the new BookCon Virtual Author Tour Series that launched last week which offers readers a front row seat to live author interviews, panel-style discussions with authors and publishers about debut books, and more.

The Read-a-Thon will invite viewers to make donations to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC) to assist booksellers and bookstores who are affected by COVID-19.

Taking place from 12:00 PM EDT to 8:00 PM EDT on BookCon's Facebook page, the Read-a-Thon authors include:

12pm-12:15pm: Introduction and welcome by BookCon and BINC teams

12:15pm-12:30pm: Lamar Giles

12:30pm-12:45pm: Andrew Eliopulous

12:45pm-1pm: Kacen Callendar

1pm-1:15pm: Justina Ireland

1:15pm-1:30pm: Justin Reynolds

1:30pm-1:45pm: Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed

1:45pm-2pm: Tobly McSmith

2pm-2:15pm: Tahereh Mafi

2:15pm-2:30pm: Layton Green

4pm-4:15pm: Soman Chainani

4:15pm-4:30pm: Shaun David Hutchinson

4:30pm-4:45pm: Victoria Aveyard

4:45pm-5pm: Kelly Yang

6pm-6:15pm: Hannah Templer ( Cosmoknights, GLOW)

"We give our warmest gratitude and thanks to all those at BookCon and ReedPop for hosting this innovative Read-A-Thon benefiting booksellers and bookstores," said Pam French, Binc's Executive Director. "At Binc, we have been amazed every single day over these last few harrowing weeks by the extraordinary ideas, energy, and dedication this community shares for the wellbeing of booksellers, comic retailers, bookstores, and comic shops. I extend my thanks and gratitude to every person who donates."

The Virtual Book Tour will continue throughout the Spring with events including a discussion on musical stardom featuring esteemed music journalist, Nelson George and Sarah Smarsh, author of the upcoming Dolly Parton biography She Come By It Natural on April 13 th. Also on the schedule is Rocky Callen, author of A Breath Too Late in conversation with Jandy Nelson, author of I'll Give You the Sun on May 1st, among many others. Fans can visit the BookCon website for regular updates to the schedule.

"BookCon was created from the desire to offer readers a place to meet and interact with their favorite authors alongside people who are as passionate about books as they are. Now, more than ever, we are eager to provide that sense of community to our fans and are excited to debut our first round of virtual events," said Jenny Martin, Event Director, BookCon.

The BookCon Virtual Author Tour is part of ongoing efforts to connect fans and foster a reader community in the digital world, as well as in the physical world. The Virtual Author Tour comes on the heels of the debut of BookCon Societies, a celebration of every type of reader that offers a community where like-minded readers can come together to discuss favorite genres and core values. After joining a BookCon Society, readers will receive dedicated emails with curated content to help them find the authors, books, and events they are sure to love. If readers are unsure of which Society they belong to, they can take a sorting quiz on the BookCon website.

BookCon 2020 will be held on July 25 & 26, 2020 at the Javits Center in New York City.

BookCon is the consumer extension of BookExpo, North America's largest gathering of book industry professionals from around the globe. The show is designed to appeal to the modern-day book lover with an appreciation for broader pop culture and where these worlds intersect. It is the ultimate fan event where storytelling and pop culture collide - offering fans unprecedented access to authors, publishers, celebrities and creators of content that influence everything we read, hear and see.

For tickets to BookCon 2020 and additional information, please visit BookCon.com or BookCon's social media pages ( Facebook, Twitter and Instagram).

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BookCon 2020 Announces Read-a-Thon on Saturday April 11th

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Press Release: BookCon, the event where storytelling and pop culture collide, today unveiled the lineup for its first-ever virtual Read-a-Thon on Saturday, April 11th. The Read-a-Thon will feature more than 25 fan-favorite authors across all genres giving 15-minute readings while also answering questions from readers across the globe.

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This open letter has been signed by MORE, AQE, CEJ, CEC 14, IntegrateNYC, and Teens Take Charge. Are you an organization that would like to sign on to this call? Please fill out the endorsement form here.

Dear Chancellor Carranza, Mayor De Blasio and NYSED Interim Commissioner Shannon Tahoe,
We are in the midst of collective trauma that will forever change us, our students and their families.
In a global crisis like this, in which our literal survival is at stake, we should be focusing on our students and families mental and physical health. But instead, we have been forced to ignore what we know about pedagogy and child development and impose a new system of learning on students that will widen inequality, discourage meaningful learning and fail to offer the social-emotional support our students desperately need at this time. As if that wasn't bad enough, the spring break we all -students, staff and families - desperately needed, has been canceled.
We write to you as NYCDOE staff, parents and students who have urgent concerns for the welfare of our city's children, families and educators. We write to implore you to slow down and adopt a more compassionate, trauma-informed approach toward education at this time for the sake of our collective health and survival.
The rapid transition to remote learning and the rigorous academic expectations educators have been instructed to impose on families have caused tremendous stress and anxiety in an already stressful time. Our transition to remote learning has also exacerbated inequity in our school system; we teach over 100,000 homeless students, and 750,000 students who lacked basic resources before this crisis began. Now, our diverse students are facing even more diverse circumstances, yet without the needed differentiation from our school system. While a few students have the resources and support at home to fully participate in remote learning, others do not. We have students who are caring for younger siblings while their parents work, students without reliable internet, students whose caregivers lost their jobs due to COVID-19, students with sick or dying family members, students who move between family member's homes or childcare centers at different times of the day and night, students who have still not received technology students living in crowded homeless shelters, students without basic school supplies, students' whose home language is not English, making it difficult for their parents to help them with remote learning and students who lack the quiet space at home that is conducive to work.
We propose the following amendments to the city's emergency remote-learning plan in order to protect children, parents and educators in a way that is first and foremost compassionate, sustainable and equitable.
This diversity of home experience holds true for our pedagogical staff too. Many teachers are juggling long hours of remote teaching with caring for their own young children or elderly relatives. Staff members' spouses and siblings may be losing their jobs. Occupational therapists and speech therapists required to do video conferencing may not have reliable internet in their own homes. Elderly parents are sick or homebound. Many teachers have already lost a colleague to COVID-19.

Despite this, school based staff have literally been working around the clock to meet new mandates and their students' academic needs. Students, too, worried about the implications on their grades and their futures, have reported working far beyond typical school hours. And parents of young children have shared that the volume and tenor of work they are facing is far more than they can handle.
Help us be there for our students and for each other. We need to slow down academic expectations, apply trauma informed principles for social emotional learning, lower the stakes by canceling all grades, evaluations and assessments, ramp up public health initiatives and reschedule spring break. Signed: MORE Caucus Alliance for Quality Education Integrate NYC Teens Take Charge Coalition for Educational Justice Community Education Council 14 "Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

1. Slow Down Academics: We need to slow down our academic expectations and work expectations. Schools should be directed to provide less academic work system wide. At most, schools should be providing 3 hours of instruction for high school students, 2 for elementary and middle school students, and 1 hour for Pre-k and Kindergarten. Beyond that time frame, all additional material posted should be optional, engaging and supportive. Teachers and school staff must be given flexibility to work at their own pace and not adhere to an all day schedule of live instruction. Caseload expectations for related service providers must also be relaxed and remote learning participation should not be factored in decisions to retain students.

2. Trauma informed teaching: Instead of focusing on traditional academics, schools should uniformly be directed to focus a majority of time and energy to providing social-emotional and logistical support to students and families. This could include one-on-one calls with teachers, giving kids and teachers more flexibility during their day, video-chat playdates with other students, setting up mutual aid networks within school communities to support families in need of groceries, legal support or healthcare, making more time for art, music, creative writing and student driven projects. This also must include directly engaging students in learning about the historic moment we find ourselves in, how we got here, and how we build a more just society going forward. Schools should also invest now in support for grieving students, families and teachers.

3. Lower the Stakes: Given the wide range of home circumstances our students face, it is completely inequitable to grade academic work at this time. The DOE should announce now that grading will be suspended for June report cards. Likewise, teacher evaluations should be suspended for the 2019-2020 school year. In no world is it feasible or appropriate to evaluate our teaching under these unprecedented circumstances and it is a waste of DOE resources to attempt to do so. We must follow the recommendations of world education leaders and prioritize meeting our students, staff and families basic physical and emotional needs.

4. We Need A Break: The Governor's decision to cancel spring break was a slap in the face for the school based staff and students who have been working incredibly hard over the last few weeks. The lack of trust this decision shows in our students and their families is offensive; the assumption that without a full day of academic work students will flee their homes and run wild around the city is rooted in racism, and has been disproven every single weekend. The Mayor's further decision to cancel our days off for Good Friday and Passover is offensive to our Jewish and Christian families and staff. But more important than all of that, is the fact that we know that breaks are essential to meaningful learning and mental health. We're hanging on by a thread, and we all needed a moment to catch our breath, plan ahead, catch up on work, spend time with our families and care for ourselves. If school staff is at a breaking point, that will inevitably trickle down to adversely impact students and families too. We call on the city and state to either restore spring break as previously scheduled or at the least, reschedule a similar length break for May.

5. Ramp Up Public Health Initiatives: The considerable resources of the Department of Education should be immediately leveraged to survey and address the health needs of our communities. Teachers are in direct touch with our students and we ask to be better armed to help them get what they need. Schools need emergency funding for inter-agency collaboration between educators and health workers in order to flood our communities with medicines, cleaning supplies, groceries and other life-sustaining services. Our communities need mass distribution of asthma-related medication and the creation of asthma treatment centers in our over-polluted neighborhoods. And DOE data on students with disabilities, ELLs, meal pickups and student health needs should be made available to PTAs, CECs and CBOs seeking to offer support to those families. Finally, we need funding for emergency grief support and therapy for our students and staff who lose family members, teachers and colleagues to Coronavirus.

When they look back on this time, New York City's students will not remember what they learned in math, chemistry or history. What they will remember, is whether their schools were there for them and their families. They will remember the staff members who reached out to see if they were okay. They will remember how their schools reacted when a staff member or family member died. They will remember the teacher who let them free-write or draw to help them process this terrifying time.They will remember the community members who dropped off meals, medicine or school supplies at their doorsteps. They will remember the staff members who advocated for their families and empowered them to see themselves as problem solvers in the midst of a crisis.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it." - Arundhati Roy

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Parents, educators and students call for equity & compassion in remote learning

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This open letter has been signed by MORE, AQE, CEJ, CEC 14, IntegrateNYC, and Teens Take Charge. Are you an organization that would like to sign on to this call? Please fill out the endorsement form here. Dear Chancellor Carranza, Mayor De Blasio and NYSED Interim Commissioner Shannon Tahoe, We are in the midst of...

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FACED with weeks indoors many of us will be turning to box sets to keep us entertained during the isolation period.

And now you can put your Netflix binges to the test with this infuriating new brainteaser.

The aim is to identify all 20 of the famous films and television series from the colored blocks below.

With nothing but the colorful squares as clues, you will have to know the characters pretty well to name them all.

We will give you one clue, the team behind this quiz is seriously into their animation so don't expect many live action hits.

Think you can master the test? Answers can be found at the bellow, but no peeking!

Those struggling to workout who's who simply need to treat each block as a character.

The colors in those blocks are typical of what that character wears in the show.

Put them all together and you should have the cast of one of your favourite TV shows or films.

For more quizzes, earlier this week we challenged you to name all the celebrity cameos in this Simpsons quiz.

And we challenged you to name all 24 of these movies from their emoji sequences.

Plus we challenged you to spot the bee among the flowers.

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Can you guess the TV shows and films just by looking at these colored blocks?

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FACED with weeks indoors many of us will be turning to box sets to keep us entertained during the isolation period. And now you can put your Netflix binges to the test with this infuriating new brainteaser. The aim is to identify all 20 of the famous films and television series from the colored blocks below.

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Right now, I miss sports. I miss waking up early on the weekends to watch Roma games and the Premier League. I miss watching the MVP race heat up between Giannis and LeBron as the NBA playoffs draw (or drew) closer this spring. I miss the knockout-stage drama of the Champions League ("Corner taken quickly... Origi!!"). I don't watch much baseball anymore. (Who has the time? Well, I guess we all do right now, and that really stings.) But I miss chatting with my father about his excitement for the upcoming season outlook of his beloved Dodgers with spring training in full swing, and talking through the insanity of the Mookie Betts trade. I miss the anticipation for March Madness, with Selection Sunday and brackets to be filled out, and the electricity of the first whirlwind days of the NCAA tournament, flipping through eight channels to catch snippets of opening round games.

But what I miss more than anything about sports is the sense of community, belonging, and teamwork that they provide for us. Sports and food have always been my way of fitting in when I've felt the most alone, depressed, anxious, and scared. It's really throwing me off not having that escape right now.

I was five when my family moved to Rome, and my mom tells me that I had a pretty rough go of it at first, struggling to cope with our new surroundings. One of my father's new colleagues suggested enrolling me in a scuola di calcio, a soccer school (what would be described as club soccer here in the States), to help integrate me into the social fabric of Italy, and maybe I'd pick up some conversational Italian at the same time. So my parents signed me up for soccer school in Testaccio, the historic meatpacking district of Rome. I fell in love with soccer, and Rome.

That's how I learned Italian, and why I speak the language with a heavy Roman accent and dialect. When I wasn't at practice, I was playing soccer all afternoon in our neighborhood piazza. At school, I played soccer at recess and wolfed down lunch as fast as possible so I could go play before classes started again. I drove my mother crazy playing inside our apartment, to the point that she had to get me a foam ball to keep me from inducing her constant migraines and breaking all the pottery. When we went on family vacations, I always brought a ball with me in case I came across a group of kids to play with.

I persuaded my parents to get AS Roma (the only professional team in the capital worth supporting; Lazio fans don't @ me) season tickets, and we would ride the 280 bus, snaking along the Tiber, out to the Stadio Olimpico every other week for home games. When Roma played away from home, I would run over to the pub around the corner that had satellite TV to watch. The bartenders took a liking to this little blond American kid with a thick Roman accent who loved Francesco Totti more than anything, and started reserving me a seat, setting me up with a Coke and a big order of patatine fritte when I sidled up to the bar and hopped on my regular stool.

When I was starting high school, my parents made the decision to move back to the States. Once again, I really struggled to adjust. Being 14 and not knowing anyone at a new 2,000-student school was not fun. I was depressed and cried myself to sleep many nights. But at least I had sports. I played on the soccer team, and when on the pitch, my anxiety would melt away.

Sports were my in for making friends. I would spend nights and weekends watching and studying American football and basketball, determined to learn the rules of the game, the teams and players that mattered, so I could join in on the conversation at school. I spent hours in my cousin's frozen driveway across the street from my new house, hoisting jumpers on her hoop in the Boston winter, determined to have a passable shot by the time it was warm enough out to play pickup ball on the courts nearby. I still missed Italy terribly and eventually was able to return to Rome on my own to finish high school. But sports got me through the uncertainty and unease of the two years I spent in the States.

The shared common goals and teamwork required in team sports are also what drew me to professional cooking. When I think about what I miss most about restaurant cooking, it's the high of being in a kitchen that's really humming, with a team of cooks who are all in sync. There comes a point when you reach a familiarity with your team and the rhythm of service that you don't need to speak, other than to expedite and call back ticket orders and allergy notifications.

You know where everyone is going to be and where they'll move to next. You can jump on the line to help a cook out on a "big pick" when they are getting slammed with orders, or line up and plate a big wave of dishes at the pass together, performing the silent dance as you take turns adding components to each plate (I'll lay down the sauce while you slice and fleur-de-sel the steaks, get the steak on pass trays and I'll plate the beef, you follow with the pickled kohlrabi slices to cover, I'll finish with the green peppercorn vinaigrette). It's the closest thing I've ever found to that trust and feel for where a teammate is going to be on the field or court, and delivering them the perfect pass. There's no better feeling.

And now both of those worlds have come to a halt. It's scary, unsettling. The restaurant industry is in dire straits; all of my industry friends are suddenly unemployed or fighting to keep their businesses from going belly-up. There's no certainty about when restaurants will come back, or, for some, if they will at all. Sports will return, but man, we could really use them right now-for cathartic release, a couple hours of distraction, an instant of "did you just see that??" awe, shared among friends and strangers.

We could use a moment like the David Ortiz speech at Fenway in the wake of the Boston marathon bombing (which was the last time I had to shelter in place, as a cook working less than a mile from the race finish line). Or a Champions League overtime thriller to watch (at least we got that bonkers Liverpool-Atlético Madrid away leg before the competition was shut down last week). Or even just a tournament bracket to pore over, picking potential Cinderellas and dark-horse upsets, conferring with friends and coworkers over their predictions.

The real March Madness tournament was cancelled the other week due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. But maybe we can help fill a tiny bit of that void, ever so slightly, with Starch Madness, a bracket-style tournament that pits 64 dried pasta shapes against each other as they duke it out for a spot in the Final Forks, with one to be crowned champion.

Introducing Starch Madness

Originally, Starch Madness was meant to be a fun, lighthearted, and engaging pasta-centric companion activity to the Big Dance, for those of us who can't get enough bracketology tournament excitement in March. Now, with no basketball tournament tipping off any time soon, and the anxieties and strain brought on by coronavirus and social distancing, Starch Madness will hopefully be the welcome distraction and breath of levity a lot of us could use right now (I know all of us at Serious Eats have really been looking forward to it over the very stressful and uncertain past couple of weeks). So, let's dance! Here's the deal with Starch Madness.

How the Bracket and Voting Works

Like the NCAA tournament, the Starch Madness bracket is made up of 64 contestants, which are divided among four regions. Each region has 16 shapes, seeded one through 16, meaning there are four number-one seeds, four number-two seeds, and so on and so forth. I spent hours vetting the field, selecting 64 shapes of dried pasta that would make it into the tournament, and then determined the seeding for each shape (more on the criteria and logic for the seeding process in a bit).

If you've never watched March Madness or filled out a bracket before, here's the drill. It's a single-elimination tournament, win-or-go-home, kicking off with the strongest teams (or pasta shapes) facing the weakest opposition. The field is cut in half at every round of competition, leading to the "Elite Ate" and "Final Forks" (if you're not a sports person, don't worry about the puns, but trust me, they're gold). Survive and advance is the name of the game, and the format allows for high drama, with the possibility for shocking upsets and unlikely Cinderella stories at every turn.

The kicker for Starch Madness is that you decide which pasta shapes advance in the tournament! The winner of each matchup will be determined by popular vote on Instagram, playing out as a running vote in the Stories on our Serious Eats (@seriouseats) account. Plus, if you leave a comment on our announcement post guessing the winner (and tag a friend), you'll be entered for a $150 cash card. So make sure you follow us on the 'Gram, and get voting!

Voting opens for Round One today, and we're kicking off with the Gragnano region. The following three regions will have their Round One matchups over the next three days. Then we'll give the shapes the weekend to rest up before moving into Round Two next week on March 30-31. Voting for subsequent rounds will move at a good clip, culminating with the Dried Pasta Shape Championship on April 10.

Not familiar with all of the shapes in the bracket and don't want to make the wrong picks? Fear not! There will be accompanying photos for each shape in our Instagram voting matchups, and you can also consult our new pasta shape guide to get acquainted with all of the noodles competing for all the marbles in Starch Madness (plus, a few bonus shapes that didn't make the cut-better luck next year rocchetti). We've also made a PDF of the entire bracket, so you can print and fill the whole thing out in advance. Want to know more about how the seedings were determined? Well, let me explain.

How the Seedings Were Determined

Let's get down to brass (or bronze-die?) tacks for how I determined qualifying pasta shapes and seedings for Starch Madness.

Dried Semolina Pasta Only: Before anyone starts asking "Where the ravs and fettuccine at?," this tournament is limited to dried pasta only, made with durum wheat semolina flour and water.* Egg-based pastas, fresh or dried, are ineligible to compete in this year's competition. There is a common misconception in the United States that fresh pasta is inherently superior to dried, and that needs to end right now. They are different and great in their own ways and cannot be casually substituted for one another. We need to show dried pasta respect. All of the dried pasta shapes that made the cut for Starch Madness are available for retail purchase in the United States. I know this for certain because I purchased every single one of them.

In the case of dried pasta shapes that are commonly used in the United States but really should be fresh, we included them but seeded them based on their quality as a dried product, not as their better fresh selves. For example: Dried lasagne sheets are a pale imitation of sheets made from fresh egg dough, so they are seeded pretty low despite the inarguable greatness of lasagna in general. Dried orecchiette, while not as perfectly toothsome as the fresh, handmade semolina-dough version, are still delicious and are seeded much higher. Dried trofie aren't as good as fresh, but they're pretty solid. However, they are much harder to find than orecchiette or other shapes, so they get knocked down in the seedings because of that. Which brings us to the next criteria.

Availability: More weight and higher seeding consideration was given to pasta shapes that are more widely available for purchase in the United States. As much as I love the mezze maniche from Pasta Mancini, they are very hard to find in shops and even online, so I had to knock them down to an eight-seed. I don't think that linguine are in any way superior to mezze maniche (in fact, I think linguine are criminally overrated), but they are seeded much higher (receiving a coveted number-three seed) due to their ubiquity in supermarkets and their popularity with American home cooks.

Popularity/Name Recognition: No tournament bracket selection process is immune to the pressures of public opinion and media attention, and Starch Madness is no exception. Just as perennial basketball powerhouses like Duke can receive favorable treatment from the NCAA tournament selection committee compared to small-conference schools like Butler or Murray State, pasta shapes like elbow macaroni (a shape that I never encountered in all my time living in Italy) are seeded way higher than they should be based on actual performance. How is it possible that elbow macaroni gets so much attention when it can only be used appropriately for a couple of dishes (mac and cheese and deli-style pasta salad; again, I am just stating facts, don't come at me)?

Versatility: Like elbow macaroni, pasta shapes that lack recipe versatility are docked for that in the seedings while shapes that can be used for a lot of different recipes are given a boost. The four number-one seeds (spaghetti, rigatoni, penne, and bucatini) are not only shapes that can be easily found in supermarkets, but they can all be used for a wide variety of popular pasta dishes. And on top of that, they are all delicious.

Deliciousness: Finally, and probably most importantly, seedings were determined by platonic pasta ideals of al dente deliciousness, according to me, the Bracket Master. Why should you trust me? Well, I have nearly three decades of pasta-eating experience, including 12 years in which I ate pasta at least once a day (the time I spent living in Italy). I have been cooking pasta for two decades, first as an avid amateur before going pro. My love of pasta got me into college (I wrote my general application college essay on my favorite childhood restaurant for amatriciana in Rome). As I am currently writing this, I have a giant cardboard box filled with a dozen bags of pasta that arrived at my apartment yesterday from Gustiamo. I care deeply about pasta. So please don't break my heart by voting for wagon wheels over bucatini in Round One. I don't know if I can survive that level of anguish in the age of social distancing.

*Does a store near you sell dried fettuccine? Well, that's just wrong.
Go Vote!

With all that in mind, head over to Instagram and vote for your favorite pasta shapes to make sure they make it through to the next round in the Big Al Dente! Print and fill out a bracket and send us a photo of it! I know I'll be doing that. Debate the seedings and make your case for angel hair in the comments (anyone that can convince me that it's a shape worth saving will get my undying, begrudging respect). This is a surreal time for all of us, but I hope that, in the absence of sports, Starch Madness and pasta can bring us all closer together while keeping a safe distance, even just for a chuckle and a rant or two. Forza e coraggio.

All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.

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Introducing Starch Madness: The Pasta Shape Bracket We Need Right Now

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Right now, I miss sports. I miss waking up early on the weekends to watch Roma games and the Premier League. I miss watching the MVP race heat up between Giannis and LeBron as the NBA playoffs draw (or drew) closer this spring. I miss the knockout-stage drama of the Champions League ("Corner taken quickly...

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The highlight of my day - every day - is opening my window and yelling at the sky.

Credit... Cari Vander Yacht

Every night at 7, my Brooklyn neighborhood comes to life with the calculated whimsy of a cuckoo clock. It starts with a single neighbor clapping. Soon dozens more join in, throwing open their front doors or hanging from their windows to put their hands together and say "wooooo." Perhaps 20 seconds into the proceedings, a man emerges from the garden apartment across from me, banging a pot with a spoon, and a woman appears on the stoop of the house next door, her spaniel barking helpfully at her side. Often there is a special guest: On a recent evening, a guy motored by on a delivery bike, a whistle blaring from between his lips. It's all over within five minutes.

The Clapping first spread through New York City on a Friday night in late March. Following similar gestures in Italy, India and Spain, the New York iteration was seeded by a strategic marketing firm and circulated over social media to thank workers on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak. It was originally presented as a one-off event, and after that, residents were asked to repeat it once a week. But now we do it every single night.

The Clapping has surely been heard by doctors and nurses and E.M.T.s, by UPS workers and Instacart delivery people and the many other New Yorkers who are putting themselves at risk to protect their city. I live just a couple of blocks from the choked I.C.U. of the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and on Tuesday, firefighters lined up right outside the center to cheer the staff on.

But the more the ritual is repeated, the more it feels as if it's for the rest of us, too. We used to go out to concerts or movies or plays and clap for the performances. Now the clapping is the performance. It is our regularly scheduled programming, live and in person when basically nothing else is.

Thanking health care workers may be the point of this act, but its delights lie beside the point. The Clapping is a communal outburst. It is a reminder that though we are isolated, we are not alone. It is made up of a hundred little improvisations that nevertheless add up to a comfortingly predictable cacophony, tailored to the street where you live.

The Clapping in Peter Cooper Village

Where lupine calls echo between apartment buildings. (Credit: Sia Michel)

In some neighborhoods, the Clapping manifests as a sparse pattering, and in others it echoes between high-rise apartment complexes, producing walls of sound. On a recent night in Stuyvesant Town, the Clapping was punctuated by clanging bells and hoots from horn instruments; on the Lower East Side, somebody blasted out Sinatra singing "New York, New York." I'm told that some blocks do not clap at all.

The Clapping on the Lower East Side

Featuring Sinatra's "New York, New York." (Credit: Caryn Ganz)

It's a cliché to describe a performance as "life-affirming," but here the description feels true. I like it for smaller reasons, though. Like many New Yorkers, I don't know most of my neighbors, and I've found myself using these few minutes every night to gather clues to their domestic lives. I notice who emerges from sprawling multistory brownstones and who from apartment buildings. One night the man with the pot was joined by a companion banging her own kitchenware. Another time, the spaniel failed to appear, and I reveled in my exaggerated disappointment. Did the dog have a previous engagement?

The Clapping in the Bronx

Where car alarms join in the effort. (Credit: Alex B. of Marble Hill)

There are those who choose to abstain from the Clapping, and those who actively campaign against it. The British right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins, who is whiling away her quarantine standing in front of a poster of the American flag and ranting into her webcam, has criticized the applause in England as a foolish hobby. She called it "clapping at the sky," which is an accidentally lovely way of putting it. Others argue that the Clapping is an empty gesture, accomplishing nothing for the workers who are most at risk. And yet even for the critics the Clapping is a kind of gift; it gives them a performance to pan.

It's true that on the internet, the ritual can appear flattened into a self-satisfied show. On Twitter, I watched the queasy corporate spectacle of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco light up with a video of clapping hands. The hashtag #ClapBecauseWeCare distorts the experience to fit the contours of a social media awareness campaign; it oversells the purpose of the event and makes it all feel a little smug. As social distancing has migrated all of our human interactions online, the Clapping has revealed the limits of the medium. Experiences let loose on the internet risk being swiftly mined for their utility to the platform, reduced to mere carriers of information capable of accumulating commentary and debate.

I can understand why people feel compelled to share videos of the Clapping, as it is perhaps the most thrilling non-horrifying event that a quarantined New Yorker can document on any given day. But watching the Clapping in other neighborhoods feels pointlessly remote, like eavesdropping on a conversation in a language you don't understand. You kind of have to be there - and you only get to be there if you're already there.

Clappers may have learned of the ritual through a Facebook post or a message chalked on the pavement of a neighborhood park. But it persists because we hear it, and we want to keep hearing it. Some days it is the only thing I hear from outside that is not an ambulance siren.

Every night as the Clapping hour approaches, my body is alert with anxious anticipation. Will we clap again tonight? So far, the answer has been yes. With each day, it feels more likely that we will stop only once the virus does. Until then, I've got nowhere else to be.

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The highlight of my day - every day - is opening my window and yelling at the sky. Every night at 7, my Brooklyn neighborhood comes to life with the calculated whimsy of a cuckoo clock. It starts with a single neighbor clapping.

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Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings.

Margaux Rebourcet, a 28-year-old artist who lives in Nanterre, France, has found solace in her work. "We are now isolated," she said. Credit... Margaux Rebourcet

Before the end of life as we knew it, Ady, an 8-year-old who lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco, read a biography of Anne Frank.

When she realized that she, too, was living through what would soon become history, Ady started keeping her own diary.

In one early entry, she recorded that the judging for her county's science fair would be conducted over the phone, rather than in person. "Not 'fair'!!" she wrote. "Har, har, very funny."

When Santa Cruz County enacted a shelter-in-place order on March 16, she again picked up her pen.

"I'm REALY scared!" she wrote. "Did you know this is getting so bad that I have to go my clarinet lessons on the cumputer!!"

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As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic. Their diaries are told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present.

Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.

"You can say anything you want, no matter what, and nobody can judge you," Ady said in a phone interview earlier this month, speaking about her diary. "No one says, 'scaredy-cat.'"

When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful.

"Diaries and correspondences are a gold standard," said Jane Kamensky, a professor of American History at Harvard University and the faculty director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. "They're among the best evidence we have of people's inner worlds."

History isn't usually told by the bigwigs of the era, even if they are some of its main characters. Instead, it is often reconstructed from snapshots of ordinary lives. A handwritten recipe. A letter written by a soldier at the front. A drawing of a kitchen sink. One of the most famous works of academic history - "A Midwife's Tale," by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - came from the diary kept by a woman living in Maine from 1785 to 1812. It won a Pulitzer Prize.

"The personal that is presented in diaries gives us the truth of the era," said Carole Ione Lewis, a diarist and the author of " Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color," which she wrote using her relatives' diaries.

Today's journals convey the shared experience of life in isolation.

Some diarists record statistics: the number of infections, the number of deaths. Others keep diaries that are part shopping list, part doodle pad. Unidentified phone numbers are scratched out in the margins of punctuation-less pages filled with the frustration of being separated from family and friends. Among these accounts, anxiety is the constant.

Deb Monti, a 22-year-old painter, was in Valencia, Spain, when the country went on lockdown. Confined to her apartment, she painted what she could see from her window.

"I'm looking at other people who are now trying to live their daily lives on these tiny balconies," she said.

Now back in Pittsburgh, where she grew up, Ms. Monti is self-isolating in her childhood bedroom.

"You look at this painting of a person looking out a window and you think, like, 'Oh, how romantic. This person is able to just daydream,'" she said. "But for me, it's so all of a sudden. It makes me feel so suffocated and restrained."

For some visual diarists, making new work has been a way to stay connected with other artists in isolation.

In Manila, before the outbreak, Patricia Joyce V. Salarzon, a 27-year-old production editor, would meet her friends to draw outside. Now they all agree to sketch at the same time, just to feel like they are together.

Credit... Patricia Joyce V. Salarzon

Timothy Hannem, an illustration artist in Paris, made a template for people to fill in and post on social media using the hashtag #coronamaison: corona house. A well-known illustrator, Pénélope Bagieu, shared the drawing with her Twitter followers.

They will each draw their own ideal place to be quarantined, she wrote.

Within a few days, hundreds of people had uploaded their own imagined interiors, with cats and plants and books. They started a website, too, as a landing pad for the project.

Together, the drawings make for a fantastical house, with rooms created by many, many hands.

About two weeks ago, Anna Temkina, a professor of public health and gender at the European University at St. Petersburg, realized she was living through what sociologists refer to as "emergent moment."

"It is a moment when new rules begin to develop, but they are not yet clear," Dr. Temkina, 59, said. "Sociologically, this was absolutely great."

She has started project called "the virus diaries," part of a broader effort by the university to study quarantine's effect on daily life.

"Saturday - a normal crowd out and about," she wrote. "I don't notice any increased caution. People are walking without distancing; two military men shake hands; a man and woman my age greet each other with a kiss."

In the early days of the outbreak, Annie Armstrong, a 24-year-old writer in Brooklyn, went home to Atlanta. Now her diary is filled with questions about her career, how to find meaning in her life, what she really wants.

"I really feel like I'm witnessing the fall of the empire," she wrote. "I'm already mourning this whole little life I made for myself in New York."

Kari Stevenson, a 34-year-old high school librarian who lives near Colorado Springs, Colo., started keeping her own quarantine journal. Writing soothes a nervous ache in her stomach, she said, even when the subject matter is anxiety provoking.

"The grocery stores are feeling the strain + shortening hours," Ms. Stevenson wrote in a recent entry. "I am starting to worry our 14 day supply might not be enough."

The day before public schools closed in Boston, Ari Zimmet asked his middle school students to draw how they were feeling.

Normally, Mr. Zimmet, 25, teaches woodworking. But he remembered how one art professor, in college, opened up her classroom for discussion and sketching after the 2016 election. He wanted to make room for his middle school students to do the same.

As they drew, many seemed unaffected. But one student, a boy, drew frantically. With blue and orange lines, he made frenzied marks as stick figures fell from the sky.

"He didn't articulate his feelings, and he almost never does," Mr. Zimmet said. "But it was like he was constructing this whole narrative with the path that his Cray-pas was taking."

That these accounts are recorded on paper is crucial to their longevity. "People think the internet is going to be permanent, but we're already starting to lose things that were committed to bits and bytes," said Shane Landrum, who holds a doctorate in American history from Brandeis University. "Even with the danger of your house burning down with all your written records inside, I still think paper is valuable as a practice," Dr. Landrum said.

The weight of a personal diary is familiar to Frank Herron, a 67-year-old book publisher who lives in Winchester, Mass. He has studied the journals his great-aunt kept in the early 20th century.

In one entry, she wrote about seeing Austrian royalty from a tailor's window.

"The procession was like a fairy tale," she wrote on June 14, 1900. "I never expect to see such a fine one again anywhere."

She was right. In a few years, in a few more diary entries, World War I would start. A few years later, the Austro-Hungarian empire would fall.

"What makes history is people who write some stuff or keep some pictures," Mr. Herron said. "This is how we communicate across centuries."

Daniel A. Kipnis translated Anna Temkina's diary entry from the original Russian.

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Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings. Before the end of life as we knew it, Ady, an 8-year-old who lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco, read a biography of Anne Frank.

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Find the latest information on the University's response to the coronavirus here.
"You do not write alone," Herbert "Tico" Braun tells his University of Virginia students. Even before this time of uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, those words could be comforting, his students have told him.

Now they mean something more.

Braun, a professor in the Corcoran Department of History, has been teaching in the "Engaging Differences" part of the College of Arts & Sciences' new curriculum since 2017. In his "The Individual and Society" course, Braun leads the students in exploring the historical impact of society on individuals and how individuals form communities.

He sent an email on Monday to his current and former students asking if they would participate in a voluntary project to keep a record of their daily lives during this unprecedented time.

"Our 'engagement' courses aim to help our first-year students connect to the world around them," Braun wrote in an email. "I hope that when they have taken this course and others, they have become imbued with the idea that they are citizens.

"The mantra of our course is, 'Write it down.' When you do, much of your life and who you are will be different than if you don't," he wrote.

Braun offered many suggestions for how the students could contribute, suggestions that just about anyone else could also use to create a record of what's happening - for the sake of history and to be part of a different kind of community.

There is a possibility Braun and his students will find a way to share this project at some point. UVA Today adapted his email into this Q&A to share his ideas with our readers now.
Q. Why do you feel it's important to create a record of one's daily life these days?
A. Our normal days in the now-suddenly-distant past may well have often dulled us into just getting through them. Our sudden lives now stop us, and lead us to wonder about our experiences and our feelings on many passing moments.

This [project] will, of course, not be routine writing and composing. That's the point. There is much that all of us and each of us have already experienced in the past few weeks that is shocking, unexpected, unpredictable, unknowable, new; much that we have not felt before and not seen. What is it like to live today knowing that we do not know what tomorrow and the day after will bring?
Q. What are you suggesting your students do that others could also do?
A. I suggest that you keep a record - in one or more different forms of your own choosing, a journal, a blog, an e-portfolio, a film, a series of artworks, a short story, poems, a series of haikus - of your life in these unprecedented days. Each individual perspective is valuable, and adds to the whole.

If you are going to compose a journal of these times, make it something easy to do. If a journal becomes onerous, it does not work. You do not have to write or do things for the journal every day. Keep your writing and composing close by, so you can jot things down to return to them later. Jot things down, a few words here and there, but then compose them in full sentences.

When you read an article that you find telling, produce a link in your journal and write a few brief reflections. Include photographs, from the press and those that you take.

Many of us are writing today and producing our work on social media. It is an explosion. You can gather these voices, these experiences, all this creativity. They are all a record of our times. These voices are urgent.

How will we deal, socially, psychologically, with the increasing number of deaths all around us? Many are saying that around the globe our lives will not be the same again.
Q. How does this project relate to the course, "The Individual and Society"?
A. I have claimed that the subject of the course touches on everything - almost everything - about our lives. I have told my students, "You will come up with this subject time and again in your lives, and you will find it in different Engagements courses, and in quite a few of your other courses.

"Write about what you learned in those courses, about you and your education, all of this today in this maelstrom. Those connections are what the liberal arts are about."
Q. Why do you think it would be helpful to do this?
A. Think of your children, your grandchildren, your friends down the road, who will ask you what was it like during that pandemic - "What was it called? Corona-something? You know, the one that was named after a Mexican beer ... back then in 2020 or '21. When was it?"

When you think about the individual in this pandemic, think of yourself and you can write about yourself, think and write about other individuals, and about your relationships to others, to your society, societies, to your loved ones, your friends, your institutions.

When you think about society, think about parts of it; death, disease, Wuhan province, the Chinese government, medical systems, Italy, the stock market, shaking hands, online classes, isolation, your town, your family, rich people and poor, social distancing, public events, the market, vulnerabilities, hoarding, hospitals, politicians, health insurance, selfishness, fear, sick leave, economic policies, exponential expansion, individualism, cooperation, competition, solidarity ... and more.

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'Write It Down': Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic

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Find the latest information on the University's response to the coronavirus here. "You do not write alone," Herbert "Tico" Braun tells his University of Virginia students. Even before this time of uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, those words could be comforting, his students have told him. Now they mean something more.

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Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too. 

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR

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Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too. 

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR https://t.co/RbEM0au5pG

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Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too.

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR pic.twitter.com/RbEM0au5pG
— Stephan Livera (@stephanlivera) April 7, 2020

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Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too. 

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR https://t.co/RbEM0au5pG

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too. 

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR https://t.co/RbEM0au5pG

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Which quarantine bird are you?

I think most #bitcoin Twitter people are some mix of Powerful Owl & Bower Bird, and we've got a few Seagulls too. 

From Jess Harwood Art on Insta https://t.co/kV3wZaprTR

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Broadway Carpool Karaoke ft. Hamilton & More

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cleveland19.com

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cleveland19.com

Reporting on a pandemic: Comparing coverage of COVID-19 and the ...
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winchesterstar.com

Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic - The Atlantic
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theatlantic.com

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Document shows Cleveland's response during the Spanish flu of 19181400 × 1812 - 297k - jpgcleveland19.com Document shows Cleveland's response during the Spanish flu of 19181200 × 600 - 114k - jpgcleveland19.com Reporting on a pandemic: Comparing coverage of COVID-19 and the ...1200 × 1040 - 180k - jpgwinchesterstar.com Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic - The Atlantic720 × 405 - 99k - jpgtheatlantic.com

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Health officials have stressed that novel coronavirus doesn't discriminate based on race or ethnicity. But disparities long present in the U.S. medical system are now driving what some call a crisis within a crisis: black and brown communities across the country are being hit harder, and with fewer resources to save them. Amna Nawaz talks to Dr. Uché Blackstock of Advancing Health Equity.

Judy Woodruff:
COVID-19 is forcing all of us to live in new ways.

But, as Amna Nawaz reports, it is also exposing longstanding rifts in American society.

This story is part of our ongoing series Race Matters.

Amna Nawaz:
Officials have said over and over again the virus doesn't discriminate.

But the disparities that have long been part of our medical system in America are now leading to what some call a crisis within a crisis, black and brown communities across the country being hit harder, in greater numbers, and with fewer resources to save them.

For more on this , I'm joined by Dr. Uché Blackstock. She was an associate professor of emergency medicine at New York University. She now runs a consultancy called Health Advancing Equity, and practices in urgent care clinics in Brooklyn, New York.

Dr. Blackstock, welcome to the "NewsHour."

Start by just telling us about the patients you're seeing right now. What are they telling you? What are their symptoms? How sick are they?

Uché Blackstock:
For multiple reasons.

I mean, even thinking about the testing criteria that was initially being used to determine whether or not someone had exposure to COVID-19. It included a person needed to have traveled abroad to one of the countries where COVID-19 was endemic, like Italy or China.

It also required is someone having to know someone who had tested positive.

And what we knew very early on was that, you know, there were communities that didn't have access to testing. We had heard of celebrities and politicians having very easy access to testing and quick turnarounds.

And these are communities that already carry very high chronic disease burdens, like diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma. There are also high rates of obesity. And you know, these have all been tied into a racial health disparities linked to structural racism.

So it's already kind of made of these patients and these communities more vulnerable to COVID-19, as we're seeing that these patients are at increased risk for developing very serious complications.

Uché Blackstock:
Right.

What we already know, as you alluded to, is that, when black and brown people interface with the health care system, they often encounter provider bias. So, we know, and it's well-documented, that their pain is undertreated or their complaints are minimized.

So, my concern is that, when these patients present to emergency departments and hospitals in their areas with COVID-19 symptoms, that their symptoms may be downplayed or they may not be taken seriously.

And we do already have the data to support that trend continuing to happen.

Uché Blackstock:
I am scared. I am. I'm scared that these communities are going to be absolutely ravaged and devastated by COVID-19.

I mean, when I think about how, each day last week, I just saw sicker and sicker patients, it was - it was significant, and it was also terrifying. And so I do worry.

And we already actually have some of the preliminary data out today in The New York Times that our poorer areas of the city, which are mostly black and brown, have the heaviest number of patients that have been affected with coronavirus.

Uché Blackstock:
Thank you for asking.

I will readily admit that I am - I am scared. I'm scared about being infected myself. I'm scared about bring disease home to my husband and my two small children.

I have had to have very difficult conversations with my family recently, including one with my husband the other night, where, once I realized things were really shifting here in New York City, I said to him, you know, there is a chance that I may not make it out of this, working on the front line. And, you know, I want you to know that I love you. I love our children very much. And just please make sure that they always know that their mama loved them.

And so these are conversations that not just I'm having, but my - many of my colleagues are having with their families as well.

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COVID-19 may not discriminate based on race -- but U.S. health care does

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Health officials have stressed that novel coronavirus doesn't discriminate based on race or ethnicity. But disparities long present in the U.S. medical system are now driving what some call a crisis within a crisis: black and brown communities across the country are being hit harder, and with fewer resources to save them.

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Lit Bar and more places

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For every story of a business being devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, there's a story of an ingenious plan owners, patrons and communities have cooked up to save one. Indie movie theaters are selling virtual tickets, whiskey temples are liquidating their rare assets and there's even a NSFW riff on Uber Eats.

Independent bookstores around the country have a particularly clever lifeline, one perfectly suited to the unprecedented moment we find ourselves in. The strange part? It came into being just weeks before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, and before the bookstores started closing up shop wondering if they'd reopen at all.

The lifeline in question is called Bookshop. In simple terms, it's a super clean, user-friendly online bookstore whose raison d'être is supporting independent bookstores - not simply with exposure or resources (though that's certainly a factor), but with cold hard cash.

Implicitly? For the first time in 25 years - since Jeff Bezos launched Amazon as "Earth's biggest bookstore," effectively waging war against all booksellers (from chains to indies) and devouring market share at all costs until it owned about half of all new book sales - independent bookstores are fighting back, not just with expertly curated tables or eloquent shelf talkers, but with Amazon's own tactics. And with Bookshop, they just might win.

"There are almost 2,000 bookstores in the country, and only about 150 of them have good online shopping platforms," Andy Hunter, CEO and founder of Bookshop, tells InsideHook. "That leaves a lot of stores that haven't adapted, and Amazon's kind of eating their lunch."

That's not news to anyone. Even though small bookstores have seen some growth in recent years, your local outpost most likely still runs on slim margins, as the fallout from COVID-19 quickly showed. Portland's Powell's Books, one of the country's largest and most celebrated indie bookstores, initially laid off over 300 booksellers ( though some have been hired back). Other supposedly thriving book retailers like New York's McNally Jackson and The Strand did the same.

Now, to stay alive, they're hanging by the thread that is online sales, and that's where Bookshop comes in.

"The idea came to me a long time ago - five years ago. I was thinking about all the challenges that independent local bookstores were having competing with Amazon. It occurred to me that they should not actually be handling their online orders, that there should be a platform where their orders could be shipped directly to customers from a wholesaler," says Hunter. "That way, all the competitive disadvantages that they have could be taken care of."

Those disadvantages include less inventory, less money to develop a website, and fewer resources and staffers to ship books. But those disadvantages have become even greater as bookstores are deemed non-essential businesses during the coronavirus outbreak and are forced to shut down. But with Bookshop, stores can make money on sales without anyone stepping foot between the stacks.

Here's how Bookshop works: American Booksellers Association stores can sign up to sell books through the website, and 30% of the profits from those sales go directly to them (recently increased from 25% because of coronavirus fallout). That's versus 40 to 45% if they do it themselves, according to Poets & Writers, but Bookshop handles the entire fulfillment process through the wholesaler Ingram. Additionally, stores can opt in to split an earnings pool that's 10% of all non-bookstore affiliate sales, thus getting a second source of revenue.

That second source of sales can come from pretty much anywhere, because anyone - a book club, a media company, an individual bookstore employee - can create a Bookshop account and get kickbacks on any books they sell through their proprietary links. It's all about affiliate revenue, and it's a little complicated, but that's where the organization stands the biggest chance of defeating Amazon.

"Right now, Amazon pays a commission on every book sale [online media companies] send their way," explains Hunter. "Pretty much every piece that's written about a book is linking back to Amazon, creating a funnel for millions and millions of readers, driving them straight to Amazon and excluding independent bookstores. That's one of the reasons why Amazon has been able to grow from 37% of consumer book sales to over 50% in four years, because everybody links to Amazon."

Our traffic and orders are about 20 times what we had planned at this point. It's a lot of work, and there are 300 urgent unread emails in everybody's inboxes, but we are helping people at a time when people desperately need help.
Andy Hunter, CEO of Bookshop

Did you buy a book after clicking through from a New York Times review? An Esquire review? Even a New Yorker review? They alllink straight to Amazon (as has InsideHook), and in doing so, they get a slice of the profits.

"I'm the publisher of Literary Hub, Electric Literature I created, so I'm in online media and I know how hard it is to stay afloat," says Hunter, who is also publisher at Catapult. "So we need to support the people who write about books just the way we need to support bookstores. Bookshop does both of those things."

And it does it better than Amazon. Right now, Amazon offers media companies a 4.5% affiliate kickback for selling paper books, while Bookshop offers 10%. It also offers discounts and fast shipping. Just over two months in, that's already led to massive shifts in the landscape.

"The New York Times has said that they're coming on board. Slate just came on board, Vox came on board," says Hunter. "We were having discussions but people's feet weren't to the fire. Now I think, first of all, they're excited by our success and it makes us seem legit. Also, they understand the need to support stores right now, so they're more inclined to do it. I think the third thing that's going on is there's some kind of social pressure. People are kind of shaming magazines that are linking to Amazon now and not linking to Bookshop, which is great for us."

When looking at the numbers, "success" seems a tad reserved. On Bookshop's website, there's a ticker displaying how much money has been raised for independent bookstores. On February 1, it was just over $2,000. On March 1, it was just over $10,000. On April 1? They ended the day over $240,000.
Related:
Excerpt: Rob Doyle Recalls His First Magic Mushroom Excursions in "Threshold"
What Can Daniel Defoe's "Plague Year" Teach Us About Coronavirus?
But what about the booksellers, the people who make your local literary emporium what it is? As previously mentioned, anyone can sign up to be a Bookshop affiliate, and some of the employees who've recently been let go are leveraging the site's resources to their advantage.

After booksellers in New York City lost their jobs, Jeff Waxman, a freelance strategic consultant for publishers and book slinger at Word in Brooklyn, got a group together and opened up a storefront on Bookshop called The Bookstore at the End of the World. It includes recommendations from employees of McNally Jackson, The Strand, Greenlight, Books of Wonder, Rizzoli and Book Culture, and they're looking to add more.

"We've done about $15K in business in a week and a day. Which, before taxes, will net the 33 booksellers involved around $150 each, as we are all equal partners," said Waxman via email. "Setting up the store is the easy part; I've uploaded everyone's lists myself and, frankly, anyone could do the same."

Want to buy some books and at the same time help laid-off booksellers? Buy from the Bookstore at the End of the World. https://t.co/GNVf3qvyI4
- Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) March 26, 2020

As he notes, there's a waiting period to collect the profits, and in the end "this is only a pale substitute" of their normal professions, but at least it's something. "I believe in Bookshop.org's mission," he wrote.

"Books have always been sacred for me, and literacy among the most important things I could ever contribute to facilitating in a community," wrote Genay Jackson, one of the contributing booksellers. "I was devastated by the news of layoffs, and was thrilled by the opportunity to remain connected to my peers, provide an online forum for readers to still access some semblance of their indie bookstore experience, and to raise whatever money and awareness might help the possibility of all of us being able to return to jobs and communities we loved."

If Bookshop keeps up at the rate it has, that money and awareness may end up being enough. And if Hunter has his way, this will be just the beginning of indie bookstores reclaiming their space.

"I'd say the biggest thing I want to do is create something that is competitive with Goodreads," he says, talking about the reader recommendation website with 90 million members. "I would love to have a community of readers like Goodreads has that supports independent bookstores and independent presses and indie culture."

As it happens, Goodreads is also owned by Amazon.

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Thanks to Bookshop, There Is No Reason to Buy Books on Amazon Anymore

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For every story of a business being devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, there's a story of an ingenious plan owners, patrons and communities have cooked up to save one. Indie movie theaters are selling virtual tickets, whiskey temples are liquidating their rare assets and there's even a NSFW riff on Uber Eats.

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The Lit. Bar: Bookstore & Chill Bookshop

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The Lit. Bar opened its doors on April 27, 2019 (National Indie Bookstore Day) and is currently the only bookstore serving the 1.5 million people of the Boogie Down Bronx. Our venue encourages curious readers and welcomes literary and community gatherings—while our wine bar connects the great pastim…

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues, children from all across the globe are trying to put a smile on everyone's faces.

Children all over the world have been placing handmade rainbows on their windows to spread joy during the global outbreak, reported Fox News.

Earlier this month, families across Italy began posting banners, paintings, and drawings with rainbows that included the message "Tutto andra' bene." That translates to "Everything will turn out OK."

Even though the trend began in Europe, signs with rainbows started showing up in people's windows through the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Dozens of rainbow pictures can be found in New York City and Philadelphia.

People on Twitter shared the beautiful artwork on social media. A reporter from the Philadelphia area posted pictures of a family doing a scavenger hunt looking for the artwork. She captioned the post, "Quality Time. Spotted this cute family doing a scavenger hunt in Queen Village! People put up photos of rainbows, a Facebook group maps them, and the kids have to spot them."

#Quarantine Quality Time: Spotted this cute family doing a scavenger hunt in Queen Village! People put up photos of rainbows... a Facebook group maps them... and the kids have to spot them. -- -- A fun spin on #SocialDistanacing @6abc pic.twitter.com/beVcFXBzCJ
- TaRhonda Thomas (@TaRhondaThomas) March 20, 2020

Passersby can track local rainbows nearby and add where they are through the Rainbow Connection group via Google Maps.

In the United Kingdom, the rainbows represent a sign supporting all of the hardworking health care professionals.

We have our #rainbow up in our kitchen window. Just a little positivity for everyone walking past. #Covid_19 #COVID19 #CovidUK #staypositive pic.twitter.com/EmyCFTPLiP
- Vicky Corbley (@vicky_corbley86) March 21, 2020

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Coronavirus: The reason kids are putting rainbows in their windows

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues, children from all across the globe are trying to put a smile on everyone's faces. Children all over the world have been placing handmade rainbows on their windows to spread joy during the global outbreak, reported Fox News.

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The current crisis is hard for readers even though, for many, it has come with the unexpected gift of free time and nowhere to be.

Credit... Mary Ellen Bartley, "Summer Reading #13," Yancey Richardson Gallery, NY

I was newly living in London in the summer of 1995 when my husband had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed down his left side and, for a time, barely able to talk. I was 31. We had been married for just two months.

The world became so small so quickly. I'd spend the days with him in the hospital and then stagger home, exhausted and frightened. I didn't know many people there, and I felt alone in my little bubble of grief. And as so often when things feel overwhelming, I turned to books for escape and consolation.

Life was challenging enough; what I wanted was comfort. I re-read my favorite Agatha Christie books, which felt like old friends. I read the wonderful Scottish mystery writer Josephine Tey: "Miss Pym Disposes," about an undetected murder that forces the title character to make a wrenching decision that will alter the fates of two young women she has only recently met; and "Brat Farrar," featuring a long-lost twin who comes back to claim his inheritance (or is he an impostor?), much to the discomfort of his brother.

I read Barbara Vine's insidiously creepy "House of Stairs," and I forgot about my own problems for a while. Meanwhile, in the hospital, my husband's father read to him from the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, with their exquisitely constructed sentences and perfect plots of gossamer nonsense.

Different crises call for different sorts of books. This current one is hard for readers even though, for many of us, it has brought the unexpected gift of free time and nowhere to be. But it's so hard to concentrate right now, so hard to feel calm and banish the fearful noise in your head. I've been thinking a lot about Francie, the dreamy girl in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," whose life is transformed by reading, who knows after she learns to read that she will "never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends," because the world is "hers for the reading."

Set among the impoverished tenements of Williamsburg in the early 1900s, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a good book for this moment. It's the quiet story of a quiet person whose life is very hard, but who confronts adversity with curiosity, imagination and ambition. It's also about how books can sustain us in difficult times.

It's easy to feel like a child just now. The news is so frightening, and we have so little control over what comes next. Sometimes the books we loved early on can help us again. Gretchen Rubin, the author of "The Happiness Project" and a great lover of children's books (I belong to a book club she runs devoted to children's literature) said that she is spending her time inside re-reading, among other things, Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books.

"I feel I have been preparing my whole life for this because of my passion for Laura Ingalls Wilder," she said, of being holed up at home with her husband and children. "If you think about it, the most memorable parts are about a family alone in a house facing some kind of challenge."

The books are about the excitement of small things when there are few things to be had - candy made from maple syrup poured into the snow; a homemade Christmas present; a sleigh ride through the snow to visit your grandfather. Home in these books means warmth and refuge, families hunkered down against the difficulties of the world, the larder stocked for hard times ahead.

From London, the author Alain de Botton, whose organization The School of Life is devoted to helping people find ways to wrestle with their troubles, recommends a story for young children, "The Tiger Who Came To Tea," by Judith Kerr, about a tiger who unexpectedly shows up at the door and demands to be served tea. It's a lesson in how to adapt to the unforeseen with flexibility and aplomb.

He also suggests the essay "The Death of the Moth," in which Virginia Woolf considers the pathos of a humble moth fluttering ineffectually outside her window. "Properly seen, it is a marvelous, beautiful thing," de Botton said in an email. "Through her essay we can be drawn to see afresh, and with deserved generosity, the worth of our own lives."

And I, in turn, would recommend one of de Botton's own books, the surprisingly delightful "The Consolations of Philosophy," which is both an introduction to six philosophers and a primer for applying their ideas to our own lives. The chapter on Nietzsche's belief about the link between happiness and painful experience is particularly appropriate right now. "All lives are difficult," de Botton writes in that chapter. "What makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met."

One way of measuring a life's reading is to remember what books have helped along the way. When I was 8 and my father died, I spent much of the summer lounging around with a stack of Nancy Drew mysteries, fortified by Ring Dings (correct eating method: surgically nibble off the chocolate coating, work through the "cake," and then savor the crème reward). With her titian hair and her harmless boyfriend and her nose for mystery, Nancy Drew got me through those first few months.

But it was Madeleine L'Engle's classic "A Wrinkle In Time," which I read and re-read to counter the lingering sadness of the ensuing years, that soothed my soul. How I loved stubborn, awkward Meg and her lanky boyfriend, Calvin, and the three exotic extraterrestrial ladies who descend to help them and our young planet fight their way through the darkness. And at heart (though I didn't realize it at the time), the book is the story of a girl who loses her father and then finds him again, so it was just right for me then.

In 2001, I was still in London when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Much as the coronavirus feels both personal and global, 9/11 felt like two tragedies layered on top of each other, the larger one and then a smaller one, because that day I (along with so many others) lost a person I loved.

I consoled myself with Ian McEwan's "Atonement," a novel set partly during World War II about love, grief and the transcendent ability of fiction to present a counter-reality to the sadness in our lives. I found it profoundly moving, and I have gone back to it often. I read it again as my mother was dying a few years ago, and I read perhaps my favorite book of all, "Charlotte's Web," aloud to her as I sat by her bedside. We were both so reassured by the notion of Charlotte living on in her children and grandchildren.

I'm not sure what the exact right book is for today, and I suspect our notions of what we need will change over these next weeks and months. But for now, I've been losing myself in Nancy Mitford's novels. My favorite is "The Pursuit of Love," set in England (and Spain and France, a little) in the years before and during World War II. It is elegant and funny and romantic and written with the lightest touch, but it also bracing and wise. It shows us how to be brave, how to approach daily life with humor and pleasure and occasional joy, even when the world seems to be falling apart.

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A Reader Looking for Remedies Thinks Back to Other Difficult Times

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The current crisis is hard for readers even though, for many, it has come with the unexpected gift of free time and nowhere to be. I was newly living in London in the summer of 1995 when my husband had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed down his left side and, for a time, barely able to talk.

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The Bathroom

Frog stood outside the bathroom door. He could hear Toad splashing inside.

"Toad! Toad!" shouted Frog, "Open up!"

"Blah," said a voice from the tub.

"Toad," shouted Frog. "You've been in there for an HOUR!"

"Go away. I feel anxious," said Toad, hiding under the bubbles.

"But Toad," said Frog, "we only have one bathroom!"

Toad did not answer.

"Toad!" yelled Frog as he banged on the bathroom door. "You must get out of the bathtub! I need to use the toilet!"

Toad ignored Frog's knocking.

He hugged his rubber duck tight.

"No virus in the bathtub," whispered Toad to his duck. "We're safe in here."

Netflix

Toad and Frog sat on the couch.

"Hmmm," said Frog. "What do you want to watch tonight?"

"Nothing looks good," said Toad.

Frog and Toad scrolled through Netflix for 20 minutes.

"Frog, I cannot pick," said Toad, "Let's watch Love is Blind again."

"There must be something else," said Frog.

They scrolled through Netflix for another 20 minutes.

" Love is Blind it is," said Frog.

"I like the part where the lady gives her dog wine," said Toad.

"Me too," said Frog.

Personal Space

Frog bounced into Toad's room.

"Hello Toad," said Frog. "What are you doing?"

"Frog," said Toad. "I need some alone time."

"You've been alone all day," said Frog. "It is time to socialize."

Frog lay down on Toad's bed.

Toad looked unhappy.

"Frog," said Toad. "Please get off of my bed."

"I feel fine," said Frog, as he climbed under Toad's blankets.

Toad looked even more unhappy.

"Frog, boundaries are important in a relationship," Toad gulped. " Especially now."

Frog snuggled into Toad's pillows.

"I'm so bored," said Frog. "Tell me a story."

Toad began to bang his head against the wall.

"Why are you banging your head against the wall?" asked Frog.

"Because," said Toad, "you do not listen to me. And you are very needy."

"Well," said Frog, "I NEED you to stop!"

Frog laughed very hard at his little joke.

Toad stared at Frog. The silence was uncomfortable.

"Frog," said Toad. "Get out of my room."

Grocery Shopping

Toad and Frog went down to the grocery store.

"Toad," said Frog, "there is no more toilet paper."

Toad lowered his head in frustration.

"I told you to get extra two weeks ago," said Toad.

"I know," said Frog, "I am sorry."

"What are we going to do!" exclaimed Toad.

Frog held up a package of coffee filters.

Toad stared at Frog in disgust.

"They are soft," said Frog, "and biodegradable!"

Toad thought about his options.

"Put them in the cart," said Toad.

News

Toad was sitting on the front porch.

Frog came outside and sighed, "What is wrong, Toad?"

"This is my sad time of day," said Toad. "It is the time I read the news."

"Oh," said Frog.

"Yes," said Toad, "it always makes me very unhappy."

"Why is that?" asked Frog.

"Because the news is very bad," said Toad.

"It is," agreed Frog. "That is why I do not read the news."

"What!" cried Toad, incensed. "You must read the news! It is very irresponsible not to!"

"The news makes me scared," said Frog.

"The world is in trouble!" yelled Toad.

"I am practicing self-care!" yelled Frog.

Frog and Toad stood on the porch, feeling angry together.

"I'm going to self-quarantine alone," said Frog.

"Good," said Toad.

Frog and Toad stood on the porch, feeling sorry for themselves.

"I'm going," said Frog.

"Well, go," said Toad.

Frog and Toad stood in silence.

"I am sorry we fought," said Frog.

"Me too," said Toad, "I don't want to be alone."

"Me neither," said Frog.

They smiled at each other.

"Toad," said Frog, "if I make mac 'n cheese with extra cheddar and cut-up hotdogs, can we be friends again?"

"Yes," said Toad.

They went inside to wash their hands together.

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Frog and Toad Are Self-Quarantined Friends

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The Bathroom Frog stood outside the bathroom door. He could hear Toad splashing inside. "Toad! Toad!" shouted Frog, "Open up!" "Blah," said a voice from the tub. "Toad," shouted Frog. "You've been in there for an HOUR!" "Go away. I feel anxious," said Toad, hiding under the bubbles.

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Teachers and librarians are sharing this poem, too, to help tweens and teens feel a little less anxious. Please feel free to share with your family and friends!

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In your country, city or your village, there are some musicians who play folk music of their area. Maybe they are famous or maybe they are not! Let's introduce them to the world. We are not looking for folk-pop, folk-jazz or folk-rock. We are looking for pure folk and classical traditional of each region. You can send their songs here and give us information about their music and their works. It can be an old farmer or a dedicated musician. Currently its hard to find information about folk / traditional music of all countries in one place. We want to achieve this goal with your help.

This project is focused on original folk and traditional music of the different countries, nations and ethnic groups of the world. Definition of "folk" and "traditional" music in different cultures changes, and generally it's hard to give a universal definition.

Although folk music usually refers to orally transmitted music or music with unknown composers, but it can include the traditional classical music of countries as well which theoretically differs from folk music, like Indian traditional classical music vs. Indian folk music. But it doesn't include Western (European) Classical music.

These music are accepted here: indigenous music, aboriginal music, ethnic music, regional music, rural music, root music, traditional ritual music, arranged folk music, recreated folk music,...

These music are not accepted in this project: folk-pop, folk-rock, folk-jazz (any kind of folk fusion that employs some folk elements like an instrument, a melody or a rhythm in another genre or style), world music (folk music arranged for Western ears with commercial interests, usually published by Western labels; although some "world music" are original and accepted), fusion of different original folks (like Arabic oud with Indian sitar or Spanish flamenco with West African rhythms), modernized and contemporized versions of folk tunes with new sounds, especially electronic sounds.

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Complete archive of folk music for all countries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In your country, city or your village, there are some musicians who play folk music of their area. Maybe they are famous or maybe they are not! Let's introduce them to the world. We are not looking for folk-pop, folk-jazz or folk-rock. We are looking for pure folk and classical traditional of each region.

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As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the "Chinese virus," many Chinese-Americans say they are terrified of what could come next.

Yuanyuan Zhu said a middle-aged man started shouting at her while she was walking to her gym and then spat at her as she waited to cross the street. Credit... Cayce Clifford for The New York Times

WASHINGTON - Yuanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her. He was yelling an expletive about China. Then a bus passed, she recalled, and he screamed after it, "Run them over."

She tried to keep her distance, but when the light changed, she was stuck waiting with him at the crosswalk. She could feel him staring at her. And then, suddenly, she felt it: his saliva hitting her face and her favorite sweater.

In shock, Ms. Zhu, who is 26 and moved to the United States from China five years ago, hurried the rest of the way to the gym. She found a corner where no one could see her, and she cried quietly.

"That person didn't look strange or angry or anything, you know?" she said of her tormentor. "He just looked like a normal person."

As the coronavirus upends American life, Chinese-Americans face a double threat. Not only are they grappling like everyone else with how to avoid the virus itself, they are also contending with growing racism in the form of verbal and physical attacks. Other Asian-Americans - with families from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and other places - are facing threats, too, lumped together with Chinese-Americans by a bigotry that does not know the difference.

In interviews over the past week, nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid - to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public - a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But unlike in 2001, when President George W. Bush urged tolerance of American Muslims, this time President Trump is using language that Asian-Americans say is inciting racist attacks.

Mr. Trump and his Republican allies are intent on calling the coronavirus "the Chinese virus," rejecting the World Health Organization's guidance against using geographic locations when naming illnesses, since past names have provoked a backlash.

Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he was calling the virus "Chinese" to combat a disinformation campaign by Beijing officials saying the American military was the source of the outbreak. He dismissed concerns that his language would lead to any harm.

On Monday evening, Mr. Trump tweeted, "It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community in the United States." He added they should not be blamed for the pandemic, though he did not comment on his use of the phrase "Chinese virus."

"If they keep using these terms, the kids are going to pick it up," said Tony Du, an epidemiologist in Howard County, Md., who fears for his son, Larry. "They are going to call my 8-year-old son a Chinese virus. It's serious."

Mr. Du said he posted on Facebook that "this is the darkest day in my 20-plus years of life in the United States," referring to Mr. Trump's doubling down on use of the term.

While no firm numbers exist yet, Asian-American advocacy groups and researchers say there has been a surge of verbal and physical assaults reported in newspapers and to tip lines.

San Francisco State University found a 50 percent rise in the number of news articles related to the coronavirus and anti-Asian discrimination between Feb. 9 and March 7. The lead researcher, Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian-American studies, said the figures represented "just the tip of the iceberg" because only the most egregious cases would be likely to be reported by the media.

Professor Jeung has helped set up a website in six Asian languages to gather firsthand accounts; some 150 cases have been reported on the site since it was started last Thursday.

Tony Du, an epidemiologist in Howard County, Md., said that hearing government leaders call the coronavirus the "Chinese virus" had made him afraid for his son, Larry, 8. Credit... Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Benny Luo, founder and chief executive of NextShark, a website focused on Asian-American news, said the site used to get a few tips a day. Now it is dozens.

"We've never received this many news tips about racism against Asians," he said. "It's crazy. My staff is pulling double duty just to keep up." He said he was hiring two more people to help.

No one is immune to being targeted. Dr. Edward Chew, the head of the emergency department at a large Manhattan hospital, is on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus. He said that over the past few weeks, he had noticed people trying to cover their nose and mouth with their shirts when they are near him.

Dr. Chew has been using his free time to buy protective gear, like goggles and face shields, for his staff in case his hospital runs out. On Wednesday night at a Home Depot, with his cart filled with face shields, masks and Tyvek suits, he said he was harassed by three men in their 20s, who then followed him into the parking lot.

"I heard of other Asians being assaulted over this, but when you are actually ridiculed yourself, you really feel it," he said the following day.

A writer for The New Yorker, Jiayang Fan, said she was taking out her trash last week when a man walking by began cursing at her for being Chinese.

"I've never felt like this in my 27 yrs in this country," she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "I've never felt afraid to leave my home to take out the trash bc of my face."

Attacks have also gotten physical.

In the San Fernando Valley in California, a 16-year old Asian-American boy was attacked in school by bullies who accused him of having the coronavirus. He was sent to the emergency room to see whether he had a concussion.

In New York City a woman wearing a mask was kicked and punched in a Manhattan subway station, and a man in Queens was followed to a bus stop, shouted at and then hit over the head in front of his 10-year-old son.

People have rushed to protect themselves. One man started a buddy-system Facebook group for Asians in New York who are afraid to take the subway by themselves. Gun shop owners in the Washington, D.C., area said they were seeing a surge of first-time Chinese-American buyers.

At Engage Armament in Rockville, Md., most gun buyers in the first two weeks of March have been Chinese-American or Chinese, according to the owner, Andy Raymond.

More than a fifth of Rockville's residents are of Asian ethnicity, and Mr. Raymond said buyers from Korean and Vietnamese backgrounds were not unusual. But Mr. Raymond said he was stunned by the flow of Chinese customers - in particular green-card holders from mainland China - that began earlier this month, a group that rarely patronized his shop before.

"It was just nonstop, something I've never seen," he said.

Mr. Raymond said that few of the Asian customers wanted to talk about why they were there, but when one of his employees asked a woman about it, she teared up. "To protect my daughter," she replied.

For recent immigrants like Mr. Du who are in close touch with friends and family in China, the virus has been a screaming danger for weeks that most Americans seemed oblivious to.

Mr. Du is trying to remain hopeful. He spends his weekends training to become a volunteer with Maryland's emergency medical workers. He is part of a group of Chinese-American scientists who organized a GoFundMe account to raise money for protective gear for hospital workers in the area. In three days, they raised more than $55,000, nearly all in small donations.

But he said he was afraid of the chaos that could be unleashed if the United States death toll rises significantly.

Already a gun owner, Mr. Du, 48, said he was in the process of buying an AR-15-style rifle.

"Katrina is not far away," he said, alluding to the unrest in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "And when all these bad things come, I am a minority. People can see my face is Chinese, clearly. My son, when he goes out, they will know his parents are Chinese."

"It's a look of disdain," said Chil Kong, a Korean-American theater director in Maryland. "It's just, 'How dare you exist in my world. You are a reminder of this disease and you don't belong in my world.'" Credit... Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Listen to 'The Daily': 'I Become a Person of Suspicion'

As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the "Chinese virus," some Asian-Americans now live in fear for their safety.

Back to The Daily

transcript

Listen to 'The Daily': 'I Become a Person of Suspicion'

Hosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Lynsea Garrison, Stella Tan and Neena Pathak; and edited by Lisa Tobin and Liz O. Baylen

As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the "Chinese virus," some Asian-Americans now live in fear for their safety.

michael barbaro

Jiayang, do you remember the first time that you started thinking about the backlash in this country against Asian-Americans in response to the coronavirus?

jiayang fan

Yeah, I mean, around, I guess, this is the beginning of March. I had seen on Instagram a friend and a fellow writer documenting an incident in Manhattan, where - I think he is Korean-American, and he was told by a stranger to get away. But I remember reading about that incident and thinking, "yeah, I mean, that's really terrible that this has happened," but wondering, is this a singular incident, or is there a trend?

As a journalist and perhaps by my own personal temperament, I'm pretty cautious. I don't like to make sensational generalizations that go well on a headline. I feel like I need very convincing proof that something is happening before I call it. And especially as a Chinese-American, I wanted to make sure that I was not crying racism before I had the full evidence. I wonder if it's because if I don't make too big a deal out of it, it won't be fully real.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily."

woman

I get to the gate at LAX.

man

Home Depot.

woman

In an Uber Pool.

man

A grocery store, Wegmans.

child

We were walking from the gym to get in our classrooms.

man

I got some milk, a little pasta. Most everything's gone.

woman

And at that moment, there was this guy, looked like a regular guy. He was staring at me.

michael barbaro

As the death toll from the coronavirus rises in the U.S., so do reports of verbal and physical attacks against Asian-Americans -

woman

And a couple of seats away from me, a man was seated. And presumably his wife comes back to sit down and says out loud -

man

"You people you, brought it. You're sick."

woman

"Fuck China."

child

"China is stupid."

man

"I ought to kill you. I ought to shoot you."

woman

"This girl looks Chinese. She must have the virus. I can't sit next to her."

michael barbaro

- Who say that they are being blamed for the pandemic.

archived recording (journalist)

A person at the White House used the term "kung-flu." My question is, do you think that's wrong?

archived recording (donald trump)

Kung-flu?

archived recording (journalist)

Kung-flu. And do you think using the term "Chinese virus," that puts Asian-Americans at risk, that people might target them?

archived recording (donald trump)

No, not at all. No, not at all. I think they probably would agree with it 100%. It comes from China. There's nothing not to agree with. I'll have the last question.

michael barbaro

Today -

man

When the president asked, I don't think they would mind it being called the Chinese virus, I mind!

child

It did make me feel different, and didn't really want to be Chinese because of the coronavirus.

michael barbaro

Jiayang Fan, a writer for The New Yorker magazine, shares her story.

It's Friday, April 10th.

Jiayang, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? Where did you grow up?

jiayang fan

I was born in 1984 in Chongqing, China. My mom was a doctor. My dad was a researcher. And he was one of the first batch of scholars sent to the U.S. to bring Western knowledge and technology back to China. So he leaves when I'm about two, so I have very little memory of him. But for my mom and I, life in China feels very serene and comfortable.

[speaking chinese]

Whatever sense I have of the outside world, the world beyond China, is very, very vague and incredibly hazy, like I'm not quite sure it exists. But I think if one place were to stand out, it would be the United States.

I remember my mom and her friends talking about the show Dynasty, which did telegraph the glamor of the U.S.

jiayang fan

The sense that this is what an everyday Joe would inhabit.

michael barbaro

And this of course, is a soap opera about an incredibly wealthy oil family living in a crazy gorgeous home, and driving along oil fields. So it's actually quite exceptional.

jiayang fan

Well, it was the show, and it was also at the time in China what was very popular were these calendars of American families, where every member had golden hair, sparkling blue eyes and perfect bone structure, and they were always smiling with their perfect white teeth. They always were sitting by a perfect colonial house, or just out in nature, but in front of a park that they looked like they owned.

[laughter]

And I remember the food that really encapsulated America to me were Cheerios.

michael barbaro

Cheerios?

jiayang fan

Yes, Cheerios. I had no idea what they tasted like, but the company did fantastic branding in China.

jiayang fan

I remember the picture of the perfect baby on these ads for Cheerios. You know, the round cheeks, the blue eyes. That baby got to have this superior breakfast food that I, in all likelihood, would never get to taste.

jiayang fan

So there's me, drinking my Chinese porridge, and eating my pickled vegetables, and having fantasies about Cheerios, which I learned years later to not be very tasty at all there. They're actually tasteless.

michael barbaro

To be like the definition of blandness, but in your mind, they are this superior food for this blond haired, perfect group of people.

jiayang fan

Yeah, for superior people, to put it bluntly.

I mean, I still remember actually the first time I heard English. I think it might have been my fifth or sixth birthday, and my mom might have come back pretty recently from English language training sessions. And she just said the words "happy birthday."

That was astounding to me. It was like my mom was superwoman, that she knew how to say this language that did not sound like a language to me. "Happy birthday." I still remember the way the syllables came out of her mouth, and the image, which was of a tsunami.

There was this tidal wave of one syllable consuming the next one that, to me, was very incomprehensible. And I remember at the time thinking, "I will never learn this language. I have no hopes of ever learning this language." Which is probably OK, because I only need one language, right? And it's Chinese.

michael barbaro

Oh.

[speaking chinese]

jiayang fan

But essentially something happens in the June of '89 that changes my father's fate as well as that of my mom and I forever.

jiayang fan

The Tiananmen massacre.

jiayang fan

So the U.S. government immediately makes provisions for Chinese scholars, who might need to flee from China.

jiayang fan

And that was when my mother and I joined my father in the U.S.

[speaking chinese]

michael barbaro

What do you remember about first arriving in the U.S.?

jiayang fan

We land in J.F.K., and my father is living at the time in New Haven, Connecticut. And that drive from J.F.K. to New Haven, it is gray and drab, like tones that are not at all what I had imagined. So I keep waiting for the real America to reveal itself to me. So it is a rude awakening when my dad leads us to his second floor studio. There's just a mattress on the floor, and I think it takes me a good minute to realize that this is my new home. And the loss of a language is pretty traumatic for me.

michael barbaro

How so?

jiayang fan

School started a few months later, and I could not understand my teachers, my classmates. And repeatedly my new American teachers ask me, why aren't you talking more? Why aren't you engaging? And those expectations, I think, are hard for me to fully understand. And I feel like I'm walking blind into a game, where I don't know the rules.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

jiayang fan

I mean, not only do I not speak the language, I'm bringing pickled fish and rice, and that's not sitting well with the other kids at a lunch table. All I feel is defeat.

michael barbaro

Hm. It sounds very lonely.

jiayang fan

Yeah, retrospectively, I think what made me feel most lonely was that I couldn't share those feelings with my mother. And I think for my mother, who worked very low paying menial labor jobs in the U.S., a drastic step down from her position as a doctor in China, she must have felt as marginalized and as embarrassed by her immigrant status as I do, but in an adult way, but similarly lacking in an emotional vocabulary to express those feelings.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

jiayang fan

Like, I remember going to the mall for the first time with my mother. And my mom's favorite pastime was window shopping, just looking at things that she couldn't afford. And I remember one time someone trying to hand her maybe a flyer for some store, and she said, no, thanks. But she couldn't pronounce it correctly, so this young man said "No sex? Did you say no sex? No sex?" And I think I was like 11 or 12 at the time. I remember that my mother actually just in this embarrassed way laughed, like out of anxiety, like she wanted it to be OK. She wanted to respond in a way to indicate that she was not offended. But I remember the way that my cheek just felt hot and red, they grew, and how I felt so humiliated on my mother's behalf. And that experience feels seared into my brain, not just because of the insult, but because my mother had to swallow her own humiliation.

michael barbaro

Did you understand, given your age, that this was racism? I mean, how did you process it in that moment?

jiayang fan

I think I turned over the incident in my mind for a long time after that. I don't think I would have coded it as racism. I think I almost only understood racism as something that white people inflicted on black people. I had no idea - or I had very little idea of how Asians fit into the landscape of race in the U.S. And I didn't know how to understand incidents in which you were not called a very specific racial slur. Like that "no thanks, no sex?" Like -

michael barbaro

What was that?

jiayang fan

What was that? Exactly. I think as an 11-year-old, in my head, I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be the one lashing out at others for being racist because inevitably that would make me seem even more different. And I think my mother, my mother was the closest person in my life. But if she had a religion, it would be survival. I learned from my mother not to rock the boat, not to shake the existing system, to basically understand how the existing system works, and then to ascend it in some way, to climb the ladder. As long as you fit in better, you will live a more comfortable life here. And that should be the goal.

michael barbaro

And did things start to get a little bit better, eventually?

jiayang fan

I start speaking better English. I start really enjoying and then falling in love with the English language, something that I thought would never happen. That's really important for me, I have to admit. When that language, English, came to feel like a part of my body, I have to say that felt like a homecoming to me.

michael barbaro

Hm. And how old are you at this point, where you're starting to fall in love with the language?

jiayang fan

I think around maybe 12 or 13.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

jiayang fan

And I'll never forget the first time in sixth grade, when I said the phrase "come on." Like, this sounds silly, but it was only sixth grade when I could comfortably say "come on" to a schoolmate, and I felt very triumphant.

michael barbaro

As if to say, "enough of that, come on."

jiayang fan

Exactly. When I could say that, I was so aware of myself saying it, and I was saying it the way that a normal American speaker would say it. And I'll never forget the sense of pride that coursed through me. And there was no one I could celebrate it with, right? Because imagine if then I turned to the classmate who I said "come on" with and said, "did you hear me? I just said come on!"

[laughter]

That would have totally defeated its purpose, but I remember it, because it felt like a real Americanism. And it just rolled off my tongue.

michael barbaro

So in that moment, you finally feel like you belong.

jiayang fan

Exactly. But I still see myself predominantly as a visitor, and that my existence is pretty probational on good behavior. And if I behave well, I will be able to minimize the number of times that I stick out as someone who doesn't belong.

But then I started to realize, that's not exactly how it works.

michael barbaro

We'll be right back.

So, Jiayang, I wonder if you can tell me about what happened to you recently.

jiayang fan

So this was in mid-March, when there were rumors that New York City would be put under lockdown because of coronavirus. And I wanted to make sure I had enough food in the house, if I had to stay in for an indefinite period of time.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

jiayang fan

And I was also really worried about my mother, who has a neurodegenerative disease and lives in a nursing home close by. I knew that I wouldn't be able to see her for a while, and I had several errands lined up. One was to take out the trash. One was to mail my rent check. And one was to go a few blocks away to my neighbor's house, to pick up a sack of rice.

It was around evening time, and I had just left my apartment building, and I was on the phone, talking to my mother's health aide in Chinese. And as I was turning around after putting the trash in the trash bin - this is right in front of my apartment. I heard "Chinese, Chinese, Chinese bitch. Fucking Chinese." But it all - I don't think I fully believed what I was hearing. And when I made eye contact with him, he kept speaking. "You're fucking Chinese." And I realized that that I was comprehending that what he was saying did not stop him.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

jiayang fan

That was when in my ear, my mom's aide paused and said, "Are you OK? Is something happening?" And I couldn't really speak. I found myself walking down the street. I think I was still really set on, "I need to get rice," but then I found it really hard to continue walking, because my legs just felt leaden. Like, I really, really wanted to continue walking. It would have only been a 10 minute walk away for me to fetch that rice, but I found myself coming to a halt. And even, I thought, if I just kept talking on the phone with my aide, but then I thought, "I'm talking in Chinese. Who else am I going to offend?" And then I just got off the phone. And once I got off the phone, I felt even more scared, because I was so aware of being alone.

michael barbaro

So this is not embarrassment or even shame in this moment. This is just terror.

jiayang fan

This is a very real sense of fright that I'm not going to make it to my friend's house to get my sack of rice.

michael barbaro

Jiayang, we started this conversation with you saying that your instinct, and maybe it's because you're a journalist, maybe it's as an Asian-American, maybe it's both, is to minimize these incidents, and to be slow to see them as part of a larger phenomenon. But it sounds like this was different for you. Am I right to think that?

jiayang fan

Yeah, I mean, this is not the first time I've been called a Chinese bitch. But what was different about this incident was that this man seemed to really mean it. And I wondered.

I mean, in retrospect, right, I wondered at the relationship between the sense of conviction in the man's voice, his certainty that he was in the right to point out my Chineseness and to call me a Chinese bitch.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

jiayang fan

And I think about the things that were going on in his day, like did he lose his job earlier in the day because of this virus? I mean, does he work in the service industry? Does he have a loved one who has also become a prisoner in a nursing home or hospital? And I think about the way that all those anxieties, and rage and sadness, might have hardened into something like an instrument, almost a weapon.

michael barbaro

Hm.

jiayang fan

And I think about me being a surface onto which he could use that weapon and lash out.

michael barbaro

Hm.

jiayang fan

And I think about the probational nature of my Chinese-American existence, in a sense that, in better times, in normal times, there are certain stereotypes that are cast upon me when I walk down the street. But in a moment of crisis, when it seems plausible that the country where I was born could be responsible for an unprecedented pandemic, that I become a person of suspicion, and I become someone who is quite easy perhaps to target all your ire and anxieties, and that maybe it gave him temporary relief to be able to identify someone or something as the cause for his hurt and for his anxieties.

michael barbaro

So what do you do?

jiayang fan

So I go home, double lock my door, pull out my phone and get on Twitter.

[tutting]

OK, yes. I describe what happened, and I tweet. I wasn't offended. I was afraid. I was worried he knew where I lived. For the longest time, I've been telling friends in China that although racism against Chinese exists in this country, that's not what I feel in a pandemic. I've never felt like this in my 27 years in this country. I've never felt afraid to leave my home to take out the trash because of my face.

I want to believe what happened is anomalous, and that we're living in extraordinary times, and fear can deform us. I wonder now if I should have taken his picture.

michael barbaro

I wonder what your mother would make of this incident. And I wonder what she would think of the fact that you decided to share what happened to you so publicly.

jiayang fan

I think if I were to tell her about the experience, she might not fully understand the import of it. She would say, "Well, were you hurt?" And I would say, "No." And she would say, "Well, did you lose anything?" And I would say, "No." And she would say, "Do you feel like this man is going to cut you down and kill you now?" And I would say, "Probably not, no." And she would say, "Well, why are you even telling me this? What is the big deal here?"

michael barbaro

Hm.

jiayang fan

Or if I were to tell her that I was having this conversation with you, she would say "Why make something out of nothing?" Right? She would say, "Why are you crying victim here? Why are you making this into a bigger deal than it really is? Do you want this to be how you're remembered, for being that woman who was the victim of a non-incident?"

michael barbaro

And what would you say in this imaginary conversation with your mother?

jiayang fan

I think I would try in English, because I think it would be hard for me to find the words in Chinese to explain the significance of it, not on my physical well-being.

michael barbaro

Help me understand what you mean.

jiayang fan

Because for the longest - I mean, I think my mom and I both lived with this fiction that if we could be perfect versions of ourselves, for example, if my mother could pronounce "thanks" the way that it's supposed to be pronounced, and for me, if I could say "come on" naturally, that had always been the goal of our American existence, was to somehow bend ourselves to a shape that America could accept. I never dared to believe that I could actually help to make America better. That was something I never dared to think was possible. But in experiencing this, it made me rethink my role as an American and how even me, even someone who is probationary, that I was in some very, very small way contributing to this country by pointing out the ways that it's failing itself, making clear the way in which this country still makes me feel ashamed, is possibly one way in which I can make it better.

michael barbaro

Hm.

jiayang fan

And also, that's the best version of America. Like in all the conceptions of America that exist in my head, I actually think this ability to call out the worst parts of America to itself, my freedom to do so, this feels to me the most miraculous part of America.

But I think all of that would be, frankly, a bit too abstract to my mother. I think her quest for survival has been so concrete and lived, I'll never be able to repay her for the way that her very concrete existence has paved the way for my more luxuriantly abstract one, but that maybe that's a boundary between us that I've been able to cross, and that no matter how many ways I try to explain it in what language, if she'll fully understand. But I really needed to make sure that, for my own sake, I could know that this did happen, that this was not a figment of my imagination, or that in an hour's time, or in 12 hours' time, I would try to minimize it in my own mind.

michael barbaro

Thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it, Jiayang.

jiayang fan

Thank you so much for having me.

michael barbaro

I'm so sorry that you had the experience you had.

jiayang fan

I am, too. But I'm sure it will be a small experience in what is hopefully a very long and a much bigger one of living in America and being American.

[speaking chinese]

michael barbaro

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today.

man

Majority leader.

archived recording (mitch mcconnell)

Our nation continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic. More than 400,000 Americans have tested positive. Nearly 15,000 have lost their lives. And important public health measures are creating an economic catastrophe.

michael barbaro

On Thursday, the Labor Department said that another 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the past week.

michael barbaro

Economists now believe that the U.S. unemployment rate is the worst since the Great Depression. The latest figures put even deeper pressure on Congress to adopt a new round of economic relief for workers. But on Thursday, that legislation hit a roadblock in the Senate. Democrats want to double the size of the bill by adding hundreds of billions of dollars for hospitals and local governments, which are facing major financial shortfalls.

michael barbaro

But Republicans, led by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, say that money can wait.

michael barbaro

"The Daily" is made by Theo Balcomb, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Adizah Eghan, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Jazmin Aguilera, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Sayre Quevedo, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoit and Bianca Giaever. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Nora Keller, Mahima Chablani, Sabrina Tavernise, Yowei Shaw and Adriana Balsamo.

That's it for "The Daily." I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

For American-born Asians, there is a sudden sense of being watched that is as unsettling as it is unfamiliar.

"It's a look of disdain," said Chil Kong, a Korean-American theater director in Maryland. "It's just: 'How dare you exist in my world? You are a reminder of this disease, and you don't belong in my world.'"

He added: "It's especially hard when you grow up here and expect this world to be yours equally. But we do not live in that world anymore. That world does not exist."

One debate among Asian-Americans has been over whether to wear a mask in public. Wearing one risks drawing unwanted attention; but not wearing one does, too. Ms. Zhu said her parents, who live in China, offered to ship her some.

"I'm like, 'Oh please, don't,'" she said. She said she was afraid of getting physically attacked if she wore one. "Lots of my friends, their social media posts are all about this: We don't wear masks. It's kind of more dangerous than the virus."

A 30-year-old videographer in Syracuse, N.Y., said he was still shaken from a trip to the grocery store last week, when the man ahead of him in the checkout line shouted at him, "It's you people who brought the disease," and other customers just stared at him, without offering to help. That same day, he said, two couples verbally abused him at Costco.

Edward, a videographer in Syracuse, N.Y., said he was still shaken from a recent episode in a grocery store. Credit... Libby March for The New York Times

"I feel like I'm being invaded by this hatred," said the man, Edward, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared attracting more attention. "It's everywhere. It's silent. It's as deadly as this disease."

He said he had tried to hide the details of what happened from his mother, who moved to the United States from China in the 1970s. But there was one thing he did tell her.

"I told her, whatever you do, you can't go shopping," he said. "She needed to know there's a problem and we can't act like it's normal anymore."

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Spit On, Yelled At, Attacked: Chinese-Americans Fear for Their Safety (Published 2020)

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As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the "Chinese virus," many Chinese-Americans say they are terrified of what could come next. WASHINGTON - Yuanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her.

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The Illinois stay-at-home order, mandating that residents shelter in place amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, has virtually shut down the city of Chicago, but according to the city's police department, gun violence is still on the rise -- some 24% compared to the same time last year.

The scourge of the pandemic and violence on top of that is dealing a double blow to the city and in particular its black population, which has been hard-hit by the outbreak of the coronavirus, officials said. And the gun violence appears to be exacerbated in part by people gathering in public despite the stay-at-home order, taxing a police department already stretched thin responding to COVID-19 response calls and dispersing crowds.

The department's chief spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, told ABC News on Wednesday that gun violence in Chicago "has been up overall, month over month" since December 2019, and although "the rate of increase was certainly smaller or less than it was attributable to COVID," the "number of shooting incidents" are still up.

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

"It has certainly ebbed and flowed. We've had days where we had very little gun violence, if any at all, and then we had days like last night," Guglielmi said.

'The epidemic of gun violence continues to plague us'

Between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, 14 people were wounded, including a 5-year-old girl, and seven were killed by gunfire.

The weather was warmer that day, which, according to CPD, is the "biggest factor" when it comes to a rise in shootings. There were dozens of shooting victims in the city this week, per CPD.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot denounced the violence in an impassioned address at the top of her coronavirus briefing on Wednesday and said that "these actions place additional and non-necessary burdens on our hospitals and intensive care units."

"Unfortunately, the epidemic of gun violence continues to plague us every day, every hour of the day," Lightfoot said, adding that "violence of any kind is never acceptable," but this is "especially urgent now as our ability to treat all Chicagoans is being stretched to the breaking point."

Gov. J.B. Pritzker criticized the federal government's handling of the pandemic last month, telling CNN that the state only has a "fraction" of the medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) it needs to battle COVID-19 as they have had to compete with the federal government and other states to fulfill orders.

The coronavirus death toll in Illinois is at least 597 as of Saturday morning, with more than 17,000 known cases of COVID-19 in the state and over 6,600 cases in Chicago, according to state officials.

"In the middle of this worldwide pandemic, our precious health resources need to be treating COVID patients and those needing acute care," Lightfoot said. "Every day we are measuring our precious health care resources, ICU capacity. To be blunt, if our ICUs are filled with gunshot victims, our ability to respond to this COVID-19 crisis will necessarily be compromised."

African Americans have been dying from the coronavirus at a higher rate than other racial demographics, according to several states' analysis of data and that same is true in Chicago.

Some 58% of deaths from COVID-19 in Illinois' Cook County were black though the population is 23% black, and 72% of Chicago deaths were black patients though the city is 32% black.

Lightfoot noted that those same communities are the ones facing the brunt of the gun violence epidemic.

"Just this week we talked about the disproportionate burden that black Chicago is facing with infections and deaths related to COVID-19," she said. "These same communities continue to be plagued by gun violence. I'm here to say enough, enough, enough. Our whole city focus must be on saving lives from all public health crises, whether it's the pandemic or the epidemic of gun violence."

What the data shows

Although overall crime is down this year in Chicago, but during the week of March 30-April 5, there were 40 shooting incidents, compared to 28 incidents during that same time in 2019, the police department said.

From Jan. 1-April 5, there were 453 shooting incidents in the city, compared to 364 shooting incidents for that same time period in 2019. New York, by contrast, a city with three times the population, had 172 shooting incidents during the same time period (although shootings were up there -- 12% -- as well), according to city crime stats. Homicides for the same period are also up. From Jan. 1-April 5 of 2019, there were 92, compared to 103 during that span of time this year.

This increase in violent crime is having an impact on the city's police force.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, policing in the city has "profoundly changed," Guglielmi said, something that has been the case in police departments around the country.

"What I mean by that is you're not only doing your traditional job of safekeeping communities and neighborhoods and fighting violent crime but you're now becoming public health officers," he explained.

Officers have been working to disperse large groups of people and implement infection control protocol by educating residents about the risks of breaking social distancing guidelines amid COVID-19 and even distributing informational fliers during checkpoints and traffic stops.

What to know about coronavirus:

How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained

What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms

Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map

In some cases, those crowds have been targets for assailants.

"Shootings into crowds without any regard for the consequences is the most heinous form of cowardice," Lightfoot said on Wednesday. "I've directed the police department to spare no expense of resource to bring the perpetrators to justice and we already have some promising leads."

While the vast majority of residents are complying with the guidance, "there are cases where people don't comply," with groups congregating at places like liquor stores and in areas where there is heavy drug trafficking activity, Guglielmi said.

Per CPD, since March 25, through Thursday April 9, Chicago police had issued 2,264 dispersal orders, 11 citations and have made 17 arrests related to non-compliance with the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.

The West Side of the city, which "has some challenges with narcotics, trafficking and drug dealing," has been "outpacing the vast majority of Chicago" in terms of dispersals, Guglielmi said.

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African Americans in Chicago face double scourge: Coronavirus and gun violence

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The Illinois stay-at-home order, mandating that residents shelter in place amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, has virtually shut down the city of Chicago, but according to the city's police department, gun violence is still on the rise -- some 24% compared to the same time last year.

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Jimmy Fallon, Sting & The Roots Remix "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (At-Home Instruments)

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The idea of "digital arts" may not immediately call Latin America to mind. Silicon Valley maybe, Old Street roundabout maybe; probably not Buenos Aires. But this is exactly where the most recent E-Poetry Festival, "renowned biennial international artistic gathering", took place earlier this month. I attended, and the gallery space on the opening night was positively buzzing with internet artists, digital performance artists and sound, video and code poets.

This is the first time the festival has been held in Latin America in its 14-year history - previous events have been held in the US, the UK, Spain and France. The choice to celebrate the event in the region is therefore significant. It's indicative of a growing recognition of the important place of Latin American digital arts at international level and a nod to the longstanding Latin American representation in the festival, wherever it's been held.

Digital arts

But first off, what are "digital arts"?

Broadly, they are any art form imaginable that can be adapted to digital formats. People are used to the fact that films are routinely made with digital technologies these days, but poetry can also be transformed with new technologies. It's not just a case of "digitising" old poems so that they can be read online. Instead poems are being "born digital": they can only be read via an interactive interface, clicking on links to find your way through. Some are "generative", taking data from various sources available online and mixing it together in endless permutations.

Image courtesy of the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero

Internet art (or net art for short) and electronic literature work with a similar premise: you need to appreciate them via a computer rather than just "print them out". Typically, contemporary digital art works display a high degree of hybridisation between art forms - poetry, visual art and performance can all be mixed in together. There's also a tendency to play with the analogue and the digital, producing "multi-media" art installations and evolving works that move back and forth between old and new technologies at different stages in their "lives".

Latin America might have found itself on the dark side of the "digital divide" over the past 20 years or so, but this really hasn't impeded the development of digital arts in the region.

Latin American culture

The Latin American digital arts scene is really just the most recent manifestation of a strong avant-garde artistic and literary tradition in the region that goes back at least a century. This avant-garde movement has always been strongly international. Latin American contributions to Cubism, Surrealism and other manifestations of the European avant-garde have long been appreciated. The work of South American artists Wifredo Lam, Xul Solar or Joaquín García Torres is very much a part of it.

So it comes as no surprise to find one of the most significant contemporary Latin American digital artists, the Uruguayan Brian Mackern, reworking García Torres's iconic inverted map of South America in his Netart Latino Database. He, like Torres before him, challenges us to turn our preconceptions of the region on their heads. This includes preconceptions which might suppose the region more suited to naive and low-tech forms of art.

netart.org.uy

Revolution and its dangers

Another preconception that quickly surfaces in the context of discussions of Latin American digital arts is the longstanding association of the region with all things revolutionary. Of course there is a relationship between some digital artworks produced by Latin Americans and proposals for social change, but just not in such a blanket fashion.

Latin Americans led the way in using the internet to initiate and sustain social protest: the Mexican Zapatista Uprising of 1994 was the first "revolution" to organise itself both on and offline. Given its success in "going viral", it has been a source of inspiration for many other subsequent social movements.

Key in the online activism associated with the Zapatistas were some inspirational hactivist attacks on major institutions organised by Mexican-American artist Ricardo Domínguez and colleagues at the Electronic Disturbance Theatre. This kind of activism has also developed to become a form of art most often known as tactical media.

Stalbaum, CC BY-SA

Some tactical media artists creatively subvert common forms of media such as adverts or commercial websites. An example of this is Peruvian-American artist and filmmaker Alex Rivera's spoof labour-outsourcing website Cybracero.com.

Alternatively, they may offer subversive applications of common technologies, such as Domínguez and colleagues' Transborder Immigrant Tool. This is an app for mobile phones that helps indicate water sources to illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico to the US; this comes with poetry to help the traveller along their way.

Despite these examples, there's a fuzzy logic in operation when foreign commentators attempt to "sell" the region and its digital arts by loosely linking the "revolution" in new media technologies with revolutionary political projects. The result is that the writings or art works in question are assumed to be "doubly revolutionary" regardless of their political colours, or even artistic merits.

Today's Latin American digital arts scene embraces all sorts of different projects. Some works are intentionally highly political, others try to break new ground in terms of aesthetics or the way they use technology.

I'm not going to claim that there's a revolution going on, but there's definitely a sense that digital arts are booming across the whole region. And because so much of this work is available via the internet, Latin American digital arts are not so easily cast as something a bit unusual that happens "down there", reflecting a world very different from our own. Instead, they are very much a part of the world we live in too.

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An introduction to the booming world of Latin American digital arts

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The idea of "digital arts" may not immediately call Latin America to mind. Silicon Valley maybe, Old Street roundabout maybe; probably not Buenos Aires. But this is exactly where the most recent E-Poetry Festival, "renowned biennial international artistic gathering", took place earlier this month.

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how our favorite characters handle corona

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How would TV's most beloved characters navigate social distancing? We asked dozens of showrunners and writers to answer that question. Below, Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims shares a script of Coach Taylor's locker-room speech right before Dillon shuts down.

INT. PANTHERS LOCKER ROOM

COACH TAYLOR
The district announced schools will be closed starting tomorrow, so this is the last time we'll be meeting for a while. Maybe a long while. The least important thing right now is football. However. Still damn important. You're still on this team. You still have football responsibilities. We're lucky enough to live in Texas. There's tons of empty spaces. Go find one and do your running, do your suicides, do your stretches. If you're a quarterback, hang a truck tire in your yard and throw a football through it an hour every day. Is that understood?

TEAM
Yes, sir.

COACH TAYLOR
Meanwhile. There is a certain segment of our population who believe that the rules do not apply to them. That they don't have to worry about all this. And I'm staring at 60 members of that segment of our population right now. Gentlemen. You will put yourself and your family and your community at serious risk if you act like a jackass. So I'm asking you to take this as seriously as you have taken anything in your life. Practice your social distancing. Stay at home. Your social calendars are officially on hold. And in case I haven't made myself clear enough, let me state it more plainly. No parties. No sex. No physical contact. Is this absolutely clear?

TEAM
Yes, sir.

COACH TAYLOR
Good. Do not let me down on this one, gentlemen.
He looks at them. He knows now he's got to say good-bye to them for a while. This is hard.
COACH TAYLOR
There's a reason why we got a football team and that's not just to win games. It's so in difficult times we have each other. Well, this is about as difficult of a time as any of us could imagine. I want you to use each other. Stay in touch as a community. Be there for each other on your phones, on Twitter, on FaceTime or whatever other kind of crap you use. And you all got my number. Call me. I know I usually tell you knuckleheads not to call me on my cell unless it's an emergency, but right now everything is an emergency. You feeling a little sick, call me. Feeling a little down, call me. Is that understood?

TEAM
Yes, sir.

COACH TAYLOR
We may not be on the field together right now, but we are all in this together. Together, we are going to stay strong. We are going to stay united. We are going to stay healthy. And anyone who thinks that we're not going to beat this, they don't know this town, they don't know this nation, and they sure as hell don't know this team. I'll miss you all. Tell your families that Tami and I are thinking of them. Tell them you're all in our prayers. Stay healthy. Stay safe. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Jump back to the full list of coronavirus episodes ➽

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The Coach Taylor Speech I'd Write For Friday Night Lights' Coronavirus Episode

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How would TV's most beloved characters navigate social distancing? We asked dozens of showrunners and writers to answer that question. Below, Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims shares a script of Coach Taylor's locker-room speech right before Dillon shuts down. INT.

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I have always thought in terms of Armageddon. Thanks to epigenetic trauma and good old-fashioned worry, I've long since established which friends will hide us in the attic and where the neighborhood plum trees grow, should the need for emergency food or shelter arise. My poor children have been groomed to appreciate lentils; I readily eat weeds. One might assume that, now that disaster is upon us, someone like me would explode with anxiety. But, actually, I might be O.K. For one thing, I have a garden again.

Last summer, when the world seemed mad but, in retrospect, was fine, I was freshly divorced and searching for a permanent home. I found a big flat that had a sunny roof terrace and, down a metal staircase, cursorily divided from the downstairs lady's domain by an elfin picket fence, a wasteland of a yard. It was a mere nine by five metres, full of brambles, ivy, weeds, and a yucca the size of Ozymandias's skull: not perfect, not remotely, but I envisioned that, one day, perhaps, I would transform it.

That was B.C.-Before Coronavirus. Now I write this at my new study window, looking out at a London that appears to be functioning almost as usual. It isn't the French Revolution out there: no burning chateaux, a shortage of sans-culottes. The British government flunked the coronavirus challenge; even in lockdown, nobody knows how to behave. My view, mildly softened by translucent blinds, is of a busy road still populated by double-decker buses and red post-office vans, men in gas masks and old women on mobility scooters with toddlers on their laps. We're teetering on the edge of panic, cartoon toes curling, and each of us is doing what brings sanity. The important people-nurses, teachers, social workers-grit their teeth and carry on.

What all gardeners know, and the rest of you may discover, is that if you have even the smallest space, a pot on a window ledge, a front step, a wee yard, there is no balm to the soul greater than planting seeds. Watching them begin to sprout, checking far too often as the firm yet fragile stems break free of the soil, the dry seed-case caps, is a joy so strong you can feel it in your knuckles. Rose-geranium leaves and thyme flowers, the hit of petrichor from damp soil, are the scents of heaven.

Dispersing homemade compost feels like alchemy: turning dead tulips and carrot tops to black gold. Some people grow flowers; unless they're edible-tangerine-orange calendula, Ionian borage-I'm not interested. Red Russian kale, on the other hand, could supply my loved ones with Vitamin C and bioflavonoids while simultaneously distracting us with its beauty: those gray-green fragile-looking leaves, their veins like rivers of wine.

Even B.C., this potential to grow things and feed people was a thrill. Now it makes me tearful with something new: gratitude. Suddenly, my least-gardeny friends are panic-buying radish seeds, punching holes in the bottoms of plastic boxes to start their seedlings. I delight in the new additions to my team, like a cheery pusher. Before, I was dehydrating, canning, making bread, yogurt, kimchi, and, oh, how they laughed. Now, suddenly, such things are almost a necessary act for maintaining sanity. To grow and preserve food is to remember that life continues.

I don't dare tell my new gardening friends that, despite all the renewed talk of victory gardens, self-sufficiency is an elusive dream. Growing edible plants, particularly in a city, is neither cheap nor easy. Without an abundance of space, and far more manure, any dreams of feeding the family without one's weekly grocery delivery are unlikely to come true.

That isn't the point, anyway. It's the journey, not the harvest. Or so I tell myself. We all know in theory that nature brings peace, but now, more than ever, we should self-prescribe a dose of it. Look down as well as up: at the glossy dinosaur shells of wood lice, the scribbled clots of earthworm casts, the weirdness of what Thoreau called "the tonic of wilderness," the patterns in lichen lobes and leaf veins, tree branches, bark. Wilderness is everywhere, even in cities. The greatest evangelist for the peace which nature brings is the poet Mary Oliver, the patron saint of noticers. She would have appreciated the complexity of feeling garden-giddy in a time of crisis-of how it is to be, as she put it in her poem " The Summer Day," both "idle and blessed."

Meanwhile, outside, as a result of the shutdown, a miracle is occurring: birdsong everywhere. I may have heard an owl. The springtime air, scented with magnolia and blossom, is, for London, almost pure. I've passed the time bagging ivy and wrenching roots from a predecessor's forgotten borders, merrily chucking manure at the feet of my old pot-bound gooseberries, checking obsessively for vine buds. We who are healthy in our homes, with a pot of compost or a small patch of soil, are so lucky. Let's get going.

A Guide to the Coronavirus

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I have always thought in terms of Armageddon. Thanks to epigenetic trauma and good old-fashioned worry, I've long since established which friends will hide us in the attic and where the neighborhood plum trees grow, should the need for emergency food or shelter arise.

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Olive and Mabel. Episode 2 - Game of Bones

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After a brief dalliance with Trump's favorite media network, John Oliver is back to covering the only thing that matters in 2020: The coronavirus, and how the pandemic continues to screw over essential workers. "It's a broad term," Oliver reminds us about who's deemed essential, "that can include any job from health care professionals to custodians to grocery store clerks to, I would argue, TikTok stars teaching me how to dance." The most egregious of these companies, he notes, is run by the world's richest nude-sending man, who only recently revised the paid sick leave policies and safety measures for his workers. A video PSA, where Amazon celebrates their "hero" employees, is particularly irksome to Oliver.

"It's hard to say what I like least about that," he explained. "Maybe it's the schmaltzy piano music, maybe it's Amazon patronizingly claiming they care about the well-being of their 'heroes,' or maybe it's just the fact that, out of context, the Amazon smile logo is a quick sketch of an uncircumcised dick. It's probably a combination of all three." If you still insist on ordering off Amazon for your quarantine goodies, though, Oliver begs you to make sure you actually need whatever you buy. So, not a dildo. Maybe flour. Okay? "If you feel you're not working in safe conditions it can be even more infuriating to know the items you're packing can be anything but essential," he added. "Risking your life to get someone a sex toy probably doesn't feel fair."

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John Oliver Won't Tolerate Amazon Calling Their Employees 'Heroes' Any Longer

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After a brief dalliance with Trump's favorite media network, John Oliver is back to covering the only thing that matters in 2020: The coronavirus, and how the pandemic continues to screw over essential workers.

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Welcome to this week's blogpost. Here's our roundup of your comments and photos from the last week.

First, scarletnoir has discovered Unknown Man No. 89, by Elmore Leonard:

A name I have known for a long time, but oddly never got around to reading. I believe that I may have been prompted by a comment from one of you, and if so - many thanks. This is an excellent and tightly plotted hard-boiled tale, set in Detroit, with our protagonist a process server with a talent for finding people. I won't say any more to avoid spoilers, except that, rather unexpectedly, the story also contains a convincing description of what early love feels like. Unexpectedly sensitive and intelligent, in what is mainly a fast-paced crime caper. Top stuff.

"Readers, I did it again," says booklooker, "I peeked at the ending of a detective novel. This time, I have just finished reading Tana French's Faithful Place":

Would recommend it for any fans of well-written detective fiction.
French's observations of human character and family dynamics are apt, concise and occasionally even funny. The conflict of loyalty to family and the possibility of a choice of personal autonomy and bettering oneself according to one's own preferences really spoke to me.

PatLux has "dived into" Earthly Remains, one of Donna Leon's crime novels set in Venice:

And here we go again - 28 pages in and I have already come across two connections with the current situation...

"...mask over his nose and mouth, hands under his ankles and shoulders, stretcher, ambulance, siren, the calming up and down motion of the water, slow slide into the dock, bumbling about, transfer to a harder surface, the sound of wheels on marble floors as he was rolled through the hospital."

"When they arrived at the foot of the Rialto bridge, they looked up horrified. Anthill, termites, wasps... "I can't stand it anymore" Paola said ... "I want Il Gazzettino to have a headline saying there's cholera in the city. Plague."

Echoes of the City by Lars Saabye Christensen feels like the right book for the moment to TomMooney:

It's been on my shelf for months but I finally made a start this morning. Boy, is this ever the book we need right now. It follows a collection of characters in Oslo as the city slowly wakes back up after the second world war. I am taking a lot of solace from its pages.

A different kind of relief for jaya06, who recommends Underland by Robert Macfarlane:

It is such a beautiful book, and is the first thing in ages that has put me back in touch with nature (even though I'm surrounded by as much concrete as you can imagine). I'm almost sad that it has to end.

Veufveuve has enjoyed Andrea Wulf's The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World:

Humboldt's was a remarkable life and Wulf tells it very well. She also does an excellent job of conveying his prescience and importance - it is strange that he is (in comparison to some others) so little known. I also appreciated the chapters on those who took inspiration from him. Particularly interesting was George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Nature, of whom I'd never heard.

Two Ben Rice books have impressed philipphilip99:

Just reread Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice, a tale of two lost imaginary friends in the opal mining region of Australia, and finally got around to reading the second novella it usually gets bundled with, Specks in the Sky, in which a mysterious group of parachutists land at the remote home of a fatherless family and set about busting gender stereotypes, much to the suspicions of the youngest child.

Both stories are an intriguing mix of realism and fable that seem to be telling you something important but without ever spelling out what that thing is.

Modern Art by Joris-Karl Huysmans, translated by Brendan King, has brought joy to AbsoluteBeginner76:

What a joy this was to read, a superbly translated volume, with excellent footnotes and small inserts of the artwork studied. Am really surprised this hasn't won any awards and Dedalus is a publisher that always rewards you with these gems of translation.

Finally, Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light is proving to be a useful ingredient in BaddHamster 's lockdown strategy:

Well, it's just me, beer, the cat and Hilary Mantel ... not necessarily in that order. Am I going a bit mad? Less so than I have been in the past. Is the cat a bit pissed off with all the extra attention? Definitely maybe. Is the new Hilary Mantel all I'd hoped it would be? Absolutely. Haven't read the previous instalment in almost a decade and after the first sentence, I'm back in that very specific world with that very specific version of Cromwell. Now, I must hasten back to the book, plant the cat on my lap, and read and sup. Keep well and safe everyone. This is history.

Thank goodness we've got writers like Mantel to help us though it all.

Interesting links about books and reading

"When regarded as a 20-something prig squatting rent-free on Ralph Waldo Emerson's land, Thoreau sounds like the dude you'd least like to be quarantined with": Ron Charles on Walden.

Ann Patchett on why we need life-changing books right now.

"From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us." Robert Zaretsky on Camus and The Plague.

Eley Williams and Influx Press are holding a flash fiction auction until Wednesday. You bid to send her a title and she'll write a story based on it.

Fredric Jameson on Joseph Conrad.

A new story by George Saunders in the New Yorker.

If you're on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us: simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we'll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
Topics

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Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

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Welcome to this week's blogpost. Here's our roundup of your comments and photos from the last week. First, scarletnoir has discovered Unknown Man No. 89, by Elmore Leonard: A name I have known for a long time, but oddly never got around to reading.

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I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19-the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

Sadiqa is worried like a soldier in a total war, seeing so many medical providers going down, seeing so many patients going down. I am worried about her health-and my own, as someone surviving metastatic cancer. I am worried about all medical providers, all Americans who have compromised immune systems, all Americans who are infected, all Americans who are healthy and want to remain that way.

As a student of health disparities, I am especially worried about the well-being of people of color. And people of color appear to be especially worried about their own well-being. Black people, at 46 percent, and Latinos, at 39 percent, are about twice as likely as white people, at 21 percent, to view the coronavirus as a major threat to their health.
Ibram X. Kendi: We don't know who the coronavirus victims are
Last week, I called for states, counties, and private labs to begin reporting the racial demographics of the people who are being tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. In the absence of that information, I can't tell for sure whether black and Latino Americans should be more worried than white Americans. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley recently urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lead the effort to collect and publish such data. Local leaders and editorial boards are pushing for the same.

The pressure is on. The pressure will not relent.

Even so, it could be some time before all or even most of the relevant agencies begin releasing racial data. But public-health officials and medical providers like my wife are fighting COVID-19 now. People are sick now. People are on ventilators now. People are dying now. We need more racial data now. We need to assess the data we have right now.

When I examine the trickle of data from states and counties on coronavirus patients, when I scrutinize the racial demographics of hot spots, when I study the survey data, it sure seems to me as if the viral pandemic is hitting people of color the hardest.

Time and again, a state or county releases racial data. Time and again, those numbers reveal a sizable racial disparity. Time and again, black Americans are overrepresented among the infected and dead. America's newest infection seems to be mating with America's original infection, reproducing not life, but death.
Read: How the pandemic will end
In Michigan, black Americans comprise 14.1 percent of the state population, but an ungodly 40 percent of coronavirus deaths. In Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor, 48 percent of residents hospitalized with the coronavirus are black, though black people make up only 11 percent of the county. In Illinois, the infection rate among black Americans is twice their percentage of the state population. In North Carolina's Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, black people comprise 32.9 percent of the residents, but 43.9 of the confirmed coronavirus cases, as of March 30. In Milwaukee, black Americans make up 26 percent of the county, but nearly half of the infections and a maddening 81 percent of deaths as of Friday.

This racial pandemic within the viral pandemic is threatening Sadiqa's entire immediate family. She's more worried about her parents' and brother's health than her own. They seem to be well. But for how long? Just thinking about where her younger brother lives, where her parents live, makes us sick. They, too, are on the front lines of the deadly war.

Sadiqa's younger brother lives in New York City, the site of the highest number of cases and deaths in the country. City officials have yet to supply racial data on testing, cases, hospitalizations, or deaths. But there are some indications that communities of color may be particularly affected.
Fred Milgrim: A New York doctor's warning
On April 1, The New York Times released data on the number of coronavirus cases per 1,000 people for every zip code in NYC. Using Census Reporter, I studied the racial makeup of the zip codes with the highest and lowest coronavirus rates per 1,000 people in NYC. Queens zip code 11370 has the city's highest rate of confirmed infections, with 12 cases per 1,000 people; the neighborhoods it includes are 37 percent Latino, 25 percent white, 22 percent Asian, and 14 percent black. In the adjacent zip code of 11369, which has the city's second-highest rate of confirmed infections with 10 cases per 1,000 people, the population is 64 percent Latino, 15 percent black, 12 percent Asian, and 8 percent white.

New York City is 32.1 percent white, 29.1 percent Latino, 24.3 percent black, and 13.9 percent Asian, according to census data. But averaging out the racial composition of the five New York City zip codes with the highest coronavirus rates shows a significant overrepresentation of Latinos (45.8 percent) and Asians (23.4 percent), and a significant underrepresentation of whites (21.2 percent) and blacks (8 percent) when compared with their citywide populations.

Does this mean Latinos and Asians are being infected with, and dying from, COVID-19 at higher rates than other New Yorkers? We don't know for certain, but it sure seems that way.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that 16 percent of Latino Americans surveyed said they were infected, had been in contact with someone who was infected, or knew someone who was infected, compared with just 9 percent of white Americans. It is not a stretch to suppose that, in our highly separated and segregated society, those results reflect different rates of infection in white and Latino communities.

Some of the infected people whom Latino Americans know may be undocumented immigrants. In the United States, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants were already social distancing from the old virus of xenophobia that Trumpism has been spreading anew. They live in the shadows, mainly in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois-the very states, save Texas, that have some of the worst known outbreaks. But tracking and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have not let up during the pandemic.
John Sandweg: I used to run ICE. We need to release the nonviolent detainees.
The shadows may protect them from the old virus, but the shadows cannot protect them from the new coronavirus. And the convergence of xenophobia and COVID-19 has led to a horrible choice for undocumented immigrants: Do I or don't I come out of the shadows? For my good. For my family's good. For the greater good of the people who forced me into the shadows.

Quitting low-wage jobs could mean getting deported. Getting tested could mean getting deported. Getting treated could mean getting deported. And if they are arrested, they could be thrown into ICE's network of jails and detention centers, where the coronavirus is already spreading.

Undocumented immigrants suffering from these impossible choices are not just Latinos. They are Middle Eastern. They are white. They are black. They are Asian. In New York City, Asians are the poorest immigrant group. The number of Asian Americans living in poverty grew 44 percent from 2000 to 2016, according to the Asian American Federation. Perhaps their growing poverty helps explain the high infection rates in zip codes with large Asian populations in NYC.

Native Americans are being infected in high numbers in urban areas such as Salt Lake City, Seattle, and San Jose. In many rural Native areas, like rural white areas with no confirmed cases, testing could be scarce-but not the disease. The virus has hit Kayenta, Arizona, a small town in the northwest corner of the Navajo Nation, compelling the nation's president, Jonathan Nez, to issue a stay-at-home order.

In the end, though, no group of Americans may be more vulnerable to COVID-19 than the incarcerated and the homeless. About 40 percent of people experiencing homelessness are black, triple their share of the U.S population. Brown and black people comprise 56 percent of the prison population, doubling their combined share of the U.S. adult population.
Conor Friedersdorf: Can't we at least give prisoners soap?
Homeless people may be the most vulnerable in cities like Seattle and Los Angeles. Prisons, jails, and detention centers have already turned into outbreak zones for prisoners, corrections officers, and prison health-care workers. At least 167 inmates and 137 staff members have already tested positive for the coronavirus at New York's Rikers Island prison complex. And it is getting worse by the day.

While Sadiqa's brother is facing an outbreak in New York City, her Baby Boomer parents are facing an outbreak in Albany, Georgia. That means her immediate family members live in the areas with the worst and second-worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States as of March 26.

Albany, nearly 200 miles south of Atlanta, is the big small town in southwest Georgia's Dougherty County. Nearly three out of four of Albany's 90,000 residents are black. Among Albany's first 24 deaths from COVID-19, 90 percent were black. As of Saturday, Dougherty County had reported 30 coronavirus deaths, an unspeakable death rate of 32.9 per 100,000 people.
Read: How the coronavirus became an American catastrophe
To put Dougherty County's death rate in perspective, it was 67 percent higher than New York City's, and about 2.5 times higher than Detroit's, on Saturday, according to New York Times county data. Albany had two more deaths than Milwaukee County, even though Milwaukee County's population is 10 times greater.

The only two U.S. areas in worse shape than New York City and southwest Georgia are in southeast Louisiana. Orleans Parish, known for the city of New Orleans, is 60.2 percent black. Its staggering infection rate of 892.1 per 100,000 people on Saturday was higher than the infection rates of New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami combined. At 38 deaths per 100,000 people, Orleans Parish's death rate is higher than Albany's. Thirty miles west of New Orleans is St. John the Baptist Parish, where the black population is 57.8 percent. If we exclude counties with only a single death, St. John the Baptist Parish has the second- highest COVID-19 death rate in the nation: an unutterable 39.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

The county with the nation's highest death rate as of Saturday is Montana's Toole County. The overwhelmingly white county of nearly 5,000 people already had three deaths connected to an assisted-living facility. If black people are likely the most vulnerable to the coronavirus in majority black counties, homeless tent cities, and prisons, then white people are likely the most vulnerable in assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. Nearly four out of five people in nursing homes are white, and older people are more at risk of dying from COVID-19.
Read: America's nursing homes are bracing for an outbreak
It seems as if every day now Sadiqa learns about another high-school friend, another parent or uncle or aunt of a close friend who is infected, who is in the hospital, who has died from COVID-19. As of Saturday, Albany had 560 confirmed infections, including Sadiqa's best friend.

Albany is what Sadiqa knows and no longer knows. "My whole community is in shambles," she told me the other day.

Sometimes racial data tell us something we don't know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know.

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latino communities.some of the infected people

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I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19-the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

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Kelly Yang is the New York Times bestselling author of Front Desk and the forthcoming Young Adult debut novel Parachutes. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @kellyyanghk and online at kellyyang.com.

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Michigan residents purposely gridlocked streets Wednesday in protest of Governor Gretchen Whitmer coronavirus lockdown measures.

Eric Lloyd, a reporter for WWTV Michigan, tweeted a video of the gridlock near the capitol building in Lansing.

"The Operation Gridlock protest hasn't even officially started but the streets around the Capitol are already packed with cars honking their horns and locking up the streets. This is Allegan Street just on the south side of the Capitol. Nobody's moving anywhere," Lloyd wrote on Twitter.

The Operation Gridlock protest hasnâ€™t even officially started but the streets around the Capitol are already packed with cars honking their horns and locking up the streets.

This is Allegan Street just on the south side of the Capitol. Nobodyâ€™s moving anywhere. @9and10News pic.twitter.com/eAqMmiXA4t
- Eric Lloyd (@EricLloyd) April 15, 2020

"Operation Gridlock," a protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was created to address the lockdown measure that they refer to as "tyranny."

"Our Governor and her allies are infecting all of us with their radical, progressive agenda. There is no reasoned and public plan to promote our overall physical and economic health," the group stated in a flyer promoting the event on their website.

"Dope stores? Open. Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going broke! Many have asked us: 'What should I do? I will go bankrupt if this continues.' Here is the brutal truth. Calling your elected representative, your elected senator or even the capitol won't do a thing...[they] have clearly 'signaled' that they will do nothing to oppose this governor's tyranny," the group states.

The organization asked residents to gridlock the streets around the capitol at noon Wednesday and urged them to stay in their vehicles so as to avoid being harassed by police enforcing social distancing guidelines. Folks were already in position by 9 a.m. for the protest, according to a report by FOX 2 Detroit.

Whitmer commented Monday on disagreements people may have to her executive order during her coronavirus press briefing saying, "I want to acknowledge it's ok to be frustrated. It's ok to be angry and it's ok to direct it at me...I've got thick skin and I'm always going to defend your right to free speech. So I just ask that those who are protesting these orders do so in a safe manner so that you don't get sick and you don't subject our first responders to risk either."

With regard to the protest, Whitmer said Monday that the organizers are "funded in large part by the DeVos family and I think it's really inappropriate to for a sitting member of the United States president's cabinet to be waging political attacks on any governor," in reference to Betsy DeVos, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.

Newsweek reached out to a DeVos family spokesperson who responded to Whitmer's comments in an email.

"Contrary to the Governor's statements, the DeVos family hasn't funded this protest nor has it offered prior support to the organizing entity. They understand the frustration of fellow Michiganders, however, as elements of the governor's top-down approach appear to go beyond public safety. Michigan deserves competent governance, not baseless attacks," the spokesperson said.

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Residents gridlock Michigan streets in protest of Governor Whitmer's coronavirus lockdown measures

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"Our Governor and her allies are infecting all of us with their radical, progressive agenda. There is no reasoned and public plan to promote our overall physical and economic health," the Michigan Conservative Coalition, the group behind the protest, stated in a flyer promoting the event.

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How to Make a DIY Face Mask for Coronavirus

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Amid a shortage of medical-grade masks, federal guidelines now recommend everyone wear face coverings out in public. Here's how to make your own cloth mask.

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Hop onto the community-oriented website Nextdoor.com, which allows you to be virtually in touch with your neighbors. Offer to lend a hand to those who are elderly or disabled. That might mean picking up some extra groceries while you're out getting yours. When 26-year-old Sarah Levine, a cashier at Trader Joe's in Eagle Rock, posted a note offering to help stock people's refrigerators, she was amazed by the response. "I was like, 'Well, I work at a grocery store, so I might as well put the word out and make myself available for people that need it,'" the Studio City resident said, adding that she has heard from three or four people a day in need of assistance. However, mostly she has received uplifting notes. Also, for older neighbors who might not be tech-savvy, drop off fliers offering to be of service.

Share your extra supplies

Don't be a hoarder. Despite how things may feel, it's not the end of times. There's plenty of food left. If you somehow managed to stockpile goods and have extras - let's say several rolls of toilet paper - consider sharing them with those who might have been less fortunate at the grocery store earlier this month. It could be as simple as asking your social media friends and dropping off a bag of goods at someone's home.

Volunteer with an organization such as Project Angel Food, which delivers more than 600,000 meals each year in L.A. to the homes of those homebound with life-threatening health issues. The nonprofit, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is in need of people to help process and prepare food. "We have no option but to keep working and delivering the meals," said Richard Ayoub, the nonprofit's executive director. "We have 1,600 clients, all living with critical illness, who depend on us. They are the people who are most susceptible to get the coronavirus. Most of them are over the age of 60."

Get involved through volunteers@angelfood.org or call (323) 845-1816. Donations are also critical. "We've postponed three fundraisers that were going to bring in $250,000," Ayoub said, explaining that the organization spent $150,000 in light of the coronavirus to ensure "that all of our clients have three weeks of shelf-stable food in the event that we can't reach them." For more information, visit angelfood.org or call (323) 845-1800.

Maintain your friendships

Times like these can be lonely, especially in a city of transplants like L.A. Organize a very small group of people (four or less) for a daily or weekly walk in your neighborhood. It's a chance to get fresh air while practicing social distancing - that means you're at least 6 feet apart. If you don't feel comfortable going outside, organize a virtual coffee date with friends, near or far, in front of your computer on Zoom or Skype.

Support your favorite restaurants

If you can afford to, support your favorite local restaurants by ordering takeout or by purchasing a gift card. Help keep these often-beloved mom-and-pop businesses afloat. Lauren Lemos, who with husband Peter owns Wax Paper sandwich shops in Frogtown and Chinatown, said gift cards go a long way. "We, and other small businesses like Wax Paper, see gift cards as a lifeline in these difficult and uncertain times," she said. "They are a loan from our trusted and incredibly supportive customers who want to see our doors stay open, and we don't take that trust for granted."

Create care packages with supplies for seniors or people with preexisting health conditions. Reach out to nursing homes or community groups to see if they know of people in need.

According to nonprofit No Kid Hungry, children will miss more than 101 million meals this week alone because of the school closures. With LAUSD classes on pause at least through early May, donate to nokidhungry.org and help feed students who usually rely on school meals. Or shop at retailers that are donating a portion of proceeds to No Kid Hungry. Local jewelry designer Adina Reyter is donating 20% of all sales this month. "It is my honor to be able to give back and help in any way possible," she said. "As a wife and mother of three, family is everything, and I pray for this situation to be under control soon. In the meantime, I will do everything I can to help my community and other families in need."

Help those seeking shelter

Donate money to help those struggling to find shelter during the coronavirus crisis. Students at Pomona College recently set up a GoFundMe to assist displaced students. Find a COVID-19 fundraiser that resonates with you at gofundme.com/c/blog/fundraising-for-coronavirus.

Organize a pharmacy run for medically fragile neighbors who might be too nervous to go outside right now. As long as you have their names and birth dates, you likely can pick up medications on their behalf.

Make an extra meal and share it with a neighbor. L.A. restaurants are already doing it. Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken, Prime Pizza and Sebastian's Mediterranean Cuisine are providing takeout meals for hungry students. At Gus's Mid-City, Long Beach, Burbank and Santa Ana locations, free food is provided to children from noon to 8 p.m. daily. Raehan Qureshi, a Los Angeles resident who owns the locations, was inspired to help others based on feedback from his staff. "There has been a lot of press on how much the pandemic is impacting restaurant owners and employees," he said, "but we would be nowhere without, in turn, having the support of our local communities. And we thought it would be best to reciprocate at this time of need."

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10 ways to help your neighbors and friends during the coronavirus crisis

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Hop onto the community-oriented website Nextdoor.com, which allows you to be virtually in touch with your neighbors. Offer to lend a hand to those who are elderly or disabled. That might mean picking up some extra groceries while you're out getting yours.

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We need to treat this graduating class with grace and empathy.

When I first noticed people sharing old senior pics on Facebook, I thought it was a fun pandemic trend. I enjoyed seeing the photos, especially from those I didn't know in high school. I'm a high school dropout, so it was interesting seeing how my friends and family have changed over the years.

Then I learned the real reason the trend started.

Apparently some people are posting their old pics to honor the class of 2020. You know, the same seniors who may never get to walk the stage, head held high, while a crowded auditorium cheers for their achievements. Those seniors.

Posting your own senior pics doesn't honor the class of 2020. It just honors your past, and it's insensitive right now.

I have a high school senior. I originally thought we'd spend this time touring colleges and planning for her future. That's not happening now.

Sure, there are virtual college tours, but there's a disconnect between the Internet and real life. There's something special about taking a road trip, rolling up to the school of your choice, and roaming the campus.

You can hear birds chirp and smell food from the cafeteria. You can see vibrant flowers decorating the entrance. You can speak with current students and staff in person instead of through a digital screen. We can convince ourselves virtual visits provide a comparable experience, but it's just not the same.

The class of 2020 is missing out on so many things right now, and it's totally unfair. We don't need to make seniors feel worse by bombarding them with our own pics on Facebook or Twitter.

"Well, they can just have their graduations when the pandemic ends."

I've heard that line often, and it doesn't help anyone feel better. Maybe they don't want their graduations later. Maybe they want them this summer just like the decades of graduates before them.

And what about seniors who are leaving town as soon as they graduate? Think about the military members and the students who signed up for the summer semester at college. There are also students who - pandemic permitting - plan to study abroad. Some ambitious students already have out-of-state internships scheduled for this summer.

These students can't just drop everything and return for their graduation. They may never get to don their cap and gown.

Some students are okay with this. Others are devastated. Instead of posting throwback pics or saying "There are bigger issues right now," let's validate these seniors' feelings.

Talk to them. Let them vent. Don't force optimism or gratitude on them.

The class of 2020 may never get the closure they need. Instead of creating happy memories during their final school year, they're getting thrust into adulthood as a virus destroys their immediate plans. New graduates often feel apprehensive about the future, but can you imagine transitioning to adulthood during a global crisis?

It's terrifying. We need to remember this and treat this graduating class with grace and empathy. They are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions right now, and some of them are missing experiences they've waited their entire lives to have.

I know what it's like not to graduate, and nearly two decades later, it still haunts me. I wanted so badly to be a first-generation high school graduate, but my home life was chaotic. Despite my best efforts, I was just too stressed to focus on my studies. I missed weeks of school at a time, and my grades reflected my poor attendance rate.

After bouncing around from family to family during my teen years, I finally gave up on my education and accepted a management position at McDonald's. On the night I should have graduated, tears covered my cheeks as I made hamburgers for happy graduates and their families. I was proud of my former classmates but hated that I'd never achieve the same educational milestone.

My own actions kept me from getting my diploma, but at least I knew I'd never walk across the stage. I had time to mentally prepare myself even though the situation still broke my heart. Imagine how seniors who worked hard from kindergarten to 12th grade, excitedly awaiting their graduation day, must feel. The pandemic cheated them out of a special moment they deserved to experience - with no warning.

I'm not saying you should stop sharing senior pics on Facebook. I get a kick out of seeing them, and so do many others.

But be mindful of why you post them. Share your senior pics because it's fun reminiscing about your high school years, not because you think it honors the class of 2020. Current seniors don't need a reminder that the pandemic derailed their graduation plans or prevented them from hugging teachers goodbye on the last day of school. Find a different way to offer support as we get through the mess COVID-19 has created.

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Posting Old Senior Pics Doesn't Honor The Class of 2020

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We need to treat this graduating class with grace and empathy. When I first noticed people sharing old senior pics on Facebook, I thought it was a fun pandemic trend. I enjoyed seeing the photos, especially from those I didn't know in high school.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci struck an emotional tone at Tuesday's White House coronavirus press briefing when discussing the disproportionate COVID-19 death toll facing African Americans in some places.

"And the reason I want to bring it up, because I couldn't help sitting there reflecting on how sometimes when you're in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does have, ultimately, shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society," Fauci said.

Fauci said death rates and intensive-care intubations were higher among African Americans because of a greater prevalence of "underlying medical conditions - the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma."

Serving as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, Fauci recalled the bulk of his career's work, which has focused on HIV/AIDS.

"If you go back then during that period of time when there was extraordinary stigma - particularly against the gay community - and it was only when the world realized how the gay community responded to this outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism, that I think that really changed some of the stigma against the gay community, very much so."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Dr. Anthony Fauci took time during Tuesday's White House coronavirus press briefing to draw attention to societal problems, delving into how African Americans in some states had been harder hit by the novel coronavirus in terms of intensive-care intubations and risk of death compared with the rest of the population.

In Chicago, more than half of all COVID-19 positive test results and 72% of recorded virus-related deaths have been among African Americans, who make up just 32% of the city's population and 15% for the state of Illinois.

In parts of Wisconsin, the numbers have been even more disproportionate. Seventy-three percent of all COVID-19 deaths in Milwaukee County have been among black people, who make up under half of all positive test results and just 28% of the county's population.

Fauci raised the subject after President Donald Trump left Tuesday evening's briefing halfway through.

"And the reason I want to bring it up, because I couldn't help sitting there reflecting on how sometimes when you're in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does have, ultimately, shine a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society," Fauci said.

"As some of you may know, the greater proportion of my professional career has been defined by HIV/AIDS, and if you go back then during that period of time when there was extraordinary stigma - particularly against the gay community - and it was only when the world realized how the gay community responded to this outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism, that I think that really changed some of the stigma against the gay community, very much so," Fauci added.

"I see a similarity here because health disparities have always existed for the African American community," he said. "But here again, with the crisis, how it's shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is."

Fauci, along with Dr. Deborah Birx, noted that there were no biological reasons African Americans were dying at higher rates from COVID-19.

Fauci said it's not the case that African Americans were getting infected more often but rather that the prevalence of "underlying medical conditions - the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma" - had led to higher intensive-care admissions and death rates.

Trump also briefly addressed the topic, saying the virus' impact has been "disproportional" but that more research needed to be done to determine why.

Not all states count or disclose a patient's race upon hospitalization or death.

At Gov. Andrew Cuomo's press briefing on Tuesday, his adviser Melissa DeRosa said New York officials had been contacting local coroners to determine demographic information about those dying from COVID-19.

Fauci later told a reporter that the trend was not limited to particular cities or states.

"The underlying reason why that is happening does not change from state to state," Fauci said.

The disproportionate impact should be a call for broader action once the dust settles, he said earlier.

"So when all this is over - and as we said, it will end, we will get over coronavirus - but there will still be health disparities," he said, "which we really do need to address in the African American community."

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Fauci says the coronavirus is 'shining a bright light' on 'unacceptable' health disparities for African Americans

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Dr. Anthony Fauci struck an emotional tone at Tuesday's White House coronavirus press briefing when discussing the disproportionate COVID-19 death toll facing African Americans in some places.

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You are not crazy, my friends.

*Gaslighting, if you don't know the word, is defined as manipulation into doubting your own sanity; as in, Carl made Mary think she was crazy, even though she clearly caught him cheating. He gaslit her.

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we "open back up" and move forward, very powerful forces will try to...

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You are not crazy, my friends. *Gaslighting, if you don't know the word, is defined as manipulation into doubting your own sanity; as in, Carl made Mary think she was crazy, even though she clearly caught him cheating. He gaslit her.

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The culture and history associated with indigenous language speakers is vast, and yet when an indigenous speaker enters popular culture it reminds us how little we know about them. Last year, Roma star Yalitza Aparicio broke barriers for indigenous women and the Guatemalan drama José looked at the world of indigenous men in the LGBTQ community.

With Latin American and the Caribbean Week happening June 3 - 7 at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the international organization is working with several Latin American and Caribbean countries to put on an Online Indigenous Film Festival in collaboration with the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019. From June 3 through 14, more than 80 films produced from filmmakers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean will be put out on the International Year of Indigenous Languages website, social media channels, and UNESCO's YouTube channel, both in Spanish and the film's original indigenous languages with subtitles in both English and Spanish.

Ten to fifteen films a day will be released, from shorts to features, around a specific theme such as education, cultural heritage, and women. UNESCO hopes the online film festival will allow for a greater understanding of indigenous languages "and their associated thought systems" and how valuable a source of information they are.

Festivals like this do a great job toward helping audiences consume films they wouldn't ordinarily. Unlike a physical film fest, online events can let people more readily access films from the comfort of their homes. As the event website lays out, there are such a range of indigenous languages that people aren't even aware of. It'll be wonderful to have a steady stream of these films available to help educate us all.
Find out more about Online Indigenous Film Festival at the event website.

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Stream 80 Indigenous Films from Latin America & the Caribbean for Free on YouTube

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A report by Kristen Lopez for Remezcla. The culture and history associated with indigenous language speakers is vast, and yet when an indigenous speaker enters popular culture it reminds us how little we know about them. Last year, Roma star Yalitza Aparicio broke barriers for indigenous women and the Guatemalan drama José looked at the world of indigenous men in the LGBTQ...

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This open letter has been signed by MORE, AQE, CEJ, CEC4, CEC5, CEC6, CEC 14, Rank & File Action/PSC, OFENY, NYCOptOut, P.S. 364M Earth School, P.S. 194K Raoul Wallenberg, IntegrateNYC, and Teens Take Charge. Are you an organization that would like to sign on to this call? Please fill out the endorsement form here.
[Versión en español aquí]
Dear Chancellor Carranza, Mayor De Blasio and NYSED Interim Commissioner Shannon Tahoe,
We are in the midst of collective trauma that will forever change us, our students and their families.
In a global crisis like this, in which our literal survival is at stake, we should be focusing on our students and families mental and physical health. But instead, we have been forced to ignore what we know about pedagogy and child development and impose a new system of learning on students that will widen inequality, discourage meaningful learning and fail to offer the social-emotional support our students desperately need at this time. As if that wasn't bad enough, the spring break we all -students, staff and families - desperately needed, has been canceled.
We write to you as NYCDOE staff, parents and students who have urgent concerns for the welfare of our city's children, families and educators. We write to implore you to slow down and adopt a more compassionate, trauma-informed approach toward education at this time for the sake of our collective health and survival.
The rapid transition to remote learning and the rigorous academic expectations educators have been instructed to impose on families have caused tremendous stress and anxiety in an already stressful time. Our transition to remote learning has also exacerbated inequity in our school system; we teach over 100,000 homeless students, and 750,000 students who lacked basic resources before this crisis began. Now, our diverse students are facing even more diverse circumstances, yet without the needed differentiation from our school system. While a few students have the resources and support at home to fully participate in remote learning, others do not. We have students who are caring for younger siblings while their parents work, students without reliable internet, students whose caregivers lost their jobs due to COVID-19, students with sick or dying family members, students who move between family member's homes or childcare centers at different times of the day and night, students who have still not received technology students living in crowded homeless shelters, students without basic school supplies, students' whose home language is not English, making it difficult for their parents to help them with remote learning and students who lack the quiet space at home that is conducive to work.
We propose the following amendments to the city's emergency remote-learning plan in order to protect children, parents and educators in a way that is first and foremost compassionate, sustainable and equitable.
This diversity of home experience holds true for our pedagogical staff too. Many teachers are juggling long hours of remote teaching with caring for their own young children or elderly relatives. Staff members' spouses and siblings may be losing their jobs. Occupational therapists and speech therapists required to do video conferencing may not have reliable internet in their own homes. Elderly parents are sick or homebound. Many teachers have already lost a colleague to COVID-19.

Despite this, school based staff have literally been working around the clock to meet new mandates and their students' academic needs. Students, too, worried about the implications on their grades and their futures, have reported working far beyond typical school hours. And parents of young children have shared that the volume and tenor of work they are facing is far more than they can handle.
Help us be there for our students and for each other. We need to slow down academic expectations, apply trauma informed principles for social emotional learning, lower the stakes by canceling all grades, evaluations and assessments, ramp up public health initiatives and reschedule spring break. Signed: MORE Caucus Alliance for Quality Education Integrate NYC Teens Take Charge Coalition for Educational Justice Community Education Council 4 Community Education Council 5 Community Education Council 6 Community Education Council 14 Rank & File Action/PSC Organizing for Equity NY NYCOptOut P.S. 364M Earth School P.S. 194K Raoul Wallenberg

1. Slow Down Academics: We need to slow down our academic expectations and work expectations. Schools should be directed to provide less academic work system wide. At most, schools should be providing 3 hours of instruction for high school students, 2 for elementary and middle school students, and 1 hour for Pre-k and Kindergarten. Beyond that time frame, all additional material posted should be optional, engaging and supportive. Teachers and school staff must be given flexibility to work at their own pace and not adhere to an all day schedule of live instruction. Caseload expectations for related service providers must also be relaxed and remote learning participation should not be factored in decisions to retain students.

2. Trauma informed teaching: Instead of focusing on traditional academics, schools should uniformly be directed to focus a majority of time and energy to providing social-emotional and logistical support to students and families. This could include one-on-one calls with teachers, giving kids and teachers more flexibility during their day, video-chat playdates with other students, setting up mutual aid networks within school communities to support families in need of groceries, legal support or healthcare, making more time for art, music, creative writing and student driven projects. This also must include directly engaging students in learning about the historic moment we find ourselves in, how we got here, and how we build a more just society going forward. Schools should also invest now in support for grieving students, families and teachers.

3. Lower the Stakes: Given the wide range of home circumstances our students face, it is completely inequitable to grade academic work at this time. The DOE should announce now that grading will be suspended for June report cards. Likewise, teacher evaluations should be suspended for the 2019-2020 school year. In no world is it feasible or appropriate to evaluate our teaching under these unprecedented circumstances and it is a waste of DOE resources to attempt to do so. We must follow the recommendations of world education leaders and prioritize meeting our students, staff and families basic physical and emotional needs.

4. We Need A Break: The Governor's decision to cancel spring break was a slap in the face for the school based staff and students who have been working incredibly hard over the last few weeks. The lack of trust this decision shows in our students and their families is offensive; the assumption that without a full day of academic work students will flee their homes and run wild around the city is rooted in racism, and has been disproven every single weekend. The Mayor's further decision to cancel our days off for Good Friday and Passover is offensive to our Jewish and Christian families and staff. But more important than all of that, is the fact that we know that breaks are essential to meaningful learning and mental health. We're hanging on by a thread, and we all needed a moment to catch our breath, plan ahead, catch up on work, spend time with our families and care for ourselves. If school staff is at a breaking point, that will inevitably trickle down to adversely impact students and families too. We call on the city and state to either restore spring break as previously scheduled or at the least, reschedule a similar length break for May.

5. Ramp Up Public Health Initiatives: The considerable resources of the Department of Education should be immediately leveraged to survey and address the health needs of our communities. Teachers are in direct touch with our students and we ask to be better armed to help them get what they need. Schools need emergency funding for inter-agency collaboration between educators and health workers in order to flood our communities with medicines, cleaning supplies, groceries and other life-sustaining services. Our communities need mass distribution of asthma-related medication and the creation of asthma treatment centers in our over-polluted neighborhoods. And DOE data on students with disabilities, ELLs, meal pickups and student health needs should be made available to PTAs, CECs and CBOs seeking to offer support to those families. Finally, we need funding for emergency grief support and therapy for our students and staff who lose family members, teachers and colleagues to Coronavirus.

"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
When they look back on this time, New York City's students will not remember what they learned in math, chemistry or history. What they will remember, is whether their schools were there for them and their families. They will remember the staff members who reached out to see if they were okay. They will remember how their schools reacted when a staff member or family member died. They will remember the teacher who let them free-write or draw to help them process this terrifying time.They will remember the community members who dropped off meals, medicine or school supplies at their doorsteps. They will remember the staff members who advocated for their families and empowered them to see themselves as problem solvers in the midst of a crisis.

Zhaisia Lessey
Aneasah Lewis
Alonica Noble
Sharon Paige
Alfonso Perez
Ana Maria Ramirez
Tenae Roberts
Thomas Rodney
Barbara Rogers
Kaliris Salas
Lisandra Sanchez
shanna schwartz
Hillary Severino
Shino Tanikawa
Erica Villalba
Margaret Woodman-Russell
Aniya Young

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it." - Arundhati Roy

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Parents, educators and students call for equity & compassion in remote learning

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This open letter has been signed by MORE, AQE, CEJ, CEC4, CEC5, CEC6, CEC 14, Rank & File Action/PSC, OFENY, NYCOptOut, P.S. 364M Earth School, P.S. 194K Raoul Wallenberg, IntegrateNYC, and Teens Take Charge. Are you an organization that would like to sign on to this call?

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14 Turkish Recipes To Experience The Country's Diverse Cuisine

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Turkey is a vast and diverse country, where the cuisines of Asia and the Middle East blend seamlessly into the dishes of Northern Africa and Eastern Europe.

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A U.S. Postal Service carrier wears a mask and gloves while making deliveries in Washington, D.C., on April 1. (Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways.

The Postal Service's decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically, as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the agency's bills - first-class and marketing mail - has withered during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency that employs around 600,000 workers, repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service's budget.

Trump threatened to veto the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or Cares Act, if the legislation contained any money directed to bail out the postal agency, according to a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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"We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it," the Trump administration official said. "I don't know if we used the v-bomb, but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that."

Instead, Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) added a last-minute $10 billion Treasury Department loan to the Cares Act to keep the agency on firmer ground through the spring of 2020, according to a Democratic committee aide.

Lawmakers originally agreed to a $13 billion direct grant the Postal Service would not have to repay. That effort was blocked by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who warned such a move could blow up the relief bill. A committee aide said Mnuchin told lawmakers during negotiations: "You can have a loan, or you can have nothing at all."

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A plan to defeat coronavirus finally emerges, but it's not from the White House

Only the $10 billion loan to the Postal Service made it into law, over Mnuchin's objections.

Without the loan, which awaits approval by the Treasury Department, the Postal Service would be "financially illiquid" by Sept. 30, according to estimates provided to lawmakers. Advocates for the Postal Service worry the agency is in a vulnerable position. As its main funding source dwindles, the Postal Service could be seen as ripe for a makeover; conservatives have long talked about privatizing the mail delivery in the United States.

The Postal Service projects it will lose $2 billion each month through the coronavirus recession while postal workers maintain the nationwide service of delivering essential mail and parcels, such as prescriptions, food and household necessities.

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That work often comes at great personal risk. Nearly 500 postal workers have tested positive for the coronavirus and 462 others are presumptive positives, USPS leaders told lawmakers. Nineteen have died; more than 6,000 are in self-quarantine because of exposure.

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While the Trump Administration and Mnuchin pushed through private-sector bailouts in the Cares Act - $350 billion to the Small Business Administration loan program, $29 billion to passenger airlines and air cargo carriers, and economic incentives for the construction, energy and life sciences industries, among others - Mnuchin has signaled any postal relief funds in a "Phase IV" stimulus package under negotiation would amount to a poison pill.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan asked lawmakers Thursday for another $50 billion - $25 billion to offset lost revenue from declining mail volume due to the coronavirus and $25 billion for "modernization" - plus another $25 billion Treasury loan and a mechanism to pay down $14 billion in existing public debt.

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Postmaster general who was target of Trump's ire announces retirement

House Democrats, led by Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), cautioned that without the funding, the Postal Service may not make it past September without missing payrolls or service interruptions. Senate Republicans insist the $10 billion loan from the Cares Act provided sufficient short-term liquidity, the staffer said, and the Senate would not vote to extend more money to an agency unlikely to make good on its borrowing.

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"I'm so frustrated at how difficult it has been for a long time to galvanize attention and action around an essential service," Connolly said in a phone interview. "And maybe the pandemic forces us all to refocus on this service and how essential it is and how we need to fix it while we can before it gets into critical condition."

Trump has long been antagonistic of the post office, calling it once in a tweet Amazon's " delivery boy." The Postal Service often serves as a vendor for Amazon, UPS, FedEx and other shipping companies, delivering the "last mile" service to often rural and remote areas. It is a crucial service for the Postal Service, for which package delivery is a growing part of its business.

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Trump personally pushed postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, other firms

Much of Trump's invective on the Postal Service is aimed at Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. Trump has advocated for increasing the prices on Amazon deliveries, against the recommendation of shipping experts and the agency's own Board of Governors, a majority of whom Trump appointed.

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"They should raise, they have to raise the prices to these companies that walk in and drop thousands of packages on the floor of the post office and say, 'Deliver it,'" Trump said at a news conference Wednesday. "And they make money, but the post office gets killed. Okay? So they ought to do that, and we are looking into it, and we've been pushing them now for over a year."

Raising rates too much would lead private-sector competitors to develop their own cheaper methods to deliver packages, said Lori Rectanus, director of physical infrastructure at the Government Accountability Office. Even if a rate increase generates revenue, that money would be marginal to the total Postal Service debt, almost all of which comes from a congressional requirement to prepay pension and retiree health care costs for all employees, even those who haven't yet retired.

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Under normal market conditions, the Postal Service nearly breaks even, save for the pension account debt, despite cratering volume on deliveries in recent years. In 2010, it delivered 77.6 billion items of first-class mail. In 2019, it delivered only 54.9 billion first-class items. The service handled 3.1 billion packages in 2010 and 6.2 billion in 2019, although processing packages doesn't earn the agency as much revenue as first-class mail delivery.

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The coronavirus has completely upended consumer behavior and the quantity of items in the mail. Volume in the first week of March declined 30 percent, postal agency officials told lawmakers. At the end of June, the agency projects volume to be down 50 percent, and it could lose $23 billion over the next 18 months.

"We are at a critical juncture in the life of the Postal Service," Brennan, the postmaster general, said in a statement. "At a time when America needs the Postal Service more than ever, the reason we are so needed is having a devastating effect on our business."

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The Postal Service has faced financial troubles for more than a decade, as digital communication morphed and took off, giving lawmakers many opportunities to debate its future. The Postal Service is so foundational to the country that it is enumerated in the Constitution.

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What you need to know about coronavirus

The agency's troubles have renewed conservative conversations about structural changes that would force the Postal Service to act more like a corporation, with steps such as eliminating the prepaid pension requirement and easing its universal service obligation to deliver to every address in the United States, including ones so remote.

"If we're concerned about the Postal Service and its workers," said Romina Boccia, an economist at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, "the best thing we can do is to free up the Postal Service to operate like a business so they can try to get back into the black."

Josh Dawsey and Jeff Stein contributed to this report.

Coronavirus: What you need to read

The Washington Post is providing some coronavirus coverage free, including:
Updated April 14, 2020 Show More Show Less
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White House rejects bailout for U.S. Postal Service battered by coronavirus

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Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways.

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Read more from Edwidge Danticat on The New Yorker

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Past Pandemics | Pandemic Influenza (Flu) | CDC

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Everything you need to know about the flu illness, including symptoms, treatment and prevention.

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The novel coronavirus pandemic, known as Covid-19, could not have been more predictable. From my own reporting, I knew this first-hand. In October 2019, I attended a simulation involving a fictional pandemic, caused by a novel coronavirus, that killed 65 million people, and in the spring of 2017 I wrote a feature story for TIME magazine on the subject. The magazine cover read: "Warning: the world is not ready for another pandemic".

There was little special about my insight. Over the past 15 years, there has been no shortage of articles and white papers issuing dire warnings that a global pandemic involving a new respiratory disease was only a matter of time. On BBC Future in 2018, we reported that experts believed a flu pandemic was only a matter of time and that there could be millions of undiscovered viruses in the world, with one expert telling us, "I think the chances that the next pandemic will be caused by a novel virus are quite good." In 2019, US President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services carried out a pandemic exercise named "Crimson Contagion", which imagined a flu pandemic starting in China and spreading around the world. The simulation predicted that 586,000 people would die in the US alone. If the most pessimistic estimates about Covid-19 come true, the far better named "Crimson Contagion" will seem like a day in the park.

As of 26 March, there were more than 470,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 around the world and more than 20,000 deaths, touching every continent save Antarctica. This was a pandemic, in reality, well before the World Health Organization finally declared it one on 11 March. And we should have seen it coming.

Covid-19 marks the return of a very old - and familiar - enemy. Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than the viruses, bacteria and parasites that cause disease. Not natural disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes. Not war - not even close.
Mass killers
Take the mosquito-borne disease malaria. It has stalked humanity for thousands of years, and while death tolls have dropped significantly over the past 20 years, it still snuffs out nearly half a million people every year.

Over the millennia, epidemics, in particular, have been mass killers on a scale we can't begin to imagine today - even in the time of the coronavirus.
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The plague of Justinian struck in the 6th Century and killed as many as 50 million people, perhaps half the global population at the time. The Black Death of the 14th Century - likely caused by the same pathogen - may have killed up to 200 million people. Smallpox may have killed as many as 300 million people in the 20th Century alone, even though an effective vaccine - the world's first - had been available since 1796.

Some 50 to 100 million people died in the 1918 influenza pandemic - numbers that surpass the death toll of World War One, which was being fought at the same time. The 1918 flu virus infected one in every three people on the planet. (Read more about how the 1918 flu changed the world). HIV, a pandemic that is still with us and still lacks a vaccine, has killed an estimated 32 million people and infected 75 million, with more added every day.

If these numbers shock, it's because today epidemics are rarely discussed in history classes, while in the not so distant past, they were simply a terrible fact of life. There are few memorials to the victims of disease. The historian Alfred Crosby was the author of America's Forgotten Pandemic, one of the great books on the 1918 flu. But Crosby was only prompted to begin researching the pandemic when he stumbled on the forgotten fact that American life expectancy had suddenly dropped from 51 years in 1917 to 39 years in 1918, before rebounding the following year. That plummet in 1918 was because of a virus just 120 nanometers wide.
Viral advantage
Pathogens make such effective mass killers because they are self-replicating. This sets them apart from other major threats to humanity. Each bullet that kills in a war must be fired and must find its target. Most natural disasters are constrained by area: an earthquake that strikes in China can't directly hurt you in the UK.

But when a virus - like the novel coronavirus - infects a host, that host becomes a cellular factory to manufacture more viruses. Bacteria, meanwhile, are capable of replicating on their own in the right environment.

The symptoms created by an infectious pathogen - such as sneezing, coughing or bleeding - put it in a position to spread to the next host, and the next, a contagiousness captured in the replication number, or "R0" of a pathogen, or how many susceptible people one sick person can infect. (Imperial College London has estimated the novel coronavirus's R0 at 1.5 to 3.5.) And because human beings move around - interacting with other human beings as they do so in every manner from a handshake to sexual intercourse - they move the microbes with them. (Read more about what makes viruses so difficult to outsmart).

No wonder militaries have long tried to harness disease as a tool of war. No wonder that, until recently, far more soldiers died of disease than died in combat. A pathogen is a perfectly economical weapon, turning its victims into its delivery system.

The constant threat of disease, as much as any other factor, kept the reins on human development and expansion. At the dawn of the 19th Century, global life expectancy was just 29 years - not because human beings couldn't live to much older ages even then, but because so many of us died in infancy from disease, or from infection during childbirth or after a wound. (Read more about whether our life spans are really longer than that of our ancestors).

The cities of the pre-modern era were only able to keep up their populations through a continual infusion of migrants to make up for citizens who died off from disease. The development first of sanitation, and then of countermeasures like vaccines and antibiotics, changed all that.

"The defeat of infection overcame these barriers and allowed us to have these great global cities," says Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in Washington DC, and the author of the forthcoming book Winning the War on Death: Humanity, Infection and the Fight for the Modern World.

It was a victory that won us the modern world as we know it.
A better era
It can be difficult to comprehend how quickly that war was seemingly won. My great-grandparents could have fallen victim to the 1918 flu. My grandparents lived their infancy and youth before penicillin was developed. My parents were born before the polio vaccine was invented in 1954. Yet by 1962, the Nobel Prize-winning virologist Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet could note that "to write about infectious disease is almost to write of something that has passed into history".

In the developed world, and increasingly in the developing world, we are now far more likely to die from non-communicable diseases like cancer, heart disease or Alzheimer's than from a contagion. The decline of infectious disease is the best evidence that life on this planet truly is getting better.

While reporting my book End Times, I visited the epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch at his office at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston one rainy morning in the spring of 2018. Lipsitch is one of the most influential epidemiologists in the United States, and one who takes seriously the possibility that disease pandemics might constitute a true global catastrophic risk - which is why I was there to see him.

But that morning Lipsitch showed me something I wasn't expecting: a chart that graphed infectious disease mortality in the United States over the course of the 20th Century.

What it shows is a drastic decline, from around 800 deaths from infectious disease per 100,000 people in 1900 to about 60 deaths per 100,000 by the last years of the century. There was a brief spike in 1918 - that would be the flu - and a slight and temporary upturn during the worst of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. But, Lipsitch told me, "death rates from infectious disease dropped by nearly 1% a year, about 0.8 % per year, all the way through the century."
Not over yet
That's the good news. The bad news, as Covid-19 reminds us, is that infectious diseases haven't vanished. In fact, there are more new ones now than ever: the number of new infectious diseases like Sars, HIV and Covid-19 has increased by nearly fourfold over the past century. Since 1980 alone, the number of outbreaks per year has more than tripled.

There are several reasons for this uptick. For one, over the past 50 years, we've more than doubled the number of people on the planet. This means more human beings to get infected and in turn to infect others, especially in densely populated cities. We also have more livestock now than we did over the last 10,000 years of domestication up to 1960 combined, and viruses can leap from those animals to us.

As Covid-19 is painfully demonstrating, our interconnected global economy both helps spread new infectious diseases - and, with its long supply chains, is uniquely vulnerable to the disruption that they can cause. The ability to get to nearly any spot in the world in 20 hours or fewer, and pack a virus along with our carry-on luggage, allows new diseases to emerge and to grow when they might have died out in the past.

For all the advances we've made against infectious disease, our very growth has made us more vulnerable, not less, to microbes that evolve 40 million times faster than humans do.

Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives since the serendipitous discovery of penicillin in 1928, but bacterial resistance to these drugs is growing by the year, a development doctors believe is one of the greatest threats to global public health. In fact, 33,000 people die each year from antibiotic resistant infections in Europe alone, according to a 2018 study. The "antibiotic apocalypse", as England's former chief medical officer, Sally Davies, called it, puts us in danger of returning to a time when even run-of-the-mill infections could kill.

Back in 2013, a World Bank estimate of how much the 1918 flu could cost our now much richer and more connected global economy put the figure at more than $4 trillion, nearly the entire GDP of Japan. Early estimates of the economic damage from Covid-19 have already crossed the trillion-dollar mark.

The World Health Organization, which performed so well under the stress of Sars, has botched more recent outbreaks so badly that experts have called for the entire organisation to be overhauled. Climate change is expanding the range of disease-carrying animals and insects like the Aedes aegyptimosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus.

Even human psychology is at fault. The spread of vaccine scepticism has been accompanied by the resurrection of long-conquered diseases like measles, leading the WHO in 2019 to name the antivaccination movement one of the world's top 10 public-health threats.

Covid-19 is very much a disease of the moment, emerging in a crowded city in a newly prosperous and connected China before spreading to the rest of the world in a matter of months. But our response to it has been both hyper-modern - and practically medieval. Scientists around the world are using cutting-edge tools to rapidly sequence the genome of the coronavirus, pass along information about its virulence, and collaborate on possible countermeasures and vaccines, all far quicker than could have been done before.

But when the virus arrived among us, our only effective response was to shut down society and turn off the assembly line of global capitalism. Minus the text alerts, the videoconferencing and the Netflix, what we were doing wasn't that different from what our ancestors might have tried to halt an outbreak of the plague. The result has been chemotherapy for the global economy.

Just as the eventual emergence of something like Covid-19 was easily predictable, so too are the actions we should have taken to shore ourselves against its coming.

We need to strengthen the antennae of global health, to ensure that when the next virus emerges - which it will - we'll catch it faster, perhaps even snuff it out. The budget of the WHO, the agency ostensibly charged with safeguarding the health of the world's 7.8 billion citizens, is somehow no more than that of a large urban hospital in the U.S.

We need to double down on the development of vaccines, which will include assuring large pharma companies that their investments won't be wasted should an outbreak end before one is ready.

We need to build more slack into our public health systems. Just as the US military is designed - and funded - to fight a war on two fronts, so our health care systems should have the surge capacity to meet the next pandemic.

One ongoing challenge in pandemic preparation is what experts call shock and forgetting. Too often politicians make funding promises in the immediate aftermath of a crisis like Sars or Ebola, only to let those pledges lapse as the memory of the outbreak fades.

Somehow, I expect that won't be the case with Covid-19. We need to do all we can to not just survive this pandemic, but to ensure it remains a throwback from the past, not a sign of things to come.
* Bryan Walsh is the Future Correspondent for Axios and the author of End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, from which this story was adapted and updated. End Times is published by Hachette Books.
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As an award-winning science site, BBC Future is committed to bringing you evidence-based analysis and myth-busting stories around the new coronavirus. You can read more of our Covid-19 coverage here If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. .
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Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than infectious disease. Covid-19 shows how vulnerable we remain - and how we can avoid similar pandemics in the future.

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The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.

It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world's population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.

While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.

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AndrewSoundarajan/iStock via Getty Images Plus.

From National Parks to the Louvre, you can check out these 15 different places from the comfort of your own home.

1. The National Museum of Natural History

Take a look around the stunning exhibits at this Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. You have the option to tour past exhibits like "Against All Odds: Rescue at the Chilean Mine" or "Iceland Revealed," along with what's currently on display.

2. The Taj Mahal

You can explore the exterior of the famous Indian mausoleum with Air Pano's virtual tour. It allows you to easily jump to different vantage points of the Taj Mahal and see them from a bird's eye view.

3. The Great Wall of China

Constructing this massive piece of architecture took more than 1800 years. You can visit this historical landmark without leaving your couch by heading here.

4. The J. Paul Getty Museum

Google Arts & Culture lets you take a peek inside this art museum in Los Angeles. With the zoom feature, you can probably get even closer to the artwork than if you were to visit the Getty in person.

5. The Louvre

Looking at fine art has never been so simple. On the Louvre's website you can choose to explore several different exhibits such as "The Advent of the Artist," "Remains of the Louvre's Moat," and more.

6. The Vatican's Museums

Now you can skip the crowds and still tour inside the Vatican. This virtual tour allows you to see the landmark's museums such as the Pio Clementino, Raphael's Rooms, and others.

7. The Sistine Chapel

You can't take a photo of the Sistine Chapel in person-it's not allowed-but you can tour it virtually. Click here, and look skyward to see Michelangelo's masterpiece.

8. Route 66

Route 66 was the United States's first all-weather highway, running from Illinois to California. Now you can get your kicks on Google Street View of Route 66.

9. The Colosseum

Are you not entertained? You will be as you click around this virtual tour of this ancient arena.

10. Palace of Versailles

Constructed in 1624, the Palace of Versailles contains countless rooms you could easily spend hours walking through. And now you can spend hours leisurely meandering through the halls-without the crowds-by heading here.

11. Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park

If you've ever wanted to journey to two of the world's most active volcanoes, now is your chance. After a short video introduction, you can take a guided virtual tour of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.

12. Stonehenge

There's still a lot of mystery surrounding Stonehenge, a prehistoric stone monument near Wiltshire, England, whose construction dates back to 3000 CE. When you visit the site virtually, you can get a close-up view of the stones, zoom in on carvings, and watch educational videos about them.

13. The Musée d'Orsay

Built in an old railway station, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris is the place to go to look at work by Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Gustav Klimt, and many other artists. Check out their work by heading here.

14. Yosemite National Park

If you're sitting on your couch, do yourself a favor and take a minute to roam around Yosemite National Park. You can hike to the top of Half Dome, see Nevada Falls, and even star gaze in the park.

15. The Pyramids

Survey the awe-inspiring achievement of the Great Pyramids at Giza from above.

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While some islands are known for their unusual geography or unique history, Lítla Dímun is notable for its weather. The island, which is the smallest of Denmark's Faroe Islands chain, is often capped by a lens-shaped cloud, making it resemble a scene from a fairytale.

According to Mental Floss's own Kerry Wolfe writing for Atlas Obscura, the cloud floating above Lítla Dímun is a lenticular cloud. This type of cloud forms when moist air flows over a protruding geological feature, like a mountain top. When the wind moving up the landmass hits the air current directly above it, a sort of wave is created on the downwind side of the mountain. The moist air falling down this wave evaporates and then condenses into a large, flying-saucer-shaped cloud atop the mountain peak as a result.

Another factor that makes Lítla Dímun distinct is that it's the only one of the 18 main Faroe Islands without human inhabitants. Visitors to the mystical location will instead find a thriving population of sheep. Originally, Lítla Dímun was home to a group of feral sheep likely dating back to the Neolithic era. But they were hunted to extinction in the 19th century. Domesticated sheep were introduced there around the same time, and today, farmers visit the island once a year to round up their flocks.

One of the few signs of human life are the ropes farmers use to scale the cliff faces bordering the island. Even if you have rock-climbing skills, Lítla Dímun may be dangerous to visit. A boat ride to the rocky shore is only possible when the surrounding sea is calm.

vladystock/iStock via Getty Images

You no longer need to spend all your free time struggling to capture the vibe of your favorite city in a few carefully chosen syllables- OpenStreetMap Haiku will do it for you.

The site, developed by Satellite Studio, uses the information from crowdsourced global map OpenStreetMap to create a haiku that describes any location in the world. According to Travel + Leisure, the poems are based on data points like supermarkets, shops, local air quality, weather, time of day, and more.

"Looking at every aspect of the surroundings of a point, we can generate a poem about any place in the world," the developers wrote in a blog post. "The result is sometimes fun, often weird, most of the time pretty terrible. Also probably horrifying for haiku purists (sorry)."

The results are also often waggishly accurate. For example, here's a haiku describing Washington, D.C.:

In other words, it seems like the city runs on compulsive coffee refills and paperwork. And if you thought life in Brooklyn, New York, was a combination of alcohol-fueled outings to basement bars and traffic-filled trips into the city, this poem probably confirms your suspicions:

The website's creators were inspired by Naho Matsuda's Every Thing Every Time, a 2018 art installation outside Theatre Royal in Newcastle, England, that used data points to generate an ever-changing poem about the city.

Wondering what OpenStreetMap Haiku has to say about your hometown? Explore the map here.

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15 Amazing Places You Can Tour Virtually

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AndrewSoundarajan/iStock via Getty Images Plus. From National Parks to the Louvre, you can check out these 15 different places from the comfort of your own home. Take a look around the stunning exhibits at this Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

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We speak with Dr. Armen Henderson, an African-American doctor who was handcuffed and detained outside his home Friday as he was wearing a mask and preparing for a volunteer shift to test homeless people for COVID-19. "I want the officer held accountable. There's no way that you racially profile me and then you arrest me, detain me, during a pandemic, when you have no mask on, where hundreds of police officers throughout Miami-Dade County have tested positive," says Dr. Henderson, who is an internal medicine physician, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Miami and an organizer with Dream Defenders.

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"I Want an Apology": Black Doctor Who Tests Homeless for Coronavirus Handcuffed by Miami Police

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We speak with Dr. Armen Henderson, an African-American doctor who was handcuffed and detained outside his home Friday as he was wearing a mask and preparing for a volunteer shift to test homeless people for COVID-19. "I want the officer held accountable.

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What New York Looks Like Now: A Photo Journey

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Makeshift hospitals and morgues, some in unexpected places, make the consequences of coronavirus unescapable.

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The learning setbacks that schoolchildren commonly experience over a summer vacation can easily wipe out one or two months of academic growth. The learning losses that are likely to result from more than 50 million children in the United States being shut out of school for weeks or months because of the coronavirus pandemic could well be catastrophic by comparison.

Consider an alarming new study from the Northwest Evaluation Association, or NWEA, a nonprofit organization that works with school districts to measure student performance. The study projects that students who lack steady instruction during the coronavirus school shutdown might retain only 70 percent of their annual reading gains as compared to a normal year. Projections for the so-called Covid slide in math look even bleaker. Depending on grade level, researchers say, students could lose between half and all of the achievement growth one would expect in a normal academic year.

These setbacks would be particularly disastrous for fifth graders, who need to be tooling up for the more complex tasks that will come their way in the upper grades. In addition, this grim scenario will surely yield worse outcomes for students whose families are grappling with hunger, unemployment or homelessness.

A learning reversal of this magnitude could hobble an entire generation unless state leaders quickly work to reverse the slide. Any reasonable approach would include: diagnostic testing to determine what children know when they return to the classroom; aggressive remedial plans and an expanded school calendar that makes up for lost instructional time; an outreach effort, without which many disadvantaged students might not return to school at all; and a blueprint for how states will deliver high-quality instruction the next time an emergency prompts a long-term shutdown of the nation's schools.

Researchers at Michigan State University who are tracking state Covid-19 school closings show that states were utterly unprepared to deal with a crisis that made face-to-face learning impossible. They reported last week that 29 states have suspended face-to-face schooling through the end of the academic year.

A majority of states are requiring districts to plan distance learning options for students, but, according to the Michigan State analysis, many districts have yet to begin such plans. Further, no state "was prepared to immediately shift to an online learning platform or distribute computer and internet resources to students statewide." Instead, the onus has been shifted to districts and localities.

Internet access is, of course, fundamental to sound educational policy. Even before the pandemic, an estimated 12 million schoolchildren had trouble completing schoolwork because they lacked internet access at home. Nevertheless, there is significantly more to online education than streaming a lesson designed for the classroom. Effective virtual education requires new styles of teaching as well as curriculum materials designed specifically for online use. By contrast, the Michigan researchers say, "Even in the best of circumstances, distance learning over the next couple of months will involve hastily planned instruction in unprepared districts from teachers who were expecting to use face-to-face instruction."

Other research has shown that virtual education as widely practiced in the United States is no substitute for traditional classroom schooling. A scalding 2016 study of full-time virtual public charter schools laid out this indictment in great detail. Researchers found that full-time virtual public charter schools performed worse than traditional public schools in most states and showed weaker academic gains for all demographic subgroups of students. Moreover, the data suggest that students tend to become disengaged from virtual schools, leaving them quickly.

The historical record shows that lengthy interruptions to schooling - during teacher strikes, for example - can undermine student achievement and even success in higher education. Parents affected by the coronavirus shutdown may not be familiar with this history, but they are clearly concerned about the risk that an extended break from school poses for their children.

Recent polls conducted in New York and California show that nearly 90 percent of parents are worried that their children will fall behind because of the closings. Parents in both polls voiced a clear desire for more consistent access to their children's teachers - an obvious plea for more guidance about how to proceed during the shutdown.

Schools need to do a better job of communicating with these parents, and effective partnership with them will be essential when schools undertake the policy changes that will be required to get students back on track academically.

The country may be stuck with virtual schooling because of the pandemic, but the data clearly show that the method is far from desirable. That makes it even more important that educators sort out how to best catch students up when in-school instruction begins again.

State education officials and policymakers ought to acknowledge that no amount of hard work from dedicated teachers will avert the learning loss crisis. The states should be working right now, in concert with parents groups, on a menu of solutions.

The step of requiring a student to repeat the current grade ought to be taken judiciously - and only after diagnostic tests have shown that the student is too far behind to be promoted. Another option to help all students catch up would be to shorten or skip school breaks, including lengthy summers off, over the next few years to make up for the lost classroom time.

The worst possible outcome would be for state and local officials to shrug and do nothing about a problem that could sidetrack a generation of Americans.

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Opinion | The Coronavirus's Lost Generation of Students

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The learning setbacks that schoolchildren commonly experience over a summer vacation can easily wipe out one or two months of academic growth. The learning losses that are likely to result from more than 50 million children in the United States being shut out of school for weeks or months because of the coronavirus pandemic could well be catastrophic by comparison.

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Public officials lament the way that the coronavirus is engulfing black communities. The question is, what are they prepared to do about it?

The old African-American aphorism "When white America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia" has a new, morbid twist: when white America catches the novel coronavirus, black Americans die.

Thousands of white Americans have also died from the virus, but the pace at which African-Americans are dying has transformed this public-health crisis into an object lesson in racial and class inequality. According to a Reuters report, African-Americans are more likely to die of COVID-19 than any other group in the U.S. It is still early in the course of the pandemic, and the demographic data is incomplete, but the partial view is enough to prompt a sober reflection on this bitter harvest of American racism.

Louisiana, with more than twenty-one thousand reported infections, has the largest number of coronavirus cases outside of the Northeast and the Midwest. When the state's governor, John Bel Edwards, announced recently that it would begin to provide data about the racial and ethnic breakdowns of those who have died, he included the grim acknowledgement that African-Americans, thirty-three per cent of Louisiana's population, comprise seventy per cent of the dead.

The small city of Albany, Georgia, two hundred miles south of Atlanta, was the site of a heroic civil-rights standoff between the city's black residents and its white police chief in the early nineteen-sixties. Today, more than twelve hundred people in the county have confirmed COVID-19 cases, and at least seventy-eight people have died. According to earlier reports, eighty-one per cent of the dead are African-American.

In Michigan, African-Americans make up fourteen per cent of the state's population, but, currently, they account for thirty-three per cent of its reported infections and forty per cent of its deaths. Twenty-six per cent of the state's infections and twenty-five per cent of deaths are in Detroit, a city that is seventy-nine per cent African-American. COVID-19 is also ravaging the city's suburbs that have large black populations.

The virus has shaken African-Americans in Chicago, who account for fifty-two per cent of the city's confirmed cases and a startling seventy-two per cent of deaths-far outpacing their proportion of the city's population.

As many have already noted, this macabre roll call reflects the fact that African-Americans are more likely to have preëxisting health conditions that make the coronavirus particularly deadly. This is certainly true. These conditions-diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and obesity-are critical factors, and they point to the persistence of racial discrimination, which has long heightened black vulnerability to premature death, as the scholar Ruthie Wilson Gilmore has said for years. Racism in the shadow of American slavery has diminished almost all of the life chances of African-Americans. Black people are poorer, more likely to be underemployed, condemned to substandard housing, and given inferior health care because of their race. These factors explain why African-Americans are sixty per cent more likely to have been diagnosed with diabetes than white Americans, and why black women are sixty per cent more likely to have high blood pressure than white women. Such health disparities are as much markers of racial inequality as mass incarceration or housing discrimination.

It is easy to simply point to the prevalence of these health conditions among African-Americans as the most important explanation for their rising death rates. But it is also important to acknowledge that black vulnerability is especially heightened by the continued ineptitude of the federal government in response to the coronavirus. The mounting carnage in Trump's America did not have to happen to the extent that it has. COVID-19 testing remains maddeningly inconsistent and unavailable, with access breaking down along the predictable lines. In Philadelphia, a scientist at Drexel University found that, in Zip Codes with a "lower proportion of minorities and higher incomes," a higher number of tests were administered. In Zip Codes with a higher number of unemployed and uninsured residents, there were fewer tests. Taken together, testing in higher-income neighborhoods is six times greater than it is in poorer neighborhoods.

Inconsistent testing, in combination with steadfast denials from the White House about the threat of the virus, exacerbated the appalling lack of preparation for this catastrophe. With more early coördination, hospitals might have procured the necessary equipment and staffed up properly, potentially avoiding the onslaught that has occurred. The consequences are devastating. In the Detroit area, where the disease is surging, about fifteen hundred hospital workers, including five hundred nurses at Beaumont Health, Michigan's largest hospital system, are off of the job with symptoms of COVID-19. Early in the crisis, at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital, nurses were reduced to wearing garbage bags for their protection. Across the country, health-care providers are being asked to ration face masks and shields, dramatically raising the potential of their own infection, and thereby increasing the strain on the already overextended hospitals.

The early wave of disproportionate black deaths was hastened by Trumpian malfeasance, but the deaths to come are the predictable outcome of decades of disinvestment and institutional neglect. In mid-March, Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County Board in Illinois, which encompasses Chicago, lamented the COVID-19 crisis and proclaimed that "we are all in this together," but, weeks later, she closed the emergency room of the public Provident Hospital in the predominantly black South Side. Preckwinkle claimed that the closure would last for a month and was a response to a single health-care worker becoming infected with the virus. Leave aside the fact that nurses, doctors, and other health-care workers have been testing positive for COVID-19 across the country, and their facilities have not been shuttered. It is a decision that simply could not have been made, in the midst of a historic pandemic, in any of the city's wealthy, white neighborhoods on the North Side.

Meanwhile, in Cook County Jail, three hundred and twenty-three inmates and a hundred and ninety-six correctional officers have tested positive for COVID-19. Not only have officials not closed the county jail as a result but they also have yet to release a significant number of jailed people, even though the facility has the highest density of COVID-19 cases in Chicago. These are the kinds of decisions that explain why there is a thirty-year difference in life expectancy-in the same city-between the black neighborhood of Englewood and the white neighborhood of Streeterville. They are also just the latest examples of the ways that racism is the ultimate result of the decisions that government officials make, regardless of their intentions. Preckwinkle is African-American, and the chairperson of the Cook County Democratic Party, but her decisions regarding Provident Hospital and Cook County Jail will still deeply wound African-Americans across Chicago.

The rapidity with which the pandemic has consumed black communities is shocking, but it also provides an unvarnished look into the dynamics of race and class that existed long before it emerged. The most futile conversation in the U.S. is the argument about whether race or class is the main impediment to African-American social mobility. In reality, they cannot be separated from each other. African-Americans are suffering through this crisis not only because of racism but also because of how racial discrimination has tied them to the bottom of the U.S. class hierarchy.

Since emancipation, racism has underwritten black economic hardship. That hardship is expressed through the concentration of African-Americans in low-wage jobs-many of which are now ironically designated "essential." According to a report in the Times, Annie Grant, a fifty-five-year-old black woman who worked at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, Georgia, said that she was suffering from fevers and chills, and she told her children that she was ordered to return to work despite exhibiting symptoms of the virus. Earlier this month, she died from COVID-19. Two more workers at the plant have died, and others have complained about the lack of protective equipment and the difficulty of social distancing there, but Tyson has kept it open. (A spokesperson for Tyson Foods has said that the company has instituted safeguards for employees, including "an adequate supply of protective face coverings for production workers.") When Vice-President Mike Pence spoke about the role of low-wage, essential work amid a widening outbreak in food-processing plants, he said, "You are giving a great service to the people of the United States of America, and we need you to continue, as a part of what we call critical infrastructure, to show up and do your job."

The intersecting threats of hunger, eviction, and unemployment drive poor and working-class African-Americans toward the possibility of infection. Fewer than twenty per cent of African-Americans have jobs that allow them to work at home. Black workers are concentrated in public-facing jobs, working in mass transit, home health care, retail, and service, where social distancing is virtually impossible. And then there is the concentration of African-Americans in institutions where social distancing is impossible, including prisons, jails, and homeless shelters. African-Americans make up the majority of the incarcerated and the homeless. Forty-six per cent of African-Americans perceive COVID-19 as a " major threat " to their health, and yet race and class combine to put black people in danger. These numbers are the crisis wrapped inside of the pandemic.

Poverty, in turn, reinforces ideological assumptions about race. When working-class black neighborhoods have high rates of substandard housing and poor maintenance, and black communities suffer from poor diets and widespread obesity, these characteristics are conflated with race. Racializing poverty helps to distract from the systemic factors at the foundation of both racial and economic inequality. Instead, there is an overabundance of attention placed on the diagnosis and repair of supposedly damaged African-Americans. On April 10th, Trump's Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, who is black, instructed African-American and Latino communities to avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs during the pandemic. In a familiar paternalistic ode, Adams advised, "We need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your big mama. Do it for your pop-pop." He added, "We need you to step up."

These remarks were a reminder of how the focus on the comorbidities accompanying COVID-19, such as diabetes and hypertension, can be easily transformed into discussions about the dietary and exercise habits of the black working class. But that is an irresponsibly one-sided discussion, one that ignores the comorbidities of food deserts, the diminishing returns of food stamps, and the depression and alienation that blanket poor and working-class black neighborhoods. It is not the absence of willpower that is fuelling the pandemic's deadly effects in black communities. And the disproportionate impact of the virus is not caused by a language barrier requiring that African-Americans be spoken to with "targeted language," as Adams later explained.

Adams's remarks were also a reminder that, even when poverty is not the issue, racism or racially inflected assumptions about African-Americans influence the ways that they are cared for within the health-care industry. Not only are black women three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women are but college-educated black women's mortality rates in childbirth are higher than those of white women with just a high-school degree. The stereotypes of African-Americans as fat and lazy, carefree and reckless, impetuous, irresponsible, and ultimately undeserving, are absorbed into the consciousness of the general public, health-care providers among them. These stereotypes are rooted in misperceptions of poor and working-class black life, but, because race is widely seen as biologically based in our society, including by doctors, they are assumed to be characteristics inherited by all black people. In a series of studies published in 2017, researchers found "an implicit preference for white patients, especially among white physicians." Another study found that doctors believed that white patients were more medically coöperative than African-American patients. A 2016 study of medical students and residents found that almost half of them believe that there are biological differences between black bodies and white bodies-including the false notion that the nerve endings of black people are less sensitive than those of whites. These findings may give some insight into a more recent study that showed that black patients were forty per cent less likely to receive medication to ease acute pain.

Discrimination against African-American patients is so embedded in health-care practices that a national study found that, even when hospitals and insurers relied on an algorithm to manage care, African-American patients received on average eighteen hundred dollars less of care per year than white patients with the same chronic health conditions. African-Americans had to be sicker than whites before they were referred for more specialized help. It's not just poverty that leads to misdiagnoses and inconsistent care; it is also deeply embedded assumptions that black bodies are damaged and, thus, disposable.

It's not just Trump appointees who make condescending or ignorant statements. Even a liberal stalwart like Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is not immune to fixating on perceptions of black complicity in poor health outcomes. In response to the reporting on black deaths from the coronavirus, Lightfoot said, "Now, we're not going to be able to erase decades of health disparities in a few days or a week, but we have to impress upon people in these communities that there are things they can do-there are tools at their disposal that they can use to help themselves, but we have to call this out as it is and make sure we've got a very robust, multitiered response now and going forward, and we will."

What are the "tools" at the disposal of black communities in Chicago that would allow them to "help themselves" out of the COVID-19 crisis? Lightfoot did not elaborate, but this sounds like loaded language that shifts the blame for black health disparities onto the segregated black neighborhoods of Chicago. Lightfoot's comments underestimate the difficulty of achieving good health and wellness while also combatting the forces of underemployment, evictions, and police violence-all of which define much of working-class black life in Chicago. The over-all unemployment rate for young black men and women in Chicago is thirty-seven per cent, compared with six per cent for their white peers. It is certainly easier to promote these mysterious "tools" than it is to confront the decades-long crisis of disinvestment and unemployment in the city, but that is actually what is necessary to change these circumstances.

There is an additional consequence of letting the coronavirus crisis lapse into a narrow focus on the personal choices of African-Americans. The assumption that if African-Americans just change their personal behavior then they can join the ranks of the fit and healthy ignores the systemic issues that have created a general crisis of health and wellness and access to medical care in the United States. The problem that black people face is not just one of exclusion from adequate health care, with inclusion as the cure. Simply calling for "equal access" can reinforce the perception that the problem is one of exclusion alone, when the deeper problem is U.S. society itself.

When James Baldwin, in his searing 1963 book " The Fire Next Time," posed the question of whether African-Americans should integrate into the "burning house" of the United States, he argued that the question demanded a deeper look into U.S. society. Baldwin wrote, "White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being. And I repeat: The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks-the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind."

Racism has meant that most African-Americans suffer to greater degrees than most white Americans. But, in the past several years, there have been multiple reports showing that the life expectancy for the average white person has gone in reverse. This does not normally happen in the developed world. But, in this country, this phenomenon is driven by alcoholism, opioid abuse, and suicide. Far from white privilege, this is white pathos.

Unequal access to health care may be important in the immediate context of the pandemic, but this alone doesn't tell us much about the general crisis with for-profit health care in the United States. It also doesn't tell us much about the larger social crises in the U.S. that underwrite the particular health-care problems of African-Americans and white Americans. A glimpse into those larger crises was provided by the United Nations in 2017, when its investigators interviewed people in several cities about poverty in the United States. The report concluded that "the United States already leads the developed world in income and wealth inequality, and it is now moving full steam ahead to make itself even more unequal. . . . High child and youth poverty rates perpetuate the intergenerational transmission of poverty very effectively, and ensure that the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion." The U.S. has the highest youth and infant mortality rates among wealthy countries. U.S. citizens live "shorter and sicker" lives than those of other prosperous democratic nations.

When public officials lament the way that COVID-19 is engulfing black communities, the larger question is, what are they prepared to do about it? The immediate answer should be the rapid expansion of Medicaid and Medicare. But access to health care is only one small piece of the dynamic that compromises the health of African-Americans. Good health-care practice must also include relief from the threat and stress of evictions. Black women constitute about forty-four per cent of those who are evicted from their homes in urban areas; as a result, they disproportionately experience homelessness and depression and, in extreme cases, commit suicide. Good health care means higher-paying jobs that allow black women and their families to worry less about monthly bills and the costs of child care and education. Black women in Louisiana, the state where African-Americans face the highest mortality rates from COVID-19, make forty-seven cents to every dollar made by white men.

We periodically endure national crises that force us to look at the poverty and inequality that exist all around us. We hear those in power, including elected officials, breathlessly discuss the shameful conditions that produce these outcomes, but they pledge little in terms of specific policies and concrete actions to reverse them. Trump says that the higher rates of black death are "a tremendous challenge. . . . We want to find the reason to it." Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who dutifully accompanies Trump to his press briefings, provided an explanation that included existing health problems, but, Fauci concluded, "There is nothing we can do about it right now except to give them the best possible care and to avoid complications."

Expressions of concern, well wishes, and promises of "a very robust multitiered response" sound good at press conferences. But many elected officials who tell us that they mean well are so trapped by a prevailing hostility to spending in order to rebuild the public sector that they are unable to reach actual solutions. In the midst of this surging pandemic, the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, a Democrat, recently announced a round of budget cuts and reduced services, saying, "It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be pleasant . . . but, at the end of it, we need a balanced budget." Philadelphia is the poorest of the large American cities where African-Americans are suffering the most from the COVID-19 outbreak. And, at just the moment when many are highlighting the ways that inequality and our poor civic infrastructure are failing the public-especially the black public-the mayor has announced "unpleasant" budget cuts.

It's not just Philadelphia. For decades, across the country, cities large and small have been committed to a development model that prioritizes attracting private corporations with promises of tax relief while neglecting to invest heavily in public institutions. Instead, public hospitals have been closed, public housing has been detonated or left in disrepair, public schools have been starved of investment, and public health clinics have been shuttered. Even as the horrifying consequences of these political choices during the COVID-19 epidemic appear in news stories across the country, elected officials have no meaningful plans to change course.

Knowledge alone about these health disparities and the racism in which they are rooted will not be enough to inspire action by elected officials or government entities. When Hurricane Katrina exposed the brutal racism of the Gulf Coast, it did not lead to a new regime of robust investments in the public sector or an infusion of high-paying jobs to pull African-Americans out of poverty. Instead, corporate vultures and their public enablers forced the closure of nearly all of the city's public schools, which were "auctioned off" to charters. The New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to tear down public housing undamaged by the hurricane. And tens of thousands of black New Orleanians were given one-way tickets out of the city, and then disparagingly referred to as " refugees " in their own country. Unless public spending is restored and coupled with access to high-paying employment, preventive and emergency health care, and safe, secure, and affordable housing, then it is hard to take seriously the expressions of outrage at the poverty and racism in this country.

In the past month, we have seen that it is possible for local and national governments to act in ways that protect people. The federal government has suspended interest and collection of federal student-loan payments until September, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development has declared a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions of government-insured mortgages. Some cities and states have halted evictions from rental properties, and municipalities across the country have released thousands of people from jails and prisons. Local law enforcement has pledged not to make arrests for misdemeanor offenses. In Detroit, officials pledged to stop turning people's water off when they can't pay their bills. If all of these actions are possible in a national emergency, because we believe that they will mitigate people's vulnerability to disease and death, then why can't this always be the standard? After all, when is it ever a good time to turn off someone's access to potable water? One cannot continue to decry the rising rates of black death while preparing to change not a single thing about our failing political and economic systems.

The difficulty in making these decisions is not only about a lack of political will. In 1968, during another period of social upheaval, Martin Luther King, Jr., explained that the power of the black movement lies not only its capacity to fight for the rights of African-Americans but in its revelation of the "interrelated flaws" of American society, including "racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism." The "black revolution," King continued, has the power to expose "the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."

Even when the flaws in our society are so easy to point out, resolving them comes into immediate conflict with the very basic assumptions of governance in the country today. Repairing the deep, historical, and continuing harm done to black people will require deep, abiding transformations. It was true when King wrote these words, more than a half century ago, and it has never been truer than it is today. To fulfill the promise that black lives matter, the United States must change in systemic and not superficial ways.

A Guide to the Coronavirus

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Public officials lament the way that the coronavirus is engulfing black communities. The question is, what are they prepared to do about it?

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The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention. New York governor Andrew Cuomo's impassioned plea for more federal assistance and a need-based system for allocating aid among the states was covered by CNN and other major corporate media. Nonetheless, they omitted the backstory, the grave decline in NYC hospital capacity over the last two decades, continued and endorsed by leadership of both political parties.

Though much attention was focused on how short of ventilators, masks, and beds the hospitals were there was almost no attention to how the city fell ino this crisis. It was as though only the virus was to blame. Over many years now Medicaid and healthcare activists have made hospital closures an intensely contested issue. In the last two decades NYC hospital beds have gone from 73,000 to 53,000. Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzales and guest Sean Petty, an emergency room nurse in the Bronx, point to the role that a market mentality creeping into private and even many nonprofit hospitals has played in this decline. "During the years Cuomo has been in office, the number of beds available per patient in the United States in many states has declined dramatically, mostly because hospital managers see empty beds as not money-making, so they want to reduce the number of empty beds as much as possible, so they staff fewer and fewer beds." Beds in short are subject to the same just in time principles that govern any other supply chain in the modern market economy. Applying just in time metrics to all key resources purportedly maximizes efficiency.

Efficiency, however, is a concept that deserves more critical scrutiny. Writing in the Atlantic Helen Lewis argued: "The tech sector's overarching philosophy remains bent towards treating the human brain and body like a machine that can be tweaked and perfected until it is running at peak efficiency," the journalist Lux Alptraum wrote for Quartz in 2017. This is, however, a fundamentally inhuman philosophy. People aren't machines. We are inherently inefficient, with our elderly parents and sick children, our mental-health problems, our chronic diseases, and our need to sleep and eat. And, as the past few months have demonstrated, our susceptibility to novel viruses....

Humans and the ecosystems of which they are a part are volatile and not always predictable. The decision to forego back- up systems and ample inventories is analogous to a homeowner's choosing not to insure his/her house because a fire is unlikely and insurance premiums consume after- tax income. Fortunately most homeowners don't or are not allowed to think that way. In the public arena, however, things are different.

Governor Cuomo has been generally supportive of the neoliberal development model that includes tax cuts for business and fiscal austerity for the public sector to fund those cuts. He shares the centrist faith in markets as perfect information processing systems and strives to remove the public from active participation in such decisions. When the state budget mandated multi billion dollar cuts in spending for hospitals he attempted to deflect attention to his role by creating a commission comprised disproportionately of health industry insiders.

Those industry insiders seem to object even to discussion of this backstory. "Focusing on closed and consolidated hospitals does nothing to help the task at hand," said Brian Conway, spokesman for the Greater New York Hospital Association. "All that matters is rising to the current challenge, and the hospital community is deeply committed to doing exactly that.

This is the familiar line of an institution in crisis. When the crisis is in full force now is not the time to explore its history. That would be fine except for two facts. Knowing how we arrived at this potentially catastrophic point is one key to a more humane resolution of it. Major media, including NPR, sadly have done little to explore the deeper background of the NYC shortages. Activists and alternative media must fill the void. Secondly even in the face of corporate healthcare's many tragedies and inequities, its proponents and beneficiaries continue to push for its preservation and extension of a market dominated health system from which they profit.

Recent sociological studies aimed at locating and finding the backgrounds of the most influential leaders in both private and nonprofit healthcare indicate that MBAs are replacing those who primary focus is in health delivery, public health, and biomedical research. Thus if these players get their way, potential vaccines to prevent a future Covid19 pandemic will be patented and thus limited to those who can afford their inflated prices. The politics of healthcare and Covid19 provide ample reasons for anger-toward corporate healthcare and the corporate media so oblivious to their exploitation.

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Corporate Media Ignores How Privatization of US Hospitals Explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators

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The politics of healthcare and Covid19 provide ample reasons for anger-toward corporate healthcare and the corporate media so oblivious to their exploitation... The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention.

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With so many people stuck in their houses practicing social distancing, nearly everyone is under-stimulated and overstressed. One way to to help your mental health while you're at home, experts say, is to create some art - literally, any kind. Whether you pick up a paintbrush, write out your feelings in a journal, decorate cakes, or do a spontaneous dance around the kitchen, artistic expression can be very helpful for mental health.

"Nearly any creative activity can become therapeutic," Dr. Gregory Nawalanic Pys.D., clinical psychologist with the University of Kansas Health System, tells Bustle. And, importantly, it doesn't matter if you feel you have any talent; you could be the next Mozart or just barely manage to remember where C is on the keyboard, and you'll likely feel some benefit.

"It can be useful to have a toolkit of coping skills to help calm the nervous system - and that's where art comes in," art therapist Cassie Hamrick, ATR LCMHC, tells Bustle. They explain that art has been shown to help regulate the nervous system through mind-body engagement; when you draw, you direct your body to hold the pencil, and your mind to direct your hand's movement. "This type of focused, embodied movement can help activate the parasympathetic wing of our nervous system, which sends calming signals throughout the brain and body," they say. This is why you feel calm and focused as you color in a picture or concentrate on a guitar chord.

Science backs it up. A review of studies on art and health published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2010 found that doing some form of artistic activity improves wellbeing and feelings of self-worth, relieves symptoms of anxiety and depression, and reduces stress. A report by the World Health Organization in 2019 also found that practicing art can help you cope and regulate your emotions, and reduce loneliness.

chee gin tan/E+/Getty Images

Art can also help us express feelings we don't have words for. "Art, writing, and music are all great creative outlets to help pass the time, as they provide an outlet to express the feelings we might not be able to effectively, or even politely, verbalize in the moment," Dr. Nawalanic says. Artistic space can be quiet, calm, and accepting, allowing you to be vulnerable and do and say what you feel.

Creating art can be therapeutic in its escapism, too. "When any combination of heart, mind and body are truly engaged at a deep level, we slip into a state that is beyond reality," psychotherapisttells Bustle. This escape can be really helpful for anybody who's feeling really confined by the four walls of their apartment right now. "Throw your heart and soul into a creative endeavor just for the pure fun of it," Koenig says - the escape can help you recalibrate and feel relief.

Whatever artistic practice you pursue, it can also provide motivation: Koenig says that art can give people something to look forward to each day, and fresh achievements to celebrate. "We can set goals for personal growth through learning to play an instrument or add new songs to the repertoire," Dr. Nawalanic says. Every goal you meet is a chance to feel good about yourself.

If you'd like to explore using art as a way to deal with issues in therapy, Hamrick says you should find a qualified art therapist. "Art therapists are trained in psychotherapy and counseling techniques, centering art as a method of healing," they say. But they also point out that anybody can use art to help their mental health at home. "We know that creative expression has always been a tool that humans have used for wellness and survival. You do not have to 'be an artist' to benefit."
Studies cited: Abbing A, de Sonneville L, Baars E, Bourne D, Swaab H (2019) Anxiety reduction through art therapy in women. Exploring stress regulation and executive functioning as underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. PLOS ONE 14(12): e0225200. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225200 Haiblum-Itskovitch S, Czamanski-Cohen J, Galili G. Emotional Response and Changes in Heart Rate Variability Following Art-Making With Three Different Art Materials. Frontiers in Psychology. 2018 ;9:968. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00968. Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: a review of current literature. American journal of public health, 100(2), 254-263. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.156497 Fancourt, D. & Finn, S. (2019) Health Evidence Network synthesis report 67: What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. World Health Organization. Cassie Hamrick ATR LCMHC, art therapist Karen Koenig LCSW M.Ed, psychotherapist Dr. Gregory Nawalanic Pys.D., psychologist, University of Kansas

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Experts Explain How Making Art While You're Stuck At Home Can Help Mental Health

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With so many people stuck in their houses practicing social distancing, nearly everyone is under-stimulated and overstressed. One way to to help your mental health while you're at home, experts say, is to create some art - literally, any kind....

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Many of us are struggling to find the motivation to read during this pandemic. Here are some ways to spark your desire-and your ability to concentrate-for reading.

Surrounded by siblings and limited to twice a month walks to the public library, ten-year-old me once daydreamed of uninterrupted time to read whatever I wished. That girl doesn't understand why I'm not curled up right now reading a tower of books. It's frustrating, but along with the distress, uncertainty, and fear of the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown, I'm not finding much joy in reading right now. News articles, tweets, and emails-I'm reading those, but a book barely holds my attention.

As someone who has always found comfort and escape in books-benefits I could use right now-being unable to read has me feeling unmoored. Occasionally, I need to get out of my head and books have always helped. But not now.

It seems I'm not alone. Sharing this disinterest with other educators online, many confess they aren't reading much either. While some people have capitalized on isolation by challenging themselves to read more than ever, others don't have the emotional or intellectual energy to read for escape. For some teachers, the demands of crisis schooling while also managing their own family and household responsibilities consume their time. Others report that they're too distracted and worried to read. There's science behind what we feel. Flooded with stress, our bodies and mental focus have turned toward the external factors threatening us-leaving little energy for ourselves, and pleasure reading.

This is natural. Our reading lives ebb and flow-we have time periods of high reading volume and interest, and times when we read much less. Sustaining a reading habit long-term requires adjustment and recommitment many times.

Folks struggling to read during the quarantine share these suggestions for sparking reading motivation:

Revisit favorites. One editor friend is rereading his old "Star Trek" paperbacks. Another friend says re-reading books she loves gives her a sense of familiarity and control. "I find comfort in the tried-and-true," she said. "My brain cannot take in one more new thing new right now."

Choose "lighter" fare. So much of what we read about the pandemic is frightening and depressing. Reading a happily-ever-after ending or adventurous travelogue can give us a sense of hope or soothe our wanderlust during confinement.

Pick something short. If that 700-page tome on your nightstand seems daunting, kick-start your reading momentum with shorter texts like graphic novels, poetry, and short story anthologies, or periodicals.

Try an audiobook. If you feel the urge to keep busy, and cannot sit still for long periods to read, try listening to an audiobook while you clean out that closet or enjoy a safe walk. Sign teens up for Audiobook Sync (available at: https://www.audiobooksync.com/ ), a free summer program, which offers two free audiobooks a week beginning April 30th.

Connect with other readers. Without face-to-face reading advisory conversations, student conferences, or conversations with colleagues, many librarians and teachers miss talking with other readers. Join a Twitter chat. Schedule a call with friends to talk about books. Look for ways to maintain the social aspects of reading that feed you. I joined a Zoom book club with other librarians and teachers. Reading for our meetings motivates me and the discussion enhances my appreciation for the books we read.

Plan for future reading. So you aren't reading today. Can you visualize yourself reading in the future? What do you miss about reading? What resources for finding and evaluating books have you wanted to use, but didn't have time? Is there a debut author or unexplored format you want to read? Watch publishers' book release videos. Read reviews. Subscribe to book review blogs. Make a list of books you'd like to read when you regain your reading appetite.

Accept that it is OK not to read. Daniel Pennac's 1992 T he Rights of the Reade r gave us permission not to read. A strong reading identity can endure setbacks and periods of low reading interest. Give yourself some grace. We can find our way back to reading. It will always be there for us.

It's a strange and stressful time. There will be an after. What can we learn from our reading experiences and our students' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic? What can this teach us about reading and supporting young readers going forward?

Like adult readers, some students may be reading more than ever, while others have lost their reading interest and motivation. Work with families to identify obstacles preventing students from reading at home. Above all, increase students' text access in any way possible. Many families lost their book access when school and public libraries closed or lack the devices or internet service required to access online reading materials. Students may need to work out a quiet space to read when their entire family is quarantined. Older students may have additional responsibilities while their caregivers continue working essential jobs. If several students in the same home share a device, they may not have the ability to access texts for home reading and all of their online coursework, even when this reading material is provided.

Discuss with colleagues the reading load expected of students across the day. How much reading is required in all courses? Streamline the volume of reading assignments, so that students have some time and energy left to read self-selected texts. Provide students with choices in how they access, respond to, and extend their reading-including the ability to opt out occasionally. Use activities and platforms that offer opportunities to share books and reading with their peers. Celebrate students' reading growth and help them plan for future reading. Accept that some students may not read much right now, but encourage them to see themselves as readers who can find joy from reading again.

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Many of us are struggling to find the motivation to read during this pandemic. Here are some ways to spark your desire-and your ability to concentrate-for reading. Surrounded by siblings and limited to twice a month walks to the public library, ten-year-old me once daydreamed of uninterrupted time to read whatever I wished.

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New Yorkers don't often get to see the city from high up, especially right now, but one freelance photographer took to the sky to produce a striking video of New York City.

Mingomatic, who lives on Long Island (and asked to be identified by his username), used drones and took aerial shots from a helicopter, in addition to walking and driving around the city, to capture mind-boggling photos and video of a mostly-empty city.

"I'm surprised at both sides of the spectrum when it comes to social distancing," he tells us. "Sometimes, I'm surprised at how empty the streets are. You never see a lack of people in certain areas that you see now. In other cases, I was shocked to see how many people [were] congregating and doing things like playing basketball."
RECOMMENDED: This stunning video shows NYC's busiest places left completely empty
The video took him a few weeks to shoot and complete, but it was something he felt needed to be captured.

"New York is a beautiful place that gets filmed and photographed quite often," he says. "So it is more unique to capture it from fresh angles and perspectives."

It's certainly a breathtaking view. Take a look:

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This drone-shot video provides a breathtaking aerial view of an empty NYC

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New Yorkers don't often get to see the city from high up, especially right now, but one freelance photographer took to the sky to produce a striking video of New York City.

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Watch Original Cast of Video Hamilton Sing 'What I Did for Love' to the Original Cast of A Chorus Line

We look back at this 2015 video to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical.

On April 16, 2015, the original Off-Broadway cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda's paid tribute to members of the original cast of A Chorus Line on the 40th anniversary of the latter's opening night on the same stage where Hamilton originated.

Upon the conclusion of curtain calls at the Public Theater, the Hamilton cast recreated the finale of A Chorus Line's opening number, arraying itself in a line across the stage of the Newman, holding their real-life resume photos in front of their faces while singing, "Who am I anyway/Am I my résumé?"

Led by composer-star Miranda, thecast then performed "What I Did for Love" in its entirety for the Chorus Line company members, who had been invited to attend that evening. Watch the performance above.

The guests were then invited onto the stage, where they mingled with their hosts and sang another brief reprise of "What I Did for Love"as Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis unveiled the model of a plaque now installed in the lobby. The plaque reads: "The Newman Theatre, Birthplace of the one singular sensation, A Chorus Line, where every little step and thrilling combination began. And changed everything."

Like A Chorus Line, Hamilton went on to transfer to Broadway, subsequently winning the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and becoming an international hit.
Check out photos from the evening below:

Two Singular Sensations! Original Chorus Line Cast Joins Hamilton Onstage For Anniversary Tribute

Two Singular Sensations! Original Chorus Line Cast Joins Hamilton Onstage For Anniversary Tribute

34 PHOTOS

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Watch Original Cast of Hamilton Sing 'What I Did for Love' to the Original Cast of A Chorus Line | Playbill

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Watch Original Cast of Video Hamilton Sing 'What I Did for Love' to the Original Cast of A Chorus Line We look back at this 2015 video to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical.

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It may be a while before you can visit your favorite museums in person again, but many museums have online resources that you can access at home. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), for example, has online courses through Coursera, which you can now take for free.

These are in-depth courses about art history, theory, and even pedagogy. They're broken down into weekly lessons, which include videos, readings, and sometimes quizzes.

In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting focuses on seven New York School artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Yayoi Kusama. Through readings, you'll learn about the artists' lives and work, and then instructor Corey D'Augustine demonstrates techniques they use in their artwork, so you can try incorporating them into your own. Guest lecturers also appear in each weekly lesson to speak about specific pieces of artwork.

Fashion as Design takes a look at the intersection of fashion and art. It covers ideas like modesty and expression, as well as specific couture techniques, the cycle of garment production, and the impact of clothing consumption and disposal. In a lesson called "Heroes," you'll learn about everything from Bruce Lee's tracksuits to military uniforms and sports jerseys.

For a broader look, you can take What Is Contemporary Art? The course draws from MoMA's collection and features artists who have made artwork within the past forty years. "I audited this class during the coronavirus epidemic and it gave me a similar feel as touring a museum, with the added value of having the comments of the artists themselves," reads a recent review. "I cannot wait to return to contemporary art museums!"

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You Can Take MoMA's Online Art Classes for Free

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It may be a while before you can visit your favorite museums in person again, but many museums have online resources that you can access at home. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), for example, has online courses through Coursera, which you can now take for free.These are in-depth courses about art history, theory, and even pedagogy.

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Nearly two decades ago, Derrick Jones' career as a recording artist ended in unceremonious fashion: the record industry dumped him.

Jones, a Bronx-born DJ, producer, and rapper better known as D-Nice, started in music as a teenager in the mid-1980s as a member of Boogie Down Productions, the legendary hip-hop group. At 20, he embarked on a solo career, releasing two albums for Jive Records, "Call Me D-Nice" (1990) and "To tha Rescue" (1991). They were good records, full of slick rapping and gruff beats, produced by Nice himself; the debut album sold half a million copies and a single, "Call Me D-Nice," reached No. 1 on Billboard 's Hot Rap Tracks chart.

But at a time when hit albums sold millions of copies and record executives viewed rappers as artists with unusually short shelf lives, those numbers didn't cut it. Jive neglected to renew D-Nice's contract and he was unable to find a deal with another label.

"Record companies really didn't have patience back then, especially with hip-hop," D-Nice says. "Rap didn't age well. You were considered 'old school' really quickly, once you hit a certain age. That's why I've always fought to remain relevant."

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Today, no one is disputing D-Nice's relevance. Over the last week and a half, as the COVID-19 pandemic has sent billions around the world scrambling into quarantine, D-Nice, 49, has emerged as perhaps the hottest name in pop culture, a majordomo of a music universe that is reconstituting itself online in performances livestreamed on social media platforms.

Since March 17, D-Nice has used his Instagram feed to stream DJ sets from his apartment in downtown L.A. The shows, billed as "Club Quarantine" or "Home School," have emerged as the place-to-be musical happenings of the lockdown: dance parties featuring a buoyant mix of disco, funk, soul and hip-hop that have drawn hundreds of thousands of virtual revelers, including a range of celebrities: Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey and Joe Biden.

"It's been a shock," says D-Nice. "I mean, I haven't left my house for more than a week, but I'm reaching all these people. You know, I'm just here in my living room. I'm halfway in my kitchen."

It began spontaneously. D-Nice, who moved to L.A. from New York less than a year ago, spends much of his time on the road, DJing at clubs and events. He is accustomed to a packed schedule of travel, nightlife and socializing. But now, like nearly everybody, he's stuck at home - quarantining alone in his high rise.

"I haven't spent this much time at home since moving to L.A.," he says. "I was just sitting here in quarantine, missing my family and friends. Obviously, the virus is stressful for everyone, so I was feeling that. I didn't really know what to do with myself."

What he decided to do was go to his Instagram page, turn on his web camera and play a little music. For that first livestream, on the 17th, D-Nice didn't DJ, per se: He spun some favorite records and chatted, sharing musical insights, anecdotes and reminiscences for an audience of just 200 or so viewers.
"It was mostly friends and friends of friends," he says. (Those friends included hip-hop luminaries like Black Thought of the Roots and Posdnuos of De La Soul.)

Word got around, and the next night, the audience grew to 1,500. It was then that D-Nice decided to turn the event into an actual party - or, rather, a virtual one. He hooked up his laptop to a DJ controller, set the equipment on his kitchen counter and began to mix records. He DJ'ed for several hours on Thursday, and by Friday the Instagram viewership had grown to tens of thousands, including dozens of celebrities.

"It just started to blow up," D-Nice says. "All of a sudden, Seal popped in. Then Drake popped in. I was like: 'Wait: this is becoming a thing.'"

The following night, Saturday, the "Club Quarantine" crowd swelled to proportions that had some commenters wondering if the Instagram Live interface could handle the traffic. D-Nice played for nine hours, and the procession of famous people "entering" the party in the scrolling comments stream reached dizzying levels, an army of A-listers - in particular, black musical and show business royalty - that we associate with award shows: Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Common, Jennifer Lopez, Khloé Kardashian, Tiffany Haddish, Patti LaBelle, Nile Rodgers, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Naomi Campbell, Missy Elliott, Lenny Kravitz, Snoop Dogg, Diddy. There were cameos by athletes (Magic Johnson, Steph Curry, Mike Tyson) and political figures (Biden, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker). The arrival of Michelle Obama sent Nice into raptures. ("I love you FLOTUS!") As the number of live streamers approached 100,000, the proprietor of the shop - Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and founder of Facebook, which owns Instagram - popped in for a look around.

"I think we were at 95,000," D-Nice recalls. "I looked up, and there was Zuckerberg. It was like, 'Yo, Zuckerberg!' People were commenting: 'Mark, you need to take care of the algorithm here, baby!' I started yelling into the mic: 'Mark, c'mon, Mark! We don't want this thing to crash!' And then Zuckerberg posted: 'You got this.'"

The parade of boldface names is part of the special appeal of "Club Quarantine." Many viewers are discovering D-Nice for the first time, but he is well established in celebrity circles. When his recording career hit the skids, he found a new line of work in the music business as a photographer, doing shoots for magazines and album covers. As a DJ, he has played such high profile gigs as the farewell party at the Obama White House in January 2017.

The livestream gives viewers the experience a peek into this rarefied world. D-Nice spends much of the time shouting out the famous people who pop into the stream. ("LL Cool J, I see you. What up, man?" "Colin Kaepernick is in here!") Often, D-Nice will hail the arrival of musicians by segueing into their records. When Janet Jackson's name showed up on the scroll of livestream viewers, Nice launched into a mini-set of her music. The arrival of Lionel Richie brought one of the great moments of "Club Quarantine," when Nice abruptly switched musical gears, cuing up Richie's lustrous early '80s ballad "You Are."

It's a new marker of Hollywood status: You know you're big if you merit a D-Nice shoutout. Yet "Club Quarantine" is not exactly glamorous. The vibe is homey - even homely - and the aesthetic is low-tech. The sound isn't great; the stream occasionally sputters and stalls. Viewers watch an unchanging tight shot of D-Nice's face, silhouetted against the backdrop of his living room windows.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

At a big club, on a floor packed with dancers, the DJ is often omnipresent but invisible, making himself known only through the music that washes over the crowd. But the livestream reverses the equation: It's a close encounter with D-Nice. The musical mix combines the classic soundtrack of black cookouts - soul, R&B and hip-hop favorites - with deeper cuts: Nigerian Afrobeat titan Fela Kuti's "Lady," Bonnie Pointer's sumptuous disco thumper "Free Me From My Freedom" and old-school rapper Special Ed's "The Mission."

Playing to an audience of shut-ins - a throng you can't see - is a novel experience for a DJ. "I have no one in front of me," D-Nice says. "If you're at a party and you throw on the wrong song, you can look at someone's body language. I can't do that now. So I'm just following my instincts. These are a special set of conditions."

Those unique conditions - the frightening reality of the COVID-19 pandemic - hangs over "Club Quarantine." During his sets, D-Nice reminds viewers to wash their hands and to stay at home; he pays tribute to healthcare workers who are fighting the virus on the front lines. Dance parties have always been about transcendence and escape, but "Club Quarantine" is, by definition, an exercise in coping: an attempt to forge connection, to have a little fun, in a world that has turned upside down.

D-Nice is also using the platform to push causes he cares about. On Wednesday, he joined forces with Michelle Obama and the organization When We All Vote, hosting a live set to promote voter registration. (According to When We All Vote, it logged more that 400,000 texts and helped nearly 13,000 new voters register during the livestream.)

Meanwhile, D-Nice is omnipresent. He has appeared on the "Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon"; Oprah interviewed him on her own live feed. This week, Spotify launched a playlist inspired by the parties, " DJ D-Nice's Homeschool." D-Nice imitators have sprung up, including several DJs - Kid Capri, DJ Premiere, Questlove - with similar old-school hip-hop pedigrees.

As for "Club Quarantine," D-Nice has decided to space out the parties a bit, paring back the schedule to once or twice a week. (To catch a livestream, follow @djdnice on Instagram.) "I have to let it breathe a little," he says. "I want it to stay special. You don't want to burn this thing out."

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From an L.A. living room, an unlikely coronavirus hero emerges: 'Club Quarantine's' DJ D-Nice

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Nearly two decades ago, Derrick Jones' career as a recording artist ended in unceremonious fashion: the record industry dumped him. Jones, a Bronx-born DJ, producer, and rapper better known as D-Nice, started in music as a teenager in the mid-1980s as a member of Boogie Down Productions, the legendary hip-hop group.

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A woman wearing a mask to protect herself from the coronavirus gives balloons to parishioners outside the Bethel Community Church on April 12, 2020, in Aurora. David Zalubowski, Associated Press

Black Coloradans make up an outsized number of coronavirus cases and deaths, according to new data released by the state health department, mirroring a trend emerging across the United States.

African Americans make up about 3.9% of the state's population, but they account for 7% of the state's COVID-19 cases and about 6.8% of the state's COVID-19 deaths, meaning they're over-represented by 79% and 74% respectively.
Colorado coronavirus racial breakdown
Racial and ethnic minorities make up an outsized portion of COVID-19 cases in Colorado

The new insights came Monday when the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released racial and ethnic data for 5,188-or about two-thirds-of the state's 7,691 known cases.

Gov. Jared Polis promised Monday to regularly release racial and ethnic data going forward.

"We pushed very hard to get this data from county health, from others," Polis said during a news conference Monday.

While the percentages might change as more ethnic and racial data is collected and published, the pattern is one that's emerged in other areas, such as Milwaukee, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Hispanic and Latino Coloradans make up about 22% of the population, but 28% of all COVID-19 cases, meaning they're over-represented in case figures by 30%. But Hispanic and Latino Coloradans don't have the same outsized COVID-19 death rate that black Coloradans have.

White Coloradans are underrepresented in case counts by about 13%. While they make up about 68% of the population, they only account for 59% of all cases.

When Polis was asked the reason for the disparities among races, he said, "That I would have to leave to scientists and those who study this data."

He speculated the data "could be a proxy for economic disparity, it could be a proxy for health; there is a number of things it could be a proxy for as to why it is disproportionately attacking communities of color."

He mentioned that preexisting conditions such as heart disease and diabetes disproportionately affect people of color, and the virus is harder on people with those preexisting conditions.

Asked what he might do to address the higher rates among Hispanics and blacks, Polis said "People live in integrated communities. You can't say we're stopping it for Hispanics but not for white people or blacks. The reason to stay at home is for everybody."

Somewhat more granular data from Denver's suburbs show the same pattern.

Numbers released by the Tri-County Health Department that serves Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties on the periphery of the urban core of the Denver metro area, show that African Americans in those counties are being counted as known coronavirus patients at 2.5 times the rate as white Coloradans there.

The same over-representation in case data is true for the Hispanic and Latino residents of those counties, although it's not as dramatic, with only twice the rate of white Coloradans being counted as coronavirus patients.

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Black Coloradans disproportionally affected by coronavirus, according to new data | OutThere Colorado

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Black Coloradans make up an outsized number of coronavirus cases and deaths, according to new data released by the state health department, mirroring a trend emerging across the United States. African Americans make up about 3.9% of the state's population, but they account for 7% of the state's COVID-19 cases and about 6.8% of the state's COVID-19 deaths, meaning they're over-represented by 79% and 74% respectively.

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AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, I want to bring into the conversation another guest, as we turn to another major issue in the city of Detroit, facing amidst the coronavirus pandemic: the water shutoffs. Despite the city announcing a moratorium on water shutoffs and a program to help thousands of residents restore service last month, people in Detroit are still reporting lack of access to water and even ongoing shutoffs. This is a video posted by Detroit resident Motisala Ra on Facebook two weeks ago.

MOTISALA RA: So, the Water Department is out here to turn the water off at this home across the street. Mind you, we're in the middle of a pandemic. They're here to turn the water off. And this is a family with an infant child. She has two children.

So, more than 140,000 homes in Detroit have had their water shut off since 2014, according to a local news outlet, the Bridge. As of March 31st, the city had only restored water to 1,000 of the 10,000 people who called to report issues with their water.

We're now joined by the community pastor, activist, Reverend Roslyn Bouier. She's frontline practitioner, executive director of Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry in Detroit.

You're very hard to get a hold of, Reverend, because you are so busy out there getting water to people. Can you explain for people in the rest of the country who might not understand? People have had their water cut off, and even though the city has said they won't be doing it anymore, there are many people who still don't have access to water, when the first thing we're told in this pandemic is you must continually wash your hands?

REV. ROSLYN BOUIER: Yes, that's true. So, here in Detroit, the water is still not on. I just need to open with that and say that folks are still experiencing water insecurity. No one still has water. The city has, historically, since 2014, turned off over 140,000. And so now the city is saying they've turned on 1,200 households. That is nothing in comparison to what is needed. I am seeing folks every day whose water is off. And folks, just as the video that you just showed, are still being shut off from water.

And then, I need to say, Dr. Sayed made a strong point when he said that COVID-19 follows the path of insecurity. And when your water is shut off - right? - when you have no access to clean, affordable water, then that's going to be the community that's hit the hardest. Brightmoor sits in the northwest section of Detroit. It has the highest population of water shutoffs. Brightmoor also has the highest population of infant mortality deaths, in the womb and out of the womb, due to water insecurity.

We know that folks normally who would work every day - right? - because when your water is shut off, you look just like you and I. People go to work. They go to school. So, folks have the ability to use restrooms and wash up and get water all day for eight to 10 hours, while they're outside of the home. The children have the ability to do that.

But when your water is shut off and we are given the directive to shelter in - which, I need to say here and stop for a moment and say, we should stop using that word "shelter," because we're not using that word correctly. "Shelter" is defined as having a place of safety and comfort and protection. And when you don't have water on, that's not shelter. It's not shelter when children have to take their waste outside and throw it in the garbage. It's not shelter when you don't have water in your home and the sanitation is not available, because the city had declared that laundromats were nonessential providers, so laundromats were closed up, as well.

So, when we see the water shutoff situation, we understand that, contrary to what you're hearing on the news - and I know that the mayor just recently did a statement saying that he had turned everybody back on, that there were only maybe 50 folks left to turn back on - we know that is not to be the truth, when we just really need the truth to get out. And the truth is, is that folks are still experiencing water insecurity. Folks do not have water, and people are still being shut off from water. Right?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Dr. Abdul El-Sayed - you were former director of the Detroit Health Department at the time this started. How can you see this ending? Are you calling for the restoration of water to all the residents of Detroit?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Absolutely. So, I started at the city after this policy had already started. It was one of the most frustrating policies to get to city leadership and to the Water Department and say that the public health starts with water. Public health started the moment we figured out how to make sure that people's water was clean. And the fact that we don't have clean water, as the reverend rightly points out, what does it mean to tell somebody to stay at home and then to wash their hands with warm soapy water for 20 minutes, when they don't have running water in their home? It is absurd in the context of a pandemic. It was absurd even before the pandemic started.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, physician, epidemiologist, former director of the Detroit Health Department, and Reverend Roslyn Bouier, community pastor, executive director of Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry in Detroit.

And that does it for our broadcast. A very Happy Birthday to Joe Parker! And we have another birthday to celebrate, a little one. We want to welcome Tully Duncan Littlefield into the world. And congratulations to his proud mama and papa, Amy Littlefield and Daniel Patterson! To see our conversation with our former producer Amy Littlefield about being pregnant during the time of the pandemic, go to democracynow.org.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is working with as few people on site as possible; the majority of our remarkable team is working from home to prevent community spread. Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Libby Rainey, Nermeen Shaikh, Carla Wills, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Adriano Contreras and María Taracena. Our general manager is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Denis Moynihan, Becca Staley, Miriam Barnard. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

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Wash Your Hands? Despite Pandemic, Thousands Still Have No Water in Detroit, a Coronavirus Hot Spot

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Water shutoffs continue amid the coronavirus pandemic in Detroit, despite a moratorium and a program to help thousands of residents restore service last month. The lack of water access comes as nearly 1,500 people in Michigan have died from COVID-19, and 40% of those who have died are African-American, despite making up just 14% of the state's population.

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The pandemic has helpfully scrambled how we value everyone's economic and social roles.

By

Mr. Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard. His forthcoming book is "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?"

An Instacart worker shopping for someone else's groceries last month. Credit... Erica Lee for The New York Times

Mobilizing to confront the pandemic and, eventually, to reconstruct the shattered economy, requires not only medical and economic expertise but moral and political renewal. We need to ask a basic question that we have evaded over these last decades: What do we owe one another as citizens?

In a pandemic, this question arises most urgently as a question about health care: Should medical care be accessible to all, regardless of their ability to pay? The Trump administration decided that the federal government would pay for coronavirus treatment for the uninsured. Whether it will be possible to reconcile the moral logic of this policy with the notion that health coverage in ordinary times should be left to the market remains to be seen.

But beyond the issue of health care, we need to think more broadly about the way we contend with inequality. We need to better reward the social and economic contributions of work done by the majority of Americans, who don't have college degrees. And we need to reckon with the morally corrosive downsides of meritocracy.

In response to rising inequality, mainstream politicians of both parties have, in recent decades, called for greater equality of opportunity - improving access to higher education so that everyone, whatever their starting point in life, can rise as far as their effort and talent will take them. This is, in itself, a worthy principle.

But as an answer to inequality, the rhetoric of rising - the promise that the talented will be able to climb the ladder of success - has a dark side. Part of the problem is that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. For example, most students at highly selective colleges and universities come from affluent families. At many elite colleges, including Yale and Princeton, there are more students from the top 1 percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent of the country.

There is also a deeper problem: Even a perfect meritocracy, in which opportunities for advancement were truly equal, would corrode solidarity. Focusing on helping the talented clamber up the ladder of success can keep us from noticing that the rungs on the ladder are growing further and further apart.

Meritocracies also produce morally unattractive attitudes among those who make it to the top. The more we believe that our success is our own doing, the less likely we are to feel indebted to, and therefore obligated to, our fellow citizens. The relentless emphasis on rising and striving encourages the winners to inhale too deeply of their success, and to look down on those who lack meritocratic credentials.

These attitudes accompanied the market-driven globalization of the last 40 years. Those who reaped the bounty of outsourcing, free-trade agreements, new technologies and the deregulation of finance came to believe that they had done it all on their own, that their winnings were therefore their due.

Meritocratic hubris and the resentment it provokes are at the heart of the populist backlash against elites. They are also potent sources of social and political polarization. One of the deepest political divides in politics today is between those with and those without a four-year college degree.

In recent decades, governing elites have done little to make life better for the nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not have a college degree. And they have failed to confront what should be one of the central questions of our politics: How can we ensure that Americans who do not inhabit the privileged ranks of the professional classes find dignified work that enables them to support a family, contribute to their community and win social esteem?

As economic activity has shifted from making things to managing money, as society has lavished outsize rewards on hedge fund managers and Wall Street bankers, the esteem accorded to traditional work has become fragile and uncertain. At a time when finance has claimed a greater share of corporate profits, many who labor in the real economy, producing useful goods and services, have not only endured stagnant wages and uncertain job prospects; they have also come to feel that society accords less respect to the kind of work they do.

The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly forced us to reconsider what social and economic roles matter most.

Many of the essential workers during this crisis are performing jobs that do not require college degrees; they are truckers, warehouse workers, delivery workers, police officers, fire fighters, utility maintenance workers, sanitation workers, supermarket cashiers, stock clerks, nurse assistants, hospital orderlies and home care providers. They lack the luxury of working from the safety of their homes and holding meetings on Zoom. They, along with the doctors and nurses caring for the afflicted in overcrowded hospitals, are the ones who are putting their health at risk so the rest of us can seek refuge from contagion. Beyond thanking them for their service, we should reconfigure our economy and society to accord such workers the compensation and recognition that reflects the true value of their contributions - not only in an emergency but in our everyday lives.

Such a reconfiguration involves more than familiar debates about how generous or austere the welfare state should be. It requires deliberating as democratic citizens about what constitutes a contribution to the common good, and how such contributions should be rewarded - without assuming that markets can decide these questions on their own.

For example, should we consider a federal wage subsidy to ensure that workers can earn enough to support thriving families, neighborhoods and communities? Should we bolster the dignity of work by shifting the burden of taxation from payroll taxes to taxes on financial transactions, wealth and carbon? Should we reconsider our current policy of taxing income from labor at a higher rate than capital gains? Should we encourage the domestic manufacture of certain goods - beginning with surgical masks, medical gear and pharmaceuticals - rather than promoting outsourcing to low-wage countries?

Even when they recede, pandemics and other great crises seldom leave social and economic arrangements as they were. It is up to us to decide what the legacy of this wrenching episode will be. Our best hope is to pursue the intimations of solidarity implicit in this moment to reframe the terms of public discourse, to find our way to a morally more robust political debate than the rancorous one we have now.

The moral and civic renewal we need requires that we resist the anguished but misconceived debate now emerging about how many lives we should risk for the sake of restarting the economy. This debate assumes that the economy is like a main street shop that turns on the lights after a long weekend and reopens for business, just as before.

The real question is not when but what: What kind of economy will emerge from the crisis? Will it be one that continues to create inequalities that poison our politics and undermine any sense of national community? Or will it be one that honors the dignity of work, rewards contributions to the real economy, gives workers a meaningful voice and shares the risks of ill health and hard times?

We need to ask whether reopening the economy means going back to a system that, over the past four decades, pulled us apart, or whether we can emerge from this crisis with an economy that enables us to say, and to believe, that we are all in this together.

Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard and is the author of many books, including the forthcoming "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?"
The Times is committed to publishing Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The pandemic has helpfully scrambled how we value everyone's economic and social roles. By Mr. Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard. His forthcoming book is "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" Mobilizing to confront the pandemic and, eventually, to reconstruct the shattered economy, requires not only medical and economic expertise but moral and political renewal.

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Postal workers rallied nationwide Tuesday in support of legislation that they say would address the financial problems of the U.S. Postal Service and save thousands of postal jobs.

The problem is in part due to a 2006 mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of future retiree health benefits. According to postal union groups, the mandate costs USPS over five billion dollars annually, accounting for the agency's $20 billion in losses over the past four years. To understand the depth of the crisis facing the agency, take this into account: this year alone the USPS is projected to lose $9 billion. The crisis has even led President Obama to announce new plans to overhaul the nation's mail service, proposing to even cut Saturday mail delivery.*

In the middle of the gray are postal service employees. Some 120,000 face layoffs, according to CNN. The stakes are especially high for a workforce comprised of large numbers of people of color and women.

Phillip F. Rubio wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the postal workforce is 37 percent female, eight percent Latino and eight percent Asian; African Americans have made up 21 percent of the force's employees since the 1960s. And as UC Berkeley researcher Stephen Pitts pointed out earlier this year, black female workers make up a large portion of the public sector that's been under attack by conservatives for decades.*

But workers insist that using surplus pension funds would help the USPS situation without cutting more jobs. They're backing H.R. 1351, or the United Stated Postal Service Pension Obligation Recalculation and Restoration Act of 2011. They believe the bill would prevent post office closures, help retain Saturday mail deliveries, and save hundreds of thousands of jobs. Currently, there are 216 co-sponsors on the bill.

Chicago, Washington D.C., and Milwaukee were just some of the cities where postal workers and supporters rallied to Save America's Postal Service.

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USPS's Largely Black and Female Workforce Rallies to Save Jobs

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Postal workers rallied nationwide Tuesday in support of legislation that they say would address the financial problems of the U.S. Postal Service and save thousands of postal jobs. The problem is in part due to a 2006 mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of future retiree health benefits.

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Some Republicans in the Ohio legislature are publicly calling on Gov. Mike DeWine to consider removing coronavirus-related restrictions beginning next month, while on Monday, around 100 protesters gathered outside the Statehouse during Dewine's daily COVID-19 press briefing.

A growing chorus of Ohio's Republican lawmakers want Gov. Mike DeWine to set a date for the first phases of re-opening businesses, schools and public places.

"We need to get the economy open, even if that means social distancing of some sort for months to come," Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, wrote in a Facebook post. "We can't stay like this much longer, and the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who've lost their jobs or the thousands of small business owners can't keep doing this either, or their lives will be irreparably destroyed."

At the same time, President Donald Trump contends it's up to him, not governors like DeWine, to establish a timeline to re-open the country.

>> Protesters plan in-vehicle rally against Michigan governor's stay-at-home order

"When somebody's president of the United States, the authority is total," Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing Monday after being asked about governors' authority.

"And that's the way it's gotta be. It's total. It's total. And the governors know that. ... They can't do anything without approval of the president of the United States."

He already had tweeted Monday morning:

"For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.

"It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!"

Politifact rated those tweets false.

>> This story is being provided for free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. You can find more stories on coronavirus here. Please support local journalism by subscribing to The Columbus Dispatch at subscribe.dispatch.com.

Trump's claim of authority over governors sounds a very different note than statements from the past several weeks. He has contended that it should be the states, not the federal government, taking the lead in battling the pandemic. The president has cited his philosophy of local control as he has declined to pressure states to enact stay-at-home orders.

DeWine, titular head of Trump's Ohio re-election effort, said he and other governors have been consulting extensively with the White House - they just had another in a series of calls Monday morning with Vice President Mike Pence - on a collaborative plan that will be unique to each state's differing circumstances.

"This is not a confrontational issue between us and the White House," DeWine said in his daily public briefing Monday. "As we put together our plan it's going to be an Ohio plan in the sense that we are different than every other state. ... I think people will think it's a rational plan. I think the Trump administration will like it as well."

Earlier, the first-term Republican governor made it clear during an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that any loosening of the stay-at-home order would be contingent on coronavirus testing results and other health data.

"Whenever we open up, however we do it, if people aren't confident, if they don't think they're safe, they're not going to go to restaurants, they're not going to go to bars, they're not going to really get back into society," DeWine said.

Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton issued the stay-at-home order March 22, but schools have been closed since March 12. That order expires May 1, but it's increasingly likely that students and teachers won't return to their classrooms this academic year.

The original forecast models used by Acton and the governor predicted a peak of 10,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by mid-April. Those projections have dropped sharply in recent days to 1,607 new cases per day though the peak has remained essentially the same.

DeWine credits Ohioans for their help in flattening the curve, but others in his party believe those first numbers were incorrect.

"Many of the earliest predictions were based on what we now know to be flawed data models," Rep. Todd Smith, R-Germantown, wrote in a letter to the governor. "We now have actual data that has shown the effect of the virus to be much less than anticipated."

He called on the governor to begin lifting the restrictions on businesses and public gatherings "in the first days of May and maybe all by the end of the month."

"Here in my district and across the state, our small business owners are being crushed under the current restrictions. They do not think it necessary to destroy their businesses and the state economy for the actual effect they are seeing due to the virus," Smith wrote.

It's a position held by conservatives like Dave Zanotti who runs The American Policy Roundtable as well as protesters who have started showing up at the Statehouse for the governor's briefings.

"So far Dr. Acton has used at least three different models as the foundation for her actions 'to save lives,'" Zanotti wrote. "All three models have proven to be wrong."

Brenner, who says Ohio's rate of infection may have already peaked, said he'd like to start seeing businesses re-open in phases.

For example, the Delaware Republican suggested stores could limit customers, hair salons could be by appointment only and restaurants could reduce their number of tables. Masks could be recommended for those in public, and medically vulnerable people could continue to stay at home.

"Opening up the economy is not going to happen overnight. It's going to take weeks or months," Brenner told The Dispatch. "Starting now doesn't mean it will all be open tomorrow."

Sen. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, is advocating for a county-by-county or even city-by-city approach.

"We don't have to treat different parts of the state the same," Huffman told The Dispatch, pointing to places like west central Ohio where the number of cases has remained low.

'We don't want to get caught up in the circular logic of saying 'look, they haven't been tested yet,'" Huffman said. "You can get tested and you can be exposed the next day ... At some point we have to look at actual data and not 'well, it could be this.'"

But DeWine said health officials consider the entire state to be affect by "community spread," even though areas with less testing are showing fewer victims. Re-opening too quickly, he said, would lead to additional deaths, especially among the state's vulnerable populations.

The decision to reduce restrictions will be "based on the best science we can see," the governor said. "We're not going to flip on a switch some day and get the world back to where it was. ... Our goal has to be how do we make them normal as we can within the confines of the fact that we have a monster out there that is lurking and can kill us."

Scientists and drug manufacturers are working on a vaccine, but it might not be ready in time for cold and flu season this winter. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a briefing in late March that he expects another wave of the coronavirus later this year.

"We can't shut the economy down constantly," Brenner said. "If this is something that is seasonal, what are we going to do?"

Around 100 protesters gathered outside the Statehouse during Dewine's appearance, at least one wearing a Donald Trump hat while many carried signs expressing displeasure at the stay-at-home order or waved American flags.

Kevin Farmer of Cincinnati climbed to the top of the Statehouse steps with his bullhorn to lead the protesters in a series of chants.

"Some say that we're actually causing havoc or putting lives in danger right now -- but actually they're putting my livelihood in danger and others because we're laid off during this pandemic," Farmer said to the crowd.

Farmer told The Dispatch that he has been laid off from his job at Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing, and said his employer will contact him when it is OK to return to work.

Farmer said he hoped DeWine would see the dissent caused by the demonstration, and allow Ohioans to get back to their jobs.

"Don't Mike DeWine supposed to be a Republican (sic)? Don't he believe in less government? Small government?" Farmer said.

"He has an obligated right to get us back to work, because if not, what do you think Americans are gonna go through?"

Farmer also led the demonstrators in a series of "When I say tyrant, you say Mike DeWine" chants, among others.

Another demonstrator, John Jenkins of Pleasantville, was bearing an upside down American flag, traditionally a distress signal.

"Ohio is currently under distress," Jenkins said. "The United States is generally under distress."

Jenkins said the demonstrators were organizing on a variety of different Facebook groups, but pointed to Ohio Stands United, a group with 6,800 members, as one of the chief avenues of organization for the two recent protests.

The Facebook page currently has a number of videos uploaded by members of Monday's protest, as well as a video of a member shooting an order from the governor with a rifle.

Joe Marshall, who did not identify where he was from, said he was representing Anonymous Columbus Ohio.

Marshall said he chose to demonstrate against DeWine because he believes DeWine and Acton are being led astray by the World Health Organization, which he said is corrupt and peddling false information to local governments.

"Their numbers here are what these clowns are going by," Marshall said. "Even if they are right, they don't justify" enforcing a stay-at-home order.

"These are common sense things," Marshall said. "The problem is, Mr. DeWine doesn't want to do common sense things, he wants to listen to Amy, and Amy gets her orders from the World Health Organization."

Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland contributed to this story.

astaver@dispatch.com

@annastaver

cbehrens@dispatch.com

@colebehr_report

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GOP lawmakers, protesters call on DeWine to begin re-opening Ohio

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Some Republicans in the Ohio legislature are publicly calling on Gov. Mike DeWine to consider removing coronavirus-related restrictions beginning next month, while on Monday, around 100 protesters gathered outside the Statehouse during Dewine's daily COVID-19 press briefing. A growing chorus of Ohio's Republican lawmakers want Gov.

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Kentucky's heavily Republican legislature voted Tuesday to require voters to show a government-issued photo ID, overriding Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto in the process.

Meanwhile, if a Kentucky voter heads to the state's webpage hoping to learn how to obtain such an ID, they will encounter a message telling them ID-issuing offices are closed.

Strict voter ID laws are increasingly common in Republican-controlled states, and left-leaning groups like students, low-income voters, and voters of color are especially less likely to have the ID that these laws require. Although voter ID's policy proponents often argue that the measure is necessary to combat voter fraud at the polls, such fraud is so rare that it is virtually nonexistent.

While voter ID laws, at best, are a solution in search of a problem, Kentucky's new law could prove to be a particularly potent attack on the right to vote during a pandemic.

Voter ID laws serve no legitimate purpose

The ostensible function of a voter ID law is to prevent someone from impersonating another voter in order to cast a ballot in their name. But numerous studies and investigations show that the primary form of voter fraud addressed by these laws, impersonation fraud at the polls, is only slightly more common than unicorns.

A study by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, who led much of the Justice Department's voting rights work during the Obama administration, found only 35 credible allegations of in-person voter fraud among the 834 million ballots cast in the 2000-2014 elections. A Wisconsin study found just seven cases of any kind of fraud among the 3 million cast in the 2004 election - and none of these seven were the kind that could be prevented by voter ID. In 2014, Iowa's Republican Secretary of State Matt Schultz announced the results of a two-year investigation into election misconduct within his state. He found zero cases of voter impersonation at the polls.

Notably, when the Supreme Court allowed an Indiana voter ID law to take effect in Crawford v. Marion County (2008), it was only able to identify a single case of in-person voter fraud at the polls in the preceding 140 years.

Voter ID laws target an imaginary problem, but at least some studies show that they particularly affect voters who lean Democratic. While there's no firm research consensus on the laws' effect, several studies have found that voter ID has no meaningful impact on voter turnout (although others have found significant effects). In a close election, though, even a small effect on turnout could matter.

At best, voter ID achieves nothing at all in an ordinary election while erecting an additional barrier to people exercising their right to vote - a barrier that disproportionately affects low-income and black and Latino Americans. Under normal circumstances, voter ID could potentially make a difference in a close election.

Voter ID could have severe consequences during a pandemic

It's far from clear that November's general election will be anything resembling normal.

Late last month, Gov. Beshear handed down an executive order providing that "all businesses that are not life-sustaining shall cease operations ... except as needed to conduct Minimum Basic Operations." Among other things, the order suspends "all in-person government activities ... that are not necessary to sustain or protect life, or to supporting Life-Sustaining Businesses."

Thus, Kentucky voters who lack an ID - perhaps because they recently moved to the state and didn't get around to obtaining a Kentucky driver's license before the coronavirus lockdown began - may be unable to obtain this ID in time to vote because the state offices that issue such IDs are closed. The future of life under coronavirus remains very uncertain, and it is, as yet, unclear when the country will return to anything resembling normal.

Even if Kentucky is able to relax restrictions as more testing for the virus becomes available, it may need to reimpose strict limits on businesses and government offices if an outbreak occurs. Voters may only have a limited window to acquire an ID, and that window might close just as a particular voter was preparing to obtain one.

Kentucky's law, moreover, also resembles a similar Wisconsin law in that it requires voters to show ID in order to obtain an absentee ballot. So voters without ID cannot escape the law by voting by mail.

The new law does permit some voters to cast a ballot without showing photo ID - if they sign a sworn statement affirming that they are lawful voters and providing certain information. But this exemption from the photo ID requirement is only available to a limited group of voters, and it is far from clear that a healthy voter qualifies because they were unable to obtain an ID because government offices were shut down during a pandemic.

Although the law allows a voter to cast a ballot without showing photo ID if they were prevented from getting an ID due to "disability or illness," the statute is not clear on whether the voter must themselves be infected by this illness in order to qualify. And voters who misuse the exemption could potentially face perjury charges.

It's worth noting that there could potentially be a very high-profile race on Kentucky's ballot this November. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for reelection, and there is some evidence that McConnell could be defeated if 2020 is a strong year for Democrats. In January, for example, one poll showed McConnell just 3 percentage points ahead of possible Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, and a second poll showed McConnell and McGrath tied.

So, while the impact of voter ID is uncertain under normal circumstances, there are good reasons to believe that such a law could have a larger effect during a pandemic. Whether that impact would be enough to skew a close election from McGrath to McConnell is also unclear. But, at the very least, many voters could struggle to cast a ballot if they are unable to obtain the IDs they need to vote.
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Kentucky just made it harder to vote during a pandemic

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Kentucky's heavily Republican legislature voted Tuesday to require voters to show a government-issued photo ID, overriding Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto in the process. Meanwhile, if a Kentucky voter heads to the state's webpage hoping to learn how to obtain such an ID, they will encounter a message telling them ID-issuing offices are closed.

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Israeli police raided a coronavirus testing clinic in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and arrested its organizers on Tuesday night because the clinic was operated in collaboration with the Palestinian Authority.

>> Coronavirus tracker: Live statistics of cases and deaths in Israel and around the world

According to the clinic's managers, there is a shortage of coronavirus tests in Silwan, where doctors say there are 40 confirmed cases and where overcrowded living conditions could lead to a rapid spread of the virus.

The clinic was opened in a hall at one of the local mosques. It was closed on Tuesday night because to the end-of-Passover curfew, but police officers nonetheless arrived, questioned neighbors and arrested four activists who were involved in setting up the clinic.

The coronavirus tests were meant to be processed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. However, Israel prohibits any PA activity in Jerusalem and last month also prevented PA workers from disinfecting public spaces in the capital. In contrast, two weeks ago Israel allowed armed PA forces to respond to a violent dispute that took place in one of the Jerusalem neighborhoods that are beyond he separation barrier.

"You [Israeli authorities] are not helping us and are preventing us from getting help from others," said one of the residents, Farhi Abu Diab. "For the first time, we have a common enemy, so let's work together."

Abu Diab said the Israeli government will respond after it's too late, after the month of Ramadan, which he said will surely exacerbate the outbreak. "Instead of working together, [Israeli authorities] are bringing politics into this. I don't care about who has jurisdiction. If something happens to my son I don't care who tests him."

On Monday, at the behest of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon and health professionals, the Israeli Health Ministry opened a testing clinic in Silwan, but it is only accessible to members of the Clalit health maintenance organization.

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Israel shuts Palestinian coronavirus testing clinic in East Jerusalem

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Israeli police raided a coronavirus testing clinic in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and arrested its organizers on Tuesday night because the clinic was operated in collaboration with the Palestinian Authority.

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The Longest Days of Our Lives (Matthew McConaughey, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig): Chapter 2

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Wine. Chocolate. Binge-watching "The Crown."

How are your coping strategies working for you these days?

Therapists have, for months, been reporting a significant increase in clients who are stressed and saddened by current events-hurricanes, fires, the threat of nuclear war. In some cases, they say, these large-scale worries are undermining...

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wharton school at the university of pennsylvania

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Seven Ways to Reduce Stress in Anxious Times

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Wine. Chocolate. Binge-watching "The Crown." How are your coping strategies working for you these days? Therapists have, for months, been reporting a significant increase in clients who are stressed and saddened by current events-hurricanes, fires, the threat of nuclear war. In some cases, they say, these large-scale worries are undermining...

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English National Ballet is delicately tip-toeing in on the live-streaming act. The world-class ballet company has launched ENB at Home, and as part of the streaming series, it will be releasing a production a week for its 'Wednesday Watch Parties'.

Each Wednesday will see a fresh dance performance broadcast on ENB's Facebook and YouTube channels, available to stream for free for 48 hours. The first one to air, on Wednesday April 22, is Frida Kahlo-inspired production 'Broken Wings', starring lead principal (and ENB artistic director) Tamara Rojo as the painter.

Choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the piece tells the tale of the Mexican artist's tortured life. It was recorded at Sadler's Wells in London in 2016, when ENB put on a series of shows dedicated to female choreography. Rojo appears opposite Irek Mukhamedov, who plays the role of Kahlo's husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera.

The subsequent Wednesday Watch Party will showcase Akram Khan's 'Dust', a 2015 ballet focusing on the role of women during World War I.

More of the streaming programme will be revealed in due course, and in the meantime, English National Ballet - whose London home in Canning Town is currently closed, and whose forthcoming performances at Sadler's Wells and the Southbank Centre have been postponed - is also running online ballet classes for its fans at home.
Check out classes and performances on ENB's Facebook page and YouTube channel. Find more amazing theatre, dance and opera streaming right now. Check out the Royal Ballet's leaping live-stream line-up.

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English National Ballet is streaming Frida Kahlo ballet 'Broken Wings' for free

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English National Ballet is delicately tip-toeing in on the live-streaming act. The world-class ballet company has launched ENB at Home, and as part of the streaming series, it will be releasing a production a week for its 'Wednesday Watch Parties'.

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As a clearer picture emerges of COVID-19's decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity.

A growing chorus of medical professionals, activists and political figures is pressuring the federal government to not just release comprehensive racial demographic data of the country's coronavirus victims, but also to outline clear strategies to blunt the devastation on African Americans and other communities of color.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first breakdown of COVID-19 case data by race, showing that 30% of patients whose race was known were black. The federal data was missing racial information for 75% of all cases, however, and did not include any demographic breakdown of deaths.

The latest Associated Press analysis of available state and local data shows that nearly one-third of those who have died are African American, with black people representing about 14% of the population in the areas covered in the analysis.

Roughly half the states, representing less than a fifth of the nation's COVID-19 deaths, have yet to release demographic data on fatalities. In states that have, about a quarter of the death records are missing racial details.

Health conditions that exist at higher rates in the black community -- obesity, diabetes and asthma -- make African Americans more susceptible to the virus. They also are more likely to be uninsured, and often report that medical professionals take their ailments less seriously when they seek treatment.

"It's America's unfinished business -- we're free, but not equal," civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson told the AP. "There's a reality check that has been brought by the coronavirus, that exposes the weakness and the opportunity."

This week, Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the National Medical Association, a group representing African American physicians and patients, released a joint public health strategy calling for better COVID-19 testing and treatment data. The groups also urged officials to provide better protections for incarcerated populations and to recruit more African Americans to the medical field.

Jackson also expressed support for a national commission to study the black COVID-19 toll modeled after the Kerner Commission, which studied the root causes of race riots in African American communities in the 1960s and made policy recommendations to prevent future unrest.

Daniel Dawes, director of Morehouse College's School of Medicine's Satcher Health Leadership Institute, said America's history of segregation and policies led to the racial health disparities that exist today.

"If we do not take an appreciation for the historical context and the political determinants, then we're only merely going to nibble around the edges of the problem of inequities," he said.

The release of demographic data for the country's coronavirus victims remains a priority for many civil rights and public health advocates, who say the numbers are needed to address disparities in the national response to the pandemic.

The AP analysis, based on data through Thursday, found that of the more than 21,500 victims whose demographic data was known and disclosed by officials, more than 6,350 were black, a rate of nearly 30%. African Americans account for 14.2% of the 241 million people who live in the areas covered by the analysis, which encompasses 24 states and the cities of Washington D.C., Houston, Memphis, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia - places where statewide data was unavailable.

The nation had recorded more than 33,000 deaths as of Thursday.

In some areas, Native American communities also have been hit hard. In New Mexico, Native Americans account for nearly 37% of the state's 1,484 cases and about 11% of the state's population. Of the 112 deaths where race is known in Arizona, 30 were Native Americans.

After Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation this week to try to compel federal health officials to post daily data breaking down cases and deaths by race, ethnicity and other demographics, the CDC released only caseload data that - similar to the AP's analysis of deaths -show 30% of 111,633 infected patients whose race is known were black. African American patients in the 45-to-64 and 65-to-74 age groups represented an even larger share of the national caseload.

The lawmakers sent a letter last month to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar urging federal release of the demographic data. And Joe Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, also called for its release.

Meanwhile, some black leaders have described the Trump administration's response to COVID-19 as inadequate, after what they said was a hastily organized call with Vice President Mike Pence and CDC Director Robert Redfield last week.

According to a recording of the call obtained by the AP, Redfield said the CDC has been collecting demographic data from death certificates but that the comprehensiveness of the data depends on state and local health departments, many of which are overburdened by virus response. No plan was offered to help health officials in hard-hit communities collect the data, leaders who were on the call said.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which took part in the call, said African Americans "have every reason to be alarmed at the administration's anemic response to the disproportionate impact that this crisis is having on communities of color."

Mistrust runs deep among residents in many communities.

St. Louis resident Randy Barnes is grappling not just with the emotional toll of losing his brother to the coronavirus, but also with the feeling that his brother's case was not taken seriously.

Barnes said the hospital where his brother sought treatment initially sent him home without testing him and suggested he self-quarantine for 14 days. Five days later, his brother was back in the hospital, where he was placed on a ventilator for two weeks. He died April 13. Barnes' brother and his wife also were caring for an 88-year-old man in the same apartment, who died from the virus around the same time.

"Those people are not being tested. They're not being cared for," Barnes said.

Eugene Rush lives in one of the areas outside large urban cities that have been hit hard with coronavirus cases. He is a sergeant for the sheriff's department in Michigan's Washtenaw County, west of Detroit, where black residents account for 46% of the COVID-19 cases but represent only 12% of the county's population.

Rush, whose job includes community engagement, was diagnosed with COVID-19 near the end of March after what he initially thought was just a sinus infection. He had to be hospitalized twice, but is now on the mend at home, along with his 16-year-old son, who also was diagnosed with COVID-19.

"I had a former lieutenant for the city of Ypsilanti who passed while I was in the hospital and I had some fraternity brothers who caught the virus and were sick at the hospital," Rush said. "At that point, I said, 'Well, this is really, really affecting a lot of people' and they were mostly African American. That's how I knew that it was really taking a toll a little bit deeper in the African American community than I realized."

___

Stafford and Morrison are members of the AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Stafford reported from Detroit, Morrison from New York and Hoyer from Washington. Associated Press writers Noreen Nasir in Chicago, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Regina Garcia Cano in Washington, Chris Grygiel in Seattle and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed.

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Racial toll of virus grows even starker as more data emerges

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As a clearer picture emerges of COVID-19's decidedly deadly toll on black Americans, leaders are demanding a reckoning of the systemic policies they say have made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus, including inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity.

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America's inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman is offering some inspiration during the coronavirus pandemic. In a performance for "CBS This Morning" at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, she used her voice to give comfort and courage to the nation.
Read her poem below.

So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend.
Like light, we can't be broken, even when we bend.

Read children's books, dance alone to DJ music.
Know that this distance will make our hearts grow fonder.
From a wave of woes our world will emerge stronger.

We'll observe how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the moments that make us humans kind;
Let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the light before the fight is over.
When this ends, we'll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing times, we became the best of beings.

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Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman​ offers words of hope amid coronavirus pandemic

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America's inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman is offering some inspiration during the coronavirus pandemic. In a performance for "CBS This Morning" at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, she used her voice to give comfort and courage to the nation. Read her poem below.

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Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. His research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. He has published 125 scholarly articles, received numerous awards, and he is featured regularly in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Good Morning America, The Today Show, PBS NewsHour, and many others.

Marc serves on a number of boards, including the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the nonprofit that founded the field of social and emotional learning (SEL) and works to mobilize the movement to make SEL an integral part of education.

In his groundbreaking work at Yale, he is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to SEL that has been adopted by over 2,000 preschools to high schools across the United States and in other countries, including Australia, China, England, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. RULER infuses the principles and skills of emotional intelligence into the immune system of schools by enhancing how school administrators lead, educators teach, students learn, and families parent. Research shows that RULER boosts academic performance, decreases school problems like bullying, enriches classroom climates, reduces teacher stress and burnout, and enhances teacher instructional practices.

Marc consults regularly with corporations including Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating emotional intelligence principles into employee training and product design, and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a digital emotional intelligence learning system for businesses.

He is the author of Permission to Feel (Macmillan/CELADON): Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive.

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Dr. Marc Brackett and Brené on "Permission to Feel" | Brené Brown

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Dr. Marc Brackett has dedicated his life to studying emotions and to teaching us what he's learning. In this episode, we talk about how emotional literacy - being able to recognize, name, and understand our feelings - affects everything from learning, decision making, and creativity, to relationships, health, and performance.

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When you're done with your Rolling Stones living-room-scavenger-hunt exercise, come here for the sonic cool-down. On Saturday's jam-packed One World: Together at Home special, in addition to the many other talented musicians who contributed a vignette for the occasion, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo formed the ultimate pop-soloist alliance: They all performed a piano ballad in the comfort of their homes. First up was event organizer Gaga, who launched into a cover of American standard "Smile."

"I care so much about all of the medical workers that are putting their lives at risk for us right now. I think of them every day, I pray for them every day, and I'm also thinking of all of you that are at hope and wondering when this is all going to be different," she explained. "What I'd like to do tonight, if I can, is just give you the permission just for a moment to smile."

Lizzo, next and flute-less, chose to cover Sam Cooke's virtuosic "A Change Is Gonna Come." Her hair also looked right out of a 17th century Renaissance painting. "Thank you to everyone working hard to keep us safe," she said at the song's conclusion. "Thank you to everyone staying home and keeping themselves safe. I love you, we got this, we'll get through this together."

As one of the special's closing acts, Swift looked no further than her ooh-ah-filled Lover tune, which did not feature a surprise cameo from the Dixie Chicks and/or Joe Alwyn. ( Unlike Keith Urban, who mastered the art.) Swift also didn't offer any words of wisdom, but hey, she has nice floral wallpaper.

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Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo Are Your Weekend Piano Chanteuses

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When you're done with your Rolling Stones living-room-scavenger-hunt exercise, come here for the sonic cool-down. On Saturday's jam-packed One World: Together at Home special, in addition to the many other talented musicians who contributed a vignette for the occasion, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo formed the ultimate pop-soloist alliance: They all performed a piano ballad in the comfort of their homes.

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Many school cafeterias are now operating more like community soup kitchens, even though the federal school meals program won't reimburse districts for meals served to struggling adults.

Workers preparing lunch bags at Sinclair Lane Elementary School in Baltimore. Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times

BALTIMORE - On the first day of the coronavirus school closure at Sinclair Lane Elementary School, Janet Bailey, the cafeteria manager, showed up to the school's kitchen like any other day, ready to do her job. She began fixing the favorites of the 250 or so children who relied on her to feed them daily - chicken patties, a fruit and vegetable, and flavored milk.

On the second day, Ms. Bailey realized that she had answered a calling. By the time the building in northeast Baltimore had opened at 10 a.m., there was a line. Among the first was a man who said he only had a half a loaf of bread in the refrigerator.

"I just packed him up, no questions asked," said Ms. Bailey, one of dozens of food service workers who signed up to staff meal sites around the city. "I didn't know his situation, if he had four kids at home or not, like he said. But I know he was hungry. We are supposed to be here to meet the needs of the community. How could I say no?"

After the coronavirus shut down America's education system, districts fortified their school meals programs to ensure that their most needy students would stay fed. One month in, school leaders realize the federal programs set up to subsidize the meals of tens of millions of students cannot meet the demands of an emergency that has turned their cafeterias into food banks and community kitchens.

Several districts are now feeding adults and sending days-worth of food home for entire families. And they are doing so at a cost that under federal rules they will not recoup, and at a rate that is financially unsustainable.

Under the child nutrition programs run by the Department of Agriculture, districts are partially reimbursed for each meal served to its poorest students. But districts are incurring costs that do not qualify, for adult meals, additional equipment, and extra pay for food service workers who are risking their safety.

The nation's 12 largest school districts will spend between $12 million to $19 million through June 30 to meet the demands of their pandemic meals operations, estimated Katie Wilson, executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance, whose members include large urban districts in Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York and Chicago.

The organization is pleading for relief from Congress, the Agriculture Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Meantime, the organization has set a donation page to help districts cover costs.

"Every one of these schools that has their doors open are literally heroes on the front line," Ms. Wilson said. "Food workers are now first responders."

Collectively, the districts in the alliance serve 3.6 million students and 635 million meals annually. But in weekly calls since the pandemic started, the districts have reported that nothing prepared them for the demand they have seen. Families are traveling to their meal sites from neighboring jurisdictions. Residents are showing up from senior living communities. Some families became known as "trick-or-treaters," hitting up different sites throughout the district.

"If people are in need, we're going to address the need, end of discussion," Austin Beutner, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said in an interview. "Our inclination is to do the right thing."

Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school system, is serving between 400,000 and 500,000 meals a day since its schools closed, and will serve its 10 millionth meal this week. About 30 percent of those meals are going to family and community members so they will not be reimbursed.

The district has had to purchase 18 refrigerated trucks to store food and milk, which will cost more than $95,000 over the next three months.

"This is not a school meal program," Mr. Beutner said. "It's a relief effort."

The nation's largest school district, in New York City, will serve anyone who needs food, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this month, a decision that drew some pushback from food service employees who lacked protective gear.

The New York City Department of Education said that it is serving about 250,000 meals a day, and has served about 4 million meals since its schools closed. Any student meals that are not partially reimbursed by the federal government will be funded by the city's budget.

Since the shutdown, the Agriculture Department has loosened rules to allow schools to serve meals outside of group settings, and states to serve after-school snacks and meals without an educational activity. It is also allowing parents to pick up meals without their children.

A spokeswoman from the Agriculture Department said it was aware that "some schools are opting to allow adults to buy meals for themselves or providing them with meals." But she said those meals would not be reimbursed. Needy adults, she said, should be turning to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which the administration has moved to cut back with three separate rule changes.

"For schools that are closed, we are doing our very best to make sure kids are fed," Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said. "Local school nutrition professionals know how best to feed their children, and we are working with them and their community partners."

Regulatory hurdles persist. In areas where fewer than half the children were eligible for free or reduced priced meals, school meal providers at first were still having to verify that each child was low-income. The department has since relaxed its rules to allow states to serve students who may not qualify for the program during the school year. But state rules vary. In Mississippi, some school sites with fewer than 40 percent of students eligible for reduced price meals still must justify giving out food. Massachusetts got statewide approval to waive proof of income.

"We are hoping for a nationwide waiver because those waivers are not consistent across states," said Crystal W. FitzSimons, the director of school programs at the Food Research and Action Center.

Arne Duncan, a former education secretary who has been helping school superintendents through the crisis, said that any government response short of enabling schools to become full-blown food distribution centers is insufficient.

"We can't be constrained by rules and regulations that make no sense now," said Mr. Duncan, who is now a managing partner at the philanthropic organization Emerson Collective. "All we need is some compassion, common sense, and flexibility."

Some schools are partnering with community food banks - many of which are also struggling to keep up - Y.M.C.A.s, and Boys and Girls Clubs to get meals out. All the while, many school districts still lack essential personal protective equipment. In March, districts in California, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia had to suspend or adjust their meals program because employees contracted the coronavirus or feared they would. In early April, a food service worker in Clark County, Nev., the nation's fifth largest school district, died from Covid-19.

School districts are already beginning to talk about financial challenges for the next school year, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association. By then, many will have little inventory and insufficient revenue to purchase more.

"I'm not sure schools can sustain the same level of outreach," said Lisa Davis, the senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign at Share Our Strength, a nonprofit organization working to end childhood hunger.

In Baltimore, the school district has served more than 25,000 meals to adults, at a cost of $85,000 and counting.

Ms. Bailey can rattle off her daily tallies as easily as her phone number. "688 today - 108 adults for breakfast, 108 adults for lunch," she said with a tinge of disappointment. That was fewer than her average of 800, but thunderstorms had blown through that day.

Even though the site opens at 10 a.m., Ms. Bailey adjusted her staff's schedules to prepare for those who show up as early as 9:30, and for the stragglers who run up with panicked looks a few minutes after it closes at 2 p.m.

She knows mothers and fathers by name, which children are lactose intolerant, and who among the vegetarians need peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She's become resourceful: When the local food bank recently dropped off a box of 40 meals, she unpacked it and stretched them into 80.

"You hear the stories about the health care workers - well we're on the front lines, too," she said. "We're on our feet from the time we come in the door to the time we leave. We're doing something that's bigger than what we can imagine right now."

The district recently switched to cold meals in April to make it easier and safer for families to "grab n' go." On a recent sunny Tuesday, city residents walked up in their house slippers and drove up in luxury S.U.V.s. There were unaccompanied children, and older residents with handicap parking placards.

The only question asked was, "Chicken salad or deli?"

"I always tell em,' thank you for your service because it's well appreciated," said Al Peterson, 62, who picked up meals for three children and two adults. "I get an extra one to take to my homeless guy down the street, too."

Tia Gardner, the owner of My Village Learning Center, a day care in northeast Baltimore, said the free meals are allowing her to stay open. She is taking care of 24 children, all of essential employees, like health care workers. That is down from 62.

"Food is one of our biggest budget items," Ms. Gardner said. "If I'm able to stay open, it eases the minds of parents who still have to go to work."

On Friday, Sinclair Lane Elementary closed out its busiest week to date - 4,056 meals served, 1,307 of them to adults. Ms. Bailey said she hoped that the federal government would step up, but regardless, "As long as the people are coming," she said, "we'll be serving."

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Schools Transform Into 'Relief' Kitchens but Federal Aid Fails to Keep Up

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Many school cafeterias are now operating more like community soup kitchens, even though the federal school meals program won't reimburse districts for meals served to struggling adults. BALTIMORE - On the first day of the coronavirus school closure at Sinclair Lane Elementary School, Janet Bailey, the cafeteria manager, showed up to the school's kitchen like any other day, ready to do her job.

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At 5:12 on Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, an earthquake of estimated 7.9 magnitude jolted San Francisco and the greater Bay Area residents awake. The quake lasted less than a minute but the damage it wreaked left the city in ruins.

The 1906 earthquake and resulting fires became a defining moment in history. Over several days, while the already-damaged city burned, over 3,000 people died, nearly half of the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless, and inestimable numbers of vital artifacts and records were lost when cultural and city institutions were reduced to ruins and ash. It was a disaster that changed the city's physical, social, economic, and cultural fabric and to this day we often think of San Francisco's history as divided into pre-earthquake and post-earthquake periods.

Photographs in the California Historical Society's collection document both the destruction and reconstruction of San Francisco. Personal diaries, journals, and letters provide us with first-hand accounts of daily life in the aftermath of the quake. Other materials such as broadsides, ephemera, artifacts, and official correspondence provide insight into the complicated role residents, business owners, church groups, community organizations, city officials, and the army played in the cleanup and rebuilding of a new San Francisco.

Relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of the quake were, as is the case in most disasters, carried out by family, friends, and neighbors, followed quickly by local charities, community, and religious organizations. Soon business leaders got involved and the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds was formed with the Governor of California, George C. Pardee, the mayor of San Francisco, Eugene Schmitz, and other prominent and recognizable San Franciscans including I.W. Hellman and Charles Sutro, Jr. on the board of directors. ¹

In the first days after the quake people slept out in the open or under whatever shelter they could find. Tents, distributed by the military, were set up in designated locations around the city before eventually being replaced by wooden huts known as earthquake cottages. There were twenty-six official refugee camps around San Francisco, twenty-one of which were managed by the army. These camps, however, reflected the racism of the time and Chinese residents of San Francisco were ultimately forced to a segregated camp in a remote area of the Presidio, farther away from access to medical care and food supplies.

U.S. Army troops, based nearby in the Presidio, played a large role in the City's relief efforts by establishing control in many areas aside from refugee housing. General Orders No. 18, issued on April 29, 1906 gives some insight into the organization behind the military's relief effort. First, they divided the city into seven relief sections, then assigned Army officers and assistants to each section "with the view of coordinating the work and introducing at the earliest moment such methods as will prevent dishonesty or wastage, eliminate the unworthy and impostors, and insure economical administration." ²

Army officers were also directed to work with the mayor's committee and the Red Cross to set up and run hospitals and food distribution locations. Incredibly, considering how much of the city's infrastructure was destroyed and the poor living conditions of the thousands of now-homeless residents, very little disease broke out. The San Francisco Board of Health appointed 500 physicians to form a group of sanitary inspectors who worked with the Army to reduce the risks of disease usually associated with overcrowding, tainted water and poor sanitation. In General Orders No. 14, Major General Adolphus Greely stated, "the division commander will retain control of sanitation...Our greatest danger in the future may be expected from unavoidable insanitary conditions, and every person is cautioned that to violate in the slightest degree the instructions of the sanitary officers would be a crime that could have no adequate punishment." ³

While many official reports highlight the Army's role in keeping the peace and establishing relief efforts, personal letters and memoirs from that period tell a more nuanced story. Mayor Eugene Schmitz's order " to KILL any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime" ⁴ was, in some cases, used as an excuse to harass and even kill civilians, with some residents documenting their fear of the soldiers who swarmed the city streets. In correspondence sent to the California Historical Society years later, Ernest W. Cleary, who was a member of the R.O.T.C. at the University of California, Berkeley at the time of the earthquake, recalls:

Soon afterward a woman came running from the fire area, wringing her hands and crying. She said "I just saw something awful. A man saw that the fire was coming and opened his grocery and told us to 'help ourselves.' A man came out with his arms full of groceries and a soldier ran up and stabbed that poor man with his bayonet." ⁵

Post-earthquake, San Francisco's business leaders knew that the longer it took to rebuild the city, the more tenuous its place was as the economic and cultural hub of California. While some, aware that fires resulting from the earthquake had caused the most damage to the city, pushed for stronger building codes and a ban on wooden structures, others, eager to get the city rebuilt as soon as possible, pushed for ways to fast track construction. A compromise by the mayor allowed commercial property owners to rebuild without permits provided they limited it to a single story wooden or corrugated iron structure.

Fast forward to 1915 and the world's fair. According to Laura Ackley, author of San Francisco's Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, the makers of the fair had two goals in mind when they committed to host: celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal, and showcasing a rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire. In both they proved incredibly successful. San Francisco, once again, was ready to shine.
To view more images from the California Historical Society's 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Collection, click here.
1 San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds (Firm). 1906. Preliminary report concerning the financial operations of the Finance Committee of the Relief and Red Cross Funds (whose affairs and functions have been transferred to and assumed by this Corporation) and also of this Corporation to November 17th, 1966. San Francisco: The Corporation.

2 General Orders No. 18. Earthquake in California, April 18, 1906; Special Report of Maj. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely, U.S. A., Commanding the Pacific Division. San Francisco earthquake and fire. Series 3, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1t1n98g0&brand=oac4&chunk.id=meta

3 General Orders No. 14. Earthquake in California, April 18, 1906; Special Report of Maj. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely, U.S. A., Commanding the Pacific Division. San Francisco earthquake and fire. Series 3, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1t1n98g0&brand=oac4&chunk.id=meta

⁴ 1906 Earthquake: Law Enforcement, National Park Service website,
https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/1906-earthquake-law-enforcement.htm

5 Correspondence, Ernest W. Cleary to Irene Neasham, April 14, 1971, MS 3468: 2-3, California Historical Society.

1906 Earthquake: Relief Efforts, National Park Service website,
https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/1906-earthquake-relief-efforts-medical-care.htm

SF1915.com. Panama-Pacific International Exposition Research, Scholarship, and Events website, 2011, by Laura Ackley,
http://www.sf1915.com/

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1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire: Relief and Reconstruction - California Historical Society

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At 5:12 on Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, an earthquake of estimated 7.9 magnitude jolted San Francisco and the greater Bay Area residents awake. The quake lasted less than a minute but the damage it wreaked left the city in

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The man who raised Keith Gambrell, who loved him like a son and married his mother, died in a blue recliner of novel coronavirus in his Grosse Pointe Woods home.

Gary Fowler, 56, went to the emergency rooms of three metro Detroit hospitals in the weeks leading up to his death, begging for a coronavirus test, begging for help because he was having difficulty breathing, but was repeatedly turned away, Keith said.

"My dad passed at home, and no one tried to help him," Keith, 33, of northwest Detroit said through tears. "He asked for help, and they sent him away. They turned him away."

In the hours before his death, breathing was so difficult, Gary slept sitting up in the bedroom chair, while his wife, Cheryl Fowler, dozed in the bed by his side. When she woke, her husband of nearly 24 years was gone.

Before he took his last breaths, Gary had scrawled on a piece of paper: "Heart beat irregular ... oxygen level low."

"My little brother called me, screaming, 'Daddy won't wake up!' " Keith said.

By the time Keith got across town to their house on the morning of April 7, police and emergency medical workers had already arrived.

His dad was still in the recliner. A bluish tinge had settled on his lips and fingers.

"I went up and talked to him," Keith said, his voice breaking as he held back tears. "I told him I love him, and that I'll see him again one day, and that I'm sorry we couldn't even have a funeral for him.

"I just felt so bad because he was begging for his life, and medical professionals did nothing for him."

The virus, which has hit Detroit harder than any other city in Michigan - infecting at least 30,791 people and killing 2,308, of whom 7,497 are in the city of Detroit, where 589 have died - has brought renewed attention to health disparities for people of color.

"About 33% of the cases of COVID-19 in this entire state of Michigan are in African Americans, and about 40% ... of the deaths," Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said during a Facebook Live interview Thursday with Detroit's Civil Rights, Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Department. "And that's incredibly concerning. We know that African Americans are only about 14% of the entire population."

Keith lives in Northwest Detroit's 48235 ZIP code, a coronavirus hot zone with the highest infection rate per capita - with 162 cases per 10,000 residents - and the highest number of confirmed cases of the virus at 724, according to data released Friday by the city.

More: Map: Detroit releases coronavirus cases by ZIP code

Keith's grandfather, David Fowler, lived in the Boston Edison District. His 48202 ZIP code is in the top 10 for coronavirus infections, too, with 114 cases per 10,000 residents.

David Fowler died of COVID-19 just hours before his son Gary was taken by the same disease.

Denise Fair, Detroit's chief public health officer, said Friday that the ZIP code data still are huge under-estimations. Coronavirus testing remains a barrier for many in the community, as does access to care.

"It's estimated that there are upwards of 10 people with undetected infections for every confirmed case, and in some communities, the estimates are even higher," she said.

Health disparities turn deadly

Dozens of factors feed the health disparities for people of color, said Khaldun, who formerly worked as the director and health officer for the Detroit Department of Health.

"It's a contagious disease," she said, "That's the bottom line. And people who have chronic conditions, asthma, diabetes are more likely to get the disease and then have more severe illness."

And in Detroit - the biggest majority black big city in America - rates of many of those chronic conditions are higher than the rest of the state, making Detroiters especially vulnerable. Add poverty to the mix, Khaldun said, and it's the perfect recipe for rapid-fire spread.

For many of the city's poor, it's impossible to practice social distancing and stay home because they are more likely to hold low-wage jobs in grocery stores, gas stations, and other work in services that are considered essential and still operating through this crisis.

Transportation plays into it, too, Khaldun said.

"People who are more likely to be underprivileged and people of color, living in poverty, are more likely to get sick from this disease," Khaldun said. "I think it's quite simple, actually. And I think we'll see that once we get more data and start doing the analysis."

Even when people in poverty get the disease, Khaldun explained, isolating from others in a household might not be possible, increasing the chances that the virus will spread through entire families.

But even beyond the economic drivers that make the black community more vulnerable in this pandemic, there's also bias within the medical community, Khaldun said.

"I don't believe for the most part that medical providers go into work every day wanting to discriminate, wanting to give substandard care to anyone, but there are just the truths that people bring their own stereotypes into their jobs," she said.

That bias might play a role in who gets a COVID-19 test and who does not, who gets hospitalized and who does not, and whose symptoms are taken seriously and whose are not.

"I'm a doctor and my own doctor did not listen to my concerns about a headache after I had my first child," she said. "And I ended up in an ICU (intensive-care unit) with a head full of blood. ... My own doctors did not listen to me...

"We know there's often delays in diagnosis for all kinds of medical conditions in the black community and people of color. So are there delays in testing? Are there delays in treatment? Are we sending people home when they really should be admitted to the hospital because they're so at risk for deteriorating quickly? So those are the types of things that we're going to have to look at.

"And again, they're happening with other diseases and I'm sure they're happening with COVID-19 right now."

COVID-19 devastates the Fowlers

Hours before Gary Fowler died in his rocking chair, his father, David Fowler, also slipped away.

COVID-19 came for David - a grandfather of 11 and great grandfather of two - while he lay alone in a hospital bed about a dozen miles from his son, who was "his best friend," Keith said.

He was 76.

"They talked every morning. Every morning, they were on the phone together," Keith said of his dad and grandpa.

David, a retired tool and dye maker who loved camping and the outdoors, took ill in mid-March.

On the morning of March 22, Keith went to visit his grandfather in the Boston Edison District of Detroit to check on him. Keith's mom and dad went, too.

"We just thought he had the flu," Keith said. But that afternoon, it was clear to them all that David's illness was serious - he'd passed out in the bathroom.

They called 911, and an ambulance took David to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where he was admitted. He tested positive for the virus, and was put on a ventilator.

"The following week, my father started developing a cough," Keith said, "and the cough was getting worse and worse by the hour."

In the last week in March, Gary spiked a fever, too, and his breathing was becoming labored. He went to Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe for help, Keith said.

"He tells them, 'My father has the coronavirus. I would like to get a test because I am showing symptoms. I am coughing,' " Keith said. "He had a fever of 101. He had shortness of breath. He was showing all the signs.

"They tell him, 'Sir, more than likely the fever is from bronchitis.' And they tell him to go home. But they also give my dad a piece of paper saying to act like you have the virus."

Gary was not tested for COVID-19. He followed the instructions and went back home.

The same scenario played out at several other hospitals in the days that followed as Gary continued to seek medical care, knowing his body was starting to fail.

When Gary arrived in the emergency room at Detroit Receiving Hospital with a fever of 100.7 degrees and complaining of shortness of breath, Keith said his father was told he'd get better care at Henry Ford.

So they drove him the roughly three miles across town to Henry Ford, where Keith said his father explained: " 'My chest hurts. I can't breathe. I have a fever that has not broke. I've been taking Tylenol, I've been drinking stuff and it is not breaking. I think I have the virus because my father tested positive for it and I saw him ... the day he went to the hospital.'

"But it was the same thing. They tell him: 'You're fine. You have bronchitis. Go home. Drink water. Act like you have the virus.' "

Gary was never tested. He was never admitted to any hospital or given any treatment, his son said, perplexed by the way each hospital turned away his father in his moment of need.

"If I have to act like I have a virus, does that mean I have a virus and you guys are sending me home until I'm on my deathbed?" Keith asked. "And then, when I come back to the hospital, it's too late?

"I honestly think that's why the death rate for blacks is so high. It's because we're being pushed to the back and told to go home, but come back if you can make it before you die.

"That shouldn't be the medical procedure for anything."

Beaumont issued the following statement following questions from the Free Press about how Gary Fowler was treated:

"COVID-19 is hitting southeastern Michigan particularly hard. As patients come to Beaumont for care during this extraordinary time, we are doing all we can to evaluate, triage and care for patients based on the information we know at the time. When making care decisions, we do not discriminate against anyone based upon their gender, race or any other factor. We grieve the loss of any patient to COVID-19 or any other illness."

The Detroit Medical Center, which operates Detroit Receiving Hospital, said it has no record of anyone named Gary Fowler "coming to Detroit Receiving Hospital for any treatment."

But the Fowlers say Gary was denied care there.

As soon as Gary told the intake nurses that he thought he had COVID-19, they "told him that Henry Ford was more equipped for people who think they have the virus," Keith said.

Henry Ford Health System said Saturday that no who comes to the hospital is denied care.

"All patients who come to our emergency departments receive care and assessment," said Brenda Craig, vice president of integrated communications at Henry Ford Health System. "Some patients will meet criteria for admission at the time, while others may not. In the case of COVID-19, we have a multi-step triage process. As patients arrive to our emergency department, all are screened for COVID-19 symptoms. Those with mild or moderate symptoms who do not meet admission criteria at the time they present may be sent home with strict instructions to return immediately if symptoms worsen.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Fowlers and all families devastated by the effects of COVID-19. We're not able to share details due to patient privacy, but we don't take lightly any concerns of biased care given our dedication to putting patients first. Throughout this pandemic, we have followed CDC guidelines related to testing and clinical care protocols. Henry Ford has also been a leader in addressing health disparities and driving true health equity as part of our core mission and values and that work will continue."

Craig acknowledged that testing for coronavirus remains limited.

"Given the U.S. currently does not have the ability to widely expand testing to everyone, the CDC has issued guidelines to health systems to prioritize testing," she said. "We've followed these guidelines closely, whereby patients who are currently admitted and health care workers experiencing symptoms are among those receiving top priority for testing."

Even though his father never had a COVID-19 test, Keith said his dad's death certificate says he died of the virus.

"There's no question," he said.

A son fights to save his mother

Despite the fresh grief of losing both of the family patriarchs within hours of one another, the coronavirus still wasn't done with the Fowler family.

The day her husband died, Cheryl, 57, got sick, too.

"She started coughing and had a fever of 102" degrees, said Keith, who was terrified about waiting too long to get help for her. He knew all too well what the virus could do.

Cheryl's cousin, state Rep. Karen Whitsett, who also had COVID-19, heard about the deaths of Gary and David Fowler, and called the family.

When she learned that no one else had been able to get tested, and that Gary had been unable to get hospital care, Whitsett gave them a contact number for the doctor who treated her for COVID-19.

But even Whitsett said she'd had trouble getting tested.

"The part that bothers me the most through this whole entire process is that ... if I hadn't used my name, if it wasn't for my name and my job title, I don't think I would have gotten anywhere, either," with testing and treatment, said Whitsett, a Detroit Democrat who represents the 9th House District, which includes parts of Dearborn and Detroit's west side.

Whitsett made national headlines earlier this month for praising President Donald Trump and crediting him with saving her life because he'd touted the anti-malaria drug hydroxycholoroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. Last week, she went to the White House to meet him.

"This is why I'm telling my story because this is not how it's supposed to be," Whitsett said. "And we have people that are dying, frankly, in my community. They know that I'm a state representative, and if it wasn't for that, I would not have gotten it. I'm not stupid.

"We have people dying. And they're in my community, and they're in my district, which is my family. People in my community are not my constituents. They are my family. And they're dying. So I need politics to stop and I need lives to be saved."

Obstacles to getting COVID-19 testing and care are not just happening in Detroit's black community.

The American Hospital Association sent a letter last week to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar about the racial disparities in the federal COVID-19 response, highlighting a lack of available tests for African Americans, unequal medical treatment for those who have the disease and lack of public health information about coronavirus for communities of color.

And the CDC released on Friday its first national report on race and coronavirus. It suggests 30% of COVID-19 patients so far in the outbreak are black, though the U.S. population is only about 12% black. The federal agency acknowledged, however, that race data was missing from 75% of the cases it examined.

The doctor who prescribed hydroxychloroquine for Whitsett wrote prescriptions for Cheryl, Keith, his brothers, Troy and Ross, and his sister, Paris, and her daughter, Logan, to get coronavirus tests, Keith said.

But before any of them could get in for testing, Cheryl's condition worsened. Her fever was rising and she was having trouble breathing, too.

Keith drove her to Beaumont Hospital, Grosse Pointe, the night of April 7 - just hours after her husband's body was taken to the funeral home.

"Before they even looked at my mother, there was a young Caucasian lady complaining about sushi she got from GrubHub that upset her stomach, and they swooped her in the back like she had coronavirus," Keith said.

"But my mom, she had all the symptoms, and they tell her just go home. That makes no sense. ... They helped a girl who ate bad seafood over someone with all the signs of needing medical need help.

"I felt like they sent my mother home to die."

Keith refused to give up. Next, he took Cheryl to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

He said he kissed her forehead before she entered the doors of the emergency room alone - during the pandemic, most hospitals don't allow adults to have support people with them inside to avoid further risk of infection.

Keith wondered whether it would be the last time he'd see her alive. The grief was still raw from the death of his father. He prayed he wouldn't lose his mother, too.

"I was very concerned that my mother wouldn't walk out of that hospital, especially after what just happened to my dad," Keith said.

There was relief when he got a call about an hour after he dropped off Cheryl at Henry Ford. She was being admitted.

"She tested positive for the virus as well," he said. "It was a blessing they kept my mom. I think the only reason they kept my mom was because she had prescriptions to get tested for the virus."

Hearts broken, but on the mend

Cheryl Fowler soon also needed a ventilator to help her breathe. Keith got daily updates from the hospital, and his sister frequently checked on her by calling the nurse's station.

Keith said he began to feel a little off as well. He had a tickle in the back of his throat, felt hot and cold flashes and had lost his sense of taste and smell.

His youngest brother, Ross, was sick, too.

On April 8, while their mother struggled for air at Henry Ford Hospital, the rest of the family went to get coronavirus tests.

Keith and Ross, 19, and their brother Troy, 21, sister, Paris, 28, and her daughter, Logan, 7, all got tested at an urgent care clinic on Mack Avenue in Grosse Pointe Woods. They were told it would be at least five days before they got results.

They all went home to wait, and to pray.

A day later, Ross was getting sicker.

Keith took him to Henry Ford in Detroit, too. Ross had been complaining of chest pain, and also had fever and a cough. It was the same hospital where their mother was starting to show signs of improvement.

"He said every time he inhales, it hurts. It hurts very bad," Keith told the Free Press the evening of April 9. "They did a chest X-ray and were like, 'Oh, you have pneumonia. So here's a piece of paper. Go home, and act like you have the virus.'

"I am so tired of hearing that. If I have it, I have it. Please let me know that I have it so I can save my life.

"If my dad could have gotten tested the first time he went to the hospital, he would be here today."

Cheryl came off the ventilator April 10, Keith said. And two days after that, she had recovered enough to be discharged home.

She'll be on supplemental oxygen for at least two weeks, he said, but she's slowly healing through her grief.

Keith and his brother Ross both tested positive for COVID-19, but both are feeling much better now. Everyone else in the family who was tested got negative results.

He is shaken, he said, by all the family has endured in this crisis, and what it has revealed about inequities in this country.

"Why isn't there enough testing in the areas that are mostly impacted, which are black areas?" he asked.

"Why are we being pushed to go home to die around our family and loved ones? That's traumatizing in itself to wake up and your husband next to you is dead after you just talked to him an hour ago.

"This coronavirus is gonna cause so much PTSD for people. It's sad. There's going to be a major fallout after this.

"It's not right at all. ... I don't try to put color on things and say, 'Oh this is black or this is white.' I don't do that with anything in my life, but when you see it, you have to call it how it is."
Free Press staff writer Kristi Tanner contributed to this report. Contact Free Press health writer Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com.
Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2020/04/19/coronavirus-racial-disparity-denied-tests-hospitalization/2981800001/

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Family ravaged by coronavirus begged for tests, hospital care, but was repeatedly denied

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The man who raised Keith Gambrell, who loved him like a son and married his mother, died in a blue recliner of novel coronavirus in his Grosse Pointe Woods home.

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D.-Augustín Rodríguez, 64, arrived on time for every one of his shifts, never absent a day at Smithfield Foods here, where he labored for 20 years.

Rodríguez, who came from El Salvador, continued to go to work at the UFCW-organized plant after he developed a fever and cough because he had to work to pay the bills. On April 1, the pain in his side became too much for him to bear and forced him to call in sick three days in a row. On April 4, unable to take the pain anymore, he was hospitalized.

On April 9, his wife, Angelita, received a call from a testing lab telling her to self-quarantine because her husband had tested positive for COVID-19. Her husband was put on a ventilator for two weeks.

He died Tuesday, becoming the first person at the Smithfield plant to lose his life to the coronavirus.

He has been dead only for three days now, and already more than 700 people connected to his workplace have tested positive for COVID-19, pushing infections in the state to well over 1,000.

The soaring infection rate among the 6,700 workers at the now-shuttered Smithfield pork plant and among Sioux Falls residents in general have made the town the new epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.

"It's not God who is to blame; it's not the coronavirus that is to blame," Augustín's wife Angelita said. "It's Smithfield. I lost him because of that horrible place," she told Mackenzie Huber, a young reporter for the Argus Leader. Huber told People's World that she doesn't speak Spanish so, when at the Rodríguez home, she used the services of a translator.

"Those horrible people and those bosses," Angelita said, "They're sitting in their homes, and they're happy as they spend time with their families."

While those Smithfield bosses shelter in place at their comfortable homes, and as Sioux Falls becomes a new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, South Dakota's GOP Gov. Kristi Noem refuses to issue a state-wide shelter-in-place order.

As infection and death spread like wildfire through Sioux Falls now, in a state only recently cited by President Donald Trump as one of the places "untouched" by the virus, the governor says "this crisis is something that the people of this state and this country will just have to tough out." Her primary concern, she says, is to get the Smithfield plant up and running as soon as possible.

South Dakota's Republican Sen. John Thune is apparently equally unconcerned about the health aspect of the crisis in his state. He has co-signed a letter with GOP senators and House members in Plains and Midwest states urging Trump Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to rush emergency financial aid, not to the worker victims, but to Smithfield and any other meat plants forced to close.

Realizing almost immediately that their Republican governor could be depended upon for nothing, the workers at the plant and their community supporters, led by the labor movement in Sioux Falls, began taking action immediately to save themselves.

Joe Sneve, a reporter for the Argus who lives in the nearby northern suburbs, told People's World that, as soon as news of infection in the plant got out, workers and residents in the Sioux Falls area organized a car caravan that descended upon the plant. "They had signs and honked horns, demanding that measures be taken to protect the safety and the health of the workers and the community," he said.

Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, which represents 30 unions in the area, immediately moved his organizations into action, pressuring the mayor, Paul TenHaken, to issue a stay-at-home-order.

B.J. Motley, the president of Local 304A of the UFCW, which represents the 6,700 workers at the plant, mobilized his workforce in support of demands for shutting it down until it could be made safe. They were able, at first, to get the company to agree to a three-day closure and then to a 14-day shutdown. Smithfield, of course, pretended that the closures were their own ideas, motivated by their alleged concern for worker health.

Even with those successes, however, it has been necessary to fight Smithfield every step of the way. "During that first three-day shutdown for alleged deep cleaning, they didn't really fully close down as they said they would," Caraway explained. "They actually kept 65% of their regular operation going throughout." Only now, Caraway said, are they remaining closed for a two-week period.

The CDC went into the plant with a team yesterday to conduct a study aimed at determining what needs to be done to re-open the plant.

Sneve confirmed that the company is being anything but transparent about yesterday's "inspection." It prevented his newspaper, The Argus Leader, and all other press, for that matter, from joining with the group conducting the inspection of the plant. Smithfield's excuse for barring the press: "Only essential workers are allowed in."

Labor movement pressure on Mayor TenHaken, at least, has borne fruit, as he has put forward a proposal, in defiance of the governor, for a stay-at-home order for Sioux Falls.

"TenHaken at least seems to care about the workers and the people in the town," said the UFCW's Motley, "but it will be an uphill battle getting that stay-at-home order through the town council."

Caraway argued in favor of the order for Sioux Falls at a council meeting last night, but there was significant resistance form right-wing council members who back the governor. So-called "liberty supporters" showed up and were there arguing that stay-at-home orders violate constitutional rights. The measure comes up for the required second hearing and vote next Tuesday. The unions and community groups in favor are hopeful but not entirely confident that they will prevail.

"Looking at some of these council members and local businesses, I'm not so sure," Sneve said. "There are a lot of folks in South Dakota who are not at all happy about government regulating anything."

The labor movement in Sioux Falls is not giving up, however. Caraway vows that the AFL-CIO unions will continue to push, and he says they have already scored gains that put them in a good position to strengthen the voice of workers not just during but also after the pandemic.

At the age of 29, he is the one of the youngest labor council leaders in the country. He leads his council along with Motley of the UFCW, who serves as Secretary-Treasurer.

Some 50 languages and 300 dialects are spoken by the workers in the plant. Under the leadership of Caraway and with strong support from the UFCW's Motley, the union organized an International Solidarity Committee which, Caraway said, "educates incoming workers, both immigrants and refugees, and works with U.S.-born workers to clue them in on labor developments around the world."

The solidarity work of the unions was important in the broader community, too, he said, doing things like organizing the first ever Native American Day parade in Sioux Falls.

With Caraway's leadership, the unions are pushing for more than just protection for workers at the point of production in this plant which, alone, accounts for 5% of the nation's supply of pork products. (The Sioux Falls plant, he said, is a "total production facility where the hogs come in alive at one end with packaged meat products ready for shipment to the nation's supermarkets at the other end."

"We are fighting a governor who makes Ayn Rand look like a liberal humanist," he said. "She has said she opposes shelter-in-place orders because people should be free to do whatever they want, regardless of how that might result in harm to others."

In addition to safety measures inside the plant, he said the unions are pushing hard for a halt to evictions, for paid leave, and for extended and enhanced unemployment benefits. "This is a big deal," he said, "in South Dakota, which serves essentially as another Cayman Islands for the Plains States." He was referring to the many corporations that have their official headquarters in the state to take advantage of the almost total absence of regulations on how they do business.

Their protection of these hideouts for corporations is just one more reason to sweep Trump and Republicans across the country out of office this November. South Dakota is the notorious headquarters for credit card companies and loan companies, for example, that charge anywhere from 25 to 700% interest, compounded daily, for their financial products.

Caraway took issue with the scare campaign Smithfield is waging regarding the nation's meat supply, calling it an "exaggeration." The company is saying that the shutdown will diminish drastically the nation's meat supply and that the meat companies are using that as an excuse to squeeze bailout money from taxpayers. "There is enough money in their coffers to make their production facilities safe and to turn out products," he said. "But for right now, the health and safety of the workers and the surrounding community has to come first."

Both he and Motley described the dangerous conditions workers face in the Smithfield plant.

"It is impossible to do any kind of social distancing in there," Motley, who has worked in the plant for 30 years, said. "We are working elbow to elbow in there, cramped together in unclean conditions."

"The place is 100 years old," Caraway said, with narrow old staircases and hallways, tiny locker rooms with people jammed into them, and people working whole shifts in incredibly close proximity to one another."

Caraway is convinced that the labor movement has a major role to play not just in getting the country through the pandemic but in building the restructured society needed afterwards.

"Labor has always been in the forefront," said the young AFL-CIO leader, "but today conditions are requiring a new and invigorated labor movement. When I first got elected to this job people said, 'Be careful. Don't be too radical.' But I have found that has not been a problem. I always speak out, and I have gotten support for our initiatives from the AFL-CIO leadership, President Richard Trumka, in particular."

Soon after Caraway's crew took over in Sioux Falls, when he was only 27, he told the press that some of the older labor leaders he replaced were "like bats hanging in a cave." He said, "The only time they moved was in response to their own sounds, and the only organizing they did was at the annual Labor Day Picnic."

Continuing, he said, "We have to get rid of some old notions, like the 'Buy America' campaign for example, which is a strategy destined for defeat. Corporations don't recognize borders. We have to organize everywhere so that they don't have any place to go. That's why we are doing an International Solidarity Committee at the Smithfield plant."

"These days," he said, "the pandemic is showing how crucial the workers are to the nation. The corporations see this; they know how important we are, but we can't count on them to change their ways when this pandemic is over. That change is something the workers will have to bring about. Restructuring into a fair economy will not happen otherwise."

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South Dakota Gov. Noem has blood on her hands after Smithfield outbreak

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D.-Augustín Rodríguez, 64, arrived on time for every one of his shifts, never absent a day at Smithfield Foods here, where he labored for 20 years. Rodríguez, who came from El Salvador, continued to go to work at the UFCW-organized plant after he developed a fever and cough because he had to work to pay the bills.

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April 20, 2020, 7:30 a.m. ET

The antibody test, which helps determine whether someone has had the coronavirus, is crucial in guiding the reopening of New York State.

Right Now

Deaths in New York State from the coronavirus dropped to their lowest number in more than two weeks.

Here's what you need to know:

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Hugo Lopez buys an ice cream for his son Jacob, 4, in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Sunday. Credit... Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

New York State will begin testing people for coronavirus antibodies today.

New York will test 3,000 people for antibodies to the coronavirus, starting today, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.

People who test positive for antibodies to the virus are believed to have already had it.

Mr. Cuomo said on Sunday that antibody testing would be key in guiding the reopening of the state, because finding the number of people who had developed antibodies to the virus would help authorities understand the full extent of its spread.

"That will tell us for the first time what percent of the population actually has had the coronavirus and is now - at least short term - immune to the virus," Mr. Cuomo said. "This will be the first true snapshot of what we're really dealing with.

The testing program, run by the State Health Department, will test a random sample of the population, because the state does not have the capacity to widely test its 19 million residents.

Michael Dowling, the chief executive of the health care network Northwell Health, said that the network hoped to build to 10,000 tests by the end of the week.

Across the country, states have said that people who have tested positive for antibodies could be allowed to return to work first.

But scientists and public health officials have raised alarms about the quality of available antibody tests and have criticized the federal government for approving the tests without sufficient scrutiny.

Mr. Cuomo also said on Sunday that data indicated New York was "past the high point" of the coronavirus outbreak. He reported that 507 more people had died in the state, the lowest figure since April 2.

"If this trend holds, we are past the high point, and all indications at this point are that we are on a descent," he said, adding, "We are on the other side of the plateau and the numbers are coming down."

The governor asked that New Yorkers remain vigilant, emphasizing that 1,300 people had been hospitalized for the virus the previous day.

In New Jersey, where deaths peaked about a week later than they did in New York, the 132 deaths reported on Sunday were the lowest figure since April 13.

De Blasio asks Trump if he's telling New York City to "drop dead."

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday continued to call on President Trump to direct desperately needed federal funding to American cities, and to criticize the president's silence on the matter.

"Donald Trump is not doing anything to help my city back on its feet," Mr. de Blasio said Monday morning on MSNBC. "How am I going to pay for basic services? How am I going to pay for first responders? How am I going to have a restart of my economy if my city's going broke?"

On Sunday, Mr. de Blasio had compared the president's lack of response on the financial shortfall facing New York City in particular to President Gerald Ford's dismissal of the city during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, which prompted the famous newspaper headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

"President Trump, what's going on? Cat got your tongue?" Mr. de Blasio said during his daily press briefing. "You're usually really talkative. You usually have an opinion on everything. How on earth do you not have an opinion on aid to American cities and states?"

He

The mayor announced last week that New York City would have to slash more than $2 billion in municipal services over the next year.

We examined the troubled nursing home where body bags piled up.

Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center II in Andover, N.J., which has 543 beds, was chronically short of staff and masks, and over the past two years the nursing home had received poor grades from federal and state inspectors. Residents were crowded three to a room, and as the outbreak worsened, so did sanitary conditions.

Workers said they hurriedly made their rounds, dispensing medicine, changing bedsheets, feeding those who could not feed themselves and doing other tasks that brought them into close contact with residents.

After receiving a tip last Monday, the police found 17 bodies in bags in a small holding room at the nursing home.

By Sunday, at least 70 Andover residents had died and dozens of the 420 remaining residents and staff members had either tested positive for the virus or were sick with fevers, coughs or both, according to county officials.

Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you're seeing.

As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers - anyone who can share what's happening in the region's hospitals and other health care centers. Even if you haven't seen anything yet, we want to connect now so we can stay in touch in the future.

A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.

Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Andy Newman and Azi Paybarah.

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N.Y. Begins Antibody Testing for Virus: Live Updates

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April 20, 2020, 7:30 a.m. ET The antibody test, which helps determine whether someone has had the coronavirus, is crucial in guiding the reopening of New York State. Right Now Deaths in New York State from the coronavirus dropped to their lowest number in more than two weeks.

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'Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.' A Global Food Crisis Looms.

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The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year.

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In 1917, as the United States deployed troops to a Europe battered by warfare and food shortages, victory gardens sprang up across the U.S. Planted by civilians with urging by the government, these small gardens were made to feed American infantry and help " win the war." Now, more than a century later, victory gardens are once again in fashion amid fears of shortages during the coronavirus pandemic, with seed companies seeing a surge in demand.

But for many people sheltering at home without access to outdoor space, their version of victory gardens look a little less like dedicated plots of earth, and more like scallions growing in glasses of water on the windowsill. Like quarantine baking, dalgona coffee, and virtual parties, this form of low-key gardening - hereby dubbed "victory sills," trademark not pending - has emerged as one of the pandemic's at-home micro-trends, adopted and adapted by those who are fortunate enough to be able to stay indoors and tinker with some light horticulture.

There's an obvious practicality to the notion of victory sills during this time of social distancing, when even a simple grocery run should be carefully considered to avoid the risk of coronavirus transmission. For writer Kat Thompson, growing her own leeks and scallions - or her "plant children" - from the leftover root ends just made sense, both in terms of money and time, once the virus outbreak intensified in New York and grocery shopping became more fraught.

"Since we've been in quarantine, we've been cooking a lot more," says Thompson, who already had some experience tending to plants, like the lemongrass and holy basil that she grew up watching her Thai mother cultivate in their garden. "I just knew that it's a thing you can do: you cut off a certain amount, you put it in water, the roots will pop out in a couple of days, and you can regrow them."

The simplicity of this kind of hydroponics-lite gardening is also a reason why many people, including first-time vegetable growers, are tempted to try it out. "I always tell people: if you're going to start something, whether that's cooking or even gardening, start with something you know is going to build confidence," says cookbook author Nik Sharma, who recently published a guide to making the best use of pantry essentials and kitchen scraps. Scallions in jars of water, the odd leftover bean in a pot of soil, even cherry tomatoes, which are easier and more encouraging to tackle than touchier heirloom varieties - "These are all little things people can do without having to put that much effort in," according to Sharma.

For the online generation, there's also a social aspect to the trend, the feeling of being able to participate in a collective hobby that several of your friends are doing. Noah Cho, a writer and teacher in the Bay Area, was partly inspired by watching the updates that Thompson, a friend of his, posted on Instagram Stories.

"I have done everything else that's basic quarantine stuff," Cho says, listing off activities like making sourdough, whipping dalgona coffee, and playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (a game, he points out, in which he also spends his time planting trees and flowers). "I've just been doing everything that everybody else is doing because I feel like it's my one way of staying connected to the world ... I can't go outside, but at least I can send friends my allium progress."

There are also small, private joys that some find in tending to their victory sills. Aaron Hutcherson, a chef, recipe developer, and writer in New York, describes the simple pleasure of seeing how his scallions - which he put in a stemless champagne flute filled with water, not long after the state's stay-at-home order went into effect - grew practically overnight. "Having something to look after right now just feels nice," he says. "A little bit of joy amid the darkness."

Not everyone who is currently attempting to grow new life on their windowsills will continue after the pandemic has ended (although the people I talked to for this story says they will try). But still, the experience of having done so during this particular moment in time, when so much is uncertain, may stay with them. Food waste, scarcity, labor - these larger issues are all inextricable from the story of a scallion, from start to finish, as it makes the journey from field to grocery store to your kitchen.

"Green onions are something we take for granted, and I think in a time when we're looking at food waste more closely, and thinking about who grows our food and the sacrifices they have to make to do it, this might make a good starting point for a lot of people to really understand what it takes," says Cho. Keeping a green onion alive may be as simple as giving it sunlight and changing its water every day, but it still requires attention, consistency, care; produce doesn't just magically materialize for our consumption. For individuals like Cho, that reminder is small, but significant: "There's a different appreciation I have for something as simple as a green onion, because of this."

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In Quarantine, the Budding of a Pastime: Growing Vegetable Scraps on Windowsills

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In 1917, as the United States deployed troops to a Europe battered by warfare and food shortages, victory gardens sprang up across the U.S. Planted by civilians with urging by the government, these small gardens were made to feed American infantry and help " win the war."

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I called my parents a few nights ago to tell them to be cautious when stepping out of the house, because they might be targets of verbal or even physical abuse. It felt so strange. Our roles had flipped.

My plea mirrored the admonitions I received from them as a child growing up in Houston. The world, they cautioned, was hostile and it viewed us as strangers. So they warned me to stick close to my family. Close to my kind.

The fact that the coronavirus seems to have originated in China has spawned a slew of anti-Asian hate crimes. Across the country, Asian American parents and children are making versions of the call I made. Friends are sharing first-hand accounts of abuse on text chains and circulating articles on Facebook, always ending with the suddenly ominous "stay safe."

Growing up, the assumption was that once we became American enough, there would be no need for such warnings - that we would be safe. To that end, my parents encouraged me and my younger brother to watch as much television as possible, so that we might learn to speak and act like the natives. The hope was that race would not disadvantage us - the next generation - if we played our cards right.

When I became an actor (maybe as a result of all that TV), and really started to work, I felt glimmers of my parents' hope coming to fruition - doors were open, strangers were kinder. In some ways, I began to lead a life devoid of race. But I've learned that a moment always comes along to remind you that your race defines you above all else.

It might be a small moment, like a salesperson greeting you with "konnichiwa." Or it might be a string of moments, like the press tour that Kal Penn and I took to promote "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" in 2004, a few years after 9/11.

We flew across the country - New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle - and it became a grim routine: Flight after flight, Kal would be pulled aside for a "random" search. On one leg of the tour, Kal's friend Gabe joined us, and when we hit security, Kal was selected for a search while Gabe and I flew through unscathed. We gathered our bags and waited on a bench for Kal to be released. Rummaging through his backpack, Gabe suddenly said, "Kal's going to be annoyed." When I looked inside it, I realized why: Gabe, who is white, had gone camping recently, and had neglected to remove his Rambo-sized hunting knife from his backpack.

I gasped and looked back at Kal, who was watching a Transportation Security Administration worker empty the contents of his bag. It was a reality check.

Asian Americans are experiencing such a moment right now. The pandemic is reminding us that our belonging is conditional. One moment we are Americans, the next we are all foreigners, who "brought" the virus here.

Like fame, the "model minority" myth can provide the illusion of "raceless-ness." Putting select Asians on a pedestal silences those who question systemic injustice. Our supposed success is used as proof that the system works - and if it doesn't work for you, it must be your fault.

Never mind that 12% of us are living below the poverty line. The model minority myth helps maintain a status quo that works against people of all colors.

But perhaps the most insidious effect of this myth is that it silences us. It seduces Asian Americans and recruits us to act on its behalf. It converts our parents, who in turn, encourage us to accept it. It makes you feel protected, that you're passing as one of the good ones.

And because the stereotypes may be complimentary (hardworking, good at math), it makes people - including us - think that anti-Asian sentiment is somehow less serious, that it's racism lite. That allows us to dismiss the current wave of Asian hate crimes as trivial, isolated and unimportant. Consider the comedians who mock Asians, but restrain themselves when it comes to other groups.

Of course, with the falsely positive come the negative stereotypes (you're sneaky, you're stealing jobs, you're corrupt). After I had been busted for cheating on a Latin quiz in high school, I recall my teacher asking, "Why are Koreans such cheaters?"

During times of national stress, it's these darker stereotypes that prevail. My wife's families were incarcerated in camps during World War II, even while her great-uncles were serving in an all-Japanese American battalion of the U.S. Army. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American autoworker, was brutally beaten to death in Detroit in 1982, blamed for the Japanese "takeover" of the auto industry. And just recently, an Asian woman in Brooklyn had acid thrown at her while she was taking out the trash, another among the skyrocketing attacks against Asians.

I came to this country in 1978, at the age of 6. I was naturalized on Nov. 21, 1990, during the military buildup before the start of the Gulf War. I remember being surprised by the judge at the ceremony asking me whether I would defend my country in uniform if called upon. I wasn't expecting that question, though my friends and I had been wondering about a possible draft, and I took my time to truly consider it. I answered yes and I meant it.

I claimed the citizenship my parents wanted for me and I think I've spent my life earning it. I'm not going to let anyone tell me or anyone who looks like me that we are not really American.

If the coronavirus has taught us anything, it's that the solution to a widespread problem cannot be patchwork. Never has our interconnectedness and our reliance on each other been plainer.

You can't stand up for some and not for others. And like the virus, unchecked aggression has the potential to spread wildly. Please don't minimize the hate or assume it's somewhere far away. It's happening close to you. If you see it on the street, say something. If you hear it at work, say something. If you sense it in your family, say something. Stand up for your fellow Americans.
John Cho is an actor best known for his roles in the "Harold & Kumar" and "Star Trek" films. He lives in Los Angeles.

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John Cho: Coronavirus reminds Asian Americans belonging is conditional

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I called my parents a few nights ago to tell them to be cautious when stepping out of the house, because they might be targets of verbal or even physical abuse. It felt so strange. Our roles had flipped. My plea mirrored the admonitions I received from them as a child growing up in Houston.

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michael caputo made racist comments about chinese people in now-deleted tweets  - cnnpolitics

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New HHS spokesman made racist comments about Chinese people in now-deleted tweets

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The new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in a series of now-deleted tweets made racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people, said Democrats wanted the coronavirus to kill millions of people and accused the media of intentionally creating panic around the pandemic to hurt President Donald Trump.

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The COVID Racial Data Tracker is a collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. Together, we're gathering the most complete and up-to-date race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 in the United States.

Júlia Ledur / COVID Tracking Project

Nationwide, Black people have died at 1.4 times the rate of white people.

Deaths per 100,000 people by race or ethnicity through March 7, 2021

Notes ↓

These calculations are based on data from The Covid Racial Data Tracker and the U.S. Census Bureau. Race categories may overlap with Hispanic/Latinx ethnicity. Rates are not age-adjusted and some rates are underestimated due to lack of reporting of race and ethnicity categories for COVID-19 deaths.

We've lost at least 73,462 Black lives to COVID-19 to date. Black people account for 15% of COVID-19 deaths where race is known.

We've asked every state to report complete race and ethnicity data. Our Racial Data Dashboard has the latest.

States and territories reporting race and ethnicity data

Tracking inequity at the county level

State-level statistics tell part of the story, but many US states are also deeply segregated-meaning different counties in the same state can have vastly different breakdowns by race and ethnicity.

Race and ethnicity data for COVID cases isn't widely available at the county level, so we're using two numbers we do have: the latest infection and death rates for each county, from a New York Times dataset, paired with the largest racial or ethnic group in that county, based on the Census Bureau's 2019 ACS 5-Year estimates. The results are staggering.

Counties with the 20 highest infection rates

Largest racial or ethnic group

White alone

American Indian and Alaskan Native alone

Hispanic or Latino

0 10,000 20,000 Chattahoochee, GA Crowley, CO Bent, CO Trousdale, TN Dewey, SD Lincoln, AR Lake, TN Bon Homme, SD Norton, KS Dimmit, TX Bethel Census Area, AK Buena Vista, IA Luce, MI Buffalo, SD Dakota, NE Eddy, ND Alfalfa, OK Forest, PA Ellsworth, KS Big Horn, MT

This chart shows the 20 counties with the highest level of infections per capita, and the largest racial or ethnic group in that county. Non-Hispanic White people represent the largest racial group in most of these counties. This is in line with Census statistics, which show that more than 60 percent of Americans are White, non-Hispanic or Latino. Show chart data ↓

Counties with the 20 highest death rates

Largest racial or ethnic group

White alone

Black or African American alone

Hispanic or Latino

American Indian and Alaskan Native alone

0 200 400 Galax city, VA Hancock, GA Jerauld, SD Emporia city, VA McMullen, TX Gove, KS Gregory, SD Foard, TX Iron, WI Motley, TX Turner, SD Dickey, ND McKinley, NM Robertson, KY Hamlin, SD Buffalo, SD Glascock, GA Lamb, TX Candler, GA Maverick, TX

When we look at the 20 counties with the highest level of deaths per capita, we see a different story. In two of these 20 counties, Black people represent the largest racial group. Two of the top five counties with the highest death rates in the nation are all predominantly Black. Show chart data ↓

Learn more from media outlets across the country about how COVID-19 is impacting communities of color.

The COVID Tracking Project collects and publishes the most complete data about COVID-19 in the US.

CovidTracking.com Copyright © 2022 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. (CC BY 4.0) Back to top

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The COVID-19 pandemic isn't affecting all communities the same way. The COVID Racial Data Dashboard helps us track this inequity by publishing topline racial data compared with state demographic data.

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tribes say they aren't getting help they need from federal government - cnnpolitics

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Amid coronavirus, tribes say they aren't getting help they need from federal government

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The health care crisis on reservations around the country is mounting with Navajo Nation, a vast 27,000 square miles spanning three states, facing more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 40 deaths.

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On March 25, Jennifer Avalos Barrios, a 24-year-old from Guatemala with two young boys in California, made a panicked call to her sister from an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana. "Call my lawyer," she said, "and tell her I'm suffocating."

Marlene Seo, a 47-year-old who's lived in the United States since she was 3, sent texts. "Alex," she wrote to her daughter through an app, "they just sprayed pepper spray in here and everyone is practically dying from coughing we can't breathe!!!" The next message was one word: "help!!!"

That morning, officials from GEO Group at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's LaSalle detention center had assured Avalos Barrios, Seo, and their dorm mates that they were safe from the new coronavirus. Things went awry, and soon 79 women found themselves trapped in a room filled with pepper spray. They were coughing, fainting, crying out for help. It was an hour or so before they got out, Avalos Barrios later told her lawyer, Mariel Villarreal.

I've spoken to Avalos Barrios, five dorm mates, a woman who watched things unfold from a neighboring dorm, and many of their loved ones. Most are using their real names, a courageous decision at a time when GEO Group is retaliating against people who speak to the media.

Listen to immigration reporter Noah Lanard reconstruct the ICE pepper-spray attack in detail from interviews with several women in detention, on this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast.

Most of the interviews were done over video calls, with the women sitting in front of a backdrop reminiscent of school photo days-the realities of detention behind them obscured by a cartoonish mountain. The $0.21-per-minute calls occasionally afforded more intimacy than the phone, but they had a tendency to leave faces frozen at unflattering angles. The app we used, called GettingOut, refers to detainees by an unintentionally accurate euphemism: residents.

Even in a pandemic, getting out of the LaSalle "ICE Processing Center" isn't easy. Nearly 1,100 of the 1,335 beds there were full earlier this month. While ICE has released some people with medical conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19, it continues to hold many more in tight quarters that make social distancing impossible.

The new coronavirus has brought tensions in detention centers to new extremes, but what happened on March 25 was months of neglect in the making, and ghoulish in its ironies. This is the story-in the women's own words-of how a presentation about a virus that attacks people's lungs culminated in guards in gas masks pulling women out of a toxic room.
Aside from the interviews with Marlene Seo, her daughter, and a woman from a neighboring dorm, what appears below is translated from Spanish. ICE and GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.

1. Before LaSalle

Marlene Seo: I come from a blended family.

Alex, Marlene's daughter: It's surreal. She's been here her whole life. Her side of the family is all Mexican. My dad is Korean. We never went to Mexico. We never visited her extended family because she was always scared of the cartel stuff.

Marlene: We have five kids and five granddaughters. This was all a shock for me-to be even sentenced to prison time for taxes. [ Listen 🔈]

Jennifer Avalos Barrios: I've been in the US for three years. I fled Guatemala to seek asylum with my sons. They're with my sister in California. The older one is 9. The younger one just turned 6 in February. The police arrested me after I got into an accident in Alabama. I lived in San Francisco, but I had relatives in Tennessee.

Kerlys: I'm from Colombia. I left for the capital and later got a job in the US. I was studying to be a medical assistant when I had my first daughter, who's 7. A friend's wife asked me to give her an implant. We ordered it from Colombia without seeing if that was allowed here. She had an allergic reaction and had to go to the hospital. The hospital called the police, then the FDA came.

I turned myself in on May 31. It was three hard months. The probation office said I wouldn't have any issues with immigration. Then they called the next day to say that ICE had placed a detainer. ICE picked me up on August 30 and I got to LaSalle on September 5.

Adelina (a pseudonym): I'm Dominican. I'm 46 years old, and I've been in the US for 25 years. I've got five kids. I was doing tiling. I worked with a whole team-six, seven, eight, nine people for a big job. I was driving when we got stopped. Immigration status isn't something I look into. I only care that you show up to work, but I was driving. They arrested me-took the car, my cellphone, my tools, everything. I thought I was going to get a ticket or something.

I have asthma, bad circulation, high blood pressure. But I spent a year fighting a human-trafficking charge from prison. They knew the charge would strip me of my green card. I said in court, "Innocent, innocent, innocent." A lawyer told me they'd let me out if I pled guilty. I wasn't getting the medicine I needed. I was having asthma attacks. What do you think I did? The judge said I was free to go. Then ICE grabbed me.

Laura (a pseudonym): I'm from Honduras, and I was living in Nashville. I'm not going to be with my son when he turns 10. When I got arrested, I said my son is asthmatic and he needs me. I said I've been living in this country for 15 years. The police didn't care and called immigration. The immigration officer showed up and showed me a piece of paper. He said, "Do you know what this is? It's your ticket back to your country." The only thing I did wrong was coming to this country illegally. I pay my taxes.

I've been here for two months and will be waiting for three or four more months to have a bond hearing. [ Listen in Spanish 🔈]

Mailenys Hernández Jiménez: I worked in IT in Cuba. My husband and I came to the US on May 5 and turned ourselves in together.

Mailenys' husband: They separated us. I got sent to Colorado. She got sent to tents in the desert.

Mailenys: I slept on the ground for 50 days and was only allowed to bathe six times. Then I got sent back to Mexico on June 23. On July 24, I crossed the bridge to go to court and told the judge I was afraid of going back to Juárez. I told an asylum officer about everything that had happened. I got back my passport, my phone, and all my things. I asked an official three times if he was sure I was being released. He said yes. I ended up getting sent to LaSalle. After two months, my husband was released with a $5,000 bond. I've been going through this for 11 months.

2. "One Little Jar of Soap"

Marlene: The whole immigration process is awful, to say the least. It's unnecessary to spend so much time in here. The depression it's causing for people. I'm a very spiritual person. I read self-help books. I know how to stay positive. I know how to stay busy. But I just broke down today. I translate for a lot of people, so they tell me their stories. They confide in me. And it just took a toll on me today.

Yesterday, I found out that my court date was going to be changed again. I just feel like it's so easy for them to just say "another week, another month," when they're not the ones in here and your families are suffering. Families are being torn apart unnecessarily. It's sad, and it brings you down.

Kerlys: I served three months for a crime. Three months. And now I'm here for an immigration case I could handle from home with an ankle monitor. I wouldn't be able to go anywhere because I'm on probation. But, no, we're here in totally inhumane conditions. [ Listen in Spanish 🔈]

Marlene: When you walk in, there's tables here in the front. The beds are in the middle part, and they're very close together. There's seven rows. In the very back are the toilets and the showers.

Kerlys: There's four toilets and six showers for 80 women.

Adelina: There's only one microwave. Right now, it's not working.

Marlene: The regular uniform is blue and orange. Blue for low level. Orange for low-medium. It's like 90 percent blue. The other dorm has yellow and red, so they're higher security.

Kerlys: On top of everything else that's happening with the coronavirus, my husband left me three months ago. He said he was tired of taking care of the girls alone, and that he'd met someone else. Eight days ago, he took my daughters to Georgia. I don't know anything about how my kids are doing, only that they're with their dad and someone named Mary.

Adelina: I was very sick when I got here. It took two weeks to get medical attention. They thought I was playing games. They said, "Calm down, it's nothing." Then a doctor saw me and confirmed I have asthma.

Mailenys: Everything they give you here has flour in it. Everything. They don't give us fruit. Today's lunch was bread, mashed potatoes, a sweet roll, and some meat. I have a thyroid condition, so I have to eat well. There's nothing healthy to buy from the commissary, either.

Marlene: The commissary is expensive-highway robbery for generic brand items. I saw yesterday the powdered milk is $5. It's just a small bag. Sensodyne toothpaste is $8.10.

The cleaning supplies. I asked even before all of this. I would ask for wipes, and they would tell us we don't have the funds. I would think that's odd because you would think a place saturated with so many people would have common things. Then this whole COVID thing happened, and it's like, "Okay, we really need it now." They're telling us we need to have it. And nope, still don't have it.

Laura: We don't have enough sanitary pads, soap, and cleaning supplies. They want us to keep things clean, but they don't give us what we need.

Marlene: Hand soap. We literally had to beg for it. They're doing a little better now. They handed us these little tubes of soap yesterday. They said they're going to bring us one every week. When we finish one, we have to show the empty one to get a new one. But for the whole week, one little jar of soap and that's it. It's ridiculous.

Kerlys: We have the advantage of having TVs. We have the news on 24/7 because there's nothing else to do.

Marlene: They don't understand that I speak English. I kind of eavesdrop on their conversations. One of the officers said today they need to take away our TVs so that we don't hear the news.

Kerlys: In Aliceville, I didn't feel like I was in prison. Here, I've experienced what it's really like to be a prisoner.

Marlene: I told them, we're not criminals. We're here just for an immigration process. You don't have to treat us like this. They just think because you don't speak English or whatever, they just push you along like cattle. "Do this. Do that."

Kerlys: The guards are always outside the dorm because they're afraid of being infected. It's because something is happening outside that we're not aware of.

3. La Doctora Mentirosa

Jennifer: Someone from GEO came and said that ICE and doctors were going to come and talk to us about coronavirus the next day. They said we'd have the chance to ask questions.

Marlene: They had told us not to ask silly questions. They make you feel stupid. Like, "Don't ask about their nail polish." I know they're trying to joke, but this is not a funny matter.

Kerlys: The official who told us about the meeting said this was our chance to do something because things were ugly outside. She said a lot of them didn't want to be working but that they had to. She said to only talk about the virus.

Everyone said they're going to bring in La Doctora Mentirosa-the Lying Doctor. She's a psychologist, but she's known as the La Doctora Mentirosa. We don't know her actual name. We say she's a liar because she promises things will happen, and they never do. [ Listen in Spanish 🔈]

Jennifer: It's very difficult to talk about what happened on Wednesday, but I'll tell you. The GEO assistant was wearing red pants, a white blouse with red stripes, and red sneakers.

Kerlys: Everything was super clean. We had our questions ready.

Mailenys: The doctor came with a plan. She was going to tell us what they wanted us to hear. But we were well informed.

Jennifer: The administrator started by introducing everyone: "She's the doctor, they're from ICE, he's the captain." She said, "I'm in charge of making sure there's enough soap, that you have cleaning supplies, that everything is clean."

"Perfect," we said. "We haven't had soap for the past few days." She said, "Send me a request when there's not enough soap." Then another woman came back from court, and she said, "You're the one who bugs me with the requests."

Then it was the supposed doctor's turn. She speaks Spanish very well. She said, "I'm here to talk about the coronavirus-how to avoid it, how to stop it from spreading." She said you have to wash your hands and be more than six feet apart. You don't have to hug. You can bump elbows.

"Any questions?" she asked. "Of course," we said.

Laura: The question that stuck with me was one about how we could avoid being in groups of 10 or more if we have people all around us. I remember the doctor saying you have to maintain distance. The woman followed up and said, "How are we going to maintain distance if there are 80 of us?" Then the doctor dodged the question and moved on.

Kerlys: I asked what their plan for avoiding mass contagion was. She ignored me and started answering another question. I raised my hand and said, "Answer my question, please."

The doctor said to calm down, that we shouldn't be watching the news because it was pure paranoia. That it was a simple flu. "I have two young daughters at home," she said. "I wouldn't be here if it were that serious." [ Listen in Spanish 🔈]

Mailenys: She told us not to worry, that only old people get the coronavirus.

Kerlys: I read. Being in detention doesn't mean we're ignorant.

Jennifer: Another woman asked about people who are asymptomatic. She went to someone else. We said, "No. Answer the question." A lot of women started saying, "You're not a doctor, you're a psychologist."

Marlene: I came back from court and started hearing questions. Then so many people started interrupting. Things started getting out of control. An officer standing in the back said, "If you can't be civil, we're going to leave." He called it off. Everybody got upset.

Kerlys: We hadn't planned a demonstration or anything like that. That was just something that happened. After they left, we started to chant, "Libertad! Libertad! Libertad!" A Russian woman started yelling, "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!"

Heather (a pseudonym for a woman in a nearby unit): I heard something about freedom. They were chanting. I'm like, what's all this noise?

Jennifer: We started talking to them through the glass, saying that the doctor should come back. That they shouldn't be cowards. We told a guard to open the door. We want to talk to the doctor. The guard got scared. She called a captain, who called another captain. A lot of captains showed up. They opened the door. We came up to the door. The captains pushed us. Some of the women pushed back.

Adelina: She came with a bottle of pepper spray.

Kerlys: One of the girls pushed the administrator, and a few of them took off.

Marlene: A few people got out, and at that point the administrator just started spraying everybody, then pushed the door closed.

Jennifer: It was the GEO administrator who sprayed the pepper spray. It was her, personally, who sprayed us.

Kerlys: An asthmatic woman fell to the floor after getting pepper-sprayed. She sprayed her in the face while she was on the ground.

Jennifer: She sprayed a lot people in the face, including me and a friend who's asthmatic.

Kerlys: She did it knowing that there were people who'd had asthma attacks a few days ago from bleach they'd used in the bathroom.

Jennifer: She did it without compassion. It doesn't matter to them that we're humans.

Marlene: There are a lot of people with respiratory problems. We were choking from the gas. Coughing.

Kerlys: All the sudden, everyone started coughing and rubbing their eyes. It turned into chaos. Everyone coughing. The people had asthma falling on the ground and passing out.

Marlene: We were yelling for them to open the door, and they didn't open it. Somebody threw something at the window to break it, but you can't break tempered glass or however these windows are.

Kerlys: We were hitting the glass. Help! Help! We're suffocating.

Adelina: It hit me in the face, too. I couldn't see. I went with everyone else to the back. I didn't know what to do because I'd never experienced something so terrible before. I was looking for air, and there wasn't air. [ Making a gasping sound.] Searching. Searching. It was a horror movie, but it was real. [ Listen in Spanish 🔈]

Jennifer: Most of us who were up front had to go back to the bathroom.

Adelina: I saw some people jumping in the shower, so I got in the shower as well, washing from head to toe. But we still couldn't breathe. A lot of people fainted. We were banging on the glass. Someone passed out by the door looking for air. I threw up blood.

Laura: I went up front because there was an older woman who was coughing. I wanted to help her, but when I got close, the smell of the gas hit me. I had to go back. Someone sat me down and told me to calm down, to breathe, because I couldn't breathe.

Jennifer: I called my sister and said, "You need to call my lawyer and say I'm suffocating." My sister said, "Calm down, you're okay." I said, "I'm not okay."

Marlene: I sent a text message to my daughter: They just pepper-sprayed us. Everybody's choking, gagging, throwing up. "Help," is what I said.

Alex: My heart just dropped. She wanted me to call the cops, so I called the cops for their area. They didn't do anything. They just said I needed to call the ICE processing center. They gave me attitude and said if I had a problem I should file a complaint online. [ Listen 🔈]

Marlene: They came back in wearing gas masks. They were only pulling out the people who were really sick. "Bring her over here!" They were standing by the door. They didn't want to go and get them. Then they closed the door again.

Heather: It was seeping through the door. When the door opened, the spray came inside. Everybody started coughing and coughing.

Jennifer: They said the rest of us would remain inside. We said no because we were all choking.

Marlene: They shut the door for an hour.

4. "The Animals Get Airtime, and the Immigrants Don't"

Jennifer: They sent us to the yard, along with some of the other dorms near ours because the spray got into all the rooms.

Marlene: They took us outside, single file. They had us sit down by the fence.

Jennifer: Five captains, two guards, and two from ICE.

Marlene: They counted us all and started treating people who were really bad. They were pouring water on gauze so anybody could wipe their face. They were pointing people out who were involved. I think they told this one girl they were going to question her. She said no, no, no.

Mailenys: She's tiny. Very skinny.

Jennifer: They told her she was the leader. We said, "There's not a leader here. We're all united. We all need answers to the questions we asked. We need the doctor to come back." The doctor didn't come back. Three men from GEO threw the woman to the ground. They put their knees on my friend's back. If they'd pulled harder, they would have broken her arm. It was bent back.

Marlene: It took like a few people to hold her down. The men had their knees on her back. They took her, and all I remember is the way that they were holding her in handcuffs, with her hands way above her head. They were just dragging her.

Jennifer: The captains picked her up by the arms like she was an animal. [ Listen 🔈]

Laura: I cried seeing how they treated her. She's a human being, a woman. I felt very sad for her and scared they might do the same thing to me.

Marlene: Then they brought us all back inside. They came in, turned on the vents, and opened a window. The air was blowing in, and [they] just kind of let it run for the rest of the day to get the smell out of here. And that was it.

Laura: Six or seven people got here last night. They said they hadn't been tested. Nothing. We don't know if they might be infected. Now they're with us.

Marlene: Everybody's problem is that they keep bringing people in. It's like, do you not get it? We're already scared as it is. Louisiana is a high point of extreme contamination.

Laura: How can they not have some heart and release us so we can fight our cases from outside? We're mothers. With everything that's happening right now with the coronavirus, why don't they let us out?

Kerlys: If the virus gets in here, it's going to be chaos. We're all going to get sick.

Marlene: We hear what's on the TV. We hear all the rules that are being applied out there, but not in here. We're being forgotten. They had this whole episode about animals and shelters. What about immigrants? The animals get airtime, and the immigrants don't. [Listen 🔈]

Kerlys: They treat us like animals, but there are officials who are good, who are excellent, who are sweet. I work in the laundry. Monday to Friday, I make $3 a day washing the men's clothes.

There's a woman in charge whose last name is Garden. In Spanish, garden is jardín. I call her Señora Jardín. She tells me things are horrible out there. I don't understand why they don't let you out-to go home and be with your families-because we don't know when this will end.

5. Getting Out

Not long after these conversations, ICE reported that a detainee at the detention center had tested positive for COVID-19. On Tuesday evening, it reported two more cases.

Late last week, Jennifer was granted a bond of $10,000. Her relatives, left without work by the coronavirus, could afford to pay only about half of it. Villarreal, her attorney, frantically secured the rest from nonprofit bond funds. They were in a race against time. The plan was to get Jennifer out before her final hearing on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Jennifer's sister, brother-in-law, and two kids set off from California's Bay Area at 6 a.m. When I reached her sister on Monday, she told me they'd gotten on the road at 3 a.m. after dropping the boys off at their grandmother's place in Rome, Georgia. They were on track to complete in 60 hours a nearly 3,000-mile drive that takes 44 hours if done nonstop. At 10:17 p.m. on Monday, with Jennifer released and back in cellphone range, I got a call.

The voice on the other end-the "hola" that stretched out into two long syllables of joy-had new life to it. I asked how she was doing. Jennifer's response was succinct: "I'm happy to be out of that hell."

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The women asked ICE for soap. They got pepper-sprayed instead.

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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters. On March 25, Jennifer Avalos Barrios, a 24-year-old from Guatemala with two young boys in California, made a panicked call to her sister from an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana. "Call my lawyer," she said, "and tell her I'm suffocating."

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A mother in Littleton is spit on in front of her young children. A man is harassed while sitting in his car in Denver. An elderly business owner is accosted while grocery shopping in Lakewood.

Welcome to pandemic life for minorities in Colorado. Minority activists say that as unnerving as the COVID-19 crisis is for everyone, many racial and cultural minorities are getting an extra serving of stress right now.

Advocates say incidents of bias-motivated crime against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans are on the rise across the metroplex as officials scramble to simultaneously combat the novel coronavirus and the new waves of xenophobia the disease has sewn.

"We have been hearing more and more reports from our friends and community members about harassment that they're getting while they're out in public," said Harry Budisidharta, executive director of the Asian Pacific Development Center in Aurora. "It ranges from spitting, to shoving, to yelling of racial slurs, to people backing away and looking visibly afraid."

For the past couple of months, Budisidharta said his organization and its partners have been receiving weekly reports of such vitriol across the metroplex, even though much of it goes unreported.

"I think a lot of people are afraid of making reports to the police, particularly in light of how hostile the federal administration has been when it comes to immigration," he said. "I know there's a difference between federal and local, but I think for a lot of people, they don't really draw that distinction."

Indeed, reporting has been scant in Aurora and Denver in recent weeks. Aurora police had not received any recently documented reports of bias-motivated crimes against Asians or Asian-Americans as of April 14, according to a department spokesperson. There was one documented report Feb. 16 in Denver when an Asian man told officers another man yelled slurs at him through his car window. It was the first documented instance of a hate crime against a person who identified as Asian in the state's capital city in more than a year, according to a spokesman for the Denver Police Department.

National figures show a more troubling trend. Kathy Ko Chin, president and CEO of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, said organizations that track instances of hate against Asians have been receiving more than 100 reports of such incidents a day in recent months. That mirrors the number of reported hate crimes after Sept. 11, 2001.

And in the week after President Donald Trump referred to the new viral infection as the "China virus," anti-Asian messages rose by nearly 170 percent on Twitter, according to a preliminary analysis of nearly 1 million tweets conducted by Gilbert Gee, a professor of community health sciences at UCLA. When used in tweets, the divisive phrase appeared more often in messages with so-called negative speech than the term "COVID-19."

The World Health Organization in 2015 formally discouraged epidemiologists and politicians from prescribing geographic locations to diseases in an effort to stem stigmas.

Gee said a spike in racist speech in-person and online can exacerbate health issues in at-risk populations and prompt even more attacks on historically marginalized groups.

"Do we want to fool ourselves into thinking that the fight is against other people and waste our energy blaming them, or face the reality that we live on a planet where pathogens are constantly emerging from everywhere?," Gee said on a call with reporters earlier this week. " ... Blaming other people will give us some temporary comfort through the illusion of control, but it is ultimately counterproductive. Now is the time for solidarity, not slurs."

Viral outbreaks of bigotry

Like the terse and sometimes ephemeral missives shot through Twittersphere, anecdotal instances of racism against Asians and Pacific Islanders have been more frequent across the census tract that traverses Lakewood, Denver and Aurora, according to Fran Campbell, president of the Asian Chamber of Commerce of Colorado. She said she was recently made aware of a Korean adoptee who was spit on at a King Soopers in Littleton. Shortly before that, she was contacted by a native Hawaiian woman who was the target of racist remarks at another King Soopers in Lakewood.

A resident of Lakewood herself, Campbell said she recently hasn't been going anywhere without her husband, who's white.

"I kind of borrow my husband's white privilege to protect myself, and that's a sad state of affairs," she said.

Other instances of racism targeted at Asians were reported in Aurora's Asian Avenue Magazine earlier this month. Campbell pointed to additional virtual attacks in which trolls have inundated Yelp and Facebook business pages of Asian restaurants, claiming the establishments have been buying tainted meat.

The disinformation has resulted in multiple Asian grocers and restaurateurs reporting 50 percent dips in business in recent months - weeks before stay-at-home orders were ubiquitous, according to Campbell.

"The Asian community has been dealing with Chinese and Asian paranoia since January," she said. "Even before the coronavirus came to America people were so paranoid about the Chinese and Asians that people stopped going to their businesses. Restaurants and markets out there in Aurora and in Denver all of a sudden saw their patronage just drop."

To combat the rise in hate, an ad-hoc coalition of organizations that largely cater to the Asian community last week sent a letter to several area grocers, asking them to keep an eye out for such crimes, report any instances to local law enforcement or the Denver Police Department's bias-motivated crimes section at 720-913-6458, and provide additional training to employees.

The letter was sent to the national offices of Target, Kroger and Albertsons. Campbell said she's yet to receive a formal response.

Representatives from all three chains did not respond to requests for comment by press deadline.

The coalition, known as the COVID Asian Response Committee, has also recruited the help of metro area mayors and city council members who have vowed to bolster protections for vulnerable groups. Both Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Gov. Jared Polis have issued public statements condemning hate against Asians.

"Denver values equity and inclusivity, and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind," Hancock tweeted March 30. "It's disturbing to learn that there are increasing reports of people in our Asian community being harassed and targeted for this epidemic."

In Aurora, Mayor Mike Coffman has coordinated with Budisidharta and proposed a citywide resolution denouncing hate.

About 6 percent of Aurora's 381,000 reported residents identified as Asian in 2019, according to recent demographic data compiled by the city's planning and development services department. Another 0.3 percent of residents identified as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

About a quarter of the Aurora residents born outside of the U.S. are from Asia, and nearly 15,000 residents speak an Asian language at home.

Language barriers have presented a challenge for officials across the country in recent weeks as messages on social distancing and self-quarantining have trickled down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Metro area governments and especially those in Aurora are focused on language issues because the area is so culturally diverse. Students in Aurora Public Schools speak well over 100 languages other than English at home, according to school district officials.

"As school districts were shutting down, there was no in-language information about why," Chin with the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum said."As sheltering in place orders have rolled out, in many states, there's no in-language explanation or information."

She referred to one community group in Arkansas that had to hire a translator to provide emergency interpretation of a CDC flyer into Marshallese on Facebook Live.

Instances like that are why Chin's group has created a central repository of translated COVID-19 information. The crowd-sourced library housed on the APIAHF website now holds 335 resources in 36 languages.

In Aurora, a city where nearly one in five people were born outside of the U.S., officials are used to providing interpretation and translation services.

As COVID-19 cases began popping up in Colorado, Ricardo Gambetta and his team at the Office of International and Immigrant Affairs started devising a plan for how to get public health information -which was rapidly being released by federal, state and local governments -to Aurora's non-English speakers.

"During this time, one of the most important responsibilities is to make sure everyone in the city has access to this critical health and safety information, including those who are not English speakers," Gambetta, who manages the office, said. "Time is everything so we tried to provide translation services in a short period of time."

In a span of two weeks Gambetta said his office, working with vendors across the metro area, were able to put out a dozen documents in 10 languages.

Gambetta estimates that about 85 percent of non-English calls the city gets are from Spanish speakers. The remaining 15 percent make up eight other languages the office has been translating information to. They include Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese as well as Nepali, Burmese, Tigrinya, Nepali and Karen.

The documents are posted on the office's Facebook page as quickly as possible and a bevy of volunteers, called "natural helpers", relay important information back to their communities. The volunteer program has trained 160 people representing 28 different countries over the past four years.

"When (agencies) release any updates or health information, we need to ensure the information reaches different segments of the communities," Gambetta said. "We're talking about life and death, we're talking about emergencies."

Translation is a normal function of the office, but the amount of information in a limited amount of time is what made this situation different. The turnaround time for Spanish documents is about 24 hours and 48 hours for other languages.

"We feel comfortable that we're reaching most everybody," Gambetta said. "There's no guarantee it's 100 percent but I feel confident."

The city is also distributing different information to non-English newspapers, television networks and radio shows that can also help spread the word about new health orders or recommendations.

Coffman said he applauds the work that Gambetta and the office has been doing, reaching out to the community and making sure they have the information they need about the virus of the business relief efforts.

The effects on immigrant-owned small businesses have been particularly harrowing, he said.

"These are heart-wrenching stories, and they are for everybody, but you know they work so hard for the American dream and they sacrifice so much and all this comes down on them," Coffman said. "There have been people that were crying to me on the phone. I did visit some, with social distancing, of course."

Coffman has been logging his own efforts of support on Facebook and Twitter. Each week the mayor, donning a face mask, gets dinner from a different local restaurant. "Oh, it's so good," Coffman said of the food. On Monday, he grabbed a burger and posed for a photo at Sam's No. 3 diner on South Havana Street.

The chicken enchiladas with green salsa at El Camaron Loco were "fantastic," he tweeted last week, and the sauces at Angry Chicken, the Korean-style fried chicken also located on Havana, were "incredible."

Before health orders prevented dining-in, Coffman launched a challenge to the entire city to visit local eateries more. As the pandemic has worsened, Coffman stuck with the challenge, but has asked Aurora residents to order a curbside meal at least once a week to help keep those places in business.

Different races, different realities

But the pandemic that has upended life across the globe has fanned the flames of hate against more than just Asians and Asian Americans. An uptick in racist speech can have a cascading effect for other marginalized groups, too, experts say.

"Discrimination against one group can give permission to discriminate against other groups," Gee with UCLA said.

For Lizeth Chacon, the fact that many workers still staffing hospitals, grocery stores and restaurants are immigrants is far from a guarantee that immigrant communities will become more respected in the U.S. Chacon is Executive Director of Colorado People's Alliance and a native of Mexico.

"I think that African, Latin American and Asian immigrants are the majority who are out there who are risking their lives," she said. "I would hope that that would change, but it is going to take a lot of work. We live in a country that is very racist."

Chacon is particularly worried about undocumented Aurorans counting among the estimated 10.5 million undocumented living in the U.S.

She said these residents are likely to be working low-wage jobs putting themselves at risk of infection, often without health insurance. They're also more at risk of working for employers disregarding social distancing rules, she said, because they've learned not to complain while living in America for risk of becoming noticed and deported.

But if undocumented workers have been laid off, they are not eligible to receive federal assistance such as the $1,200 stimulus check Congress approved last month as part of the CARES Act. Nor will undocumented residents, who pay taxes, be eligible for state unemployment benefits, Chacon said, without a work permit or special status.

"Undocumented immigrants will get nothing. Literally, they will lose their job and nothing will come," she said of the government benefits.

In other states including California and Oregon, local governments and community organizations are setting up their own relief funds specifically for undocumented people. Chacon said COPA will be pressing local and state officials to set up a similar fund to help undocumented Aurorans and Coloradans who are slipping through the safety net.

Even legal resident Berhanu Ayele, an Aurora resident originally from Ethiopia, is suspicious of federal benefits. He said he hasn't applied for any assistance even after losing his only job last week, as a wheelchair pusher at Denver International Airport.

As a Green Card holder, Ayele is expected to benefit from the federal stimulus package, according to a story by the Associated Press.

But he's nervous that receiving government assistance could help land him and his family back in Ethiopia under a recent rule change by the Trump administration. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this year the federal government could disqualify immigrants from a bid for legal citizenship or permanent residency for receiving assistance such as food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid.

Attorneys generals asked the Supreme Court this week to temporarily suspend the rule, called the public charge rule, during the pandemic.

"Can I take that help or not? Does that help me or block me? Everything is not clear," Ayele said.

According to the immigrants rights group Protecting Immigrant Families, accepting a stimulus check would not count against a resident immigrant under the public charge rule.

Ayele said he doesn't need benefits either way, but said so many other immigrants do. And after watching the federal government count points against an immigrant for receiving traditional assistance during a global economic collapse, he said he's lost a rosy vision of what America represents.

"For me," Ayele added, "this is a turning point."

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CULTURAL ADVERSITY: Metro area minorities get a double dose of strife with COVID-19 crisis - Sentinel Colorado

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A mother in Littleton is spit on in front of her young children. A man is harassed while sitting in his car in Denver. An elderly business owner is accosted while grocery shopping in Lakewood. Welcome to pandemic life for minorities in Colorado. Minority activists say that as unnerving as the COVID-19 crisis is for ...

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Our groundbreaking Digital Food Choice Pantry (DCFP) distributes uncooked meals to those who need food using a point system based on family size. Shopping is done on a bilingual touch screen computer. Each item chosen subtracts points from your account and groceries are packed to order. Points are automatically replenished every 30 days. Fresh produce, often grown in New York State, is also available daily through the pantry as well as fresh local milk.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our groundbreaking Digital Food Choice Pantry (DCFP) distributes uncooked meals to those who need food using a point system based on family size. Shopping is done on a bilingual touch screen computer. Each item chosen subtracts points from your account and groceries are packed to order. Points are automatically replenished every 30 days.

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30 percent have experienced racism in covid

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30 percent have experienced racism in covid

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More than 30 percent of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Ipsos survey conducted for the Center for Public Integrity.

Sixty percent of Asian Americans, who made up about 6 percent of the survey's respondents, told Ipsos they've seen the same behavior.

The poll, released Tuesday, comes as advocacy groups and researchers report an alarming rise in anti-Asian discrimination. Stop AAPI Hate, an effort to track these cases, reported about 1,500 instances of harassment against Asian Americans in a one-month period since mid-March.

"We're already seeing an increase in physical assaults, refusal of service and vandalism," said Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization helping to run the tracking effort, "despite the fact that 95 percent of Americans are sheltering in place."

Choi worries about what will happen when shelter-in-place orders are lifted and more people interact on subways, in workplaces and elsewhere. "We are preparing for worst-case scenarios," she said.

Serious incidents of violence have already occurred, in one of which a man is accused of stabbing an Asian American family, including two children, at a Sam's Club in Texas in March. By mid-April, the New York City Police Department was investigating 11 coronavirus-related hate incidents, one of which left a woman needing stitches after she was hit on the head with an umbrella while people yelled anti-Asian insults at her.

The surge in anti-Asian bias may reflect a growing tendency to blame certain groups for the pandemic, according to Chris Jackson, the head of public polling at Ipsos, who ran the survey of 1,001 adults. The survey has a "credibility interval," a way of measuring its precision, of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
While a narrow majority of poll respondents described the virus primarily as a natural disaster, 44 percent said specific people or organizations were responsible. Of those respondents, nearly two-thirds mentioned China or Chinese people.

"The majority of people - a bare majority, but a majority - are still viewing the pandemic as a natural disaster," Jackson said. "We've not asked this particular question before, but we've asked similar questions, and that number is coming down. Earlier on, there was a much larger number of people who viewed it as a natural disaster."

The poll found a partisan divide. Sixty percent of Republicans said the virus was caused by specific people or groups, almost double the share of Democrats who said that.

This reflects an intentional 2020 election effort.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo directing campaigns this month to blame China when asked about failures in the Trump administration's response to the pandemic. "Don't defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban - attack China," says the memo, first reported by Politico.

President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians have repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus."

"I think the Republican strategy is to deflect blame and scapegoat and rile up their base," said Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University who is also involved in the Stop AAPI Hate tracker. "A clear consequence of using terms like 'Chinese virus,' of making China the central campaign strategy, is putting Asian American lives at risk."

In open-ended responses to the poll, many people simply blamed "China," leaving it unclear whether the blame was leveled at the Chinese government or at Chinese and Asian people more broadly.

Jeung said that it was fair game to criticize foreign governments for their responses to the pandemic but that Americans should also look to the failures of their own government. Politicians have a responsibility to denounce hate and racism, he said.

Charissa Cheah, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is researching anti-Asian bias during the pandemic. She said she is not sure that people make a clear distinction between criticism of Chinese leaders and criticism of people with Asian ancestry.

"Many of these implicit assumptions are done without thought," she said.

The tendency to blame China is particularly notable, she said, because researchers have found that most COVID-19 cases in New York were imported from Europe, not Asia.

Anti-Asian bias amid the virus' spread plays into a long history of racism in the United States that has associated immigrant groups with disease, Cheah said. But while some immigrant groups, such as those from European countries, were later assimilated into an identity as white Americans, people with Asian ancestry keep finding their status as Americans questioned.

"They fall very quickly from model minority to yellow peril," she said. "Asian Americans are considered perpetual foreigners. It doesn't matter how many generations you've been here. You're always asked, 'Where do you come from?'"

Community spread within the U.S. dwarfs the risk of exposure from outside travel. But the Ipsos/Center for Public Integrity poll results suggest that a minority of people see Asian Americans as disease risks.

One out of 4 people said they would be concerned about coming into close contact with someone of Asian ancestry in public, a share that jumped to 46 percent if the person was not wearing a face covering or other protective gear. Respondents were far more likely to express concern about encountering someone of any ethnic background who is coughing (94 percent), not wearing protective gear (79 percent) or elderly (56 percent).

To Jackson, the Ipsos pollster, that suggests that the lion's share of Americans see outward signs of disease or lack of protection - not ethnicity - as a risk factor. The trouble, he said, is that a small number of racists motivated to take action can cause serious damage.

"Virulent racism isn't a mass phenomenon," Jackson said. "But among Republicans particularly, there is an environment where blaming China or blaming the Chinese people is acceptable, and that is an environment that fosters more extreme acts."

The federal government has done little to combat a rise in hate crimes during the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention swiftly launched a team to combat discrimination during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, but the agency has announced no such measures for COVID-19. The Justice Department has not said whether it is planning anything like its quick response to the backlash that affected Americans of South Asian and Middle Eastern ancestry after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

That leaves a critical gap. But bystanders can play a crucial role in combating hate, experts said.

People's level of prejudice is directly correlated with their perception of what is socially acceptable, said Mina Cikara, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard University: "Social norms are incredibly powerful in terms of driving attitudes." Denouncing violence, or publicly supporting the victim of harassment, sends a strong signal.

The consequences of not intervening could be severe. All it takes, Cikara said, is "a couple of awful people to do awful things."
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.

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Over 30 percent of Americans have witnessed COVID-19 bias against Asians, poll says

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More than 30 percent of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Ipsos survey conducted for the Center for Public Integrity. Sixty percent of Asian Americans, who made up about 6 percent of the survey's respondents, told Ipsos they've seen the same behavior.

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In moments of social and political upheaval, the best way to get attention and action is to focus on common ground, highlight our interconnectedness, and foster solidarity, communications research tells us. In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, that is exactly what we are seeing from grant makers like the Ford Foundation's Darren Walker and advocacy networks like People's Action, which are stepping up and advancing messages that unite and push us toward a better future.

These messages spark hope that a more inclusive and equitable world might lie ahead, that the new normal might be closer to the one we have been working for. But alongside this optimism sits a stark and sharp reality. Covid is turning up the heat on inequities that have simmered throughout the history of America.

The pandemic is driving a wedge into the existing chasm between rich and poor, black and white.

As lawmakers call for demographic data to be collected, early information confirms what social- and racial-justice advocates have long known: that decades of bad housing, health care, and employment policies, as well as the daily stress of racism, manifest as disparities in health outcomes - whether it's higher rates of heart disease or shorter life spans.

Covid is bringing America's systemic racism into clear view. But amid the chaos and suffering, there is an opening to address our legacy of racist public policies and systems. Our ability to move forward in this direction lies, at least in part, in the way we talk about issues of race and racism right now.

Researchers who study how we discuss certain topics - a process known as framing - are concerned with the effects of our communication choices on people's perceptions and behaviors. Research has shown that how we say what we say shapes how people think, feel, and act.

At one time, there was some debate about whether those seeking to address structural racism should lead with it in their communications: Some research suggested that going hard and headfirst on the stark reality of racism and the gravity of its effects was not the best way to generate broad support for the policy changes needed to promote change.

We are in a different time. The issues have advanced, and so has the research.

We simply cannot and should not avoid talking about race. Rather than whether, the question now is how best to have conversations about race. How can social-change communicators best promote conversations about race and racism in ways that help people understand, and get them to act and support solutions that advance equity?

Here are four ideas that can help those communicating about race equity in the Covid-19 context:

Find shared values. To develop strategies that could open up productive conversations about improving the justice system, we looked at how best to use facts about racism in the justice system. In partnership with Harvard's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, and with support from the Ford Foundation, we conducted an online experiment to test messages that focused narrowly on data about the justice system's unfair treatment of black Americans. We also tested messages that called for making change through collaborative problem-solving and a commonsense approach to overhauling the justice system to advance our shared goal for it, public safety. Finally, we tested a message with both the commonsense change argument and the structural racism facts. In the end, the most effective message was the one that contained facts about race and emphasized problem-solving. This worked better than either of those appeals on their own. Talking about racism as part of promoting social change is more effective if we also draw people's attention to larger shared values.

Don't just assert. Explain. We have also found that messages explaining the roots of racism are more effective than those that only assert its existence. In a project supported by the Knight Foundation, we explored public understanding of neighborhood segregation to find ways to drive support for integrative policies. We found that messages that asserted the existence of racist housing policies were generally ineffective, but when paired with a short explanation of how racist lending and zoning practices have led to segregated neighborhoods, they spurred support for a wide range of progressive community-development policies and practices.

For advocates working on housing, community development, education, and health, messages about patterns of racism work better if they help people understand the roots of current inequities. Historical examples (like redlining) that demonstrate how past policies led to the current reality facing many communities of color are particularly promising ways of explaining.

Show solutions, not just problems. While it's tempting to start and end messages about racism with a firm and unwavering focus on the scope and depth of the problem, research suggests that messages focused only on the problem, without also touching on solutions, don't move people much. And in some cases, research suggests that messages mired in crisis may actually make people fatalistic and lead to disengagement. We suffer acutely from crisis inflation and emergency fatigue, traps that problem-based messaging falls right into.

Counter "separate fates" thinking with a collective aspirational vision for the future. We are finding that messages with an affirmative, collective, and aspirational vision of the future that puts race and racism at the center can create space for supporting progressive policies. We know from many years of work that Americans tend to assume that black and white Americans occupy different worlds and have "separate fates." This thinking saps support among white Americans for policies that would redistribute resources to provide black Americans and other people of color with the opportunities they have historically been denied.

To counter this separate-fates thinking, we can offer messages that make it clear that racism is an issue that affects all of us and that addressing it creates a stronger society for us all. Such messages must also offer a positive vision of the future. We must ask ourselves, "What would it actually look and be like to live in a society characterized by racial equity?"

In working to build support for policies that address racial inequities in access to affordable housing, we found that emphasizing collective prosperity- the idea that tackling racial inequities was key to the future of all Americans - increased people's sense of collective, rather than individual, responsibility for the issue and boosted support for policies including progressive zoning, developer incentives and set-asides, and housing assistance.

Racism is at the core of many issues we wrestle with today - making sure every child receives a quality education, ensuring that every community has a grocery store stocked with healthy food options, creating a criminal-justice system that honors human rights, and guaranteeing that everyone has access to vital health services, including proper Covid-19 care and treatment.

We need to be able to imagine a world that is more just and inclusive while learningfrom our past - and present - mistakes and failures.

In her essay, "The Pandemic Is a Portal," the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy captures this wisdom: "Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it"

Acknowledging the presence and effects of racism by appealing to shared values, explaining its roots and offering solutions, and advancing an affirmative vision of a collective future can help create the systemic and cultural change we need to move into a safer, healthier, more equitable new world.
Nat Kendall-Taylor is chief executive officer and April Callen is a senior strategist at the FrameWorks Institute, which advises advocates on communicating about social and scientific issues.
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Here's How Nonprofits Can Get Americans to Fight the Racism Laid Bare by Covid-19 (Opinion)

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In moments of social and political upheaval, the best way to get attention and action is to focus on common ground, highlight our interconnectedness, and foster solidarity, communications research tells us.