A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday that a school board’s transgender bathroom ban discriminated against a former student, Gavin Grimm.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen in Norfolk is the latest of several nationwide that have favored transgender students facing similar policies. But the issue remains far from settled in the country as a patchwork of differing policies governs the nation’s schools.
The Gloucester County School Board’s policy required Grimm to use girls’ restrooms or private bathrooms. The judge wrote that Grimm’s rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause as well as under Title IX, the federal policy that protects against gender-based discrimination.
“There is no question that the Board’s policy discriminates against transgender students on the basis of their gender noncomformity,” Allen wrote.
“Under the policy, all students except for transgender students may use restrooms corresponding with their gender identity,” she continued. “Transgender students are singled out, subjected to discriminatory treatment, and excluded from spaces where similarly situated students are permitted to go.”
Similar claims
Allen’s ruling will likely strengthen similar claims made by students in eastern Virginia. It could have a greater impact if the case goes to an appeals court that oversees Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas.
Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said last month that she expected Grimm’s case to join the “steady drum beat” of recent court rulings favoring transgender students in states including Maryland, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But she said differing transgender bathroom policies are still in place in schools across the country. Those polices are often influenced by court rulings or by states and cities that have passed protections for people who are transgender.
“Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times for transgender students really can depend on where you live and who your principal is,” she said.
One fight in long battle
The judge’s opinion is the latest step in Grimm’s yearslong legal battle, which has come to embody the debate about transgender student rights.
Grimm, who is now 20, has been fighting the case since the end of his sophomore year at Gloucester High School, which is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Richmond and near the Chesapeake Bay. Since graduating in 2017, he has moved to California where he’s worked as an activist and attended community college.
Grimm’s lawsuit became a federal test case when it was supported by the administration of then-President Barack Obama and scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017. But the high court hearing was canceled after President Donald Trump rescinded an Obama-era directive that students can choose bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
The school board has argued that Grimm remains female, even though he obtained a court order and Virginia birth certificate declaring his sex is male in 2016, when he was still in 12th grade.
The board’s attorney, David Corrigan, argued in court last month that gender is not a “societal construct” and that it doesn’t matter that Grimm underwent chest reconstruction surgery and hormone therapy. Corrigan had told the judge that bathroom policy is based on a binary, “two choices for all” view of gender.
Contacted by The Associated Press after the ruling, Corrigan declined to comment in an email.
Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.
U.S. border
A month after the start of a program forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting U.S. immigration hearings, the policy is stranding thousands, most of whom are from Central America. Hundreds are now being bused to Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, in what one Mexican immigration official described to VOA as a policy of “deportation in disguise.”
FILE – A handcuffed woman stares though the chain link fencing at Koch Foods Inc. in Morton, Miss., Aug. 7, 2019.
Raids’ long-term effects
After Wednesday’s raids in the six Mississippi towns where the poultry plants were located, community members said the effects of the roundups would be felt long term.
Migrant children attend school in a bus at the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just kilometers from the U.S. border. They sit in two neat lines and open their notebooks at desks that once served as passenger seats.
FILE – An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official gives direction to a person outside the building that houses ICE and the Atlanta Immigration Court, June 12, 2019.
Immigration court
The Trump administration launched a pilot program in 10 cities, from Baltimore to Los Angeles, aimed at fast-tracking court hearings and discouraging migrants from making the journey to seek refuge in the United States. Immigration lawyers, however, said the new timetable does not give their clients enough time to testify and get documents from abroad to bolster their claims.
July migration statistics
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan announced U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s enforcement actions for July, indicating more than a 20 percent decrease in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border for the second month in a row.
VOA Immigration Reporter Aline Barros contributed to this report from Washington.
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO — Off to the side of the Puente #1, the bridge that connects pedestrians, drivers and cyclists from the Texas city of Laredo to the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, dozens of migrants and asylum-seekers sit on what was built as a parking lot for the customs office.
The concrete radiated after hours of 42-degree Celsius (108-degree Fahrenheit) heat from the sun.
They hadn’t been able to shower in three days, several said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) often apprehended them within an hour of crossing the river, held them for two to three days, then transported them back to Mexico.
Now a month after the start of the Trump administration’s Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican government is busing hundreds of returned migrants to faraway Chiapas, in what is described as a thinly disguised deportation program.
Bus departures
VOA witnessed two nights of bus departures from a location adjacent to a pedestrian bridge where CBP dropped off migrants to await their immigration hearings in the U.S. from outside the country.
The first, around 12:30 a.m. on August 7, consisted of eight full buses, transporting 350 to 400 migrants; the next night, another three buses departed from the same location, carrying approximately 120 people, largely families with children under age 10.
Migrants returned to Mexico under MPP have been camping beneath puente 1 (intl bridge) in Nuevo Laredo for days or longer. As of a couple hours ago, buses came to pick them up. Migrants say they are being forced to leave. All of the buses appear to be headed to Chiapas. pic.twitter.com/ZpMBYlMyL1
The majority of migrants VOA spoke with ahead of their 2,100-kilometer (1,300-mile) journey were from Honduras and had crossed the Rio Grande into the United States in the first days of August.
Some of the migrants who spoke to VOA said they felt their hearings stood no chance and would self-deport to their respective countries. Others planned to utilize temporary work permits in southern Mexico while they considered their next moves.
MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, began in January 2019 in other border cities. It expanded in earnest in March, and then June, as Mexico scrambled to respond to the U.S. threat of tariffs if the number of unauthorized border crossings did not decrease.
In a statement to VOA, a CBP spokesperson said MPP allows the U.S. “to more effectively assist legitimate asylum-seekers and individuals fleeing persecution while migrants with false or meritless claims no longer have that incentive to make the journey.”
The Trump administration said it created the program to alleviate overcrowding in U.S. detention facilities by making migrants await immigration court dates in Mexico.
The United States has returned more than 30,000 migrants to Mexico under the policy, CBP acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said Thursday.
According to an analysis by Human Rights First, CBP has returned an average of 450 migrants per day to Mexico in early August, more than double the rate of returns in early June.
More than 3,000 migrants have been returned to Nuevo Laredo during MPP’s first month operating in the city, the independent, U.S.-based human rights organization reported.
That number includes children and adults who have been apprehended crossing the Rio Grande without authorization by U.S. Border Patrol agents, as well as people who presented themselves at ports of entry to formally request asylum.
Central American migrants line up for community-donated food and drinks near the Puente Numero I International Bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. (R. Taylor/VOA)
Left in border city
The migrants VOA met hours after their return from the U.S. were predominantly from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Many felt they had no real choice but to leave on the buses, wherever they were headed, just to get out of Nuevo Laredo.
Sitting in the shade of a bus shelter, they were trying to determine who wanted to go where, and how they would get there.
Few had cellphones or money to contact relatives. They had no knowledge of the city, no map and no means to get to a local shelter. All they carried were clear plastic bags with a few toiletries, paperwork, and the phone numbers of relatives to call when they could borrow a phone from someone with cell service in Mexico.
The Mexican city’s reputation as a hub of drug cartel activity and ransom kidnappings kept many migrants within the confines of the parking lot adjacent to Puente #1.
The U.S. State Department posts a maximum “Level 4: Do Not Travel” warning because of crime and kidnapping in the surrounding state of Tamaulipas, where “armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses as well as private automobiles,” according to its advisory.
“They bring us here, where you’re surrounded by the Zetas drug cartel, and in the end, what security do we have?” said Yuna, a Cuban asylum-seeker returned under MPP, who boarded one of Tuesday’s eight buses to Tapachula, Chiapas. “We can’t [take a taxi] because they’ll send us to the lion’s mouth. If we go to the [bus] station, they’ll kidnap us.”
But according to Nuevo Laredo Mayor Enrique Rivas Montaño, “The issue of insecurity is not exclusive to the border.”
“Everywhere, there are risks, there are dangers in a city you don’t know,” Rivas Montaño told VOA.
A Honduran migrant and her 18-month-old daughter wait to decide their next steps after being returned to Mexico under the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) earlier in the day. (V. Macchi/VOA)
Awaiting US court hearings
Although Mexican immigration authorities first thinned the number of returnees in Nuevo Laredo by busing some to Monterrey, roughly 220 kilometers (137 miles) to the southwest, this week the buses were bound for Tapachula, Chiapas, roughly 10 times farther away.
Monterrey is at a Level 3 warning, with the caution to “reconsider travel due to crime” and curfews on U.S. personnel in the area.
Chiapas, the more recent destination, is considered a Level 2 safety risk, according to the State Department, which urges visitors to “exercise increased caution due to crime.”
It is also Mexico’s southernmost state, which means that within the country’s boundaries, it gets as close to Guatemala — and in turn, El Salvador and Honduras — as a person possibly could be while remaining in Mexico.
That distance puts 35 hours of road travel between the migrants and their court dates in border cities, some for September, others as late as November, requiring additional expenses few people VOA spoke with could afford. A one-way return economy bus ticket, with a connection in Mexico City, costs $111.
Mexico’s National Institute of Migration did not respond to an emailed request for more information about the busing system.
The first buses bound for Chiapas left on August 2, according to one local media report.
Father Julio López, the head of the Nazareth migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, said that southbound trip — while in theory is voluntary but in practice feels like the only option to some migrants — shows that from the outset, even the name of policy was a ruse.
“The Migrant Protection Protocol is, to me, a protocol of lies for migrants,” the priest said. “There is no protocol, and if there were one, it’s not for protection. There is no protection.”
Likewise, a Mexican federal immigration agent at the CBP drop-off site near the bridge said he believed MPP was not a policy of waiting for court dates, but rather one of “dolled-up deportations.”
“Honestly, what we’re seeing here, these are deportations,” he told VOA. “Deportations in disguise.”
CBP deferred comment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a VOA inquiry about whether the MPP program effectively works as a deportation plan. DHS and Mexico’s National Institute of Migration have not yet responded to similar inquiries.
The world’s biggest free trade pact may be just months from final signatures after talks this month appeared to bring the trade group’s 16 members closer to agreement.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), is a trade deal hatched in 2012 by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) along with six free trade agreement partners (China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand). It will cover about 32% of the world GDP and nearly 30% of global trade. The deal excludes the United States.
During a meeting in Beijing Aug. 2-3, the countries hashed out core differences. The deal should be finished by year’s end, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha told a news conference Sunday after an ASEAN foreign ministers meeting held in Bangkok.
Exporters from the 16 signatory countries hope for freer, cheaper and more reliable trade, after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from a Pacific Rim deal in 2017 and has since challenged countries across the world on existing agreements. The United States has been embroiled in a trade dispute with China since early 2018, with both nations raising tariffs on the other’s imports.
“There is understandably concern in ASEAN about the effect of future U.S. trade barriers being introduced that will affect their countries,” said Stuart Orr, business and law professor at Deakin University in Australia. “Striking this deal will reduce their dependence on the U.S. as a market by creating a coordinated ASEAN market.”
FILE – A grain salesman shows locally grown soybeans in Ohio, April 5, 2018. Trump’s tariffs have drawn retaliation from around the world.
US pullback in free trade
Much of Asia, especially major manufacturers such as China and Vietnam, traditionally count the United States as a major destination for exports.
Last month, the United States said it would impose a final round of tariffs on China as part of an 18-month-old trade dispute, affecting $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
“China needs to strengthen its local trade opportunities to assist it in its trade war with the U.S.,” Orr said.
Trump has also mulled placing tariffs on auto imports from the European Union and Japan, and threatened tariffs against Mexico.
FILE – An officer stands by goods for trade at Tan Thanh Border Gate in Vietnam. (D. Schearf/VOA)
Momentum in talks toward Asia trade deal
In China, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday more than two-thirds of the RCEP negotiations on bilateral market access had been completed with talks on what’s left “being actively pushed forward.”
The RCEP also covers import tariffs, labor and intellectual property rights. The elimination of trade barriers would offer signatory states access to low-cost raw materials, Orr said, while the deal as a whole would expand the number of firms operating in Southeast Asia.
“In the context of the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, Vietnam could have other markets,” said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Once implemented by the target year of 2030, the partnership, encompassing about 47% of the world’s population, will increase global real incomes by an estimated $286 billion per year, the Brookings Institute said in a report in November.
But negotiators have reached agreement on just seven of RCEP’s 18 chapters, cautioned Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit, a market research firm in Singapore. A year-end finish line may be impossible, he said.
“These kinds of deals take a long time to agree. Then, they have to be ratified by parliaments. Then, they have to be implemented in terms of legislation. So, there’s nothing fast about these kinds of deals,” Biswas said. “So, I think it’s unrealistic to have too much sense of urgency about it.”
India edges on board
India has held back talks on the pan-Asian deal over the years on concerns about low-cost imports entering from China, and competition with China over manufacturing, Biswas said.
“India is single-handedly holding up the other 15 negotiating parties,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. “On this front, China and ASEAN countries, they almost have consensus, like greater market access and more free trade, and so on.”
India’s Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing last week to hash out some of the issues, Indian news outlet BusinessLine reported Sunday. India can accept RCEP if it addresses “the existing level of trade imbalance,” BusinessLine said.
U.S. President Donald Trump is renewing focus on mental illness as a major cause of gun violence, following two mass shootings in two days in the U.S. that killed 31 people. VOA’s Brian Padden reports that while Trump has called for more treatment and involuntary detention of mentally disturbed individuals, his administration has rolled back federal regulations to restrict the mentally ill from buying guns and has tried to abolish a health care law that expanded access to mental health services.
Climate change is about to hit the world in the stomach, according to the United Nations. A new scientific report from the world body that examines land degradation concludes that climate change will imperil crops and worsen hunger. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
Russia appears to be using one of its most powerful weapons — tourism — against Georgia, its smaller neighbor to the south. Moscow has banned direct flights between Russia and Georgia, after the latest wave of protests in Georgia against Russia’s occupation of two of its regions. Moscow has also called for its citizens to return home. That is meant to damage the Georgian economy, which is highly dependent on tourism. Ricardo Marquina reports from Tbilisi in this report narrated by Jim Randle.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority says more than 15,000 people in Los Angeles County in the state of California live in their cars. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s also unsafe. To make their life a little easier, a nonprofit called Safe Parking LA was founded in 2016 and is creating what they call “Safe Parking Lots.” Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story narrated by Anna Rice.
A team of British scientists has helped produce a radioactivity-free vodka called “ATOMIK” from crops near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the University of Portsmouth said on Thursday.
The team did find some radioactivity in the grain but said the normal distillation process meant the only radioactivity in the alcohol was natural Carbon-14 “at the same level you would expect in any spirit drink”.
“I think this is the most important bottle of spirits in the world because it could help the economic recovery of communities living in and around the abandoned areas,” university professor Jim Smith said in a statement.
Smith, who has been researching the contamination from Chernobyl for nearly 30 years, worked alongside colleagues in Ukraine to produce the spirit.
After the accident, a 30-kilometre (19-mile) exclusion zone was established around the plant. Commercial farming is still banned both there and in a wider surrounding area.
“Many thousands of people are still living in the Zone of Obligatory Resettlement where new investment and use of agricultural land is still forbidden,” Smith said.
The scientists said they were setting up a company called The Chernobyl Spirit Company to sell the vodka and hope to begin small-scale production later this year.
Seventy-five percent of profits from the production are planned to go to the local community.
Thirty people were killed in the Chernobyl explosion on April 26, 1986 and hundreds more died of related illnesses, though the exact figure remains disputed.
Soviet authorities initially tried to cover up and then play down the disaster.
Eventually 350,000 people were evacuated from the exclusion zone. Scientists say it will only cease to be radioactive in 24,000 years.
Workers in full protective gear began Thursday to decontaminate some Paris schools tested with unsafe levels of lead following the blaze at the Notre Dame Cathedral, as part of efforts to protect children from risks of lead poisoning.
Paris authorities ordered last month a deep clean and removal of hazardous substances at schools near the cathedral, which was seriously damaged in the April 15 blaze that sent tons of toxic lead from the metal roof into the air. The decontamination work is expected to be completed before children return to school in September.
At Saint Benoit nursery and primary school, a few hundred meters away from Notre Dame, workers donning masks and white protective suits sprayed an adhesive product on the playground floor to keep the lead particles fixed on the surfacing before removing the first layer of the playground. They were planning to fully renovate it by the end of the month.
Mickael Prestavoine, director of industrial operations at Seche Urgences Interventions, said a decision was made last week to “excavate the schoolyard” after local authorities conducted multiple tests that found lead on the surface material.
Paris’ regional health agency recommended in June blood tests for children under 7 and pregnant women who live near Notre Dame as they are especially vulnerable to health problems from lead poisoning and exposure.
Earlier this week, the agency said a young boy needs medical monitoring because tests showed that he was at risk of lead poisoning. Sixteen others were deemed to be just short of being “at risk” and will also be monitored as a precaution, out of a total of 162 children who have been tested for lead in Paris.
Lead removal work at the cathedral itself is set to resume next week with stricter safety procedures after authorities suspended it last month under pressure from labor inspectors concerned about health risks for workers.
Levels of lead remain exceptionally high at some spots inside the cathedral, in the plaza outside and on adjacent roads. Those areas have been closed to the public since April 15.
However, no dangerous levels have been registered in other nearby streets, where tourists and residents continue to gather and souvenir shops and restaurants have reopened.
President Donald Trump says he’s “very strongly” considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is serving a 14-year prison term on multiple federal corruption convictions.
Trump suggested more than a year ago that he was considering a commutation for Blagojevich, who then filed paperwork requesting a commutation.
The Republican president told reporters Wednesday night while returning to Washington aboard Air Force One that he thought Blagojevich, a Democrat, had been treated “unbelievably unfairly.”
Trump says he’s taking into consideration Blagojevich’s wife and children and what was, in his view, mere braggadocio.
Raging floods across Myanmar have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent weeks, officials said Thursday, as monsoon rains pummel the nation.
Aerial images from Shwegyin township in Bago region showed how the area had become a vast lake of water.
Only the rooftops could be seen of many homes lining the Sittaung river.
Emergency services have been helping bring people to dry ground, many seeking shelter in local monasteries.
Others waded through waist-deep floodwaters or rowed on wooden boats with pets and any belongings they could take with them.
Than Aye, 42, who has diabetes and is partially-sighted, struggled to escape the deluge.
“I could not do anything when the flooding started but then the fire service came to rescue me by boat,” he told AFP from the safety of the monastery that has been his home for the last five days.
The most severe flooding is currently in eastern Bago region and Mon and Karen states, according to the social welfare ministry.
“There are currently over 30,000 people (across the country) displaced by floods,” said director general of disaster management Ko Ko Naing.
UN’s Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates around 89,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks, although many have since been able to return home.
Damascus on Thursday accused Turkey of “expansionist ambitions,” saying Ankara’s agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in northeastern Syria only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.
The statement by Syria’s Foreign Ministry comes a day after the U.S. and Turkey announced they’d agreed to form a coordination center to set up the safe zone. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move, which is designed to address Ankara’s security concerns, was important.
The announcement of the deal may have averted for now a Turkish incursion into that part of Syria. Ankara seeks to push out U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters from the region as it considers them terrorists, allied with a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
The Syrian Kurdish fighters were the main fighting force on the ground against Islamic State militants in the area, and Washington has been hard pressed to protect its partners.
Damascus said the Syrian Kurdish groups “bear historic responsibility” for the U.S-Turkey deal and urged them to drop “this aggressive U.S.-Turkish project” and align with the Syrian government instead.
Damascus has had no presence along the Turkish border since 2012, when Syrian rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups took control of different parts of the region.
After three days of talks in Ankara and repeated Turkish threats of a military incursion in northeast Syria, Turkish and U.S. officials agreed that the coordination center would be based in Turkey and would be set up “as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish defense ministry.
The ministry did not provide further details but said the sides had agreed that the safe zone would become a “corridor of peace” and that all additional measures would be taken to ensure the return of refugees to Syria.
Turkey has been pressing to control _ in coordination with the U.S. a 19-25 mile-deep zone within Syria, east of the Euphrates River, and wants no Syrian Kurdish forces there.
In its previous military incursions, Turkey entered northwestern Syria, expelling Islamic State militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from the area and setting up Turkish military posts there, with allied Syrian opposition fighters in control. Turkish troops also man observation points that ring the last opposition stronghold in the northwest _ posts that are meant to uphold a now fraying cease-fire.
This week on “Plugged In” for August 7, 2019 – The Voices of Women on Equality and Empowerment. Prominent women speak out on the politics of gender, equal pay and the changing roles of women around the globe. How far have women really come in the 21st century? VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara is filling in for Greta this week.
Greek search crews have found the body of a British scientist who went missing while on holiday on the Aegean island of Ikaria in a ravine near where she had been staying, authorities said Wednesday.
Police said the body of Cyprus-based astrophysicist Natalie Christopher, 34, was found in a 20-meter (65-foot) deep ravine. Christopher had been reported missing on Monday by her Cypriot partner with whom she was vacationing after she went for a morning run.
The cause of death was not immediately clear and authorities planned an autopsy.
Police, firefighters, volunteers and the coast guard had been scouring the area where Christopher had been staying during her vacation, which has paths along ravines and steep seaside cliffs. A specialized police unit with geolocation equipment was sent to the island to help in the search.
Cypriot authorities said they were in close contact with Greek search crews and the woman’s family.
“I express the sincere condolences of the Cypriot state and of myself to the family and friends of Natalie Christopher,” Cypriot Justice and Public Order Minister George Savvides said after being informed that the body had been identified.
They are seen as the shock troops of a burgeoning direct-action environmental movement. Earlier this year, members of Extinction Rebellion brought the center of London and some other major British towns to a standstill by barricading bridges, standing on top of trains, and blocking major thoroughfares and crossroads.
Extinction Rebellion (XR), a campaign of civil disobedience born in Britain and aiming to address a worldwide climate crisis, has been endorsed by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, the teenage poster child of environmentalism. XR has pledged to cause more disruption, arguing that governments are not doing enough to stop the “climate emergency.”
The group, which is spawning similar campaigns in the United States and Australia, says climate activists have no choice but to take matters into their own hands. It demands that governments prevent further biodiversity loss and commit to producing net-zero greenhouse gases by 2025. Otherwise, XR says, there will be a mass extinction of life forms on the planet within the lifetimes of the demonstrators themselves.
The group’s next target is next month’s star-studded London Fashion Week. Activists have promised to shut down the five-day runway event in a bid to raise awareness of the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry.
FILE – Extinction Rebellion climate activists raise a mast on their boat during a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Britain, July 15, 2019.
“We need to change our culture around consumption,” said climate activist Bel Jacobs. “People have no idea how environmentally destructive fashion is.”
Greenhouse gas emissions from making textiles was estimated at 1.2 billion tons of CO2-equivalent in 2015, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British environmental charity.
‘Cultish nature’
XR’s actions have been applauded by many environmentalists, who say the only way to make governments, people and corporations sit up and take climate action is to shock them into it. But the radical philosophy underpinning the group, which includes wanting to set up citizens’ assemblies that could overrule parliament, is drawing increasing criticism from foes, who compare the group to a millenarian sect.
“The cultish nature of XR’s activities is a little spooky,” said Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project, a group that focuses on urban planning and futurist technological solutions.
Sympathizers acknowledge that XR hasn’t helped itself with some of the remarks made by its leaders. Co-founder Gail Bradbrook said her realization that humanity was on the brink of extinction came from taking huge doses of psychedelic drugs, which “rewired” her brain and gave her the “codes of social change.”
Roger Hallam, another co-founder, has said, “We are going to force the governments to act. And if they don’t, we will bring them down and create a democracy fit for purpose. And yes, some may die in the process.”
FILE – Police remove a climate change demonstrator during a march supported by Extinction Rebellion in London, Britain. May 24, 2019.
Hallam is not a scientist but has a track record as a political activist, and holds a Ph.D. on “digitally enhanced political resistance and empowerment strategies.”
BirthStrikers
Several leading XR adherents have announced they’ve decided not to procreate in response to the coming “climate breakdown and civilization collapse,” arguing the world is too horrible a place to bring children into it.
The BirthStrikers, as they are nicknamed, received some endorsement earlier this year from U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said the climate emergency “does lead young people to have a legitimate question — ‘Is it OK still to have children?'”
XR critics have compared the BirthStrikers to the Cathars, a medieval religious sect that encouraged celibacy and discouraged marriage on the grounds that every person born was just another poor soul trapped by the devil in a body.
Defections
XR has also seen defections. Sherrie Yeomans, coordinator of XR blockades in the English city of Bristol, left the group, saying, “I can no longer surround myself with the toxic, manipulative Extinction Rebellion cult.”
Johan Norberg, a Swedish author, historian and XR critic, worries that the group is fueling anxiety while not being practical about the possible solutions to global warming.
“I guess it depends on your definition of cult,” he said. “But I think it is a growing, but very radical, sentiment that I fear plays a part in giving people anxiety about their life choices, and also leads us to thinking about these things in the wrong way,” he told VOA.
On the BirthStrikers he said: “The bizarre thing is that they just think of another human being as a burden, a mouth to feed. But they also come along with a brain to think, and hands to work. I don’t know what scientific insight and which technology will save us from not just global warming but also the many other problems that will affect us — the next pandemic, natural disaster and so on — but I know that the chance that we’ll find it is greater if we have more people alive, who live longer lives than ever, get a longer education than ever, and are more free to make use of the accumulated knowledge and technology of mankind to take on those problems.”
FILE – Protesters from the group Extinction Rebellion walk to Hyde Park in London, April 25, 2019.
Norberg points to a future of “electric cars and, soon, planes,” and biofuels made from algae and extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. He worries about the economic consequences if the abrupt zero-growth goals of XR were adopted.
“It would result in a reversal of the amazing economic development that has resulted in the fastest reduction of poverty in history. A lack of growth and international trade would result in human tragedies on a massive scale,” he said.
XR response
XR’s co-founders say Norberg’s formula won’t halt climate change and stop extinction. They defended themselves against critics’ cult charges, arguing recently in an article in a British newspaper, “We’ve made many mistakes, but now is the time for collective action, not recriminations.”
“Extinction Rebellion is humbly following in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King,” Hallam said. “After covering basic material needs, human beings are not made happier through consuming more stuff.”
Bradbrook told reporters in London, “We oppose a system that generates huge wealth through astonishing innovation but is fatally unable to distribute fairly and provide universal access to its spoils. … We need a ‘revolution’ in consciousness to overturn the system.”
Researchers in Uganda this week launched a trial for a new Ebola vaccine. Eight hundred health workers involved in the fight against the Ebola virus are receiving doses of the two-part vaccine. Halima Athumani reports from Mbarara in western Uganda.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday proposed a “red flag” law that would take guns away from people who may harm themselves or others, responding to pressure for him to “do something” after a mass shooting in Dayton that killed nine people.
The Republican governor said he would ask the General Assembly to pass a law that would allow judges to temporarily confiscate guns from individuals believed by police or their relatives to be a danger, and to provide them with mental health treatment.
“We have an obligation to each other,” DeWine said at a news briefing. “If someone is showing signs of trouble or problems, we must help and we must not turn away.”
DeWine spoke three days after a gunman wearing body armor and a mask opened fire early Sunday in a crowded Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood known for its nightlife. It was the second deadly U.S. mass shooting in less than a day.
The governor, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association when he was elected last year, was heckled Sunday night as he spoke at a vigil for the victims of the rampage.
FILE – People shout “Do Something!” as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine speaks during a vigil at the scene of a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 4, 2019.
Protesters repeatedly chanted “Do something!” — a reference to perceived state and federal inaction to curb U.S. gun violence.
“Some chanted ‘Do something!’ and they’re absolutely right,” DeWine said Tuesday. “We must do something, and that is exactly what we’re going to do.”
Other ‘red flag’ laws
Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in American politics. Supporters of tighter restrictions say they are necessary to staunch a U.S. epidemic of gun violence, while opponents believe more controls would violate gun ownership rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
DeWine, who took office in January, previously expressed support for “red flag” laws after a deadly Passover shooting at a California synagogue in April.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have “red flag” laws on the books, according to Giffords, a gun-control advocacy group. Most of the jurisdictions are under Democratic control.
DeWine’s proposal could meet resistance in the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate and House of Representatives.
In an address to the nation Monday, President Donald Trump also backed laws to allow guns to be taken away from dangerous individuals. He also proposed tighter monitoring of the internet, mental health reform and wider use of the death penalty in response to the two mass shootings over the weekend that left 32 people dead in Texas and Ohio.
The president and first lady Melania Trump will visit Dayton on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday.
FILE – Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley speaks to members of the media Aug. 6, 2019, outside Ned Peppers bar in the Oregon District after a mass shooting early Sunday in Dayton.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, a Democrat, said she would welcome the president but plans to tell Trump “how unhelpful he’s been on this,” referring to Trump’s remarks on Monday about ways to curb gun violence.
“Yesterday, his comments weren’t really helpful around the issue of guns,” Whaley told reporters.
Motive unclear
Police named the Ohio gunman as Connor Betts, a 24-year-old white male from Bellbrook, Ohio, and said he was armed with an assault-style rifle fitted with an extended drum magazine that could hold 100 rounds.
The killings in Dayton began around 1 a.m. Sunday in the city’s Oregon District and ended rapidly when nearby police moved in and shot Betts dead. At least 14 people were wounded by gunfire, while others were injured as they fled. Six of the nine people killed were black.
The gunman shot at least 41 bullets in the seconds before he was killed, Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl told reporters Monday. Police officers ended the rampage in about 30 seconds, Biehl said Sunday.
Investigators were still trying to determine a motive, Biehl said. FBI agents were helping police.
The shooting in Dayton, a riverfront city of about 140,000 people in southwestern Ohio, took place just 13 hours after a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, where 22 people were killed. The 21-year-old suspect in that shooting was arrested.
Sunday’s massacre occurred a week after a teenager killed three people with an assault rifle at a food festival in Northern California before taking his own life.
