The IMF Board of Governors convened a special virtual session for final approval of US $650 billion in emergency reserve currency or Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Countries will receive their share of Special Drawing Rights on August 23rd.
“More than $200 billion of these new reserve funds will go to developing countries to support pandemic relief and recovery efforts,” said Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network. “While these resources are needed, developing countries must receive more aid to get beyond the crisis.”
More than $400 billion of the emergency currency goes to wealthy countries. Wealthy countries can donate their SDRs to developing countries directly, or through initiatives from the IMF or development banks.
“Most wealthy countries don’t need their share of Special Drawing Rights and they need to donate them quickly to developing countries struggling with the health and economic crisis,” stated LeCompte.
Read Jubilee USA’s IMF COVID response letter calling for Special Drawing Rights aid with nearly 270 signatories here.
“He was talking about going pro and going to college. He had a future on him. He had a future. I just wish that he was still here with us,” said Ruskin High School football teammate, Kenderal Webber. “I lost a lot of friends, but I was real close with Terrell. I wouldn’t never thought this would happen.”
“He was like another little brother. I see him and my cousins running around. He was a good person and ya’ll took him from everybody now,” said Bell’s friend, Tyisha Peak.
Earlier this week FOX4 spoke to the teen’s pastor, Dennis Lester who said the teen was active and faithful member at the neighborhood church, Bethel Family Worship Center.
At the vigil, there were also calls for change and peace.
Local gospel artist Christian Fly delivering an emotional plea before the crowd.
“Enough is enough. Until we teach our kids that their neighbor is deserving of the same respect of those in their household. This going to continue to happen,” Fly said. “We got to teach them better problem-solving skills. Until pain hurts you enough to make you want to change, we are going to keep going through things like this.”
A juvenile has been arrested and charged in Bell’s death.
National Gun Violence Survivors Week is about elevating our voices and stories, because after living through terrible tragedy, we have found the strength to speak out to help prevent others from experiencing the same pain. It is an emotionally intense week, and after reading and sharing so many stories, I hope you will continue to practice self care and explore resources with the Everytown Survivor Network.
I also wanted to share some of the incredible things you accomplished in the third year of National Gun violence Survivors Week.
Field Events: Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers organized close to 95 virtual events with more than 1700 in attendance, including the first ever NGVSW student summit. Thank you to all of you who organized and spoke at events to ensure survivor voices were heard across the country: from panel discussions to acts of service such as blood drives and book drives, it had a powerful impact.
A moving event lead by California Survivor Engagement Leads
Social Media: Thousands of survivor stories were shared on social media, including 55k mentions of the hashtag #GVSurvivorsWeek and related terms. I was honored to be a part of the Survivor Twitter team — a truly powerful force — who were sharing stories of survivors in the Network all throughout the week to reach more Americans with the urgent message that we must address our country’s gun crisis. If you haven’t already and would like to, you can join the Survivor twitter team here, which engages on campaigns throughout the year.
Federal, State, City Leaders: More than 370 survivors of gun violence released an open letter to the 117th Congress highlighting the shared life-changing trauma of gun violence, which we shared with elected officials and on social media and media during the week. Thank you to all of you who signed the letter.
Our partners in Washington responded by lifting up your voices through social media, virtual conversations, press releases, and floor speeches, including Ambassador Susan Rice, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA-03). The week was even featured during floor speeches in both chambers of Congress by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA).
Beyond the federal government, dozens of mayors and state officials from across the country shared your stories on social media and issued mayoral proclamations. Everytown’s research team also put together a fact sheet for local government leaders on “Community-Led Services for Survivors.”
Partnerships: Over 65 partners, including nearly every gun violence prevention organization, national membership groups, non-profit organizations, and faith partners across various issue areas, joined the effort to lift stories and facts about the impact of gun violence.
In the week leading up to Survivors Week, PEOPLE Magazine released People Features: Gun Violence Survivor Athletes, a virtual roundtable where members of the Everytown Athletic Council shared their personal experiences with gun violence.
Throughout the week, there were many media clips in which survivors spoke out about the impact of gun violence across the country. Here are just a few of them:
America’s extra vaccine doses could be key to global supply
Data: Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Chart: Michelle McGhee/AxiosThe Biden administration’s purchase of 200 million additional Pfizer and Modern doses means the U.S. could fully vaccinate 300 million people with just those two vaccines — and 355 million more people if four additional vaccines gain FDA approval, Axios World editor Dave Lawler reports.Why it matters: The White House says the U.S. will eventually donate excess doses to other countries, but it hasn’t released a plan to do so.Between the lines: Sources in the administration emphasize that despite the bulk orders, only two vaccines have been approved and supplies remain scarce.Most of the 1.2 billion doses of six vaccines currently on the books were purchased as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.Keep reading.
Efforts to restrict facial recognition are gathering momentum around the country, including the investigation of the Capitol insurrection, Axios Future author Bryan Walsh writes.Why it matters: With dozens of companies selling the ability to identify people from pictures of their faces — and no clear federal regulation governing the process — facial recognition is seeping into the U.S.Driving the news: The Minneapolis City Council voted yesterday to bar its police department from using facial recognition technology, Axios Twin Cities’ Nick Halter reports.Minneapolis will join other cities that have restricted the technology, including Portland, San Francisco and Boston.Keep reading.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) greets Jason Miller, adviser to President Trump, at the Capitol yesterday. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty ImagesHistorians are already drawing lessons from Impeachment II, Axios managing editors David Nather and Margaret Talev report:The power of impeachment: That’s pretty much gone. Historian Douglas Brinkley says if former President Trump is acquitted, it’ll be clear impeachment is a political process, not a legal one.America’s changing demographics: Renee Romano, an Oberlin College professor who specializes in the field of historical memory, says that outcome would raise the question: “Can America ever truly be a multiracial democracy?'”Congress leaves the field: With a Trump acquittal, the Senate would have passed on two chances to hold a president accountable for undermining the authority of Congress, said Andrew Rudalevidge, expert on presidential power.Share this story.
En español | A nonprofit organization that specializes in teaching technology skills to older adults is uniting with AARP to offer its courses to even more older adults nationwide — for free.
Senior Planet and its parent organization, Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), have been working with AARP on projects for a decade or more, including a How to Use Zoom class early in the coronavirus pandemic that drew more than 10,000 participants, says Tom Kamber, executive director of OATS/Senior Planet. Now OATS has joined forces with AARP as an affiliated charity, like AARP Foundation, Legal Counsel for the Elderly and Wish of a Lifetime.
OATS will continue to offer its programs independently. AARP will support OATS in expanding its offerings and making them known to a wider audience through AARP’s new Virtual Community Center. The relationship with AARP allows both organizations to help more people learn the computer skills they need now more than ever because so many activities and events are available only online.
Before the pandemic, nearly three-quarters of adults in the United States had high-speed internet access at home, according to recent Pew Research Center data. But that number misses differences among age groups. About 4 of 5 adults ages 50 to 64 had high-speed internet then, higher than the U.S. average, but only 3 of 5 people 65 and older had the same access.
More than a quarter of people 65 and older told Pew researchers that they never went online. Past Pew studies have shown that online use drops even more among those 80 and older.
Tech anxiety transformed
In many cases, older adults lack confidence in their ability to use new devices and software designed to make their lives easier, the Pew researchers found. They watch from the sidelines as younger family members easily adopt new technology, potential employers use code words for age bias to target “digital native” job candidates, and the pandemic increases their isolationbecause of the COVID danger that meeting friends face to face may bring.
Jolynn Bailey, 67, a retired teacher who lives in Clifton, Texas, was a reluctant convert to technology. She had used a computer at work and for her grade books, but only because her school required it, she says. She used the computer her daughter bought her only to look at email and log on to Weight Watchers’ website.
Learn online
AARP has two places where you can sign up for free online classes and workshops:
Then the pandemic left her alone in her studio apartment with poor TV reception and a few DVDs — unable to go to the nearby gym, head to Weight Watchers meetings in Waco or meet with friends. Her daughter, who works for a tech company in California, found out about Senior Planet in April and suggested she try it. She waited three months, becoming more and more desperate for things to do.
“The first time I went on Senior Planet I was hooked,” Bailey says. “It gave me my world back and more than that, a whole new world.” Now she joins stretch or chair yoga classes to keep fit; participates in the virtual book club; and takes tech classes, even learning how to use an HDMI cable so she can watch YouTube videos from her computer on the bigger TV screen. She’s in Senior Planet discussion groups where she’s met people from across the country and often takes part in several workshops each day.
The idea for OATS/Senior Planet began when Kamber was working on part of the project to revitalize Lower Manhattan after 9/11. An 87-year-old woman in the area called him after learning about his website launch related to the project. But she didn’t have a computer and didn’t know about the internet.
Kamber ended up tutoring her in his office.
OATS was founded in 2004 in New York City as an outgrowth of those lessons. It now has Senior Planet physical centers in five additional cities: Palo Alto, California; Denver; Rockville, Maryland; Plattsburgh, New York; and San Antonio. Classes are entirely online during the pandemic, which allows anyone from across the country to participate, but in-person instruction will resume when it’s safe to do so.
Engagement erases isolation
Senior Planet programs are designed to teach adults 60 and older basic computer skills — including how to start, stop, mute, skip ads and enlarge a YouTube video — and more advanced options. Its interactive online classes, offered in English, Spanish and Chinese, are free to anyone of any age. About 50 classes are on the schedule each week.
“A lot of Latino adults aren’t up to date with technology. Some don’t even have internet access,” says Braulio “Brad” José Veloz Carvajal, a 73-year-old retiree in San Antonio who found out about the Senior Planet classes through his membership in the Pride Center San Antonio. He knew how to use a computer but retired from his job at the Pentagon in 2003, so he wanted to learn all about Google, Facetime and Zoom.
“With what I learned, I was able to talk to my family in Corpus Christi and San Antonio. That made me so happy.”— Brad Veloz, 73, of San Antonio
“With what I learned, I was able to talk to my family in Corpus Christi and San Antonio. That made me so happy,” he said after the months of lockdown because of the pandemic. “I hope Senior Planet teaches technologies that can provide a way to talk to other seniors in the Latino LGBT community and start support groups.”
Class participants can decide to just listen, speak up with questions or type comments in the chat area. Most sessions aren’t archived for future playback, although some how-tos are posted to Senior Planet’s YouTube channel, but popular courses are offered frequently.
“In some of our classes, we find that they come early and stay late to talk to each other,” Kamber says. “Our trainers seek out opportunities to engage people. They draw people out.” Follow-up with students has shown that participants are using their newfound knowledge.
Technology topics include a range of how-tos such as shopping on Amazon, using Google Maps and hosting a Zoom meeting. Some workshops focus on helping participants struggling with tech issues or learning how to keep their personal information secure. Better balance, chair yoga and stretching sessions are among Senior Planet’s fitness offerings.
“If I can Zoom, you can Zoom,” says Bailey, who decided to become a member of Senior Planet to go along with her 17-year AARP membership. “It’s not that complicated. You just need somebody to guide you through it. And that’s what Senior Planet knows how to do.”
Monica Bentivegna contributed to this story. Linda Dono is an executive editor for AARP. Previously, she served as a reporter and editor for USA Today, Gannett News Service and newspapers in four states, including The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The Virtual Community Center uses Zoom and a few other online platforms to allow users with common interests to learn together. As with Senior Planet’s offerings, these events are live and allow for interactivity — speaking or typing — with others in attendance. It’s not on-demand video.
“The Virtual Community Center is designed in many ways to be like an in-person community center. You sign up for a class and go to it” online, says Heather Nawrocki, AARP’s vice president of fun and fulfillment.
Events on a wide variety of topics, including books, fitness, history, music and screenings of AARP Movies for Grownups, are available now for signup. All are free, have no age restrictions and don’t require AARP membership to participate. Although the programs initially are in English, AARP is looking at expanding the signup platform as well as course offerings for Spanish speakers.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
-Luke 15:20
Recently, the United Kingdom appointed a Minister of Loneliness to attend to the growing public health crisis of loneliness reported by 9 million people in their country. Our culture has mastered the art of relational distance. Too many of us are content to view one another from a long way off. Our past hurts, pains, disappointments and biases keep us so isolated and alone. But like this father who saw his son and became proximal to him, we are being nudged to close the chasm of difference and remember our shared humanity.
Pastor Michael McBride (known as “Pastor Mike”) is a native of San Francisco and has been active in ministry for over 20 years. Pastor McBride’s commitment to holistic ministry can be seen through his leadership roles in both the church and community organizations. A graduate of Duke University’s Divinity School, with a Master of Divinity with an emphasis in Ethics and Public Policy, Pastor McBride founded The Way Christian Center in West Berkeley, where he presently serves as the Lead Pastor.
Bestselling author Stephen King on Monday weighed in on President Trump’s recent warnings to the migrant caravan moving through Mexico toward the United States. King’s criticism came in response to a tweet Trump shared on Sunday stating that “full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther (sic) Border.” “Jesus, man,” King said in response to the tweet. “You act like the Red Chinese army was invading.” “They’re just a bunch of scared and hungry people,” the author said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addresses some of the greatest superbug threats—and what the agency is doing about them.
“It’s a long road from exciting things happening in the lab to getting through a clinical process to the patient’s bedside,” Kathy Talkington, director of Pew’s antibiotic resistance project, explains in a Chicago Tribune editorial.
For Men’s Health Month—June—get to know Chris Linaman. After his heartbreaking superbug experience, he’s working to help others avoid the trauma he endured.
Antibiotics are fundamental to modern medicine, essential for treating everything from routine skin infections to strep throat, and for protecting vulnerable patients receiving chemotherapy or being treated in intensive care units.
Pew’s antibiotic resistance project is working to ensure both the prudent use of existing drugs and a robust pipeline of new drugs in order to meet current and future patient needs.
You probably heard the great news – after a few years of progressive activism, FOX finally cancelled Glenn Beck’s show–but the Boycott Must Go On!!
Ten years ago, Media Matters launched with a revolutionary mission: to systematically monitor the U.S. media for conservative misinformation every day, in real time. We’ve been calling out right-wing lies for a decade — and we’re not done yet. Will you contribute now to help us raise $10,000 for our 10th anniversary?
For ten years, we’ve successfully fought back against the bad actors that poison our media with right-wing lies and smears. It’s been an amazing beginning, and we couldn’t have done it without your support.
Dear Kevin,
You probably heard the great news – after two years of progressive activism, FOX finally cancelled Glenn Beck’s show.
Beck was targeted after he slandered President Obama by saying, “This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don’t know what it is… This guy, I believe, is a racist.”
Activists at ColorOfChange, Media Matters, StopBeck, FoxNewsBoycott, and of course Democrats.com responded with a boycott of advertisers on Glenn Beck’s show. Ultimately over 300 advertisers pulled their ads from Beck, costing FOX over $40 million.
Advertiser boycotts work! And it’s time to boycott all FOX News advertisers: http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv
We’re starting our boycott of all FOX News with Proactiv, which sells acne medicine to teenagers and young adults. Why?
First, there are lots of other acne treatments. Second, young adults above all are hurt by FOX News, which promotes right-wing policies on race, education, healthcare, the environment, and war. Let’s get our future leaders to lead the fight against FOX News!
Sign the petition to Proactiv and enter the email address of every young adult over 18 you know: http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv
Beyond President Obama, FOX regularly slanders nearly everyone: Democrats, unionized workers, the unemployed (including veterans and 99ers), environmentalists, feminists, blacks, Hiics, Jews, Muslims, progressives, scientists, and any other group it disagrees with.
FOX News broadcasts rightwing extremist slander, incitement to violence, political propaganda, and outright lies to promote its rightwing political agenda. This is not “news,” but rather a never-ending “war on news” – and it’s all documented in our petition.
Why would any decent company want to fund it? Tell Proactiv to stop advertising on FOX News: http://www.democrats.com/boycott-proactiv
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
GLEN BECK ADMITTED in 2007, “I Am RACIST and Barack Obama is very White” THIS MAKES Boycotting FOX NEWS needed NOW
By Kevin Stoda
Dear, American supporters of the Fascist Oddball Xenophobic (FOX) news networks.
AMERICANS are getting less tolerant of your racism and stronghold on our major media.
For example, we have noted that in his 2007 TV program from FOX (See on You-Tube), Glen Beck admitted he himself was racist. Further, Beck then, in contrast to 2009, called Barrack Obama much more white than black. (Apparently, Beck now he has other nonsense to mush men’s minds.)
Using a major news platform to promote racism and to tell people to disrespect a whole presidential administration through mixed truths, outright lies, and xenophobia, is not to be tolerated any more.
On Democracy Now today, Amy Goodman asked Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP what he thought of Wal-Mart’s pull-out from advertising on the Glen Beck program on FOX.
NOTE: Goodman had simply asked , “The whole attack by Glenn Beck that drove this (resignation)? In your response from the NAACP to Van Jones, it says, ´The only thing more outrageous than Mr. Beck’s attack on Van Jones is the fact that there are sponsors that continue to pay him to provide this type of offensive commentary.` Do you support the continued boycott of companies like Wal-Mart of Beck’s show on Fox?”
This is a particularly important point because Glen Beck´s HATE CAMPAIGN ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION led recently to a great American policy maker, Van Jones, quitting the government this week.
Mr. Jealous said, “We certainly support them (Walmart) choosing with their dollars who they’re going to support. I mean, it’s—Glenn Beck is somebody who’s told a seven-year-old girl, a seven-year-old black girl, that he would buy her a ticket back to Africa, that she needed to go back to Africa. And then he comes out, and he says that healthcare is the beginning of reparations. I mean, this guy plays the race card on a weekly basis. He does it very aggressive—you know, in a very hateful way.”
Recall, first, that Van Jones is one of the most important and thoughtful men in America—however, the FOX (Fascist Oddball Xenophobic) news network chose to support a man, like Glen Beck, rather than seeing that tens of millions of Americans need to get health care from promoters like Jones and that our America economy needs to move starting today to the kind of economy that its competitors worldwide are already doing.
Let’s quote the wisdom and influential words of Van Jones on the absolute necessity to green the American economy NOW!
“I think it’s really important to point out that we’re sort of at the end of an era of American capitalism, where we thought we could run the economy based on consumption rather than production, credit rather than creativity, borrowing rather than building, and also, most importantly, environmental destruction rather than environmental restoration.”
Jones continued, “We’re trying to make the case in this book that that era is over. We now have to move in a very different direction. And key to that will be basing the US economy not on credit cards, but based on clean energy and the clean energy revolution that would put literally millions of people to work, putting up solar panels all across the United States, weatherizing buildings so they don’t leak so much energy and put up so much carbon, building wind farms and wave farms, manufacturing wind turbines. We argue you could put Detroit back to work not making SUVs to destroy the world, but making wind turbines, 8,000 finely machine parts in each one, twenty tons of steel in each wind tower, making wind turbines to help save the world.”
Finally, Van Jones wisely noted, “So we think that you can fight pollution and poverty at the same time. We think that you can actually power our way through this recession by putting people to work, but we’re going to have to start building things here and re-powering, retrofitting, retooling America, and that that’s the way forward both for the economy, for the earth and for everyday people.”
Note: These statements came from a program on DN from October of last year:
Another way, is to demand that local radio and TV channels put better programming on, such as Democracy Now or news sources promoted by serious progressive journalists:
Here in New York City, faculty at The New School have launched the first faculty encampment to protest the violent police crackdown on their students. The professors named the encampment after the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December.
Suneil Sanzgiri: “Following police raids and violence, The New School faculty established the Refaat Alareer faculty solidarity encampment. The call from students and Palestinians in Gaza is clear. We cannot give up. We must escalate and persevere to demand our universities divest, disclose and boycott from the war profiteers and institutions justifying and aiding the genocide in Gaza.”
The first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment in the United States was launched Wednesday at The New School in New York City, where nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents inside the lobby of the university’s main building on Fifth Avenue. The encampment is named after the Palestinian writer, poet and professor Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December. The faculty protest began after the police raided a student encampment at The New School and arrested more than 40 students following a request by the university administration to clear the encampment. On Thursday, 12 more people were arrested outside The New School as the faculty encampment continued inside. Democracy Now! was on the scene and spoke with protesting faculty who denounced the school’s ties to Israel and the militarized police response against student protesters. “For the state violence that our students were subjected to and traumatized because of, we could not stand on the sidelines any longer,” part-time lecturer Suneil Sanzgiri said. “What we’re doing here is calling for all faculty across the country to step up, to risk more and to escalate, because we have to get all war profiteers out of our universities.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The first faculty-led Gaza encampment in the country was launched at The New School here in New York City Wednesday evening. Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents inside the lobby of The New School’s main building on Fifth Avenue. They named their encampment after the Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December.
The faculty encampment was launched several days after the police raided a student encampment at The New School and arrested more than 40 students after the university administration called on the NYPD to clear the encampment. In a statement Thursday, The New School said it would not pursue criminal charges against the student protesters who were arrested. It also said it would be reactivating a college committee to examine the issue of divestment.
However, on Thursday evening, 12 people were arrested outside The New School as the faculty encampment continued inside. Last night, I got a text as the protest was heating up. I was walking my dog Zazu. We raced over to The New School, and I met up with Democracy Now! fellow Hana Elias, and we started reporting and recording.
PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! We’re standing in front of The New School. There are posters in the windows, a faculty encampment, the first in the country. The posters say “40K people dead. You arrest kids instead,” “All eyes on Rafah.” But the slogan of The New School here on the window is “Radical Democracy.” Two professors are here who are part of the encampment.
HALA MALAK: My name is Hala Malak. Have a few demands. The first one is we want The New School to divest from the 13 companies that are — that they have investments in weapons and manufacturing that are part and complicit in this war, so demilitarization of divestment, basically, of the school. Our second demand is that we would like all cops to be off campus indefinitely, and we also want the school to cut all ties with the NYPD.
PROTESTERS: Up, up with liberation! Down, down with the occupation!
SUNEIL SANZGIRI: My name is Suneil Sanzgiri. I’m a part-time faculty in the Culture and Media Department. I’m here because I teach a class on decolonization, and there is no better way to put into place the knowledge that students learn in our classrooms into practice. In the encampment that we see sweeping across the country, we know that the state repressive police forces are lock in step with the larger U.S. imperialist presence around the globe, and specifically with what’s happening in Palestine. And so we understand that what we’re doing here, the calls for divestment, are directly and materially impacting in an end to the genocide. And for us, as faculty, for the state violence that our students were subjected to and traumatized because of, we could not stand on the sidelines any longer. We knew we had to step up. Many faculty across the country have risked so much. And what we’re doing here is calling for all faculty across the country to step up, to risk more and to escalate, because we have to get all war profiteers out of our universities.
CLARA MATTEI: Hi. My name is Clara Mattei. I’m associate professor of economics at the NSSR. I’m out here because this is the struggle of the moment everyone has to be in. I must say that these encampments are places where culture actually explodes, emerges, connections are made. And ultimately, this is a fight against capitalism and the violence of capitalism at large.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re standing in front of the police van where they put a young Black man who they arrested. Then scores of people came, professors and students, to demand that he be let go. They sat in front of the police van. And now scores of police have come to arrest the people that are sitting in front of the van.
CRESA PUGH: My name is Cresa Pugh, and I’m assistant professor of sociology here at The New School. And I’m sitting here because as I was walking to support our students, in the encampment, the faculty encampment, they arrested one of my Black students, refused to tell me why they were arresting him, and promptly threw him in this van. And I am not going to stand up and let this van go until they let my Black student out of that van. And he was arrested for supporting Palestinian Gazans. Forty thousand have died. And you’re arresting this kid?
PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!
AMY GOODMAN: There are now dozens of police here. We’re right next to Parsons and The New School. Parsons has a plaque on it that says this is the site of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis magazine and the headquarters of the NAACP, a place where Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and others wrote. They’re arresting a young Black man. The crowd has been asking, many of them professors and students here at The New School, “Why is he being arrested?”
CRESA PUGH: Why will you not speak to us about our students? What is his name? I’m a professor here. I deserve to know who my student is that you have in this van.
NATASHA LENNARD: I’m Natasha Lennard, and I’m a faculty member at The New School of Social Research. I’m here to support my students. I’m here to stand in solidarity with other faculty members, other staff members who want to see an end to genocide. We’re also calling profoundly for cops off and away from campus. And this is what you see when you keep standing armies of NYPD in and near a campus. A small incident — and I didn’t see exactly what happened — but an incident has led now to many people being put at risk. A young man, a young Black man, is in police custody. None of this would happen if we didn’t have police ready because of the completely unnecessary actions of our administration in calling the police in on our students, like so many administrations around the country calling police in on a peaceful protest for the end to the genocide in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Your name? And why are you being arrested?
NEW SCHOOL STAFF MEMBER: I’m being arrested for trying to protect a student at the university. I’m a staff member here. This is shameful. This all started because a student at this university was arrested with no cause. The police refused to give an answer. And now they’ve arrested more students.
JULIETA SALGADO: I’m Julieta!
AMY GOODMAN: Are you a student? Are you a professor?
DENIS MOYNIHAN: Tell us your name!
AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?
AMY GOODMAN: The person we were shouting to, who was being put into a police car, was Julieta Salgado. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back. But just before they put her into the car, a police officer unbuttoned her shirt and put her hands up and down her chest over her bra in full public view. A total of 12 people were arrested on the streets outside The New School last night. Special thanks to Democracy Now! video fellow Hana Elias and Hany Massoud.
When we come back, we go to Princeton University, where over a dozen students are on hunger strike calling for divestment from companies with ties to Israel. We’ll speak with one of the hunger-striking students and with Larry Hamm. He’s running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey. He’s also a Princeton alum who helped lead the protests there in the ’70s calling for Princeton to divest from apartheid South Africa. Stay with us.
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Image Credit: Allison Bailey / NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Police have arrested scores more student protesters as part of a widening crackdown on encampments calling on schools to divest from Israel. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, police raided a student encampment on Tuesday night, arresting around 130. In Washington, D.C., police deployed tear gas as they broke up an encampment at George Washington University. Thirty-three were arrested. Police also broke up an encampment at the University of Houston.
On Capitol Hill, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib held a press conference Wednesday where she praised student protesters.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “These students are saying, ‘Save lives,’ no matter faith or ethnicity. This is something that I feel like is being completely ignored. Why are they out there? This is why we’re proud. We’re proud to use our position in office to bring these voices so you all don’t forget why there are encampments, why there are movements and dissent around this country.”
Students from George Washington University and other nearby schools joined Tlaib at the press conference.
Kali: “Since day one, we have understood the monster before us. It is the collusion of academic institutions, administrations, police, Congress and the state at large to protect the interests of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. They have affirmed a blatant mischaracterization of these encampments, naming them as antisemitic and dangerous, in order to justify the carceral crackdown on student territory we’ve seen across the nation.”
Israel on Wednesday bulldozed 47 homes of the Palestinian Bedouin community in the Negev Desert, home to some 500 people. Israel is planning on building a highway on the site of the demolished homes, but the approval for the construction has yet to be granted. No alternative housing has been set up for the families who have now been rendered homeless. The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of Negev said the demolition was unprecedented in its “scope of the destruction and the hatred.”
Elsewhere in Gaza, health workers uncovered another 49 bodies at the decimated Al-Shifa Hospital Wednesday. Most of the bodies were decomposed, and some were found headless. Five hundred twenty bodies have been uncovered across three Gaza Strip hospitals in recent weeks after attacks and sieges by the Israeli military. Attacking hospitals is a war crime.
Biden was in Chicago Wednesday for another campaign fundraiser, where he was met with protesters who blocked downtown streets.
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, protesting hostage families clashed with police. Two arrests were made. The sister of a hostage was hospitalized. Her mother said in a social media video, “Bring back the hostages. Stop the war with Hamas.”
In an interview on CNN, President Biden said the U.S. will stop supplying certain weapons to Israel if its forces invade Rafah.
President Joe Biden: “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem. We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like came out of the Middle East recently. But it’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells used, that have been used in cities” —
Erin Burnett: “Artillery shells, as well?”
President Joe Biden: “Yeah, artillery shells.”
Israel’s extreme-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted on X this morning, “Hamas [heart symbol] Biden.”
Israel continues to seal off Gaza’s Rafah border crossing, as the U.N. warns it is “choking off the entry of life-saving aid.” The U.N. adds that many of the 600,000 children taking shelter in Rafah are “highly vulnerable and at the edge of survival.” Save the Children also warns humanitarian operations will “come to a complete halt” unless Israel changes course in Rafah. The aid group says three-quarters of all child patients that have been treated in a so-called safe zone near Rafah have blast injuries. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are once again on the move, though many say their next destination is unknown, with no safe place to shelter in Gaza. As Israel prepares for its full-scale ground invasion in Rafah, Palestinians continue to die under aerial attacks.
Mohammed Khalil Abu Kaynass: “We were baking bread. We came to blood and martyrs scattered. We’re gathering them in body parts and pieces. The Civil Defense members came and gathered them in pieces. My friend died. They also picked him up in pieces. Everything is in pieces.”
A girl looks on as she stands by the rubble outside a building hit by Israeli bombardment in the southern Gaza Strip on October 31, 2023. Children in Gaza have been exposed to high levels of violence even before the current war, researchers say, increasing their risk of mental health challenges.
Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images
When Iman Farajallah was growing up in Gaza, she says she witnessed the first and second intifadas — Palestinian uprisings against Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank — and subsequent wars with Israel.
“The experience was so vicious, so scary, so harmful that there are no words that you can actually describe it,” says Farajallah, a psychologist who now lives in the United States and works with refugee children at a community clinic in San Francisco.
“How can you describe when [an] Israeli soldier comes and jumps from the walls into our home, beating up my brothers, beating up my mother?”
Yet, as a child, she says, she wasn’t able to talk to anyone about how terrifying those experiences were. “Nobody ever talked to me about my trauma,” she says.
Now there is new trauma for children in Gaza.
The current conflict began on Oct 7, when Hamas attacked parts of Israel, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200, including 32 children. In response, Israel began bombing Gaza and launched a ground invasion.
The children in Gaza, including the hostages, are trapped in a war zone.
According to Palestinian health officials, of the more than 10,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza in the past month, about 4,000 were children. Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday.
And even as the World Health Organization warns about the spread of infectious diseases in Gaza, some researchers are concerned that those children who do survive might be scarred for the rest of their lives.
Researchers say the cumulative trauma of chronic ethnic-political violence has a profound and lasting impact on children’s mental health and development, affecting their functioning and outlook on the world as young adults. Studies show that even youth who seem to become desensitized to the violence around them remain deeply scarred — unless, that is, they are given a chance to recover.
This is especially a concern for children in Gaza, who were already struggling with significant mental health issues well before this conflict. For years, numerous studies have documented unusually high rates of mental and behavioral health issues among Gaza’s youth, who make up nearly half of the population in the territory. Most of them have never known a life without the threat of violence and conflict.
Mental health of children in Gaza before the current conflict
Many children struggle with symptoms of physical trauma, says Farajallah. “A lot of them have been impacted by the bombs,” she says. “So they have scars. They have splinters and fragments in their body. Some of them [have] lost their limbs, some of them have lost their eyesight.”
She also saw a whole range of mental and behavioral health symptoms among children in Gaza, like “fear of darkness, general tension, flashback, nightmares, avoidance, difficulty sleeping and a recollection of their trauma.”
Many other studies have documented high levels of emotional distress and mental illness among children in Gaza and the West Bank. A review study in 2011 found high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder among Palestinian children, with estimates in various studies ranging from 23% to 70%.
According to UNICEF, before the previous conflict in 2021, one in three children in Gaza needed care for conflict-related trauma. In a study in 2022, the nonprofit Save the Children interviewed nearly 500 children and 160 parents in Gaza. It found that 80% of children in the study showed symptoms of emotional distress. About half of them there reported having contemplated suicide, and three out of five kids were self-harming. Four in five children reported they were living with depression, grief and fear.
Studying how violence affects Israeli and Palestinian children
A series of international studies following both Israeli and Palestinian children over several years have documented how exposure to high levels of ethnic and political violence not only hurts children’s mental health but also makes it more likely for some to become aggressive toward others.
Back in 2007, a team of American, Israeli and Palestinian researchers began following hundreds of children in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza to understand how much political and ethnic violence they were exposed to and how that was affecting them in the long run.
“We were able to look at exposure to violence from middle childhood, around age 8, all the way through late adolescence, emerging adulthood,” says Eric Dubow, professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University.
They looked at a range of exposures to political and military violence, from having family members or friends and acquaintances die to seeing someone held hostage, tortured or abused to witnessing the destruction of buildings, buses or properties.
While both Israeli and Palestinian children were exposed to relatively high levels of violence, Dubow says Palestinian children’s exposure was significantly greater than for Israeli children on all measures they looked at.
For example, they found that 55% of Palestinian children reported having at least one friend or acquaintance die due to political or military violence. In comparison, 13% of Israeli Jewish kids and only 3% of Israeli Arab kids had the same experience. While 43% of Palestinian children had witnessed someone being held hostage or tortured or abused by Israelis, 14% of Israeli Jewish kids said they had witnessed such violence by the other side.
“There’s no question that the Palestinian kids are being exposed to a lot more political violence than the Israeli kids,” says Dubow.
Dubow and his colleagues found that high levels of ethnic-political violence also increased the levels of violence in communities, and perhaps more important for kids, within families.
“When families are growing up in these conflict zones, it affects the parents,” says Dubow. “The parents become more depressed, the parents become more aggressive toward each other.”
So children in a conflict zone are more likely to experience violence at home and more likely to be harshly treated by their parents, he says.
His team found that overall exposure to violence affects both Israeli and Palestinian kids in a number of harmful ways.
“The more violence they see all around them in their broader social environment, the more likely they are to have higher levels of post-traumatic stress (PTS) reactions,” says Dubow’s colleague Paul Boxer at Rutgers University.
As the team reported in a 2013 study, the Palestinian children had the highest levels of PTS symptoms, followed by Israeli Jewish kids and then, Israeli Arab kids. And these symptoms stayed with the kids through the seven years of the study, following the oldest cohort into adulthood.
Post-traumatic stress is debilitating for youth, says Dubow. “Their sense of the world is shattered,” he says. “They don’t feel secure in their families. They don’t feel secure in their relationships with others. They’re constantly on guard.”
From pushing and shoving to more severe aggression
The aggression starts out as “pushing and shoving other kids,” says Dubow, “but by the time they’re [in] adolescence and late adolescence and even into early adulthood, then we start to see more severe physical aggression and we also start to see more support for violent political demonstrations.”
He and his colleagues also wanted to know how these children who were seeing so much violence around them from a young age were reacting to violence. So they did an experiment and showed the kids a violent video to gauge their emotional reaction.
“We actually hooked kids to this machine that basically has little straps that go around the fingers and measures the amount of sweat under the skin,” says Dubow. The amount of sweat is an indicator of emotional arousal – the more someone sweats, the stronger their feelings.
“Those kids actually show more post-traumatic stress symptoms because they are emotionally aroused by the violence,” says Dubow.
But the other kids weren’t aroused by the violence in the video – they were numb to it. And these are the kids, Dubow says, who had become aggressive toward others and were more likely to participate in violent political protests as young adults.
“Most of us, when we’re exposed to violence, it’s abhorrent to us,” says Dubow. “We reject it. We think it’s horrible.”
But when children are constantly exposed to violence from a young age, some start to become desensitized to it. “By becoming numb to the violence we see, it makes it a lot easier to accept violence as a typical way of responding to a social situation,” he adds.
These kids start to believe “that the world is a more violent place, that aggression is a good way to solve problems,” says Boxer, “and [that] the world in the broader sense, is a very hostile environment where there may be others who are consistently out to get them.”
For all the outcomes Boxer and his colleagues looked at, Palestinian children fared worse than Israeli kids.
Psychological ‘first aid’ and long-term healing
The ongoing conflict, he says, only makes things worse.
Both children in Gaza and the Israeli children directly exposed to the Hamas attacks are now at a greater risk of long-term post-traumatic stress and other mental health problems, says Dubow.
“It’s almost unfathomable to think about what’s happening to kids there,” says Boxer.
What kids in Gaza need most urgently, he says, is to be safe. It’s part of what’s known as “psychological first aid,” he says. “So making sure kids are warm and clothed and fed, kept physically safe.”
Only then, he says, can they receive care to minimize the long-term mental health impacts of what they have been through in recent weeks.
But Iman Farajallah, the Palestinian-American psychologist, says mental health care alone can’t heal children in Gaza.
“When you work with a child, he’s going to ask you, ‘but what if another war broke out? Can you protect me? Can you protect my parents?’ ” she says. “Our answer is ‘no, we can’t.’ “
With violence spiraling in the war, she fears that the children in Gaza won’t have a real chance to recover from their trauma.
Image Credit: Instagram @saic_spl and Palestinian Youth Movement
Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S., yet students continue to call for an end to the war on Gaza and universities’ investment in companies that support Israel’s occupation of Palestine. We speak to three student organizers from around the country: Salma Hamamy of the University of Michigan, president of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, about the commencement ceremony protest she helped organize, and Cady de la Cruz of the University of Virginia and Rae Ferrara of the State University of New York at New Paltz about police crackdowns on their schools’ encampments. De la Cruz was arrested in the UVA raid and banned from campus without an opportunity to collect any of her belongings. She says repression has strengthened the resolve of many protesters, who are willing to risk their academic futures to push for divestment. “All of us there felt like we have more time on our hands … than the people of Gaza,” she explains, “We would hold it down for anything.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Graduation ceremonies have begun on college campuses across the United States as students continue their protests in solidarity with Palestine and calling on their schools to divest from Israel. On Friday, the student speaker at the University of Toledo’s graduate school commencement ceremony wore a keffiyeh hijab and a Palestinian flag over her graduation robe. This is part of the address by Maha Zeidan, a Palestinian American graduating law student, president of the Graduate Student Association.
MAHA ZEIDAN: I apologize that this is not a typical graduation speech, but there is nothing typical about the times that we are living in. There is nothing typical about 15,000 children live-streamed deaths being watched. And there is nothing acceptable about our institutional complicity, silence or the gross misuse of police force nationwide.
AMY GOODMAN: Maha Zeidan. Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan, students holding Palestinian flags briefly disrupted graduation ceremonies Saturday as a plane flew overhead holding a banner that read “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” Also on Saturday, at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where in 2017 neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us,” police in riot gear stormed a Gaza solidarity encampment and arrested at least 25 student protesters.
PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!
POLICE OFFICER: Turn around and walk that way.
PROTESTER 2: Do not touch her Hey!
PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!
AMY GOODMAN: The raid came after The Intercept’s Prem Thakker reported UVA, quote, “appears to have unilaterally changed policy on tents to help justify calling upon the police to arrest protesters.”
Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S. in the past three weeks, which includes 133 arrests on Thursday at SUNY New Paltz alone, where police violently raided a student encampment with batons and dogs.
Well, we’re joined by three guests from these schools. We’re beginning in Southfield, Michigan, with Salma Hamamy, a student at the University of Michigan who just graduated this past weekend. Salma is president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Michigan.
Salma, can you describe the graduation ceremony on Saturday?
SALMA HAMAMY: Hi. Yes. Thank you for having me.
So, the graduation ceremony on Saturday took place in the early morning with nearly hundreds and hundreds of students prepared to enjoy a celebratory moment. However, likewise, there are hundreds of students who are in the process of immense grief, given the ongoing genocide in Gaza and given the fact that the University of Michigan is funding a genocide. So, students took it upon themselves to engage in protest at the ceremony, with nearly a hundred students walking up and down the aisle trying to rally for the university to heed our demands, considering that they have entirely ignored us for the last seven months. As soon as the plane flew over with the banner, “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” students jumped out of their seats carrying the Palestinian flag, walked throughout the aisles. And eventually, the police pushed us towards the back and prevented further protesters from being able to join us in the graduation.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the overall crowd? I mean, there were tens of thousands of people there at University of Michigan graduation, Salma.
SALMA HAMAMY: Yeah, there were certainly tens of thousands of people there. The stadium is one of the largest in the world. And as soon the plane flew by with the banner calling for the university to divest, cheers erupted through the crowd. As students stood up and held their Palestinian flags, you could likewise hear a mix of cheers and some fellow students nearby calling for the police to immediately arrest us, cursing us out, throwing racial slurs. However, students continued on and held the Palestinian flag very high up and joined very quickly with one another and only got louder as both the cheers and boos continued.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Salma, I’m curious. At the same time, you have a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus. Police have not been called in to raid that?
SALMA HAMAMY: Yes. Surprisingly, police officers have not been called in to raid our encampment yet. We have faced quite a bit in regards to police brutality throughout the last seven months. And as of right now, our best guess is due to the fact that every single time police suppression continues on the rise, students’ power only grows in response. And so, considering that the university would probably be very fearful of what would happen on campus if they were to engage in police violence again, witnessing what has happened in the past, students would only exemplify and amplify their solidarity. So, it’s more so a preventative cause. They’re saying that they’re trying to allow students to peacefully protest; however, every single time we have tried peacefully protesting in the past demanding a meeting, they’ve arrested us several times, brutally beaten us to the floor, even ripping off students’ hijabs in the process. So, as of right now, the university, I think, is trying to wait it out and to wait for the students’ energy to die down. However, it’s only going to continue to grow.
AMY GOODMAN: Salma is joining us from Michigan. We’re going now to Cady de la Cruz, an undergraduate student at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, arrested Saturday for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, a senior scheduled to graduate in two weeks. Now, let’s place this again. This is Charlottesville, where in 2017 scores of white men, mainly men, marched, saying, “Jews will not replace us.” This is during the Trump administration. If you can describe the arrests that took place, Cady, police arresting 25 protesters? What happened?
CADY DE LA CRUZ: Hi. Good morning.
Yeah. So, as you noted, the tent policy changed without notice at 11 a.m. on Saturday. And at noon, they deployed state troopers in riot gear. We immediately linked arms. We knew why we were there. We knew we weren’t going to leave until they met our demands, and we felt strong. They stalled for two hours. The state police, the city police, the county police, the university police were all there, at least a hundred cops. And we danced. And a huge crowd gathered around the encampment, supporting us, as police tried to keep them from getting in, but people kept running actually past the cops to join us. There was so much solidarity. The crowd outside was almost louder than us.
Eventually, the state troopers in riot gear did close in on us, a line of at least 40 of them, just a little bit longer than us, with shields. We were able to hold our ground until they started to spray huge clouds of chemicals at close range. When we ran back into the encampment to flush out our eyes and our throats, it was when we were separated and on the ground that they started to beat me down with their shields, drag my body by my clothes, and they sprayed us at close range with the chemicals. I saw the can close to my face. I had a friend who they ripped her goggles off and sprayed her. They took us somewhere where they had no medics and no water, while we screamed in pain. They detained 26 of us for almost nine hours with the chemicals still burning on our skins.
I’m now banned from campus. They’ve given us no chance to get our belongings. I have no phone, no laptop, no wallet. I’m purely getting by on the generosity of my friends. And like you said, this is the same campus that knew that men with rifles, Nazis, white supremacists were coming, and did not stop them. And none of those white supremacists are banned from campus.
AMY GOODMAN: Cady, you’re supposed to graduate in two weeks?
CADY DE LA CRUZ: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re risking so much to have protested right before, spending years getting your degree. Why did you do it?
CADY DE LA CRUZ: We had spent so many months pushing for divestment. We had had walkouts, like Salma was saying. Like, we had had walkouts. We had done so, so much. We had passed a referendum that got more votes in favor than even our entire student council election. And our administration refused to even comment on divestment.
And even though I only have two weeks before I’m supposed to graduate, I actually started the encampment on my last day of classes, and I ended up missing my classes. But even with two weeks left, I still — all of us there felt like we have more time on our hands left on our timeline than the people in Gaza, as we’re watching them bomb Rafah. We had a vigil the night before they raided our encampment. And again, we felt so much strength —
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
CADY DE LA CRUZ: — in our escalation. We knew why we were there. We linked arms. We felt strong. We danced in front of that riot gear. We would hold it down for anything.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Cady. And I want to now go to New York to Rae Ferrara, who is with SUNY New Paltz — that’s State University of New York at New Paltz — at the Gaza solidarity encampment. Rae Ferrara, can you describe — I mean, you had a large number of students arrested. Over 130?
RAE FERRARA: The closest thing to an accurate number we have is 133, but it is most definitely more than that. That’s the number that the DA is giving. But just our jail support resources have made it even more than that. We had about that many people at the encampment.
AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, since we only have about 40 seconds, can you describe what happened? You had just put the encampment up, when police moved in?
RAE FERRARA: No, we set up our encampment at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, and it wasn’t until about 10:40 p.m. on Thursday that the police raided us. This was after several failed attempts to negotiate with the university. Police raided us for over three hours. They knocked my friend unconscious. He had a concussion. They knocked an 82-year-old woman unconscious. All of my friends have bruises. They have red marks on their hands from the zip ties. And then, afterwards, they bulldozed all of our things.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Rae Ferrara, SUNY New Paltz Gaza solidarity camp participant and student at SUNY New Paltz; Cady de la Cruz, speaking to us from the University of Virginia; and Salma Hamamy at the University of Michigan, graduate, just graduated, president of SJP. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
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The World Food Programme is warning northern Gaza has reached a “full-blown” famine that is spreading south. This comes after the Israeli military has spent months blocking the entry of vital aid into Gaza, attacking humanitarian aid convoys and opening fire on Palestinian civilians waiting to receive lifesaving aid. We get an update on conditions among the besieged and starving population of Gaza — including of children now suffering from the psychological effects of intense and prolonged trauma — from Dr. Walid Masoud, a vascular surgeon and a board member of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund who is just back from heading a medical mission to Gaza.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We continue to look at the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the head of the World Food Programme warns northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine,” with severe starvation quickly spreading to the south, due to Israel’s war and total blockade of Gaza. World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Senator John McCain, spoke Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press.
CINDY McCAIN: There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it’s moving its way south. And so, with — what we’re asking for and what we’ve continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in — safe and unfettered access to get into the — into Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Human rights groups accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime. The Israeli military has repeatedly blocked the entry of vital aid into Gaza, attacked humanitarian aid convoys and killed Palestinian civilians waiting to receive food and other aid. A Palestinian mother in Gaza City described the dire situation.
ASMAA AL-BELBASI: [translated] We need food to survive. We need to feed our children. We want to get to this area but can’t get there with cars, because the roads are blocked by rubble from the strikes. The sun hits us as we walk. And you find a long queue there from the morning. And you’re exhausted by the time you return, all for some bread.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Amman, Jordan, where we’re joined by Dr. Walid Masoud, a vascular surgeon, board member of Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. He headed PCRF’s medical mission to Gaza earlier this month.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Doctor. If you can start off by describing what we’re seeing, I mean, to have Cindy McCain, the head of the World Food Programme, saying the north is in “full-blown famine”? Describe the effects and what this means for the people who are surviving in Palestine, Gaza.
DR. WALID MASOUD: Good morning, first of all. Good morning, America.
First of all, let me say about PCRF that our mission is to provide medical and humanitarian relief for the children throughout the Levant, regardless their nationalities or religion. We headed to Gaza under the umbrella of PCRF and the umbrella of WHO. OK? We had one lecture in the WHO in Cairo telling us about the safety measures, what we are going to meet in Rafah.
Once we entered there, the moment we entered there, we could see the children around us begging for food, begging for money, begging for anything. OK? The starvation, you could see it in everywhere in the hospital. We were based in the European Hospital. And in the buildings of the hospitals, it was full of refugees. More than 50,000 refugees came from the north to this hospital, because they feel it is safe. It’s not only in the territory around the hospital, but inside the hospital, inside the corridors, in the stairs, every room, they had refugees.
While we were walking in the corridors, you could see the children around, and you could see by their eyes how they underfed and they have malnutrition and they are starving. You could see how they lost the muscle mass. You could see the skin. You could see how they fatigue. You could see how they are depressed, actually. When you talk to them, they are slow, slow motion in talking. OK? You can see the loss of the weight on these children. In the theaters, when we operate upon children, we could see how their body mass index is low, and we could see they are not oriented, actually, most of the patients upon which we operated. This reflects this decreased immunity of the children and increased rate of the infection, because there is not enough proteins in their body to initiate or to make the immunity system in the right way.
We had to operate immediately as emergency on many injured patients, not only children but also adults. Starvation does not only with the children. It was everyone in the population. Imagine you have 1.8 million in Rafah, and there is not enough food for these. If there is food, you cannot even reach it, because transportations is dangerous. You could see how is the World Kitchen being bombed and killed there. What about the locals? If the foreigners died from bombarding their cars, what about the locals?
You can imagine how 1.8 million, they don’t have enough hospitals. Only three proper hospitals is working in Rafah. We operated in Rafah only, but some of our surgeons went to Al-Kuwaiti Hospital, because they could not transfer the kids to the European Hospital. One of our surgeons, pediatric surgeons, went to the Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and performed 16 surgeries. Totally, we operated around 250 or 275 and more. The situation was very bad in the theater.
The staff, if we talk about the staff, the staff are exhausted, the staff depressed, the staff disoriented. All the staff in the theaters and in the wards in the hospital, they are volunteers, actually. They don’t receive salaries. Do you know what they receive? They are volunteers working, no money, but they receive only the lunch. And this lunch, they eat a little bit. Maybe they eat 10% of their lunch, in order to take the lunch to the tents to their families, because they don’t have money to buy anything. And if they have money, there is not enough food in the market.
We operated upon children who’ve been injured around five, six months ago. We had a patient, 13-years-old patient. I sent you his video. He had shrapnels behind the knee, and he developed a fistula between the artery and the vein. So, because of that, his foot and leg became ischemic, not enough blood, and it began a gangrene in his toes. So, we did such an operation. This patient had a referral letter to go to Egypt for treatment, but he could not, because there is a queue. Maybe it will take him 10 months just to his chance to go to Egypt. We did the operation. We disconnected the fistula. And he is OK. But you could tell how his muscles are weak and there is a loss of muscle bulk with him. His wounds — we followed him a few days after that. His wounds is not healing well because of the lack of proteins in his body, lack of minerals, lack of vitamins in his body. There is not enough food even in the hospital to give them IV fluids or IV nutrients.
Many patients died from infection because they don’t have enough immunity. They don’t have enough antibiotics or proper antibiotics, because sometimes they have the basics of the antibiotics. We managed to bring many medications, many antibiotics, other things, but it’s not that enough. When a mission comes, they bring some, but it’s not enough for 1.8 million people there. And there is, as you said earlier, above 78,000 injured patients.
Our mission was depressing to us from inside, but we were happy to give what we can do to them. There were many things which disturbed us. We could work in an environment which is unsuitable. OK? Example, these drones all the time have noisy, noise, voices, like zzzzz. They called it zanana. First three days, in our team, they could not sleep because of these drones and zanana and these noises. And it is 24 hours there. The staff is exhausted and depressed. When we came, we were seven surgeons from Jordan and one nurse also from Jordan. We had two from Ireland. We have one from Germany and one from United States. All of them, we gathered them. We could not eat full food, because we feel we are guilty once we are eating. And outside, there is a lot of children begging for food, and families, maybe they don’t eat at all or they eat one time a day.
Many surgeries were done, major surgeries, which means that this patient should have well feeding, IV or something, in order his wounds to heal. We managed to help patients, but in some situations it is out of our hands to continue. OK, I managed, for example, to reoperate the lab cath — the cath lab, so we can do some surgeries with intervention, interventional radiology. This cath lab was out of work for more than seven months. We managed to start working on this. We did many surgeries and, the patients, discharged them home.
This is another point. When we did surgery, patient went to discharge. The patient said, “Where I am going? I don’t have any home. I don’t have even tent to go.” So, many patients stay in the hospital so they can have a home, shelter. They can have food also.
We managed — also they have dialysis machines, which is out of work for the last seven, eight months in the European Hospital. We managed, with the help of one of the biomedical engineers who came from Jordan, Dr. Samadi, we managed to fix up these two machines, and we reopened the dialysis unit there. We tried to bring some medicine, some instruments, some tools, equipment to be used for the patients there, but that was not enough.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Masoud, I’m going to interrupt here —
DR. WALID MASOUD: Not enough for this.
AMY GOODMAN: — because we have to break.
DR. WALID MASOUD: Our mission not only was medical.
AMY GOODMAN: But I know that there is a delay.
DR. WALID MASOUD: We tried to support with —
AMY GOODMAN: Doctor — Dr. Masoud, there’s a delay, but I just wanted to end by saying that we are seeing nonstop breaking news on Twitter now. For example, The New Yorker contributor Mosab Abu Toha says the Israeli army is starting to blow up complete neighborhoods in East Rafah, just four hours after ordering families to evacuate the area. And I wanted to end — we just have 30 seconds — because you work with Palestine Children’s Relief, with your observation that increasingly children are expressing suicidal thoughts. We have 30 seconds.
DR. WALID MASOUD: Unfortunately, I had two patients — one patient and his sister — they were around 8 and 7 years. They were questioning me when I was in the round, “Why I am still alive while my wife — my mother and father and brothers died?” The children there, they started to think about suicidal attempts. And we have another patient who lost their legs and lost all the family, and she’s bedridden. And she tried to attempt suicide.
Children, I cannot imagine how they will grow, these children, in the future, while they were thinking about suicidal attempt because their family has died. Unfortunately, many children thinking about this. I cannot imagine in the future how they will act and how they will look to the world and to the peace. Imagine what’s happening. Each family has lost many of their main supporter as father or mother. This creates a psychiatric situation with these children.
I think as they need surgeons to be there, they need psychiatrists in order to treat these patients. There’s a need, definitely a need, because the increase of the, let us say, not suicide, because I did not see any suicidal attempts, but I heard from many children they are thinking about suicide. Unfortunately, the help now is going through vascular surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, etc. I think we need to send more doctors there. Unfortunately, the borders now is closed.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Walid Masoud, we’re going to have to leave it there as we go to the students who are protesting across the United States. I want to thank you so much for joining us from Amman, Jordan, just back from Gaza, vascular surgeon and board member of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Coming up, the protests at University of Michigan graduation, at State University of New York, New Paltz, and more. Back in 20 seconds.
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