Tag Archives: pandemic

UN should be learning from sustainable food producers – not hosting Big Ag

Small-scale farmers and Indigenous groups say they have again been shut out of the UN Food Systems Summit

By Shalmali Guttal and Sofia Monsalve. Published 7-21-2023 by openDemocracy

With support from Oxfam, small-scale farmers in Tanzania are thriving. Photo: Alun McDonald/Oxfam/CC

A UN summit on global food systems should be an opportunity to address structural inequalities and tackle hunger. It should be a chance to learn from small-scale producers whose sustainable food practices feed 70% of the world. Instead, next week’s conference in Rome will be a festival of greenwashing, allowing Big Agriculture corporations to tighten their grip on food systems.

This will be the second Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The first, in 2021 was supposed to address the lack of progress towards the UN’s sustainable development goals. It was dubbed a “people’s summit” by the organisers, but caused an outcry among local producers when their calls to roll back the power of transnational corporations were cynically ignored.

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World’s 500 Richest People Added $852 Billion to Their Wealth in First Half of 2023

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“They can afford to pay their fair share in taxes.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-7-2023 by Common Dreams

Elon Musk at a Neuralink presentation. Photo: Steve Jurvetson/flickr/CC

The 500 richest people on the planet collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023 due in large part to a record-breaking rally in the U.S. stock market.

According to a Bloomberg analysis of its Billionaires Index, the world’s richest people added an average of $14 million per day to their wealth over the past six months, “the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy rebounded from a Covid-induced slump.”

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House Dems Revive Bill to Make Poverty-Eradicating Child Tax Credit Permanent

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“In 2021 alone, the expanded Child Tax Credit reached more than 61 million children and lifted nearly 4 million of them out of poverty.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-7-2023 by Common Dreams

As congressional Republicans intensify their assault on vital social programs, a trio of House Democrats on Wednesday reintroduced legislation that would make permanent the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit—a policy credited with lifting millions of U.S. children out of poverty.

The American Family Act—reintroduced by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and backed by 204 House Democrats—would ensure the permanency of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) as established in the American Rescue Plan, the sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021. The expanded CTC expired at the end of 2021 amid the Omicron surge of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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‘Enormous Policy Failure’: States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

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“We knew this was coming,” wrote one policy expert. “But we still treat these burdens like they’re unavoidable natural disasters.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-27-2023 by Common Dreams

With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.

More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.

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15 Million People Could Lose Coverage as Nightmarish Medicaid ‘Purge’ Begins

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“I feel sick,” said one physician. “Medicaid is not enough: we need seamless, lifelong universal care now.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 4-1-2023 by Common Dreams

Beginning on Saturday, states across the U.S. will start the process of stripping Medicaid coverage from millions of people as pandemic-related protections lapse, part of a broader unraveling of the safety net that was built to help families withstand the public health crisis and resulting economic turmoil.

Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirements were enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic to help vulnerable people maintain insurance amid the health emergency, resulting in record-high Medicaid enrollment.

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Three Years Into Covid Pandemic, World Leaders Say ‘Never Again’ to Vaccine Apartheid

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“These past three years should act as a warning for future pandemics,” said former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “We need a return to genuine cooperation between nations in our preparation and response to global threats.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 3–10-2023 by Common Dreams

National COVID 19 Vaccine Introduction Launching Program at Eka Kotebe Hospital Addis Ababa, March 13,2021. Photo: UNICEF Ethiopia/fluckr/CC

Around 200 current and former world leaders, Nobel laureates, health and faith leaders, and activists this week marked the third anniversary of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 pandemic declaration by taking aim at the “vaccine apartheid” that according to one advocacy group was responsible for one death every 24 seconds during the outbreak’s first year alone.

A letter led by the People’s Vaccine Alliance notes that three years have passed since “the World Health Organization (WHO) first characterized Covid-19 as a pandemic” on March 11, 2020 and implores governments to “never again” allow nationalism and capitalist greed to supersede human needs.” Continue reading →

Extra SNAP benefits are ending as US lawmakers resume battle over program that helps low-income Americans buy food

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*For some Americans, the decline will be quite sharp.*
*Michael Loccisano/Getty Images*

Tracy Roof, University of Richmond

Millions of Americans will find it harder to put enough food on the table starting in March 2023, after a COVID-19 pandemic-era boost to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits comes to an end. Congress mandated this change in budget legislation it passed in late December 2022.

Roughly 41 million Americans are currently enrolled in this program, which the government has long used to ease hunger while boosting the economy during downturns.

Many families enrolled in the program, commonly known as SNAP but sometimes called food stamps, stand to lose an average of roughly US$90 per person a month. Continue reading →

A Trump-era law used to restrict immigration is nearing its end despite GOP warnings of a looming crisis at the Southern border

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*Hundreds of asylum-seekers gather on the banks of the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. on Dec. 12, 2022.*
*Jose Zamora/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images*

Ernesto Castañeda, American University

A key component of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies is currently set to expire on Dec. 21, 2022.

Officially called Title 42 of the U.S. Code, the little-known law was established initially in 1944 to prevent the spread of influenza and allow authorities to bar entry to foreigners deemed to be at risk of spreading the disease.

In March 2020, on the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then-President Donald Trump invoked the law to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading →

Protests in China are not rare – but the current unrest is significant

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*Protesters march along a street in Beijing on Nov. 28, 2022.*
*Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images*

Teresa Wright, California State University, Long Beach

Street protests across China have evoked memories of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations that were brutally quashed in 1989. Indeed, foreign media have suggested the current unrest sweeping cities across China is unlike anything seen in the country since that time.

The implication is that protest in China is a rarity. Meanwhile, the Nov. 30, 2022, death of Jiang Zemin – the leader brought in after the bloody crackdown of 1989 – gives further reason to reflect on how China has changed since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and how Communist party leaders might react to unrest now. Continue reading →

US Unemployment System ‘Wholly Unprepared’ as Fed Risks Throwing Millions Out of Work

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“If another wave of job losses does indeed hit, the unemployment safety net isn’t ready to cushion the blow without significant improvements,” warns the co-author of a new study.

By Jake Johnson Published 11-1-2022 by Common Dreams

People’s Unemployment Line protest in Philadelphia, 2020. Photo: Joe Piette/flickr/CC

With the Federal Reserve poised to induce mass layoffs in its ongoing campaign to curb inflation, a study published Tuesday warns the notoriously fragmented U.S. unemployment system is nowhere near ready to handle another surge in jobless claims, potentially spelling disaster for the millions of people who could be thrown out of work next year.

Authored by Andrew Stettner and Laura Valle Gutierrez of The Century Foundation (TCF), the new analysis notes that “the share of jobless workers actually receiving UI benefits has shrunk dramatically” since federal benefit increases expired last year. According to TCF, just 26.8% of jobless workers were receiving state unemployment benefits in the 12 months that ended in August 2022, a sharp decline from the 76% rate through early 2021. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: pandemic