October, 26 2017, 04:30pm EDT
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RN Volunteers Back from Puerto Rico Join Congress Members to Urge Increased Aid to Stem Health Crisis
WASHINGTON
Registered nurse volunteers who recently returned from two weeks of providing nursing care and other disaster relief today joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress to call for increased aid to confront the ongoing humanitarian and health care crisis in Puerto Rico.
The RNs, members of the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN)--a disaster relief program sponsored by National Nurses United (NNU), the largest U.S. union of RNs--were in Puerto Rico as part of a 300-member deployment led by the AFL-CIO, in conjunction with the Puerto Rican Federation of Labor and the San Juan Mayor's office. NNU sent 50 RNs from eight states in its deployment.
"Thank you to the nurses who have traveled home from the frontlines of the crisis to tell their story. Thank you for saving lives, delivering hope, and fighting for more relief," said Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who called an official NNU report on conditions in Puerto Rico, presented to Congress today, "quite an indictment."
READ NNU's REPORT "CONDITIONS IN PUERTO RICO AND CALL FOR IMMEDIATE CONGREASSIONAL ACTION
"Our nurses went to Puerto Rico to provide basic nursing care, but, in community after community, they were shocked to find that Puerto Ricans were facing a deadly lack of food, water and shelter several weeks after Hurricane Maria struck the island," said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of NNU's RNRN program.
"It's deeply disturbing that the Trump administration continues to pat itself on the back ... Just because something has been done, it doesn't mean much more doesn't need to be done," said Pelosi. "Seventy-five percent of Puerto Ricans lack power, 35 percent do not have cell service, one million lack clean running water, three quarters of sewage treatment plants are still not functioning ... We are calling on President Trump and the administration to treat this as a national emergency, with the urgency that Puerto Rico deserves."
Outlining the necessity for urgent assistance in a variety of areas--particularly fixing the energy grid and giving a fiscal boost to Puerto Rico to prevent millions of residents from losing Medicaid coverage, Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-NY), stressed, in her opening remarks, "Lets be clear, congress created this problems and Congress needs to fix it ... Fixing Medicaid and the energy grid will not be easy or inexpensive, but they are part of what's necessary to heal Puerto Rico."
Castillo reported that NNU had made 12 requests to have the volunteers meet with FEMA to testify on what they have witnessed--only to be denied a meeting. FEMA's own website notes that those who have made it through the request process for follow up aid will receive an average of only $543 per household compared to $3,802 per household for residents affected by a similar hurricane disaster in Texas.
"Many communities our nurses encountered had never seen anyone from FEMA. And for those Puerto Ricans that did have contact with FEMA, many did not receive a sustaining level of food or water," said Castillo.
"What we have today here is a group of very courageous people who have given of their time and talent, and we thank you for caring and doing that which is so noble, that which so few people do in our society, which is to give help where help is needed," Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) said to the RNRN volunteers. "[The people of Puerto Rico] are our fellow Americans; they've served in our wars, they do pay taxes, and they should be treated equally ... FEMA has to be a support arm, not a stumbling block. Puerto Rico deserves better."
"I am a member of congress, and we oversee the response provided by the federal government. I can say, the government response has been inadequate," said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL)
"Our nurses were deployed across the island, in urban and rural areas, and returned with heartbreaking stories," noted Cathy Kennedy, RN, a vice president of NNU who also served as lead RN for the healthcare teams on the deployment.
"Many people they met continued to live in homes with roofs blown off, sleeping on soaking wet mattresses, black mold beginning to spread that can cause rashes, severe respiratory distress and other serious health problems," Kennedy said.
"People were so desperate for drinking water they were forced to make terrible choices -- do they suffer from deadly dehydration or drink from contaminated streams that could also lead to death? Nurses report going into small towns and finding dangerously dehydrated babies lying listlessly in their mothers' arms," said Kennedy.
"While we were there, we saw the beginning of a potentially lethal epidemic of leptospirosis, an animal-borne bacterial disease that can be fatal if not properly treated in time. One of our nurses described going into a community where every single resident seemed to be suffering from conjunctivitis. Nurses went door to door and saw people who they are afraid will die before food, water or medicine can reach them," Kennedy said
"In one town I traveled to, one of the few where FEMA was present, I met a woman named Rosa who arrived with a family member to apply for aid at 3 am, only to find there were already people in line. FEMA arrived at 7 am, opened its doors at 8, and closed them at 10. Many people in line were never seen, and could not apply for assistance," noted Olivia Lynch, RN.
"What are these people supposed to do? Without electricity and internet access, they cannot apply for FEMA assistance online," said Lynch. "For those who made it through the line to apply for assistance, FEMA demanded paperwork to confirm routing numbers and home addresses that residents could simply not provide. Their homes had been flooded, their paperwork was wet or missing, and they have no electricity, internet or cell service to get that information."
"When I travelled to Loiza, I worked with elderly residents who depended on insulin," said Christine Grant, RN. "Because there is no electricity, the insulin cannot be refrigerated, threatening its efficacy. The elderly residents I talked with had put their insulin in a bowl of tepid water, to try to keep it cool so that it would allow them to survive. The fact is that without refrigeration, people with diabetes, hypertension, and other illnesses, are at risk of severe illness and death."
"Many pharmacies in Puerto Rico can't refrigerate medications either. Because of the lack of electricity, many pharmacies also cannot access prescription orders that are stored electronically, so patients cannot get refills without a new prescription. With many doctors' offices closed, patients who have access to a pharmacy have been scrambling to find someone to write a prescription for them. Others may have access to a doctor, but not a pharmacy."
"We cannot be silent while millions of people continue to endure such treacherous conditions. Given the growing climate crisis, it's essential that the federal government is prepared to respond expeditiously to increasingly dire natural disasters. It is unacceptable that the richest country on earth is denying necessary aid to its own citizens and leaving its people to die," Castillo said.
National Nurses United, with close to 185,000 members in every state, is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in US history.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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