Portside

Peddling Snake Oil from the Oval Office (2020)

THE WEEK OF APRIL 9 IS THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the moment when I and many others began to truly understand we were enmeshed in a global public-health catastrophe completely unlike anything we had ever experienced. 

At the time, much of the world had been in lockdown for weeks. But lockdowns, by themselves, were proving to be incapable of short-circuiting the Covid-19 pandemic. The spread of infection was not going to be denied that easily.

President Trump, having tried denial – "For the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very very low” he said – was making a blustery show of action and angry rhetoric, such as banning travel from Covid-19 hot spots and blaming the World Health Organization for “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus."

But having already spent three years hollowing out federal public-health agencies, the Trump administration had blinded itself to what was happening and what needed to be done. By mid-February 2020, South Korea was administering tens of thousands of Covid tests daily, which was essential to slow the spread of the virus. In the U.S. similar testing was only available in September 2020.

On April 10, Trump told reporters the pandemic would kill “substantially” fewer than 100,000 in the U.S. In fact, the hundred-thousandth U.S. fatality occurred only eight weeks later; there would be four hundred thousand fatalities before the end of 2020. By the end of 2023 the U.S. experienced some 1,150,000 Covid-19 deaths. Many public-health specialists believe that nearly half of the Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. could have been prevented if the country’s resources had been used more wisely. 

Living through months and years of events that had once seemed to be beyond the realm of possibility makes it difficult to recall them accurately. There may be comfort in forgetfulness, but it offers no protection from a new virus or an unprecedented heat wave. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/opinions/covid-unnecessary-price-bergen

Refugees from the Great Dust-Up (1935)

APRIL 11 IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of the worst day of one of the most damaging of the vast weather systems that turned millions of acres of farmland in 11 midwestern states and three Canadian provinces into what was known as the Dust Bowl.

On this day in 1935 wind-blown dust sharply reduced visibility in large areas of seven states: Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and New Mexico. Many schools and businesses either closed early or never opened. Visibility was so limited that vehicles of all kinds were forced to slow to walking speed or stop altogether. Breathing the dust-filled air was very hazardous. In places the winds were so powerful they broke windows. In addition, the wind stripped all the topsoil from vast swathes of farmland.   

On other days similar storms ravaged parts of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa as well as southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada. https://youtu.be/fQCwhjWNcH8?si=4fzWNb4rv4kI69xx

Jonas Salk, Lifesaver (1955)

APRIL 12 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the U.S. government’s approval of the first polio vaccine, which was developed by Jonas Salk in 1955. Mass vaccination campaigns began almost immediately. As a result, annual polio infections in the U.S. fell from about 35,000 in 1953 to 160 cases in 1961, to zero in 1979. https://historyofvaccines.org/

Fighting Racism for the Long Haul (1775)

APRIL 13 IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of the establishment of the first organization dedicated to outlawing the practice of slavery in what would soon become the United States. 

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded in 1775 by a meeting of 24 men in the Rising Sun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1784 it renamed itself the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and it continues to devote itself to the cause of combating racism. https://still.hsp.org/still

Ireland’s Prelude to Freedom (1920)

APRIL 14 IS THE 105TH ANNIVERSARY of an important victory in the Irish War of Independence, when a 2-day long general strike by thousands of Irish workers forced British authorities to unconditionally release all 89 revolutionary prisoners awaiting trial on sedition charges. The successful outcome of the strike in 1920 was a prelude to the eventual victory of pro-independence forces in December 1921.

The general strike, which began April 13, was called in support of the demand that 89 revolutionary prisoners, most of whom were being held indefinitely without charges, be unconditionally released. 

The workers’ strike was enormously effective, except in the pro-British stronghold of Ulster. Throughout Dublin and all 26 of the southern Irish counties virtually all shops, restaurants and hotels were shut down, as were the docks, the post office, public transportation and intercity railroads.

The situation was so dire in such a vast territory, the leaders of the British forces decided to agree to the strikers’ demand for the prisoners’ release in exchange to the end of the strike. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/conor-kostick-general-strike-ireland-1920

Getting Organized to Fight Jim Crow (1960)

APRIL 15 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at a 3-day conference of some 200 people, most of whom were Black college students, at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The 1960 meeting took place just 10 weeks after the beginning of the fast-expanding student-led civil rights sit-in movement that had been sweeping cities and towns throughout the southern U.S. The students who were sitting-in at lunch counters were part of a largely spontaneous campus-based region-wide movement. The many campus organizations involved had no central body that could help to support and coordinate their work and train their members.    

Seeing the need for such a coordinating body, the Shaw University meeting was initiated by Ella Baker, Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the leading civil rights movement organizations at the time. Baker, with SCLC’s support, invited representatives of almost 60 campus organizations in 12 southern states, some 20 campus organizations from colleges in the North, plus representatives of Congress of Racial Equality, Fellowship of Reconciliation, National Student Association, SCLC and Students for a Democratic Society. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/sncc2.htm
 

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