America

6 Current Events Red & Black Current Events

Hurricane Eta En-Route to Central America

Hurricane Eta swirls accross the coast of Florida on November 11.

Lekhya Kollu Red & Black Staff

On Nov. 2, Hurricane Eta developed into a Category 4 hurricane on a path to Central America.

Category 4 hurricanes are classified as major hurricanes that can cause catastrophic damage due to their wind speeds of 130-156 miles per hour. Hurricane Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Nov. 3, causing extensive flooding, downed power lines and structural damage to many buildings. As of Nov. 3, the city of Puerto Cabezas, in one of Nicaragua’s poorest regions, was without power and at capacity in its government shelters.

In Honduras, which borders Nicaragua, the storm left 38 dead and eight missing.

The storm weakened after moving inland over Central America’s mountainous terrain, and by the time it had made its second landfall in Cuba on the morning of Nov. 8, it had been downgraded again to a tropical storm. By the night of Nov. 8, it had made its third landfall in Florida with 65 mile per hour winds, causing widespread flooding and power outages for 28,000 homes across the state.

Many school districts have shut down both in-person and online instruction. The storm pounded the state with six to 14 inches of rain, which overwhelmed soil that had already been saturated by heavy rains in Oct.

The storm’s rains also overwhelmed the poor drainage systems in many of the states’ older communities. To prevent water from seeping into homes, Florida state officials have been providing sandbags to residents and vacuuming water up with tanker trucks over the past few weeks. As of

Courtesy Fox News

Nov. 9, the storm is moving southwest away from Florida and atmospheric conditions in the Gulf of Mexico are likely to weaken it significantly, but meteorologists still predict a chance of a fourth landfall later in the week. According to National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham, it’s “going to take a while” before the storm completely dies down.

Eta is the 28th named storm of a record-breaking season. Thus far, 2020 has tied with 2005 for the highest number of named storms in a season, with Hurricane Eta being the strongest hurricane of the year. Hurricane season will officially be ending this year on Nov. 30.

13 November 2020 Red & Black Current Events 7 Abortion Rights Are Under Fire Internationally

Women protest for the seventh straight day in Poland.

Courtesy Omar Marques via Getty Images

Akansha Das Red & Black Staff

In Poland this week, a new near total ban on abortion has got citizens taking to the streeets in protest—some even storming churches and running into police with incidents of pepper spray use. Poland has been notoriously known for its ultra tight restrictions on abortion and the new law prevents a woman from seeking an abortion if her baby has lethal birth defects. As of now, Poland only permits abortion for the traditional three reasons: rape, incest or danger to the mother. Additionally, Poland’s government signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration recently (Brazil, Egypt, the U.S. and thirty other countries) which encourages its members to enact “prolife” policies.

Proponents of the law—including Karolina Pawlowska, director of the Center of International Law at Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute—state that it’s a win for disability rights and prevents discrimination against a fetus. She claims that it prevents a woman from aborting her baby for a condition such as Down Syndrome that can be managed and a condition with which many can still live healthy and productive lives. Many Polish pregnant women are afraid to even seek prenatal care in Poland and are considering going abroad for care.

This tightening in abortion restrictions has been a trend across Europe. Armenia, Georgia and Russia have introduced various preconditions that women must meet before getting an abortion. Germany has strict laws about clinics and doctors promoting their offering of an abortion procedure and Croatia and Italy have a “conscience clause” that allows providers to deny a woman an abortion based on their moral views.

Within Poland itself, the cultural belief that women are supposed to be housewives, mothers and procreators has festered anti-abortion sentiments. Additionally, one of the main drivers of increased restrictions is the U.S. and its Mexico City Policy or the “Global Gag Rule.” Expanded during Trump’s presidency, this states that no U.S. funding can go to NGOs that provide the abortion services or referrals in an effort to reduce abortion rates. However, CNN reports that this rule has actually increase abortions by 40 percent and decreased contraceptive use by 13.5 percent. Increased contraceptive use is key to reducing abortion rates, especially among adolescents, according to the Guttmacher Insitute. Additionally, new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barett to the Supreme is ardently anti-abortion, believing that life begins at conception which brings a threat to Roe v. Wade (the 1973 case that first made abortion legal in the U.S.). The reprcussions of a Roe v. Wade repeal could be massive as 21 states would undoubtedly enact abortion bans and such bans would disproptionately impact low-income women who couldn’t necessarily drive to another state to get an abortion. Despite the most recent rise in abortion restrictions, it’s important to remember that the American public has largely preferred to keep abortion legal. Pew Research Center reports that 58 perccent of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all cases and 64 percent saying in a 2018 Gallup poll that they don’t think Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Hillary Margolis (a senior researcher at the women’s rights division at the Human Rights Watch) has said that close to 50 countries have “actually liberalized their laws and several others have even removed abortion wholesale from their criminal codes” in the past 25 years. Additionally, human rights lawyer Payal Shah has said that it’s important to remember there is a “clear global trajectory towards abortion law liberalization.” However, with the recent global trends, that trajectory might need more activists to ensure that it’s one open to women worldwide.

8 Diversity

Red & Black Diversity

Mail-In Ballot Rejections: Fraud or Racism?

Bavi Makkar Red & Black Staff

Absentee ballot rejections were predicted to reach historic levels this November, risking widespread suppression of minority voters and the credibility of election results.

In just the primaries this year, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania rejected about 60,000 votes, numbers that could close margins of victory. These also bring about conspiracy theories this year of how votes for Trump were just thrown away. People are against mail-in ballots are also calling this form of voting “illegal” and “un-American.”

However, Dylan Bertovich ’21 believes that “the idea that there is fraud is inherently racist. The focus is always on large minority cities such as Philadelphia or Los Angeles. The focus is never on areas where some fraud has been found such as rural North Carolina. When Trump calls out these cities, it is a dog whistle to his supporters that the minorities are stealing the election from them and the country.”

Republicans seem to be dumbfounded by the amount of democratic votes coming in, despite the fact that Trump bluntly told his followers to only vote in person, thereby explaining the found majority of democratic votes. He has been constantly tweeting about how he won with the amount of “legal” votes that came in. Furthermore, he has increased levels of security in certain cities, discouraging BIPOC from going to vote at the polls.

The levels of discounted votes could have dramatically increased the margins for Biden’s victory but due to these levels of intense distrust, people have to make intense levels of security. Pennsylvania was luckily a state that could not discount votes based on signatures, a security measure pushed by Trump for something that frequently changes for people.

Brendan Troesch ’21 also spoke on the matter: “Discounting the mail in ballot is a sad attempt to undermine the democratic process. This country has been against BIPOC from the beginning and the attempt to block mailins, which make voting more accessible to everyone scares the oppressive institution since they know it will give the BIPOC community, which they have tried so hard to silence, a platform to speak and be heard.”

The strong wave of absentee ballot rejections is not a result of voter fraud, like most Trump supports believe, but instead the byproduct of 200 million eligible voters navigating an often-confusing voting process where simple mistakes can cost a vote.

Rejecting one ballot is not just one vote, it is the vote for numerous local and state representatives that is greatly skewing the representation of minority voters. Our system has such a high error rate for absolutely no good reason. America needs to look at the amount of voters that came out for this election and learn that they need to make voting a more accessible process for all people.

Courtesy Postcard Voters

Diversity 9 Election 2020: The ‘Squad’ Is Growing

Amanda Fitzpatrick Red & Black Editor

The four congresswomen known as “the Squad” – Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – have won reelection.

Since they first took office in January 2019, these lawmakers, all women of color, have stood at the forefront of the Democratic Party’s progressive base and brought great (and long needed) change to the party. Despite facing baseless attacks from the President, Republican lawmakers and Democratic lawmakers alike, none of the Squad’s members faced significant challenges in their first reelection races this year.

Ocasio-Cortez won reelection to New York’s fourteenth Congressional District against two challengers, one being Republican John Cummings, in which she fundraised aggressively in the face of well-financed opposition and an abnormal amount of outside spending overwhelmingly targeted against AOC. Similarly, Omar sailed to a double-digit victory over Lacy Johnson, endorsed by President Trump. Further, Pressley and Tlaib were able to win by large margins.

However, “the Squad” as it has become known is not an exclusive group – and the election results have increased the Squad’s numbers. With each squad member backed by the Justice Democrats, a group that seeks to elect more progressive candidates to break establishment molds, three congresspeople-elect have similarly been endorsed by the Justice Democrats. Cori Bush is one of these congresspeople-elect, becoming Missouri’s first Black Congresswoman. Bush, a former nurse and vocal Black Lives Matter advocate, won her race with a large majority of the vote. This was her second attempt to unseat the Democratic incumbent William Lacy Clay Jr. for Missouri’s first district, which she accomplished over the summer in the state’s primary elections. This historic win by Bush cements the power of grassroots movements can be stronger than the gatekeepers and big money in politics.

Bush is not the only member ready to join “the Squad.” Former Principal Jamaal Bowman is officially headed to Congress in which he unseated long-serving Democratic incumbent Eliot Engel in the New York primary elections. With this election upset, Bowman was referred to as “the next AOC” being that his win in New York’s sixteenth district confirmed that hers cannot be dismissed as a fluke. His platform highlights his career as an educator and his commitment to improving the lives of children, something Congress greatly needs at this time of a pandemic and ongoing separation of children from parents at the border. Bowman received several endorsements from progressive powerhouses including Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Joining Bowman in New York’s congressional delegation is Mondaire Jones, elected to represent the seventeenth District after Representative Nita Lowey announced her retirement last fall. Ritchie Torres also will be replacing Representative José Serrano in the fifteenth District. Running on their support for policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, Jones and Torres will share the distinction of being the first openly gay Black members of Congress. Mondaire Jones has identified two primary problems with our criminal legal system that he is looking to tackle: systemic racism and an overreliance on police as a means to obtain public safety. Torres, previously a member of the New York City Council, has advocated for better public housing and programs to address racially concentrated poverty.

Lastly, Marie Newman will become her district’s first woman representative. Newman defeated both the Democratic incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski in the House primary and her Republican opponent in the general election in Illinois’ third district. Winning the vote by roughly six points, she will be the first woman to represent her district and has been endorsed by progressive organizations like EMILY’s List.

This victory and support is monumental, given Lipinski was an anti-abortion legislator. Similar to all members of the squad, her platform focuses on fighting for working families and closing the income gap. Further, she has spoken in opposition of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Israeli blockade of Gaza, like that of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib.

Ultimately, “the Squad” is growing – and so is its power with members of The Squad already becoming the Democratic Party’s most influential voices. Despite the indisputable and apparent diversity in its members, these winners and sitting members of “the Squad” center the issues that younger voters and working families care most about: healthcare, job creation, economic inequality and a willingness to treat climate change as an immediate and existential threat to the planet.

However, “the Squad” goes beyond Congress. Pressley told The Guardian last year “The reality is anyone who is interested in building a more equitable and just world is part of The Squad.”

Courtesy Now This News

10 Diversity Red & Black 13 November 2020 Women in STEM Spotlight: Esha Vaidya

Courtesy Inside Higher Ed

Akansha Das Red & Black Staff

“I love learning about processes in the human body and get a weirdly deep satisfaction from working through an Organic Chem reaction,” Esha Vaidya ‘24 remarks.

While this passion for the complexities of chemistry certainly distinguishes Vaidya, it’s only one of many things that make her unique. Coming from a family with many physicians, she grew up hearing their work stories, which ignited an interest in medicine for her. However, she’s surely done more than the average college freshman to solidify this interest.

During high school, she found time to work as a research intern at Magee-Womens Research institute, volunteer at a diabetes awareness camp in India and devote some hours to a nursing home for the elderly with memory disorders. Vaidya says that these unique experiences taught her the value of “putting in hard work to reach a common goal of helping people with their health.”

As a self-proclaimed science nerd, Vaidya wants to pursue a biochemistry major at Washington & Jefferson College for the appealing nature of the content, not to mention the convenient way that the requirements align with the MCAT and medical school prerequisites. Outside of the classroom, she hopes to spend her time doing community outreach—either at local nursing homes and/or Washington Hospital.

While Vaidya knows that she wants to be a doctor, specialization is still a long way away down the road for her. While she’s open to many fields, she says if she had to choose today it would be between becoming a surgeon or family medicine doctor. She remarks “while I enjoy the precise, hands-on aspect of surgery, I also like the personal connection with patients that comes with family medicine.”

Yet this path has not been easy for her. Acknowledging that she couldn’t have done this alone, she credits her parents for being her biggest role models and advocates. “I cannot even imagine where I would be without them—they are always supporting me and encouraging me to do the best that I can.” She also credits her STEM teachers and their guidance for helping her get to where she is today.

While medicine has been a notoriously difficult path, being a woman makes the journey harder in some ways. Women in the workforce and in STEM fields often have harder times finding mentors, earning a salary equal to their male counterparts and the stigmas often applied to women for being assertive. In terms of her own struggles, Vaidya says that she has been overwhelmed with all the coursework from her STEM classes.

To surmount this struggle, she says she tries to look at the big picture. “After all of this hard work and determination, I will one day be able to call myself a physician. And that’s what makes it all worth it.”

Courtesy Akansha Das

13 November 2020

Red & Black opinions

Biden Defeats Trump, but the Fight is Just Beginning

Bavi Makkar Red & Black Staff

On Nov. 7, the tense week of vote tallying resulted in Pa. finalizing the Presidential Election. In a historical election, President elect Joe Biden won with a record number of votes in any election. He flipped key states such as Wis., Mich. and Pa. Vice President elect Kalama Harris also has made history by becoming the first woman and first person of color to occupy the office.

Shattered barriers aside, this election will go down in infamy as it was the strangest in recent years, characterized by increasing outlets of misinformation, fears of voteby-mail systems and a deadly virus claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. Amanda Fitzpatrick ’22 stated “While I am entirely supportive of the outcome of Joe Biden as our new president elect, this is really just the beginning rather than the end of our work. Trump still holds the presidency until Jan. The senate race will come down to Ga. We are still amidst a global pandemic that Biden and Harris are already working to address. This is our current reality, even though the future may seem brighter. And lastly, we must not lose the momentum of grass roots movements calling for fundamental change just because our president elect is a democrat.

Ultimately, it was the work of these movements, of Black women organizing in Ga., of Native Americans organizing in Ariz. and so many more that allowed this presidency to be possible. We must not forget the work, or the true goals, of these people as we move forward as a country.” Trump is able to do a lot of damage before he leaves office and the Senate contains more conservative seats than it was before, making change and reform an even larger challenge.

While the news of a significantly better president lightened the hearts of many, there were 70 million people who still somehow voted for four more years of hatred and lies.

These people are fighting the results, led by posts on social media saying that the mail-in ballots are suspicious, despite the common knowledge that Trump openly told his followers to vote in person, explaining the lack of republican mail in ballots. There are videos of fake republican ballots being found in dumpsters which have been driving these people wild.

Jillian Curtis ’23 found that “the election has reaffirmed that the current voting system is antiquated and no longer serves the people.” Voting needs to be made easier and more accessible. America needs to follow the steps of other countries in which voting takes place on weekends and mail-ins are encouraged.

This election was a step in the right direction for the country, but America has a long way to go and hopefully they are able to learn from this election to prevent anymore disastrous leaders.

Courtesy New York Times

President-elect Joe Biden celebrates his victory.

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