Tuesday Jun 2, 2020

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

San Juan The

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Praying Mantises More Deadly Than We Think

Star

P24

Under a New Civil Code Governor Signs Bill Despite Critics, Recognizes Might Have Amendments P3

Trump Lashes Out at Governors Over Protests Response, Warns Will Deploy Military P7 & P8

NOTICIAS EN ESPAÑOL P 19

The New ‘Normal’ at the Mall P5

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

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June 2, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Governor signs new Civil Code

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fter a protracted public debate and several meetings with the conservative authors of the bill as well as with some of its’ harshest critics, Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced signed the controversial Civil Code proposal already passed by the Congress.

Vázquez Garced officially made the bill into law during a Monday press conference at La Fortaleza where she placed her signature in the multipage document, which was authored by a group spearheaded by religious conservative representative María Milagros Charbonier, of the prostatehood New Progressive Party. Vázquez Garced then defended her decision, claiming that the new Civil Code does not curtail or take back previously gained rights.

“This civil code is the organism that rules all our interactions and it is key in our development as a society,” said Vázquez Garced, who was the Justice Secretary prior to assuming the governorship following Ricardo Rosselló’s abrupt exit from

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La Fortaleza.

However, Váquez Garced explained that the document will not turn into law in 180 days and that even after signing it, she will continue to hear the critics who claim that the bill attempts to limit the hard fought rights acquired by minority communities.

“We will continue revising this code and if there is any need to further clarify anything in it and if it needs further amendments in the next 180 days before it turns into law, we will look into them,” she said.

The governor’s interpretation of the new civil code is at odds with the opinion of many in the minority groups on the island, especially those in the LGBTTQ+, who claim the new code attempts to limit the rights they have been campaigning against for decades, like marriage equality, and the right to legally adopt children.

On Monday, the governor had strong words for them.

“I received many emails expressing opposition to the bill and they all had the same argument, that it took away rights. This argument was based on lack of knowledge of the bill,” she said.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

US Supreme Court says fiscal board’s selection process does not violate Appointments Clause

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board’s member appointment process did not violate the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires the president to submit appointments for Senate confirmation, the US Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The decision overturned a U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the appointment of the members of the oversight board violated the Appointments Clause because the members were not appointed with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. However, the Appeals Court refused to strike down the entirety of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) because the statute itself used a severability clause to remove any constitutionally infirm provisions. As for the actions taken by what it found to be the improperly appointed board, the Appeals Court instead applied the de facto-officer doctrine, which allowed the court to deem the oversight board’s past actions valid notwithstanding the illegality of the board’s appointment.

The decision by the Supreme Court, which was supported by all nine Supreme Court justices, though two issued concurring opinions, merely ruled that while the seven board members were officers of the United States, their appointment did not violate the Appointments Clause.

In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court agreed that the Appointments Clause applies to all “Officers of the United States,” including high-level officials whose duties relate to Puerto

Rico. But, the court continued, the clause’s use of the phrase “of the United States” indicates that the drafters of the Constitution intended to distinguish between federal officials, on the one hand, and officials exercising state or local power, on the other. Therefore, the court concluded, the Appointments Clause “does not restrict the appointment of local officers that Congress vests with primarily local duties.”

Rather than being appointed under the Appointments Clause, which requires the president to choose members who are then confirmed by the Senate, then-President Barack Obama chose most of the oversight board members from lists provided by leadership in Congress. Those appointments were not subsequently subjected to Senate confirmation.

The Supreme Court ruled that the oversight board members need not be chosen under the Appointments Clause because they primarily wield local, and not federal, power.

“Board members qualify as local officials because Puerto Rico pays board members’ salaries; the board possesses investigatory powers; it can hold hearings and it can issue subpoenas under Puerto Rico laws and enforce them only in Puerto Rico’s courts. It also oversees Puerto Rico’s fiscal and budgetary plans, it has authority over debt issuance, and its budget is ‘deemed’ to be that of Puerto Rico. These are all local authorities,” the high court ruled.

“Some Board actions, of course, may have nationwide consequences. But the same can be said of many actions taken by many governors

or other local officials. Taking actions with nationwide consequences does not automatically transform a local official into an Officer of the United States,” the court said.

The local nature of PROMESA’s expressed purposes, the representation of local interests in bankruptcy proceedings, the focus of the oversight board’s powers upon local expenditures, the local logistical support, the reliance on local laws in aid of the board’s procedural powers -- all these features when taken together and judged in the light of Puerto Rico’s history and that of the territories and the District of Columbia -- make clear that the oversight board’s members have primarily local duties, such that their selection is not subject to the constraints of the Appointments Clause, the Supreme Court ruled.

“We conclude, for the reasons stated, that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause applies to the appointment of officers of the United States with powers and duties in and in relation to Puerto Rico, but that the congressionally mandated process for selecting members of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico does not violate that Clause,” the ruling said.

Given the conclusion, the justices did not consider the request by some of the parties to overrule the much-criticized “Insular Cases” and their progeny, which state that Puerto Rico can be treated differently from other states. The justices also did not go into the de facto officer doctrine.

Had the Supreme Court ruled differently, it could have undone major portions of the restructuring, which potentially could have affected even

entities who have finished the Title III bankruptcy and Title VI voluntary restructuring process, such as the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Authority -- better known as COFINA -- and the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion stating that while he agreed that the appointment process for members of the oversight board does not violate the Appointments Clause, he said he did not believe board members were Officers of the United States.

“Today’s decision reaches the right outcome, but it does so in a roundabout way that departs from the original meaning of the Appointments Clause,” Thomas wrote. “I would hold that the Board’s members are not ‘Officers of the United States’ because they perform ongoing statutory duties under only Article IV. I therefore cannot join the Court’s opinion and concur only in the judgment.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case raises serious questions about when, if ever, the federal government may constitutionally exercise authority to establish territorial officers in a territory such as Puerto Rico, where Congress seemingly ceded that authority long ago to Puerto Rico itself. She said the court’s ruling went against the commonwealth compact.

“The 1950s compact between the Federal Government and Puerto Rico undoubtedly carried ramifications for Puerto Rico’s status under federal and international law; the same may be true of the Appointments Clause analysis here,” she said.

Fiscal board welcomes Supreme Court’s decision

By THE STAR STAFF

T

he Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico said Monday it welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that will allow the members and the oversight board to continue their work under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA).

“The Supreme Court confirmed that PROMESA established the Oversight Board as an entity within the Government of Puerto Rico and that the congressionally mandated process for selecting members of the Oversight Board does not violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause,” the oversight board said

in a statement.

The oversight board’s member appointment did not violate the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires the president to submit members for Senate confirmation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.

“PROMESA’s appointment process has established a bipartisan Oversight Board, ensuring balanced decisions to help Puerto Rico recover and prosper,” the oversight board said in the statement.

“The Members of the Oversight Board have an important mandate: to help Puerto Rico recover from an unsustainable debt burden and decades of fiscal mismanagement. The Oversight Board has been renegotiating Puerto Rico’s debt

and has been steadily working toward instituting long-term fiscal planning and balanced budgeting.”

“The Oversight Board is looking forward to continuing its work in the interest of the people of Puerto Rico,” the statement added. “It is paramount that we turn the corner from this crisis as soon as we can.”

Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González said the high court’s ruling is another blow to the commonwealth status as it highlights that it is a colonial status.

“With this decision, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously, including Puerto Rican justice Sonia Sotomayor, reiterates that we are a colony without political or economic power,” she said in a statement.

The ruling reaffirms the broad power of Congress to legislate over Puerto Rico, the resident commissioner said.

“As has been the case since the Foraker Act, Congress can impose laws on the territory and impose the organisms to implement them and the territory is the one that pays for it,” she said. “The court again refuses to address either the Insular Cases or the alleged ‘compact’ of Law 600.”

The oversight board’s powers are powers that Congress cannot impose on a state, González added.

“This decision proves once again that if Puerto Rico wants to have control over local affairs, it must become a state,” she said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

5

The ‘new normal’ at Plaza Las Américas After being closed for more than two months due to the public health emergency, the ‘center of everything’ welcomes back shoppers as the COVID-19 pandemic continues

By JOSÉ A. SÁNCHEZ FOURNIER @SanchezFournier Special to The Star

T

he early birds were there, but not in the force some might have expected for a spectacle of this magnitude. Hundreds of people had stood in lines since Javier Cárdenas, from Medellín, Colombia got stranded in PR by the pandemic. The retired engineer visited Plaza well before the 9 a.m. scheduled time for the reopening of Plaza Las Américas, or The Center of Everything, as with his wife and dog, Mamasita Mía. it promotes itself.

Suddenly, Mamasita Mía yelped while happily “This must have been my quickest visit to Plaza On Monday, Plaza Las Américas received customers for the first time since the islandwide emergency- ever,” said a dirty-blonde-haired woman to her friend shaking her tail. Her “Mom” -- Cárdenas’ wife -- had mandated closing of all non-essential businesses due to as she came out of the mall with a large brown paper met back up with them. She was buying a new baseball bag with handles. They were both wearing tight-fitting cap for her husband after their newly adopted canine the COVID-19 pandemic, starting March 16.

That was two months, two weeks and two days ago. blue jeans and sleeveless black tops. The other woman chewed the one he was wearing. Her name is Mariluz It had been a long time since the economic lung was also carrying a brown paper bag with handles, but Echeverri.

“We rescued her [Mamasita Mía] from the Condado of the metro area last opened its doors to the public at smaller in size.

Once inside, the six-foot distance markers were Lagoon area about a month ago,” she said. “We were large, and many were anxiously waiting for the moment they once again were welcomed into the multi-level replaced by yellow or blue bold arrows that read “Walk planning to stay three months but now we’ve been here this way.” Traffic within the mall had a two-lane-blacktop for five.” shopping and office center.

“With some luck, we’ll be going back home in “I was expecting a long line, but this is not that bad,” feel to it: simply keep on the right lane of “the road,” with said Marie Gratacoss, who along with her daughter the peppered kiosks forming the figurative dividing line. July,” said Cárdenas, 83. “This is the first time we’ve The first noticeable difference is that every shopper left the hotel.” came to shop for clothing in Plaza, which under normal “We stayed inside because since Javier is a bit is wearing a protective breathing mask that covers their circumstances they visit often.

The entrances of the shopping mall had metal railings mouths and noses, a conduct which at any other time older, we did not want to run any unnecessary risks,” and six-foot distance markers, so that incoming shop- would have been grounds for expulsion from the mall, his wife said. pers could easily respect social distancing guidelines, and maybe even detainment by the police. But under Some stores closed, some very busy Not every establishment was open for business on which Plaza Las Américas management were taking the pandemic, masks are the new “normal.”

Inside, the mall had an unfamiliar echo to it. The Monday. Macy’s, Casa Febus and Abercrombie & Fitch very seriously.

Once a shopper got to the front of the line, he or clock read 10:30 a.m. and although more than 4,000 remained closed, while Old Navy and Champs had she was asked to present a digital copy of his or her people had already entered, with very few having left, lines of people waiting to get in.

There was a noticeable change in the third-level prescheduled appointment, which are needed to be Plaza did not feel like its usual bustling self. It wasn’t allowed entrance and which are available via the Plaza empty by any means, with lines having formed in front food court: there were no tables placed together for large groups. Most were by themselves, with one chair Las Américas app. No spur-of-the-moment visits to of shops like Champs by then.

In front of La Patisserie De France, an older gentle- per person.

Victoria’s Secret or last-minute flybys to compare A/C man in a green t-shirt and black baseball cap apparently “We got here at 8:45 a.m. but did not have to wait prices in Sears Brand Central.

After the scheduled visit was verified, a Plaza security waited for someone. He had a chocolate spotted mix- in line for long. We are from Quebradillas, so to come guard took the shopper’s temperature with a laser ther- breed dog on a leash. Mamasita Mía, the four-legged to Plaza we must leave early from home and be ready mometer. There was plenty of hand sanitizer available. visitor seemed a bit nervous inside the cool and com- to stay awhile. We scheduled our visit early on and made plans for the day,” said Vanessa Vargas, who was The line moved briskly, even with the occasional fortable building.

“She is looking for her mom,” said the gentleman coming out of Forever 21 with several large yellow bags hiccup caused by someone arriving at the wrong date or full of clothes. time (visits are scheduled for either 9 a.m. or 1 p.m.), or at about the canine.

“This is our first time ever here [in Plaza Las Améri“There’s not much difference when compared to a the wrong entrance. The staff was deeply knowledgeable of the new procedure and on the use of the Plaza App. cas],” said the man, Javier Cárdenas, a retired engineer regular day. The place is spotless; they are constantly By 10:15 a.m., there were no lines at the entrances, from Medellín, Colombia, who was visiting Puerto Rico cleaning everything,” she added. “And I found several and a few of the early birds were coming out after a when the COVID-19 pandemic stranded him on the stores with great sale prices. There seems to be fewer island with his wife. people than usual. But it is still Plaza.” successful spree.

6

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Testing of public employees ordered

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

L

a Fortaleza Chief of Staff Antonio Pabón Batlle announced on Monday that he has instructed the heads of agencies and human resources offices of the various island government agencies to comply with and enforce the collective agreements in force in the areas of health and safety in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, so that viral tests are carried out as Puerto Rico’s public employees return to work.

The announcement came after Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced issued instruc-

tions based on agreements with island labor unions.

“The different heads of agencies, together with the directors of human resources, must comply with the collective bargaining agreements in force, particularly those clauses that address the composition of the health and safety committees in the sense of taking the necessary measures to conduct COVID-19 tests on all public employees, and thus maintain control to safeguard the safety of all,” Pabón Batlle said in a written statement.

The official said that within the clauses, the necessary measures must

be taken for each workplace for the well being of all public servants, and so that the tests are carried out in an orderly manner as workers return to their workplaces.

At the same time, Pabón Batlle said, officials must follow up on the work and prevention plans for COVID-19, supervising its implementation as established and always seeking the well being and health of employees.

“An official must be appointed to establish and maintain continuous communication with the respective workers’ organization and see to it that the regulations will apply to career and trust

employees,” he said. In the absence of an agreement that indicates so, it is time to work on appointing a team for each work center to address this situation.”

The tests will be carried out free of charge and may be coordinated with the corresponding medical plans, public and private laboratories in the region where the workplace is located, as well as with the island Health Department.

PDP electoral commissioner warns on duplicate registrations; NPP counterpart says voters must be notified before they’re excluded

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

P

opular Democratic Party (PDP) Electoral Commissioner Lind Merle Feliciano demanded on Monday that the General Voter Registry be corrected in order to eliminate 138,000 duplicate registrations, of which 31,118 are voters who are active in order to vote in the primaries and general elections.

“It is the responsibility of the president of the State Elections Commission (SEC) to ensure that this does not happen in the next elections,” Merle Feliciano said in a written statement. “It is highly suspicious that the only party that opposed our request that these voters be removed from the registry was the NPP [majority New Progressive Party]. We must maintain and strengthen our tradition of participating in electoral events and of having certainty in their results.”

The PDP electoral commissioner said the SEC “has a legal and moral obligation to try to maintain a reliable record and to exclude those voters who have registered in any state in the United States.”

“According to the Commission’s data, there are 5,551 voters in Puerto Rico who registered in any state in the United States of America from 2013 to the present and have not been excluded from the General Voter Registry,” Merle Feliciano said. “It is an attack against our democracy, since thousands of people could vote twice in the next elections. This situation allows those who registered in the United States and continue to be registered in Puerto Rico to vote in both jurisdictions. This is a crime.

Under the Electoral Reform promoted by the NPP, it is allowed through the absentee vote that voters registered in the United States can vote in Puerto Rico under the new definition of electoral domicile.”

“Yours truly demands that the Commission act immediately and clean the General Voter Registry,” he added. “In order to guarantee the right of all parties, the voters must be notified of the determination of their exclusion. Inaction would facilitate electoral fraud. Double voting is an electoral crime, and the president, as the highest executive officer of the Commission, has the duty to start a process of administrative exclusion of voters who are registered twice in the same jurisdiction or in different jurisdictions.

“We immediately request that the SEC president exercise due diligence in this matter of such importance for the democracy of our country. Our people deserve a fair and transpar-

ent electoral system. A reliable registry of our voters strengthens confidence in our electoral system. The emergency cannot become or be an obstacle to comply with the mandate of the law.”

NPP Electoral Commissioner María Dolores “Lolin” Santiago responded that “[t]he NPP’s position is to always seek to have a clean Electoral Registry where only voters domiciled in Puerto Rico can vote.”

Santiago said the case as resolved ordered the SEC that in order to refine the registrations and remove voters from the lists, as the PDP commissioner requests, the voter must be notified as part of the requirements of federal law and due process of law.

“In the electoral system of Puerto Rico, the voter must be notified to exclude him from the lists, as a requirement of the electoral law, federal laws and the guarantee of due process of law of both the federal and Puerto Rico Constitutions,” Santiago said. “The SEC has to send the notification to the voters before excluding them from the Registry.”

She noted that deceased people are excluded from the cleaning of the General Voter Registry. Those voters obviously should not be notified. That information is provided by the Health Department’s Demographic Registry.

Also, the process of cleaning the electoral registry is carried out in the SEC at the end of the electoral year.

“In the SEC, in that first semester of 2017, the corresponding purification was not carried out,” Santiago argued.

She pointed out that the SEC has an electoral registry with inflated numbers as a direct result of

the federal case presented by the PDP in 2012, Colón Marrero v Conty Pérez, which claimed the application of the federal Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act to then automatically reactivate for the 2012 elections and plebiscite 300,000 voters that the SEC had inactivated in 2009.

The case was resolved in 2016 by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the SEC could not purge the electoral registry unless a voter did not vote in two general elections and only after notifying the voter.

In 2016, the effect was to activate 770,000 inactive voters through the administrative channel and to inflate the electoral registry to 2,867,557 voters when the total population of Puerto Rico then, according to the U.S. Census, did not reach 3.4 million inhabitants.

As a result of the decision, in 2016 the SEC did not have updated information on those 770,000 administratively activated voters: if they had moved, if they had died, or if they were duplicate voter registrations.

“The Registry is inflated thanks to PDP strategies,” Santiago said. “That resulted in Puerto Rico lowering its high participation rate to 55 percent in 2016 from 78 percent in 2012.”

“The NPP’s position has always been that the SEC has to establish agreements with the other state boards and commissions to exchange information on when an voter moves from one jurisdiction and registers to vote to notify the other jurisdiction,” she said. “The electoral commissioner alleged that a citizen only has the right to vote in a jurisdiction where he establishes domicile.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

7

Trump lashes out at governors over response to protests

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A

week after George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis, daytime demonstrations focused on racism and police brutality are increasingly giving way to violence and chaos by night, fueling tensions over the direction of a protest movement that has unfurled in sprawling fashion in dozens of cities across the United States.

Several people have been killed or wounded in shootings linked to the unrest, and looters have raided neighborhood shops and upscale commercial districts from Santa Monica, California, to Boston, as a sixth day of largely peaceful protests descended into lawlessness.

President Donald Trump, who has been besieged by protests and fires outside the White House, took a hard line Monday in a call with state governors.

“You have to arrest people,” the president said, warning that governors would look like “jerks” if they did not crack down.

The unrest and the race to control it have come when the country was already grappling with a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people and an economic collapse that has put millions out of work. National Guard troops have been deployed to help overwhelmed police departments in about half the states, and dozens of mayors have imposed curfews in the hope of heading off violence.

But as residents and business owners across the country awoke Monday to sweep and scrub the latest damage away, many expressed a determination not to let destruction define the narrative — a sentiment was shared by Floyd’s brother, Terrence Floyd, who expressed concern that the violence would overshadow calls for justice.

New York City, ravaged by the coronavirus and now protests, is establishing a curfew.

After thousands of demonstrators fanned across New York City for a fourth night, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the city would be put under a curfew.

The curfew, which Cuomo announced in a radio interview, will be in effect from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.

“In New York City, I spoke with the mayor, there’s going to be a curfew in New York City that we think could be helpful,” Cuomo said on Monday. “More importantly, there is going to be an increase in the force.”

“There were about 4,000 officers on duty last night,” he said. “There’ll be double that tonight, about 8,000.”

Curfews were imposed in dozens of cities over the weekend, but the tactic was particularly striking for New York City’s 8 million residents, who have been under severe lockdown orders because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed thousands of city residents. Just as the city was getting ready to cautiously reopen on June 8, the protests injected a new factor of unease, coming with not only police confrontations and widespread looting, but also fears that the virus was spreading in the crowds.

The New York Times obtained audio of a private conference call President Trump had with governors, in which he tells them to crack down on protesters.

A day of largely peaceful protests on Sunday turned into jarring scenes of chaos across the city. Flames nearly two stories high leapt from trash cans and piles of street debris, sending acrid smoke into the air around Union Square. Stores in the trendy SoHo neighborhood were targeted for the second night in a row. And all night long, sirens screamed across the city, with multiple reports of lootings in lower Manhattan.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also walked back earlier comments that appeared to criticize protesters who were rammed with police vehicles during a protest in Brooklyn, in an encounter captured on video that was shared widely over the weekend.

De Blasio, who was first elected to office on a platform of police reform, had drawn heavy criticism for his earlier remarks, in which he called for an investigation but also seemed to blame protesters.

“There is no situation where a police vehicle should drive into a crowd of protesters or New Yorkers,” de Blasio said during a news conference on Monday.

At the scene of George Floyd’s death, his brother condemned violence and encouraged people to vote for change.

He walked, slowly, up to the scene where a white police officer had knelt on his brother’s neck, a place now covered in flowers and chalk drawings. He knelt down himself, his knees buckling, and he let out a wail of anguish.

On Monday afternoon, Terrence Floyd became the first member of George Floyd’s family to visit the place where his brother lived his last conscious moments. He had said in a television interview earlier on Monday that he wanted to feel George’s spirit after days of feeling numb.

But Terrence Floyd, wearing a face mask with his brother’s face on it, also had a message. He understood people were upset. He doubted those protesting were half as upset as he was. Yet what he had seen in recent days troubled him.

“If I’m not over here wilding out, if I’m not over here blowing up stuff, if I’m not over here messing up my com-

munity, then what are y’all doing? What are y’all doing?” he said through a megaphone at the memorial on Monday.

“Y’all are doing nothing. Because that’s not going to bring my brother back at all.”

He said the cycle of anguish, protest and destruction that has followed many police killings has not changed the country for the better. Instead, he said, people should inform themselves and vote.

“Educate yourself and know who you are voting for,” Terrence Floyd said. “That’s how we are going to hit them.

Because there’s a lot of us.”

His visit to the memorial on Monday, which lasted for more than 30 minutes, was tense, at times, as the media swarmed him as he exited his vehicle, trampling some flowers and signs, despite calls to give Terrence Floyd space.

While there were times of quiet — when Terrence Floyd knelt, there was near silence — the visit was mostly filled with chants for peace, justice and remembrance of George Floyd’s name long after the demonstrations have ebbed.

After a fatal police-involved shooting in Louisville, the governor wants video released.

Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky called on Monday for the Louisville police to release video footage related to the death of a man who was killed shortly after midnight in a shooting by police officers and National Guard troops.

Officials say the troops and officers opened fire after being shot at. The governor has ordered an investigation.

Officials identified the victim as David McAtee, 53, owner of a local barbecue restaurant.

“My understanding is that there is significant camera footage, body camera and otherwise,” Beshear said at a news conference. “I believe that the people of Kentucky deserve to see it for themselves.” He added, “I hope it’s out long before nightfall.”

McAtee’s mother, Odessa Riley, and a group of protesters went on Monday to the scene of the shooting, where they were greeted by Mayor Greg Fischer, who offered his condolences.

“My son didn’t hurt nobody,” Riley said.

Officials have not suggested that McAtee had anything to do with that initial shooting, and have not said whose bullet or bullets hit him.

Like cities across the nation, Louisville has been convulsed by angry protests over police use of force, in particular the death of George Floyd a week ago in Minneapolis. Anger has also surged in Louisville over the killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death in March by officers who burst into her home to execute a search warrant.

Memorial services for Floyd are planned in Minnesota and Texas.

A series of memorial services for Floyd are being planned in Minneapolis, where he died, and in Houston, where he spent much of his life, but the details have yet to be announced.

Continues on page 8

8 From page 7 The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, told reporters Monday that a memorial service for Floyd was scheduled for Thursday. After that service, Floyd’s body would be flown to Houston for a funeral a few days later, according to Fort Bend Memorial Planning Center, the funeral home handling the arrangements in both cities.

“At this time, we’re working with the family, just to kind of bring together everyone in unity as we prepare to celebrate his life,” said the owner, Bobby Swearington. He said he expected to announce specific dates, times and locations soon.

Over the weekend, the funeral home, which is in Rosharon, Texas, about 30 miles south of downtown Houston, posted a picture of Floyd on its Facebook page with the words, “Funeral arrangements are forthcoming.”

In Minnesota, Walz said the service on Thursday will be a “significant event,” for Minneapolis, the state and the country, “to watch that process of celebrating a life that was taken in front of us.”

The Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, who has marched with demonstrators and changed the Houston Police Department’s Twitter profile picture to an image of Floyd and the hashtag #JusticeForFloyd, said he offered to have his officers escort the body.

“We’ve reached out to the family,” Acevedo said in an interview on Sunday.

“Depending on their plans, if they need help with the movement of the body, we’ve offered to provide that security.”

Floyd was born in North Carolina but grew up in Houston, living in the Third Ward, one of the city’s historic African American neighborhoods. He graduated from JackYates High School in 1993, after making a name for himself as a star athlete on both the football and basketball teams. He was involved in Christian ministry programs in the Third Ward, and moved to the Minneapolis area a few years ago.

The attorney general has summoned riot teams to Washington, as the capital braces for more protests.

Attorney General William Barr is stepping up the response from federal law enforcement to the turmoil in Washington, according to Justice Department officials, as the capital braced for more demonstrations.

Barr summoned hostage rescue teams to Washington around midnight on Sunday, and the department said it would increase the presence of federal law enforcement in the city again on Monday night. Barr also

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

directed the Bureau of Prisons to send Special Operation Response teams, or riot teams, to the capital.

Smoke could be seen on Sunday evening rising from the Washington Monument as police fired tear gas and flash grenades to disperse protesters in the area. Windows of prominent buildings were smashed, and vandals overturned cars and set fires. A curfew from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m. did little to deter crowds from clashing violently with riot police officers in Lafayette Square, a small park beside the White House.

On Monday morning, workers tried to paint over graffiti and clean up after the tumultuous night. A section of Connecticut Avenue that would ordinarily be bustling with lawyers and lobbyists was barren on Monday except for construction crews sweeping up chunks of glass and surveying damage.

The White House was darkened on Sunday evening, adding to the impression of a president under siege. Secret Service agents rushed Trump on Friday to a bunker beneath the White House that has been used during terrorist attacks.

Trump sought on Monday to blame the anti-fascist movement antifa for violence across the country, and urged his supporters to look forward to the November election.

State officials have said there were signs that the violence was being instigated by white supremacists and others on the far right.

A new morning ritual: Cleaning up after a night of turbulence.

Days of protest and nights of unrest are giving way each dawn to a new ritual in America, as residents of the nation’s biggest cities awake to assess the damage and begin the sometimes heartbreaking and healing work of cleaning up.

Business owners in Minneapolis began a new week sifting through the remnants of their livelihoods, disintegrated in flames. Philadelphians turned out to sweep and scrub the previous night’s damage away. And in Boston, where commercial districts were peppered with shattered glass on Monday morning, a radio announcer’s voice echoed out like a collective sigh of relief and exhaustion: “It’s June 1st, and Boston made it through the night.”

On Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, looters had circled retail areas in cars until about 5 a.m., according to José Penaranda, a building manager who tried to protect merchandise from being stolen from the Back Bay Bicycles store.

By the time the sun rose, the store’s door

President Trump in Washington, DC, on May 30, 2020. had been smashed and looters had left bicycles scattered in the street.

“I talked to the police — they said, ‘We can’t even keep up with the calls,’” Penaranda said. “They couldn’t do much.”

Not far away, Bryan Ramey, a manager at a Diesel store, was sweeping up broken glass Monday morning. He said the looters had been selective and methodical in their choice of targets: A driver would remain in a vehicle outside while others brought out “armfuls of stuff.” They returned late at night and cleared the office of equipment, including a modem, a safe and a security system, in an act of looting that he said seemed unrelated

to the protests.

“I’m all for protesting, even rioting when you feel you should fight the power,” he said. “But theft for theft’s sake is just taking advantage of a situation that’s already bad.”

Anita Harrison, who is from the predominantly black neighborhood of Roxbury, went to an upscale commercial strip on Newbury Street in Boston on Monday, offering to clean up. Standing in front of a shattered North Face store, she said she felt sad.

“This is not the answer,” she said.

“It’s just people coming out looking for trouble. Like we’re not in enough trouble already.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

9

How Minneapolis, one of America’s most liberal cities, struggles with racism

By JOHN ELIGON and JULIE BOSMAN

R

esidents of Minneapolis swell with pride over their city’s sparkling lakes, glassy downtown, beautifully kept green spaces and bicycle-friendliness that draws comparisons to Copenhagen, Denmark.They see themselves as public spirited, embracing of multiculturalism and inspired by Minnesota’s liberal icons, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone.

The Minneapolis City Council, made up of 12 Democrats and a member of the Green Party, includes two transgender members, both of whom are black. The city has for years held a popular community celebration and parade for Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery.

But there remains an extraordinary racial gap for Minnesotans when it comes to education outcomes and health care. Black families own their homes at far lower rates than white families, among the largest such disparities in the country.

And the city’s predominantly white police force, which has been accused of racist practices for decades, rarely disciplines officers with troubled records.

“Minneapolis has ridden this reputation of being progressive,” said Robert Lilligren, who became the first Native American elected to the City Council in 2001. “That’s the vibe: Do something superficial and feel like you did something big.

Create a civil rights commission, create a civilian review board for the police, but don’t give them the authority to change the policies and change the system.”

Events of several long days and nights, as Minneapolis was rocked by protests, destruction and overwhelming police crackdowns, were forcing a reckoning over the city’s complicated identity.

Markers of sophistication in the city of 430,000 people draw newcomers: an enviable landscape of food, arts and public radio, a robust business and philanthropic community, and a growing diversity boosted by immigrants from East Africa and Asia.

From one angle, Minneapolis has been booming, a Midwestern magnet for transplants seeking job opportunities and culture.

With a range of industries including health care, agriculture and finance, residents are immensely proud of their distinction as one of the cities with the most Fortune 500 companies per capita.

Minneapolis residents pride themselves as welcoming; the state took in nearly 110,000 refugees from 1979 to 2018, a resettlement effort that is largely the work of Lutheran and Catholic social services agencies.

It was the city’s embrace of diversity and job opportunities that attracted Orlando DeWalt, 49, who moved to Minneapolis last year from his hometown of East St. Louis, Illinois.

“All the different mixed cultures, the different foods — and it’s got a nice school system,” he said.

DeWalt said he liked that white people stand next to black people to fight for police reform, and that when he lost his wallet in Walmart, a white man who returned it would not accept the money that DeWalt offered as a thank you.

Yet the city was also the backdrop to a horrific scene on Memorial Day, of a white police officer pressing his knee

Volunteers helped clear water on Saturday, from the interior of a Wells Fargo Bank that was destroyed the night before during protests in Minneapolis. against the neck of George Floyd, a black man, for nearly nine minutes. Furious demonstrations rippled beyond Minneapolis to scores of cities across the country. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was charged with third-degree murder.

“The things that are great about it are great,” Betsy Hodges, a former mayor of Minneapolis, said of the city. “And it is also a city that has deep challenges, especially regarding race.”

In 2016, Hodges, who is white, devoted her State of the City address to the troubling dualities of the place.

The current mayor, Jacob Frey, took office in 2018 vowing to repair ties between the police and the community after two fatal police shootings. Within a day of the death of Floyd, Frey, a civil rights lawyer, quickly denounced the officers involved.

“Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” he said. “I believe what I saw and what I saw is wrong on every level.”

Frey has also laid out plans to address Minneapolis’ lack of affordable housing, a byproduct of its growth: Since the 1990s, Minnesota has attracted a surge of immigrants from Somalia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Laos and Mexico. Minneapolis is about 60% white, 20% black, 10% Latino and 6% Asian, according to census data.

The legacy of policies discriminating against people of color has lingered.

“The racism has been around for a very, very long time,” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “You can see it in the redlining of neighbor-

hoods, the education system, the transportation system and, obviously, policing.”

Even lifelong residents who brag about their city say that Minneapolis’ friendly exterior masks deep-rooted problems.

It is not uncommon to hear residents say how much they love the multicultural nature of Minneapolis in one breath, but that they feel threatened because of their race, ethnicity or religion in the next.

“Racism with a smile” is how Leila Ali, 42, a Somali immigrant who has lived in Minneapolis since 1998, described it.

White liberal residents of Minneapolis point to policy changes that have been praised for their progressivism. A measure in 2018 eliminated single-family zoning, long believed to have perpetuated segregation. Lawmakers voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2017, the first major Midwestern city to do so, and mandated sick leave for workers.

Yet a shift in influence and representation has been slow coming. In 2018, Minnesotans elected Rep. Ilhan Omar, DMinn., a Somali American and Muslim, the first woman of color from the state to serve in Congress. And disparities in employment, poverty and education between people of color and white residents are among the worst in the nation.

“The Twin Cities pride themselves in being diverse,” said Maddie Hankard, 24, an environmental engineer who is white, as she stood outside buildings damaged during Saturday’s protests. “But there’s been a whole generation not respecting communities of color.”

10

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

States warn that virus may doom climate projects

Waves crashed against a home in a flooded section of Milford, Conn., the morning after Hurricane Sandy blew through in 2012.

By CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE

C

onnecticut is preparing to build a first-ofits-kind underground flood wall. Virginia has planned an intricate system of berms, pump stations and raised roads to keep the floodprone city of Norfolk dry. Louisiana has broken ground on a new community for people forced to flee a village on its sinking coast, the country’s first government-resettled climate migrants.

Projects in 13 cities and states, which were part of the Obama administration’s push to protect Americans from climate change after the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, are now in jeopardy because of the coronavirus pandemic, state and local officials warn. And they need Republicans in Congress to save those projects.

On Monday, officials are expected to tell lawmakers that the coronavirus will prevent them from meeting the conditions of a $1 billion Obama-era program for large-scale construction projects that defend cities and states against climate-related disasters. That money must be spent by the fall of 2022.

Missing that deadline, which officials say is likely because of delays caused by the coronavirus, would mean forfeiting the remaining money, scuttling the projects. States and cities have been moving swiftly in the design phases and to secure permits since the Obama administration awarded the funds in 2016. Officials will ask Congress to extend the deadline for construction by three years, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.

“Without an extension, any funds not spent by the deadline will be canceled and projects will remain unfinished,” the letter reads.

“These projects are absolutely critical for bolstering our defenses against future disasters,” said Jainey Bavishi, director of the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency in New York City, which got $176 million to build gates along the East Side of Manhattan that would flip up to protect people and buildings during a storm or flood, and be used as recreational space the rest of the time.

The rush to save the program is the latest example of how the pandemic has disrupted climate policy.

The Trump administration has used the virus to justify relaxing rules for polluters, despite concerns that air pollution may worsen people’s risk of dying from COVID-19. The virus has also exposed weaknesses in disaster response because emergency managers cannot deploy staff as usual or operate normal evacuation shelters.

And the economic fallout has forced cities to cut budgets for their own climate-resilience projects.

The projects are the result of the Obamaera program called the National Disaster Resilience Competition. Its goal was to encourage new ideas for coping with the accelerating consequences of global warming by funding the best ideas and providing models for other parts of the country.

If state and local governments could figure out how to better protect their residents from disasters, the logic went, then the country could

avoid spending billions of dollars each year rebuilding homes and cities just to watch them crumble again in the next storm.

“The only fiscally responsible way to address climate impacts is to build infrastructure that spurs the economy, creates jobs and ensures we are not paying for repetitive losses,” said Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit group created after Hurricane Sandy whose goal is to help cities recover from disasters more effectively.

In Connecticut, officials got $36 million to help protect a lower-income neighborhood in Bridgeport that was flooded by Hurricane Sandy. Rather than build a typical concrete storm wall, the project is designed to blend into the landscape, according to Rebecca French, who until last month ran the project as director of resilience for Connecticut’s Department of Housing.

By March, the state had finished the preliminary design phase, as well as environmental reviews, French said. It was planning to break ground early in 2021 and finish in time for the September 2022 cutoff.

“It doesn’t leave a lot of margin of error,” she said.

Then the virus struck. In April, Connecticut’s housing commissioner sent a letter to Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., asking Congress to provide an extension, citing the disruption from the virus, according to French. State officials declined to comment further.

The program does not always aim to fortify neighborhoods against disasters. Sometimes the goal is to get people out of the way.

Louisiana won $48 million to resettle the residents of a coastal village, Isle de Jean Charles, that is quickly being swallowed by rising waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Last month, the state began work on a new settlement farther inland, called The New Isle. The schedule calls for finishing the last house by the end of 2021.

That schedule was already going to be tight, according to Pat Forbes, executive director of Louisiana’s Office of Community Development, which is running the project.

“All of these projects, all 13 of them, are very complex,” Forbes said. “These are the types of projects that do take longer to develop and construct.”

The pandemic has made it harder.

“Every interaction with a government entity is going to get slowed down,” Forbes said.

The construction could take longer as well, he said, as workers worry about exposure to the virus.

In Virginia, which was awarded $121 mi-

llion, officials have planned a series of projects in Norfolk, including building a flood wall, adding new green space to hold floodwater and pump stations to move it out, and raising roads to keep them dry more often, according to Doug Beaver, the city’s chief resilience officer.

Officials finished the environmental impact statement for the project last spring and broke ground in February, Beaver said. By March, the city had spent almost $18 million on planning and administration. The goal was to spend the federal funds in full by August or September of 2022, just within the deadline.

On May 21, two months into the virus crisis, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia wrote a letter to his state’s representatives in Congress, asking that Congress extend the deadline by three years.

If that federal money went away, states and cities would be unlikely to be able to finance the projects themselves even in normal times. The damage done to state and local budgets by the pandemic makes it even less likely.

As of Feb. 28, most of the 13 recipients, which include New York City, New Orleans and California, had spent less than one-fifth of their allotted money, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which manages the program.

In a statement, a spokesman for the department said the 2022 deadline “was created

by Congress and needs to be fixed by Congress if they choose to do so.”

The slow pace of spending reflects the nature of large-scale infrastructure projects, according to people involved with them. Many of the cities and states have already spent millions of dollars designing and securing permits for their projects. When the pandemic hit, most had either just started or expected to soon begin construction, which accounts for the bulk of the cost.

On Monday, officials representing all 13 grant recipients plan to send letters to their congressional representatives as a group, echoing Northam’s request. The change would require new legislation, passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax.

“These projects will help us understand what we can do to protect people and keep property safe,” said Marion McFadden, who led the National Disaster Resilience Competition at HUD during the Obama administration. “I think we should all care about that, because we just can’t tell where the next disasters will strike.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

11

Poor countries face a debt crisis ‘unlike anything we have seen’

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and MATT PHILLIPS

F

rom Angola to Jamaica to Ecuador to Zambia, the world’s poor countries have had their finances shredded by the global pandemic.

The president of Tanzania has called on “our rich brothers” to cancel his country’s debt. Belarus veered toward a default when a promised $600 million loan from Russia fell through. Russia couldn’t spare the money because the ruble had taken a nose-dive, along with oil and gas prices.

Lebanon, troubled even before the pandemic, has embarked on its first debt restructuring. And Argentina has defaulted again — for the ninth time in its history.

The low interest rates of the past decade led to an unlikely alliance between poor countries and international investors. Governments, state-owned companies and other businesses were able to raise money relatively cheaply to finance their growth, while investors searching for better returns than they were getting at home gobbled up that debt.

As a result, developing countries owe record amounts of money to investors, governments and others outside their borders: $2.1 trillion for countries ranked as “low income” and “lower-middle income” by the World Bank, including Afghanistan, Chad, Bolivia and Zimbabwe.

Now, the pandemic is fraying that alliance. Economic activity has ground to a halt, closing ports, shutting factories, canceling flights and emptying resorts. Governments are on the hook for billions of dollars in interest and principal repayments — payments suddenly made more expensive by volatility in the currency markets at the same time that their public health costs are skyrocketing. And their investors are not in a forgiving mood.

“This is really unlike anything we have seen,” said Mitu Gulati, a law professor at Duke University who studies the debts of countries, or sovereign debt. “The last time we had this many countries likely to go under at the same time was in the 1980s.” In Latin America, that period was known as La Década Perdida — The Lost Decade.

Resolving those debts took years of negotiations, austerity measures and stalled economic development. But the debt crisis brewing today could be even harder to sort out.

Poor countries have long been able to borrow from institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, or from the governments of their trading partners, like China. But in recent years their debt, usually in the form of bonds, became popular with private investment firms. The investment funds in turn placed it with client pension funds, family offices and exchange-traded funds. And those entities have their own interests and their own rules, which will complicate any effort to negotiate easier terms for the borrowers, such as stretched out payment schedules, lower interest rates or reduced principal.

A group of 77 poor countries are scheduled to make interest and principal payments of $62 billion on their debts this year, according to calculations by Ugo Panizza, an economics professor at the Graduate Institute of Internatio-

People waiting in line at a food donation site in Buenos Aires on Friday. Argentina just defaulted again on its debt — for the ninth time in its history. nal and Development Studies in Geneva, who published them in a joint research paper with six other economists and bankruptcy lawyers. A portion of that is due in June.

Private investors have bought up more debt than official lenders in Latin American, East Asian and emerging European countries. These countries tend to issue bonds in dollars or other hard currencies. Now, their own currencies have plummeted in value as investors around the world sought refuge in the dollar — Brazil’s is down more than 30% against the dollar this year.

That means it takes more of their own currency to buy every dollar they need to pay their debts. At the same time, they’re spending heavily on everything from hand-washing stations in places without tap water to airlifts of protective equipment for medical workers.

In late March, the leaders of the World Bank and the IMF issued a joint statement calling on international creditors to grant the struggling countries relief. They suspended the payments owed this year from a group of 76 countries known as the International Development Association, plus Angola, which owes large payments to China. A few weeks later, the Group of 20, a forum for large-economy governments and central banks including the United States, Germany and China, issued a communiqué supporting a payment suspension.

Thirty-six countries have already applied, G-20 officials said Thursday.

Those organizations have called on bond funds and other private investors to join the suspension on comparable terms.

The response has been slow.

It took the Institute of International Finance, a trade group from around the globe, nearly four weeks to offer a proposal. The group’s members — banks, insurers, hedge funds and other financial entities — say debt forgiveness is complicated by their fiduciary duties to their clients.

On Thursday, the group said it would be up to each investor to decide whether to go along with a moratorium, and any skipped interest payments would be tacked on to the borrowers’ principal. In other words, the countries would come out of the moratorium with more debt than they went in with.

Gulati, the Duke law professor, said he wondered if any solution could be reached in time for borrowers to skip their June bond payments without being deemed to be in default.

Decisions by the IMF, World Bank and G-20 to let the countries skip payments will certainly free up cash, he said.

But that doesn’t mean the countries will put it toward the costs of the public health crisis. If the private investors don’t get on board, the money could move into their pockets instead.

“That relief,” he said, “can be used to pay the private creditors on time and in full.”

12

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Stocks

Wall Street closes higher as recovery signs soothe protest, pandemic worries

U

.S. stocks posted gains on Monday as signs of U.S. economic recovery helped offset jitters over increasingly violent social unrest amid an ongoing pandemic and rising U.S.-China tensions.

All three major stock indexes began the month with gains of less than 1% on the heels of a strong rally in May. “Certainly the pace of the stock market recovery can’t contnue at the pace it has been,” said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago. “I’m stunned at how well the market’s been doing. It’s truly a head-scratcher.”

The White House called for “law and order” as U.S. cities were looted and smoldering after six nights of widespread, violent demonstrations triggered by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, even as the country reels from the economic effects of pandemicrelated lockdowns.

“Most investors are saying (the protests) aren’t going to destroy the economy,” Nolte added. “It’s a roadblock but it’s not as big as a pandemic.”

The unrest has prompted retailers such as Target Corp (TGT.N) and Walmart Inc (WMT.N) to shutter a portion of their stores, while Amazon.com (AMZN.O) has scaled back deliveries.

Further weighing on sentiment, China has ordered state-owned firms to halt purchases of U.S. soybeans and pork, in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would end special treatment for Hong Kong following China’s move to tighten security measures in the territory.

But economic data gave a boost to investor sentiment, with the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) purchasing managers’ index (PMI) showing the contraction of factory activity was slowing, and a decline in construction spending was not as steep as economists feared.

“The numbers are still poor, but as long as they continue to improve there’s reason for optimism,” Nolte said.

A fuller picture of the economic damage wrought by pandemic-related lockdowns is expected on Friday, when the Labor Department’s jobs report is seen showing a drop of 8 million jobs and an unemployment rate sky-rocketing to 19.7%.

Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.37% to end at 25,476.05 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.38%, to 3,055.75. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC climbed 0.65% to 9,551.67.

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The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

13

Global anger grows over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis

By JAVIER HERNÁNDEZ and BENJAMIN MUELLER

I

n many parts of the world, the death of yet another black man at the hands of police in the United States is setting off mass protests against police brutality and reviving concerns that America is abandoning its traditional role as a defender of human rights.

On the streets of Berlin and Vancouver, British Columbia, in halls of power in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Beijing, a chorus of criticism has erupted alongside the unrest in the United States over the death of George Floyd. Floyd, 46, died last week after he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The officer who pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck has been charged with murder.

Paired with the global anger at police violence in some U.S. cities has been another demand: that lawmakers heed the signs of racism and police abuse in their own countries.

In London, thousands of demonstrators gathered around the moated U.S. Embassy in defiance of stay-at-home coronavirus restrictions and chanted Floyd’s name, “I can’t breathe” and “No justice, no peace,” before making their way to Grenfell Tower. The building was the site of a devastating fire in 2017 that killed many Arab, Muslim and African residents. On a memorial at the base of the tower, a protester wrote, “Black Lives Matter.”

In Toronto, calls to end American racism merged with outrage at the recent death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, 29, a black woman who police said fell from her balcony after officers arrived at her home in response to reports of a “domestic incident.”

And in Paris, among those calling for a demonstration was the family of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died in custody in 2016 after being tackled and pinned down by police in the Paris suburbs. La Vérité Pour Adama, or “the truth for Adama,” an advocacy group led by Traoré’s sister, Assa, said Floyd’s death was a chilling reminder of Traoré’s.

“How can one not think of Adama’s terrible suffering when he had three police officers on him and he was repeating, ‘I can’t breathe’,” the group wrote on Facebook last week. “His name was George Floyd, who just like Adama died because they were black.”

Beyond local instances of racism and police violence, the widespread condemnation also reflected growing unease about America’s rapidly eroding moral authority on the world stage.

President Donald Trump already faces criticism across the globe for a response to the coronavirus pandemic that has led the United States to relinquish its longtime role as a global leader in times of crisis.

Now the death of Floyd has brought protests to at least 140 U.S. cities, turning many into tear gas-filled battlefields. Images of police officers and protesters engaged in heated street fights have spread swiftly across social media sites around the world, drawing furious comments and calls for action.

In Berlin, thousands of demonstrators held a peaceful protest outside of the U.S. Embassy on Saturday, some carrying signs that read, “Stop Killing Us,” and graffiti artists sprayed

There have been accusations that far-right or far-left activists have hijacked protests about a black man’s death in police custody.

Floyd’s image on a remaining stretch of the wall that divided the city for decades during the Cold War. Two players in Germany’s top soccer league — English forward Jadon Sancho and French striker Marcus Thuram — made gestures of support after Floyd’s death as part of goal celebrations during matches Sunday.

In Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, the target of a monthslong offensive by the Syrian government to seize control from opposition forces, two artists painted a mural on the shell of a ruined building that read “I Can’t Breathe” and “No to Racism.”

For America’s rivals, the tensions have provided an opportunity to deflect attention from their own problems.

In China, where officials have chafed at Trump’s criticism of how they handled the coronavirus outbreak, the state-run news media heavily featured reports about Floyd’s death and portrayed the protests as another sign of America’s decline. The violent protests were covered extensively in the news media and on the social media platform Weibo. “BunkerBoy” became a trending topic after reports that Secret Service agents rushed Trump to a bunker Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House.

Pierre Haski, a noted French journalist, commented on France Inter on Monday: “Beijing could not have hoped for a better gift. The country that designates China as the culprit of all evils is making headlines around the world with the urban riots.”

When a U.S. official Saturday attacked the ruling Communist Party on Twitter for moving to impose national security legislation to quash dissent in Hong Kong, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government fired back with a popular refrain among U.S. protesters. “‘I can’t breathe,’ ” the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, wrote on Twitter.

In Iran, Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, accused the United States of hypocrisy. He posted a doctored screenshot of a 2018 statement by U.S. officials condemning Iran for corruption and injustice. In his version, the references to Iran were replaced with America.

“Some don’t think #BlackLivesMatter,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.

The European Union said Monday that it hoped “all the issues related to the protests in the U.S. will be settled swiftly and in full respect for the rule of law and human rights.” The statement, emailed by a spokesman for the European Commission, was an unusual comment from the body on U.S. affairs.

The commission, the executive arm of the 27-nations bloc, which has close trade and political ties with the United States, usually reserves this type of language for violent breakdowns in nations with few democratic or human rights safeguards.

“We regret the loss of life, express our condolences to those affected and condemn violence and racism regardless of where it comes from,” the statement added.

14

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Rogue trip by Boris Johnson aide makes UK’s spectator part of the story

Demonstrators in support of Brexit in London.

By MARK LANDLER and STEPHEN CASTLE

W

hen Boris Johnson became the editor of The Spectator in 1999, he declared that he planned to make the weekly magazine, Britain’s oldest, a “refuge for logic, fun, and good writing.” It would, he promised somewhat paradoxically, “continue to set the political agenda, and to debunk it.”

Now that Johnson is the prime minister, the magazine he once ran has never been closer to fulfilling his ambition of being at once in bed with Britain’s conservative establishment and willing to yank the covers off it.

Yet in the last few weeks, The Spectator’s incestuous ties with the governing elite have thrust it into the murky heart of an uproar over a 260-mile drive that Johnson’s most influential adviser, Dominic Cummings, and his wife made to his parents’ house in northern England, violating Britain’s lockdown rules.

Mary Wakefield, one of the magazine’s senior editors, is married to Cummings and wrote a vivid account of how she and her husband both fell ill with the coronavirus. Cummings, she said, lay “doggo” in bed for 10 days before emerging into “the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown.”

The trouble is, she did not mention that they had actually gone to Durham, a journey that brought charges of hypocrisy and calls for Johnson to dismiss Cummings, at a time when the government was under fire for Britain’s rising death toll, ravaged nursing homes and hapless test-and-trace program.

Wakefield’s omissions have cast an unflattering light on

The Spectator as well. Critics have accused it of misleading readers. Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organization, a watchdog group, has received more than 100 complaints from the public about the column, which, pending an investigation, could force the magazine to publish a correction.

“The English tradition of editing has always been more laissez faire than the American one,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a historian at Oxford University and longtime contributor to The Spectator. “But there was too much latitude in this case.”

The Spectator’s editor, Fraser Nelson, declined to discuss the contretemps, and Wakefield, who has since assigned stories critical of her husband, did not return a request for comment.

A spokesman for the magazine said, “We’re happy to let the coverage speak for itself” — a standard-issue response that in this case might accurately convey the magazine’s sentiments, given the streak of mischief in its culture.

“They’d be amused by the notoriety,” said Andrew Gimson, a former foreign editor of The Spectator who wrote a biography of Johnson. “They’ve always had a tradition of allowing people leeway and laughing at mistakes.”

At once high-minded and playful, conservative and louche, The Spectator occupies a peculiar niche in British media.

It has only 83,000 print and digital subscribers, but an outsize influence because of its 192-year history, legacy of acclaimed writers (Christopher Hitchens, A.N. Wilson, Jeffrey Bernard), and reputation as an incubator for Conservative Party leaders, from Johnson to Nigel Lawson, who edited the magazine in the 1960s

and went on to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

With offices in a stately Westminster town house, where the leather chairs and bookcases are more redolent of an Oxford college than a 21st century news organization, the magazine is famous for its summer party. No food, but the Champagne flows freely and the guest list, one writer cracked, can range from Cabinet ministers and famous authors to a “Catholic monsignor, aged 106.”

During Johnson’s editorship, when he also won a seat in Parliament, he and other editors carried on a tangle of extramarital affairs in the office, prompting The Spectator’s Fleet Street rivals to nickname it The Sextator.

Colleagues of Johnson say he always enjoyed a good joke, sometimes at the expense of other publications. In 2002, when The New York Times sent a photographer to shoot a portrait of Johnson, he tried to get Gimson to sit in his chair and impersonate him. The Spectator’s publisher “got wind of this childish prank, was not amused by it and put a stop to it,” Gimson recalled.

As Alexander Chancellor, one of its most storied editors, once said, “The Spectator is more of a cocktail party than a political party.”

And yet, under Nelson, its Scottish editor who went to the University of Glasgow rather than Oxford, the magazine has tried to be more sober and balanced. It has published several tough articles about Johnson and the Cummings affair, including at least one commissioned by Wakefield, according to the writer, Anthony Horowitz, who is a critic of the government.

And it published a piece by its Scotland editor, Alex Massie, that declared “Boris isn’t fit to lead.”

Since 2004, The Spectator has been owned by the Barclay brothers, David and Frederick. Reclusive billionaires who are best known these days for feuding with each other, the Barclays hold staunch pro-Brexit views. But staff members say they are less involved in the magazine than in their other media property, the Daily Telegraph.

It is not clear if the magazine’s bosses were amused by its cameo role in the Cummings affair. Andrew Neil, whom the Barclays installed as chairman of its parent company, retweeted a post in which a Times of London columnist labeled Wakefield’s column “a piece of noble deception.” Neil referred questions to Nelson, saying, “He’s responsible for the content of the magazine.”

So far, the only person who has stepped forward with an explanation is Cummings, who contributed a short piece of his own to The Spectator, which also skipped over the Durham trip.

He defended the omission because, he said, his family had received threats in their London home.

“Why on earth would I mention another house I was in, where I’ve got two elderly parents and other relatives living there?” he said during a session with reporters in the garden at 10 Downing Street.

Then why, a reporter pressed Cummings, write an article at all?

“My wife’s a writer,” he replied. “I don’t tell her what to do.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

15

Resisting lockdown, Nicaragua becomes a place of midnight burials

By ALFONSO FLORES BERMUDEZ and FRANCES ROBLES

J

ust hours after Yamil Acevedo died in a hospital, funeral home workers in hazardous materials suits strapped his coffin to the back of a pickup truck, drove it to a cemetery and buried him in the dark of night.

Across Nicaragua, families are being forced to hold these “express burials,” rushed funerals at all hours of the night, without time to call a priest or buy flowers.

The services are happening so fast, and in such a haphazard fashion, that relatives worry terrible mistakes are being made.

“The doctor said, ‘If you can bury him as soon as possible, do it,’” said Amani Acevedo, Acevedo’s daughter. “I don’t know that the person in that coffin was even him.”

Long lines have formed at the country’s hospitals, and pharmacies have run out of basic medicines. The popular baseball season has been suspended, with players refusing to take the field.

The signs are everywhere that the coronavirus is raging across Nicaragua.

But the Nicaraguan government insists it has the virus firmly under control, with the lowest COVID-19 death toll in Central America.

Nicaragua, a nation of 6.4 million people, is one of the last countries to resist adopting the strict measures that have been put in place around much of the world to curb the spread of the disease. It never closed its schools. It did not shutter businesses.

Throughout the pandemic, the government not only allowed mass events — it organized them.

Families say the consequences of these decisions are being buried, literally, under cover of darkness. Without any testing for COVID-19, they are told that their loved ones died of pneumonia and — because of fear of contagion — are urged to bury them as soon as possible.

Health organizations are struggling to get accurate case numbers. Testing is limited and controlled by the government. Doctors and activists watching respiratory illnesses spread around the nation are bracing for disaster, just two years after anti-government uprisings against President Daniel Ortega turned violent.

Facing withering criticism, the government released a report last Monday stating that critics were trying to sow chaos, and that the vast majority of people in the country, the second-poorest in the hemisphere, could not afford to lose work under a strict lockdown.

In the document, which was posted online, the government compared its approach to that of Sweden, challenging “one-sizefits-all” tactics and arguing that each country’s response to the pandemic should be tailored to its own reality.

“Countries that have totally closed their economies are uncomfortable with the example of countries that do not apply a draconian closure and do not destroy their economies to face the pandemic,” the government said in the document.

The document did not say how many people had been tested for the virus or explain why the government has allowed mass events — like food festivals and a march called “Love in the Time of COVID” — to continue as planned.

In a video the government prepared, Paul Oquist, a U.S.-born adviser to Ortega, said people in the countryside could not shelter at home because they were busy milking cows, gathering eggs and finding wood. Some 80% of workers in Nicaraguan cities have

informal jobs, he said, and if they do not work, they do not eat.

Oquist added that the country’s health system was prepared for the outbreak because the Ortega government had increased the number of hospitals and doctors over the past 13 years. Nineteen hospitals were designated to respond to the coronavirus, and a mass campaign to disinfect taxis, buses, schools and markets was underway.

For almost two months, the government reported only handfuls of infections. In late May, however, as signs of the spread of the virus became more obvious, the government’s count shot up 10-fold, and the Ministry of Health now says it has confirmed 759 cases and 35 deaths.

The Citizen Observatory, an anonymous group of 90 doctors, epidemiologists and other public health volunteers who formed an underground organization to track coronavirus cases in Nicaragua, puts the coronavirus death toll in Nicaragua at 805. They have counted 3,725 cases as of Saturday.

The government says routine pneumonia cases, which are no higher than normal, are being conflated with the coronavirus.

The pandemic has arrived at a time when trust in the Nicaraguan government is low. Two years ago, enormous uprisings against Ortega left hundreds of people dead or in prison.

In the document released last Monday, the government asserted that its opponents were trying to use the pandemic to force economic collapse and undermine Ortega’s administration at a time when the economy is still reeling from the uprisings, which it says cost more than 150,000 jobs.

Some doctors say they fear speaking out, since it could cost them their jobs — or worse — as was routine during the political crisis.

Dr. Carlos Quant, chief of the infectious disease unit at Manolo

Morales Hospital in Managua, said at least 100 medical workers at his hospital were out sick, yet the hospital stopped testing staff members for the illness.

He said that it was unclear whether there was a shortage of testing supplies or a bottleneck at the testing facilities centralized by the government, but that few of the patients who probably died of COVID-19 were likely to have had the correct cause of death listed on their death certificates.

“I don’t know if this is a bad intention to have an undercount, to hide information or hide data, but it’s very easy for the government to say, ‘No, these are atypical pneumonias,’” he said. “And, sure, they are atypical pneumonias, because they are not tested.”

Jarbas Barbosa da Silva, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, the regional division of the World Health Organization, said international health authorities were struggling to get accurate data from Nicaragua. Most countries provide daily figures, while Nicaragua releases only weekly numbers.

Nicaragua has not accepted the organization’s offer to send international experts to carry out an epidemiological analysis and an evaluation of Nicaragua’s health services, he said. But he said the government did eventually agree in recent weeks to limit the size of mass events.

While the government has not closed schools, most classrooms are empty: Parents are keeping their children home.

“The whole world has to understand the truth of the crime that our government is committing,” said Elena Cano, whose 46-year-old son, Camilo Meléndez, the facilities manager at the National Assembly building, died May 19 after trying to get medical care several times.

His death certificate says he died of acute respiratory failure as a consequence of “unusual severe pneumonia.”

Across Nicaragua, families are being forced to hold rushed funerals at all hours of the night, without time to call a priest or buy flowers.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The Drive-In theater: Keeping drama alive during the lockdown

By PATRICK KINGSLEY

T

o attend her first play in more than two months, Marie Reslova, a prominent Czech theater critic, drove into Prague, headed to a large vegetable market, parked next to a convertible sports car and switched off her engine.

Soon, actors from the Czech National Theater strode onto a platform a few yards from Reslova’s windshield.

The play had begun. And she had not even left her car.

The Czech Republic enforced tighter restrictions than most European countries to combat the coronavirus pandemic. For several weeks, Czechs were barred even from jogging without a mask. After the government eased that restriction, masks were still mandatory in most other public contexts.

But the country also loosened the lockdown earlier than most — and that has made it a laboratory for how arts and cul- A performance by the Czech National Theater in a parking ture can adapt to a context in which some restrictions on social lot in Prague. life have been lifted, while others remain in place.

The drive-in theater at Prague’s vegetable market was an lockdown, she had seen theater only on the internet.

“I don’t have to watch this online!” she said cheerily ambitious example. To circumvent restrictions on public gatherings, audience members watched plays, concerts and comedy through her car window, before the show started.

The couple in the convertible beside her, a pair of marketfrom behind their steering wheels — in a monthlong program that ended with a variety act by the National Theater on the ing executives, were equally excited. But standing at the back, having sneaked in on foot, a Czech photographer was more evening of May 24, attended by Reslova.

Across Europe, drive-ins have become a familiar means circumspect.

Delighted as he was that there was at least something to of circumventing pandemic restrictions. By default, cars keep their occupants socially distanced, leading even nightclub own- watch, David Konecny wondered how the performers would foster that sense of shared experience and connection that he ers and priests to set up drive-in discos and churches.

Though considered a gimmick at first, their proliferation feels is so central to live theater.

Otherwise, Konecny feared, “it’s just people in their cars, suggests they could become a common feature of society at least until the development of vaccines and treatments for the sitting in their bubbles.”

For the actors, the experience was a strange mix of exhilcoronavirus. aration at performing again after a long pause — and eeriness.

But that will probably have ramifications for both the enPeter Vancura, one of the performers that night, at first felt vironment and the quality of cultural events. At times, the drivenervous stepping onstage, confronted not by faces and frowns, in theater felt more like a traffic jam than a work of drama.

When the audience members wanted to applaud, they but the hoods of 30 cars. But then he noticed he could make out some people’s expressions through the windshield, and honked their horns.

When it started to drizzle, they flicked on their wind- even see their smiles.

“It’s not so bad!” he said backstage. “Not so unconnectshield wipers.

And to hear the actors, they hooked their car speakers to ed.”

The project was dreamed up in late March by Karel Kraa portable radio provided by the organizers.

It was theater, but not quite as Reslova remembered it. tochvil, an actor with a children’s theater company who could Not that she minded — initially, at least. Before the lockdown, not stand how the lockdown had laid waste to all forms of culshe watched three or four plays in person a week. During the tural life, including his own productions. Just as doctors care

for people’s medical health, he felt a duty to care for people’s emotional well-being.

“To me, an actor is not a job, it’s something higher,” Kratochvil said. “It means taking some responsibility for society.”

To that end, Kratochvil initially put on his own one-man show, declaiming literary excerpts from a small boat moored under a famous medieval footbridge in central Prague.

But only one person showed up, sending Kratochvil back to the drawing board.

A few days later, he woke up with a new idea. What if people could attend a drive-in play, just as they might see a film at a drive-in cinema?

Kratochvil cannot actually drive, but that was just a detail.

Within days he had founded “Art Parking,” a festival that ended up including both the drive-in theater and a drive-in cinema a few miles across town. Kratochvil invited several theaters to participate, from small independent outfits to the state-funded National Theater on May 24.

There were also folk singers and classical violinists, rock guitarists and chanson singers. By the end of the month, 11,000 people had attended 28 performances.

At first it was unclear whether the artists would need to speak or sing through masks, since they were working in public and the law technically required them to cover their mouths and noses.

But at the first performance, the singer decided at the last minute to go without. Police did not intervene, and a precedent was set.

For Tomas Dianiska, a comic playwright who performed his own play earlier in the festival, his show had been an important human experience, but not one he hopes will need to be repeated any time soon.

“We came to the stage, and said ‘hello’ to these cars,” Dianiska remembered. “You can’t see the people — they’re using klaxons instead of laughing.”

“Better than nothing,” he summarized. “A good experience to tell people about in the pub, but not for theater.”

The artistic quality was varied, Kratochvil happily acknowledged.

But that was beside the point, he said. The goal was to keep the cultural world ticking along and to maintain at least some form of human interaction, rather than to aim for virtuosity.

“My thought was: We have to show how living art will never die,” he said.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

17

What Trump and toxic cops have in common crowds outside the White House if things intensified.

He’s Bull Connor with a comb-over. Or Walter E. Headley, Miami’s former police chief, who in 1967 said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase that reappeared in a Trump tweet Friday.

And this is the point, is it not? Trump, who made his political bones by peddling apocrypha about our first African American president’s country of origin, thrives on racial divisions. Us-them. Conflict zones are his comfort zone, perfect for firing up his base.

But the pressures of this historic moment proved to be too much. We can’t see the African Americans who are dying in disproportionate numbers inside our hospitals, but we can see George Floyd, an African American, cruelly singled out for asphyxiation in the Demonstrators confronted police officers outside of the street. His death in police custody is a potent symbol White House on Saturday. of the obscene inequality and racial hostility of this moment, with the police officer as Trump’s smirking

By JENNIFER SENIOR and pitiless proxy. African Americans — and many whites, too — were so enraged that they poured n his first Inaugural Address, and hopefully his last, out into the streets to protest, even in the midst of a Donald Trump talked about American carnage. He pandemic, even though African Americans are most got it last week. What we couldn’t have known in at risk in this pandemic.

January 2017 is that he wasn’t here to save us from this A month from now, it’s quite likely many will carnage, but to perpetuate it; that incitement wasn’t end up in hospitals, once again in disproportionate just a feature of his campaign, but of his governance. numbers. It’s too awful to contemplate.

When historians look back at the Trump era, they may And once again, there’s a leadership vacuum in very well say his presidency was encapsulated by this response to the chaos, just as there is with COVID-19. moment, when a sadistic cop knelt on the neck of It’s every state for itself, with Trump trolling the most an African American man in plain view for almost 9 liberal leaders for their supposed failures to contain minutes and the streets exploded in rage. the unrest.

Derek Chauvin was by no means the first cop to How these protests devolved into violence across gratuitously brutalize and lynch an African American. the country will be the subject of analysis for years to But he embodied something essential about Trump- come. For now, what has riveted me is that somehow, ism: It’s us versus them. That’s the poison ethos at in spite of the dystopian horror unfolding in front of the heart of police brutality, and it’s the septic core us, in spite of execrable responses from some of the of our 45th president’s philosophy. Neither a toxic largest police forces in the country (including New York cop nor Donald Trump sees himself as a servant of all City’s), we’re nonetheless hearing talk of America as a the people they’ve sworn to protect. They are solely perfectible place — of the arc still bending. It’s been servants of their own. Everyone else is the enemy. more than three years since we’ve heard that tune.

From the beginning, the police have received a Yet there was Joe Biden, the presumptive Demolot of perverse messages from Trump, encouraging cratic presidential nominee, issuing a wee-hours them to embrace the bitter angels of their nature. statement that asked Americans not to ignore their Three summers ago, he gave a speech on Long Island, pain, but to use it “to compel our nation across this disparaging officers who cradled the heads of suspects turbulent threshold into the next phase of progress, as they tucked them into their squad cars: “You can inclusion, and opportunity.” There was Killer Mike, take the hand away, OK?” (A bank of cops, seated the rapper from Atlanta, reminding his fellow citizens, behind him, started to laugh and cheer.)

“Atlanta’s not perfect, but we’re a lot better than we One of Trump’s most revealing tweets since the ever were, and a lot better than cities are.” rioting began was a boast about the prowess of the Conservatives will focus on the pleas for law Secret Service — and to threaten to sic “the most and order in their messages. But what I hear is a revicious dogs, and most ominous weapons” on the pudiation of Trumpian nihilism — a rejection of the

I

tyranny of the perpetual “anxious present” that Masha Gessen describes in her forthcoming book “Surviving Autocracy.” They’re instead speaking with what Gessen calls “moral ambition,” inviting fellow citizens to build a more expansive country, rather than an us-versusthem one. Their messages weren’t, “Don’t destroy your community,” so much as, “There’s a still community left for you to join. Come and make it better.”

And so, along with terrifying imagery of fire and fury, we also saw images over the weekend of police officers and protesters marching together. The bonds were sometimes fragile, only to later disappear. But they happened. In Flint, Michigan. In Camden, New Jersey. In Coral Gables, Florida. In Santa Clara, California. In Ferguson, Missouri. In Kansas City, Missouri, where two cops, one white, held aloft a sign saying “End Police Brutality.”

Or listen to the chief of police in Atlanta, Erika Shields, tell an anxious protester, “I hear you.” When Trump met with those who’d lost loved ones in the Parkland shooting, he needed an empathy cheat sheet that contained those very words; it was item No. 5. For her, they simply spilled out, as naturally as rain.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Destructive power of despair

A police cruiser burned in Brooklyn on Saturday during a protest against the killing of George Floyd.

By CHARLES M. BLOW

D

espair has an incredible power to initiate destruction. It is exceedingly dangerous to assume that oppression and pain can be inflicted without consequence, to believe that the victim will silently absorb the injury and the wound will fade.

No, the injuries compound, particularly when there is no effort to alter the system doing the wounding, no avenue by which the aggrieved can seek justice.

This all breeds despair, simmering below the surface, a building up in need of release, to be let out, to lash out, to explode.

As protests and rioting have swept across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, it’s evident that America has failed to learn that lesson yet again.

The protests are not necessarily about Floyd’s killing in particular, but about the savagery and carnage that his death represents: The nearly unchecked ability of the state to act with impunity in the oppression of black bodies and the taking of black life.

It is an anger over feeling powerless, stalked and hunted, degraded and dehumanized. It is an anger that the scenes keep repeating themselves until one feels exhausted

and wrung out. It is an anger over feeling that people in power on every level — individual officers as well as local, state and federal government — are utterly unresponsive to people’s calls for fundamental change and equal justice under the law and equal treatment by it.

When people feel helpless, like there is nothing left to lose, like their lives already hang in the balance, a wild, swirling, undirected rage is a logical result.

You destroy people’s prospects, they’ll destroy your property.

Our intransigence on the issue of social justice and use of force by the police is making last-straw extremists of members of a generation that feels unheard and disrespected.

We can bemoan the violence that has attended some of these protests, but we must also recognize that to have to live in a world, in a society, in which you feel that your very life is constantly under threat because of the color of your skin is also a form of violence.

It is a daily, ambient, gnawing violence. It is the kind that makes a grown man’s shoulder draw up and his jaws clench whenever officers approach, even when there has been no offense or infraction.

It is the kind that forces mothers down to pray whenever a child is out late, pleading to the gods for his or her

safe return.

It is the kind that makes a child think to write a parent’s phone number on their skin when they sense trouble brewing, just in case.

This is also violence.

Indeed, America is not only the progenitor of this type of violence, but it sadly responds most to violence.

That’s when people pay attention, that’s when the ears perk up, that’s when the news crews come.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the protesters practiced nonviolence, but they were regularly met with violence, and it was that violence that spurred action.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed after the violence against protesters was broadcast on TV, four little girls were killed in the bombing of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church and the killing of Medgar Evers in 1963. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, popularly known as the Fair Housing Act, was passed after Martin Luther King was assassinated and rioting swept the country.

If America wants peace it must be responsive in peacetime. You can’t demonize an athlete who peacefully takes a knee to protest against police brutality, labeling him a “son of a bitch,” as President Donald Trump did, and then pine for peaceful protests now.

It seems that no form of protest has been effective in this fight for justice. It seems that what the public and the power structure want is a continuation of the status quo.

They want stillness and passivity. They want obedience.

They want your suffering to be silent, your trauma to be tranquil.

That won’t happen.

Some of the people now breaking things and burning things and looting things are ironically participating in a storied American tradition. There has long been a penchant for destruction in this country, an insatiable bloodlust, that the country conveniently likes to forget.

American violence is learned violence. It is the American way.

White people in America have rioted, slaughtered, massacred and destroyed for centuries, often directing their anger and violence at black people and Native Americans, to take what they had or destroy it, to unleash their rage and assert their superiority, to instill terror, to maintain power.

Sunday marks the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in which a whole prosperous black neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street” was destroyed and as many as 300 people killed because of a violent white mob.

White riots have often, historically, targeted black people, while black people have rioted to protest injustice.

On either side, racism is the root. And we have refused to sufficiently address it.

Now, that chicken is coming home to roost.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

19

Contralora revela que Autoridad de Carreteras pagó más de medio millón por aplicación que no utiliza Por THE STAR

L

a Contralora Yesmín Valdivieso emitió el lunes una opinión cualificada, de las operaciones de los sistemas de información computadorizados de la Autoridad de Carreteras y Transportación de Puerto Rico.

El Informe revela que la Autoridad había pagado 542,691 dólares, por la aplicación e implementación del programa AvantGard Integrity sin ninguna utilidad. Luego de tres años desde la firma del contrato en el 2014, la Autoridad no utilizaba la aplicación Integrity porque no había recibido los adiestramientos y procedió a cancelar el contrato.

“Esta situación le impidió a la Oficina de Tesorería de la Autoridad, el tener en operación un sistema para realizar las transacciones automatizadas que

conectara las inversiones con las necesidades bancarias diarias”, opinó la contralora en comunicación escrita.

La auditoría de dos hallazgos señala también, que el 55 por ciento de las facturas emitidas por la compañía por el contrato del programa Integrity, carecían de la certificación requerida. La reglamentación dispone que las facturas de los contratistas deben contener la información de que ningún empleado de la Autoridad tiene intereses en las ganancias producto del contrato, que el importe es correcto y que los servicios fueron prestados y los mismos no han sido pagados.

Este Informe, segundo y último de la Autoridad, cubre el periodo del 1 de enero de 2014 al 15 de septiembre de 2017 y está disponible en www.ocpr. gov.pr.

Mesa Social denuncia el desacato del Gobierno ante sentencia de los tribunales sobre comedores Por THE STAR

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l grupo Mesa Social denunció este lunes que el gobierno de Puerto Rico desacató una orden judicial de apertura de los comedores escolares.

“Cuando un gobierno se niega a cumplir con su deber y se niega a obedecer una sentencia del Tribunal que le ordena alimentar a quienes los necesiten, es hora de que el país haga su parte para que se haga lo correcto. Estamos ante la misma negligencia criminal que negó nuestros muertos de María, que dejó expirar agua y comida a la intemperie o en almacenes. Hoy empieza la temporada de huracanes: ¿Alguien le cree a la Gobernadora que su gobierno está listo? Nos siguen mintiendo y el pueblo pagando”, expresó la Mesa Social en comunicación escrita.

“El Gobierno de Puerto Rico y la gobernadora Wanda Vázquez Garced tienen el deber de cumplir con la sentencia emitida por el Tribunal el 22 de mayo y que le ordenó abrir TODOS los comedores del país para ofrecer alimentos a TODA persona que lo necesite. Sin embargo, han dado largas al asunto e insisten en decir que no tienen el deber de velar por la vida, dignidad y bienestar de nuestra gente”, expresó Carmen Warren del Comité Timón de Madres y Padres de Educación Especial, una de las organizaciones que demandó al Gobierno para que abra los comedores y distribuya alimentos.

Por su parte, Amárilis Pagán Jiménez, de Proyecto Matria y portavoz de la Mesa Social explicó que “la

apelación radicada por el Gobierno NO paralizó la sentencia así que si no abren los comedores, están en desacato. Están violando, además, los derechos humanos de las personas que se niegan a atender. Estamos ante un gobierno genocida. Lo que nosotras nos preguntamos es qué opinan los alcaldes y alcaldesas que tienen que dar cara a la gente de sus pueblos. Ellas y ellos conocen de la sentencia y tampoco les hemos visto exigir que se abran los comedores en sus pueblos. ¿Se harán cómplices de la gobernadora?”.

“En Puerto Rico hay más de 300 residenciales públicos. Súmenle las barriadas, las comunidades que viven en pobreza y la gente que está encerrada en sus casas sin trabajo, ni PAN ni desempleo. ¿Cómo alguien se atreve a decir que con 80 o 90 escuelas abiertas es suficiente? A mi residencial aún no llegan esos almuerzos que el gobierno nos debe. Ya están más que tarde.

Casi tres meses tarde. ¿Van a seguir esperando?”, dijo Lucía Santana, de la organización Solidaridad Humanitaria del Residencial Manuel A. Pérez en San Juan. “El Secretario de Educación Eligio Hernández no merece estar en ese puesto y le estamos pidiendo la renuncia.

Si no puede velar por el bienestar de nuestra niñez, no puede estar allí”, añadió Santana.

“Es imposible que el Gobierno alegue que está preparado para la temporada de huracanes cuando ha sido incapaz de abrir y operar los comedores escolares durante estos casi tres meses de encierro. Ha habido energía eléctrica, agua potable, carreteras hábiles y gente

dispuesta a ayudar. Ha tenido las mejores condiciones posibles para abrir y operar los comedores pero sigue dando excusas. Eso nos obliga a pensar: Si ahora dice que no puede, ¿qué dirán la Gobernadora y el Secretario de Educación si nos pasa por encima un huracán? ¿Cuáles serán sus nuevas excusas?”, dijo Janice Soliván Roig de Casa Juana Colón de Comerío.

La Mesa Social explicó que la apertura parcial de cerca de un 10% de los comedores NO cumple con la sentencia. “En Puerto Rico hay más de 800 escuelas que tienen comedores funcionales. Puntualizamos, además, que en la zona sur, el gobierno debe tomar medidas adicionales para sustituir los comedores inutilizados por los terremotos”, añadió Soliván.

“El trabajo de las organizaciones sin fines de lucroaunque valioso- NO sustituye el deber del gobierno.

Aún haciendo nuestro trabajo con amor y con personas voluntarias, estamos conscientes de que es el gobierno el que posee la infraestructura y el presupuesto millonario para distribuir alimentos a través de todo Puerto Rico. Esta vez no hay excusas de falta de dinero. El Gobierno Federal les otorgó el presupuesto necesario no solo para niñas y niños, sino para personas adultas que también necesiten comida”, añadió Pagán.

“En Puerto Rico cerca de un millón de personas necesita alimentos hay datos del Kids Count y el Censo que lo prueban. Nuestras organizaciones de servicios hemos sido testigos del hambre de las familias que atendemos o que nos han solicitado servicios”, dijo Warren.

20

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

Live from New York, it’s Jazz at a distance

By ALAN SCHERSTUHL

I

n a different age, about three months ago, 20 bucks could buy you up to four sets of music at Smalls, the pulsing Greenwich Village basement club celebrated for crowd-pleasing, unfussy jazz. Squeeze into the front row and you’d be close enough to the musicians to sweat on one other. Buy a drink and you were welcome to stick around for a 1 a.m. jam session featuring brash up-and-comers — and maybe guest turns by established stars. That cover charge, and a willingness to pack yourself in, also bought access to the intimate Mezzrow, Smalls’ sister club, just across Seventh Avenue South.

Smalls and Mezzrow haven’t been packed in the past 12 weeks, of course. The clubs shuttered after performances on March 15, and their owner, Spike Wilner, said that even before the mandated shutdown, the crowds had diminished and musicians had been canceling gigs.

But there’s a funny thing about jazz: It keeps roaring back to life. Live music returns to Smalls on Monday, in a socially distant way, thanks to Wilner’s persistence, the club’s shift into full nonprofit mode and a windfall from a celebrity benefactor — a $25,000 donation to the SmallsLIVE Foundation from Billy Joel.

“That gift was such a positive vibe at a time when things were really dark,” Wilner said last week. “The impact of the virus has been devastating on the jazz community.”

In a phone interview, Joel said he felt compelled to support Smalls in its time of need: “Live music is the vitality of New York.” He added: “That great sound is the hum of the city. And

during this pandemic, it’s the jazz and classical players who get hit first.”

Wilner’s plan for the money addresses the greatest hardship that jazz players are facing during the shutdown: lost gigs.

He has booked a different jazz band at Smalls for two sets a night, at 7 and 8:30 p.m., all through June, paying the usual gig rate. It’s not quite a reopening, though. The musicians will be alone in the club except for an engineer and a manager. The audience will be at home, watching via the livestream that has regularly broadcast Smalls shows.

Smalls makes its sets available in real time, then archives them behind a paywall for donors who have given at least $10 to the SmallsLIVE Foundation. The livestreams will also be available on the club’s Facebook page.

No other major New York City jazz club is getting back to live, on-site performances so early. Trumpeter and composer Jeremy Pelt, who plays Smalls on reopening night in drummer Joe Farnsworth’s quartet, has no qualms about being cautious while performing. “We’re armed with the basic knowledge of how the virus spreads. When I go down to Smalls, I’m not going to be hugging people and slapping high-fives, even with my very dear friends. We’re going to make this music and leave.”

Organist and composer Akiko Tsuruga noted that the Smalls stage is large enough for the players to connect while still staying 6 feet apart. She said that when her quartet plays there on June 12 she’ll miss the club’s community — the crowds of aficionados and out-of-towners, the musicians who pop in to hang — but will simply be happy for the chance to play. “The lockdown has reminded me how important playing music is to

Spike Wilner, left, the owner of Smalls, and Carlos Abadie, its general manager, prepare the club for the return of live bands on its stage in New York

my life,” Tsuruga said.

Other clubs have booked players for Zoom gigs, like the Jazz Gallery’s Lockdown Sessions, in which musicians like Joel Ross or Camila Meza chat over Zoom with Rio Sakairi, the Gallery’s artistic director, and then present new, homemade videos of themselves playing solo or with a live-in partner. Some festivals, too, have moved online, such as the annual celebration for artists on pianist Fabian Almazan’s Biophilia Records.

But jazz players insist that a Zoom connection doesn’t cut it when it comes to collaborative improvisation. “That connection can’t happen over a computer,” pianist and singer Johnny O’Neal said.

Tsuruga agreed: “Musicians need eye contact and the same vibe.”

Pelt titled his most recent album “The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 1,” which refers not just to the romantic yearning of the set’s luminous ballads. “It’s not necessarily about the love aspect.

It’s the fact that listening to this music is like listening in on a private conversation between the musicians.”

Conversations like that, Pelt believes, demand physical presence. “We’re almost able to play and interact digitally, with no blips and not being a nanosecond off. But what will never be replaced is the human interaction with your fellow musicians.”

Joel agrees. “There’s something about the atmosphere or the acoustics of playing together live in a small place that you can’t replicate any other way,” he said. “It’s an immediate sensation, feeling the vibrations of the drum and the resonance of a standup bass.”

Like the jazz players, Joel has also tired of canceled gigs, including a summer tour and his Madison Square Garden residency. The singer and pianist said that he’s fortunate enough to be able to pay his band and crew full salary during the shutdown, but he misses “the community aspect” of playing live — connecting with other musicians.

Wilner, meanwhile, is doing what jazz players do best.

He’s improvising. Besides reaching out to other potential bigticket supporters, he’s upgraded Smalls’ livestream technology and redesigned the club’s website to allow for financial contributions, large and small.

The cost of a donation allows patrons access to the Smalls archive of 18,000 recorded performances from about 4,000 musicians. Wilner’s royalty system cuts checks to musicians whose archived sets get streamed, though the issue of performance rights royalties for original compositions remains murky. “We look at it as a sponsorship rather than a subscription,” Wilner said. “We don’t want to sell this music. We want people to support it.”

He’s trying to get the cats playing again — and to get the cats paid. “We need to collect about $25,000 a month,” he said. “That would pay for 28 bands and one month’s rent.”

The Smalls that returns Monday won’t be the Smalls of old, exactly. But it will still be Smalls. That means something to O’Neal, whose exuberant trio performs there June 2. “Everybody comes to Smalls. Everybody. It will go down in history as one of the premiere jazz clubs in history.”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

21

Feminist Rap group in Iceland looks abroad after making a stir at home

By KATE HUTCHINSON

O

n a recent afternoon, the nine faces of the Icelandic feminist rap collective Daughters of Reykjavik were arranged in a grid on Zoom for a group interview. One of the rappers nursed a 15-day-old baby. The band’s founder stood up to show her pregnancy bump. Another member sat in the home of her 82-year-old grandmother, who wandered into view now and then.

The rappers had gotten used to this scenario in lockdown.

After the pandemic pressed pause on promoting their second album, “Soft Spot,” they boosted their morale by making a video for the single “Thirsty Hoes,” featuring a synchronized routine recorded by each rapper in her bedroom. As it plays out in another Zoom-like grid, raucousness occasionally erupts: one member dances on her bed; a bare-chested man writhes around behind another; a third swigs from a bottle of Champagne.

Yet while such scripted organized chaos, which mirrors the choreography of the group’s live shows, has won over audiences around Europe, the group has been divisive at home.

“We’ve been a big controversy in Iceland, basically,” said Thuridur Blaer Valsdottir, the group’s founder, who directed the “Thirsty Hoes” video — which, as the group member Ragnhildur Holm said, is their first “that doesn’t have any negative comments on YouTube.”

So it’s not surprising that the band — whose “Soft Spot” was released Friday — now has aspirations beyond Iceland’s tiny hip-hop scene.

The rappers met in the early 2010s at a women-only openmic night that one of the members, Thura Stina Johannsdottir, had helped put on. And when they got together as a group, “there was a lot of ugly sexism,” Johannsdottir said.

Critics said they looked good but trashed their music.

One of the rappers, Steiney Skuladottir, acknowledged that in the group’s early days, when everyone was welcome and the group had an unruly 21 members, they weren’t very good. But even now that the collective is more professional, the idea that they are “bad musicians” still haunts them, she said. “That’s just our brand in Iceland.”

At the time of their founding, in 2013, homegrown hiphop was becoming popular in Iceland. Many young, mostly male MCs were emerging, adopting the distinctive hi-hat percussion and skittering snares of the popular American trap sound but rapping in Icelandic.

The arrival of an all-woman troupe with a clear feminist agenda stirred things up.

The group — then called Reykjavikurdaetur — immediately gained its reputation for scandal when it landed a spot on a national TV show and Johannsdottir performed a profanity-laden rap about Iceland’s prime minister at the time.

It wasn’t her negative attitude toward him that viewers found shocking, she said, but rather that a woman was being vulgar. People said of the group, “They’re much ruder than all the boy rappers,” Johannsdottir said.

“But we are not,” she added. “We’re exactly as rude as them.”

It wasn’t just the news media that made disparaging comments about the group. Other Icelandic musicians joined in on social media.

A photo provided by Sunna Ben shows the Icelandic feminist rap collective Daughters of Reykjavik.

Emmsje Gauti, a prominent male rapper, said on Twitter that he thought they lacked talent: “This is not a matter of gender,” he wrote. “Bad music is bad music.” His comments, said Salka Valsdottir, the producer of the group’s beats, “got so many retweets that it became kind of acceptable to be very negative and disrespectful towards us.”

Iceland is a small nation of just over 350,000 people, and its music industry is close knit. So Gauti’s comments were wounding — especially because, for someone in the group, he’s family.

“He’s my step-cousin,” Johannsdottir said. “We’ve spent Christmas together — it’s really awkward.” But she said she didn’t let it get her down for long. “I gave him a Reykjavikurdaetur Tshirt with my signature on it as a present.”

One of the few other women in Icelandic rap is Ragna Kjartansdottir, who performs as Cell7 and has been active since the ’90s. She said in an interview that the local rap scene was split over the collective, which last year changed its name to Daughters of Reykjavik — something easier for foreigners to say — and cut its numbers to the current nine.

“Some people think it’s great,” Kjartansdottir said of the group, but others think they’re less about the music and more about creating a spectacle.

Events came to a head when the group performed its song “Disgusting” on a talk show in 2016. Skuladottir said in the interview that there was nothing extraordinary about the performance that night — although one member was wearing a strap-on sex toy.

Another guest on the program, singer Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir, was appalled and walked offset. Afterward, in an interview with the website Nutiminn, Erlendsdottir likened the experience of sharing a stage with the collective to being “raped on live television.”

The internet was soon ablaze with hate for the group, Skuladottir said. “When I got home and I looked on the computer, people were like, ‘Oh my God, they are disgusting! They are the

worst thing that’s happened to Iceland.’”

It was then, she said, that they decided to concentrate on breaking through abroad.

“We’d been scared of making music because anything we’d do, we would get so much hate,” Skuladottir said. “But after we shifted our focus, we’ve been a lot more free.”

Katrin Helga Andresdottir, another member, said that now, outside Iceland, the band was “way bigger than any of the male rappers.”

Valsdottir has since moved to Berlin, and the other Daughters traveled there last year to record “Soft Spot” over 10 days.

Working in such a large group can be challenging, Johannsdottir said. When Daughters of Reykjavik had more than 20 members, they would all would write their own verses separately.

Now, with fewer, it’s a more collaborative process.

“At one point we were anarchic — every voice had to be heard, and everybody had very strong opinions about everything,” said Steinunn Jonsdottir, a member. Now, she said, “We know who is the strongest in one aspect of their work and who is the strongest in another, so we don’t fight each other.”

To promote the album, the band recorded a podcast that explores themes from the album, such as online abuse, toxic masculinity and body image. Episode 1 uses the song “Sweets” as a springboard for a discussion among the group’s members about female sexuality.

One song on the album, the Eminem-inspired track “A Song to Kill Boys To,” is a tongue-in-cheek nod to “the hate that we got,” Johannsdottir said. But otherwise, the Daughters said their music was about empowerment and positivity.

“It’s important that women perceive us as lifting each other up,” Valsdottir said, and to see that amateurs just having a go can find success.

They all started rapping “to have fun,” Skuladottir said.

After all that they’ve been through, she added, that’s still what drives them.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

You thought your cat was fancy?

Judy Sudgen and her toygers at her home in Los Angeles

By ALEXANDRA MARVAR

N

ot so long ago, wild-cat companions were associated with glamour, class and creativity. Salvador Dalí brought his ocelot to the St. Regis. Tippi Hedren lounged with her lions in her Los Angeles living room. Josephine Baker’s cheetah, collared in diamonds, strolled the Champs-Élysées. In their time, these wild creatures made chic pets.

But by the mid-1970s, a wave of awareness and wildlife protection legislation changed both the optics of owning a big cat, and the ability to legally purchase one.

Meanwhile, a cat breeder named Jean Mill was working on a more practical alternative: Her leopard-spotted companion was just 10 inches tall. At her cattery in Southern California, Mill invented a breed of domestic cat called the Bengal, which would offer wild cat admirers the best of both worlds: an impeccable leopardlike coat, and an indoor-cat size and demeanor.

Mill’s daughter, Judy Sugden, 71, carried on her legacy.

Sugden grew up observing and assisting with the Bengal breed.

Despite having a degree in architecture, she realized her true calling was at the cattery. “I thought ‘Well gee, I don’t want to be an architect.’ Really,” she said, “I wanted to design a beautiful little cat.”

It may seem an unusual career path but the designer cat market is a thriving one where supply rarely meets demand, and in its service, more than 40,000 registered house cat breeders around the world are devoted to supplying pet owners with Ragdoll, Sphynx and other prized breeds. (PETA has argued this clientele should instead adopt cats from a shelter.)

In the 1980s, Sugden envisioned a domestic cat with a glistening orange and black striped coat, reminiscent of a tiger. It

would have tiny, round ears, a wide nose and a white belly like a tiger. It would weigh just 10 pounds, but it would move across the living room as though it could take down a gazelle. It would evoke that seductive “essence of tigerness,” she said.

It would be called a toyger.

Toyger Toyger, Burning Bright Some 20 years into Sugden’s experiment, in 2007, The International Cat Association (TICA) declared the toyger a championship cat breed. A toyger made the cover of LIFE magazine.

“There’s going to be toyger fever,” TICA’s then-president Kay DeVilbiss told the magazine.

And indeed, the appeal of wild-looking cats has only grown in recent years, said Anthony Hutcherson, 45, a political speechwriter, Bengal cat breeder and a former protégé of Mill.

“I find people want the things that make them think ‘wild’ right away,” he said from his cattery, Jungletrax, in Southern Maryland.

“High-contrast patterns, dramatic overall color, and a look and proportions of a leopard or an ocelot would have.”

As preferences evolve, Hutcherson said “the market has exploded” for Bengals, with around 2,000 breeders from Baltimore to Bucharest, and some 60,000 registered Bengals around the world. Meanwhile, Sugden estimates just 150 breeders worldwide are focused on the toyger.

Anthony Kao, 50, is among them, breeding toygers and other animals like parrots and coral species at his Urban Exotic Pets cattery in Los Angeles. “The whole point of why we have this breed is we could satisfy the human curiosity of the exotic without having an exotic,” he said.

Ligers and Beefalos and Grolar Bears For centuries, humans have been combining the favorable characteristics of one living thing with another, yielding creations

from the Honeycrisp apple to the Siberian husky.

Such creative efforts have begotten — with no small amount of objection from animal welfare activists — hybrid animals like the beefalo, the liger, even the grolar bear (half-grizzly, half-polar bear).

But despite the clever portmanteau, a toyger has nothing to do with a tiger — at least not beyond the nearly 96% of tiger DNA in all domesticated cats. Because their chromosomes have evolved so differently since their species diverged 11 million years ago, breeding a wild tiger with a domesticated cat today is considered a biological impossibility.

So how do you get a domestic house cat to look like a tiger without tiger parentage? “We don’t have the genes,” Sugden said from her home in Los Angeles, “so we have to fake it.”

Today toyger kittens can cost as much as $5,000 — a price comparable to that of an actual tiger on the American market.

If the prices seem high, it is because these breeders must cover all the costs of an owner (litter, food, vet bills, pet insurance) multiplied many times over. Plus, to be seriously involved in the genetic evolution of a species is a serious investment.

23andMe-like feline DNA tests that help breeders (and owners) test for morphological aspects or disorders start at $89 per feline. And to further the research, Hutcherson recently worked with a cat geneticist, Dr. Chris Kaelin at Stanford University, to clone one of his champion cats at a cost of $25,000.

Because each cat and kitten is an investment, breeders at this level tend to vet their potential buyers as stringently as a buyer may evaluate a seller. Contracts often stipulate that the buyer must spay and neuter their cat, and that no cat will end up in a shelter. The cats even come with a lifelong unconditional return policy.

Location is a consideration, too: Cats that are considered hybrids, like the Bengal, are illegal in some places, including New York City and Hawaii. In Rhode Island, owners of toygers — because of the Bengal in their lineage — require a permit, just as owners of a pet alligator, chimpanzee or wolf would.

“There are a lot of people in this world that don’t care if there’s a toyger,” Sugden said. “There are a lot of things in this world no one cares about. But no one cared if there was a Mona Lisa until we had a Mona Lisa.”

In the 1980s, Sudgen envisioned a domestic cat with a glistening orange and black striped coat, reminiscent of a tiger.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

23

When can I see my grandkids?

By TARA PARKER-POPE

G

randparents have had enough. They want to see their grandchildren.

A life in seemingly endless lockdown and isolation from grandchildren is not how grandparents want to spend their golden years. But adult children don’t want to risk exposing an older, more vulnerable generation to the new coronavirus during a family visit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 8 out of 10 deaths from COVID-19 are in people age 65 and older.

But a healthy life is more than just physical health. Loneliness is also a general predictor of decline and death in people older than 60. As reality sets in that pandemic living will be measured in months and possibly years, grandparents are asking, “How can I safely visit my grandchildren?”

“This is a tricky one because older people are particularly vulnerable to this virus,” said Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor in the department of population medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Of course, the safest approach is to avoid any interactions with grandparents, but that won’t be sustainable for everyone, and there are important ways to minimize risk if people do choose to see older relatives.”

To start, families need their own reality check about the actual level of vigilance by every member of the household.

“What I would consider quarantine and what other people would consider quarantine are often different,” said Shan SoeLin, a lecturer at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and managing director at Pharos Global Health Advisors, a nonprofit global health firm in Boston. “One of the gold standard questions is, ‘How many people have you come into contact with over the last week, or over the last month if you can remember that far back?’ I think that’s a clear test question. Everyone says that they are being super careful. Nobody self-evaluates as being completely reckless.”

So as a first step, think about human contacts, big and small, by every member of the household. How many times did someone go to a store? Did you meet up with a friend for a walk? When you jog, how close are you to other runners? At the park, did your children run up to another child before you could stop them? Is a teenage boyfriend

The pandemic has separated many grandparents from their grandchildren.

Here’s advice for safely reuniting your family’s oldest and youngest generations. dropping by the house? Do you always wear a mask? Do your children?

“If you’re a family and you have some leakage in your quarantine protocol — if you had to go to the grocery store, for instance, delivery people came over, other people entered your house — any time you have a break in that protective bubble I would be extremely cautious,” Soe-Lin said.

Now that you’ve taken stock, try to seal the “leaks” in your quarantine bubble.

While it may be impossible to get your contact risk to zero, you can eliminate the biggest risks (like outside visitors), reduce shopping trips to once a week or less, improve hand hygiene and wear a mask. Once you’re confident in your family’s quarantine vigilance for 14 days, it’s less risky to visit an older family member. But go with a plan.

The safer strategy is to spend time together outdoors — the risk for viral transmission outside is far lower than inside. Everyone should wash hands and stay at least 6 feet apart. Some experts suggest 10 to 12 feet if the grandparent is a very elderly person or has a chronic health condition. Even outdoors, everyone older than 2 — and not just the grandparent — should wear a mask.

Children are more likely to wear a mask if you explain to them that it’s to protect someone they love.

“A sneeze without a mask can spread up to 20 feet,” said Dr. Asaf Bitton, execu-

tive director of Ariadne Labs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s also the act of speaking — we expel droplets even in quiet speech. The mask really contains a great amount of them. The mask is protecting all of us from each other.”

Masks can be removed for meals, but everyone should stay at least 6 feet apart from the older person. Don’t share food or drinks, which increases the risk of close contact or catching germs from serving utensils and dishes. If you have hand sanitizer, use it often. And avoid touching the face.

Remember, the biggest worry is being in an enclosed space with someone who has the virus but doesn’t know it. Keep everyone outside, if possible. But if children must enter a grandparent’s house, monitor them and allow it only when the grandparent is outside. Everyone should wear a mask, and sanitize the bathroom after use. If grandparents are visiting you, designate one disinfected bathroom just for them and keep children outdoors.

Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech who studies viral transmission, said that before the pandemic, her 74-yearold mother-in-law cared for her two children twice a week. Now they meet outdoors for family meals, with everyone keeping a distance.

“We have a long table outside, and

she sits at the opposite end more than 6 feet away,” Marr said. “We do not pass around dishes. She has not been in our house for months. We’re worried about her. We don’t want her to get sick.”

While parents may worry that all these precautions will create too much stress, research shows that even young children understand the concept of keeping people safe, “kind of like how superheroes help save people,” said Dr. Neha Chaudhary, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Parents can explain the need to keep grandparents from getting sick by keeping their body to themselves, staying behind a particular landmark like a sidewalk or set of chairs, and keeping a mask on their faces since germs come from there,” Chaudhary said. “Young kids generally understand the idea of something bad happening and trying to do good instead.”

Don’t panic if a child breaches the social distancing barrier and gets close to a grandparent. Brief encounters are not a big risk, and you don’t want to create fear in children. But long hugs, cuddles and sitting in Grandpa’s or Grandma’s lap are not advised. If both grandparent and child are wearing a mask, a quick hug from a child around the waist or knees, keeping faces as far apart as possible, poses very little risk, Marr said.

Long-distance visits to see grandparents are more difficult. You should stay in a hotel or rental nearby, not in the grandparent’s house, and still limit visits to the outdoors while wearing a mask. Even if you drive instead of fly, stopping for food and using public restrooms along the way sets your quarantine clock back to zero. It’s safest to quarantine for 14 days before visiting the older person.

Be aware that the risk of being together during the pandemic will change over time.

Areas where new cases and hospitalizations are low and dropping may be safer than places where illness is high and on the rise, Bitton said. Experts say the summer may be your best opportunity to visit with older family members in many states, partly because you can spend time together outdoors, but also because a surge in cases is expected in the fall and winter, when stricter quarantines may be recommended for the most vulnerable.

24

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Praying mantises: More deadly than we knew

By CARA GIAIMO

A

praying mantis watches intently as a fly bobs by. In less than a blink, she’s snatched it up. When the tape is played back in slow motion, we see the mantis pause and calibrate, almost like an experienced baseball catcher who has realized she’s dealing with a knuckleball.

It’s an impressive highlight reel. As detailed in a paper published this week in Biology Letters, it’s also evidence that mantises strike less like automatons and more like active hunters, calibrating their attacks to more efficiently capture their prey as it flies by at different speeds.

Predatory animals are traditionally divided into two categories based on how they catch their meals. The first group, pursuit predators, run down their prey. Researchers have uncovered “extraordinary examples of how flexible their pursuit can be,” said Sergio Rossoni, who performed the new study as a master’s student at the University of Sussex, and is now a zoology doctoral student at the University of Cambridge.

The second group, known as sit-and-wait predators, skulk until the time is right, and then, bam — they strike.

In the past, such predators were “thought to be quite stereotypical in their behavior,” Rossoni said, almost like windup toys. Researchers had described praying mantis strikes in particular as always occurring “at the same rate with the same movements,” he said.

Rossoni and his then-supervisor Jeremy Niven, a zo-

New research shows these ferocious insects don’t just hunt like robots. ology professor at the University of Sussex, decided to test praying mantises further, and see whether they varied their approach with slow or speedy prey.

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For his experiment, Rossoni placed one Madagascan marbled mantis at a time on a raised platform underneath a bright light. He then swung a target — either a dead bug, or a bead that looked like one — toward the mantis on a transparent wire. The target could move at three speeds, each meant to approximate a different type of mantis prey.

Rossoni and Niven found that the mantises did indeed adjust their strike speed, according to how quickly the target was moving. Most of that modulation occurred in the approach phase — when presented with a slower target, the mantises would raise their limbs more slowly or pause in the middle, in a zombielike pose.

And if they initially miscalculated the speed of their prey, the mantises would often “correct their own mistakes” with a similar pause, Rossoni said. “Considering that some of the strikes are less than a tenth of a second, this is quite extraordinary.”

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responsiva en la secretaria del

CIVIL NUM. GB2020CV00252.

tración de Casos (SUMAC), al

PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. EM-

Ia siguiente dirección electró-

ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AME-

pr, salvo que se represente por

LOS EEUU EL ESTADO LIBRE

deberá presentar su alegación

A: JOHN DOE Y RICHARDO ROE, personas desconocidas que se designan con estos Nombres ficticios, que puedan ser tenedor o tenedores, o puedan tener algún interés en el pagare hipotecario a que se hace referencia mas adelante en el presente edicto, que se publicara una sola vez.

tribunal. Si usted deja de pre-

Se les notifica que en la Demanda radicada en el caso de

epigrafe se alega que un pagere hipotecario fue otorgado el 15 de junio de 2007, a favor de

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria Puerto Rico o a su orden,

por la suma de $200,000.00 de principal, con intereses al 12%

anual, y Vencedero a la presentación, ante el Notario Maritza Guzman Matos, mediante afidávit 2012. La hipoteca que grava la propiedad descrita en

el párrafo anterior fue constituida mediante la escritura numero 146 del 15 de junio de 2007,

sentar su alegación responsiva

dentro del referido término, el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia

en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, a cualquier otro,

si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

LCDO. JAVIER MONTALVO CINTRON RUA NUM. 17682 DELGADO & FERNANDEZ, LLC Fernandez Juncos Station PD Box 11750, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00910-1750, Tel. (787) 274-1414 / Fax (787) 764-8241 E-mail: jmontalvocdelgadofernandez.com

Expedido bajo mi firma y sello

del tribunal, hoy 22 de mayo de

2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria Regional. DIAMAR T GONZALEZ

la inscripción del mismo, y, en general, a toda persona que desee oponerse.

POR LA PRESENTE: se les notifica que los peticionarios de

epígrafe, han presentado una

Petición para que se declare a favor de ellos, el dominio que

tienen sobre la siguiente pro-

rios poseyeron como si fuera un

solo predio desde sus respec-

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO tivas compras, efectuadas por DE PUERTO RICO TRIBU- las escrituras números diecisie-

ante el Notario Maritza Guzman

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA te(17) del 17 de abril de 1979, ante Amílcar Soto Santiago y SALA DE CAROLINA.

tomo 1539 de Guaynabo, fin-

1985, ante el mismo Notario.

Matos, inscrita al folio 90 del ca numero 32866, inscripción 13, Registro de la Propiedad de

Guaynabo.

El

inmueble

gravado mediante la hipoteca

antes descrita es la finca numero 32866 inscrita al folio 90

del tomo 1539 de Guaynabo, Registro de la Propiedad de

Guaynabo. La obligación evidenciada por el pagare antes

EVA ILIA PÉREZ CRESPO, WILFREDO APONTE PÉREZ Y LIAM MAGAL Y APONTE PÉREZ PETICIONARIOS

EX PARTE

doce (12) del 17 de octubre de

Ni los referidos dos lotes, ni

la propiedad formada por los mismos y que los Peticionarios

desean inscribir ahora como

un solo predio, están afectos a CIVIL NÚM. CA2020CV0060. cargas o gravámenes de clase SOBRE: EXPEDIENTE DE alguna. Este Tribunal ordenó DOMINIO.

EDICTO. ESTA- que se publique la pretensión DOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA por tres (3) veces durante el EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. término de veinte (20) días en

talidad. Dicho gravamen no ha

UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASO- un periódico de circulación geCIADO DE PR. neral diaria, para que todas las

berse extraviado el original del

y todas aquellas desconocidas

descrito fue saldada en su topodido ser cancelado por hapagare. El original del pagare

antes descrito no ha podido ser

localizado, a pesar de la gestiones realizadas. Banco Bilbao

Vizcaya Argentaria Puerto Rico es el acreedor que consta en

el Registro de la Propiedad. El

@

A: todo el que tenga algún interés propietario, o derecho real sobre el inmueble descrito en la Petición de Dominio del caso de epígrafe, a las personas ignoradas a quienes pueda perjudicar

staredictos1@outlook.com

mayo de 2020. Lcda. Marilyn

Aponte Rodriguez, Secretaria

Regional. Eliann Reyes Mo-

rales, Secretaria Auxiliar del Tribunal.

LEGAL NOTICE

DE LA SUCESION DE JESUS DIAZ RIVERA, TODO CON PARADEROS DESCONOCIDOS (Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto)

EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que

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DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- Sentencia Parcial o Resolución piedad: “RÚSTICA: Predio de mera Instancia Sala Superior en este caso, que ha sido debiterreno denominado Parcela de CAROLINA. damente registrada y archivada Uno (1) en el plano de inscripANGEL GARCIA CORREA en autos donde podrá usted ención localizado en el barrio Ceterarse detalladamente de los Y OTROS dros de Carolina, Puerto Rico, términos de la misma. Esta noDemandante con una cabida superficial de tificación se publicará una sola LUZ EDNA SANTIAGO mil seiscientos sesenta punto vez en un periódico de circulaGOMEZ Y OTROS cuatro mil doscientos dieciocho ción general en la Isla de PuerDemandado(a) metros cuadrados (1,660.4218. to Rico, dentro de los 10 días MC), equivalentes a punto cua- Civil: Núm. CA2019CV02439. siguientes a su notificación. Y, SALA: 403.

Sobre: LIQUIDAtro mil doscientos veinticinco siendo o representando usted diezmilésimas de cuerda (.4225 CION DE COMUNIDAD DE una parte en el procedimiento BIENES. NOTIFICACIÓN DE Cda.) y en lindes: por el Norte sujeta a los términos de la Sencon terrenos de la Sucesión SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. A: CARLOS ROHENA tencia, Sentencia Parcial o Rede Agustín Rodríguez; ahora, solución, de la cual puede estaEleuterio Álamo Resto; por el MOJICA, CARLOS blecerse recurso de revisión o Sur, con Parcela marcada Dos ROHENA RODRIGUEZ, apelación dentro del término de del mismo Plano, ahora Luis JOHANI ROHENA 30 días contados a partir de la Cruz; por el Este, con quebraRODRIGUEZ Y YARITZA publicación por edicto de esta da y área a dedicarse a uso ROHENA RODRIGUEZ, notificación, dirijo a usted esta público y por el Oeste, con MIEMBROS DE LA notificación que se considerará camino de uso público.” Dicho hecha en la fecha de la publiSUCESION DE RUBEN lote es parte de la finca número ROHEN SANTIAGO Y cación de este edicto. Copia de 43,955, inscrita al folio 259 del esta notificación ha sido archiLA VIUDA DE ESTE, tomo 1047, finca número de la IRAIDA RODRIGUEZ, vada en los autos de este caso, Sección II de Carolina, propiedad de Elíseo Casillas Pérez JORGE LUIS CORREA con fecha de 26 de mayo de 2020. En CAROLINA, Puerto de quien la copeticionaria Eva l.

ROHENA, LUIS M .

Rico, el 26 de mayo de 2020.

Crespo Pérez y su esposo WilCORREA ROHENA Y LCDA. MARILYN APONTE ROfredo Aponte Aponte adquirieWALESKA CORREA DRIGUEZ, Secretario(a). F/ ron el lote que desean inscribir ROHENA, MIEMBROS DE LILLIAM ORTIZ NIEVES, Semediante este procedimiento, LA SUCESION DE MARIA cretaria Auxiliar. en dos predios con cabidas

BARRETO, Secretaria del Tri- originales de 1, 147.62 M.C y 796.02 M.C y que los Peticionabunal Confidencial II.

LEGAL NOTICE

Carolina, Puerto Rico, a 26 de

25

personas arriba mencionadas a quienes pueda perjudicar la

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Athletes’ outpouring on civil unrest rekindles Kaepernick debate in NFL

By KEN BELSON

T

he outbreak of civil unrest initiated by the death of George Floyd has brought about an unusual outpouring from players, coaches and officials in the NFL, which has wrestled publicly with issues of race and racism more than other leagues.

In some instances, however, long-standing disputes about whether the league takes the issue seriously enough have been rekindled.

For several years, discussions about race in the NFL have largely focused on Colin Kaepernick and the kneeling campaign he began to raise awareness of previous bouts of racial injustice and brutality toward African American people at the hands of the police. While some black players came to his defense, the quarterback has been without a job in football and reached a settlement with the NFL over his accusation that he had been blackballed.

This time, a broader range of players and team officials has chosen to speak out.

Brian Flores, one of the four black or Latino coaches in the league, said in a searing statement that he lost friends in the NFL because of their opposition to Kaepernick, and he urged those who were against his protests to show similar outrage over the killing of Floyd.

“Many people who broadcast their opinions on kneeling or on the hiring of minorities don’t seem to have an opinion on the recent murders of these young black men and women,” Flores said.

In contrast to previous outcries over racial injustice, some white players have added their voices this time on the topic, which has been a third rail in a league where three-quarters of the players are African American yet almost every owner and top team executive is white. Only a few white players had joined or supported their black teammates when they took a knee during the playing of the national anthem in recent years.

“I don’t understand the society we live in that doesn’t value all human life,” Carson Wentz, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, wrote Thursday on Twitter. “My prayers go out to every man, woman, and child that has to endure the effects of racism in our society.”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new quarterback, Tom Brady, who has sidestepped

A protester wore a Colin Kaepernick jersey at a demonstration on Friday in Louisville, Ky., over the police-related killing of Breonna Taylor there and of George Floyd in Minneapolis. questions about his friendship with President Donald Trump, joined the Players Coalition in calling for an investigation into the death of Ahmaud Arbery, an African American killed by two white men while jogging near Savannah, Ga. The NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, issued his own statement late Saturday saying “the protesters’ reactions to these incidents reflect the pain, anger and frustration that so many of us feel.”

He added, “There remains an urgent need for action.”

Yet his statement, his detractors noted, did not include any mention of the police or of Kaepernick.

Goodell and other top leadership provoked more debate, not less, in part not only because of the unwillingness of any NFL team to hire Kaepernick, but also because of the league’s poor record in trying to increase the hiring of black coaches, an issue that came up again in recent weeks as the league considered steps to address it.

Eric Reid, a free-agent safety who knelt with Kaepernick when they were on the San Francisco 49ers, mocked the commissioner’s statement as anodyne, sa-

ying he looked forward to “Songs of the Season 2.0,” a reference to the league’s songwriting campaign that donated the proceeds from the songs to the NFL’s social justice initiatives.

As before, many players and coaches in other leagues have spoken out as well. LeBron James, who has attacked Trump on social media, asked rhetorically why America did not love black Americans, too. Michael Jordan, who has been criticized for his reluctance to take a stand on many social issues but who has not been silent about the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement, wrote on Twitter, “We have had enough.”

Marcus Stroman, a pitcher for the New York Mets who is African American, urged others to fight racism.

“If you choose to turn a blind eye towards it … you’re part of the problem that will continue to destroy this nation,” he wrote on Twitter.

In the Bundesliga in Germany — where people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Berlin — soccer players Jadon Sancho and Achraf Hakimi of Borussia Dortmund displayed undershirts that read, “Justice for

George Floyd,” after scoring in a game Sunday.

The owners of the Brooklyn Nets, whose arena, the Barclays Center, has been at the center of protests in New York, vowed to use their platform as a sports team to push back on racial prejudice.

“Today, we stand up and speak up against all forms of racism — overt or subconscious — especially against the black community,” the team said. “We want to say ‘Enough is Enough.’”

The outpouring from players and coaches comes as most sports leagues remain shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. So far, players have not spoken in front of television cameras or had to reckon with the reactions of tens of thousands of fans, some of whom jeered players who protested in 2017.

For his part, Kaepernick, the player who started the kneeling campaign, said last Friday that his nonprofit group, Know Your Rights Camp, would provide legal representation to protesters in Minneapolis, who he called freedom fighters.

“When civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction,” Kaepernick wrote on Twitter. “The cries for peace will rain down, and when they do, they will land on deaf ears, because your violence has brought this resistance. We have the right to fight back!”

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

27

A basketball brotherhood calls timeout

By SCOTT CACCIOLA

A

s commissioner of one of New York City’s long-standing pickup basketball games, Dan Feigin always knew where he would be every Saturday morning: inside the subterranean gymnasium at Trevor Day School in Manhattan, where he has worked for nearly three decades as a teacher, coach and administrator.

But for the first time since 1992, the game has been shelved indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic. And even as the NBA and other sports leagues begin to outline their plans for comebacks in the age of social distancing, weekend warriors like Feigin are coping with basketball-shaped voids in their lives.

“I wander around the house,” Feigin said in a recent telephone interview. “My wife is like, ‘What are you doing?’ I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Feigin, 50, calls his game the Saturday Morning Run — popularly known among its members as “The Run” or “SMR” — and he has a massive collection of T-shirts to prove it. This year’s edition comes stamped with the Roman numeral XXVIII, to commemorate the game’s 28 years of existence. Feigin distributed the shirts in February to The Run’s regulars during a weekend retreat to Milwaukee, where his twin brother, Peter, works as the president of the Bucks.

Over the years, The Run has become an indispensable part of the players’ weekend routines — and a socioeconomic hodgepodge. Its rotating cast includes bankers, lawyers and high-powered television executives.

Malcolm D. Lee, the director of the “Space Jam” sequel starring LeBron James, and Christopher d’Amboise, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, are two of the game’s founding fathers. Marc Lasry, the coowner of the Bucks, joined The Run when his sons were students at Trevor.

But there are also long-range shooters who work in retail sales and small forwards who direct nonprofits, photographers and writers, students and teachers.

Basketball is the great equalizer.

“I’ve never seen less arguing in a serious pickup game,” said Adam Keefe, a former NBA power forward, who lives in Southern California but joins The Run whenever he travels to New York for his job in finance. “It’s kind of like the unwritten rule: Don’t argue about anything. People who do argue are kind of not

“If you’re not playing defense, they’re going to call you out,” said Woodhouse, who would temper his Friday night activities in anticipation of The Run. “If I’m 25 and struggling to get up and down the court because I was out with my friends, and these guys who are running companies are showing up and playing ball, then I have no excuse. It became such a healthy place to be.”

The Run also often doubles as a daycare.

If you lose, that might mean you need to keep an eye on several of your friends’ toddlers.

Back when the Feigins’ (now teenage) sons were much younger, Lasry suspected that Peter Feigin or Dan Feigin would give them a secret signal to scamper onto the floor if their team was losing.

“That’s just my view,” Lasry said. “But I could swear by the 10th time it happened, it was not an accident.”

More recently, Tom Kearns, a mental health counselor and one of The Run’s longtime staples, has been bringing his 12-year-old Kevin Draughon, a former student at Trevor Day School, drove on Dan Feigin, who runs daughter, Sophia, so she can shoot hoops on the side with Dan Feigin’s 12-year-old daughthe pickup games on Saturdays at the school’s gym. ter, Dylan. Afterward, a big group heads to City Diner on Broadway for brunch.

“It’s really a family,” Kearns said. follow-up emails if his friends are slow to reallowed back.”

In all, about 100 players have played in The Run’s roots date to the early 1980s, spond. But usually, The Run comprises a core The Run over the decades, some more lumiwhen Lee became childhood friends with the group of 15 to 20 players who range from 16 nous than others. When Lee was shooting his Feigin brothers. They called themselves “The to 58 years old. film “The Best Man,” he brought actors Taye Feigin is in charge of divvying up the five- Diggs and Morris Chestnut to the gym. Lasry, Magic Three” as middle school teammates on the Upper East Side. After college, Dan Feigin man teams at the start of the session — and who has been active in Democratic Party got a job at Trevor teaching English and coach- typically includes himself on the strongest politics, has invited various campaign staffing sports, which meant one important thing: squad. (There are perks to being commis- ers. And everyone was thrilled when Keefe He had access to a gymnasium in New York sioner.) The first game goes to 9 points, and showed up.

City, where indoor hoops are more precious every game after that goes to 7. Since 3-pointBefore life as we knew it went on hiaers are worth 2 points and 2-pointers are only tus in March, Peter Feigin was occasionally than parking spaces.

“I thought I’d hit the jackpot,” Feigin said. worth 1, there is a strong premium on outside returning to New York from Milwaukee for “That was my dream of dreams when I was a shooting. Defenders are responsible for calling weekend visits — and to rejoin The Run, kid: Oh, my God. I’ve got the keys to a gym.” fouls. There is an honor system. which has become multigenerational. Peter’s “If someone kills you, they’ll give you the son, Thomas, and Dan’s son, Jackson, are His brother and Lee were just as excited.

One Saturday, they gathered with some of ball,” Dan Feigin said. both high school juniors and excellent playAlex Woodhouse, 34, a photographer ers. They cause matchup problems for their their other pals — including d’Amboise, who had been playing hoops with them for years and musician who was a three-year starter at fathers’ friends.

— and The Run was born. None could have Colgate, joined the game in his mid-20s at the “Being able to play ball with your son is kind anticipated how it would grow over the years, urging of a friend. Woodhouse had no idea of like the best of the best,” Peter Feigin said. “It’s or the motley crew of characters who would what to expect. He was unfamiliar with Lasry, like winning the life lottery.” then his friend filled him in. be drawn to it.

The entire Saturday morning crew has done “A billionaire? With a ‘B’?” Woodhouse a few Zoom calls. But while it is nice to connect, “I always joke that we could run a counrecalled asking him. try,” d’Amboise said.

Kearns described the calls as “artificial sweetenBut if Woodhouse had any qualms about er.” It is not the same.

Every Wednesday, Dan Feigin, now the director of Trevor’s Upper School on the Up- digging in on defense against various titans of “You miss falling on the ground,” Dan Feigin per East Side, sends a mass email to determine industry, he quickly learned that everyone was said. “You miss making a game-winning shot. You who will be playing that weekend. There are competitive. miss throwing that pass. You can’t replicate that.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Despite warnings, races continue at a North Carolina speedway

By JERRY GARRETT

A

card with at least seven races and qualifying was carried out Saturday at Ace Speedway in Elon, N.C., with a large crowd in attendance, despite apparent warnings from the Alamance County sheriff to cancel the program.

The speedway’s owners, Robert Turner and his son Jason, barred reporters and news crews, with exceptions for a reporter and a photographer from The Times-News of nearby Burlington, N.C. and a photographer for Getty Images. Jason Turner said the reason was the negative coverage the facility received a week earlier for its season-opening event, which was attended by thousands and held in defiance of the governor’s order against outdoor gatherings of more than 25 people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina had described the large crowds at the track’s reopening May 23 during a pandemic as a “dangerous and reckless” situation, and suggested that the state could be compelled to intervene.

At the request of the governor, Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson appealed to the track’s owners Saturday afternoon to call off the races, The Times-News reported. Ace Speedway raced anyway, in front of what The Times-News called “a smaller yet still ample turnout of fans.”

Although no filming or videotaping for television was allowed, the operators posted their own short video on Instagram of a field of 19 cars in one of the events.

In denying admittance to a photographer from The New York Times, Jason Turner said he did not want additional coverage of the event because too much attention had come the track’s way after the season opener. He added that he thought the coming week would be “bad,” with possible repercussions from the governor.

Another reporter who was turned away, Andrew Carter of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., said a speedway worker told him the owners decided to bar reporters because they felt the place was made out to be “the devil” last week.

The city of Burlington, of which Elon is a nearby suburb, has one of the highest average daily growth rates of coronavirus

For the second weekend in a row, crowds attended racing at Ace Speedway in Elon, N.C., in defiance of a state ban on large gatherings. deaths in the country and once topped the list. Some infections are tied to outbreaks at assisted-living facilities, but some critics still see Ace as contributing to the problem.

Videos posted on social media of the season opener showed a densely packed, near-capacity crowd at the 5,000-seat facility, with few people wearing masks or any other protective equipment.

Johnson, the county sheriff, had said after that event that he considered the governor’s order against outdoor gatherings of more than 25 people “vague” and “unconstitutional,” so he refused to stop the events. He added, “I will not enforce an unconstitutional law.”

A county commissioner, Tim Sutton, criticized the way the county was handling racing at Ace. “No, Alamance County did not do this,” he told The Times-News. “It was one person. The board of commissioners didn’t do this.”

Later in the interview, he accused the commissioners chair, Amy Galey; the county

attorney, Clyde Albright; and county management for taking it upon themselves, in a closed-door meeting, to allow Ace to race.

Galey denied the accusation, and then accused Sutton of having “a history of making false, inflammatory and downright stupid statements.”

The track, now a four-tenths-mile paved oval, has been in business since 1956, despite financial struggles, and has gone through a succession of owners and operators.

NASCAR, meanwhile, emphasized it had nothing to do with the Ace events, though in the past the track has held NASCARsanctioned events. Ty Gibbs, a member of Joe Gibbs Racing, which competes in NASCAR, raced at Ace in the season opener — and won. Gibbs was not listed as a competitor Saturday night.

NASCAR has been under pressure to prove it can conduct its events responsibly, without exacerbating the spread of the coronavirus. It was one of the first major sports to return to hosting live, nationally televised events with races in Concord,

N.C., and Darlington, S.C., without fans in the stands.

Ace Speedway, however, had fans in attendance over the weekend, and was hardly alone. Dozens of small tracks, of which there are about 1,000 nationwide, reported results Friday and Saturday night.

Racing has been going on since May 2 at another North Carolina short track, 311 Speedway in Stokes County.

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Sudoku

29

How to Play:

Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Building something would be very useful for you to do right now. It could even strengthen your relationships! Even if you don’t know how to use a hammer and couldn’t tell a nail from a snail, you still can (and should) create something today. Do you like to cook?

Make a meal for a close friend or your partner. Got a killer music collection? Share a special mix with a friend who needs a lift. You have a lot to give, and that generosity can take many different forms.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Get ready to have your regular routine disrupted. There is a storm brewing. While this trouble is far enough offshore that it won’t cloud your sunny life, its ripple effects could stir things up for people you really care about. Let folks know that you are there for them if they need you.

Keep your phone on. They’ll call you if they need help, so don’t worry about checking in with them. They can take care of themselves and get back up on their feet if they fall. Don’t worry.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Accept any and all suggestions you get today without hesitation, especially the ones that come from unlikely sources. Your enthusiasm will show people how secure you are in yourself, which will add to your glowing reputation. Tongues are wagging about you, in a very good way. Your bravery is impressive.

This is a very promising time for you in terms of building a better career network. A major connection is coming soon.

You can’t let a stick-in-the-mud personality drag you out of your good-time groove today! Sure, they’re going to be moody if they don’t get what they want, but do you really care if they get their nose bent out of shape? It’s not selfish to disregard their feelings on the matter. It’s simply not practical to cater to one (extremely picky) person’s preferences right now. Remember that this is a democracy and that the majority rules, at least when you’re in charge!

All the peaks and valleys of your life could feel twice as steep and deep today. The good events will feel twice as nice, and the bummers will feel double-bummer-y. This roller coaster of a day might not land on the list of your all-time favorites, but at least it won’t be boring. The only thing you need to remember is that whatever is going on at any given moment is going to change very soon. It’s a potent day, so be ready to take notes!

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

So what if things aren’t going exactly the way you want them to today? Just keep pushing forward. Your persistence will pay off. This situation is taking more time than you planned, but perhaps your expectations were a bit too optimistic. Maybe you need to slow down anyway and learn the benefits of patience. Anything worth having is worth waiting for.

Immediate gratification doesn’t always bring longlasting value.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Are you getting nervous about an upcoming family conversation? That’s silly. These are the people who always see the best in you (or at least try to). You needn’t worry whether you’re going to meet their expectations. If you go into the situation feeling like you’re under a microscope, you’ll be uptight. Relax and try to see these people as your allies, not your judges. They love you! You’ll find that out for yourself.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Your practical side has had too much control over your decision-making lately, and it’s time for you to stop deliberating every single decision so analytically. Life requires some leaps of faith, some risks, and a little bit of luck if it’s going to stay interesting. Try to let go. Try not to control every single element of your day. Let other people make some decisions, and trust that everything will still be okay, because it will. You’re taking on too much responsibility. It’s time to step back.

In order to handle today’s ups and downs more healthfully, you need to try to stay as detached from the situation as possible. Remain calm about what is going on. Be as flexible as you possibly can, and you’ll help yourself roll with any punches that may or may not be coming your way. Creating more emotional distance between you and the source of negative energy will free you up from having to worry about what they’re going to do next and let you enjoy your day a lot more.

An authority figure who has been acting as your mentor might start becoming a bit more officious and a little less personal today, but don’t take it personally! Their respect for you hasn’t diminished. They just have other priorities they need to focus on right now. Prove to them that you’re professional enough to roll with it when they aren’t paying as much attention to you as usual. This is your chance to mentor someone else. Turn your energy toward someone who looks up to you.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

It’s okay if things are easy for you from time to time.

In other words, don’t feel guilty if a task or test that stressed out a friend was as easy as a walk in the park for you. Everyone has their own level of skill, and yours just happen to be very high in a certain way. Don’t keep thinking that if something is difficult it must be good for you. A tough challenge doesn’t always equal a good lesson in life. Sometimes, it’s just a pain in the neck.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

If you’re working on building a better love relationship, practicing open communication is essential. You can’t wait any longer to tell someone what your true feelings are. The vibe they’ve been putting out there is confusing you, and it’s time for you to get to the bottom of things.

The information you learn may require you to change your expectations, but at least you’ll know where you stand.

And that’s more important than getting what (you think) you want.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

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Ziggy

32

The San Juan Daily Star

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

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