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The White House is set to announce travel restrictions to eight countries in Southern Africa on Monday due to the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, according to senior administration officials.
The World Health Organization classified the COVID-19 variant as a “variant of concern" due to its high mutation and transmission rate, and is calling the new strain the “omicron."
“This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning," the WHO said in a statement. “Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant, as compared to other (variants of concern)."
Based on the advice of the President's Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the restrictions go in effect Monday and those countries include South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.
These restrictions do not apply to Americans or lawful permanent residents, but international travelers must still provide a negative COVID-19 test before traveling.
President Joe Biden urged those Americans who are already vaccinated, to get a booster shot “so you can have this additional protection during the holiday season," and for those who are unvaccinated, to get vaccinated.
“America is leading the world in vaccinating children ages 5-11, and has been vaccinating teens for many months now – but we need more Americans in all age groups to get this life-saving protection," Biden said.
The president also called on countries to contribute their share of donating vaccines, as “this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations."
On CNN, Fauci said that the U.S. is currently reviewing the research from South Africa to determine how effective the vaccines are against the new variant.
“We just arranged, right now, a discussion between our scientists and the South African scientists a little bit later in the morning to really get the facts, because you're hearing a lot of things back and forth," he said.
Dozens of countries have taken similar measures. Late Thursday, the United Kingdom banned travel to six African countries — South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.
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How what many labeled a quixotic recall movement led to the ouster of Arizona's most powerful politician
November 26, 2021
One of the great stories in Arizona politics involves the recall 10 years ago this month of then-Republican Senate President Russell Pearce, the far-right author of the single most anti-immigrant bill in modern U.S. history, Senate Bill 1070.
More commonly known as the “show us your papers" law, its passage wreaked terror in the immigrant community, sparked a national economic boycott of Arizona, and supercharged an already growing progressive movement whose reverberations are still being felt across state politics today.
One of the people inspired to counter the threat posed by Pearce's political ascent was Randy Parraz, a longtime community organizer and the founder and president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, which formed to drive the 2011 recall effort.
“I just couldn't believe that someone with that type of extremist views — racist, anti-Latino — could be rewarded for that type of behavior. That's what really captured me and (made me decide and) say I have to do something," said Parraz, who recently published, “Dignity by Fire," a book about the recall.
For Parraz, Pearce's draconian views on immigration were just the tip of the iceberg. “Of even greater concern to some families was his insistence on cutting Medicaid, rejecting billions of health care dollars from the federal government and eliminating funds to assist patients waiting for organ transplants," Parraz writes. Pearce had also presided over a Senate that cut nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in funding from K–12 education.
“He was extreme in many ways," Parraz said. “Anti-union, anti-worker, anti-women. He wanted to change laws to make it more difficult to press charges against a man when they committed domestic violence against a woman."
But a grassroots campaign to take down the man many at the time regarded as Arizona's most powerful politician was viewed by most of the state's leading power brokers as not only unlikely but downright crazy and even counterproductive.
The widespread fear among leading Democrats, Pearce's mostly muted critics in the Republican Party and the state's powerful business community was that going after Pearce would fail miserably and spark a backlash that could damage their own agendas.
Among Parraz's most ardent Democratic naysayers was then-state Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who now represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate.
In his book, the author recounts a conversation between his wife, Lillia Alvarez, and Sinema about her involvement in the recall. According to Alvarez, Sinema called the campaign “dangerous" and warned, “You need to stop that right now . . . And, besides, he's my boss and he would kill all of my bills."
“Despite [Pearce's] anti-anything-progressive record," Parraz writes, “some Democrats still wanted to go along to get along in pursuit of their own agendas."
One reason so many of the state's established leaders opposed the recall, Parraz said, was the belief that Pearce was politically invincible. Pearce had never lost an election, he represented a “ruby red" conservative district, and he was president of the state Senate. Not to mention, no one in the Arizona Legislature had ever been recalled and there had never been a state Senate president recalled in U.S. history.
Even if he could be recalled, the “conventional wisdom" went, no Democrat could beat him in a special election and no Republican would risk sticking their neck out to run against him.
Citizens for a Better Arizona had an answer for all of that. The group's strategy was to first convince just enough registered voters in the district to sign a petition to recall Pearce, then get them to support a moderate Republican candidate to run against him.
Under the state's recall rules, the group needed 7,756 signatures — or 25% of the number of voters who had cast a ballot in Pearce's last election. Assuming that few Republicans would back the recall movement, Citizens for a Better Arizona set out to gather the necessary signatures from the district's pool of about 40,000 registered Democrats and independents.
The bigger challenge, of course, involved finding a moderate, pro-immigrant, Republican “unicorn" brave enough to take Pearce on.
Along the way, Parraz and his team learned that there was also a growing contingent of Republicans in the district who were fed up with Pearce's extremist agenda, including his racist anti-immigrant stance. Much of that opposition came from the district's influential population of followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as Mormons, though the church has shied away from that moniker in recent years.
Many in the church, despite leaning Republican, are generally pro-immigrant. Of the church's more than 16 million members worldwide, about 40% are in Latin America.
In the end, Pearce was not only recalled but beaten by double digits in a special election won by political newcomer Jerry Lewis in a campaign backed by a first-of-its-kind coalition that included a demographically diverse array of Democratic, Republican and independents voters.
Instrumental in Pearce's defeat was the district's growing bloc of Latino voters. In the latter months of the campaign, droves of mostly young volunteers from across the Valley, including some undocumented immigrants, knocked on thousands of doors in the district urging voters to turn out the powerful incumbent.
“For decades, Latinos in safe, red Republican districts [like Pearce's] had been ignored or taken for granted," Parraz writes. But thanks to Latino grassroots organizations like Somos America, Mi Familia Vota, and Promise Arizona in Action, Parraz writes, “For fifty straight days, Latino voters felt the love and attention of hundreds of volunteers who finally came to their neighborhoods, came to their casas (homes), knocked on their doors, and said, 'We need your vote!' "
The ultimate legacy of the Pearce recall, Parraz said, has been three-fold.
First, since Pearce's ouster, Arizona Republicans have failed to pass any major anti-immigration legislation.
Also, Parraz adds, had Pearce remained in office, a later push in the Legislature to expand access to Medicaid would almost certainly have failed. As a result of what Parraz calls as an “unintended victory" of the recall, hundreds of thousands of low-income Arizonans today have health care coverage.
Most importantly, defeating Pearce showed, said Parraz, that “citizens can and must get involved when the prevailing institutions [including the state's major political parties] fail to hold certain politicians accountable."
With the publication of his book behind him, what's next for Parraz?
As co-founder and president of Organizing Institute for Democracy, Parraz said he and his family are making plans to relocate soon from California to Arizona, where they plan to buy a home.
Parraz said his group might get involved in a new voter initiative to repeal the ban on in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants. He also plans to fight what he calls recent steps by the legislature to “criminalize" voting rights.
No word on whether Parraz and Pearce plan to meet up anytime soon to talk about old times.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.
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'It destroyed me': Woman hurls the N-word at elderly Black veteran after he makes a simple request
November 26, 2021
A Vietnam veteran who served 29 years in the U.S. Army recently recounted his experience with racism in a supermarket parking lot.
"It was pretty dramatic. It's destroyed me," 73-year-old Eugene L. Brice, a member of the Springfield chapter of the National Association of Black Veterans, told MassLive.
"I pulled into the handicapped spot at the Big Y in East Longmeadow. I do my own shopping and for my wife," Brice said. "A woman pulled beside me and crossed halfway over the lines. I asked her to move so I could use my ramp to get out of the car."
While the woman did move, she didn't give Brice enough room to exit his car, prompting him to ask her again, to which she responded, "Mind your own business." But then what happened next moved Brice to tears.
RELATED: Slur-spewing landlord pulls gun on Black tenant
"The woman said, 'N----, just keep on moving.' She said that several times," said Brice, who uses a mobility scooter to get around. He also said that the woman physically threatened him.
"I was sitting in the scooter, and I was very vulnerable. I was scared and afraid if I said something, it might escalate," Brice said.
Once he was inside the store, Brice's ordeal wasn't over yet.
"I tried to buy some ice cream, but I was shaking and I couldn't talk," he said, adding that a white man who saw the incident told the woman that if Brice had stayed "with his own kind" — it wouldn't have happened.
Read the full story at MassLive.
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