Fact: Black Women Have Been Targets of Police Violence and Brutality For decades, black women have been targets of police violence and brutality, but their stories have been sidelined in public discussions. by Keisha N. Blain

Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home.

The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found.

But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers.

Although the majority of black people killed by police in the United States are young men, black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The #SayHerName campaign has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue.

Police violence against black women is marginalized in the public’s understanding of American policing. There is a perception among many Americans that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence.

This perception could not further from the truth.

Breonna Taylor’s story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a long-standing pattern: For decades, black women have been targets of police violence and brutality.

And for decades, their stories have been sidelined in public discussions about policing. Many scholars point to misogyny to explain the continued marginalization of black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking #SayHerName report, explains, “Women’s experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.

Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence

Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence.

Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s.

After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when only 5% of the state’s 450,000 black residents were registered.

In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter’s workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat.

The restaurant owners made it clear that black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her.

Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she later recalled, “They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn’t bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That’s how I got this blood clot in my left eye – the sight’s nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back.”

Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she recounted her story before a live, televised audience of millions.

In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories – and the stories of their loved ones.

From lynch mob to violent police

During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a grassroots initiative in New York City to combat police violence in black communities.

In 1984, Mary Bumper’s 66-year-old mother, Eleanor Bumpurs, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, Veronica Perry’s 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer.

Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.

United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City – an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.

On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders.

“We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it,” Veronica Perry insisted.

Her comments emphasized black activists’ recognition that the fight for black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence – whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.

The struggle continues

In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, who died in police custody in 1983.

Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son Randolph Evans was killed by New York police in 1976.

At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. “We as a people have to stand together,” Mary Bumpurs explained. “It takes each of us banding together,” Veronica Perry added.

Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women’s grassroots organizing during the 1980s.

Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role black women play in challenging police violence.

These women’s political work continues today through the “Mothers of the Movement,” a group of black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.

This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to push for legislation that would fundamentally change American policing.

In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have run for public office. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for greater police accountability and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of black people in the United States.

Common Sense Might Be the Best Way to Beat Coronavirus Did this mitigation policy of “flattening the curve” prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections and the corresponding cohort of deaths? Or did it simply postpone them? by Daniel Johnson and Robert Moffit

While combating the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state officials must rely on the best available scientific data, including updated clinical information on the course of this mysterious disease and reliable epidemiological estimates. 

Prominent epidemiological models, such as those of the Imperial College in Britain and the University of Washington, have been seriously flawed in predicting millions of deaths.

Sound policy planning based on a reliance on such models is difficult.

Statistical projections into the past—“what might have happened if”—bear scrutiny, even if developed by top-flight researchers at prestigious institutions.

A case in point is the finding of Columbia University researchers that the lives of 35,927 Americans could have been saved if public health authorities had imposed “social distancing” restrictions just one week earlier than they did. That finding was based on an analysis of disease transmission data over the period March 15 to May 3.

It should be noted that the Columbia study, though widely reported in the media, has not been peer-reviewed—the “gold standard” for academic acceptance in professional journals.

Like all professional analysts, the Columbia team also readily acknowledges the limitations of the study:

We note these counterfactual experiments are based on idealized hypothetical assumptions. In practice, initiating and implementing interventions earlier during an outbreak is complicated by factors such as general uncertainty, economic concerns, logistics and the administrative decision process.

In the case of the Columbia University study, let us assume that the methodology is rigorous and the math is correct, and that its number—35,927 deaths—is also correct. Let us also assume that the lockdown “flattened” the curve of infection.

But here’s the key question: Did this mitigation policy of “flattening the curve” prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections and the corresponding cohort of deaths? Or did it simply postpone them?

Going forward, determining how many COVID-19 patients’ lives could be spared and how many deaths would simply be postponed depends on at least three things: (a) the development and effectiveness of a vaccine; (b) the development and effectiveness of therapeutic measures; and (c) progress in clinical understanding of the disease.

Before politicians seize on the Columbia study to resume the unprecedented lockdowns of social and economic life, they should consult a broader range of empirical evidence.

For example, Heritage Foundation analysts conducted an exhaustive analysis of the data and found that 92% of America’s coronavirus deaths occurred among persons 55 years of age and older (with 80% of them over the age of 65), and almost 90% of the deceased suffered from one or more comorbidities, such as cardiac or respiratory problems or diabetes.

In the Columbia analysis, researchers focused on six metropolitan areas, including “hot spots” New York and New Orleans. Heritage analysts also show that the mortality is geographically concentrated, with New York and New Jersey accounting for 44% of all COVID-10 deaths.

Not surprisingly, nursing home residents account for an estimated 42% of all COVID-19 mortality. That’s a clear failure of public health policy.

Even assuming the absence of an additional week of “social distancing,” as estimated by the Columbia researchers, a multiplicity of other factors also contributed to this pandemic’s mortality.

Just to name a few: communist China’s lack of transparency on the nature and spread of the disease during its crucial initial phases (December and January); the World Health Organization’s unforgettable Jan. 14 tweet, based on Chinese sources, that the deadly disease was not transmissible “human to human”; and the stunning regulatory failures of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration in February that inhibited early and aggressive American testing. 

Second-guessing is unproductive. Going forward, however, we do have to ask ourselves: Are we able to set aside partisan rancor and have civil debate and discussion? Can we dispassionately ask ourselves about what worked, what didn’t work, and what we could—and should—do better next time?

Unless and until we can do so, we will not be prepared for that next time. And there will be a next time.

US Navy deploys three aircraft carriers to Pacific against China By Peter Symonds

For the first time in three years, the US Navy has mobilised three aircraft carrier strike groups to the Pacific as a part of a provocative military build-up against China. The deployments underscore the strategic shift by the Pentagon from the so-called “war on terror” to great power competition that heightens the danger of conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

As of Thursday, the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and their associated groups of destroyers and cruisers set to sea in a massive show of force. While there are no details of their planned movements and exercises, all will be operating in the Western Pacific in strategically sensitive waters off the Chinese mainland.

USS Theodore Roosevelt, which has been sidelined in Guam after a major outbreak of COVID-19, is now operating in waters off Guam. The USS Nimitz strike group left the US West Coast earlier this week while the USS Ronald Reagan together with its battle group has left its base in Japan and is currently operating in the Philippine Sea.

In comments to the Associated Press about the deployments, Rear Admiral Stephen Koehler, director of operations for the US Indo-Pacific Command, specifically referred to China as the chief target. He accused Beijing of slowly and methodically building up military outposts in the South China Sea and putting missile and electronic warfare systems on its islets.

Koehler declared that the US “ability to be present in a strong way is part of the competition… you’ve got to be present to win when you’re competing.” He then boasted: “Carriers and carrier strike groups writ large are phenomenal symbols of American naval power. I really am pretty fired up that we’ve got three of them at the moment.”

The dispatch of three aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near China comes as the Trump administration has deliberately inflamed tensions with Beijing by blaming it for the global COVID-19 pandemic. Without a shred of evidence, Trump has accused China of covering up the outbreak and given credence to far-right conspiracy theories that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.

While Trump is attempting to deflect attention from his own criminal negligence in dealing with the pandemic, the scapegoating of China is part of Washington’s aggressive efforts that began under President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” to undermine and confront Beijing. US strategists regard China as the chief obstacle to American imperialism halting its historic decline and reasserting its global hegemony.

Under President Obama, the Pentagon launched a “rebalance” to the Indo-Pacific to station 60 percent of its naval assets and warplanes in the region by 2020. As part of this strategy, the US has been restructuring its extensive bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam, forging basing agreements throughout the region, including in Australia, Singapore, India and Sri Lanka, and strengthening military alliances and strategic partnerships.

In the current standoff with China, the Trump administration has encouraged India’s dangerous confrontation with China along their contested border. Both sides have mobilised thousands of troops who face each other at several points along their mountainous border areas. The two regional powers, both of which are nuclear-armed, fought a border war in 1962 and the border disputes have never been resolved.

The deployment of aircraft carrier strike groups is just part of the US build-up of military forces in the Western Pacific. Fox News reported this week that the US Air Force has deployed nuclear-capable B-1B Lancer bombers to Guam last month that have been conducting operations over the South China Sea. The Air Force has also sent long-range, high altitude Global Hawk drones to Japan to carry out surveillance in the Western Pacific.

Under the Trump administration, the US Navy has stepped up its so-called “freedom of navigation” operations that deliberately violate territorial waters claimed by China around its islets in the South China Sea. In late April, the Navy carried out two South China Sea operations in as many days followed by another on May 7. On May 28, the guided missile destroyer USS Mustin passed within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit of Woody Island in the Paracel group that has been occupied by China for decades.

Washington’s claim that it is simply asserting “freedom of navigation” is a fraud. The US Navy is determined to maintain a presence in the South China Sea which is critical to the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle plans for a massive assault on Chinese military bases in the event of war. The South China Sea is adjacent to sensitive Chinese military bases on Hainan Island, including for its nuclear submarines.

The US Navy has also increased its transits of the Taiwan Strait that lies between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan which China claims as part of its territory. On June 5, the guided missile destroyer USS Russell passed through the narrow strait—the second US warship to do so in three weeks and the seventh this year. The Chinese state-owned media responded by branding the transit as “another provocative move.”

Taiwan is another sensitive flash point that the Trump administration is deliberately inflaming. While not officially abrogating its “One China” policy recognising Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan, Trump has steadily strengthened diplomatic and strategic relations with Taipei. He has backed Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen whose Democratic Progressive Party advocates a more independent role for Taiwan from China.

The carrier group deployments follow a further escalation of tensions between the US and China when Taiwan’s defence ministry allowed a US Navy cargo plane to make an unprecedented flight through Taiwanese air space on its way from Okinawa to Thailand. Beijing responded by condemning the incident as “provocative.”

The Trump administration’s dangerous escalation of military tensions with China coincides with the global crisis of capitalism revealed and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like his counterparts around the world, Trump is not only preparing class war against the working class, but is driven to force rival powers to bear the lion’s share of the burden of the economic crisis.

The reckless US military intervention in areas of key strategic importance for China risks a confrontation, whether by accident or design, that could rapidly spiral out of control into a catastrophic war that would envelop the world.

Zoom Censors Chinese Activist Group That Commemorated Tiananmen Massacre Zoom faces growing scrutiny regarding its ties to China, which prohibits discussion of the protest and the government’s violent response to the demonstrations. by Chris White

Video conferencing company Zoom removed a group of Chinese activists shortly after they held a meeting on the platform marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Axios reported Wednesday.

Activist Zhou Fengsuo, a former student leader of the Tiananmen protests in 1989, organized the May 31 event through a paid Zoom account associated with a nonprofit group he founded called Humanitarian China, according to the Axios report. Roughly 25 people based in the United States attended the event before Zoom shut down Zhou’s account on June 7.

Mothers of students who were killed during China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-Democracy activists were invited to speak during the event, as were organizers of Hong Kong’s Tiananmen candlelight vigil. Fengsuo has been unable to gain access to his account since Zoom removed it, the report noted.

Zoom faces growing scrutiny regarding its ties to China, which prohibits discussion of the protest and the government’s violent response to the demonstrations. The company acknowledged in April routing calls through Chinese servers.

“We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company,” Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a joint statement. “As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Zoom usage surged among college students and Americans who were forced to work remotely amid lockdowns, which were implemented to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Reports of security vulnerabilities discovered within the application stymied that growth to an extent, leading several companies to ban its usage.

Researchers also found traffic from the app was being routed through China leading to the Taiwanese government banning the remote conferencing service. Zoom is also facing a lawsuit in California for allegedly giving away the data of users improperly to Facebook and other tech giants.

Zoom has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Why We Should Not Treat all Conspiracy Theories the Same Conspiracy theories are not uniform – nor should our engagements with them be. by Jaron Harambam

Ever since the coronavirus spread across the world, suspicions have proliferated about what is really going on. Questions arose about the origins of the virus, the way it makes people sick, the mitigation measures taken, the suspended civil rights, the connection with 5G, possible cures and medications, and about the role of Bill Gates in it all.

These ideas are commonly framed as conspiracy theories. Yes, they may all distrust the mainstream narrative and share certain characteristics, but they are not one of a kind.

They take so many different forms and have such varying degrees of plausibility that I question how useful it is to bracket them all under the same banner. To understand and effectively respond to the various coronavirus conspiracy theories, we need to dig deeper.

The dominant explanation for the popularity of coronavirus conspiracy theories is remarkably similar: these dark and unsettling ideas help people make sense of a complex and uncertain world. They provide sufficiently large explanations for tragic events, and give back feelings of agency and control.

Since these ideas sometimes have real-world consequences, from 5G masts set on fire to ignoring coronavirus mitigation measures, various commentators condemn these conspiracy theories. Officials now need not only fight a health pandemic, so their story goes, but an infodemic too.

Recognising diversity and context

The problem with the generalising approach is threefold. It does not account for the motivations of conspiracy theorists themselves; nor for the different forms and plausibility of the various conspiracy theories; nor for their relations with various political and societal issues.

Providing uniform explanations for conspiracy theories fails to seriously consider their contents or underlying concerns. Similarly, it leaves untouched how certain conspiracy theories are weaponised in various propaganda wars.

A closer look at these theories or – even better – actual engagement with the people propagating them, shows conspiracy theories not so much as a uniform coping strategy in unsettling times, but rather as a wide array of cultural expressions.

These include suspicions of planned efforts to impose mass vaccinations, doubts about the origins of the virus, expressions of disgust for the ruling elite, geopolitical insinuations, pointers to an inflated media panic, the scapegoating of certain societal groups (Chinese or Jews), critiques on the methods and measurements of COVID-19 symptoms and deaths, discontents with powerful philanthropists, worries about the expansion of authoritarian government policies, or concerns about corporate intrusion in the search for effective medications.

This means, as I argue in my recent book, that we need to focus on the meaning, diversity and context of different conspiracy theories, as well as the people who subscribe to them.

Different conspiracy theory subcultures

During my ethnographic research projects on contemporary conspiracy cultures, I encountered a wide variety of people, ideas, practices and communities. Because coronavirus conspiracy theories have yet to settle down, let’s turn to some markedly different conspiracy theory subcultures that have been around for longer. They illustrate how different conspiracy theories and the people who subscribe to them can be.

Starting with the anti-vaccination movement – of great concern to many. Because many anti-vaxxers in the western world are highly educated urban hipsters, it is difficult to reject them as ignorant deplorables.

Next to critiques of Big Pharma, vaccine hesitancy is informed by holistic and naturalistic ideas about health and the body; ideas rooted in alternative medicine and New Age spiritualities. In these subcultural worlds, emotions, feelings, experiences, testimonies and social relations are often more important guides than scientific knowledge.

Rather different are those active in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Broadly interested in geopolitics and government cover ups, these people challenge the mainstream narrative of 9/11 with competing factual and scientific evidence. They advance visual proofs and mathematical calculations of why the towers could not have collapsed by the planes, but indicate controlled demolition instead.

These activists profess knowledge of physics, construction and explosives, and ground their legitimacy in this expertise. They are focused on “exposing the official lies”. Like true activists, they wish revolutionary change, “to end the regime and illicit power structures responsible for 9/11”.

Amusing or dangerous?

The list of markedly different conspiracy subcultures could go on. Think of the Flat Earthers, who deploy various scientific methodologies and perform actual experiments in the outside world to show that it is not a globe but a Truman Show-like dome.

Favouring rational thinking and scientific methods is, however, no guarantee for brotherhood. 9/11 Truthers generally stay away from them as that would harm their credibility.

QAnon followers, meanwhile, deploy various strategies to interpret secret messages from their anonymous leader Q. These are known as “crumbs” or “drops” and are all part of their search for truth and redemption. Sharing many characteristics of millenarian New Religious Movements, QAnon followers anticipate a violent apocalypse when the conspiracy will be dismantled and followers will be vindicated.

This brief overview already shows the wide variety of themes, ideologies, plausibilities, origins, people and potential dangers of different conspiracy theory subcultures. Regarding conspiracy theories as one uniform category obscures all these differences and the various societal dynamics in which conspiracy theories play a role.

This inevitably leads to simplistic explanations. Further, it has the political effect of collectively stigmatising certain ideas and people – and prematurely excluding them from legitimate political debate. Conspiracy theories are not uniform – nor should our engagements with them be.

Life on Welfare Isn’t What Most People Think It Is Americans often have stereotypes and inaccurate perceptions of people receiving public assistance. by Thomas Mould

When Americans talk about people receiving public assistance – food stamps, disability, unemployment payments and other government help – they often have stereotypes and inaccurate perceptions of who those people are and what their lives are like.

Statistics can help clarify the picture by challenging false stereotypes of undeserving people gaming the system, but people’s stories about their own experiences can be more memorable and therefore more effective in changing minds.

As an anthropologist and folklorist seeking to better understand life on public assistance, I have worked with a team of researchers in North Carolina over the past seven years, recording stories people tell about welfare in America. We’ve talked to more than 150 people and recorded over 1,200 stories and found that the stories people tell about aid recipients rarely match up with the stories told by people actually receiving aid.

The danger of short-term solutions

Pat has a story that is representative of many aid recipients. She started working at McDonald’s at age 15 to help her family make ends meet. After graduating high school, she worked in hotels, factories and big-box stores, all in physically demanding jobs.

At 45, she got hurt at work, and now has back problems that have rendered her unable to do the only jobs she has been trained to do.

Theoretically, Pat faced a choice between going to school or a training program, or finding low-wage work – but she didn’t have the luxury of looking at the long-term benefits of learning new skills. She and her family needed money right away.

So, like many aid recipients, she found a series of short-term solutions to that immediate need. But taking one low-paying job after another to put food on the table effectively locked her out of the opportunity to build skills she could have used to work her way out of poverty.

The many causes of poverty

As I explain in my forthcoming book, “Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America,” the reasons people find themselves needing assistance are numerous and interrelated. Many children born poor remain poor as they grow up and raise their own families, inheriting the financial hardships of the past as continued pressure in the present.

Millions of Americans still can’t get a quality education, jobs that pay a living wage, affordable child care to offset low-wage labor or reliable transportation. But more than anything else, health problems emerged in our interviews as one of the most pervasive causes, and results, of poverty.

The real stories are often hidden from view

At first glance, people receiving public aid may seem to confirm popular stereotypes. But actual stories reveal that there is much more to many recipients’ situations than outside viewers might imagine.

For instance, a casual observer in the grocery store could see a woman I’ll call Keira dressed immaculately, with carefully coiffed hair and manicured nails, buying her groceries with food stamps and conclude that she was one more “welfare queen” gaming the system.

But as a newly single mother of two who had just gone through a divorce, Keira was trying to find a home and a job in a new city. Her clothing and appearance reflected the life she had recently led, and the jobs she was applying for, not excessive or illegitimate aid benefits. Keira’s use of food stamps was temporary. She soon found two jobs and is able to help put her children through college.

Aid is less temporary for others. “Davey” often smokes outside the local homeless shelter. He knows cigarettes are not good for him, but they provide him comfort as he deals with a degenerative joint disease, broken spine, and extensive nerve damage that went undiagnosed for years because he didn’t have health insurance. He eventually got the health care he needed and has applied for disability, but he lost his job and his home and will likely never walk again.

“Lilly” has a dog, even though she needs food stamps to feed herself and gets free health care. She was homeless for a while until she was able to afford a room in a boarding house and then qualify for subsidized housing. But it wasn’t always this way. Lilly was married with a home and a thriving Avon business.

After only a few years of marriage, she realized that if she stayed with the physically and emotionally abusive man she had married, she might not survive. She escaped, only to find herself in a new town with no money, no home, no family and no job. Her dog may seem like an unnecessary expense, but he provides crucial comfort for Lilly as she moves toward self-sufficiency.

Running in place

Many people told us stories that illuminated one of the problems they found most frustrating with the current welfare system: An increase in income can result in a corresponding reduction in benefits. Rather than climbing a ladder to success with each promotion, they remain on a treadmill.

“Louise” lives in public housing and pays rent based on her income. But as a home care nurse, her income fluctuates depending on her patients’ needs. Less care means less money for Louise to pay her rent and feed her children.

“I can’t tell you how discouraged I have felt,” she told us. “I have cried. Every time when I start another job, I know I got to report that income. And the people at grant housing said, ‘Well, because you have a certain amount of hours, you have pay [coming in].’ But my patient just got moved, so my income is not going to be the same. And the housing guy just said, ‘Well, we can’t keep adjusting the rent.’”

But as she says, “They’re supposed to adjust my rent.” Louise felt that agencies were quick to lower her benefits when she was making more money, but reluctant to raise them when she was making less.

In some places, that trap may be loosening a bit. Some states such as Minnesota have allowed aid recipients to keep a greater portion of their benefits as they begin working. In North Carolina, some local housing authorities offer their residents a program that matches a portion of their savings to help them build their own safety net.

These stories show only some of the range of problems aid recipients face and the complex systems that can make it more difficult for them to make ends meet. But they provide a crucial, if often overlooked, perspective in helping to clarify public perception, public opinion and, importantly, public policy.

Zoom will no longer allow Chinese government requests to impact users outside mainland China.

• 
• Eric Yuan, CEO, Zoom Video Communications
• Zoom said it’s building software that can remove or block meeting participants based on location.
• The company said it had suspended and then reinstated the account of a person who had held a meeting to commemorate the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which the Chinese government objected to.
• Silicon Valley-based Zoom has seen an influx of usage in recent months, including in China, as coronavirus took hold.

• Video-calling service Zoom said Thursday it will not comply with requests from the Chinese government to suspend hosts or block people from meetings if those people are not located in mainland China.

  It’s Zoom’s latest reaction to pressure amid a surge of popularity this year as the coronavirus sent people home from school and work. First, Zoom faced concerns about security and privacy as issues like lewd interruptions to meetings and security vulnerabilities became apparent, and the company took steps to address them. 

  Earlier this month, U.S.-based civil-rights group Humanitarian China, founded by protest participant Zhou Fengsuo, said that the organization’s Zoom account was shut down following an event commemorating the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which the Chinese government forbids citizens from observing. On Wednesday, Zoom acknowledged it had shut down the account, then later reinstated it.

  The company explained in a blog post Thursday that its action “fell short,” and offered more details about what happened.

  In May and early June, the Chinese government alerted the company to four Tiananmen Square-related meetings and told Zoom to shut down the meetings and the accounts hosting them. The company saw that some of the meetings had attendees in mainland China, so it ended three of the four meetings and suspended or shut down the accounts that had hosted them.

  But not all of the attendees or hosts were located on the Chinese mainland. So Zoom reinstated the accounts for two hosts based in the U.S. and one in the Hong Kong special administrative region. It also admitted it was wrong to end the meetings entirely, even for users who were not in mainland China, but that it currently lacks technology to block individual users based on geography.

  Zoom is now building technology that can remove or block people based on country, which could help the company meet government requests without overreaching.

  “We are improving our global policy to respond to these types of requests. We will outline this policy as part of our transparency report, to be published by June 30, 2020,” the company said.

  Zoom itself is based in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, California, and CEO Eric Yuan is a U.S. citizen.

  Last week Yuan said that the company wants to work the FBI if people use Zoom with malicious intent and that Zoom wouldn’t want to provide end-to-end encryption to people who use the service without paying for it.

  Zoom shares are up 226% so far this year as usage swelled alongside competing services like Cisco’s Webex, which Yuan once worked on. Zoom’s revenue grew 169% on an annualized basis in the quarter that ended on April 30.