Contributing Writers

Amid a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations across the United States, the Latinx community has been hit especially hard in places like California, where many Latinx workers fill essential jobs as farmworkers and meatpackers. “Latino and people of color basically do the scut work that keep the state going, its economy going, but get very little of the resources,” says Dr.

The African continent has mostly escaped the worst of the pandemic, but the World Health Organization is now warning of an impending acceleration of its spread. “We have always been very clear that the pandemic in Africa was a delayed pandemic, that the continent wasn’t spared,” says Dr. John Nkengasong, director for Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

COVID-19 infections are skyrocketing in South Africa, now fifth in the world for coronavirus cases, with an already fragile hospital system. “I really think it’s our inequality reckoning moment,” says Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer with the Health Justice Initiative. “All of the fault lines of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, and its inequality and its violence, is actually coming to the fore.

As President Trump continues to push for schools to reopen even as COVID-19 rates skyrocket in many states, teachers are revolting. “I love my students, and I know that the best place for them to learn is in classrooms where they can collaborate and collectively solve problems,” says Seattle high school teacher Jesse Hagopian.

As mayors in six cities call for the immediate removal of the president’s rapid deployment units and for Congress to investigate the tactics of federal authorities against antiracism protests, Trump says he may send troops to Chicago this week. “We’re looking at the infringement on our rights that is just escalating,” says Chicago activist Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance.

The U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon has called for an investigation into the conduct of federal officers deployed to protests in Portland, calling their behavior “unlawful.” Local officials are also mounting legal challenges to remove the agents from city streets.

Heavily armed federal officers without name tags have carried out nightly attacks on antiracist demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, and snatched people off the streets into unmarked vans, sparking widespread outrage. “What we’ve seen is a continuous escalation in violence against our protesters,” says Lilith Sinclair, an Afro-Indigenous local organizer in Portland. They note the federal violence follows many years of “severe police brutality” from local police.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says unhoused people living in encampments should be allowed to remain where they are to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we go to Philadelphia, where the mayor has postponed the eviction of an encampment planned for this morning. “The Philadelphia Housing Authority has about 5,000 vacant properties,” notes Sterling Johnson, an organizer with Black and Brown Workers Cooperative, who joins us from the camp.

Reverend C. T. Vivian, whom Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once described as “the greatest preacher to ever live,” died July 17 at age 95. Vivian was a giant of the civil rights movement and a leading proponent of nonviolent struggle against injustice. He spoke to Democracy Now! in 2015 outside the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 1965.

Civil rights movement icon and 17-term Democratic Congressmember John Lewis, who died July 17 at the age of 80, helped found SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and was the youngest of the so-called Big Six who addressed the March on Washington in 1963. Before that, he was among the 13 original Freedom Riders who rode buses across the South to challenge segregation laws.

As the United States mourns the loss of civil rights icon and 17-term Democratic Congressmember John Lewis, we feature his 2012 in-studio interview, when he tears up remembering the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery march he helped lead in 1965 as a 25-year-old man, when he was almost beaten to death by police in what came to be called “Bloody Sunday” and helped push the country toward adopting the Voting Rights Act.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says unhoused people living in encampments should be allowed to remain where they are to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we go to Philadelphia, where the mayor has postponed the eviction of an encampment planned for this morning. “The Philadelphia Housing Authority has about 5,000 vacant properties,” notes Sterling Johnson, an organizer with Black and Brown Workers Cooperative, who joins us from the camp.

The United States hit an all-time high of 75,600 new COVID cases Thursday — the largest number recorded in a single day since the pandemic began. Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says the spike in cases resulted from states rushing to reopen their economies. We speak with investigative journalist Sonia Shah about the government’s failed response, the false idea that the virus is a “foreign incursion,” and “vaccine nationalism.

As the coronavirus spreads in Yemen, where the population already devastated by the world’s worst humanitarian crisis faces growing hunger and aid shortages, the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition continues to drop bombs in the country. We speak to Yemeni scholar Shireen Al-Adeimi, who calls the ongoing crisis “Trump’s war.” “We’re seeing death rates that are just astronomical,” Al-Adeimi says.

As health experts warn the coronavirus is on the rise in 41 states, many governors are reimposing restrictions after attempts at opening up the economy, but President Trump wants schools open. We speak with public health historian John Barry, who warns “The Pandemic Could Get Much, Much Worse” if we don’t take bolder action now.