The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: scare
Backlash Hurts Dallas Neighborhood Touched By Ebola Case

Backlash Hurts Dallas Neighborhood Touched By Ebola Case

By Dianna Hunt and Dianne Solis, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Schoolchildren were left without tutors. Medical clinics were short on staff. Workers were told to stay home. And the shelves at a food bank were stocked and ready but few people turned up for supplies.

A backlash against immigrants and refugees in the Vickery Meadow area — the heart of the community touched by the Dallas Ebola case — is causing a shortage of volunteers at some charities. Work-related problems are surfacing for others, community leaders said.

The residents are being unfairly targeted by those who don’t understand they are not at risk of passing on the Ebola virus, said Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who represents the area.

“These residents are safe,” Gates said. “Even though they are at the epicenter of the Ebola case … they are not at risk for getting the disease and they are not at risk of transmitting the disease, and unfortunately they are feeling discriminated against.”

Residents who came in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man fighting for his life at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, are being monitored. Those who didn’t have contact with him are not at risk of contracting or spreading the virus, health officials have said.

But that hasn’t stopped volunteers from failing to show up, prompting a renewed call for people willing to work in the community, said Ellen Mata, director of mission programs at NorthPark Presbyterian Church. She is coordinating the recruitment effort.

Mata said one or two dozen volunteers failed to show up in the week since the Ebola crisis began. “Several of these nonprofits have had volunteers who have backed out on commitments,” she said. “We are trying to fill those.”

Particularly hard hit have been Heart House Dallas, which provides tutors and after-school help for children in four apartment complexes, and the Vickery Meadow Neighborhood Alliance Food Pantry, Mata said.

“Some of the after-school programs are needing volunteers to help with tutoring and reading with the kiddos,” she said. “They are looking for some people to help with special projects.”
Officials at the food pantry were expecting the usual heavy turnout on the first Saturday of the month. But volunteers and people in need largely stayed home, officials said.
“People needing food were afraid to leave their family … because of the way people (in the community) are treating them,” Mata said.

Gates said many residents don’t understand what is happening. “They’re a vulnerable population,” she said. “The trust factor is not always there with government officials. We have to let them know we’re here to help.”

Officials at Heart House and the food pantry did not return phone calls for comment.

Meanwhile, new volunteers are beginning to step forward, including a registered nurse who will be assigned to work at Healing Hands Ministries, which operates a medical and dental clinic, Mata said.

Rebecca Range, executive director of the Vickery Meadow Improvement District, said about 40 people met Monday, including officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and nonprofits and faith-based groups.

“Many residents are telling them that they can’t go to work and are being turned away at restaurants based on their appearance,” Range said. “Help us spread the word that there is no need for this stigma.”

Two lawyers were brought in to meet with residents but calls to the attorneys were not returned Monday.

At the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, executive director Bill Holston, who did not attend the meeting, said laws are in place to protect immigrants and other workers.
“It’s a heavily immigrant neighborhood,” he said. “I understand people’s nervousness about an infectious disease but it is wrong to discriminate against an entire class of people.”
Gates said three men told her they were told to leave work at an undisclosed location because they lived in the Ivy Apartments, where Duncan had been staying. “Those people had no contact with Patient Zero and they’re not being traced by the county,” Gates said. “But because of where they live, they were turned down at work.”

Dallas Independent School District officials are working to prevent bullying of students who hail from Africa or the apartment complex. They also are working to prepare students for the day when the five students who came in contact with Duncan — and who are now staying home and being monitored — return to school. The virus has a 21-day incubation period.

“We are … in the process of having a team develop guidance lessons for students around sensitivity, around how Ebola is actually spread and how students can help create a support group for the students when they return to class in a couple of weeks,” said Jon Dahlander, school district spokesman. “Part of the lesson will be about helping all students understand the fear that the students who were exposed to the virus are currently facing.”

Photo/Nathan Hunsinger/Dallas Morning News/MCT

Interested in more national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Two Sailors In Custody After Airsoft Pistol Scare At Submarine Base

Two Sailors In Custody After Airsoft Pistol Scare At Submarine Base

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

SAN DIEGO—Two enlisted sailors were taken into custody Thursday after a report of “suspicious behavior” involving a gun touched off a “shelter-in-place” order to personnel at the Point Loma submarine base.

The two were using airsoft pistols to fire from their barrack’s window at a mirror on an adjacent structure, the Navy said. Airsoft pistols fire pellets and often have a realistic appearance.

Someone saw one of the pistols and made an emergency call that led to the “shelter in place” order, the Navy said. The sailors were contacted by their command chief and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

NCIS, FBI, SWAT, base security and San Diego police rushed to the scene. The two sailors were taken into custody without incident.

“The safety and security of our personnel and resources are our primary concerns,” said Capt. Scott Adams, commanding officer of Naval Base Point Loma.

The Navy frequently conducts “active-shooter” drills, officials said, along with an annual anti-terrorism exercise.

No announcement was made about whether the two sailors will face charges or other punishment.

AFP Photo/Noel Celis

Why Occupy Wall Street Should Scare Republicans

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — In Florida this week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked about the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. “I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” he said.

Romney’s right. It may be dangerous — to his chances of being elected.

Occupy Wall Street, now almost three weeks old, isn’t like the anti-globalization demonstrations that disrupted summits in the 1990s or even the street actions at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, though some of the same characters are probably in attendance. With unemployed young protesters planning to camp out all winter in Zuccotti Park (with bathrooms available only at a nearby McDonald’s), it’s more like a cross between a Hooverville and Woodstock — the middle-class jobless of the 1930s and the hippie protesters of the 1960s.

With the help of unions and social networking, the movement has at least some chance of re-energizing Democrats in 2012 and pushing back against the phenomenal progress Republicans have made in suppressing voter turnout in several states.

Why? Because the tectonic plates of U.S. politics are shifting in ways we don’t yet fully understand. We don’t know whether Occupy Wall Street is a carnival party — a piece of left-wing street theater that gets old fast — or a nascent political party that revives a long-dormant tradition of class-based politics.

It’s possible that these demonstrations, which have now spread to about 150 cities and campuses, will be hijacked by extremists or dissipated by obnoxiousness; the American left has practice in committing suicide. The whole thing could fade as young people find a better way of hanging out offline.

Something Consequential

But my visits to Zuccotti Park made me think it’s the beginning of something consequential. So far it looks like a younger, lefty version of the early days of the Tea Party — a leaderless, mostly organic movement with a catchy symbolic name that captures the public imagination by channeling anger against elites.

Like the Tea Party on the Republican side, Occupy Wall Street makes the party establishment nervous. It’s not just that Democratic candidates have done well fundraising on Wall Street in recent years. The bigger problem is getting the activists to draw a distinction between bringing specific greedheads to justice and mocking those parts of Wall Street that are blameless in the 2008 crash and do plenty to invest in the future of the country.

Directing Anger

But a healthy rebalancing of the national conversation is nonetheless under way. The Tea Party directed public anger against the federal government in general and President Barack Obama in particular; Occupy Wall Street directs that ire against Wall Street in general and — inevitably — Romney in particular.

This will have no effect on Romney in the Republican primaries, of course, but in a general election it could make him the poster boy of the big banks that many see as the cause of their woes. The specifics of his record running Bain Capital LLC will be subsumed in the image of his rationalizing the actions (resisting any tax increases) of the “1 percenters.”

The arguments I heard from the often-articulate protesters in the park were economic, not partisan. None of the posters depicted Romney, House Speaker John Boehner, or any other Republicans. Instead they said things like “Top 1% Want Everything,” “Listen to the Drumming of the 99% Revolution,” “Stop Off-Shore Tax Evasion,” and “Protect Medicare, Not Billionaires.”

It’s easy to denigrate the movement for simplistic sentiments that lack a clear agenda. But as the Tea Party demonstrations showed in 2009, that very shapelessness is a huge asset (to use the Wall Street term). If “We’re the 99 percenters” catches on, and the crazies can be marginalized, then the challenge will be to move from the streets to the ballot box, as the Tea Party did in 2010.

Voting Barriers Multiply

Lack of enthusiasm for Obama would be one problem. But the young people brought into activism by Occupy Wall Street may face other impediments. Today’s Republican Party is not just anti-Democratic but anti-democratic. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University just released a disturbing report showing that changes in state laws could make it much harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012. Some states are putting barriers in the way of early voting and student voting, both of which are used heavily by the liberal base.

The most appalling laws make it almost impossible to vote without a driver’s license, which 11 percent of U.S. adults don’t have. College ID cards are not an acceptable substitute in several states. Texas Governor Rick Perry recently signed a bill saying you can vote with a concealed-handgun permit but not with identification from the University of Texas.

Discipline Needed

It isn’t hard to see what Republican-controlled legislatures are trying to do. They want to make sure that the kind of free-floating anger expressed by Occupy Wall Street doesn’t end up helping Obama’s reelection. The claim that the purpose of the new election laws is to prevent voter fraud is itself a fraud, given that there’s no widespread evidence of ballots cast under assumed identities.

To make something lasting of this movement, the left must move from legitimate moral outrage to a disciplined approach for electing candidates who want to make Wall Street more answerable for the mess we’re in. Even as they’re outspent by the Koch brothers and their corporate ilk, the 99 percenters will make 2012 a helluva lot more compelling.

(Jonathan Alter, a Bloomberg View columnist, is the author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

Copyright 2011 Bloomberg.