Mayor Lumumba’s family at the Inaugural Celebration Photo Credit: Jay Deville Johnson
Section 2: International What The White House Doesn’t Understand About Modi: International Covid-19 Aid To India Is Being Withheld From The Communities Most Impacted Simran Noor, Lakshmi Sridaran, and Sruti Suryanaryanan What began with an autocratic, inhumane, and sudden lockdown of India last March has evolved into a crisis of immense magnitude. The right-wing, Hindu fascist government of India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) has become an expert in veiling its draconian, neoliberal policies as democratic, secular, and egalitarian. While lockdowns around the world ultimately kept communities safe during the height of the pandemic, the details of how they were executed make all the difference. India’s lockdown happened with almost no warning, drastically and disproportionately impacting workers, day laborers, rural communities, caste oppressed populations, and religious minoritized groups. The world saw the images of people walking for days and weeks to reach their homes after all forms of public transportation were shut down immediately, shopkeepers scrambling after being told to close their doors with less than 24-hour notice, and day laborers struggling to find ways home after being cut off from a daily source of income. It is no surprise that one year later, this disingenuous lockdown has not actually kept Covid cases from rising in India, and in fact the opposite has happened. The world watched in horror as the Indian healthcare infrastructure collapsed as Covid cases skyrocketed this April and May [of 2021]. The same populations who were cast aside when considering the initial lockdown are now also disproportionately contracting Covid and finding no relief available to them. Indians turning to the internet in cries for help were censored and even punished by the Modi regime. While there has been an influx of international aid to India, it is nowhere near the scale needed to address the crisis, and rural communities, Dalit-Bahujan, Adivasi, Muslim, and other poor, working class, caste oppressed, religious minoritized populations
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By Any Means Necessary