Important news about the Independent Media Institute’s work in 2020, and for our coming plans going into 2021.

The two big challenges of the moment that we face are to make sure that everyone’s vote is counted, and getting the federal government to develop a real plan to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. And increasingly, the two issues are intertwined.

We are bombarded on a daily basis with faulty and misleading information about COVID-19 from federal agencies and the White House. The Department of Justice is a bubbling pot of misinformation about the election and voter fraud, and the all-too credulous media refuses to dismiss the lies out of hand.

IMI’s projects like Voting Booth and Local Peace Economy and writers like Sonali Kolhatkar have not let up in this crisis. Steven Rosenfeld’s recent article explains why Attorney General Barr has no legal authority to interfere in the 2020 vote count, as much as the Trump administration might wish. The failure of government at all levels to address the COVID-19 crisis has inspired many a community to find ways to provide mutual aid. April M. Short’s article on community fridges has been read by a wide audience—and helped spread the idea of finding ways to help support the fundamental issue of hunger.

Please support this work now and keep us going into the election and its aftermath—and during the COVID-19 crisis, which has no clear end in sight.

Have you kept up with our most recent stories?

How BlackRock Is on Track to Infiltrate a Biden Administration

Max Moran – Economy for All

In Trump’s America, There Is Death Before Due Process

Sonali Kolhatkar – Economy for All

The Terrible True Cost of Milk, Cheese, Butter and Ice Cream

Reynard Loki – Earth | Food | Life

Latest Election Stunt Proves Uber and Lyft Are Their Own Worst Political Enemies

Steven Hill – Economy for All

Please support our work now if you haven’t already this year.

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team.

500,000 mail-in votes in Wisconsin might not have been counted in November—that is, until our reporting helped identify what could charitably be called a “clerical error” in that state’s Republican-created ballot application process with enough time for voters to be educated about it. Wisconsin’s electoral votes, by the way, were determined in 2016 by fewer than 25,000 votes. Voting organizations in September have a clearer idea of whose absentee votes are most likely to be rejected—younger voters, at as much as triple the average rate. Poll workers and voters can expect bottlenecks almost as soon as precincts are open—the more we know about these potential Election Day issues, the better the public can prepare for them.

These are just a selection of the recent articles Steven Rosenfeld has done for IMI’s Voting Booth project. Supporting democracy isn’t just about sending money to candidates running for office—this country needs skilled reporting that can spot problems in real time. Those two things need to go together for the process to work.

Voting Booth has prevented so much error and malfeasance in our election systems—and we are asking you to step up and support this work at a critical moment.

If you aren’t up to date with the important work being done by our other writers, please catch up with their recent work!

Dems Mock the GOP for Denying Climate Science, But They Are Still Addicted to Fossil Fuel Funders by Sonali Kolhatkar

Our Food System Is Broken and Inhumane, but It Can Be Fixed by Reynard Loki

Europe Is Perversely Causing the Destruction of U.S. Forests in the Name of Fighting Climate Change by Danna Smith

Community Fridges Are Popping Up Across America for Mutual Aid Amid the Pandemic by April M. Short

Online Charter Schools Are Not a Solution to Education in a Pandemic by Florina Rodov

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team—help us prevent the worst from happening.

The Trump administration’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic is clearly the worst by any country on the planet. Corporate media have blanketed us with daily coverage about each idiotic, corrupt and despotic decision that the White House has made along the way. If that’s all you were paying attention to, you might think that Trump was the sole author of a death rate many times higher than the rest of the world.

But there’s a bigger truth, one that the corporate media simply haven’t told us: a catastrophe may well have happened if there weren’t a Trump administration. Privatized health care, wealth inequality and systemic racism are the soil from which this pandemic has sprung, and the devastation we are seeing fits with a pattern of how the U.S. has failed at responding to three other major pandemic outbreaks since World War II, especially considering how much Americans pay for health care.

I have to admit I had thought it was mostly Trump’s fault until I worked with IMI contributor Marshall Auerback on his recent essay making this persuasive case for a wider perspective. The consequences are that change isn’t just a matter of pulling the lever for a president who will have a competent public health strategy—it’s about chiseling away and finding ways to resolve the big social challenges of our times.

IMI’s mission is to produce important journalism that can shift attitudes and provide powerful insight to help the public and policymakers make better decisions. We work with dozens of publications to get the work read by large audiences, we distribute our media in full through email, and then we work hard to connect our authors with multimedia interview opportunities to talk about their work.

Please channel your frustrations about our times and your hopes for a better future through IMI—your donation will make this world a better place.

And if you aren’t up to date, please catch up with our recent work!

Primaries and Elections in 2020 Show That Vigilance and Planning Are the Best Medicine to Prevent a Disaster in November

Steven Rosenfeld – Voting Booth

The Hoopla Over the Kamala Harris VP Selection Obscures the Many Young People of Color Who Are Winning Offices Nationally

Sonali Kolhatkar – Economy for All 

Trump Administration Plan Puts Endangered Species on Path to Extinction

Reynard Loki – Earth | Food | Life

How Donald Trump Has Constructed a Legal Infrastructure of Fascism

Bill Blum – IMI 

Community-Based Farms Rise to the Occasion as Big Food Supply Chains Stall

Elizabeth Henderson – Earth | Food | Life 

If Biden Wins, Get Ready for Trump to Punish America

Thom Hartmann – Economy for All

Why 5G Is the First Stage of a Tech War Between the U.S. and China

Prabir Purkayastha – Globetrotter

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the rest of the IMI team—please join our cause to produce media that can change the world.

We are all trying to make sense of this bizarre moment, where the sitting president was forced to cancel his own national political convention as a result of a pandemic that could have been prevented had he not dismissed it.

America’s rightward march culminating in Trump’s presidency has brought us to this moment where we are dying from a virus that other nations have managed to control.

And now we are watching a calculated effort by the Trump administration to dismantle the government’s capacity to collect and share information about the spread of COVID-19. How can we know how bad the pandemic is without this data? It’s an audacious act, and IMI contributor Sonali Kolhatkar goes right to it:

“Trump has repeatedly told Americans that the virus would simply go away—like magic. Now, he has even taken steps to control hospital data on the virus, just like the sleight of hand that a magician requires in order to perform an illusion. The trick is to manage the illusion until the November election.”

The illusion can only be shattered by a vigilant media that reports in the public interest. Journalism that fights for the facts that actually matter is what keeps our society going. The reporting and impact by IMI and its contributors are produced with that vision.

IMI continues to expand the roster of publications that we work with—now reaching South Africa through the Mail & Guardian, and the New School’s Public Seminar. Please check out the important recent work from our fellows and contributors.

Steven Rosenfeld’s widely read report for Voting Booth makes the case that Trump’s efforts to thwart an accurate 2020 election are best defended by citizens volunteering for training to work as poll workers.

Earth | Food | Life’s Nina Jackel reminds us that the next pandemic is always around the corner, and the disastrous methods of the coffee industry could provoke the next outbreak.

Our Schools’ Jeff Bryant covers Trump’s perplexing effort to expose public school teachers to higher COVID-19 infection rates.

The writers of Globetrotter have produced important work on key pressure points in Africa: Vijay Prashad surveys the clash of regional powers and global players that is tearing Libya apart. Danny Sjursen covers the diplomatic crisis between Ethiopia and Egypt over the former’s damming up the Nile. Prabir Purkayastha calls on societies to prevent Western pharma monopolies from controlling the distribution of medicines to fight COVID-19.

Economy for All’s Richard D. Wolff explains how in a rigged economy, government helps the people who need it least. Marshall Auerback covers the breakdown of EU-U.S. talks over the establishment of a multinational tax system.

Would Trump resist leaving office quietly? Bill Blum explores the possibility and the constitutional challenges that he might face. Thom Hartmann wonders if Libertarianism can survive now that the public has seen what happens when government doesn’t step in to fight a crisis.

We can’t produce this work, and get it read by decision makers and wide audiences, without a group of loyal donors who understand our mission and the work we are producing—please join us!

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the team at the Independent Media Institute

It is a common experience for us all that despite the flourishing of digital media in print, audio and video in the present era, it often comes up short.

Take COVID-19, and the question of whether having antibodies is of any meaningful consequence, or whether the virus is evolving into more potent or weaker strains, or whether the vaccine development process is going to happen, and estimates for when that’s going to happen. Answers to questions like those, when they can be found, are splintered and atomized across many publications and official organizations, hidden like Easter eggs among faulty, vague or useless information, and often lack context and necessary critiques of the politics that surround them.

Or take the way corporate media and local news outlets tend to report the injuries and deaths of innocent people caused by police: “They tripped,” “they posed an immediate threat,” “police departments say these weapons and surveillance are necessary,” etc.

Moments like these are reminders of the value of independent media in difficult times. There is a level of care in providing the public with accurate information from a perspective of what the public might actually make use of. That is so often lost when advertising and the prerogatives of power come into play.

That’s the difference from our approach—here’s some of the recent work we’ve produced with our many publishing partners in the U.S. and all over the world.

Sonali Kolhatkar wrote in her recent column that a big part of America’s racist policing problem is the tendency of “liberal” politicians and Democrats in big cities to support the almost unlimited funding of police departments nationwide, with no accountability. April Short’s powerful interview with activist Aqeela Sherrills tells the story of how one city known for high crime rates and racial tensions kept its protests non-violent.

Another recent article by April Short for Local Peace Economy shows us that many of the world’s best solutions for how to deal with the pandemic are not in the U.S.—many other countries have adopted models that Americans should follow. Jeff Bryant’s latest for Our Schools reminded us that for Trump’s cast of fiendish cabinet secretaries, this is a moment of opportunity. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the crisis to ram home her agenda at top speed. Earth | Food | Life’s Reynard Loki zoomed in on an overlooked issue of COVID-19, the soaring death rates of laboratory animals. Steven Rosenfeld’s steady coverage on the increased headaches of conducting elections during a pandemic for Voting Booth most recently took him to Georgia’s multifront disaster primary this June, a possible portent of what the national election could look like in November.

For Globetrotter, Prabir Purkayastha described the new arms race the U.S. is racing to start with China and Russia. M.K. Bhadrakumar explained what the friction between China and India is rooted in. Vijay Prashad explored who the rightful recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize might be as humanity works its way through the pandemic.

That’s just a small sampling of the amazing work of our fellows, amplified by the dedicated work of our editors and the rest of the staff.

I hope that if you haven’t already come to the conclusion that independent media is essential and worth supporting, that you will now.

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the team at the Independent Media Institute

The pandemic has presented us with new problems, and resurrected old ones. As always, our dysfunctional media system has amplified them or, even worse, pretended they don’t exist.

In some cases, the problems are rooted in the media itself.

The talented journalists and public intellectuals we work with have zeroed in on some of the most pressing causes, educating the public about what the problems are, and also helping decision-makers arrive at the best possible answer. That’s what good media can do—and it’s what you do as a supporter of the Independent Media Institute. I hope the rundown below on what we’ve done recently will inspire you to make the leap to support IMI.

I am so impressed by the quality of the work that our team and writers are producing—and it’s encouraging to see that it has increasingly global appeal. More on that further down.

Our Globetrotter project’s Vijay Prashad made the case for preventing what could be the most disastrous policy of the 21st century: a cold war with China. The amount of time and money spent on defense procurement, on trying to carve out separate spheres of interest, and on demonizing another country will come at an opportunity cost of what desperately needs to happen—educating, feeding, and strengthening the poorest citizens across the world, and building cooperation and solidarity to deal with global challenges, such as pandemics, climate change, and much more. The fault lines are already starting to appear; it will take the dedicated work of journalists and the wider public to prevent it.

Prabir Purkayastha, also writing for IMI’s Globetrotter project, explained why private medicine doesn’t have a good track record of producing vaccines, especially for illnesses in the developing world: it’s not just that there’s not much money to be made, it’s also that vaccines don’t produce an ongoing stream of profits. What’s the business sense in that, right? I am proud that these articles were widely circulated in the independent press in the U.S., and all the more that they found audiences in many newspapers and online journals across the world. The need for quality independent journalism on the issues of our time isn’t restricted to the U.S.

Another recent Globetrotter article, an authoritative overview by Maj. Danny Sjursen on the U.S.’s virtually ignored bombing campaign in Somalia, was widely picked up in the U.S.—and by two of the largest online news publications in Somalia. It’s that second part that indicates a wider definition of what is possible when it comes to educating the public.

For the Trump administration, the pandemic is an opportunity to accelerate its projects to attack our core social programs that form the spine of our democracy.

Trump’s team saw the public need for a continuation of government payments to citizens as a chance to advance the long-term project to destroy and privatize Social Security. It was a brazen affair, as Alex Lawson detailed recently for Economy for All. Marshall Auerback’s latest explains how Germany’s highest court appears hell-bent on destroying the euro, and the political union that underwrites it.

Jeff Bryant, writing for Our Schools, exposed the accelerated effort by Betsy DeVos to defund public education and privatize it to the fullest extent possible as the pandemic unfolds. Thom Hartmann covered the disgraceful behavior of Trump’s attorney general, whose abuse of justice increases by the day. The federal government and private companies do little to protect the safety of meatpacking plant employees, even now that the coronavirus pandemic has made this a life-or-death issue, Taylor Ford writes for Earth | Food | Life.

The only counter to this greed and destructive behavior has to be the growth of a democratic culture. April M. Short, writing for Local Peace Economy, covered the mutual aid volunteerism that is sustaining the neediest in American society. And many of the good news stories that continue to happen among us are practically invisible. Short reveals a very creative way that artists are challenging the gentrification process in Oakland. Perhaps the greatest direct and near-term threat to democratic culture is the assault on the voting process itself. Steven Rosenfeld, writing for Voting Booth, laid out the scenarios that lawyers and elections experts are looking at for November, including what might happen if more than one presidential candidate claims victory.

Sonali Kolhatkar went after a media problem that is getting increasingly more complicated—the truth itself. When you combine the deceptive agendas of powerful interests with media publishing technologies that facilitate the mass production of lies, trust in the media is chipped away with each conspiracy theory, and amplified by the misinformed ravings of a disaffected citizenry.

These articles are just some of what we’ve produced recently, and there’s a lot more in the works—we have so much more work to do, but we can’t do it without your support and encouragement.

Please, if you can, make a generous contribution on behalf of the many readers who can’t.

Thanks from Jan Ritch-Frel and the team at the Independent Media Institute