• Colombia appears ready to join another “pink tide” emerging across Latin America with the election of progressive candidates Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru. These leaders are part of a new generation of leftists embracing the issues of climate change, gender equality and the rights of indigenous people — in addition to traditional progressive campaigns against inequality and poverty.
(“Colombia’s Left Finds its Footing,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2022; “Petro Takes Lead, Congress Divided,” Al-Jazeera, March 14, 2022)
• Months before Russia invaded Ukraine, food aid was cut off in Yemen, now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and ongoing civil war. Over the last year, the crisis in Yemen has deteriorated despite a promise by President Joe Biden to end the war between a Saudi Arabian-led coalition and Houthi rebels who control much of the country. According to the Intercept, the Biden administration has not applied the necessary pressure on the Saudis to end a fuel embargo targeting Yemen that would ease hunger in the poor Middle Eastern nation.
( “As the US Focuses on Ukraine, Yemen Starves,” Intercept, March 16, 2022; Yemen War Now Chronic Emergency As Millions Starve,” UN News, March 15, 2022)
• Redlining was outlawed in the late 1960s, but its legacy lives on with decades of people of color in America’s urban centers exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution and high particulate matter. A new national study concludes that 45 million people breathe dirty air today due to federal decisions in the 1930s to implement discriminatory redlining of immigrant and black neighborhoods. Because these communities were deemed “undesirable,” less expensive real estate attracted industrial plants and the building routes of the U.S. interstate highway system.
“Redlining Means 45 Million Americans Are Breathing Dirtier Air, 50 Years After It Ended,” Washington Post, March 9, 2022)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Anna Manzo
