Lorena Borjas, Legendary Trans Latinx Activist, Dies of COVID-19

Lorena Borjas, who was considered the mother of the transgender Latinx community in Queens, New York, died on Monday, reportedly of COVID-19.

“You can’t feel anything,” said Cecilia Gentili, a trans Latina woman and a leading advocate for trans rights who knew Borjas for roughly 15 years. Borjas was “like a mother,” to Gentili, who personally assisted Borjas throughout her time with the virus.

Gentili said Borjas first became ill in mid-February, weeks before the first COVID-19 diagnosis was confirmed in New York City. “She called me and said she had a fever and cough,” Gentili says. “[Borjas] had been feeling that way for four days, and I told her to go to the hospital. She refused to go, but I told her no wasn’t an option.”

Gentili called an ambulance, and Borjas was tested, then sent home without a confirmed diagnosis, though “the doctor was suspicious that it was the Coronavirus,” Gentili said. “The hospitals were getting full, and I guess they thought she could beat it at home. She didn’t.”

New York has rapidly become the “epicenter” of the global pandemic, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the New York Times, as of Tuesday, 75,795 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in New York State, with the death toll reaching 1,550.

Borjas spent her time advocating for trans women in prison, those in need of housing, legal representation, and healthcare. Much of her work for the community was done for free, in the hours she wasn’t working at her full-time job. In the months before Borjas’ death, Gentili secured a small grant from the Keith Haring Foundation, before connecting Borjas to the Trans Equity Coalition. “I was working really hard to get her a full salary to do the work she does without having to have a full-time job,” Gentili said. “We had a plan. We were very optimistic.”

Last week, Gentili said she became concerned after she hadn’t heard from Borjas for several days. News of the spike in deaths linked to COVID-19 at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens broke, and Gentili was dismayed to learn that Borjas had been admitted there. Gentili said Borjas was then sent to Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn due to a shortage of ventilators at Elmhurst.

On Sunday evening, after spending days working with the hospital to coordinate Borjas’ care, Gentili sent dinner to the entire floor of the hospital where Borjas was being treated. Several hours later, she was awakened by a phone call from the facility, alerting her of Borjas’ death. Now, a community is struggling to accept the loss of one of its most cherished leaders, who advocated on issues spanning from sex work, immigration, and health care, including HIV prevention.

“Lorena was the person who would go out giving condoms to the girls, walking all night to ensure they were safe,” Gentili said. “She had people in her home after they got out of jail. If somebody calls me at 3 in the morning I don’t call back until the next day. Lorena always answered. She was interested in interrupting the deportation process via her community bail fund.”

Chase Strangio, the deputy director for Transgender Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union, and a leader in the legislative fight for transgender rights, worked closely with Borjas starting in 2010 through his work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. “She would come to the office multiple times a week with a list of people in need of legal services and notes about everything we needed to do to support her community,” Strangio said. “She was relentless and brilliant. I learned more about the law and systems of legal injustice from her than from anyone or any institution.”

Much of their work together focused on providing practical care to some of the most vulnerable community members.

“Together in 2011 we started to pay cash bail and bond together in a more formalized way and co-founded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund to fight to get people out of detention,” said Strangio, who is a trans man. “She took care of so many people in so many ways and always had time and space for joy and love and celebration.”

Borjas threw Strangio a baby shower in 2012 before the birth of his child. “We connected across age and language to share in our love for community. Lorena and the community of trans immigrants from Jackson Heights bought us a car seat and stroller and showed up with so many gifts, and food, and so much love.”

On Monday evening, a Zoom meeting organized by Strangio and Gentili brought nearly 250 community members from coast to coast together to speak in Borjas' memory. Trans rights leader Ceyenne Doroshow spoke of collective loss, praising Borjas’ life, and ensuring that Borjas would be honored in death as she honored her community in life. Countless Latinx individuals on the call struggled to speak through their grief, telling stories about the way that Borjas changed their lives forever.

State Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz met Borjas years ago. “I was supposed to be at an event she invited me to in late January, but I couldn't make it in time,” Cruz said. “The last time I saw her was at a rally for sex workers in September. She was a voice for so many people. Her death leaves such a void. Lorena was a figurehead at a local and national level. All we have left is to fight in her honor.”

In December 2017, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pardoned Borjas for charges associated with her undocumented immigration to the United States from Mexico after being subjected to sex trafficking, granting Borjas new security in this country. Lynly Egyes of the Transgender Law Center represented Borjas at that time, stating in 2017 that, “Lorena has done more than anyone else I know to shine a light on the epidemic of trafficking in transgender communities and to help other trans women escape exploitation.”

“She was a trans woman, she was Latinx, she was Mexican, undocumented for years, a sex worker, a drug user for many years, and she had been incarcerated,” Gentili said. “I think she wanted to make a change for communities because she understood their pain. She saved herself from historical oppression.” As a fellow leader in trans advocacy, Gentili looked to Borjas for direction. “I wanted to be like Lorena Borjas, but I couldn’t be; I’m not that selfless,” Gentili said. “She was unparalleled.” Borjas spent last Thanksgiving with Gentili, bringing 12 trans women who had been in ICE detention with her. “Lorena helped them obtain housing, and health care,” Gentili said.

In a written statement to VICE, Make the Road NY, an organization that advocates for the rights of immigrant and working class populations, highlighted the profound meaning that Borjas brought to her work, and how deeply she enriched the lives of others. "We are heartbroken to have lost an incredible leader and champion of the TGNCIQ+ community. Lorena spent her life tirelessly fighting and supporting our trans sisters, making sure they were treated with dignity and respect they deserve. We will truly miss her. May she rest in power and love.”

“She supported me and believed in me in every way and I hope that if nothing else I can fight in her memory for a more just world,” Strangio said. “She died of COVID-19, but she also died from capitalism, and racism, and over policing, and white supremacy. Her body held so much pain and trauma and still she worked relentlessly to give so many other people a chance to live and thrive. I am a better person and advocate and parent because of the love and grace that Lorena showed me."

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Construction Workers Said Their Sites Are Still High-Fiving and Sharing Porta Potties: ‘We're All Going to Get It’

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Gorge, a construction site manager from the Bay Area, has been going to work every day at the 15 sites he oversees during his state’s coronavirus lockdown. As recently as last week, people were still shaking hands and bumping fists with workers at other sites with as many as 50 people.

Site elevators have also become unavoidable bottlenecks, forcing close contact with dozens of others trying to navigate the site. And the limited number of porta potties on sites has become an issue.

“I walked through a unit on this site, and there were five guys working in the living room on three different items,” said Gorge, who asked not to use his full name. “One of the dudes was coughing. No masks. No gloves in there at all.”

“We're all going to get it,” he added.

As the rest of the country slows to a crawl to contain the spread of the coronavirus, construction workers have been forced to make a dangerous and possibly fatal decision: work without the proper protective gear and safety precautions or risk losing their primary source of income. In cities like San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., many construction sites are carrying on as normal — even as supply shortages and a failure to adhere to social distancing guidelines threaten the lives of the people who work there.

The White House has also asked many construction companies to donate their stock of N-95 masks to help alleviate shortages at local medical facilities. But the gesture of goodwill leaves workers exposed not only to the contagious respiratory illness but to the work site contaminants like silica dust and lead, which can damage their lungs. And they’re not always being smart.

“Some are taking good precautions, like enforcing as much distance as we can and wearing gloves and masks,” Gorge said. “But most jobs are still full of dudes who are gun-toting, good ol' boys who think this coronavirus is a bunch of horseshit.”

“One of the dudes was coughing. No masks. No gloves in there at all.”

For Noah Jacobs, who owns and runs Brightwood Design + Build in Washington, D.C., the shortage of N-95 masks has altered much of his day to day work. In two weeks, he’s run out of personal protective equipment for both his subcontractors and himself.

“We've immediately had to realize that what we've taken for granted, being able to on a per-job basis go and purchase supplies to protect our lungs, is no longer there,” he said. “Every big box store, every mom and pop hardware store in Washington, D.C. is empty. You can’t get them online.”

He’s since had to scrounge for whatever supplies he could gather from his family’s garage in North Carolina.

“I've got about 15 masks to last me as long as this crisis hits, or at least as long as the supply chain issue goes on,” he said. “It’s just a mess.”

Without the proper equipment, Jacobs has either finished outstanding projects himself or pivoted toward more outdoor-oriented projects like decks, patios, and exterior masonry to keep his contractors and himself safe.

“When you're doing interior work and you're confining as many as five to 10 people to small interior spaces, that’s pretty concerning from an exposure standpoint,” he said.

On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered a stop to all of the state’s nonessential construction work, which includes residential and commercial jobs. The announcement came days after an electrician died of the coronavirus and an outcry of protests from New York laborers and their concerned families.

Until then, Brandon Ream, a 38-year-old electrician at a highrise construction site in New York City’s Financial District, had been coming to work every day.

Ream didn’t share what company he works for, but he said that little had changed to protect workers — aside from providing liquid soap near the first-floor bathroom of the 50 story building. Masks, while plentiful on the site, weren’t as good of quality as the ones he’s used to wearing while working.

“We’ve spent more time discussing proper lifting habits in the last two weeks than we have the coronavirus,” he said.

“Pretty much all they’ve said is if you don't feel good don't come in,” he added. “That, of course, comes with the caveat of not getting paid.”

Friday was the last day that anybody would be working at Ream’s site until further notice on the governor’s orders. But he feared the stoppage may be too little, too late thanks to weeks of using public transportation and working alongside other potentially asymptomatic laborers.

“It’s impossible at least for the next couple of weeks to know who’s got it and who doesn’t,” Ream said. “I’m just thankful that if any of us have it or I have it, I don’t have to worry about spreading it to the couple hundred people that you interact with anytime you leave the city.”

Cover: Workers dig as construction continues at a site in Las Vegas, during the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, March 31, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Golf, Guns, and Gardening Supplies: Here Are Some of the ‘Essential’ Businesses States Are Allowing to Stay Open

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Arizona’s shelter-in-place order goes into effect Tuesday, but if you’re planning on playing a round of 18 there this weekend, don’t fret: The executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey allows for golfing to continue.

In his order, Ducey deemed outdoor exercise an “essential” activity which includes “walking, hiking, running, biking, or golfing, but only if appropriate physical distancing practices are used,” as the Phoenix New Times pointed out.

At least 30 states and Washington, D.C., have handed down shelter-in-place or stay at home orders of varying levels of severity, according to CNN. Most have ordered nonessential businesses to close, but what’s considered essential can vary from state to state, aside from the obvious ones: medical facilities, grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations, to name a few.

READ: JoAnn Fabrics employees are furious they're working in crowded stores after the company declared itself ‘essential’

As it turns out, some states (and the federal government) have very different ideas of what’s considered essential or nonessential. And some companies have even declared themselves essential, like craft and fabrics chain JoAnn Fabrics and GameStop.

Weed dispensaries and liquor stores

Even though cannabis is still technically banned under federal law, some states that have legalized distribution and sale in recent years are allowing medical dispensaries and pot shops to stay open as essential businesses.

Six states have allowed recreational shops and medical dispensaries to stay open, while another16 states and Washington, D.C. are only allowing medical dispensaries to keep operating according to Marijuana Business Daily.

Besides medicinal cannabis uses, there’s a genuine public health case to be made for recreational sales, too: Businesses forced to follow social distancing requirements are safer than the black market. At least one dealer in New York City, where cannabis has been decriminalized but not legalized for recreational sale and usage, said business has been booming for him during the coronavirus outbreak — even if customers are being a bit more cautious, according to the New York Times.

Liquor stores have also been deemed essential in most states. Earlier this month, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America asked states to keep stores open “so as to not encourage bad actors to pop up black-market liquor operations,” according to industry magazine Drinks International.

The exception is Pennsylvania, where the state-owned wine and liquor stores have been closed since March 17 — St. Patrick’s Day.

“Gov. Tom Wolf should consider the huge impact his decision has had and reevaluate the complete closure of all Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores in Pennsylvania,” the presidents of the Distilled Spirits Council and American Distilled Spirits Association wrote in a joint op-ed published by the Lehigh Valley Morning Call on Tuesday.

Gun stores

In New Jersey’s original stay-at-home order, issued on March 21, Gov. Phil Murphy barred the opening of gun stores. He reversed course on Monday because over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security changed its guidance on what should be considered an essential business to include “workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges.”

It should be no surprise that the change came after an intense lobbying effort on behalf of the firearms industry aimed at the White House, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are deeply appreciative to the Trump Administration and Department of Homeland Security for recognizing the vital role our industry fulfills in our nation,” a senior vice president for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Lawrence Keane, told the Journal.

Even though he abided by the guidance, albeit with an appointment-only provision and limited hours, Murphy clearly wasn’t happy about it. “It wouldn’t be my definition,” Murphy said at a Monday briefing, “but that’s the definition at the federal level, and I didn’t get a vote on that.”

Garden supply stores, hair salons, and furniture stores

If you’re the kind of person who's using this time to develop a green thumb (or begin your life as a prepper by stockpiling food), you’re in luck — as long as you live in Virginia. “Lawn and garden equipment retailers” are included as an essential business under Gov. Ralph Northam’s executive orders.

A previous order by Ducey issued last week allows for hair salons in Arizona to stay open, despite other states prohibiting them because of the close contact involved. "We're sanitizing everything that our guests are touching, door handles, chairs and underneath the chairs," one Tucson salon worker told TV station KOLD. "We've gotten rid of all our magazines just so they're not touching those."

Although Texas has no statewide shelter-in-place order, a stay-at-home order issued last week in Harris County, the state’s largest, deemed “furniture suppliers” essential. The Houston Furniture Bank said that it won’t enter homes to pick up donated furniture, and that visitors to the furniture bank “will be asked to complete a short health survey.”

Cover: FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2014 file photo, Jason Day watches his tee shot on the second hole in his match against Rickie Fowler during the fifth round of the Match Play Championship golf tournament in Marana, Ariz. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

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They Live in the US, But These Canadians Are Fleeing Home Due to Coronavirus

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Like many Canadians in a creative field, Megan Wilson had long dreamed of living in New York City.

Wilson, 34, went to Ryerson University in Toronto and since 2011 has spent various stints in the U.S., for school in fashion design and to star in a reality show in Portland. Finally, she moved to Brooklyn in September 2017 where she works as the lead stylist for a sustainable fashion company.

While she loves the community she’s found there, Wilson flew back to Canada on March 18 due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.

“What broke the camel’s back so to speak was when (Canadian Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau said they were going to close the borders,” Wilson said. “The fact that I couldn’t even watch (U.S. President Donald) Trump for more than about a minute, it was like OK, time to leave.”

Wilson is one of several Canadians living in the U.S. who told VICE they are fleeing back home in light of the outbreak. Most cited concerns about navigating the patchwork American healthcare system, not wanting to strain already taxed hospitals, and having anxiety over how Trump is handling the crisis, as well as a desire to be closer to family.

Megan Wilson left New York during the pandemic due to concerns about healthcare and space.

The U.S. is now the epicenter for COVID-19, with more than 163,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths as of March 31, according to the New York Times.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN millions of Americans could end up infected, and 100,000 to 200,000 may die. The death toll in New York state, which is currently on lockdown, has surpassed 1,000. Speaking to the Times, paramedics in New York City said they are fielding 7,000 911 calls a day—breaking records—and are running out of supplies, including N95 masks.

On March 21, the Canada-U.S. border closed to all non-essential travel.

On Sunday, Trump said social distancing guidelines, calling for Americans to avoid leaving their houses except for necessities, will remain in place until the end of April; many states have implemented their own stay-at-home requirements. As recently as last week, however, Trump said he wanted people back to work by Easter and was also considering opening the Canada-U.S. border by then.

As of March 31, there were more than 7,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 89 deaths in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly advised Canadians to stay at home, and every province and territory has declared a state of emergency.

As she followed both Canadian and American news from her Bushwick apartment, Wilson said her instinct was to “hunker down.” She thought she could stay isolated and help out neighbors who needed groceries. But then things got more serious.

“When I was seeing people getting really sick with lung problems, that started to worry me,” said Wilson, who has asthma.

She signed up for health insurance that costs $230 USD a month, but said the process was complicated. While working on the reality show in Portland in 2017, she was hospitalized with no insurance, but said the production company covered the $8,000 USD bill. That summer she came back to Toronto for a hyperparathyroidism-related surgery because she said the cost would have been around $25,000 USD south of the border.

“It’s really confusing,” Wilson said, noting healthcare in the U.S. is run like a business venture. “It really makes you see how it’s not set up to help people who really need it.”

That, combined with the fact that she shares an apartment with two roommates and can work remotely, sealed Wilson’s decision to book a flight to Montreal, where her parents picked her up and drove her to Ottawa.

Lucas Van Meer-Mass and his wife and young daughter moved from Toronto to Philadelphia in January 2019 so that his wife, a scientist, could take on a postdoc position at Princeton University.

The couple has health insurance, but Van Meer-Mass, 37, said they still felt apprehensive about how resources would handle the pandemic.

“The healthcare system is so fractured and it’s so segregated in terms of incomes,” he said. “We didn’t know that we could have access to anything should (something) occur.”

He said they packed a couple of suitcases and caught an early morning flight to Vancouver on March 14. At some point, they’ll have to return to get the rest of their stuff. But they’ve decided they don’t want to live in the U.S. long term, largely because of the healthcare system.

“It was a real glimpse into how Americans who don’t have those benefits live. It’s quite shocking,” he said. “I felt a huge sense of relief to be back and to be around my parents.”

Dr. Claudie Bolduc, a senior resident of emergency medicine, is Canadian but lives in Los Angeles. She said it makes sense for Canadians to want to return home during this type of crisis.

“If you’re born and raised in Canada, you do have an understanding about the healthcare system. It’s very simple for the user there,” she said, whereas in the U.S. there’s no national healthcare system.

However, she said it’s worrisome that Canadians might be traveling back home from a coronavirus hotspot in the U.S.—traveling could increase the chances of becoming infected and transmitting the virus.

Dr. Greta Bauer, an epidemiologist at the University of Western Ontario, said heading back to Canada is probably more risky than staying home and isolating. She said people who do travel should try for ”contactless pick-ups”—meaning getting into a car that someone parks for you at the airport and driving yourself to where you’re staying. She also said people traveling back to Canada should be quarantining for two weeks alone, not staying with family or friends, and they should have two weeks worth of food available.

“It’s going to get worse everywhere,” she said. “You have places that will look really bad for a period of time but that doesn’t mean another place you move to won’t be in that same position in the future.”

David Lucas and his partner Sula Johnson are isolating in a house in rural Manitoba after leaving behind their apartment in Brooklyn, where they’ve been living for a year and a half.

“We were lucky there was a house that was not occupied for two weeks,” said Lucas, 41, who works in justice reform.

Sula Johnson and her partner David Lucas are back in rural Manitoba after living in Brooklyn.

The couple said they are concerned about their friends and colleagues still in New York, but felt they’d be more useful helping their parents with errands. They don’t think they’ll be able to return to Brooklyn for months.

“Our hope is to be there long term and we hope that it doesn’t devastate the city in the way it looks like it will for the most vulnerable populations,” Lucas said.

But it’s not only Canadians who are seeking refuge in Canada.

New Yorker Daniel Gulda, 25, spent spring break in Winnipeg with his Canadian girlfriend. When he heard Canada and the U.S. were shutting down their shared border, he decided to ride out the pandemic in Winnipeg rather than return home.

“It just seems to be safer here compared to New York,” he said.

Gulda was critical of Trump using press conferences about coronavirus for political gain. The president recently bragged about the ratings his pressers were receiving, comparing them to The Bachelor.

“For a long time, I was kind of agnostic towards our president… I just became so fed up that there was no use of getting upset,” Gulda said. That’s changed in the past few weeks.

“This just can’t go on like this. People’s lives are at risk,” he said.

Bolduc said she believes the pandemic will put healthcare at the forefront of the upcoming U.S. federal election. She thinks it could be a turning point, as politicians realize that a crisis can’t be adequately addressed by a system that is so siloed.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently said public and private hospitals will work together to share the coronavirus caseloads.

“It just highlights how important it is to have one coordinated system for healthcare,” Bolduc said.

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Las Vegas Turned a Parking Lot Into a Homeless Shelter Where People Sleep on the Ground 6 Feet Apart

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Las Vegas, a city that’s globally known for its luxe hotel industry and overheated rental market, is currently corralling some homeless people into a concrete parking lot, where they’ll sleep out part of the coronavirus pandemic in painted squares spaced six feet apart.

Officials in Southern Nevada scrambled to create the temporary, albeit controversial, outdoor “shelter” space this weekend after a large, 500-bed shelter run by Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada had to suddenly close over a positive case of the coronavirus.

That closure risked scattering unsheltered people throughout the county, where there are currently 750-plus recorded cases of the contagious respiratory illness.

So Clark County, where more than 5,200 homeless people were sleeping in shelters and on the streets in 2019, chose to open up a parking lot near a convention center as a quick solution to help people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get into nearby shelters. (The convention center is being set aside for possible hospital overflow.) The parking lot has been fitted with portable toilets and hand-washing stations, according to the New York Times.

While photos circulating on social media showed homeless people sleeping directly on the concrete, the city has since laid down easy-to-clean blue mats, according to the Guardian. The “shelter” is only expected to remain open through this week.

“Look, this is an emergency situation. People are always going to criticize. But the city and county are working to ensure people can get the resources they need,” Jace Radke, a spokesperson for the city of Las Vegas, told the Guardian.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned against moving homeless people around unless it’s to place them in individual housing units. Other cities with squeezed resources and burgeoning homeless populations have rushed to get vulnerable people indoors, sometimes even buying up vacant hotel rooms, as advocates and politicians pointed out.

“There are 150K hotel rooms in Vegas going unused right now,” Julian Castro, former presidential candidate and Obama-era secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in a tweet Monday. “How about public-private cooperation (resources) to temporarily house them there? And fund permanent housing!”

Cover: People prepare places to sleep in area marked by painted boxes on the ground of a parking lot at a makeshift camp for the homeless Monday, March 30, 2020, in Las Vegas. Officials opened part of a parking lot as a makeshift homeless shelter after a local shelter closed when a man staying there tested positive for the coronavirus. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Chris Cuomo Has Coronavirus

CNN primetime news anchor Chris Cuomo has tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Cuomo, who’s received attention for interviewing his brother, New York State governor Andrew Cuomo, about the battle against the pandemic, said in a post on Twitter that he will continue recording his nightly news show from his basement.

In a statement, CNN said Cuomo’s symptoms are mild.

“I have been exposed to people in recent days who have subsequently tested positive and I had fevers, chills and shortness of breath,” Cuomo wrote. “I just hope I didn’t give it to the kids and Christina. That would make me feel worse than this illness!”

Cuomo represents the third known case of coronavirus at CNN in New York City, the company said. Another case was announced to employees in the middle of March.

“CNN has implemented sweeping changes in response to the pandemic,” the network said. “The vast majority of CNN employees have been working from home for several weeks. Anchors have been broadcasting from small studios and home offices. And office spaces are being regularly cleaned.”

Cover: CNN's Chris Cuomo during an interview with host Seth Meyers on August 1, 2019 (Photo: Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

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Zoom is Leaking Peoples' Email Addresses and Photos to Strangers

Popular video-conferencing Zoom is leaking personal information of at least thousands of users, including their email address and photo, and giving strangers the ability to attempt to start a video call with them through Zoom.

The issue lies in Zoom's "Company Directory" setting, which automatically adds other people to a user's lists of contacts if they signed up with an email address that shares the same domain. This can make it easier to find a specific colleague to call when the domain belongs to an individual company. But multiple Zoom users say they signed up with personal email addresses, and Zoom pooled them together with thousands of other people as if they all worked for the same company, exposing their personal information to one another.

"I was shocked by this! I subscribed (with an alias, fortunately) and I saw 995 people unknown to me with their names, images and mail addresses." Barend Gehrels, a Zoom user impacted by the issue and who flagged it to Motherboard, wrote in an email.

Gehrels provided a redacted screenshot of him logged into Zoom with the nearly 1000 different accounts listed in the "Company Directory" section. He said these were "all people I don't know of course." He said his partner had the same issue with another email provider, and had over 300 people listed in her own contacts.

"If you subscribe to Zoom with a non-standard provider (I mean, not Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo etc), then you get insight to ALL subscribed users of that provider: their full names, their mail addresses, their profile picture (if they have any) and their status. And you can video call them," Gehrels said. A user still has to accept the call from the stranger for it to start, however.

A redacted screenshot of the Company Directory issue provided by Gehrels. Image: Motherboard

On its website, Zoom says, "By default, your Zoom contacts directory contains internal users in the same organization, who are either on the same account or who's email address uses the same domain as yours (except for publicly used domains including gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc) in the Company Directory section."

Zoom's system does not exempt all domains that are used for personal email, however. Gehrels said he encountered the issue with the domains xs4all.nl, dds.nl, and quicknet.nl. These are all Dutch internet service providers (ISPs) which offer email services.

On Twitter Motherboard found other instances of Dutch users reporting the same issue.

"I just had a look at the free for private use version of Zoom and registered with my private email. I now got 1000 names, email addresses and even pictures of people in the company Directory. Is this intentional?," one user tweeted last week along with a screenshot.

Dutch ISP XS4ALL tweeted in response to a complaint on Sunday, "This is something we cannot disable. You could see if Zoom can help you with this."

Do you know anything about data selling or trading? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Dutch ISP DDS told Motherboard in an email it was aware of the issue, but hadn't heard directly from any of their own customers about it.

"Zoom maintains a blacklist of domains and regularly proactively identifies domains to be added," a Zoom spokesperson told Motherboard. "With regards to the specific domains that you highlighted in your note, those are now blacklisted." They also pointed to a section of the Zoom website where users can request other domains to be removed from the Company Directory feature.

Last week, Zoom updated the iOS version of its app after Motherboard found it was sending analytics data to Facebook. On Monday a user filed a class action lawsuit against Zoom for the data transfer. On the same day the New York Attorney General sent a letter to Zoom asking what security measures the company had put in place as the app has sky-rocketed in popularity.

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What Is the Most Secure Video Conferencing Software?

Now that millions of people are practicing social distancing and working their office jobs from home because of coronavirus, video conferencing is more popular than ever. Whether you're just attending your regular work meetings, grabbing a beer with friends, or catching up with your extended family spread across the globe—all these fun activities now live thanks to video conferencing apps.

The people’s choice, more often than not, is Zoom. But it doesn’t have to be.

While Zoom offers end-to-end encrypted chat—meaning only the participants in the exchange have access to the contents of the messages—its video calls are not encrypted in the same way by default. Hosts, however, can enable end-to-end encryption in video calls too, according to the company.

The app has a troubled record when it comes to security and privacy. Thanks to a creepy feature, hosts can track whether you are paying attention to the meeting, and the company’s privacy policy allows it to collect all sorts of personal data.

Last year, Zoom had a flaw that allowed hackers to turn on someone’s webcam without their consent, and without them noticing. On top of that, when someone had the Zoom app closed and even uninstalled, the software left a web server up and running, allowing for an automated install of the app if someone invited the user to a Zoom call. Finally, Zoom makes it really hard for you to join calls without installing the app, even though that’s possible.

So, what other apps can you use instead of Zoom?

FACETIME

The obvious choice, if you have an Apple device, is FaceTime. Apple’s video (and audio) conferencing app has been end-to-end encrypted for a very long time. On top of that, it’s incredibly easy to use, and allows for up to 32 participants. The downside, of course, is that it’s only for iOS and Mac users. So if you use Windows, the most popular operating system in the world, you’re out of luck.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• End-to-end encrypted
• Works with up to 32 participants
• Apple is good at security

Cons:

• Only for Mac and iOS

JITSI

A great cross-platform alternative is the little known Jitsi, which is not end-to-end encrypted, and has apps for Android and iOS. Jitsi also just works in a browser, without having to install anything. Jitsi is also open source, meaning anyone can inspect and contribute to the code. I have used it occasionally and it always worked very well. While the video streams in Jitsi are not end-to-end encrypted, Jisti allows users to run their own server so they can encrypt the video streams to this server, which they control.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Works with apps or just on web
• Open source

Cons:

• Open source also means it has fewer resources to get security right

WHATSAPP

WhatsApp is the most popular chat app on the planet, it’s end-to-end encrypted with state-of-the-art protocols, and is incredibly user-friendly. It’s also cross platform, although video calls don’t work on desktop. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of enterprise software, but if you're just looking to connect with a couple of friends or family, it's more than enough.

Pros:

• Uberpopular, so chances are your friends have it
• End-to-end encrypted
• Cross-platform

Cons:

• Only supports 4 people at a time
• It’s owned by Facebook

WIRE

Finally, one of our favorite end-to-end encrypted chat apps, Wire, offers group video chat, but only to paying customers.

Pros

• End-to-end encrypted with widely respected encryption protocols

Cons:

• Not available for the free version of Wire.

GOOGLE MEET

If you want something that’s easy to use, but not end-to-end encrypted, you can always fall back on Google’s alternative: Meet.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Works well

Cons:

• Not end-to-end encrypted
• Requires a Google account

ZOOM

Zoom has become the de-facto video calling app in the last few days, but it's far from perfect. Its privacy policy is vague and seems to indicate the company could sell some of your data. Calls are not end-to-end encrypted by default and it's unclear if they can be at all.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Cross platform
• Easily lets you see all people’s videos at once with its panel view
• Seems to handle poor connections well
• Allows for pretty epic and trolly virtual backgrounds.

Cons:

• It's unclear what type of encryption it uses
• Privacy policy is suspect

Correction, March 30, 2020 at 10:30 a.m. ET: this story has been updated to clarify that Jitsi is NOT end-to-end encrypted.

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Cutting Your Own Hair Will Only Make This Worse

Over the past few days, I’ve had to talk not one but two different friends out of giving themselves an emergency quarantine haircut—a “quarantrim,” if you will. One wanted to change up her sleek middle part with some bangs, while the other friend wanted to buzz her cascading, sun-kissed waves fully, all the way off.

“Like most people in times of crises in the past, I have been wondering if I should get bangs,” my friend Rachel Rabbit White said. A poet in Brooklyn, Rabbit White said she’s been on the verge of a quarantine makeover since day 10 of social distancing. “There’s this aspect of isolation where we’re all just looking into the mirror, like, on every level? Metaphorically, as well as literally, staring at ourselves on FaceTime.” Soon, she said, “it started to seem like a conspiracy. Why don’t I have bangs? Why do my friends say I shouldn’t get them when bangs equals attractive?”

It’s a natural impulse to have as we enter week three (or four? 22? 47?) of social distancing. With at least another 30 days of self-isolation ahead of us, if not more, the question of what to do with our hair will become louder and louder as the days drag on.

If you’ve been starting to wonder if you should give yourself a little quarantrim, let me stop you right there so I can tell you the same thing I told both of my friends: No. Don’t. Please stop immediately. I know your hair looks bad right now, and it’s only going to get worse before this pandemic is over. But just suck it up, and wait it out until you can see your regular stylist.

Now, my advice might not be what the experts are saying. Brad Mondo, the stylist behind the mega-popular “Hairdresser Reacts” videos on YouTube, told VICE that if someone really wants to give themselves an at-home haircut, they might as well go for it. “Just don’t cut your bangs too short!” warned Mondo, who released a “Hairdresser’s Guide to Cutting Your Own Hair and Not Ruining It” video last Thursday. “Start off by cutting them longer than you want to ensure you’re not the next victim of a badly cut fringe.”

But I do speak with some authority. I am a woman who cut her own hair all throughout high school and college, often to my liking and often very much not. I picked it back up a couple years ago after a friend gave me straight-across bangs, which needed a cut every month or two. I figured it was worth it. I mean, why pay someone else to do something I could manage perfectly fine on my own? And then I gave myself the absolute worst, hairline-clinging TERF bangs that any adult human female has ever been cursed enough to sport. After putting down the scissors and looking in the mirror, I had a full-on meltdown. I am not joking when I tell you that my boyfriend nearly broke up with me over the amount of emotional labor I demanded of him at the time—something he still teases me about to this day!

I bring up this humiliating anecdote to say that there’s something way worse than not being able to get the haircut you want while social distancing, and that’s giving yourself a terrible haircut that you can’t get fixed because your local salon is closed until further notice. Not only will fucking up your hair leave you filled with regret—you did it to yourself, after all—but you’ll inevitably need your loved ones to attend to your exhausting, if thoroughly low-stakes, crisis. The fallout of my big bang (with small B’s) fuckup nearly ended my relationship, and that was in non-pandemic times. Right now, your friends and partners are probably too busy dealing with unemployment, threats to their physical health, the possible collapse of our hospital system, and unprecedented levels of horniness to worry about your petty follicular troubles. Do yourself and them a favor, and wait to get that trim.

Also consider whether your desire to cut your hair stems from something deeper than just wanting to see if the Instagram shag actually looks good IRL. Ellen Westrich, a clinical psychologist in New York City, told VICE that the desire to give oneself an impulsive haircut might be rooted in a desire to return to life as it was before COVID-19 changed everything. “It might be tied to a need for some kind of normalcy,” said Westrich. “You can’t go out to dinner. You can’t go visit a friend. You can’t go to a barber or go to a salon, so cutting your hair might be a way to try to introduce that aspect of normalcy back into our lives.”

Your burning desire for a balance-restoring makeover might also be a way of trying to seize control amidst a thoroughly uncontrollable nightmare. “We can self-quarantine, wash our hands, and do all the other things we’ve been told to do, but ultimately, we don’t have total control over whether we get sick,” said Westrich. “So, what can we control in terms of our bodies? We can control what our hair looks like. We can control what our nails look like, what our clothing looks like. There’s a sense of control there, but more specifically a sense of control over one’s body that I think is so critical right now. I can totally understand why people might want to do that.”

Much like hairdresser Mondo, Westrich said that if you want to trim your hair and you know it’ll make you feel good, then you might as well go for it. But she cautioned anyone who wants to go D.I.Y. on this—especially anyone who has self-harming tendencies or who tends to be impulsive—to sit with that desire for a bit and see how they feel in a few days.

I know it’s frustrating to be filled with anxiety over the pandemic and not have a suitable outlet through which to channel it. Trust me, I want nothing more than to pick up a pair of scissors and restore my bangs to their rightful, above-the-brow place right now. But I shall save myself for my beloved stylist, whenever it is that she’s finally able to see me, comforted by the knowledge that I won’t be the only newly middle-parted woman undergoing a forced Haim sister-fication right now.

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India Is Spraying Migrant Workers With Bleach Disinfectant During Coronavirus Lockdown

Thousands of migrant workers in India have been sprayed with a bleach disinfectant after they returned home during the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

Video captured by a reporter in the northern city of Bareilly shows migrants forced to sit on the ground after they arrived, as three people in protective gear doused them with the spray.

The disinfectant is usually used to sanitize buses.

Millions of migrant workers in India have been attempting to make their way home after the government locked down the entire country a week ago. Many of the workers were left without food and shelter and had no option but to make long and often deadly journeys home.

The migrants in Bareilly, which is a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, were told by officials when they arrived that they would be put on a bus and given food.

Instead, they were sprayed with the disinfectant, which contained a mixture of water and sodium hypochlorite, according to the Times of India. Sodium hypochlorite is widely used as a bleaching agent in the textile, detergents, and paper industries.

As many as 5,000 people have been "publicly sprayed" when they arrived in Bareilly alone, according to Ashok Gautam, a senior officer in charge of COVID-19 operations in Uttar Pradesh, who spoke to CNN.

“We sprayed them here as part of the disinfection drive, we don't want them to be carriers for the virus and it could be hanging on their clothes, now all borders have been sealed so this won't happen again," Gautam said.

Gautam’s actions were strongly condemned by Lav Agarwal, senior official at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

READ: People in India are dropping dead after walking hundreds of miles during coronavirus lockdown

Agarwal said that local officials involved in the incident were “reprimanded,” adding that spraying migrant workers was not a "required" policy in the country. Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath called the spraying of migrants "rude and indecent" and called for those responsible to be punished.

The public spraying in Bareilly is just the latest questionable response from officials and law enforcement to the lockdown in India. Police have been embarrassing lockdown offenders, forcing them to do squats, push-ups, or road sweeping in public.

The police have also been accused of beating a man to death as he went to a store to buy some milk during the lockdown.

Cover: A group of daily wage laborers walk to return to their villages as the city comes under lockdown in Prayagraj, India, Monday, March 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

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France Is Putting Domestic Abuse Victims in Hotels During Coronavirus Lockdown

France is relocating women beaten by their partners into hotels, and has created a secret code word for them to discreetly seek help in pharmacies, in response to a huge increase in domestic abuse during the coronavirus lockdown.

In France and many other affected countries, restrictions on movement during the pandemic have trapped women inside their homes with abusive partners, resulting in a sharp rise in reports of domestic violence. French officials say that reports of abuse have leaped by about one third around the country since the restrictions came into effect on March 17.

In response, the government has launched several new initiatives to help women escape what Gender Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa has described as “a breeding ground for violence.” Schiappa announced Monday that the government would pay for up to 20,000 nights of accommodation in hotels to help women escape abusive partners, and had set up 20 support centers at shopping centers around the country where women could seek help.

"My biggest concern is to multiply the points of contact with women. As it's difficult for women to get out, we want to make sure that support systems can go to women," Schiappa told French newspaper Le Parisien.

READ: Food banks are facing a “tsunami” of people in need from the coronavirus crisis

Last week, French officials set up an “alert system” in pharmacies nationwide, where victims of domestic abuse could discreetly ask the pharmacist to call police by asking for a “mask 19.” The initiative mimics a scheme set up in Spain’s Canary Islands that uses the same code word.

Le Parisien reported that the first arrest under the scheme was made in the northeastern city of Nancy on Saturday, after a woman who was five months pregnant reported that her partner had slapped her and threatened her with a knife. The woman did not need to use the code word as she went to the pharmacy unaccompanied by her husband, prosecutors told the newspaper.

READ: European countries are throwing out “rubbish” Chinese-made masks and coronavirus tests

Schiappa tweeted Tuesday that thousands of women were also reporting assaults using the government’s online “stop the violence” platform, which connected them with police officers trained in responding to domestic violence cases.

Officials and domestic violence services around the world have reported similar rises in abuse since their countries went into lockdown.

In Hubei, China, where the outbreak began, the founder of an anti-domestic violence nonprofit in the city of Jingzhou told the Sixth Tone website earlier this month that reports of domestic violence had nearly doubled since the lockdown. Similar spikes have been reported by domestic violence helplines and drop-in centers in Spain, Cyprus, and Brazil.

READ: Wuhan’s crematoriums are filling thousands of urns with coronavirus victims each day

Officials in other countries have taken steps of varying degrees to help domestic violence victims seek help amid the pandemic, with police in India’s Uttar Pradesh state launching a special hotline number, and Spain’s government advising women that they were exempt from strict lockdown restrictions if they needed to leave the home to flee or report abuse. In Trento, Italy, a prosecutor ruled that abusers, rather than their victims, would have to leave their homes if they committed an assault.

Cover: Daily Life in Paris, amid Covid-19 outbreak lockdown in France, on March 29, 2020. Photo by Alain Apaydin/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)

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During Coronavirus, GameStop Chose Profits Over People. So I Quit.

CT Collins is a pseudonym. VICE Games agreed to use a pseudonym because Collins signed an employment contract that forbids the disclosure of internal GameStop information. VICE Games independently verified their employment status.

It may have taken a terrible response to a global pandemic, but last week, I finally left GameStop. COVID-19 started to spread across the world and, given the opportunity to do the right thing, GameStop made it clear that making money was more important than the health of their employees and their families.

I started working for GameStop back in 2012, and while I haven't been around all seven years uninterrupted, I have always come back. I loved the people I worked with, the customers I got to help, the games I got to talk about. I enjoyed my job despite its imperfections. It was a job after all.

Watching GameStop struggle hasn't been easy, and the process has stomped-out a lot of the enthusiasm and love I used to have for the place. Watching the customer base dilute their physical purchases with digital, requiring them to come in less frequently, making their membership less and less of a priority. The stages of separation were easy to see.

Honestly, I have never seen a company so ready to blame its people like GameStop has. As the company struggled to find footing, the reminders on attach rates (adding warranties and additional product) and memberships became persistent, to the point that I would have to send multiple updates a day. People who didn’t meet numbers were let go, or their hours got cut back until they quit. The company’s approach to its employees was to point out their shortcomings before offering tangible, actionable help. It was death by a thousand “why don’t you stop hitting yourselves?”

All of this was manageable for a long time because I still loved to do the day-to-day job. I made friends with the people I worked with, made friends with regulars, some of those people even followed me from previous stores. All of those things made my misgivings with the company's direction ignorable. I tried to make a difference on the ground level, making sure as many people as possible were as happy as possible.

But the culture started to rot. I noticed it at my store—and others. As corporate continued to increase expectations, associates began to lose motivation altogether. Since holiday alone, my store saw increased expectations in every metric we were tracked on, despite January and February being extraordinarily slow months. They roughly their expectations for sales of warranties on games, warranties on hardware, memberships—everything went up. This despite the fact that our store had struggled to meet the previous targets, and our new game sales were nearly halved from the previous year. Conversations focused on the decrease tended to blame the new consoles on the horizon.

There was also a strong lean into “Tech Trades.” In the last couple years, GameStop has made phone, tablet, and smartwatch trades a huge priority. What started as a service we offered that other places didn’t evolved into one of the most tracked metrics GameStop has.

We were expected to get at least five tech quotes a day. This meant mentioning the fact that we took devices in trade and gave cash back, asking the customer if they had any devices they wanted to get rid of, and then finding their device in our system so we could quote them the value of said device. It was corporate’s (or perhaps just my district manager’s ) belief that 1-in-10 quotes became actual trades. That number was repeated as if it was fact, despite the fact that what that statistic translates to is a reality where 90% of customers just won’t come back with devices to trade.

Stores were expected to get five tech trades a week.

"GameStop made it clear that making money was more important than the health of their employees and their families."

As each of these expectations evolved, my district manager became increasingly passive aggressive. Sending emails to all stores, calling out the bottom performing stores, saying that if things don’t change people are going to start getting let go. I understand that underperformance needs to be addressed, but the conversation can’t end there. I coached as many associates as I could, but more often than not I was, instead, helping those around me combat the feeling of inadequacy that came with each transaction.

If you didn't get a PRP (Product Replacement Plan), GPG (Gameplay Protection Guarantee), Pro Card, or Reservation, you left the transaction feeling like you failed. Not because you had actually failed, but because the only feedback you were going to get would be based on that. There was never any training that came along with that feedback. Never. It has been six years since I have seen a manager coach an associate on how to interact with people. Now, it never happens.

Then, on top of all of this: coronavirus. It was a perfect storm to expose GameStop's problems.

I wanted to see GameStop do the right thing. No matter how bad GameStop's gameplan has looked, I have always found a way to see the good side of the coin. There wasn’t a good side of this coin: we were promised sanitation supplies we never got, then were asked to buy them ourselves. We were given a piece of paper to print out to give to authorities should they come ask us to comply with closure orders. My district manager told us not to show that paper, comply with a closure demand, and then call them to let them know.

But this shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering the company's Black Friday policy walkback over the last five years. For context, back in 2014 and 2015, GameStop took a stand for what they called “Protecting the Family,” a phrase they had embedded in their core values. Stores would not open on Thanksgiving so employees could be with their families. In 2017, stores opened at 4pm on Thanksgiving Day. The conference calls informing us of this change said, “many of our store associates and guests have asked for this.”

Two weeks ago, GameStop was doing great business, a fact that I imagine made corporate feel justified in their stance. None of our customers adhered to any social distancing guidelines, we were harassed when we had to ask people to wait outside. When we stopped taking trades, we had to argue with people every 20 minutes, and people “jokingly” coughed at us. The last week was absolute hell.

The last conference call that was on was full of people who didn’t sound like they were taking the coronavirus as seriously as they needed to be. Questions about closures were dismissed. An employee who felt uncomfortable having to come to work was brought up by his manager, and after recommending the employee reach out to HR, the district manager joked: “He doesn’t want to work anyway, I don’t know why he is using that as an excuse.”

Most GameStop employees are young. I imagine this kid had roommates, at the very least. That is enough reason. We were told that if employees wanted to stay home they would have to use PTO, a luxury only afforded to full-time associates. I have worked at GameStop for nearly eight years, and I have never seen a full-time associate outside of the manager and assistant manager.

After nearly 15 minutes of discussing COVID-19, the conversation on the conference call shifted. The district manager was upset with us and wanted us to “get back on track” because “in the last week we have really fallen off.” No one suggested that we might be experiencing lower numbers because there was a global pandemic. I was too shocked to open my mouth. Then, the blame landed on our shoulders again. “If you have employees in there that aren’t driving numbers we need to get those people out of there.”

Before I called my district manager last week, I was sitting in my office at home, shaking. Furious. GameStop had issued the “we believe we’re essential” statement. Fabricating a reality in which GameStop—as a business—was "essential" to people's survival still feels like a bad joke I read on Reddit.

I spent a lot of time believing in this company. For them to just discard our health felt like a stab in the back. Within minutes, I was talking to my wife about the feasibility of an exit. But here’s the thing: not everyone can do that. I am extremely fortunate to have a support system that can sustain me. I have friends that are still working, that have to keep working.

On a call with my district manager, I told them that I couldn’t justify coming in. If my whole family is home for quarantine and I am going out to work every day, then the preventative measures they are taking would be useless. I worked the following day, understanding that finding a replacement would take some time. The following day, I went up to my store to help my replacement open, and to hand off my keys. Three days later, I sent my letter of resignation.

I wish I had told them to stand next to their employees and run some transactions with them. I wish I had told them to go to their stories and talk to each employee about how they actually feel about GameStop. Then again, the company decided long ago that there were some things it didn’t want to know, and some answers it didn’t want to hear.

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Amazon Fired the Warehouse Worker Who Organized a Walkout Over Coronavirus

After he helped organize some of his fellow workers to walk out at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island over coronavirus-related safety concerns, Chris Smalls was fired from his job. Amazon says he violated a company order to self-quarantine and put his fellow workers at risk of contracting the coronavirus; he says it’s retaliation.

“It’s a shame on them,” Smalls told VICE News. “This is a proven fact of why they don’t care about their employees, to fire someone after five years for sticking up for people and trying to give them a voice.”

Amazon says that they fired Smalls for “violating social distancing guidelines and putting the safety of others at risk.”

“He was found to have had close contact with a diagnosed associate with a confirmed case of COVID-19 and was asked to remain home with pay for 14 days, which is a measure we’re taking at sites around the world,” Amazon said in a statement provided to VICE News. “Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came onsite today, March 30, further putting the teams at risk. This is unacceptable and we have terminated his employment as a result of these multiple safety issues.”

Amazon has publicly confirmed that two workers at the JFK8 warehouse have tested positive for coronavirus, though Smalls told VICE News Monday that he believes several more workers have contracted the illness than Amazon is publicly confirming. Smalls told VICE News Monday that workers were walking off the job in an effort to force Amazon to shut down the facility and sanitize it, with full pay for workers while the facility was closed.

READ: Amazon workers in New York have started walking off the job: ‘This is a cry for help’

Smalls disputed the order to self-quarantine, and said that when he was ordered to go home last Saturday, it was never made clear to him when the quarantine order was supposed to have started. Amazon said earlier this month that the first worker who tested positive last reported to work on March 11, nearly three weeks ago, according to Motherboard.

“You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [my co-worker] for less than five minutes,” he told VICE News. “[The co-worker] was with my associates for ten-plus hours a week, I’ve been communicating with [management] all week but no one else was put on quarantine.” (Amazon did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday morning asking how many people at the site have been ordered into self-quarantine.)

The company confirmed that no one else was fired Monday, and said that no one would be let go or be disciplined for participating in the action. Still, the decision to fire Smalls drew rebuke from Athena, a coalition of progressive social and economic justice groups working to counter Amazon’s outsized influence on the economy and public policy.

"Chris, along with many of his colleagues in New York and around the country, have dared to tell the truth about the dangerous conditions at Amazon facilities,” the directors of Athena, Make the Road NY, and New York Communities for Change said in a joint statement. “We can only conclude that instead of listening to the people who are actually risking their lives on the front lines, Amazon would rather they just shut up about Amazon working conditions, which are now a national public health concern.”

Aside from the fact that he was fired yesterday, Amazon and Smalls don’t agree on much. Following the publication of a story on the walkout yesterday, Amazon contacted VICE News to dispute both the size of the protest and Smalls’ job title and role. The company said Smalls wasn’t an assistant manager, and didn’t supervise employees, both of which Smalls disputed. (In other media reports, Smalls has also been described as a “process assistant” and a “manager assistant.”)

READ: Amazon’s largest NYC warehouse reports its first case of coronavirus

And while the organizers said over 60 workers walked off the job at the JFK8 warehouse yesterday, Amazon said just 15 walked off — “less than half a percent of associates” who work at the 5,000-plus employee warehouse, the company said in a statement). The company also claimed that any additional workers captured in the total just happened to be on their lunch break at the time.

“They have no idea what they’re talking about. They spin stuff, they lie, they downplay, I’m not a manager all of a sudden, I’m an hourly associate,” Smalls told VICE News. “That’s what they do to the press. They tell y’all bunch of lies and everything. It is what it is.”

On Monday night, Smalls got some powerful backup: New York attorney general Tish James tweeted her support for him, said she was “considering all legal options,” and called on the National Labor Relations Board to investigate.

“Amazon, this is disgraceful,” James tweeted.

Though he said he expected to be fired after the leading role he played in the walkout, Smalls said he plans to pursue action against the company for his dismissal. “It’s a no brainer. Anyone can see this is a direct target,” he said.

“It’s not gonna stop me,” Smalls added. “I’m gonna continue to fight.”

Cover: Gerald Bryson, left, join workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, N.Y., protesting conditions in the company's warehouse, Monday March 30, 2020, in New York. Workers say Amazon is not doing enough to to keep workers safe from the spread of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

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Video Shows Police Whipping People for Violating Coronavirus Lockdown in South Africa

Police officers in South Africa are resorting to violence to enforce a strict nationwide lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, using rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse citizens gathering in public.

And in at least one case, a police officer was captured on video using an African whip known as a sjambok to repeatedly attack people he believed were breaking the rules.

The plainclothes officer, seen by journalists from the Mail and Guardian and AmaBhungane, was recorded using the whip on several citizens walking on the streets of Hillbrow, one of Johannesburg’s most densely-populated suburbs.

The reporters say they saw the plainclothes officer whipped one resident up to eight times. When they approached a uniformed officer who also on the scene, he was unapologetic about the actions being taken:

“We are sjambokking people … People cannot be disciplined without it,” said the uniformed driver of the vehicle. “We don’t want to see three people together without carrying anything. What are they doing? Then you ask, ‘Where are you going?’, [and] they don’t answer.”

South Africa’s government announced a three-week-long nationwide lockdown on Friday, but authorities have so far struggled to enforce it, particularly in many of the country’s overcrowded slums and townships where many people live in single-room shacks.

South Africa has reported over 1,300 confirmed cases of coronavirus to date — the most of any African country — and just three deaths. But experts fear that the crisis could get much worse in a country with a seriously underfunded healthcare system.

READ: People in India are dropping dead after walking hundreds of miles during coronavirus lockdown

In a bid to stop the crisis getting worse, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced strict lockdown measures on Friday, shuttering all restaurants, fast-food outlets, pubs, and bars. The transportation of alcohol has been banned.

South Africa has also effectively closed all airports, ports, and land border crossings to passenger traffic.

People are only allowed to leave their homes for essential trips like grocery shopping or to seek medical attention, and face up to six months in jail for leaving for other reasons.

But within hours of the lockdown being announced, there were huge lines at supermarkets across the country, with little to no social distancing being observed and a tiny police presence to enforce the rules.

In Cape Town, the authorities quickly deployed water cannons to disperse crowds outside a store. In Johannesburg, there have been widespread reports of police using rubber bullets to break up crowds gathering at grocery stores.

READ: Indian police are being accused of beating a man to death for violating the coronavirus lockdown

Then, on Sunday, one man was shot dead on the veranda of his own home in the township of Vosloorus on the outskirts of Johannesburg after police followed him home from a bar where he had been drinking.

As the police struggle to deal with the crisis, the army has been deployed in some of South Africa’s poorest communities, where troops are attempting, with limited success, to disperse crowds who continue to gather in public.

So far, more than 1,000 people have been arrested for breaking lockdown regulations, but reports of police and army overreach persist, despite Ramaphosa’s call for respect and support.

“You are required to support our police, work with them, walk among our people and defend them against this virus,” Ramaphosa said when he announced the deployment of the military. “You are required to do this in the most understanding way, in the most respectful way, in the most supportive way.”

Cover: South African police and National Defense Forces patrol in downtown Johannesburg on Monday March 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

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Workers Were Always 'Essential'

You may have noticed that the people getting us through the coronavirus crisis aren't billionaires, bosses, or traders: they're average folks, suddenly recognized as essential workers, and their daily labor is what makes everyday life possible under normal circumstances and infinitely more so during a pandemic.

Covid-19 has turned everything upside down, but everything was so topsy-turvy to begin with that the simple fact that workers are the main drivers of society—long denied and obscured—has finally become irrefutably self-evident as the wealthy temporarily exile themselves from society while the people who really keep things running must continue to show up.

Many governments have ordered most businesses closed to slow the spread of Covid-19, but some "essential" businesses such as supermarkets, pharmacies, liquor stores, restaurants doing takeout or delivery, repair shops, and more, are staying open. While people who have the ability to stay home while maintaining an income self-isolate, essential workers continue to show up at these businesses in the face of danger. Rightfully, they're being called heroes.

But what happens after the pandemic ends? Will people go back to conveniently "forgetting" to tip their delivery app driver, berating unsuspecting cashiers, and joking about overpaid or lazy civic workers? It doesn't have to be this way. The sudden society-wide recognition of low-paid workers—individuals, heroes, not just numbers in a market for labor—as being indispensible, like so many other sudden shifts during the pandemic, can be a springboard for better things.

This crisis is revealing the simple, illuminating truth that was there all along: there's no food on the store shelves we're now so worried about seeing empty without the people who grow it, stock it, and cash you out. There is no public transportation without bus drivers. Without sanitation workers, garbage will pile up in the streets. The world simply doesn't work without labor.

The idea of an "essential" worker has a pernicious side, no doubt, as companies quibble over what the term means and continue to exploit people while providing only the minimum protections. There is a sense that a pandemic under capitalism creates two types of people: those who can afford to self-isolate and those who must work while exposing themselves to a virus.

To avoid the idea of "essential" labor becoming a coercive trap, the category of the essential worker must be expanded to every worker, and be the basis for empowering mass action rather than a disempowering (and deadly) sense of duty to serve "the economy."

We're already seeing this play out in reality as workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, General Electric, and more, strike and walk off the job en masse to push for better conditions or, in the case of GE workers, to deploy their own labor power to make life-saving devices. Now imagine if they could make that decision themselves.

The ruling class has long derided average people as disposable, interchangeable, "low-skilled," and so on. What we are seeing now is irrefutable evidence that the reality was always the exact opposite. It's not capitalists who are essential, but workers, and essential people have leverage.

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Scientists See Trippy Quadrupled Black Hole While Peering Through a Galaxy

Astronomers peered across 11 billion light years and used another galaxy as a telescope to observe energetic jets fueled by a supermassive black hole in the early universe.

The effort has produced the first high-resolution images of disrupted galactic gas clouds at such an extreme distance from Earth, according to a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and a trippy quadrupling effect in the image due to gravitational distortion from the galaxy-telescope.

The new images provide an “excellent opportunity” for investigating rarely-observed interactions between radiant jets and interstellar gas in a far-flung galaxy, said the authors, led by Kindai University cosmologist Kaiki Taro Inoue.

Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of large galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Occasionally, big clumps of matter fall into these black holes, triggering the release of powerful plasma jets that transform galactic centers into ultra-luminous objects called active galactic nuclei (AGN). Quasars are the most radiant AGNs ever observed, and they are among the brightest phenomena in the universe.

For decades, scientists have been fascinated by a distant quasar called MG J0414+0534, which is located 11.1 billion light years from Earth. Despite this immense distance, the quasar is observable thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

Lensing occurs when massive objects magnify background events from our perspective on Earth. In this case, the gravitational field of a galaxy located between the quasar and Earth has amplified light from MG J0414+0534. Not only does the quasar appear much closer because of the effect, its image is split into four identical images by the distortion of the foreground galaxy.

Inoue and his colleagues observed this quasar for four nights in November 2017 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The combination of the highly sensitive radio telescope and the lensing galaxy enabled the team to parse fine details about the effects of the jets on interstellar gas within the quasar.

Reconstructed images of what MG J0414+0534 would look like if gravitational lensing effects were turned off. Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), K. T. Inoue et al.

The team captured emissions from interstellar water vapor and carbon monoxide gas that were generated by the irradiation of these molecules by the high-energy plasma jets. “The observed features show clear evidence of strong interaction between the jets and interstellar medium (ISM),” the team said in the study.

“High temperature and high-density environments in the ISM of the quasar host galaxy, as suggested from CO line ratios, also support this result,” they added.

Though the jets are highly luminous, they also appeared to be fairly small, suggesting that this quasar, as we see it now, has only been active for tens of thousands of years. This makes it a valuable example of “the early stage of quasar radio activity,” according to the study, which is a process that is rarely observed, especially at such immense distances.

“MG J0414+0534 is an excellent example because of the youth of the jets,” said Inoue in a statement. “We found telltale evidence of significant interaction between jets and gaseous clouds even in the very early evolutionary phase of jets.”

“I think that our discovery will pave the way for a better understanding of the evolutionary process of galaxies in the early Universe,” he concluded.

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