Despite health leaders advice to social distance to fight the pandemic, Syrians citizens are protesting against the country’s economic crisis and sanctions.

“The arrival of coronavirus is problematic for all countries,” said Christian Thuselt, lecturer of Middle East Politics at the Department of Political Science at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen Nuremberg. “Now the virus is spreading to the weaker states. In Syria, the economy is in shambles, millions have fled, nine million Syrians suffer from malnutrition That makes them more vulnerable.”

Hundreds of protestors demanding government action during the country’s economic crisis recently marched on the streets of Sweidaa, a city in the south of Syria.  But protests are erupting all over the country. 

During the past 36 hours the cities of Damascus & Idlib in #Syria have witnessed rallies against poverty, unemployment & economic difficulties. Demonstrators are demanding Assad step down in order to end the war & bring an end to meddling by #Iran & Russia in their country. pic.twitter.com/pEkDKPGcDc

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) June 8, 2020

The civil war has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011. The war started to crush anti-regime protests.

For non-Arabic speakers,these are the most prominent slogans chanted in the demonstrations in #Suwayda yesterday. #Syria #SyrianLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/mWP1IrRBKs

— السويداء 24 (@suwayda24) June 8, 2020

The coronavirus has  furthered the economic collapse of Syria. Food prices have more than doubled and now 7.9 million people are considered food insecure, according to the World Food Programme., The Syrian pound on the parallel market fell 50% and the minimum wage  now equals $26 a month. Eighty percent of the population is living in poverty.

“They’re literally risking their lives to go into the streets . . . [showing] just how desperate people have become,” Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace told the Financial Times.

Bakeries are closing, doctors are closing, shops are closing, businesses are closing. Millions of parents aren’t able to put food on the table for their kids. They can’t buy food or milk 4 their babies. Some people are offering to sell their organs so they can help their families

— Ahmad Al-Rashid ✪ (@ahmadalrashid99) June 9, 2020

Syria’s President Bashar al- Assad blames the economic situation on western sanctions. In 2011 through Executive Order 13582, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Syria’s government, prohibiting U.S. individuals to export or to sell services to Syria, like petroleum products. The sanctions were intended to deprive the regime of resources needed to as it brutally clamped down on citizens demanding change. The European Union followed a similar path and extended its sanctions against the Syrian regime.

The Syrian government won the the civil war with the help of countries like Russia and Iran ,but the war led to the destruction of 70% of the country’s economy and infrastructure, including medical facilities.

“Our hospitals are not provided with respiratory support devices or enough doctors,” said Mohammed, who works at a public hospital in Aleppo and did not want to give his full name. “Hospitals are good to handle a lot, but not in large numbers, like a pandemic this big. In my city, for example, we have only something like four ventilators, and they are most likely occupied.”

Syrians on Facebook groups offering to donate portions of their scarce medication. “No more medicine of any type available, even aspirin and cetamol were cut”
“I just had a thyroid cyst removed and I can’t stay without thyroxine and it’s also cut”
“I am on the last bottle” pic.twitter.com/PdSxEXa8PD

— jaro (@LaconicJaro) June 10, 2020

Thuselt said medicine is a prestigious profession and many doctors and medical students fled because of the war.

“I believe that the number is up to 70% of the medical staff has fled Syria, and so did students,” he said.“They are usually privately financed and their families do everything to take them out of Syria.”

According to World O’ Meter, Syria has 144 coronavirus cases and has registered only nine deaths.

To contain the virus, doctors gave residents the standard protocol, stay home, wash your hands and use face masks, Mohammed said.

“We also had some mobilization on Facebook groups,” he said. “The government established a curfew, so we aren’t allowed to leave the house after 6 p.m. on weekdays and on weekends after 12 p.m.,” Mohammed said.

Thuselt doesn’t believe they are accurate.

“There’s one thing that they [the government] won’t admit, it is defeat,” he said “They act as if the country is perfect, everything is just perfect. A good example was when Homs was under siege and Syrian state television, brought up peaceful pictures of Homs. They are bad at admitting that they are being defeated.”

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“The current regime tries to politicize the virus to stay in power and form common enemies,” said a journalist based in Caracas  who did not want to be identified for safety reasons. “Moreover, this is the perfect excuse to mask the gasoline shortage. If we are under quarantine, people don’t really use cars that often.” 

Venezuela’s government, historically responsible for jailing journalists, concentrating power, rejecting human rights scrutiny, was already struggling economically even before President Nicolas Maduro took power. Basic needs, like access to food and health resources became scarce and led millions of Venezuelans to flee from their homes.

The president imposed a nationwide quarantine on March 17 after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the country. But because of the extreme poverty, Venezuelans continue to leave their houses to search for food and water. 

According to the World Food Program, 9.3 million Venezuelans,  nearly a third of the country’s population, are considered food insecure and 1 in 3 are not getting enough to eat. The same study found that 74%of families have adopted coping strategies to deal with the lack of food, such as reducing quality and variety of what they eat. 

 Maduro recently declared that the mandatory use of masks and quarantine measures are working. On May 30 Venezuela had 1,370 confirmed cases with 14 deaths. But these numbers were called “absurd” by the Human Rights Watch and John Hopkins University.

Dr. Kathleen Page, an associate medicine professor at John Hopkins told France 24 that Venezuela is “a country where doctors don’t have water to even wash their hands” and end up using water coming from the air conditioner to do it, and where “the health system is totally collapsing.”

She believes the true number of COVID-19 deaths is closer to 30,000. 

The Caracas journalist said that Venezuela suffered from serious consequences of the precarious public health even before the arrival of the coronavirus. 

“It is certainly difficult to believe that the numbers are that good,” the journalist said. “There is no transparency on the numbers coming from the government. Hospitals had already collapsed before the pandemic started and this is a risk for hospital staff too.” 

The first COVID-19 case was registered on  March 14, according to ABC News. 

A report from the Associated Press showed that despite the coronavirus threats, Venezuela’s elite still partied in Los Roques, a Venezuelan archipelago. On March 20, Maduro said on state television that, “practically everyone at the party is testing positive.”

“The first cases are believed to be imported by Spanish prostitutes after a party in Los Roques,” the journalist said

As a result , Colombian president, Iván Duque, closed the country’s border with Venezuela to stop the spread in Colombia. But Colombians could still enter Venezuela.

Just like in China, where xenophobia is on the rise,  Maduro is also blaming refugees that are coming back from Colombia for bringing the virus into Venezuela because he knows that people who fled are not his supporters, the journalist said.

Federico Sor,   a historian of modern Latin America, said Venezuela and China are allies. 

“The difference is that China had the resources, it built hospitals and tested the people, Maduro, however does not have the resources to do the same,” Sor said. “In Venezuela, just like in China, people who were contesting the numbers or threatening to expose it were being arrested.” 

In China, Li Wenliang, a doctor who sent the message to fellow doctors in Wuhan about the spread of a new virus was silenced by the police and later on investigated. The same has happened to journalists and doctors in Venezuela who claimed that health facilities were not ready to receive patients with COVID-19. Melquiades Avila is one of them. Now in hiding, he was accused of being a “criminal” by Lizeta Hernandez, a member of the ruling Socialist party. 

The economic situation is specifically critical now that oil prices are collapsing. Sor said the crisis is so big that he believes that it precedes the sanctions imposed by countries, such as the US. 

“Any country that relies on imports particularly suffers more,” he said. “The oil prices are low and the economy is contracting almost by half. Therefore, the options to stay in the country are not the best offer for most of the people who have left.”

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It has been 26 years since the end of apartheid, a system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa for 40 years. Yet the country remains the world’s most unequal, with the majority of the country’s land and wealth owned by its minority white population.

Lockdown has brought this lingering inequality to the forefront as South Africans of different economic levels complain about different aspects of their lockdown experiences. 

South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. On the left, shacks in the informal settlement of Khayelitsha. On the right, houses overlooking Llandudno beach. Both are in Cape Town. Photo by Tommy Trenchard

Affluent and predominantly white South Africans, confined to comfortable and spacious houses, have complained of restrictions on outdoor exercise such as jogging and surfing. 

For the first five weeks of lockdown, no outdoor exercise or walking of dogs was allowed. Now, walking or jogging is allowed from 6 a.m. to 9.a.m. , but beaches and the ocean remain off limit. Some say that this three hour limitation is arbitrary, and serves only to create crowding on public running paths and oceanfront promenades.

“I thought that yoga was an okay exercise,” said tearful Samantha Vietri after being reprimanded by police for doing yoga on Muizenburg Beach.

“They didn’t even want to give me time to put my shoes on, she said. “It was just a horrible experience and not a way that people should be treated”.

Surfers protest at Blouberg Beach, Cape Town against the South African government’s banning of surfing during the COVID-19 lockdown. Photo by Nardus Engelbrecht.

“To us, surfing is more than just being in the water, it’s a culture,” said Surfer Anton Fourie “ And not being able to surf is torture.”

But for millions of impoverished black South Africans, yoga and surfing are the least of their worries. For those confined to small shacks in overcrowded townships or rural villages with poor lighting, no electricity and communal toilets, hunger has been the most difficult part of this lockdown. Initial studies have estimated that 34 percent of South Africans have gone to bed hungry since the lockdown began.

Many of these people live day to day, surviving on day wages received for casual labor. Since lockdown began in March, these people have been without income. Without income, hunger has set in, and there have been incidents of looting and theft from local grocery stores and food delivery trucks.

“I’m not earning anything now,” said Thandi Lebho, who lives in Diepsloot township with her husband and three children. 

“I’m starving now. I don’t have anything, she said.”

In some areas, hungry people wait for food handouts in lines that are over two miles long. The South African government is providing food parcels to some South Africans, but government officials have been accused of bribery and nepotism in the provision of these parcels. Some immigrants have also complained that they have been denied food parcels because they are not South African citizens. As a result, millions of South Africans are not receiving any food assistance.

“If the government cannot give us food parcels as promised, it should scrap the lockdown and let us go back to work and hustle for our families to eat,” said Nonkikelelo Mceki, a domestic worker living in Tsakane who has been out of work since the lockdown began.

Some South Africans have started handing out food parcels to the hungry. But without a special permit, this is considered a violation of lockdown restrictions. 

A food delivery truck is looted in Bishop Lavis in Cape Town, South Africa. Photo by Armand Hough

Many have criticized the government’s strict lockdown rules, including the prohibition of the sale of alcohol or cigarettes for almost seven weeks, as being irrational, arbitrary, and brutally imposed. 

Former finance minister Trevor Manuel, is among those who say that lockdown restrictions have been too harshly implemented.

“There are daily reports of the abuse of power by the security forces, including assaults with sjamboks [leather whips]; the arrest of citizens for the pettiest of infractions; the payment of admission of guilt fines by people desperate to get out of custody, and a long list of instances of misbehaviour,” Manuel wrote.

But the government has defended its strict restrictions as a means of saving lives. 

“Imposing a nationwide lockdown gave our country a strategic advantage,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa in a recent national newsletter. “It bought us valuable time to prepare our health system and put in place containment measures. This has slowed transmission and saved lives.”

According to the South African Department of Health, there have been 10,652 COVID-19 infections confirmed in South Africa, with 206 deaths. Although the infection rate remains low compared to those in other countries, some are concerned that the actual infection rate may be far higher, given that only 6,004 tests have been conducted per million people. 

The infection rate has also been increasing sharply and is expected to worsen during the winter months from May until August, when it is expected to reach a peak.

“The coronavirus crisis will pass,” said President Ramaphosa. “But for as long as it remains a threat to the lives of our people, we must remain vigilant, diligent and responsible. We will need to adapt to new ways of worshipping, socialising, exercising and meeting that minimise opportunities for the virus to spread.”

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As thousands of high school seniors signed their letter of intent on National Signing Day, Irvington High School stands out. While the public school is on the rise as a football powerhouse and is in one of the most competitive conferences in the state of New Jersey, their community has suffered from violence, crime and poverty.  The success of the program has been a much needed bright spot.

“We’re trying to change the narrative of what this city has been and the troubles that we’ve had in the past,” said Ashley Pierre, head football coach of the Irvington Blue Knights.

According to City-Data, Irvington’s crime rate was more than four times the national average, with 1,000 crimes occurring per 100,000 people for seven years straight. Though the crime rate did begin to decline in 2010, the rates are still high.

“Outsiders always talk bad about Irvington. They don’t realize people come from negative situations and that’s part of life,” said Savion Herring, Irvington’s offensive tackle and University of Cincinnati signee.

Coach Ashley Pierre, an Irvington native, played football at the University of Rhode Island and was an all-conference linebacker in 2007. When he was hired in 2015, he took over a team that was 3-7 overall and at the bottom of the Super Essex County conference. In his first season as head coach, he went 8-2 and had a top 50 finish in the state.

Irvington head coach Ashley “Rowdy” Pierre has been at the school since 2016. Since then he’s has a 24-9 record and has sent more than 12 athletes to division one schools. Photo by Chinedu Onyemaobi

“When I first took over this program, I tried to surround myself with men who cared and loved these kids,” said Pierre. “So we brought back some coaches from this city who have accomplished what we’re aiming at and that’s a championship.”

In a town where 25 percent of households live below the poverty line, the struggles at home can affect student-athletes both in the classroom and on the field. To combat these issues, Pierre has implemented a mandatory one hour study hall, weight lifting sessions, and  nutrition courses for his players. He also has a “Real World Wednesday”, where he brings guest speakers to mentor his players about the realities of life after football.

“What Rowdy [Coach Pierre] has done for our football program is truly special. There’s a different level of focus in our football players and it transcends beyond the classroom,” said Dr. John Taylor, Irvington’s Athletic Director.

Darren Fields, Irvington’s 6′2″ defensive back, will be playing at University at Albany State University of New next year and has played in Irvington township since his Pop Warner years. The start of the 2018 football season did not start off on the right foot, as Fields was sidelined with a fibula injury and missed the first eight games. Getting to this point in his life was not easy as he was faced with adversity early on his life.

“From the way I was raised, to be honest, I’m not supposed to be in the situation I am right now,” said Fields. “All I can do is be a great example to my brother and sister and show them the right path so they can be successful.”

Irvington High School had 12 student-athletes sign to division one schools in 2017. Most notable was  Lancine Turay, who is at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and is the brother of Indianapolis Colts linebacker Kemoko Turay. This year, Irvington has six student-athletes signing to division one schools. Coach Pierre believes this is just the beginning of Irvington’s success.

“Next year we should have around 10 guys sign. This is just the start of something special” said Pierre. “We’re going to be around for a long time. Just stay tuned.”

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Eighty-one-year-old Liu, or “Grandpa Liu”, as other tenants call him, has been living here for two months. He shares a cubicle with another man and pays $195 per month for rent. For him, moving around is the norm.

“We either don’t speak English, or are undocumented, so we cannot sign leases,” said Liu. “When I first came here, I found a place on Delancey Street, eight of us shared a one-bedroom apartment. I lived there for two years, and then the person who signed the lease was gone. All of us had to move out. It’s like this every time.”

Chinese are the second most undocumented immigrants in the country.

Mae Lee, the executive director of Chinese Progressive Association, said that many of the houses in Chinatown actually don’t have leases because the landlords never offer them one.

Mae Lee, the executive director of Chinese Progressive Association, said that many of the houses in Chinatown actually don’t have leases because the landlords never offer. Photo by Ellie Miao

“There is a language barrier of course, but many of the migrants also don’t know their rights and don’t know about leases. Especially those who are undocumented, they are more vulnerable,” said Lee. “ I’ve heard cases in which the landlords threatened to turn in the undocumented tenants to the government.”
Liu has moved so many times over the years that he couldn’t name every one of them. He remembers living in three places on Broome Street, the longest stay was seven years, and the shortest was two weeks.

“Rent should be one third of your income, that is the national standard of how you can live comfortably. But in Chinatown the rent is roughly the same as the median household income, which is $2700,” said Lee. “For many migrants, Chinatown is the first place where they come to live. They have nothing and they are paid poorly, but there is just not enough affordable housing in here.”

According to the Asian American Federation of New York Census Information Center’s research, almost one third of the Chinese in New York City live below the poverty line, many do not speak English and have never finished high school. This contributes to living conditions like at 81 Bowery.

No private bathroom, no kitchen and no stove make daily life very hard in 81 Bowery. Liu only cooks once a day and saves the food in the tiny fridge for the rest of the day.

Liu has lived in New York City for 17 years. He grew up in Southern China’s Fujian Province, which is where most Chinese migrants in New York are from. His son was the first one in the family who immigrated to America, followed by his two daughters. Liu and his ex wife, whom he divorced 35 years ago, were the last to come.

“Seventeen years ago, I was still strong enough to work,” said Liu. “Now I’m too old.”
He worked in a nail salon owned by a guy he knew back in Fujian, until five years ago. Now he has a green card, the government gives him $500 per month’s subsidy.

“I have no family here in New York. My son and daughters are in Connecticut,” said Liu. But he would rather stay in New York than living with them in Connecticut. “They all have their own families now.”
Liu is proud of his families. “My biggest grandson is a college graduate,” he said. “He is an engineer and he makes decent money; unlike me, I’m illiterate, I never went to school.” However, Liu said he hadn’t talked to him for years, not even over the phone.

Liu’s best friend in 81 Bowery is Jiang, a 37-year-old construction worker. Jiang has been here for seven years, and never got married. “I live here because it’s cheap,” said Jiang, “I’m still paying back my stowaway fee to the ‘snakehead’.”

Snakehead refers to the infamous Chinese gangsters in New York City who help people enter America illegally. Most of the money Jiang made over the years has been paid to his snakehead, so he has no savings. He lives in a cubicle by himself and pays $250 per month.

Liu is moving out again in late February, to temporarily stay with his friend in Flushing, Queens before going back to China for a visit. He has no idea where to live when he comes back to New York.

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“I can only see shadows, no more,” said Lopez early Monday as the snow was starting to fall in this working class, immigrant community in Brooklyn. “As long as there are people walking on the street, it says the weather is not that bad, and I’d stay.”

Disabled and jobless, he makes money by singing upbeat ballads and playing his accordion every morning in his neighborhood. He spends one hour on a block, then moves to the next one. He makes $5 a day at most.

Before he went blind he used to be a roofer. But as his vision worsened, he could no longer do the job and had to rely on savings to pay his $320 rent.

He used up the last of his savings to hire his old immigration lawyer, to work out a deal with his landlord to suspend his rent. It was the same lawyer who helped him get his green card in 2002, 16 years after coming to this country from Mexico.

But his Social Security card and the green card were stolen and they have not been replaced. He carries around a certification from Maimonides Medical Center that says he donated blood at their blood center, to prove his legal status.

“I don’t have anything else to prove my identity,” he said.

When bad weather comes, Lopez stands under the eaves of the shops along the street. He helps shop owners with cleaning and other odd jobs. In return, they let him perform there.

Laia Diaz, the owner of the laundry on 4^th Avenue, said that when Lopez started singing in the neighborhood years ago, she recognized him right away.

“He was on television in 1991,” said Diaz. “He went into the UN building with a gun and got arrested. But he is a nice man in life.”

But Lopez said the gun charge was a big mistake.

“My friend wanted me to keep his gun for him. I did, I carried it everywhere. I didn’t speak English and had no idea it was illegal,” said Lopez. “I was just visiting the UN.”

As the snow falls, Lopez sings, but no one stops to listen.

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by Maria Panskaya

With eyes filled with tears, Ricky sat in the front row at Church of the Holy Apostles, in Chelsea, Manhattan yesterday attentively watching young and old performers acting and dancing on the stage in the new ballet show, “For The Homeless” by Edward Morgan Ballet.

Ricky is not her real name and she no longer uses her last name. She said her age is insignificant to her; while such things as food, shelter and hygiene is of a huge value to her life.

“For The Homeless” a free performance, which was created in collaboration with Goddard Riverside Community Center and Joseph Alexander Awareness Project, revealed the uncensored side of homelessness, trying to raise awareness and educate people on the issue thought dance and expressive acting. The show closes tomorrow.

“A lot of people have a misconception about homeless,” said Celestiena Trower, a former social worker and one of the performers. “We hope that people who see the performance will be more conscious about this issue. The homeless are not weak people or people who don’t want to work. They are all kinds of people: people who had been at war and came back injured, people who worked and lost their jobs. We want New Yorkers to know it.”

Ricky, who had been homeless for about five years, was covered in thick bluefish blankets, with charcoal leather boots slightly showing from underneath her numerous robes and with a red t-shirt brightly popping out from underneath her navy-blue hoodie. She didn’t smell. She wasn’t rude. And she didn’t choose to live on the streets or to beg for food, she said.

Before, she had it all—family, home, food—but one day she lost her job, all savings drained away, she received almost no help form the city government, lost her apartment and friends, and ended up moving to the nearest dumpster.

“I thought it would never happen to me. I would never end up living on the street,” said Ricky. “But it happened. Sometimes I overhear people say that I chose to be this way, but it’s not true. How can someone, in good mind and spirit, intentionally become homeless? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Joseph Alexander, director of the Edward Morgan Ballet and initiator of the Homeless Awareness Project, came up with an idea of a ballet for the homeless four years ago, inspired by one of his students. With ballet being an art of physical strength, grace and discipline, Alexander’s student was coming in late for classes and skipping some of them.

“I remember her crying a lot,” said Alexander, in reference to his student. “I thought that she might’ve been abused at home or something along these lines. But one day she said to me that she and her mama were moving to a shelter and it is hard for her to keep up with ballet training. I was shocked.”

The following year Alexander began to work with kids who lived in shelters, teaching them how to sing and dance. The hard work was paid off when the kids won a talent show with their musical theater/ballet performance.

However, one of the difficulties Alexander had faced since the awareness project started was raising funds. He had always spent his own money to cover ballet expenses such as children’s trips to contests and equipment costs. No donations were coming in from anywhere. But it didn’t discourage him from committing to the project.

“I still reach out to children form different communities, trying to integrate them,” said Alexander. “If you have talent and drive we will foster it.”

Since then, in collaboration with various organizations, he has worked on raising awareness about homelessness, sending the message that homeless people are people too and they deserve help and attention. Despite the Morgan’s ballet company’s nation-wide recognition, the company still train children from impoverished communities and participate in multiple outreach programs.

Approximately 150 people attended “For The Homeless” performance and among those were representatives from different cultures, generations and races—from several homeless people like Ricky to college students to concerned citizens, who live just above the poverty line.

Sharice Burgess, of the Bronx is struggling to provide for her two children and her 94-year-old mother.

“I stay in prayer all the time,” said Burgess. “My family is too close to being kicked out from the apartment. I pray I have enough money to pay rent every month.”

According to the Census Bureau, 21% of New Yorkers live in poverty and struggle to make ends meet every day, just like Burgess. While watching the emotionally intense ballet choreography, Burgess broke into tears, scared that one day she might end up living on the street, sleeping on the stone-cold floor and begging for food.

Zach Mihalko, of Brooklyn attended the performance only because of the Morgan’s outstanding dancing skills and reputation, but said he was educated and inspired by the show and he vowed to volunteer at soup kitchens every week.

“This performance added to my understanding about homelessness,” said Mihalko. “To be honest, I have never even thought about this issue. I didn’t care much. But now I feel like I have to do something to help those unfortunate on the streets.”

Mihalko’s emotional response to the ballet was a reaction Morgan had tried to achieve among all guests. Even though no politicians or governmental officials responded to the Morgan’s invitation to see the performance, he was still happy that their awareness message was able to touch hearts and open minds of regular folks like Mihalko.

“Most people take comfort of their home and food on their table for granted,” said Anne Wangh, of Manhattan one of the attendees. “They don’t think they can end up homeless one day.”

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A coalition of Catholic orders called Nuns on the Bus took to the road this summer to protest the Ryan budget’s affects on the poor
Photo Courtesy of tvnewsbadge

Catholic groups hope to exert an influence on voters and politicians ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but they find themselves at odds with other Catholic organizations as they struggle to determine how to turn church principles into policy.

Roman Catholics make up 23.9 percent of the population, according to a 2007 Pew Research poll. But, unlike Evangelical Protestants, who make up 26.3 percent and who strongly favor socially conservative policies, Catholics are spread across the political spectrum. Far from being a voting bloc in the Nov. 6 elections, they are sharply divided over abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage and poverty.

Both Vice President Joe Biden and the Republican aspirant, Paul Ryan, are Roman Catholics—a first time for a head-to-head at that level. But Ryan said during their one debate that his faith inspires his opposition to abortion while Biden, who supports abortion rights, said he objects to imposing religious beliefs on others.

The Catholic Association, based in Washington, D.C., gave Obama a failing grade on its Freedom of Religion scorecard, which measures how well a politician protects the association’s interpretation of religious values. The group gave his rival, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, an A-plus.

Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at the association, said that “increasingly, there’s a notion that religion is something that should be private.” The group refers to Biden’s comment during the debate that he separates his policy-making from his faith.

The Catholic Association plans to circulate more than 500,000 of its scorecards in the battleground state of Ohio. It makes its voting guide available in both English and Spanish. According to a Gallup poll conducted in April, Hispanic Catholics support Obama by an overwhelming majority.

For the past decade, the Knights of Columbus has quietly worked to block same-sex marriage. The organization, which was founded in 1881 by Father Michael McGivney, the son of Irish immigrants, now includes 1.9 million members and is known for providing food and housing services to the poor, funded by donations and a top-rated life-insurance service.

According to tax returns for the Knights of Columbus, the organization has given more than $6 million since 2005 to groups seeking to ban same-sex marriage. This year, the Knights gave to such campaigns in all four states where an initiative on the matter is on the ballot, including donations of $250,000 each in Washington State and Maryland.
The Knights of Columbus did not reply to requests for an interview. It recently released a statement expressing support for “the bishops of the Catholic Church” and the church’s teaching on “moral issues.”

One of the flashpoints for Catholics concerns the contraception mandate that is part of Obama’s Affordable Care Act; the mandate requires that all health insurance plans cover preventive health services, including FDA-approved forms of birth control. Though the administration exempted religious organizations such as churches, a public spat ensued.
American bishops declared that the policy violates the “conscience rights” of Catholic-affiliated universities and hospitals. The bishops’ stance inspired grassroots organization as well. Catholics for Freedom of Religion, founded by Barbara Samuells and five other volunteers, opposes the mandate for the same reasons as The Catholic Association. Samuells says that mandating contraceptive coverage is not a compelling “government interest,” especially when birth control is available at clinics for “pennies.”

Both Catholics for Freedom of Religion and the Catholic Association opposed the president’s proposed compromise to exempt all religious organizations and non-profits but require insurance companies to pay for and absorb the costs of providing contraception.

The Nuns on the Bus see these issues as secondary, even contrary to the mission of the church. A coalition of sisterly orders, the Nuns on the Bus made waves with a nine-state tour this summer highlighting social justice issues and protesting the budget cuts proposed by Ryan. When the nuns reached Marietta, Ohio, they faced a protest themselves from the Marietta 9-12 Project, a Tea Party-like group inspired by television personality Glenn Beck.

The protesters held signs supporting Romney and Ryan and attacking abortion, which the sisters do not explicitly oppose.

A supporter of Nuns on the Bus and her little sister
Photo Courtesy of tvnewsbadge

The sisters see cuts to programs for the poor and working classes in the Republicans’ budget as crises of justice. They consider the Obama White House an ally. Network, the group that runs Nuns on the Bus, compiled policy proposals for the transition documents when Obama was newly elected. Network was also a vocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act.

Sister Marge Clark, Network’s lobbyist for domestic human needs, says that “the underlying federal budget should be formed on the needs of the people” because the United States has a responsibility to focus on poverty.

But the Vatican wants the nuns to keep their noses out of the books. Earlier this year, the church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rebuked Network for being “silent” on the issues of gay marriage and abortion.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops takes the same position as Network on poverty, saying in a letter to the House of Representatives that the House budget failed to “protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people.”

But the church has not taken a stance against the Romney/Ryan ticket. Ryan says his budget is guided by “the church’s social teaching.” Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the bishops’ conference, calls Ryan a “great public servant.”

But Ryan’s plan to convert food stamps and Medicaid to block grants and to slash funding will certainly affect the poor. If he’s serious that his budget is in line with the church’s teaching to help the needy, Ryan is putting a great deal of faith in the private sector to step in and provide for America’s most vulnerable.

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