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Global, U.S. Protestors Demand WTO Waive IP Restrictions Blocking COVID-19 Vaccine Access Following Delay of WTO Ministerial Due to Omicron Variant
WTO Must Lift IP Obstacles to Greatly Expand Vaccine, Treatment Production or New Variants Will Cause Endless Cycle of Death and Economic Hardship.
Photos of protests here.
WASHINGTON
Today, doctors and medical students, labor and faith leaders and activists across the U.S. and around the world are holding vigils and protests as part of a global call to action demanding the suspension of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules that are prolonging the global COVID-19 pandemic by providing monopoly control to a few pharmaceutical corporations which limits supplies of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Protests are being held in a dozen American cities and two dozen locales worldwide in support of an emergency waiver of WTO rules that now empower a few pharmaceutical corporations to decide how much vaccine and treatment is produced and where it is sold. A waiver would allow medicines to be produced in as many places as possible as quickly as possible.
The day of action was planned to coincide with the start of a WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva, the body's first major decision-making summit in four years. The meeting was postponed indefinitely due to global travel restrictions spurred by the new Omicron variant. Even as the organization that has blocked global access to vaccines is forced to shut down due to a new variant, activists continue to demand the WTO get out of the way of ending the pandemic.
COVID-19 variants like Omicron and Delta develop in regions where few people can obtain vaccines. Today, only 7% of people in low-income countries have had their first dose due to ongoing shortages of vaccine supplies. Participants in many of Tuesday's vigils and protests are observing a moment of silence with the ringing of a bell every four seconds, with each toll symbolizing another preventable COVID-19 death caused by the WTO's inaction.
At his Monday briefing on Omicron, President Joe Biden explained: "But we need to do more than vaccinate Americans. To beat the pandemic, we have to vaccinate the world as well. And America is leading that effort. ... The Delta variants and now the Omicron variant all emerged elsewhere in the world. So we can't let up until the world is vaccinated. We're protecting Americans by doing that as well." On Nov. 26, just before the WTO announced the postponement of the ministerial, Biden reiterated his position and called "on the nations gathering next week for the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting to meet the U.S. challenge to waive intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines."
"The Omicron variant and the Delta variant before it are the endless pandemic that public health experts have warned about unless everyone around the world can get vaccinated and there are no raging COVID outbreaks to hatch dangerous new variants," said Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The world has wasted more than a year of trying everything but the necessary emergency suspension of pharmaceutical firms' monopoly control over how many vaccines and treatments are made, which is necessary to get the supplies needed to end the pandemic. We need U.S. leadership at the WTO to get our European allies to stop blocking the 100-plus nations that want this waiver and to get a special online WTO meeting to enact a comprehensive waiver immediately."
Advocates for the waiver are holding vigils and protests this week not just across the U.S. -- but also in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Uganda, the U.K. and more.
This global call to action is endorsed by powerful labor, health and other organization worldwide including the global labor federation, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Public Services International (PSI), Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Oxfam, Avaaz, the People's Vaccine Alliance, Greenpeace, and many more.
A full list of events is below.
BACKGROUND: More than 100 nations support a temporary, COVID-specific waiver of WTO rules that are part of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). The Biden administration announced its support for this TRIPS waiver in May and Pres. Biden reiterated the urgency of enacting a waiver in his statement on Friday about the omicron variant. But the U.S. government has not acted to get the few close U.S. allies blocking the waiver, the European Union (pushed by Germany), Switzerland and the UK, to allow progress on the critical initiative. A meaningful WTO waiver that can facilitate the necessary scale-up in production will only be agreed to if the Biden administration applies maximum diplomatic and political pressure to make it happen.
Last week, members of Congress joined health, labor, faith and development leaders to deliver three million petition signatures with this demand, and nine U.S. Senators called on President Biden to "deliver on your promise to defeat the pandemic" by actively pushing for the TRIPS waiver at the ministerial. With the ministerial now postponed, advocates are demanding Biden work with the European Union and WTO Director-General to hold an emergency, online meeting to approve the waiver.
This week, a coalition of nurses unions representing well over 2.5 million health care workers from 28 countries around the world -- coordinated by Global Nurses United and Progressive International -- filed a complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur on Physical and Mental Health, alleging human rights violations by the EU, UK, Norway, Switzerland and Singapore, for their opposition to the TRIPS waiver. Waiver opposing countries were also directly named and shamed this week by the Council of Global Unions (CGU), which represents over 200 million workers.
Since being introduced over a year ago, support for the waiver has poured in from the majority of U.S. House Democrats, ten U.S. senators, 170-plus former heads of state and Nobel laureates, 400-plus U.S. civil society organizations, 250 international organizations and over 100 international intellectual policy academics.
PROTESTS DEMANDING A COVID-19 WTO WAIVER
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U.S. EVENTS
*All U.S. events on Nov. 30 unless noted
BOSTON, MA
1:00 PM
CHICAGO, IL - two events
3:00 PM
@ 103rd and Western
Time TBA
@ Location TBA
DENVER, CO
5:00 PM
@ Denver Public Library, east lawn
10 W. Fourteenth Ave. Pkwy
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ
3:30 PM
@ Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
NEW HAVEN, CT
Time TBA
@ Location TBA
NEW YORK, NY
5:15 PM
@ Times Square
Duffy Square area along 46th St.
PORTLAND, OR
6:15 PM
@ The World Trade Center
Corner of SW 2nd and Salmon
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
1:00 PM
@ UCSF, Parnassus Campus
505 Parnassus Ave.
WASHINGTON, DC - two events
12:00 PM
@ Foggy Bottom Metro
23rd and I St. NW
1:30 PM
@ White House
Pennsylvania Ave. & Lafayette Park
GLOBAL EVENTS
Barcelona, ES
Time and Date: TBA
Petition gathering
Belfast, NI
Time and Date: TBA
Petition gathering
Bilbao, ES
Time and Date: TBA
Petition gathering
Brussels, BE
November 30, 5:00 PM CET
Vigil
Geneva, CH
November 30, ALL DAY
8AM: Rally
9AM: International Press Conference
10AM-6PM: Picket @ Centre International de Conferences
5PM-8PM Candlelight march
Geneva, CH
December 1, 9:00AM - 6:00PM
Picket @ Centre International de Conferences
Geneva, CH
December 2, 9:00AM - 6:00PM
Picket @ Centre International de Conferences ATTEND
Geneva, CH
December 3, 9:00AM - 6:00PM
Picket @ Centre International de Conferences
Jakarta, ID
November 30, 9:00 AM
Rally & March @ Embassy or Switzerland
London, UK
November 30, 11:00 AM
Photo stunt shaming the government for opposing the TRIPS waiver.
Mbarara, UG
November 30, Time TBA
Vigil & Moment of Silence @ Mbarara University Of Science & Technology
Melbourne, AU
November 30, 12:00 PM AEDT
Vigil for Global Vaccine Justice.
Online/Virtual Rally
November 23, 9:00 AM ET
"WTO: DON'T TRADE WITH OUR LIVES!" Online Global Rally
Paris, FR
November 30, 6:00 PM ET
"La vie plutot que les profits! Levez les brevets!" Rally & March
Sydney, AU
November 22, 12:00 PM AEDT
Rally to tell Pfizer: "End the Vaccine Monopoly!"
Toronto, CA
November 22, 4:00 PM ET
"All Out for a PeoplesVaccine" Rally
Valencia, ES
Time and Date: TBA
Petition gathering
Vienna, AT
November 22-28
Starting 11:00 AM Nov. 28
Youth activists will hold a 7 day vigil outside the Ministry of Economics Stubenring
Vienna, AT
November 30, 6:00 PM
March & Rally
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
Trump Admin Slammed for Yet Another Move to 'Help Corporate Polluters' Exploit Alaska
One critic called the transfer of 1.4 million acres a "massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don't want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities."
May 06, 2026
Defenders of the planet took aim at President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday for transferring approximately 1.4 million acres of public lands along the Dalton Utility Corridor from the US Bureau of Land Management to the state of Alaska.
"This corridor encompasses some of Alaska’s most critical transportation and energy assets, including portions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System corridor, the Dalton Highway, and proposed routes for the Ambler Road and Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects," the US Department of the Interior noted in a statement, framing the move as part of DOI's commitment to the Alaska Statehood Act, as well as orders issued by Trump and the agency's secretary, Doug Burgum.
As Burgum and Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy cheered the development on Wednesday, Andrea Feniger, director of the state's Sierra Club chapter, declared that "this is less a transfer to Alaskans than a massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don't want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities."
"Gov. Dunleavy has repeatedly shown he is more interested in helping the Trump administration and fossil fuel executives exploit Alaska than standing up for the people who actually live here," Feniger said. "These companies will not be satisfied until every corner of our state is opened to industrial development and short-term profit, regardless of the permanent damage done to the wild places, subsistence traditions, and communities that make Alaska unique. Alaskans deserve leaders who will protect these lands for future generations, not politicians willing to hand them over to corporate polluters."
Bloomberg reported that "Alaska's acquisition along the highway north of Fairbanks is part of 2.1 million acres" that Burgum offered earlier this year, after revoking a pair of decades-old orders. In March, a coalition of environmental groups, including Trustees for Alaska, filed a federal lawsuit over the secretary "unlawfully removing federal protections."
While Alaska filed a motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday, Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, told Bloomberg that the land transfer is illegal. She also said that "the interior secretary broke the law when removing federal protections for over 2 million acres of public lands in February without hearings in local communities, without a public comment period, and without addressing that decision's impacts on land, water, and subsistence users."
Other groups supporting that suit include the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, and Sierra Club, whose director of conservation, Dan Ritzman, condemned Wednesday's transfer.
"This action will only help corporate polluters transform Alaska into an industrial wasteland—destroying irreplaceable landscapes for the sake of expanding the portfolios of mining and oil and gas companies that will never have to live with the consequences of this destruction," Ritzman stressed. "This decision completely ignores the wishes of local communities and tribes that depend upon these untouched areas for their livelihoods, cultures, and regional identities."
"Alaska is home to some of the country's last true wild places, and projects like Alaska LNG and the Ambler Road threaten irreversible damage to these precious landscapes, the wildlife that depend on them, and the communities that have stewarded them for generations," he added. "These lands belong to all Americans, not corporate special interests looking to exploit them for short-term profit. We are fighting this in court and will continue opposing any other attempts to sacrifice Alaska's public lands for the benefit of polluters and extractive industries."
Rebecca Noblin, an Alaska senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, similarly told E&E News that "handing this incredible stretch of federal public lands over to the state puts the communities, fish, and wildlife who live there in danger."
"Alaska officials envision bulldozing the area for a private industrial mining road and the LNG pipeline boondoggle," Noblin said. "We're fighting this transfer of our federal public lands in court, and we'll keep standing up for Alaska's wild places."
Climate and conservation groups have also recently sounded the alarm about Interior's forthcoming fossil fuel lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain, and warned—in the words of Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity—that that Trump's "ridiculously reckless" plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling, including near Alaska, "could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast."
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Tennessee GOP Ripped for Rush to 'Shamelessly Capitalize' on Supreme Court Voting Rights Ruling
"You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community," said one Democratic Tennessee state senator. "You cannot call it anything but racism.”
May 06, 2026
Voting rights defenders in Tennessee on Wednesday condemned a racially rigged congressional map proposed by Republican state lawmakers in the wake of last week's US Supreme Court decision limiting challenges to discriminatory redistricting.
Tennessee Republicans unveiled a US House map that breaks Memphis—one of the nation's largest majority-Black cities—into three districts in a bid to make it likely for GOP candidates to flip the 9th Congressional District, which has been represented by Democrats for half a century.
"These maps have just been released that look like some coloring book from the Republican Party, without any clarity at a precinct level, of where these new districts are gonna be," state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-86) said Wednesday. Pearson—who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen in the 9th District—drew national attention in 2023 when Republican legislators expelled him and Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) following their protest for tighter gun laws after the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
Tennessee Republicans just unveiled their post-VRA congressional gerrymander.It would eliminate the one majority-Black and solidly Democratic district by splitting Memphis 3 ways to install a 9-0 Republican majority.It also splits Nashville several ways to protect scandal-tarred Rep. Andy Ogles
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— Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 8:34 AM
"This whole process has been a sham," Pearson added. "It's been done in secrecy, behind closed doors, with backroom deals. This is just wrong. And everyone knows why this is happening. This is an attack on our Black majority district, this is an attack on our democracy."
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) weighed in Wednesday on the proposed gerrymander, writing on X, "MAGA Republicans are taking a blowtorch to Black representation in the American South."
Jeffries said that President Donald Trump "and Supreme Court extremists are responsible for this carnage," vowing to "crush them at the ballot box in November" during midterm elections.
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), said in a statement, “This proposal takes an already egregious gerrymander to an even greater extreme by carving up Memphis into three districts, connecting it to rural areas hundreds of miles away, stretching as far as middle Tennessee—communities with needs far different from those of Memphians."
Bisognano added that the GOP proposal "robs Black voters of the ability to elect a congressional candidate of their choice—reversing a right that Black Memphians fought for with blood, sweat, and tears."
Democratic state lawmakers, civil rights leaders, and concerned citizens rallied outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville Tuesday to protest the proposal as a two-day special legislative session on the issue began.
HAPPENING NOW… marching on the Capitol…. #NewJimCrow @GovBillLee
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 12:33 PM
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called the special session just two days after the US Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision ordering the state to redraw its 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation.
Lee's move came a day after a phone call from Trump, who has urged him and other Republican governors to follow the lead of Texas, the first salvo fired in a redistricting war prompted by Republican fears of a midterm loss of one or both houses of Congress. Democrat-controlled California followed Texas' move, with other blue states including Virginia, Maryland, and Washington in various stages of enacting or considering redraws.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry subsequently suspended his state’s scheduled May 16 US House primary election, a move that drew rebuke from liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and legal challenges from Louisianans who already cast ballots in the contest.
The Louisiana v. Callais decision, which the court's 6-3 right-wing majority framed as limiting the role of race in redistricting, is now being used to defend maps where race still plays a decisive role, not only in Tennessee but also in other states that are moving to redraw their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a rigged congressional map into law.
“The ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to gut the Voting Rights Act before Tennessee Republicans rushed to be the first to shamelessly capitalize on it by proposing a gerrymander that systematically targets Black voters in Memphis... and ensures all of the state’s congressional districts are majority-white," Bisognano said.
Bold, blatant f*cking racism. They're gleeful about it.
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— catnan.bsky.social (@catnan.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 7:58 PM
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25) said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be colorblind—the decision indicated states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics."
“Tennessee’s redistricting will reduce the risk of future legal challenges while promoting sound and strategic conservatism," Sexton added.
Black Memphians weren't having it. Protesters interrupted the second day of hearings Wednesday as a House committee discussed the proposal, chanting, "Memphis is Black, there's no denying that!" and "Hands off our vote!"
“Memphis is Black! There’s no denying that!”House committee disrupted after Speaker sexton presents the racist Republican maps and claims race has nothing to do with how they carved up the city to dilute black representation with white power 🤔(From @gabbysalinas)
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:06 PM
"Voters pick our leaders, not the other way around,” Memphis resident Amber Sherman told WREG. "Slicing up Memphis’ congressional districts across a state map will make it impossible for us to get fair representation in Congress because we know that adding a chunk of rural voters to urban cities will never give us fair representation.”
Nashville students confronted Sen. Joey Hensley (R-28) inside the Capitol on Wednesday about how the proposal will disenfranchise voters affected by the redistricting. Hensley's attempt to gaslight the students was caught on camera by The Tennessee Holler, which has provided extensive coverage of the gerrymandering effort.
HENSLEY: “Their vote will still count the same.”STUDENTS: “Then why not leave it the way it was before?”🤔🔥Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) tries to gaslight NASHVILLE students about the Republican push to strip representation from MEMPHIS… and gets immediately owned.
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 7:09 AM
During Tuesday's session, numerous Democratic lawmakers objected to the proposal, with some invoking the deadly struggle of the Civil Rights era.
"I never thought in my lifetime as the youngest African American to ever serve in this body, in the history of this state, that I’d be standing in a body surrounded by my colleagues who are going to erase the vote of my city and Black people in Memphis,” state Sen. London Lamar (D-33) said, according to Democracy Docket.
“This will be one of the most racist actions taken in the modern history of this Legislature that you are participating in this week," she continued. "Intentionally breaking state law to take my community’s vote is downright disgusting and offensive.”
“This is an opportunity for you to have some courage, show some courage. Y’all know this is wrong,” Lamar added. “You don’t have to do it.”
State Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-29) said: “There’s no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black and breaking it up into three different districts. You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community. You cannot call it anything but racism.”
“History will not look back kindly on you when you had an opportunity to do what was right and you chose to do something else,” she added.
MEMPHIS SENATOR @raumeshakbari : “This is an act of hate. You cannot call it anything but racism. You cannot sugarcoat this.”Tennessee Republicans are diluting Black representation with white power, stripping their seat in Congress. #JimCrow @GovBillLee @MarshaBlackburn
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
As Democracy Docket reported: "The debate repeatedly returned to personal history. Black lawmakers invoked ancestors who had fought in wars, lived through segregation, and struggled for the right to vote, placing the proposed map squarely in the lineage of those battles."
The fight for civil rights in Memphis spans centuries, from the Reconstruction-era Memphis Massacre to the Ida B. Wells-led anti-lynching campaign to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. to ongoing struggles over police violence, inequality, and economic justice.
Martin Luther King III warned in a letter to legislative leaders that the redistricting would "dismantle the only congressional district that provides Black voters in Memphis a fair opportunity to have a voice in our democracy."
“Do not take this nation back to the days of Jim Crow," he implored, adding that the “resulting disenfranchisement of Black voters would run contrary to everything that my father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for.”
Bisognano vowed to fight the GOP rigging attempt, saying that "Republicans are doing this because they think they can get away with it without consequence."
"But they are wrong," he added. "Tennesseans from across the state are already rising up against this un-American attempt to deny Black voters their voice at the ballot box, and, if enacted, this map will be challenged in court.”
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The Atlantic Says FBI Investigation Into Its Reporting Would Be a 'Dangerous Attack on the Free Press'
One press freedom advocate said the reported FBI investigation "would be outrageous even if The Atlantic reported classified information, which it didn’t."
May 06, 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday denied that it launched a reported probe into The Atlantic, which recently published a damning account of FBI Director Kash Patel’s alleged drunkenness, though magazine leadership and press freedom advocates remain alarmed.
As reported by MS NOW on Wednesday, the FBI is conducting a criminal leak investigation into The Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick, whose reporting on Patel cited two dozen anonymous sources to document concerns about the FBI director's behavior.
MS NOW noted that the investigation into Fitzpatrick's reporting is "highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information" on the part of government insiders.
One source told MS NOW that the FBI agents assigned to the case have expressed serious reservations about its scope and purpose.
"They know they are not supposed to do this," the source said. "But if they don’t go forward, they could lose their jobs. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don't."
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied to MS NOW that the agency had launched an investigation into Fitzpatrick, saying that "every time there’s a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist."
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said the magazine was working to learn more about the alleged investigation, but "if true, this would be an outrageous, illegal, and dangerous attack on the free press and the First Amendment."
"We will defend Sarah and all of our reporters who are subjected to government harassment simply for pursuing the truth," Goldberg added.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, also condemned the reported investigation, which he said "would be outrageous even if The Atlantic reported classified information, which it didn’t."
"The FBI is reportedly conducting an invasive leak investigation merely to settle a personal vendetta," added Stern. "Separately, it doesn’t make much sense for Patel’s FBI to investigate leaks from what Patel’s lawsuit over the same reporting called ‘sham sources.’ Fake sources can’t leak."
Patel last month filed a $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic for its report on his behavior, which the magazine said included "episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences."
The Atlantic vowed to fight the lawsuit, saying it stood by its reporting while describing Patel's complaint as "meritless."
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