newyorker--2020-06-09--Making a Planet Worth Saving

Making a Planet Worth Saving

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
Most weeks , we talk about how to save the world , which seems the only accurate way to put it , given that we ’ ve just lived through the hottest May in recorded history and that the carbon-dioxide levels in our atmosphere just hit a new high , unmatched in the past three million years .
There are , per usual , dozens of interesting new reports and studies I could tell you about and dozens of dangerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump Administration waiving environmental reviews for major projects such as pipelines .
( Just no more review—go ahead and build . )
But the pain expressed so eloquently in the richest country on Earth these past few weeks can ’ t help but make one wonder : If we ’ re just going to use solar power instead of coal to run the same sad mess of unfair and ugly oppression , is it really worth it ?
Despite the glad sight of Americans surging into the streets this past weekend—and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is setting out to dismantle its police department and replace it with something else—I worry that , as with other such moments in the past , this one may slip away without our society really doing the deep work of facing our collective demons .
So I thought it would be worth listening to some of my colleagues at 350.org ( a group that I helped found ) , who , on Thursday night , put together this Webinar .
It isn ’ t necessary , of course , to agree with all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Webinar doesn ’ t make you uncomfortable in spots , your comfort meter may be pegged too high .
But discomfort never killed anyone , not like a knee on the neck or a coal-fired power plant down the street .
It features the 350.org activists Thanu Yakupitiyage , Dominique Thomas , Cherrell Brown , Natalia Cardona , Emily Southard , Tianna Arredondo , and Clarissa Brooks , as well as Sam Grant , the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of 350 .
Their guests are Oluchi Omeoga , who is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Lumumba Bandele , the national strategies and partnerships director for Movement for Black Lives .
Since this is a fairly personal edition of this newsletter , let me say that there is almost no one I like working with more than the Reverend Lennox Yearwood , Jr. , who is based in Washington , D.C. We ’ ve been to jail together on several occasions , most recently in January , at the launch of a campaign to keep Chase Bank from funding fossil fuels , and we ’ ve worked together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hip Hop Caucus has been at the forefront of bringing culture to bear on environmental politics .
I remember him addressing people being handcuffed , in Lafayette Square , at the start of the Keystone XL mass protests .
“ This is the lunch-counter moment for the twenty-first century , ” he told them .
He and his team are currently filming a climate comedy/documentary called “ Ain ’ t Your Mama ’ s Heat Wave.
” ( See www.Think100Climate.com for more information and a film preview . )
My conversation with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for length and clarity , is below .
You ’ ve worked hard on police-brutality issues and on climate change .
Describe the intersections .
Climate change and police brutality are directly linked together , because the communities who are most impacted and vulnerable to police brutality are also the same communities that are most vulnerable to climate change .
We saw this directly in the case of Eric Garner .
When Eric Garner was killed in 2014 , he stated the same words that we now have heard from George Floyd : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But one of the things that ’ s important to know about Eric Garner is that he had asthma , as did most people in the Garner family , including his daughter Erica , who would die after suffering an asthma-induced heart attack and a broken heart fighting for justice for her father .
Even though Eric Garner was killed by an illegal choke hold by the New York City Police Department , it ’ s important to note that the borough he lived in ( which has the highest tree density in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for ozone pollution , per the American Lung Association ’ s 2018 report .
The way that we can actually fight pollution and police brutality is by fighting them together .
I would also add poverty to this deadly mix , because the issues of police brutality , pollution , and poverty are all linked together .
Sixty-eight per cent of black people live within thirty miles of a coal-fired power plant .
We know that the destruction of Hurricane Maria , Harvey , Katrina , and Superstorm Sandy all had a direct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities but on communities of color , which reinforces that racial justice and climate justice are linked .
But , to be clear , it ’ s all about justice .
Which is why the cries of the people of “ No Justice , No Peace ” are very real .
So the minute that we become serious about fighting police brutality as an environmental movement will be the minute that we begin to have faster gains in fighting climate change and vice versa .
Those who are solely focussed on police brutality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact of the climate crisis and lack of clean air and lack of clean water and those oil companies , gas companies , and coal companies , and how they are directly linked to the poisoning of our communities that we are trying to protect , then they will see that they must take on not only police brutality but also the issue of climate change .
We ’ re coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of Katrina , which was an early chance for Americans to think about the links between race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You ’ ve worked hard on relief and recovery in New Orleans .
What lessons did that leave you with ?
To be honest , our modern-day , twenty-first-century environmental movement is pretty much based on the backs of what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with Hurricane Katrina .
So it ’ s a little disappointing that our movement is still trying to connect the dots .
Trying to figure out what racial justice means to climate justice .
Our movement is still trying to break the silos .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understanding the issue of racial justice and climate justice after Hurricane Katrina , and in some cases are behind the curve on how we are addressing this issue right now .
On the other hand , while we approach the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina , I am excited to see how , within those past fifteen years , the movement has changed to see more leaders of color in key positions of leadership , groups like Hip Hop Caucus moving to the forefront , and to see young people rising up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the conversation of how we connect the dots of climate justice and racial justice .
Even though it seems to have taken a very long time to get to this point , I am encouraged by seeing large environmental organizations and environmentalists willing to have the conversation about the issues of racial justice and defunding the police .
They ’ re calling out white supremacy and institutional racism and posting it on social media .
And taking part in protest and talking about it , and not acting like it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They ’ re understanding that they must discuss racial justice and climate justice at the same time , and not act like race is some kind of trip wire for our movement .
I ’ m excited because it feels like we are stepping over the race trip wire at this critical moment .
The stakes are clearly high , with the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd , but I ’ m very encouraged at this moment .
I ’ m also encouraged that white people are not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critical time but accomplices in this moral and just fight to end white supremacy .
I think 2020 is the year of truth , and I think that this fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is a moment that the entire climate movement can get it right .
If we do this now , then when we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina , in 2030 , we can say we defeated poverty , pollution , and police brutality in this country .
What a glorious moment that can be !
The Reverend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listening to Meek Mill ’ s “ Other Side of America , ” which was released Friday .

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
Most weeks, we talk about how to save the world, which seems the only accurate way to put it, given that we’ve just lived through the hottest May in recorded history and that the carbon-dioxide levels in our atmosphere just hit a new high, unmatched in the past three million years. There are, per usual, dozens of interesting new reports and studies I could tell you about and dozens of dangerous new political developments, right down to the Trump Administration waiving environmental reviews for major projects such as pipelines. (Just no more review—go ahead and build.) But the pain expressed so eloquently in the richest country on Earth these past few weeks can’t help but make one wonder: If we’re just going to use solar power instead of coal to run the same sad mess of unfair and ugly oppression, is it really worth it? Despite the glad sight of Americans surging into the streets this past weekend—and even with news that the Minneapolis City Council is setting out to dismantle its police department and replace it with something else—I worry that, as with other such moments in the past, this one may slip away without our society really doing the deep work of facing our collective demons.
So I thought it would be worth listening to some of my colleagues at 350.org (a group that I helped found), who, on Thursday night, put together this Webinar. It isn’t necessary, of course, to agree with all the views expressed there; if the Webinar doesn’t make you uncomfortable in spots, your comfort meter may be pegged too high. But discomfort never killed anyone, not like a knee on the neck or a coal-fired power plant down the street. It features the 350.org activists Thanu Yakupitiyage, Dominique Thomas, Cherrell Brown, Natalia Cardona, Emily Southard, Tianna Arredondo, and Clarissa Brooks, as well as Sam Grant, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of 350. Their guests are Oluchi Omeoga, who is a Minneapolis organizer with Black Visions Collective, and Lumumba Bandele, the national strategies and partnerships director for Movement for Black Lives.
Passing the Mic
Since this is a fairly personal edition of this newsletter, let me say that there is almost no one I like working with more than the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr., who is based in Washington, D.C. We’ve been to jail together on several occasions, most recently in January, at the launch of a campaign to keep Chase Bank from funding fossil fuels, and we’ve worked together in many other ways, because his Hip Hop Caucus has been at the forefront of bringing culture to bear on environmental politics. I remember him addressing people being handcuffed, in Lafayette Square, at the start of the Keystone XL mass protests. “This is the lunch-counter moment for the twenty-first century,” he told them. He and his team are currently filming a climate comedy/documentary called “Ain’t Your Mama’s Heat Wave.” (See www.Think100Climate.com for more information and a film preview.) My conversation with the Reverend Yearwood, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below.
You’ve worked hard on police-brutality issues and on climate change. Describe the intersections.
Climate change and police brutality are directly linked together, because the communities who are most impacted and vulnerable to police brutality are also the same communities that are most vulnerable to climate change. We saw this directly in the case of Eric Garner. When Eric Garner was killed in 2014, he stated the same words that we now have heard from George Floyd: “I can’t breathe.” But one of the things that’s important to know about Eric Garner is that he had asthma, as did most people in the Garner family, including his daughter Erica, who would die after suffering an asthma-induced heart attack and a broken heart fighting for justice for her father. Even though Eric Garner was killed by an illegal choke hold by the New York City Police Department, it’s important to note that the borough he lived in (which has the highest tree density in N.Y.C.) also received an F for ozone pollution, per the American Lung Association’s 2018 report. The way that we can actually fight pollution and police brutality is by fighting them together. I would also add poverty to this deadly mix, because the issues of police brutality, pollution, and poverty are all linked together.
Sixty-eight per cent of black people live within thirty miles of a coal-fired power plant. We know that the destruction of Hurricane Maria, Harvey, Katrina, and Superstorm Sandy all had a direct impact not only on marginalized and vulnerable communities but on communities of color, which reinforces that racial justice and climate justice are linked. But, to be clear, it’s all about justice. Which is why the cries of the people of “No Justice, No Peace” are very real.
So the minute that we become serious about fighting police brutality as an environmental movement will be the minute that we begin to have faster gains in fighting climate change and vice versa. Those who are solely focussed on police brutality, the minute they also understand the impact of the climate crisis and lack of clean air and lack of clean water and those oil companies, gas companies, and coal companies, and how they are directly linked to the poisoning of our communities that we are trying to protect, then they will see that they must take on not only police brutality but also the issue of climate change.
We’re coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of Katrina, which was an early chance for Americans to think about the links between race, poverty, and the environment. You’ve worked hard on relief and recovery in New Orleans. What lessons did that leave you with?
To be honest, our modern-day, twenty-first-century environmental movement is pretty much based on the backs of what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with Hurricane Katrina. So it’s a little disappointing that our movement is still trying to connect the dots. Trying to figure out what racial justice means to climate justice. Our movement is still trying to break the silos. We didn’t move fast enough with understanding the issue of racial justice and climate justice after Hurricane Katrina, and in some cases are behind the curve on how we are addressing this issue right now.
On the other hand, while we approach the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I am excited to see how, within those past fifteen years, the movement has changed to see more leaders of color in key positions of leadership, groups like Hip Hop Caucus moving to the forefront, and to see young people rising up, doing so many phenomenal things and engaging in the conversation of how we connect the dots of climate justice and racial justice.
Even though it seems to have taken a very long time to get to this point, I am encouraged by seeing large environmental organizations and environmentalists willing to have the conversation about the issues of racial justice and defunding the police. They’re calling out white supremacy and institutional racism and posting it on social media. And taking part in protest and talking about it, and not acting like it’s taking away from their core mission. They’re understanding that they must discuss racial justice and climate justice at the same time, and not act like race is some kind of trip wire for our movement. I’m excited because it feels like we are stepping over the race trip wire at this critical moment. The stakes are clearly high, with the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, but I’m very encouraged at this moment.
I’m also encouraged that white people are not only asking to be allies at this critical time but accomplices in this moral and just fight to end white supremacy. I think 2020 is the year of truth, and I think that this fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is a moment that the entire climate movement can get it right. If we do this now, then when we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in 2030, we can say we defeated poverty, pollution, and police brutality in this country.
What a glorious moment that can be!
Warming Up
The Reverend Yearwood suggested that people might profit from listening to Meek Mill’s “Other Side of America,” which was released Friday.


newyorker--2020-06-09--I Will No Longer Be Thinking of You, Unless I Hear from You Soon: Letters to My Exes

Hannah , we ’ ve had a good run .
You moved out , what , five years ago ?
That ’ s kind of a long time .
You said you hoped that I would always think of you .
If that ’ s the case , how come , when I do think of you , you don ’ t respond ?
To have me still thinking of you at this point almost seems selfish .
I can only conclude that you no longer want that , and I acknowledge that it may have nothing to do with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to therapy , by the way . )
I ’ m sorry to suddenly cut you off like this .
Let me know if you ’ d like to talk about it , over the phone or in person , whatever works best for you .
Clara , wow , it ’ s been over a decade since college .
I see you ’ re married , which is good—I ’ m happy for you .
Not to say that every marriage is perfect .
I wouldn ’ t know , having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do hope yours is going well .
I just find it disheartening that when I try to tell you I ’ m happy you don ’ t acknowledge it .
I take that to mean you don ’ t feel comfortable responding .
Maybe you don ’ t want to re-ignite old feelings , etc.
, which is O.K .
So I will officially stop thinking of you .
But , if that ’ s not what you want , just communicate as much to me .
Communication is so important , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been making great strides in .
Alana , sometimes people do get back together , so I don ’ t think it was that unreasonable for me to suggest it via e-mail .
Especially given that I don ’ t have your new phone number .
Though you certainly didn ’ t owe me a response , it would have been helpful to know you received my note , so that I could have avoided more humiliating ways of reaching out ( by that , I ’ m referring to the Words @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I understand that the wounds are still fresh with us , so it almost feels cruel to stop thinking of you .
But what choice do you leave me ?
I watch your Instagram Stories and send emojis , and yet you don ’ t watch my Instagram Stories back .
I only became aware that you weren ’ t watching last week , after clicking on my analytics and accidentally scrolling through my thousand followers .
( Things have been picking up for me , followers-wise . )
While I offer thoughtful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mark my messages with a “ like , ” as if you ’ re trying to say , “ I will acknowledge that I ’ ve seen your message , but I ’ m not going to engage.
” If that ’ s what you ’ re saying , just let me know .
Renée , you may not remember me , but we dated for five days in the eighth grade .
We definitely dated .
I sent you a note , delivered by Craig Watt , asking if you would go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Yes ” and wrote down your phone number with a little pink heart .
Unfortunately , we didn ’ t cross paths the rest of that day , or the next ( Friday ) , so , over the weekend , I called you from a pay phone .
Your mom answered , and by the time you got to the phone my three minutes were almost up .
We had a laugh about how I only brought one quarter , and then we got cut off .
Which was kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That Monday , you broke up with me via your friend Hilary , who approached me during dodgeball , handed me the note , and said , “ I ’ m so sorry.
” At that exact moment , Chauncey Dalton—the Babe Ruth of our middle school—released a screamer that caught me right on the solar plexus .
I had to unfold your origami on the sidelines , the welt of the ball still fresh on my chest , while the lead of your No .
2 pencil did the rest .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of your life and out of the dodgeball finals .
I ’ ve never cried that hard before or since , though it ’ s difficult to parse how much was caused by you and how much by Chauncey ’ s raw strength—he went on to play minor-league baseball .
I see you ’ re in Arizona now , doing art therapy .
That sounds really cool .
Given that you are in the business of healing , I think you ’ ll understand why I have to stop thinking of you .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ me know .
We can talk on the phone for more than twenty seconds this time , haha .

Hannah, we’ve had a good run. You moved out, what, five years ago? That’s kind of a long time. You said you hoped that I would always think of you. If that’s the case, how come, when I do think of you, you don’t respond? To have me still thinking of you at this point almost seems selfish. I can only conclude that you no longer want that, and I acknowledge that it may have nothing to do with me. (I’ve started going to therapy, by the way.) I’m sorry to suddenly cut you off like this. Let me know if you’d like to talk about it, over the phone or in person, whatever works best for you.
Clara, wow, it’s been over a decade since college. I see you’re married, which is good—I’m happy for you. Not to say that every marriage is perfect. I wouldn’t know, having never been in one, but I do hope yours is going well. I just find it disheartening that when I try to tell you I’m happy you don’t acknowledge it. I take that to mean you don’t feel comfortable responding. Maybe you don’t want to re-ignite old feelings, etc., which is O.K. So I will officially stop thinking of you. But, if that’s not what you want, just communicate as much to me. Communication is so important, and it’s an area I’ve been making great strides in.
Alana, sometimes people do get back together, so I don’t think it was that unreasonable for me to suggest it via e-mail. Especially given that I don’t have your new phone number. Though you certainly didn’t owe me a response, it would have been helpful to know you received my note, so that I could have avoided more humiliating ways of reaching out (by that, I’m referring to the Words with Friends request).
Rebecca, I understand that the wounds are still fresh with us, so it almost feels cruel to stop thinking of you. But what choice do you leave me? I watch your Instagram Stories and send emojis, and yet you don’t watch my Instagram Stories back. I only became aware that you weren’t watching last week, after clicking on my analytics and accidentally scrolling through my thousand followers. (Things have been picking up for me, followers-wise.) While I offer thoughtful responses to your content, you just mark my messages with a “like,” as if you’re trying to say, “I will acknowledge that I’ve seen your message, but I’m not going to engage.” If that’s what you’re saying, just let me know.
Renée, you may not remember me, but we dated for five days in the eighth grade. We definitely dated. I sent you a note, delivered by Craig Watt, asking if you would go out with me, and you circled “Yes” and wrote down your phone number with a little pink heart. Unfortunately, we didn’t cross paths the rest of that day, or the next (Friday), so, over the weekend, I called you from a pay phone. Your mom answered, and by the time you got to the phone my three minutes were almost up. We had a laugh about how I only brought one quarter, and then we got cut off. Which was kind of romantic, if you think about it. That Monday, you broke up with me via your friend Hilary, who approached me during dodgeball, handed me the note, and said, “I’m so sorry.” At that exact moment, Chauncey Dalton—the Babe Ruth of our middle school—released a screamer that caught me right on the solar plexus. I had to unfold your origami on the sidelines, the welt of the ball still fresh on my chest, while the lead of your No. 2 pencil did the rest. Just like that, I was out of your life and out of the dodgeball finals. I’ve never cried that hard before or since, though it’s difficult to parse how much was caused by you and how much by Chauncey’s raw strength—he went on to play minor-league baseball. I see you’re in Arizona now, doing art therapy. That sounds really cool. Given that you are in the business of healing, I think you’ll understand why I have to stop thinking of you. Unless I hear from you soon—just let me know. We can talk on the phone for more than twenty seconds this time, haha.


newyorker--2020-06-09--Emma Cline Reads “White Noise”

Emma Cline Reads “White Noise”

Emma Cline reads her short story from the June 8 & 15 , 2020 , issue of the magazine .
@ @ @ @ @ , “ The Girls , ” a winner of the Shirley Jackson Awards , came @ @ @ @ @ story collection , “ Daddy , ” will be published later this year .

Photograph by Basso Cannarsa / Opale / Alamy
Emma Cline reads her short story from the June 8 & 15, 2020, issue of the magazine. Cline’s first novel, “The Girls,” a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, came out in 2016. Her story collection, “Daddy,” will be published later this year.


newyorker--2020-06-10--Georgia Betrays Its Voters Again

Georgia Betrays Its Voters Again

In November of 2018 , Alyssa Thys , a twenty-nine-year-old communications manager in Atlanta , waited in line for more than two hours to vote for Stacey Abrams , at her precinct in a working-class , predominantly black neighborhood .
Thys , to whom I spoke at the time , called the experience “ complete chaos and disorganization.
” She returned to the same place , Pittman Park Recreation Center , on Tuesday , to vote in the primaries .
( In the most high-profile race , seven Democrats , including Jon Ossoff , are running for the opportunity to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , David Perdue , in November . )
“ Like , wow , ” Thys , who is white , told me after another frustrating morning .
“ Nothing has been learned.
” She ’ d arrived early again—at 6:45 a.m. , fifteen minutes before polls opened—and there was a line “ down the block , ” she told me , lengthened by social distancing .
A few dozen would-be voters were already queued up ahead of her .
“ People thought they didn ’ t have the correct number of machines again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turned out , there were more machines than two years ago—eight working machines , Thys believed , rather than the three on site in 2018 .
But they ’ re new machines , which require printing out completed paper ballots and placing them in a secured box .
“ They just didn ’ t have any of that paper that was supposed to be printed , ” Thys said , “ which is , like , half of the entire system meant to prevent election fraud.
” After her frustrating experience in 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various issues she ’ d encountered , which included—as she ’ d written on a form—disorganized poll workers , no provisional ballots available , and issues with the touch screens .
“ The response I got , ” Thys told me , “ was that , basically , the state had nothing to do with it and the county election officials were responsible for the staffing and supplies at each precinct—which , honestly , just feels like they ’ re trying to pass the buck .
It comes from the top.
” At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Republican who , as secretary of state , in 2018 , oversaw his own race against Abrams .
Kemp won by some fifty-five thousand votes , amid widespread allegations that Republicans worked to limit turnout .
“ Like me , my neighbors think it ’ s voter suppression again , ” Thys said .
“ That ’ s what I heard in line.
” She shared a video she ’ d taken of a black fellow-voter .
Almost an hour into Tuesday ’ s voting delays , he stepped out and addressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ They say that they ’ ve escalated this particular issue to the Secretary of State ’ s office , ” he said .
“ But we know how that goes .
So what we need you to do in the meantime—because this is what we call voter suppression—we need you all to call election-protection hotline.
” He read the number twice .
“ You may get a voice mail when you call , ” he went on .
“ Please leave a message.
” Shortly after eight o ’ clock , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind schedule .
“ While folks waited , ” Thys said , “ they didn ’ t offer provisional ballots , so we could record our votes and leave.
” She added , “ That ’ s a huge issue for most people .
I ’ m in a relatively privileged position , with a corporate job .
If I needed to be there for eight hours , I could ’ ve been.
” A neighbor of hers , Zakiya Mims , was also experiencing déjà vu .
A twenty-nine-year-old financial planner in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black , grew up in the wealthier , more conservative East Cobb community , in Cobb County .
“ I had great voter experiences there , ” Mims said .
In Fulton County , where she now lives and where she first voted in 2017 , she described a notably different experience : a lack of machines and insufficient access for the elderly and disabled .
She e-mailed her concerns about this to the entire Fulton County Board of Elections two years ago .
Their eventual explanation—that they didn ’ t have enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ My whole thing , ” she told me , “ is you have voting machines sitting in a warehouse !
” ( There were , in fact , hundreds of machines locked in warehouses , as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time , owing to a federal lawsuit over whether the machines were susceptible to tampering . )
Mims told me that she e-mailed the Fulton County Board of Elections again , last week , worried about the same thing recurring .
An official , in response , noted that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owing to the coronavirus pandemic and expected high voter turnout .
“ Nowhere in there does she say the machines are not gon na have tape in them , ” Mims said , “ and they ’ re not gon na have been tested on site.
” On Tuesday , Mims arrived at the Pittman Park precinct at six-fifteen , becoming the second in line , and waited for it to open at 7 A.M. , as scheduled .
“ It was 8:07 before anyone walked into the building , ” she said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to election officials whose voice-mail boxes were full .
“ I get that we ’ re in the middle of COVID-19 and there are new machines , ” she told me .
“ But if they get on the news and say this went smooth , like in 2018 , ” she went on , “ this is why there ’ s voter suppression .
You guys had enough money to have the National Guard out to stand against protesters , but you couldn ’ t use the National Guard to test the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Atlanta , as Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms noted on Twitter , precinct lines were exceedingly long , and some machines were not working .
“ Is this happening across the county , or just on the South End ?
” Bottoms wrote .
The problems appeared to be widespread across both Fulton and Dekalb counties , which comprise much of the Atlanta metropolitan area .
Kate Whitney , a thirty-one-year-old design researcher , also arrived early at her polling location , the West Oakland Missionary Baptist Church , in a poor part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an absentee ballot—because her father is ill and she worried about exposure to the coronavirus—but never received one .
At her polling location , there were three poll workers also dealing with problems , which delayed voting until around nine o ’ clock .
“ When you put the new cards in the machine , ” Whitney said , “ it would say that the data was invalid on the card.
” In the first two hours , Whitney told me , eight people , at most , were successfully able to vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people to stay , but , Whitney said , “ we ’ d already lost a significant number as the day got hotter and people had to get to work.
” She clocked in an hour late , but , like Thys , this did not put her employment in real jeopardy .
“ I can do my work at a lag time , ” she said , “ which is a luxury.
” Whitney spoke to an emergency responder who ’ d just finished a sixteen-hour shift on an ambulance .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to bed and then getting up again tonight to work another extended shift .
She stuck it out , but many did not.
” The whole experience was markedly different from her last one , two years ago , when Whitney , who is white , lived and voted in a wealthier part of the city .
“ We always had enough voting machines , stations , and workers , ” she said .
As for her new polling location and its workers , she said , “ they were doing their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the support , the infrastructure , or resources they needed—they didn ’ t even have a ton of pens.
” She went on , “ Because it ’ s a poorer , smaller , predominantly black area , that doesn ’ t feel like a mistake.
” State officials dissembled .
“ While these issues are unfortunate , ” Gabriel Sterling , a statewide voting-implementation manager , told a local TV station , “ they are not issues of the equipment but a function of counties engaging in poor planning , limited training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s successor as secretary of state , the Republican Brad Raffensperger , echoed this message .
In a statement , Raffensperger called the issues “ unacceptable ” and announced that he ’ d launched an investigation to “ determine what these counties need to do to resolve these issues before November ’ s election.
” He went on , “ Obviously , the first time a new voting system is used there is going to be a learning curve , and voting in a pandemic only increased these difficulties .
But every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote.
” This kind of thinking did not sit well with county officials .
“ It ’ s astounding to me what an abdication of leadership that is , ” Steve Bradshaw , a Dekalb County commissioner , told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , “ to push the ownership down to the counties .
I was raised that if you mess up , ’ fess up .
”

In November of 2018, Alyssa Thys, a twenty-nine-year-old communications manager in Atlanta, waited in line for more than two hours to vote for Stacey Abrams, at her precinct in a working-class, predominantly black neighborhood. Thys, to whom I spoke at the time, called the experience “complete chaos and disorganization.” She returned to the same place, Pittman Park Recreation Center, on Tuesday, to vote in the primaries. (In the most high-profile race, seven Democrats, including Jon Ossoff, are running for the opportunity to unseat Georgia’s senior Republican senator, David Perdue, in November.) “Like, wow,” Thys, who is white, told me after another frustrating morning. “Nothing has been learned.” She’d arrived early again—at 6:45 a.m., fifteen minutes before polls opened—and there was a line “down the block,” she told me, lengthened by social distancing. A few dozen would-be voters were already queued up ahead of her. “People thought they didn’t have the correct number of machines again,” she said. As it turned out, there were more machines than two years ago—eight working machines, Thys believed, rather than the three on site in 2018. But they’re new machines, which require printing out completed paper ballots and placing them in a secured box. “They just didn’t have any of that paper that was supposed to be printed,” Thys said, “which is, like, half of the entire system meant to prevent election fraud.”
After her frustrating experience in 2018, Thys filed a complaint noting the various issues she’d encountered, which included—as she’d written on a form—disorganized poll workers, no provisional ballots available, and issues with the touch screens. “The response I got,” Thys told me, “was that, basically, the state had nothing to do with it and the county election officials were responsible for the staffing and supplies at each precinct—which, honestly, just feels like they’re trying to pass the buck. It comes from the top.” At the top is Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican who, as secretary of state, in 2018, oversaw his own race against Abrams. Kemp won by some fifty-five thousand votes, amid widespread allegations that Republicans worked to limit turnout. “Like me, my neighbors think it’s voter suppression again,” Thys said. “That’s what I heard in line.” She shared a video she’d taken of a black fellow-voter. Almost an hour into Tuesday’s voting delays, he stepped out and addressed the crowd, offering useful information. “They say that they’ve escalated this particular issue to the Secretary of State’s office,” he said. “But we know how that goes. So what we need you to do in the meantime—because this is what we call voter suppression—we need you all to call election-protection hotline.” He read the number twice. “You may get a voice mail when you call,” he went on. “Please leave a message.”
Shortly after eight o’clock, the polling location finally opened, an hour behind schedule. “While folks waited,” Thys said, “they didn’t offer provisional ballots, so we could record our votes and leave.” She added, “That’s a huge issue for most people. I’m in a relatively privileged position, with a corporate job. If I needed to be there for eight hours, I could’ve been.”
A neighbor of hers, Zakiya Mims, was also experiencing déjà vu. A twenty-nine-year-old financial planner in Fulton County, Mims, who is black, grew up in the wealthier, more conservative East Cobb community, in Cobb County. “I had great voter experiences there,” Mims said. In Fulton County, where she now lives and where she first voted in 2017, she described a notably different experience: a lack of machines and insufficient access for the elderly and disabled. She e-mailed her concerns about this to the entire Fulton County Board of Elections two years ago. Their eventual explanation—that they didn’t have enough machines—didn’t make sense to her. “My whole thing,” she told me, “is you have voting machines sitting in a warehouse!” (There were, in fact, hundreds of machines locked in warehouses, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, owing to a federal lawsuit over whether the machines were susceptible to tampering.)
Mims told me that she e-mailed the Fulton County Board of Elections again, last week, worried about the same thing recurring. An official, in response, noted that delays would be expected once more, owing to the coronavirus pandemic and expected high voter turnout. “Nowhere in there does she say the machines are not gonna have tape in them,” Mims said, “and they’re not gonna have been tested on site.” On Tuesday, Mims arrived at the Pittman Park precinct at six-fifteen, becoming the second in line, and waited for it to open at 7 A.M., as scheduled. “It was 8:07 before anyone walked into the building,” she said. Mims sent e-mails and made calls to election officials whose voice-mail boxes were full. “I get that we’re in the middle of COVID-19 and there are new machines,” she told me. “But if they get on the news and say this went smooth, like in 2018,” she went on, “this is why there’s voter suppression. You guys had enough money to have the National Guard out to stand against protesters, but you couldn’t use the National Guard to test the machines on site?”
Elsewhere in Atlanta, as Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms noted on Twitter, precinct lines were exceedingly long, and some machines were not working. “Is this happening across the county, or just on the South End?” Bottoms wrote. The problems appeared to be widespread across both Fulton and Dekalb counties, which comprise much of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Kate Whitney, a thirty-one-year-old design researcher, also arrived early at her polling location, the West Oakland Missionary Baptist Church, in a poor part of Fulton County. She’d requested an absentee ballot—because her father is ill and she worried about exposure to the coronavirus—but never received one. At her polling location, there were three poll workers also dealing with problems, which delayed voting until around nine o’clock. “When you put the new cards in the machine,” Whitney said, “it would say that the data was invalid on the card.” In the first two hours, Whitney told me, eight people, at most, were successfully able to vote. Volunteers brought chairs outside to encourage people to stay, but, Whitney said, “we’d already lost a significant number as the day got hotter and people had to get to work.” She clocked in an hour late, but, like Thys, this did not put her employment in real jeopardy. “I can do my work at a lag time,” she said, “which is a luxury.” Whitney spoke to an emergency responder who’d just finished a sixteen-hour shift on an ambulance. “She’d arrived to vote before going to bed and then getting up again tonight to work another extended shift. She stuck it out, but many did not.” The whole experience was markedly different from her last one, two years ago, when Whitney, who is white, lived and voted in a wealthier part of the city. “We always had enough voting machines, stations, and workers,” she said. As for her new polling location and its workers, she said, “they were doing their best, but didn’t have the support, the infrastructure, or resources they needed—they didn’t even have a ton of pens.” She went on, “Because it’s a poorer, smaller, predominantly black area, that doesn’t feel like a mistake.”
State officials dissembled. “While these issues are unfortunate,” Gabriel Sterling, a statewide voting-implementation manager, told a local TV station, “they are not issues of the equipment but a function of counties engaging in poor planning, limited training, and failures of leadership.” Kemp’s successor as secretary of state, the Republican Brad Raffensperger, echoed this message. In a statement, Raffensperger called the issues “unacceptable” and announced that he’d launched an investigation to “determine what these counties need to do to resolve these issues before November’s election.” He went on, “Obviously, the first time a new voting system is used there is going to be a learning curve, and voting in a pandemic only increased these difficulties. But every other county faced these same issues and were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote.”
This kind of thinking did not sit well with county officials. “It’s astounding to me what an abdication of leadership that is,” Steve Bradshaw, a Dekalb County commissioner, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “to push the ownership down to the counties. I was raised that if you mess up, ’fess up.”


newyorker--2020-06-09--The Embarrassment of Democrats Wearing Kente-Cloth Stoles

The announcement did not warrant such a visual stunt , but the Democratic Party , the party of optics and gesture , apparently could not resist .
On Monday , members of Congress introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 , news that was bulldozed by the pageant antics accompanying it .
Swathed in identical kente stoles , the lawmakers , intent on conveying solidarity with their constituents , only made themselves models of obtuseness .
Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Steny Hoyer wore their stoles over dark suits , as did Senator Kamala Harris .
On House Speaker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bright red , evidently to coördinate with the rhombuses of green and blue in the cloth , the fabric swung , giving her an inappropriate swagger .
There is no event that is too sombre to extinguish the need for style , which we should never dismiss as a frivolity ; clothing can communicate dissent or alliance , belonging and political belief .
All politics rests on an aspect of performance .
But the sight of the mantles literally dragging on the floor—as members of Congress stood up after kneeling for eight minutes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that mirrored that of Derek Chauvin , the cop who , with his knee , pressed on the neck of George Floyd , killing him—felt not just misguided but like an outright mockery .
The need to deliver a photo op overcame consideration of what the resulting pictures would communicate .
Why kente ?
The textile has long been used in ways distant from its original context , collecting meanings both specific and vague .
Kente is indigenous to the Asante kingdom , in what is now Ghana .
Skilled artisans have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; its intricate pattern , a geometry of quadrangles and golden expanse , is extremely difficult to fabricate .
In Ghana , kente is prized as a link between ancestry and the present , a totem of tradition .
In America , kente is a magnet for a broad and diffuse desire for “ Africanness , ” the yearning to participate in the black diaspora .
It is an organization of thread expected to resolve the primal problem of our black Americans ’ continental orphanage .
The kente stole , in particular , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Every spring , black graduates walk down grassy knolls draped in the finery .
Interestingly , authentic kente is endangered .
Scroll through Alibaba.com and you ’ ll find thousands of examples of “ African ” wax-print fabrics , bootlegs of kente primarily manufactured in China .
The piracy results in a kind of sartorial tragedy , or an imperialist comedy ; in Harlem , you might encounter a young black person unaware that her garment is not only fake but a farce .
The stoles worn by members of Congress looked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but the impression of guilelessness was still overwhelming .
It was primarily the white members of Congress who were ridiculed .
An image of Pelosi and Schumer—the former with her hands on her hips in a can-do stance , the latter folding his arms disapprovingly—made them look like ready-made , absurdist hotep memes .
A photo that captured Senator Cory Booker stoleless made him seem the exemplar of common sense .
( In fact , he wore one , too . )
Fashion is statecraft , and liberal politicians in general love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be extrapolated to signify seductive class solidarity .
Before , it was the rolled-up sleeve , deployed most fluidly by the everyman Barack Obama , as he embraced the throng ; in the time of the pandemic , it ’ s the mask , worn to signal , in contrast to Trump , a public servant ’ s humility .
Still , it is essential to note that the idea for Monday ’ s kente cloth came from the Congressional Black Caucus , according to its leader , Karen Bass .
Members of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disapproval of Trump at his State of the Union address in 2018 .
“ The significance of the kente cloth is our African heritage , and for those of you without that heritage who are acting in solidarity , ” Bass said on Monday .
What was projected was limp domestic diplomacy , akin to historical images of white political leaders preening in the exotic “ garb ” of people living in countries that they are exploiting .
Inadvertently , the cloth emphasized the sense that black Americans are foreigners in their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Bass , “ our origins and respecting our past.
” It signalled Afrocentricity , yes , but also , more crucially for Democratic leaders , a political consensus .
This myth of the black monolith is essential to the tenets of the modern Democratic Party .
Internal divisions within the race are not tolerated ; they must be drowned out with bright colors .
That is why we so often refer to a bloc called the “ black community.
” But , in recent weeks , the gulf between black liberals and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Washington , D.C. , Mayor Muriel Bowser ’ s administration commissioned a mural spanning the two blocks leading to Lafayette Square , which reads , in massive yellow letters , “ Black Lives Matter ” ; just days later , activists painted an addendum : Defund the Police .
Increasingly , we are hearing such calls to defund , if not wholly abolish , police forces across the United States .
The theatrics of Monday happened to underscore the problem with the reformist legislation contained in the Justice in Policing Act , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is largely symbolic .
Included are provisions to end racial profiling and to ban chokeholds—never mind that the N.Y.P.D.
, for example , banned chokeholds years before one of its officers killed Eric Garner by placing him in one .
The impunity woven into the fabric of the nature of American policing has proved impervious to reform .
We have a reliance in this country on asymmetrical displays that allow us to dwell in , and never penetrate beyond , the level of the cultural .
I am thinking of the galvanic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knitted pussyhat .
I am thinking of the canonization of certain moments of pacification : Obama singing “ Amazing Grace ” at the funeral of Clementa Pinckney , who was murdered by Dylann Roof ; Bill Clinton , while leading an Administration that codified mass incarceration , being sanctified for knowing how to play the saxophone so well .
And now these stoles , which I know many found to be powerful and , worse , legitimizing .

The announcement did not warrant such a visual stunt, but the Democratic Party, the party of optics and gesture, apparently could not resist. On Monday, members of Congress introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, news that was bulldozed by the pageant antics accompanying it. Swathed in identical kente stoles, the lawmakers, intent on conveying solidarity with their constituents, only made themselves models of obtuseness.
Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Steny Hoyer wore their stoles over dark suits, as did Senator Kamala Harris. On House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who chose to wear bright red, evidently to coördinate with the rhombuses of green and blue in the cloth, the fabric swung, giving her an inappropriate swagger. There is no event that is too sombre to extinguish the need for style, which we should never dismiss as a frivolity; clothing can communicate dissent or alliance, belonging and political belief. All politics rests on an aspect of performance. But the sight of the mantles literally dragging on the floor—as members of Congress stood up after kneeling for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, assuming a pose that mirrored that of Derek Chauvin, the cop who, with his knee, pressed on the neck of George Floyd, killing him—felt not just misguided but like an outright mockery. The need to deliver a photo op overcame consideration of what the resulting pictures would communicate.
Why kente? The textile has long been used in ways distant from its original context, collecting meanings both specific and vague. Kente is indigenous to the Asante kingdom, in what is now Ghana. Skilled artisans have been weaving the cloth for hundreds of years; its intricate pattern, a geometry of quadrangles and golden expanse, is extremely difficult to fabricate. In Ghana, kente is prized as a link between ancestry and the present, a totem of tradition. In America, kente is a magnet for a broad and diffuse desire for “Africanness,” the yearning to participate in the black diaspora. It is an organization of thread expected to resolve the primal problem of our black Americans’ continental orphanage. The kente stole, in particular, is most often associated with the academy. Every spring, black graduates walk down grassy knolls draped in the finery.
Interestingly, authentic kente is endangered. Scroll through Alibaba.com and you’ll find thousands of examples of “African” wax-print fabrics, bootlegs of kente primarily manufactured in China. The piracy results in a kind of sartorial tragedy, or an imperialist comedy; in Harlem, you might encounter a young black person unaware that her garment is not only fake but a farce. The stoles worn by members of Congress looked, to my eye, authentically woven, but the impression of guilelessness was still overwhelming. It was primarily the white members of Congress who were ridiculed. An image of Pelosi and Schumer—the former with her hands on her hips in a can-do stance, the latter folding his arms disapprovingly—made them look like ready-made, absurdist hotep memes. A photo that captured Senator Cory Booker stoleless made him seem the exemplar of common sense. (In fact, he wore one, too.)
Fashion is statecraft, and liberal politicians in general love the accessory or the flourish that can be extrapolated to signify seductive class solidarity. Before, it was the rolled-up sleeve, deployed most fluidly by the everyman Barack Obama, as he embraced the throng; in the time of the pandemic, it’s the mask, worn to signal, in contrast to Trump, a public servant’s humility. Still, it is essential to note that the idea for Monday’s kente cloth came from the Congressional Black Caucus, according to its leader, Karen Bass. Members of the C.B.C. wore stoles in silent disapproval of Trump at his State of the Union address in 2018. “The significance of the kente cloth is our African heritage, and for those of you without that heritage who are acting in solidarity,” Bass said on Monday. What was projected was limp domestic diplomacy, akin to historical images of white political leaders preening in the exotic “garb” of people living in countries that they are exploiting. Inadvertently, the cloth emphasized the sense that black Americans are foreigners in their own land.
The uniform signified, according to Bass, “our origins and respecting our past.” It signalled Afrocentricity, yes, but also, more crucially for Democratic leaders, a political consensus. This myth of the black monolith is essential to the tenets of the modern Democratic Party. Internal divisions within the race are not tolerated; they must be drowned out with bright colors. That is why we so often refer to a bloc called the “black community.” But, in recent weeks, the gulf between black liberals and black leftists has become ragingly visible. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration commissioned a mural spanning the two blocks leading to Lafayette Square, which reads, in massive yellow letters, “Black Lives Matter”; just days later, activists painted an addendum: Defund the Police. Increasingly, we are hearing such calls to defund, if not wholly abolish, police forces across the United States. The theatrics of Monday happened to underscore the problem with the reformist legislation contained in the Justice in Policing Act, which, like the kente stoles themselves, is largely symbolic. Included are provisions to end racial profiling and to ban chokeholds—never mind that the N.Y.P.D., for example, banned chokeholds years before one of its officers killed Eric Garner by placing him in one. The impunity woven into the fabric of the nature of American policing has proved impervious to reform.
We have a reliance in this country on asymmetrical displays that allow us to dwell in, and never penetrate beyond, the level of the cultural. I am thinking of the galvanic white pantsuit, and of the hot-pink knitted pussyhat. I am thinking of the canonization of certain moments of pacification: Obama singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered by Dylann Roof; Bill Clinton, while leading an Administration that codified mass incarceration, being sanctified for knowing how to play the saxophone so well. And now these stoles, which I know many found to be powerful and, worse, legitimizing.
Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter Protests


newyorker--2020-06-09--Can the Constitution Reach Trump’s Corruption?

In the more than two hundred and thirty years since the Constitution was ratified , no lawsuit had attempted to enforce its anti-corruption provisions—until the Presidency of Donald Trump .
Two previously obscure provisions of the Constitution , known as the emoluments clauses , aim to prevent public officials from being improperly beholden to foreign and domestic governments .
One , the foreign-emoluments clause , requires a person holding a federal “ office of profit or trust ” to get Congress ’ s consent before accepting any “ emolument ” —an advantage , gain , or profit—from a “ foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clause , prohibits the President in particular from receiving any “ emolument ” from the federal government or from a state , other than the preset standard salary for the job of President .
Previous Presidents did not present the need for courts to interpret these clauses ’ meaning .
And , for the same reason that Trump is so different from other Presidents—his brazen disregard of legal norms—several lawsuits claiming that he is violating the emoluments clauses may end up forcing the unfortunate recognition that the Constitution ’ s anti-corruption measures are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s impeachment , last year , for abuse of power , was triggered by a phone call in which he told Ukraine ’ s President , Volodymyr Zelensky , that he would release U.S. aid to Ukraine , but that Zelensky should “ do us a favor , though , ” and investigate the son of his political opponent Joe Biden for corruption .
Recall that Zelensky ’ s part of that phone call consisted of attempts to ingratiate himself with the American President , including with the statement , “ Actually , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States .
.
.
I stayed at the Trump Tower.
” In the same vein , shortly after Trump ’ s election , in 2016 , an unnamed Asian diplomat told the Washington Post , “ Why wouldn ’ t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House , so I can tell the new president , ‘ I love your new hotel !
’ Isn ’ t it rude to come to his city and say , ‘ I am staying at your competitor ?
’ ” A Middle Eastern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all delegations will go there.
” So , indeed , since November , 2016 , numerous foreign governments , American states , federal officials , and members of Congress have chosen to patronize Trump properties instead of other venues for events and hotel stays .
Trump stepped back from management of his business when he became President but did not divest himself of ownership , despite ethics experts ’ calls for him to do so .
That means money spent at his properties benefits him personally , and creates , at the very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ official treatment of those who enrich him and those who don ’ t .
Trump has not managed to disabuse the public of suspicions that his financial interests sway his outlook on the national interest .
He began his Presidency with the inauspicious statement that “ the President can ’ t have a conflict of interest.
” He and White House staff have since made many public statements boosting his hotels .
Trump once said , about Saudi Arabia , “ They spend forty million dollars , fifty million dollars .
Am I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them very much.
” Speaking of a U.S. dispute with China over the South China Sea , he said , “ I do deals with them all the time .
The largest bank in the world , four hundred million customers ” —the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China— “ is a tenant of mine.
” Apparent examples of favorable treatment of those he does business with abound .
Middle Eastern countries where Trump has significant commercial interests , including Saudi Arabia , Egypt , the United Arab Emirates , Lebanon , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list of majority-Muslim countries targeted in Trump ’ s so-called Muslim ban , in 2017 .
And Trump ’ s abrupt announcement , in October , 2019 , that American forces would move aside in northern Syria—thereby enabling an offensive in the region by the Turkish military—raised eyebrows in light of a lucrative Trump Towers licensing deal in Istanbul .
Since 2017 , several lawsuits against Trump claiming that the President ’ s financial gains from foreign or domestic states ’ patronage of his hotels violate the emoluments clauses have been making their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question the courts have clashed over in these cases is who , if anyone , should be permitted to press such a constitutional case against the President .
Federal courts allow only plaintiffs who suffer real injuries to sue , in order to insure that the judges keep to the constitutional requirement that they hear only “ cases ” or “ controversies ” ( rather than legislative or executive matters ) .
Here that means that a suit can only be brought by a plaintiff who is harmed concretely by President Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a court could redress .
One case , brought by two hundred and fifteen Democratic members of the House and the Senate , claimed their right , under the foreign-emoluments clause , to vote to give or refuse consent for Trump ’ s receipt of foreign states ’ money .
The D.C .
Circuit , overruling a district court , dismissed the case , holding that even hundreds of members of Congress together can not sue to assert the interest of Congress as a whole .
Another lawsuit , brought by New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as Trump ’ s direct business competitors , they are harmed by his emoluments violations , because foreign and domestic governments opt to go to Trump ’ s establishments instead of theirs in hopes of enjoying official favor .
A Second Circuit panel , overruling a district court , is allowing that case to proceed for now , though the decision could still be reversed by the full court .
Finally , a case in which the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland are suing Trump for emoluments violations appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court for hearing next term .
D.C. and Maryland claim that they are harmed by the violations because , if the Trump Organization requested exemptions from environmental , zoning , and other regulations , they might face the President ’ s disfavor if they denied the requests .
And , like the New York restaurateurs and hoteliers , D.C. and Maryland claim that they and their citizens are harmed as competitors to Trump ’ s businesses , especially the Trump International Hotel in Washington , D.C. After a district court refused to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ panel ordered the case dismissed , because it was unconvinced that the plaintiffs ’ injury was real or redressable by a court .
But , in May , the full Fourth Circuit enabled the case to proceed , holding that the district court ’ s refusal to dismiss it wasn ’ t a “ clear abuse of discretion , ” and that Trump ’ s right to dismissal of the case wasn ’ t “ clear and indisputable.
” The emoluments clauses encompass concerns about bribery or quid-pro-quo exchanges that are also prohibited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were more concerned about a President ’ s vulnerability to subtler inducements .
The foreign-emoluments clause was inspired by their desire to guard against what they saw as a corrupt European custom of gift-giving .
An early event that fuelled its inclusion in the Constitution was the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin ’ s receipt , in 1785 , as Ambassador to France , of a gift from King Louis XVI—a gold snuff box bearing the King ’ s portrait and studded with more than four hundred diamonds .
Amid whispers of scandal , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gift , and Congress agreed .
He then left the snuff box to his daughter , and asked that she not remove the diamonds to use for jewelry , but over the generations his descendants sold off nearly all of them .
Presidents have since tangled with emoluments in various forms , but they have been able to satisfy the public without being taken to court .
President Abraham Lincoln disclosed to Congress gifts of elephant tusks and a sword from the King of Siam , and Congress directed him to place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ permitted President Martin Van Buren to sell gifts from the Imam of Muscat and deposit the proceeds in the Treasury .
Congress allowed President Benjamin Harrison to receive medals gifted by Brazil and Spain .
But Congress refused permission for President Andrew Jackson to keep a gold medal received from the Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar .
President Barack Obama sought the opinion of the Justice Department ’ s Office of Legal Counsel ( O.L.C . )
on his $ 1.4 million award for the Nobel Prize ; because the Nobel Committee was not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could accept it without the need to ask Congress .
( Obama ultimately donated the funds to charity . )
Likewise , when President Ronald Reagan asked the O.L.C .
about receiving his retirement benefits from California , which were fully vested prior to his becoming President , the O.L.C .
determined that those were not “ emoluments ” because they were “ neither gifts nor compensation for services ” that could subject him to improper influence .

Lawsuits claiming that Trump’s gains from his hotels violate the Constitution are making their way through the courts. Photograph by Jennifer Wright / Alamy
In the more than two hundred and thirty years since the Constitution was ratified, no lawsuit had attempted to enforce its anti-corruption provisions—until the Presidency of Donald Trump. Two previously obscure provisions of the Constitution, known as the emoluments clauses, aim to prevent public officials from being improperly beholden to foreign and domestic governments. One, the foreign-emoluments clause, requires a person holding a federal “office of profit or trust” to get Congress’s consent before accepting any “emolument”—an advantage, gain, or profit—from a “foreign state.” The other, the domestic-emoluments clause, prohibits the President in particular from receiving any “emolument” from the federal government or from a state, other than the preset standard salary for the job of President. Previous Presidents did not present the need for courts to interpret these clauses’ meaning. And, for the same reason that Trump is so different from other Presidents—his brazen disregard of legal norms—several lawsuits claiming that he is violating the emoluments clauses may end up forcing the unfortunate recognition that the Constitution’s anti-corruption measures are ineffectual when most needed.
Trump’s impeachment, last year, for abuse of power, was triggered by a phone call in which he told Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, that he would release U.S. aid to Ukraine, but that Zelensky should “do us a favor, though,” and investigate the son of his political opponent Joe Biden for corruption. Recall that Zelensky’s part of that phone call consisted of attempts to ingratiate himself with the American President, including with the statement, “Actually, last time I travelled to the United States . . . I stayed at the Trump Tower.” In the same vein, shortly after Trump’s election, in 2016, an unnamed Asian diplomat told the Washington Post, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’ ” A Middle Eastern diplomat said, “Believe me, all delegations will go there.” So, indeed, since November, 2016, numerous foreign governments, American states, federal officials, and members of Congress have chosen to patronize Trump properties instead of other venues for events and hotel stays. Trump stepped back from management of his business when he became President but did not divest himself of ownership, despite ethics experts’ calls for him to do so. That means money spent at his properties benefits him personally, and creates, at the very least, the appearance of influencing his official treatment of those who enrich him and those who don’t.
Trump has not managed to disabuse the public of suspicions that his financial interests sway his outlook on the national interest. He began his Presidency with the inauspicious statement that “the President can’t have a conflict of interest.” He and White House staff have since made many public statements boosting his hotels. Trump once said, about Saudi Arabia, “They spend forty million dollars, fifty million dollars. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” Speaking of a U.S. dispute with China over the South China Sea, he said, “I do deals with them all the time. The largest bank in the world, four hundred million customers”—the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China—“is a tenant of mine.” Apparent examples of favorable treatment of those he does business with abound. Middle Eastern countries where Trump has significant commercial interests, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Turkey, were conspicuously not on the list of majority-Muslim countries targeted in Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, in 2017. And Trump’s abrupt announcement, in October, 2019, that American forces would move aside in northern Syria—thereby enabling an offensive in the region by the Turkish military—raised eyebrows in light of a lucrative Trump Towers licensing deal in Istanbul.
Since 2017, several lawsuits against Trump claiming that the President’s financial gains from foreign or domestic states’ patronage of his hotels violate the emoluments clauses have been making their way through the courts. The main question the courts have clashed over in these cases is who, if anyone, should be permitted to press such a constitutional case against the President. Federal courts allow only plaintiffs who suffer real injuries to sue, in order to insure that the judges keep to the constitutional requirement that they hear only “cases” or “controversies” (rather than legislative or executive matters). Here that means that a suit can only be brought by a plaintiff who is harmed concretely by President Trump’s constitutional violations in a way that a court could redress. One case, brought by two hundred and fifteen Democratic members of the House and the Senate, claimed their right, under the foreign-emoluments clause, to vote to give or refuse consent for Trump’s receipt of foreign states’ money. The D.C. Circuit, overruling a district court, dismissed the case, holding that even hundreds of members of Congress together cannot sue to assert the interest of Congress as a whole. Another lawsuit, brought by New York hotel and restaurant owners, claims that, as Trump’s direct business competitors, they are harmed by his emoluments violations, because foreign and domestic governments opt to go to Trump’s establishments instead of theirs in hopes of enjoying official favor. A Second Circuit panel, overruling a district court, is allowing that case to proceed for now, though the decision could still be reversed by the full court.
Finally, a case in which the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland are suing Trump for emoluments violations appears poised to be taken up by the Supreme Court for hearing next term. D.C. and Maryland claim that they are harmed by the violations because, if the Trump Organization requested exemptions from environmental, zoning, and other regulations, they might face the President’s disfavor if they denied the requests. And, like the New York restaurateurs and hoteliers, D.C. and Maryland claim that they and their citizens are harmed as competitors to Trump’s businesses, especially the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. After a district court refused to dismiss the case, a Fourth Circuit panel ordered the case dismissed, because it was unconvinced that the plaintiffs’ injury was real or redressable by a court. But, in May, the full Fourth Circuit enabled the case to proceed, holding that the district court’s refusal to dismiss it wasn’t a “clear abuse of discretion,” and that Trump’s right to dismissal of the case wasn’t “clear and indisputable.”
The emoluments clauses encompass concerns about bribery or quid-pro-quo exchanges that are also prohibited by criminal statutes, but the Framers were more concerned about a President’s vulnerability to subtler inducements. The foreign-emoluments clause was inspired by their desire to guard against what they saw as a corrupt European custom of gift-giving. An early event that fuelled its inclusion in the Constitution was the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin’s receipt, in 1785, as Ambassador to France, of a gift from King Louis XVI—a gold snuff box bearing the King’s portrait and studded with more than four hundred diamonds. Amid whispers of scandal, Franklin asked Congress whether he could keep the gift, and Congress agreed. He then left the snuff box to his daughter, and asked that she not remove the diamonds to use for jewelry, but over the generations his descendants sold off nearly all of them.
Presidents have since tangled with emoluments in various forms, but they have been able to satisfy the public without being taken to court. President Abraham Lincoln disclosed to Congress gifts of elephant tusks and a sword from the King of Siam, and Congress directed him to place them with the Interior Department. Congress permitted President Martin Van Buren to sell gifts from the Imam of Muscat and deposit the proceeds in the Treasury. Congress allowed President Benjamin Harrison to receive medals gifted by Brazil and Spain. But Congress refused permission for President Andrew Jackson to keep a gold medal received from the Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar. President Barack Obama sought the opinion of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (O.L.C.) on his $1.4 million award for the Nobel Prize; because the Nobel Committee was not a “foreign state,” he could accept it without the need to ask Congress. (Obama ultimately donated the funds to charity.) Likewise, when President Ronald Reagan asked the O.L.C. about receiving his retirement benefits from California, which were fully vested prior to his becoming President, the O.L.C. determined that those were not “emoluments” because they were “neither gifts nor compensation for services” that could subject him to improper influence.
Trump has argued in his emoluments cases that an “emolument” does not include payments that he gains at fair market value for services, namely rentals of hotel rooms or event spaces. He has even claimed that the clauses only prohibit payment for employment (say, if an American President were actually in the paid employ of Russia or Texas). But the Maryland federal district court in Trump’s case rejected Trump’s view, reasoning that the Founders’ generation understood “emolument” broadly, so that it would encompass his commercial transactions—particularly where profits arise precisely from various governments’ efforts to curry favor with the President.
As usual, Trump is also making sweeping claims of his immunity, in keeping with other cases that he is currently litigating, on the separation of powers. He claims that he is “absolutely immune” from any individual liability based on his conduct in the Presidency, and that his choices regarding emoluments fall “within the outer perimeter of the President’s official responsibilities” and cannot be second-guessed by courts as a matter of separation of powers. In a dissenting opinion in the case brought by D.C. and Maryland, the Fourth Circuit’s five conservative dissenting judges spelled out their view that no court can order the President to comply with the emoluments clauses, regardless of whether he is in violation of them or who the plaintiff is. To do so, they said, would be inconsistent with “the integrity of the separation of powers,” which “depends on no branch being able to commandeer another.” To “control” the President, they reasoned, “is to control the executive branch itself.” The opinion stems from the dissenters’ strong belief that it is only up to the President and Congress, and not judges, to interpret the meaning of the emoluments clauses. The nine judges in the majority of the Fourth Circuit, though, hewed to the more standard “judicial supremacy” view: that authority to interpret what the Constitution means rests with the judiciary, not with the other branches—particularly because it makes little sense for the President to have unreviewable power to define the meaning of constitutional provisions meant to restrain him. (The dissenters shot back that, even without judicial enforcement, Congress could enforce the emoluments clauses, by passing laws requiring a President’s financial disclosures, for example—or, of course, by impeaching him.)
The conservative judges appeared to believe that by not stopping the emoluments lawsuit, which they called a “litigative assault,” the court was doing grave damage to the judiciary itself. The dissent charged the majority with casting “aside the inspired design of our constitutional order in exchange for the ephemeral rush of a judicial power unbound,” making judges “partisan warriors in contradiction to the rule of law that is and should be our first devotion.” Alleging lawlessness and “exceptional hubris,” the conservative dissenters denounced their colleagues’ willingness to “indulge this lawsuit” as “a missed opportunity to transcend the political moment,” and waxed pseudo-Shakespearean: “Can we not see the political cloak we are asked to don?” In response, the majority returned fire, feeling disparaged as “political hacks” and in turn accusing the dissenters of abandoning “judicial temperament and restraint by commandeering this case as a vehicle to question the good faith of judges.” “Readers may compare our measured approach with the dramatics of the dissent and draw their own conclusions,” the majority wrote. Ultimately, despite the judicial motivation to safeguard the public trust, neither side managed to avoid the “political scrum” in vituperating that the other was being partisan and immodest. The tonal extremity of the judges’ fusillade was a revealing symptom of what the dissent called “this most rancorous of times,” as “partisan fevers grip the national government.”


newyorker--2020-06-09--What to Stream: James Baldwin’s Tour of Black San Francisco in “Take This Hammer”

In the spring of 1963 , a white filmmaker and poet named Richard O. Moore followed James Baldwin around San Francisco as Baldwin interviewed black residents about their lives .
The resulting documentary , “ Take This Hammer , ” is a crucial precursor and supplement to later films about Baldwin ’ s life and work , including Raoul Peck ’ s “ I Am Not Your Negro , ” from 2016 .
Whereas Peck ’ s film offers a powerful , probing , and career-spanning synthesis of Baldwin ’ s ideas and activities , “ Take This Hammer ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Baldwin , who didn ’ t know the city well , travels through it by car and on foot , guided by the social-services executive Orville Luster , speaking at length with Luster and the people he meets in San Francisco ’ s predominantly black neighborhoods .
Interspersed throughout his tour of the city are clips of Baldwin delivering an on-camera monologue , filmed against a plain background ( in the director ’ s home ) .
In “ Take This Hammer , ” Baldwin creates a deep , passionate cross-sectional analysis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the struggle for civil rights and amid the endurance of Jim Crow .
There are two versions of “ Take This Hammer ” : one that was broadcast in 1964 ( which is forty-four minutes ) and the director ’ s cut , from the year before , which is fifteen minutes longer .
( Both the director ’ s cut and the broadcast version are available to stream , free , at the Bay Area Television Archive site . )
Although the cuts in the broadcast version are significant , they don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film : Baldwin ’ s trenchant and urgent interviews with the city ’ s black residents , mainly young people , and his own powerful insights regarding the implications and demands of the historical moment .
The film was made during the Birmingham campaign , led by Martin Luther King , Jr. , and the S.C.L.C.
, and the brutal tactics of that city ’ s police chief , Bull Connor , were on full national view .
The premise of “ Take This Hammer , ” as Baldwin states early on , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance , which is to say no distance between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham ” —that the liberal , freethinking city , where Jim Crow held no official sway , was as oppressive and unjust for its black residents as a legally segregated Southern city that repressed protest by force .
In talking with young black people in San Francisco , Baldwin finds them keenly aware of the nexus of discrimination , exclusion , and violence that confronts them , and of the absurd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One young man tells Baldwin , “ The white man , he ’ s not taking advantage of you out in public , like they ’ re doing down in Birmingham , but he ’ s killing you with that pencil and paper , brother !
” At the time , the city was undergoing what Luster calls “ redevelopment ” —meaning , he says , “ the removal of Negroes ” —and Baldwin learns from black San Franciscans that one of the outrages inflicted upon them is their being offered , amid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , work in construction—or , rather , destruction .
“ They ’ re gon na let us tear down our own homes , out here in Hunters Point , ” one man tells Baldwin .
A woman adds , moments later , “ We ’ ll be living out in the streets , in tents.
” The city was in the process of building modern housing projects for displaced black residents ; Baldwin and Luster visit them , and , even as Baldwin admires their aesthetic veneer , he sees through it : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plants , but you can not do anything about the moral and psychological effects of being in the ghetto , ” about “ a million forces which are inevitably set in motion when a people are despised.
” Standing outside another housing project under construction , Baldwin goes into detail about those effects : the “ least-damaged kids ” would be “ a little sardonic ” about American ideals , and “ the more damaged kids would simply feel like blowing it up.
” What Baldwin hears from young people in San Francisco @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and rage .
They despair of the city being wrenched out from beneath their feet ; they despair of unemployment ; they despair of police violence , incarceration , the frequency and cruelty of discriminatory police scrutiny ; they despair of a miseducation that teaches nothing of their history ; they despair of the efficacy of the civil-rights movement itself .
One young man tells Baldwin , to the approval of others nearby , that the Birmingham protests are “ over.
” Baldwin disagrees , but the young man contends that civil disobedience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , calls Dr. King a “ chump ” for believing in nonviolence , and endorses a nationwide revolution by black people .
“ Let everybody bleed a little bit , ” he says .
“ That ’ s the only way we ’ re gon na get anything.
” Baldwin , wearing a microphone clipped to his shirt , discusses with Luster a primary obstacle in drastically changing the circumstances of black Americans : white liberals who , he says , “ think of themselves as missionaries ” and seek the “ alleviation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but have “ never discovered who a Negro is—not what , but who.
” Baldwin ’ s view is far-reaching and tragic—in order for the needed comprehensive changes to occur , every white liberal will have to “ risk everything he has , from his status to his child , since that ’ s what we have to do.
” Baldwin finds the limits of this group ’ s politics at its self-interest : “ You can ’ t serve , as they say , two masters .
The liberal can ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
He ’ s with you , but not when the going gets rough.
” Among the segments that were removed for the originally broadcast version is Baldwin ’ s follow-up to his remark about the similarity of San Francisco and Birmingham : there ’ s “ no moral distance , ” he repeats , “ which is to say no distance between President Kennedy and Bull Connor , because the same machine put them both in power.
” Yet , even in the absence of that remark , “ Take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ view of nationwide racism and the political and economic order that sustains it—and depends on it .
Both versions of the film end with a monologue by Baldwin ( talking into the camera , in a scene that recurs throughout the film ) , in which he speaks , to white America , of the figure of the N-word : “ White people have invented him , ” Baldwin says , invoking the epithet and calling him “ necessary.
” He goes on to say , “ Well , he ’ s unnecessary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessary to you .
So I give you your problem back.
” In a notable short documentary , “ The Making of Take This Hammer , ” which is also on the Bay Area Television Archive site , Moore , interviewed in 2012 , explains that the film arose from a 1960 fellowship in which he encountered such documentary filmmakers as Albert Maysles .
Upon his return to San Francisco , he established a documentary unit at KQED to create direct-cinema documentaries , immersive and participatory , which depended on lightweight cameras and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ died in 2015 , discusses the sense of moral urgency—inspired by the publication of Baldwin ’ s essay “ Letter from a Region in My Mind , ” in The New Yorker—that impelled him to make “ Take This Hammer , ” and the technical inventiveness that made the film possible , including a rear-engine station wagon that allowed a “ small cameraman ” to crouch in the uncovered trunk in front of the windshield .
Moore also discusses the difficulty that he had in getting the film broadcast , because of executives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black rage being expressed.
” ( Despite mandated cuts , it comes through clearly . )

In the spring of 1963, a white filmmaker and poet named Richard O. Moore followed James Baldwin around San Francisco as Baldwin interviewed black residents about their lives. The resulting documentary, “Take This Hammer,” is a crucial precursor and supplement to later films about Baldwin’s life and work, including Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro,” from 2016. Whereas Peck’s film offers a powerful, probing, and career-spanning synthesis of Baldwin’s ideas and activities, “Take This Hammer” is local, immersive, and immediate. Baldwin, who didn’t know the city well, travels through it by car and on foot, guided by the social-services executive Orville Luster, speaking at length with Luster and the people he meets in San Francisco’s predominantly black neighborhoods. Interspersed throughout his tour of the city are clips of Baldwin delivering an on-camera monologue, filmed against a plain background (in the director’s home). In “Take This Hammer,” Baldwin creates a deep, passionate cross-sectional analysis of the lives of black Americans during the struggle for civil rights and amid the endurance of Jim Crow.
There are two versions of “Take This Hammer”: one that was broadcast in 1964 (which is forty-four minutes) and the director’s cut, from the year before, which is fifteen minutes longer. (Both the director’s cut and the broadcast version are available to stream, free, at the Bay Area Television Archive site.) Although the cuts in the broadcast version are significant, they don’t bowdlerize the essence of the film: Baldwin’s trenchant and urgent interviews with the city’s black residents, mainly young people, and his own powerful insights regarding the implications and demands of the historical moment. The film was made during the Birmingham campaign, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the S.C.L.C., and the brutal tactics of that city’s police chief, Bull Connor, were on full national view. The premise of “Take This Hammer,” as Baldwin states early on, is that there is “no moral distance, which is to say no distance between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham”—that the liberal, freethinking city, where Jim Crow held no official sway, was as oppressive and unjust for its black residents as a legally segregated Southern city that repressed protest by force.
In talking with young black people in San Francisco, Baldwin finds them keenly aware of the nexus of discrimination, exclusion, and violence that confronts them, and of the absurd cruelty of its benign administrative face. One young man tells Baldwin, “The white man, he’s not taking advantage of you out in public, like they’re doing down in Birmingham, but he’s killing you with that pencil and paper, brother!” At the time, the city was undergoing what Luster calls “redevelopment”—meaning, he says, “the removal of Negroes”—and Baldwin learns from black San Franciscans that one of the outrages inflicted upon them is their being offered, amid the virtual impossibility of finding a job, work in construction—or, rather, destruction. “They’re gonna let us tear down our own homes, out here in Hunters Point,” one man tells Baldwin. A woman adds, moments later, “We’ll be living out in the streets, in tents.” The city was in the process of building modern housing projects for displaced black residents; Baldwin and Luster visit them, and, even as Baldwin admires their aesthetic veneer, he sees through it: “You can build a few better plants, but you cannot do anything about the moral and psychological effects of being in the ghetto,” about “a million forces which are inevitably set in motion when a people are despised.”
Standing outside another housing project under construction, Baldwin goes into detail about those effects: the “least-damaged kids” would be “a little sardonic” about American ideals, and “the more damaged kids would simply feel like blowing it up.” What Baldwin hears from young people in San Francisco is, in significant measure, despair and rage. They despair of the city being wrenched out from beneath their feet; they despair of unemployment; they despair of police violence, incarceration, the frequency and cruelty of discriminatory police scrutiny; they despair of a miseducation that teaches nothing of their history; they despair of the efficacy of the civil-rights movement itself. One young man tells Baldwin, to the approval of others nearby, that the Birmingham protests are “over.” Baldwin disagrees, but the young man contends that civil disobedience is useless; he praises Malcolm X, calls Dr. King a “chump” for believing in nonviolence, and endorses a nationwide revolution by black people. “Let everybody bleed a little bit,” he says. “That’s the only way we’re gonna get anything.”
Baldwin, wearing a microphone clipped to his shirt, discusses with Luster a primary obstacle in drastically changing the circumstances of black Americans: white liberals who, he says, “think of themselves as missionaries” and seek the “alleviation and protection of their own consciences” but have “never discovered who a Negro is—not what, but who.” Baldwin’s view is far-reaching and tragic—in order for the needed comprehensive changes to occur, every white liberal will have to “risk everything he has, from his status to his child, since that’s what we have to do.” Baldwin finds the limits of this group’s politics at its self-interest: “You can’t serve, as they say, two masters. The liberal can’t be safe and heroic, too. . . . He’s with you, but not when the going gets rough.”
Among the segments that were removed for the originally broadcast version is Baldwin’s follow-up to his remark about the similarity of San Francisco and Birmingham: there’s “no moral distance,” he repeats, “which is to say no distance between President Kennedy and Bull Connor, because the same machine put them both in power.” Yet, even in the absence of that remark, “Take This Hammer” presents a remarkably frank view of nationwide racism and the political and economic order that sustains it—and depends on it. Both versions of the film end with a monologue by Baldwin (talking into the camera, in a scene that recurs throughout the film), in which he speaks, to white America, of the figure of the N-word: “White people have invented him,” Baldwin says, invoking the epithet and calling him “necessary.” He goes on to say, “Well, he’s unnecessary to me, so he must be necessary to you. So I give you your problem back.”
In a notable short documentary, “The Making of Take This Hammer,” which is also on the Bay Area Television Archive site, Moore, interviewed in 2012, explains that the film arose from a 1960 fellowship in which he encountered such documentary filmmakers as Albert Maysles. Upon his return to San Francisco, he established a documentary unit at KQED to create direct-cinema documentaries, immersive and participatory, which depended on lightweight cameras and portable synch-sound equipment. Moore, who died in 2015, discusses the sense of moral urgency—inspired by the publication of Baldwin’s essay “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” in The New Yorker—that impelled him to make “Take This Hammer,” and the technical inventiveness that made the film possible, including a rear-engine station wagon that allowed a “small cameraman” to crouch in the uncovered trunk in front of the windshield. Moore also discusses the difficulty that he had in getting the film broadcast, because of executives’ qualms about “the preponderance of black rage being expressed.” (Despite mandated cuts, it comes through clearly.)
Moore also discusses how the making of the film resulted in a break between him and Baldwin. Moore says that he filmed Baldwin’s monologue in his own home: he’d invited Baldwin home for dinner, after a long and hard day of shooting. Moore’s wife ran a bubble bath for Baldwin and put a bottle of whiskey next to the tub, resulting, Moore says, in Baldwin coming downstairs “quite refreshed” but “also a little loopy.” Moore knowingly filmed Baldwin when the writer had been drinking, and then used that footage in the film. Baldwin believed that he and Moore had agreed that the film would consist solely of the interview scenes with people in the street, whereas Moore felt that such a film “wouldn’t work, even for black audiences, perhaps,” and needed the monologue scenes, however dubious their provenance. When Baldwin saw the cut with excerpts from his monologue included, he cut contact with Moore and the station. Moore’s ethical failing, an attempt to compromise his film in order to juice it with personality-based sensationalism, is also an aesthetic one—a misguided and narrow idea of what “works.” Moore’s deception also suggests the limits of observational documentaries—ones that leave the circumstances of filming, the facts of the filmmaker’s active participation in the creation of events, unseen and undisclosed. Though Moore’s exploitative and compromising actions don’t taint the substance or the essence of the film, they suggest a different and even better film that’s hiding among the footage.


newyorker--2020-06-09--Professional Mourners’ Laments from Quarantine

Taryn Simon is a student of grief .
To Simon , a multidisciplinary artist whose work has explored subjects ranging from wrongful incarceration to engineered applause , the state of loss is “ a space that ’ s beyond articulation or beyond language.
” Her new project in collaboration with Artangel , “ Laments from Quarantine , ” captures on video wails , songs , and chants of loss during the coronavirus pandemic , which has now killed at least four hundred thousand people worldwide .
But the mourners in the videos are not recently bereaved ; they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The tradition of professional mourning has a centuries-long history , in which cultures across the globe have relied on hired hands to aid the living in saying goodbye to those they ’ ve lost .
A lack of intimacy with the dead does not necessarily preclude authenticity ; in fact , Simon believes that professional mourners can help us understand how to process loss .
Simon had already worked with these professionals in “ An Occupation of Loss , ” an installation held in New York and London , in 2016 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lamented and performed their rituals of grief , in what Simon described as “ a cacophony of mourning.
” When she began to check in with the mourners after quarantines began around the world , they expressed an interest in doing something remotely .
( None of the mourners whom Simon has worked with are currently working via Webcast . )
A series of video vignettes was born .
Some feature traditional modes of mourning that have been passed down through generations .
Other mourners are adapting their rituals , Simon said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment .
”

Taryn Simon is a student of grief. To Simon, a multidisciplinary artist whose work has explored subjects ranging from wrongful incarceration to engineered applause, the state of loss is “a space that’s beyond articulation or beyond language.” Her new project in collaboration with Artangel, “Laments from Quarantine,” captures on video wails, songs, and chants of loss during the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed at least four hundred thousand people worldwide. But the mourners in the videos are not recently bereaved; they’re professionals, people paid to publicly grieve. The tradition of professional mourning has a centuries-long history, in which cultures across the globe have relied on hired hands to aid the living in saying goodbye to those they’ve lost. A lack of intimacy with the dead does not necessarily preclude authenticity; in fact, Simon believes that professional mourners can help us understand how to process loss.
Simon had already worked with these professionals in “An Occupation of Loss,” an installation held in New York and London, in 2016 and 2018, in which a group simultaneously lamented and performed their rituals of grief, in what Simon described as “a cacophony of mourning.” When she began to check in with the mourners after quarantines began around the world, they expressed an interest in doing something remotely. (None of the mourners whom Simon has worked with are currently working via Webcast.) A series of video vignettes was born. Some feature traditional modes of mourning that have been passed down through generations. Other mourners are adapting their rituals, Simon said, “lamenting in ways specific to this moment.”