newyorker--2020-06-24--Do Movies Still Need Multiplexes?

Do Movies Still Need Multiplexes?

Last week , movie-theatre chains that are planning to reopen their multiplexes in July became the subject of a drama of their own making : “ Mask Wars.
” It was a battle fought in the press and over social media—and the chains blinked .
Adam Aron , the C.E.O .
of AMC , announced , on Thursday , in Variety , that , when most of its theatres reopen their doors ( in anticipation of the July 24th release of “ Mulan ” and the July 31st release of “ Tenet ” ) , staff would all be required @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the other hand , masks would be optional , because , Aron said , “ We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy.
” His remarks prompted vehement reactions on social media , and , on Friday , Aron changed his mind , issuing a statement announcing that viewers would be required to wear masks after all .
The Regal chain , which plans to reopen on July 10th , had originally punted the requirement for both employees and patrons to local laws , but , following AMC ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to require the wearing of masks by staff and viewers alike .
Cinemark will not be requiring viewers to wear masks .
None of the three chains will be taking customers ’ temperatures at the door unless local guidelines mandate it .
There ’ s a built-in exception to the mask policy ( tacit with AMC , explicit with Regal ) : customers will be allowed to remove them while eating and drinking—which , for many viewers , means much of the time .
Even for the non-eaters , there ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforced , once the lights go down and the movies begin—a potential recipe for conflict between viewers and theatre staff , and , for that matter , between audience members themselves .
In the end , moviegoers will decide for themselves what risks they want to take to see “ Mulan ” and “ Tenet ” when the movies are newly released , or whether to hold off for the inevitable streaming releases down the line .
The dreadful prospect , of course , is that the reopening of theatres will cause , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in COVID-19 infections ; the mere possibility may give enough viewers pause to render the economics of these reopenings dubious .
The economic harm inflicted upon those who work in the movie business—whether in theatres , in production , or in offices—has been grievous .
The only thing worse would be a new wave of illnesses and deaths caused by a hasty return , and , as usual , the canaries in the mine are the least-paid and least-protected employees—those working shifts behind a cash register or at a concession stand or pushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wield other sanitation equipment to disinfect theatres between shows .
Movie actors and crew members are protected by unions ; many in the industry ’ s white-collar jobs can continue to work from home .
Theatre staff have neither form of protection , and many will have no choice except to return to work and face the risks .
What the past three months of relative confinement—and the resulting shift from theatrical to online releases—have proved is that movie theatres , particularly the multiplexes , hardly matter now .
The widespread shutdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was already occurring .
Most films in limited release never get past a handful of screens in big cities or college towns , and the few that do so ( such as “ Parasite ” and “ Portrait of a Lady on Fire ” ) don ’ t make up for the dozens that quickly vanish after a weekend or a week , never to be seen again—until they turn up streaming .
Fewer and fewer daring movies get released in theatres , and many that do are seen on fewer and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York .
Most of the best movies never see the inside of a multiplex .
What ’ s more , many of the best rarely get out of big cities ; some of them never get out of New York until they ’ re streaming , and others never play in theatres at all .
The number of good movies that do well financially in theatrical release is painfully low : last year , they included “ Us , ” “ Little Women , ” “ Uncut Gems , ” “ Ad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” But the best movie of the year , “ The Irishman , ” was a Netflix production and had only a nominal theatrical release .
It ’ s hard to argue for the artistic importance of theatrical release when , by and large , its financial success is sustained mainly by the most impersonal work that Hollywood has to offer , the corporate-controlled and ‑dominated franchises .
What ’ s more , the very qualities that draw large numbers of viewers to theatres—distilled by studio executives into the term “ theatricality ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s most original and advanced in the modern cinema , which presents experience in intimate dimensions that are even better suited to viewing in private , close up to the computer or television screen , than to the cavernous spaces of theatres .
( That ’ s as true of “ The Irishman ” as of “ Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
” ) The art of movies belongs not only to filmmakers addressing a crowd but also to those who address audience members one by one .
The history of cinema @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has long been thwarted or stifled by the spectacular element , the flexing that theatrical releases favor .
The lockdown , and the possibility of theatres closing down soon after opening up ( or attracting scant audiences ) , are only accelerating a process that has been under way for years : the shifting of viewership to streaming .
Since mid-March , online releases of such distinguished films as “ Never Rarely Sometimes Always , ” “ Fourteen , ” “ The Whistlers , ” “ Shirley , ” and “ Yourself and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Da 5 Bloods ” —have taken the place of theatrical releases .
In the case of Dan Sallitt ’ s drama “ Fourteen , ” it has done so with marked success , more than what would have been likely in theatres : in its sixth week of release , it ’ s available through ninety theatres in virtual release .
The forthcoming digital releases of “ The 11th Green ” and “ Tito ” ( films that might not have been likely to see the inside of movie theatres in regular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a summer with reduced studio releases , critics will have the chance to adjust their antennae toward movies that , under usual circumstances , would be overshadowed by widely ballyhooed ones released on thousands of screens—and that , because of home viewing , are now as widely available .
Some of these are overlooked classics—such as Bill Duke ’ s “ The Killing Floor ” —which benefit from a time when rediscovered films are on a level playing field of online availability with new studio productions .
The shuttering of theatres has emphasized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has thrust one aspect of public viewing to the fore , namely , repertory houses .
As I wrote in April , what I miss most about theatres isn ’ t the presence of new releases , whether in multiplexes or art houses ; it ’ s the revelatory programming at repertory houses , thanks to the depth of knowledge , the diligence , and the devotion of their programmers .
The single most important event to occur in digital releasing since the coronavirus , for instance , is the release , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a group of films under the rubric “ Tell Me : Women Filmmakers , Women ’ s Stories , ” comprising works mainly from the nineteen-seventies and eighties in documentary , essay , and metafictional forms .
Yet this release was derived from a series curated by Nellie Killian at Metrograph , in 2018 .
It ’ s a sort of creative curation , an archival artistry and passion that , at least temporarily , while repertory houses are on hold , should be undertaken by streaming services on their own .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s only a matter of time before the Criterion Channel becomes a venue for new art-house releases . )

Last week, movie-theatre chains that are planning to reopen their multiplexes in July became the subject of a drama of their own making: “Mask Wars.” It was a battle fought in the press and over social media—and the chains blinked. Adam Aron, the C.E.O. of AMC, announced, on Thursday, in Variety, that, when most of its theatres reopen their doors (in anticipation of the July 24th release of “Mulan” and the July 31st release of “Tenet”), staff would all be required to wear masks. For moviegoers, on the other hand, masks would be optional, because, Aron said, “We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy.” His remarks prompted vehement reactions on social media, and, on Friday, Aron changed his mind, issuing a statement announcing that viewers would be required to wear masks after all. The Regal chain, which plans to reopen on July 10th, had originally punted the requirement for both employees and patrons to local laws, but, following AMC’s shift, also changed its policy to require the wearing of masks by staff and viewers alike. Cinemark will not be requiring viewers to wear masks. None of the three chains will be taking customers’ temperatures at the door unless local guidelines mandate it.
There’s a built-in exception to the mask policy (tacit with AMC, explicit with Regal): customers will be allowed to remove them while eating and drinking—which, for many viewers, means much of the time. Even for the non-eaters, there’s the question of how the policy will be enforced, once the lights go down and the movies begin—a potential recipe for conflict between viewers and theatre staff, and, for that matter, between audience members themselves. In the end, moviegoers will decide for themselves what risks they want to take to see “Mulan” and “Tenet” when the movies are newly released, or whether to hold off for the inevitable streaming releases down the line. The dreadful prospect, of course, is that the reopening of theatres will cause, or help to cause, another spike in COVID-19 infections; the mere possibility may give enough viewers pause to render the economics of these reopenings dubious.
The economic harm inflicted upon those who work in the movie business—whether in theatres, in production, or in offices—has been grievous. The only thing worse would be a new wave of illnesses and deaths caused by a hasty return, and, as usual, the canaries in the mine are the least-paid and least-protected employees—those working shifts behind a cash register or at a concession stand or pushing a broom or, now, preparing to wield other sanitation equipment to disinfect theatres between shows. Movie actors and crew members are protected by unions; many in the industry’s white-collar jobs can continue to work from home. Theatre staff have neither form of protection, and many will have no choice except to return to work and face the risks.
What the past three months of relative confinement—and the resulting shift from theatrical to online releases—have proved is that movie theatres, particularly the multiplexes, hardly matter now. The widespread shutdown has only exaggerated and accelerated a shift that was already occurring. Most films in limited release never get past a handful of screens in big cities or college towns, and the few that do so (such as “Parasite” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) don’t make up for the dozens that quickly vanish after a weekend or a week, never to be seen again—until they turn up streaming. Fewer and fewer daring movies get released in theatres, and many that do are seen on fewer and fewer screens—often, just one week in New York. Most of the best movies never see the inside of a multiplex. What’s more, many of the best rarely get out of big cities; some of them never get out of New York until they’re streaming, and others never play in theatres at all. The number of good movies that do well financially in theatrical release is painfully low: last year, they included “Us,” “Little Women,” “Uncut Gems,” “Ad Astra,” and “Richard Jewell.” But the best movie of the year, “The Irishman,” was a Netflix production and had only a nominal theatrical release.
It’s hard to argue for the artistic importance of theatrical release when, by and large, its financial success is sustained mainly by the most impersonal work that Hollywood has to offer, the corporate-controlled and ‑dominated franchises. What’s more, the very qualities that draw large numbers of viewers to theatres—distilled by studio executives into the term “theatricality”—are antithetical to much of what’s most original and advanced in the modern cinema, which presents experience in intimate dimensions that are even better suited to viewing in private, close up to the computer or television screen, than to the cavernous spaces of theatres. (That’s as true of “The Irishman” as of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”) The art of movies belongs not only to filmmakers addressing a crowd but also to those who address audience members one by one. The history of cinema, the quest for artistic proximity, has long been thwarted or stifled by the spectacular element, the flexing that theatrical releases favor.
The lockdown, and the possibility of theatres closing down soon after opening up (or attracting scant audiences), are only accelerating a process that has been under way for years: the shifting of viewership to streaming. Since mid-March, online releases of such distinguished films as “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “Fourteen,” “The Whistlers,” “Shirley,” and “Yourself and Yours”—plus the Netflix release of “Da 5 Bloods”—have taken the place of theatrical releases. In the case of Dan Sallitt’s drama “Fourteen,” it has done so with marked success, more than what would have been likely in theatres: in its sixth week of release, it’s available through ninety theatres in virtual release. The forthcoming digital releases of “The 11th Green” and “Tito” (films that might not have been likely to see the inside of movie theatres in regular week-long releases) suggests that, in a summer with reduced studio releases, critics will have the chance to adjust their antennae toward movies that, under usual circumstances, would be overshadowed by widely ballyhooed ones released on thousands of screens—and that, because of home viewing, are now as widely available.
Some of these are overlooked classics—such as Bill Duke’s “The Killing Floor”—which benefit from a time when rediscovered films are on a level playing field of online availability with new studio productions. The shuttering of theatres has emphasized the process of reclamation—and, paradoxically, has thrust one aspect of public viewing to the fore, namely, repertory houses. As I wrote in April, what I miss most about theatres isn’t the presence of new releases, whether in multiplexes or art houses; it’s the revelatory programming at repertory houses, thanks to the depth of knowledge, the diligence, and the devotion of their programmers. The single most important event to occur in digital releasing since the coronavirus, for instance, is the release, in May, on the Criterion Channel, of a group of films under the rubric “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories,” comprising works mainly from the nineteen-seventies and eighties in documentary, essay, and metafictional forms. Yet this release was derived from a series curated by Nellie Killian at Metrograph, in 2018. It’s a sort of creative curation, an archival artistry and passion that, at least temporarily, while repertory houses are on hold, should be undertaken by streaming services on their own. (For that matter, I think it’s only a matter of time before the Criterion Channel becomes a venue for new art-house releases.)
Currently, daring and original movies produced or released by Netflix (such as “The Irishman,” “Atlantics,” “Burning Cane,” and “Marriage Story”) have had only nominal theatrical releases before becoming available to stream; and, were it not for sheltering, “Da 5 Bloods” would have followed the same pattern, appearing in theatres for a short time before dropping on the streaming platform. But such front-loaded theatrical releases are formalities—a way of following the Academy’s long-standing rules that tether eligibility to theatrical releases. (This year, the rules have been loosened to allow films appearing digitally—but only if a theatrical release had been planned.) Such rules, which are followed by many critics’ groups as well as by editors assigning reviews, serve above all to protect the multiplexes. They have nothing to do with whether a movie deserves to be reviewed or exalted. Movies aren’t a rule, a venue, or a set of institutions; they’re an idea, an aesthetic. The reopening of theatres, at potential risk to employees and moviegoers, is a good moment to consider both the pleasures offered and the pressures imposed by the industry’s emphasis on public viewing—and what a diminished role for movie theatres might hold for the future of the art.


newyorker--2020-06-23--Trump Refuses to Ramp Up Testing Because of His Hatred of Ramps

WASHINGTON , D.C. ( The Borowitz Report ) —Donald J. Trump is refusing to ramp up testing because of his deep-seated hatred of ramps , White House sources have revealed .
According to several sources , Trump ’ s enmity toward ramps reached a fever pitch after his notorious visit to West Point , earlier this month , which took any talk at the White House of ramping up anything totally off the table .
Eyewitnesses say that it was shortly after that visit that Jared Kushner , seemingly unaware of Trump ’ s newly inflamed feud with ramps , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Do you think we should ramp up testing ?
, ” only to receive a chilly reply from Trump .
“ Never say that word again , ” he reportedly snapped .
While White House staffers have been scrambling in recent days to find synonyms for “ ramp up , ” including “ accelerate , ” “ increase , ” and “ do more of , ” they have become suddenly aware of other words they must avoid while speaking to Trump , including “ drink , ” “ glass , ” @ @ @ @ @

WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump is refusing to ramp up testing because of his deep-seated hatred of ramps, White House sources have revealed.
According to several sources, Trump’s enmity toward ramps reached a fever pitch after his notorious visit to West Point, earlier this month, which took any talk at the White House of ramping up anything totally off the table.
Eyewitnesses say that it was shortly after that visit that Jared Kushner, seemingly unaware of Trump’s newly inflamed feud with ramps, suggested in a White House meeting, “Do you think we should ramp up testing?,” only to receive a chilly reply from Trump.
“Never say that word again,” he reportedly snapped.
“Testing?” Kushner asked.
“Ramp, you idiot,” Trump thundered.
While White House staffers have been scrambling in recent days to find synonyms for “ramp up,” including “accelerate,” “increase,” and “do more of,” they have become suddenly aware of other words they must avoid while speaking to Trump, including “drink,” “glass,” and “water.”


newyorker--2020-06-23--Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Death in Her Hands” Is a New Kind of Murder Mystery

It begins with the mysteries .
On a dawn walk in the birch forest near her isolated rural home , a seventy-two-year-old widow named Vesta Gul finds a handwritten note .
“ Her name was Magda , ” the note says .
“ Nobody will ever know who killed her .
It wasn ’ t me .
Here is her dead body.
” But there is no body .
The woods disclose no evidence of any crime .
It ’ s a prank , Vesta thinks : “ Somebody was playing games.
” That ’ s her initial impression .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” as a name , a bit too particular , a bit too realistic , to have been chosen for a prank ?
Especially in Levant , the white-bread nowheresville town where Vesta lives .
“ This was not a Jenny or Sally or Mary or Sue .
Magda was a name for a character with substance.
” Has Vesta stumbled upon a kind of confession ?
“ It seemed so sinister all of a sudden .
It seemed so real.
” “ Death in Her Hands , ” Ottessa Moshfegh ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at first to occupy familiar territory .
We ’ ve been here before : the lonely woman in the haunted wood , the enigmatic note , the hunt for clues and closure .
All that ’ s missing from this murder mystery is the murder .
Our detective , of course , is Vesta , who rapidly invents for Magda both a family ( her father is “ a man in a military hat ” ) and a writer of the note ( Blake , “ the shaggy blond boy on the skateboard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to solve the crime using the Internet ( a bit ) and her imagination ( a lot ) .
Suspects include a man with facial scarring ( “ Hunting accident ” ) , who works in a local store , and Vesta ’ s nearest neighbors , a wealthy couple who seem skittish about visitors to their land .
Vesta ’ s unquiet mind drives her to involve these strangers in elaborate fictive scenarios , biographies , love affairs .
“ Strange , ” she muses , “ strange what the mind will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first novel , “ Eileen , ” from 2015 , might also imagine that they ’ ve been here before .
That novel is narrated by the depressive and introverted Eileen Dunlop , who shares a house with her alcoholic father and who spends her days working in a correctional facility for adolescent boys .
Eileen ’ s outward life , in small-town New England in the nineteen-sixties , is so miserable and impoverished that she is forced to take refuge in fantasy .
She even concocts romantic daydreams about Randy , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ He would offer his arm as I stepped across the black slate of ice in the parking lot , but I would refuse it , and he would feel jilted and abashed.
” Vesta ’ s speculations are every bit as vivid as Eileen ’ s .
She imagines Magda ’ s death , “ her hands hog-tied behind her back , the blood from her stab wounds leaching into the ground.
” “ Eileen ” ends up elaborately deceiving both Eileen and its readers , and “ Death in Her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But it makes no real secret of its tricksiness—which is in itself grounds for mistrust .
Vesta ’ s unreliability is flagged so thoroughly in the early pages that you begin to suspect that Moshfegh is playing some kind of higher-order game with narrative tension .
In fact , from those same pages , it would appear that we are reading a cruelly knowing variation on Henry James ’ s “ The Turn of the Screw , ” in which the sinister truth , which peeps out from between the lines of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , turns out to be even worse than we originally imagined .
Will Vesta ’ s unreliability turn out to be a trick ?
Is the unreliable narrator reliable after all ?
But creating this sort of narrative tension isn ’ t quite what Moshfegh is up to—or , rather , it ’ s only a fraction of what she 's up to .
The unreliable narrator , as a technique , appeals to novelists who are interested in the gaps ( tragic , comic ) that yawn between how we conceive of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be .
Moshfegh has toyed with this technique in much of her work .
The alcoholic protagonist of her début novella , “ McGlue ” ( 2014 ) , tells the first part of his tale through a haze of delirium tremens , suffered in the hold of a ship where he has been summarily imprisoned for murder .
( He has also incurred a head wound that renders his perspective untrustworthy even when he ’ s sober . )
The narrator of “ My Year of Rest and Relaxation , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ project of “ hibernation ” by grief , yet she tells us about her parents ’ deaths almost casually , as if the brute fact of loss were ancillary to her real concerns .
According to a New York Times profile of Moshfegh , from April , “ Death in Her Hands ” was actually written before “ My Year ” and reposed in a drawer until now .
( We should all have such accomplished manuscripts mouldering in our desks . )
“ It ’ s a loneliness story , ” Moshfegh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when human company is swept away , a baroque inner life can often flourish , and Vesta ’ s increasingly monstrous inner life grows to occlude her view of the world .
A late revelation about party games played by Vesta ’ s neighbors , which might just explain the Magda mystery , goes unnoticed .
By that point , the novel , too , is looking elsewhere .
There are the usual games of form and narration , but they are made to operate in the service of Moshfegh ’ s real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fiction to redeem a maimed life .
“ Death in Her Hands ” is not a murder mystery , nor is it really a story about self-deception or the perils of escapism .
Rather , it ’ s a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art .
One of the book ’ s central questions , then , is whether a work of the imagination can reënchant the world .
From the start , Vesta is less concerned with establishing the facts of the case than she is with insuring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the note is to remark on its writtenness .
The note , she thinks , “ could have been the beginning of a story tossed out as a false start.
” Vesta is critical of the note-writer ’ s literary style : “ It seemed better to begin with gentler descriptions .
I could write the book myself if I had the discipline , if I thought anyone might read it.
” And write the book—that is , the story of Magda and her hypothetical murder—is more or less what Vesta does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearby town of Bethsmane , she prints out a “ character profile questionnaire , ” from a Web site called Top Tips for Mystery Writers , and completes it , at such length that the finished product occupies a whole chapter of “ Death in Her Hands.
” Vesta ’ s character profile of Magda is rife with novelistic detail , much of it adapted from Vesta ’ s own experiences : “ [ Magda ’ s ] father .
I could picture him .
He was like my father : of average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a paisley sweater and scarf.
” Vesta is therefore herself a kind of novelist , doing her best to make the random scraps of experience cohere into meaning .
What does art do , if not slake our thirst for a hidden order ?
We know Vesta ’ s making it all up—but we , too , thirst for a hidden order , especially when we read a story that begins with an ominous note found in the woods .

Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Death in Her Hands” is a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art. Photograph by Jessica Lehrman / NYT / Redux
It begins with the mysteries. On a dawn walk in the birch forest near her isolated rural home, a seventy-two-year-old widow named Vesta Gul finds a handwritten note. “Her name was Magda,” the note says. “Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” But there is no body. The woods disclose no evidence of any crime. It’s a prank, Vesta thinks: “Somebody was playing games.”
That’s her initial impression. But isn’t “Magda,” as a name, a bit too particular, a bit too realistic, to have been chosen for a prank? Especially in Levant, the white-bread nowheresville town where Vesta lives. “This was not a Jenny or Sally or Mary or Sue. Magda was a name for a character with substance.” Has Vesta stumbled upon a kind of confession? “It seemed so sinister all of a sudden. It seemed so real.”
“Death in Her Hands,” Ottessa Moshfegh’s intricate and unsettling new novel, appears at first to occupy familiar territory. We’ve been here before: the lonely woman in the haunted wood, the enigmatic note, the hunt for clues and closure. All that’s missing from this murder mystery is the murder. Our detective, of course, is Vesta, who rapidly invents for Magda both a family (her father is “a man in a military hat”) and a writer of the note (Blake, “the shaggy blond boy on the skateboard”), and who sets out to solve the crime using the Internet (a bit) and her imagination (a lot). Suspects include a man with facial scarring (“Hunting accident”), who works in a local store, and Vesta’s nearest neighbors, a wealthy couple who seem skittish about visitors to their land. Vesta’s unquiet mind drives her to involve these strangers in elaborate fictive scenarios, biographies, love affairs. “Strange,” she muses, “strange what the mind will do.”
Readers of Moshfegh’s first novel, “Eileen,” from 2015, might also imagine that they’ve been here before. That novel is narrated by the depressive and introverted Eileen Dunlop, who shares a house with her alcoholic father and who spends her days working in a correctional facility for adolescent boys. Eileen’s outward life, in small-town New England in the nineteen-sixties, is so miserable and impoverished that she is forced to take refuge in fantasy. She even concocts romantic daydreams about Randy, a slobby, toothpick-chewing guard at the facility: “He would offer his arm as I stepped across the black slate of ice in the parking lot, but I would refuse it, and he would feel jilted and abashed.”
Vesta’s speculations are every bit as vivid as Eileen’s. She imagines Magda’s death, “her hands hog-tied behind her back, the blood from her stab wounds leaching into the ground.” “Eileen” ends up elaborately deceiving both Eileen and its readers, and “Death in Her Hands” is another tricksy novel. But it makes no real secret of its tricksiness—which is in itself grounds for mistrust. Vesta’s unreliability is flagged so thoroughly in the early pages that you begin to suspect that Moshfegh is playing some kind of higher-order game with narrative tension. In fact, from those same pages, it would appear that we are reading a cruelly knowing variation on Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” in which the sinister truth, which peeps out from between the lines of the self-deceived narrator’s ostensibly trustworthy prose, turns out to be even worse than we originally imagined. Will Vesta’s unreliability turn out to be a trick? Is the unreliable narrator reliable after all?
But creating this sort of narrative tension isn’t quite what Moshfegh is up to—or, rather, it’s only a fraction of what she's up to. The unreliable narrator, as a technique, appeals to novelists who are interested in the gaps (tragic, comic) that yawn between how we conceive of ourselves and how the world perceives us to be. Moshfegh has toyed with this technique in much of her work. The alcoholic protagonist of her début novella, “McGlue” (2014), tells the first part of his tale through a haze of delirium tremens, suffered in the hold of a ship where he has been summarily imprisoned for murder. (He has also incurred a head wound that renders his perspective untrustworthy even when he’s sober.) The narrator of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” from 2018, is driven to her project of “hibernation” by grief, yet she tells us about her parents’ deaths almost casually, as if the brute fact of loss were ancillary to her real concerns.
According to a New York Times profile of Moshfegh, from April, “Death in Her Hands” was actually written before “My Year” and reposed in a drawer until now. (We should all have such accomplished manuscripts mouldering in our desks.) “It’s a loneliness story,” Moshfegh told the Times. Moshfegh knows that when human company is swept away, a baroque inner life can often flourish, and Vesta’s increasingly monstrous inner life grows to occlude her view of the world. A late revelation about party games played by Vesta’s neighbors, which might just explain the Magda mystery, goes unnoticed. By that point, the novel, too, is looking elsewhere. There are the usual games of form and narration, but they are made to operate in the service of Moshfegh’s real subject, which is the final inability of fiction to redeem a maimed life. “Death in Her Hands” is not a murder mystery, nor is it really a story about self-deception or the perils of escapism. Rather, it’s a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art.
One of the book’s central questions, then, is whether a work of the imagination can reënchant the world. From the start, Vesta is less concerned with establishing the facts of the case than she is with insuring its literary quality. Her first response to the note is to remark on its writtenness. The note, she thinks, “could have been the beginning of a story tossed out as a false start.” Vesta is critical of the note-writer’s literary style: “It seemed better to begin with gentler descriptions. I could write the book myself if I had the discipline, if I thought anyone might read it.”
And write the book—that is, the story of Magda and her hypothetical murder—is more or less what Vesta does. In the public library of the nearby town of Bethsmane, she prints out a “character profile questionnaire,” from a Web site called Top Tips for Mystery Writers, and completes it, at such length that the finished product occupies a whole chapter of “Death in Her Hands.” Vesta’s character profile of Magda is rife with novelistic detail, much of it adapted from Vesta’s own experiences: “[Magda’s] father. I could picture him. He was like my father: of average height, with a thick middle, in a paisley sweater and scarf.”
Vesta is therefore herself a kind of novelist, doing her best to make the random scraps of experience cohere into meaning. What does art do, if not slake our thirst for a hidden order? We know Vesta’s making it all up—but we, too, thirst for a hidden order, especially when we read a story that begins with an ominous note found in the woods.
Moshfegh depends on this thirst in order to create her novel’s highly disconcerting effects. As Vesta, in her search for clues, begins to turn up small coincidences and, later, more disturbing echoes (does the woman Vesta meets in the library bathroom really call her son Blake?), we find ourselves seduced into hoping that Vesta is right—that there was a real Magda, that she was murdered, and that Vesta’s lonely life, revealed to us in painful asides as she goes about her empty days, will not, in the end, have meant nothing.
Threaded through the character profile—and through Vesta’s narrative generally—are glimpses of her marriage with a man named Walter, who was, it becomes clear, both abusive and unfaithful. Walter mocked Vesta’s “paranoic” cast of mind, and frequently tried “to divert my attention away from what he thought I might know about how he spent his time outside of the house.” The note in the woods gives Vesta the chance to tell a story, and, by doing so, to reclaim the meaning of her life in the aftermath of her miserable marriage.
This is what artists do, of course: they reclaim meaning from the accidents of experience, or try to. In the fact that Vesta’s efforts are finally eroded by paranoia and loneliness—in the fact that the Magda mystery, founded entirely on red herrings, turns out to be the biggest red herring of them all—lies the almost unbearable message of this brief, bleak book. “Death in Her Hands” is the work of writer who is, like Henry James or Vladimir Nabokov, touched by both genius and cruelty. Cruelty, so deplorable in life, is for novelists a seriously underrated virtue. Like a surgeon, or a serial killer, Moshfegh flenses her characters, and her readers, until all that’s left is a void. It’s the amused contemplation of that void that gives rise to the dark exhilaration of her work—its wayward beauty, its comedy, and its horror.


newyorker--2020-06-23--Can Domestic Abusers Keep Themselves Accountable When No One Is Watching?

One morning in early April , Brian Heiman and Melissa York , employees of the Kansas Department of Corrections , had just begun a weekly Zoom class with the half-dozen men in their batterer-intervention program .
It was the group ’ s second week of meeting remotely , owing to the COVID-19 pandemic .
They started by discussing a recent murder , in Wichita , of a woman and her eight-year-old daughter ; police suspected the woman ’ s boyfriend of the crime .
Heiman and York planned to use the case in class to illustrate how domestic abusers isolate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been dead for three days before their bodies were found .
A regular member of the class joined the call a few minutes late .
John ( the name is a pseudonym ) is hard to miss in any context : he is enormous , with a linebacker ’ s build and a deep bass voice .
Before quarantine , he kept his hair carefully styled , but today it was wild , unkempt .
He was in the car when he dialled in , with his phone mounted on the dashboard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participants on the call could see trees and buildings passing behind him .
His phone was muted , so he could hear everyone else , but they couldn ’ t hear him .
At one point , he pulled into what looked like the parking lot of an apartment complex and got out of the car , leaving his phone behind .
A minute or two later , he got back into the car and started driving again .
Heiman and York asked him to unmute himself , but he didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the call , John parked his car in a new spot , got out , and then returned , a few minutes later .
In batterer-intervention programs , a facilitator—sometimes a reformed batterer—leads a discussion aimed at helping abusers recognize the causes of domestic violence , develop empathy for themselves and for others , and identify negative thought patterns that can precipitate acts of abuse .
All of the men in Heiman and York ’ s class were attending it by court order , as a condition of probation or of parole for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call , York asked the other men on the line what they thought John was doing .
None of them answered .
York told me that , during the call , John had appeared focussed , self-contained .
“ He seemed mission-oriented , ” she said .
Heiman remembered his demeanor as being somewhat different .
“ He was very activated—it looked like he was in a rage , ” he said .
“ He was out of control , in a controlled way.
” Heiman grew up in an abusive home , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he recognized in John the anger he used to witness in his father .
Suddenly , John unmuted himself and began ranting .
“ He was saying that men get in trouble for being manipulated , and for having their hearts broken , ” York said .
John intimated that , if the murdered woman in Wichita had not manipulated her boyfriend , she would still be alive .
Then he began talking about his own relationship : how his girlfriend had broken up with him the night before and moved out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how she wasn ’ t responding to his calls and texts ; how he knew that she ’ d been cheating on him .
He had taken care of her , he said , given her a place to live , showered her with gifts—now he knew that she ’ d been using him all along .
It was then that Heiman and York realized that John was not aimlessly driving around—he was hunting for his ex-girlfriend .
Later , they discovered that John had logged into his girlfriend ’ s account on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the app ’ s geolocation feature , he was stalking her .
Heiman and York ended the class , but they had John stay on the line .
“ I kept trying to bring him back to the present , ” by asking him to identify his immediate feelings , York said .
She wanted John to see that his rage toward his ex was a kind of shadow , or deflection , of what he was really feeling : sadness .
York hoped that , if she could get him to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his grief about the end of the relationship , she could calm him down .
As she talked to John , Heiman quietly called a victim ’ s advocate , who in turn tried to contact John ’ s ex-girlfriend to let her know that she was in danger .
Eventually , John , seeming to run out of places to look for his ex-girlfriend , returned home and planted himself on his couch .
The phone call continued for three more hours .
York and Heiman asked him more questions from their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anger ?
What might his ex be feeling in this moment ?
John continued to talk about all he had done for her .
He threatened to dump everything outside that she had left behind .
Eventually , he promised that he would not hurt himself or her , though he refused to say that he would not harm the man whom he suspected she was seeing .
He didn ’ t care if he went back to prison , he said .
That night , Heiman stayed awake until dawn , listening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning of the pandemic , advocates for victims of domestic violence have been warning , with terrible accuracy , that the forced intimacy resulting from quarantine , and also the crisis ’ s economic and psychological stresses , would lead to a worldwide surge in abuse .
Meanwhile , the pandemic has also badly hobbled systems for accountability .
“ In a normal time , ” Heiman said , of the episode with John , “ we would have given him a jail sanction ” —holding him pending an investigation— “ until we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John ’ s stalking and verbal threats may have been enough to revoke his parole , “ but , with COVID , if there ’ s not an act of violence , it ’ s been tough ” to do that , Heiman said .
He knew of at least two other cases in his jurisdiction in which arrests ordinarily would have been made , but weren ’ t .
In mid-March , domestic-violence calls to police started to increase sharply across the country , while arrests decreased .
Jails became hot spots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down , and civil courts operated on a severely limited basis—judges were hearing cases over Skype or granting orders of protection via phone or e-mail .
Thousands of cases were continued , and then continued again .
Chicago saw a four-hundred-per-cent increase in G.P.S.-monitoring violations—broken restraining orders stemming from domestic violence .
An officer in a Texas sheriff ’ s office , who asked not to be named , told me that COVID-19 has had dramatic effects on evidence collection and on-scene investigations : officers are hampered by onerous protocols when entering homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were delayed until restrictions were lifted .
David Thomas , a program manager at the International Association of the Chiefs of Police , in Alexandria , Virginia , told me that some accused abusers have been claiming to have COVID-19 in order to keep police away .
John Chisholm is the district attorney for Milwaukee , where homicides were double the normal rate during the first five months of 2020 ; Chisholm estimates that a quarter of these were related to domestic violence , including an incident on April 30th in which a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed five members of his family , four of them teen-agers .
Chisholm told me that there ’ s no set date for when courts will be fully operational again .
“ The backlog concerns me the most , ” he said .
“ It ’ s going to stretch our protective services , and we will have more people with unresolved cases still circulating in close proximity to the victims.
” The time between the arraignment of an alleged abuser and disposition—usually about ninety days—is a notoriously dangerous period for victims .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Massachusetts , have bail statutes that allow offenders to be held pre-trial .
“ You ’ re trying to disrupt that escalation of violence , ” Kelly Dunne , the chief of operations at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center , in Amesbury , Massachusetts , told me .

One morning in early April, Brian Heiman and Melissa York, employees of the Kansas Department of Corrections, had just begun a weekly Zoom class with the half-dozen men in their batterer-intervention program. It was the group’s second week of meeting remotely, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. They started by discussing a recent murder, in Wichita, of a woman and her eight-year-old daughter; police suspected the woman’s boyfriend of the crime. Heiman and York planned to use the case in class to illustrate how domestic abusers isolate their victims: the mother and child had been dead for three days before their bodies were found.
A regular member of the class joined the call a few minutes late. John (the name is a pseudonym) is hard to miss in any context: he is enormous, with a linebacker’s build and a deep bass voice. Before quarantine, he kept his hair carefully styled, but today it was wild, unkempt. He was in the car when he dialled in, with his phone mounted on the dashboard; as he drove, the other participants on the call could see trees and buildings passing behind him. His phone was muted, so he could hear everyone else, but they couldn’t hear him. At one point, he pulled into what looked like the parking lot of an apartment complex and got out of the car, leaving his phone behind. A minute or two later, he got back into the car and started driving again. Heiman and York asked him to unmute himself, but he didn’t respond. Again and again, throughout the call, John parked his car in a new spot, got out, and then returned, a few minutes later.
In batterer-intervention programs, a facilitator—sometimes a reformed batterer—leads a discussion aimed at helping abusers recognize the causes of domestic violence, develop empathy for themselves and for others, and identify negative thought patterns that can precipitate acts of abuse. All of the men in Heiman and York’s class were attending it by court order, as a condition of probation or of parole for a domestic-violence-related conviction. Partway through the call, York asked the other men on the line what they thought John was doing. None of them answered.
York told me that, during the call, John had appeared focussed, self-contained. “He seemed mission-oriented,” she said. Heiman remembered his demeanor as being somewhat different. “He was very activated—it looked like he was in a rage,” he said. “He was out of control, in a controlled way.” Heiman grew up in an abusive home, and, through his computer screen, he recognized in John the anger he used to witness in his father.
Suddenly, John unmuted himself and began ranting. “He was saying that men get in trouble for being manipulated, and for having their hearts broken,” York said. John intimated that, if the murdered woman in Wichita had not manipulated her boyfriend, she would still be alive. Then he began talking about his own relationship: how his girlfriend had broken up with him the night before and moved out of the home that they shared together; how she wasn’t responding to his calls and texts; how he knew that she’d been cheating on him. He had taken care of her, he said, given her a place to live, showered her with gifts—now he knew that she’d been using him all along. It was then that Heiman and York realized that John was not aimlessly driving around—he was hunting for his ex-girlfriend. Later, they discovered that John had logged into his girlfriend’s account on a dating app; with the help of the app’s geolocation feature, he was stalking her.
Heiman and York ended the class, but they had John stay on the line. “I kept trying to bring him back to the present,” by asking him to identify his immediate feelings, York said. She wanted John to see that his rage toward his ex was a kind of shadow, or deflection, of what he was really feeling: sadness. York hoped that, if she could get him to dig beyond his anger, and access his grief about the end of the relationship, she could calm him down. As she talked to John, Heiman quietly called a victim’s advocate, who in turn tried to contact John’s ex-girlfriend to let her know that she was in danger.
Eventually, John, seeming to run out of places to look for his ex-girlfriend, returned home and planted himself on his couch. The phone call continued for three more hours. York and Heiman asked him more questions from their class curriculum: What was behind his anger? What might his ex be feeling in this moment? John continued to talk about all he had done for her. He threatened to dump everything outside that she had left behind. Eventually, he promised that he would not hurt himself or her, though he refused to say that he would not harm the man whom he suspected she was seeing. He didn’t care if he went back to prison, he said. That night, Heiman stayed awake until dawn, listening to a police scanner.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, advocates for victims of domestic violence have been warning, with terrible accuracy, that the forced intimacy resulting from quarantine, and also the crisis’s economic and psychological stresses, would lead to a worldwide surge in abuse. Meanwhile, the pandemic has also badly hobbled systems for accountability. “In a normal time,” Heiman said, of the episode with John, “we would have given him a jail sanction”—holding him pending an investigation—“until we could figure everything out.” Typically, John’s stalking and verbal threats may have been enough to revoke his parole, “but, with COVID, if there’s not an act of violence, it’s been tough” to do that, Heiman said. He knew of at least two other cases in his jurisdiction in which arrests ordinarily would have been made, but weren’t.
In mid-March, domestic-violence calls to police started to increase sharply across the country, while arrests decreased. Jails became hot spots of coronavirus transmission. Criminal courts shut down, and civil courts operated on a severely limited basis—judges were hearing cases over Skype or granting orders of protection via phone or e-mail. Thousands of cases were continued, and then continued again. Chicago saw a four-hundred-per-cent increase in G.P.S.-monitoring violations—broken restraining orders stemming from domestic violence. An officer in a Texas sheriff’s office, who asked not to be named, told me that COVID-19 has had dramatic effects on evidence collection and on-scene investigations: officers are hampered by onerous protocols when entering homes, and on-scene arrests and immediate warrants were delayed until restrictions were lifted. David Thomas, a program manager at the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, in Alexandria, Virginia, told me that some accused abusers have been claiming to have COVID-19 in order to keep police away.
John Chisholm is the district attorney for Milwaukee, where homicides were double the normal rate during the first five months of 2020; Chisholm estimates that a quarter of these were related to domestic violence, including an incident on April 30th in which a man with a history of domestic abuse killed five members of his family, four of them teen-agers. Chisholm told me that there’s no set date for when courts will be fully operational again. “The backlog concerns me the most,” he said. “It’s going to stretch our protective services, and we will have more people with unresolved cases still circulating in close proximity to the victims.”
The time between the arraignment of an alleged abuser and disposition—usually about ninety days—is a notoriously dangerous period for victims. This is why some states, such as Massachusetts, have bail statutes that allow offenders to be held pre-trial. “You’re trying to disrupt that escalation of violence,” Kelly Dunne, the chief of operations at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, in Amesbury, Massachusetts, told me.
I spoke with a woman in Texas whose ex-boyfriend punched her in the stomach, strangled her, and pushed her down the stairs when she was eight months pregnant; she went into early labor and her child was stillborn. She obtained a fifty-year restraining order against the ex-boyfriend, though a date for his trial has not been set. In April, she learned that he had successfully petitioned to have his G.P.S. monitor removed. (The ex-boyfriend’s attorney declined to comment.) She is particularly afraid of his access to guns—he has sold them in the past—and believes that if she were white, and not a woman of color, “this wouldn’t be happening the way it’s happening.” Since then, she has installed security cameras in her home and asked the police for patrols on her street. But she lives in fear that he’ll just show up one day.
There are some fifteen hundred batterer-intervention programs across the U.S., but no one organization that oversees and codifies all of them. As a result, no two have the same standards—not in terms of training, curriculum, program length, or required court order. This variability also means that there is relatively little research on how effective these programs are in reducing violence. (Studies of programs modelled on one of the oldest batterer-intervention-program models, which was developed in the early nineteen-eighties, in Duluth, Minnesota, have shown that they have, “at best, a minimal effect on whether participants continue to abuse their partners,” as Matthew Wolfe wrote in The Atlantic, in January.)
In many parts of the country, however, batterer-intervention programs are the only sources of accountability for abusers which have remained relatively intact during the pandemic. While programs that convened inside jails and prisons did shut down entirely, those for men on probation and parole have moved online. Some of these Zoom groups, such as that run by Heiman and York, are mandatory, but many others, including those in Milwaukee and Massachusetts, have been made voluntary: probation and parole officers have been working out of their homes, with limited capacity for oversight, and many participants lack smartphones, reliable Internet access, or unlimited cell-phone minutes. Yet, facilitators consistently told me that, even in jurisdictions where participation is optional, attendance hovers around eighty per cent.
The Alma Center, in Milwaukee, which convenes a Men Ending Violence class and other programming aimed at helping men with a history of domestic violence, gets most of its clients, and some of its funding, through Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections. But the D.O.C. stopped making referrals once the state’s safer-at-home orders went into effect, which has resulted in a substantial reduction in the Alma Center’s operating budget. “It’s been more of a struggle for us to be identified as essential services, because the traditional approach is to fund victim services,” Terri Strodthoff, the founder and executive director of the Alma Center, told me. “But, during the pandemic, people are recognizing that victim services are only one aspect. We also need to support people in their process of change.”
In Strodthoff’s groups, men call in from cars, back porches, laundry rooms—anywhere they can find some privacy. They tend to be men living at the economic margins, who might scramble to find bus fare to arrive on time to meetings with parole officers or support services. For many, being able to join their support group from home is a stress reliever. “There’s a comfort level in the home, and a quicker movement to a level of depth,” Strodthoff told me.
Juan Carlos Areán, the program director for Futures Without Violence, a domestic-violence-prevention organization that provides training for batterer-intervention programs, said that the persistence of intervention classes during the pandemic “is breaking a fundamental paradigm in this country—that men will not ask for help voluntarily.” With the criminal and court systems in disarray, Areán said, it’s become clearer that “we have underused other ways to work with people who use violence. This is an opportunity to expand accountability outside of a punitive approach.”


newyorker--2020-06-23--Where Bail Funds Go From Here

Where Bail Funds Go From Here

Until recently , the Minnesota Freedom Fund , which began paying criminal bail and immigration bonds in 2016 , had one full-time staff member , one part-time staff member , and eight volunteer board members , all of whom had full-time jobs elsewhere .
Its average annual budget was about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars , and getting that amount together was not easy .
“ It was very much , ‘ Who ’ s going to write this grant to this organization so we can raise some more money ?
’ ” one of those board members , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told me .
Then , on May 26th , hundreds of people poured into the streets of Minneapolis to protest the horrific killing of George Floyd by a police officer named Derek Chauvin .
Cops cracked down on the unrest , and people on Twitter began sharing a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund , so that protesters who were arrested could be bailed out .
Days and nights passed , the protests continued , and the money kept coming in .
People who had never heard the term “ bail fund ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viral .
The organization began pointing donors to other local groups , but the donations didn ’ t stop .
By the end of the first week of June , the fund had received more than nine hundred thousand donations , totalling more than thirty-one million dollars .
Ceja-Orozco , who ’ s in her mid-thirties and comes from a family of mixed immigration status , asked for time off from her paying job so that she could help the fund full time .
The organization hadn ’ t anticipated this instant explosion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopped working because too many new messages were coming in .
There were also behind-the-scenes conflicts among the staff , which , a week or so later , would finally spill into public view .
And , in the meantime , the tiny crew had many more people than usual to bail out .
In the money-bail system , a person charged with a crime must provide , as security , an amount set by a judge based on a bail schedule ; if that person can not pay , he or she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The money is returned after the case is closed , or after the case is dismissed , which happens somewhere between a third and half of the time—a huge number of people every year spend time in jail for charges that are ultimately deemed not worth pursuing .
Around sixty per cent of those in jail on any given day are awaiting trial , and most of them are being held there because they could not afford bail .
Even low bail amounts are generally not affordable : in New York , nine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay bail at arraignment .
Many end up turning to the two-billion-dollar commercial bail industry , an industry that only legally exists in two countries , the U.S. and the Philippines .
The jail population is disproportionately black , because racism is embedded at each level of the system : black Americans are poorer than white Americans , their neighborhoods are more aggressively policed , and black men are consistently assigned higher bail amounts than white men who have been charged with similar crimes .
Being held on bail often means losing your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your children ; it means fighting your case from a place of minimum agency—and , very often , accepting a criminal conviction as the price of going home .
As the protests over Floyd ’ s killing spread around the country , bail funds in other cities were also deluged with donations .
The National Bail Fund Network , which provides coördination and resources for such funds , has now received money from nearly two million people ; the funds that it supports have raised an estimated seventy-five million dollars .
In ordinary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the accused call bail funds to request help ; some funds have staff members who monitor arraignments .
But during periods of protest the support system grows : legal observers and activists go to jails and courthouses , ready to contact a bail fund as soon as protesters are brought in , or when bail is set .
The first formally organized bail fund was created by the American Civil Liberties Union , a hundred years ago , specifically for protesters , after Congress passed sedition laws in an attempt to deter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funds that focus on protest bail , such as the Atlanta Solidarity Fund .
But “ there ’ s always an overlap ” between those funds and community bail funds , Pilar Weiss , the director of the National Bail Fund Network , told me .
During the recent wave of protests , she said , “ Community bail funds and protest bail funds have essentially merged.
” The readiness of organizers to meet the demands of the moment is the result of steady work that has been going on for years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2014 , to raise bail for people arrested at a vigil for DeSean Pittman , a teen-ager who was killed by the Chicago police .
In the six years since , it has paid more than two million dollars in bond for Chicago residents .
Activists have used social media to amplify this work and broaden its base of support .
For the last three years , the abolitionist activist Mariame Kaba has raised money for bail funds on New Year ’ s Eve , encouraging people to donate the cost of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ donors every year .
The National Bail Out Collective makes a fund-raising push every year around Mother ’ s Day ; this year , a # FreeBlackMamas campaign raised more than two million dollars from twenty-four thousand individual donors , and they have bailed out seventy-one mothers and caregivers in the weeks since .
I first donated to a bail fund in 2015 , drawn , like a lot of people , by how directly such support alleviates human suffering .
( I have given money to many of the organizations mentioned in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fund uses to pay bail can serve as a kind of endowment , because the bulk of the money almost always comes back .
But the difficulty of actually getting it back is one of the reasons that bail funds are essential .
“ What some people don ’ t understand is that there are a lot of lags in the system , ” Weiss told me .
“ It ’ s not an instant process when a person gets arrested and a bail fund gets them out .
And , afterward @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case and say , ‘ Here ’ s your money back , ’ either .
It can take two weeks , or it can take years .
It ’ s very clear that the state expects people to be ground down by the effort to get their bail money back—and that , as with incorrect health-insurance claims , they might just give up.
” Bail logistics have gotten even more complicated since the onset of the pandemic : courts often keep irregular hours these days , as do banks , which makes it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s checks or large amounts of cash and then post bail .
( Minneapolis is in Hennepin County , which does not accept checks or credit cards and requires exact change . )
Since the Floyd protests began , the Minnesota Freedom Fund has seen bail set as high as five hundred thousand dollars , prior to one detainee ’ s arraignment .
( At the arraignment itself , the bail was dropped to seventy-five thousand dollars . )
A lot of Minneapolis protesters were released without bail , possibly thanks to public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hotspots .
But some protesters have been pulled into ICE detention , which does not come with public records and jail rosters , Ceja-Orozco told me .
She and the other organizers were also concerned that the police department might begin doubling back to arrest protesters on heftier charges , drawing on video evidence .

Until recently, the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which began paying criminal bail and immigration bonds in 2016, had one full-time staff member, one part-time staff member, and eight volunteer board members, all of whom had full-time jobs elsewhere. Its average annual budget was about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and getting that amount together was not easy. “It was very much, ‘Who’s going to write this grant to this organization so we can raise some more money?’ ” one of those board members, an immigration attorney named Mirella Ceja-Orozco, told me. Then, on May 26th, hundreds of people poured into the streets of Minneapolis to protest the horrific killing of George Floyd by a police officer named Derek Chauvin. Cops cracked down on the unrest, and people on Twitter began sharing a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, so that protesters who were arrested could be bailed out. Days and nights passed, the protests continued, and the money kept coming in. People who had never heard the term “bail fund” before Googled it; donation-matching challenges went viral. The organization began pointing donors to other local groups, but the donations didn’t stop. By the end of the first week of June, the fund had received more than nine hundred thousand donations, totalling more than thirty-one million dollars.
Ceja-Orozco, who’s in her mid-thirties and comes from a family of mixed immigration status, asked for time off from her paying job so that she could help the fund full time. The organization hadn’t anticipated this instant explosion in attention and responsibility—its e-mail account briefly stopped working because too many new messages were coming in. There were also behind-the-scenes conflicts among the staff, which, a week or so later, would finally spill into public view. And, in the meantime, the tiny crew had many more people than usual to bail out.
In the money-bail system, a person charged with a crime must provide, as security, an amount set by a judge based on a bail schedule; if that person cannot pay, he or she is held in jail until trial. The money is returned after the case is closed, or after the case is dismissed, which happens somewhere between a third and half of the time—a huge number of people every year spend time in jail for charges that are ultimately deemed not worth pursuing. Around sixty per cent of those in jail on any given day are awaiting trial, and most of them are being held there because they could not afford bail. Even low bail amounts are generally not affordable: in New York, nine out of ten defendants are unable to pay bail at arraignment. Many end up turning to the two-billion-dollar commercial bail industry, an industry that only legally exists in two countries, the U.S. and the Philippines. The jail population is disproportionately black, because racism is embedded at each level of the system: black Americans are poorer than white Americans, their neighborhoods are more aggressively policed, and black men are consistently assigned higher bail amounts than white men who have been charged with similar crimes. Being held on bail often means losing your job, your housing, custody of your children; it means fighting your case from a place of minimum agency—and, very often, accepting a criminal conviction as the price of going home.
As the protests over Floyd’s killing spread around the country, bail funds in other cities were also deluged with donations. The National Bail Fund Network, which provides coördination and resources for such funds, has now received money from nearly two million people; the funds that it supports have raised an estimated seventy-five million dollars. In ordinary times, public defenders and family members of the accused call bail funds to request help; some funds have staff members who monitor arraignments. But during periods of protest the support system grows: legal observers and activists go to jails and courthouses, ready to contact a bail fund as soon as protesters are brought in, or when bail is set. The first formally organized bail fund was created by the American Civil Liberties Union, a hundred years ago, specifically for protesters, after Congress passed sedition laws in an attempt to deter the rise of communism—and there are still funds that focus on protest bail, such as the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. But “there’s always an overlap” between those funds and community bail funds, Pilar Weiss, the director of the National Bail Fund Network, told me. During the recent wave of protests, she said, “Community bail funds and protest bail funds have essentially merged.”
The readiness of organizers to meet the demands of the moment is the result of steady work that has been going on for years. The Chicago Community Bond Fund was created in 2014, to raise bail for people arrested at a vigil for DeSean Pittman, a teen-ager who was killed by the Chicago police. In the six years since, it has paid more than two million dollars in bond for Chicago residents. Activists have used social media to amplify this work and broaden its base of support. For the last three years, the abolitionist activist Mariame Kaba has raised money for bail funds on New Year’s Eve, encouraging people to donate the cost of a drink and engaging thousands of new donors every year. The National Bail Out Collective makes a fund-raising push every year around Mother’s Day; this year, a #FreeBlackMamas campaign raised more than two million dollars from twenty-four thousand individual donors, and they have bailed out seventy-one mothers and caregivers in the weeks since.
I first donated to a bail fund in 2015, drawn, like a lot of people, by how directly such support alleviates human suffering. (I have given money to many of the organizations mentioned in this piece.) The money that a fund uses to pay bail can serve as a kind of endowment, because the bulk of the money almost always comes back. But the difficulty of actually getting it back is one of the reasons that bail funds are essential. “What some people don’t understand is that there are a lot of lags in the system,” Weiss told me. “It’s not an instant process when a person gets arrested and a bail fund gets them out. And, afterward, they don’t close the case and say, ‘Here’s your money back,’ either. It can take two weeks, or it can take years. It’s very clear that the state expects people to be ground down by the effort to get their bail money back—and that, as with incorrect health-insurance claims, they might just give up.”
Bail logistics have gotten even more complicated since the onset of the pandemic: courts often keep irregular hours these days, as do banks, which makes it harder for organizers to obtain cashier’s checks or large amounts of cash and then post bail. (Minneapolis is in Hennepin County, which does not accept checks or credit cards and requires exact change.) Since the Floyd protests began, the Minnesota Freedom Fund has seen bail set as high as five hundred thousand dollars, prior to one detainee’s arraignment. (At the arraignment itself, the bail was dropped to seventy-five thousand dollars.) A lot of Minneapolis protesters were released without bail, possibly thanks to public awareness that crowded jails have become COVID-19 hotspots. But some protesters have been pulled into ICE detention, which does not come with public records and jail rosters, Ceja-Orozco told me. She and the other organizers were also concerned that the police department might begin doubling back to arrest protesters on heftier charges, drawing on video evidence.
The work has felt vital and important, Ceja-Orozco told me, even though the fund’s necessity is and always will be a source of frustration. Like many of its peer organizations, the Minnesota Freedom Fund would like to put itself out of business: they don’t want to make bail more fair, they want to end it. And, for many of them, that abolitionist impulse extends well beyond bail. “It is inspiring to see this progressive momentum in Minneapolis,” Ceja-Orozco said, “but it’s hard in a lot of ways to celebrate our work. The truth is, we don’t want to exist, really. We don’t want to help this bail cycle continue. We don’t plan to be a long-term organization.”
Bail was originally supposed to be emancipatory, more or less. When bail as we know it in the United States was first conceived, in England, more than a thousand years ago, the state was not responsible for criminal justice, and crimes were mostly punished through financial penalties (an improvement on the previous practice of settling scores through blood feuds). Bail allowed the accused to remain free until trial—and the accused did not have to put up any money, only to identify a guarantor for the amount that he would owe if convicted. June Carbone, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, has written that this model was perhaps the idea’s “last entirely rational application.” In the eleventh century, the English state began to assume responsibility for criminal justice, and financial penalties started giving way to capital and corporal punishment. Judges turned to high bails as a way of keeping people detained until they were tried. By the time English bail law was imported to Colonial America, “excessive bail” was technically forbidden—and state constitutions later proclaimed the right to pretrial liberty—but the reality of bail as a punitive instrument, and a method of social control, was already taking shape.
Families, churches, and other collectives pooled money to free their own, a way of resisting this sort of control. The bail fund created by the A.C.L.U., in 1920, established a model that other organizations could follow: after Congress passed the Smith Act, in the forties, which made advocating for the overthrow of the American government a crime, a group called the Civil Rights Congress formed a bail fund for those who were charged under the law, which has never been entirely repealed. (In 1951, the attorney general of New York turned over the names of the fund’s contributors to the F.B.I.) In the sixties, civil-rights groups bailed out activists from Massachusetts to Mississippi. College students bailed out peers who were arrested for protesting the Vietnam War. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson signed the Bail Reform Act into law; the legislation encouraged leniency on the part of judges but left the money-bail system intact. State legislatures pushed back against the law almost immediately, and, in 1984, a second Bail Reform Act restricted the changes of the first.
The contemporary bail-fund movement is largely a product of the last decade, and got its start in New York City. In 2007, Robin Steinberg and David Feige, of the Bronx Defenders, a groundbreaking public-defenders’ office, launched the Bronx Freedom Fund, to pay low-level bails for Bronx residents. Two years later, a judge ruled that the fund was a bail-bond business and was not properly licensed or certified, and shut it down. But the organization had already generated telling outcomes. The category of defendants that the fund bailed out typically pleaded guilty ninety-five percent of the time; after receiving access to bail money, none of the nearly two hundred people the fund helped went back to jail on their original charges. (Many cases were dismissed, and most convicted defendants received non-jail sentences, like fines or community service; a few received time served.) Steinberg and Feige pushed for state legislation that would permit bail funds to operate, but Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed their first bill, in 2011. A year later, the Charitable Bail Organizations Act was passed, with some concessions: charitable bail was capped at two thousand dollars, and only those who’d been charged with low-level crimes were eligible. (Opponents of bail reform continue to argue that the ability of judges to set high bail amounts and to use their discretion to lock up defendants accused of more serious crimes is necessary to keep the public safe.)


newyorker--2020-06-24--More Activities That Penguins Have Been Permitted During Lockdown

Two penguins went to the beach and talked to a dolphin about how weird it was that someone took them to a museum .
Three penguins were allowed admission to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame , in Cleveland , after Jann Wenner lifted the animals ’ lifetime ban , claiming that “ petty grudges must be cast aside during these uncertain times.
” ( One of the penguins supposedly embarrassed Wenner in front of Linda Ronstadt at an East Village party , in 1979 . )
One penguin went to a coffee shop to work on its book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t quite right and it had a lot of e-mails to respond to , anyway .
One penguin got drinks with someone it had never actually liked before the pandemic and said , “ I just miss this , you know ?
” four times .
One penguin waddled down the flight of stairs from “ Joker.
” One penguin was allowed to go to the barbershop to get a haircut , which forced the penguin into the crushing realization that it had generously inflated the memory of its pre-quarantine personal appearance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transformative an effect as expected .
Two penguins went on a date to a concert .
They got tired during the opening act and went home .
One penguin took a picture of a bunch of other penguins not social-distancing and posted it online .
One mentally fatigued penguin was allowed to come to a halting stop in front of a park bench and say “ I just need a minute ” to no one in particular .
A penguin walked into a bar .
That ’ s it .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a female penguin ’ s one day outside of the aquarium by talking to her about the new Bob Dylan album .
Three penguins went to a baseball game .
In the fifth inning , one of them said , “ I think I ’ d rather watch ice melt , ” and they all laughed , but then silence fell over the group as individually they thought about how , much like baseball ’ s grasp on America ’ s attention span , the polar ice caps from which they came are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than anybody wants to acknowledge .
One penguin went to a SoulCycle class at which the instructor was a little too forward .
One father penguin got to walk around Home Depot , and the second he got a whiff of that weird Home Depot smell his little penguin tail started to wag uncontrollably .
One penguin taught itself to play chess on its phone during quarantine and then got absolutely crushed when it played an actual other penguin in the park .
Four penguins went to yoga and it was exactly as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Two penguins walked down Fourteenth Street .
One of them shook its head and said , “ New York ’ s changed , ” and the other knowingly replied , “ Mm-hmm , ” but neither provided any context , and both moved there in 2015 , so , honestly , what are they even talking about ?

A group of the flightless birds were recently allowed to roam the halls of Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium—a through-the-looking-glass moment if there ever was one. Now, penguins visited a museum for a “morning of fine art and culture. The outing was arranged by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City Zoo. Both institutions are closed to the public because of the pandemic.—NPR
Two penguins went to the beach and talked to a dolphin about how weird it was that someone took them to a museum.
Three penguins were allowed admission to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, after Jann Wenner lifted the animals’ lifetime ban, claiming that “petty grudges must be cast aside during these uncertain times.” (One of the penguins supposedly embarrassed Wenner in front of Linda Ronstadt at an East Village party, in 1979.)
One penguin went to a coffee shop to work on its book proposal, but the vibe wasn’t quite right and it had a lot of e-mails to respond to, anyway.
One penguin got drinks with someone it had never actually liked before the pandemic and said, “I just miss this, you know?” four times.
One penguin waddled down the flight of stairs from “Joker.”
One penguin was allowed to go to the barbershop to get a haircut, which forced the penguin into the crushing realization that it had generously inflated the memory of its pre-quarantine personal appearance, when the haircut did not have as transformative an effect as expected.
Two penguins went on a date to a concert. They got tired during the opening act and went home.
One penguin took a picture of a bunch of other penguins not social-distancing and posted it online.
One mentally fatigued penguin was allowed to come to a halting stop in front of a park bench and say “I just need a minute” to no one in particular.
A penguin walked into a bar. That’s it. That’s the joke.
A male penguin wasted a female penguin’s one day outside of the aquarium by talking to her about the new Bob Dylan album.
Three penguins went to a baseball game. In the fifth inning, one of them said, “I think I’d rather watch ice melt,” and they all laughed, but then silence fell over the group as individually they thought about how, much like baseball’s grasp on America’s attention span, the polar ice caps from which they came are slipping away at a pace more rapid than anybody wants to acknowledge.
One penguin went to a SoulCycle class at which the instructor was a little too forward.
One father penguin got to walk around Home Depot, and the second he got a whiff of that weird Home Depot smell his little penguin tail started to wag uncontrollably.
One penguin taught itself to play chess on its phone during quarantine and then got absolutely crushed when it played an actual other penguin in the park.
Four penguins went to yoga and it was exactly as adorable as you’d imagine.
Two penguins walked down Fourteenth Street. One of them shook its head and said, “New York’s changed,” and the other knowingly replied, “Mm-hmm,” but neither provided any context, and both moved there in 2015, so, honestly, what are they even talking about?


newyorker--2020-06-24--Clarence Major Reads Billy Collins

Clarence Major Reads Billy Collins

Clarence Major joins Kevin Young to read “ Downpour , ” by Billy Collins , and his own poem “ @ @ @ @ @ recent honors include a PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award and a Lifetime Achievement @ @ @ @ @ from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation .

Download a transcript.
Photograph by Earl Gibson III / Getty
Clarence Major joins Kevin Young to read “Downpour,” by Billy Collins, and his own poem “Hair.” Major’s recent honors include a PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award in the fine arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.


newyorker--2020-06-24--The Vanishing Monuments of Columbus, Ohio

If you attended elementary or middle school in Columbus , Ohio , during the early nineteen-nineties , you most likely took a field trip downtown , to the banks of the Scioto River , to visit the Santa Maria Museum .
Docked just offshore , it was a full-size replica of Christopher Columbus ’ s flagship , unveiled in 1992 to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus ’ s first voyage across the Atlantic , in 1492 .
My parents—who wrestled to serve as a barrier between their children and the sanitization of the country ’ s history , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for me to go on the trip .
On the designated day of the fifth grade , I stayed behind , in a dimly lit classroom , thumbing through highlighted literature that my father had given me to read .
There were people in the city who believed the ship to be a marvel , something beautiful enough to obscure the history of the place where it rested , or the blood that was shed in the name of conquest .
On the day that the Santa Maria was officially dedicated , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ celebrate .
In the street by a nearby park , more than a hundred people protested .
From the ship ’ s deck , a visitor could look up toward the mouth of the Scioto , to an area that was once known as Salt-Lick Town , where , in 1774 , soldiers from Virginia opened fire on a village of indigenous men , women , and children , killing ninety-six people .
There were no memorials for this chapter of our history .
Just the replica of the boat , casting a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doorstep of an era in which the once impossible is becoming newly possible .
The Santa Maria replica was pulled from the Scioto River in the early twenty-tens—not because of what it represented , or because of the people who ’ d spent the previous decades calling for its removal , but to make room for renovations along the river .
Other monuments to Christopher Columbus remain woven into the fabric of the city named in his honor .
The most prominent of three statues , a twenty-two-foot , three-ton likeness cast in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by the citizens of Genoa , Italy , and has towered outside of City Hall ever since .
In August of 2017 , in the wake of the violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville , Virginia , as monuments to Confederate leaders began to be taken down elsewhere in the country , protesters in Columbus gathered outside of City Hall to demand the statue ’ s removal .
The city ’ s mayor , Andrew Ginther , responded by stating that such protests were distracting from the “ real problem , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The removal of a statue wouldn ’ t address that problem , Ginther decided then .
Three years later , in the midst of renewed calls for monuments across the country to fall , his tune has changed .
Last week , Columbus State Community College announced that it would remove a Columbus statue that has stood on its campus since 1988 .
Two days later , Ginther announced that the City Hall statue would be removed “ as soon as possible.
” I have lived in Columbus for most of my life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever uncertain time I have left .
Sometimes a place is a thing that happens to you , or the result of a series of happenings .
My people ’ s people moved until they chose to stop moving .
My father , who was raised in New Jersey and New York , travelled to Providence , Rhode Island , in the early eighties for a job interview .
When that job didn ’ t come through , he packed our family into a car and drove to Columbus , where work was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though to love any place has always seemed to me to involve a series of calculated choices , ones that must be continually weighed and measured .
And , as in any other relationship , one must be prepared to reckon with the possibility of withdrawing one ’ s affections if the math stops adding up .
For most of my adult years in Columbus , I have been thinking about the way monuments can vanish .
For the kids in my east-side neighborhood , downtown was a distant planet , only a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from where we kicked broken glass off of basketball courts or climbed atop the roofs of neglected school buildings .
I grew to love the monuments of my neighborhood , while also coming to understand that they could disappear , without warning , at any moment .
At the start of spring , for instance , the basketball hoops at Scottwood Elementary School would be adorned with fresh , white nets , attempting to lure players back to the park as the temperatures rose .
Whoever put them up knew how shooters craved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a net .
Then , one spring , the nets didn ’ t appear .
The rims twisted away from each other and never turned back .
In my early twenties , I worked at a dollar store a short walk from my father ’ s house .
It was in the same plaza as the Super Duper market , whose sign was topped by a massive , smiling elephant .
I ’ d stared up at it from the back seats of cars as a kid ; it was a reminder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where my people were .
The lights illuminating the letters of the Super Duper sign never all worked at once , making it read “ S ER DUP , ” or some variation .
The red lights would flicker at night , briefly pulling the curtain of darkness away from the elephant—until the store closed and became something else , and then something else , and then the elephant was gone .
It feels foolish to believe in any place , knowing that it might do away with your most cherished corners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Most of the people I know and love who grew up here have seen their personal monuments fade , or become a shell of themselves , for the sake of an eager city ’ s expansion .
Parts of the city ’ s east and west sides are shrinking , pushed on both sides by the growth of suburbs , or sprawling visions of breweries and high rises .
At the center of the city , its arts district , known as the Short North , spirals further into generic opulence .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered undesirable by the wealthy and those on the city ’ s outskirts , a high rise called Bollinger Tower at one of the area ’ s major intersections was Section 9 public housing for the poor and for people with disabilities .
Twenty-five years later , it became voucher-based Section 8 public housing for seniors .
Then , in 2017 , the building was purchased in a private sale , and its hundred residents were relocated haphazardly .
Some moved to alternative public housing nearby ; others , thrown out of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far from an adequate bus line or grocery store .
The trappings of the old Short North have all given way .
The Bollinger Tower building is going to become a luxury hotel .
The center where I used to donate plasma for quick cash when there were no checks on the horizon is now a bar , or a restaurant , or a shop of some kind .
At a certain point , one remapping blurs into the next until an area becomes grey , a border between your present and past @ @

If you attended elementary or middle school in Columbus, Ohio, during the early nineteen-nineties, you most likely took a field trip downtown, to the banks of the Scioto River, to visit the Santa Maria Museum. Docked just offshore, it was a full-size replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, unveiled in 1992 to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic, in 1492. My parents—who wrestled to serve as a barrier between their children and the sanitization of the country’s history, however impossible the task—never signed the permission slip for me to go on the trip. On the designated day of the fifth grade, I stayed behind, in a dimly lit classroom, thumbing through highlighted literature that my father had given me to read. There were people in the city who believed the ship to be a marvel, something beautiful enough to obscure the history of the place where it rested, or the blood that was shed in the name of conquest. On the day that the Santa Maria was officially dedicated, a large crowd gathered along the river to celebrate. In the street by a nearby park, more than a hundred people protested. From the ship’s deck, a visitor could look up toward the mouth of the Scioto, to an area that was once known as Salt-Lick Town, where, in 1774, soldiers from Virginia opened fire on a village of indigenous men, women, and children, killing ninety-six people. There were no memorials for this chapter of our history. Just the replica of the boat, casting a long shadow.
We are at the doorstep of an era in which the once impossible is becoming newly possible. The Santa Maria replica was pulled from the Scioto River in the early twenty-tens—not because of what it represented, or because of the people who’d spent the previous decades calling for its removal, but to make room for renovations along the river. Other monuments to Christopher Columbus remain woven into the fabric of the city named in his honor. The most prominent of three statues, a twenty-two-foot, three-ton likeness cast in bronze, was sent, in 1955, by the citizens of Genoa, Italy, and has towered outside of City Hall ever since. In August of 2017, in the wake of the violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as monuments to Confederate leaders began to be taken down elsewhere in the country, protesters in Columbus gathered outside of City Hall to demand the statue’s removal. The city’s mayor, Andrew Ginther, responded by stating that such protests were distracting from the “real problem,” which was the racial divide in America. The removal of a statue wouldn’t address that problem, Ginther decided then. Three years later, in the midst of renewed calls for monuments across the country to fall, his tune has changed. Last week, Columbus State Community College announced that it would remove a Columbus statue that has stood on its campus since 1988. Two days later, Ginther announced that the City Hall statue would be removed “as soon as possible.”
I have lived in Columbus for most of my life, and hope to be here for whatever uncertain time I have left. Sometimes a place is a thing that happens to you, or the result of a series of happenings. My people’s people moved until they chose to stop moving. My father, who was raised in New Jersey and New York, travelled to Providence, Rhode Island, in the early eighties for a job interview. When that job didn’t come through, he packed our family into a car and drove to Columbus, where work was more plentiful. I love Columbus, though to love any place has always seemed to me to involve a series of calculated choices, ones that must be continually weighed and measured. And, as in any other relationship, one must be prepared to reckon with the possibility of withdrawing one’s affections if the math stops adding up.
For most of my adult years in Columbus, I have been thinking about the way monuments can vanish. For the kids in my east-side neighborhood, downtown was a distant planet, only a few miles and an entire universe away from where we kicked broken glass off of basketball courts or climbed atop the roofs of neglected school buildings. I grew to love the monuments of my neighborhood, while also coming to understand that they could disappear, without warning, at any moment. At the start of spring, for instance, the basketball hoops at Scottwood Elementary School would be adorned with fresh, white nets, attempting to lure players back to the park as the temperatures rose. Whoever put them up knew how shooters craved the rewarding slurp of a ball spinning through a net. Then, one spring, the nets didn’t appear. The rims twisted away from one another and never turned back. In my early twenties, I worked at a dollar store a short walk from my father’s house. It was in the same plaza as the Super Duper market, whose sign was topped by a massive, smiling elephant. I’d stared up at it from the back seats of cars as a kid; it was a reminder that I was returning to my neighborhood, where my people were. The lights illuminating the letters of the Super Duper sign never all worked at once, making it read “S ER DUP,” or some variation. The red lights would flicker at night, briefly pulling the curtain of darkness away from the elephant—until the store closed and became something else, and then something else, and then the elephant was gone.
It feels foolish to believe in any place, knowing that it might do away with your most cherished corners in the name of its growth. Most of the people I know and love who grew up here have seen their personal monuments fade, or become a shell of themselves, for the sake of an eager city’s expansion. Parts of the city’s east and west sides are shrinking, pushed on both sides by the growth of suburbs, or sprawling visions of breweries and high rises. At the center of the city, its arts district, known as the Short North, spirals further into generic opulence. In 1985, when the area was still considered undesirable by the wealthy and those on the city’s outskirts, a high rise called Bollinger Tower at one of the area’s major intersections was Section 9 public housing for the poor and for people with disabilities. Twenty-five years later, it became voucher-based Section 8 public housing for seniors. Then, in 2017, the building was purchased in a private sale, and its hundred residents were relocated haphazardly. Some moved to alternative public housing nearby; others, thrown out of the building they called home, ended up far from an adequate bus line or grocery store. The trappings of the old Short North have all given way. The Bollinger Tower building is going to become a luxury hotel. The center where I used to donate plasma for quick cash when there were no checks on the horizon is now a bar, or a restaurant, or a shop of some kind. At a certain point, one remapping blurs into the next until an area becomes gray, a border between your present and past selves.
But, of course, it bears mentioning that my presence in the city of Columbus is part of its own long process of reformatting the landscape. Just as the mouth of the Scioto River was once home to a village before a massacre, the basketball courts where I learned to shoot were built upon land that was once home to another people. In Central Ohio, our land acknowledgements give praise to the Shawnee, Miami, Lenape, and Wyandotte peoples as those who lived on and cared for this stretch of earth. Much of our living is an act of painting over an existence before ours, though my complicity in that story doesn’t quiet the ache I feel at seeing the city spaces I grew up in become unfamiliar; at seeing the police who once hovered over these neighborhoods move out of them and find new people at the margins to hover over; at seeing the machinery of power in the city hum along, unaware of who it is leaving behind.
Toppling a statue is a symbolic act, but it comes after years of concrete work and pressure. There were the people who took to the streets, in 1992, to say, No, this boat cannot sit here, and the people in the years after who stood at the feet of Christopher Columbus and said, No, this statue cannot sit here—the people who told the present and past mayors that there is a debt for the history that the city still chooses to revel in. In recent weeks, people have once again taken to the streets in Columbus and across the country. There is a bigger picture propelling them, but even the smaller fights serve as a bridge to something larger. After the City Hall statue is taken down and tucked away, some of those same people will be right back, tapping their fingers on the city’s flag and seal, which bear the image of the Santa Maria. They’ll be taking aim at the city’s third and oldest Columbus statue, which stands at the statehouse, and writing letters to the mayor demanding to change the city’s name—which now, in this era of new possibilities, seems not out of the question. Among these people are those who have seen their small sanctuaries in the city get swept away—people who have lost the buildings that they grew up in, or the restaurants where their folks worked when they were starting from nothing. A city cannot consistently transform itself at the expense of its most marginalized citizens and not expect those citizens to have a vast imagination about what a further transformation—whether of statues, a name, or leadership—could be.
The work of the people is what endures. It’s unromantic work, done in small increments, sometimes just as a blueprint for whatever future movements might arise, and it’s more precious than any bronzed monument or seal or city name. The work of the students who will not rest until the cops leave their schools. Of the medics who guide people under the shade of a tree and flush the tear gas out of their eyes. Of the people who sew masks, or make bags of supplies and bike them across the city through police barricades. Of the people who carry bags of ice so that the water stays cold. Of the black people who sacrifice their own safety to keep their people safe. Of the people who show up to courthouses, and in front of police stations, and in the suburbs. Of the mothers who grieve for their dead children and who, despite their grief, continue to fight for the living. The new monuments the people are building toward cannot yet be seen. And still, here we are, leaping forward.