newrepublic--2020-09-03--The Making of the “Good CIA”

The Making of the “Good CIA”

For decades , it ’ s been an article of faith among leftists that the CIA is fundamentally malign , and has been since its founding .
Its purpose was to extend American hegemony ; its method dirty tricks ( not excluding murder ) to undermine popular movements or governments and impose brutal right-wing authoritarian regimes in client states .
We can recite the agency ’ s outrages as a shorthand litany : Mossadegh , Arbenz , Trujillo , Bay of Pigs , Diem , MK-ULTRA , Congress for Cultural Freedom , CHAOS , Allende , Mobutu , “ Family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Afghanistan , Curveball , “ Slam Dunk.
” Yet in recent years , the CIA ’ s image has softened .
Outrage against Obama ’ s CIA-led drone warfare program was relatively muted , and during his administration the agency experienced no Iraq-scale debacles .
In academia , the “ new Cold War studies ” has in the last 20 years painted a more rounded picture of the CIA ’ s activities during the conflict .
Soviet communism really was an aggressive threat in the 1940s and 1950s , and an intelligence service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now grant .
Such studies—by scholars like Hugh Wilford , Penny von Eschen , and myself—have also dialed back some of the conspiratorial froth typical of earlier exposés , arguing that just because the CIA tried to get involved and run things doesn ’ t mean that it succeeded , or that it held as much sway as people think .
The agency was not ultimately and fully responsible for the Vietnam War , or the dirty wars in 1970s Latin America , or the dominance of Abstract Expressionism .
Cultural and geopolitical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The effect , if not the intention , has been to cool the fury against the agency and subtly recast it in the public imagination .
In the last 15 years or so , prestige pop culture has assisted in this image surgery , with sympathetic , textured depictions of the agency in films like Zero Dark Thirty and Argo and series like Homeland ( often endorsed by or even concocted within the CIA itself ) .
In these stories , CIA agents courageously put their safety and careers in jeopardy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Pakistan or Venezuela—whom the CIA ’ s actual plots have done so much to immiserate .
The International Spy Museum , which could have been designed by the CIA ’ s public relations office , has become one of Washington , D.C. ’ s most popular tourist attractions .
Last year , Reese Witherspoon ’ s book club , an influential force in American bookselling today , put Lara Prescott ’ s novel The Secrets We Kept—which revolves around the CIA ’ s championing of Dr. Zhivago and thus links the agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list .
In this year ’ s juiciest podcast , journalist Patrick Radden Keefe investigated the CIA ’ s possible involvement in writing the Scorpions ’ 1990 monster ballad “ Wind of Change.
” Insipid as the song is , who could be against power chords reverberating freedom from the crumbled Wall all the way to the moribund Soviet Union ?
So what if the song lacked artistic integrity ?
A new book on the prehistory of the agency , Scott Anderson ’ s The Quiet Americans : Four CIA Spies at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Three Acts , continues this project of showing a government agency both essential and partially cleansed of its notorious fiascos and excesses .
Anderson sees the CIA ’ s worst actions as the products of outside decisions by arrogant and ignorant politicians and officials in the executive branch .
But what situates his book in the wave of CIA revisionism is his contention that the agency ’ s operations branch was not full of cowboys and adventurers willing to throw any kind of spaghetti at the wall but was rather led by agents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most part , cautious and judicious , dubious about the cockamamie schemes proposed to them by people who would never have to get their own hands dirty .
In the aggregate , this wave of scholarly and popular revisionism about the agency is welcome , particularly in dispelling simplistic or conspiratorial thinking .
But it may run the risk of glossing over the magnitude of the political , economic , and human tragedies the CIA caused or exacerbated .
More importantly , this makeover leaves us vulnerable to future adventurism and blunders from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , little meaningful public oversight , and a preoccupation with its own public image , and which has long been susceptible to misuse by the White House .

Unlike earlier defenders of the CIA, Anderson establishes his leftist sympathies immediately, recounting the discomfort he felt watching the “political theater” and celebrations of militarism put on by the South Korean, Indonesian, and Nationalist Chinese governments when he was growing up in East Asia as the son of a USAID administrator. Later, as a young reporter, he traveled to San Salvador during the height of the Central American conflicts and witnessed a death squad dump a woman’s body on the street and a military clean-up team retrieve the corpse for disposal. “The very phrase ‘anti-communist’ took on a squalid quality,” he remembers, “when I considered the crimes done in its name.”
How, Anderson asks, did the United States go from being “a beacon of hope and a source of deliverance” to joining the same side as dictators and death squads? The answer can be found, he argues, in the period between the end of World War II and the Hungarian uprising of 1956, which featured several chances for the Cold War to thaw or even evaporate, instead of freezing into an almost half-century-long standoff. And fundamentally, his answer lies with spies, who were the “animating force” of the Cold War, a conflict that could not be allowed to break into the open combat of a third World War.
Burke, Lansdale, and Sichel embody the “good CIA”—the agency that tries to keep casualties and deceptions to a minimum, that doesn’t stab its assets in the back, and that doesn’t get in bed with fascists and tyrants.
For Anderson, four particular men embody this transformation: Michael Burke, Peter Sichel, Edward Lansdale, and, above all, Frank Wisner. All served in the OSS, the CIA’s predecessor agency, during World War II—Wisner, Sichel, and Burke in Europe and Lansdale stateside—and were clever, courageous, and comfortable with deception. They slipped into their CIA roles easily. From his cover as a freelance Hollywood producer in Dolce Vita–era Rome, Burke organized “Operation Fiend,” a shambolic attempt to use Albanian tribesmen to detach that nation from Stalin’s orbit. (After his time at the CIA, Burke became executive director of the Ringling Brothers circus—the jokes write themselves.) Lansdale, an adman before the war, was the original “quiet American” of Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, pulling strings first in the Philippines and then in a collapsing South Vietnam. Peter Sichel’s German-Jewish family escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, only to end up in Vichy France before fleeing to Manhattan. Sichel joined up the day after Pearl Harbor, worked with Burke in North Africa during the war, and then ran agents in Berlin and East Germany in the early Cold War. His role in Anderson’s narrative of the early CIA is perhaps more central than actual fact merits, as much of the book relies on Anderson’s interviews with Sichel, the only surviving one of his key players.


newrepublic--2020-09-03--The Hollow Gospel of Personal Investing Apps

Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt , the millennial founders of the investing app Robinhood , have long claimed that their inspiration was Occupy Wall Street , the anti-capitalist movement that agitated against the runaway greed of the financial sector and the ruling class a few years before Tenev and Bhatt would become multimillionaires themselves .
The explicit promise of the app , which allows users to trade stocks free of charge and with no account minimums , is to “ democratize finance for all.
” This is a common refrain among a certain style of fintech founders .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ muted Instagram color palette ( “ built by women , for women ” ) , the naturalistic and deliberately nonthreatening Acorns ( “ grow your money ” ) , and the sleeker Stash , which seems intended for the more generic striver ( “ own your financial future ” ) .
They all tell a similar story of financial egalitarianism : Give people the right tools , and anyone can get rich—or at least retire comfortably .
But the majority of Americans don ’ t have money in the stock market , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fintech founders like Robinhood and others like to suggest , isn ’ t lack of “ access ” to the trading floor .
What , exactly , are the 40 percent of people who don ’ t have $ 400 in the bank for an emergency supposed to invest ?
The personal investing industry—which exists to make money for brokerage firms and app inventors , not change the foundations of the economy—simply reduces structural inequality to a matter of individual risk .
Investing apps aren ’ t an equalizer ; they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that promises a few people profit at the expense of many others .
Robinhood in particular was versed from the start in the language of anti-authoritarianism , which initially set it apart from more modestly styled investing apps .
Though it ’ s probably safe to assume that no one who signed up to trade stocks through Robinhood did so under the impression that they were participating in an experiment to drastically upend capitalism , the company ’ s rhetoric nevertheless attempts to conceal the hollowness of the gospel of personal investing .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of Robinhood users surged during the pandemic—the result , at least in part , of people in lockdown with $ 1,200 stimulus checks seeking to take advantage of a market on the ascent .
“ Robinhood truly is take from the rich hedge funds and redistribute to the poor , ” CNBC commentator Jim Cramer marveled recently .
Robinhood did “ disrupt ” the brokerage industry by doing away with trading fees and account minimums—which enticed more first-time traders to the app and forced a number of other online brokerages to follow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no charity .
Robinhood makes its money through a murky behind-the-scenes process , in which it sells its trades to larger firms , and this year expects nearly $ 700 million in revenue , all while its users risk financial ruin .
As Forbes journalists Jeff Kauflin , Antoine Gara , and Sergei Klebnikov wrote last month in an in-depth report on the company , “ Robinhood has sold the world a story of helping the little guy that is the opposite of its actual business model : selling the little guy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Robinhood ultimately serves the same ends as every other Wall Street broker , and the app ’ s extreme user-friendliness—one basis of its claim to financial democratization—is also incidentally what helps part users from their money .
Like the various tricks casinos employ to encourage gamblers to stay another hour , Robinhood ’ s sleek and deliberately addictive interface lures users to continue trading , sometimes until they ’ re tens of thousands of dollars in the hole .
Less than a decade after Robinhood launched , the company is under investigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for inadequate customer support operations , which has left inexperienced traders hanging out to dry .

In perhaps the most tragic instance of the danger posed to new traders, earlier this year, a 20-year-old amateur trader died by suicide after his Robinhood dashboard briefly logged a negative balance of $730,000. (Following that incident, the company donated $250,000 to suicide prevention, or a little over half of a year’s worth of pay for the average Wall Street executive.) More recently, the app crashed for more than a day without warning, explanation, or any customer service support, costing some users thousands of dollars in lost trades. That seems to be part of a long line of problems with the app: “Over the first half of the year, U.S. consumer protection agencies received more than 400 complaints about Robinhood—roughly four times more than competitors,” Bloomberg reported earlier this week. This year, the company has pledged to beef up its user support but has also opened a D.C. office and hired a battery of lobbyists to promote the company’s interests on Capitol Hill—the exact opposite, that is, of cultivating democracy.
But even the apps that are slightly more benign, or at least less legally pressed, are part of the same system. Acorns, whose CEO described it as a “financial wellness system,” is well on its way to a valuation of $1 billion. The app Betterment, valued at $700 million, is close behind. And all the while, economic inequality has stayed sky-high, wages are still essentially frozen for the vast majority of workers in the U.S., and the two major political parties remain in lockstep with Wall Street. The liberatory, disruptive potential of fintech, in other words, seems to have overwhelmingly benefited the same group that was cashing in before.
In a certain sense, investing apps are for ordinary people, insofar as they’re designed to exploit them. No amount of outlaw rhetoric can transform another tech-savvy cash grab into some kind of overhaul of the financial sector, and turning loose more people onto the digital trading floor won’t do anything to ameliorate inequality, despite the claims of Robinhood’s founders and champions. When it comes to Wall Street, the house always wins. That, after all, was the very problem that sparked the movement that Robinhood’s founders once tried to claim as inspiration.


newrepublic--2020-09-03--Why Matt Drudge’s Feud With Donald Trump Matters

In the summer of 2016 , Matt Drudge hammered the same story again and again on his eponymous news aggregation website , the Drudge Report : Hillary Clinton was not well .
She was old and sick and feeble , unable to navigate even a small set of steps without the help of multiple aides .
These stories , often coupled with the hashtag # HillaryHealth , complemented the narrative that Clinton was , with her husband , a symbol of the decaying , corrupt political establishment .
Drudge had already helped Donald Trump immensely , earlier in the campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ primary rivals like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz .
While many news outlets stressed the role that newer conservative publications , particularly Breitbart , played in Trump ’ s surprise victory in 2016 , none played a more decisive role than the Drudge Report .
Four years later , it is Trump who is being depicted as a deranged , infirm maniac .
In just the last week , Drudge has hailed Joe Biden ’ s attacks against the president and amplified Trump ’ s bizarre , unprovoked denial that a series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last fall .
What happened ?
Trump ’ s allies in conservative media think they know .
In June , Tucker Carlson described Drudge as “ firmly a man of the progressive left ” and suggested that the site was now comparable to The Daily Beast or “ any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company.
” Radio host and Fox News regular Mark Levin has described the Drudge Report as a “ NeverTrumper ” site .
On Tuesday , the president himself weighed in , incorrectly claiming , “ Drudge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The exact details of the Trump-Drudge divorce remain shrouded in mystery , thanks in large part to Matt Drudge ’ s status as the Howard Hughes of media .
Ensconced in south Florida , he rarely grants interviews and hasn ’ t commented on the split .
( When a Columbia Journalism Review reporter told him that he was curious about his thoughts on his president , Drudge replied , “ You and everybody else.
” ) But a closer look at Drudge and his role as a media impresario reveals clues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current state of the conservative infotainment complex .

Drudge’s sensibility has always been more tabloid than ideological. He has broken some huge stories—most famously Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky—but the precise nature of his influence has always been hard to pin down. John Harris and Mark Halperin whiffed when they described him as the “Walter Cronkite of our era.” Brian Williams came closer when, in 2007, he described the Drudge Report as “America’s bulletin board, and much more than that.” Obsessed over by reporters and politicians alike, it has greater influence and a bigger audience than tip sheets like Politico’s Playbook. Drudge’s knack is for turning gossip into news, whether it is trivial but real (John Edwards’s $400 haircut during the 2008 primary) or fake and malicious (a Bill Clinton Black love child, a claim that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was forged).
Much of Drudge’s early success came from filling a void. The early online political press skewed left; Drudge appeared as a correction and, as a result, instantly gained millions of readers who were looking for a different perspective. At the same time, Drudge is idiosyncratic and obsessed with things that rarely feature in the political press: the box office, celebrity gossip, weird sex, and conspiracy theories, particularly involving government surveillance. He is not here, like Fox News, solely to do conservative agitprop. He’s a muckraker and gossip hound fixated on the buttoned-up press’s failures to report all that’s lurid and controversial—i.e., the good stuff. He’s less Walter Cronkite than some unholy cross between Gawker and Milo Yiannopoulos (an old Drudge favorite).
Does Drudge even have a political viewpoint? He loved Hillary Clinton before he hated her. As Philip Weiss wrote in New York in 2007, “The one person Drudge seems to believe can lead is Hillary Clinton. Though Drudge often savages Hillary, he is convinced that she will make history, and he seems determined, in spite of himself, to empower her.” He fixated on Clinton’s rivals that year in much the same way he focused on Trump’s eight years later. “That House is going pink,” Drudge said in 2007.


newrepublic--2020-09-03--You Might Not Know If Your Kid Has Covid-19

Yes , kids can get Covid-19 .
They can also spread it .
They might even be better at spreading it than adults are .
You wouldn ’ t know that from listening to the White House , though .
“ It ’ s not just that children are not at risk at all from this disease .
They also do not even transmit the disease , ” Scott Atlas , President Trump ’ s controversial new coronavirus adviser—a radiologist and fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution—argued in June .
He said it was “ irrational ” to close schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the children.
” The Trump administration immediately adopted this false argument , with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos threatening to withhold funding from schools that did not reopen in-person classes .
A month later , the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children ’ s Hospital Association released a report showing a 40 percent increase in infection among kids in the second half of July .
Nearly 100,000 American children had gotten sick in those two weeks alone .
By the end of the month , 338,000 children in the United States had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all known cases in the country .
Even so , a few days after the report ’ s release , Trump argued that children are “ virtually immune ” to the virus .
More data published recently by the AAP shows the rate of children testing positive for the virus is rising rapidly , even as some states and districts resume in-person schooling .
The American debate about reopening schools was a touchstone for a country struggling its way through the pandemic .
How much do we know about the virus , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How do partisan politics influence those decisions ?
But the science is clear : Kids can get the virus , and they can pass it on to others .
Simply asking whether kids can get sick isn ’ t the right question , experts say .
Instead , we should be focusing on how children are getting sick , what their symptoms look like , which kids are most vulnerable , and what we can do to protect them and their communities .

Even if they never develop symptoms, children are very likely still contagious. In fact, a previous South Korean study published by JAMA found that asymptomatic people carry as much virus as those with symptoms and thus can spread the virus just as easily—but, because many of them don’t realize they have it, they may transmit the virus even more than people who stay home when they’re sick. Yet another JAMA report from Chicago revealed that younger kids carry just as much, if not more, virus in their noses and throats. Some kids under five had 100 times the amount of the virus that adults did.
Kids are at risk for the coronavirus, and it could affect the rest of their lives, from missed education to long-term health issues. But not all kids are at risk equally. A study in the journal Pediatrics found significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in the Washington, D.C., area. Black and Latino children were four to six times more likely than white children to test positive for the virus. And kids of color also have a higher chance of developing severe illness.
Some kids under five had 100 times the amount of the virus that adults did.
“Not all kids are the same, and the environments and conditions that all kids live in are not all equal,” Boyd told me. Black and Latino households are twice as likely as white households to lack access to clean water, while Indigenous households are 19 times less likely to have clean water. “In the pandemic, if handwashing is a way to prevent spread, these are populations who are structurally unable to engage in one of the simplest forms of prevention. And you also have to think about environmental pollution: Who lives in areas where there’s more air pollution?” Boyd asked. Air pollution can cause asthma and chronic lung disease, making Covid-19 complications worse. “And then who had access to health care? Whose parents are essential workers who have to work in conditions where they don’t have adequate protection?”


newrepublic--2020-09-04--A Bold New Plan to Turn the Rest Belt Blue

For decades , workers , millions of them—steelworkers and social workers , truck drivers and teachers—have been flooded with labor union phone calls and flyers every four years .
But for many of them , when they retired or their factories closed or their unions shriveled due to attacks from Republicans like Scott Walker , the calls and door knocks stopped .
Steve Rosenthal , a respected Democratic strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO , believes that this was a major reason Donald Trump won the 2016 election .
According to his calculations , Hillary Clinton received 425,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Al Gore did ; it was that decline in union turnout that torpedoed her there , as well as in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin .
Eager to make sure that history doesn ’ t repeat itself in those states , Rosenthal has founded an innovative new project called Union 2020 that aims to persuade former union members to back Joe Biden .
With $ 6 million from liberal PACs and unions—including two of America ’ s largest teachers ’ unions , the Communications Workers , SEIU , and AFSCME—the group is sending out hundreds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as sponsoring Facebook pages and ads , to make the case that Biden , unlike Trump , is a loyal friend of workers .
Rosenthal wants to educate people about Biden and to humanize him .
One of these flyers shows Biden in a 1967 Chevy Corvette that he still owns—his father gave it to him as a wedding present—along with a section on how he led “ the negotiations that rescued the auto industry and saved millions of jobs as Vice President.
” The goal is to convey that Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man whose father went through difficult stretches of unemployment when Biden was young , and whose wife , Jill , teaches at a community college and worked as a waitress on the Jersey Shore while a teenager .
Union 2020 has compiled a list of 400,000 former union members as well as 700,000 other voters in Michigan , Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania , who , according to various databases , sympathize with workers and unions .
It ’ s already bombarding them with information , confident that they can be nailed down for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions more in donations , so that his organization can reach another 2.3 million voters before November .
“ This program is simply genius , ” said Ron Bieber , president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO .
Maria Peralta , the SEIU ’ s political director , said Union 2020 “ really fits into our overall theory to win , which is we need a multiracial coalition to win—to engage voters and expand the electorate in communities of color and reengage union members and former union members who moved away from the Democrats @ @ @ @

As Rosenthal told me, “Unions were successful over the years in creating an echo chamber that gave workers, their families, and coworkers the space to support the Democratic candidate for president. They were hearing things from their union. They were getting materials and phone calls. Over the years, that changed. The people who have taken over the echo chamber—the loudest people in workplaces and bars tend to be Trump people, and then there’s the megaphone of Trump’s tweets, Fox News, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. Part of what we’re trying to do is take back that echo chamber.”
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio calls Union 2020 “really important” and says he hopes it will expand into Ohio (although Rosenthal doesn’t currently have the money to do so). “If you go after these people the right way,” Brown said, “you win those three states easily, and you might also win Ohio.” Rosenthal, for his part, argues that Democrats need to focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin before worrying about states like Texas or Arizona. “If the union movement can do what it used to be able to do and mobilize its members in those three states and keep union supporters and former union members informed, that’s a game changer,” he said.
Union 2020 may not succeed at bringing all these important voters into the Biden fold, but considering how minuscule Trump’s victory was in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, every little bit can help—and perhaps be pivotal.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--This Is What Trumpism After Trump Looks Like

The event from this summer that best captured the chaotic energy of the GOP heading into the presidential election was not the Republican National Convention , with its high-decibel roster of party leaders , but the victory party for Laura Loomer at the airport Hilton in West Palm Beach , Florida .
The far-right provocateur had won a six-way primary in the congressional district that contains Mar-a-Lago , and a host of her fellow agents of chaos , from Milo Yiannopoulos to Roger Stone , were there to celebrate .
The president tweeted , “ Great going Laura , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personally .
A year ago , it would have been difficult to imagine Loomer chatting with the chair of the RNC .
A self-described “ proud Islamophobe , ” she began her career as a campus agitator , first making headlines in 2015 when she attempted to start a “ Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ” club at a Florida university and recorded the nonplussed reactions of school administrators .
For the next four years , subsidized by an octopus of far-right news sites , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walking on stage at New York ’ s Shakespeare in the Park in 2017 and accosting James Comey at a book event the following year .
By 2019 , Loomer ’ s history of Islamophobic remarks got her banned from Twitter , Facebook , PayPal , GoFundMe , Venmo , and the Conservative Political Action Conference , where she chased reporters around a convention center .
That Loomer could win a Republican primary a year after being kicked out of CPAC demonstrates how unmoored the GOP base has become from the party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a network of influencers who view “ alternative facts ” less as a slogan than a business model : More than a dozen Republicans on the ballot this November , including Loomer , have expressed support for QAnon .
At least one , Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia , whom Trump has called “ a future Republican star , ” is sure to win in the general election .
It ’ s often said that Trump might start an independent media network once he leaves office , but such a network already exists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platform to cast-abouts like Loomer , helping them launder racism and gibberish through the filter of “ independent media.
” Regardless of whether Trump joins this crowd , the instability he has introduced into the media ecosystem will outlast his presidency , pushing the boundaries of legitimate politics ever further into the realm of the unhinged .

The event from this summer that best captured the chaotic energy of the GOP heading into the presidential election was not the Republican National Convention, with its high-decibel roster of party leaders, but the victory party for Laura Loomer at the airport Hilton in West Palm Beach, Florida. The far-right provocateur had won a six-way primary in the congressional district that contains Mar-a-Lago, and a host of her fellow agents of chaos, from Milo Yiannopoulos to Roger Stone, were there to celebrate. The president tweeted, “Great going Laura,” and Ronna McDaniel called to congratulate Loomer personally.
A year ago, it would have been difficult to imagine Loomer chatting with the chair of the RNC. A self-described “proud Islamophobe,” she began her career as a campus agitator, first making headlines in 2015 when she attempted to start a “Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” club at a Florida university and recorded the nonplussed reactions of school administrators. For the next four years, subsidized by an octopus of far-right news sites, she embarked on a national disturbing-the-peace tour, walking on stage at New York’s Shakespeare in the Park in 2017 and accosting James Comey at a book event the following year. By 2019, Loomer’s history of Islamophobic remarks got her banned from Twitter, Facebook, PayPal, GoFundMe, Venmo, and the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she chased reporters around a convention center.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--Big Oil’s Evil, Stupid Plan to Drown the World in Plastic

Only about 5 percent of the world ’ s plastics actually get recycled , the CarbonTracker report finds .
Thirty-six percent of plastic products are thrown away after a single use , and 40 percent end up in the environment .
China—where the United States had sent much of its plastic waste , historically—banned plastic waste imports in 2018 , sending shockwaves through the recycling industry ; state-owned firms there , it ’ s worth noting , are themselves investing heavily in petrochemicals production for export .
Changes to the 1989 Basel Convention last May now mean that in 2021 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the treaty—will be barred from trading plastics waste with countries that are not OECD members , 37 of the world ’ s wealthiest economies .
Other countries seeking to export most types of plastic will need to seek the prior and informed consent of the governments they ’ re exporting it to .
In other words , an uncommonly strong and timely international agreement may have cut the U.S. off from treating the global south as a dumping ground for its plastic waste .
Unsurprisingly , U.S. trade representatives and the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these changes and are already looking for workarounds .
Documents revealed by Unearthed have shown that U.S. trade representatives have had a cozy relationship with the American Chemistry Council—a lobby group including the country ’ s biggest oil and gas companies—to hammer out a bilateral agreement with Kenya that would allow the U.S. to ship more so-called end-of-life plastics there ; plastics are already America ’ s biggest export to Kenya .
As The New York Times reported , public outcry over this influx has led to the government implementing some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Civil society groups warn the country is already inundated with shipped-in waste that ’ s leaching harmful chemicals into the air , water , and soil .
Like much of the rest of the oil and gas industry ’ s activities , its foray into plastics is premised on being able to pass tremendous social , environmental , and financial costs onto mostly nonwhite people it can keep out of sight and out of mind .
Uncharacteristically , global governance agreements could finally help close on-ramps to places that have historically been treated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allies in government , though , are waging a dirty fight to keep them open .
Kathy Hipple , an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis , says petrochemicals are just another sign of the fossil fuel industry ’ s mounting distress .
“ The whole fundamental financials of the oil and gas industry are very shaky right now .
The industry is extremely vulnerable .
The market capitalization of some of these companies is less than half of what it was a few years ago , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ExxonMobil now delisted from the S & P500—energy now accounts for just 2.34 percent of that index .
“ Oil companies are struggling to figure out their next move , and my view is that legacy companies rarely pivot sufficiently in time.
” Ørsted , the Danish state-owned oil and gas company , is one of very few examples of companies that have successfully diversified into renewables .
“ But it ’ s also controlled by the Danish government , and the Danish government made a bold decision , ” Hipple said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and gas companies have made their fair share of bad investments over the last few years , flooding markets with fossil fuels it doesn ’ t need and plastics it may not want—never mind the cost of all that to the planet .
Given their increasingly dangerous track record , it may be worth asking whether today ’ s oil and gas CEOs are the best people to let call all the shots as their companies lurch toward financial and planetary ruin .

But overall, new plants are still being built at a rapid clip. And they’re on track to pump out prodigious amounts of new plastics. These products will then have to go somewhere. And that leads to a whole other set of problems than whether the plants turn a profit.
Only about 5 percent of the world’s plastics actually get recycled, the CarbonTracker report finds. Thirty-six percent of plastic products are thrown away after a single use, and 40 percent end up in the environment. China—where the United States had sent much of its plastic waste, historically—banned plastic waste imports in 2018, sending shockwaves through the recycling industry; state-owned firms there, it’s worth noting, are themselves investing heavily in petrochemicals production for export. Changes to the 1989 Basel Convention last May now mean that in 2021 the U.S.—because it is not a party to the treaty—will be barred from trading plastics waste with countries that are not OECD members, 37 of the world’s wealthiest economies. Other countries seeking to export most types of plastic will need to seek the prior and informed consent of the governments they’re exporting it to. In other words, an uncommonly strong and timely international agreement may have cut the U.S. off from treating the global south as a dumping ground for its plastic waste.
Unsurprisingly, U.S. trade representatives and the country’s biggest industries have hotly opposed these changes and are already looking for workarounds. Documents revealed by Unearthed have shown that U.S. trade representatives have had a cozy relationship with the American Chemistry Council—a lobby group including the country’s biggest oil and gas companies—to hammer out a bilateral agreement with Kenya that would allow the U.S. to ship more so-called end-of-life plastics there; plastics are already America’s biggest export to Kenya. As The New York Times reported, public outcry over this influx has led to the government implementing some of the strictest anti-plastic policies in the world. Civil society groups warn the country is already inundated with shipped-in waste that’s leaching harmful chemicals into the air, water, and soil. Like much of the rest of the oil and gas industry’s activities, its foray into plastics is premised on being able to pass tremendous social, environmental, and financial costs onto mostly nonwhite people it can keep out of sight and out of mind. Uncharacteristically, global governance agreements could finally help close on-ramps to places that have historically been treated as sacrifice zones. Corporations and their allies in government, though, are waging a dirty fight to keep them open.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--Our Summer of American Nihilism

Our Summer of American Nihilism

In a recent interview on The Ringer ’ s 10 Questions podcast , Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins—a man who says he keeps a four-foot-tall pile of rocks outside his garage to remind him of his own mortality—explained that he ’ s not all that concerned about the pandemic and isn ’ t convinced wearing a mask really matters .
In one of his rapid-fire questions , host Kyle Brandt asked Cousins : “ If 1 is the person who says , ‘ Masks are stupid , you ’ re all a bunch of lemmings , ’ and 10 is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my master bathroom for the next 10 years , ’ where do you land ?
” Cousins laughed , then replied : “ I ’ m not gon na call anybody stupid , for the trouble it would get me in .
But I ’ m about a 0.00001.
” He then expanded a bit more on his philosophy , noting that he has been wearing a mask at the Vikings ’ team facility mainly to make others feel comfortable .
As far as the virus itself goes , Cousins continued : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go about my daily life .
If I get it , I ’ m going to ride it out .
I ’ m going to let nature do its course .
Uh , survival-of-the-fittest kind of approach and just say , if it knocks me out , it knocks me out .
I ’ m going to be OK .
Even if I die .
If I die , I die .
I kind of have peace about that.
” From the mouth of someone so protected , the meaning seems to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ die .
It is easy , and justifiable , to get extremely pissed off at someone like Cousins—a white man with a massive platform , wrapped in 10 layers of the best Bubble Wrap money can buy—speaking so recklessly in the midst of a pandemic that has been so devastating for millions of people , with environmental and health care racism leaving Black and brown people especially vulnerable to the worst impacts .
It was also easy because the mantra he wrapped himself in— “ If I die , I die ” —has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s an ethos of annihilating selfishness that has in many ways come to define our summer .

These stories have stayed with me through the summer because they bleed together into a single story of the thing that feels so sick about our country. Selfish individualism mixed with violent paranoia and gleeful provocation in the face of other people’s misery. But even as that’s true—those are the mandates that dictate our policies and have shaped our failed recovery—they also weren’t reflective of most people. Which felt like its own story about the country, both this summer and long before it.
Last week, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that the number of Americans who reported wearing their masks in public most or all of the time has skyrocketed since similar polling conducted at the beginning of the summer. Between June and August, the rate jumped from 65 percent to 85 percent. (Those who identified as white, Republican, and men—i.e., Cousins, a golf buddy of Trump’s—ranked lower than their comparable counterparts in all categories, but they all still made similarly significant gains.)
Now, as was the case with the June numbers, there are going to be refutations of reports of such high mask-wearing rates—when asked how many people they saw in public wearing their mask all or some of the time, respondents from the June poll pegged the number at just 44 percent, 21 percentage points below those who claimed to be taking the preventative measure. And speaking purely anecdotally, as someone who just spent five months back home in rural North Carolina, including the time period during which the Pew poll was conducted, I understand the skepticism. Nearly every time my partner and I left the house, we would be two of the only people in our Food Lion with masks on. I listened as the “If I die, I die” attitude came out of the mouths of family members and in-laws young and old, healthy and sick.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--Your State Flag Might Not Be Racist, but It’s Offensively Ugly

There are few symbols more potent in American life than the national flag .
Colin Kaepernick helped fuel a movement by kneeling during a ceremony that honors it ; President Donald Trump once proposed stripping the citizenship of anyone who desecrates it .
But for all the reverence and affinity that comes with the Stars and Stripes—or perhaps because of it—state flags often fall far shorter in public esteem .
That ’ s why I was so pleased to see this week ’ s results of Mississippi ’ s flag redesign process .
The state passed a law in June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which bore the Confederate battle emblem , and created a commission to consider some brand new , nontreasonous designs for voters to approve in November .
On Wednesday , after a month of whittling down the various submissions , it approved a strong , inclusive design featuring a blue backdrop with red bars on the sides , centering a white magnolia surrounded by a ring of stars .
The floral choice “ represents Mississippi ’ s sense of hope and rebirth , as the Magnolia often blooms more than once and has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s official description read .
“ The circle of twenty stars represents Mississippi as the twentieth state of the United States of America and is anchored by the gold five-point star , which stands alone .
This star represents our first peoples , the indigenous Native American tribes of the land that would become Mississippi.
” The change is long overdue , as Mississippi was the last state in the Union to feature overt Confederate symbols on its state flag .
( If voters reject the new flag this fall , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the next election . )
It represents perhaps the most significant change yet in the national reckoning over white supremacist symbols in civic spaces .
But it also shows the high level of thoughtfulness that can be brought to bear in a modern state-flag redesign process—and the quality of the product such a process can yield .
This is a lesson that many other states should take to heart .
There are some exceptions to the generally poor quality of U.S. state flags .
New Mexico , which ranked first in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Association , is a striking yellow field with the red sun symbol of the Zia people at the center .
Alaska ’ s dark blue banner features the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star , reflecting its status as the northernmost state .
Others carry historical weight .
Maryland ’ s eclectic yellow , red , and white flag draws upon Lord Baltimore ’ s coat of arms .
California ’ s flag is a modernized version of the one flown during its revolt against Spanish colonial rule in the mid-nineteenth century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its flag upon George Washington ’ s ancestral family crest .

Beyond those and a handful of others, it’s a dismal sight. Almost half of the states’ flags can be described thusly and boringly: a blue field with the state seal in the center. An American driver could travel east from Oregon’s Pacific coast along the northernmost states to Michigan, hop on a boat across the Great Lakes to Pennsylvania or New York, and continue onward to Maine’s Atlantic shores without being able to tell the state flags apart at a glance. So common is the basic design that five states—Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Montana, and Wisconsin—also prominently write out their respective names on their flags so they can tell them apart from one another.
The status quo is hard to change. One Nebraska lawmaker, whose state flies the lowest-ranking flag in the 2001 NAVA survey that’s still in use today, tried to redesign theirs after discovering it had flown upside down on the state capitol for 10 days in 2017 without anyone noticing. The proposal reportedly received little enthusiasm in the state legislature, with some lawmakers describing it as a distraction from more urgent concerns. After his proposal to create a task force on the redesign died in committee the following year, he began crowdsourcing alternatives from graphic designers online.
But there’s a clear interest in vexillological reform at the city level. Orlando, Florida, celebrated its 142nd birthday by swapping out its dated flag from the 1980s for a more modern one after months of public input. My hometown of Reno, Nevada, jettisoned one of the least creative flag designs in the Union in 2018 for a more representative symbol of the city. And in Omaha, Nebraska, a project formed this summer in response to the coronavirus pandemic hopes to replace the city’s unsightly flag with a new symbol of civic pride.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--The “Law and Order” Backlash Against Biden Was a Mirage

For all the effort expended over the past 15 years to bring punditry a step or two closer to the social sciences and into communion with statistics , the art of the political take is still , for the most part , the art of the quick draw .
Our discourses and the technologies that now sustain them aren ’ t built to reward patience ; as ever , the loudest and most important voices are those that can mold their predictions out of raw , uncomplicated intuition with speed and ease .
Other , more careful and more interesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in scholarship about our political past .
But even they might be led astray by historical determinism : the presupposition of outcomes that representative data in the present has yet to reveal .
As ever , the very best way to suss out what ’ s going to happen in American politics is to wait and see what happens .
It ’ s not really foolproof—those who are loud and wrong about what will happen are often as loud and wrong about what ’ s happened already—but compared to the other methods , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ re a little under two months out from the election and a little over three months into a season of protests against racism and police violence that , despite what their critics have said , really have been mostly peaceful .
A series of polls taken in June suggested between 15 and 26 million Americans demonstrated against the killing of George Floyd that month—if most had been committed to or engaged in violence , the president and the right would probably have more to fear now than a mere loss at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there genuinely has been looting and rioting in cities across the country .
For several nights in late May , the nation watched sections of Minneapolis go up in flames .
And as it was happening , we heard a lot about 1968 .
Our understanding of the impact the King assassination riots had on racial politics and that year ’ s election has been capsulized into a tidy piece of received wisdom , one invoked so solemnly and so often this summer it might have been thought a law of physics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and help Republicans .
But Biden ’ s continued rise in the polls after Minneapolis suggested strongly that this particular election , with these particular candidates , might play out differently .
And now , after another round of high-profile protests , a Republican National Convention heavy with “ law and order ” rhetoric , and a wave of quality national and state data , we can say with some confidence that those who raised the alarm about the demonstrations have , so far , been comprehensively wrong .
The limits of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the beginning .
In the first place , the racial attitudes of the American public and the disposition of the mainstream press toward racial protest have changed dramatically over the last half-century .
Our basic political geography has also changed , as has the composition and partisan sort of the electorate .
And the “ law and order ” candidate this time around is a historically unpopular incumbent who has deepened the lawlessness and disorder he decries—an incumbent who , incidentally , has also bungled the response to a pandemic that remains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters and has killed nearly 190,000 Americans .
The Trump campaign ’ s decision to elide this last fact and lean fully into messaging about urban disorder during the RNC should have been seen universally as an act of desperation .
Instead , a slew of pundits—spooked by the unrest in Kenosha , Wisconsin , following the shooting of Jacob Blake , not chastened in the slightest by Biden ’ s numbers post-Minneapolis—insisted that Trump had settled on a strategy sure to succeed absent a dramatic change in strategy from Biden who , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his millionth denunciation of rioting in Pittsburgh and Kenosha this week .
“ It ’ s no use dismissing their words as partisan talking points , ” The Atlantic ’ s George Packer wrote last Friday .
“ They are effective ones , backed up by certain facts .
Trump will bang this loud , ugly drum until Election Day .
He knows that Kenosha has placed Democrats in a trap .
”

For all the effort expended over the past 15 years to bring punditry a step or two closer to the social sciences and into communion with statistics, the art of the political take is still, for the most part, the art of the quick draw. Our discourses and the technologies that now sustain them aren’t built to reward patience; as ever, the loudest and most important voices are those that can mold their predictions out of raw, uncomplicated intuition with speed and ease. Other, more careful and more interesting voices root their arguments at least partially in scholarship about our political past. But even they might be led astray by historical determinism: the presupposition of outcomes that representative data in the present has yet to reveal. As ever, the very best way to suss out what’s going to happen in American politics is to wait and see what happens. It’s not really foolproof—those who are loud and wrong about what will happen are often as loud and wrong about what’s happened already—but compared to the other methods, it really cannot be beat.
We’re a little under two months out from the election and a little over three months into a season of protests against racism and police violence that, despite what their critics have said, really have been mostly peaceful. A series of polls taken in June suggested between 15 and 26 million Americans demonstrated against the killing of George Floyd that month—if most had been committed to or engaged in violence, the president and the right would probably have more to fear now than a mere loss at the polls in November. Of course, there genuinely has been looting and rioting in cities across the country. For several nights in late May, the nation watched sections of Minneapolis go up in flames. And as it was happening, we heard a lot about 1968.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--How David Graeber Changed the Way We See Money

In the third edition of the college-level textbook Macroeconomics , the economists Andrew Abel and future Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke blithely assert that “ since the earliest times almost all societies … have used money.
” They say that money arises from the inefficiency of barter—of trading one good for another—because “ finding someone who has the item you want and is willing to exchange that item for something you have is both difficult and time-consuming.
” The evolution from barter to money is an old story in economics , repeated down the centuries in one form or another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are aware of it .
It also happens to be only that : a story , and one with precious little evidence to back it up outside the heads of those who tell it .
While some economists imagine primordial villages and basic agricultural systems where birds are exchanged for flowers to illustrate the history of money , Abel and Bernanke come up with something much more immediate : The economist is hungry .
Barter systems would indeed make it difficult for an economist to eat lunch .
Would a restaurateur exchange his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Perhaps not , and the meal goes unsold and the economist goes hungry .
Thankfully , the economist has students to whom he can sell his knowledge for dollars , which then function as a medium of exchange with which he can purchase his meal .
The restaurateur is paid , the economist is satiated , while the students have learned something worthwhile .
But the only people who pay Ben Bernanke directly for his thoughts are investors .
Students do not .
Perhaps instead they borrow money to pay for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a place to live , and the associated administrative costs of providing lectures to students .
The interest on the debt eats up most of the students ’ subsequent income from the job market , leaving them with no chance of ever paying off the principal in a reasonable timeframe .
The debt will stick with them forever , even shaving off dollars from their Social Security checks , and make the normal mileposts of adult life—marriage , children—difficult or impossible to achieve .
Fed up with their narrowed prospects , they join @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up space , literally , in the shadow of New York ’ s financial institutions and they start talking about what they have in common : their debt .
And they decide to do something about it .

The evolution from barter to money is an old story in economics, repeated down the centuries in one form or another, to the point that even children are aware of it.
Barter systems would indeed make it difficult for an economist to eat lunch. Would a restaurateur exchange his goods for a lecture on monetary policy? Perhaps not, and the meal goes unsold and the economist goes hungry. Thankfully, the economist has students to whom he can sell his knowledge for dollars, which then function as a medium of exchange with which he can purchase his meal. The restaurateur is paid, the economist is satiated, while the students have learned something worthwhile.
But the only people who pay Ben Bernanke directly for his thoughts are investors. Students do not. Perhaps instead they borrow money to pay for the lecture, along with other lectures, a place to live, and the associated administrative costs of providing lectures to students. The interest on the debt eats up most of the students’ subsequent income from the job market, leaving them with no chance of ever paying off the principal in a reasonable timeframe. The debt will stick with them forever, even shaving off dollars from their Social Security checks, and make the normal mileposts of adult life—marriage, children—difficult or impossible to achieve. Fed up with their narrowed prospects, they join a group of activists who have taken up space, literally, in the shadow of New York’s financial institutions and they start talking about what they have in common: their debt. And they decide to do something about it.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--America Is Not Reliving 1968

America Is Not Reliving 1968

In contrast , almost all the evidence from the spate of post-convention polling released this week suggests that Trump ’ s demagoguery on race is simply not working .
For all the demonization by Trump and the Republicans , the Black Lives Matter movement remains relatively popular .
After the shootings and deaths in Kenosha , Wisconsin should , in theory , be the swing state most receptive to law and order fears .
Instead , a Fox News survey of Wisconsin registered voters found that they preferred Biden to Trump by a 47-to-42 percent margin in terms of who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policing and criminal justice.
” Even more ominously for the Republican ticket , a national Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters found that 50 percent believe that having Trump as president makes them feel less safe , despite the president ’ s Inaugural claims in 2017 that he alone would end what he called “ American carnage.
” Furthermore , Nixon and the Republicans in 1968 had another issue working for them that dominated the campaign year—Lyndon Johnson ’ s war in Vietnam .
A Gallup Poll from July of that year found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vietnam the most pressing issue facing the nation , significantly more than any other topic .
Other surveys from that summer—including Nixon ’ s internal polls—reached a similar conclusion .
Sure , if you squint very hard , you might see an analogy between body bags coming home from Vietnam and a raging pandemic .
But all through 1968—from Eugene McCarthy ’ s and then Kennedy ’ s antiwar primary challenges to the tear gas wafting over the Chicago Convention—Vietnam sundered the Democratic Party as Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey , LBJ ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support of the party ’ s peace wing .
This time around , it is hard to recall a nonincumbent election campaign in which the Democrats were more unified .
With a coalition of supporters ranging from Bernie Sanders to Never Trump Republicans , Biden has the freedom to embark on an election campaign without ever having to worry about securing his base .
In contrast , it is hard to exaggerate how bleak Humphrey ’ s prospects looked at this point in 1968 .
As British journalists Lewis Chester , Godfrey Hodgson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ An American Melodrama , their superb account of the 1968 election , “ The beginning of the campaign was startling .
It was difficult not to believe that the Democratic candidate was heading to a defeat … so comprehensive as to almost threaten the two-party system.
” But beginning with a late-September speech in Salt Lake City in which he called for a bombing halt in Vietnam , Humphrey launched one of the great closing sprints in modern American political history .

A Harris Poll in late August 1968 found that 81 percent of Americans believed that “law and order has broken down in this country.” And 59 percent said that “Negroes who start riots” were a major cause. (Fifty-six percent felt that Communists were another major cause.) In the same poll—in which the level of overt racism was shocking—50 percent of white Americans agreed, “Negroes smell different.” And 44 percent of whites were not embarrassed to tell a pollster that Blacks in their view had “less native intelligence.”
In contrast, almost all the evidence from the spate of post-convention polling released this week suggests that Trump’s demagoguery on race is simply not working. For all the demonization by Trump and the Republicans, the Black Lives Matter movement remains relatively popular. After the shootings and deaths in Kenosha, Wisconsin should, in theory, be the swing state most receptive to law and order fears. Instead, a Fox News survey of Wisconsin registered voters found that they preferred Biden to Trump by a 47-to-42 percent margin in terms of who could do a better job with “policing and criminal justice.” Even more ominously for the Republican ticket, a national Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters found that 50 percent believe that having Trump as president makes them feel less safe, despite the president’s Inaugural claims in 2017 that he alone would end what he called “American carnage.”
Furthermore, Nixon and the Republicans in 1968 had another issue working for them that dominated the campaign year—Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam. A Gallup Poll from July of that year found that 46 percent of the voters considered Vietnam the most pressing issue facing the nation, significantly more than any other topic. Other surveys from that summer—including Nixon’s internal polls—reached a similar conclusion.


newrepublic--2020-09-04--A Bold New Plan to Turn the Rust Belt Blue


newrepublic--2020-09-05--The American Horror of Hooding

The American Horror of Hooding

On March 23 , Joe Prude of Rochester , New York , called 911 because his visiting brother , Daniel , had fled his home while experiencing a mental health crisis .
When police officers responded , they found Daniel Prude in the street , naked and bleeding .
He obeyed their commands to lie on the ground—the temperature was just above freezing , as snow fell—and allowed himself to be handcuffed .
The officers placed a “ spit hood ” over Prude ’ s head .
One officer pressed Prude ’ s head and gripped the hood , while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few minutes , he had stopped breathing .
We know all of this now because , after five months , Prude ’ s family has finally been able to obtain and publicly release the police video of the incident that led to his death .
Prude was later declared brain dead and , on March 30 , taken off life support .
But it wasn ’ t until this Thursday , after the video surfaced and protests erupted , that seven officers were suspended over the incident .
Prude ’ s death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in recent years , police subjected to a spit hood or mask .
There was Dujuan Armstrong , who died after being restrained in Santa Rita Jail , Alameda County , California , in June 2018 .
He was placed not only put in a spit hood , but also a WRAP device , a restraint that binds a person ’ s legs and arms to prevent movement .
The local coroner concluded that the spit hood “ contributed to his death ” by asphyxiation , along with other factors such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , police officers in Fairfax County , Virginia , forced a spit mask on Natasha McKenna , in addition to cuffing her hands behind her back , shackling her legs , and connecting a hobble strap between the cuffs and shackles .
They finally Tasered her four times , leading to her death .
All three of these victims were Black .
All of the incidents were captured by police video .
And each victim had been subjected to more than one kind of restraining violence or device that made it hard , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a time of mass protests over police shootings of Black Americans , these hood incidents are only another recurring feature of racist state violence .
The use of spit hoods and other hoods to torture and terrorize vulnerable people is a fact and feature of America ’ s history , as well as its present .
There is a long historical record of authorities—including enslavers , law enforcement , correctional bodies , and institutions of state-sanctioned violence—using hoods , masks , and other devices that cover people ’ s heads and mouths , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to cause humiliation and physical harm .
Enslaved people whose resistance to bondage was deemed too much of a threat to the order were bound with iron muzzles that controlled them through silencing , humiliation , pain , blocked breathing , and food and sleep deprivation .
Sometimes , the slavers ’ pretext was to protect the enslaved person from themselves .
Similar thinking guided the use of hooding at the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania , founded in the nineteenth century on Quaker principles of benevolence .
Authorities at Eastern argued that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practices , such as hooding inmates when they left their cells , was edifying and humane .
While the wearing of hoods by executioners in the U.S. wasn ’ t a widespread practice until after 1972 ( when capital punishment resumed after a national moratorium ) , prisoners condemned to capital punishment have been forcibly hooded for at least three centuries , to silence or subdue them—and to protect the sensibilities of witnesses .
During the largest mass execution in U.S. history , the 39 Dakota men and boys sentenced to death for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in white muslin ; until the moment of death , they sang together through the hoods .

Hoods have also been used as torture devices since at least 1902, when U.S. troops hooded and waterboarded Filipino insurgents during the Philippine-American War. During World War II, Jewish prisoners at the German concentration camp Fort Breendonk, in Belgium, were hooded, beaten, and shackled. In the 1950s, French forces in Algiers tortured hooded women prisoners with beating and electrocution. Through the 1960s to the ’80s, U.S. advisers taught hooding and other torture techniques to militarized police in Brazil, and Argentinian torturers, who soaked the hoods with toxic chemicals to suffocate prisoners, passed the techniques on to their counterparts in Guatemala and Honduras. More recent victims of hooding-as-torture include the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib: The man known as “Hooded Man,” forced to stand on a box with a dark sandbag over his head, came to represent all the injustices of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Given the hood’s use in torture, it is appalling—though perhaps not surprising—to see its widespread use by police departments in America. According to The New York Times, “the use of spit hoods or spit shields is widespread among medics, prison guards and the police, throughout the United States and internationally.” Spit hoods are mesh hoods made of supposedly breathable material. The justification given for their use is to prevent spitting, biting, and injury to detaining officers. This type of restraint has “been involved in at least 10 deaths in police custody since 2001,” but “how much the spit hood contributed to those deaths” remains under debate, the Times reported. In cases such as those of Armstrong, Prude, and McKenna, multiple types of restraints were used, any of which could singularly interfere with critical life functions or contribute to a perfect storm of conditions for asphyxiation.
Not every police department has an official policy on the use of spit hoods These cases show situations where officers can reasonably avoid getting spit on by a “resister,” who is already handcuffed and restrained, by positioning themselves behind the person or wearing protective gear. But spit hoods, along with choke holds, kneeling, and any other tactics that restrict breathing, remain in use, officially sanctioned or not. Tactics like these can routinely make police officers’ bodies more dangerous than their guns, but society only scrutinizes the risk in the wake of a highly publicized death. Police departments (and other organizations that use spit hoods) may ascribe potentially linkable fatalities (and nonfatal injuries or trauma) to the victim’s underlying health conditions or behavior. In some cases, the use of a spit hood may not even be divulged to families or the public.


newrepublic--2020-09-07--Happy Pandemic Labor Day

Happy Pandemic Labor Day

Labor Day is here , which means it ’ s time to buy stuff .
The Today Show has the latest on the “ Home Decor Sales You Can ’ t Miss.
” USA Today excitedly reported that “ Home Depot ’ s huge Labor Day sale has arrived.
” The New York Post is here to inform you that Wayfair is slashing prices up to 70 percent !
This is the worker ’ s holiday in the United States—a Black Friday for the dying days of summer .
Most years , this doesn ’ t really register .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clarity , has made the Labor Day sales push harder to look past .
Daily infection rates in the U.S. are double the rates in spring and early summer , and the death rate has held steady at roughly 1,000 per day for the past six weeks .
The unemployment rate , while down since July , still sits at 9.1 percent .
Amazon delivery drivers , trying to gain a slight edge on claiming new jobs and make ends meet , are sticking their cell phones in trees while the company ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ position to help it root out “ labor organizing threats.
” Bartenders and servers are still being accosted by anti-mask customers , all while chains and ownership groups institute mass layoffs .
Public school teachers—who entered the pandemic fresh off a years-long push for more resources—are being called back into schools where some classrooms have no windows .
The American economy has been built for a very small , very wealthy segment of society .
This has always been a moral and material disaster , but its reach in the pandemic is widening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the more glaring .
As politicians have either cozied up or turned a blind eye to the wealthiest in America , billionaires have made off with profits that outsize many state budgets .
Private equity firms , fresh off gutting staffs at nursing homes , have reaped the profits of short-selling commercial real estate securities , all while corporations roll back the temporary pay increases retail workers relied on at the start of summer .
But the message to workers over the past five months has mainly been constant reminders that our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is our willingness to return to unsafe job sites and our ability to spend our paychecks .
This year , Labor Day feels painfully familiar and somehow new .
Worse .
Writing for Teen Vogue last year , New Republic contributor Kim Kelly traced the holiday ’ s origins back to the late nineteenth century , when the wealthy of the fading Gilded Age needed to appease the working class .
But globally , the worker ’ s holiday is May Day , whose origins lie in the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
American workers and labor organizers have a long history and tradition of uniting to combat corrupt management , corporations , and governments .
Eight-hour days .
Forty-hour workweeks .
Weekends .
These are all political victories that required decades of organizing and oftentimes physical confrontation and sacrifice .
The American construction of Labor Day isn ’ t about any of that .
It ’ s not the worker organizer , or the worker militant being celebrated—it ’ s the worker-consumer .
Now it ’ s hard to think about anything else .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , for America ’ s billionaires , the pandemic hasn ’ t been so much a tragedy as it is a half-trillion-dollar investment opportunity .
One can ’ t watch an NBA bubble game ( on a Disney- or AT & T-owned network ) without listening to American Express beg the audience to “ Shop Small ” during these tough times .
The dissonance has always been staggering ; now it ’ s annihilating .
Workers didn ’ t need a national health crisis to be shown in grotesque detail how poorly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been set up , but it arrived all the same .

Labor Day is here, which means it’s time to buy stuff. The Today Show has the latest on the “Home Decor Sales You Can’t Miss.” USA Today excitedly reported that “Home Depot’s huge Labor Day sale has arrived.” The New York Post is here to inform you that Wayfair is slashing prices up to 70 percent! This is the worker’s holiday in the United States—a Black Friday for the dying days of summer. Most years, this doesn’t really register. But the pandemic, a depressing engine of clarity, has made the Labor Day sales push harder to look past.
Daily infection rates in the U.S. are double the rates in spring and early summer, and the death rate has held steady at roughly 1,000 per day for the past six weeks. The unemployment rate, while down since July, still sits at 9.1 percent. Amazon delivery drivers, trying to gain a slight edge on claiming new jobs and make ends meet, are sticking their cell phones in trees while the company’s corporate office is hiring for a position to help it root out “labor organizing threats.” Bartenders and servers are still being accosted by anti-mask customers, all while chains and ownership groups institute mass layoffs. Public school teachers—who entered the pandemic fresh off a years-long push for more resources—are being called back into schools where some classrooms have no windows. The American economy has been built for a very small, very wealthy segment of society. This has always been a moral and material disaster, but its reach in the pandemic is widening and the violence of impact has become all the more glaring.


newrepublic--2020-09-07--Fox News Shares the Blame for Trump’s Deranged, Ruinous Presidency

Throughout history , presidents have singled out particular reporters for special access .
Franklin Roosevelt often favored The New York Times ’ Arthur Krock with inside information .
John F. Kennedy ’ s close personal relationship with Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee is documented in Bradlee ’ s book , Conversations With Kennedy .
It ’ s an arrangement that suits both parties—reporters get scoops , while presidents get to put their spin on the news in a relatively unfiltered form .
Donald Trump , however , has gone far beyond past practices to favor an entire news organization , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gives Trump fawning , obsequious coverage , according to a new book , Hoax : Donald Trump , Fox News , and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth , by CNN ’ s media analyst Brian Stelter .
In great detail , he shows how access to Trump can make or break careers at Fox , with millions upon millions of dollars in ratings-driven compensation at stake .
Sean Hannity , whose 9:00 p.m. Fox show is the network ’ s highest rated , is the unquestioned leader of the pack when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dictates Hannity ’ s programming , and Hannity has little choice but to comply .
In return , Hannity gets interviews with Trump almost on demand , and is a close private adviser to Trump off the air as well .
But the most influential show is Fox & Friends , which runs from 6:00 am to 9:00 am Eastern time .
That ’ s because Trump is an early riser and a television junkie who gets the bulk of his information about everything from cable news .
In lieu of briefings from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newspapers , Trump relies heavily on oral downloads of dubiously sourced information from Brian Kilmeade , Ainsley Earhardt , and Steve Doocy , the morning show ’ s three co-anchors .
They often establish Trump ’ s priorities , his interests , and take on the news of the day , as evidenced by his frequent early morning tweets that regularly follow Fox & Friends commentary in real time .
Stelter reports that Trump administration officials must beg for interviews on Fox & Friends just so Trump will see them and in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which he ’ s otherwise too preoccupied to reserve office time .
Corporations have also learned about Trump ’ s addiction to the show and exploit it by buying advertising in its time slot .
( Unfortunately for them , Trump likes to watch Fox & Friends on delay so he can fast forward through commercials . )

This is why Fox retains controversial commentators such as Tucker Carlson, whose program consists largely of race-baiting and pandering to white supremacists. Carlson’s prime-time show has cost Fox millions of dollars in advertising due to corporate boycotts, but it’s also highly rated and a key reason why cable systems pay Fox’s exorbitant fees. That’s why Carlson can afford to lose 100 percent of his advertisers and still keep his show and the millions of dollars per year Fox pays him.
Stelter says that the historical model for TV news broadcasting has become reversed at Fox. Whereas a typical media outlet leads with hard news and buries commentary at the back of the paper or the end of a program, Fox leads with commentary and presents real news only as an afterthought. The network doesn’t even employ very many actual reporters; the bulk of “news” content at Fox comes from the internet, especially from right-wing sources like Breitbart. The Drudge Report, in particular, is very closely monitored for material. (This may have changed lately since Matt Drudge adopted a more Trump-skeptical perspective, causing Fox’s Carlson to declare him “a man of the progressive left,” which is blatant nonsense.)
Fox executives like to say that the daytime programming at Fox isn’t materially different from that of other cable news networks—it’s determined largely by breaking news. The really bad stuff appears on prime-time shows that are clearly understood to be commentary. But Stelter says that the Trump-pandering mandate is bleeding more and more into daytime programming, which has become a sort of hybrid of news and commentary. This has become more pronounced since the departure of Shepard Smith, whose 3 p.m. show was an island of hard news and high journalistic standards in the Fox wasteland of right-wing misinformation and blather. (Smith has recently joined CNBC.)


newrepublic--2020-09-07--The Future of Labor Is Growing in South Dakota

Kooper Caraway , the newly elected president of the South Dakota AFL-CIO , sees his stated duty to improve the lot of the American working class as more of a calling .
Born in Alabama and raised in Texas , the 29-year-old son of a German-American truck driver and a Native American retail worker became aware of the inequities of social class at an early age .
Caraway knows all too well what it ’ s like to suffer for lack of basic resources , let alone luxuries .
He ’ s “ been to jail a lot , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of political activism .
When he was still a boy and his family ’ s water got cut off , he ’ d be forced to sneak over to a neighbor ’ s yard to surreptitiously fill up empty milk jugs so he could shower in the morning before school .
Now he is the country ’ s youngest state federation president within the AFL-CIO , and he aims to shake up the nation ’ s creaking labor bureaucracy in a big way .
His first foray into political action came in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plot to steal the keys to the city and take control of its armory in order to seize power from the adults that he felt were causing all the world ’ s problems .
Despite such early militant impulses , little Kooper felt his life ’ s mission was to become a preacher .
His family wasn ’ t especially religious , he recalls , but he carried his Bible around with him , taking at least one of its messages to heart—the one involving rich men and needles .
“ As far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book was saying , or at least what Jesus Christ was saying , was that all people—thieves , murderers , sex workers—could achieve salvation , except rich folks , ” he says .
“ Rich folks are not getting in .
And looking around as a kid , it seemed pretty clear to me that all the struggles that me or my family or my neighbors or my friends or anyone else in the community were going through were directly tied to rich folks.
” This youthful fascination with religion was politically charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world occurred a little later .
Like many millennials , he was galvanized by the abuses of power that marked the George W. Bush years and particularly by the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 .
While I was rallying against Dick Cheney back in South Jersey , Caraway was organizing protests and actions to chase Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of his small Texas town , where they ’ d begun raiding his neighbors ’ homes .
After the feds cleared out , Caraway threw himself into community organizing , with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the organizing power of labor .
“ By the time I was a teenager , it was just clear to me that the labor movement , with its blemishes and imperfections and historical grave wrong decisions , was the movement that had the potential to provide the earth-shattering change that I wanted and felt like I needed.
” A quick breakdown of the next few years of his career reads like something out of a socialist fairy tale .
He left sleepy Northeast Texas for bustling Dallas , where he worked on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; after that , he was a labor organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and worked as a union representative for the American Federation of Teachers .
In 2017 , he moved up north to South Dakota to work as the lead organizer for Council 65 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees ( where he ’ s still a member ) .
In short order , he rose through the ranks to become the president of the Sioux-Falls AFL-CIO , making history as the youngest central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Now , at 29 , he ’ s done it again with his election to state-level office .
He began campaigning in October last year , traveling around the state to speak at local membership meetings .
He also began collecting endorsements from area labor leaders and produced a slick campaign video with Means TV that aired in the lead-up to the state federation convention that would vote him in .
But , as he says , those plans quickly changed after his predecessor , Duwayne Wohlleber , was found to be posting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his personal Facebook page .
Following pressure from the national AFL-CIO leadership , Wohlleber decided to resign , leaving the office of president vacant for several months and clearing the path for Caraway , who ultimately ran unopposed .

At the best of times, the AFL-CIO, like many sprawling national institutions, finds itself juggling an often conflicting array of priorities, issues, and criticisms—all while trying to placate its 55 million very different members. And these, needless to say, are far from the best of times, with the United States staring down the barrel of yet another presidential election pitting a querulous neoliberal Democratic establishment against the specter of full-blown fascism. The federation has been working overtime to marshal the union vote in favor of Joe Biden, who loves to tout himself as a “union man,” despite having never actually joined one. But the associations representing cops and border guards broke with the rest of the labor movement and endorsed Trump—an unsurprising move that further highlighted a problem that the AFL-CIO has been trying very hard to ignore for a very long time: its relationship with the police.
Since late May, when the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement and sparked a nationwide uprising against police violence, many powerful institutions have been forced to reevaluate their relationships with law enforcement. The house of labor is no different, and during this summer of protest, the AFL-CIO released multiple statements reaffirming its commitment to racial justice and advocating for police reform. For many in the movement, though, this wasn’t enough: A number of rank-and-file groups within the federation have started to call for the AFL-CIO to officially disaffiliate the International Union of Police Associations and for other member unions to expel the cops within their own ranks. This tension tracks the broader generational and political divide between labor’s traditionally Democrat-aligned leaders and the younger, more left-leaning and diverse segments of its membership. In Caraway’s view, that conversation isn’t going away, nor should it; but he also says that it’s run aground on the sacrosanct question of the police union’s collective bargaining rights.
The challenge, he argues, is to be clear about which unions are really advancing the labor movement’s shared goals. “To me it makes sense to say, which unions should be held to the same standard of solidarity, and which union should be exempt from that standard of solidarity? Which unions should be required by the federation to not cross each other’s’ picket lines and in fact to support each other’s job actions, and which unions should be allowed to not only cross the picket lines but to break up the picket lines and arrest the organizers? Which unions in the federation should be held to the standard to get down with the AFL-CIO’s national political program, and support the labor-endorsed candidates, and which unions should be exempt from that and be able to go endorse whatever anti-union politicians they’d like to, and then stand outside of polling places with guns?”


newrepublic--2020-09-08--The End of the University

The End of the University

Since coming down south to be closer to family , I ’ ve taken many walks around the University of North Carolina ’ s Greensboro campus , where my father works as a professor of chemistry .
I arrived not long before spring classes were moved online and the vast majority of students decamped for home .
The spacious campus turned desolate , bicycles locked up everywhere , as though the people who rode them to class had vaporized .
For months , little changed , with the exception of a large boulder that sits near the main green and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When I first arrived , the message spray-painted on it was hopeful : WASH YOUR HANDS SO WE CAN GRADUATE , the artist implored .
In a matter of weeks , it grew resigned : COVID-19 , the rock read , CLASS OF 2020 .
By early June , it was rebellious : GEORGE , BREONNA , AHMAUD , BLACK LIVES MATTER .
What is going to happen to universities moving forward ?
And to their students , faculty , and staff—not to mention the surrounding communities and businesses that depend on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one knows , but everyone agrees the situation is dire .
Some state systems have forecast losses of up to a billion dollars by the end of the year .
The virus has sparked a national conversation about the value of education ; scrambling to adapt to online teaching often creates more work for faculty with less payoff for students , who are isolated from their teachers and peers .
Across the country , including at the University of North Carolina , students have filed suits to get tuition refunds , on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true college experience , ” and signed petitions demanding that their housing costs be reimbursed .
In March , Moody ’ s downgraded the sector ’ s outlook from stable to negative , citing the prospect of reduced enrollment .
With universities and colleges in desperate need of funds far in excess of the $ 14 billion in federal stimulus money allotted by the CARES Act , Covid-19 may well be what some have called an “ extinction-level event ” for higher education .
Schools often run deficits in normal times ; in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already borderline insolvent .
Covid will cause many to shutter for good .
It is accounting , not epidemiology , that drives university administrators to push for a rapid return to business as usual , effectively demanding that faculty and staff sacrifice their lives for the financial health of their employer .
In August , UNC officials brazenly invited students to move back into their dorms for fall semester .
Before long , the system ’ s flagship school , UNC Chapel Hill , experienced multiple outbreak clusters , and pivoted to remote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraged my father to resist the pressure to return to the classroom in the fall on a rushed and reckless time line .
Walking around the ghostly Greensboro campus this summer , I felt as if I ’ d arrived in the future that highly paid tech pundits have long claimed was inevitable—a dystopia where instruction takes place solely online and traditional college is obsolete .
The people invested in digital disruption are not alone in their push to end higher education as we know it .
North Carolina may have been the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ university back in 1795 , but Republican legislators—so keen on Southern heritage when a Confederate monument is at stake—have been working for years to dismantle the state ’ s educational legacy , slashing appropriations while targeting specific academic initiatives ( including an anti-poverty law program and one focused on biodiversity ) .
Convinced colleges are hotbeds of liberal political correctness , they are eager to see lecture halls , libraries , and laboratories close for good .
Democrats , too , facilitated higher education ’ s evisceration ; they bear substantial responsibility for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unnecessarily , vulnerable to the pandemic ’ s fiscal shock .
For decades , disinvestment in higher education has been a bipartisan undertaking .
Looming state budget deficits and austerity policies will ensure that even more schools are public in name alone .
Cuts , unfortunately , tend to stick : After the 2008 crash , state funding for higher education never rebounded .
Even before Covid , state higher-ed spending , on average , was down around 17 percent per student , adjusted for inflation , from prerecession levels .
Meanwhile , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make up for declining state revenue—a growing dependence on tuition dollars and proceeds from real estate holdings , athletics , and hospitals—have recently been exposed as massive liabilities , as vacant dormitories , stadiums , and surgery wards collect not income but dust .
Donors , who in good times might be inclined to give generously to an endowment in exchange for a tax break and a plaque , may prefer now to tighten their belts .
Of course , those schools that aren ’ t rich enough to have medical complexes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coming crunch .
In the most likely scenario , the comparatively privileged will compete ever more frantically for space in academia ’ s upper echelons , while millions of poor and working-class students , disproportionately Black and brown , are funneled into dilapidated community colleges and for-profit degree mills or give up on studying altogether .
Harvard and Yale will not just survive this calamity , they will likely see their stock rise ; Princeton ’ s $ 26 billion endowment generates about $ 158,000 in annual revenue for each of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation ’ s historically Black colleges and universities , which lack comparable cash reserves , will be especially harmed by closures .

Before UNC students were called back for an uncertain and perilous fall semester, I often felt sentimental. Crossing the abandoned quad or passing the lonely statue of Minerva, I missed the usual hustle and bustle and wistfully regarded the signs of devotion to scholarship and learning. And yet, as someone who has spent the last eight years campaigning to end student debt and advance the demand for tuition-free, and intellectually freeing, public college for all, I know the university must not be romanticized. The question is not whether the university as it currently exists will survive the pandemic, but whether we want it to.
The coronavirus pandemic did not cause the current crisis like an unexpected blow to an otherwise healthy patient; it has exposed and exacerbated an array of preexisting conditions, revealing structural inequalities that go back not just decades but centuries. Capitalist imperatives and racial exclusions have distorted and damaged our education system since its inception. America’s universities were built on a corrupt foundation: The theft of indigenous territory and the owning and leasing of enslaved people provided much of the initial acreage, labor, and capital for many of the country’s most esteemed institutions. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862, the year before the Emancipation Proclamation, handing over millions of acres of stolen land to found universities that shut out Black people, with few exceptions. The Morrill Act was part of a concerted effort to modernize the economy. Indeed, the research university and the business corporation developed in tandem. Racism, commerce, and education have been bedfellows from the beginning. If we want a real cure for the present crisis, we must change how our institutions of learning are funded and governed, so that they might embody a deeper, democratic purpose at long last.
The coronavirus pandemic may well usher in a period of catastrophic destruction, but difficult revelations can also be a spur to insight and action. Though increasingly stratified, segregated, and costly access to higher education is not the only possible future we are racing toward, it is the default—the destination that aligns with our past and present trajectories. In order to forge another path, we must engage in a deeper form of accounting. Beyond finding a way to balance university budgets in the midst of global depression, the challenge is to acknowledge and repair past mistakes and ongoing inequities, thereby making our higher education system, for the first time in our troubled history, truly public. If our goal is to shift course and avert the disaster on the horizon, the boulder’s final message—“Black Lives Matter”—points us in the right direction. “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression,” the Combahee River Collective, an influential group of Black feminists, wrote in 1977. Their wisdom still holds. If we could create a world where Black students were free to learn at free universities, we would have created a world where everyone else was finally able to do so as well.


newrepublic--2020-09-08--My 98 Days in Unemployment Purgatory

My 98 Days in Unemployment Purgatory

When the pandemic hit and millions of people lost their jobs , my beat as a reporter at Vice swiftly changed to covering unemployment .
I spoke to workers—teachers , ride-share drivers , servers—who were dialing unemployment offices hundreds of times a day , desperate for any type of relief .
Our team called offices in all 50 states and found only two people actually picked up , illustrating how impossible it was to get help from a real person .
I spoke to labor lawyers and policy experts who themselves were struggling to parse the federal government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Good thing we ’ re doing all this reporting on unemployment insurance so we will know what to do when we lose our jobs , ” I joked to my editor in April .
By May , I was laid off , along with most of the people on my desk , along with some 21 million others .
But at least I had a good grasp on the system .
My claim seemed clear-cut : I was laid off from a full-time W-2 job , with regular paystubs , because of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coming from a union job , which meant that I had lawyers and union staff to help me with the application process .
I was out of work , but I was lucky .
But what followed—a summer spent plumbing the cursed depths of unemployment rules—quickly tested that premise .
I applied through the DOL ’ s online portal , entering my income and dutifully certifying my claim every Sunday .
Weeks went by and most of my former coworkers got their applications approved .
I heard nothing .
On June 4 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I messaged the New York Department of Labor ’ s ( DOL ) Twitter account because one lawyer from an unemployment webinar I helped organize a few weeks after I was laid off had advised that it was the fastest way to get through .
They were right , which still feels insane .
After I sent the private message , someone from the department took my name and said I would receive a call .
Two weeks later , I reached back out to say I hadn ’ t received a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As I waited , I scoured a Facebook group , forebodingly named “ HELP US - NYS Unemployment Issues , ” that I had found months back in the course of my reporting .
People posted that the real trick to actually getting in touch with someone was to get routed through the governor ’ s office .
Every time I learned something new , I would text my friends , who were sick of me , to “ update ” them on “ my new life .
”

He asked me the application questions over the phone: “Did your place of employment close as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic?” I told him I had been laid off, but that the Vice offices were still open—did that count? He asked where I worked now. I said that as a freelancer, any work I was able to do was from my desk at home. He repeated the question. I replied, “So you’re asking did my home close as a direct result of Covid-19?” He repeated the question. I said no. I hung up the phone and sat quietly at the desk in my office, which had stayed open during the pandemic because it is also my bedroom.
After months of a slow, bureaucratic drag, what came next happened quickly: My rejection from PUA arrived in the mail just days later. It was now August. I filed for an appeal, while also reaching out to a former colleague who worked in unemployment policy and multiple unemployment lawyer help lines. After many calls and emails, I was told that, actually, I should be eligible for regular unemployment; the problem was a mess with the number of specific calendar quarters I had worked in. (I would go into the details of the “alternate base period,” but I’ll spare you the suffering.) Every conversation with an expert gave me a flood of relief that something might change; every grain of solid information felt like an undeserved treasure. They told me to reapply, so I did.
By the end of August, almost four months later, I finally got my unemployment. It took 98 days.
As I waited, the Labor Department called—not because I had reapplied, but to return my Twitter message from June. After I explained my situation again, I was told that, actually, I should be eligible for PUA. “Why did you think your place of employment didn’t close as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic?” the representative asked me. I explained that the Vice (and my home) office didn’t close. “See, this is the problem—people are really overinterpreting these questions,” he said. OK, buddy, I thought, as I recalled my conversation with the last representative. By the end of August, almost four months later, I finally got my unemployment. It took 98 days.