thenation--2020-11-25--Are Cuban American Voters Really a ‘Special’ Case?

A common question this election cycle , especially from non-Cuban Americans , was “ How could Cubans immigrants possibly support Trump ?
” The question of Republican support among the Cuban diaspora in Florida has bedeviled Democrats for decades , including many in the community itself .
It is easy and often comforting to fall into the trap of marshaling broader historical processes to rationalize disappointments .
In this case , it usually starts off by pointing to the Cuban Revolution as an event that primed the diaspora for the red scare tactics that the GOP loves to deploy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cuban exceptionalism , buoyed but not born of special migratory rules for Cubans , which undermines their sense of solidarity with other Latin American immigrants .
Then you might get into discussions of the long shadow of racism in Cuba ’ s history , with the island ’ s transformation during the Spanish colonial period into a plantation society giving it more commonality with the antebellum American South than , say , many parts of Central America .
But in telling the story of Cuban voting patterns this way , we often lose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s politics often reflect internal US trends , including old and familiar political strategies .
It isn ’ t that these problems specific to Cuba aren ’ t real , but that by focusing on them we are buying into a premise that inevitably leads to the assumption that Cubans are “ natural Republicans , ” about which we can do little .
If we stop assuming that Cubans are a “ special ” case , we may not only start to see them as part of something more familiar ; we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A good place to start looking for answers is Florida International University ’ s Cuba Poll , run by sociologists Guillermo Grenier and Qing Lai , which Grenier has been periodically conducting for almost 30 years .
The poll takes samples of Cuban immigrants and Cubans born outside of Cuba who live in South Florida , and varies from 800 to 1,000 people .
It focuses on a series of questions about US policy toward Cuba and their political affiliations here in the United States .
While attempts at explanations of Cuban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cuba at their center , Grenier says the data have never borne this out .
“ Cubans , ” he tells me , “ are often treated like perpetual exiles , ” but in terms of what is most important to them in US politics , Cuba policy regularly rates last , behind issues like health care and the economy .
While the diaspora may be more open to manipulation through Red Scare tactics than other communities , even in this respect Cubans merely reproduce a rhetoric that has become a standard part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s not just a Cuban thing .
They ’ re [ seen as ] weird because they ’ re in a critical state… .
but as far as Republicans go , Cubans aren ’ t far off from moderate [ Republicans ] .
” Will 2020 Be Trump ’ s Bay of Pigs ?
It ’ s true that many Cuban exiles worked closely with the GOP—including many of the Watergate burglars who saw the bugging of the DNC as part of the broader fight against Communism—but the community was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the early decades after the Revolution as it has become since .
Indeed , while the Kennedy administration is often remembered primarily in connection with its perceived “ betrayal ” of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion force , it ’ s often forgotten that President Kennedy played a key role in instituting the Cuban Refugee Program , which facilitated the US entry of tens of thousands of Cubans a year and set aside significant funds for their resettlement .
The GOP now promotes its hard-right , anti-socialist Latin America policy in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a strategy to cultivate popular support in the Sunshine State , but that ’ s only the tip of the iceberg .
A key part of the deeper answer to the GOP ’ s success seems to lie in the political machine the party has built up in Florida .
For Grenier , the big shift came under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s .
“ The Republican Party put boots on the ground under Reagan , ” he explains .
“ Cubans were surrogates for the Reagan administration in Central America , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but on the other hand , [ Reagan was saying ] ‘ I ’ m going to make you guys citizens and you are going to join the Republican Party.
’ ” Under Reagan , institutions like the Cuban American National Foundation were built up to help lobby for the interests of Cuban-American Republicans .
“ The Republican Party talked the talk and walked the walk , ” says Grenier .
As Reagan ’ s strategy progressed and more opportunities for advancement started opening on the right , many ambitious young Cuban-American Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this turn in the career of longtime Republican Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart , who started in politics as a president of the Florida Young Democrats .
He even ran , and lost , as a Democrat in a state race in 1982 before cochairing the Democrats for Reagan Campaign in 1984 and formally switching parties in 1985 .
The so-called “ Reagan Revolution ” ended , but the GOP ’ s strategy in Florida continued , and built on its gains .
Another good example is TV and Radio Martí , the propaganda channels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Broadcasting , based in Miami and aimed at Cuba .
The channels have been a poor man ’ s Radio Free Europe , with all the costs of their better-known predecessor , but without its competence or impact .
Radio Martí was founded in 1983 , at the height of the Reagan revolution , and shored up Republican support among Cuban immigrants , while TV Martí was founded in 1990 , under George H.W .
Bush , as Reaganism receded .
Despite their systematic failure to make significant inroads in Cuban public opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taxpayers just shy of $ 800 million .
They seem to exist principally to play the dual role of being a shining symbol of Republican commitment to a “ free Cuba ” and providing steady employment to a gaggle of right-leaning , Spanish-speaking employees in Florida .
They recently made the news by broadcasting anti-Semitic stories about the alleged political machinations of George Soros , with one reporter calling him a “ nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals , ” resulting in eight TV and Radio Martí employees ’ being fired .
They may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ineffectual organizations , but as federally—and lavishly—funded institutions , they function as an effective part of the GOP ’ s patronage and political machinery in Florida , offering both jobs and politically useful symbols .
Recent Democrat-to-Republican converts who played key roles in the 2020 election seem to bolster the idea that an old pattern—that of shifting political loyalties in search of personal opportunities—is continuing .
Much discussed in the press , Cuban immigrant turned Florida social media influencer Alex Otaola has been widely credited as pivotal in the GOP ’ s war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Cuba in 1979 , Otaola arrived in the United States in 2003 .
He began a YouTube channel in 2017 to promote his Web show Hola Otaola after losing his job with the Spanish-language network Mega TV in 2015 , and has since become the new media equivalent of what right-wing talk-radio was in the 1990s .
Less discussed , however , is that Otaola was a registered Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and only switched parties as recently as 2018 .
Another case in point is Giancarlo Sopo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media for Trump ’ s 2020 campaign .
Sopo had previously made news for resigning from his post as communications director for then–Democratic Representative Joe Garcia in 2013 following a police raid on a family member ’ s home as part of an investigation into Sopo ’ s alleged role in illegal unsolicited requests for absentee ballots during the 2012 Democratic primary .
Sopo was never charged and later claimed to have been tricked into participating in the scheme by Garcia ’ s former chief of staff , Jeffrey Garcia ( no relation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his role in the plot .
Sopo cofounded the CubaOne Foundation ( which supports normalization with Cuba ) as recently as 2016 , was presenting himself as a moderate liberal during much of the Trump administration , and , according to a leaked conversation attributed to Sopo by the Florida Democratic Party , was privately complaining that Trump had “ disgraced the office ” of the presidency “ with his conduct ” as recently as October of 2018 , before earning a fellowship in 2019 with a right-wing think tank , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a staff writer at the right-wing media company The Blaze , and joined the Trump campaign this past April .
( Disclosure : Sopo and I have had negative personal interactions on Twitter dating back to at least 2018 . )
Support for the GOP among Cuban Americans in Florida receded under Obama , but that didn ’ t last .
I pressed Grenier as to why .
“ There was no concomitant attempt by the Democratic Party to reach out to Cubans and build the base .
It was all top down.… @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In short , “ to chip away at ” Cuban support for the GOP , “ you ’ ve got to be around.
” As Stacey Abrams and other Democrats in Georgia just demonstrated , if Democrats want to build political power in a difficult environment , there is no substitute for deep , grassroots organizing .
One bright spot for Democrats in recent decades has been growing receptiveness to Democratic politics as well as normalization of relations with Cuba among both recent migrants and second- and third-generation Cuban Americans .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that too , with signs of a rightward shift more generally , and in particular among recent arrivals from Cuba .
In a recent article for Progreso Weekly , Grenier noted that in the 2020 Cuba Poll , “ for the first time since we ’ ve been keeping records , ” “ new arrivals are registering Republican rather than Democrat or Independent ( No Party Affiliation ) to the tune of 76 % .
” A big part of this shift seems to be the one-two punch of the right ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delivery mechanism for right-wing political messaging .
The more established Spanish-language newspapers , like El Nuevo Herald , as well as online blogs targeting Cubans on and off the island , like Diario de Cuba or Cubanet , certainly haven ’ t gone anywhere .
But social networks like Facebook and mobile apps like WhatsApp have become incredibly effective tools for the spread of right-wing memes , videos , and articles .
This is perhaps made easier with relatively new arrivals because they , like all immigrants , are still learning to navigate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sees new media as a “ repackaging of Cuban exile ideology ” for a new audience .
In order to understand better how this played out in practice , I reached out to three Cuban immigrants who had arrived in the past five years , had yet to obtain US citizenship , and who all supported Trump .
All three were legal permanent residents at interview time , saw social networks as central parts of how they got their news , have family in Cuba whom they help support and thereby protect from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Two of them earned between $ 50,000 and $ 100,000 a year , and one , my former classmate at the University of Havana , Carelis Enriquez , 30 , lives in Miami ; she arrived thanks to an application through her spouse , and earns under $ 30,000 .
She “ preferred ” Trump because she saw him as more straightforward and better on the economy than Biden , whom she saw as ineffective and “ somewhat pedophilic.
” Anti-immigrant sentiment under Trump bothered her , but she hadn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , more important , agreed with many restrictive immigration policies because she disliked the idea of “ other people living on my taxes.
” She has a deep distrust of the press , and gets most of her news from coworkers and social networks .
Jorge Roca , 33 , arrived under the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program and lives in north Georgia , earning between $ 50,000 and $ 100,000 a year .
He would have voted for Trump if he had been a citizen , he says , “ because , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican talking point , but based on Biden ’ s speeches and Biden ’ s interviews , he seems like Fidel Castro.
” Roca receives his news mostly from Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube , including both Spanish-language sources like the right-leaning Diario de Cuba and Otaola , as well as English-language new media like Ben Shapiro ’ s podcast or the Chicks on the Right podcast , both of which he found out about through friends on Facebook or Facebook recommendations .
Finally , South Florida resident Nelson Valiente , also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foot , dry foot ” policy ( begun during the Clinton administration , this policy allowed the US government to deport Cuban refugees intercepted in waters between the two nations , but allowed those who made it to US land to seek expedited permanent-resident status and eventually seek citizenship ) .
Valiente said that while he didn ’ t think either candidate would impact his life much , because he didn ’ t pin his hopes on any government , “ whether right or left , ” he “ preferred ” Trump because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the right ” supports self-improvement and he is skeptical of claims that people can ’ t advance in life because of discrimination .
At the same time , Valiente recognizes that Trump isn ’ t particularly diplomatic or presidential .
He gets most of his news through articles on Facebook and Twitter , but doesn ’ t regularly go to any specific news source , because such sources make him feel “ manipulated.
” He also noticed that many of the members of the electrical workers union he was a part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be friction between Trump and unions .
The ability of right-wing messaging to successfully reach these new immigrants and shape their views of US politics points to potential trouble down the line for Democrats .
It also seems to support the older consensus that the special rules for Cuban immigration historically undermine solidarity with other Latin American immigrants or even more recent arrivals facing a post–wet foot , dry foot world ( as one of the last acts of his administration , coming after the historic normalization of relations , Obama ended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Perhaps there will be a reckoning with Trump ’ s harsh immigration policies and their impact on Cuban new arrivals , which could help shift Cubans away from the GOP—but that shift has yet to arrive .
GOP machine and patronage politics and right-wing use of new media and social networks are not the complete story .
But they do seem to be emerging as two concrete problems that Democrats will have to grapple with not only to make inroads but , more importantly , to retain support in the Cuban-American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is part of a very old and very American story , harkening back at least to Tammany Hall ’ s political machine in 19th-century New York , which built up a similar relationship with Irish immigrants .
The other , media , is taking on new forms in a digital age , but if recent statements by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O ’ Rourke are anything to go by , this is a national problem for Democrats that a growing chorus within the party are already well aware of .
Grenier tells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well aware that the GOP ’ s hold over the Cuban-American community was not built overnight .
We can ’ t expect Democratic inroads to be either .

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A common question this election cycle, especially from non-Cuban Americans, was “How could Cubans immigrants possibly support Trump?” The question of Republican support among the Cuban diaspora in Florida has bedeviled Democrats for decades, including many in the community itself.
It is easy and often comforting to fall into the trap of marshaling broader historical processes to rationalize disappointments. In this case, it usually starts off by pointing to the Cuban Revolution as an event that primed the diaspora for the red scare tactics that the GOP loves to deploy. Added to it is the problem of Cuban exceptionalism, buoyed but not born of special migratory rules for Cubans, which undermines their sense of solidarity with other Latin American immigrants. Then you might get into discussions of the long shadow of racism in Cuba’s history, with the island’s transformation during the Spanish colonial period into a plantation society giving it more commonality with the antebellum American South than, say, many parts of Central America.
But in telling the story of Cuban voting patterns this way, we often lose sight of the ways that the community’s politics often reflect internal US trends, including old and familiar political strategies. It isn’t that these problems specific to Cuba aren’t real, but that by focusing on them we are buying into a premise that inevitably leads to the assumption that Cubans are “natural Republicans,” about which we can do little. If we stop assuming that Cubans are a “special” case, we may not only start to see them as part of something more familiar; we may also start to see actual solutions.
A good place to start looking for answers is Florida International University’s Cuba Poll, run by sociologists Guillermo Grenier and Qing Lai, which Grenier has been periodically conducting for almost 30 years. The poll takes samples of Cuban immigrants and Cubans born outside of Cuba who live in South Florida, and varies from 800 to 1,000 people. It focuses on a series of questions about US policy toward Cuba and their political affiliations here in the United States. While attempts at explanations of Cuban voting patterns often put US policy toward Cuba at their center, Grenier says the data have never borne this out. “Cubans,” he tells me, “are often treated like perpetual exiles,” but in terms of what is most important to them in US politics, Cuba policy regularly rates last, behind issues like health care and the economy. While the diaspora may be more open to manipulation through Red Scare tactics than other communities, even in this respect Cubans merely reproduce a rhetoric that has become a standard part of GOP campaigns across the country. “It’s not just a Cuban thing. They’re [seen as] weird because they’re in a critical state…. but as far as Republicans go, Cubans aren’t far off from moderate [Republicans].” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Related Articles Will 2020 Be Trump’s Bay of Pigs? Peter Kornbluh Could Colombian Politicians Help Trump Win Florida? Miguel Salazar
It’s true that many Cuban exiles worked closely with the GOP—including many of the Watergate burglars who saw the bugging of the DNC as part of the broader fight against Communism—but the community was not as tightly wed to the party in the early decades after the Revolution as it has become since. Indeed, while the Kennedy administration is often remembered primarily in connection with its perceived “betrayal” of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion force, it’s often forgotten that President Kennedy played a key role in instituting the Cuban Refugee Program, which facilitated the US entry of tens of thousands of Cubans a year and set aside significant funds for their resettlement.
The GOP now promotes its hard-right, anti-socialist Latin America policy in Florida, and analysts rightly see that as a strategy to cultivate popular support in the Sunshine State, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. A key part of the deeper answer to the GOP’s success seems to lie in the political machine the party has built up in Florida.
For Grenier, the big shift came under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. “The Republican Party put boots on the ground under Reagan,” he explains. “Cubans were surrogates for the Reagan administration in Central America,” on the one hand, “but on the other hand, [Reagan was saying] ‘I’m going to make you guys citizens and you are going to join the Republican Party.’” Under Reagan, institutions like the Cuban American National Foundation were built up to help lobby for the interests of Cuban-American Republicans. “The Republican Party talked the talk and walked the walk,” says Grenier. Current Issue View our current issue
As Reagan’s strategy progressed and more opportunities for advancement started opening on the right, many ambitious young Cuban-American Democrats began switching parties. We can see this turn in the career of longtime Republican Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who started in politics as a president of the Florida Young Democrats. He even ran, and lost, as a Democrat in a state race in 1982 before cochairing the Democrats for Reagan Campaign in 1984 and formally switching parties in 1985. The so-called “Reagan Revolution” ended, but the GOP’s strategy in Florida continued, and built on its gains.
Another good example is TV and Radio Martí, the propaganda channels now operating under the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, based in Miami and aimed at Cuba. The channels have been a poor man’s Radio Free Europe, with all the costs of their better-known predecessor, but without its competence or impact. Radio Martí was founded in 1983, at the height of the Reagan revolution, and shored up Republican support among Cuban immigrants, while TV Martí was founded in 1990, under George H.W. Bush, as Reaganism receded.
Despite their systematic failure to make significant inroads in Cuban public opinion, as of 2018 they had cost taxpayers just shy of $800 million. They seem to exist principally to play the dual role of being a shining symbol of Republican commitment to a “free Cuba” and providing steady employment to a gaggle of right-leaning, Spanish-speaking employees in Florida. They recently made the news by broadcasting anti-Semitic stories about the alleged political machinations of George Soros, with one reporter calling him a “nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals,” resulting in eight TV and Radio Martí employees’ being fired. They may seem on the surface to be rather ineffectual organizations, but as federally—and lavishly—funded institutions, they function as an effective part of the GOP’s patronage and political machinery in Florida, offering both jobs and politically useful symbols.
Recent Democrat-to-Republican converts who played key roles in the 2020 election seem to bolster the idea that an old pattern—that of shifting political loyalties in search of personal opportunities—is continuing. Much discussed in the press, Cuban immigrant turned Florida social media influencer Alex Otaola has been widely credited as pivotal in the GOP’s war for public opinion in Florida. Born in Cuba in 1979, Otaola arrived in the United States in 2003. He began a YouTube channel in 2017 to promote his Web show Hola Otaola after losing his job with the Spanish-language network Mega TV in 2015, and has since become the new media equivalent of what right-wing talk-radio was in the 1990s. Less discussed, however, is that Otaola was a registered Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and only switched parties as recently as 2018.
Another case in point is Giancarlo Sopo, director of rapid response in Spanish-language media for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Sopo had previously made news for resigning from his post as communications director for then–Democratic Representative Joe Garcia in 2013 following a police raid on a family member’s home as part of an investigation into Sopo’s alleged role in illegal unsolicited requests for absentee ballots during the 2012 Democratic primary. Sopo was never charged and later claimed to have been tricked into participating in the scheme by Garcia’s former chief of staff, Jeffrey Garcia (no relation), who ultimately served jail time for his role in the plot. Sopo cofounded the CubaOne Foundation (which supports normalization with Cuba) as recently as 2016, was presenting himself as a moderate liberal during much of the Trump administration, and, according to a leaked conversation attributed to Sopo by the Florida Democratic Party, was privately complaining that Trump had “disgraced the office” of the presidency “with his conduct” as recently as October of 2018, before earning a fellowship in 2019 with a right-wing think tank, the National Review Institute. He then became a staff writer at the right-wing media company The Blaze, and joined the Trump campaign this past April. (Disclosure: Sopo and I have had negative personal interactions on Twitter dating back to at least 2018.)
Support for the GOP among Cuban Americans in Florida receded under Obama, but that didn’t last. I pressed Grenier as to why. “There was no concomitant attempt by the Democratic Party to reach out to Cubans and build the base. It was all top down.… There was no bottom-up organizing for Democrats.” In short, “to chip away at” Cuban support for the GOP, “you’ve got to be around.” As Stacey Abrams and other Democrats in Georgia just demonstrated, if Democrats want to build political power in a difficult environment, there is no substitute for deep, grassroots organizing.
One bright spot for Democrats in recent decades has been growing receptiveness to Democratic politics as well as normalization of relations with Cuba among both recent migrants and second- and third-generation Cuban Americans. But recent polling has cast a shadow over that too, with signs of a rightward shift more generally, and in particular among recent arrivals from Cuba. In a recent article for Progreso Weekly, Grenier noted that in the 2020 Cuba Poll, “for the first time since we’ve been keeping records,” “new arrivals are registering Republican rather than Democrat or Independent (No Party Affiliation) to the tune of 76%.”
A big part of this shift seems to be the one-two punch of the right’s effective use of social media as a delivery mechanism for right-wing political messaging. The more established Spanish-language newspapers, like El Nuevo Herald, as well as online blogs targeting Cubans on and off the island, like Diario de Cuba or Cubanet, certainly haven’t gone anywhere. But social networks like Facebook and mobile apps like WhatsApp have become incredibly effective tools for the spread of right-wing memes, videos, and articles. This is perhaps made easier with relatively new arrivals because they, like all immigrants, are still learning to navigate and critically consume US media. Grenier sees new media as a “repackaging of Cuban exile ideology” for a new audience.
In order to understand better how this played out in practice, I reached out to three Cuban immigrants who had arrived in the past five years, had yet to obtain US citizenship, and who all supported Trump. All three were legal permanent residents at interview time, saw social networks as central parts of how they got their news, have family in Cuba whom they help support and thereby protect from the impact of Trump’s sanctions. Two of them earned between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, and one, my former classmate at the University of Havana, Carelis Enriquez, 30, lives in Miami; she arrived thanks to an application through her spouse, and earns under $30,000. She “preferred” Trump because she saw him as more straightforward and better on the economy than Biden, whom she saw as ineffective and “somewhat pedophilic.” Anti-immigrant sentiment under Trump bothered her, but she hadn’t personally been affected by it, and, more important, agreed with many restrictive immigration policies because she disliked the idea of “other people living on my taxes.” She has a deep distrust of the press, and gets most of her news from coworkers and social networks.
Jorge Roca, 33, arrived under the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program and lives in north Georgia, earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. He would have voted for Trump if he had been a citizen, he says, “because, I dunno, it’s a Republican talking point, but based on Biden’s speeches and Biden’s interviews, he seems like Fidel Castro.” Roca receives his news mostly from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, including both Spanish-language sources like the right-leaning Diario de Cuba and Otaola, as well as English-language new media like Ben Shapiro’s podcast or the Chicks on the Right podcast, both of which he found out about through friends on Facebook or Facebook recommendations.
Finally, South Florida resident Nelson Valiente, also 33, arrived under the “wet foot, dry foot” policy (begun during the Clinton administration, this policy allowed the US government to deport Cuban refugees intercepted in waters between the two nations, but allowed those who made it to US land to seek expedited permanent-resident status and eventually seek citizenship). Valiente said that while he didn’t think either candidate would impact his life much, because he didn’t pin his hopes on any government, “whether right or left,” he “preferred” Trump because, he believes, the “ideology of the right” supports self-improvement and he is skeptical of claims that people can’t advance in life because of discrimination. At the same time, Valiente recognizes that Trump isn’t particularly diplomatic or presidential. He gets most of his news through articles on Facebook and Twitter, but doesn’t regularly go to any specific news source, because such sources make him feel “manipulated.” He also noticed that many of the members of the electrical workers union he was a part of strongly supported Biden and that there seemed to be friction between Trump and unions.
The ability of right-wing messaging to successfully reach these new immigrants and shape their views of US politics points to potential trouble down the line for Democrats. It also seems to support the older consensus that the special rules for Cuban immigration historically undermine solidarity with other Latin American immigrants or even more recent arrivals facing a post–wet foot, dry foot world (as one of the last acts of his administration, coming after the historic normalization of relations, Obama ended the wet foot, dry foot policy). Perhaps there will be a reckoning with Trump’s harsh immigration policies and their impact on Cuban new arrivals, which could help shift Cubans away from the GOP—but that shift has yet to arrive.
GOP machine and patronage politics and right-wing use of new media and social networks are not the complete story. But they do seem to be emerging as two concrete problems that Democrats will have to grapple with not only to make inroads but, more importantly, to retain support in the Cuban-American community. One, politics and patronage, is part of a very old and very American story, harkening back at least to Tammany Hall’s political machine in 19th-century New York, which built up a similar relationship with Irish immigrants. The other, media, is taking on new forms in a digital age, but if recent statements by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O’Rourke are anything to go by, this is a national problem for Democrats that a growing chorus within the party are already well aware of. Grenier tells me that Democrats in Florida are already well aware that the GOP’s hold over the Cuban-American community was not built overnight. We can’t expect Democratic inroads to be either.


thenation--2020-11-25--Trump’s Team Is Sabotaging the Transition

Trump has yet to concede the 2020 election and quite likely will never acknowledge his loss .
It ’ s not in his character to admit defeat .
Instead , he remains diligently at work constructing a “ stolen election ” myth that will allow him to retain his pride while also building the rationale for a 2024 bid to return to the White House .
But no concession is necessary so long as the administrative machinery of transition runs smoothly .
At the beginning of the week , Trump took a crucial step by assenting to the General Services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transition .
As The Washington Post reports , “ Trump authorized the federal government to initiate the Biden transition late Monday , setting in motion a peaceful transfer of power by paving the way for the president-elect and his administration-in-waiting to tap public funds , receive security briefings and gain access to federal agencies.
” But a transition is more than a merely bureaucratic affair .
It requires some cooperation between the outgoing administration and its successor .
In this endeavor , Trump is following the same path as his comical coup and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sabotage the Biden administration .
On Monday , Bloomberg reported , “ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will put $ 455 billion in unspent Cares Act funding into an account that his presumed successor , former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen , will need authorization from Congress to use.
” The money will be put into the Treasury ’ s General Fund , which means it can be accessed only with congressional approval .
In effect , Mnuchin is tying Yellen ’ s hand and depriving her of funds she could use to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Perils of Not Prosecuting Trump Even a Clownish Coup Can Still Hurt Democracy Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman described Mnuchin ’ s move as “ sabotage , pure and simple.
” It ’ s unclear whether the move is even legal , since the Cares Act stipulated that that any unspent money be transferred into the General Fund “ on January 1 , 2026.
” By specifying “ on ” rather than “ by ” or “ no later than , ” the actual act seems to rule out Mnuchin ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be in a position to raise an administrative challenge .
But rather than wait for that , they would be well-advised to protest publicly now so there will be no delay in accessing the funds .
Secretary State Mike Pompeo seems to be engaged in his own version of sabotage in a continent-spanning international tour .
Bloomberg described the trip as one where Pompeo “ angered Turkey ’ s leaders , infuriated the Palestinians and befuddled the French.
” Jacob Silverman , writing in The New Republic , made a similar point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently concluded a 10-day , seven-country overseas trip that seemed designed to cause as much damage as possible ( and perhaps firm up his own dubious reputation with an eye toward a possible 2024 presidential run ) .
” Silverman goes on to note that “ Pompeo ’ s most important stop on his recent diplomatic tour was in Israel and the occupied West Bank , where he drank wine made in a settlement , offered succor to Israel ’ s right wing , and issued proclamations muddling the definitions of anti-Zionism and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it difficult , perhaps impossible , for Biden to restore negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to their pre-Trump condition .
Equally worrisome are Pompeo ’ s meetings with Arab leaders , who might be working with him on last-minute plans to bomb Iran .
Again , the intent would be to hamper any effort by the Biden administration to move away from Trump ’ s aggressive policy .
As Silverman notes , “ At this late date , an all-out bombing campaign against Iran ’ s nuclear program is unlikely , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great loss of life and regional conflict , including an attack by Iran or its proxies against American forces in Iraq.
” In an interview with Fox News on Monday , Pompeo attacked Biden ’ s incoming foreign policy team .
“ I know some of these folks , they took a very different view , they lived in a bit of a fantasy world , ” Pompeo said .
“ They led from behind , they appeased .
I hope they will choose a different course.
” The staffing of the transition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As CNN reports , “ Kash Patel , a Trump loyalist who was connected to efforts to spread conspiracy theories about Joe Biden , has been put in charge of the Pentagon transition effort and will oversee coordination with the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
” In the impeachment hearings , it was documented that Patel was part of a network connecting Representative Devin Nunes and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that played an instrumental role in spreading conspiracy theories about Biden ’ s handling of Ukraine policy .
Patel was only recently placed in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CNN describes as “ a flurry of personnel changes at the Pentagon that have fueled concerns Trump is dislodging officials across the government and burrowing loyalists into agencies in a way that could make them difficult for Biden to remove next year.
” On Sunday , The Washington Post reported , “ The United States has formally withdrawn from the Treaty on Open Skies , a decades-old pact meant to reduce the chances of an accidental war by allowing mutual reconnaissance flights by parties to the 34-nation agreement.
” Significantly , Trump ordered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also the disposal of the airplanes that are used to maintain the current mutual surveillance regime .
This move will make it much more difficult for Biden to rejoin the treaty .
The Trump administration is clearly engaged in a wide-ranging sabotage effort .
These are only the reported stories , but there are likely to be many more buried inside Washington ’ s bureaucracy .
It ’ s unclear whether the Biden transition team has any plans to publicly respond to this sabotage—or even to push back privately .
Biden ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ignore Trump ’ s antics and simply work on staffing .
The assumption is that Trump is a distraction who will soon be gone .
Biden ’ s position is not without merit .
But the danger is that by ignoring Trump and not speaking out , you also embolden him .
The Trump administration ’ s actions are far outside American norms , at least since the Civil War .
The Biden transition team would do well to make the public aware of what is going on .
If they don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight , they can certainly find allies in the media and Congress who can raise a stink .
Trump is planting land mines inside the government .
When these mines go off , Biden will want to be in a position for the public to understand where the real blame lies .

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Trump has yet to concede the 2020 election and quite likely will never acknowledge his loss. It’s not in his character to admit defeat. Instead, he remains diligently at work constructing a “stolen election” myth that will allow him to retain his pride while also building the rationale for a 2024 bid to return to the White House. But no concession is necessary so long as the administrative machinery of transition runs smoothly.
At the beginning of the week, Trump took a crucial step by assenting to the General Services Administration’s decision to start the transition. As The Washington Post reports, “Trump authorized the federal government to initiate the Biden transition late Monday, setting in motion a peaceful transfer of power by paving the way for the president-elect and his administration-in-waiting to tap public funds, receive security briefings and gain access to federal agencies.”
But a transition is more than a merely bureaucratic affair. It requires some cooperation between the outgoing administration and its successor. In this endeavor, Trump is following the same path as his comical coup and time-wasting lawsuits, with a spiteful attempt to sabotage the Biden administration.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported, “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will put $455 billion in unspent Cares Act funding into an account that his presumed successor, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, will need authorization from Congress to use.” The money will be put into the Treasury’s General Fund, which means it can be accessed only with congressional approval. In effect, Mnuchin is tying Yellen’s hand and depriving her of funds she could use to stimulate the economy with low-interest loans. More From Jeet Heer The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution August 14, 2023 Why Does This Racist Keep Getting Silicon Valley Money? August 11, 2023 When Phallocrats Go Limp August 4, 2023
Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman described Mnuchin’s move as “sabotage, pure and simple.” It’s unclear whether the move is even legal, since the Cares Act stipulated that that any unspent money be transferred into the General Fund “on January 1, 2026.” By specifying “on” rather than “by” or “no later than,” the actual act seems to rule out Mnuchin’s actions. Certainly, the Biden administration will be in a position to raise an administrative challenge. But rather than wait for that, they would be well-advised to protest publicly now so there will be no delay in accessing the funds.
Secretary State Mike Pompeo seems to be engaged in his own version of sabotage in a continent-spanning international tour. Bloomberg described the trip as one where Pompeo “angered Turkey’s leaders, infuriated the Palestinians and befuddled the French.” Jacob Silverman, writing in The New Republic, made a similar point: “America’s top diplomat recently concluded a 10-day, seven-country overseas trip that seemed designed to cause as much damage as possible (and perhaps firm up his own dubious reputation with an eye toward a possible 2024 presidential run).” Silverman goes on to note that “Pompeo’s most important stop on his recent diplomatic tour was in Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he drank wine made in a settlement, offered succor to Israel’s right wing, and issued proclamations muddling the definitions of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.” All of this will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for Biden to restore negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to their pre-Trump condition. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Equally worrisome are Pompeo’s meetings with Arab leaders, who might be working with him on last-minute plans to bomb Iran. Again, the intent would be to hamper any effort by the Biden administration to move away from Trump’s aggressive policy. As Silverman notes, “At this late date, an all-out bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely, but even a limited strike could lead to great loss of life and regional conflict, including an attack by Iran or its proxies against American forces in Iraq.” Current Issue View our current issue
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Pompeo attacked Biden’s incoming foreign policy team. “I know some of these folks, they took a very different view, they lived in a bit of a fantasy world,” Pompeo said. “They led from behind, they appeased. I hope they will choose a different course.”
The staffing of the transition also suggests an active sabotage effort. As CNN reports, “Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who was connected to efforts to spread conspiracy theories about Joe Biden, has been put in charge of the Pentagon transition effort and will oversee coordination with the incoming Biden-Harris administration.” In the impeachment hearings, it was documented that Patel was part of a network connecting Representative Devin Nunes and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that played an instrumental role in spreading conspiracy theories about Biden’s handling of Ukraine policy.
Patel was only recently placed in his current position as part of a what CNN describes as “a flurry of personnel changes at the Pentagon that have fueled concerns Trump is dislodging officials across the government and burrowing loyalists into agencies in a way that could make them difficult for Biden to remove next year.”
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported, “The United States has formally withdrawn from the Treaty on Open Skies, a decades-old pact meant to reduce the chances of an accidental war by allowing mutual reconnaissance flights by parties to the 34-nation agreement.” Significantly, Trump ordered not just withdrawal from the treaty but also the disposal of the airplanes that are used to maintain the current mutual surveillance regime. This move will make it much more difficult for Biden to rejoin the treaty.
The Trump administration is clearly engaged in a wide-ranging sabotage effort. These are only the reported stories, but there are likely to be many more buried inside Washington’s bureaucracy.
It’s unclear whether the Biden transition team has any plans to publicly respond to this sabotage—or even to push back privately. Biden’s preferred mode since the election has been to ignore Trump’s antics and simply work on staffing. The assumption is that Trump is a distraction who will soon be gone. Biden’s position is not without merit.
But the danger is that by ignoring Trump and not speaking out, you also embolden him. The Trump administration’s actions are far outside American norms, at least since the Civil War. The Biden transition team would do well to make the public aware of what is going on. If they don’t want to pick an explicit fight, they can certainly find allies in the media and Congress who can raise a stink. Trump is planting land mines inside the government. When these mines go off, Biden will want to be in a position for the public to understand where the real blame lies.


thenation--2020-11-25--Bryan Washington on Fiction ‘Outside the Bounds of Trauma’

The rare quality of Bryan Washington ’ s fiction is that he deftly explores the emotional lives of people from marginalized communities without foregrounding or telegraphing trauma or reducing them to their marginalization .
In Memorial , his debut novel , two men , countries apart , assess the sum of their four-year relationship while trying to grapple with various forms of familial abandonment .
Mike decides to go to Osaka , Japan , to stay with his estranged father , who is dying of cancer , leaving Ben alone in their Houston apartment with Mike ’ s mother , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Japan to visit her son .
The book shifts between the two men ’ s perspectives as they clumsily form tentative relationships and learn to be vulnerable with the new people in their lives—Mike with his father , Eiju , and the sole employee and patrons of his father ’ s bar , Ben with Mitsuko and Omar , the older brother of a child at his day care job .
That there are few white characters populating the novel and that Mike is Japanese and Ben is Black should not be even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are .
Washington ’ s first story collection , Lot , revolved around the lives of Houstonians of color—some of whom are undocumented or queer or both—navigating how they negotiate interpersonal boundaries and masculinity as they work various subsistence jobs , struggle to pay rent , and try to stay out of trouble .
The wryness with which he plumbs the emotional depth of people batting away at the vultures that be—real estate agents and rude managers , to name a few—has won him major accolades , including the Ernest J. Gaines Award @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington before the release of Memorial , touching on Japanese literature in translation , generosity and labor , and “ whiteboys.
” I got the sense that his world is expansive , full of mirth , and even portentous of a more hospitable future for American letters .
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity .
osemarie o : People have described Memorial as a quiet book , but I would describe it as one in which there are a lot of lapsed moments of intimacy and negotiations of intimacy that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ebb and flow of these relationships ?
ryan ashington : That ’ s a reading that I really appreciate .
What was most important for me from a structural standpoint as I was trying to depict the relationship from both Ben ’ s and Mike ’ s vantage points—and the iteration of their cumulative experiences that the reader was experiencing—was not to be prescriptive or dogmatic , as far as what their relationship could look like .
They do terrible things to each other , but they also do lovely things to each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that understanding , it would have taken the air out of those scenes to have the action play out and then to say , “ OK , now that was a terrible thing ” or “ Oh , but this was the good thing that moved the relationship along.
” That seemed it would be reductive at best and just a waste of the reader ’ s time at worst .
So trying to paint the clearest picture possible that I could of the creases in between their relationship in lieu of major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship was really important to me , along with showing that their respective focal points within that relationship and what they individually value varied wildly between Ben and Mike .
Trying to do that in a way that wasn ’ t hackneyed was really important to me .
Lot in many ways was good practice for trying to figure out how to pace a conversation on the page where the unspoken thing is at the forefront of the conversation while not directly alluding to it in the dialogue itself .
That was pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I sort of strove for , to see the different ways that while language may have failed one of them—or not—at any given point in their relationship , they attempt to fill the gap with sex or food or photos that they ’ re sending back and forth to each other .
It was a lot of trying to figure out how to create a simulacrum of what that could look like without being too obvious or holding the reader ’ s hand and really just trusting the reader to follow me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ literature and films in translation in your writing ?
BW : For me , it would be difficult to separate the literature in translation that I ’ ve gotten to read—I hate the phrase “ foreign films , ” so I just say “ films that were not made in America ” —from craft as I perceive it , because , like , I ’ m not someone who arrived at literary fiction as early or as easily as many friends who are also writing , which is to say I wasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was growing up .
So my first interactions with narrative were through films and translation , working my way through loads and loads of Criterion Collection and Janus films , mostly for pleasure .
But it was through casually seeing recurring themes and recurring emotional pockets or recurring parts that I started to get the foundation of my sense of what structure is and was and could be .
So they ’ re indelible , as far as my understanding of narrative is concerned .
For Ottessa Moshfegh , Novel Writing Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Messiness of Language Garth Greenwell on the Poetics of Cruising I grew up with books around the house—cookbooks and also quite a lot of sci-fi and fantasy—so that was helpful in and of itself .
Although it took me a little while to get around to thinking that and have an appreciation for simplicity of language , narratives that are delivered in such a way that comprehension isn ’ t a barrier for entry .
Many of the texts that were lying around the house were folks like Samuel Delany and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in contexts that were very far from how Black characters were depicted in contemporary American narratives .
That ’ s really important to me—to see marginalized communities depicted outside the bounds of trauma .
Even if I couldn ’ t have articulated it that way at the time , it was really significant to me .
And then later I began to read fiction in translation , authors like Yoko Ogawa , Hiromi Kawakami , Natsuo Kirino— [ Haruki Murakami ’ s ] Sputnik Sweetheart was a novel that was especially important .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ later on , folks like Valeria Luiselli , Alejandro Zambra , Andrés Neuman ( who has an epigraph in Memorial ) were super-pivotal , as far as not having a preconceived notion of what fiction was or could be structurally or formally .
One thing that kept me from starting a novel—other than that it just seemed like so much fucking work—is that my image of what a contemporary American novel could be—or specifically , what could sell to a publisher under the guise of a contemporary American novel—was hamstrung in a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward folks who are writing outside of that .
What was helpful for me as far as getting over that barrier was just deciding to tell the narrative on the page structurally the way that I wanted it to look , move the way that I wanted it to move emotionally , even if didn ’ t necessarily hit down the middle or teach the reader something or leave the reader feeling as though all of the boxes were checked for their novel checklist .
RH : I feel we ’ ve been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warmth , that comes out in the writing , that allows ambiguity to be possible , which is a recurring theme in a lot of your work .
How does that relate also to cooking , as someone who cooks and writes ?
You write a lot of columns about food and , specifically , sharing food with your friends and family .
BW : I started cooking when I was a kid , and it was just something that I did , that I knew—if it didn ’ t fucking suck—that could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And that was how I approached it , certainly not from the vantage point of , like , “ OK , I ’ m going to monetize this at some point , ” right ?
But I think it was really fortunate to grow up in a subset of a diverse neighborhood where most weekends we would go over to our neighbors ’ and , you know , we would have pancit or yakisoba or black beans and rice .
So just being privy to a number of different cuisines quite early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not really something that you can pay back or plan for .
It sounds a bit ridiculous now , but I really didn ’ t know that I was writing about food until I was told by other people , “ Oh , you are a food writer.
” And then I was like , “ OK , that ’ s not a super-horrible thing to be.
” It certainly wasn ’ t a planned trajectory .
But it was reading folks like John Birdsall and Tejal Rao around the way that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pleasure and comfort while not shying away from talking about the transactional nature of both that made me think a bit more deeply , if not critically , about how and what role food could take on the page .
For Memorial , I spent a good deal of time carving out [ the characters ’ ] culinary arcs , because I wanted them to reflect how they ’ re figuring out that food can be a language in itself and a way to provide pleasure for other folks , a way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ receptive to their needs .
Whenever I ’ m in a space where there ’ s a transaction of food , I ’ m interested in the question of “ Who is benefiting from this ?
To what extent are they benefiting from it , and why ?
” Right before we hopped on this Skype call , I ran out to grab some bread from this super-rad Filipino bread delivery pop-up doing drop-offs all over Houston .
Even then , I ’ m thinking , “ OK , how far did this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do this ?
What is the labor behind that in a morning ?
” He had to have woken up quite early to pull that off , and he ’ s making multiple deliveries over the course of the day .
So where am I within that ?
How can I not only adequately but aptly compensate this person for the labor behind the pleasure and the comfort that he ’ s giving me ?
I don ’ t know that that ’ s good or even the best way to approach all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just , like , picking up fucking banh mi , but it ’ s something I ’ m hyperconscious of and something that I wanted to try to play with for the book .
RH : That ’ s interesting , because both of your books are about how and why people are in community with one another , regardless of whether they ’ re related by blood .
Why are you interested in working out what community and collective practice look like in your fiction ?
BW : Why do you think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not to bring everything back to writing , but it sounds to me that you approach art-making as less of an individual thing , which also implies a different approach to thinking through all of these different objects—the book object , the food object , and what it means to put yourself in relation with others through that object .
BW : I think that that ’ s exactly it , to some extent .
It ’ s not a very interesting answer .
But I think that , having spent most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m endlessly fascinated by how it works .
I go back and forth between whether I was hamstrung or whether I was privileged , in that the diversity of the city and the communities that I grew up in was just all-encompassing .
You of course move from one section of the city to another when you ’ re a kid , and you see financial disparity .
You see that equity is not being apportioned as it should , how a multimillion-dollar Baptist church is right next to a neighborhood where most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ store options as akin to a food desert .
Or you have the very lovely private school right next to the strip mall and a bail bond center .
Now that I ’ m older , I can articulate it in such a way and say , “ OK , there are structural reasons behind this.
” It ’ s understood that many different folks are going to be living simultaneously among one another in the city .
And that ’ s deeply interesting to me , especially now that I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time in other places and cities .
On a very base level , that isn ’ t the case from place to place .
It isn ’ t remarkable in Houston for a very diverse classroom of second graders to all know how to spell a new classmate ’ s surname , because you grew up knowing folks from different backgrounds .
So trying to figure out why that is and when my figuring out that has been insufficient to me , I turn to fiction in order to problematize and ask more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t know that I ’ m interested in an answer for it .
A recurring thing that I could not ever in this life have envisioned is that people would turn to Lot and they would ask , “ What does it feel like to write the Houston narrative ?
” or “ What does it feel like to be the person writing about Houston ?
” The premise of that question is bullshit to me , when every experience is so singular and is so much itself that you could not possibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encompass the entirety of Houston .
Coming up with and playing with singular narratives taking place within the city in which these communities are interacting with one another , whether or not those folks are within the same microcommunities or parallel communities or communities that are very disparate from one another and trying to figure out how they actually work in tandem is always something that ’ s endlessly interesting .
RH : I ’ m interested in this because you ’ re thoughtful on a syntactical level .
The word “ whiteboy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not two in your stories ?
BW : [ Laughs ] Thank you for asking that question .
There ’ s a technical answer behind it , but it ’ s not perhaps as interesting as the answer-answer behind it , which is that socially , when I was growing up , I did not spend a lot of time around whiteboys , so there was never a separation .
Like , I ’ m not talking about a boy that is white .
I ’ m talking about a whiteboy—a singular entity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re the first person to ask why I ’ m doing it , even though you ’ re not the first person to point it out , so it ’ s been very telling , the connotations that other folks have attached to it , right ?
There is a myriad of reasons for that .
In so much of contemporary American fiction , because whiteness is the standard assumption or it ’ s the vantage point of how a narrative is told , you go 200 , 300 pages without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And yet the author will take great pains to note the Asian American person working in a grocery store or the Black friend that gets , like , four fucking lines that are a feeder for this white protagonist journey that ’ s self-actualization .
So “ whiteboy ” never was separated for me , but also , what is important to me every time that I use it is that it underlines the [ book ’ s ] vantage point is not whiteness .
It is not the dominant frame through which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m not looking for anyone to pick up one of my texts and see or learn how their whiteness is refracted against any of the communities that are depicted .
Even though the characters are from many different backgrounds , a whiteboy is a whiteboy is a whiteboy .
It has been a recurring joy for me to just take that to its logical extreme .
I keep waiting for someone to tell me to stop , but nobody has yet—to their credit , I suppose .

The rare quality of Bryan Washington’s fiction is that he deftly explores the emotional lives of people from marginalized communities without foregrounding or telegraphing trauma or reducing them to their marginalization. In Memorial, his debut novel, two men, countries apart, assess the sum of their four-year relationship while trying to grapple with various forms of familial abandonment. Mike decides to go to Osaka, Japan, to stay with his estranged father, who is dying of cancer, leaving Ben alone in their Houston apartment with Mike’s mother, Mitsuko, who has just flown from Japan to visit her son. The book shifts between the two men’s perspectives as they clumsily form tentative relationships and learn to be vulnerable with the new people in their lives—Mike with his father, Eiju, and the sole employee and patrons of his father’s bar, Ben with Mitsuko and Omar, the older brother of a child at his day care job. That there are few white characters populating the novel and that Mike is Japanese and Ben is Black should not be even worth mentioning, and yet here we are.
Washington’s first story collection, Lot, revolved around the lives of Houstonians of color—some of whom are undocumented or queer or both—navigating how they negotiate interpersonal boundaries and masculinity as they work various subsistence jobs, struggle to pay rent, and try to stay out of trouble. The wryness with which he plumbs the emotional depth of people batting away at the vultures that be—real estate agents and rude managers, to name a few—has won him major accolades, including the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
I talked to Washington before the release of Memorial, touching on Japanese literature in translation, generosity and labor, and “whiteboys.” I got the sense that his world is expansive, full of mirth, and even portentous of a more hospitable future for American letters.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
—Rosemarie Ho
R osemarie H o: People have described Memorial as a quiet book, but I would describe it as one in which there are a lot of lapsed moments of intimacy and negotiations of intimacy that fail. How do you approach the ebb and flow of these relationships?
B ryan W ashington: That’s a reading that I really appreciate. What was most important for me from a structural standpoint as I was trying to depict the relationship from both Ben’s and Mike’s vantage points—and the iteration of their cumulative experiences that the reader was experiencing—was not to be prescriptive or dogmatic, as far as what their relationship could look like. They do terrible things to each other, but they also do lovely things to each other, and while I can have that understanding, it would have taken the air out of those scenes to have the action play out and then to say, “OK, now that was a terrible thing” or “Oh, but this was the good thing that moved the relationship along.” That seemed it would be reductive at best and just a waste of the reader’s time at worst. So trying to paint the clearest picture possible that I could of the creases in between their relationship in lieu of major points that could be attributed to the relationship was really important to me, along with showing that their respective focal points within that relationship and what they individually value varied wildly between Ben and Mike. Trying to do that in a way that wasn’t hackneyed was really important to me. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Lot in many ways was good practice for trying to figure out how to pace a conversation on the page where the unspoken thing is at the forefront of the conversation while not directly alluding to it in the dialogue itself. That was pretty tricky. But it was something that I sort of strove for, to see the different ways that while language may have failed one of them—or not—at any given point in their relationship, they attempt to fill the gap with sex or food or photos that they’re sending back and forth to each other. It was a lot of trying to figure out how to create a simulacrum of what that could look like without being too obvious or holding the reader’s hand and really just trusting the reader to follow me.
RH: What is the place of literature and films in translation in your writing?
BW: For me, it would be difficult to separate the literature in translation that I’ve gotten to read—I hate the phrase “foreign films,” so I just say “films that were not made in America”—from craft as I perceive it, because, like, I’m not someone who arrived at literary fiction as early or as easily as many friends who are also writing, which is to say I wasn’t a massive, massive reader when I was growing up. So my first interactions with narrative were through films and translation, working my way through loads and loads of Criterion Collection and Janus films, mostly for pleasure. But it was through casually seeing recurring themes and recurring emotional pockets or recurring parts that I started to get the foundation of my sense of what structure is and was and could be. So they’re indelible, as far as my understanding of narrative is concerned. More From Rosemarie Ho Black Refuge and the Novel of Ideas: A Conversation With Maya Binyam August 3, 2023 Hua Hsu’s Lesson in Friendship September 27, 2022 An Intimate History of Hong Kong May 4, 2022
I grew up with books around the house—cookbooks and also quite a lot of sci-fi and fantasy—so that was helpful in and of itself. Although it took me a little while to get around to thinking that and have an appreciation for simplicity of language, narratives that are delivered in such a way that comprehension isn’t a barrier for entry. Many of the texts that were lying around the house were folks like Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, writing about Black folks in contexts that were very far from how Black characters were depicted in contemporary American narratives. That’s really important to me—to see marginalized communities depicted outside the bounds of trauma. Even if I couldn’t have articulated it that way at the time, it was really significant to me. And then later I began to read fiction in translation, authors like Yoko Ogawa, Hiromi Kawakami, Natsuo Kirino—[Haruki Murakami’s] Sputnik Sweetheart was a novel that was especially important. It made my ears pop.
And later on, folks like Valeria Luiselli, Alejandro Zambra, Andrés Neuman (who has an epigraph in Memorial) were super-pivotal, as far as not having a preconceived notion of what fiction was or could be structurally or formally. One thing that kept me from starting a novel—other than that it just seemed like so much fucking work—is that my image of what a contemporary American novel could be—or specifically, what could sell to a publisher under the guise of a contemporary American novel—was hamstrung in a lot of ways. My preferences leaned more toward folks who are writing outside of that. What was helpful for me as far as getting over that barrier was just deciding to tell the narrative on the page structurally the way that I wanted it to look, move the way that I wanted it to move emotionally, even if didn’t necessarily hit down the middle or teach the reader something or leave the reader feeling as though all of the boxes were checked for their novel checklist.
RH: I feel we’ve been circling this ethic of generosity, of warmth, that comes out in the writing, that allows ambiguity to be possible, which is a recurring theme in a lot of your work. How does that relate also to cooking, as someone who cooks and writes? You write a lot of columns about food and, specifically, sharing food with your friends and family.
BW: I started cooking when I was a kid, and it was just something that I did, that I knew—if it didn’t fucking suck—that could give pleasure to the folks around me. And that was how I approached it, certainly not from the vantage point of, like, “OK, I’m going to monetize this at some point,” right? But I think it was really fortunate to grow up in a subset of a diverse neighborhood where most weekends we would go over to our neighbors’ and, you know, we would have pancit or yakisoba or black beans and rice. So just being privy to a number of different cuisines quite early was just a big gift, which is not really something that you can pay back or plan for.
It sounds a bit ridiculous now, but I really didn’t know that I was writing about food until I was told by other people, “Oh, you are a food writer.” And then I was like, “OK, that’s not a super-horrible thing to be.” It certainly wasn’t a planned trajectory. But it was reading folks like John Birdsall and Tejal Rao around the way that they used food from the vantage points of pleasure and comfort while not shying away from talking about the transactional nature of both that made me think a bit more deeply, if not critically, about how and what role food could take on the page.
For Memorial, I spent a good deal of time carving out [the characters’] culinary arcs, because I wanted them to reflect how they’re figuring out that food can be a language in itself and a way to provide pleasure for other folks, a way to listen to other folks and be receptive to their needs. Whenever I’m in a space where there’s a transaction of food, I’m interested in the question of “Who is benefiting from this? To what extent are they benefiting from it, and why?”
Right before we hopped on this Skype call, I ran out to grab some bread from this super-rad Filipino bread delivery pop-up doing drop-offs all over Houston. Even then, I’m thinking, “OK, how far did this person have to go in order to do this? What is the labor behind that in a morning?” He had to have woken up quite early to pull that off, and he’s making multiple deliveries over the course of the day. So where am I within that? How can I not only adequately but aptly compensate this person for the labor behind the pleasure and the comfort that he’s giving me? I don’t know that that’s good or even the best way to approach all of your interactions if you’re just, like, picking up fucking banh mi, but it’s something I’m hyperconscious of and something that I wanted to try to play with for the book.
RH: That’s interesting, because both of your books are about how and why people are in community with one another, regardless of whether they’re related by blood. Why are you interested in working out what community and collective practice look like in your fiction?
BW: Why do you think I’m interested?
RH: Not to bring everything back to writing, but it sounds to me that you approach art-making as less of an individual thing, which also implies a different approach to thinking through all of these different objects—the book object, the food object, and what it means to put yourself in relation with others through that object.
BW: I think that that’s exactly it, to some extent. It’s not a very interesting answer. But I think that, having spent most of my life in Houston, I’m endlessly fascinated by how it works. I go back and forth between whether I was hamstrung or whether I was privileged, in that the diversity of the city and the communities that I grew up in was just all-encompassing. You of course move from one section of the city to another when you’re a kid, and you see financial disparity. You see that equity is not being apportioned as it should, how a multimillion-dollar Baptist church is right next to a neighborhood where most of the folks would describe their grocery store options as akin to a food desert. Or you have the very lovely private school right next to the strip mall and a bail bond center. Now that I’m older, I can articulate it in such a way and say, “OK, there are structural reasons behind this.” It’s understood that many different folks are going to be living simultaneously among one another in the city.
And that’s deeply interesting to me, especially now that I’ve gotten to spend a little bit more time in other places and cities. On a very base level, that isn’t the case from place to place. It isn’t remarkable in Houston for a very diverse classroom of second graders to all know how to spell a new classmate’s surname, because you grew up knowing folks from different backgrounds. So trying to figure out why that is and when my figuring out that has been insufficient to me, I turn to fiction in order to problematize and ask more questions about it.
I don’t know that I’m interested in an answer for it. A recurring thing that I could not ever in this life have envisioned is that people would turn to Lot and they would ask, “What does it feel like to write the Houston narrative?” or “What does it feel like to be the person writing about Houston?” The premise of that question is bullshit to me, when every experience is so singular and is so much itself that you could not possibly even attempt telling a narrative that will encompass the entirety of Houston. Coming up with and playing with singular narratives taking place within the city in which these communities are interacting with one another, whether or not those folks are within the same microcommunities or parallel communities or communities that are very disparate from one another and trying to figure out how they actually work in tandem is always something that’s endlessly interesting.
RH: I’m interested in this because you’re thoughtful on a syntactical level. The word “whiteboy”—why is it one word and not two in your stories?
BW: [Laughs] Thank you for asking that question. There’s a technical answer behind it, but it’s not perhaps as interesting as the answer-answer behind it, which is that socially, when I was growing up, I did not spend a lot of time around whiteboys, so there was never a separation. Like, I’m not talking about a boy that is white. I’m talking about a whiteboy—a singular entity, always intertwined.
I think that you’re the first person to ask why I’m doing it, even though you’re not the first person to point it out, so it’s been very telling, the connotations that other folks have attached to it, right? There is a myriad of reasons for that. In so much of contemporary American fiction, because whiteness is the standard assumption or it’s the vantage point of how a narrative is told, you go 200, 300 pages without a white character being called white. And yet the author will take great pains to note the Asian American person working in a grocery store or the Black friend that gets, like, four fucking lines that are a feeder for this white protagonist journey that’s self-actualization.
So “whiteboy” never was separated for me, but also, what is important to me every time that I use it is that it underlines the [book’s] vantage point is not whiteness. It is not the dominant frame through which I’m writing my narratives. I’m not looking for anyone to pick up one of my texts and see or learn how their whiteness is refracted against any of the communities that are depicted. Even though the characters are from many different backgrounds, a whiteboy is a whiteboy is a whiteboy. It has been a recurring joy for me to just take that to its logical extreme. I keep waiting for someone to tell me to stop, but nobody has yet—to their credit, I suppose.


thenation--2020-11-25--Good Times and End Times on 26th and Folsom

an rancisco—I ’ m standing near the sunny corner of 26th and Folsom , two blocks from my writer ’ s cave , across the street from the projects and down the block from my birthplace , in San Francisco ’ s Mission district .
The projects are surrounded by apartments that used to house big immigrant families—up to a dozen members in my family ’ s case—apartments that now house the DINC ( dual income , no children ) people , who also own the Victorian duplexes priced from $ 1 million on up .
Two men , Seyfu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a blunt in front of the small gray apartment building that houses Iglesia Arca de Dios , the Pentecostal church that ’ s been reviving the Holy Spirit three to four days a week since I left the Mission for wartime El Salvador in 1990 .
I approach them , hoping they can give some small sense of how Covid-19 has hit the old hood .
The most visible indicator : It ’ s 3 pm and there are no people on the street—no kids coming home from school , no Mexican and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laundry , no groups of men hanging out on the corner .
Just Seyfu and Ricky , standing next to the church .
A Dangerous New Chapter of the Pandemic Bryan Washington on Fiction ‘ Outside the Bounds of Trauma ’ More in this series I look at the church .
Images of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants who once packed it rush to mind .
They first came to the Iglesia seeking solace from the apocalyptic ravages of war .
These days , immigrants come for other reasons .
Clients at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by my friend Felix , tell social workers their main fear is that they will be uprooted because they can ’ t make the rent .
Local children echo this sentiment in a poetry collection filled with stories of being pushed out , or of robots protecting their families from evil landlords .
At the church , the booming voice of the 5 ’ 2″ pastor provides succor .
“ Who are you , bro ?
” Seyfu asks hesitantly , his muscular body tightening as if getting ready to light me up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , looking more chill and pretty high .
Their eyes move up and down my leather-jacketed body to see if I ’ m friend , foe , or fucking cop .
Neither of them is wearing a mask .
I am .
The wondrous perfume of the legal kush they ’ re smoking wafts through the air with a freedom I never knew back when I dealt joints and nickel bags of Colombian and skunk weed that , by comparison , smelled like dirty tube socks .
“ I grew up down the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” I quickly respond .
“ So , where ’ d you go to school at ?
” “ Yeah ?
So , if you went to Horace Mann , who was Mr. Sullivan ?
” “ You mean Sullineck ?
” I say , referring to the nickname some of us gave Horace Mann ’ s truant officer because of the blob of pinkish white flesh that occupied the space where his neck may once have been .
“ Aw , fuck !
” Seyfu exclaims , as he steps back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a gesture of surprise .
“ This dude is the real Horace Mann deal !
What up , bro ?
Whatdyu need ?
” “ I ’ m just here trying to understand what daily life is like now , especially with Covid.
” “ Well , there been a few cases in the projects , but it ’ s been chill.
” In February , San Francisco became the first US city to declare a state of emergency in response to the virus , thanks to Mayor London Breed , who grew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Breed ’ s model Covid response is guided by veteran doctors and scientists who garnered great experience back when the AIDS epidemic ravaged the projects down the street .
Sadly , Breed ’ s housing , policing , and other policies are guided by Big Real Estate , Big Finance , and Big Silicon , whose greed has gentrified the Mission , exacerbated homelessness , and defined the city ’ s inhumanely shitty response to these and other crises that are hollowing out gorgeous San Francisco , exiling poor Black and brown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t been chill are the cops , ” Seyfu continues .
“ They still on everybody ’ s ass.
” “ They can ’ t bother us about weed anymore , ” he says before taking a hit off his joint .
“ But they goin ’ crazy about crack , heroin—and guns.
” “ Has Covid slowed down the pace of people getting shot ?
” “ Nah .
People dealin ’ and shootin ’ ; people still doin ’ their thing.
” I think on how relative the ideas about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around to look at the church founded by Central American war refugees .
Homicides in San Francisco are down .
Way down .
On the very day Donald Trump and William Barr were raging in the Oval Office against MS-13 last July , escalating the rhetoric and legal persecution by labeling its members “ terrorists , ” I interviewed members of the SFPD ’ s gang unit .
They told me that MS-13 in the Mission had killed all of two people in 2019 .
Zero this year .
Meanwhile , Covid has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March , low for a population this size , though there ’ s a spike in new cases now .
In the city , the Mission has endured the highest number of those since mid-October , and the hottest spot in the district is three blocks from 26th and Folsom .
In front of the church dozens of ancient pieces of discarded bubble gum are embedded into the concrete , blackened from years .
The sidewalk there has the misfortune of being next to Rubin ’ s Market on the corner .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of Rubin ’ s chewing gum , hang out in front of the church and spit out their gum .
I remember when the gum was fresh pink and purple , cuz I was one of those kids .
Rubin ’ s was also one of the major centers of the black market in the Mission .
Rubin was my father ’ s black market mentor .
I look at the church and see myself as a deacon who turned to Jesus as a way to redeem myself from the shame of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ They just started havin ’ services again , ” Seyfu tells me .
“ Things gettin ’ loud around here.
” Apocalyptic preaching became a sign of better days under loosened Covid restrictions .
Since the spike in infections , things have tightened up .
The church meets less frequently , but , when it does , the high-volume voice on the hulking loudspeakers rages about End Times every Monday , Tuesday , Friday , and Sunday , as it has for decades .
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
This series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

S an F rancisco—I’m standing near the sunny corner of 26th and Folsom, two blocks from my writer’s cave, across the street from the projects and down the block from my birthplace, in San Francisco’s Mission district.
The projects are surrounded by apartments that used to house big immigrant families—up to a dozen members in my family’s case—apartments that now house the DINC (dual income, no children) people, who also own the Victorian duplexes priced from $1 million on up.
Two men, Seyfu and Ricky, are kicking back smoking a blunt in front of the small gray apartment building that houses Iglesia Arca de Dios, the Pentecostal church that’s been reviving the Holy Spirit three to four days a week since I left the Mission for wartime El Salvador in 1990.
I approach them, hoping they can give some small sense of how Covid-19 has hit the old hood. The most visible indicator: It’s 3 pm and there are no people on the street—no kids coming home from school, no Mexican and Salvadoran moms pushing baskets with food or laundry, no groups of men hanging out on the corner. Just Seyfu and Ricky, standing next to the church. Scenes From a Pandemic
I look at the church. Images of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants who once packed it rush to mind. They first came to the Iglesia seeking solace from the apocalyptic ravages of war. These days, immigrants come for other reasons. Clients at the Clínica Martín-Baró mental health center, founded by my friend Felix, tell social workers their main fear is that they will be uprooted because they can’t make the rent. Local children echo this sentiment in a poetry collection filled with stories of being pushed out, or of robots protecting their families from evil landlords. At the church, the booming voice of the 5’2″ pastor provides succor.
“Who are you, bro?” Seyfu asks hesitantly, his muscular body tightening as if getting ready to light me up, if necessary. Ricky stands quietly, looking more chill and pretty high. Their eyes move up and down my leather-jacketed body to see if I’m friend, foe, or fucking cop. Neither of them is wearing a mask. I am. The wondrous perfume of the legal kush they’re smoking wafts through the air with a freedom I never knew back when I dealt joints and nickel bags of Colombian and skunk weed that, by comparison, smelled like dirty tube socks.
“I grew up down the street, near the corner of 25th,” I quickly respond. Current Issue View our current issue
“So, where’d you go to school at?”
“Horace Mann.”
“Yeah? So, if you went to Horace Mann, who was Mr. Sullivan?”
“You mean Sullineck?” I say, referring to the nickname some of us gave Horace Mann’s truant officer because of the blob of pinkish white flesh that occupied the space where his neck may once have been. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
“Aw, fuck!” Seyfu exclaims, as he steps back and cocks his head, laughing in a gesture of surprise. “This dude is the real Horace Mann deal! What up, bro? Whatdyu need?”
“I’m just here trying to understand what daily life is like now, especially with Covid.”
“Well, there been a few cases in the projects, but it’s been chill.”
In February, San Francisco became the first US city to declare a state of emergency in response to the virus, thanks to Mayor London Breed, who grew up in a Western Addition housing project. Breed’s model Covid response is guided by veteran doctors and scientists who garnered great experience back when the AIDS epidemic ravaged the projects down the street. Sadly, Breed’s housing, policing, and other policies are guided by Big Real Estate, Big Finance, and Big Silicon, whose greed has gentrified the Mission, exacerbated homelessness, and defined the city’s inhumanely shitty response to these and other crises that are hollowing out gorgeous San Francisco, exiling poor Black and brown people.
“The thing that hasn’t been chill are the cops,” Seyfu continues. “They still on everybody’s ass.”
“For what?”
“They can’t bother us about weed anymore,” he says before taking a hit off his joint. “But they goin’ crazy about crack, heroin—and guns.”
“Has Covid slowed down the pace of people getting shot?”
“Nah. People dealin’ and shootin’; people still doin’ their thing.”
I think on how relative the ideas about violence and calamity are as I walk around to look at the church founded by Central American war refugees.
Homicides in San Francisco are down. Way down. On the very day Donald Trump and William Barr were raging in the Oval Office against MS-13 last July, escalating the rhetoric and legal persecution by labeling its members “terrorists,” I interviewed members of the SFPD’s gang unit. They told me that MS-13 in the Mission had killed all of two people in 2019. Zero this year. Meanwhile, Covid has killed 154 in San Francisco County since March, low for a population this size, though there’s a spike in new cases now. In the city, the Mission has endured the highest number of those since mid-October, and the hottest spot in the district is three blocks from 26th and Folsom.
In front of the church dozens of ancient pieces of discarded bubble gum are embedded into the concrete, blackened from years. The sidewalk there has the misfortune of being next to Rubin’s Market on the corner. I remember when kids and adults would come out of Rubin’s chewing gum, hang out in front of the church and spit out their gum. I remember when the gum was fresh pink and purple, cuz I was one of those kids.
Rubin’s was also one of the major centers of the black market in the Mission. Rubin was my father’s black market mentor.
I look at the church and see myself as a deacon who turned to Jesus as a way to redeem myself from the shame of my father’s—and my—criminal dealings.
“They just started havin’ services again,” Seyfu tells me. “Things gettin’ loud around here.” Apocalyptic preaching became a sign of better days under loosened Covid restrictions. Since the spike in infections, things have tightened up. The church meets less frequently, but, when it does, the high-volume voice on the hulking loudspeakers rages about End Times every Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, as it has for decades.
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.