thenation--2020-09-01--This Simple Change Could Legalize Millions of Immigrants

A general hallmark of immigration policy is that it ’ s complex .
Even though many people believe that the undocumented can simply apply for residency after some period of time in the country , that ’ s just not true .
At least , not in most cases .
Actually , there is a mechanism for those who ’ ve been physically present in the United States since a certain date and haven ’ t been otherwise rendered inadmissible by something like a criminal record to simply send in an application for permanent residency , and following that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ straightforward process is so obscure that even a lot of immigration practitioners aren ’ t very familiar with it—because it ’ s essentially obsolete .
To be eligible for registry , the date of entry into the United States has to be prior to January 1 , 1972 , almost 50 years ago .
The jingoistic tenor that has characterized the immigration debate over the last two decades belies the fact that for most of the 20th century , while policy directed at would-be immigrants was often overtly racist and exclusionary , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t make sense to have a standing domestic population of undocumented people .
In 1929 , eight years after immigration quotas were first established , legislators realized that they ’ d painted thousands of people into a corner by creating an immigration system around them after they ’ d already entered .
So they established registry , which “ was in the same category as a number of policies that recognize that a kind of social inclusion , or the experiential fact of inclusion , should trump any kind of legal technical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Columbia University historian and author of a book on 20th century immigration policy .
The cutoff date was initially set at 1921 , but it quickly became clear that the program would be useless without updates .
This pragmatic recognition was neatly laid out in a 1938 report prepared by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration .
FDR was so paranoid about immigration and enemy infiltration that he infamously turned away Jewish refugees escaping Nazism , fearmongered about the allegiance of Italian- and German-Americans , and sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps .
Nonetheless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the registry date , from 1921 to 1924 , stating that it was “ not in the best interests of the United States that there should be a considerable number of aliens here who have resided in this country for many years and who are otherwise eligible for naturalization and anxious to become citizens , but who are prevented from doing so because of the absence of a record.
” The date has been advanced three times since , first to 1940 , then 1948 , and finally 1972 , where it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reform and Control Act ( IRCA ) , signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986 .
The registry date change was overshadowed by the bill ’ s other mass regularization provisions , namely a general program for those who had been present continuously since 1982 and a separate program just for people who had performed at least 90 days of agricultural work in the year preceding May of 1986 .
A total of about 2.7 million formerly undocumented immigrants were regularized by these programs , but that was a one-time trade-off coupled with increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ border security and enforcement .
A 2014 dissection of IRCA by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute identifies several “ cautionary lessons ” in the implementation of the law ’ s new programs , including the fact that a 12-month application deadline following the effective date excluded many people who found out about it too late or had trouble gathering the necessary documentation .
Registry sidesteps most of these issues by virtue of its simplicity .
The entire statute is just 161 words long .
That ’ s not to say it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must still prove continuous residence—not always easy to do—and could be rendered ineligible by the standard inadmissibility criteria , including public charge considerations .
This straightforwardness stands in stark contrast to most of our contemporary policy proposals , like the 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act “ that was going to make every immigrant best friends with an immigration lawyer for 20 years , ” said Margaret Stock , a prominent Anchorage-based immigration attorney .
“ One of the problems with Congress is they love complexity over simplicity .
So it ’ s ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the week , ’ and if you come in , ‘ so I can do the same thing in two lines , ’ they ’ ll go , ‘ huh ?
’ ” It would really only take one of the shortest bills ever passed by Congress , merely changing the number “ 1972 ” to , say , “ 2010 , ” to suddenly make millions of people eligible for full residency .
Pew Research estimated that in 2017 , around 66 percent of the country ’ s 10.5 million undocumented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 years .
With falling rates of irregular immigration , that share will only have grown , and most of them would be eligible for registration .
Any way you cut it , a change to 2010 could lead to the regularization of over 5 million people .
Registry doesn ’ t come up much in current legislative conversations , because any such proposal would be immediately labeled amnesty—one of those terms that Democrats have become terrified of—and open-borders boosterism .
Yet at this point it ’ s hard to imagine a proposal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigration reform have come and gone to varying degrees of fanfare for decades now .
Most proposals gaining any traction are extremely targeted—at Dreamers , agricultural workers , essential personnel—and still somehow fail to get enacted .
“ When I came to the house , that [ the date for registry eligibility ] was just something we changed .
In years past , every few years it changed just without a lot of hoopla , ” former Senate majority leader Harry Reid told The Nation .
“ What this registry did is make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that would have advanced the date of registry and made it rolling , advancing the cutoff by one year every year automatically .
“ I was the leader and assistant leader .
We spent more time on immigration than any other one issue .
I could never get it over the finish line , ” he said of immigration reform generally .
According to Boston-based attorney Matt Cameron , the reluctance to bring up registry is partly a result of “ this idea that amnesty needs to be some kind of redemption.… The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so that it has to be an arduous , painful path , and that ’ s the only way that we can get both sides to accept it.
” He contrasted it to other types of legal reprieve : “ When you say you have a gun amnesty , you have an illegal gun , you can turn it in without consequence .
It ’ s not like you have to pay a penalty fee , or you have to spend 10 years apologizing for it.
” Jonathan Willmoth , a Kansas City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment in a 1980 primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W .
Bush when they are asked about whether the children of undocumented immigrants should be able to go to public schools for free .
“ They ’ re sort of falling all over each other to have the more humane and welcoming immigration stance , ” said Willmoth .
“ It really turns the current attitudes of the Republican Party on its head .
I mean , [ Bush and Reagan were ] really just diametrically opposed to the sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Indeed , the shifting attitudes can be seen in the thinking of someone who was involved in the last registry date advance : former senator Alan Simpson , a Wyoming Republican and IRCA ’ s primary Senate sponsor .
His intervention was pivotal in the regularization of millions of undocumented immigrants , but , now 88 and retired , he seemed frustrated when asked about advancing the registry date .
“ It was done and it ’ s over and it ended , ” he told The Nation .
“ If you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , bring in , under some obscure law , millions more people , while the fight is on all over America : elections coming up , you ’ ve got racism and you ’ ve got a pandemic , you ’ ve got people who have lost their house .
You ’ ve got Blacks who are out of work and Hispanics who are out of work .
You ’ re trying to open the box that doesn ’ t have an opening .
And it won ’ t open .
Not in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of irony in the fact that the registry provision actualizes the hazy notion many people already have about immigration law .
“ If you actually poll ordinary people and go , ‘ Who should be allowed to get a green card ?
’ They go , ‘ Well , somebody who ’ s been here a really long time and pays their taxes and doesn ’ t have a serious criminal record.
’ I mean , that ’ s registry , ” said Stock , who said she had raised the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dick Durbin and members of the Biden campaign ( representatives for Durbin and the campaign did not respond to requests for comment ) .
Proponents sometimes liken updating the registry eligibility cutoff to having a statute of limitations on immigration violations , which are civil law violations .
“ We have statutes of limitation on everything , except for like a handful : murder , treason , kidnapping .
That ’ s about it .
Oh , and crossing the border , ” said Ngai , the historian .
While it doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broader immigration conversation , registry hasn ’ t been completely forgotten .
Tom Jawetz , former chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and now vice president for immigration policy at the well-connected Center for American Progress , said that CAP supports a date advance , though it doesn ’ t believe there ’ s “ a single magical bullet to approach legalization.
” He added that he hoped “ legalization is properly understood as an essential component ” of any forthcoming legislation meant to address the impact of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marginalized populations .
As things stand , most immigration attorneys never deal with registry cases .
Those that do crop up tend to be for older people who may not have even realized they had immigration problems in the first place .
Willmoth said he handled a case 10 years ago of a truck driver in his late 50s who went to renew his driver ’ s license after Missouri changed its documentary requirements , only to find out he had been born in Mexico and his parents had never told him about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where a date change would resolve a client ’ s complicated predicament .
One of Stock ’ s clients , Rebecca Trimble , was recently profiled in The New York Times after discovering at age 30 , after having been continuously in the United States since she was three days old , that her parents had not taken the necessary steps to register her adoption and she could be deported .
All she really needs is a formal record , and registry could give her that .
“ If an administration had an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about what would happen if this went into effect , you would get a lot of public support for it , ” said Stock .
“ Because the average person thinks this [ already ] exists .
”

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A general hallmark of immigration policy is that it’s complex. Even though many people believe that the undocumented can simply apply for residency after some period of time in the country, that’s just not true. At least, not in most cases.
Actually, there is a mechanism for those who’ve been physically present in the United States since a certain date and haven’t been otherwise rendered inadmissible by something like a criminal record to simply send in an application for permanent residency, and following that, citizenship. Known as registry, this straightforward process is so obscure that even a lot of immigration practitioners aren’t very familiar with it—because it’s essentially obsolete. To be eligible for registry, the date of entry into the United States has to be prior to January 1, 1972, almost 50 years ago.
The jingoistic tenor that has characterized the immigration debate over the last two decades belies the fact that for most of the 20th century, while policy directed at would-be immigrants was often overtly racist and exclusionary, there was a grudging consensus that it didn’t make sense to have a standing domestic population of undocumented people. In 1929, eight years after immigration quotas were first established, legislators realized that they’d painted thousands of people into a corner by creating an immigration system around them after they’d already entered.
So they established registry, which “was in the same category as a number of policies that recognize that a kind of social inclusion, or the experiential fact of inclusion, should trump any kind of legal technical disqualification,” says Mae Ngai, a Columbia University historian and author of a book on 20th century immigration policy. The cutoff date was initially set at 1921, but it quickly became clear that the program would be useless without updates.
This pragmatic recognition was neatly laid out in a 1938 report prepared by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. FDR was so paranoid about immigration and enemy infiltration that he infamously turned away Jewish refugees escaping Nazism, fearmongered about the allegiance of Italian- and German-Americans, and sent Japanese-Americans to internment camps. Nonetheless, the report recommended the first update to the registry date, from 1921 to 1924, stating that it was “not in the best interests of the United States that there should be a considerable number of aliens here who have resided in this country for many years and who are otherwise eligible for naturalization and anxious to become citizens, but who are prevented from doing so because of the absence of a record.” 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
The date has been advanced three times since, first to 1940, then 1948, and finally 1972, where it was part of the much broader Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. The registry date change was overshadowed by the bill’s other mass regularization provisions, namely a general program for those who had been present continuously since 1982 and a separate program just for people who had performed at least 90 days of agricultural work in the year preceding May of 1986. Current Issue View our current issue
A total of about 2.7 million formerly undocumented immigrants were regularized by these programs, but that was a one-time trade-off coupled with increased controls on hiring and funding for additional border security and enforcement. A 2014 dissection of IRCA by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute identifies several “cautionary lessons” in the implementation of the law’s new programs, including the fact that a 12-month application deadline following the effective date excluded many people who found out about it too late or had trouble gathering the necessary documentation.
Registry sidesteps most of these issues by virtue of its simplicity. The entire statute is just 161 words long. That’s not to say it’s free of any discrete requirements; applicants must still prove continuous residence—not always easy to do—and could be rendered ineligible by the standard inadmissibility criteria, including certain criminal convictions.
This straightforwardness stands in stark contrast to most of our contemporary policy proposals, like the 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act “that was going to make every immigrant best friends with an immigration lawyer for 20 years,” said Margaret Stock, a prominent Anchorage-based immigration attorney. “One of the problems with Congress is they love complexity over simplicity. So it’s ‘give me a 1000-page bill any day of the week,’ and if you come in, ‘so I can do the same thing in two lines,’ they’ll go, ‘huh?’”
It would really only take one of the shortest bills ever passed by Congress, merely changing the number “1972” to, say, “2010,” to suddenly make millions of people eligible for full residency. Pew Research estimated that in 2017, around 66 percent of the country’s 10.5 million undocumented immigrants had been here for longer than 10 years. With falling rates of irregular immigration, that share will only have grown, and most of them would be eligible for registration. Any way you cut it, a change to 2010 could lead to the regularization of over 5 million people.
Registry doesn’t come up much in current legislative conversations, because any such proposal would be immediately labeled amnesty—one of those terms that Democrats have become terrified of—and open-borders boosterism. Yet at this point it’s hard to imagine a proposal that wouldn’t. Efforts at immigration reform have come and gone to varying degrees of fanfare for decades now. Most proposals gaining any traction are extremely targeted—at Dreamers, agricultural workers, essential personnel—and still somehow fail to get enacted.
“When I came to the house, that [the date for registry eligibility] was just something we changed. In years past, every few years it changed just without a lot of hoopla,” former Senate majority leader Harry Reid told The Nation. “What this registry did is make things fair.”
Reid introduced unsuccessful bills that would have advanced the date of registry and made it rolling, advancing the cutoff by one year every year automatically. “I was the leader and assistant leader. We spent more time on immigration than any other one issue. I could never get it over the finish line,” he said of immigration reform generally.
According to Boston-based attorney Matt Cameron, the reluctance to bring up registry is partly a result of “this idea that amnesty needs to be some kind of redemption.… The terms of the debate have been set so that it has to be an arduous, painful path, and that’s the only way that we can get both sides to accept it.” He contrasted it to other types of legal reprieve: “When you say you have a gun amnesty, you have an illegal gun, you can turn it in without consequence. It’s not like you have to pay a penalty fee, or you have to spend 10 years apologizing for it.”
Jonathan Willmoth, a Kansas City, Mo.–based attorney, pointed to a moment in a 1980 primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush when they are asked about whether the children of undocumented immigrants should be able to go to public schools for free. “They’re sort of falling all over each other to have the more humane and welcoming immigration stance,” said Willmoth. “It really turns the current attitudes of the Republican Party on its head. I mean, [Bush and Reagan were] really just diametrically opposed to the sort of anti-immigrant policies of the current administration.”
Indeed, the shifting attitudes can be seen in the thinking of someone who was involved in the last registry date advance: former senator Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican and IRCA’s primary Senate sponsor. His intervention was pivotal in the regularization of millions of undocumented immigrants, but, now 88 and retired, he seemed frustrated when asked about advancing the registry date. “It was done and it’s over and it ended,” he told The Nation. “If you’re trying to open up some box, bring in, under some obscure law, millions more people, while the fight is on all over America: elections coming up, you’ve got racism and you’ve got a pandemic, you’ve got people who have lost their house. You’ve got Blacks who are out of work and Hispanics who are out of work. You’re trying to open the box that doesn’t have an opening. And it won’t open. Not in these times.”
There’s a kind of irony in the fact that the registry provision actualizes the hazy notion many people already have about immigration law. “If you actually poll ordinary people and go, ‘Who should be allowed to get a green card?’ They go, ‘Well, somebody who’s been here a really long time and pays their taxes and doesn’t have a serious criminal record.’ I mean, that’s registry,” said Stock, who said she had raised the idea on a recent call with Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and members of the Biden campaign (representatives for Durbin and the campaign did not respond to requests for comment).
Proponents sometimes liken updating the registry eligibility cutoff to having a statute of limitations on immigration violations, which are civil law violations. “We have statutes of limitation on everything, except for like a handful: murder, treason, kidnapping. That’s about it. Oh, and crossing the border,” said Ngai, the historian.
While it doesn’t use up much oxygen in the broader immigration conversation, registry hasn’t been completely forgotten. Tom Jawetz, former chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and now vice president for immigration policy at the well-connected Center for American Progress, said that CAP supports a date advance, though it doesn’t believe there’s “a single magical bullet to approach legalization.” He added that he hoped “legalization is properly understood as an essential component” of any forthcoming legislation meant to address the impact of Covid-19 and its disproportionate impact on already marginalized populations.
As things stand, most immigration attorneys never deal with registry cases. Those that do crop up tend to be for older people who may not have even realized they had immigration problems in the first place. Willmoth said he handled a case 10 years ago of a truck driver in his late 50s who went to renew his driver’s license after Missouri changed its documentary requirements, only to find out he had been born in Mexico and his parents had never told him about it.
Yet they all have cases where a date change would resolve a client’s complicated predicament. One of Stock’s clients, Rebecca Trimble, was recently profiled in The New York Times after discovering at age 30, after having been continuously in the United States since she was three days old, that her parents had not taken the necessary steps to register her adoption and she could be deported. All she really needs is a formal record, and registry could give her that. “If an administration had an effective public affairs campaign to educate people about what would happen if this went into effect, you would get a lot of public support for it,” said Stock. “Because the average person thinks this [already] exists.”


thenation--2020-09-01--In Trump’s America, Domestic Terrorists Thrive

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thenation--2020-09-01--After the Beirut Blast, Hezbollah Almost Went to War

Even before the August 4 Beirut port explosion that devastated the heart of the Lebanese capital , Hezbollah commander Abu Karim was on edge at his post in the southern Lebanese hills , east of the ancient port city of Tyre .
Tensions were high after a week of escalating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Syria , and the Party of God was ready to retaliate on the Lebanese-Israeli border .
So when the monumental blast occurred , panicked orders came from the top and the commander found himself on the radio , calling his fighters to battle stations and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the brink of war with Israel .
Speaking exclusively to The Nation , Abu Karim , a Hezbollah field commander stationed in southern Lebanon , and Abu Naim , a fighter on reconnaissance patrol in Beirut during the blast , depict an organization going from the depths of a military crisis to the center of a political one .
( Both have taken a nom de guerre and insist on anonymity because Hezbollah fighters are barred from speaking to Western media . )
“ In the first moments of the blast we thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” says Abu Karim .
“ We thought that this is it .
It ’ s on !
” Leader of over 500 fighters , Abu Karim describes a frenzied rush to mobilize from the mountains to the coast in the south , where , in 2000 , Hezbollah ended Israel ’ s occupation after an 18-year guerrilla resistance .
“ All troops were mobilized in the south .
The rocket-system operators were ordered to their missile sites and told to be ready to fire.
” Israel and Hezbollah Are Girding for War—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Syrian Civil War Has Transformed Hezbollah For the next 45 minutes , recalls the commander , battle-hardened during Hezbollah ’ s 2006 war with Israel , his fighters waited nervously while senior commanders debated over the radio .
As time passed , claims that Lebanon was rocked by an Israeli airstrike were increasingly countered by assertions that an explosion had happened inside the port .
“ Then the order came to stand down , ” he says , with relief still reverberating in his voice .
The trepidation is warranted ; another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Israel has repeatedly threatened Hezbollah that in the next round , its formidable military , one of the most powerful in the world , would bomb Lebanon with far greater fury than it did in the 34-day 2006 conflict .
In that war it killed more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians , severely damaged infrastructure , and displaced a million people—a quarter of the population at the time .
Hezbollah , for its part , is now estimated to have more than 100,000 rockets , according to the Center for Strategic and International @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accurate , and with a far greater range capable of targeting all of Israel ’ s major cities , than the highly inaccurate Katyushas it was known for in the past .
A central ally to the Assad regime , Hezbollah has put forces on the unoccupied side of the Syrian Golan Heights , which could become a second front .
Meanwhile , Hezbollah ’ s ground troops have been battle-seasoned in the Syrian civil war , where some 1,500–2,000 of its fighters have died ; and it has expanded into training and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Iraq .
Rush hour was still bustling at 6 pm on August 4 in Beirut ’ s central neighborhood of Ras Al Naba ’ a .
Abu Naim was carrying out what he describes as standard , unarmed reconnaissance in civilian clothes with the rest of his unit .
Minutes later , the fighters were lying dazed in the street around their party office .
They had been knocked off their feet by a blast wave full of broken glass , which transformed the city in an instant .
Stunned and confused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ injured in his unit as orders blared on his hand-radio to head to base , gather weapons , and await further orders .
“ Three of us were injured by the flying glass , ” recalls the fighter .
“ We tried to protect our bodies but couldn ’ t take much cover .
It was like a state of war within seconds .
There was lots of blood and people injured .
It was a horror movie.
” Abu Naim describes how , after helping treat his comrades and returning with them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radio , armed and ready to fight , while contradicting explanations for the explosion crackled through the receiver for 20 minutes .
“ One minute we heard that it is an Israeli attack , the next we ’ re told that it ’ s not , ” he says , about the confusion from high command , while fighters kept a nervous watch on the surrounding streets .
Soon , though , his unit received orders to stand down and assist in the emergency response by opening roads for ambulances , even as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ battle readiness .
Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion , and even Hezbollah ’ s secretary general , Hassan Nasrallah , didn ’ t finger his bitter foe , instead indicating that the explosion was an industrial accident .
After it quickly emerged that more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate , stored unsafely for six years in a government-run port hangar , had caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history , a shocked public became enraged .
A furious and devastated nation focused its anger on a ruling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , enriched after the war through loyalty to the foreign patrons they fought for and clinging to power through sectarian division .
Economic collapse had already sparked a mass anti-establishment revolt in October , and the government ’ s inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded popular outrage .
The port explosion , however , exposed the Lebanese to the unfathomable cost of the corruption endemic in an establishment tethered to backers in Iran , Saudi Arabia , the United States , and France .
And Hezbollah—having grown from its guerrilla origins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful military force in the country , not only dominating Lebanon ’ s political system but operating as a major player in regional politics—is at the center of this establishment , maintaining its rule .
“ All the political forces lead the country to this point .
It ’ s not just one , ” says Ahmad Moussalli , a political science professor at the American University of Beirut who specializes in Islamic political movements .
He was at home in the suburbs 15 kilometers from the capital when the mushrooming fireball shook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was felt as far away as Cyprus .
“ But because Hezbollah is so strong , there is a narrative acceptable to many people that Hezbollah , in one way or another , helped the corrupt class in order to keep its weapons and its plan for the country , ” continues the professor .
Moussalli can ’ t see Lebanon ’ s governing elite and system of sectarian patronage surviving the political fallout from the explosion .
“ The political establishment in Lebanon is finished , ” he contends .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survive the current crisis.
” For Lebanese American University political science professor Imad Salamey , however , Lebanon ’ s establishment appears to be more resilient and able to retain power , despite overwhelming popular opposition .
“ The political system here doesn ’ t go by public mood , ” argues Salamey , who is skeptical that the mass protests have the leverage to force out the entrenched establishment and uproot the sectarian system .
“ The system here goes by global and regional forces that orchestrate the government.
” A specialist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salamey describes how the shock wave from the blast brought back memories of running from bombardment during the civil war .
He laments that his child now bears scars that echo his generation ’ s ; his 18-year old son narrowly survived a building collapse in the explosion , afterward joining frantic efforts to rescue people from the rubble .
Salamey sees the current political crisis as similar to that of the mid-1970s , when mass protests demanding democratic political and social transformation faced an entrenched sectarian leadership that maneuvered to plunge the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a socialist upstart from the Druze community named Kamal Jumblatt led the charge against sectarian politics while embracing pan-Arabism .
Today ; his son , Walid—who took over the Druze-based Progressive Socialist Party after his father ’ s assassination by the Syrians during the civil war—is one of the pillars of the sectarian establishment that people in the streets want to tear down .
“ If things get bad , they will go to civil war , establish their cantons , and run their own separate affairs , ” Salamey says , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cling to power despite the depths of the national crisis .
“ As long as you see this regional dynamic of sectarian struggle going on , I don ’ t expect Lebanon to go against this momentum and form an alternative regime.
” Rooted in France ’ s colonial legacy , Lebanon ’ s political system is divided among the country ’ s Christian , Druze , Shia , and Sunni Muslim communities .
After the 1989 Taif Agreement , which ended the 15-year civil war , Parliament altered from having a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Muslim and Christian , but the sectarian system remained in place , and the militia leaders became party leaders in it .
They proceeded to enrich themselves through their control of the economy and corrupt rebuilding contracts , while neglecting the social safety net and infrastructure .
So undrinkable tap water and daily power cuts across the electricity grid continued .
However , the recent mass , cross-confessional opposition in the streets—where protesters chant “ all of them means all of them ” as they demand the ouster of a corrupt ruling class—is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , where police could hardly be seen during rescue efforts but were out in force to teargas protesters .
The movement already brought down a government in November ; following the explosion , it forced the end of the appointed caretaker government .
However , the August 31 selection of Mustafa Adib as prime minister–elect reflects the consensus of the embattled establishment on a choice that they hope will please the French and bring much needed foreign aid .
Abu Karim and Abu Naim are staunchly loyal to the movement inspired by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lebanon ’ s historically marginalized Shia community .
Both still believe Israel is somehow behind the explosion .
They say it ’ s an impression they are being given unofficially by their commanding officers , even as Nasrallah focuses attention on the investigation and struggles to publicly position Hezbollah as a voice of popular outrage against corruption .
Nonetheless , both acknowledge that Hezbollah supporters are furious in the wake of the blast and generally believe it was rooted in negligence and corruption .
“ There are people who support Hezbollah who say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is enough , ” says Abu Karim .
“ But it is only a matter of time before they change their mind.
” Moussalli describes Hezbollah as in a corner , caught between its Iranian patron , which doesn ’ t want it to cooperate with international recovery efforts , and the needs of its Shia support base .
It is why , he says , Nasrallah is striking a conciliatory tone toward the international community and the political demands in the streets , while trying to deny Hezbollah ’ s role in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Hezbollah ’ s base , Moussalli suggests , doesn ’ t believe that Israel was involved in the blast .
He says it ’ s significant that only a small minority of hard-liners blame Israel , in a country where a long history of Israeli military aggression usually makes it a popular suspect when disaster strikes .
“ Although the Shia community in general supports Hezbollah , I think everyone in one way or another is saying we can ’ t take it anymore , ” Moussalli says .
But for some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and accountability are rooted in a reckoning with its old enemy to the south .
“ We believe this is definitely sabotage ; it was definitely a bomb detonated on purpose , ” Abu Naim states in a tone of absolute certainty .
It is a perspective reinforced by continued Lebanese-Israeli tensions , like the August 26 Israeli airstrike on a guard tower near the Syrian border .
And yet he says that if he believed that Hezbollah knew about the ammonium nitrate in the port storage hangar or was involved in corruption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d quit .
Abu Karim is less emphatic .
Despite Nasrallah ’ s public denial , he acknowledges that Hezbollah had a clear and independent watch on the port and must have known about the dangerous substance that was stored in vast quantities in a place so central to its interests .
While he struggles to explain why Hezbollah didn ’ t do anything about it , he is not concerned about the explanation .
“ From inside the organization , no one cares much , because it ’ s a way of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shapes his perspective .
“ Without this organization , you will suffer financially .
You keep your opinion to yourself.
” Moussalli believes that Hezbollah could be the only part of the establishment to survive the system ’ s collapse .
He sees in its strong base of ideologically loyal supporters a movement that will remain as a powerful force in any new political system , regardless of the increasing internal and external dissent it ’ s facing .
“ Probably if Hezbollah goes along , it will be the major player , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ground , but in a legitimized way , ” he predicts , saying this is the reason the party is embracing the outrage of its base while keeping its fighters prepared for the next war .
It is why , he says , Nasrallah has been open to international support for Lebanon and initiatives by French President Emmanuel Macron , despite strong Iranian opposition .
“ Hezbollah is ultimately a Lebanese party , and its community and supporters are Lebanese , ” Moussalli asserts .
“ Iran may be ready to sacrifice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sacrifice itself .
”

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Even before the August 4 Beirut port explosion that devastated the heart of the Lebanese capital, Hezbollah commander Abu Karim was on edge at his post in the southern Lebanese hills, east of the ancient port city of Tyre. Tensions were high after a week of escalating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Syria, and the Party of God was ready to retaliate on the Lebanese-Israeli border. So when the monumental blast occurred, panicked orders came from the top and the commander found himself on the radio, calling his fighters to battle stations and bringing Lebanon’s powerful militia to the brink of war with Israel.
Speaking exclusively to The Nation, Abu Karim, a Hezbollah field commander stationed in southern Lebanon, and Abu Naim, a fighter on reconnaissance patrol in Beirut during the blast, depict an organization going from the depths of a military crisis to the center of a political one. (Both have taken a nom de guerre and insist on anonymity because Hezbollah fighters are barred from speaking to Western media.)
“In the first moments of the blast we thought we were under attack by Israel,” says Abu Karim. “We thought that this is it. It’s on!”
Leader of over 500 fighters, Abu Karim describes a frenzied rush to mobilize from the mountains to the coast in the south, where, in 2000, Hezbollah ended Israel’s occupation after an 18-year guerrilla resistance. “All troops were mobilized in the south. The rocket-system operators were ordered to their missile sites and told to be ready to fire.” Related Articles Lebanon’s Protest Movement Is Local and Organic Samah Hadid Israel and Hezbollah Are Girding for War—and the Next Round Could Be Horrific Sulome Anderson How the Syrian Civil War Has Transformed Hezbollah Jesse Rosenfeld
For the next 45 minutes, recalls the commander, battle-hardened during Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, his fighters waited nervously while senior commanders debated over the radio. As time passed, claims that Lebanon was rocked by an Israeli airstrike were increasingly countered by assertions that an explosion had happened inside the port. “Then the order came to stand down,” he says, with relief still reverberating in his voice.
The trepidation is warranted; another war with Israel would devastate both countries. Israel has repeatedly threatened Hezbollah that in the next round, its formidable military, one of the most powerful in the world, would bomb Lebanon with far greater fury than it did in the 34-day 2006 conflict. In that war it killed more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, severely damaged infrastructure, and displaced a million people—a quarter of the population at the time.
Hezbollah, for its part, is now estimated to have more than 100,000 rockets, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies—many of them far more sophisticated and accurate, and with a far greater range capable of targeting all of Israel’s major cities, than the highly inaccurate Katyushas it was known for in the past. A central ally to the Assad regime, Hezbollah has put forces on the unoccupied side of the Syrian Golan Heights, which could become a second front. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s ground troops have been battle-seasoned in the Syrian civil war, where some 1,500–2,000 of its fighters have died; and it has expanded into training and assisting Iran’s allies in Yemen and Iraq. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
Rush hour was still bustling at 6 pm on August 4 in Beirut’s central neighborhood of Ras Al Naba’a. Abu Naim was carrying out what he describes as standard, unarmed reconnaissance in civilian clothes with the rest of his unit. Minutes later, the fighters were lying dazed in the street around their party office. They had been knocked off their feet by a blast wave full of broken glass, which transformed the city in an instant. Stunned and confused, Abu Naim scrambled to help the injured in his unit as orders blared on his hand-radio to head to base, gather weapons, and await further orders.
“Three of us were injured by the flying glass,” recalls the fighter. “We tried to protect our bodies but couldn’t take much cover. It was like a state of war within seconds. There was lots of blood and people injured. It was a horror movie.”
Abu Naim describes how, after helping treat his comrades and returning with them to base, they sat by the radio, armed and ready to fight, while contradicting explanations for the explosion crackled through the receiver for 20 minutes. “One minute we heard that it is an Israeli attack, the next we’re told that it’s not,” he says, about the confusion from high command, while fighters kept a nervous watch on the surrounding streets.
Soon, though, his unit received orders to stand down and assist in the emergency response by opening roads for ambulances, even as the south of the country remained on battle readiness.
Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion, and even Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, didn’t finger his bitter foe, instead indicating that the explosion was an industrial accident. After it quickly emerged that more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, stored unsafely for six years in a government-run port hangar, had caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, a shocked public became enraged. A furious and devastated nation focused its anger on a ruling class inherited from the 1975–90 civil war, enriched after the war through loyalty to the foreign patrons they fought for and clinging to power through sectarian division.
Economic collapse had already sparked a mass anti-establishment revolt in October, and the government’s inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded popular outrage. The port explosion, however, exposed the Lebanese to the unfathomable cost of the corruption endemic in an establishment tethered to backers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and France. And Hezbollah—having grown from its guerrilla origins in the 1980s to become the most powerful military force in the country, not only dominating Lebanon’s political system but operating as a major player in regional politics—is at the center of this establishment, maintaining its rule.
“All the political forces lead the country to this point. It’s not just one,” says Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut who specializes in Islamic political movements. He was at home in the suburbs 15 kilometers from the capital when the mushrooming fireball shook his flat like an earthquake; it was felt as far away as Cyprus. “But because Hezbollah is so strong, there is a narrative acceptable to many people that Hezbollah, in one way or another, helped the corrupt class in order to keep its weapons and its plan for the country,” continues the professor.
Moussalli can’t see Lebanon’s governing elite and system of sectarian patronage surviving the political fallout from the explosion. “The political establishment in Lebanon is finished,” he contends. “It’s dysfunctional and it will not survive the current crisis.”
For Lebanese American University political science professor Imad Salamey, however, Lebanon’s establishment appears to be more resilient and able to retain power, despite overwhelming popular opposition.
“The political system here doesn’t go by public mood,” argues Salamey, who is skeptical that the mass protests have the leverage to force out the entrenched establishment and uproot the sectarian system. “The system here goes by global and regional forces that orchestrate the government.” Related Article The Disturbing Story Behind the Beirut Port Explosion Ian Urbina
A specialist in ethnic and sectarian political polarization, Salamey describes how the shock wave from the blast brought back memories of running from bombardment during the civil war. He laments that his child now bears scars that echo his generation’s; his 18-year old son narrowly survived a building collapse in the explosion, afterward joining frantic efforts to rescue people from the rubble.
Salamey sees the current political crisis as similar to that of the mid-1970s, when mass protests demanding democratic political and social transformation faced an entrenched sectarian leadership that maneuvered to plunge the country into civil war.
Back then, a socialist upstart from the Druze community named Kamal Jumblatt led the charge against sectarian politics while embracing pan-Arabism. Today; his son, Walid—who took over the Druze-based Progressive Socialist Party after his father’s assassination by the Syrians during the civil war—is one of the pillars of the sectarian establishment that people in the streets want to tear down.
“If things get bad, they will go to civil war, establish their cantons, and run their own separate affairs,” Salamey says, about the willingness of the established parties to cling to power despite the depths of the national crisis. “As long as you see this regional dynamic of sectarian struggle going on, I don’t expect Lebanon to go against this momentum and form an alternative regime.”
Rooted in France’s colonial legacy, Lebanon’s political system is divided among the country’s Christian, Druze, Shia, and Sunni Muslim communities. After the 1989 Taif Agreement, which ended the 15-year civil war, Parliament altered from having a slight Christian edge to being balanced between Muslim and Christian, but the sectarian system remained in place, and the militia leaders became party leaders in it. They proceeded to enrich themselves through their control of the economy and corrupt rebuilding contracts, while neglecting the social safety net and infrastructure. So undrinkable tap water and daily power cuts across the electricity grid continued.
However, the recent mass, cross-confessional opposition in the streets—where protesters chant “all of them means all of them” as they demand the ouster of a corrupt ruling class—is now a major force in a bankrupt country, where police could hardly be seen during rescue efforts but were out in force to teargas protesters.
The movement already brought down a government in November; following the explosion, it forced the end of the appointed caretaker government. However, the August 31 selection of Mustafa Adib as prime minister–elect reflects the consensus of the embattled establishment on a choice that they hope will please the French and bring much needed foreign aid.
Abu Karim and Abu Naim are staunchly loyal to the movement inspired by the Iranian revolution and its base in Lebanon’s historically marginalized Shia community. Both still believe Israel is somehow behind the explosion. They say it’s an impression they are being given unofficially by their commanding officers, even as Nasrallah focuses attention on the investigation and struggles to publicly position Hezbollah as a voice of popular outrage against corruption. Nonetheless, both acknowledge that Hezbollah supporters are furious in the wake of the blast and generally believe it was rooted in negligence and corruption.
“There are people who support Hezbollah who say we’ve had it, enough is enough,” says Abu Karim. “But it is only a matter of time before they change their mind.”
Moussalli describes Hezbollah as in a corner, caught between its Iranian patron, which doesn’t want it to cooperate with international recovery efforts, and the needs of its Shia support base. It is why, he says, Nasrallah is striking a conciliatory tone toward the international community and the political demands in the streets, while trying to deny Hezbollah’s role in the system’s failure.
Most of Hezbollah’s base, Moussalli suggests, doesn’t believe that Israel was involved in the blast. He says it’s significant that only a small minority of hard-liners blame Israel, in a country where a long history of Israeli military aggression usually makes it a popular suspect when disaster strikes.
“Although the Shia community in general supports Hezbollah, I think everyone in one way or another is saying we can’t take it anymore,” Moussalli says.
But for some Hezbollah loyalists, it seems that change and accountability are rooted in a reckoning with its old enemy to the south. “We believe this is definitely sabotage; it was definitely a bomb detonated on purpose,” Abu Naim states in a tone of absolute certainty. It is a perspective reinforced by continued Lebanese-Israeli tensions, like the August 26 Israeli airstrike on a guard tower near the Syrian border. And yet he says that if he believed that Hezbollah knew about the ammonium nitrate in the port storage hangar or was involved in corruption leading to the explosion, he’d quit.
Abu Karim is less emphatic. Despite Nasrallah’s public denial, he acknowledges that Hezbollah had a clear and independent watch on the port and must have known about the dangerous substance that was stored in vast quantities in a place so central to its interests. While he struggles to explain why Hezbollah didn’t do anything about it, he is not concerned about the explanation.
“From inside the organization, no one cares much, because it’s a way of living,” he says about what shapes his perspective. “Without this organization, you will suffer financially. You keep your opinion to yourself.”
Moussalli believes that Hezbollah could be the only part of the establishment to survive the system’s collapse. He sees in its strong base of ideologically loyal supporters a movement that will remain as a powerful force in any new political system, regardless of the increasing internal and external dissent it’s facing.
“Probably if Hezbollah goes along, it will be the major player, not only by force and facts on the ground, but in a legitimized way,” he predicts, saying this is the reason the party is embracing the outrage of its base while keeping its fighters prepared for the next war. It is why, he says, Nasrallah has been open to international support for Lebanon and initiatives by French President Emmanuel Macron, despite strong Iranian opposition.
“Hezbollah is ultimately a Lebanese party, and its community and supporters are Lebanese,” Moussalli asserts. “Iran may be ready to sacrifice Hezbollah, but Hezbollah is not willing to sacrifice itself.”


thenation--2020-09-01--What This Country Needs Is a Working Parents Administration

As schools go online nationally amid a recession , the speeding high-unemployment and home-school trains are on a collision course , with working mothers , their families , and the economy set to be mowed down at the crossroads .
Unless we switch tracks , quickly .
This fall , many parents must homeschool their children while continuing to work at full-time employment .
Those who can ’ t manage both—many of them women—will have to quit their jobs or reduce their hours , adding to the already huge ranks of the unemployed .
In some cases , their spots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without child care responsibilities—creating a major setback to the gender balance of the workforce and leaving many families struggling on reduced incomes .
A new track—a policy that values parenting as national service , rather than seeing it as a distraction , and that invests in getting all quarantined kids an equitable education now—could spread the work around , grow the economy , and carry us to a better place .
We need a 21st century WPA—a Working Parents Administration—to face this moment ’ s challenges head on .
This WPA can initiate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long needed .
Later , it can offer paid family leave and public early-childhood education—an expanded version of the free all-day early childhood education offered ( in various forms ) in New York , San Antonio , and Boston—once that ’ s a healthy option again .
But for now , it would include two new programs : Universal Online Tutoring and Parenting Pay .
All students can benefit from tutors during the lockdown : Wealthy families have rushed to book them , online and in-person .
Why would the non-wealthy need them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t get adequate feedback .
Some have parents with both time and education to assist , but many do not—and even those parents aren ’ t always up-to-date on the curriculum .
As with Internet-enabled devices and digital access , tutors should be available for all students during the pandemic .
Since the money to pay them is nowhere in state budgets—and since the point is to avoid rationing education by zip code—the federal government should provide the funds , as it did for the original WPA during the Great Depression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do so in a timely manner , others should step up—including the businesses counting on an educated next-generation workforce .
( That ’ s all businesses . )
Recessions are contraceptive , and the already-falling US birth rate will plunge over the next years : that means an outsize proportion of our future workforce is in school right now .
Which also means we won ’ t be able to offset this year ’ s lost educational investment later .
How could such an ambitious program work ?
By building on resources already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Houston , a tutoring program called ACES connects undergraduate and graduates with at-risk students at schools in the Third Ward ( George Floyd ’ s neighborhood ) .
That in-person program went online this spring and has protocols for vetting and training tutors , and supervising the interactions , so it doesn ’ t put kids at risk .
ACES and others are working with the city to reach more kids this fall , drawing on a combination of government grants and donor funds .
University students make great tutors : Recent high-school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ situations , want to help , and often need the money .
Similar programs could start up across the nation , and an online tutor needn ’ t live nearby .
Elementary and middle school students need more supervision .
To address that need , Parenting Pay would be another proactive intervention .
Unlike unemployment insurance , which isn ’ t enough for many families and only lasts for a limited period , Parenting Pay would replace a larger percentage of the parent ’ s salary ( as Germany did this spring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It would also go directly to working parents—not through the employer as in the current Payroll Protection Program .
This would allow parents of rowdy preschoolers to step out entirely for the pandemic ’ s duration at nearly full pay—or a middle school parent to take less time off , on a prorated basis .
To counter gender bias , where there are two parents , both could go part-time .
Such an investment would pay off multiply : It will limit the traumatizing effects of poverty on kids and families , support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the attention they need .
Businesses will also benefit : They ’ ll retain for the long term both the expanded insight their more diverse workforce provides ( instead of only being able to retain workers without child care responsibilities ) and their experienced workers .
Those currently out of work can be hired to spell working parents doing the home/work double shift , for the duration .
Parents would need a return-to-work guarantee , like that offered to National Guard and Armed Service members , once schools can safely and consistently reopen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employer , a new version of the 20th century Work Projects Administration model could find them suitable jobs elsewhere ( including infrastructure building ) —and could also help find employment for the millions of others who will find themselves without jobs after the pandemic .
This spring , as they struggled to keep themselves and their families safe , working parents were overwhelmed—single working parents even more so .
By viewing them as public servants raising the nation ’ s workforce in a crisis , companies can adjust productivity expectations for parents , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We can debate details , but a WPA that uses the Covid-19 crisis to transform national family , education , and work policies would jump-start real education equity and a culture and economy of care .
Like the Rosies and the Roscoes who innovated together to meet the many crises of the 1930s and ’ 40s , “ We can do it !
”

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As schools go online nationally amid a recession, the speeding high-unemployment and home-school trains are on a collision course, with working mothers, their families, and the economy set to be mowed down at the crossroads. Unless we switch tracks, quickly.
This fall, many parents must homeschool their children while continuing to work at full-time employment. Those who can’t manage both—many of them women—will have to quit their jobs or reduce their hours, adding to the already huge ranks of the unemployed. In some cases, their spots may be filled by currently unemployed workers without child care responsibilities—creating a major setback to the gender balance of the workforce and leaving many families struggling on reduced incomes.
A new track—a policy that values parenting as national service, rather than seeing it as a distraction, and that invests in getting all quarantined kids an equitable education now—could spread the work around, grow the economy, and carry us to a better place. We need a 21st century WPA—a Working Parents Administration—to face this moment’s challenges head on.
This WPA can initiate the family-friendly work-policy revolution we’ve long needed. Later, it can offer paid family leave and public early-childhood education—an expanded version of the free all-day early childhood education offered (in various forms) in New York, San Antonio, and Boston—once that’s a healthy option again. But for now, it would include two new programs: Universal Online Tutoring and Parenting Pay.
All students can benefit from tutors during the lockdown: Wealthy families have rushed to book them, online and in-person. Why would the non-wealthy need them less? Isolated students in online classes won’t get adequate feedback. Some have parents with both time and education to assist, but many do not—and even those parents aren’t always up-to-date on the curriculum.
As with Internet-enabled devices and digital access, tutors should be available for all students during the pandemic. Since the money to pay them is nowhere in state budgets—and since the point is to avoid rationing education by zip code—the federal government should provide the funds, as it did for the original WPA during the Great Depression. But if Congress doesn’t do so in a timely manner, others should step up—including the businesses counting on an educated next-generation workforce. (That’s all businesses.)
Recessions are contraceptive, and the already-falling US birth rate will plunge over the next years: that means an outsize proportion of our future workforce is in school right now. Which also means we won’t be able to offset this year’s lost educational investment later. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
How could such an ambitious program work? By building on resources already in place. At the University of Houston, a tutoring program called ACES connects undergraduate and graduates with at-risk students at schools in the Third Ward (George Floyd’s neighborhood). That in-person program went online this spring and has protocols for vetting and training tutors, and supervising the interactions, so it doesn’t put kids at risk. ACES and others are working with the city to reach more kids this fall, drawing on a combination of government grants and donor funds. University students make great tutors: Recent high-school grads themselves, they understand their tutees’ situations, want to help, and often need the money. Similar programs could start up across the nation, and an online tutor needn’t live nearby.
Elementary and middle school students need more supervision. To address that need, Parenting Pay would be another proactive intervention. Unlike unemployment insurance, which isn’t enough for many families and only lasts for a limited period, Parenting Pay would replace a larger percentage of the parent’s salary (as Germany did this spring), without a fixed term. It would also go directly to working parents—not through the employer as in the current Payroll Protection Program. This would allow parents of rowdy preschoolers to step out entirely for the pandemic’s duration at nearly full pay—or a middle school parent to take less time off, on a prorated basis. To counter gender bias, where there are two parents, both could go part-time.
Such an investment would pay off multiply: It will limit the traumatizing effects of poverty on kids and families, support the economy, and give young kids the attention they need. Businesses will also benefit: They’ll retain for the long term both the expanded insight their more diverse workforce provides (instead of only being able to retain workers without child care responsibilities) and their experienced workers.
Those currently out of work can be hired to spell working parents doing the home/work double shift, for the duration. Parents would need a return-to-work guarantee, like that offered to National Guard and Armed Service members, once schools can safely and consistently reopen. If the downturn disappears their former employer, a new version of the 20th century Work Projects Administration model could find them suitable jobs elsewhere (including infrastructure building)—and could also help find employment for the millions of others who will find themselves without jobs after the pandemic.
This spring, as they struggled to keep themselves and their families safe, working parents were overwhelmed—single working parents even more so. By viewing them as public servants raising the nation’s workforce in a crisis, companies can adjust productivity expectations for parents, while maintaining their pay via the WPA.
We can debate details, but a WPA that uses the Covid-19 crisis to transform national family, education, and work policies would jump-start real education equity and a culture and economy of care. Like the Rosies and the Roscoes who innovated together to meet the many crises of the 1930s and ’40s, “We can do it!”


thenation--2020-09-01--Trump Hasn’t Ended Endless Wars

Trump Hasn’t Ended Endless Wars

Speakers at last week ’ s Republican National Convention lauded President Trump as a foe of endless wars .
Senator @ @ @ @ @ praised the president for “ bringing our men and women home , ” while Eric @ @ @ @ @ accomplished “ peace in the Middle East .
Never-ending wars were finally ended.
” Just @ @ @ @ @ of a direct clash between US and Russian troops in northern Syria .
Military vehicles @ @ @ @ @ an open field until a Russian vehicle collided with a US vehicle , injuring four @ @ @ @ @ claiming the other was to blame .
Former administration official Brett McGurk noted that “ @ @ @ @ @ for months.
” How did we arrive at a situation where the two most heavily @ @ @ @ @ off in rural Syria without congressional authorization ?
Read the full text of Katrina ’ @ @ @ @

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
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Speakers at last week’s Republican National Convention lauded President Trump as a foe of endless wars. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) praised the president for “bringing our men and women home,” while Eric Trump claimed that his father accomplished “peace in the Middle East. Never-ending wars were finally ended.”
Just hours later, we learned of a direct clash between US and Russian troops in northern Syria. Military vehicles from each country raced in an open field until a Russian vehicle collided with a US vehicle, injuring four Americans, with each side claiming the other was to blame. Former administration official Brett McGurk noted that “these incidents have been ongoing for months.”
How did we arrive at a situation where the two most heavily armed nuclear powers are facing off in rural Syria without congressional authorization?
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


thenation--2020-09-02--Is This the First Great Quarantine Novel?

A few months ago , when the pandemic was still young , the literary question du jour was who would be the first to write the great American Corona novel , or which notable person of letters might already be at work on such a project .
This speculation , by no means unique to the coronavirus or to our present moment , emerges from a conception of literature as a kind of report on worldly circumstances .
By this account , the author experiences the world , often engages in research , arranges and shapes the material , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the expectation takes us all the way back to Stendhal : “ A novel is a mirror carried along a high road.
” To be clear , there are many successful works of literary art that set out to respond to epoch-making events and eras .
Rachel Kushner ’ s The Flamethrowers ( the 1970s in New York City ) ; Emma Cline ’ s The Girls ( Manson-adjacent California in the 1960s ) ; Rebecca Makkai ’ s The Great Believers ( Chicago during the AIDS epidemic ) , and Colson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to name a few recent examples , certainly transcend reportage , and do so with varying degrees of fidelity to the letter of history .
But another kind of novel , by resisting depiction and explication of the disaster and absorbing the culture of disaster itself , belongs to the category of the prescient , analyzing history in advance , as it were .
Blake Butler ’ s new novel , Alice Knott , was written well before the emergence of Covid-19 , yet it resonates so strongly with life under lockdown that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The narrative is filtered through the obsessive consciousness of the titular character , an aging heiress who “ hasn ’ t left her house in years.
” Alice ’ s basement vault is filled with priceless works of art that she hardly looks at anymore , and her main sources of diversion are what occurs on various electronic screens .
When vandals break in and destroy her art , a video of the act goes viral , causing an international sensation as masterpieces around the world are targeted .
Already isolated and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becomes embroiled in the criminal investigation and derailed by her hurtful introspection .
The world of the novel is of a piece with lockdown existence in the sense that its reality is largely recognizable , although distorted and intensified .
No one can say what life will look like post-pandemic , but existing trends that appear to be accelerating include time spent online , the further consolidation of corporate power , and social atomization .
When Alice sees the act of vandalism in her home reported on the TV news , for instance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tonight alongside advertisements , scores , and weather , all of them wearing our attention down , molding our position into a feed we can nurse through our adult lives.
” The feed evokes the character of social media , and is followed by a “ tumult ” of broadcasts in which “ dozens or hundreds of public personalities ” produce content unconcerned about “ what had actually occurred ” and that instead seek to construct identities and reality itself .
Alice ’ s reaction to seeing herself on television applies , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ That couldn ’ t be what she looks like to other people , could it ?
” she muses .
When Alice thinks , it seems to be in a voice “ not wholly hers.
” Having quit drinking , she is “ smashed no longer on gin and water but on her impression of the present as ongoing event , suspended between the conflicting impressions of isolation and surveillance at the same time.
” Alice Knott captures the affective experience of being physically alone with the screens that remedy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so eerily anticipates the accelerant to come in 2020 .
Alice ’ s alienation is both technological and cognitive , as well as evidence of the novel ’ s commitment to an aesthetics of absence : Her memory is full of holes , her childhood colored by the disappearance of family members ( later replaced by an “ unfamily ” ) , and her thoughts tend to undercut themselves , at times bringing her own selfhood into question .
If here ’ s a positive aspect to any of Alice ’ s thoughts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realm of art .
Though priceless artworks are the target of the wave of destruction , Alice repeatedly praises their specialness not as beyond price but as one of a kind .
The fragility of these works is what differentiates them from the endlessly proliferating viral fodder on offer .
Furthermore , their destruction hints at actual creative potential .
In the account of the first viral video , the incineration of Woman III by Willem de Kooning is characterized as follows : “ The destruction is beautiful itself , too , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way.
” Besides the interplay between image and text , Alice Knott is concerned with the sonic , as when masked figures in the viral video take the painting off the wall , there is “ no sound but the low , ambient buzz of a hot mic recording nothing.
” This is surely a reference to John Cage , a quote from whose “ Lecture on Nothing ” serves as an epigraph to Butler ’ s 2011 memoir Nothing : A Portrait of Insomnia .
Cage ’ s well-known music of silence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Rauschenberg ’ s White Painting ( part of Alice ’ s collection ) , and the Samuel Beckett of Stories and Texts for Nothing and Nohow On .
Alice Knott represents a continuation of this aesthetics of the void and a contemporary instance of making art out of emptiness .
For what embodies absence more completely than a white painting—a white painting that ’ s destroyed ?
In a way that recalls Butler ’ s memoir about his struggles with insomnia , Alice Knott itself is a powerful rethinking of absence ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the insomniac , as for the recluse and the quarantined , time is evacuated of meaning .
The interior spaces of both Alice Knott and Butler ’ s memoir are similarly distorted : endless hallways , personal disorientation , and a kind of dream logic that has Alice “ arriving back to where she ’ d already been ” after walking exclusively in one direction .
In addition to an overwhelming defamiliarization , a sense of illness defines the world of the novel .
Alice is barred from contacting her so-called “ unbrother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense uncannily resembles her ) as he is “ under quarantine , ” and there is a brief mention of “ a virus passed by sight ” as well as a set piece concerning “ an epic plague.
” To put things in perspective , Butler ’ s work has visited destruction on humanity for over a decade : from the plagues of his early novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas to his 2014 novel 300,000,000 .
The latter title refers to the population of the United States , which is ravaged by mass hysteria .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ America , there ’ s a way in which Alice Knott imagines the end of art , or art ’ s final form .
Oddly enough , Butler ’ s long-standing focus on America ’ s ( often self-inflicted ) suffering finds its eeriest expression in a passage from Alice Knott concerning the memory of a popular television drama “ centered on a retelling of the foundational history of the United States.
” This virtuosic scene runs for seven pages over which the novel ’ s strands of media , art , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kicker .
While watching this dramatic serial with her family as a child , Alice believes she is actually watching the news , “ captured footage of real living people.
” In a mirror inversion , unlike Alice , who thinks what she ’ s watching is true though it is fiction , readers expecting fiction from this novel will be met with an echo of reality .
The series , whose name Alice can not recall , “ depicted crime and turmoil during the fallout of an epic plague that deconstructed all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then all the rest.
” The plague is a psychic one , “ a continuously mutating viral fire feeding off human experience , ” a virus contracted by watching the series itself and avoided only by refusing to watch .
To watch this fictive television show is to “ eradicate all sense of self from those exposed , ” much in the way those who encounter the eponymous film in David Foster Wallace ’ s Infinite Jest begin to drool , soil themselves , and neglect to eat , viewing it on repeat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the anxiety driving Wallace ’ s novel takes the form of film and television ’ s cultural dominance , the rivals facing Alice Knott have multiplied to include the Internet and an increasingly oppressive 24-hour news cycle .
Ultimately , Alice Knott is disturbing because it is familiar .
Alice spends her days indoors looking at screens , but so do we , and most of us can ’ t blame it on agoraphobia .
In fact , though an unspecified cognitive disorder is mentioned , I would hesitate to attribute Alice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than modern life , such as it is .
In terms of the unnamed show above , reading about it gives rise to the novel ’ s ultimate allegory .
As fiction mistaken for news , it reflects the ongoing process of journalism detaching itself from reality as fiction increasingly merges with history and biography .
Indeed , the perverse logic of Alice Knott often provokes the same question that watching the news in 2020 tends to provoke : How real is this ?

A few months ago, when the pandemic was still young, the literary question du jour was who would be the first to write the great American Corona novel, or which notable person of letters might already be at work on such a project. This speculation, by no means unique to the coronavirus or to our present moment, emerges from a conception of literature as a kind of report on worldly circumstances. By this account, the author experiences the world, often engages in research, arranges and shapes the material, and reports back. At its most reductive, the expectation takes us all the way back to Stendhal: “A novel is a mirror carried along a high road.” Books in Review Alice Knott By Blake Butler Buy this book
To be clear, there are many successful works of literary art that set out to respond to epoch-making events and eras. Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers (the 1970s in New York City); Emma Cline’s The Girls (Manson-adjacent California in the 1960s); Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers (Chicago during the AIDS epidemic), and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, to name a few recent examples, certainly transcend reportage, and do so with varying degrees of fidelity to the letter of history. But another kind of novel, by resisting depiction and explication of the disaster and absorbing the culture of disaster itself, belongs to the category of the prescient, analyzing history in advance, as it were.
Blake Butler’s new novel, Alice Knott, was written well before the emergence of Covid-19, yet it resonates so strongly with life under lockdown that one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The narrative is filtered through the obsessive consciousness of the titular character, an aging heiress who “hasn’t left her house in years.” Alice’s basement vault is filled with priceless works of art that she hardly looks at anymore, and her main sources of diversion are what occurs on various electronic screens. When vandals break in and destroy her art, a video of the act goes viral, causing an international sensation as masterpieces around the world are targeted. Already isolated and ruminative, Alice unravels further as she becomes embroiled in the criminal investigation and derailed by her hurtful introspection.
The world of the novel is of a piece with lockdown existence in the sense that its reality is largely recognizable, although distorted and intensified. No one can say what life will look like post-pandemic, but existing trends that appear to be accelerating include time spent online, the further consolidation of corporate power, and social atomization. When Alice sees the act of vandalism in her home reported on the TV news, for instance, it is described as “presented tonight alongside advertisements, scores, and weather, all of them wearing our attention down, molding our position into a feed we can nurse through our adult lives.” The feed evokes the character of social media, and is followed by a “tumult” of broadcasts in which “dozens or hundreds of public personalities” produce content unconcerned about “what had actually occurred” and that instead seek to construct identities and reality itself. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Alice’s reaction to seeing herself on television applies, as well, to our increasingly online life. “That couldn’t be what she looks like to other people, could it?” she muses. When Alice thinks, it seems to be in a voice “not wholly hers.” Having quit drinking, she is “smashed no longer on gin and water but on her impression of the present as ongoing event, suspended between the conflicting impressions of isolation and surveillance at the same time.” Alice Knott captures the affective experience of being physically alone with the screens that remedy and magnify this condition, and in doing so eerily anticipates the accelerant to come in 2020. Alice’s alienation is both technological and cognitive, as well as evidence of the novel’s commitment to an aesthetics of absence: Her memory is full of holes, her childhood colored by the disappearance of family members (later replaced by an “unfamily”), and her thoughts tend to undercut themselves, at times bringing her own selfhood into question.
If here’s a positive aspect to any of Alice’s thoughts, it would be found in the realm of art. Though priceless artworks are the target of the wave of destruction, Alice repeatedly praises their specialness not as beyond price but as one of a kind. The fragility of these works is what differentiates them from the endlessly proliferating viral fodder on offer. Furthermore, their destruction hints at actual creative potential. In the account of the first viral video, the incineration of Woman III by Willem de Kooning is characterized as follows: “The destruction is beautiful itself, too, some viewers will argue, in its own way.”
Besides the interplay between image and text, Alice Knott is concerned with the sonic, as when masked figures in the viral video take the painting off the wall, there is “no sound but the low, ambient buzz of a hot mic recording nothing.” This is surely a reference to John Cage, a quote from whose “Lecture on Nothing” serves as an epigraph to Butler’s 2011 memoir Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia. Cage’s well-known music of silence has analogues in monochromatic art, such as Rauschenberg’s White Painting (part of Alice’s collection), and the Samuel Beckett of Stories and Texts for Nothing and Nohow On.
Alice Knott represents a continuation of this aesthetics of the void and a contemporary instance of making art out of emptiness. For what embodies absence more completely than a white painting—a white painting that’s destroyed? In a way that recalls Butler’s memoir about his struggles with insomnia, Alice Knott itself is a powerful rethinking of absence’s aesthetic and political dimensions. For the insomniac, as for the recluse and the quarantined, time is evacuated of meaning. The interior spaces of both Alice Knott and Butler’s memoir are similarly distorted: endless hallways, personal disorientation, and a kind of dream logic that has Alice “arriving back to where she’d already been” after walking exclusively in one direction.
In addition to an overwhelming defamiliarization, a sense of illness defines the world of the novel. Alice is barred from contacting her so-called “unbrother” (who in the strictly Freudian sense uncannily resembles her) as he is “under quarantine,” and there is a brief mention of “a virus passed by sight” as well as a set piece concerning “an epic plague.” To put things in perspective, Butler’s work has visited destruction on humanity for over a decade: from the plagues of his early novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas to his 2014 novel 300,000,000. The latter title refers to the population of the United States, which is ravaged by mass hysteria.
Just as 300,000,000 imagines the end of America, there’s a way in which Alice Knott imagines the end of art, or art’s final form. Oddly enough, Butler’s long-standing focus on America’s (often self-inflicted) suffering finds its eeriest expression in a passage from Alice Knott concerning the memory of a popular television drama “centered on a retelling of the foundational history of the United States.” This virtuosic scene runs for seven pages over which the novel’s strands of media, art, and contagion converge. Here’s the kicker. While watching this dramatic serial with her family as a child, Alice believes she is actually watching the news, “captured footage of real living people.” In a mirror inversion, unlike Alice, who thinks what she’s watching is true though it is fiction, readers expecting fiction from this novel will be met with an echo of reality. The series, whose name Alice cannot recall, “depicted crime and turmoil during the fallout of an epic plague that deconstructed all emotional logic, and then nostalgia, then all the rest.” The plague is a psychic one, “a continuously mutating viral fire feeding off human experience,” a virus contracted by watching the series itself and avoided only by refusing to watch.
To watch this fictive television show is to “eradicate all sense of self from those exposed,” much in the way those who encounter the eponymous film in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest begin to drool, soil themselves, and neglect to eat, viewing it on repeat until they expire. Yet whereas much of the anxiety driving Wallace’s novel takes the form of film and television’s cultural dominance, the rivals facing Alice Knott have multiplied to include the Internet and an increasingly oppressive 24-hour news cycle.
Ultimately, Alice Knott is disturbing because it is familiar. Alice spends her days indoors looking at screens, but so do we, and most of us can’t blame it on agoraphobia. In fact, though an unspecified cognitive disorder is mentioned, I would hesitate to attribute Alice’s mental state to anything other than modern life, such as it is. In terms of the unnamed show above, reading about it gives rise to the novel’s ultimate allegory. As fiction mistaken for news, it reflects the ongoing process of journalism detaching itself from reality as fiction increasingly merges with history and biography. Indeed, the perverse logic of Alice Knott often provokes the same question that watching the news in 2020 tends to provoke: How real is this?