thenation--2020-07-16--There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre , President Barack Obama delivered what I have always believed to be the best speech of his presidency .
He talked about what it ’ s like to be a parent , and the critical realization , experienced by most parents , that you can ’ t keep your children safe or teach them well without the help of your friends and neighbors .
Then he expanded that idea to include the whole of society .
He said , “ This is our first task—caring for our children .
It ’ s our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t get that right , we don ’ t get anything right .
That ’ s how , as a society , we will be judged.
” We have not gotten anything right when it comes to caring for our children .
We were not getting things right before the coronavirus pandemic ; we did not get things right at the outset of the crisis ; and as we hurtle towards the fall , we are on the verge of getting things dangerously , irreparably wrong again .
We are now embroiled in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back to school , and we have left ourselves nothing but bad options .
If we send them to school , they might get sick or might get others sick .
If we keep them home , we won ’ t be able to go to work and we might stunt their educational growth .
If we do a “ blended learning ” approach and send them to school some days but keep them home other days , our children might get sick and they might be stunted .
Besides , there aren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down a full-time job that they show up for only two-and-a-half days a week .
It didn ’ t have to be this way .
If we had successfully done the work of stopping the spread of the virus , as has been done in other countries , we wouldn ’ t have to pick which poison to expose our kids to .
If we had committed to testing so as to track the spread of the virus , instead of not testing so as to manage Donald Trump ’ s asinine fear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know which school districts could safely reopen .
If we had leaders who cared about the health of our people nearly as much as they care about the health of their stock portfolios , we would be able to protect teachers instead of asking them to risk their lives .
The Men Pushing to Open the Economy Clearly Don ’ t Need Child Care The Lesson of the Coronavirus ?
There ’ s No One Left to Trust .
Instead , our leaders view children as nothing more than tiny impediments to efficient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Secretary Alex Azar put it most bluntly : “ Parents have to get back to the factory .
They ’ ve got to get back to the job site .
They have to get back to the office .
And part of that is their kids , knowing their kids are taken care of.
” Meanwhile , just last week President Donald Trump worried that CDC guidelines for protecting our children were too “ expensive.
” He tweeted , “ I disagree with @ CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open , they are asking schools to do very impractical things .
I will be meeting with them !
!
!
” And so , we are here .
I wouldn ’ t let my children eat candy handed out by this administration .
There are snakes with better parental instincts than these people .
The people running the nation have led us to 138,000 deaths and counting , the most in the world .
They ’ ve lost the right to advise me on how to keep my kids safe .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , mainly at the local level , trying to come up with humane plans for the fall—plans that keep our kids safe , teach them , and don ’ t kill thousands of teachers while doing so .
The problem is , a national crisis has a way of exacerbating everything that is weak with the underlying society , and our child care and school systems were hobbled and broken well before Covid-19 reared its viral head .
The first problem is that our child care system and school system are the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ families have no access to reliable , affordable child care without in-person schooling .
“ In the Covid-19 Economy , You Can Have a Kid or a Job .
You Can ’ t Have Both , ” blared a recent New York Times headline , highlighting the problem every working parent has faced since the onset of the pandemic .
Unequal access to home computing—the digital divide—deepens the problem and renders remote learning a disaster for many families .
A family with only one device that can connect to the Internet is put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work from home and a child ( or multiple children ) must Zoom in to school .
And I don ’ t even know how the millions of families who have no devices and no reliable Internet service are getting by .
Meanwhile , experts tell us that there are psychological and social benefits to having kids return to school .
The American Academy of Pediatrics is pushing for kids to be physically present in a classroom , if possible .
I ’ m no doctor , but I worry a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids haven ’ t been out in public since March 6 ) is delaying my children ’ s social growth and emotional intelligence .
I can homeschool math ; I can ’ t homeschool “ Yes , your classmates made fun of your comment .
Are you going to deal with it or are you going to act like Bari Weiss about it ?
” There is learning that can happen only out here in these streets , and the pandemic is robbing my children of such experiences .
But my first job @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sending them to a physical building with a bunch of other people doesn ’ t feel safe right now .
When I last saw my 7-year-old ’ s class back in March , the kids were trampling each other to get in line for recess .
Now I ’ m supposed to believe they will wait patiently six feet apart for an entire day ?
Have you met children ?
“ Socially distant school ” is one of those phrases , like “ clean coal ” or “ compassionate conservative , ” that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Covid-19 does not seem to kill children at the same rates as it kills adults , which is a blessing .
But the long-term health effects of the virus on growing lungs are still largely unknown .
Do people really expect parents to offer their children as guinea pigs in a years-long coronavirus study ?
Come on .
I know parents who won ’ t let their kids near a Nintendo for fear of what screen time will do to their young minds .
That ’ s probably why , despite the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an Axios poll found that 71 percent of parents thought sending kids back to school was a moderate to high risk .
Among communities of color , the dread is even higher : 89 percent of Black respondents and 80 percent of Hispanic respondents thought sending kids back to school was risky .
Schools : To Open or Not to Open ?
That Is Not the Question .
Even if I weren ’ t myopically concerned about the health and safety of my own children , I would be skeptical of opening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids ’ teachers .
Whatever protections children seem to have from the virus does not extend to their caregivers and educators .
Teachers should not be used like frontline infantry in our fight to return to normalcy .
The Movement of Rank and File Educators ( MORE ) , the progressive caucus within New York ’ s United Federation of Teachers , is saying more or less the same thing : It ’ s too soon to go back to school .
Even beyond the obvious health risks , decades of underfunding and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the resources they would need to keep children and teachers safe if we reopened schools during the pandemic .
Once kids are back in the building , who is washing all those germy little desks ?
We saw this past spring that schools didn ’ t even have the basic supplies needed to keep classrooms clean .
The government has had problems getting personal protective equipment to hospitals ; how are we going to get all of that stuff to schools ?
Where are all the cleaning supplies coming from ?
Who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all those districts facing budget cuts ?
And who is paying off the wrongful death lawsuit if even one child dies from Covid at school ?
Or will parents be expected to sign a death waiver , as if they ’ re sending their kids to a Trump rally ?
And what happens when someone inevitably gets sick ?
You can read reams of plans and proposals for reopening schools , but you don ’ t see plans for when a child or teacher contracts the disease .
Will the schools be closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t see plans for easy access to testing .
You don ’ t see reporting guidelines for confirmed cases , or transparency guidelines for informing the school community when someone comes down with the illness .
Do we really think parents are going to want to send their kids back to school when their kid ’ s teacher has Covid-19 ?
Or is the plan simply to not tell the parents that the teacher got sick ?
Despite the demonstrable need to send children back to school , it is highly unlikely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a physical building this fall .
I can say that because I am drenched in privilege .
I have a house with a yard , so my kids aren ’ t cooped up all day .
Each kid has their own dedicated iPad , and they have their own laptop .
My wife and I both have jobs we can do from home , while homeschooling our kids .
It ’ s terrible , but I at least have the option of dashing off crappier columns while taking care of my kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important , my kids ’ school , a private one , provided all of the materials and support my family needed to keep educating the kids through this crisis .
Zoom learning isn ’ t the best , but we ’ ll get by .
My privilege speaks to the shocking inequality in our society and school system .
Fortunate people will opt out of this madness until there is a vaccine .
We ’ ll print out workbooks , take virtual-reality trips to the zoo , and wait until everybody stops dying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cocoon of safety .
Less-privileged people will have to suffer the full consequences of living in the only advanced nation that can ’ t be bothered to stop the spread of the virus .
Other countries are in a position to reopen schools and businesses because they did the right thing with lockdowns and didn ’ t turn public health into a culture war .
Our country , led as it is by a ruling party that has spent three decades acting like “ science ” was a liberal hoax , is only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reopening schools in this environment will have predictable results : The children of poor and working-class folks will be more exposed to the disease , because those families will have no choice but to risk their health in order to work .
Those children will , in turn , infect their parents and the teachers who work in lower-income communities , and any long-term health risks from Covid-19 will be borne more heavily by those who grew up with more economic challenges .
Eventually , clusters of teachers will turn up dead , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as many bars and restaurants are doing now .
It would be nice if we could skip over the dead teachers phase , but Trump and his education secretary , Erik Prince ’ s sister , have evidently decided that getting people killed is the best way for him to win reelection .
Trump ’ s predecessor poignantly concluded that our inability to protect our children from gun violence is the most unforgivable failure of American society .
I guess I shouldn ’ t be surprised that a society that can not come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being shot at school has no plan to keep children and teachers from getting sick at school .

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After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, President Barack Obama delivered what I have always believed to be the best speech of his presidency. He talked about what it’s like to be a parent, and the critical realization, experienced by most parents, that you can’t keep your children safe or teach them well without the help of your friends and neighbors. Then he expanded that idea to include the whole of society. He said, “This is our first task—caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.”
We have not gotten anything right when it comes to caring for our children. We were not getting things right before the coronavirus pandemic; we did not get things right at the outset of the crisis; and as we hurtle towards the fall, we are on the verge of getting things dangerously, irreparably wrong again.
We are now embroiled in a critical debate about sending our kids back to school, and we have left ourselves nothing but bad options. If we send them to school, they might get sick or might get others sick. If we keep them home, we won’t be able to go to work and we might stunt their educational growth. If we do a “blended learning” approach and send them to school some days but keep them home other days, our children might get sick and they might be stunted. Besides, there aren’t many parents who can hold down a full-time job that they show up for only two-and-a-half days a week.
It didn’t have to be this way. If we had successfully done the work of stopping the spread of the virus, as has been done in other countries, we wouldn’t have to pick which poison to expose our kids to. If we had committed to testing so as to track the spread of the virus, instead of not testing so as to manage Donald Trump’s asinine fear that testing causes cases, we might know which school districts could safely reopen. If we had leaders who cared about the health of our people nearly as much as they care about the health of their stock portfolios, we would be able to protect teachers instead of asking them to risk their lives. More from Mystal The Men Pushing to Open the Economy Clearly Don’t Need Child Care Elie Mystal You Can’t Mask Stupid Elie Mystal The Lesson of the Coronavirus? There’s No One Left to Trust. Elie Mystal
Instead, our leaders view children as nothing more than tiny impediments to efficient wage slavery. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar put it most bluntly: “Parents have to get back to the factory. They’ve got to get back to the job site. They have to get back to the office. And part of that is their kids, knowing their kids are taken care of.”
Meanwhile, just last week President Donald Trump worried that CDC guidelines for protecting our children were too “expensive.” He tweeted, “I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” 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
And so, we are here. I wouldn’t let my children eat candy handed out by this administration. There are snakes with better parental instincts than these people. The people running the nation have led us to 138,000 deaths and counting, the most in the world. They’ve lost the right to advise me on how to keep my kids safe. Current Issue View our current issue
To be sure, there are decent people, mainly at the local level, trying to come up with humane plans for the fall—plans that keep our kids safe, teach them, and don’t kill thousands of teachers while doing so. The problem is, a national crisis has a way of exacerbating everything that is weak with the underlying society, and our child care and school systems were hobbled and broken well before Covid-19 reared its viral head.
The first problem is that our child care system and school system are the same system, and that means that working families have no access to reliable, affordable child care without in-person schooling. “In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both,” blared a recent New York Times headline, highlighting the problem every working parent has faced since the onset of the pandemic. Unequal access to home computing—the digital divide—deepens the problem and renders remote learning a disaster for many families. A family with only one device that can connect to the Internet is put under immense stress while parents are trying to work from home and a child (or multiple children) must Zoom in to school. And I don’t even know how the millions of families who have no devices and no reliable Internet service are getting by.
Meanwhile, experts tell us that there are psychological and social benefits to having kids return to school. The American Academy of Pediatrics is pushing for kids to be physically present in a classroom, if possible. I’m no doctor, but I worry a lot about how this extended quarantine (my kids haven’t been out in public since March 6) is delaying my children’s social growth and emotional intelligence. I can homeschool math; I can’t homeschool “Yes, your classmates made fun of your comment. Are you going to deal with it or are you going to act like Bari Weiss about it?” There is learning that can happen only out here in these streets, and the pandemic is robbing my children of such experiences.
But my first job is to keep my children safe. Sending them to a physical building with a bunch of other people doesn’t feel safe right now. When I last saw my 7-year-old’s class back in March, the kids were trampling each other to get in line for recess. Now I’m supposed to believe they will wait patiently six feet apart for an entire day? Have you met children? “Socially distant school” is one of those phrases, like “clean coal” or “compassionate conservative,” that names a thing that does not exist.
Covid-19 does not seem to kill children at the same rates as it kills adults, which is a blessing. But the long-term health effects of the virus on growing lungs are still largely unknown. Do people really expect parents to offer their children as guinea pigs in a years-long coronavirus study? Come on. I know parents who won’t let their kids near a Nintendo for fear of what screen time will do to their young minds.
That’s probably why, despite the desperate need for education and child care, an Axios poll found that 71 percent of parents thought sending kids back to school was a moderate to high risk. Among communities of color, the dread is even higher: 89 percent of Black respondents and 80 percent of Hispanic respondents thought sending kids back to school was risky. Covid and Schools Schools: To Open or Not to Open? That Is Not the Question. Rhea Boyd
Even if I weren’t myopically concerned about the health and safety of my own children, I would be skeptical of opening schools and risking the lives of my kids’ teachers. Whatever protections children seem to have from the virus does not extend to their caregivers and educators. Teachers should not be used like frontline infantry in our fight to return to normalcy.
The Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), the progressive caucus within New York’s United Federation of Teachers, is saying more or less the same thing: It’s too soon to go back to school. Even beyond the obvious health risks, decades of underfunding and inequality have robbed many school districts of the resources they would need to keep children and teachers safe if we reopened schools during the pandemic.
Once kids are back in the building, who is washing all those germy little desks? We saw this past spring that schools didn’t even have the basic supplies needed to keep classrooms clean. The government has had problems getting personal protective equipment to hospitals; how are we going to get all of that stuff to schools? Where are all the cleaning supplies coming from? Who is paying all the overtime for janitors—particularly in all those districts facing budget cuts?
And who is paying off the wrongful death lawsuit if even one child dies from Covid at school? Or will parents be expected to sign a death waiver, as if they’re sending their kids to a Trump rally?
And what happens when someone inevitably gets sick? You can read reams of plans and proposals for reopening schools, but you don’t see plans for when a child or teacher contracts the disease. Will the schools be closed? For how long? You don’t see plans for easy access to testing. You don’t see reporting guidelines for confirmed cases, or transparency guidelines for informing the school community when someone comes down with the illness. Do we really think parents are going to want to send their kids back to school when their kid’s teacher has Covid-19? Or is the plan simply to not tell the parents that the teacher got sick?
Despite the demonstrable need to send children back to school, it is highly unlikely that I will be sending my kids to a physical building this fall. I can say that because I am drenched in privilege. I have a house with a yard, so my kids aren’t cooped up all day. Each kid has their own dedicated iPad, and they have their own laptop. My wife and I both have jobs we can do from home, while homeschooling our kids. It’s terrible, but I at least have the option of dashing off crappier columns while taking care of my kids (sorry, readers). Most important, my kids’ school, a private one, provided all of the materials and support my family needed to keep educating the kids through this crisis. Zoom learning isn’t the best, but we’ll get by.
My privilege speaks to the shocking inequality in our society and school system. Fortunate people will opt out of this madness until there is a vaccine. We’ll print out workbooks, take virtual-reality trips to the zoo, and wait until everybody stops dying before letting our kids out of our cocoon of safety.
Less-privileged people will have to suffer the full consequences of living in the only advanced nation that can’t be bothered to stop the spread of the virus. Other countries are in a position to reopen schools and businesses because they did the right thing with lockdowns and didn’t turn public health into a culture war. Our country, led as it is by a ruling party that has spent three decades acting like “science” was a liberal hoax, is only in a position to court death.
Reopening schools in this environment will have predictable results: The children of poor and working-class folks will be more exposed to the disease, because those families will have no choice but to risk their health in order to work. Those children will, in turn, infect their parents and the teachers who work in lower-income communities, and any long-term health risks from Covid-19 will be borne more heavily by those who grew up with more economic challenges. Eventually, clusters of teachers will turn up dead, and schools will “re-close” just as many bars and restaurants are doing now.
It would be nice if we could skip over the dead teachers phase, but Trump and his education secretary, Erik Prince’s sister, have evidently decided that getting people killed is the best way for him to win reelection.
Trump’s predecessor poignantly concluded that our inability to protect our children from gun violence is the most unforgivable failure of American society. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a society that cannot come together to prevent children and teachers from being shot at school has no plan to keep children and teachers from getting sick at school.


thenation--2020-07-16--Shaking Up Your Perceptions

Shaking Up Your Perceptions

Yes , people , I know .
The concept of universal human rights is a time-bound , culture-bound idol , hammered out by the European bourgeoisie in a forge of hypocrisy .
I will not bend the knee .
But as a student of Marx , I also know that nothing useful ever comes into our world unless somebody invents it .
Each day , in a purely secular spirit , I remember to thank the European bourgeoisie and Eleanor Roosevelt for having developed the idea behind the idol : the proposition that there ought to be enforceable limits to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , no matter where .
The annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival exists to enlighten and enrage audiences about one or two dozen current violations of those limits and to encourage hope by showing instances of resistance .
The abuses fall into broad categories : injustices to women , the LGBTQ community , migrants , indigenous people , journalists , environmentalists , and ( of special urgency this year , as ever ) Black lives .
The medium for exposing and countering the abuses , though , is particularistic to a fault .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the here and now—and so , unavoidably , the festival inverts the logic of its theme .
“ Human rights ” posits an omnipresent , equally shared status whose dignity extends downward to the individual .
The selections in the festival present granular cases , from which you ’ re expected to extrapolate upward to a generalized outrage .
In this sense , the Human Rights Watch Film Festival tests the limits of both authority and documentary filmmaking .
Of these tests , only the first are explicit .
Subject matter reigns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who instead chooses to foreground style may justifiably be considered a fool .
For this reason , the organizers of this year ’ s festival did well to make Erika Cohn ’ s Belly of the Beast the opening night feature , because of what it reports about the widespread , programmatic sterilization of Black and brown women in California ’ s prison system .
I , on the other hand , would arguably be wrong were I to mention the kitschy functionalism of Cohn ’ s filmmaking .
Enough to say that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s an important one .
But then , if you don ’ t want to think about the nature and limits of documentary , what ’ s the point of organizing a film festival rather than , say , a festival of newspaper clippings ?
At its best , the Human Rights Watch event offers pictures that shake up your ideas about how right and wrong play out both in the world and on the screen .
Forced into the digital realm by the pandemic but still allied with Film at Lincoln @ @ @ @ @ @ @ festival ’ s New York edition ran this year from June 11 through June 20 .
( Earlier screenings of the 2020 slate were held in Amsterdam , Copenhagen , London , Los Angeles , San Diego , and Toronto . )
Here are notes on a few outstanding selections from the 11 features , which generally remain accessible on streaming platforms .
Down a Dark Stairwell , directed by Ursula Liang , spoke to the festival ’ s moment as no other film could , with its account of the aftermath of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Akai Gurley , an unarmed 28-year-old Black man , in the Brooklyn public housing building where he lived .
The film even provided as happy an ending as such a story can have : The officer who shot Gurley became the first New York City cop in more than a decade to be convicted of a police killing .
Although the indictment and verdict were shockingly exceptional , no one should deny the importance to Gurley ’ s community of merely hearing the word “ guilty.
” In a devastating coda to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the second anniversary of Gurley ’ s death , Liang shows how various people shared in the mourning by coming forward , in heartbreaking succession , to testify about the police killings of their friends and family members .
As many other good documentarians have , Liang stuck with her story for years , gaining the trust and cooperation of her subjects .
Where she truly distinguished herself , though , was in breaking from the heroes-and-villains framework that is standard in Marvel Universe movies and human rights documentaries .
Gurley ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partner , daughter , and neighbors , as well as the friend who loved him so much that he broke down weeping on the street—they ’ re all present in the film .
But so , too , are the people who called for the case against the cop to be dropped , insisting ( in the words of their placards ) that this was a matter of “ One tragedy , two victims.
” The parallel protesters—they were careful not to turn into counterdemonstrators—were Chinese Americans , who asked why the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to account for the deaths of Black citizens happened to be a rookie , working an overtime shift , named Peter Liang .
I don ’ t assume it was a foregone conclusion that Ursula Liang ( no relation ) would also be able to win the confidence of these Chinese American protesters .
In the event , though , she got access to not one but two groups : middle-aged leaders of established Chinatown institutions and a separate set of young leftists who joined in the demonstrations by African Americans .
Amid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was possible to agree that African Americans and Chinese Americans have both suffered from white supremacy and shouldn ’ t behave as enemies—but that was easier said than done .
In the crowd scenes around police headquarters in Manhattan and at Brooklyn ’ s Cadman Plaza , you see the curbside assertion that Peter Liang was a scapegoat and the rebuttal that scapegoats don ’ t fire guns ; the earnest plea that Chinese Americans have suffered , too , and understand the grievances of Black people , and the rejoinder that mainstream @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
( But then , say some of the witnesses in the film , until around this time the Chinese American community had seldom shown up on the street even for itself . )
To the degree that Down a Dark Stairwell offers heroes , you might find them among the people who resist simplification—the Black activist who refuses to chant a slogan against “ model minorities , ” the Chinese American organizer who forcefully reminds his peers after Peter Liang receives a light sentence that a man is dead and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And villains ?
The description hardly fits Peter Liang , with his deficit of swagger and his shock at having killed .
And though there was wrongdoing in the circumstances that made the killing possible—the fact that Gurley was taking the stairs because the elevator never worked , the fact that Peter Liang couldn ’ t see in the stairwell because nobody changed the light bulbs—you ’ d have to impute these faults to indifference and incompetence , not malice .
Ursula Liang finds no villains in this story , only people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leftists who were slammed by their own community .
Unfortunately , the American landscape is thickly dotted with genuine villains , too many of whom are in uniform .
We sorely need exposés of their crimes , and we ’ ve been getting them from smartphones and dashboard cameras .
But I think we can also use a documentary as unusually clear-sighted as Down a Dark Stairwell—one that reminds us , in the words of a young Black man shown toward the end , that the powerful want us at war with one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endurance , intelligence , a capacity for self-sacrifice , and good judgment about when to deploy them—if these are the attributes of heroism , then David France ’ s Welcome to Chechnya is a documentary packed with heroes .
You see them much of the time in sequences that were shot and edited like episodes of an action thriller , not for the sake of formal extravagance but because the characters were engaged in undercover operations with people ’ s lives at stake .
It ’ s been a while since I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspenseful , though as an honest work of documentary , it ’ s also humbling and dauntingly unresolved .
Its heroes fall prey to exhaustion and sometimes abandon the field .
The cause , at the end , has been advanced but perhaps won ’ t be won .
The theme of Welcome to Chechnya—LGBTQ activism in the face of mortal peril—is not new to David France , but the threat this film addresses demanded that he work in an entirely new way .
In How to Survive a Plague ( 2012 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ P. Johnson ( 2017 ) , France chronicled chapters of queer history in the United States , relying to a large extent on astonishing montages of archival material .
This time he had to create the archive himself , at personal risk , as he pursued a story he learned from a 2017 New Yorker article by Masha Gessen : the campaign by the Chechen government , with Moscow ’ s compliance , to purge queer people from this corner of Russia by means of round-ups , torture , and murder .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authorities for protection and justice ; the authorities are the killers .
The only way to save lives is to spirit people out of the country , using the support of an international network of LGBTQ organizations and skills that the local activists had to develop from scratch : operating safe houses , conducting covert transport missions , negotiating behind the scenes for visas and asylum .
Studio-shot interviews with two of the principal rescuers—David Isteev of the Russian LGBT Network and Olga Baranova of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives—alternate with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where life can sometimes be mundane and at other times touching or harrowing .
And then there are the clandestine images of transports in progress , shot on the fly by Askold Kurov with a tourist-grade video camera ( battered to make it look harmlessly authentic ) and a cellphone .
Two of these operations frame the narrative of Welcome to Chechnya : the exfiltration of a 21-year-old woman with the pseudonym Anya , whose uncle learned she is lesbian and threatened to expose her if she didn ’ t have sex with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Grisha , who was freed from prison and torture because he isn ’ t Chechen ( he ’ d been arrested while in Grozny for work ) but who , along with his lover and family , is being pursued by Chechen agents to make sure he doesn ’ t talk .
France does more to protect his subjects ’ identities than give them false names .
Through an extraordinary use of digital imaging , he also gives them different faces .
A title at the start alerts you to this device .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ persuasive , you forget about it—until a turning point , late in the film , when France without warning unmasks a character who has made the almost impossibly brave decision to file an official complaint .
Political act and filmmaking method unite in a single moment to create the most stunning coming out I ’ ve ever witnessed .
It ’ s as transporting as any scene you would watch in a summer blockbuster , if any were being screened .
But the point is it ’ s not likely to happen again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The rest remain in hiding .
The facial recognition technology and machine learning that made possible the wondrous digital masks in Welcome to Chechnya come in for leery sidelong glances in Shalini Kantayya ’ s Coded Bias , a fine example of the globe-trotting , relay-team style of issue-based documentaries .
Leading a squad of expert commentators and carrying the baton in the final lap is Joy Buolamwini , a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab .
A thoroughly engaging movie character—young , bright , and breezy—she has put together a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spell “ Wakanda ” and her own superhero identity as founder of the Algorithm Justice League .
The attitude is unpretentious , the purpose deeply serious .
While working at MIT on a digital alias project , Buolamwini stumbled on a troubling fault in her program ’ s data set .
The software had been fed examples of mostly white faces .
It would not recognize her features as a face unless she put on a white mask .
From this seemingly small glitch , she deduced a very large problem : Social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every kind , from the ones that target you with online ads , give you a credit score , or decide whether you ’ re an effective classroom teacher to the video surveillance programs used to tag you as having the face of a terrorist .
A relatively small population of mostly white , male techies builds the data sets for all these algorithms .
The result , as one of Buolamwini ’ s interlocutors says , is that “ racism is being mechanized.
” With that as the premise , Coded Bias @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cape Town , Houston , and Washington , following other insurgent tech experts to their conferences , book-signing events , and street actions and spending maybe a little too much time watching their wheelie suitcases glide through airports .
The argument occasionally wanders as much as the itinerary , to the point of running counter to Buolamwini ’ s mission .
If you ’ re worried that police surveillance is a threat , why labor to correct the software and help it recognize you ?
But in the end , as if with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ match between problem and analysis .
We are allowing the Silicon Valley class to feed garbage into machine learning systems , and guess what ?
Garbage is coming out .

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Yes, people, I know. The concept of universal human rights is a time-bound, culture-bound idol, hammered out by the European bourgeoisie in a forge of hypocrisy. I will not bend the knee. But as a student of Marx, I also know that nothing useful ever comes into our world unless somebody invents it. Each day, in a purely secular spirit, I remember to thank the European bourgeoisie and Eleanor Roosevelt for having developed the idea behind the idol: the proposition that there ought to be enforceable limits to authority’s sway over every person, no matter where.
The annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival exists to enlighten and enrage audiences about one or two dozen current violations of those limits and to encourage hope by showing instances of resistance. The abuses fall into broad categories: injustices to women, the LGBTQ community, migrants, indigenous people, journalists, environmentalists, and (of special urgency this year, as ever) Black lives. The medium for exposing and countering the abuses, though, is particularistic to a fault. A camera records nothing but contingent details of the here and now—and so, unavoidably, the festival inverts the logic of its theme. “Human rights” posits an omnipresent, equally shared status whose dignity extends downward to the individual. The selections in the festival present granular cases, from which you’re expected to extrapolate upward to a generalized outrage.
In this sense, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival tests the limits of both authority and documentary filmmaking. Of these tests, only the first are explicit. Subject matter reigns supreme—and given its force, a viewer who instead chooses to foreground style may justifiably be considered a fool. For this reason, the organizers of this year’s festival did well to make Erika Cohn’s Belly of the Beast the opening night feature, because of what it reports about the widespread, programmatic sterilization of Black and brown women in California’s prison system. I, on the other hand, would arguably be wrong were I to mention the kitschy functionalism of Cohn’s filmmaking. Enough to say that she tells the story, and it’s an important one.
But then, if you don’t want to think about the nature and limits of documentary, what’s the point of organizing a film festival rather than, say, a festival of newspaper clippings? At its best, the Human Rights Watch event offers pictures that shake up your ideas about how right and wrong play out both in the world and on the screen.
Forced into the digital realm by the pandemic but still allied with Film at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center, the festival’s New York edition ran this year from June 11 through June 20. (Earlier screenings of the 2020 slate were held in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Toronto.) Here are notes on a few outstanding selections from the 11 features, which generally remain accessible on streaming platforms.
Down a Dark Stairwell, directed by Ursula Liang, spoke to the festival’s moment as no other film could, with its account of the aftermath of the fatal police shooting in 2014 of Akai Gurley, an unarmed 28-year-old Black man, in the Brooklyn public housing building where he lived. The film even provided as happy an ending as such a story can have: The officer who shot Gurley became the first New York City cop in more than a decade to be convicted of a police killing. Although the indictment and verdict were shockingly exceptional, no one should deny the importance to Gurley’s community of merely hearing the word “guilty.” In a devastating coda to the film, recorded at a gathering on the second anniversary of Gurley’s death, Liang shows how various people shared in the mourning by coming forward, in heartbreaking succession, to testify about the police killings of their friends and family members. 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
As many other good documentarians have, Liang stuck with her story for years, gaining the trust and cooperation of her subjects. Where she truly distinguished herself, though, was in breaking from the heroes-and-villains framework that is standard in Marvel Universe movies and human rights documentaries. Gurley’s mother, valiant activist aunt, domestic partner, daughter, and neighbors, as well as the friend who loved him so much that he broke down weeping on the street—they’re all present in the film. But so, too, are the people who called for the case against the cop to be dropped, insisting (in the words of their placards) that this was a matter of “One tragedy, two victims.” The parallel protesters—they were careful not to turn into counterdemonstrators—were Chinese Americans, who asked why the only New York City police officer being called to account for the deaths of Black citizens happened to be a rookie, working an overtime shift, named Peter Liang. Current Issue View our current issue
I don’t assume it was a foregone conclusion that Ursula Liang (no relation) would also be able to win the confidence of these Chinese American protesters. In the event, though, she got access to not one but two groups: middle-aged leaders of established Chinatown institutions and a separate set of young leftists who joined in the demonstrations by African Americans. Amid the clashing banners and slogans, it was possible to agree that African Americans and Chinese Americans have both suffered from white supremacy and shouldn’t behave as enemies—but that was easier said than done. In the crowd scenes around police headquarters in Manhattan and at Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza, you see the curbside assertion that Peter Liang was a scapegoat and the rebuttal that scapegoats don’t fire guns; the earnest plea that Chinese Americans have suffered, too, and understand the grievances of Black people, and the rejoinder that mainstream Chinatown had never stepped up to show it. (But then, say some of the witnesses in the film, until around this time the Chinese American community had seldom shown up on the street even for itself.) To the degree that Down a Dark Stairwell offers heroes, you might find them among the people who resist simplification—the Black activist who refuses to chant a slogan against “model minorities,” the Chinese American organizer who forcefully reminds his peers after Peter Liang receives a light sentence that a man is dead and “We’re not celebrating anything.”
And villains? The description hardly fits Peter Liang, with his deficit of swagger and his shock at having killed. And though there was wrongdoing in the circumstances that made the killing possible—the fact that Gurley was taking the stairs because the elevator never worked, the fact that Peter Liang couldn’t see in the stairwell because nobody changed the light bulbs—you’d have to impute these faults to indifference and incompetence, not malice. Ursula Liang finds no villains in this story, only people who are vilified, like the Chinese American leftists who were slammed by their own community.
Unfortunately, the American landscape is thickly dotted with genuine villains, too many of whom are in uniform. We sorely need exposés of their crimes, and we’ve been getting them from smartphones and dashboard cameras. But I think we can also use a documentary as unusually clear-sighted as Down a Dark Stairwell—one that reminds us, in the words of a young Black man shown toward the end, that the powerful want us at war with one another.
Moral and physical courage, endurance, intelligence, a capacity for self-sacrifice, and good judgment about when to deploy them—if these are the attributes of heroism, then David France’s Welcome to Chechnya is a documentary packed with heroes. You see them much of the time in sequences that were shot and edited like episodes of an action thriller, not for the sake of formal extravagance but because the characters were engaged in undercover operations with people’s lives at stake. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie as exciting and suspenseful, though as an honest work of documentary, it’s also humbling and dauntingly unresolved. Its heroes fall prey to exhaustion and sometimes abandon the field. The cause, at the end, has been advanced but perhaps won’t be won.
The theme of Welcome to Chechnya—LGBTQ activism in the face of mortal peril—is not new to David France, but the threat this film addresses demanded that he work in an entirely new way. In How to Survive a Plague (2012) and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017), France chronicled chapters of queer history in the United States, relying to a large extent on astonishing montages of archival material. This time he had to create the archive himself, at personal risk, as he pursued a story he learned from a 2017 New Yorker article by Masha Gessen: the campaign by the Chechen government, with Moscow’s compliance, to purge queer people from this corner of Russia by means of round-ups, torture, and murder. It’s no use appealing to the authorities for protection and justice; the authorities are the killers. The only way to save lives is to spirit people out of the country, using the support of an international network of LGBTQ organizations and skills that the local activists had to develop from scratch: operating safe houses, conducting covert transport missions, negotiating behind the scenes for visas and asylum.
Studio-shot interviews with two of the principal rescuers—David Isteev of the Russian LGBT Network and Olga Baranova of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives—alternate with direct-cinema scenes in the safe houses, where life can sometimes be mundane and at other times touching or harrowing. And then there are the clandestine images of transports in progress, shot on the fly by Askold Kurov with a tourist-grade video camera (battered to make it look harmlessly authentic) and a cellphone. Two of these operations frame the narrative of Welcome to Chechnya: the exfiltration of a 21-year-old woman with the pseudonym Anya, whose uncle learned she is lesbian and threatened to expose her if she didn’t have sex with him, and a 30-year-old man called Grisha, who was freed from prison and torture because he isn’t Chechen (he’d been arrested while in Grozny for work) but who, along with his lover and family, is being pursued by Chechen agents to make sure he doesn’t talk.
France does more to protect his subjects’ identities than give them false names. Through an extraordinary use of digital imaging, he also gives them different faces. A title at the start alerts you to this device. Then, because the technology is so persuasive, you forget about it—until a turning point, late in the film, when France without warning unmasks a character who has made the almost impossibly brave decision to file an official complaint. Political act and filmmaking method unite in a single moment to create the most stunning coming out I’ve ever witnessed.
It’s as transporting as any scene you would watch in a summer blockbuster, if any were being screened. But the point is it’s not likely to happen again. One person managed to step forward. The rest remain in hiding.
The facial recognition technology and machine learning that made possible the wondrous digital masks in Welcome to Chechnya come in for leery sidelong glances in Shalini Kantayya’s Coded Bias, a fine example of the globe-trotting, relay-team style of issue-based documentaries.
Leading a squad of expert commentators and carrying the baton in the final lap is Joy Buolamwini, a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab. A thoroughly engaging movie character—young, bright, and breezy—she has put together a nerdy cool-girl style, featuring earrings that spell “Wakanda” and her own superhero identity as founder of the Algorithm Justice League. The attitude is unpretentious, the purpose deeply serious.
While working at MIT on a digital alias project, Buolamwini stumbled on a troubling fault in her program’s data set. The software had been fed examples of mostly white faces. It would not recognize her features as a face unless she put on a white mask. From this seemingly small glitch, she deduced a very large problem: Social prejudices are being built into algorithms of every kind, from the ones that target you with online ads, give you a credit score, or decide whether you’re an effective classroom teacher to the video surveillance programs used to tag you as having the face of a terrorist. A relatively small population of mostly white, male techies builds the data sets for all these algorithms. The result, as one of Buolamwini’s interlocutors says, is that “racism is being mechanized.”
With that as the premise, Coded Bias takes off to Brooklyn, London, Cape Town, Houston, and Washington, following other insurgent tech experts to their conferences, book-signing events, and street actions and spending maybe a little too much time watching their wheelie suitcases glide through airports. The argument occasionally wanders as much as the itinerary, to the point of running counter to Buolamwini’s mission. If you’re worried that police surveillance is a threat, why labor to correct the software and help it recognize you?
But in the end, as if with a ding, Coded Bias scores a match between problem and analysis. We are allowing the Silicon Valley class to feed garbage into machine learning systems, and guess what? Garbage is coming out.


thenation--2020-07-16--Anti-Semitic Comments by Athletes Demand a Better Response

I ’ ve waited a week to write about this , a lifetime in our sports-hot-take universe .
But I wanted my feelings as a Jewish writer to settle , in order to achieve some kind of clarity amid an altogether ugly situation .
I ’ m speaking about the anti-Semitic post by the Philadelphia Eagles ’ DeSean Jackson and the defense of DeSean Jackson by former NBA player and now anti-racist protest leader Stephen Jackson .
DeSean Jackson posted a fake quote incorrectly attributed to Adolf Hitler stating that white Jews “ will blackmail America .
[ They ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world domination won ’ t work if the Negroes know who they were.
” DeSean Jackson has since been suspended from his team , has apologized numerous times , and is even planning a trip to Auschwitz to learn more about the issue .
Teammates and other athletes were at first very quiet in their responses , with the notable exception of Turkish basketball player Enes Kanter , who called for people to “ stand against all kinds of discrimination.
” Then the quiet was broken by Stephen Jackson , who defended DeSean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Stephen Jackson added , “ You know who the Rothschilds are ?
They own all the banks… .
I haven ’ t said one thing that ’ s untrue yet.
” Is Dan Snyder Really Changing the Washington Team ’ s Name ?
Athletes Are Taking Their Solidarity to the Streets This was so disheartening .
Stephen Jackson has been a leader in the struggle since George Floyd ’ s murder .
He and Floyd were close friends .
I didn ’ t want Stephen Jackson to say these things .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the response would be nothing constructive .
The silence from some quarters and then the unprincipled outrage from others was both predictable and depressing .
To be clear , anti-Semitism has no place in any movement for liberation .
It ’ s “ the socialism of fools , ” and has been so for centuries .
Used effectively by people ranging from the czars of feudal Russia to Henry Ford to Donald Trump and the modern right wing , with its incoherent ramblings about “ New York values ” and George Soros @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to divide and conquer movements as well as to divert focus from the crimes of the rich and powerful .
It was disheartening to see so few people in the struggle condemn anti-Semitism as a point of principle .
These comments , coupled with recent posts by celebrity Nick Cannon , led Kareem Abdul Jabbar to write a column decrying the apathy in the face of these comments called , “ Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood ?
” And yet , given the tenor of the media response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s also understandable why they chose to not pile on .
Right-wing sports pundits—a growing industry rooted in white grievance and poor writing—savaged them .
Commentators who criticized NASCAR for taking down the Confederate flag and the Washington football team for saying that it would change its racist name all of a sudden had all kinds of energy to—for the first time in their lives—condemn anti-Semitism .
( Forgive me if I don ’ t want to link or give free publicity to their racist-outrage porn . )
In the process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement for racial equity .
The Malcolm Jenkins example is constructive .
The Eagle who has for years been politically active against our racist system of criminal justice stepped into the breach and said : Of course , Fox News dug into their faux outrage toolbox and published , “ Saints ’ Malcolm Jenkins calls DeSean Jackson ’ s anti-Semitic posts ‘ a distraction ’ .
” Yes , the racist network of Tucker Carlson took Jenkins ’ s words out of context in an absurd act of sanctimony .
I would want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family who lost people in the Holocaust , anytime I see anti-Semitism I ’ m deeply distressed .
But I also know who my enemies are , and it isn ’ t the Black people who seem to always be singled out for anti-Semitism .
We never saw this volcanic energy when someone brought a swastika to a Bernie Sanders rally or when Representative Matt Gaetz brought a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union address or when Donald Trump praises preachers like Robert Jeffress and John Hagee who have damned Jews @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fan of the Rothschild theory ) .
The outrage machine is always focused on Black people , particularly on whoever knows someone who knows someone who met with Louis Farrakhan .
This entire imbroglio also raises the question of why people turn to conspiracy theories in the first place .
This is something that journalists have the obligation to explore , not merely condemn .
In a country that is as systematically racist , unequal , and barbaric as the United States—not just in the Trump era , but for generations—people may have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forces that wield enormous power , that are both hidden and that wreak havoc on their communities .
Why wouldn ’ t people seek theories to explain their own oppression ?
Where I Live , Hostility Toward Black Lives Matter Is Often Indirect Tear Down the Monuments , Bring Our Cities to Life More in this series The grasping at these theories comes out of frustration that obvious human demands—like having a police force that doesn ’ t kill Black men and women with impunity—are stymied time and again .
It arises from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a combination of bigotry and voter suppression , continue their grip on power despite representing a minority of the country .
This frustration leads people to seek explanations for their apparent powerlessness .
It should be the aim of any left , and any movement worth its salt , to pose alternative solutions when bigotry is put forward as an answer for what ails us .
This is not just about anti-Semitism but also about when the Chinese are blamed for Trump ’ s deadly management of the pandemic , or the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s all the same playbook that keeps us from coming together and demanding the change we deserve .
We should be patient to explain what anti-Semitism is , what purpose it serves in such a profoundly unequal and oppressive society , who actually perpetuates it ( hint : It ’ s not Black people ) , and why it is wrong and must be vociferously resisted .
I still think DeSean and Stephen Jackson have something to offer this struggle .
We should have no tolerance for any bigotry in our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believe in exiling people for comments , as if they don ’ t have the capacity to learn or change .
I don ’ t believe , as Michael Wilbon said , that Stephen Jackson now “ has no credibility ” as a “ voice for equality.
” Movements are not just how we change the world .
They are how we change ourselves .
Bystanders become participants .
Participants become leaders .
Backward ideas need to be challenged .
And people ’ s ideas change in the struggle .
This is our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That hope won ’ t be found in the writings of cowards and hypocrites ready to pounce on athletes with the aim of burning this movement to the ground and then salting the earth .

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I’ve waited a week to write about this, a lifetime in our sports-hot-take universe. But I wanted my feelings as a Jewish writer to settle, in order to achieve some kind of clarity amid an altogether ugly situation.
I’m speaking about the anti-Semitic post by the Philadelphia Eagles’ DeSean Jackson and the defense of DeSean Jackson by former NBA player and now anti-racist protest leader Stephen Jackson. DeSean Jackson posted a fake quote incorrectly attributed to Adolf Hitler stating that white Jews “will blackmail America. [They] will extort America, their plan for world domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were.”
DeSean Jackson has since been suspended from his team, has apologized numerous times, and is even planning a trip to Auschwitz to learn more about the issue. Teammates and other athletes were at first very quiet in their responses, with the notable exception of Turkish basketball player Enes Kanter, who called for people to “stand against all kinds of discrimination.”
Then the quiet was broken by Stephen Jackson, who defended DeSean Jackson by posting:
He was trying to educate himself, educate people and he’s speaking the truth. Right? He’s speaking the truth. You know he don’t hate nobody, but he’s speaking the truth, the facts that he know and try to educate others.
The next day, Stephen Jackson added, “You know who the Rothschilds are? They own all the banks…. I haven’t said one thing that’s untrue yet.” More From Dave Zirin “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash August 15, 2023 Why the Right Wanted the USWNT to Lose August 10, 2023 Carli Lloyd’s Attacks on the USWNT Are Personal—and Political August 1, 2023
This was so disheartening. Stephen Jackson has been a leader in the struggle since George Floyd’s murder. He and Floyd were close friends. I didn’t want Stephen Jackson to say these things. It cut deeply, partly because I knew that the response would be nothing constructive.
The silence from some quarters and then the unprincipled outrage from others was both predictable and depressing. To be clear, anti-Semitism has no place in any movement for liberation. It’s “the socialism of fools,” and has been so for centuries. Used effectively by people ranging from the czars of feudal Russia to Henry Ford to Donald Trump and the modern right wing, with its incoherent ramblings about “New York values” and George Soros, anti-Semitic tropes are a tired way to divide and conquer movements as well as to divert focus from the crimes of the rich and powerful. 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
It was disheartening to see so few people in the struggle condemn anti-Semitism as a point of principle. These comments, coupled with recent posts by celebrity Nick Cannon, led Kareem Abdul Jabbar to write a column decrying the apathy in the face of these comments called, “Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood?”
And yet, given the tenor of the media response to both DeSean and Stephen Jackson, it’s also understandable why they chose to not pile on. Right-wing sports pundits—a growing industry rooted in white grievance and poor writing—savaged them. Commentators who criticized NASCAR for taking down the Confederate flag and the Washington football team for saying that it would change its racist name all of a sudden had all kinds of energy to—for the first time in their lives—condemn anti-Semitism. (Forgive me if I don’t want to link or give free publicity to their racist-outrage porn.) In the process, they trashed and dismissed an entire movement for racial equity.
The Malcolm Jenkins example is constructive. The Eagle who has for years been politically active against our racist system of criminal justice stepped into the breach and said:
All of this back and forth that’s going on right now is a distraction. Comments were made, and they were wrong. Allow those who were impacted by it to voice their grievances. But we’ve got to stay focused. Because Breonna Taylor’s killers are still not arrested. We’re still fighting for justice. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And this ain’t it. Stay focused.
Of course, Fox News dug into their faux outrage toolbox and published, “Saints’ Malcolm Jenkins calls DeSean Jackson’s anti-Semitic posts ‘a distraction’.” Yes, the racist network of Tucker Carlson took Jenkins’s words out of context in an absurd act of sanctimony.
I would want to say that as part of a family who lost people in the Holocaust, anytime I see anti-Semitism I’m deeply distressed. But I also know who my enemies are, and it isn’t the Black people who seem to always be singled out for anti-Semitism. We never saw this volcanic energy when someone brought a swastika to a Bernie Sanders rally or when Representative Matt Gaetz brought a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union address or when Donald Trump praises preachers like Robert Jeffress and John Hagee who have damned Jews to hell (Hagee is a particular fan of the Rothschild theory). The outrage machine is always focused on Black people, particularly on whoever knows someone who knows someone who met with Louis Farrakhan.
This entire imbroglio also raises the question of why people turn to conspiracy theories in the first place. This is something that journalists have the obligation to explore, not merely condemn. In a country that is as systematically racist, unequal, and barbaric as the United States—not just in the Trump era, but for generations—people may have reason to feel like there are hidden forces that wield enormous power, that are both hidden and that wreak havoc on their communities. Why wouldn’t people seek theories to explain their own oppression? Black Lives Matter Sinead O'Connor Began Singing Her Black Lives Matter Anthem in 1990 John Nichols This New Magazine Aims to Be a Home for the Black Left Dani McClain It’s Time to End the Outrageous Militarization of America’s Police Force Katrina vanden Heuvel
The grasping at these theories comes out of frustration that obvious human demands—like having a police force that doesn’t kill Black men and women with impunity—are stymied time and again. It arises from the searing frustration that racist politicians, through a combination of bigotry and voter suppression, continue their grip on power despite representing a minority of the country. This frustration leads people to seek explanations for their apparent powerlessness.
It should be the aim of any left, and any movement worth its salt, to pose alternative solutions when bigotry is put forward as an answer for what ails us. This is not just about anti-Semitism but also about when the Chinese are blamed for Trump’s deadly management of the pandemic, or the demonization of immigrants for stealing jobs. It’s all the same playbook that keeps us from coming together and demanding the change we deserve.
We should be patient to explain what anti-Semitism is, what purpose it serves in such a profoundly unequal and oppressive society, who actually perpetuates it (hint: It’s not Black people), and why it is wrong and must be vociferously resisted.
I still think DeSean and Stephen Jackson have something to offer this struggle. We should have no tolerance for any bigotry in our movements, but I don’t believe in exiling people for comments, as if they don’t have the capacity to learn or change. I don’t believe, as Michael Wilbon said, that Stephen Jackson now “has no credibility” as a “voice for equality.” Movements are not just how we change the world. They are how we change ourselves. Bystanders become participants. Participants become leaders. Backward ideas need to be challenged. And people’s ideas change in the struggle. This is our best hope for a better tomorrow. That hope won’t be found in the writings of cowards and hypocrites ready to pounce on athletes with the aim of burning this movement to the ground and then salting the earth.


thenation--2020-07-16--Austin, Texas, Just Voted to End the Drug War

“ On day one , we will end the prosecution of low-level drug offenses here in Travis County , ” announced district attorney candidate José Garza , at a February forum on criminal justice reform in Austin .
“ We will end the prosecution of possession and sale offenses of a gram or less.
” That may have sounded to some like a bold statement , but Garza argued it was the rational response to a “ broken system.
” On Tuesday night , voters in the state capital of Texas and the surrounding county agreed .
Garza , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activist , and executive director of the Texas Workers Defense Project–Proyecto Defensa Laboral , swept to victory over Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore in a closely watched Democratic primary runoff election .
And the successful challenger signaled that he is ready to act .
“ We know that 60-percent of all people arrested and charged with drug possession through traffic stops are people of color , ” he told reporters .
“ So , it is time to end the war on drugs in this community to begin to unwind the racial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Garza won 68 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Moore , who , as The Austin Chronicle noted earlier this year , had been “ under fire on many fronts for her perceived insufficient commitment to true justice , particularly for women survivors of sexual assault.
” The Chronicle endorsed Garza as a candidate who would bring to the office “ a demonstrable commitment to equity.
” Ayanna Pressley to Betsy DeVos : ‘ I Wouldn ’ t Trust You to Care for a House Plant Let Alone My Child ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Why Won ’ t Democrats Just Come Out for Legalizing Marijuana ?
With the party nomination secured in an overwhelmingly Democratic county , Garza is positioned to further demonstrate that commitment as one of the most high-profile members of the emerging class of county prosecutors who are prepared to upend old ways of thinking about law enforcement and the achievement of justice .
He ’ ll join Chicago ’ s Kim Foxx , Philadelphia ’ s Larry Krasner , and San Francisco ’ s Chesa Boudin as part of a movement to transform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address public safety issues .
“ The movement is growing !
” observed Boudin , as he celebrated the victory by Garza , who ran with strong support from unions , Austin Democratic Socialists of America , the Working Families Party , and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren .
The Texan summed up the thinking of the movement during the course of a campaign in which he told voters , “ Our system doesn ’ t have to be broken .
We have the power to fix this .
And we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it be fixed.
” What distinguished Garza is his determination to move quickly and decisively to take on the gravest injustices .
Take his response to questions about capital punishment .
“ The Death Penalty is morally and ethically wrong , does not serve as a deterrent , has proven to be applied arbitrarily at best , and comes at tremendous financial costs , ” the candidate ’ s platform states .
“ As District Attorney , I will not seek a death sentence .
I will also review all post-conviction death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no forensic , evidentiary , or legal issues that should cause the conviction to be called into question.
” Or his response to questions about police violence .
“ Prosecutors must play a key role in holding police accountable and ensuring that officers who commit misconduct are not allowed to continuously harm communities , ” asserts Garza , who began his list of commitments on the issue by promising , “ We will never take donations from police organizations .
We deserve a DA unbought by those they are responsible for holding accountable.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecuting the powerful—including corporate CEOS .
“ No one should be above the law , no matter how rich they are or just because of their job title .
We will use our resources to investigate and prosecute the powerful actors in Travis County who have harmed the public—landlords who exploit immigrants , police officers accused of misconduct , and corporate heads who take money from the poor will no longer have a free pass in Travis County , ” reads his platform .
“ Instead , the Travis County District Attorney Office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have abused their positions.
” Garza ’ s vision of the DA ’ s office as a platform for pursuing economic , social , and racial justice was especially profound when it came to stopping the damage done by a war on drugs that for too long has been facilitated by Democratic and Republican prosecutors .
In a set of commitments for how he would run the DA ’ s office in a county where the population is nearing 1.3 million , Garza explained : The revolving door of justice for people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of time , money , and prosecution resources .
The latest medical research on addiction suggests that treating drug use as a public health issue , as opposed to a criminal justice issue , is a more effective approach to reducing harm and promoting public safety .
Nevertheless , our jails and prisons are filled with people who have done nothing more than suffer from addiction .
As a result , this office will seek to pursue policies that reduce the number of people in jails and prisons for drug-related offenses .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ injection sites and harm reduction programs are key to keeping our most vulnerable alive .
Unless there is evidence that a person poses a danger to the community , I will not prosecute sale or possession of a gram or less of narcotics .
For possession or sale of larger amounts of narcotics , my office will consider all appropriate diversion programs so that person may avoid a conviction if they are not a danger to the community .
For decades , politicians of both parties and their amen corners in the media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make communities safe .
Elected prosecutors mounted reelection campaigns that highlighted their conviction rates and their willingness to pursue the harshest sentences .
Audia Jones Wants to Redefine Criminal Justice in Texas The San Francisco Establishment Is Desperate to Stop Chesa Boudin More in this series Even as evidence of policing abuses , prosecutorial misconduct , systemic racism , and the absolute failure of mass incarceration mounted , too many prosecutors in too many places responded with incremental reforms that changed little .
Too many prosecutors refused to change course and recognize that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows there is something wrong with a system in which “ the majority of our resources are spent locking-up people struggling with substance abuse and our DA ’ s office has not reduced the number of people we send to prison.
” And he knows there are smart alternatives .
“ The research is clear : prisons do not reduce recidivism , ” says the candidate Travis County voters has just nominated .
“ In fact , rehabilitation programs run outside of prisons consistently outperform those run in prison when it comes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @

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“On day one, we will end the prosecution of low-level drug offenses here in Travis County,” announced district attorney candidate José Garza, at a February forum on criminal justice reform in Austin. “We will end the prosecution of possession and sale offenses of a gram or less.”
That may have sounded to some like a bold statement, but Garza argued it was the rational response to a “broken system.”
On Tuesday night, voters in the state capital of Texas and the surrounding county agreed. Garza, a former federal public defender, immigrant rights activist, and executive director of the Texas Workers Defense Project–Proyecto Defensa Laboral, swept to victory over Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore in a closely watched Democratic primary runoff election. And the successful challenger signaled that he is ready to act. “We know that 60-percent of all people arrested and charged with drug possession through traffic stops are people of color,” he told reporters. “So, it is time to end the war on drugs in this community to begin to unwind the racial disparities in our criminal justice system.”
Garza won 68 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Moore, who, as The Austin Chronicle noted earlier this year, had been “under fire on many fronts for her perceived insufficient commitment to true justice, particularly for women survivors of sexual assault.” The Chronicle endorsed Garza as a candidate who would bring to the office “a demonstrable commitment to equity.” More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
With the party nomination secured in an overwhelmingly Democratic county, Garza is positioned to further demonstrate that commitment as one of the most high-profile members of the emerging class of county prosecutors who are prepared to upend old ways of thinking about law enforcement and the achievement of justice. He’ll join Chicago’s Kim Foxx, Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin as part of a movement to transform how cities and countries across the country address public safety issues. “The movement is growing!” observed Boudin, as he celebrated the victory by Garza, who ran with strong support from unions, Austin Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. 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 Texan summed up the thinking of the movement during the course of a campaign in which he told voters, “Our system doesn’t have to be broken. We have the power to fix this. And we have a right and a responsibility to demand that it be fixed.”
What distinguished Garza is his determination to move quickly and decisively to take on the gravest injustices. Current Issue View our current issue
Take his response to questions about capital punishment. “The Death Penalty is morally and ethically wrong, does not serve as a deterrent, has proven to be applied arbitrarily at best, and comes at tremendous financial costs,” the candidate’s platform states. “As District Attorney, I will not seek a death sentence. I will also review all post-conviction death penalty cases to ensure that there are no forensic, evidentiary, or legal issues that should cause the conviction to be called into question.”
Or his response to questions about police violence. “Prosecutors must play a key role in holding police accountable and ensuring that officers who commit misconduct are not allowed to continuously harm communities,” asserts Garza, who began his list of commitments on the issue by promising, “We will never take donations from police organizations. We deserve a DA unbought by those they are responsible for holding accountable.”
Or his response to questions about prosecuting the powerful—including corporate CEOS. “No one should be above the law, no matter how rich they are or just because of their job title. We will use our resources to investigate and prosecute the powerful actors in Travis County who have harmed the public—landlords who exploit immigrants, police officers accused of misconduct, and corporate heads who take money from the poor will no longer have a free pass in Travis County,” reads his platform. “Instead, the Travis County District Attorney Office will actively investigate and prosecute powerful actors who have abused their positions.”
Garza’s vision of the DA’s office as a platform for pursuing economic, social, and racial justice was especially profound when it came to stopping the damage done by a war on drugs that for too long has been facilitated by Democratic and Republican prosecutors.
In a set of commitments for how he would run the DA’s office in a county where the population is nearing 1.3 million, Garza explained:
The revolving door of justice for people with substance abuse issues is a waste of time, money, and prosecution resources. The latest medical research on addiction suggests that treating drug use as a public health issue, as opposed to a criminal justice issue, is a more effective approach to reducing harm and promoting public safety. Nevertheless, our jails and prisons are filled with people who have done nothing more than suffer from addiction. As a result, this office will seek to pursue policies that reduce the number of people in jails and prisons for drug-related offenses. We also have a responsibility to prevent deaths—safe injection sites and harm reduction programs are key to keeping our most vulnerable alive. Unless there is evidence that a person poses a danger to the community, I will not prosecute sale or possession of a gram or less of narcotics. For possession or sale of larger amounts of narcotics, my office will consider all appropriate diversion programs so that person may avoid a conviction if they are not a danger to the community.
For decades, politicians of both parties and their amen corners in the media fostered the fantasy that filling prisons would make communities safe. Elected prosecutors mounted reelection campaigns that highlighted their conviction rates and their willingness to pursue the harshest sentences. Prosecutors Trump Might Face Criminal Charges—But He’s Unlikely to Face Justice Elie Mystal Larry Krasner on What Will Actually Reduce Crime Laura Flanders Can a District Attorney Dismantle Mass Incarceration and Fight for Gender Justice? Piper French
Even as evidence of policing abuses, prosecutorial misconduct, systemic racism, and the absolute failure of mass incarceration mounted, too many prosecutors in too many places responded with incremental reforms that changed little.
Too many prosecutors refused to change course and recognize that the system is not working.
Garza knows there is something wrong with a system in which “the majority of our resources are spent locking-up people struggling with substance abuse and our DA’s office has not reduced the number of people we send to prison.” And he knows there are smart alternatives. “The research is clear: prisons do not reduce recidivism,” says the candidate Travis County voters has just nominated. “In fact, rehabilitation programs run outside of prisons consistently outperform those run in prison when it comes to keeping people out of jail.”