thenation--2020-12-24--This California Law Offers Biden a Tool in the Fight for Environmental Justice

Dillon Delvo never set out to become an environmental justice crusader .
But as a native resident of Stockton , Calif. , the second-generation Filipino American has long been forced to breathe some of the nation ’ s worst pollution .
Crisscrossed by five freeways and home to a bustling seaport and the associated network of trucks , cars , railways , and ships , Stockton is burdened by California ’ s highest asthma rate .
It is also the nation ’ s most racially diverse city , with ample Black , Hispanic , Asian American , and white populations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says that George Floyd ’ s killing led the devastating links between these main elements—pollution , health , and race—to gel in his mind .
“ We know that it ’ s not just crooked cops who aren ’ t letting our communities breathe , ” Delvo said .
And so , joining a flock of concerned citizens and environmental justice advocates in similarly burdened communities across the Golden State , the former youth pastor has answered the call issued by a landmark environmental justice law the state passed in 2017 .
Called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community-driven system for addressing air pollution hot spots in disadvantaged locales .
Now , with President-elect Joe Biden tapping Michael Regan of North Carolina for his Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) head , academics argue that California ’ s experience with AB 617 carries valuable lessons for how the incoming administration could make good on Biden ’ s pledge to prioritize environmental justice .
As 2020 Ends , It ’ s Time for News Outlets to Declare a ‘ Climate Emergency ’ Why Democrats Lose on Social Media While Republicans Lie and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US in the Paris Agreement , Humanity Faces Climate ‘ Suicide ’ More in this series “ One of the geniuses of the American democracy is that laypeople at the community level can have a real and meaningful impact , ” says David Wooley , a public policy professor at the University of California–Berkeley , who co-authored a new Brookings Institution study arguing that California ’ s experience with AB 617 could help guide the EPA in leveraging the 1970 Clean Air Act to fight for racial justice .
“ If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then that ’ s a failure of democracy.
” Regan , who has served as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality since January 2017 , has a “ mixed record on environmental justice issues , ” says Lisa Ramsden , a senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace .
AB 617 , which is overseen by the state ’ s environmental regulator , the California Air Resources Board ( CARB ) , has established community-based committees meant to evaluate and remediate local air pollution hot spots .
In a departure from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just the usual roster of representatives from industry , labor unions , local government , and regulatory agencies .
They must also bring to the table the local residents suffering from the very pollution this Californian experiment in democracy is charged with mitigating .
Even so , some environmental justice advocates in California maintain that AB 617 is failing to live up to its hype and is no cause for celebration or emulation .
AB 617 was enacted three years ago as a crucial compromise—or pacifying balm .
It coaxed just enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state ’ s widely touted—and according to critics , woefully ineffectual—cap-and-trade program .
The legislature offered the law as a response to environmental justice advocates ’ intense opposition to the cap and trade renewal and their longstanding concerns that relying on market forces to curb the greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change short-changes the goal of reducing the co-emitted air toxins that poison local residents .
And so AB 617 seeks to elevate the voices of those very residents in an effort to tackle air pollution hot spots directly .
Such efforts are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as California ’ s elevated fuel-emissions standard and the rule CARB passed in June requiring truck makers to ratchet up zero-emissions vehicle sales .
The need for progress is dire .
California cities comprise the majority of the American Lung Association ’ s trio of top 10 lists of those most polluted by ozone , year-round particle pollution , and short-term particle pollution , respectively .
The bulk of the state ’ s air pollution comes from mobile sources , including diesel trucks , freeway traffic , and freight ships and trains .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and refining , power generation , manufacturing , and pesticides .
Asthma , cardiovascular disease , and various cancers , especially lung cancer , are among the devastating collateral damage of what ’ s known as particulate matter—microscopic air pollutants that can wreak havoc by lodging in the lungs and entering the bloodstream .
Additional major threats to health include gasses such as nitrogen oxides , ozone , sulfur dioxide , and carbon monoxide .
The devastating impacts of such poisons have only been compounded by the escalating wildfire crisis , and now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risks to lungs made vulnerable by air pollution .
Dillon Delvo knows the pain of pollution ’ s devastation all too well .
In 2018 , Dr .
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon , a dear friend and fellow native Stocktonian with whom he cofounded the local nonprofit Little Manilla Rising , died suddenly following an asthma attack .
She was 46 .
AB 617 , the Brookings authors argue , could help address “ unfinished business of the Clean Air Act.
” “ There is no reason why a new federal administration could not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ persistent inequity in air pollution exposure for low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in the US , ” Wooley says .
How Biden Could Use the Presidential Bully Pulpit to Drive Climate Action He argues that under the legislation ’ s 1990 amendments , the EPA could create financial incentives to encourage states to follow California ’ s lead by cultivating their own grassroots-based systems for targeting local air pollution .
“ The EPA , ” Wooley says , “ could also tighten national ambient air quality and toxics control technology standards and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It could use its broad grant-making and air quality monitoring authority powers to support enhanced local air quality monitoring , community engagement , and citizen-monitoring science.
” Data from such stepped-up monitoring could in turn trigger regulatory actions to address toxic air , he argues .
The EPA ’ s current network of 3,900 air monitoring devices is placed far too sparsely to detect with the necessary granularity the extreme variability of “ criteria ” air pollutants within any particular region .
A recent Reuters investigation found that the monitors in this woefully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and often yield inaccurate reads .
California budgeted $ 495 million for AB 617 ’ s first two years and $ 235 million for the current fiscal year , drawing funds from the cap-and-trade auctions .
Some of this money supports improving the accuracy of air-monitoring data , which in turn can guide the mitigation efforts that receive the majority of the budget .
“ I think 617 can fit into Biden ’ s environmental justice plan and serve as a model for when they ’ re trying to relocalize air quality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a human ecologist at the University of California–Davis .
London is the author of a rigorous analysis that CARB published in June of AB 617 ’ s budding community-engagement process .
While he remains optimistic about the law , he found that local air districts have proved resistant to “ recognizing and responding to real power in the community ” and that the resource-intensive process of the legislation ’ s rollout has spawned both “ collaboration and conflict ” between groups unused to working together .
Both the Brookings paper and London ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still out as to whether AB 617 will succeed .
It ’ s become painfully clear , for example , that a steering committee ’ s capacity to draft and pass a promising mitigation plan for air pollution hot spots can be highly dependent on the preexistence of savvy local environmental justice groups .
While many environmental justice advocates remain at least cautiously optimistic about AB 617 ’ s eventual impacts , a concerted faction remains deeply unimpressed with and steadfastly opposed to a law they continue to resent for , as they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cap-and-trade .
“ AB 617 was a bargain that EJ communities didn ’ t ask for and we didn ’ t end up supporting , ” says Paulina Torres , a staff attorney at the Center on Race , Poverty and the Environment in Delano .
Critics of AB 617 have expressed concerns that the emergent air pollution reduction plans largely lack teeth , relying too much on financial incentives to prompt change and not enough on forceful regulatory power .
Environmental justice advocates have also called out apparent conflicts of interest among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We would be hoodwinking the public by characterizing AB 617 as a successful program , ” says Gladys Limon , executive director of California Environmental Justice Alliance .
“ It is not , and lifting it as a model is dangerous to meaningful efforts to improve the health and safety of communities suffering and dying from air pollution .
Given the change in the presidential administration , we hope that it can learn from the failures and flaws of this program.
” 133.9 Million Americans Live in Areas With Unhealthy Levels of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the retiring chair of CARB has overseen AB 617 ’ s rollout , was recently passed over as Biden ’ s EPA pick .
Environmental justice activists had campaigned mightily against her because of her place at the helm of California ’ s cap-and-trade program .
While some environmental justice advocates interviewed complained bitterly about CARB ’ s handling of AB 617 , accusing the agency of being dictatorial and inflexible during the rollout , others were more sanguine .
“ CARB has been very receptive to the criticism , ” says David @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego .
According to agency spokesperson Stanley Young , CARB has been looking at the litany of critiques of AB 617 ’ s rollout as it revises the blueprints that guide steering committees in following the law .
“ Unfortunately , AB 617 did not authorize or fund quick fixes , ” CARB ’ s vice chair , Sandra Berg , wrote in an e-mail .
She stressed , however , that “ as we knit together additional pollution reduction solutions , we must see a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ What is clear , ” Berg continued , “ is that AB 617 has changed how we listen , learn , and participate .
Along with expanding community and local business participation at the table , we are committed to making meaningful reductions.
” The Biden administration is dawning at a time of historic political , economic , and public health uncertainty , with climate change looming largest as an existential threat .
Facing human activity ’ s toxic threat to his family ’ s simple ability to breathe , Dillon Delvo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he and his fellow AB 617 committee members achieve in clearing Stockton ’ s air may come too late to protect his three young daughters from lifelong damage to their lungs due to inhaling pollutants .
This worry is accentuated by the grief of losing his friend Dawn Mabalon to the asthma she developed as a Stockton teen .
“ I think about that 5-year-old girl that my friend was and how no one did anything for her , ” he reflects as he strives to ensure that AB 617 ’ s lofty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more dreams deferred for his community .
“ That ’ s when she needed the help .
”

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Dillon Delvo never set out to become an environmental justice crusader. But as a native resident of Stockton, Calif., the second-generation Filipino American has long been forced to breathe some of the nation’s worst pollution. Crisscrossed by five freeways and home to a bustling seaport and the associated network of trucks, cars, railways, and ships, Stockton is burdened by California’s highest asthma rate. It is also the nation’s most racially diverse city, with ample Black, Hispanic, Asian American, and white populations included among its 313,000 residents.
Delvo says that George Floyd’s killing led the devastating links between these main elements—pollution, health, and race—to gel in his mind.
“We know that it’s not just crooked cops who aren’t letting our communities breathe,” Delvo said. And so, joining a flock of concerned citizens and environmental justice advocates in similarly burdened communities across the Golden State, the former youth pastor has answered the call issued by a landmark environmental justice law the state passed in 2017. Called AB 617, the law demands a community-driven system for addressing air pollution hot spots in disadvantaged locales.
Now, with President-elect Joe Biden tapping Michael Regan of North Carolina for his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head, academics argue that California’s experience with AB 617 carries valuable lessons for how the incoming administration could make good on Biden’s pledge to prioritize environmental justice. Covering Climate Now How to Stop the Spread of Climate Disinformation Erika Seiber and Michael Khoo A Soundtrack for the Climate Emergency Mark Hertsgaard Can Gen Z Save the Midterms for Democrats? Mark Hertsgaard
“One of the geniuses of the American democracy is that laypeople at the community level can have a real and meaningful impact,” says David Wooley, a public policy professor at the University of California–Berkeley, who co-authored a new Brookings Institution study arguing that California’s experience with AB 617 could help guide the EPA in leveraging the 1970 Clean Air Act to fight for racial justice. “If you don’t have that community involvement, then that’s a failure of democracy.”
Regan, who has served as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality since January 2017, has a “mixed record on environmental justice issues,” says Lisa Ramsden, a senior climate campaigner for Greenpeace.
AB 617, which is overseen by the state’s environmental regulator, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), has established community-based committees meant to evaluate and remediate local air pollution hot spots. In a departure from nationwide practices, these committees must include not just the usual roster of representatives from industry, labor unions, local government, and regulatory agencies. They must also bring to the table the local residents suffering from the very pollution this Californian experiment in democracy is charged with mitigating. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Even so, some environmental justice advocates in California maintain that AB 617 is failing to live up to its hype and is no cause for celebration or emulation. Current Issue View our current issue
A Democratic Experiment
AB 617 was enacted three years ago as a crucial compromise—or pacifying balm. It coaxed just enough legislators to support the renewal of the state’s widely touted—and according to critics, woefully ineffectual—cap-and-trade program.
The legislature offered the law as a response to environmental justice advocates’ intense opposition to the cap and trade renewal and their longstanding concerns that relying on market forces to curb the greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change short-changes the goal of reducing the co-emitted air toxins that poison local residents.
And so AB 617 seeks to elevate the voices of those very residents in an effort to tackle air pollution hot spots directly. Such efforts are meant to complement statewide anti-pollution policies such as California’s elevated fuel-emissions standard and the rule CARB passed in June requiring truck makers to ratchet up zero-emissions vehicle sales.
The need for progress is dire. California cities comprise the majority of the American Lung Association’s trio of top 10 lists of those most polluted by ozone, year-round particle pollution, and short-term particle pollution, respectively.
The bulk of the state’s air pollution comes from mobile sources, including diesel trucks, freeway traffic, and freight ships and trains. Other culprits include oil and gas production and refining, power generation, manufacturing, and pesticides.
Asthma, cardiovascular disease, and various cancers, especially lung cancer, are among the devastating collateral damage of what’s known as particulate matter—microscopic air pollutants that can wreak havoc by lodging in the lungs and entering the bloodstream. Additional major threats to health include gasses such as nitrogen oxides, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
The devastating impacts of such poisons have only been compounded by the escalating wildfire crisis, and now Covid-19, which research suggests poses greater risks to lungs made vulnerable by air pollution.
Dillon Delvo knows the pain of pollution’s devastation all too well. In 2018, Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, a dear friend and fellow native Stocktonian with whom he cofounded the local nonprofit Little Manilla Rising, died suddenly following an asthma attack. She was 46.
Unfinished Business
AB 617, the Brookings authors argue, could help address “unfinished business of the Clean Air Act.”
“There is no reason why a new federal administration could not use existing law to begin to address persistent inequity in air pollution exposure for low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in the US,” Wooley says. Federal Help How Biden Could Use the Presidential Bully Pulpit to Drive Climate Action Jamie Henn
He argues that under the legislation’s 1990 amendments, the EPA could create financial incentives to encourage states to follow California’s lead by cultivating their own grassroots-based systems for targeting local air pollution.
“The EPA,” Wooley says, “could also tighten national ambient air quality and toxics control technology standards and revive its urban air toxics program. It could use its broad grant-making and air quality monitoring authority powers to support enhanced local air quality monitoring, community engagement, and citizen-monitoring science.”
Data from such stepped-up monitoring could in turn trigger regulatory actions to address toxic air, he argues.
The EPA’s current network of 3,900 air monitoring devices is placed far too sparsely to detect with the necessary granularity the extreme variability of “criteria” air pollutants within any particular region. A recent Reuters investigation found that the monitors in this woefully underfunded network are “falling into disrepair” and often yield inaccurate reads.
California budgeted $495 million for AB 617’s first two years and $235 million for the current fiscal year, drawing funds from the cap-and-trade auctions. Some of this money supports improving the accuracy of air-monitoring data, which in turn can guide the mitigation efforts that receive the majority of the budget.
“I think 617 can fit into Biden’s environmental justice plan and serve as a model for when they’re trying to relocalize air quality management,” says Jonathan London, a human ecologist at the University of California–Davis.
London is the author of a rigorous analysis that CARB published in June of AB 617’s budding community-engagement process. While he remains optimistic about the law, he found that local air districts have proved resistant to “recognizing and responding to real power in the community” and that the resource-intensive process of the legislation’s rollout has spawned both “collaboration and conflict” between groups unused to working together.
Environmental Justice Pushback
Both the Brookings paper and London’s report stress that the jury is still out as to whether AB 617 will succeed.
It’s become painfully clear, for example, that a steering committee’s capacity to draft and pass a promising mitigation plan for air pollution hot spots can be highly dependent on the preexistence of savvy local environmental justice groups.
While many environmental justice advocates remain at least cautiously optimistic about AB 617’s eventual impacts, a concerted faction remains deeply unimpressed with and steadfastly opposed to a law they continue to resent for, as they see it, justifying the continuation of cap-and-trade.
“AB 617 was a bargain that EJ communities didn’t ask for and we didn’t end up supporting,” says Paulina Torres, a staff attorney at the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment in Delano.
Critics of AB 617 have expressed concerns that the emergent air pollution reduction plans largely lack teeth, relying too much on financial incentives to prompt change and not enough on forceful regulatory power. Environmental justice advocates have also called out apparent conflicts of interest among industry representatives on the steering committees.
“We would be hoodwinking the public by characterizing AB 617 as a successful program,” says Gladys Limon, executive director of California Environmental Justice Alliance. “It is not, and lifting it as a model is dangerous to meaningful efforts to improve the health and safety of communities suffering and dying from air pollution. Given the change in the presidential administration, we hope that it can learn from the failures and flaws of this program.” Dirty Air 133.9 Million Americans Live in Areas With Unhealthy Levels of Air Pollution Michelle Chen
Mary Nichols, who as the retiring chair of CARB has overseen AB 617’s rollout, was recently passed over as Biden’s EPA pick. Environmental justice activists had campaigned mightily against her because of her place at the helm of California’s cap-and-trade program.
While some environmental justice advocates interviewed complained bitterly about CARB’s handling of AB 617, accusing the agency of being dictatorial and inflexible during the rollout, others were more sanguine.
“CARB has been very receptive to the criticism,” says David Flores, the air quality campaign director with the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego.
According to agency spokesperson Stanley Young, CARB has been looking at the litany of critiques of AB 617’s rollout as it revises the blueprints that guide steering committees in following the law.
“Unfortunately, AB 617 did not authorize or fund quick fixes,” CARB’s vice chair, Sandra Berg, wrote in an e-mail. She stressed, however, that “as we knit together additional pollution reduction solutions, we must see a measurable change in the next decade.”
“What is clear,” Berg continued, “is that AB 617 has changed how we listen, learn, and participate. Along with expanding community and local business participation at the table, we are committed to making meaningful reductions.”
Fighting Against the Clock
The Biden administration is dawning at a time of historic political, economic, and public health uncertainty, with climate change looming largest as an existential threat.
Facing human activity’s toxic threat to his family’s simple ability to breathe, Dillon Delvo grapples with the awareness that any success he and his fellow AB 617 committee members achieve in clearing Stockton’s air may come too late to protect his three young daughters from lifelong damage to their lungs due to inhaling pollutants.
This worry is accentuated by the grief of losing his friend Dawn Mabalon to the asthma she developed as a Stockton teen.
“I think about that 5-year-old girl that my friend was and how no one did anything for her,” he reflects as he strives to ensure that AB 617’s lofty promises won’t amount to yet more dreams deferred for his community.
“That’s when she needed the help.”


thenation--2020-12-24--Modern Hollywood Discovers Its Jazz ‘Soul’

The very first seconds of Pixar ’ s new feature Soul , the cue card of the Disney castle , offers some of the best jazz ever heard in a Hollywood movie .
The famous theme “ When You Wish Upon a Star , ” is blared out in a raggedy fashion by a brass band , replete with noisy trumpets , squalling saxophones , and tailgate trombone .
What ?
Is this a long-lost Charles Mingus tape ?
Or somebody equally hip ?
When the Disney logo fades into the first scene , it turns out that the band @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just don ’ t know how to play quite yet .
Jazz is a tough discipline , but something akin to amateurism is part of the secret sauce .
Handed a simple big band chart by Count Basie or Duke Ellington , middle-school groups absolutely outdo polished college jazz ensembles .
The college kids know how to play everything correctly at every moment , but they haven ’ t yet accessed a final stage .
Professional jazz players have mastered a mysterious and discordant discipline , where they intentionally muss up a high-gloss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle-school band can sound so good : They are naturals at being imperfect .
We give that mysterious and discordant element various names .
If the European fundamentals of harmony are being mussed up , it might be the “ blues.
” If the beat has disjunct yet sophisticated elements , it ’ s got some “ groove.
” A generic rubric might be “ soul ” —amusingly , a word that barely appears in the movie Soul until they kick Curtis Mayfield ’ s “ It ’ s All Right ” for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Soul , where two disparate formless characters learn life lessons on the way to becoming finished humans , mainly concerns “ soul ” in the sense of the animating life force .
Of course , the word “ soul ” also has African American connotations—soul food , soul music—and the Pixar film embraces those aspects as well .
The first protagonist of the movie is Joe Gardner , voiced by Jamie Foxx , a talented African American jazz pianist turned music teacher .
The real-life composer in charge of the film ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the model for Gardner .
One of the writer/directors , Kemp Powers , is the first African American to join Pete Docter and Mike Kemp at the Pixar top table .
It ’ s safe to say that Disney ( a corporation that doesn ’ t exactly have a perfect track record on race : We could start with Song of the South from 1946 ) is catching up with the times .
The jazz scenes in Soul turn out to be simply terrific .
The creative team interviewed famous names like Herbie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dialogue right ; when working on sketches for the fictional club the Half Note , the animators took a trip to the Village Vanguard .
Batiste is the linchpin , a professional of soul who plays and directs music that is quite rough around the edges in exactly the right way .
The animators lovingly reproduce those imperfections perfectly .
There ’ s jazz everywhere in the history of soundtrack music , but how much has Hollywood done with jazz as metaphor or motivating force for character ?
An excellent recent book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You Feel : The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film , collates just over 100 examples , including movies directed by Howard Hawks ( Ball of Fire ) , Otto Preminger ( Man with a Golden Arm ) , John Cassavetes ( Shadows ) , Martin Scorsese ( New York , New York ) , Clint Eastwood ( Bird ) , Spike Lee ( Mo ’ Better Blues ) , Francis Ford Coppola ( The Cotton Club ) , Robert Altman ( Kansas City ) , Woody Allen ( Sweet and Lowdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Terminal ) .
Many of the movies included in Whitehead ’ s survey are not especially loved by serious jazz fans or musicians .
Of course , painters don ’ t always love movies about painters and not all newspaper reporters love movies about newspaper reporters .
When the topic is too close to home , a fictionalized story rarely satisfies .
However , jazz may be particularly messy in how it colors outside the lines : art vs. entertainment , improvisation vs. composition , the steady drumbeat of racial politics : It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sum up on the back of the box .
If you know , you know .
If you don ’ t know , you don ’ t know .
Jazz movies tend to come in bunches , and Soul is the fourth high-profile example from the last six years .
Whiplash ( 2014 ) and La La Land ( 2016 ) were both directed by Damian Chazelle , and Green Book ( 2018 ) was directed by Peter Farrelly .
The academy likes these movies—they all won major awards—but jazz musicians were horrified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sports movies by definition do not honor imperfection , and the cheesy score offers the worst kind of “ perfectly played ” college band sound .
It ’ s also blindingly white in aesthetic , which might be fine if the plot didn ’ t concern jazz drums .
All the very greatest jazz drummers have been African American , and the movie ’ s relentless erasure of African American musical values is a major faux pas .
( In another couple of decades , Whiplash may be relegated to that same “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” file where Song of the South currently resides . )
La La Land is a musical .
Musicals by definition require cheerful choreography and unsophisticated melodies .
This wonderful genre has a liminal place in serious American culture .
For jazz , the standard tunes from musicals offer some of the best innocent source material : We still know certain songs from very old white-bread musicals simply because Miles Davis or John Coltrane injected them with soul .
But musicals that are soulful to begin with are rare .
Lin-Manuel Miranda ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t satisfy serious hip-hop fans .
The rhythmic profile and production qualities of most of the songs are just too basic .
La La Land works as a musical , too—but the soundtrack could drive a serious jazz fan to drink .
Green Book was based on true-life events concerning Don Shirley , a sophisticated musician who worked between genres .
There was a lot of controversy about this movie , and Shirley ’ s real life musical path disappeared in the discourse .
Don Shirley was just about the least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50s .
Shirley ’ s ideals were firmly rooted in European concert music ; he had little desire to muss up harmony or lay into the groove .
This set of values gave him a unique sound , but that unique Shirley aesthetic proved to be rather obdurate source material for a story investigating 1960 American race relations from the vantage point of 2018 .
At the climax of Green Book , Shirley sits in with all–African American bar band and plays the blues .
Could the real-life Shirley have done this ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fortunately , the musician in charge of the score to Green Book , Kris Bowers , is another professional of soul , and gave that blues session the requisite attributes for success onscreen . )
In comparison with its three famous predecessors , Soul floats easily to the top when simply dealing with jazz .
Indeed , the movie could have stayed with jazz a bit longer .
When the Pixar film changes pace and goes to an ethereal realm , Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross take over the score , offering solid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( There will be two soundtrack albums for the movie , one from Batiste and one from Reznor/Ross . )
Gardner is joined by the second protagonist , 22—voiced by Tina Fey—and the movie continues in conventionally heartwarming Pixar fashion .
Green Book was sharply criticized for continuing the “ white savior ” trope ; Soul does what it can to disentangle Joe Gardner from the “ magical negro ” trope by firmly centering him in the final frame .
There are a full 10 minutes of credits to Soul .
About @ @ @ @ @ @ @ names go by in unheralded fashion , without even listing their instruments .
The famous jazz star in the onscreen story is alto saxophonist Dorothea Williams , voiced by Angela Bassett .
Two alto players are listed in the credits , Eddie Barbash and Tia Fuller .
I called both Barbash and Fuller ; neither had seen the movie yet , so we couldn ’ t determine who did what for certain , but probably most of the glamorous night club scenes with Williams were done to Fuller ’ s tracks .
Fuller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Linda May Han Oh on bass , and Marcus Gilmore on drums .
Gilmore ’ s granddad Roy Haynes—one of the greatest musicians in history , someone who invalidates the entirety of Whiplash with a single bass drum bomb—also played on the soundtrack .
Disney could have gone a step further in honoring the musicians who gave life to the characters onscreen , especially during a pandemic , when there are no gigs and every bit of onscreen love is a beautiful thing .
I ’ ve asked around and nobody seems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet killing ! )
trombone cues for the precocious 12-year-old Connie .
I plan to buy the Batiste soundtrack as a Christmas present for myself ; presumably , that will give all the personnel .
Still , I wish that somewhere in that 10-minute forest of Pixar credits it had said , “ Connie ’ s trombone played by [ insert name here ] .
” That would have shown a little soul .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The very first seconds of Pixar’s new feature Soul, the cue card of the Disney castle, offers some of the best jazz ever heard in a Hollywood movie. The famous theme “When You Wish Upon a Star,” is blared out in a raggedy fashion by a brass band, replete with noisy trumpets, squalling saxophones, and tailgate trombone. What? Is this a long-lost Charles Mingus tape? Or somebody equally hip?
When the Disney logo fades into the first scene, it turns out that the band is a distracted group of middle-schoolers who just don’t know how to play quite yet.
Jazz is a tough discipline, but something akin to amateurism is part of the secret sauce. Handed a simple big band chart by Count Basie or Duke Ellington, middle-school groups absolutely outdo polished college jazz ensembles. The college kids know how to play everything correctly at every moment, but they haven’t yet accessed a final stage. Professional jazz players have mastered a mysterious and discordant discipline, where they intentionally muss up a high-gloss finish. That’s why a middle-school band can sound so good: They are naturals at being imperfect.
We give that mysterious and discordant element various names. If the European fundamentals of harmony are being mussed up, it might be the “blues.” If the beat has disjunct yet sophisticated elements, it’s got some “groove.” A generic rubric might be “soul”—amusingly, a word that barely appears in the movie Soul until they kick Curtis Mayfield’s “It’s All Right” for the closing credits.
The main plot of Soul, where two disparate formless characters learn life lessons on the way to becoming finished humans, mainly concerns “soul” in the sense of the animating life force. Of course, the word “soul” also has African American connotations—soul food, soul music—and the Pixar film embraces those aspects as well. The first protagonist of the movie is Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx, a talented African American jazz pianist turned music teacher. The real-life composer in charge of the film’s soundtrack, Jon Batiste, was the model for Gardner. One of the writer/directors, Kemp Powers, is the first African American to join Pete Docter and Mike Kemp at the Pixar top table. It’s safe to say that Disney (a corporation that doesn’t exactly have a perfect track record on race: We could start with Song of the South from 1946) is catching up with the times.
The jazz scenes in Soul turn out to be simply terrific. The creative team interviewed famous names like Herbie Hancock and Terri Lyne Carrington to get the dialogue right; when working on sketches for the fictional club the Half Note, the animators took a trip to the Village Vanguard. Batiste is the linchpin, a professional of soul who plays and directs music that is quite rough around the edges in exactly the right way. The animators lovingly reproduce those imperfections perfectly. 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
There’s jazz everywhere in the history of soundtrack music, but how much has Hollywood done with jazz as metaphor or motivating force for character? An excellent recent book by Kevin Whitehead, Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, collates just over 100 examples, including movies directed by Howard Hawks (Ball of Fire), Otto Preminger (Man with a Golden Arm), John Cassavetes (Shadows), Martin Scorsese (New York, New York), Clint Eastwood (Bird), Spike Lee (Mo’ Better Blues), Francis Ford Coppola (The Cotton Club), Robert Altman (Kansas City), Woody Allen (Sweet and Lowdown), and Steven Spielberg (The Terminal). Current Issue View our current issue
Many of the movies included in Whitehead’s survey are not especially loved by serious jazz fans or musicians. Of course, painters don’t always love movies about painters and not all newspaper reporters love movies about newspaper reporters. When the topic is too close to home, a fictionalized story rarely satisfies. However, jazz may be particularly messy in how it colors outside the lines: art vs. entertainment, improvisation vs. composition, the steady drumbeat of racial politics: It’s all a bit hard to sum up on the back of the box. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, you don’t know.
Jazz movies tend to come in bunches, and Soul is the fourth high-profile example from the last six years. Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016) were both directed by Damian Chazelle, and Green Book (2018) was directed by Peter Farrelly. The academy likes these movies—they all won major awards—but jazz musicians were horrified.
Whiplash is a sports movie. Sports movies by definition do not honor imperfection, and the cheesy score offers the worst kind of “perfectly played” college band sound. It’s also blindingly white in aesthetic, which might be fine if the plot didn’t concern jazz drums. All the very greatest jazz drummers have been African American, and the movie’s relentless erasure of African American musical values is a major faux pas. (In another couple of decades, Whiplash may be relegated to that same “let’s forget we did this” file where Song of the South currently resides.)
La La Land is a musical. Musicals by definition require cheerful choreography and unsophisticated melodies. This wonderful genre has a liminal place in serious American culture. For jazz, the standard tunes from musicals offer some of the best innocent source material: We still know certain songs from very old white-bread musicals simply because Miles Davis or John Coltrane injected them with soul. But musicals that are soulful to begin with are rare. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton works fine as a musical—but doesn’t satisfy serious hip-hop fans. The rhythmic profile and production qualities of most of the songs are just too basic. La La Land works as a musical, too—but the soundtrack could drive a serious jazz fan to drink.
Green Book was based on true-life events concerning Don Shirley, a sophisticated musician who worked between genres. There was a lot of controversy about this movie, and Shirley’s real life musical path disappeared in the discourse. Don Shirley was just about the least soulful pianist making jazz records in the 50s. Shirley’s ideals were firmly rooted in European concert music; he had little desire to muss up harmony or lay into the groove. This set of values gave him a unique sound, but that unique Shirley aesthetic proved to be rather obdurate source material for a story investigating 1960 American race relations from the vantage point of 2018. At the climax of Green Book, Shirley sits in with all–African American bar band and plays the blues. Could the real-life Shirley have done this? Maybe, but probably not. (Fortunately, the musician in charge of the score to Green Book, Kris Bowers, is another professional of soul, and gave that blues session the requisite attributes for success onscreen.)
In comparison with its three famous predecessors, Soul floats easily to the top when simply dealing with jazz. Indeed, the movie could have stayed with jazz a bit longer. When the Pixar film changes pace and goes to an ethereal realm, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross take over the score, offering solid, if far more predictable, sounds. (There will be two soundtrack albums for the movie, one from Batiste and one from Reznor/Ross.) Gardner is joined by the second protagonist, 22—voiced by Tina Fey—and the movie continues in conventionally heartwarming Pixar fashion.
Green Book was sharply criticized for continuing the “white savior” trope; Soul does what it can to disentangle Joe Gardner from the “magical negro” trope by firmly centering him in the final frame.
There are a full 10 minutes of credits to Soul. About six minutes in, the musicians’ names go by in unheralded fashion, without even listing their instruments. The famous jazz star in the onscreen story is alto saxophonist Dorothea Williams, voiced by Angela Bassett. Two alto players are listed in the credits, Eddie Barbash and Tia Fuller. I called both Barbash and Fuller; neither had seen the movie yet, so we couldn’t determine who did what for certain, but probably most of the glamorous night club scenes with Williams were done to Fuller’s tracks. Fuller told me the basic quartet was Batiste, Linda May Han Oh on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums. Gilmore’s granddad Roy Haynes—one of the greatest musicians in history, someone who invalidates the entirety of Whiplash with a single bass drum bomb—also played on the soundtrack.
Disney could have gone a step further in honoring the musicians who gave life to the characters onscreen, especially during a pandemic, when there are no gigs and every bit of onscreen love is a beautiful thing. I’ve asked around and nobody seems to know who played the amateurish (yet killing!) trombone cues for the precocious 12-year-old Connie. I plan to buy the Batiste soundtrack as a Christmas present for myself; presumably, that will give all the personnel. Still, I wish that somewhere in that 10-minute forest of Pixar credits it had said, “Connie’s trombone played by [insert name here].” That would have shown a little soul.


thenation--2020-12-24--John Locke and America’s Cult of Private Property

Donald Trump spent the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign trying to convince voters that Joe Biden—under the influence of his “ communist ” running mate Kamala Harris—was not the moderate he ran as but a crypto-socialist .
“ Socialism is the mainstream of the Biden campaign , ” Trump asserted at a rally in August .
Voters were already skeptical of claims that the centrist Biden would turn the country toward socialism .
But clearer evidence of the elusive nature of socialists ’ hold on the Democratic Party emerged in a series of ballot measures in Harris ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , on Election Day , voters upheld privileges of home-ownership and rejected protections for workers .
Taken together , four major ballot propositions reaffirmed the primacy of private property in one of the bluest of blue states , where Biden defeated Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin .
Liberal voters often accuse those in poor , rural states of “ voting against their interests ” —supporting Republicans who want to gut the social safety net despite the fact that these states receive a greater share of federal support .
But this year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their values—claiming to support the policies of Bernie Sanders , who won the state ’ s Democratic primary , while voting to protect their own private property rights .
The 2020 California ballot proposition that has received the most attention is Prop 22 , which strips protections from app-based drivers and classifies them as contractors rather than employees .
Companies like Uber , Lyft , and DoorDash spent $ 200 million on the “ Yes on 22 ” campaign , more than 10 times as much as their opponents , with a deceptive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the change .
The proposition includes an outrageous clause that it can only be overturned by a seven-eighths vote in the California House and Senate .
Prop 22 passed by a 59-41 margin .
But Prop 22 was not the only ballot initiative that shored up property owners ’ benefits .
Proposition 19 , which narrowly passed , will expand the ability of homeowners over the age of 55 to transfer their current tax assessment to new homes of higher value , thus allowing them to move without their taxes going up .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the disabled and victims of natural disasters—and limits tax breaks on inherited property—this is an enormous benefit for what is already a financially advantaged group .
Proposition 21 , which would have allowed cities to set their own rent control policies , failed by a nearly 60-40 margin in a win for landlords .
Perhaps most significantly , Proposition 15 , which would have reversed portions of Prop 13—the “ third rail of California politics ” —narrowly failed by 52 to 48 percent .
Prop 13 , which passed in 1978 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or business ’ s last sales price , meaning that even as the cost of housing has skyrocketed across the state , tax revenues have been kept artificially low , with devastating consequences for school systems .
Proposition 15 would have rolled back these tax breaks for commercial and industrial properties , taxing them at their current market value and bringing in an estimated $ 8 billion to $ 12.5 billion a year in revenues , 40 percent of which would have gone to public schools and community colleges .
Why are Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so wedded to the ideology of private property ?
Why do we instinctively believe that , as Mitt Romney said during his 2012 presidential run , “ corporations are people too ” ?
And that , conversely , the people who work for those corporations are mere cogs in machines ?
One answer lies in the early theorizations of property that provided the intellectual basis for the colonization of America and the American Revolution .
The protection of private property was central to our government ’ s founding and continues to shape our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society .
John Locke provided the point of origin for this viewpoint in his 1689 Second Treatise of Government .
Locke contended that people form compacts creating civil governments to protect themselves from the State of Nature , which could easily become a State of War .
Individuals agreed to “ take sanctuary under the established laws of government , and therein seek the preservation of their property.
” He continued : “ Government has no other end but the preservation of property.
” Locke ’ s theory was an original one , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private property despite the theological perspective that , as he wrote , “ God…gave the world in common to all mankind.
” He also defined property in a novel and influential way .
An individual possessed “ a property in his own person , ” which comprised “ the labour of his body , and the work of his hands.
” By cultivating nature , a person “ hath mixed his labour with [ it ] , and joined to it something that is his own , and thereby makes it his property.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the individual could turn formerly common land into property : “ As much land as a man tills , plants , improves , cultivates , and can use the product of , so much is his property.
” Locke explains land ownership by tying it to individual effort .
It is easy to see how Locke ’ s theory of property could be used to justify the colonization of foreign lands , and , in fact , Locke was explicit that the “ wild woods and uncultivated waste of America , left to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ In the beginning , ” he wrote , “ all the world was America ” —that is , land available to be converted into private property .
Likewise , Locke used the example of enclosure—the legal process in Britain of “ enclosing ” common lands with fences or hedges and converting them into private property—to explain his theory .
A person who improves land through labor “ does , as it were , inclose it from the common.
” Over the course of the 18th century , almost all of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forcing now-landless commoners into wage labor positions on farms or in new industrial factories .
Landlords claimed that common land had to be enclosed in order to be “ improved ” with the new farming methods of the Agricultural Revolution , a process that allowed them to raise rents on their tenant farmers .
Locke ’ s Second Treatise was a key text for American revolutionaries , especially for its assertion that civil society requires the consent of the governed and its opposition to absolute monarchy .
The colonists ’ focus on what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Locke ’ s emphasis on property .
Locke represented civil rights as a kind of property , and property as the foundation of civil society .
In either case , property was at the center of social relations .
However , Locke ’ s theory of property is not straightforward ; scholars differ on whether he is discussing capitalist private property or merely individual property .
But the long-standing influence of his emphasis on property is perhaps more significant than the details of his definition .
Karl Marx , for example , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ served as the basis for all the ideas of the whole of subsequent English political economy.
” In the contradictions of voters who say they believe the current system of wealth distribution is unfair but who consistently vote against tax increases or worker protections , we can see the long shadow of Locke ’ s theory .
Although Locke would not have agreed , his argument could be taken to imply that people have earned their property through hard work .
Despite rising anti-billionaire sentiment , Americans tend to believe this is true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how being a “ successful businessperson ” —whether Donald Trump , Carly Fiorina , or Tom Steyer—can be seen as a qualification to run for political office .
Property May Not Be Theft , but It ’ s Not NOT Theft Even the ballot proposition system itself , allowing voters a direct say on how to assess and distribute taxes , can be seen to have its roots in Locke ’ s classically liberal argument that people must actively consent to restrictions on the use of their property .
Prop 22 , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that classified gig workers as employees rather than contractors .
Importantly , in the Second Treatise Locke argued that people did not have a right to more property than they could use for themselves and their families : “ Whatever is beyond this , is more than his share , and belongs to others .
Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.
” He was opposed to hoarding and miserliness , and his writing could be interpreted to say that the rich have a duty to benefit society with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ implement left-leaning social policies in blue states—the backers of Proposition 15 , for example , have already vowed to reintroduce it two years from now—they must convince voters such as those in California that this aspect of Locke ’ s legacy is more important than protecting private property .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Donald Trump spent the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign trying to convince voters that Joe Biden—under the influence of his “communist” running mate Kamala Harris—was not the moderate he ran as but a crypto-socialist. “Socialism is the mainstream of the Biden campaign,” Trump asserted at a rally in August.
Voters were already skeptical of claims that the centrist Biden would turn the country toward socialism. But clearer evidence of the elusive nature of socialists’ hold on the Democratic Party emerged in a series of ballot measures in Harris’s home state of California, where, on Election Day, voters upheld privileges of home-ownership and rejected protections for workers.
Taken together, four major ballot propositions reaffirmed the primacy of private property in one of the bluest of blue states, where Biden defeated Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin. Liberal voters often accuse those in poor, rural states of “voting against their interests”—supporting Republicans who want to gut the social safety net despite the fact that these states receive a greater share of federal support. But this year, we could accuse Californians of voting against their values—claiming to support the policies of Bernie Sanders, who won the state’s Democratic primary, while voting to protect their own private property rights.
The 2020 California ballot proposition that has received the most attention is Prop 22, which strips protections from app-based drivers and classifies them as contractors rather than employees. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash spent $200 million on the “Yes on 22” campaign, more than 10 times as much as their opponents, with a deceptive campaign that implied drivers were pushing for the change. The proposition includes an outrageous clause that it can only be overturned by a seven-eighths vote in the California House and Senate. Prop 22 passed by a 59-41 margin. Up in Smoke California’s Fires Prove the American Dream Is Flammable Kian Goh
But Prop 22 was not the only ballot initiative that shored up property owners’ benefits. Proposition 19, which narrowly passed, will expand the ability of homeowners over the age of 55 to transfer their current tax assessment to new homes of higher value, thus allowing them to move without their taxes going up. While the proposition also includes some benefits for the disabled and victims of natural disasters—and limits tax breaks on inherited property—this is an enormous benefit for what is already a financially advantaged group. Proposition 21, which would have allowed cities to set their own rent control policies, failed by a nearly 60-40 margin in a win for landlords. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. My Homeland Is Being Ruled by Terror. The World Must Pay Attention. Manny Maung
Perhaps most significantly, Proposition 15, which would have reversed portions of Prop 13—the “third rail of California politics”—narrowly failed by 52 to 48 percent. Prop 13, which passed in 1978, keeps property taxes tied to a home or business’s last sales price, meaning that even as the cost of housing has skyrocketed across the state, tax revenues have been kept artificially low, with devastating consequences for school systems. Proposition 15 would have rolled back these tax breaks for commercial and industrial properties, taxing them at their current market value and bringing in an estimated $8 billion to $12.5 billion a year in revenues, 40 percent of which would have gone to public schools and community colleges.
Why are Americans, even the most supposedly progressive, so wedded to the ideology of private property? Why do we instinctively believe that, as Mitt Romney said during his 2012 presidential run, “corporations are people too”? And that, conversely, the people who work for those corporations are mere cogs in machines? One answer lies in the early theorizations of property that provided the intellectual basis for the colonization of America and the American Revolution. The protection of private property was central to our government’s founding and continues to shape our understanding of the basic purpose of civil society. Current Issue View our current issue
John Locke provided the point of origin for this viewpoint in his 1689 Second Treatise of Government. Locke contended that people form compacts creating civil governments to protect themselves from the State of Nature, which could easily become a State of War. Individuals agreed to “take sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property.” He continued: “Government has no other end but the preservation of property.”
Locke’s theory was an original one, offering a justification for the existence of private property despite the theological perspective that, as he wrote, “God…gave the world in common to all mankind.” He also defined property in a novel and influential way. An individual possessed “a property in his own person,” which comprised “the labour of his body, and the work of his hands.” By cultivating nature, a person “hath mixed his labour with [it], and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”
In particular, Locke explained how the individual could turn formerly common land into property: “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.” Locke explains land ownership by tying it to individual effort.
It is easy to see how Locke’s theory of property could be used to justify the colonization of foreign lands, and, in fact, Locke was explicit that the “wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature,” did not constitute property. “In the beginning,” he wrote, “all the world was America”—that is, land available to be converted into private property.
Likewise, Locke used the example of enclosure—the legal process in Britain of “enclosing” common lands with fences or hedges and converting them into private property—to explain his theory. A person who improves land through labor “does, as it were, inclose it from the common.” Over the course of the 18th century, almost all of the agricultural land in England was enclosed, forcing now-landless commoners into wage labor positions on farms or in new industrial factories. Landlords claimed that common land had to be enclosed in order to be “improved” with the new farming methods of the Agricultural Revolution, a process that allowed them to raise rents on their tenant farmers. 2020 Propositions Can American Labor Survive Prop 22? Wilfred Chan
Locke’s Second Treatise was a key text for American revolutionaries, especially for its assertion that civil society requires the consent of the governed and its opposition to absolute monarchy. The colonists’ focus on what they saw as unjust taxation also drew from Locke’s emphasis on property. Locke represented civil rights as a kind of property, and property as the foundation of civil society. In either case, property was at the center of social relations.
However, Locke’s theory of property is not straightforward; scholars differ on whether he is discussing capitalist private property or merely individual property. But the long-standing influence of his emphasis on property is perhaps more significant than the details of his definition. Karl Marx, for example, wrote that Locke’s “philosophy served as the basis for all the ideas of the whole of subsequent English political economy.”
In the contradictions of voters who say they believe the current system of wealth distribution is unfair but who consistently vote against tax increases or worker protections, we can see the long shadow of Locke’s theory. Although Locke would not have agreed, his argument could be taken to imply that people have earned their property through hard work. Despite rising anti-billionaire sentiment, Americans tend to believe this is true. Our cult of private property explains how being a “successful businessperson”—whether Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, or Tom Steyer—can be seen as a qualification to run for political office. Property Theft Property May Not Be Theft, but It’s Not NOT Theft R.H. Lossin
Even the ballot proposition system itself, allowing voters a direct say on how to assess and distribute taxes, can be seen to have its roots in Locke’s classically liberal argument that people must actively consent to restrictions on the use of their property. Prop 22, for example, overturned a 2019 California law that classified gig workers as employees rather than contractors.
Importantly, in the Second Treatise Locke argued that people did not have a right to more property than they could use for themselves and their families: “Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.” He was opposed to hoarding and miserliness, and his writing could be interpreted to say that the rich have a duty to benefit society with their wealth. If progressives hope to implement left-leaning social policies in blue states—the backers of Proposition 15, for example, have already vowed to reintroduce it two years from now—they must convince voters such as those in California that this aspect of Locke’s legacy is more important than protecting private property.


thenation--2020-12-25--To Restore American Leadership, the Biden Administration Should Focus on Global Hunger

Just before Thanksgiving 2020 , the United Nations World Food Program warned world leaders that without a major and sustained investment of billions of dollars , there will be famines of “ biblical proportions ” in 2021 because of Covid-19 .
Such an explosion of hunger could not come at a worse time .
Uninterested in nurturing cooperation with allies , suspicious of international organizations , and disdainful toward developing nations , President Donald Trump spent the last four years shredding decades of US-led advances in global security and development , including America ’ s historic role in alleviating widespread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incoming Biden-Harris administration with an opportunity to tackle this problem head-on .
Aggressively addressing global hunger is one of the most important things the Biden-Harris administration could do to rebuild America ’ s global leadership and restore our standing in the world .
We have the capacity , the knowledge , and the spirit to do it .
Now is the time for us to think big .
Such a move would be smart politics .
President Trump ’ s attacks on programs to feed the hungry run counter to decades of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , improving agricultural production , and combatting malnutrition , especially among the world ’ s most vulnerable children .
No matter who sat in the Oval Office or which party held the majority in Congress , these initiatives have been successful because they enjoy broad bipartisan support .
Many key programs survived the Trump years because strong bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill was matched by the integrity and dedication of public servants in places like the US Agency for International Development , the State Department , and the US Department of Agriculture .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Story of a Pandemic More in this series Just a few years ago , President Obama launched Feed the Future and mobilized the international community to help lift small-scale farmers—especially women—out of hunger and extreme poverty .
He also strengthened emergency humanitarian programs like Food for Peace and expanded the capacity of the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program , which helps local communities provide meals for school-age children .
His focus on ensuring adequate nutrition during the “ first 1,000 days ” of a child ’ s life to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smart and innovative .
A comprehensive approach by the Biden administration that prioritizes hunger could restore the mantle of America ’ s leadership and return us to the days of addressing both the immediate needs and underlying causes of global poverty .
This kind of holistic leadership is desperately needed .
The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragility of our national , regional , and global food systems .
A preliminary July assessment by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization suggests that Covid-19 could add between 83 million and 132 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the world .
Simply put , when local markets are disrupted , supply chains break down .
If small farmers can ’ t sell their products , they can ’ t buy seeds and fertilizer ; they can ’ t plant , can ’ t harvest , and can ’ t get crops to market , creating a vicious and hard-to-break cycle .
This is not a “ Band-Aid ” moment—we need major , transformational solutions .
We should not only respond to the urgent , immediate need created by the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more stable and viable food system for the long haul .
That means uplifting small farmers , especially women , and demanding a renewed international commitment to creating a “ whole of society ” approach that confronts the devastating economic impact of coronavirus , worsening hunger due to conflict and war , and the impacts of climate change .
These challenges are urgent and important , but they are not new or unique .
In the aftermath of World War II , Europe lay in ruins .
Factories were destroyed , millions were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today , Americans yearned for a return to normalcy .
Yet a generation of visionary leaders on both sides of the Atlantic , driven by strategic interest as well as heartfelt empathy , came together to craft the Marshall Plan and lift millions out of hunger and poverty .
They knew then what we know now : Food insecurity is a root cause of desperation , migration , and destabilization .
They understood that we not only have a moral obligation to end hunger , but that compassion and cooperation are among the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognized that global poverty and food insecurity are not problems that time alone will solve—they require an active and focused commitment .
The Biden-Harris administration can and must once again provide the principled American leadership and fresh thinking so vital to any international campaign that tackles these existential challenges .
The world , literally , hungers for it .

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Just before Thanksgiving 2020, the United Nations World Food Program warned world leaders that without a major and sustained investment of billions of dollars, there will be famines of “biblical proportions” in 2021 because of Covid-19.
Such an explosion of hunger could not come at a worse time. Uninterested in nurturing cooperation with allies, suspicious of international organizations, and disdainful toward developing nations, President Donald Trump spent the last four years shredding decades of US-led advances in global security and development, including America’s historic role in alleviating widespread food insecurity.
His actions provide the incoming Biden-Harris administration with an opportunity to tackle this problem head-on. Aggressively addressing global hunger is one of the most important things the Biden-Harris administration could do to rebuild America’s global leadership and restore our standing in the world. We have the capacity, the knowledge, and the spirit to do it. Now is the time for us to think big.
Such a move would be smart politics. President Trump’s attacks on programs to feed the hungry run counter to decades of American leadership in lifting people out of hunger, improving agricultural production, and combatting malnutrition, especially among the world’s most vulnerable children. No matter who sat in the Oval Office or which party held the majority in Congress, these initiatives have been successful because they enjoy broad bipartisan support. Many key programs survived the Trump years because strong bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill was matched by the integrity and dedication of public servants in places like the US Agency for International Development, the State Department, and the US Department of Agriculture. Coronavirus Amid Partisan Politicking, Revelations on a Covid Origins Article Jimmy Tobias It’s Not “Unreasonable” to Want to Change Our Rotten Health Care System Gregg Gonsalves Covid Has Left Deep Wounds in America’s Rural Communities Anne N. Sosin
Just a few years ago, President Obama launched Feed the Future and mobilized the international community to help lift small-scale farmers—especially women—out of hunger and extreme poverty. He also strengthened emergency humanitarian programs like Food for Peace and expanded the capacity of the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which helps local communities provide meals for school-age children. His focus on ensuring adequate nutrition during the “first 1,000 days” of a child’s life to prevent permanent physical and cognitive damage was smart and innovative.
A comprehensive approach by the Biden administration that prioritizes hunger could restore the mantle of America’s leadership and return us to the days of addressing both the immediate needs and underlying causes of global poverty.
This kind of holistic leadership is desperately needed. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragility of our national, regional, and global food systems. A preliminary July assessment by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization suggests that Covid-19 could add between 83 million and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world. Current Issue View our current issue
Simply put, when local markets are disrupted, supply chains break down. If small farmers can’t sell their products, they can’t buy seeds and fertilizer; they can’t plant, can’t harvest, and can’t get crops to market, creating a vicious and hard-to-break cycle. This is not a “Band-Aid” moment—we need major, transformational solutions. We should not only respond to the urgent, immediate need created by the pandemic; we should work to build a more stable and viable food system for the long haul. That means uplifting small farmers, especially women, and demanding a renewed international commitment to creating a “whole of society” approach that confronts the devastating economic impact of coronavirus, worsening hunger due to conflict and war, and the impacts of climate change.
These challenges are urgent and important, but they are not new or unique.
In the aftermath of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Factories were destroyed, millions were in danger of starvation, and like today, Americans yearned for a return to normalcy. Yet a generation of visionary leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, driven by strategic interest as well as heartfelt empathy, came together to craft the Marshall Plan and lift millions out of hunger and poverty.
They knew then what we know now: Food insecurity is a root cause of desperation, migration, and destabilization. They understood that we not only have a moral obligation to end hunger, but that compassion and cooperation are among the strongest weapons in our arsenal. They recognized that global poverty and food insecurity are not problems that time alone will solve—they require an active and focused commitment.
The Biden-Harris administration can and must once again provide the principled American leadership and fresh thinking so vital to any international campaign that tackles these existential challenges.
The world, literally, hungers for it.


thenation--2020-12-25--‘Christmas in My Soul’

‘Christmas in My Soul’

The most poignant and powerful Christmas-themed song of the modern era was released 50 years ago by Laura Nyro , the Bronx-born singer and songwriter whose remarkable contribution to the American songbook included a series of late-1960s and early-1970s hit singles for the 5th Dimension ( “ Wedding Bell Blues ” ) , the Supremes ( “ Stoned Soul Picnic ” ) , Blood , Sweat & Tears ( “ And When I Die ” ) Three Dog Night ( “ Eli ’ s Comin ’ ’ ” ) and Barbra Streisand ( “ Stoney End ” ) .
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with cultural and political meaning , Nyro knew no musical boundaries .
Working at the intersection of blues , soul , folk , rock and jazz , she composed music so intense that , as Suzanne Vega would note , “ ordinary things—the weather , the river , the streets , the kids—glowed with a spiritual energy .
Though we were plain , ordinary , nasty kids , when she sang she made us beautiful.
” Nyro released four groundbreaking albums of her own songs between 1967 and 1970 , the last of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sweat .
Issued in November 1970 , it was not a collection of holiday favorites but , rather , a haunting moral statement about a moment when generational , gender , and racial divisions were tearing the country apart .
The most political song of the album was its last , “ Christmas in My Soul , ” a seven-minute symphony that opened with the promise , “ I know it ain ’ t easy , but we ’ re gon na look for a better day.
” The imagery Nyro employed was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listeners , and on the singer herself .
I love my country as it dies In war and pain before my eyes I walk the streets where disrespect has been The sins of politics , the politics of sin The heartlessness that darkens my soul On Christmas .
Red and silver on the leaves Fallen white snow runs softly through the trees Madonnas weep for wars of hell They blow out the candles and haunt Noel The missing love that rings through the work On Christmas .
Nyro was writing at the close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vietnam War spread into Cambodia , and when the war at home had brought the killing of student protesters on the campuses of Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State University in Mississippi .
Backlash politics , inspired by Richard Nixon , Spiro Agnew , and George Wallace , among others , was sweeping the nation , as racist code words inflamed the off-year election season that concluded just days before the Christmas and the Beads of Sweat was released .
Authorities were arresting and prosecuting members of the Black Panther Party , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Convention and Native Americans who that demanded treaty rights be respected .
Nyro pulled all the pieces into her narrative , singing : Nyro , who died in 1997 at age 49 , was an inspiring if not always best-selling artist who would eventually be hailed as a vital influence by Joni Mitchell , Rickie Lee Jones , Jill Sobule , Roseanne Cash , Donna Summer , Billy Childs , and Bette Midler .
In a reflection highlighted by Michele Kort ’ s masterful 2003 biography , Soul Picnic : The Music @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Martin ’ s ) , Mary Travers of Peter , Paul & Mary credited Nyro with “ setting the tone of a strong woman in a time when the image didn ’ t readily exist.
” The finest musicians of the time played on Christmas and the Beads of Sweat : Duane Allman and Cornell Dupree on guitar , Felix Cavaliere on organ , Alice Coltrane on harp , and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section .
Richard Davis , the most innovative bass player of the era , contributed parts every bit as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Astral Weeks .
When it was released , however , the reception for Nyro ’ s album was mixed—especially for the song “ Christmas in My Soul.
” Critics griped that singer had grown “ too serious , ” with Rolling Stone ’ s Alec Dubro complaining that the album “ can be appreciated for its virtuosity , but it ’ s hard to just sit back and dig on it.
” They respected Nyro ’ s craft and musicianship , but fretted that the songs themselves were too topical , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its assessment of an American experiment gone awry .
Yet today , five decades after its release , “ Christmas in My Soul ” is as meaningful , and moving , as it was for those who got its point in 1970 .
The song ’ s specificity does not date it , as some critics feared at the time , because the fundamental questions it asked remain unanswered .
America is still wrestling with racism , sexism , and generational estrangement .
In 2020 , this country ’ s deep divisions and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic dislocation that extends from it .
The sins of politics , the politics of sin , the heartlessness still darken our soul on Christmas .
Through it all , we still look for hope and healing , as Laura Nyro did at the close of “ Christmas in My Soul , ” when her voice soared to announce :

Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The most poignant and powerful Christmas-themed song of the modern era was released 50 years ago by Laura Nyro, the Bronx-born singer and songwriter whose remarkable contribution to the American songbook included a series of late-1960s and early-1970s hit singles for the 5th Dimension (“Wedding Bell Blues”), the Supremes (“Stoned Soul Picnic”), Blood, Sweat & Tears (“And When I Die”) Three Dog Night (“Eli’s Comin’’”) and Barbra Streisand (“Stoney End”).”
A brilliant lyricist who infused her songs with cultural and political meaning, Nyro knew no musical boundaries. Working at the intersection of blues, soul, folk, rock and jazz, she composed music so intense that, as Suzanne Vega would note, “ordinary things—the weather, the river, the streets, the kids—glowed with a spiritual energy. Though we were plain, ordinary, nasty kids, when she sang she made us beautiful.”
Nyro released four groundbreaking albums of her own songs between 1967 and 1970, the last of which was Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. Issued in November 1970, it was not a collection of holiday favorites but, rather, a haunting moral statement about a moment when generational, gender, and racial divisions were tearing the country apart.
The most political song of the album was its last, “Christmas in My Soul,” a seven-minute symphony that opened with the promise, “I know it ain’t easy, but we’re gonna look for a better day.”
The imagery Nyro employed was not easy. It made demands on listeners, and on the singer herself.
I love my country as it dies
In war and pain before my eyes
I walk the streets where disrespect has been
The sins of politics, the politics of sin
The heartlessness that darkens my soul
On Christmas. Red and silver on the leaves
Fallen white snow runs softly through the trees
Madonnas weep for wars of hell
They blow out the candles and haunt Noel
The missing love that rings through the work
On Christmas. Current Issue View our current issue
Nyro was writing at the close of a year that had seen the Vietnam War spread into Cambodia, and when the war at home had brought the killing of student protesters on the campuses of Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State University in Mississippi. Backlash politics, inspired by Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and George Wallace, among others, was sweeping the nation, as racist code words inflamed the off-year election season that concluded just days before the Christmas and the Beads of Sweat was released.
Authorities were arresting and prosecuting members of the Black Panther Party, organizers of demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and Native Americans who that demanded treaty rights be respected.
Nyro pulled all the pieces into her narrative, singing:
Nyro, who died in 1997 at age 49, was an inspiring if not always best-selling artist who would eventually be hailed as a vital influence by Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Jill Sobule, Roseanne Cash, Donna Summer, Billy Childs, and Bette Midler. In a reflection highlighted by Michele Kort’s masterful 2003 biography, Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Lauro Nyro (St. Martin’s), Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary credited Nyro with “setting the tone of a strong woman in a time when the image didn’t readily exist.” The finest musicians of the time played on Christmas and the Beads of Sweat: Duane Allman and Cornell Dupree on guitar, Felix Cavaliere on organ, Alice Coltrane on harp, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Richard Davis, the most innovative bass player of the era, contributed parts every bit as elegant as his playing on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
When it was released, however, the reception for Nyro’s album was mixed—especially for the song “Christmas in My Soul.”
Critics griped that singer had grown “too serious,” with Rolling Stone’s Alec Dubro complaining that the album “can be appreciated for its virtuosity, but it’s hard to just sit back and dig on it.” They respected Nyro’s craft and musicianship, but fretted that the songs themselves were too topical, too timely, and too stark in its assessment of an American experiment gone awry.
Yet today, five decades after its release, “Christmas in My Soul” is as meaningful, and moving, as it was for those who got its point in 1970. The song’s specificity does not date it, as some critics feared at the time, because the fundamental questions it asked remain unanswered. America is still wrestling with racism, sexism, and generational estrangement. In 2020, this country’s deep divisions and even deeper inequalities have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic dislocation that extends from it. The sins of politics, the politics of sin, the heartlessness still darken our soul on Christmas.
Through it all, we still look for hope and healing, as Laura Nyro did at the close of “Christmas in My Soul,” when her voice soared to announce:


Somewhere Real

Get in , George Eliot .
I packed PB & Js .
I ’ m bringing that rainbow parachute we held hands under as eight year olds .
Get in , right beside Autumn , beside every manic pixie dream girl screenplay written by a man , beside “ bad weather , ” beside Allegra ’ s pomegranate split into five uneven offerings , beside Allegra herself , she ’ s a mother now , as I write this .
Get in , television and all the extinct hardware of the nineties .
Montel , Jerry , Ricki , get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Get in , exes .
Tell me about life without me , pick the music , thread a threat through my dumb brown hair , something like you were always so then let the rain finish your sentence .
Get in rain , but don ’ t hog the air .
I ’ m running away .
I ’ m tired of not being a monk .
Get in , “ You ’ re So Vain , ” and five o ’ clock shadows and how hard it is to not talk to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year and a half .
Get in , year and a half .
Get in , therapist with the good haircut and bad advice .
You too , Michael Jackson .
I ’ m so sorry you had to be Michael Jackson .
The kind of snow that only fell when I was young , get in .
Or maybe it ’ s just how I saw it , get in .
I ’ m trying desperately not to sound cute , which is , of course , adorable .
But , please @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , get in , next to my grandfather .
Pillheadedness , get in .
Pema Chodron ’ s forehead and everything behind it , get in .
I ’ m not going to say it again : buckle up , put a daffodil behind my ear , touch my shoulder from the backseat , write my will for me , tell Mary Ann Evans I can hear her humming , it ’ s fine except it ’ s driving me nuts .
I ’ m aware that I ’ m crying , get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ baffling intelligence of starling and uteri—front seat .
I ’ m only five feet tall , too many strangers pick me up as a gag , my recurring dream is that I choose this life again—keep your hands inside the vehicle .
The mandolin I inherited because of genocide , keep me awake all night .
Morgan , I just want to watch your hands protect a flame .
Everybody , I ’ m sorry , I ’ m doing my best not to lean so hard on metaphor I avoid where I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even though I get the facial expressions right , I ’ m a poor listener , get in .
Greasy haired , bucktoothed , gets distracted easily , deodorant stains , secret crush on Kathryn , come on in , throw your book bag out the window and tell me your favorite color .
Turquoise , get in .
The locker they shoved Gabby into and I didn ’ t do it , but I didn ’ t stop them , get in .
The line between where you almost went and where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a fork .
Funny .
Every time I let the moon roof slide open , but there was no moon , get in , hurry slowly , slow up , slur your worlds , say you ’ re sor- row , admit you loved the uglier twin while arm-in-arm with the one older by a second .
Oh , cherishing , get in , it ’ s not too late , get in , the diner never closes , get in , put your feet on the dash , I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they call it this , two commands : Rest !
Stop !
The game is we rush into the gas station , you buy me a souvenir I most certainly don ’ t need , and I , you .
I found this keychain , it blinks your name , they never have mine , get in .
Get in , world , death , time .
I swear I ’ ll turn this car around if you don ’ t hot box us vapid .
The day the stars come down and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place , God said , I ’ m quitting , get in .
The game is I spy , the game is who can be quiet the longest , the game is hold your breath there ’ s a cemetery .
Order me fries .
Order me lungs .
Order me around .
Order my manuscript .
Here ’ s a handful of pennies , of ketchup packets , of sky .
I know you ’ re exhausted , get in , I ’ m driving you home .
Roll down your window @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dog ’ s kicking in his sleep which means a brain the size of a lemon can squeeze a whole dream .
Poor poet , get in , you never could say goodbye with grace .
Lucille , get in .
Dead family , get in .
I want to show you something : I had no map when I started and now here I am , somewhere real called loving you , get in .

Get in, George Eliot. I packed PB&Js. I’m bringing
that rainbow parachute we held hands under
as eight year olds. Get in, right beside Autumn, beside
every manic pixie dream girl screenplay written by
a man, beside “bad weather,” beside Allegra’s pomegranate
split into five uneven offerings, beside Allegra herself,
she’s a mother now, as I write this. Get in, television
and all the extinct hardware of the nineties. Montel,
Jerry, Ricki, get in. I’m driving. Get in, exes. Tell me
about life without me, pick the music, thread a threat
through my dumb brown hair, something like you were
always so then let the rain finish your sentence. Get in
rain, but don’t hog the air. I’m running away. I’m tired
of not being a monk. Get in, “You’re So Vain,” and five o’clock
shadows and how hard it is to not talk to my brother.
We went a whole year and a half. Get in, year and a half.
Get in, therapist with the good haircut and bad advice.
You too, Michael Jackson. I’m so sorry you had to be
Michael Jackson. The kind of snow that only fell
when I was young, get in. Or maybe it’s just how
I saw it, get in. I’m trying desperately not to sound cute,
which is, of course, adorable. But, please. Eleven siblings
killed in the camps, get in, next to my grandfather.
Pillheadedness, get in. Pema Chodron’s forehead
and everything behind it, get in. I’m not going to say it
again: buckle up, put a daffodil behind my ear, touch
my shoulder from the backseat, write my will for me,
tell Mary Ann Evans I can hear her humming, it’s fine
except it’s driving me nuts. I’m aware that I’m crying,
get in, sit next to K. The baffling intelligence
of starling and uteri—front seat. I’m only five feet tall,
too many strangers pick me up as a gag, my recurring dream
is that I choose this life again—keep your hands inside
the vehicle. The mandolin I inherited because of genocide,
keep me awake all night. Morgan, I just want to watch your hands
protect a flame. Everybody, I’m sorry, I’m doing my best
not to lean so hard on metaphor I avoid
where I am. This road invented itself. Even though
I get the facial expressions right, I’m a poor listener, get in.
Greasy haired, bucktoothed, gets distracted easily, deodorant
stains, secret crush on Kathryn, come on in, throw your book bag
out the window and tell me your favorite color. Turquoise, get in.
The locker they shoved Gabby into and I didn’t do it, but I didn’t
stop them, get in. The line between where you almost went
and where you’re going: they call that a fork. Funny. Every time
I let the moon roof slide open, but there was no moon, get
in, hurry slowly, slow up, slur your worlds, say you’re sor-
row, admit you loved the uglier twin while arm-in-arm with
the one older by a second. Oh, cherishing, get in, it’s not too
late, get in, the diner never closes, get in, put your feet
on the dash, I’m stopping at a—I can’t believe they call it
this, two commands: Rest! Stop! The game is we rush
into the gas station, you buy me a souvenir I most certainly
don’t need, and I, you. I found this keychain, it blinks
your name, they never have mine, get in. Get in, world,
death, time. I swear I’ll turn this car around if you don’t
hot box us vapid. The day the stars come down and start
walking around like they own the place, God said, I’m quitting,
get in. The game is I spy, the game is who can be quiet the longest,
the game is hold your breath there’s a cemetery. Order me fries.
Order me lungs. Order me around. Order my manuscript.
Here’s a handful of pennies, of ketchup packets, of sky.
I know you’re exhausted, get in, I’m driving you home. Roll down
your window, the forecast is alive. The dog’s kicking in his sleep
which means a brain the size of a lemon can squeeze a whole
dream. Poor poet, get in, you never could say goodbye with grace.
Lucille, get in. Dead family, get in. I want to show you something:
I had no map when I started and now here I am, somewhere real
called loving you, get in.