thenation--2020-05-25--Scott Walker Is Peddling the Deadly Snake Oil of Austerity

Scott Walker got so many things wrong as governor of Wisconsin that when he sought the Republican nomination for president in 2016 , he was ridiculed in party debates and dismissed as a dimwit after a series of national interviews where he appeared to be clueless .
Barely two months after entering the race—when a CNN survey found his support had collapsed so completely that he was polling behind “ no one ” —Walker quit .
When he sought reelection in 2018 , the fed-up voters of Wisconsin rejected the governor and every statewide candidate he had endorsed .
Walker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now he ’ s back , peddling the worst advice any Republican has offered since President Trump reviewed a report that cleaning with commonly available disinfectants kills the coronavirus and declared , “ I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute .
One minute .
And is there a way we can do something like that , by injection inside or almost a cleaning ?
” In an op-ed published by The New York Times on May 20 , Walker rages against the idea of providing federal support for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the coronavirus pandemic and the mass unemployment that has extended from it .
Writing under the blunt headline , “ Don ’ t Bail Out the States , ” the former governor has injected an appeal for brutal austerity into the public policy debate .
Walker ’ s intervention comes at a time when state finances have been rocked by a collapse in revenues and a spike in demands for health care services , unemployment insurance payments , and aid to small businesses .
A fresh NBC survey of state revenue officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cost states hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue in the upcoming fiscal year ” and warns , “ With most states starting their new fiscal year early this summer , the projections in many cases will serve as the basis for severe budget cuts states may have to make if massive federal government aid doesn ’ t come soon.
” Democrats in the House voted May 15 for a stimulus plan that includes $ 1 trillion in vital funding for state , local , and tribal governments .
But the Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell going so far as to say , “ I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.
” ‘ America Needs a Coronavirus Cure , Not More War ’ This Vermonter Is Attracting Support From Top Bernie Backers Walker , who has emerged as a leading advocate for the “ balanced budget ” gimmickry long supported by the right-wing billionaires who financed his campaigns , is actually proposing a more heartless , and destructive , scheme than McConnell .
The Wisconsinite wants to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slash services at precisely the point when they are most needed .
“ Over 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past six weeks .
That is roughly 20 percent of the labor force .
And that number is likely to grow larger as most states are ill equipped to handle the onslaught of the newly unemployed , ” writes the former governor who made his name by attacking the unions representing nurses , teachers , librarians , and other public employees , while slashing funding for public education and public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grumbles that “ many state government employees are still receiving paychecks ” and complains , “ To make matters worse , many state leaders now demand a bailout by the federal government—the American taxpayer .
This should not happen .
States already raise taxes on their residents.
” For the states that can not get more tax dollars from residents who are out of work , and from small businesses that are struggling to survive , Walker proposes the cruelest austerity .
Arguing that “ a federal bailout would stop state governments from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ reforms ” he enacted after taking office in 2011 .
But Walker ’ s attacks on public employees and their unions , on public education and public services—and his rejection of federal money for necessities like rural broadband services , as well as federal health exchange funding and the Affordable Care Act ’ s Medicaid expansion—created what even Donald Trump described as “ a mess.
” “ Wisconsin ’ s doing terribly , ” Trump told Republicans in 2015 .
“ First of all , it ’ s in turmoil , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disaster , and they ’ re fighting like crazy because there ’ s no money for the schools , the hospitals and education is a disaster.
” In July of that year , Trump tweeted : “ When people find out how bad a job Scott Walker has done in Wisconsin , they won ’ t be voting for him .
Massive deficit , bad jobs forecast , a mess.
” Trump doesn ’ t get much right .
But he was right about Walker in 2015 .
The governor ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a 2018 Economic Policy Institute study of how Walker ’ s Wisconsin compared with neighboring Minnesota , which rejected austerity and invested in infrastructure , health care , and education , revealed that “ outcomes for workers and families over the course of the last seven years have been markedly better in Minnesota than in Wisconsin.
” The EPI study concluded that “ the progress achieved in Minnesota over the past seven years is undeniable , and that progress has the fingerprints of good state policy all over it .
The good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progress for Badger State workers and families is possible—but it will take a different policy agenda from the one the state has pursued for the past seven years.
” A few months after that report came out , Wisconsin voters gave Scott Walker the boot .
Unfortunately , the proponents of austerity never acknowledge their failures .
They just circle back to propose even greater , and even more dangerous , failures .

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Scott Walker got so many things wrong as governor of Wisconsin that when he sought the Republican nomination for president in 2016, he was ridiculed in party debates and dismissed as a dimwit after a series of national interviews where he appeared to be clueless. Barely two months after entering the race—when a CNN survey found his support had collapsed so completely that he was polling behind “no one”—Walker quit. When he sought reelection in 2018, the fed-up voters of Wisconsin rejected the governor and every statewide candidate he had endorsed.
Walker knows no shame, however. So now he’s back, peddling the worst advice any Republican has offered since President Trump reviewed a report that cleaning with commonly available disinfectants kills the coronavirus and declared, “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”
In an op-ed published by The New York Times on May 20, Walker rages against the idea of providing federal support for states that have mounted a necessary response to the coronavirus pandemic and the mass unemployment that has extended from it. Writing under the blunt headline, “Don’t Bail Out the States,” the former governor has injected an appeal for brutal austerity into the public policy debate.
Walker’s intervention comes at a time when state finances have been rocked by a collapse in revenues and a spike in demands for health care services, unemployment insurance payments, and aid to small businesses. A fresh NBC survey of state revenue officials finds that “the coronavirus pandemic will cost states hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue in the upcoming fiscal year” and warns, “With most states starting their new fiscal year early this summer, the projections in many cases will serve as the basis for severe budget cuts states may have to make if massive federal government aid doesn’t come soon.” Democrats in the House voted May 15 for a stimulus plan that includes $1 trillion in vital funding for state, local, and tribal governments. But the Trump administration and its congressional allies have been resistant—with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell going so far as to say, “I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.” 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
Walker, who has emerged as a leading advocate for the “balanced budget” gimmickry long supported by the right-wing billionaires who financed his campaigns, is actually proposing a more heartless, and destructive, scheme than McConnell. The Wisconsinite wants to use the crisis to force states to slash services at precisely the point when they are most needed.
“Over 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past six weeks. That is roughly 20 percent of the labor force. And that number is likely to grow larger as most states are ill equipped to handle the onslaught of the newly unemployed,” writes the former governor who made his name by attacking the unions representing nurses, teachers, librarians, and other public employees, while slashing funding for public education and public services. True to form, Walker grumbles that “many state government employees are still receiving paychecks” and complains, “To make matters worse, many state leaders now demand a bailout by the federal government—the American taxpayer. This should not happen. States already raise taxes on their residents.”
For the states that cannot get more tax dollars from residents who are out of work, and from small businesses that are struggling to survive, Walker proposes the cruelest austerity. Arguing that “a federal bailout would stop state governments from enacting meaningful reforms,” he celebrates the “reforms” he enacted after taking office in 2011. But Walker’s attacks on public employees and their unions, on public education and public services—and his rejection of federal money for necessities like rural broadband services, as well as federal health exchange funding and the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion—created what even Donald Trump described as “a mess.” Current Issue View our current issue
“Wisconsin’s doing terribly,” Trump told Republicans in 2015. “First of all, it’s in turmoil, the roads are a disaster…the schools are a disaster, and they’re fighting like crazy because there’s no money for the schools, the hospitals and education is a disaster.” In July of that year, Trump tweeted: “When people find out how bad a job Scott Walker has done in Wisconsin, they won’t be voting for him. Massive deficit, bad jobs forecast, a mess.”
Trump doesn’t get much right. But he was right about Walker in 2015. The governor’s austerity agenda weakened Wisconsin—to such an extent that a 2018 Economic Policy Institute study of how Walker’s Wisconsin compared with neighboring Minnesota, which rejected austerity and invested in infrastructure, health care, and education, revealed that “outcomes for workers and families over the course of the last seven years have been markedly better in Minnesota than in Wisconsin.” The EPI study concluded that “the progress achieved in Minnesota over the past seven years is undeniable, and that progress has the fingerprints of good state policy all over it. The good news for Wisconsin is that achieving similar progress for Badger State workers and families is possible—but it will take a different policy agenda from the one the state has pursued for the past seven years.”
A few months after that report came out, Wisconsin voters gave Scott Walker the boot.
Unfortunately, the proponents of austerity never acknowledge their failures. They just circle back to propose even greater, and even more dangerous, failures.


thenation--2020-05-25--For Biden to Unite the Party, He Needs Warren as His Running Mate

Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primaries on March 5 .
Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign a month later , on April 8 .
Yet , more than six weeks later , both Warren and Sanders continue to rack up votes in the primaries .
In the Oregon primary , on May 19 , Joe Biden got 66 percent of the vote , Sanders 20 percent , and Warren nearly 10 percent .
In the Hawaii primary , which ended on May 22 , Biden got 63 percent and Sanders nearly 37 percent .
Sanders , of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for him , so they can be represented by delegates who will shape the platform .
But it remains astounding that a third of the Democratic Party continues to vote for someone other than Biden even after his receiving the endorsement of all his main rivals , including Sanders and Warren .
By contrast , Donald Trump has a unified Republican Party behind him .
From the ongoing primary votes , it ’ s clear that even though Biden has the majority of the party on his side , there is a significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who are to his left .
As he prepares for the general campaign , Biden ’ s main task has to be to unite the party by figuring out a way to get the voters who preferred Sanders or Warren to join his ranks .
This is something that goes beyond merely voting in November .
Sanders and Warren had the most enthusiastic and energized voters , the ones most likely to donate to and canvass for their candidates .
Biden needs those voters to feel they have a stake in not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ active participants in the campaign .
Biden has been making policy overtures toward progressives , notably in selecting the committees that will shape the party platform .
But he still has a way to go .
In April , longtime Democratic Party strategist Stan Greenberg warned the Biden camp that Sanders voters were “ dangerously not ” ready to accept Biden yet .
A recent Change Research poll in Michigan showed that Biden was doing 5 points worse among voters under 35 than Hillary Clinton did .
Biden leads the state by 49 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If Biden could get young voters as excited as they were in 2016 , he ’ d have a much more comfortable lead in a crucial swing state .
The Best Way to Lampoon Trump : His Own Words A recent poll conducted by Data for Progress laid out a strong case that Warren is the candidate who is best positioned to unite the party if selected as a running mate .
According to the polling organization , “ Sixty-one percent of Sanders supporters would be more likely to vote for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a Biden/Harris ticket , 33 percent for a Biden/Klobuchar ticket and 26 for a Biden / Abrams ticket.
” Unifying the party goes beyond any simple polling advantage .
The consensus among political scientists is that a vice-presidential candidate makes little difference unless they are notably unpopular ( Sarah Palin probably cost John McCain between 1 and 2 percent ) .
But a vice-presidential pick is important for building a coalition and getting different factions of a party to work together .
As David Leonhardt pointed out in The New York Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tickets have involved a balancing act between candidates who are dissimilar .
“ Donald Trump , a divorced reality-television star , chose a religious conservative , ” Leonhardt notes .
“ Barack Obama and George W. Bush , both worried about seeming inexperienced , chose party elders .
Ronald Reagan , who was labeled a radical conservative , chose an establishment figure : George H.W .
Bush.
” By contrast , Hillary Clinton ’ s pick of Tim Kaine did little to help her , since he shared her political profile .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenging Biden on issues like bankruptcy law might make him averse to picking her .
But , in cold political terms , these earlier fights should make her a more attractive candidate , one whose selection can bring the party together .
She has real credibility with progressives and can be trusted to be their advocate in a Biden administration .
Even progressives disappointed by her backtracking on Medicare for All still know she ’ s by far the most left-wing candidate on Biden ’ s short list .
But Warren ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She also has the specific character traits needed in a top-level government official .
Trump ’ s corruption and incompetence have demoralized the civil service , notably the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control .
Any successful Democratic administration will need to rebuild the administrative state , attracting thousands to join the new government .
Warren , uniquely among the plausible picks to be Biden ’ s running make , has built up a network of policy wonks who could help fulfill this task .
As Jamelle Bouie of The New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proven her skills in building up the administrative state by being the political force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau .
Biden will face the enormous task of cleaning up Trump ’ s mess , with both the pandemic and the economic meltdown requiring policies that are quick , bold , innovative , and far-reaching .
It ’ s hard to think of anyone better equipped to help Biden in such a crisis than Warren .
She ’ s the politically smart pick .
She ’ s also the best @ @ @ @ @

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Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primaries on March 5. Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign a month later, on April 8. Yet, more than six weeks later, both Warren and Sanders continue to rack up votes in the primaries. In the Oregon primary, on May 19, Joe Biden got 66 percent of the vote, Sanders 20 percent, and Warren nearly 10 percent. In the Hawaii primary, which ended on May 22, Biden got 63 percent and Sanders nearly 37 percent.
Sanders, of course, is encouraging his voters to continue voting for him, so they can be represented by delegates who will shape the platform. But it remains astounding that a third of the Democratic Party continues to vote for someone other than Biden even after his receiving the endorsement of all his main rivals, including Sanders and Warren. By contrast, Donald Trump has a unified Republican Party behind him.
From the ongoing primary votes, it’s clear that even though Biden has the majority of the party on his side, there is a significant minority, about a third of voters, who are to his left. As he prepares for the general campaign, Biden’s main task has to be to unite the party by figuring out a way to get the voters who preferred Sanders or Warren to join his ranks. This is something that goes beyond merely voting in November. Sanders and Warren had the most enthusiastic and energized voters, the ones most likely to donate to and canvass for their candidates. Biden needs those voters to feel they have a stake in not just defeating Trump but also in being active participants in the campaign.
Biden has been making policy overtures toward progressives, notably in selecting the committees that will shape the party platform. But he still has a way to go. In April, longtime Democratic Party strategist Stan Greenberg warned the Biden camp that Sanders voters were “dangerously not” ready to accept Biden yet. A recent Change Research poll in Michigan showed that Biden was doing 5 points worse among voters under 35 than Hillary Clinton did. Biden leads the state by 49 percent to Trump’s 46 percent. If Biden could get young voters as excited as they were in 2016, he’d have a much more comfortable lead in a crucial swing state. More From Jeet Heer The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution August 14, 2023 Why Does This Racist Keep Getting Silicon Valley Money? August 11, 2023 When Phallocrats Go Limp August 4, 2023
A recent poll conducted by Data for Progress laid out a strong case that Warren is the candidate who is best positioned to unite the party if selected as a running mate. According to the polling organization, “Sixty-one percent of Sanders supporters would be more likely to vote for a Biden/Warren ticket, compared to 42 percent for a Biden/Harris ticket, 33 percent for a Biden/Klobuchar ticket and 26 for a Biden / Abrams ticket.” 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Unifying the party goes beyond any simple polling advantage. The consensus among political scientists is that a vice-presidential candidate makes little difference unless they are notably unpopular (Sarah Palin probably cost John McCain between 1 and 2 percent). But a vice-presidential pick is important for building a coalition and getting different factions of a party to work together.
As David Leonhardt pointed out in The New York Times, many of the most successful presidential tickets have involved a balancing act between candidates who are dissimilar. “Donald Trump, a divorced reality-television star, chose a religious conservative,” Leonhardt notes. “Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both worried about seeming inexperienced, chose party elders. Ronald Reagan, who was labeled a radical conservative, chose an establishment figure: George H.W. Bush.” By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s pick of Tim Kaine did little to help her, since he shared her political profile. Current Issue View our current issue
The fact that Warren has a record of challenging Biden on issues like bankruptcy law might make him averse to picking her. But, in cold political terms, these earlier fights should make her a more attractive candidate, one whose selection can bring the party together. She has real credibility with progressives and can be trusted to be their advocate in a Biden administration. Even progressives disappointed by her backtracking on Medicare for All still know she’s by far the most left-wing candidate on Biden’s short list.
But Warren’s credibility goes beyond her policy prescriptions. She also has the specific character traits needed in a top-level government official. Trump’s corruption and incompetence have demoralized the civil service, notably the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control. Any successful Democratic administration will need to rebuild the administrative state, attracting thousands to join the new government. Warren, uniquely among the plausible picks to be Biden’s running make, has built up a network of policy wonks who could help fulfill this task.
As Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times notes,
It simply isn’t enough to write and pass a bill. You need experienced officials and agency heads, a fully staffed and well-seasoned federal bureaucracy and skilled political leadership to manage the entire operation. You need a Congress ready to adjust programs as needed and lawmakers skilled in oversight. You need, in other words, state capacity—the ability to actually deliver on plans and mandates. And if there’s anyone in the Democratic Party who has thought deeply about the challenges of state capacity, administration and personnel, it’s Warren.
Warren has already proven her skills in building up the administrative state by being the political force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Biden will face the enormous task of cleaning up Trump’s mess, with both the pandemic and the economic meltdown requiring policies that are quick, bold, innovative, and far-reaching. It’s hard to think of anyone better equipped to help Biden in such a crisis than Warren. She’s the politically smart pick. She’s also the best person for the job.


thenation--2020-05-25--A Death in the Extended ‘Nation’ Family: Omar Portillo, 1956–2020

The building where The Nation offices have been housed for the last three-and-a-half years is a sturdy neoclassical structure—all beige brick and upper terraces—hovering over the tumult of the Garment District .
For nearly 100 years , it has watched over the neighborhood , been part of the neighborhood , a hive buzzing within a vast , frenetic ecosystem .
Tending to that hive , keeping it humming , has been a dedicated band of janitors and freight operators , doormen and porters , handymen , superintendents , and jacks of all trade .
On March 27 , the building @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Omar Portillo .
A gentle soul who had dedicated the last 25 years of his life to working as a handyman in the building , Omar died from complications of the novel coronavirus in a crowded Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Bushwick , Brooklyn .
He would have turned 64 years old the next day .
He was a father of two daughters in Honduras and two sons in New York , a grandfather , and a husband to his wife , Scarlett .
He was also an adored colleague , known for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all remember Omar in the office for his warm hugs—he always asked everyone how they were doing and most importantly how their families were doing , ” wrote Jessica Leon , assistant manager for GFP Real Estate , which owns and operates the building where Omar worked , in an e-mail .
“ Our office will never be the same now.
” The Honduran native moved from his home in San Pedro Sula to New York City in the early 1980s and began working for GFP Real Estate in the mid-1990s .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his coworkers organized a fundraiser to help his family .
The fundraiser page is filled with comments in both English and Spanish from coworkers , friends , and relatives back in Honduras that have posted about how much they love and will miss Omar .
“ Omar was a beam of light in a dark world , my friend and such a beautiful soul , ” his coworker Nicole wrote .
Omar ’ s stepson , Eduardo Barahona , said that Omar was one of the first employees to be sent home when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ building .
Soon after , his son noticed that he was coughing .
Omar was worried about his coworkers and was upset to be stuck at home instead of working .
He had worked since the age of 12 and loved being around his coworkers .
“ Work was everything to him—work and family , ” Barahona said .
Omar loved family trips , and Barahona ’ s memories are filled with long summertime drives down to Florida and months spent in Honduras visiting family .
Omar had raised Barahona since he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandfather to Barahona ’ s son .
In so many of the photos posted online by friends and family , Omar is seen with his thick cap of white and gray hair , smiling gently , putting his arm around someone or hugging them .
In one photo , a slightly younger Barahona can be seen sitting at a table with a birthday balloon as Omar gives him a kiss on the cheek .
Barahona remembers how funny and cheerful Omar was and how he tried to look on the bright side .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ remembers Omar saying that he was all right—and trying to cheer up everyone else around him .
Barahona also described how his mother and Omar would jokingly argue about what songs to listen to on the radio during one of the many long family drives .
Omar was a salsa and merengue lover , while Scarlett loved boleros and older romantic songs .
Barahona ’ s mother and Omar had dated back in Honduras when they were teenagers but lost touch when Scarlett moved to the United States with a relative .
Years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States , Omar and Scarlett bumped into each other and reconnected .
They rekindled a relationship in the early ‘ 90s and were married a few years later , Barahona said .
“ I feel like they were destined to be together , ” he said .
Over the years , Omar ’ s coworkers have gotten to know his family and have reached out to share memories and offer their condolences .
Barahona isn ’ t surprised that so many people have contributed to and commented on the fundraiser for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the legacy Omar left behind as a worker and a friend .
“ It ’ s something I definitely feed off of , especially in these times , because it ’ s hard , ” Barahona said .
“ I remember how he was so driven regardless… .
This man was like , ‘ We ’ re gon na get through this , ’ and that ’ s what ’ s keeping me positive…because of his memory .
”

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The building where The Nation offices have been housed for the last three-and-a-half years is a sturdy neoclassical structure—all beige brick and upper terraces—hovering over the tumult of the Garment District. For nearly 100 years, it has watched over the neighborhood, been part of the neighborhood, a hive buzzing within a vast, frenetic ecosystem. Tending to that hive, keeping it humming, has been a dedicated band of janitors and freight operators, doormen and porters, handymen, superintendents, and jacks of all trade.
On March 27, the building lost a member of that band, Omar Portillo. A gentle soul who had dedicated the last 25 years of his life to working as a handyman in the building, Omar died from complications of the novel coronavirus in a crowded Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He would have turned 64 years old the next day. He was a father of two daughters in Honduras and two sons in New York, a grandfather, and a husband to his wife, Scarlett. He was also an adored colleague, known for his kindness and warmth.
“We all remember Omar in the office for his warm hugs—he always asked everyone how they were doing and most importantly how their families were doing,” wrote Jessica Leon, assistant manager for GFP Real Estate, which owns and operates the building where Omar worked, in an e-mail. “Our office will never be the same now.”
The Honduran native moved from his home in San Pedro Sula to New York City in the early 1980s and began working for GFP Real Estate in the mid-1990s. After Omar’s passing, one of his coworkers organized a fundraiser to help his family. The fundraiser page is filled with comments in both English and Spanish from coworkers, friends, and relatives back in Honduras that have posted about how much they love and will miss Omar.
“Omar was a beam of light in a dark world, my friend and such a beautiful soul,” his coworker Nicole wrote. Current Issue View our current issue
Omar’s stepson, Eduardo Barahona, said that Omar was one of the first employees to be sent home when concerns about Covid-19 began rippling through the building. Soon after, his son noticed that he was coughing. Omar was worried about his coworkers and was upset to be stuck at home instead of working. He had worked since the age of 12 and loved being around his coworkers.
“Work was everything to him—work and family,” Barahona said.
Omar loved family trips, and Barahona’s memories are filled with long summertime drives down to Florida and months spent in Honduras visiting family. Omar had raised Barahona since he was 8 years old and loved being a grandfather to Barahona’s son. In so many of the photos posted online by friends and family, Omar is seen with his thick cap of white and gray hair, smiling gently, putting his arm around someone or hugging them. In one photo, a slightly younger Barahona can be seen sitting at a table with a birthday balloon as Omar gives him a kiss on the cheek.
Barahona remembers how funny and cheerful Omar was and how he tried to look on the bright side. Even when he was sick, Barahona remembers Omar saying that he was all right—and trying to cheer up everyone else around him.
Barahona also described how his mother and Omar would jokingly argue about what songs to listen to on the radio during one of the many long family drives. Omar was a salsa and merengue lover, while Scarlett loved boleros and older romantic songs. Barahona’s mother and Omar had dated back in Honduras when they were teenagers but lost touch when Scarlett moved to the United States with a relative. Years later, both then living in the United States, Omar and Scarlett bumped into each other and reconnected. They rekindled a relationship in the early ‘90s and were married a few years later, Barahona said.
“I feel like they were destined to be together,” he said.
Over the years, Omar’s coworkers have gotten to know his family and have reached out to share memories and offer their condolences. Barahona isn’t surprised that so many people have contributed to and commented on the fundraiser for his stepfather; it’s part of the legacy Omar left behind as a worker and a friend.
“It’s something I definitely feed off of, especially in these times, because it’s hard,” Barahona said. “I remember how he was so driven regardless…. This man was like, ‘We’re gonna get through this,’ and that’s what’s keeping me positive…because of his memory.”


thenation--2020-05-26--The Forgotten Women’s Arts Fellowship That Forged a New Way of Writing

The poet appears at the top of the stairs , holding a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other .
It ’ s 1966 , and the filmmaker Richard Moore is with Anne Sexton in her suburban Massachusetts home for his television documentary series USA : Poetry .
Sexton is the subject of Moore ’ s seventh episode ; he ’ s already read tarot cards with Robert Duncan and played finger cymbals with Allen Ginsberg .
Now he is trying to capture on film what readers of Sexton have already come to know about her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the prompting of her psychiatrist after suffering a nervous breakdown , that she ’ d been in and out of mental hospitals ever since , and that she still chased her demons with pills , whose amber bottles get a slow panoramic shot later in the episode .
But the opening frame , of the poet descending her staircase , is more metaphorical .
Moore is shooting Sexton from beneath but has lit her from behind , so as she descends , shadows slide from her feet to her face .
With each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By the time she ’ s close enough to touch the camera , she ’ s nothing but a silhouette .
The Equivalents : A Story of Art , Female Friendship , and Liberation in the 1960s Sexton wrote openly about mental illness , sex , and motherhood .
Her first collection , To Bedlam and Part Way Back , published in 1960 , depicted her time spent in psychiatric institutions .
“ I am queen of this summer hotel / or the laughing bee on a stalk / of death , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s opening poem .
Sexton ’ s openness about these topics earned her the title of “ confessionalist , ” and the biographical work that ’ s been done on her since her death in 1974 has fixated on these themes .
Two works from the early 1990s—Diane Middlebrook ’ s Anne Sexton : A Biography ( 1991 ) and Linda Gray Sexton ’ s Searching for Mercy Street : A Journey Back to My Mother , Anne Sexton ( 1994 ) —caused great controversy , the first because Middlebrook used audio recordings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the second because Sexton ’ s daughter described being abused by her mother .
Both writers stated that they were not endeavoring to write “ pathographies , ” a term coined by Joyce Carol Oates to describe a genre of biography whose “ motifs are dysfunction and disaster.
” But these motifs were nonetheless their focus .
Reviewing Middlebrook ’ s Anne Sexton , Michiko Kakutani wrote that it focused “ relentlessly on Sexton ’ s breakdowns , suicidal fantasies and incestuous and adulterous sexual involvements.
” The Anne Sexton that takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Equivalents : A Story of Art , Female Friendship , and Liberation in the 1960s ( Knopf ) is not the madwoman descending into darkness of Moore ’ s film , or the pathological person of biographers—or not exclusively so .
Doherty has organized her book around Sexton ’ s experience as an inaugural member of an experimental institute at Radcliffe College designed for women who had been pulled away from their careers by the demands of raising children and keeping house—what the institute , in its advertising materials , called “ intellectually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ’ 63 , Sexton bonded with a group of women artists—the poet Maxine Kumin , the writer Tillie Olsen , the painter Barbara Swan , and the sculptor Marianna Pineda—who fundamentally shaped each other ’ s creative work and altered each other ’ s lives .
They formed an “ institute within the institute , ” Doherty writes , and playfully referred to themselves as “ the Equivalents , ” after Radcliffe ’ s requirement that applicants have an advanced scholarly degree or “ the equivalent ” in a creative field .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ lonesome , anguished poet with one of a vibrant community of women .
She tells of Sexton ’ s first letter to Tillie Olsen , for example , sent from Newton , Mass.
, to San Francisco in 1960 .
Sexton had just read Olsen ’ s short story “ Tell Me a Riddle.
” She was awestruck and humbled by the piece .
“ My eyes are still crying and I can not possibly tell you how much your story has moved me , ” she wrote .
Olsen felt the kinship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she addressed Sexton as her “ dear related to me ” and told her she ’ d hung a picture of Sexton on her writing desk next to portraits of Tolstoy , Hardy , and Whitman .
Doherty also tells the story of Sexton ’ s poem “ To Lose the Earth , ” which was inspired by one of Barbara Swan ’ s lithographs .
Sexton called Swan when she was composing it .
She was looking for the kind of feedback Kumin , a fellow poet , often gave her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workshopping poems over the phone that they eventually installed second phone lines .
Swan , a visual artist , couldn ’ t help her much .
Yet after Sexton read the poem to a room full of Radcliffe women in 1962 , Swan revealed that the unfinished lines Sexton had read over the phone had sparked a new drawing called The Sorcerers .
“ This is the music I ’ ve waited for , ” the poem went , as if in reference to the women ’ s collaboration .
Doherty ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the question of what is useful for understanding a life .
Here it is not the pills , the affairs , and the suicide .
It is the work , the friendships , and the sense of community .
The institute that brought these women together was the brainchild of Mary Ingraham Bunting , a microbiologist and education reformer who became the president of Radcliffe in 1960 .
In the 1950s , Bunting had served on a National Science Foundation committee to study the nation ’ s schools , and she had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation ’ s most promising high school students who didn ’ t go on to college , 90 percent were women .
All the more striking was the fact that none of the men on the committee were bothered by what Bunting considered to be a woeful loss of national brainpower .
In her article “ A Huge Waste : Educated Womanpower , ” Bunting asked , “ Why haven ’ t we been more concerned with the higher education and later utilization of the married woman ?
What does this neglect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signified that women were “ never really expected to use their talents and education or to make significant intellectual or social advancements.
” Women lived in a “ climate of unexpectation , ” she wrote .
And it wasn ’ t just women who suffered within this climate , addled by what Bunting ’ s friend Betty Friedan would call the “ problem that had no name.
” It was the Cold War nation itself .
Education had a role to play in the “ utilization ” of women for national progress .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ education didn ’ t “ fit the pattern of women ’ s lives , ” Bunting wrote .
Bunting likened women to drivers on the nation ’ s new interstate highway system , merging onto careers when domestic life allowed and exiting off when they were needed at home .
Their professional lives did not look like the long , uninterrupted road trips of men .
Education “ needed to provide women with on-ramps and off-ramps that they could use at will , ” Doherty writes .
Bunting ’ s institute , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ designed to provide such an on-ramp .
And indeed it did .
The institute gave each member of its inaugural class a stipend , an office , and access to Harvard ’ s library .
Most important , it offered her a community of fascinating women—chemists , anthropologists , linguists , historians , poets—each of whom found herself in some version of what Tillie Olsen , a member of the institute ’ s second cohort , described as her life ’ s central conflict : “ to reconcile work with life.
” For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family and aspiring to a career in the arts meant that she had “ to keep on dividing ” herself when all she wanted was to “ run in one river and become great.
” The institute provided the material support to let the river run , and the Equivalents produced some of their best work there .
Sexton wrote her luminous All My Pretty Ones and started drafting her next collection , Live or Die , which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967 .
Kumin also went on to win the Pulitzer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Up Country .
Olsen started on Silences , her revolutionary study of literary history that fundamentally changed what was taught in college classrooms and spurred the creation of women ’ s studies departments across the country .
Olsen ’ s work on literary history also made clear the profound limitations of programs like the one that enabled it .
Silences began as a presentation Olsen gave at the institute called “ The Death of the Creative Process.
” Olsen was supposed to be using her time at the institute to write the great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dreaming of , having been kept from the task by needing to earn a wage to keep her family of five afloat .
But she ’ d done something else instead : She ’ d holed up in the Harvard library and read the literary canon .
She was especially focused on those who had been prolific , the Honoré de Balzacs and Henry Jameses of literary history .
As much as Olsen wanted to write her own novel , she also wanted to figure out why she ’ d never been able @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to write so much .
Why weren ’ t there more people like her—working-class women—in the literary record ?
It couldn ’ t be chalked up to talent alone , or lack thereof , she reasoned .
Surely “ genius of a sort must have existed ” in all social classes .
Olsen argued that material conditions had made it impossible for working-class women to foster the comfort and concentration necessary to produce art .
Doherty listened to the recording of Olsen ’ s presentation , and in it she could hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listeners—the shifting of sore bodies , the rustling of skirts , the lighting of cigarettes—as Olsen stretched an hour past her allotted time .
But as Doherty points out , perhaps their discomfort also stemmed from Olsen ’ s implicit indictment of the way the Radcliffe institute defined talent and doled out opportunity .
Who wasn ’ t in the room ?
What sort of genius was Radcliffe overlooking ?
The first class of fellows was entirely white and well-off , and Doherty confronts the racism and classism of the institute that some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from within .
While Bunting sought “ intellectually displaced women , ” she was also looking for women who had already achieved a great deal , and “ such women tended to have many things already working in their favor : money , racial privilege , some degree of social support , ” Doherty observes .
The stipends given out that first year ( $ 3,000 , or $ 25,000 today ) were designed not to replace a family ’ s income but to supplement it .
Fellows could use their money any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them used it to hire domestic workers—overwhelmingly women of color—to clean their homes and take care of their children so they could study or make art .
As Radcliffe came under pressure for its racism—in 1968 , a group of black undergraduates occupied the administrative building—and began increasing the admission of black students , so too did the institute start to recruit and admit black fellows .
Doherty traces this evolution in an outstanding chapter on Alice Walker , who began her indispensable work on Zora Neale Hurston during her time at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The story of the institute ’ s inaugural class in 1961 is nonetheless a story of white women who may have been intellectually displaced by gender expectations ( or “ unexpectations ” ) but who carried privilege along the other lines of their identities .
Why tell this story now ?
Doherty ’ s narrative depicts what displacement felt like for this small group of women in the 1960s , the fight against the “ brutal impulse to shove [ her daughter ] away from [ her ] typewriter , ” in Olsen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that her love for her children did not always “ surpass [ her ] desire to be free of their demands , ” in Sexton ’ s .
But it also prompts us to consider the systems of marginalization that continue to reproduce the psychic division that agonized these women , as well as the material conditions that made it hard for some , like Olsen , to “ reconcile work with life.
” The book encourages us to consider how we might update Bunting ’ s metaphor of the highway .
Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and exiting a highway but rather being stopped at a gate or a border .
Maybe these aren ’ t metaphors at all .
Doherty asks us to consider how the structure of education might not only be tailored to “ fit the pattern ” of people ’ s lives , as Bunting wrote in 1961 , but be mobilized to change the very patterning of society .
Doherty has written the first full account of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study , having done some prodigious research in the institute ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Equivalents is not , at heart , the story of a beneficent institution that launched the careers of some of the century ’ s most important artists and scholars .
It is the story of what these women needed from and gave to one another .
Much of this evades the archival record , like the summer day in 1963 when the five Equivalents , knowing their time at the institute was drawing to a close , drove up to the seaside town of Rockport to go swimming .
Perhaps the outing was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after all , used her Radcliffe money to build a swimming pool in her backyard because swimming laps in the morning sun was therapy for her overactive nerves .
In Moore ’ s film , Sexton walks languidly around her pool alone , but in Doherty ’ s reimagining , we see five women venturing into the ocean together .
There ’ s no real record of the day , not even a photo .
But in the mind ’ s eye , light is coming from everywhere , and there are @ @ @ @ @

The poet appears at the top of the stairs, holding a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It’s 1966, and the filmmaker Richard Moore is with Anne Sexton in her suburban Massachusetts home for his television documentary series USA: Poetry. Sexton is the subject of Moore’s seventh episode; he’s already read tarot cards with Robert Duncan and played finger cymbals with Allen Ginsberg. Now he is trying to capture on film what readers of Sexton have already come to know about her: that she started writing poetry at the prompting of her psychiatrist after suffering a nervous breakdown, that she’d been in and out of mental hospitals ever since, and that she still chased her demons with pills, whose amber bottles get a slow panoramic shot later in the episode. But the opening frame, of the poet descending her staircase, is more metaphorical. Moore is shooting Sexton from beneath but has lit her from behind, so as she descends, shadows slide from her feet to her face. With each step, her white caftan turns black. By the time she’s close enough to touch the camera, she’s nothing but a silhouette. Books in Review The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s By Maggie Doherty Buy this book
Sexton wrote openly about mental illness, sex, and motherhood. Her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, published in 1960, depicted her time spent in psychiatric institutions. “I am queen of this summer hotel / or the laughing bee on a stalk / of death,” she wrote in the collection’s opening poem. Sexton’s openness about these topics earned her the title of “confessionalist,” and the biographical work that’s been done on her since her death in 1974 has fixated on these themes. Two works from the early 1990s—Diane Middlebrook’s Anne Sexton: A Biography (1991) and Linda Gray Sexton’s Searching for Mercy Street: A Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton (1994)—caused great controversy, the first because Middlebrook used audio recordings from Sexton’s therapy sessions, and the second because Sexton’s daughter described being abused by her mother. Both writers stated that they were not endeavoring to write “pathographies,” a term coined by Joyce Carol Oates to describe a genre of biography whose “motifs are dysfunction and disaster.” But these motifs were nonetheless their focus. Reviewing Middlebrook’s Anne Sexton, Michiko Kakutani wrote that it focused “relentlessly on Sexton’s breakdowns, suicidal fantasies and incestuous and adulterous sexual involvements.”
The Anne Sexton that takes shape in Maggie Doherty’s The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (Knopf) is not the madwoman descending into darkness of Moore’s film, or the pathological person of biographers—or not exclusively so. Doherty has organized her book around Sexton’s experience as an inaugural member of an experimental institute at Radcliffe College designed for women who had been pulled away from their careers by the demands of raising children and keeping house—what the institute, in its advertising materials, called “intellectually displaced women.” At Radcliffe from 1961 to ’63, Sexton bonded with a group of women artists—the poet Maxine Kumin, the writer Tillie Olsen, the painter Barbara Swan, and the sculptor Marianna Pineda—who fundamentally shaped each other’s creative work and altered each other’s lives. They formed an “institute within the institute,” Doherty writes, and playfully referred to themselves as “the Equivalents,” after Radcliffe’s requirement that applicants have an advanced scholarly degree or “the equivalent” in a creative field. 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Doherty has replaced the image of the lonesome, anguished poet with one of a vibrant community of women. She tells of Sexton’s first letter to Tillie Olsen, for example, sent from Newton, Mass., to San Francisco in 1960. Sexton had just read Olsen’s short story “Tell Me a Riddle.” She was awestruck and humbled by the piece. “My eyes are still crying and I cannot possibly tell you how much your story has moved me,” she wrote. Olsen felt the kinship, too. In her letter back, she addressed Sexton as her “dear related to me” and told her she’d hung a picture of Sexton on her writing desk next to portraits of Tolstoy, Hardy, and Whitman. Doherty also tells the story of Sexton’s poem “To Lose the Earth,” which was inspired by one of Barbara Swan’s lithographs. Sexton called Swan when she was composing it. She was looking for the kind of feedback Kumin, a fellow poet, often gave her; the two spent so many hours workshopping poems over the phone that they eventually installed second phone lines. Swan, a visual artist, couldn’t help her much. Yet after Sexton read the poem to a room full of Radcliffe women in 1962, Swan revealed that the unfinished lines Sexton had read over the phone had sparked a new drawing called The Sorcerers. “This is the music I’ve waited for,” the poem went, as if in reference to the women’s collaboration. Doherty’s shift in focus implies a different answer to the question of what is useful for understanding a life. Here it is not the pills, the affairs, and the suicide. It is the work, the friendships, and the sense of community.
The institute that brought these women together was the brainchild of Mary Ingraham Bunting, a microbiologist and education reformer who became the president of Radcliffe in 1960. In the 1950s, Bunting had served on a National Science Foundation committee to study the nation’s schools, and she had turned up a striking fact: Of the nation’s most promising high school students who didn’t go on to college, 90 percent were women. All the more striking was the fact that none of the men on the committee were bothered by what Bunting considered to be a woeful loss of national brainpower. In her article “A Huge Waste: Educated Womanpower,” Bunting asked, “Why haven’t we been more concerned with the higher education and later utilization of the married woman? What does this neglect signify?” For Bunting, it signified that women were “never really expected to use their talents and education or to make significant intellectual or social advancements.” Women lived in a “climate of unexpectation,” she wrote. And it wasn’t just women who suffered within this climate, addled by what Bunting’s friend Betty Friedan would call the “problem that had no name.” It was the Cold War nation itself.
Education had a role to play in the “utilization” of women for national progress. As it stood, the structure of education didn’t “fit the pattern of women’s lives,” Bunting wrote. Bunting likened women to drivers on the nation’s new interstate highway system, merging onto careers when domestic life allowed and exiting off when they were needed at home. Their professional lives did not look like the long, uninterrupted road trips of men. Education “needed to provide women with on-ramps and off-ramps that they could use at will,” Doherty writes. Bunting’s institute, the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, was designed to provide such an on-ramp.
And indeed it did. The institute gave each member of its inaugural class a stipend, an office, and access to Harvard’s library. Most important, it offered her a community of fascinating women—chemists, anthropologists, linguists, historians, poets—each of whom found herself in some version of what Tillie Olsen, a member of the institute’s second cohort, described as her life’s central conflict: “to reconcile work with life.” For Olsen, the demands of raising a family and aspiring to a career in the arts meant that she had “to keep on dividing” herself when all she wanted was to “run in one river and become great.” The institute provided the material support to let the river run, and the Equivalents produced some of their best work there. Sexton wrote her luminous All My Pretty Ones and started drafting her next collection, Live or Die, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. Kumin also went on to win the Pulitzer, in 1973, for her collection Up Country. Olsen started on Silences, her revolutionary study of literary history that fundamentally changed what was taught in college classrooms and spurred the creation of women’s studies departments across the country.
Olsen’s work on literary history also made clear the profound limitations of programs like the one that enabled it. Silences began as a presentation Olsen gave at the institute called “The Death of the Creative Process.” Olsen was supposed to be using her time at the institute to write the great proletarian novel she’d spent decades dreaming of, having been kept from the task by needing to earn a wage to keep her family of five afloat. But she’d done something else instead: She’d holed up in the Harvard library and read the literary canon. She was especially focused on those who had been prolific, the Honoré de Balzacs and Henry Jameses of literary history. As much as Olsen wanted to write her own novel, she also wanted to figure out why she’d never been able to, and why some had been able to write so much. Why weren’t there more people like her—working-class women—in the literary record?
It couldn’t be chalked up to talent alone, or lack thereof, she reasoned. Surely “genius of a sort must have existed” in all social classes. Olsen argued that material conditions had made it impossible for working-class women to foster the comfort and concentration necessary to produce art. Doherty listened to the recording of Olsen’s presentation, and in it she could hear the increasing agitation of Olsen’s listeners—the shifting of sore bodies, the rustling of skirts, the lighting of cigarettes—as Olsen stretched an hour past her allotted time. But as Doherty points out, perhaps their discomfort also stemmed from Olsen’s implicit indictment of the way the Radcliffe institute defined talent and doled out opportunity. Who wasn’t in the room? What sort of genius was Radcliffe overlooking?
The first class of fellows was entirely white and well-off, and Doherty confronts the racism and classism of the institute that some, like Olsen, were already criticizing from within. While Bunting sought “intellectually displaced women,” she was also looking for women who had already achieved a great deal, and “such women tended to have many things already working in their favor: money, racial privilege, some degree of social support,” Doherty observes. The stipends given out that first year ($3,000, or $25,000 today) were designed not to replace a family’s income but to supplement it. Fellows could use their money any way they pleased, and most of them used it to hire domestic workers—overwhelmingly women of color—to clean their homes and take care of their children so they could study or make art. As Radcliffe came under pressure for its racism—in 1968, a group of black undergraduates occupied the administrative building—and began increasing the admission of black students, so too did the institute start to recruit and admit black fellows. Doherty traces this evolution in an outstanding chapter on Alice Walker, who began her indispensable work on Zora Neale Hurston during her time at the institute from 1971 to ’73.
The story of the institute’s inaugural class in 1961 is nonetheless a story of white women who may have been intellectually displaced by gender expectations (or “unexpectations”) but who carried privilege along the other lines of their identities. Why tell this story now? Doherty’s narrative depicts what displacement felt like for this small group of women in the 1960s, the fight against the “brutal impulse to shove [her daughter] away from [her] typewriter,” in Olsen’s words, or the feeling that her love for her children did not always “surpass [her] desire to be free of their demands,” in Sexton’s. But it also prompts us to consider the systems of marginalization that continue to reproduce the psychic division that agonized these women, as well as the material conditions that made it hard for some, like Olsen, to “reconcile work with life.” The book encourages us to consider how we might update Bunting’s metaphor of the highway. Maybe displacement doesn’t look like entering and exiting a highway but rather being stopped at a gate or a border. Maybe these aren’t metaphors at all. Doherty asks us to consider how the structure of education might not only be tailored to “fit the pattern” of people’s lives, as Bunting wrote in 1961, but be mobilized to change the very patterning of society.
Doherty has written the first full account of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, having done some prodigious research in the institute’s archives along the way. But The Equivalents is not, at heart, the story of a beneficent institution that launched the careers of some of the century’s most important artists and scholars. It is the story of what these women needed from and gave to one another. Much of this evades the archival record, like the summer day in 1963 when the five Equivalents, knowing their time at the institute was drawing to a close, drove up to the seaside town of Rockport to go swimming. Perhaps the outing was Sexton’s idea. She had, after all, used her Radcliffe money to build a swimming pool in her backyard because swimming laps in the morning sun was therapy for her overactive nerves. In Moore’s film, Sexton walks languidly around her pool alone, but in Doherty’s reimagining, we see five women venturing into the ocean together. There’s no real record of the day, not even a photo. But in the mind’s eye, light is coming from everywhere, and there are no shadows at noon.


thenation--2020-05-26--One French Hospital’s Battle Against the Coronavirus

Paris—Here in France , we have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic : Though our numbers are steadying , more than 180,000 people have tested positive for the virus , and more than 28,000 people have died , one of the highest death tolls in the world .
Throughout the crisis , our health care workers have been tirelessly tending to the waves of sick .
For the past several weeks , I have been documenting the work of the doctors , nurses , and support staff at one of Paris ’ s major hospitals , the Groupe hospitalier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capital ( Newsweek ranks it one of the world ’ s top 100 best hospitals ) .
Between March and April , 200 patients affected by Covid-19 needed a bed every day at this hospital , and 36 of them had to be treated in the intensive care unit , three times the normal population in the ICU .
By the 31st of March , Paris reached the peak of our pandemic , with 400 new patients hospitalized that day .
In this exceptional situation , I wanted to document the impact the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the whole hospital , from reception to the emergency room , the ICU , the mortuary , the logistics room , and the operating room .
This hospital and its staff are dealing with a situation unprecedented in our lifetime , but they ’ re also trying to maintain the same high level of care for all patients that they were providing before the crisis .
That hasn ’ t been easy .
The doctors , nurses , and caregivers are strained to their limit , as are the less visible but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employees , morgue workers , and others who are central to the functioning of the hospital .
At the forefront of many of these departments , I found women health care workers keeping their teams running .
Elisabeth Sauvaget , an ENT surgeon , told me that the pandemic has been “ a dramatic experience that really surprised me and all the hospital staff with its severity and unusual evolution .
We spent a lot of energy managing all kinds of issues as they came up ( securing equipment for critical care , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and adequate staffing ) .
” But she also had a daughter to care for at the same time , which was “ exhausting and stressful , since I was alone with her , with no family and no babysitter.
” France ’ s health care system is different from the one in the United States : For one , it is a universal system , which guarantees coverage for everyone , and care is provided by a mix of public and private hospitals , clinics , and physicians .
The Paris Saint-Joseph @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public medical care , and the hospital worked hard to support its staff : The administration set aside an area for mental health and psychiatric care for staff to help manage the stress of the situation , and assigned an entire department to produce protective masks and hand sanitizer .
They also saw to more grave needs , such as setting up an additional refrigeration room in the mortuary , due to the increased number of deaths .
Documenting the hospital ’ s battle against the virus , I was of course afraid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ main challenge was to try to capture moments that aren ’ t already part of our stock visual lexicon of the Covid-19 crisis—I tried to find images we haven ’ t seen yet from the pandemic , the in-between moments that convey the long struggle our health care workers have undertaken against this threat .
If we don ’ t keep this struggle in mind , we risk forgetting the heroic effort that these workers are putting into pulling down the death rate .
Just two weeks ago , I was told by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this hospital was interesting but , unfortunately , too old .
But this crisis is still ongoing , and we will be dealing with it for a long time yet .
As Sauvaget , the ENT surgeon told me , the crisis has so far been handled only through “ a lot of solidarity , humanity , and a wonderful mobilization of all the personnel in the hospital .
This crisis showed us that the collective wins .
”

Elena Perlino, The Nation, Magnum Foundation

Paris—Here in France, we have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic: Though our numbers are steadying, more than 180,000 people have tested positive for the virus, and more than 28,000 people have died, one of the highest death tolls in the world.
Throughout the crisis, our health care workers have been tirelessly tending to the waves of sick. For the past several weeks, I have been documenting the work of the doctors, nurses, and support staff at one of Paris’s major hospitals, the Groupe hospitalier Paris Saint-Joseph in the heart of the capital (Newsweek ranks it one of the world’s top 100 best hospitals). Between March and April, 200 patients affected by Covid-19 needed a bed every day at this hospital, and 36 of them had to be treated in the intensive care unit, three times the normal population in the ICU. By the 31st of March, Paris reached the peak of our pandemic, with 400 new patients hospitalized that day.
In this exceptional situation, I wanted to document the impact the pandemic was having on the different units of the whole hospital, from reception to the emergency room, the ICU, the mortuary, the logistics room, and the operating room. This hospital and its staff are dealing with a situation unprecedented in our lifetime, but they’re also trying to maintain the same high level of care for all patients that they were providing before the crisis.
That hasn’t been easy. The doctors, nurses, and caregivers are strained to their limit, as are the less visible but no less vital laboratory technicians, logistics employees, morgue workers, and others who are central to the functioning of the hospital. At the forefront of many of these departments, I found women health care workers keeping their teams running. Elisabeth Sauvaget, an ENT surgeon, told me that the pandemic has been “a dramatic experience that really surprised me and all the hospital staff with its severity and unusual evolution. We spent a lot of energy managing all kinds of issues as they came up (securing equipment for critical care, equipment for personal protection, drugs, and adequate staffing).” But she also had a daughter to care for at the same time, which was “exhausting and stressful, since I was alone with her, with no family and no babysitter.”
France’s health care system is different from the one in the United States: For one, it is a universal system, which guarantees coverage for everyone, and care is provided by a mix of public and private hospitals, clinics, and physicians. The Paris Saint-Joseph Hospital is a private charity hospital providing public medical care, and the hospital worked hard to support its staff: The administration set aside an area for mental health and psychiatric care for staff to help manage the stress of the situation, and assigned an entire department to produce protective masks and hand sanitizer. They also saw to more grave needs, such as setting up an additional refrigeration room in the mortuary, due to the increased number of deaths.
Documenting the hospital’s battle against the virus, I was of course afraid of becoming infected myself, but my main challenge was to try to capture moments that aren’t already part of our stock visual lexicon of the Covid-19 crisis—I tried to find images we haven’t seen yet from the pandemic, the in-between moments that convey the long struggle our health care workers have undertaken against this threat.
If we don’t keep this struggle in mind, we risk forgetting the heroic effort that these workers are putting into pulling down the death rate. Just two weeks ago, I was told by a magazine that the story I covered in this hospital was interesting but, unfortunately, too old. But this crisis is still ongoing, and we will be dealing with it for a long time yet.
As Sauvaget, the ENT surgeon told me, the crisis has so far been handled only through “a lot of solidarity, humanity, and a wonderful mobilization of all the personnel in the hospital. This crisis showed us that the collective wins.”


thenation--2020-05-26--Sexual Harassment at McDonald’s Is Even Worse Than We Knew

In the summer of 2017 , single mother Kimberly Lawson needed a second job , so she got one at McDonald ’ s .
She quickly realized it wasn ’ t what she had hoped for .
As a crew member , she earned just $ 8.75 per hour , which “ wasn ’ t enough to survive , ” she said .
But then it got much , much worse .
Her male coworker started staring at her “ constantly ” and brushing up against her , “ always in my space all the time , ” she said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way to walk by her , sometimes touching her butt as he did .
It can be close quarters behind a McDonald ’ s counter , but that wasn ’ t the problem .
“ There would be more than enough room , ” she said .
And yet still he would get “ uncomfortably close.
” He started giving her gifts—doughnuts , an Earth Wind and Fire CD—that he didn ’ t bring for any of the other employees .
She reported what was happening to the store ’ s general manager @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to her coworker or do anything else to intervene .
“ I feel like he completely dismissed me , ” she said .
Then a different shift manager spoke with her coworker , but his behavior still continued .
Then it happened again with a different coworker .
A night shift manager started making uncomfortable comments about her body—telling her things like “ You ’ re sexy , ” “ You have a big butt , ” and “ You are chocolate ” —and talking to her about leaving her boyfriend .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like he would be more serious , ” she said .
“ The way he used to just talk to me , he used to scare me .
I would feel like he would follow me home.
” Yet she decided not to report her shift manager .
“ Nothing was done about the coworker ” when she reported him , she noted .
“ I figured they wouldn ’ t even do anything.
” Instead , she took matters into her own hands , changing her schedule and cutting her shifts in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t have the money to do that , I was still a single parent , ” she said .
But “ I had to cut my own work hours just to get away from that.… I just had to get out of that situation.
” She couldn ’ t afford to quit , and she worried that switching to a different location would only mean getting harassed by someone else .
“ It wasn ’ t just at that store .
I was certain of that.
” The Heartbreaking Choices Faced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lines We Can ’ t Save the Economy Without Universal Child Care She was right—Lawson is far from alone .
In a new survey conducted in April of 782 female McDonald ’ s employees who were either currently employed in non-managerial positions or had been within the last year shared exclusively with The Nation , three-quarters reported experiencing sexual harassment on the job .
Just 20 percent said they work at a location where neither they nor their coworkers have been harassed .
Two-thirds of the survey respondents had experienced multiple forms of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who had received sexual comments , half who had received sexually suggestive looks or gestures , and a third who were touched , groped , or fondled .
Twenty-nine percent had been asked to have sex with a coworker , 22 percent were offered more hours , a promotion , or another benefit in exchange for dates or sex , and 19 percent received threats for refusing to date or have sex with a coworker .
Twelve percent were sexually assaulted or raped .
For many , these things happened multiple times .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a McDonald ’ s spokesperson wrote in an email , “ The crew and managers are the heart and soul of every McDonald ’ s restaurant , and McDonald ’ s and its franchisees are dedicated to ensuring that their work environment is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment .
We ’ ve demonstrated our commitment to this issue by consistently offering various Safe and Respectful Workplace Trainings .
Without examining the Change to Win poll ’ s results or methodology in full , we can not speak to it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we must point out that the poll surveyed less than 0.1 % of the individuals who work in a McDonald ’ s U.S. restaurants , which is hardly representative of the more than 800,000 people working at McDonald ’ s restaurants nationwide.
” The fast-food industry is no stranger to sexual harassment , a problem that plagues the entire restaurant industry .
A 2016 survey of women in fast food found that 42 percent of women had experienced sexual harassment on the job .
Nearly every major chain—including KFC , Burger King , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taco Bell , and Wendy ’ s—have faced lawsuits over sexual harassment in their stores .
Two-thirds of employees at CKE Restaurants , which owns Hardee ’ s and Carl ’ s Jr. , have reported experiencing harassment .
But the numbers at McDonald ’ s , which also holds the title of the being world ’ s largest fast-food company , are of a different order of magnitude , revealing a deep and widespread problem .
It ’ s one that employees have started to speak out about .
In September 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuits against the company , including a number of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints across different states and a class action lawsuit in Michigan .
On May 18 , an international coalition of unions filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development alleging that the company has failed to address “ rampant ” sexual harassment in both the United States and a number of other countries , the first of its kind lodged against a multinational company over sexual harassment .
Here at home , workers have accused McDonald ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harassment in its stores .
They say they ’ ve received little to no training on the issue , and that it wasn ’ t made clear who to report harassment to or how .
In response to some of the activism , last year McDonald ’ s announced a new sexual harassment training program for corporate-owned locations , which it said it would encourage in franchise locations as well .
Still , in the survey , only just over a third of workers say they have seen such training implemented in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hamstrung Lawson .
After her two different coworkers harassed her , she “ felt completely alone , ” she said .
“ I didn ’ t even know the steps I could take.… I didn ’ t know who I could talk to about it.
” She worried that she risked being fired if she kept speaking up .
She was likely right about that as well .
The survey found that while most women who were harassed at McDonald ’ s reported what happened to them , 71 percent faced some form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of five were fired , denied a raise or promotion , or had their hours cut .
One challenge in holding the company accountable is that it employs a franchise model , pushing responsibility down the corporate ladder to individual franchise owners .
But the survey found that harassment is a problem at both franchise and corporate-owned locations .
In fact , more women who worked for corporate McDonald ’ s locations reported experiencing sexual harassment .
Lawson is now among the many women who have decided to speak out publicly .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the EEOC in 2018 .
“ If McDonald ’ s won ’ t listen , I ’ ll put it to the public ’ s attention so you ’ ll have to listen , ” she said .
Still , the effects of what she experienced won ’ t easily be shrugged off .
There was an emotional cost .
When she cut down on her own hours , it meant making financial sacrifices .
“ I was barely able to do anything before [ but then ] there was less things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It really took a toll on everything .
”

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In the summer of 2017, single mother Kimberly Lawson needed a second job, so she got one at McDonald’s. She quickly realized it wasn’t what she had hoped for. As a crew member, she earned just $8.75 per hour, which “wasn’t enough to survive,” she said.
But then it got much, much worse. Her male coworker started staring at her “constantly” and brushing up against her, “always in my space all the time,” she said. He would go out of his way to walk by her, sometimes touching her butt as he did. It can be close quarters behind a McDonald’s counter, but that wasn’t the problem. “There would be more than enough room,” she said. And yet still he would get “uncomfortably close.” He started giving her gifts—doughnuts, an Earth Wind and Fire CD—that he didn’t bring for any of the other employees.
She reported what was happening to the store’s general manager, but he didn’t talk to her coworker or do anything else to intervene. “I feel like he completely dismissed me,” she said. Then a different shift manager spoke with her coworker, but his behavior still continued.
Then it happened again with a different coworker. A night shift manager started making uncomfortable comments about her body—telling her things like “You’re sexy,” “You have a big butt,” and “You are chocolate”—and talking to her about leaving her boyfriend. This was even worse. “I felt like he would be more serious,” she said. “The way he used to just talk to me, he used to scare me. I would feel like he would follow me home.”
Yet she decided not to report her shift manager. “Nothing was done about the coworker” when she reported him, she noted. “I figured they wouldn’t even do anything.” Instead, she took matters into her own hands, changing her schedule and cutting her shifts in order to avoid him. “I didn’t have the money to do that, I was still a single parent,” she said. But “I had to cut my own work hours just to get away from that.… I just had to get out of that situation.” She couldn’t afford to quit, and she worried that switching to a different location would only mean getting harassed by someone else. “It wasn’t just at that store. I was certain of that.” More From Bryce Covert The New Law to Protect Pregnant Workers Is Already Changing Lives August 14, 2023 Finally, the Biden Administration Will Offer Some Relief for Childcare Costs July 11, 2023 One of #MeToo’s Biggest Wins Is About to Be Tested in Court June 13, 2023
She was right—Lawson is far from alone. In a new survey conducted in April of 782 female McDonald’s employees who were either currently employed in non-managerial positions or had been within the last year shared exclusively with The Nation, three-quarters reported experiencing sexual harassment on the job. Just 20 percent said they work at a location where neither they nor their coworkers have been harassed.
Two-thirds of the survey respondents had experienced multiple forms of harassment, with half of all respondents who had received sexual comments, half who had received sexually suggestive looks or gestures, and a third who were touched, groped, or fondled. Twenty-nine percent had been asked to have sex with a coworker, 22 percent were offered more hours, a promotion, or another benefit in exchange for dates or sex, and 19 percent received threats for refusing to date or have sex with a coworker. Twelve percent were sexually assaulted or raped. For many, these things happened multiple times. 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection 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 How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
In response to a request for comment, a McDonald’s spokesperson wrote in an email, “The crew and managers are the heart and soul of every McDonald’s restaurant, and McDonald’s and its franchisees are dedicated to ensuring that their work environment is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment. We’ve demonstrated our commitment to this issue by consistently offering various Safe and Respectful Workplace Trainings. Without examining the Change to Win poll’s results or methodology in full, we cannot speak to it. However, considering their agenda, we must point out that the poll surveyed less than 0.1% of the individuals who work in a McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, which is hardly representative of the more than 800,000 people working at McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.”
The fast-food industry is no stranger to sexual harassment, a problem that plagues the entire restaurant industry. A 2016 survey of women in fast food found that 42 percent of women had experienced sexual harassment on the job. Nearly every major chain—including KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s—have faced lawsuits over sexual harassment in their stores. Two-thirds of employees at CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., have reported experiencing harassment. But the numbers at McDonald’s, which also holds the title of the being world’s largest fast-food company, are of a different order of magnitude, revealing a deep and widespread problem.
It’s one that employees have started to speak out about. In September 2018 McDonald’s employees filed over 50 lawsuits against the company, including a number of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints across different states and a class action lawsuit in Michigan. On May 18, an international coalition of unions filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development alleging that the company has failed to address “rampant” sexual harassment in both the United States and a number of other countries, the first of its kind lodged against a multinational company over sexual harassment.
Here at home, workers have accused McDonald’s of not doing enough to prevent harassment in its stores. They say they’ve received little to no training on the issue, and that it wasn’t made clear who to report harassment to or how. In response to some of the activism, last year McDonald’s announced a new sexual harassment training program for corporate-owned locations, which it said it would encourage in franchise locations as well. Still, in the survey, only just over a third of workers say they have seen such training implemented in their workplace.
A lack of clear protocols hamstrung Lawson. After her two different coworkers harassed her, she “felt completely alone,” she said. “I didn’t even know the steps I could take.… I didn’t know who I could talk to about it.” She worried that she risked being fired if she kept speaking up.
She was likely right about that as well. The survey found that while most women who were harassed at McDonald’s reported what happened to them, 71 percent faced some form of retaliation for speaking up. Two out of five were fired, denied a raise or promotion, or had their hours cut.
One challenge in holding the company accountable is that it employs a franchise model, pushing responsibility down the corporate ladder to individual franchise owners. But the survey found that harassment is a problem at both franchise and corporate-owned locations. In fact, more women who worked for corporate McDonald’s locations reported experiencing sexual harassment.
Lawson is now among the many women who have decided to speak out publicly. She filed a complaint against the company with the EEOC in 2018. “If McDonald’s won’t listen, I’ll put it to the public’s attention so you’ll have to listen,” she said.
Still, the effects of what she experienced won’t easily be shrugged off. There was an emotional cost. When she cut down on her own hours, it meant making financial sacrifices. “I was barely able to do anything before [but then] there was less things I could do,” she said. “It really took a toll on everything.”