vox--2020-07-31--The NYPD unit that snatched a protester off the street has been accosting people for years

A silver minivan had been driving just ahead of a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Manhattan Tuesday night when it came to a sudden stop .
Five men in plain T-shirts and cargo shorts came pouring out of the vehicle and grabbed a young woman in the crowd off of her skateboard .
They then violently placed her into the van , driving off , leaving surrounding protesters confused and upset about what just happened .
To some observers , it looked like a kidnapping ; in video clips , protesters are seen surging forward , trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group of about a dozen uniformed police on bikes circle the van to push people away .
The men in the van , it turns out , were plainclothes officers from the New York Police Department ’ s Warrant Squad , and they were detaining a young woman who was later identified as Nikki Stone , an 18-year-old homeless trans girl .
An NYPD spokesperson , Sergeant Jessica McRorie , told Vox , “ The NYPD had probable cause to arrest her for five previous crimes , ” which included allegations of vandalizing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ City Hall Park in Manhattan .
The NYPD said that while officers were detaining Stone , protesters assaulted them by throwing rocks and bottles .
But video of the incident shows only one bottle rolling around on the ground in the aftermath .
Protesters who witnessed the incident disputed the police narrative .
“ None of that happened whatsoever , ” Clara Kraebber , a 20-year-old Oxford student told Gothamist .
“ We literally turned the corner and were met with a line of police who attacked us without warning.
” The incident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abduction was necessary over alleged vandalism .
It has also prompted new questions about police abuse in the wake of federal officers in Portland , Oregon , similarly snatching protesters off the street .
Several prominent New York City elected officials decried Stone ’ s arrest on Twitter .
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ( D-NY ) tweeted , “ There is no excuse for snatching women off the street and throwing them in unmarked vans.
” House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler ( D-NY ) also shared video of the Tuesday arrest on Twitter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ unacceptable ” while demanding an explanation .
New York City Council member Carlina Rivera , who tweeted the following morning that Stone had been released from police custody , said that she would be exploring legislation to change the NYPD ’ s use of plainclothes officers in unmarked cars making arrests .
A GoFundMe to assist Stone , whose nickname is “ Stickers , ” has raised over $ 42,000 as of Friday morning to help her find housing .
However , the unit that made the arrest — the NYPD Warrant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new policing tactic in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the nation in recent months .
It ’ s a shadowy group of plainclothes officers who have been detaining persons of interest in the city for decades .
Until Tuesday night ’ s arrest , many New Yorkers were unaware of the squad ’ s existence , and yet taking suspects into unmarked vehicles — especially in Black and brown communities — has been a longtime tactic of the squad , legal experts and advocates say .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The NYPD Warrant Squad is a remnant of the department ’ s expansion into counterterrorism in the wake of 9/11 under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani .
These days , however , according to several people with knowledge of the squad ’ s tactics , it focuses less on counterterrorism and more on rounding up persons of interest for the department .
Like in the incident seen in the video of Stone , officers from the squad ( or , perhaps more accurately , squads ) typically operate in plainclothes , with nothing identifying them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At its inception , the squad was meant to be a tactical unit to apprehend the city ’ s most dangerous wanted criminals .
Appearing in plainclothes added to the element of surprise when taking on a potentially armed and wanted suspect .
( An NYPD spokesperson did not respond to Vox ’ s request for comment regarding the purpose and actions of the squad . )
Nearly every precinct in the city has its own warrant squad , which is typically part of a precinct ’ s detective squad , Jennvine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society , told Vox .
Over the past 15 years , the Warrant Squad , along with the NYPD ’ s anti-crime unit , has developed a reputation in the city ’ s Black and brown neighborhoods for using plainclothes and unmarked vehicles to disappear or accost people off the street .
The anti-crime unit ’ s reputation was so bad that in June NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea disbanded it , reassigning officers to other units .
And both units ’ secretive tactics are so common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nickname for these officers : “ jump-out boys.
” “ Jump-out boys is a term that describes undercover non-identifiable cops , ” said writer and criminal justice organizer Josmar Trujillo , who lives in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan .
“ But you know that they ’ re cops [ by ] the cars that they drive and what they look like , usually with the cargo shorts and the Under Armour and the steroid arms .
They just jump out on people.
” According to Trujillo , the squad has strayed far from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the Warrant Squad is that oftentimes they ’ re framed as catching really dangerous people , ” he told Vox .
“ But most of the warrants in New York City historically have been for low-level misdemeanor [ crimes ] and under.
” Several years ago , the city revealed that the NYPD had over a million open warrants .
With so many open warrants , the police couldn ’ t possibly arrest everyone ; Trujillo said officers would therefore sometimes round people up just to meet an arrest quota .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police , in 2015 the New York Daily News reported that Staten Island officers were in fact given arrest quotas to meet .
A 2015 Vice report detailed how the Warrant Squad frequently raids homeless shelters , seemingly to meet those quotas , waiting until the middle of the night when potential detainees must be inside the facility for the night or they lose their spot .
“ You ’ re disoriented and angry , ” Jonathan Allen , who sometimes stayed in the city ’ s Wards Island shelter , told Vice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the squad .
“ You ’ re asking , ‘ What ’ s going on ?
’ Then they crush you into the vans like sardines.
” Maryanne Kaishian , senior policy counsel and staff attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services , told Vox that defense attorneys would often meet with clients and ask about how they were detained , and the response is that the “ jump-out boys ” appeared suddenly and physically pulled them into an unmarked car .
And they don ’ t even necessarily need a judge-signed warrant to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people are arrested on mechanisms called [ Investigation Cards or I-Cards ] .
This is not an arrest warrant .
It is not signed by a judge , ” Kaishian said .
I-Cards are issued for persons of interest to investigators , she said , but they also present an opportunity for police to detain people and get around the hassle of getting a judge to sign off on a legitimate warrant .
“ It ’ s an internal piece of information that ’ s shared amongst the members of the NYPD describing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that another cop has probable cause to make the arrest , which then they argue confers probable cause to any officer that might encounter that person , ” Kaishian said .
But Wong wasn ’ t sure how often the squad picks up people based on I-Cards .
“ The Warrant Squad should only be effectuating arrest if there ’ s actually a warrant , ” she said .
“ So it could be a bench warrant from criminal court or an arrest warrant .
They almost never have an arrest warrant .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ warrants.
” Bench warrants are issued if a person misses a court date without an excuse , while an arrest warrant is signed by a judge and allows police to arrest and detain a suspect accused of a specific crime .
( An NYPD spokesperson also did not respond to a question from Vox over whether they had a warrant for Stone ’ s arrest or whether the officers detained her based on an I-Card . )
There are the protocols for the Warrant Squad ’ s arrests that are shaky , criminal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are the tactics .
The prospect of plainclothes officers roaming the city and disappearing people off the street without potential judicial oversight raises serious constitutional issues .
The squad ’ s lack of clear , observable identifiers may help them capture unsuspecting persons of interest , but a sudden , potentially violently arrest is often disproportionate to the crime they are wanted for .
And any physical reaction to what amounts to a kidnapping can draw charges of resisting arrest or assaulting an officer .
“ When a person is accosted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Someone will run , they ’ ll fight , they ’ ll yank their arms away from someone who ’ s trying to pull them into a car , ” said Kaishian .
“ These acts were often charged as resisting arrest or obstructions of governmental administration .
So in addition to the charge for the warrant or the I-Card that was issued , even if they caught the wrong person , the person that they grabbed would be subjected to additional charges simply for responding to that terrifying situation.
” These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for years , but often out of sight of white people The practice of law enforcement officers snatching protesters off the street most recently gained widespread attention earlier this month in Portland , Oregon .
Over the course of several days of intense protests , federal agents were caught on camera “ disappearing ” protesters into unmarked vans before whisking them away to detention .
To be released by federal agents , ProPublica reported Tuesday , protesters were forced to sign an order which stated they were not allowed to engage in further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Democratic elected officials across the country — including by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio , who first won office in 2014 promising criminal justice reform .
But when faced with his own police department using the very same “ secret police ” tactics in his own city , de Blasio waffled .
“ I think it was the wrong time and the wrong place to effectuate that arrest , ” he said of Stone ’ s arrest at a press conference Wednesday .
“ Anything that even slightly suggests that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s the kind of thing we don ’ t want to see in this city .
...
This is not Portland.
” The mayor promised to discuss the arrest with Dermot Shea , the NYPD commissioner , but also said he would not push to discipline the officers involved .
However , the Stone incident was not a one-off and the Warrant Squad ’ s tactics have been used for decades in the city ’ s Black and brown neighborhoods .
It ’ s only now , after a white woman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that more people have taken notice of the squad .
“ People have created the space for you now to question the validity of policing at a more fundamental level , ” Trujillo said .
“ If the NYPD is willing to do this to someone who ’ s participating in an organized demonstration , what do you think that they ’ ve been doing for years when no one ’ s been looking in housing projects in the Bronx ?
If you ’ re outraged over the things you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s just like a fraction of it.
” But creating systemic change within the NYPD has proven difficult through the years .
Often , “ reform ” has simply meant changing the name of a historically abusive unit which can then just continue on until the public discovers it again and calls for more reform .
A report by the Intercept in June detailed the NYPD ’ s “ shell game ” of disbanding units only to replicate them later with a new name .
“ You can say ‘ abolish the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of like the anti-crime unit was disbanded , ” Trujillo said .
But he also points out that before the anti-crime unit became notorious for brutal tactics , the city ’ s street crime unit was operating in a similar way .
The street crime unit was disbanded in 2002 while it was tied up in litigation over the Amadou Diallo shooting , a 23-year-old immigrant who was shot 41 times by NYPD officers in 1999 , only to be recreated again within the anti-crime unit .
The issue is these units @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the city ’ s legal system .
When de Blasio or Shea decline to discipline officers , it ’ s tacit approval for abuses of power , reform advocates say .
When district attorneys decline to prosecute abusive officers , it only reinforces the NYPD ’ s impunity .
In other words , there ’ s plenty of political blame to go around .
“ This isn ’ t just Portland inspired , ” Eliza Orlins , a candidate for Manhattan district attorney and a career public defender , told Vox .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ going on for years and that ’ s because the Manhattan DA Cy Vance has let the cops run wild without any accountability.
” ( Vance ’ s office didn ’ t immediately respond to a request for comment from Vox . )
Wong agrees that prosecutors in the city are complicit with condoning abusive police tactics .
“ While there may be individual prosecutors who take their ethical obligations very seriously about disclosing everything you need to know about officers and these kind of tactics , my overwhelming experience with this office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hide that information for as long as possible , ” she said .
“ They are going to , in a way , be willfully ignorant about it so they have plausible deniability.
” This is why many reform advocates are calling for defunding the police , or at least reimagining what the police does .
And it ’ s clear to Trujillo that abolishing police units can not be a one-time deal ; it has to be a long-term process to make sure that police and prosecutors don ’ t just reinvent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s important to have baseline demands [ like abolishing the Warrant Squad ] , but it ’ s also important to keep challenging ourselves , ” he said .
We need to “ make sure that , if the police are trying to be two steps ahead of us , we have to be three steps ahead of them.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

A silver minivan had been driving just ahead of a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Manhattan Tuesday night when it came to a sudden stop. Five men in plain T-shirts and cargo shorts came pouring out of the vehicle and grabbed a young woman in the crowd off of her skateboard. They then violently placed her into the van, driving off, leaving surrounding protesters confused and upset about what just happened.
To some observers, it looked like a kidnapping; in video clips, protesters are seen surging forward, trying to intervene. Then, immediately, a group of about a dozen uniformed police on bikes circle the van to push people away.
The men in the van, it turns out, were plainclothes officers from the New York Police Department’s Warrant Squad, and they were detaining a young woman who was later identified as Nikki Stone, an 18-year-old homeless trans girl. An NYPD spokesperson, Sergeant Jessica McRorie, told Vox, “The NYPD had probable cause to arrest her for five previous crimes,” which included allegations of vandalizing police cameras with stickers and paint around City Hall Park in Manhattan.
The NYPD said that while officers were detaining Stone, protesters assaulted them by throwing rocks and bottles. But video of the incident shows only one bottle rolling around on the ground in the aftermath. Protesters who witnessed the incident disputed the police narrative.
“None of that happened whatsoever,” Clara Kraebber, a 20-year-old Oxford student told Gothamist. “We literally turned the corner and were met with a line of police who attacked us without warning.”
The incident left many asking why a violent police abduction was necessary over alleged vandalism. It has also prompted new questions about police abuse in the wake of federal officers in Portland, Oregon, similarly snatching protesters off the street.
Several prominent New York City elected officials decried Stone’s arrest on Twitter. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted, “There is no excuse for snatching women off the street and throwing them in unmarked vans.” House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) also shared video of the Tuesday arrest on Twitter, calling it “terrifying” and “unacceptable” while demanding an explanation.
Our civil liberties are on brink.
This is not a drill. There is no excuse for snatching women off the street and throwing them into unmarked vans.
To not protect our rights is to give them away. It is our responsibility to resist authoritarianism. https://t.co/pw20WF05KK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 29, 2020
New York City Council member Carlina Rivera, who tweeted the following morning that Stone had been released from police custody, said that she would be exploring legislation to change the NYPD’s use of plainclothes officers in unmarked cars making arrests. A GoFundMe to assist Stone, whose nickname is “Stickers,” has raised over $42,000 as of Friday morning to help her find housing.
However, the unit that made the arrest — the NYPD Warrant Squad — was not created as some new policing tactic in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the nation in recent months. It’s a shadowy group of plainclothes officers who have been detaining persons of interest in the city for decades. Until Tuesday night’s arrest, many New Yorkers were unaware of the squad’s existence, and yet taking suspects into unmarked vehicles — especially in Black and brown communities — has been a longtime tactic of the squad, legal experts and advocates say.
The alarming tactics of the NYPD Warrant Squad
The NYPD Warrant Squad is a remnant of the department’s expansion into counterterrorism in the wake of 9/11 under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. These days, however, according to several people with knowledge of the squad’s tactics, it focuses less on counterterrorism and more on rounding up persons of interest for the department.
Like in the incident seen in the video of Stone, officers from the squad (or, perhaps more accurately, squads) typically operate in plainclothes, with nothing identifying them as police, and utilize unmarked vehicles. At its inception, the squad was meant to be a tactical unit to apprehend the city’s most dangerous wanted criminals. Appearing in plainclothes added to the element of surprise when taking on a potentially armed and wanted suspect. (An NYPD spokesperson did not respond to Vox’s request for comment regarding the purpose and actions of the squad.)
Nearly every precinct in the city has its own warrant squad, which is typically part of a precinct’s detective squad, Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney for the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, told Vox. Over the past 15 years, the Warrant Squad, along with the NYPD’s anti-crime unit, has developed a reputation in the city’s Black and brown neighborhoods for using plainclothes and unmarked vehicles to disappear or accost people off the street. The anti-crime unit’s reputation was so bad that in June NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea disbanded it, reassigning officers to other units. And both units’ secretive tactics are so common that some lower-income neighborhoods have developed a nickname for these officers: “jump-out boys.”
“Jump-out boys is a term that describes undercover non-identifiable cops,” said writer and criminal justice organizer Josmar Trujillo, who lives in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan. “But you know that they’re cops [by] the cars that they drive and what they look like, usually with the cargo shorts and the Under Armour and the steroid arms. They just jump out on people.”
According to Trujillo, the squad has strayed far from its original purpose. “The problem with the Warrant Squad is that oftentimes they’re framed as catching really dangerous people,” he told Vox. “But most of the warrants in New York City historically have been for low-level misdemeanor [crimes] and under.”
Several years ago, the city revealed that the NYPD had over a million open warrants. With so many open warrants, the police couldn’t possibly arrest everyone; Trujillo said officers would therefore sometimes round people up just to meet an arrest quota.
After years of speculation from critics of the police, in 2015 the New York Daily News reported that Staten Island officers were in fact given arrest quotas to meet. A 2015 Vice report detailed how the Warrant Squad frequently raids homeless shelters, seemingly to meet those quotas, waiting until the middle of the night when potential detainees must be inside the facility for the night or they lose their spot.
“You’re disoriented and angry,” Jonathan Allen, who sometimes stayed in the city’s Wards Island shelter, told Vice at the time about his experience with the squad. “You’re asking, ‘What’s going on?’ Then they crush you into the vans like sardines.”
Maryanne Kaishian, senior policy counsel and staff attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, told Vox that defense attorneys would often meet with clients and ask about how they were detained, and the response is that the “jump-out boys” appeared suddenly and physically pulled them into an unmarked car. And they don’t even necessarily need a judge-signed warrant to do so.
“Often what happens is people are arrested on mechanisms called [Investigation Cards or I-Cards]. This is not an arrest warrant. It is not signed by a judge,” Kaishian said. I-Cards are issued for persons of interest to investigators, she said, but they also present an opportunity for police to detain people and get around the hassle of getting a judge to sign off on a legitimate warrant.
“It’s an internal piece of information that’s shared amongst the members of the NYPD describing the person to be arrested and saying that another cop has probable cause to make the arrest, which then they argue confers probable cause to any officer that might encounter that person,” Kaishian said.
But Wong wasn’t sure how often the squad picks up people based on I-Cards. “The Warrant Squad should only be effectuating arrest if there’s actually a warrant,” she said. “So it could be a bench warrant from criminal court or an arrest warrant. They almost never have an arrest warrant. It’s usually just for bench warrants.”
Bench warrants are issued if a person misses a court date without an excuse, while an arrest warrant is signed by a judge and allows police to arrest and detain a suspect accused of a specific crime. (An NYPD spokesperson also did not respond to a question from Vox over whether they had a warrant for Stone’s arrest or whether the officers detained her based on an I-Card.)
There are the protocols for the Warrant Squad’s arrests that are shaky, criminal justice reform advocates say, and then there are the tactics. The prospect of plainclothes officers roaming the city and disappearing people off the street without potential judicial oversight raises serious constitutional issues.
The squad’s lack of clear, observable identifiers may help them capture unsuspecting persons of interest, but a sudden, potentially violently arrest is often disproportionate to the crime they are wanted for. And any physical reaction to what amounts to a kidnapping can draw charges of resisting arrest or assaulting an officer.
“When a person is accosted by surprise, they have a natural reaction. Someone will run, they’ll fight, they’ll yank their arms away from someone who’s trying to pull them into a car,” said Kaishian. “These acts were often charged as resisting arrest or obstructions of governmental administration. So in addition to the charge for the warrant or the I-Card that was issued, even if they caught the wrong person, the person that they grabbed would be subjected to additional charges simply for responding to that terrifying situation.”
These “kidnapping” tactics have been used for years, but often out of sight of white people
The practice of law enforcement officers snatching protesters off the street most recently gained widespread attention earlier this month in Portland, Oregon. Over the course of several days of intense protests, federal agents were caught on camera “disappearing” protesters into unmarked vans before whisking them away to detention.
To be released by federal agents, ProPublica reported Tuesday, protesters were forced to sign an order which stated they were not allowed to engage in further protests.
The practice was widely denounced by Democratic elected officials across the country — including by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who first won office in 2014 promising criminal justice reform.
We’ve seen the chaos secret police are creating in Portland. We won’t let it happen here. https://t.co/ata6VwJUHu — Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) July 20, 2020
But when faced with his own police department using the very same “secret police” tactics in his own city, de Blasio waffled. “I think it was the wrong time and the wrong place to effectuate that arrest,” he said of Stone’s arrest at a press conference Wednesday. “Anything that even slightly suggests that is, to me, troubling and it’s the kind of thing we don’t want to see in this city. ... This is not Portland.”
The mayor promised to discuss the arrest with Dermot Shea, the NYPD commissioner, but also said he would not push to discipline the officers involved. However, the Stone incident was not a one-off and the Warrant Squad’s tactics have been used for decades in the city’s Black and brown neighborhoods. It’s only now, after a white woman was grabbed on camera in midtown Manhattan, that more people have taken notice of the squad.
“People have created the space for you now to question the validity of policing at a more fundamental level,” Trujillo said. “If the NYPD is willing to do this to someone who’s participating in an organized demonstration, what do you think that they’ve been doing for years when no one’s been looking in housing projects in the Bronx? If you’re outraged over the things you’re seeing on video right now, that’s just like a fraction of it.”
But creating systemic change within the NYPD has proven difficult through the years. Often, “reform” has simply meant changing the name of a historically abusive unit which can then just continue on until the public discovers it again and calls for more reform. A report by the Intercept in June detailed the NYPD’s “shell game” of disbanding units only to replicate them later with a new name.
“You can say ‘abolish the Warrant Squad’ or disband it, kind of like the anti-crime unit was disbanded,” Trujillo said. But he also points out that before the anti-crime unit became notorious for brutal tactics, the city’s street crime unit was operating in a similar way. The street crime unit was disbanded in 2002 while it was tied up in litigation over the Amadou Diallo shooting, a 23-year-old immigrant who was shot 41 times by NYPD officers in 1999, only to be recreated again within the anti-crime unit.
The issue is these units — and their tactics — are baked into the city’s legal system. When de Blasio or Shea decline to discipline officers, it’s tacit approval for abuses of power, reform advocates say. When district attorneys decline to prosecute abusive officers, it only reinforces the NYPD’s impunity.
In other words, there’s plenty of political blame to go around. “This isn’t just Portland inspired,” Eliza Orlins, a candidate for Manhattan district attorney and a career public defender, told Vox. “This is something that has been going on for years and that’s because the Manhattan DA Cy Vance has let the cops run wild without any accountability.” (Vance’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Vox.)
Wong agrees that prosecutors in the city are complicit with condoning abusive police tactics. “While there may be individual prosecutors who take their ethical obligations very seriously about disclosing everything you need to know about officers and these kind of tactics, my overwhelming experience with this office is that their prosecutors are going to hide that information for as long as possible,” she said. “They are going to, in a way, be willfully ignorant about it so they have plausible deniability.”
This is why many reform advocates are calling for defunding the police, or at least reimagining what the police does. And it’s clear to Trujillo that abolishing police units cannot be a one-time deal; it has to be a long-term process to make sure that police and prosecutors don’t just reinvent the wheel when everyone stops paying attention.
“It’s important to have baseline demands [like abolishing the Warrant Squad], but it’s also important to keep challenging ourselves,” he said. We need to “make sure that, if the police are trying to be two steps ahead of us, we have to be three steps ahead of them.”


vox--2020-07-31--Eulogy for my neglected windowsill herb garden

Thank you for being here to honor the lives of those whose journeys meant so much to us all , and whose stories are , fondly and inevitably , coming to an end .
I ’ m speaking of course of the herbs I planted on my windowsill at the beginning of the pandemic .
What remarkable lives they have led .
However , due to my negligence and realization that I ’ m just not that good at growing windowsill herbs and sort of did it just as a thing to do , the time has come to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Scallions and Sage and of course baby Celery , home from City Fresh grocery store in March .
How fresh and green they all looked that first day , each filled with promise , despite my knowledge that I have managed to kill many an “ indestructible ” succulent .
Still , I tended to these lives with care , watching roots spread in shot glasses full of water , and planting Sage in an old mug while dreaming of the brown butter sauces I ’ d spoon over future ravioli .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ depression and perhaps scurvy , I thought .
Here , my saviors of novel frugality !
Here , my hopes .
As the months went on , the garden thrived .
Well , not Celery .
While I planted her base in shallow water and she grew some leaves , all that really happened was she got a slimy bottom with not much growth .
But Sage and Scallions seemed happy .
I soon transported Scallions out of their shot glass full of water and into a coffee can full of soil , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bigger and stronger than before .
Sage sprouted new leaves from its mug .
As go the plants , so goes the nation , I told myself .
By the time Scallions grew tall and thick , I ’ d be congregating maskless with old friends in bars again , subjecting them to my unshielded Scallion breath .
But my garden faced struggle , such as when a bird absolutely plucked one of the Scallion siblings from its coffee can home after I moved it onto the balcony , or when I realized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t really put Sage in anything except around Thanksgiving .
There was the great storm of early July , which nearly drowned Scallions .
There were the droughts of mid-April , May , June , and July during which I was just sort of distracted and depressed and forgot to water everything , from which Sage has never quite recovered .
And there was the mild panic of late July , in which I realized a recipe called for Scallions , and even though using them in recipes is precisely what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by picking one I ’ d be undoing months of work and somehow jinxing the entire country ’ s epidemiological progress .
Scallions only really yielded flavorless , hollow greens as I attempted to preserve the white roots , even though that ’ s the part I wanted , and Sage ’ s leaves were never big enough to impressively adorn any dish .
And so , we bid them farewell .
Perhaps on another plane they will find a new destiny .
But we can all take heart in knowing they will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world : Celery base , Sourdough Starter , and DIY Embroidery Kit .
May your memories be a blessing .

Cherished friends,
Thank you for being here to honor the lives of those whose journeys meant so much to us all, and whose stories are, fondly and inevitably, coming to an end. I’m speaking of course of the herbs I planted on my windowsill at the beginning of the pandemic. What remarkable lives they have led. However, due to my negligence and realization that I’m just not that good at growing windowsill herbs and sort of did it just as a thing to do, the time has come to say goodbye.
We first took the herbs, Scallions and Sage and of course baby Celery, home from City Fresh grocery store in March. How fresh and green they all looked that first day, each filled with promise, despite my knowledge that I have managed to kill many an “indestructible” succulent. Still, I tended to these lives with care, watching roots spread in shot glasses full of water, and planting Sage in an old mug while dreaming of the brown butter sauces I’d spoon over future ravioli. My months inside would not end in depression and perhaps scurvy, I thought. Here, my saviors of novel frugality! Here, my hopes.
As the months went on, the garden thrived. Well, not Celery. While I planted her base in shallow water and she grew some leaves, all that really happened was she got a slimy bottom with not much growth. But Sage and Scallions seemed happy. I soon transported Scallions out of their shot glass full of water and into a coffee can full of soil, in hopes that they’d grow bigger and stronger than before. Sage sprouted new leaves from its mug. As go the plants, so goes the nation, I told myself. By the time Scallions grew tall and thick, I’d be congregating maskless with old friends in bars again, subjecting them to my unshielded Scallion breath.
But my garden faced struggle, such as when a bird absolutely plucked one of the Scallion siblings from its coffee can home after I moved it onto the balcony, or when I realized that it’s Summer and I don’t really put Sage in anything except around Thanksgiving. There was the great storm of early July, which nearly drowned Scallions. There were the droughts of mid-April, May, June, and July during which I was just sort of distracted and depressed and forgot to water everything, from which Sage has never quite recovered. And there was the mild panic of late July, in which I realized a recipe called for Scallions, and even though using them in recipes is precisely what I grew them for, I worried by picking one I’d be undoing months of work and somehow jinxing the entire country’s epidemiological progress.
Scallions only really yielded flavorless, hollow greens as I attempted to preserve the white roots, even though that’s the part I wanted, and Sage’s leaves were never big enough to impressively adorn any dish. And so, we bid them farewell. Perhaps on another plane they will find a new destiny. But we can all take heart in knowing they will be reunited with their siblings from around the world: Celery base, Sourdough Starter, and DIY Embroidery Kit. May your memories be a blessing.


vox--2020-07-31--Elections, explained (to kids)

Elections, explained (to kids)

Although the 2020 presidential election is still a few months away in the US , voters on the Island of Explained are headed to the polls today to pick their new president and decide which party ( the Now Party or the Later Party ) will carry the day .
In the second of four episodes of Today , Explained to Kids : Summer Camp , Vox ’ s explainer podcast series for kids , we head back to the island to learn about political parties ( wait , there ’ s no cake ? )
and listen in to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two presidential candidates .
We also talk to Vox political reporter and Island librarian Li Zhou to find out why the Island of Explained , and the US , count electoral votes rather than the popular vote and whether that system gives the people more , or less , power .
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and a fun experiment in phone banking you can do with kids ( or , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on what we learned in the episode .
Grown-ups : The discussion guide introduces kids to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and encourages families and educators to explore present-day challenges to voting rights with the young people in your lives .
Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials !
Listen to more Today , Explained to Kids episodes : Support Vox ’ s explanatory journalism Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contribution to Vox today .

Although the 2020 presidential election is still a few months away in the US, voters on the Island of Explained are headed to the polls today to pick their new president and decide which party (the Now Party or the Later Party) will carry the day.
In the second of four episodes of Today, Explained to Kids: Summer Camp, Vox’s explainer podcast series for kids, we head back to the island to learn about political parties (wait, there’s no cake?) and listen in to a debate between the island’s two presidential candidates. We also talk to Vox political reporter and Island librarian Li Zhou to find out why the Island of Explained, and the US, count electoral votes rather than the popular vote and whether that system gives the people more, or less, power.
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and a fun experiment in phone banking you can do with kids (or, again, by yourself) that builds on what we learned in the episode.
Grown-ups: The discussion guide introduces kids to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and encourages families and educators to explore present-day challenges to voting rights with the young people in your lives.
Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials!
Listen to more Today, Explained to Kids episodes:


vox--2020-08-01--MacKenzie Scott is donating her billions much faster than her ex Jeff Bezos

A year ago , Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos set records with the world ’ s biggest divorce settlement .
On July 28 , MacKenzie Bezos ( now MacKenzie Scott ) announced that she ’ s spent the time since aiming to set a much more inspiring record — for how fast she can give the money away .
When the couple divorced in 2019 , they were splitting the largest personal fortune in history , estimated at the time at about $ 145 billion .
The couple announced a settlement in April 2019 that left Jeff Bezos 75 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the marriage with $ 35 billion , making her at the time of the announcement the third-richest woman in the world ( a recent Forbes ranking now has her at fourth ) .
Right away , Scott indicated that her approach to philanthropy would be profoundly different from the approach she and Bezos had used as a couple .
Jeff Bezos ’ s forays into philanthropy have been limited .
While the wealthiest man in the world , he has not signed the Giving Pledge to eventually donate a significant share of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a far smaller percentage of it than other ultra-wealthy figures like Bill Gates , Mark Zuckerberg , Warren Buffett , or Mike Bloomberg .
When he has given , I ’ ve criticized his approach for a lack of rigor and clarity .
One month after the divorce , Scott signed the Giving Pledge that Bezos never did .
“ I have a disproportionate amount of money to share , ” she wrote in her pledge letter .
“ I won ’ t wait .
And I will keep at it until the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like she ’ s been acting on that declaration .
A year later , she has published an update , and it ’ s an astonishing one .
In the past year , she has donated $ 1.7 billion to 116 organizations working in areas of interest to her , from racial justice and LGBTQ equality to climate change and global health .
All the organizations listed are established nonprofits , selected , Scott says , for their leadership ’ s “ track record of effective management and significant impact in their fields.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 586.7 million — went to organizations working on racial equity , an issue where awareness has grown quickly over the past few months amid protests sparked by George Floyd ’ s killing by Minneapolis police .
Other top priorities included economic mobility ( $ 399.5 million ) , gender equity , public health , and global development ( more on these below ) .
The total amount — $ 1.7 billion — is obviously just a fraction of her fortune , but it is deeply unusual for billionaires to give away that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a preexisting organization to do grant research and vetting .
Her methods , too , are unusual .
“ It was a gift that just fell from the sky , ” Jorge Valencia , executive director and CEO of one of those 116 organizations , the Point Foundation , told the Chronicle of Philanthropy .
The organization , which offers scholarships to LGBTQ+ students , did not apply for a grant and had no connection to Scott .
And while it ’ s common for philanthropists to give grants that are restricted for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the course of several years or conditional on various benchmarks for grant success , Scott says she did none of that .
“ I gave each a contribution and encouraged them to spend it on whatever they believe best serves their efforts .
Unless organization leadership requested otherwise , all commitments were paid up front and left unrestricted to provide them with maximum flexibility , ” she wrote in her announcement .
“ It ’ s an interesting contrast to the more technocratic giving of the tech billionaires , ” Rob Reich , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role of philanthropy in society , told me .
Another interesting contrast is the way Scott approached publicizing her giving .
The announcement two years ago that Jeff Bezos planned to give $ 2 billion to education and homelessness charities attracted , Reich says , “ fanfare with zero follow-up.
” Almost two years later , the website for Bezos ’ s Day One Fund lists just under $ 200 million in grants , about 10 percent of the amount initially pledged .
Half of the initial pledge was for education , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officially announced yet ( though Bezos has posted updates on Instagram ) .
In 2020 , Bezos announced on Instagram a planned $ 10 billion in grants to fight climate change through what he called the Bezos Earth Fund .
The Bezos Earth Fund has no website .
Bezos ’ s original Instagram post says that grants will start this summer , though they appear to have not yet started .
All this is not unusual ( and it doesn ’ t suggest that Bezos won ’ t eventually meet his commitments ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s made , including $ 100 million to Feeding America for coronavirus relief earlier this year ) .
Typically , philanthropic announcements get widespread coverage even if they are substantially in advance of the actual disbursement of money .
And in some cases , money is disbursed to donor-advised funds or other instruments , which means they may take even longer to reach recipients .
There is nothing wrong with taking your time to make grants if that means the grants do more good — but it ’ s easy for delays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive publicity of a major grant long before anyone ’ s life is improved by it .
Scott , by announcing her gifts only after she ’ d already disbursed all the money , avoids that pitfall — and could offer a glimpse of a new model of how to give , one that is focused on moving money quickly , not attaching any requirements or conditions , and shifting the power dynamics of the philanthropy world .
Does this model of giving work ?
Scott ’ s fast , massive disbursements and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sums of money to where they are needed , with much less review and fewer application steps than in traditional grantmaking , “ weakens the case that giving away $ 1.7 billion is difficult , ” Reich said .
“ There remains a question about whether it ’ s difficult to do well.
” Giving away money very quickly with a minimal process does have some disadvantages .
Many charitable interventions don ’ t work , and the differences between the best organizations and the average organizations can be quite large .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t want to take that chance .
But there ’ s a good argument that at least some funders should be happy to make lots of grants , many of which may disappoint them anyway .
Vetting often adds lots of overhead , delays , and communication problems for charities ; a faster process that gets money where it ’ s needed sooner can make a big difference .
In some specific fields ( say , scientific research ) , studies have shown that all the effort-intensive work to find the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers don ’ t agree with each other ’ s rankings at all .
In a case like that , you might as well just get money out the door , with minimal vetting — as Scott has done .
And in some areas , like coronavirus relief , getting money to people quickly is really important .
If it takes months to make a grant and more months for the money to arrive , it may be too late to help .
Scott donated to GiveDirectly , a nonprofit that gives people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which has dramatically expanded its operations this year in order to help people around the world deal with the coronavirus crisis .
Scott ’ s team reached out to GiveDirectly after having already done their research , GiveDirectly ’ s managing director Joe Huston told me .
Very little staff time was tied up in making the donation happen .
( The nonprofit tracks how many resources are expended per dollar raised and said that Scott ’ s gift was one of the lowest-scoring , on that metric , they could remember .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and 95 percent of it was sent out to recipients within 10 days .
“ The pandemic is giving donors experience in handing over the reins in philanthropy , ” Huston told me , so that help can reach people as fast as it ’ s needed .
“ My hope is that when people are just looking to help , they ’ ll start with that in general.
” There are other pitfalls to trying to give away money quickly , though Scott avoided many of the biggest ones .
Lots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targets like Stanford , Harvard , or MIT — big research universities with well-staffed donor relations departments that can absorb enormous gifts .
( “ For the love of God , rich people , stop giving Ivy League colleges money , ” my colleague Dylan Matthews wrote after one such mega-gift , and I agree . )
Scott donated to several historically Black colleges and universities ; in each case , her donation of $ 20 million to $ 40 million was the largest single donation in the school ’ s history .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial burden off of deserving students and help make ends meet so they can focus on graduating on time , ” Howard University said in a statement .
“ This pure act of benevolence is clearly a game-changer and it could not have come at a better time , ” Hampton president William R. Harvey told the HBCU Digest .
In general , picking organizations run by people affected firsthand by the injustices Scott targeted was a priority .
“ On this list , 91 percent of the racial-equity organizations are run by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders , and 83 percent of the gender-equity organizations are run by women , bringing lived experience to solutions for imbalanced social systems , ” she wrote in her note announcing the gifts .
That fact might provide a useful lens for evaluating her donations .
MacKenzie Scott does not know how to solve racial justice , women ’ s rights , or LGBTQ+ equality .
She just happens to , unlike most of us , be in possession of $ 35 billion , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of that money to Black activists and LGBTQ+ activists and women ’ s activists , probably they would be better suited than she is to figure out how the money could be spent to solve those problems .
The same theme recurs in Scott ’ s letter and in nonprofits ’ descriptions of her process .
There wasn ’ t very much vetting because Scott does not particularly expect that she ’ s better at vetting than these organizations are .
There weren ’ t restrictions on the grants because Scott does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suited than the recipients to guess what restrictions would be useful .
She is “ trusting the leaders of the organizations chosen , ” Reich told me , “ with a very deliberate eye toward leaders with the lived experience of the work they ’ re doing.
” There ’ s something deeply inspiring about that .
I am in favor of philanthropists putting in the work to identify the most effective approaches to social problems and direct their money with precision where it will do the most good , when they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think that work is often well worth the effort .
“ There ’ s room for the bigger foundations , the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , that kind of heavyweight model , ” Huston told me when I asked whether more philanthropists should be imitating Scott .
“ But I ’ m glad there ’ s more examples , like [ MacKenzie ] Bezos , like Twitter ’ s Jack Dorsey , ” where philanthropists make donation decisions quickly and trust the decision-making to others .
If you have $ 35 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make you qualified to figure out how to fix the world — and if you think that other people are more qualified , you might decide the best plan is to just shovel the money out the door so they can run with it .
That seems to be MacKenzie Scott ’ s approach to philanthropy so far — and a society grappling with the role of billionaires in our world and in our giving should be watching .
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we ’ ll send you a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world ’ s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

A year ago, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos set records with the world’s biggest divorce settlement. On July 28, MacKenzie Bezos (now MacKenzie Scott) announced that she’s spent the time since aiming to set a much more inspiring record — for how fast she can give the money away.
When the couple divorced in 2019, they were splitting the largest personal fortune in history, estimated at the time at about $145 billion. The couple announced a settlement in April 2019 that left Jeff Bezos 75 percent of his Amazon fortune, while Scott departed the marriage with $35 billion, making her at the time of the announcement the third-richest woman in the world (a recent Forbes ranking now has her at fourth).
Right away, Scott indicated that her approach to philanthropy would be profoundly different from the approach she and Bezos had used as a couple. Jeff Bezos’s forays into philanthropy have been limited. While the wealthiest man in the world, he has not signed the Giving Pledge to eventually donate a significant share of his wealth, and he’s donated a far smaller percentage of it than other ultra-wealthy figures like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, or Mike Bloomberg. When he has given, I’ve criticized his approach for a lack of rigor and clarity.
One month after the divorce, Scott signed the Giving Pledge that Bezos never did. “I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” she wrote in her pledge letter. “I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.” And it seems like she’s been acting on that declaration.
MacKenzie Scott’s deeply unusual approach to philanthropy
A year later, she has published an update, and it’s an astonishing one. In the past year, she has donated $1.7 billion to 116 organizations working in areas of interest to her, from racial justice and LGBTQ equality to climate change and global health.
All the organizations listed are established nonprofits, selected, Scott says, for their leadership’s “track record of effective management and significant impact in their fields.” The largest area of grants — $586.7 million — went to organizations working on racial equity, an issue where awareness has grown quickly over the past few months amid protests sparked by George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. Other top priorities included economic mobility ($399.5 million), gender equity, public health, and global development (more on these below).
The total amount — $1.7 billion — is obviously just a fraction of her fortune, but it is deeply unusual for billionaires to give away that much money this quickly, especially without a preexisting organization to do grant research and vetting.
Her methods, too, are unusual. “It was a gift that just fell from the sky,” Jorge Valencia, executive director and CEO of one of those 116 organizations, the Point Foundation, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The organization, which offers scholarships to LGBTQ+ students, did not apply for a grant and had no connection to Scott.
And while it’s common for philanthropists to give grants that are restricted for a specific purpose, paid out over the course of several years or conditional on various benchmarks for grant success, Scott says she did none of that. “I gave each a contribution and encouraged them to spend it on whatever they believe best serves their efforts. Unless organization leadership requested otherwise, all commitments were paid up front and left unrestricted to provide them with maximum flexibility,” she wrote in her announcement.
“It’s an interesting contrast to the more technocratic giving of the tech billionaires,” Rob Reich, a Stanford philosopher who writes about the role of philanthropy in society, told me.
Another interesting contrast is the way Scott approached publicizing her giving. The announcement two years ago that Jeff Bezos planned to give $2 billion to education and homelessness charities attracted, Reich says, “fanfare with zero follow-up.” Almost two years later, the website for Bezos’s Day One Fund lists just under $200 million in grants, about 10 percent of the amount initially pledged. Half of the initial pledge was for education, and no progress in this area has been officially announced yet (though Bezos has posted updates on Instagram).
In 2020, Bezos announced on Instagram a planned $10 billion in grants to fight climate change through what he called the Bezos Earth Fund. The Bezos Earth Fund has no website. Bezos’s original Instagram post says that grants will start this summer, though they appear to have not yet started.
All this is not unusual (and it doesn’t suggest that Bezos won’t eventually meet his commitments; he has paid out other grants he’s made, including $100 million to Feeding America for coronavirus relief earlier this year). Typically, philanthropic announcements get widespread coverage even if they are substantially in advance of the actual disbursement of money. And in some cases, money is disbursed to donor-advised funds or other instruments, which means they may take even longer to reach recipients. There is nothing wrong with taking your time to make grants if that means the grants do more good — but it’s easy for delays to mean that givers enjoy all the positive publicity of a major grant long before anyone’s life is improved by it.
Scott, by announcing her gifts only after she’d already disbursed all the money, avoids that pitfall — and could offer a glimpse of a new model of how to give, one that is focused on moving money quickly, not attaching any requirements or conditions, and shifting the power dynamics of the philanthropy world.
Does this model of giving work?
Scott’s fast, massive disbursements and other recent experiments in quickly moving large sums of money to where they are needed, with much less review and fewer application steps than in traditional grantmaking, “weakens the case that giving away $1.7 billion is difficult,” Reich said. “There remains a question about whether it’s difficult to do well.”
Giving away money very quickly with a minimal process does have some disadvantages.
Many charitable interventions don’t work, and the differences between the best organizations and the average organizations can be quite large. It’s reasonable that many funders don’t want to take that chance.
But there’s a good argument that at least some funders should be happy to make lots of grants, many of which may disappoint them anyway. Vetting often adds lots of overhead, delays, and communication problems for charities; a faster process that gets money where it’s needed sooner can make a big difference. In some specific fields (say, scientific research), studies have shown that all the effort-intensive work to find the “best” grants is fairly arbitrary; researchers don’t agree with each other’s rankings at all. In a case like that, you might as well just get money out the door, with minimal vetting — as Scott has done.
And in some areas, like coronavirus relief, getting money to people quickly is really important. If it takes months to make a grant and more months for the money to arrive, it may be too late to help. Scott donated to GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that gives people cash, no strings attached, and which has dramatically expanded its operations this year in order to help people around the world deal with the coronavirus crisis.
Scott’s team reached out to GiveDirectly after having already done their research, GiveDirectly’s managing director Joe Huston told me. Very little staff time was tied up in making the donation happen. (The nonprofit tracks how many resources are expended per dollar raised and said that Scott’s gift was one of the lowest-scoring, on that metric, they could remember.) The money arrived in early June, and 95 percent of it was sent out to recipients within 10 days.
“The pandemic is giving donors experience in handing over the reins in philanthropy,” Huston told me, so that help can reach people as fast as it’s needed. “My hope is that when people are just looking to help, they’ll start with that in general.”
There are other pitfalls to trying to give away money quickly, though Scott avoided many of the biggest ones. Lots of donors making large gifts gravitate toward targets like Stanford, Harvard, or MIT — big research universities with well-staffed donor relations departments that can absorb enormous gifts. (“For the love of God, rich people, stop giving Ivy League colleges money,” my colleague Dylan Matthews wrote after one such mega-gift, and I agree.) Scott donated to several historically Black colleges and universities; in each case, her donation of $20 million to $40 million was the largest single donation in the school’s history.
The money will help ”lift the financial burden off of deserving students and help make ends meet so they can focus on graduating on time,” Howard University said in a statement. “This pure act of benevolence is clearly a game-changer and it could not have come at a better time,” Hampton president William R. Harvey told the HBCU Digest.
In general, picking organizations run by people affected firsthand by the injustices Scott targeted was a priority. “On this list, 91 percent of the racial-equity organizations are run by leaders of color, 100 percent of the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders, and 83 percent of the gender-equity organizations are run by women, bringing lived experience to solutions for imbalanced social systems,” she wrote in her note announcing the gifts.
That fact might provide a useful lens for evaluating her donations. MacKenzie Scott does not know how to solve racial justice, women’s rights, or LGBTQ+ equality. She just happens to, unlike most of us, be in possession of $35 billion, and so she decided that if she gave much of that money to Black activists and LGBTQ+ activists and women’s activists, probably they would be better suited than she is to figure out how the money could be spent to solve those problems.
The same theme recurs in Scott’s letter and in nonprofits’ descriptions of her process. There wasn’t very much vetting because Scott does not particularly expect that she’s better at vetting than these organizations are. There weren’t restrictions on the grants because Scott does not particularly believe she’s more suited than the recipients to guess what restrictions would be useful. She is “trusting the leaders of the organizations chosen,” Reich told me, “with a very deliberate eye toward leaders with the lived experience of the work they’re doing.”
There’s something deeply inspiring about that. I am in favor of philanthropists putting in the work to identify the most effective approaches to social problems and direct their money with precision where it will do the most good, when they have the resources to do that. I think that work is often well worth the effort.
“There’s room for the bigger foundations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that kind of heavyweight model,” Huston told me when I asked whether more philanthropists should be imitating Scott. “But I’m glad there’s more examples, like [MacKenzie] Bezos, like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey,” where philanthropists make donation decisions quickly and trust the decision-making to others.
If you have $35 billion, that fact does not in itself make you qualified to figure out how to fix the world — and if you think that other people are more qualified, you might decide the best plan is to just shovel the money out the door so they can run with it. That seems to be MacKenzie Scott’s approach to philanthropy so far — and a society grappling with the role of billionaires in our world and in our giving should be watching.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter and we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.


vox--2020-08-01--Umbrella Academy delivers a rambunctious, touching second season

The dysfunctional family of seven ex-superheroes known as the Umbrella Academy have two things in common : They all were born on the same day , and they ’ re all working — some more consciously than others — through the trauma of their father ’ s abuse .
Beneath the end-of-the-world , blow-up-the-moon stuff , the first season of Netflix ’ s fizzy live-action adaptation of The Umbrella Academy , Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba ’ s Eisner Award-winning comic book , had that emotional heart too .
In season one , we met the Hargreeves kids , now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when their dad , Reginald Hargreeves , dies .
His death brings them all together , forcing them to confront unanswered questions about forgiveness , abuse , and family — questions they buried with time .
With their bad dad dead , finding closure should be easier for the kids .
Or at least , that ’ s what they believed .
Their hope is that any of their trauma or scars will die with the person who caused them .
But complicating matters is that these superpowered humans have to stop the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having powers like superstrength , marksmanship , communing with the dead , and psychic manipulation , they failed .
But instead of dying with the rest of humanity , they time traveled to go back before the apocalypse to try again to stop it .
They now find themselves scattered in Dallas at the beginning of the 1960s .
That first season spent a lot of time laying all of this out , making some parts of it feel a little like a chore .
But all that time spent on extreme exposition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entertaining , tighter second chapter .
Season one of Umbrella Academy set the board , and season two plays the game .
There ’ s a lot more zapping and superpower-ing in season two , which should appease comic book fans who want to see superheroes do that kind of thing .
But it also swings for something way more emotionally resonant , wanting to comment on the imperfect , human way we heal and the gulf between people wanting to change their ways and actually doing so .
And in its best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second season manages to balance both humanity and superheroics without sacrificing either .
The Umbrella Academy uses superpowers to tell a very human story about complicated relationships One of the core devices in Umbrella Academy is that the Hargreeves are each known by a number , assigned to them by their father : There ’ s Luther ( # 1 ) , Diego ( # 2 ) , Allison ( # 3 ) , Klaus ( # 4 ) , Five ( # 5 ) , Ben ( # 6 ) and Vanya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s like they ’ re players on a basketball team whose names you never learned .
Or in the Academy ’ s case , the numbers are a way to differentiate the seven different superpowers they possess .
The dark edge is that reducing your kids to a number is just one of several emotionally abusive things Reginald Hargreeves , the patriarch of the family , did .
Hargreeves developed his adopted children into a superhero team , putting them through relentless physical training , teaching them violence , pitting them against each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failed .
They ultimately did fail when the world needed them most , resulting in Ben ’ s death and the disappearance of Five , hence the disbandment .
And they failed again at the end of last season , as Vanya ’ s power manifested itself to destroy the moon before all of them , including Ben , decided they could save the world if they just time traveled .
Believing you can avert an armageddon that you and your siblings caused is in itself a slightly egotistical thing to do .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re truly the only ones who can stop it .
After jumping through that portal , the adult Hargreeves kids are separated and spread out in various pockets of time before November 22 , 1963 — the day President John F. Kennedy is shot in Dallas and around 26 years before they were all born .
It also turns out that , although they ’ ve timed-hopped , there ’ s another cataclysmic event happening that they need to stop .
But that ’ s very difficult to do when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place or even the same time .
As tantalizing as that mysterious , encroaching doomsday itself is , the best stuff about the second season is how we get there and how we get the Hargreeves siblings on the same page .
The time jump forces the siblings , for some brief moments , to live independently from one another .
Time travel , for the siblings , is a forced immersive therapy of sorts .
These brothers and sisters , their feelings , and their identities were so tightly tethered to one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to live as if the others , and their father , don ’ t exist .
Which means we see each of them try to heal their lifelong wounds in their own way .
Luther ( Tom Hopper ) , with his superstrength , becomes a bodyguard by day and an underground fighter by night to dull the pain .
Diego ’ s ( David Castañeda ) superhuman marksmanship is no use in the mental institution he ’ s stuck in , but he ’ s plotting every day to get out .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ drinks and somehow starts a cult .
Five ( Aidan Gallagher ) is the only bridge to the others , thanks to his time-hopping powers .
And then there ’ s Allison ( Emmy Raver-Lampman ) , who can force people to do anything by preceding an action with the phrase “ I heard a rumor ” ( such as , “ I heard a rumor that you ate a cheesecake ” ) , who ’ s unfortunately plunked down in 1961 .
Unlike her white siblings , Allison faces an added threat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America ’ s segregation laws and rampant racism .
White privilege , it seems , extends to time travel .
The central conceit in Allison ’ s story is that she could easily change the world around her by “ I heard a rumor you weren ’ t a flagrant racist ” -ing everyone around her , but she never says that .
The show purposely doesn ’ t spell out exactly why she doesn ’ t , allowing you to come to your own conclusions about why the racism she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Or maybe the excuse is that she isn ’ t powerful enough to stop the racism .
Or that racism is more complex than simple actions to be commanded one way or another .
Or maybe Allison ’ s afraid of how much she ’ s truly capable of .
In season one , Allison lost custody of her daughter when her ex-husband revealed that he caught Allison using her rumor power to make their daughter fall asleep .
Even though Allison loves her daughter , she still used her powers to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will .
Allison gets a stark lesson in the human consequence of her powers , something her father encouraged her to use and allowed her to ignore the fallout from .
We actually do see her use her powers in a “ Whites Only ” diner in a late-season episode .
The diner ’ s manager has been a racist prick over and over again .
She rumors the manager into serving her coffee .
She ’ s so enraged with him , though , that she tells him to fill her cup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scalding his hands raw and red .
Skin sloughs off .
He still pours .
She can ’ t stop inflicting pain .
Allison could have easily just rumored the man to serve her and stop him when the coffee cup was full , saving him the burns .
But she inflicts pain upon him because it feels square with the racism and injustice she ’ s been fighting in this timeline and because punishment and pain are what her father taught her .
What ’ s fascinating is that the show goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t a villainous person .
This scene doesn ’ t happen until after Allison has refrained from using her powers against injustice for the majority of the season .
Instead , her lapse shows us that being “ good ” or being healed isn ’ t a one-and-done fix .
Healing and bettering yourself require constant work .
In that same vein , Allison and the Hargreeves siblings confront an ugly truth when they re-connect with Vanya ( Ellen Page ) : They each had treated her as badly as their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1960s and before adult Vanya fully unleashed her power that brought a piece of the moon crashing down , the adult siblings locked her away in a padded room because they thought she was too dangerous .
Instead of sticking up for her or protecting her from their father ’ s abuse when they were kids , they neglected her and treated her as the problem .
This is the kind of behavior you ’ d expect from people whose entire family life is training , punishment , and competition , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not excusable .
Ultimately , the siblings spend this season learning how to ask for forgiveness and being able to forgive each other .
This isn ’ t to say that everything in Umbrella Academy ’ s second season is ooey-gooey touchy-feely .
Since we know what everyone ’ s powers are now , the show loosens its grip on the exposition and allows for more of its signature , music-cued fight sequences and action scenes peppered throughout the season .
This includes an explosive armageddon with all the siblings going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explode and faces melt , crumpling artillery shells with their bare hands , Kraken-like tentacles flinging soldiers around — that happens in the first seven minutes of the first episode .
But viewers already know by season two that Umbrella Academy is always ready to deliver spectacle .
It ’ s just that this season , it ’ s finally ready to deliver everything else at that same level .
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The dysfunctional family of seven ex-superheroes known as the Umbrella Academy have two things in common: They all were born on the same day, and they’re all working — some more consciously than others — through the trauma of their father’s abuse.
Beneath the end-of-the-world, blow-up-the-moon stuff, the first season of Netflix’s fizzy live-action adaptation of The Umbrella Academy, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s Eisner Award-winning comic book, had that emotional heart too. In season one, we met the Hargreeves kids, now adults, all puzzling out their lives when their dad, Reginald Hargreeves, dies. His death brings them all together, forcing them to confront unanswered questions about forgiveness, abuse, and family — questions they buried with time.
With their bad dad dead, finding closure should be easier for the kids. Or at least, that’s what they believed. Their hope is that any of their trauma or scars will die with the person who caused them. But complicating matters is that these superpowered humans have to stop the end-of-the-world event they inadvertently caused.
Despite having powers like superstrength, marksmanship, communing with the dead, and psychic manipulation, they failed. But instead of dying with the rest of humanity, they time traveled to go back before the apocalypse to try again to stop it. They now find themselves scattered in Dallas at the beginning of the 1960s.
That first season spent a lot of time laying all of this out, making some parts of it feel a little like a chore. But all that time spent on extreme exposition pays off in a flashier, more entertaining, tighter second chapter.
Season one of Umbrella Academy set the board, and season two plays the game.
There’s a lot more zapping and superpower-ing in season two, which should appease comic book fans who want to see superheroes do that kind of thing. But it also swings for something way more emotionally resonant, wanting to comment on the imperfect, human way we heal and the gulf between people wanting to change their ways and actually doing so. And in its best moments, The Umbrella Academy’s second season manages to balance both humanity and superheroics without sacrificing either.
The Umbrella Academy uses superpowers to tell a very human story about complicated relationships
One of the core devices in Umbrella Academy is that the Hargreeves are each known by a number, assigned to them by their father: There’s Luther (#1), Diego (#2), Allison (#3), Klaus (#4), Five (#5), Ben (#6) and Vanya (#7). It’s like they’re players on a basketball team whose names you never learned. Or in the Academy’s case, the numbers are a way to differentiate the seven different superpowers they possess. The dark edge is that reducing your kids to a number is just one of several emotionally abusive things Reginald Hargreeves, the patriarch of the family, did.
Hargreeves developed his adopted children into a superhero team, putting them through relentless physical training, teaching them violence, pitting them against each other, and punishing them when they failed. They ultimately did fail when the world needed them most, resulting in Ben’s death and the disappearance of Five, hence the disbandment. And they failed again at the end of last season, as Vanya’s power manifested itself to destroy the moon before all of them, including Ben, decided they could save the world if they just time traveled.
Believing you can avert an armageddon that you and your siblings caused is in itself a slightly egotistical thing to do. But these are the Hargreeves, and they’re truly the only ones who can stop it.
After jumping through that portal, the adult Hargreeves kids are separated and spread out in various pockets of time before November 22, 1963 — the day President John F. Kennedy is shot in Dallas and around 26 years before they were all born. It also turns out that, although they’ve timed-hopped, there’s another cataclysmic event happening that they need to stop. But that’s very difficult to do when the siblings aren’t in the same place or even the same time.
As tantalizing as that mysterious, encroaching doomsday itself is, the best stuff about the second season is how we get there and how we get the Hargreeves siblings on the same page.
The time jump forces the siblings, for some brief moments, to live independently from one another. Time travel, for the siblings, is a forced immersive therapy of sorts. These brothers and sisters, their feelings, and their identities were so tightly tethered to one another. Now they’re forced to live as if the others, and their father, don’t exist.
Which means we see each of them try to heal their lifelong wounds in their own way.
Luther (Tom Hopper), with his superstrength, becomes a bodyguard by day and an underground fighter by night to dull the pain. Diego’s (David Castañeda) superhuman marksmanship is no use in the mental institution he’s stuck in, but he’s plotting every day to get out. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) drinks and drinks and somehow starts a cult. Five (Aidan Gallagher) is the only bridge to the others, thanks to his time-hopping powers.
And then there’s Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who can force people to do anything by preceding an action with the phrase “I heard a rumor” (such as, “I heard a rumor that you ate a cheesecake”), who’s unfortunately plunked down in 1961. Unlike her white siblings, Allison faces an added threat from their 1960s time traveling because of America’s segregation laws and rampant racism. White privilege, it seems, extends to time travel.
The central conceit in Allison’s story is that she could easily change the world around her by “I heard a rumor you weren’t a flagrant racist”-ing everyone around her, but she never says that. The show purposely doesn’t spell out exactly why she doesn’t, allowing you to come to your own conclusions about why the racism she’s facing is too overwhelming to be fixed. Or maybe the excuse is that she isn’t powerful enough to stop the racism. Or that racism is more complex than simple actions to be commanded one way or another.
Or maybe Allison’s afraid of how much she’s truly capable of.
In season one, Allison lost custody of her daughter when her ex-husband revealed that he caught Allison using her rumor power to make their daughter fall asleep. Even though Allison loves her daughter, she still used her powers to make her daughter do something against her will. Allison gets a stark lesson in the human consequence of her powers, something her father encouraged her to use and allowed her to ignore the fallout from.
We actually do see her use her powers in a “Whites Only” diner in a late-season episode. The diner’s manager has been a racist prick over and over again. She rumors the manager into serving her coffee. She’s so enraged with him, though, that she tells him to fill her cup until it spills over and over, scalding his hands raw and red. Skin sloughs off. He still pours. She can’t stop inflicting pain.
Allison could have easily just rumored the man to serve her and stop him when the coffee cup was full, saving him the burns. But she inflicts pain upon him because it feels square with the racism and injustice she’s been fighting in this timeline and because punishment and pain are what her father taught her.
What’s fascinating is that the show goes to great lengths to show that Allison isn’t a villainous person. This scene doesn’t happen until after Allison has refrained from using her powers against injustice for the majority of the season. Instead, her lapse shows us that being “good” or being healed isn’t a one-and-done fix. Healing and bettering yourself require constant work.
In that same vein, Allison and the Hargreeves siblings confront an ugly truth when they re-connect with Vanya (Ellen Page): They each had treated her as badly as their father had.
Before being teleported to the 1960s and before adult Vanya fully unleashed her power that brought a piece of the moon crashing down, the adult siblings locked her away in a padded room because they thought she was too dangerous. Instead of sticking up for her or protecting her from their father’s abuse when they were kids, they neglected her and treated her as the problem.
This is the kind of behavior you’d expect from people whose entire family life is training, punishment, and competition, but while it’s explainable, it’s not excusable. Ultimately, the siblings spend this season learning how to ask for forgiveness and being able to forgive each other.
This isn’t to say that everything in Umbrella Academy’s second season is ooey-gooey touchy-feely.
Since we know what everyone’s powers are now, the show loosens its grip on the exposition and allows for more of its signature, music-cued fight sequences and action scenes peppered throughout the season. This includes an explosive armageddon with all the siblings going full force — rumoring people until brains explode and faces melt, crumpling artillery shells with their bare hands, Kraken-like tentacles flinging soldiers around — that happens in the first seven minutes of the first episode.
But viewers already know by season two that Umbrella Academy is always ready to deliver spectacle. It’s just that this season, it’s finally ready to deliver everything else at that same level.