Outfits big and small are shedding top editors over racial controversies

WASHINGTON, DC

ALEXIS JOHNSON, one of the few black journalists on the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was barred from covering the protests against racist policing on June 1st because editors claimed that she had displayed bias. Her offence? Firing off a sardonic tweet comparing the aftermath of looting to that of a tailgate gathering outside a country-music concert. Outrage mounted when colleagues who rallied to her sideincluding Michael Santiago, a Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalistwere deemed ineligible to cover the protests, too. Mr Santiago has since taken a severance payment and left. Ms Johnson is suing for a civil-rights violation. And the journalists union is demanding the resignation of the newspapers top two editors.

At other American papers, heads have already rolled. Adam Rapoport, the editor-in-chief of Bon Apptit magazine, resigned after an old Halloween photo of him dressed as a Puerto Rican man resurfaced and he was accused of paying less to non-white contributors. James Bennet, the editorial-page editor of the New York Times, had to go after publishing an offending op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for military back-up in response to violent protests (the content of the article, hardly extreme among Republicans, seemed less damning than the admission that it had been published without Mr Bennets reading it). Outlets from Man Repeller, a fashion website, to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a respected daily, have lost their leaders.

Efforts to push out media bosses are not running out of steam. A top executive has been placed on leave at ABC News for alleged racist remarks. At Vogue Anna Wintour faces an attempt to dethrone her from the editorship for not featuring enough black staffers or subjects. Journalists at the Los Angeles Times are pointedly criticising editors for their coverage of the protests and the dearth of well-paid, non-white staffers.

As with the #MeToo movement, executives find themselves taken to task on two counts. One is what are deemed to be blatant examples of prejudice, like dubious Halloween costumes or unexplained inequities in minority pay. The other is insufficient minority representation, whether in organisations newsrooms or in their pages. On that score few media outlets (including this newspaper) measure up. Elite newsrooms are much whiter than the population. Damning statistics on the racial make-up of journalists and quoted sources will probably be tabulated and circulated.

Editors can quickly find themselves caught in a pincer movement, facing internal rebellion and mounting external pressure. The American left thinks corporate culture ought to become actively anti-racistmeaning not just the absence of discrimination but the hiring and promotion of sufficient shares of ethnic minorities.

Non-white bosses are just as rare in the boardrooms of Americas largest companies, which are experiencing rumbles but fewer signs of insurrection than media firms. The incidents there have been more isolated: the former head of diversity at Morgan Stanley is suing the bank over alleged racial bias. The difference might be that nearly 80% of American journalists identify themselves as liberal (and they may be especially moved by the zeitgeist, given their focus on current affairs). Their resemblance to university studentsleft-leaning, outraged by racial injustices, willing to blame the institutions leaders for inadequate minority hiring and representationlooks striking. The cultural battles that roiled college campuses a few years ago may now disturb workplaces, starting with those most sympathetic to the cause. The tech titans, with their somewhat rumbustious Bay Area staffers, look quite vulnerable. Facebook recently announced plans to make increase its non-white leadership by 30%.

In another way, too, the debates upending newsrooms resemble those that have shaken universities. Both places are critical to the free exchange of ideas, and, consequently, to the normal functioning of democracy. Ideas that staff deem too dangerous for publicationlike Mr Cottons op-edwill go un-presented to mainstream readers, while the divide between the liberal and conservative factions of Americas media will widen.

The educational pipeline produces fewer minority candidates for sought-after journalism jobs. Until that is fixed, more affirmative-action schemes, which are common at universities, may be needed to achieve the levels of diversity demanded by staff at media firms. That would be controversial, too. All of which suggests that the tumult is unlikely to subside soon.

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Why race will continue to vex American newsrooms - The Economist

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Fashion has awoken, but isnt woke enough.

There is still opportunity for the industry which prides itself on being so in touch with the zeitgeist to meet this extraordinary moment in American history and go beyond diversity and inclusion to truly welcoming everyone into the fold.

Its going to take real and for some, very personal work to shake the status quo that for too long has been good enough for the privileged majority and thus has become entrenched in a way that is both unfair and was broadly unaddressed.

But now it is an issue thats more urgent than ever.

While the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising animated discussions around LGBTQ rights and diversity issues a year ago, the topic was blown wide open this year by the killing of George Floyd another Black man dead at the hands of police.

The video of Floyd gasping for breath and ultimately dying while a white police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck proved to be just too much racially tinged police brutality to be tolerated. People in thousands of cities and towns across the U.S. and the world joined the largely peaceful protests and forced the issue to the front of the common consciousness.

If there were questions whether corporate America in the throes of the COVID-19 shutdown and facing financial meltdown still had the capacity to address diversity, it was answered in the flood of new, vocal supporters to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Many retailers, apparel and beauty firms took new and strong stands against racism and in support of the protests, donated to groups working on the issues, promised to look into their own practices. Away from fashion, corporate America mobilized at last: the National Football League embraced the Black Lives Matter movement, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag, the Aunt Jemima brand was retired and more.

And all this happened alongside Pride Month celebrations rainbow-hued collections and all in the midst of the pandemic. There has also been real progress on the LGBTQ legal front with the recent Supreme Courts ruling that it is illegal to discriminate against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

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But a lot of the progress going forward is going to happen away from the spotlight now trained on the issue of diversity. People and organizations are going to have to look within. Many opinions on privilege, what racism is today and what it means to be a supporter of minority groups will have to be reexamined.

Michael Bush, chief executive officer of people analytics company Great Place to Work, said: The best companies, the best organizations, they are embarking on a path of learning, they are reading, they are studying, because people who think they understand why things are the way they are, thats part of the problem, because theyre wrong.

People in the majority need to move beyond a sense of individualism that hangs too much of their place in the world on their own efforts, he said.

Racism isnt bad people doing bad things, Bush said. Racism is moving through the world not realizing how the world reacts to you and believing youre moving through the world the way you do because you worked hard individually. Its full of bias.

To change, Bush said corporate leaders need to stop and listen and take some time before responding. And they need to be trying to understand.

A good litmus test is a ceos reading list.

What three books are you reading related to related to racism? Bush said. If youre like, None, and arent going to, I dont think youre going to move.

He suggested White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo the number-one nonfiction book on The New York Times Best Sellers list as a good place to start. And then there are plenty of places to turn. Nine of the top 10 books on the bestsellers list last week focused on race or social justice.

People seem to be listening and, hopefully thinking, more than ever before.

Its a hard pivot for fashion, which was just finishing preparations to celebrate Pride Month when Floyd was killed and the protests started.

Instead of stopping to pat themselves on the back and celebrate the LGBTQ community theres been some progress, but not enough as there are still very few LGBTQ ceos and business leaders in fashion the industry found itself behind the curve on another dimension of diversity.

One tenet of the push for corporate inclusion is that having a more diverse set of voices at the top will lead to better decisions and, as numerous studies show, better financial performance.

C-suites and boards are still dominated by straight white men. That, in essence, is the old boys club that, whether on purpose or not, benefits from a society and system that has held and continues to hold others back.

But there are some small cracks in the system.

In the Fortune 500, there are five Black ceos, including former J.C. Penney chief Marvin Ellison, who is now head of Lowes, and Jide Zeitlin at Tapestry. The number of LGBTQ ceos is smaller still, at four, including Jeff Gennette at Macys Inc.

There are others as well Neiman Marcus Group also has an LGBTQ ceo in Geoffroy van Raemdonck but the list of major players with real diversity at the very highest levels is vanishingly small. And thats a loss.

Macys is Americas department store and we serve a very diverse set of customers and communities, Gennette told WWD. The diversity of our teams is certainly helpful as it allows us to have a greater understanding of what the Black experience is in our company and our country today. But it isnt our Black colleagues responsibility to educate the people around them. Weve made a call for our non-Black colleagues to self-educate and have shared resources with both our colleagues and customers.

No human is one-dimensional, Gennette said. Each of us brings all of our experiences to bear when we try to empathize with any minority group. This weeks convergence of the victory on LGBTQ rights from the Supreme Court and the continued peaceful demonstrations demanding fundamental change to end racism was powerful and very encouraging to see.

While the COVID-19 shutdown and slow restart has had a crushing financial impact on fashion with Neiman Marcus and many others driven into bankruptcy the desire for equality is a personal and professional endeavor separate from the balance sheet.

Van Raemdonck said: Were at a very important time in history, evidenced by momentum in the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the recent Supreme Court ruling expanding LGBTQ+ protections in the workplace. At Neiman Marcus Group, we recognize our responsibility to speak out against racial injustices and societal inequities and to take pivotal action to ensure we have a company culture of acceptance and belonging. As a gay man, driving meaningful actions and serving as a catalyst for change is a responsibility I take seriously.

Even as these and other executives have been fighting for LGBTQ equality, they now face an even more systemic problem in battling racism and determining how to embrace the ongoing rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the fashion industry, there is a great deal of white privilege both at the board level and management levels, said James Miller, who is gay and ceo and chief creative officer of The Collected Group, which operates Joie, Equipment and Current/Elliott. I dont think race has been focused on enough.

The company had not historically been vocal on issues of race, although it was working on the matter internally. Miller, however, has not shied away from thorny issues and this year Equipment launched a gender-fluid line in collaboration with The Phluid Project.

Miller said the many conversations he had while developing and selling the gender-fluid collection helped prepare him to step out early as the Black Lives Matter protests began.

The ceo personally took control of the brands Instagram accounts and started with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. There comes a time when silence is betrayal and has digitally engaged with people on the issue on behalf of the company.

Miller said he wanted to do it himself because: These are delicate conversations. We are a predominantly white-based organization and I dont believe everyone is equipped to wander into a discussion on race on a public platform.

Internally, Miller said the Collected Group has sought to be more thoughtful in hiring. Just because we have open positions doesnt mean we have to fill them tomorrow, he said. If youre looking to fill a seat in our company purely out of speed, that is absolutely the wrong way to go about this.

Miller said his company is also doing things that push the boundary of normalcy he pointed to donations of Personal Protective Equipment to what he said was the forward-leaning womens corrections department in Arizona and taking on less comfortable topics.

Why is fashion synonymous with making you feel good? said Miller, noting consumers are ready to move beyond pure aesthetics and to brands that represent more.

Customers are an important part of the equation.

Brands are used to a delicate dance, chasing consumer dollars while also trying to lead in various stylistic directions, looking for fresh ways to connect. This often begins with a kind of composite view on who is a brands customer and then a marketing apparatus that tries to find people who fit the profile.

That approach has historically missed large groups, from Black and LGBTQ people to plus-sized and older shoppers. It can also restrict appeals to select groups of consumers to a calendar of specific events.

Now the Black Lives Matter protests have pushed the absolute necessity of diversity to the fore, making it all the more clear that minority groups dont just exist for one month of the year be it Pride Month in June or Black History Month in February but deserve and need regular attention.

Companies have to do a wholesale rethinking of their customers, said Todd Sears, founder and principal of global business network Out Leadership. Thats not a new idea, its just not an idea that every company out there has paid attention to before this. Its like Black Lives Matters has ripped the Band-Aid off.

It is not just companies, but the people who keep them humming who need to take a fresh look at the world and their place in it.

Sears said allies people who are a part of the dominant culture, but open to and accepting of minority groups need to make clear that they are supportive.

Allies have to come out, he said.

Companies and the people who run them also have to create cultures that are able to move beyond the ideas of just diversity and inclusion.

Diversity is getting invited to the dance, inclusion is getting into the room with the dance, but belonging is getting asked to dance, Sears said. That you ultimately feel like youre a part of something thats easier for some companies than others.

And more companies are awakening to the fact that a diverse workforce can also be a stronger workforce.

Chantal Gaemperle, executive vice president of human resources and synergies for LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton, said teams are more efficient when people can express their potential in an open working environment where everyone can be themselves.

In order to be yourself, you need to be able to express your differences, Gaemperle said.

In the luxury business, which is about making people dream through exceptional experiences or create high-quality products, the company has to be able to capitalize on such differences, she said.

Its not just corporate babble to say that diversity and inclusion are business enablers its proven, she said. I think we can make a link with the economic performances of groups that are diverse in the composition of their talent to be able to reflect you see it with what were living today a world that is going through perpetual change and to have these different perspectives.

The current crisis has highlighted the necessity of local proximity, especially when it comes to subjects of cultural sensitivity, she said.

Our role at the group level is to say that this subject is fundamental, it is something that has to be spread with our practices, but each region can choose its focus according to local priorities, she said.

Its a particularly strong subject in the U.S. right now, with a push for more transparency when it comes to sharing statistics, she said.

Its a question we have, we are thinking about this I cant say I have all the answers its a sign of the times, today we are living in a very complex world that is changing all the time. We have to stay humble when it comes to this, and we have to above all listen, she said.

And the many diversity and inclusion programs in fashion are just a starting point for the industry at large.

The conversation is changing from one of inclusion and representation to one of opportunity, said Corey Chafin, principal in Kearneys consumer practice and lead author of the upcoming report, Unstoppable for 50 Years: LGBTQ+ Pride Marches Forward.

Its not just about saying we reserve two spots on our board for this demographic. Thats insufficient, Chafin said. What they need to focus on is, Are we providing the right opportunities for all our employees? As you get closer to the top you do see the numbers start to trail off; what you cant measure is why.

Companies need to look at trigger moments, or at just what step minority employees are leaving. Once you identify those, then you can set up some interventions around that, he said.

So, if a retailer has broad representation among sales associates, but a much less diverse group of store managers, they can track that and start to figure out how to move a more diverse group of people up through the ranks at that key juncture.

Many companies were tracking diversity already, but clearly arent using that information to redress the ongoing imbalance the higher up the corporate ladder one looks.

Theres a realization that the dominant culture thought that it understood the experience of various minority cultures and in fact it doesnt, Chafin said. It doesnt understand the history and the nuance.

We have to dig deeper to get to the why and to get to the why, you really have to understand the lived experience of those groups, he said.

There is space now to get to that understanding.

Its the moment for diversity to step forward, more than any moment Ive seen in my lifetime, he said.

Right now the broader white community has been awakened and is focused on the issue.

Black people have been screaming and yelling and talking about this for yearsand it took this vicious murder on TV to open the eyes of many white people, said Kelly Charles-Collins, an employment trial attorney and ceo of HR Legally Speaking. They didnt have a choice, but to pay attention [to the killing of Floyd, who was held down, a knee on his neck, for eight minutes and 46 seconds]. They didnt have a choice but to pay attention. It was so long. It was so callous. It was so in their face that they didnt have a choice, but to pay attention.

The discomfort that white people feel at this moment is going to go away, Charles-Collins said. They will be able to go back to the, I dont see, I dont hear, I dont know.

To be part of the solution, fashion companies are going to have to go beyond words and take action, weaving equality into their operations by incorporating it into strategic planning and by making sure people have spaces to express their feelings.

That requires acceptance that your culture is not as welcoming or as inclusive as you thought it was, she said and then acting. Knowing is good, but applied knowledge is what makes a difference.

There is also hope in the next generation.

Gen Z seems to be enlightened in all the ways in how the world is diverse, Charles-Collins said. For them, I think the challenge will be how do you challenge [the status quo] in a way that creates sustained change. And they need the rest of us to help in that. Its systemic, so the system has to be dismantled. The people who benefit from the system have to want to change it.

Launch Gallery: All Black Lives Matter Pride Parade

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Belonging in Fashion, Equality in the Spotlight - Yahoo News

Tom Scharpling and Julie Klausners Double Threat. Photo: ForeverDog

The comedy-podcast universe is ever-expanding, not unlike theuniverseuniverse. Were here to make it a bit smaller, a bit more manageable. There are a lot of great shows, and each one has a lot of great episodes, so we want to highlight the exceptional, the noteworthy. Each week, our crack team of podcast enthusiasts and specialists and especially enthusiastic people will pick their favorites. We hope to have your ears permanently plugged with the best in aural comedy.

Double Threat With Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling - On a Zoom Call with Woody Allen

Alec Baldwin has never been skilled at reading the room. Though to be fair, even if this interview wasnt released at the height of a worldwide protest movement against American police brutality, theres never a good time for a fawning interview with Woody Allen. To tackle the latest bit in Baldwins lifelong performance art piece about men with no self-awareness, Julie Klausner and Tom Scharpling devoted the latest episode of Double Threat to a minute-by-minute takedown of the least essential interview of 2020. Following a hysterical opening where they riff on the fictional Men in Black Players, the duo wades through the slog of Allens childhood baseball career, his thoughts on the clarinet, and the accusation, as Baldwin briskly refers to it. Youll need a themed drink from one of Baldwins Broadway Danny Rose parties to get through the episode, but its worth it. Pablo Goldstein

Listen: Spotify | Apple | Website

Scam Goddess - The Tinder Swindler with Miles Gray

Ah, Tinder. Remember when swiping right led to an actual date? And when a first date led to the classic question, Do you want to go to Bulgaria with me? Host Laci Mosley, along with none other than the man who gave her the Scam Goddess name, comedian Miles Gray (The Daily Zeitgeist), dissects the greatest scheme of all: love. Reminisce about those ten oclock first dates as you listen to the tale of The Tinder Swindler, a.k.a. Simon Leviev, or Shimon. This dude used Tinder to seduce and swindle basic young women for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In his defense, that Entourage lifestyle doesnt pay for itself! If youre remotely familiar with the concept of red flags, youll join Mosley and Gray in raising your hand a million times as the two unpack Shimons scammer kit (his sexy blood shirt selfie, an Instagram-filtered TD Bank statement, etc.). From start to finish, this episode is a damn delight, as Mosley and Gray are clearly versed in making each other laugh. From Shimon to Match.com to Grays ex-girlfriend stealing the TV she bought him, they easily prove that Love is the front door to the kingdom of scams. Anna Marr

Listen: Spotify | Apple | Website

Bad Romance - Imagine Me & You (with Sarah York)

At the very beginning of this episode, host Jourdain Searles sets the standard for recent episodes of Bad Romance. She says, Rom-coms arent enough for me unless they are insane. If its not all-the-way good or all-the-way bad, then no one should be wasting their time. That is unless the film at hand is Imagine Me & You, the confusing, nice-core 2005 film that lands somewhere in the middle but still leaves plenty to unpack. One of the greatest joys (or perhaps to some, disappointments) of this podcast is realizing all the laughable flaws in films that hold a special place in our hearts based purely on nostalgia. In this case, its guest Sarah York, who topples the notion of this being an important lesbian film to her young closeted self when all your girlfriends are imaginary, the title really hits. York, along with hosts Searles and Bronwyn Isaac, skewer this feel-good British flick with wit, charm, and unfiltered anger, perhaps unintentionally dropping recommendations for insane rom-coms worth adding to our watchlists along the way. Brianna Wellen

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Sloppy Seconds With Big Dipper & Meatball - Olivia Benson

No, Olivia Benson isnt this weeks guest. Nor is Mariska Hargitay, the actor who portrayed Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for over 20 seasons. What the episode name refers to is Sloppy Seconds hosts, rapper and comedian Big Dipper and drag star Meatball, donning their detective caps to investigate whats happening in Los Angeles with the Pride organization and their Black Lives Matter solidarity march. Theyre quick to question the validity of this probe even though it does include numerous uses of Law & Orders signature sound, the dun dun. Yet, they joke its mostly conjecture and petty name-calling, as they discuss the attempts to co-opt and whitewash the Black Lives Matter movement, which the parade was repeatedly called out for before making some necessary changes. But theyre being modest. The episode is beneficial, especially when Big Dipper and Meatball keep their promise to provide an unapologetic look at sex, culture, dating, and food, courtesy of two bears who arent afraid to speak their minds. They end the show with some humorous and heartwarming calls from listeners and more pro tips like, Dont get duped by that 8 Cant Wait bullshit, making their of-the-moment investigation unquestionably valid. Becca James

Listen: Spotify | Apple | Website

Movie Therapy - Im Having Trouble Sleeping

What better time to find a movie to cure what ails you than now, when you are likely still mostly hunkered down at home? Movie Therapy is a breezy half-hour co-hosted by Rafer Guzman and Kristin Meinzer. (Hes a film critic for Newsday; shes a culture critic and also co-hosts the popular By The Book podcast.) Their first patient is having trouble sleeping and wants suggestions for movies that will actually knock her out. Meinzers remedy is Terrence Malicks near-unwatchable Tree of Life. She also suggests zoning out to the Home Shopping Network, which she swears by as a makeshift lullaby. Another listener writes in to say how much she misses being at the office with all of her co-workers. Guzman recommends a dose of 2015s The Intern starring Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, and Rene Russo to get a fix of office life and the way we used to (sort of) work. Two TV suggestions given are old episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Cheers. The hosts have a fun chemistry together and clearly know each others buttons to push to maintain a little friendly friction on their way to prescribing cinematic cure-alls. Marc Hershon

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Other Podcasts Were Listening To:

Gettin Better with Ron Funches - Joy with Jimmy O. YangListen: Spotify | Apple | Website

Time:Out with Troyce The ACE Family Are F*UCKED UP For USING George Floyd for CLOUTListen: Spotify | Apple | Website

How Star Wars Is It? Les MiserablesListen: Spotify | Apple | Website

Got a comedy podcast recommendation? Drop us a line at comedypodcasts@vulture.com.

If you like comedy and you like podcasts, we recommend you subscribe to Vultures ownGood Onepodcast, which releases new episodes every Tuesday onApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher,Overcast, orwherever you get your podcasts.

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This Week in Comedy Podcasts: Klausner and Scharplings Double Threat - Vulture

POCATELLO The Pocatello police force got significantly stronger Thursday morning after adding both Superman and the first-ever Ultimate Fighting Championship Hall of Fame inductee to its reserve officer squad.

Former Superman Dean Cain from the 1990s hit show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman as well as UFC 1 champion and Hall of Fame inductee Royce Gracie took the oath and were sworn in as Pocatello police reserve officers during a Thursday morning ceremony at the Pocatello Police Department.

The Idaho State Journal spoke to Cain and Gracie on Wednesday evening during a firearms training in which both men shared their perspectives on various aspects of the current movement calling for the defunding of law enforcement agencies and their motivation for backing the men and women in blue during these tumultuous times.

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I grew up the grandson of a Navy commander and my uncle was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, Cain said about his decision to become a reserve police officer. We had that military influence in the family and Ive always had that respect for the military, law enforcement and first responders. Ive always looked at them as heroes.

Moreover, Cain said as a former football player, he understands what its like to work under pressure.

But that is on a football field, Cain added. Police officers deal with life-and-death situations in real life every single day all the time. There are parallels between football players and police officers, but this is the big boy club. The opportunity to come up here, especially during this very tumultuous time, is an honor. Im humbled to get sworn in as a police officer here in Pocatello and be here to say, Listen, the men and women in blue are superheroes to me and they should be to you, too.

Gracie, a current resident of Los Angeles, said hes hopeful he can take some of the practices and training being implemented here in Southeast Idaho back to the men and women serving in the Golden State.

I love to help the police officers whenever I can, Gracie said. At home in LA, when I leave the house I surely hope the police know what they are doing so if I can help them out in any way, I will.

Cain and Gracie opted to become reserve Pocatello police officers via their participation in the CACF Foundation, which protects children from child predators, active shooters, bullying and teenage suicide. The program has become very popular with small agencies that need extra help and funding, according to its website.

Much like the sentiment of Pocatello Police Chief Roger Schei, Cain described the current movement to defund police departments, as a scary, scary proposition. In fact, Cain believes the opposite should be happening, in that law enforcement agencies throughout the country should be getting more money to provide additional funding for more rigorous training, especially the sort that involves teaching officers the practices involved with community-oriented policing.

The amount of training weve had in the last two days has been phenomenal, Cain said. If other officers throughout the country were trained like Chief Schei trains his guys here, I think wed be in a lot better shape as a police force in the nation.

Cain continued, The idea that people are vilifying the police is insane to me. I understand there is a groundswell for changing police policies but the way that Chief Schei does it here is the right way. This is a great example of unity and community policing. If we could implement what he is doing nationwide, I think we would be in a much better place. I am clearly making a point in joining now because the zeitgeist is going one way and it should be going the other way.

There are, however, aspects of the defund the police movement that Cain said he can support. For instance, Cain said he believes the use of social workers responding to calls involving those dealing with mental health issues could enhance the role of law enforcement agencies.

Social workers shouldnt replace police officers, but could enhance their roles is how I would describe it, Cain said. The mental health calls that these guys go on is never something they want to do. They are not specifically trained to handle these situations as if they are experts. Police officers deal with threats, they are not there to be a social worker, so if a social worker can take some of that load off the police officers hands, I think that is a great idea.

Cain said he doesnt support banning the use of chokeholds, primarily because the term itself can be deceptive. Cain said that its not the type of hold itself that should be scrutinized, but the training involved with teaching officers how to implement the hold and when to resort to such use of force.

When you say chokehold that is a very deceptive term, Cain said. We have Royce Gracie here who could choke me out in a heartbeat and in a safe manner. Id rather have Royce Gracie choke me out than knock me out, but police officers are trained to use a carotid hold, its not even a chokehold. You dont shut off a persons airway; you stop the blood flow to the brain, the person goes to sleep and they wake up in a minute. Chief Schei trains many ways to subdue a suspect without force and talks about it frequently. Its hard to say you are going to ban chokeholds because there are five different carotid holds you can do.

In speaking about why officers use carotid holds or neck restraints, Gracie added, Chokeholds are not the only way to subdue an opponent. There are maneuvers and locks to get a person to move from one point to another. The idea is to get the person in handcuffs, not to beat them up. In the first UFC, the order my father gave to me was to win without hurting your opponent. And that is in the UFC, the first sanctioned sport where men basically fight to the death. A sport where we are paid to rip each others heads off my dad told me he didnt want to see any blood. He told me to win without drawing blood and hurting your opponents.

Despite what appears to be a very fractured relationship between police and many of the people they swore an oath to protect and serve, Cain and Gracie are optimistic positive change will be the result of the current unrest.

I think there will be positive change because this is unprecedented, Cain said. This is a big, bad, ugly situation where police officers are being vilified and they shouldnt be, but maybe in the long run that will be a positive thing.

Gracie added, What I heard from the chief today, these guys are heading in the right direction. But they have been doing it right in this area for a long time already. This is not something new for them. Because one officer screws up doesnt mean that all of them are bad. We are all humans. We have to have trust in the system.

And so long as police officers continue to protect what Chief Schei describes as a gift, which is the level of bi-lateral trust between a law enforcement agency and the citizenry its promised to keep safe.

We need to continue to move forward, Schei said. We need to look at each other as humans, not for their race, religion, origin, orientation or a profession. You cant look at a group of people and judge them based on one person. My big thing is to protect the gift and what I mean by that is to protect the gift of trust that our community gives us. Because one guy did not protect the gift it has sent our country into a tailspin. And that infuriates me. We have to continue to get better and every day is a tryout. We cant take anything for granted.

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BACK THE BLUE: Former Superman, UFC Hall of Famer join PPD as reserve officers - Idaho State Journal

Alessandra Biaggi on the 2018 campaign trail (photo: @Biaggi4NY)

This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by theSolutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

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On the night of September 13, 2018, a wave crashed through New York state politics.

For years, pressure had been mounting on the members of the Independent Democratic Conference, or the IDC, a small group of high-profile and controversial Democrats who caucused with Republicans in the New York State Senate. At times, the IDC effectively barred the mainline Democratic conference from holding a majority in the chamber, hobbling party-backed legislation and affording its members major leverage in Albany.

The presence of the IDC also appeared to hamper Democratic efforts every two-year cycle to swing certain State Senate districts from Republican to Democratic hands, meaning a split Legislature with Democrats in control of the Assembly. After the election of President Donald Trump in November of 2016, significant additional pressure grew on the members of the IDC and their Democratic allies, which included Governor Andrew Cuomo.

By April of 2018 and facing his own reelection campaign with a primary challenge from his left, Cuomo brokered a deal with the IDC to dissolve and rejoin the mainstream Democrats, with an eye toward capturing the majority together as Cuomo sought to quell a progressive uprising and secure a third term. But the damage was already done, at least for IDC members who provoked such backlash in their districts that activists were set on removing them from office.

A group of largely young, progressive challengers rose up in the districts, recruited and bolstered by the Working Families Party, grassroots groups, community activists, and a smattering of elected officials. By the end of primary night in September 2018, six of the eight former IDC members had been knocked out (while Cuomo secured victory by a wide margin).

Those Senate challengers would go on to win their general elections and, along with newly elected colleagues that gave Democrats the majority, become massive forces in Albany, championing landmark rent, criminal justice, gun control, environmental, and voting reforms among others that were centerpieces of a historic 2019 legislative session.

Though some of the most striking images of that September 2018 primary election night come from the victors pictures of the Bronxs Alessandra Biaggi with her fist raised in the air, or Queens Jessica Ramos surrounded by cheering supporters images only tell part of this story.

The other part isnt as flashy, but speaks to something more powerful: voter turnout. Voters across New York went to the polls in record numbers for the 2018 state primary elections the gubernatorial primary more than doubled the votes cast four years prior, and some districts surpassed turnout during the 2016 presidential primary. Still, New York City voter turnout numbers have a long way to go, never in recent years hitting 40 percent in a primary other than when there is a presidential election, a trend that helped lead to the sweeping electoral and voting reforms, like early voting, passed in 2019.

The map below shows where turnout increased the most and the least in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary compared to the 2014 primary.

Overall, the Senate districts represented by IDC members saw voter turnout spikes in line with the overall trend, but within those districts, much of the increases came in geographic areas where the challengers did especially well, a new Gotham Gazette analysis shows.

The reasons for the voter spike are far more complex than a single night, or even the months of anger among Democrats who finally learned about their rogue state senators. And while in 2018 many New York Democrats were still reeling from Donald Trumps election as president, it wasnt that simple either individual campaigns, newly-formed grassroots groups, and long-standing labor unions and other organizations all played a role in bringing many more voters to the polls. Some relied on tried and true tactics, while others got more creative.

The groups that rose or grew in 2018, and the tactics they developed that year, were ready for a big 2020 until the pandemic hit. But many of the same activists are again doing all they can, albeit under very different circumstances, to see their favored candidates win in this months primaries for congressional and state legislative races. Even as New York City could see a major drop in voter participation, those 2018 successes are still reverberating throughout the state as lawmakers pass bills dealing with public health and police accountability.

Trump DemocratsDonald Trumps divisive presidential victory in 2016 sparked a wave of renewed political activism across the United States. Huge demonstrations marked the early days of Trumps administration, such as the 2017 Womens March or the protests over a travel ban on countries in the Middle East and Africa.

In New York, grassroots organizations began to coalesce around electing progressives to local and state political positions. Though over half of eligible voters had turned out for the November general election in 2016, the state primary turnout rate that September was abysmal: only 10 percent of voters had come out.

For many, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) of the State Senate was the first on their list for change.

People were angry, said Mia Pearlman, a co-founder of True Blue NY. The idea for True Blue was born soon after Trumps election, at a Park Slope meeting where people were gathering to politically organize.

A lot of people who were at the meeting lived in [State Senator] Jesse Hamiltons district at the time and were really upset to find out the morning after Election Day that not only was Donald Trump president, but that their own Democratic state senator was empowering Republicans, she said of Hamilton, an IDC member.

True Blue began on the idea that even though New York was seen as a Democratic bastion by others around the country, on the state government level, it struggled to pass meaningful progressive legislation. This was in part due to the IDC, and how complacent so many Democrats were about its presence and a Republican-controlled State Senate. In the months after Trumps election, grassroots groups like True Blue and a network of Indivisible groups sprung up and tapped into the outrage people felt to get them more involved in local politics.

In part, they pointed people angry over Trumps election to the State Senate, with its Republican control bolstered by rogue Democrats.

True Blue began to reach out to other grassroots groups in districts represented by IDC members, building a coalition of over 45 organizations. The main strategy was voter education whether that meant protests, phone-banking, tabling at events, handing out informational palm cards, and sending handwritten postcards to voters to convince them to turn out against the IDC.

The biggest issue with the IDC was that most people didnt know that their own state senator was in the IDC, or they didnt know what that was, Pearlman said. The groups utilized one of their biggest assets time to educate voters in the months between early 2017 and the September 2018 primary election.

This initial campaign against the IDC began before the districts even had candidates to put up against IDC members, which was key, according to Pearlman.

By the time we started to recruit candidates, along with No IDC New York and other groups, we sort of created an opening for them to have the opportunity to win, she said.

The way that the 2018 election went was that it really started 18 months prior, with the notion of, We need to go out and do constituent and voter outreach and engagement on the issues, said Ricky Silver, the co-lead organizer with Empire State Indivisible, a grassroots political activist group formed following the 2016 presidential election and part of the True Blue NY coalition.

Silver said that the races against IDC members were powered largely by enthusiastic volunteers. Empire State Indivisible was able to draw volunteers in by hosting forums across the city about particular issues, like education funding or the climate crisis, and educating residents about how the IDC slowed progress on those issues, the importance of electing real Democrats and of flipping control of the State Senate (the November elections, with a focus on one Republican-held Brooklyn State Senate seat and others in the citys suburbs, were always on activists minds, even as they focused on the primaries first).

People showed up because they cared about the issues, and then we were able to get them involved because they understood the pathway to a new vision was electoral. And thats how we were able to grow the movement, he said.

Meanwhile, a slate of statewide races was about to rocket progressive politics, the debate over what it means to be a real Democrat (AKA True Blue), and the need to control the State Senate, to the forefront of New York political consciousness.

Backed by the Working Families Party and other progressives, actor and activist Cynthia Nixon ran for governor against Cuomo. The WFP bet big on Nixon, despite upsetting some longtime political allies, and endangering its financial support from labor unions afraid of incurring Cuomos wrath. Nixons race was accompanied by competitive primary campaigns for lieutenant governor, between incumbent Kathy Hochul and challenger Jumaane Williams, then a City Council member, as well as for the open state attorney general seat.

The WFP credited the threat Nixon and Williams posed to Cuomo as the reason the governor brokered the deal to dissolve the IDC, following long-standing accusations that Cuomo backed and benefited from the IDC-GOP arrangement, which Nixon made central to her campaign.

The WFP also took on the IDC, launching a campaign against what they called the Trump Democrats in May 2017. The campaign organized thousands of voters against the IDC, giving insurgent candidates a head start before even officially entering their races. WFP ran nightly texting and phone banking activities with over 1000 shifts, and by the end of the campaign, had identified 10,000 voters who would vote against their IDC member in the Senate.

Thanks to the shock of Trumps victory and these organizing efforts, well over a year before the September 2018 primaries, many New York Democrats were engaged in local politics for the first time.

Central BrooklynIn Brooklyn, trouble was brewing for Jesse Hamilton, a two-term legislator who had joined the IDC shortly before the 2016 general election.

Despite the IDCs dissolution, many prominent borough Democrats continued to denounce Hamiltons actions as self-serving well into the primary season, though Hamilton continued to have the support of Borough President Eric Adams.

Members of the Brooklyn Congressional delegation, state legislators, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, chose to back Zellnor Myrie, a young lawyer trying to unseat Hamilton in Central Brooklyns 20th State Senate District.

The campaign got a boost from the WFP, which provided Myrie with media training and campaign support, and from grassroots activists and local political clubs who wanted a bluer district.

There was a lot of energy in the air for a real Democrat, and not a law and order Trump Democrat, according to Myries senior campaign advisor Andr Richardson.

Myries supporters took to the streets to drum up buzz for their candidate. For the Brooklyn Young Democrats, a club that endorsed Myrie that spring, that meant extensive canvassing, door-knocking, and days of action.

We all went out there in a storm for him, not only because [he was] against the IDC, but because he was speaking to issues in the community, BYD President Christina Das said. Das estimates that the club knocked around 2,000 doors for Myrie, and held three or four days of actions either in conjunction with other organizations, or on its own.

A native Brooklynite, Myrie had strong roots in the district, which spans through parts of Sunset Park, Park Slope, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and Brownsville. The district is diverse, but predominantly black of the nearly 310,000 people living in District 20 in 2018, 50 percent were black, 19 percent were white, and another 19 were Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey.

One of Myries main focuses in his campaign was affordable housing and tenant protections, goals that spoke to a district that is home to an overwhelming majority of renters, who faced challenges with rising costs.

It was a great race because everyone was kind of in it together in the neighborhood, BYD Executive Vice President Julia Elmaleh-Sachs said.

In 2014, the year Hamilton was first elected, there were roughly 129,000 active registered Democrats in the district, but only around 15,000 voted in the primary, which was quite competitive as Hamilton edged out Rubain Dorancy, who had backing from de Blasio, among others. Hamilton won with almost 10,000 of those votes. Then in 2016, Hamilton went through primary season uncontested. In the heavily-Democratic district the Democratic primary is tantamount to full electoral victory.

2018 was going to be a very different year as those frustrated by the IDC, including many educated and activated after Trumps election, went from not fielding a primary challenger to Hamilton to immense organizing behind Myrie.

On primary day in 2018, Myrie defeated Hamilton by almost 4,000 votes. Voter enrollment and participation in the district saw significant spikes, with 44,000 of the roughly 141,000 eligible Democrats casting a ballot. The increase from 15,000 votes in Hamiltons contested 2014 primary to the 44,000 votes in Myries victory over the incumbent made for almost a 300 percent increase in raw turnout, and the district was in line with the overall turnout jump seen in the gubernatorial race from 2014 to 2018.

Part of Myries success stemmed from his ability to garner support from different facets of Brooklyns Democrats, from longtime black voters to newcomers and progressives, Richardson said.

I think Zellnors case was a very unique case because he was able to bridge that divide, Richardson said of longtime black voters, newcomers to the district, and white progressives. Myries campaign attracted hundreds of volunteers, Richardson added, attributing part of Myries success to his authenticity and speaking to the needs of the district across demographic and other divides.

Myrie nabbed the greatest share of votes in Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and parts of Crown Heights and Sunset Park. In several of these areas, turnout jumped enormously from. The map below, from the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research, CUNY Graduate Center, shows where Myrie and Hamilton each did well:

The Bronx and WestchesterWhen Alessandra Biaggi, a lawyer in the Cuomo administration and former staffer on Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign, began her campaign to unseat State Senator Jeff Klein a founder and the leader of the IDC from Senate District 34 in the Bronx and Westchester, she understood the stakes.

I didnt go into it thinking to myself, Im going to absolutely win, Biaggi said in a recent interview. I went in thinking to myself, We probably wont win. But what we will do is have a win in the loss. Because were going to raise awareness about an issue that is so devastating to the state. And people are finally going to be excited about their state government and want to fight for it.

As the head of the IDC, Klein held immense power in state government, and was a major target for progressives. With millions of dollars in Kleins war chest and his strong web of political connections made over decades, however, most pundits considered a challenge to Klein almost unwinnable.

In 2014, Klein faced a challenge from former New York Attorney General Oliver Koppell and kept his seat fairly easily, winning with over 9,000 votes compared to Koppells roughly 5,000. According to voter enrollment data from that November, about 101,000 active Democrats were registered to vote in the district, which encompasses parts of the Bronx and southern Westchester County, including Riverdale, Hunts Point, Throggs Neck, Pelham Parkway, City Island, and Pelham.

In 2016, Klein was unopposed in the primary.

Biaggis campaign was assisted by anti-IDC groups that started educating voters in the district about the IDC before Biaggi even started running, according to her 2018 campaign manager Luke Hayes.

The campaign tapped into community members in the district, generating support in key neighborhoods through word-of-mouth. Together with Biaggi and other organized forces, they started to knock on doors.

It was a scrappy campaign. We knew we werent going to outraise Klein, Hayes said of the assumed fundraising disadvantage. By the end of the race, Klein would spend more than $3 million on his campaign, an unusually high total for a state legislative race, and 10 times more than Biaggi spent.

Biaggi said that fundraising became less integral to her campaign than canvassing and meeting with voters.

I was going to win this thing on the doors. I laced up my sneakers every single day and I was knocking on doors, she said. She and her supporters engaged with many thousands of voters up to and including primary election day.

She also credits young, politically active students, some high school-aged, with helping to activate the community around her campaign. About 324,000 people lived in the district in 2018. Of that number, 43 percent were Hispanic, 34 percent were white, 14 percent were black and 6 percent were Asian, according to American Community Survey data.

When you have a dynamic candidate like Alessandra, when you can engage with a candidate one-on-one, that can counteract a lot of ads, Hayes said.

Support from groups and officials were also key.

Endorsements are a big deal, Biaggi said. If you are going to be endorsed by, for example, the Working Families Party, which was my first endorsement, it gives you legitimacy.

The powerful union 32BJ SEIU backed Biaggi in a big way, mobilizing thousands of members to conduct phone-banking and door-knocking from six weeks before the primary. The move surprised some in the state political scene, as 32BJs president at the time, the late Hector Figueroa, had initially helped to kick off attempted IDC reunification with Democrats in 2017. In a 2018 interview with Gotham Gazette, Figueroa said that he thought that the IDC was not sincere in its efforts to fix Democratic unity and explained the 32BJ decision to buck the deal orchestrated by Cuomo.

Silver, of Empire State Indivisible, points to the cooperation of a litany of organizations, such as the WFP, unions like 32BJ, and grassroots organizations, as one of the keys to Biaggis success in appealing to a diverse district.

It was that sort of coalescing of organizations that made it powerful, he said.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson voiced their support for Biaggi in June 2018, giving the campaign more legitimacy, adding media buzz, and bringing their networks of volunteers to campaign for her. The New York Times endorsed her later that summer.

When the results rolled in that September, it was a shocking upset: Biaggi had nabbed 19,000 votes to Kleins 16,000. There were a total of 107,000 Democrats eligible to vote in the district that November. The jump in voter turnout from Kleins last challenge in 2014 was significant, moving from around 14,000 voters to around 35,000 voters, or increasing by 250 percent. The parts of the district where Biaggi did best also saw the biggest jumps in voter turnout from 2014 to 2018.

The precincts Klein did best in had lower jumps in voter turnout compared to Biaggis best precincts. In the Bronx, Biaggi had the greatest share of votes in Riverdale, Fieldston, Kingsbridge and City Island.

For Senate District 34, the green precincts match up well with Klein's best precincts, especially around Castle Hill and the Throgs Neck area, while most of the orange precincts match up perfectly with Biaggi's best precincts, centered around Van Cortlandt Park, said Benjamin Rosenblatt, president of Tidal Wave Strategies, who performed data analysis and mapping for Gotham Gazette for this piece. The first map below, created by Rosenblatt, shows where turnout jumped the most and least in 2018, from 2014, for Senate District 34. The second map below, from the CUNY Mapping Service, shows where Biaggi and Klein each did well.

Western QueensIn Queens, Jessica Ramos, a former mayoral aide, was challenging State Senator Jose Peralta for his seat in Senate District 13.

Peralta joined the IDC in early 2017, claiming that it was a pragmatic choice to best serve the district during the new era of Trumpian policy. At a packed town hall soon after the decision was announced, some residents protested, calling Peralta a traitor.

A legislator with almost two decades of experience, Peralta had no competition in the districts Democratic primary for the entire time he held the seat, running unopposed in the primary in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016.

The districts neighborhoods, including Jackson Heights, Corona, and East Elmhurst, are home to large immigrant communities. Of its population of 302,000 in 2018, over half were born outside of the United States, according to American Community Survey data. Of the district residents, 62 percent were Hispanic, 17 percent were Asian, 14 percent were white and 6 percent were black.

Trumps rhetoric and policies against immigrants, such as the public charge rule or travel bans to certain countries, directly impact residents in those communities, and led many to question how Peralta could align himself with the IDC, which bolstered Republican leadership of the State Senate, preventing major immigrant-friendly legislation from passing. That included the Dream Act that Peralta championed and he apparently saw as possible to get passed with added leverage as part of the IDC.

Make the Road Action, a leading immigrant rights group that is very active in the district, endorsed Ramos for the Senate seat in July 2018, and set out to have thousands of its members phone-banking, canvassing, and engaging voters for Ramos.

Progressives in the district were energized by the stunning upset political unknown Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had in June against then-U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley, the Queens County Democratic Party boss and one of the highest ranking Democrats in Congress. New Yorks 14th Congressional District overlaps with Senate District 13. There was a renewed sense of what was possible after Ocasio-Cortezs win as Ramos and her supporters eyed the sprint from the June congressional primaries to the September state primaries (those primaries were merged to June starting this year).

Most of all, I think her win has created a lot of enthusiasm for the small d democratic process in the district and that enthusiasm is what were hoping to maintain our momentum, Ramos told City & State in the summer of 2018.

Other political powerhouses and grassroots organizations coalesced around Ramos. The WFP helped her hire key staff, consulted on her campaign, and identified thousands of voters for her. Stringer backed Ramos in March. In the summer after Crowley fell, de Blasio, for whom Ramos had previously worked, and Johnson backed her, and Ramos and gubernatorial candidate Nixon cross-endorsed each other.

On primary day, Ramos defeated Peralta by over 2,000 votes, with almost 23,000 votes cast in total. In November of that year, 90,000 Democrats were eligible to vote in the district. Ramos did far better in parts of the district like Steinway, Astoria Heights, and Jackson Heights. The map below, from the CUNY Mapping Service, shows where Ramos and Peralta each did well.

Other Races in Manhattan and BrooklynOther districts around the city saw increased voter turnout in the same neighborhoods where insurgent candidates nabbed the largest share of votes.

In Manhattans Senate District 31, former City Council Member Robert Jackson emerged victorious on primary night over former IDC member and State Senator Marisol Alcantara. Jackson had run for the seat before in 2014 and 2016, losing narrowly to Alcantara in 2016 in a three-way race. Alcantara only served one term in office before Jackson overtook her in 2018.

The largest increases in voter turnout in the district from 2014 to 2018 were in the Upper West Side, Manhattanville, Washington Heights, and parts of Inwood, all where Jackson performed the best, indicating how well the insurgents supporters did at turning out the vote. The map below, created by Rosenblatt, shows where turnout jumped most and least in 2018, compared to 2014, in Senate District 31.

In Brooklyns Senate District 18, progressive upstart Julia Salazar triumphed against Martin Malav Dilan, who had represented Brooklyn in the State Senate since 2003. Dilan was not a member of the IDC, but the progressive push in 2018 helped fuel Salazars campaign, including backing from the Working Families Party and the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Salazar picked up votes in neighborhoods with some of the highest changes in turnout from 2014 to 2018, including East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint.

While the Senate primaries saw dramatic increases in turnout throughout each district from 2014 to 2018, even compared to the gubernatorial primaries, the relative turnout increase was absolutely massive in the areas where progressive primary challengers did best, said Rosenblatt, of Tidal Wave Strategies, referring to his data and mapping analysis. The map below, created by Rosenblatt, shows where turnout increased the most and least in 2018, compared to 2014, in Senate District 18.

The fight continuesAccording to Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College, campaigns need three things to succeed: money, organization, and message.

The opponents of the IDC had more of the three than the members of the IDC, he said, looking back at 2018s primary upsets.

The odds piled up for dramatically increased voter turnout, and for a turnout against the IDC: the national Democratic movement in response to Trump and for a blue wave in the 2018 midterms, accelerated progressive conversations and efforts launched by grassroots organizers, strong upstart candidates, and a concerted plot to educate voters ahead of the election cycle.

The wind was at the back of Democrats and progressives nationally. And certainly the state was part of that, Muzzio said. [The IDC] were out of step with the zeitgeist of the time.

And while pundits and political analysts were surprised by the unprecedented spike in voter turnout in New York, that didnt mean that turnout in the 2018 primaries was overwhelming. Although turnout in races with former IDC members garnered more attention, the average turnout in those districts and other Senate districts was almost the same around 29 percent according to a report from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

This shows that the perceived competitiveness of an election does not necessarily lead to increased turnout in that district, and that in this high-profile election, voters turned out regardless of whether they were voting in a competitive election, the report reads.

But the key for the IDC challengers appears to have been where some of the increased turnout occurred, in areas of the districts they were running in that were most enthusiastic about their candidacies, and about defeating the incumbents.

To get there, activists as well as candidates and their campaigns, endorsers, and other supporters utilized a variety of tactics, including an unprecedented organizing and voter education effort done over an especially long period of time before any votes were cast. Dynamic and diverse candidates were recruited and backed, and they were just as willing as their volunteers and staff to knock doors and pass out flyers.

These strategies and others mixed with Democratic reaction to Trumps election, growing frustration with a lack of movement on progressive priorities in Albany, and a robust left-wing challenge to Cuomo, which both further galvanized progressives and pushed the governor to spend tens of millions of dollars getting out his vote.

The energy that led to defeat for six of the eight IDC members then helped flip several state Senate seats in November 2018, giving Democrats a solid, True Blue majority for the 2019 session to combine with the Assembly Democratic majority and third-term Democratic governor reelected by a wide margin on a slate of progressive promises.

With those 2018 electoral wins and the legislative victories that followed in 2019 and into this year, the WFP, True Blue NY, and other progressive organizations began preparing for a new slate of races in 2020, hoping to use a similar organizing playbook to net more wins. However, the coronavirus pandemic changed everything.

Continued here:

Voter Turnout in New York City Was Cratering; Then Came 2018 - Gotham Gazette

But the Dewaele brothers didnt want to use it as an abstract effect, modulating other sounds. They wanted to make something musical: An album -- beats, bass, pads and all -- created entirely on the Synthi 100. Which is precisely what they did, Deewee Sessions is the result of their time with #30 and every single sound on the album comes from that machine. Albeit with a little help from modern technology.

I guess sort of the point of the album was to showcase what we think are the characteristics of the machine said Dewaele. The album is made up of six movements, three per side of the vinyl release. Movement 1 starts with a simple pulse tone. Its exactly the first sound you imagine would come out of such a machine, electronic, pure, almost sinister. But it doesnt take long before that tone starts to waver and dissolve into a cacophony of metallic, haunting and then soothing, throbbing sounds. The album is the sonic equivalent of shining light through a prism -- one sound seemingly contains all the sounds.

If youre familiar with Soulwaxs more electronic-led music (Nite Versions, for example), youll soon recognize their trademark earthy-futuristic sound. The first two movements of the album feel like a nod to the Synthi 100s prog-rock legacy, with a more abstract edge to them. Movement 3, however, is when moody, plodding basslines start to emerge, and something resembling a rhythm. Side B starts with another melodic breather for Movements 4 and 5, before the Dewaele brothers return to their higher-energy roots for the last, thumping, head-swirling act.

It would be bold to say that Deewee Sessions will be the last record to showcase the Synthi 100, but it almost certainly will be the last one entirely made with it -- the remaining specimens are dying. Sort of living? We only know of about 14 or 15. Dewaele said. And he should know after having been looking for one for at least the last 25 years. As he tells it, many ended up in similar institutions to IPEM, and for a while were not considered important or valuable and may have found their way into landfill. It's quite surprising that half of them are still around.

Even the one they made the album with, #30, wasnt fully working. Dewaele guessed at it being 75-percent functional when it arrived at their studio. Fortunately, IPEM had a staff member that cared deeply for it, and was overseeing its glacial restoration. A process that would continue during its relocation. He actually has an exact replica of the machine and even slotted the circuit boards in there, and could not get it to work. Dewaele said.

Given that Dewaele estimates there are over 7,000 combinations on the patchbay (that pipes signals between different components), and not everything was working, adopting the experimental spirit of the Synthi 100 wasnt just nostalgic, it was essential to get anything done. [The restoration problem] was actually a blessing in disguise, because what that opened up to us was like okay well knowing that doesn't work, why don't we really do what Peter Zinoviath imagined? Which is why don't we use modern technology.

So thats what they did. David and Stephen paired the Synthi 100 with gear from Expert Sleepers, a company that specializes in hardware and software that allows old synthesizers to be controlled by modern PCs. So you keep the sound and the idiosyncrasies of the machine, but it allows you to do it much more according to Dewaele.

Purists might be aghast that any modern equipment could be allowed in such a project, but Dewaele makes the case that this is actually more inline with the Synthi 100s futurist vision. For all its vintage feel, the Synthi 100 is technically a hybrid analog/digital system. Zinovieff essentially added a computer to it, albeit an incredibly basic one by todays standards. But despite the brothers future-forward approach, it was an anachronism too far for Zinovieff.

The brothers were keen to speak to the synths spiritual father, but it didnt go as planned. I guess, not surprisingly, Peter Zenoviath had no interest in revisiting the synth 100 or anything of the EMS stuff Dewaele said. Because there's so much more we can do with computers right now. He's an 80-something-year-old, still making avant garde computer music.

And here is where the two worlds combine (or compete?). On the one hand, theres a mini revival going on with the Synthi 100. It's cool because since we started making the album, there's been a little bit of a zeitgeist thing where there's one in Melbourne, there's one in Athens, there's one in Belgrade, and they've all had recent restorations. Dewaele added. And they're now in contact with all these people. So it's now become a lot more part of their repertoire, more than it was in 2016.

Read more from the original source:

Soulwax and the hunt for the EMS Synthi 100 - Engadget

Statues are falling, conversations are changing. Were in the middle of a much anticipated cultural revolution and its becoming clear that our perception of the world is beyond faulty. Amid those changes, even the ostensibly progressive creative industries are finally recognising their roles in building a flawed system. The Grammys have finally renamed their Urban Contemporary category in an attempt to stop the racial profiling of artists, and even Anna Wintour herself has apologised for the lack of support she has given to Black voices over her 32-year tenure at Vogue.

In place of London Fashion Week Mens, which was supposed to take place this past weekend, the British Fashion Council organised a three-day digital residency programme which saw designers being given a timeslot to showcase their creative output. Some hosted panel discussions, others streamed films, VR presentations and even live gigs. Keeping the conversation relevant to whats happening in the real world, many responded to the Black Lives Matter movement, with the BFCs own programming for #LFWReset focused on amplifying BAME voices.

Joe Casely-Hayford AW95

These are all important gestures of support to creatives that have so often been overlooked, but the obvious question is -- what about those that have already fallen victim to a corrupt system? Just like in general educational curricula, the presence of Black folk in fashion literature is sparse and ambiguous, to say the least. At the Royal College of Art, when we had a brief introduction to the history of fashion, Black designers contributions to history were never really mentioned, remembers Saul Nash, the Hackney-born designer and dancer, and current Fashion East recipient.

One name that may not have made it onto RCAs fashion history reading list, but has played a definitive role in establishing London as a major fashion capital is Joe Casely-Hayford. Born in Kent in 1956 into a line of influential Ghanaian creative polymaths, Joe was one of the first Black British fashion designers to attain mainstream success. After graduating from Saint Martin's School of Art in 1979, he started his career in the early 80s by upcycling surplus military tents into garments, before teaming up with his wife Maria to launch a namesake brand which originally specialised in shirting. His work in both menswear and womenswear earned him multiple nominations at the British Fashion Awards, as well as a broad fanbase that included everyone from Princess Diana to Lou Reed. A lot of people had the issue that they couldnt pigeon-hole him, everyone was always quite quick to make assumptions because of the colour of his skin. But his breadth of talent, which extended in so many different ways, made it impossible to define him as just one thing, explains Charlie Casely-Hayford, Joes son who took over their joint business upon his fathers passing in 2019.

Joe Casely Hayford SS99

Joe was the first-ever designer to design a capsule collection for Topshop back in 1995, and was involved in a whole range of creative ventures including the design of The Barbicans seminal exhibition on the art of African textiles that same year. A decade later, he became the creative director of the heritage Savile Row tailoring brand Gieves & Hawkes, and in 2009, joined arms with his stylist-designer-model son to launch Casely-Hayford. This new brand brought together Joes decades of experience and trailblazing with Charlies new perspective, creating a cross-generational approach to a refined wardrobe. Our collections were an extension of conversations weve been having for years, and thats how we would always design, says Charlie, whose parents never really encouraged him to work in fashion. A large part of that was down to the struggles that he had in the industry, he didnt want his kids to go through the same thing. Still, both my sister [Alice Casely-Hayford, Net-A-Porter & Porter Magazine Content Director] and I ended up in fashion.

When Louis Vuitton first announced Virgil Abloh as its menswear artistic director, he became the first African-American man to head an LVMH-backed brand. Last year, Rihanna was named the Black woman to launch her own brand with the support of the French conglomerate. But before Virgil and Riri, there was Ozwald Boateng. Appointed as the artistic director of Givenchys men's division in 2003, the London-native self-taught designer of Ghanaian descent became the first-ever Black person to head the design team of a French Maison. His appointment didnt come out of nowhere, though -- for two decades beforehand, Ozwald has steadily built a tailoring empire with his signature vivid colours and decorative fabrics, often paying homage to his heritage by elevating classic tailoring with elements of traditional dress.

Oswald Boateng AW96

He created bespoke costumes for some legendary films and TV show -- including some of those outrageous suits Carries BFF Stanford Blatch wore on Sex and The City. Ozwald was a fixture of 00s zeitgeist, but just as he was preparing to take over America, the atmosphere shifted. His vibrant hues and boxy cuts went out of style, swapped out for the outr sex-appeal of exposed chests and slim-fit shirts. The industry quickly forgot about all the barriers he broke. Business declined, global stores were closed, and magazines and newspapers decided to exchange the figure of a confident party boy for an arrogant, out-of-touch man. The Guardian gave his self-produced documentary, A Mans Story, one star, while GQ put him top of their 2014 Worst Dressed list. Thats nine places above Nigel Farage. Long before the overflowing of kindness, the industrys message was clear [read in Heidi Klums voice] one day youre in and the next day youre out.

While he may have been absent from recent fashion week schedules, Ozwalds influence is everywhere. He remains the only Black-owned business on Savile Row, and last year, he hosted a show in New Yorks Apollo Theatre in honour of the 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance.

Indeed, a key issue in the industry remains the lack of a visible presence of Back folk in both business and creative positions in the industry, showing the next generation they too can one day take the helm. This has, however, slowly changed in recent years, as designers like Martine Rose, Nicholas Daley, Wales Bonner and Samuel Ross have picked up the torch and run full-speed ahead into creating successful businesses.

Martine Rose AW20

A South Londoner with her HQ in Tottenham, Martine launched her much-loved eponymous label in 2009 and has regularly collaborated with brands like Napapijri and Nike. Over the past decade, she has been a defining figure in developing what some might define as streetwear but is in fact just a resolutely contemporary take on ready-to-wear. Proving her influence beyond her own brand, Martine became a menswear consultant for Balenciaga when Demna Gvasalia took over the creative direction, a stint she recently finished after three years.

While the consultant role is one that has increasingly been offered to Black figures in fashion whether as collaborative artists or members of diversity panels rarely have they been offered the most lucrative roles.

Diors Resort 2020 show in Morocco came under plenty of criticism when they revealed its theme to be common ground, presenting luxury interpretations of elements of traditional garments from across the African continent. To justify the move, Maria Grazia Chiuri surrounded herself with collaborators who had authority on the subject, including anthropologists, African artists and textile specialists, as well as London-born Grace Wales Bonner. She began her career in 2014 with her CSM graduate collection titled Afrique. An intellectual approach to exploring Black identity in the context of contemporary menswear was quickly defined as her brands core and her immaculate execution made her an industry favourite. Since then, she has won just about every fashion prize out there, curated her own exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, and had Meghan Markle wear a custom Grace Wales Bonner design. PS. Shes 29.

A-COLD-WALL* AW20

Her fellow fashion award darling is Samuel Ross who has had quite an unorthodox experience of getting to the turnover of 12m his brand A-COLD-WALL* hit last year. Originally from Northamptonshire, he studied graphic design and illustration at De Montfort University in Leicester before being taken under Virgil Ablohs wing, assisting him on Off-White as well as on Kanye Wests Yeezy line. In 2015, he finally launched a brand of his own. Fortunately, my home fostered an incredibly creative environment, with memories such as building cameras with my father, discussing architecture, Apple products and visiting computer fairs, Samuel shares.

His conceptual approach to garments as design objects was routinely labelled as streetwear from the beginning. While this term first entered the mainstream fashion vernacular in the 90s, its overuse can almost exclusively be traced to Louis Vuittons AW17 menswear show which debuted Kim Jones infamous Supreme collaboration. In some ways, streetwear has become fashions version of urban -- a catch-all term for all non-white style identities. It's a coded term, a lazy term. Its quite tiresome, and illogical too. To be direct, it often reflects a lack of sensitivity and understanding displayed by the author, Samuel says.

Nicholas Daley SS20. Photography Piczo

Another designer using their platform to spotlight other Black creatives is Nicholas Daley, who established the multi-sensory potential of garments at his CSM graduate show in 2013. Bringing together the influences his Jamaican father and Scottish mother instilled in him growing up, Nicholas asked legendary musician and artist Don Letts to walk in his graduate show. He was really interesting, because of the way he blended punk-rock with reggae music, he says. His shows blend together fashion with live music by performers from Nicholas own creative community. I see fashion as a vehicle for saying so much more. Its the three Cs -- community, craftsmanship and culture -- that are the backbone of what my brand is about.

Proof of recent progress in terms of the representation of Black voices on the fashion week schedule comes in the new wave of emerging menswear designers exploring their multi-cultural backgrounds and complex definitions of British-ness. Priya Ahluwalia consistently merges her dual Indian and Nigerian heritage in both the techniques employed in the production of the garments and their presentation. With a sustainable outlook which includes reworking existing garments and textiles that would otherwise end up in landfill, Priya continues to build the puzzle of her past by creating the fashion of the future. Ahluwalias most recent project is a Jalebi, a photography book which captures Britains first Punjabi community in Southall through the lens of Laurence Ellis. The best thing about London is the accessibility there are so many talented people, as well as suppliers and manufacturers which helps with the process of collaboration, says Priya.

Bianca Saunders SS20. Photography Ronan McKenzie

Also based in South London, Bianca Saunders work focuses on introducing subtly feminine elements to templates of Black masculinity, a theme she originally found by looking at yardie dancehall culture during her MA at RCA. It was about the way some Jamaican men choose to groom from shaping their eyebrows to the upkeep of hair, she explains. Appearance was key to presenting themselves. For Black History Month in November 2019, Bianca curated a show in the stalls of Brixton Village, with some of the photographs by Ronan McKenzie starring her own family wearing Bianca Saunders SS20. Her latest presentation was one of the standout moments of London Fashion Week Mens AW20, as she staged a presentation in which models danced in her fluid, modern tailoring at 9:30am.

The person behind the choreography was Saul Nash, a close friend of Biancas, who himself also creates garments that blend performance and fashion and focuses on the way clothes move. He recognises the big shift in the mentality of the designers which has helped create this network: Were now entering a generation where its not about elbowing each other to get to the top, but its about understanding that were all different and trying to understand how we can work together to get through it.

According to a 2018 report by University of the Arts London, 47% of the students across their five universities (London College of Fashion, Central Saint Martins, Camberwell College of Arts, London College of Communications and Chelsea College of Arts) come from BAME backgrounds. Among them is Cameron Williams, a graduate of this years CSM MA class whose final collection stood out for its explicit yet subversive interpretation of his familys West African heritage. He titled both the outing and his new-found brand Nuba, after a somewhat derogatory name, given to generalise the Nilotic tribes of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan by Arab traders and settlers throughout history.

Cameron Williams AW20. Photography Sharmaarke Ali Adan. Direction Jebi Labembika

For his graduate collection Cameron drew influence from his ancestry by combining the indigenous influences of sculptural wrapping and frugal functionality, with the urban streetwear influences of my surroundings. Its what he defines as an ideal of survival fashion. His plans for the years to come? Funding is also an important factor for me, which I see becoming more accessible as Black-owned businesses within art and fashion are providing financial grants to others, endorsing the progress of upcoming Black professionals. The aim for the near future is to develop into a cultural entity that promotes a world without tokenism, fetishism or colourism, and changes our approach to the understanding of indigenous cultures.

Clearly, there are so many changes that still need to be made, but the sole responsibility [shouldnt] be on Black-owned brands to make these changes, Charlie Casely-Hayford says. Instead, we need to look at structures and how to create a culture of belonging, which means integrating a deeper understanding through the corporate structure -- this includes looking at executive boards and people behind the scenes. The idea of just having a Black model just isnt enough anymore as that wont make a difference on a deeper level.

One thing I have realised recently is how closely my following watches me and absorbs everything I do and say, Bianca adds. As designers, we have this platform to reach a very engaged audience of young fans coming through, we have the power to influence for the better. Hopefully, some of that power will in the future be amplified by those that are already on the top of the pyramid. Whats indisputable in our industry today is the imbalance between the contribution Black fashion designers have made to building contemporary fashion and the attention their work has been given. Instead of just sitting on advisory boards and offering their experiences as consultants, there need to be more Black voices guiding the industry from its highest seats. If it werent for those that came before, the fashion landscape we so deeply cherish would be a pale imitation of what it is today.

Joe Casely-Hayford SS01

Credits

All imagery courtesy of the credited designers

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Did you know every major gaming generation has lasted longer than the Confederacy that sparked the American Civil War? That nascent nation only managed to hold out for a little over four years. And yet, instead of erecting statues to the Xbox, the United States continues to honor Confederate figures with memorials across the country.

Since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25, the world has been rocked by protests centered around the Black Lives Matter movement. This has sparked many conversations, from the ever-present effects of systemic racism to the role of law enforcement in our communities. Protestors have begun vandalizing and removing monuments to Confederate generals, many of which were erected long after the Civil War as a way of intimidating slave descendants. And as part of this national reckoning, NASCAR decided to ban the flying of Confederate flags at its events, as has the US Navy.

Over the last week, the denizens of the internet have taken to dunking on the Confederacy with examples of things in gaming that lasted longer than its failed rebellion. A joke account devoted to the topic on Twitter pointed out that Too Human was in development longer than the Confederacy existed, and we all know how that turned out. Same with Duke Nukem Forever. Grand Theft Auto V, which will eventually appear on the upcoming PlayStation 5 because why not, has been part of the gaming zeitgeist for twice as long. Halo fans have been waiting for Infinite a year longer than the Confederacy existed. Even Super Smash Bros. Brawls notoriously terrible online servers held out longer.

If anything funny can be said about the Confederacy, its that this supposedly monumental part of Southern history barely registers as a blip. As I mentioned above, every major generation of video game consoles has lasted longer, even as recent generations have gotten shorter. The PlayStation Vita survived for seven years despite sales taking a nosedive shortly after release. Nintendos Wii U, considered by many to be a failure in relation to the success of the original Wii, outlasted the Confederacy by a month.

But why stop there? The fighting game community continues to hold tournaments for the poorly received Street Fighter x Tekken eight years after its release, doubling the amount of time the Confederacy played war for the sole purpose of continuing to brutalize enslaved people. Yandere Simulator development has been trucking for six years. A total of seven Call of Duty games have been released in the same amount of time as the Confederacy desperately avoided having to farm their own plantations. That Game Boy that was blasted to shit in the first Gulf War and now sits on display in the official Nintendo store still works 30 years after the handheld first hit the scene.

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America doesnt take kindly to interrogating its past. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the way it looks back on the Confederacy, whose horrific legacy of slavery has been warped into one of regional pride, both through an extensive rewriting of history and poor education of subsequent generations. When someone bases their entire identity around the short-lived Confederate States of America, what theyre really saying is that they arent ready to let go of their love of plantation-owning fancylads and the racist beliefs they embodied.

Its not my intention to make light of the Confederacy or the unique brand of American brutality that gave birth to it. Its a history that American citizens need to recognize and accept. We shouldnt forget, but we cross a line when these important reminders of previous injustices become venerations of the men that perpetrated them. There is no rehabilitating the Confederacy. We might as well put up monuments to Mario and Solid Snake; at least theyve been around longer and actually made a positive impact on the world.

Looking for ways to advocate for black lives? Check out this list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved.

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Even The Wii U Lived Longer Than The Confederacy - Kotaku

Reform proponents are advancing a decoy agenda that has been distracting people for generations, writes Caitlin Johnstone.

By Caitlin JohnstoneCaitlinJohnstone.com

A black man named Rayshard Brooks was recently killed by an Atlanta police officer whoshot him in the backwhile he was attempting to run away.

Video footage fromthe police bodycamanda nearby witnessmakes it clear that Brooks resisted arrest after failing a breathalyzer test when police approached him sleeping in his car at a Wendys parking lot, punching an officer and taking a taser the police had attempted to use on him before trying to flee the scene.Video footage fromthe parking lotmakes it clear that Brooks was running away, and, without ceasing to run, pointed the taser at police behind him, at which point he was shot twice in the back by an officernamed Garrett Rolfe.

There is no rational defense of this shooting. If someone is runningawayfrom you with a short-range weapon, it is literally impossible for them to pose an imminent threat to you. Just allowing Brooks to run out of the range of the taser, as he was already trying to do, would have nullified any potential threat to either of the two officers on the scene, because it would have been literally impossible for Brooks to tase them while continuing to run in the direction he was running.

This indisputable and self-evident fact hasnt stopped people from bleating moronic police apologia in my social media notifications since the shooting occurred.

Even leaving aside any debate about policing as it exists in America today, there was absolutely no excuse for Rolfes behavior. They had all of Brooks information. They had his car. They knew where he lived. They could have followed him in their car and called for backup. They could have gone in with backup to arrest him later.

But Rolfe decided to kill. After watching all these protests against police brutality raging throughout his country since the murder of George Floyd, after being confronted with all the public outrage about police killing black men day after day in news headline after news headline, after his society forced him to contemplate police violence and his role in it, Garrett Rolfe still decided to kill. After all that, he watched a black man running away from him, posing no threat to him whatsoever, and he decided to kill.

The fact that cops are so thoroughly inoculated against public demand that they change their behavior makes a complete farce of the decoy police reform agenda that establishment narrative managers have been actively trying to corral the current protest movement into to kill their support for police abolishment.

Theres a feud going on in Americas new protest movement right now between those who wish to abolish, defund, dismantle, and/or disarm the police, and those who want to reform or transform the police. The former are actually pushing for a revolutionary change which actually pushes back against abusive power structures and calls for the creation of a radically different social paradigm, while the latter wants to keep policing institutions in theirirredeemably corrupt stateand add more funding for de-escalation training seminars where grown adults are told not to commit gratuitous acts of violence.

Training seminars which, it turns out, Officer Garrett Rolfe had just completed.

According to the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, Rolfe had recently received use of force training,reportsAtlanta news outlet AJC. On April 24, he took a nine-hour course on de-escalation options, his record shows. And on Jan. 9, Rolfe was trained on the use of deadly force at the DeKalb County police academy.

And yet youve got fauxgressive establishment narrative managers like Cenk Uygurpromoting the reform agendaand calling calls to defund the police distracting.

Iwrote the other daythat if these protests end it wont be because tyrants in the Republican Party like Donald Trump and Tom Cotton succeeded in making the case for beating them into silence with the U.S. military. It will be because liberal manipulators succeeded in co-opting and stagnating its momentum. This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

People who claim these protests are the result of some kind of psyop often cite the fact that theyre being supported by Establishment liberals, mainstream media, and giant corporations, but this misses a very important distinction in the dynamic that is at play here. While it is true that these institutions have been expressing general support for the demonstrations and the idea that black lives matter, absolutely none of them are supporting the defunding or abolishment of Americas police force. None of the empires ruling elites support this.

The reason you are seeing manipulation and attempts at co-option in this new movement is because that is exactly whats happening. But it isnt whatsdrivingthe enthusiasm behind the demonstrations. Rather, you are seeing an attempted hijacking of an actual revolutionary agenda that actually challenges actual power institutions (including increasingly common attempts to manipulate the narrative by claiming demands to defund and abolish are actually just calls for reform).

The widespread call to abolish Americas police state, anintegral part of the gluewhich holds the U.S.-centralized empire together, is revolutionary. It is not an exaggeration to say its as interesting and exciting as seeing a mainstream call to end U.S. imperialism, and it is just as threatening to Establishment power structures. The call for reform, in contrast, is just more milquetoast, Obamaesque fauxgressive verbiage designed to stagnate a real revolutionary change movement. It is as interesting and as threatening to Establishment power structures as saying the U.S. should push regime changein Syria rather than Iran.

Police abolishment advocates are pushing for something which would require the complete reconfiguration of power in society. It would end the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs. What we think of as policing would be mostly replaced by something more akin to social work. Police reform proponents are advancing a decoy agenda which peoplehave been distracted by for generationswhile the police force has become increasingly militarized behind a veil of meaningless verbiage about community outreach and training programs.

This is where the real revolutionary energy is at in America right now, so its no wonder Establishment manipulators are doing everything they can to co-opt it into something innocuous which wont disturb actual power structures in the slightest. President Barack Obama made a whole political career out of telling leftwardly inclined Americans that theyre getting what they want without actually giving it to them, and now weve got Democratic Party princeling Andrew Cuomo telling New York protesters You dont need to protest. You won. You won. You accomplished your goal. Society says, youre right. The police need systemic reform.

Its textbook liberal manipulation used to steer the revolutionary zeitgeist into an impotent conceptual tar pit for another few years while the prison bars are reinforced.

As I explained a while back in my article How To Tell Real News From Useless Narrative Fluff, you can tell whats really going on by watching where the money is going, where the weapons are going, where the resources are going and where the people are going. You can see in these demands for dismantling the police state a bunch of people moving around demanding to drastically change all four of these things, and you can see from the liberal narrative managers an agenda to prevent any of those four things from actually changing. And if they win out, you will be able to watch the people, police, weapons and resources continue moving in more or less the exact same way theyve been moving.

Theyre trying to replace a real revolutionary impulse with useless narrative fluff. They have learned that it is much easier to neuter such impulses with empty agreement and a bunch of insubstantial words than to tell them no and stomp them down. Hopefully, the people have learned this too.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularlyat Medium. Her work isentirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her onFacebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on eitherYoutube,soundcloud,Apple podcastsorSpotify, following her onSteemit, throwing some money into her tip jar onPatreonorPaypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her booksRogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin JohnstoneandWoke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

This article was re-published with permission.

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The Killing of Rayshard Brooks Shows Police 'Reform' Is a Joke - Consortium News

Sky Movies placed a warning on the Disney remake letting viewers know that they might be offended by a childrens film. If I had three wishes for corporate wokeness they would be stop, stop and please, please, please stop.

Life comes at you fast, as the kids say, but it apparently hurtles towards you at the speed of sound, if youre Sky Movies. The entertainment provider has taken to putting warnings on films that display outdated attitudes and cultural depictions which may cause offence today and this apparently includes the Aladdin adaptation that came out last year.

Im just about old enough to remember the dim and distant days of May 2019, when the Guy Ritchie offering received its cinematic release. A very dark time for the movie industry, replete with hideous racism. I mean how could anyone watching this remake of the 1992 animation, with its virtually entirely ethnic-minority casting, not conclude it was an obvious racist dog whistle?

Will Smith can only have taken the role of the genie because he wanted to mock the Middle East. Ritchie himself was clearly trying to sneak his deep-seated contempt for Arabs into the cultural zeitgeist by implying they all ride magic carpets, believe in jinn, and frequently and spontaneously burst into song. Frankly, how Disney ever signed off on the project is staggering, now we view it through the enlightened eyes of 2020. How anyone can look back on what we thought was acceptable 13 months ago with anything but a mixture of horror and disgust is beyond me.

Personally, Im shocked that it got away with a PG (Parental Guidance) rating at the time. How on earth could the British Board of Film Classification possibly have thought it acceptable for children to watch a blue Will Smith dance around in a spangly turban? Those poor kids must either have been scarred for life or will have to undergo extensive re-education. I mean, the only appropriate solution for any child whose parents took them to the cinema to see Aladdin is that they should be immediately taken into care to stop them from growing up to be white supremacists.

And Aladdin isnt the only movie that Sky is warning us has outdated attitudes. Aliens obviously does (though those views are presumably outdated because its set in the future, so humanity hasnt had a chance to develop them yet), and The Jungle Book remake from 2016 carries the warning, too, as do Flash Gordon and Trading Places. Tropic Thunder and White Chicks also both bear the advisory, perhaps for more obvious reasons, but both of those movies are still less than 20 years old and stirred up no controversy at the time, being widely praised as great comedies.

Obviously, this all started with the Gone with the Wind debacle, which also fell foul of the outdated attitudes warning on Sky, having been pulled altogether by HBO last week for the same reason. But while that movie which, incidentally, provided the role that earned the first Oscar for a black actress, in the shape of Hattie McDaniel was made in 1939, whereas Aladdin was made last year. Woke madness is currently rocketing through time at a rate previously achieved only by Marty McFly.

Bizarrely, neither 12 Years a Slave nor Django Unchained have been slapped with this warning, despite literally being about slavery and both containing dialogue that virtually uses the n-word as a form of punctuation.

This nonsense needs to stop. It makes the entire woke brigade look ridiculous. How can you expect anyone to believe your movement isnt operating some kind of year zero approach to the world when its terrifying corporations into slapping outdated attitudes trigger warnings on childrens films from the previous calendar year? Aladdin is a light-hearted Disney musical, not Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, and even if it were, watching movies doesnt make someone a racist. Erasing the past is bad enough erasing yesterday is completely insane.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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A woke new world: Who deemed the outdated attitudes on display in 2019s Aladdin movie unacceptable in 2020? - RT

The pandemic has been a perfect opportunity to catch up with backlogs of unwatched films or binge-watch new series. Its been a tough time for local cinemas, but some arthouse film distributors helped The Broad Theater and Zeitgeist Theater & Lounge by splitting $12 ticket fees with them if viewers used links from the theaters websites.

Both The Broad Theater and Zeitgeist air a special screening of Up from the Streets, a documentary about New Orleans music, and a portion of viewing fees goes to a fund set up by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation for musicians affected by the pandemic. The film is available May 15. The films executive producer is trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who will participate in a Q&A via Zoom on Saturday, May 16.

Also recently introduced by the New Orleans Film Society is a channel to view 40 films screened at the New Orleans Film Festival. Below are details about film screenings that benefit local theaters and cultural organizations.

"Bacurau." When townspeople in a remote area of Brazil notice their village has disappeared from the internet, it sets up a modern Western as the town sits on the lawless frontier of global forces. The Broad and Zeitgeist.

Here are some cyber activities and events you can do while social distancing.

"Corpus Christi." Nominated for a Best International Feature Oscar in 2020, this thriller from Poland follows a young man from prison to the pulpit, as he is mistaken for a priest sent to help a town in need. Zeitgeist.

"Crescendo." A famous director tries to build a youth orchestra of Israeli and Palestinian children. Zeitgeist.

"Extra Ordinary." In this paranormal comedy, Will Forte plays a washed-up rock star who needs to find a virgin to make a deal with the devil for another hit. The Broad andZeitgeist.

"From NOLA with Love." The New Orleans Film Festival offers online screenings of 40 feature and short films by local filmmakers from its 2019 event via its website. Visit https://nolalove.eventive.org for details and a film guide.

"LInnocente." Director Luchino Viscontis 1976 Italian film about libertine 19th-century aristocrats was restored and rereleased in 2020.Zeitgeist.

Some help to get you through the waning days of lockdown

"The Hottest August." This person-on-the-street documentary encounters New Yorkers talking about their daily lives and hopes and fears about the future. See page 25.Zeitgeist.

"Mossville When Great Trees Fall." The documentary follows the struggle for survival of a Louisiana community created by formerly enslaved people and free people of color that found itself surrounded by petrochemical plants. The Broad.

"New York International Childrens Film Festival." There are two slates of short animated and live action films, one for children ages 3 to 7 and one for ages 8 and older. Zeitgeist.

"Once Were Brothers." The documentary follows the rise and fall of Robbie Robertson and The Band. The Broad.

"Roar." Anyone who binge-watched Tiger King may be interested in this 1981 feature starring Tippi Hedron and Melanie Griffith about people living among lions, tigers and elephants. The Broad.

"Saint Maud." A nurse who recently converted to Catholicism fears that she is possessed in this British psychological horror film. The Broad.

"Satantango." A seven-hour work in the slow cinema movement, Bela Tarrs film follows the lives of former members of an agricultural collective after the fall of communism in Hungary. Zeitgeist.

"Up from the Streets." Director Michael Murphys exploration of New Orleans musical traditions includes interviews with Terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Robert Plant, Sting and others. The Broad and Zeitgeist.

"Vitalina Varela." A sort of visual poem of shadows and framing, director Pedro Costas film is about a woman from Cape Verde traveling to Portugal, where her long separated husband has just died. Zeitgeist.

"Wild Goose Lake." In this film noir-esque crime thriller, small-time mobster Zhou Zenong tries to mitigate the damage to his wife and friends after he kills a cop while battling a rival gang. Zeitgeist.

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One last chance to binge-watch movies you've meant to watch - NOLA.com

On Feb. 7, 1918, the artist Egon Schiele, then 27, once again looked to his mentor, Gustav Klimt, to be his muse. But this time, Schiele had to visit the morgue of Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the Vienna General Hospital, to make his drawings of the renowned painter. The day before, Klimt had died of a stroke that many historians believe was a result of the flu. Schieles visit resulted in three haunting drawings of a deceased Klimts head, showing his face deformed from the stroke.

That same year, Schiele began working on a painting, The Family, which was meant to be a portrait of himself, his wife and their future child. But before he could finish the piece, his wife, who was six months pregnant, died of the flu. Three days later, Schieles life was also taken by the flu.

Egon Schiele's "Gustav Klimt on his death bed," 1918

Public Domain

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch also found inspiration in the disease. The artist made Self-Portrait With the Spanish Flu and Self-Portrait After the Spanish Flu, detailing his own experience contracting and surviving the illness. These paintings, characterized by Munchs obsession with existential drama, speak to feelings of trauma and despair that were widespread amid a pandemic that killed at least 50 million people. Illness, insanity, and deathkept watch over my cradle, the artist once said, and accompanied me all my life.

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It could be easy to think that these works are the only famous examples of the impact of the 1918 flu on the world of western fine art. Though the ongoing fight against COVID-19 has drawn renewed attention to the pandemic of about a century ago, the influenza pandemic has long been largely overshadowed by World War Iin public memory as well as contemporary thoughteven though the flu had a higher death toll. In light of wartime efforts, news about the initial spread of the 1918 flu was played down in many places. Do not worry too much about the disease, wrote the Times of India, in a country where 6% of the population ended up dying from the illness. In addition, many artists were sent to war during this time or died prematurely of the flu themselves.

Egon Schiele's "The Family," 1918

Belvedere Museum

But the flu did not go unnoticed by artists. Rather, the outbreak magnified the absurdity of the moment, according to art historian Corinna Kirsch. For many, World War I and the flu combined with political upheavals (such as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of newly-formed communist governments) and social issues (such as gender and income inequality) to create a perception of the universe as chaotic and hopeless. A sense of meaninglessness spread, and people started to lose faith in their governments, existing social structures and accepted moral values. Everyday life felt ridiculous. The art movements that came out of this period explored this hopelessness, tried to fight against it and showed the ways in which everyone was trying to cope.

The Dada movement in particular seized on this absurdity as inspiration. The Dadaists wanted to create a new form of art, one that could replace previous notions altogether. Collage became a popular medium at the time; many artists were dealing with the modern era and the horrors of war through strategies of cutting, reassembling and remixing, explains Kirsch. One 1922 piece by Hannah Hch, the only woman who was part of the Berlin Dada group, parodied a traditional German guest book by collecting Dada sayings rather than the typical well-wishes from house guests. One saying included in the piece was from the poet Richard Hlsenbeck: Death is a thoroughly Dadaist affair.

Edvard Munch's "Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu," 1919

Nasjonalmuseet

George Grosz, another Dada artist, painted The Funeral around 1918, depicting distorted human figures haphazardly overlapping one another in what appears to be a never-ending street, surrounded by nightclubs and buildings. In the middle of the crowd is a skeleton perched on top of a coffin drinking from a bottle. In a strange street by night, a hellish procession of dehumanized figures mills, their faces reflecting alcohol, syphilis, plague I painted this protest against a humanity that had gone insane, Grosz later said of his hellscape.

Though Dadaism was mostly nihilistic in its approach, there was also a utopian impulse at work with many artists who wanted to create an entirely new world and revolution, says Kirsch.

With this impulse in mind, architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. The Bauhaus aimed to bridge art and design, training students to reject frivolous ornamentation in order to create art objects that were practical and useful in everyday life. Marcel Breuer, who started at the Bauhaus in 1920 and eventually taught there, designed furnishings that historians believe were influenced by the flu. In contrast to the heavy, upholstered furniture that was popular at the time, Breuers minimalist pieces were made of hygienic wood and tubular steel, able to facilitate cleaning. Lightweight and movable, works like the designers bicycle-inspired Wassily Chair and Long Chair met modern sanitary needs by being easy to disinfect and rid of dust build-up.

The rise of modern architecture and design in the 1920s was inextricably linked to the prevailing discourse on health and social hygiene, says Monica Obniski, curator of decorative arts and design at Atlantas High Museum of Art.

Wassily Chair, B3, design By Marcel Breuer at Bauhaus School

Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

To other artists dealing with the horrors of the time, abstraction was a way to escape reality. Abstraction became a defining sense of that moment in time. There was a definite relationship [between] non-objective, non-realistic art and the horrors of what was going in the world, says Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of The Metropolitan Museum of Arts Department of Photographs. This was seen in many paintings and photographs made during the time. [View of Rooftops], a 1917 photograph of a desolate New York City scene, made by Morton Schamberg, is one example of this. The photograph, shot at an oblique angle, abstracts the cityscape in a Cubist manner and lacks any signs of human life. Schamberg died of the flu in 1918.

Further, in 1917, Fountain was unveiled under the pseudonym R. Mutt. The work consisted of a standard urinal, signed and dated, and thrust the art world into discussions of what was and wasnt to be considered art for years to come. It is widely believed that R. Mutt was Marcel Duchamp, but the subject has been up for debate. Art historian Michael Lobel argues that R. Mutt could also have been Schamberg. We arent able to know for sure because of the artists premature death from the flu. Schambergs relatively early death not only cut short his career but also means that we have little to no recorded testimony from him on these and related matters. In his case, then, the pandemic registers mostly as a telltale absence in our account of the period, Lobel has written in Art Forum.

Morton Schamberg's "[View of Rooftops]," 1917

John C. Waddell/Ford Motor Company Collection/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Just as the 1918 flu pandemic was an inescapable part of the zeitgeist of the time, the coronavirus pandemic has already become so today. Though we might not know exactly how COVID-19 will affect art and art movements to come, the visual culture has already shifted.

Photographers discovering empty streets and how our cities look without people show a kind of sad beauty to these urban metropolises around the world, says Rosenheim. The empty cityscapes being captured and shared arent depicting the pandemic, but the effects of isolation and emptiness, psychologically. Others have argued that, as a result of the quarantine, nude selfies have become high art.

Andreas Gursky's "Prada II," 1996

Courtesy the artist/Gagosian/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

As was the case in 1918, the pandemic is just one part of a larger mood that predated the disease. Isolation, stillness and the impacts of consumerism were already themes being explored through art in recent decades. For example, Andreas Gurskys 1996 photograph Prada II shows a display case that is completely void of product and lit with sterile, fluorescent lights an image that now calls to mind news photos of store shelves left empty amid the pandemic. Gregory Crewdsons early 2000s Beneath the Roses series captures with a surreal ghostliness the desolate corners of small towns, evoking the urban loneliness of Edward Hoppers paintings, which are being disseminated widely on social media today.

These works were created before the novel coronavirus swept the world, but they speak to the current moment proving that, as was the case in the past, Rosenheim says, we dont need a pandemic to create chaotic, psychologically traumatic imagery.

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Write to Anna Purna Kambhampaty at Anna.kambhampaty@time.com.

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How Art Movements Tried to Make Sense of the World in the Wake of the 1918 Flu Pandemic - TIME

So much of our national politics looks like bread and circuses that one can miss important shifts in the political zeitgeist. Joe Bidens descent to the second circle of #MeToo hell may be one of them.

Yes, we are learning again the high price of double standards and hypocrisy, which are always with us. But while the Democrats bucket brigades throw water on the Biden-Reade wildfire, look over there at something else thats in flames. It is liberal progressivisms nearly hundred-year-old strategy of using moral condescension as a crude weapon against its enemies.

A distinction is necessary. Morality is about right and wrong. Moralitys insincere cousin is moralism, which grabs virtue off the shelf as needed. About every 20 or 30 years, the progressives come up with another moralized argument to delegitimize their opponents.

The most durable political weapon the progressives ever created was the notion that capitalism is immoral. This interpretation of private economic interests was popularized as far back as the 1930s with Matthew Josephsons The Robber Barons, a tendentious history of late-19th-century American entrepreneurs, whose title stuck as shorthand for capitalism.

The progressives positioned capitalism not merely as flawed but irredeemably immoral and requiring controlby them. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized what a potent and repeatable weapon this was, coining the campaign phrase the Ishmaels and the Insulls, whose hand is against everymans.

Moralism became a progressive go-to tactic in American political life because it constantly forced conservatives to issue denials of moral failure.

By now the appeal is virtually robotic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer this week outputted his thoughts that Republican plans to give companies wrestling with coronavirus liability protection are going to help big CEOs, but not the workers.

Next came the great moral event of the centurys second halfthe civil rights movement. Once past the landmark laws of the mid-1960s, Democratic politicians quickly transformed even that into a moralistic weapon, routinely asserting that Republican policies would roll back the moral victories of that era.

Leave it to Joe Biden, looking more than ever like an innocent abroad, to resurrect his partys legacy of protecting Jim Crow when at a fundraiser he cited his good Senate relationship with Old-South Democrats Herman Talmadge of Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi.

During Barack Obamas first high-minded presidential term, he gave speech after mocking speech about the wealthiest and the 1%. They came in like moralistic mortar rounds. In 2011, a liberal group ran a TV ad against Paul Ryan, then House Budget Committee chairman, depicting him throwing Grandma off the cliff with his proposed Medicare reforms.

Then, no longer content with isolating its opposition as its moral inferiors, the American left began to overreach. It targeted basic beliefs that had bipartisan support, such as the consensus about First Amendment free-speech protections. The campus speech codes arrived first but then came the mobs that shut down talks by conservative speakers, claiming they had moral justification for suppressing these speakers views on race, women and ... pretty much anything.

This was an important turning point. Previously progressive condescension at least operated inside traditional moral categories. In recent years, it has decided it could get away with displacing even agreed-on norms of right and wrong with entirely novel claims, such as demoting centuries of due process for the accused with believe the woman.

Standard measures of credibility devolved into credulousnessbut again, primarily in the interests of deploying the new rules as a political weapon. The ideas, or sentiments, were secondary.

The weaponizing of sexual-abuse accusations for the Brett Kavanaugh nomination was so over the top and evidence-free that many people eventually went numb on the subject.

Has the time finally come to agree the American system has waded into deep water by using cheap moralism as a political weapon? It wont change, not unless people in positions of leadership speak up.

Just because Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reinstating due process in campus sexual misconduct proceedings doesnt mean liberals have to remain passive and silent. Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman used to talk in clear terms about defending moral traditions, but the Democratic left drove him out of the party.

The Biden episode suggests that political moralism is losing its punch. Progressives will keep trying to intimidate their opponents this way because thats what they do. But nonstop media eventually sucks the energy out of everything these days, even its allies.

Other than the Democrats downloading pro forma support for Mr. Biden in hope of getting the vice presidential nomination, hardly anyone cares one way or the other about his guilt or innocence, or his accuser. The publics normal instincts of concern have been worn down into a cynical callousness. Can anyone count how many times Bernie Sanders called some part of American life a moral outrage?

What lies on the other side of the Biden double standard is no standard at all. We are getting close.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

Continued here:

Joe Biden and the Moralizers - The Wall Street Journal

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The late 1970s was a turbulent time for Britain. Mass unemployment, a new Prime Minister with her eyes on privatising national companies for huge profit, and Glam Rock. For the youth of the era, it was hard to find something to look forward to, but after a shop owner tapped into the zeitgeist from the New York music scene, a new movement began to form.

The first Punk single to be released in the UK was the 1976 track, New Rose by The Damned. The song was fast, simple and catchy. Despite this being the first mainstream British Punk song, The Damned were influenced by and had started as a supporting act to this rising Malcolm McLaren manufactured group, the Sex Pistols.

The Pistols followed The Damned one month later with their debut Punk single, Anarchy in the UK, introducing the Sex Pistols to the mainstream. They became the poster boys for the new Punk movement, which would seemingly eschew pop music orthodoxy and promote disdain for the conventional.

But was it everything they hoped? Was it everything punks now think it was? No, is the short answer...

By the time the bands second single, God Save The Queen, was released in time for the Silver Jubilee, they had been dropped from their EMI record deal due to swearing on primetime television, signed with a young Richard Bransons Virgin Records label, and had made headline news across the country.

Appearing on the front of the Daily Mirror under the headline the FILTH and the FURY, the Sex Pistols represented a new direction for pop music and seemed to endorse the idea of personal freedom, originality, and non-conformity. These ideals were attractive to the youth, and quickly Punk became fashionable. Bands would alter their sound to capitalise on the energetic and simplistic performances of the Pistols and join in the revolution, effectively conforming with the non-conformists.

After the rejection of co-managing the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLarens former business partner, Bernie Rhodes sought to find a bad of his own. After attending local gigs and getting musicians on board, it wasnt long before he had control of his own Punk band, The Clash.

The band were the next big thing in Punk, and, under the direction of Rhodes, released a variety of singles focused on the troubles of the time. Rather than just spewing no future, The Clash rallied against the disastrous job market, declared apathy towards American music, and detailed events from a riot at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival.

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The Punk Movement Was Over Before It Began - WhatCulture

CBR has become the latest outlet to take a tired swing at the wildly popular The Rising of the Shield Hero, as a recently published article questions the series socially contentious undertones and labels its fanbase as incels.

On May 5th, the comic book and pop culture outlet published an article declaring that The Rising of the Shield Hero Is Absurdly Popular for NO Good Reason, in which freelance article writer Timothy Donohoo purports to be baffled by the series continued popularity, opening his article by claiming that the recipe for a potentially terrible anime was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero and that the constant attacks on the series socially contentious undertones were well deserved before proceeding to examine how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

Isekai is easily the most ubiquitous genre in todays anime and manga. While this means the genre has a huge audience of avid fans, it also means that it has plenty of detractors, as well. Often seen as incredibly cliche, if not boring, the faraway fantasy worlds that isekai transports its heroes and viewers to all seem to blend together at this point. Add in a host of social faux pas, and you have the recipe for a potentially terrible anime.

That recipe was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero. With an overpowered protagonist whos seemingly never wrong, topped with socially contentious undertones, the series has gotten its fair share of well deserved flak. Despite this, it continues to find a fanbase, as evidenced by its consistently high ranking on sites like Crunchyroll. Heres a look at how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

The attack on the series continues as Donohoo boasts that the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason, taking issue with the rape accusation leveled against Naofumi Iwatani at the onset of the series for being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement.

Related: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia Wins Crunchyrolls Best Girl Award

Hilariously, after recalling how this plot point led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, Donohoo is forced to acknowledge that sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan.

Fittingly, the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason. The story kicking off with the hero being falsely accused of rape was especially controversial, with many seeing it as being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement, if not wholly opposing it. This led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, though the sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan. Regardless, though this plot point is played for laughs, many felt that the confines of a fantasy isekai might not be the best place to handle such a serious topic.

Turning to the accusations that the series promotes slavery, Donohoo dismisses Naofumis confession that he only enslaved Raphtalia due to his belief that his best bet for survival in a world in which his reputation is torn asunder is an ally who is literally magic-bound to follow him, and pointing to the overall concept of Raphtalias enslavement as supportive evidence for the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert:

The show has also been accused of supporting slavery. Early on, the protagonist actually buys a slave girl and, instead of immediately freeing her or even feeling conflicted over the fact that shes a slave, Naofumi keeps her enslaved to him. Some have excused the plot element through the shows medieval setting, as well as the fact that the hero doesnt treat his slave in a degrading or dehumanizing way. Within the show, Naofumi justifies his needing a slave by saying that no one else would willingly work with him due to his fractured reputation. This hasnt helped the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert' who feels put upon by the world.

Related: Cosplay: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia By Katyushacos

Finally, Donohoo argues that the show itself is just another generic isekai show, taking issue with Naofumis characterization and his displays of unreasonable skill, despite these moments being played primarily for their comedic value:

Even without these unsavory elements, the show itself is just another generic isekai show, and a poorly done one at that. This is exacerbated further by Naofumi constantly winning in some form or fashion, despite him supposedly being the worlds victim. He wins fights with relative ease despite his inexperience with the fantasy game world. Far more experienced gamers and fighters pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Naofumifor some reason. Other characters also constantly come off as incredibly dumb, either blindly worshiping Naofumi or simply acting stupid for the sake of the plot.

After putting forth these legitimate issues, a disingenuously baffled Donohoo questions the series widespread popularity.

Related: Rising of the Shield Hero to Get 2nd and 3rd Seasons

Asserting that the isekai genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before, Donohoo argues that the fact that some viewers may relate to Naofumi as justification for the shows label as an incel fantasy and concludes that the series has more notoriety than it deserves.

Despite all of these legitimate issues, the show continues to develop an audience. Crunchyroll revealed that it was in their Top 20 list of the currently most popular series, in the same ranking as much more acclaimed shows like My Hero Academia, Naruto and One Piece. One justification for the questionable series popularity is the current wave of other generic, poorly constructed isekai shows that seem to somehow find a loyal audience. The genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before.

The controversial elements might actually be a boon for the shows popularity. Some viewers may seek out Shield Hero because of its taboo, almost risque reputation, while others might even sympathize with the protagonist. This would justify the shows label as an incel fantasy, but it would also explain why rampant criticism has failed to break the shows viewership. Another interesting explanation for why the show is so widely watched may be its cult status in the West. The source material was one of the first web light novels to be translated into English, opening a new world of potential readers, and eventually viewers, to an underdog, no-name web novel author. This Western cult status is ironic, given that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism. Nevertheless, the shows popularity, much like its eponymous hero, continues to rise, and it certainly wont be the last generic isekai to get more notoriety than it deserves.

Conversely, according to original The Rising of the Shield Hero light novel printing company Kadokawa Producer Junichiro Tamura, there have been no controversies regarding the series in Japan as Japanese viewers do not see these anime as controversial.

Related: Despite Detractors, The Rising of the Shield Hero Becomes Wild Success With Over 6.2 Million Copies Printed

Ironically, despite multiple admissions that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism, Donohoo fails to consider that this criticism is largely unfounded and put forth by critics in bad-faith.

After the premiere of The Rising of the Shield Heros first episode, many proponents of social justice theory took issue with the use of a false rape allegation as a major plot point, accusing the series of promoting misogyny and calling for the series cancellation.

In their 2019 retrospective, Anime News Network ranked the series as the Worst Anime of 2019, claiming that the adventures of Naofumi were a rallying point for the worst impulses of some of the worst people.

This is further seen in the fact that the purported morally justified and rampant criticism leveled against the series has not prevented CBR from promoting the series in a positive light in order to draw traffic to their website.

Related: Crunchyrolls The Rising Of The Shield Hero Anime Attacked by Feminists and Social Justice Warriors!

Earlier this year, the outlet published an article speculating on the Dungeons & Dragons alignments of the series cast, which makes no reference to misogyny, slavery promotion, or incels.

In an article titled 10 Things You Need To Know About Rising Of The Shield Hero, Naofumis anger and distrust of the world around him is optimistically described as a part of his character development, without which hes identical to every other isekai protagonist.

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CBR Takes Issue With The Rising of the Shield Hero's Socially Contentious Undertones and "Incel" Fanbase - Bounding Into Comics

The opening track of Petals for Armor, the debut solo record from Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, feels like a deep sigh. Rage is a quiet thing, she sings, over a tapestry of breaths and hums. Rage... is it in our veins?

The album is a release in multiple senses of the word for Williams. Its her first record without the band that made her famous when she was still a teenager (though her bandmates, Taylor York and Joey Howard, worked with her on the writing and recording of the album, this project stands apart from their work as a unit). Emotionally and lyrically explicit, Petals for Armor touches on raw nerve after raw nerve: the breakdown of her marriage, her grandmothers declining health, and the inherited trauma that has been passed down through the women in her family. Every woman in my family on my moms side... theyve all been abused in almost every sense of the word, she told The New York Times. She began writing the album after entering intensive therapy for the first time, and being diagnosed with depression and PTSD. Trauma echoes through the lyrics, which often speak specifically to women. I think of all the wilted women/ Who crane their necks to reach a window, she sings on Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris.

The albums opening note of rage feels, coincidentally, in conversation with another album released this month. Torontonian synth-pop artist Katie Stelmanis, better known under her band name Austra, opens her fourth album HiRUDiN with the words: You make me so angry. Her previous record, Future Politics, written pre-Brexit and pre-Trump, was a contemplation of power structures in the outside world, but on HiRUDiN, she turns the lens back on herself, writing about the breakdown and aftermath of toxic relationships, and internalised queer shame. HiRUDiN came out of a lot of feelings of disappointment that I was able to channel into new forms of optimism, she tells me. Namely, the importance of healing the self, and how that can actually be a powerful tool in terms of broader activism and politics.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN both exist in a lineage of albums by women reckoning with their pain; Stelmanis nods to Bjorks Vulnicura and FKA twigss MAGDALENE as recent examples of break-up albums that rocked her, and Williams made a playlist of inspirations for her album that included the very vulnerable work of Solange, Beyonce, and SZA. But Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN also share a lightness and an optimism that envisions not only a way out of that pain, but a meaningfulness to it. As Williams said in Rolling Stone last month, I dont think you can get to the good s*** without digging through the bad first. Its like you are trying to find the centre of the Earth how can you find that without cracking through limestone and heavy, hard things?

Ever since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, there has been the question of what its musical legacy will be. There have been angry songs, vengeful songs, satirical songs that have seized on the cultural mood. But a more satisfactory result could be more women, and victims of toxicity and abuse of any gender, feeling able to write honestly about their trauma without making it the focal point of their identity.

The music industry has never had its full-blown #MeToo moment, but Kesha came closest to sparking one when she sued her former producer and manager Dr Luke for alleged sexual and physical abuse in 2014, in a legal battle that is ongoing (he denies her claims). In 2017, Kesha released Rainbow, a cathartic purge of an album; but it was with High Road, released in January, that she reclaimed her party girl identity while celebrating her survival. Though miles away in sound, theres echoes of the liberatory urging of Fiona Apples Fetch the Bolt Cutters an album title that is also becoming a kind of zeitgeist-capturing mantra, encouraging women to cut themselves out of their cages and shout about their realities.

Apples album is unflinching, with lines such as, You raped me in the same bed/ Your daughter was born in. But its also a loose-limbed, defiant dance party, laced with frantic percussion that Apple created by banging on the walls of her house. Its a similar energy, if not sound, to that captured in Song For Our Daughter, the recent album from folk artist Laura Marling. On the albums release, Marling told The Independent: This album represents a triumph over trauma. I found my way through the very complicated reparative process, and it turns out to be quite a cheery album, which is a blessing.

Marling directs her album towards her future child, just as Hayley Williams, on Petals for Armor, also contemplates generational trauma, and how she might feel about her own daughter someday (If my child needed protection from a f***er like that man, Id sooner gut him...). What these albums all share is an envisioning of life after trauma: they are acknowledging but not dwelling on the brutality of the past, and celebrating their complex present, their hopeful future.

Both Petals of Armor and HiRUDiN are albums about healing. They rejoice in the body, and in the bodys place in the natural world. Williams was inspired by a vision of plants growing from under her skin, and the record is underpinned by an extended metaphor that depicts her and other wilted women as blooming flowers fragile, yet persistent. On the funk strut of Watch Me While I Bloom, she strikes a triumphant chord, pulling back her head to truly savour the howl of the line: How lucky I feeeel, to be in my body again. Trauma can make its victims feel robbed of their bodily autonomy, but here Williams wields hers.

Stelmanis, meanwhile, names her record after Hirudin, an anticoagulant peptide found in the saliva of leeches. Its how the predator gets into you, the traces it leaves inside your body when it sucks your blood. But in different contexts, hirudin can also be medicinal. Just as Williams envisions herself as a flower, Austra figures herself part of the natural landscape: on Mountain Baby, backed by the uplifting power of a childrens choir, she likens her relationship to the bittersweet work of climbing to a great height, her love interest the mountain. But amid the pulsating rush of I Am Not Waiting, the very next song,she sings, I am a mountain, before breaking into the delicious refrain, Im over you! Im over you!

There are several of these whiplash moments on the record, which flits between the highs of being in a codependent couple, and the lows of escaping it. Her writing reflects the dizzying feeling of trying to make sense of conflicting memories and emotions, when sifting through the debris of a toxic relationship. I only realised the theme of the record was toxic relationships after Id just about finished writing it, Stelmanis explains. It became clear that there was this linear progression of being in a difficult relationship, getting out of it, and finding safety on the other side. But in terms of track arrangement, that linearity didnt quite work, and instead you get this relatively chaotic back-and-forth. Which I actually think is a more accurate description of real life experience, as nothing is ever actually linear!

Hayley Williams new solo album, Petals for Amor is about healing(Atlantic Records)

The non-linearity will feel familiar to any sufferer of any kind of trauma, a boomerang affliction which can barely affect you at one moment, and leave you debilitated the next. On Petals For Armor, Williams follows a more conventional arc: her three-part release charts a trajectory from darkness to light. But, of course, its not that simple. Shadows cling to the records happiest moments: as she hints on Simmer, with that opening line about rage, you think that youve tamed it, but its lying in wait. By the time she ramps up the motivational surge of Over Yet, after a bright, synth-washed onslaught of positive mantras, she sings mournfully: For all the darkened parts of me... The suggestion of tragedy clings even to her upbeat moments, like the club-facing Sugar On The Rim, where she muses on finding good love after a scarring experience: Maybe we just had to feel it/ So wed know the difference.

Williams and Stelmanis both sound liberated on their new albums, as three-dimensional women carving out winding paths to recovery that encompass anger, vulnerability, grief, and lots of joy, too. For Williams, her video Cinnamon provides an apt visual metaphor for the album as a whole, as she sings about the home in which she lived alone after the breakdown of her marriage. In the video, she sees chameleonic creatures climb down from the walls and furnishings, and stalk her through the house, evoking the paranoia of a PTSD sufferer. She tries to lock herself away inside a room, only to find that the creatures are in there with her. They go wherever she goes. And so, rather than fight any longer, she changes into a bright-coloured costume, and invites her tormentors to dance with her. Her pain becomes part of her performance, and the result is beautiful.

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Rage is a quiet thing: How Hayley Williams and other female artists are writing their way out of trauma - The Independent

Throughout the 2010s, the rate of Hollywood comic book movie releases drastically escalated. The backbone of that movement was theMarvel Cinematic Universe, a 23-part mega-franchise encompassing 11 sub-franchises, most of which stand among the highest-grossing film series of all time. Although its business-oriented structuring has some creative drawbacks, the MCU has never produced a truly bad movie.

RELATED:10 Previous Failed Attempts To Adapt MCU Characters For The Screen

At worst, the MCUs offerings are cookie-cutter blockbusters, like Thor: The Dark World or Doctor Strange; most of the time, theyre fun, entertaining, pretty great movies, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok; and at best, they really connect to the zeitgeist, like Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

There are still plenty of great comic book movies being made outside the MCU, as well as plenty of not-so-great ones that provoke more fan backlash than a Mandarin fake-out. So, here are five recent comic book movies that were better than the MCUs offerings, and five that were worse.

Patty Jenkins was lined up to direct Thor: The Dark World with a more interesting love story and astronger characterization for Jane Foster, but quit after Marvel made some script changes she wasnt happy with. (As it turned out, neither was the Marvel fanbase.)

Jenkinswas instead snapped up by DC to helm Wonder Woman. Jenkins brought a real sincerity to the project, refusing to acknowledge the word cheesy, that made it a more engaging counterpoint to the MCUs bathos.

Warner Bros. gave David Ayer just six weeks to write the script for Suicide Squad before rushing it into production. Somewhere in the movieis the groundwork for an entertaining piece aboutantiheroes, but that potential is buried under generic characterization, on-the-nose exposition (like Rick Flags introduction of Katana), and mind-numbing plot logic.

RELATED:Suicide Squad: 5 Things James Gunn Should Change From The Original (And 5 He Should Keep The Same)

Following Sylvester Stallones abysmal PG-13 attempt at bringing Judge Dredd to the screen in the 90s with Rob Schneider, the 2000 AD icon finally got his due in 2012.

Karl Urban stars in the title role in this ultraviolent hard-R take on the character as he takes a rookie (played wonderfully by Olivia Thirlby) into a high-rise controlled by a drug lord to bring down their operation with brute force.

In 2019, Simon Kinberg, who is somehow the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, tried his hand at directing an X-Men movie after years of writing and producing them. As with every $200 million directorial debut, Dark Phoenix was a complete disaster. Days of Future Past may have a couple of plot holes, but it was a cinematic ride, and Apocalypse had its moments, few and far between.

RELATED:5 Things Fox's X-Men Movies Did Wrong (And 5 They Did Right)

Thanks to the Disney merger, Dark Phoenix was always going to be the final nail in Foxs X-Men franchises coffin a crew somberly going down with their ship but Kinbergs script and direction (not to mention the casts bored performances) didnt do it any favors.

Last year, for whatever reason, Academy voters got it in their heads that Todd Phillips Joker was something more profound and artistic than a derivative, confused, thematically vapid Scorsese knock-off being carried on the shoulders of Joaquin Phoenix and Lawrence Sher. James Mangolds Logan is a much better example of a comic book movie taking influence from the classics of cinema to transcend the trappings of the superhero genre.

Its a bleak neo-western taking cues from Paper Moon in its father-daughter story and Shane in itstale of an aging hero reluctantly called upon for one last act of heroism. In both cases, it doesnt feel like a rip-off of those movies but simply a story exploring the same themes in a different, more modern context.

Hugh Jackmans final performance as Wolverine is a grizzled tear-jerking delight, while Patrick Stewarts bittersweet portrayal of a dementia-ridden Charles Xavier and Dafne Keens subdued, emotionally deep performance as X-23 are quite poignant.

Midway through production on Josh Tranks unusually dark reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise, 20th Century Fox executives got cold feet about the directors weird body horror aesthetic and stepped into reshoot most of it.

RELATED:Fantastic Four: 5 Things The Other Movies Got Wrong (& 5 Ways The MCU Can Get It Right)

The reshoots are painfully obvious, from Kate Maras intermittent use of a blonde wigto the inconsistent, anticlimactic plot. Plus, for reasons unknown, the strangely titled Fant4stic carried over the terrible apropos-of-nothing Reed/Sue/Victor love triangle storyline from the previous movies.

After the first Deadpool movie provided an entertaining enough origin story with an agreeable gag rate, the second one really pushed the boat out as a meta commentary on superhero blockbusters.

At every turn, Deadpool 2 masterfully subverts the audiences expectations, such as thegrim early fate of the X-Force. Plus, the subplot involving Wades dream of reuniting with Vanessa in the great beyond gave the sequel a real emotional connection.

Why did they not just let Guillermo del Toro make Hellboy III with Ron Perlman? Instead, wegot Neil Marshall and David Harbour being given a $50 million check by a Hollywood studio to unsuccessfully mimic what del Toro and Perlman already did perfectly in 2004 and 2008, with needless bloodshed added in post to strain for a gratuitous R rating.

In some parallel universe, theres a Hellboy III directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, and it would probably be included in the best column of this list.

With emotionally resonant voice performances (particularly from Shameik Moore in the lead role), a complex plot that uses lofty sci-fi concepts like interdimensional travel to convey human ideas, and a beautiful animation style that recalls flicking through the pages of a comic book, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse emerged in 2018 as the perfect Spidey movie.

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Into the Spider-Verse reassured fans that Sony wouldnt screw up all of its attempts to tell Spider-Man stories on the big screen even if it screwed up a lot of them.

This is the movie that forced Sony to relinquish some of Spider-Mans film rights to Marvel Studios, allowing his introduction in the MCU. Andrew Garfields bloated second outing as Spidey proves that Sony didnt learn anything from the shortcomings of Spider-Man 3, as they rammed it with terrible villains, and on top of that, it has a bunch of setups for a cinematic universe that never happened.

NEXT:The 10 Darkest Superhero Movies Ever Made, Ranked

NextWhich Ozark Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac Sign?

Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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5 Recent Comic Book Movies That Were Better Than The MCU's Offerings (& 5 That Were Worse) - Screen Rant

Despite a self-insert protagonist who defies all logic and seemingly condones slavery, Shield Hero's popularity is only rising.

Isekaiis easily the most ubiquitous genre in today's anime and manga. While this means the genre has a huge audience of avid fans, it also means that it has plenty of detractors, as well. Often seen as incredibly cliche, if not boring, the faraway fantasy worlds that isekai transports its heroes and viewers to all seem to blend together at this point. Add in a host of social faux pas, and you have the recipe for a potentially terrible anime.

That recipe was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero. With an overpowered protagonist who's seemingly never wrong, topped with sociallycontentious undertones, the series has gotten its fair share of well deserved flak. Despite this, it continues to find a fanbase, as evidenced by its consistently high ranking on sites like Crunchyroll. Here's a look at how one of today's worst anime has become one of its most popular.

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Like nearly every isekai series, The Rising of the Shield Hero began life as a light novel series before becoming a manga and finally, in 2019, an anime. The plot follows Naofumi Iwatani, a college student who is suddenly transported to a magical fantasy world. After discovering the Book of Four Heroes in this world, he is greeted by three other men and is designated as the titular Shield Hero.

Unfortunately for him, everything goes downhill from there. He's not exactly charismatic among the chosen heroes, having been something of an outcast in his original world. This leads to only one female - a cardinal sin in the harem filled worlds of isekai anime - to join his party and, once she does, she falsely accuses him of raping her. From there, he has to learn how to thrive as a hero in a world where his reputation is lower than dirt.

RELATED: Shield Hero or Reincarnated as a Slime: Which is the Better Isekai?

Fittingly, the show's own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason. Thestory kicking off with the hero being falsely accused of rape was especially controversial, with many seeing it as being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement, if not wholly opposing it. This led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, though the sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan. Regardless, though this plot point is played for laughs, many felt that the confines of a fantasy isekai might not be the best place to handle such a serious topic.

The show has also been accused of supporting slavery. Early on, the protagonist actually buys a slave girl and, instead of immediately freeing her or even feeling conflicted over the fact that she's a slave, Naofumikeeps her enslaved to him. Some have excused the plot element through the show's medieval setting, as well as the fact that the hero doesn't treat his slave in a degrading or dehumanizing way. Within the show, Naofumi justifies his needing a slave by saying that no one else would willingly work with him due to his fractured reputation. This hasn't helped the character's real life reputation as an "incel self-insert" who feels put upon by the world.

Even without these unsavory elements, the show itself is just another generic isekai show, and a poorly done one at that. This is exacerbated further by Naofumi constantly winning in some form or fashion, despite him supposedly being the world's victim. He wins fights with relative ease- despite his inexperience with the fantasy game world. Far more experienced gamers and fighters pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Naofumi...for some reason. Other characters also constantly come off as incredibly dumb, either blindly worshiping Naofumiorsimply acting stupid for the sake of the plot.

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Despite all of these legitimate issues, the show continues to develop an audience. Crunchyroll revealed that it was in their Top 20 list of the currently most popular series, in the same ranking as much more acclaimed shows like My Hero Academia, Narutoand One Piece.One justification for the questionable series' popularity is the current wave of other generic, poorly constructed isekai shows that seem to somehow find a loyal audience. The genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before.

The controversial elements might actually be a boon for the show's popularity. Some viewers may seek out Shield Herobecause of its taboo, almost risque reputation, while others might even sympathize with the protagonist. This would justify the show's label as an "incel fantasy," but it would also explain why rampant criticism has failed to break the show's viewership. Another interesting explanation for why the show is so widely watched may be its cult status in the West. The source material was one of the first web light novels to be translated into English, opening a new world of potential readers, and eventually viewers, to an underdog, no-name web novel author. This Western cult status is ironic, given that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism. Nevertheless, the show's popularity, much like its eponymous hero, continues to rise, and it certainly won't be the last generic isekai to get more notoriety than it deserves.

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The Rising of the Shield Hero Is Absurdly Popular for NO Good Reason - CBR - Comic Book Resources

The Back to the Future Trilogy...okay, maybe there's another beloved trilogy new to streaming this month (Now available on Netflix!) that speaks directly to our current moment in a fairly eye-opening and retroactively disturbing way. You see, Once upon the 1980s, a young Republican in a life-vest, with the help of a way-too-old-to-be-hanging-out-with-teenagers science friend, traveled back in time where he had to prevent his mothers sexual advances and instead steer her toward Crispin Glovers dick. He succeeded in this fraught scenario, but accidentally transformed the future into Planet Las Vegas, which sounds cool, but was actually kinda shitty, because the president of Planet Las Vegas was Donald Trumpbut in what dystopian hellscape of nuclear distraction would a populace ever elect that asshole, right? So our heroic young Republican then went all the way back to the Wild West, where Mary Steenburgen lives, and managed to set the timeline back on track and everyone learned that its never really a good idea to steal plutonium from angry Libyans. Co-starring Huey Lewis and Flea.

Rabbit Hole There are no lack of podcasts about The Internet being made right nowshows that cover the culture, politics, dark underbelly, and idiosyncrasies of being online are outnumbered only by mediocre true crime pods. Yet Rabbit Hole, the new weekly audio series from the New York Times (updates Thursdays) that explores the internets potential to radicalize its users, manages to stick out by pairing deep original reporting with a high degree of specificity. In the first two episodes alone, you will track the viewing history of a guy whose streaming habits went from Frozen parodies to right-wing YouTubers to outright white supremacists, and learn about the YouTube algorithm that favors the fringe. Episodes are kept at a succinct 30 minutes, leaving you wanting more each time. In a media landscape thats oversaturated with hot takes about Twitter feuds and lacking in valuable reporting about the place where most Americans spend hours of their day, having a pod like Rabbit Hole is a good thing. BLAIR STENVICK

Take a Free OSU Class on Growing VegetablesOregon State University is looking to make education more delicious, and you can learn for yourself whether the food you grow and cook yourself really does taste better than any other food you'll eat by taking this free series of courses from the school's Master Gardener program, made up of 12 on-demand classes covering where to grow your food, how to grow your food, how to protect your food from pesky insects, and how to enact that protection without ruining your food or the soil its grown in.

HollywoodThere's more than a few alternate-history shows that have captured the pop-culture zeitgeist recently. Hulu had 11.22.63 (What if you could stop the Kennedy assasination?), Amazon had Man in the High Castle (what if the Axis won World War II?), and HBO had The Plot Against America (What if Charles Lindbergh ran for president in 1940, won, and America became openly fascist?). You'll note all these alternate histories are pretty serious and dark, almost like there's a rule that alternate histories have to be dystopias. Well, here comes Netflix, and Ryan Murphy, and Hollywood, an alternate history whose primary question is "What if the golden age of Hollywood wasn't so sexist, racist, 'phobic, and gross?" and whose primary answer seems to be "It'd be pretty fun and fabulouslook at all these amazingly pretty people swan around for a couple hours." Is there an important lesson to be learned here? Probably not. Is there an "important lesson" to be learned from drinking champagne 'til you're dizzy and making out with hot people all night? Who gives a shit! Hollywood!

WWOZ: Jazz-Festing in PlaceNot to be outdone by Pickathon's throwing open the doors to their prized vault of amazing live performances, New Orleans' listener-supported radio station 90.7 WWOZ has dug into their own archive of amazing music and come up with "Jazz-Festing in Place," putting together a program spanning eight days made up of nothing but absolute classic performances from over 30 years of New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival concerts, starring legends like Aaron Neville, Roy Ayers, the Ohio Players, Charlie Musselwhite, Terence Blanchard, Bonnie Raitt, Toots & the Maytals, Ella Fitzgerald & Stevie Wonder from 1977, Hugh Masekela, Dr. John, Trombone Shorty, and many, many more. The streams start at 9am PST, stop at 5pm PST, and play every Thurs-Sun for the next two weeks.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & GrillSpeaking of bayou brilliance getting unearthed this weekend: Every streaming service has its fair share of shining diamonds that are buried underneath more popular, more easily algorithm'd titles, and that goes double (or quadruple, really) when the title isn't a competitive reality show, or a buzzed-about drama, but a filmed stage play from 2014. But when that play is the Tony Award-winning Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, filmed at the Cafe Brasil in New Orleans and streaming on HBO Now? When it's starring Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday, singing and telling stories at a dive bar? You should take the time to use that app's search bar for the betterment of your weekend.

The Hollywood Theatre presents: RififiThe centerpiece of Jules Dassins 1955 pitch-black noir is perhaps the greatest heist ever filmed. Without a single line of dialogue or note of music, the immaculately detailed sequence takes up nearly a half-hour of screentime. The fallout after the robbery is nearly as suspenseful; even with a musical number and a cute little kid, Rififi remains a bleak, black, unforgettable crime film. The Hollywood Theatre is partnering with Film Movement to make this available: Buy a $6.99 ticket that makes the movie available for 72 hours, and a portion of those proceeds helps support the Hollywood. NED LANNAMANN

DrakeDrake just dropped a brand new mixtape late last night. It's called Dark Lane Demo Tapes. He appears to be clad in traditional ninja garb on the cover. Either you're clicking on that or you're not. And if you're not? You probably should. Here:

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The Best Things to Do (While Staying Home and Staying Safe) in Portland: Fri May 1 - The Portland Mercury

The official, representative text of the global not-for-profit sustainability advocacy organization known as The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). This is a 320-page guide defining all of the core ideas of The Movement, documented with over 800 sources.

The First Civilization by Jas Garcha is a well-written introduction into a resource-based economy (RBE). The arguments are scientific and substantiated by 138 citations in the reference section. The book gives full credit to Jacque Fresco and his life-work, The Venus Project. After presenting the basic ideas in the first part, Jas Garcha logically answers typical objections and gives a long-term plan with considerable detail how to test whether the RBE concept actually works while moving towards it at the same time.

In this bold new look at the recent uncontrolled spread of global capitalism, John McMurtry, professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, develops the metaphor of modern capitalism as a cancer. Its invasive growth, he argues, threatens to break down our society's immune system andif not soon restrainedcould reverse all the progress that has been made toward social equity and stability. On every continent, in every state, there are indicators of profound economic and environmental collapse. From the lands of indigenous communities to the currency markets of Asia, from the ocean floors to the ozone layer, the collapse is all-encompassing and deep-reaching.

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Education - The Zeitgeist Movement US