Letter to the Editor: Black Lives Matter? – Pine and Lakes Echo Journal

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It's certainly apparent someone forgot to mention that to these large inner cities, under Democratic mayors and governors, where 78% of all killings are Blacks on Blacks.

Example: Chicago, weekend of June 13 - 18 killed; weekend of June 20 - 104 shootings, 14 died, five kids.

This is going on all across our country. Baltimore, New York, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Houston, D.C., Philadelphia, etc. Even our own Minnesota "Nice" in Minneapolis. These are all sanctuary cities - coincidence?

Under Obama's eight years of presidency (2008-2016), 4,412 killings in Chicago; his last year (2016), 762 killings, under his "own" mayor Rahm Emanuel. Where was the outrage from the "Reverend" Al Sharpton (probably out preaching hate), Jesse Jackson, Cory Booker and all the national Black leaders?

Why didn't Black Lives Matter under Obama - maybe he was Black?

As "racism" goes, who are these so-called Blacks (the news media and political correctness censors us to express ourselves) who many feel life owes them, society against them, gangs are their families, use the "system," it's their way of life, it's abused. Once frustration call it "White racism."

George Floyd (no saint) tragedy was wrong, but have a question - how many "questionable" whites are shot every year by Black police officers?

From the start, our own "Minnesota Nice" Gov. Walz's lack of guts, the first day, to put down this "paid" for riot (Minneapolis) only added fuel to the fire, and a green light for all "these" Black and misfits nationwide to go on rampages and destroy so many people's lives. It all falls in Walz's lap. Now he's asking for federal aid and the Black vote in November. Now that "does" take guts.

Radical violence now rules our country without any retaliation. Pitiful.

Jack Schmidt,

Pequot Lakes

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Letter to the Editor: Black Lives Matter? - Pine and Lakes Echo Journal

After being told to remove her "Black Lives Matter" face mask, Whole Foods employee quits in protest. – Berkeleyside

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A protester holds up a sign at a demonstration against Whole Foods Markets clothing policy. outside Whole Foods on Gilman Street in Berkeley on July 17, 2020. Photo: Nancy Rubin

About 200 people gathered at the intersection of Gilman and Ninth streets Friday afternoon to protest a Whole Foods Market policy of not letting employees wear masks or T-shirts reading Black Lives Matter.

They came out to support Jordan Baker, who wore a Black Lives Matter face mask to work at the Gilman Street Whole Foods on July 15 and was asked to remove it within five minutes of arriving at work, according to her Instagram account.

I honestly dont want to work for a company who only supports a movement when it makes them look good, or makes them money, she wrote.

Her post was liked more than 40,000 times and many people at the rally said they had seen it and had turned up to support her.

Baker declined to talk to Berkeleyside during the rally. She said she has quit her job at Whole Foods.

The companys dress policy prohibits workers from wearing clothing with visible slogans, according to a spokesperson who sent the following statement:

In order to operate in a customer-focused environment, all Team Members must comply with our longstanding company dress code, which prohibits clothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not company-related, reads the statement. Team Members with face masks that do not comply with dress code are always offered new face masks. Team Members are unable to work until they comply with dress code.

But a woman who works at the Gilman store disputed that characterization. She said people wear clothing with slogans all the time and management does nothing about it. It was only when Baker wore a Black Lives Matter mask that they complained.

I wear logos every day and its never a problem, she said.

The woman, who did not want to give her name, said workers at the Gilman store are upset about the company policy. A number have quit. The woman, who has worked there for about a year, said she intended to quit soon. Others at the rally said word about what happened to Baker had spread among workers at the Berkeley and Oakland stores.

This is not the first large company to run into trouble when its employees wanted to wear Black Lives Matter merchandise. Starbucks, after tweeting on June 1 that it stood in solidarity with our Black partners, customers and communities, told its employees they could not wear BLM merchandise because its dress code, like Whole Foods, prohibited political or religious slogans, according to Buzz Feed. Starbucks later reversed its position.

The crowd, which started gathering at 3 p.m., soon swelled to more than 200. Protesters stood on the sidewalk and hoisted signs in the air. Many cars and trucks tooted horns in solidarity.

One woman, who used to work at the Whole Foods in Oakland, said the corporation was hypocritical because it said it supports social justice issues and has no tolerance for racism. But when an employee wears a Black Lives Matter face mask, she is told those words are prohibited.

Its tone-deaf, she said. Its super inconsiderate. Theyre performative. Its lip service.

A number of people at the rally said the concept of Black Lives Matter was no longer controversial after the mass movements prompted by the police killing of George Floyd, but instead expressed a demand for basic human rights.

This is not a political issue, the woman said. It is a human rights issue. This is not a controversial statement. Its a human rights statement.

Others at the rally said they were there to demand societal changes.

What I like to see is people participating, making social change, said Michael Ware, who works down the street at Berkeleys transfer station. Its our time, not only for Blacks but for whites to come together. This is an opportunity to unite for the better of all people.

The rally didnt seem to affect Whole Foods business much. As cars tried to turn into the parking lot, protesters would plead with the drivers to go elsewhere. A few turned around.

Inside, people continued with their shopping, seemingly unaware of the protest outside. However, three young women walked around the store and stopped customers to suggest they leave. They stopped this reporter and explained that Amazon was the true owner of Whole Foods, that it didnt pay its employees well, and that is a corrupt company. They encouraged customers to shop at Berkeleys independent markets, including Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market and the Berkeley Natural Food Company.

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After being told to remove her "Black Lives Matter" face mask, Whole Foods employee quits in protest. - Berkeleyside

Black Lives Matter in the Food System – Civil Eats

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During the first half of 2020, the disproportionate spread of COVID-19 in communities of color and the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police have drawn into sharp focus the systemic racism present in the United Statesincluding in our food system.

While Civil Eats has long reported on the issue of food justice, we have focused especially this year on topics related to racial justice in food and agriculture, and how the coronavirus pandemic has compounded the issues that communities and individuals of color have faced for many years.

From how historically redlined and segregated neighborhoods affect residents diets, health, and well-being today to the ways that Black communities are building on their generations of self-reliance and mutual aid to meet even greater needs today, 2020 has brought an entirely new level of challenges for people of color to face.

In the past few months, weve reported on the role food apartheid has played in the spread of coronavirus in Black communities, farm countrys reaction to the racial reckoning following Floyds death, and the evolution of the Black food sovereignty movement over the years, among many other issues.

In acknowledgment of todays Strike for Black Lives(#StrikeForBlackLives)during which tens of thousands of workers are expected to walk off the job in at least 25 cities to protest systemic racism, white supremacy, and police brutality against Black peoplewe are sharing some of our recent reporting on Black lives and the food system.

For more of our in-depth reporting, you can visit our archives of coverage of food justice and the coronavirus.

People of Color are at Greater Risk of COVID-19. Systemic Racism in the Food System Plays a Role.

Food apartheid and economic inequality are among the factors leading to high rates of infections and deaths of Black and brown Americans.

Black Leaders Discuss How the Food Sovereignty Conversation Has Shifted

Nearly two dozen Black farmers, chefs, and advocates took part in an online Juneteenth event to share stories of resistance, resilience, and the fight for land access.

Op-ed: The Farm Bureau Says it Wants to Fight Racism. Heres Where to Start.

Addressing systemic racism in U.S. agriculture has to begin with the USDA.

Reckoning with Racial Justice in Farm Country

Rural communities and agriculture groups are divided over George Floyds death and the resulting protests. As some stay silent, others express solidarity or hold rallies in support.

Want to See Food and Land Justice for Black Americans? Support These Groups.

Food justice is racial justice. As the nation rises up to protest atrocities against Black people, here are some organizations working to advance Black food sovereignty.

Op-ed: How Urban Agriculture Can Fight Racism in the Food System

Growing food in cities offers a powerful way to reclaim communities and change the dynamics so that people of color have wealth and power.

How Black Communities Are Bridging the Food Access Gap

Amid the pandemic and racial-justice uprisings, Black organizers nationwide are getting fresh, healthy food and groceries to those who need it most.

The Doctor-Botanist Couple Healing a Community in the Rural South

In Alabamas Black Belt, where COVID rates are high and hospitals are understaffed, Dr. Marlo Paul and her plant biologist husband, Anthony, are making house calls and providing free herbal remedies from their own farm.

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Black Lives Matter in the Food System - Civil Eats

Cubs To Hold Moment Of Silence For Black Lives Matter | 670 The Score – 670 The Score

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(670 The Score) The Cubs will hold a moment of silence in solidarity with and recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement at their home opener against the Brewers at Wrigley Field on Friday evening, the team announced.

On Wednesday, manager David Ross had mentioned the team had a plan in place to acknowledge racial injustice and to support those fighting against it.

"We've had multiple meetings on the racial injustice topic," Ross said. "We've got a plan in place for Opening Day that these guys are unified with. It's really has been some great discussions, some great conversations learning a lot about things that we don't see or what other people may be going through. It's been powerful for this group to have those discussions and brought us closer together in my opinion. It's been very rewarding on my end, and we've got great leadership here between the players, our front office group and our coaching staff."

Also Friday, teen gospel singer Keedron Bryant will also perform "I Just Wanna Live" from a rooftop across from Wrigley Field.

There will also be a virtual first pitch compilation featuring Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and health careworkers from Advocate Health Care. Additionally,two new blue flags will be added to the exterior of Wrigley Field as a tribute to health care workers.

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Cubs To Hold Moment Of Silence For Black Lives Matter | 670 The Score - 670 The Score

Black Lives Matter posters placed on top of building in 5 Points neighborhood – WRAL.com

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By Kirsten Gutierrez, WRAL reporter

Raleigh, N.C. A new work of art in Raleigh's Five Points neighborhood is sure to catch your eye the next time you drive through.

At the intersection in Raleigh, you'll notice familiar faces.

Those faces were placed on top of the Shops at 1700 building Friday as a showcase of solidarity. Among the people now covering the edges of the roof are Michael Brown, Jordan Baker, Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice. On the other side of the building are Eric Garner, George Floyd, Breona Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

Its great for one thing. Its part of getting together. Just hope everyone gets on one accord and gets together," said Five Points resident Edgar Cross.

Many who live in the neighborhood are just starting to notice the posters and believe its a great way to spread awareness.

"(It's) such a great response to see here in a very conservative neighborhood that doesnt have any murals yet.I think it speaks high volumes of education and what we want our community to reflect as well as our downtown community," said Carolyn Walker, a Five Points resident.

So far, the posters have spoken far louder than expected.

I think thats the purpose of it, to make change," said Cross.

The owner of the building said the posters will stay in place as long as they last.

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Black Lives Matter posters placed on top of building in 5 Points neighborhood - WRAL.com

Corporate ads said Black Lives Matter. But the industry creating them is nearly all white. – NBC News

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Advertisings unique ability to persuade by creating the appearance of change through rhetoric, symbols and events has helped corporations and existing power structures conceal and protect white gains and Black losses behind the scenes for generations.

So as Black Lives Matter gained mainstream acceptance in June, brands eager to stay on trend turned to ad agencies to help them join the movement through woke messaging. And though we'd seen similar efforts backfire before Pepsis infamous protest ad with Kendall Jenner in the midst of protests against police shootings in 2017 come to mind long-standing public pressure campaigns to end commercial monuments to white supremacy (ranging from corporate mascots of happy Black servitude to racist NFL trademarks) were, in fact, finally successful this time.

While these hard-won victories are worth savoring, they are still largely symbolic because it's hard to ascribe them to any true change of attitude; the people spoke, but it was really that money talked. So, when Proctor & Gamble tells its consumers that Now is the time to be Anti-Racist, one has to wonder whether the companies and the agencies that produced the ad got the memo, too.

Because, when it comes to feigning change while continuing to marginalize Black lives and maintain white power, advertising has a long record as a repeat offender. And nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the ongoing, striking lack of diversity in the advertising industry itself.

In 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed advertising and promotion managers in the United States, and found that less than one percent (0.7 percent) were Black a stark contrast to the 13.4 percent of the U.S. population that is Black. Perhaps more troubling, the number had actually gotten worse: In 2010, the percentage was 0.8 percent.

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To find out why, I conducted field work through internship programs at three major New York City advertising agencies. I found three related problems that likely contribute to the problematic, and ongoing, lack of Black advertising managers.

First, white nepotism runs rampant: At the agencies I studied, all 24 of the interns referred to as "must-hires" (which means interns with family connections) were white. In most cases, must-hires are a well-kept but open secret at an organization; their connections are subject to an implicit don't ask, don't tell policy. (Except, this time, I did ask and my anonymous sources told.) And since they are white, their race conceals them like a cloaking device they aren't subject to questions about whether they got their jobs due to "affirmative action" policies even though "must hire" policies are exactly that.

Second, the qualifications for entry-level positions in advertising can be loose and subjective; it comes down to whether a candidate feels like a "culture fit" rather than objective skills or experiences. As one human resources manager told me, the interview process for such positions feels more like rushing for a fraternity or sorority than interviewing for a firmly conceived job. As a result, colorblind whites cant (or choose not to) see that they are consistently hiring people that look like or come from the same backgrounds, because those are the people with whom they feel the most comfortable.

Third, advertising employees often refer their friends for open positions, which may save the agency the expense of a headhunter and provide the added bonus of a familiar officemate, but also makes for a racially homogenous workplace. Sociologists have long documented how the powerful and well-connected use this kind of opportunity hoarding as a means to conserve power within familial (and thus racial) lines.

All of which puts Black applicants in a tough spot. While Latinos and Asians are also underrepresented in advertising, Blacks stand out in an agency setting as one of the interns in my study put it like "freckles." This presents serious obstacles to mentoring and makes Black employees particularly vulnerable to white backlash.

For instance, over half of the white "must-hires" in my study opposed affirmative action, even though they got their own spots through just such a program; these white hires nevertheless complained that Black interns got in "only because" of their race. (Meanwhile, though a smattering of diversity initiatives offered competitive scholarships for minority interns, the must-hires in my study still outnumbered them by a ratio of more than 2 to 1.)

My research only begins to scratch the surface of a deeply entrenched problem but don't take my word for it. Watch Travis Wood's short SXSW film "Affurmative Action," which mocks how creative companies Meet the Team pages often feature plenty of dogs ... but no Black people. Or read this open letter from 600 & Rising, a coalition of 600+ Black advertising professionals calling for urgent action from agency leadership the most important of which being "transparency on diversity data.

In order to dismantle white supremacy inside advertising, more data is needed to hold ad agencies accountable and yet, despite decades of problems and numerous requests, as of last year neither major industry group not the 4A's nor the American Advertising Federation even bothered to track diversity statistics in their industry.

The Pledge for 13 has, in fact, offered to establish a a hub that tracks the performance and progress of agencies throughout the industry on diversity goals and instructing participating agencies to commit to achieving 13 percent African American leadership by 2023.

The pressure seems to be working: On the eve of Juneteenth, June 19, 600 & Rising announced that 30 agencies agreed to publicly share their internal diversity data on an annual basis, broken down by gender identity, race/ethnicity, seniority and department. The 4As signed on as a co-sponsor and agreed, for the first time, to conduct an annual diversity survey to create industry benchmarks.

But, of course, weve been here before.

In 2009, the NAACP launched the Madison Avenue Project and released a damning (if not surprising) report exposing the widespread and systematic under-hiring, under-utilization, and under-payment of Black people across the advertising industry. Not only was racial discrimination 38 percent worse in the advertising industry than in the overall U.S. labor market, but the discrimination divide had gotten twice as bad as it had been 30 years before. Months after the reports release, Adland's own Dan Wieden who coined Nike's catch phrase "Just Do It" criticized his own agency for hiring white kids to sell Black culture, asking a room of industry insiders, "How many Black faces do you see here?"

All this pressure didnt stop the 2011 CLIO Awards advertising's Oscars from their tone-deaf promotion campaign featuring a bunch of white guys dressed up like characters from AMC's "Mad Men." (The show seemed more aware of the problems within the industry than the industry: The fifth season of AMCs award-winning drama, premiering in 2012, opened with three white ad men hurling insults and water bombs onto the heads of Black civil rights protesters an event that actually happened at Young & Rubicam.)

Meanwhile as protests continue and brands jump on the bandwagon majority-white advertising agencies, among the hipster trappings of a progressive workspace, are still hiring predominately white people on the basis of favors, "fit" and friendship. And they're all working to convince us how "woke" our favorite brands are, so that we don't look too hard behind the curtain at how white the people in control of those brands and the messaging around them remain.

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Corporate ads said Black Lives Matter. But the industry creating them is nearly all white. - NBC News

Spacewalkers accomplish another round of space station battery swap outs – Spaceflight Now

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STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

EDITORS NOTE:Updated at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) after end of spacewalk.

Now in the home stretch of a complex, multi-year upgrade, two space station astronauts floated outside the lab complex Thursday and completed the replacement of aging batteries in one of the labs four sets of solar arrays.

With the completion of Thursdays six-hour spacewalk, multiple astronauts participating in 11 extra-vehicular activities, or EVAs, have now replaced 46 of 48 aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with 23 more powerful lithium-ion units.

A replacement for a lithium-ion battery that was damaged in 2019 when a battery charger shorted out has not yet been installed. But a unit flown to the station in January will be installed during a spacewalk later this year, taking the place of the final two nickel-hydrogen units.

That swap out will finally complete an upgrade that began in January 2017. The new batteries, along with additional planned upgrades, are expected to keep the station functioning through the end of the decade if not beyond.

Thursdays spacewalk began at 7:10 a.m. EDT when station commander Chris Cassidy and astronaut Robert Behnken, floating in the labs Quest airlock, switched their spacesuits to battery power, officially kicking off the 230th EVA since ISS assembly began in 1998.

After checking safety tethers and collecting tools, the astronauts headed for the far right end of the labs power truss to continue work started during spacewalks June 26and July 1to replace 12 older nickel-hydrogen batteries at the base of the outboard set of solar arrays with six lithium-ion power packs.

The space station is equipped with four huge solar wings, two at each end of the power truss, that feed electricity into eight power distribution channels. Twelve nickel-hydrogen batteries at the base of each wing, six per power channel, keep the station functioning when its in orbital darkness.

Starting in 2017, astronauts began replacing the old batteries with lithium-ion units. Because they are more efficient, only six lithium-ion batteries are needed at the base of each solar wing, along with circuit completing adapter plates to take the place of batteries that were removed but not replaced.

During spacewalks in 2017 and 2019, spacewalking astronauts replaced all 24 nickel-hydrogen batteries used by the left and right inboard arrays. But one of the replacement batteries blew a fuse when the charger it was connected to shorted out. That lithium-ion battery was removed and two older units were installed in its place pending launch of a replacement.

The left-side outboard solar wing, meanwhile, was upgraded during spacewalks in 2019 and earlier this year, leaving just the right-side outboard set 12 batteries feeding two power channels for Cassidy and Behnken.

They completed the battery work for one power channel during their two earlier spacewalks.

During Thursdays outing, they removed the six remaining nickel-hydrogen batteries and installed all three of the remaining lithium-ion units, along with a final three adapter plates. Cassidy also installed a high-definition camera boom on an inboard power truss.

NASA planners originally thought the battery work would take two spacewalks per power channel, but Cassidy and Behnken ran well ahead of schedule during their first two EVAs and again on Thursday.

They plan to carry out one more spacewalk next Tuesday to make preparations for installation of a commercial research airlock; to install a tool storage box; and to remove two of six no-longer-needed ground-handling fixtures at the base of the solar wings. That will clear the way for future power system upgrades.

Assuming Tuesdays spacewalk runs exactly six-and-a-half-hours as planned, Behnken will move up to third on the list of most experienced spacewalkers with 62 hours and 11 minutes of EVA time over 10 outings. Cassidys 10-spacewalk mark will stand at 55 hours and 52 minutes, moving him up to eighth in the world.

Cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev holds the all-time spacewalk record with 78 hours and 21 minutes over 16 EVAs. Retired astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria is second with 67 hours and 40 minutes over 10 excursions.

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Spacewalkers accomplish another round of space station battery swap outs - Spaceflight Now

Spaceflight and Tethers Unlimited team up on deorbiting system for satellite carrier – Yahoo News

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An artists conception shows Spaceflights Sherpa-FX, the first orbital transfer vehicle to debut in the companys Sherpa-NG (next generation) program. The vehicle is capable of executing multiple deployments, as well as providing independent and detailed deployment telemetry. (Spaceflight Inc. Illustration)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc. says itll use a notebook-sized deorbiting system developed by another Seattle-area company to deal with the disposal of its Sherpa-FX orbital transfer vehicle.

The NanoSat Terminator Tape Deorbit System, built by Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited, is designed to take advantage of orbital drag on a 230-foot-long strip of conductive tape to hasten the fiery descent of a spacecraft through Earths atmosphere. The system has been tested successfully on nanosatellites over the past year, and another experiment is planned for later this year.

Tethers Unlimiteds system provides an affordable path to reducing space debris, which is becoming a problem of greater concern as more small satellites go into orbit. Statistical models suggest that there are nearly a million bits of debris bigger than half an inch (1 centimeter) whizzing in Earth orbit.

WhenTethers was founded in 1994, its main focus was to solve the problem of space debris so that NASA, the DoD [Department of Defense] and commercial space enterprises could continue to safely operate in Earth orbit, Tethers Unlimited CEO Rob Hoyt said today in a news release. We are pleased to see our solutions are now making a significant contribution to ensuring sustainability of the space environment, which will benefit the entire industry.

Spaceflight Inc.s Sherpa-FX is due to have its first in-space use during a dedicated rideshare mission scheduled for no earlier than December. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would send the vehicle into orbit, loaded up with smaller spacecraft. After Sherpa-FX separates from the rockets upper stage, it would deploy those spacecraft to independent orbits. The system builds on the legacy of Spaceflight Inc.s first free-flying satellite deployer, which was used for a 64-satellite mission in 2018.

In-space transportation is essential to meeting our customers specific needs to get their spacecraft delivered to orbit exactly when and where they want it, Grant Bonin, Spaceflight Inc.s senior vice president of business development, said in a news release. If you think of typical rideshare as sharing a seat on a train headed to a popular destination, our next-generation Sherpa program enables us to provide a more complete door-to-door transportation service.

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Spaceflight Inc.s customers for the rideshare mission include iQPS, Loft Orbital, HawkEye 360, Astrocast and NASAs Small Spacecraft Technology program.

The Terminator Tape module, which weighs less than 2 pounds, will be attached to Sherpa-FXs exterior. When the transfer vehicle has completed its mission, an electrical signal will activate the system to wind out the conductive tape. Interactions with Earths magnetic field and upper atmosphere will increase drag, causing a quicker plunge from orbit.

Were focused on being a good steward of our space resource, and our mission is to conduct frequent small satellite launches, so we have a responsibility for deorbiting what we send up, said Philip Bracken, vice president of engineering at Spaceflight Inc. Tethers solution is affordable, compact and lightweight, and will help us fulfill our responsibilities to clean up space after our mission is complete.

Spaceflight Inc. handles satellite launch logistics in partnership with a variety of launch providers, including SpaceX and Rocket Lab. It was founded as a subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, but this year ownership was transferred to Mitsui & Co. Ltd.

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Spaceflight and Tethers Unlimited team up on deorbiting system for satellite carrier - Yahoo News

More evidence of increasing militarization of space as U.S. claims Russia satellite weapon test – TechCrunch

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The U.S. Space Command has released details about an alleged anti-satellite weapons test it suspects Russian of conducting using an existing probe already on orbit, The Verge reports. The Russian satellite in question is the same one that made headlines back at the beginning of 2020 when it seemed to be tailing an existing orbital U.S. spy satellite. That same spacecraft appears to have deployed some kind of projectile according to Space Command, which monitors objects currently in orbit around Earth.

General John Raymond of U.S. Space Command told the Verge that this represents further evidence of Russias continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems, and pursing a strategy that could but U.S. and allied in-space assets at risk.

The militarization of space isnt new, and parties on all sides have been pursuing development of both offensive and defensive in-space weapons technologies. One of the biggest potential risks lies in weapons that, like this one in theory, could be deployed from satellites to destroy others potentially disabling key ground communications, intelligence or observation space-based infrastructure that is used to support command and control operations on terrestrial battlegrounds and in the defense or observation of key military assets.

Russia isnt the only global power unnerving the U.S. when it comes to the militarization of space: An April test by India saw that nation demonstrate a ground-to-orbit anti-satellite missile system, which NASA Administrator denied as being not compatible with human spaceflight. India is hardly the first country to demonstrate this kind of capability, however, as the U.S., China and Russian have all performed similar tests.

The growing risk of orbit-to-orbit offensive weapons has had a dramatic effect on how militaries including that of the U.S. has changed its priorities for in-space assets. For instance, the Department of Defense and other U.S. defense and intelligence agencies appear to be shifting focus away from the large, geosynchronous satellites that were massively costly and relatively unique upon which they used to rely, and towards smaller, more nimble satellites that might operate in low Earth orbit and consist of constellations with built-in redundancy. Theyve also been actively funding the development of commercial small-scale launcher startups, which can offer more response orbital launch services even than SpaceX and other existing providers.

While there are obviously many vocal detractors regarding the militarization of space, the fact remains that its an area where a number of global superpowers have spent billions, since the potential tactical advantage it provides is immense. Based on the increasing frequency and more public nature of tests like this one, its a segment where the U.S. in particular will be only too happy to look for support from the private sector, including technology startups, that can provide creative and advanced solutions.

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More evidence of increasing militarization of space as U.S. claims Russia satellite weapon test - TechCrunch

Comet NEOWISE: 10 big questions (and answers) about the icy wanderer – Space.com

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See Comet NEOWISE?

(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab/Parker Solar Probe/Brendan Gallagher)

If you spot Comet NEOWISE, let us know! Send images and comments to spacephotos@space.com to share your views.

Comet NEOWISE has is delighting skywatchers around the Northern Hemisphere. But what makes this comet so special?

The comet made its closest approach to the sun on July 3 but, until now, was only visible in the sky before dawn. Now, for keen observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the comet has been getting higher in the evening sky, sparkling northwest below the Big Dipper constellation, according to Joe Masiero, deputy principal investigator of NEOWISE (NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the NASA space telescope that first spotted the comet).

One of the most fascinating details about Comet NEOWISE is that it won't return to our skies for another 6,800 years. But that's not the only thing that makes this icy space rock special. So let's take a dive into what makes Comet NEOWISE unique and a little weird.

Related:How to see Comet NEOWISE in the evening sky now

Officially known as C/2020 F3, Comet NEOWISE is a comet that was discovered on March 27, 2020, by NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting afterlife of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

Comets, often nicknamed "cosmic snowballs," are icy, rocky objects made up of ice, rock and dust. These objects orbit the sun, and as they slip closer to the sun most comets heat up and start streaming two tails, one made of dust and gas and an "ion tail" made of electrically-charged gas molecules, or ions.

Yes! Because it is especially bright, the comet is visible in the night sky with the naked eye. Skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere can spot the object just after sunset, to the northwest just under the Big Dipper constellation.

In fact, the comet is so bright that scientists are "able to get a lot more and better data than we typically do for most comets," Kramer said. "We're able to study it with a wide variety of different telescopes, and that'll allow us to do really interesting studies."

Related: How to photograph Comet NEOWISE: NASA tips for stargazers

No! Because Comet NEOWISE is an especially bright object, it is relatively easy for astronomy enthusiasts to spot it in the night sky with just the naked eye, although binoculars or a small telescope will give you a better view.

"The fact that we can see it is really what makes it unique," Kramer said. "It's quite rare for a comet to be bright enough that we can see it with a naked eye or even with just binoculars."

More:Best telescopes for the money 2020 reviews and guide

To those spotting the comet with the naked eye, without any tools or instruments like a telescope, it looks like a fuzzy star with a little bit of a tail.You do need to be away from city lights, though.

With binoculars or a small telescope, the comet will be more clear and the tail will be easier to spot.

Related:Amazing photos of Comet NEOWISE from the Earth and space

There is "about 13 million Olympic swimming pools of water," in Comet NEOWISE, Emily Kramer, a science team co-investigator forNASA's NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during a news conference July 15. "So that's a lot of water."

"Most comets are about half water and half dust," she added.

Comet NEOWISE has two tails that typically accompany every comet.

As a comet nears the sun, it warms up and material pulls away from the surface into a tail. Often, dust is pulled away along with gases from sublimating (going directly from solid to a gas) ice. This dust tail is the sweeping trail seen in most comet images. Comets also have an ion tail made up of ionized gas blown back by the solar wind.

Researchers studying Comet NEOWISE might actually also have a sodium tail. By observing what they believe to be atomic sodium in the comet's tail, researchers can glean keen insight into the object's makeup.

Comet NEOWISE is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter, "which is a reasonably large but roughly average-size comet," Kramer said.

"It's rare to see something that's this bright," she added. "There are comets that are of this size that we see regularly, but most of them are from Earth that they don't get this bright. They're too far from the sun and the Earth to be able to see them in the way that we're seeing this Comet NEOWISE."

The comet is traveling at about 40 miles per second (that's about 144,000 mph, or 231,000 km/h).

Joe Masiero, deputy principal investigator of the NEOWISE mission, said the the comet is moving about twice as fast as the Earth's speed around the sun. But don't expect that rapid clip to last.

Because of the comet's extremely elliptical orbit, it will slow down as it reaches its farthest point from the sun, then fall back toward the inner solar system and accelerate again when it heads back round the sun. That trip around the sun is over for Comet NEOWISE's current orbit and it's moving back to the outer solar system.

"And so as it goes farther from the sun, [it] will be slowing down as it climbs back up that gravity well," Masiero said.

Have no fear, Comet NEOWISE will not hit Earth.

"This particular comet has no possibility of impacting the Earth. It crosses the plane of Earth orbit well inside of recovery orbit and almost near the orbit of Mercury, so there's absolutely no hazard from this comet," Lindley Johnson, the planetary defense officer and program executive ofNASA'sPlanetary Defense Coordination Office at NASAHeadquarters, said during the news conference.

The comet orbits the sun every 6,800 to 7,000 years, NASA has said. The comet is currently about 70 million miles (111 million kilometers) away from Earth.

No, Comet NEOWISE originates in our own solar system. To date, only two interstellar objects have been discovered: 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov.

"This one we know it's not Interstellar object. By watching its motion, we can see that it's bound to the sun's gravity," Kramer said. "So it's coming in very rapidly and then it's going to go far back out again and then but then should come back in again in about 6,800 years."

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect timespan for Comet NEOWISE's orbit. It is about 6,800 to 7,000 years, NASA has said.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Comet NEOWISE: 10 big questions (and answers) about the icy wanderer - Space.com

Black Women Have Consistently Been Trailblazers for Social Change. Why Are They So Often Relegated to the Margins? – TIME

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When someone says no one cares about Black women and girls, I tend to reply, we all we got. Its a slight correction to a sentiment thats understandable. There is, after all, ample evidence that much of the world does not have much concern for the well-being of Black women, girls and femmes, but to say that no one cares fails to acknowledge those who do, those who work to protect and support them. As Christina Sharpe, the inimitable author of In The Wake: On Blackness and Being, reminded me a few weeks ago: Black women, girls and femmes have always looked out for each other.

In the past, I admit, I too asserted without qualification that no one cares about us, overlooking historical and contemporary examples of Black women and femmes showing up for and centering the plight of Black women, girls and femmes. Even as a Black feminist, I participated in the racist and sexist practice of erasing Black womens labor. I said no one cared because I was angry that far too few people beyond other Black women and femmes care about our victimization or the energy we expend struggling against injustice.

Today the undervaluing of the labor and commitment of those of us who do care and show up for Black girls, women and femmes looms large. Black women and femmes keep developing radical ideas about social transformation, wrestling with the ways anti-Blackness manifests in areas such as the criminal justice system, health care, news media and popular culture, and tirelessly amplifying the experiences of Black women, girls and femmes. But even as our ideas are coopted, our victimization remains on the margins.

Our limited visibility as prominent architects of the burgeoning 2020 uprising and as victims of racial injustice feels all too familiar and has left me with disconcerting questions: What will it take for folks to not use our ideas and strategies without crediting us or centering injustices against us? Should Black women, girls and femmes give up on expecting anyone other than us to care? Is solidarity even a meaningful goal if folks continuously fail to cite our labor and center our marginalization?

The problem we endure is one of constant erasure. For example, the origins of anti-rape activism in the U.S., although largely attributed to feminist activists in the 1970s, date back more than 150 years. In 1866, a group of African-American women testified before Congress about being gang-raped by white men during the Memphis Riot. Despite compelling testimony, the perpetrators were not punished. After this pioneering moment in anti-rape activism, African-American women such as Fannie Barrier Williams and Ida B. Wells founded and participated in campaigns to end sexual violence against Black women and girls. Black women in the late 19th century laid the groundwork for future generations of anti-rape activists. In the 1970s, which many consider the third peak in anti-rape activism, the strategies and aims of Black womens anti-rape activism became part of a broader movement that included the creation of rape crisis centers and college campus activism.

Many of the trailblazing African-American women who documented, analyzed and fought against sexual violence, however, became mere footnotes in the historical record of the enduring struggle to end sexual violence. This made it easier for folks in 2017 to overlook Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement in 2006, and to not identify Aishah Shahidah Simmons NO! The Rape Documentary as a germinal film about contemporary sexual violence. It was also unsurprising that the stories of primarily famous white women took centerstage in national debates. Black womens work anchors anti-rape activism, and yet sexual violence against Black women, girls and femmes remains under-addressed within the mainstream anti-rape movement.

Protesters gather for the Black Women Matter "Say Her Name" march in Richmond, Va., on July 3, 2020.

Eze AmosGetty Images

History appears to be repeating itself as calls to #DefundThePolice intensify. This part of the current racial justice movement owes a tremendous debt to the grassroots organizing and scholarship of Black feminists and other feminists of color over the past few decades. From Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries who knew they could not look to police or prisons to address violence against queer and trans people to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis and others forming Critical Resistance as a grassroots organization striving to dismantle the prison-industrial complex, the demand to abolish policing and prisons is hardly new. Davis argued in her 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, thatthe most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor. Defunding the police is a means by which abolition becomes possible.

While more folks are now engaging the work of Black women like Davis, Gilmore and other Black feminist abolitionists on policing and prison abolition, some people are missing key Black feminist sensibilities that undergird demands to radically transform the criminal justice system. Systems of policing currently allow people, from police officers to intimate partners, to harm Black women, girls and femmes with no accountability. The move to divest from policing and prisons demands an understanding of interlocking systems of power in which Black women, girls and femmes are disproportionately vulnerable to violence and to being overpoliced.

The call to defund and ultimately abolish police is predicated upon examining the conditions in which harm thrives. It also compels us to care about, prevent and address harm outside of a punitive context through investment in areas like education, health, housing and employment, areas in which Black women, femmes and girls combat notable bias, disparities and inequities.

To re-center the lives and labor of Black women, girls and femmes in the current debate about #DefundThePolice isnt merely about recognition; its about ensuring that we dont render them as no one. In 2014, Black women created #SayHerName to push people to acknowledge that Black men are not the only ones killed by police at a disproportionate rate. While there were massive protests after the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, we did not see similar public outrage over Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson or other Black women, girls and femmes who died at the hands of police. Although Black women are routinely killed, raped and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality, said Kimberl Crenshaw, who authored and published the #SayHerName report with Andrea Ritchie, and the African American Policy Forum in 2015. Yet, inclusion of black womens experiences in social movements, media narratives, and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for black communities and other communities of color.

A demonstrator marches on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on June 6, 2020.

Tom WilliamsCQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images

Today these deaths still dont get the nearly the attention or mobilization our male counterparts do. It took George Floyds death for people outside of Louisville to march for justice for Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police two months earlier. And beyond Black trans and non-binary people and a few non-trans allies, I suspect few people even know about the killing of Brayla Stone, a 17-year-old Black trans girl whose body was found in June, or the five other Black trans women who were killed between June 25 and July 3.

I dont know how to convince people to care about the lives of Black women, femmes and girls like Taylor and Stone, but I do know that theyre not no one and neither are the Black women and femmes pushing fighting for them.

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Black Women Have Consistently Been Trailblazers for Social Change. Why Are They So Often Relegated to the Margins? - TIME

After George Floyd, Who Will Police Minneapolis? | by Krithika Varagur – The New York Review of Books

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Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty ImagesMinneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, accompanied by an MPD sergeant, taking a knee as the remains of George Floyd are driven to a memorial service in his honor, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 4, 2020

Minneapolis, MinnesotaTo begin, two tales of Twin Cities police.

First, Donn Landrum. The fifty-three-year-old served three foreign tours in the Navy, discharged right before the Gulf War. Thanks to his military experience, he quickly found work in private security after that. Landrum, who is black, grew up in Chicagoand still wears a Bulls jerseybut has lived in Minneapolis since 1987. While working, he eventually went back to school and obtained a bachelors degree so that he could enroll in the citys police academy, which he did in 2008.

He quit within six weeks. The disparities in how they treated black people were just too big, he told me. It was my deep feeling that it couldnt be changed.

He returned to the private sector, working for various security firms over the years. One of his colleagues in 2017 was George Floyd. A really nice guy, he recalled. Never started anything. Landrum attended Floyds funeral last month.

Second, Clarence Castile. He is the uncle of Philando, who was infamously murdered by police in 2016 in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. The sixty-year-old works as a landscaper, but at the time of his nephews death, he was well on his way to his certification as a reserve police officer in St. Paul. He went ahead and completed it, and took up a volunteer post that requires a hundred hours of service per year, usually to assist in tasks like traffic control for public events. Today, Castile wears the same blue uniform as regular cops, but does not carry a firearm.

I had a moment of reflection when that happened, for sure, when I didnt think I could go through with it, he told me. We saw seven bullets get emptied into his [Philandos] body. I was so angry; I hated cops. But it wasnt all cops who killed my nephew I had friends from high school who became cops and they cried with me, in their uniforms, he went on. My family doesnt hate cops. If we turn angry and stay angry, all it would do is fuel other peoples anger.

Those two accounts go to the heart of a raging debate in Minneapolis over whether to reform or abolish the citys police department in the wake of the protests over George Floyds murder that have shaken the nation, and the world beyond. When nine members of the City Council stood together in a park on Sunday June 7, a fortnight after Floyds killing, and announced their intent to disband the department, it seemed like an astonishing victory for the popular uprising. The council members stated simply that The Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed and will never be accountable for its actions. Even after the heat of that moment, every single member of the council voted on June 27 to advance a proposal to create a new department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, to be led by someone with non-law enforcement experience.

To the generation of activists shaped by Black Lives Matter, this sequence of events seems to offer an unprecedented chance to completely redefine policing, and they are pinning their hopes on the charter amendment, in spite of state-level gridlock on other police reforms. But to other activist groups that have been through previous cycles of campaigning, setbacks, and disillusionment, the potential for such dramatic change appears dimmer.

We are definitely moving in the right direction, said Kandace Montgomery, a queer black organizer who in 2018 co-founded the group Reclaim the Block, a leading voice on the abolitionist side. What were focused on now is that people get an opportunity to vote for an amendment to the city charter addressing the abolition of the police department, and getting it on the ballot in November, she said. The deadline for adding new items to the ballot before this years election day is August 21. Under consideration is the very existence of a city police department, as well as the required minimum number of police for the citys population (currently set at 730 officers).

Reclaim the Block activists have helped pro-abolition councilmembers formulate language for this amendment, a dialogue that Montgomery said would have been impossible until very recently. Engagement was very minimal before Floyds murder, she said. Having people out on the streets every day has been key to getting them to pay attention. If were not pressuring them, they are going to lose focus. Just last year, she noted, the council authorized an $8 million increase to the police departments budget. Even this amendment is subject first to revision by a fifteen-person volunteer commission, and second, to a vote in the council on whether that wording gets put up for referendum in November. And even if that passes, it would still have to go to the mayor for his approval (though the council could override his veto).

One reason for the abolitionist camps confidence is that it is articulating positions that have gestated for several years. A landmark report by regional activists called MPD150 presented a well-researched practical pathway for the dismantling of the Minneapolis Police Department back in 2017. And the grassroots groups Reclaim the Block and the Black Visions Collective have heavily foregrounded abolition, in addition to demanding specific budget cuts to the police, most recently calling for a $45 million decrease.

Its basically been six years of political development on the police abolition front, said Philip V. McHarris, a scholar and organizer. People have had the opportunity to learn, build, and grow with one another in the context of a broader movement since the Ferguson era, he said. The movement became an ideological incubator. As an organizer in New York, he recalls discussing cop-free zones in Chicago as an alternative to policing, typifying the real sharing of ideas that took place in this period across state lines.

In the early response to the movement, he noted, under the Obama administration, the focus was on technocratic solutions like body cameras. But todays renewed calls for abolition and structural change draw on deeper intellectual roots, like the work of Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, and Alex Vitale. More recently, the Movement for Black Lives, the umbrella activist organization that arose in 2014, also developed the policy ideas of investing in social services and divesting from policing that informs abolitionist demands today.

Still, even in its newly robust form, abolition does not draw a universal consensus among campaigners in Minneapolis, some of whom remain committed reformists. Michelle Gross, who leads the nonprofit Communities United Against Police Brutality, has called the charter amendment totally flawed and has criticized the process behind the proposal as rushed.

Her organization was chastened by events two years ago, when the City Council failed to act on popular, more modest demands to reform the police department after a black man named Thurman Blevins was fatally shot by a cop in 2018 and no one was charged. The City Council floated a proposal for it to oversee the police instead of the mayor, but it didnt get off the ground. Grosss group complains that the city authorities seemed to learn nothing from that experience.

Then, just nine months before Floyds murder, a coalition including CUAPB issued fourteen proposed changes to the contract between the police department and the city. Their proposals were fairly wonkysuch as calling for officers to be penalized for bad behavior through a new disciplinary matrix of measuresand the major priorities were far from radical, including items such as capping officers work hours to limit fatigue and making mental health screenings mandatory. In March, the coalition revealed that its members had been shut out of City Council discussions, an exclusion that only intensified as the pandemic and lockdown took hold.

Acknowledging such setbacks, Sheila Nezhad, another Reclaim the Block organizer, admitted during a recent webinar that if the council stalled past the August deadline, activists would have to gear up for at least another year of pressure. For its part, CUAPB argues that its more modest slate of reforms could usefully be adopted as interim measures, whether or not the charter amendment moves forward.

While the council famously had a veto-proof majority of nine when it announced its commitment to dismantle the police, Mayor Jacob Frey has dismissed proposals to rewrite the charter and rejected the concept of defunding the police in general. But a recent national poll fromThe Washington Post found that 69 percent of respondents believed that Floyds killing represents a broader problem in law enforcement, as opposed to 43 percent who did so in 2014 after the Ferguson protests. Frey may be swimming against the tide of public opinion.

*

The Minneapolis Police Department dates back to 1867. By the 1920s, when the city was still about 99 percent white, the force was shot through with Ku Klux Klan members and sympathizers. In June 1922, officers made several high-profile arrests of black men for disorderly conduct, which provoked the citys small black community to protest, and for the local chapter of the NAACP to meet with the Mayor. Its major demand: increasing the number of black people on the force.

A century later, that refrainWe need more cops who look like uswas one I heard today all over the Twin Cities, and notably from many different black men, including John Thompson, the friend of Philando Castile who is now running for state office in a House district of St. Paul; Deputy Police Chief Art Knight; and community activist Jamar Nelson, who helps lead a group called A Mothers Love that cooperates with the police department over community patrols. Its true that the demographics of the citys police force is still not representative. In 2015, 22 percent of the Minneapolis police force and 17 percent of the one in St. Paul was nonwhite, compared to 40 percent and 46 percent nonwhite presence in their respective populations.

The Minneapolis Police Departments recently appointed chief, Medaria Arradondo, is the first black person to hold the office; Art Knight is a deputy chief serving under him. In 2007, Arradondo and four others sued their own department, alleging that black officers were disciplined more harshly and frequently than their white counterparts for comparable misconduct; the suit was settled out of court. In their complaint, the black officers said that some of them had received hate mail signed KKK.

Ive been a policeman for twenty-eight years, but my first perspective of the world is being black, said Knight. Originally from Chicago, he is an avowed fan of Barack Obamas initiativesfollowing Trayvon Martins murder and has been credited with introducing to the Minneapolis police several typical post-Ferguson reforms such as body cameras and implicit bias training. Today, he remains a committed incrementalist, though he is obliged to admit that the training he has championed is not a panacea: The frustrating thing about Derek Chauvin [the cop who killed Floyd]and I was even his supervisor for six months, though I dont remember much, because he was unremarkable, honestlywas that he did go through all these trainings. And it still didnt make a difference.

We have a joke in policing, that cops hate two things: change and the way things are, he told me. When Knight joined the force in 1992, shortly after the Rodney King riots in LA, he was one of only two black officers in the whole department. So from my perspective, the changes since then have been substantial. We certainly never talked about something like bias when I was in training. He has fired a gun twice in his career, neither occasion resulting in a fatality.

His number one priority when he was appointed as deputy chief in 2017 was improving the forces diversity, which he labeled atrocious. But diversity doesnt come for free, he said; one of the main means to recruit nonwhite officers is a cadet program for people who didnt major in law enforcement in college (which is a requirement for the MPD). Knight estimated that it costs about $250,000 a year in total, which has made the department reluctant to keep funding it.

A more representative police force seems like a good idea, but would more black cops actually result in fewer police-involved killings? In the influential 2017 monograph The End of Policing, Alex Vitale surveys the literature and concludes that There is now a large body of evidence measuring whether the race of individual officers affects their use of force. Most studies show no effect. Despite modest increases in the nonwhite police numbers since Knight started his career there, the Minneapolis force still heavily over-polices black people, who are about nine times more likely than white people to be arrested for low-level offenses like trespassing, disorderly conduct, and loitering, according to an ACLU report from 2015.

If abolition becomes the order of the day, it will doubtless make all these efforts at internal reform look quaint, if not feeble. But whether abolitionist or reformist, all efforts to overhaul the MPD face one formidable foe: the extremely strong police union, led by the pugnacious Bob Kroll, a lieutenant who has described the Floyd protests as a terrorist movement. If the police department is not dismantled, the union will be the main roadblock to reform. Pete Gamades, an organizer with the group MPLS for a Better Contract, argues that changes to the contract are possible. Pay, he said, has been used successfully for leverage against police unions in cities like Austin. Off-duty work can be very lucrative for police, so its in their best interest to agree to work fewer hours. But, he also acknowledged, We look at this as an addition to, not an alternative to, the charter debate.

Prospects for using this leverage, though, look limited. The union negotiates directly with the mayor, not the City Council, and had already, before the pandemic, moved its current contract talks to a mediation stage, which prevents further public involvement. Since Floyds death, Police Chief Arradondo has pulled out of negotiations altogetherindicating that he does not see the contract as a vehicle for change.

*

In face of this stop-start nature of institutional change, some in Minneapolis are taking the job of public safety into their own hands. Powderhorn Park, in south-central Minneapolis, is a leafy, residential neighborhood just a few blocks from Cup Foods, where Floyd was murdered. In early June, the park itself became the site of pop-up settlements in camping tents of unhoused people, who now number over eight hundred. These started on June 9, when about two hundred homeless people whod occupied the Sheraton Hotel in the aftermath of the Floyd protests were evicted. Because of this and the parks proximity to the site of Floyds murder, anti-police sentiment runs high in Powderhorn.

This is essentially a no-go zone for the police, said Jack Nobles, a middle-aged white man who usually works as a set designer. He has become one of dozens of volunteers who have been staffing these camps around the clock to provide food and water, medic tents, showers, even weekly laundry.

Dennis Barrow, who is now in his fourth month without formal housing, is one of the day one encampment residents, and does double-duty as a community security guard. We know whos who, he said, we police our own community. He wore a whistle around his neck on a lanyard that said SMILE. We dont use firearms at all, he said. The key thing is de-escalation. To him, this means conversations, direct engagement, and being a familiar face. The Powderhorn Park security team, which numbers about a dozen, report to an exacting commander named Dee, who wears a white durag and has a habit of picking up garbage behind the other residents. There is a noise curfew starting at 10 PM, and community meetings every evening at 7 PM.

But the informal settlements experiment has had its challenges. At least three sexual assaults have been reported there, and gun violence is on the rise, too. When I visited one morning this month, Nobles said there had been a spike in meth use when people got their unemployment checks. Im a former addict, so I can tell, he said. We officially take a harm reduction approach here and provide clean needles, have people trained to administer Narcan [a nasal spray that can treat opioid overdoses], and so onbut we dont, as a rule, ever want to call 911 about an overdose because that will end up on the police scanners.

In the immediate aftermath of Floyds murder, when the neighborhood was a hot zone for violent riots, local residents started to organize their own community patrol, too. Danielle Enblom, a dancer who has been living in an apartment near the park since March, became a leader of the neighborhood watch program in May. We had one big meeting in the park where almost a thousand people attended, she told me, and we discussed how to keep ourselves safe in the absence of policingor even from the police. Her group now counts 120 active members who communicate on a mobile group chat and maintain a neighborhood watch in a four-to-five block radius. The initial impetus for security waned somewhat after the most violent phase of the protests, but the unhoused encampment in the park filled its place, to an extent. Like many of her neighbors, Enblom was happy to support the sanctuary movement there, but there are a lot of fears and concerns, which is understandable, she said. Look, the neighborhood is not going to be as safe and secure as it once felt.

Already, it seems as though time may be running out for the Powderhorn sanctuary, and the utopian window into a different world, where goods and services were freely circulated within a city to its most vulnerable, may be closing. Signs at the park now broadcast limited resources and a new volunteer model, and there is a de facto moratorium on new tents; volunteers have been peeling off because of perceived security risks and armed robberies during daylight hours. The ones who have stuck it out, with the idea that community-led safety should not be given up even under such circumstances, are grittier, and employ guerrilla tactics.

Nomad, the alias of a twenty-four-year-old volunteer with an ad hoc security group called Bikwakoon (an Ojibwe word for a bundle of arrows), is one of them. He says he hasnt slept much since Memorial Day, spending all night, after his shifts as a line cook, zipping to high-risk neighborhoods on his motorbike, with a bandana tied around his face. Theres no strict protocol, and we dont use firearms, but our MO is really just to deescalate situations verbally and get people help without calling the police, he said, of Bikwakoons approach. Their approximately twenty-five members coordinate through the Signal messaging app and deploy to wherever theyre needed, from about 10 PM to 4 AM each night.

Last week, they were patrolling at Little Earth, an affordable housing complex home to many Native Americans, when they encountered a teenaged girl who had overdosed with opioids and started foaming at the mouth. Nomad helped rouse her to consciousness and called an ambulance, waiting with her family until they came, and politely refusing police intervention. On Friday night, another volunteer who goes by the name No Face conveyed a young woman who had been sexually harassed at Powderhorn to another, smaller encampment in his white cargo van. A central assertion of the police abolitionists is that many of the things people call 911 for could be answered by people without guns: mental health professionals, social workers, domestic violence advocates, and other responders, per the MPD150 report.

For the time being, these community-led policing initiatives have proliferated, often taking over from the MPD effective responsibility for public safety in their localities. Another group along these lines, formed in the wake of the Floyd uprising, are the Freedom Riders, an armed group of about fifty volunteers originally assembled by the Minneapolis NAACP to protect black-owned businesses during the riots. Yet another group, led by black female organizer Alicia Smith, known as the Minnesota Safe Streets Coalition is based in the Corcoran neighborhood and in Little Earth, an all-night patrol organized by Native American residents call themselves the protectors.

But how sustainable in the long run is it for autonomous, volunteer groups to provide community policinggiven the strenuous, high-stakes, all-night demand for security in the face of real social problems? I think were pushing for our elected officials to step up and show up and come to the table with solutions with us at this point, said Enblom, who volunteers occasionally at the Powderhorn sanctuary beyond coordinating her neighborhood watch. It shouldnt be the job of unpaid neighborhood volunteers to make it work.

Meanwhile, three of the councilmembers who support defunding the police had received a barrage of threats, and, for most of the month of June, the City had to assign them a private security detail, rather than MPD officers. The cost, it was revealed this week, was over $150,000.

This article is thesecondin a three-part series supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

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After George Floyd, Who Will Police Minneapolis? | by Krithika Varagur - The New York Review of Books

The Occupation at City Hall – Dissent

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The occupation sought to challenge the priorities of a city government that would choose to cut funding for guidance counselors, park workers, teachers, and other social services while continuing to spend billions on cops.

The apparition of New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnsons face on a projector screen, surrounded by hundreds of protesters, was one of the most uncannyyet definingimages of Occupy City Hall. After weeks of unrest, the city council faced its first substantial political test: a vote on the 2021 budget. For the protesters who had spent the week camping outside City Hall, Johnsons budget didnt do enough to reduce spending on the NYPD. Cheers, applause, and boos filled the middle plaza as council members, at bizarre camera angles characteristic of Zoom meetings, explained their votes deep into the night.

As occupiers watched the screen, others manned the barricades along the perimeter of the park, facing down police in riot gear who threatened to break into the encampment. At various points the boundaries of the space expanded as nearby blocks were annexed. A young man wearing a camouflage jacket and an American flag bandana as a mask later told me about having been arrested as a teenager and making the dreadful walk down Police Plaza Path. Dancing on that same walkway brought a sense of joy.

The occupation, which began on June 23 and was cleared out by police in the early hours of this morning, was established with one central demand: for the city council to vote to cut the NYPD budget by at least $1 billion. In New York City, taxpayers hand over about $11 billion to the police each yearmaking it one of the most lavishly funded departments per capita in the United States. Local frustration about the oversized presence of the NYPD isnt new. But the national movement that sprung up in the wake of George Floyds murder by a police officer in Minneapolis brought renewed energy and confidence to activists who argued that cities should reconsider how much they spend on policing. On June 26 the Minneapolis City Council had unanimously agreed to scrap their police and replace it with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention. Activists around the country hoped to see more action along these lines. Through the month of June, in New York and across the country, protesters holding Defund the Police signs were kettled, tear gassed, and beaten up. In the face of nonviolent dissent, the polices only response was more violence.

Why do our students lack textbooks when the NYPD has submarine drones? one sign at the occupation asked. Why are our crucial programs and community services always the first on the chopping block? The occupation sought to challenge the priorities of a city government that would choose to cut funding for guidance counselors, park workers, teachers, and other social services while continuing to spend billions on cops. It began seven days before the scheduled vote on an austerity budget, which had to make up for a $9 billion shortfall in revenue due to the slowdown of the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. In its timing and focus on the vote, the occupation had a practical orientation. The activists who gathered around the screen for hours to watch council members speak showed deep investment in the politics of the immediately possible.

They were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of the vote. While the city government claimed a cut approaching $1 billion, activists said it was a sleight of hand. Instead of real cuts, the budget shifted money from the NYPD to other departments where it would still be spent on policing, and used calculations of an expected decrease in overtime claims with no mechanism to enforce it (the citys Independent Budget Office estimates that the force will exceed the overtime cap by $400 million). The council members apparent capitulation to the duplicity of Mayor Bill de Blasios budget drew much ire, and protesters vowed that the occupation would be the beginning, not the end, of their fight to defund the police. This fight could also be a defining moment for the council itself: as journalist Ross Barkan has noted, thirty-five of the fifty-one city council seats are term-limited and an organized push in 2021 by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or other groups could bring in a new wave of council members more attuned to their demands.

For a week the occupation also served as a dynamic site of debate among people eager to examine or live out the more radical politics of the moment, inspired by Black Lives Matter, the largest movement in this countrys history. The conversations I had and the interactions I observed in the camp suggested an ambitious political horizon. The camp was named Abolition Park, and the vision of a future without police or prisons mingled and, at times, clashed with the goal of reducing the NYPDs budget. The abolitionist current was manifest on various levelsfrom fiery disputes between activists to approaches to dealing with interpersonal harm within the space. As they camped out to draw attention to the upcoming vote, organizers sought to model, however imperfectly, the world they hoped to eventually build: one that wouldnt be free from conflict, but would be free from violence.

The occupation began when local activist group VOCAL-NY, Black Youth Project 100, and the Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color caucus of the DSA, all of whom fall under the Communities United for Police Reform umbrella, organized a march that ended with the establishment of the camp. Members from these groups coordinated the provision of food and supplies, recruited volunteers, and wrote community agreements for the space. Wearing a black Defund the Police face mask, Jawanza Williams of VOCAL-NY told me that, amid the nationwide spectacle of police violence, political education and teach-ins could challenge dominant ideas about the necessity of policing and introduce new people to abolitionist ideas. We have to be able to imagine new futures, he said. And we cannot use the frameworks that exist to imagine our future. We have to redefine some words. We have to redefine safety.

When I first arrived at Abolition Park on Friday, June 26, the occupation had been in place for three days. A green and white Don Panchito truck was giving away free tacos. In front of the fence guarding City Hall were tables for writing letters to representatives (QR codes took you directly to pages to contact a city council member or de Blasio, or to register to vote) and an ever-expanding library. Across from those tables was the medic camp and, further in, an island of people sitting on lawn chairs, mats, blankets, yoga mats, and tarps. Loud cheers erupted when a group of cyclists, on their own march against police brutality, coasted past. Motorists honked in support. Drivers in a trash truck received one of the loudest cheers of the night. Protesters yelled, within police earshot, These are the real essential workers. Around the edges I could hear the brush strokes of people making art on the floor. A shrine to Breonna Taylor, the twenty-six-year-old woman killed by the police in Louisville in March, was decorated with lit candles and flowers. Another monument featured a grid of fifteen people killed by the NYPDincluding Kimani Gray, Ramarley Graham, and Shantel Daviswith golden halos and rose petals scattered around. The whole encampment was a giant cenotaph for Black people killed by police.

This is the first time in my life living through a true revolutionary movement, Rudy Martinez, a graduate student of Colombian descent who was reading Roberto Bolaos The Savage Detectives under the canopy of trees, told me. Martinez wore round eyeglasses, an ankh necklace, and had a Sontag-like streak of white in his shoulder length hair. It had been hard for him to stay home and sleep or focus on anything else with all that had been happening across the country. He had been impressed by the seventeen-year-olds he kept running into and was excited to see teenagers do in one night what theorists have been theorizing for decades on end.

Some of the teenagers returned from their Maghrib prayers. One, a Moroccan-American with a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh wrapped around his head, was a baby when 9/11 happened. He was alarmed to realize that Black communities had been undergoing the harassment that Arab and Muslim-American ones had undergone in the last two decadesbut for hundreds of years. He could either be home playing video games or be here standing in solidarity, he said. On the inside of an old pizza box next to a tree, the demands of the Arab Diaspora were listed: the closing of NYPD offices or operations in countries in the Middle East and the redistribution of the money to Black working-class communities.

Isidore Barney, a seventeen-year-old in a tie-dye Black Lives Matter T-shirt who was overseeing a table of supplies, had arrived on the second day after seeing a call for volunteers on the @justiceforgeorgenyc Instagram page, which has been sharing information about planned protests and marches in the city. Before the summer break, she had been in school in Iceland, where she was making Black Lives Matter posters to hang up around Reykjavik and educate white Icelanders (especially boomers who arent active on social media) on racial injustice, especially microaggressions.

Building on a moment in which protests and marches have led to the radicalization of a young, multiracial cohort, the occupation included frequent political education workshops and teach-ins. Some were planned with the involvement of organizers and announced ahead of time at the camp and on Instagram. Others came together whenever, whereverall it took was enough demand and a teacher. A significant proportion were focused on abolitionist politics. A reading group met to discuss chapters of Ruth Wilson Gilmores Golden Gulag, a landmark study of mass incarceration in California. Other workshops taught participants about the fight to support public higher education or the importance of voting in all elections and not just the presidential ones. There were also de-escalation trainings to provide practical tools for when conversations got heatedas they often did.

Perhaps the most instructive educational moments were spontaneous principled struggle sessions that began when individuals called out problems or disagreements in the hope of holding others accountable. One such session occurred around 9.30 p.m. on the Friday I arrived. There had been a comedy show, in line with the organizers belief that joy is a form of resistance. At the Peoples Assemblywhere a majority of people circled around the main plaza lit by streetlights to listen to a speakernumerous people voiced their frustrations. I didnt sign up for Coachella, one said about the celebratory nature of the space. Another said comedy felt inappropriate when there are people still dying. Others argued about the quiet hours from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., I didnt come here to sleep . . . the cops are being paid to babysit, a protester said. An organizer responded that there was not one leader, and things were up for discussion. But the crowd seemed to revel in the rebellions, and many cheered as the critiques kept coming.

Some of the issues raised highlighted the racial dynamics at the camp. One protester lamented that she felt like several groups of white people on the margins were not engaging with the programming. (A different protester later told me that he thought these privileged individuals were a tactical asset to the camp as any police incursions and violence against them would trigger more backlash than if it were directed at the Black protesters.) Another recurring critique challenged the lead organizers affiliations with the nonprofit world; there were heated discussions about whether or not nonprofit and grassroots are opposing constructions, and the ways that funding affected activism. Some people just wanted more energy and action; various groups sought to mobilize people to take over the nearby bridges, or streets, sometimes against the wishes of lead organizers who thought fewer bodies in the camp endangered it.

Among Black protesters, there were also wonderful debates that exhibited how various strains of Black liberationist thought, ranging from pan-African to Black nationalist, are being rearranged to meet a new historical moment. Other arguments devolved when the speaker chose to wield their identity to foreclose critique. These exchanges were also instructive: the dead-ends served as a live action political education on why its important to understand intersectionality as the prioritizing of politics that benefits the most oppressed among us, rather than a tool for individuals who want to deflect disagreement.

An ethos of community accountability and restorative justice informed behavior and expectations. At every turn, individuals worked to identify harm in what was being said, and to interrupt it, or address it later, without resorting to vengeance, violence, or other carceral habits. In this way, the camp sought to align the personal and political, even if it wasnt always easy to meet that goal. As people at the camp strove to abolish the cop within their minds (as one activist put it to me), they encountered barriers, psychic as well as political. One such moment of introspection for me was seeing a post shared by the @abolitionplaza Instagram that squared the apparent contradiction of calling for the arrests of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor while espousing abolitionist politics. Grieving families have FULL permission to call for justice how they see fit . . . the post read. But we do need to do the work to examine what justice looks like free of vengeance.

From the outset, the occupation had been criticized by some for being reformist, and for not making a big enough ask after having mobilized so many people. (A teach-in at the camp by the Racial Justice Working Group of NYC-DSA argued for a 50 percent budget cut, for instance.) VOCAL-NY, one of the lead organizations behind the encampment had been accused by some of not being abolitionist enough. If you believe that Black Lives Matter, then you need to make sure that Black people are protected, Jawanza Williams told me, pointing to VOCALs decades of work on homelessness, the AIDS epidemic, mass incarceration, and the drug war. Who is most affected by all those issues is Black people. He explained that their membership (which consists of people directly affected by these issues) held a variety of perspectives. His work was to make sure that they are offered up other alternatives to think about the world and to be able to imagine Black futures that do not have prisons and that center the dignity and the humanity of people. He was open to principled critiques and thought that after this action, the organization would have a chance for reflection. Reforms, he said, are only antithetical to abolition if they expand the carceral state. He defended the occupation as an abolitionist action, since it reduces the power of the NYPD.

Defunding the police is not as radical as it is being made to seem, and the demands are eminently reasonable, said the historian and New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb in a recent talk about the protests. Governments shouldnt be looking to create great policing in underprivileged communities. The first people to say the police do too much are the police, Cobb said. If politicians had hired a consultant who advocated that police stick to core competenciesstopping violent crimethey would get a fat check and big round of applause. What policymakers have an issue with is who is making the argument to defund.

During the budget vote, some of explanations offered by council members appeared to validate Cobbs observation. In a statement explaining their stance in support of the budget, the councils Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus acknowledged that our city faces unique fiscal challenges that demand painful choices and shared sacrifice, pointing to the challenge of narrowing a $9 billion deficit despite $7 billion in lost revenue. They dismissed the defund the police call as an oversimplification of our centuries-long struggle on matters of race. To defund frames that struggle as an issue of economics, which is but part of a larger context that also includes changes to social structures, priorities, and culture.

Had the budget not been passed that night, there was a risk that the state would take over the task and enact cuts at its whim. And the final budget partially wrested back money for things like summer youth employment programs and counselors for schools in low-income communities. Still, even if they were acting with genuine concern for their constituents, many council members chose to oversimplify the matter. Leader Laurie Cumbo commented that the occupation felt like a colonization and incorrectly stated that it was not being led by Black activists. If you really cared about this, wed see you at NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority], at homeless shelters, she said. Work under the existing leadership of the communities that are already there. VOCAL-NY responded on Twitter that the organization had run a homeless drop-in space for more than a decade close to Cumbos office. Speaker Johnson also described listening to African-American council members as his north star, in the deliberations over the police budget.

It was bizarre to witness this tactic of using Blackness (or proximity to Blackness) to support the budget in lieu of critical engagement with the substance of policies that harm Black people. The call to defund the police was being framed as an extraneous demand, and yet at its center was the desire of Black and brown New Yorkers (and more than half of all New Yorkers, according to a recent poll) to see reallocation of money from a violent police force to services they count on. The politicians rejection of the legitimacy of the protesters was a local version of a dynamic weve seen on the national stage. As the scholar and writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor noted about the Congressional Black Caucus earlier in June, we can no longer assume that shared identity means a shared commitment to the strategies necessary to improve the lives of a vast majority of Black people. Class tensions among African-Americans have produced new fault lines that the romance of racial solidarity simply cannot overcome.

Part of the point of recent protests, I believed, was to stop treating Black people, or any people, as a monolith. We dont have to agree, but at least we faced each other in the park, Nelini Stamp, an organizer of the occupation, told me as we talked about her experience being challenged by other activists at the camp and, later, by the council members. Even if it was painful in the park, what happened was more principled than how some city council members decided to view protests over the last few weeks. The fundamental difference, she felt, was the dismissal of the hundreds of thousands of people who had, in the streets and over emails and calls, tried to engage with their elected leaders. The majority of council members voted to pass a budget that not only failed to actually cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget, but also included the Mayors plan to increase the police budget by $42 million by issuing New Yorkers more tickets.

As the budget passed, I thought of Lou, a Cameroonian immigrant who had been brutally beaten and arrested within minutes of joining his first protest and was held just across the street at 1 Police Plaza. The night before the vote he wondered how so many people have been bystanders for so long; how political leaders in New York could say Black Lives Matter when the killer of Eric Garner walked free; what it must do to a person psychologically to see another human being terrorized for so long, and do nothing about it. He is not fully himself anymore. A human being when you see another human being oppressed or killed or mistreateda real human being stands up and stops it.

Lous comments reminded me of a session during the Peoples Assembly when the gathered group sang ancestors watching / I know they watching / ancestors watching I know I know, as individuals yelled out the names of their ancestors, biological and ideological: Marsha P. Johnson! Sylvia Rivera! Bayard Rustin! Fannie Lou Hamer! Malcolm X! The names came faster and faster, drowning out the chirps of a green parrot, the patter of feet, faint voices on a megaphone, the melodious conversations and laughter from the margins of the camp, the hum of cars on the highway nearby, the groans of the subway below, and the helicopter hovering above. The ancestors arent the only ones watching anymore. The police have ended the occupation in the park, but with upcoming elections, council members and politicians are on notice.

Anakwa Dwamena is a contributing editor for Africa Is a Country, and on the editorial staff of the New Yorker magazine.

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The Occupation at City Hall - Dissent

We need and deserve far more than ‘fair pay’ – Morning Star Online

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OUR public-sector unionsUnison, GMB and Unite have been pressing for a fair payrise for council staff.

Their arguments are irrefutable. Not only on the grounds of pure justice: public-sector wages have been in lockdown for years as part of the Tory and Lib Dems failing strategy to reduce public expenditure. Last year a measly 2 per cent was won, but the outstanding case for a substantial rise remains unanswered.

The case for a pay rise rests also on the grounds of commonsense. The unions point out that the net cost of a pay rise for council and care staff, many of whom are very low-paid, is lower than the headline cost because it would increase the Treasury tax take, raise national-insurance contribution, reduce spending on tax credits and employment subsidies and boost local economies.

The true cost, the unions argued, is under 800 million.

Employers in both private and public sectors know full well that most of their costs power, raw materials etc are fixed. The biggest variable cost is wages, and thus whenever employers are under pressure from market forces or government policies to cut costs it is what our US cousins call compensation that suffers.

The term compensation suggests that the employee is compensated for the time they spend at the beck and call of the employer.A much better way of looking at pay is to think of it as that part of the value of our labour that the boss doesnt take as profit.

Except for the special case of privatised public services where we, the taxpayers, subsidise the profits of the contractors, public services are not there to make a profit but to maintain the stability and good order of our collective lives and deliver the services that make modern living approximate to a civilised existence.

Pay levels in the bigger market for labour power in the rest of the economy are a measure of how far public-sector pay has fallen behind, so it is easy to see how unions alight on the idea that a pay rise would be fair.

This is especially true in an economy where women earn much less than men. Class is the organising factor, where men from professional and managerial backgrounds earn 21 per cent more than working-class women in the same professions while black and ethnic-minority professionals generally earn less than white colleagues in similar roles.

A useful article in the Morning Stars Full Marx series pointed out that the biggest disparities in pay are with the hierarchy of pay grades between upper managerial and so-called routine occupations where this is regarded as normal, justified on the need to provide incentives the implication being that care jobs bring their own rewards.

This factor is especially important in local government where the full social and human value of the lowest-paid jobs as revealed in the pandemic is not reflected in pay levels.

Our local-government unions and the workers they represent deserve every support in the campaign, not only for themselves but because raising the average level of pay in this massive sector raises the level for everyone else.

In our futures there does lie the essential prerequisite for a solution to this seemingly never-ending struggle. This is when the working class receives the full value of its collective labour.

Instead of the conservative motto: A fair days wage for a fair days work, argued Karl Marx in Wage Price and Profit, trade unions ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: Abolition of the wages system!

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We need and deserve far more than 'fair pay' - Morning Star Online

‘The Old Guard’ shoots for greatness but fails – Daily Californian

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Grade: 3.0/5.0

The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, brings exceptional action scenes to the screen while presenting a unique world and story. Straight from illustrator Leandro Fernandez and writer Greg Ruckas graphic novel, the Netflix film introduces a new set of warriors with interesting backstories. However, The Old Guard makes several rushed narrative decisions, resulting in poorly written characters and a scattered storyline. Rather than using the films almost two-hour run time to present dynamic characters, the writing instead focuses on setting up a storyline for a sequel that has yet to be greenlit.

The films main plot revolves around four immortal mercenaries utilizing their self-healing, combat and resurrection abilities to help people in need and those who can afford their services. Although their abilities allow them to be fearless, they are not eternal. Each one of them will eventually become mortal again without warning, becoming vulnerable to their enemies once more. While the group has worked in secret for centuries, it is now struggling to maintain its anonymity in the 21st century, as a wealthy CEO, Merrick (Harry Melling), tries to capture it. Meanwhile, a new immortal recruit, Nile (KiKi Layne), is tracked down by Andy (Charlize Theron), the mercenaries fearless leader, who wants to help Nile understand her newly discovered abilities.

The other group members, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) are lovers who once started as enemies in the Middle Ages, fighting on different sides of the Crusades. As for Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), he has been immortal since the Napoleonic wars and struggles with the grief of outliving his family. Although most characters are hinted to have a detailed backstory, the films writing fails to make them dynamic characters. Andy is shown to be frustrated with the worlds worsening deaths and wars despite her efforts to help, so she begins to lose hope throughout the film. When she does regain her hope, however, no remarkable events are shown to support her sudden change of mind. Booker also makes a detrimental decision in the film that feels unlike his character, but the writing fails to provide enough context to make Bookers decision believable. Instead, the film simply focuses on how his decision leads to future events, creating character inconsistency.

Despite failing to introduce its new set of exciting heroes properly, The Old Guard does a great job introducing queer representation in an organic manner. The film introduces Nicky and Joes relationship progressively, so it never feels out of place. Both small cues and a detailed explanation of their love allows the buildup to their on-screen kiss to be outstanding. Their relationship feels genuine and not like a last-minute effort to be inclusive.

Furthermore, unlike other action films, The Old Guard does not rely on destruction or computer-generated imagery to generate thrilling action. Instead, it takes a more bloody, simple approach to action scenes. The film showcases hand-to-hand combat with swords, handguns and axes, which highlight the actors execution of the fight choreography. While the film editing does rely on numerous cuts to generate excitement, the action never feels unnecessary, as the placement of each action scene contributes to the progression of the plot. But perhaps what makes this films action scenes remarkable is that its heroes can get wounded despite being immortal. It allows for a more realistic approach to fighting, making one wonder if the characters will continue to resurrect each time they die or if it will be the last time we see them.

Ultimately, The Old Guard has much potential with a great take on immortality, inclusivity and action. However, if the writers sought to present a cohesive film, they failed. Rather than developing a well-written stand-alone film with heroes to fall in love with, the film instead shapes the characters writing to set up for a sequel. Since The Old Guard is expected to reach 72 million households in four weeks, one can hope that if the sequel ever comes, it will dive into the story at hand rather than build up for a post-credits scene.

Contact Brany Barragan at [emailprotected].

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'The Old Guard' shoots for greatness but fails - Daily Californian

The Old Guard is a Thrilling Movie that Gives a Glimpse of the Woes of Immortality – Technext

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After watching a lot of action and superhero movies featuring immortals and gods, one would have thought that The Old Guard will be a replication. But the movie proved me wrong.

The Old Guard is an action thriller and pure delight for anyone who loves carnage. From the early scenes which showed the bloody bodies of the warriors to the actual scene of betrayal, the curiosity and uncertainty leaves an enthralling effect on anyone watching.

The Netflix action movie features a group of unkillable mercenaries led by an immortal warrior named Andy (Charlize Theron). The covert group of mercenaries have a mysterious inability to stay dead, as they heal after being killed.

At 2hr 5mins, this movie captures the unque pressure of what it feels like to battle an immortal. However, the movie leaves a lot of unanswered questions and curiousity about the misterious ability of the team.

For centuries the group of mercenaries have fought to protect the mortal world from the shadows, but when the team is recruited to take on an emergency mission, their extraordinary abilities are suddenly exposed.

The villain in the movie was played by the evil pharmaceutical billionaire, Merrick (Harry Melling), who wanted the use the teams DNA to replicate the power of immortality for profit.

Armed with an ancient battle-axe, Andy the eldest member of the team uses her ancient skills and experience while taking the lead in eliminating the threat. Replicating her kick-ass ability as a fierce warrior from Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron took centre stage as the main character.

Related Post: #GreatestShowman is the Best Celebration of Humanity in a Movie So Far

The movie which is an adaptation of an action-fantasy comic-book series by Greg Rucka was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the director of Love and Basketball, and Beyond the Lights.

Gina didnt disappoint as she efficiently directed the movie, with one of my favourite scenes being the fight between Andy and Nile (KiKi Layne) on a rattling cargo plane.

In this movie, Nile, a Marine stationed in Afghanistan whose slit throat suddenly heals itself joins the immortal squad as the fifth member after being recuited by Andy.

In a world of immortals, The Old Guard movie holds a unique spot in how it exhibited the mortality of the unkillable mercenary team. The team bled, felt pain and even died like normal humans. The only difference is that they could heal even in death.

Unlike most other superheroes movies where the hero is bulletproof, flys, inhumanly strong and cant die, The Old Guard warriors are just skilled humans who cant die, making it more relatable.

Apart from the action, Gina depicted the humanity of the superheroes. Several times, the camera lingers on their faces as they contemplate or remember the sadness of losing someone as a repercussion of having lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

The movie intentionally included the depiction of the immortals, both in flashbacks and in its current timeline to provide a back story. They are played by a variety of different races across the timeline.

There was a blend of romance in the movie, especially after the capture of Andys teammates Niccolo (Luca Marinelli) and Joe (Marwan Kenzari). Joe expressed his love for Nicolo which was developed when they were constantly killing each other during the Crusades.

Another major highlight was the capture of Niccolo and Joe. After living for centuries through the witch trials and crusades, the one thing the immortals were scared about was capture. A flashback by Andy shows a time when Andy and Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo) were captured during the witch trials.

To delve deep into the roles which Andys right-hand man, Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts ) plays in the capture and exposure of the team would be to kill the suspense and the thrill that full blown action sequel holds in stock.

That said, I would like to point you towards the backstory that revealed that the immortal warriors aint so immortal. I believe from there you will understand the strange turn of events in the last scenes. Snippet Nile falls from a skyscraper

Related Post:#AvengersInfinityWar Leaves You Guessing and Speculating Wrongly all Through

If I am to mention one major turn-off in the movie it will be the music selections. while some will be lenient and say its fair I believe it could have been so much better.

However, I will say that the thrill and excitement from the actions drowned out the inadequacies of the musicals. Its no surprise that the movie already ranked among the top 10 most popular Netflix movies.

This is really astonishing for Gina as it makes her the first black female director on the Top 10 list.

The Old Guard is on track to reach 72 million households in its first 4 weeks.

THE OLD GUARD is breaking records! The Charlize Theron blockbuster is already among the top 10 most popular Netflix films ever and Gina Prince-Bythewood is the first Black female director on the list.

The film is currently on track to reach 72M households in its first 4 weeks! pic.twitter.com/pM8vOTNa6m

As a lover of action movies, I confidently say that The Old Guard is one of the best action movies released this year. The immortality of the warriors made the action more exhilarating as it tapers imagination and experiences different from other superhero movies.

So if you looking for a movie to spice up a boring day, The Old Guard is my top recommendation to help you go to bed curious but happy. Oh, and if you happen to be unsatisfied by the ending, dont fret. The last scene showing ana unexpected guest visiting Brooker hints that a sequel is coming.

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The Old Guard is a Thrilling Movie that Gives a Glimpse of the Woes of Immortality - Technext

Rockfield Studios: Where Ozzy, Oasis, Queen and Coldplay took off – BBC News

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"Musical Hogwarts" is how Chris Martin describes it. To Liam Gallagher it's the "Big Brother House with tunes", but for Ozzy Osbourne it's the birthplace of heavy metal.

It's where Oasis created their masterpieces, where Bohemian Rhapsody came to life and where Coldplay's journey into the musical stratosphere took off.

A long way from the bright lights, the ramshackle old farm "in the middle of nowhere" near the Welsh-English border has become known for its decades of stellar output.

And some of the world's greatest rocks stars have now paid homage to Rockfield Studios with the story of its legacy having been made into a feature film to be premiered on the BBC on Saturday night.

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Blink and you'll miss Rockfield as you travel north out of Monmouth on the B4233 in south Wales.

The cattle and pig farm on the Monnow Valley floor has for years been the place where careers are defined and where rock royalty hang out.

It is to recording studios what Glastonbury is to music festivals - run by farmers, on a working farm and fiercely independent.

But it all started with a snub.

Brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward had hoped to record at EMI in London in the 1960s but were turned down by legendary producer and "fifth Beatle" George Martin.

So they decided to buy the gear and set up for themselves - and Rockfield Studios was born.

Almost 60 years later, they are able to boast that almost everyone across the globe will know a song recorded in their old barn or pig shed.

And it was in these most tranquil and sedate of settings that the loudest of music was born - and with it, two heavy metal godfathers.

The first was the late, legendary Lemmy, a former roadie for Jimi Hendrix who turned up at Rockfield in 1972 to record his first material as the newest member of Hawkwind, kickstarting a career which led to him founding Motorhead and immortality with their metal anthem Ace of Spades.

The other is the now the head of one of TV's most famous families and lives among Hollywood A-listers in opulent Beverly Hills - but Ozzy Osbourne traces his fame and fortune back to the little homestead.

Rock music's Prince of Darkness was one of the first to use Rockfield's newly-built Coach House Studio in 1970 as his new band Black Sabbath fine-tuned their breakthrough hit Paranoid.

"We were very loud and Rockfield allowed us the freedom," Osbourne recalls. "Because no-one would allow us to play as loud as that. The roof tiles were rattling.

"We didn't think, 'let's invent heavy metal', it just happened.

"Rockfield will always be a part of me. I can go and live in Beverly Hills but for some reason I end up back in Rockfield. It's just magic."

Paranoid by Black Sabbath was put together and rehearsed at Rockfield in 1970 and went on to be considered one of the greatest heavy metal songs of all time.

It was in Rockfield's old horse tack room where the final piece of a six-minute rock operetta was lovingly mastered by Queen in the summer of 1975.

When the studio's co-owner Kingsley Ward walked in on Freddie Mercury playing on the dusty old piano in the corner of the food store, little did he know he was getting an exclusive preview into what would eventually become one of the most acclaimed songs of all time.

"I went in and Freddie was sat in the corner - he was probably doing the finishing touches to Bohemian Rhapsody. Then it was called Freddie's Thing," says Kingsley.

The release of Bohemian Rhapsody was a defining moment for band and studio.

The track is Rockfield's most famous export and the song that made Queen a household name across the world, recorded at the studio during a six-week stint in 1975.

Later, the great David Bowie ended his 1970s decade of dominance - including anthems such as Heroes, Changes and Starman - by eating cheese in Monmouth with a friend famous for his Lust for Life.

Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr takes up the story.

"We were recording in the Coach House Studio and we were curious to know who was in the main studio," he says.

"We could not believe it was none other than Iggy Pop. Not only was that mind-blowing but Bowie turned up and he looked as you'd always imagined David Bowie looking.

"It was so Rockfield - he had this huge bit of cheese in his hand and a can of Heineken."

Although Simple Minds wrote their breakthrough hit Promised You A Miracle in Monmouth, they actually recorded it at new record label Virgin's own residential studio.

That became the pattern - labels began to use their own studios and Rockfield, an independent beacon for so long, was on the rocks.

"There was loads of studios and only a certain amount of work to go around - then dreaded dance music turned up and it wasn't what we did," says Kingsley.

Computers replaced recording studios and technology took over.

From the endless bookings of the 70s, Kingsley Ward's wife Ann took several book-keeping jobs to keep Rockfield alive during the late 80s.

"Then in 1989 and 1990, there was a massive recession and the music industry suddenly caved in completely," says Kingsley in the film Rockfield: The Studio On The Farm.

Then came their second coming - literally so - as one infamous band saved Rockfield with an album by that name.

The Stone Roses' self-titled first album had been a massive success, with the band laying down Waterfall and I Am The Resurrection at Rockfield after their Battery Sessions in London had proved a slog.

And when they decided to return to Rockfield to record the follow-up, it was a pivotal moment in the studios' survival.

Producer John Leckie, who first recommended Rockfield to the Roses, said their new American record company "were quite prepared to throw lots of money - millions of pounds - at the band to do whatever they wanted."

That was music to Rockfield's ears, as times were tough when the Roses arrived in 1992 to plan their Second Coming.

Its lead single Love Spreads was recorded at Rockfield sometime between 1992 and 1994 and was the band's first new material released for more than two-and-a-half years. It was their highest place record in the UK chart, reaching No 2 in November 1994.

"They booked in officially for a couple of weeks," Lisa Ward, Kingsley's daughter and now office manager, explains in the film.

"But they stayed. It was 13 months in the end. That saved us. The Stone Roses saved Rockfield."

Little did Rockfield know at the time that their next musical legacy was staying over the other side of the valley, recording at a studio that was once part of the Rockfield estate.

Manchester Britpop heroes Oasis were trying - and failing - to master their debut album Definitely Maybe there.

During their sojourn, frontman Liam Gallagher pinched the owners' combine harvester and crossed the fields to spy on the Roses at Rockfield.

Oasis eventually finished their first album in Cornwall, but returned to Monmouth to record what would become some of their most celebrated anthems at Rockfield.

Don't Look Back In Anger was recorded by Oasis at Rockfield in 1995 and went to No 1 in February 1996, becoming one of their most famous songs.

The second Oasis album - (What's The Story) Morning Glory - transformed the band and the Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam into global rock sensations as Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger and Champagne Supernova became pub singalongs.

"There was a little bit of a debate about who was going to sing Wonderwall," recalls Rockfield's studio engineer Nick Brine.

"Noel was going to sing Wonderwall, then Liam was going to sing Wonderwall.

"Then Noel said, 'ok I'll sing Don't Look Back in Anger', then Liam wanted to sing Don't Look Back in Anger. So there was a debate on who was going to sing what."

Ultimately, Don't Look Back In Anger turned into songwriter Noel Gallagher's first single as lead vocalist, while Liam sang Wonderwall.

"Everyone wanted to make the songs the best they could," Liam tells the Rockfield film. "If that bred a bit of competition then so be it."

While residential studios such as Rockfield - one of the first - allowed bands to immerse themselves in their creativity, living together at such close quarters 24/7 could spark tension.

Liam Gallagher recalls a row with his brother at Rockfield which ended in damage being caused with "cricket bats and air rifles, the lot".

But when tempers cooled, the band got down to business and finished the album which helped define Britpop - a musical movement for which Rockfield would become the engine room.

"Both studios were both booked up nine months in advance, back to back," recalls Lisa Ward.

"The 1990s was a great time for British guitar bands."

Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Ash, Black Grape and the Boo Radleys all recorded number one albums there.

Kingsley Ward says: "One time in 1997, out of the top ten albums, Rockfield had seven."

And the next Monmouth megahit was written in the stars - and inspired by an old copy of the Yellow Pages.

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Much was expected of the up-and-coming band Coldplay at the turn of the millennium but they were under pressure to turn that expectation into something more tangible.

Frontman Chris Martin knew Rockfield was a "a make-or-break session" as the former cleaners had "one shot" at the big time in one of their first recording sessions.

Luckily for them, the sky was clear for at least part of their sessions recording debut album Parachutes - as immortality and their crowd classic Yellow was created.

"We were recording Shiver and went outside for a breather and it was so beautiful," says Martin.

"All four of us were outside and Ken Nelson, our producer, said 'look up there, lads' - and he literally said 'look at the stars', which is the first line of that song.

"It was mind-blowing because we'd been in London for five years so we haven't seen anything beyond smog for a while, so that line was in my head.

"I went back in and sat behind the mixing desk and I played the chord. I got the title from the Yellow Pages which was at about a 45 degree angle.

"The chorus came in the bathroom of the living room area. And that gave us our lives for the last 16 years. From humble beginnings."

Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm will be broadcast on BBC Two Wales and BBC Four at 21:15 BST on Saturday and on BBC iPlayer

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The New York Liberty Are The Youngest Team In WNBA History – Jul 23, 2020 – Sports Are From Venus

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The New York Liberty are the youngest team in WNBA history. The Liberty have seven rookies on their roster compared to only five non-rookies. Within the first 15 picks in the WNBA Draft, the Liberty accounted for six of those.

Led by No. 1 pick and super prospect Sabrina Ionescu, other rookies include No. 9 Megan Walker, No. 10 Jocelyn Willoughby, No. 12 Jazmine Jones, No. 13 Kylee Shook, No. 15 Leaonna Odom, and No. 19 Joyner Holmes.

The average age for the Liberty rounds up to 24-years old. Many players on the Liberty were born the same year as the WNBA in 1997.

In a media availability conference on Wednesday, Joyner Holmes spoke about what its like being one of the many rookies on the team.

Its getting easier, the first couple of days was a struggle for us just trying to learn everything and then continuously like being consistent and talking, stuff like that. Its a little easier because youre able to relate to these people on another level. We are all kinda the same age, were all on the same boat, so its easier to come and talk to them about things. Our vets have been very helpful for us throughout practice and even after practice just talking to us in simple situations. I think it is fairly easy as we are all on the same level and can all kinda communicate with each other. We kinda made history with all the rookies on our team with how young we are and how many we have, so thats good.

27-year old Kiah Stokes explained the impact that the young players have on the team.

Its been tough. There are definitely some days where we can tell were young. People stop talking, or theres some confusion. Its fun. We have young people that want to work hard, they want to play, they have that excitement. Which is exciting, because it kinda makes us feel young again. Were not old, but sometimes our bodies feel old, like oh man practice, but then you have the rookies coming in like YEAH PRACTICE and youre like you know what, PRACTICE! They just have that positive energy, that spirit that keeps you fresh. They have the hunger, they have the want, and they have so much energy so I think we could use that to our advantage for sure. But, its been fun so far, just cant wait for the games to start in a couple more days and then its GAME GAME GAME GAME. So were enjoying it while we can right now and trying to get better and as good as we can and get better every day till the games start.

Even the Libertys head coach is a young rookie, 34-year old Walt Hopkins, who is a decade younger than the rest of the head coaches in the WNBA.

Since the league has never had a team this young, it should be interesting to see how well they are able to compete for a playoff spot. Everyone will be talking about Sabrina Ionescu, but whats more important maybe how well all the rookies are able to establish themselves as pros and gel together.

Considering how much-untapped potential this Liberty roster has, it is hard not to get excited about the future of Liberty basketball. The way New York is rebuilding its roster is unprecedented in the WNBA. No one has dared to field a roster this young.

Unfortunately, the Liberty will not have their full squad of rookies to begin the season. Megan Walker tested positive for COVID-19 and has not joined the team in Florida but plans to play once healthy.

A new era of New York Liberty basketball begins against the Seattle Storm on Saturday, July 25 at 12 PM on ESPN.

For more WNBA content from Sports Are From Venus,click here.

For more thoughts and opinions from Zachary Diamond, check out hisauthor pageorTwitter.

(photo credit: AP Images)

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Liberty Media CEO Says We Will Give Fans What They Want: A Baseball Season – Yahoo Sports

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The Major League Baseball season is back with many twists, but Atlanta Braves owner Liberty Media Corporation (NASDAQ: LSXMA) is committed to safely give "the fans what they want which is baseball," Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said on CNBC.

What To Know: It's very important for sports fans to see their beloved game "in the best way possible," Maffei said. The players and league got together and struck an agreement to develop a safe way to make a shortened 60 game season to happen.

"Baseball is exciting and I think it's in the national interest and in the interest of America to get it going," he said.

Why It's Important: Atlanta Braves first baseman and four-time All Star Freddie Freeman contracted the COVID-19 virus and experienced a high temperature of 104.5 degrees before recovering. He has since received medical clearance to play and is expected to be in the opening day lineup on Friday, Maffei said.

Other unnamed players also contracted the virus and are "recovering well" and the league deserves credit for implementing a series of protocols that may even make it safer for players to be on the field than at home.

What's Next: Demand for sports is "way up" as evidenced by impressive ratings for golf and Formula 1 events, Maffei said. Encouragingly, the league hasn't given up on the notion that fans will be able to return to stadiums this season.

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Liberty Island will partially reopen next week, Ellis Island to remain closed – NJ.com

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After being shuttered for months because of the coronavirus, Liberty Island will partially reopen to visitors on Monday, July 20, the National Park Service announced Friday afternoon.

However, Ellis Island will remain closed as will the museums on both islands, officials said.

The announcements were made as part of the Phase 4 reopening of New York which includes some art and entertainment venues like zoos and botanical gardens to open for outdoor activities only, according to the New York Times.

When we were notified that museums were excluded from Phase 4 of the states reopening plan we quickly moved to adjust our reopening plan to delay the reopening of the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, said John Piltzecker, Superintendent, Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island. We will now open access to the grounds of Liberty Island only where outdoor dining and restrooms will be available. Ellis Island, the interior of the Statue of Liberty, and both our museums will remain closed.

Both Liberty Island and Ellis Island are federally owned.

A phased approach will be used to partially reopen the famous parks as officials continued to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first phase will allow people to access the grounds and limited food and gift shop services on Liberty Island.

The Statue of Liberty Museum and the interior of the Lady Liberty, including its pedestal and crown, will be included as part of a later reopening phase, park officials said.

The park will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. daily.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com.

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Liberty Island will partially reopen next week, Ellis Island to remain closed - NJ.com