Monthly Archives: February 2017

Liberal Activists Join Forces Against a Common Foe: Trump – New York Times

Posted: February 15, 2017 at 9:42 pm


New York Times
Liberal Activists Join Forces Against a Common Foe: Trump
New York Times
Within days of the election, Mr. Boyan began volunteering for the Working Families Party, a liberal political organization focused on income inequality, and attended almost weekly protests to voice his dismay. He traveled to the Women's March on ...

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Conservative groups push back against liberal opposition to Neil Gorsuch – Washington Examiner

Posted: at 9:42 pm

Conservative groups involved in a multimillion-dollar effort to ensure that federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court are pushing back against opposition from a coalition of liberal groups.

After more than 100 liberal groups wrote a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, America Rising and the Judicial Crisis Network sought to downplay the criticism.

"It's no surprise that this collection of liberal groups would oppose a mainstream nominee like Judge Gorsuch, who follows the law, adheres to the Constitution, and has been effusively praised by legal experts on both sides of the political spectrum," Jeremy Adler, America Rising Squared spokesman, wrote in an email. "Instead of voicing legitimate concerns, this is just a sad attempt to play politics with a Supreme Court seat and knowingly misrepresent Judge Gorsuch's sterling judicial record."

The Judicial Crisis Network similarly labeled the liberals as "extremists."

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"I am not surprised that a group of results-oriented political activists have attacked Judge Gorsuch because he is a fair and impartial judge, not a results-oriented political hack," said Carrie Severino, Judicial Crisis Network chief counsel. "Like Senator [Chuck] Schumer, they are extremists who will try every trick in the book to stop an exceptionally qualified, widely respected nominee who puts the law and the Constitution ahead of politics."

The back-and-forth between advocacy groups over Gorsuch's nomination comes ahead of the confirmation hearings expected to begin in the Senate next month.

Top Story

Allegations that Flynn was targeted by the U.S. intel community for his hostility to the Iran deal haven't gained much traction among Senate Republicans.

02/15/17 6:36 PM

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The True Origins of the Phrase ‘Bleeding-Heart Liberal’ – Atlas Obscura

Posted: at 9:42 pm

Westbrook Pegler with Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library/NARA 195810

Westbrook Pegler was extremely good at calling people names. Particularly politicians. In his syndicated newspaper column, he called Franklin D. Roosevelt Moosejaw and mommas boy. Truman was a thin-lipped hater.

Pegler was a bit of hater himself. He didnt like the labor movement, Communists, fascists, Jews, and perhaps most of all, liberals. In one 1938 column, he coined a term for liberals that would eventually come to define conservative scorn for the left. Pegler was the first writer to refer toliberals as bleeding hearts. The context for this then-novel insult? A bill before Congress thataimed tocurb lynching.

Before the 20th century, the phrase bleeding heart was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts, said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christs wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a Bleeding Heart Yard (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.

By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist, recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art. As a contemporary of his wrote in an academic article on political name-calling, Pegler has coined, or given prominence to, a fair share of unfair words. (Pegler also called the AFL a swollen national racket, economics a side-show science, and Harold Ickes, who ran the Public Works Administration, Donald Duck.)

Pegler first used bleeding heart in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on a bill to provide penalties for lynchings. Pegler wasnt for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes. The bill, he thought, was being used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers. And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:

I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.

Pegler was apparently pleased enough with this use of bleeding heart that he kept it up. He later wrote of professional bleeding hearts who advocated for collective medicine after a woman couldnt find a doctor to help her through labor, and lobbed the insult of bleeding heart Bourn at a rival, left-leaning columnist. By 1940, he had condensed the phrase down to bleeding-heart humanitarians and bleeding-heart liberals.

Peglers usage did not immediately catch on, though. (Perhaps thats because he went on to become so right-wing that he was asked to leave the John Birch Society.) If the New York Times archives is any indication, through the 40s and 50s, bleeding heart was most often used to refer to the flower Lamprocapnos spectabilis, which grows rows of pretty pink blossoms, and occasionally sports.

Bleeding heart wasrevived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio. It wasnt until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though. In 1963, the satirical columnist Russell Baker put it on a list of political insults: If one is called a phoney, about the only thing he can do is come back with some epithet like, anti-intellectual or bleeding-heart liberalor you must be one of those peace nuts. By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once, he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a former bleeding heart Democrat.

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait. You are called a bleeding heart liberal because you have a heart for the poor, one told the Times. Count me with the bleeding heart liberals, an NAACP lawyer wrote in a letter to the editor.

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Mason Fiscal gives WVFD go-ahead – Ledger Independent

Posted: at 9:41 pm

Much like their Maysville City counterparts, Mason County Commissioners gave the go-ahead for the Washington Volunteer Fire Department to become independent from the city.

The department currently operates under the MFD.

In doing so, the county agreed to provide support in the form of insurance on vehicles and, eventually, on buildings. That should total about $2,500 after the first three years, officials said.

The process of pulling city fire department support from the WVFD will be a three-year process, Maysville City Manager Matt Wallingford told county commissioners.

As an independent department, the WVFD will be eligible for federal grants and state aid, have control over its own budget and freedom to raise funds, Wallingford said. During the transition, the city will lease the current fire building to the volunteers for $1 annually for three years and pay utilities on the building, also for three years, he said.

Last fall, talks first began with plans to merge the WVFD with another county department. It was later decided the firefighters with WVFD would prefer to go it alone, Wallingford said.

Even though the department is located within the city limits, it is a county fire department, Wallingford said.

WVFD Chief Darrell Kalb said his department covers an area which serves 400-600 households and has mutual aid agreements with neighboring departments to share services and equipment and responds when requested. The department has recently added more firefighters to its roster and has started a junior firefighters program for teens ages 15-18, he said.

City officials are currently working to secure non profit status for the WVFD and acquire a tax ID number for the group. Before any official agreement is brought to a vote, the city needed a "green light" to continue the process and county officials gave the proposal a thumbs up.

Mason County Judge-Executive Joe Pfeffer said the WVFD is just another example of the city and county working together.

Also Tuesday, the county commissioners heard an update from Buffalo Trace Health Department Executive Director Allison Adams on the Community Health Needs Assessment and Health Improvement Plan.

"The staff of the Buffalo Trace District Health Department have a vision for a healthy community for everyone," Adams said in a letter opening a booklet outlining the assessment and community health improvement plan.

Adams said several things stood out in the assessment including smoking, diabetes, immunization, sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy rates. rates. There is also a large incidence of single parent households and grandparents raising grandchildren in the area. Those all contribute to lower life expectancy, she said.

"We want everyone to have the opportunity to be healthy," Adams said.

While the goal is to get the community healthy, that isn't going to happen overnight -- just as becoming less than healthy was a long process so too will changing attitudes and outcomes be a long-term process, she said.

In other business, commissioners:

-- Heard from Barry Fryman with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District 9 office who outlined Rural Secondary Fund allotments for the county and recommendations for state road projects including Tuckahoe Road, Helena Road, Ewing Road and Salem Ridge Road.

-- Approved reports from the Road Department, Animal Shelter, Sheriff, Landfill and Recycling Center, Detention Center and Treasurer.

-- Approved the addition of Robert Scott and Larry Rice to the list of approved electrical inspectors.

-- Appointed Andrew Wood to an unexpired term on the Ethics Committee and reappointed John Larry Dodge to the same committee.

-- Learned Pfeffer named Barry Fields to fill the unexpired term of Juston Pate to the Maysville-Mason County Industrial Authority.

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Better Buy: Baidu Inc. vs. Amazon.com Inc. — The Motley Fool – Motley Fool

Posted: at 9:41 pm

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) have both been very profitable plays for long-term shareholders. Shares of Baidu have risen 1,480% over the past ten years, while shares of Amazon have surged 2,050%.

Baidu and Amazon probably won't repeat those massive gains over the next decade, but both tech giants remain solid investments -- Baidu is the top search engine in China, and Amazon is the biggest e-commerce site and cloud platform provider in the world. Let's compare both company growth trajectories and valuations to see which is a better buy at current prices.

Image source: Getty Images.

Baidu's revenue grew 35% in fiscal 2015, but it's only expected to rise 6% in fiscal 2016 when it reports its full-year earnings on Feb. 23. That slowdown was mainly caused by a government crackdown on misleading ads (especially for healthcare products) across its sites, a swap of its stake in online travel agencyQunarwith its rival Ctrip, and the overall slowdown of the Chinese economy.

But once those headwinds fade, Baidu's top line is expected togrow 20% in fiscal 2017. That growth will likely be fueled by its investments in new and adjacent markets, like O2O (online-to-offline) services which integrate new services into its core mobile app, driverless vehicles, and artificial intelligence.

Amazon's revenue rose 20% in fiscal 2015, 27% in fiscal 2016, and is expected to rise another 22% this year. That consistent growth can be attributed to the rapid growth of its core marketplace businesses and the growth of AWS (Amazon Web Services), the biggest cloud platform in the world. During fiscal 2016, AWS revenues surged 55% and accounted for 9% of its top line -- compared to 7% in 2015.

Most of Baidu's revenues come from ads, which have much higher margins than Amazon's main marketplace business. However, Baidu's operating margins have gradually declined over the past few years, due to the ramp up in its spending on O2O services and other businesses. Meanwhile, Amazon's operating margins have gradually improved due to the growth of AWS, which has much higher margins than its marketplace business.

Source:YCharts.

Baidu's net income rose 155% in fiscal 2015, but much of that gain came from the aforementioned share swap with Qunar and Ctrip. For fiscal 2016, analysts expect Baidu's net earnings to fall nearly 10% on higher O2O investments in letting users order meals, hail cabs, make payments, and perform other tasks within its core app. Baidu needs these features to widen its moat against Tencent (NASDAQOTH:TCEHY), which squeezes similar features into its monolithic WeChat app. But looking forward, analysts expect Baidu's earnings to rebound 33% in 2018 as those ecosystem investments bear fruit.

Amazon's rising operating margins lifted its net income by 125% in 2015 and 298% in 2016. Analysts expect AWS' top line growth and its steady operating margins to boost its net earnings by 49% this year and 75% in fiscal 2018. That impressive bottom line growth will give Amazon more freedom to use loss leading and low-margin strategies (like additional Prime services, Echo, Fire TV, Dash buttons) to expand its e-commerce ecosystem. However, investors should be aware that an ongoing price battle in the cloud platform market has forced AWS to repeatedly lower its prices -- so the unit's bottom line growth could still hit a few speed bumps in the near future.

Baidu trades at 14 times trailing earnings, which is much lower than the industry average of 50 for internet information providers. But its forward P/E of 32 is higher due to its expected slowdown in earnings growth.

Amazon has a trailing P/E of 192, which initially looks lofty but isn't terribly high relative to its earnings growth in 2016. Its forward P/E of 65 also looks reasonable compared to earnings growth expectations for 2017 and 2018.

With high-growth internet companies like Baidu and Amazon, it's also important to check their enterprise value to free cash flow (EV/FCF) ratios. A lower figure indicates that the company is "cheaper" relative to its free cash flow -- which can be used to further expand their businesses. As seen in the following chart, Amazon looks much cheaper than Baidu by that key metric.

Source:YCharts.

I own shares of both Baidu and Amazon, and I still recommend buying both stocks as long-term tech investments. But if I can only buy one at current prices, I'd buy Amazon because it exhibits steadier top and bottom line growth with reasonable valuations. As for Baidu, investors should see if short-term concerns about its rising expenses punish the stock -- which could reveal better buying opportunities.

Leo Sun owns shares of Amazon, Baidu, and Tencent. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon and Baidu. The Motley Fool recommends Ctrip.com International. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Consumers in cross-hairs with Dodd-Frank repeal – mySanAntonio.com

Posted: at 9:41 pm

Catherine Rampell, Washington Post Writers Group

Consumers in cross-hairs with Dodd-Frank repeal

The White House may be in chaos. But at least Congress is addressing the issue Americans care about most: making it easier for the finance industry to rip them off.

Last week, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, circulated an outline of his latest plan to repeal Dodd-Frank. This law, you may recall, was put in place after the financial crisis to reduce our chances of having another one.

The law isnt perfect, but it did have at least one crucial, mostly popular component: It created an agency dedicated solely to helping consumers fight back when financial institutions cheat or mislead them.

This agency is called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It oversees large banks, thrifts and credit unions, along with lots of companies in the nonbank universe, such as mortgage brokers and servicers, payday lenders, debt collectors, private student lenders and credit bureaus.

Remember when Wells Fargo got caught creating millions of fake customer accounts? The bureau helped lead that investigation, which resulted in a $185 million settlement.

The bureau has also, among other things, sued pension-advance companies that fleece veterans, and it ordered the firms that left low-income users of prepaid RushCards unable to access their own money to pay $13 million in restitution and fines.

In its five years of existence, the bureau says, it has recovered $11.7 billion for more than 27 million consumers.

The financial industry, understandably, is not keen on this independent federal agency. And neither is Hensarling, who just coincidentally? has received generous campaign contributions from the finance industry.

Hensarlings leaked memo lays out updates to legislation he introduced last year (which, among other things, required that CFPB employees be paid less than their counterparts at other federal financial regulatory agencies).

Under the Orwellian section heading Empowering Americans to Achieve Financial Independence, the memo explains how Hensarling intends to further disempower this agency and by extension, American consumers.

For instance, the CFPB director would become an at-will political appointee. This means that unlike the officials who run the Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission or Securities and Exchange Commission the CFPB director could be fired without cause. The bureau would cease to be an independent agency and could be pressured at any time to drop investigations of, say, friends of the president.

According to the memo, Hensarling also plans to repeal the CFPBs supervisory powers that is, its authority to regularly examine whats going on inside the institutions it regulates to make sure theyre following the law.

And the bureau would no longer be allowed to punish firms that cheat customers.

Yes, no more fines and no more penalties. Its not even clear from Hensarlings memo that the bureau could force firms to return any money theyve already pinched from consumers.

We dont know exactly how the bullet points in this memo will get translated into legislation. But it seems likely that consumer protections would wind up even weaker than they were before the crisis.

Thats because Dodd-Frank took the authority to enforce some consumer protection laws away from other regulators and gave them to the newly formed CFPB. Assuming those authorities arent being redelegated to these other agencies and the memo does not indicate that will happen theyll remain with a bureau thats essentially powerless to enforce them.

Which brings me to the weirdest and least defensible parts of Hensarlings plan: an effort to make consumers dumber.

Hensarlings memo also eliminates the CFPBs research functions, its public database of consumer complaints and even its consumer education functions. Right now, the bureau publishes educational materials on its website and partners with libraries, veterans groups and other community organizations.

Its hard to imagine what legitimate public interest lies in killing efforts to promote financial literacy. But in the con-man economy, maybe public interest is no longer a consideration.

crampell@washpost.com

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Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union serves and empowers Latino consumers with Juntos Avanzamos program – CUinsight.com (press release)

Posted: at 9:41 pm

SMCU is the first credit union in Seattle and the second credit union in the state of Washington to be accepted into the program that recognizes its efforts to serve the Latino community.

The credit union officially accepted the designation yesterday with a flag raising ceremony at the grand opening of its new Beacon Hill branch. It is located in the new Roberto Maestas Plaza at El Centro de la Raza (1604 S. Roberto Maestas Festival Street, Seattle, WA 98144). Guests included Seattle Deputy Mayor, Hyeok Kim; El Centro de la Razas Executive Director, Estela Ortega; CDCUs SVP of Membership and Network Engagement, Pablo DeFilippi; and Northwest Credit Union Association (NWCUA) President and CEO, Troy Stang.

We congratulate Seattle Metro for becoming a Juntos Avanzamos (Together we Advance) credit union, joining a fast growing network committed to financial inclusion and to providing asset building opportunities for Latinos and immigrants. We salute Richard Romero and his team for their leadership on brining responsible and sustainable financial services to the Hispanic community in Seattle, said Pablo DeFilippi, Federation SVP Membership and Network Engagement.

On behalf of the entire Northwest Credit Union Movement: thank you to SMCU for your tireless efforts to help so many advance, together, added NWCUA President and CEO Troy Stang. Your work exemplifies the member-driven, not-for-profit cooperative structure, as well as the Juntos Avanzamos mission.

As SMCU has grown with the City of Seattle, we have focused on serving the communities that need more affordable financial services, plus options like bilingual services and more, said Richard Romero, CEO of Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union. This designation is an important recognition of our initiatives and commitment to provide outstanding service to Latinos.

According to the Federation, immigrants are a large and vibrant part of the US economy, yet they remain largely unbanked and vulnerable to predatory financial service providers.

The Juntos Avanzamos program was developed by Cornerstone Credit Union League in Texas and is expanding nationally by the Federation to meet this demand. Member credit unions who receive this designation are recognized for serving and education the Latino community on their journey to financial independence.

As a member of the Together We Advance family of credit unions, SMCU has demonstrated that, at a minimum, it:

Has a formal strategic plan for improving service to Latinos

Offers bilingual services and information

Collaborates with organizations that support the Latino community

Offers affordable products and services that meet the needs of Latinos, and

Offers financial information tailored to the Latino community

Some examples of SMCUs initiatives in the Latino community include:

In 2005, SMCU opened its Rainier Avenue branch in the heart of one of the nations most diverse communities. In January, SMCU will open another branch in Beacon Hill in the new Plaza Roberto Maestas at El Centro de la Raza.

SMCU now offers Online Banking, the SMCU.com website, and printed resources in Spanish. Employees at SMCU represent many cultures and languages that mirror the communities it serves. SMCU is staffed with fluent Spanish speakers and accepts Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) for opening loans and accounts.

SMCU has partnered with the City of Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to create a new Citizenship Loan to help new immigrants finance their path to U.S. citizenship. SMCU was onsite for the first three workshops and will continue to have a supporting presence in the citys ongoing program.

SMCU participated with the Mexican Consulate and the Latino Educational Training Institute to present an 8-week financial education series from March through May of 2016.

SMCU CEO Richard Romero has served on the YearUp Leadership Council, the Federation of Community Development Credit Unions Board of Directors and Leadership Eastside Board of Directors.

Romero also won the 2016 Crosscut Courage in Business Award for reaching out to immigrants and other underserved populations.

SMCU is a sponsor of the Latina Style Business Series conference, the Latino Community Fund Gala and the El Centro de la Raza Building the Beloved Community Gala.

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Utopia releases its next version of master data governance solution … – SDTimes.com

Posted: at 9:39 pm

Utopia Global, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise data solutions and a long-time SAP partner, has released a new software version of its master data governance solution for enterprise asset management that SAP resells as a solution extension under the name SAP Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension by Utopia. The new capabilities in the solution extension will help customers to improve maintenance planning, increase regulatory compliance and advance the delivery of customer services dependent upon high availability of infrastructure, facilities and fleet assets.

This new version of the solution extension adds the ability to create and maintain maintenance plans complete with task lists, items and master data issues commonly associated with preventive and predictive maintenance program work. The enterprise asset management extension introduces the SAP Fiori user experience for selected create, review and approver functions, along with:

The new version of SAP Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension is a comprehensive commercially available enterprise asset management extension that integrates with the SAP ERP application and complements existing master data governance data models for material, supplier, customer and finance. It works with the SAP Master Data Governance application, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA and SAP Fiori, and is designed to work with SAP Asset Intelligence Network.

We believe that master data is the DNA of an enterprise. We are very proud of the new release of this solution extension because it responds to client demand for solutions that accelerate movement to the digital economy, Internet of Things, Big Data analytics and commitments to SAP solutions like SAP HANA and SAP Asset Intelligence Network, said Arvind J. Singh, CEO of Utopia Global. We feel this latest version of SAP Master Data Governance, enterprise asset management extension will provide clients with the best tools and methods to build a trusted bridge to SAP HANA adoption.

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Plotting ‘No-Place’ in ‘Utopia Neighborhood Club’ – Seattle Weekly

Posted: at 9:39 pm

A student-curated exhibition at Jacob Lawrence Gallery envisions political grandiosity.

If life-negating political structures are the result of the suppression of imagination, utopias are visions as pushback. At the University of Washingtons Jacob Lawrence Gallery (The Jake), three new curators, Nadia Ahmed, Sarah Faulk, and Anqi Peng, with support from former director Scott Lawrimore and project assistant Justen Waterhouse, have organized an exhibition series on the conceptions and present-day stakes of utopia. On the 100th anniversary of Jacob Lawrences birth, Utopia Neighborhood Club contextualizes utopia within his life. Faulk states, My hope for the relationship between utopia and the institution this show is happening within is that it can foster a community that encourages imagining radical futures.

Utopia is literally nowhere; the word comes from the Greek roots not and place. Often an ideal against which we compare current reality, utopias imagine societal overhauls into structures where the subjects lives are easier. They are fantastical, such as an island nation where queer women live free from men (but with giant kangaroos) in William Moultons Themyscira, or an alternate reality in which native populations in the Congo had learned about steam technology before Belgiums colonization, as imagined in Seattle author Nisi Shawls Everfair. Utopia as a political premise asks us to imagine something radically outside what we know, like universal basic income and prison abolition, and from there sets direction for programmatic goals. Utopias are multifarious, simultaneous, and even contradictory. When Thomas More wrote Utopia almost exactly 500 years ago, reducing the workday to nine hours was one of his farfetched visions.

Shelter-wear prototypes. Tad Hirsch and Mae Boettcher. Photo Courtesy of Jacob Lawrence Gallery.

Utopias are completely relative, Ahmed tells me. Everyone envisions something different for a perfect world. The exhibition series and public programs demonstrate this expansiveness of perspectives. The first iteration of the series exhibited Tad Hirsch and Mae Boettchers shelter-wear prototypes for homeless people, a versatile poncho formed from Tyvek construction material, which suggested the role of the artist in an idealized society as that of social interventionist. In contrast, Zhi Lins quotidian drawings of a kitchen and bedroom during Chinas Cultural Revolution demonstrated the artists preferred embrace of art for arts sake, to stay away from the intervention of the communist government.

How might Jacob Lawrences life inform our understanding of utopia? With a large exhibition at Seattle Art Museum, his profound impact on this city is experiencing a surge of recognition. Lawrence is celebrated for his depictions of 20th-century black Southern life, specifically for his documentation of the Great Migration, the relocation of more than six million black Americans from the South to the industrial North between the late 1910s and the 1970s. As LadiSasha Jones writes in Temporary Art Review, If we can understand the Great Migration at the turn of the 20th century as a radical spatial imaginary, through this lens, the Black city can be framed as an active collective imagining of utopia. During that era, the many arms of racism were still being flexed via brazen laws such as restrictive housing covenants. In response, Jones writes, Organized networks sprang up all across expanding Black urban enclaves and became a part of the fabric of Black survival and ascension in the city.

It was at Utopia House in Harlem, a community center started by three black women, that young Lawrence took painting classes. Building a utopia involves rearranging social codes to either change laws or sidestep them, and this art club, where Lawrence laid the foundation for his training, was one example of the many outerworlds within the country built for and by black people.

Jacob Lawrence (second from left), Harlem, 1933-34. Photograph by Kenneth F. Space. National Archives, Harmon Foundation, College Park, Maryland

In early 2016, Lawrimore brought in as the Jake Legacy Artist-in-Residence artist Steffani Jemison, whose work is inspired by Utopia House; her show Promise Machine, Jones writes, utilizes utopia as a discourse of abstraction within Lawrences work and a century of imagining the Black city. Jemison drew the connection between Lawrences work and the utopian impulse in collective migration and community network-building: within her project, Jemison created reading groups around books such as Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America by William Pease, Black Empire by George Schuyler, and Light Ahead for the Negro by Edward A. Johnson.

On the Utopia Neighborhood Club website, a quote from cultural critic Stephen Duncombe reads Utopia is No-Place, and therefore it is left up to all of us to find it. It is clear that the curators placed emphasis on all of us. Public programs pack the exhibition series calendar, such as multiple forums on the meanings of neighborhood and club; How to Organize a Public Library with Professor Michael Swaine; and a workshop on DIY Venue Harm Reduction with architect and curator S. Surface. The exhibition series ends with works by Lawrence, including The Legend of John Brown, a 22-part serigraph series depicting the life and contribution of the important abolitionist, and features a gallery talk by Royal Alley-Barnes, former executive director of Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and Jacob Lawrences first graduate student.

Utopia Neighborhood Club Opening reception. Courtesy Jacob Lawrence Gallery

Utopianism may seem naive as we question the viability of creating societies separate from the ones weve already clumped together with the bulky shrapnel of history. In recent decades techno-utopianists have dominated the discourse with their zealous belief that technology could bring forth a just society, promising that we can invent our way out of our social problems and that new-media technologies and the Internet contain portals to non-hierarchal cybersocieties. As weve seen this pipe dream rust and corrode, its spirit persists in political partnerships, product marketing, and even art exhibitions that promise disruption of the status quo through invention-solutions.

Nadia Ahmed states her hope that many students outside of the art program will join the conversation: People do not take enough advantage of the Gallery, which is why we wanted to ask what people want from it. What could The Jake become to make itself a more accessible space? This receptiveness to input, instead of a patronizing assertion of solutions, is the first step toward collective accountability.

Im struck by the relationship between the utopian no-place and no-place as a geographic negation, a term for an absence of a national identity by law or faith. There are those with no place in America: the fugitive, the refugee, the immigrant; for these, no-place is the purgatory state of inhabiting a country that has denied your legal stake in it. Utopian thinking carries varying weight depending on whether you believed you ever had a country to lose. When no inhabitable places are in sight, devising new social orders is less an indulgent fantasy exercise than a means of survival.

In America 2017, these ideas are highly relevant. How will Jacob Lawrence Gallery continue to account for the utopian tradition of Lawrences life after this exhibition is over? How can the rich trajectory of utopian thought extend our capacities for imagining and acting beyond what we have known to be possible?

Its useful for me to think of a utopian mindset as one committed to hope, creating new possibilities, and new landscapes, Sarah Faulk says, but with the knowledge an end is probably never going to be in sight. The work never ends. A Student Response Part II The Jake Legacy Residency and The Legend of John Brown + Other Works, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, 1915 N.E. Chelan Lane, jacoblawrencegallery.hotglue.me. Through Sat., March 4. Gallery Talk with Royal Alley-Barnes, 10 11 a.m. Wed., Feb. 15.

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Everybody’s Pop-Up Shop Throws a Wild AntiFashion Week Party With Adwoa Aboah – Vogue.com

Posted: at 9:39 pm

Hows this for a New York Fashion Week party in the age of anxiety? No guest list, no VIP labels, no PR squadron to tussle with at the door. Everything is designed by real people and made in America with ecological sensitivity, and you can buy it on the spot (much of it for less than $100). Anybody can come in off the streetand all sorts of people do.

This was the premise of last nights opening fete for the brand Everybodys new Lower East Side pop-up: fashion as humanist utopia. As part of Informal Shop, a four-day installation hosting experiential commerce and cultural programming in a temporary Henry Street storefront, founders Iris Alonzo and Carolina Crespo gathered friends and strangers for a sort of antiValentines Day, anti-fashion event to celebrate the newest offering in their ongoing series of collaborations with non-trained designers: a tracksuit created by model and activist Adwoa Aboah.

Adwoa Aboah in her Gurls Talk T-shirt, made with Everybody Photo: Courtesy of Everybody

Aboah first worked with Alonzo and Crespo when she asked them to produce the T-shirts for her Gurls Talk feminist action project, which are available at the store.. I just like their aesthetic; I like that they use recycled cotton; I like that theyre women; I like that we talk about our ideas over home-cooked meals, Aboah said.

Alonzo and Crespo also confessed to having a style crush on Aboah. I know shes been called an It girl, Alonzo said, but shes so much more than that.

The tracksuit they designed together consists of a boxy, high-collared sweatshirt top and higher-rise pants in buttery fleece accented by gold zippers with circular pulls. It will debut on Everybodys site this spring and will be sold in black, navy, and pink.

The fit is as effortlessly cool as Aboah herself. I didnt want it to have a saggy crotch; I wanted it to look good on the hips; I wanted it to look good on the bum; I didnt want it to look too girly, she explained of the design. Her references? Roller disco 60s tracksuits meets Wimbledon tennis players meets RunD.M.C.

Photo: Courtesy of Everybody

And though you cant buy the tracksuit yet, the pop-ups other merchandise is equally compelling. We wanted to do something that really felt immersive, where you can escape into some strange fantasyland, Alonzo explained. The brands signature trash teesthick, vintage-style staples made from 100 percent cotton recycled in the U.S. from cutting-floor scraps, priced at $25 eachhang beside a mini-exhibition detailing the industrial process.

To showcase a pair of jaunty mens cotton shirts designed by chess master Prakash Gokalchandwhom Alonzo met by chance in Los Angeless MacArthur Park, where he plays every daya chessboard and chairs rest beneath an enormous palm tree cut-out and a Hockney-esque pool graphic. (Later in the night, a pair of models, or Gen Z-ers who could have been, wearing tracksuits of their ownhers a pink Juicy-ish number paired with rainbow platform sneakers, his a Royal Tenenbaums burgundysat down for a serious match. No, Alonzo insisted, they were not part of the installation, and she had no idea who they were.)

Downstairs, an indigo-belted jacket with pockets galore, designed by artists Mae Elvis Kaufman and Kalen Hollomon, is modeled by mannequins sporting Kaufmans formidable wig collection. (Behind them, posters designed by Hollomon juxtapose 80s-hair-salon-goddess photos with on-point fortune cookie messages: This is not a day to take risks. Diplomacy rules today.) In a neon-lit corner, African-print body pillows shaped like snakes that have swallowed houses, designed by the art collector Jean Pigozzi, were styled as a plush conversation pit. But conversations ground to a halt last night when a pair of go-go boys showed up and stripped down to their contoured briefs, then writhed away before a circle of mostly female onlookers on what became an impromptu dance floor. (Who needs a valentine?)

Photo: Courtesy of Everybody

A table with postcards and stamps for visitors to send handwritten correspondencebright yellow pens at the readyfeels, in the smartphone era, almost like a provocation. Alonzo and Crespo have more where that came from: Tonight, Kaufman and Hollomon will lead a workshop called An Hour of Escapism, in which Kaufman will transform participants with makeup and wigs, with results documented by Hollomon. Tomorrow, landscape architect Margot Jacobs and producer Ed Brachfeldwhose military-style jumpsuit and sturdy cotton outerwear are part of the collectionwill hold court alongside complimentary astrology readings; on Friday, artist and writer Kiki Kudowho designed a little black stretch dress with playful round cut-outs, also available at the storewill serve a Japanese bento breakfast whose probiotic count, Alonzo made a point of noting, will be off the charts.

Is it all some sort of illuminati-grade branding exercise? Or homespun creativity seasoned with a dash of silly fun? Maybe its both. As the crowd thinned out late last night, Aboah, ready to rest up for one more day of runway shows, walked out carrying a plant housed in a pot shaped and painted like a pair of naked boobs. Across the room, a political action plan was hatched.

Open 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. through February 17 at 142 Henry Street, New York; everybody.world .

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Everybody's Pop-Up Shop Throws a Wild AntiFashion Week Party With Adwoa Aboah - Vogue.com

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