Monthly Archives: June 2020

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The year 2020 seems to be drawn straight from the plot of some discarded dystopian novel a book that never got published because it sounded too far-fetched. Not only is there a pandemic to contend with, unemployment nearing levels last seen in the Great Depression, and nationwide protests against police brutality, but its all happening in the same year Americans are supposed to elect a president.

Amid the chaos and tear gas, some people see a chance to scrap everything and start over, a first step toward turning their visions for a better world into reality. In Seattle, protesters in one six-block stretch of Capitol Hill, a neighborhood near downtown, have created a community-run, police-free zone, recently renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, CHOP. Its a scene of masked crowds, vibrant signs and street art, a no cop co-op giving away food and supplies, and newly planted community gardens. In Minneapolis, volunteers turned a former Sheraton hotel into a sanctuary offering free food and hotel rooms until they got evicted.

Were seeing a new resurgence of utopianism, said Heather Alberro, an associate lecturer of politics at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom who studies radical environmentalists and utopian thought.

Problems like climate change, the widening gap between the rich and everybody else, and racial inequality gives many the sense that theyre living through one giant unprecedented crisis. And these combined disasters create the exact conditions that give rise to all sorts of expressions of utopian thinking, Alberro said. From broad ideas like the Green New Deal the climate-jobs-justice package popularized by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Seattles autonomous zone, people are offering up new plans for how the world could operate. Whether they came from literature or real-life experiments, these idealistic efforts can spur wider cultural and political change, even if they falter.

A community garden in CHOPs Cal Anderson Park. Grist / Kate Yoder

Based on President Donald Trumps tweets about Seattles CHOP (or Fox News websites photoshopped coverage of the protest) youd picture pure chaos, with buildings afire and protesters running amok. The reality was more like people sitting around in a park, screening movies like 13th, and making art. Its a serious protest too, with crowds gathered for talks about racism and police brutality in front of an abandoned police precinct. The protesters demands include abolishing the Seattle Police Department, removing cops from schools, abolishing juvenile detention, and giving reparations to victims of police violence.

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone #CHAZ is not a lawless wasteland of anarchist insurrection it is a peaceful expression of our communitys collective grief and their desire to build a better world, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan tweeted last week.

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The protest zone goes by many names: Originally called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, it was later rebranded as CHOP. The barricaded area, which spans from Cal Anderson Park into nearby streets, is part campground, part block party. Tourists wander through, snapping photos of the street art.

A week earlier, protests in Cal Anderson Park, sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, were met by police officers spraying rubber bullets, mace, and tear gas. Then, last week, the police abandoned the area, and the protesters declared it their own, turning the Seattle Police Department into the Seattle People Department with a bit of spraypaint.

The CHAZ follows a long history of anti-capitalist experiments that reimagined the way the world was run. In 1871, the people of Paris, sick of oppression, rose up to take control of their city for a two-month stint. The Paris Commune canceled debt, suspended rent, and abolished the police, filling the streets with festivals. The French government soon quashed their experiment, massacring tens of thousands of Parisians in The Bloody Week. Even though it was short-lived, the Paris Commune inspired revolutionary movements for the next 150 years.

Protesters sleep in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan during Occupy Wall Street, 2011. Ramin Talaie / Corbis via Getty Images

In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protestors took over New York Citys Zuccotti Park for two months to highlight the problems of income inequality. Their encampment offered free food, lectures, books, and wide-ranging discussions. The radical movement ended up changing the way Americans talked, giving them a new vocabulary the 99 percent and 1 percent and its concerns about income inequality went on to mold the priorities of the Democratic Party.

Alberro compared Seattles CHOP to a community of 300 environmental activists in western France who set up camp at a site earmarked for a controversial new airport starting in 2008. One of many ZADs (zones dfendre) that have sprung up in France, the community ended up being not just a place to protest the airport, but to take a stand against what protesters saw as the underlying problems capitalism, inequality, and environmental destruction. (The government ended up shelving plans for the airport in 2018). The point of these autonomous zones is not only to create these micro exemplars of better worlds, Alberro said, but also to physically halt present forces of destruction whether thats an airport or, in the case of Capitol Hill, how police treat black people.

A bike rides past a farm in la Zad, a utopian community protesting an airport in Western France. LOIC VENANCE / AFP via Getty Images

Seattle has a lengthy history of occupations and political demonstrations tracing back to the Seattle General Strike in the early 1900s. The Civil Rights era brought sit-ins and marches. Indigenous protesters occupied an old military fort in 1970 and negotiated with the city to get 20 acres of Discovery Park. Two years later, activists occupied an abandoned elementary school in Beacon Hill, demanding that it be turned into a community center (now El Centro de la Raza).

And it might not be a coincidence that the new protest zone appeared on the West Coast, often portrayed in literature as an ideal place to set up utopian communities, Alberro said. For instance, the book Ecotopia, published in 1975 by Ernest Callenbach, depicted a green society complete with high-speed magnetic-levitation trains! formed when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States. The book went on to become a cult novel, influencing the environmental movements focus on local food, public transportation, and renewable energy.

Ecotopia isnt exactly an ideal parallel for the current wave of protests, as its utopia was white. Callenbach envisioned a segregated society where black people opted to live in the less affluent Soul City. Still, its apparent that some of its other messages live on. Alberro has talked to many radical environmental protesters for her research, and most of them havent read any of the green utopian books she asks about. But they repeat some of the ideas and phrases from that literature nearly word for word when describing the changes they want to see in the world.

Though Seattles protest zone is focused on racial oppression, not environmental destruction, Alberro sees a similar impulse behind all these projects. Many activists would argue that its all part of the same struggle, she said, arguing that people cant successfully take on environmental issues without addressing racism and other socioeconomic problems. There seems to be a cultural atmosphere that molds these different movements, even though they often dont come into contact with one another.

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Seattles autonomous zone belongs to a grand tradition of utopian experiments - Grist

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This piece was originally published in Gristand appears here as part of our Climate Desk Partnership.

The year 2020 seems to be drawn straight from the plot of some discarded dystopian novela book that never got published because it sounded too far-fetched. Not only is there a pandemic to contend with, unemployment nearing levels last seen in the Great Depression, and nationwide protests against police brutality, but its all happening in the same year Americans are supposed to elect a president.

Amid the chaos and tear gas, some people see a chance to scrap everything and start over, a first step toward turning their visions for a better world into reality. In Seattle, protesters in one six-block stretch of Capitol Hill, a neighborhood near downtown, have created a community-run, police-free zone, recently renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, CHOP. Its a scene of masked crowds, vibrant signs and street art, a no cop co-op giving away food and supplies, and newly planted community gardens. In Minneapolis, volunteers turned a formerSheraton hotel into a sanctuary offering free food and hotel roomsuntil they got evicted.

Were seeing a new resurgence of utopianism, said Heather Alberro, an associate lecturer of politics at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom who studies radical environmentalists and utopian thought.

Problems like climate change, the widening gap between the rich and everybody else, and racial inequality gives many the sense that theyre living through one giant unprecedented crisis. And these combined disasters create the exact conditions that give rise to all sorts of expressions of utopian thinking, Alberro said. From broad ideas like the Green New Dealthe climate-jobs-justice package popularized by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezto Seattles autonomous zone, people are offering up new plans for how the world could operate. Whether they came from literature or real-life experiments, these idealistic efforts can spur wider cultural and political change, even if they falter.

Based on President Donald Trumps tweets about Seattles CHOP (or Fox News websitesphotoshoppedcoverage of the protest) youd picture pure chaos, with buildings afire and protesters running amok. The reality was more like peoplesitting around in a park, screening movies like13th, and making art. Its a serious protest too, with crowds gathered for talks about racism and police brutality in front of an abandoned police precinct. The protestersdemandsinclude abolishing the Seattle Police Department, removing cops from schools, abolishing juvenile detention, and giving reparations to victims of police violence.

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone #CHAZ is not a lawless wasteland of anarchist insurrectionit is a peaceful expression of our communitys collective grief and their desire to build a better world, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan tweetedlast week.

The protest zone goes by many names: Originally called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, it was later rebranded as CHOP. The barricaded area, which spans from Cal Anderson Park into nearby streets, is part campground, part block party. Tourists wander through, snapping photos of the street art.

A week earlier, protests in Cal Anderson Park, sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, were met by police officers spraying rubber bullets, mace, and tear gas. Then, last week, the police abandoned the area, and the protesters declared it their own, turning the Seattle Police Department into the Seattle People Department with a bit of spray paint.

The CHAZ follows along historyof anti-capitalist experiments that reimagined the way the world was run. In 1871, the people of Paris, sick of oppression, rose up to take control of their city for a two-month stint. TheParis Communecanceled debt, suspended rent, and abolished the police, filling the streets with festivals. The French government soon quashed their experiment, massacring tens of thousands of Parisians in The Bloody Week. Even though it was short-lived, the Paris Commune inspired revolutionary movements for the next 150 years.

In 2011, Occupy Wall Street protestors took over New York Citys Zuccotti Park for two months to highlight the problems of income inequality. Their encampment offered free food, lectures, books, and wide-ranging discussions. The radical movement ended up changing the way Americans talked, giving them anew vocabularythe 99 percent and 1 percentand its concerns about income inequality went on to mold the prioritiesof the Democratic Party.

Alberro compared Seattles CHOP to a community of 300 environmental activists in western France who set up camp at a site earmarked for a controversial new airport starting in 2008. One of manyZADs (zones dfendre) that have sprung up in France, the community ended up being not just a place to protest the airport, but to take a stand against what protesters saw as the underlying problemscapitalism, inequality, and environmental destruction. (The government ended up shelving plans for the airport in 2018). The point of these autonomous zones is not only to create these micro exemplars of better worlds, Alberro said, but also to physically halt present forces of destructionwhether thats an airport or, in the case of Capitol Hill, how police treat black people.

Seattle has alengthyhistoryof occupations and political demonstrations tracing back to theSeattle General Strikein the early 1900s. The Civil Rights era brought sit-ins and marches. Indigenous protesters occupied an old military fort in 1970 and negotiated with the city to get 20 acres of Discovery Park. Two years later, activists occupied an abandoned elementary school in Beacon Hill, demanding that it be turned into a community center (nowEl Centro de la Raza).

And it might not be a coincidence that the new protest zone appeared on the West Coast, often portrayed in literature as an ideal place to set up utopian communities, Alberro said. For instance, the bookEcotopia, published in 1975 by Ernest Callenbach, depicted a green societycomplete with high-speed magnetic-levitation trains!formed when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States. The book went on to become a cult novel, influencing the environmental movements focus on local food, public transportation, and renewable energy.

Ecotopiaisnt exactly an ideal parallel for the current wave of protests, as its utopia was white. Callenbach envisioned a segregated society where black people opted to live in the less affluent Soul City. Still, its apparent that some of its other messages live on. Alberro has talked to many radical environmental protesters for her research, and most of them havent read any of the green utopian books she asks about. But they repeat some of the ideas and phrases from that literature nearly word for word when describing the changes they want to see in the world.

Though Seattles protest zone is focused on racial oppression, not environmental destruction, Alberro sees a similar impulse behind all these projects. Many activists would argue that its all part of the same struggle, she said, arguing that people cant successfully take on environmental issues without addressing racism and other socioeconomic problems. There seems to be a cultural atmosphere that molds these different movements, even though they often dont come into contact with one another.

Read the original post:

2020 Is a Disaster. Some People See a Chance to Scrap Everything and Start Over. - Mother Jones

June 17, 2020 The smart cities of the future have the potential to be extraordinarily efficient and to minimize the danger of natural disasters, said UTOPIA Fiber CEORoger Timmermanin a Tuesday webinar sponsored by Utah Ignite.

The coronavirus pandemic has made social media and other technologies indispensable, and Timmerman said smart cities offer a unique opportunity to continue technologizing modern life.

Smart cities would enable businesses and other organizations to have surveillance cameras wherever they wished, he said. The cameras would rely on high-quality infrastructure, and subsequently, high-speed internet.

The more connectivity they benefit from, the better the cameras, he said.

Speaking at an event of Utah Ignite, a smart city group affiliated with the national non-profit organization U.S. Ignite, Timmerman also said that smart cities could assist with the efficient allocation of resources amid turbulent natural circumstances.

This is a really urgent thing in Utah because we are low on water, he said. So the better we can manage that resource, the better for our conservation of water.

The employment of smart meters can help to measure resource usage in the cities, and are ideal for sustainable use, Timmerman said.

They dont use much bandwidth theyre pretty insensitive to delay and jitter and things like that, he said.

The meters could utilize artificial intelligence to monitor for suspicious usage levels, Timmerman added.

I dont know how many of you had that happen to you, but the ability to put these systems in water is one thats very common for cities.

Smart cars could offer new possibilities for autonomy and other advancements, Timmerman said, allowing smart cities to get creative with new applications.

Now they want to have as much of [the new technology] as possible so that you want to buy the car, but at the same time those types of connectivity are available. They want to leverage those, he said.

Other technologies like LED smart lights and smart facilities that sense when people are using them can all help to make the lives of the smart cities residents easier, Timmerman said.

However, he admitted that smart cities and the surveillance systems they employ often raise important questions about privacy.

They use technology almost like what Amazon has their little stores where you go and pick up stuff and walk out, and it knows what you did, he said. [Its] really cool when its Amazon, its not socool when its the government.

The technologies carry both risks and rewards, but Timmerman claimed that the rewards outweigh the risks as well as predicting that UTOPIA Fiber will play a crucial role in their rollout.

UTOPIA stands for the Utah Open Infrastructure Agency, and providers Gigabit-level symmetrical broadband services through its fiber network. It is the largest open access network in operation in the United States.

Read more here:

UTOPIA Fiber CEO says at Utah Ignite Event that Rewards of Smart Cities Outweigh Risks - BroadbandBreakfast.com

Jan Weismiller and Tim Budd of Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City and Kathy Magruder of Pageturners Bookstore in Indianola talk about the best books to read this summer.

The coronavirus pandemic has made this a difficult time to sell books, an unfortunate time to publish a book and a wonderful time for many to read.

In this edition of Talk of Iowa, its the annual summer books show. If youre looking for powerful fiction, a read that might challenge your ideas and broaden your mind, poetry that explores the depths of joy, or a light-hearted escape, we have books for you.

The titles were chosen by Jan Weismiller and Tim Budd of Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City and Kathy Magruder of Pageturners Bookstore in Indianola.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Twelve-year-old Edward is the sole survivor of a plane crash that claimed the lives of 186 passengers and crew members, including his parents and older brother. "The premise of this novel may seem depressing and, yes, there is great sadness and grief here but the book soon turns into an extremely uplifting and moving story about memory, connection with others, and finding beauty and love in small kindnesses."

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The Bear by Andrew Krivak

Sometime in the future, a young girl and her father are the last two humans living; when the girl finds herself alone, a bear comes to her aid in the wilderness. "This slim novel is part adventure story, part fantasy and part love story to the world of nature -- it reminded me of a Native American folktale."

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The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

This new novel, by the author of Station Eleven, follows Vincent as she leaves her bartending job at a resort hotel to become the kept girlfriend of a wealthy Ponzi scheme manager. "Superbly written, this is a novel about adapting to the transitions in life and the fragile, memorable connections we have with others."

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Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright

A man named Graveyard is walking down the street when a bag of money falls from the sky, changing his life forever. "A very funny, very sharp satire about income inequality, material obsession, and the light and dark side of all that money!"

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This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

Noel,in his seventies, recounts the summer of 1958 when, as a 17-year-old, he lived with his grandparents the same summer when electricity finally came to their small Irish village. "A charming coming of age novel, with the naivet of youth balanced against the wry remembrances of old age. Full of the eccentricities and personalities of country life, this reads like an Irish Lake Woebegone."

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Real Life by Brandon Taylor

This coming-of-age novel is narrated by Wallace, a young, gay black man from Alabama who has come north for the first time to pursue a PhD in biochemistry at a large, midwestern university. It takes place over the course of one long summer weekend in which tension, both personal and racial, come to a head. "Taylor is one of the most precise writers imaginable and Real Life allows us insight into our riven culture without giving up an inch of complexity."

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Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld has written a historical novel based on a life of Hilary Rodham that might have unfolded had she not married Bill Clinton. "Sittenfeld, both humanist and historian, has written a book you wont be able to put down."

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Camino Windsby John Grisham

This is the second of John Grishams novels to feature protagonist Bruce Cable, owner of Bay Books in Florida. "He does a marvelous job of bringing the bookselling/publishing world into the world of true crime. The real sleuth is Nick, the college student slacker who is always reading mysteries behind the counter. The prescient Grisham has found a villain in a nursing home chain."

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

This subtle and compelling novel is narrated by Vanessa, a young woman floundering in her early thirties. It is the height of the me too movement and Vanessa is forced to reconsider a relationship she had with a manipulative teacher when she was a precocious teenage scholarship student at a boarding school. "This book raises vital questions of agency, consent and complicity. Intimate and intense it confronts the shifting cultural mores that transform our relationships"

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In the Not Quite Dark stories by Dana Johnson

Thiscollection of bold stories is set mostly in downtown Los Angeles. They examine large issues - love, class and race - and how they influence and define our most intimate moments. "My husband and I came across Dana Johnsons firstcollection of Stories: BreakAny Woman Down when we were house cleaning in the early days of the pandemic. We have since read both her story collections and her Elsewhere, California. This is an amazing African American voice that has been with usfor months."

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Network Effect by Martha Wells

When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.

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This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesotas Gilead River, Odie OBanion is an orphan confined to the Lincoln Indian Training School, a pitiless place where his lively nature earns him the superintendents wrath. Forced to flee after committing a terrible crime, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own. Over the course of one summer, these four orphans journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.

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Beach Read by Emily Henry

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes best-selling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. Theyre polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, theyre living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writers block. Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. Shell take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and hell take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously.) Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

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The Heap by Sean Adams

Once standing 500 stories high, Los Verticals is now collapsed into a massive pile of rubble called The Heap, where volunteers have created their own ad-hoc society of Dig Hands, removing trash, debris and bodies from the vast site. Orville Anders' brother--a radio DJ--has miraculously survived and is broadcasting from inside The Heap. The brothers' nightly conversations are a rating bonanza but Orville is cut off when he refuses to cooperate with corporate sponsors. The next night he hears "Orville" on the radio and determines to uncover the corruption at the core of their enterprise.

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Conviction by Denise Mina

The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life exploded started off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone. Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own -- a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she's taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened.

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The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings under a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent. Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.

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Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

James Shapiro looks at pivotal moments in America's history through the lens of the plays and productions of Shakespeare that were either being performed at the time or were used as examples to bolster current popular opinions. "You don't need to know Shakespeare's plays to enjoy this incredibly interesting look at the complex relationship between the US and the Bard of Avon. Utterly fascinating."

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The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America by Eric Cervini

The story of Frank Kameny, an early pioneer of the gay rights movement, and his battle for equality in the decade before the Stonewall riot. "I found myself filled with wonder and admiration for these men and women who displayed such bravery and perseverance in a time of real danger and persecution."

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What It's Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley

A famed birder and author of several bird guides, Sibley's new oversized book looks at the behaviors and science of the birds of North America. "Full of vibrant illustrations (many life-size) and interesting tidbits about how birds are able to do what they do, this is a book for both kids and adults. You'll be spellbound for hours."

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The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

In Winston Churchills first day as Prime Minister, Hitler invaded Holland. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson draws on diaries, archival material and once-secret intelligence reports releasedonly recently to provide a new lens on Londons darkest yearthrough the day-to-day of Churchill and thoseclosest to him. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of todayspoliticsdysfunction and back to a time of true leadership.

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Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcenturyby Honor Moore

Our Revolution follows the life of Jenny Moore - Honors mother - as she becomes involved in the great mid-twentieth century movements for peace and social justice. When she is diagnosedwith cancer at 50 she bequeaths to her 27-year-old daughter her unfinished writing. As Honor pursued her own life as a writer she was haunted by her mothers request. Our Revolution is the result of Honorsre-engagement with her mothers work and the new understanding she gains of a woman and of a time.

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Joy: 100 Poems edited by Christian Wiman

Following Simone Weils statement, A test ofwhat isreal is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, Christian Wiman has edited a collection of poems that are joyful in the deepest sense.It will buoy up the darkest moment.

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Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous

Part memoir and part joyful romp through the fields of imagination, the story behind a beloved pseudonymous Twitter account reveals how a writer deep in grief rebuilt a life worth living. Becoming Duchess Goldblattis two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media. Fans around the world are drawn to Her Graces voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community thats sprung up around her.

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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the Worlds Greatest Library by Edward Wilson-Lee

At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Coln sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbuss death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue and surpass his fathers campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe.

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The Best New Fiction And Nonfiction Books To Read This Summer - Iowa Public Radio

Photo: Bravo/Tommy Garcia/Bravo

In recent weeks, there have been a handful of surprisingly swift reactions from powerful institutions in the wake of the mass protests demanding justice for Black Americans. There was the repeal of a law shielding NYPD records from the public, the divestment of public schools from the police in Minneapolis, the stepping-down of the New York Times opinion page editor James Bennet for running a piece called Send In the Troops and the fallout at Vanderpump Rules, a reality show on Bravo about a group of young hot people who work or used to work at a West Hollywood restaurant.

Last week, Bravo fired two Vanderpump men for past racist tweets, and two women, Stassi Shroeder and Kristen Doute, who bragged publicly in 2018 about calling the police to report Faith Stowers, a Black former cast member the shows only one, ever for crimes she had nothing to do with. The cruelty of this harassment should have been obvious at the outset, but it was horrifically magnified by the way George Floyd died in Minneapolis, after someone called the cops.

And more heads are likely to roll. Another star, Jax Taylor, repeated the same smears about Stowers; he and his wife, Brittany Cartwright, have also been accused of asking a pastor with a history of making homophobic remarks to officiate their wedding. Beyond their terminations, many fans are calling for Vanderpump to be entirely gutted, or axed altogether, given that most of these incidents were already known to former Real Housewife Lisa Vanderpump, the shows executive producer, as well as to the rest of the cast and to others behind the camera all of whom did nothing, until they became a public-relations and financial liability.

From here, if you are a Bravo completist like me having seen not only Vanderpump Rules but every Real Housewives iteration and their offspring, for over 15 years since the franchise began and launched the Bravo cinematic universe the scope of the purge begins to snowball. What about the show set in Charleston with all-white cast members, some of whom still own plantations? What about the nearly all-white show set in summer in the very white Hamptons? What about the shows with the Trump supporters, of which there are numerous? Ramona Singer, a Real Housewife of New York, was recently filmed flirting wildly with a former Republican senate candidate in Missouri famous for writing a Facebook post about preventing his future daughters from becoming feminist she-devils. If the viewers are truly taking a zero-tolerance stance toward racism and all types of bigotry, what must we decide about whether to continue watching these shows, reliant as most of them are on white people behaving very, very badly?

This existential crisis was already looming last November over the first BravoCon, a three-day convention in New York that I attended nearly every hour of (for journalism). It was a mass of almost exclusively white women, ecstatically gathered like congregants in a ros-soaked megachurch. The friction between the frivolous unreality of the shows heavily edited and produced, about people encouraged to act in outsize ways and the sobering fact that these were real human beings was already uncomfortable. Not to mention how much money Bravo and the stars were clearly making from this behemoth enterprise, along with a satellite ecosystem of podcasters and bloggers. The fans I spoke to largely consider themselves liberal-minded; Sarah, a 24-year-old nurse from Nashville, told me about a few Facebook groups that had been roiled by political discussions, about several stars posting All Lives Matter on social media, for example. But the conversations were largely circumscribed by the escapist nature of the viewing. At the end of the day, I just dont want to think, you know? she said. Thats generally how Ive considered these shows, too, something to satisfy and soothe after work, like a heavily processed, sugary snack.

Now I cant get the bad taste out of my mouth. The idea that we can keep watching Bravo without thinking, now that more of us than ever are finally doing just that thinking, about how the concepts of racism and anti-Blackness play out in real life has fully soured. In a buffet of guilty pleasures, Bravos reality shows present a somewhat sinister conundrum: The things we should feel guiltiest about are done in real life, by real people. Doutes and Schroeders actions were not written into a script for characters in a drama, for which a white writers room could be held to account; they make money directly from playing themselves. It never made sense to me that Vanderpump Rules, originally about waiters trying to make it in L.A., never had more Black stars or other stars of color, given that that milieu is clearly not all white people. But I didnt linger too long on the disconnect. The tacit understanding we all had is that it was never about reflecting reality but putting hyper-reality on display; as long as the cast was drinking hard, playing hard, slapping each other, and lasering their foreheads, it didnt matter what world they were presenting or what the extreme ends of their behavior produced. That calculation, and the safe remove from which we made it, feels no longer viable.

Vanderpump Rules probably cant be salvaged. Maybe Bravo can, starting with the inclusion of more nonwhite producers and other executives, who might have raised a red flag earlier on two white stars lying to the police about a Black colleague. The bigots on other shows should be fired, and more nonwhite stars should be hired. Certain joys tracking yearslong interpersonal drama like memorizing baseball stats; watching fairly harmless, delightful insanity can remain. A woman dramatically taking off her prosthetic leg at a restaurant; a medium wreaking havoc at a dinner party there are people the world over who can be counted on to want attention and drink too many Pinot Grigios without being racist.

Of course, representation in something like entertainment is a limited, top-down goal and shouldnt be confused for political organizing. Bravos negligence in keeping its cast to its own standards of conduct is evidence that a corporate entity is not an effective steward of civil rights. There is too much pressure on consumer choice to help shape our lives and too little emphasis on, say, our government, which can feel almost impossible to influence in comparison. No wonder, during weeks that set the country ablaze, people looked around to see what things they could light up more immediately. Bravo was one of them.

But it is a good thing if audience members are losing their appetites for despicable behavior. And it is good if Bravo actually caters to the impulse to hold ourselves accountable, finally, in both the real world and this world we pretended wasnt really real for too long. Part of the seduction of reality shows is that looking at the worst of them helps us look away from the worst parts of ourselves: I am not involved in this, we can say from the couch. But of course we are. Bravo will probably never become an egalitarian utopia. But it could be a test case for this new era of openness, in which Americans who have long benefited from thinking of themselves as apolitical, just fans watching a show, are seeing themselves for the first time as cast members. Where do we want next season to go?

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What Do We Do With Bravo? - The Cut