Monthly Archives: February 2021

Some Democrats in Washington are seizing on the recent frenetic trading in GameStop Corp. to push the financial transaction tax long favored by progressives, setting up a battle with Wall Street firms that bitterly oppose the idea.

After a House hearing Thursday to examine the GameStop issue, Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, said she is considering such a tax, which came up several times during testimony.

Investment firms and stock exchanges are lining up lobbyists and public-relations firms in hopes of stopping the tax, which could decrease trading activity and lower earnings. They see it as harmful to the average American trying to save for retirement.

Maxine Waters

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Robinhood Markets Inc., whose popular, commission-free trading app helped ignite the stock frenzy, this month registered its first in-house lobbyists and said the proposed tax is one of the issues they will tackle. At Thursdays Financial Services Committee hearing, Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said the tax would be a bad idea but wasnt given a chance to explain why.

Exacting a tiny sum from every securities trade is a concept that liberal Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have pushed for years. They see it as a way to curb the kind of speculative betting that led to last months chaotic swings in the market and to fund Democratic priorities such as increased public-works spending.

A financial transaction tax hasnt garnered support from some top Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has been wary to back an idea targeting a key industry in his state. To become law, bills that include a financial transaction tax would likely need united support from Democratic lawmakers, making the effort an uphill climb.

The tax failed to gain steam a decade ago because of uncertainty over how it would affect the returns of retail investors and markets recovering from the financial crisis.

Wall Street lobbyists and Republican lawmakers also opposed the idea, often pointing out that some European countries that imposed transaction taxes later withdrew them. The tax mostly failed to raise the amounts proponents promised; it also drove securities trading and jobs to other countries.

Chuck Schumer

Photographer: Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner/Bloomberg

Efforts to adopt an EU-wide levy also foundered, though some European Union member countries are again floating the tax as a way to raise funds to bolster economies hit by the pandemic.

One measure now gaining traction, by Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio, proposes a levy on trading firms of 10 cents for every $100 of securities traded, though other proposals have gone as low as 5 cents and as high as 50 cents.

In January, South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, threw his support behind the tax. Clyburn noted that the DeFazio proposal was projected to raise $777 billion over 10 years, money that could be used to fund spending on job-creation initiatives and health care.

The speculation that weve seen in the market, not just around GameStop but in all of the casino that is Wall Street, has raised the attention, said Susan Harley, a lobbyist and managing director of the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy organization. Those dollars are very attractive.

Waters said she hadnt come to a conclusion on whether to support a transactions tax. Im very interested and I do think it portends possibilities for revenue that may be desperately needed, she said.

A smaller financial transaction tax, such as one targeted to certain securities or with an extended phase-in period, is a very real possibility, said Compass Point Research & Trading analyst Isaac Boltansky, noting that it could generate revenue to pay for Democrats policy priorities.

As a candidate in 2019, President Joe Biden expressed support for the tax but he never released a detailed proposal. The White House didnt respond to a request for comment.

Peter DeFazio

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

During Thursdays hearing, Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib sparred with Citadel founder Ken Griffin over the tax, which she framed as a way to address inequality. She called it one way to ensure that this enormous wealth generated on Wall Street actually reaches the real economy. Griffin argued that it will injure Americans hoping to save for retirement.

A financial transaction tax would eat into the returns of Griffins Citadel businesses -- a hedge fund and a market maker -- that would be dinged every time they make a trade. Investment funds and firms that trade the most, such as high-frequency traders, could face the highest costs.

Public Citizen and other groups are circulating a letter in support of DeFazios bill. The levy is an important step toward having Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes, says the letter, whose signatories so far include the liberal Economic Policy Institute and unions such as the AFL-CIO and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

In addition to efforts in Congress, lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and Illinois have proposed local taxes on financial transactions. In response, exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and market makers including Virtu Financial Inc. have threatened to move operations out of those states to avoid the tax. A national tax would undercut those threats.

Wall Street firms are girding for battle. Investment giants and trade groups including Vanguard Group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Investment Company Institute said theyre lobbying on the issue.

Financial transaction taxes at the federal or state level unfairly target Americas mom-and-pop investors and working families saving for retirement, said Chris Iacovella, chief executive of the American Securities Association, a trade association for regional financial services firms.

Rashida Tlaib

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

The U.S. had a stock transactions tax between 1914 and 1965. Today, a small fee is still levied against stock transactions to help fund oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A group of nonprofits in the U.K. in 2010 organized to support a financial transaction tax, even dubbing it the Robin Hood tax, with the idea that it would take from the rich to help the less fortunate. It caught on in the U.S. as Democratic lawmakers proposed their own bills, which never moved forward once Republicans regained control of the House in 2010.

A financial transaction tax also took the stage during the 2020 Democratic primaries. As a candidate, Vermont Senator Sanders, who now helms the Senate Budget Committee, proposed a levy on all trades as a way to finance his plan for tuition-free college.

Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, also offered aversion during his presidential primary effort.

At the time, lobbyists circulated research by Vanguard that claimed a measure similar to DeFazios would reduce investor returns by more than one percentage point per year. Vanguard came under fire for its assumptions, such as basing its calculation on the high turnover rate of an actively managed small-cap stock fund. The company later released estimates for more typical types of mutual funds and said in many cases the tax would hurt returns by less than 0.3 percentage point.

Vanguard spokesman Charles Kurtz said a broad financial transaction tax would do unintended damage to everyday families saving for retirement or higher education.

One advocacy group, the Partnership to Protect Our Retirement Future, planted paid consultants at candidates town hall-style meetings to frame the tax concept as an affront to retirees, the public relations firm that formed the group acknowledged to Reuters. Locust Street Group, the PR firm, didnt respond to a request for comment.

North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry, the lead Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, in October introduced his own bill, the Protecting Retirement Savers and Everyday Investors Act. It would prohibit states from imposing taxes on transactions.

(Updates with analyst quote in 14th paragraph)

--With assistance from Laura Davison, Ben Bain, Saleha Mohsin and Sam Mamudi.

To contact the reporter on this story:Joe Light in Washington at jlight8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Paula Dwyer

2021 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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Wall Street Transaction Tax Wins Backers on GameStop Furor (1) - Bloomberg Tax

The CEA also calls on state lawmakers to confront the shortage using three strategies. Colorado has struggled for more than a decade to fund public schools at the level of the national average. The union is asking state lawmakers to pay down some of the billion-dollar school budget shortfalls, called the budget stabilization factor. It is a legislative maneuver that allowed lawmakers to dip into school funding in order to balance the state budget. All told, schools have missed out on more than $10 billion dollars since 2008.

The union also wants health safety equipment and vaccines for teachers and students, as well as to postpone high-stakes exams.

The growing dissatisfaction among existing educators, however, isnt deterring hundreds of students across the nation from considering a career in education in the Centennial State.

The University of Northern Colorado, the states largest producer of teachers, hopes to inspire hundreds of students to enter the profession. High school and community college students from as far away as Arkansas, Pakistan and the Philippines attended the colleges most recent annual Future Teacher Conference.

Keynote speaker Gov. Jared Polis told attendees one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has forced leaders to take a critical look at how education systems operate. He said districts are thinking creatively about how to develop new and more effective learning environments.

You will be on the vanguard of making sure that opportunity reaches every child in the state no matter where they live, their race, their gender, their geography, their income, he said. I am so thrilled that you are interested in becoming teachers. You're needed now more than ever."

Founded as a teachers college in 1889, UNC produces about 40 percent of Colorados teachers. The state as a whole only produces half of the 4,000 teachers it needs annually.

Were an importer of teachers, said Charles Warren, an administrator in the universitys Office of Professional Licensure who meets monthly with school human resource directors from across the state. These HR directors are going to job fairs to find teachers all over the country, to beat the bushes and find these new teachers.

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As Colorado Teachers Consider Leaving Their Jobs, UNC Fights To Keep The Ranks Full - Colorado Public Radio

The somber procession of ashes was led by a new generation of the Black Panther Party movement, a final farewell fit for a Panther from a different era.

In black berets, they raised clenched fists in the air, saluting the velvet-encased urn topped with a matching beret.

Trunnell Levett Price was among the last of San Diegos original Black Panthers. He was memorialized Saturday not only for the fight he embarked on some 50 years earlier, but for mentoring a crop of young activists who are carrying on the iconic movements legacy today.

Price died Jan. 26 at the age of 71 after a long battle with lung disease.

He was proud of his place in history as part of a complicated movement that often suffers from oversimplification in its retelling.

The Black power movement marked in pop-culture by its militant edge and Marxist-tinged philosophy called for self-defense against police abuse and the uplifting of marginalized communities. It defined his life in many ways.

He was very concerned for the community, for poor people in general, especially Black people, Pastor Buddy Hauser, who served in the Panthers with Price as a youth, told mourners at the Spring Valley memorial service. He stood for us when a lot of people werent even thinking about us.

Price rode waves of vilification and lionization as a member beginning at the age of 17, finding a sense of purpose for providing for Black people what White society wouldnt, while at times facing the consequences of crossing lines to accomplish that goal. Like many Panthers of the era, he also bounced in and out of the criminal justice system.

His death comes at a time of renewed public interest in the Panthers. In 2016, the party celebrated its 50th anniversary and sparked an urgency to preserve the histories of original members. Two recently released films Judas and The Messiah, a biopic of Panther leader Fred Hampton showing on HBO Max, and Netflixs The Trial of the Chicago 7" offer Hollywood-style retrospectives of the extremes government went to to neutralize the movement.

A Black Panther beret tops the vessel holding the ashes of Trunnell Price during Saturdays memorial service.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Even late in life, Price saw a roadmap in the Panther ideology that he believed could be used to fight todays social and racial injustices. He helped reactivate the movement with a new group, the Black Panther Party of San Diego, which puts the original tenant of community service into practice with programs that include homeless outreach, food assistance and resume-writing classes.

Im really excited about this generation coming up, Price said in 2017 in an oral history recorded at San Diego State University. Theyre the ones who are going to decide whether we continue to suffer for the next 10 or 15 years ... to do what it is thats in their hearts. They know the difference between right and wrong.

I give them 20 years. Thats a lot. A lot can happen in 20 years.

The fourth of nine children, Price was born in Coronado, where his father worked for the Navy. The family lived in modest housing for blue-collar military workers.

As a child, he learned about systemic and institutionalized racism by seeing White landlords demand sex for rent from women of color, he said in an interview with The Activated Podcast last summer.

His family later moved to Stockton, one of several southeastern San Diego neighborhoods settled in the 1950s and 60s by Black residents who faced worse housing discrimination in other parts of the city.

There, police abuse was rampant, according to residents. From humiliating traffic stops to beatings at a downtown lumberyard, Black youth have recalled how officers doled out their own version of justice to exert dominance and extract street intelligence.

They were sending a signal to the neighborhood: They were in control, Henry Lee Wallace, who served in the Black Panther Party as a teen with Price, recalled of the police. They were the slave masters and they were keeping us in line.

It was 1967 when Price heard that the founding chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, born a year earlier in Oakland, was going to be in San Diego. Local universities and colleges had been resisting some Black students trying to enroll, and the Panthers wanted to advocate for greater access to higher education.

Price attended the Panther protest on the campus of San Diego State College, meeting party co-founder Bobby Seale and leader David Hilliard.

Kenny Denmon, left, and Eldridge Cleaver, center, during Cleavers visit to San Diego in 1968. Denmon was the founder of the San Diego chapter of the Black Panthers. He died in 2018. He was 78.

(San Diego History Center )

I was convinced that their program, which included education, was something I thought I could get involved with and would help uplift oppressed people and people of color, Price said in his interview with SDSU.

Price was soon recruited into the newly formed San Diego chapter of the Panthers by its first chairman, SDSU student Kenny Denmon. He died in 2018 at the age of 78.

The young Price was intent on soaking up the lessons the Panthers had to offer everything from Black history to the 10-Point Plan that defined the partys agenda to social capitalist ideology.

The education the Black Panthers offered to young recruits was different from the education we were getting at school, said Wallace, who was also brought into the party by Denmon, his brother-in-law. All we saw was George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We didnt see anything representing Blacks in history books.

Price was soon given the role of deputy minister of education and was put in charge of running classes for members, teaching social and economic survival.

He was very studious, he didnt show the militancy part of it, Wallace said.

But as Price later recalled in interviews, the partys focus on self-defense from abusive police was also a major draw for him.

Wearing the groups signature leather jackets, members openly carried guns, which was legal at the time, and saw themselves as protectors of their community. They often patrolled neighborhood streets for police activity, stopping nearby with their weapons visible to monitor for civil rights abuses.

Their interactions with police were guided by one rule: We wont instigate anything, but we will certainly defend ourselves, Price said in an interview.

The anti-police stance took on more radical undertones, with cartoons in the national Panther Party newspaper that depicted officers as pigs including one that read: The only good pig is a dead pig fueling the partys image as violent and criminal. A former party newspaper editor later testified before Congress that the cartoon was political satire.

The militant persona was softened with a number of social programs the Black Panthers brought into communities, from food and clothing distributions to medical clinics to providing children regular free breakfasts before school.

In 1969, a Black Panther in San Diego serves children as part of the partys free breakfast program, one of many social programs aimed at serving and uplifting the Black community.

(San Diego History Center/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

In San Diego, the breakfast program operated out of Christ the King church, then a small Catholic parish just blocks from Prices family home.

The specter of armed Black revolutionaries put the Panthers in the crosshairs of J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime FBI director who used the agencys clout to investigate and intimidate those he viewed as politically radical. But it was the breakfast program that he viewed as especially dangerous. He saw the goodwill the Panthers were eliciting from the community as a tool of indoctrination.

In 1969, Hoover declared to Congress, the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country.

The FBIs weapon of choice against the Black Panthers was COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program that had already been in use for several years against other groups. The goal, according to FBI records later made public, was to neutralize Black militant groups to prevent the rise of a messiah-type leader, to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence and to widely discredit the movement.

To do that, the FBI infiltrated the party, sowed distrust among its members and used local police to harass and arrest members. The FBI also instigated deadly rivalries with Organization US, another Black nationalist militant group, by planting fake threats and insults. The disinformation sparked tit-for-tat violence in San Diego, with two Panthers dying in shootings in 1969.

The agency hoped the Panthers would rip themselves apart.

Price was at the forefront of that war as member of the Vanguard, the unit assigned to protect Panther leadership and sniff out opposition throughout the state.

On Nov. 22, 1968, students at UC San Diego protest a ruling against a UC Berkeley course taught by Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. The ruling was issued by California Gov. Ronald Reagan and the University of California Regents. At left, activist Angela Davis, then a graduate student, is seated on a barrier.

(U-T file photo)

In an interview with The Activated Podcast, he described one Thanksgiving night in San Francisco being on bodyguard duty for Eldridge Cleaver, the party spokesman who had skipped bail and was wanted by law enforcement for provoking an ambush that wounded two Oakland police officers.

On Saturday, friends from the old neighborhood recalled the greatest escape, when law enforcement in San Diego tracked Price to a friends home and he walked away under their noses disguised as a woman.

Jail was a familiar place to most Panthers, whether the charges were legitimate, cooked-up, or both. Price was no exception.

In 1969 he was charged in a sniping incident in which a bullet fired at a San Diego police car narrowly missed two officers inside, according to reports in the San Diego Union. The charges apparently didnt stick. Wallace recalled the incident and said Price had possibly been with the shooter in a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In 1971, Price was convicted by an all-White federal jury for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery of the downtown postal office. Price testified that the men had flagged him down randomly for a ride and that he didnt know they had robbed the office.

Price made headlines for his theatrics during the trial and sentencing hearing, including trying to leave the courtroom at one point while still in the custody of U.S. Marshals Service and later proclaiming: Im not an American citizen. Im a slave. My slave name is Trunnell Price. We are the revolutionaries and you will have your day in court.

Prices 25-year sentence was later reduced to 15 years after a federal appeals court found issues with the trial. At the resentencing hearing, Prices mother, attorney and minister argued that hed reformed during his time at the Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas.

Price was apparently released early, although he would rack up other federal and state charges over the years, including a six-month stint in federal prison for misdemeanor drug possession in 1979.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982, although it had lost much of its influence long before that.

Its original members were left disillusioned with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and criminal records as they saw the status quo return in many ways, said Renee Walton, who came to know Price as a member of the revitalized party. They were left feeling, like, What was that all about?

The era was populated with its share of White left-wing radicals, too, many of whom went to prison. But many of those adherents were able to shed the stigma and offered the resources to move forward, unlike their Black counterparts.

We got jailed, shot, beat up, and now I have a criminal record, Walton said, putting voice to the Panthers angst. What about employment?

A lot of members turned to drugs and alcohol, which resulted in more arrests.

Theres a lot of glory associated with the party, but you know, what those guys went through, Walton said. Their accomplishments were huge, but they didnt feel like it. They ended up not really with anything tangible.

Some original members from the San Diego chapter of the Black Panther Party have made an effort to record oral histories of the era. Left to right, Ben Waddell and Henry Wallace, members since they was 15 years old, and Patrick J. Germany, who joined when he was only 10.

(NelvinC. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Black Panther Party has since been recognized as one of the more influential albeit controversial political and civil rights movements in modern history, helping to lay a foundation for todays Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2016, Alfred Olongo, a Black man suffering from a psychiatric episode, was fatally shot by an El Cajon police officer after he pointed a device at the officer that turned out to be a vaping pen. The shooting opened familiar wounds in the community and thrust San Diego once again into the national debate over use of force.

That same year, some of San Diegos original members including Price, Wallace and Hauser reconnected to share their oral histories.

They had the attention of a new generation of activists who saw an opportunity to build on the Panther legacy.

The Black Panther Party of San Diego was born. Price, who had gone on to have a career in transportation and construction, easily slipped back into his role as educator and historian, along with a new one: mentor.

Price served as chairman of the new group for a few years until his lung condition worsened in 2018.

He taught that youth need to make sure they are more than just protesting, that they are completely educating themselves on the political process, said current chairman Robert War Williams. Its not about the protest lifestyle, its about the lifestyle of empowerment.

The groups 10-Point Program closely follows the original, but is updated for the current times. It still demands equal access to land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Robert War Williams, chairman for the Black Panther Party of San Diego, a new iteration of younger activists carrying on the Panther legacy, honors mentor Trunnell Price at his memorial service.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The literal paramilitary image of the 60s has also been swapped for a more figurative paramilitary-like discipline necessary to defend a cause.

Youre not going to see us carrying AK-47s and marching. We dont agree with that, Walton said. Our approach today is trying to reach people and encourage and empower them.

The group is among several autonomous organizations flying the Panther banner around the country; an official national umbrella no longer exists. Wallace reactivated his own version, the San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment, a nonprofit focused on distribution and education programs. The Panther name also has also been used by at least one group to espouse racist and anti-Semitic views, which are denounced by both original and modern Panthers, including those in San Diego.

The Black Panthers of the 60s are what the 60s needed, Walton said. We are the Black Panthers of 2020, and we want to be whats needed now, or at least be part of it.

Price is survived by mother, Ruby Vryes-Price; wife, Michele Geiger; son, Leonard Price; and stepdaughter, Nicole Ventura, as well as two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Excerpt from:

An original Black Panther departs having bridged San Diego's eras of racial struggle - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Eric Webb|Austin 360

I cant stop thinking about Fern in the snow.

Played by Frances McDormand in Chlo Zhaosstunning Nomadland, the character is living out of her van, travelingthecountryafter both an economic bust in her industrialcommunity and her husbands death have left her adrift.In a scene that stuck in my head even before Austin was blanketed in white and its worn-out residents were left to freeze, Fern finds herself somewhere out in empty America, the vistas searing, blank and frigid. A woman approachesthe van and tries to get Fern to seek shelter at a Baptist church from an oncoming blizzard.

Fern says shell be fine.

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Shes taking care of herself, but whether shes really fine in a world of loss and loneliness is one of the quiet questions nestled insideNomadland. After a few screenings last year it made Austin360s Top 25 Movies of 2020 its officially in theaters and on Hulu on Friday.

If youre reading this in Texas,you might have to wait a little longer to watch, what with our own winter storm andthe catastrophic failure of our infrastructure. (As of this writing, and after a night spent watching my breath bloom intovapor inside a tent in my apartment, my powers been out for about 65 hours, and Im living out of the American-Statesman newsroom.)But when you do get the chance to watch this film at the heart of which beats the thrum of a humanity that capitalism can bruise,but not destroy I hope youre able to see it with a new empathy.

Nomadland introduces us to Fern as she takes a few things out of a storage locker some dishes, a mans coat she holds like its aliveand hits the open road.She sings What Child Is This? to herself in the van (named Vanguard) around Christmas; she checks into an RV park and looks like shes afraid of a blow;she takes abarely litNew Years Eve meal by herself, party hat and all.Through conversations with people Fern meets along the way, we gather she and her husband lived in a company-run Nevada town, before the jobs dried up and her husband passed away.Now, she goes where she can to get any fleeting foothold.

In one moving scene, she runs intosome familiar faceswho offer to let them stay with her. Bing Crosby sings about the holidays over a store PA system. A young girl whom Fern used to tutor asks if shes homeless. Fern replies, Im not homeless, Im just houseless. Not the same thing, right?

More: 5 films to watch this Black History Month, according to UT film professor Ya'ke Smith

Thats really Nomadland in a nutshell, a movie that's all scenic route and also all destination. Zhaoembeds us ina loose-knit community of wandererswhose home is wherever they find a fire to sit around and a gig to keep things going.The film was inspired by Jessica Bruders post-recession nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, and the cast includes several real-life nomads, playing fictionalized versions of themselves.Two viewings in,Imstill not sure exactly what to make ofthe films use of real lives in the service of entertainment.Is it condescending? Anthropological? I think Ifeelrespect come off the screen, witha romantic tint.

But if youre thinking about it after, its probably worth watching, and all credit due to Zhao for this lyrical journey.Sometimes Nomadland feels documentary, as when Fern and two nomad friends, Swankie and Linda May (real nomads playing versions of themselves), take in the thrills of an RV show.Its almost voyeurism, as whenwe peer at Fernfloating naked in a stream, driving through an impossibly tight canyon, surveying an abandoned building in her nightdress, shouting on a mountain, holding a baby she doesnt know what to do with. For allthe miles on this road trip, every exit feels worth the stop.

McDormand, who can knock any ball out of the park even if Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a roadside car fire, she was great is Nomadland, though. The camera is rarely far from her. Among ancient rock formations in a national park, she strikes an imposing figure. Mending a broken dish, shes heartbreaking. This isone of thoseits all in the face performances for which it would be hard to begrudge her another Oscar.

Most movies have suffered for being released in the past year, fragmented across drive-ins, limitedpandemictheatrical runs, VOD drops and streaming exile. A few, though, are the better for it, andthats whereNomadlandstands. It is quiet; weve grown to knowquieta little bettersince March.Were apart, and were together, and so are the nomads in the film.Zhaos storyhangs dignity on the shoulders of Americans gutted by profit-thirsty systems, whereweveoftenbeen taught to see shame.Loss of love, loss of job, loss of place you, like Fern, are more than these things, Nomadland tells us softly.

Especiallynow, when weve been sotreacherouslyleft in the cold bythe systems we were supposed to trust, its only the people we travel with who give us shelter.And sometimes, even for just a little bit, youve got to travel alone.

Grade: A-

Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Swankie

Director:Chlo Zhao

Rated: R for some nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Watch: In theaters and available on Hulu on Friday

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Review: 'Nomadland' is a film for all of us left out in the cold - austin360