Monthly Archives: September 2021

Contemporary art has always been at the forefront of artistic practices that venture to replace aesthetic narratives with social activism. In this text, however, we will examine the theaters rejection of its own aesthetic methods and expressive idioms in the name of direct democracy, as well as the sociopolitical and artistic effects of these experiments. Has the notorious sacrifice of dramatization (i.e., the theatrical episteme per se) in postdramatic theatrical practices proven politically effective and aesthetically radical?

Researchers have argued that there were two motivations for the postdramatic turn in the theater. One was post-disciplinaritys dissolution in direct-democracy practices. The other was the attempt to borrow the performative poetics of contemporary art, which, as theater researchers falsely imagined, was based on the artists direct, living, nonsymbolic presence in the performative process. This is what differentiated the artist from the actor, who was immersed in the temporality of role-playing and staged repetition. Theater scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte defined this presence as autopoetic, as opposed to mimetic. This nondramatic, non-staged presence on stage has come to be called postdramatic in almost all critical theater studies.

It is important to deal with two erroneous assumptions made by the postdramatic theater. First, what the theatrical gaze sees as the living presence in art performance is not alive. Second, spontaneous behavior, liberated from the discipline of acting and theatrical staging, is not identical to emancipating citizen and society.

In her book The Transformative Power of Performance, Fischer-Lichte encourages theater workers to borrow the anthropology of real presence from contemporary performance art. The same appeal runs through Hans-Thies Lehmanns Postdramatic Theater. In a similar vein, the choreography theorist Andr Lepecki calls for immersion in the authentic present instead of the fictitious narrative depiction that occurs in ballet choreography and classical music. Only in this way, he argues in Exhausting Dance, can we rid ourselves of the authoritarianism of discipline in the performing arts. All three works argue that the score (the original text) and the rehearsal aspect of theater and choreography are rudiments of Western European modernity. Lepecki believes that the compressed time of the performing arts is an allegory of Western Europes colonial geopolitics, which has been reflected in the performing arts in the form of drilling (military science) and commands (promulgation of laws).

Lepecki shows that the composed and choreographed temporality of dance (and therefore of music and the theater) is based on the transient eventfulness of the present moment; that is, the performing arts were shaped to pursue this lost moment of the beautiful present and mourn it. Although Lepecki does not mention it, we would do well to recall the Orphic genealogy of the performing arts and the theater in particular. After all, Orpheuss loss of Eurydice is the lost present moment to which we shall have to return endlessly, repeating it because it is impossible to compensate for. This original grief has molded music, the theater, and later, choreography. Lepecki argues that, given this constellation, the present moment inevitably turns out to be a lost past, a past we never cease pursuing. That is why the classical performing arts are kinetic and involve perfecting the configuration of this kinetics. After all, what matters in this case is clutching at the beautiful as it escapes, hence the kineticism: the work is constructed as a series of such beautiful but passing moments.

Modernitys aesthetic context is thus based on the pursuit of a lost object. That is why the kinetic body must be artificial, disciplinary, sculptured, and architectonicin music, in the theater, and in choreography. Western European modernitys performative paradigm is orchestrated in such a way that the body must acquire impossible abilities and exist in impossible conditions, because every moment that we lose irretrievably in a time-dependent work must be perfectly beautiful. Performance should consist of these fleeting moments, whose disappearance is compensated for by the fact that every moment is a perfect monument to its own disappearance, with the viewer observing the ideals retroactive progress. The work of art, whether theatrical or musical, is composed of extreme moments that drop out of the chronicle of time: the work is thus opposed to the chronic present.

It is just this exaggerated shaping of time in the theater, music, and choreography that Lepecki sees as evidence of violence against time, the body, and societya violence that attempts to generate perfect essences and forms that are not equivalent to life. Therefore, instead of this exaggerated form of time, Lepecki advocates an expanded, democratized, and anti-kinetic durationa present without past and future that does not trigger memory and bid mournful farewells to the transient present. This implies a return to contemplative and solipsistic nonaction, to natural behavior and the bodys presence in the here and nowthat is, to the same living presence that Fischer-Lichte also advocates, mistakenly expecting that it can be found in contemporary performance art. In this disposition, instead of representing events and deeds, radically dramatizing them, and conveying the metanoia in the individuals life, both the body and time should unlearn these modes. Accordingly, they should liberate themselves from the practice of repeated rehearsals in order to find a realm where they can simply be with all the naturalness and intimacy of dissolving into duration, rather than performing something. If this liberation succeeds, there will be no need for the fulfillment of performanceno need to perform and materialize components that materialize even as they disappear.

As Lepeckis analysis shows, it is not only a matter of rejecting dramatization, but also of rejecting the special temporalizing of the work, thus added to the chronic time of existence. Most practitioners and theorists of the theater and modern dance argue that the rejection of all forms of fine-tuned, rehearsed, fictitious performativeness democratizes both the performing process itself and, consequently, the types of presence in public space. Moreover, it enables two milieuxtheatrical action and social discussion, the stage and the agora (agonistic pluralism, to borrow Chantal Mouffes term)to interpenetrate. Not only does democratized postdramatic action seemingly come down to earth and infiltrate the public space, but civic discussion, by rejecting dramatization, also takes to the stage to allow simple forms of conviviality and the controversial compatibility of bodies to find a voice and be presented publicly.

Theater curator Florian Malzacher argues that one can politicize the theater by removing the disciplinary figures of the actor, the dramatic role, the director, and the event from the action, since these components only reproduce a particular social problem, rather than revealing ways to solve it. Instead of fictionally sublimating the event, merely residing in a real social or existential situation is a much more effective way of understanding its essence. The same stance made Lehmann insist much earlier, in 1998, that the theater should rely more on its phenomenological structure, in which the transmission of signals and their reception occur in the same common space and time. (I do not agree with this stance and will explain why below.)

According to Malzacher, if dramatic fictitiousness were abandoned, the theater could focus not merely on certain political issues, but could be the very site of politics, becoming a kind of public parliament within the theatrical institution. The representative model of the theater, based on actors performance of roles, is also socially outmoded. In a truly civil democratic society, a member of the middle class would not portray a poor person, a resident of the rich European north would have no right to speak for an oppressed southerner or a refugee, and a white person would not play a person of color. That is why one should simply be who one is in a particular context, rather than playing the role of someone else, and those who are not involved in the institutional theater should be authorized to appear on the stage both as agents of the performance and as debaters, thus turning the theater into the site of Mouffes agonistic pluralism.

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In the discussions I have named, contemporary art, in which the individuals or the bodys intervention in public space is one of the most important tropes, has become a model of direct political participation for the theater. However, there is more than meets the eye in the naive interpretation of contemporary arts living (as opposed to rehearsed) presence, as promoted by the adherents of the postdramatic turn.

Interestingly, when Fischer-Lichte, Lepecki, and Malzacher call for the radicalization of theater and choreography, they often cite textbook examples of contemporary performance art: for example, the performances of Marina Abramovi (cited by Fischer-Lichte) and Bruce Nauman (cited by Lepecki), and the political ready-mades of Jonas Staal (cited by Malzacher). They identify these performances with post-choreographic or postdramatic practices in the theater and choreography, such as the post-choreographic performances of Xavier le Roy, the productions of Boris Charmatz, and the performances of Maria La Ribot. But try as the abovementioned theorists might, and despite the frequent use of these postdramatic practices in museums and exhibitions, they have nothing to do with contemporary art. For Fischer-Lichte, Abramovi embodies the rejection of the fictitious image of pain in the theater and the autopoetic rejection of theatrical mimesis. For Lepecki, Nauman illustrates the destruction of composed temporality, the end of the choreographic score, and the discovery of a new form of solipsistic intimacy. For Malzacher, Jonas Staals 2012 project New World Summit (2012) is a specimen of agonistic pluralism. The project was presented in theaters as a real ready-made of a congress of unrecognized states, confirming that direct democracy is possible within the walls of the theater, and this is exactly what the repertory theater lacks.

Now let us return to the two abovementioned assumptions made by the postdramatic theater and recall what their fallacies were.

1. What the theatrical gaze sees as a living presence in contemporary performance art is, in fact, not.

2. Democratic liberation from the discipline of acting and the framework of theatrical production does not lead to the emancipation of citizen and society, but only reproduces the mantra of emancipation formally.

Why is the comparison of contemporary performance art to the postdramatic theater a gross aesthetic and epistemological mistake? Because performance art is not and has never been a living presence that is perceived and described phenomenologically. Performance art, even as collective action, is neither a civic act nor direct democratic action. In the performances of Abramovi, Francis Als, Valie Export, and many others, it is vital that the artists body or their actions are transformed into a materialized conceptualized exhibitin a sense, into the embodiment of an abstract concept. They therefore have little connection with the autopoetic freedom of expression about which Fischer-Lichte writes. What the postdramatic theater theorists imagine as the phenomenologically registrable, immediate, and nondramatic presence in performance art is situated outside the dramatic and postdramatic. Why? Because, while the theater, by way of renewing itself, still employs early twentieth-century methods, thus merely demonstrating or deconstructing the medium, art has completely abolished itself as art in order to finally rid itself of all dependence on the audience and establish itself as an institution that references its own emptiness, its own nonexistence. Again, even when the theater explores its own thresholds and tries to introduce self-reflection into the performance, it remains at the level of merely critiquing itself as a medium. The theater has never committed total self-abolition. That is why it prioritizes reception and observation and the need for an audience, despite sometimes engaging in radical experiments that can be difficult to digest. This happens because only the medium-related components of the theater are conceptualized or abolished, while the phenomenological structure itself, which involves observing and registering the action, is not sublated. In other words, the contemporary theater employs various experiments: it dabbles with the absence of action, attempts to be immersive, or tries to rid itself of the actor and other disciplinary theatrical epistemes.

The same thing has been happening in dance, which has been trying to rid itself of choreography and the dancer. Generally, both contemporary theater and contemporary dance have been trying to remove mimetic constructions, showing the viewer the very process of their own disintegration. Nevertheless, both still need an audience on hand to observe their deconstruction. Contemporary art and performance art have no such need because of modern arts absolute self-abolition. Malevichs Black Square (1915) and, later, Duchamps Fountain (1917) devastated the institution of art to such an extent that it became an ideal concept that no longer had any need whatsoever for observation or spectators. That is, the institution of art had to abolish itself totally in order to establish the new institution of contemporary art.

That is why each disciplinetheater, dance, cinemahas its own theory. But the difference between the theory of art and the theories of theater, literature, cinema, and choreography is that contemporary art itself is already theory, as it were: it does not need a theory describing it. That is, as a result of arts self-abolition, that institution has no aesthetics. It has no autonomous phenomenology, only theory. Despite its modernization, the theater has not undergone the complete eradication of its substance, the abolition of the perceptual context of the discipline itself. Consequently, the substance of the theater has not completely left it, although many people would like this substance to be similar to artto become more defamiliarized, more socially engaged, and therefore more appealing to todays progressive viewer.

During a discussion after the premiere of a dance performance of hers, choreographer Alexandra Konnikova, explaining the ethics and poetics of contemporary dance, actually voiced all the postulates outlined above in connection with Lepeckis critique of ballet choreography. In contemporary dance, the body is anti-acrobatic: it strives to naturalize space and time and the modes of existing within them. Our being in this milieu should not be excessive: rather, it should involve self-therapy and self-observation of the bodys internal biorhythms (thus recalling Lepeckis protracted present tense and his defense of self-observation and solipsism). We see such bodies in productions by choreographers such as Charmatz, La Ribot, Le Roy, Constanza Macras, and Jrme Bel, among others. But lets compare these postulates about the bodys naturalization with Grotowskis and Artauds fundamental and opposite demand for supreme excess, for pushing the actors body and mind to the brink. Artauds principal metaphor is athleticism, acrobaticism. For Grotowski as well, the body must be raised to a superhuman sensitivity to become spirit. The bodys acrobatic and athletic excess produces, as it were, an acrobatic amplitude of consciousness, soul, and spirit that endows one with the physical and spiritual abilities to take action. In other words, acting is not so much a profession as a specific psychophysical training that prepares one to perform deeds. This body is neither individual nor solipsistic: it is ideal and therefore universal. Even the Brechtian acting method, which postdramatic theorists often consider the forerunner of post-disciplinary theater practices, does not so much upset the discipline as toughens it, supplementing the actors training with critical civic meta-reflection. In this case, the avant-gardes criticism of repertory theater contradicts critiques of academic theater found in so-called contemporary postdramatic theater. Avant-garde theater criticized mainstream repertory because it weakened the excessive components of theatrical performancethat is, because it lacked purely performative, radical, truly dramatic components. On the contrary, current adherents of the postdramatic aesthetic (Fischer-Lichte, Lepecki, Malzacher) criticize mainstream repertory theater (in which there is nothing left of the rigor of the dramatic genre) for its excessively rigid discipline.

Now let us ask ourselves a question. Can a body that limits itself to a mere natural existence in a particular enduring present, a body for which its own natural solipsistic precarity suffices, really be political? Is not freedom and social activism replaced in this case by the mere demonstration of ones lifestyle, of ones trauma? Consequently, isnt what we observe only the promiscuous admission of all arbitrary forms of behavior into the social and artistic space, rather than a rebellion on the part of these forms? The allusion to contemporary performance art is irrelevant here, because in performance art, the body and its presenceonly simple and unrehearsed at first glanceare in fact rigidly conceptualized and theorized, and turned into an art exhibit, as argued above. In the contemporary postdramatic theater and contemporary dance, however, we observe an endless stream of individualistic and solipsistic self-expression instead of conceptualized ready-mades. As a result, instead of the dimension of the general or universal in postdramatic practices, we observe a sociality that appears, rather, in the image of a panopticon of hybridized individuals, whose unification is possible in the sense that each of them is provided with a mini-arena for demonstrating their everyday identity. Democratization is reduced to this demonstration. Intense forms of emancipation emerge, however, when the individual seeks the dimension of the general in their identity, and not when they are limited to the individual right to everyday life and the narcissistic demonstration of this right.

Post-disciplinary democratic performativity consists in everyones being allowed not to make an extraordinary effort, as if any extraordinary effort can only be the Big Others authoritarian imperative, rather than an ethical, civic, or creative achievement.

In The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler accurately describes the type of socialization intrinsic to the post-disciplinary society, in which gender freedom is not the social horizon of universal emancipation, but that minimal area of bare life that might escape the regulatory apparatus. In this context, gender identityas a type of social emancipationis empowered only within the realm of the clinic. In other words, gender freedom and other representations of identity freedom are realized in the capsule of the clinic, in the mode of freedom from society, rather than freedom for society (that is, for the universal). Liberal democracy in the broad sense is a democracy of individuals free from society, united in a quasi-community similarly free from society. This motif runs like a dotted line through Foucaults analytical critique of post-disciplinary neoliberal society.

Paradoxically, the openness of the public sphere does not involve the dimension of the universal, but a democratic consensus about each individuals freedom from the commons, from society, because the universal is associated with coercion and excessive methods of creative work. In addition, under capitalism, work itself is so excessive and exhausting that creativity must suspend all species of coercion and regulation. On the contrary, all manners of anarchic and perverse everyday life are permitted in the solipsistic quasi-clinical capsule.

Underpinned by this rationale, the theater director or playwright thinks that if they equate the artwork with the everyday flow of time, they will manifest their equality with ordinary citizens who do not have the opportunity to do art and thus incarnate democratic emancipation. In fact, such an approach demonstrates only the middle classs snobbery towards societys unprivileged strata. For the director or playwright should take into account the fact that simple life is not reducible to the mundane flow of time. The everyday working life of ordinary people and their hopes can be much more excessive, ecstatic, musical, and poetic than imagined by progressive intellectuals convinced that liberation from artistic intensities and canons would be liberating and democratic for ordinary people. Artists such as Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier never stop showing and proving the opposite. They depict how, in ordinary life, an excessive or a heroic act happens to be theatrical, so that an ordinary person becomes a performer of the most excessive gestures undermining daily life. In Hanekes film Cach (2005), for example, it is the destitute Arab who proves capable of a radical, deadly performative act in the name of truth and justice.

Based on the arguments above, we can provisionally divide existing practices of theater and performativity into five paradigms:

1. Contemporary performance art. This includes only those practices that have gone down in the history of modern art as conceptualized exhibits, regardless of their processual and temporal structure.

2. Dramatic repertory theater. Most theatrical practices in the world adhere to this paradigm. Claiming to be connected with tradition, such theater has actually forfeited this connection, retaining only formal corporate characteristics and turning into a form of urban leisure. Most performances in such theaters around the worldin Moscow, Petersburg, Berlin, and London resemble staged TV series featuring unpretentious narratives, watered down with current social problems.

3. Postdramatic theater practices. This includes both performative ready-mades that compete with performance art and, generally, all experiments involving so-called direct, non-fictitious presence. The Rimini Protokoll troupe, the director Hannah Hurtzig, the Zentrum fr Politische Schnheit (Center for Political Beauty), the early Milo Rau, and Lotte van der Berg have worked in this vein. The contemporary dance performers that should be mentioned in this context include Xavier Le Roy, Maria La Ribot, and Jrme Bel, among others.

4. Art practices that borrow performing practicesdance, the theater, musicwhile remaining contemporary art, by way of incorporating dramatic, fictitious narratives into the works. This group of practitioners includes the Israeli artist Roee Rosen, with his opera parodies, the German artist Anne Imhof, who uses all the performing arts in her performative canvases (e.g., Faust, 2017), the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, who employs pop and light orchestral music in his performances, and the Petersburg art group Chto Delat.

5. Finally, the fifth paradigm is the theater of theater. This is theater that, on the one hand, has intellectualized itself, disengaged from the discipline, incorporated self-observation of its own methods, along with self-reflection and defamiliarization, abandoned narrative, and also formally gone postdramatic in a sense. In reality, however, these steps towards generalization and self-reflection were made only to strengthen dramatization, so that the actor in such a performance would not just play a role, but become a pathfinder, blazing a trail to the event. Christoph Marthaler, Anatoly Vasiliev, Boris Yukhananov, Heiner Goebbels, Theodoros Terzopoulos, the early Sasha Waltz, and the visual artist Victor Alimpiev (in the play Were Talking About Music, 2007) have engaged in making such theater.

I would like to dwell in more detail on the potential of this fifth performative paradigm. To begin with, the fusions mentioned before between theater and contemporary art have occurred because the theater is sick of its nontheoretical, nonphilosophical nature. What it lacks is knowledge of the world and a meta-position, so it is not surprising that it imitates contemporary art. Contemporary art, on the other hand, is weary of its own severity, its theoreticalness and conceptuality: it wants vitality, eroticism, history, narrative, and to a certain extent, an audience. This essay barely touches on contemporary art itself, focusing instead on how the abovementioned directors have succeeded, without abandoning the discipline of theatrical performance, in being metaphysical, philosophical, and conceptual, in defamiliarizing their methodssometimes by invoking elements of performance artwhile deepening dramatization and, simultaneously, not imitating contemporary art. They have proven that the theater is impossible without a sensual journey to an event that cannot be understood, named, defined, and remembered outside the process of acting and performing. In this performance, the actor is no less important than the director. Or rather, not only is the director an artist and maestro, but so too is the actor; without the actor, the way to the event is impossible. Gilles Deleuze wrote that acting is not a profession, but the acquired ability to traverse an event and repeat it. That is why the actor is a medium of emancipation and a vehicle of painful intuition. According to Deleuze, the actor performs a change of the will, a sort of leaping in place of the whole body which exchanges its organic will for a spiritual will. Grotowski defined this actorly practice as dangerous exposure. Hence the field of sacredness (secular rather than religious) on which all the above directors insist.

In the repertory theater, an actor is schooled like a parrot that has been obliged to play-act and dissemble, while the actor in postdramatic projects is an average joe who holds forth on the stage as if they were standing on an imaginary agora. But for the theater not to become whispered staging, as Artaud feared, the dramatic work must be treated not as a text, but as the score of a performance that has already taken place, for the playwright who has written it down has already performed it as an imaginary actor, rather than as a writer.

These theatrical experiments do not need to recode the discipline of the theater in the idiom of an instantly recognizable democratic mundaneness (so often confused with an analysis of modern life). On the contrary, they often resort to ancient mythology and poetry, to generalized philosophical treatises and music, thus accentuating the declamatory and prosodic components of speech. Their rejection of plotted narrative is aimed not at de-dramatizing what has occurred, but at conceptually and sensually intensifying it to clear a way to the event exclusively in the newspeak of hyperdramatized theatrical performance. Employing the compositional tools of this modespeech, psychophysics, movement, vocal resonance, musical timbre, and poetryit is important that the theatrical performance, no matter what event or issue it deals with, should not present a narrative construction of the event, but rather an aphoristic and poetically philosophical reaction to it. Neither genuine drama nor acting is possible in the absence of a philosophical or provisionally metaphysical perspective. The philosophical dimension generates the distance from the event that enables us to generalize the situation and the problem. Performing is impossible without such generalization, because without it, speech would be bogged down in the prosaic thickets of narration. That is why it is impossible to watch most of whats produced by the repertory theater: speech there becomes an endless prose recitation. In other words, the repertory theater is anti-philosophical and, hence, not modern: it contains no generalized knowledge of the world. Contemporary art has such knowledge, and it is theoretical and philosophical, but its conceptual and philosophical constructions are spatial. By definition, these constructions are neither temporal nor performative, even when it comes to performance art.

Unfortunately, the postdramatic theater, as it imitates contemporary art, cannot even acknowledge arts theoretical-philosophical and absurdist codes. So the former has borrowed only the discourse of social engagement from the latter, along with what we have described above as the living phenomenological presence in the mundane present. In the theater, however, the philosophical dimension should not figure as analytical description, as in theory, nor as absurdist paradox, as in contemporary conceptual art. The philosophical, aphoristic, and poetic dimension should appear in the theater inductively, as Yukhananov has often arguedas inductive (rather than denotative) speech.

Inductivity means that the performative and prosodic process of speech overlaps with the generation of an idea. Paradoxically, this can only happen in the mode of repetitionthat is, in the mode of the actors emitting this idea not from themself, but as it were on behalf of an imaginary someone. This is the most important theatrical performance syndrome, in which the sentence (uttered by the actor) does not narrate, but repeats/performs something over and above what has happened. Outwardly, it might resemble nonsense, glossolalia, or babble, but this does not prevent such speech from constructing a philosophical dimension vis--vis the event. Becketts characters can utter nominally meaningless phrases, but these phrases are simultaneously actorly, theatrical, poetic, and philosophical. When Hamlet utters the phrase To be or not to be, he similarly expresses the most profound philosophical idea in a seemingly unphilosophical or nontheoretical manner. It is a philosophical phrase, but it is simultaneously playful, sarcastic, actorly, and poetic, and it is uttered seemingly on behalf of another performing subjectthat is, the phrase To be or not to be is repetitive. Thus, the loss of the dramatic (the ludic) is fraught not so much with the rejection of plot, fictitiousness, and roles, as with the loss, first of all, of the theaters philosophical (metaphysical) dimension. That is why the repertory theater, the postdramatic theater, and the democratic theater are often stupid, anti-intellectual, unethical, and unmusical. Not to mention the fact that theatrical and cinematic education today trains an actor not as a thinker and an artist, but as a show-business employee.

From our premise about the philosophical and metaphysical dimension necessary to the theater, it follows that this meta-position enables one not merely to mimetically depict so-called life, but also to play a game. What does this mean? That, in all the experiments cited as exemplifying the fifth performative paradigm (the works of Marthaler, Vasiliev, Terzopoulos, and so forth), the theater ends up with exactly the event that has been jettisoned from life and has already become non-mundane, super-existential, excessive, and irremediable. Among such events thrown out of life in theatrical mythology, the stories of Oedipus and Orpheus are the most programmatic. Orpheuss journey to Hades is therefore a metaphor, in a sense, for all truly theatrical action and theatrical processualism. The main event is that the hero has been forced to exit life, but also been forced to perform. (After all, when Orpheus loses Eurydice, he descends into repetition syndrome, speechifying and singing as the only way he can compensate for his loss.) Later, this same performance syndrome is acted out in the theater. That is, the tragedy of Orpheus has to do both with the loss of a loved one, and also with the fact that he is destined never to stop, constantly and syndromatically resuming his lamentations and mourninga performance whose repetition is, in fact, the theater. The story is theatrical because its hero acts out grief, not because he possesses some kind of grief. It is not merely someones grief that informs the theater and the actors craft, but the grief of the one who acts out grief. We thus obtain the formula for the performing of performing, the theater of theater.

Wasnt this also Shakespeares mantra about the theater of theater? After all, only what proved to be theater in his life made it into his plays. Consequently, the theater played the theater. That is why Shakespeares claim that all the worlds a stage is no metaphor at all, but rather a statement of the fact there are realms of life that drop out of life into theatricality, and it is such realms that the theater repeats, reproduces, and adopts. Therefore, the real theater is theater about the theater, not in the modernist sense of art about art, but in the sense of theatrically performing what has proved more intense than life about life itself, of playing the part of life that has proved to be theatrical. This motif manifests in Yukhananovs staging of Andrei Vishnevskys play Pinocchio (2019). Like Orpheus, Pinocchio goes on a journey through the inferno, because this is the only way he can find the beautiful Rose (Eurydice?). But this life journey proves to be a journey through the circles of the theatrical for the puppet (the actor, the poet). The theater is the place where the hero literally drops out of everyday life. The only way to cope with this theatrical withdrawal from existence is with the theaters help.

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The Postdramatic Theater's Misadventures in the Age of Contemporary Art - Journal #120 September 2021 - E-Flux

The triple lock is the most high-profile and contested area of pensions policy. It is also the most misunderstood. The lock, which ensures state pensions rise annually by the highest of average earnings growth, inflation or 2.5%, is almost always discussed in terms of the trade-off between pensioner benefits and working-age benefits. But to frame it simply like this is an error.

Thrse Coffey has today announced the suspension of the triple lock. It will be welcomed by those who believe we need to rebalance public spending from the old to the young. However, despite many arguments to the contrary, young people are in fact among the main beneficiaries of the triple lock. They would actually suffer from its removal.

The idea that scrapping the triple lock would be in the interests of intergenerational fairness rests on a false presumption that if we spend more money on one group of people, we must spend less on another. Yet we can and should spend more on social security for young and old people alike. More important, because the triple lock will have been in operation for decades by the time younger people reach retirement, they will benefit from pensions that are far greater than those of todays retirees such is the power of compound growth over time.

To believe that a Conservative government would invest what it saves by removing the triple lock on todays young people requires some magical thinking. In practice, by reducing the state pension accrual rate (the entitlements we build up in return for paying national insurance), scrapping the triple lock would effectively amount to a significant tax hike on young people. Thats because the tax they pay now would entitle them to a lower income in retirement than previously anticipated.

George Osborne introduced the triple lock in 2010 in order to reward the Conservatives ageing support base. But the right policy introduced for the wrong reasons is still the right policy. The value of the UK state pension is already one of the lowest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (worth less than in any EU country). This was exacerbated by the then coalition governments abolition of the state second pension (creating a single state pension benefit) which, of course, harms todays young people the most, because they will spend most or all of their working life entitled to only the new state pension, rather than the more generous previous system.

Some argue that the UK system is fairly unique because it spends more on subsidising private pensions through pensions tax relief (which costs about 20bn a year). But tax relief does not work as a saving incentive, and its benefits are concentrated on the wealthiest savers. There remains no credible case against the state simply investing these billions in its own state pension system, given its unrivalled capacity to manage very long-term financial risks arising from economic downturns and demographic change.

It is clear that todays young people saddled with student debt and facing astronomical housing costs are unlikely to accumulate wealth at the same rate as the baby boomers. Yet this does not mean that the rather meagre state pension should not continue to increase. If the government really wants to alleviate intergenerational inequality then it should tax some of the wealth that older generations have accumulated. It is worth remembering that the recently and soon-to-be retired have already seen large cuts to their lifetime state pension income due to increases in state pension age which impact most unjustly upon poorer groups with lower life expectancy.

The bleak prospects facing many young people are all the more reason to boost the value of the state pension, so they can look forward to higher financial security in retirement. Doing it gradually (in other words, using the triple lock or something similar) is the best way of ensuring the benefits of increasing the state pension accrue mainly to the young.

This doesnt mean there can be a cast-iron guarantee that the triple lock will remain in place in perpetuity. But the case for increasing the value of the state pension, whether by maintaining the triple lock or another similar measure, is overwhelming. The best way of directing state pension expenditure towards younger generations would, of course, be a steep, one-off increase in its value as these people approach retirement. But increasing the state pension gradually is much more likely to be feasible, politically, than the prospect of a more radical increase at some undefined future point. This is precisely because of the way the triple lock benefits todays retirees a bit, while it will stealthily benefit tomorrows retirees a lot.

The more we raise the state pension now, the harder it will be to cut it back in future. And even if it were the case that the triple lock is intergenerationally unfair now, it would be a small price to pay if steadily increasing the state pension eventually reduces younger cohorts reliance on private options as the old world of occupational pensions crumbles.

It is worth noting, finally, that the present debate around state pension indexation is not really focused on the triple lock at all. The third lock in the current policy is the 2.5% bit, but the state pension had been due to rise sharply by 8% due to the second lock, that is, earnings growth as a result of the peculiar way in which the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the UK labour market. Some see this as policy failure; I see it as a silver lining. It was the Thatcher government that removed the state pension earning link in 1980, leading to an avalanche of pensioner poverty, and its restoration rightly became an article of faith on the left. If we cannot support all benefits rising in line with living standards, without exception, then we cannot make the case for any benefits doing so.

See the rest here:

Suspending the pensions triple lock is bad news for young people - The Guardian

Amendments by Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat MSPs all fell after the new co-operation agreement ensured the Scottish Greens would vote to pass the governments plan despite the party being opposed to the idea before striking a deal to enter government.

Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie was accused of jettisoning his principles" in a heated debate, which also saw the government accused of failing to produce evidence for the move. He had previously warned they would deepen discrimination.

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The scheme was passed by 68 votes to 55, and will now come into operation on October 1, despite much anger by the industries affected.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said vaccines passports were a proportional response to rising Covid cases and would reduce risk while avoiding further restrictions for events, and should also encourage uptake of the vaccine among younger people.

Coronavirus vaccination certificates will now be required to enter events such as nightclubs, music festivals and some football grounds, with staff at the venues able to download a "verifier app" to a smartphone to allow digital checks on peoples certification status.

Guidance will be provided for venues on how to use the app to check for certification although under 18s and adults who are ineligible for vaccination will be exempt.

Health secretary Humza Yousaf said: We must do all we can to stem the rise in cases and vaccine certification will form part of a range measures which can help us to do this.

It will only be used in certain higher risk settings and we hope this will allow businesses to remain open and prevent any further restrictions as we head into autumn and winter.

We do not want to re-impose any of the restrictions that have been in place for much of this year as we all know how much harm they have caused to businesses, to education and to peoples general well-being. But we must stem the rise in cases.

"We want to ensure that as many people get vaccinated as possible and particularly to increase uptake in the younger age cohort, so anything that helps to incentivise that is helpful.

However Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton condemned the decision and confirmed that his party will continue to campaign for the abolition of the passports.

In his speech he warned the government that given the potential for those who have been vaccinated to still transmit the virus, vaccine passports would give people a false sense of security.

We are fundamentally opposed to the introduction of mandatory vaccine certification on grounds both of ideology and of practicality, he said.

In particular I am dismayed that on such a fundamental recalibration of our civil liberties, the government has failed to produce any substantive detail for the introduction of these measures.

Practical problems seem to be endless and will affect virtually everyone.

"Business owners are left in the dark and will have to wait until the very last minute to discover whether they will have to ask for a Covid ID to their patrons. The system does not specify how it will handle those who received one or both doses outside Scotland, nor how it will handle the booster programme. It only leaves questions and confusion.

On the Greens backing the introduction of the vaccine passports, he added: Im saddened by the Scottish Greens abandoning their previous principled opposition to this illiberal policy.

Despite just days notice, no proposed end date to the use of these passports and an open door to their expansion, the Greens will act as midwives to a policy that sets our country on a disturbing and illiberal course.

Scottish Labours health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said there was a real danger that the passports would entrench vaccine hesitancy.

"Almost 60,000 people were consulted by the UK Government, she said, referencing a consultation south of the border on vaccine certfication. How many have the Scottish Government consulted? Have they even spoken to the businesses that will be responsible for implementing this?There seems to have been little meaningful engagement, according to the nighttime industry, and the hospitality industry. And by the government's own admission, in the document published yesterday, they haven't even based this on evidence."

She added: The problems with the current system are fast becoming legend, those on clinical trials not getting certificates, those getting a dose elsewhere not being recorded, those whose data does not match and is wrong.

"So there is a practical question of the government's ability to even implement this. Now, we all know that Covid positive case numbers are very high, frighteningly so, but we need to understand what works and not simply reach for anything, just to be seen to take action and end up making matters worse.

And Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said the plan was riddled with holes.

"The flaws are considerable and the lack of detail is astounding, he said. The SNP government has failed to bring opposition parties or the public onboard with these plans. They didnt even bother to make the effort. At the last minute, all we got was a subpar pamphlet that can be summed up in three words ask again later.

Businesses are being chucked under the bus by these plans. There seems to be no financial support or assistance available to help them administer and enforce this policy. It will hit them with considerable costs but the SNP dont even know how much.

Once again, the people who create jobs in Scotland are treated disgracefully by the SNP government. There are still no answers and no detail on so many key questions.

Nicola Sturgeon is asking that we ignore serious concerns and nod this policy through like her spineless new coalition partners - but we cannot support such weak proposals.

The move was greeted with anger and dismay by the hospitality industry.

The Scottish Licencing Trade Associations managing director, Colin Wilkinson said: The Scottish Government issued a paper on the scheme only this morning, just a few hours ahead of the vote, yet we remain unaware of how it will be implemented.

"Where is the evidence that this action is needed and is proportionate, a word often used by the Deputy First Minister in the debate this afternoon? There has been no assessment of the costs to businesses, nor the impact on the sector.The sector is labelled as being a high-risk setting, but the hospitality industry is not the only sector where people congregate.

He added: We fully support moves to reduce the rate and impact of transmission of coronavirus but these must be proportionate and directed to the sectors or settings responsible for spreading transmission the most.

The finer details of how this scheme will work should have been discussed with the hospitality industry prior to todays debate and vote.

Mr Wilkinson said that the definition of what constitutes a nightclub or an analogous venue must be provided as soon as possible in order to allow premises to put procedures in place for the implementation of the scheme.

UKHospitality Scotland Executive Director Leon Thompson said the result was extremely disappointing.

"The Scottish Government has not listened and now our businesses face just three weeks in which to prepare for a policy that will put further economic and resourcing pressures on them.

"The Scottish Government has not consulted with hospitality, it has not produced any credible plans for the introduction of passports and it has not even defined what a nightclub is. This leaves many businesses fearful that they will fall within scope of this legislation and concerned about the open-ended costs they might now face.

UKHospitality Scotland will continue to push for solutions to ensure the worst effects of this policy are mitigated, so our members can continue to work towards recovery.

Read more:

Vaccine passports in Scotland from October 1 as MSPs approve move - The Scotsman

NO SURPRISE that the Democratic Unionist Party leader chose the day the EUs key Brexit person was in town to issue his latest big threat: collapsing power sharing if the Norths special trade status is not changed in a big way.

ut Jeffrey Donaldson also spent a lot of time couching this threat in as much reasonable language as possible.

And he notably did not shut any door on potential compromise, seeking major change to the so-called Northern Ireland EU Brexit Protocol but not its abolition.

The EUs representative, the unflappable Commissioner Maros Sefcovic who is spending two days meeting all concerned by Brexit in the North, urged everyone to talk less and work more.

Lets dial down the political rhetoric, lets bring calm and focus on what is our task to accomplish, the Slovakian Commissioner said after meeting business people in Newry.

Mr Donaldson has been in trouble since he took over as DUP leader in late June. An opinion poll at the end of last month put his party on less than half its vote take in their last electoral outing, and in joint fourth place on level terms with the nationalist SDLP and cross-community Alliance Party.

The two other unionist parties, the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party, which was eclipsed by the DUP in 2004, and the more hardline True Unionist Voice, are both ahead of Mr Donaldsons party.

Internally, his own partys activists have been adding to the pressure by urging him to stand up to Dublin, the EU, Sinn Fin and the SDLP.

But he is also boxed in as any move for elections in the North earlier than those scheduled for next May would spell disaster given those opinion poll ratings.

So, he announced the withdrawal from North-South government co-operation bodies something that is half-happening already all the while pledging to continue health and anti-Covid co-operation to stave off allegations of irresponsibility.

The DUP leaders speech was long and nuanced, taking half an hour to deliver. In essence he said if the protocol was not changed,then the DUP would have to quit power-sharing, and this would become clear over the coming weeks

TaoiseachMichel Martinsaid the DUP leaders statement posed new challenges. But after meeting also with Mr Sefcovic Mr Martin said the EU was willing to make the necessary compromises if met in the proper spirit by the UK negotiators.

The deadlock has remained the same since the start of the year. The UK Government signed up to a political deal in late 2019, reinforced by a trade deal in 2020, which prevented a renewed visible north-south border in Ireland after Brexit.

But to protect the EUs single market there must be checks on some goods coming from Britain into the North. The UK originally sought to deny and downplay the importance of these checks. But more recently Boris Johnsons government has taken up the cudgels on behalf of the Northern unionists and claimed these checks are tougher and more widespread than originally understood to be happening.

The EU has flatly refused UK demands to reopen the Northern Ireland Protocol but is open to talks aimed at smoothing out implementation difficulties.

Northern Ireland business people have signalled their preference for some kind of compromise arguing that the bigger trade picture is best served in this way.

More here:

DUP: As Jeffrey Donaldson issues threat over power sharing, DUP leader takes care not to shut door on Brexit deal - Independent.ie

Julius Jones, one of forty-six people now on Oklahomas death row, will be considered for clemency by that states Pardon and Parole Board next week. He is scheduled to be executed on October 28. Jones claims that he is innocent of the murder for which he was sentenced to death when he was 19 years old, a claim that is supported by substantial evidence.

His case, which from start to finish was tainted by racial bias, has attracted nationwide attention and renewed calls to re-examine the use of clemency in capital cases.

Against a background of capital punishments diminishing hold in this countrys penology and politics, individualized grants of clemency in capital cases remain rare.

It is time for abolitionists and others to pay attention. Many people whose cases and circumstances cry out for mercy should be high on the agenda for all who seek to end the death penalty.

In 2002, when Jones was sentenced for the shooting death of Paul Howell, Oklahoma executed seven people, making it one of the most aggressive death penalty states. From 1976 to 2015, the date of its last execution, it put 112 people to death, the most of any state other than Texas and Virginia.

At the start of this century, capital punishment, not only in Oklahoma, seemed to be a permanent part of Americas criminal justice system; grants of clemency in capital cases were very rare.

But today, almost two decades later, the situation has changed dramatically. We are in the midst of a national reconsideration of the death penalty, evidenced by dramatic declines in death sentences and executions. Moreover, the period since 2007 has witnessed the largest number of states abolishing capital punishment during any comparable time period in American history,

Yet, as an important study by lawyer Laura Schaefer and sociologist Michael Radelet points out, the use of clemency in capital cases like Joness has lagged behind this larger trend and not reflected that same abolitionist momentum.

As Schaefer and Radelet point out, Only 82 commutations and five pardons have been granted on the individualmerits of the case since 1976. That averages to about two commutations or pardons per year, and roughly one commutation for every 17.5 executions.

These low numbers represent a radical shift from several decades ago, when governors granted clemency in 20 to 25 percent of the death penalty cases they reviewed. In Florida, for example, governors commuted 23 percent of death sentences between 1924 and 1966, yet no Florida death penalty sentences have been commuted since 1983. Similarly in Texas, since 1976 there have been only 2 commutations in capital cases.

In contrast to the rarity of clemency grants to individuals on death row, Schaefer and Radelet note that there have been 206 commutations and pardons included in what they call broad grants of clemency. These occur when governors have emptied death rows, usually close in time to the abolition of capital punishment in that state.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that there have been seven such broad or blanket grants of clemency given to death row prisoners since 1976. Four of them have occurred since 2007, in New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, and Colorado, each of which stopped using capital punishment entirely.

It is less risky for governors to use their clemency power when they have broad support for ending the death penalty than to go out on a limb and grant mercy to any particular death row inmate.

Even when they take such risks, governors almost always use grants of clemency to correct demonstrable errors or miscarriages of justice, like those that seem evident in the Jones case, rather than as exercises of grace or mercy. Rejecting appeals from the Pope, Mother Teresa, televangelist Pat Robertson, former prosecutors, and even judges and jurors in death cases, governors reserve their clemency power for cases which they can present as unusual, in which someone clearly has been unfairly convicted or whose conviction was tainted by racism.

Such a narrow and constrained view of the ground of clemency in capital cases is a departure from early to mid-twentieth-century practice, when many governors took a broad view of their clemency power.

Terry Sanford, Governor of North Carolina from 1961 to 1965, provides one example of such a view. The courts of our state and nation exercise in the name of the people the powers of administration of justice. Sanford said:

The Executive is charged with the exercise in the name of the people of animportant attitude of a healthy societythat of mercy beyond the strict framework of the law. The use of executive clemency is not a criticism of the courts, either express or implied. Executive clemency does not involve the changing of any judicial determination. It does not eliminate punishment; it does consider rehabilitation. To decide when and where such mercy should be extended is a decision which must be made by the Executive.

More than three decades after the fact, our political leaders seem haunted by the memory of what happened to Michael Dukakis during his 1988 presidential campaign against then-Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. During that campaign, Bush ran a series of advertisements, the so-called Willie Horton ads.

Those ads blamed Dukakis for supporting a policy that furloughed murders from prison while they were serving their sentences. These ads created a media rampage that turned the tide for Bush. They accomplished this by making a black man who brutalized a white couple the symbolic representation of Dukakiss alleged soft on crime attitudes and policies.

But 2021 is not 1988. Fear of crime today is a less potent political issue than it was then. And support for the death penalty is lower while awareness of its flaws is higher than in the late 1980s. Even many prominent conservatives now are working to end capital punishment.

So great is the change that in 2020 every candidate for the Democratic nomination for president openly opposed the death penalty, and the country now has its first death penalty abolitionist as president.

Todays governors have less to fear when they consider commutations and pardons in death cases than in the Dukakis days. But less to fear is different from nothing to fear. Exercising mercy requires courage and conviction to see someone worth saving in those who now populate this countrys death rows.

There is much work to do before we will see a revival of the spirit of mercy and, with it, grants of clemency in individual death cases.

That revival can come about only if opponents of the death penalty put it high on their agenda. Even as they work to highlight injustices of the kind that mar the prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of people like Julius Jones, they must make a place in their movement for a politics that values mercyeven for those who have been justly convicted of committing the most serious criminal offenses.

See the article here:

Abolitionists Must Put Reviving Clemency in Capital Cases High on Their Agenda - Justia Verdict

This is Part I of a two-part essay.

For at least a century there have been two Strathconas in Vancouver: the Strathcona of urban elites and the Strathcona of the working class. From early-colonial settlement into the late-colonial present, the first Strathcona has been built as a peaceable property-owning enclave for the middle and upper classes. But at important moments the second, popular Strathcona the neighborhood of immigrants, workers, and Indigenous people has been able to resist, build alternatives, and stand in the way of state and capitalist plans for the area.

Recently, in April 2021, the local state fulfilled one such plan with a mass eviction of Camp H.O.P.E.S. in Strathcona (formerly KT Tent City). The eviction occurred at the exact location of a tent city that once stood decades before, a large East End jungle evicted by the City in 1931. While the individual cast and characters are new, the historical cycle of displacement is far from unprecedented in the neighbourhood.

Forced displacement and the eviction of tent cities is a key if forgotten part of the history of Strathcona, beginning in the late nineteenth century with the original settler-colonial displacement from Indigenous settlements at Kumkumalay (present-day Dunlevy) and elsewhere in the area. History is never the simple author of lessons for the present, but these moments of displacement and the counter-movement of resistance and self-organization that accompany them need to be remembered and revisited in our process of learning, organizing, and resisting today.

East End Jungles

Though each new tent city in Strathcona and Vancouver seems to elicit fresh shock and outrage from local government, police, and elites, the existence of encampments in Vancouver is more common than not and the Strathcona neighbourhood is no exception. Following the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the housing crisis intensified in Vancouver and Strathcona. Low wages proved unable to match high rents and an endemic shortage of affordable housing, leading to regular evictions. In a June 1931 report to Vancouvers Mayor and Council, officials estimated there were at least four East End hobo jungles or encampments in the area to the east of False Creek, housing more than 1,000 people (the East End was later renamed Strathcona).

The local state responded with overwhelming force. By September 1931, city crews raided, demolished and burned each of the tent cities.1 Like tent cities today, each encampment had forged its own separate community, built on bonds of survival and political solidarity. The jungle near the Georgia viaduct sheltered up to 200 unemployed residents and was known as a place to drink in relative isolation from the enforcement of temperance and prohibition. In contrast, an encampment of unemployed workers perceived to be more sober and respectable was set up near Dunlevy Avenue. Another 100 men lived in shacks near the Great Northern Railway buildings. Lastly, the jungle at Prior and Campbell Avenue housed many immigrant workers laid off from the logging industry. This was also the location of the city dump, and the exact location of todays Strathcona Park.2

Despite their differing levels of disfavor with the government and media, all camps were smashed and dispersed by the end of 1931.3 Many residents were either forced to live in other clandestine locations in the East End or take up residence in the growing number of shelters run by Central City Mission. At the time the government officially cited typhoid as a cause for the evictions. In truth it was a strategy to break up concentrations of working-class life and the threat posed to Vancouvers property-owning social contract, because the East End hobo jungles had had in fact transformed into urban hotbeds of Communist, leftist, and IWW organizing.4 In this respect they had become a kind of urban version of the relief camps. The relief camps had been set up in rural and interior BC during the depression by the federal government in a scheme to provide room-and-board in exchange for hard labour.

Anti-Communist Repression in Strathcona

A wave of strikes and occupations across the 1930s marked a period of increased class tension in Vancouver, punctuated by the Ballantyne Pier strike (1935), the occupation of the Vancouver Museum (1935), and the Vancouver Post Office occupation (1938). Each of these events was indelibly tied to Strathcona. The strike at Ballantyne pier started on the waterfront but soon turned into a prolonged battle between workers and police that criss-crossed through the streets of the neighborhood, including right up to the door of the Lord Strathcona School itself. Supporters also turned Strathconas Ukrainian Hall into a makeshift hospital for strikers, which would not be the last such act of solidarity. In 1938 the Womens Emergency Committee would be formed out of the same hall to help build support for the Post Office sit-down strike.5

The Ballantyne strike and the sit-in occupations are now canonical historical events in Vancouver working-class history, but there were also a whole series of similar events in Strathcona throughout the 1930s that might help shed light on our present moment. In 1933 the Workers Ex-Servicemens League (WEL) was evicted from the Strathcona School the event can be found in the VPD archives under the euphemistic designation Strathcona School disturbances.

Ex-servicemen who had fought in WWI formed the WEL, which had 2,000 members by 1933. The group was aligned with the Communist Party and had prominent Communist members in its leadership but was not officially a Red organization. WEL members had seen the horrors of the trenches and were resolutely antiwar. They argued that resources should be used for social reconstruction instead of remilitarization.6

The politics of the WEL also extended beyond their opposition to war and fascism. An August 1933 resolution of the WEL made demands to abolish the relief camps, increase the minimum wage, provide adequate housing, and provide dignified benefits for the families of ex-servicemen to which the local elite responded with astonishing repression.

The WEL demanded the right to eat and sleep where they choose.7 This was both a response to the eviction of the Strathcona encampments, and also to the conditions in the shelters and other relief institutions, which were deemed unfit for human occupancy.8If workers refused to accept the states offer it resulted in being cut off from any future relief, a policy that Mayor Gerald McGeer continued when elected the following year.

The policy echoes loudly in todays eviction of tent city encampments. At Strathcona Park tent city residents were recently given a stark choice: face arrest or accept coercive slum conditions in SROs and shelters. Like the Strathcona Park residents today, the Ex-Servicemen demanded adequate social housing run by democratic state bodies, rather than private developers and charities. Specifically, they called for housing right by the DSCR (Department of Soldiers Civil Re-establishment).9

Police Riot at Strathcona School

In late 1933 the WEL booked and paid for a reservation of the auditorium at the Strathcona School. The November 9 meeting was intended to prepare for a march and rally on Armistice Day, where WEL resolutions for adequate housing and the abolition of the relief camps would also be reiterated. In the weeks leading up to the events, WEL delegates made several visits and letters to the constable of the VPD, attempting to get confirmation that their event would be allowed to proceed.10 Finally on the afternoon of November 9th, only a few hours before the meeting was to be convened, the constable and Mayor Taylor abruptly cancelled the meeting and forced the Strathcona School principal to send back the reservation fee paid by the WEL.

When ex-servicemen arrived at the school for their evening meeting, WEL leadership read aloud the Citys letter stating that the meeting would be cancelled. At this time, mounted police arrived and began brutally assaulting WEL members with fists and clubs. Affidavit testimonials of the repression and police violence are harrowing. The attack on the crowd was sudden and unannounced, with officers swinging clubs and loudly cursing at members of the crowd. In a chilling testimonial, one member recounts: instantly a squad of Mounted Police Officers charged through the crowd, clubbing over the head every man who could not get out of their way, at the same time using such expressions as, Run you degenerated Sons of Bitches, Dirty Bums and Bastards.11

On the ground, this was a conflict between starving workers and comfortable police, or in the words of the WEL: overfed Policelet loose with curses and clubs.12In the bigger picture this was a class conflict between the bourgeois state and resistant masses. Later, Mayor Taylor claimed he had directed police not to use their clubs, but the damage was already done.

Flu, disease, and biopolitical control

The strategy of naked police repression to displace the unwanted was matched with a subtler strategy to weaponize medical power in a language of public health. As today, when threats of COVID-19, E-coli and shigella are used to justify mass evictions of tent cities (irrespective of the fact that people do not have anywhere else to go and are likely at greater risk of contracting illness or disease if forced to disperse), public health was a key tool in the states arsenal to displace and disperse.

In the 1930s this mode of biopolitical control essentially meant invoking public health as a more neutral and scientific cover for property-owning interests in Strathcona and underlying policies of white supremacy. This process had already reared its head in Strathcona in previous decades, with Chinese residents facing down new forms of discriminatory power during the flu pandemic in 1919.13 At the time, Chinatown and the Chinese community were simultaneously contained and attacked, designated as reservoirs of disease, as Mary Ellen Kelm points out in her study on the flu pandemic in British Columbia in 1918-1919.14

Chinatown and Strathcona were consistently framed in pathological terms as a place of deteriorating health and degenerate bodies. This discourse provided a basic justification for both invasion and repression, but also public health neglect and segregation. Throughout the 1930s, the states raids against places of working-class survival intensified, including encampments, hospitals, residences, brothels, and rooming houses.15In response to this repression and to worsening conditions of unemployment, a growing counter-power took shape in what we may call subaltern Strathcona.

Subaltern Strathcona

By the 1930s, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews descended from across Eastern Europe, and Slavic people of all nationalities were entering a universe of East Vancouver socialist and Communist community, political organization, and daily life. The Strathcona of the 1930s and 40s was made up of people like the well-known Bezubiak and the Polowy families from Ukraine, who participated in the May Day rallies, linked arms with the Communists, and immersed themselves in the anti-fascist politics of the neighborhood.16 Throughout the 1930s the Ukrainian Hall (Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association) played an important role in the class politics of the city, providing political education, mutual aid, and self-help for the Ukrainian community. As one worker put it, we knew we needed a meeting place for mutual support. There was no welfare or social services we had to do it for ourselves.17

By the middle of the 1930s the demand to close the relief camps had grown undeniably strong. After the government conceded in 1937 and announced the closure of the camps, no genuine transition plan was made and thousands of unemployed workers were forced into deepening poverty. Communists organized the unemployed into different sections to carry out various survival activities like tin-canning (organized begging) but when the city banned tin-canning, the movement was further emboldened in its demands. On May 20, 1938, around 1,200 unemployed workers occupied the Georgia Hotel, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Vancouver Post Office.18 A Womens Emergency Committee was formed out of Strathconas Ukrainian Hall to help build support for the Post Office sit-down strike.19The occupations at the Art Gallery and the Post Office lasted for five weeks, until state repression was unleashed during Bloody Sunday on June 19th. The actions of the Womens Emergency Committee would be one of their last acts of political solidarity before the Ukrainian Hall was seized by the government in 1940 under the War Measures Act.20

When city planners surveyed Strathcona in the 1940s, they described not only a biopolitical threat to public health, but also an insurgent social threat. It was clear that the propertyless were continuing to organize after WWII, and that their self-organization would continue to come under assault much like the previous generation of unemployed workers evicted from the jungles. Often this threat was reframed in euphemistic terms of urban criminality and delinquency, and in technocratic jargon as an area badly in need of rationalization.21 It was an area of crime, delinquency and vice, as one politician described it at the time, and an area whose very existence posed a threat to Vancouvers bourgeois legal order.22

In addition to its expression as colonial, anti-Black, and anti-Asian racism, this medico-biopolitical characterization of Strathcona was also racialized in its reference to Jews, Slavs, and other European immigrants who had not yet been fully integrated into the caucasian race at this moment in history.23 The attempt to drain the swamp of urban rebellion in Strathcona was inseparable from the Canadian project of white supremacy. The effort to build white Canada forever remained a clear goal of planners, politicians, and property owners across Vancouver.24

In reading the history of a neighborhood, references to crime and irrationality must be peeled back their true meaning is something closer to the political intelligence of a class in revolt. When postwar Canada launched its political attack on Communism, it also extended into a cultural politics of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant racism, expressed as WASP anxieties about cultural Bolshevization. These dovetailed with wider imperatives of colonialism, white supremacy, and Canadian nation-building in Vancouver.

This quasi-racial element was always inseparable from the class aspect and was often a way of flattening or coding an explicit class project and replacing it with a more amorphous framing, in the form of a fear-mongering and moral panic about contaminated others and a criminal underclass who did not respect the allegedly democratic order.25New strategies of class containment were necessary in this evolving conjuncture. What followed was the Marsh Plan in the 1940s.

Marsh Plan and Popular Insurrection, or, Planning Against Communism

After WWII, workers organized locally in the face of chronic poor-quality housing, low vacancy, and a systemic lack of affordable housing options in Vancouver. Tenants came together spontaneously and in formal organizations of the Communist and non-Communist left over the course of the 1940s.These organizing efforts included the 5,000 Homes Now! campaign, a coalition of over 50 organizations based in Vancouver. The campaign was in large part organized by Communist activists, who at the time were active under the umbrella of the Labour Progressive Party (LPP).26 LPP members helped build broad support for the campaign through direct and militant tactics that drew the disapproval of the established Left and other moderate forces. Direct action became an important strategy for the movement, in particular the numerous emergency picket lines at sites of new evictions.27

Throughout this period, state authorities responded to the housing crisis reluctantly but with increasing levels of urgency. The private housing market was not meeting the basic housing needs of a massive number of people. In turn, this failure was seen by planners as a source of subaltern revolt, and hence as a threat to the liberal order both in its repressive-policing and parliamentary-democratic institutions. Planners and elites began to genuinely feel their power being put into question and feared that events like the occupation of Hotel Vancouver were part of a public insurrection.28

To make matters worse, this local threat was, in the eyes of elites, paired with the international bogeyman of Communism. It was in this context that the Marsh Plan was born.In the electoral sphere the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), the more left-leaning equivalent of todays NDP, was also polling at record levels in the years immediately after the war.

Marsh was a social democrat influenced by the economic ideas of Keynes, who believed that state planning was a means to both relieve the hardship of working-class communities and manage the political crisis of capitalist inequality. Uprisings like the occupation of the Hotel Vancouver in 1946 were an urgent reminder to planners and politicians that the class politics of the 1930s had in no way been left behind or superseded by the war.29 With the mounting strength of labor and with the Soviet Union playing a central role in the defeat of the Axis powers, the anti-Communist lesson was newly written into the consciousness of Canadian liberals: provide a bare minimum of social welfare or face upheaval.

Marsh was a social democrat influenced by the economic ideas of Keynes, who believed that state planning was a means to both relieve the hardship of working-class communities and manage the political crisis of capitalist inequality. Uprisings like the occupation of the Hotel Vancouver in 1946 were an urgent reminder to planners and politicians that the class politics of the 1930s had in no way been left behind or superseded by the war.29 With the mounting strength of labor and with the Soviet Union playing a central role in the defeat of the Axis powers, the anti-Communist lesson was newly written into the consciousness of Canadian liberals: provide a bare minimum of social welfare or face upheaval.

The construction of mass housing and the planned regulation of the private housing market were introduced as responses to this threat, and Marsh was explicit about the reactive aspect of postwar reconstruction. As he said in a talk delivered to the CBC in 1958, democratic national planning is the strongest of all bulwarks against Communism.30 Without the looming threat of Communism, it would be impossible to understand the Marsh Plan.

Soon these imperatives of anti-communist planning would more fully merge with a politics of anti-Black slum clearance at Hogans Alley, Vancouvers only black neighborhood. The Marsh Plan would serve as a guide for the postwar state to carry out slum clearance and urban renewal in Strathcona, which included the demolition of Hogans Alley between 1967 and 1971. Urban renewal would also continue to fuse with a wider politics of colonial urban resettlement and segregation across Vancouver, drawing deeply on a project of white supremacy inherent in the Canadian nation-building project. Part II of this essay will discuss the politics of displacement in Strathcona and Hogans Alley, but also the fierce resistance on the part of Black and Chinese communities. These events were followed by decades of continued Black, Indigenous, and working-class resistance right up until the present, revealed in the strong communities who fought back but were eventually uprooted at Strathcona Park this past April.

Notes

Thank you to the archivists at the City of Vancouver Archives, and thanks to Sasha Bondartchouk for transcription assistance. Also thank you to Caitlin Shane, Vince Tao, Byron Peters, Andrew Witt, Andrei Mihailiuk, and Maria Wallstam for reading versions of this essay, all possible errors remain my own.

[1] Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, A Sign for the City (Vancouver: City of Vancouver Public Art Program, 2012), unpaginated, see entry for September 4

[2] Jill Wade, Houses for All: The Struggle for Social Housing in Vancouver, 1919-50 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994) pp. 44-45

[3] Todays demarcation of a deserving and undeserving poor was clearly already being put in motion by the early part of the century. See Jesse Proudfoot, The derelict, the deserving poor, and the lumpen: A history of the politics of representation in the Downtown Eastside, in Stan Douglas: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 2011), pp. 88-105

[4] Hal Griffin and Sean Griffin, Fighting Heritage: Highlights of the 1930s struggle for jobs and militant unionism in British Columbia, Ed. Sean Griffin (Vancouver: Tribune Publishing, 1985); Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver: New Star, 1990)

[5] Irene Howard, The Mothers Council of Vancouver: Holding the Fort for the Unemployed, 1935-1938, BC Studies No. 69/70 (Spring/Summer 1986) p. 278; See also Opening Doors: Vancouvers East End, Eds. Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter, Sound Heritage Vol. VIII, Nos. 1 & 2 (1979) pp. 134

[6] Statement of the WEL Central Committee (September 28, 1933), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[7] WEL letter to Vancouver City Council (December 4, 1933), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[8] C. Willmott Maddison letter to Oscar Orr (November 20, 1033), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[9] See Comrades! Wake Up!, WEL statement (September 28, 1933), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[10] Statement of F. Fox, T.R. Casey, and G.E. Laycock (see p. 5), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[11] Statement of T.R. Casey (p. 7), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[12] WEL letter to Vancouver City Council (November 16, 1933), CVA Archives Ref VPD-S181

[13] Ellen Scheinberg, Battling both Racial Persecution and the Flu Pandemic: The Chinese Community of Strathcona, Vancouver (Defining Moments, 2018)

[14] Mary Ellen Kelm, Flu Stories: Engaging with Disease, Death and Modernity in British Columbia, 1918-1919, in Epidemic Encounters: New Interpretations of Pandemic Influenza in Canada, 1918-1920, Eds. Magda Fahrni and Esyllt Jones (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), pp. 167-192

[15] As Ellen Scheinberg points out, the Chinese community in Chinatown and Strathcona faced two pandemics in 1919: both the outbreak of the Spanish flu, but also an outbreak of state repression against the Chinese community and its neighborhood infrastructure, including repeated police raids against its hospital on East Pender Street.

[16] Opening Doors: Vancouvers East End, Eds. Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter, Sound Heritage Vol. VIII, Nos. 1 & 2 (1979) pp. 132-138

[17] Vancouver Moving Theatre, Bread & Salt: A tribute to the East Ends historic Ukrainian Community (Vancouver: DTES Heart of the City Festival, Vancouver Moving Theatre & Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, 2013) p. 21

[18] Fighting for Labour: Four Decades of Work in British Columbia, 1910-1950, Sound Heritage, Vol. VII, No. 4 (Victoria: Aural History Program, 1978) p. 49

[19] Vancouver Moving Theatre, Bread & Salt (Ibid.) p. 29

[20] Opening Doors: Vancouvers East End (Ibid.) p. 134

[21] Leonard Marsh cited in Kate Murray, Seriality and Invitation: Knowing and Struggle in Vancouver Chinatowns Historic Area Height Review, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia (2007) p. 231

[22] Kate Murray, Seriality and Invitation (Ibid.) p. 231

[23] Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006)

[24] W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1978)

[25] More accurately, the discourse on race was often permeated with moments of class and vice versa As Stuart Hall put it, [race is] the modality in which class is lived, the medium through which class relations are experienced. Stuart Hall, Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance, in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Ed. United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Paris: UNESCO, 1980) pp. 305345

[26] Jill Wade, Citizens in Action: Local Activism and National Housing Programs, Vancouver, 1919-1950, PhD Dissertation, Simon Fraser University (September 1991) p. 315

[27] Jill Wade, Citizens in Action (Ibid.) p. 308

[28] Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, The New Spirit (Ibid.) p. 184 (f.n. 68)

[29] Jill Wade, A Palace for the Public: Housing Reform and the 1946 Occupation of the Old Hotel Vancouver, BC Studies No. 69/70 (Spring/Summer 1986)

[30] Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, The New Spirit (Ibid.) p. 64

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Two Strathconas The Mainlander - The Mainlander

The end of summer means youll be seeing viral Outfit of the Day videos and creepy door chants flooding your social media feed from students rushing Greek life organizations. As a Jesuit college, Fordham University doesnt have a Greek life scene. Some students may undoubtedly feel theyre missing out on the traditional college experience, and the glamorized houses, parties and friendships.

However, what viral TikToks and Instagram posts dont show are the ugly sides to Greek life, such as the expensive dues, the safety risks and the discriminatory practices with which historically white social Greek letter organizations are associated.

In reality, the Greek life tradition should not be indicative of what a normal college experience in the United States is supposed to look like, but should instead be seen as a dangerous curse, the continuation of which is harmful to college students.

Insiders and outsiders alike of Greek life know one thing about the recruitment process: prospective new members are often hazed before they can join an organization. This is usually justified by Greek organizations as building brother/sisterhood or through claims that hazing is just doing menial tasks and is harmless fun. However, hazing in practice is often much more serious.

While every organization is different, some members have described being forced to simulate oral sex with cucumbers, bring bathing suits and magic markers and falsely being told that sisters would circle body fat on new members, and sit in a kiddie pool filled with rotten food and excrement for hours.

Although most universities and chapters have anti-hazing regulations and hazing is a crime in many states, this hasnt stopped the practice.

They were the lucky ones. There have been over 50 hazing-related deaths since 2000 in colleges across the country. Oftentimes these deaths are related to heavy drinking, but official causes of death have included head injury, heatstroke and cardiac arrest. What has been labeled as a right of passage has been recreated year after year in a traumatic and sometimes fatal experience. Because of Greek organizations strict policies against sharing what happens during rush, most stories go unreported.

Although most universities and chapters have anti-hazing regulations and hazing is a crime in many states, this hasnt stopped the practice. Rather, it has encouraged students to remain silent for fear of legal repercussions for their chapter and their friends. No social organization is worth the lives of dozens of young people and considering how important hazing is to the Greek experience, it may be time to give the idea of abolition serious consideration.

Still, some argue that hazing is only an issue when recruits first seek out membership in a Greek organization, but Greek life often puts their members and their communities at risk throughout the school year.

Greek life is associated with a culture of sexual assault. According to The Guardian, fraternity brothers are three times more likely to rape than non-fraternity men, and sorority women are 74% more likely to experience rape than non-sorority women. Recently, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter (also known as Fiji) at the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus was suspended after students protested the fraternitys presence on campus due to an alleged assault that took place on the first day of classes.

University officials refusal to outright ban the fraternity and the fraternitys casual and mocking tone toward the protests demonstrates how normalized sexual assault has become in Greek letter organizations.

Hundreds of students gathered outside the Phi Gamma Delta house for several nights in a row, and students claim to have received via Airdrop a video from fraternity members inside the house of brothers laughing and making fun of protesters. Many students are calling for the fraternity to be banned from campus, especially since this is not the first time the fraternity has been suspended.

Student protests represent a change in the culture surrounding Greek life; however, university officials refusal to outright ban the fraternity and the fraternitys casual and mocking tone toward the protests demonstrates how normalized sexual assault has become in Greek letter organizations.

Students arent only at risk of being attacked or hazed when they join Greek life, but also of getting sick. Many Greek organizations have been accused of causing COVID-19 outbreaks on their campuses. Last winter, Chi Phi at Lehigh University allegedly hosted COVID parties, at which students who tested positive for COVID-19 or who had already been exposed to the virus were invited.

Needless to say, Greek organizations tend to attract students of middle- or upper-class standing.

Unsurprisingly, the party culture and lack of regulation associated with Greek life have extended to the COVID-19 crisis, demonstrating some organizations lack of care for the general well-being of their campuses and surrounding communities and a belief that they are above the rules both written and social.

Many Greek organizations are the most secretive about one thing in particular: dues. Although most chapters urge their members not to share this information, dues can range from anywhere between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a semester. This does not include the cost of living in a sorority or fraternity house if a student chooses to do so or the costs associated with fundraisers, gifts for other members, new clothing and other social obligations. Needless to say, Greek organizations tend to attract students of middle- or upper-class standing.

So where does the money go? Most of the money contributes to paying national conference dues, national chapter dues, insurance for the chapter and costs associated with running the individual chapter and its social events. But some organizations dip their hands into politics and donate to the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, also known as FratPAC.

FratPAC claims to be a bipartisan organization that seeks to amplify the benefits of the fraternal experience for students, however, it does so by advocating against strict hazing laws and for tax loopholes for Greek-owned houses and laws that strengthen the due process rights for alleged sexual assault offenders, potenitally making it harder for victims to come foward. Although the organization claims to be bipartisan, the majority of its funding goes to Republican candidates, with its largest contribution in the last election cycle going to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

For some colleges, Greek organizations can play an even greater role in school and local politics.

For some colleges, Greek organizations can play an even greater role in school and local politics. At the University of Alabama, the Machine, an underground organization of fraternities and sororities secretly determines how students should vote in the student government and even local school board elections. From 1986-2015, no student government president was elected without the Machines support. The group allegedly terrorized non-Machine candidates, specifically African Americans, by putting burning crosses in their yards, threatening them and their families, and even running a campaign member off the road.

The group has also been accused of pressuring Greek students into voting a certain way by bribing them with free drinks and limo rides and of using these practices to swing local school board elections. Although the University of Alabama has never formally acknowledged the Machines existence, the schools newspaper published a timeline of the Machines alleged activities in a magazine for new students. Considering the political impact of Greek letter organizations, it is worthwhile to examine the historic makeup of these groups.

Greek letter organizations were historically created by upper-class white students on the basis of excluding others, and this practice still exists today. Many students have shared their stories of racist encounters while participating in Greek organizations, leading some chapters to disband entirely.

The continued homogenous presence of Greek organizations rests in the rush process. Former members of sororities describe ranking potential new members based on appearance and how much they look like the rest of the group.

Greek organizations actively discriminate in their recruitment process.

In 2010, 77% of sorority members at Princeton University were white, and fewer than 10% were from middle- or lower-class families. Greek organizations actively discriminate in their recruitment process because discrimination was built into their founding. Recruitment has always been this way, and with groups disbanding rather than attempting to reform the system, rush cannot exist without racism and classism.

So why are students still joining social fraternities and sororities? And why do so many colleges let them run free on campus? For one thing, Greek organizations can justify their existence through philanthropy. Social Greek organizations need to devote a certain amount of money and time toward a specific charity.

Every chapter differs in how much they prioritize charity, but looking at Yale Greek life, most organizations raised a few thousand dollars for charity despite each member paying at least $350 in fees and chapters paying for other lavish expenses. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with charity, nonprofit work in Greek letter organizations is not important enough to the Greek experience to justify organizations that continue to harm thousands of young people every year.

Many argue that Greek life provides networking opportunities for the rest of a students career, and it is true that 85% of Fortune 500 CEOs were in fraternities, as were 76% of all current congressmen and senators. It is worth questioning whether a persons Greek affiliation is what made them successful, or if it is their privileged position as a white, wealthy educated person that helped them obtain a spot in Greek life that also allowed them to be successful in their careers.

Starting college is one of the most terrifying and isolating experiences in a young persons life.

While networking may exist in the Greek community, it is not the pipeline to success it claims to be. Philanthropy and networking are sloppy excuses for what Greek organizations are really providing: parties and a sense of community.

Starting college is one of the most terrifying and isolating experiences in a young persons life. A community of close-knit friends who always know where the parties and cool events on campus are seems like a dream, even if you do need to pay and jump through some hoops for membership. Greek organizations are fueled off of vulnerable students joining, whether theyre freshmen away from home the first time, sophomores who havent seen a normal campus yet or anyone else who feels like they dont belong.

These organizations prey on vulnerability, and once students are upperclassmen, they continue the tradition, exerting their newfound power on students who are now in the position they were in a few short years ago. Colleges let these organizations stay on campus because it is a social expectation for many, a draw to the school for others and most importantly, a must-have for Greek alumni who, again, tend to come from privileged backgrounds and who tend to be some of the biggest donors to the school.

Without Greek life, Fordham students do not have to worry about hazing or fitting in with a popular crowd of students.

Greek life is enticing for colleges and students alike, even though it creates a toxic campus environment in most cases.

Despite not having Greek life, Fordham does exhibit some of its toxic traits. In a survey conducted by the Observer last year, 90% of students said that they believe discrimination is present at Fordham. Greek life is of course not the only racist, elitist factor on college campuses, and colleges like Fordham must make a serious effort to change their past. Even though Fordham is far from perfect in terms of equality, it is a better campus community because of its lack of Greek life.

Without Greek life, Fordham students do not have to worry about hazing or fitting in with a popular crowd of students. And even though Fordham is not innocent in preventing all discrimination, an organized collection of students who perpetuate discriminatory behaviors would undoubtedly make Fordham much less inclusive. First years, dont ponder on what might have been if you had gone to a different college, but instead, be glad that Fordham is protecting you from a toxic, unnecessary tradition.

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Why You Should Be Glad Fordham Doesn't Have Greek Life - Fordham Observer

This story was originally published on SAPIENS and is republished here with permission.

Garlic sizzles in a big Dutch oven. As Peggy Brunache stirs, the aromatic softens and starts to take on a sweetness in the hot oil.

Soon, meat thats been marinated in sour Seville orange juice and episa medley of onions, bell peppers, herbs, salt, and yet more garlicwill hit the pan. These ingredients stew in a mix containing Scotch bonnet peppers and pumpkin and butternut squash that stand in for a winter squash grown in Haiti.

Its our resistance and celebratory soup, says Brunache, who is Haitian American. The dish is also her favorite of the stewed mealsincluding callaloo, pepperpot, and gumbothat appear across the African diaspora.

A historical archaeologist at the University of Glasgow, Brunache has investigated the meals that enslaved African people created in the French Caribbean, food that she calls slave cuisine. Through excavations on the islands of Guadeloupe, she and her colleagues have catalogued bones and shells, and analyzed remains of pottery to clue into the ingredients and types of food enslaved people cooked for themselves.

Those studies, along with the work of many other scholars, provide a window into the day-to-day experiences of people who lived in slavery. In discussing such meals, Brunache pairs the words slave and cuisine because these ideas may strike some listeners as a jarring juxtaposition. Her use of cuisine is an intentional homage to the skill and creativity of enslaved cooks, typically Black women, who made these foods that are still celebrated today.

In Brunaches kitchen, the aroma of soup joumou entices her family long before its ready to eat. But Brunache also cooks for audiences of dozens or hundreds, using food to broach the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European enslavers forcibly transported more than 10 million people out of Africa and into the Caribbean and the Americas. Though their stories varied widely, many of these people endured slavery in colonized lands on plantations that grew crops such as coffee, sugar, cotton, rice, and indigo. In addition to tending plants and livestock, enslaved people labored in enslavers homes, for instance as maids, butlers, and cooks.

The toll of this tradein death and sufferingacross hundreds of years cannot be calculated. Its vast scale often overshadows the experiences of individuals, including their contributions to culture.

Brunache is one of many scholars who have embarked on a reclamation project, seeking to unveil the humanity of people who lived under slavery. Through research projects across the Americas and the Caribbean, anthropologists and archaeologists are piecing together a more complete picture of the lives led by individuals forced into slave labor.

Often when we talk about slavery, it puts the enslaved person in the place of victimhood, Brunache says. But there were also other aspects of slave culture we can talk about.

In particular, foodwaysthat is, the cultural, social, and economic practices linked to foodcan illuminate the agency of people who lived under slavery and provide connections to the aspects of their history and culture that have lived on. Food is a perfect way to talk about these hard histories: that we found something positive, that we did something activesomething that we can still be proud of, that we still have a link to, Brunache says.

The scholars who study the meals that enslaved people created and consumed contend with gaps in the historical record. European and American enslavers wrote most of the documentation that survives today, leaving silences and inconsistencies regarding the lives and foodways of enslaved people, says Diane Wallman, a historical archaeologist at the University of South Florida.

For example, the Code NoirFrench for Black Codea set of regulations for slavery in the French Caribbean used from 1685 to 1789, described rations that were supposed to be provided to those who were enslaved. But in practice, enslavers failed to give enough sustenance. Brunache observes that there was a conscious choice made by planters to not really provide enough food for the enslaved community, even though they were working them to death.

Archaeological discoveriesincluding culinary tools and the remnants of meal prep from long agohelp fill in this picture. Researchers have found evidence of not only a varied diet but also diverse, skillful methods of obtaining food, including fishing, hunting, cultivation, and foraging. What happens, explains Wallman, is you have enslaved peoples primarily raising, growing, procuring their own foodstuffs, both plant and animal, throughout this period.

For example, in her excavations of trash heaps near the dwellings occupied by enslaved people on Martinique and other islands, Wallman has turned up a trove of local fish and shellfish remainsevidence against some scholars long-held assumption that only an elite group of enslaved people fished. Lead weights, used to hold nets down and recovered from areas where enslaved people lived, hint at how they fished. We can use what we find to actually counter a lot of these ideas that have been presented in the historical record, Wallman says.

Across both the Caribbean and parts of the United States, enslaved workers grew fruit and vegetable gardens, often called provision grounds. In some cases, people living in slavery had time away from other tasks to tend these gardens, as this produce made up for food enslavers failed to provide. But another way to think about it is that enslaved Africans really pressed for the ability to sustain themselves, notes Maria Franklin, an archaeologist at the University of Texas, Austin.

Franklin has excavated the grounds surrounding the quarters of enslaved people at Rich Neck, a plantation in Virginias Williamsburg area, occupied between 1636 and the 1800s. From subfloor root cellars, hearth areas, and trenches, she and her colleagues have uncovered hundreds of plant specimens. Among the varieties unearthed are corn, cultivated at the plantation and probably rationed to enslaved people, and cowpeas and melons that enslaved people likely grew in their own gardens. Her team also found evidence for foraged fruit, such as cherries and blackberries.

Seed pods from the honey locust tree were the most abundant botanical. In Peter Randolphs autobiography, the formerly enslaved man who lived in a county near Rich Neck recounts brewing the seeds in a coffee-like beverage and using the pods as a sweetener.

Franklin adds: Those trees were growing right around that area, and still are, actually.

Franklins work also suggests that, during the 1700s, people living in Rich Necks slave quarters were raising livestock and had access to many cuts of meat. They also hunted and trapped animals. Evidence of diverse game meatincluding possum and raccoonsuggests a varied diet and that at least some hunting occurred at night, given the nocturnal animals captured.

In this way, the archaeological evidence for these varied meals hints at the experiences of enslaved African people who lived on plantations. Another example comes from evidence of fish dishes at Rich Neck, which suggests that enslaved people had mobility beyond the plantation. The closest river was at least a mile from the slave quarters, so theyre traveling at great lengths, Franklin notes.

While its not clear if that travel was permitted, she says, the presence of firearms suggests that overseers and enslavers knew that enslaved people were hunting. In addition, Franklin observes, its notable that enslaved people were the ones who are dictating, to a large extent, what they are going to eat.

Several archaeologists are trying to better understand the power dynamics that existed on individual plantations, using foodways as a clue. Barnet Pavo-Zuckerman at the University of Maryland has explored differences between what enslaved domestic workers and field workers atethe latter typically having less time to gather their own food.

On some plantations in Virginia, Pavo-Zuckerman and other archaeologists have found flints, lead shot, and parts of guns. Some of the people who had access to firearms accompanied enslavers on hunting trips. And they may have served as enforcers of the enslavers rules, she explains. That was also a part of social controlto give privileges to some folks and not others.

Her work and others underscores the unique position of the Black enslaved cooks who prepared food for their white enslavers. Often, their recipes blended disparate traditions and ingredients in ways that would come to define regional cuisines. It was a combination of African techniques, American ingredients, Native American influences, and European preferences, Pavo-Zuckerman says, that came in together in the kitchens of these enslaved communities.

In some locales, enslaved people raised and gathered such a bounty of food that the excess could go to market. In the Caribbean, these open-air gathering places likely resembled markets that some of these islands host today, Wallman, the University of South Florida archaeologist, observes.

Written eyewitness accounts from the 1600s to the 1800s suggest enslaved merchants bartered foods and handicrafts, sometimes on behalf of the plantation and sometimes for their own benefit. On Martinique, despite the French government trying to suppress the growing of food in provision grounds through the Code Noir, the practice continued. By 1700, and through emancipation in 1848, through these markets, Wallman says, the enslaved end up almost feeding the entire island with surpluses from the provision grounds and gardens.

Similar markets all over the Caribbean and in parts of the United States also provided a social venue for enslaved people, helping to build a community. So, too, did the various steps of procuring and preparing meals. Hunting, fishing, and cooking were sometimes done in groupsand skills were shared and passed on over generations. For instance, a late 1930s account by Jim Martin, a formerly enslaved man who lived in Mississippi, includes a song that calls the men to go hunting. They would have taken young boys along with them, Franklin remarks, teaching them animals habitats and behavior, and how to use a firearm.

Sharing food was an important way to pass down traditions. Franklin explains how mothers socialized their children through meals: Its their early indoctrination into seeing the world in a certain way, and to understanding their roots, their identity, their heritage through what they were consuming on a daily basis.

And foodways helped maintain traditions from Africa over generations. Archaeologists have found fragments of ceramic vessels called colonowares at plantation sites in Virginia and South Carolina. Enslaved people made these unglazed ceramic vessels for preparing, serving, and consuming food, adapting earthenware bowl production practices from West Africa.

These vessels stewed many of the same ingredients Brunache uses in preparing the spicy, long-simmering stews and soups that were themselves based on West African cuisine. Recipes often contained a carbohydrate, such as corn or rice; some vegetables, such as leafy greens and peppers; and spices. And Brunaches excavations in Guadeloupe revealed the shells of marine snails, clams, and conches that offered a meaty addition.

Some ingredients came from Africa, brought during the transatlantic slave trade, including yams and okra. Meanwhile, chili peppers from the Americas commonly featured in West African and diasporic cuisines, and still do. Usually, its quite pepperytheres fire on the tongue, Brunache says. That is something you see in every part of the Caribbean.

Slavery endeavored to stamp out the culture and identities of enslaved people. English planters, for instance, gave enslaved people English names and imposed restrictions on African people meeting and practicing their traditional religions.

Yet African people held onto their foodways. Though forcibly uprooted and displaced across great distances, they carried their traditions, skills, and ideas about food with them. Their descendants continued to do so, over generations, including after the abolition of slavery and as families moved across the United States, bringing their cuisines to places like Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California.

In many regions of the Americas and Caribbean, the foods innovated and perfected by enslaved African women and men remain iconic staples. Black historians and archaeologists have highlighted how the foods of the African diasporaincluding foods created by enslaved peoplehave become American foods. Enslaved African women brought meals from their quarters into the mansions kitchens, says Franklin, and thats how white children received enslaved foodways as well, which became co-opted as Southern cuisine.

Continuity can also be found in the Caribbean. When Wallman gives public talks, many attendees who live on the islands are eager to share their own stories of using similar foods and recipes today. During a presentation, Wallman and her colleagues gave on Dominica, they showed pictures from excavations, including fish bones that offer clues to past meals. In reaction, Wallmans audience chimed in with the local Creole name, sharing whether they still consumed that fish or where they catch that particular species. Were doing this for the greater good of history, Wallman notes, but also for local communities.

These foods can connect people to their history in complex ways. Salted codfish, for example, was slave food. It was specifically imported for enslaved people, Brunache says. But we [Haitians and Haitian Americans] still love the hell out of our codfish today it was something we found positive and still choose to continue in our current identity.

In Scotland, Brunache often prepares peppery gumbo, taro fritters, and sugarcane as part of lectures for primarily European audiences who sometimes have little knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade or how Europeansincluding Scottish merchantsprofited from it. Consuming historical dishes somehow allows people to embody the past more readily, Brunache says. Its not abstract anymore. Theyve tasted it.

Across history, foodways speak to identity. The meals Brunache and other scholars have unearthed reflect the lives of the enslaved people who once cooked them. As such, they can reflect the context of brutal oppressionand they also illuminate the ingenuity, skill, community, and subtle acts of resistance of the people who prepared them.

The fact that the system was set up to kill you, and you survive, is resistance, Brunache says. Enslaved people did more than survive, she adds. They created phenomenal food.

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The Resistance and Ingenuity of the Cooks Who Lived in Slavery - Atlas Obscura

New Delhi: With protests from priests of various temples in the state mounting to seek dissolution of the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanam Management Board, the states chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, has finally decided to meet representatives of the priests on September 11. The priests say the Board is trying to usurp their earnings and reduce their say in the functioning of shrines.

Talking to The Wire, Vinod Prasad Shukla, president of the Teerth Purohit Samaj Shri Kedarnath, said a letter has been received for the meeting. Shukla said though it was projected that Dhami met some of them last month, that was not the case. We did not have any meeting with the chief minister earlier. He had only met with the MLAs of Kedarnath and Badrinath then, none of our representatives had attended that meeting.

But now, he said, as the chief ministers letter has been received, the priests of the state will once again forcefully demand that the Devasthanam Board be scrapped.

Interests of priests ignored; industrialists and government stand to gain

Our stand is that the Act they have made to constitute the Board has nothing in our interest. They have spoken about development but made industrialist Mukesh Ambanis son Anant Ambani a member of the Chardham Devasthanam Board. Now you imagine how they are bringing the moneybags to Uttarakhand and telling us to vacate our lands so that they may be transferred in the name of Ambanis, Tatas or Birlas, charged Shukla.

Shukla, who is spearheading the protests in Kedarnath, had in August declared that from September 1, teerth purohits and other stakeholders will protest at Rudraprayag district headquarters to intensify their two-month-long agitation for seeking abolition of the Devasthanam Act. He had also insisted that the priests would not compromise on the demand.

In view of the growing voices in favour of the move, Dhami, who had taken over the reins of the state in July this year, had formed a committee to submit a report on the issue after talking to all stakeholders. The priests are now hoping for an early resolution to their demands.

`Board interfering in temple traditions, denying activities permitted over ages

On what prompted the move against the Board, Shukla said, The new Act says that no construction would be allowed within a 200 metre radius of any temple. But where did this law come from? They did not take us into confidence, the decision was taken without even consulting us. Is it the responsibility of the government to run temples? For centuries we have been running these temples, but now the government says it wants to run them.

He insisted that the government should ideally focus on development activities that provide employment to the youth. They should open more industries across the country.

Also read: Fake COVID Tests at Kumbh: New CM Gave Job to Unfit Company With BJP Ties

But, he said, through the Board, the government was eyeing the earnings of the temples and interfering in their functioning. Now they have set their sight on these Chardham temples and have started interfering with the traditions too. The doli of Kedarnath baba used to be carried on foot from Ukhimath to Kedarnath and back. But now they have broken that tradition by taking it by a vehicle.

`Prayer, bhog timings changed arbitrarily

Shukla also accused the Board of arbitrarily changing the prayer and bhog timings at the main Kedarnath shrine. The prayers that were performed at Brahma Muhurta or from 3:40 am have been changed by the government to be held at 7 am. Likewise, the Bal Bhog of Baba which used to be at 4:30 am has been arbitrarily changed to 6 am, and similarly his evening bhog which used to be at 4 pm is now taking place at 12 noon. The Board is acting as per its whims, he said.

Shukla said the decision making has been taken over by the Board, which is chaired by the chief minister and has the minister for religious affairs as the vice-chairman. He said the Board has placed enormous powers in the hands of the chief executive officer, who is an Indian Administrative Service officer.

There are 22 IAS officers operating in the Board. So are we now required to work as per their diktat. Their aim is to corner the earnings of the temples, he charged.

Many shrines, temples were placed under Board

As many as 51 temples in Uttarakhand, including the four famous shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, were placed under the Devasthanam Board in 2019. Following continued opposition to the move, former chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat had in April this year, just a month after assuming office, announced that the government would remove the management of these temples from under the control of the Board. However, that decision has still not been implemented.

Shukla said the government wants to control these temples by placing its men in important positions. The CEO has been given enormous powers under the scheme. Now he decides what building or structure would come up around the roads, who will operate there and who will be allowed to set up shop there. Even when it comes to keeping or operating mules or horses, the Board now decides their rates and charges a commission from the owners. If the rate is Rs 1,500, they charge Rs 500 from the owner. Then they also take the contract for the operations and only pay the owner a fixed amount. So the government walks away with the bulk of the earnings.

Also read: The Aftermath of the Chamoli Disaster in February Is Still Playing Out

The Board, he said, has also taken decisions which have impacted the livelihood of thousands in the region. Earlier people from Gaurikund used to come to Kedarnath for work, but now they have shooed them away. They tell them to get the government slips, saying only those authorised by the Board can operate shops in the area. So the business of the valley people, which had been going for ages, has been impacted in this manner.

`Livelihood of over 50,000 impacted in Kedarnath valley alone

Overall, Shukla insisted, that there must be around 50,000 people in the Kedarnath valley alone who have been affected by these decisions.

It is because of the widespread anger against the governments move that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad also passed a resolution last month seeking scrapping of the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanam Act.

In a statement, following a meeting on the issue, its central joint general secretary Surendra Jain had said that VHP firmly believes that management and control of shrines, temples, and muths should be freed from government control. It should be done by religious, spiritual, and stakeholders of temple committees only. The government should reconsider its decision on this aspect and revoke the Act.

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Uttarakhand CM Finally Agrees to Meet Priests Protesting the Char Dham Devasthanam Board - The Wire

Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, and Yusef Salaam.

The Central Park Five, later and more respectfully known as the Exonerated Five following their exoneration in 2002, have endured what many in this country could never fathom and may never have to conceptualize. When one is significantly wronged and denied justice, as the Exonerated Five were in their adolescence, it takes an immense level of fortitude to not develop a cold, resentful outlook on the same world responsible for that misdeed. This is especially true when the repulsive nature of racism and systemic inequity rears its vile head to validate the stripping of the humanity of Black and Brown bodies. Wrongfully convicted and accused of the assault of Trisha Meili in New York City in 1989, the Exonerated Five were coerced into disgustingly long prison sentences at the fragile ages of 14 (Richardson and Santana), 15 (McCray and Salaam), and 16 (Wise).

Following the success of the Ava Duvernay directed Netflix series When They See Us, the five men impacted have had a renewed platform to share their stories in a way that only they can. In a deep contrast from the media attention they received as teenagers, they have since robustly garnered attention both as a collective and from the vantage point of their individual experiences in prison. Through their journeys, the public has been fortunate to see the duality of the Exonerated Five regaining and experiencing their rightful freedom while grieving and reckoning with time lost over an unnecessary sacrifice. Since their exoneration these men have been on a path toward true healing, happening in their own time and unique fashion. This path has consisted of milestones such as starting families, committing to the betterment of Black and Brown communities, going on to receive honorary degrees at prestigious universities, and even running for Senate seats in the communities that birthed them.

In the personal memoir Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice, Dr. Yusef Salaam boldly and proudly shares the foundational principles that guided him in his youth, through his wrongful imprisonment and today, where he shares his light for others to bear witness to and learn as an activist and motivational speaker. Simultaneously, Salaam offers both a critique of the prison industrial complex as it operates today and a solution for reconstructing this system as one that prioritizes oppression to one rooted in communal accountability and restorative justice.

EBONY was honored to sit down with and hear the reflections of Dr. Yusef Salaam about his life experiences and lessons learned in Better, Not Bitter.

EBONY: What was the catalyst for telling your story and your experience with the prison industrial complex in this manner?

Dr. YUSEF SALAAM: Well, you know, the story of the Central Park Five, as we were once known, and as was shown in When They See Us, and of course, in the documentary, the Central Park Five by Ken Burns. Burnsreally did a deep dive and broad overview of the story of the five of us, but there was the missing link of the individual stories. I say missing link only because there was a moment where we got the opportunity to really dive into Koreys story and how terrible and tragic it was to experience that. Right? And when you look at the rest of the stories, especially my story, you get the sense that we were okay during that process and miraculously survived through some sense of grace by the Creator. But you needed to know what that was. For me, I wanted to tell that story, and I wanted to tell it in such a way that people got the understanding that it wasnt just about this thing that happened to me, or this thing that happened to the five of us; it was about telling the story of being a Black person in America and what that reality is like. How tragic it is that we walk around with this color of our skin and we are always seen as a crime. I wanted to not only tell that story but I wanted to also talk about how we can use our God-given power to really bounce back from anything, because we were born on purpose, and with a purpose.

There are many people in this country who have been deeply affected by the prison industrial complex in our country and who may not be able to recover from such a situation, or they may end up with the bitterness you speak of in the book. As an activist and abolitionist, how have you consciously chosen to be better and not bitter?

I would say in that process, and I call it a process on purpose because you have to literally go into a mode of Sankofain order to move forward, you have to go back and remember that we all stand on the shoulders of great people. We come from a great history of kings, queens, princesses, and princes. We also come from a great history of thinkers of movers and shakers of people who have been down underneath the ground. You know, as some people call it, weve been in the mud, and weve come out of the mud, and we made something of ourselves. Im talking about as far back as we can remember to as more recent historically documented times, like chattel slavery to the creation of things like Black Wall Street. I say that to, to remind people that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and some of those giants just recently transitioned. Folks like John Lewis and Nelson Mandela. I think about people like that, including my great she-ro, Dr. Maya Angelou, because I got the opportunity to not just hear the words, but I got the opportunity to mull it over for years upon years.

Hearing Nelson Mandela say that he had to leave anger and bitterness in the prison as taking it with him meant that it would destroy him was powerful for me. In a situation like that where they were run over by the system, anyone would seek revenge. The wisest of us understand that people who harm you often have already moved past that point of harming you, and theyre living their lives. Were the ones stuck in that moment. Were stuck in time. In my case, it was 15 years old Yusef Salaam, right? Then when I came home from prison, I was now 20-plus years old, but I was still stuck as a fifteen-year-old Yusef Salaam. All of the work that I had been doing in the prison was focused around theory. I had to figure out how to take that theory and now make it so. I hadnt yet heard the words of the great philosopher Cardi B knock me down nine times, Ill get up ten. But I did hear the words of Les Brown, who said, its not a matter of if you fall in life but when you fall try to land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up.

Following your release and in your journey to alleviate the bitterness, what became your ultimate inspiration and driving force to leave it behind?

The words of Dr. Maya Angelou so strongly rang through my ears frequently. When she said, you should be angry, but you must not be bitter. That bitterness is like a cancer. It eats upon the host and it doesnt do anything to the object of his displeasure. Then she teaches us to question how we can use that very thing that is trying to make us bitter and turn it into gold? We become alchemists through the process. She said use that angeryou dance it, you march it, you vote, you do everything about it. Then she said you talk, and never stop talking it.

Ive found that the process of finding purpose and living on purpose and living in a way that you live every day so that you only die once is a choice. Its a choice that you get the opportunity to live fully so that you can die empty and that you get the opportunity to say Im not going to wait for someday to comethat someday is now. Then that isolated island of bitterness becomes the place where all of the gold, all of the diamonds, all of the wealth of the world, is found. Oftentimes, that place becomes a graveyard because its a place that people have let life pass and slip through their hands. Weve got to do as much as we can, live as well and unapologetically as we can. Even when the spiked wheels of justice run you over, get up and realize that youre still alive. Those wounds really do become battle scars. They have stories to tell. You can use them to not only tell your children how they have to stand up through adversity, but also with others who support you in the movement and get the opportunity to look at you as an example. They find strength in the fact that you are still standing and thats important.

As you mention in Better, Not Bitter, Black and Brown folks must realize our own collective power and use it to harvest something great. Weve seen this happen over the past year as our communities have been holding space for conversations that will open up a greater dialogue for structural change with topics such as defunding the police and prison abolition. How would you like people to reimagine what they think of when they think of the prison industrial complex in order to imagine something great?

I think about it from the perspective of systems. We are in the era where weve heard new language being used around what we need as communities. A lot of that new language is very scary to people who are part of the establishment. And furthermore, its scary to us as well. However, we know that what we know we need is not what we have right now. What we currently have is that we can be one of the most recognized elite members of society and we can still be harassed, at best,and we could be harmed or murdered in the communities that we come from. We know far too often that weve been taught that youre going to be dead or in jail before you reach the age of 21. Very rarely has anyone ever said to themselves who gave us that thought? Who planted that seed of thought in our minds that we carry out? Once we become conscious that we have not constructed that way of thinking ourselves, we then have the opportunity to remove the box that someone else has placed us in.

We look at the sides of the cop cars in New York City and cop cars around the nation, and they all have some semblance of the same wording to protect and serve. That is a very noble thing. As a matter of fact, its a noble profession to go into if you are there on purpose and on your square saying what do I do God with my life? and your soul is vibrating in such a way that is telling you to protect and serve people. We want those specific people to protect and serve our communities. We dont want criminals to police us. We dont want people who harm people on purpose to police us. Thats what weve been seeing over and over and over again. So in todays understanding of what it is that we need and want, we want a system that is for the people, and perhaps, by the people. A system that represents a kaleidoscope of the human family and no longer upholds protections afforded to some that are not afforded to others. James Baldwin was so right when he said that in America we live in a state where to be relatively conscious puts you in a state of rage all the time.Here, we are African Americans, for the most part, where we are African without memory and we are American without privilege. Because of this, weve been living in the divided States of America. Weve been trying to figure out how we can become one. Unfortunately, there has been this concerted effort that I call the true fight. The true fight that were fighting against is not just a fight against racism; its not a fight against sexism; its not a fight against Islamophobia. All of those things are rocks that are being thrown at us. What were really fighting is like what Bob Marley said in one of his beautiful songswere fighting against spiritual wickedness in high and low places.

To have a deep consciousness of our current conditions as a community can either feel rage-inducing, overwhelming or like an immense sense of passion. With the work that you are doing paired with your life experience, there must be moments when that rage may seem to be too much. When you feel that rage or feel like youre slipping back into bitterness, how do you find joy and remember the beauty and the light in this time?

I am Muslim. In my faith, we imagine somebody just placing boxes and weights and all kinds of things on your shoulder and head and walking around life every day with this on your shoulders. How much weight would that be? So as a Muslim, we are taught that we have to pray five times a day. With praying, you have to bow and you have to prostrateso imagine all of those boxes just falling off of you as you do so. Im saying that because I get the opportunity to understand that through prayer, especially while I was in prison, I understood this on a really powerful level. Prayer is when you are talking to God. You get the opportunity to talk to God and tell God everything that is going on with your life. When you then couple that with meditation, you are learning to be still in order to listen. Im not talking necessarily about being in a state of non-movement. In prison, you could not always just sit down. You had to move around. You had to walk around people who might be killers and murderers and rapists rightso you had to walk and meditate. You had to eat and meditate. You had to be cognizant of what it was that you were putting in your mind through what you saw and putting in your heart through which you hear and read. And so communicating with the Creator is important, because you can tell God anything.

God says in the Quran that he does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves. Its about really becoming the change. There are more conversations being held around the dining room table or on Zoom meetings now than there were before COVID-19. Were hearing the language of abolition and such because we absolutely need abolition. We need to build a new system with new bricks because what we have is not conducive to living a full life. But on the other hand, we know that we cant live in a state of lawlessness. We have to live in a system that is life-given and thats life-affirming. One that teaches you that you were born on purpose, and with a purpose that gives you the opportunity to look around your community, and where other people have seen the worst of life, you see the best and abundant opportunity. A system that says that you matter and that you have a voice.

How do we change the system? We do so by having the people who have been impacted articulate the situational nature of the system. Again, James Baldwin said that the person who is a victim and who can articulate the situation ceases to be the victim. They now become a threat to the old ways of being. As we change, we need a system that will change with us.

What is your greatest hope that people take away from reading your own personal story as a part of the greater narrative of the Exonerated Five?

When we were born, we were one of over 400 million options. My hope is that we find that purpose. My hope is that as we are struggling and groping through the darkness of life, we begin to understand that sometimes we have to activate the light inside of us in order to see the way. I know that all that Ive experienced is not for nothing. I know that even being run over by the spiked wheels of justice was to teach me how to get up. I was young enough to realize that I still had my faculties and that I could still tell myself that I was born on purpose. My hope is for others to realize that too and step into that purpose.

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Dr. Yusef Salaam Is Better, Not Bitter in the Retelling of His Life's Journey in New Memoir EBONY - EBONY