Vanyaland gets the scoop: The venerable Allston rock spot, which used to be where the Taco Bell is now at Harvard and Commonwealth, is planning to return in new space at Harvard and Cambridge Street that it'll share with O'Brien's Pub, including new room where Stingray Body Art used to be.
Vanyaland says the current owners are planning to reshape the lot into a building with housing on top. One of the owners, Jordan Warshaw, is currently building an apartment complex in Readville.
Matthew Connortall and lanky huh? at last, my big break
A casting company is looking for extras to play zombies in "The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2," set for filming in Boston between April and July.
To be considered, you'll have to submit non-professional photos that show what you look like, with special preference given to people with "weathered faces" or who are particularly tall and lanky (to play "walkers," which, not having seen the series, we assume means people forced to walk through Green Line tunnels after a trolley derails).
Please remember this is a post apocalyptic show; make sure your submission photos have a natural look, little or no make-up to reflect the tone of the show.
Matthew Connorsorry to put terrible things in your feed but we're supposed to be visiting my family in alabama in a few months & it is really starting to give me serious anxiety. really truly i do not want to set foot in that hellhole state ever again
How long must we keep a straight face?
Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.
And needless to say, this degradation predates this particular manifestation:
Further, if embryos and fetuses are children, then the state may have an interest in protecting their lives that extends to controlling even more of women’s daily conduct. Could a woman who is pregnant, or could be pregnant, have a right to do things that might endanger her embryo in a situation where an embryo is her legal equal, with a claim on state protection? Could she risk this embryo’s health and life by, say, eating sushi, or having some soft cheese? Forget about the wine. Could she be charged with child endangerment for speeding? For going on a jog?
These scenarios might sound hyperbolic, but they are not entirely hypothetical. Even before the Alabama court began enforcing the vulgar fiction that a frozen embryo is a person, authorities there had long used the notion of fetal personhood to harass, intimidate and jail women – often those suspected of using drugs during pregnancies – under the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” law, using the theory that women’s bodies are environments that they have an obligation to keep free of “chemicals” that could harm a fetus or infringe upon its rights.
Using this logic, police in Alabama, and particularly in rural Etowah county, north-east of Birmingham, have repeatedly jailed women for allegedly using drugs ranging from marijuana to meth while pregnant – including women who have claimed that they did not use drugs, and women who turned out not to be pregnant. In 2021, Kim Blalock, a mother of six, was arrested on felony charges after filling a doctor’s prescription during a pregnancy; the state of Alabama decided that it knew better than her doctor, and they could criminalize her for following medical advice.
This is not an extreme example: it is the logical conclusion of fetal personhood’s legalization – the surveillance, jailing and draconian monitoring of pregnant women, an exercise in voyeuristic sadism justified by the flimsy pretext that it’s all being done for the good of children. Except there are no children.
The reasoning by which these legal burdens violate both the long-established right to privacy and the equal protection of the laws is, as the man said, awkwardly simple.
The post The misogyny is the point appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Bill Speros posts a copy of an e-mail message from the Chenery Upper Elementary School in Belmont about a disturbing odor in the school:
We would like to inform you of a strong odor detected this morning in our sixth grade hallways. We have identified the source of the smell as being a small bottle of "fart spray." We have taken steps to dissipate the odor and we gave students and staff the option to relocate to another areas of the building if needed. We just want to assure you that all students are safe and engaged in learning activities.
The school adds that "teachers will be following up with all students."
Meanwhile, Arlington Police have sounded an all clear for the Gibbs Elementary School, where a staff member yesterday found two spent casings from a 9-mm handgun on the school's main stairwell.
Police say it was all just an accident: Seems somebody attending an event at the school Tuesday night, with the shell casings, as one does, somehow dropped the casings by mistake.
Students, faculty, and staff were in no danger.
Arlington Police have determined that the casings were dropped by accident and have closed the investigation. No charges will be filed.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 21, 2023 is:
Kafkaesque \kahf-kuh-ESK\ adjective
Something described as Kafkaesque has an often nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality to it. More broadly, anything relating to or suggestive of the writing of Franz Kafka may be said to be Kafkaesque.
// The airline is notorious for its Kafkaesque procedures for changing flights, even in situations where a flight is cancelled due to bad weather.
Examples:
“Two people who had recently navigated the state’s maze of housing programs also spoke to lawmakers on Thursday. ... Those living in poverty are expected to complete mountains of complicated paperwork to access aid and can be harshly penalized for any errors. For help, they must rely on overtaxed social workers, who are themselves often stumped by the Kafkaesque bureaucracy their clients face.” — Lola Duffort, VTDigger.org (Montpelier, Vermont), 6 Oct. 2023
Did you know?
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. The opening sentence of his 1915 story The Metamorphosis has become one of the most famous in Western literature (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”), while in his novel The Trial, published a year after his death, a young man finds himself caught up in the mindless bureaucracy of the law after being charged with a crime that is never named. So deft was Kafka’s prose at detailing nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority, that writers began using his name as an adjective a mere 16 years after his death. Although many other literary eponyms, from Austenian to Homeric, exist and are common enough, Kafkaesque gets employed more than most and in a wide variety of contexts, leading to occasional charges that the word has been watered down and given a lack of specificity due to overuse.
Michelle Goldberg’s column reminds me of Orwell’s observation, published on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, that “we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men [and women].”
Speaking of which:
Before we can fight authoritarianism, we have to fight fatalism. My great hope for 2024 is that anti-Trump Americans can transcend exhaustion, burnout and self-protective pessimism to mobilize once again for the latest most important election of our lifetimes. It’s perfectly understandable that many people galvanized by abhorrence of Trump would step back once his immediate threat to the Republic receded. The obsession with politics that took over the country during his administration was neither sustainable nor healthy. But if you don’t want an even uglier and more despairing replay of those years, the time to act is now.
One place to start is with donations to grass-roots organizations working on voter turnout, which are desperately underfunded. (The Movement Voter Project has a clickable map with links to such groups all over the country.) You can also get involved with the campaigns to put referendums protecting abortion rights on the ballot in states like Arizona and Florida, efforts that could both undo cruel abortion bans and drive voter turnout.
It’s going to be especially important next year to give people reasons to vote beyond the presidential election. I didn’t want Biden to run again and wish there had been a competitive Democratic primary, but it’s too late for a serious challenge now. Faced with an unenthusiastic electorate, Democrats will need down-ballot candidates who can motivate people to go the polls. Few are doing more to bring exciting new candidates into the political process than Run for Something, which recruits and trains young progressives to run for office.
“As we look to our strategy for ’24, we want to make sure especially that we’re prioritizing resources for local candidates whose races can have an impact at the top of the ticket,” said Amanda Litman, Run for Something’s co-founder. Young voters, she said, “are not particularly psyched about Joe Biden right now. But thanks to years of education and each of these special elections, they deeply understand the need to show up locally.”
Here’s hoping she’s right. Next year is going to be hard. It’s up to all of us whether it’s going to be disastrous.
The psychological attractions of fatalism, and its close cousin despair, is that they cater to our bottomless laziness and inertia. This is what makes doom junkies of so many people on the left, broadly defined: if the situation is so dire as to be practically hopeless, then why not check out that new Netflix series, instead of trying to do anything about it?
It’s difficult to be both clear-eyed about what Trump represents, and what his initial rise and evident political resurrection tell us about America, and to maintain the sufficient will to fight for the future of a country that has already sunk to our current level of political and cultural degradation.
But consider the alternative.
The post Fatalism and despair are objectively pro-fascist appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Matthew ConnorMore-phan! More-phan! More-phan! More-phan!
2023 is winding down and I say good riddance! Sure sure, there were plenty of creamy middles and even some delicious highs. But we cannot ignore low lows from the past year either, including but not limited to The Exorcist: Believer existing, a Blu-ray release of Stay Alive still not existing, and Screaming Females existing and then not existing any longer, which means that the February show--where they were to play with Team fucking Dresch!!--I had tickets for was cancelled. With Persephone firmly tucked away in the underworld for the next li'l bit (stay strong, girl) and the sun setting at, like, 3:30 in the afternoon, the dark vibes seem perfectly fitting as 2023 withers to its end at last.
But, soft! What choker through yonder window breaks? It is Esther's, and she is the goddamned sun! She has come to save us all with the news that Orphan 3 is in active development.
Perhaps you already know this, but regardless let me state it plain: I am such an Orphan fan. It is the goodest of good times. I never dared to wish for more, particularly as star Isabelle Fuhrman aged out of the role. But somehow, against all odds and the laws of nature alike, that not-wish was answered last year with Orphan: First Kill, yet another goodest of good times, which made me feel like a dope for thinking that Isabelle Fuhrman would ever age out of this role. Mind you, more than a decade had passed since the first film, and Fuhrman looks like a 23-year-old playing a 31-year-old playing a 9-year-old. Go figure! There are camera tricks and apple boxes galore, and we are never fooled for an instant into thinking anyone would assume she's a regular ol' child! The filmmakers also know this. None of us care. Orphan:First Kill is glorious. It's a film that probably shouldn't be at all but there it is and we as a species are better for it.
"But no, that has to be the last? Unless...no. No, right?" Again, I daren't dream for more. But madlad William Brent Bell saw the love that lurks in my heart, and will deliver unto us more-phan. When will we see it? Who knows. It doesn't matter. Just knowing that Esther is out there in the ether is enough for me. I'm already writing letters to the Oscars, telling them to get ready to hand out all of their trophies to Orphan 3.
Okay, in this one that choker is gonna be removed and her head will fall off at last, I just knows it!
Matthew Connori want to scream
Last year I wrote that Spotify's royalty system is "as perfect an embodiment of the winner-takes-all neoliberal economy as has yet been devised." Perfection, it turns out, can always be improved, as Damon Krukowski reports: "Starting in 2024 (less than two months from now), [Spotify] will no longer pay any royalty on tracks that fall below a minimum 1,000 streams a year. These tracks will still earn royalties, in theory – but those royalties will not be paid to their rights holders. Instead, they will go into a pot to be divided among accounts that garner more plays. This is akin to a regressive tax – reducing payments to those who already receive less, in order to boost payments for those who already receive more, increasing the divide between haves and have-nots. It is, on the face of it, the ugliest of ugly capitalist cash grabs." Kevin Erickson of the Future of Music Coalition notes: “Among the people not hitting this threshold for big parts of their catalog: Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur prize winners and nominees. People at the pinnacle of artistic and critical acclaim in their respective niches are being told they have to get more fans to earn >$0.00.”
Matthew Connornot gonna lie, finding out my beloved (since 1996!!!) róisín is a fucking terf has been really really hard. i had shitty dreams about it all night :\
A week ago I assembled a list of my fifty favorite albums, among which is Overpowered, the Róisín Murphy album which impressed me in 2007 for treating dance music as a valid way to express singer-songwriter observations about place, the media spotlight, as much as love. The former member of Moloko has since assembled an impressive discography; she was all set to follow up 2020’s excellent Róisín Machine.
Then this self-styled queer icon wrote remarks on her Facebook page in which she proved that musicians should stick to music if they risk hurting untold millions of fans. “Please don’t call me a terf, please don’t keep using that word against women,” Murphy wrote. “I beg you! but puberty blockers ARE FUCKED, absolutely desolate, big Pharma laughing all the way to the bank. Little mixed up kids are vulnerable and need to be protected, that’s just true.”
Dazed‘s James Greig will have none of her gibberish about medicine, a subject Murphy knows as much about as Ron DeSantis about George Eliot:
These are all pretty standard ‘gender-critical’ talking points and, to put it mildly, she is talking shit: rather than being “FUCKED”, the available evidence on puberty blockers suggests that the positive outcomes outweigh the negatives. Studies have shown that young trans people who can access puberty blockers experience a number of benefits, including increased well-being, decreased depression and reduced risk of suicide. As a form of treatment, they are endorsed by a majority of medical organisations (though maybe they forgot to consult Róisín Murphy?).
As for the ‘big Pharma’ claim, this just isn’t true: hormone medication can now be sold as ‘generic’, which means that no pharmaceutical companies hold an exclusive patent and, as a result, it is much less profitable. Likewise, trans people are such a small demographic that it would not make good business sense to promote gender-affirming care. When pharmaceutical companies promote certain medications and conditions (which, particularly in the US, they do) they are extremely unsubtle about it: they’re bribing doctors and launching huge advertising campaigns. In the context of gender-affirming care, this simply isn’t happening.
The infantilization of children by putatively well-intentioned adults remains an epidemic, yet here an artist who has triumphed with expressions of self-reliance resorts to mawkish banalities (“little mixed up kids”!).
After days of silence, Murphy released a statement, screenshot above. It was worse than I imagined. “I understand fixed views aren’t helpful” translates as “You’re not changing my mind, go away.” How she’ll handle the press is anybody’s guess. How easy to be an ally when appearing at Pride events and saying pretty words represent the limits of her commitments, not when many of the little mixed up kids whom she patronizes live in countries and American states where governments threaten their lives.
What depresses me — empties me out — is how few of these stories present trans people as people: punching bags, victims, demonstrations of piety, yes. Journalists can report on the rise of violence against trans and gender non-conforming people without resorting to clickbait tactics.
Matthew Connornice!!
The Boston Licensing Board today approved the sale of the Pour House's liquor license to Dani’s Queer Bar, 909 Boylston St. in the Back Bay.
Manager Thais Rocha hopes to open a full-service restaurant and bar aimed at "LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people" later this summer or early this fall, in the old Pour House location, using the license being acquired from landlord Charles Talanian.
The Pour House closed, like its neighboring bars, in the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
As part of Pride month, the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District and Men of Melanin Magic are hosting a free drag, dance and music show with local queer performers, on Summer Street at Washington Street, between 5 and 8 p.m. on Friday.
Doriann Blonch and Zon Legacy Phoenix will DJ; performers include Yefri, Gia D’Witches, Carmina, Blacc Brandi and dance troupe Haus of Snap. DJ Music by Begbick.
The performances will end at 7:15 p.m. so that the drag performers can mingle with attendees and be available for photos.
Free facepainting will also be available.
Matthew Connori'm glad V V is back <3
V V Brown - Black British
Speaks for itself. Yes!
Matthew Connorbleak
On the heels of the shutdown of the Sound Museum in Brighton, the owner of the Charlestown Rehearsal Studio on Terminal Street in Charlestown plans to kick out the musicians who now practice there by June so it can turn the building into a self-storage facility, City Councilor Gabriela Coletta (Charlestown, North End, East Boston) said today.
That could leave up to 1,100 musicians with no place to rehearse - and, when coupled with the Sound Museum closure, would leave Boston with no large rehearsal spaces at all - she said at a City Council meeting.
The council agreed to a request by Coletta and Councilors Liz Breadon (Allston/Brighton) and Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) to look at ways to help city musicians. Without places to practice, "we are going to lose our artistic community," Breadon said. In their formal request, they wrote:
Boston is home to many incredible artists like New Edition, Aerosmith, Oompa, and many of the upcoming artists who attend the Berklee College of Music. Our city loses many of these artists to Los Angeles and New York because of the lack of resources and support provided by the City of Boston.
Coletta said that R.J. Kelly Co., which owns the current Charlestown Rehearsal Studio at 50 Terminal St., wants the building vacated by June 1. The building now has 95 separate facilities, which tend to be shared by between 5 and 14 musicians or groups.
IQHQ, a California developer that is tearing down the Sound Museum building for a life-sciences complex, says it has acquired another Allston building for Sound Museum musicians, but that building needs to be renovated for musician use first.
City Councilor Frank Baker noted work to bring some of the Allston musicians to Dorchester in a former broadcast building on Morrissey Boulevard.
The View co-host Joy Behar made one spine-chilling confession about a spooky sexual encounter on the daytime talk series this week, revealing that she herself has had sex with not one, but multiple ghosts, and never ended up carrying its mystical spawn.
Matthew Connoroh mannnn. haven't been there in ages but this feels like a real end of an era!!
Matthew Connoruseful info
There are few people out there more interested in the ways the human body can be destroyed in terrible, Rube Goldberg-style accidents than personal injury lawyers. It’s not surprising, then, that a law office would have such a fascination with the horrible series of deadly accidents that fill the Final Destination…
Matthew ConnorTi West has had more misses than hits post-House of the Devil & the A24 fatigue is real but.... this trailer looks great
The trailer for A24’s newest horror film, X, is here. The film, directed and written by Ti West and starring Mia Goth, Brittany Snow and Kid Cudi (credited under his full name, Scott Mescudi), is about a ’70s film crew with Hollywood dreams who are making a porn flick. They convince an old couple in the middle of…
Matthew ConnorSo! My sister teaches sixth grade in a poor county in Alabama, and her experience of this whole thing has been a NIGHTMARE. She currently has 30 kids in her classroom instead of the usual 20, so there's even LESS distance than usual. Why are there so many kids in her class, you ask? Because there are so many sick teachers. She herself had the virus in Sept/Oct, despite wearing an N95 and face shield and goggles. And she's immunocompromised so it was a nightmare and she's still not back to 100%. Meanwhile, her school district got a grant from the state, and some other schools gave their teachers bonuses, but she got... nothing. And no one seems to know what her school DID spend the money on. So yeah. Just ranting! Sorry! Fuck all this.
The nation’s treatment of front line workers, from meat packers to grocery store workers, has been an atrocity in the age of COVID. We call them “heroes,” something they certainly did not ask for when they took that job and therefore because of their heroic status, they don’t need any job protectors or wage gains or anything like that. Complete cynicism from employers, utter indifference from the general population.
Teachers are a little bit tougher because we care enough about our kids to do just about anything, such as double down on racism while denying that we are acting racist by doing so. After all, little Madison and Connor just Deserve The Best. All of this means that we have at least a greater tendency to listen to teachers than to other front line workers. But that doesn’t mean that when they talk and complain about their working conditions that employers care.
Computer science teacher Suzy Lebo saw COVID-19 dangers frequently in her Indiana high school: classes with about 30 students sitting less than 18 inches apart. Students crowding teachers in hallways. Students and staff members taking off their masks around others.
“I’m concerned,” said Lebo, who teaches at Avon High School in the Indianapolis suburbs. “We’re not controlling the virus in our county. We’re not controlling it in our state. And we’re not controlling it in our schools.”
President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response proposes $130 billion to improve school safety, offers federal guidance for making schools safer and improves workplace protections to safeguard teachers and other workers from COVID-19.
This comes after many school districts and states holding in-person classes have ignored recommendations from public health officials or written their own questionable safety rules – creating a tinderbox where COVID-19 can sicken and kill.
A KHN analysis of federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration data found more than 780 COVID-19-related complaints covering more than 2,000 public and private K-12 schools. But those pleas for help likely represent only a small portion of the problems, because a federal loophole prevents public school employees from lodging them in 24 states without their own OSHA agencies or federally approved programs for local and state employees. Still, the complaints filed provide a window into the safety lapses: Employees reported sick children coming to school, maskless students and teachers less than 6 feet apart, and administrators minimizing the dangers of the virus and punishing teachers who spoke out.
KHN also found that practices contradicting safety experts’ advice are codified into the patchwork of COVID-19 rules put out by states and districts. For instance, about half of states don’t require masks for all students – including 11 that have exempted schoolchildren of various ages from mandatory masks, with New Hampshire excluding all K-12 students. Districts can craft stricter rules than their states but often don’t.
I’d like to think that after this is all over, we as a society will rethink all the levels of inequality and indifference to safety that led to these disasters. But that’s extremely unlikely. We are unlikely to change anything at all.
Matthew Connorhere have a bunch of witch art. btw we just moved to salem
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Angela Marzullo Makita Witch, 2008
‘In the video we see Makita as a witch, flying around on her broom. Through a game of mirrors, the Witch is reflected on the walls and ground. This multiplication of reflections is increased in the installation which recaptures the structure of the decor. The purpose being that the projection surface then dissolve into the installation, and that everything becomes reflection. Even the spectator looses his glance in this animated labyrinth.’
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Raphaela Vogel Witch Sequenz, 2018
‘Many different witch scenes, witches, doing spells, and flying around on a broom.’
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Trulee Hall Witch House, 2020
‘Wood, paper mache, resin, fabric, stuffing, fake fur, synthetic hair, altered sex dolls, acrylic paint, spray paint, found cornucopia baskets, found ceramic cornucopia, found crystal balls, convex mirror, polymer clay, hardware, LED candles, found candle holders, logs, sticks, volcanic rocks, projector screen, video. 13 feet x 14.5 feet x 17.5 feet.’
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Linda Stupart A Spell to Bind Straight Cis White Artists from Profiting off of Appropriating Queer Aesthetics and Feminine Abjection, 2016
‘IS: To bind someone is to hold them back, to restrain them from entering your zone. Is magic, then, a means of creating safe space? LS: Before I started working with magic and spells, I was thinking a lot about safe spaces. I began to cast salt circles before I had done much research into magic and witchcraft. I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed on TV and saw the film The Craft, and all my knowledge initially came from them. I cast a salt circle as a way to create my own space. I get anxious when people get too close to me, and the salt circle was in a sense pragmatic. I simply wanted the space for myself. And when I cast a circle, nobody walked into it. It’s just salt on the ground, but people stay out. In other words, the magic works. I began to think about how I might develop it. Refusal is an important part of magic. The American writer and film-maker Chris Kraus talks about refusal as an “active stance” in her book Aliens and Anorexia. I also love something that sociologist Sarah Franklin refers to, “the wench in the works”, which is a sex-worker or a difficult female body who stops the cogs, who gets in the way of capitalism. It’s something that’s really carried with me: this idea of stopping the flow, breaking the chain. It’s the opposite of accelerationist theory: rather than go faster, it says slow it down to break it.’
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Candice Lin Recipe for Spontaneous Generation: Baby Mice, 2015
‘Fabric, dried wheat, baby mice, alcohol, glass jar, airlock, copper pipe. 26 x 4 x 4 inches.’
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W.I.T.C.H Various, 1968 – 1970
‘Unlike radical feminists groups that fought to overturn the patriarchy alone, W.I.T.C.H (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) claimed they sought a wider social change. They attributed the oppression of women to capitalism, seeking to ally with other leftist causes such as the New Left, the black liberation movement, the student movement, and the anti-war movement to bring about socio-political and revolutionary change. The group declared the witch as their symbol and used the dramatic tactics of guerrilla performance and costume in their protests. Notably, on their inaugural action, members dressed up as witches and marched down Wall Street putting a hex on New York’s patriarchal and capitalist financial district. They would distribute garlic cloves and cards with the motto, “We Are Witch We Are Women We Are Liberation We Are We.” They would storm restaurants with brooms and black hats to chant, “Nine Million Women, Burned as Witches.” The chant a nod to the European witchcraft trails but an erroneous and inaccurate number claimed by many. Clearly a figure meant to shock if anything.
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Unknown A witch trapped in a bottle, c. 1850
‘glass, silver, cork and wax, 110 cm’
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FASTWÜÜRMS DONKY@NINJA@WITCH, 2007
‘Witch vs. Ninja features exciting visual/non-martial arts non-matrixed action and the sexy collision of “Beshiki-me” radical ninja feminism, “take back the night,” with the occult relational aesthetics and black collar labour negotiations of the Witch Nation, “workers of the night, unite!”.’
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Naomi Blacklock Padma, 2018
‘The apparatus/stage, again, featured the motif of the circle and the mirror. In a ring on top of a single circle of mulch around four metres in diameter, six mehrab-shaped, inward-facing mirrors are tilted backward on a deep lean. The two psychedelic-red stage lights beam sharp reflections onto the gallery walls and the audience. Sitting cross-legged in front of more audio equipment and two arms of brass bells, Blacklock again began an amplified cycle of breathing. The outline of her seated figure and the arms of bells were clearly silhouetted within the red reflections on the walls. It recalled the horror trope of the ghostly figure in the window or the spectre glimpsed behind the protagonist in a reflection. At first sporadically and then with a continuous and restrained clapping motion wherein her hands eerily never touched, Blacklock began ringing both sets of bells. They chimed through the speakers, layering on top of the polyphonic score of looped breathing. In the strongest of the six reflections, the space between the hands became a locus of unbearable tension and control, as the sound swallowed the room. This motion completed a linguistic-performative cycle started with the title Padma, a Sanskrit word for the sacred lotus central to Hinduism and Buddhism and a guiding body-metaphor in yogic practice as a posture for meditation. The pure lotus grows from and is sustained by muddy waters. The arrangement of the mirrors, and even their mehrab-shaped heads, recall the blossomed petals of the lotus. Blacklock then occupies this site of cultural meaning and pairs it with the representations of witches. With eyes closed and bells ringing, Blacklock’s performance literally meditates on these themes.’
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Katharina Fritsch WITCH HOUSE AND MUSHROOM, 1999
‘wood, polyester and acrylic’
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Rosaleen Norton Various, 1954 – 1965
‘Rosaleen Miriam Norton (1917-1979), painter and self-styled witch, was born on 2 October 1917 at Dunedin, New Zealand, third daughter of Albert Thomas Norton, a master mariner from London, and his New Zealand-born wife Beena Salek, née Aschman. Albert was a cousin of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The family arrived in Sydney in June 1925. Rosaleen was expelled from the Church of England Girls’ School, Chatswood, at the age of 14 for producing ‘depraved’ drawings of vampires, ghouls and werewolves thought likely to corrupt the other girls. She later studied for two years at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff who encouraged her ‘pagan’ creativity.
‘Her work was influenced by British vorticism and has been linked stylistically to that of Norman Lindsay, for whom she occasionally modelled. Norton derived much of her imagery from a type of psychic exploration based on self-hypnosis and from what in occult circles has been described as ‘wanderings on the astral planes’. Many of her paintings were based on trance-encounters with archetypal beings whom Norton believed had their own independent existence. She began to compile a series of these mystical drawings which, with poems by Greenlees, appeared in The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1952), under the sponsorship of the publisher Walter Glover. This book was even more controversial than her Melbourne exhibition. Glover was charged with producing an obscene publication. The book could only be distributed in Australia with some of the more sexually explicit images blacked out. In the United States of America copies were burned by customs officials. Greenlees and Norton, who had been financially assisted by Glover, were forced to scrounge a living by other means when he was declared bankrupt.
‘Norton continued to produce macabre paintings of the supernatural, though they were increasingly lurid and repetitive. She died of cancer on 5 December 1979 in the Sacred Heart Hospice, Darlinghurst.’
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Jala Wahid Final Blade, 2018
‘This piece protrudes from the wall up on high, appearing like a giant claw or sliver of human bone. In this way, the artist encapsulates both the awe and terror that is traditionally associated with witchcraft without envoking stereotypical imagery. It feels inherently violent in a way that sets it apart from other works that are predominantly associated with themes of preservation and protection. In this way, it serves as an important reminder of the marginialization and persecution so many people have faced at the hands of the term “witch”, and the reclamation that so many now seek.’
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Jesse Jones Tremble Tremble, 2017
‘The powerful witch in Tremble Tremble may in fact be perceived as an incarnation of magical thinking, a figure of radical transformation of the real and a trigger of cosmic chaos. This incredibly charismatic personage is interpreted by the acclaimed Irish actress Olwen Fouéré, who delivers a haunting performance while, beyond the screen, the exhibition space undergoes simultaneous ritual activity. Every few minutes a circle is loudly inscribed by an invigilator on a black wall, and a moving curtain slides to split up the space with the transparency of a gigantic, ghostly hand. The verticality of self-standing, landscape-shaped video screens opposed to one another, could also be another sign of the transformation of values operated by the witch.’
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Annie Cattrell Veracity 1 & 2, 2018
‘Catrell’s work consists of a series of marks or drawings burned into found wooden objects attached to the wall. These are shown alongside the filmed projection of a flame contained within a glass recepticle, recalling the purifying power of fire as well as fires linked to the rituals and fantasy of witches. The installation refers to aspects of Malcolm Gaskill’s research concerning the demonisation and branding of women as witches. The swaying of the flames echoes the rhythm and pattern of witchcraft accusations as they rippled and swirled, not just within individual psyches but also throughout early and modern communities. Fringe murmurings and isolated suspicions could suddenly flare up (reflected literally in Catrell’s installation) into full scale panics before calming down again. The marks burned into wood show the long lasting branding of the term witch on the women that were accused.’
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Darja Popolitova How to Get Rid of Sexism and Discrimination of LGBTQ+ People in Your Country, 2020
‘In the video the ‘witch’ Seraphita tries on the drag face filters (augmented reality effects that apply a drag make-up to a face) onto the portraits of Estonian right-wing politicians (Mart Helme, Jürgen Ligi, Riina Solman) and thus metaphorically stops sexism and homophobia among a society. She also tries this face-filter on herself and says that the world seems so much brighter after conducting the ritual. The video-tutorial is accompanied with instructions for conducting the ritual. For example, a person needs to become clean from all digital rubbish seen during the day before starting the magic. And for that, the necklace with a ‘special’ brush that leans against the skin is applied with slow movements to the face.’
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Elisabeth Krohn Sabat Magazine, 2016 ->
‘I made this zine (called Sabat) about “pop vs. real” teen witches when I was doing my first project for my MA back in 2015. Through my nostalgic eyes, the 1990s maiden witch was very alluring, both as an aesthetic but also as an analogy for coming into power as a young woman and the struggle of figuring out what to do with your powers. It was hard to find people who would talk to me about witchcraft and to find this young witch I was sure could not just be a product of my imagination. I approached witchcraft shops, online forums, and finally through social media discovered the world of the #witchesofinstagram where this amazing network of young witches was growing before my eyes. For the first issue, finding contributors and convincing them I knew what I was doing was a challenge. Sabat’s designer Cleber de Campos and I were making a magazine for the first time, it was not an obvious lifestyle magazine concept to say the least, and in so many ways we were making it up as we went along. Witchcraft has a rich visual history. Right now, a new generation of photographers, artists and writers are exploring this heritage in a fresh and contemporary way and communicating their work online. Working with a concept of the ancient and the instant, we tried to create a kind of micro-cosmos around this collaborative community, but also a publication that is a strong haptic experience. It’s been amazing to scroll down our Instagram feed and see how Sabat has become this object that sits comfortably on a reader’s altar with tactile tools and tarot decks.’
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Johanna Hedva Various, 2016 – 2019
‘I’m a goth, so I’m partial to the ones who speak of death as the totalising divine. Georges Bataille, for whom God was death, comes to mind. I like [Eugene] Thacker’s book Cosmic Pessimism, it’s so emo. I spend probably an unhealthy amount of time thinking about the void. I’m pretty obsessed with black holes: black holes as a metaphor for death, and also as an un-metaphor, something so beyond language that it can’t be leveraged as a metaphor, feels very close. When I learned that black holes make noise, that when they collide it causes spacetime to ring, and that this is how we’ve been able to detect and articulate them – that nothingness sings – it made sense to me as a way to speak about death. I was raised by witches, which means that the dead were very much alive in our house. They spoke constantly, and their language was tricky and multilingual, but they rarely spoke directly to you in a language you could understand. Sometimes they spoke in dreams, sometimes they turned the living room lamp on and off. I think any philosophy of death has to account for this, how the dead speak.’
Mary (Excerpt, 2019)
Sick Witch (2016)
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Clara Ursitti Birch Bitch, 2010
‘A witches hat moves around the room as if it has a life of its own. At times it is absolutely still, and uncannily starts to move, bumping into other artworks, furniture and walls in the gallery/domestic space, moving from room to room. It smells like it is burning. (Scent, robotic vacuum cleaner, old leather jackets.)’
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Katharine Dowson Concealed Shield, 2018
‘The installation takes place inside a symbolic chimney, and possibly also inside the heads of viewers wanting to protect their homes. The sounds in the dark room suggest the presence of unseen creatures, imagined to be concealed in the fabric of the walls. On entering the dark space, the viewer may experience the feeling of being surrounded by mysterious forces and by scurrying beast-like demons. The red shadows on the wall point to the piercing of the witch’s heart.’
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Valve Corporation Left 4 Dead: Witch Cry, 2000
‘Imagine being caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and as you’re treading through the dark hallways of an abandoned shopping mall, you overhear the sound of a woman crying. You might be compelled to help her and if you decide to, prepare for the most frightening experience of your life. The Witch from Left 4 Dead is a special boss infected who fits in with the likes of the Tank but the difference is she won’t charge after you without provocation. You can typically ignore her cries and proceed through the map unpenalized but the moment you shine a flashlight or shoot a gun in her direction, she’ll rise to her feet and dish out one of the most unforgiving whoopings you’ll ever receive in the game. From the moment you hear her music and sobs of grief in the distance, to the second you see her eyes glistening as she rocks back and forth in the shadows, the sheer terror the Witch sends coursing through you is one of the most memorable moments in survival horror game history.’
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Roxanne Jackson Lesser Evil, 2018
‘The idea of a feminine monster is a terrifying thing. This is because we associate the female as being the birther, the mother and the nurturer — when we think of her as being monstrous or beastly, we become truly horrified. Jung alludes to this with the archetype of the Devouring Mother, one who psychologically and/or emotionally consumes her children. This infiltrates our collective idea of the feminine — and we can see this expressed in pop culture films and entertainment. For instance, Disney shows us many great examples of the negative feminine — such as the antagonist and sea witch Ursula, in Disney’s The Little Mermaid animation. What’s more, the Mermaid Ariel, can only find her freedom, to be with a (human) man, after she denies her true beast-like nature; then she transforms to become (tame and) human. [And, the human male Prince (what’s his name) never considers how to change into a mer-man to be with Ariel…..]. I much prefer the storyline from the 1986 film, Splash, starring Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. In this romantic fantasy the mermaid, Madison, exposes her beast-like nature by aggressively devouring a lobster in a feeding-like-frenzy, while on a date with her boyfriend (Allen) in a white tablecloth restaurant. And (like a true hero), he gives up his humanness to be with her and to live in her world.’
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Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath, 1798
‘Witches’ Sabbath shows the Devil in the form of a garlanded goat, surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and aging, witches in a moonlit barren landscape. The goat possesses large horns and is crowned by a wreath of oak leaves. On the right, an old crone can be seen holding an extremely starved looking, but apparently still living, infant in her hands, while a younger witch to her right does the same with a healthier looking child, implying he/she will follow the same fate. The Devil seems to be acting as a sort of priest at an initiation ceremony for the children, although popular superstition at the time believed the Devil often fed on children and human fetuses. The dead body of an infant can be seen discarded to the left, whereas the legs of another can be seen held down with force to the ground by a presumably younger witch in the center foreground. More witches, young and old, can be seen in the background, as well as three dead infants, apparently manacled, hanging from the neck on a stake to the left in the distance.’
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William Mortensen Various, 1923 – 1948
‘In a roll call of the pioneers of modern photography, one name is never invoked. From the late 1920s to the 1950s, William Mortensen was one of the most famous and celebrated photographers in America. However, his subject matter – which veered towards the savage, indecorous, gothic and grotesque – as well as his use of montage and illustration, made him a pariah among the puritanical new guard in photography, led by Ansel Adams, who tried to write him out of history.’
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John Maus Teenage Witch, 2017
‘He sings into curtains of reverb about, presumably, his past: “Teenage witch/Want to start a fire witch,” he intones, hinting at the rage of stifling high school years. He’s accompanied by a rickety synth bassline so artificially cheery it might have been borrowed from his past collaborator Ariel Pink. This contrast between the song’s light, retro instrumentation and its sinister lyrics makes for a sharp portrait of the teen psyche.’
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Robert Therrien No titled (witch hat), 2011
‘Plastic (acetal) 12 1/4 × 8 × 8 in’
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John William Gay Witches, 2014
‘John Lawrence Sullivan shorts, vintage jewelry; AllSaints shorts, Calvin Klein t-shirt, vintage jewelry. John Lawrence Sullivan jacket, AllSaints shirt, John Lawrence Sullivan tie, vintage earring. Jeremy Scott for adidas ObyO trousers, vintage jewelry. AllSaints sweater, Rose Dent shorts, vintage Buffalo shoes, UNIQLO socks; AllSaints tracksuit, adidas shoes, Stone Island hat. Vintage Nike sweater, Lacoste t-shirt, AllSaints shorts, vintage jewelry.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Steve Finbow, Hi, Steve. Very nice to have you here, sir. Thanks! And for the links. I will pore over what’s at their destination. Everyone, the very fine writer Steve Finbow graced this place yesterday to share two links re: yesterday’s suicide forest post, specifically regarding the Finnish artist Jukka Siikala who’s done forest related work. Here’s an interview, and here’s a link to a book of Siikala’s put out by Infinity Land Press. Thank you again, take care. ** h (now j), Hey. Thank you for the fill-in about your Mekas related work. Very interesting of course. Oh, mm, I go to a lot of galleries. It depends on what shows they have up. I’d have to think of names because there are a lot. Since they’re open, i’m not sure that they have viewing rooms. Anyway, I’ll wrack my brain. We’re surely going to get Covid worse here too. Just hoping they speed up the vaccinating fast. ** David Ehrenstein, I think Roman in ‘PGL’ would think that forest was way too famous. I don’t know who Seth Rich is. I’ll find out. ** Dominik, Hi, D! I would suspect that escorts who write boring, straight forward profile texts get a lot more business than the fucked up ones I post here. And better reviews too. I know, I think we created a perpetual motion machine without even intending to. Cool, I’ll quit procrastinating and finally get ‘The Savage Detectives’. How’s stuff with you? Are you still enjoying your work/gig? Love quitting his job as love’s incarnation and becoming the most prolific escort eating cannibal in history, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. He’s not entirely out of the woods, but he can see the sunlight through the trees. And re: the latest PT, the thanks are all mine. ** Misanthrope, Well, unless you decide to off yourself I don’t think you’ll have a choice how populous your death spot is. I hope you don’t ever die, but, if you, that you get lucky. Yeah, opioids … I have a seriously great hatred of opioids, heroin, that whole genre of drugs, having had many people close to me die because of them, and I think what he’s doing is extremely dangerous, and I have no idea what you can do to stop him, probably nothing, but that’s very grim news to me, and I wish you and him all the luck. ** T, Hi,T. Happy … what is it, oh … Tuesday! Thanks a lot. And more and greater thanks for turning me/us on to Kyoufu Shimbun. I don’t know his stuff, and it sounds like a must. I’ll hit the link once I’m outta here. And you’ve made ne definitely want to dig deep into Wataru Tsurumi. You’ve basically tweaked what looked to be rather dull day for me. I guess that building The Vessel in NYC has become one of those alluring stepping off points. There must be at least one in Paris, but I don’t know what it is. Not any place obvious like Eiffel Tower or anything. Hm, I’ll check. Anyway, amazing comment, man, thank you. Chewy and deep. Happy the post put some sparkle in your work day. Sparkle on, me too. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, I didn’t see ‘The Sea of Trees’. Gus lost me after ‘Paranoid Park’, and ‘TSoT’ did sound like the worst yet. I did watch ‘Suicide Forest Village’. It’s fun, not bad, charming. ** ae, Hey, good to see you! I think I may have to go hunt down that Logan Paul video. Just to see that beanie in that forest if nothing else. Thanks. No, I don’t know that chapbook. Huh. I’ll find it ASAP. Cheers for the tip. I’m buddying up to good health as best I can, and you too, I hope. And not too bored. What about you? ** Brian O’Connell, Happy day before the big turn over, Brian. The West seems to want to understand the high suicide rate in Japan as resulting from their supposed workaholism, but I wonder. Oh, Edith Wharton is kind of great. When I did Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast a while back, he was raving to me about her, and I dipped back in, and, yeah, good stuff, good prose. Our assignment for the next Zooming bookclub session is a story by William Vollman titled ‘Violet Hair: A Heideggerian Tragedy’. It’s from his book ‘The Rainbow Stories’, which is my favorite of his books. Any tidbits (or non-tid, larger than bit-like occurrences) of note from your Tuesday? Hugs. ** Right. Witches … what more can I say? Fall under their spells, I guess. See you tomorrow.
Matthew Connorwhat in the ever living fuck. (this is gonna be a blumhouse movie in six months)
We should have more on this shortly. But it seems we have another case where anti-Antifa hysteria led members of one community in Washington state to go full feral and create a harrowing Deliverance type situation for a multi-racial family from Spokane who was looking to go camping. While stopping off to purchase camping supplies at Forks Outfitters in Forks, Washington, the family was confronted by “seven or eight carloads” of people demanding to know if they were with Antifa. This appears to have been in response to widespread rumors fanned in right wing media that “antifa” was sending formations into suburbs to loot subdivisions and rural homes. After the family decided to flee, they were then pursued by two of the vehicles with passengers apparently carrying automatic weapons. Camping that night the family heard gunfire and power saws down the road from there campsite and decided to leave. But soon they found that that self-styled anti-Antifa warriors had trapped them by cutting down trees to block the only road they could leave by. Local Facebook pages were lit up with reports about the success against Antifa. A group of high schoolers rescued the family by clearing the trees and the local Sheriffs department is now investigating.
Late Update: Here’s Kate Riga’s full report.
Matthew Connorit's been a long dispiriting week but i've been reading about and reflecting a lot on all of this & i think this post (particularly Michael Harriot's long twitter thread and the last paragraph) are worth your time.
I want to discuss some things that Chris raised in his post last night on Black voters and the Biden-Bernie matchup, and that were then echoed by others in comments. (I should say at the top that I am both one of the only Sanders-supporting and one of the only nonwhite LGM front-pagers, both of which may or may not be relevant disclosures.)
I don’t have any issues with Chris’s larger conclusion that Biden manhandled Sanders in attracting Black voters in the South. That’s clearly true and not up for debate. I also agree with the point that it’s patronizing to write off Black voters as voting against their interests, being ill-informed, etc. It’s also not borderline offensive. It is offensive.
However, I think there is a lot of nuance that’s lost, and then there’s the big problematic assertion that Black votes are going to be in play in November in terms of Trump succeeding at making a play for them. That’s not true in any really meaningful way, as even the Thomas Edsall piece linked to in the post basically shows. There’s a likelihood of lower turnout relative to 2008 and 2012, thanks to voter suppression and Obama not being on the ticket, but there’s not likely to be a statistically meaningful defection to Trump, despite what Kanye thinks and regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.
The reasons aren’t hard to parse. It’s in large measure because Black voters are by and large legitimately horrified by Trump, and by a much wider margin than are most other demographic groups. (This is of course more true of Black women than Black men.) As Blair LM Kelley writes:
black voters like the ones who pushed Biden to big victories in South Carolina, and then in Virginia, Alabama and North Carolina, aren’t The Establishment, and it would be a mistake to characterize them as moderate, or even, as certain pundits maintain, somewhat conservative. Rather than placing these votes along a straight continuum between the left and the right, it would be better to think about black voters in their own particular contexts. For most of these voters, the main concern isn’t the radicalism of their chosen primary candidate but the recklessness of the current president. Removing Trump is their primary — and in some cases only — concern. Biden, who stood firmly behind President Barack Obama for two terms, is less a compelling candidate than a reset button.
The John McWhorter quote that Chris offers (“Trump’s racism is less important to probably most black people than it is to the minority of black people in academia/the media/collegetownish circles”) contradicts that message, but McWhorter is dispositionally and professionally prone to denying the importance of racism in anything, so I don’t really think it’s worth putting stock in his opinions on this.
As for Sanders, he clearly has made mistakes when it comes to appealing to older Black voters. As Kelly notes in the piece linked above, Sanders’ skipping of important events like the Salute to Selma are huge turn-offs, and thus blunders. So too was his apparent refusal to really seek out the support of people like Jim Clyburn ahead of the South Carolina primary.
There’s also the reality, though, as Michael Harriot wrote on Twitter, that for a lot of older Black voters, their Democratic affiliation is more than just a political party, a potentially insurmountable reality for Bernie with that constituency. I’m just cutting and pasting Harriot’s tweets here:
I’ve talked to TOO MANY black Southern voters this week (and during my life). I wanna stop and explain the concept of “the establishment” to some people and why a lot of black Southern voters will NEVER vote for Bernie. Growing up, my family only talked revolutionary politics. I didn’t go to school until age 12 so I didn’t know about political parties. (I swear this is true) I thought “Democrats” was a religion. My grandma would pop u in the mouth if you said anything bad about a Dem. Here’s why. In a lot of small towns in the South, black people are generally on their own. There is no outside help. Activists, people on the ground doing work, and local political leaders all come from the same pot. There is no real distinction. My piano teacher growing up was also the NAACP president who was also a city councilperson. Sometimes I had to wait for her to finish with someone who was harassed by the cops. Sometimes there was a meeting about a local restaurant who wouldn’t serve black teens. If it was a voting day, I had to miss a lesson because she had to work the polls. Shortly after Mike Brown was killed, I went to Ferguson. As soon as I to Florissant Rd. folks asked me to help unload a truck filled with food, water, etc. where people could come and get it. I don’t remember the woman and the man’s name but he was from a local mosque and she was on the local Dem committee. Because of the protests, schools were closed. I never thought about this, but they made a good point that only someone in the community would know: If the kids were home all day but their parents still had to work, who was going to pay for and provide that extra meal they missed? A few years ago, I did a story about a third-world hookworm epidemic in Lowndes County, Ala. The woman who explained the problem to me was Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has worked on environmental justice in the South for years. The hookworms happened because a lot of people couldn’t afford septic tanks, so they “straight-piped” the waste away from their homes. Coleman-Flowers didn’t discover the hookworm problem because she’s some kind of expert. She was working in the county trying to help people in this 73% black county solve its waste problems. It was only when SHE got sick and asked a dr to test her was the hookworm was discovered. If it wasn’t for her, we might not know why people in the area were dying at such a high rate because scientists literally thought the parasite didn’t exist in America. I was once involved in what ended up being a 1-man protest (long story, read it here). Police chiefs from 2 different jurisdictions were crouched over me threatening me with arrest. They said I’d be locked up all weekend if I couldn’t make bail. But what they didn’t know is that a local councilwoman had already arranged lawyers and bail for anyone who was arrested. Again, there ain’t no help for black people EXCEPT black people. Look at photos of protests for Trayvon Martin in Fla. or EJ Bradford Jr. in Birmingham or Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Those well-meaning, progressive white liberals are nowhere to be found. All we have is the institutions, organizations and relationships we built. That’s why politicians come to black churches in the south. That’s why a lot of activists down here are also educators and religious leaders. It’s why Dem. Party meetings take place in church basements. That is quite literally “the establishment” for us. Unlike someone who live in blue and progressive areas, their lives depend on politics. It’s why I’ve found black Southern black voters are more educated on the issues than any other group. Admittedly, that comes with cynicism. Here is an example: 1 woman told me that Bernie is too “obsessed” with M4A. She believes he’ll sell anything out to get it done. Then she shocked the f*ck out of me by explaining something I had never heard of. She explained that she had read Bernie’s M4A plan and didn’t like it because it would essentially eliminate private insurance. And, she said, negotiating prescription drugs removed financial incentives for innovating. Turns out, she was retired from a medical company. She doesn’t think pharmeceutical companies and insurance lobbyists would ever let it happen. “I want to eat anything I want withoutt gaining weight. But it won’t happen. The way he [Bernie] has it, it will never happen. Ever. I like the public option more.” She spent her Super Tues. driving people from her community center to the polls in Ala. Back to the original point. A lot of these people pay a lot of attention to politics. You can criticize them but you can’t say they are uninformed. And many of them have the same criticism of Bernie Sanders: “He ain’t no Democrat.” And they’re right. He has not only criticized the party (God knows I have) but he has denigrated “the establishment” and distanced himself from people like Jim Clyburn and John Lewis. I shrug it off but, to a lot of people, you’re talking about their church members, their piano teachers, the people that help them when they are the lowest. Those people see that. And to them, Bernie is just another progressive white man with great-sounding “ideas.” They know Bernie’s record. They know about his history. They also know about unfulfilled promises. It’s not that they trust Biden more than they trust Bernie —A lot of them will NEVER be convinced to trust one white man over another white man. WHat has Biden ever done for black people? Nothing. Neither has Sanders. For a lot of them, NO white person has ever had their best interest at heart. A lot of them don’t even care about Biden’s relationship with Obama, as some people claim. He has another 40-year relationship that is more important: That D” beside his name. To them, that’s the “establishment” they trust. They all they got.
There is also a large and reasonable suspicion of whether or not enough white voters would actually support a Sanders-style political recalibration. Kelly, again:
Black voters over 45 have lived long enough to see the history made by Obama, but also have an even longer memory of the disappointment and shortcomings of candidates who failed. They’ve surveyed the polarized political landscape and bitterly divided Congress, and they doubt that a Sanders’-style political revolution is even a remote possibility in an age when just voting to fund the government is regularly up for debate. Many of them admired the grit and talent of Warren but had no faith that white men in any significant numbers would support a woman for president, even if she was the best choice.
Or as the great Black Freedom Movement scholar Hasan Jeffries put it:
I’m only going to say this once, so listen up! It’s not that Black voters don’t trust #BernieSanders enough to vote for him in the primaries, it’s that they don’t trust white voters enough to vote for him over Trump in the general election. So #Biden it is.
I know from reader reactions to my postings on reparations last year and Erik’s postings on school segregation, etc. that there’s a true aversion within a lot of this community to thinking truly and hard about whiteness and its power. But people need to know that whiteness and the ways it works are routinely part of the political arithmetic for voters of color. They have to be. (It hardly needs reiterating that Trump’s base is white men and white women, in that order, but I’ll reiterate it anyway.)
For the duration of this election cycle, Sanders has been more popular among people of color than he has been among white folks, with obvious variation between and among various demographic groups and ups and downs in the precise statistics. It’s probably true that some Black voters and other voters of color wouldn’t vote for Bernie in the general, whether because they disagree with his politics or because they don’t buy his Democratic credentials or because he’s skipping states in the primary or whatever.
But there is also the reality that many nonwhite voters are suspicious, based upon experience and history, of white voters’ commitment to a politics explicitly premised on social, economic, and racial justice that might disrupt the privileges of whiteness. That reality weighs on what people think is possible, and thus influences how they primary. It’s obviously not the only thing, but it’s there. The voting calculations of nonwhite voters aren’t made in a vacuum. They’re made in a political landscape indelibly shaped (one might say mutilated) by whiteness.
Matthew Connorlol my train is going to be out of service for... the entire month of July. as kenny said, "what is this, brooklyn?"
Matthew ConnorGOOD imo
Rendering of one of the upgraded stops.
The Daily Free Press reports a contractor is expected to begin work soon to build two new Green Line stations along Commonwealth Avenue that will replace four current stops.
The $29.3-millon project will eliminate the current St. Paul Street, BU West, Babcock Street and Pleasant Street stations and replace them with two new stations: One just west of the current BU West stop and one between the existing Pleasant Street and Babcock Street locations. The stations are expected to open next year.
By eliminating two stops, the Green Line will go a bit faster between BC and downtown. But in addition, the new stops will be longer than the current ones - which will allow for three-car trains to stop there - and be designed to allow people in wheelchairs to use them.
The brilliant scholar-activists Steve Striffler and Aviva Chomsky, both of whom teach in Massachusetts and both of whom specialize in Latin American politics and social movements, make the argument that the Bay State is actually a failed state by many measures.
And yet, it is precisely Massachusetts’s wealth and progressive character that makes the failure of government so glaring. Two of the defining features of “failed states”—something typically associated with conflict-ridden countries in the Third World—are the inability to provide public services and the lack of democratic institutions that allow for meaningful citizen participation. In many cases, as in Massachusetts, these two failures are directly connected. The state’s inability to provide core public goods such as transportation, housing, education, and healthcare is a result of a closed political system that serves entrenched interests and undermines the political will of the people. And, here again, Boston is the leader. The city’s unrivaled economic inequality, its reputation for racism, its traffic, and its crumbling system of public education are all tied to state and local institutions that are effectively closed boxes shut off from public input or influence (whether it be the legislature, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the MBTA, etc.).
This failure has been a long time coming, but its visible manifestations have recently become particularly acute for a simple reason: All of our fundamental public goods and services—transportation, housing, education, and healthcare—are simultaneously in crisis. And crisis in one area tends to compound or expose crisis in others. A crumbling transportation system, for example, puts further stress on already debilitated systems of education, housing, and healthcare. We are in a downward spiral that is making the path out more difficult by the day. What is even more troubling is that despite the clarity of the crisis, our government remains closed off from meaningful popular participation and therefore not only lacks the will and capacity to fund public goods but to pass legislation that addresses the fundamental issues at stake. Massachusetts is a failed state.
Take transportation. Massachusetts political leaders have for decades doubled down on a car-first vision, leaving Boston with the worst traffic in the nation and a system of public transportation that is inadequate, unreliable, out of date, and even unsafe. Failed public transportation, in turn, forces more people into cars and onto roads, intensifying a race to nowhere that has us stuck in place while breathing toxic fumes. It also serves to undermine the state’s limited efforts to combat climate change.
To the extent that we are moving at all, it is in the wrong direction. While other states and cities are confronting transportation crises throughout the nation, Massachusetts political leaders are either missing in action or driving us off the cliff. Gov. Baker and Mayor Walsh have essentially abdicated leadership, in effect opposing efforts to incentivize people to drive less and use public transportation more. Under current conditions, taking the bus, subway, or rail is to run the risk of arriving to work late, getting stranded completely, or falling off the tracks altogether. Political leadership is precisely what is needed if we want to make the changes necessary to make public transportation a realistic option for most people.
On the one hand, congested roads and dysfunctional public transportation serve to raise housing costs in urban areas as people concentrate in certain locales to avoid soul-crushing commutes. On the other hand, outrageous housing costs force working people out of the city and farther from work sites, driving cars they cannot afford greater distances in order to secure rents that allow them to survive. Yet, despite the fact that voters throughout the state consistently point to the housing crisis as the most important issue facing the Commonwealth, politicians have done little to address the problem in any systematic way. Last year Gov. Baker proposed a bill that lawmakers failed to pass because it didn’t go far enough—and so they did nothing.
Mayor Walsh has at times talked a good game and helped create over 30,000 homes with tens of thousands more in the pipeline. But far too few are affordable, and there seems to be little political will to confront the problem or even recognize that government has a responsibility to ensure people are adequately housed. The consequence of inaction—of letting the free market and backroom deals through an old boy network reign—is a development landscape that reproduces inequality through glittery monstrosities such as the Seaport District while forcing more poor people into homelessness. The state’s homeless population jumped 14% in 2018. Working families are struggling to survive as their income is devoured by rent and the dream of home ownership slips away, and even the upwardly mobile are leaving the region for more affordable and transit-friendly locales.
Nor can we take solace in our educational system. To quote a Boston Globe headline, “Beacon Hill lawmakers have been shortchanging the education of students nearly $1 billion a year,” a fact that has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students of color, and recent immigrants. Less than one in three black and Latino fourth graders read at grade level, and only 28% of low-income eighth graders are on grade level in math. This is not entirely surprising. Massachusetts “is no longer among the states that direct more state and local dollars to the districts serving the most low-income students,” and Boston schools are more segregated than they were when the tumultuous process of desegregation tore apart the city decades ago.
Nor are those students likely to catch up if they manage to make their way to the state’s underfunded public colleges and universities. Our political leaders cut funding for higher education by 14% between 2001 and 2017, the cost of which was passed on to students who now leave college with around $30,000 in debt. Average student debt has grown faster in Massachusetts than in all states but one, and the state ranks near the bottom in terms of higher education support per $1,000 of personal income. What that means is that despite being a relatively wealthy state, our political leaders have been very stingy when it comes to funding public higher education. Massachusetts is failing the students of working families at every stage of the educational process, from preschool through college.
One could make similar arguments about California, Oregon, and Washington as well. The rise of these wealthy states and their booming economy has led to some good social policies, but has also led to a lot of selfishness in terms of things such as housing policy, which drives poverty and homelessness. But what about the value of my home!?!?! Indeed, what about the value of your home as homeless people take shelter around the edge of your property. One thing about Latin American and southeast Asian cities where I have been is that it’s not that there’s usually a huge physical distance between the wealthy and the poor masses. It’s that the wealthy are locked in behind gates and fences and security guards and cameras while the poor are just outside. Thinking of the future of the bluest states in a similar light is not a real happy vision. Of course, calling Massachusetts a failed state is meant to be provocative, but it’s also important that you feel provoked by these issues.
