Billie Eilish is perhaps the most talented artist of our generation…and I don’t throw that around lightly. At only 13, Eilish wrote “Ocean Eyes” alongside her brother Finneas and launched her prolific career. And at the fair age of 22, Eilish has 24 GRAMMY Award nominations and nine wins, two Oscars, two Golden Globes, and countless other accolades.
Beyond that, she recently announced her third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, to be released May 17, 2024. She spent the days leading up to the announcement building excitement by adding all of her Instagram followers to her “Close Friends” list. Eilish had the most Instagram followers in 48 hours…with her count increasing by 7 million followers total.
While her debut album, when we all fall asleep…where do we go?, was a chart-topper in its own right, it landed Billie every GRAMMY it was nominated for at the ripe age of 18…Eilish has solidified herself as one of the most revered and sought-after popstars in the world.
Eilish recently caught media attention for quietly revealing her sexuality. In an interview with Variety, she states that she’s always liked girls…and assumed people always knew that. In a viral snippet from her new song, LUNCH, she details a love affair with a girl.
But people don’t only adore Billie for her catchy tracks that consistently top the charts. It’s not just her songwriting ability and unique vocals that keep us hooked. People love her because she’s unafraid to speak her mind.
Whether it be complaining about too many influencers being at an awards show, or calling out other artists for using unsustainable practices…Billie does not hold back.
Billie Eilish On Sustainability
Eilish home
rethinkingthefuture.com
The Eilish home is iconic for many reasons: it’s where Billie and Finneas recorded her debut album, countless other songs, and EPs, in an effort to conserve water there’s no grass, and the roof is covered in solar panels. And being environmentally conscious extends beyond the four walls of their home.
When the hottest young talent is discovered at such an early age like Eilish, record labels are chomping at the bit to sign them. It’s like when a D1 athlete is ready to commit to college…you have your pick.
But what Eilish and her mom, Maggie Baird, were looking for wasn’t about money or label-perks…they were seeking a solid sustainability program. And while that may seem like standard practice, most labels didn’t bring up environmental policies during these meetings at all.
After signing to The Darkroom via Interscope Records, the struggle didn’t stop there. Billie Eilish and her family have been consistent contributors to the fight against climate change.
Maggie Baird has since started Support + Feed, which focuses on the climate crisis and food insecurity. Support + Feed helped Eilish’s 2022 Happier Than Ever tour save 8.8 million gallons of water through plant-based meal service for the artist and crew members.
During Billie’s 2023 Lollapalooza performance, she aided the launch and funding of REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project – which guaranteed all battery systems used during her set were solar powered. The MCD’s overall mission is to lower – and eventually eliminate –the music industry’s carbon emissions.
But more recently, Billie Eilish called out other artists for releasing multiple versions of vinyls in order to boost vinyl sales. In an interview with Billboard, she says,
“We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging … which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money and gets them more…”
Artists convince fans to buy different versions of their albums by offering exclusive features on each vinyl. Take Taylor Swift, for example, who released five separate vinyl versions of Midnights, each with a different deluxe “Vault” track.
While Billie may not have been trying to shade one artist in particular, the point is that she’s fed up. After being the rare artist in the industry who go out of their way to remain environmentally conscious, Eilish sets the bar high.
How Eilish’s New Album Is Sustainable
Billie for "Hit Me Hard and Soft"
William Drumm
Social media users were quick to claim Eilish was hypocritical by announcing that HIT ME HARD AND SOFT will have eight vinyl variations. However, each vinyl is made from recycled materials – either 100% recycled black vinyl or BioVinyl, which replaces petroleum used during manufacturing with recycled cooking oil.
This just illustrates that Eilish wasn’t directing criticism towards other artists for using vinyl variants to gain album sales…but she does think there are better ways to do it that benefit the environment without hurting their sales.
Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Eco-Anxiety, and Hope During the Climate Crisis
In A Time Of Climate Anxiety, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Is Paving A Hopeful Path Forward
With disasters like metal-melting, marine life-boiling heat waves across the Pacific Northwest, flash floods turning streets into rivers and subway stations into toxic lakes, wildfires in Oregon so intense they filled the New York skyline with a smoky haze. Then there's the ocean surface burning due to oil spills while companies are still trying to force oil pipelines through Indigenous lands. It's been especially difficult these days to feel hope for the future.
In a 2017 study by the American Psychological Association, researchers used the term "eco-anxiety" to describe the mental health impacts of climate change and its social and ecological consequences. Think: fatalism, chronic stress, fear, exhaustion, anger, depressive episodes, even violence. Honestly, how can you not feel that way when you doom-scroll through social media and watch the 24-hour news cycle of climate emergencies happening around the world?
Greta Thunberg, one of the youth movement's biggest voices, has talked about struggling with depression in the early years of her activism. This was brought on by her frustrations with the continued inaction of adults in positions of power. It's no surprise that the doomsday prep and emergency management industry is expected to grow by billions of dollars by 2025.
As much as we'd like to disconnect or look away, climate change and its many intersecting consequences — and the planet-damaging systems that got us into this situation — aren't going away any time soon. How, then, can we move through this collective anxiety we share about the future? How can we come together locally and globally to lessen the blows of environmental change, especially for our most vulnerable communities?
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's tireless work as a marine biologist and climate policy advocate should be an example to us all of how to build a path forward together through education and collective action. Maybe you've heard of her, or at least heard of her work: She's written about racism as one of the biggest obstacles to stopping climate change, coastal and ocean conservation efforts across New York City (she's also a board member of the Billion Oyster Project), and how environmental justice is essential to the Black Lives Matter movement.
A co-founder of the coastal cities policy think tank Urban Ocean Lab, Dr. Johnson co-authored the Blue New Deal. This plan was released during Senator Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign and would prioritize restoring America's ocean habitats and rebuilding coastal economies and communities impacted by warming oceans, pollution, and overfishing. Dr. Johnson's even discussed being a climate justice advocate with Billie Eilish.
But it's her current role as the co-host of Gimlet Media's podcast How To Save A Planet where Ayana's passion for climate change education and collective empowerment really shines. Episode subjects range from agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions to the history of wildfires and land management. Listeners' questions often take center stage. Think: Is the carbon footprint a helpful tool for measuring our individual action against climate change? Are electric cars really that much better for the environment? Does recycling make a difference? No environmental justice-shaped stone is left unturned.
Dr. Johnson, with the help of great guests including farmers, activists, and researchers, reframes these ongoing debates in a way that's refreshingly accessible. Listeners not only learn about topics left out of their science textbooks, but they gain a better understanding of how climate science terms and theories manifest in our day-to-day lives. She also covers what we may experience at our local level to big-picture changes in our regional and global ecologies as well as our economic and political systems.
Through Dr. Johnson's solutions-focused approach, the scary unknowns that tend to paralyze our discussions around climate change—and make us feel like none of our actions even matter—feel a little less scary. Dr. Johnson's intention, throughout this show and through all of her work is not to shame people for not doing enough or fear-monger without offering a course of action. Instead, she engages with everyone, regardless of how much they know and their proximity to the climate movement, to build a better foundation of our environmental understanding, to challenge misinformation, and to inspire us to make change together.
The stories collected in the anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions For The Climate Crisis, which Dr. Johnson co-edited alongside Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, are urgent reading. Especially in this perpetual era of environmental calamity wherever we look. Poems about the Anthropocene share pages with stories of climate migration, Indigenous resistance, stories of communities of color fighting against systems of environmental racism, and motherhood during the climate crisis.
The collection uplifts just as much as it educates. Flip through each chapter and you'll find terms defined, statistics, and insights marked for your attention, offering accessible entry points into looming threats and ongoing struggles that oftentimes feel beyond our comprehension.
In her chapter on mental health and the climate crisis, climate adaptation researcher Susanne C. Moser notes how "climate grief" has sprung up in many of us. Scholars define this as an attempt to process the traumatic effects of living on a changing planet marred by overwhelming impacts of natural disasters, and forced migration and displacement. But both Moser and Johnson call for resilience as opposed to giving into the fear. As Moser writes, "Burnt-out people are less effective people. Burnt-out people can become sick people...Burnt-out people aren't equipped to serve a burning planet."
We cannot predict the future. Already, climate change has defied our modeling and our expectations, impacting communities across the world in disproportionate ways. It's understandable to avoid thinking about it until the climate crisis ends up at your front door.
Those in power who strive to continually get away with the damage we've done want us to focus on everything that's gone wrong and want us to give up. But now, more than ever, we must educate ourselves, unite, build political power, help enact community-based change, close the gaps, and mend the harmful systems that have impacted frontline communities for so long.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's ongoing climate advocacy is a reminder that all hope is not lost. Her work suggests that taking care of our bodies and minds is critical now more than ever.
So take a step back and breathe. Remember to celebrate victories and good news and treat yourself and each other with compassion. Listen to the marginalized communities who have been and continue to be most victimized by this climate emergency. Look to them for guidance and support their fight with the resources and tools you already have. As Dr. Johnson writes, together with Dr. Katherine Wilkinson: "Roll up your sleeves. Everyone has a role to play."
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Eleonor Botoman is a critic and poet based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work has appeared in C Magazine, Artforum, Sunlight Press, Interiors Journal, BUST Magazine, The Mantle, and Dream Pop Journal. A former sketchbook librarian, she now studies in NYU's Experimental Humanities program. When she's not reading science fiction or visiting museums, she's working on her newsletter, Screenshot Reliquary.
Jared Kushner Could Win a Nobel Prize, but BLM Deserves It
The Nobel Prize committee has the chance to signal a better future for a prize with a fraught past.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice — Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. "Letter From Birmingham Jail" 1963
Nominations have been announced for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
Among notable nominees are Ivanka Trump's husband Jared Kushner, politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Depending on your political biases, you likely find at least one of those nominations offensive, though it should be noted that the list of nominees is long, and anyone can be nominated.
In this case, Black Lives Matter was nominated by Petter Eide, a member of Norway's parliament. As for Jared Kushner, he was nominated along with former Special Representative for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz — the famed Harvard law professor, Trump sycophant, and defense attorney for O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein. Kushner and Berkowitz played central roles in brokering the Abraham Accords declaring, "Peace, Cooperation, and Constructive Diplomatic and Friendly Relations" between the US, Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE.
The Abraham Accords: The PR of the 'peace deals' | The Listening Postwww.youtube.com
At face value many Americans would no doubt see the negotiation of a peace deal as more legitimate grounds for nomination than a protest movement that sparked violent confrontation with police and counter protesters around the country in 2020. And, if we look at the history of the Peace Prize, there is a sense in which they would be right — the prize has often been awarded for superficial diplomatic theater rather than the real and often messy work of addressing injustice.
The Fraught History of the Nobel Peace Prize
In 1928, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg received the prize for getting all the world's major powers to officially, meaninglessly renounce war...shortly before Hitler took power in Germany. Another Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was selected by the Nobel Committee for negotiating a cease fire with Vietnam in 1973 — the same year it was revealed that he had masterminded a secret carpet bombing campaign in Cambodia, which is credited with giving rise to the genocidal Khmer Rouge.
More recently, in 2009, Barack Obama was given the Peace Prize just for being elected president — in a move Obama acknowledged as premature. And in 2020, Donald Trump's son-in-law and his buddy Avi were nominated for the award for arranging "peace" between nations that were never at war — with a substantial arms deal thrown in for good measure.
To put it bluntly, it would make nearly as much sense for Jared Kushner to win the Nobel Peace Prize as it did for a number of other recipients with dubious claims to peace work. By contrast, in 1948 the Nobel committee chose not to award anyone — rather than acknowledge Mohandas Gandhi's work in pushing for Indian independence from Britain.
Historically the committee has often erred on the side of the powerful — rewarding hollow and hypocritical displays of diplomacy over the controversy that tends to arise around grassroots struggles. So while it may be unlikely that Kushner and Berkowitz will receive the peace prize, neither would it really be surprising.
But with Black History Month kicking off, it's worth articulating not just why their diplomacy is underwhelming, but why the Black Lives Matter movement deserves recognition for advancing the global fight against injustice.
No Justice, No Peace
While extensive efforts have been made to paint the Black Lives Matter movement as violent, anti-White, and at the political fringes, in reality it is the largest and most racially diverse protest movement in American history. And considering the thousands of demonstrations that have taken place, involving many millions of individuals, the relative lack of violence from the protesters is much more worthy of note than a handful of dramatic scenes.
Compared to the January 6th Trump rally, where a crowd of around 30,000 spawned a violent insurrection — which was handled with kid gloves by the police and led to five deaths — the 15 million plus who participated in BLM marches in 2020 were remarkably peaceful. The same cannot be said for far too many of police who patrolled those marches and gave proof to the brutality that inspired them.
And though regrettable incidents of arson and violence have undeniably taken place in connection with BLM demonstrations, the alternative was not "peace."
What is often overlooked in discussions of peace is the reality of social and political injustice as among the most prevalent forms of violence on Earth. When millions of people, targeted through no fault of their own, are systemically dehumanized — their lives and their contributions devalued and their opportunities for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness both deliberately and incidentally truncated for centuries — that is violence that destroys lives on another scale altogether.
For Black Americans that obviously means slavery and its aftermath, as well as segregation and the continued legacies of practices like redlining. But it also means a so-called "war on drugs" that treats addiction as a crime rather than an illness and disproportionately targets and locks up Black Americans, depriving too many children of their parents.
It means racist police procedures like Stop and Frisk, as well as the implicit (and often explicit) racial biases of the officers themselves. It means making it nearly impossible for people convicted of felonies within this unjust, racist system to live within the bounds of the law, depriving them — as well as millions of Black Americans who haven't been convicted of anything — of the right to participate in democracy and change the system that treats them so cruelly.
And none of this even covers the immense wealth inequality that makes life harder for almost all Americans — though, again, the harm is leveled disproportionately against Black Americans. All of these ordinary and unacceptable aspects of American life are violence — "the negative peace which is the absence of tension."
They destabilize communities, families, and individual lives. And that violence came to a head in June, following the horrific killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill.
While far from the only evidence of systemic racism in America, the murder of unarmed Black men, women, and children by police and by racist vigilantes who — more often than not — are allowed to walk free, is perhaps its most blatant and disgusting expression.
And the names of the slain — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Philando Castille, too many more to mention — have become rallying cries.
With all the domestic resistance the protests met from people who insist on spitting "all lives matter!" (as if fighting for the value of Black lives implied otherwise) and "blue lives matter!" (as if the safety of police officers depends on their ability to shoot unarmed Black men, women, and children without consequence), it would be easy to lose sight of how much support the movement has received overseas. While the movement was started in America, the impact has been global.
"Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere"
The reality of living as a dehumanized minority in a bigoted society is sadly all too common in the world. And while not everywhere is as bad in this respect as America, the recognition sparked protests of solidarity and of common cause around the world.
Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black Lives Matter has continued the fight for America to live up to its promise. Because right now "the land of the free" is home to a carceral state where more people are imprisoned than anywhere else on Earth, and citizens are killed by police at a higher rate than in any comparable nation.
Because the systems that were deliberately set up to keep newly freed Black citizens oppressed following the Civil War were never truly purged — have been covertly bolstered and supplemented ever since.
That is not peace. Only a stable form of violence.
In 1964 the Nobel committee opted not to side with power. It was the same year the FBI sent a harassing letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., urging him to commit suicide.
He was considered by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover — and many others in positions of power within the American government — to be an enemy of the state. There is even reason to believe that these forces were directly involved in his 1968 assassination.
His protest movement was disruptive to the normal order of American life that most white Americans were content to maintain. Many balked at the idea that it could be called peaceful. But the Nobel committee selected him for the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a serious signal that the world was watching how America handled peaceful dissent.
Did that make a difference in passing the voting rights act of 1965? Who can say? But the Nobel committee has a similar opportunity this year.
What Black Lives Matter has been fighting for in recent months is the "positive peace" King spoke of as "the presence of justice." With that in mind — and with some uncertainty remaining as to how a decentralized, leaderless movement of millions can receive an award — the Nobel committee should take seriously the option of selecting Black Lives Matter.
Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speechwww.youtube.com
There are no doubt many nominees whom the committee could select for the Peace Prize — including Jared Kushner. And some who would even be worthy — including Stacey Abrams.
But the significance of acknowledging a grassroots fight for justice that was centuries in the making (in a nation which — for all its flaws — continues to shape culture around the world) is too powerful to deny.
How America Celebrates Black History While Erasing It
In February we celebrate Black History Month in America.
For the entire month, we commemorate the vast contributions from Black people who have impacted society here and abroad. After all, we are responsible for countless inventions and innovations in art, science, athletics, business, and activism, contributions that often get overlooked because of our country's pervasive legacy of racism.
Black History Month may also be the only annual instance that this country comes close to acknowledging its racist heritage. The brilliance that Blackness has provided modern-day society is, unfortunately, also rooted in hatred and exclusion.
Recognizing the creations shaped by the hands of Black people means examining the oppressive infrastructures that sparked their genius. One of those infrastructures is slavery.
The mention of slavery prompts various reactions amongst white people. Some declare it to be our country's greatest shame, while others act as if it never happened. If the latter admits to its existence, it's to admonish others for "living in the past."
The celebration of Black History Month and the acknowledgment of slavery go hand in hand. Although a vast majority of Black History itself isn't a direct result of slavery, its ramifications are certainly a factor.
For instance, Martin Luther King Jr'.s vaunted legacy hinges upon his fight against racism and segregation. His peaceful marches and resounding speeches became the introduction to Black History and the Civil Rights Movement for most children in elementary schools across the country.
King is a lauded American hero for his fortitude. But his battle with a racist system is often romanticized. His reimagining sees him as a man standing up for his beliefs instead of a victim of a hateful construct who was forced to rise up against his oppressors.
The irony resides in Black people being labeled as world-changers and trailblazers in the eyes of history but only being allowed to access a small portion of it in order to apply their craft.
Similarly, Black people becoming a dominant force in sports and entertainment hasn't been without their share of obstacles. Unlike today where they have access to a worldwide audience to entertain, Black musicians and athletes' sole audiences used to be people who looked like them.
Sports pioneer Jackie Robinson made history as the first Black man to play professional baseball. His breaking of the color barrier instituted a new day in American sports, but the country's prejudicial temperament remained the same. Robison received death threats from angry white fans, players, and even owners.
Robinson Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers poses at Ebbets Field in the Brooklyn borough of New York. John Rooney/AP/Shutterstock
Furthermore, musicians like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, who are pioneers of Rock and Roll, are credited with inspiring The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. But during the '50s, their sound was classified as "race music." Conversely, that same "race music" was acceptable when taken and repurposed by white artists.
They and others like them persevered in the face of adversity to open doors for Black people today. Their struggles are reminders of the resiliency of Black people that changed the world and the unnecessary roadblocks they had to overcome to do so.
The observance of Black History Month in today's racial climate in America feels insincere. When entities are dedicated to oppression the other 11 months of the year, it's hard to believe their calls for racial unity in February
We voice our grievances about the government and law enforcement's wanton negligence daily, only to hear how stuck in the past we are as a race. Yet, that same past is responsible for the evolution of civilization as we know it today. Without Black people, America would not be the culturally rich place it is today.
Still, many feel sentiments like "Black Lives Matter" are radical movements, when in actuality they are an ever-present reminder of the conditions Black people had to navigate to pull off these incredible feats.
America cannot sincerely immerse itself in the celebration of Black History Month until it confronts its history. Racism is the beating heart beneath the floorboards of privilege. But as the beating grows louder, our country continues to disregard its pulse.
The Attack on Capitol Hill Wasn't Black Americans' Fight
"President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon...Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad." -Malcolm X.
The attack on Capitol Hill was another example of how President Donald Trump has emboldened white supremacy. His term in office has given racism and fascism a bigger platform and an official advocate. He proved that, at his command, MAGA fanatics will assemble to do his bidding.
As the world watched the descent of democracy, many were appalled at the visual. This was an attempted coup two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. News outlets and politicians questioned how we, as a country, got to this point. But for Black Americans, this has always been our country.
The violence witnessed on Capitol Hill was a scene all too familiar for Black people. The difference was that we weren't the direct targets. Trump's base has antagonized and threatened violence against Black people while law enforcement abuses its power when interacting with us. The confrontation between the two entities responsible for our oppression was unexpected, but not surprising.
Many Trump supporters and members of law enforcement are cut from the same cloth. In fact, many members of law enforcement voted for him. Their belief in excessive force under the guise of law and order gives them what they feel is the right to harm anyone who goes against their authority. They are loyal to a flawed system and a man that keeps them in power and not to the country and its citizens seeking progress and peace.
Throughout this presidency, both sides have pledged their allegiance to each other. MAGA supporters have backed the Blue Lives Matter movement. Police officers have demonstrated leniency when dealing with unruly Trump disciples at rallies and protests. Both believe they are the good guys trying to make things great again.
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Black people have had to do battle with both. We've had to listen to the various lies spewed about the Black Lives Matter movement from supporters of the president while fighting police brutality daily. The assault on Blackness was a cause that unified them. Black people have warned the world of the dangers these factions were capable of for years. Those claims fell on deaf ears, until yesterday when they turned on one another.
For many Black Americans, yesterday was the manifestation of this country's inability to address domestic terrorism. Peaceful protests and resistance against police brutality are viewed in the same light as the insurrection. The anarchy and mayhem that GOP pundits accuse BLM of inciting was a direct order from their leader.
Their ignorance and arrogance gave them the courage to lay siege to a government building. But if angry Black protesters attempted the same actions, many lives would've been lost.
Suddenly, Trump supporters view themselves as oppressed. Their reign over the country is coming to a not so graceful end. Rather than humbly accepting defeat, they want to dismantle the establishment. The same establishment that helped empower them over the last four years.
Somehow this attack was yet another revelation for white Americans. Before Trump's election, the idea of police officers displaying a lack of regard for the lives of Black people was inconceivable to white Americans. The thought of parts of our government upholding systemic racism was unfathomable.
Last night, after a year of reckoning with the racism built into America's system, white Americans were forced to once again look at the enormous part white privilege plays in policing. But for Black people, it was simply a clear visual of America's decision on November 8, 2016, coming home to roost.
Black Voters Won Georgia. Now It’s Time for Democrats to Listen
For too long we've been told that "Black" politics would scare away moderates
First thing's first: I need white people to stop treating Stacey Abrams like their savior.
Deification, a form of dehumanization, strips a person of their humanity and turns them into a symbol. By overhyping Stacey Abrams, white people assert their goodness on the back of a Black woman, trying to be woke by association.
While Abrams deserves much praise, we cannot continue to place superhuman expectations upon her. We also cannot act like she was solely responsible for discovering a secret to turning Georgia blue. The reality is that Stacey Abrams worked tirelessly alongside other dedicated organizers to address the voter suppression Black people have been fighting in Georgia for decades.
So why haven't democratic politicians done this before? Obama did, campaigning at a grass roots level and counting on disenfranchised voters. But he was Obama, people might say, of course Black people will vote for him. The "Black vote" in political discourse is treated as an ineffable mystery and often discarded as impossible to count on. Black people just don't vote, politicians say, then focus their attention elsewhere.
So when the Black vote (alongside other BIPOC demographics such as the historic voter turnout of Indigenous populations in Arizona) undoubtedly delivered the 2020 election to the Democrats, then did the same for the House in the Georgia run-offs, everyone was talking about Stacey Abrams in a way a little too reminiscent of how the dad talked in Get Out.
But the election results revealed that Black voters are in fact the key to the Democratic Party's success. When is the Party going to start acting like it?
All through the election year, Democrats were convinced that playing it safe was the key to defeating Trump.
By electing Biden as the nominee instead of more "radical" Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the DNC were adamant that the game plan was to appeal to white moderates — which meant not scaring them away.
So while Biden picked Harris, a biracial Black and Indian woman, as his Vice President, their campaign strategy was to hover around the center and appeal to white voters who somehow just weren't sure who to vote for yet.
Meanwhile, the country was going through a period of major racial protest. Black Lives Matter protesters spent the summer appealing for an end to police brutality, for legislative protection, for defunding the police and reexamining the carceral system in light of its racist roots.
And though there were some tweets and statements from major Democratic politicians in response to the murder of George Floyd, as well as that super embarrassing thing with the Kinte cloths, the sentiment remained that actually addressing the demands of protestors would be too risky and scare away the nice white voters.
Well, the nice white voters went for Trump.
Exit polls showed that 58% of white voters voted for Trump — an increase from the 2016 election. And while Trump made percentage gains with Black men, Black people overwhelmingly voted for Biden. And in key cities in key states, Black voters having the agency to vote in the presidential election and in the Georgia Senate races was instrumental in the Democratic wins.
The numbers speak for themselves. In his election speech, Biden even thanked Black voters for being instrumental to his victory. But Biden's main message was one of healing — not for marginalized groups who suffered most under the Trump presidency, but for … "the soul of America"?
Biden's speech seemed to focus on restoring party communication, going back to his comfortable place in the center and telling us (while invoking Langston Hughes in his references to "dreams deferred") to join him.
For many Black voters, moving to the center looks like regression. Again, the Democratic rhetoric was one that appealed to white moderates, to appease their concerns and placate their nerves after a year of proverbially "difficult" conversations and "reckoning."
But for Black Americans, the most difficult thing is being constantly gaslit — being told by a party which claims to care about us that fighting for our concerns (read: our lives) is too much, too difficult, too frightening.
In response to the calls to defund the police, many major Democrats were quick to dismiss the movement. Biden himself said that he did not want to defund the police. "I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness," he said instead, again appealing to vague notions of morality rather than actionable policy.
Even Black politicians took up this rhetoric. South Carolina Representative and major Civil Rights activist James Clyburn said that "nobody is going to defund the police," and that "police have a role to play." His plea was against "sloganeering," claiming that pleas like "Defund the Police'' would undermine the movement and lose the election.
Barack Obama said something similar (thanks, Obama): "If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like Defund the Police, but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it."
These sentiments are the work of years of conditioning that expects Black people to acquiesce to white audiences, to settle for banal "reform" and "slow, steady change" instead of radical action. They are examples of respectability politics and tone policing that reinforce the idea that Black folks are a liability, harming our own progress by scaring away potential allies.
But we're tired of it.
In the wake of the dismissal of BLM slogans, many major progressives also spoke out. Representative Ilhan Omar responded to Obama's comment in a tweet, saying: "We lose people in the hands of police. It's not a slogan but a policy demand. And centering the demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country gets us progress and safety."
Her response points out the danger in the quick dismissal by these politicians: too focused on how the slogan sounds, they fail to address the policy changes it calls to action and continue to support a system of policing which currently exists in a fundamentally oppressive structure. Reform is not enough, complete restructuring and radical change is the only answer.
Most Black Americans do not have the privilege of not understanding this. And, after delivering the election to Biden and the Senate, we want recognition.
We want to no longer be the big scary thing that Democrats are afraid of. We want to be taken seriously, and we want our demands to be met, our communities to be prioritized, and our people to stop dying at the hands of the state.
Black voters do not appear magically to deliver democracy if white people click their heels, repost an infographic, and say, "Stacey Abrams" in the mirror three times. The Black Vote is a collection of diverse, real people who are tired of being treated like a liability, a threat to the party they have always been loyal to.
It's time the party returned the favor — pointing out the obvious transgressions of the (soon) past administration will not be enough. With a blue senate, Biden has the opportunity to be bold, to enact real change for the communities who showed up for him, despite his own flaws and a year spent turning his back to us for the sake of white voters who did not.
Black Power, White Money: How Ice Cube and Lil Wayne's Wealth Insulates Them from Donald Trump
After four years of reversing Obama-era policies, empowering white supremacy, and allowing the coronavirus to kill more than 200,000 Americans—a disproportionate amount of them Black—Trump is finally attempting to reach out to Black voters weeks before the election.
Ice Cube and Lil Wayne's ability to ignore all of the damage the Trump administration has done is a sharp reminder of not only class solidarity among the super-wealthy, but also the power disparity between white and Black people.
During the last few weeks of the 2020 election, the Trump campaign spent over $20 million on a last-minute grasp for Black voters. Part of this effort involved reaching out to Black celebrities like Ice Cube and Lil Wayne and unveiling what the administration called "The Platinum Plan," a part of Trump's second term strategy that would empower Black Americans by increasing "access to capital in black communities by almost $500 billion."
The plan also lists "Access to better education and job training opportunities" and "Safe Urban Neighborhoods with Highest Policing Standards," both of which implies some acknowledgment of the issues Black Americans face every day. But given Trump's stance on the Black Lives Matter movement, these promises ring hollow.
Ice Cube and Lil Wayne's willingness to associate with the Trump Administration is admirable if you consider their efforts attempts to insulate their communities against the possibility of a Trump victory in the 2020 election, but the promises Trump is making them are vague at best and hypocritical at worst.
After four years of reversing Obama-era policies, empowering white supremacy, and allowing the Coronavirus to kill more than 200,000 Americans—a disproportionate amount of them Black—Trump is finally attempting to reach out to Black voters weeks before the election. The amount of ignorance required to ignore all of that, when it's written on the page, is astronomical.
Ice Cube and Lil Wayne may have their own reasons for supporting Trump, but their ability to be independent comes from their wealth. They are allowed to choose sides because they are rich and are insulated from the consequences of the political world, while their Blackness gives them ties to communities that they have the ability to leave because they are rich.
In 2016, Ice Cube said during an interview with Bloomberg, "Do I think he's gonna do anything to help poor people or people that's struggling? No, because he's a rich white guy. He's always been rich, being rich don't make you bad, I ain't saying that. But I'm just saying, how can he relate?"
This sentiment isn't too far from the mark. It's worth remembering that Ice Cube is a millionaire himself—a millionaire who is allowed to posture as a community leader due to his fame. The Blackness and wealth that these celebrities possess make them indispensable assets for people in positions of white power.
In American politics, Black people have been offered a choice between voting for a party that allies itself with their oppression and a party that promises to oppress them less. Reasonably, many have just opted to not participate.
But Ice Cube's alignment with Trump will not persuade people to vote. In fact, it may just persuade more people not to vote, as they see a rich Black man whose wealth and fame has given him the opportunity to stand side by side with white power be won over by some hollow words on a sheet of paper.
The thing that uniquely places all Black Americans into a community is that they are pinned under the same thumb. They have fewer opportunitiesfor upward movement, and the opportunities at the bottom of the ladder don't pay enough to move up that ladder. They are killed disproportionately by their supposed protectors. Lil Wayne and Ice Cube are insulated from, not immune to, these facts because of their exorbitant wealth.
Ice cube is Black to everyone, a fact that overwrites his wealth. He, Lil Wayne and anyone else who falls under this umbrella can always have their wealth disregarded by whiteness, so in order to be validated in their accomplishments, they often associate with whiteness.
Still, their very real wealth fundamentally separates them from the middle and lower class Black people that they seek to represent.
Karens for Biden and Dicks for Trump: What Your Name Says About Your Vote
A new poll of voters names reveals some surprising results.
It should surprise no one to learn that Donald Trump has locked down the Dick vote.
President Trump and former vice president, Joe Biden, are currently polling around even among men nationwide—each receiving about 48% support, with a handful of voters still undecided. But when that category is narrowed to Dicks, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena college shows that Donald Trump takes a decisive lead, earning 64% of their support to Biden's 36%.
It would be tempting to point to Donald Trump's lifelong pattern of cruel, selfish, and inhumane approach to life as the key selling point for Dicks. And while that may well be a factor in how Dicks plan to vote, Donald Trump is an entirely different category of dick than these voters.
The Dicks that so overwhelmingly prefer him in this new poll are not defined by dickish behavior, but by their first name. Of course they may go by Rich, or Rick, or the uncut Richard—though if they don't like being called Dicks, they should really stop voting like such dicks.
The Poll
The poll asked over 17,000 respondents in 18 battleground states to provide their first names and voting preferences, resulting in a list of 102 names with more than 30 respondents.
The Origin Of The Karen Memewww.youtube.com
While that means the data on a name like Marilyn (44% for Trump, 56% for Biden) is pretty limited, with a high margin of error, the results for more popular names like John (53% for Trump, 47% for Biden) and Mary (48% for Trump, 52% for Biden) are probably pretty reflective of how people with those names are voting.
Of the 10 most popular male and female names on the list, the two with the widest margins are Richard (64% for Trump, 54% for Biden) and—shockingly—Karen (40% for Trump and 60% for Biden).
That result is particularly surprising, given the reputation that Karens have developed in recent years. synonymous with a caricature of entitled, middle-aged white women with swoopy blonde hair and who are eager to call the police on people of color over minor or non-existent offenses.
They're the women who go into stores without masks on, then shout about their civil rights when employees try to enforce mask policies. They're women like Amy Cooper, who called 911 about "an African American man threatening [her] life" when asked to put her dog on a leash by a man wielding dog treats...
That certainly sounds like the kind of person who would support a president with swoopy blond hair and who downplays the coronavirus pandemic and calls Black Lives Matter protestors terrorists. And yet Karens favor Biden by a margin of 20%.
While white women in general favored Biden by about 13% in a recent CNN/SSRS poll—compared to an approximate 2% margin for Trump over Clinton in 2016—this new poll suggests that Karens are an outlier, with a much stronger lean toward Biden.
Have we judged Karens too harshly? Are they not the entitled monsters we have memed them to be?
Are Karens Good Now?
The question of how Karens ended up with this reputation is closely tied to the question of how people with different names are likely to vote. While most of us don't choose our names, trends in baby names across years and regions (as well as cultural and socio-economic groups) can actually have pretty strong predictive power.
For instance, the fact that Jacobs strongly favor Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over Donald Trump and Mike Pence (35% for Trump, 65% for Biden) is hardly surprising when you consider the steep rise in popularity of that name from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and the polling for that name tracks pretty closely to polling for voters aged 18-49. As for Harpers or Masons, it's a pretty safe bet that most of them won't be voting for a few more years—and when they do, it will be for the President and VP Jake and Logan Paul.
This is also an informative way to consider the name Richard, which peaked in popularity in the 1940s. Considering Donald Trump's popularity among men over 70—who don't have to worry about the global climate collapsing in 2050—it's hardly surprising that he has a dominant lead in this group. Likewise for the Donalds polled; the fact that 78% of them preferred Trump probably has at least as much to do with demographics of a name that peaked in the 1930s as it does with Donald's oversized egos.
But the more you look at Karens, the more confusing it gets. The name Karen peaked in popularity in the 1950s and '60s, which means the average Karen is older than the average woman (even the average white woman in the US), yet Karens in The New York Times/Siena College poll buck demographic trends, favoring Biden even more than their younger cohorts.
What could this mean? Have Karens been shamed by meme culture into examining the prejudices and entitled behavior that earned them this level of infamy? Were they always more tolerant than we gave them credit for, taking the fall for the Nancys (57% for Trump, 43% for Biden) and Janets (67% for Trump, 33% for Biden) of the world? Or is the problem more complicated?
Maybe Trump is too much of a Karen himself to appeal to Karens. Trump, who loves to use the threat of police violence to control unruly minorities, may be spoiling the Karens' favorite trick. After all, in any given room only one person can talk over everyone else.
Maybe the Karens are sick of Donald Trump always being the loudest Karen in the room. Maybe they want to know that, if they ever get the chance to speak to America's manager, they'll be able to bully him into giving them a free round of appetizers—or at least a better deal on their health care...
While there are numerous possibilities, for the time being—at least until through election day and however long it takes for the votes to be counted—maybe we can all cut America's Karens some slack and apologize for misjudging them. Sorry, Karens.
Also, if you meet a Dick, keep in mind that there's about a 64% chance that he deserves a swift kick in his richard.
The Cruel Absurdity of the Lawsuit Against Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker
Police sergeant Jonathan Mattingly is suing Kenneth Walker for allegedly shooting him in the leg the night of Breonna Taylor's tragic death.
In the latest disturbing addition to the tragic killing of Breonna Taylor, Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly of the Louisville Police filed suit this week against Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.
Sergeant Mattingly's suit comes weeks after Kenneth Walker filed a lawsuit against the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department alleging assault, malicious prosecution, and negligence, among other charges related to the night police killed 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor.
Louisville police officer sues Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, for emotional distresswww.youtube.com
The Killing of Breonna Taylor
It was mid-March, after midnight in Louisville Kentucky, when Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker heard a loud banging at her apartment door.
Walker reports that Taylor called out, "Who is it?" to no response, at which point Walker armed himself with his licensed 9mm handgun. An initial "no-knock" warrant—issued on the basis that Taylor's ex-boyfriend, alleged drug dealer Jamarcus Glover—had received a package there, had been revised to require officers to knock at the door and announce their presence.
But witnesses disagree about whether three white narcotics officers dressed in plain clothes announced themselves as police at all—most asserting that they heard no announcement at all. If officers did announce themselves, it seems it was only in passing.
The officers then took a battering ram to the apartment door, knocking it loose from its hinges, and prompting Kenneth Walker to fire a single warning shot at the unknown intruders. Again, there are conflicting reports about whether that warning shot struck Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly in the thigh, or if his injury may have come from another weapon entirely. In either case, it was then that the officers opened fire.
No effort was made to communicate with the shooter or determine whether there were bystanders inside before officers sent 32 rounds into Breonna Taylor's apartment.
At least five of those bullets struck Taylor, mortally wounding her. Three others entered the home of a neighboring white family, and two went through the ceiling into the home of the Black family that lived above Taylor.
Kenneth Walker called 911 to report that people had broken into their apartment and shot his girlfriend. He was uninjured, and taken in on charges of attempted murder for the single shot he fired in a clear case of self defense. Those charges were later dropped amid public outcry.
When charges of wanton endangerment were finally brought against one of the officers—Detective Brett Hankison—it was for the three bullets that penetrated the white family's home. No charges were brought in connection with Taylor's death or the endangerment of her upstairs neighbors.
Two anonymous members of the grand jury tasked with assessing charges in the case have since come forward with reports that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not present the full evidence regarding homicide charges.
One grand juror claims that AG Cameron used them as a shield to avoid taking responsibility in a controversial case that has become a point of focus for the Black Lives Matter movement. As a result, Cameron has sought to prevent grand jurors from speaking publicly on the case.
Incompetence Without Malice?
As disturbing as those facts are on their own, they do not touch the full evil of the case. It's possible to interpret the events as related as a result of gross incompetence without malice, and an effort to protect officers and other state officials from the repercussions of their tragic negligence.
If that was the entirety of the injustice involved, it would be a strong argument for serious reform of both police practices—defunding and disarming could be a good start—and the systems that are supposedly intended to hold officers accountable.
It would further highlight the systemic lack of concern for Black Americans made to contend with a "justice" system that brutalizes them. But it would not necessarily point to any of the individuals involved as heartless or intentionally cruel.
Should police respond to a warning shot from an unseen source by firing recklessly through doors and windows into rooms they can't see? Obviously not. But natural fear, combined with insufficient training, are enough to explain that. Even Walker's arrest could be attributed to confusion and uncertainty of that night, before the evidence made it clear that he had only acted in self-defence.
As for the lack of accountability for those involved, cowardice and cronyism cover that. Detective Hankison—implicated in unrelated sexual assault allegations—was selected as the scape goat, and the others were protected.
The human failings involved are deeply depressing, but they can all exist without ill will or inhumanity. It's only with the addition of this latest civil suit from Sergeant Mattingly that any gray area is left behind.
Standards of Decency and Morality
The suit seems to be a clear response to Walker's case, which accuses the police department of gross misconduct and asserts that ballistic evidence points to another police weapon as the source of Mattingly's injury.
In a statement on his suit against the LMPD, Walker said, "The charges brought against me were meant to silence me and cover up Breonna's murder." As if attempting to prove his point for him, Mattingly is now suing Walker for "severe trauma, mental anguish, and emotional distress," allegedly caused by Walker shooting him in the leg.
Worse still, the lawsuit insists that Walker's use of a legally-owned firearm against unknown individuals forcing entry into his home is "outrageous, intolerable, and offends all accepted standards of decency and morality."
Even if Mattingly fully believes—against the evidence—that Kenneth Walker knew he was firing on police officers, the idea of characterizing himself as the aggrieved party is horrifying.
It was Kenneth Walker who was made to sit there while his girlfriend was shot and slowly died. It was Kenneth Walker who was then arrested and had his life hang in limbo over a bogus charge of attempted murder tied to a single shot—compared to 32 flying in the other direction.
Jonathan Mattingly, by contrast, was shot in the leg while bursting through a stranger's front door, had his wound treated, was defended from prosecution by the state's attorney general, and has even kept his job.
Institutional Harassment or Virulent Racism
There are only two conceivable ways for a person in Mattingly's situation to conclude that he should sue Kenneth Walker. It's either, as Walker's attorney recently framed it, part of a deliberate effort to "further victimize and harass Kenny"—so that Walker will be cowed into dropping his own suit thus saving the LMPD a lot of money—or it's the result of Mattingly completely dehumanizing both Kenneth Walker and Breonna Taylor.
If Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly does not see Black people as fully human, maybe it's easy for him to ignore their perspectives.
He doesn't have to consider the fear for himself and his loved ones that motivated Kenneth Walker to shoot at intruders. He doesn't have to imagine the tragedy of being unable to save your girlfriend's life after she's shot by men from whom you tried to defend her, or the terror of being held for months in fear of losing your freedom.
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker details the night of her death in an exclusive interviewwww.youtube.com
He doesn't have to hear the hurt in Walker's voice saying, "That was my best friend. The most important person pretty much to me on the Earth. And they took her."
If Jonathan Mattingly sees Black people as a subhuman underclass to be controlled through fear and violence, then of course Kenneth Walker should be punished for injuring a white man.
So which is it? Is there a systemic effort to suppress all criticism of institutional violence through campaigns of harassment and intimidation, or are American police forces so welcoming to virulent racists that Jonathan Mattingly gets to keep his job despite an open willingness to dehumanize Black people? Maybe it's both.
In any case, it "offends all accepted standards of decency and morality," and we're faced with a horrifying indictment of the American "justice" system's capacity for evil. Even if this lawsuit is justly thrown out, we should not ignore the disturbing message it has sent.
Visionaries Project: Christoph Carr on Black Land Ownership and Giving Flowers to Cops
Christoph Carr talks art, music, and protest.
Scholar, activist, musician, event organizer, author—Christoph Carr is the personification of a visionary. As the co-founder of Brooklyn Wildlife and Black Land Ownership, Carr has long been working to break down boundaries and to create space where art and life can thrive without outside imposition.
More recently, he's been leading unique NYC-based Black Lives Matter protests that attempt to engage directly with the police. His many projects address current, pressing needs—but they also envision a world that could be, a world of connection, deep roots, and human empathy. Here, we spoke about the stories behind his groundbreaking organizations, and the grief and strange possibility buried in the depths of 2020.
How did Brooklyn Wildlife come to be? What space did you want it to fill?
I moved to New York in 2008 for a relationship, and by summer 2009 that relationship was falling apart. I was on the cusp of going back to DC or staying in New York, and I decided to stay.
A homie I knew had just gotten back to town and he was doing music, and we started recording a project together. By 2010 we finished the project and we were trying to do shows, but we ran into a huge issue while trying to book shows as a rap group without an agent or a booking company. The clubs didn't want to answer emails—they'd say talk to the booker, and the booker would say talk to the promoter. [A lot of these places] were only doing two hip hop shows a month at that time, or they wouldn't even book hip hop.
So me and my friend were like, we gotta just throw the shows ourselves. We know other musicians; let's just throw the party.
Chris Carr performing
When we first started sending out emails, we realized that a lot of the bookers and promoters didn't want to deal with artists, and we had to come up with a name or some way to be able to book the shows separately from us as performers. So we were like, let's start Brooklyn Wildlife. Let's make the events that we want to go to.
I was really inspired by the events going on when I moved to New York, but there was this partitioning and almost like segregation, where if I went to the warehouse electronic music parties, there was no hip hop. If I went to the hip hop shows, there was no folk.
And I like all of it. I like burlesque, I like comedy and music and visual art shows and filmmaking, and there wasn't really something that I saw that brought all these different elements together in a way that was authentic and aware and respectful of the traditions of those types of art forms.
I really obsess over hip hop and enjoy the cultural elements of hip hop and it being the quintessential postmodernist music form in its use of bricolage and sampling and expression, but I also really dug my friends who were DJing grime or dubstep or international music—what people might see as world music, or Afro-Soul and house music. All these things were of interest, and we weren't finding that.
So we started working with people we knew as Brooklyn Wildlife to throw as many shows as possible. Over the past few years we've done literally thousands of events, but it started out as wanting to have something for ourselves, and wanting to go to shows that we would enjoy ourselves.
Were you always involved in art and music?
I can't say always, but to a certain extent yes—my mom put me in violin lessons when I was five, and I was bad. In high school, I got into hip hop, but I was also playing sports, and hip hop wasn't an organized, structured activity at the time. When I got to college I started taking hip hop more seriously, MCing and writing and going out with my friends who wrote graffiti—and realized I wasn't good at that. Dancing, I wasn't good at that. DJing, not so much. I always like the types of music that other people didn't really "like" like—I like the B-sides, the secret album cut, the songs that are kind of reflective or might not be the party starters, by artists who may be more fringe or outside the status quo.
MCing was this great platform for me to learn about myself, society, and other people. When I was 18 or 19, in 1996-7, you could meet rappers and end up knowing people that worked on music video sets, just by being around the college environment I was in in Atlanta. You could run into Cee Lo Green outside the tabernacle.
At that point, I reattached to music in a serious way. [In Atlanta, there was this] level of professionalism and seriousness about what could be done with hip hop. I was still in school, and then I went to grad school at Columbia, but music was always a side thing—and it kept pulling at me. It wasn't until I left grad school and went back to DC that I was like, I need to make music. What would happen if I put all this time and effort and energy into making music on a full-time level?
I decided to invest whatever money I had into making my own studio and started making my own beats and throwing shows in DC. We were trying to throw more shows than everybody.
Since then, I don't really get writers' block or caught up in not being inspired. Since then it's been consistent: make a living from art.
A lot of your work seems to be about bringing people together in a way that's separate from corporate ownership. You started Brooklyn Wildlife because you wanted to have your own performance space that others didn't have to approve—and with Black Land Ownership, you're working to make space for people to own land outside of corporations. What's the connection between them?
One's an extension of the other. Some of the ideas from Black Land Ownership directly extend from what we learned doing Brooklyn Wildlife. The main thing is: If you don't own the land, you will not be able to dictate what happens on that land.
When I moved to my apartment, at the time, people were throwing mad shows at McKibben. As the building changes, the landlords start bringing in tenants and our neighbors move, and now it's people that have to wake up and go to work in the morning, and they start complaining to the landlords, and the landlords might lose money, so they tell me I have to stop making music.
We decided we'd rent DIY spaces. Still, if your neighbors don't like it, they call the cops. If the businesses nearby don't like it, they'll call the cops. Your landlord can shut you down. There's always someone that can make it difficult.
Whereas if you own a space, it's a lot harder for people to cause you problems. In New York it's too expensive to just buy a building. But when I went out to Colorado and Texas and parts of the country that are really wide open, I started thinking: There's so much space. If we had land, we could throw an outdoor festival with 100 people and no one could complain about anything. If people didn't like the noise, they wouldn't have to deal with it.
Still, you're going to have to lease farmland or county fair kinds of land. But when you do that, the owners can ask what types of events you're doing, and they can say that they only want certain things. And we can't really have that. We make sure we book artists that aren't using hate speech or being misogynistic or racist or phobic towards any marginalized groups, but people should be able to express their political ideologies, their emotional feelings and their spiritual feelings. And we shouldn't have to worry about some person who runs the fairgrounds saying: You all are anti-capitalist, that's anti-American, we don't want to have this.
So it comes to—well, you have to own the land. The only way that's possible for a group of artists is in more rural areas where the land is less expensive.
In Colorado, I was able to stay for free by working on a farm, and as I was pulling roots out of the ground—it gave me a lot of time to think. I did some shows while I was traveling, and when I came back I was like, why isn't that opportunity made more [available] for Black folks?
Denver is the most diverse city in Colorado, and it's still very homogenous in a certain way. In Grand Junction you're back towards the more conservative side, and you can tell people are like—"We don't have any Black people here, where'd you come from?"
It was shocking. [I started to ask], how come all the Black folks are crammed into cities on the East and West Coast, being pushed out, dealing with gentrification, being erased geographically—or we're in areas of the South and midwest that are economically depressed, dealing with racism and violence and stratification? There's all this space where there's plenty of land to grow food. Part of [the problem] is we only own 2% of the rural land in the country. So how are we going to get healthy food? We don't own the means of production.
In my mind, Marxism isn't a political system—it's an assessment of how capitalism works—and in the Marxist understanding, you have to own the means of production. If you want to have a place to grow your food, you need to own the land, or they'll push you out and find that it's more lucrative for Walmart to buy it.
[During] the Civil Rights movement, it was less difficult to find a common thread amongst different Black people. The idea of basic human rights could transcend layers of partitioning. Now there are certainly different opinions—on reproductive rights, on gender—but the one thing I could find that didn't cause people to have conflict is Black land ownership. It's not politicized, but no one talks about it. You have discussions about fair housing or affordable housing, but there are Black people with money who can't move where they want to due to institutional racism around land ownership, or groups of non-Black people pushing them out when they do make purchases.
Providing spaces for artists is important, but artists need an opportunity not to be stuck in the city paying $1,000 or $1,500 in rent every month. We need to get out and lay in a field, and play songs and run around, and have space in nature and grass under our feet, and be able to draw inspiration from something other than concrete and metal buildings.
How are you doing with COVID and everything?
It's been quite a year. Last spring, back in March, my partner had her appendix removed. She gets a call back, and she has to get a biopsy. And then [sic] she tests positive for appendix cancer, and they say they have to take out part of her colon. She has surgery in May and is recovering in June. She gets cleared. A week and a half to two weeks after that, I get diagnosed with melanoma in my toe and I have to get my pinky toe amputated.
I can't walk for however long. So I figure out how to pull off my summer festival and start throwing small shows, then wintertime hits. I go to California and tour, then in March I'm scheduled to go to SXSW. I had booked over 40 performers at the house we were renting down there, but COVID pops up the week we're supposed to go, and they cancel. That weekend of the 15th, lockdown started. In a weird way, I had already been on lockdown. Both [my partner and I] had been in our house a lot, working on our personal projects. I stopped drinking, so we stopped going to bars and clubs. COVID didn't change a whole lot for me.
I really miss not being able to meet new folks and engage with people and learn about their musical journeys. I've made a lot of stuff while we were trapped inside—a whole bunch of new songs, a project with my friend Annie Are You Okay—and a bunch of songs I've recorded with other people. And there are new secret projects I've been working on, and I finally put out one of my books—Thoughts of an Angry Black Man.
You've also led a few Black Lives Matter protests recently. Can you tell me about how that started?
I do a lot of Facebook Lives, and I was doing one about hip hop, recording in front of my building. I have my phone resting up on the fence. Since the camera is facing the street, I see the police pulling up. Then they walk up to me, and they're like, are you so and so, and I'm like nope, can't help you. And I'm like, by the way, I'm recording on Facebook Live. And they're like, we're concerned for you, are you on any medication? And I was like, no, what's this about—and they're like, we got a call that there's a man out here talking to himself and kicking at people.
And I was like, I've been recording this whole thing. Instead of them being like sorry, whatever, they're like, we're concerned—are you on medication? I was like, I don't have to answer any of your questions, but what do we have to do to make this the least conflictual as possible? Finally I just told them I live across the street, I volunteer at the school down the street, I run a store around the corner. They're finally like, we just had to check, someone called. And I'm like, what do you mean, someone called? Did you check if they're on medication?
When they pull off, I go upstairs. I look out the window and another cop car pulls up, so I [decide] I'm going to ask them how to file a report. Those police were like, you didn't have to answer the questions; you could've walked away. And I was like, really? You can't walk away from a police officer.
And then [I realize] the car I was leaning on—it's an undercover car. And an ambulance had been called. Two regular cop cars, an undercover car, and an ambulance came.
This is after Floyd stuff had happened, and I'm like, this could have gone so badly if I had a different demeanor. When I came back in I was really frustrated, and I started asking myself: what can I do to remove the standard approach to this? Who can I talk to about this?
So I walk over to the precinct, and see three cops there. And they're like: Who do you want to talk to? One cop says, "You gotta understand, people get called on emotionally disturbed people…" And finally they get the community liaison.
The liaison basically makes sure that protocol wasn't broken, and she asks if I want to file a report. One of the cops was a Black woman, and the other was a Latinx man, I think...I didn't want to get the cops in trouble. It's a policy that someone else created, that made it so they couldn't leave me alone.
After that, I was even more frustrated. When I left the precinct I was like, I gotta think of something to do that's not the same old me going back and yelling at the cops or not doing anything.
So I was like, what if I take flowers to the precinct, and talk to the guys standing in front of it and tell them about how I'd been stopped for no reason, and use the flowers as metaphors for other people who have been detailed without cause, or assaulted or brutalized by the police, or in horrible circumstances, lost their lives at the hands of the police?
[I wanted to] get the issue past politics, past the idea of Democrat/Republican or authority or anti-authority, or any of these names of organized groups. I'm a person, and the only person that ever pulled a gun on me in my life was a police officer. My friend down in Atlanta got killed by the police; my other friend in DC got shot by the police when he was unarmed. [I wanted to] root it in their humanity. Before they put on their guns and badges, they're humans, and I'm a human. Let's engage with the reality of how policing has had a negative effect on my community.
I went to the vigil at McCarren Park, and told some people about the flower thing. We ended up organizing a march from McCarren over to the 94th Precinct in Greenpoint. We took the flowers and had a line of people marching. It was wild to see that solidarity—to see how many people's lives had been touched by police brutality. It wasn't 20 people—it was over a hundred people who knew someone who had been hurt. There was no social media, no organized nonprofit entity. It was just people who had friends and heard the stories and wanted to show unity. And [they showed that] if the police harm one person in the community, 100 people might show up to support.
We organized another one that went from House of Yes over to the precinct on Knickerbocker. It's something that will continue, keeping in mind that it's about peace and love. The police aren't used to people showing up with flowers, saying, my friend got hurt by the police, and we want you to know this is personal.
This is about us as people. When we're walking on the streets, we're citizens, not criminals. You don't look at someone like me and automatically assume I'm the target of your predatory predisposition.
It's been a trip. I think it's cathartic for certain folks. They had never had the chance to present the emotions they had towards the police to the police. They may have told friends and family members, but to be able to tell the police officer in this manner that is somewhat controlled and purposeful—it kind of allowed for a valve to release pressure.
After the first march [sic], we were walking back from the precinct in Bushwick. There was a fire hydrant that was popped, and so a bunch of us danced in the fire hydrant—[it was a] cleansing experience. It was important for me, to see that solidarity, to see how all these other people have a common experience.
Find Christoph Carr's Patreon here.
Bill Barr Thinks COVID Lockdown Is Worse than Jim Crow and Genocide
Japanese internment camps pale in comparison to not being able breath your germs on a crowd of strangers in a bar.
On Wednesday, speaking at a Washington D.C. event celebrating Constitution Day, Attorney General and Donald Trump's lapdog William Barr noted that slavery—but only slavery—was worse than the pandemic lockdown.
Alongside accusations that the Black Lives Matter movement improperly uses Black people slain by the police as "props" for achieving "a much broader political agenda," Barr shared his thoughts on what he apparently thinks of as a much more serious injustice: "You know, putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,"
Leaving aside the familiar galactic scale of the understatement in the phrase "a different kind of restraint," it's worth noting that (thanks to his boss) there never were any national stay-at-home orders—though that approach could have saved tens of thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and months of this confusing stasis.
More importantly, we can now take a stroll through history and look at all the horrible things America has done that apparently pale in comparison to telling people not to spread a deadly virus. As it turns out, when you signed up for HelloFresh this spring—because meal kits weren't already convenient enough without the looming threat of death—you weren't just avoiding the modern horror of the grocery store, you were giving into crushing tyranny.
Attorney General William Barr brings up slavery when referring to quarantining during the pandemicwww.youtube.com
How bad is it? Well, you've probably heard about the Jim Crow era of American history—when Black Americans were legally refused service, housing, and employment, and deprived of access to adequate education, and even their voting rights. According to Bill Barr, this is worse—at least back then some people were allowed to eat in restaurants.
And you know how, during World War II, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and held in awful conditions in internment camps on the basis that they might be spies? Well at least they weren't asked to wear masks on the basis that they might be asymptomatic carriers of a highly contagious pathogen that has already killed nearly 200,000 Americans.
Oh, and about the systematic theft of land and resources from Native Americans, coupled with the destruction of their cultures and languages, deliberate exposure to deadly infections, forced sterilization, and just plain mass murder: It's true that the United States used violent, overwhelming force and numerous insidious measures to erase their heritage and move them onto smaller and smaller "reservations" of undesirable land. On the other hand, you try getting a "reservation" these days—in some places you can only get takeout.
As awful as it is to make light of these historic tragedies, it's important to call out the fact that the head of the Justice Department is speaking so flippantly about both American history and the vital ongoing efforts to prevent further deaths.
This is exactly the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that encourages people to storm government buildings armed with assault rifles. It's the logic that says we "have to get back to normal life" when that's just not possible.
Look at Sturgis, South Dakota where, each year, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally brings hundreds of thousands of visitors, and hundreds of millions of dollars. Surely the state has no choice but to "get back to normal" by welcoming that kind of important economic stimulus for the region... except that it became a super-spreader event, rippling out from South Dakota to cause new COVID outbreaks around the country, creating a public health crisis that estimates say will end up costing over $12 billion.
Unless we're planning to let a million more Americans die off—in their homes, because it would take to much to hospitalize them—we have no choice but to treat this pandemic as the emergency it is, and to "intrude" on people's civil liberties.
Barr's comments, at an event hosted by conservative Hillsdale College, came specifically in response to a question about the freedom of religion in the context of the lockdown—the idea being that it may not be constitutional to disallow church services. Obviously if specific denominations or religious practices were being targeted for discriminatory restrictions, that would be a serious concern.
But that's not happening. In states where they aren't being given special leniency to risk their parishioners lives, churches are subject to the same restriction on public gatherings as any other organization. And while people should be free to worship as they choose, their choices must fall within a certain realm of reason and decency—no one has the freedom to perform human sacrifices. Well, maybe one person does...
On Sunday Donald Trump—the man whom Bill Barr's justice department is inexplicably defending in a defamation suit involving rape accusations—defied city orders by holding a rally in Henderson, Nevada. His first indoor rally since the June event in Tulsa that likely led to the death of Herman Cain, this rally has been characterized as "negligent homicide," almost certainly spreading the novel coronavirus, in addition to spreading the kind of insanity that treats mail-in voting as a threat to democracy, and masks as a threat to liberty.
And thanks to the nature of the Trump administration, the Attorney General's job is no longer to impartially enforce the law, it's to cosign the president's favorite conspiracies, encourage violent hysteria, and compare bare minimum public health efforts to the worst crimes in American History.