THE WHY ALICE NEEL NEVER STOPPED PAINTING — P18 INDYPENDENT #263: MAY 2021
“The End of the American Dream” by former ICE
detainee Marcial Morales is MORELOS MARCIAL based on his time in the Essex County Jail in Newark, NJ.
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS A kaleidoscope of the human condition, MAY 10–SEP Ellen Davidson, Anna Gold, Endlessness includes scenes of a couple 9am–12am • FREE/Low cost GET Alina Mogilyanskaya, Ann fl oating over war-torn Germany, a father and PERFORMING ARTS: OUTSIDE: The Schneider, John Tarleton MAY his daughter in the pouring rain, a teenager RESTART STAGES r a anese dancing outside a cafe and a defeated army Lincoln Center is artist ay i sa a EDITOR-IN-CHIEF marching to a prisoner-of-war camp. Swedish opening a giant outdoor ill e n is lay all John Tarleton THROUGH MAY 2 master absurdist Roy Andersson is known for movies performing arts center that s er at the e 10am–5pm that are intricately designed, photographed and lit with will include 10 different York Botanical Garden CONTRIBUTING EDITORS EXHIBIT: GOYA’S GRAPHIC IMAGINATION deadpan comic timing. performance and rehearsal in the Bronx. Ellen Davidson, Alina Regarded as one of the most remarkable artists from the FILM FORUM spaces. Audience members Mogilyanskaya, Nicholas late 18th and early 19th centuries, Francisco Goya (1746– 209 W. Houston St., Manhattan can expect free and low- Powers, Steven Wishnia 1828) is renowned for his prolifi c activity as a draftsman ls a aila le irt ally at fi l r . rg fi l a t cost events, an outdoor reading room and a wealth and printmaker, producing about 900 drawings and 300 endlessness) of family programming. Enjoy a concert and cabaret ILLUSTRATION DIRECTOR prints during his long career. Through his drawings and series, fi lm screenings, summer concerts, dance Frank Reynoso prints, he expressed his political liberalism, criticism of STARTING MAY 1 workshops and more. superstition and distaste for intellectual oppression in 10am–6pm, 7pm on weekends • FREE LINCOLN CENTER DESIGN DIRECTOR unique and compelling ways. OUTDOORS: GOVERNORS ISLAND Lincoln Center Plaza, Manhattan Mikael Tarkela THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART Governors Island, a 172-acre island in the heart 1000 5th Ave., Manhattan of New York Harbor, is reopening to the public. In MAY 10–NOV 14 addition to the 43-acre public park, Governors Island 6am–11pm • FREE DESIGNERS THROUGH MAY 31 includes free arts and cultural events, as well as PUBLIC ART: MAYA LIN: GHOST FOREST Leia Doran, Anna Gold, 10:30am–5:30pm • $14–$25 recreational activities. In nature, a ghost forest is the evidence of a dead Evan Sult EXHIBIT: RECONSTRUCTIONS: ARCHITECTURE AND r lyn erry r ier r e H anhattan erry woodland that was once vibrant. Maya Lin’s Ghost BLACKNESS IN AMERICA r the attery ariti e il ing Forest, a towering stand of 50 haunting Atlantic OFFICE MANAGER How does race structure America’s cities? MoMA’s white cedar trees, is a newly-commissioned public Amba Guerguerian fi rst exhibition to explore the relationship between MAY 8 art work at Madison Square Park. The 40-foot trees architecture and the spaces of African-American and 7pm • FREE serve as a memory of germination, vegetation and GENERAL INQUIRIES: African diaspora communities, “Reconstructions: JAZZ: KEYON HARROLD AT THE BREATHING PAVILLION abundance, and as a harsh symbol of the devastation [email protected] Architecture and Blackness in America,” presents 11 The Breathing Pavilion, Ekene Ijeoma’s public of climate change. newly commissioned works by architects, designers and sculpture, will host a series of site-specifi c musical MADISON SQUARE PARK SUBMISSIONS & NEWS TIPS: artists that explore ways in which histories can be made performances. Grammy-winning trumpeter, singer and 11 Madison Ave., Manhattan [email protected] visible and equity can be built. composer Keyon Harrold has played with artists such MUSEUM OF MODERN ART as Beyoncé, Common, Erykah Badu, Rihanna, Eminem ONGOING ADVERTISING & PROMOTION: 11 W. 53 St., Manhattan and D’Angelo. 7:30pm • $50 [email protected] THE PLAZA JAZZ: SMALLS REOPENS THROUGH OCT 31 300 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn A true New York jazz lover’s favorite, Smalls Jazz Club VOLUNTEER CONTRIBUTORS 10am–6pm • $25–$35 has featured some of the most talented players in the INSTALLATION: KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE MAY 8–9 & 15–16 city since it opened in the ‘90s. The club is still running Linda Martín Alcoff, Eleanor Spectacular installations feature Japanese artist Time and cost TBD its fi rst sets as online streaming only but has returned J. Bader, Bennett Baumer, Sue Yayoi Kusama’s lifelong fascination with the natural PERFORMANCE: 1:1 CONCERTS to live, COVID-friendly performances for second sets Brisk, Roman Broskowski, world, beginning with her childhood spent in the Brooklyn Academy of Music curated a private outdoor at 7:30 p.m. If you’re vaxxed and able to splurge, go Emlyn Cameron, Rico Cleffi , greenhouses and fi elds of her family’s seed nursery. concert experience. In secluded corners of the Brooklyn enjoy the soundwaves. Show listings are available at Renée Feltz, Todd Fine, Her multifaceted art includes monumental fl oral Navy Yard, artists from the Silkroad Ensemble and their www.smallslive.com/events/calendar/ Lynne Foster, Esteban Guerra, sculptures that transform New York Botanical Garden’s guests from New York’s thriving music scene await. SMALLS Theodore Hamm, David 250-acre landmark landscape. Follow your unique path to a socially distant, private 130 W. 10 St., Manhattan Hollenbach, Manvi Jalan, NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN stage and discover which musician will share their Rob Katz, Kenneth Lopez, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx artistry in a 10-minute, one-to-one concert. Derek Ludovici, Gary Martin, BROOKLYN NAVY YARD Farid Nassif, Teddy Ostrow, PREMIERES APR 30 l shing e r lyn Reverend Billy, Olivia Riggio, Select times TBD • $15 Natasha Santos, Steven FILM: ENDLESSNESS Sherman, Maresi Starzman, Julia Thomas, Tyrone Wallace, and Matt Wasserman.
VOLUNTEER DISTRIBUTORS Erik Anders-Nilssen, Eric Brelsford, Chris & Pam
May 2021 May Brown, Hank Dombrowski, Joseph Epstein, Lew Friedman, ADVERTISE IN THE INDY • GREAT RATES Priscilla Grim, Laura Kaplan, Michael Korn, Ashley • UNIQUE AUDIENCE Marinaccio, Christine Miller, • PERSONAL ATTENTION FROM US Saul Nieves, Tom O’Keefe, • FREE HIGH QUALITY DESIGN AT NO EXTRA CHARGE Caroline Rath, Norm Scott and
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STAGE LEFT, P4 Off-Broadway theater workers fi ght for their labor rights and win. REEFER GLADNESS, P5 How New York won the dopest marijuana legalization law in the country. 9/11 LEGACY, P6 The last publicly-owned parcel of land at DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG the World Trade Center site could provide an oasis of affordable housing. Tune In Live Every Weekday 8-9am ET WHO PLANS THE CITY?, P7 • Audio, Video, Transcripts, Podcasts Corey Johnson wants to change how NYC land use decisions are made. Critics hear • Los titulares de Hoy (headlines in Spanish) the ghost of Robert Moses stirring. • Find your local broadcast station and schedule ERASE THE TEST, P8 It will be a lot easier for public school • Subscribe to the Daily News Digest students to avoid participating in standardized tests this year. And that’s a Follow Us @ DEMOCRACYNOW good thing. STRINGER THEORY, P9 City Comptroller Scott Stringer has embraced NYC’s ascendent left in recent years. Will it embrace his run for mayor? MANHATTAN DA RACE, P10 The race to be the next Manhattan DA is wide open. Will the three decarceral Join us to celebrate the life of candidates cancel each other out? THE BUSINESS OF DETENTION, P12 Three Democratic-run counties in northern FRANCES New Jersey earn millions running ICE detention centers inside their jails. They want to keep it that way. GOLDIN THE VAXX OF LIFE, P16 Once you’re vaccinated, who’s ready for activist and literary agent a hug? who died last year, LEFTIST AT THE MET, P18 at an online memorial. Alice Neel believed everyone deserved everyone deserved a great portrait, not just the rich. Now, her work is on display at the Met. BEWARE THE MAGA TRAP, P20 Superstar economist Thomas Piketty warns of the perils of inequality and false Date and time: solutions proffered by right-wing nativists. Saturday, May 15, 2021, SPREAD THE WEALTH, P21 at 2:00 p.m. EST. The U.S.’s vast riches will never be widely shared until we overcome a system based May 2021 on zero-sum racism, says Heather McGhee. The event will be live-streamed on YouTube: EDUCATION FOR LIBERATION, P22 Queer Studies should be about liberation bit.ly/CelebrateFrancesGoldin THE INDYPENDENT not accommodation, a CUNY prof writes in his new book. If you cannot make it at that time, the link will remain REVEREND BILLY’S REVELATIONS, P23 active and you can watch it at your convenience. Tips for rebuilding trust and openness after a year’s lockdown + how to make learning fun again for your child 4 LABOR SUE BRISK
VICTORIOUS: Genevieve Beller le t an eannette lt st e SUPPORT r essi nals r age ity in the Theater District.
says Jessa-Raye Court, an organiz- er with CPfWE. “I grew up in New OUR Hampshire, so sometimes I looked for jobs in or near my hometown, because I wanted to spend the International Publishers summer being a little more acces- TROUPES sible to my parents.” New items from IP In major cities, unions like the WORKERS AT SMALLER International Alliance of Theatri- cal Stage Employees set minimum This month International Publishers has brought THEATERS WIN PAY & rates within large companies. out new editions of two classic works on topics Many professionals in smaller the- LABOR EQUITY aters, however, are not represented of immediate interest and of great importance. by unions. Clear pay rates are one One on labor history and the other on labor or- way that they can make sure they By Derek Ludovici are getting the fee they seek. ganizing—Roger Keeran’s unique and previously “It’s much easier and much appreciated untold history of unionization in the US Auto in- s of April 2, entertainment when they list the pay rate upfront, espe- venues in New York have the cially because in the theater world and the dustry, and a “Bible” of union organizing, green light to resume opera- non profi t theater world where I tend to written by the great labor and political leader, tions at 33% capacity, with work, pay rates can really span a very long a limit of 100 indoor seats range,” Jenna, a freelance stage manager William Z. Foster, who drew from his own long andA 200 outdoor seats. Broadway theaters who did not want to give her last name, experience as a union organizer in the United probably will not reopen until September, told The Indypendent before the policy as they don’t see a limited opening as vi- change. “I just had an experience where States in writing this book. able, but this is welcome news for smaller I saw a listing for a stage manager, and it theaters and their workers who were laid didn’t list any details. It didn’t list a pay off in March 2020. These professionals rate or the schedule.” Both are “must have” additions to the libraries of won a signifi cant victory in late March, Playbill’s website now states: “For Paid when the Playbill and BroadwayWorld jobs, the AMOUNT fi eld is now required. both students and organizer of labor in the Unit- Websites agreed to require clear pay rates Please enter a numerical value or range; ed States. on their job listings. leaving the fi eld blank or entering TBD or Costume Professionals for Wage Equity similar will result in a delay in approval (CPfWE) and On Our Team, two organiza- or rejection.” tions advocating pay and labor equity in Clear pay rates also make it easier to the theater industry, released an open letter compare what the company is offering dif- on March 5 requesting that Playbill require ferent workers. “About three or four years clear rates of pay on all job listings posted ago I was working on a project and I got a on its site. After a 21-day online campaign, phone call from the lighting designer who Playbill announced it would on March 26. I had previously worked with,” says Gen- May 2021 May Playbill is one of the largest theater sites evieve Beller, another CPfWE organizer. in the United States. Its job listings range “He said, ‘Hey, do you want to compare from brick-and-mortar theaters to cruise contracts and see who’s getting what?’ No- ships in all 50 states and Abu Dhabi. That body had ever done that with me before. scope makes it particularly useful for indi- On the surface, we were getting the same viduals looking for jobs in different locales. design fee, but the work requirement was - - “When I was younger, Playbill was one
THE INDYPENDENT of my main go-to places to look for jobs,” Continued on page 22 CANNABIS SATIVA 5 TYRONE WALLACE
ville should be able to move from selling $20 sacks to there are no rules,” says Nancy Udell, a longtime activist with opening a legal weed shop. Empire State NORML. But, she adds, “we’ve seen what hap- “It’s absolutely important that people who have pened in other states. We know what to do.” SMOKED OUT been part of the legacy market don’t get shut out,” Illinois, she notes, has social-equity provisions in its law, but says Melissa Moore, state director of the Drug Policy “didn’t really put in a mechanism to make it happen.” HOW NY PROGRESSIVES Alliance. (“Legacy market,” a term borrowed from “Obviously, we don’t know what will happen until licenses tech corporations, is a euphemism for “old-style pot are issued,” says Williams. But, he adds, the law has enough CORNERED CUOMO TO dealer or grower.”) The system should have “as many specifi cs to defi ne “what their job is.” entry points as possible for people with limited capi- “We don’t get to win and walk away,” he concludes. “We WIN BEST-IN-THE-NATION tal,” she adds. have got to keep an eye on them.” Low or nominal application fees are important, concurs Carly Wolfe, state policy director of the Na- MARIJUANA REFORM LAW — tional Organization for the Reform of Marijuana WHAT CHANGED POLITICALLY? Laws (NORML). AND WHAT COMES NEXT. Unlike New York’s 2014 medical-marijuana law, How did New York politics evolve from the days when Mayor the new law prohibits “vertical integration,” in which Michael Bloomberg, whose stop-and-frisk policing policies put one company can grow, process, and retail cannabis. petty pot busts of young Black men at their core, was regularly By Steven Wishnia Instead, like the state’s alcohol regulations, it will separate cul- lauded for running New York City with unprecedented effi - tivation, distribution, and retail. That “automatically breaks ciency, to legalization winning an almost two-thirds majority ate on a warm April afternoon in Manhattan, the up the process for Big Cannabis to create a monopoly,” says in the Legislature? Activists identify four main factors. breeze on a side street southwest of Midtown wafts Jawanza Williams, organizing director for VOCAL-NY, a First, organizing. The Start Smart Coalition, founded about the aromas of joints and cigar-tinged blunts. grassroots group that builds power among low-income people six years ago to advocate legalization and social equity, grew The duos and trios sparking up in the after- directly affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war, mass incarcera- to more than 70 organizations from Long Island to Buffalo, work sunshine no longer have to worry about be- tion and homelessness. The exceptions are that the companies including the Working Families Party, the state NAACP, Lati- ingL arrested. New York State legalized pot on March 31, when in the medical system will be allowed some retailing — with noJustice PRLDEF, Desis Rising Up & Moving, and two large Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Marijuana Regulation and the proceeds going to social-equity programs — and “micro- labor unions — 1199SEIU and 32BJ SEIU. Taxation Act, one day after it passed by votes of 40–23 in the businesses” can do all three, much like a craft brewery can sell Second, the ethnic disparities of pot busts were so extreme state Senate and 94–56 in the Assembly. The law allows pos- six-packs. that their racist overtones were “painfully obvious,” says session of up to three ounces, and smoking is now legal almost The law sets a goal that half of new licenses should go to Udell. It wasn’t like marijuana was “effectively legal” for white anywhere cigarettes are permitted. social-equity applicants, including small farmers. It earmarks people, but it was also obvious that they made up a lot more Ten years ago, at the peak of New York City’s stop-and- 40 percent of tax revenue for reinvestment in communities than 15% of the pot smokers in New York City. The racial frisk era, more than 100 people a day were busted for posses- most affected by the drug war. It also automatically expunges disparities were also extreme on Long Island and in Albany, sion. About 85 percent of them were Black or Latino. convictions for marijuana offenses that are no longer illegal, Buffalo, and Rochester, says Moore. “Today is an historic day for New Yorkers,” Sen. Liz and the smell of weed will no longer be probable cause for a Third, the growth of public support for legalization. More Krueger (D-Manhattan), the bill’s lead sponsor, declared on police search except as evidence of impaired driving. than 40% of the U.S. population now lives in states that have the Senate fl oor March 30. “The bill we have held out for will Pot sales will face a 13% tax, plus a half-cent per milligram legalized it, says Wolfe. New Jersey legalizing made it “unten- create a nation-leading model for legalization.” on THC content; for a 7-gram bag of buds that’s 15% THC, able” for New York to retain prohibition, says Moore, as pot Eighteen states now allow growing and selling cannabis for that tax would be $5.25. Individuals may grow up to six plants shops would be open a short PATH train ride from Manhattan non-medical use. New Jersey legalized it in February, and New at home. Local governments will be allowed to ban retail sales or a quick drive from Rockland County. Mexico and Virginia followed New York within a week. But it if they do so by Dec. 31, with sentiment for that appearing Finally, political changes in Albany. Democrats won a solid is unlikely that reefer retailers will open before late next year, as strongest on Long Island. majority in the state Senate in 2018, ending decades of control it will take time to license and establish businesses. Employers will be barred from penalizing workers for mari- by Republicans. And Gov. Cuomo, who opposed legalization There was some opposition. Sen. Philip M. Boyle (R-Suf- juana use off the job, unless it impairs their performance or until a few years ago and had proposed a separate bill with folk) said marijuana is a “gateway drug” that leads to heroin, violates licensing regulations or federal law. The law also re- much vaguer social-equity provisions, was weakened by the and that states where it is legal have seen “carnage on the quires all license applicants to agree in writing not to interfere COVID nursing-home and sexual-harassment scandals. streets” and “people going to work stoned.” Sen. Anna Kaplan with union attempts to organize. For applicants that have 25 Cuomo “was not interested in repairing the structural May 2021 (D-Nassau), one of three Democrats to vote no, said legaliza- or more employees, the state Offi ce of Cannabis Management harms,” says Williams, and also wanted to maintain peri pheral tion was premature when there’s no measurement equivalent (OCM), the agency that will be created to oversee the indus- criminalization such as keeping public smoking illegal and hav- to blood-alcohol concentration for detecting intoxicated driv- try, must give priority to those who already have labor-peace ing the smell of pot be a justifi cation for police searches. The ers, and “rates of addiction are skyrocketing.” agreements or used union labor to build their facilities. governor won concessions on the THC-content tax, says Udell, THE INDYPENDENT But overall, the debate between Gov. Cuomo and the Leg- New Jersey and California also require labor-peace agree- but overall, “he wasn’t in a position to say, ‘no, my way or the islature’s leadership was over how to structure the industry to ments. Colorado’s pot industry is completely nonunion. highway.’” ensure “social equity” for the people and neighborhoods most How the state will reach its social-equity goals, however, Williams credits years of “consistent organizing.” Yes, Cuo- affected by prohibition and prevent domination by the fast- remains up in the air. Key issues, such as whether the state will mo was weakened, he says, “but also, we were ready.” growing corporate chains that have the money and political limit the number of licenses and how it will defi ne and enforce connections to navigate an expensive and cumbersome appli- the 50-percent requirement, will be up to the OCM. cation process. In other words, that the street dealer in Browns- “We’re going to try to infl uence the OCM, but right now, 69/11 LEGACY SUE BRISK
ment (HUD), the project also puts the Biden admin- Vicki Been hasn’t said much istration in the uncomfortable position of being asked about 5 World Trade Center, 20 YEARS LATER: to endorse a luxury residential project sponsored by and Open New York has now ing n n the l t r HOUSING FOR taxpayer money. telegraphed that it won’t con- World Trade Center 5, the last This conclusion to the World Trade Center recon- test the ratio of affordability. ar el lan n the site struction saga occurs at a time when affordable hous- Although Gov. Cuomo’s scan- t n t e re e el e . ing has declined signifi cantly in the surrounding area dals have enabled his oppo- south of Chambers Street. This is not because of a lack nents to gain the upper hand WHOM? of construction. Data published by Community Board over Empire State Development Corporation’s megaproject STATE, CITY NIX PROPOSAL TO 1 indicates that 13,862 new residential units were con- with Vornado around Penn Station, there hasn’t yet been any structed between 2000 and 2016, although some of comparable reaction to the plans for 5 World Trade Center. the brand-new buildings don’t appear to be fully occu- The idea of having affordable housing be part of the Sep- BUILD 1,000 AFFORDABLE HOUSING pied or even completed after years of work. For exam- tember 11 reconstruction has a long history, although it largely ple, 125 Greenwich St., the 912-foot residential tower came to naught. In the early years after the attacks, there was UNITS AT WORLD TRADE CENTER across the street from the Site 5 lot, briefl y entered strong sentiment to include housing. Dozens of organizations foreclosure in 2019 and is languishing in an unfi nished had partnered in the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New SITE. WILL BIDEN GO ALONG? state. Yet, because most of those new units are at the York with a demand that, since September 11 was considered extreme high end of the market, the high vacancy rates “an attack on all New Yorkers,” the reconstruction should are unlikely to result in greater affordability. benefi t all classes of people. David W. Woods’s book Democ- By Todd Fine In 2011, Community Board 1 published the fi ndings of an racy Deferred: Civic Leadership after 9/11 documents how affordable-housing task force chaired by Battery Park City res- new affordable housing was often the most popular demand at wenty years after September 11, 2001, President ident Tom Goodkind. The report revealed how key protections the dozens of “listening sessions” organized by civic organiza- Biden is seeking to end the U.S. military deploy- that supported affordability in Lower Manhattan had been tions and government agencies in 2002 and 2003. As a result, ment in Afghanistan. At the World Trade Center dismantled, and that the relatively modest post-September 11 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was site, our own never-ending battle over real estate disaster funds that supported housing were often not focused designated to spend federal disaster funds, originally listed af- is coming to a close. on the immediate area. Alarmed by the growing recognition fordable housing as one of its core objectives. TIn February, a complex set of public entities controlled by that low- and middle-income tenants could no longer afford to Twenty years later, despite the population south of Cham- Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio reached a deal move to Lower Manhattan, the report advocated that 5 World bers Street almost tripling since 2001 to around 61,000 resi- to make 5 World Trade Center, the last unallocated lot owned Trade Center (130 Liberty St.) include affordable housing. dents, many of whom live in new offi ce-to-residential conver- by the public, into a luxury residential skyscraper developed by Goodkind later advocated that 5 World Trade Center sions, there is not much that is affordable. The reconstruction a joint venture of Silverstein Properties and Brookfi eld Prop- should include over 1,000 affordable units, with some possibly at the World Trade Center was delayed so long that most of erties. Located at 130 Liberty St. south of the September 11 set aside for artists and for catastrophically injured veterans the civic organizations wound down before key government Memorial, Site 5 would become the fi rst offi cial World Trade and fi rst responders. In 2017, he arranged meetings with the decisions were made. Many low-rise affordable buildings have Center building to contain residences. With the two partners public corporation responsible, the Lower Manhattan Devel- been demolished, or their tenants have been harassed into leav- controlling at least 10 buildings in the immediate vicinity, the opment Corporation, to present this vision. Sadly, however, he ing. Out of the billions of dollars in federal funding, including decision would cement a mixed-use megacomplex in Lower died of a chronic degenerative illness in February 2019, at age nearly $3 billion from HUD, the Lower Manhattan Develop- Manhattan comparable to Hudson Yards. 65. That June, Gov. Cuomo announced a developer competi- ment Corporation’s “Partial Action Plan 6” for affordable Although many other social and commercial possibilities tion for Site 5 that made fi nancial return a more important housing only subsidized the design process for a mere 33 new for the site had been fl oated over the years — such as an offi ce criterion than affordability. low-income units in a mixed-income building at 270 Green- building, public housing, a hospital or university — the ulti- If Goodkind’s plan had been pursued, the building conceiv- wich St. The plan spent just $41 million in total, in comparison mate decision confi rms the continued government devotion to ably would have been able to match the 800 units of affordable with the over $1 billion spent on the September 11 Memorial the luxury residential skyscraper boom in Lower Manhattan, housing promised by the Department of City Planning’s con- and cultural grants. despite its questionable economics both before and after CO- troversial upzoning of historic districts in SoHo and NoHo. In Now, in 2021, there is one last chance to construct some- VID-19. Consistent with de Blasio’s approach to “affordable recent months, the constant refrain from the mayor’s offi ce and thing that could possibly redeem the World Trade Center and housing” that relies on private-sector incentives, the deal calls its supporters in the pro-developer group Open New York has be a signature achievement for the Biden administration. Site for 25% of the 1,325 rental units in the 900-foot tower to be been that we must build affordable housing in wealthy Man- 5 will be the last skirmish of the reconstruction fi ght, and the priced as “affordable,” with the actual meaning of that pledge hattan districts that have access to transportation or are oth- battle lines of activism remain to be formed. May 2021 May to be determined. erwise “amenity-rich.” Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, in charge As this is publicly-owned land, local activists and Commu- of the mayor’s housing initiatives, even stated that the SoHo Todd Fine is president of the Washington Street Advocacy nity Board 1 plan to advocate for higher levels of affordabil- rezoning was prompted by the killing of George Floyd and the Group, an organization that uses creative, guerrilla advocacy ity during a complicated approval process. The World Trade Black Lives Matter protests. tactics to promote historic preservation and historical memory Center’s General Project Plan will have to be changed to allow Yet, if achieving a maximal amount of affordable housing in Lower Manhattan and across New York City. residences. Additionally, because the site (a former headquar- was truly the goal, why didn’t the government pull out all the ters for Deutsche Bank) was purchased with federal disaster stops, especially when the site is on public land and the remain-
THE INDYPENDENT funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ing federal disaster money could have subsidized construction? URBAN PLANNING 7 REZONING
GRASSROOTS VOICES: li ia y the e le’s REVAMP ity i e an se llian e s ea s at a rally tsi e ity Hall. COUNCIL SPEAKER’S PLAN PANNED term plan, and gives the director authority to select one BY NEIGHBORHOOD GROUPS WARY OF of those three if the City Council does not vote for a land use to include in the fi nal long-term plan. TOP-DOWN PROCESS This evokes the specter of Moses, who autocrati- cally ruled development decisions in the metropolitan area from 1924 to 1968, from building Jones Beach to By Emlyn Cameron ramming the Cross-Bronx Expressway through the heart of work- ing-class neighborhoods. ity Council Speaker Corey Johnson has introduced Opponents of the bill say that the legislation would give the legislation to revamp the city’s 46-year-old process planning director fi nal say what proposed land uses make it into for making land-use decisions. The bill is meant to the fi nal long-term plan, and, by extension, which types of pro- increase the system’s responsiveness to community posals are subject to discretionary review and can use the generic needs by mandating a 10-year plan with preferred environmental impact statement. Cland uses. But some community organizers and land-use experts Fermino says the council wouldn’t have to adopt any of the are concerned the plan would give local residents little authority land uses put before it, and that the local institutions involved in over development in their neighborhoods. the review — community boards, borough presidents, the long- “When I saw the plan, I thought, ‘oh! great!’ But, then, I read it term planning steering committee — could create their own sug- and it makes no place for community planning,” Thomas Angotti, gested land uses and submit them as part of their recommenda- a retired professor of urban policy and land use at Hunter College, tions to the council. The council could also conceive land uses to told The Indypendent. vote into the long-term plan, with the director only stepping in if it New York is the only major U.S. city without comprehensive doesn’t select any land use. land-use planning, Angotti says. Instead, it has maintained piece- Opponents respond that this isn’t explicit in the bill’s text. It meal zoning regulations favorable to real estate, which he ascribes says that the steering committee, borough presidents, and com- in part to landlords’ lobbying and campaign donations. Now, he munity boards “shall each submit … a recommended preferred says, climate change, calls for racial and economic equity, and land-use scenario for each applicable community district” to the community resistance to development are making comprehensive speaker. The council must “adopt a single resolution establishing planning politically viable. But he sees Johnson’s bill, Intro 2186- one preferred land use scenario for each community district,” but 2020, as inadequate to meet community desires. the bill doesn’t specify if it must be one of the director’s proposals The speaker’s bill is meant to modify the city’s Uniform Land or can be their own. Use Review Process, commonly known as ULURP, in which the 59 local community boards have only an advisory voice on rezoning plans or major developments in their neighborhoods, and the City POWER IMBALANCES Council, which approves or disapproves them, traditionally defers to the opinion of the local member. In the de Blasio administra- Other activists believe the bill will reduce power imbalances in the tion’s rezoning of neighborhoods like Inwood, Highbridge, East land-use process. The Association for Neighborhood and Housing New York, and Chinatown for high-rise luxury housing with a Development, whose work ranges from helping tenant coalitions trickle-down amount of “affordable” apartments, this has often organize against harassment to advising nonprofi t developers, is played out as community boards opposing the rezoning, and the backing the bill with caveats. Emily Goldstein, the group’s direc- administration dismissing their ideas, but offering enough conces- tor of organizing and advocacy, believes it will give councilmem- sions for the local councilmember to vote yes. bers more resources to assess land-use proposals, putting them on Johnson’s legislation would set up a 10-year plan, and the coun- a more equal footing with developers and city agencies such as cil would vote on which land-use scenarios to adopt for each dis- the Department of City Planning and the City Planning Commis- trict in the plan. The choices would be meant to refl ect community sion. (The Department of City Planning is opposing the bill on the needs established in meetings, hearings, and suggestions from insti- grounds of expense, practicality, and predicted outcomes, Direc- tutions such as the community boards, as it moves along the path tor Marisa Lago said in written testimony to which the Indy was from a “preliminary citywide goals statement” to the adoption of referred by DCP). the eventual long-term plan. At a February hearing of the council’s Subcommittee on Capital Council Communications Director Jennifer Fermino says plan- Budget, Johnson argued that the bill would not substantially alter aligned applications would go through ULURP, but the council the ULURP process or reduce the role of community boards or reviewing them would be discretionary rather than mandatory. other representatives. He emphasized that its purpose was to cre- Councilmembers could have them “called up” for a hearing and ate a system robust enough to respond to systemic inequalities and vote by obtaining the signatures of seven other members, and the climate change. applications would be able to cite relevant portions of a “generic “We have worked hard as a council to advance equity and jus- environmental impact statement” to supplement studies of the en- tice and to undo the city’s harmful and exclusionary policies, but vironmental effects. we, as a city, have not acknowledged — let alone reformed — the Angotti, however, believes the bill misses a key part of plan- ways in which our city’s fundamental failure to plan has upheld the ning’s renaissance: communities’ desire to take the initiative them- status quo,” Johnson said. selves in determining land use. Community boards would still be The hearing did not inspire confi dence in everyone. Philip Simp- understaffed, underfunded, and only able to offer advisory opin- son, a lawyer and member of Inwood Legal Action, which unsuc- ions, he points out. He hopes to see an alternative that would give cessfully challenged the de Blasio administration’s rezoning of the communities more substantive leadership, such as increasing com- neighborhood, believes the city government showed its true atti- munity boards’ resources to develop and propose plans themselves. tude about community input elsewhere: Three community boards “It’s a matter of an ongoing conversation with these communi- submitted testimony saying that they had not learned about the bill ties,” he said. until shortly before the hearing.
Fermino responded that the bill was going through the normal May 2021 legislative process and feedback was being solicited from commu- THE SPECTER OF ROBERT MOSES nities and community boards. Simpson and other opponents say they will need to see more
Angotti is not alone in thinking planning under the proposed bill proof that the administration is truly committed to comprehensive THE INDYPENDENT may end up being imposed from above. The ULURP process is planning that is responsive to communities, instead of imposing “not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,” says Kirsten Theo- top-down planning. dos of the People’s Citywide Land Use Alliance, which organized “I think the whole bill should be scrapped. We need citywide a March rally against the bill in front of City Hall, “but what this planning, but it needs to start at the bottom and fi lter up,” he said. legislation does is create essentially a Robert Moses.” The bill would empower a director of long-term planning to
SUE BRISK propose three land-use scenarios for each district in a draft long- 8EDUCATION PENCIL US
$1 billion per year on state contracts, and just last week, New York State agreed to OUT pay Questar Assessment roughly $72 mil- IT’S GOOD NYC MADE lion to develop new tests for grades third through eighth. This is state money that goes to private testing companies like Pear- STANDARDIZED TESTING ‘OPT IN’ son and McGraw-Hill instead of going to our schools. THIS YEAR. NOW, LET’S CANCEL This year, we have the opportunity to do something different. We have a chance THE TESTS. to send a clear message to the DOE that we want a reimagined system of assess- ment for students and teachers. Allow me By Alexa Avilés to paint a picture for you of an alternative system, one that treats our students and educators like the his spring, I will not be giving my complex, talented and unique human beings they daughters the “test pep talk.” I will are. Instead of basing educational decisions on test not be reminding them that they need scores, we could listen to teachers, who understand sharpened #2 pencils, nor will I be giv- their students better than any test. We should take ing them the candy that will get them their advice when they report on students’ devel- Tthrough the day. They won’t be sharing nervous opment in critical thinking and creativity and use stares with their friends, and teachers won’t be giv- holistic methods of tracking students’ development ing them Smarties while anxiously drilling testing through content-based assessments, projects, teach- rules and quick strategies to use over the next sever- ers’ notes and students’ self-evaluation of their al hours. My girls aren’t taking the state’s standard- work. Instead of spending money on testing con- ized exams this spring. And yours shouldn’t either. tracts, we could use those funds to hire more teach- In a year in which my daughters have lost loved ers, lowering class sizes and ensuring that our stu- ones and suffered through the uncertainty and con- dents get more individual attention at school. Freed fusion of our education system’s bungled response from the constraints of teaching to what they often to COVID-19, I cannot fathom putting them refer to as that damn test, our teachers could tailor through the additional anxiety of standardized test- their curricula to the needs of their students. ing. These tests don’t help our kids or our schools. Building a better world for our children starts Instead, they perpetuate injustice. with making our public schools into world-class The NYC Department of Education recently an- learning environments. That’s what I’ve spent my nounced that the standardized tests given to stu- life fi ghting for, and why I’m running for City dents in grades third through eighth will be offered Council in District 38, a beautiful and vibrant com- on a voluntary basis, where parents who wish to munity that deserves better than the overcrowded, have their children tested must opt them in. Making underfunded and over-tested schools we currently the tests opt-in is a start, but now is the moment have. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I know we to talk about ending them entirely. We know that can get there. That means putting into place more standardized tests have reinforced the inequities child-centered, appropriate ways of assessing kids’ inherent in our school system and perpetuated the de facto segregation of our schools, plac- WE NEED TO ing pressure and stigma on the students and teachers of under- served schools. Students from REIMAGINE HOW poor and working-class com- munities and communities of WE MEASURE color are set up to fail. Even when the system tries to accommodate students who STUDENT SUCCESS. face learning challenges, it falls short. For students who have a hard time paying at- learning and progress and in the case of standard- tention, for example, subjecting them to a six-hour ized testing, opting out for good. test instead of a two-hour one does nothing to ad- dress their needs. And teachers are caught between Alexa Avilés serves as a Parent Representative of the teaching exclusively to the test, at the expense of M.S. 88 School Leadership Team and as Chair of a more enriching curriculum, or risking the career the New York City Youth Board. She is running as a consequences and lifelong impact on students that democratic socialist for City Council in District 38 come with poor standardized test results. in Sunset Park. I speak from personal experience. As a Puerto Rico-born kid growing up in East New York, I was originally placed in a Spanish-speaking class, but my mother had me moved to an English one when she discovered that the bilingual classes were a full year behind their grade level. This kind of gap would be unacceptable anywhere, but it’s especially egregious in a city where 49 percent of households speak a language other than English at home, according to census data from the New York City Department of City Planning. In Community District 7, which is comprised of Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park, May 2021 May that number is even higher — 75 percent of resi- dents speak a language other than English at home. I’ve lived in Sunset Park for nearly two decades, and I’ve helped countless parents opt their kids out of state testing for this very reason. Despite this fl awed system, we know why high- stakes testing proliferates: It’s big business. Nation-
THE INDYPENDENT DORAN LEIA wide, the standardized testing industry makes over NYC POLITICS 9 COURTESY SCOTT STRINGER CAMPAIGN STRINGER SCOTT COURTESY
hear how Stringer planned to be “a mature steward Democrats, which played a of a $140 billion pension fund.” key role in electing Ocasio- CAMPAIGN TRAIL: The question is: Why should Scott Stringer, a Cortez to Congress. “It’s to tt tringer st s in IS ‘READY mainstay of local politics for 30 years, preside over our credit as a movement that Queens with State Senator a progressive, majority-minority city in the midst someone like Scott is uplifting essi a a s at his si e. of profound post-pandemic change — and rapid positions and things that we political realignments across the fi ve boroughs’ want to see happen.” Democratic parties? Tobias now heads Our City, an independent-expenditure ON DAY ONE’ committee that supports progressive candidates in districts where they face strong corporate-backed opponents. They • • • intend to focus on races in about a dozen districts along with the mayoral and comptroller contests, and want to ensure a ENOUGH? progressive trifecta. Stringer has cultivated an impressive collec- Still, Stringer has hesitated to embrace the much more SCOTT STRINGER WANTS TO tive of endorsers from New York’s ascendant left to controversial movement to dramatically reduce the Police help answer that question in his favor. They include Department’s $6 billion annual budget. Where he previously REALIGN HIMSELF WITH THE Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/Westchester), As- called for defunding the NYPD by $1 billion over four years semblymember Yuh-Line Niou (D-Manhattan), during the protests after George Floyd was killed last year, MOVEMENT, NOT THE MACHINE. and state Senators Alessandra Biaggi of the Bronx, his online mayoral platform bears little resemblance to that Jessica Ramos of Queens, and Julia Salazar of outspoken posture, only calling for capping overtime use CAN HE PULL IT OFF? Brooklyn, all of whom Stringer endorsed early on and removing overtime bonuses for arrests, and focusing on in their outsider campaigns. “investments” in social services and moving responsibilities Stringer’s platform has meaty policy planks. His away from the police. By Rob M. Katz NYC Under 3 early childhood plan, lauded by Bowman, a Organizations like VOCAL-NY, NYC-DSA, and the former middle-school principal, aims to triple the number Working Families Party have been demanding that between n Jan. 24, 1977, The New York Times ran of infants and toddlers in city care. He’d launch “the larg- $1 billion and $3 billion be redirected from the NYPD budget two letters under the header “The Youth est teacher residency program in the country” and put two into social services like public education and homeless out- Input.” One short note by a seventh-grader teachers, a mentor and a resident, in every classroom from reach, which they believe would reduce crime. reads: “I was indignant to note that [Man- kindergarten through fi fth grade. He’d make the City Univer- Nonprofi t executive Dianne Morales, who has steadily hattan Borough President] Percy Sutton ap- sity of New York tuition free. His climate plan is ambitious, built a base of young left-wing activist support in recent Opointed two boys to the Community Planning Boards. Why calling for a ban on all new fossil-fuel infrastructure, convert- months and recently unlocked public matching funds, took should boys represent New York teenagers when girls con- ing Rikers Island into a renewable-energy hub, and advocat- advantage of that daylight between Stringer and the left’s stitute more than one half of this age group? Ideally there should be equal representation of both sexes.” STRINGER HAS CULTIVATED AN The second, longer note praised Sutton’s decision to place two 16-year-old high- school students on a pair of Manhattan IMPRESSIVE COLLECTION OF community boards. “I believe we will bring a different viewpoint to our respective com- ENDORSERS FROM NEW YORK’S munity planning boards,” wrote one Scott Stringer, a student at John F. Kennedy High
School in Marble Hill who was one of the ASCENDANT LEFT. May 2021 two adolescent appointees. Stringer would go on to be an assemblymember and then ing a Green New Deal for public housing, modeled after the racial-justice demands when she announced her pledge to de- Manhattan borough president, and is currently city comp- bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria fund the NYPD by $3 billion. troller. The child of well-connected liberals (his mother was Ocasio-Cortez. Many of these promises meet demands popu- More contradictions come with Stringer’s jumping into the THE INDYPENDENT a city councilmember and a cousin of ’70s feminist hero larized by organizations on the left over the past decade. “movement politics” lane after a career of carefully calculat- Rep. Bella Abzug; his father was a senior aide to Mayor Abe “I think there was excitement in seeing someone like ed triangulation. He has morphed into a critic of real-estate Beame), he fundraised like a well-connected Manhattan liber- Scott Stringer who didn’t come out of the [Democratic So- interests and pledged to reject any new real-estate donations al. A 2013 article in Vogue magazine described TV star Lena cialists of America] or something, who wasn’t some far-left to his campaign. However, he’s taken fl ack for donations he Dunham introducing the middle-aged politico at a Maritime politician from back in the day, seeing how powerful pro- received before developer support became taboo — more Hotel cocktail fundraiser, where a crowd of socialites, luxury gressives have become in the city,” said Gabe Tobias, an fashion designers, and cosmetics entrepreneurs gathered to alumnus of the left-leaning national organization Justice Continued on page 20 10CRIMINAL JUSTICE COURTING THE LEFT THREE DECARCERAL CANDIDATES ARE VYING TO BE NEXT MANHATTAN DA. BUT WILL WALL STREET’S FAVORITE PREVAIL OVER A FRACTURED FIELD?
By Theodore Hamm berg, the fi gure most responsible for Vance’s ascent in 2009. lthough the Manhattan district attor- Alvin Bragg, running as a reformer, has the clear- ney’s offi ce is the second largest in the est traction thus far among the left-of-center can- United States (after Los Angeles), it didates. As of the January campaign fi nance fi ling, is far and away the most prominent. Bragg has the most individual donors (nearly 2,000) During his three terms, outgoing DA from Manhattan of the eight candidates (Orlins ACy Vance made international headlines because is second, with roughly 1,300). In addition to his of his controversial handling of cases involving support from Black leadership in Harlem, where Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Harvey Weinstein and he grew up and still lives, Bragg has been endorsed Donald Trump. by more than a dozen Democratic clubs, a reliable On a much lower-profi le level, Vance’s offi ce source of Manhattan votes. routinely outpaced its city counterparts in terms of Quart, meanwhile, is backed by seven clubs, and prosecuting misdemeanors, a practice that ensnared he has the support of several Latinx elected offi cials the city’s Black and Latinx residents. But anytime representing Upper Manhattan, including Jose Ser- Vance announced a new policy regarding prosecu- rano, Carmen de la Rosa, Robert Rodriguez and Di- tions, it got plenty of media attention. ana Ayala. Votes from Washington Heights (where Over the past few years, a wave of progressive Quart was raised) through Inwood could play a piv- prosecutors has taken over district attorneys’ of- otal role in the race. fi ces across the country, including recently in L.A. In the 2018 primary for attorney general, Zephyr and New Orleans. But no offi ce can match Manhat- Teachout defeated Tish James in Manhattan by tan’s media infl uence. If he were shaking things up 20,000 votes (105,000–85,000). Both candidates here, Philadelphia’s radical DA Larry Krasner would carried stretches of Washington Heights and In- be a household name outside of the criminal justice wood, trouncing centrist Sean P. Maloney. Running world right now. as the “anti-Teachout,” Maloney collected 42,000 As the June 22 primary race takes off, many crim- votes, largely in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen. inal justice activists nonetheless fear that Tali Far- Orlins, a longtime Chelsea resident, views her hadian Weinstein, the candidate most similar to Cy campaign as playing well with LGBT voters in the Vance, may emerge victorious in the crowded fi eld. area. Her pre-public defender career in the enter- “Progressives need to coalesce against a billion- tainment industry likely will appeal to many West aire [Farhadian Weinstein] so there’s no continua- Village and Tribeca residents. While Orlins has the tion of Vance’s legacy of discriminatory prosecu- backing of the Downtown Independent Democrats, tion against people of color and in favor of the the Chelsea Reform Dems are backing Quart and wealthy,” says Tahanie Aboushi’s campaign man- the Village Independent Dems are supporting Bragg. ager Jamarah Hayner, who recently handled George Aboushi’s strategy is to pick up swaths of votes Gascón’s successful left-wing run to become L.A. across Manhattan, starting with younger Black district attorney. as well as Muslim residents of Harlem, where she In recent weeks, Aboushi, one of three decarceral lives. Yuh-Line Niou will help rally support in candidates (along with Eliza Orlins and Dan Quart), Chinatown and Jumaane Williams will bring out has picked up high-profi le endorsements, including NYCHA residents downtown and elsewhere. Like from the Working Families Party, Jumaane Wil- all the contenders, Aboushi hopes to grab a solid liams, Jamaal Bowman, Cynthia Nixon, and Yuh- chunk of support on the Upper West Side through Line Niou. How many votes such support will yield Morningside Heights. remains to be seen. Aboushi’s edge in institutional endorsements ap- Several campaigns tell The Indypendent that the pears to be the handiwork of her consultant Ca- winner in the June 22 Democratic primary will need mille Rivera, co-founder of New Deal Strategies. As approximately 70,000 votes. Because the district at- Jeff Coltin of City & State reported, the Manhat- torney is a state offi ce, the ranked-choice voting pro- tan chapter of the Working Families Party voted to cess currently being rolled out in NYC elections does endorse Orlins, only to be overruled by higher-ups. not apply in the race. Sources tell The Indypendent that Rivera’s husband Farhadian Weinstein, the leading fundraiser (with Jonathan Westin of NY Communities for Change, a over $2.25 million), has a base of support among the leading organization within the WFP, was pivotal. city elite. Her campaign’s media team answers to Stu Rivera’s close ties to city labor leaders likely Loeser, former press secretary for Michael Bloom- helped infl uence the decision of the executive com-
THE • Fully target white- away from excessive MANHATTAN collar fraud, includ- sentencing). ing tax evasion and • Hold the NYPD ac- DA’S MANY money laundering in countable by expos- POWERS real estate deals (e.g. ing cops who provide Trump Soho). false information. With its nearly $170 million budget and 500 prosecutors, the • Become a national • Initiate crackdowns Manhattan district attorney’s offi ce leader in reducing on wage theft and is the second-largest in the United the number of peo- other forms of May 2021 May States (after Los Angeles), but it is ple prosecuted for worker exploitation. far and away the most prominent. nonviolent crimes. — THEODORE HAMM The Manhattan DA’s offi ce has the • Establish new direc- power to: tions for prosecuting violent crimes (e.g. THE INDYPENDENT SUE BRISK 11 and Law Disorderradio COURTING THE LEFT MEET THE THREE DECARCERAL CANDIDATES ARE VYING TO BE NEXT CANDIDATES Listen to the show each week and download podcasts at MANHATTAN DA. BUT WILL WALL STREET’S FAVORITE PREVAIL Eliza Orlins Profi le: egal i iety li e en er in anhattan Lawanddisorder.org OVER A FRACTURED FIELD? thr gh t an e era. Airing on over 125 stations Distinctiveness: st highly rate an i ate y i e around the nation r e en ers a net r ell r gressi e li mittee of DC 37, the large e en ers st ts en regar ing the nee t en union representing city trial ta hi h er es g ilty leas ia threat a h “Our basic constitutional rights government workers, to l nger senten e n trial n i ti n itte t lly COURTESY are in jeopardy. "Law and back Aboushi. At the same e ri inali ing se r . Disorder” is an excellent time, the union’s leader- Drawback: t getting h instit ti nal s rt see magazine format radio show, ship endorsed Eric Adams article). hosted by progressive lawyers for mayor — an odd com- who analyze the state of civil bination of left and center- Dan Quart rights in this post-9/11 period. right picks. Profi le: sse ly an re resenting er ast i e r FrFrom attacks on Muslims at In the DC 37 selection ast e a e. home to torture abroad, "Law process, Orlins was again Distinctiveness: ea er in sse ly fi ghts r ail and Disorder” puts these slighted. Despite being the re r re eal shiel ing is i linary constitutional attacks into perspective” only active union mem- re r s an ee legali ati n highest ar s r i e - AMY GOODMAN ber in the race (Legal Aid r e en ers in ter s a nta ility r th li e HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW! Society public defenders an r se t rial is n t. are represented by UAW Drawback: Only candidate who would not be a historic 2325, which endorsed fi rst as anhattan all h ha e een hite en . Orlins), the candidate was never sent a ques- Tahanie Aboushi tionnaire or interviewed. Profi le: i il rights la yer in ri ate ra ti e sin e . Co-founded by: At least three other cam- Distinctiveness: ess lly s e r is ri ina COURTESY paigns say they were given ti n against sli fi ers an rrently re resents Michael Ratner (1943-2016) President, Center for Constitutional Rights; such opportunities. DC nya ayer h as assa lte y li e at last year’s and hosted by movement lawyers: 37 delegates ratifi ed the r test tsi e ar lay’s enter itte t ne er harging eniles as a lts n’t see senten es that Heidi Boghosian, Aboushi endorsement in Executive Director, A. Muste Memorial Institute; late March. e ee years an ill re ie ast senten es e ee ing and Michael Steven Smith, In mid-April Bragg that length . New York City attorney and author. snagged the high-pro- Drawback: ath t i t ry re ains n lear see arti le . fi le backing of Zephyr NOW ON FACEBOOK.COM Teachout and Janos Mar- Alvin Bragg ton, leaders in both the Profi le: year areer as a r se t r in l ing as hie fi ght for decarceration and e ty att rney general e r tate. against public corruption. Distinctiveness: nsel in rrent ase that see s ll Earlier in the month Bragg trans aren y regar ing the ’s han ling the ri scooped up the support arner ase i e range e erien e regar ing hite of 32BJ, which represents llar r se ti ns le ges t re ie all ases han le y building service workers entral ar i e r se t r in a airstein. throughout the city. That Drawback: ten sta es t i le gr n hi h ay not excite voters. should help Bragg pick up COURTESY votes in Upper Manhat- tan, although there are Tali Farhadian Weinstein many members who live Profi le: r er e eral r se t r h ser e as nsel THE throughout the borough. t ri H l er an then as general nsel t r lyn Aboushi recently DA Eric Gonzalez. gained the backing of Distinctiveness: an e as the least r gressi e an i UNITE HERE Local 100, ate y i e r e en ers re ently t ts her r le in which represents food ser- erseeing re rt y n ale ’s fi e that analy e r s INDY vice workers at Madison e t rial is n t in e nerati n ases alth gh the Square Garden and sever- re rt i n t i enti y s e ifi r se t rs lear a ility t SUBSCRIBE al larger Midtown restau- raise n s a ng ity elite. Drawback: enefi ts r s lit a ng le t an i ates. rants, among other ven- TODAY! ues. As Politico noted, it is the fi rst time the union has REST OF THE FIELD 12 ISSUES, $30 endorsed a Manhattan DA te ll are r er r se t rs in the anhattan ’s fi e. candidate. Quart, mean- Lucy Lang is i ely nsi ere t e an e’s re erre while, has the support of s ess r t she has str ggle t gain tra ti n. ter a EVERY ISSUE
CWA Local 101, which is te er her is n t in a large nstr ti n ra COURTESY bargains for telecommu- case, Diana Florence is st ertainly n t an e’s i DELIVERED nications and broadcast an as ith ang it’s har t see a lane r l ren e. Liz STRAIGHT TO media workers, as well Crotty has a lane en n the right t she ay la the as IATSE, the union for res r es t rs e it. YOUR MAILBOX. Broadway stagehands. The UFT also revealed
in early April that the four INDYPENDENT. May 2021 fi nalists for its support are Bragg, city politics. While it’s hard to forecast ORG/SUBSCRIBE Lucy Lang, Orlins and Quart, causing how it will play out, the fact that the OR Aboushi’s supporters to object to her splintering left factions could allow
exclusion. This will be a good one for Farhadian Weinstein to emerge victo- THE INDYPENDENT the candidate who scores it, because rious remains an alarming prospect. THE INDYPENDENT the UFT has many members (particu- // 388 ATLANTIC larly retirees) living in places like Stuy Town and the Upper West Side. AVE., 2ND FL. // Union support can be pivotal in competitive races, and backroom ma- BROOKLYN, NY
neuvering is how the game is played in COURTESY 11217 12IMMIGRANT RIGHTS 13
ing indicated suicidal tendencies — where they are FOLLOW THE MONEY stripped naked. SLICE OF LIFE: Vergara, who organized a hunger strike at the Since 2009, the federal Marcial Morales is back at COLD AS ICE Hudson jail in December, was kept on suicide watch budget has fi nanced an the pizzeria he manages for a week as retribution. “They put me in a cell “immigration bed man- after spending almost nine THREE NEW JERSEY COUNTIES ARE RAKING with no water that was very dirty. They stripped date” of 34,000 to 40,520 months in ICE detention me. They didn’t give me a blanket or anything. They beds a year to detain immi- last year. He’s still fi ghting said, ‘If you don’t want to eat, that means you want grants in the United States. his deportation order. IN MILLIONS FROM THE FEDS WHILE HOLDING to kill yourself,’” he told The Indy. In 2019, ICE detained a NO ICE US, a group formed in January to build record high of more than awareness and support for the detainees, contin- 55,000 immigrants. That “HAPPY FATHER’S IMMIGRANT DETAINEES IN SUBHUMAN ues holding bi-weekly solidarity actions outside required shifting the bud- DAY DAD, I MISS the Bergen jail. Drawing on Morales’s network of get lines around. The fed- YOU.” contacts, members of the group are in communica- eral mandate funds more CONDITIONS tion with detainees, often those who are on hunger beds than privately run strike. Each time they meet, they receive a call from detention centers can furnish. The extra space is ac- the inside and listen to it in a parking lot in front counted for by county jails, like those in Bergen, Essex of the jail. and Hudson, and state prisons that enter into con- By Amba Guerguerian with John Tarleton A WAVE OF HUNGER STRIKES “I really appreciate what you guys do for us,” tracts to rent their beds to ICE. said one hunger striker calling from the Hudson A 2018 report by the federal Offi ce of the Inspector n March 6, 2020, Marcial Morales Morales found himself in ICE detention at the Essex jail on a Saturday afternoon in March. A group of General found that contracts made directly with county was sent to the Essex County Jail in County Jail when he took a plea deal after having about 20 people stood in a circle around the loud- jails and prisons often circumvent ICE’s own standards Newark, New Jersey to await depor- served 21 months in the Warren County Jail awaiting speaker his voice was reverberating from. “The way for how a federal contract should be obtained. tation proceedings. For the 37-year- a trial that resulted in a hung jury. they treat us here is not the way you’re supposed to “They’re supposed to actually provide justifi cation old pizzeria manager and father of “My lawyer said, ‘You’ll go home. You’ll go back treat a human being,” he added. “This is really sad. when they enter into a new agreement. They often Othree children, it was the beginning of a nine-month to see your kids’ and all of that. So I took the plea We’re locked down 24 hours.” just bypass that requirement,” says Jesse Franzblau, ordeal in the pits of the U.S. immigrant detention sys- deal, and then, they sent me to ICE.” The organizers, most of whom are in their early senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Jus- tem. For the local jails that contract with the federal After being held in Essex County for nearly eight to mid-twenties, are encountering the same frustra- tice Center. “If ICE didn’t take shortcuts with their Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement months, Morales was transferred to the Bergen tions that detainees and their families have been federal procurement process, it would likely be more (ICE) to hold detainees like Morales, it was money in County Jail, along with 60 other detainees. Upon ar- struggling with for years. Their phone numbers are diffi cult for them to maintain as many empty beds, as the bank — $110–$120 per night, or roughly $30,000 rival, they were locked in “quarantine” — virtually being blocked by the jails, and when outgoing calls many contracts.” before he was released in November. solitary confi nement. After being kept in quarantine get through, the connection is often spotty. Essex County made $33.4 million from its ICE “To make money, they keep the detainees in there, cells for 18 days, Morales organized his unit to go on “The quality of the phone calls is terrible. It’s contract in 2019. That dropped to $20.9 million in hoping they will be so dismayed that they give up and a hunger strike. impossible,” said Micah Jay, an organizer with 2020 after the release of some detainees due to the go back to their birth country,” says Morales, who “They told us we’d be in quarantine for one week,” NO ICE US. “Even if [the detainees] want to keep COVID-19 pandemic. The offi ce of County Executive journeyed alone to the United States from Guatemala he said. He and 41 detainees refused meals to protest their privacy, they can’t, because they have to yell Joseph “Joe D.” DiVincenzo did not reply to queries
when he was 15 years old. the jail’s poor conditions, lack of proper medical care GUERGUERIAN AMBA through the phone. I have tons of recordings where from The Indy about how the additional revenues On any given night, the jails in Bergen, Essex and and ICE’s failure to release detainees whose medical you can barely make them out.” from ICE were allocated. Hudson counties combine to hold hundreds of immi- complications made them eligible for parole. grant detainees from New York and New Jersey and With his health deteriorating because of his dia- Continued on next page are capable of holding many more. Their law librar- betes, Morales was released on parole in November ies have no legal books, their water is hardly potable after the ninth day of his hunger strike. He is now and detainees are very rarely allowed to breathe fresh back at the pizzeria, working 80-hour weeks in order air. The Bergen County Jail in Hackensack is overrun to pay for the immigration lawyer who is helping him with rats and mosquitoes, Morales says, while at Es- fi ght his deportation orders. When he asked ICE for BERGEN COUNTY JAIL sex, guards routinely administer violent beatings and a lighter ankle monitor, they replaced the two-pound HACKENSACK, NJ guard-on-prisoner rape is not uncommon. At Hudson, device he was wearing with a six-pound one that has SHERRIFF: Anthony Cureton militarized law enforcement is called upon instead of the ability to record his conversations. medical staff to deal with health emergencies. Despite his busy schedule, Marcial has created a CURRENT/RECENT # OF DETAINEES 105 When a detainee at the Hudson County Jail in Ke- communication web that connects journalists, anti- TYPICAL # OF DETAINEES (PRE-COVID) 500 arny suffered an epileptic seizure, he had to wait 15– ICE advocates and organizers, and detainees in New PER DIEM (PER ICE DETAINEE) $110 20 minutes before a single nurse came to his aid, said Jersey and New York. TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2019 $14.4 MILLION ex-detainee Bryan Vergara. “He was there on the fl oor It was through him that The Indypendent was con- TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2020 $6.7 MILLION with his head thrashing, blood everywhere,” Verga- nected with Bonilla, who organized a hunger strike at CONTRACT LENGTH/END DATE OPEN-ENDED ra said. “The fi rst people to arrive are police, like a the Essex jail in January. After a week during which he SWAT team just for the jail. They cuffed his legs and was put in solitary confi nement and threatened with hands and let him continue to convulse on the fl oor.” being force-fed as punishment, Bonilla was trans- For the Democratic Party leaders who control Es- ferred to a federal detention facility in Buffalo, New ESSEX COUNTY JAIL sex and Hudson counties and the Democratic sheriff York, more than 350 miles from his home in North NEWARK, NJ who presides over Bergen County’s corrections spend- Brunswick, New Jersey. “The two things they needed COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Joseph DiVincenzo ing, though, immigrant detention is a lucrative busi- to move me, a negative COVID test and a legally valid ness that pads their annual budgets with millions of reason, they didn’t have,” he said. CURRENT/RECENT # OF DETAINEES 195 dollars in extra revenues (See sidebar). Their story is Bonilla and Morales are among the hundreds of TYPICAL # OF DETAINEES (PRE-COVID) 800 also a cautionary tale of how the stark partisan divide ICE detainees who have gone on hunger strike over PER DIEM (PER ICE DETAINEE) $117 over immigration in the Trump era will become blur- the past year to protest the conditions at the Essex, TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2019 $33.4 MILLION rier in the Biden era. Hudson and Bergen county jails and ICE’s impunity TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2020 $20.9 MILLION At the same time, support for immigrant rights toward immigrants. Only 11 have been released. CONTRACT LENGTH/END DATE 10 YEARS/2026 intensifi ed on the left during the Trump years and is fueling the opposition to the cozy arrangements that have fi lled the coffers of the three North Jersey coun- INSIDE-OUTSIDE
ties for years. Hunger strikes by detainees have gal- HUDSON COUNTY JAIL May 2021 vanized protests on the outside while advocates are The hunger strikes were supported by daily and week- KEARNY, NEW JERSEY insisting immigrants should be treated humanely no ly protests outside the Bergen County Jail and more COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Tom DeGise matter which party is in charge. sporadic protests at the Hudson and Essex jails. In May 2021 May “We need to stop using immigration detention. December, police kettled and attacked protesters out- CURRENT/RECENT # OF DETAINEES 49 THE INDYPENDENT It’s never good for anyone. It costs [federal] money, side the Bergen jail, and more than a dozen people TYPICAL # OF DETAINEES (PRE-COVID) 800 it hurts people. They come out different — whether were arrested. PER DIEM (PER ICE DETAINEE) $120 they’ve been in there three months or three years, While protesters make noise outside, the people TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2019 $19.8 MILLION they experience dramatic psychological trauma,” says inside are being told that they’ll never see their fami- TOTAL REVENUE CLAIMED BY COUNTY 2020 $7.7 MILLION Chia-Chia Wang, organizing and advocacy director at lies again if they continue to fast, says Bryan Vergara. CONTRACT LENGTH/END DATE 10 YEARS/2031 the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant They are kept in their cells around the clock, and
THE INDYPENDENT Rights Program. some are put on suicide watch — despite not hav- MORALES MARCIAL 14
He can’t say much for the medical staff, either. He, like Ver- who was held in the Essex jail from March to October 2020. COLD AS ICE gara, was put on suicide watch despite not having shown sui- “I used to go to medical and watch the inmates playing soccer, Continued from previous page cidal tendencies. “I asked him why I was there, and that’s when knowing I wasn’t allowed outside.” they started to strip me. They said the doctor said I was Level Detained immigrant detainees are not allowed to interact “The money they [Essex and Hudson] get from the ICE One suicide watch. I told him I hadn’t talked to the doctor.” with the inmates, he added, “because they are ‘prisoners’ and contracts is often more than what was planned for in the bud- “Bergen is a black box. There’s no information going in or we are ‘civil detainees.’ But the same correction officers deal get,” says Imani Oakley, an Essex County-based political orga- out,” says Chia-Chia Wang. “The sheriff said that there’s noth- with us. That’s why they treat everybody like criminals. That’s nizer and former legislative director for the New Jersey Work- ing they need to improve and his jail is like a hotel.” all they know to do.” ing Families Party. “They tend to have more money left over In January, the Legal Aid Society, the Bronx Defenders and There’s “a lot of abuse going on,” Morales continued. “It’s that they can use to do extra things, whatever that may be. But Brooklyn Defender Services wrote a letter to ICE, saying they common knowledge that a lot of guys get raped by the offi- it’s blood money. There are other ways they can get money to had received “alarming” reports from detainees that there was cers. … Once I saw a guard beating up a detainee really badly. the county.” no heat in various detainee cellblocks. “At least one detainee Two of my friends there told me they were raped at the same Advocates and activists are unable to discern how the mon- has been told ‘the cold will kill the coronavirus, so we’re not time. Then one was deported and one was sent to Buffalo ey is being spent. In a secret recording provided to The Indy of turning it on,’” read the letter. Correctional Facility.” an August 2018 meeting between ICE abolitionists and Essex In 2019, Bronx cab driver Faruk Karimu was swiftly de- County freeholders (New Jersey’s term for county legislators) ported to Ghana after he claimed to have been raped by guards Michael Parlavecchio and Wayne Richardson, one of the activ- PARTY MACHINES at the Essex County Jail with an unknown object that caused ists asked, “If I take my kids to the zoo, am I supporting — are painful internal bleeding. we visiting something that was built using money from $117 Bergen County has been under Democratic control since 2015. Public affairs officers that represent ICE in Essex, Hudson per night per detainee? Or no?” Parlavecchio explicitly con- Old-school Democratic Party machines have ruled Essex and and Bergen counties issued identical statements in response firmed that ICE money “is certainly part of it”— in reference Hudson counties for decades, going back at least to the 1930s to those allegations: “ICE remains committed to ensuring its to the funding for the Essex County Parks and Zoo. when Jersey City Mayor Frank “I Am the Law” Hague was facilities adhere to ICE’s detention standards, which provide Richardson defended the conditions of the detention facility party boss, and have wielded outsized power in state govern- several levels of oversight in order to ensure that residents in following a federal inspection that found conditions at the site ment as well. At the same time, New Jersey’s machine-friendly ICE custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” to be so bad that even the Trump administration’s Department ballot rules make it almost impossible for progressives to pri- At the pandemic’s local peak last April, the Essex County of Homeland Security condemned it. mary Democratic incumbents successfully. Board of Freeholders passed a resolution urging the release Hudson County has long been notorious for corruption. “Party machines build a patronage mill that creates tremen- of nonviolent federal detainees. But ICE is known to dub de- Since the 1970s, it has seen a county executive, two Jersey City dous power, but also further limits public accountability,” says tainees a “threat to society” even if they haven’t committed a mayors and two Jersey City Council speakers convicted. “Our Kathy O’Leary, the New Jersey regional coordinator for Pax crime. And legally, a resolution holds little weight. politicians still take money in brown paper bags,” the editor Christi USA. “The political power is great enough that party “Don’t waste your time with a resolution,” said Imani Oak- of the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch told a newly hired re- bosses can then wield it outside their borders. The jails and the ley. “Take the steps to make the change. Your power reaches porter in 1990, during a three-year period in which the mayors federal contracts play an important role in providing jobs and beyond a mere resolution.” of eight of the county’s 12 cities and towns were indicted or subcontracts that can only be gained or maintained through convicted. From 2014 to 2016, Jersey City police officers par- loyalty to the party machine.” ticipated in a no-show job scheme. In 2018, when public outrage over former President DON’T CROSS THE ‘COUNTY LINE’ In 2019, the county earned $19.8 million from its ICE con- Trump’s policy of separating families and caging immigrant tract. It did not respond to The Indy’s request for information children was at its height, Hudson County Executive Tom Organizers pushing for an end to ICE detention in New Jer- on how much it made from ICE in 2020. DeGise announced that he would initiate a “path to exit” from sey face an uphill battle. County officials in Bergen, Essex On March 11, the state Senate’s Law and Public Safety the county’s ICE contract. and Hudson are content to rake in the revenues. And New Committee held hearings on a bill that would keep ICE from Later that year, when the county’s 10-year contract with Jersey’s unique ballot configuration — known as the ‘county expanding or renewing its contracts in New Jersey. Anthony ICE was expiring, DeGise extended it for only two years, line’ — is a formidable barrier to outsider candidates run- Vainieri, chair of the Hudson County Board of Freeholders, promising the county would end its relationship with ICE af- ning against entrenched incumbents. testified against it, bemoaning the revenue that would be lost ter that. Instead, in November 2020, after a 10-hour Board of Under the system, the candidates backed by the local if his county left the contract, on top of the money it has Freeholders hearing in which none of the roughly 100 speak- county machine all appear on the ballot as a single slate, already lost due to fewer people being incarcerated during ers favored renewal, Hudson County signed another a 10-year from President down to the lowest office, and are placed on the pandemic. About an hour later, he attended a meeting contract with ICE. Unlike the previous agreements, the new a prominent part of the ballot. Their opponents, if any, are where the commissioners voted a raise for themselves and contract gave DeGise full authority over contract negotiations. scattered around less visible parts. A study of 2020 prima- other county officials. For the next decade, he, like Bergen’s Sheriff Cureton, will be ry results by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonpartisan Bergen County gave out $2.4 million in bonuses to county able to change the terms of the contract without the approval think tank, found the average vote margin between candi- employees during the pandemic, despite a COVID-tightened of the freeholders. dates appearing on the county line and their opponents was budget. One of the beneficiaries was the wife of Sheriff Antho- “I just came down on the side of continuing it, because I 35 percentage points. Another recent study by the Commu- ny Cureton, who has come under scrutiny for his ICE contract, was convinced that it’s a very effective law-enforcement tool in nications Workers of America, which represents more than from which the county says it took in $14.4 million in 2019. trying to keep some bad guys out of our communities and off 55,000 state and local government workers in New Jersey, of our streets,” DeGise told NJ Spotlight. found that no incumbent state legislator on the line had lost Detainee numbers are down in Hudson County due to the a primary between 2009 and 2018. ‘BERGEN IS A BLACK BOX’ pandemic. However, Amy Torres, head of the New Jersey Al- “New Jersey has the most corrupt ballot design in the liance for Immigrant Justice, warns that the worst impacts of entirety of the country,“ Oakley says. “It basically makes The Bergen County commissioners, unlike those in Hudson the economic crisis have yet to hit low-income communities. it impossible for anybody that wants to challenge, to move and Essex counties, do not vote on the county’s ICE contract. “There’s going to be mass evictions,” she says. “And what hap- and replace these old machine-elected officials who are per- Instead, Sheriff Cureton approves and signs it. The seven coun- pens when people get evicted? They are much more likely to fectly fine with ruining people’s lives for some money to the ty commissioners have not demanded more power to review have trouble with law enforcement.” county.” the contract. Joel Torres, a Hudson County freeholder who voted “We provide the best quality care with a clean environ- against the 2020 contract renewal, was taken off the county ment, nutritious food, accredited medical staff and a robust ESSEX COUNTY line, and has since been replaced with someone more to the complaint reporting system,” the Bergen County Sheriff’s machine’s liking. “They politically murdered him,” said Office claims. In Essex County, Joseph DiVincenzo has reigned as county ex- Hector Oseguera, an anti-money laundering analyst and Morales begs to differ. “There are mosquitoes and rats all ecutive since 2003. A 2011 New York Times feature hailed him former congressional candidate. over the place. I would fill plastic bags with the water, and it as “the king of North Jersey,” a hard-charging political opera- Both Oakley and Oseguera say the only way to get politi- May 2021 May would be filled with debris and metal. And a lot of time the tor who “has shown a knack for bringing in revenue” through cians elected in New Jersey who would sever ties with ICE sinks don’t even work, so you have to drink out of the toilet,” government contracts. would be to abolish the county line. In January, a coalition he told The Indy. “In one week, one guy killed seven rats. They The ICE contract DiVincenzo signed, in line with the federal of progressive organizations and candidates joined a law- don’t want to be rat hunters but they have to be. As soon as government’s definition of detention, calls immigrant detention suit to end the system, arguing that it violates their constitu- the lights are turned off, all the rats start coming out and going a “civil detention system that is not penal in nature,” but the tional rights to freedom of association and equal protection into the cells… Even now, if I’m alone in my room at home, I detainees The Indy spoke with describe a harsh environment. under the law. feel that something is around me. I feel rats around me. They’re “The regular inmates in jail are allowed to go outside and Advocates to end ICE detention have called on Governor
THE INDYPENDENT not there.” hang out in the yard, but the detainees aren’t,” said Morales, Phil Murphy, a Democrat who ran on a progressive, pro- 15 Border Rule& immigrant platform in 2017 and rode a able to others. “If we don’t have the con- Global Migration, Capitalism, wave of the anti-Trump resistance, to can- tract,” Hudson County Commissioner An- cel ICE contracts. He has remained silent thony Vainieri told NorthJersey.com, “can and the Rise of Racist Nationalism on the issue. he sponsor legislation to give the counties “He just didn’t pay attention to us,” says that will lose $20 million a year [something] Oseguera, who is a member of the Abol- to help us out?’’ ish ICE NJ-NY Coalition. “Murphy is up Johnson’s bill, however, would not af- for election, and he needs the high-density fect Bergen County’s open-ended ICE con- vote from Hudson County. And Hudson tract, and might not affect Hudson Coun- County has been known to be spiteful to- ty’s contract either. wards Democratic governors running for The struggle continues. “My goal here is reelection if they don’t play nice with the to let the world know what happens inside machine,” he explains. of these jails. Where the greatest justice in the Gov. Murphy’s offi ce did not reply to an world should be is the worst place to be,” Indy request for comment. said Marcial Morales. “And I won’t shut up. I had a couple unknown calls threatening me and saying I should stop. I said, ‘you’d have PEOPLE VS. PROFITS to cut my tongue out or kill me’.”
In 2020, ICE released a Request For Infor- All sources of ICE revenue are fi gures pro- mation (RFI), exploring the possibility of vided by Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties. “ is is a book building two new 900-bed detention facilities of unsparing truth in New Jersey. For more detailed accounts of conversations, and dazzling ambition.” In January, after weeks of hunger strikes testimonies and jail conditions referenced NAOMI KLEIN and escalating protests against ICE’s pres- above, go to indypendent.org/njicesources. ence in New Jersey, Assemblymember Gor- don Johnson (D-Bergen) introduced legisla- John Tarleton contributed to this article. tion that would bar local governments from HARSHA WALIA renewing expiring agreements with ICE and prevent public and private detention facilities Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley, Afterword by Nick Estes in the state from signing new contracts. “Separating people from their families be- cause they overstayed their visa is not what we should be doing,” Johnson said. Forsaking ICE revenues remains unthink-
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16COVID-19 BREAKING UP WITH FEAR
By Nicholas Powers
he Walgreens nurse jabbed me with the needle and it felt like a key opening a jail cell. After a year of be- ing locked inside the apartment, locked inside fear and guilt, I was free, free, free. “You gave me my life back.” I smiled. THe gave me a fatherly pat and said to wait 15 minutes, in case of a reaction. I paced the aisles and when time was up, sprinted outside, and thrust hands to the sky. On an empty street I ripped off the mask and leaned on a fi re hydrant. The sunlight held my face like a pair of hands. A great relief cleansed me. I no longer worried about accidentally killing people. In that moment, I realized the toll of grinding, relentless fear. The vaccine was the fi rst step in relearning how to live in the after- math of a pandemic. It threw out the future we took for granted. Now, we have to reimagine the 21st century.
THE CORONATION
Last year, COVID-19 blew over the planet like fatal pollen. First Wuhan, China, reported a virus but from a distance, it seemed more crazy news in a year of Hong Kong protests, Amazon rainfor- est burning, and President Trump impeached. But headlines blared loud panic. On CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was grim. Each day the coronavirus spread to more places, killed more people and, like an invisible army of microscopic spiky balls, ti- nier than the width of a single human hair, it fl oated through the air. Rolling down the esophagus, the virus infl amed lungs and cut off oxygen. Most who got it became sick and then recovered. But a lot died. The deaths electrifi ed our conversations. At the bar, we drank as overhead a TV blared more COVID-19 news but disbelief won against fear. I sat with my friend Gabriel, we sipped on beers and asked each other if liberals were hyping the virus to defeat President Trump. I mean Russiagate didn’t work. We laughed and clinked glasses. “To the coronavirus,” I said. “To the coronavirus,” he said. The jokes lasted until the lockdown. A funeral pall hung over New York. I stood at my window and watched ambulances pick up the dead and dying. The fl ashing red lights painted the neighbor- hood blood red. My downstairs neighbor died. My friends got sick. My best friend said his mom texted photos from the ICU of her on a ventila- tor. And then I got a message from him, “My mom died.” I pressed the phone to my heart and blinked back tears. Later, we met at an outdoor café. His eyes were fi lled with grief. He said he killed his mom. His marriage was a cold war and, hun- gry for love, he took up with a younger woman. They met at hotels. They did not get tested and weeks later his family got COVID-19. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault. I wanted to say, don’t let guilt transform a far-fetched chance of infection into a murder ver- dict. His hands shook. I squeezed them as if pumping his mother’s heart back to life.
LOSE YOUR ILLUSION
The coronavirus stole from us our bodies and our innocence. We could not take for granted a touch or kiss or hug. We could kill those we loved just by loving them. In order for us to save our lives, we had to suffer in the most diffi cult way, we suffered alone. We walled ourselves in apartments, binged on Netfl ix and porn, ate too much, worked out too much, got stimulus checks, and tried not to collaborate with the virus. No matter how hard we tried, we lost loved ones. We lost jobs. We lost homes. We lost whole futures. We lost dreams. We lost May 2021 May fresh air. We also lost illusions, like who kept our cities running. Turns out it was not the CEOs, hedge fund managers or Wall Street. It was the invisible workers. It was the delivery men, who rode scooters with boxes of steaming takeout. It was the nurses with dark bruised faces from wearing masks at the hospital, who broke down in their cars after their shifts because they could not stop people from dy-
THE INDYPENDENT JIMENEZ ESTEBAN ing. It was the immigrant bodega men, teachers, the truck and train 17
and bus drivers. It was the Mexican farm grant kids in cages. American cruelty took so many shapes, hit herd immunity and new variants of COVID-19 swam BREAKING UP WITH and meat plant workers. They put them- so many forms that it was a mythical Hydra with a thou- in the air, threatening to throw us back into full lockdown, selves on the line so we could sit at home sand snapping jaws. It bit our skin color. It bit our gender. It but there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn’t on our laptops writing articles like this one, bit our youth and sex and paychecks. When Chauvin killed another train. or make business deals or bitch about the Floyd, it was another Hydra head that leered at the camera When I got my Walgreens appointment, I ran down the hike in the minimum wage. as it sniffed fresh kill. We saw the monster, picked up signs, street on Cloud Nine. I waved at neighbors, the bodega FEAR One day, I went to the bodega and saw and trampled it under our feet. Black Lives Mattered. Black men, even the police parked in front of the building with Louis, the Mexican sandwich maker, lean- Trans Lives Mattered. Black Love Mattered. constant shootings. I was that happy. ing on the wall, smoking a cigarette. We tapped elbows. He After the protest, I bicycled with friends though Danny, the laundromat owner saw the glow and asked if looked sad. I asked him what was wrong. Brooklyn, saw activists openly drinking, playing music, I had won the lottery. “My best friend,” he said. “He went to the hospital for sitting on curbs and handrails, smoking weed and, for “Yes,” I said, “I’m going to get vaccinated.” I waited for pain, caught the COVID and died.” the first time, passionately talking about race. Pride radi- him to say a Fox News talking point. “I’m so sorry, hermano.” ated from Black people. Whites had an easy open body “Good.” He nodded. “People say all kinds of crazy stuff He looked at me as if trying to speak from under water. language. They shared beers and under the street lights, about vaccines but they go all the time to doctors, take all “It’s real, amigo. This thing is fucking real.” it looked like Rembrandt had painted urban portraits of types of pills. Do they ask what’s in them? No. But a vaccine young revolutionaries. comes out and now they’re detectives. Fuck outta here.” He New expressions flowed over faces. Raw empathy. Eyes saluted me. “Go be a good New Yorker.” COLLABORATORS mirrored eyes. Long caring stares. Trusting arms encircling We touched elbows. Giddy, I rode the train. Giddy, I shoulders. Heads touching. It was beautiful because for the waited at Walgreens. Giddy, I took off the hoodie, bared my Even as COVID killed and killed, some collaborated with first time in the pandemic, really for the first time in years, I shoulder and felt the quick sting of the needle. it. Nearly a third of America, under the sway of President saw strangers take off their masks. Outside, on the empty street, I took off the mask and Trump, Fox News, Brietbart and Newsmax, thought the rubbed my face with sunlight. A year’s worth of fear quarantine was a Democratic coup attempt, a Silicon Val- peeled away. Skin tingled. What does this mean? I looked ley power grab, or a plot by Satanic pedophiles to sell the THE LIGHT IN THE TUNNEL at my hands. Did I accidently kill someone? Could I have United States to alien lizards. done more? Republicans stormed capital buildings without masks, “I got vaccinated!” Eyelids shut, the day was an orange glow in the dark. hoisting signs to “free Michigan” or “free Oregon.” They “You did? How?” I squinted my eyes at her. What do we now? How do we repair a broken world? brazenly shoved naked mouths and noses into the camera “I’m a service provider.” She held up my coffee and muf- I kept my eyes closed and followed the sun like a flower. because in their ideology the mask was a sign of emascula- fin. “Jealous?” Its light was far away but I could feel it. tion. Only a spineless liberal jellyfish wore it. “Live Free” “Yes.” was a common phrase on the signs they shook. “Give Me We laughed. Who wouldn’t be? It’s like being in jail Liberty or Give Me COVID-19” was a particularly odd one. and seeing another prisoner wave goodbye. I walked back Led by Trump, who said injecting bleach or high-pow- home, thumbing my cellphone for the NYC/vaccine site, ered light killed the virus, the maskless mob drove COVID entering my name, age, zip code. Nothing. All the appoint- across the nation. They collaborated with the virus because ments were taken. they didn’t care if it killed us. They assumed the coronavirus On Facebook, friends posted photos smiling as was a “blue state” problem, even as is spread through “red they got the jab. They could re- states” with a vengeance. join the world, not all at In New York, you saw the collaborators. On the subway, once, the vaccine tries that a man chomped on a sandwich with no mask, no face cover- was not a cure- are home to 4 billion people — half the ing, no nothing. The rest of us relayed the same silent mes- all and we global population. Amid a surge in its own CO- ex- sage with our eyes, “Yo, what the fuck is homeboy doing?” have VID-19 cases this spring, India has hoarded the amples The anger in the air built and New Yorkers have a thing not vaccines for its domestic population, keeping of pushback we do, where someone is deputized to handle business, so A significantly more than its fair share of 35% of against the crip- a man casually walked by and smacked the sandwich out the doses. pling monopoly on of his hands, and told him, “You need to wear a mask or WORLD APART In the midst of the stall in shipments, As- vaccine production: but get the fuck off this train.” Subway justice ensued and we traZeneca has exported millions of doses to in order to truly end the berated the guy until he dashed out at the next station. Since Dec. 14, 2020, over 127 wealthy countries that are not included in the spread of COVID-19 and en- We checked each other too. No one liked it. No one million people across the United 92 intended recipients, such as the United sure equitable recovery from the likes being scolded by friends to wear a mask, or to States have received at least one Kingdom. These countries, prior to their pur- devastation of the pandemic, pat- hear that snide self-righteous tone in their voice that dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according chase of AstraZeneca vaccines from India, were ent monopolies must be waived, as was like fingernails on a chalk board. No one. to the Centers for Disease Control and among the first to oppose requests to the many medical experts and progressive We stood in long lines to get tested. We clung Prevention, and the rollout continues to World Trade Organization for patent waivers to organizations continue to demand. to the negative results like a quickly expiring visa reach more eligible groups nationwide. expand vaccine production globally. One hundred and seventy-five former to each other’s homes. We met, tore off masks, The country is on pace to meet President “That the UK, which has vaccinated nearly heads of state and Nobel laureates have drank and made love. All the hunger for touch Joe Biden’s doubled goal of 200 million ad- 50% of its adults with at least one dose, should signed an open letter demanding Presi- had to be satiated in those brief hours like pris- ministered doses by April 28, his 100th day demand vaccines from India, which has only dent Biden waive intellectual property rules oners getting conjugal visits. in office, with some experts predicting all U.S. vaccinated 3% of its people so far, is immoral,” for COVID-19 vaccines. A waiver would end Afterwards, walking the street, masked residents could get a shot in 2021. writes Achal Prabhala, a coordinator of the Ac- monopoly-hindered supply shortages and again and holding hands, we saw the closed This high level of vaccine access, however, cessIBSA Project, which campaigns for equal expand manufacturing capacities, and priori- businesses and “For Rent” signs on empty is a reality only in wealthy countries. The vast vaccine access, in The tize the health of people everywhere. Without buildings. A sinking feeling hit us that maybe majority of the world’s people are experienc- Guardian. “That the UK has already received it, 9 in 10 people in poor countries could go the New York we knew was gone forever. ing vaccine apartheid, due to pharmaceutical several million doses from India, alongside without a vaccine in 2021; and by not vacci- monopolies on COVID-19 vaccines that lay other rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and nating people globally, the whole world will bare the value placed on corporate profit over Canada, is a travesty.” continue to suffer due to the ongoing spread Vaccine apartheid is exacerbating the dis- BREATH WORK ending the pandemic on a global scale and of COVID-19. proportionate impacts of COVID-19 in low- providing lifesaving, essential care for those “If this last year has taught us anything, income countries and prolonging risk of ex- “Black Trans Lives Matter! Black Trans Lives who are most vulnerable. it is that threats to public health are global, posure for billions of people, as well as further Matter!” The artificial scarcity of COVID-19 vac- and that strategic government invest- spread of highly infectious variants. A third ment, action, global cooperation, and Our voices were thunder. Our marching pound- cines is created by Big Pharma and its of the world’s countries have had no public solidarity are vital,” the letter reads. ed pavement. Signs bobbed like sails on a vast river licensing agreements, which heav- money to deal with the effects of COVID-19, ac- “The market cannot adequately meet of faces that rose and fell like waves. I looked side- ily restrict the global production and cording to an Oxfam report, and the Americas, these challenges, and neither can to-side, saw my lover passing out bright bottles of consequent distribution of vaccines to poor countries. Take the Oxford the world’s hardest-hit region, have seen an narrow nationalism.” water, and my friend cupping his mouth and hollering. acute rise in gender-based violence and deadly May 2021 I checked my make-up in the reverse cellphone camera, AstraZeneca vaccine, which is currently being produced by attacks on people defending land, water and — JULIA THOMAS seeing the glittery dress hugging my hips and the lipstick to the Serum Institute in In- human rights. China and Russia are practicing honor the Black trans lives snuffed out by hate. vaccine diplomacy by selling or donating vac- dia and was originally THE INDYPENDENT “Should I have worn heels?” I asked. intended for 92 cines to dozens of low-income countries in Afri- “Too much.” She shook her head. “Solidarity not low-income ca, Asia and South America, while Cuba, known caricature.” coun- for its commitment to universal healthcare and In the midst of the pandemic, we saw a video of a white international medical solidarity, is nearing the cop, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, end of two stage-three clinical trials for its own a Black man, for nine minutes as he begged for air. “I can’t COVID-19 vaccines. These are breathe,” he repeated until he died. We saw this before: Em- met Till, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Me Too, immi- 18PAINTING ALICE NEEL: PAINTING
PEOPLE LEFT OUT OF The following two years were an unspeakable ca- marchers holding aloft flares tastrophe. She lost two daughters — Santianna, and placards. However, Alice Neel, (American, who died in 1928 of diphtheria at the age of one, these paintings lacked the 1900–1984) THE PICTURE and Isabetta, whose care was assumed by her hus- features that would become , 1980 Self-Portrait band’s family in 1930. Her suicide attempts led to her stylistic signature. Oil on canvas Alice Neel: People Come First prolonged stays in psychiatric hospitals. These har- Metropolitan Museum of Art In 1934, Neel first met 53 1/4 × 39 3/4 in. (135.3 × Through August 1 rowing years explain her many portraits of preg- José Santiago Negrón, a 101 cm) nant women and even more often, children. Puerto Rican younger than National Portrait Gallery, Neel then settled in Greenwich Village. There her at a club, where he was Smithsonian Institution, By Gerald Meyer she became immersed in leftist politics. She gained singing and playing Latin Washington, D.C. employment in the Works Progress Administration’s guitar music. It was José © The Estate of Alice Neel Federal Arts Program, where she earned a small but who would provide her with n a world that viewed portrait painting as an affec- steady income working in its coveted brush-and-easel sec- passage to Spanish Har- tation of the rich, Alice Neel (1900-1984) believed tion until the WPA was disbanded in 1943 due to the war. lem, where she would stay for more than two decades. all people had a right to Her sunny apartment was large have a portrait painted. enough to serve as a studio and On canvas, Neel depicted sufficient space to raise two Ieveryday people in a way that sons, Richard and Hartley. Neel dignified them and viewed them wasn’t an outsider in the Bar- as agents for change. She gave rio — she spoke Spanish with her subjects both personality her neighbors and interacted and character, a feat that re- with storekeepers. Like so many vealed their capacity to endure others, she raised two sons on and to struggle. They are never her own, one of whom was born broken or demoralized. And there. El Barrio was also a leftist now we have a glorious new ex- community where a majority of hibition of more than 100 of her its residents voted for the Amer- paintings at the Metropolitan ican Labor Party, who elected Museum of Art that brings her Vito Marcantonio to Congress. art to life and affirms the belat- It was in El Barrio where she ed recognition she has received painted what have been called as one of the great painters of her “essential portraits.” the 20th century. Negrón became the subject of Neel rejected abstract-ex- some of her earliest East Harlem pressionism, the prevailing style paintings. He was not the only of painting, where people and man she painted erotically, but their background disappeared or he was the only one she painted belonged to the artist. Like Van with love. Some of her best por- Gogh, Thomas Eaton, Robert traits are compositions of mem- Henri, Raphael Soyer and oth- bers of his family. T.B. Harlem, ers, she employed social real- for example, shows his brother ism, a style of painting where in bed in a tragic-erotic pose, the images in her paintings are where white bandaging covers recognizable. She vivified social wounds caused by the removal realism by introducing expres- of ribs to treat his tuberculosis. sionistic techniques: exaggera- It was in East Harlem where she tion, bold colors and, most im- began painting children in clas- portant, painting directly onto sics such as The Spanish Family the canvas. Her artistic choices and Dominican Boys on 108th associated her with a style of Street. There were the people in a painting that had been discred- place that best matched up with ited as the imposition of leftists her art and her politics. Michael and Communists. She didn’t re- Gold, the Communist writer, treat from that accusation, she best summed up the meaning embraced it and surpassed it. She of Neel’s East Harlem portraits: insisted she was not just paint- “Some of the melancholy of the ing individuals. Through her region counts over her work … . subjects she intended, and often But there is a truth and unques- succeeded, to paint their times tionable faith. Neel ennobles her and circumstances. She declared: sitters in their quiet dignity.” “When portraits are good art, In 1960, Neel moved to a larg- they reflect the culture, time and er apartment on the Upper East many other things.” Famously, Side. From there she painted a she argued, “Art is a form of much wider spectrum of subjects: history, painting is an historical a fuller brush salesman, pregnant act where one has the chance to women, Communists, gays and know both the individual(s) and lesbians. While the social circum- his/her times.” Late in her life, stances of their lives still shine Neel called the collectivity of her through in paintings like Mar- paintings, “A monument to the people.” In stark contrast with the upper-class Enríquez, Neel fell garet Evans Pregnant, they seem to be more psychological While studying at Moore College of Art and Design in in love with Kenneth Doolittle, a sailor. While living with than social. But her work remained unmistakably her. Philadelphia, Neel met Carlos Enríquez, a Cuban artist Doolittle, Alice produced shameless drawings of their love Never one to flinch from reality, Neel posed for her own who, despite his bourgeois background, was a commit- life. “Her intimacy is sexual,” one critic noted. These and nude self-portrait at the age of 80. Shortly before she died, ted leftist. In 1926, the newly wedded couple arrived in subsequent works speak to Alice’s liberation from patriar- Neel said that the world was divided in a great struggle Havana. Bored with upper-class dining and recreational chy, but it did not protect her from male brutality. In 1934, between socialism and capitalism. There never was a doubt May 2021 May rituals, nightly the newlyweds escaped to Vibora, a har- fueled by alcohol and jealousy, Doolittle tore to pieces 70 which side she was on. bor district that attracted the desperately poor and those of her oil paintings and incinerated two years of her draw- determined to reverse their fate. It was the other side of ings. In contrast with earlier catastrophes, her tightly-wo- La Vibora where she encountered revolutionaries such as ven support system prevented yet another breakdown. Alejo Carpentier, a founder of the Cuban Communist Par- During this period, Neel did good work. She produced ty. There she learned of Marxism and imperialism, which semi-surrealistic paintings that were generated from her informed her artistic decisions. grief. Other paintings were blatantly political. Nazis Kill
THE INDYPENDENT In 1927, Neel, now pregnant, left Cuba for New York. Jews depicts a mass demonstration with working-class 19
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) Margaret Evans Pregnant, 1978 Oil on canvas 57 3/4 × 38 1/2 in. (146.7 × 97.8 cm) Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Gift of Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women © The Estate of Alice Neel
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) The Spanish Family, 1943 Oil on canvas 34 × 28 in. (86.4 × 71.1 cm) Estate of Alice Neel © The Estate of Alice Neel
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) T.B. Harlem, 1940 Oil on canvas 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm) National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay © The Estate of Alice Neel
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) Mercedes Arroyo, 1952 Oil on canvas 25 × 24 1/8 in. (63.5 × 61.3 cm) Collection of Daryl and Steven Roth © The Estate of Alice Neel
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian, 1978 Oil on canvas San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Purchase, by exchange, through an anonymous gift © The Estate of Alice Neel May 2021
Alice Neel, (American, 1900–1984) James Farmer, 1964 THE INDYPENDENT Oil on canvas 43 3/4 × 30 1/4 in. (111.1 × 76.8 cm) National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Hartley S. Neel and Richard Neel © The Estate of Alice Neel 20BOOKS AVOIDING THE MAGA
TRAP Postwar politics in the West generally pitted con- reconfi guring global econom- servative parties (Britain’s Conservatives, the Republi- ics and politics, and every- CHRONICLER OF Capital and Ideology cans, Charles DeGaulle in France) with wealthier and thing appears up for grabs. INEQUALITY: By Thomas Piketty more educated constituencies against less educated, The Brahmin left values in- h as i etty Translated by Arthur Goldhammer working-class left-wing parties. The left-wing par- ternational trade, celebrates Belknap Harvard 2020 ties generally voted for democratic socialism — labor the winners (managers, tech rights, universal healthcare and higher rates of progres- entrepreneurs) and offers policy pittances to the losers (fac- sive taxation. Piketty terms these politics as a “clas- tory workers, low-paid service workers). By Bennett Baumer sist” formation, but it loses steam around the fall of In the United States, Barack Obama’s anemic response to the Berlin Wall. the Great Recession greased the skids for Trump’s bigoted and The 1930s New Deal proved the power of govern- “America First” economic appeals to lower-earning and less- n a 2019 campaign video, Bernie Sanders appeared ment action to create jobs and alleviate poverty, and the civil- educated voters. Piketty asserts that across democracies there hugging a crying single mother outside her hardscrab- rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s mo- are four roughly equal electoral camps. The left consists of the ble trailer in the Deep South. The video, called Brahmins but also a rising internationalist, pro-wealth- “Trapped,” introduced us to a mother living on redistribution activist faction embodied in the United less than $1,000 a month in an impoverished ru- States by fi gures like Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio- ralI Black-majority county, in a home that badly needed Cortez. On the right, the pro-market “merchant right” repairs and sat next to a polluted lagoon, in a rich favors global trade and cooperation, joined uneasily by country where the national minimum wage is a mere an empowered nativist and nationalist far-right that $7.25 per hour. Sanders’ distinctive Brooklyn accent in talks about wealth redistribution. voiceover explained that this same scene could be in a Piketty warns of the “social-nativist” trap — Latino community in California or in white West Vir- where elites can rally the bottom 50% to a platform ginia. During the teary embrace, he told the woman, of redistributive politics to the “native” population, “we won’t forget you.” with violent exclusion of immigrants and national mi- Sanders did not forget. But in March, eight Demo- norities. But can a MAGA-infused GOP deliver eco- cratic senators, including Joe Manchin of West Vir- nomic gains to its working- and middle-class nativist ginia, voted against adding a minimum wage increase base? One-term Trump’s lone legislative victory was to $15 per hour into the COVID relief bill — a hard a massive tax cut for the rich. His inconclusive trade kick to the millions of low-wage service workers risk- war with China and disastrous COVID-19 response ing their health during the pandemic. mostly alienated the merchant right, with notable ex- You won’t fi nd direct references to impoverished ceptions like the MyPillow guy and the CEO of the
trailer courts in French economist Thomas Piketty’s CHARLES PLATIAU Goya food company. latest work, Capital and Ideology, but their specter is Polls show the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion all over this massive tome. You will fi nd those trailer COVID-relief package is widely popular across the parks, urban neighborhoods and small towns in the “dramatic bilized masses to dismantle Jim Crow and challenge the old political spectrum, yet not a single Republican voted for it. collapse” of the lower half of American households’ income. boys’ network. The far right’s response, Corey Robin wrote The bill avoids repeating Obama-era mistakes: It will provide The bottom 50 percent’s share of national income went from in his excellent The Reactionary Mind, has been to “harness thousands of dollars in direct relief to tens of millions of fami- 20% in 1980 to just above 12% today, and the miserly federal the energy of the mass in order to reinforce or restore the lies, and is a clear blow against austerity politics and a win for minimum wage is partially at fault. “This reversal attests to the power of elites,” beginning with Barry Goldwater’s unsuc- the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Critics note magnitude of the political-ideological changes that took place cessful 1964 presidential run and reaching power in Ronald that the aid is temporary and wonder how we will pay for it. in the United States since the 1970s and 1980s,” writes Piketty. Reagan’s 1980s counterrevolution. The Biden Administration is eyeing higher corporate taxes and Capital and Ideology is chock-full of graphs with nifty ex- Capital and Ideology traces this shift in politics across making it harder for multinationals to shift profi ts to tax ha- plainers and statistics that show historical income and wealth the world’s democracies over the past 50 years. Left parties vens. But if democracy is to avoid falling into a social-nativist distributions. This is the “capital” aspect of the book, but it such as Britain’s Labour and India’s Congress shifted from trap, this relief bill is a positive fi rst step. is the “ideology” portion that illuminates how wealth was robust representation of their working-class constituencies distributed away from the bottom 50% and towards the one to become parties led by an educated, professional and more percent at such magnitude. highly paid elite — the “Brahmin left.” This realignment is
tion and be extremely movable and from day are undecided. The poll’s authors called the Morales and Wiley. And the United Fed- SCOTT STRINGER one have the commitment to bringing real race “wide open.” eration of Teachers, which represents nearly Continued from page 9 stakeholders in the room?” Tobias said a lack of voter awareness 200,000 teachers and daycare workers, is Abreu, who worked as Biaggi’s fi eld direc- was the most likely reason for Stringer, soon expected to announce its pick. than $800,000 since 2014, much of which tor in 2018, has endorsed and been endorsed Morales,and Wiley’s low numbers. At the UFT’s fi nal endorsement forum, he has rolled into his mayoral campaign cof- by Morales. He points to a similar problem “A lot of voters haven’t really decided Stringer was raring to make a good impres- fers. Stringer defends his decision to keep the during the 2013 mayoral election, when pro- what they want in the race,” he said. He sion. As comptroller, he has been a strict money as a pragmatic necessity when fac- gressives struggled to coalesce around a can- added that Morales and Wiley’s support- and outspoken auditor of the Department of ing well- fi nanced rivals. (He has compiled a didate before Bill de Blasio took charge late in ers would likely rank Stringer high on their Education, and often joined UFT President strong pro-tenant record, including backing a the race, thanks to an iconic ad featuring his ranked-choice ballots. Michael Mulgrew at press events. On this proposed state law to prohibit evictions with- biracial son Dante. Yang’s limited political record and post- day, he would contrast his education platform out “good cause.”) political messaging (“Not left. Not right. with the charter school-friendly pasts of Ad- Adolfo Abreu, the organizing director of Forward” was the mantra of his national ams and Yang, make a few jokes, and avoid Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy • • • campaign) have made him a popular choice, the fi re that was about to be trained on Yang. Coalition and a City Council candidate Tobias said, for voters looking for something In a moment ripe for a precocious stu- backed by the Democratic Socialists of Amer- new despite Yang’s fairly conservative posi- dent to shine, Mulgrew asked the candidates ica, credited Stringer for being “extremely Polling for this year’s race has been tions on most issues. With increased voter if they had “done their homework.” (“You strategic” in endorsing progressive outsiders sparse but consistently shows entrepreneur outreach in the coming months, as well as mean, when I was a kid?” Yang stammered.) when it was risky to do so, but was skeptical and former 2020 Democratic presidential the coalitional politics encouraged by ranked- It turned out the UFT leader was referring to about the likelihood that he would intention- candidate Andrew Yang as the frontrunner, choice voting, that 50% undecided should the union’s fi ve-point plan to reopen schools ally incorporate social-movement demands with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Ad- disperse across several camps. in September. Had Adams, Wiley, Yang or into his governance. ams running second. A March 24 poll by “The good thing about ranked-choice Stringer read it? “Do I think Scott Stringer will be a bad Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analyt- [is] we don’t have to fi ght about the one Adams, yes. Wiley, “a Cliff Notes ver- May 2021 May mayor? I don’t think so,” Abreu said. “I just ics placed Yang at 16% and Adams at 10%, true progressive who is the actual best one,” sion.” Yang, no. Stringer? “I’ve done my think that there will be multiple times where with Stringer lagging at 5%, ahead of Mo- Tobias said. “We can say, here are the good homework, sir!” The question is, will a life- we’re going to have to hold him account- rales but also trailing former de Blasio coun- progressive candidates who have committed time of preparation and a late-career shift to able … . We’re tired of having to consistently sel and MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley, to our vision, and not the ones who are op- the left pay off for this scion of New York’s do protests and rallies and all these other who clocked in at 6%. posed to it.” liberal establishment? mechanisms to hold people accountable to But with less than 100 days until the June As The Indypendent goes to press, the the things that they ran on. I think it’s just 22 Democratic primary that will almost cer- Working Families Party has just tapped
THE INDYPENDENT more of, who’s going to be committed to ac- tainly decide the next mayor, 50% of voters Stringer as its top endorsee, followed by BOOKS 21 WHY AMERICANS CAN’T HAVE NICE sum is a story sold by wealthy interests for their own Another striking example of racism’s what-goes-around- profi t, and its persistence requires people desperate comes-around nature is in the housing sector. McGhee THINGS enough to buy it,” she writes. traces banks’ predatory lending practices against African- White slaveholders’ status in the pre-Civil War Americans in the decades leading up to the subprime mort- The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can United States quite literally was zero-sum, as they gage boom that precipitated the fi nancial crisis of 2008. Prosper Together benefi ted from the cruel system of African slave la- Those practices were the canary in the coal mine for a much By Heather McGhee bor. She draws from W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept in broader crisis, which harmed Black people and other racial One World Books, 2021 Black Reconstruction of the “public and psycho- minorities disproportionately, but did not spare millions of logical wage of whiteness,” whites’ elevated social white people. status over enslavable Blacks, which sabotaged the “Such fi nancial malfeasance was allowed to fl ourish be- By Teddy Ostrow clear economic benefi t both groups would reap from cause the people who were its fi rst victims didn’t matter interracial solidarity against the exploitative, prop- nearly as much as the profi ts their pain generated,” McGhee ertied class. writes. “But the systems set up to exploit one part of society n the summer of 2010, 15-year-old Dekendrix War- In the following chapters, McGhee illustrates how the rarely stay contained.” ner slipped down a clay-surfaced bank in a shal- afterlives of America’s original sin and the zero-sum racism Central to McGhee’s proposed path forward is the “re- low recreation area in the Red River in Shreveport, that it bred have harmed all of us. She convincingly argues fi lling of the public pool,” the formation of a social democ- Louisiana, falling into 20-foot-deep waters. Spotting that racism foreclosed social democracy in the United States. racy, but with targeted programs and stopgaps to make Warner in distress, fi ve other teen- sure universalized policies are truly uni- agersI came after him. Neither they nor the versal. McGhee spurns repeating the ex- adults watching in horror from the river clusion of predominantly African-Amer- bank — all Black — could swim. The six ican groups of workers from New Deal teenagers drowned. programs such as Social Security and the The incident was tragic but not new to minimum wage. Further, she suggests a Black America. In 1953, when Baltimore’s national, government-funded process of seven public pools were all segregated, a consciousness-raising to rewrite the ill- 13-year-old Black boy drowned in the Pa- informed dominant narrative about race tapsco River while swimming with three in the United States. friends, two of whom were white. The The Sum of Us is a readable work, group couldn’t go to any of the city’s pools packed with compelling history, per- together, so they opted for the rougher sonal narrative and heart-wrenching open water. stories of both white and Black people A NAACP lawsuit desegregated Balti- whose lives were upturned by the dis- more’s pools just three years later, though criminate and indiscriminate nature what followed was far from friendly in- of structural racism. But McGhee also tegration. Whites violently intimidated presents empowering tales of multiracial Black people who sought to use public solidarity bringing signifi cant victories, pools in white neighborhoods, and many or “Solidarity Dividends” as she calls white people just stopped going to them. them — from the national Fight for $15 As other public pools across the country movement to organizing for a “just tran- desegregated, instead of becoming hubs sition” in Richmond, California. of interracial amusement, many of these In the end, The Sum of Us is a call to gems of early 20th-century public infra- organize cross-racially against white su- structure were drained, fi lled with cement, premacy, bringing whites — and people of forgotten or replaced with (white) private all races — into the fold not by ignoring pools. If whites couldn’t have the pools to the importance of racism, but by refram- themselves, then no one but the white elite ing it as an issue that holds us all back. could have them at all. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential cam- The result of segregation and the clos- paign was perhaps the closest the United ing of public pools is that today white States got in decades to refi lling the pools. Americans are twice as likely to know Sanders built a young, multiracial coali- how to swim as Black Americans, and tion on a platform of social-democratic Black children are three times as likely reforms and a commitment to solidarity. to drown. But the movement failed to cajole enough But, as Heather McGhee argues in her working-class voters. Meanwhile, older new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Black and white voters alike stuck with Costs Everyone and How We can Prosper their establishment gut, at least in part Together, draining pools in the name of because they didn’t trust that zero-sum white supremacy doesn’t just hurt Black America would vote for the candidate of people, whether they’re literal ones or “nice things.” other “pools” of public investment, like In this way, among the American left’s Medicaid or federal Pell grants for stu- many political obstacles is not only a white dents. Rather, they hurt everyone, includ- majority steeped in that self-sabotaging ing white people. “Racism got in the way zero-sum ideology, but a substantial num- of all of us having nice things,” McGhee ber of would-be allies unconvinced that writes bluntly. that majority would ever take their hands Indeed, whites lost those public pools in solidarity. The Sanders campaigns un-
too. FOSTER LYNNE veiled the dividends in waiting. Only or- The Sum of Us is in many ways a per- ganizing, together, will allow us to start sonal tale. An economic policy wonk, cashing the checks. McGhee left her post as president of the liberal think tank The neoliberal turn in the 1970s and ’80s that drained the
Demos in 2018, frustrated with many progressives’ lack of pool of public investment was pushed through by politicians May 2021 engagement with race in their economic justice programs. like Ronald Reagan, who used racist dog whistles to turn She views the biggest obstacle to a more just America as the white majority against “society’s two strongest vessels the “zero-sum” ideology widespread among white Ameri- for collective action: the gov- cans: that their own prosperity must come at the expense of ernment and labor unions.” THE INDYPENDENT people of other races, and that improving the status of racial The result: millions of Ameri- THE ZERO-SUM RACISM minorities means worsening the status of white people. cans, the majority of whom For the book, McGhee journeyed across America to un- are white, suffer without basic derstand how this zero-sum paradigm emerged and how it social provisions such as uni- THAT SLAVERY BRED functions. What she found was a white populace manipu- versal healthcare, free college lated by elites who stoke racialized fears and tensions to and the workplace advantages fragment the working classes for their own gain. “The zero of union membership. HAS HARMED ALL OF US. 22BOOKS POOR QUEER STUDIES
ENTERS DAILY LIFE each semester—at CSI it is 350. ate and practice speaking in a shared, nonstandard queer Unlike richer schools where such conditions studies tongue…My students translate our classroom Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University are unheard of, Brim posits that these deficits, discussions, filled as they are with standard and queer By Matt Brim however frustrating, also have an upside. By in- academic languages and rhetoric, into non-academic and Duke University Press, 2021, 247 pages tegrating with community, “Poor queer studies at non queer languages and rhetoric: cross cultural ones, re- a public commuter college makes its way home, ligious ones, familial ones.” into houses, neighborhoods, and into workplaces Black queer studies classes raise the ante further, he By Eleanor J. Bader by traveling with its dynamic students,” he writes. writes, by centering stories that might otherwise be dis- This, he explains, can provoke questions and dis- missed or forgotten. Brim finds this inclusiveness exciting and sees t’s a well-documented fact that the US significant potential in the ability of poor queer system of higher education steers all but studies to straddle the class divide and push a the most exceptional Black, Brown and more egalitarian politics forward. “Poor queer low-income students into two-year and studies refuses to pit race, class, and queer- unranked four-year colleges and univer- ness against each other,” he writes, “even as it sitiesI or for-profit proprietary programs that necessarily asks how rich queer studies partici- promise real-world job training and place- pates in class stratification in the academy in it ment to graduates. It’s also well known that own ways and with its own impacts and with many students who enroll never earn a degree. its own race-queer-class negotiations.” Instead, they drop out when it becomes too Brim further believes that poor queer studies difficult to juggle course completion with fam- instructors can reject classism “as part of their ily and financial responsibilities. intersectional work.” As the same time, he con- Still, as common as this scenario is in pub- cedes that while “cross-class ferrying” is pos- lic universities throughout the 50 states, an- sible, “class and race contradictions abound.” other parallel academic universe exists. In this The stakes of eliminating these contradic- one, top-tier—read rich—students attend top- tions are, of course, extremely high. “As long tier schools and have the luxury of focusing as higher education operates from the current on their studies and social lives to the exclu- system of race and class sorting, as long as sion of all else. the rich get access to one kind of education Call it the rich school / poor school-divide. and the poor get access only to another,” he Matt Brim, an associate professor of Queer writes, “and as long as queer studies follows Studies at the College of Staten Island [CSI] of the line of educational hierarchy rather than the City University of New York has taught at steps out of line to form collective resistance,” both types of institutions so has the expertise the status quo will be maintained. As someone to compare and contrast them. Indeed, his re- who taught at Kingsborough Community Col- flections on the frustrations and joys of teach- lege-CUNY for 16 years, I know that creating ing queer studies classes to poor and working- an egalitarian academy will require a com- class students at the chronically underfunded plete reorganization, with a redistribution of CSI are heartfelt and enraging. Nonetheless, resources to ensure that every student has full Poor Queer Studies may be off-putting to access to the materials and financial supports readers unfamiliar with the many texts he ref- that are necessary for them to thrive. To do erences and the jargon used. less betrays the long-deferred dream of educa- That said, the book is at its best when tion as a universal race-class-gender equalizer. chronicling the many obstacles facing CSI’s students, many of whom live at home with Eleanor J. Bader taught in the English Depart-
parents and siblings, have children of their MARTIN GARY ment at Kingsborough Community College own, and more-likely-than-not hold down from September 2004 until June 2020. full-time jobs while enrolled. Grabbing a candy bar from a vending machine in lieu cussion amongst those who glimpse titles such as Punks, of a meal, then sitting in an overheated, underheated, or Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens being read. leaky classroom—with a computer and overhead pro- Add in the benefits of an inter-generational student jector that may or not be working during a particular body and the richness of the personal and political ex- class—will be appallingly familiar to many CUNY stu- changes that are fostered becomes evident. What’s more, it dents and instructors. becomes clear that poor queer studies classes—like classes Likewise, they’ll recognize the restrictions on students in other disciplines—can provide a richer tableau than is whose ability to access readings are stymied by limita- found within more homogeneous student populations. tions on how many total copies they can print for free This crossover, Brim writes, allows students “to cre-
Requiring clear rates of pay is part of a serious disadvantage,” the letter calling on Playbill is not the first theater Website to SUPPORT OUR larger movement by On Our Team and CP- Playbill to require pay rates in job postings require job listings to include clear rates of TROUPES fWE to remove gender and racial pay dis- said. “Playbill’s continued facilitation of pay. The Chicago-based OffStageJobs be- Continued from Page 4 parities in the theater industry. pay secrecy perpetuates an arts community came one of the first major theater job post- “The largest subsidy for the arts comes made up of the few people who are privi- ing sites to do so in 2018, with its “Post- not from governments, patrons, or the pri- leged enough to have a low (or no) personal The-Pay” rule. This required employers to that I be on site for an additional two weeks.” vate sector, but from artists themselves in bottom line. Transparency of pay will help include the numeric pay rate, starting pay When the fee was calculated per day, she the form of unpaid or underpaid labor,” organizations fulfill their missions of diver- rate, or potential pay rate range of the job, was making less. She talked to the theatre stated a 2019 report by the United Nations sity and inclusion by leveling the playing or state that there is no pay. and they increased her pay. “How many Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Orga- field and eliminating unconscious biases.” “We are celebrating the changes Play- times had I miss out on that opportunity to nization. “This requires new thinking to re- Nonwhite actors also tend to have lower bill and BroadwayWorld have made and have that negotiation by not discussing the vise labor and social protection frameworks salaries because plays featuring them tend the transparency it will lead to,” says Elsa pay?” Beller asks. that take into account the unique and atypi- be relegated to smaller theaters, according Hiltner, cofounder of On Our Team. “And May 2021 May “Requiring a clear rate of pay for all jobs cal manner in which artists work, especially to the Visibility Report: Racial Represen- beyond this campaign, we’re inspired by all listed on these popular job sites will promote female artists.” tation on New York City Stages, released the action and activism by theatre workers pay transparency, help to reduce pay gaps “Concealment surrounding pay exac- in September 2020 by the Asian American that is leading to positive systemic change.” based on biases, and combat deeply rooted erbates the gender and racial pay gaps by Performers Action Coalition and based on pay inequity that subsidizes the industry and rewarding job seekers who are able to ag- data from 18 nonprofit theaters in the city. undermines the field’s potential diversity, gressively negotiate or who have a history It said that while salary figures for Broad- sustainability, and artistic vitality,” says CP- of a higher wage — a system that leaves way are not published, it is “highly likely
THE INDYPENDENT fWE co-founder Elizabeth Wislar. women and marginalized populations at a that a significant wage gap exists.” 23
Notice of Formation of PERSONA INTEGRATED MEDICAL ARTS LLC.
Arts of Org led with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/03/2021.
Of ce Loc: NY County.
SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: 720 Ft Washington Ave., New York, NY 10040. BRANDON O’NEILL Reg. Agent: REVEREND US Corp. Agents Inc. BILLY’S 7014 13th Ave, Ste 202, Bklyn, NY 11228. REVELATIONS Purpose: any lawful act.
Dear Billy, Rev Billy, I’m fully vaxxed. I’m in my mid-40s and My 12-year-old daughter is bored and in good health but going back out into miserable with life in the pandemic. the world still seems scary, especially the Whether she goes to school (assuming it thought of being indoors around lots of hasn’t closed again due to COVID) or people or taking off my mask in the com- stays at home, her classes are conducted pany of other people. How do I unlearn via Zoom. She sees less of her friends and the fear of this past year? when they are together, the 6-foot rule DONNA applies. How do I convince someone so Sunset Park young that it won’t be this way forever even if it feels that way? OLIVER Donna, Washington Heights Your fear is real and reasonable. But “un- learning” it isn’t realistic. Our fear of the coronavirus will be with us all of our days. Oliver, In your fi rst indoors experience with un- The big old institutions are not our lead- masked folks, all of you will be dealing ers. You act as if you let schools make with the fear and all of you will be bringing your young one’s educational choices. your own antidote for it, which is openness There is home schooling, neighborhood and trust. schooling, Coney Island schooling and This reunion we’re going through, well, Greta Thunberg schooling, which is strik- we need each other, because we are threat- ing every Friday for the Earth. Millions of ened in 2021 with virus, fl ood, fi re and pes- students did just that and it impacted the tilence … all the extreme events spinning curriculum, at least it did in our 11-year- out of the larger extinction of the Earth. old’s Brooklyn school. Oliver! Bring the Accepting all this, Donna, is not unlearn- change! Radicalized individuals and fami- ing fear but relearning it. The time we live lies have the education in them, with or in tells us we must learn to live with fear. without COVID. If parents are realistic Some of us had the privilege to feel safe about the world they are leaving their for much of our lives. People of color, non- children, then they will share a political cisgender people, women living with sex- conscience with their children. ist violence — think of those who fi nd in Time for a teach-in!
COVID something to add to years of living — REV May 2021 in fear. They are our teachers now, as we go forward into the unknown. Oh, what a REVEREND BILLY IS PASTOR OF THE CHURCH time we live in! OF STOP SHOPPING. HAVE A QUESTION FOR
Courage, Donna! THE REVEREND? JUST EMAIL REVBILLY@ THE INDYPENDENT — BILLY INDYPENDENT.ORG AND UNBURDEN YOUR SOUL.
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