The INDY RADIO NEWS • MONDAYS 6–6:30PM • 99.5FM IndypendenT #244: MARCh 2019 • IndypendenT.ORG

BAnnInG The BLIndFOLd LAW p4 heALThCARe FOR The peOpLe p15 FRIdA KAhLO In nyC p20 FIRST SOCIALIST pReSIdenT? COVeRAGe STARTS p12 ROB LAQUINTA 2 COMMUNITY CALENDAR The IndypendenT

THE INDYPENDENT, INC. 388 Atlantic Avenue, 2nd Floor , NY 11217 212-904-1282 www.indypendent.org : @TheIndypendent facebook.com/TheIndypendent

BOARD OF DIRECTORS: MARCH 4–MARCH 25 THU MARCH 7 freedom movement. This acoustic jazz group lov- Ellen Davidson, Anna Gold, MON, 7PM–9PM • $25–$35 6:30PM–8:30PM • FREE HENRY WINSTON UNITY HALL ingly re-imagines the music of Alina Mogilyanskaya, Ann FESTIVAL: WOMEN’S JAZZ HISTORY: RADICAL BLACK 235 W. 23rd St., Mnhtn legendary trumpet player Miles Schneider, John Tarleton FESTIVAL FEMINISM AND THE COMBA- Davis from the 1940s and 1950s. Featuring some of the best- HEE RIVER COLLECTIVE SAT MARCH 9 HANKS SALOON EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: known and unsung female per- Activists like Ella Baker and 5:30PM–8:30PM • FREE 345 Adams St., Bklyn John Tarleton formers in jazz today in honor of groups like the Combahee River PARTY: NYC FOR BERNIE 2020 Women’s History Month. Collective pioneered intersec- LAUNCH PARTY FRI MARCH 15 ASSOCIATE EDITOR: tionality by combining antiracist Join people from across NYC 6:30PM–10PM • $10–$20 Peter Rugh SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RE- SEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE and women’s liberation move- to build a movement to elect PARTY: YA TAYR AL TAYIR: AN CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: 515 Malcolm X Blvd., Mnhtn ments. Join Barbara Smith, Bernie Sanders as the next EVENING OF PALESTINIAN Ellen Davidson, Alina Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor and president and fi ght for racial, DABKE AND CULTURE Mogilyanskaya, Nicholas WED MARCH 6 Barbara Ransby, as they elevate social, economic and environ- Want to learn how to dance Powers, Steven Wishnia 6:30PM–8:30PM • FREE the voices of path-breaking rad- mental justice. dabke? Been wondering how BOOK LAUNCH: OUR HISTORY ical black feminists and discuss KATCH ASTORIA you can get involved with ILLUSTRATION DIRECTOR: IS THE FUTURE how to carry their philosophies 3119 Newtown Ave., Queens the movement for Palestine? Frank Reynoso Nick Estes traces the traditions for freedom into the future. Join this evening celebrating of indigenous resistance that SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RE- SUN MARCH 10 Palestinian cultural resistance DESIGN DIRECTOR: led to the #NoDAPL movement. SEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE 3PM–5PM • FREE through dabke, art, poetry, Mikael Tarkela His new book serves as a work 515 Malcolm X Blvd., Mnhtn SCREENING: WARRIOR music, food and more. of history, a manifesto, and WOMEN THE PEOPLE’S FORUM DESIGNERS: an intergenerational story of FRI MARCH 8 The story of Madonna Thunder 320 W. 37th St., Mnhtn Leia Doran, Anna Gold resistance. 6PM–8PM • FREE Hawk, a leader in the 1970s FRI MARCH 15 MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: THE PEOPLE’S FORUM BOOK LAUNCH: RIGHTS IN American Indian Movement FRI MARCH 15 Erin Sheridan 320 W. 37th St., Mnhtn TRANSIT: PUBLIC TRANSPOR- who cultivated a ragtag gang of 7PM–12AM • $30–$40, 18+ TATION & THE RIGHT TO THE activist children, including her MUSIC: HABIB KOITÉ & ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER: THU MARCH 7 CITY daughter Marcy, into the “We BASSEKOU KOUYATE Dean Patterson 6PM–9PM • $25 Is public transportation a right? Will Remember” survival group. Habib Koité and Bassekou PHOTOGRAPHY: PHOTOGRA- asks Prof. Kafui Attoh of the The fi lm explores what it means Kouyate exemplify the his- GENERAL INQUIRIES: PHY OF NORTH KOREA CUNY School of Labor & Urban to balance a movement with torical, cultural and unifying [email protected] photographer Studies. Should it be? For those motherhood and how activist properties of Malian music. Wong Maye-E will share images reliant on public transit, the legacies are passed down from One of Africa’s most recognized SUBMISSIONS & NEWS TIPS: of North Korea and its people, answer is invariably “yes” to generation to generation. musicians, Koité is a modern [email protected] in conversation with Korea both. For those who lack other MAYSLES CINEMA troubadour with extraordinary Society senior director Stephen means of mobility, transit is a 343 Malcolm X Blvd., Mnhtn appeal. He performs with fellow ADVERTISING & PROMOTION: Noerper. lifeline. It offers access to many Malian Kouyate, a master of the [email protected] THE KOREA SOCIETY of the entitlements we take as THU MARCH 14 Malian lute known as the Ngoni. VOLUNTEER CONTRIBUTORS: 350 Madison Ave., 24th Fl., essential: food, employment 6:30PM–8:30PM • $15 (LE) POISSON ROUGE Linda Martín Alcoff, Sam Mnhtn and democratic public life itself. SCREENING: EL PUEBLO SE 158 Bleecker St., Mnhtn Alcoff, Charlyne Alexis, Gino THE MURPHY INSTITUTE LEVANTA Barzizza, Bennett Baumer, THU MARCH 7 25 W. 43rd St., 18th fl oor, Mnhtn In the late 1960s, conditions SAT MARCH 16 Allison Bellucci, Yousef 6:30PM–8:30PM • FREE for Puerto Ricans in the United 7:30PM–2AM • $9–$13 Oussama Bounab, Valerio WORKSHOP: HOW TO START A FRI MARCH 8 States reached a breaking PARTY: TECHNOWRUZ Ciriaci, Rico Cleffi , Anne BLOCK ASSOCIATION 7PM–9PM • $5 suggested point. Produced in 1971, this A dance party in observance of Derenne, Federico di Pasqua, Block associations bring neigh- donation hard-hitting documentary the vernal equinox and Iranian Renée Feltz, Lynne Foster, bors together and help to main- TALK: WE’RE NOT GOING focuses on the poverty and New Year. Esteban Guerra, Lauren Kaori tain and uplift communities. Join BACK oppression of NYC’s own East TRANS-PECOS Gurley, David Hollenbach, Citizens Committee for This year marks the centennial Harlem. 9-15 Wyckoff Ave., Queens Manvi Jalan, Derek Ludovici, City to learn how to start a block of the founding of the Commu- MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW Gary Martin, Lydia association or get connected to nist Party USA. Join historian YORK SAT MARCH 16 McMullen-Laird, Charina 8PM–12AM • $5–$10 Nadura, Farid Nassif, Brady an existing block association in Robin D.G. Kelly, Prof. Leith 1220 Fifth Ave., Mnhtn O’Callahan, Donald Paneth, your neighborhood. Mullings and the CPUSA’s PARTY: REBEL! A RIOT GRRRL Mark Read, Reverend Billy, GREENWICH HOUSE SENIOR Joe Sims for an evening of THU MARCH 14 PARTY Steven Sherman, Apoorva CENTER–OUR LADY OF POMPEII storytelling, poetry and song, 8PM–12AM • $10 Feeling Rage? Feeling Nostal- Tadepalli, Naomi Ushiyama, CHURCH highlighting historic struggles MUSIC: BIRTH OF THE COOL gic? Feeling like you want to Isobel van Hagen, and Amy 25 Carmine St., Mnhtn of our country’s labor and SEXTET kick something in a nonviolent Wolf.

VOLUNTEER DISTRIBUTORS: Erik Anders-Nilssen, Eric Brelsford, Chris & Pam Brown, Hank Dombrowski,

March 2019 Joseph Epstein, Kim Frazcek, Lew Friedman, Mindy Gershon, Tami Gold, Priscilla Grim, Michael Hirsch, Zack AdVeRTISe In The Indy Kelaty, Michael Korn, Jane UnIQUe AUdIenCe • AFFORdABLe RATeS • peRSOnAL ATTenTIOn LaTour, Dave Lippman, FOR MORe InFORMATIOn, eMAIL [email protected] OR CALL 212-904-1282 Ashley Marinaccio, Saul Nieves, Caroline Rath, Liam

The IndypendenT Reilly, and Carol Smith. The IndypendenT 3 MARCh IN THIS ISSUE

BLInd JUSTICe, p4 Prosecutors have all the power

LAKECIABENJAMIN.COM in NY’s skewed legal system. That could soon change. and safe way? Come heal your PARTY & PARADE soul and dance our asses off to Kids, youth, parents, stewards LOCAL neWS In BRIeF, p5 some riot grrrl punk rock. of the resistance, lovers of The most bizarre train delay DRTY SMMR delirious fun, dreamers of new ever and more. 1198 Myrtle Ave, Bklyn worlds and everyone in between is welcome at this art build that hOW TO TAKe On The MON MARCH 18 will culminate in a kid-led pa- WORLd’S LARGeST 7:30PM–9PM • $20 rade. Celebrate Queens’ victory CORpORATIOn, p6 PERFORMANCE: SMASH THE over and call for the …and win. WALL! (WITH BEAUTY, LOVE just and democratic city of your AND HONESTY) wildest dreams. FAIR’S FARe, p7 The International Human Rights JEWISH CENTER OF JACKSON The discount MetroCard Art Festival, in conjunction with HEIGHTS program the mayor doesn’t want the New Sanctuary Coalition 3706 77th St., Queens you to know about. and Immigrant Families Togeth- er, presents an evening of mu- SAT MARCH 30 TeMpORARy pROTeCTIOn, sic, fi lm, theater and discussion 8AM–12:30PM • $20–$35 peRMAnenT STRUGGLe, p8 in the service of smashing the FITNESS: 2019 GAZA 5K + The residency of thousands of wall within! After all, all walls DABKE PARTY BLOWN AWAY: New Yorkers is in jeopardy.

built in the world represent Despite the current U.S. admin- Soulful saxophonist KRIENKE THORSTEN walls that exist in our psyche. istration’s decision to defund Lakecia Benjamin is SLUMMInG IT, p10 THE PLAYROOM THEATER the United Nations Relief and among the headliners at A Trump administration troll 151 W. 46th St. 8th Fl., Mnhtn Works Agency, you can improve the Women’s Jazz Fest moves into NYCHA and lives to the quality of life for refugee this month, taking place tell about it. SAT MARCH 23 children in the Gaza Strip by at the Schomburg Center. 10AM–5PM • FREE signing up for the NYC Gaza 5K. CAndLe In The WIndOW, p12 CONFERENCE: FEMINISM FOR GRECIAN SHELTER IN PROS- You’re Berning for answers, THE 99% WOMEN’S CONFER- PECT PARK SING OUT: we’ll do our best. (2020, baby!) ENCE Bklyn Troubadour Habib In the era of #MeToo, women’s Koité is bringing his TheRe MUST Be A BeTTeR marches and an increased pres- SAT MARCH 30 masterful Malian WAy, p15 ence of progressive women in 8:30PM • $25, 21+ sounds to le poisson The left’s Rx for an ailing Congress, women’s resistance MUSIC: THE SOUL REBELS rouge on March 15. healthcare system. has manifested itself in various Brass funk straight outta New forms. This conference grapples Orleans. VOX pOp, p16 with the central question of Will America become a socialist what it means to be a feminist 61 Wythe Ave., Bklyn country? NYCers speak out. and a revolutionary socialist fi ghting for a new society. SpReAdInG The WeALTh, p17 THE PEOPLE’S FORUM On the limits and possibilities of 320 W. 37th St., Mnhtn social democracy.

SUN MARCH 24 SO yOU SAy yOU WAnT A 2:30PM–5:30PM • FREE ReVOLUTIOn, p18 FAMILY: PURIM FAMILY ART Well, you know, the FBI might have other ideas. eAST MeeTS WeST, p19 An ancient Indian symbol is starting to look more like its SUBSCRIBe TOdAy! modern Germanic double. FROM MÉXICO WITh LOVe, 12 ISSUeS/$30 • 24 ISSUeS/$54 p20 Send CheCK OR MOney ORdeR TO “The IndypendenT” AT Inside the new Frida Kahlo The IndypendenT/388 ATLAnTIC AVe., 2nd FL./ BROOKLyn, ny 11217 exhibit at Brooklyn Museum.

She-hULK, p21 2019 March SIGn Up OnLIne AT Women are fi nding the hidden power of dormant rage. neVeR MInd The OSCARS, IndypendenT.ORG/SUBSCRIBe p22 IndypendenT The A look at the off-Hollywood cinema around NYC this month. The TRUMp depReSSIOn hOTLIne, 23 Log off of social media and join Indy a leftwing, sectarian cult. 4 CIVIL LIBERTIES

pRISOneR’S dILeMMA ny IS One OF JUST FOUR STATeS WheRe deFendAnTS ARe nOT ALLOWed TO See The eVIdenCe AGAInST TheM UnTIL JUST BeFORe TRIAL.

By Peter Rugh ing they don’t plead guilty to a lesser charge. Most District attorneys love do, but not Herring. His case illustrates just how this system. The backlog from JUST CAUSE: After

t was July 17, 2015, when the cops took far the legal system can stretch a man without ever the zealous policing of people spending 18 months in LEONARDO MARCH Darryl Herring away. It was Dec. 16, 2016 convicting him. of color works in their favor. jail waiting for the trial when he was let go. He left Rikers wearing A woman on the block whom Herring knew There simply isn’t enough time that cleared his name, the clothes he’d been picked up in. In shorts accused him of rape. She said that he coerced her nor enough judges to deliver on Darryl Herring has and a T-shirt, he ran down to the Legal Aid into her apartment at knifepoint at fi ve in the morn- the constitutional promise of a trouble leaving his home SocietyI offi ces for a giveaway coat. He’d just spent ing. The Bronx District Attorney’s offi ce, headed by speedy trial. Most of the time some days for fear he’ll 18 months of his life on ’s notori- Robert T. Johnson at the time of Herring’s arrest and defendants either rot away or be locked up again. ously violent prison island. His trial lasted two by Darcel Clark by the time his case was dismissed, plead out without DAs break- days — into court on Friday, released from custody had security camera footage in its possession of the ing a sweat. on Monday. Case dismissed. pair calmly walking into the building together. They The District Attorneys Association of the State Chattel slavery was abolished in the United also knew the accuser was on psychiatric medica- of New York opposes both the bill to repeal the States with the ratifi cation of the 13th Amendment tion, which she was not taking when she made the “blindfold law” and the measure to reduce pretrial to the Constitution in 1865. But some days Darryl accusation, and that a medical examination did not detention. The association did not respond to a re- Herring wakes up and can’t leave his apartment support her claim. quest for comment for this article, but its members in the Soundview housing project in the Bronx, so Darryl didn’t know what the DA knew. He have been actively campaigning, writing op-eds and overwhelming is the fear that he will be disappeared just knew he was innocent. He was looking at 15 meeting with lawmakers to either stave off a vote on once more. years in prison, but when they offered him a four- the bills or to get them watered down. “Something’s got to change,” he says. “There year plea deal to an assault charge, he said “no.” Many of the reforms’ most vocal critics over- are too many people sitting up in jail just like me When they offered him a year and a half if he pled to see counties with high pretrial detention rates. But that are innocent. And I’m not saying that what hap- rape, he once more declined. By no means a man of with polls showing legal system reform is deeply pened to me doesn’t happen to all nationalities, but means, he went through three different lawyers until popular — in surveys commissioned by the bipar- if you look at the percentage of people in jail, it’s he found one he trusted to have the same resolve to tisan advocacy group Fwd.us and conducted by people of color. Slavery is no more, but this is a new take his case to trial as he did from his cell on Rikers Global Strategy Group, 73 percent of New York form of slavery.” Island. He opted for a trial by a judge rather than by State voters supported bail reform and 90 percent It’s not like things were coming up roses for jury, because “a judge has to instruct the jury in the backed speedy-trial reform — the DAs have had to Herring at the time of his arrest. He was living in an law, but a judge already knows the law.” tread carefully. emergency shelter on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Yes, even someone who is locked up for months “Let me be clear,” Onondaga County District But he had more than one set of clothes. He had a on end for a crime he did not commit has faith in Attorney William Fitzpatrick wrote in an op-ed for few possessions — family photographs, trinkets his the law. Herring’s biggest gripe about Rikers is that Syracuse.com. “Neither I nor my colleagues in law late stepmother had left him, and suits for special younger prisoners would sometimes start fi ghts in enforcement across the state are against reform. In occasions and job interviews locked away in a stor- order to get out of their mandatory GED classes. fact, we have embraced it.” age unit. “When I got out, I had nothing,” he said. They’d instigate a lockdown and older inmates like Fitzpatrick goes on to insinuate that if cash A pair of bills before the New York State leg- him wouldn’t be permitted access to the law library. bail and the blindfold law were eliminated, gang islature would help prevent what happened to Her- Yet despite Herring’s faith, the way the legal members could intimidate or kill witnesses set to ring and continues to happen to thousands like him. system now works is not to determine a defendant’s testify against them, battered women would be put One would repeal the state’s “blindfold law,” which innocence or guilt, but to crack them before a judge at risk, and a pedophile could be allowed to de- allows prosecutors to withhold evidence until the or jury can make that determination. pose his victim “in a sickening interview process start of a trial. (New York is one of only four states “People have an idea about courts and the le- or, even better, demand that the court allow him to with such a law.) Another would eliminate pretrial gal system being a place where truth is resolved and visit her dwelling.” detention for all but the most violent crimes. The justice prevails, and that is just not the case,” says Here’s what he fails to mention: governor has provided for similar measures in his Nick Malinowski, Civil Rights Campaign director budget, which will be hashed out this March in Al- at VOCAL-NY — part of a coalition of dozens of • Under the proposed reform to the bany. With both houses of the legislature now in the groups pressuring Albany to fi nally overhaul its cash state’s discovery rules, prosecutors hands of Democrats, there is little excuse left for bail and discovery laws. who fear witness intimidation can stalling these reforms. Sixty thousand people cycle through Rikers ask the court to prevent the disclo- each year, and 200,000 through jails across the sure of witness identities. • • • state. Some are serving short sentences but, state- wide, about 60 percent are trapped in the limbo of • There are already laws on the books March 2019 As things stand, the legal system creates a near- pretrial detention. New York State’s pretrial deten- under which prosecutors can fi le impossible situation for defendants like Herring tion rate is the fourth highest in the country. Ninety- protective orders against defen- to navigate. fi ve percent of those charged never stand trial. In dants. There was a protective order First, a judge and prosecutor set bail, often a New York City, just one percent go to trial. To get against Herring for the entire 18 prohibitively large sum. Herring’s was $75,000. there can take such remarkable resolve that it strains months he was locked up in Rikers. Then it’s off to jail, where defendants can wait the notion of the right to due process. months or even years before receiving their day in

The IndypendenT court and seeing evidence against them — assum- • • • Continued on page 10 5 BRIEFING ROOM

AIRING THE DIRTY A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR the Reagan presidency. Under the LAUNDRY NY STATE de Blasio-Carson deal, “the city L OF MESS:

New York City has subpoenaed Airbnb for details of Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced a bill in and NYCHA have all the respon- Prepare for extensive TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY more than 20,000 apartment listings as part of a drive February that would establish a task force to develop sibility, limited authority and all delays on the L train to uncover illegal hotels. Sometimes whole apartment a plan for cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions of the fi nancial burden,” Breze- this spring as the MTA buildings are rented through the site. The subpoena is to zero by 2030. The proposal mirrors targets called noff said. HUD will have veto begins an estimated an effort to bypass a ruling issued in January, blocking for on the national stage by Congresswoman Alexan- power over whomever the city 15-month repair job the city from accessing Airbnb’s listing data. The com- dria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens). Gov. Cuomo fi nds to replace him. leftover from 2012’s pany is widely blamed for contributing to a shortage of said he would support a national Green New Deal but Superstorm Sandy. affordable housing in New York and other cities. the “problem has always been the how, not the goal.” Most engineers and energy experts in fact see achiev- FROM ROOSEVELT AVE ing zero emissions by 2030 as technically feasible. The TO K STREET CUOMO’S COMMUTER political will to do so is another matter. What’s an out-of-work congressman to do? Joe Crow- CRUELTY ley, who was defeated last June by Alexandria Oca- Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to keep the L train run- sio-Cortez, announced on Feb. 19 that he was going ning while the MTA conducts post-Sandy repairs will LONG KISS GOOD NYCHA to work for Squire Patton Boggs, the same lobbying result in “on board crowding greater than anything The interim head of the New York City Housing Au- fi rm that employees former GOP Majority Leader ever experienced on the NYC subway system on a thority was let go after refusing to sign the paperwork John Boehner and former GOP Senate Majority Lead- sustained basis.” That’s according to a Jan.22 inter- on a deal brokered by Mayor and fed- er Trent Lott. The fi rm’s clients include Coca-Cola, nal memo drafted by the authority and obtained by eral Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sec. Ben Procter & Gamble, United Health and Saudi Arabia. Gothamist. Cuomo’s plan calls for keeping at least one Carson intended to rescue the city’s dilapidated public Crowley, who has long lived in Virginia where his tube on the L line running every 20 minutes on week- housing stock. Under the terms of the arrangement, three children go to school, also stepped down as the ends. Actual wait times for boarding a train could the city agreed to a federal monitor and to put $2.2 Queens County Democratic Party leader. be up to 40 minutes. Meanwhile, some commuters billion toward capital improvements at NYCHA prop- are wondering if the L train is cursed. An oil spill in erties in order to ward off federal receivership. Stanley — INDYPENDENT STAFF February sickened passengers and drove four workers Brezenoff, whose work as a civil servant for the city to the hosptial. During another recent rush hour, the goes back four decades, told the MTA took a train out of service because an anti-Nazi arrangement is “receivership in all but name only.” sticker in one of the cars featured a swastika, leading “Where the hell is HUD and money?” he asked. Fed- to extensive delays. eral funding for NYCHA has dropped markedly since March 2019 March The IndypendenT The 6 HQ2

nyC KILLed AMAZOn BUT CAn CUOMO ReVIVe The AMAZOMBIe?

By Derek Ludovici & Peter Rugh [and] their surveillance and data collection, espe- cially on undocumented immigrant communities.” fter Amazon abruptly cancelled its “We took a no-compromise, no-negotiations deal to build a satellite “HQ2” head- position,” said Solis. “This deal would have been a quarters in New York City Feb. 14, robbery of our communities.” proponents of the deal blamed local Rapi Castillo of Progressive HackNight, a politicians, specifi cally state Sen. Mi- group of activist tech workers, said the win against Achael Gianaris (D-Queens), City Councilmember Amazon sent a “good message” to corporations and Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) and Council Speak- to tech companies in particular: “You don’t just er Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan). Others pointed come into our communities and impose yourself,” the fi nger at gentrifi ers for taking a not-in-my-back- he told The Indypendent. “You have to be mindful yard stance. about what you’re representing, But if the governor, mayor and the big develop- what your technology does. And ers who backed the deal to give Amazon $3 billion in for us, what Amazon’s technol- WORKER corporate welfare in exchange for 25,000 promised ogy does is hurting families, TURNING THAT Armed with foam roll- RIGHTS: jobs were looking for someone to point their fi ngers hurting immigrants, hurting the SMILE UPSIDE ers, black paint and a pile of One week at, they might have come down to Diversity Plaza community.” DOWN cardboard, Yoder, Schragis after Amazon in Jackson Heights after Amazon’s announcement. Not that opposition in the and a team of volunteers announced Just after dark, drums and chanting began. Activ- community was unanimous. I had Rachel Schragis and Josh Yoder — set to work, churning out it would not ists held up banners as a children’s mariachi band, Many local businesses were the artist-design team that turned Amazon’s 200 evil-Amazon logos one bring its HQ2 followed by Trinidadian tassa drummers, raised a wildly in favor of the deal, en- smile upside down — on the phone the other night last summer. The em- to New York, ruckus celebration. thused at the prospect of the day when Yoder interrupted our conversa- blem made its debut at the State Senator “None of us expected it,” said Anatole Ashraf extra revenue the 25,000 white- tion. Something was happening out his win- Javits Center in July, at a Jessica Ra- of PrimedOut NYC, an online group formed to collar workers Amazon pledged dow that illustrated a point they were making. protest outside the com- mos (pictured bring Amazon opponents together. “Even when the to hire would bring their way. A bundle of Amazon Prime-branded packag- pany’s annual conference. above) and New York Times reported it, we didn’t believe it.” The city’s labor unions ing tape was tumbling down the street, blow- When Amazon announced other critics Few could. Developer David Lichtenstein, were divided between those who ing in the wind. plans to build a satellite of the mega- whose Lightstone Group owns a 428-unit apart- stood to get jobs from the deal The point: Amazon is ubiquitous. Every- headquarters in Queens last corporation ment complex near the planned HQ2 site in Long and those trying to organize where and nowhere at once. An online en- fall, the logo was featured rallied outside Island City, called it “the worst day for New York workers at the notoriously anti- tity whose boxes wait grinning on doorsteps prominently at opposition the site of City since 9/11.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo told the union company. “New Yorkers the world over to be picked up and carried rallies in . a future New York Post it was the “greatest tragedy I have are the number one reason HQ2 inside homes. News reports of Amazon seen since I’ve been in politics.” In a statement is- will be built in Queens,” the When Yoder and Schragis fi rst got the Amazon’s internal delib- warehouse sued on Feb. 14, he griped that a “small group of building-service workers union idea to stencil an anti-Amazon logo on card- erations suggest that CEO in Woodside, politicians put their own narrow political interests 32BJ-SEIU said in an evasive, board boxes, they didn’t know the company Jeff Bezos and other ex- Queens. They above their community.” vaguely-worded statement. It was planning on coming to New York. They ecutives felt threatened by demanded As The Indypendent went to press the governor had pre-existing agreements were working in support of the Primed for the tarnishing the brand that all future was working furiously to revive the deal. In an open with TF Cornerstone and Plax- Hate campaign, targeting the corporation for received in Queens. Ama- workers in the letter published in the New York Times on March 1 all, contractors that would have selling racist, xenophobic and anti-Jewish zon didn’t anticipate that warehouse be elected offi cials, labor and business leaders, joined provided services such as securi- merchandise to fans of hate movements. its grassroots opponents allowed to join Cuomo in pleading for Amazon to return. ty and cleaning at Amazon offi c- Yoder said he was asking himself, would broaden the pub- a union. Despite catching much of the fl ack for the es if the deal had gone through. “How can you touch Amazon? How can lic discourse surrounding original deal’s demise, the Amazon opposition The Building and Construction you touch something that is this big and the company to include its went far beyond the triad of Gianaris, Van Bramer Trades Council of Greater New this distant?” Then it occurred to the pair labor practices or its col- and Johnson. Its numerous antagonists mobilized York also backed the deal, after how: “To get inside their own branding and laboration with Immigration and Customs on-the-ground anger in the community into collec- it became clear that the project their own messaging.” Enforcement. Because the mock emblem tive action. They came from a diverse coalition of would be built by union labor. The two drew inspiration from seeing “looks like them, it became a conversation community groups, union activists, students, tech But the Teamsters and the news reports of striking Amazon workers in that they couldn’t back away from,” says Yo- workers and Queens residents. If city politicians , Wholesale and Depart- Europe who’d carried banners and picket der. “They can’t undo their own branding.” were more receptive to their arguments, it was due ment Store Union, which is signs with Amazon’s smiley logo turned up- “It takes a neighborhood to beat a bil- in part to the upsurge in left-wing populism that trying to organize workers at side down. “One of our goals was to make the lionaire,” Schragis added. “I’m sure there are gave the Democrats full control of the state legis- Amazon’s warehouse on Staten frown more real than the smile,” said Schra- many other people dreaming of how we can lature and got socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Island, were among the loudest gis, “so that when you see the smile, you use our creative skills to push back against elected to Congress from a nearby Queens-Bronx opponents. In a meeting the day think of the frown.” corporate forces in the world. It’s an all- district last year. before Amazon pulled out, com- They took that anti-Amazon logo and hands-on-deck moment. The win makes so Ocasio-Cortez opposed the deal from its an- pany executives refused to agree added a pair of eyes, angry slashes that much possible. It’s time that we fi gure out nouncement and used her national platform to that it wouldn’t fi re union sup- render the frown into a greedy scowl. The how to dream from the win.” lambaste Amazon. However, “many of the elected porters at the warehouse. two little specks are subtle, but give the im- offi cials who ended up supporting the fi ght against Polls showed a 70 percent pression that something sinister lies behind — PETER RUGH Amazon initially signed on to the letter inviting approval rating for Amazon’s them, a soulless corporation that abuses its Amazon,” notes Fahd Ahmed, executive director of arrival statewide. But at a time employees, writes code for the surveillance Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), a South Asian when income inequality and state, peddles bigotry, and puts mom and pop immigrant organization based in Jackson Heights. gentrifi cation are increasingly out of business. “But once they felt the pressure of communities, on New Yorkers’ minds and the March 2019 they realized the winds had shifted, and that would left is resurgent in the city, the not be a tenable position.” $3 billion in corporate welfare Angeles Solis of Make the Road New York brokered in a backroom deal proved too much for said her organization opposed Amazon’s arrival in many to stomach. Meanwhile, Amazon didn’t have Queens even before the corporate welfare package much of a taste for the publicity war that ensued. was announced. She cited the company’s “exploit- “I think we embarrassed them too much with ative treatment of workers, their long history of our constant pushback,” Sabrina Rich, who helped

The IndypendenT tax evasion, especially in underserved communities form the student-based CUNY Not HQ2 after 7 MASS TRANSIT bluestockings radical bookstore | activist center | fair trade cafe 172 ALLEN ST • 212-777-6028 bluestockings.com

EVERY THURS • 6:45–7:30AM YOGA: Start your day with sun salutations and a vinyasa fl ow.

FRI MARCH 8 • 7–9:30PM BOOK LAUNCH: Berenice Malka Fisher’s Unhappy Silences features stories of women’s activism from the TOKen 1950s to present. MARCH 15 • 7–9:30PM PERFORMANCE: Plays based on confronting economic inequality, eFFORT racism and other social injustices from Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. members of the City University of New York Board of Trustees wrote a letter in support of the By Indypendent Staff in each borough, Amazon deal, told The Indy. open 8 a.m. to 7 ALONG

Many see the victory against OFFICE OF STATE SENATOR JESSICA RAMOS ave you heard? p.m. Bring photo FOR THE ERIN SHERIDAN the corporate behemoth as just New York City identifi cation (an RIDE: Fair the beginning. is offering half- NYCID card works). Fares offices “Momentum for our move- price MetroCards Dial 311 if you have in Harlem. ment is only going to build,” said to an estimated further questions. David Lee of Queens Democratic 700,000H low-income straphang- The full implementation Socialists of America. “We are ers who fall below the federal of Fair Fares can’t come soon still going to fi ght for things like poverty-line. It’s understandable enough, especially given the universal rent control, making if you haven’t. Unlike paid sick MTA board voted for yet anoth- housing a human right, fi ghting leave, the minimum-wage bump er fare hike on Feb. 27, raising gentrifi cation and displacement, and universal Pre-K — initiatives the price of a monthly Metro- fi ghting big tech and their collu- that Mayor Bill de Blasio himself Card to $127, up from $121 — a sion with the military industrial championed — you won’t fi nd ad- 57 percent increase over what it complex, and all these fascist vertisements on the subway pro- cost a decade ago. Meanwhile, agencies of oppression.“ moting Fare Fairs. despite de Blasio reluctance to Others are seeking to build The mayor was never a fan fund Fair Fares, he’s subsidizing on the momentum of the grass- of the program. Perhaps because the new ferry boat system to the roots victory to end the kinds it was not his idea. It was pushed tune of nearly $9 per ride. of corporate subsidies and tax on him by the City Council. breaks Amazon was set to re- When de Blasio gets behind an WHERE TO ceive. Legislation to that effect something he really gets behind GET YOUR FAIR has been introduced in New York it and lets you know who to FARE: and several other states. thank. Not so in this case. Amazon, which already The most you’ll fi nd out BRONX employs 5,000 people in the there on Fair Fares from the city 1309 Fulton Ave. city, is still expanding opera- is a page on its website instruct- Bronx, NY 10456 tions here, albeit on a smaller ing visitors that if they are eli- scale. Last year, it purchased gible they will receive a letter in MANHATTAN the yuppie grocery chain Whole the mail. 413 E. 120th St. Foods. It also opened a distri- So far the rollout is moving New York, NY 10035 bution center in Queens, and is at a loris pace. De Blasio’s pre- slated to open another in Wood- liminary budget allocates about BROOKLYN side in the near future. half of what advocates say is 444 Thomas Boyland St. The company’s continued needed to get the program up Brooklyn, NY 11212 presence means “the degradation and running, $100 million. But of labor standards across the en- the city isn’t even half-assing QUEENS tire city,” said Make the Road’s it. By February, one month af- 114-02 Guy Brewer Blvd. Solis. “They are just driving ter Fair Fares went into effect, Jamaica, NY 11434 down worker protections that we barely 100 subway riders were fought for for decades.” signed up. STATEN ISLAND Teaming up with Make the Maybe you or someone you 1 Edgewater St. Road and many of the commu- know can take advantage of Fair Staten Island, NY 10305 nity groups that beat back HQ2, Fares, so here’s the lowdown on the RWDSU is continuing its union anti-poverty program the mayor March 2019 March drive at Amazon’s distribution doesn’t want you to know about. centers, including one slated to Currently, New Yorkers open at a former watch factory ages 18 to 64 receiving cash Co-founded by Michael Ratner in Woodside. assistance from the city and (1943-2016) President, Center working at least 20 hours per for Constitutional Rights; and IndypendenT The week are eligible. That’s about hosted by movement lawyers Heidi 30,000 people. There are plans Boghosian, Executive Director, A. to expand Fair Fares in April to J. Muste Memorial Institute; and include another 130,000 New Michael Steven Smith, New York Yorkers who receive food assis- City attorney and author. tance. You’ll fi nd a list of Fair

ERIN SHERIDAN Fares offi ce locations below, one 8 IMMIGRATION

WBAI SAFe WBAI JOURNEYS: hAVen Political + Spiritual Connections TpS ReCIpIenTS Fend OFF TRUMp ATTACKS Travel to Peru By Renée Feltz cials to justify ending with WBAI Friends TPS for Haitians by STATUS n a video by the Massachu- downplaying health SEEKERS: setts-based rights group Centro and safety concerns On Feb. 12

Presente, 10-year-old Gabriella that had been raised @WOLA_ORG A Journey Where You Will Experience Life More Deeply……. thousands describes herself as a U.S. citi- by other federal offi - marched in zen who dreams of being “an cials. One responded Washington, IESL teacher for students who do not by complaining: “The D.C. to speak, read or understand English.” basic problem is that it defend the Then she quickly adds: “In order IS bad there… We can humanitarian November 7- 15, 2019 to accomplish my dream I need my ... try to get more, and/ immigration mother and family.” or comb through the program called Far from the border, even chil- country conditions we Temporary dren like Gabriella who were born have again looking for Protected in the now fear separa- positive gems, but the Status. tion from their parents because of the conditions are what Info: www.journeyswbai.org Trump administration’s push to end they are.” Other emails obtained by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) the UndocuBlack Network and Na- for immigrants who fl ed war, famine tional Immigration Law Center show and natural disaster. Her mother is that instead of focusing on conditions one of some 320,000 TPS recipients in Haiti, some offi cials sought infor- who now live and work legally in the mation on how many Haitians with United States, where they have built TPS received public benefi ts. A deci- families over decades. About 15,000 sion in the case could come in March. live in New York City. As TPS holders and their loved Congress created TPS in 1990 for ones suffer uncertainty about whether MARCH 21, 22, 28, 29, 30 · 7PM people who fl ed El Salvador’s civil war. the program will be continued, many The list of eligible countries has since braved the cold in February to march grown to include Nepal, Somalia, on Washington with signs that read Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, “Residency Now!” and visit with Honduras and Haiti. TPS recipients members of Congress to ask them to “Me & Lee” must pass a background check and take the next step: fi ght for them to be A New Musical from Jason Trachtenburg pay a fee to apply to renew their status granted permanent legal residency. every six to 18 months. Now they also “From Nepal to Honduras, we STARRING Emily Frembgen, Trav S.D., Miz Stefani, Anclaudys Rivas have to fi ght to keep TPS in place. So made a promise that we were going far they are winning. to be a safe haven,” Rep. Alexandria and Mike Amato as Dr. Alton Ochsner When Trump told the Depart- Ocasio-Cortez of Queens told them ment of Homeland Security to end at a rally in front of the White House. TPS in 2017, he immediately faced le- “We are here to make sure that all TPS gal challenges from groups like Centro recipients become permanent mem- Presente, National TPS Alliance and bers of the United States of America.” the National Day Laborer Organiz- Here in New York, organizers ing Network, who argued the change have launched new initiatives to pro- was driven by a “racially discrimina- tect immigrants vulnerable to depor- tory attitude toward all brown and tation if their TPS is not renewed. The black people.” Last October, Federal New Sanctuary Coalition’s Sanctuary District Judge Edward Chen in San “Hood” program is engaging leaders Francisco seemed to agree when he of all faiths to encourage their com- cited “serious questions as to whether munities to be safe spaces and raise a discriminatory purpose was a moti- funds to bond out people taken into vating factor” and ordered TPS to re- immigration custody. The Asian/Pa- main in effect for El Salvador, Sudan, cifi c/American Institute at New York Haiti and Nicaragua as the case winds University and the group NYU Sanc- through court. tuary are hosting a conference called Closer to home, nine Haitian “Offering Refuge, Building Solidarity: TPS holders fi led another lawsuit to Universities as Sanctuaries.” Others The true story of Judyth Vary Baker - a teen science super-star recruited by the U.S. save TPS in the Eastern District of are calling for New York Gov. An- Government during the height of the Cold War in 1962 as part of a secret project New York. They were joined by the drew Cuomo to keep his campaign developing cancerous bio-weapons designed to kill Fidel Castro. She met and fell in love Brooklyn-based newspaper, Haïti Lib- promise and fund healthcare for all with another Government agent involved in the project. His name: Lee Harvey Oswald. erté, and the Haitian rights group, the residents of the state regardless of their This factually verifi ed love story tells the events that result in the assassination of J.F.K. Family Action Network Movement, immigration status.

March 2019 An All-Star Downtown cast and band sings and acts this incredible true story to life. (Adapted from “Me and Lee,” by Judyth Vary Baker, Trine Day.) formerly known as Haitian Women Meanwhile, senior Trump ad- of Miami. They too argued Trump’s ministration offi cials have reportedly move was driven by racial animus and sought to extend TPS to protect Ven- pointed to his 2017 comment that ezuelans in the United States from be- 15,000 new Haitian immigrants “all ing deported. have AIDS.” The Brick Theater. 579 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn NY 11211 | bricktheater.com Their case also cited emails from

The IndypendenT Trump appointees calling on offi - Indypendent Ad 5x7 06-23-15.pdf 1 6/23/15 1:56 PM

BROADCAST ON MORE THAN 1,300 PUBLIC TV AND RADIO STATIONS WORLDWIDE 9 This powerful narrative recounts the dramatic years in Honduras A Daily Independent following the June 2009 military Global News Hour coup that deposed President Manuel with Amy Goodman Zelaya, told in part through and Juan González first-person experiences. It weaves together two broad pictures: first, the repressive regime launched with the coup with ongoing US support; and second, the brave and evolving Honduran resistance movement, with aid from a DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG new solidarity movement in the Tune In Live Every Weekday 8-9am ET United States. • Audio, Video, Transcripts, Podcasts Although it is full of terrible things, this is not a horror story: • Los titulares de Hoy (headlines in Spanish) the book directly counters mainstream media portrayals of Honduras as a pit of unrelenting awfulness and unexplained • Find your local broadcast station and schedule violence. Rather, it’s about sobering challenges with roots in • Subscribe to the Daily News Digest political processes, and the inspiring collective strength with which people face them Follow Us @ DEMOCRACYNOW

PEOPLE’S FORUM/MARCH SOLIDARITY WITH WOMEN’S STRUGGLES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.

OUR BODIES’ WISDOM: CUBANAS SELF FILM SCREENING DEFENSE TRAININ G MASSAGE AND SELF CARE FILM SCREENING / March 15 FORF EMMES March 16 WORKSHOP / March 5 6:30pm TRAINING / 6:30pm 6:30pm - 8:30pm FREE | Registration: peoplesforum.org FREE | Registration: peoplesforum.org $10 | Registration: peoplesforum.org I, A BLACK WOMAN, A CALL TO NEGRO WOMEN: A RESIST’ OF A POWERFUL WOMAN’ PANEL DISCUSSION / March 16 FILM SCREENING / March 8th FEMINIST 12:00pm - 5:00pm March 21 6:30pm / FREE | Registration: peoplesforum.org 6:30pm - 8:30pm FREE | Registration: peoplesforum.org FREE | Registration: peoplesforum.org

© Fred W. McDarrah March 2019 March The IndypendenT The

#peoplesforumnyc 320 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018 | [email protected] | peoplesforum.org 10 HOUSING

GeneRAL pATTOn STORMS nyChA

By Rico Cleffi in her regular appearances on Fox and Friends and with Pence, and that Melania

on Twitter, where she insists Bill de Blasio is per- Trump was interested in visit- IN THE OFFICE OF BRONX BOROUGH PRESIDENT/FLICKR ynne Patton has been schlepping an sonally mismanaging the NYCHA budget. Speaking ing NYCHA. Whether she will TRENCHES: air mattress to the apartments of vari- with recently, Patton likened wear her “I don’t care, do you?” “General” Lynne Patton ous New York City Housing Authority concerns over chronic disinvestment in NYCHA to jacket is still unknown. inspects NYCHA boilers (NYCHA) residents since mid-February. “grievances by a 15-year-old who, 10 years later, is The whole thing brings to with Bronx Borough A surly character, the Housing and Ur- still complaining about an allowance cut at age 5.” mind a reality show, with the Pres. Ruben Diaz, Jr. Lban Development (HUD) regional administrator for The focus on fi nancial mismanagement seems half-million NYCHA residents the Northeast region initially took a media drubbing odd, given Sec. Carson’s propensity for $31,000 as backdrops to Patton’s careerist stunt. Perhaps the for her role as ’s wedding planner. One of dining sets or the shady practices of Patton’s for- defi ning moment of Patton’s visit came when she, Trump’s few African-American appointees, Patton mer employer, the Eric Trump Foundation — cur- her entourage and the news crews in tow overloaded is also known for her offi cial HUD Twitter account, rently under investigation by the New York State an elevator in the Douglass Houses. One member an endless fusillade of MAGA spew, where she regu- Attorney General for its fi nancial dealings. And of the throng accidentally hit the emergency but- larly vomits forth expletive-laden rants in praise of lest anyone buy into Patton’s “honest reformer” ton, causing the FDNY to come and pull everybody Trump and his wall, and bashes Democrats, the me- image, it’s worth noting that government trans- out. Patton seized the opportunity to rail against the dia and haters in general. parency group American Oversight obtained re- state of NYCHA’s elevators. Patton has said she got the idea for her NYCHA cords revealing Patton has discussed Trump Hotel After the second week of her NYCHA stay, excursion while watching Crazy Rich Asians in her business with a developer while in her HUD post Patton announced on Twitter that she would be Westchester Trump Plaza apartment with her pet on at least one occasion. taking a week off for “3-days of mandatory meet- shih tzu. The purpose of the month-long tour is, Without the necessary funding, no real im- ings at HUD.gov” (sic). In a remarkable mix of presumably, to gather information to present to in- provements will come to NYCHA residents. Trump’s witness intimidation and publicity hounding, she coming federal NYCHA monitor Bert Schwartz. So 2019 budget proposed $8.8 billion in cuts to HUD. turned up at ’s Congressional tes- far, it reeks of disaster porn — Patton vacillates be- Sec. Carson, who has claimed poverty is largely “a timony. Rep. (R-North Carolina) tween referring to residents’ “shithole apartments” state of mind,” recently called for increased privati- rolled Patton out as a prop to prove Trump can’t and sobbing over a hole in a bathroom wall. zation of public housing. possibly be racist since she is a Trump hire. Two Before her stay began, Patton established a NYCHA has scrambled to make repairs in days later reported that Pat- narrative of alternative facts. She started with the the buildings Patton is visiting, and some desper- ton was seeking leave from HUD to star in a reality claim that one million residents reside in NYCHA ate residents are pointing to her visit as the only television show. Her appearance at the Cohen hear- housing, a made-up fi gure that doubles the larg- way they have been able to get badly needed work ing was a kind of audition. est estimates. She then set to debunking (with zero done. Other NYCHA residents who have dared As for the NYCHA residents, they are likely to evidence) the widely accepted fi gure of $32 billion to question Patton have been publicly berated at see more federal budget cuts from HUD while Pat- needed to repair NYCHA facilities. Patton claims town hall meetings. ton continues her career climb at their expense. It’s the $32 billion fi gure is vastly infl ated, and is only At one point last month, Patton took a brief fur- a long way to the top and a few stalled elevators and due to the cost of union labor. NYCHA’s unionized lough from slumming it as she and Frederick Doug- shithole apartments are a small price to pay when workforce is likely to be a main target of Patton’s lass Houses residents’ association president Carmen you have a brand to build. report to the incoming federal monitor. Quinones traveled to the White House’s Black His- In keeping with HUD Secretary Ben Carson, tory Month fête in Washington. Local New York Patton insists NYCHA does not need and will not television news touted the “successful” meeting be- get additional funding. The problem, she claims, is tween Quinones, Trump and Vice President Mike mismanagement, not money. It’s a trope she repeats Pence. Quinones remarked that she was impressed

DAs, and for them to be allowed 30 to 45 days before forking movement taking on the machinery of mass incarceration, pRISOneR’S dILeMMA over evidence. theirs is a comparatively humbler aspiration. With the federal Continued from page 4 The current version of the bill would give defen- Justice Department tough-on-crime zealots, they have turned dants and their attorneys access to the state’s evidence their sights to the local level. • Witness depositions under the proposed within 15 days of arraignment. Even that is too long, In Boston and Philadelphia, grassroots campaigns have legislation may only be conducted by law says VOCAL’s Malinowski. led to the election of district attorneys who have pledged to enforcement, government employees or Arraignment, the fi rst time the accused stands before a be more responsive to the needs of the communities they serve experts. judge after being arrested, is “the most signifi cant moment” rather than narrow interests of police and prosecutors. Phila- in a case for most defendants, he says. “People go to jail. They delphia DA Larry Krasner began refusing to seek money bail Nor does Fitzpatrick seem to have any of these concerns for could die. They could lose their housing. They could lose their in most cases shortly after assuming offi ce last year. victims of wealthy assailants who are able to make bail. Bail kids. All these things could happen. Democrats who have long ridden into offi ce using pro- is intended to curb the risk of fl ight, not ensure public safety, “To us it is a fundamental idea about how the system gressive rhetoric no longer have the Republican-controlled but as it stands now, there are two legal systems, one for the should operate that prosecutors should have some burden to state Senate as an excuse for inertia. Will they bow to pres- rich and one for the rest of us. produce some evidence at the very fi rst [court] date,” he adds. sure from DAs, police and correction offi cers’ unions, or March 2019 “We want to achieve the spirit of the legislative propos- “Like you can’t just bring somebody in, make an accusation, make good on promises of change? Lawmakers must approve als, but we want to make sure it’s done responsibly, not at the ruin their life and then say, ‘Sorry, we had the wrong person.’” the governor’s budget by the end of March. We should have a expense of victims,” Albany DA David Soares, who was fi rst Prosecutors commonly have police reports, surveil- clearer picture when the deal-making dust clears by then or, elected in 2004 on a platform of reforming the state’s harsh lance video, and witness statements at their fi ngertips at the latest, by the end of the legislative session June 19. Until Rockefeller drug laws and now heads the District Attorneys upon arraignment. then, the fate of future Darryl Herrings hangs in the air. Association, told the New York Law Journal. “We want to Malinowski is careful to describe what VOCAL is fi ght- make sure we do it in a way that will be long-lasting.” Soares ing for as legal system reform rather than criminal justice

The IndypendenT wants the reform legislation to include more funding for local reform. While VOCAL members are part of a nationwide 11 March 2019 March The IndypendenT The 12 13 2020 ELECTIONS

THE INTERSECTIONAL female one as well. And in the political culture the status quo secure and stable. The structural BERNIE Trump has wrought, racism and sexism are worse oppression of identity groups is legitimated by ide- By Linda Martín Alcoff than ever. We desperately need to diversify our po- ologies, and those targeted are in the best position litical leadership. The House is 72 percent white! to unravel the false claims. But rational debate will n the 2016 presidential election, Sanders was The Senate is 75 percent male! Almost 90 percent never suffi ce. No one is given power; as Frederick running against a viable female Democratic are Christian! These facts are the result of conscious Douglass and Frantz Fanon argued, you have to Icandidate, and both he and his supporters got discriminatory practices and stupid ideas that are take it. That means, we who suffer identity-based grief for not backing out of the campaign, as if this way past their expiration date. oppression need to set our sights on taking power. was a suffi cient reason. In the ensuing commotion, Yet, I’m voting for Bernie. Is it because I care Class-based oppressions work similarly: up- I was surprised to fi nd myself called a “Bernie bro” about class more than race or gender? NO! It’s be- per classes have more say, and their say is skewed despite years of feminist and antiracist activism and cause I understand their connections. Their deeply toward protecting their own power. But class is an scholarship. There is no question that the term was intrinsic, intimate connections. importantly different kind of identity in two ways: pretty brilliant: any defense of Bernie, any critique There are both structural and ideological con- fi rst, you can change your class, unlike (in most READY TO RUN he made of Hillary Clinton, even any reference to nections between class-based forms of oppression cases) your social identity, and second, our goal as class politics, became proof that one was a bro who and identity-based forms. Identity-based oppression progressives is to eliminate or seriously transform SANDERS FACES NEW HURDLES IN SECOND ‘just didn’t get it’ — that is, the need to redress sex- is the kind that uses your social identity to keep you class, not simply ensure its proportional represen- ism and put gender issues fi rst, for once. boxed in, no matter your talent or hard work. And tation. So the ugly moniker “classism” has never Today Bernie is running against not only viable when your identity group is kept silent and demor- WHITE HOUSE BID female Democratic candidates, but a viable black alized, the “deciders” are generally going to keep Continued on next page

VOTE FOR A deeply entrenched forces that need gaffes, fashion choices, infi ghting, I have no interest in giving MOVEMENT to be overturned if we are going pundits, scandals, choice in pets, power to people who want it but By Gan Golan to build a more just society and, dietary habits, religious affi lia- don’t know how to build it. By John Tarleton between ordinary Americans and their “billionaire frankly, survive as a species. tion, leaky emails or even recently In 2020, don’t vote for a can- class” overlords who have rigged the economy and n 2020 I will not be voting for Personally, I am not interest- adopted policy positions. didate. Vote for a movement. eal change never takes place from the top the political system in their favor. any politicians. ed in the changes these individu- What I will be looking for is “ on down,” intones a voice with a familiar The last political leader to transform a major po- I Yes, you heard that cor- als proclaim they will enact once whether any of these folks have a Gan Golan is an artist, cultural Brooklyn brogue as the music swells and litical party was Ronald Reagan who narrowly lost rectly. I am not voting for any of they are in offi ce. If they are not clear strategy for helping to build organizer and New York Times a camera pans a cluster of skyscrapers. the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 to the individuals running. An un- authentically used to working as a movement of millions of people bestselling author. “But from the bottom on up.” incumbent Gerald Ford but captured the hearts and popular position when so much is part of or building popular politi- who are willing to go knocking on RIt’s the opening scene from the campaign video minds of party faithful even in defeat. The Republi- at stake, I know. cal movements with enough pow- people’s doors before the election, Bernie Sanders released on the morning of Feb. 19 cans’ 1976 platform that espoused strong support for That said, I defi nitely will er to actually impact the system, and then kick down the doors of when he announced he was running again for presi- the Equal Rights Amendment and tip-toed delicately be voting and what I will be vot- then there is little that they are power after the election. dent. What followed was a fast-moving montage of around abortion is like an artifact from a distant age. ing for is not any individual with actually going to achieve. What’s If any one of these candidates news clips highlighting Sanders outsized infl uence Four years later, Reagan cemented an alliance of Cold an ego massive enough to believe more, I think they know it. Empty are doing THAT, then I will not on the Democratic Party as evidenced by growing War militarists, free-market tax cutters and religious they should be president, but for a promises are easy to make. only use my vote to build that support for Medicare For All, free college tuition fundamentalists. This alliance swept him into power mass movement, because nothing So this election season I won’t movement, I will spend my days and a Green New Deal. Cheers then go up from and has dominated national politics for much of the short of a mass popular movement be paying much attention to indi- before and after my vote working 350,000 Amazon workers who celebrate in their past 40 years but is now running on fumes. is going to be able to confront the vidual personality traits, haircuts, my butt off for it. warehouses upon learning that their company had Sanders will have a much harder time pulling off agreed to raise their pay to $15, a cause vociferously a similar transformation of his party given the divide championed by Sanders. between the Democrats’ grassroots base and party In the fi rst 24 hours after he announced his elites. However, those polling numbers that show him A MEME FOR ALL male? Isn’t he passé? The answer is yes, we can. Un- woman of color or a minority president. candidacy, Sanders raised almost $6 million from to be the most popular politician in the country sug- SEASONS like the others, whose liberal identity politics mask In a warped form of political Tinder, voters can 225,000 donors for an average of, yup, $27 per dona- gest an intriguing roadmap forward. By Nicholas Powers a moderate agenda; Sanders strikes fear into Wall swipe left or right for candidates who look good un- tion. The total dwarfed the fi rst day fundraising hauls A September Gallup poll showed him with a +15 Street. The people know it. They won’t care if he’s til you read their records. Here’s Sen. Kamala Har- of his dozen rivals for the Democratic nomination. A favorable rating. His favorable rating with nonwhites ho knew Bernie could dance so well? On white, old, straight or male, they will simply trans- ris holding handcuffs, saying, “Want to go to jail?” week later, he announced that his campaign signed up was 64-21 percent compared to 49-46 among whites. the Ellen Show, Drake’s “Hotline Bling” form his image into their own. They’ll own Bernie. Swipe left. Here’s Sen. Cory Booker eating a salad its one millionth volunteer and counting. There are similar disparities between younger vot- Waired and an actor playing the senator made of money saying, “Wall Street has been good By the normal metrics of the presidential horse ers who support Sanders and older voters who tend just got down. He dipped, stripped his jacket off to me.” Swipe Left. Here’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand race, Bernie Sanders would be the presumptive front- not to. He also does better with non-college educated and got spanked. The audience fell out laughing. POLITICAL TINDER lost in a hall of mirrors that give back a refl ection of runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomi- whites than any other major Democratic Party fi gure. In 2015, Bernie was everywhere. I saw Gay Hillary Clinton. Swipe left. nation. He has near universal name recognition. He These are the ingredients for a multi-racial work- Pride Bernie, Burning Man Bernie, Angry Birds “It’s hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice,” Da- Bernie’s the last one. In every photo, he’s rages has been the most popular politician in America since ing-class movement to compel the government to act Bernie, Thug Life Bernie. No presidential candidate vid Brooks said on PBS NewsHour, “He was the at the machine, his hair fl ying. In the oldest one, he’s early 2016, according to multiple polls. He has al- in the interests of ordinary people, if Sanders can turn had inspired this feverish popular culture, re-mix- shiny new penny but now there are a lot of people a young man in a black-and-white photo arrested ready run one national campaign. His signature poli- generic goodwill into votes in a crowded fi eld. ing since Obama’s 2008 campaign. People chose with the same policy positions. You would think for protesting racial segregation. And then you fall cies have gone from fringe to mainstream in the Dem- The 2020 presidential race will be an ultra-mar- Bernie like they chose Obama; he was their mirror. a younger, more diverse version of Bernie Sanders in love again. Bernie. Swipe right. ocratic Party over the past three years. He can raise athon. We’re looking at 20 more months of fl eeting Now in 2019, Bernie runs again but in a richly would be the ticket.” He’s right. Other candidates gobs of money and has a large, passionate following controversies and subsequent social media outrage, diverse presidential race. The fi eld is packed tight lip-sync Bernie’s New Deal platform, they say some that will dedicate countless hours to his campaign. email boxes clogged with urgent fundraising appeals, with female senators and senators of color. Can form of Medicare for All and free college but add No other Democratic presidential contender comes candidate debates that feel more like television game progressives, identify with an old, white, straight the powerful symbolism of being the fi rst woman or Continued on next page close in these areas. shows and so on. So pace yourself. But while the cir- However, Sanders isn’t your normal presidential cus drones on, there’s an opportunity here — not a candidate and will once again be running against the guarantee but an opportunity — to build a massive

odds. Age is part of it. He would be 79 on the day of popular movement that can overcome all the obsta- ROB LAQUINTA WHY I STILL to move to the small, overwhelm- en, gays and lesbians was paltry. As eligible Democratic voters partici- his inauguration and despite his energetic appearance, cles thrown up by Democratic Party elites and trans- DON’T FEEL ingly white state of Vermont. His a result, he garnered relatively few pated. It is welcome news that the doubts persist. He faces a large and diverse fi eld in a form politics in this country for many years to come. THE BERN political career would fl ourish in votes from the very groups most Democratic Party has changed its party hungry for more diverse leadership. Legions of By Gerald Meyer that environment, but his inability committed to the Democratic Party. rules for 2020 to make it easier for Hillary Clinton supporters still resent him for forcing to connect with Black and Latino Sanders’ did best in states people to participate in the cau- her to compete for the 2016 nomination. But above he right candidate to repre- voters was painfully obvious when that selected their delegates by cuses without having to be physi- all, Sanders is detested by the Democratic Party es- sent the Democratic Party he stepped onto the national stage in caucuses. These bodies met for cally present. March 2019 March tablishment and its wealthy backers such as the CEO Tfor president, in 2020, is the 2015 to run against Hillary Clinton. long hours in the evenings and Sanders’ campaign, like Ralph of a giant Wall Street bank who anonymously told candidate who can unify the party He started his 2016 presiden- often required public affi rmations Nader’s before him, drove a wedge in January “It can’t be [Elizabeth] Warren, while moving it leftward. Bernie tial campaign without a single of participants’ loyalties to one between progressives — especially and it can’t be Sanders.” Sanders is not that candidate. African-American or Latino se- or another candidate. These sup- young, white males — and the March 2019 More than trying to win the presidency, Sand- Like Sanders, I am a 77-year- nior staff person and only made posedly democratic institutions great masses of Democratic vot- INDYPENDENT THE ers and his movement are trying to wrest control of old white male who grew up in a half-hearted efforts to correct that effectively excluded mothers with ers. These divisions carry with a major political party and reorient it dramatically to working-class home where money blunder. His campaign focused small children, workers on eve- them the mutant seeds of internal the left. Sanders is not a socialist in the same vein as was always tight and would go on on large rallies that attracted ning or night shifts and the still feuding and factionalism. The left his early 20th century hero Eugene Debs who cham- to become a committed, lifelong predominantly-white audiences larger numbers of voters who were in America should struggle for the pioned the public ownership of industry. However, leftist. Yet I’ve never felt the Bern. of students and other relatively intimidated by this process. In maximum possible unity within Sanders does espouse a fi erce narrative of class con- Why is that? young people. Evidence of his con- those states with caucus systems,

THE INDYPENDENT fl ict and class struggle (i.e. the political revolution) In his mid-20s, Sanders chose cern for, even awareness of, wom- on average, only 10 percent of the Continued on next page 14

THE INTERSECTIONAL BERNIE A MEME FOR ALL SEASONS WHY I STILL Continued from previous page Continued from previous page DON’T FEEL THE BERN worked for me: class oppression is not analogous to race, gender, I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR Continued from previous sexuality, religion, disability, or other forms of social identities. page Some may want to eliminate some of these, but most of us just want “We are all in this together,” Bernie said on CNN, “The truth to be able to breathe and vote and be taken seriously when we speak is … when you hurt, when your children hurt, I hurt. I believe the Democratic Party. This and wear whatever we damn well please. that’s what human nature is.” In six words, he summed up his can be achieved by fi ghting Bernie Sanders today, as always, actually represents our best philosophy. We are living mirrors, refl ecting one another until de- for those gains that overarch hope for redressing both forms of oppression: those that are class humanizing ideology teaches us to toss away people like garbage. the various groups that be- based, and those that are identity based. Like many people here, one His philosophy was in action in 2016 when he campaigned in the long to the Democratic Party. of my identities is as an immigrant. And like most, I feel connected Brownsville Housing Projects in Brooklyn. A reporter asked why, Now Sanders is run- to two countries, two nations. Another sadly shared experience I he said, “It is absurd to have 38 percent of African American chil- ning again. If he is to fare have is that one of the countries I feel attached to was bombed by dren living in poverty.” better this time, he will the other one, during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. This Bernie’s face, mirrors our reality. His furrowed brow or have to show he can win was one of the most horrible experiences of my life: my family was sucked-in lip refl ect the impatience or sarcasm that are etched deep over groups that previously in mortal danger, and I was behind enemy lines. into him by years of anger at a cruel system. His feelings at inequal- spurned him, especially Bernie Sanders has often been the only voice in Congress call- ity refl ect ours. It creates a magnetism that pulls us over differences African Americans, the ing out imperial actions in Latin America. He rejects “American in skin color or culture and lets buried hope rise to the surface. You party’s single most loyal exceptionalism” and has made it clear that the United States cannot fi nd yourself rooting for a man who looks nothing like you. But voting bloc. Socialism by expect to dominate the world and then claim to be on the side of somehow looks at the world the way you do. and for white people is not democracy. He regularly reminds us about the U.S. overthrow of At the 2016 rallies, I saw thousands of enthusiasts wearing a socialism I want to be a Iran’s democratically elected president in 1953, Chile’s democrati- Bernie hats, Bernie shirts, Bernie signs and Bernie hairpieces. They part of. cally-elected president in 1973, and brings up the U.S. support for so identifi ed with him, they wore his name and hair like sacred what he rightfully calls “murderous regimes” in El Salvador and talismans. Politics incites the same passions as sports and religions. Gerald Meyer is a Profes- Guatemala in the 1980s. Who else does that? In his 2017 speech Strangers bond over shared symbols. That’s nothing new. sor Emeritus of History at on foreign policy, Bernie characterized the United States as serv- What’s new and strange and wild is the populist turn, people Hostos Community Col- ing global democracy only some of the time, while at other times did not just identify with him but remade him into their image. lege and co-chair of the undermining it, and he suggested we need to build partnership At rallies or on websites or on stickers at coffee shops, I saw Ber- Vito Marcantonio Forum. between peoples, not (just) governments. Further, he linked U.S. nie become like Janus, his new faces sculpted by many hands. He He is the author of Vito authoritarianism abroad with its concentration of wealth at home. was gay Bernie in Rainbow Pride colors. Or Jedi Bernie welding a Marcantonio: Radical Pol- I wish he was stronger at times; I wish he’d call the humanitar- lightsaber. Or Captain America Bernie, punching Hitler Trump. Or itician 1902-1954. ian aid to Venezuela the ruse that it is, and demand an end to the Run DMC Bernie, who is tougher than leather. Or Hip-Hop Bernie sanctions. I wish his opposition to was more robust. But in where he is photoshopped into gold necklace dangling scenes. the past 40 years, Bernie’s vocal, consistent and sometimes emo- Wherever we lived, however we lived, we made Bernie into tional criticism of U.S. covert and overt actions in Latin America us. It’s a small but important reversal. Instead of power coming and elsewhere in the global south has won my trust and my loyalty. from identifying with a “leader”, it came from making the leader And he gets the link between U.S. imperial actions and its economic look like us. Bernie’s political revolution is authentically demo- designs. As a Latin American, I trust him as much or more than any cratic. It belongs to our imagination, the very place where new other political leader in my lifetime. worlds are born. I believe that Bernie’s passionate commitment to end identity- What we see is so far beyond tepid, liberal incrementalism. based oppression is connected to his own Jewish identity. His fa- When we take control of his image, we learn how to take control ther’s side of the family that lived in German-occupied Poland was of a part of the world that with each victory becomes a bigger and wiped out by the Nazis about the time he was born. He grew up bigger part. If we win, we win against no healthcare, against deep unavoidably aware of how your social identity can keep you boxed poverty, against climate change, against student debt. We win the in, or worse, subject to annihilation. As a friend put it, this is not survival of our species. your average white dude’s experience. The real reason we aim for better representation of diverse identities in our political leadership is because we know we need LET A THOUSAND BERNIES BLOOM better idea representation. We need people whose experiences in- form their frameworks and motivations and values. Bernie’s got it I thought maybe he wouldn’t run. His age is a factor. His politics all. I’m voting for him. demand we unlearn cynicism and dream again. And that’s scary. Maybe it was too late? Candidates have jumped into the race Linda Martín Alcoff is a professor of philosophy at Hunter Col- like sharks that smelled blood in the water. Trump was weakened. lege. She is the author of The Future of Whiteness and Rape and The Republicans lost the House. As each one announced, you could Resistance. see the hunger for power in their smiles. It felt like business as usual. The new gimmick is minority Democrats who mouth New Deal bromides but will tack center if they get the nomination. How do we know? Wall Street loves Booker and Harris and Gillibrand. Wall Street is terrifi ed of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. I trust my enemies. If they hate Bernie, we can trust him. Maybe he didn’t want to run? Every time “Hotline Bling” played on the radio, which is too often, it was like Drake channeled Bernie. He was asking why we were “getting nasty for someone else?” I was like, “Bernie, call us, even if it’s late. It can only mean one thing.” And then I heard from people in the know that he was going to announce. “Word? Really? No. Can’t be. Really?” I got a warm cozy feeling. Like sipping hot chocolate in winter. “Bernie’s back?” March 2019 Then a friend sent a link to me. I opened it. “I am going to run for president,” Bernie said on CBS This Morning. No, I thought. We are all running now.

Nicholas Powers is a Professor of African American Literature at SUNY-Old Westbury and author of The Ground Below Zero. The IndypendenT 15

HEALTHCARE

AnTIdOTe FOR A BROKen SySTeM MedICARe FOR ALL GAInS SUppORT

By Steven Wishnia after World War II. But the idea of a universal national healthcare would be “a huge liberation for both em- healthcare system — proposed in Congress in 1943 by ployers and workers,” says Dudzic. Insurance is a major t’s a moral issue,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D- Rep. John Dingell Sr. (D-Mich.), along with Senators expense for employers that provide it. Richard Master, “ Mich.) declared outside the Capitol on Feb. 27. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and James Murray (D-Mont.), CEO of MCS Industries, a Pennsylvania-based picture-

“Isn’t it time?” and endorsed by President Harry Truman in 1949 — was frame manufacturer, told the Capitol rally the company’s GARY MARTIN She and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) were blocked by opposition to “socialized medicine.” premiums average $13,500 a year per employee. leading a rally to announce the introduction of Instead, a system of employer-provided insurance Dudzic rejects the argument that eliminating pri- H.R.I 1384, The Medicare for All Act of 2019. The odds developed. That left out the elderly, the unemployed and vate insurance would hurt people who like their current are virtually nil that the bill would pass the Republican- the working poor. Those gaps were partially fi lled by plans. “My experience is that people hate their insurance majority Senate or not get vetoed by — Medicare and Medicaid, enacted in 1965-66 — although companies,” he says. “The only thing they hate more is but if it were enacted, it would create a system far more President Lyndon Johnson’s original intent that Medicaid the fear of going without insurance.” comprehensive than Medicare. cover the lower working class got wiped out by the Viet- In any case, he adds, the current system denies “Every individual who is a resident of the United nam War — and the 1997 Children’s Health Insurance most people security. Nonunion employers can reduce States is entitled to benefi ts for healthcare services under Program, which covered some low-income children. coverage unilaterally and union employers regularly this Act,” the bill states. Rep. John Dingell Jr., John Dingell Sr.’s son and demand givebacks. The legislation would expand Medicare to all Amer- Debbie Dingell’s late husband, regularly introduced sin- “Health care has been an issue in every collective- icans within two years. And unlike Medicare, which cov- gle-payer bills during his 59 years in the House. More bargaining contract I have seen in the last two decades,” ers only about 80 percent of medical expenses, it would recently, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) began sponsor- American Federation of Teachers President Randi Wein- have no copayments, insurance premiums, or deductibles ing H.R. 676, which would have set up a single-payer garten said at the Capitol rally. for either medical care or prescription drugs. It would system, in 2003, and Sen. Bernie Sanders made it a core The Medicare for All Act has more than 100 co- cover dental, vision and mental healthcare. And it would issue of his 2016 presidential campaign. The 120-page sponsors, all Democrats. It faces opposition from Re- also include long term care for the elderly and disabled, Jayapal-Dingell bill fl eshes out the concept. publicans, who are ideologically opposed to the govern- with a preference for in-home care rather than putting Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act, signed into ment providing for the general welfare, and insurance people in nursing homes, Jayapal said. law by President Barack Obama in 2010, expanded and pharmaceutical companies, who would lose billions “We are the only major country that does not guar- Medicaid to cover the working poor, and made buying of dollars. antee healthcare,” she told the crowd. “We don’t want health insurance semi-compulsory, with subsidies for It will also likely face indifference from centrist you to spend hours on the phone with insurance compa- those who couldn’t afford the full cost. But its partial Democrats who contend it’s a politically unachievable nies, go to a doctor or a hospital and be told it’s out of success made clear where it fell short. The United States ideal. They offer options such as giving people between network, and then get hit with a $20,000 bill.” still spends close to twice as much of its gross domes- 50 and 64 the option of buying into Medicare — but that The bill would eliminate most private insurance, tic product on healthcare as countries such as France. would not cost that much less per month than private forbidding companies from offering coverage that dupli- Private insurance’s administration and profi ts consume insurance, nor help younger people. cated Medicare. The system would also negotiate with 18 to 20 percent of its spending, compared with 2 to 3 “A majority of Americans are fed up with incremen- pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down, which percent for Medicare, says Dr. Oliver Fein, chair of the tal tweaks to the current broken system,” National Nurs- Medicare is currently forbidden to do. New York Metro chapter of Physicians for a National es United head Bonnie Castillo said in a statement Feb. Health Program. 26. Rep. Jayapal told the Capitol rally that given the scale • • • There are still about 28 million people with no health of our health crisis, bold changes are needed to “tackle insurance and more than 40 million “underinsured,” the deep sickness in our for-profi t system.” Among the world’s universal healthcare systems, the people whose plans have such high deductibles and co- The free market simply doesn’t work in healthcare, Medicare model is closest to those in Canada, Taiwan payments that they can’t get care. Almost two-thirds of where not purchasing a product that costs too much can and South Korea. The government — the “single payer” personal bankruptcies in the United States are because be life-threatening, Fein argues. “Using price transpar- — pays the bulk of the bills to private providers. The of medical bills, and three-fourths of those people had ency as a way to control costs is not a feasible idea. Not United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have a more so- insurance, says Fein. in medicine,” he says. “Therapeutic decisions shouldn’t cialist system, in which most hospitals are government- Ironically, Obamacare attacked the most compre- be made on the basis of cost.” owned and most doctors employees on salary. Germany, hensive insurance plans by levying a 40 percent tax on Doctors, not patients, are usually the ones who France and Israel provide care through a network of pri- coverage deemed too costly, although that surcharge has make those decisions, especially in emergency situations, vate but tightly regulated nonprofi t insurance companies. been delayed from 2018 to 2022. he adds. Germany’s dates back to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s The for-profi t system is the root of the problem, Fein Physicians for a National Health Program would regime in the 1880s. They are paid for by a mix of pub- adds. In order to sell their plans to employers at the low- also like to see the government buy out for-profi t provid- March 2019 March lic funds and contributions from employers and workers est cost, he explains, insurance companies have to erect ers such as hospitals and nursing homes. “The evidence is that varies from country to country. People can also buy barriers to using care: copayments, deductibles, “narrow that they really do provide inferior care,” he says. private insurance to cover additional services. networks” that include a limited number of health pro- The odds of getting Medicare for All passed may For the United States, a Medicare-style system is viders, and requiring prior approval for all but the most be nil in the current Congress, says Fein, but that could “the most elegant way” to achieve universal care, says basic care. change after the 2020 election. In 1962-63, he notes, “no IndypendenT The Mark Dudzic of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer, a Andy Brodock of Michigan told the Capitol rally one thought Medicare would be passed.” coalition of 14 labor unions. It’s “easy to implement and that after his late wife was diagnosed with Stage IV can- “We’re going to see enormous resistance,” he probably has the greatest effi ciency,” as it builds on the cer at the age of 28, she lost her insurance after she got adds, “so there’s going to have to be a really strong existing Medicare system and allows people to choose too sick to work. When he was able to get her covered, popular movement.” their own doctors. she missed chemotherapy because she was arguing with Like Britain’s National Health Service and France’s the insurance company about whether it would pay for it. national health system, the current U.S. system emerged Taking away the link between employment and 16 VOX POP

‘The nATURAL WAy TO GO’ neW yORKeRS ChILLAXed ABOUT SOCIALIST TAKeOVeR

By Erin Sheridan & Dean Patterson DEE DEE OUELLETTE,OUELLETTE, Miami, All photos by Erin Sheridan I’m probably more for socialism than not. There are a lot of institutional things that all my life have been ntil a few years ago, socialism was con- wrong with the government. Education and health- sidered a fringe idea in U.S. politics. care are things that should not have to go out and pay Now, it’s widely talked about, though for on our own. Over the course of my life, people what exactly is meant the by “S” word would say, “You’re a socialist.” I would say, “OK. If is often unclear. that’s what I’ve morphed into, so be it. It is what it UWorker control of the of the economy and its is.” I just think that those things should not be run bounty? Or an expanded social safety net and invest- as businesses. Those corporate ideas are not us. You ments in public infrastructure paid for by taxing the have to separate corporations from the government. rich? Marx and Engels? Or AOC and Bernie Sanders? The government is supposed to provide for its people. Whatever it is, President Trump vowed in his All that said, as much as I like Bernie and his ideas, I State of the Union address last month that the United think that we need somebody else. States will “never, ever” be a socialist country. How- ever, when we asked people on the streets of New York what they thought, we found little fear of socialism OULIMATA BABA,, Harlem and a fair amount of acceptance. As for Bernie, opin- Allot of people fear the world socialism. I don’t think ions were mixed. that it’s anything to be feared. I think with social- ism comes a lot of benefi ts for a lot of people, like national healthcare and free college education for BRIAN WALLS, Gowanus-Carroll Gardens everyone. I’m not as frightened by that idea. My idea I don’t have a problem with democratic socialists. I of socialism goes back to the notion of “everybody is think socialism gets a bit of a bad reputation. The created equal.” way the world is headed, I think there’s going to be no choice. Government has be more supportive of the people. The idea that if you take care of the busi- SHEILA GOWAN, Upstate nesses, and then the businesses will take care of the I don’t like the idea of socialism. I think it’s wrong- people doesn’t exist anymore. So I think that social- headed economically. It’s taking from the rich and ism is the natural way we have to go. giving to the poor. I believe in the American way of Nonetheless, I’m not thrilled about Bernie, to making your own and hiring people and giving them be honest with you. It feels like it’s ego driven at this jobs and “making it.” There aren’t any candidates point. I think he missed his shot. I don’t think he’s in the race who I identify with right now. It’s bad all really bringing anything new to the Democratic Party. around. Bad. I certainly hope that America will never I wish, but it just doesn’t feel right to me. be a socialist country.

ELIJAH NICHOLSON,, Fort Greene I don’t know too much about socialism but I feel like Bernie is just trying to get us to become one. The world is tiresome, we’re tired of fi ghting. We can’t do this on our own. For him to come back after what happened in 2016, that says a lot. He doesn’t care about all the propaganda. He has a message that he’s trying to get across. If he’s as strong as he was then, he’s going to get it done. As far as taxes on wealthy people go, I feel like that’s equal. People working on minimum wage still get taxed signifi cantly but the people who have millions and billions should be taxed more. It has to be fair. Everybody should lose a little bit depending on their income in order to help all of us in the long run. We can do it.

JENNIFER, NYU I’m defi nitely interested in the idea of socialism. I think it’s clear that the system of capitalism in this country is not working very effectively. I actually saw Bernie Sanders come speak last semester right here. He’s a great candidate and I’ll be excited to see how the primaries turnout. Socialism means a lot depend- ing on who is interpreting it. I know some countries have enacted it in very different ways. I think the ac- tual conversation is, “What does socialism mean for March 2019 the United States of America?” Platforms like health- care for all, expanding programs that already exist like the WIC program [Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) | Food and Nutrition Service], food stamps and things like that and creating a net of social security is what that would mean for us. The IndypendenT 17 POLITICAL ECONOMY

CLASS COMpROMISe SOCIAL deMOCRACy SpReAdS The WeALTh BUT IS hOBBLed By COnTRAdICTIOnS

By Steven Sherman work contracts, reducing pressure for government left untouched by redistributive programs, will rebel

intervention. The New Deal coalition was indeed when economic downturns and growing popular DAVID HOLLENBACH ith Bernie Sanders reentering the fi ssured along racial and class lines, with many demands pinch profi ts too much. Indeed, this is presidential primary race, expect white workers rejecting leadership seen as both too the story of the 1970s and the world we have been critiques of social democracy to sympathetic to African Americans and indifferent to living in ever since. Clearly, strategies must be de- surface. Social democracy in- their own nationalistic and religious priorities, i.e. veloped to permanently weaken the capacity of the volves the expansion of govern- too grounded in the college-educated professional capitalist class to act, on both a global and national Wment to meet needs of working people and to re- strata — the terrain of JFK, Barack Obama, Mi- scale. In the United States, where public corpora- distribute wealth. As Sanders promotes policies like chael Dukakis and Hillary Clinton. Even so, social tions dominate the economy, one strategy might be single-payer healthcare, a higher estate tax, enlarge- democratic government programs such as Social Se- to halt the practice of confl ating shareholders with ment of Social Security and the Green New Deal curity and Medicare have tended to fair better than “owners” and instead demand that other stakehold- (rather than the abolition of profi t taking), he can be the once relatively generous work contracts. It does ers — workers, communities corporations are based fairly described as a social democrat. not seem like so much of a stretch that some of those in and environmental advocates — play a role in Three critiques of social democracy are that, white workers might be won to a fi ghting social corporate governance. Warren’s proposal that work- fi rst, by leaving intact the power of the business class, democratic coalition grounded in the multiracial ers should sit on corporate boards would be a step it allows them to regroup and wipe out the gains working class. No iron laws of history need to be in that direction, although it would have to be ex- made by the working class; second, as a set of poli- invoked one way or the other about those prospects. panded. Other proposals might include imposing a cies primarily viable in wealthier countries, it leaves In theory, social democratic programs can re- maximum wage, say $800,000, which would limit intact and sustains itself off of global inequality; and distribute the wealth of a country without affecting the ability of CEOs to amass the fortunes that they third, that it is only viable in countries with racially the hierarchy of the global economic system in the employ to exercise political power and expanding homogeneous populations where working-class frus- least. If so, it is hard to see why leftists should op- the public sector. The latter should include provi- trations cannot be redirected downward at minority pose using the wealth within the borders to pay for sions to make public enterprises democratically con- populations. Put another way, while the New Deal, health care and education rather than billionaires’ trolled by stakeholders in order to make privatiza- the closest the United States has gotten to social de- yachts. As a practical matter, the period associat- tion diffi cult. The United States could exercise its mocracy, could triumph when the working class was largely white, it was undone when the WHEN THE BUSINESS CLASS REBELS, same white workers were turned against African Americans from the late Sixties on. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IS IN TROUBLE. To break these critiques down, there is something of a sampling problem ed with social democracy (1945-1970s) was one in power worldwide to crack down on tax havens that involved in assertions that social democracy works which there was relatively more oxygen for national enable capital fl ight. better in racially homogeneous societies. In the development experiments in countries of the Global The New Deal, the closest the United States heyday of social democratic initiatives, between South due to the practice of fi xed exchange rates. ever came to social democracy, offered considerable the end of World War II and the 1970s, most Eu- The total effect didn’t change global inequality security to much of the working class and, in ways ropean countries were relatively homogenous. They much, but was clearly preferable to the debt-orient- little appreciated, opened up pathways for the civil- were also wealthy enough to sustain such programs ed straight jacket imposed once the global business rights and feminist movements. It is tragic that it and be close allies of the United States. In the more community had gotten its act together to fi ght back. succumbed to racism, the backlash of business and heterogeneous countries of the global South, there Today, Sanders is the sole presidential candidate being tethered to U.S. foreign policy. As a new era of have been many coalitions that have come together who has talked about cutting defense and pursuing reforms seems near, this should spur thinking as to to support social democratic initiatives, but they are a more cautious foreign policy. Sanders has called how to creatively overcome these challenges, rather much more politically vulnerable to outside inter- for a global progressive movement. than dismiss those who have begun to reopen fun- March 2019 March ference, often sponsored by the United States, and In the case of a Sanders’ presidency, the labor damental questions. more economically vulnerable to steep downturns. movement would likely feel the wind at its back. Dur- The recent experience of Brazil, which was moving ing the social democratic era, the American labor in a social democratic direction, and then dramati- movement closely aligned itself with Cold War priori- cally reversed course after an economic downturn ties, but over the last couple of decades, it has been IndypendenT The became a political crisis, is relevant here. Then more open to international solidarity efforts. One there is the United States, the most racially diverse wonders if those efforts might bloom with a strength- wealthy country between 1945 and the 1970s, and ened labor movement grounded in the multiracial also the least social democratic. working class. A social democratic presidency seems A big part of the reason is that U.S. corpora- like the best thing that could happen in the United tions were, for a time, so profi table that social dem- States for a movement against global inequality. ocratic benefi ts were distributed through corporate A third criticism is that the capitalist class, if 18 SURVEILLANCE STATE

LeSSOnS FROM The FBI’S SeCReT WAR On ACTIVISM

By Michael Steven Smith for a democratic form of socialism unlike what existed been tossed aside. The surveil- in the Soviet Union. At its peak, it had 3,000 members, lance state has grown ever larger LAST TIME he Federal Bureau of Investigation tried including its youth group. It had a weekly newspaper, a with the creation of a Department AROUND: A Feb.

to destroy left organizations and the monthly magazine, an international news service, a pub- of Homeland Security that works 19, 1970 antiwar PHOTOGRAPHERUNKNOWN black freedom movement during the last lishing house and owned a fi ve-story headquarters in an closely with the FBI and local po- demonstration turns major upsurge in radical politics in this old ship repair building in the West Village. It had chap- lice departments to monitor lawful violent following the country, in the 1960s. It looks like they ters in most major cities and on many college campuses. political dissent. conviction of the areT trying to do it again. It helped organize some of the largest demonstrations The FBI has already infi l- 8. The bureau’s Cointelpro (Counterintelligence Pro- against the Vietnam War. trated mosques and admitted to a gram) was a secret operation carried out against left- The 1986 trial took three months. What was prov- program targeting those whom they call “black identity wing groups from 1956 to 1971. It fi rst targeted the en? The FBI had used 300 infi ltrators and 1,300 infor- extremists,” that is, black people organizing to oppose Communist Party, and was expanded to the Socialist mants over a 15-year period, and burglarized SWP offi c- police violence. Under Obama, the FBI and Homeland Workers Party (SWP) in 1961 and the “New Left” in es and members’ homes more than 200 times. Wiretaps Security worked closely with local police departments in 1968. In a secret 1968 memo, longtime FBI director J. had been employed for 20,000 days and listening devices the fall of 2011 to monitor and later break up Occupy Edgar Hoover directed his agents to “expose, disrupt and for 12,000. Landlords were contacted in an effort to get encampments in various cities. otherwise neutralize the activities of various New Left people evicted and workplaces were visited in order to We need to build solid organizations that can with- organizations. We must frustrate every effort of these get people fi red. stand government attempts at disruption. Here are some groups and individuals to consolidate their forces or to The agents were also instructed to stir up mis- key practices to remember: recruit new or faithful adherents.” trust in the movement and create antagonistic fac- Hoover directed his venom especially at the black tions inside the party, such as by sending anonymous • We should not advocate anything illegal, movement, writing that “we must prevent the rise of a letters to a prominent black SWP member insisting keeping in mind that the government will new black messiah.” The FBI and its accomplices in the that he and his fellow “party monkeys” should leave try to put the onus of violence on us rather Chicago Police Department admitted to the 1969 assassi- and join the Black Panthers. Agents tried to get the on itself where it belongs. nation of Chicago socialist and Black Panther Party lead- party to engage in illegal activities, such as by hand- er Fred Hampton along with his bodyguard Mark Clark. ing out fl yers at an antiwar demonstration calling • Don’t say anything on social media or oth- The circumstances around the murders of Martin Luther the SWP and other organizers cowards for not want- er electronic communications you would King, Jr. — who was harassed by the FBI for years — and Malcolm X remain suspicious. WE CAN BUILD SOLID ORGANIZATIONS Although Cointelpro was ended after it was exposed in 1971, THAT WITHSTAND GOVERNMENT and the FBI investigation of the SWP ended in 1976, their practices ATTEMPTS AT DISRUPTION. of government surveillance, infi l- tration and disruption of radical groups have never gone away. ing to get “battle wounds” fi ghting the “pigs.” not want the government to see. They have Most of what we know about Cointelpro resulted The 1986 victory was historic. The federal court access to all of it when they want it. from a lawsuit, Socialist Workers Party v. The Attorney decision held that advocating for socialism and being General, which the SWP fi led in 1973 through its attor- in a socialist organization were legal, ruling that “these • Within our social movements, don’t turn ney Leonard Boudin, the fi nest movement constitutional disruption operations were directed at the kind of politi- political disagreements into personal feuds. litigator of his time. In 1986, a federal judge in Manhat- cal activities that the SWP had a constitutional right to Don’t engage in needlessly disruptive tan awarded the party $264,000 in damages. The case is carry out.” behavior — and be wary of those who do extraordinarily important today, when socialist ideas are “For the fi rst time the FBI’s disruptions, surrepti- so on a regular basis. The government has growing in popularity and socialists are getting elected to tious entries and use of informers have been found un- a long history of using infi ltrators to sow offi ce for the fi rst time in almost 100 years. constitutional,” the Nation Magazine wrote. “All in all, strife within leftist organizations. The FBI fi rst investigated the SWP in 1940. When it amounted to a domestic contra operation against a the bureau added it to Cointelpro in 1961, a secret memo- peaceful political organization, for no reason other than Socialism is no longer a dirty word. We are growing in randum said the party had been “openly espousing its its ideological orientation.” numbers and strength. It would be naïve to think that the line on a local and national basis through running can- The FBI had played its role as the “political police of powers that be are not cognizant of the threats to their didates for public offi ce and strongly directing and/or the national government,” Noam Chomsky wrote. The power and privilege and are not taking steps to block it. supporting causes such as Castro’s Cuba and integration federal government, represented by then-U.S. Attorney March 2019 problems arising in the South.” Rudolph Giuliani, maintained to the bitter end that it Michael Steven Smith is a past board member of the The discovery aspect of the SWP lawsuit took eight had a right to undermine an organization just because of Center for Constitutional Rights. He co-hosts the na- years and yielded an astounding 10 million pages of doc- its ideas. No government offi cial who participated in the tionally broadcast weekly radio show Law & Disorder uments. The judge told Boudin, “You are not going to campaign against the SWP was ever prosecuted, and no with Heidi Boghosian and is the author of the forthcom- believe what’s in these documents.” congressional hearings were ever held. ing book Lawyers For the Left: In the Courts, In the The SWP was a Trotskyist group that traced its In the post-9/11 era, even the modest legal restraints Streets, and On the Air, to be published by OR Books. origins back to the anti-World War I left wing of the that were imposed on law enforcement surveillance and

The IndypendenT Socialist party led by Eugene Victor Debs. It advocated infi ltration of political activity during the 1970s have 19 NATIONALISM

LOVe VS. hATe The SWASTIKA hAS TRAVeLed FAR FROM ITS ORIGInAL eASTeRn MeAnInG

By Manvi Jalan preferred calling card. In one instance, the British colonial rule in 1947

symbol was spray painted in orange on the but it has never truly been ONE EMBLEM, ADAM COHN rowing up, two swastikas drawn walls of a Jewish professor’s offi ce at Colum- free. The British manipulated TWO MEANINGS: by hand in sandalwood orange bia University. The act betrayed the ignorance our people, pitting Hindus In Narendra Modi’s were painted on the corridor of the perpetrators in more ways than one. In and Muslims against each India, ancient religious walls of my aunt’s home — not Hinduism, orange or saffron — the color of other just as Modi’s govern- symbols are taking on new unusual in a Hindu household. fi re — represents purity. The vandals unin- ment is doing now. signifi cance amid the rise SwastikaG literally translates to “well-being” in tentionally blessed the professor if we go by Mainstream Indian me- of Hindu nationalism. Sanskrit, symbolising prosperity and balance. Hindu philosophy. dia is wrought with propa- But the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Mo- Meanwhile, Modi’s ascent has forced me ganda. Journalists who have actively spoken di’s Hindu nationalism in India is beginning to reconsider the swastika’s meaning in my out against Modi have found themselves tar- to give the swastika the darker connotation it home country. His virulent religious national- geted by the government, living in fear. More carries throughout the rest of the world. ism has deepened the divide between Hindu than one has shown up dead. I have always denied Hitler’s swastika has and Muslim communities, with rates of vio- Extremists have been emboldened to act in anything to do with Hinduism. The sacred lence and hate crimes against minorities rising Modi’s India, just as white supremacists here symbol has been used not just by Hindus but after he came into power in 2014. in the United States have been emboldened by by Buddhists and Jains, and made its way out It is convenient for the Hindu elite to ig- his ally, President Trump. Critics have drawn of the Indian subcontinent and into the West- nore the chain reaction of systemic hate be- comparisons between Hitler’s fascism and ern imagination as an emblem of prosperity cause it affects the poor the most. Their de- Modi and Trump’s policies. While it is highly and good luck long before it was reappropri- fense for Modi is based on the argument that improbable that either Modi or Trump are ca- ated by Hitler. It was used to sell everything his policies are designed to strengthen the In- pable of mass genocide, their brand of politics from fruit to Coca-Cola in early 20th-century dian economy. But the plight of the poor has instills fear and hate of the ‘other’ in the popu- America. The Girl Scout’s magazine was called far from improved under his reign, particularly lar mind, just as Hitler’s did. the Swastika. that of the rural poor. Hinduism has historically been a peaceful In Vedic feng shui, known as vastu shas- To distract from his disastrous economic religion. But Modi’s nationalism and its adher- tra, the geometry of the swastika is believed to invite balance, life and prosperity HINDUISM HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN A in the home. It is commonly painted on the doors of most Indian homes, whether its PEACEFUL RELIGION. inhabitants are deeply reli- gious or not. policies, Modi as implemented a series of dis- ents have cast our religious symbols, includ- Growing up in this context, there has al- criminatory laws meant to make the Hindu ing the Indian swastika, as props in a game of ways been a marked difference in the Hindu feel superior and stoke hatred, such as a na- hate. Hindu extremists are rising and are out swastika and Hitler’s warped version. For me, tionwide beef ban enforced in 2017. The gov- for blood. Hitler’s version of the swastika or hakenkreuz ernment claimed that the consumption of beef Modi and Trump will one day leave offi ce (hooked cross) symbolized an atrocious mo- is ‘against India’ as cows are considered holy and Hitler is long dead. But the people who so ment in global history when the dormant ha- to Hindus. Meat smuggling has now become a deeply buy into their narratives of hate seem tred in humanity rose and nearly conquered profi table but dangerous trade. Muslim smug- to be increasing in number and that’s what I’m the world. In stark contrast, the benign Hindu glers crossing conservative borders were being afraid of. I am afraid of how far fear will drive swastika serves as a reminder to me of the love attacked by Hindu mobs, beaten and slaugh- us to madness, to war. Where once the bells that lives in us all. tered like the meat in their trucks. and chants of temples were a peaceful sound This distinction is true even for the Indian In another instance of violence, an 8-year- to my ears, they now serve as a reminder of the Jewish community. Hitler simply reappropriat- old Muslim Kashmiri girl, Asifa Bano, was terror the so-called righteous are capable of. March 2019 March ed an Indian symbol. The hakenkreuz has never found strangled to death with her skull bashed The swastika is no longer an innocent been a representation of our history or culture. in last year. She had been tied up in a Hindu symbol to me and if other Hindus are honest Writer and activist, Jael Silliman’s personal ex- temple and gang-raped for days, police — who with themselves they will agree our sacred em- perience is a testament to this. “As an Indian only began looking for the missing child af- blem is coming closer to overlapping Hitler’s. Jew, I separate the two swastikas entirely,” she ter public protests — have said. A government IndypendenT The writes. “I empathize with the European Jewish minister and four police offi cers are among experience but it is not my trauma.” those who were eventually charged in the case. It was not until I moved to the United The child’s family were forced to bury her on States that I realized the swastika’s power as non-Hindu occupied land, miles away from an emblem of hatred is still very much alive. In their home, as right-wing Hindus cried out in Trump’s America, neo-Nazis feel safe enough defense of the perpetrators. to come out of hiding and the swastika is their India may have gained its freedom from 20 EXHIBITION

COMMUnIST, FeMInIST, ARTIST, GLOBAL © 2019 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERAMEXICO, FRIDA KAHLO D.F. / ARTISTS MUSEUMS TRUST, RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

COMMOdITy the year of her birth in alignment tensive set of cases display Kahlo’s ward-

with the start of the Mexican robe drawn from matriarchal Tehuana cul- © 2018 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLOMEXICO, MUSEUMS D.F. / ARTISTS TRUST, RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving Revolution. She grew up in a low- ture — lace headdresses, embroidered fl oral Thru May 12 er-middle class household, the skirts, woven shawls, cotton and silk tunics Brooklyn Museum third of four daughters, in Mexi- in magenta, golden yellow, and azure — at co City suburb of Coyoacán. Her times with Chinese and European fl ourish- Jewish father, a photographer, es. Another section is dedicated to the or- By Lauren Kaori Gurley immigrated to Mexico from Ger- thopedic corsets, prosthetic legs and plaster many in 1892, and her mother casts (some painted with the communist ong before the Mexican painter — of Spanish and indigenous P’urhépecha hammer and sickle) that she wore beneath Frida Kahlo was a global com- descent — was from Oaxaca. A series of the colorful dresses to support her injured modity, she was a communist. black and white silver gelatin prints taken spine. “Appearances can be deceiving,” a As a precocious teenager, she by her father depict Kahlo posing for her nearby charcoal sketch is titled, revealing joined the Communist Party of father at a young age wearing the stoic, in- the medical devices hidden beneath elabo- MexicoL and in her twenties, she led union scrutable expression that she would return rate costume. (The exhibition was named rallies with her husband, the muralist Di- to in her self-portraits later in life. after the 1946 drawing). ego Rivera. It is said that she decorated her The photos progress from Kahlo at The show reminds viewers that for headboard with images of Marx, Engels age two to her early adulthood in the post- much of Kahlo’s life, Diego Rivera and his and Lenin. In 1954, 11 days before she Revolution years, when progressive po- sweeping murals depicting agrarian reform died from an arterial blood clot at age 47, litical reform and a series of public works and campesino struggles overshadowed Kahlo marched in a protest against U.S. in- programs swept the nation. We see Kahlo Kahlo and her self-portraits. A 1933 arti- volvement in the coup that deposed leftist at a march for the Union of Mexican Tech- cle from the News, printed on one president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in Gua- nical Workers, Painters and Sculptors; gallery wall, shows Kahlo painting in her temala. At her funeral, a red fl ag bearing Kahlo dressed as a communist comrade studio with the accompanying headline: a sickle and hammer was draped over her with her classmates at the Escuela Nacio- “Wife of Master Painter Gleefully Dabbles casket. “I’m more and more convinced it’s nal Preparatoria; Kahlo with braids and in Works of Art.” A demeaning Time Mag-

only through communism that we can be- a rebozo shawl talking to peasants in the azine review from 1938 of a Kahlo exhibi- © 2019 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLOMEXICO, MUSEUMS D.F. / ARTISTS TRUST, RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK come human,” she wrote Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). in her diary during an ex- Appearances Can Be Deceiving, n.d. tended stay in New York AN ICON FOR ALL SORTS OF Charcoal and colored pencil on paper, and Detroit in the 1930s. 11¼ x 8 in. (29 x 20.8 cm). Collection Kahlo’s radical politics of Museo Frida Kahlo. built on her experiences as MARGINALIZED GROUPS. a mixed-race, disabled, bi- sexual, polyamorous, Jewish feminist who countryside; Kahlo in a wheelchair at a tion in Manhattan reads, “Too shy to show Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). suffered from chronic pain, which she al- protest of the CIA’s involvement in Gua- her work before, black-browed little Frida The Love Embrace of the Universe, leviated with tequila. Of her condition, she temala in 1954. has been painting since 1926, when an au- 1949. Oil on Masonite, 27 ½ x 23 ¾ wrote, “I am not sick. I am broken.” In Kahlo’s social circles, the appeal of tomobile smashup put her in a plaster cast, in. (70 x 60.5 cm). The Jacques and The Brooklyn Museum’s blowout ex- socialism went hand-in-hand with the rise ‘bored as hell.’” Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th hibition “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can of a resurgent Mexican nationalism. The When I visited the show, I overheard Century Mexican Art and the Vergel Be Deceiving,” the largest show dedicated aftermath of the Revolution led to a period several young women quietly remarking Foundation. to the artist in U.S. history, is a testament of national identity building, spearheaded that they always considered Kahlo a more to Kahlo’s political and artistic life in all of by the minister of public education, Jose compelling artist than her husband Rivera. its complexities and contradictions. Over Vasconselos — and joined by artists like Indeed, today — Kahlo stands as icon for Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). 350 objects — from her eyebrow pencils Kahlo and her husband, Rivera. The move- all sorts of marginalized groups as well Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943. Oil and her favored pink lipstick to her Oaxa- ment celebrated Mexico’s multi-ethnic as cultural elites. Unlike her husband, her on canvas, 32 x 24 ¾ in. (81.5 x 63 cm). can ceramics and shawls — overshadow heritage, or mestizaje, in particular, by ap- reach extends far beyond her paintings into The Jacques and Natasha Gelman less than 15 paintings. The exhibition does propriating indigenous culture from south- the worlds of high fashion, queer and Chi- Collection of 20th Century Mexican not seek to challenge Kahlo’s rise to global ern Mexico for an identity that could unite cano identity politics and both grassroots Art and the Vergel Foundation. stardom as a massively profi table cultural all Mexicans — white, brown and mestizo and corporate feminism. (As one egregious commodity — Bank of America, Delta Air- into a “cosmic race.” In one gallery, cura- example, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa lines and Revlon, Kahlo’s preferred lipstick tors recreate Kahlo’s Mexico City home, May wore a Frida Kahlo bracelet to give a brand, sponsored the exhibition — but for the Casa Azul, with displays of pre-Colom- speech at a Conservative Party conference the most part, corporate sponsorship does bian ceramics, vases and sculptures dating in 2017.) For better or worse, the expan- not distract from Kahlo’s political and aes- as far back as 200 B.C.E, as well as votive sive Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Brooklyn March 2019 thetic vision. paintings and folk art from the Brooklyn Museum leans into all of these narratives The exhibition begins with a series of Museum’s collection. at once, allowing the viewer to take home videos and photographs documenting the Kahlo took political, aesthetic and what they will. Mexico that Kahlo grew up in during the sartorial inspiration from the Isthmus of Revolution and its aftermath. Kahlo was Tehuantepec — Mexico’s narrowest point, born in 1907 — when Porfi rio Díaz and his which connects the Pacifi c Ocean to the aristocratic regime still ruled Mexico, but Gulf. It’s where Kahlo’s mother had roots,

The IndypendenT later she fudged the dates, claiming 1910 as though Kahlo herself never visited. An ex- 21 BOOKS

The UnFeMInIne eMOTIOn © 2018 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLOMEXICO, MUSEUMS D.F. / ARTISTS TRUST, RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK Rage Becomes Her: The Power Of Women’s Anger By Soraya Chemaly Atria Books, 2018 check, check. But not anger.” Sadness — a more March. It starts with a look at the recent reemer-

Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of ‘feminine’ state — is a “retreat” emotion, the op- gence of feminism, after “decades of a feminist CHARLYNE ALEXIS Women’s Anger posite of anger which is an “approach” emotion, deep freeze.” Feminists no longer seemed to be By Rebecca Traister an emotion that requires action. angry, so “mainstream feminism was funny, hip, Simon & Schuster, 2018 While sadness often means thinking more enthusiastic about sex … and kind of cool.” Not deeply, its downside is that it “can easily turn into to mention, she added dryly, as Hillary Clinton paralyzing rumination, lowered expectations and geared up for the presidency, what was there to be By Isobel van Hagen costly impatience. Sad people accept and are satis- angry about? fi ed with less.” The Women’s March sparked a newly awak- oraya Chemaly’s new book begins with In order to counter this, Chemaly — in a long ened rage of white women that was, as Traister a description of her mother and father’s polemic, almost textbook-like format — methodi- brilliantly puts it, “just that: newly awakened.” beautiful white-and-gold wedding chi- cally takes the reader through a woman’s life, Traister makes a concerted effort to honor the na that was only used in her household from girlhood to adulthood, highlighting the sys- leading roles of women of color in resistance on very rare occasions. “That’s why, temic sexism that should make them feel angry, movements, and urges newly awakened white Sone day when I was fi fteen, I was dumbfounded rather than sad. She covers healthcare, sexual as- women to educate themselves about the struggles to see my mother standing on the long veranda sault, how women have been written out of his- of women “who have never not been angry.” outside our kitchen, chucking one china plate af- tory and much more. The election of Donald Trump produced raw ter another as hard and as fast as she could into One of the main concepts Chemaly focuses fury, disillusionment and political activism, and the hot, humid air.” Her mother never discussed on as a key reason for subconscious female rage is Traister paints this new anger as a specifi cally it with anyone. what she refers to as “The Caring Mandate.” You progressive and good force for women, but where

© 2019 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLOMEXICO, MUSEUMS D.F. / ARTISTS TRUST, RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s guessed it, women are taught, groomed and ex- do we go from here? Anger and Rebecca Traister’s new book, Good pected to take care of everyone else. She invokes There are many different forms of anger — and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s an economic argument, that women’s unpaid and resentment, rage and disillusionment, to name a Anger both center around the supposedly unfemi- undervalued care stands as the single greatest few, and neither book takes much time to care- nine emotion: anger, and its repression in women. wealth transfer in today’s global economy — and fully defi ne the emotion. Perhaps the assumption Much of what both Traister and Chemaly ad- it is basically ignored as legitimate “work.” is the specifi c kind of anger doesn’t matter, and dress in their books is a catch-22: We live in a At the heart of the Caring Mandate is the par- long as it is funneled into something politically time where there is plenty for women to be mad ticular entanglement of “woman” and “mother.” or socially progressive. But is all unadulterated about, but responding to the feeling comes with Societies glorify motherhood and not the moth- anger virtuous? That occasionally feels like the its own negative consequences. When a woman ers themselves. Every 90 seconds, for example, a suggestion when reading — whether it is meant shows anger, Chemaly discerns, “she automati- woman dies from a preventable pregnancy-related to or not. cally violates gender norms. She is met with aver- complication. What could be more infuriating? So, while the exact defi nition of productive sion, perceived as more hostile, irritable, less com- She offers a pertinent suggestion, an antidote anger may need more addressing, there is some- petent, and unlikable.” On the other hand, other to the suppression of anger that women face — thing positive about the acceptance of “pure” fe- kinds of self-assertion by women are often labeled using anger as a form of connection, particularly male anger, no matter the type — it allows for an as anger, and are therefore dismissed as an emo- between women. This is also a key ingredient of acknowledgement of that specifi c emotion (no it’s tion impossible for a woman to legitimately feel. empowerment according to Good and Mad. In not sadness, it’s not hysterics, you’re not “crazy”) They also both examine the double standard fact, solidarity among women is as important a and knowing that action must be taken. associated with all forms of anger, as men’s an- theme in Traister’s book as anger itself. So when the world comes to tell you that you ger is often seen as forceful and righteous, while In what feels like a string of essays rather than shouldn’t get mad again, writes Traister, “because women’s anger is often dismissed as bitterness, a single narrative, Traister, a New York Magazine you were kind of nuts and you never cooked din- and as being “overly emotional” or even as “un- writer, deftly focused her writing on the specif- ner and you yelled at the TV and weren’t so pretty, hinged.” Young girls are taught to prioritize other ics of rage in the context of American politics, and life will be easier when you get fun again... I kinds of feelings, taught that anger is undesirable. and how this newfound feminist anger could and say to all the women reading now: What you’re Good and Mad focuses specifi cally on the in- should be revolutionary. The main impediment to angry about now — injustice — will still exist, March 2019 March tersection of politics and anger. It scrutinizes his- this pending feminist political revolution, she ar- even if you yourself are not experiencing it … oth- torical and current feminist political action, par- gues, is women’s habit of hiding and minimizing ers are still experiencing it … Stay mad for them. ticularly in response to the 2016 election and the rage. Like Chemaly, she illustrates the many ways Stay mad with them.” #MeToo movement that followed shortly thereaf- American society stresses that women’s anger is ter. Rage Becomes Her takes a more open-ended impolite, unfeminine and unattractive. But she IndypendenT The approach, focusing less on the consequences of specifi cally chooses to spotlight anger because it is the emotion of anger itself and examining a wide politically important, despite being underplayed range of social norms that create the disparities in the history of female political activists: “Anger that should make us angry. has rarely been acknowledged as righteous and Rage Becomes Her opens with the idea that patriotic when it has originated with women…” women actually rarely even learn how to feel an- Good and Mad was borne from the 2016 ger, “Sadness, yes. Envy, anxiety, guilt, check, election, and more specifi cally from the Women’s 22 FILM

FeMInIST FRAMeS

By Renée Feltz BLACK WOMEN’S FILM CONFERENCE CHAL- ot one woman was March 17 LENGING nominated for Best Di- momaps1.org STEREO- rector in the 2019 Acad- This inaugural gathering TYPES: emy Awards. But this offers a space to focus Konkona month many festivals on Black women’s voic- Sen Sharma inN NYC feature work by women, trans, es and experiences in a in Lipstick non-binary and gender non-conforming white, male-dominated Under My fi lmmakers. You can binge watch with a fi lm industry. Hosted Burkha, pass, or grab individual tickets and en- by MoMA PS1 in Long screening joy some of these highlights. Island City, the mix of at the NYC fi lm screenings and talks Feminist Film NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL is co-organized with a Festival this CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL collective of Black wom- month. Thru March 17 en fi lmmakers called nyicff.org The New Negress Film Society. Women directed about half the fi lms shown over four weekends at this SOCIALLY RELEVANT FILM 21-year-old festival. It includes popular FESTIVAL NEW YORK short fi lm series such as “Girls’ POV” March 15–21 and the new “Boys Beyond Boundar- Ratedsrfi lms.org ies,” which attempts to redefi ne “how The SRFF was launched by actor and boys can feel, think and be.” The “Hee- fi lmmaker Nora Armani in 2014 to bie Jeebies” series promises “mind- uplift new and compelling socially rel- bending fantasy.” Two superhero fi lms evant narratives told without resorting that are tributes to the power of imagi- to gratuitous violence and violent forms nation put girls at the center. The fi rst of fi lmmaking. It offers industry panels feature by Likarion Wainaina, Supa and most screenings include a Q&A AND Keynote speaker: Moda, centers on a 9-year-old Jo, who with directors. This year kicks off with MEDEA BENJAMIN is terminally ill but her Kenyan village The Man Who Mends Women, about THE co-founder of CodePink helps convince her she has special pow- 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. WAR ers. “The Shadow of Cairo,” directed by Denis Mukwege. An all-women panel Tara Shehata, tells the story of 14-year- following the fi lm includes Pramila Pat- old Maya after she decides to avenge her ten, the United Nations Special Repre- GREEN mother’s death. sentative on Sexual Violence in Confl ict. NYC FEMINIST FILM WEEK QUEENS WORLD FILM FESTIVAL March 5–10 March 21–31, 2019 nycfeministfi lmweek.org queensworldfi lmfestival.com This is the third annual edition of a week Everyone can fi nd something to watch ECONOMY of carefully curated programs organized among the more than 200 fi lms from 31 around the theme of feminist fi lm gene- countries screened here over the course alogies. The series asks: “How do femi- of 11 days. The program has blocks TH WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 7-9PM nist fi lm practices function as forms of with names like Worldly Vision, Cyber political and critical intervention? What Alarm, It Gets Better, Local Express, strategies do they employ to unsettle and Surviving Displacement, Power to the Come learn about the war economy, dismantle racism, heterosexism, trans- People, The Hate Card and Who Knew? its impact on the environment, phobia, classism, and stigmas around A documentary by Jackson Heights na- and how we can redirect Pentagon sexuality, illness, and dis/ability? And tive Melanie J. La Rosa called How to how do feminist fi lm and media prac- Power a City shows communities on the spending to green initiatives. titioners articulate queer, trans, POC, front lines of the clean energy revolu- working class, immigrant, dis/abled, tion from Astoria to . The and other marginalized experiences and Washing Society, by experimental fi lm- Brooklyn Friends Meeting House identities?” On International Women’s makers Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker,

WHERE: 110 SCHERMERHORN ST, BROOKLYN, NY 11201 Day there are two programs, including portrays a day in the life of laundry March 2019 one that examines the role of sexual workers past and present and draws its politics in fi lms by the pioneering and name from the 1881 strike by African- prolifi c director Alice Guy-Blanché. The American laundresses to win higher FIND US ON: next day you can see Laura Mulvey’s wages and gain more respect. BROOKLYN FOR PEACE classic 1983 documentary, Frida Kahlo BROOKLYNPEACE.ORG and Tina Moditti, about the two radical [email protected] | 718-624-5921 At brooklyn4peace artists in post-revolutionary Mexico. The IndypendenT 23 TRUMP DEPRESSION HOTLINE The Poverty of Work

Dear Billy, concerns I have it keeps me con- by David Van Arsdale I think my friend is joining a left- nected to the larger world. I catch

wing cult. You know the kind that up on the news and am in touch JON QUILTY sell their newspapers at protests, with friends and family who are all A remarkable piece of investigative research! Van Arsdale get in ideological arguments with over the place. Then I look out the becomes a laborer at employment agencies in New York strangers on the street, act like window and see cars and pedestri- City and beyond in order to reveal the contemporary they have all the answers and ans moving about in the sun. When business of supplying temporary, immigrant, and on- they’re going to wake up early do you know when to step away? and lead the revolution tomor- demand labor to a variety of employers. Moreover, he row. It’s almost like she repeats — DEREK, Midwood traces the full history of employment agencies—from their everything she picks up at their role in exchanging servants and slaves, to their trafficking meetings. Should I orchestrate of immigrant women in the 20th century, and their rise some kind of intervention? The computer, iPhone — these de- thereafter into one of the most profitable corporate vices do not offer a logical pause. You entities in the modern economy. Van Arsdale concludes by — JOHANNA, Elmhurst don’t get a message like, “You can go considering what needs to be done to prevent the modern now,” from the screen. The screen has devoured the world. Addiction mistreatment of employment agency laborers. The Poverty You’ve got to be kidding. Interven- to it has built the biggest companies. of Work is a must read for anyone interested in labor tions are for saving lives. You are Here’s a simple act of resistance. issues and history, especially as they relate to New York. against something that you only First, breathe deep. Exercise vaguely understand, as if its style that NO muscle. Shut the computer embarrasses you. on purpose, even if it feels arbitrary. You have an idea of a cult that While you do so, sing these words to you believe to be improper, and yet yourself: “I am not a pixel, yeah!” the only behavior that will save us Repeat. Inhale the meaning of these from imminent fascism and outright six words each time you escape. extinction is exactly that — crazy, “I am not a pixel! Yeah!” over-convinced fearless behavior. The words become stronger and Vague puritanism is the bane of stronger and your freedom easier to From American culture. achieve. You can control the sensual We need more crazies. We need aggression of corporate, artifi cial International Publishers screamers and cussers and orators intelligence. Use the screen. Build back in the Union Square. Fortune your mighty ritual-power against the favors the bold. Power can only be screen. Don’t let it use you. met by power. Let’s make a practice of radical interventions on our own REVEREND BILLY IS AN ACTIVIST selves. Let’s face our social condi- AND POLITICAL SHOUTER, A POST-RE- tioning as an obstacle, a Trumpian LIGIOUS PREACHER OF THE STREETS wall. Let’s go outside and shout what AND BANK LOBBIES. GOT A QUESTION we believe. FOR REVEREND BILLY? JUST EMAIL [email protected] AND UNBURDEN YOUR SOUL. • • •

Dear Billy, I enjoy spending time on social media. I feel like for all the data collecting and privacy

I DESIGN THE INDY I DESIGN FOR CHANGE I CAN DESIGN FOR YOU March 2019 March

MIKAEL The handbook for TARKELA the Green New Deal IndypendenT The Order via the IP GRAPHIC Website; www.intpubnyc.com DESIGN or call: [email protected] 212-366-9816