THE ROAD TO FASCISM JULIAN BOND, RADICAL TIFFANY CABÁN ROBERT GREENE II

AUGUST 24/31, 2020

Man and

An Beastunusual experiment in rewilding reveals that the marriage between humans and animals needs a lot of work.

VALENTINE FAURE

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An Ounce of Prevention it can end is safe and legal abortion. Kudos to Sonia Shah [“How to Define Abortions would continue, at great a Plague,” July 27/August 3] for point­ costs to women. Andy Oram ing out the need to tell a new story Color-Blind Reporting about the coronavirus. As she notes, germ theory doesn’t go far enough. Re “Joe Kennedy III Hired a Cop Subscribe wherever you It doesn’t address genetic, epigenetic, to Advise Him on Race and Justice” by Maia Hibbett [TheNation.com, get your podcasts or go to nutritional, economic, and geographic July 10]: As Black residents of Massa­ TheNation.com/ factors or the influence of medications and other diseases. If the problem is chusetts,­ we condemn The Nation’s StartMakingSense disingenuous and offensive charac­ to listen today. seen only as the presence of a patho­ gen, then the solution is to kill the terization of Suffolk County Sheriff germ rather than change other circum­­ Steve Tompkins. STACEY ABRAMS Clearly, Hibbett does not know MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES stances that enabled it to cause illness. The medical community would do Tompkins. If she did, she would have M. BLOW SHERROD BROWN well to adopt a broader perspective on mentioned that he has been at the NOAM CHOMSKY GAIL COLLINS illness using the model of integrated forefront of racial justice longer than MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW pest management, in which the first she has been alive. She would have approach to dealing with insects in a mentioned that he is supported by BARBARA EHRENREICH progressive heroes like Representative DANIEL ELLSBERG FRANCES building is not to pull out a poisonous spray but to remove food and water Ayanna Pressley and that he traveled FITZGERALD ERIC FONER sources and seal cracks that allow bugs the country for Senator Elizabeth War­ THOMAS FRANK HENRY LOUIS to enter. Similar to controlling weeds, ren to help sell her bold criminal justice GATES JR. MICHELLE GOLDBERG IPM focuses on creating healthy turf reform proposal. She would have men­ that is better able to exclude weeds. tioned that he has used his platform to AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES fight against mandatory minimums, MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. May we see the big­ police violence, and mass detention. CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN ger picture of this pandemic and act She also would have mentioned RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH accordingly. Ann McCampbell, MD that Tompkins is Black. NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL santa fe, n.m. That she did not is the kind of color-blind reporting that continues MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL Abortion and the Court to allow non-Black voices and faces to MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY Re “Playing the Long Con” [Elie define what progressivism is in Ameri­ JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE Mystal, July 27/August 3]: When you ca today. It was a clumsy effort to drive O’DONNELL LAURA POITRAS say, “The other four conservatives on a narrative about Kennedy at the ex­ pense of a Black man’s lived experience KATHA POLLITT ROBERT the court are ideologically dedicated to ending abortion by any means and credibility. REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH necessary,” you ignore that the Su­ Not for nothing, Kennedy is ARUNDHATI ROY BERNIE preme Court cannot end abortion; all (continued on page 26) SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) is published 30 times a year (four issues in February; three issues in SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN March, April, June, and November; and two issues in January, May, July, August, September, October, REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET and December) by The Nation Company, LLC © 2020 in the USA by The Nation Company, LLC, 520 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018; (212) 209-5400. Washington Bureau: Suite 308, 110 Maryland TALBOT CALVIN TRILLIN Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002; (202) 546-2239. 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POSTMAS­ TER: Send address changes to The Nation, PO Box 8505, Big Sandy, TX 75755-8505. Printed in the USA. UPFRONT 3 100 Years of Suffrage The Nation. Joan Walsh since 1865 4 Road to Fascism Tiffany Cabán 5 Q&A: Barbara Lee 8 Biden, Just Say Yes on M4A! D.D. Guttenplan 38 Portraits of a 100 Years of Suffrage Pandemic Steve Brodner COLUMNS nce upon a time, many American women looked forward 6 The Liberal Media Journalists Rise Up to a euphoric 100th anniversary celebration of the 19th Eric Alterman 10 Mic Drop Amend­ment, which belatedly granted us the vote, to be That Suburban led this month by the nation’s first woman president. We Lifestyle Dream Kali Holloway still celebrate, though that much-anticipated president lost to a confessed O 11 Deadline Poet sexual predator whose administration is dedicated to Presidential Diagnosis rolling back women’s rights. As I write, we are also er early contender, Senator Elizabeth Warren, was a Calvin Trillin preparing to celebrate the Democratic Party’s second policy wonk who, we were warned, would serve her nomination of a woman for vice president, though I own agenda and not necessarily Biden’s. Features don’t know who she is yet. (Readers probably will Let’s not criticize our male competitors, either, 12 Man and Beast when they read this.) But we know that Joe Biden, as Senator Kamala Harris did running against Biden Valentine Faure In the Netherlands an who might have skipped a third run for president last year—though he did the same running against experimental nature reserve to back one of the four women senators who ran in Barack Obama in 2008 (the year Biden became his has become a battleground 2020, promised to pick a female running mate before running mate). Despite that history, former senator for two approaches to he sealed the nomination—a consolation prize of Chris Dodd, who is helping Biden with the VP search protecting wildlife. sorts for the largest bloc of American voters. (and who also ran against Obama, as well as Biden), 18 It’s Time to Abolish We will, of course, accept that conso- was offended by Harris’s lack of “remorse” Nursing Homes lation prize and go forth to save Amer- for critiquing Biden’s anti-busing​ stance in Sara Luterman COMMENT If three out of four ican democracy, as women voters have one of the primary debates. Americans want to spend been doing since Donald Trump’s elec- That appeared to create an opening their final years at home, tion shocked many of us (too many of for former national security adviser Su- why do so many of us end us, especially white women) into pas- san Rice, who is also Black and worked up in institutional care? sionate activism almost four years ago. closely with Biden in the Obama admin- 22 A Thick Blue Fog And not just activism: An unprecedented istration. But some critics lament that ML Kejera number of women ran for and won of­ the former diplomat has sharp elbows, Momodou Lamin Sisay fices around the country, inspired by the another thing women should avoid. was killed during a traffic stop in Georgia. Women’s Marches that heralded the rise The issues with Harris and Rice Only the police know of a real resistance. led Dodd and others to begin pushing California what really happened. Whomever Biden chooses, it will be a victory for Representative Karen Bass, a former state House women, though bittersweet (especially if his choice is speaker, with some suggesting she is a kind of mul- Books & the Arts a centrist). If a woman is ever to occupy the Oval Of- ticultural Goldilocks: Black but not too competitive 27 In the Fire of Activism fice, it seems, even 100 years after we won the vote, or abrasive or wonky. Just right to be No. 2. Which Robert Greene II even after we powered the anti-Trump resistance, is insulting to the assertive, confident Bass. By the 32 The Love Poems she will have to spend some time directly appren- end of the vetting period, it seemed the 11th com- of Virginia (poem) ticing to a man, living at a safe distance from actual mandment of women’s politics, 100 years after we Scott Challener power at the Naval Observatory. And who­ever gets won the vote, was “Thou shalt never be just right.” 33 The User Always Loses the nod from Biden, we all know, has had to endure I am nonetheless looking forward to celebrating Lisa Borst the same sexist stereotyping as did the women sena- the centennial of suffrage—and to voting for the 34 Status Update (poem) tors who had the audacity to run for president against Democrats’ second female vice presidential nomi- Shara Lessley him and as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. nee. But I am just so tired of fighting all we’ve had 36 Funk for the Future On this happy centennial, though, let’s not be to fight to get here. Is this an inspiring anniversary Marcus J. Moore bitter. Nobody likes a bitter woman. Also, let’s not message? Not entirely. Is it rage-inducing? I hope be too ambitious. An early front-runner to become so. We should use that rage to work for the female VOLUME 311, NUMBER 4, AUGUST 24/31, 2020 Biden’s pick, 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate candidates running this year, from VP on down, so The digital version of this issue is Stacey Abrams, got dinged for appearing to cam- the women coming after us have a different story to available to all subscribers August 11 at paign for the job. And let’s not be too smart. Anoth- tell 100 years from now. JOAN WALSH TheNation.com 4 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

BY THE NUMBERS explain why the raids fluctuate: Some months have low numbers, perhaps meaning the cops don’t need as many Road to Fascism arrests; when the raids go up, the cops are presumably The Internet sees the NYPD for what it really is. in need of some juice.” As a former public defender, I’ve witnessed this police n July 28, a couple hundred protesters terrorism masquerading as public safety up close. In the in Manhattan watched helplessly as an early years of my career, parades of warrant squad detain- 18-year-old trans woman named Nikki ees were regularly marched into court, the rattle of their Stone was snatched off the street by plain- chain gang shackles filling the room. Some were partly clothes officers, shoved into an unmarked clothed; others were missing shoes. The infractions that 45M Ovan, and taken who knows where. justified their appearance in this dehumanizing state Number of peo- Protesters were met with pepper spray to the face. were almost always dismissed. One by one, they were ple in south­ern Africa who lack Shortly afterward, video of the kidnapping was posted unshackled and sent on their way, with the state acting as sufficient access on Twitter for all the world to see. if nothing had happened—until the next raid. to nutritious The “crime” that warranted a literal kidnapping? Unlike many of the warrant squad’s incursions over food—up nearly Stone was accused of damaging police cameras with the years, what happened to Stone on Tuesday was 10 percent from spray paint. witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people via 2019 In the months since the murder of George Floyd by smartphones and social media. Several New York City Minneapolis police sparked nationwide demonstrations Council members joined the righteous torrent of out- 8.4M against systemic racism and unjust policing practices, rage, but many chose to look good rather than do good Children who we’ve witnessed, in person and on video, federal and when the time arrived to hold police accountable. are expected to local law enforcement officers terrorize and brutalize In June a multiracial coalition of New Yorkers did suffer from acute malnutrition protesters with impunity, making it ever clearer that their part in working to disempower an out-of-control across southern we’re moving away from democracy and police force by advocating a $1 billion di- Africa this year; heading toward fascism. vestment from the NYPD and an invest- some 2.3 million Just days before Stone was taken, we Nikki Stone ment of that money in social services. Those of them will watched federal officers in Portland, Ore., was snatched efforts were met with political chicanery require lifesaving treatment snatch protesters in similar fashion. So, off the street when the City Council passed a budget that naturally, messages of fear and confusion failed to cut the NYPD’s funding in any proliferated quickly online in response to to send a meaningful way. The same legislators who 820M the video from New York City. Were these message: You, are standing up now to express their outrage Number of peo- federal officers? Members of the New York too, can be and demand answers about Stone’s arrest sat ple world­wide Police Department? Since they had no clear on their hands when the time came not just who suffered disappeared. from hunger in markings, could anyone be sure they were to demand accountability but also to make 2018—up from officers at all? An NYPD social media ac- real and lasting change. 784 million count eventually said the department was responsible What happened to Stone should be a wake-up call in 2015 for the kidnapping and falsely claimed that the arresting to anyone who thought police violence would confine officers were assaulted with bottles and rocks. itself to Black, brown, and poor communities. That she 60% To those outside New York City and to many of its was snatched from a dense throng of protesters shows Share of food- residents, this was new and terrifying. To those the sophistication of NYPD surveillance. This was an insecure people of us who have fought police terrorism in the intentional act meant to send a message: Speak out and who are women city, however, it’s the same NYPD we’ve always you, too, can be disappeared. If this happened in anoth- or girls known. The division responsible for Stone’s er country, we’d be condemning the regime responsi- kidnapping is known as the warrant squad. The ble, as we frequently do when foreign governments that 2B name makes it sound as if the officers ride aren’t allies use their security forces to brutally suppress

People who are COMMENT around town like the A-Team, taking down the dissenting speech. unable to access toughest criminals with unorthodox tactics but But it’s easy to call out oppression beyond our borders safe, nutritious, for the right reasons. Quite the opposite: The warrant and much harder to do when it’s our own government and sufficient food year-round squad marshals the full weight of the department’s waging violence against the people. However, difficulty multibillion-dollar budget to terrorize the city’s most cannot be a deterrent. History shows what happens when vulnerable communities. we fail to uproot oppression. The prophetic prose of 132M A 2015 investigative report by John Surico for Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came…” rings loudly Additional Vice highlighted the warrant squad’s repeated raids on in my head. “First they came for the Communists / And people who could become homeless shelters—with a majority of arrests involving I did not speak out / Because I was not a Communist,” chronically non­violent minor offenses. it begins. What started in the dark of night at homeless hungry this Surico wrote, “When I asked homeless people why shelters is now in the streets in broad daylight. We are year because this is happening, most said it was to meet quotas—the the last to speak for us. If you have not been already, it’s of the Covid-19 statistics-based policing that critics (and even some time to start shouting. TIFFANY CABÁN pandemic —Taliah Mancini police officers) say is encouraged by One Police Plaza [NYPD headquarters]—and that the homeless arrests Tiffany Cabán is a national organizer with the Working Fam- can act as fodder for the stats. This, they argued, may ilies Party. August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 5 Q&ABARBARA LEE

Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) going back to the notion that When I was here working this is a marathon for justice. for Ron after his election to cast the sole vote in Congress against You have to keep fighting. Congress, I got to see Shirley You have to run this lap of the Chisholm, and she mentored the 2001 Authorization for Use of Mili- race. [Representative] Ron me. Let me tell you, [for a num- tary Force resolution that launched what Dellums passed me the baton. ber of years] she was the only We passed younger people Black woman dealing with this would come to be known as the batons. We see Black Lives entire power structure within America’s forever war. But she’s BL: Well, it’s absolutely import- Matter and Dreamers. We see the Congress. It was amazing. not alone anymore. In July, ant, because young people are our Movement for Black Lives. And she never backed down. 93 House members and 23 sen- not going to tolerate [status Everyone is coming together ators supported a proposal by quo politics]. They’re not going now, taking these batons and JN: California’s Bernie Sanders Lee and Representatives Mark to vote if we don’t make it a running with it. delegates to this year’s Dem- Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jay- part of our new priorities. When ocratic convention recently apal (D-Wash.) to cut the Pen- you look at polling data, when JN: You were a Shirley suggested that Joe Biden tagon’s budget by 10 percent you look at where people are Chisholm delegate at the should consider you for vice and shift the money to tackling on military policy and domestic 1972 Democratic National president. What did you think Covid-19 and mass unemploy- policy—when it comes to mak- Convention. Do you think her about that? ment. After the vote, Lee and I ing sure that these unautho- “unbought and unbossed,” BL: It just made me think, on spoke about reordering our pri- rized wars, these forever wars, “catalyst for change” politics orities and reimagining politics a very personal level, “Well, stop—the public is with us. is finally taking hold? in 2020. Here are some high- maybe our progressive work lights from our conversation. JN: There’s also a rising de- BL: Absolutely. I know Shirley and movement, maybe people —John Nichols mand to address another issue is smiling right now. She would see us and hear us and under- you’ve been discussing for be so proud of women in Con- stand what I’m doing or trying JN: You’ve worked for decades years, structural racism. gress, especially the women to do.” n to change our budget priori- of color, saying, “Enough is BL: I’m cautiously optimistic. It ties. Suddenly you’ve got a lot enough.” Can you imagine? of allies. What happened? took the unfortunate and hor- rific murder of [George] Floyd BL: [With Covid-19 and mass for people to really seriously unemployment], it’s clear that begin to focus on the systemic We see Black people are hurting very badly. racist nature of the criminal Lives Matter and And yet they are told, “Well, the justice system and our policing. resources just aren’t there.” Of I’ve been involved in police is- Dreamers. We course we know that Repub- sues since the ’70s. I was going licans got their tax cuts, but see the Movement into San Quentin, into prisons the resources are also within then, counseling and working for Black Lives. the Pentagon in terms of their with inmates. Even before that, wasteful spending…. I think Everyone­ is… I was a community worker that this is the moment when with the Black Panther Party. taking these batons all of this is coming together, The Black Panther Party stood where the movement is really and running down the police because they pushing the Congress and with it. were killing people and they saying, “We need resources for were brutalizing our communi- our domestic priorities.” ties in Oakland and throughout JN: How important is it for the country. I got it then and Democrats to make these new understood we had to have priorities a part of what they some systemic change in the talk about in 2020? criminal justice system…. I keep 6 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 Eric Alterman Journalists Rise Up The Wall Street Journal’s reporters are challenging its Trumpian opinion section.

IN OUR ORBIT n 1981, Ben Bagdikian, a veteran jour- and violently repressing Black Lives Matter pro- nalist and former dean of the Univer- tests has made publishing the president’s most Antidote sity of California, Berkeley, journalism enthusiastic supporters especially dangerous. school, tried to explain why The Wall As the Times’ Senator Tom Cotton brouhaha to Despair Street Journal published an opinion sec- demonstrated, journalists have pushed the issue s a politician, Jesse Jack- Ition dominated by an almost lunatic fringe. “Ex- of printing fascistic arguments on one’s op-ed son has seldom enjoyed ecutives and stockholders really do want to know page front and center. Despite the legacy of live A the full fruit of his labors. the unpleasant truth about corporate life when it and let live across the news and opinion partition, Running for president in 1984— affects their careers or incomes. At the same time, the Journal’s actual journalists took action in building on Shirley Chisholm’s however, most of them are true believers in the July. About 280 signed a long letter to the pa- pioneering campaign in 1972—he rhetoric of free enterprise,” he noted. Therefore, per’s publisher, Almar Latour, complaining that won just three states and the by “singing the grand old hymns of unfettered the opinion section’s “lack of fact-checking and District of Columbia. In 1988 he laissez-faire on the editorial pages” while report- transparency, and its apparent disregard for evi- won 11 contests but never recov- ing the truth in its news pages, “the dence, undermine our readers’ trust ered from his defeat by Michael Journal has it both ways.” and our ability to gain credibility with Dukakis in Wisconsin. Yet without This was only moderately prob- sources.” The letter had many exam- Jackson, there would’ve been no lematic when US politics was played ples, but a centerpiece was a column President Barack Obama; without the Rainbow Coalition, Bernie on a field with center-left and center-​ titled “There Isn’t a Coronavirus Sanders’s campaign would’ve right goalposts, though media critics ‘Second Wave’” by Vice President struggled to get out of Vermont. often amused themselves by suggest- Mike Pence, whose arguments were As a prophet, though, Jack- ing that any number of inaccuracies inconsistent with the government’s son has no living rivals. Readers published on the opinion pages could own figures when published and were depressed during this summer’s have been easily avoided if their au- thoroughly debunked by the Journal’s conventions by the decline in thors took the trouble to read their news pages days later. American oratory could do far own newspaper. Unfortunately, the Journal’s ed- Latour issued an anodyne statement in re- worse than console themselves itorial page helped mess up the game when Re- sponse, saying, “[We] remain deeply committed with Keeping Hope Alive, a new publican politicians started taking its arguments to fact-based and clearly labeled reporting and collection of his speeches and seriously. It began with the paper’s campaign for opinion writing. We cherish the unique con- sermons. Some will be struck supply-side economics under President Ronald tributions of our Pu- by his superb sense of occasion: Reagan and ballooned with literally thousands of litzer Prize–winning Preaching in New York’s River­side pages of conspiracy theories printed during Bill Opinion section to the Church in 2005, he recalled the The Journal edi- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s deci- Clinton’s presidency. Incrementally, thanks to the Journal and to societal sive turn against the Vietnam War massive investments of billionaires like Rupert debate in the U.S. and torial page helped from that very pulpit; Jackson Murdoch (now the Journal’s owner), Richard beyond.” The editorial mess up the game also warned, “When China rattles Mellon Scaife, the Koch brothers, and the Mer- board, sounding a lot its sabers at Taiwan…do we say cer family, this sort of nuttiness became holy writ like Weiss upon her when Republican that preemptive strikes are only within the conservative punditocracy. departure from the politicians started good for America?” Under the stewardship of Paul Gigot, who Times, complained that What stays with me, though, took over the Journal’s op-ed section in 2001, it would not kowtow taking its argu- is Jackson’s insistence on the the page has lurched rightward with the rest of to what it called the ments seriously. possibility—the necessity—of the conservative movement—to the point that “wave of progressive redemption. At Riverside he in- even fabulists like Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss cancel culture” and ar- voked “Thomas Paine and Thom- no longer felt comfortable and decamped to gued that unlike those fraidy-cats at The New York as Jefferson…Frederick Douglass pollute the pages of The New York Times. Un- Times (or so it implied), “our opinion pages offer and Sojourner Truth…Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta… like the Times, however, the Journal’s page, with an alternative to the uniform progressive views Martin Luther King and Robert just one centrist exception, often publishes only that dominate nearly all of today’s media.” Kennedy.” None of them were right-wingers. Opinions may split between those Herein lies the dilemma that faces all serious perfect. But each was of use to who cheerlead for and those who chide the pres- mainstream media organizations: Take the Trump Jackson, another flawed human ident. But there is a discernible consistency: a administration at its word, and you are not only who once reminded the nation, commitment to owning the libs. disgracing yourself professionally by misinform- “God is not finished with me yet.” Today the threat posed by the Trump admin- ing people; you are also putting your readers’ lives

—D.D. Guttenplan istration spreading coronavirus misinformation at risk. But if you don’t do so, you are vulnerable ANDY FRIEDMAN TOP RIGHT: TOP RIGHT: ANDY FRIEDMAN television (CATV) mediaoutletsair a few. You mayrequestthat audience, suchasthegeneralpublicorstudents,tomentiononly to downloadanyshowsthatwouldbeofinterestyourlocal is providedtoyou at no-costasapublicservice. You areinvited very nicely!GCTVistheonlyprogramofitstypeinworld,and Connections Television (GCTV)mayfitintoyourprogramming who discussinternationalissuesthathavelocalimpact?Global the world’s leadingvoicesfromthepublicandprivatesectors Looking foraninternationally-orientedtalkshowwithaccessto GLOBAL CONNECTIONSTELEVISION GCTV featuresin-depthanalysiswithinawidescopeofcurrentissues,topicsandevents including: duction, peaceandsecurity, andgenderissues. technology, culture,education,foodsecurity, poverty re development, globalpartnerships,renewableenergy, climate change,environmentalsustainability, economic analysis ofimportantcurrentissuesandeventsincluding wide. international issues and how they impact people world ly-produced, privately-financedtalkshow Global ConnectionsTelevision (GCTV)isanindependent •GLOBALPARTNERSHIPS •CLIMATE CHANGE•ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY •TECHNOLOGY • FOODSECURITYEDUCATION •RENEWABLE ENERGY•GENDERISSUESPOVERTYREDUCTION • GCTV FORBROADCASTERS,MEDIAOUTLETS &EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Global ConnectionsTelevision featuresin-depth shows onaweeklybasis. • PEACEANDSECURITYECONOMICDEVELOPMENTHEALTH • WITH your localPBS/communityaccess BILLMILLER the Global Connections TV that focuseson content, thepubliccanlearn moreabouttheworld,itsissues,and found onourwebsite.GCTVbelieves thatbyprovidingthisinvaluable educational institutionsatno chargesubjecttotermsandconditions from theUNandotherorganizations,GlobalConnectionsTelevision Within thegoalofprovidingimportantperspectivesandinitiatives is providedtobroadcasters,satellite systems,mediaoutletsand WWW.GLOBALCONNECTIONSTELEVISION.COM - - - groups impactthedailylivesofpeoplearoundworld. other importantorganizationsthatshowcasehowthese provides insideperspectivesfromtheUnitedNations public-access television,andtheWorld WideWeb. GCTV Episodes arebroadcastworldwidethroughcable,satellite, [email protected] GCTV largest city. y MaestraUniversityinSantiago,thecountry’s second ond yearhewasProfessorofSocialWork attheMadre a communitydeveloperinremoteruralarea;hissec- the DominicanRepublic.Inhisfirstyearheworkedas UN whenheservedasaUSPeaceCorpsvolunteerin Bill developed an interest in international issues and the Television concept. Media Consultants,whichcreatedtheGlobalConnection He is the Principal of Miller and Associates International UN issues. Washington Internationalandhaswrittenextensivelyon Bill MillerisanaccreditedjournalistattheUNfor men andwomenmakingadifference. TELEVISION GLOBAL CONNECTIONS WITH

BILL MILLER and 8 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

to the incessant and aggressive working of the refs by people commit more hate crimes than white people” right-wing figures who label any attempts to impose but also used “only his own single weighted statistical standards of truth telling as “progressive cancel culture.” calculation, with no attribution or context” to support it. For a few years after Murdoch’s purchase of the paper I do not exaggerate when I say that the result of believ- Take the Trump from the Bancroft family in 2007, the Journal’s jewel-like ing the Journal’s editorials can be death. Pence’s op-ed, for administration news-gathering operations appeared at risk. The mo- instance, used false statistics to encourage complacency at its word, gul’s handpicked editor in chief, the British-born Gerard in places experiencing spikes in corona­virus infections. At and you are Baker, complained in 2017 of “a fit of Trump-induced least three academic studies have pointed to an increased disgracing pearl-clutching among the journalistic elite” and sought number of Covid-19 cases where viewership of Fox News, to steer the paper’s reporting in a pro-Trump direction. Murdoch’s other famous property, is unusually high. A di- yourself That fear was mitigated when Baker was replaced by the rect causal relationship is difficult to establish, as the same professionally by veteran journalist Matt Murray in 2018 and relegated people who are likely to be lied to by right-wing pundits misinforming first to the news pages and, after his May 15 column might have refused to take proper precautions anyway. people. “The Often Distorted Reality of Hate Crime in Amer- But it is enough to say that misinformation about the vi- ica,” to the opinion pages. An earlier letter to Latour rus is a serious public health risk, and we should cheer on from staff members argued that the column not only the journalists rising up within their institutions to insist posited “the highly controversial argument that black that they are no longer willing to be a party to it. ■

any of us are committed to polls, it has done nothing to inspire young preventing four more years of progressives to embrace a compromising— Biden, Just Say Donald Trump by any means and deeply compromised—candidate whose necessary: mailing ballots, vot- reflexive bias toward the center misses both Yes on M4A! Ming early, or braving in-person polls in No- the urgency and the desperation of the vember if we have to. As John Lewis recently current moment. Their frustration would Covid-19 gives you the perfect reason reminded us, “Democracy is not a state. It is have been all too familiar to the 23-year- to change your mind. an act, and each generation must do its part.” old Lewis, the revolutionary firebrand who While Joe Biden’s basement campaign at the 1963 March on Washington was may have given him a lead in the opinion prevented by the organizers from asking, “Which side is the federal gov- ernment on?” PETER KUPER The question remains all too COMIX NATION pertinent. Yet it also suggests the single thing Biden could do to genuinely excite young Ber- nie Sanders supporters and to wake up the electorate: Endorse Medicare for All. Whatever the reasons for Biden’s previous resistance, the pandemic gives him more than enough cover to change his mind. From personal protective equipment and testing shortages to vaccine access to track and trace, the private sector just isn’t up to the job. Recognizing that reality would be a sign of strength. It could also electrify and transform US politics. As John Nichols re- cently noted, Alvan Earle Bo- vay, who called the meeting that founded the Republican Party in 1854, previously campaigned on the slogan “Vote yourself a farm.” Give Americans the chance to vote ourselves guar- anteed health care in November, and Trump and Trumpism will be buried under the landslide. D.D. GUTTENPLAN Explore The Nation Online Make the most of your subscription

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TRUMP Bad for Kali Holloway Business? n a little-noticed move at the end of July, the US That Suburban Lifestyle Dream I Chamber of Commerce, one of the Republican Party’s Trump says out loud what many white liberal communities support in practice. most reliable allies, announced that it is preparing to sue Donald n recent weeks, just after the umpteenth homeless services center slated to be built in their Trump’s administration over its round of media reports about the presi- neighborhood. In Maplewood, N.J.—where, ac- anti-immigration orders and dent’s purported change in tone, Donald cording to The New York Times, Black Lives Matter regulatory changes. This marks Trump resumed stoking white people’s signs are a common lawn adornment—a group of an extraordinary moment. fears of Black people. This time, his racist Black parents had to file a lawsuit in 2018 to force The lobbying group has long Ioutbursts were directed at “all of the people living the desegregation of district public schools. And in regarded the GOP as the party their Suburban Lifestyle Dream,” who he indicated New York City, after learning their children would of low taxes, deregulation, and would find themselves living in a multiracial night- be rezoned to a majority African American school, anti-unionism but also of free mare if Joe Biden is elected. white parents publicly worried about the danger trade, internationalism, and a “People have gone to the suburbs. They want posed by Black elementary schoolkids. The rezon- relatively open immigration sys- tem. The Chamber’s almost un- the beautiful homes. They don’t have to have a ing went forward as planned, but most of the white stinting support has been a boon low-income​ housing development built in their kids never made the transfer, presumably because to the Republicans for decades. community…which has reduced the prices of their their parents sought whiter learning environs. Now US business interests are homes and also increased crime sub- These examples of liberal white beside themselves with anger stantially,” Trump stated during a vir- racism are further borne out by data. over the Trump administration’s tual rally with supporters. A day later MIC DROP In a 2009 study, researchers found recent efforts to shred the H-1B in Texas, he picked up right where he white people indicated that, compared visa program, end protections left off. “I’ve seen conflict for years. It’s with integrated and all-Black neigh- under the Obama administra- been hell for suburbia. We rescinded borhoods, “all-white neighborhoods tion’s Deferred the rule three days ago. So enjoy your were most desirable.” A report from Action for Child- life, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy your Harvard published this January noted, hood Arrivals life.” The rule Trump rescinded was “Despite parents’ espoused support initiative, and issued by the Obama administration for integration, in districts where par- deny visas to in 2015 and required localities to track ents are actually given greater op- international students whose recurring issues around housing discrimination and portunities to choose schools, schools appear to colleges have moved to online create detailed plans for how to fix those problems. become more segregated.” The authors conclud- courses during the pandemic. It aimed to strengthen the Fair Housing Act, the ed that “many White, advantaged parents appear Chamber of Commerce CEO same anti-discrimination legislation the Justice De- to determine school quality by how many oth- Thomas Donohue even penned partment sued Trump for violating in 1973. Almost er White, advantaged a furious op-ed for The New York 50 years after losing that case, he is still suggesting parents send their child Times, arguing that these actions that whiteness should be the default measure of to a school, without “clearly exceed the authority of safety and affluence of a neighborhood while the doing the legwork Recent examples the executive branch, as they mere presence of Blackness threatens both. The to determine what of liberal take a sledgehammer to the president says these kinds of overtly racist things schools in a district are immigration laws that Congress partly because he believes them but also because— actually high-quality NIMBYism crafted over many generations.” particularly when an election is on the line—they and a good fit for their prove that If the Chamber of Commerce almost always work. child.” Another report breaks with Trump and sours Trump knows on the Republican project more Even as the suburbs lean more Democratic released early this year generally—and if the businesses than in the past, recent examples of white liberal determined that “the just which it represents start to distance NIMBY­ism prove that Trump knows precisely 12 most politically pro- anti-Black themselves from a Trumpified which anti-Black buttons to push. In Silver Spring, gressive cities in the GOP—that could signal a major Md., as local officials consider proposals to elimi- U.S. have significant- buttons to push. VIA GETTY IMAGES realignment, barely three nate exclusionary zoning policies that prevent more ly larger achievement months before the elections. affordable housing from being built, residents have gaps [between Black and white students] in reading, —Sasha Abramsky staged protests and taken to social media to reg- math and high school graduation than the 12 most ister bitter complaints. (“I doubt that any of my politically conservative cities.” Among those deeply THE WASHINGTON POST THE WASHINGTON neighbors want to stop living in their single family blue places with the highest Black-white profi- homes because an academic has told them it’s rac- ciency gaps are San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, ist to own a house with a large yard,” one poster Portland, and Washington. wrote.) Last year a group of wealthy homeowners The vast Black-white disparities in housing and in San Francisco launched a GoFundMe campaign education are the stuff that America’s systemic ra-

to pay the costs of waging a court battle against a cial inequalities are founded on, and unsurprisingly, BOTTOM: JAHI CHIKWENDIU / AP PHOTO August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 11

they remain the areas where white folks of all political ual acts of anti-Black bias also deserve recognition for the stripes have been most loath to upset the status quo. Hous- ongoing role they play in maintaining white supremacy. ing determines nearly every aspect of our lives, from the Trump isn’t clever enough to come up with a strategy resources available in our public schools to the quality of to exploit racist fears on his own; he’s just following a suc- our streets and the accessibility of public transportation. cessful tradition in American politics. But there is some It’s easy for white The community we call home is tied to the very air we evidence that the tide is turning. In a few cities around liberals to call breathe, which, because of decades of anti-Black racism, the country, there are bills pending to end exclusionary for more Black is hotter and dirtier in African American neighborhoods. zoning and allow communities to create affordable hous- inclusion in the It’s easy for white liberals to call for more Black inclusion ing in places where it had been prohibited by legislation abstract but to in the abstract—or to plant lawn signage that makes or pricing. (In fact, Minneapolis scrapped single-family the bare-minimum recognition of Black lives as fully zoning last year, and Oregon made big changes of the same fall quiet when human—but to fall quiet when the specific location sought kind.) The response to those proposals will reveal whether the specific is the house next door. And while historian Richard Roth- white liberals’ professed commitment to dismantling white location sought stein said that racial segregation has undoubtedly been supremacy—stated​ loudly and often in our streets and is the house expertly driven “by racially explicit federal, state and local social media feeds as of late—are genuine or just a veiled next door. policy, without which private actions of prejudice or dis- desire to get back to the sort of normalcy that keeps white- crimination would not have been very effective,” individ- ness in power regardless of who’s in the White House. ■

PRESIDENTIAL DIAGNOSIS SNAPSHOT / RINGO H.W. CHIU Feeling the Heat He tweets wacko theories. He rants and he raves. A firefighter watches the Apple Fire in Cherry Valley, His language decay is steady. Calif., about 75 miles east of Los Angeles, on August 1. From 1972 to 2018, California saw a 400 percent The question is asked: Is he falling apart— increase in annual burned area—a trend scientists Calvin Trillin attribute to climate change. The Apple Fire had blazed Deadline Poet Or was he apart already? through more than 26,000 acres by August 3. AP PHOTO marriage betweenhumansand Man animals needsalotofwork. An unusualexperimentin rewilding revealsthatthe Beast VALENTINE FAURE and The Nation. ILLUSTRATION BY CREDIT TK

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hey arrived as if from another age, as if they remembered what had been there before the roads and buildings and cars. Ducks walking in the empty streets of Paris, a herd of fallow deer grazing on lawns in East London; buffalo walking along an empty highway in New Delhi. Over the past few months, the Covid-19 pandemic has frozen the world’s economy and forced half of humanity into confinement. Amid the calamity—over half a million deaths, untold economic and social dislocation—some pointed to unprecedented opportunities: to try degrowth strategies, end predatory tourism, or curb emis- sions. The animal resurgence, in particular, captured the public imagination. Many of us, clinging to the possibility of any- Tthing resembling a silver lining, were quick to share on social media these images of wildlife reasserting itself, like postcards from a possible future in which we might have finally learned a valuable lesson about our impact on the world we inhabit. There’s precedent for wildlife flourishing when hu- mans are out of the picture. Thirty years after the Cher- rochs) to the Oostvaardersplassen. Twenty koniks (semi­ nobyl disaster and the subsequent evacuation of 350,000 feral horses bred to approximate the tarpan, an extinct people, the site has become home to a thriving popula- type of wild horse) were added the next year and 44 red tion of wolves, bears, and bison and now hosts more than deer a few years later. The idea was to let natural forces 200 bird species. Now we are stricken with a pathogen restore biodiversity without intervening. This practice is that originated in animals; nature seems to be defying It’s time now known as rewilding, a conservation method that, in- human primacy like never before. As the border between to ask stead of protecting nature and what remains of it, aims to the categories we call civilization and the natural world re-create extinct ecosystems without human interference dissolves, it’s time to ask ourselves, what is our respon- ourselves, through the reintroduction of key species. There would sibility to the creatures with which we share the planet? what is our be no vaccinations or other medical interventions for the responsibility animals. He wanted to see what happens when we simply here’s a saying that god created the earth let nature take its course. but the Dutch created the Netherlands. Until to the Rewilding is a way, as the philosopher Virginie Maris 1968, an expanse of land now called Flevo- creatures wrote, to “limit the human empire” in the so-called An- land, a few miles from Amsterdam, didn’t even with which thropocene, the proposed geological epoch that begins exist; for thousands of years, there was only with human activity’s first significant impacts on the plan- the sea. But in the Nether­lands, human beings must ne- we share et. Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Fraser, gotiate with water, and thanks to an ambitious drainage the planet? the author of Rewilding the World, calls the practice “the Tplan put into place in the 1950s, the province emerged most exciting and promising” method of nature conserva- from the bottom of the North Sea. tion. The best-known and most successful example of re- The part known today as the Oostvaardersplassen, or wilding is in Yellowstone, where wolves were reintroduced OVP, was initially intended for industry, but before the in 1995, resulting in a cascade of tremendous ecological first building could sprout, a wetland ecosystem emerged benefits. In Argentina and Chile, Tompkins Conservation, spontaneously. Intrigued, a young ecologist named Frans Blurred lines: first led by the man who founded the North Face and Vera set out on an unprecedented ecological experiment: The coronavirus Esprit brands, has carried out one of the largest re­wilding turning 14,800 barren acres into a place where, with lockdown drew many projects on hundreds of thousands of acres bought from the help of a few animals, nature would be restored to a wild animals into mostly absentee landowners, promoting the return of human-dominated long-forgotten preagricultural state. spaces, like these species like the wild llama and the jaguar. At the time, most scientists believed that in Europe goats wandering Although rewilding has become mainstream, even and elsewhere, the natural world looked like a virgin for- through a Welsh town. banal—a recent Guardian article encouraged homeowners est and that open habitats like grasslands were the result of human labor. All nature, the thinking went, eventually evolves into a closed forest when left to its own devices. But Vera thought animals had a role to play and that European wildlife once enjoyed a more diverse ecosys- tem, thanks to the presence of large now-extinct herbi- vores that roamed the continent hundreds of thousands of years ago. Wild horses, bison, and aurochs had al- lowed the space to remain open and accommodate a vast biodiversity—​and they could do so again, he believed. God created the planet, and the Dutch created the Neth- erlands, but Vera would become the god of the OVP. To put his theory to the test, in 1983 he introduced 34 Heck cattle (a breed of large wild ox bred to resemble au-

Valentine Faure is a French author and journalist. Her work has appeared in Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire, Libéra-

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Running free? The konik horses that roam the OVP reserve are left to their own devices—for better and for worse.

to rewild their backyards—the Oostvaardersplassen is a mains undeterred. A blacksmith and hunter who grew up controversial model. It was only after Vera’s project began When we’re among farm animals, he was heartbroken by the sights that conservation biologists formalized the principles of he encountered at the OVP: a deer drowning amid ice, rewilding around the three Cs: cores, corridors, and carni- the ones a wounded mare dying while giving birth, a toothless vores. Core reserves are the protected habitats. However, who have stallion. “And I’m not sentimental, not at all,” he insists. carnivores (the natural predators meant to regulate the “Let them take them to the butcher shop. All of them. I ecosystem) and corridors (safe pathways between protect- orchestrated have the mentality of a farmer. For me, it’s normal to raise ed areas that allow migration) are missing in the OVP. the wilder­ animals to eat them. I don’t have a problem with that. My And even though Vera paved the way for many successful ness, must problem is the animals that are starving.” Everything­ he experiments, from Croatia to the Rhodope Mountains, sees gets cataloged and photographed as irrefutable evi- there are some who view his project in the OVP, 40 years we let it dence of the debacle happening at the OVP. after it began, as an unmitigated disaster. carry out its Nagel and Metzemaekers were radicalized against cruelty the OVP in the winter of 2017–18, or the “winter of ddy nagel, an animal rights activist, is horror,” as they remember it. In this supposed paradise among these outspoken critics. “I call it an unimpeded? of biodiversity, thousands of skeletal animals roamed experiment to make the strongest live and the like zombies, hordes of mud-stained ghosts in search of weakest die,” he says. Most winter weekends, any blade of grass, under the horrified gaze of the train Nagel, 62, illegally tosses 150 bales of hay over passengers crossing the reserve. That particularly harsh the fence surrounding the OVP, then trespasses in the winter, 3,200 animals died, nearly 90 percent of them middle of the night to feed animals he says are starving. killed because they were deemed unfit to survive the win- EUnder a cold rain in January, he and his frequent co­ ter. The Dutch public, after years of eyeing the situation conspirator, Bas Metzemaekers, also in his 60s, guided warily, turned decisively against the Oostvaardersplassen. me through the part accessible to visitors—who are pro- The mastermind: For a while, the reserve—nicknamed the Dutch Ecologist Frans hibited from leaving its trails—toward trees with gnawed Vera engineered the Serengeti—had been a source of national pride. While bark: proof, for them, of the horses’ famished condition. controversial OVP the OVP’s fauna is admittedly less exotic to Europeans The pair’s investment in the project is astonishing. experiment. than Tanzania’s or Kenya’s, an impressive array of species During the winter, they go three or four times returned over the years, as Vera predicted, in- a week to the reserve to observe the animals, cluding foxes, buzzards, goshawks, gray herons, sometimes feeding them. They’re not wild but kingfishers, kestrels, and even the white-tailed domesticated animals, the men insist. From the eagle, a variety not seen in the region since the road that bisects the Oostvaardersplassen, we Middle Ages. Ecologists from all over the world looked upon the expanse of grass and mud from looked with admiration at this exceptional wild- which dark clouds of birds regularly take flight, life reserve. The handful of large herbivores in- with herds of cattle or horses here and there. troduced by Vera multiplied and grew. But their There are electric towers, wind turbines, and a freedom of movement is constrained by fences, yellow train from Amsterdam that passes by ev- and although he says wolves—a key species in ery five minutes with a bang. The animals—wild preagricultural Europe—are welcome there, the or not—don’t seem to mind. area is too small to accommodate them. Metzemaekers has been in police custody And that’s the rub: Predators are an essential several times for his trespassing and has sat component of any ecosystem, where a stable through multiple trials, most notably on charges population presupposes a balance between births of having made death threats against a forest and deaths. In the absence of predators, deer,

ranger. (“Lies, lies, lies!” he swears.) But he re- horses, and cows reproduced at an untenable 4.0 MUNDWILER; BOTTOM: CC BY-SA TOP: KATHRIN MUNDWILER KATHRIN August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 15

rate, turning the Oostvaardersplassen into a monotonous grassland—a decline of biodiversity that drove away its impressive array of birds and small herbivores. In the wild, many creatures die from disease, wounds, starvation, or predation much more frequently than from old age. Sometimes nature deals massive blows. In 2015, for example, a bacterium wiped out 200,000 saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in a matter of weeks. “In sober truth,” wrote the philosopher John Stuart Mill, “nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s every-day perfor­ ­ mances.” But when we’ve orchestrated the wilderness, must we then let it carry out its cruelty unimpeded? As gruesome images of the widespread animal deaths spread, opposition to the OVP started to take root. In 2005 the president of the Dutch Council on Animal Affairs compared the situation to a concentration camp, to a form of “animal experimentation” that must be aban- doned. Some years later, organized resistance groups The dissidents: specific objective, of any given habitat, garden, forest, or mobilized to save the animals that remained. Vera began Bas Metzemaekers urban area? If humanity is to limit its empire, where does receiving threats online. (left) and Eddy Nagel it set those limits? are devoted to putting That year, the Dutch government commissioned an a stop to the OVP The very concept of wilderness, seen as untouched international committee of experts to find out whether project. nature, is a human invention. In a 1995 New York Times it was possible for the OVP “to maintain a resilient, self-​ essay, “The Trouble With Wilderness,” the environ- sustaining ecosystem including large herbivores” that was mental historian William Cronon wrote, “Wilderness acceptable in terms of animal welfare. To compensate for hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more the reserve’s lack of carnivores, the committee determined beguiling because it seems so natural…. If we allow that the weaker animals should be killed to avoid painful ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be natural deaths. It also recommended that shelters be creat- wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall.” ed to protect the animals from the wind. Humankind was The paradox of rewilding, a wilderness designed and reasserting control over the laws of nature. conceived by people, is nowhere more blatant than at the Five years later, a harsh winter meant a large number OVP, where animals roam an artificial land, like a stage of animals had to be culled. Images of the starving animals where one expects the spectacle of wildness. But must appeared on national television, provoking outrage that we necessarily stand outside nature for nature to be au- brought conditions at the OVP to the attention of the thentic? What is more natural—a UNESCO reserve or a Dutch parliament. After an emergency debate on the fate What is more dandelion growing through the asphalt of a parking lot? of the animals, the House of Representatives decided that natural— “The awareness that we are slowly growing into now rangers were mandated to feed large herbivores. A new a UNESCO is that the earthly wildness that we are so complexly de- committee of experts declared “a moral obligation for the pendent upon is at our mercy,” wrote the activist Wendell managers [of the OVP] to take all necessary measures to reserve or Berry in the 1980s. “It has become, in a sense, our artifact minimize the extent of any unnecessary suffering” and a dandelion because it can only survive by a human understanding and recommended killing “the animals that are in visibly growing forbearance that we now must make. The only thing we poor condition” before the winter could batter them, in have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing “early reactive culling.” But the new committee deemed through the we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity.” parliament’s supplementary feeding mandate a “political asphalt of a In an article for the scientific journalNature, Ecology & decision,” contrary to the experts’ advice. “In effect,” they parking lot? Evolution, scientists termed this period of Covid-induced wrote, the feeding “simply increases the winter carrying containment “anthropause.” Anthropause is, in part, a capacity of the ecosystem, allowing herbivore populations respite for nature, yet the cessation of human activities to increase and stabilize at a new, higher level.” As Vera has exposed how much nature may need people in the told the journalist Isabella Tree, “Starvation is the deter- Anthropocene. Closures of national parks and wide- mining factor. It is a fundamental process of nature. ” spread travel bans have meant a drop in financial support for all kinds of environmental operations. In much of cientists are divided on the objectives of sub-Saharan Africa, tourism provides the money to rewilding. Should it—and can it—re-create a maintain the parks that protect wildlife. Across Asia and state of nature that existed before human influ- Africa, reduced human presence and law enforcement ence, as in Siberia’s Pleistocene Park, where a in more remote areas have exposed endangered species Russian scientist and his son have approximated to increased poaching. The anthropause authors wrote, a mammoth steppe ecosystem of the earth’s last glacial “What is clear is that humans and wildlife have become period? Or should it repair specific ecological damage more interdependent than ever before.” Scaused by humans? Does “wilderness” instead refer to As Hans-Erik Kuypers, an OVP ranger, more bluntly

TOP: KATHRIN MUNDWILER; BOTTOM: CC BY-SA 4.0 MUNDWILER; BOTTOM: CC BY-SA TOP: KATHRIN MUNDWILER KATHRIN the idea of a natural process, of letting go, without a puts it, “Without man, the Oostvaardersplassen would 16 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 not exist.” Even the animals’ DNA Politically, Van Straaten comes bears traces of human interference. from the far right. Her foundation is Take Heck’s aurochs, which now supported by the Party for Freedom populate the dull plain of the Oost­ and the Forum for Democracy, two vaarders­plassen in the hundreds. The hard-line right-wing parties. She is original aurochs, a muscular and ag- critical of the ideology of the OVP’s gressive wild ox, has the sad honor of founders, who are determined to being one of the first species record- continue their experiment. “They ed as extinct, in 1627. But in inter­war want to re-create an ancient nature,” Germany, the Heck brothers, who she says indignantly. “And for that, directed the Berlin and Munich zoos, they receive subsidies from Europe!” selectively bred cattle in an attempt Ultimately, Van Straaten would to genetically reengineer the species; like to empty OVP of most of its the project dovetailed with the Nazi animals, including all of its horses. quest to restore a racially pure Germanic past. Both Another opponent: Where to put them? “That’s not my problem,” she says. projects, of course, were chasing a myth: The oxen that Equestrian Annemieke “But when you put animals behind fences, you have to emerged had little to do—genetically or otherwise—with Van Straaten lobbies take care of them.” against the OVP any purported state of unspoiled nature. project from a far- The descendants of these herds were among the 3,200 right perspective. he battle around the oostvaardersplassen casualties of the “winter of horror,” when protesters be- reflects a long-standing cultural and political gan to call the little Serengeti “Auschwitz for animals.” tension between the two visions of nature. “It is…time to conclude that this experiment is gone “Ever since the 19th century, celebrating wil- out of control,” read a petition launched in 2019 by the derness has been an activity mainly for well- high-profile biologist Patrick Van Veen and signed by to-do city folks,” Cronon wrote, adding that rural people more than 200,000 people. “The State Forest Service “generally know far too much about working the land claims to be a nature conservation organization, but Tto regard unworked land as their ideal.” Sociological what is different about this nature reserve from a zoo Perhaps research has shown that in the Netherlands, appreciation or a farm?” read the petition. Even the legendary field “wild” and for wilderness is greater in the city than in the countryside. biologist Jane Goodall got involved. “When I heard [the “That contradiction is reinforced in the current era, OVP story], I could hardly believe that something like “domestic,” in which politicians are setting the elite and the people this would happen in a civilized country,” she wrote in rather than against each other,” says Martin Drenthen, a philosopher an open letter. “There is no excuse for the continuation being fixed and Oostvaardersplassen expert, noting that the OVP is of a policy of non-intervention when this results in hor- routinely accused of being an elite ecological plaything. rific suffering.” During demonstrations in front of the categories, This is reflected in the voting behavior of the province, reserve, protesters held funeral processions and minutes exist on a which votes more conservatively than areas with big of silence for the dead animals. The threats against Vera cities. Conservative parties such as the Christian Dem- intensified. He received a letter targeting his grand- continuum. ocratic Appeal, the People’s Party for Freedom and De- children. “This letter had a huge impact on my family,” mocracy, and the Reformed Political Party are in favor he told a Dutch newspaper in January 2020. He soon of more active human involvement in the management removed himself from the public eye, but that did little of the reserve; social democrats, the Green Party, and to stop the protests. the Party for the Animals support a hands-off approach, From this growing chorus of opposition to the OVP although the Party for the Animals wrote that culling is emerged Annemieke Van Straaten, the movement’s most Winter of horror: the “most animal-friendly solution.” vocal lobbyist. She has opted for PR tactics over direct The remains of At the mention of Van Straaten’s diatribes, Kuypers thousands of deer and action. Instead of bales of hay tossed over the fence in the other grazing animals shrugs. “Does an animal have to eat all year round? I’m middle of the night, she sends out six people to document littered the OVP after not sure,” he says quietly. He seems transported by the abuses on the reserve and relays the news on Twitter in fu- the winter of 2017–18. contact with nature, his face reddened forever by the rious posts accompanied by vomiting north wind. “They tell us, ‘You don’t emojis. Overpopulation, she claims, like animals.’ We respond, ‘We love leads to “mare rapes.” In the winter them as much as you do but in a dif- she posts a lot of photos of horses ferent way.’ We give them space and with their hair matted in clumps, with freedom. It’s a different perspective.” burdock fruit stuck like Velcro. Van For example, he explains, the Straaten comes from the horse world, burdock fruit clinging to the horses’ and for her, a happy horse is a horse in hair (and grating on Van Straat- a field “with people who take care of it en’s nerves) need animals as vehi- every day,” she says, and, presumably, cles to disperse. The seeds fall off an untangled mane and tail. In Janu- on their own during the winter. To ary 2019 she offered to buy 90 horses him, they’re just further proof of an from the forest service that manages ecosystem that is working. All the

the reserve, without success. supporters of a wild OVP, free from BOTTOM: PIERRE CROM / GETTY IMAGES STRAATEN; OF ANNEMIEKE VAN TOP: COURTESY MUNDWILER KATHRIN August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 17

Inescapably intertwined: A high-speed train carrying passengers to Amsterdam cuts through the OVP.

human meddling, praise the quality of life of the animals oday the rangers at the oostvaardersplassen call a veteri- and their freedom of movement and socialization. In an narian if they see an animal in distress. But in practice, the rule interview with the Dutch daily De Volkskrant­ in January, seems unclear. Why didn’t they call the vet for a fox that walked Vera castigated the farmers who raise dairy cows that past us with a limp? “Good question,” says Kuypers with a smile. they kill after six years, when they could live for 20, and Questions like these fit together like a chain of moral dilemmas. horse lovers who “sit on them.” Should we replace slaughter with contraception? But can’t procreation be And then there’s the question of fences. The OVP’s considered an animal right? Yet isn’t it better to deprive them of this right critics liken the reserve to a camp that prevents emaciat- Tthan to kill surplus animals? ed animals from grazing elsewhere. (Some activists once “It’s impossible to satisfy everyone,” Kuypers concedes. “But one thing cut holes in the fences to let red deer escape; some ended nature needs is continuity. No policy changes every two years. We need time up on the highway and had to be shot.) Ecologists, for to measure, to see what works, to adjust.” their part, respond that all wild areas are bordered by “Conservation is about managing people. It’s not about managing wild- some kind of natural barrier, like a river. life,” Caroline Fraser quoted conservationist Joseph Kirathe as saying. The larger debate on the role that humans should Opponents of the OVP are not limited to equestrians mocked by scien- play in ending animal suffering most often concerns tists. There are also hunters and the farm lobbies, angry to see this fertile land slaughter­houses, factory farming, and animal testing. slipping away from them, and those who want an airport next door to finally But now animal rights organizations, following in the open to commercial flights, despite the thousands of wild geese. After min- footsteps of the influential utilitarian philosopher Peter ister Henk Bleker’s decision to decentralize Dutch nature policy in 2011, the Singer, are campaigning to alleviate the suffering of wild OVP’s future is being decided at the Flevoland provincial animals as well. Why should our moral contract with level, where these pressure groups are most influential. domestic animals be any different with wild animals? As of 2018, total animals had to be reduced to no more Since humans already interfere extensively with nature than 1,100, regardless of their condition. A few horses for their benefit, why not direct this interference to the were slaughtered, and 180 were evacuated to reserves in cessation of animal suffering? Belarus and Spain. Deer were killed by the thousands; Some even dispute the idea that an animal is happier their meat is now sold to gourmet restaurants, and top in nature, where the dangers are great, the stress level is chefs have judged it to be exceptionally marbled, thanks high, and its natural needs are not necessarily satisfied. to the quality of life these animals lead. “There is a conflict between animal rights activists and “Conserva­ “It’s no longer reactive culling. It’s hunting,” says environmentalists,” says Drenthen. The former focus on tion is about Drenthen. Two guards who refused to kill healthy ani- the fate and welfare of individual animals, he says, while mals asked to be transferred. the latter have a holistic perspective, focused on the managing The following year, the court barred further mass flourishing of entire ecosystems. people. culling of red deer. The fate of the animals of the Oost­ At the OVP, where this debate has been raging for It’s not vaarders­plassen hangs on successive contradictory deci- decades, the answer has yet to be found. Animal ethicists sions. To this day, the various parties continue to appeal call ecologists ecofascists on the grounds that willingly about to human justice to decide whether and how many deer sacrificing an individual to preserve a system is tanta- managing should be culled. mount to fascism; ecologists reply that their ideological wildlife.” In this natural space, humans—their dreams, their rivals are ecologically illiterate. — conservationist battles, their shortsightedness, and above all, their finan- The Dutch philosopher and animal ethicist Jozef Joseph Kirathe cial motives—remain inescapable. Even the proponents Keulartz suggested that “wild” and “domestic,” rather of rewilding use the economic argument, adopting a than being fixed categories, exist on a continuum and that lexicon borrowed from the market, of a nature-based obligations of care should be calibrated according to an economy or an economy of contemplation. animal’s position on this spectrum. In a 2017 lawsuit over So it’s no surprise that in the Oostvaarders­ plassen,­ whether the reserve was violating welfare laws regarding tourism looms on the agenda. It is about image, financing, the treatment of domesticated animals, a Dutch appeals compromise. “Sooner or later,” says Drenthen, “there will court granted the large herbivores of the OVP a specific be holiday homes, cycle paths, and bird-watching huts.” intermediate status of “wild kept animals”—whatever​ that After all, what good would this wilderness be if it can’t

TOP: COURTESY OF ANNEMIEKE VAN STRAATEN; BOTTOM: PIERRE CROM / GETTY IMAGES STRAATEN; OF ANNEMIEKE VAN TOP: COURTESY MUNDWILER KATHRIN might mean. be admired by humans? ■ 18 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

IT’S TIME TO ABOLISH NURSING HOMES If three out of four Americans want to spend their final years at home, why do so many of us end up in institutional care? SARA LUTERMAN THIS PAGE: SCOTT EISEN / GETTY IMAGES THIS PAGE: August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 19

lbert p. died alone in a nursing home from covid-19. because of new safety regulations, his daughter, Gita, was not allowed to visit. In the days before his death, she told me, the nursing home staffers “spoke to my mom at length about how great my dad was doing…. [They] said, ‘He’s eating. He’s drinking water. He’s smiling. He’s doing really well.’” Gita wasn’t so sure. She said there were previous issues with her father’s care: hours spent sitting in soiled Abedsheets, medication mismanagement, and missed meals. On May 6, a staff member called to tell her that Albert, 79, had died. She had never been told that her father was even ill. Then she was asked, “When are you going to come to claim the body?” Gita remembered hanging up the phone. “I didn’t know what to do.” “From Grandpa Simpson to Junior Soprano, popular Albert’s death was no outlier. More than 40 percent culture constantly acknowledges our society’s worst- of Covid-19 deaths in the United States—about 62,000 “Popular kept secret: Nursing homes are awful places to live. people as of July 30—have been linked to long-term care Unfortunately, we’ve set up our health care and human facilities, according to the Centers for Disease Control culture services systems to send vast numbers of seniors and and Prevention. About one in 37 nursing home residents constantly people with disabilities there anyway.” have died of Covid-19. New York Governor Andrew That leaves us with a few basic questions: Why do Cuomo described the threat of the disease in nursing acknowl­ nursing homes exist? How have they so thoroughly em- homes as “fire through dry grass.” edges our... bedded themselves in the American life cycle? And what The rapid spread of infection in nursing homes isn’t worst-kept can we do instead? new. Before the pandemic, 82 percent of nursing homes had citations for failure to adequately prevent or control secret: ursing homes are relatively new. before the the spread of infection; about half had multiple citations. Nursing 20th century, all kinds of care—elder care and Opportunistic infections by pathogens like Clostridium homes are even surgery—were performed at home. The difficile thrive in nursing homes, and those usually caused wealthy could hire servants to tend to the needs by neglect, like sepsis and urinary tract infections, are awful places of their elderly relatives. Among those less well- prevalent. Covid-19 just spreads more easily and does its Noff, women were expected to take on the bulk of the to live.” deadly work faster. — Ari Ne’eman, caregiving, uncompensated. And for those who were In New York magazine, music and architecture critic Harvard Law School poor and without families capable of caring for them, Justin Davidson recently imagined what it would take Project on Disability there were almshouses. to build better nursing homes in the wake of Covid-19. Almshouses sheltered the “undeserving” poor: the Perhaps if we had smaller facilities or installed wet bars, disabled, the ill, children born out of wedlock, widows, people would like them better. He emphasized the need and elderly people in poverty. Poorhouses were, for the for more funding. But the problem with nursing homes Taking care: most part, dilapidated and dirty and were seen as a last is not that they need wood floors instead of vinyl or A first responder in resort for human refuse. On Blackwell’s Island, now Massachusetts loads a that food is served on plastic trays. The problem is that nursing home resident Roosevelt Island, in New York City hundreds of beds they are total institutions: secluded facilities where staffs with Covid-19 into an were squeezed so tightly together that the residents tightly control the lives of vulnerable people. ambulance in April. had difficulty getting in and out of them, according to There is some debate over the origin of the total institution as a concept, but it is usually credited to the sociologist Erving Goffman. In his 1961 book Asylums, he described total institutions as “an assault on the self.” In a nursing home, patients depend on and are at the mercy of the staff. Patients do not choose with whom they live or what activities they can do on a given day. It is, he wrote, entirely opposed to the way normal society functions. Nursing homes allow for an economy of scale. Feeding, washing, and otherwise seeing to the needs of elderly and disabled residents all at once is more efficient than addressing those needs on an individual basis. But this efficiency comes at the expense of human dignity. Ari Ne’eman, a senior research associate at the

THIS PAGE: SCOTT EISEN / GETTY IMAGES THIS PAGE: Harvard Law School Project on Disability, points out, 20 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

meet these new requirements, so larger, more hospital-like nursing homes took their place. But these more medicalized facilities weren’t much better. In order to turn a profit, many still spent as little as possible on residents. In his 1980 book Unloving Care: The Nursing Home Tragedy, Bruce Vladeck de- scribes post-reform nursing homes “with green meat and maggots in the kitchen, narcotics in unlocked cabi- nets, and disconnected sprinklers in nonfire-resistant structures.” In 1981, Congress amended the Social Security Act to allow for home- and community-based ser- vices waivers. Before that, seniors and disabled people could get com- prehensive long-term care only in Thomas Cole’s The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Nowhere else to go: institutional settings like nursing homes; if they re- Aging in America. In 1876, Charles mained at home and wanted such care, they had to pay By the early 20th century, more specialized institu- Hofmann painted for it out of pocket. The new HCBS waivers allowed the grounds of the tions opened to address the disparate needs of people Schuylkill County Medicaid to fund comprehensive care at home. who had relied on almshouses. These included schools almshouse in Even though three out of four people over the age of for the blind and the deaf, orphanages, mental asylums, Pennsylvania. 50 want to remain in their homes, according to a 2018 and homes for wounded veterans. As a result, the per- AARP survey, the system remains weighted toward nurs- centage of people in almshouses who were elderly soared. ing homes and other forms of institutional care. Despite In 1880 about a third of almshouse residents were elder- scandal after scandal and reform cycle after reform cycle, ly; by 1923, that share of residents had doubled. In 1903 federal spending on nursing homes was $57 billion in the New York City commissioner of charities announced 2016. The American Health Care Association, the largest that the almshouse on Blackwell’s Island would change its “Far too of­ lobbying group for the industry, spent $3.84 million in name to the Home for the Aged and Infirm. ten, hospitals 2019 in its push to further loosen safety regulations and The Great Depression overwhelmed and ultimately reduce the industry’s legal liability. And the resulting solu- destroyed the almshouse system. Suddenly, millions of and nursing tion to lawsuits over poor conditions? In July, President Americans were in poverty. This gentled public opinion homes don’t Donald Trump announced $5 billion in additional funds. toward the poor. The public turned against almshouses and embraced cash benefit programs. This shift culmi- tell older echnically, all seniors who meet the finan- nated in the Social Security Act of 1935 and the advent adults how cial criteria should have access to home care of a federal welfare system. The act was meant to usher they can through Medicaid. But despite legal require- in an era in which senior citizens could pay to support ments, seniors and families are rarely informed themselves in their own homes. get the care of this option. Jennifer Goldberg, the deputy To facilitate this goal, the legislation prohibited the they need in Tdirector of Justice in Aging, pointed out that “far too use of federal funds for “an inmate of a public institu- their homes often, hospitals and nursing homes don’t tell older adults tion,” cutting off support for locally run almshouses. how they can get the care they need in their homes and Unfortunately, it did not provide money for home health and com­ communities.” care or assistance with activities like feeding and wash- munities.” In 2017, when Albert first entered the nursing home, ing. Private rest homes for the elderly stepped in to fill — Jennifer Goldberg, it was meant to be a temporary stay for rehabilitation, the void. Although it was supposed to end institutional Justice in Aging with the cost covered by Medicare. He had experienced care for senior citizens, the Social Security Act only re­ some kidney trouble. A nursing home, according to Gita, fashioned it. was the only option given. In 1960 amendments to the act radically increased Initially, Albert seemed to be doing well. But days nursing home funding. Between 1960 and 1965, federal before he was supposed to be discharged, he contracted spending on nursing homes ballooned from $47 million a C. difficileinfection, which can be deadly and is spread to $449 million a year. The advent of Medicaid in 1965 Sara Luterman mostly in hospitals and nursing homes. his health de- expanded nursing homes even further. Nursing home is a freelance clined rapidly. He lost a dangerous amount of weight, journalist and capacity more than doubled from 1963 to 1973. commentator. and it became clear that he would not be returning Congress amended Medicaid in 1967 to include a She writes about home within the time allotted by Medicare. Then he definition of a skilled nursing facility and to require disability politics, came down with pneumonia. Eventually, he also devel- 24-hour nursing services and stricter building codes. research, and oped contractures—painful tightening of the tendons

Many of the smaller, older rest homes were unable to culture. and joints from months of disuse. He bounced from IMAGES VIA GETTY / HERITAGE ART HERITAGE WILFREDO LEE / AP PHOTO August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 21

nursing home to hospital to nursing home. And at no A registered nurse, an occupational therapist, and a con- point, according to his daughter, was his family offered struction worker meet with a senior at home, evaluate the an alternative. person’s needs, and renovate the home for accessibility. “Had staying at home been an option, I don’t think we According to CAPABLE, every $1 spent on the program would have ever put him in a nursing home,” Gita said. yields nearly $7 in savings. But what about seniors with severe disabilities like ccording to the kaiser family foundation, dementia? Many people think it is impossible for a per- nearly three-quarters of national long-term ser- son with dementia to live safely outside a locked facility. vices and support spending for seniors goes to “No one Jorwic, whose organization represents many Americans institutions like nursing homes. Nursing homes with significant cognitive disabilities, disputes that. are an entitlement, which means seniors have goes to a “When it comes to serving individuals with dementia, Aimmediate access to them through Medicaid. Home it can be really difficult for families, service providers, nursing care, on the other hand, has waiting lists. In 2017 there home and staff to see how that person can live outside of a were 201,000 seniors and adults with physical disabilities [nursing home], and it is important to note that the same waiting for Medicaid-funded home care. Nationally, the because security can be done in a home- and community-based average wait for an HCBS waiver is two and a half years. they’re setting,” she said. Why do waiting lists exist for a service delivery model The idea that anyone can live independently given the clearly preferred by most Americans? And why wouldn’t old. They right supports is prevalent in discussions about disability case managers tell seniors about all of their options? go there but less common in ones about aging. Appropriate staff- Nicole Jorwic, the senior director for public policy at because they ing is key: People with more significant disabilities may the Arc of the United States, a part of the Disability and need more staff to assist them in their everyday lives. Aging Collaborative, gave one possible explanation. “If have a The idea of a greatly expanded home care workforce a case manager is talking about discharge options for an disability.” and widely available individualized care brings up the individual, [an HCBS waiver] waiting list may last longer — Kelly Buckland, issue of cost. According to the National Council on than the individual may live,” she said. National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, home- and Another barrier to the wider adoption of home care Independent Living community-based services have proved to be significant- in the United States is that nursing home associations ly less expensive than institutional care in every state that and unions lobby against it. The associations’ reasons are tracks the data. But the current level of home care is not self-evident: They are protecting their business interests. always sufficient to meet an individual’s needs. Costs are Trade unions have historically opposed home care be- held low by Medicaid reimbursement caps, the exploita- cause home care workers are less likely to be unionized. tion of home care workers, and red tape: Navigating In general, they also have lower pay and less job security. Medicaid home and community-based services can be Even with home care workers unionizing in recent years, a Kafkaesque nightmare. People sometimes die before the pay remains low and the hours long. Most of these they’re able to access adequate care. workers are immigrants and women of color, and the Finally, there is the prevailing cultural idea that turnover is immense: Every year, two-thirds of home nursing homes are inevitable: We are born, we work, care workers quit. we retire, we go to a nursing home, we die. But there is In order to expand and improve home care, workers nothing inevitable about nursing homes. need higher pay, better benefits, and more job security. Farewell: Margaret Through his work in disability rights, Kelly Buck- In short, they need to be treated as the essential workers Choinacki, 87, waves land, the executive director of the National Council on goodbye after a they are. friend’s drive-by Independent Living, has been championing ways to end Then there are the more literal, physical barri- visit at Miami Jewish the nursing home model for the past 30 years. Oddly, ers to home care. Stairs and bathtubs can become Health in July. many people who support community living for younger un­usable for elderly resi- disabled people still think of dents. Carpets and coffee nursing homes as necessary tables can be deadly haz- for seniors. ards. There is a shortage “There’s this underlying of accessible housing in belief that when you get old, America. This problem, at that’s where you go,” Buck- least, has a straight­forward land said. “But no one goes solution: Pay to make ex- to a nursing home because isting housing accessible. they’re old. They go there The Community Aging in because they have a disabil- Place–Advancing Better ity.” He and other disability Living for Elders (CAPA- rights advocates envision a BLE) initiative at the John world with home care for Hopkins School of Nurs- everyone:­ no more institu- ing piloted a successful tions. To some, it may seem home-based intervention a like an absurd dream, but all decade ago, and the pro- we need is the political will to

HERITAGE ART / HERITAGE IMAGES VIA GETTY / HERITAGE ART HERITAGE WILFREDO LEE / AP PHOTO gram has been expanded. make it happen. ■ 22 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 A THI

A THICK BLUE FOGMomodou Lamin Sisay was killed during a traffic stop in Georgia. Only the police know what really happened. ML KEJERA August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 23

mages of black death have become inescapable, yet footage of momodou lamin sisay’s death re- mains elusive. Sisay was killed in Georgia on May 29 in an altercation with officers from the Snellville and Gwinnett County police departments. A THI Here is the story, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation: A Snellville police offi- cer attempted to stop Sisay’s car on Skyland Drive for a vehicle tag violation. Sisay reported- Ily did not stop. A chase ensued. Officers eventually forced his car off Temple Johnson Road. They approached the car, giving “verbal commands.” Sisay did not comply. As they prepared to enter the car, he pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the officers. They fired and took cover behind their cars. Sisay started his engine. A SWAT team was called in. He shot at the officers. An unnamed officer shot back. Sisay was found dead. “A handgun was located at the scene,” says the police report. Sisay was Gambian, like me. A common refrain of the Black Lives Matter movement is to say, out loud, the names of police victims. Saying Sisay’s name, I thought of its similarity to mine. Variations of the Prophet Muhammad’s name are common in Gambia; mine is Muhammad Lamin, and my mother’s maiden name is Ceesay. I imagine that most Black people, upon hear- confrontation, but it turned out to be one that took place ing news of state-sanctioned Black death, think, “That in New York last year. There is no shortage of footage could’ve been me.” For me, those words have never rung A video like this. Traditional and online petitions demanding truer. In saying Sisay’s name, I’m almost saying mine. But image can the release of body camera footage have circulated. The if I had come across the news from the local outlets that Gambian government has gotten involved, calling for a first covered it, one of which referred to the killing as function not federal investigation. an “officer-related shooting,” this utterance would have only as Nelly Miles, a spokesperson for the Georgia Bureau been impossible. of Investigation, told The New York Times that the offi- A sometimes painful aspect of diaspora existence is evidence, cers’ body cameras were recording during the alterca- that grief, too often, is disrupted by distance. Being from but as tion, implying that the police have video of it. No such a country unfamiliar to most neighbors but with citizens vindication. video has been made public. around the world means getting the news by word of mouth. Sisay was identified publicly in a Facebook post asked some friends if they knew anyone with a by Gambian human rights activist Banka Manneh, who is Georgia address, and one of them put me in touch based in Atlanta. He was notified of the killing by Habib with a local activist. I contacted the Sisay family’s Mbye, a family friend of Sisay’s. In a May 30 Facebook Momodou Lamin civil attorney, the pro bono victims’ advocate Ab- post, Manneh said the Gambian community “is still Sisay’s car, with doukadir Jaiteh, who told the Times that the footage holding out hope that some passerby recorded the pro- bullet holes marked, Iwas not made available to him because of the ongoing in a police evidence ceedings just like that of George Floyd in Minnesota.” photo obtained from investigation. No such person has come forward. the Georgia Bureau of Throughout the process, I asked myself why I sought From Manneh, I learned that Sisay was raised in Investigation. this video, which in a way I wish did not exist. As Kia Georgia. He was better known as Boy Gregory wrote in The New Republic, the Sisay, according to a eulogy on Face- phenomenon of “linked fate” can make book posted by Aji Amber Barry. He was watching these videos a traumatizing ex- Muslim and “known to always be at the perience. “When black people watch a mosque.” He took care of his siblings after video of police violence against another his mother died. Lare Sisay, Momodou black person, they see themselves or their Sisay’s father, described him as some- loved ones in that person’s place, knowing one who “abhors violence.” The family that the same fateful encounter could very has opened its own investigation into his well happen to them,” she said. At the death. “We’re not going to let it go,” Lare same time, we live in an age when every- Sisay told The Fatu Network, a Gambian thing can be documented—and often is. news outlet. It then becomes a question of whose in- For a few days, it seemed that Mo- terests these documents serve. In the case modou Sisay’s killing was the only thing of experiences that run counter to official Gambians talked about, particularly in narratives, like police violence, a video Georgia’s tight-knit Gambian communi- image can function not only as evidence ty. A family member sent me a Facebook but also as vindication. video purporting to be footage of the The 1992 riots in Los Angeles, sparked by the acquittal of four police officers ML Kejera is a Chicago-based writer from who had beaten Rodney King, might not Gambia. He is a Caine Prize nominee and has have taken place if footage of the episode been short-listed for the Commonwealth Short had not circulated nationwide for a year. Story Prize. Though I was born two years after the 24 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

previous requests. Georgia law allows but does not require au- thorities to withhold any docu- ments pertinent to an ongoing investigation. A Snellville PD records coordinator and a customer service associate for Gwinnett County stated that most of my contact’s requests could not be met at the time, citing the exemption clause in Georgia law. They did release the nearly empty initial police reports, about as blank as those filed for Breonna Taylor’s po- lice killing in Louisville, Ky. My contact’s letter asked for the “names and badge numbers of all police officers involved in Momodou Lamin Sisay’s death.” Gwinnett County pro- riots, the video, recorded by a bystander, has been em- Law enforcement ceeded to provide my contact with an Excel spreadsheet bedded in my memory ever since I first saw it as a child officers on the titled “List of Responding Officers,” comprising 116 in Saudi Arabia. Before I ever experienced American grounds of the Georgia names. Whether or not the intention was to bury a civil- State Capitol during a policing, I was struck by the relentlessness of King’s at- protest after the killing ian request in paperwork, it was impossible to determine tackers and saddened by the inaction of the other officers of George Floyd. which officers actually took part in the fatal encounter. present, who did nothing to stop their colleagues. Although the request was filed on June 22, Gwin- Ferguson, Mo., still burns in recent memory through nett County said it would make an initial response by an audio recording of Michael Brown being shot to July 14—well past the three-day limit mandated by the death. Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” cap- The police Georgia Open Records Act. The county did not provide tured on video after an officer from the New York Police a description of the records when it notified my contact Department put him in a choke hold, have become a reports and of the delay, as required by the public records code. Yet rallying cry at demonstrations against police killings. statements its report revealed a piece of information undisclosed Protests ensued after bystander video surfaced of Wal- to the press anywhere else: the involvement, in an unspecified capac- ter Scott’s killing by a North Charleston, S.C., police ity, of the Atlanta Police Department. officer that directly contradicted the police version of have created events. The killer claimed that Scott was reaching for a fog of he snellville and gwinnett county police the officer’s stun gun. The video showed Scott running reports and statements to the press have created away when he was shot. After these widely publi- uncertainty. a fog of uncertainty. One inconsistency between cized killings—and the outrage in response—pressure the GBI’s preliminary press release and recorded mounted on police departments to implement the use interviews with officers who were at the scene of body cameras. This year the visceral and widely Twas noted by The New York Times: The bureau claims seen video of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has Momodou Lamin that Sisay discharged his weapon after the SWAT team’s brought us to a breaking point, inspiring protests un- Sisay, in a photo arrival, while Detective Jeff Manley of the Snellville PD precedented in their reach. The national consciousness provided by his father. told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution that Sisay fired his has been seared with Floyd’s echo of Garner, weapon before the team arrived. his strained repetition of “I can’t breathe.” We According to Manley, “The subject pro- watched a man dying for more than eight min- duced a handgun and began firing at the offi- utes; the duration itself has taken on symbolic cers.” But the GBI report says that although meaning. It was a murder, caught on camera, Sisay pointed a gun at the Snellville officers, to which we all became witnesses. he was not the first to shoot. Michele Pihera, The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was a public information officer for the Gwinnett the first agency to respond to a request from County PD, told the Journal-Constitution my contact for information about Sisay’s death. that “the patrol officer assigned to Gwinnett Brad Parks, the special agent in charge of the County decided this situation would be a GBI’s office of privacy and compliance, sent SWAT activation,” but the GBI reports that a form letter stating that the requested docu- it was Snellville police, not Gwinnett County ments were “not subject to dissemination until police, who requested assistance from the the investigation is concluded, which may also county SWAT team. Pihera also claimed include prosecutorial actions and the appeals that Sisay, after a single round from the

process.” The same response was used for team, “still continued to move around in- TOP: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: LARE SISAY / AP TOP: @KRISTENCLARKEJD / TWITTER; BOTTOM: LA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 25

side his vehicle.” She said that, using a SWAT detail from my exchange with Whitehead haunts vehicle, officers “were able to get up close and me. He said Sisay “raised a cell phone, pointing it determine that he was, in fact, injured.” In con- toward the officers, but they did not fire.” Even in trast, the GBI website says that “GCPD SWAT Whitehead’s version of events, Snellville PD offi- approached the vehicle and found the driver cers pointed their guns at Sisay after he pointed his unresponsive.” phone at them. I was reminded of the police kill- There are more discrepancies between the ing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento, after officers statement about the case published on the GBI’s confused his cell phone for a gun. website and a video of on-the-scene interviews with Manley and Pihera conducted by the isay was not committing a violent Journal-Constitution’s John Spink. The website crime when Snellville police began chas- says that Snellville PD officers “were preparing ing his vehicle. After he was run off the to use a non-lethal device to enter the vehi- road, his vehicle was stuck. Whitehead cle when the driver pointed a handgun at the verified that, during the short chase, only officers.” In Spink’s video, on the other hand, Sone other vehicle was in the vicinity. According to Manley says that they went through with the use of the Rayshard Brooks, all the relevant police authorities, a SWAT team—with less-lethal device, but it “did not have the effect that we who was killed by armored vehicles—was called in to deal with one man wanted.” The circumstances may well be different, but it Atlanta police in June. with a single handgun. No police officers were injured as is hard not to be reminded of Scott, who was accused of a result of the altercation. At the very least, this case ap- aggression and shot in the back. pears to be one in which a miniature army was dispatched When Sisay died, not only were the police his killers; to deal with one man over missing paperwork. they were the only witnesses. The public might see the According to The New York Times, Butch Sanders, video evidence only after the GBI completes its investiga- A miniature the Snellville city manager, claimed Sisay discharged tion. Even then, some information may remain redacted, army was his weapon five times. But Sanders told me that he “did as the law allows for the exemption clause to be applied to dispatched to not mention a specific number of shots.” He stopped any subsequent prosecution process as well. Yet my con- responding to my e-mails after I asked him to clarify versation with Manneh reminded me of what local author- deal with one whether he maintains that the Times misrepresented ities had been clear about from the start. He wondered man over the details of its reporter’s conversation with him. why, with the resources available to the Snellville and missing Whitehead, however, said that Sisay was in possession Gwinnett County police departments, more effort wasn’t of a five-chamber revolver and that all its shots had made to obtain Sisay’s surrender. Use of deadly force is paperwork. been discharged. A photo of the car, after it was taken meant to be restricted to cases of extreme necessity— in for evidence, shows white stickers placed next to circumstances unlikely to arise after a stop for a vehicle tag every bullet hole. There are dozens. If Sisay did shoot violation without some cause of escalation. Jaiteh pointed five times, the rest must have been fired by law enforce- out that Sisay did not present a threat to the community ment. Was all this necessary for one man who was not at the time of the chase, as there was little to no traffic. In presenting a danger to the public? his opinion, the police “should have called off the chase.” While I conducted my investigation into the killing of I reached out to the Snellville PD and the city man- The 1991 booking Sisay, a 27-year-old Black man named Rayshard Brooks ager for comment. Police Chief Roy Whitehead’s version photos of the four po- was killed by Atlanta police officers. They claimed to lice officers indicted of events mostly aligned with the GBI’s statement. Sisay’s for brutalizing Rodney have received a call from a local Wendy’s, where Brooks car was run off the road by way of two pit maneuvers King in a videotaped had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through line. because of a tag violation. Sisay at no point responded attack. From left: Sgt. Video of the killing, recorded by a bystander, was widely to police commands, including offers of medical aid. Stacey C. Koon, Offi- seen. In response, the Atlanta PD released body camera cer Theodore J. Bris- Whitehead told me that the Atlanta PD “only assisted eno, Officer Timothy footage of the killing, even though the case is under in- in trying to find out who owned the car.” Although I E. Wind, and Officer vestigation by the GBI. Under Georgia law, the choice is didn’t ask, the Snellville PD also told me officers “recov- Laurence Powell. the police department’s alone. ■ ered a gun, fraudulent ID, and a felony amount of marijuana and packaging ma- terial.” Whitehead concluded with the revelation that Sisay was “a convicted felon” and “prohibited from possessing a firearm.” Through my subsequent in- vestigation, I learned that Sisay had a marijuana possession charge from 2011 and a previous vehicle tag violation. Whitehead, with more direct access to the same information, chose to leave his description at “convicted felon.” The Snellville PD maintains that Si- say shot first, finally acknowledging the

TOP: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: LARE SISAY TOP: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: LARE SISAY / AP TOP: @KRISTENCLARKEJD / TWITTER; BOTTOM: LA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY existence of video as proof. A particular 26 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

The Nation. [email protected] EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER: Katrina vanden Heuvel EDITOR: D.D. ­Guttenplan PRESIDENT: Erin O’Mara EXECUTIVE DIGITAL EDITOR: Anna Hiatt (continued from page 2) as its race-and-​criminal-​justice LITERARY EDITOR: David Marcus leading incumbent Senator Ed adviser amid mass protests SENIOR EDITORS: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (on leave), Roane Carey, Emily Douglas, Markey among voters of color decrying police brutality and Shuja Haider (acting), Lizzy Ratner, Christopher Shay by double digits in every public abuse of power. Repeated stud­ MANAGING EDITOR: Rose D’Amora poll. We encourage The Nation ies have found that diversifying CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Robert Best COPY DIRECTOR: Jose Fidelino to come to Massachusetts and police forces does not signifi­ RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Miguel Salazar report on why. Perhaps it is cantly reduce rates of brutality COPY EDITOR: Rick Szykowny because Kennedy understands­ and killing. An officer’s race MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Francis Reynolds how deeply impacted Black does not absolve the police of ENGAGEMENT EDITOR: Annie Shields ASSOCIATE LITERARY EDITOR: Kevin Lozano lives are by erasers in the hands the disproportionate and inher­ ASSISTANT COPY EDITORS: Lisa Vandepaer, Haesun Kim of white allies. As he wrote ently violent power they have WEB COPY EDITOR/ PRODUCER: Sandy McCroskey in The Washington Post, “The over civilians. I don’t think that ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR: Ricky D’Ambrose reckoning going on in this there is any cop—brutal or DC CORRESPONDENT: Ken Klippenstein country today is a reflection of gentle, mean or nice, white or INTERNS: Emily Berch, Daniel Fernandez, Meerabelle Jesuthasan, Taliah Mancini, Rima Parikh, Jessica Suriano • Cindy Lee (Design), Sara Baig (Business) what the Rev. [Martin Luther] Black—who would be appro­ NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENTS: Jeet Heer, John Nichols, Joan Walsh King himself warned us of— priate for Tompkins’s position JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Elie Mystal that it is the silence of friends, on the Kennedy campaign. EDITOR AT LARGE: Chris Hayes not the words of enemies, that It is this imbalance of pow­ COLUMNISTS: Eric Alterman, Kali Holloway, Katha Pollitt ultimately protects American er that makes Tompkins’s role DEPARTMENTS: Art, Barry Schwabsky; Civil Rights, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, shackles.” The Nation owes its in the July 7 debate between Defense, Michael T. Klare; Environment, Mark Hertsgaard; Films, Stuart Klawans; Kennedy and Markey such an Legal Affairs, David Cole; Music, David Hajdu, Bijan Stephen; Poetry, Stephanie readers better. Burt, Carmen Giménez Smith; Sex, JoAnn Wypijewski; Sports, Dave Zirin; Strikes, Tony Brewer, boston egregious offense. Not only Jane McAlevey; United Nations, Barbara Crossette; Deadline Poet, Calvin Trillin Beth Chandler, roslindale does he work for the Ken­ CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Robert L. Borosage, Stephen F. Cohen, Mike Davis, Bob Eunice Charles, malden nedy campaign, but he also Dreyfuss, Susan Faludi, Thomas Ferguson, Melissa Harris-Perry, Doug Henwood, Jacques “Teddy” Chery, incarcerates the people who Naomi Klein, Sarah Leonard, Maria Margaronis, Michael Moore, Eyal Press, Joel medford asked the questions. Do I real­ Rogers, Karen Rothmyer, Robert Scheer, Herman Schwartz, Bruce Shapiro, Edward hyde park Sorel, Jon Wiener, Amy Wilentz Denella Clark, ly have to explain how that’s CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: James Carden, Zoë Carpenter, Wilfred Chan, Michelle Chen, Natacha Clerger, randolph undemocratic? Bryce Covert, Liza Featherstone, Laura Flanders, Julianne Hing, Joshua Holland, Lamar Cook, springfield I didn’t dig into Tompkins’s Greg Kaufmann, Stephen Kearse, Richard Kreitner, Julyssa Lopez, Dani McClain, Claudette Crouse, carlisle progressive bona fides because Marcus J. Moore, Ismail Muhammad, Erin Schwartz, Scott Sherman, Michel Denis, hyde park the piece wasn’t actually about Mychal Denzel Smith, Jennifer Wilson Theresa Gordon, holyoke EDITORIAL BOARD: Emily Bell, Deepak Bhargava, Kai Bird, Barbara Ehrenreich, him; it was about the cam­ Frances FitzGerald, Eric Foner, Greg Grandin, Lani Guinier, Richard Kim, Tito Jackson, boston paign. A writer can’t include Tony Kushner, Elinor Langer, Malia Lazu, Richard Lingeman, Deborah W. Meier, Jackie Jenkins-Scott, belmont everything about everyone. You Walter Mosley, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Victor Navasky, Pedro Antonio Noguera, Sandra King, sudbury didn’t mention that Warren Richard Parker, ­Elizabeth Pochoda, Rinku Sen, Waleed Shahid, Zephyr Teachout, Jean Louis, east boston Dorian T. Warren, Gary Younge has endorsed Markey in this Ryan McCollum, longmeadow ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, SPECIAL PROJECTS: Peter Rothberg race or that Kennedy endorsed VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS: Caitlin Graf Jynai McDonald, springfield then-incumbent Representative ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, CONSUMER MARKETING: Katelyn Belyus Gianna Mitchell, springfield Mike Capuano over Pressley in CONSUMER MARKETING MANAGER: Olga Nasalskaya J. Keith Motley, stoughton 2018. But I get it; every argu­ CIRCULATION FULFILLMENT MANAGER: Vivian Gómez-Morillo Kris Perez, brighton ment has a limited scope. E-MAIL MARKETING ASSISTANT: Will Herman Colette Phillips, brookline ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, DEVELOPMENT: Sarah Burke I apologize for any offense I DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE: Guia Marie Del Prado Colleen Richards Powell, caused. I didn’t state the race of DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT: Yubei Tang newton any politician mentioned in the ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, ADVERTISING: Suzette Cabildo Shirley Shillingford, boston piece—and that’s what these ADVERTISING ASSISTANT: Kit Gross Corey Thomas, newton people are to me: politicians. DIGITAL PRODUCTS MANAGER: Joshua Leeman Claudia Thompson, malden They are not my friends, and IT/PRODUCTION MANAGER: John Myers Linda Whitlock, newton PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Duane Stapp I would like for our legislators chestnut hill DIRECTOR OF FINANCE: Denise Heller Bennie Wiley, to be chosen based on policy, ASSISTANT MANAGER, ACCOUNTING: Alexandra Climciuc Fletcher Wiley, chestnut hill not personality. I just hope HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATOR: Lana Gilbert Hibbett Responds my home state agrees in the BUSINESS ADVISER: Teresa Stack September primary. PUBLISHER EMERITUS: Victor Navasky Yes, Tompkins is Black, and no, Maia Hibbett LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: E-mail to [email protected] (300-word limit). Please do not send I did not pat the Kennedy cam­ new york attachments. Letters are subject to editing for reasons of space and clarity. paign on the back for having SUBMISSIONS: Go to TheNation.com/submission-guidelines for the query form. the basic common sense not to Comment drawn from our website Each issue is also made available at TheNation.com. [email protected] appoint a white police officer Please do not send attachments JULIAN BOND (LEFT) AND BAYARD RUSTIN AT THE 1968 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION IN CHICAGO (BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES) I for atClaflin Universityandhaswritten history Robert Greene IIis anassistantprofessorof both retrospectionaboutthecivil rights end ofthedecade.Itwasamoment of where Black America found itself at the the magazinewantedtotake stockof and thewarinVietnam stillraging, away fromputtingamanonthemoon With theUnitedStatesmereweeks Jacobin Georgia HouseofRepresentatives. had recentlybeenreelectedtothe tivist and civil rights leader who a profileofJulianBond,theac n May of 1969, B ooks & the Arts & Books , In TheseTimes Ebony IN THEFIREOFACTIVISM magazine ran , and Dissent Julian Bond’slifeinpoliticsandprotest . - of howfarthe movement hadchanged earlier inthe decade, wasameasure as BayardRustin putitinanarticle Bond’s shift“fromprotest topolitics,” gling toeffectchangefrom within it. outside, tobecomeapolitician strug gling againstabrokensystem fromthe it meantforaradicalstalwart, strug Julian Bondlookstired.” Llorens wrote, “Attractive cat that he is, a decade,anditshowed. for freedomandjusticemorethan politics. Yet Bondhadbeen fighting the futureheldforAfricanAmerican movement andexcitementaboutwhat The profilesoughttoexamine what by ROBERT

GREENE Ebony

’s David II

- - fears ofsomany AfricanAmericansin pillars thatheld uptheaspirationsand Bond’s newrole.Thesewere thesame pride andambivalencethatsupported moved ontodiscussthetwin pillarsof coalition startedtounravel, Llorens in theDemocraticPartyasitsNew Deal colleges, andhisdeepeninginvolvement state representative,hisspeaking toursat had togo. how muchfurtherthenationasawhole Reconstruction wasalsoameasureof Georgia legislaturegenerationsafter of thefirstBlackpeopletoservein Southern society. ThatBondwasone After describingBond’s workasa 28 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 the immediate aftermath of the civil rights Race Man to his involvement in the creation of the movement. As Llorens wrote, “Julian Bond, Selected Works, 1960–2015 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com- as a politician, represents hope for the By Julian Bond mittee. Bond immediately understood the freedom of black people,” but it was a hope Edited by Michael G. Long significance of SNCC and the role that “entirely dependent upon the possibility City Lights Publishers. 304 pp. $22.95 students could play in expanding the civil that white people are capable of a humane rights movement. The younger generation and non-racist America.” For Llorens, this and doggedly to establish solid connections of Black Americans was ready to use new hope was real and somewhat tangible. But between the black civil rights movement tactics to fight for the kind of social change as he noted at the end of the passage, it de- and the many progressive movements it their parents and grandparents sought pended on a radical change in the thought sometimes un­predict­ably inspired.” in previous eras. Reflecting on the rise and action of white Americans—something of these new organizations, Bond wrote, that in 1969 still appeared far off because ulian Bond was born in 1940 in “The struggle for human rights is a con- of a continuation of the “backlash politics” Nashville. His father, Horace Mann stant fight, and one which the students do that had defined American political, so- Bond, was the first president of Fort not plan to relinquish until full equality is cial, cultural, and intellectual discourse ever Valley State University in Geor- won for all men.” since Reconstruction. gia and later became the first Black Against the backdrop of African nations That mix of felt urgency and anxious Jpresident of Lincoln University in Penn- declaring their independence abroad and uncertainty about how much change could sylvania, both historically Black institu- civil rights agitation growing at home, be made in American society would define tions. While serving as a college president, 1960 saw a wave of sit-ins, starting in Bond’s efforts for much of his career. His Horace Bond participated in the intel- Greensboro, N.C. Four students at North time in office, like his time as an activ- lectual ferment of the World War II and Carolina A&T, a Black college, decided to ist, would be characterized by both his early Cold War years. He did considerable stage a sit-in, adopting the tactics of non- hopes for greater social equality and the research to support the NAACP’s argu- violent direct action already being used by continuing need to fight for such change ments in the landmark Brown v. Board of various civil rights organizations. Word of when these hopes were too often thwarted. Education case of 1954 and served as a the sit-ins spread across the South, spur- This tension was central to nearly all of his prominent civil rights advocate during the ring even more sit-ins as well as Bond’s par- writing, much of which is now collected in period. The elder Bond’s participation in ticipation in Atlanta. “Why don’t we make a new book, Race Man, edited by the histo- the rarefied world of African American it happen here?” Lonnie King said to Bond rian Michael G. Long. educators and intellectuals meant that his in February 1960. That brief conversation, Race Man captures the full output of son was exposed to many of the leaders of between two young men who yearned to be Bond’s long and distinguished career, first Black America from an early age. A famous part of the great moral and political issue of as an activist with the Student Nonvio- image of Julian Bond as a young boy, for their age, sparked Bond’s lifelong service to lent Coordinating Committee, then as a example, shows him side by side with the the movement. member of the Georgia legislature (in the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson. Bond participated in the sit-ins in At- House and later in the Senate), then as a The photograph itself is a testament to the lanta that year and in a whirlwind series traveling academic who taught about his intergenerational links between the differ- of campaigns across the South as the com- experiences in the social upheavals of the ent civil rights cohorts. munications director of SNCC. Leaving ’60s, and finally as a writer and aging lion Yet Bond’s early exposure to the intel- Morehouse to dedicate himself to this work of the civil rights movement still fighting lectual creativity and political activism of full-time, Bond, like many other young to hold on to the ideals of his youth. Along Black America would hardly shield him Black Americans, accepted that he would the way, the book also makes clear a set of from the racism and violence spawned by have to relinquish the comforts of the themes and quandaries that have troubled white supremacy. In the Jim Crow South, college campus and risk life and limb in so much of the history of the American Bond saw racism and discrimination all the fire of activism. At this time, he began left: What is lost in the movement from around him—a radicalizing experience that to think in broader terms about the idea protest to politics? How can lasting change never left him, even after he and his family of human rights, looking beyond Ameri- be achieved in the face of unsatisfying com- moved to Pennsylvania when his father ca’s shores to recognize the violence and promise? How can radicals and activists became the head of Lincoln University. oppression that the country inflicted on carry the torch of emancipation and equal- Bond’s growing politicization throughout various peoples of color elsewhere—an ity in an age in which both major parties the ’50s was only deepened by his years at internationalism that he would soon marry and many voters appear, at best, apathetic the George School, a prep school founded to his domestic egalitarianism. to meaningful change and, at worst, down- by Quakers, where he began to develop his By the mid-’60s, after five years of right hostile to it? long-term fascination with pacifism. working with SNCC, Bond began to grow Bond’s years as an activist also offer a In 1957, Bond returned to Georgia to frustrated. While he recognized the chang- guide through the intellectual and political attend Morehouse College. Long a hotbed ing nature of struggle, he had always imag- history of the left in the second half of the of Black struggle and uplift, the school ined SNCC as an organization that would 20th century. As Long argues in his intro- helped launch his career in civil rights embrace everyone, and he became worried duction, Bond’s importance to the history activism. He met Martin Luther King Jr. about its increasingly separatist politics. of the United States and the American in 1960 while at Morehouse, and that year “I didn’t like the direction it seemed to be left in particular is nearly impossible to he cofounded, with fellow student Lon- taking,” he recalled, especially as SNCC overestimate today. Very few Americans, nie King, the Committee on the Appeal embraced the idea of becoming an exclu- he writes, “had sought more consistently for Human Rights, which eventually led sively Black organization. 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Despite Bond’s ambivalence about victims of poverty, apt to forget the water ble connection between black Africa and SNCC’s separatist turn, the organization removed or the street repaired.” black America,” he argued in 1978 while continued to exert a major influence on his participating in a protest against a Davis life, especially with its anti-imperialist pol- he essays in Race Man nicely illustrate Cup match between the United States and itics in the middle of the decade. SNCC this trajectory from college activist South Africa in Nashville. This was not denounced the Vietnam War, and Bond to elected official (and beyond). Bro- a coincidence: After all, Bond was also in grew increasingly active in anti-war ef- ken into 10 sections, the book traces pursuit of an equality far greater than the forts. He also began to consider running Bond’s political formation through- federal government was willing to offer, for office. In early 1965, Rustin made outT these periods of his life. The problems and the civil rights liberalism that their his appeal to civil rights activists to turn of white supremacy, capitalism, imperial- protest spawned was, in their view, only “from protest to politics,” arguing that ism, and misogyny were his fights through- the beginning, not the end point. Likewise, the problems they would continue to face, out, even if they all changed shape. From Bond, who hewed steadfastly to pacifism even after the passage of the Civil Rights the struggle against Jim Crow to the battle early in his public life, also began to doubt, and Voting Rights acts, required more for LGBTQ rights, he remained convinced with his more radical colleagues, its ef- than demonstrations. By then, Bond was that it was necessary to agitate on behalf of ficacy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, preparing a run for the Georgia House the powerless outside the halls of power, and while he lauded the achievements of of Representatives, and he was joined by but as he got older, he became convinced the sit-ins, he came to recognize the clear the many different strands of the Black one had to do it from inside them as well. limits of early civil rights activism. Indeed, freedom struggle—the mainstream civil Whether as an activist struggling for vot- that was one of the reasons he turned to rights movement, Black nationalists, and ing rights or as a politician in the Georgia electoral politics. the growing number of African Americans legislature redrawing district boundaries, Bond’s ambivalence about the growing active in the Democratic Party—that were Bond insisted that only through a combi- radicalism of SNCC was also rooted in also making the move. nation of movements and policy could his desire for more concrete action. Inti- After his election, Bond social change be achieved. mately aware of the organization’s internal found himself at a curious in- Bond’s essays capture discord, he concluded that it had become tersection of local, national, the intellectual world that mired at times in what he called “too much and international politics inspired him and that he democracy” and a lack of decision-making when the state House re- helped inspire in turn. by its leaders. He did not appear to ques- fused to seat him because Though dedicated to tion SNCC’s democratic goals, but he felt he had endorsed SNCC’s egalitarian politics, he that by 1967 its leadership was no longer anti-war​ stance. SNCC, often found himself in taking responsibility for the group’s deci- Martin Luther King Jr., heated debate with other sions, in terms of both immediate tactics and other activists rallied to elements of the left. This and long-term strategies. defend Bond’s right to repre- was especially true in the late One policy change in particular frus- sent his constituency in Atlanta. ’60s, as the hope of nonviolent trated him: the separatism that no longer Eventually the Supreme Court ruled, civil disobedience peacefully chang- sought to build a multiracial membership 9–0, in Bond v. Floyd that his right to free ing American society began to buckle un- in SNCC. Bond opposed this separatism speech had been violated by the state der the strain of Vietnam, the half-hearted on principle as well as for practical rea- House’s vote to deny him a seat. War on Poverty, and the ever-present​ spec- sons, writing in 1967 that it would lead After Bond became a legislator, he ter of white backlash. The rise of the Black to “near unanimous condemnation” and found that more of his peers were fol- power movement offered Bond and other cause SNCC activists to narrow the scope lowing in his footsteps. People like John civil rights activists a unique challenge: of their activities, “effectively contained by Lewis, Marion Barry, and Jim Clyburn, af- They embraced many key components of their own unwillingness to trust the ‘out- ter years in the streets demanding change, this more radical turn but also struggled to side world.’” For Bond, part of the lesson were now running for office as they sought find their way among its constituency, one of the ’60s was that activism alone was not to secure and extend the gains they had that increasingly seemed to view the gains enough; one had to have a programmatic helped win. It seemed the logical next step, they had won as limited and incomplete. plan of action for both grassroots organiz- even if the change that could be achieved Of course, in many ways those gains ing and building political power in the face in state legislatures sometimes appeared were incomplete, and reading Bond’s re- of rampant white backlash. small compared with what could be done sponse to his more radical contemporaries, at the federal level. And yet, as Llorens one can see that he might have missed nce in office, that was exactly what wrote in Ebony, that kind of work mattered how their militant spirit—not to mention Bond attempted to do. He wanted to as well: Basic services like streetlights, gar- their ability to continue to find common find a way around the dead end that bage removal, sewage, repairing roads, and cause with social movements all over the movement politics appeared to face draining water from flooded basements world—helped, in the long run, to solidify in the late ’60s and the political weak- were “‘some of the things we need’ as Ju- the reforms he and his colleagues had won. Onesses of white liberal complacency in the lian sees it, and he takes pride in being able An example of this is seen in his writings early ’70s. While serving in the Georgia leg- to use his political weight to deliver them. about South Africa and the growing move- islature, he amassed a national reputation, ‘Those are things my constituents weren’t ment to divest from the apartheid state, and by 1972, he began contributing serious always able to get in the past,’ he says. Nor in which Bond sounded far more like his ideas to the political ferment of that era. are most of his constituents, who…are more radical peers. “There is an insepara- Bond participated in the discussions August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 31 across the South that led to the 1972 concerning the direction of the Democratic policy mirrored a broader awareness among National Black Political Convention in Party and whether it has taken generations Black Americans of the need to get more Gary, Ind. His criticism of both the Amer- of Black voters for granted. involved in global affairs. It was also why ican left and mainstream liberalism grew there were sometimes moments of fierce more pointed as the decade progressed, ne of the advantages of Race Man friction, as displayed in the arguments when he repeatedly expressed his deep is that instead of shuffling Bond’s Bond had in the ’70s with the growing ambivalence—if not outright hostility—​ writings together by theme, Long environmental movement. Pleading with toward the presidential campaign and then presents them in chronological or- its champions to look past a narrow politics presidency of former Georgia governor der so we can chart Bond’s evolution of conservation and local resistance, he Jimmy Carter. “Southern Baptists are fond Oas well as his consistency. We can see his insisted, much like climate change activists of saying that ‘prayer changes things,’” thinking change over time on a wide va- today, that “environmental pollution is only Bond wrote. “Jimmy Carter’s religiosity riety of topics—sometimes dramatically— a symptom of the moral and political pol- has certainly had that effect on him, in and while we can see the shifts in his lution at its core…. Long before industrial fact has changed him from left to right to tactics and strategies, we also see just how filth fouled the rivers, lakes, and air of this center so many times that converts to the consistent his principles remained. How- continent, the bitter salt of slaves’ sweat and Carter cause ought to take a cue from an ever, the book’s chronological structure tears soured the [once] fertile soil and the earlier apostle, Thomas, who doubted.” slightly overdetermines Bond’s changes: blood of noble red men soaked the fields In the end, Bond was one of the few main- We lose sight of the complicated nature of and plains.” stream Black civil rights activists turned the broader civil rights and Black power Bond’s insistence that the environmen- politicians who refused to back Carter movements, and at times it can be difficult tal movement’s rhetoric about a ticking during his 1976 run. to situate his arguments in the context of “population bomb” was equally misguid- For Bond, Carter’s candidacy—as well national politics and international tumult. ed anticipated the birth of a more di- as his backing by so many prominent Afri- From almost the outset of his career, Bond verse and robust movement that sought can Americans—was less a betrayal than a was writing from within the milieu of a to think more systemically about envi- reminder of how weak the Black vote was Black freedom movement that inspired ronmental problems. The growth of the as a bloc within or, if need be, outside the and was inspired by other movements in environmental justice movement in the Democratic Party. “American politics has pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality ’70s and ’80s—a Blacker, poorer relative of always been group politics,” Bond wrote elsewhere in the world. the better-known​ movement that spawned in 1977, during the first year of Carter’s This is why Bond’s seamless movement Earth Day in 1970—ameliorated Bond’s Nation Summer 20.qxp_Layout 1 7/29/20 3:58 PM Page 1 administration, and Black movements and from domestic campaigns to international fears by tapping into long-held concerns politicians needed to embrace this fact and form a cohesive electoral faction. Bond’s arguments mirrored those put forth a decade earlier in the book Black new from Power by Charles V. Hamilton and the fu- AMERICAN ture Kwame Ture about the necessity for LIBRARY independent political action, now applied to electoral politics. And he was not wrong, OF WOMEN’S either. During Reconstruction, Southern Black men formed the backbone of the AMERICA Republican Party below the Mason-Dixon SUFFRAGE Line and thus wielded considerable power. During the New Deal era, both major par- ties sought Black voters while carefully try- Voices from the Long Struggle ing to not antagonize pro-segregation white Southerners. In the ’70s, with the New for the Vote 1776–1965 Right on the rise and liberalism—as well as the broader ideas of social democracy— Susan Ware, editor under threat across the Western world, 791 pp. + 16 pp. insert $40.00 cloth Bond believed it was more urgent than ever // for Black Americans to acquire sustained political power. “The sooner we realize the “Amid the flood of books marking difference between elections and governing, the centennial of women’s suffrage, this the better able we’ll be to form ourselves anthology stands out for its scope and authority.” into a political bloc,” he wrote. This came, ironically, after Bond argued —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) in 1972 that “coalition politics always weak- ens at least one partner in the coalition rath- er than strengthens both partners” (a fear Library of America ★★★★ Hamilton and Ture also voiced). Such ques- www.loa.org Distributed by Penguin Random House, Inc. tions, of course, are still with us, especially 32 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 by Black Americans and others about the in the ivory tower, far removed from the whispered about in Atlanta and were blown relationships between racism, land owner- everyday needs of working people. wide open when Lewis challenged him to ship, and environmental waste. This more a drug test. “I love Julian like a brother,” sophisticated environmentalism also drew y the late ’70s and early ’80s, Bond Lewis said in a 1990 profile of the two men Bond into its movement, and he got arrest- had become, for many Americans, an in Atlanta magazine. “But he fumbled the ed in 2013 at the White House while pro- avatar of the civil rights movement ball. He had unbelievable opportunities. He testing the Keystone XL pipeline alongside and its legacy. He lent his voice to just didn’t take advantage.” members of the Sierra Club and in defiance the groundbreaking miniseries Eyes Part of what hurt Bond’s campaign, as The of the nation’s first Black president. Bon the Prize, serving as a one-man Greek New York Times pointed out after his defeat, Bond was likewise concerned about a chorus for the now-iconic struggle. He was the concern that his “thousands of speak- growing disconnect between activists and hosted an early episode of Saturday Night ing engagements and television appearances ordinary people in the 1970s. As Black Live, cementing his status as a national pub- elsewhere” hampered his ability to be an power gave way to a Black liberalism safe- lic figure. But there was an increasing sense effective voice in the Georgia Senate. That ly ensconced in the Democratic Party, he that Bond had failed to live up to his early lost him the trust and goodwill he needed to continued to wonder if activists had lost promise on the political stage and that as his win what turned out to be his toughest—and their way. “It suggests that the supposed celebrity grew, so did his distance from his final—political campaign. After the election, and alleged security of the college campus is constituents in Georgia. In a bruising 1986 Bond accepted teaching positions at several not the proper place from which to engage race for the US House of Representatives distinguished institutions, including Harvard in social criticism of people who seldom see that pitted him against his friend and col- and American University, and he reflected on any book but the Bible from year to year,” league from the civil rights movement John the charge that he had failed to live up to his he warned, critiquing what he saw as an Lewis, Bond was criticized for having lost potential as the man who could have been the activism that had become too comfortable his way. Rumors that he used drugs were nation’s first Black vice president, perhaps even its first Black president. “I can’t do what other people want me to do,” he said. “I’m absolutely content and fulfilled right now The Love Poems of Virginia [teaching and lecturing]. It’s enough for me. I’m confused as to why it’s not enough for Now the love poems that aren’t about being devoured anyone else.” Are about being executed. Bond remained active in left political cir- One can see the naturalness cles for the rest of his life, and he continued to consider how one could be radical and Of the line, how it extends, how it was thought yet work within the system, sounding the Into the holes of the future by an unruly wish alarm during George W. Bush’s and Barack Under pressure. Obama’s presidencies on a range of issues, especially the erosion of voting rights and Which is to say: You do not want the need to fight for LGBTQ rights. To share a language, lover. It is difficult to imagine a thorough his- tory of the American left after 1960 that You want to do something. doesn’t include Bond and the many roles You want to constitute an enemy. he played: as a communications director for You want to organize. You want SNCC, as a state legislator for 20 years, as To learn. You want to work. the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a position he assumed in 1971), as the voice that millions of people associated This punctured tire, the chairs with the civil rights movement thanks to Eyes Falling apart, the de-articulated toys around us. on the Prize, and as an elder statesman of the The fixable is here, now, slow, waiting, movement before his death in 2015. His bal- Violent and curled ancing act between radicalism and reform, On the tongue of an impossible language. between movements and party politics, still And when you kiss me you say see speaks to the divides and the cohesiveness of the left. Fighting for freedom in the streets, in the classrooms, and in the halls of power We don’t need it. We don’t need any of it. Not was all part of Bond’s tool kit. Reading his This tired love, not someone else’s future. essays, we are reminded that the challenges Not another poem about the lover’s body, however of forging a principled yet practical path Bloused in coastal light or tenderly parted forward are nothing new—and that Bond is someone who might serve as a guide in our Into new forms. The songs that matter never stay written own uncertain times. We cannot be afraid of Down when there are plantations to burn— difficult debates or of changing tactics when necessary. Julian Bond proved that, time and SCOTT CHALLENER time again. ■ August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 33

trolling and harassment in digital commu- nities built with utopian aims, the rise and fall of Internet microcelebrities, and the ho- mogenization of user experience on a World Wide Web that has swelled ever vaster (from one website for roughly every 9,000 users in the mid-’90s to about one for every three today, according to McNeil). The result is a fast-paced and sometimes excursive chronicle of online communities and identities that is less interested, for example, in detailing the enormous infra- structure required to take over global CD production than in examining how it felt to come of age on AOL. It’s a story that will be broadly recognizable to many but that, by prioritizing the means by which users have shaped and manipulated their platforms, occasionally passes over the grimmer and more opaque policy decisions and business strategies that allow platforms to shape and manipulate their users.

cNeil has had a hand in much of the better critical Internet writ- ing of the past decade. Her career has seen her involved with many prominent Internet-focused publi- THE USER ALWAYS LOSES Mcations and research groups, from the New How did the Internet get so bad? Museum’s Rhizome, where she was an editor in the early 2010s, to New York’s Eyebeam by LISA BORST Art + Technology Center and the School for Poetic Computation, an artist-run coding n the mid-1990s, as part of a carpet-​ perspective—that of the everyday surfers, and design institute. The computer, she bombing campaign to market the still posters, and especially the eponymous lurk- writes, is “where I grew up.” nascent World Wide Web to poten- ers who have been witness to the Internet’s The chronology sketched in Lurking— tial consumers, America Online offered development over time, even if they haven’t beginning in the mid-’90s, when the Inter- free dial-up Internet trials and mailed participated in guiding it. What interests net became accessible to a critical mass of ICDs containing software to several mil- McNeil is the shifting experiences of daily Americans—is more or less coterminous lion Americans. Reportedly, half the CDs online life for these users, not the devel- with McNeil’s biography, and some of the in the world at one point were branded with opers, engineers, and CEOs whose hagi- strongest parts of the book are written as the AOL logo. For several weeks in 1998, ographies have until recently dominated memoir. She writes movingly and stylishly the company apparently used the entirety of the landscape of trade tech writing. In this of the friendships she forged online as a the earth’s CD manufacturing power. way, her book is structured as a kind of peo- teenager in chat rooms devoted to riot grrrl The ad blitz was an astonishing, almost ple’s history of the Internet, a bottom-up zines (always under a screen name: “Why on unbelievable feat of logistics, and it set the chronicle of online expression and digital earth would I be myself online—a person I stage for the Internet as we know it today— environments that prioritizes the textures hated?”) and with lucid humor, then genu- that is, as one of history’s most expensive, and cultures of the Internet’s demos. It’s a ine anger, about her experiences with online extractive, and manipulative advertising ap- project rooted in a sense of optimism about harassment. But occasionally her intimacy paratuses, dominated by a shrinking hand- the power of the user against the sort of with the material leads Lurking to read less ful of giant platforms. The story is one of massive corporate might on display in AOL’s like a diverse and polyphonous people’s his- the countless pieces of Internet history campaign. “Infrastructure is power, but it is tory and more like a single person’s history, breezily covered in Joanne McNeil’s new not the law,” McNeil writes, “which means extrapolated—a warm and often firsthand book, Lurking: How a Person Became a User, there is still an opportunity for users—as account of three decades of life online that, a conversational and idiosyncratic account individuals and collectives, and working viewed from a distance, might nevertheless of the past 30 years of online life that re- with government bodies—to hold platforms be considered enormously depressing. The minds us that the Internet didn’t have to accountable.” story of the Internet since the mid-’90s is, become what it is today. Alongside this history, Lurking provides of course, also one of hyperconsolidation, Lurking is written from a layperson’s richly descriptive narratives of the more increasingly nightmarish privacy violations, familiar and quotidian dramas that generate and a brutal competition for clicks. Be- Lisa Borst lives in New York and works at n+1. these platforms’ content: the emergence of tween its personal moments, McNeil’s book 34 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 focuses on the centralization and market Lurking though Lurking is studded with perceptive dominance of a diminishingly few social How a Person Became a User observations about our shifting behavioral media platforms, over a period when “the By Joanne McNeil and emotional relationships with platforms, dream of cyberspace—strangers, strange- MCD. 304 pp. $28 it’s less interested in addressing the policy ness, anonymity, and spontaneity—lost out decisions and funding streams that quietly to order, advertising, surveillance, and cut- hypercapitalist, and a failure”; 4chan is “re- guide these changes. Google is, as McNeil throat corporatism.” silient in its regressiveness.” Of Friendster, writes, “the intermediary between my ideas In her studies of AOL, Friendster, Tum- she writes, “Those of us who were once and action forward, the glue between my blr, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, as xSonicYouthx and Marathon83 were recast questions and answers, a placeholder for well as the less explicitly social (though as John S and Katie L (but not yet John thoughts and a way to sort my desires.” But still theoretically user-oriented) Google Smith and Katie Lee)”—a startlingly con- it’s also an advertising, machine-learning, and Wikipedia, McNeil takes a diachronic cise one-sentence history of compulsory and data-collection regime, with material approach, surveying changes in user be- nonanonymity told via usernames, even if incentives for addressing it as an advice havior over time. Often she seems to be it’s hardly news to anyone who’s been online column rather than an algorithm. after a sort of gestalt principle of platforms: longer than a few years. “When users are scapegoated, Silicon What historical conditions did the col- A chapter on search engines similarly Valley is left off the hook,” McNeil writes lective voice of Myspace articulate? Why notes a phenomenon that seemed intuitive- in a passage on disinformation campaigns did blogging take off as a shared response ly familiar, though I’d never seen it named on Twitter. We might read this conclusion to the US invasion of Iraq? (When “the before. “Search strings used to be phrased as the driving premise of her book. By Internet became an ideal valve to release like ingredients: ‘revolution AND french analyzing user behavior as the labor—the opinions,” she writes, “who didn’t have an OR russian NOT american,’” McNeil “content and dis-content”—of real people, opinion on the Iraq war?”) What weirder writes. But in the past two decades, the lan- Lurking aims, fundamentally, to make a and more regional Internet communities guage and tone of our search queries have case against tech companies’ consistent and communication habits were lost in the become more baroque and confessional. “contempt for outsiders—and users.” But shift to broadband service? “When I search for information now, I feel a reader may be left wondering wheth- McNeil is a sharp reader and critic, and like I should add ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to er a primarily descriptive and personal, many of her observations assume the form every request. There is no way around it, bottom-up account can put Silicon Valley of a rhetorical analysis or notes on trends in talking to the Google search bar like a hu- on the hook, either. A chapter on AOL and user experience. She’s great with epithets, man generates more relevant results.” This anonymity online, for instance, focuses and her descriptions of the voices and affects feels anecdotally true; I’ve certainly gotten chiefly on the kinds of communities the that have emerged from platform to plat- into the habit of phrasing my searches, as platform enabled; it’s clouded with nos- form are by turns damning and sympathetic. McNeil notes, along the lines of “‘how do talgic recollections of message boards and Twitter, with its “distributed punditry,” is i download a printer driver for mac’ rather dead channels, fond roasts of AOL users as “jangly and feral”; AOL was “pedestrian, than ‘download printer driver mac.’” Al- the “fanny-pack masses, an invasion of the

Status Update

I am safe. I am here! I’ve survived the shooting, a bat hovering over the baby in the bassinet. bombing, hurricane, flood of numbers streaming We must love ourselves where we lie! I am safe

across a screen in Silicon Valley where some kid on the coast, in a church, hung out to dry. codes We are safe. All’s well, we buzz from our train I am safe in the field, salt-parched, gut-drunk,

seats, offices, stalls; the bills all canceled, the old overdue to call home. I am safe, my loved one, debts wiped clean. I shall go gently into that good my sweet, dear stranger. Is anyplace lovelier

night on a Tuesday in spring surrounded by books than this nothingness? Here, there is no bottom and those I love, a smile bright as silver spread to the well, no arsenic, no chair with straps and wires

across my face. I am safe—what’s dangerous is to rattle the fillings in our teeth. There’s no huntsman, elsewhere!, breathing down someone else’s neck, no one deranged, our delicate watches never running August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 35 squares.” This is a company that, in 2006, her writing, in fact, echoes the formal plea- cNeil ends Lurking with a “longing intentionally leaked the partly anonymized sures and occasional frustrations of prose for an Internet that is better, for search terms of 650,000 Americans in a styles native to the Internet. Recalling her Internet communities that haven’t privacy breach that swiftly led to the public earliest use of the Web amid the “provoca- come into being yet, certainly not exposure of a number of users based on tive optimism” of mid-’90s techno-utopian on a mass scale, and even then, their identifying (and often deeply strange) rhetoric, she writes, “Information super- Mnothing lasting.” Life online, her book re- search histories. highway or cyberspace, I remember it like minds us, used to be a little more capa- Although that’s exactly the kind of de­ an intense dream; my feelings come before cious and strange. The smaller and more human­izing­ corporate history behind the the details, tone and emotions before coher- user-driven Internet communities of the story of how a person became a user, we ence.” It’s a potent, tweet-length account past—the websites and services that “could don’t hear about it in Lurking. Instead we get of the hours lost to scrolling—and a fitting not compete with the speed and price points studies of users’ changing search habits, description for a book in which tone can of corporate broadband” after the dot-com analyses that occasionally exaggerate the occasionally outpace coherence. collapse—might offer a model for a more role of users in creating those habits. Despite Lurking’s attentiveness to affect democratic and less revenue-driven Internet and user experiences, the book is oddly in the future. She sees an imperfect example y the end of Lurking, we’re in the organized. Associative and loping, it almost of one such community in Wikipedia, a present, and McNeil has hit an angry, mirrors the way one experiences the In- platform that remains “global and open, polemical stride. “In this book I have ternet. Each of its seven chapter titles ad- transactional and pluralistic, chaotic and tried to maintain a consistent tone of dresses a specific concern (like “Search,” rule-based, anonymous apart from user- criticism that is not openly combat- “Anonymity,” and “Sharing”), but each names and IP addresses,” and anachronis- Bive,” she writes, “less ‘this is wrong’ than chapter departs quickly from its nominal tically ungoverned by the market logic of ‘isn’t it interesting how wrong this is,’ but I mission, sometimes getting bogged down other websites its size. The whole platform, have found it next to impossible to maintain in unwieldy case studies that range from McNeil writes, can seem like a “nineties this distance when it comes to the topic of original reporting and testimonials (an in- cyberspace holdover,” and an Internet that Facebook. I hate it…. The company is one terview with a Google Street View driver, scaled up some of Wikipedia’s ethos would of the biggest mistakes in modern history, a a profile of a Wikipedia editor) to summa- share qualities with the pre-broadband, digital cesspool that, while calamitous when ries of canonical media studies like Julian pre-duopoly Internet that existed when it fails, is at its most dangerous when it Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace.” Rapidly Lurking begins: more local, less obligatory, works as intended. Facebook is an ant farm expanding and contracting in scope and less competitive and commercial. of humanity.” linked by meandering transitions, the book Is such a vision achievable anytime soon? An ant farm of humanity! This is McNeil has a flavor of disorganization that will feel Lurking was published in late February, a in her best and most persuasive mode—as familiar to those of us who have spent many few weeks before the era of social distancing colloquial and triumphantly invective as a hours browsing aimlessly: digressive, curi- transformed the Internet from the tool and blog post but with better research. Much of ous, sometimes a little haphazard. distraction that McNeil describes (“a hell

out of time, the barbs clasped to the dandelion’s body repair, its courthouse whose inner chamber’s skull forever, the dogs content on their leads until— enclosed by a labyrinth of halls that guards the room

Disaster strikes. We reenter our watery bodies, holding a pock-marked metallic stone—the meteor their soft bones, tap the pale dull screen to locked away in its case of glass, as if to suggest,

whisper I’m safe. In my little town, with my white night as if to say without really saying, that though we’re dead gown and box of sleeping pills; in my county men walking, there’s nothing to fear, the air is clear,

that’s real and true with its clothespins and postman, that one dark day the sky fell well and good behind us. its poisonous tree, its constituents all over the map, SHARA LESSLEY its middle-class spoils, cold grocery aisles, its toll gate nobody wants to pay, its trailer park and auto- 36 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020 that is fun”) into the very precondition for sociality and solidarity: In an era of quar- antine, the Internet became a vital site for community. Reread Lurking while confined to one’s home, and McNeil’s vision for a dif- ferent and better Internet takes on a new sa- lience. In the first weeks of the pandemic, it sometimes seemed the Internet had gotten a little weirder—more frantic and more jit- tery, certainly, but with occasional glimpses of the possibility for something different and less consolidated. Neighborhood-based​ mutual aid efforts emerged or strengthened, gaining traction on surprising platforms like the workplace messaging app Slack. Blogging enjoyed a bit of a renaissance as well, perhaps because, like the Iraq War, the pandemic and its mismanagement invite opinions from everyone. Scrolling through Twitter this spring, I remembered McNeil’s invocation of tech journalism circa the plat- form’s launch. “Early criticism of Twitter could be distilled to a single (ironically tweetlike) sentence: ‘No one cares what you had for breakfast,’” she writes. (“It was always breakfast,” she adds. “Never din- ner, never snacks.”) I’ve never seen more tweets about breakfast than I did in the first weeks of lockdown—until suddenly, instead of breakfast, there were photos from uprisings, videos of police brutality, chains of donation receipts to bail funds. Since the beginning of the protests in response to George Floyd’s murder, the user-driven parts of the Internet have looked and felt alive in a whole other way: a joyful, mourn- ful, militant, redistributive mobilization of for-profit platforms to imagine something else. I can’t stop looking at it. The pandemic, of course, illuminated the consequences of the digital divide. The Internet access needed to trawl Twitter all day—or to complete one’s newly remote FUNK FOR THE FUTURE work duties or school classes—is a resource Nick Hakim’s Will This Make Me Good that’s nowhere near evenly distributed, as long as broadband continues to be con- by MARCUS J. MOORE trolled by one or two conglomerates across most of the country. hen Nick Hakim sings, it’s as Where Will We Go, his sound was more tra- At its most persuasive, McNeil’s book re- if he were talking to you and ditional, veering toward straightforward minds us that life online, structured from the no one else. There’s a certain R&B cuts about heartbreak, sensuality, beginning by private interests, only height- comfort to his music, and across and romance. Three years later, on the ens the inequalities of life off-line. A bet- two EPs and his first full-length LP Green Twins, his music took on a ter and more equitable Internet would, like album,W his songs impart the feeling of an psychedelic aura. “Roller Skates,” “Miss Lurking, begin with the premise that every intimate, closed-door conversation with a Chew,” and “Slowly” borrowed the sounds user is a person, something our existing plat- dear friend. of ’70s soul, down to the analog cassette forms have consistently failed to do. The past In his earlier work, like the 2014 EP hiss. In the best way, Green Twins played few months have only made it clearer that like a warped vinyl record you’d find in a market-based solutions can’t build the better Marcus J. Moore is a contributing writer for The cardboard box in your parents’ house or and fairer health care or justice systems we Nation and the author of the forthcoming book evoked that forgotten classic you snagged badly need. They won’t build the healthier The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar from a stoop sale because the cover looked and fairer Internet we deserve, either. ■ Ignited the Soul of Black America. cool. It spoke to Hakim’s creative charm: NICK HAKIM (DANIEL REGAN) August 24/31, 2020 The Nation. 37

While he conjured a bygone era of ex- n Hakim’s view, we have detached from perimental soul music, he took from the one another, and on the album opener, past without leaning too heavily on it. His “All These Changes,” he laments how INCREASE AFFECTION art salutes legends like Shuggie Otis and that lack of community solidarity has Milton Nascimento, but it’s still very much led to our trifling with the planet. As Created by Nick Hakim. Ihe sees it, climate change is just Moth- Winnifred Cutler, Ph.D. in biology from er Earth raging against all the pollution U. of Penn, post-doc or his new album, Will This Make Me we’ve dumped into the atmosphere. “Cit- Stanford. Co- Good, the D.C.-born Hakim treks ies burning, tides that rise,” he sings, discovered human deeper into his retro aesthetic, com- “pretty soon we’ll be underwater.” On pheromones in 1986 Author of 8 piling an LP of dusty tape loops, paper, those lyrics read with an almost books on wellness meditative chants, and lo-fi beats that, apocalyptic sense of doom, yet in the song, and 50+ Fwhen paired with his rich falsetto, feels beneath a delicate blend of strings and scientific papers. equally nostalgic and trippy, a kaleido- bass drums, his proclamation doesn’t seem scopic mix of funk-infused soul informed so alarming. Instead, he likens our demise PROVEN EFFECTIVE IN 3 by late ’90s Maxwell and Voodoo-era D’An- to a rebirth of sorts. “Pretty soon we’ll be DOUBLE-BLIND STUDIES gelo. This album presents Hakim as a drifting in the ocean, and we’ll grow scales ATHENA PHEROMONES tm despondent drifter in search of peace away so we can breathe.” increase your attractiveness. from the chaos and nonsense he encoun- When he isn’t talking about the earth, Athena 10X tm For Men $99.50 10:13 tm For Women $98.50 ters in daily life. This is still love music, he’s chastising authority figures who sell Unscented though not in the lustful sense. Through- fear and drugs to people as ways to con- Cosmetics Free U.S. Shipping ♥ Jake (IL) “Since the 10X, I definitely out the album, he urges us to adore the trol the populace. The title track’s beat noticed a difference in women’s more planet, be one with our communities, and sounds machinelike, as churning and immediate attentiveness. I’ve had some really be mindful of the mental health of friends pounding as a factory operating at full affectionate relationships! Thank you.” and strangers alike. tilt. “Don’t give in to the master plan!” ♥ Julie (CAN) “I tried the 10:13 for the first time last night. My husband professed his love for “Qadir,” a sweeping seven-minute epic he exclaims. “Burn it down, light that shit me 4 times in 30 minutes!” dedicated to a late friend with that name, is up in flames.” The song and the album the best summation of the album’s thematic as a whole mark a sharp creative turn for Not in stores tm 610-827-2200 focus, even if he explores personal pain Hakim. Will This Make Me Good might Athenainstitute.com and US politics on other parts of the LP. sound messy and downright confusing at Athena Institute, Braefield Rd, Chester Spgs, PA 19425 NTN It was the first song Hakim wrote forWill times, but it works—not just because it’s This Make Me Good, and it sets a pensive different but also because he manages to tone. In announcing the album, the singer capture the joy, pain, and uncertainty of described “Qadir” as his attempt to convey life itself. how his friend must have felt in isolat- Musically, the album does not have the ed moments. And while the lyrics depict same ease of Green Twins and Where Will Advertising a man spiraling downward, the backing We Go, yet there’s something beguiling beat—a composition of hard drums, elec- about the way Hakim unpacks weighty Opportunities tric piano, strings, and flutes—ascends with subjects while maintaining the warmth

each verse. of his past work, even if deeper listening THEFRANCE YEMENSPRESSURE WAR! THE BATTLE OVER DROP NAFTA 2.0 ON TRUMP END ’ YELLOW VEST REVOLTLORI WALLACH EVAN HILL COLE STANGLER A NEW LEFT INTERNATIONAL? How House Democrats ATOSSA ARAXIA ABRAHAMIAN Then there are the vocals: Hakim and reveals his most riotous album to date. KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL Can / ROBE Win the Battle of Ideas a who’s who of experimental vocalists and That he created something this frank is RT L. BOROSAGE J A N U A R Y 7, 2 0 1 9 S P E C I A L R E P O RT producers (including We Are King’s Amber its own form of protest. Take the song D E C E M B E R 3 1 , 2 0 1 8

EXPOSING Most Valuable Mayor Most Valuable Strother, rising rapper-singer Pink Siifu, “Bouncing”: Here he describes a scene Senator DAVE Michael Tubbs Bernie SandersTHE LINDORFF and beat-​makers Nelson “Bandela” Nance of “lonely strangers marching through PENTAGON’S Most Valuable Most Valuable Multimedia House Member Maker and KeiyaA) sing in unison like a gospel the snowstorm trying to get to work on Ro KhannaMASSIVE Laura Flanders

By ACCOUNTING JOHN NICHOLS Most Valuable choir. It’s a stellar celebration of Qadir’s time.” Though this summarizes life in Most Valuable Champion of Policy-Makers Checks and Balances Pramila Jayapal & the Amy ProgressiveFRAUD Klobuchar Caucus life and the album’s most captivating song. any major city, “Bouncing” seems to ad- Spending keeps rising while the Most Valuable Defense Department cooks the books. Progressives Ilhan Omar Ayanna Pressley THENATION.COM Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Exploring a similar theme, the track “Vin- dress New York, where Hakim now lives. Rashida Tlaib ...and more.

JANUARY 14/21, 2019 THENATION.COM cent Tyler” pays homage to another person Bad weather tends to make the city feel OCTOBER 16, 2017 THENATION.COMTHENATION.COM who died, a Washington man who was desolate, and when you add the stress of shot 13 years ago in the city’s Northwest subway commuting and working to make Special packages available for quadrant and left on the snowy ground in the rent, the city can feel like a pressure small businesses, authors, and an alley. Here, Hakim sings, “I walked over cooker. nonprofit organizations. Options for slowly and prayed that he was sleeping / I Throughout Will This Make Me Good, regional and national campaigns tapped his foot three times, but nobody an- it’s clear that Nick Hakim is tired of, well, with modest budgets. swered.” On “Qadir” and “Vincent Tyler,” everything and he’s fighting to feel human he presents the two men as tragic figures again. “I just wanna get back and support who died alone. It’s also an indictment of my family,” he shouts on “Drum Thing.” More information at the groups and institutions that abandoned “Fuck all the other shit. That’s all that TheNation.com/advertise

NICK HAKIM (DANIEL REGAN) Qadir and Tyler and let them perish. matters to me.” ■ 38 The Nation. August 24/31, 2020

DRAWING THE NATION ver the past five months, I have been drawing daily Portraits of portraits of people affecting and affected by the O Covid-19 pandemic. Beginning August 14, they will a Pandemic be a weekly feature at TheNation.com. —Steve Brodner freedom from religion foundation Salutes One Hundred Years of Women’s Suffrage

. . . and the firm agnostic and visionary, Elizabeth Cady Stanton — the first to call for women's suffrage, in 1848. Although it was known as “The Anthony Amendment,” Stanton wrote the very words of the 19th Amendment, finally adopted on August 26, 1920. “In the early days of woman-suffrage agitation, I saw that the greatest obstacle we had to overcome was the bible. It was hurled at us on every side,” Stanton observed. We owe a debt to the many feminist foremothers who dared challenge the religious status quo demanding women’s silence, subjection and servitude. Join FFRF, the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics). Like Stanton, we believe actions should be “grounded on science, common sense, and love of humanity.” Help FFRF ensure that religious dogma is not allowed to dictate U.S. law and social policy. Join at ffrf.us/suffrage ____ RATING JOIN FFRF TODAY FFRF is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit founded in 1978 with over 32,000 members 1.800.335.4021 ffrf.us⁄suffrage and a team of attorneys. Charity Navigator has awarded FFRF a perfect score, and a Or request a complimentary issue of our newspaper, Freethought Today “four-star rating” 10 years in a row.

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