#I think that there needs to be a lot more grassroots effort for any third party candidate to be viable on the presidential level

[havegaysex]

Why are you telling people to vote for the guy committing genocide :/

because voting is not an endorsement it's harm reduction.

Trump is going to be at best doing the same as Biden and likely much worse for Palestinians and all the countries suffering from American Imperialism than Biden is.

Republicans want to bring back child labor and get rid of social security, medicare, Medicaid. As someone who is surviving on Medicaid and social security I don't want those taken away. The Republican majority house already put a lot of limits on food stamps in this past term and I don't think we'll still have food stamps if we get a republican Congress and a Republican president.

They've made it pretty clear that if they get a republican Congress and a Republican president they're going to enact project 2025 and call a conference of states and try and take our rights back to the days when only wealthy white men had any rights when women and racial minorities had no rights, they want to make it illegal for LGBT+ folks to safely exist in public and get lifesaving healthcare.

In short

Do I support every single thing Biden has done as president?

No.

Do I like him?

Not particularly. But I'm still voting for him because apathy is not a choice.

Do I think that Joe Biden having another term means that we can actually make more progress for labor rights, trans healthcare, abortion access, advancement of the rights and protections for disabled people and so much more?

Yes absolutely.

Do I think that the genocide in Gaza needs to end and the United States needs to stop sending weapons to israel?

Yes, I think that un restricted flow of humanitarian aid into Palestine needs to happen, the siege needs to stop, and the country of Israel and the United States need to be held accountable at an international level. I think that the soldiers of the IDF/IOF need to be held accountable for their war crimes and pillaging that they continuously post evidence of on social medias. I'm trying to put a read more here so ce I've put a few linked articles and quotes from them.

A quote from the article below:

"While our map focuses solely on high school aged youth (age 13-17), some states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina, have considered banning care for transgender people up to 26 years of age. "

I've seen lawmakers in some states try to make it felony punishable by life in prison to get your trans child healthcare to keep them alive because they want to make it illegal for us to exist and a legal for anyone who helps us exist.

some quotes from the article above:

"Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s second term — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024. With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking. “This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’” The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending. Instead, Trump-era conservatives want to gut the “administrative state” from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing. The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump’s own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals. While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans. And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business. “The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America. Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired. Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump — and other presidential hopefuls — now vow to reinstate it."

"There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail."

Personally I think that voting for Joe Biden is better than someone who wants to enact this stuff on day one. It's like they read handmaid's tale and want to make that the reality of this country.

"Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language." Ronald Reagan is a big reason we have a lot of problems we have today with our economy and with a lot more things. The people that supported Ronald Reagan do not need another term in office.

A quote from the article linked below:

"Trump has given no indication that he would be more sympathetic to Palestinian claims, nor that he would place more pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire. “The approach of the United States would be that Israel needs to win this war, it was attacked brutally,” Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, describing how Trump would act. Friedman is now a campaign surrogate for Trump."

Personally I think Trump telling Israel to finish the job is indicators that another Trump presidency doesn't mean that weapons would stop being sent to Israel from United States

I fail to see how another term of Donald trump will be any better for the victims of the ongoing genocide in Palestine than President Joe Biden.

i think our system is absolutely messed up and broken but I don't think abstaining from voting is going to actually help.

[wellesleyunderground]

Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Patrice Caldwell ’15, Founder of People of Color in Publishing

Patrice Caldwell ’15 is the founder & fundraising chair of People of Color in Publishing – a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members of the book publishing industry. Born and raised in Texas, Patrice was a children’s book editor before shifting to be a literary agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

In 2018, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree and featured on The Writer’s Digest podcast and Bustle’s inaugural “Lit List” as one of ten women changing the book world.

Her anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn – 16 stories of Black girl magic, resistance, and hope – is out March 10, 2020 from Viking Books for Young Readers/Penguin Teen in the US/Canada and Hot Key Books in the UK! Visit Patrice online at patricecaldwell.com, Twitter @whimsicallyours, and Instagram @whimsicalaquarian.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to converse with Patrice via email about publishing, reading, and writing. E.B. is grateful to Patrice for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series, even with everything else she has going on!

EB: When did you first become interested in going into writing and publishing? Did something at Wellesley spark that interest?

PC: For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved writing. It’s how I best express myself. That love pretty naturally grew into creating stories. I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. I’ve also always been pretty aware that publishers exist. I remember at a young age noticing the logos on the spines of books (notating the imprint/publisher), so by the time I was a teen I could recall which publishers published my favorite books (served me very well in interviews, haha) and was curious about that process. But I was a theater kid, intensely, that’s what I thought I would do, but then I decided to go to Wellesley and majored in political science (especially theory—I took ever class Professor Grattan, she’s brilliant) but then dabbled in a bunch of other subjects, including English. I think English courses definitely strengthened my critical thinking, but I absolutely do not think you have to be an English or creative writing major in order to work in publishing or be a writer. My theater background is just as helpful as is my political theory one. (I have friends who are best-selling authors who did MFA programs and others who never went to college.)

Wellesley was my safe space. I came back to myself while at Wellesley. I wrote three (unpublished) manuscripts during my time there, starting the summer after my first year, and I held publishing and writing related internships. I also took a fantastic children’s literature course taught by Susan Meyer (who’s a children’s author herself!) that changed my world. I highly recommend it. We studied children’s literature, got to talk to an author and a literary agent, and we wrote our own stories. I later did a creative writing independent study with her, and I truly thank Professor Meyer for expanding my interest in writing and publishing.

EB: How did People in Color Publishing come about? What goals do you have for the organization? What would you like people to know about it?

PC: I founded People of Color in Publishing in August 2016 to allow people of color clearer access into the book publishing industry, better support networks, and professional development opportunities. It really is about sending the elevator back down for others after climbing (& maybe even assembling) the stairs.

We’re currently working towards nonprofit status. You can learn more about us and our initiatives at https://www.pocinpublishing.com/ and sign up for our newsletter, which is incredibly well done. As you’ll see when you visit the site, the organization really is a team effort. I don’t and couldn’t do this alone; I’ve had an amazing team with me from day one. We each play to our strengths and work really well together. (The org is very active on Instagram and Twitter, too!)

EB: I am really excited about your collection A Phoenix First Must Burn, coming out from Penguin Random House on March 10, 2020. What inspired you to put together that anthology? What was challenging about the process of compiling the anthology, and what was rewarding about it?

PC: Thank you; I’m so excited for it as well. I talk about this more in the book’s introduction, but I was inspired by my eternal love for Octavia Butler—the title even comes from a passage in Parable of the Talents—as well as similar adult market anthologies like Sheree R. Thomas’s Dark Matter, and wondering what one for teens would look like. The answer is power and imagination like I’ve never before seen, in the form of a kick-ass, #BlackGirlMagic anthology that’s hella queer—I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Before I became a literary agent, I was a children’s book editor. The editing of these stories was the easy part. It was super fun. The hard part was wrangling of everyone, haha. Thankfully they were amazing to work with and I wasn’t doing it alone—my then editor Kendra Levin also has a fantastic editorial eye.

As for what was rewarding, my younger self needed this. Like I said, it’s Black and queer. Since Toni Morrison passed, a day hasn’t gone by in which I’ve thought, about how she wrote for Black people, especially Black women, unapologetically. I feel that deeply. I got to work with some of my favorite writers writing today. How often does someone get to say that, you know. And, I grew a lot as a writer. I never thought I could write a short story, but I did. We’ve been getting some really great early reviews (like this beautifully-written starred review from Kirkus, OMG!) But going back to how my younger self needed this, the most rewarding thing has been the people who’ve reached out how excited they are to read it and how much they’ve been craving a book like this. It’s a dream come true. A dream I strategized to reach, worked my butt off on, and so yeah, I’m over the moon.

EB: You're also the author of a YA fantasy book (publication date TBD) in addition to the anthology. How is the experience of writing a fantasy novel different and/or similar to compiling an anthology? What advice would you give to someone writing their own book (of any genre)?

PC: It’s such a different experience in that writing this novel is all me, especially because it hasn’t sold yet (I’m finishing revising it now). My agents are amazing, with an excellent editorial skills, and so they’re certainly there to help and advise me should I need them—and then I have author friends I can ask for advice too—but ultimately if I don’t write this book, it doesn’t get written. There’s no one else to nudge.

The similarities, however, between novels and short stories are that ultimately, I’m the same writer, I’m the same person. For instance, I love experimenting with structure. My story for A Phoenix First Must Burnbegins in the present, goes back in time, and ends again at the present. The story I just wrote, for Dahlia Adler’s Shakespeare-inspired anthology, is epistolary—told partially in journal entries, and my third short story (for an unannounced thing) takes place partially on the set of a scripted reality TV show, so there’s definitely going to be script excerpts throughout. My novel is similar in that it’s told through three women, but two of them are narrated in first present tense (like, I am) whereas one is in third past (she was). And then every few chapters I have an excerpt of something from this fantasy world’s archives—oral myths passed down about various gods, peace treaties made over the years, accounts from the war that just ended, etc. It’s been a huge challenge and lot of fun.

I didn’t have the skills to pull this book off when I started writing it, which is something I think a lot of writers deal with at some point. Therefore, I had two options: put the book down and write something more manageable or take the time it took to write this. Neither option is better than the other—the best option is what’s right for you, and I didn’t have anything more manageable that I was as passionate about, so I had to write through it. When you’ve tried everything you can possibly try (including breaks, they’re important!) to unstick your story, you have to write through it. You have to deal with the voices (including sometimes your own) saying you can’t, and the only way to truly deal with those voices is to show up to the paper, the screen, whatever it is, and write. In writing and believing in my own work before anyone else has, I’ve found my confidence. Confidence in your own writing is key because only you can write the book you want to write <3.

EB: What are you currently reading?

PC: Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri. I just loved herdebut novel, Empire of Sand, and I’m so pumped to be diving into this one. Badass women, incredibly rich worldbuilding, and very cool magic as well as a lot about access to forgotten history and assimilation into other cultures.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It is getting fantastic early reviews and was pitched as a 21stcentury Lolita (by one of my agents who sold it actually) and given all the #MeToo conversations, it has ended up being super timely. I hated Lolita (could not finish), and I love this book. Oh, and Stephen King loved it, which for me is an auto-buy. It’s out March 10, 2020.

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski. You definitely don’t have to love someone’s books to be friends with them, but in this case, Marie is a friend whose work I’m obsessed with. It’s set in the same world as another one of her series—one of my favorite series that’s like game theory in a fantasy world and begins with The Winner’s Curse. Marie is brilliant, this book is brilliant, and it’s also very queer. It’s out March 3, 2020.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. This book has been getting the best of reviews and praise, so it’s been at the top of my to-reads list for a while, but I started reading it because a friend mentioned that it has multiple POVs all in first person (which is very unusual), and like I said, I love playing around with stuff like that. This is book is a masterpiece.

As you can tell, I love reading books. I also love book hopping, so I’m always reading a bunch at once. I’m on a bit of a fantasy streak right now. But from October to December 2019 I read like a romance novel a week (sometimes three a week, haha) and revisited my favorite urban fantasy series, so if you’re into those check out Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires + Heirs of Chicagoland series, Tessa Dare’s Girl Meets Duke series and of course our very own Jasmine Guillory, my favorite of hers thus far is The Wedding Party). After I’m done with my revisions, I wanna take a writing break and sink into Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey and Dan Jones’s The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors.

EB: What future projects/goals do you have for yourself and your career?

PC: I spent most of Wellesley working towards two goals: being published and working in publishing. In doing so, I accomplished a lot in a very short time, and I totally wrecked my mental health—it took most of 2019 to rebuild that. I’m trying to live more in the present and enjoy that. Career wise, I’m just gonna trust that I’m already doing the work I need to do and that I have the support systems I need to help me keep doing that. And for a personal goal, I have been wanting to spend more time in Paris—I went back for the first time in ten years for all of February 2019, and just loved it. My whole soul felt at home, so I’d like to take some French lessons to fill in the gaps (I took French from middle school through sophomore year at Wellesley and achieved proficiency, but I want to become fluent). And then I want to visit more for longer and see where that takes me.

EB: I so admire your freelance hustle, and as someone attempting it myself, too, I know that sometimes it feels like you have to work 24/7 to make it possible. How do you set boundaries for yourself and your work? How do you take care of yourself?

PC: So, I’m a literary agent and a writer, which means my entire income comes from commission I make from the writer client projects I work on and sell as an agent and advance payments (and hopefully royalties down the line) as a writer. That said, I didn’t become a literary agent until June 2019, and didn’t get the first payment from a client book I sold until November, so most my income is still coming from writing (for reference, I received my first advance check in fall of 2018).

As of now, balancing the two isn’t that hard for me. But you have to understand that I was first an editor and a writer, so I had to do most of the deadlines for A Phoenix First Must Burn while also going into an office 5 days a week, from 10-7/8pm. Now, I manage my own schedule.

My main “freelance life” struggle was that I was diagnosed with ADHD this year. When I left my full-time, salaried job, at the end of 2018, I didn’t realize just how helpful that structure had been. To me, that structure was only ever a limitation. I felt like it was ridiculous with all of this technology that we all had to be in NYC, I felt like editors needed to be more proactive, I preferred to travel to book festivals and teach at workshops and meet writers where they are, etc. etc. But then, without that structure, everything fell apart. Suddenly, tasks that used to take me five minutes could actually take me five hours because I only had myself to answer to. I would hyper-focus on everything but what I needed to be doing. It was a really hard time for me because I had all of these things I wanted to do now that I finally had more time to do them, but ADHD had other plans—I constantly felt like I wasn’t achieving what I knew I could because I had done it before.

I had to learn to forgive myself. This is how my brain works, and there are a lot of strengths to it (like if I remove distractions like the internet, I can hyper-focus for hours, I’m a fantastic problem solver, and I thrive in chaos—all things that help me excel at my work). Learning to forgive yourself for not accomplishing all the things, whether you have a mental illness or not, is really important.

You also have to be hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses. What are things you know you’re just not good at? Can you pay someone else to do it? Is there an app you can download that can make that task easier? I delegate and outsource every detail-level thing that I can because I’m horrible at details and I’ve finally accepted that that’s okay. One person cannot do everything forever; it’s not sustainable.

And then you also have to say no. If you can afford to say no to something that doesn’t really interest you / have a high payoff, do so. That is how you set boundaries. My health has become so much better ever since I started saying no to more things. Why? It gives me time to do other things, those things I’ve been saying forever I’m going to make more time for (like French lessons and reading books for fun). Now, my evenings and weekends are for non-work things. I love my jobs they’re still jobs.

Trust that you’re on the right path. Trust that you have the support systems you need and if you aren’t or don’t, dream and strategize towards those.

Ultimately, I am the happiest I’ve ever been and that’s because I finally stopped focusing my whole life around my jobs, stopped caring what people who aren’t paying my bills think, and started living my actual life.

EB: What else would you like our readers to know about you and/or your work?

PC: I have a website, Twitter, Instagram, and a newsletter. If you enjoyed this interview, definitely sign up for my newsletter (& check out past issues) as I always give creative life pep talks, share recipes and what books and tv shows I’m loving. I think of my newsletter as a longer form version of my Twitter. My website is a pretty standard website—you can find out more about my own books, my clients, events I’m attending, etc. there. And my Instagram is slightly more personal, with pretty pictures of my face and my book haha, and I share daily/weekly updates about my writing there via IG stories.

And, of course, buy my book: https://patricecaldwell.com/a-phoenix-first-must-burn

Thank you so much for having me and for reading. Happy New Year!

[letterboxd]

The Last Artists.

“From the outside it seems like this dream scenario… but the truth is it took years working on drafts and wondering if anyone would ever read them.” —Joe Talbot on The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

A love story to San Francisco, to one grand Victorian house in particular, and to a life-long friendship, The Last Black Man in San Francisco was many years in the making. And it paid off: Joe Talbot picked up the Best Director prize at Sundance 2019 for his debut feature, a story drawn from the life of his best friend (and the film’s leading man), Jimmie Fails. A close-knit family of creatives grew around the project, and became a vital support system for Talbot when his father had a stroke just weeks before the shoot. Since January, critical accolades for the film have snowballed. Most recently, it appeared in our ten highest-rated features for the first half of 2019.

Letterboxd reporter Jack Moulton took the opportunity for a lengthy chat with Talbot about his remarkable debut feature. The interview contains a virtual masterclass in first-time feature film development (and the persistence required to see it through), along with some never-before-seen images shared exclusively with us by Joe. Also: some plot spoilers, which we’ve left until the very end.

Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails in 2014, photographed by Talbot’s brother, Nat Talbot.

Thanks for agreeing to a good chat with us. Are you on Letterboxd? We have our suspicions that you might be. Joe Talbot: Yeah. I love it. I found Letterboxd before we shot the movie. I use it to save movies to watch for later and look up movies people recommend. Occasionally I read the reviews of films I’ve just watched, they’re often really thoughtful.

Can we share your username? You could be the next Sean Baker. The one I have right now is more of a lurking profile so it’s not very formal. I made one that’s a little more presentable for you under my name.

Are you in San Francisco right now? I am. If you can hear my heavy breathing, I’m actually walking up one of the steeper hills that Jimmie and Montgomery crest in the movie and see the skyline. That’s what I do for every interview, I like to walk up the hill to put me in the film. Just kidding, this is the first time I’ve done it. I’m just walking with a friend and we’re about two thirds of the way up. Woo!

We’ve just published our halfway top 10 of the year. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is in second place, between Avengers: Endgame and Booksmart. How does this make you feel, and how do you cope with reviews (whether they’re full of praise or criticism)? Wow, that means a lot. I find the reviews informative, though have to admit I don’t read too many of them. In general, it’s great to know that there are people that love movies enough to get into debates and write passionately, either about how much they loved them or didn’t like them at all. Having platforms like Letterboxd and finding those communities online can be really great, even if they’re not made up of people in your city.

Given that the film has relatively low stakes—it’s not life or death, it’s house or no-house—what gave you confidence that audiences would connect to Jimmie’s story? I don’t know if we were ever confident. You never fully know. You hope that if you share something that has meaning to you then it will have meaning to others. That was our guiding light.

We finished the movie four days before the Sundance screening, so that was the first time watching it with any audience. I looked over at [Plan B producer] Jeremy Kleiner when the movie ended; he said “the tweets are good”. I looked around and realized the whole audience were on their phone as soon as the credits rolled.

I only had a short film play at Sundance before [American Paradise in 2017, also starring Jimmie Fails] so I didn’t realize part of our culture now is the need to immediately respond to something—but luckily they were nice. It will be much more anxiety-inducing going into my next feature now that I know how all this works.

We wanted to make something that captured the San Francisco that we grew up in and feel very strongly about. We’ve travelled to Chicago, DC, New York, LA, and Atlanta with the film and I was surprised to see how much people were connecting to it. In a way, Jimmie and I say it is unfortunately universal because it means the same things are happening everywhere.

This idea has lived with you and Jimmie for a long time. Can you talk us through the journey of the film? We’ve been informally talking about it for at least seven years and it’s gone through so many incarnations. We always envisioned it as the first feature that Jimmie and I would make after many years of making short films together. This story felt big enough in scope and there was a lot that we wanted to cover.

We wanted to tell a story about Jimmie and this Victorian home he once lived in and make it a valentine to the San Francisco we grew up in, that we see as being lost. We also wanted to celebrate all the wonderful people who are here that make this city what it is. That’s a big part of what we are afraid of losing: the very people that make San Francisco ‘San Francisco’.

An alternative poster for the film, illustrated by Akiko Stehrenberger.

We both lived with my parents for five years—we ran our operation out of the living room there. The first thing we did was shoot a concept trailer for Vimeo. It was a five-minute piece of Jimmie skating through the city telling his grandfather’s story, much like the [feature’s] opening sequence, though I filmed it hanging out of the side of my brother’s car.

Afterwards we got emails from people saying they wanted to help; they would become our core collaborators on the film. Khaliah Neal, Rob Richert, Luis Alfonso de la Parra, Natalie Teter, Sydney Lowe, Prentice Sanders, Fritzi Adelman, Laila Bahman and Ryan Doubiago. They spent years with us, hashing out the script over my parents’ kitchen table and working with us to create a look-book, run an ambitious Kickstarter campaign, write grant proposals and so on.

We felt like these oddballs—the last artists in San Francisco. You get a lot of noes along the way, having never made a movie before, so it was the emotional support that helped us persist through the difficult times. We were excited to be learning together, as a group of mostly first-timers, and were constantly making things.

Our look-book was very elaborate, thanks to our stills photographer Laila Bahman. We built it as a website and staged the scenes as if we were filming the movie, with costumes and heavy art direction. We knew people we pitched were probably seeing materials from other filmmakers who were further in their careers and probably better writers than us. We knew we needed to show the world of the movie so that executives’ imaginations wouldn’t be running off with thoughts of Michael B. Jordan or Donald Glover; that this is Jimmie and this is the plaid shirt we want him in and this is his Victorian. It’s his story.

That helped us get into the Screenwriter’s Lab at Sundance, but I didn’t get into the Director’s Lab, which I was initially bummed about because I really needed that experience. Our Kickstarter was very successful and those backers created a grassroots ground-swelling around the movie that pushed it forward, even though it was difficult in pitch meetings as we weren’t the most bankable pair in such a risk-averse industry.

In a last-ditch effort, my crew and I decided to do our own Director’s Lab instead. We felt if it doesn’t work now then that might be it for Last Black Man. I’d never made a proper short with a budget before but a producer named Tamir Muhammad, who had a short-lived venture within Time Warner called OneFifty, gave us the money to make what would become American Paradise. It gave the crew a chance to get in the trenches together before moving on to a feature, and show the potential of what we could do.

The team who’d assembled from our concept trailer years before all worked on American Paradise, from Khaliah Neal, Rob Richert and Luis Alfonso down the line. We worked with production designer Jona Tochet and even the sound team of Sage and Corinne (who would all go on to work on Last Black Man). In a city increasingly devoid of artists, we felt we’d found our people.

The short was different from Last Black Man, but features Jimmie playing the same character. After it played in Sundance it got the attention of Plan B’s Christina Oh. They took a big leap of faith on us, only having ever made that short. There’s not a lot of people willing to do that.

Khaliah, Christina and Jeremy approached A24 and we were in production two months later. From the outside it seems like this dream scenario of having the incredible indie studios Plan B and A24 behind us, but the truth is it took years working on drafts and wondering if anyone would ever read them. I think the extra time we had helped, because if we had the chance to make it two or three years ago, I don’t think we would have been ready.

Jimmie Fails and the creative team behind ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’ at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. / Photo: Sue Peri

What was the first movie you made with Jimmie when you were teenagers? The first half-decent thing we made was a movie that my brother and I co-directed called Last Stop Livermore. I am actually in it alongside Jimmie and that was my first and only time in front of the camera. I learned my place pretty early on.

Didn’t you have a cameo in Last Black Man? I swear I saw you. I did have a cameo. As long as I’m not speaking, I’m okay. But even then when I just had to look at Jimmie once it was very difficult for me to do. I needed four takes for that shot, ha ha. I’m much more comfortable on the other side.

Jimmie, however, was really good in [Last Stop Livermore]. We made it while I was in high school before I dropped out, and it got into the San Francisco International Film Festival. Like everything we do, it’s based on something that happened in real life when a friend and I felt like we were fish out of water, going off to meet some girls in the suburbs.

That attention the film got, however minor, encouraged us because until that point only our family, friends and my high school teacher had seen our movies. Oh and Jimmie still had a flat-top—just thought I should add.

The film features the most important house of the year [Editor’s note: at least until the rest of the world sees the Parasite house, designed by the great Namgoong]. How did you find Jimmie’s house and what made it the house? It took us over a year and a half to find the house. We combed the streets with my co-producer Luis Alfonso de la Parra and production designer Jona Tochet and knocked on doors. In hindsight, a more efficient way would have been to use Google Maps but this way we could see inside the houses.

Unfortunately, the interiors would usually be gutted and have IKEA furniture and granite table tops. As a filmmaker, it was depressing, but as a native San Franciscan it was heartbreaking because the details inside all these beautiful houses were destroyed. It’s a thing that a lot of real estate agents do when they flip houses.

We ended up going back to a house that I had driven past as a kid on my way to elementary school. My mom, my brother and I would pick out our dream Victorian houses on our family car ride since we couldn't afford a proper one. I went back to one of the houses that had always stuck with me. After we found that house, it felt like we had cast a major character in the movie.

When we first knocked on the door of the house that would become Jimmie's home in the film, an older gentlemen greeted us and within seconds beckoned us inside. As we entered, we found a home that had not been gutted, but instead had been lovingly restored. Jim, the homeowner, much like Jimmie, the actor, had spent more than half of his life working on the house.

He carved the witch hat you see in the movie shingle by shingle and did the honor of putting it on the roof himself. He fixed the organs you see in the film and built Pope's hole in the library. In many ways, he felt like the spirit of San Francisco.

As a now elderly man, we would have understood him declining our wants to film there -- or charging a buttload to help him in his retirement. Instead he welcomed our big crew into his house and charged us next to nothing. I still don't fully know why, but I can imagine he saw shades of himself in Jimmie's love for this Victorian.

In the years we spent location scouting, we would also meet people on the street that we put in the movie. Dakecia Chappell was working at a Whole Foods in the confectionery section, near a ‘potential Jimmie’s house’ around the corner and she was just really charming, so I offered her the ‘Candy Lady’ part in the film. We met the mover who tells Jimmie the homeowners are moving out late one night at a taqueria on Mission Street. This extra time allowed us to capture the little details of what our San Francisco is like.

Even after your major backing from Plan B and A24, was there a point on set where it felt like everything was falling apart? I’m sure there are directors that aren’t plagued by the self-doubt I had. I didn’t go to film school and I felt isolated in San Francisco since a lot of the filmmakers have left for Los Angeles or New York. I was feeling this imposter syndrome. You’re both really joyous and grateful that you finally have a chance to make a movie, but also feel the weight of the city and wanting to honor what’s happening to people there. In every stage you have big and little freak-outs. The only thing that got me through it were the people around me. They bring perspective when you might not have it.

A couple of months before we shot the film my dad had a stroke. He survived, thankfully, and he would say half-jokingly “I survived to see the movie”. My parents struggled as artists themselves in their lives and yet they created this loving home that allowed us to make the movie. I look up to my Dad a lot, so when that happened that was really scary, and it happened during the height of the pandemonium of prep.

By that point our creative collaborators felt like family and they did everything for us. They came over to my house, brought us food, did as much as they could to take work off my plate so I could be with my own family. That always sticks with me when I remember tough times. You could say it’s just a job, but they treated it like so much more. So while it sounds corny, I think the spirit which comes with people being so loving and kind becomes imbued in the film.

Very glad to hear your dad is okay. The scenes with Jimmie’s parents are so powerful; you really get a greater sense of his isolation. It’s amazing his mom agreed to be in the film as a fictionalized version of herself. How did you and Jimmie sketch those scenes? The scene with his mom is loosely based on something that happened. Jimmie was raised mostly by his dad and he’s very close to his parents now in a way that’s very different from the relationship that he had with them growing up. He and his dad have worked through a lot.

Jimmie Fails as Jimmie. This and the header photo are by Laila Bahman.

It’s hard to pack in all the complex details that makes someone who they are because you don’t have enough screen time to do that sometimes. These elements were pulled from the walks we’d take during the earliest developments when the idea was more informal and we’d talk about Jimmie’s family.

One story that Jimmie always recalled both humorously but also quite painfully was about the guy who had driven off in the car that he and his dad were living in at the time. We thought it would be funny if there was a character who never acknowledged that he’d stolen the car but claimed that he was still borrowing it. We knew Mike Epps would be the perfect person for that. It was a story that came from a kernel of truth but took on a life of its own.

Why was Jimmie’s dad pirating The Patriot, of all movies? The tonal juxtaposition made us laugh. Ha ha, it was in the public domain.

We loved the score. What are some of the soundtracks that inspired you while making the film? The Last of the Mohicans, The Day of the Dolphin, The Claim, Batman (and also the animated TV show’s score actually rivals Elfman’s), and Far From the Madding Crowd.

You’ve spoken in another interview about how you and Jimmie fear friendships like yours aren’t possible with the type of gentrification that’s going on. However, nowadays you can meet some of the important people in your life over the internet. Could the bonds we make online compensate for what’s being lost on the streets? I think the internet is a double-edged sword. It both brings people together that you could never have met, such as how many of our closest collaborators first found our concept trailer online. But I do fear it also plays a part in people developing shallower, less intimate connections. I have friends who I love who will go to events seemingly just to get a good Instagram photo out of it. I’m sure I’ve suffered from similar instincts. That scares me.

Montgomery adds so much tenderness and insight to the film. Given he’s Jimmie’s best friend and he’s also an artist, is he your avatar in the movie? How did the casting of Jonathan Majors inform the development of his character? Montgomery is actually not based on me. Jimmie and I have a friend from the Bay named Prentice Sanders who is one of the more original people we’ve ever met. His spirit influenced the first shades of the character. When Jon came on he took those early sketchings to a whole new level, creating his own backstory, mannerisms, and interests.

On the vanity in his room, Jon decided to put up Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Barbara Stanwyck, Canada Lee, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison as inspiration. He had a hand in every little detail. In fact, Jon and Jimmie became very close in real life. They still talk nearly every day.

Warning: the last section of the interview contains spoilers, including for the endings of both ‘Last Black Man’ and ‘Ghost World’. This is your last chance to back out…

How do you direct Jimmie? I imagine you can read each other’s minds at this point. Yeah, there is a weird unspoken connection between us, as we grew up together. Knowing each other for so long allowed us to be vulnerable around each other. As a director, inevitably there are days on set that are stressful, scary, and tense, so being able to go for a walk around the block together to recalibrate and feel present was helpful.

This film asked something much different than anything we had done before. We’d never written a feature script and most of our shorts were ad-libbed. Honestly, everyone broke their backs to make this. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra was a hero. Nobody phoned it in.

But more than anybody, we asked the most of Jimmie. There’s a scene where he’s across from his real mother and the bravery from both of them to do that set a tone that everyone on set sought to honor.

Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails on the set of ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’. Photo by the film’s cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra.

Your collaboration with Jimmie has been so strong for such a long time. Is it a relief for you or maybe a sadness that this phase with him is nearly over? It doesn’t feel like it’s over yet, but I’m sure when it does there will be a little bit of sadness. The movie continues to sell out theaters on a Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco and opened in the little neighborhood theaters that indies barely make it into and it's playing alongside Toy Story. There’s a feeling in the city now that’s hopeful.

It’s been wonderful to witness because I feel like we’ve been working through our feelings about San Francisco in making the movie, and in some ways Jimmie leaving at the end feels a bit like us, how perhaps we can’t be here anymore. I’ve only ever lived in San Francisco my entire life but maybe it is time to go somewhere else.

However, in putting the movie out there I’ve seen so many more natives that feel like people I grew up with 15-20 years ago. People who I thought had been lost but are still out there, fighting to exist somehow through all the changes. I feel like part of me is falling back in love with San Francisco again and I think that feeling is going to go on for a long time.

A lot of people are contacting us saying that they left the theater and they just started writing their own scripts, or writing poetry, or sending us paintings that were inspired by the movie. In a city that is increasingly difficult to exist in as an artist and not always inspiring, this always means something to us.

On the film’s ending: to you, where is Jimmie going? Jimmie is going to start his legacy somewhere else—to fully be himself and start anew, following the footsteps of his grandfather. And it’s more fun to shoot it that way than have him ride away on a BART train.

One interpretation of the ending we’ve heard is that it was all in Mont’s head, and in “reality” it ended on a more tragic note. So some viewers felt it as hopeless, but you in fact intended it to be more hopeful? I think we wanted to leave it open to interpretation. I talked to Thora Birch [who has a small role in Last Black Man] about the ending of Ghost World, because that always left an impression on me. I interpreted it as a suicide when I saw it as a teenager and she had told me that she felt that way about it too, but there are also people who thought she was going off to art school. I feel our ending works in the same way.

I don’t see any interpretation of it as invalid, but what your relationship is to your city affects what you bring to it. Either way it’s a bittersweet ending, because it is a loss for Jimmie and Mont’s friendship, and for the city. Like, San Francisco doesn’t deserve him anymore.

Discover the films that inspired the look and feel of ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’.

[schraubd]

My Thoughts on Jewish Organizations

There are a lot of Jewish organizations out there. And I have thoughts on them. Some I like a lot. Some I like less. I'm a progressive Zionist with more of an academic than a political bent, which means I don't like anti-Zionist or right-wing groups, and all else equal I prefer groups who are "wonkish" or "scholarly" to "political" or "activist". But the former part matters more than the latter -- I understand the importance of political organizing, even if it isn't my style; whereas groups which actively back settlements or BDS go a ways beyond "not my style". Anyway, these are just my opinions -- do with them what you will. * * * AIPAC: Kind of an old, creaky battleship at this point. I actually think AIPAC probably does see the threats to its core mission -- namely, the growing partisanization of Israel as an issue -- but is too large and unwieldy to actually do anything about it. For all its supposed power, it's actually not that effective anymore (though it's very effective at being a boogeyman for "the all-powerful Israel Lobby"). Ameinu: I like them a lot. The former Labor Zionist Alliance has the right political orientation and tends to take a careful approach to things, which I appreciate. Its "Third Narrative" initiative is definitely my cup of tea. American Jewish Committee: Deeply uneven. Sometimes stands out in front on human rights. Sometimes falls over itself to praise Jair Bolsonaro. Definitely not adjusting with the times, and definitely needs to fire whoever is running their Twitter account. American Jewish Congress: Are they still a thing? Americans for Peace Now: Of the true "left" groups, definitely my favorite. That's probably because its the only one that's still okay with Zionism, but also because it does genuinely important and substantive work and provides a much needed critical progressive voice inside Jewish communal structures. Anti-Defamation League: My favorite of the major "mainline" groups. Does it bat 1.000? No. But it's right more often than it isn't, and it takes a lot more flak than it deserves. The effort by conservative voices to place it in the pocket of the left is ludicrous. A Wider Bridge: In late 2015/early 2016, I started looking up which Jewish organizations not specifically focused on Mizrahi/Sephardic issues nonetheless mentioned Mizrahi/Sephardic Jews. My methodology was pretty basic and the bar was pretty low: do a google site search for "Mizrahi" or "Sephardic". The results were ... disappointing. A Wider Bridge was an exception. Generally does very good work, and the fact that it does good work is probably why its opponents are so desperate to smear it with the "pinkwashing" label. Be'chol Lashon: Can't rave about them enough. They deserve infinitely more attention, resources, and support from the rest of the Jewish community. I dare say the future of the vitality of diaspora Judaism depends on the success or failure of Be'chol Lashon's work. Bend the Arc: Another group I'm generally positively disposed towards, though I have little to say on them specifically. Conference of Presidents: More of an umbrella group, but it needs mention because for too long it's been far too solicitous of its right-wing members (see ZOA). American Jews vote for the Democratic Party at the same proportion as Idahoans vote Republican -- our conservatives should have exactly as much communal power as an Idaho Democrat. HIAS: If you don't like HIAS, you're a monster. Hillel: Desperately needs a dose of democracy. They're still the center of Jewish life on many campuses, and that's important in its own right. They're not the evil leviathan Open Hillel makes them out to be, but because they're not accountable to the student population they serve, they constantly fall into easily avoidable pitfalls. They certainly can't be trusted with something as sensitive as a partnership guideline. In my dream world, they become the bureaucratic arm of the American Union of Jewish Students. IfNotNow: Everything you don't like about BernieBros, but trying to rip apart the Jewish community instead of the Democratic Party. Sanctimonious, smug, hackish, theatrical, and almost unfathomably self-righteous. For them, sparking a civil war within the Jewish community isn't a risk they hope to avoid; it's the point of the movement. "Some people have never met a forest fire they didn't ache to pour gasoline on." I went from "cautious optimism" to "deep disdain" in a hurry. Israel Policy Forum: Somehow I'm always overlooking them. Don't know why -- they do really good work. Overall, I take a positive view. Jewish Community Relations Councils/Jewish Federations: Depends on the federation, naturally. As always, I worry about democracy deficit. Are they responsive to genuine community sentiment, or are they responsive to their donor base? Jewish Voice for Peace: Ugh. JFREJ: Everytime I read something from JFREJ, my reaction is always "meh". It's never particularly bad. It's never particularly good. It's meh. I'm if anything impressed by how consistently they make me shrug. JIMENA: Sometimes takes a more conservative line than I would like, but overall an important voice for the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish community. When I've worked with them, I've had no trouble integrating my progressive Zionist positions into what we've done together. J Street: Overall I like J Street (I definitely like this statement it just released on its commitment to Israel's future). It's a political lobbying shop, which means it makes certain compromises I wouldn't (less on issues, and more on using rhetoric that is mobilizing more than it is precise), but that comes with the territory -- a classic "not my style, but someone needs to do it" case. And, far and away, no group is maligned further out of proportion to its actual sins than J Street. It's not even close. OneVoice: Not exclusively a Jewish organization, but it's so important I'll give them a pass. You want durable and just peace in Israel and Palestine? Do the hard work of building grassroots support and political infrastructure for non-extremism and co-existence. That's what OneVoice does. Partners for Progressive Israel: I don't end up citing them a lot -- Ameinu ends up filling their niche -- but I'm generally positively inclined. T'ruah: Another very good progressive organization. Their commentary on the UN resolutions criticizing Israeli settlements is one of my favorite statements by a prominent Jewish organizations on any Israel-related topic, ever. Definitely endorse. Zioness: Came in deeply suspicious of them. Current posture is cautiously okay. They've filed off some of the rougher edges, and they haven't done what some groups in its niche love to do -- spend 90% of their time wailing about how mean people treat Israel before "proving" their progressive bona fides by writing a post about how terribly Saudi Arabia treats women (*cough* Women's March For All). They actually spend most of their time advocating for progressive ends that have no clear relation to Israel. Good on them! Still think they need to confirm that their progressivism extends to Israel itself, though. Zionist Organization of America: It's tough competition, but Mort Klein might be the worst. And since ZOA has become almost exclusively a vehicle for his hard-right, racist, xenophobic, anti-Palestinian politics, they're the worst too. The only difference between them and JVP is that ZOA gets to be the worst from inside the communal tent -- which goes to show how systematically biased the Jewish community in favor of our fringe right-wing voices. via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2DEjdCu

[krizzuti19ahsgov-blog]

The 3 Ps Assessment: Parties, Political Interest Groups, and PACs

1.  Include

a.  The Republican Party thinks there is a need to protect certain species threatened worldwide with extinctions. However, they think species, like gray wolves, who exist in other countries in healthy numbers should not be protected by the U.S. They think  has stunted economic development, halted the construction of projects, burdened landowners, and has been used to pursue policy goals inconsistent with the Endangered Species Act. Democrats oppose the efforts to undermine the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act. Libertarians think protecting the environment needs a clear definition and enforcement of individual rights and responsibilities. The Green Party supports a enforceable and strengthened Endangered Species Act. The Peace and Freedom Party supports the protection of species’ habitats so I think they are in favor of the Endangered Species Act because it also preserves biodiversity (which they support). 

b.  I agree with the Green, Democratic and Peace and Freedom Parties because they are all for the Endangered Species Act. I disagree with the Republican’s position because even though species may be alive in other countries or regions doesn’t mean they will be there forever. We should take all the appropriate measures to save these animals because they deserve the right to live just as much as we do. 

c.  I identify most with the Green Party’s position because they want a strengthened Endangered Species Act. This act is potentially going to be weakened by the Trump Administration and these animals need all the protection if not more they can get. This is not surprising to me because I care a lot about the preservation of the environment and animals. Environmental issues to me are some of the most important so, I would vote for the presidential candidate of the third party because the Green Party and some other parties, realize the environment should be one of our top priorities since it is our home. I know that they would make clean energy laws, preservation and conservation laws which would be a step forward to a healthier planet. 

2. Identify one national interest group that represents your issue 

a.  Endangered Species Coalition

b. The Endangered Species Coalition wants to protect all of the at risk species in our nation.

c. Their mission is to stop the human-caused extinction of the U.S’s at risk species and to protect and restore their habitats. They work to safeguard and strengthen the Endangered Species Act. The coalition uses grassroots mobilization, education and targeted campaigns to allow every American to participate in elections. They have more than 150,000 individual activists and supporters who all are focused on protecting our nation’s disappearing wildlife and last remaining wild places.

d.  This group wants a stronger Endangered Species Act and support the Green Party’s position on this act as well. They strongly oppose the Trump Administration trying to weaken this act by removing certain species and allowing for commercial building near protected habitats.

e. The Endangered Species Coalition is located in Washington D.C. They do not have any local meetings I can attend.

f. There are no volunteer opportunities but they have events and campaigns. For example, they had this memorial for a baby orca on September 21 and people came and mourned over the orca. This baby was the child of an orca named  Tahlequah who carried her dead baby for 17 days. After they mourned and organized about the orca population and what steps they can take to help these animals.

g. I find it interesting how they are trying to bring more awareness to the endangered species rather than trying to directly and persistently advocate for the Endangered Species Act.

3. Identify one state interest group that represents your issue 

a. Los Angeles Waterkeeper

b. This group works to protect marine life and freshwater species by preventing metal, trash and bacteria enter the LA waters.

c. They advocate for the termination of the “No Otter Zone”; this allowed the otters to return to the coastal waters under the full protection of the Endangered Species Act. Their Kelp Project is currently working to restore the underwater ecosystem that was destroyed by the absence of the sea otters. Their Litigation team and NRDC filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County for discharging waste into bodies of water from the Mugu Lagoon to Latigo Point Area of Special Biological Significance (ASBS) – a marine coastal reserve in Northern Los Angeles County. They also are advocates for clean water and want to hold polluters accountable for their federal Clean Water Act permits. They also have many programs that protect and conserve marine wildlife and their habitats.

d. This group was a key factor for the termination of the “No Otter Zone” by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. July 2013, the California Sea Urchin Commissions filed a lawsuit saying that the otters will eat all of the marine life they catch for business. The Los Angeles Waterkeeper filed a petition to intervene with the case in order to defend the marine ecosystem and ensure the removal of the “No Otter Zone”.

e. They are located in Santa Monica, California and they do not have any local meetings since they are based in LA.

f. There are volunteer opportunities and they are: beach cleanups, dive programs ( volunteer scuba divers work with our staff to conserve undersea habitats), MPA watch (help survey and monitor the human activities in Marine Protected Areas of the Santa Monica Bay) and watershed programs (survey and track pollution that goes into our waterways).

g. I find it interesting that there litigation team has worked on four cases to help conserve and fight for animal and habitat rehabilitation. 

4. The LA Waterkeeper seemed more organized to me because ,for one, their website has a lot of information about their work and beliefs. They were also more successful because they have reduced LA sewage spills by 90%. The Endangered Species Coalition mainly holds meetings about the importance of protecting endangered species rather than directly taking action. However, they do have events all over the US to bring awareness to these endangered species.The LA Waterkeeper target schools and young people more than the Endangered Species Coalition. I would say the coalition is more for adults. The Endangered Species Coalition has a lot of supporters since many organizations joining it; hundreds of organizations have joined them. The LA Waterkeeper has some local and some national organizations who support them but they do not have as many organizations as the Endangered Species Coalition.

5. Choose on PAC or Super PAC

a. National Wildlife Federation Action Fund

b.  This PAC is “working to raise the visibility of key conservation issues with voters and elected officials. Through grassroots actions and focused legislative campaigns, the Action Fund advocates for solutions to protect, restore, and connect wildlife habitat; transform wildlife conservation; and connect Americans with wildlife.”

c. Their total recipient receipt is $7,588; they have spent $33,999: on hand they have $33,087 in the beginning and in the end they have $6,899. 

d. They spent $6,300 on Democrats and -$1,000 on Republicans.

e. Bruce Wallace (retired) and Martha Darling (works at Hooper Hathaway) are their donors. This reflects the interests of the PAC a little because it encourages them to endorse democrats even more than they already have.

[internwithme]

A Look at my Second Week

A brief (lol) introduction...

So, I'm starting this blog as a way to track my progress through my internship with the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida. They're an amazing grassroots effort set on collecting, researching, and exhibiting LGBTQ memorabilia from the greater Orlando area. They're truly one of a kind, and I hope that I'm able to contribute something meaningful to their institution. I guess I should introduce myself, too. My name is Alycia (uh-Lee-see-uh) Lampley, and I am a third semester grad student at Johns Hopkins University for museum studies. My interest is museum education and, more broadly, the informal education of youth. A couple of things; I don't think that museum learning has to be secondary to the United States' public school system's standards, nor do I look at informal education as a supplementary or ancillary service to standardized learning. I'm hoping that as time goes on, informal education as a stand alone, just as much as a supplement or collaboration, will begin to become more of a conversation and priority in GLAM institutions in the near future. But, that's enough of that.

I would - should - have begun this blog with week one, but I'm not all the way together, I suppose, so we're here now.

This week was much like the first, but it ended with a much more solid grasp of my next steps in working with the museum. My project for the semester is to create educational modules about LGBTQ history for middle-school aged youth, all based on collection objects from the museum's Pride, Prejudice, and Protest exhibition. In the previous week, I spent time gaining access to the collection and exploring for the most part, looking to see if I could access collection content from the exhibition. Initially, after only being able to locate photographs from an in-person exhibition of the content, I reached out to my supervisors. I had a few email conversations between Martha, Sara, and myself, where they provided me with information that would help me complete my "Big Picture" assignment, due for my internship course with the university. The assignment was intimidating to me at first, partly because I wasn't sure exactly how I would access the information, short of asking them for it straight up (which I ended up doing anyway), and I wasn't sure how my responses and analysis of the information provided would hold up in any class discussion. I always tend to get those kinds of jitters in the first few weeks of a course, but there's never anything to worry about anyway.

I also had a lengthy conversation with the museum's Treasurer, Rose, who also initially contacted me about my interest in the internship. She was also incredibly helpful and far exceeded my asking in terms of what I needed to know and the details. I learned quite a lot about the museum's community partner, RICHES, through the University of Central Florida.  RICHES is an interface that archives and houses public history projects, and that's keeping it really general. They link, through the Public History program at UCF, both profit and non-profit organizations to promote the collection and preservation of history in Central Florida. I found out through speaking with Rose, a UCF professor (my site supervisors, Martha and Sarah, are also UCF professors. I should've said that earlier), that the LGBTQ History Museum was one of the first community partners that RICHES worked with, collaborating on NEH grants, for example. I was able to learn a lot and not only apply it to my assignment, but learn more about the museum themselves and see how they navigate community partnerships and initiatives.

Another meeting I had this week was with David, Vice President on the Board of Directors for the museum and PhD student. Yet another amazing help. He set me on course for how I'm going to essentially begin designing the modules. My problem is always starting. I need different goal posts or benchmarks so that I can feel my way through a project, so, essentially, when I entered this zoom meeting, I was coming to him with nothing. He helped me sort of steer this museum education ship, providing me with LGBTQ educational resources and examples, including a PDF outlining the Dru Project, an LGBTQ advocacy organization that promotes Gay-Straight Alliances and LGBTQ student clubs. Through that meeting this morning, I was able to locate the official exhibition checklist through RICHES, from which I will draw content for the modules, narrow my scope to post-visit educational modules (as opposed to both pre and post because that's just too much) and locate the standards for Florida Public Schools, CPALMS.

All in all, I spent a about five hours this week working, between locating different exhibition information, being in contact with my board members/supervisors, and now, thanks to David, reading up on teaching LGBTQ history to youth - he sent me the title of a great book that I'm looking into now for Kindle.

I'll be sure to update weekly, for real this time. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say, and I'm excited to continue. The next step for me is drawing from exhibition material and formulating a draft - I guess I should figure out which topic to start with.

I'm not sure how I'll close these out in the future but until I figure that out, I'll just talk to y'all later. Bye!

-Alycia

[studydreamrepeat]

I’m a very goal driven person.  Without a clear goal in mind I begin to flounder and struggle, uncertain of where I should redirect my efforts.  So, as I reconsider my career goals and relationship with academic research, I thought some reflection might be useful. 

I entered college with a very specific career goal in mind.  I wanted to be a pharmaceutical researcher, working for a (large, well-paying) corporation on developing drugs for clinical trials and/or consumer use.  Chemistry and biology were my favorite subjects in high school; lab experiments were my favorite part.  I had an amazing experience during HS where I spent a year doing community outreach for a grassroots air quality organization.  The experience had been so amazing because they were actually measuring the levels of air pollutants in the air with the help of graduate students at a local university, and I got to help them measure the levels of nitrous oxides in the air.  I reported my results to city officials and even presented at a youth conference in DC, where I spoke to my local and state representatives as well as EPA officials.  Doing real-world lab techniques, learning about the chemistry and the biological effects, and seeing my results be used in real life outreach and legislation had enraptured me.  I was sold.  I wanted to do something similar with my life, but in pharmaceutical research I saw a better connection to my interest in disease, better pay/job security, and more real-life influence by developing medications.  It seemed perfect.   Three years later, I have no idea where that enthusiasm went–but it’s totally gone.  I’m now changing my major.  Again.  A B.S. in Biology is what I’m switching to, making it my third chance.  I entered college pursuing a B.S. in Biochemistry & Biophysics, as there was no plain biochemistry degree (which seemed ideal, with biology and chemistry being my favorite subjects)–but switched out within the year.  Following a poor first term (C’s across the board, with the exception of a history course), my adviser scared me out of the program by convincing me that I would never survive the rigor of the remaining calculus and advanced chemistry classes I would have to take.  If I couldn’t excel in general chemistry right out the gate, how would I survive the school’s advanced physical chemistry series where straight-A students were known to struggle for passing grades?  That seemed like a fair criticism.  I switched majors that spring.   I aced the rest of my self-written gen chem labs and went on to ace organic chemistry as well, driven by pettiness to deliver a subtle “fuck you” to that particular adviser.  

There were other, more valid reasons for my leaving the department, but the success I forced myself towards out of sheer bitterness has always entertained me.  I switched to a unique degree after biochemistry, pursuing a B.S. in Biological Research.  I loved the department, adviser, and coursework.  I got to customize the classes I was taking and elected to focus on toxicology.  The other great thing about the degree was that it required nearly 20 credits of thesis research experience.  I tacked on a chemistry minor and a certificate in medical humanities, thinking I was set for the next three years.

Within two weeks of joining the department, my adviser had been contacted by a doctoral candidate looking for an undergraduate to work with him.  He was a program alumni needing extra hands for his natural resource isolation research in a pharmaceutical sciences lab.  On paper it seemed like a great fit.  I jumped on board even though natural resource isolation wasn’t my real interest.  I was willing to learn about anything, and for the first few weeks natural curiosity carried me.  I’d heard horror stories of how difficult it was to get a proper thesis project, and was relieved to have it seemingly handed to me. In person, it was more of a disaster.

Of the four other undergraduates already affiliated with the lab, three of which were also women, I was the only one who regularly came in.  It didn’t take long to find out why.  A majority of the researchers (not that there were many) came from cultures that are known for poor treatment of women.  I was, after a few months when I finally thought to ask, told it had been quite some time since there had been a post-doctoral or other faculty researcher in the lab, and that the last one had not stayed particularly long.  I consider myself a friendly person–I make eye contact, smile, and exchange pleasantries when it seems opportune.  I was now in a setting where I was actively ignored.  I was largely expected to learn by just doing what I was told.  Questions were rarely answered, and trust me–when you’re holding a bottle with a giant label declaring CARCINOGEN for the first time, you’re going to have questions about how to proceed. 

I was isolated from everyone but the other undergrads and my mentor–when he was gone, I could occasionally convince one of our post-docs to help me find the right compounds, before he would return to his bench where he would scroll through FB for a majority of the day.  My PI rarely spoke to me, and he was often gone from the country for weeks at a time.  With only general chemistry under my belt, I didn’t know enough to really appreciate what I was doing.  I struggled.  Things got better and I started to understand, only to get lost again when our project shifted in another direction, then back, then back again.  My mentor was surprisingly patient through all of my confusion–far and away, he is the only reason I even survived a year in that lab.

Paperwork caught up with me.  My depression returned, worse than ever.  This time I struggled with anxiety symptoms that I had somehow evaded in all my previous experiences with mental illness.  My grades started looking like the long end of a bell curve. I gave up part of my Christmas break to stay in town to work in the lab, only to spend those days working on an unrelated project.  

Halfway through the school year, I was casually told my thesis project would be changed to something involving gene operons.  I would be working with a lot of bacteria, rather than the genetically modified yeast cultures I had been working on in my resource isolation.  I hadn’t taken general microbiology yet, much less bacterial genetics or any other relevant class.  I was just starting a class in cellular biology and barely knew what a gene operon was.  My opinion had never once been asked through this process.  It was never once suggested that my mentor and PI had been thinking of switching my project.  They decided without me or any input from me, and when I was told it hadn’t been a proposition or question–they were very honest in telling me the decision had, somehow, already been made.  Had they asked me, I would have been happy to go along with it.  That my opinion on what I would be spending the next two years working on was regarded as unimportant was very frustrating.

I was starting from square one again.  To this day, I still don’t understand a lot of the techniques I used or data I generated.  The only thing I understood was that I was getting damn good at electrophoresis.  I had no funding, so I continued to put in my hours without pay.  For most of the year my efforts were considered null even though I was in the lab logging more hours and generating more data than many of the paid researchers.  It seemed I had gotten my acknowledgement when funding finally came that June, nine months after I had started.  It turned out that the grant had actually been secured for me by my adviser who knew I was staying in town for the summer to continue my research.  Now four months into this new project, I still didn’t understand the basis for most of my experiments, didn’t understand how to analyze whatever data I was continuously generating, and generally didn’t know what was happening.  The lab was becoming emptier. On occasions I would arrive and find the lab was just closed for the day, lights off and doors locked.  My mentor was busy with his prelims.  There was no support or acknowledgement of my frustrations.  I remember one day where I repeatedly asked for clarification, followed the directions I was given, and was then told I had done it incorrectly and had to redo it.  I messed it up again because the numbers I had been given was wrong.  I remember tearing up in the lab and managed to excuse myself for the evening, then crying out of sheer frustration in the women’s bathroom.

I wasn’t the only one frustrated.  One of the other undergrads left the lab, citing the lack of support and poor treatment, including some degree of sexism, from the professional researchers. The lab was falling apart at the seams.  Water occasionally dripped from pipelines running above our workbenches.  The equipment was all older than I was, and the bigger equipment was twice my age.  Our fridges wouldn’t maintain their temperatures.  Experiments would frequently be delayed for a day or two while my mentor tinkered with equipment, trying to fix things that someone else had broken. Someone had broken a rubber ring on the fermenter and tried to replace it with a ring of parafilm. We had two HPLCs, and one of them was broken the entire year I was there.  When questioned, I was told fixing it would be pointless because if we had a second working one then someone would break it knowing there was still the second. When we started having weekly lab group presentations, sharing our data and progress, it devolved immediately.  One person would present, and the rest would sit around the table finding the most useless and particular questions to ask in an attempt to one-up the presentation.  We stopped having meetings again as our PI flew in and out of the US.  The problem with the lab wasn’t that we were complacent or poked fun at each other and each other’s research, or asked legitimate questions to encourage growth.  It was openly hostile.  Asking for help accomplished nothing. Undergraduates were not encouraged to ask questions in the lab or ask for help. We also weren’t allowed to work without someone else  in the lab, because it was well understood that we didn’t know what we were doing and were a danger to ourselves.  

There’s no way of explaining how exhausted or ill working in that specific setting had made me.  It was a collection of small things.  The inherent frustration of research–constant failure and constant redesign–barely registered through the entire experience.  The frustration of not being able to express myself, being isolated, lacking financial/intellectual/mental support, and not having working equipment built up to become hair-pulling.  I stopped wanting to come to lab.  Then I stopped wanting to go to school.  For a while I entertained just dropping out completely and fulfilling my life’s dream of becoming a subsistence potato farmer in rural Idaho. My partner patiently reminded me my life goals were bigger than potatoes.  My friends reminded me my life goals were more than potatoes. My family wanted me to have more than potatoes.  Everyone severely underestimates potatoes. All the meanwhile my family life devolved in the background.  There were three months where at any given point I had a family member in a hospital.  I was constantly on the edge of a mental breakdown. 

I left at the end of August for a week’s vacation, which extended into a month because of a medical emergency.  Away from the lab–even with other major stresses–my anxiety receded.  I was coping better with my depression.  I resolved not to go back and I didn’t.  I withdrew from the lab, citing family responsibilities and health problems.  I was, and am, completely disenchanted with lab-based research.  My career goals had been decimated because I don’t believe I have the discipline or willpower to pursue a PhD.  I am skeptical of the quality of any letter of recommendation or reference I could get from that lab because of how my PI rarely interacted with me and the way I suddenly made my exit, abandoning a lot of responsibilities. Exhausted by research, never mind a full thesis, I am switching majors to a good and simple Biology degree and taking my minor and certificate with me.  I’m not sure what my new career goal will be.  MD, PharmD, JD focusing in health law, or maybe a MS or PhD in a different field. 

Despite the frustrations and discrimination my peers and I dealt with in that lab, I learned so so so much and am very grateful to have gotten the opportunity.  I learned a lot of lab techniques and shortcuts. I learned how to present and communicate my research, how to interact with vendors, how to get funding (alternatively: how not to get grants), and saw a lot about graduate school and what it really took to get a lab-based research degree at the doctoral level.  I saw my mentor’s frustrations, even with his decade of experience, and how it was shaping his career and effecting his family life.  My scientific writing improved.  I pushed myself to new limits and, optimistically, I’d like to say I grew as a person. I also learned some things that I’m glad I haven’t taken for granted, which is what I don’t want to do with my life.  I learned how to put myself and my health first, even if it means giving up on amazing opportunities.  I learned how to tell when something was becoming too much for me to handle or deal with.  I learned where my breaking point was, which is at an 18 credit term with 20 hours a week of research (orgo chem, physics, cell bio, and tech writing made for a pretty brutal term). 

Even with the disastrous experience I went through with academic pharma research, I still want to have more research experience–just in a completely different field.  I’m going to pick research that I am interested in and because it’s what I want to learn more about, not because I need research experience to fill a requirement or to bolster my resume (although that’s a bonus).  I’m looking at PIs who are focused in health literacy, or quantifying legislative effects, or nanotoxicology. 

If you want to do research, it ought to be something you genuinely care about or are interested in.  Sure, you can do it if you’re indifferent or if you’ve scrounged up some everyday curiosity for it, but after a couple hundred hours you’ll be pretty goddamn miserable. No matter what it is you’re doing, if you’re going to put hundreds of hours into something, make sure you care about it.  Those are hours you will never get back.  Even in labs where there is support and people act like decent human beings, research is still not an easy task.  I’d like to think we call it research because you have to constantly be searching for reasons to continue. 

There are reasons worth continuing.  There are reasons to keep pushing forward and hunting down the answers to your questions.  Your discoveries may be small at first.  History is made by small discoveries and a random spattering of luck.  But your discoveries, no matter how revolutionary or mundane, are still discoveries.  Your work can lead to a cure.  To a difference in the way we interact with other species. To a difference in the way we interact with each other.  You can change the way we use certain materials, or the way we use the world. You can change the world.

[saoirseann]

Creative Confidence - Tom & David Kelly

In this book, David and Tom Kelly discuss thoroughly the opposite of “the creativity myth” by talking about what they call “Creative confidence.”

 This is the foundation that we are all creative.

Creative Confidence helps you rediscover your creativity, showing you how to exercise your innovative muscle by drawing on the authors’ experiences working at the design and innovation firm IDEO, as well as the lessons they learned and imparted to others at the d.school at Stanford University.

“Creative confidence is like a muscle - it can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and experience.”

If you haven’t used the muscle in a while, it only takes a bit of training in order to make it strong again is David and Tom’s theory.

What is Creativity?

Great creativity sometimes finds its expression in the fine arts, but it actually has a much broader application. Creativity means simply using your imagination to create something new.

Creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you, the self-assurance.

 Belief in creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation.

Tom & David Kelly debunk that  “Creativity is only for artsy types.”

We even see this social rejection in the classroom, where creativity is smothered in favour of rationality, and small children are told to obey the rules and only colour inside the lines.

They talk about the example of when Paul McCartney was at school he was told to give up music and pursue a “safe career” in Liverpool’s manufacturing and shipping industries. Instead, he became part of the most successful band in history.

The anti-creativity mindset is changing.

Today’s businesses have begun to recognize that the best way to find novel solutions to complex problems is by investing more time and money in nurturing their employees’ innovative drives.

For example, a very recent IBM survey of more than 1,500 CEOs reported that creativity is the single most important leadership skill for enterprises engaged in the complex world of global commerce, where innovative solutions.

In our experience, everybody is the creative type.

People simply need to rediscover what they already have: “the capacity to imagine - or build upon- new-to-the-world ideas.”

Growth Mindset

Many people want to be creative, but they don’t really know how to do it. The most basic thing you can do is to give up the notion that you cannot be creative. 

You must truly believe that you can grow, experience and create more than you ever previously thought was possible.

One way to develop this mindset is to create a roadmap to guide you through creative processes. This roadmap has all the different techniques you need to train your creative muscles, providing you with an easy, straightforward path to follow.

One technique that the authors often use with so-called “non-creatives” is design thinking. Basically, design thinking helps us to identify human needs and create new solutions by thinking like design practitioners.

From Design Thinking to Creative Confidence

Develop the courage to explore your creativity – it’s a great first step toward discovering your new self.

By adopting this growth mind-set you will automatically change your perception of yourself and the world around you, and be empowered to flex your creative muscles and come up with innovative solutions. 

Three factors in every innovation program

 Tom & David Kelly believe that successful innovations rely on some element of human-centred design research whilst also balancing the two other elements - seeking the sweet spot of feasibility, viability & desirability. 

No one-size-fits-all-methodology for bringing new ideas to life

First factor - technical factors (feasibility) 0 cool technology alone isn’t enough essentially.

Second key element - Economic viability (business factors) Not only does the technology need to work but it also needs to be produced and distributed in an economically viable way.

Third element involves people- often referred to as the human factors. Generally, you need to deeply understand human needs - getting at people’s motivations & core beliefs.

A growth state of mind

I’d researched this before from Carol Dweck’s Ted talk but it was interesting to read further about it in Creative Confidence. 

Individuals with a growth mindset, “believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.”

A growth mindset it a passport to new adventures

The Failure Paradox

David & Tom debunk the widely held myth that creative geniuses rarely fail - But really everyone fails. In fact, Professor Simonton of the University of California found that these iconic creative geniuses didn’t fail less, but actually more than others.

However, rather than quit, they learned to keep going. Creative geniuses learn from their mistakes and modify their next attempts so that they are closer to the mark.

So, if we want to be successful in our creativity, then we need to think like Edison: a failure is only a failure if nothing has been learned from it.

In fact, there’s a paradox: success at your first attempt might actually hurt your results in the long run.

This is because failures that happen early in the innovative process reveal the weaknesses in your product or line of thinking.

Standford professor Bob Sutton & IDEO partner Diego Rodriguex often say at the d.school - 

“Failure sucks, but instructs.”

The “do something” mindset helps you see that you can and should change things for the better.

Changing your mind-set from, “I know I should probably do this,” to “I will do this,” is the most powerful means you have of taking charge of your own life.

Even when the outcome is not successful, you will have no regrets, because you know that at least you tried. The worst mistake you can make is to not try and never learn.

Balance money and passion to find a job that fulfils all your desires.

One of the chapters goes into detail and asks about what kind of job would you rather have: one that pays as much as possible or one that allows you to pursue your passions?

Usually, people want both, and this can cause a lot of stress. However, it’s rare that both our passions and big money are equally represented in our job opportunities, so we often have to choose between the two.

Channelling your creativity will improve your work and make you happier in your private life.

Allowing yourself the freedom to think creatively and to innovate is one of the best ways to ensure your own happiness, both professionally and personally.

For starters, when there’s innovation, engagement and creativity in your work, your employers will start paying attention. Nowadays, companies recognize the great value of people who can pitch new ideas and help their projects achieve new heights.

Nearly everyone who has worked with the authors to rediscover their creative potential has their own stories of how cultivating creativity did marvels for their career. It’s allowed CEOs to involve themselves in innovative, grassroots work and helped lawyers approach tough cases in a novel and intelligent way, leading them to win more cases.

A creative mind can do wonders for your personal life as well. Not only will this new perspective help you to enjoy the mundane aspects of life, but the life you’ve built for yourself will further inspire and motivate you.

My key learning of Creative Confidence

Creativity isn’t just for artists. It’s generally in everyone’s blood. And although society does everything it can to smother it(mostly schools), you can still flex your creative muscles in order to win it back. The only way to do that, however, is to face any fear of failure and take immediate action instead.

[thisdaynews]

Gani Adams: I See APC, PDP Breaking Up And New Party Formed Before 2023

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/gani-adams-i-see-apc-pdp-breaking-up-and-new-party-formed-before-2023/

Gani Adams: I See APC, PDP Breaking Up And New Party Formed Before 2023

There Aare Gani Adams is the 15th Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land. He is a social activist and former leader of a faction of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), which supports an autonomous state for the Yoruba people. Talking with Sunday Sun, he (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); spoke about his views of 2019 and the New Year, 2020, among other issues.

What is your assessment of the outgoing year 2019?

2019 is a year of hardship in terms of the economy. It is a year where our economy is not moving in the right direction. It is a year that the government shut the border for the past four months now and it’s a year of bloodshed. It is a year of crises and lots of social vices. It is a (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); year of bloodletting in different states in Nigeria and it’s a year of political decision.We held our presidential election and Nigeria elected President Muhammadu Buhari .

It’s a year that gradually, Nigerians are losing hope on the government. It’s a year that the government has already made up their mind with some politicians that whether you like us or not, we’ll buy you to exercise franchise for us against your will. It’s a year that we are fast losing our institution and it is a year that rule of law is dying gradually,. It’s a year that we foresee a situation that the government is prepared to intimidate the citizens by all means. The freedom of expression is eshrined in our constitution, but tactically the Federal Government wants to erase it by bringing in a bill of hate speech which the majority of Nigerians have kicked against. It is a year that the budget sent to the National Assembly doesn’t see hope coming in 2020.

It’s a year we realized that our president is not in control anymore; the people in the corridor of power have already taken over the government from him. The Sowore saga is another thing which the Federal Government did not manage very well, especially the SSS. If anybody poses a security threat, the government has a right to arrest that person, to detain him within 24 hours and charge him to the court of law. Until when the court proves him guilty before people would know that he has committed that offence. In democracy, there must always be a room for opposition. It is better to be in military uniform than to be a dictatorship in civilian democracy. You can’t survive dictatorship in democrat government. There is a serious setback on the process of our democracy.

What would you say about the arms of government?

I realized that our two arms of government have been caged by the executive. The Senate president openly told Nigerians that anything the executive brings to their table they would grant it. That’s an impeachable statement from any number three person who holds the most powerful parliament. It’s so sad that people like us that fought for this democracy are here, but those who worked with the military in those days are the ones in charge now. If the government did not pay me back for what I have done, the Yoruba has paid me a certain level of what I have done by giving me this position of Aare Ona Kakanfo. This is my own country. I can’t change my green passport.

I can’t have citizen of any other country like others who believe that if Nigeria does not work, they would fall on their green card. It’s very difficult for me to have such plans because they would use it against me. I have been offered green card, residential permit by many organizations. If not for the love I have for this country I would have had their residential permit and needing no visas to go to those countries, at least European union, 28 countries. Because of the love and because of the sacrifice we have for this country I decided to go with my green passport.

What are your perceptions about the closure of our land borders?

The damage closure of borders has caused to us is more than the advantage that the closing has caused us. I’m not a smuggler, it’s not my route, it’s not my own business interest, but when you study the feelings of the people, you are baffled at the suffering. Before I became the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land I listened to the wishes of the people, I realised that the Seme border, the Shaki border, Idiroko border and other borders within the Southwest and the economy of the grassroots are seriously affected. When you say they are bringing terrorists from these borders to Nigeria, what is the job of our Immigration? If you say they are bringing illegal goods to Nigeria what is the job of our Customs? When you are talking of security in the border, there are Immigration, SSS, Nigeria Police.

Are you now telling us that these security institutions saddled with the responsibility to secure our borders, are they not competent to secure our borders and the best solution is for you to seal the borders? This is a year I believe Nigerian government took a wrong decision on external relations in that regard.

As we are entering year 2020 are we hoping to see Vision 2020 come to reality?

Is Nigeria even prepared for 2030 talk less of 2020? A lot of things have been done to affect our institution. Every sector of Nigeria is complaining. Even the civil servants are complaining. Both federal, states and even local government. When you are talking about three tiers of government, it is only the federal and states that are working. The local government tier of government is not active as before because their money is not getting to them.

At the same time, Vision 2020 can never be realized. If they have a plan for Vision 2020 you could have heard them talking that two years ago. I don’t know the plan the government has maybe for Vision 3030 . Nigeria is the only country I (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); see that the government was sworn in on May 29 and certain crop of politicians just rise up again that they want to become president. It is a serious diversion for the incumbent president; it’s a diversion for the incumbent governor and even the incumbent local government chairman.

I will advise the politicians that they should play down their politics in 2020. By middle of 2021 the political atmosphere can be charged because anything now will destroy the entire system. The president will have an excuse that he wants to prepare for his successor because people have been coming out.

How do you see the coming year 2020?

I don’t foresee any magic. There won’t be something different from what happened in 2019. I forsee a situation where the president would be looking forward to clamp down on his opposition. I foresee a situation whereby the president would want to jail most of the governors that have trials. I foresee a situation that the president would want to use anti-corruption to cow down most of the opposition and those who don’t believe in his cause. I foresee a situation where new party may come out within 2020 and 2021. I foresee the two main major party will break and new party will surface. I foresee a situation that more civil society groups will come out stronger. I foresee a situation where many people we thought were powerful, their secrets will be opened and the whole world would know that most of them are enemies of this country. I foresee our judiciary, some of them standing their feet, that if you want to remove me, remove me, I cannot continue this way.

Talking of the economy, I foresee international community coming against our government . If care is not taken sanction would come from international community. From what happened in 2019, the international communities were not pleased with the process of our democracy. I foresee a sanction from United States of America; I foresee a sanction from EU. If the (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); Federal Government does not manage our international relations very well, the crisis between the government and the international community will be worse than the military because a statement that came from the spokesperson of the president that we are not answerable to the US, Britain and EU, that statement would generate a lot of annoyance because these are the powerful forces in global scene.

They control World Bank, they control IMF, they control United Nations about 99 per cent of the institutions that we use to govern, the whole world they control them. You are not answerable to them, but you get grant from them and they are selling world equipment to you. We would have witnessed another third world war if not for the United Nations. I foresee sanction coming to the government if they do not manage their international relations very well. I foresee international community blocking our citizens from traveling to their countries.

There’s an approval of budget of 30 billion dollars. Already Nigerian owes about N25 billion, the calculation of $30billion will almost get to N11 trillion. Definitely, the money the Federal Government is asking for, if the National Assembly grants the request, Nigeria will be oweing almost N36 billion, and a country with that kind of debt is in bad shape. Nobody will be thinking of bringing an investment to that country and nobody will be thinking of even borrowing more money to that country. It would bring more inflation to our society and value added tax has been increased from 5.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent and when cost of living is being hiked and wages are not high there will be serious problem. Definitely, we should expect a serious economic hardship in 2020.

There have been major crisis in Southwest in 2019, what efforts are you putting in place to curb it?

I think the Federal Government has tried its best. To solve our security problems now, the onus lies on the Southwest governors. The police have called that they’re ready to partner with the organization. Some state governments because of politics are trying to dodge it and by so doing they could not move forward. Once they dodge, it would be an exercise in futility. Definitely, the ball is on the court of our state governors.

I see APC, PDP breaking up and new party formed before 2023 –Gani Adams

[junker-town]

The NBA MVP will be one of these 12 players

LeBron and Luka are each MVP candidates so far.

Who’s in and who’s out of the NBA’s MVP race for the 2019-2020 season.

Two weeks is a blink and an eternity in basketball. Two weeks ago we were debating whether the Warriors would be a mid-rung playoff team or miss the postseason entirely. That debate is over. Two weeks ago people had high hopes for the Bulls, Kings, and Pelicans. Those hopes have been dashed. Stephen Curry was a leading MVP contender. Nope. The Lakers were a mystery. Nope. The Suns were in line for the worst record again. Nope.

A lot has changed in two weeks. Has the MVP outlook changed?

Consider this an early opportunity to reassess what we thought the 2019-20 NBA MVP race would look like and what’s changed about six games into most teams’ season. We’ll discuss some players who were expected to be in the conversation all along and whether they remain in it, and bring up some names few had in the mix initially but who warrant further attention as the season strolls along.

Candidate no more

Stephen Curry: Curry will apparently miss at least three months with a broken hand. Between that and the Warriors’ reduced effectiveness, Curry’s MVP campaign is over.

Fading

Nikola Jokic: Jokic had a bad start to the season — out-of-shape, disengaged — and is already at least partially responsible for one Michael Malone meltdown. An MVP case for a idiosyncratic star like Jokic is a fragile thing, and it can’t survive much tumult. It’s still early enough to fix, but Jokic needs strong positive momentum and grassroots support to stay in the conversation and win some votes come April.

Kyrie Irving: We already have a story about Kyrie’s chemistry issues that seems sourced by Nets personnel. Kyrie has been really good and the Nets have been iffy. But Kyrie was an ultra-longshot to win MVP, and having something about chemistry come out like that early in the season while the team struggles is a killer.

Still alive

James Harden: The Rockets are weirder than I think any of us imagined, and we all knew they’d be weird. Harden is of course the early scoring leader. Here’s something weird: only one player in the whole league (Andre Drummond) has more total rebounds (131) than James Harden has free throw attempts (95). Harden has made 91 free throws. No. 2 on that list is Anthony Davis with 53; No. 3 is Damian Lillard with 39. Harden has made 2.3 times as many free throws as the third most frequent free throw maker this season! Just unreal. But yes, he could still win MVP even though he’d be atop no one’s list at this point.

Damian Lillard: The Blazers are a mash unit up front and some bad on-court breaks have Portland at 3-3. Dame only has an MVP case if Portland is one of the best teams in the West. We’ve seen the Blazers pull that off in recent years, so it’s still on the table. But they need some healthy bodies in the frontcourt to have a shot.

Donovan Mitchell: Mitchell has been quite good to start the season, but something’s off with the Jazz. As with Jokic and Lillard, if Utah isn’t one of the best teams in the West and a title contender, Mitchell’s case suffers greatly through no direct fault of his own.

Still strong

Giannis Antetokounmpo: Giannis has been by far the most effective Buck, and the Bucks remain quite good. He remains the de facto Eastern Conference candidate if Joel Embiid misses 15 or so games and Antetokounmpo plays close to all of them, and so long as the Bucks end the season looking like a Finals threat. Giannis is in late-2000s LeBron mode right now. He could probably win MVP every year if he keeps it up.

Anthony Davis/LeBron James: The Lakers’ two stars suffer from what Curry and Kevin Durant did the last few seasons. Can you be the most valuable player in the entire league if we aren’t really, totally sure you’re the most valuable player on your team? But if the Lakers end up as the clear No. 1 team in the league (more plausible than it was a few weeks ago), and one of the superfriends has some eye-popping stats or performances, it could happen for one of them.

Kawhi Leonard: Kawhi has played a lot and done nothing to dissuade anyone that he is without question of the most talented, productive players in the world. The longer Paul George recuperates from shoulder surgery the stronger Kawhi’s early case gets. Because Davis and James share credit and PG-13 isn’t around, Leonard has an advantage there.

Joel Embiid: The Sixers are the best team in the NBA, Embiid is their best player. He’s also in a way a mascot for the entire league. There are few people who dislike him, even though he beefs with everyone in the league. He’s a little like pre-Malice Ron Artest or a post-title Metta World Peace. Except one of the best players in the world. If the Sixers keep this up and Embiid plays 70 or so games, MVP just might be his to lose.

Rising candidates

Devin Booker: Phoenix makes the playoffs and Booker is definitely getting some fifth-place vote buzz.

Jimmy Butler: Butler hasn’t even been there for all of the wins, but he has that certain je ne sais quoi that has Miami buzzing. If the Heat win 50 games and come in as a No. 2 or a strong No. 3 seed on par with the Sixers and Bucks, and if Butler is the team leader in points and assists, and if Butler has a few signature performances, and if something goes sideways with Antetokounmpo and Embiid and there’s no clear candidate from the West, Butler could absolutely get in there.

Karl-Anthony Towns: Towns has been among the best players in the NBA this season, and is the biggest reason Minnesota is respectable. His story has been somewhat like that of Anthony Davis: an extremely highly regarded young big man who faces team failure and whose reputation suffers unfairly. (Towns also had the Butler experience hurt his rep.) Put him on the right team and you remember what he can do. Is this Minnesota team the right team? Probably not. But you never know, and Towns is positioned to capitalize.

Luka Doncic: We keep referring to Luka as a future NBA MVP. Well, April 2020 is in the future, right? This kid is absolutely electric. He has the Mavericks in a great spot, and while he should share credit with Kristaps Porzingis and a well-prepared, high-effort Dallas team, he will get the lion’s share of individual glory in the national conversation because everyone just loves him so much. (And with good reason.) The media loves to be early on the coattails of what’s next, and Luka is next, and the media votes for MVP. I’m buying on this one.

[lorajackson]

Michigan conservatives hail protest success – and set sights on Trump's re-election

Protesters backed by rightwing donors believe their growing movement can ‘dwarf the Tea Party’ and keep Trump in the White HouseIt started with a Zoom call.Five members of the Michigan Conservative Coalition – a rightwing non-profit with ties to the Trump administration – decided they needed to do something to protest against Michigan’s stay-at-home order, designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.Over a video chat in mid-April, they conceived a “gridlock” protest outside Michigan’s state capitol. It led to thousands of people blocking streets with their cars and hundreds assembling, in contravention of social distancing guidelines.The rally had a bigger impact than they could have imagined. Promoted by wealthy rightwing groups, pushed by Fox News, and tacitly endorsed by Donald Trump, the Michigan protest has sparked copycat rallies across the US with further protests planned, and is spiraling into a movement which one conservative activist said could “dwarf the Tea Party”.“We were blown away,” said Meshawn Maddock, a co-founder of the Michigan Conservative Coalition and a member of the advisory board for Women for Trump – an official arm of Trump’s re-election campaign.“We’ve organized some pretty big things, but I don’t think Michigan … I don’t know that the nation has seen anything like what just happened.”The rally was also supported by the Michigan Freedom Fund – which has received more than half a million dollars from the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos – but soon even bigger groups were jumping on board, each with their own rightwing agendas to promote.FreedomWorks, a conservative special interest group which pushed the Tea Party movement, opposed Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, and has downplayed climate change, has directed resources to the movement. The group now hopes to turn the anti-lockdown protests into a movement which could help re-elect Trump in November.The Tea Party Patriots, another group forged amid the Tea Party movement of 2009, has also weighed in, promoting the rallies to its 3 million members nationwide, while a group of gun-enthusiast activist brothers bought up webpages in an effort to further the movement’s aims.The Tea Party supported lower taxes, but was also accused of representing a racist reaction to the election of the first black president. It is also a prime example of “astroturfing” – where corporations jumped on to an activist group presented as a grassroots movement. It had some undoubted success, particularly in electing a number of extremely rightwing Republicans to office during the midterm elections, but some of those behind the current protests say this movement could eclipse it.“This movement that’s starting right now has the potential to even dwarf the size of Tea Party,” said Noah Wall, the vice-president of advocacy at FreedomWorks.“The Tea Party was started in response to excessive government spending and bailouts in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. This is affecting Americans across the board. You don’t have to have an opinion on government spending to not want to be forced to stay at home and not be able to work.”Wall stressed that activists are organizing the protests, but FreedomWorks is pulling out all the stops to help them do so. The organization has set up an online “planning guide” for people to hold anti-stay-at-home rallies, complete with printable rally signs and tips on promoting the events online.Meanwhile, it has promoted the events to its 5 million members through emails and social media posts.The influence of rightwing groups has rarely been made clear to the aggrieved Americans heading out to the protests.Maddock and her Michigan Conservative Coalition co-founder Marian Sheridan claimed the Michigan rally was bipartisan, despite scores of protesters waving Trump 2020 campaign signs and sporting Maga hats. Others paraded Confederate flags.Sheridan is the grassroots vice-chair of the Michigan Republican party, and said although this wasn’t an official Republican protest, “I’m sure that the party supports this”.“There were lots of our legislators at the rally,” Sheridan pointed out.Tony Daunt, the executive director of the DeVos-backed Michigan Freedom Fund, downplayed the group’s involvement in the rally – saying it was limited to spending $250 to advertise the event – but he did attend the protest.“The rally was, I think, a huge success,” Daunt said.Daunt and the Michigan Conservative Coalition said they had supported Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s initial stay-at-home order until she introduced stricter measures on 10 April, including limiting the number of people allowed in stores.Polls show a majority of Michiganders support Whitmer’s handling of the crisis. More than 2,800 people have died from coronavirus in the state – the third highest tally in the US – with African Americans accounting for 40% of the deaths.Despite minorities having been most affected by coronavirus in the state, the Michigan crowd appeared to be majority white.Fox News covered the Michigan event throughout the day, with hosts including Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro – neither of whom have risked abandoning social distancing to attend a protest – championing the effort.Fox News’s bombardment of anti-lockdown messaging soon reached a particularly influential audience member. “Liberate Michigan!” Trump tweeted two days after the Michigan protest, minutes after another favorable report by Fox News. On Sunday, he denied the protesters had put people at risk.“They’ve got cabin fever,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing. “They want their lives back. These people love our country. They want to get back to work.”As Trump and Fox News, plus other rightwing outlets, cheered the Michiganders, plans for rallies in other states began to emerge. Since the Michigan effort, protests have taken place in Maryland, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia – a rally organized, in part, by a Virginia gun rights group.Other protests, promoted by FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, are planned in Alaska, Delaware and Kansas.Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots, stressed that the protests had not been organized by the top of the organization, but by Tea Party Patriots activists in different states.“They let us know about reopen events that are happening in their own state,” Martin said. “As long as the event is listing that the social distancing guidelines must be followed then we are sharing the event with our supporters in the geographic area by email.”That possibly underplays the Tea Party Patriots’ influence, given it has 3 million supporters and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Wall, at FreedomWorks, was also keen to stress it did not organize events, but the organization’s ability to reach its 5 million members is hardly a small matter in promoting the events.In any case, the protests and the fawning news coverage by the rightwing media serve as a handy shot in the arm for less-publicized work both organizations are doing behind the scenes.FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have joined with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial rightwing network that pushes policies by creating model legislation, to create a “Save Our Country” coalition, which is quietly lobbying Trump to reopen the economy. The protests are likely to help them make their case – potentially having consequences that far outweigh the few thousand who have turned out to defy stay-at-home orders.In the meantime, FreedomWorks is hoping to turn the rallies into a force in electoral politics, another avenue the original organizers did not conceive.“We train activists on how to influence elections. Any new members who are interested we will absolutely be providing training and resources for them to get involved and be able to affect the elections,” Wall said.“What’s happening in the coming weeks will absolutely affect the November elections.”

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[dorcasrempel]

MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem steps up to the challenge of Covid-19

Innovation and entrepreneurship aren’t easy. New companies are forced to make due with minimal resources. Decisions must be made in the face of great uncertainty. Conditions change rapidly.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, MIT’s I&E community has stepped up to the unforeseen challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. Groups from many corners of the Institute are adapting to the myriad disruptions brought on by the emergency and spearheading efforts to help the people most affected.

At a time when most students would be on spring break, many were collaborating on projects and participating in hacking workshops to respond to Covid-19. And as faculty and staff develop new curricula and support structures, they’re focusing on the needs of their students with the same devotion entrepreneurs must focus on their customers.

Above all, members of the MIT community have treated the challenges presented by Covid-19 as opportunities to help. Perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than the Covid-19 Rapid Innovation Dashboard, which was just a rough idea as recently as March 16, but is now a bustling hub of MIT’s Covid-19-related activities. Projects on the dashboard include an initiative to help low-income K-12 students with school shutdowns, an effort leveraging behavioral science to reduce the spread of misinformation about the virus, and multiple projects aimed at improving access to ventilators.

People following those projects would hardly suspect the participants have been uprooted from their lives and forced to radically change the way they work.

“We never would’ve wished this on anybody, but I feel like we’re ready for it,” says Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a professor of the practice at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “Working in an environment of great change, if you’re a great entrepreneur, is playing to your strengths. I think the students will rise to the occasion, and that’s what we’re seeing now.”

The Rapid Innovation Dashboard

In the second week of March, as the global consequences of Covid-19’s spread were becoming apparent, members of the MIT Innovation Initiative began getting contacted by members of the MIT community looking for ways to help.

Most people wanted information on the various grassroots projects that had sprouted up around campus to address disruptions related to the spread of the virus. Some people were looking for ways to promote their projects and get support.

MITii’s team began brainstorming ways to help fill in those gaps, officially beginning work on the dashboard the week of March 16 — the same time staff members began working remotely.

“From ideation to whiteboarding, to concept, to iteration, to launch, we did it all in real time, and we went from idea to standing the dashboard up in four days,” MITii executive director Gene Keselman says. “It was beautiful for all of us innovation nerds.”

The site launched on March 19 with six projects. Today there are 50 live projects on the site and counting. Some of them deal with mechanical or scientific problems, like the aforementioned efforts to improve access to ventilators, while others are more data-focused, like an initiative to track the spread of the virus at the county level. Still others are oriented toward wellness, like a collection of MIT-related coloring pages for destressing.

“A lot of the things we’re seeing are data-driven, creative-driven projects to get people involved and get them feeling like they’re making an impact,” Keselman says.

The current dashboard is version 1.0 of an ongoing project that will continue to evolve based on the community’s needs. Down the line, the MITii team is considering ways to better connect the MIT community with investors looking to fund projects related to the virus.

“This is going to be a long term problem, and even when we go back to the office, issues will persist, we’ll be dealing with things that are the runoff from Covid-19,” Keselman says. “There will be an opportunity to keep this thing going to solve all kinds of second- or third-order problems.”

Overcoming adversity

The dashboard is just one example of how different entrepreneurial organizations on campus are stepping up to the challenges of Covid-19. The Trust Center is encouraging students to leverage its Orbit app, to get help from entrepreneurs in residence, engage with other members of MIT’s entrepreneurial community, and navigate MIT’s myriad entrepreneurial resources. And in response to Covid-19, the Trust Center launched the Antifragile Entrepreneurship Speaker Series to provide thought leadership to students.

“We’ve revitalized our speaker series,” Aulet says. “We used to fly people in, but now we can have anyone. They’re sitting at home, they’re bored, and we can have more interaction than we did before. We try to create antifragile humans, and antifragile humans excel in times like this.”

MIT D-Lab, where hands-on learning and common makerspaces are central to operations, is just one example of an area where faculty members are taking this opportunity to try new ways of managing projects and rethinking their curriculum.

“We’re in a real brainstorming phase right now, in the best sense of the word — throwing out all the wild ideas that come to us, and entertaining anything as we decide how to move forward,” Libby Hsu, a lecturer and academic program manager at D-Lab, told MIT News the week before MIT classes resumed. “We’re getting ready to ship materials and tools to students at their homes. We’re studying how to use Zoom to facilitate project work student teams have already put in. We’re realistically re-assessing what deliverables we could ask of students to help D-Lab staff prototype things for them here on campus, perhaps later in the semester or over the summer.”

Other entrepreneurial groups on campus, like the Venture Mentoring Service, MIT Sandbox, and the Legatum Center, are similarly adopting virtualized support mechanisms.

On March 5, MIT Solve, which uses social impact challenges to tackle the world’s biggest problems, launched a new Global Challenge seeking innovations around the prevention, detection, and response of Covid-19. The winning team will receive a $10,000 grant to further develop their solution.

The students themselves, of course, are also organizing initiatives. In addition to many of the projects in the Rapid Innovation Dashboard, the MIT COVID-19 Challenge is a student-led initiative that held its first virtual “ideathon” this past weekend, with another major event April 3-5.

Indeed, Keselman could’ve been talking about any group on campus when he said of his team at MITii, “We feel like we lived an entire lifetime in just the last week.”

The early efforts may not have been the way many participants expected to spend their spring break, but in the entrepreneurial world, new challenges are par for the course.

“Being knocked out of your homeostasis is a good thing and a bad thing, and it’s an entrepreneur’s job to make it more of a good thing than a bad thing,” Aulet says. “I think we’ll come out of this utilizing technology to have more efficient, more effective, more inclusive engagements. Is this disrupting the entrepreneurial ecosystem? Absolutely. Should we come out of it stronger? Absolutely.”

MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem steps up to the challenge of Covid-19 syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[accesswilliamsport]

Accesswilliamsport

Even as more people over the past year have called for action on the affordable housing shortage in the Charleston region, typical rents and home prices remain higher than what most workers can pay.

In late 2017, The Post and Courier analyzed local housing trends and salary data, revealing that much of the workforce couldn’t afford to live where they worked in the center of the region. As a result, teachers, police officers and hospitality workers were moving farther away into the edges of town for cheaper housing — adding more commuters to an already congested roads system.

A review of updated data showed those trends haven’t let up, despite grassroots efforts and some policy changes that have taken root recently to address the problem.

Technology and manufacturing sectors are growing in Berkeley and Dorchester counties, but Charleston County is still by far the largest hub of employment in the region. The medical and hospitality industries are largely based downtown, and the Boeing plant is based in North Charleston.

Yet the majority of the workforce in Charleston County doesn’t live there. The latest report from the S.C. Department of Employment & Workforce found only about a quarter work and live in the county. About 41 percent are commuting into Charleston County every day, while 31 percent are commuting to other parts of the region.

Across three counties, the typical household brings in about $57,000-$58,000 a year. That’s not enough to buy the typical single-family home or rent the average apartment near the job centers of the Charleston region. In many cases, people end up spending much more of their income on housing than they can really afford to.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says households should spend no more than a third of their income on housing and utility costs. The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University found 48 percent of renters were paying more than that in the Charleston region.

One thing that’s changed over the past year is the level of public awareness about the issue. A number of community groups including the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Charleston Area Justice Ministry have begun advocating for affordable housing solutions, lending an alternative perspective in communities that had begun resenting new housing developments.

“We cannot continue to tell people, ‘Drive until you qualify for the house you can afford.’ It’s not a workable housing strategy,” said Ian Scott, the chamber’s senior vice president of government relations. “We’re all sitting in the traffic that’s resulted from that approach.”

It’s hard to gauge how much of a difference it’s making.

While one major municipality, the city of Charleston, has been pursuing a number of strategies to address the affordability crisis, the government in the other most expensive housing market — Mount Pleasant — has passed more anti-growth policies that will likely exacerbate the problem.

The latest economic scorecard for the Charleston metro region shows healthy growth, overcrowded roads and a lack of affordable housing for all the new workers. File/Leroy Burnell/Staff

Households have to earn at least $100,000 to afford a house in Mount Pleasant, the Charleston peninsula, Daniel Island, or any of the beach communities, according to the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors. It takes slightly less, about $80,000 to $95,000 to buy in most other parts of Charleston County.

The county’s rent prices have remained at about $1,800 over the past year, according to Zillow. It’s 20 percent cheaper to rent in Dorchester and Berkeley counties, and the price for a typical single-family home is at least $130,000 cheaper than it would be in Charleston County.

The catch is the travel time. Commuter data shows about half of the residents in Berkeley and Dorchester counties have to travel elsewhere for work.

Delia Smith, a server at Peninsula Grill, has worked in Charleston’s hospitality industry for more than 25 years. She said she earns a decent living, but she’s spending much more to rent a much smaller apartment in West Ashley than where she used to live on James Island a few years ago.

When discussing housing issues with friends and co-workers in the hospitality field, she said almost everyone she talked to was struggling to afford where they live. They didn’t want to talk to the newspaper because they were ashamed, she said.

“They’re working multiple jobs,” she said. “They get sick a lot because they don’t have time to rest.”

The region’s booming $7.4 billion hospitality and tourism industry is also one of the lowest-paying, with an average annual wage of $22,152. Its epicenter is on the peninsula, where housing costs are the highest. Inevitably, most workers have to live elsewhere and drive to work.

Smith has been outspoken about at least ensuring workers have access to public transit so they don’t have to spend even more of their wages on parking downtown.

While the city and the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority launched a park-and-ride shuttle system particularly for downtown hospitality workers, called the HOP bus, Smith said more solutions are needed to improve the quality of life for most workers.

“It’s not easy to work in the hospitality industry in Charleston, South Carolina, and be in a good mood, because you’re paying a lot for where you live, and you’re paying a lot and having to put with a lot just to get to work,” she said.

That’s ultimately hurting employers’ ability to attract and keep good employees, which is a major reason the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce has gotten involved in the issue.

“Every employer thrives on a workforce. Human capital is the predominant factor in the economy,” Scott said. “Employers themselves are realizing the role they’ll have to play.”

Melanie Stith, vice president of human resources with Roper St. Francis Healthcare, is among those employers. She joined the chamber’s housing task force about a year ago after realizing how the lack of workforce housing was affecting the hospital’s turnover rate.

“A couple of years ago we started really digging into our exit interview trends and why people were choosing to leave the health system,” she said. “More and more often, we were hearing that it was not that people did not love working for Roper St. Francis Healthcare. … They couldn’t afford to live close to where they worked.”

Now, she frequently attends council meetings around the region to speak in support of policies that would add more housing near the region’s job centers.

While new apartment buildings are being constructed throughout the region, the units are often too expensive for typical workers. Brad Nettles/Staff/File

As a coastal place, the Charleston region has always had a limited amount of land to build on. The problem is, local governments didn’t set policies to use that scarce land efficiently as the area grew over the last half-century.

For decades, most local governments in the region have favored one type of housing development: subdivisions with single-family homes on large lots.

That’s how most areas such as James Island, West Ashley and Mount Pleasant have grown, so land that’s left there now is more scarce and more valuable than ever. Regulations on parking requirements, lot configurations, and height limits often increase the land needed for a project, further driving up the cost.

To offset those expenses, developers over the last few years have built high-end housing such as luxury apartments. So, even though more units are being built, they’re often out of reach for average workers.

The region still lacks starter homes — generally those that are priced at or below $200,000 — and denser housing types such as cluster homes, duplexes and townhomes.

In suburban communities, it’s those types of projects that see the most resistance from residents, who often argue dense housing will exacerbate traffic or ruin the once-quaint character of their neighborhoods. In response, Mount Pleasant has stopped permitting apartment projects and recently cut back on new building permits in general.

“It’s going to artificially restrict supply while the demand is still high,” said Patrick Arnold, executive director of the Charleston Home Builders Association. “It’s going to drive up housing prices.”

The median home sale price in Mount Pleasant in 2017 was about $445,000. The typical rent has hovered around $2,400 over the past year, according to Zillow.

Stith said employers can help in those communities by offering a different perspective.

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“I think oftentimes our councils and our governments only hear the voice of disgruntled citizens who don’t want something in their backyard,” she said. “They don’t always hear the employer say, ‘But we’re trying to provide services in that community and we need to have workers … who can live and work in proximity.’”

Housing is expensive in South Carolina’s fourth-largest city, Mount Pleasant. A new nonprofit group, Housing For All – Mount Pleasant, plans to work on solutions. Wade Spees/Staff/File

There are many ways governments can encourage the development of affordable housing options. The city of Charleston is making progress on a number of them.

The city is looking for developers who can build affordable housing on two city-owned properties on the upper peninsula: one on F street near the future Lowcountry Lowline, and another between Nassau, Hanover, Lee and Cooper streets. Combined, they could offer more than 100 units to low-income households.

Through a combination of grants and housing department funds, the city has invested more than $6.5 million to help construct more than 200 new affordable homes since mid-2016. More are on the way.

“We’re on track to deliver hundreds of affordable units over the next several years if our efforts are successful,” said City Planner Jacob Lindsey.

The city will have more funds available to address the problem later this year, when it will begin issuing bonds to help pay for affordable housing developments. In 2017, city residents overwhelmingly voted for a $20 million affordable housing bond.

These are strategies that have been proven to work, Scott said.

“It’ll take some amount of public resources to bridge the gap between what the market can deliver and what the median worker can afford,” he said. “There’s already a lot underway, but we’ll have to scale those up really dramatically.”

Charleston County has jurisdiction over a smaller footprint of land in the urbanized areas, but it has also committed to encouraging more affordable housing along transit hubs in its updated Comprehensive Plan.

The local interfaith group, Charleston Area Justice Ministry, tried to launch a regional housing trust fund last year to get the large local governments to invest in affordable housing. The approach hasn’t gained traction, though the group is still working on the plan and meeting with local officials.

Arnold of the Home Builders Association said the private market could help deliver more affordable price points if governments would speed up the permitting process.

“We’ve seen the length of time it takes to complete a project increase, which also increases prices,” he said. “Some of it is due to more stringent requirements, and some of it is due to those offices not having the resources to review developments put before them.”

The city of Charleston is working on streamlining its process. Lindsey said the city will also be proposing a way for affordable housing projects to be fast-tracked through permitting.

Mount Pleasant has no clear strategy to create affordable housing. Council did exempt affordable housing projects from its permit allocation program, which could help them break ground more quickly than other projects in the town. But without public subsidies or incentives to help make an affordable project work, it’s hard to say if any would come forward.

The town also commissioned a housing study, which led to the creation of a new nonprofit, Housing For All. The group will mostly rely on grants and fundraising to deliver affordable housing, according to board member Daniel Brock.

Arnold is skeptical developing housing at lower price-points will ever be feasible in Mount Pleasant.

“I have yet to see a policy in Mount Pleasant in the last four years that was actually going to bring down the cost of construction,” he said.

While progress has been spotty and housing prices have generally remained high over the past year, Stith said it’s an encouraging sign that more people are aware of the housing shortage and how that impacts their communities.

“People are starting to realize that in order to have central services, this is an issue we have to tackle,” she said.

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[thisdaynews]

‘You’re setting people up for failure’: Castro allies rail against Dem primary rules

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/youre-setting-people-up-for-failure-castro-allies-rail-against-dem-primary-rules/

‘You’re setting people up for failure’: Castro allies rail against Dem primary rules

Julian Castro dropped out of the 2020 presidential race Thursday. | David Becker/Getty Images

Julián Castro launched his long-shot bid nearly a year ago in his native San Antonio, hoping to excite a diverse coalition of voters who could power him to the White House.

When he bowed out of the race Thursday, his allies expressed frustration that he was prevented from doing so, casting him as a victim of a primary process that inhibits candidates of color. In interviews, a half-dozen former aides and allies cast the first major Latino candidate in the 2020 race as a casualty of a system that already felled California Sen. Kamala Harris and is keepingNew Jersey Sen. Cory Booker from gaining traction.

“How you fare in Iowa and New Hampshire sets the tone for how your campaign continues, and when you have these two states that in no way represent the diversity of the Democratic Party, it makes it very difficult for minority candidates to get momentum,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, who noted the impact a campaign’s momentum — or lack thereof — has on fundraising, polling and media coverage.

“If you’ve got people like Booker and Kamala Harris and Castro campaigning in places like Texas, California and South Carolina early on, they’re gonna get momentum,” he argued. “They’re gonna get well known. They’re gonna start raising money. These were high-quality candidates and people who have credentials, who have a history of public service, who are smart, who have ideas and who I think represent where we’re at as a party on the issues important to Americans.”

With some two dozen candidates all vying for the Democratic nomination and party rules that emphasized national and early-state polling and grassroots fundraising to determine who could qualify for the sanctioned debates, Castro’s campaign had an uphill climb, some argued.

Black voters cast a majority of the Democratic primary vote in South Carolina and Hispanic or Latino voters make up a third of the population in Nevada. But the other two early states are overwhelmingly white.

Struggling to keep pace with his rivals in fundraising, Castro lacked the infrastructure and resources of the other Texan in the race, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who ended his campaign in November.

Castro saw his only polling bump when the two Texans clashed over immigration policy at the first debate in June, hitting 4 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post survey days later. In every other approved national and early-state poll released in 2019, however, Castro sat at 2 percent or less.

He cast himself as a voice for marginalized communities, releasing detailed policies on immigration, policing, lead exposure, indigenous communities, people with disabilities and animals while also meeting with inmates and touring a Las Vegas flood tunnel where homeless people seek shelter.

“Some of the people we targeted are people who literally don’t ever vote and could never get included in the political process, people like homeless people,” said a former aide who was laid off when the campaign shuttered its staff in New Hampshire and South Carolina to prioritize Iowa and Nevada.

“It’s tough because in places like Nevada, they rarely poll,” the ex-aide added. “The other issue is polling has always historically underpolled people of color and poor people, people who don’t have landlines. So when you make that system, so when the DNC basically says, ‘Oh, all right, this is how people are gonna qualify,’ you’re setting people up for failure.”

Mayra Macías, executive director of Latino Victory Fund, a progressive PAC that seeks to increase Latino political power and that endorsed Castro in August, said in her experience dealing with media, Castro’s candidacy was often written off. In her estimation, Castro fell victim to an electability argument that rewarded poll leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire with even higher polling and additional media coverage.

Castro never got significant media attention or polled above 2 percent in the first two early states.

“The bulk of the interviews that we’ve had have felt like almost a moratorium since Day One — folks bringing up a million and one reasons why his campaign wasn’t gonna be viable,” Macías lamented. “The mainstream coverage — or lack thereof — that his campaign received was a big factor, particularly because the campaign doesn’t have the resources as other campaigns do to get their message out there to the American people, so a lot of the campaign’s ability to reach out to folks really did depend on this earned media.”

Colin Strother, a Texas Democratic strategist who once advised Castro, said the system seems like it was “engineered” to make the primary a three-person race between the “three white septuagenarians” in former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont while preventing diverse candidates like Castro, Harris and Booker from reaching the goal line.

But Castro’s staff is also responsible for his demise, Strother said, blaming the candidate’s senior team for robbing their candidate of the opportunity “to get to Super Tuesday, when brown people and black people are finally gonna get a chance to vote.”

“They knew what the process was. At the end of the day, you’ve got to have a strategy to give your candidate a shot, and Julián’s staff didn’t,” he said. “They were spending money they shouldn’t have spent and pushing a strategy that they had to have a reasonable assumption wasn’t gonna work.”

Castro’s first campaign stop was Puerto Rico, instead of Iowa or New Hampshire, the traditional early states. And two days after the DNC announced its polling thresholds for the first two debates — thresholds that hinged on performance in the four early states — Castro’s campaign announced a 50-state tour.

The ploy may have been a creative effort to help him clinch 65,000 unique donors since 200 of them each needed to come from at least 20 different states. But the time and resources spent on trips to states like Idaho and Utah could have been used to campaign or advertise in Iowa, Nevada or Super Tuesday states.

After spending more than half a million dollars more than it raised in the third quarter, the campaign entered October with less than $700,000 cash on hand. Later that month, Castro warned his supporters that his campaign needed $800,000 to stay alive in the next 10 days to stay alive, emulating a strategy that helped extend the life of Booker’s campaign.

Castro met the self-imposed deadline, but still lacked the resources to sustain an ad campaign that could boost his polling enough to qualify for upcoming debates. He missed the last two in November and December, and the party rejected campaigns’ plea to allow more candidates to debate later this month.

When he was on the debate stage, Castro held his own, winning plaudits on the left for endorsing decriminalizing illegal border crossings, naming Atatiana Jefferson, a black woman who was shot and killed by a police officer in Texas, and mentioning transgender people when talking about abortion access.

“It’s a strong symbol when somebody can literally change the narrative on a few issues and not have the polling numbers but still the candidates on the stage also go toward that policy,” said another former aide who worked under Castro at HUD. “He pushed the envelope further than black and brown people have seen in a while.”

Castro acknowledged Thursday morning “that it simply isn’t our time” but also signaled that he isn’t leaving the political arena.

Allies say he belongs in the conversation for vice president, highlighting him as a young, progressive minority with executive experience who became mayor of a major city and ran a Cabinet department in the Obama administration.

They note he would be a valuable asset to any Democratic ticket and could see himserving in a Cabinet position under a Democratic administration, running for governor of Texas in 2022 or possibly even president again in 2024 if Donald Trump is reelected.

“I’m not afraid to admit that on more than one occasion I’ve asked each and both of those brothers to run for governor,” said Hinojosa, the Texas state party chairman, alluding to Julián and his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro.

But some Democrats warn that challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is a fool’s errand because the state isn’t ready to put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion.

“He wasn’t really getting a lot of traction in Texas,” noted the aide who worked under Castro at HUD. “That’s a good symbol or sign that if you can’t even carry your own territory, how do you push against that narrative, that you’re strong enough or a viable candidate?”

Strother, the Democratic strategist, added that even after O’Rourke dropped out of the presidential race, the Texas Democratic community of donors, activists and elected officials didn’t coalesce behind Castro.

“If he couldn’t count on them in the biggest election of most of our lifetimes and in probably the modern history of the world, then I don’t think that he should expect that they’ll be there for him in a governor’s race,” Strother said, noting Abbott’s popularity and fundraising prowess.

In recent weeks, Castro had begun arguing for a greater focus on diversity on the front end of the primary calendar so that more people of color have more of a say in who ultimately becomes the nominee. No candidates of color this cycle have led pollingin any of the fourearly states.

“A lot of people will point out and say, ‘Oh, but Barack Obama.’ Barack Obama is from Illinois, which is a bordering state to Iowa,” said the former aide who was downsized. “People in bordering states tend to do well, especially when you start sending volunteers. Right over the border isn’t that far. You talk about one exclusion, one exception. That’s not the rule. We have a lot of work to do as a Democratic Party to uplift our candidates [of color].”

Hinojosa, himself a Democratic Party leader, expressed frustration that the party’s system allowed a now-former mayor in Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., to become a front-runner at the expense of more qualified candidates of color.

“I don’t want to put down Pete Buttigieg, but give me a break. This guy never got more than 8,000 votes in any election,” Hinojosa said. “He’s a front-runner in Iowa versus these three other individuals? What the hell does that tell you?”

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[kacydeneen]

Allegations of Anti-Semitism Cloud 2019 Women's March

Amid accusations of anti-Semitism surrounding the leaders of the Women’s March on Washington, many Jewish women will be deciding one thing this weekend: to march or not to march?

Joan James, of Lincoln City, Oregon, was very supportive until the allegations of anti-Semitism began to surface.

"The Women’s March is supposed to be an inclusive movement that supports diversity of color and ideas," said James, who is Jewish. "If your leaders are making statements that are less than supportive of a group of people, it tears the movement from the inside."

James is still conflicted on whether or not she will participate this weekend, when thousands of women are expected to take the streets for the third year in a row. The march was sparked by the election of President Donald Trump by women worried about his agenda and offended by comments he made. Many participants wore distinctive "pink pussy hats" as a symbolic way to show resistance.

Now some women are aggravated the anti-Semitic allegations are causing a divide within the women’s movement.

The accusations of anti-Semitism were crystalized in an article written in the Tablet in December. The magazine reported that in an initial planning meeting, Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, two of the Women's March Inc. leaders, said that Jewish people had “a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people." Mallory and other leaders deny the statement.

In addition, Perez, Mallory, and Linda Sarsour's association with Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan, who has a history of making anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ comments, led to more criticism. The New York Times reported that Mallory and Perez said, “they work in communities where Mr. Farrakhan is respected for his role in rehabilitating incarcerated men. They attended the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March in 2015, which Mr. Farrakhan planned.” 

In an appearance on ABC's "The View" Mallory said, "What I will say to you is that I don't agree with many of Minister Farrakhan's statements." In a later interview with a radio station called Breakfast Club she condemned anti-Semitism. However she and the other leaders did not denounce Farrakhan's rhetoric.

Some advocates are conflicted about whether the allegations are serious enough to keep them from participating.

In response, Women’s March Inc. released a press statement which reads, “It’s become clear, amidst this media storm, that our values and our message have — too often— been lost. That loss caused a lot of harm, and a lot pain. We should have been faster and clearer in helping people understand our values and our commitment to fighting anti-Semitism. We regret that. Every member of our movement matters to us — including our incredible Jewish and LGBTQ members. We are deeply sorry for the harm we have caused, but we see you, we love you, and we are fighting with you.”

While some advocates are frustrated with the controversay over the anti-Semitic allegations, they also recognize the impact of the Women’s March.

Aliza Lifshitz, a Jewish Barnard College student and activist, posted on her Facebook page, “If you’re vocally critical of the women’s march but you do nothing to publicly call out or resist the current administration’s policies, it is very safe to assume that you’re using your concerns about anti-Semitism to tear down a movement you didn’t agree with in the first place.”

"People should acknowledge what they are missing out on when they abandon the women’s march," she said in an interview with NBC.

Lifshitz believes the march has played a significant role is organizing the women’s resistance movement and that the march itself is symbolic of the desire for change. However, she also said she respects anyone who feels uncomfortable marching because of the controversy.

The allegations have resulted in stark differences between competing marches and women abandoning the march altogether over confusion about what each organization stands for.

Women’s March Inc. brought three Jewish women onto their steering committee. Abby Stein, the first openly transgender woman raised in a Hasidic community, is one of the women.

“The leaders of the Women’s March are not anti-Semitic," she said. "Louis Farrakhan has no impact on the goals of the Women's March. In fact, the Women’s March is the antithesis to everything he preaches."

Stein said when she was given the opportunity to join the steering committee, she saw it as a way to make sure Jewish women feel included and as a platform to defend the LGBTQ community.

"The question was not how I could join the Women’s March, but how could I not?" she said. "I can accomplish so much when it comes to eradicating anti-Semitism by working with them."

Stein told NBC the Women’s March in 2017 focused on resistance, the march in 2018 guided people to the polls, and this year’s march is about a policy agenda.

“One of the strongest impacts the steering committee has is assisting with the women’s agenda which is a policy agenda that Congress could basically copy and paste and turn it into a bill,” she said.

The Women's March Inc. has released a policy agenda encompassing many different topics including ending violence against women, advocating for reproductive rights, and fighting for racial injustice.

Despite efforts to show the march is inclusive and not anti-Semitic, the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, among others, are no longer sponsoring the Women’s March Inc. event.

“I think it is unfortunate they are no longer supporting the event," said Rabbi Robin Polosuk of Los Angeles, who wrote an article in the Jewish Journal called, “Why I Will Walk With the Women’s March.” "We have to ask ourselves who benefits if our movement fractures and it is not us. At this point, I still feel really firm that it is the grassroots women who have to define the march and not a couple of personalities at the top."

“As a Jewish woman, I think it is important that we reclaim this march and that we stand for this as much as any woman. I see us walking in the same direction, where each of us is heard and empowered," she said.

Many women’s marches planned around the world on Saturday are not associated with Women’s March Inc.

Women’s March Alliance, for example, is a separate organization that plans the march in New York City.

Katherine Siemionko, the alliance's founder and president, told NBC, “We are hoping to roll out a new name brand and face this upcoming March to make it clear that we have no association with Women’s March Inc.”

Siemionko is aware many Jews are contemplating whether or not to march.

“We are working to make sure everyone feels welcome and we are doing a lot of outreach across the board," she said. We have also been speaking at synagogues and making sure to confirm our commitment to the Jewish communities we have worked with in the past.”

During a phone call in October, Siemionko asked Sarsour why Women's March Inc. was planning to hold a competing event in New York City on Saturday. She said Sarsour had told her the separate rally was needed to provide a space for women of color.

Siemionko told NBC many women of color are involved in her organization. She said the volunteer trainings this week averaged 60 percent people of color and the alliance's board has 3 women of color out of 5 members. Siemionko told NBC she thought Sarsour had given her a "lame excuse."

Women's March Inc. did not make Sarsour available for an interview.

With all of the controversy, some people are choosing to stay away from any women’s march this year.

Arielle Kaplan, a 24-year-old Jewish woman from New York City, said “I think it is great that people are going and that Jewish women are trying to make marches that are inclusive for Jews but I am not going because I don't want people to mistake me for supporting Women’s March Inc by going to a women’s march that is unaffiliated.”

Photo Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images Allegations of Anti-Semitism Cloud 2019 Women's March published first on Miami News

[rickhorrow]

10 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF SEPT. 3 :Mayors Edition with Tanner Simkins

with Tanner Simkins

After this week’s kickoff celebration, the NFL is set to stage four international games this season, three of which will be held at Wembley Stadium after English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur fell behind on its stadium construction plans. The three London matches will be held in consecutive weeks starting on October 14. The first will feature the Seattle Seahawks and Oakland Raiders, the second one (October 21) will pit the Tennessee Titans against the Los Angeles Chargers, and the third match (October 28) will showcase the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles against the London regular Jacksonville Jaguars. In addition to these three games, the Kansas City Chiefs will square off against the Los Angeles Rams on November 19 at the iconic Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, Mexico. This season is set to mark the fourth year in a row that at least three games were held in London and another in Mexico, highlighting the league’s continued international push and growing brand presence outside of the United States. International growth is also a critical strategy for a league facing declining numbers at home, both in stadiums and on tv.

NFL teams are now allowed to sell sponsorships directly to casinos that operate sportsbooks. According to SportsBusiness Journal, a committee of NFL owners met and agreed to relax the league’s rules regarding partnerships with casinos ahead of the new season. As part of the new rules, casinos will not be allowed to promote the sports books directly, “but teams will be able to accept advertising from casinos and daily fantasy sites that operate sportsbooks in shoulder programming and during preseason game telecasts.” Teams will be able to profit from the direct partnership, though they will not be able to accept any sort of revenue sharing coming from business they drive to casinos and gambling websites. Teams are also now allowed to sell stadium naming rights to casinos, a move that is largely believed to benefit the Oakland Raiders upon their move to Las Vegas. All of these changes mark some of the NFL’s first steps in navigating an environment where sports betting is legal across the country – conversely, the new NFL season begins the first true test of revenue viability for the states that have legalized sports betting to date.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has signed a deal to become the highest paid player in NFL history, keeping him in green and yellow until he is at least 40 years old. According to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Rodgers, 34, and the Packers both head into the new season confident of the foreseeable future, assuming No. 12 can stay healthy. The four-year, $134 million deal comes on top of Rodgers’ current deal, which came as a five-year, $110 million extension that he signed back in 2013 — he has two more years left on that one. The agreement "ends months of negotiations" between Packers Executive VP and Director of Football Operations Russ Ball and Rodgers' agent, Athletes First CEO David Dunn, and reports of the final numbers "indicate that the Packers were able to stand firm on their refusal to do anything but a standard contract." While Rodgers’ numbers are higher, recent mega contract extensions for Odell Beckham, Jr. ($18 million/yr, $65 million guaranteed), Aaron Donald ($22.5 million/yr, $87 million guaranteed), and Khalil Mack ($23.5 million/yr, $90 million guaranteed), speak volumes about the health of the league.

Hyundai has secured sponsorship rights for NBC's "Sunday Night Football" kickoff show. According to AdAge, the NFL's official automotive sponsor enters the 2018 season "looking to assume a bigger role on game day." The original 2015 deal between Hyundai and the NFL "offered little direct advertising exposure during NFL games on FOX, CBS, and NBC, leaving the door open for deeper-pocketed brands to own game day telecasts." Hyundai Motor America CMO Dean Evans said, "You can buy the sponsorship, and then if you don't have enough money to run enough TV commercials, you almost don't look like the sponsor." Evans added, "When you're watching football this year, it's going to feel more like Hyundai is the sponsor." Hyundai will also "sponsor a three-part digital series called 'Cover 2'" that will "give fans a closer look at some league rivalries." The series is produced by Huntington Beach-based ad agency Innocean. Hyundai also "continues its partnerships with six teams" for the 2018 season -- the Cardinals, Dolphins, Rams, Steelers, Texans, and Vikings. The details behind this partnership are a terrific example of the creative ways that brands look to activate around the NFL, particularly in the digital space.

The Cleveland Browns could potentially build a roof to enclose FirstEnergy Stadium instead of electing to build a new stadium from scratch. According to Crain’s Cleveland Business, the Browns head into their 20th season at FirstEnergy Stadium, with the facility’s most recent renovation, a $125 million venture of which $95 million was financed by the team, occurring way back in 2015. A new stadium would cost “well over $1 billion” and while building a roof to enclose the stadium would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it would not cost ten figures. The construction of a roof would surely present several foreseen and many more unforeseen obstacles that go beyond financing, but staying in the same location would give the team another chance to “see the area around the stadium developed and fans provided easier access to a facility that was ill-conceived from the beginning.” Fresh off the signing of Heisman winner Baker Mayfield and a well-received turn on HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” the Browns now need a house worthy of bringing down when their play on the field dictates such a move.

As the U.S. Open enters its second week, the new Louis Armstrong Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center has been drawing mostly positive reviews. According to ESPN, the complex’ five-year, $600 million renovation is now complete, becoming the second stadium to be given an umbrella-like retractable roof on the grounds. The sheltered bowl provides shade for both fans and players most of the time, while also insulating the noise to bolster the atmosphere. “It was beautiful,” said Andy Murray of his first match at the renovated stadium. On the contrary, American Sloane Stephens criticized the venue, noting the numerous distractions during her first Armstrong match. “I think it makes it a little tough to kind of settle down,” said Stephens. “There was a lot going on between the airplanes and the subway behind the court, the concessions being in the lower bowl, and people walking in the games at 2-all, 3-all.” Interestingly, the new stadium has already developed a reputation as a giant slayer, as it’s seen the upsets of top seeds including Alexander Zverev, Caroline Wozniacki, Kevin Anderson, and Simona Halep.

Colorful new marketing deals are plentiful at the U.S. Open. In 2018, we have Billie Jean King’s sneaker makeover. The 39 Grand Slam-winning tennis icon is at the center of Adidas' unusual U.S. Open campaign in which they will transform any kicks--whether they're Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Puma, or Louis Vuitton--into King's blue three-striped trainers--an homage to the shoes she wore during her historic "Battle of the Sexes" against Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome 45 years ago. The activation is part of Adidas' broader "Here to Create Change" platform. Consumers at the Flushing Meadows Adidas store can walk in and get their shoes a BJK makeover for free at the hands of artists using stencils and spray paint. There will also be BJK-revamped Stan Smiths, Barricades, and NMDs available for purchase, at $100, $120 and $140 respectively. The effort is also part of Adidas' Women's Equality Day efforts, which includes a film directed by Doug Liman highlighting the lack of representation of female athletes in the media. Women make up only about 4% of the athletes shown on mass media – though viewers might argue that Serena Williams’ spots comprise 90% of U.S. Open broadcast ads.

The U.S. golf industry – driven by WE ARE GOLF, a coalition of leading organizations working together to communicate the game’s economic, charitable, environmental, and fitness benefits – launches its #inviteHER campaign. Powered by the LPGA and WE ARE GOLF’s Women’s Task Force, golfers – men and women alike – are encouraged to bring friends, colleagues, and family to join them on the course. “The appetite for golf is at a historic level with a latent demand of 38 million Americans,” says Steve Mona, World Golf Foundation CEO. “Last year, 35% of the game’s 2.6 million new players were female and we are confident #inviteHER is a huge step in the right direction to continue increasing this number.” #inviteHER’s primary objective is to grow awareness and participation among women and girls through the power of an invitation from one of the 24 million American golfers. The game should more closely mirror U.S. demographics as only 24% of the current golf population is female. While grassroots efforts are critical, women’s golf at present lacks a Tiger Woods-caliber star who will fuel young women’s interest in the game.

Derek Jeter’s first season in Miami has not been the easiest one. According to the Miami Herald, just as the Marlins have struggled to produce on the field, currently sitting at the bottom of the NL East, the club has struggled even more to get fans in seats at Marlins Park. In an effort to reach out to local fans and capitalize on the city’s international population, the Marlins will “create a section in the right field stands they will call ‘Comunidad 305,’ which translates to Community 305 in Spanish.” Fans in the section can purchase a season ticket for $8 and will be allowed to bring “everything from flags to musical instruments” to games. Speaking of fans in the new section, Marlins President of Baseball Operations Chip Bowers said: “They can (buy those tickets) knowing they’ll be part of a community of people that can come hang out and be a little different, bring bells, whistles, flags, whatever that is to create a really cool vibe.” Overall, the initiative is meant to bring fans from various cultures together to create a World Baseball Classic-type feel for home games.

With Stan Kroenke on the verge of taking full control of Premier League heavyweight Arsenal, Arsenal Supporters’ Trust members refused to sell their shares in the club. According to the London Evening Standard, Kroenke currently owns 98.8% of Arsenal after striking a deal to buy ALisher Usmanov’s 30% stake in the club for $716.1 million in August. Supports’ Trust members will not pursue legal action over the takeover from the American businessman due to the “potentially exorbitant costs” that could be incurred from doing so, though the fan group “was seeking to take action over Kroenke’s compulsory purchase of the club.” The AST’s gesture was more symbolic in nature, as it will not actually prevent the takeover from going through. If the club wants to return to its glory days, many fear that Kroenke is not the solution. Kroenke has long since been criticized as a sports franchise owner who cares more about the bottom line than winning cups and titles, something that traditionally-strong Arsenal have been lacking over the past few years.