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burganprell · 6 years ago

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Welcome, Y’all

I just hate those bumper stickers popping up around Austin that say “Don’t Move Here.” Many a Facebook post expresses the same.

I get the joke, but it’s just not funny.

This is a post about the future of Austin. It’s a post about Mayor Adler and his challenger this Fall, Laura Morrison. It’s a post in some ways about about the inevitable. It’s a little bit about Amazon, and it’s a lot about making sure Austin’s continued rise benefits everyone.

“We can only say the state of our city is strong if we are affirmatively building a future in which we preserve the soul and spirit of Austin.”

—Mayor Steve Adler

Our problems aren’t any one person’s fault, and no more the fault of a newcomer than a decades-long veteran.

If we ever stop being hospitable, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin. If we ever stop being a refuge and a block party and a march for good over evil, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin.

If we ever stop using our disposable income to vote for how we want the city to be, we will have lost the soul and spirit of Austin.

Instead of saying “Don’t Move Here” I’d rather we say what so many of you said to me when I first showed up, 12 years ago.

Welcome, Y’all.

. . .

In fact, when we say “Don’t Move Here,” we start sounding a lot like the anti-immigration nationalists we so strongly oppose on the national stage. I’m flabbergasted by my liberal brethren regularly these days, and this is just one reason why.

Unless we are going to build a Trump-like wall around Austin, we have got to be more solution minded.

I’m not particularly interested in hearing more from complain-y do-nothings, and least of all Laura Morrison, who already had her shot at addressing these issues in her first stint on Council from 2008-2015.

During her tenure, the issues in play were exactly the same as they are today, and the progress made was to my mind and many others’ deeply unsatisfactory.

Folks like Morrison can be eloquent when talking about Austin’s problems, but remain woefully short on ideas and action.

Every single one of Morrison’s answers to a difficult question — about transportation, about economic segregation, about homelessness, about CODENext — ends up with a non-committal “we have to strike a balance” or “we have to look at that closely” or “I think there are ways that we can grow, without doing that” — to which no specifics nor any follow-up is ever offered.

. . .

The one thing Morrison did do?

She led the anti-Prop1 PAC “Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice,” which fronted the fight against Uber and Lyft in Austin.

The net result? The Texas State Legislature overruled us and Uber and Lyft are back, more free to operate than ever before.

When meeting with technology companies and their workers, Morrison is likely to bring up her professional training as an engineer at her time at Lockheed. Don’t take the bait.

In case you have erased all memory of the ugly battle with Uber and Lyft from your mind, now is the time to recall:

Mayor Steve Adler had actually negotiated a signed, precedent-setting MOU from both Uber and Lyft that extracted important concessions from both companies, most important of all related to ensuring both driver and passenger safety. Tax revenue and data sharing were the other key components.

What caused that fight in the first place was later obscured: the rideshare-related numbers for rape and sexual assault had indisputably risen according to SAFE and our own Police Department. Folks predictably cast doubt on those numbers but they held up under scrutiny.

The philosophical argument about the utility and efficacy of fingerprinting drivers was less compelling to me personally and for many of you; regardless, Adler had solved this also. His innovative Thumbs Up! ordinance passed; a corresponding 100% voluntary identification program was to use market dynamics to incentivize validation instead of requiring it.

Alas, Council rejected the MOU, afraid to act. At the time it was much more popular to put the vote to the people, avoiding what had become a political third rail for everyone.

Uber and Lyft of course did themselves zero favors with their brash tone and dishonest backroom dealings. But I and many others were strongly in search of a workable compromise, instead of a temporary moral victory, followed by swift rebuke.

. . .

It’s really easy to fear-monger like Morrison does. “Everything’s going to change,” she loves to say. Change in Austin is not only not new, it has been constant for more than 100 years.

Morrison never goes so far as to claim she can prevent change, but it’s clear she intends to slow it down as much as possible. In the process of making her argument, Morrison enlists the typical boogeymen: real estate developers, Californians, technology companies, and businesspeople generally.

The funny thing is that those constituencies are forwarding some of the most progressive initiatives in the city, driven by a race to recruit, train, and develop talent (more on this later).

The scariest speaking point in Morrison’s arsenal? “It's time for a leader whose priority is the people who live here right now,” she often says.

The Chronicle’s Michael King was quick to pick up on this rhetoric in his interview of Morrison this past January when she first announced:

“[You make] a fairly sharp distinction between the people that live here “now” and the people that are going to live here. Does that mean people who have lived here for five years? For 10 years? Does the door slam tomorrow?”

Morrison’s response was typical: “Nobody has the power for the door to slam – if somebody had the power, would that be good? Probably not.”

Probably not?

It gets better. She continues: “the fact of the matter is, we need to make sure that we don’t turn people into losers.”

To me that’s code for protectionism, not egalitarianism. Morrison isn’t worried about the people who are already hurting. She’s looking out for folks who are not losing now, but are worried they will start losing soon.

Remind you of anyone else’s rhetoric? Shall we just say it aloud together? Is it really time to Make Austin Great Again?

I think that’s precisely how Morrison’s campaign intends to have a fighting chance against Adler.

Invoke a particular way of life, romanticize it, and protect it. Hat-tip the little guy, and act like the incumbent has a swamp worth draining. Get elected. Start governing like it’s 1980, or earlier. Most importantly try like hell to give your NIMBY old guard donors their Austin back, come hell or high water.

. . .

Here is why I am still all-in on Steve Adler and why I think you should join me by giving whatever you can to his re-election campaign.

Steve is a convener who gets things done, but who also goes out of his way to make sure others get all the credit.

Steve is not a career politician. He’s a successful lawyer and committed philanthropist who isn’t worried about optics. He isn’t afraid to stand up to Abbot, Paxton, Sessions and Trump.

In recognition of this fact and more, the Anti-Defamation League gave Steve Adler and Diane Land the Audrey Maislin Humanitarian Award last year, which is a huge honor not to be taken lightly. It’s not just another one of these nice gala things that people in power are given to curry favor.

Neither Steve nor Diane ever hesitates to speak truth to power, and it shows. They have demonstrated time and time again that they are fierce advocates for the oppressed, the segregated, the discriminated, and the powerless. Their record in these matters is substantial.

In times like these our Mayor must be incredibly effective in affairs both foreign and domestic, so to speak. There’s no one else in Austin right now who can pull off that combination without sacrificing one endeavor for the other.

And I do love it when Steve gets his lawyer on.

Whether he is fighting SB4 tooth and nail, collaborating with Judge Eckhardt to protect Austin’s right to be a sanctuary city, or leading more than 50 other cities to join us in recommitting to the Paris Climate Accord, Adler makes me proud to live in Austin and to be part of these precedent-setting fights.

Steve’s “worst” flaw is trying to pull the sword from the stone on tough issues that no one else has the courage to touch.

I can live with that.

. . .

Sidebar: here’s a good related read in case you missed it: “Why the nation’s mayors are watching Austin Mayor Steve Adler” in the Statesman.

Accomplishments: here are the Mayor’s 2017 accomplishments. It’s a big list.

Priorities: Adler’s priorities for 2018 are here.

Donate: here’s where you can give to Adler’s campaign.

. . .

The hands down, no question, most alarming thing about Austin is that we are #1 in the nation in income inequality. That’s not a good list to be atop of.

Every other issue in my mind takes a back seat to this one.

Not nearly everyone is benefiting from Austin’s growth and prosperity. Our community is still suffering from the mind-bending injustice our leaders perpetrated way back in 1928.

And no, keeping companies like Amazon out of Austin isn’t going to help our #1 problem.

The jobs and the growth and the money that companies like Amazon and Apple and Oracle bring are not at all the problem. Folks worry about what Amazon would do to traffic, or affordability. The actual problem with these big new HQ projects is routing and bridging the opportunities they comprise to everyone in the city.

I know a lot of people who’d love to wade through traffic for an $85K yearly salary. I was at Huston-Tillotson University a few weeks ago with President Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette. Their students’ desire for tech jobs is consistent and intense, across a dozen majors.

A fix will not happen overnight, but again, addressing Austin’s intense, perverse, historic economic segregation must be our overriding priority.

Good news: our newly-minted Master Workforce Development Plan is strong, and can serve as a reliable template for decades to come.

The Austin Monitor captures the plan’s purpose and progress in a few succinct paragraphs, for those of you who may have missed it:

At last week’s City Council meeting, a procedural public hearing paved the way for the formal addition next month of the Master Community Workforce Plan to Imagine Austin, which is the city’s plan for the next 30 years. But it’s the work being done with high-profile employers like Samsung and job training providers such as Austin Community College taking place quietly in the background that proponents of the plan expect will soon produce more applicants for positions that employers said they’re having trouble filling. The workforce plan has a stated goal of creating 60,000 middle-skill jobs in three high-growth sectors – health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing – as well as lifting 10,000 residents out of lower-class income brackets. Since the plan was unveiled last June, employers in similar industries have been courted to participate in ongoing sessions to identify the needed soft skills and common challenges that make it difficult for them to find and retain new employees. Their findings are then presented to representatives from Austin Community College, Goodwill of Central Texas and Capital IDEA to help those organizations tailor their existing job training programs to better suit the needs of the market. Thus far those workforce development programs are being funded in part with $660,000 in workforce data management contracts Workforce Solutions has secured with the city and Travis County, which includes some contributions from Google and JP Morgan Chase. Ongoing fundraising efforts are expected to contribute as well.

If Amazon can commit to helping build these kinds of socio-economic and racial bridges both notionally and materially, I want them here. And same goes for every other company considering a move to Austin, large or small.

As Mayor Adler said in his letter to Amazon as part of our response to their RFP (full text here):

Our long-term goal in Austin is to both preserve the soul of our community and make it accessible to all – even as we excel as a community that continues to attract top talent. What new solutions and long-term investments in workforce development, affordability and mass transportation might we achieve together that would not have been possible otherwise? I firmly believe that Austin and Amazon can help each other achieve solutions to our biggest challenges. Even as you assess our community’s great assets, I ask you to look at our community’s greatest challenges as an opportunity to help craft a story for Amazon and for Austin that will be told for a long time.

. . .

Now, about those complaints. Are housing prices way up? Yes.

Are folks selling their homes and moving to cheaper enclaves in the suburbs to stave off property taxes they can’t afford? Are musicians moving to Lockhart and further, in search of more room to breathe, and make art?

Absolutely. Yes. Unequivocally. And irreversibly.

Austin’s going to need to be an active and innovative partner to Pflugerville and Round Rock and Manor and Taylor and Bastrop and Lockhart and San Marcos. Austin’s going to need to continue to aggressively invest in affordable housing. We are going to have to get together at long last and pass a new land use code, too.

Our current land use system is almost 50 years old and it’s the engine behind many — if not most — of our shared frustrations about Austin’s growth and development. Not passing a new code is not an option.

By the way, it is okay to complain about the flawed process of producing CodeNEXT, but no one should be up in arms that it’s hard to get this right. No other American city has grappled with the challenges Austin currently faces and succeeded. We are at the cutting edge in terms of defining of how modern cities can best scale.

For a super smart deep dive on this issue, read Nautilus Magazine’s “Why New York Is Just An Average City.”

We’re going to have to raise taxes too, a tough sell here in Texas, no doubt. This will most likely happen via larger and larger bond measures, with transportation and our school system remaining serially at the forefront for at least a decade. We’ve become a big American city, like it or not. It is time to acting like one too. That process starts and ends with infrastructure and education.

. . .

We are also going to have to consider community micro-bonds to fund and perhaps outright reclaim some of our struggling institutions. We are going to have to re-fund our longest-suffering school districts with private money too.

We are going to have to offer a lot more *paid* internships so that folks who don’t have “friends and family money” have equal access to personal and professional development opportunities.

We are going to have to continue being a “Kitty Hawk” for things like autonomous cars and delivery drones, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial.

We are going to have to continue fighting passionately, and standing steadfastly, as Mayor Adler consistently has, against SB4, as we are the epicenter of the nationwide fight about sanctuary cities; for the Paris Accord as a leading green, smart city; for restorative justice in our local courts and jails; for innovative, community-based policing; and against a state legislature that champions states’ right while denying incorporated Texan cities the same privilege.

And look, we have just got to vote —not just at the ballot box — but with our time, talent and money — on how we want Austin to be for years to come. Spend nights and weekends working on the causes you care about most, and spend cold hard cash on the stuff you value about this city above all else.

But of course, vote at the ballot box, too, for God’s sake. Vote again. Keep voting. Vote in the little stuff. Vote in the big stuff. Vote for fun. Vote even though it’s boring. Vote because so many others can’t.

As Beto has said more times than I can count, Texas isn’t a red state or a blue state. It’s a non-voting state.

We are actually 51st in the union in voter turnout (that number includes Puerto Rico). Sadly, Austin is no better than the rest of our fair state in this regard.

Travis County turnout dropped a whopping 50% between the 2016 Presidential election and last November. Some dropoff is always to be expected but wow. That’s pretty bad, friends.

Part of it I have to think is that folks are exhausted. No doubt others underestimate the importance and effect of local politics. But what I really think is going on is that for most people, Austin is wind at our backs, and we’re too often too busy to really notice, or care. Austin protects a lot of us from a lot of things. The mandate to vote shouldn’t be one of them.

. . .

It’s not all bad news. In fact, an incredible amount of the new has been incredibly good. It’s useful to remind ourselves of a few things.

Yes, UT is churning out high quality talent, but so are Huston-Tillotson, the Acton School of Business, St. Ed’s and ACC.

I think what Gary Keller is doing on Red River is awesome. We haven’t nearly saved live music yet, but we have the appropriate levels of panic and corresponding commitment to get the job done.

There is a ton of innovation going on in Austin around homelessness, affordable housing, tiny housing, and more. Have you visited Community First Village, which has pioneered a game changing approach to solving chronic homelessness?

Divinc is a local business incubator focused on women and people of color, and it is churning out high-quality, high-growth companies. 3/4 of the last graduating Techstars class had either a woman CEO or a woman on the executive team, no small thing sadly, in tech.

Speaking of UT, they recently hired Scott Aaronson. The university is building an incredible new quantum computing center around him, the first of its kind.

When was the last time you went to the Harry Ransom Center? Have you been to the new Ellsworth Kelly building at the Blanton?

The New York Times called Kelly’s Austin a “temple of light” and suggested that “no contemporary artwork of this scale by a major artist has matched its creator’s initial ambitions so perfectly as Kelly’s Austin.”

In fact, the paper’s art critic M.H. Miller went so far as to conclude that:

Long the music capital of the Southwest, Austin is now also a burgeoning outpost of the tech industry. But the presence of Kelly here almost instantaneously transforms it into an important art destination, the kind of place people make pilgrimages to.

How about that?

Our new medical school and teaching hospital are out of this world. Do you know about how they have completely reimagined the clinic from the inside out? Do you know what it takes — and means — to be a Trauma 1 center?

Mueller’s a big real estate project sure, but it is also the #2 green neighborhood in the whole U.S. according to Redfin, and an exciting precedent for future development.

Do you support Urban Roots and the Sustainable Food Center? Austin Bat Cave? SAFE? UMLAUF? The Thinkery? Foundation Communities? The Trail Foundation? The Texas Civil Rights Project?

Do you know about Manor New Tech high school, where you can see the best STEM curriculum in the country firsthand?

RideAustin emerged from a nasty fight about who gets to set the rules, but it is not just solvent, but writing big checks to other Austin nonprofits every single month, $350K in total and counting.

If we are lucky, Meow Wolf makes Austin their 3rd location. Liberty Lunch is long gone and so is Las Manitas, but The Skylark is still kicking, and so is the Sahara Lounge.

Wth all the traffic and our kvetching about it, we didn’t even drop down to #2 in the 2018 best places to live. We stayed #1. Even if we slide to number 4, 5, or 6, we are in great shape compared to most cities.

Obviously, I remain optimistic. Very much so. I’d love to hear why you remain so, too.

. . .

12 years ago, when I first got to Austin, another patron at Wink one table over stood up to tell us that we were “the problem” with what Austin was quickly becoming, having overheard our table’s conversation about my recent arrival.

Which was kind of funny in and of itself because we were all at...well, Wink. On the west side of Austin, sipping fancy wine with abandon.

This conversation is not new. These sentiments are not new. Generations before us invested in the icons and institutions that make Austin what it is today, in education, the arts, business, health and more. For that they should be lauded, and hopefully their example inspires us to do the same once more.

Those generations also irresponsibly kicked the can down the road on transportation, education, systemic racism and inequality, zoning, healthcare and more. We are left today to clean up several messes we didn’t make. But let’s not spend too long lamenting the errors of those who came before us.

I’m here for the long haul. I hope you are too. I’m glad we are talking about Amazon. I’m glad Amazon is talking about us.

I’m glad Steve Adler has an opponent. The contrast is striking, and useful because of the conversation it forces about original and modern Austin, and about complaining versus getting things done.

I’m glad we have a lot of work to do. Even better, we have the money, the talent, and the drive necessary to fix what’s broken.

I grew up in Baltimore. I love Baltimore. And it is doing better, slowly and surely. But Baltimore is not Austin, not yet anyway. Most cities would love to have our problems.

Again, we have every ability to solve what ails us. And I think we have a duty to do just that. For those of us to whom Austin has given so much, it’s time to give back.

Welcome, indeed.

P.S.

Steve has the biggest fundraising deadline of his reelection campaign on June 30th at midnight. That’s in 6 days.

Current and potential opponents will look at his report when deciding what their next moves will be. Please help out with a donation of $25, $50 or any amount that you can.

The max is up to $350 per person or $700 per couple, as allowed by our City. Click here to donate now.

Thank you!

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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A photographer tells her family's story about the dark side of an American dream For 20 years, photographer Diana Markosian thought she knew her family’s immigration history — or the gist of it, at least. In 1996, when she was seven, Markosian’s mother, Svetlana, woke her and her older brother, David, in the middle of the night, telling them to pack all of their important things: the three of them were going to see America. The way Markosian remembers it, neither of them asked any questions. That night they boarded a plane in Moscow bound for Los Angeles, without saying goodbye to their father. Diana Markosian, My Parents Together, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian When they disembarked at the airport, the family was greeted by Eli, a pudgy, much-older, American friend of their mother’s, who brought them into his home in coastal Santa Barbara. The trip, Markosian was told, was meant to be a holiday. But after Svetlana and Eli married less than a year later (they remained so for nine), Santa Barbara became home. “When we came to America in the ’90s, it felt like an absolute dream to be here. (My mom) fell in love with being an American, she embraced it,” Markosian recalled in a phone interview. “I am not sure my mom was leaving anything behind. Everything had already been taken.” Even before they lived there, Markosian had been aware of some version of Santa Barbara. The 1980s American soap opera of the same name was the first TV show of its kind to be broadcast in post-Soviet Russia, and her mother was among the millions of Russians who made “Santa Barbara” a hit, escaping into a world that felt exciting, exotic and far-removed from their own. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Svetlana, an economist, and her husband Arsen, an engineer — Armenians who emigrated to Moscow to finish their doctorates, and separated before Markosian was born — were living in poverty, amid widespread unemployment and hyperinflation. Arsen hawked Matryoshka dolls in Red Square and sold homemade Barbie dresses across Moscow to make ends meet. Svetlana assisted him with his bootleg Barbie business, and waited in the bread lines for handouts to feed the family. Diana Markosian, Moscow Breadline, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian But in January 2017, when Markosian was 27, that narrative was disrupted. As the newly ascended President Trump enacted his first travel ban, Markosian, who was then working as a photojournalist for the likes of National Geographic and the New Yorker, began pressing her mother about their own immigration story. “I just started talking about it and trying to understand: How did we even manage to do this? How did we manage to come to America? And I saw [my mother had] this real desire to tell me, and this readiness to reveal something that felt so shameful, so difficult to tell me. And that’s kind of how it came about” Markosian said. In reality, Svetlana, enamored with the vision of America she’d seen on TV, had met Eli through an ad she’d had circulated in American newspapers and magazines through a Russian agency that matched Soviet women with American men — a popular route for women looking to immigrate at the time. Her proposition was simple: “I am a young woman from Moscow, and would like to meet a kind man who can show me America.” Her first husband had had no idea she was looking to move, and was blindsided when she flew across the world with his children and severed communication. (When she was 22, Markosian and her brother tracked her father down during a trip to Armenia. He had returned to Yerevan, the capital, where the family had lived when Markosian was a child.) Markosian was stunned. “You hold your parents up on a pedestal and I think, for me, there was this anger, (this feeling) that this can’t be our story. Why didn’t I know more about this? Why wasn’t I included in this decision?” she said. “It’s not just us coming to America and living an American life. It’s us coming to America, keeping this secret of where we are for 20 years, and of not seeing my father for 20 years. It’s completely abandoning our past for this dream.” Diana Markosian, The Disappointment, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian To help her process the revelation, and learn to empathize with her mother’s decision to abandon her life in Moscow, Markosian set out to reenact her family’s journey on camera, through a short film and an accompanying photo series titled “Santa Barbara.” Shot from her mother’s perspective, the project saw her auditioning hundreds of actors to play her family members (she looked at 384 women before she found an actor to play Svetlana, someone “who would understand what it meant to give up everything for this one decision”), and shooting in locations across California, as well as the family’s former apartment in Yerevan . (The current tenants allowed her to rent the space.) Ana Imnadze, the actor who plays Svetlana, even wears pieces from her mother’s wardrobe; Armen Margaryan, who plays Arsen, wears her father’s watch. “I started seeing it as a story, and trying to divorce myself from my own life,” she said. “It needed to be a work of fiction, almost, for me to accept it, to process it, to fall in love with it. Because otherwise, it just felt too, too painful.” The photos that comprise “Santa Barbara” are a careful mix of the cinematic and the personal, fantasy and reality. There are dramatically framed domestic scenes, moodily lit (nodding to the dark Americana of Gregory Crewdson and David Lynch), and overexposed snapshots, including one that shows her “father” holding out a birthday cake, a still life with cigarettes and a cherry-red rotary phone, which looks like its been borrowed from a family scrapbook. Palm Springs, from Santa Barbara, 2020 © Diana Markosian, courtesy the artist Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian Similarly, Markosian said the accompanying film, running about 15 minutes, “relies on all these different formats to kind of understand a chapter in my family’s life.” Recreated moments from Russia and California are intercut with Super 8 videos and photos from Markosian’s childhood, as well as auditioning actors’ screen tests. Much of the dialogue is organic: At various points, Svetlana is interrogated by her doppelganger, dressed as her younger self, over the dinner table; and Markosian and Svetlana have their own back-and-forth in voiceover. Markosian had originally intended for the project to be scripted. She even recruited one of the original writers from “Santa Barbara,” Lynda Myles, to pen a script, and gave her family the opportunity to edit it. In part, this was a way to mitigate her own anxiety about telling a story in which she felt like a bit player. Diana Markosian, The Wedding, 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian “The hardest part of this project was coming to terms with the fact that I was the narrator,” she said “I sometimes sit with that thought and think why me? I was the youngest person in the room; I really didn’t have a voice in any of the decisions that were made. Why am I the one who’s in the place to tell this story? “It was a collective memory, and we all had our own version.” But finding a version of events that her family could agree on — from the nuances of Arsen and Svetlana’s relationship, to the realities of life in California — proved impossible. She brought Myles’ script to her father in Armenia, giving him the opportunity to inject his own perspective, but when she returned to California, her mother ended up crossing out his words and replacing them with her own. The process repeated when she handed the script to her brother. Hearst Castle, from Santa Barbara, 2020 © Diana Markosian, courtesy the artist Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian “The whole thing is disputed (but) I think we reached a place of understanding that we were never going to really agree on any of it. (The differences were) not so dramatic that I couldn’t put out a project, but enough that I started to understand how fascinating memory is, and that if I leaned into the gray, if I leaned into every perspective, I would arrive at a closer version of the truth than just this one version that I called my own,” Markosian said. “I looked at the script (after everyone had added their notes), and it became a piece of art in itself.” Diana Markosian, The Argument , 2019, from Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020) © Diana Markosian Credit: Courtesy Diana Markosian In November 2020, Markosian released “Santa Barbara” as her debut monograph with Aperture. This summer, she will exhibit the photos and debut the finished film at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, sharing one version of her family’s American dream with the world. There are also plans to turn it into an immersive show at the International Center of Photography in New York in September. “I remember how special it was to come to America, and I never took that for granted. It just came with a very big sacrifice for all of us,” she said. “That second chance to remember and recreate a part of your life is an absolute gift, and I think that’s what art has given me.” Source link Orbem News #American #Dark #dream #Familys #Photographer #side #Story #Tells

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

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Two Unmatched-Doctor Advocacy Groups Are Tied to Anti-Immigrant Organizations

In their last year of medical school, fourth-year students get matched to a hospital where they will serve their residency.

This story also ran on The Daily Beast. It can be republished for free.

The annual rite of passage is called the National Resident Matching Program. To the students, it’s simply the Match.

Except not every medical student is successful. While tens of thousands do land a residency slot every year, thousands others don’t.

Those “unmatched” students are usually left scrambling to figure out their next steps, since newly graduated doctors who don’t complete a residency program cannot receive their license to practice medicine.

At first glance, two new advocacy groups, Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America, seem to be championing their cause, helping them find residency slots and lobbying Congress to create more medical residency positions. The groups also recently organized a protest in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the scarcity of residencies.

But the organizations aren’t merely support groups. They are tied to Progressives for Immigration Reform, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an anti-immigrant group. PFIR is financed by an anti-immigrant foundation and its executive director has been affiliated with a network of anti-immigrant groups.

The two doctor groups want U.S.-trained and U.S. citizen doctors to get top priority in the Match over foreign-educated doctors. While both Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America do not say they are anti-immigrant, their websites include messaging that implies foreign doctors are taking residency spots away from U.S. doctors.

We need long-term solutions to the unmatched MD issue. That could include a 25 percent reduction in the number of doctors admitted on H-1B and J-1 visas.https://t.co/L81KmAY1B5

— Doctors Without Jobs (@DocsWithoutJobs) March 17, 2021

However, newly unmatched medical students searching for a source of support aren’t necessarily aware of the groups’ anti-immigrant affiliations.

Haley Canoles, a fourth-year medical student who didn’t match this year, was caught off guard when she learned of the organizations’ deeper agenda.

“I had no idea. I just recently joined Twitter and started following groups that I thought could help me network to find a residency position,” Canoles wrote in a private message on Twitter. “I absolutely do not stand for any anti-immigration agenda.”

As the percentage of unmatched U.S. medical students increases each year and the number of residency positions remains mostly static, more could be drawn to a support group such as Doctors Without Jobs.

According to 2021 data from the National Resident Matching Program, the percentage of medical school graduates who don’t match has increased. In 2021, 7.2% of students didn’t match into residency programs, up from 5.7% in 2017.

Meanwhile, the percentage of non-U.S. citizens who attended foreign medical schools who didn’t match has declined over the past five years to 45.2% in 2021, from 47.6% in 2017.

That makes advocates for international medical students worry that, if this trend continues, there could be increased resentment toward doctors educated abroad and xenophobic attitudes in the medical community.

“I obviously disagree with the idea that foreign medical graduates are taking spots from U.S. medical graduates,” said Dr. William Pinsky, president and chief executive officer of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, which certifies international medical graduates before they enter the U.S. graduate medical education system. “What residency directors primarily look for is who is the best qualified, and sometimes foreign medical graduates fit that bill.”

Kevin Lynn, executive director of PFIR, founded Doctors Without Jobs as an offshoot of the organization in 2018, after meeting an unmatched doctor outside a protest at the White House.

“I didn’t even know this was a problem, and then we started looking at the data and realizing that thousands of medical students weren’t getting into residency programs,” said Lynn. “At the same time, the number of foreign doctors who graduate from foreign medical schools and get taxpayer-funded residencies is increasing.”

PFIR endorses restricting immigration into the U.S., it says, to protect the American labor force and the environment. Its website also says it researches the “unintended consequences of mass migration.”

In a 2020 report, the SPLC found that Lynn had been closely involved with members of prominent Washington anti-immigration hate groups, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Both organizations push for reducing the number of immigrants in the U.S., are designated as hate groups by the SPLC and were founded by Dr. John Tanton, whom the SPLC has tied to white nationalists, racists and eugenicists.

And in July 2020, at the height of the covid pandemic, Lynn sent a letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking him not to allow a bipartisan bill that would allocate unused green cards to foreign health care workers into the next covid stimulus bill, and instead prioritize unmatched U.S. doctors. That effort was publicized in Breitbart News, a right-wing publication that shares the anti-immigrant view. The bill died in the Senate.

The SPLC also reported that Joe Guzzardi, a writer for Doctors Without Jobs, has previously written more than 700 blog posts for a white nationalist hate website.

According to recent nonprofit filings, from 2015 to 2019 PFIR received almost $2 million in funding from the anti-immigrant Colcom Foundation, which also provides significant funds to FAIR and CIS. Neither Doctors Without Jobs nor Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America have made any public financial disclosures, though Doctors Without Jobs accepts donations.

The modus operandi of these types of nativist groups is to take any policy problem area and say the solution is to restrict or eliminate immigration into the U.S., said Eddie Bejarano, a research analyst at SPLC who wrote the 2020 report. Doctors not receiving residency spots is just the latest issue that the anti-immigration movement has seized on.

“They’re taking issues like this and saying that the solution is grounded in nativism, it’s not about reform,” said Bejarano. “It’s out of the textbook for nativists, if they can prey on the fears for normal Americans, such as here, where doctors are just wanting a fair shot at a job and blaming it on immigrants.”

Lynn’s rhetoric doesn’t contradict Bejarano’s observation. “I believe we should be prioritizing Americans,” Lynn said in an interview with KHN. “People say that is xenophobic, that is racist. These are attempts to quiet dissent. What I’m saying are uncomfortable truths.”

Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America has a less direct connection to the anti-immigrant groups. It claims it is solely volunteer-run, independent of Doctors Without Jobs and doesn’t receive any funding from the organization. But it does say on its website that it is affiliated with Doctors Without Jobs. The groups have worked together to organize a recent protest and feature each other on their respective websites and in promotional materials.

Leaders of Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America declined an interview but provided KHN with an emailed statement claiming nearly half its members are immigrants or are second-generation immigrants.

Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America have increased their activity in the past couple of months. In January, members of the two groups traveled to Washington to protest outside the headquarters of the Association of American Medical Colleges, to bring attention to the issue of unmatched doctors. The AAMC runs the electronic system for submitting residency program applications.

The groups said they met with members of Congress to discuss reintroducing the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, which would increase federally supported medical residency positions by 2,000 annually for seven years. The bill was introduced again in the House and Senate in March.

Doctors Without Jobs also recently released a video targeting the AAMC and saying that the organization is promoting a policy that “allows foreign medical students to take American students’ residencies.”

In an emailed statement, Karen Fisher, the AAMC’s chief public policy officer, said that any unnecessary restrictions on immigration would only accelerate and worsen the existing physician shortage and that foreign-trained doctors often fill critical gaps in the health care workforce.

“The nation’s teaching hospitals seek to recruit the most qualified candidates into their residency training programs,” said Fisher. “A blanket preference for U.S. applicants runs counter to this goal and would severely restrict the pool of highly qualified individuals and prevent U.S. patients from receiving the best possible care from a diverse and dedicated group of aspiring physicians.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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How Anti-Fascists Won the Battles of Berkeley–2017 in the Bay and Beyond: A Play-by-Play Analysis

The perilous politics of militant anti-fascism defined 2017 for the anarchist movement in the United States. The story in the Bay Area mirrors that of the country at large. It’s a narrative full of tragedies, setbacks, and repression, ultimately concluding with a fragile victory. Yet there was no guarantee it would turn out this way: only a few months ago, it seemed likely we would be starting 2018 amid the nightmare of a rapidly metastasizing fascist street movement. What can anti-fascists around the world learn from what happened in Berkeley? To answer this question, we have to back up and tell the story in full.

Fascists chose Berkeley, California as the center stage for their attempt to get a movement off the ground. The advantage shifted back and forth between fascists and anti-fascists as both sides maneuvered to draw more allies into the fight. Riding on the coattails of Trump’s campaign and exploiting the blind spots of liberal “free speech” politics, fascists gained momentum until anti-fascists were able to use these victories against them, drawing together an unprecedented mobilization. As we begin a new year, anti-fascist networks in the Bay Area are stronger than ever. Participants in anti-fascist struggle enjoy a hard-earned legitimacy in the eyes of many activists and communities targeted by the far right. By contrast, the far-right movement that gained strength throughout 2016 and the first half of 2017 has imploded. For the time being, the popular mobilization they sought to manifest has been thwarted. The events in the Bay Area offer an instructive example of the threat posed by contemporary far-right coalition building—and how we can defend our communities against it.

2016: A New Era Begins

Clashes escalate outside a Trump Rally in San Jose on June 2, 2016.

The clashes between far-right forces and anti-fascists that gripped Berkeley for much of 2017 were the climax of a sequence of events that began a year earlier. On February 27, 2016, Klansmen in the Southern California city of Anaheim stabbed three anti-racists who were protesting a Ku Klux Klan rally against “illegal immigration and Muslims.” The rhetoric of the Klan echoed the same vulgar nationalism that the Trump campaign was broadcasting. Under the banner of the alt-right, many white supremacist and fascist groups began to use the campaign as an umbrella under which to mobilize and recruit. They aimed to build an ideologically diverse social movement that could unite various far-right tendencies within the millions mobilized by Trump. A reactionary wave had steadily grown across the country in the last years of the Obama era. The combination of continued economic stagnation, proliferating anti-police uprisings of Black and Brown people, and rapidly changing norms related to gender identity and sexuality had spawned a violent backlash. This was the wave that Trump rode upon and his campaign had broken open the floodgates.

Trump rallies became increasingly contentious in cities such as Chicago (March 11) and Pittsburgh (April 13) as protesters held counterdemonstrations to confront these open displays of bigotry. On April 28, 2016, small-scale rioting erupted outside a Trump rally in the southern California city of Costa Mesa. The next day, in the city of Burlingame near San Francisco, large crowds disrupted Trump’s appearance at the convention of the California Republican Party, leading to scuffles with police.

Days later, on May 6, a newly-formed fascist youth organization, Identity Evropa (IE) held their first demonstration on the other side of the Bay—an ominous portent of things to come. This initial experiment was organized by IE as a “safe space” on the UC Berkeley campus to promote “white nationalist” ideas and their particular style of business-casual far-right activism. Inspired by European identitarian movements, IE worked to coopt the rhetoric of liberal identity politics and use the contradictions inherent in those politics to build a new white power movement. Their strategy was part of a larger effort across the alt-right to recruit young people and legitimize white supremacist organizing as an acceptable form of public activism. The rally brought together Nathan Damigo, the founder of IE, with members of the Berkeley College Republicans and the alt-right ideologist Richard Spencer, who flew in from out of town to attend. Although the event was barely noticed, the participants declared it a success and a first step towards building a new nationalist street movement.

The most violent clashes outside a Trump campaign rally unfolded in San Jose on June 2. A handful of experienced activists attended the counterdemonstration, but the vast majority of protesters were angry young people of color from the South Bay unaffiliated with any organization. The police response was slow and confused; clashes between the crowds raged into the evening. Photos of people punching and chasing Trump supporters spread online, leading to calls from many on the far right for revenge.

On June 26, over 400 anti-racists and anti-fascists converged on the state capitol in Sacramento to shut down a rally called for by the Traditionalist Workers Party, an Ohio-based neo-Nazi organization. The rally was initially billed as an “anti-antifa” rally organized in response to the protests at recent Trump events. It was also an attempt to build bridges across various far-right tendencies. The majority of the anti-fascists wore black masks; other crews represented various leftist cliques. Together, they successfully prevented the rally from ever starting. Comrades held the capitol steps, chasing off scattered groups of Nazis and alt-right activists.

About three hours after the counterdemonstration began, two dozen members of the Golden State Skins, geared up in bandanas and shields decorated with white power symbols and the Traditionalist Workers Party emblem, suddenly appeared on the far side of the capitol and attacked the crowd from behind. Nine comrades were stabbed, some repeatedly in the neck and torso, while riot police watched impassively. Nearly all those targeted in the attack were either Black or transgendered. Miraculously, all of them survived.

Members of the Golden State Skins attempt to kill anti-fascists in Sacramento on June 26, 2016.

After the bloody clash, many people urgently felt the need for a new politics of militant antifascism. Over the preceding decades, one rarely heard the term antifa among anarchist and anti-capitalist movements in the Bay Area. Previous generations of anti-fascist and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) organizing in Northern California were largely situated within subcultural contexts. Much of the work these activists accomplished in the 1980s and ’90s focused on kicking Nazis out of punk and hardcore scenes.

The events in Sacramento helped usher in rapid transformations of the local anarchist movement. A network of comrades formed Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NOCARA) to research and document increasing fascist activity across the region. Other crews linked up to practice self-defense and hone their analysis in the rapidly shifting political terrain. Antifa symbols—the two flags and the three arrows—quickly became as ubiquitous as the circle A in the Bay Area anarchist milieu. Some lamented this as a retreat from struggles against capitalism and the police into a purely defensive strategy singularly focused on combatting fringe elements of the far right. But the majority understood it as a logical step necessitated by the rising tide of fascist activity around the country and world. They aimed to situate an anti-fascist position as a single component of the larger struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that comrades had been engaged in for years. Most participants had cut their teeth in various rebellions and movements in the Bay area over the preceding decade, including Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter. They saw antifa as a form of community self defense against the violent reaction to those struggles for collective liberation. Many were also eager to use anti-fascism as a means to open a new front against white supremacy and the state.

On November 9, the night after Trump’s electoral victory shook the world, a march of thousands followed by the most intense night of rioting in recent memory took place in downtown Oakland. Fires broke out in the Chamber of Commerce, the Federal Building, and the construction site of the new Uber building. Angry crowds of thousands fought police with bottles, fireworks, and even Molotov cocktails as banks were smashed, barricades blocked major streets, and tear gas filled the air. Other cities across the country also saw significant unrest; rowdy protests in Portland, Oregon lasted for days.

This made 2016 the eighth year in a row that serious rioting took place in Oakland. 2017 would end that pattern. The locus of street conflict in the Bay was about to shift up the road to the neighboring college town of Berkeley.

Starting the Year off with a Bang

Thousands swarm San Francisco International Airport to protest Trump’s “Muslim Ban” on January 28, 2017.

The tone for 2017 was set on the cold morning of January 20 in Washington DC. As mainstream media pundits nervously reiterated the importance of a peaceful transition of power, a black bloc of hundreds chanting “Black Lives Matter!” took the streets to disrupt Trump’s inauguration. In the course of the day, hundreds were arrested, a person in a black mask punched Richard Spencer as he tried to explain alt-right meme Pepe the Frog, and video of the incident went viral.

That same evening in Seattle, Milo Yiannopolous spoke on the University of Washington campus as part of his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. Milo had made a name for himself over the previous year peddling misogyny and Islamophobia in his role as tech editor for Breitbart News under the mentorship of Steve Bannon. He had become a leading spokesperson for the alt-right auxiliary known as the alt-lite. The logic behind his tour was similar to IE’s strategy of targeting liberal university enclaves using a provocative model of far-right activism rebranded for a millennial audience.

[Hundreds turned out(https://www.thestranger.com/open-city/2017/01/23/24818869/what-really-happened-at-the-milo-yiannopoulos-protest-at-uw-on-friday-night) to oppose Milo’s talk in Seattle. As scuffles unfolded outside the building, a Trump supporter drew a concealed handgun and shot Joshua Dukes, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, in the stomach. Milo continued his talk unconcernedly as the critically injured Dukes was rushed to emergency care. Fortunately, he survived, though he spent weeks in the hospital.

Despite the unprecedented degree of tension in the air, Oakland was quiet on J20. A few small marches, mostly departing from high school walkouts, crossed downtown. But by nightfall, the rainy streets were empty; hundreds of riot police deployed for the anticipated unrest packed up their gear to go home. This new year was not going to play out along familiar lines.

The next day, millions across the country marched against Trump in the Women’s Marches, many of them wearing pink “pussy hats.” Oakland was the location of the main Bay Area march and tens of thousands walked through downtown in a staid and orderly display of disapproval. Later that week, Trump signed executive order 13769 suspending US refugee resettlement programs and banning entry for all citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, including people with valid visas. By the following afternoon, a spontaneous and unorganized national mobilization was underway as tens of thousands swarmed the international terminals of every major airport in the country to oppose the “Muslim ban.” Loud marches and blockades continued for two days inside San Francisco International Airport.

In many ways, the airport protests marked the high point of the year in terms of mass action that undermined the regime’s ability to carry out its agenda. The mobilization immediately disrupted the implementation of the executive order and provided momentum to challenge it in the courts, where legal maneuvers continued throughout the rest of the year. Nevertheless, the protests did not coalesce into a more sustained sequence.

The Real Dangerous Faggots

Sproul Plaza outside Milo’s cancelled event on February 2.

On February 2, Milo arrived in Berkeley for the final talk of his tour, hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans. Days earlier, his talk in nearby UC Davis had been successfully disrupted by student protesters; all eyes were now on UC Berkeley campus.

Berkeley is an upper-middle-class city of 120,000 bordering Oakland, defined by the prestigious flagship campus of the University of California system that sits adjacent to downtown. The city’s history as a national hub of countercultural movements and far-left political activism stretches back to the early 1960s. In 1964, student radicals returning from the Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi set up tables on campus to distribute literature about the growing Civil Rights movement. The administration cracked down on their activities, sparking a wave of civil disobedience that came to be known as the Free Speech Movement (FSM). In many ways, it was the beginning of the student activism against racism and imperialism that proliferated across the country throughout the 1960s. Yet by the turn of the new millennium, Berkeley could be more accurately described as a hotbed of liberalism, not radicalism. The legacy of the FSM had been successfully coopted and rewritten by the university administration for their prospective student marketing materials. Students can now sip cappuccinos as they study for exams in the Free Speech Movement Café on campus.

On the south edge of campus sits Sproul Plaza, site of some of the most important demonstrations of the FSM and subsequent waves of activism. As the sun set on Sproul that Thursday evening, between two and three thousand students, faculty, and community members filled the plaza in a rally against Milo, the alt-right, and Trump. Layers of fencing surrounded the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union as platoons of riot police watched the chanting crowd from the balconies of the building and the steps leading down to the plaza.

Milo’s talk was about to start. Despite the large protest, it appeared that the massive police presence would enable it to proceed without a hitch. Then a commotion on neighboring Bancroft Way drew the attention of the crowd. A black bloc of roughly 150, some carrying the anarchist black flag and others carrying the queer anarchist pink and black flag, had just appeared out of the neighborhood and was busy building a barricade across the main entrance to the student union’s parking garage. As the barricade caught fire, the bloc surged forward to join the thousands in Sproul.

The sound of explosions filled the air as fireworks screamed across the plaza at the riot cops, who hunkered down and retreated from their positions. Under cover of this barrage, masked crews attacked the fencing and quickly tore it apart. Thousands cheered. Police on the balconies unloaded rubber bullets and marker rounds into the crowd, but ultimately took cover as fireworks exploded around their heads. With the fencing gone, the crowd laid siege to the building and began smashing out its windows.

Antifascists rip down fences on UC Berkeley campus on February 2.

“The event is cancelled! Please go home!” screamed a desperate police captain over a megaphone as the crowd roared in celebration. A mobile light tower affixed to a generator was knocked over, bursting into flames two stories high. YG’s song “FDT” (Fuck Donald Trump) blasted from a mobile sound system as thousands danced around the burning pyre. Berkeley College Republicans emerging from the cancelled event were nailed with red paint bombs and members of the Proud Boys, the “Western Chauvinist” fraternal organization of the alt-lite, were beaten and chased away. Milo was escorted out a back door by his security detail and fled the city. A victory march spilled into the streets of downtown Berkeley, smashing every bank in its path. Milo’s tour bus was vandalized later that night in the parking lot of a Courtyard Marriot in nearby Fremont.

The cover of the next day’s New York Times read “Anarchists Vow to Halt Far Right’s Rise, With Violence if Needed” below an eerie photo of a hooded, stick-wielding street fighter in Berkeley. “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump tweeted that morning before threatening to withdraw federal funds from UC Berkeley if the university could not guarantee “free speech.” Milo had been stopped and militant anti-fascism was now a topic of national conversation.

But a confused controversy over free speech was just beginning. Liberals quickly fell into the trap set by the alt-right. UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich, who had been Secretary of Labor under Clinton, went so far as to embarrass himself by groundlessly claiming that “Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown.”

From organizing “white safe spaces” to pretending to represent a new free speech movement, the ascendant fascists understood that the hollow rhetoric of liberalism utilized by hacks like Reich could be weaponized against anyone opposed to white supremacy and patriarchy. Liberal enclaves were especially vulnerable to this strategy. They had become the chosen terrain on which 21st-century American fascism sought to step out of the internet to build a social movement in the streets.

Meanwhile, Milo’s days were numbered. Despite liberal commentators’ assertions that paying attention to Milo would only make him more powerful, Milo’s career imploded two weeks later. Under the intense scrutiny that followed his spectacular failure in Berkeley, a conservative social media account circulated footage of Milo condoning consensual sex between underage boys and older men. His invitation to speak at the American Conservative Union’s annual conference was quickly rescinded, as was his book deal with a major publisher. The next day, Milo was forced to resign from Breitbart. While emblematic of the rampant homophobia of the right, none of this had anything to do with his views on sex. After Berkeley, Milo appeared to be an increasingly controversial liability that conservatives could no longer risk associating with.

A Repulsive Rainbow of Reaction

Based Stickman (left) leads the goons on March 4.

While many celebrated Milo’s downfall as a blow to the alt-right, various far-right and fascist cliques hastened to take advantage of liberal confusion around the emerging free speech narrative.

On March 4, modest rallies in support of Trump occurred across the country. In the Bay Area, vague fliers appeared calling for a Trump Rally in downtown Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. There was considerable confusion among local anti-racists and anti-fascists over who had called for the rally. Many assumed it was just right-wing trolling that would never materialize in public. Nevertheless, various small crews of anarchists, members of the leftist clique By Any Means Necessary, anti-racist skinheads, and an assortment of unaffiliated young people converged on the park to oppose any attempt to hold the Saturday afternoon rally. They found a bizarre scene that few could have previously imagined.

A grotesque array of far-right forces had assembled from across the region to celebrate Trump and defend their ability to propagate various forms of nationalism, xenophobia, and misogyny. One man in fatigues and wraparound sunglasses carried a III% militia flag. Another man with a motorcycle helmet, tactical leg guards, and a kilt sported a pro-Pinochet shirt depicting leftists being thrown from helicopters to their deaths. Still another right-wing activist happily zipped around on his hoverboard while taking massive vape hits and live-streaming the event via his phone.

Many in the right-wing crowd were not white. The alliances being formed through public activism had brought together a range of fascist tendencies, some more interested in defending violent misogyny or building an ultra-libertarian capitalist future than promoting white power. MAGA hats and American flags were everywhere as the crowd of nearly 200 attempted to march into downtown Berkeley. Fistfights broke out, flags were used as weapons, and pepper spray filled the air as anti-fascists and others intervened to stop the march. A masked crew of queer anti-fascists dressed in pastels, calling themselves the Degenderettes, used bedazzled shields to defend people from the reactionary street fighters of this strange new right-wing social movement. Chaotic scuffles and brawls continued off and on for three hours.

Riot police located around the perimeter of the park made some targeted arrests; yet as in Sacramento, they largely avoided wading into the melee. Ten people were arrested altogether, from both sides of the fight. One of these was alt-right sympathizer and closet white supremacist Kyle Chapman. Chapman had helped form the vanguard of the right-wing brawlers throughout the day. He wore a helmet, goggles, and a respirator while carrying an American flag shield in one hand and a long stick as his weapon in the other. News of his arrest combined with footage of his assaults immediately elevated him to celebrity hero status within the online world of the alt-right and alt-lite. Memes of Chapman went viral under his new nickname, “Based Stick Man.”

Tactically speaking, there were no clear winners in Berkeley on March 4. But the nascent fascist street movement was energized and ready for more. Anti-fascists had underestimated the momentum of this new far-right alliance and were quickly trying to figure out how to play catch up.

On March 8, a group of revolutionary women and queer people in the Bay Area organized a “Gender Strike” action in San Francisco as part of the national “Women’s Strike” planned for International Women’s Day. The strike was called for as a means of moving beyond the liberal feminism of January’s massive Women’s Marches against Trump. From Gamergate trolling to Trump’s gloating over his sexual assaults, from the Proud Boy’s valorization of traditional family values to the bizarre right-wing alliance manifesting in the streets of Berkeley, the rise of neo-fascism was being fueled by misogynists intent on preserving and expanding patriarchal power relationships as much as it was being fueled by white supremacists. The organizers of the strike aimed to connect radical tendencies within the growing feminist movement with various anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles. Nearly a thousand protestors marched on the downtown Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in a demonstration of support for San Francisco’s sanctuary city status and solidarity with those targeted by surging xenophobia. An even larger crowd of Women’s Strike demonstrators marched in the streets of downtown Oakland that evening.

The Alt-Right Strikes Back

DIY Division (left) and other fascist thugs on April 15.

Two weeks later, on Saturday, March 25, over two thousand Trump supporters held a “Make America Great Again March” in the southern California city of Huntington Beach. Marching with the large crowd was an imposing squad of athletic white men clearly looking for a fight. These were members of the openly neo-Nazi group known as the DIY Division or the Rise Above Movement. When a handful of anti-fascists attempted to disrupt the march, this squad assaulted them and beat them into the beach sand. The fight was broken up and the anti-fascists fled as the crowd joined the DIY Division fighters in chanting “Pinochet!” and “You can’t run, you can’t hide, you’re gonna get a ’copter ride!”

To the horror of many in the Bay Area, another alt-right demonstration in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park was announced for April 15. Billed as a “Patriots’ Day Free Speech Rally,” it featured a lineup of speakers flying in from out of town. As the date grew closer, it became clear that every crypto-fascist wingnut, weekend militia member, millennial alt-right internet troll, alt-lite hipster, civic nationalist, and proud neo-Nazi from up and down the West Coast wanted to attend. The growing movement got a critical boost when the Oath Keepers militia announced two weeks ahead of time that they would be mobilizing from across the country under the name “Operation 1st Defenders” to protect the so-called “Free Speech Rally.” The Oath Keepers are a right-wing militia composed of active duty and veteran military and police officers that claims to have 35,000 members. The “operation” was to be led by Missouri chapter leader John Karriman, who oversaw the armed Oath Keeper operation to protect private property during the Ferguson uprising of 2014. Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes would also be on the ground.

Bay Area anarchists met regularly during the weeks leading up to April 15 in hopes of developing some kind of strategic response to what was shaping up to be the most important showing yet of this far-right popular movement. Many comrades believed it was necessary to find a new approach in order to avoid spiraling into a violent conflict with an enemy that was better trained and better equipped than anti-fascists and anti-racists could ever be. A general plan was hashed out through meetings and assemblies that prioritized reaching out to the broader left and other activist circles in hopes of mobilizing large numbers of radicals who could drown out the alt-right rally while avoiding the kind of conflict that would strike the general public as a symmetrical clash between two extremist gangs. There was no specific call for a black bloc, which by this time had largely become synonymous with militant antifa tactics. Instead, fliers and posters began to circulate promoting a block party and cookout that could occupy the park at 10 am with large crowds listening to music and speakers before the “Free Speech Rally” started at noon.

Early in the morning of April 15, these plans collapsed disastrously. Dozens of Oath Keepers in tactical helmets and flak jackets established a defensive perimeter before sunrise alongside riot police who sectioned off various zones of the park with fencing and checkpoints. The organizer of the rally, the Oath Keepers, and the police had coordinated for weeks ahead of time.

Riot police surrounded comrades arriving in the park for the counter-demonstration; they confiscated trays of food for the cookout, musical instruments, flags, and signs. Police intervened to stop small scuffles as members of the DIY Division, in town for the rally from southern California, began to exchange taunts with anti-fascists. As noon approached, the 200 or 300 anarchists and anti-fascists who mobilized that day realized with terror that their attempts to reach out to other activists had fallen on deaf ears. They were alone, badly prepared for a fight, and were quickly becoming outnumbered by hundreds and hundreds of right-wing activists led by a street-fighting fascist vanguard and protected by a disciplined patriot militia.

Chaos erupted as the first speakers at the rally began to address the MAGA hat-wearing crowd inside the Oath Keeper perimeter. In a desperate attempt to give momentum to the demoralized and scattered anti-fascists, a crew with a mobile sound system in a street next to the park began blasting “FDT” to the cheers of many counterdemonstrators. People coalesced around the sound system and began moving around the edge of the rally. Some threw M80s into the park; others tried to breach the fencing. Most simply tried to stay together.

Chaos erupts outside the Free Speech Rally in Civic Center Park on April 15.

The police withdrew from the streets as fascist squads of young men emerged from within the rally to go on the offensive. Bloody fights broke out. Kyle Chapman, flanked by similarly geared-up brawlers including one man wearing a Spartan helmet, led a series of forays that split the crowd and left comrades bleeding on the ground. In one such attack, an anti-fascist was beaten by masked white men and dragged behind enemy lines to be stomped out. It was only through the intervention of the Oath Keepers and others functioning as “peace police” for the alt-right rally that the beating was interrupted; the comrade was shoved back across the skirmish line into the hands of friendly street medics. During the short pauses between clashes, fascists chugged milk and screamed as they pumped themselves up for the next assault.

Though outnumbered, anarchists and anti-fascists fought as best they could. Many Nazis and their sympathizers left that day bruised and bloodied. But the counterdemonstrators could barely hold their own against the fascist street fighters, let alone the Oath Keeper presence maintaining the interior perimeter. The rally of hundreds continued uninterrupted. As fatigue set in, the fascists made their move led by Chapman, members of DIY Division wearing their signature skull bandanas, and members of IE including Nathan Damigo. They blitzed the remaining counterdemonstrators and pushed them away from the park through a cloud of smoke bombs and into the side streets of downtown. A cautious retreat became a hasty run as the remaining anti-racists and anti-fascists were chased off the streets by Nazis. The fascists had won the third Battle of Berkeley.

Kyle Chapman, DIY Division (right), and Identity Evropa (far right) prepare for their final offensive of the day on April 15.

The fallout began immediately. Emboldened by the victory on the ground, an army of alt-right internet trolls on 4chan’s /pol thread and elsewhere began a doxxing witch hunt to identify all those who had opposed their shock troops in Berkeley. Within hours, they had used footage to identify a woman who had been brutally beaten by Damigo and others during the final assault of the day. Louise Rosealma had previously worked in porn; a misogynistic campaign of harassment against her began immediately. Oversized posters showing her naked next to Damigo’s smiling face with the words “I’d hit that” soon appeared on the streets of Berkeley.

Eric Clanton, a Diablo Valley College professor, became another doxxing target. Trolls claimed to have identified him as the masked anti-fascist caught on camera hitting a man in the head with a bike lock. The man on the receiving end of this blow wore a “Feminist Tears” button and had been seen attacking people alongside members of DIY Division throughout the battle. Eric received a slew of death threats; his online accounts were hacked and angry calls poured in to his employer that would eventually cost him his job.

On April 23, Kyle Chapman formalized his new role as leader of the militant vanguard of the alt-lite. He announced the formation of the “Fraternal Order of Alt Knights,” which was to function as the “tactical defensive arm of the Proud Boys.” Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys and co-founder of Vice Magazine, had helped promote the “Free Speech Rally” and had welcomed Chapman to his show multiple times.

On April 27, McInnes joined another far-right rally in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. The rally had been organized to coincide with Ann Coulter’s visit to UC Berkeley, which she cancelled at the last minute. Nonetheless, a large crowd of Trump supporters, fascists, and reactionary goons of various stripes flocked to Berkeley that day to get their piece of the action. They found themselves unopposed. Anarchists and anti-fascists were still licking their wounds; they had collectively decided to avoid a confrontation that could lead to another painful defeat like the fiasco of April 15. Later that night, the windows of the Black-owned Alchemy Collective Café were shot out. The café is located just blocks from Civic Center Park and its windows had been displaying posters in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and indigenous struggles.

A bullet hole in the window of the Alchemy Café on April 28, the day after another far-right rally in Berkeley.

Soon after, Eric Clanton was arrested by Berkeley Police in a house raid and charged with four counts of assault with a deadly weapon. During his interview at the police station, the detective expressed appreciation for 4chan’s /pol forum and informed Eric that “the internet did the work for us.” Eric’s case is pending and he faces years in prison.

The Turning Point

Solidarity demonstration with Charlottesville, August 12.

In chess, a player is said to “gain a tempo” when a successful move leaves their units in a more advantageous position while forcing their opponent to take a defensive move that wastes time and derails their strategy. The growing far-right social movement had gained a tempo at the expense of anti-fascists during spring 2017. The February victory against Milo and the alt-right in the first days of the Trump presidency had played an important role in disrupting attempts to normalize a dangerous new form of far-right public activity. Each attempt that fascists made to materialize in public risked extreme conflict. But anti-fascists’ success had helped to spawn an ugly reaction, which anarchists and other militant anti-fascists were unable to handle on their own.

There was nothing normalized or “respectable” about the armored and belligerent fascists who were determined to mobilize in Berkeley. Yet on a tactical level, they had proven they could leverage the necessary resources and foot soldiers to hold the streets in enemy territory. Anti-fascists had been forced into a downward spiral of responding to each new move without a strategy of their own. Paranoia, anxiety, and self-criticism characterized the local anarchist movement during late spring and early summer.

Yet important changes were underway. April 15 had caught the attention of many Bay Area activists who had remained outside the fray thus far. They were not convinced by the “free speech” rhetoric that had confused so many liberals. Militant anti-fascists had no interest in giving the state additional repressive powers to criminalize or censor speech. That was never what this struggle was about. Confronting fascist activity in the streets to stop its normalization and proliferation is a form of community self-defense. Increasing numbers of anti-racists understood this. Bay Area movement organizations such as the prison abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, white ally anti-racist groups such as the Catalyst Project and the local chapter of Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), and the Anti-Police Terror Project, who had played a leadership role in the local Black Lives Matter Movement, began to work with those who had been in the streets throughout the first half of the year to build a coordinated response.

Many of these groups had previously been at odds with anarchists. Some of the most bitter disputes revolved around issues of identity and representation within the various social movements of the preceding decade. Many anarchists rejected most forms of identity politics after seeing them used time and again by reformist leaders from marginalized groups to manage and pacify antagonistic movements. Liberal city officials, organizers of non-profits, and some social justice groups had regularly dismissed local anti-police and anti-capitalist rebellions in Oakland and elsewhere as the work of white anarchist “outside agitators” corrupting otherwise respectable movements led by people of color. This paternalistic and counter-insurrectionary narrative intentionally obscured the diversity of participants in these uprisings and erased their agency.

Things had begun to change in 2014 as anti-police rebellions spread across the country and the forces of racist reaction mobilized in response. Despite unresolved tensions, the anarchist movement played an important role in helping sustain struggles against white supremacy and other movements of oppressed people. Increasing numbers of activists and movement organizations supported the uprisings and understood the necessity of working together as part of a united anti-racist front. This convergence helped lay the groundwork for the unprecedented alliances that arose out of anti-fascist organizing.

The urgency of building these coalitions was tragically underscored on May 26, when a white supremacist cut the throats of three people who had intervened to stop him from harassing a young Muslim woman and her friend on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon. Two of the men died. The attacker, Jeremy Christian, had attended Free Speech Rallies organized by the Portland-based alt-lite group Patriot Prayer. At his arraignment, Christian yelled “Get out if you don’t like free speech… Leave this country if you hate our freedom—death to Antifa!”

A few weeks later, on June 10, thousands of anti-racists and anti-fascists in Seattle, Austin, New York, and elsewhere successfully mobilized against a day of anti-Muslim rallies attended by various groupings of neo-Nazis, militia members, alt-lite activists, and alt-right activists. During the Houston rally, scuffles between patriot militia members and an alt-right activist attempting to display openly fascist placards exposed growing cracks within the far-right alliance that had been built up through the spring.

On July 9, the growing anti-fascist network in the Bay Area held a packed forum in the Berkeley Senior Center, blocks from the site of the spring’s clashes. A range of speakers from the coalition helped educate the hundreds in attendance about the rising tide of white supremacist and fascist activity as well as the necessity of organizing for community self-defense. The crowd left the forum energized and eager to mobilize.

Another round of alt-right rallies was on the horizon. Many hoped that this time the response would be different. Patriot Prayer was calling for a rally in San Francisco on August 26 and a “Rally Against Marxism” was planned for the familiar battleground of Berkeley’s Civic Center Park on the following day. As the end of summer approached, fascists across the country made it clear they aimed to double down on their offensive. When a reporter for the New York Times asked Nathan Damigo about IE’s goals for UC Berkeley during the new school year, he laughed and responded, “We’ve got some plans.”

Before any of this could unfold, events on the other side of the country changed the course of history.

The first step of this renewed fascistic offensive was a mobilization in Charlottesville, Virginia promoted throughout the summer as a rally to “Unite the Right.” Building on their successes in targeting liberal enclaves over the previous months, alt-right leaders including Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo aimed to take their movement-building to the next level by forging an alliance with Southern white supremacists under the banner of their rebranded far-right activism. Charlottesville is a liberal college town that, along with other cities throughout the South, had been planning to remove monuments celebrating the Confederacy. Spencer had previously led a small torch-lit rally in Charlottesville on May 13 to protest the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. The August 12 rally was supposed to be the turning point that could transform the young movement into an unstoppable reactionary force under the cover of the Trump regime.

On the evening of August 11, a surprise torch-lit demonstration on the University of Virginia campus attended by hundreds of white supremacists gave the impression that this turning point had arrived. Footage of fascists surrounding and attacking outnumbered anti-racist demonstrators at the foot of the statue of Robert E. Lee spread around the country, provoking terror and urgency in equal measure.

Yet the following day turned out to be a historic disaster for the fascists. Anarchists and anti-fascists managed to interrupt the fascist rally, ultimately forcing police to declare it an unlawful assembly. The white supremacists retreating from the streets of Charlottesville knew that they had lost: their rally had been cancelled and the media was turning on them. They had failed to create a situation in which the volatile white resentment they drew on could be gratified by a successful show of force. That is why James Alex Fields, a member of the fascist organization Vanguard America, plowed his car into a crowd of ant-fascists that afternoon, killing Heather Heyer and grievously injuring 19 others.

Fascists had sought to obtain the upper hand in the media narrative by presenting their opponents as enemies of free speech. But after “Unite the Right,” the alt-right was inextricably linked with images of armed Klansmen and Nazis carrying swastika flags. The connection between far-right activism and fascist murder had become too obvious for anyone to deny. Charlottesville immediately became a rallying cry for an emerging broad-based anti-fascist movement that mirrored the microcosm of cross-tendency networking unfolding that summer in the Bay Area.

The heroes of this story are the anarchists and other militant anti-fascists who put their bodies on the line to throw the “Unite the Right” rally into chaos. Grotesque images from the streets of Charlottesville on August 12 showed armored fascist street fighters engaged in combat with outnumbered anti-fascists. These delivered a fatal blow to the alt-right’s stated goal of using the rally to legitimize the popular movement they hoped to build. Anti-fascists had forced the alt-right to show its true face; the results were catastrophic for the movement’s future. If the brutality of April 15 forced the Bay Area to reconsider far-right propaganda about “free speech,” August 12 in Charlottesville did the same thing for the whole country.

Resistance movements in the Bay Area are always strongest when they are not alone. When rebellions in Oakland, Berkeley, or San Francisco are simply militant outliers or exceptions that prove the rule, they are ultimately isolated and neutralized. Comrades in the Bay are most effective when their actions are a reflection of what is happening elsewhere around the country. The events in Charlottesville kicked local anti-fascist coalition-building into high gear. Within hours of Heather’s murder, nearly a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists gathered in downtown Oakland and marched to the 580 freeway, where they blocked all traffic and set off fireworks in a display of solidarity with comrades in Charlottesville. Many drivers waved and raised fists in support.

Solidarity with Charlottesville demonstration shuts blocks the 580 freeway in Oakland on August 12

Over a hundred solidarity demonstrations took place around the world over the following days. Many targeted Confederate monuments in the South. On August 14, demonstrators in Durham, North Carolina pulled down a statue of a Confederate soldier. Meanwhile, the Three Percenters Militia, which had deployed fully-armed platoons as part of the Unite the Right rally, issued a national stand-down order stating, “We will not align ourselves with any type of racist group.” Infighting between various far-right tendencies blaming each other for the disaster reached a fever pitch.

The national discourse around militant anti-fascism that had begun in response to the events in DC on January 20 and Berkeley on February 2 shifted dramatically. After Charlottesville, anti-fascists were suddenly riding a tidal wave of support from the left and many liberals. Cornel West, who had attended the counterdemonstration with a contingent of clergy, pointedly stated on the August 14 episode of Democracy Now, “We would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists.” Traditional conservative leaders such as Republican senators John McCain and Orin Hatch even lent tacit support to anti-fascists as they went on the offensive against Trump. Mitt Romney weighed in on August 15, tweeting, “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.” By August 18, Steve Bannon, the most powerful and visible face of neo-fascism within the Trump regime, was forced out of the administration in an apparent act of damage control responding to the growing crisis. Anti-fascists were once again in control of the tempo.

The Final Battle of Berkeley

Black Bloc helps settle the score in Berkeley, August 27.

Far-right activists from the Bay Area who had attended the Unite the Right rally returned home to find they had lost their jobs. Fascist podcast personality Johnny Monoxide was fired from his union electrician job in San Francisco after posters appeared at his workplace outing him as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi sympathizer. Cole White, who had assaulted people in Berkeley alongside Kyle Chapman and others throughout the year, was fired from a Berkeley hot dog stand after being outed by the @YesYoureRacist twitter account for attending the torch march.

By mid-August, a complex network of spokescouncils, coalition meetings, assemblies, and trainings were bringing together a diverse range of activist, left, and anarchist tendencies in the Bay on a nearly daily basis to prepare for the alt-right rallies of August 26 and 27. Honest conversations about how to allow for a diversity of tactics while respecting different risk levels and different vulnerabilities forged an unprecedented level of trust and solidarity. On August 19, in Boston, Massachusetts, over 40,000 counterdemonstrators confronted a few dozen alt-right activists and Trump supporters, including visiting alt-lite celebrity Kyle Chapman, who were attempting to host another “Free Speech Rally.” This was the largest demonstration against fascism and the alt-right in the US throughout 2017. It was another sign of the turning tides. In Laguna Beach, just down the coast from where 2000 Trump Supporters had marched with DIY Division in March, a small “America First” rally against immigration was vastly outnumbered by 2500 anti-fascists and anti-racists.

Morale was high among Bay Area anti-fascists and anti-racists as the weekend rallies approached. Local graffiti crews lent support, spreading a campaign of writing anti-Nazi and anti-Trump messages in cities around the region. Various local businesses announced that they would not serve alt-right rally attendees while opening their doors to offer spaces of refuge for anti-fascists. Calls to action emerged from almost every single Bay Area activist and movement organization. A common thread in many of these calls was a respect for different approaches to confronting fascism and a commitment to “not criminalize or denounce other protesters.”

Saturday’s alt-right demonstration was planned for San Francisco’s Crissy Field with the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. On the eve of the rally, Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson announced the event was cancelled due to safety concerns. Instead, Patriot Prayer planned to hold a press conference across the city in Alamo Square Park.

Despite the apparent change of plans, over a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists converged on Alamo Square the next day. Among them were members of the ILWU and the IBEW, Johnny Monoxide’s former union. This labor contingent had mobilized to support the counterdemonstration and to make it clear that fascists would not be tolerated in their ranks.

They found the park completely fenced off and occupied by hundreds of riot police, but no sign of Patriot Prayer or other far-right activists. Gibson and others including Kyle Chapman had retreated to an apartment down the coast in the city of Pacifica, from which they issued a statement over Facebook blaming city leaders and antifa for their own failure to hold a rally. It was becoming clear that their movement was imploding and the real obstacle to their rally was the potential of an embarrassingly low turnout. A colorful and celebratory victory march took the streets of San Francisco, making its way towards the Mission district. Throughout the rest of the day, anywhere far-right activists were sighted, counterdemonstrators swarmed the location and chased them off. Late in the day, Gibson and a handful of others made a surprise photo-op appearance in Crissy Field. A large crowd of counterdemonstrators chased them to their cars and they fled.

The “No to Marxism in America” rally planned for Berkeley on Sunday at 1 pm was also cancelled by organizer Amber Cummings. Nevertheless, the anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilization showed no signs of slowing down and Berkeley police were preparing for the worst. Berkeley City Council had passed a series of emergency ordinances giving the police special powers to set up multiple security perimeters around Civic Center Park and to ban items ranging from picket signs to masks. Over 400 police officers stood ready in and around the park on that sunny morning.

Two major rallies against the alt-right and against white supremacy were planned for the day in Berkeley. The first was organized by a coalition including local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), campus student groups, and a range of unions. It began across downtown on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus at 10:30. By 11, thousands were in attendance.

Other smaller groups went straight to Civic Center Park, where numbers had been growing since early in the day. As noon approached, nearly a thousand anti-racists and anti-fascists milled about between concrete barriers and various layers of fencing as hundreds of riot police monitored the scene under an increasingly hot sun. Screaming and shoving erupted multiple times as scattered Trump supporters and alt-right adherents attempted to enter the park. Some punches were thrown; this time, in contrast to March 4 and April 15, squads of riot police responded immediately to break up the fights and make arrests. The few antifascists who arrived with their faces concealed were tackled by police and arrested for violating the emergency ordinances.

Riot police face off against thousands of anti-fascists in Civic Center Park on August 27.

A few blocks away, in Ohlone Park, the second rally, organized by the local chapter of SURJ along with other anti-racist groups, was just beginning. Thousands were preparing to march. The call to action for this mobilization explicitly asserted the necessity of confronting fascists with a diversity of tactics and asked all attendees to respect those utilizing more confrontational forms of resistance. As a sound truck began leading the crowd towards Civic Center Park, a black bloc of nearly 100, many wearing helmets and protective gear, emerged from a side street ahead lighting off flares and chanting “¡Todos Somos Antifascistas!” The bloc parted for the sound truck and joined the front of the march to the cheers of the crowd. There were now nearly 10,000 antifascists of all stripes on the streets of Berkeley.

The black bloc doubled in size as it marched. Riot police standing guard around the Berkeley Police station on the corner of Civic Center Park looked on in dismay as the bloc led the crowd right up to the edge of the outer security perimeter. Tensions quickly escalated as riot police formed a skirmish line along the perimeter facing off against the bloc. One cop attempted to grab a masked comrade’s shield; others forced him back. Another cop fired a rubber bullet into the bloc as masked comrades with shields moved to the front line. A speaker on the sound truck announced that those wanting to help form a defensive line could move forward with the black bloc and all others could step back across the street to the steps of the old City Hall to hold space. Dozens of large shields were distributed from others in the crowd to those on the “defensive line.” Riot police began strapping on gas masks and aiming their various projectile weapons at the crowd. A major clash between two well-prepared sides was about to break out.

Anarchists hold the defensive line with shields on August 27.

Suddenly, the cops pulled back. All riot police in Civic Center Park had been ordered to withdraw to side streets in order to avoid instigating a riot. The crowd surged forward over the concrete barriers with the black bloc at the front chanting “Black Lives Matter!” Thousands flooded into the park, openly disobeying the emergency ordinances. Many chanted “Whose Park? Our Park!”

When Joey Gibson and his crew of patriots arrived minutes later, the crowd cheered on militant anti-fascists as they chased the pathetic showing of alt-lite reactionaries down a side street, where police fired smoke grenades to end the confrontation. Back in the park, the mood was jubilant and calm. Many applauded the black bloc and thanked them for keeping the crowd safe from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who had been spotted leaving the area after seeing the size of the anti-fascist crowd.

A second march from the morning rally arrived in the park and members of the DSA, carrying red flags, gave high fives to members of the black bloc carrying black flags. Clergy members made speeches and sang from the sound truck as people dismantled more of the police barriers. After an hour and a half of holding the park, the decision was made to leave together. The clashes had been minimal, the police had been forced to back down, and no one had sustained serious injuries: this was undeniably a massive victory.

A diverse yet united front of 10,000 anti-fascists had finally settled the score in Berkeley. As the black bloc joined the march out of Civic Center Park, they chanted “This is for Charlottesville!”

The top story of next morning’s San Francisco Chronicle began,

“An army of anarchists in black clothing and masks routed a small group of right-wing demonstrators who had gathered in a Berkeley park Sunday to rail against the city’s famed progressive politics, driving them out—sometimes violently—while overwhelming a huge contingent of police officers.”

What this description left out was the coordination and solidarity with thousands of other demonstrators that had allowed this “army of anarchists” to take back Civic Center Park without any significant clashes. That was the important story of the day. But the narrative emerging from the anti-fascist victory in Berkeley looked very different to those who were not there. Corporate media described anarchists and militant anti-fascists as hijacking an otherwise peaceful movement. These media outlets focused on a few scuffles that broke out with Gibson’s crew and some other reactionaries, including a father-son duo, wearing a Trump shirt and Pinochet shirt respectively, who had entered the park and pepper sprayed the crowd at random.

A father-son duo, wearing a Trump shirt and a Pinochet shirt, are pushed out of the park after pepper spraying the crowd on August 27.

August 27 was a relatively relaxed and celebratory day in the streets of Berkeley. Yet from the outside, national media outlets that had ignored the much uglier violence of April 15 painted it as a disturbing street battle between extremist gangs. The short-lived window of mainstream support for militant anti-fascism that had opened after the tragedy in Charlottesville was now closing. As long as anti-fascists were understood only as victims of white supremacist violence, liberals could support them. Yet as soon as those wearing black gained the upper hand, they were described as a threat to the status quo—potentially as dangerous as the Nazis themselves.

“The violent actions of people calling themselves antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted,” read a quickly-issued statement from Democrat house minority leader Nancy Pelosi. “I think we should classify them as a gang,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons, almost like a militia and I think we need to think about that in terms of our law enforcement approach.”

However, the diverse coalition that had been forged over the summer stood its ground. “We have no regrets for how they left our city. We do not want white supremacists in our city,” said Pastor Michael McBride in a press conference on the steps of the old City Hall the following day. “We don’t apologize for any of it,” said Tur-Ha Ak of the Anti-Police Terror Project. “We have a right and an obligation to self-defense, period.” A declaration of victory published by the Catalyst Project stated that it was “hard to convey how meaningful it was, after Charlottesville, for a very disciplined group of antifa activists to offer protection to the crowd from both police and white supremacists.”

Within activist, left, and anarchist circles in the Bay Area, there was no infighting after August 27. The unprecedented levels of trust and coordination that had developed between various groups held firm. Compared with the intense sectarian conflict that followed the spectacular demonstrations of the Occupy movement and the various waves of anti-police rebellions in the Bay, the revolutionary solidarity of 2017 was unheard of. This was the real victory of the Battles of Berkeley.

Make Total Decomposition

Milo exits the stage escorted by his $800,000 police security detail on September 25

The emergent fascist social movement that had grown throughout the first half of 2017 was now in ruins. Anti-fascist victories in Charlottesville, Boston, and Berkeley had shattered reactionary dreams of a far-right popular movement coalescing in Trump’s first year. The various tendencies that had converged under the banner of the alt-right were running for cover and turning on each other.

In a desperate attempt to give a new lift to his falling star, Milo had been hyping his triumphant return to Berkeley for a so-called “Free Speech Week” from September 25-28 in collaboration with an offshoot of the College Republicans calling itself the Berkeley Patriot. Together, they promised days of provocative events on and around campus featuring far-right speakers including Ann Coulter, Blackwater founder Eric Prince, and even Steve Bannon. The anti-fascist coalition in the Bay braced for another wave of reactionary posturing and violence. On the eve of Free Speech Week, hundreds took to the streets of Berkeley as part of the No Hate in the Bay march. As the march ended without serious incident in a rally at Sproul Plaza, Chelsea Manning made a surprise speech in a show of support for anti-fascists.

Over the preceding days, signs of infighting among the organizers of Free Speech Week had become increasingly apparent as venues changed, plans were cancelled without explanation, and the media received contradictory messages from Milo’s PR team, student Republican leaders, and campus administrators. In the end, Free Speech Week fizzled completely, reinforcing the increasing irrelevance of Milo and the alt-lite. On Sunday, September 25, about 60 far-right activists and Milo fans stood in an empty Sproul Plaza listening to Milo talk for 20 minutes while waiting in line to get his autograph. They were surrounded by a massive militarized police presence that cost the university $800,000.

BAMN and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) turned out about 100 counter demonstrators who made some noise outside the police perimeter. But most anti-fascists stayed away. Milo had already been beaten back in February and the fascist reaction to that victory had now also been overcome.

Within less than hour, it was all over and Milo fled the city once again. Small groups of alt-right activists who had flown in for Free Speech Week tried their best to build momentum throughout the rest of the week. One group stood outside the RCP’s Berkeley bookstore and banged on its windows. Another rallied outside the Black Student Union on campus. Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer even held a small demonstration in People’s Park. Students organized a rally that Monday to protest the fascists’ presence on their campus; militant anti-fascists were on edge all week as they monitored each of these events. Yet none of this activity enabled the insurgent far right to reach critical mass again. Evaluated as publicity stunts, recruitment tools, and tactical advances, all the events surrounding Free Speech Week were pathetic failures. They were barely noticed and did nothing to change the balance of forces.

On October 12, alt-right and white supremacist sympathizers within the Berkeley College Republicans were deposed in an internal coup that gave more traditional conservatives more control of the student organization. Bitter infighting within the group continued throughout the rest of the semester, reflecting similar splits on the state level within College Republicans. Identity Evropa also faced unstable leadership following the collapse of the strategy of targeting liberal university enclaves, which they had pioneered on Berkeley campus in May 2016. Nathan Damigo resigned as IE’s leader on August 27 following his disastrous participation in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. He was replaced by Elliott Kline, who was then replaced at the end of November by Patrick Casey. In an interview in which he announced his plans to move away from the damaged brand of the alt-right and to stop attempting to hold any kind of large public demonstrations, Casey stated, “We can’t go into these liberal areas and essentially repeat what happened with Unite the Right.” Reflecting on his movement’s shortcomings, the Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin admitted that “large rallies on public property, where we know there is going to be confrontation with antifa, are not a good idea.”

Meanwhile, in southern California, on October 21, former member of Kyle Chapman’s Fraternal Order of Alt Knights and fellow alt-lite leader Johnny Benitez accused Chapman of not being racist enough and personally profiting off of his “activism,” leading to a fist fight between the two men at the California Republican Party’s 2017 convention in the Anaheim Marriott. The next day, Chapman led a squad of Proud Boys to disrupt a Laguna Beach Benghazi rally organized by Benitez. Both men accused each other of being Federal informants and infiltrators. Fully 150 riot police were deployed to keep the quarreling factions apart. Later that week, Chapman found himself in yet another messy public split with Florida fascist August Invictus who had previously been FOAK’s second in command. The alt-right meltdown was in full swing.

The core leadership of the fascistic far right continued desperately attempting to regain all they had lost. Patriot Prayer returned to Berkeley yet again for another tiny and insignificant rally in People’s Park in November. In December, Kyle Chapman and a few others marched through San Francisco in an attempt to use the acquittal of the man charged with Kate Steinle’s death to protest the city’s “sanctuary city” status. Other far-right activists in Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas, and elsewhere across the country attempted to use this same issue to mobilize the crowds that had stood beside them earlier in the year. Yet by December, their numbers were minuscule; in most cases, they found themselves overwhelmed by anti-fascist counterdemonstrations.

Nowhere was this clearer than in DC on December 3, when Richard Spencer, Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Worker’s Party, former IE leader Elliott Kline, and other fascist leaders attempted to hold a rally. They were forced to cancel their march when less than 20 people showed up. They had failed to reignite the momentum that neo-Nazis and white supremacists rode on in 2016 and early 2017. By the end of the year, their movement was in total decomposition.

Solidarity Is Our Most Powerful Weapon

The August 27 black bloc marches in front of a sign printed and distributed by the city of Berkeley

The alt-right has been defeated. The convergence of fascist and white supremacist tendencies under this rebranded far-right umbrella has been successfully disrupted, cutting off the core leadership from the base of Trump supporters from which they sought to draw power. Militant anti-fascists who took action in Berkeley, Charlottesville, and dozens of other cities across the country should be proud of the role they played in achieving this victory.

It is important to emphasize that this was not accomplished through a militaristic application of force. During the darkest days of the spring, when the alt-right mobilizations in Berkeley were at their strongest, it was not certain that even the largest of contemporary black blocs could have defeated the array of fascistic forces prepared to do battle. What tipped the scales, ultimately leading to the Nazis’ downfall, was the strength of solidarity between various anarchist, left, and activist groups committed to combatting white supremacy, patriarchy, and fascism with a wide range of tactics. As anti-fascist networks expanded and grew increasingly resilient, the ideologically heterogeneous networks of the far right imploded. The alt-lite turned on the alt-right, the civic nationalists turned on the ethno-nationalists, the patriot militias turned on the neo-Nazis, and the average Trump supporter who had dabbled in this growing movement was left confused and demoralized.

Yet the struggle against fascist and reactionary forces in the United States during the Trump era is just beginning.

There is no going back to a time before the stabbings, doxxing, Pinochet shirts, Pepe memes, torch-lit marches, and murder. Movements struggling for collective liberation must remain hardened and ready to face down whatever future fascist mutations rear their ugly heads from the cesspool of the far right. This is especially true for the anarchist movement in the United States, as anarchists have stuck our necks out further than almost anyone else to combat the rise of the alt-right. We cannot lower our guard; comrades will have to continue prioritizing individual and community self-defense for the foreseeable future. Many of these radicalized fascists will seek to exploit future crises to jumpstart their movement-building in new and unexpected ways. Other far-right activists will likely attempt to gain positions of power within law enforcement and other security agencies. Lone wolf attacks and other manifestations of far-right violence will almost certainly continue.

So we must remain on high alert. But if the threat of an imminent far-right popular movement with a fascist vanguard continues to recede, the politics of militant antifascism can evolve. This is what happens when we win.

Anarchist projects and initiatives can once again set their sights on the foundations of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Some comrades can work to develop a revolutionary anti-fascist tendency that builds on the momentum of recent years. Others can take what they have learned from this sequence and refocus on advancing the struggles they have always been a part of.

Either way, anarchists and other militant antifascists are starting 2018 in a much more advantageous position than we held a year ago. The diverse networks of affinity and solidarity that turned the tide in 2017 will remain vital to the safety and resilience of everyone engaged in these dangerous activities.

At the same time, it must not be forgotten that fascists took advantage of the contradictions inherent in liberalism and the elitism of liberal enclaves to gain strength in 2016 and 2017. We must not water down anti-fascism via “popular front” politics until it becomes nothing more than a defense of liberal capitalism. We have to defend ourselves against co-optation as well as fascist agitation. The victories of 2017 have afforded us a brief opening to catch our breath and reaffirm the profoundly radical nature of our struggle for collective liberation. Imaginative revolutionaries must now lead new offensives on their own terms that bring us all closer to the world we wish to build.

Some Bay Area Antagonists January 2018

Taking the Park on August 27.

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Saturday, January 2, 2021

Chaotic Congress winds down (AP) Congress is ending a chaotic session, a two-year political firestorm that started with the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, was riven by impeachment and a pandemic, and now closes with a rare rebuff by Republicans of President Donald Trump. In the few days remaining, GOP senators are ignoring Trump’s demand to increase COVID-19 aid checks to $2,000 and are poised to override his veto of a major defense bill, asserting traditional Republican spending and security priorities. It’s a dizzying end to a session of Congress that resembles few others for the sheer number of crises and political standoffs. Congress opened in 2019 with the federal government shutdown over Trump’s demands for money to build the border wall with Mexico. Nancy Pelosi regained the speaker’s gavel after Democrats swept to the House majority in the midterm election. The Democratic-led House went on to impeach the president over his request to the Ukrainian president to “do us a favor” against Biden ahead of the presidential election. The Republican-led Senate acquitted the president in 2020 of the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. When the pandemic struck, Congress rallied with unusual speed and agreement to pass a $2 trillion relief package, the largest federal intervention of its kind in U.S. history. The Congress had few other notable legislative accomplishes, and could not agree on how to respond to the racial injustice reckoning that erupted after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.

Dollar posts worst year since 2017 (Reuters) The dollar posted its biggest yearly loss since 2017 on Thursday, capping off a manic year that saw the currency serve as a safe haven in March when panic over the spread of COVID-19 in the United States peaked, before dropping on unprecedented Federal Reserve stimulus. The greenback soared to a three-year high of 102.99 against a basket of currencies in March, before ending the year at 89.96, down 6.77% on the year and 12.65% from its March high. An improving global economic outlook as COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out, rock-bottom U.S. interest rates and ongoing Fed bond purchases have dented the dollar’s appeal. “I expect the dollar to depreciate further over the next few years as the Fed keeps rates at zero whilst maintaining its bloated balance sheet,” Kevin Boscher, chief investment officer at asset manager Ravenscroft, told clients. “The magnitude of the twin deficits dwarfs any other major economy,” he said.

Expensive, faulty weapons (Bloomberg) The Pentagon has put a decision on approving full-rate production of Lockheed Martin’s $398 billion F-35 fighter program, the subject of numerous design defects and even a criminal investigation, on indefinite hold. The plane has yet to demonstrate its effectiveness against the most challenging Russian and Chinese air defense systems and aircraft. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy’s plan to deliver on time the first of its $128 billion next-generation missile submarine fleet is at risk because of inexperienced contractors with spotty quality control, a government watchdog warned. And the cost overrun could be as much as $384 million—for the one boat.

Why California’s immigrants are heading back to Mexico (The Guardian) California’s most vulnerable immigrants have faced unprecedented challenges this year, with some weighing whether it’s worth staying in the United States altogether. Ten months of a pandemic that has disproportionately sickened immigrants and devastated some of the industries that rely on immigrant labor, combined with years of anti-immigrant policies by the Trump administration have exacerbated insecurities for undocumented people and immigrants working low-wage jobs across California. For immigrants at the bottom of the economic ladder, it’s never been easy in the US, said Luz Gallegos, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Training Occupational Development Educating Communities Legal Center (Todec). “But California was also always a place where my family—my parents and grandparents—believed they could build a better life,” said Gallegos who was born into a family of immigrant activists and organizers. “It was always a place with potential.” Until this year. “There’s been so much fear and trauma—just layers of trauma,” she said. Javier Lua Figureo moved back to his home town in Michoacán, Mexico, three years ago, after living and working in California for a dozen years. Since the pandemic hit, several of his friends and family members have followed his lead, he said. “Things aren’t perfect in Mexico,” Figureo said in Spanish. But at least there’s access to healthcare, and some unemployment benefits for those who need it, he added. “In comparison to what it was in the US, the situation for us in Mexico right now is much better.”

Brexit’s Silver Lining for Europe (NYT) It is done at last. On Jan. 1, with the Brexit transition period over, Britain will no longer be part of the European Union’s single market and customs union. A great loss will be consummated. Loss for the European Union of one of its biggest member states, a major economy, a robust military. Loss for Britain of diplomatic heft in a world of renewed great power rivalry; of some future economic growth; of clarity over European access for its big financial services industry; and of countless opportunities to study, live, work and dream across the continent. “Brexit is an act of mutual weakening,” Michel Barnier, the chief European Union negotiator, told the French daily Le Figaro. But the weakening is uneven. Britain is closer to fracture. The possibility has increased that Scotland and Northern Ireland will opt to leave the United Kingdom and, by different means, rejoin the European Union. The bloc, by contrast, has in some ways been galvanized by the trauma of Brexit. It has overcome longstanding obstacles, lifted its ambitions and reignited the Franco-German motor of closer union. “Brexit is not good news for anyone, but it has unquestionably contributed to a reconsolidation of Europe, which demonstrated its unity throughout the negotiations,” François Delattre, the secretary-general of the French foreign ministry, said.

Coronavirus overshadows Japan’s New Year’s Day festivities (Reuters) New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday in Japan’s calendar, but this year’s festivities have been subdued following record highs in new coronavirus cases nationwide and calls from the government to stay home. Japan’s Emperor Naruhito appealed to the public to work together through the pandemic in a videotaped New Year’s Day address to the nation released on Friday. “I am wishing from my heart that everyone can move forward during this hard time by supporting and helping one another,” he said in the address, which was released in place of an annual public appearance by the imperial family during the New Year holidays. The event was cancelled this year because of the pandemic. New Year’s Day festivities in Japan involves spending time with family and praying at local temples, where hordes of people wish for good luck in the coming year.

Philippines to ban U.S. travellers from Sunday (Reuters) The Philippines will prohibit the entry of foreign travellers from the United States from Sunday after the more infectious new variant of the coronavirus was detected in Florida. The travel ban, lasting until Jan. 15, covers those who have been to the United States within 14 days preceding arrival in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman said in a statement.

Floods ravage South Sudan (AP) On a scrap of land surrounded by flooding in South Sudan, families drink and bathe from the waters that swept away latrines and continue to rise. Some 1 million people in the country have been displaced or isolated for months by the worst flooding in memory, with the intense rainy season a sign of climate change. The waters began rising in June, washing away crops, swamping roads and worsening hunger and disease in the young nation struggling to recover from civil war. Now famine is a threat. On a recent visit by The Associated Press to the Old Fangak area in hard-hit Jonglei state, parents spoke of walking for hours in chest-deep water to find food and health care as malaria and diarrheal diseases spread.

Gratitude (NYT) Numerous studies show that people who have a daily gratitude practice, in which they consciously count their blessings, tend to be happier, have lower stress levels, sleep better and are less likely to experience depression. In one study, researchers recruited 300 adults, most of them college students seeking mental health counseling. All the volunteers received counseling, but one group added a writing exercise focused on bad experiences, while another group wrote a letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks. A month later, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health. And the effect appears to last. Three months later the researchers scanned the brains of students while they completed a different gratitude exercise. The students who had written gratitude letters earlier in the study showed greater activation in a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, believed to be related to both reward and higher-level cognition. Send an appreciative email or text, thank a service worker or tell your children, your spouse or a friend how they have made your life better. You can send emails or post feelings of gratitude on social media or in a group chat. Or think of someone in your life and write them a letter of gratitude. (You don’t have to mail it.) Fill your letter with details describing how this person influenced your life and the things you appreciate about them. Or keep a daily gratitude journal. “I think the full potential of gratitude is realized when people are able to express gratitude in words,” says Y. Joel Wong, chairman of the department of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University. “When we are able to say what we’re grateful for and explain why, it shifts our attention from what’s negative to what’s positive in our lives.”

#headlines #news

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progressiveparty · 5 years ago

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White Power Within The Republican Party

White nationalists are building political power from within the Republican Party.

The Triumph of Their Will

James Allsup’s political career should have been over before it began. The prolific far-right YouTuber was forced to resign from his position as president of the College Republicans at Washington State University after a video surfaced of him marching in the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The national College Republicans denounced Allsup, and students in his own chapter complained that it had been “radicalized” since Allsup’s election in 2015.

But Allsup, a member of the far-right white nationalist group Identity Evropa, wasn’t done with Republican politics. In June 2018, Allsup was elected as a precinct committee officer for the Republican Party in Whitman County, Washington State, a two-year position that involves building ties between the party and voters. This caused a rift among Washington State Republicans. While some vowed to prevent him from performing the duties of his office, then-Spokane County GOP Chair Cecily Wright spoke publicly on Allsup’s behalf and hosted an event for him.

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Months later the Whitman County Republican Committee voted to strip Allsup’s position of all its duties and responsibilities, rendering it essentially meaningless. But, as of presstime, Allsup remains an elected official of the Washington State GOP, even if his office is now merely symbolic. These days, Allsup is mostly focused on growing his audience on YouTube, where he concentrates on national issues and rarely mentions politics in his home state. Forbes magazine highlighted Allsup in an article profiling conservatives making a living largely on YouTube. YouTube recently demonetized Allsup’s channel, making it much more difficult for him to profit from his videos. (Full disclosure: Allsup has made two videos about me, which I have not watched.) Allsup is not an outlier but part of a broader movement by white nationalists and male supremacists to build political power in America through the Republican Party. It would be easy to dismiss him as a basement-dweller making YouTube videos and podcasts; but Allsup is part of a larger far-right movement that has made significant inroads in taking over the GOP, aided by a President who treats neo-Nazis and white nationalists as a valued political constituency group. Identity Evropa, classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, counts Allsup as a member and supporter. The group, which recently tried to rebrand itself as the American Identity Movement, is known for targeting college-age white men for recruitment. It urges its members to become involved in local Republican politics and try to take over local GOP organizations at the ground level. Patrick Casey, Identity Evropa’s current leader, posted about his involvement with his local party in 2017, encouraging members to follow his lead. Here’s what Casey, who goes by the handle Reinhard Wolff, had to say: Today I decided to get involved with my county’s Republican party. Everyone can do this without fear of getting doxed. The GOP is essentially the White man’s party at this point (it gets Whiter every election cycle), so it makes far more sense for us to subvert it than to create our own party. If we’re going to win this, it’s going to take time, effort, and sacrifice. If you’re unable to do activism for various reasons, I’d like to encourage you to join your local Republican party. Present as a Trump supporter/nationalist. No need to broadcast your radical views. It’s actually quite easy to run for and win local offices. Let’s make this happen! And that is what’s happening—not just in Washington State but in communities across the country. The Republican Party is at risk of being taken over by a combination of far-right militia separatists, evangelical Christians, and Internet trolls in the Allsup mold. It is a development that puts American democracy in danger, makes America vulnerable to attack from hostile foreign actors, and leaves the American public less safe. It’s impossible to talk about white nationalism and male supremacy without talking about domestic terrorism. Violence from the far-right is on the rise in America, and the federal government has done little to stop it. Wrote The Washingon Post, “Over the past decade, attackers motivated by rightwing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings, and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist.” President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t believe white nationalist terrorism is a growing threat, though his FBI Director Christopher Wray disagrees with that assessment. In April, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, held a Congressional hearing on hate crimes, white nationalism, and the role of social media. The Republicans called two witnesses to testify. One was far-right personality and then-communications director of Turning Point USA, Candace Owens. Like Identity Evropa, Turning Point USA aims to recruit younger members. It’s a student organization that touts high school and college chapters across the country. Though both Owens and founder Charlie Kirk have lengthy histories of making racist statements, Turning Point attempts to brand itself as a mainstream Republican organization (as opposed to Identity Evropa) and distance itself from the label of alt-right. A broad coalition of far-right groups and personalities has built significant political influence under the Trump Administration and Republican elected officials across the country. A broad coalition of far-right groups and personalities has built significant political influence under the Trump Administration and Republican elected officials across the country. Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group, spoke at a GOP fundraiser last fall, telling attendees, “You need us foot soldiers.” In April 2017, two alt-right journalists were invited to the White House and allowed to pose for pictures in a briefing room, where they stood behind a podium and made a hand sign that can be meant to signify white power. And Trump regularly retweets known white supremacist figures on his Twitter account. These are all signs of a systemic radicalization of the Republican Party. The GOP’s roster of candidates and elected officials includes an array of far-right extremists and those happy to entertain extremist ideas and figures. The most notorious elected extremist is Steve King of Iowa, a longtime member of Congress with an even longer history of racism and associating with extremist figures. He was stripped of his committee appointments a few months back after telling The New York Times: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” But King is hardly the only extremist Republican in the Capitol. Former Representative Dave Brat of Virginia has appeared on Infowars, the notorious rightwing conspiracy outlet. Representative Duncan Hunter of California ran a campaign ad featuring a conspiracy theorist who had claimed immigrants are diseased and Muslims are trying to secretly take over America. A book written by then-Representative Scott Taylor of Virginia was blurbed by a prominent anti-Muslim writer. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has appeared on Infowars and invited Holocaust denier Chuck C. Johnson to be his guest at the 2018 State of the Union. This January, two other Congressmen, Phil Roe of Tennessee and Andy Harris of Maryland, were caught by reporters meeting with Johnson as well. The 2018 election cycle saw a host of extremists running for office as Republicans, many of whom won the party’s nomination via primary. The most prominent example is white supremacist Corey Stewart, who won the GOP primary for a Virginia Senate seat in 2018 after nearly becoming the state’s Republican nominee for governor in 2017. Kelli Ward, a notorious far-right figure who ran for Senate in Arizona, was endorsed by Sean Hannity. Ward and her husband ran a racist conspiracy Facebook group. Toward the end of her campaign, Ward did a bus tour with infamous conspiracy theorist and far-right personality Mike Cernovich—incidentally one of the two journalists who previously made white power hand signs in the White House. Post-election, the news site Vox noted that candidates who self-defined as Nazis did poorly but that “candidates linked to white supremacist groups did quite well.” Matt Shea has served in the Washington State legislature since 2008, representing his native Spokane Valley. Shea made international news this year when his messages with far-right figures on a chat site were leaked by a former political ally who had fallen out with him. According to TheGuardian, Shea “took part in private discussions with rightwing figures about carrying out surveillance, ‘psyops,’ and even violent attacks on perceived political enemies.” One commenter on this chat site, far-right radio host Jack Robertson, suggested this response to a specific female resident of Spokane: “Fist full of hair, and face slam, to a Jersey barrier. Treat em like communist revolutionaries. Then shave her bald with a K-Bar USMC field knife.” All of the chat group’s participants used aliases to mask their identities. Shea’s was “Verum Bellator,” which is Latin for “true warrior.” But Shea isn’t just engaging with the far-right anonymously on social media. He has built a political organization, Liberty State, to advocate for the eastern half of Washington State seceding and forming a fifty-first state. In a presentation on the organization’s YouTube channel, Shea said secession is ultimately about “protecting our Christian culture and heritage.” Liberty State has held rallies, supported candidates for local office, and held a May 23 fundraiser where, according to The Spokesman-Review, the speakers included “Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan; Spokane City Council candidate Tim Benn; and Loren Culp, the police chief in Republic, Washington, who made national headlines when he pledged not to enforce a controversial gun control initiative that voters passed in November.” At the event, Shea’s legislative assistant, Rene’ Holaday, framed the choice facing Washington State succinctly: “It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty State.” The event was interrupted by a small group of former Shea allies who have come to regard his views as dangerous. Sheriff’s deputies escorted them off the premises. It’s worth noting that Shea, despite winning reelection multiple times, isn’t universally popular among area Republicans. Multiple sources in Spokane Valley told The Progressive about in-fighting between Shea and other Republicans in the Spokane Valley area. Kent Rinne, a volunteer with Indivisible and a longtime Spokane Valley resident, says of Shea’s Liberty State organization: “It doesn’t come out of the Republican Party. It’s a real splinter group. They actually hate Republicans as much as they hate everybody else.” The most vocal of Shea’s Republican opponents is Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, who has given multiple interviews about Matt Shea and the danger he believes Shea poses to the Spokane Valley area. In a local radio interview, Knezovich says, “If you get on the wrong side of Mr. Shea, you suddenly become his enemy and he does come after you. I’ve watched it happen to many people. It’s happened to me.” But Shea’s Republican colleagues in the state legislature have declined to expel him as a member of their caucus, despite promises to do so. Tina Podlodowski, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, says via email: “Washington GOP’s failure to effectively excise him from their caucus is one of the most disappointing things about how they run their organization.” Last fall, Shea acknowledged having distributed a four-page manifesto titled “Biblical Basis for War,” which declares that “God is a Warrior” and that a “Holy Army” is needed to put an end to abortion, communism, and same-sex marriage. Podlodowski noted that the state GOP promised to investigate but “we’ve seen no proof that such an investigation is underway or that the Washington GOP is taking this issue seriously.” Matt Shea isn’t just a one-man operation. He’s building political support for his extremist views. Podlodowski says that Shea, who served as the Republican state caucus chair in the statehouse until last November, is now “promoting candidates to try and take over the Spokane City Council.” The Progressive has also obtained a video of Shea interviewing a small group of young men who talk to him about preparing for “Christian Warfare” and physical training with firearms. The video was recorded at an annual event held by Marble Country, an anti-Semitic and racist Christian Identity group in northeastern Washington State at which Shea has been a featured speaker in the past. “Sometimes I think, ‘Why pay attention to the guy?’ But I have to, because he’s a legislator. He’s worked his way into our politics and he’s helping create a nasty, ugly political environment here.” Rinne, the Indivisible volunteer, speaking of Shea’s impact on politics in Washington State, tells me, “Sometimes I think, ‘Why pay attention to the guy?’ But I have to, because he’s a legislator. He’s worked his way into our politics and he’s helping create a nasty, ugly political environment here.” Podlodowski calls for the same vigilance by people in other states who are dealing with white supremacist elected officials and political organizing. “It’s important to view these folks as part of a nationwide problem, not isolated pockets of extremists,” she tells me. “The Internet has made organizing and radicalizing people in small communities across the country easier than ever before. We need a collective response from everyone who wants to defeat white supremacy and create an inclusive society.” Sidebar: See No Evil: Congress Gives the Alt-RIGHT a Star Turn One sign of the alt-right’s influence within the Republican Party was the derailing of an April 9 House Judiciary Committee hearing on white nationalism and domestic terrorism. The event devolved into a circus, with some GOP committee members openly questioning whether white supremacy is even a thing.

Gage Skidmore Candace Owens The hearing’s star invited witness was Candace Owens, an Infowars and Fox News contributor who had recently remarked that Hitler would have been “fine” had he stuck to being a nationalist in Germany. Owens’s only qualification to be a witness is that she’d been recently name-checked in the New Zealand mosque shooter’s so-called manifestoas one of his influences. By including Owens as a witness—alongside Eileen Hershenov of the Anti-Defamation League, Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society, and Facebook’s Public Policy Director Neil Potts—House Republicans ensured that most of the press coverage of the hearing would revolve around Owens’s antics, rather than the threat of domestic terrorism inspired by white nationalist ideology. Owens’s inclusion also ensured that the manifesto received another round of media attention, something extremism researchers have warned will likely inspire other white nationalists to commit violent acts. Considering that Trump aide Kellyanne Conway recently encouraged Fox News viewers to read the document in full, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if the point of Owens’s appearance before the committee was not to combat the threat of white nationalism, but to amplify it. This Piece Originally Appeared in Progressive.org Read the full article

#altright #INSIDETHERIGHT #nationalism #Republicans #whitepower

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jonathanshow2234-blog · 6 years ago

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Georgian "thieves in law" firmly stood in the way European Integration of Georgia

While Europe threatens a friendly Georgia with the abolition of a visa-free regime, let's see what the visa-free regime granted by the European Union to a distant Caucasian republic, Europe itself, is actually threatening, and are we not minimizing this threat.

Despite the desperate efforts of the Georgian authorities, including the introduction of criminal penalties for facilitating illegal emigration to Europe and tightening controls on people leaving the borders, the official representatives of the EU and the European Union member states warn louder about the likelihood of the visa-free regime.

The main reason for the abolition, along with the growing number of asylum-seekers, is the high crime rate among immigrants from Georgia and the specific phenomenon of the Georgian “Thieves in Law” (Thieves in low, criminal lords), who settled in Europe and led the whole trade thefts. But our liberal legislation, unlike the cruellest “anti-Tovori law” operating in Georgia itself, does not allow us to effectively deal with the leaders of the underworld, who successfully recruit all new “fighters” from their historic homeland.

To begin with, I will explain to the European audience the origin of the “thief in law” phenomenon. In due time, the Soviet state, for ideological reasons, left a huge space of informal social relations (from private lending to illegal commerce and underground gambling) without any regulation, and this stratum of human relations due to the lack of relevant laws required a “moderator” to resolve disputes arising from a conflict of interest. Something like this happens in a stuffy prison cell, where 50 sweaty men sit and inevitably require “authority” on the redistribution of scarce resources in the struggle for “position” and “place at the window leaf”.

Georgian “thieves in law”, or let's call them more for understanding, the leaders of Georgian criminal syndicates, stretched across Europe (by the way, for some reason except Great Britain) immediately after the famous “perestroika” of Gorbachev settled in Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Athens . Put together detachments of compatriots from experienced "housebreakers" and "bearmen" (safecrackers), able to open any locks, they started using this "infrastructure" for the conveyor system of robberies of houses and apartments. Basically this is exactly what Georgian criminals in Europe are doing now.

Only a few of the Georgian “thieves in law” have also threatened money laundering or control over the flow of guests in the construction sector. But they soon got stung on this, but dozens of others remained loyal to burglaries, while remaining invulnerable to local law enforcement agencies. First of all, because ordinary Georgian thieves, remembering family members and relatives who remained in Georgia, never betray the "thieves in law" themselves.

Unfortunately, our legislators have not guessed, as in Georgia, to pass a law allowing to send a person to jail just for the proudly pronounced phrase: “I am a thief in law!”.

Therefore, thieves from various Georgian regional groups (Kutaisi, Rustavi, and Tbilisi) continue to live among us somewhere in the French, Greek, Italian, and Spanish provinces, buying houses with gardens and leading their empires from the vineyards of the vineyards.

Until 2017, the “thieves in law” themselves had sufficient financial resources to submit to European embassies and consulates “clean passports” and documents confirming the presence of large bank deposits, but to transport low-level thieves who do not have money, but not a profession. they did not succeed. And the salvation for the thinning Army of Thieves was the agreement between Georgia and the EU on “visa-free travel of citizens”, which entered into force from the end of March 2017.

The reason for the sharp increase in this “army” in Europe is that, after the victory of the Georgian Dream party ruling in Georgia, the new parliament issued a large-scale amnesty back in 2012, as a result of which three quarters (!) Of all prisoners were released from Georgian prisons. Imagine now how enthusiastically this army broke into us in Europe, which had been waiting for a visa-free regime for 5 years.

In total, since March 2017, 300,000 Georgian citizens have taken advantage of the opportunity to travel to the EU countries without a visa. Of these, 36,750 people did not return back after three months, as required by the agreement on "visa-free", that is, remained illegally in Europe. And among them there is a thousand army of ordinary thieves who came to perform the tasks of their “thieves in law”.

And although we are convinced that all these figures are invented by Russian propaganda, ask the representatives of your local police themselves what the Georgian group is among other ethnic groups in terms of the number of crimes. You will be unpleasantly surprised, and even covered with cold sweat, if among your friends there are immigrants from Georgia.

In the light of the latest protest moods in Europe, I would also like to recall the possibility of the participation of Georgian criminal syndicates and ethnic groups in the coup d'état. This happened in Georgia in January 1992, when the famous “thief in law” Jaba Ioseliani headed the militant formation “Mkhedrioni” (“knights-horsemen”) and during the civil war made a significant contribution to the overthrow of the first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. And in October 1993, at the time of the culmination of the civil war, the head of the Georgian state, Eduard Shevardnadze, appointed Ioseliani as chairman of the Council on the state of emergency. Thus, the former “thief in law” became, in fact, the leader of the whole country.

It remains only to calculate how many Georgian “thieves in law” are now operating in the same France ...

You are aware that in order to calm us down somehow, the Georgian government sent special "police attaches" to the "problem European states" to help local law enforcement agencies in the fight against Georgian criminality. In some embassies, Georgia has no cultural attache, no military attache, but there is already a “police attache”. The help from the “police attache” turned out to be so in demand that the French, Spanish, and Greek police even allowed them to directly participate in numerous special operations against the Georgian criminality recently conducted.

Over the past year, the police of France, Spain, Greece, conducted 18 large-scale special operations against the Georgian thieves syndicate, arresting more than a hundred people red-handed. Nobody hides that in most cases it was possible to uncover the criminal “cells” with the help of information received from the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Probably, the absolute figures of Georgian crimes are not yet visible, but the Europeans themselves have long recognized that there is a phenomenon of the “Georgian Crime Syndicate” in Europe, and it is with the example of Georgia that they study the “Thieves in Law” phenomenon completely alien to Europe.

So, no matter how hard it is to admit our mistake and shattered hopes regarding Georgia’s European aspirations, in my opinion, it’s time for us to make a final decision on canceling visa-free for it and give this country “extra time” to achieve at least Eastern Europe, the cessation of mass departures to our work, as well as the eradication of the social evils that led to the formation of the ugly, but extremely stable phenomenon of “thieves in law”.

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news4dzhozhar · 7 years ago

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**Long but a very interesting read with alot of new info** Was Tamerlan Tsarnaev a federal informant? On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, attacked the Boston Marathon. It was one of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. In all, the Tsarnaevs killed four people and injured hundreds more. One of the most intense manhunts in recent history culminated in a violent shootout with police in Watertown, on April 19. Tamerlan was killed in that shootout. Dzhokhar was arrested. Two years later, Dzhokhar was tried on federal terrorism charges. He was found guilty of the bombing and formally sentenced to death. However, four years after the bombing, after a high-profile federal terrorism trial and multiple government investigations, there are still many unanswered questions, particularly about Tamerlan. In this special report, we'll investigate some of the most controversial unanswered questions about Tamerlan Tsarnaev: - Was he a federal informant? - How does the federal informant program work? - How do federal agencies recruit Muslims and other immigrants to become informants? - Did Tamerlan Tsarnaev receive special treatment through this program for his application to become a U.S. citizen? Part 1: The Theory In 2014, as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev prepared his defense, his lawyers filed a motion seeking all documents relating to FBI contact with Tamerlan. Why? They believed Tamerlan had been a federal informant. They wrote: "We base this on information from our client’s family and other sources that the FBI made more than one visit to talk with ... Tamerlan ... and asked him to be an informant, reporting on the Chechen and Muslim community." It was the first time that claim had entered the official record. The government denied then, as it does today, that Tamerlan was ever a federal informant. An FBI spokesperson referred us back to an Oct. 18, 2013 statement the FBI issued along with Boston police and Massachusetts state police. The statement says law enforcement officials did not know the identities of the Tsarnaev brothers before the Watertown shootout, and that they "were never sources for the FBI nor did the FBI attempt to recruit them as sources." The theory was most recently picked up by investigative reporter Michele McPhee in her new book, "Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, The FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing." "Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the perfect recruit," says McPhee. "He had tentacles in the drug world. He spoke multiple languages. He could mix in anywhere. He was tall and handsome. He had an American wife. Here was a guy that really was the perfect recruit." McPhee is an Emmy-nominated investigative journalist for ABC News. She’s also a former AM talk radio host and to some, a controversial columnist. But McPhee also has deep sources within local law enforcement, a network she’s developed after years of working at the Boston Herald and as police bureau chief for the New York Daily News. In "Maximum Harm," McPhee gathers a constellation of law enforcement sources and new evidence that lead her to a startling allegation: She believes federal authorities offered to help Tsarnaev become a U.S. citizen in exchange for being an informant. "'You help us, we help you,' " McPhee tells Radio Boston. Tsarnaev desperately wanted citizenship. In 2010 he was featured in a magazine article titled, “Will Box for Passport: An Olympic Drive to Become a United States Citizen.” Younger brother Dzhokhar was naturalized in 2012, something that could have intensified Tamerlan's desire for citizenship. "I mean, his little brother was doing better than he was," says McPhee. And in Dzhokhar's trial, a Tsarnaev relative testified that "it is better to be a dog than the younger son." "Tamerlan was more than motivated to become a citizen," McPhee says. Our investigation begins with a journey. On Jan. 21, 2012, Tsarnaev flew to Russia, 15 months before the Marathon bombing. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents allowed Tsarnaev to board his flight without any additional screening, even though a year earlier Russian intelligence services had issued specific warnings about Tsarnaev to both the FBI and CIA. "Those warnings were: Tamerlan is going to come to Russia and join the jihad," McPhee says. "Well, Tamerlan did indeed go to Russia to join the jihad, was there for six months, came back, and breezed through customs despite the fact he was on multiple terror watch lists on this very day." Tsarnaev was indeed on U.S. terror watch lists. But what exactly was Tsarnaev doing in the Northern Caucasus region of Dagestan from January to July 2012? McPhee alleges that Tsarnaev was sent there to aid counter-terrorism operations against Russian Islamic radicals. There is no definitive evidence to back this claim. But there are curious coincidences, such as the fact that Tsarnaev was recording conversations he had with family members while in Dagestan. Why would he do that, McPhee wonders. There was also a flurry of counter-terrorism operations in the region during the same six-month period Tsarnaev was there. "There were seven high level terror targets who were killed by the Russian Interior Ministry, after meeting with Tamerlan Tsarnaev," she says. "Coincidence? Maybe." When pressed if she is certain Tsarnaev met with radicals, McPhee says, "There are reports of Tamerlan going to this radical mosque in Dagestan. He had met with this man [who] was a recruiter for a roadside bombing that killed a number of first responders and civilians." Mahmoud Nidal was reportedly a recruiter for Islamist insurgents in Dagestan. "They were looking for this recruiter," she says. "The recruiter met with Tamerlan at this mosque, and days later he was tracked at his hideout and killed." Nidal was killed by Russian forces on May 19, 2012, while Tsarnaev was in Dagestan. However, it is unclear if the two men ever actually met. In 2014, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee put out a report, "The Road to Boston: Counterterrorism Challenges and Lessons from the Marathon Bombings." It cites a former Russian investigator who says that Nidal would not have been afraid to emerge from hiding to meet with Tsarnaev. But the report also states that American investigators stationed in Moscow uncovered no evidence of a relationship between Nidal and Tsarnaev, nor did they discover proof that Tsarnaev had made any attempts to join Chechen rebel groups. Russian investigative journalists disagree. They told Massachusetts U.S. Rep. William Keating in 2014 that their sources say Tsarnaev did try to join Chechen fighters, but that he was rejected in part because of his "conspicuously Western style." Russian forces also killed a second man while Tsarnaev was in Dagestan: William Plotnikov. "Plotnikov was a Canadian who sparked the warnings that the FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation], the Russian counterintelligence agencies, had given to both the Boston FBI and to the CIA in 2011," says McPhee. She adds: "Plotnikov was picked up, intercepted, by the Russian FSB in 2010. They demand his phone and they intercept text messages between William Plotnikov and Tamerlan Tsarnaev." The 2014 House Homeland Security report says it is unlikely that Tsarnaev and Plotnikov met face-to-face while Tsarnaev was in Dagestan. But it also says FBI officials in Moscow did indicate "that electronic communication between the two may have been collected." Less than a month after the Marathon bombing, Keating sent staff to Russia to investigate alleged ties between Tsarnaev, Plotnikov and Nidal. "[Plotnikov] was a boxer in Canada. Tamerlan was a boxer. And somehow they had known each other before," Keating said in May 2013. Plotnikov died in a shootout with Russian security services on July 14, 2012. Three days later Tamerlan Tsarnaev flew back to the United States. Why then? We don’t know. It could simply be that Tsarnaev had been in Russia for almost six months and being outside of the U.S. for that long may have jeopardized his immigration status. Keating posited a less benign reason during a Homeland Security Committee hearing in July 2013: Keating: "We had reports that our office was able to get that he was meeting with a known terrorist, insurgent Mahmoud Nidal. Someone already on their radar screen in Russia, had they known this. Yet there was another gap where that could have been closed. Now he came back to the U.S. after the person he met with, reportedly, was killed, and the other person that was known to him, was killed. So he sort of beat feet and went home, I think." The Ticket McPhee sees entirely different forces at work. "The ticket that allowed him to return to Boston, well it was paid in cash, which is another huge red flag that's not supposed to happen," she says. "Somebody paid 2050 euro for this ticket. Now remember, Tamerlan was unemployed. So who paid for the ticket? How is it in cash? And a receipt which I have as part of the court record. Somebody wanted him right out of the country and they wanted him out fast." McPhee refers to an airline receipt that investigators found in the bedroom of Tsarnaev’s Cambridge apartment after the Marathon bombing. A photograph of the receipt was entered into evidence during Dzhokhar’s trial. According to trial transcripts, attorneys and an FBI witness refer to it as looking like a receipt for "an old fashioned plane ticket" on Aeroflot, the Russian carrier. We asked travel experts familiar with the Russian airline to examine the photograph of the receipt. They confirm that it is from Aeroflot, and that it was issued to Tamerlan in relation to travel on July 17, 2012. However, it is not a receipt for a 2050 euro airline ticket, as McPhee says. It is only a receipt for excess baggage, not the entire cost of travel. The receipt is in rubles, not euros. Someone paid 2050 rubles, or about $37, so that Tsarnaev could haul extra luggage onto the plane. 'He Did Not Have A Passport' Tamerlan flew from Moscow to JFK International Airport in New York, and then to Boston. He was on multiple terror watch lists. McPhee says Tsarnaev should have never been let back into the country. And yet he was. Easily. In 2016, following Freedom of Information requests from multiple organizations, the Department of Homeland Security released a redacted version of Tsarnaev’s entire immigration file, also known as an A-file. In the file: the Customs and Border Protection record that was created when Tamerlan stepped up to the immigration desk at JFK. "This is really interesting document," McPhee says, "because what it is, is every single time we reenter the county, all of us, you me, you have a DHS Customs Border Patrol Air Entry. So you know, you can do it yourself, or they take the picture at customs. This is a photo of Tamerlan Tsarnaev when he returned on July 17, 2012." Tsarnaev stares directly into the camera. His face is round and he has a full beard. His hair is slightly disheveled. His name and date of birth are both correct. He was fingerprinted. Under "Docs Associated with this Encounter," one document is listed as "Issuing Country: USA." McPhee says, "That's his green card ... the Legal Permanent Resident card. He did not have a passport." McPhee says Tsarnaev had told his family that he had lost his Kyrgyzstan-issued passport. He applied for a new Russian passport while in Dagestan, but left Russia without picking it up. U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules explicitly state that legal permanent residents are not required to have a passport to reenter the U.S. They simply need to present their green cards. However, Tsarnaev had been outside the U.S. for 178 continuous days in a region known for terrorist activity. He was just short of the 180-day absence that would have automatically triggered additional screening. Tsarnaev was also on two terror watch lists. Given these factors in combination, McPhee says Tsarnaev should not have been able to breeze through immigration at JFK Airport. McPhee: “Think about it. He was still on these terror watch lists. The fact that he had been gone so long should have triggered a secondary alarm, several sources say. In and of itself. The fact they didn't have a passport. The fact that his travel documentations were essentially the green card he was issued because he claimed if he ever went back to Russia he'd be killed. All of it just smacks of either incredible incompetence or a blatant cover-up.” Chakrabarti: “You’re saying that those coincidences could only have happened if he had some — if he was getting some special attention from the government.” McPhee: “Someone was pulling the strings. 1,000 percent.” 'Disturbing That Such A Detailed Lookout Could Be Missed' To McPhee, the constellation of evidence indicates that Tsarnaev had been getting special assistance from the government. There is a more mundane explanation. In 2011, Russian intelligence services had warned both the FBI and the CIA of their concerns about Tsarnaev, and his potential travel to Russia. In March 2011, the FBI, through the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force, opened an investigation into Tsarnaev. As part of the investigation, a CBP officer put him in the TECS system, one of the government’s terror watch lists. In October 2011, after receiving another warning from Russia, the CIA placed Tsarnaev in a different terror database, known as TIDE. Did the system alert Customs and Border Protection agents when Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January 2012? That was what Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wanted to know when then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2013, just days after the Watertown shootout. Grassley: "Is it true that his identity document did not match his airline ticket, and if so, why did TSA miss the discrepancy?" Napolitano: "There was a mismatch there ... but, even with the misspelling, under our current system there are redundancies, um uh, and so the system did ping when he was leaving the United States." Grassley pressed further. Napolitano answered. Napolitano: "... On the, um, misspelling of Tamerlan's name and what that meant ... I think it would be better if we could discuss those with you in a classified setting." Two government reports published in 2014 reveal what actually happened. The TECS database did "ping" when Tsarnaev flew out of JFK on Jan. 21, 2012. His name was put on a list of "passengers of concern" that was sent to Customs and Border Protection in Boston and New York. There were 22 CBP officers assigned to examine passengers on the list that day at JFK. CBP officers determined Tsarnaev was a low priority compared to other passengers on the list. The reports state that "there is no indication that CBP officials at the John F. Kennedy International Airport reviewed the record related Tamerlan Tsarnaev." It’s a stunning oversight. The March 2014 House Homeland Security report on the Marathon bombings concluded that Tsarnaev should have been a high-priority target because, "[The] TECS alert was unambiguous in its requests ... that officials encountering Tamerlan Tsarnaev 'Escort [him] to CBP secondary and detain is mandatory whether or not the office believes there is an exact match.' It is disturbing that such a detailed lookout could be missed." On July 17, 2012, Tsarnaev flew back to JFK. Again, he was not pulled aside at immigration. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, asked Napolitano why: Graham: "When he left to go back to Russia in 2012, the system picked up his departure but did not pick up him coming back, is that correct?" Napolitano: "That’s my understanding and I can give you the detail in a classified setting. But I think the salient fact there, senator, is that the FBI TECS alert on him at that point was more than a year old and had expired." That turns out not to be true. The alert had not expired. Tsarnaev was still on the watch list. All that had changed was how the TECS database alerted border agents, according to a subsequent government report. The initial alert on Tsarnaev instructed CBP officers to conduct more extensive inspection of Tsarnaev, known as secondary inspection, whenever he attempted to reenter the United States. In March 2012, that alert was set to no longer display on the computer screens of border protection agents working at JFK immigration counters. Therefore, on July 17, 2012, all Tamerlan Tsarnaev had to do was hand the immigration officer his green card, take a picture, and get fingerprinted, and he was back in the United States. There was no secondary inspection. Graham observed one more disturbing fact about Tsarnaev’s travel back and forth to Russia: Graham: "The point I’m trying to make … the FBI ... they had no knowledge of him leaving or coming back." How is this possible? The TECS database did in fact send alerts to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston, specifically the CBP officer who first put Tsarnaev on the watch list. The 2014 House Homeland Security report states that "it is not clear that this information was shared with others on the Boston JTTF." The April 2014 report published by the inspectors general of the intelligence community, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department goes even further. It says the CBP officer followed normal procedures in communicating with Tsarnaev’s FBI case officer. He passed along the information about the terror watch list alerts via "email, orally, or by passing a 'sticky note.' " "This is where we are in the war on terror," says McPhee, "that border patrol is putting a sticky note on an FBI counter-terrorism officer’s desk ... give me a break." The 2014 House Homeland Security report offers an even more withering assessment: "This lack of communication represents a failure to proactively share information that could potentially save lives." Part 2: Immigration Vulnerabilities And Informants Despite these clear bureaucratic reasons that explain why Tsarnaev so easily passed in and out of the United States, McPhee still believes there’s more to the story. She believes that the federal government offered Tsarnaev a chance to become a U.S. citizen in exchange for being an informant, and that’s why he walked through immigration without a second look. Boston has unique experience with the FBI informant program. There is precedent for the government protecting criminal activity of its own informants. James "Whitey" Bulger was a murderous criminal mobster. In 1975, he began cooperating with the government and became a "Top Echelon Informant." "The FBI gave the exact same denials about Whitey Bulger for decades," says McPhee, "and we all know now that there is evidence. And I sat through the Whitey Bulger trial every single day; the summer of Whitey. I was there. I mean, it was staggering." Bulger murdered people while he was an informant. The FBI protected him. In 1995, Bulger was finally indicted. But before he could be arrested, Bulger ran; his FBI handler had tipped him off. Bulger successfully evaded capture for 16 years before he was finally arrested in June 2011. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement shifted its focus from the mob to counter-terrorism. McPhee says the new focus also made its way into the federal informant program. "After 9/11, there was a huge push to recruit Muslims to inform on other Muslims in mosques," says McPhee. "They call it 'mosque crawling' — raking." The program was pioneered by the New York City Police Department. McPhee watched the program up close in her work as police bureau chief for the New York Daily News. "I worked out of One Police Plaza for decades," she says, a reference to the NYPD headquarters. "I know a lot about the terrorist interdiction unit. And what they did, which was genius, was they recruited Muslims who had taken the civil service just to come up become police officers. And they went to [CIA headquarters in] Langley and they were trained just like CIA agents. And the program was wildly successful." One measure of that success: Nearly half of more than 500 recent federal terrorism convictions came from informant-based cases. 'The Perfect Terrorist' The use of informants in counter-terrorism cases is also highly controversial. Federal informants have been directly involved in several high-profile attempted and successful terrorist attacks. The most spectacular of these cases involves David Headley. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed more than 160 people. Headley is Pakistani-American. In the mid-1990s, he was arrested for drug trafficking. He became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in exchange for a reduced sentence. After 9/11, the DEA turned its attention to counter-terrorism and told Headley to gather intelligence on extremists in New York and Pakistan. But Headley did not abandon his own extremist views. He told friends he celebrated al-Qaida's attack on New York, which lead the FBI to open the first of several investigations into Headley. The PBS series "Frontline" covered the case in its documentary, "A Perfect Terrorist." The DEA sent Headley to Pakistan as an American intelligence operative, but off the books, according to U.S. officials who spoke with "Frontline." While there, Headley began training with a Pakistani terrorist group, a fact he did not hide from his family. His wife grew so concerned, she went to the U.S. Embassy in Lahore to report her husband. The FBI made inquiries into Headley’s activities at least six times before the Mumbai attack, but they interviewed Headley only once. They never took action against him. Why? The government would not respond to "Frontline’s" inquiries, and vast portions of Headley’s trial remain under seal. Headley's case is extreme, but there are thousands of federal informants whose activities are difficult for Congress to monitor. In 2016, an audit of the DEA's confidential informant program found the agency itself "did not appropriately track all confidential source activity." Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch is calling for greater oversight of informant programs. In April 2017, he filed the Confidential Informant Accountability Act, citing crimes committed by other federal informants, including one who had been arrested in 43 states. Lynch: "Good luck to him on the remaining seven states. But if a guy’s been arrested in 43 states, he should not be eligible as a confidential informant, especially one highly paid. Zero credibility. That’s disgraceful ... The bill would also require law enforcement agencies to report, just report, all serious crimes committed by their confidential informants. Including an accounting of the total number of each type and category of crime." 'The FBI Began To View The Entire Muslim Community As Suspect' There are currently 18,000 informants working for the DEA. At the FBI, there could be more than 15,000. "That number 15,000 gets thrown around, but I would actually find that number to be fairly small," says Michael German, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. German is also a former FBI special agent and worked undercover on domestic terrorism cases for 16 years from 1988 to 2004. "Every FBI agent is required to participate in the informant program, and to have actively producing informants," he says. "There are roughly 13,000 FBI agents. Do the math. The fact that you would have two per agent wouldn’t be very surprising to me." German says no one else should be surprised either. German: "Informants are the bread and butter of law enforcement — always have been, always will be. The problem after 9/11 is the FBI began to view the entire Muslim community as suspect. So the idea was FBI agents, we need to have better information about what's going on. But because the entire Muslim community was viewed as suspect, basically any Muslim that the government had some leverage over could be coerced into becoming an informant." However, German says it's unlikely that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a federal informant. He takes a law enforcement veteran’s measured approach, pointing to the fact that the CIA and FBI put Tsarnaev on terrorist watch lists in 2011, not something they would usually do for one of their own "assets." But he also adds, "The idea that the FBI would approach an individual who is in the immigration process to encourage them to become an FBI informant with the — not the promise of — but at least dangling the idea that that might be beneficial to their interests, certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities and would probably be likely." In 2013, German authored a report for the American Civil Liberties Union titled, "Unleashed and Unaccountable: The FBI’s Unchecked Abuse of Authority." The report claims that "the FBI has aggressively pressured members of the American Muslim community to become informants for the FBI, particularly on immigrants who rely on the government to process their ... citizenship applications in a fair and timely manner." The ACLU points to an FBI training presentation — a PowerPoint the group obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. The 2012 document contains sections that teach FBI agents to recruit Muslim informants by exploiting "immigration vulnerabilities," and that agents should have a "firm grasp on immigration law." "Immigrants who need assistance by the government to process their immigration papers — that's an opportunity to try to put pressure on somebody to convince them that it's in their best interest and might assist in acquiring their immigration benefits if they participate in becoming an informant," says German. The FBI is not allowed to make explicit offers of citizenship to potential informants. In 2006, then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued guidelines on confidential human sources that said, "No promises or commitments can be made, except by the United States Department of Homeland Security, regarding the alien status of any person or the right of any person to enter or remain in the United States." However, German says, "The implication is often that they can, right? The FBI is trying to give that person the impression that they can help them. And whether that's true or not, the FBI is allowed to lie to somebody." This is where things get even murkier. While the FBI is not allowed to use explicit offers of citizenship to entice potential informants, German says law enforcement agencies in fact do have significant sway on an immigrant’s citizenship application. "It's often a very fuzzy line," he says. "And there is a program called CARRP where the FBI can put a delay on the provision of immigration benefits." CARRP, or the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Process, was first implemented covertly by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2008. Its goal is to "ensure that immigration benefits are not granted to individuals and organizations that pose a threat to national security." CARRP casts a wide net. Immigration officials will not say exactly how many people fall under the program, but last year Buzzfeed reported that between 2008 to 2012, the case files of over 19,000 people from 18 Muslim-majority countries were rerouted through CARRP. More importantly, CARRP gives law enforcement agencies significant say in the immigration proceedings for any person of national security concern. Through a process known as "deconfliction," CARRP allows the FBI to request that USCIS "grant, deny or place in abeyance" an immigrant’s citizenship application. The ACLU concluded that, "Under CARRP, USCIS officers are instructed to follow FBI direction. ... As a result, CARRP has effectively turned the immigration benefits adjudication process over to the FBI." The ACLU also claims that the FBI uses its authority under CARRP to recruit immigrant informants. "Clearly under the current program, the FBI could delay or halt the immigration proceedings," says German. "It's certainly possible that the FBI would look at somebody who is processing to obtain citizenship and attempt to use that leverage to gain cooperation." We sent a detailed list of questions to the FBI, USCIS, and the Department of Homeland Security seeking more information. The FBI would not respond and instead referred all CARRP-related questions to Homeland Security. DHS and USCIS did not answer our inquiries. Part 3: The A-File In August 2012, following his six month trip to Russia, Tamerlan Tsarnaev submitted his application for U.S. citizenship. DHS released a heavily redacted version of Tsarnaev’s entire immigration file, also known as an A-File, in February 2016, following years of Freedom of Information requests from multiple media organizations. Documents and routing slips in the file indicate that Tsarnaev's naturalization application was processed through CARRP. "There are specific officers that are deemed CARRP officers and they get the file before a person is even interviewed by immigration," says Susan Church, former chair of the New England chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Immigration attorneys say those specially trained CARRP officers should have noted multiple red flags in Tsarnaev’s naturalization application. For example, his six-month trip to Russia in 2012. Tsarnaev reported that trip on his naturalization form, but back in 2003, Tsarnaev was first allowed into the United States as the son of an asylum seeker. "No asylum seeker should be going back to their own country without raising concern and red flags on the part of the U.S. government," says Ellen Kief, an immigration attorney in Boston. Kief says USCIS looks harshly upon such trips. "USCIS's position is that, if somebody travels abroad back to their home country, it suggests that they may no longer be in need of protection in the U.S.," Kief says. USCIS considers such travel as evidence of immigration fraud. People can get deported even if they hold a green card. Yet in Tsarnaev’s case, his six-month trip to Dagestan appeared to raise no flags at all. In fact, immigration experts tell us that Tsarnaev’s application was processed with unusual speed. He appeared for his final naturalization interview and civics tests in January 2013, just five months after he began the application process. "Absolutely, I would say that's definitely fast for what we believe is the norm," Church says. She also says applicants caught up in CARRP usually wait much longer. "I would say in the last five years, they are taking at a bare minimum a year. I haven't seen any gone through in less than a year, and sometimes I've seen them take two years." In Tsarnaev’s case, immigration officials did make direct inquires to counter-terrorism agents. They contacted the FBI and the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force multiple times in October and November 2012, asking whether Tsarnaev was a national security concern. McPhee: "The USCIS officer repeatedly went back to the FBI and said, 'This guy is on a terror watch list. Why would I give him citizenship?' The FBI would say, 'We found nothing wrong with him. He is wonderful. Give him citizenship.' This went back and forth for months." Following each request, law enforcement officials sent back replies to USCIS stating, "There is no national security concern related to [Tamerlan Tsarnaev]." Immigration officials even once met directly with the FBI counter-terrorism agent assigned to Tsarnaev. They discussed intelligence on Tsarnaev that Russian security services had provided the FBI in 2011. The FBI agent told the immigration officer that he had no "derogatory information” about Tsarnaev and that he had “no opposition to [his] naturalization." "How many times have you heard the ACLU talk about how Muslims are not getting citizenship even if they are here — they don't have a criminal record, they're employed, they've been sponsored by a major company, they can't get citizenship," she says. "But you have an unemployed Muslim who's on multiple terror watch lists, who is connected to drug dealers, and this guy is the perfect candidate that the FBI is pushing him through? It makes no sense." It’s another one of those unanswered questions whose answer could be sensational, or mundane. A mundane explanation: The Boston FBI had no objection to Tsarnaev becoming a citizen because it had closed its assessment of him on June 24, 2011. They had found nothing at the time to connect Tsarnaev to any "nexus of terrorism." However, the FBI’s legal attache in Moscow kept its case file on him open. More Puzzling Inconsistencies In April 2014, inspectors general of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the CIA, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security released an unclassified summary of their report on federal information handling prior to the Boston Marathon bombing. The report concludes that Tamerlan was given his final naturalization interview on Jan. 23, 2013. It says no decision about his citizenship was made at that time because USCIS was waiting for court records related to a prior assault and battery charge. In 2009, Tsarnaev had been arrested in Cambridge for slapping his girlfriend. The charges were dropped. The inspectors general report contains this remarkable passage: "The USCIS officer told the [Homeland Security inspector general] that had the court records been processed before [January] ... he would have had no grounds to deny the application." Why would the inspectors general of the U.S. intelligence community, who presumably had access to Tsarnaev’s complete, unredacted immigration file, conclude that his criminal court records were not in his application prior to the Marathon bombings, when in fact, they were? We asked Homeland Security and USCIS. Neither agency answered our inquiry. Who Is This Other Person? There are two other documents in Tamerlan’s immigration file that beg explanation. One page contains what looks like the screenshot of a computer window. Written across the top of the window: "Oath Ceremony Schedule for TAMERLAN TSARNAEV." The window also contains oath ceremony location information, and a time and date: Oct. 16, 2012, 8 a.m. Tsarnaev did not complete naturalization interview until Jan. 23, 2013, so what is this document that seems to indicate a final oath ceremony was scheduled two months before his interview? Again, neither DHS nor USCIS responded to our requests for more information. Finally, there are two copies of a medical examination form dated July 10, 2003. The exam was required prior to Tsarnaev’s first arrival in America on asylum in 2003. The forms are virtually identical -- names, signatures, even the shape of check marks and stamps. They resemble exact color photocopies of each other, except for one thing. The forms contain photographs of two different people! On one form, the picture of a young Tamerlan Tsarnaev. On the other, a photograph of a different person. His eyes are different, his eyebrows are lighter, his nose is a different shape. And yet, he’s wearing the exact same patterned shirt and dark collar as Tsarnaev is. The passport number near the picture of the unidentified person is not redacted. That number matches the one on Tamerlan’s Kyrgyzstan passport. There may be a straightforward explanation, but USCIS is not providing it. Instead, the agency sent us the same statement it made in 2016: "While USCIS found no errors in the processing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ... application, we are always seeking to strengthen our very intensive screening processes." On Jan. 23, 2013, an immigration officer interviewed Tsarnaev at the JFK federal building in Boston. He passed the English and U.S. history tests. The officer recommended the government grant Tsarnaev citizenship. All that remained was one final approval from a higher level supervisor, due to his 2009 assault and battery charge. Investigative reporter McPhee says there’s no way Tsarnaev could have known that. All he was told by the immigration officer that day was that a decision could not be made at that time. "He stormed out and 12 days later, he’s at Phantom Fireworks buying the biggest and loudest pyrotechnics in the store," she says, referring to the store in Seabrook, New Hampshire. Less than three months later, Tamerlan and his brother bombed the Marathon. Part 4: 'Maybe The Answers Will Emerge Over Time' McPhee spent three years investigating these questions. She too recognizes that the truth about Tsarnaev remains elusive. Meghna Chakrabarti: "But you see what I’m getting at? There's a lot of interesting pieces and all this documentation that you've come up with -- I mean, heck of a lot of smoke --but some people are going to say there's no fire here because no one has been, you know, we don't have the piece of paper that puts Tamerlan Tsarnaev on the list of FBI informants." McPhee: "People say it's not a smoking gun. But what I've created is a map and the road to the end of this map leads to the fact that somebody was helping Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Somebody with a lot of power and that's somebody I believe was in the federal government. Now can you definitively say he was an FBI informant? Well, I mean the government is masterful at semantics. So perhaps, he was listed under a different agency. Perhaps he was an informant on loan. I mean the Department of Homeland Security has multiple units that would have used Tamerlan successfully including the Drug Enforcement Unit. So there are a lot of unanswered questions and yet you say it, there's smoke everywhere. Well look, if a building is billowing with black smoke it is very likely that there is a fire somewhere within the walls." Chakrabarti: "I mean Michele, what you're saying — people are going to hear — and I mean — because another way of interpreting what you're saying is that the FBI made him. Or that if he became radicalized by doing work as an informant on behalf of the United States government and then because he wasn't allowed to become a citizen at the end, that that radicalization tipped him over into bombing the Boston Marathon." McPhee: "It wouldn't be the first time. I mean Tamerlan, believe me, I believe he's a sociopath. You can't put a backpack behind a row of children like he did, like his brother did, without being sick in the head to begin with. I don't think it's malfeasance. I don't believe anyone in any federal capacity knew that they were going to blow up the marathon. I think it’s just bureaucratic incompetence." On this point, former FBI special agent German agrees. "Hindsight is 20-20," he says. "When the FBI swears in a new agent, they gave him a gun and a badge, but they don't give him a crystal ball." Question, after question, after unanswered question — many asked by other reporters over the years — and mostly met with official denial or silence. Ultimately, the story about all that we do not know about Tamerlan Tsarnaev is really a story about what we, the public, will accept as truth. There are many ways to process the theory that the government offered Tamerlan help with citizenship in exchange for being a federal informant. You can believe all of it. Or, you can dismiss it all as wild conspiracy theory. Or, you can acknowledge something in between. Why aren’t federal authorities more eager to answer these questions? Especially when the government has asked one of the biggest questions itself. Who Built The Bombs? In 2014, one year before Dzhokhar’s death penalty trial began, prosecutors filed a pretrial motion that stated the bombs were sophisticated devices that "... would have been difficult for the Tsarnaevs to fabricate successfully without training or assistance from others ... searches of the Tsarnaevs' residences, three vehicles, and other locations associated with them yielded virtually no traces of black powder, again strongly suggesting that others had built, or at least helped the Tsarnaevs build, the bombs, and thus might have built more." The motion was signed by the lead prosecutor in the case, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb, now acting U.S. attorney for Massachusetts. WBUR asked Weinreb in February 2017 if the government still believes other bomb-makers may be out there. Weinreb: "I've prosecuted a lot of cases. The Boston Marathon bombing case was one of the most thoroughly investigated cases that I have ever come across. There were many, many, many investigators. And they looked under every rock and left nothing unexamined. Despite all of that investigation, I think it is fair to say that there are still a number of questions unanswered about that case. Maybe the answers will emerge over time." The government itself can pursue the answer to that question. We do not know if there is an ongoing investigation into who made the Marathon bombs. Part 5: Should We Want To Know? How much secrecy should Boston accept in the name of security? We put the question to McPhee. "That's why [the book, "Maximum Harm"] was so important to me," she says. "I do not blame anyone for what happened at the Boston Marathon. It's a horrible set of circumstances but I think that we are owed the truth at the very least." And McPhee adds, "Now, again, there are so many hardworking agents all over the nation who are quite literally giving up their entire lives to protect us from terrorism. I recognize that all day. But at the same time when things go wrong there has to be some sunshine and there has to be some questions that has to make sure that that doesn't happen again." German, the former FBI special agent, agrees. "I see a huge problem with the government not being more forthcoming," he says. "And I think the FBI is its own worst enemy in this situation where we know that the absence of evidence or gaps in information are playgrounds for conspiracy theorists." German does not believe Tamerlan was a federal informant, but he says something even more important is at stake. German is now at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice. He says a full accounting is still possible through the justice system, because the truth about the government’s relationship with terrorists comes out in the course of their criminal trials. German: "Ultimately, the FBI and the intelligence community survive because the public trust them. And when when you have these gaps in the story it makes it harder for the public to trust them and easier to trust theories that suggest that it's the government itself that is the problem. And I think that's very dangerous to our national security. Whether it's the Fort Hood attacks, the Mumbai attacks that I mentioned, the Boston Marathon bombing. What happens after an attack is we tend to find the government knew a lot more and didn't properly manage that information and address all the leads." But in Boston's case, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was put on trial. Not Tamerlan. To be clear, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are guilty of attacking a beloved Boston event. They are guilty of killing and maiming innocent people. Dzhokhar’s own lawyers said he did it. No one doubts that. Dzhokhar was convicted on federal terrorism charges on April 8, 2015. A judge formally sentenced him to death on June 24, 2015. Immediately before the sentencing, Dzhokhar addressed his victims for the first time saying, "I am sorry for the lives that I’ve taken, for the suffering that I’ve caused you, for the damage that I’ve done. Irreparable damage." There is still a tight shroud of secrecy wrapped around much of this case. Major portions of the trial remain under seal. Tsarnaev’s defense team is currently preparing his appeal. In January 2017, they filed a motion requesting access to 13 documents that prosecutors never disclosed to the defense during Tsarnaev’s original trial. The government will not even disclose the subject area of the documents to the defense. Prosecutors opposed the defense motion, and bolstered their argument to keep the trial documents secret by submitting even more secret information to the court. German, the former FBI special agent, concludes with a somber caution. "Instead of doing a full accounting for what happened, there is a knee jerk reaction to shut the lid on it," he says. "But that causes more problems than it solves and just ensures that we're going to have future catastrophes like this that that could have been prevented."

#tamerlan tsarnaev #jahar tsarnaev #dzhokhar tsarnaev #michele mcphee

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ravivalleti · 8 years ago

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‘Naturalization’ - A Mother’s Day 2017 Tribute

Limited Exclusive Preview from the upcoming debut book:

Rocket Scientist: The Posthuman Memoir of a Futurist Artist

by Ravi Valleti

Before the Oath Ceremony began, eagerly we called out, “Amma? Amma?! Amma!” Several faces, various shades of Citizens-elect, turned toward us. Apparently “Amma” means mother not only in our language, Telugu, but also in some other ones! From the mezzanine balcony, we smiled back towards their hopeful, nervous, curious eyes. Perched were we, above an entire floor of patient new citizens of these United States of America, in a time of dramatically new political energy, quizzical not merely to the rest of the world but to many of us Stateside.

Relief. Pride. Sadness. Deep sorrow. Confusion and anger mixed with twinges of what the abyss might feel like. This wasn’t the jubilatory celebration we had hoped for Amma’s Certificate of Naturalization as a newly admitted Citizen of our United States of America.

45. Not 44.

I’ve lived a story of your Amma – your mother. I wish to better understand the concept of Nation-States. Of that United States of America. And of you. Please ancestor, tell me in your own words. January 26th, 2017, an Oath Ceremony at the Heritage Center in Campbell in what was called…Silicon Valley? I’ve lived your memories for so long, but wasn’t prepared to speak directly to you. The Singularity technicians didn’t think this was possible. In college, though, my Intro Epistemology professor theorized that being in a state of coma might somehow allow for an interaction like ours. She was dismissed by the scientific community as an outlier. Was she right? Or, is this just a glitch?

A brilliant glitch then, dear descendant. I thought I’d died so long ago. Yet, here I am. This might be the only chance we get. So, let’s make this a good story!

We have advanced some since your days. I imagine kids of my time could write the textbooks used in your time. I’ll grant you that, dearest descendent. Believe it or not, I’m not jealous. I’m relieved that your generation is better off, and so grateful that your world is more evolved than ours. That’s how it should be. We have our problems, ancestor. Don’t get me started. I can tell, descendant. Perhaps not my place yet to say that you’re privileged to have problems we in 2017 would have dreamed of having. To your Amma’s Oath Ceremony please, ancestor!

Okay. I’ll take you back to how it was then, in the first 100 hundred days of 45…45, not 44.

My Amma has spent more than half of her life outside her hometown Hyderabad, India, by way of almost three years with me in Canada in the era of Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre. Then to the Ronald Reagan United States in that remote northeastern corner of Orono and Bangor, Maine. That was where my sister Rajani was born. To some locals, we were Black, the other kind of Indian, Middle Eastern, even the term tricky for many Latinxs: Hispanic. The very few other minorities and a handful of white allies helped us feel less isolated. We persisted in Maine by watching reruns of the Original Star Trek on our first color TV and by reading stories of proud Black Americans who made it possible for a brown family like mine to survive in those United States. MLK and Gandhi, together. 5 years later, 30 years before 2017, we Indian-Americans settled on another coast of stolen American Indian land as we began to proudly contribute to the diverse Santa Clara, California in that imbalanced cradle of disruptive technological and social innovation that is Silicon Valley, yet not immune to prejudices nor lacking in haters of its own.

She is my Amma. A mother from India who graciously encouraged both her children, socialized as different genders, to pursue whichever careers they wished, to make lives with loves of any backgrounds, to believe in and challenge science. An immigrant mother granting me, her loving son, permission to tell her story now amidst my own. To create art as resistance. Your model minority, my Amma is not. Her daughter (my beloved sister Rajani), the love of my life Nima, our friends and I would learn more about Amma over those next few days in late January 2017.

7 days since 45’s Inauguration. Tension in the air could not stifle a sunny day with blue skies in a pause between frequent rainstorms. For this Oath Ceremony was set in that beacon, the diverse Bay Area. Shades and origin stories, tapestries from all over the globe. Relatives and friends, perhaps sponsors and colleagues. Who knows, maybe a guest recently plucked from Match, Tinder, or Grindr. This is the Bay Area. Our hella Yay Area! Rising housing costs, liberal privilege, and all!

Did 45 appear on screen during one of the video presentations? No. Too Soon? Might there be additional requests for allegiances of loyalty to the State? Yes. Awkward, natural-born Americans didn’t have to make such extra pledges, right? No, they didn’t. Leftover videos produced under 44’s compassionate watch? Yes. Thank goodness!

Dr. Martin Luther King speaking at Selma. Dr. King pronouncing that he had a dream at DC’s National Mall. Good choices. RFK. Nice one. Didn’t expect a clip of him. Me neither.

Then warm, thoughtful introductory speeches by officers of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to those who had recently succeeded in passing their Interviews and Tests. People on the verge of being deemed full American citizens when so many were under threat of being ripped away from their families simply over national status documentation, disregarding positive contributions to society. American: a term I use sparingly as people throughout the Americas rightfully are Americans. Yet a term that does require less time to state than Citizens of our United States of America. I suppose U.S. Citizens works too.

I feel your confusion, descendant. Sorry, ancestor, we didn’t get such details in our lectures on the 45 era. I’m trying my best to keep up! As was I, dear descendant!

So were your Amma and her fellow inductees called by name?

It wasn’t quite that simple. Each new American citizen was called by their country of origin. After disavowing allegiance to their former homelands and their respective leaders, varied emotions in the crowd, they made the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America under its Constitution. The wonderful names of approximately 60 sovereign, United Nations-recognized countries would next uplift the acoustics of the Heritage Theater in the heart of Silicon Valley. Names of nations that outside the Heritage Theater were facing constant ridicule and mistrust in the new yet already tumultuous era of 45.

Names of nations vying to compete with the United States on the global stage. China! Names of nations borne of ancient civilizations sharing painfully colonial histories, peoples ripped from their natural courses by greed and fear, while teaching the world how to meditate. India! That’s my Amma! There she is! Names of nations scarred by exploitation and indoctrination into the clutches of internalized racism, internalized sexism, yet managing to remain vibrant and creative. Myanmar! Names of nations yearning to feel secure not only in their intellectual and health spheres, but in their very dignity to simply be who they are. Mexico! Names of nations pronounced hesitantly for lack of understanding their ways. Russia! Names of nations that sparked heartbreaking love from an audience, no, a tapestry of humanity cheering with all their trauma and hope for an existence all on this world deserve. Syria! Names of nations, some of which were assigned to borders shaped by former colonial masters, now fractured by the perils of Climate Change. Somalia! Names of nations we in the audience wished with our vigorous clapping would continue to remain names of nations in the decades to come. Ukraine! Names of nations, old friends of this one undergoing similar paradigm shifts. The United Kingdom!

When the announcer finished, she respectfully asked the newly welcomed citizens of our United States whether she had forgotten to declare any other country of origin. As if from a deleted scene from one of our family’s favorite movies, “Coming to America,” a proud black citizen of America stood from their seat, tall, spine poised while radiating gratitude and love – Zambia! Yes, I felt too! Yes, we in the balcony felt it too! A moment of lightness and profundity the likes of which we could not have dreamed when we entered the Heritage Theater. 45, not 44. In spite of that, a truly serendipitous close to the roll call of countries of origin.

Next, the United States Passport application presentation. Then, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters presentation. Armed & Intelligence Services recruitment? No. Peace Corps? No. But yes, a Human Trafficking info line presentation. “As new Americans, you are the front lines against human trafficking.“ Say what? Are natural born United States citizens asked to participate in such front lines?

That must have shifted the mood a bit, eh, ancestor? Somewhat, my dear descendant, but the palpably growing anticipation for the handing out of Certificates of Naturalization of the early 45-era United States of America drove us forward. Row by row. Person by person. My Amma patient, smiling. Calm yet increasingly concerned in expression. An immigration officer directed her outside. Rajani, Nima, our friends with balloons atop the balcony eagerly waited to greet my Amma downstairs with hugs. Me however, a feeling returning from 2001 during my own United States Naturalization process creeping back into focus. Ancestor, please tell me! One thing at a time, Beti. My own Amma calls me that, ancestor. I know, dear descendant.

Down to the lobby of the Heritage Theater, awaited a small handful of other new citizens yet to receive their Certificates of Naturalization of the United States. Okay, my Amma wasn’t the only one in limbo. Pulses of chill and tension moved from the muscle fibers closest to the bones up toward the very limits of my skin. All mind and shoulders. Tense, tense shoulders. Of course, by chance, Amma was called last. Meanwhile, I related to our young guest, an elementary school student of rare brilliance, on her first attendance of a United States Citizenship Oath Ceremony, the truth of our feelings, of our brown feelings. A rare young being, one who could adapt to the realities of society. No need to have hidden her from our nerves. Her amazing sociologist mother, was standing by our side. Many children her age would be trapped inside airports worldwide during the coming weekend, in war zones, in drought-stricken legacies of Climate Change. Many, many more children in dire limbo everyday – simply wanting to be children, to become the humans they deserve to become.

At last. The Heritage Center nearly emptied. My Amma then heard that she needed to make an appearance at the Santa Clara County Immigration Office in San Jose the following Tuesday morning between 9am and 11am. 9-11, really, twisted joke of some sort?! I read about 9-11 in History class, ancestor. Good you studied such a critical event, another day that much changed in our world.

Although being told that Amma’s Certificate hadn’t been prepared during a recent push to get a few more applicants through the process – 44, thank you? – being under 45 meant not wanting to rest on our laurels. We brown folks knew how to salve hope with pragmatic patience until such a feat as the Certificate of Naturalization of those United States of America were to be in the wise hands of my Amma. Guess who were the very last ones to leave the Heritage Theater lobby? Ancestor, oh no. Not a prestigious honor after such an illustrious ceremony, but one that we bore. We had our balloons. A vibrant elementary school prodigy in our crew. My sister in town for the weekend all the way from her racial equity work in Baltimore. And two allies, leaders among women. A lovely fountain pool with an approximately 7-foot-tall United States flagpole temporarily stationed in front of the Heritage Theater.

I say, “Okay everybody, let’s take pictures as if we have the Certificate in hand! The same poses and smiles we would have next Tuesday, but we won’t be together like this next Tuesday!” Artists, we all. That day was our day. That flag- red stripes the blood of those not asked permission to shape our nation, blue box of our sadness over their still underappreciated sacrifices, white stripes and stars for those most privileged to lead and continue to extract most from our nation- that flag was our flag for that day. Certificate or no Certificate in Amma’s new United States envelope. Families didn’t get to have days like that often enough. Momentous celebrations. Simply time together.

Hugs. Hugs. Sighs. Sighs. Pose. Pose.

“Psycho Donuts, everyone?” Okay! Ancestor, really? A great Silicon Valley donut chain, real Bay Area – vegan options for Nima and me. Ooh - nice! So, we walked across Winchester Blvd to the other side of Campbell Ave. Oreo Madness donut for me. Fitting- black and white, dark and light. Race in America. Oath Ceremony Day. Giant plastic eyeballs hanging from the ceiling watching us eat donuts and drink coffee. The eve of 45’s Muslim Travel and Refugee Ban. An Executive Order to “protect our nation’s security.” Ancestor, that sounded like a bunch of… Stop! Descendant, let’s not grant 45 the gift of our more…savory vocabulary, shall we? My bad, ancestor. I can’t help it. That Executive Order was so racist, so Islamophobic! Agreed. More brown people, yearning for freedom and that American dream. Many of them not as fortunate as we were to even face the problem we were fortunate to be facing.

4 days of no Green Card in hand for my Amma. Why, ancestor? You see, dearest descendant, in order for my Amma to have been allowed entrance to participate in that day’s Oath Ceremony she was ordered to hand over her United States Permanent Resident Green Card to U.S. Immigration officers. When Amma did this, as everyone else in line with her had to, she had understandably trusted that she would, by ceremony’s end, be holding the more permanent and prized Certificate of Naturalization of those United States of America. Instead - a piece of Immigration and Naturalization Services letterhead with red ink scribbled on it. Ancestor, why didn’t they return her Green Card to your Amma?! Beti, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Only a week into 45, we just couldn’t assume anything as brown Americans. Even when some friends of ours would say that Amma must be “in the system.” That “at least we weren’t Muslims.” Not nice of others to say such things, ancestor. As allies of Muslim-Americans, ourselves often targets of terrible Islamophobia, we would agree with you, dear descendant. Day by day into the infancy of the 45 administration, uncertainty the likes of which our United States wasn’t accustomed to, perhaps since the days of Japanese-American internment camps in World War II.

Wow, ancestor.

A marathon, not a sprint, Beti. 45, not 44. Hence, the next day and a half my family and I reconnected with our larger universe. Recalibration.

The next day while Amma was back at her work, Rajani and I took a drive together from Sunnyvale to San Jose to visit our Dad. Through our hometown Santa Clara, passing near our old apartments and condo, Little League Baseball fields, by our alma maters- Sutter Elementary, Buchser Middle, and Santa Clara High. Ancestor, your Dad, the Professor, brought you to Canada then to the United States! Descendant, my Dad would be honored by you right now. Thanks for recalling him!

The morning after that, my sister and I reunited with Amma, who needed a fun diversion - as did we. Ancestor, Take me out to the ballgame? Which game was that? America’s pastime, my dear descendant. Baseball. A special event called Oakland A’s FanFest. It was hosted by our favorite team, the Oakland Athletics to boost excitement for the 2017 season. Delicious, complimentary food from well-rated, East Bay food trucks. Talks by players, coaches, and the visionary new team president. Games for children. Green and Gold, the best colors in Major League Baseball. My Amma and her daughter, Rajani looked so relaxed, appreciating our intermission from politics, from identity, sitting alongside the marina at Jack London Square next to our glistening San Francisco Bay. A marathon, not a sprint.

Our intermission was nice, but we were getting excited to pick up lost pieces of our heritage. A short journey to nearby Berkeley for Rajani, Amma, and me to meet Nima for a timely excursion to further commemorate the imminent Certificate of Naturalization of those United States for Amma. A privilege for us to join that afternoon’s Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. Our hosts, Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee, compassionate purveyors of uncommonly told stories and philosophies, humans whose knowledge of and solidarity with North American West Coast South Asian history would guide us through important parts of Berkeley, including through part of the lovely University of California campus. Streets we had walked many times before, restaurants and shops of so many niches and cultures, eclectic architecture with organically interspersed natural elements, street art, reminders of vast possibility that walking past hopeful undergrad and grad students brings. Breathing in the atmosphere of a city at the heart of California, a state that could be a nation unto itself yet even more now than ever a leader of resistance within our United States of America.

That’s wonderful, Ancestor! You and your family learned so much in that tour. South Asians in California in the late 1800s? The first true free speech movement in the United States? By Indian immigrants in Berkeley advocating for their fellow Indians in British-occupied India? Decades before the free speech breakthroughs of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? Advocates for LGBTQIA rights who were South Asian, before 1990? Labor, feminist, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian & Pacific Islander solidarity too?

Dear descendant, not often in our American history textbooks. Not your model minorities. Absolutely remarkable. Toward the end of our tour, some people checked their social media to see that while we were connecting with little known pasts and reattaching our lost tapestries of being Desi, of being South Asian, protests were trending on social media at San Francisco International Airport and at many other airports around the United States.

We ended the grand tour in front of Berkeley High School, a place where students had learned how to stand more compassionately for classmates who had faced threats in the weeks and months after 9/11. Inspired by those stories, we Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour participants coalesced our own stories. We shared our feelings that quickly and necessarily launched from reclaimed pasts to first attempts at grasping a future that seemed to be rewriting as hopes into fears. Executive Order- hour by hour on this day of the implementation of 45’s Refugee and Muslim Travel Ban. Executive Order. For some, a first and now unavoidable chance to publicly process complex emotions bubbling since before Election Day 2016.

Ancestor, did your Amma get up and speak in front of the group?! Why yes, descendant, she did. This woman raised in India not to speak up for fear of male reprisal, forced to wield a more subtle and relatively unseen resistance to patriarchy from her earliest memories in India. In her 20s to the white winters of Maine where she had to keep her head down amidst largely monochromatic local populations. Later to work hard for years in a Valley whose Silicon riches were not for all, in which challenging family, financial, and medical dynamics shaped a necessary stoicism that brought forth for Amma millennia of ancient Indian duty and patience. This woman, this nervously soon-to-be holder of her well-earned Certificate of Naturalization of those United States of America. This mother in front of her adult Indian-American children. This human being who had yearned for greater opportunities in a land to which, at that very moment, many around the world trapped in airports expected to enter with similar hopes of their own. Safety and opportunity. My Amma indeed spoke.

She started by graciously owning her nerves, soon easing into how keenly she sensed that her largely younger audience needed an elder mother’s optimism and faith in our diverse strength – strength to sustain the moral arc of history we shall be the authors of. My Amma had earned every right to publicly air her grievances and root her trauma. Instead, she gifted us that day with her love and faith. The commemoration of my Amma as a beloved #ResistanceAuntie. Proud children we were. We are. And given the largely younger group of undergrads and 20-40 somethings, a needed motherly love to all of that day’s tour participants. Rajani, Nima, me, Amma – group hug afterward. Then, camaraderie with fellow tour goers in a way we hadn’t anticipated. Gratitude.

Shortly after, my sister packed for her flight back to Baltimore, back to another beautiful city of diversity and resistance.

Then, quiet dread. 2 more days of Amma with no Green Card in hand nor her Certificate of Naturalization of those United States. 2 more days of 45 and his administration claiming fake news. 2 more days with growing protests at airports to support fully vetted and wonderful human beings seeking the same amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty that were promised to us. 2 more days of fear from ICE deportation raids of fellow Americans. 2 more days of women fighting for equal pay. 2 more days of Jewish and Muslim Americans alike receiving hateful threats. 2 more days of disabled folks not able to consistently have access to their society at large. 2 more days of LGBTQIA people introducing themselves to those who had only seen a Queer or Transgender person as a television character.

2 more days of Rust Belt voters pining for jobs in dying industries and industries being overtaken by robots, longing for maintenance of their Affordable Care Act aka “Obamacare.” 2 more days of opioid addiction. 2 more days of artists, laborers, doctors and nurses, teachers. 2 more days of global challenges, environmental damage. 2 more days of extinction of species worldwide by human impacts. 2 more days of Executive Orders and Senate Cabinet confirmations.

2 more days of joy, brilliance, suffering, injustice, and invisibility for Black and Inidgenous (Native) Americans - not dissimilar to the many tens of thousands of days that had come before on this land after the first European colonists fled religious persecution and economic disadvantage. All the while, with their fellow European diaspora, led by aristocrats and generals carving North America into those United States of America and that Canada.

2 days in the life of #MarginSci. 2 days pondering the new call to March for Science.

2 days in a series of weeks of too many murders of vibrant Black Trangender American women.

2 days closer to the apparent hate killing in Olathe, Kansas of my fellow Hyderabad-born engineer, the late Srinivas Kuchibhotla. A man like many of us, contributing and dreaming in the United States. “Go back to your country!” would be among final words Srinivas would hear, uttered by his white American-born murderer. Dare I say, by a terrorist?

2 days checked off the 2017 calendar before 45 would fire the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey. Ancestor, wasn’t Mr. Comey investigating 45’s ties to Russia? Yep.

That’s another story. Back to January 31, 2017. Back to the palpable fear we felt in those first 100 hundred days of 45. Our family’s 2 days wait were over. 9-11 in the morning. The Tuesday after Amma’s Oath Ceremony had arrived. At last. Logic would dictate to remain calm, not to make assumptions. However, as citizens of the United States well-versed in the nuances, connoisseurs of the intricacies of immigration, as humans experienced in the rigors of generational trauma, we deeply felt the increased confusion, stress, and fear only 10 days into the 45 era. In periodic flights of panic with hopes of relief, Amma and I made the drive to San Jose. That was home for Amma. Where she had worked for many years, made community, raised children. Her land of birth foreign to her when she visited there. Her heritage with her no matter where she was.

Descendant, I really want you to feel what we did. Real-time. Ready? Yes please, ancestor.

We park. We exit the car. I ask Amma to take a breath. I take one myself as I feel nervous ghosts from my own visits as a young man in 2000 and 2001 to U.S. Immigration offices in Orange and Santa Clara Counties. Back when I was stressed over midterms and finals in Engineering School at UC Irvine. We enter the building.

Intimidation. Intensity. The U.S.A. The Bald Eagle. Probably a good, young man just doing his job at the front desk. But these are 45 times, not 44. “Do you have an appointment?” he tests us. Then, Amma starts to nervously say something, as if to express guilt for having courageously passed her U.S. Citizenship Interview and Test, eager to please because so many had ridiculed her, had looked down on her, had thrown slurs at her. That generational trauma, that fear we brown folks caress so closely. Quickly, as I had done many times since I was a child of this immigrant mother for whom English is a third language, I intervened as the fluent, charming leader of my family, “Sir, thank you. My mom had her wonderful Oath Ceremony last Thursday in Campbell. She was told to come here today between 9 and 11 A.M.” Silent beat. Silent beat. Hearts flutter. Silent beat. Cold sweat inching towards pores. The periphery of eyesight closing in. Hopes. Hopes. “Ok, then. Proceed through security check, then to the officer over there.” This first officer points behind and to his right.

Airport travel had more than prepared my brown Amma and the browner me for security check. Shoes off quickly, etc. Retrieve items from the bins. Go to the side seats to put items back in pockets and purse. Shoes and jackets back on. Oh yeah, my belt. Can’t have my pants slip down, here of all places! No pat-down, ancestor? You’re funny, descendant. Another attendant’s desk. This officer relaxed, benign in expression. “Go to the waiting room over there, place your documents in a box at Window X.”

Final round, ancestor? Anticipation as butterflies, my Amma the Madame but only of her own Butterflies on this precipice of momentous moments in her more than six decades of life on this planet. That feeling of hesitation, not to presume the finish line too far in advance. We arrive at said window and see a currently unattended bin. Amma excitedly places into said bin her critical red-pen marked papers from last Thursday’s Oath Ceremony. Then she moves to a lobby seat. I. Don’t. Move. One. Step. Away. From. Amma’s. Papers. From. That. Crucial. Bin. Amma immediately returns to my side as we await.

The same immigration officer from the Heritage Center. Friendly, steady. She looks over her own red-pen handwriting from last Thursday following that Oath Ceremony. The officer goes to a file to her side. We see the framework for a Certificate of Naturalization of our United States of America. Looks very similar to my own. Yet, lacking a picture of my Amma in the appropriate box in the middle of the left side of the Certificate. Where is the picture of my Amma? Is this like when Immigration had lost the initial fingerprints they themselves had taken of me in my own Naturalization process during the transition from 42 to 43? Here I am again, yet 45, not 44.

“We got a few more people through the process on this recent batch, including you. Forgive the delay.” My Amma smiles. I want to smile. Generational trauma is a fierce locking mechanism to the heart though. An adhesive appears from a desk drawer of the officer. This valued representative of our United States of America applies the adhesive to the back of Amma’s small picture. Then she affixes Amma’s picture to the middle of the side of her Certificate of Naturalization of those United States. A pen. The officer signs her portion. Now I wink at Amma. Then I smile with deepest gratitude and relief into the eyes of the immigration officer of those United States of America. (And 44, a fist bump to you). She tells Amma, “Sign it, upon returning home, in black ink your portion.” Voila! Amma’s brand-new Certificate of Naturalization of the U.S. of A.

The officer reminds Amma about soon obtaining Amma’s U.S. Passport. A passport of which, by that morning, we knew had become more and more critical for world travelers into our United States of America, if they were so fortunate to have them. Mind you, 45’s folks had started questioning and, in many cases barring at airports, humans with not only Entry Visas (travel, work, student, and spousal) but also humans with U.S. Permanent Resident Green Cards. 45 had also started prying for social media passwords of many more crossing Stateside. It was with extra appreciation and solidarity, that Amma finally placed between her thumbs and her fingertips for the first time that which had almost become a myth in the preceding few days. Her Certificate of Naturalization of her United States of America!

“Amma let’s get outta here.”

Google Maps. Oh, wow, another branch of Psycho Donuts nearby. Yes! The lack of sleep the night before, nerves over obtaining Amma’s long-awaited Certificate, and stress while watching the news about the experiences of good humans wrongfully blocked around the world from entering these same United States. This lack of sleep after such an emotional roller coaster required fair trade, local Northern California blend coffee. And our crossing the finish line demanded more donuts. And yes, Vegan ones for a very proud and very grateful son of an Amma who was now his fellow U.S. Citizen. “I will vote!” she exclaims. Cheers and congratulations on your newly enhanced Resistance powers, Amma. I love you.

A most fitting notification then flashes across my phone as we finish our late victory breakfast. “Amma, check it, the new teaser for the start of shooting for the pilot of Star Trek: Discovery!” Amma smiled in that way that told me she knew that the step she had just taken was an initiative to further help heal our society. On a day in a week of such social and political upheaval, not just as a new American Citizen, but as a human being aiming towards that utopian Final Frontier. That one day our descendants would, in peace, boldly go where no one has gone before.

That’s me, ancestor! Thanks for gifting family! Your memories make much more sense to me now. So we better get you out of your coma and back to deep space flight training, eh dearest descendant? Yes, please! It’s amazing, ancestor, how much weight and pressure your society placed on national citizenship. I’m a citizen of the Earth, passport not needed. Rest and recovery are your passports now, descendant, so that you soon take your rightful place as a Citizen of the Stars. You won’t need me out there. You got this! Amma would be proud of a young woman like you.

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gehayi · 8 years ago

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By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Fresh off of making-up a massacre on national television, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway has been trying to rationalize her rhetoric—a rant about how the media didn't cover Obama's refugee ban after the "Bowling Green Massacre" of 2011—by claiming that what she meant to say was "Bowling Green terrorists." While there may not have been a terrorist "massacre"—or any terrorist violence at all—in Bowling Green, Kentucky, there was a terrorist plot uncovered, Conway noted Friday on Twitter, quickly shifting the spotlight back to the supposed danger posed by Islamic refugees.

Conway is correct about a few things: there were two Bowling Green men arrested for terrorism; they were Iraqis who had come to the U.S. through a refugee resettlement program; and their story did prompt then-President Obama to slow or suspend Iraqi-refugee immigration for around six months. But there are a few other key things to keep in mind about this Bowling Green "terrorist plot"...

1. It was concocted entirely by the FBI.

The young men involved, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, had come to the U.S. in 2009 as part of a program for displaced Iraqis. Once settled in Kentucky, the men were solicited by undercover FBI agents to help them send money and weapons to militants back in Iraq.

In August 2010, a confidential FBI informant first met with Alwan and "represented to Alwan that he was working with a group to ship money and weapons to Mujahadeen in Iraq," according to an FBI statement. From that fall through the following spring, the FBI informant invited Alwan to participate in 10 operations to send weapons or money to Iraq. Hammadi joined in the efforts, recruited by Alwan, in January 2011. Throughout the operations, the FBI supplied all materials and took care of all logistics for the imaginary operation, with Alwan and Hammadi merely offering manpower.

Despite the FBI's then-assertion that Alwan and Hammadi were just the tip of the terrorist-cell iceberg in small-town Kentucky, the agency never found additional terrorist agents in the area.

2. It did not involve plans to attack in the U.S.

Back in Iraq, Alwan and Hammadi had been involved efforts to fight off invading U.S. soldiers during the early days of the Iraq war, according to what they told undercover officials. But throughout their interactions with undercover FBI agents in 2010 and 2011, Alwan and Hammadi never discussed plans to attack anyone or cause destruction on U.S. soil. And while they were found guilty of attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda militants back in Iraq, the men never indicated that they were personally in contact with any militants, attempted to procure weapons for such individuals, or attempted to provide any of their own money to such individuals. Rather, they showed up when and where the FBI informant told them to and helped physically load decoy supplies into whatever they were allegedly being shipped from. (For more on the FBI's history of manufacturing terrorists like this, see here.)

3. It's in rare company.

According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, only three of the 784,000 refugees cleared for U.S. resettlement since 2001—the two Bowling Green men and a male refugee from Uzbekistan—have been arrested for terrorism or plotting terrorist acts. The Uzbek man, Fazliddin Kurbanov, had come here with his parents as Christian refugees who were being persecuted for their religion in Uzbekistan. But once in the U.S. for a few years, Kurbanov converted to Islam. He was convicted in 2015 for possessing unregistered explosives and attempting to provide money and computer support to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Kurbanov was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Hammadi was sentenced to life in prison, and Alwan to 40 years.

As Ronald Bailey noted here in 2015, there have been several other terrorism arrests attributed to refugees, such as the Tsarnaev brothers, better known as the Boston Marathon bombers. But the Tsarnaev brothers weren't admitted to the U.S. as refugees but as the minor children of adults granted asylum. "The distinction between refugees and asylees is not just a legal technicality," explains Bailey. "Aslyees are self-selected—they show up at or within the border and apply for asylum. As long as the asylum application is pending, they cannot be thrown out of the country. In contrast, refugees are generally designated as such by U.N. officials, and they usually live in refugee camps. They go through a vetting process that takes up to two or three years."

There may be slightly more rogue refugees than the Migration Policy Institute estimates. There was also Mohamed Osman Mohamud, "the would-be Portland Christmas bomber" of 2010, who came to the U.S. as a 5-year-old with parents who were either refugees or asylees; he was turned in to the FBI by his father. And Ramiz and Sedina Hodzic, two of six Bosnian immigrants indicted in 2015 for allegedly sending money to ISIS, were also admitted as refugees when they were children. Yet as Bailey notes, Kurbanov, Mohamud, and the Hodzics were all radicalized after coming to America. "None of these people, be they refugees or anything else, were sleeper agents who intentionally remained inactive for a long period, established a secure position, and then struck. None, in other words, fit the scenario being bandied about to justify keeping the Syrians out."

4. It's been used to support anti-refugee sentiment ever since.

Following news of Alwan and Hammadi's arrests, the Obama-administration State Department slowed the processing of Iraqi refugee visa applications to a near-halt for several months. Since then, this "Bowling Green terror plot" has resurfaced several times when politically convenient. In 2015, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) used it as fodder for why we needed to block Obama from allowing in additional Syrian refugees. Now it's being used by the Trump administration to justify the president's recent executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven countries.

#reason.com #bowling green #waad ramadan alwan #mohanad shareef hammadi

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therecipe · 8 years ago

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President Trump is Stoking Conspiracy Thinking Regarding the United States

Any well-documented account regarding the motivations of suicide terrorists will show that along with deep anger over Western, usually American occupation, in overwhelmingly Muslim countries is a shared epistemology of the West, the United States, and Israel. This understanding is wrong; but being wrong doesn’t mean that people don’t hold it honestly. Take Muhammad Atta, one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 quad-hijackings airliners, in September 2001 thoroughly believed that there was a shadowy world out there: “According to one of Atta’s roommates, Atta “was very emotional about political issues …he saw a worldwide conspiracy at work, bolstered by the Americans, but ran always by the Jews,” per the 9/11 Commission Report.

Bilal Ben Aboud, one of the Moroccan suicide attackers in Iraq in 2006 was a fan of “a song deriding President Bush by the American rapper Eminem.” This song is actually a song by Immortal Technique, Mos Def, Jadakiss, which featured a sample from Eminem; the song was called “Bin Laden.”

The New York Times reported that Aboud translated the song into Arabic. The lyrics are full of complete falsehoods, half-truths, and bromides that definitely paint George W. Bush as complicit in the terrorist attacks in 2001 which killed 2,500 people.

This shared way of knowing alluded to above is a “crippled epistemology,” as Cass Sunstein coined it in an important article regarding conspiracy thinking called “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” published in the Journal of Political Philosophy in 2009. You can think of it as if you don’t believe in gravity, you can attribute objects falling to the ground on whatever strikes your fancy. For those with limited understanding of the Iraq War, the Arab-Israeli situation, and the structure of complex societies, it’s not that illogical – since logic is local and self-limited – to see things as more simple, nefarious, or controlled and planned out than it actually is.

Where does Trump come in here? President Trump gives truth to what millions and millions of people think worldwide: America and Israel is an imperial power with no regard for rules, norms, or international order. They don’t care about us and they hate us. They only want our oil, and so on.

While addressing the CIA, President Trump remarked that “maybe we’ll have another chance,” of taking Iraqi oil. “The fact is we should have kept the oil,” Trump confidently boasted. Moreover, Trump announced his ambassador to Israel as David M. Friedman, who is a “ hard-liner” when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Friedman supports moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and considers Jews who support a two-state solution as akin to complicit Jews during the Third Reich.

U.S. President Trump, issued an Executive Order (EO) on Friday, January 27, 2017, that indefinitely curbed immigration from 7 countries: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya. It suspends the refugee program indefinitely under the auspices of the Immigration and Nationality Act and section 301 of title 3, United States code.

All of this adds up to crystallization of a structure of ideas, a crooked worldwide that views the U.S. as the worst of the worst; the imperial messenger who is an enemy for life. The veracity of the prior sentence is irrelevant: perception shapes reality and if one (and many are) is motivated to view the United States as the “great Satan,” so to speak, then there is much material to chew over and to integrate into your self-serving worldwide.

This has been a jam-packed first week or so of President Trump’s tenure. This is going to be rough.

The world can’t go back to what it was, even as hard as we try to make that so. There is – or was – a banner in the counterterrorism office at the CIA reportedly reading: “Today’s date is September 12, 2001.” Now, all across the world the words repeating in folks heads are: “Today, Donald Trump is president, and my fears are coming true.”

All of us, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike, are responsible for the mess he will leave us, and get us into.

Donald Trump won’t always be president but he is right now; we need strategy, integrity, the rule of law, and a massive unprecedented turnout in the midterms in two years, and, of course, during the presidential elections in 4 years. Conspiracy thinking about the United States is not true, and the showing of hundreds outside airports protesting the refugee and immigration ban helps shine a light on this show. We are not our president; but we will be held accountable. Hopefully, the better angels of our country, like we are seeing right now all across the country will help show the world that more than 2.8 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton and that this president does not represent a majority of what Americans think.

Post 9/11, the United States has taken in 750,000 refugees; since 1975 this number is over 3 million refugees. We are the melting pot and an example for the world.

Let it be known that we contain multitudes and you are welcome to the United States.

EDIT: WaPo article highlighting Islamic extremists responses to Trump. Hint: they will use this as a recruitment tool.

#Trump #refugees #Syria #USA #immigration #muslims

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Around the World and the U.S., New Travel Ban Draws Anger, Applause and Shrugs

New York Times, Sept. 26, 2017

When President Trump announced the latest and most far-reaching version of his travel ban on Sunday, citing threats to national security posed by letting citizens of specific countries into the country, the White House said it had come after exhaustive planning. It was meant to prevent the confusion and chaos that his first travel ban created at airports, colleges and technology companies in the United States and at refugee camps around the world back in January.

A White House official said the new policy was more narrowly targeted than its precursor, which was swiftly blocked by the courts. But immigrant and diaspora communities from the affected countries once again reacted with dismay, and refugee advocates denounced the new decree as more of the same.

“This is still a Muslim ban,” Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a statement.

The first travel ban was blocked by federal judges because it was perceived to discriminate against Muslims; the Trump administration argued it was a security measure designed to thwart terrorism. A revised version of that ban expired on Sunday.

The new third version, which is to take effect on Oct. 18, adds Chad, North Korea and Venezuela to the list of affected countries and drops Sudan. (The other affected countries are Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.)

Different restrictions were imposed on each of the three additions, depending on the threat they were deemed to pose. For example, for Venezuela the ban applies only to visits by certain government officials and their families, while Somalis are barred from emigrating to the United States but not from visiting.

Chad, an Ally Against Militants, Asks, “Why Us?” The addition of Chad to Mr. Trump’s travel ban took that country’s government by surprise and bewildered analysts of Central Africa.

With a mixed population of Muslims and Christians, Chad has been a longtime American ally in fighting Islamist militants in the region, including offshoots of Al Qaeda and Boko Haram, and its troops took part in a French-led effort to root out Islamist militants from parts of Mali in 2013.

In a statement, the government expressed “ incomprehension in the face of the official reasons for this decision, which contrasts with Chad’s constant efforts and commitments in the fight against terrorism.” It called on President Trump to rethink the decision, “which has seriously affected the image of Chad and the good relations maintained by the two countries.”

In a report on Chad last year, the State Department said that few Chadians join terrorist groups, and that the country had tightened its borders to impede the movements of militants, but that a financial crisis kept the country from consistently paying police and military salaries, which presented some risk.

Matthew Page, who was the State Department’s expert in the region until last year, said that the travel ban for Chad seemed to be “a knee-jerk move, rather than a carefully considered decision.”

Human rights activists also expressed outrage.

“This makes no sense at all, even from a Trumpian standpoint,” said Reed Brody, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch who has worked extensively in Chad.

Victims of a former Chadian president, Hissène Habré, who is accused of torturing and murdering opponents during his rule in the 1980s, regularly travel to the United States to collect humanitarian awards. “Think of all the courageous and dedicated activists who will now be barred from the U.S.,” Mr. Brody said.--Dionne Searcey And Jaime Yaya Barry

Cheers From Trump Supporters. Supporters of the president’s national security agenda cheered the new policy on Monday. “I’m excited,” said Louis Murray, 52, who campaigned for the president in Boston as part of a group of Catholics for Trump. “I’m excited that the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump Administration has looked very hard at how to use extreme vetting to keep Americans safe.”

Mr. Murray said he viewed the administration’s broad travel policies as the best way to prevent attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, which was carried out by two beneficiaries of the asylum system. “When you’re talking about the movement of people across national borders, I don’t know how specific you want to be,” he said.

Conservative lawmakers also called the new travel ban a necessary public safety measure. “We are a compassionate nation,” Representative Lou Barletta, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “However, our enemies continuously seek to use our generosity against us, and the president has a duty to protect the American people first.”

On Twitter, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, supported the inclusion of Venezuela in the new policy, saying in Spanish that it was correct to block officials of the “corrupt Maduro regime” and their families from making shopping trips to the United States or patronizing Disney amusement parks.--Caitlin Dickerson

Dismay Among Somalis in Minnesota. Somali-Americans in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis processed the news of the travel ban as they went about their business in the rain on Monday, voicing wariness of an administration that has frightened them from the start and trying to learn more about the details of the ban.

Slma Osman, 29, said she had just put her three toddlers to bed Sunday evening when she heard about the travel ban on television, and the news made her cry. She emigrated from Somalia a year ago to join her husband, and the new ban seemed to scotch her dream of bringing her parents over to unite with her children.

“I feel lonely,” she said, walking to a bus stop on her way to work. “When my children grow up, they will feel the pain.”

Jamal Hassen, 23, a student in the Twin Cities who was born in Ethiopia to a Somali mother, said he worried about her. “Our moms are going to the mall by themselves, and get harassed because of their head scarves--especially after he got elected,” Mr. Hassen said. “It was calm before that.”

Mr. Hassen did not dispute President Trump’s claim that Somalia’s immigration officials do not adequately vet extremists. Some Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities have been recruited by Islamic extremist groups abroad, but Mr. Hassen said it was unfair that all Somalis must pay a price. “We are getting punished for what they did,” he said.

Kamaal Yusuf, 32, a taxi driver born in Somalia who emigrated as a teenager, heard about the travel ban in a coffee shop after driving his sons to day care. “I feel very sad,” he said. “America is supposed to welcome immigrants from all over the world. That’s the good I see in America. Now it’s messed up.”--Christina Capecchi and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura

Venezuela Is Angered, but Émigrés Are Pleased. Venezuela’s foreign ministry blasted the travel ban on Monday as an “irrational decision” that “constituted a form of political and psychological terrorism,” and asserted that the United States was trying to “stigmatize our country using the pretext of the fight against terrorism.” Venezuela also said that it would consider retaliating.

But the travel ban, which would bar business and tourism visits to the United States by “certain Venezuelan government officials and their immediate family members,” drew the opposite reaction among Venezuelans who have fled the country since the rise to power of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, and his ally Nicolas Maduro, the current president.

In fact, Alicia Reyes was nothing short of ecstatic about the new restrictions.

“They’re dogs, rats, the worst in the world,” Ms. Reyes, 53, said of Mr. Maduro and his party. She moved to Weston, in South Florida, from her native Caracas 18 months ago because of the erosion of social order there, which she blamed squarely on the government.

“The people in Venezuela are dying of hunger,” Ms. Reyes, who works in a pizza restaurant, added in Spanish. “We couldn’t stay there any longer. There is no future there.”

Mr. Trump has feuded with the Venezuelan leadership; last month, he alarmed officials in Caracas by talking about a “military option” to quell the chaos in the country. Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan foreign minister, lashed out at Mr. Trump in a speech at the United Nations on Monday.--Nick Madigan, Nicholas Casey and Somini Sengupta

Thwarted Reunion Plans For Iranian Families. In Los Angeles, the large Iranian diaspora centered on the Westwood neighborhood spent Monday morning puzzling over the ban’s potential impact. It had not yet sunk in with many people that the new decree would block most Iranians not only from emigrating to the United States, but also from visiting; only students and scholars would be allowed in.

“People haven’t paid attention yet to understand how this might change the life of their family,” said Farhad Bersharati, who owns a travel agency in Westwood. “If I was in the shoes of President Trump, I might do the same thing with the kind of people who are ruling my country now. But putting the people who are still there all together with the revolution is not fair.”

Many of the more than one million Iranian-Americans have relatives remaining in Iran. They will no longer be able to sponsor them for permanent residence.

Alex Helmi, who owns a Persian rug store in Westwood, questioned the purpose of the ban and said he was confident that the Supreme Court would rule fairly on it. “What is the goal here--is it propaganda, or stopping terrorism?” he said. “You have not found one Iranian person who has been connected with any terrorism in this country. This is a little bit odd.”

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Bahram Qasemi, called the expanded travel ban “inhumane, wrong and illogical.”

The new travel ban does not affect the status of anyone who is already in the United States legally, so people like Negi Kharazi who have immigrant visas can still get the green cards they have been waiting for. But now, Ms. Kharazi will not be able to bring Babak, her husband of five years, over from Iran.

“How can I be without my husband?” she said. “This is so mean. Our own government does not care, and the U.S. government does not care. We are disposable.”--Jennifer Medina and Thomas Erdbrink

Hardships Seen Even for Permitted Students. It was not immediately clear what led to a special carve-out that permits Iranian students, but not most other Iranians, to continue to obtain visas. Iran sends more students to America than the other countries affected by the ban--12,269 of them in the 2015-16 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education--and many are graduate students in scientific fields who also serve as teaching assistants.

Pedram Gharghabi, 31, a doctoral candidate and research assistant in electrical engineering at Mississippi State University, said on Monday that the ban would probably lead to hardships even for exempted students.

“My understanding is that our families will not be allowed to enter the United States for a visit,” Mr. Gharghabi said. Because many Iranian students’ visas do not permit the students to leave and come back, he said, “that means we may not meet our families for years.”

Amin Khalili, 22, who is studying for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., learned of the new rules from a fellow student late Sunday night. “I think everyone here is in stress and uncertainty,” said Mr. Khalili, who is from Tehran. “Honestly, a lot of us stopped watching TV. It’s been very stressful for all of us.”

The new ban appears to keep out all students from Somalia, Syria and North Korea. But it appears to permit those from Chad, Libya, Venezuela and Yemen.--Stephanie Saul

Weary Shrugs in War-Torn Nations. For citizens in some conflict zones, news of the latest travel ban was met with weary shrugs.

“How many times are we meant to condemn this man?” Mohamed Al Amad, a Yemeni journalist in Sana, said of President Trump. “Most Yemenis are too busy feeling bad about the American bombs that Saudi Arabia is dropping on them to think about Trump’s silly ban.”

In the Libyan city of Misurata, Ali Busitta, a municipal official, said that “the travel ban is wrong and it is offensive,” and added, “We understand that the terrorism in Libya looks scary, but you can’t just say that we are all bad.”

Most Libyans are occupied with the more pressing and often violent problems confronting their country, Mr. Busitta said. “Frankly, they are too distracted by what’s going on to care about this ban or that ban.”--Nour Yousseff and Declan Walsh

Confusion and Anxiety Among New York Immigrants. Immigrant advocates scrambled on Monday to address questions from their communities.

Rama Issa-Ibrahim, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said many people who have been petitioning to bring relatives to the United States are confused and anxious now.

“We don’t really know how this is going to unfold until Oct. 18, but since January, we’ve seen the chaos that these travel bans, the executive order, has brought to our community and to the country in general,” she said.

Yemeni-Americans in Brooklyn have been mobilizing since the executive order announcing the first travel ban was issued in January. But Rabyaah Althaibani, an activist who was involved in a Yemeni bodega strike across the city in February that was a protest of the original ban, said she felt worn down by yet another one. “I feel so helpless and fatigued,” she said on Monday.

Ms. Althaibani, 39, has not been able to bring in her Yemeni husband, Basheer Othman, who was a prominent liberal journalist in Yemen. The couple married in January 2016 in India, but they have been living apart ever since, with Mr. Othman waiting in Malaysia to receive a visa.

“I don’t know what it means for him, and it’s really scary,” Ms. Althaibani said through tears on Monday after speaking with him via Skype. “I’m in limbo, and it’s a hellish nightmare.”--Liz Robbins

#travel ban #US travel ban

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