#defund University of Chicago

[vollesroah]

Reblog

Gee, if only Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg had made a blockbuster movie about how this was a bad idea.

[dewitty1]

May Day protesters plan rallies against the Trump administration : NPR

On May Day, protesters are honing their message to decry what they say are attacks on the working class and immigrants. Organizers for the effort, called May Day Strong, say the administration and its billionaire allies pose a threat to labor rights, public services, and the safety of immigrants regardless of their legal status. Organizers have stated their opposition to violent forms of protest.

"This is a war on working people," organizers said on the May Day Strong events web page.

"They're defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence," they added. "We are reclaiming our power from corporate elites, and we will not be intimidated by Trump, Musk, or their billionaire backers.

They've ruled for too long.

"The U.S. does not officially observe the labor holiday, due to what historians say is an enduring resistance to working-class unity. Despite that resistance, America's working class has found ways to commemorate May Day since the 19th century.

The tradition began with a labor strike.

Why Americans protest on May 1

Before the 8-hour workday became standard, the organization now known as the American Federation of Labor planned a nationwide strike for May 1, 1886, to demand an 8-hour workday, as many workers were doing shifts twice that long.

The Chicago strike, known as the Haymarket Affair, turned violent when police clashed with civilians, and a bomb exploded. Although the bomb's intended target was unclear, four men connected to the protests were hanged for conspiracy to commit murder and became celebrated as the Haymarket Martyrs. The Pullman railroad strike also played a significant role in establishing May Day in the U.S. Workers from the Pullman Palace Car Company initiated a widespread work stoppage in May of 1894, prompting President Grover Cleveland to send federal troops to Chicago to break the strike.This set the stage for the long history of co-opting May Day.

Inspired by the Chicago workers, the international socialist movement gained traction, with activists spreading Marxist literature. In an effort to to detach May Day from labor movements, U.S. presidents have tried to redefine its significance. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made May 1 as "Law Day" — to recognize how the rule of law protects civil liberties, and Labor Day was moved to September.

During his first term, Trump echoed his predecessors by declaring May 1 "Loyalty Day," a time to celebrate the country's loyalty to individual liberties. Previous May Days during Trump's presidency saw similar protests and boycotts by immigrants and workers who railed against the Republicans' border wall plans and mass deportations efforts.

But the protests held across the U.S. in 2006, triggered by a bill to increase penalties for illegal immigration, might serve as a better comparison. Those March protests saw some 2 million demonstrators rally in 140 cities and 39 states.

What distinguishes Thursday's planned May Day protests is the scale of the movement, said Joseph McCartin, professor of labor history at Georgetown University.

With more than 1,000 events planned for May 1 in over 1,000 cities, according to organizers, McCartin said the nationwide protests stand to become the world's most widespread May Day on record.

"These are going to be protests that bring out a broader array of people and a broader array of places, and I think that's going to be historic, at least for that reason," he said.

[mariacallous]

The New Yorker Daily: Trump Threatens NPR and PBS

One hundred days into the second Trump Presidency, the chaos has settled into a patterned upheaval. The Administration continues to defund and dismantle government institutions, fire independent decision-makers, and insult and intimidate the press. These strategies came together last week, when Trump targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit founded in 1967. The C.P.B. funds public radio and television stations in local markets, as well as fifteen per cent of the Public Broadcasting Service and one per cent of National Public Radio. Trump attempted to remove three of the C.P.B.’s five board members, to deprive it of quorum and freeze its activities. (C.P.B. has sued to block that action in court.) Then, last night, he issued an executive order instructing the C.P.B. to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS. . . to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” In a press release, the White House listed “examples of the trash that has passed for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS,” including a segment on diet culture, a feature on a book about “queer ducks,” and a documentary on reparations. It also mentioned NPR’s alleged refusal “to cover the explosive Hunter Biden laptop scandal.”

Previous Republican leaders have made similar attempts to defund public media. Big, existential cuts have historically been averted, mostly because Americans were willing to step up for Elmo and “NewsHour,” not to mention for the community radio we all rely on when wildfires and hurricanes strike. What feels different this year is that “a lot of people are afraid to speak up,” Jennifer Ferro, the C.E.O. of KCRW, the public-radio station in greater Los Angeles, told me. “Many public-radio stations are housed at universities that do not want to be in opposition to the Administration.” KCRW is a comparatively large station in a wealthy city; about five per cent of its budget comes from the C.P.B. But Ferro is also on the board of Marfa Public Radio, in rural Texas—“the only live broadcast service for some thirty thousand square miles,” she said—which would be badly hurt by a federal cut. Margaret Low, the C.E.O. of WBUR, in Boston, told me that, although only three per cent of the station’s budget comes from C.P.B., its national programs rely on “millions of dollars in syndication fees and sponsorships” from other stations around the country. Ira Glass, the host of WBEZ Chicago’s “This American Life,” which doesn’t rely on government funding but airs on many NPR affiliates, said that part of the harm of the executive order is that it poses a “branding issue”: “It’s not great to have the President saying your coverage is biased.”

Journalists at NPR, PBS, and every other outlet in the U.S. have much more to worry about than their paychecks. As the Committee to Protect Journalists put it in a recent report, “These are not normal times for American press freedoms.” On the same day Trump issued his executive order, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, announced that the Justice Department will use subpoenas and warrants to obtain reporters’ phone records, notes, and testimony in order to investigate government “leaks.” “Journalists’ work is under fire in a way that has an emotional and psychological effect,” Tina Pamintuan, the outgoing C.E.O. of St. Louis Public Radio, told me, while she was in Washington lobbying for federal funds. (More than six per cent of her station’s projected revenue comes from the C.P.B.) “Yet they still go out there and do this amazing work.”

[covid-safer-hotties]

Hi covidsafehotties!

Do you know of any official nonprofits that are doing good work for Covid? Obviously you personally are doing a LOT, but i mention official because my company will donate to registered nonprofits, especially if we volunteer with them - and i don't know of and can't find any.

Do you know of any organizations that would fit the bill?

Honestly im open to anything even vaguely Covid related if you can't think of things more closely related.

I'm not sure how many registered covid-specific non-profits are out there, but most of the ones I know are incredibly localized like specific mask blocs and Chicago's Clean Air Club. There's a distinct lack of organization in a lot of covid response measures since Biden's administration decided to defund covid response measures at large. It's mostly a lot of people like me giving their time, energy, and know-how to do what the government should be doing.

The University of Pennsylvania's Center for High Impact Philanthropy has a list that seems fairly up-to-date that may help you in your research. https://www.impact.upenn.edu/covid-19/nonprofits-to-give-to/

[reasoningdaily]

After Black Lives Matter - CEDRIC G.JOHNSON

THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY CLICK THE TITLE TO DOWNLOAD

Contemporary policing reflects the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed The historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way we think about race and policing. Why did it achieve so little in the way of substantive reforms? After Black Lives Matter argues that the failure to leave an institutional residue was not simply due to the mercurial and reactive character of the protests. Rather, the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injustice that underpins the crisis of policing: socio-economic inequality. For Johnson, the anti-capitalist and downwardly redistributive politics expressed by different Black Lives Matter elements has too often been drowned out in the flood of black wealth creation, fetishism of Jim Crow black entrepreneurship, corporate diversity initiatives, and a quixotic reparations demand. None of these political tendencies addresses the fundamental problem underlying mass incarceration. That is the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed. Johnson sees the way forward in building popular democratic power to advance public works and public goods.  Rather than abolishing police, After Black Lives Matter argues for abolishing the conditions of alienation and exploitation contemporary policing exists to manage.

Review

"A virtuoso performance! Weighing the successes and limitations of Black Lives Matter, Johnson concludes that identity-based mobilization—confusing what people look like with what they need—cannot substitute for majoritarian political coalition-building." —Barbara J. Fields, Columbia University "A brilliant scholar who is first and foremost concerned with equality and justice. It’s those very commitments that lead him, in After Black Lives Matter, to question today’s antiracism and its nostrums." —Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto "Essential reading for those weary of platitude-driven texts on race and criminal justice and in the market for an empirically grounded political analysis that points to practicable solutions to one of the biggest problems of our day." —Touré F. Reed, author of Toward Freedom "A provocative and expansive critique from the left of the loose collection of protest actions, organizations, and ideological movements-whether prison abolition or calls to defund the police-that make up what we now call Black Lives Matter...After Black Lives Matter should be commended both for the clarity of its message and the bravery of its convictions." —Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker

About the Author

Cedric Johnson is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.  Johnson is the editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. His 2017 Catalyst essay, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Anti-policing Struggles and the Limits of Black Power,” was awarded the 2018 Daniel Singer Millenium Prize. Johnson’s writings have appeared in Nonsite, Jacobin, New Political Science, New Labor Forum, Perspectives on Politics, Historical Materialism, and Journal of Developing Societies. In 2008, Johnson was named the Jon Garlock Labor Educator of the Year by the Rochester Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He previously served on the representative assembly for UIC United Faculty Local 6456.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Given the sheer scale, magnitude and diversity of 2020’s resurgent Black Lives Matter protests, many pundits, scholars and activists celebrated the George Floyd rebellion as an historic watershed, one where the possibility of real reform came into view. For too  many, however, the euphoria of the moment suspended any criti- cal analysis of what it all meant. This is a deeper problem on the  US left—the tendency to read protests as always prefigurative rather than contingent, and as a manifestation of real power rather than a reflection of potential. Such wish-fulfillment think- ing, however, forgets that mass mobilization is not the same as  organized power, and that mass mobilization is much easier now with the endless opportunities for expressing discontent provided by social media, online petitions, memes and vlogging.

The scale of protests can be misleading, and their actual effectiveness, regardless of their size, is dependent on historical conjunctures, such as the balance of political forces, the organized power and  capacity of opposition and the clarity of objectives among activists. Throughout the opening decades of this century, ever larger  protests have proved incapable of consolidating in a manner that might effectively oppose ruling-class prerogatives. In recent memory, we have witnessed successive mass protests—turn-of the-century demonstrations against global capitalism, protests against the Bush administration’s so-called War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street encampments, anti-eviction campaigns, the March for Our Lives following the Parkland High School mass shooting, protests against police violence and ICE deportations, among others—but these have done little to depose capitalist class power and the advancing neoliberal project.

If anything, the hegemony of finance capital, the war-making powers of the national security state, the criminalization of immigration, the power of the gun lobby and the unaccountability of police are as entrenched as ever. THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY

[ceekbee]

E. Tammy Kim

Kim writes about politics and the federal workforce.

One hundred days into the second Trump Presidency, the chaos has settled into a patterned upheaval. The Administration continues to defund and dismantle government institutions, fire independent decision-makers, and insult and intimidate the press. These strategies came together last week, when Trump targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit founded in 1967. The C.P.B. funds public radio and television stations in local markets, as well as fifteen per cent of the Public Broadcasting Service and one per cent of National Public Radio. Trump attempted to remove three of the C.P.B.’s five board members, to deprive it of quorum and freeze its activities. (C.P.B. has sued to block that action in court.) Then, last night, he issued an executive order instructing the C.P.B. to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS. . . to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” In a press release, the White House listed “examples of the trash that has passed for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS,” including a segment on diet culture, a feature on a book about “queer ducks,” and a documentary on reparations. It also mentioned NPR’s alleged refusal “to cover the explosive Hunter Biden laptop scandal.”

Previous Republican leaders have made similar attempts to defund public media. Big, existential cuts have historically been averted, mostly because Americans were willing to step up for Elmo and “NewsHour,” not to mention for the community radio we all rely on when wildfires and hurricanes strike. What feels different this year is that “a lot of people are afraid to speak up,” Jennifer Ferro, the C.E.O. of KCRW, the public-radio station in greater Los Angeles, told me. “Many public-radio stations are housed at universities that do not want to be in opposition to the Administration.” KCRW is a comparatively large station in a wealthy city; about five per cent of its budget comes from the C.P.B. But Ferro is also on the board of Marfa Public Radio, in rural Texas—“the only live broadcast service for some thirty thousand square miles,” she said—which would be badly hurt by a federal cut. Margaret Low, the C.E.O. of WBUR, in Boston, told me that, although only three per cent of the station’s budget comes from C.P.B., its national programs rely on “millions of dollars in syndication fees and sponsorships” from other stations around the country. Ira Glass, the host of WBEZ Chicago’s “This American Life,” which doesn’t rely on government funding but airs on many NPR affiliates, said that part of the harm of the executive order is that it poses a “branding issue”: “It’s not great to have the President saying your coverage is biased.”

Journalists at NPR, PBS, and every other outlet in the U.S. have much more to worry about than their paychecks. As the Committee to Protect Journalists put it in a recent report, “These are not normal times for American press freedoms.” On the same day Trump issued his executive order, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, announced that the Justice Department will use subpoenas and warrants to obtain reporters’ phone records, notes, and testimony in order to investigate government “leaks.” “Journalists’ work is under fire in a way that has an emotional and psychological effect,” Tina Pamintuan, the outgoing C.E.O. of St. Louis Public Radio, told me, while she was in Washington lobbying for federal funds. (More than six per cent of her station’s projected revenue comes from the C.P.B.) “Yet they still go out there and do this amazing work.”

[xtruss]

Photograph By Drew Angerer/Getty

“Journalists’ Work Is Under Fire.”

Donald Trump Is Yanking Federal Funds From Public Media. E. Tammy Kim talks to leaders at NPR-affiliate stations around the country about why this attack feels different, and what the consequences of defunding would be.

— E. Tammy Kim

One hundred days into the second Trump Presidency, the chaos has settled into a patterned upheaval. The Administration continues to defund and dismantle government institutions, fire independent decision-makers, and insult and intimidate the press. These strategies came together last week, when Trump targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit founded in 1967. The C.P.B. funds public radio and television stations in local markets, as well as fifteen per cent of the Public Broadcasting Service and one per cent of National Public Radio. Trump attempted to remove three of the C.P.B.’s five board members, to deprive it of quorum and freeze its activities. (C.P.B. has sued to block that action in court.) Then, last night, he issued an executive order instructing the C.P.B. to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS. . . to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” In a press release, the White House listed “examples of the trash that has passed for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS,” including a segment on diet culture, a feature on a book about “queer ducks,” and a documentary on reparations. It also mentioned NPR’s alleged refusal “to cover the explosive Hunter Biden laptop scandal.”

Previous Republican leaders have made similar attempts to defund public media. Big, existential cuts have historically been averted, mostly because Americans were willing to step up for Elmo and “NewsHour,” not to mention for the community radio we all rely on when wildfires and hurricanes strike. What feels different this year is that “a lot of people are afraid to speak up,” Jennifer Ferro, the C.E.O. of KCRW, the public-radio station in greater Los Angeles, told me. “Many public-radio stations are housed at universities that do not want to be in opposition to the Administration.” KCRW is a comparatively large station in a wealthy city; about five per cent of its budget comes from the C.P.B. But Ferro is also on the board of Marfa Public Radio, in rural Texas—“the only live broadcast service for some thirty thousand square miles,” she said—which would be badly hurt by a federal cut. Margaret Low, the C.E.O. of WBUR, in Boston, told me that, although only three per cent of the station’s budget comes from C.P.B., its national programs rely on “millions of dollars in syndication fees and sponsorships” from other stations around the country. Ira Glass, the host of WBEZ Chicago’s “This American Life,” which doesn’t rely on government funding but airs on many NPR affiliates, said that part of the harm of the executive order is that it poses a “branding issue”: “It’s not great to have the President saying your coverage is biased.”

Journalists at NPR, PBS, and every other outlet in the U.S. have much more to worry about than their paychecks. As the Committee to Protect Journalists put it in a recent report, “These are not normal times for American press freedoms.” On the same day Trump issued his executive order, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, announced that the Justice Department will use subpoenas and warrants to obtain reporters’ phone records, notes, and testimony in order to investigate government “leaks.” “Journalists’ work is under fire in a way that has an emotional and psychological effect,” Tina Pamintuan, the outgoing C.E.O. of St. Louis Public Radio, told me, while she was in Washington lobbying for federal funds. (More than six per cent of her station’s projected revenue comes from the C.P.B.) “Yet they still go out there and do this amazing work.”

— E. Tammy Kim Writes ✍️ About Politics and the Federal Workforce.

[omgokiguess]

God there are just so much garbage jobs anymore these days. And you already know you're gonna get laid off in a year or two anyway it's almost like what's the point. Imagine being my dad in his time....... his university research got defunded when I was a baby so he moved us to Chicago and got a great job with Motorola....... this was in like 1997 and it came with a fucking pension. A pension!!!!!!!!! My husband sees a, like, half sized pension but I'll never see a pension in my life. After seeing someone live with a pension too it's like wow what a mythical dream that I could never dare to imagine :(

[ramrodd]

How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart) | David Brooks

COMMENTARY:

David, the rupture has just begun, You have beenm abd continueto be, a major mechanism of that alienaton. Your forcus on family values has facilitated the defunding of the community programs that nurture as support family values, Family structures are far to fragile to sustain the sort of social cohesion of the socio-economic matrix America was advancing towards until the Public Choice shool of the University of Chicago began to pick apart the system with the economic sabotage of Grovre Norquist's 'starve the beast" strategy of the Supply Side Marxism of Project 1015;s nazification agenda you were weaned on in the Young Americans for Freedom, The educated elite are the Ivy League socialism that sustained slavery and contiue to abostruct organize labor when organized labor has done nothing but make the children of Ivy Leabue Socialism rich, Labor unions were illegal in the Soviety Union and they still have nor vialbe middle class, bu the proponets of Supply Side Marxism like you continue to flog the union busting design of the Harvard MBA business model. In 1968, the anti-war draft dodgers thought the liberal arts tradition of Post Modern Literary CIriticism had to go, so the occupied Columbia in the January 6 even of the liberal Boomers, and reject Hegel in favor of Marx with the currently prevelent Post Modern Historic Deconstruciton, Didn't you say you wer a History major at the University of Chicago, which has had the same fascist culture as Berlin in 1938 since it was founded? Or, at least, since Al Capone established the Chicago business culture. The basis of Democracy is the secular rule of Law, That's what Socrates is all about, his cup of Hemlock, He submitted to the judgement of the secular rule of law and history pivoted around his example. And Jesus accepted His own cup of wrath to submit to the Roman secular rule of law and and the reslut has been the 19th Amendment and Apollo 11, The voice of Edmund Burke is the DEI social contract of the Declaration of Indepence, which is the incubator of individual rights and the pursuit of happines. Eisenhower's 1956 Presidential Platform introduce a process to transform the culture of the Military Industrial Complex to the Aerospace Entrepreneural sociao-economic Matrix required to sustain a lunar colony for 100 yeras to enable Wernher von Braun's Das Marsprojekt that you have been helping to sabotage your entire career as a Consrvative and Elon Musk is blowing up by extra-constitutional means,  The ZOOM culture that emerged out of the disaster of Trump'e response to COVID 10 is the leading edge of the socio-econom Matric os the Starship Capitalim of Eishenhower's Starship Capitalism but you have not ability to discern it's ower because of Post Modern Historic Deconstruction which has rejected the epsitemology of Jesus and Hegel and the dialogue of sommunity What Esienhowr and Goerge Marshall Republicans disdovered with the Marshal Plan is that cultural change is driven through community economics and esprit de corps Both Marxism and the Conservative values of the Harvar MBA program suppress esprit de corps in the name of your alleged "spiritual values"  America was ready to do great things when Reagan took over the Oval Office with Conservative Values and all th and the Hollywood Joh Birch Society did was to deconstruct that impulse to advance the deconstruction of the socail contract of the New Deal that had won WWII, the Cold War and put man on the moon with Apollo !!, You don't hav a clue of what you speak,  Conservatism was defined by William F. Bucley  in his rebuttal to James Baldwin at the Cambridge Union in 1964 four months after the assassination of JFK, The vote for Balswein reflect the vote for LBJ in Novermber and Conservatism has been committed to reversing that cultural edifice ever since. Indlcuing this address. Trump is exactly what Consrvatism is all about, Buskley's "Negro Problem" says it all.  

[radicalurbanista]

3.16.21. Evanston, IL

Police respond to an anti-police protest outside the president's mansion with ~75 riot officers. Gear included less-than-lethal munitions are at least two K-9 units. Student protestors were armed with umbrellas and megaphones and were not destroying any property.

The NIPAS is a police coalition among suburban Chicago municipalities that were present with local police as well. The abolitionist group "NU Community Not Cops" has demanded defunding of the university's private police force. The university has expressed displeasure with NIPAS's previous responses but has not made any commitment to defunding their private police force. NIPAS made no attacks this night.

Previous protest

[jones-friend]

Gonna rant bc its some straight up horseshit what the federal govt is doing with higher ed during the pandemic rn.

For scale, the pandemic hit and many schools were understandably unprepared. However, in the months after it showed which schools could adapt and which schools floundered. The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) decided way back around May they’d be fully online for fall and have been gearing all their resources for that. The school I work at still doesn’t have their plan together.

ICE released in the past week that international students studying here need to be attending an in person course or get deported. Its so blatantly anti-immigrant, for a big school like UIC that’s going to be hard to turn on a dime and provide in-person coursework because the federal govt, who has said so many times we’re sitting this out and its up to the states to handle the pandemic, is now making a very late mandate.

Whats more, it screws over international students and essentially forces them to experience COVID. Either meet in a group physically or be forced onto a plane with many other passengers for hours. And from what I understand, many countries aren’t accepting flights from the US and returning to their home country isn’t realistic, and they’d end up getting stuck in limbo.

On top of that, Tr*mp recently threatened to defund schools that aren’t holding classes in person, in July. What that means is students can’t get loans to go to that school. For non-American peeps american tuition is garbage, my uni is some $30,000 a term and its a small uni. If you lose funding students cannot attend your school and you go under (which that’s its own separate capitalistic horseshit). Again, for big schools like UIC with a lot of logistics to coordinate its not realistic for them to do a 180 and change course in the second week of July, just bc crusty ass boomer Tr*mp wants the appearance of normalcy.

God dammit.

[arcticdementor]

What fun, what entertainment. And rare: One seldom sees the collapse of a landmark society in a rush of wondrous idiocy. Would I could sell tickets. Don’t look at it as a loss, but as a show, an unwanted but grand amusement.

The coup de grace in our ripening decadence is the current uprising purportedly, though implausibly, over racism. But never mind. The causes don’t matter. The deal is done.

…

You cannot solve a problem without knowing what it is. This we dare not know. Democracies, however approximate, cannot deal with chronically underperforming minorities.

They cannot even try. Anything that might help is politically impossible, and anything politically possible won’t help.

So, after the riots:

Social division will worsen after the riots. Racial hostility from blacks will not decrease because their conditions will not change. The rioters are getting their way now, and rule, but at the price of sowing hatred. At best we will have many decades of ugly rancor. At worst, we are winding the spring for another outburst.

Multiculturalism has not worked, quite apart from race, and will not. White Americans are not one people. The poor communications and bad roads that once allowed them to live almost separately no longer exist. In its writ-large form, trying to force West Virginia to accept the culture of Massachusetts will produce only anger.

…

Censorship will intensify, not just of communications and office chitchat but of books. Tom Sawyer will be pulled from bookshelves or—Amazon being the continental shelf—or bowderlized to remove the Nigger Jim and Injun Joe The Nigger of the Narcissus may survive because none of the blacks and few of the whites will ever have heard of Conrad. At least for the foreseeable future, firings for anything imaginably redolent of racism–saying “All lives matter,” for example–will be snatched at in a mixture of passive aggression and schadenfreude to result in firings. This is unlikely to have a happy ending.

Schooling: Watching great universities become sandboxes for unpleasantly righteous dimwitted brats galls, or does if one lets it. I don’t. Most of the protesters seem recently to have erupted from the drains of an educational system that has been in sharp decline for decades They, including the intelligent among them, appear historically not just ignorant but carefully misinformed, culturally pathetic, and intellectually laughable. (For example, a protestress interviewed by a British reporter as to what she thought of Churchill said she couldn’t really say because she hadn’t met him. How many in BLM can spell “Confederacy”? A statue of Ulysses Grant was pulled down in the belief that he was a Confederate general. May God preserve us.)

The, uh, redaction of culture will not stop with books. Classical music is too white, the sciences too white, mathematics a tool of oppression (meaning that blacks cannot understand it) and so on. We have created a nation of pampered and imbecile peasants.

…

The most—I dare not say “entertaining” for fear of lynching, but, well, perhaps “interesting” reforms will be those of the police, whether abolition, defunding to shift money to youth outreach and rehab (which don’t work) or replacement of police by warm and caring adults, will result in increased crime. We need not concern ourselves with whether and to what extent the police have been culpable in which cases. The changes will come anyway.

An intriguing question is what the nonviolent, non-racist, warm and fuzzy pseudopolice will do when they encounter violent criminals. Counsel them on social justice? I would love to watch.

…

Many cities are routinely out of control, with seven hundred homicides in Chicago and three hundred in Baltimore every year. Increasingly criminals are released without bail and small crimes, such as evading subway fares, are ignored when committed by minorities. The hordes of derelicts grow, the New York subways become a homeless shelter. These are not problems seen in civilized countries. Which America no longer is, to the astonishment and amusement of the world.

Perhaps this was to be expected. The American practice of choosing its leaders every two, four, or six years by popularity contest worked, after a fashion anyway, in a sprawling continental country in which government had very little local influence. In a world far more complex, with little ability to plan when those in charge change with paralyzing rapidity, and everything intensely regulated by people unfamiliar with problems, results are poor. America’s competition with large countries having intelligently authoritarian and stable governance will prove a losing proposition proposition. The inevitable decline in standard of living, already well underwater, will promote unrest. Here we go again.

…

Think of it as the Cultural Revolution by suburban hobbyists. There are the same raging untermenschen, the same desire to destroy anything they do not know, or cannot understand, or be bothered to learn.

As a philosophic emollient one may reflect that all empires and civilizations must end, and ours is. America will remain as a place, a military bastion, a large if declining economic force. It will never again be, even by the low standards of humanity in such things, a relatively free and vigorous society. The world will not again credit its charades of moral leadership. The rot, the tens of thousands of derelict people living on the sidewalks, the looting and fire setting, the censorship, are now visible to the entire earth. Oh well. It was a good thing while it lasted.

[jyleshay]

April, 2021 - A fun and catchy title

April was a month in which I found some reasons to be hopeful. I was able to get vaccinated, the president is pushing for changes around infrastructure, the environment, and child care, and Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder. No longer a hope to "get back to normal", but a hope to get past the old normal and find a way to better.

The event that stands out to me the most from April was watching the verdict to Derek Chauvin's trial. The outcome was never a certainty throughout the trial, and when the verdict was delivered I felt a huge sense of relief to see that justice was served. I also felt despair; if it is so hard to get justice for a crime as well documented as it was egregious, how are we going to realize it for less clear situations. The answer is with effort. There is nothing simple about the massive systems at play in America, and there is nothing easy about changing them. I don't adhere to the call to defund the police, but the police systems in the US need to feel the pressure to change and that does include their finances. We have to maintain the effort to bring forth that change, in how we communicate, how we protest, and how we vote.

The movie The Trial of the Chicago Seven, which is my film pick for the month, is particularly apropos to these ideas around change and pressure. I highly recommend watching it, not just because it's really well done, but also to compare the past year to the events of the movie and realize we're living in a continuous timeline with the America of our past and of that film.

There was also a really interesting story during April about a Super League in Europe where the richest teams tried to create their own elite tournament that nobody else could play in but themselves. It got protested down by the fans and players but I wouldn't be surprised if the rich club owners try to do it again, but next time, sneakier.

What I read:

I've read some really good books this year, but this month's was my favorite so far. Exhalation - by Ted Chiang is a collection of science fiction short stories that blew me away with their elegance and depth. Not only does the author tell stories with science fiction concepts such as time travel, artificial intelligence, and parallel universes, he uses those concepts to approach deeper meaning around humanity and our nature, free will, love, death, and meaning. This is a very thoughtful book that does what great science fiction is supposed to do; become a mirror in which we can view our own universe in a new light. 10/10, will read again.

Favorite Movie: The Trial of the Chicago Seven

Favorite Series: The Expanse, Season 5

Favorite Podcast: The Social Dilemma - Intelligence Squared

Honorable Mentions:

Monkey Mind Pong - Neuralink on YouTube

Malibu Broken - Jessie Frye, Ollie Wride

The Super League That Wasn't - The Daily

If you read all of this, thank you, you're amazing. Good luck in May!

[carolinesiede]

Reflecting on 2020

The strangest thing about 2020 was how familiar much of it felt: Working from home, extended periods of isolation, weeks and months blending together. To a much lesser degree, those are things I experience each year as a freelancer. And while I suspect it will take awhile before the full extent of the trauma we’ve all lived through this year fully sets in, right now I’m mostly focused on gratitude. I’m grateful for the health of my loved ones. Grateful I already had a work-from-home routine to maintain during the pandemic. And grateful that I was able to quarantine with my family for much of the year—which had its challenges but also its rewards too.

In my 2019 year-end post I wrote about feeling like my career was finally on an upward trajectory after several years of plateauing. This year obviously offered some new wrinkles in that regard. I made significantly less money and felt familiar fears about how sustainable this career actually is. But having less work also gave me more time to focus on the actual craft of writing. I feel like I reached a new level in terms of voice, clarity, and the ability to self-edit. I'm the sort of person who constantly (arguably, obsessively) strives to be better, and it’s rewarding to feel like that hard work is finally slowly starting to pay off.

In addition to devoting my quarantine time to mastering a favorite curry recipe, getting really into the Enneagram, finally learning to French braid hair, and rewatching all of New Girl, I also had some really cool opportunities scattered throughout the year. I interviewed John Barrowman about his surprise return to Doctor Who, which felt like a real milestone for me. I also contributed to the Los Angeles Times’ list of TV shows to binge-watch during quarantine, which appeared both online and in print. And thanks to everything going virtual this year, I was able to attend a press panel for the fifth season of This Is Us, which is the sort of thing I’m not usually able to do as a Chicago-based critic. 

My career is always a juggling act between film and TV, and this year made me appreciate how valuable it is to be able to move seamlessly between both worlds. I took on new TV assignments covering the first season of Stargirl and the second season of The Umbrella Academy, both of which were a blast to write about. And while I didn’t watch quite as many films as I did in my insane catch-up year last year, I did fill in some more major blindspots. I also contributed to The A.V. Club’s list of the best films of 2000 and shared my own ballot over on Letterboxd. Oh, and I set up a Letterboxd this year too!

Elsewhere, I made my debut on Bustle and The Takeout, and ended the year with a Polygon article about “Kind Movies” that pretty much sums up my entire ethos on storytelling. I was also named a Top Critic by Rotten Tomatoes, which was a real honor. But the pride and joy of my career remains my rom-com column, When Romance Met Comedy. I devoted a whopping 49,000 words to analyzing 25 different romantic comedies this year. And I’m really pleased with how the column has grown and with the positive feedback I’ve received.

I have to admit, I sometimes worry that year-end highlight reels like this one can make my life seem easy or glamorous in a way that doesn’t reflect what it’s like to actually live through it. I'm tremendously lucky to get to do what I do, but I also struggle a lot—both with the logistics of this career and with bigger questions about what value it brings to the world. My goal is to approach 2021 with a greater sense of intentionality. I want to be more thoughtful in my career choices, more purposeful in how I use social media, and more active in my activism and politics. I’d also like to do 20 push-ups a day everyday for the whole year, but we’ll see how long that resolution actually lasts.

Finally, on a sadder note, one other defining experience of the year was the loss of my dear internet friend Seb Patrick, who I’ve known for years through the Cinematic Universe podcast. Seb created a wonderfully positive nerd space online, and was a big part of my early quarantine experience thanks to the Avengers watchalongs I did with the CU gang in the spring. I’m so grateful for all the fun pop culture chats we got to have throughout the years, several of which are linked below. Seb is tremendously missed, and there’s a fund for his family here.

As we head into 2021, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2020. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot.

My 15 favorite films of 2020

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2020

Op-eds, Features, and Interviews

Women Pioneered The Film Industry 100 Years Ago. Why Aren’t We Talking About Them? [Bustle]

2020 is the year of the Kind Movie — and it couldn’t have come at a better time [Polygon]

Make a grocery store game plan for stress-free shopping [The Takeout]

What’s Going On: A primer on the call to defund the police [Medium]

Doctor Who’s John Barrowman on the return of Captain Jack Harkness [The A.V. Club]

Episodic TV Coverage

Doctor Who S12

This Is Us S4 and S5

Supergirl S5

Stargirl S1

The Umbrella Academy S2

The Crown S4

NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical!

When Romance Met Comedy

Is The Ugly Truth the worst romantic comedy ever made?

Working Girl’s message is timeless, even if the hair and the shoulder pads aren’t

You’ve Got Mail and the power of the written (well, typed) word

Love & Basketball was a romantic slam dunk

How did My Big Fat Greek Wedding make so much money?

America eased into the ’60s with the bedroom comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson

I can’t stop watching Made Of Honor

Notting Hill brought two rom-com titans together

It’s time to rediscover one of Denzel Washington’s loveliest and most under-seen romances

Something’s Gotta Give is the ultimate quarantine rom-com

20 years ago, But I’m A Cheerleader reclaimed camp for queer women

On its 60th anniversary, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment looks like an indictment of toxic masculinity

The Wedding Planner made rom-com stars out of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey

After 25 years, Clueless is still our cleverest Jane Austen adaptation

William Shakespeare invented every romantic comedy trope we love today

Edward Norton made his directorial debut by walking a priest, a rabbi, and a Dharma into a Y2K rom-com

The forgotten 1970s romantic comedy that raged against our broken, racist system

His Girl Friday redefined the screwball comedy at 240 words per minute

Before Wonder Woman soared into theaters, the hacky My Super Ex-Girlfriend plummeted to Earth

Dirty Dancing spoke its conscience with its hips

The rise of Practical Magic as a spooky season classic

In a dire decade for the genre, Queen Latifah became a new kind of rom-com star

Years before Elsa and Anna, Tangled reinvigorated the Disney princess tradition

Palm Springs is the definitive 2020 rom-com

Celebrate Christmas with the subversive 1940s rom-com that turned gender roles on their head

The A.V. Club Film & TV Reviews

Netflix’s To All The Boys sequel charms, though not quite as much as the original

The Photograph only occasionally snaps into focus

Jane Austen's Emma gets an oddball, sumptuous, and smart new adaptation

Pete Davidson delivers small-time charms in Big Time Adolescence

Council Of Dads crams a season of schmaltzy storytelling into its premiere

In Belgravia, Downton Abbey’s creator emulates Dickens to limited success

Netflix’s Love Wedding Repeat adds some cringe to the rom-com

Netflix takes another shot at Cyrano de Bergerac with queer love triangle The Half Of It

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a feel-good origin story for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first troupe

Sara Bareilles’ melodic Apple TV+ series Little Voice is still finding itself

Netflix’s sexist rom-com sensation gets a minor upgrade in The Kissing Booth 2

With Howard, Disney+ movingly honors the lyricist who gave the Little Mermaid her voice

The Broken Hearts Gallery tries to find catharsis in heartbreak

Netflix’s ghostly musical series Julie And The Phantoms hits some charming tween high notes

After We Collided slides toward R-rated camp—but not far enough

Holidate is a bawdy start to Netflix’s holiday rom-com slate

Kristen Stewart celebrates the Happiest Season in a pioneering queer Christmas rom-com

Isla Fisher gets her own Enchanted in the Disney Plus fairy tale Godmothered

Podcast Appearances

Debating Doctor Who: “Orphan 55”

It Pod To Be You: The Wedding Singer

Reality Bomb: Defending Doctor Who’s “Closing Time”

The Televerse: Spotlight on Doctor Who Season 12

You Should See The Other Guy: The Ugly Truth

Only Stupid Answers: Stargirl’s season finale

Motherfoclóir: Ireland and the Hollywood Rom-Com

Called in to Nerdette’s Clueless retrospective episode

Cinematic Universe Appearances

Cinematic Universe: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Cinematic Universe: Birds of Prey

Cinematic Universe: Infinity War watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Endgame watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Terminator 2

Cinematic Universe: Josie and the Pussycats

Cinematic Universe: The Cuppies 2020 (Cuppies of Cuppies)

And here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

[good--bye--binary]

Since her election in 2019, #LoriLIEFoot has spent over $2 billion on the Chicago Police Department. Lori’s campaign promises to reopen schools and mental health clinics have gone unfulfilled and unheard, leaving Black and Brown communities under resourced and overpoliced.

According to defundchicagopolice.com, the CPD’s budget has increased every single year since 2012. Under Lori’s first year of leadership, it increased by at least $121,504,351.

We demand #LoriLIEFoot and City Council defund the Chicago Police Department and invest in the things that actually make our communities safer: quality housing for all, universal health care, community-based mental health services, income support, safe living wage employment, education and youth programming.

Join us TODAY at Wrightwood and Kimball to demand Lori Lightfoot #DefundCPD and defend Black lives. 5pm.

Take digital action at bit.ly/happybdaylori.

image by Cori Lin (@cori.lin.art)

#HappyBdayLori #DefundCPD #DefundorResign #58candles

[afriqveens]

Press Release

Press Release A Virtual Discussion On Policing Data, and Transparency-

October 1stAn awesome group of panelist put together by the board of UCFTP otherwise known as cops off campus on twitter, run by an assembly on California’s university campus is hosting a viirtual discussion on October 1st. This panel will feature Alicia Hurtado, Carenotcops, Damon Jones, Harris School of Public policy , Invisible Institute Trina Reynolds-Tyler, MAira Khwaja and will be moderated by the University of Chicago department of Sociology. On Thursday, October 1st- this discussion will be centered on the ongoing efforts to defund Uchicago police. There will also be talk about police field stop & data, as well sharing ongoing efforts to hold police accountable. The overarching themes will be centered around community,safety, and information about the university of Chicago police department. Cops of Campus is an organization that promotes awareness about policing in America’s universities. They host a number of events year round teaching about diversity issues, support in college communities and more.This event can be streamed live at 6pm central time.. and you can register online here at this link. Bitly.com/UPDDATA