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dark-academia-newsroom · 4 years ago

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Advice for early career and student journalists

I’m making this post because students will often reach out to me for advice. I’m always happy to chat, but thought I would do a brain dump on tumblr as an easy-to-share resource. I’ll continue adding things as I think of them.

First, who I am: Right now, I’m the audience engagement editor at the Center for Public Integrity, one of America’s oldest, Pulitzer-prize winning, nonprofit newsrooms. I handle digital strategy, social media, partnerships, crowdsourced investigations, newsletters, metrics, SEO and help with membership building. I also sometimes report when I can. -whew- Before that, I was doing audience engagement at POLITICO. I hope my experience can be useful to you! ✨

Low-hanging fruit:

Network but IRL: I feel like I could have done this more when I was an undergraduate student. There are a ton of groups that regularly host events like the Online News Association, Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, National Association for Black Journalists, National Association for Hispanic Journalists and more. I personally like smaller events so that you can get to know people on a more intimate level. Conferences are sometimes intimidating but special tracts or scholarships for students are really great opportunities that you should take advantage of.

Reach out to people you admire: First, they might actually end up being your colleague or superior one day. It’s also great to get advice from journalists you want to emulate. If you want a similar career, learn from the best!

Have a portfolio: It doesn’t have to be fancy –– my first portfolio was on tumblr! It helps to have your work in one place so employers can have your information and experience on hand.

Build your social presence: It doesn’t just help with clout. Employers can get a sense of who you are and based on what you tweet (since journalist Twitter is still a thing), it shows that you’re thinking critically about the conversations going on in the industry.

Keep up with industry news: Read Nieman Lab, Poynter, Pew research etc. You’ll be remembered not just for reporting, but for executing journalism smartly. Plugging into tough conversations in the industry also helps build your news judgement.

Be active at your campus paper: It’ll help you get experience and internships which lead to jobs!

P.S. A job interview starts the minute you walk through the door or pick up a phone, not when you’re sitting down across from the hiring manager. Use every minute you have with them to impress.

For the workplace:

Journalism is best when it’s collaborative: Aim to work with people who will elevate your journalism. They might be on a different team from yours entirely.

Go the extra mile, but know your limits: This one is pretty self explanatory. If you can do something, say yes. But if your plate is full you should communicate that to your editor and they will help you reprioritize. They should work with you, especially if you’re still in school.

Ask questions: I still sometimes hesitate to ask my director questions. But it’s important to make sure you have your ducks in a row. Depending on the story, asking questions might even be a matter of safety.

Speak up: If you have an idea you want to spitball, share it with your editor or at the all staff meeting. It might be intimidating, but it’s better to be generous with your ideas. You can’t build from nothing. Btw, you might know something that other people don’t –– even if you feel you’re the least experienced because of your age. You have something to contribute and people should recognize that.

Roll with the punches: Don’t beat yourself up too badly when you make a mistake. I sometimes think back on errors I’ve made, especially while covering breaking news. I learned from those mistakes and did better the next time. That’s what counts.

Join your diversity committee: If you care about an equitable world, start with your newsroom. If you don’t have a diversity committee, start one!

Join your coworkers for drinks or hangs: Camaraderie amongst coworkers builds a strong team. I'm not promoting alcoholism...but journalists do have strong livers for a reason.

Keep your receipts: If there’s ever an issue with senior management, write the incident down, export your emails and screenshot your messages. The first thing HR will ask for is proof. Also, don’t send anything you don’t want other people to see.

For reporting:

Think outside the box: With interactives, video, graphics and social media, there’s a ton of ways to experiment with different forms of storytelling and soliciting feedback from audiences to help inform your work. You’ll be remembered for implementing something new.

Don’t get attached: Editing is a bitch, no matter what the medium. You’re gonna see a lot of red lines or cuts. Don’t be discouraged. It’s normal! Unless you can make a case for why something is really strong or necessary to include, you might want to check yourself and see if you’re being too precious about your work. I found that my editors were wise enough to make decisions that strengthened my copy.

Listen humbly: Always consider the possibility that the story that you originally had in mind could be completely wrong. Journalists are not experts at everything. Be flexible and report on what you find. Treat people with dignity and compassion.

Journalism is a service: Before you report a story, ask yourself who you’re serving by reporting it. How are you contributing to the narrative? What impact do you hope this will make? Who are you holding accountable? How are you lifting people up? Who isn’t being heard?

Diversify your sources: Make sure POC, women, LGBTQ+ are represented in your work, even if they’re not explicitly talking about their identities, you’re highlighting their voices and expertise.

General advice:

You are your best hype-man: No award or accomplishment is too small. Celebrate! And #humblebrag.

Question everything: Even your editor and yourself!

Know your worth: Don’t let anyone drag you down. And if you can’t afford it, don’t work for free.

Objectivity isn’t real: “Both sides” journalism is not it. Why? It fails to acknowledge injustice and structural inequalities our country is built on. The role of media is to use it’s power and influence to inform and hold people accountable for upholding those structures. If something is wrong, call it out.

Wellp, these are all the things that I can think of off the top of my head. Let me know if I missed anything! :’)

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 16, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

The reality that Joe Biden is about to become president and Kamala Harris is about to become vice president is sinking in across Washington, and today gave us some indications of what that’s going to mean.

Stories about what exactly happened in the Trump administration are coming out, and they are not pretty. Politics trumped everything for members of the administration, even our lives.

Today Representative James Clyburn (D-SC), who chairs the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, revealed documents from senior appointees in the Trump administration overriding the work of the career officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those documents show that the political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services called for dealing with the coronavirus crisis by pursuing a strategy of “herd immunity,” deliberately spreading the coronavirus to try to infect as many people as possible, with the theory that this approach would minimize the dangers of the pandemic. While doing so, they downplayed what they were doing, tried to hide the dangers of the virus, and blamed the career scientists who objected to this strategy for the rising death rates.

Although the White House has tried to distance itself from senior Health and Human Services Adviser Paul Alexander, last summer he was widely perceived to speak for his boss Michael Caputo, the Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs whom Trump had appointed, and for the White House itself. Alexander, a part-time university professor from Canada, defended Trump against scientists, accusing CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat of lying when she provided accurate public information about the worsening pandemic. When she suggested everyone should wear a mask, he claimed: “her aim is to embarrass the President.” Alexander attacked Anthony Fauci for his attempts to protect Americans. “He just won’t stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” wrote Alexander on July 3, 2020 (yes, I counted the exclamation points); “does he think he is the President???”

Alexander advocated spreading the infection to younger Americans: “So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares? If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares…as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests.”

Alexander wrote to Caputo: “There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD.” On the same day, he wrote: “Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…”

On July 24, he wrote to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Caputo: “it may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected” as a strategy to get “natural immunity…natural exposure,” an argument that illuminates Trump’s insistence this summer that schools and colleges must open.

But the idea that young people are safe from the virus is wrong. Today, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that while Americans older than 65 have borne the brunt of the coronavirus, young adults are suffering terribly. From March through July, there were almost 12,000 more deaths than expected among adults from 25 to 44. Young Black and Hispanic Americans make up not just a disproportionate number of that group of victims; they are a majority. Those extraordinary death rates have continued. Younger adults are indeed endangered by the coronavirus; the idea it is harmless to them “has simply not been borne out by emerging data,” doctors Jeremy Samuel Faust, Harlan M. Krumholz, and Rochelle P. Walensky—Biden’s pick to run the CDC-- wrote in the New York Times today.

Another report today showcases two former CDC political appointees who are now speaking out to call attention to the silencing of career scientists at the agency. Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the CDC, and his deputy Amanda Campbell watched as political appointees in Washington ignored scientists, censored doctors’ messages to the public, and cut the agency’s budget. “It was… like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC,” McGowan told New York Times reporter Noah Weiland. “Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won.”

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking website from the Poynter Institute, named the downplaying and denial of the seriousness of coronavirus its “Lie of the Year.”

Today it became clear the administration dropped the ball in other important ways. We have more information now about the extensive computer hack that appears to have been conducted by operatives from the Russian government. It’s bad. Hackers placed malware on commercial network management software upgrades to gain access to government computers, along with those of major U.S. companies, as far back as last March. They have been able to root around in our secrets for months. Hackers accessed the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and parts of the Pentagon, among other targets. The intrusion was discovered on December 8, when the cybersecurity company FireEye realized it had been hacked and alerted the FBI.

Today the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), issued a joint statement acknowledging “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” and indicated they are not sure yet what has been hit. “This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government.” It is clear the U.S. has been hit hard: Trump’s National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has cut short an overseas trip to come home and deal with the crisis.

In the New York Times, Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security Adviser said, “the magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate.” He insisted the U.S. must call out Russia for this attack (assuming it is confirmed that that country is, indeed, behind the attack). “Trump must make it clear to Vladimir Putin that these actions are unacceptable. The U.S. military and intelligence community must be placed on increased alert; all elements of national power must be placed on the table.”

“President Trump is on the verge of leaving behind a federal government, and perhaps a large number of major industries, compromised by the Russian government. He must use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.”

The New York Times called this breach “among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it “stunning.” “Today’s classified briefing on Russia’s cyberattack left me deeply alarmed, in fact downright scared. Americans deserve to know what’s going on,” he tweeted. Blumenthal also recognized the severity of the coronavirus early: he tweeted on February 25: “This morning’s classified coronavirus briefing should have been made fully open to the American people—they would be as appalled & astonished as I am by the inadequacy of preparedness & prevention.”

And yet, there are signs that the country is reorienting itself away from Trump and modern-day Republicanism.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, previously a staunch Trump supporter, has released an advertisement urging people to wear masks and admitting he was wrong not to wear one at the White House. It seems likely he is eyeing a future presidential run, and clearly is calculating that it is wise these days to distance himself from Trump’s anti-mask politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has refused to advance a coronavirus relief bill since the House passed one last May, seven months ago, is now trying to make a deal that includes direct payments to Americans hurt by the pandemic. He explained to Republicans today that Republican senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are running against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia, are “getting hammered” because the people want the bill and the Senate is holding it up.

Finally, Bloomberg last night ran a story by journalist Craig Stirling highlighting the work of economists David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, who examined the concept of “supply side economics,” or the “trickle down theory.” This is the economic theory popularized in the 1980s saying it’s best for the economy not to support wages at the bottom of the economy—the demand side—but rather to free up capital at the top—the supply side—because wealthy entrepreneurs will create new jobs and the resulting economic growth will help everyone. This idea has been behind the Republicans’ forty-year commitment to tax cuts for the wealthy.

In their study of 18 countries over 50 years, Hope and Limberg concluded that this theory was wrong. Tax cuts do not, they prove, trickle down. They do little to promote growth or create jobs. Instead, they mostly just help the people who get the tax cuts.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Criminal GOP #corrupt GOP #political #election 2020 #COVID-19 #global pandemic #incompetent GOP #malevolent GOP

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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In The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite (2020), building on my argument in The Next American Nation (1995), I offered an answer. I proposed that, while the proletariat is still the proletariat, James Burnham, Bruno Rizzi, John Kenneth Galbraith and other thinkers were correct that by the mid-twentieth century power had passed from individual bourgeois business owners to a new ruling class of technocrats or bureaucrats, whose income, wealth, and status is linked to their positions in large, hierarchical organizations, (i.e. nonprofits, government agencies, industrial and financial firms, and so on).

I use the term “overclass” to describe this group. A similar though not identical concept is what is known, after Barbara Ehrenreich, as the “professional-managerial class” (PMC). Whatever terminology you prefer to use, generalizations about all Western elites need to be accompanied by more granular analysis at the level of each country. Referring only to the U.S., I think it is helpful to go beyond the basic distinction between the overclass and the working class and identify distinct groups within each.

…

But the American elite includes three other groups, in addition to these bureaucratic managers. One consists of hereditary rentiers—heirs and heiresses, born into rich families. Old money types should be distinguished from tycoons like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, who tend to be products of upper-middle-class or modestly rich families who happened to become incredibly rich. Only the most primitive Marxists believe that a tiny group of individual capitalists—to the manor born or self-made—controls modern societies from behind the scenes. I will not pay further attention to old money in this essay.

In German a distinction has long been made between the Besitzbürgertum (propertied bourgeoisie) and the Bildungsbürgertum (educated bourgeoisie). The equivalents of these two groups exist in the U.S. today. They are distinct from the big-organization managers and important in American politics out of all proportion to their numbers. Lumping them together as “PMC” confuses matters. Let us call them the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie.

The professional bourgeoisie—made up of lawyers, doctors, professors, K-12 teachers, journalists, nonprofit workers, and many of the clergy—is concentrated in the teaching, helping, and research sectors. Their jobs often pay modestly but provide both status and a degree of personal autonomy that the frequently better-paid managerial functionaries in more hierarchical occupations do not possess.

The small business bourgeoisie consists of the owner-operators of small businesses and franchises, along with genuine contractors (as opposed to proletarian “gig workers”), both those who are self-employed and those who employ others.

…

The working class in the U.S. is divided as well. First, there is the heartland working class—those who work in the industries located in the low-density exurban heartland. These industries include manufacturing, agriculture, energy, retail distribution and warehousing.

And then there is the hub-city working class. This class of workers can be found in metropolises like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Houston. Many of these members work directly for the urban overclass as maids, nannies and other domestic staff, or otherwise indirectly in luxury services that cater to the affluent elite.

(A note: by the “heartland working class” I do not mean the stereotypical “white working class.” Most African-Americans and Hispanics are high-school-educated workers who live and work in suburbs and exurbs. Those areas also contain many foreign-born workers, though first-generation immigrants make up a greater share of the populations of hub cities.)

To the distinct hub and heartland working classes can be added a third non-elite group, often described as the lumpenproletariat—or, perhaps more clearly, the “underclass.” (In the 1990s the speech police of the politically-correct left banned the use of “underclass” from academic and journalistic usage in the U.S., but the term is neither racist nor an insult.) This refers to members of often-broken families caught in multigenerational poverty, particularly those trapped in the grim carceral subculture of public housing, food stamps, petty crime, and the prison-industrial complex. Like the hub and heartland working classes, the multigenerational underclass is racially and ethnically diverse, and found in both urban and rural parts of the U.S.

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Since this is all very abstract, an image might help. Visualize two horseshoes—a lower horseshoe whose two prongs point up, and an upper horseshoe whose two prongs point down. The lower horseshoe has the underclass at the bottom/midpoint and the hub city working class and the heartland working class as the points of its two opposing prongs. The upper horseshoe has the managerial elite proper as its midpoint/apex and the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie as the points of its two opposing prongs. Arranged in this way, the two horseshoes form a rough outline of a circle, with the managerial elite at the very top, the underclass at the very bottom, and the two working classes and the two bourgeoisies distributed in between.

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American politics is little more than the internal politics of the overclass, now that the working-class majority has lost the grassroots, mass-membership institutions that once gave it collective bargaining power—private sector trade unions, influential religious organizations, and local political parties. Members of the working-class majority play no role except as occasional voters. They tend to be ignored, except during election seasons, when they are targeted by manipulative appeals based on race and gender in the case of the Democrats and religion and patriotism in the case of the Republicans.

…

At the risk of being overly schematic I would suggest that the “center,” “left” and “right” of America’s top-thirty-percent politics can be mapped imperfectly onto the managerial elite, the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie. In particular, both DSA progressivism and Tea Party conservatism can be understood as different strategies for enlisting the power of government to stave off the proletarianization of the constituents of the two bourgeoisies.

The goal of so-called progressivism in 2020s America is to expand employment opportunities for college-educated, center-left professionals, while adding new wings to the welfare state that are tailored to their personal needs. The slogan “Defund the police” is interpreted by the bourgeois professional left to mean transferring tax revenues from police officers, who are mostly unionized but not college-educated, to social service and nonprofit professionals, who are mostly college-educated but not unionized. The enactment of proposals for free college education and college debt forgiveness would disproportionately benefit the professional bourgeoisie, not the working-class majority whose education ends with high school. Likewise, public funding for universal day-care allows both parties in a two-earner professional couple to maximize their individual incomes and individual career achievements by outsourcing the care of their children to a mostly-female, less well-paid workforce at taxpayer expense.

It is no coincidence that many professionals in the sectors most dependent on their funding on donations from the capricious rich, like philanthropy, colleges and universities, and the media, hate billionaires with the passionate resentment that is reserved for benefactors. In their view, in a just society, the arts program or the NGO would be permanently funded by tax revenues, instead of annual fund-raising appeals to this or that plutocrat’s personal fortune or foundation.

Gore Vidal was known to say that America has socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. Contemporary American progressivism can be succinctly described as social democracy for the professional class.

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To avoid being squeezed out of existence between big business and organized labor, the small business bourgeoisie has fought for generations on two fronts, demanding subsidies and exemptions from government regulations, while insisting on anti-union and anti-labor legislation and a reliable supply of cheap labor (preferably guest workers or illegal immigrants who cannot vote). The lobbies for the small business sector naturally oppose any “decommodifying” social insurance reforms. Examples are longer periods for unemployment insurance or universal health care, each of which can increase the bargaining power even of non-unionized workers by allowing them to hold out longer until employers are forced to make better offers.

The upper horseshoe schema explains American political factions in terms of different combinations of its elements. When the professional bourgeoisie allies itself with the Managerial Elite, you get Clinton-Obama-Biden left-neoliberalism. When the small business bourgeoisie allies itself with the Managerial Elite, you get George W. Bush-Paul Ryan-Nikki Haley right-neoliberalism.

When the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie unite with each other against the oligopolies and monopolies that dominate modern industry and finance and the managers who run them, you get the neo-Brandeisian, small-is-beautiful antitrust school. Their anachronistic small-producerist ideal, in which everything big has been broken up by government antitrust litigation, is an economy of small shops, artisanal craft breweries and independent doctors and lawyers.

…

The protests associated with the first reopening were led during the early stages of the lockdown by conservative members of the small business bourgeoisie. Many of their undercapitalized storefront businesses, like hair salons, and restaurants, and car repair shops, were threatened or wiped out by city and state shut-down orders. The protests were dominated by petty-bourgeois business owners, and not their low-paid employees—some of whom might have been endangered by a premature return to their workplaces during the pandemic.

The initial response of the progressive professional bourgeoisie was to ridicule and denounce the right-wingers for endangering their own lives and those of others by ignoring the advice of credentialed public health experts.

Then, during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, the same progressive professional bourgeoisie concluded that systemic racism was a greater threat to public health than COVID-19, which—mirabile dictu!—cannot be spread at left-wing demonstrations.

…

What does all of this mean for the neglected working-class majority on the sidelines of American politics? A century ago, trade unionists like Samuel Gompers and socialists like Eugene Debs criticized antitrust and praised large industrial combinations, on the sensible grounds that large, modern corporations are easier to unionize and/or socialize than lots of small businesses.

A case can be made that both the professional bourgeoisie and the small business bourgeoisie are relics of an earlier techno-economic paradigm. Each is a leftover pocket of technological backwardness and labor exploitation in an advanced industrial economy.

In American higher education, a dwindling minority of tenured academics, using pedagogical methods unchanged from the agrarian era, lords it over a mass of impoverished guild apprentices, the poorly-paid, insecure, non-unionized adjuncts who now teach most university students nationwide. At the same time, the business models of many small, owner-operated firms in the U.S. are made possible by poor-country levels of worker rights and social insurance—and much of the workforce consists of recent, desperate immigrants from actual poor countries. Because the backward professional and small business sectors have much lower productivity than the rationalized, capital-intensive parts of the economy like manufacturing and energy, they pay low wages to much of their workforces while charging high prices to consumers.

Needless to say, any new cross-class settlement would have to follow the recreation of powerful mass-membership working-class organizations in current and newly-rationalized, sectors, which would permit the transformation of the majority of Americans in the bottom horseshoe into subjects, not mere objects, of American politics. But that is a story for another day.

#michael lind #the bellows #read the whole thing

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lukemeintheeye · 5 years ago

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WASHINGTON - Senior Trump administration officials considered resigning en masse last year in a “midnight self-massacre” to sound a public alarm about President Donald Trump’s conduct, but rejected the idea because they believed it would further destabilize an already teetering government, according to a new book by an unnamed author.

In "A Warning" by Anonymous, obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release, a writer described only as "a senior official in the Trump administration" paints a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead.

The author - who first captured attention in 2018 as the unidentified author of a New York Times opinion column - describes Trump careening from one self-inflicted crisis to the next, "like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport."

The book is an unsparing character study of Trump, from his morality to his intellectual depth, which the author writes is based on his or her observations and experiences. The author claims many other current and former administration officials share his or her views.

The 259-page book - which was published by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, and goes on sale Nov. 19 - does not re-create many specific episodes in vivid detail, which the author writes was intentional to protect his or her identity.

At a moment when a stream of political appointees and career public servants have testified before Congress about Trump's conduct as part of the House impeachment inquiry, the book's author defends his or her decision to remain anonymous.

"I have decided to publish this anonymously because this debate is not about me," the author writes. "It is about us. It is about how we want the presidency to reflect our country, and that is where the discussion should center. Some will call this 'cowardice.' My feelings are not hurt by the accusation. Nor am I unprepared to attach my name to criticism of President Trump. I may do so, in due course."

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham derided the book as a "work of fiction" and its anonymous author as a "coward."

"The coward who wrote this book didn't put their name on it because it is nothing but lies," Grisham wrote in an email. "Real authors reach out to their subjects to get things fact checked - but this person is in hiding, making that very basic part of being a real writer impossible. Reporters who choose to write about this farce should have the journalistic integrity to cover the book as what it is - a work of fiction."

Earlier this week, the Justice Department warned Hachette and the author's agents, Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin, that the anonymous official may be violating a nondisclosure agreement. Javelin responded by accusing the administration of seeking to unmask the author.

The author’s Sept. 5, 2018, op-ed in the Times, headlined “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” depicted some senior officials as a bulwark protecting the country from the president’s reckless impulses. Trump denounced it at the time as treasonous.

In the book, the author repudiates the central thesis of the column: "I was wrong about the 'quiet resistance' inside the Trump administration. Unelected bureaucrats and cabinet appointees were never going to steer Donald Trump the right direction in the long run, or refine his malignant management style. He is who he is."

The author describes senior officials waking up in the morning "in a full-blown panic" over the wild pronouncements the president had made on Twitter.

"It's like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him," the author writes. "You're stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn't do it every single day, his words aren't broadcast to the public, and he doesn't have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on."

The book depicts Trump as making misogynistic and racist comments behind the scenes.

"I've sat and listened in uncomfortable silence as he talks about a woman's appearance or performance," the author writes. "He comments on makeup. He makes jokes about weight. He critiques clothing. He questions the toughness of women in and around his orbit. He uses words like 'sweetie' and 'honey' to address accomplished professionals. This is precisely the way a boss shouldn't act in the work environment."

The author alleges that Trump attempted a Hispanic accent during an Oval Office meeting to complain about migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We get these women coming in with like seven children," Trump said, according to the book. "They are saying, 'Oh, please help! My husband left me!' They are useless. They don't do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something."

The author argues that Trump is incapable of leading the United States through a monumental international crisis, describing how he tunes out intelligence and national security briefings and theorizing that foreign adversaries see him as "a simplistic pushover" who is susceptible to flattery and easily manipulated.

After the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, the author writes, Trump vented to advisers and said he would be foolish to stand up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

"Do you know how stupid it would be to pick this fight?" Trump said, according to the book. "Oil would go up to one hundred fifty dollars a barrel. Jesus. How [expletive] stupid would I be?"

The book contains a handful of startling assertions that are not backed up with evidence, such as a claim that if a majority of the Cabinet were prepared to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Mike Pence would have been supportive.

Pence denied this on Thursday, calling the book "appalling" and telling reporters, "I never heard anything in my time as vice president about the 25th Amendment. And why would I?"

One theme laced throughout the book is Trump's indifference to the boundaries of the law. The author writes that Trump considered presidential pardons as "unlimited 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards on a Monopoly board," referring to news reports that he had offered pardons to aides.

As he ranted about federal courts ruling against some of his policies, including the 2017 travel ban, the author writes, Trump once asked White House lawyers to draft a bill to send to Congress reducing the number of federal judges.

"Can we just get rid of the judges? Let's get rid of the [expletive] judges," the president said, according to the book. "There shouldn't be any at all, really."

The author portrays Trump as fearful of coups against him and suspicious of note-takers on his staff. According to the book, the president shouted at an aide who was scribbling in a notebook during a meeting, "What the [expletive] are you doing?" He added, "Are you [expletive] taking notes?" The aide apologized and closed the notebook.

The author also ruminates about Trump's fitness for office, describing him as reckless and without full control of his faculties.

“I am not qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity,” the author writes. “All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.”

#A Warning #Books #Publishing #Donald Trump #racism

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bloomsburgu · 6 years ago

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ABC's John Quiñones to headline MLK commemorative event

Author, broadcast journalist and motivational speaker, John Quiñones will speak at Bloomsburg University for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration. The lecture will be held Monday, Feb. 11, at 6 p.m. in Carver Hall's Gross Auditorium and is open free to the public.

Quiñones has worked in different capacities at ABC News since 1982, working on programs such as 20/20, Good Morning America, Nightline and most notably as an anchor on ABC World News Tonight. He is a seven-time Emmy Award winner for his work on ABC.

Quiñones is the author of two books, “Heroes Among Us: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Choices,” and “What Would You Do? Words of Wisdom About Doing the Right Thing.” Quiñones is also the creator and host of the show “What Would You Do?,” a hidden camera show exposing the difficult choices people make in tough situations.

Quiñones success stems from his desire to break free from the Hispanic stereotyping he experienced growing up in San Antonio, Texas. When his father asked if John wanted to pick cherries for the rest of his life, as he himself did, Quinones realized he had a choice. He committed himself to education to climb out of poverty, bringing his family along with him. Participation in the federal program, Upward Bound enabled him to attend St. Mary’s University, in Texas for Speech Communications. He began a broadcasting career while he attended Columbia University for a master’s degree in journalism.

BU's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration is sponsored by the Multicultural Center and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion.

Black History Month Events

Wednesday, Feb. 6 — Elevate You at BU, 3 p.m., KUB Multicultural Center

Monday, Feb. 11 — MLK Jr. Commemorative Celebration, 6 p.m., Carver Hall

Wednesday, Feb. 13 — For the Love presented by the Black Cultural Society, 8:30 p.m., KUB Multicultural Center

Saturday, Feb. 16 — Sankofa Conference, Kehr Union Building

Monday, Feb. 18 — Disabilities Etiquette: Advancing Cultural Competence Across Communities by Carolyn Reid-Brown, assistant professor of exceptionalities, 5 p.m., KUB Multicultural Center

Monday, Feb. 25 — Black Mental Health Matters by Philip Roundtree '05, founder/CEO at Quadefy LLC, 6 p.m., KUB Multicultural Center

#MLK #SpeakerSeries #SenseOfCommunity #BlackHistoryMonth #MulticulturalAffairs #ABCNews #GoodMorningAmerica

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danayescanaverino · 7 years ago

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Top 3 Groups Every Latina Entrepreneur Should Join

Here's the latest from my blog:

To say that Latinas are killing it in the entrepreneurial space is an understatement.

According to the the 2016 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report commissioned by American Express OPEN, Latina owned businesses led the way in driving new business growth. Latina owned companies grew by 137% versus 45% for women-owned firms between 2007 and 2016.

Image: THE 2016 STATE OF WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES REPORT

As the number of Latina business owners continues to grow, there is a need for places to support and network with one another. I have been researching and joining groups and organizations in the hopes of learning more about fellow Latina entrepreneurs.

Here are three of my favorite places to network with my fellow Latina entrepreneurs.

Latinas in Business

According to their website, LatinasinBusiness.us is a community of communicators and business owners seeking to support, enrich and empower the experience of Latinas in business and the workplace. From those running their own enterprises to those just entering the labor force or sitting in the corner office, LatinasInBusiness.us is dedicated to the fastest growing business community in the nation: Latinas.

It’s Founder and Editor-in-Chief is Susana Bauman, an award-winning journalist, author, multicultural expert, public speaker, small business advocate. Susana is an Argentinean immigrant who started her own small business over 20 years ago. Now, through her new digital platform and social media channels, she advocates for the economic empowerment of Latinas in the United States.

Image: Susana Bauman Founder LatinasinBusiness.us

Events

LatinasinBusiness.us is hosting their 2017 Latina Small Biz Expo and Pitch your Business to the Media Competition. The event will take place at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Campus Center Atrium in Newark, NJ on November 9, 2017.

Image: LatinasInBusiness.us

Here is a peak at last year’s event.

youtube

My Take:

The site features Latina entrepreneurs as well as networking and lifestyle resources. This is one of the few newsletters I actually look forward to reading.

More importantly, the corresponding Facebook group is very active and a great resource to connect with other Latina bosses. I’ve made some great connections and learned about several events.

Latins Think Big®

Per their website, Latinas Think Big® is an award-winning network and career platform, building a global society of prosperous women. We galvanize the big ideas, careers and ventures of Latinas through summits, a dynamic online community, career advice, and influential networks.

The founder, Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin, is a social entrepreneur and psychologist who has dedicated her professional life to empowering the lives and careers of women. Dr. Perez-Litwin has showcased the innovative ideas and contributions of Latinas through dynamic Summits, hosted at Google, Twitter, Harvard Kennedy School and Columbia University, among others. Previously, Dr. Perez-Litwin had a faculty appointment at New York School of Medicine, where she conducted research and led a diagnostic clinic. She continues her work as a psychologist with a private practice in New York.

Image: Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin Founder, Dr. Latinas Think Big®

My take:

With over 17,000 members, the Facebook group for Latinas Think Big® is the largest gathering of Latina leaders on the platform. I love reading about the events and launches from fellow Latinas and connecting with my peers. It is the most engaged and thriving network on Facebook and there are weekly opportunities to promote jobs, events and business connections.

#WeAllGrow Latina Network

#WeAllGrow Latina Network is the first and largest network of digital Latina influencers in the U.S. Aside from it’s influencer agency services, the network also features events and an annual Summit where members can meet and foster brand partnerships.

After a career of more than 15 years creating content for US Hispanics and the LatAm market as a producer for major Spanish-language networks, founder and ceo Ana Flores transitioned to launching the award-winning SpanglishBaby.com. Her many accomplishments since then include co-authoring the book Bilingual is Better and being recognized by the prestigious Holmes Report among their 2015 Innovator 25. A passionate advocate for portraying Latina women in a positive light, in 2016, Ana was invited to speak on two occasions at the White House, including the United State of Women Summit, on issues of gender diversity.

Image: Ana Flores, Founder & CEO, #WeAllGrow Latina Network

Events

Their next summit is being held on March 1-4, 2018 at the Hotel Maya in Southern California with a theme of “The Beauty of Evolution”. According to their website, it is meant “to celebrate the beautiful evolution of our community as it continues to manifest into a powerful sisterhood.”

Here is a look at last year’s summit.

youtube

My take:

While the network is known as a platform for Latina influencers and the brands who love them, I find it to be much more than that. The facebook group is full of inspiration and collaboration among members who range anywhere from established authors and celebrities to the new mom blogger who doesn’t quite know where to start. Ana has really figured out how to service the need for a community of Latina entrepreneurs in the digital creator space that celebrates its members and fosters sisterhood and collaboration.

The facebook group feels like I am meeting with a group of amigas to have a cafecito and chat about life, current events and opportunities. I haven’t been to an event yet due to scheduling conflicts, but I am super excited about making it to one very soon.

Which Group Is Right For You?

If you aren’t sure where to start, I suggest creators such as bloggers, vloggers and social media mavens join #WeAllGrow Latina Network. It is the more casual and laid back of the groups. If you are looking for business networking opportunities, then the other two groups are a good fit.

Remember to make a time commitment and invest in engaging and being active in any group you join. As cliche as it sounds, you only get what you put in. I see it in my own networking. The more I give to the groups, the more I receive in connections and opportunities.

The post Top 3 Groups Every Latina Entrepreneur Should Join appeared first on Danay.

via WordPress http://www.danay.net/top-3-groups-every-latina-entrepreneur-join/

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polixy · 5 years ago

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Before the pandemic, three-quarters of Americans said people would cooperate with each other in a crisis

Before the pandemic, three-quarters of Americans said people would cooperate with each other in a crisis;

An elementary school cafeteria manager hands a woman free breakfast and lunch meals for her grandchildren on March 17 in Boston. Schools there are closed amid the COVID-19 outbreak. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

Americans say there has been a decline in public trust in the federal government and in each other, and they believe this erosion of confidence makes it harder to solve some of the nation’s pressing problems, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2018.

But one finding from the study may offer some hope as the country confronts the new coronavirus: Three-quarters of Americans said people would cooperate with each other in a crisis, even if they didn’t trust each other. Around a quarter (24%) said people wouldn’t cooperate in a crisis if they didn’t trust each other.

Cooperating in a time of a crisis has taken on new urgency as federal, state and local government leaders urge Americans to stay at home, practice “social distancing” and take other steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (It’s important to note that respondents to the 2018 survey may have been focusing more on how Americans might actively assist those in need during a crisis, rather than steering clear of others to avoid spreading a virus.)

How we did this

As the United States copes with the public health and economic fallout of the coronavirus, we revisited the findings of a late 2018 Pew Research Center survey about Americans and trust. The survey was conducted Nov. 27-Dec. 10, 2018, among 10,618 U.S. adults.

Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Recruiting our panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling). To further ensure that each survey reflects a balanced cross section of the nation, the data is weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.

Here are the questions asked in this survey, along with responses, and its methodology.

The survey found no partisan differences when it comes to how the public expects Americans might behave in a crisis. Around three-quarters of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (76%) as well as Democrats and Democratic leaners (75%) said people would cooperate with each other, even if they didn’t trust each other. By contrast, partisans were divided on many other questions related to public trust, including the confidence they place in key institutions and societal actors, from presidential appointees and career government officials to journalists.

The trust that majorities of Americans said they have each other in times of crisis generally held true across demographic groups. But there were some differences by income and education level, race and ethnicity, and age. For example, 81% of those in households earning $75,000 a year or more said people would cooperate with each other in a crisis, compared with around two-thirds (68%) of those in households earning less than $30,000 a year.

White adults (78%) were more likely than black (67%) and Hispanic (69%) adults to say people would cooperate with each in other in a time of crisis. And while eight-in-ten Americans ages 65 and older said people would cooperate with each other in a crisis, a slightly smaller share (71%) of those ages 18 to 29 said this. This reflects a broader pattern of young adults expressing less trust than their elders in other people and key institutions.

The survey also found divisions based on people’s overall levels of interpersonal trust – that is, whether people are “high trusters” (22% of all U.S. adults) “medium trusters” (41% of adults) or “low trusters” (35% of the public). Among those classified in the study as high trusters, 85% said people would cooperate with one another in a time of crisis, even if they didn’t trust each other. The share fell to 78% among those classified as “medium trusters” and 65% among those deemed “low trusters.” (You can read more here about how respondents were placed in one of these trust groups.)

Note: Here are the questions asked in this survey, along with responses, and its methodology.

; Blog – Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/19/before-the-pandemic-three-quarters-of-americans-said-people-would-cooperate-with-each-other-in-a-crisis/; ; March 19, 2020 at 07:21AM

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fullspectrum-cbd-oil · 5 years ago

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Seventeen Democrats, Three Republicans in U.S. Presidential Race

The historically large field of Democratic presidential candidates vying to take on Republican President Donald Trump in next November’s U.S. election was reduced by one on Wednesday when Wayne Messam dropped out of the race.

Messam, 45, the mayor of Miramar, Florida, announced via Twitter that he was suspending his campaign. His withdrawal brings the number of Democrats still in the race to 17, with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg also considering a White House bid as a Democrat.

TOP DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS

There are four candidates who have separated themselves thus far from the rest of the field among Democratic voters.

JOE BIDEN

Biden, the early Democratic front-runner in opinion polls, waited until April to enter the race, launching his bid with a direct swipe at Trump. Biden, 77, served eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president and 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He stands at the center of the Democratic debate over whether the party’s standard-bearer should be a veteran politician or a newcomer, and whether a liberal or a moderate has a better chance of defeating Trump. Biden, who frequently notes his ‘Middle-Class Joe’ nickname, touts his working-class roots and ability to work in a bipartisan fashion. Some fellow Democrats have criticized him for his role in passing tough-on-crime legislation in the 1990s.

ELIZABETH WARREN

The 70-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts is a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce critic of Wall Street. She was instrumental in creating the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008 financial crisis. Her campaign has surged in recent months, equaling Biden in some polls. She has focused her presidential campaign on a populist anti-corruption message, promising to fight what she calls a rigged system that favors the wealthy. She has released an array of policy proposals on everything from breaking up big tech companies to implementing a wealth tax on the richest Americans. Warren has sworn off political fundraising events to back her campaign.

BERNIE SANDERS

The U.S. senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but is trying again. For the 2020 race, Sanders, 78, is fighting to stand out in a field of progressives running on issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. Sanders suffered a heart attack while campaigning in Nevada in October, but there has been little impact so far on his support. His proposals include free tuition at public colleges, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and universal healthcare. He benefits from strong name recognition and an unmatched network of small-dollar donors.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, emerged from virtual anonymity to become one of the party’s brightest stars, building momentum with young voters. A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes scholar, he speaks seven languages conversationally and served in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve. He touts himself as representing a new generation of leadership needed to combat Trump. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay presidential nominee of a major American political party. Recent polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first nominating contests in February, put him ahead of the other leading candidates, even though his national standing is lower.

TRYING TO BREAK THROUGH

The rest of the Democratic field is a mix of seasoned politicians, wealthy business people and others still looking to break into or regain their toehold in the top tier of contenders.

KAMALA HARRIS

The first-term U.S. senator from California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Harris, 55, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She supports a middle-class tax credit, the Green New Deal and marijuana legalization. Her track record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general has drawn scrutiny in a Democratic Party that has grown more liberal in recent years on criminal justice issues. She saw a significant bounce in the polls after a high-profile clash with Biden over racial issues during the first Democratic debate in June but has since seen her numbers drop back down.

ANDREW YANG

The New York entrepreneur and former tech executive is focusing his campaign on an ambitious universal income plan. Yang, 44, wants to guarantee all Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 a $1,000 check every month. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang supports the Medicare for All proposal, which is based on the existing government-run Medicare program for Americans aged 65 and older, and has warned that automation is the biggest threat facing U.S. workers. His campaign has released more than 100 policy ideas, including eclectic proposals like creating an infrastructure force called the Legion of Builders and Destroyers.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

The U.S. senator from Minnesota was the first moderate in the Democratic field vying to challenge Trump. Klobuchar, 59, gained national attention when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings last year. On the campaign trail, the former prosecutor and corporate attorney has said she would improve on the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, by adding a public option, and is taking a tough stance against rising prescription drug prices.

CORY BOOKER

Booker, 50, a U.S. senator from New Jersey and former Newark mayor, gained national prominence in the fight over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Booker, who is black, has made race relations and racial disparities in the criminal justice system a focus of his campaign. He embraces progressive positions on healthcare coverage for every American, the Green New Deal and other key issues, and touts his style of positivity over attacks.

TULSI GABBARD

The Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and has centered her campaign on her anti-war stance. Having previously worked for her father’s anti-gay advocacy group and drafting relevant legislation, she later apologized for her past views on same-sex marriage. Gabbard’s populist, anti-war approach has won her fans among the far left and the far right, and she recently engaged in a Twitter war with Hillary Clinton, whom she called the “personification of the rot” after Clinton suggested Gabbard was being groomed for a third-party run at the presidency. Gabbard, 38, slammed Trump for standing by Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

JULIAN CASTRO

Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development would be the first Hispanic to win a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. Castro, 45, whose grandmother immigrated to Texas from Mexico, has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies. Castro advocates universal prekindergarten, supports Medicare for All and cites his experience to push for affordable housing. He announced his bid in his hometown of San Antonio, where he once served as mayor and as a city councilman. In the third Democratic debate in September, Castro drew jeers from the audience for an attack on Biden that was perceived as questioning the former vice president’s memory as a way to draw attention to his age.

TOM STEYER

A billionaire environmentalist and force in Democratic fundraising over the past decade, Steyer said in January he was focusing on his efforts to get Trump impeached and Democrats elected to Congress. Steyer, 62, reversed course in July, saying other Democrats had good ideas but “we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy.”

JOHN DELANEY

The former U.S. representative from Maryland became the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race, declaring his candidacy in July 2017. Delaney, 56, says that if elected, he would focus on advancing only bipartisan bills during the first 100 days of his presidency. He is also pushing for a universal healthcare system, raising the federal minimum wage, and passing gun safety legislation. A former business executive, Delaney is self-funding much of his campaign.

MICHAEL BENNET

Bennet, 54, a U.S. senator for Colorado, has based his political career on improving the American education system. He previously ran Denver’s public schools. Bennet is not well known nationally but has built a network of political operatives and donors helping elect other Democrats to the Senate. During the partial U.S. government shutdown in January, he garnered national attention criticizing Republicans for stopping the flow of emergency funds to Colorado.

STEVE BULLOCK

Montana’s Democratic governor, re-elected in 2016 in a conservative state that Trump carried by 20 percentage points, has touted his electability and ability to work across party lines. Bullock, 53, has made campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his agenda. He emphasizes his success in forging compromises with the Republican-led state legislature on bills to expand the Medicaid healthcare funding program for the poor, increase campaign finance disclosures, bolster pay equity for women, and protect public lands.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The 67-year-old best-selling author, motivational speaker and Texas native believes her spirituality-focused campaign can heal the United States. A 1992 interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show led Williamson to make a name for herself as a ‘spiritual guide’ for Hollywood and a self-help expert. She is calling for $100 billion in reparations for slavery to be paid over 10 years, gun control, education reform, and equal rights for lesbian and gay communities.

JOE SESTAK

The retired three-star Navy admiral and former congressman from Pennsylvania jumped into the race in June. Sestak, 67, highlighted his 31-year military career and said he was running to restore U.S. global leadership on challenges like climate change and China’s growing influence. Sestak said he had delayed his entry in the race to be with his daughter as she successfully fought a recurrence of brain cancer.

DEVAL PATRICK

Patrick is a late entry, launching his candidacy just days before early state filing deadlines. The 63-year-old African American and former Massachusetts governor said he was seeking to draw in Americans who felt left behind and to bridge a party he saw split between “nostalgia” or “big ideas” that left other voices out. The state’s first African American governor, Patrick was credited with implementing Massachusetts’ healthcare reform plan and tackling pension reform, transportation and the minimum wage. In 2014, Obama said Patrick would make “a great president or vice president,” although Patrick has said the former president was remaining neutral in the current race.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Former New York City Mayor and billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg, 77, has filed as a candidate in Alabama and Arkansas, but has not yet decided whether to run.

THE REPUBLICANS

Trump is the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination, and there has been criticism among his opponents that party leadership has worked to make it impossible for a challenger. Still, the incumbent will face at least two rivals.

DONALD TRUMP

The 73-year-old real estate mogul shocked the political establishment in 2016 when he secured the Republican nomination and then won the White House. His raucous political rallies and prolific use of Twitter were credited with helping him secure victory. After running as an outsider, Trump is now focusing his message on the strong economy, while continuing the anti-immigration rhetoric that characterized his first campaign as he vies for re-election.

JOE WALSH

A former congressman, Walsh, 57, has become a vocal critic of Trump, who he argues is not a conservative and is unfit for public office. Walsh won a House seat from Illinois as a candidate of the Republican Party’s fiscally conservative Tea Party movement in 2010, but was defeated by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in his 2012 re-election bid. After leaving Congress, he became a Chicago-area radio talk-show host.

BILL WELD

The 74-year-old former Massachusetts governor ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2016 as a Libertarian. He has been a persistent critic of Trump, saying when he launched his 2020 campaign that “the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.”

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson, Joseph Ax, Tim Reid, Sharon Bernstein, Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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billyagogo · 5 years ago

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Kennedy Ryan on how Shonda Rhimes and <em>Scandal</em> inspired her latest romance novels

New Post has been published on https://newsprofixpro.com/moxie/2019/10/03/kennedy-ryan-on-how-shonda-rhimes-and-scandal-inspired-her-latest-romance-novels/

Kennedy Ryan on how Shonda Rhimes and Scandal inspired her latest romance novels

Kennedy Ryan is an inspiration to a lot of people. As the first black author to win a coveted RITA Award from Romance Writers of America, Ryan has achieved a dream generations of women didn’t know they’d ever see come to pass. Yet for her, the victory is bittersweet. As she tells EW, “It is bittersweet because I know there are talented women who have written worthy stories in [RWA’s] 37-year history. When they announced my name, it really was so shocking for me — the way the room exploded. All of these black authors poured into the aisle as I was going up on stage. They had tears streaming down their face. It was a sense of we did it. It was so much bigger than my book, and so much bigger than me. I felt the weight of it.”

(Though Ryan won her award first that night, she broke the barrier alongside author M. Malone, who won for Romance Novella.) While Ryan is out here kicking down doors in the romance industry, she also has plenty of inspirations of her own. In publishing, she cites women like Beverly Jenkins and Sandra Kitt, authors who have been turning out romantic hits since the 1980s and ’90s. She’s not shy about declaring that she stands on the shoulders of giants. And then there are the women in other media who are directly inspiring her work and her storytelling — namely Shonda Rhimes and Ava DuVernay.

“Shonda Rhimes, there are aspects of my career I have modeled after her,” Ryan says. “Her and Ava DuVernay are two storytellers who are giants to me. To see a black storyteller who is given the agency and the space to create stories that everyone can relate to and become immensely popular, it was inspiring to me and became a blueprint for how I approached a lot of what I do. Writing diversely, but also writing widely — I saw that in Shonda Rhimes.”

So much so that Ryan’s next releases, the All the King’s Men duet, which EW can exclusively reveal the covers for below, were inspired by Rhimes’ hit series Scandal. The first novel, The Kingmaker (Oct. 28), begins an epic love story between political activist Lennix Hunter and power player Maxim Cade, and the story concludes in The Rebel King (Nov. 18).

Ahead of the books’ fall debuts, EW called up Ryan to discuss her RITA win, what fuels her heavier plotlines, and why interviewing is a crucial part of her writing process. Check out her striking covers and read more below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It’s been a few months since your historic RITA win. Has your perspective changed at all now that you’ve had some time to marinate in the victory?KENNEDY RYAN: When I write, I write on a mission. There is something very specific that’s propelling me to tell a story, and a theme that goes through most of my work is that I am all about centering marginalized people. All of these people who have been at the edges of traditional and mainstream romance, I write to put them at the center. What did shift for me was understanding the importance of that, and the breadth of it. Authors who have been in the game for 20, 25 years coming up to me and saying thank you — if you’re not humbled by that, there’s something wrong with you. One of them came to me and said, “I didn’t want to die before I see a black president, and I didn’t want to die before I see a black woman win the RITA, and you gave that to me tonight.” It’s just humbling. You want to continue to do that great work. You want to be representative. But also, I want to be very clear with people that I don’t feel I am exceptional. It’s a cop-out to say, “This book won because it’s so exceptional.” What I want people to hear is we had so many exceptional books written by black women before that never got in this space because of systemic bias.

What is the All the King’s Men duet about? It centers on a Yavapai Apache woman, a Native American woman from an Apache tribe based in western Arizona. She’s the heroine. [The hero is] a green-energy mogul whose father owns an oil company. Early on in the book, there’s a pipeline protest. There’s a cultural immediacy to a lot of my work, and usually it’s because I see something and feel like we should be talking about it more. I was watching everything that was going on with the DAPL protest — I saw that a lot of the water protectors are teenagers. The Native American youth really are on the front line of protests. They articulate that it’s a sacred connection — that protest is a way to connect in a sacred way to generations from before and to some of the traditions that have been lost. Where they first meet is at a pipeline protest, where she is one of these water protectors who’s on the front line of protesting the natural gas pipeline that his father’s company is laying on sacred burial ground. That’s how the book starts; it’s across many years.

You said Scandal was an inspiration to you. How did it influence this story? As soon as people hear politics, they assume it’s going to be divisive. I’m like, “Think Scandal,” you know? We all want that. [The heroine and her best friend] start a political consulting firm that focuses specifically on putting in power candidates who will champion the cause of marginalized people. They’re like the gladiators [of this world].

Given that political aspect, how much of the story is inspired by current events? Will we see much reference to today’s politics in the narrative? There is a fine line I walk between being a clarion voice in what feels like a very muddy landscape because a lot of times what we do is politicize things that are actually issues of humanity. It’s a cop-out to see something you know is a moral offense and because it has become polemicized, you feel the liberty to [label it]. When I wrote this book, I didn’t set out to be controversial. I don’t want people to read any of the early things about this book and think, “Well, I’m a Republican so this book isn’t for me,” because that’s not it at all. There are some things that are issues of humanity and issues of injustice.

[The heroine] is very true to her traditions and her culture. She speaks frankly on the kleptocratic history of this nation. People generally know we did Native Americans wrong. They will hear a heroine who is very comfortable and conversant in actual history and articulates that. For some people, that feels confrontational. It shouldn’t. It’s just true. I wouldn’t say that it’s this highly political book; it is a book that does not back down from what actually happened. It’s very much about truth. Guilt, especially in the context of where we are as a nation, is useless. I want us all to feel responsible for the future, and we can’t really be good stewards of the future if we don’t know and recognize what’s happened in the past. I honestly was terrified to write this book.

What is your research process like, particularly for a heroine with this highly specific cultural background? I interviewed 10 Native American women over the course of four months. No writing, only research. Only personal accounts. The same as any other cultural group, Native Americans are not monolithic. At least a third of those I was interviewing were from the particular tribe I selected for my heroine. I hired sensitivity readers from that cultural background to beta-read both books for me. That’s the process I have gone through to be respectful and responsible. It’s not that I don’t think people should write beyond their experience. But if you don’t deep-dive consult with someone who has lived that experience, it’s the height of arrogance. It’s irresponsible, and it’s probably going to be harmful. People talk about sensitivity reading and they confine it to race. I was listening to a podcast with Alyssa Cole, and she called it accuracy reading. It is sensitivity reading, for sure, but it’s also accuracy reading because you want to portray this in a way that is as true to real life experience as possible and that’s respectful.

It seems like your background as a journalist is essential to your writing process. People always ask me, “Why do you interview?” My background is journalism. That��s my default, is to not assume I know the story. I feel like I have to go get the story, if that makes sense. Every time I sit down, I think, “What don’t I know about this person? Where will I find that information?” For me, [making underrepresented people the heroes and heroines] is always the win. Whether it’s a black woman, a Hispanic woman, an other-abled woman — for someone to say, “I feel seen. When I read your stories, I see myself when I don’t in a lot of other stories.”

Your RITA-winning book, Long Shot, tackled domestic abuse. Can we expect that same level of heaviness in this duet? And if so, why is that intense subject matter something you keep coming back to? I don’t think it’s the same level of pain as Long Shot. That book it its own brand of raw. But there’s an emotional arc — if anybody ever tells you Kennedy Ryan wrote a rom-com, you know they’re lying. [People accuse me of writing women’s fiction.] I write stories that center powerful women, and they get a happily-ever-after. Whatever you want to call centering powerful women who end up happy, that’s what I write. It’s always going to have a happily-ever-after. I guarantee you that, but I don’t say it’s going to be easy.

What I enjoy is the hard-won happily-ever-after. I like to see love under pressure. As humans, we shine brightest under pressure. That’s how my own love story has gone — when we were in the darkest times, we clung to each other. We learned so much about each other. We loved each other most deeply when we were in pain. I just feel like true love and true happiness is something we should fight for — I don’t take it for granted. [But I also don’t want] the message of my book to be this woman would not be happy if she had not found this man. That’s why sometimes you’ll have these gaps. This one has one too. Readers are going to say, “Why was she apart from him?” Because she’s building her career. She’s living her life. She’s figuring out who she is. She’s finding out how to be happy with herself, and then, when she is ready, she engages in that relationship. She’s mentally happy. She’s emotionally whole. There’s an integrity to who she is as a person. Sometimes we don’t see that as much in romance, and it’s what I want to perpetuate.

These covers are very striking. What inspired the crisp, clean look? The word that came to me is power. I really play with what power really is in the book and how it’s abused and all that. [I was aiming for] a rumpled elegance. Those are buzzwords that my designer and I [locked onto]. We have a whole Pinterest board. You know really powerful, elegant people at a party? What I wanted was to see them when they come home from the party with their cufflinks off. That is a visual representation of their authenticity, their own vulnerability. What I wanted is the space between a public persona and who you really are. Seeing people who are really well put together in public behind the scenes. It’s power in repose.

There’s an ongoing discussion about illustrated covers and the challenges of finding diverse cover models or stock images. Is this something you have come up against? It was very important to me that my cover reflects diversity. It’s an Anglo-centric concept of beauty. If they see a black person on a cover, they assume the story is not for them. It’s the same mistaken philosophy that someone won’t be able to relate to something because a black person wrote it, and they’re not black. Which is ridiculous. I’ve grown up my whole entire life reading magazines that feature white people and watching shows that feature white people, and I never thought, “Well I can’t relate to this because I’m not white.” Being an author of color in a mainstream publishing landscape can be exhausting. There are things we have to negotiate and consider that nobody else would think twice about. I am willing to swim upstream. But it can be exhausting. It does feel hard sometimes, but it’s worth it. I’m not going to stop trying. This interview has been edited and condensed. Related content: Hot Stuff: September romances visit Victorian Oxford, a Renaissance Faire, Michelin restaurants, and more How morning TV and London at Christmas inspired Lucy Parker’s new romance See the cover of Helen Hoang’s third romance novel,The Heart Principle

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longislandweekly-blog · 5 years ago

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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau hosts candlelight vigil to end immigrant detention camps

Approximately 300 Long Islanders gathered to hold vigil for migrant asylum seekers who are being held in detention camps at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photos by Kimberly Dijkstra)

On the evening of July 12, Garden City stood in solidarity with more than 700 other vigils across the country to denounce inhumane conditions in detention camps at the U.S. southern border. Instead of spending their Friday night at the Seventh Street Promenade or seeing Toy Story 4, several hundred residents gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau to listen to local leaders speak and to hold a candlelight vigil at the busy intersection of Stewart Avenue and Nassau Boulevard.

Elizabeth Gonzalez, worship arts chair of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau, began the event called Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps by thanking attendees “for being here for Lights for Liberty, to take a stand against the horrific atrocities and human rights violations that are being carried out in our name right now.”

She continued, “The flaming chalice represents many things to Unitarian Universalists. It represents the light of truth and the light within each of us. And so…we will be lighting up the corner of Stewart Avenue and Nassau Boulevard tonight to shine a light on the atrocities being committed against asylum seekers and refugees and to bring light…to the darkness of our world.”

Gonzalez said that she invited representatives of the neighborhood, including Town Councilman Thomas Muscarella, Mayor of Garden City Theresa Trouvé, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, County Legislator Laura Schaefer, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, State Assemblyman Ed Ra, State Senator Kevin Thomas and Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, and that she was told they had prior engagements.

Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages said child abuse is unacceptable.

Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages accepted the invitation. Gonzalez said that Solages is “a strong advocate and dominant force within her community. From her close ties to immigrant communities, she has used her voice to champion issues facing new Americans.” Solages was recently appointed chair of the Task Force on New Americans and serves as first vice-chair to the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus.

Solages said that she could not stand silent while children are abused at the border.

“For all the elected officials who are staying silent, who think that…this is too politically dangerous for me to say something, shame on you,” she said. “I could be home with my 9-month child…but I cannot be silent. And so I call on the federal legislators, especially here on Long Island…to stop funding this agency that is raiding our community—ICE—to stop giving these terrorists, as I call them, funding.”

Dr. Richard Koral spoke about compassion, empathy and hospitality.

Richard Koral, leader of the Ethical Society of Long Island, began by asking the crowd to imagine if compassion ruled U.S. policy.

“The practice of hospitality is one of the most ancient features of a civilized life,” he said. “This is breaking one of the most basic rules of civilization, to shun people in their hour of need. These are refugees. These are asylum seekers…These are people who are suffering and who are escaping situations that we helped create.”

Koral also specified that the MS-13 gang originated in Los Angeles and was exported to Central America.

Town Clerk Sylvia Cabana called the crisis at the border a humanitarian issue, not a partisan issue. She recounted a story of a time she was traveling with her daughter and an airport worker took her aside for inspection at security.

“[My daughter] was hysterical, hysterical, and that was for the two minutes that her mom was out of her sight,” Cabana said. “How are we making these children feel? This is not right. We are scarring these children for life.”

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The crowd applauded when Town Clerk Sylvia Cabana arrived.

Cabana spoke impassionately about her upbringing as the daughter of immigrants in Garden City.

Cabana also spoke about being the child of immigrants. Her mother came from Cuba and her father came from Argentina in 1961.

“I was taught to be very proud of my background like I’m sure many of you were taught to be proud,” she said. “What the Trump administration is doing to demonize these people is wrong….They are coming here seeking asylum. They are coming here to make a better life for themselves, just the way our families came to make a better life for themselves.”

A frequent speaker at immigrants’ rights events, Patrick Young is the downstate advocacy director of the New York Immigration Coalition and former program director at CARECEN (Central American Refugee Center), which provides legal assistance to immigrant communities on Long Island.

“I have worked in this field for 35 years, through five different presidents, and I’ve been asked, ‘Isn’t this how things have happened in the past? How is this different from Bush, or Obama, or Reagan?’” he said. “Let me tell you something. The children who struggled to our door at CARECEN over the last six months are in the worst shape of any refugees that CARECEN has ever seen. They are worse than the escapees from the death squads in the 1980s, from the massacres in El Salvador and Guatemala. These are our children who are not just traumatized by what they suffered in their home country, but by what they suffered here.”

Patrick Young has spent his career advocating for immigrants.

Young continued with a story about a mother and child, named Samir, that his wife became the caretaker of.

“My wife sat with them for the first day that she met them, and then at the end of the day, as they were preparing for bed, she said, ‘now let me take Samir to the bathroom so he can take a shower.’ Samir began to cry and his mother became upset,” Young explained. “When [my wife] was able to calm them and ask them why they were upset, they said because the last time someone from the border patrol had told them he was going to go for a shower, they didn’t see each other again for 52 days.”

Young went on to say that this should not happen in the United States.

“These are cowardly abuses,” he said. “As we know, these children were returned to their parents traumatized, and as we know, a few of these children never returned to their parents. We as American citizens have to pray. We have to stand up. We have to speak to our neighbors. We have to be on the streets. And we have to be at the voting booths.”

Nikhil Goyal spoke about the history of turmoil in Central America as well as how Long Islanders can hold their representatives accountable.

Sociologist and cofounder of Young Progressives of Nassau County Nikhil Goyal spoke for several minutes to provide context for the border crisis. Goyal referenced the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Guatemala in 1954 by the CIA, the genocide of indigenous people in Guatemala which ensued under a dictator, the United States funding of Contras in Nicaragua which resulted in the murders of hundreds of thousands of civilians, a 2009 military coup of democratically elected Manuel Zelaya and subsequent recognition and financial support of a right-wing government that has killed thousands, including activists, trade unionists, journalists and judges.

“It is no coincidence that those individuals are fleeing violence and instability and trying to come here,” Goyal said. “It is a little bit rich for us as a country to deny refuge to the very people who are fleeing the violence that we created in the first place.”

Goyal continued, “I tell the people who don’t want undocumented people in this country, let’s stop supporting right-wing death squads and stop overthrowing democratically elected governments in Central America. Then they won’t be coming here to this country for stability.”

Goyal went on to describe the border funding bill that passed in late June. Two versions of the bill were introduced, one in the House which would provide humanitarian aid and stringent oversight of immigrant detention centers, and one in the Senate which had far fewer provisions. The Senate version passed.

“The U.S. House voted the Mitch McConnell Republican Senate bill, including Democrats like Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi,” Goyal said, taking aim at local legislators. “They both voted to reauthorize ICE in the Department of Homeland Security Act in 2017….The Congressional Hispanic Caucus opposed that bill because they viewed it as racist and xenophobic and un-American.”

Sharon Golden spoke out against the unsanitary conditions of many detention facilities as well as the trauma inflicted on children by the strict rules enforced.

Like other speakers, Goyal called on residents to call their representatives.

“Our demands must be very clear and simple. Close the immigration detention centers. Reunite the families. And end all ICE deportation raids,” Goyal said. “It is our job to tell our representatives to say clearly not one more dollar for kids in cages. Not one more dollar for ICE deportation raids. Not one more dollar for family separation. Not one more dollar for human rights abuses. Our tax dollars should not be funding these violations of basic American norms and rights.”

In closing, Goyal said, “At this unprecedented time in American history, we are being tested as Americans, tested as human beings tested as people who believe in humanity and justice. We are being tested the same way Americans were tested and confronted with the horrors of slavery, with Jim Crow white supremacist terror, with Japanese internment camps, with the Nazi genocide of Jewish people, with violence against civil rights protesters, and more recently the Muslim ban and neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville. The question I ask myself and the question I believe many of you ask yourselves is when my children and grandchildren ask me what I did when immigrant children were being ripped out of the arms of mothers and fathers, when children were being put in cages, when families were being destroyed by ICE, will I say that I engaged in business as usual or did I raise my voice and fight against this injustice? Did I put my body on the line to defend human rights and decency? So what will your answer be?”

Nassau Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Susan Gottehrer took the stage next to share her sense of outrage and disgust, and connect the national issue to local issues.

“When we say family separation, everybody thinks of the southern border, but there are children in Nassau County going to bed every night not knowing if their family will be separated the next day,” Gottehrer said. “Our county executive has not only refused to distance herself from ICE, but is cooperating with ICE. The police commissioner has his officers accompanying ICE to people’s homes.”

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Sylvia Cabana lit a candle in solidarity with migrants who are suffering under the current administration’s policies.

Members of the community made signs.

In January, a disagreement between County Executive Curran, Commissioner Patrick Ryder and ICE agents in Nassau County resulted in the ICE trailer being moved from the front entrance of the Nassau County correctional center to a building on the adjacent Nassau University Medical Center campus. Gottehrer called Curran’s silence “complicity” and her guilt “crocodile tears.”

Curran condemned the targeting of immigrant families in Nassau County in a statement she released with Congressman Suozzi on July 12:

“We strongly condemn the President’s plan to target thousands of immigrant families across the United States this weekend. On Long Island, immigrants are a valued and essential part of our communities. They are students, veterans, small businesses owners and taxpayers. This needless operation is not only cruel and inhumane, but it also represents a massive misallocation of important federal resources…This policy will only further drive immigrant communities underground, it will lead to more family separations, and it will make us all less safe.”

Angel Martinez, representing the Teamsters Local 812 and the Teamsters Hispanic Caucus New York Chapter, said, “What’s happening now is a tragedy and I know the Statue of Liberty is crying every day because this is not what she stands for.”

As co-administrator of Together We Will Long Island, Sharon Golden seeks to educate and empower Long Islanders to take definition action to safeguard human rights, preserve democracy and demand that the government uphold these principles. The resistance group has organized other demonstrations opposing family separation and cruelty at the border.

“Those children that are being held…feel them for a moment, feel the trauma that they’re feeling,” Golden said while encouraging attendees to use their voices and call their representatives. “Don’t forget them—tomorrow, the next day, the day after. You have voices…Please, we beg you, use them.”

Passing vehicles honked their horns in support of the demonstration.

Following the prepared speeches, Garden City resident Karen Barnaby asked to say a few words. She told the audience that she emigrated from Germany when she was 3 or 4 years old in the 1940s.

“I was put in an orphanage, just for a month or so. I did not speak for a whole year. I don’t have a memory of it, but this is the kind of trauma that even under unexpected benign care will do,” she said. “These children are not experiencing anything benign. And a trauma that we can’t even imagine.”

She added, “I have always been proud of choosing America as my country. I am not becoming more than ashamed of America, and I am fighting like hell to change.”

Lights for Liberty vigils also took place the same evening in Huntington Station, Patchogue, Riverhead, Sag Harbor and Little Neck with hundreds in attendance, as well as larger gatherings in New York City and Washington D.C.

Editor’s note: A version of this article will appear in Garden City Life on July 24.

Hundreds gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau in Garden City on Friday for Lights for Liberty to denounce the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in detention camps at the southern border. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Central Nassau hosts candlelight vigil to end immigrant detention camps On the evening of July 12, Garden City stood in solidarity with more than 700 other vigils across the country to denounce inhumane conditions in detention camps at the U.S.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years ago

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It Takes an Army

This review was originally published on March 28, 2018 and is being republished for Women Writers Week.

By now, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. Less well-known is that it takes an army of women to raise consciousness about how Hollywood’s gender and race imbalance—both in front of the camera and behind it—is inimical to equal employment, pay, and representation.

Largely due to the efforts of activist female filmmakers including Allison Anders, Ava DuVernay and Maria Giese, agenda-driven academics such as Martha Lauzen and Stacy Smith (all five pictured above), and institutions such as The Bunche Center at UCLA, inclusion has been a critical and still unresolved factor for the past two decades in the Hollywood movie equation.

Sadly, as these women warriors, guerrilla girls and inclusion revolutionaries challenge and shake up the Hollywood establishment, exclusion remains the norm. Because of Lauzen’s tenacity, we know that for the past 20 years the percentage of female directors has wavered between 5 and 11 percent. Because of Smith’s diligence, we know the ratio of males to females on screen is stuck between 3:1 and 2.5:1 (In 1991, Rodney Mitchell, then the diversity officer at the Screen Actors Guild, told me that by his Guild’s numbers, the onscreen male:female ratio was roughly 2.35:1. 26 years later, Smith’s 2007 study of the percentage of women who have speaking roles on screen likewise shows a 2.35:1 ratio.)

I have written about this issue since 1984. To borrow a line from Manohla Dargis, I feel like a broken record broken record broken record. Why does the needle seem to be stuck?

Because it’s easier to point to womens’ successes in the industry as positive signs of change—Kathryn Bigelow wins a best director Oscar for “The Hurt Locker” (2008)! Patty Jenkins directs the superheroine movie, “Wonder Woman” (2017)! Ava DuVernay makes a girl-centered fantasy, “A Wrinkle in Time” (2018)!—than to make permanent structural change in the industry. Just because good things are being made and honored by women in Hollywood doesn’t mean the problem of systemic gender bias in the industry has been solved.

And because beleaguered Hollywood, fighting the rise of streaming services that eat at its theatrical profits and the horrific charges of sexual predation that eat at its soul, historically uses these other issues to push inclusion back on the back burner. This, even though predation is a symptom of the power and gender imbalance the activists have sought to rectify. (While I want to celebrate the stories of the change agents who blazed the trail for #TimesUp, the legal fund dedicated to fighting workplace harassment across the board, and while the work of The Bunche Center is hugely important, I will focus here on those women and institutions who have done the most for female representation.)

Since 1998, Martha Lauzen, professor at San Diego State University, and head of the Center for Women in Television and Film, has published the annual Celluloid Ceiling report tracking film employment, the ‘Boxed In’ report, that does the same for women’s employment in TV, and ‘It’s a Man’s World,’ tracking representation of women on the big and small screens.

In the 1990s, she read newspaper articles about how women were doing better in film and TV. The reports were anecdotal—they were about the unicorns, or exceptions—and had no correlation with what she was seeing on the big and small screens, and in the credits.

“I started conducting research on an annual basis to accurately document women’s underemployment, and to build industry awareness,” she wrote in an email. It didn’t occur to her that it would take decades to build momentum and “for the demographics of the country to help push it along.” The Center tracks employment for women in all areas behind the camera, from cinematographer to screenwriter. (Lauzen was the first to provide statistics showing how a woman director boosts the number of women on the set: on films with exclusively male directors, women accounted for only 15% of editors and 5% of cinematographers. On films with female directors, the percentages of women editors rose to 35%, and cinematographers to 26%.)

It seemed clear, she said, “that the data was essential to keep the conversation going.” She coined the term “gender inertia” to describe how the numbers of women on and behind the screen have failed to rise substantially over the past two decades.

Not only has the data she collected kept the conversation going, organizations including the ACLU and the California State Assembly cite the Center’s findings as continuing evidence of chronic and consistent gender bias in Hollywood.

In 1999, Allison Anders, the gifted filmmaker of “Gas Food Lodging” (1992) and “Grace of My Heart” (1996) had it with Hollywood’s double-standard. Why did her male peers have career momentum? Even after a flop, they were offered another movie. Why, if Anders or another woman had a success, was it a “fluke”?

She wanted answers—and solutions. She emailed sister filmmakers and sympathetic journalists. And, in April 2000, the Women Filmmakers’ Summit took place at the late, lamented Miramar Hotel in Santa Barbara, described by film historian Cari Beauchamp in a recent article as “run-down, but still vibrant.”

There were established directors at Miramar, like Martha Coolidge (“Valley Girl,” “Real Genius,” “Rambling Rose”), and also newcomers, like Patricia Cardoso and Gurinder Chadha, who within a few years respectively would make Real Women Have Curves and Bend it Like Beckham. After a “venting” session, the assembled concluded that it wasn’t personal, only business, and that the business was tilted in men’s favor. After their common goal of gender equality, they named themselves “50/50.” In the years since, the women who were there continue to network, gaining strength and strategy from each other.

A handful of Miramar alumna collaborated with the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist collective that stages humorous interventions such as billboards and posters—to highlight gender inequality. As “Kathe Kollwitz,” nom de guerre of a GG co-founder, said in a recent email, “We knew Hollywood was bad, but it wasn’t until looking at statistics like Martha Lauzen’s that we realized it was even worse than the art world!”

For the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Miramar alumna and the Guerilla Girls targeted companies without movies by female filmmakers up for distribution. The activists identified the companies with stickers that read, “THESE DISTRIBUTORS DON’T KNOW HOW TO PICK UP WOMEN.”

The following year, “those directors helped fund a billboard, “The Anatomically Correct Oscar.”

The billboard had a caricature of the statuette with a caption—"He’s White & Male—just like the guys who win!” and the facts that only 3% of the acting awards had gone to people of color, and Best Director had never gone to a woman. My favorite among the Guerrilla Girls actions was a 2006 billboard on Sunset Boulevard during Oscars month. It showed a Queen Kong, a gorilla in a red gown, mad and manacled, with the datapoints that female filmmakers directed only 7 percent of the films of 2005 and that only three women had ever received best director nominations. A handful of Hollywood execs, male and female, have told me they nearly had car crashes driving past the sign while reading it. The Guerrilla Girls have updated these billboards and exhibited them around the world. In 2016, they updated many of the signs during the #OscarsSoWhite campaign and put them of the streets of Minneapolis.

A year after the Guerrilla Girls’ “anatomically correct” billboard appeared in 2002, Stacy Smith joined the faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

She is the founding director of The Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative (MDSC), which in 2017 rebranded itself as The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Smith and her colleagues took an intersectional approach to the analysis of 800 films made between 2007 and 2015. Their findings included: That women are only 30% of those on screen, and when they are their characters are hypersexualized by skimpy clothing and nudity; That the representation of non-white characters consistently is lower onscreen than the percentages of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans in the general population; That when an African American is in the director’s chair the percentage of black characters climbs from 10% to 39%; That when men are in the director’s chair the number of women onscreen is roughly 30% and when women are the percentage of women onscreen rises to 41%. Smith calls the disproportionately low numbers of non-whites and women onscreen an “epidemic of invisibility.”

Smith, like Lauzen, is increasingly concerned with finding solutions to the seemingly intractable problem of onscreen underrepresentation of women, non-whites and gender nonbinaries. In a 2016 TED Talk, Smith suggested three ways to improve the numbers of women and nonwhites on and behind the screen. One of the suggestions was the “inclusion rider” that Frances McDormand talked about in her Oscar acceptance speech. Namely, a stipulation that actors and actresses can ask (or demand) to have inserted into their contracts, which would require a certain level of inclusion among a film's cast and crew.

Maria Giese was hardly the first female filmmaker to note that the Hollywood playing field was not exactly level. But she may be the first who described that field as “vertical.” After receiving her MFA in film production from UCLA in 1994, and making two indies, “When Saturday Comes” (1996) and “Hunger” (2001, pictured above), she found it increasingly challenging to get another feature made.

The numbers were against her. Between 2000 and 2001 The percentage female directors dropped from 11% in to 6%. Giese was frustrated. She thought of “Norma Rae,” “Erin Brockovich” and “Nine to Five.” She knew that Hollywood relished making movies about women who triumph over the odds. But when it came to helping female filmmakers triumph over the odds in Hollywood’s own clubby universe, the industry was less interested.

By 2011, she was broke and angry. She studied the data gathered by Lauzen and Smith and collected her own. She studied case law and brought her files to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in 2013. The EEOC needed more data. Giese took her files to the ACLU which conducted an independent investigation. In May 2015, the ACLU wrote an extraordinary 15-page letter to the EEOC that concluded, “the statistics and anecdotal evidence we have gathered points to systemic discrimination.”

The EEOC does not comment on investigations. Before it sues employers for noncompliance, it mediates employment discrimination. According to Deadline Hollywood’s David Robb in February 2017, the EEOC was working on mediation. From leaks to which I have been privy, I understand that mediation efforts are in progress.

The rest of us work towards inclusion. Ava DuVernay just does it. In 2010, the year she completed “I Will Follow,” her first feature film, she also founded AFFRM (now ARRAY), a collaborative that brings black-themed and female-themed art films to cities across the country. Thus far, 15 independent films—including “I Will Follow” and DuVernay’s “Middle of Nowhere”—have found audiences. The result: 15 films with mostly non-white and female stories, actors and crews got distribution via DuVernay’s insistence on inclusion.

In 2016, when she was named creator, writer and producer of the episodic cable series “Queen Sugar,” DuVernay announced that the director of each episode would be a woman. When reporters questioned this, she responded, “If 'Game of Thrones' can have three seasons of all male directors, why can’t we have three of all female directors?” The result: Women who needed more credits to get into the Directors Guild and to get more work, earned both via DuVernay’s insistence on inclusion.

In 2017, when named director of “A Wrinkle in Time,” DuVernay cast the Murry family as multiracial: White dad, black mom, one biracial child and the other of Asian heritage. The result: A family that looks more like America than the ones we see in most movies and television.

In 1980, the year I began reviewing films for the Village Voice, the percentage of women directing films was .05%. You read that right: ½ of 1%. Twenty years later, in 2000, it was 11%. I admit, I was optimistic. But in 2017, the number is still 11 %. This, despite the agents of social change I celebrate here. Who would have thought that in Hollywood change is geological?

These women and institutions are doing great work not only in keeping the conversation going, but in keeping Hollywood’s feet to the fire. Still, I wonder, could we do better?

And I think, each of the inclusion warriors is doing better than her best. They’ve given Hollywood the longitudinal data and a snapshot of each year for the past 20 years. They’ve crunched the data so Hollywood knows to the dollar that movies with women and by women make money. They have schooled Hollywood so it knows that when it holds up a mirror to America, it reflects back as too male and too pale.

And I think, Hollywood, we’ve done our job. Now do yours.

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missnevainc · 6 years ago

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NOTICIAS TELEMUNDO STRENGTHENS ITS PRESENCE IN WASHINGTON D.C. WITH THE APPOINTMENT OF CORRESPONDENT #JAVIERVEGA MIAMI – AUGUST 20, 2018 – Noticias Telemundo announced the appointment of Mexican journalist Javier Vega as correspondent in Washington, D.C., as part of an initiative to strengthen its operations in the U.S. capital. Vega will report to Victoria Rivas-Vázquez, #NoticiasTelemundo’s Washington, D.C. bureau chief, and will work alongside the bureau team, including renowned Noticias Telemundo’s correspondent Lori Montenegro. Prior to joining the Washington, D.C. team, Vega was a @noticiastelemundo correspondent in Mexico. “Javier Vega comes to the epicenter of political activity in the United States to reinforce our philosophy of ‘telling it like it is,’” said Rivas-Vazquez. “In Washington, information is being generated at an unprecedented rate and the inclusion of a journalist of Vega’s talent and experience reaffirms our commitment to the Latino community at this critical time.” Vega began his career as a local reporter at #TelevisaPuebla. Later he joined Milenio, a national media outlet, where he specialized in #politicalaffairs covering the Congress and Senate, the State Department and the President. As part of the “Special Affairs” team, he produced reports and anchored newscasts on Milenio Televisión, the leading news channel in Mexico. He was also an #investigativejournalist on Televisa’s “Punto de Partida with Denise Maerker,” a bi-weekly show covering social, #political and #securityissues . In addition, he was a #newsanchor and reporter at the #telesur network. In 2009 Vega won the National #journalism Prize awarded by Club de Periodistas de México A.C., and was part of the team awarded the National #Communication Prize “José Pagés Llergo” for its #coverage of the September 19 #mexicocity #earthquake. He holds a Communications degree from Universidad de las Américas de Puebla and diplomas from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and the #UniversityofGuadalajara . Noticias #telemundo is a leading provider of news for US Hispanics. Its award-winning news programs are #broadcasts from Telemundo Center

#javiervega #noticiastelemundo #televisapuebla #politicalaffairs #investigativejournalist #political #securityissues #newsanchor #telesur #journalism #communication #coverage #mexicocity #earthquake #universityofguadalajara #telemundo #broadcasts

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healthspiritbody · 7 years ago

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Ny Pulls Statue Of Doctor Who Tested On Black Women Without Anesthesia

A statue of Dr. James Marion Sims, the ‘father of gynecology’ who experimented on black women without anesthesia, has been removed from New York’s Central Park.

However, activists who have campaigned for years to take down the statue said it was a ‘slap in the face’ to relocate the 14-foot bronze figure to Sims’ grave in Brooklyn instead of destroying it – and the pedestal embellished with his name is still there.

Sims has to this day been held up as a pioneer in the field of women’s health, with statues in New York, Pennsylvania and his home state of South Carolina, despite performing brutal operations on slave women without pain relief.

Through his callous techniques, he invented the vaginal speculum, which is still used in gynecological examinations, as well as a way to fix a tear between the uterus and bladder during childbirth.

After years of protests, New York officials unanimously voted on Monday to remove the statue in Harlem after a review of the city’s monuments deemed it to be a ‘symbol of hate’.

Today at 8 am, activists chanted ‘off with his head’ as a noose and hood were placed over the 14-foot bronze figure to move it to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn where Sims is buried.

Plans are underway to replace the statue with a plaque dedicated to Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, the three black slave women who Sims stripped and tortured to test his theories, while his white female patients were allowed painkillers beforehand.

Nonetheless, the move has sparked controversy as some insist it should be destroyed, and many questions why there was no provision to get rid of the pedestal at the same time, leaving his name and history lingering in the largely Hispanic and African American neighborhood.

Dr. James Marion Sims invented the speculum which offered the first deep look at women for gynecologists. As a result, he was commemorated in a statue in New York’s Central Park

On Tuesday, New York City removed a 14-foot statue of Dr Sims, deeming it a ‘symbol of hate’

Only three of Sims’ dozen slaves are named, Betsey, Lucy, and Anarchy; he operated on them without anesthesia while his white patients were medicated. Pictured: an activist at the removal on Tuesday

East Harlem Preservation, the group that spearheaded the campaign to remove the statue, said on Tuesday that as long as the statue exists, Sims is still being commemorated.

‘Dr. Sims is not our hero, and we don’t need any reminders of his barbarities. We bear the pain and burden of intergenerational trauma every day,’ the group said.

‘The symbolic “move” was seen as a slap in the face by many who had for years maintained that the statue’s presence did a huge disservice to the neighborhood’s majority Black and Latino residents—groups that have historically been subjected to medical experiments without permission or regard for their wellbeing.’

Speaking to Daily Mail Online, Susan M Reverby, a medical historian who is Professor Emerita of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College and has been vocal in the campaign to alter or remove the statue, said she condemns the statue but accepts the decision to move it rather than destroy it.

‘We don’t live in Stalin-era Soviet Union where things would be destroyed,’ Reverby said.

‘I agree with the American Historical Society that there is a difference between history and memorializing. No one is denying the history of what he did, but just that we as a society have decided what we are memorializing and what we are not.’

Instead, she believes we should focus on remembering the women he hurt.

The removal, Reverby said, ‘reinforces a growing awareness over the last half century of women patients and what they put up with. They shouldn’t just be nameless faces. We should be remembering them, the women who were used and suffered.’

The Sims statue, which stood on 5th Avenue at 103rd Street, was the first ever erected for a doctor in America. It was made in 1894 and in 1934 moved to the edge of Central Park, near where Sims spent the final years of his life.

South Carolina-born Sims started his career in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was a slave owner and trained doctor.

Sims embarked on a series of exploitative experiments that even his doctor peers in the pro-slavery south found to be too extreme

Early on in his career, he started to notice that many slave women suffered a specific kind of tear between the uterus and bladder (vesicovaginal fistula) during childbirth, largely because of forced rape and teen pregnancy.

He decided to embark on a series of exploitative experiments that even his doctor peers in the pro-slavery south found to be too extreme.

In his autobiography, The Story Of My Life, Sims claimed women were clamoring to be operated on by him. However, there is no indication that they consented to the fiercely unethical manner in which he went about treating them.

At his hospital, in the center of the neighborhood where slaves were traded, Sims pitted himself as the go-to slave healer for all kinds of ailments.

Meanwhile, he used 12 black women (all anonymous bar Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey) as experiments to trial new surgical techniques – and to test the theory widely held among white physicians that black women did not feel pain as much as white people.

Sims proudly described his experiments: he cut Anarcha 13 times before he could achieve the results he was aiming for; Lucy, he admits, was in ‘extreme’ agony.

This all happened before 1853, when he had earned a name for himself as the ‘father of modern gynecology’ and moved to New York City to become a celebrity doctor, treating royals and A-listers who came in from all over the world.

His popularity started coming into question in the 1960s, but it was not until medical journalist Harriet Washington published Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present in 2007 that Dr. Sims’ ethics were truly scrutinized.

‘When I started out as a medical writer, most people were unaware of what Dr. James Marion Sims did,’ Washington told Daily Mail Online.

‘What surprised me was that the historical accounts I was reading about him had been distorted, portraying him as the “father of gynecology”. But in his own writing, he was open about what he did. He described what he did.’

And so, using Sims’ own words, Washington deconstructed his reputation – the women whose genitalia he cut repeatedly for years, the children whose skull bones he ‘rearranged’ to ‘treat’ an infectious disease, the patients he left out to pasture even if repeated operations failed.

At the time that she finally published her account, Washington was left with a strong feeling that his statue should stand where it does, a looming reminder of the horrific things he did so we never forget.

But a trip back to Germany, where she grew up, shifted her perspective.

‘In Germany, I don’t see any monuments to Hitler. Instead, I see brass markings commemorating the victims of the Holocaust,’ Washington said.

‘In our country, we commemorate the perpetrators – the Confederate statues, for example. Those were people who did unspeakable things to other Americans just because of the color of their skin.

‘Would you erect an anti-Semitic statue in a Jewish community? No. It’s an additional slap in the face that Dr. Sims’ statue was in Harlem, largely made up of Hispanic and African American women who have to walk by him every day.’

The 14-foot bronze figure will be moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried

The Sims statue, which stood on 5th Avenue at 103rd Street, was the first ever erected for a doctor in America

Now, after the ceremonious removal, Washington and other activists are keenly waiting to find out what’s in store to replace it.

Plans for a plaque commemorating the women Sims tortured are slow to come together, and Washington is concerned that such a minuscule symbol will pale into its surroundings and be forgotten, just as Betsey, Lucy, and Anarcha were for years.

Meanwhile, Deirdre Cooper Owens, one of the leading historians to write about Sims’ legacy and the author of a new book Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, questions what’s to become of Sims’ statue in Green-Wood Cemetery, which is a tourist attraction in its own right, hosting open-air movie nights during the summer.

‘Will there be context next to his statue? I wonder if, in a few years, people will even know,’ Cooper Owens, of Queens College, mused this afternoon to Daily Mail Online. ‘I wonder if people will just walk by the statue and not know anything about the enslaved women, and about Sims, in a way that advances historical understanding.’

New York City’s Monument Commission has promised to hastily tidy up the loose ends.

But Cooper Owens warns it will be harder to address the indelible mark Sims left on the legacy of medicine and treatment of African Americans and women.

‘There are so many things that slavery affected that many don’t even realize. Medicine! Who would have thought it? Many don’t see the medical racism that still exists today.

‘Many black women are dying in childbirth, they are giving birth to low weight babies, and enduring some things more distressing than in the antebellum era. Black Americans are by and large are not given the same amount of pain relief [as white patients] and viewed as somehow being more likely to be addicted to illegal drugs.

‘This is all born from the 19th century. It doesn’t seem to go away.

‘That’s what I’m concerned about. What is the legacy going to be? And how can we be more transparent about it to change things?’

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Ny Pulls Statue Of Doctor Who Tested On Black Women Without Anesthesia was originally published on Health Spirit Body

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ageeksnerdyworld · 7 years ago

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I felt like making a comprised list of all my WIPs and/or abandoned WIPs for literally no reason. Titles, for those that have ‘em, are in parentheses at end of description.

A doctor, living in New York, tries to cure his best friend’s brain cancer only to turn him into a zombie. Outbreak ensues and doc becomes a zombie hunter. Kills his friend but not before he’s bitten by members of the hoard. Fights the virus and runs away to Siberia to hide out. Years later he gets visited by a historian who was studying the outbreak. Wrecked with guilt he tells historian the story only to break and devour him. Side note: this was actually the first story idea I ever had.

A teenage boy gets wrongfully framed for the murders of a family on his block. Gets convicted and goes to a maximum security juvenile detention center. The detention center is essentially an Alcatraz for kids. He befriends some other kids who were also wrongfully imprisoned. But the eldest boy is due to be transferred to an adult prison so they plan to escape. But with an abusive and overbearing warden who watches thier every move is an escape even possible? (Maximum Security)

A mild-mannered accountant with a crappy life befriends his new neighbors who just moved in across the street. But something is a little off about the family. They’re too chipper, too nice, too perfect. Finds out the father is a serial killer and killed the real father of that family before taking his place. Killer abducts him when he finds out and holds him hostage as killer tries to make him see his, the killer’s, side. (The Grass Is Always Greener)

A retired black cop, a Hispanic disabled teen, a genderfluid black sheep, a closeted lesbian, and an elderly immigrant are all your average bystander. Until they’re all in the same freak accident. Each one of them dies for a couple minutes but is revived at the hospital. Over a month or so they start to develop superpowers. Coming together to figure out what’s going on they are forced to team up when a villain comes to town. (The Bystander Effect)

A boy who can shapeshift must journey to a distant land in search of his father. He crosses into different lands with people with different abilities. Shifters, like him, Pyros, who can create and manipulate fire, Aquas, who create and manipulate water, Electros, who create and manipulate electricity, and Controllers. But when he finds his father he’s too late to save him from the evil clutches of the Controllers. Side note: this was actually intended to be a series. (The Jason Argus Chronicles)

A set of fraternal twins have been born and bred as a two-person government task force due to thier special psychic abilities. The girl grew up cold, hard and ruthless; making her the favorite of those in charge. Meanwhile the boy was reluctant, and wary. He escapes the facility that holds them and his sister is sent to track him down by any means necessary. (The Gemini Project)

Jack Sharpe finds out his father is a serial killer. Despite being seen as an accomplice he testifies on his father’s behalf. But the man is still convicted and sentenced to death. Jack goes into witness protection and also goes to court ordered therapy. Under a new name and starting a new life he tries to put all that behind him. But he can’t shake his father’s voice, and his violent thoughts, from his head. (Just Like You)

An outcast teen wanders in the woods behind the school after getting beat up by some other kids. He stumbles upon other outcasts as he walks. They talk and walk and spend a little too much time in the woods. Just as they’re about to leave they stumble upon the dead body of the school’s star quarterback. Getting framed by the student body for the murder they decide to solve the case. (Band of Brothers)

In a fully digitized world life-changing virtual reality is in fact a reality. What started as a luxury for the mega rich is now available for the everyday citizen. Life changing because anything you do with the headsets on actually correlates to real life. But Veronica Harding feels fishy about the VR headsets. The more they grow in popularity the more problems she sees with them. Then her friends, and family, start buying into the fad. Seeing the true intent behind them Veronica sets out to take down the corporation that created them.

Security robots have become a thing of the present. With AI that senses any changes in mood and can adapt to calm the situation they’re a force of protection. But secret nanobots have been built in with an unknown purpose. When Anthea Roberts discovers their real purpose can she, with the help of her high school teachers, save her family and friends? Or is she too late?

As a government spy Bravo spends his days obeying orders of his handler and leading a team of other operatives like him. Everyday is the exact same as the day before even though he can’t remember most of them. A price he has to pay to do the work he does. But one day Bravo gets abducted by a mysterious man claiming to be Alfa; the legendary operative who somehow escaped the organization they work for. Alfa claims that the organization is lying to everyone about many things; the operatives’ pasts, memories being destroyed, and the real purpose of thier jobs. He tries to convince Bravo to destroy the organization from the inside. But is Alfa telling the truth? Can anything be trusted? (The Forgotten)

A young princess is forced to run from her kingdom when the citizens revolt. The king and queen are brutally murdered in front of her and she barely escapes with her life. She spends years of her life hiding from those who want her dead but learns that the revolt was caused by an evil witch. Vowing revenge on the witch responsible she searches for the legendary Lost Knight, a knight turned rogue, to ask for his help. Gathering together a bunch of other misfit people, including a half-elf, an orc and a drunken wizard, they make thier way back to the kingdom. But will they be strong enough to defeat the witch? (Lost And Found)

Starchasers dedicate years of thier lives to exploring the vast expanses of space. Most days are rather boring and routine checks of already cataloged planets. Or reporting on stars that have died. But some days they come across smugglers and space pirates. Or the occasional Fraell warship. Until one day the crew of the SS Tyson comes across something unimaginable. A distress beacon coming from a planet that was long dead. A planet that was burned alive by it’s own core.

A Viking leader’s kingdom is attacked by a group of Saxons claiming to spread Christianity. Despite his, and his warriors’, efforts thier village is destroyed. Many innocents die, crops are stolen, thralls are kidnapped, and the king’s wife and child are murdered. And he is forced to watch this all unfold. Then the Saxons set houses on fire and leave. The citizens go about rebuilding their village but the king is set on having his revenge. (Stoic Mind/Bleeding Heart)

Seven college kids kick off thier summer vacation with an end of the year party. Everything goes well and they say thier goodbyes. A few days later they all start to fall ill; deathly so. But then whatever sickness they had is suddenly gone a few days later with no after effects. Then they all start to notice they have developed strange abilities. Henry Harker can control minds. Cassandra Langley emits pheromones. Terry Singer controls fire. Killian O'Connor has super strength. Victor Park has minimal foresight. Jackson Thomas can create small bursts of light. And Wendy Dekker shapeshifts. Over the summer they develop thier powers in secret and start to help people. But soon the gang slowly turns on Wendy. They say her powers are too unpredictable and dangerous. She’s kicked out of the group and accidentally shapeshifts inside a crowded shopping mall; killing a few innocents. Labeled a villain by the media, and her old friends, Wendy decides to show them just how villainous she can be. Ends with a five/ten year timeskip. (Living Up To Labels)

Detective Nicholas Young has been on the case of a serial killer for the majority of his career. And nearing the age to retire he’s more determined than ever to solve the case. But in his last few months on the force he’s assigned a new partner. Usually the force gives about to retire cops and detectives less casework but they’ve had budget cuts and an influx of odd murders. Crimes linked by only one thing; a small black symbol found at each crime scene. Nicholas’ partner, Blake Jacobs, is fresh out of the academy and more than eager to catch criminals. But Blake seems to have some sixth sense or to know more about the crimes than he lets on. Eventually Blake lets Nicholas in on his secret weapon; he can telepathically connect to the dead. Can Nicholas solve the murders, and the case that haunts him like a ghost, with Blake’s help? Or is Blake hiding even more secrets? (Death Detective)

Journalist Vanessa Reynolds goes deep undercover into a non profit organization that provides food for the homeless to prove claims of child labor. But what she finds is even worse. Marcus Wheeler, self-made billionaire and philanthropist, is running all his businesses to cover up a cult. The eco-friendly self-sustaining community he created worships him as a God and he wouldn't have it any other way. Just as Vanessa discovers the truth she tries to make a break for it. But she's overtaken by Wheeler's acolytes. Now that she knows the truth he can't allow her to leave. And to make matters worse he's had his heart set on marrying Vanessa from the moment they met. And he's determined to make that fantasy a reality by any means necessary.

#i just #i have so many ideas #too many some might say #but not enough talent #my wips #wips #story ideas #story wip #writing wips #ugh #i wish i could actually write these

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