#the writers really said “but what if the civil rights movement... used violence!1!”

[diaryofamadsunwukongfan]

Ok but seriously

The writers sound like Kyle Rittenhouse

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson:

June 1, 2020 (Monday)

Trump began the day with a call to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Shortly after, he called American state governors. In the 55-minute call, he told them, “You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.” He told the governors, “You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff again.” “You know when other country’s watch this, they’re watching this, the next day wow, they’re really a push over. And we can’t be a push over. And we have all the resources—it’s not like we don’t have the resources. So, I don’t know what you’re doing.” “It’s a movement, if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse…. The only time its successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.”

He said: “We will activate Bill Barr and activate him very strongly.” He said: “Washington [D.C.] was under very good control, but we’re going to have it under much more control. We’re going to pull in thousands of people.” Barr later directed the FBI to send riot teams to Miami and Washington.

Also on the call were Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Esper echoed Trump, telling the governors in a discussion of American protesters in American cities: “we need to dominate the battle space.”

On the call, Trump said he had put Milley in charge of managing the protests. Since by law Milley is an advisor, rather than part of the military chain of command, the Pentagon clarified that he could not lead any military response to the crisis. White House Press Secretary later said he would lead a “central command center in conjunction with the state and local governments.”

This call was recorded and leaked to the press almost immediately.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a former Army captain who now sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was on board with the sentiments in it. He called for Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which permits the president to override the restriction against using the military in domestic situations in extreme situations. Cotton tweeted: “Anarchy, rioting, and looting needs to end tonight. If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let’s see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they’re facing off with the 101st Airborne Division. We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction…. And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.”

Readers pointed out that the concept of “no quarter,” that is, killing those who surrender in a battle, is a war crime. Trump tweeted that Cotton was “100% correct.” Cotton later tried to walk back the comments by resorting to a dictionary definition, but David A. French, a lawyer, military officer, Iraq veteran, and journalist, pointed out that Cotton graduated from Harvard Law School, and certainly knew that military ops defines “no quarter” very clearly, and prohibits it.

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz—the man who wore a gas mask on the floor of Congress to downplay the dangers of coronavirus—tweeted “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do in the Middle East?” Twitter hid the tweet—a tweet from a sitting congressman—as glorifying violence.

A reminder: we do not yet know who is behind the looting and violence, although a number of videos have shown white instigators. The political affiliation of those rioters is not clear, despite the statements of Trump and Attorney General Barr that they are “radical leftists.”

When a journalist today asked a senior White House official what Trump was doing, the official responded: “He’s not handling anything, just typing a bunch of shit on Twitter.” But things took an ominous turn later in the day.

Twenty-nine states have activated about 70,000 National Guard troops but have not deployed more than a few hundred of them, and no state governor has asked for federal intervention. Nonethless, Trump, who refused to help the states respond to the coronavirus pandemic, now wants federal troops in those same states. In the Rose Garden this afternoon, he said that if mayors and governors didn’t increase their troop presence, he would send in federal troops. He announced he was deploying “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to stop the protests in Washington, D.C. and “to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”

While he was talking, a massive police presence, including officers from the Customs and Border Protection, were clearing peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square with tear gas and flash-bang explosions.

The president concluded his remarks by saying “Now, I’m going to pay my respects to a very, very special place.” He walked out of the White House to the north side of it, into Lafayette Square, where the protests have been, along with Esper, Attorney General William Barr, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and other White House officials, including Hope Hicks, who apparently hatched the plan to calm Trump's anger at being made fun of for his stay in the White House bunker. They crossed the park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, a historic site that had briefly been set on fire last night. There, Trump held up a Bible and said: “We have a great country, that’s my thoughts, the greatest country in the world. We will make it even greater, it won’t take long. It’s coming back strong and it will be greater than ever before.”

Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania tweeted: “I want to be super clear about what happened tonight in Washington: The President of the United States deployed tear-gas, rubber bullets and military personnel on peaceful protesters so that he could cross the street for a photo op. There is no excuse.” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon straight up said “the fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens. I fear for our country tonight and will not stop defending America against Trump’s assault.”

Esquire writer Charles Pierce notes that since 9-11, the federal government has equipped local police with $4.3 billion in military gear and prepared them for an all-out war on terrorists. In 2014, President Barack Obama tried to stop the transfer of military weapons and equipment to civilian police departments with an executive order, but Trump reversed it. This militarization of the police has created in America’s streets what a government commission in 1968 defined as a “police riot,” in which officers themselves instigate, escalate, or sustain violent confrontations. In addition to attacking protesters, today’s police are singling out journalists for attack. This development is significant because it is a key sign of authoritarian regimes, which try to silence journalists to silence information about their actions.

Tonight General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, talked to reporters from the streets of Washington. National security specialist Tom Nichols noted: “There is absolutely no reason for the Chairman to be walking the streets right now. This is not even remotely in the tradition of U.S. civil-military relations.”

[shannon-jeanna]

Within America, these shining examples of economic and social success have given Indians a reputation of being a “model minority.” We came to America with little, the story goes, abided by the laws of the land, and pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps into positions of success. By emphasizing education and economic achievement, we’ve turned the American dream into an Indian-American reality.

But flattering as it may be, it’s a reputation that glosses over our tremendous diversity, stereotyping us as monolithic. (Plus it sweeps under the rug the 300,000 of us that live in poverty, the 22% of us that speak limited English, and the struggles that come with being the fastest-growing group of undocumented migrants in the country).

At its worst, though, it’s a reputation that’s given us contempt for other groups in the US that haven’t “mastered the system” in the same way. It’s a contempt that’s most often directed at Black Americans, who are derided as irresponsible, violent, scary, and worse. They’re stereotypes that are sadly pervasive throughout the US, but we’ve internalized them with the Hindi slur “kallu” that too easily finds itself on the lips of many South Asians. As the comedian Russell Peters pointed out, “it’s not like Black people colonized India for 200 years!”

In fact, it’s the Black community to whom Indian-Americans, and India, owe a tremendous debt for our current stature. Let me unpack that.

Small as our numbers are, South Asians have a pretty long history in America. As far back as the 1800s, north Indian traders came bearing ‘exotic articles from the orient,’ selling silks, spices, and hookahs in New Orleans, Detroit, and even the old Southwest (think of Ali Hakim from the play Oklahoma!).

Not just lacking immigration papers, but having brown skin, these Indian migrants were shown the door at White-owned hotels and neighborhoods. And the racism and antipathy didn’t stop there. The 1917 Immigration Act made Indians, as author Vivek Bald puts it, “equivalent in the eyes of the law to alcoholics, professional beggars, and the insane,” and the Supreme Court ruled that “Indians who were already in the United States were racially ineligible to become citizens.”

Fears of a “Hindoo Invasion” and a “Turban Tide” swept American newspapers, and as Erika Lee documents in The Making of Asian America, brown people from Washington State to Florida were denied citizenship (despite American military service, in the case of Bhagat Singh Thind), beaten by white mobs, forcibly removed from entire towns, imprisoned if they sought to marry Caucasian women, and worse. But where they did gain acceptance were the Black majority enclaves of all of these cities. In his brilliantly revelatory book, Bengali Harlem, Bald describes communities in Tremé, New Orleans, the west side of Baltimore, and East Detroit where scores of Desi men married local African American women and settled down.

And through the 1900s, when British vessels docked in New York Harbor, dozens of Indian maritime workers jumped ship, interspersing in New York’s crowded streets before settling in the “Black Mecca” of Harlem.

There, they married Black, African, and Caribbean New Yorkers, and set up New York City’s first Indian restaurants right in Harlem. In those restaurants, Malcolm X debated Islam with South Asian Muslims, the trumpet virtuoso Miles Davis first heard the ragas that would revolutionize jazz music, and the international labor, Indian independence, and Black civil rights movements found solidarity. Stemming from interactions like these, the prominent Black activist W.E.B. Du Bois even pledged public support for Indian independence, strengthening the movement in the US.

Across the country, another group of South Asians made their way to the West Coast, working as farmers in California’s upstart agricultural economy. Together, Punjabi and Mexican migrants picked fruits and vegetables for low wages and in poor working conditions. Years before Cesar Chavez, Punjabis like Dalip Singh Saund helped to organize workers of both ethnicities—-many of whom were intermarried—-to demand labor rights.

In solidarity with Mexican workers, Saund traversed the US, mobilizing undocumented Indian workers to become more politically active. He, along with Arizona farmer Mubarak Ali Khan, JJ Singh of New York’s India League of America, and other Asian activists lobbied Congress to pass the Luce-Celler Act, which allowed 100 Indians to gain US citizenship every year.

This act wouldn’t be enough to bring all South Asians out of the shadows, to end the racist immigration quotas that had restricted America’s talent pool to Europeans, or to bring a new generation of South Asians to American shores.

Left to languish in urban areas, too many children of the Civil Rights movement were unable to build wealth—-notably the housing assets that other communities used to underwrite college loans—-even as highway construction tore through their neighborhoods, hastening their decline. Education might have paved a path out of poverty, but since it was funded by property tax, its quality mirrored the poor economic circumstances in which many Black people found themselves.

Compare this with our relative luck. Nancy Foner, a leading immigration scholar at Hunter College points out that “because they are not Black, Asian immigrants face less discrimination in finding a place to live...which translates into access to heavily white neighborhoods with good public schools.”

Meanwhile, a ‘War on Drugs’ specifically targeted Blacks and Hispanics simply for the crime of being young—-white and suburban youth consume drugs at a higher rate than Blacks, with little consequence, but more than 1 out of 3 Black men will find themselves in the clutches of the correctional system for the same offence. This has of course meant that many have been left far from the American dream, languishing on street corners and in prisons—-just three out of every ten Blacks are able to make it to the middle class, compared to two-thirds of Whites. As President Obama once said, “what’s remarkable is not how many Black men and women failed in the face of this discrimination, but how many overcame the odds.”

Yet we’re still seeing the effects of this violence in racial profiling cases throughout the country, through the deaths of horticulturist Eric Garner, teenaged aspiring astronaut Trayvon Martin, 12-year old Tamir Rice, and the countless others who live this daily reality. This violence is not just an ancillary issue that affects “those” people, and it definitely doesn’t increase our safety. This racial violence directly harms all of us. Just last year, an old Indian man was left partially paralyzed after Alabama police responded to a call about “a skinny black guy” walking around the neighborhood.

And though it’s nowhere near the same scale, it’s a similar strain of systemic violence and vitriol that brown people in America have felt since the War on Terror. As the Black writer Greg Tate said of South Asians after 9/11, “welcome to racial profiling.” This strand of ignorant virulence targets many people of color, regardless of religion or economic “success”: In 2012, a Hindu PhD student named Sunando Sen was fatally pushed into the subway tracks in New York by a woman who claimed she “hates Hindus and Muslims ever since...they put down the twin towers.”

These realities tell us that even as the successes of Indian Americans are celebrated, our challenges remain—-and they intersect with those of people we too often exclude. It’s a strange paradox we live; as the pianist Vijay Iyer has said, “to succeed in America is, somehow, to be complicit with the idea of America—which means that at some level you’ve made peace with its rather ugly past...with all of its structural inequalities, its patterns of domination, and its ghastly histories of slavery and violence.”

As the #BlackLivesMatter movement seeks to correct injustices that should have long been consigned to history, we need to recognize that true Black liberation in America will lead to liberation everywhere. Let’s start by making sure our workplaces look like our country; by acknowledging the impacts of past and current discrimination; and by fully championing, without coopting as our own, the message that Black lives really ought to matter today, as always—-only then would all lives truly matter.

Fundamentally, as members of our diaspora go on to lead the largest companies, invent the next path-breaking technologies, and even populate the nation’s highest courts, let us, as Iyer put it, “choose to be that kind of American that refuses to accept what America has been, and instead help build a better America even for others, who might not immediately seem to ‘belong’ to us.”

[billyagogo]

A year after nationwide protests, Chile goes to the polls on a new constitution

New Post has been published on https://newsprofixpro.com/moxie/2020/10/24/a-year-after-nationwide-protests-chile-goes-to-the-polls-on-a-new-constitution/

A year after nationwide protests, Chile goes to the polls on a new constitution

More than three decades ago, Chileans went to the polls in a landmark plebiscite and voted to end the dictatorial rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

On Sunday, Chile votes on another referendum aimed at erasing a key pillar of Pinochet’s legacy — the 1980 constitution approved under his authoritarian rule.

Sunday’s vote, originally scheduled for April but pushed back because of the COVID-19 pandemic, was the government’s major concession to civil unrest last year that largely paralyzed this South American nation of 19 million.

Student protests against a transit fare hike soon escalated into a broader movement targeting inequalities in a country long hailed as a regional beacon of economic progress and political stability — but in reality deeply divided, with half of its workers earning the equivalent of $500 a month or less.

Clashes with police and rioting last year left at least 31 people dead and caused $1.4 billion in damage — including torched shopping malls, supermarkets and subway stations.

Billionaire President Sebastián Piñera, who initially declared that the government was “at war against a powerful enemy” in dealing with the unrest, backed down after weeks of turmoil and declared: “It’s time to listen to the people.”

Protesters attack a police armored vehicle on the anniversary of the start of anti-government protests over inequality in Santiago.

(Esteban Felix / Associated Press)

Last November, leaders of almost all of the country’s political factions signed on to a deal calling for a vote to rewrite the constitution to reflect protesters’ demands for reform.

Polls have indicated that around 70% of Chileans will vote in favor of the rewrite.

“Let’s hope now we get a fair democracy,” said Valentina Seguel, 22, a veterinary medicine student who, like many of her generation, had to take out a loan to go to college. “We don’t have decent healthcare. There’s no quality education for people with fewer resources. … We need a change.”

Sunday’s balloting takes aim at a constitution that was already amended after democracy was restored in 1990, with Pinochet’s signature removed in 2005.

The new referendum is not really about Pinochet — more than half of eligible Chilean voters were younger than 20 when he left office in 1990, and about 1 in 5 hadn’t been born by then. Rather, the debate targets the charter’s emphasis on protecting business and markets. It is a model that, critics say, does little to address economic inequities, while ignoring environmental concerns.

“What’s at stake here is the preeminence of the market over the state on issues of social rights like pensions, health, education, housing … the protection of natural resources, including water, and the recognition of Indigenous people,” said Claudio Fuentes, a political science professor at Diego Portales University. “And symbolically, it is Pinochet’s constitution, which is its original sin.”

A worker wipes a chair during a disinfection operation to help prevent spread of the coronavirus at a gymnasium that will serve as a polling station for a constitutional plebiscite in Santiago.

(Esteban Felix/AP)

Opponents worry that constitutional reforms could dampen prospects for growth and heighten pressure on state finances already stretched thin by the pandemic. Chile’s economy is expected to shrink by more than 5% this year.

“It’s ridiculous to waste millions changing a constitution in the midst of a pandemic,” said Daniel Sagredo, 65, a helicopter pilot. “It’s with this constitution that the country has grown enormously in the last decades.”

Others voice fears that a new constitution could send the long-stable country down a path of lawlessness and anarchy.

Last Sunday, on the anniversary of last year’s demonstrations, otherwise peaceful rallies in Santiago devolved into violence when masked vandals struck two churches in the capital, broke into and stole from stores and attacked police stations.

“I was going to vote for rewriting the constitution, but now I’m scared to think about what’s to come,” said Valeria Krutmeyer, 50, as she scooped up debris downtown at the landmark Roman Catholic La Asunción Church, burned to the ground in the violent outburst.

“This is not protesting,” said Krutmeyer, a member of the church choir. “These are thugs.”

Firefighters battle flames at La Asunción Church in Santiago after it was attacked by vandals on Oct. 18.

(Esteban Felix / Associated Press)

On Sunday, voters will be asked not only if they favor a new national charter but, if so, who should do the rewrite — a constitutional convention fully elected by popular vote, or a mixed assembly composed of sitting lawmakers and elected citizens.

Once a new constitution is drafted — after up to a year of work — the document would be submitted to voters in yet another referendum scheduled for 2022.

Among those participating in a recent rally here in favor of scrapping the current charter was María Paz Grandjean, 45, a well-known actress who has recovered after being shot in the face, apparently by a rubber bullet, during last year’s protests. She recalls the elation of the 1988 referendum that ousted Pinochet, but regrets that a more equitable society did not emerge.

“Those of us who innocently lived that joy are now adults,” she said. “But we cannot let the politicians assure us once again that, yes, justice will be served — but only to the extent possible.”

Special correspondent Poblete reported from Santiago and Times staff writer McDonnell from Mexico City.

Read More

[muneerahwrites]

BHM: Autobiography of Malcolm X

I am a little late because it’s already mid-November and I’ve only just finished “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” that was meant to be reading for Black History Month in Oct ahhaha.

Anyway, I was looking forward to reading this because I admit as much as I knew that Malcolm X was an icon and role model for civil rights movement for the Black community and Muslim community worldwide, I did not know specifically what he stood for. More importantly, I did not understand his journey. I heard snippets of his talks from the Nation of Islam days and then some during his Hajj journey. These snippets confused me most of the time because they were at times, contradictory.

In 2013, I was at a Malaysian event for youths and they asked us to shout out notable Muslims, so Malcolm X came to mind. Muslim, famous, black, American, (different from the other figures that everyone else named, for eg, Salahuddin, Hasan Al Banna etc) I shouted his name.

“Malcolm X!” The room stilled and even the MC was stunned. He brushed his shock off quickly and said that he could not be counted in this list because he was a controversial figure. I am ashamed to say that even though I was thrown aback but that statement, I did nothing to learn more about this man and why he was so misunderstood.

So fast forward 4 years, I am glad I dedicated three books to 3 Black figures and I am glad to finally understand Malcolm X as he himself wishes to be understood.

His autobiography is a great read, I took a while to read it because I was re-reading certain chapters. His life is truly remarkable.

Who was Malcolm X?

I think this section can be answered by his book – YALL SHOULD READ IT PLEZ. The whole time I was reading his book I kept thinking that Allah’s tarbiyah (development of the self) is really tailor made.

Malcolm X (he claimed that his slave name was Malcolm Little, adopted by slave owners so he disowned his surname and referred to himself as X) was also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

Malcolm Little, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up in a myriad of locations in the United States including Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lansing, Michigan, Boston, Massachusetts, Flint, Michigan and New York City. He was assassinated in New York in 1965.

Malcolm X was raised by a Baptist minister, he had an understanding of Christianity in his youth. He led a life of hustling, crime, drugs, dancing, women etc. (When we watched the movie, my younger brother was so confused, he didn’t know Malcolm X’s past). This was so important in hindsight and just shows Allah’s wisdom in putting him through so much pain and suffering. This period was so important in terms of him understanding racism, systemic racism, the attitudes of White people, the attitudes of Black people and the different struggles, poverty cycles that are violently placed on the Black community.

“I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.” – Malcolm X

He was in prison for seven years. Honestly, for me, these chapters were the most captivating and it truly showed how pivotal this time in confinement was for his journey. He discovered Nation of Islam in jail, as well as the importance of reading and knowing the language of your oppressors.

 “I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.” – Malcolm X

 Autobiography of Malcolm X review

Stage 1: The Nation of Islam

Before he went to Africa and for Hajj, Malcolm X was quite a bit more militant (I’m not placing a value on this word, it’s neither moral nor immoral. He was just fiercer and less willing to sit defenceless/passively.  He said things like:

I am a Muslim, because it’s a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time. – Malcolm X (not from Autobiography: https://hollowverse.com/malcolm-x/#footnote_2_6100)

His period of his life from Chapters “Savior” to “Out” was intense. We get an understanding of the physical, emotional and systemic violence and racism that went down in the US against the Black community. I got an understanding of how Nation of Islam was an organised Black nationalist movement that had a religious rhetoric (and also a very specific unorthodox/fringe understanding of Islam).

As a Muslim myself, when I was reading about the practices and the rhetoric of Nation of Islam, I immediately knew that the organisation was not religious per se. The practices and rituals were not orthodox (what Muslims around the world do). It is particularly a US creation and institution, that can’t be found in Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, Wahabbi teachings etc.

Nation of Islam was most defined by its leader Elijah Muhammad, who put forward a very clear, conservative code aimed at black spiritual, mental, social and economic improvement --- using Islamic rhetoric and toughing on some aspects of Islam but not truly Islamic? Its interesting because I felt as though Islam was used solely as an anti-thesis to Christianity, aka “the religion of the white man/the oppressor”.

They called for/preached about:

-          The complete separation of races

-          the created narratives and mytic views of the creation of the Black man

-          Black separatism

-          Black capitalism: economic self-reliance and empowerment

-          Return of African American to Africa / creation of a separate state

Read more here.

Stage 2: Transition post Hajj/Africa

Reading his recollections of how he was betrayed and how he broke off with the Nation of Islam was actually heart breaking. And we see this too often, when the time is dire and in need of unity and strength, we see organisation breaking apart with different allegiances and leaders being goaded by power and delusions. For someone who was loyal and so committed to the cause, I felt the pain and emotional confusion of Malcolm X.

This was when I realised what a great man he was. Through and through, Allah kept seeing that there was a diamond in the rough, misled by the system, by circumstances and by people. He was tested in terms of his sincerity to the Truth and in this phase we see it manifest.

It really is quite sad that we were not able to witness the development of his philosophies and how this more refined, more open understanding of Islam and the situation in America could have played out. But Allah knows best.

For more detailed understanding of his life please read the book! Or read here.

In 1963, Malcolm X travelled to Africa, the Middle East and Europe where he met white people of whomhe could find no reason to hate, no matter what colour they were. Furthermore, Malcolm X discovered hypocrisies and deceptions within the Nation of Islam that caused him to question his allegiance to the organization. At this time, he changed his socio-political worldview as well as his religious tone, saying things like:

[Islam] is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white, but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all together, irrespective of their color.”

― Malcolm X

His commitment to Truth and speaking it to power.

He was an important figure and an inspiration to all of us in terms of speaking Truth to power – truth in terms of speaking out against the oppressor and its systems as well as being committed to searching for the ultimate Truth.

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

Powerful quotes

(Reading his book was one experience but searching up his speeches, now THAT was another experience. He was really really charismatic, mashaAllah)

“So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.” 

“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”

“And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black 'leaders' knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear--nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some 'action'. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely. What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his 'glamour' image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto.These ghetto teen-agers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the prejudiced, intolerant white man’s world. The ghetto teen-agers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed ‘sharp’ and flashing money and displaying no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitution, and general crime and immorality.”

House Negro and the Field Negro (THIS WAS SOOO SIMILAR TO FANON’S OBSERVATIONS in “Black Skins, White Masks”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kf7fujM4ag

By any means necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfSpjyCplg

Who taught you to hate yourself?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaXPhR7aWvo

[progressivemillennial]

To Punch a Nazi, Part 3

Get caught up: Part 1   Part 2

About a month ago, David Pakman interviewed Richard Spencer in such proximity to the inauguration that you can still see the bruise on his eye from getting sucker punched while being interviewed on the street, a very real “bash the fash” incident.  I’ve watched four appearances involving Spencer, and this is the only interview.  I’m glad I watched it because Pakman has opportunities to keep the content focused, Spencer cannot speak solely to his prepared remarks and talking points, and he is challenged in ways that he couldn’t at friendly conferences, which you can see in Part 2.  The interview runs 37 minutes, and I would highly recommend it if you have time and want to efficiently learn about Richard Spencer and his ideology.

Pakman opens the interview by asking Spencer if he considers himself to be any of the following: white nationalist, white separatist, Neo-Nazi, Nazi, white supremacist.  Spencer replies that white nationalist would be the term that he’s most comfortable with.  While he’s most comfortable with that term, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other labels listed were not applicable.  After researching Spencer, he seems like more than a white nationalist to me.  White supremacist and racist seem appropriate since he has such esteem for white people, and I think we could safely say white separatist because he advocates for separating white people from other cultures and races.  I really don’t care for Nazi because it’s been so overused that it has lost so much of its meaning.  Neo-Nazi, however?  I think it’s fair to call him a fascist and a neo-Nazi, given that he has refused to disavow Hitler on multiple occasions, he’s conservative, and, when pressed in November 2016 by the Washington Post, he said the following about creating a white ethno-state within America: “Look, maybe it will be horribly bloody and terrible.  That’s a possibility with everything.”  He is on the record as advocating for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” but it seems that he would be willing to throw out the peaceful part of that equation in favor of ethnic cleansing and/or civil war.  In sum, it sounds an awful lot like he approves of ethnic cleansing in order to establish a white ethno-state in America.

With all of that said, Spencer considers himself first and foremost an identitarian, which seems hypocritical since he does not believe in identity politics as they exist in the United States today.  Moreover, he does not see a contradiction between the alt-right being against identity politics but seeing himself as identitarian. “It’s not really a contradiction; it’s just maybe something that’s a bit surprising,” he argues.  Charles Lyons, a writer for the alt-right Radix Journal, explained that, as an identitarian, “I too am concerned about the preservation of my White, that is to say European, identity within a liberal society. As we have seen with liberalism, it has led to the deracination of our people through globalism, immigration, and multiculturalism.”  You can read Spencer’s definition of identitarianism here.  He argues that people want to be part of something bigger than their interests or a political ideology; they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and identity can fill that void.  One might argue that people can be part of something bigger than themselves in something like religion, but Spencer would claim that identity transcends the political, the spiritual, the national.  I personally do not find that argument convincing.  What could be bigger than spiritual connection?

Pakman then asks whether the white ethno-centric nation he envisions would consist of only whites.  Spencer imagines “a post-American world that would include a white ethno-state that is a homeland for all Europeans from around the world,” and that you could see this new land “as analogous to the Jewish state of Israel.  That is, it is a state that is a homeland for all Europeans, so this would actually be a very new thing.” This new thing, he acknowledges, is a utopian idea since it doesn’t exist in contemporary form. Spencer has used Israel as his example when he speaks elsewhere about forming an ethno-state through peaceful ethnic cleansing, but it’s a flawed example.  Even if the resettlement process of the formation of Israel went peacefully, the conflicts that have engulfed Israel and its neighbors, particularly Palestine, continue through the present.  So it remains unclear how Spencer could ensure the formation of an ethno-state in America without violence and without future violence.

Still, Pakman presses the issue, asking if Spencer’s vision would involve the removal of non-white people from America.  Spencer repeats that his dream would involve the establishment of a homeland for European people, but he says that he doesn’t know what that would entail “because this is something in the future.”  I find it impossible to take this coy response seriously.  If he dreams of forming a “post-American” white ethno-state, he surely has considered how that would take place.  If it’s a post-American order, how does one arrive at this post-American nation?  How does America fall away?  Surely not peacefully.  I imagine that Americans would not readily accept “ethnic redistribution” as Spencer calls for.  It’s impossible to imagine how the formation of such a state would be done peacefully.

Further on the subject of whites and non-whites, Spencer does not think that interracial marriage and interracial breeding are good things, but not for the reason you’d probably think.  Interracial breeding, he asserts, will destroy all races.  That would be a danger not just to white people, but to Africans, Chinese, and the like.  “It would ultimately entail the creation of a kind of new race, an amalgamation of everyone and that would be dissociated from their true cultures. They’d be dissociated from history, they’d be dissociated from these millennia of families that preceded them. I do not see that as a good thing, absolutely not.”  But then what is white culture?  Are Jews white?  Jews, to Spencer, are not white.  “Jews are Jews.”  While whites and Jews (or blacks, Asians, or others) can get along individually, Spencer does not believe that these groups can get along.  “Biracial and multiracial societies are going to ultimately fragment, are going to ultimately end in chaos, and they’re gonna end in blood and tears.”  So, again, separating the groups based on race, is actually a beneficial thing according to Spencer.  Having a white ethno-state saves us from each other!

Specifically, Spencer wants a Christian European nation.  So, I have numerous questions here: which kinds of Christians?  Protestants?  Catholics?  Eastern Orthodox?  Every single kind?  What about Europeans?  Presumably, northern European whites would fit in this ethno-state.  But what about Spanish and Portuguese?  They’re not the same as those other groups.  What about slavic Europeans?  What about Bulgarians and Serbs and Bosnians?  I’m willing to guess that all white Europeans are not created equally in Spencer’s mind, just as they’re not all created equally in Europeans’ minds.  It’s too easy, in my opinion, to shoot holes in the Christian European characterization.

Since it was so revealing, I will share with you the transcript of the end of the interview:

Pakman: “Will you denounce Adolf Hitler?  I heard you don’t denounce Adolf Hitler when asked about that.” Spencer: “National Socialism was a disaster, the 20th century was pretty much a disaster from my opinion.” Pakman: “ Yeah, but do you denounce the actions of Adolf Hitler?” Spencer: “I’m not gonna play this game where you throw out historical figures and I denounce them.  I mean, do you denounce Stalin, do you denounce Pol Pot?  I mean, look, the National Socialist party is part of history, it’s not who I am.” Pakman: “I’m not asking if Hitler is part of history.  So, you don’t denounce Hitler when asked is what you’re saying? Spencer: “I don’t play this game of denunciations.” Pakman: To call it a game is playing a game.  Do you condemn the KKK? Spencer: “The KKK? I mean, look, I don’t even know if we have time to talk about this.  The 19th century KKK has nothing to do with where we are now.  It’s a historical thing.  The second Klan was not engaged in violence, by the way, it was a sort of Americanist group. Pakman: Okay, so you don’t denounce them. That’s okay.  I’m just asking. Spencer: I’m not going to denounce these historical things that don’t really have any resonance to where we are.  If someone in my movement ever claimed that he was gonna engage in violence, I would denounce him in a second.  But I am not going to be burdened by history.”

The easiest question to answer in the world is whether you denounce Hitler.  The fact that the answer was not yes speaks volumes.

The thrilling conclusion of “To Punch A Nazi” comes to a close soon.

Peace and love, Tom

[gibsongirlselections]

Hillary Was Right About BLM

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, you may have noticed that some of your white friends and family members engaged in an odd ritual: They filled their social media pages with confessional screeds acknowledging their white privilege and vaguely promising “to do better,” to listen more, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

The idea that the nation’s problem with overpolicing of poor and working-class neighborhoods originates from some place of internalized white supremacy and that the problem is not going to get fixed until white Americans acknowledge their sins is nothing new. It had been making the rounds on the fringes of political discourse for years, until recently it spilled onto the world stage and was hastily adopted by said white friends and family members of yours.

Look, for example, how this young white woman reacted recently when asked why she was berating black police officers:

White woman yelling at black officers. pic.twitter.com/dEdfTf0Dgw

— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) June 23, 2020

“Racism is a white person’s problem,” she shouts. “Racism is my problem. I need to fix it.” Talk about a white-savior complex.

It’s worth remembering that Hillary Clinton was once faced with the same idea. Her response was admirable and no doubt the correct one.

At a primary campaign event in 2015, Clinton met with the Black Lives Matter activists Daunasia Yancey and Julius Jones during a backroom meeting that was captured on video. You can find the fullest available recording of the conversation here (the pertinent moments are between time codes 1:19-3:41 and 8:50-14:20):

Yancey and Jones were there to confront Clinton on her role in promoting the 1994 Crime Bill that contributed to the explosion of America’s prison population over the last thirty years (a trend that has since somewhat changed and, hopefully, with the recent passage of the First Step Act irreversibly so). The intervention was definitely necessary, as Clinton was largely getting a pass for her former tough-on-crime posture, while Bernie Sanders was getting hammered for being somehow blind to the plight of black Americans.

Clinton promised that she now held different views on criminal justice issues, but Jones remained unconvinced. And so, he asked her: “What in your heart has changed that’s going to change the direction of this country?”

The question might on first sight appear reasonable, but it also strangely confines the matter to the realm of feelings.

Clinton would have none of it and put the ball back in the activists’ court, a rhetorical tour de force that deserves to be quoted at some length:

You’re gonna have to come together as a movement and say, here’s what we want done about it. Because you can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are gonna say: Oh, we get it, we get it, we’re gonna be nicer. That’s not enough. At least, that’s not how I see politics. So the consciousness raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical, but now all I’m suggesting is, even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives.

[…] But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own god-given potential, to live safely, without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future. So, we can do it one of many ways: You can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it, you may actually change some hearts. But if that’s all that happens, we’ll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.

Christopher Hitchens once remarked that Hillary Clinton’s record is so full of lies “that it can only hope to stay alive on the podium by quacking out the clock […] and saying nothing testable or original or courageous.” This was not one such moment.

To be sure, during her exchange with the activists, there was the fair share of Clintonian prevarication, too (“I’m not sure I agree with you. I’m not sure I disagree.”) But the imagery of Yankee Stadium full of guilt-ridden white liberals is highly amusing, and her insistence on concrete policy proposals around which the nation can gather is absolutely spot-on. Just changing someone’s heart, she argues, is a meaningless exercise. It falls below the threshold of the political because at the end of the day nothing of value will have been done to improve the lives of the poor. Economic well-being and safety from crime will always trump the hollow gestures of contemporary anti-racism.

On these points at least, Clinton had outwitted the Black Lives Matter activists. They, in turn, were right, of course, in reminding her of her central role in promoting the sort of policies that led to a general decline in the quality of living for many of America’s poor.

It also needs reminding that Clinton-style neoliberal politics had a profoundly disempowering effect on civil society. The social and political work that used to be done by trade unions, churches, parent-teacher or neighborhood associations are now monopolized by professional NGOs and non-profits with deep ties to the state and corporate donors. If the Black Lives Matter activists should have probed deeper for any possible change of heart in Clinton, it would have been to find out whether she now believed that voluntary citizen associations should wrestle away power from managerial elites. But that was when Black Lives Matter still existed in somewhat germinal form. Now, it’s a richly endowed non-profit in its own right.

But instead of insisting on any of these points, Jones somewhat haplessly replies to Clinton that, “if you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do […] This is and has always been a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us.”

In a brilliant New York Times op-ed from 2017, Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote that identity politics ironically enough gives whiteness a near-mystical power to mold and control the course of the world in such a way that “those deemed white remain this nation’s primary actors.” White people act, black people are acted upon. This is the way it’s been and, if you ask the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, this is the way it’s going to remain for a long, long time. It was unfortunate that Jones fell into the same fatalistic way of thinking.

But what felt like an argumentative misstep then is now the law of the land on the left, by which activists like the indignant white woman from the Twitter video above reveal their actual racism. It’s the same sentiment informing those horrid Facebook posts by your friends.

What will be left to the wayside as a result is any meaningful attempt to tackle the issues of overly aggressive policing, unemployment, low growth, dwindling incomes, existential despair, and the skyrocketing homicide rate that’s been haunting our cities since the recent riots and the subsequent retreat of police forces. Black lives are getting lost at staggering rates, and no one who holds the public microphone seems to care.

There was a real moment for genuine reform in the air recently—that is, at least, in the briefest sliver of time right after the brutal killing of George Floyd and right before the looting broke out (with plenty of entitled white progressives stoking the flames, some of them literally). Since then, things have degenerated toward ahistorical acts of iconoclasm against the author of the Declaration of Independence or the Union general and later president who brought the rebellion to its knees and then crushed the KKK. The target in all this is not so much some perceived historical injustice that occurred in the distant past but the belief that “whiteness” has wiggled its way through time, swallowing and destroying all that has stood in its way. It’s the stony memorials to this mythic, all-pervasive whiteness that therefore need to be toppled first before anything else can change. And voila, we’re way past addressing the real problems affecting our country. 

(Perhaps, it’s the advance guard of Joe Biden’s presidency. After all, didn’t he promise a room full of megarich donors that under his administration “nothing would fundamentally change”?)

Far from taking advice on how to fix our problems from the Clintons—they’re the last ones we should consult on literally anything—Hillary’s response to the Black Lives Matter activists remains prudent on its own. Whether she truly meant it and whether she as president would have followed through on her words (she wouldn’t have), it should still be seen as a compassionate plea to black Americans—really, to all Americans— not to feel like the deck is forever stacked against them. True change requires us to engage in meaningful civic activity in order to regain a sense of agency that our corporate-sponsored anti-racist figureheads insist remains confined to the hearts of entitled white progressives.

Otherwise, “we’ll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.”

Gregor Baszak is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a writer. His articles have appeared in The American Conservative, Los Angeles Review of Books, Platypus Review, Public Books, Spectator USA, Spiked, and elsewhere. Follow Gregor on Twitter at @gregorbas1. 

The post Hillary Was Right About BLM appeared first on The American Conservative.

[bhuva23]

'The Tempest' as a Postcolonial Text

The Tempest as a Postcolonial Text

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word ‘colonialism’ emerges out of the Roman ‘colonia’ which translates to ‘farm’ or ‘settlement’. It was a reference to Romans who settled down in other lands while retaining their citizenship. The OED definition of colonialism as Ania Loomba points out in her book Colonialism/Postcolonialism, does not make any reference to the natives, people who might have been living in places where colonies were established. This essay will consider The Tempest in the light of postcolonialism using Loomba’s theories and the relationship between the natives of the island and Prospero, Stephano and Trinculo.

William Shakespeare draws inspiration for The Tempest from William Strachey’s account of a ship that ran into a storm. It was on its way to Jamestown, Virginia. The passengers surprisingly were safe and it resulted in the first colony which was set up in 1607. The play was written in 1611. Loomba states that Shakespeare adds a major component to the play, which was absent in the account. This is the idea of the island being inhabited prior to Prospero’s arrival. It renders the play into an allegory of a colonial encounter, more than a romance. In order for Prospero to sustain his power, there was a certain “re-forming” and “un-forming” (Loomba, 8) that had to be done. It includes practices such as “trade, plunder, negotiation, warfare, genocide, enslavement and rebellions.” (Loomba, 8).

These are some of the factors that distinguish between colonialism in the Genghis Khan era and the modern colonialism. Modern colonialism made sure that there was a link between the economy of the colonized lands and the colonizers’ land. There was a flow of human and natural resources between the colonized and colonial countries. This was in the form of slaves and raw materials. The profits were obtained by the colonial powers. In The Tempest, Prospero uses Ariel and Caliban for their services claiming that he rescued one and raised the other. Ariel and Caliban are not only used for labor, but also are “educated” with the European ideology. Having established the colonized as the ‘other’, the Europeans felt the need to educate what they thought were savages. This idea is talked about by Edward Said in Orientalism where he notes how Arabs were seen as exotic, backward, uncivilized and dangerous. This idea is carried out in the case of Caliban who is described in an animal-like fashion. Prospero accuses him of attempting to rape Miranda in the past, a reason he uses to impose control on him.

Similarly, the idea of the cannibal was used by Columbus and by Spanish colonists later on to justify their brutal practices. Loomba talks about a Martin Frobisher who used an Eskimo for display in England. This idea resonates in The Tempest where Trinculo thinks about the money he could earn by doing the same with Caliban. He muses how people “will lay out ten (coins) to see a dead Indian” (1, ii, 32-33). This is a stereotype. Sander Gilman says that stereotypes promote an “artificial sense of difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’” (Loomba, 55). Prospero, Trinculo and Stephano clearly use this technique to degrade the position of Caliban.

On the other hand, the colonized people, as mentioned earlier with reference to Orientalism, were considered exotic, yet inferior, while the latter considered the former as enviable, and corrupt. This instance can be seen in The Tempest when Prospero refers to Ariel as “delicate” (4, i, 49) and as a “fine apparition” (1, ii, 319) but also reminds Ariel that he is a “malignant thing’ (1, ii, 259). Caliban views Prospero as powerful and desires to overthrow him. This highlights the ambivalent relationship that the two parties share. The idea of the colonized being “exotic” is carried out across the geography of the colonized land. This results in the colonizer using the colonized as a medium to access resources and ‘secrets’ of the land and culture. It shows how the colonizer considers it necessary to tame not only the natives, but also the land itself. Another factor used to create the binary of the European and non-European is the language.

Peter Hulme refers to two words which were derived from Native American languages. The words ‘cannibal’ and ‘hurricane’ were used to widen the gap between the colonizer and the colonized. Hurricane was referred to as a tempest, unique to the Caribbean and suggested the supposed violence and savage condition of the place. Similarly, cannibalism was not merely a synonym for ‘anthropophagi’ (savages who eat their own kind). Cannibalism was a marker for the threat the savages posed against Europeans, as Loomba points out. As a natural phenomenon and a cultural practice, the terms designated anything that was situated outside Europe. ‘Canis’ is a Latin word referring to dog, and the view was that the people of the Caribbean treated their victims in a ferocious, predatory manner. It is no surprise that Caliban is an anagram for cannibal (negating the ‘n’) and also explains why Prospero uses dogs to attack the rebels as Hulme points out. Cannibalism was also used as a pretext to justify the taking over the American lands.

Apart from the image of the cannibal, the image of the colonized as a dark-skinned rapist is established. Prior to this, the colonizers were seen as the rapists who plundered countries. The narrative changed with time. Caliban, too is alleged of an attempt to rape Miranda. The notion of the savage rapist, as Loomba argues, “…deflects the violence of the colonial encounter from the colonizer to the colonized” (Loomba, 70). Jenny Sharpe in her book Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Women in the Colonial Text demonstrates how Indians were seen as mild and meek until the 1857 revolt. Following this, the ‘mild Hindoo’ became a sexual predator who raped British women. Sharpe suggests that the rebellion left the British “without a script on which they could rely” (Sharpe, 67). Caliban is the more rebellious of the slaves. Ariel is mild and soft spoken. Caliban’s rebelliousness ears him the place of a savage rapist.

This brings up the need for civilizing the ‘savage’. The phrase ‘white man’s burden’ was used as an ideology to denote the duty of the white colonizers to educate the colonized with western ideologies in order to ‘help them out’. In the play, Prospero educates Caliban and teaches him the former’s language. Caliban exclaims “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language!” (1, ii, 365-367). It is similar to the ‘subaltern’, a term coined by Antonio Gramsci to identify people excluded from society’s established institutions. Gayathri Spivak notes how the subaltern, in order to be heard, must adopt the Western language. Caliban, similarly, uses Prospero’s language to insult him and express his discontentment. Through his language, the colonizer creates narratives to explain the local history of the colonized land. These narratives overwrite and silence the local narratives. Prospero repeatedly tells Caliban and Ariel about how he rescued them. The story of Caliban’s childhood and Ariel’s imprisonment is continually repeated by Prospero. Joseph Goebbels says “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” So the questions one needs to consider while looking at The Tempest as a colonial text are – Did Caliban really try to rape Miranda, or could it possibly be a narrative used to oppress him, and one also needs to consider how much of the native perspective is highlighted. However, one does see Caliban claiming his authority over the island, as he is the true inhabitant and considers Prospero as an outsider. It is visible in the lines where Caliban says “This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou takest from me.” (1, ii, 333-334). This leads to the representations of the play as a depiction of colonial oppression. In the 1960s and 1970s, de-colonization movements began in Africa, Caribbean and Latin America. The anti-colonial writers challenged the notion of Prospero’s ‘art’ being considered as a part of the civil world, while Sycorax’s natural black magic is considered evil. Writers began defending Caliban’s right to the island. The lines quoted at the end of the preceding paragraph highlights this. Aimé Césaire, a black writer from Martinique rewrote the play to celebrate Caliban’s verbal attacks on Prospero and questions his claim to the island. In Jonathan Miller’s 1988 production of The Tempest, Prospero is a white colonizer and Caliban is a black slave. In David Thacker’s 1995 production, Ariel was played by a woman with face paint of a Native American Indian. Hence it is evident how the text was interpreted from an anti-colonial point of view, recognizing the postcolonial ideologies and representations in the original text.

On a similar note, Joanne Drayton in her article talks about how chess is seen as a metaphor for the “postcolonial relationship between Maori (indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand) and Pakeha (New Zealander of European descent) in Aotearoa New Zealand.” (Drayton, Researchgate). It brings about questions of diaspora and the idea of the carrying of culture, since chess has been attributed to Viking culture. In the play, one finds Ferdinand and Miranda playing a game of chess. This symbolizes how Prospero’s every move is calculated and used to manipulate the rest of the characters in in the play.

With regard to a counter-view when studying the play as a postcolonial text, Meredith Anne Skura suggests that the parallels to colonial discourse are unintentional and cannot be taken seriously. She claims that the exploitation of people has been dealt with in several other plays of Shakespeare, and that it was too early for the colonial ideology to set in, since the play was written merely four years after the setting up of a colony in Virginia. She further explains how the characters can be seen as manifestations of human personalities. Caliban could be a representation of Prospero’s evil side. The latter acknowledges this at the end of the play when he says “This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.’ (5, i, 277-278). Skura makes several important points including the fact that Caliban is not a representation of the cannibal, since he does not eat meat, instead “confining himself more delicately to roots, berries and an occasional fish” (Skura, 59).

However, as pointed out by Loomba, the fact that the playwright added the presence of inhabitants, slavery, narratives, and a subjugation and exploitation of the inhabitants renders the play as a portrayal of colonialism, whether or not the writer intended to represent it in that light. In popular culture, one sees colonial ideas and attitudes, for instance, in the Tintin comics, the artist depicts gypsies, native Americans, and Indians in a racist and stereotypical light, and the same can be said about the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Professor Yvette Rosser comments on how the film is a racist portrayal of Indians. Kayleigh Donaldson in her article Problematic Faves: Indiana Jones talks about the blatant racist outlook on Indians and South Asians, as the Hindus are represented as blood drinking, demon worshiping savages with odd and revolting food habits. Hadley Freeman highlights the racism in the movie in her article Blacking up, wacky Asians and the Libyans: the worst of 80s movie racism, where she makes references to the racist representations of Blacks and Asians. Hadley Freeman hardly finishes pointing at how the films have shown to be racist, when the stark irony is revealed, when she exclaims “Ha ha ha, Asian people are GROSS” (Freeman, The Guardian) .This goes on to show how racism and stereotypical notions along coupled with the white man’s superior attitude still permeate the society today, as a result of colonization.

To conclude, The Tempest has been considered from a postcolonial critical viewpoint, since it embodies the attitudes, practices and ideologies of the European colonizer. It has also been observed how colonization has led to racism and stereotypes that still exist in today’s society.

WORKS CITED:

Books

Loomba, Ania. (2005). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge, 2005.

Shakespeare, William, and John Crowther. The Tempest. Sparknotes, 2003.

Speaight, Robert. Shakespeare On The Stage. Little, Brown, 1973.

Sharpe, Jenny. Allegories Of Empire. University Of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Gilman, Sander. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness. Cornell University Press, 1985.

Websites

Donaldson, Kayleigh. "Problematic Faves: Indiana Jones". SYFY WIRE, 2019, https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/problematic-faves-indiana-jones. Accessed 2 Apr 2019.

Freeman, Hadley. "Blacking Up, Wacky Asians And The Libyans: The Worst Of 80S Movie Racism". The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/10/wacky-asians-blacking-up-and-the-libyans-the-worst-of-80s-movie-racism. Accessed 2 Apr 2019.

"Joseph Goebbels On The "Big Lie"". Org, 2019, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot. Accessed 2 Apr 2019.

"Production History | The Tempest | Royal Shakespeare Company". Org.Uk, 2019, https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-tempest/past-productions/production-history. Accessed 2 Apr 2019.

Anne Skura, Meredith. Discourse And The Individual: The Case Of Colonialism In "The Tempest". 1989, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870753. Accessed 2 Apr 2019.

[theconservativebrief]

President Trump implied that his justification for separating families seeking asylum, and his restrictionist ideology for even legal immigrants, is to prevent the United States from enduring what’s happening in Europe, where, he claims falsely, immigrants are bringing with them a wave of violence that’s driving up the crime rate.

Trump has often referred to these kind of outlandish claims as just “politically incorrect.” But that isn’t really it. Trump — and key members of his administration — are embracing what used to be a fringe theory held by the furthest of the far right.

Believers argue that white people are being systematically “erased” by their inferiors, and thus require an influx of white babies and new white immigrants (and the exclusion of nonwhite immigrants) to survive.

To some among these believers, white Americans, and white culture, are threatened by a slow-running “genocide” via demographic replacement. (Indeed, Trump once retweeted someone with the handle “WhiteGenocide,” which refers to this theory.)

We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2018

Stephen Miller, in an interview this week:

“It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.” https://t.co/2c1crARYqg

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) June 17, 2018

This theory has adherents on the alt-right, across the conservative media, and even in Congress.

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017

In this worldview, it’s not “racist” to think that a Norwegian might be a better fit with American culture (as they define it) than an immigrant arriving from Lagos or Addis Ababa — it’s “racial realism.” It’s the only way to stop white people from being losers of a fight to the death between races.

These ideas are old, rooted in scientific racism and fears of miscegenation once held by Progressive Era stalwarts like President Woodrow Wilson and white supremacist hate groups alike. But now they appear to have the ear of those closest to the president — and are playing a part in the creation of policy.

This group included former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. In fact, long before he ran Trump’s presidential campaign or took a role in the White House, Bannon believed that the movements of nonwhite immigrant groups, legal or not, posed a physical, cultural, political, and moral danger to “white” countries. As he told White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller in a March 2016 Sirius XM show, “When you look and there’s got 61 million, 20 percent of the country, is immigrants — is that not a massive problem?” Miller agreed wholeheartedly. Now Miller and his former boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, are vocalizing the same views, both to the media and to the president of the United States.

AG Jeff Sessions on immigration reform: “What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, & is going to struggle in our country & not be successful? That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” pic.twitter.com/JwOBmbAG0P

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 17, 2018

Trump’s internal racism might be that of a 71-year-old white man who marvels that, for instance, members of the Congressional Black Caucus didn’t already know Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. But his external racism is heavily influenced by adherents of an ideology that believes whiteness is the essential character of America, with direct and very detrimental impacts on discussions regarding immigration policy.

And importantly, Trump’s language and policies are evidence of a worldview that holds that whiteness is more valuable to participation in the American experiment than anything else — even a deep and abiding belief in American ideals.

Throughout the 19th century, fears regarding miscegenation and “race mixing,” rooted in a belief that the dilution of white bloodlines — bloodlines that offered political, economic, and social authority over nonwhites — would result in societal disaster led to states across the country banning interracial marriages and enforcing strict rules regarding exactly what it meant to be white. In the 20th century, such views were espoused by Progressive Era activists, leading to restrictionist acts passed in 1917 and 1924. As Madison Grant argued in the 1915 eugenicist tome The Passing of the Great Race:

The resurgence of inferior races and classes throughout not merely Europe but the world, is evident in every despatch from Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Romania, India and Mexico. … Neither the black, nor the brown, nor the yellow, nor the red will conquer the white in battle. But if the valuable elements in the Nordic race mix with in-ferior strains or die out through race suicide, then the citadel of civilization will fall for mere lack of defenders.

More recently, the exact language of “white genocide” began to circulate among the white supremacist underground after the Second World War. In 1972, the official newspaper of the National Socialist White People’s Party published a piece titled “Over-Population Myth Is Cover for White Genocide,” arguing that the widespread availability of contraception would lead to a terrifying future in which “whites will be outnumbered four to one.”

A decade later, David Lane, a white supremacist responsible for the murder of a Jewish radio host in 1984, wrote the “White Genocide Manifesto” while in prison, arguing that “‘racial integration’ is only a euphemism for genocide.” He later shortened his three-page manifesto to 14 words: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Three decades later, the term “white genocide” is the single most popular hashtag used by white nationalists on Twitter.

The sentiment among white nationalists has little changed since the Civil War: Whiteness is a valuable commodity, essential to the very nature of American and European life. And it is under attack — not by violence but by immigration, and by sexual intercourse between whites and nonwhites.

“White genocide” rhetoric circulated in mail-order publications and racist websites like Stormfront for much of the 1990s and 2000s, but also held sway within policy institutes and foundations that gave cover to scientific racism, also known as “racial realism” — a belief that racism is not only based in fact but has scientific and quantitative backing.

Among these groups was the Pioneer Fund — which the Washington Post found in 1985 to have “financed research into “racial betterment” by “scientists seeking to prove that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.” American Renaissance, a publication of the self-described “race-realist, white advocacy organization” New Century Foundation, held an online symposium in late 2017 called “Global Demographics and White Survival: What Is to Be Done?”

One writer included in the conference, F. Roger Devlin, compared African birthrates to that of the deer population in Arizona, arguing, “We cannot ‘cull’ Africans as if they were deer, but we can eliminate the misguided humanitarian aid that is doing so much harm.” He concluded his essay with the following:

Obviously, we must be prepared to do what is necessary to defend our own living space, up to and including shooting intruders. Whites are so used to seeing Africans as objects of humanitarian concern that many are unable to grasp that they may also be dangerous rivals. But in fact, fertility is a major advantage they possess over us. We should not attempt to compete with them directly, but we can and must prevent our living space from becoming a dumping ground for their excess fertility. If we fail, it will mean a darker future for all humanity.

Another white supremacy foundation is the National Policy Institute, created by William Regnery in 2005 to “give voice to the interests of white peoples.” Its current president is Richard Spencer, who has said he worked closely with Stephen Miller in college on campus activism about immigration.

It must be noted that these ideas are not only untrue but also ahistorical. The idea of whiteness as quantifiable and, moreover, essential to the notion of what it means to be an American ignores virtually all of American history.

In fact, hard lines dividing Americans by race were redrawn over and over; many American families seemed to cross from black to white to black depending on their social status and the region of the country in which they lived. Immigrant groups, too, endured changing racial norms, with Irish and Italian Americans, for example, deemed scientifically inferior for decades.

When Maine politician Ira Hersey declared in the early 20th century, “We have thrown open wide our gates and through them have come other alien races, of alien blood, from Asia and southern Europe … with their strange and pagan rites, their babble of tongues,” he was talking about Italian Catholics.

White Americans are declining as a percentage of the population of the United States, from roughly 69 percent of the population in 2000 to 64 percent in 2010. As of July 1, 2015, just over half of all babies under the age of 1 born in the United States were racial and ethnic minorities. Mixed-race Americans are the second-fastest-growing ethnic group in America.

Time magazine, “The New Face of America,” November 18, 1993.

For many Americans, this is a positive development. But for “racial realists,” this is an emergency.

As they see it, if there are more nonwhite people in America, there will be fewer white people. If there are fewer white people, there will be fewer white voters who would favor conservative policies. As “racial realist” Gregory Hood wrote for American Renaissance in November 2017, “American civic nationalism ultimately depends on white voters. The refusal to speak the truth explicitly about demographic realities [dooms] the GOP to electoral extinction.”

The underlying assumption is that only white people will favor conservative policies. As Hood wrote in the same piece, conservatives must understand “that many of the things they value — the flag, monuments to certain leaders, or cultural norms such as a tradition of free speech — really are dependent on a European-American majority.”

That’s an echo of the sentiments shared by immigration restrictionist John Tanton, who told a donor to his organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “One of my prime concerns is about the decline of folks who look like you and me,” and warned a friend, “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

There’s markedly little discussion among “racial realists” of attempting to creating conservative arguments that appeal to nonwhite Americans. To them, race is political destiny, and to the racial victors will go the nation. In a way, it’s the very inverse of “demographics as destiny.”

In short, believers of “white genocide” think that any encouragement of diversity in schools or workplaces, or the increase in mixed-race Americans (and their presence in mainstream media), isn’t evidence of more progressive attitudes toward race, but of a sinister plot.

In the words of Richard Spencer: “America was … a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”

Of course, much of the current GOP might not feel comfortable using terminology like “white genocide” and “racial realism,” in part because many conservatives simply don’t share these views.

Many members of the Republican Party think like Haitian-American Rep. Mia Love, who spoke out about Trump’s racist comments in January. In her words, Trump’s statements were “unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values,” and she told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “You have to understand that there are countries that struggle out there but … their people are good people and they’re part of us.”

In fact, until recently, the conventional wisdom was that the GOP needed to do more to appeal to people of color in order to survive and thrive. After the presidential election in 2012, Sen. Marco Rubio told Politico, “The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them.” Sen. Susan Collins agreed, telling the New York Times in 2012, “Republicans cannot win with just rural white voters.”

“One of the great projects and challenges of the conservative movement is persuading a much broader ethnic coalition of Americans of the value of conservative ideas,” said David French, a staff writer at National Review who experienced online attacks by far-right trolls in 2015, many of whom aimed their ire at French’s Ethiopian-born daughter.

But many on the right didn’t, and don’t, feel the same way. While Miller was advising then-Sen. Jeff Sessions on how best to kill the efforts of Rubio and the “Gang of Eight” to pass immigration reform in 2013, Steve Bannon and Breitbart News were fanning the flames of racial discord, complete with a “black crime” article label and stories about the imminent dangers posed by nonwhite immigrants.

It’s not just Breitbart. Conservative pundit Ann Coulter (who tweeted, “I don’t care if [Trump] wants to perform abortions in White House,” after the release of his immigration policy paper in 2015) wrote last November that “the only reason Democrats want a never-ending stream of Third World immigrants is because they know immigrants will help them win elections. … There isn’t much time on the clock before it’s lights-out for the GOP.” Trump is a noted fan of Coulter’s writing, and during his presidential campaign, Coulter warmed up the crowd at several campaign rallies.

In a way, the idea slots neatly into Trump’s zero-sum worldview. To those who voice the “white genocide” myth, a victory by nonwhite Americans, particularly immigrants, will inevitably lead to losses by white Americans.

As far-right commentator (and former White House senior adviser) Pat Buchanan wrote, “Endless mass migration here means the demographic death of the GOP. In U.S. presidential elections, persons of color whose roots are in Asia, Africa and Latin America vote 4-1 Democratic, and against the candidates favored by American’s vanishing white majority.”

To him, this puts America “on the path to national suicide.” American Renaissance shared his column.

Bannon may be out of the White House (and Breitbart News). But his attitudes regarding immigration and immigrants remain in place, voiced by fellow immigration restrictionists like Sessions and Miller who believe that immigration poses a danger to American culture and American life — unless that immigration is from a predominantly white country.

Most importantly, those views are being voiced by Trump himself. After all, when the white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted, “You will not replace us” — a direct reference to the “white genocide” myth — Trump made sure to say that there were “very fine people” among those chanting.

This has a direct impact on immigration policy, including current negotiations regarding family separation at the Mexican border with the United States.

It’s making the process of dealmaking virtually impossible for Democrats, and for Republicans who desperately want to avoid any arguments that racialize immigration policy. If the debate over immigration is about border security and preventing the entrance of genuine threats to American security, compromise is imaginable, even possible.

But if the debate over immigration is actually about a belief that nonwhite immigrants pose an existential danger to America and Americanness as a whole, and that “demographics” require Haitian immigrants to be expelled from the country while hypothetical immigrants from Norway are welcomed with open arms, then there is no ready compromise at hand.

As my colleague Dara Lind wrote in January, “You can’t negotiate with people who believe that an America that lets in people from ‘shithole countries’ isn’t the America they know or love. Either America is a nation of immigrants or it is a nation of blood and soil. It cannot be both.”

Original Source -> The scary ideology behind Trump’s immigration instincts

via The Conservative Brief

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New Post has been published on Titos London

#Blog New Post has been published on http://www.titoslondon.co.uk/back-to-black-why-women-are-using-clothing-to-protest-at-the-golden-globes/

Back to black: Why women are using clothing to protest at the Golden Globes

Award shows are, traditionally speaking, a stage — a stage upon which a moment of fashion fantasy plays out, where talent is celebrated, and where stars can make a statement and have their voices heard. At the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday — the first major Hollywood awards ceremony of the year — a number of high-profile women are planning to make a powerful statement against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry. And they’re doing it via the colour of their clothes.

1/19

Suffragist parade in New York

Image: Getty

Suffragettes during march for the Vote

Image: Getty

Suffragists pose in front of the Capitol House Building

Image: Getty

Democratic women wear white as President Donald J. Trump delivers his first address before a joint session of Congress

Image: Getty

President Donald Trump address to Congress

Image: Getty

Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party Presidential Nomination

Image: Getty

Hillary Clinton Press Conference in New York: Purple was claimed to represent a mix of red and blue, the colours of the Republican and Democratic parties coming together.

Image: Getty

Gun violence awareness march in New York

Image: Rex Features

Gun violence awareness march in New York

Image: Rex Features

Chanel SS15

Image: Imaxtree

Chanel SS15

Image: Imaxtree

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

Image: Getty

Diamond & gold snake brooch from State Secy. Madeleine Albright’s collection which she wore as US Amb. to UN in lieu of name tag in 1994 mtg. w. Iraq’s Tariq Aziz after being called serpent in Iraqi press.

Image: Getty

Meryl Streep at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards

Image: Rex Features

Jessica Chastain at Molly’s Game film premiere

Image: Rex Features

Helen Mirren at the Pirelli Calendar 2017 launch

Image: Rex Features

Emma Stone at the premiere of Mother

Image: Rex Features

Nicole Kidman at Lincoln Center Corporate Fund Gala

Image: Rex Features

Reese Witherspoon at the 27th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards

Image: Rex Features

In a show of solidarity following the allegations of rape and sexual assault made against the American film producer Harvey Weinstein late last year, 300 actresses, agents, writers, directors and producers – including Emma Stone, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon and Shonda Rhimes – have called on women attending the awards on Sunday to don black. They also published an open letter in the New York Times announcing the launch of Time’s Up, which includes a $13 million legal fund to support survivors of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace.

“This is a moment of solidarity,” Eva Longoria told the Times of the protest. “This time the industry can’t expect us to go up and twirl around.”

The resulting images — showing dozens of the world’s most famous celebrities clothed uniformly in black, splashed on the front pages of newspapers across the globe — will be striking. “Think how important actresses wearing elaborate, bright dresses is to so many forms of media now,” says Rebecca Arnold, senior lecturer in History of Dress & Textiles at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. “Subtracting that, and refusing that, is a really strong protest. It will force all those magazines who cover what was worn at the Golden Globes—who looks good and who doesn’t look good—to engage.”

The blackout has sparked something of a dress race, with stylists like Karla Welch, Jessica Paster, Law Roach and Tanya Gill rushing to secure a handful of dresses. Designers are also quickly remaking dresses in black — Prabal Gurung, Christian Siriano and Naeem Khan included — while battling a major storm New York.

Using colour as protest

Sunday’s initiative builds on a growing movement of (sartorial) dissent on the red carpet. Lola Kirke and Transparent creator Jill Soloway sported “Fuck Paul Ryan” badges to the 2017 Golden Globes; Kerry Washington wore a safety pin at the 2017 SAG awards in support of refugees denied entry to the U.S.; and several attendees of to the 2017 Oscars ceremony, including Ruth Negga and Karlie Kloss, pinned blue American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ribbons to their dresses to draw awareness to the non-profit’s work. But this year’s Globes protest marks a watershed moment in the unification and organisation of a red-carpet resistance.

The Golden Globes protest undoubtedly takes its biggest steer from the Suffragette movement of the early 20th century, when women donned white, green and purple to advocate for the vote. White has since evolved into a symbol of feminist resistance all its own. It was worn by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, by female Democrats to his first joint address to Congress, and by those protesting his return to New York after his swearing in.

In January of last year, another item of clothing — the pink pussyhat — became a feminist symbol after women around the world marched in protest of Trump. (The pussyhat referenced a recorded comment he had made about grabbing women by the genitals.) Other recent political initiatives in the U.S. have likewise utilised colour to great effect, like the Wear Orange movement to spotlight gun violence.

The power of black

So why have this year’s Golden Globe nominees chosen black over white or pink? “Black is a really powerful colour to use: it’s a non-colour,” says Arnold. “It matches with menswear, making an equivalence and flatting out some of the differences.” It is also the colour of power, mourning, and ultimately darkness, as Margaret Atwood highlights in her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

Sunday’s all-black dress code hasn’t gone without criticism. Actress Rose McGowan, one of the first to go public with claims against Weinstein, was quick to point out that wearing black is a “silent” protest, tweeting at the time: “You’ll accept a face award breathlessly and affect no real change… Your silence is the problem.”

When all is said and done, the stand taken at the Golden Globes will be remembered long after the stars have shed their black ensembles, sparking — as intended — ever-larger conversations about women’s rights around the world.

The post Back to black: Why women are using clothing to protest at the Golden Globes appeared first on VOGUE India.

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'Barça is More Than a Club'

Alex and Sílvia are good friends. Born in the same year, they have known each other for more than two decades: they went together to the same school in a small town near Barcelona, and they went on to be university classmates in the Catalan capital afterwards.

Alex and Sílvia also share a big passion: they are die-hard FC Barcelona fans.

On the outside they seem really alike, but nothing could be further from the truth. Alex and Sílvia are really different…especially in everything related to politics.

"Estelada" flags, symbols of the independence movement, are usual in balconies in Barcelona.

On Sílvia’s balcony there is a huge Catalan flag with a white star on a blue triangle: it is the "estelada," a symbol which identifies the independence movement in Catalonia.

In the election held on December 21 in this region of Northeastern Spain, Sílvia voted for the center-right secessionist party Junts per Catalunya. In the vote, pro-independence parties won by a narrow margin over unionists.

On Alex’s balcony, however, there are no flags at all. In the elections, he decided to vote for Catalunya en Comú, a left-wing party which preferred to focus their campaign on social issues rather than positioning on independence.

"Caganers"—literally meaning "guy taking a shit"— are an an awkward traditional Catalan figure used in Christimas nativity scenes, wearing Barça jerseys.

Alex and Sílvia’s political ideology, as usual in Catalonia, has an echo in sports. Alex belongs to a sector of blaugrana fans whose motto is ‘only Barça.’ For them, the club is nothing more than a football team that carries no political significance. When he goes to Camp Nou, Alex’s chants simply cheer the players. Nothing else.

“I go to Camp Nou to enjoy football. That’s it,” says Alex. “In my opinion, when you go to the stadium you have to leave politics at home.”

FC Barcelona flags —as well as official shorts from different seasons—at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni, a fanclub located in central Barcelona.

Sílvia, however, believes that Barça is bigger than sports.

“Narcís de Carreres, a former president, described it very well: Barça is more than a club,” Sílvia says, referring to the famous blaugrana motto "més que un club."

Every time Sílvia goes to the stadium, she wears yellow clothes, a reference to jailed pro-independence politicians and activists. She also shouts in favor of independence every game at the 17:14 minute: 1714 was the year Barcelona fell into the hands of Bourbon troops during the War of Spanish Succession.

“Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a famous Catalan writer, described Barça as the unarmed army of Catalonia,” Sílvia adds. “I believe that this sentence defines the club really well.”

Barça fans watch the Clásico between Madrid and Barcelona at the at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

Alex and Sílvia exemplify two visions of a club which has as many faces and interpretations as fans.

Marc Duch is president of Manifest Blaugrana, an association of members whose objective is to build a more democratic and transparent FC Barcelona.

“What is Barça, you say?,” asks Duch. “I would say it depends on the time: for me, it has been a hobby, an untamable passion, an example to imitate, an absolute shame…and much more.”

“This game is just life for me,” says Ángel, a die-hard Barça fan. “We wait for Barça-Madrid all year long: winning at the Bernabéu stadium is the best thing that can happen. The country’s current situation increases this rivalry, which is goes way further than just sport: it comes from many years ago, and now it’s even tougher. Without a Catalan team, the Spanish league would go down the drain.”

“Barça is an institution with the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s why we should demand it to have a proactive role in the social and human improvement of the country,” Duch adds. “That is where, at least partially, the motto ‘more than a club’ comes from.”

"FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

Marc Cornet takes this idea even further. On October 1, the Catalan regional government tried to organize a referendum on independence: the Spanish government considered it illegal and sent the police to repress it…violently. After the referendum, Cornet thought it was absolutely necessary for Barça to get more involved in social matters, and that is why, with other club members, he founded the Barça Republic Defense Committee—CDR, in Catalan.

“This game is much more than just sports,” says Cristian. “It’s a representation of the Catalonia versus Spain clash.”

“Our club has always been a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance,” Cornet explains. “During the twenties, dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera closed our stadium because some fans whistled while the Spanish anthem was played; in 1936, our president Josep Sunyol was killed for being a Republican Catalanist; after the Civil War, the fascists took out the Catalan flag from our crest.”

“We don’t ask Barça to be openly independentist,” Cornet adds. “But we want it to be always on the side of civil rights, and that’s why we founded the CDR: we don’t want any other October the 1st, ever.”

“For us die-hard fans, Barça is our life,” says Jordi, who has followed the blaugrana team for decades. “Beating Madrid is important, but all games are important. Being a Barça fan means being part of something bigger, of some kind of huge family.”

The partisan positions of Duch and Cornet are pretty common among the Catalan culers—that is, Barça fans—but they’re not the only positions. Recently, the fanclub of Elda, near Alicante in Eastern Spain, publicly announced their decoupling from Barça as a reaction to the club’s decisions on October 1 to play their La Liga game behind closed doors as a means to protest against police violence.

An Elda fanclub spokesperson declared to local media that their members had “unanimously” decided to end their relationship with Barça “due to the implication of the club and its leaders in the events that took place in Catalonia.”

“Barça-Madrid is the best game of the season,” says Víctor, barman at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni. “But that’s it. It’s just a football game, nothing more.”

Other public figures such as the former Spanish international Julio Alberto Moreno, who played in FC Barcelona in the eighties, have also shown their disapproval of the club’s management: “The board has been chosen to rule a football club, not a political party,” Moreno said to the Spanish TV channel Antena 3.

“The independence process has destroyed much of the confidence between different social sectors and has caused a clear crack within Catalan society," says Berta Barbet, a political scientist at the University of Barcelona.

“It has also caused a political deadlock in the whole of Spain and has affected many important institutions in Catalonia—including Barça, of course,” Barbet adds.

“Beating Madrid is beating the number 1 enemy,” says David. “Unfortunately, there’s more than football in this game.”

“Still, Barça can still be a key factor in order to fix this division: given its relevance, it could become a positive reference and generate a feeling of union between people who support independence and people who don't,” Barbet suggests.

Jordi Fexas, geographist, historian and writer of several books on the independence movement, disagrees with Barbet’s diagnosis: “The independence process had no negative effects until the Spanish government intervened,” he says.

“Barça is a key part of my life,” says Marta. “It’s not just football. FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

“It’s the Spanish State who created the concept of ‘social crack,’” Fexas adds. Independence activists might be naive sometimes, but they have never been violent. It was the State who tried to build the idea of latent violence in order to justify their intervention. Given this repressive context, Barça might act as a soft power to mediate.”

Alex and Sílvia, like most Catalans, are deeply invested in the political events surrounding the Catalan independence movement. The independence debate has been at the center of Spanish politics for almost a decade. Many people are getting exhausted by it.

“The Clásico against Madrid is emotional. It’s really difficult to explain,” says Juan. “There’s a huge rivalry, and winning it is great, because everybody has some friends who are Madrid fans and whom you can laugh at when you beat them. I know the game may also have a political sense for some people, but for me it’s just sport: my family are from Galicia and Andalusia, and I have many friends in Madrid, so for me it’s just football.”

Barça’s convincing victory over Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabéu was seen by many fans as a pause, a little measure of happiness in tense times. For some hours, all culers agreed on celebrating Suárez, Messi, and Vidal’s goals at the eternal rival’s stadium.

“The Barça anthem says it all: ‘una bandera ens agermana,’—‘a flag unites us all’”—says Sílvia. “That is precisely what Barça is able to do: unite.”

Alex sums it up quickly: “In the end, everything is quite simple: we might think differently in political terms, but our love for Barça is the same,"

Barça fans celebrate a goal against Madrid at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

'Barça is More Than a Club' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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‘Barça is More Than a Club’

Alex and Sílvia are good friends. Born in the same year, they have known each other for more than two decades: they went together to the same school in a small town near Barcelona, and they went on to be university classmates in the Catalan capital afterwards.

Alex and Sílvia also share a big passion: they are die-hard FC Barcelona fans.

On the outside they seem really alike, but nothing could be further from the truth. Alex and Sílvia are really different… especially in everything related to politics.

‘Estelada’ flags, symbols of the independence movement, are usual in balconies in Barcelona.

On Sílvia’s balcony there is a huge Catalan flag with a white star on a blue triangle: it is the ‘estelada’, a symbol which identifies the independence movement in Catalonia.

In the election held on December 21 in this region of Northeastern Spain, Sílvia voted for the center-right secessionist party Junts per Catalunya. In the vote, pro-independence parties won by a narrow margin over unionists.

On Alex’s balcony, however, there are no flags at all. In the elections, he decided to vote for Catalunya en Comú, a left-wing party which preferred to focus their campaign on social issues rather than positioning on independence.

Caganers’ —literally meaning ‘guy taking a shit’— are an an awkward traditional Catalan figure used in Christimas nativity scenes, wearing Barça jerseys.

Alex and Sílvia’s political ideology, as usual in Catalonia, has an echo in sports. Alex belongs to a sector of blaugrana fans whose motto is ‘only Barça.’ For them, the club is nothing more than a football team with no political significance. When he goes to Camp Nou, Alex’s chants simply cheer the players. Nothing else.

“I go to Camp Nou to enjoy football. That’s it”, says Alex. “In my opinion, when you go to the stadium you have to leave politics at home”.

FC Barcelona flags —as well as official shorts from different seasons— at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni, a fanclub located in central Barcelona.

Sílvia, however, believes that Barça is bigger than sports.

“Narcís de Carreres, a former president, described it very well: Barça is more than a club”, Sílvia says, referring to the famous blaugrana motto ‘més que un club’.

Every time Sílvia goes to the stadium, she wears yellow clothes, a reference to jailed pro-independence politicians and activists. She also shouts in favour of independence every game at the 17:14 minute: 1714 was the year Barcelona fell into the hands of Bourbon troops during the War of Spanish Succession.

“Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a famous Catalan writer, described Barça as the unarmed army of Catalonia”, Sílvia adds. “I believe that this sentence defines the club really well”.

Barça fans watch the Clásico between Madrid and Barcelona at the at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

Alex and Sílvia exemplify two visions of a club which has as many faces and interpretations as fans.

Marc Duch is president of Manifest Blaugrana, an association of members whose objective is to build a more democratic and transparent FC Barcelona.

“What is Barça, you say?”, asks Duch. “I would say it depends on the time: for me, it has been a hobby, an untamable passion, an example to imitate, an absolute shame… and much more.”.

“This game is just life for me”, says Ángel, a die-hard Barça fan. “We wait for Barça-Madrid all year long: winning at the Bernabéu stadium is the best thing that can happen. The country’s current situation increases this rivalry, which is goes way further than just sport: it comes from many years ago, and now it’s even tougher. Without a Catalan team, the Spanish league would go down the drain”.

“Barça is an institution with the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s why we should demand it to have a proactive role in the social and human improvement of the country,” Duch adds. “That is where, at least partially, the motto ‘ more than a club’ comes from.”

Marc Cornet takes this idea even further. On October 1, the Catalan regional government tried to organize a referendum on independence: the Spanish government considered it illegal and sent the police to repress it… violently. After the referendum, Cornet thought it was absolutely necessary for Barça to get more involved in social matters, and that is why, with other club members, he founded the Barça Republic Defence Committee —CDR, in Catalan.

“This game is much more than just sports”, says Cristian. “It’s a representation of the Catalonia versus Spain clash”.

“Our club has always been a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance,” Cornet explains. “During the twenties, dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera closed our stadium because some fans whistled while the Spanish anthem was played; in 1936, our president Josep Sunyol was killed for being a Republican Catalanist; after the Civil War, the fascists took out the Catalan flag from our crest”.

“We don’t ask Barça to be openly independentist,” Cornet adds. “But we want it to be always on the side of civil rights, and that’s why we founded the CDR: we don’t want any other October the 1st, ever.”

“For us die-hard fans, Barça is our life”, says Jordi, who has followed the blaugrana team for decades. “Beating Madrid is important, but all games are important. Being a Barça fan means being part of something bigger, of some kind of huge family”.

The partisan positions of Duch and Cornet are pretty common among the Catalan culers—that is, Barça fans—but they’re not the only positions. Recently, the fanclub of Elda, near Alicante in Eastern Spain, publicly announced their decoupling from Barça as a reaction to the club’s decisions on October 1 to play their La Liga game behind closed doors as a means to protest against police violence.

An Elda fanclub spokesperson declared to local media that their members had “unanimously” decided to end their relationship with Barça “due to the implication of the club and its leaders in the events that took place in Catalonia.”

“Barça-Madrid is the best game of the season”, says Víctor, barman at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni. “But that’s it. It’s just a football game, nothing more”.

Other public figures such as the former Spanish international Julio Alberto Moreno, who played in FC Barcelona in the eighties, have also shown their disapproval of the club’s management: “The board has been chosen to rule a football club, not a political party,” Moreno said to the Spanish TV channel Antena 3.

“The independence process has destroyed much of the confidence between different social sectors and has caused a clear crack within Catalan society, says Berta Barbet, a political scientist at the University of Barcelona.

“It has also caused a political deadlock in the whole of Spain and has affected many important institutions in Catalonia —including Barça, of course,” Barbet adds.

“Beating Madrid is beating the number 1 enemy”, says David. “Unfortunately, there’s more than football in this game”.

“Still, Barça can still be a key factor in order to fix this division: given its relevance, it could become a positive reference and generate a feeling of union between people who support independence and people who don’t,” Barbet suggests.

Jordi Fexas, geographist, historian and writer of several books on the independence movement, disagrees with Barbet’s diagnosis: “The independence process had no negative effects until the Spanish government intervened,” he says.

“Barça is a key part of my life,” says Marta. “It’s not just football. FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

“It’s the Spanish State who created the concept of ‘social crack,’” Fexas adds. IIndependence activists might be naive sometimes, but they have never been violent. It was the State who tried to build the idea of latent violence in order to justify their intervention. Given this repressive context, Barça might act as a soft power to mediate.”

Alex and Sílvia, like most Catalans, are deeply invested in the political events surrounding the Catalan independence movement. The independence debate has been at the center of Spanish politics for almost a decade. Many people are getting exhausted of it.

“The Clásico against Madrid is emotional. It’s really difficult to explain,” says Juan. “There’s a huge rivalry, and winning it is great, because everybody has some friends who are Madrid fans and whom you can laugh at when you beat them. I know the game may also have a political sense for some people, but for me it’s just sport: my family are from Galicia and Andalusia, and I have many friends in Madrid, so for me it’s just football.”

Barça’s convincing victory over Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabéu was seen by many fans as a pause, a little measure of happiness in tense times. For some hours, all culers agreed on celebrating Suárez, Messi and Vidal’s goals at the eternal rival’s stadium.

“The Barça anthem says it all: ‘una bandera ens agermana’, ‘a flag unites us all,’” says Sílvia. “That is precisely what Barça is able to do: unite.”

Alex sums it up quickly: “In the end, everything is quite simple: we might think differently in political terms, but our love for Barça is the same,”

Barça fans celebrate a goal against Madrid at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

‘Barça is More Than a Club’ syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[everettwilkinson]

MATTIS on NEW AFGHANISTAN strategy — SNEAK PEEK: REMNICK on Trump — BANNON to WaPo: ‘No administration in history has been so divided’ — ELISE STEFANIK's wedding

BULLETIN — NYT’S MICHAEL GORDON in Amman, Jordan: “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that President Trump, who had been accused by lawmakers of dragging his feet on Afghanistan, had settled on a new strategy after a ‘rigorous’ review.

“‘The president has made a decision,’ Mr. Mattis told reporters on an overnight flight that arrived in Amman … on Sunday. ‘I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous.’ Mr. Mattis received the authority in June to send nearly 4,000 troops to Afghanistan so that the United States military could expand its efforts to advise Afghan forces and support them with American artillery and air power. But Mr. Mattis had refrained from building up the American force there until the Trump administration settled on a broader strategy. Mr. Mattis declined to say what steps the president had ordered, including troop levels. He added that Mr. Trump wanted to announce the details to the American people, and that the president was expected to do so in coming days. …

Story Continued Below

“The decision to send troops is just one component of a strategy that is also expected to outline ways to pressure Pakistan to shut down the sanctuaries that the Taliban and other extremist groups have maintained on its territory. ‘It is a South Asia strategy; it not just an Afghanistan strategy,’ Mr. Mattis said.” http://nyti.ms/2x2TxKm

Good Sunday morning. SNEAK PEEK — DAVID REMNICK in the New Yorker, coming out tomorrow: “Early last November, just before Election Day, Barack Obama was driven through the crisp late-night gloom of the outskirts of Charlotte, as he barnstormed North Carolina on behalf of Hillary Clinton. … During his speech in Charlotte that night, Obama warned that no one really changes in the Presidency; rather, the office ‘magnifies’ who you already are. So if you ‘accept the support of Klan sympathizers before you’re President, or you’re kind of slow in disowning it, saying, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ then that’s how you’ll be as President.’” http://bit.ly/2ihQqes … A look inside the magazine http://bit.ly/2vPCKvX

— WORTH NOTING: Obama has not publicly responded to Trump’s comments post-Charlottesville except to post a tweet quoting Nelson Mandela.

MARK LANDLER and MAGGIE HABERMAN: “With Bannon’s Ouster, Question Remains Whether His Agenda Will Be Erased, Too” http://nyti.ms/2x2QKRw

— JOSH DAWSEY and MATT NUSSBAUM: “The departures from Trump’s White House have come at a dizzying pace in recent weeks: multiple communications directors, the chief of staff and the press secretary have all left, along with top aides on the national security council and a number of CEOs from influential business councils. But none of the departures are likely to change the dynamics as much as that of the polarizing Bannon, whose ouster on Friday could alienate conservatives, hearten some who feared his brand of populism-nationalism, and dial down the fights inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

‘“Bannon is the intellectual heart and soul of the Trump movement,’ said Mark Corallo, a prominent GOP operative who served briefly as the spokesperson for Trump’s private legal team. ‘He was the think tank. He’s the idea generator. … He was the guy who was the most thoughtful about how to enact the agenda, how to build a coalition.’” http://politi.co/2vdOox4

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

BREITBART’S LEAD STORY — “Report: Powerful GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson Supports Campaign to Oust McMaster” http://bit.ly/2vPDzET

— BANNON SPEAKS to Bob Costa and John Wagner, who reported from Bedminster: “‘If the Republican Party on Capitol Hill gets behind the president on his plans and not theirs, it will all be sweetness and light, be one big happy family,’ Bannon said. … ‘No administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction about where it should go,’ Bannon said, adding that Trump’s base is frustrated by a congressional agenda that has dovetailed more with traditional Republican priorities than the agenda Trump championed.” http://wapo.st/2wepaDo

–“Breitbart bullish on Bannon return, promises ‘aggressive expansion,’” by Cristiano Lima: “Breitbart News is riding high amid its reunion with executive chairman Steve Bannon. … ‘I think we definitely are planning on stepping up our game,’ Breitbart News Washington editor Matthew Boyle said during the outlet’s weekly SiriusXM show on Saturday. ‘[W]e’re planning a lot of aggressive expansion and much more aggressive reporting than we’ve already been doing … We’ve been a pirate ship without a captain for a year … We’re thrilled to have our captain back.” http://politi.co/2xfu5AT

THERE WE GO! — DAILY MAIL SAYS IVANKA AND JARED PUSHED BANNON OUT: “How Jewish convert Ivanka got ‘Bannon the Barbarian’ to go: Trump’s daughter ‘helped to force out’ aide blamed over President’s failure to condemn neo-Nazi rally … Chief strategist Bannon, 63, helped orchestrate the President’s election victory … But many blamed him for Trump’s failure last week to condemn neo-Nazis … ‘Pushed out’ by daughter Ivanka and her husband because of his far-Right views”: http://dailym.ai/2v3rp8p

— FRONT PAGE OF THE BALTIMORE SUN: “Jared Kushner’s firm seeks arrest of Maryland tenants to collect debt,” by Doug Donovan: “The real estate company owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and top adviser to President Donald Trump, has been the most aggressive in Maryland in using a controversial debt-collection tactic: getting judges to order the arrest of people who owe his company money. Since 2013, the first full year in which the Kushner Cos. operated in Maryland, corporate entities affiliated with the firm’s 17 apartment complexes in the state have sought the civil arrest of 105 former tenants for failing to appear in court to face allegations of unpaid debt, The Baltimore Sun has found.” http://bsun.md/2weo36H

— TIMES OF ISRAEL: “Abbas says Trump administration ‘in chaos’”: “‘Each time they reiterate their commitment to a two-state solution and the stop to settlement building, Abbas says. ‘I urge them to tell Netanyahu that, but they are deterred.’ ‘I don’t even know how they are dealing with us, because his entire administration is in chaos,’ he adds.” http://bit.ly/2uVkvWM

MNUCHIN RESPONDS TO CRITICS IN HIS YALE CLASS — via Zach Warmbrodt: “I don’t believe the allegations against the president are accurate. I believe that having highly talented men and women in our country surrounding the president in his administration should be reassuring to you and all the American people.” Mnuchin’s full statement http://bit.ly/2v3Q0tY

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): If you know only one fact about rising drug costs, know this one: drug makers set prices for prescription drugs. To help manage nearly double-digit price increases, employers, unions and government programs use PBMs to negotiate lower net prices to help curb costs for employers and patients. Learn more at affordableprescriptiondrugs.org ******

NEW POLL — “Trump’s Job Rating Is Below 40 Percent in Three Key Midwest States,” by NBC’s Mark Murray: “President Donald Trump’s job-approval rating in the three states that helped propel him to the White House – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – stands below 40 percent, according to a trio of NBC News/Marist polls of these key states in the Midwest. In addition, Democrats enjoy double-digit leads in Michigan and Pennsylvania on the question of which party voters prefer to control Congress after the 2018 midterms, and they hold an 8-point advantage in Wisconsin.

“And in all three states, more than six-in-10 voters say Trump’s conduct as president has embarrassed them, versus just a quarter who have said it’s made them proud. These three NBC/Marist polls were conducted Aug. 13-17 – after the August 12 unrest and violence in Charlottesville, Va., as well as in the midst of President Trump’s multiple responses to that unrest and violence.” http://nbcnews.to/2v3zs58

ABOUT YESTERDAY … — BOSTON GLOBE FRONT PAGE: “MAKING A STAND AGAINST RACISM … Resolute and ready, they marched … Rally by tens of thousands is peaceful but pointed” — A1 pdf http://bit.ly/2ve082I

— “‘Free speech’ rally speakers, little heard, end event quickly,” by the Boston Globe’s Beth Healy: “By 12:45 p.m., only 45 minutes into their official program, organizers of the Boston Free Speech rally ended the event and were escorted by police out of the park, to chants of ‘Go home, Nazis’ from the crowd. A Facebook post for the event listed 14 speakers and was scheduled to last for two hours.” http://bit.ly/2fX8NEr

— @realDonaldTrump: “Great job by all law enforcement officers and Boston Mayor @Marty_Walsh. Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before! I want to applaud the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!”

… AND IN CHICAGO: “7 shot, 1 fatally, in West Pullman attack among 33 shot in 13 hours,” by the Chicago Tribune’s Elva Malagon and Denease Williams-Harris. http://trib.in/2v32Zfp

WHAT OTTAWA WANTS YOU TO READ — “The Trump Unit: Inside Canada’s PMO squad to save NAFTA,” by the National Post’s Alexander Panetta: “The Canadian government has created an election-style nerve centre to handle White House-related challenges and officials who describe its operations say it has about eight regular staff: two former trade officials, two senior PMO officials, an ambassador, a writer, a cabinet minister, and it’s run by a young staffer with a reputation for staying cool while smothering political fires.

“The most blistering inferno it’s preparing to confront is a scenario where the president threatens NAFTA. Everybody involved anticipates the threat level from Trump will rise with the heat of negotiations. A well-connected Washington lobbyist milling about last week’s talks said a Trump pullout threat is virtually assured: ‘Almost 100 per cent.’ Trade lawyer Dan Ujczo said it’s a logical play for the president: ‘The threat of withdrawal is his key negotiating leverage.’” http://bit.ly/2wlnOad

GREAT STORY — ANNIE KARNI on NEWT GINGRICH: “Newt Gingrich goes to spouse school”: “Last week, Newt Gingrich sat in a classroom surrounded by 11 women and one other man, furiously jotting notes. In the weeklong intensive, where classes ran from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with only a short cafeteria lunch break in between, the former House Speaker and onetime presidential candidate received a crash course in a new role: invisible spouse. When he moves to Rome with his third wife, Callista Gingrich, to become husband of the Ambassador to the Holy See, the ubiquitous Fox News talking head, will have no official diplomatic role abroad, beyond being generally presentable and essentially not heard from.

“It will be a challenge for an outspoken sometimes-booster, sometimes-critic of the Trump administration, who said he does not plan to terminate his contract with Fox News. But like former President Bill Clinton during his wife’s two bids for the presidency, Gingrich will be taking on the secondary role of booster after a public life spent demanding the limelight. Aware that this new, less celebrated, role will take some getting used to, Gingrich eagerly enrolled himself in what he referred to, excitedly, as ‘spouse school.’

“The program, run by the State Department and hosted on the Arlington campus of the Foreign Service Institute, was started in the 1950s, when it was referred to simply as the ‘Wives Seminar.’ Over the years, a State Department official said, it ‘has evolved into a variety of training and orientation programs for foreign affairs family members.’ Today, topics include: ‘expectations and personal goals for your time overseas,’ ‘post morale,’ ‘the official residence,’ ‘navigating a public diplomacy role,’ ‘legal issues and ethics,’ as well as ‘stress management.’” http://politi.co/2x2pnHl

WHAT AMERICA IS READING … — THE BIRMINGHAM (ALA.) NEWS: “With Jones, Democrats dreaming big again: ‘Mount Rushmore of political upsets’” http://bit.ly/2iguP5O … ARIZONA REPUBLIC: “Sign of respect for the eclipse: Navajos won’t be watching ‘sacred communication’ between sun and moon” http://bit.ly/2x3k8XK … CHARLOTTE OBSERVER: “HERITAGE OR ‘SHAMEFUL HISTORY’?: Gastonia’s Confederate monument, one of dozens standing quietly on N.C. public property, inspires loyalty even as people question its message” http://bit.ly/2vPqZ8F … JANESVILLE (WIS.) GAZETTE: “Now available: One-fourth of business space vacant in downtown Janesville.” http://bit.ly/2wtHAjd

— RARE: INDIANAPOLIS STAR FULL FRONT PAGE EDITORIAL: “LET’S STAND AGAINST HATE. TOGETHER” http://bit.ly/2vPTuTS

REMEMBERING ARTHUR FINKELSTEIN – NYT’s Sam Roberts: “Finkelstein, a reclusive political Svengali who revolutionized campaign polling and financing and helped elect a bevy of conservative candidates, including President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, died on Friday night in Ipswich, Mass., where he lived. He was 72. … Mr. Finkelstein was among the first political strategists in the late 1970s to grasp the potential of a United States Supreme Court ruling that allowed putatively independent political committees to spend money on behalf of individual candidates and causes. … He also pioneered sophisticated demographic analyses of primary voters and methodical exit polling, and of using a marketing strategy, called microtargeting, to identify specific groups of potential supporters of a candidate regardless of their party affiliation.” http://nyti.ms/2xfq2En … Statement by his family http://bit.ly/2ihkjeR … National Review profile http://bit.ly/2we3uqY

— AP: “Comedian, civil rights activist Dick Gregory dies,” by Daisy Nguyen: “Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, has died. He was 84. Gregory died late Saturday in Washington, D.C. after being hospitalized for about a week, his son Christian Gregory told The Associated Press. He had suffered a severe bacterial infection. As one of the first black standup comedians to find success with white audiences, in the early 1960s, Gregory rose from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis to win a college track scholarship and become a celebrated satirist who deftly commented upon racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement.” http://bit.ly/2fWy16a

SUNDAY BEST — JAKE TAPPER talks to OHIO GOV. JOHN KASICH on CNN’s “STATE OF THE UNION”: TAPPER: “If everything continues like it has been, does a Republican need to step forward to challenge President Trump in three years?” KASICH: “Well, Jake, as you said, I don’t have any plans to do anything like that. I’m rooting for him to get it together. We all are. We’re only like seven months into this presidency. … What we have to start thinking about, all of us, not just the president, but down where we live, in the neighborhoods, in the communities, we’ve gotta build a stronger America. Look, why am I on this show. You asked me to come on.

“I’m trying to have a responsible voice. To call things out when they need to be called out, but also to support my country. So what I hope is going to happen … I hope we’re going to have stability, the president is going to learn from these episodes and we’re going to do better. That’s what I hope is going to happen. We’ll have to wait and see.”

— FOX NEWS SUNDAY: “Trump ally blast congressional leaders,” by Kyle Cheney: “A top ally of President Donald Trump offered hints Sunday of a coming war on Republican leaders in Congress, a battle presaged by the return of former chief strategist Steve Bannon to Breitbart News.

“‘There’s a lack of leadership on one side of Pennsylvania Avenue,’ said David Bossie, a former Trump campaign adviser, appearing on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ Bossie, who said he’s spoken to Bannon ‘many times’ in recent days, said Bannon’s departure from the administration will help the administration at ‘leaning into Congress.’ He repeatedly decried a ‘failure of leadership in the House and Senate.’ ‘Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have to step up,’ Bossie said, adding, ‘The House and Senate leadership has not bought into the president’s agenda fully.’” http://politi.co/2vdLlF0

— SEN. TIM KAINE talks to JOHN DICKERSON on CBS’S “FACE THE NATION” about Robert E. Lee’s statue in the Capitol: “Every state gets two statues to put in Statuary Hall or throughout the capital. Just using Virginia as an example. The state gets to choose two people to represent the entire scope of the state’s history. Virginia obviously chose George Washington, the father of the country. But the second choice that was made in 1909, and has never been changed, is Robert E. Lee.

“I think as you look at the scope of Virginia history here in 2017, and if you want there to be two people to really stand for who Virginia is, why wouldn’t you think about Pocahontas who, had she not saved John Smith’s life, we wouldn’t even be here possibly? Why wouldn’t you think about a Barbara Johns, who led a school walkout in Prince Edward County that ultimately became part of the Brown versus Board, desegregation decision? Why wouldn’t you think about Governor Wilder, the grandson of a slave, a decorated Korean War combat veteran, who became the first elected African-American government in the history of the country? I think from 2017 looking backward, I think Virginia could probably do better in the two people that we choose to stand for us in Statuary Hall. And I think a number of the other states can do better as well.”

— SIREN: @facethenation: Sen. Scott: “‘As we look to the future it’s going to be be very difficult for POTUS to lead. His moral authority remains compromised.'”

PHOTO DU JOUR: Protesters face off with riot police escorting conservative activists following a march in Boston on Aug. 20 against a planned ‘Free Speech Rally’ just one week after the violent ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Virginia. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

JAKE’S TIP OF THE DAY — WEAR THESE SHOES (Allbirds are kind of great) — NYT Style: “To Fit Into Silicon Valley, Wear These Wool Shoes,” by Nellie Bowles. http://nyti.ms/2vdNIaQ

DEPT. OF TAX REFORM IS HARD — “Left warns Democrats in tax reform fight,” by Elana Schor: “Liberal activists who hounded the GOP throughout its failed Obamacare repeal bid are gearing up to hit any Democrat who strays from the fold on tax cuts for the wealthy — including some of the party’s most politically vulnerable incumbents. Democrats were spared the sight of their progressive base battling centrists on Obamacare, which proved a uniquely unifying issue for both wings of the party. But there’s no guarantee that taxes will be another kumbaya moment for Democratic leaders, who have long struggled to contain tensions between red-state lawmakers facing tough reelections and a grassroots emboldened by resistance to President Donald Trump’s agenda. …

“Liberal groups are vowing to fight the GOP tax bill as hard as they battled Obamacare repeal. They’re expecting Democrats to stand together against any legislation that cuts taxes for the rich, even if it also trims tax bills for others. And they’re prepared to unleash their energized grassroots on any lawmaker who doesn’t get on board.” http://politi.co/2wlrl8H

IMPORTANT — THE HILL’S BEN KAMISAR: “The Republican National Committee expanded its massive fundraising lead over the Democratic National Committee in July as the Democrats posted their worst July haul in a decade. The DNC raised just $3.8 million in July, compared to the $10.2 million raised by the RNC in the same month. While the GOP has no debt, the DNC added slightly to its debt in July, which now sits at $3.4 million.” http://bit.ly/2uUsZxC

THE OPPOSITION — “Amateur sleuths hunt for Trump bombshells,” by Darren Samuelsohn: “Nearly 3,000 miles from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Washington offices, another investigation into President Donald Trump is underway. This one unfolds in the public libraries and coffee shops of San Francisco, where a self-employed 40-year-old named Geoff Andersen has worked since November for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, burning through nearly $45,000 in personal savings and donations from friends and family in pursuit of hidden truths about Trump’s rise to power. … Andersen is not alone in his largely solitary quest. Countless amateur sleuths are on the case, from a short-order cook in Belfast whose research was recently cited by the Daily Beast to a Florida art teacher who tells POLITICO he is applying his pattern-recognition skills to Trump’s sprawling business empire.

“Undaunted by a lack of subpoena power or search warrants, and the government’s vast legal and technical expertise, countless people like these are poring through Trump’s personal and business records, as well as overlooked 2016 campaign clues. They share their findings through email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and even tips to reporters and the FBI. Most labor in obscurity, but all are motivated by the lottery-like odds of a discovery that has eluded journalists and prosecutors but which just might bring down a president.” http://politi.co/2fW575P

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): Pharmacy benefit managers negotiate the lowest net price for prescriptions on behalf of employers and other health care purchasers; however, the list price – the important starting point for those negotiations — continues to rise, at a rate of nearly ten percent in 2016 alone. Increased competition, faster reviews of generics and biosimilars and ending anti-competitive practices can also bring down the cost of medications for patients. Learn more at affordableprescriptiondrugs.org ******

VALLEY READ — KARA SWISHER: “Jeff Immelt has emerged as the front-runner to become Uber’s CEO”: “While the tension on the board of the car-hailing company remains high — due of late to an ugly lawsuit that one of its major investors, Benchmark, is waging against its ousted co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick — sources said that a majority of the board is coalescing around the experienced Immelt.

“That could certainly change, said sources, and there are two other executives who are also still being considered, neither of whom is a woman, as some had hoped. Sources said a vote of Uber’s directors is likely to happen within the next two weeks, which does not have to be unanimous, although most directors are hoping it will be. In any case, Immelt has pulled ahead, said several sources. One of Immelt’s earliest and strongest supporters on the board is Arianna Huffington, said sources, but he is also the top choice of several directors. Others still undecided — including Benchmark, which has weakened its status because of the lawsuit and ensuing publicity — have become convinced that Uber needs to hire someone who can quickly deal with a number of pressing and problematic issues and consider Immelt fully capable of handling that well.” http://bit.ly/2vPtw2O

MEDIAWATCH — “Jersey Gov. Chris Christie no longer a candidate to replace Mike Francesa at WFAN,” by N.Y. Daily News’ Bob Raissman: “Scratch Chris Christie off the list of candidates to replace Mike (Sports Pope) Francesa when he leaves WFAN (if he actually does) in December. FAN sources said the suits searching for Francesa’s replacement have informed the New Jersey Governor his Gasbag services will not be needed.” http://nydn.us/2vUASAc

BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman, filing from Nantucket:

–“After The Flame,” by Wayne Drehs and Mariana Lajolo in ESPN the Magazine: “The 2016 Summer Games were supposed to bring Rio and Brazil to new financial and athletic heights. What’s left behind? A city and country shrouded by corruption, debt and broken promises.” http://es.pn/2vGuvCn

–“A Brief History of Traveling With Cats,” by Jackie Mansky in Smithsonian: “Fierce felines of history sailed the world, survived Europe’s crusade against them and made it all the way to Memedom.” http://bit.ly/2uTzyfG

–“Bangalore, before the dystopia,” by Harish C Menon in Quartz – per The Browser’s description: “Bangalore has gone from Garden City to Garbage City in 30 years. Renowned as the tech hub of India, producing 10% of India’s GDP, the city is ‘a disaster in slow motion’. Population and area have tripled with little in the way of planning or infrastructure. Green spaces and watercourses have been concreted over. Quality of life has fallen to the lowest of all Indian cities. Residents ‘grapple with self-combusting foaming toxic lakes”. By 2025 Bangalore ‘will be simply uninhabitable.” http://bit.ly/2v4ADAs

–“‘Y’all Sent Me to Washington at an Interesting Time,’” by The Atlantic’s Molly Ball: “A freshman Republican lawmaker [Jim Banks] tries to stay on the right side of his constituents—and his principles—deep in Trump Country.” http://theatln.tc/2v4ruZ0

–“What the Heck Is Guam? A Guide for the Perplexed,” by Shannon Togawa Mercer in Lawfare: “It sits almost 1,500 miles south of Japan and around 2,100 miles from North Korea. … According to historians, Guam was discovered and populated by Austronesian peoples around 4,000 years ago. Guam got a jump on contact with Europeans when Ferdinand Magellan stumbled upon Guam in 1521.” http://bit.ly/2wjhGOQ

–“The partition goes on: A Pakistani perspective,” by Mohammed Hanif on Al-Jazeera: “Like many Pakistanis I saw my first Indians in London and was surprised that they were a bit like us. Most Indians and Pakistanis have the same reaction when they meet. It seems as if they are brought up to believe that a community of ferals lives across the border. The most we know about each other is from moving images from films and songs, and a bit from books.” http://es.pn/2vGuvCn

–“James Baldwin’s Istanbul,” by Suzy Hansen in PublicBooks: “Baldwin was delighted by the Turkish custom of holding hands — even men could be openly affectionate. It was easier to be gay in Istanbul than in America, and easier to be black … [The city was] a place anyone could go to live and feel free.” http://bit.ly/2fO2Vxi

–“What should you do when two ISIS suspects are interrogated right before your eyes?” by Anthony Loyd in the New Statesman: “I felt intrigued but uncomfortable, watching it all unfold, the bound and kneeling men waiting for the whip or worse. I knew that if I left the room both prisoners would get thrashed for sure, and likely tortured. If I stayed, they might get thrashed anyway, in front of me, which might have implied my acquiescence. But I also wanted to know what would happen. It was awkward either way.” http://bit.ly/2fNROEt

–“The Fight of His Life,” by Brian Castner in Esquire: “Afghan Army Captain Noorullah Aminyar was once a valuable ally to the American military. But after a failed defection attempt and three years in detention, his asylum claim now rests on the argument that the U.S. has lost its longest war.” http://bit.ly/2wdhWQi (h/t Longreads.com)

–“Mr. Nice Guy,” by Wired’s Nicholas Thompson: “Instagram’s Kevin Systrom wants to clean up the &#%$@! Internet.” http://bit.ly/2wdqlU0

–“My Life Lessons in Rust Belt Racism,” by Kim Kingsley on Medium: http://bit.ly/2xfTcU0

–“The White Lies of Craft Culture,” by Lauren Michele Jackson in Eater: “How the world of small batch, single origin, and totally artisanal erases the people of color who made it possible.” http://bit.ly/2fUeLG

SPOTTED: Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) at Cisco Brewery on Friday on Nantucket … John King on an American Airlines flight from DCA to Nantucket on Saturday morning.

WEEKEND WEDDINGS — “Elise Stefanik, Matthew Manda” — N.Y. Times: “Ms. Stefanik, 33, is a United States congresswoman, representing the 21st District of New York. She is a Republican serving on the House Armed Services Committee; the Committee on Education and the Workforce; and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Elected in 2014 at age 30, she is the youngest woman elected to Congress in United States history. Previously she served in the Office of the Chief of Staff in the White House under President George W. Bush. She graduated from Harvard. …

“Mr. Manda, 34, is the marketing and communications director in Alexandria, Va., for the Media Group of America, which owns and operates the media outlet Independent Journal Review. Previously he was the communications director for Representative Kevin Yoder, Republican of Kansas, and as the political director for 2010 campaign for Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas. The groom graduated from the University of Kansas. … The couple met through mutual friends in January 2012 at a party hosted by the bride in Washington.” With pic http://nyti.ms/2wlkegi

— Pool report: “At the Hall of Springs in Saratoga State Park, guests noshed on Baby lamb chops, a raw bar pork belly sliders, potato pancakes, antipasti in honor of the bride’s Italian roots, a Cannoli bar and a gelato bar. The Bride and groom had a choreographed dance to ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.’ The father and daughter dance was to Hamilton’s ‘Dear Theodosia.’” Pics http://bit.ly/2x2Paix … http://bit.ly/2fWc3Qv

SPOTTED: Russ Schriefer and Nina Easton, Lenny and Amelia Chassé Alcivar, Ryan Coyne, Joel and Laura Cox Kaplan, Anita and Tim McBride, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), Will Hurd (R-Texas), Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), David Young (R-Idaho), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), New York State Assemblyman Dan Stec, NY State Conservative Party Chair Mike Long, Megan and Tyler Foote, Phil Musser, Mike Leavitt, Tom and Corinne Hoare, Lindley and Dustin Sherer, Aly and Graham Wheeler, Ali and Stuart Siciliano, and Anthony Katie Pileggi.

— Jonathan Nabavi, vice president of public policy and government affairs at the NFL, and Catherine Hansen, who works on congressional relations at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, were married Saturday in Bar Harbor. NYT announcement with pic http://nyti.ms/2vdRW2h … Wedding pic http://bit.ly/2xfxkIj SPOTTED: Andrew Kovalcin, Rebecca and Matt Haller, Bradley Hayes, Adriana Brizuela and Chris Gindlesperger, Nicole Gustafson, Ali Tulbah and Alana Nolan, Sergio Rodriguera, Allison O’Brien, Nat and Melissa Sillin, Dan Finucane and Danielle Bruccheri and Sean Fairchild.

ENGAGED — Andrea Saul, who works on communications at Facebook and was national press secretary for Romney 2012, got engaged on Saturday to David Nosbusch, who works in business development at Box and is a Harvard Business School grad. He proposed on the 18th green at 3 Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole, with friends and family nearby. They met through mutual friends watching college football at NorthStar Cafe in San Francisco.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD – Krista Zuzenak, co-founder of mKz Inc and member of Team Pelosi, and Brian Zuzenak, partner at Moxie Media and member of Team McAuliffe, “welcomed their 3rd roommate Isabelle Emma on [Friday]. Isabelle weighed 7 pounds 4 ounces and despite many bets that Baby Z was a boy she surprised and melted the hearts of her parents, family and friends. The couple fell in love across departments at the DCCC and can’t wait to introduce her to the entire Pelosi/McAuliffe Family.” Pic http://bit.ly/2uVun37

BIRTHDAYS: Fox News’s Fin Gomez, celebrating in Iceland running a half marathon … Lea Berman … Chuck Campion, chairman and co-founder of Dewey Square Group (hat tips: Rick Ahearn) … Jenny Backus … Amb. Michael Froman, a distinguished fellow at CFR and former USTR, is 55 (h/t Andrew Bates) … Brad Fingeroot … Politico’s Doug Palmer … Scott Rothrock, CTO at advanced-manufacturing company Xometry and a Politico alum … BPI birthday twins: partner Ben LaBolt and COO Ann Marie Habershaw (h/ts Jen Nedeau and Addie Whisenant) … Al Roker is 63 … former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is 82 … former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is 84 … Targeted Victory co-founder Zac Moffatt … Connie Chung … Rae-Lynn Ziegler, director of social media and outreach for the Washington Free Beacon (h/t Anton Vuljaj) … Rachel Thomas, who works on external relations, gov’t and regulatory affairs at IBM … Susan Aspey … Kendell (Coletti) Mountain … Gina Keeney, partner at Lawler, Metzger, Keeney & Logan and a FCC alum (h/t Jon Haber) … Brianna McCullough … Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) is 56 (h/t Josh Brown) … Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) is 51 … Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) is 55. He’s celebrating by grilling burgers with his family at home and his three dogs. … former Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-Tex.) is 77 … Tarrah Cooper, managing director at Mercury … Matt Shapanka is 3-0 … Morgan Murtaugh … Jody Serrano (h/t Amy Sisk) … Alice Frost Richardson …

… CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy … Jim Hock, adviser at PSP Capital and former Commerce COS … Meghan Grant … Madeline Shepherd, associate director of federal policy at Council for a Strong America (h/t Rachel Wein) … Gordon Neal … Hayley Herrin (Peterson), senior correspondent at Business Insider … Patrick Drahi is 54 … Matthew Gould is 46 … David Ryan Adelman is 36 (h/ts Jewish Insider) … Pat Collier IV, policy director at JB Pritzker for Governor … Jeff Morehouse is 37 … Angelica Alatorre … Nicholas Himebaugh … Kenny Swab … Jordan Kittleson … Shannon Travis … Linnea Dyer Hegarty … Katie Peters, comms director for Americans for Responsible Solutions … Casey Badmington … Eleni Roumel … Steve Pfrang … Shannon Harris … Ari Goldberg, VP of comms at First Focus, is 44 … Faryar Shirzad … Jen Brown … Lona Valmoro … Bob Hudek … Ryan O’Keefe (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

****** A message from the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs (CAPD): The high prices that drug makers set for prescription drugs can put financial strain on patients, employers, unions and others who provide health care coverage to more than 50 percent of Americans. Pharmacy benefit managers negotiate the lowest net price for prescriptions on behalf of employers, unions and government programs. But, as list prices – the starting point for those negotiations — continue their nearly double-digit increases, the effects ripple throughout the system. The key to ensuring greater access and affordability lies in fostering greater competition. Facilitating faster reviews of generics and biosimilars, identifying off-patent drugs with little or no generic competition, and ending anti-competitive practices that keep safe, effective alternatives out of the market are also key to abating rising drug costs for patients. Learn more at affordableprescriptiondrugs.org ******

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NHL fans pressuring teams on sexual assault, domestic violence

Mike Ribeiro, Slava Voynov, Semyon Varlamov, Ben Johnson

During the last three years of Melissa Geschwind’s crusade for better policies on sexual assault and domestic violence in the National Hockey League, there have been times when her voice has been acknowledged.

Her online petition, created in the aftermath of the Chicago Blackhawks’ handling of the Patrick Kane case in 2015, has grown to over 37,500 fans that support her call for “a clear, comprehensive policy of zero tolerance for players who commit acts of intimate partner violence or sexual assault.”

She felt the petition was a necessity. “The Patrick Kane saga was a case study in how not to handle allegations against a player. The Hawks almost seemed determined to do the wrong thing every step of the way. The Kings were cartoonishly terrible in how they handled Slava Voynov, too,” said Geschwind, a hockey fan and freelance writer from New Jersey.

“Unfortunately, it’s nothing new. The only difference is it’s a little harder to sweep these things under the rug in the Internet age. Now people actually notice.”

The NHL eventually took notice of her efforts. She earned an audience with League officials, including Vice President for Special Projects and Corporate Social Responsibility Jessica Berman. Later, she had an audience with Commissioner Gary Bettman, asking him about the League’s policies on these issues and about the “casual sexism that contributes to a culture that views violence against women as inevitable and, to some extent, acceptable.”

There aren’t many people, without the backing of an organization, that get that kind of access to Bettman. Geschwind’s efforts allowed her to sit in a room with the NHL’s most powerful individual and ask him, face to face, if he acknowledged that when fans refer to Corey Perry as “Katy Perry,” it’s a gender-based insult.

(Bettman, who previously pushed back on the notion, agreed that it was.)

But there have also been times during this crusade when Geschwind felt like she was screaming into the void, and doing it alone. So last summer, she decided it was time for others to join the effort, and target the NHL’s teams about their sexual assault and domestic violence policies.

“After it became clear that my meeting with Gary Bettman was a one-off and I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the League, I figured the best way forward was to help teams hear directly from their fans. I put out a call on Twitter and in a petition update, and fans from across the League took the time to write letters urging their teams to take an active role in the fight against domestic violence and sexual assault,” she said.

She received 43 letters from fans, representing 25 teams.

They were sent out. Follow-ups were made.

On March 20, 2017, about 18 months after Geschwind’s campaign started, the Maple Leafs announced they were partnering with the White Ribbon campaign, which is billed as “the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls and promoting gender equity, healthy relationships and a new vision of masculinity.”

“The Maple Leafs were amazingly responsive,” said Geschwind. “Lou Lamoriello called me directly and ultimately put me in touch with Brendan Shanahan, who was already involved with Sanctuary for Families in New York. He wanted the Leafs to be leaders in this area and the letters showed him that there was fan support for it, too. The letters played a real role in encouraging the Leafs’ partnership with White Ribbon.”

Sometimes her voice was heard. Sometimes it felt like no one was listening. The Maple Leafs showed they were not only listening to their fans but were willing to do something tangible about domestic violence and sexual assault.

It was a start. And it was more than many NHL teams have shown a willingness to do on these issues, despite the fans’ best efforts.

***

In 2014, Bettman said the NHL didn’t have a domestic violence problem.

“So I’m not sure for us there is any need for any code of conduct other than our players, who overwhelming conduct themselves magnificently off the ice — we deal with it on a case by case basis. I don’t think we need to formalize anything more. Our players know what’s right and wrong, and as I said, we have the mechanisms in place to hopefully not get to that point,” he said.

The NHL has had several high-profile cases of sexual assault and domestic violence against women in recent years.

Colorado Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov was arrested for a domestic violence incident involving his girlfriend in 2013, but wasn’t suspended by the NHL. The charges were later dropped due to “reasonable doubt.”

In July 2015, Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov pled “no contest” to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge involving his wife, did jail time and was suspended indefinitely by the NHL before leaving for Russia. This was after the Kings allowed him to practice with the team after his suspension and arrest, a move that earned the franchise a $100,000 fine. (Russia attempted to put him on its World Cup of Hockey team, but the NHL rejected the request, fearing a backlash.)

In July 2015, Nashville Predators center Mike Ribeiro settled a sexual assault suit with a former nanny, a case that saw horrific details of that abuse reported in the press. The Predators handed him a two-year contract extension at the start of the month.

Also in July 2015, Evander Kane of the Buffalo Sabres was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a Buffalo hotel. Buffalo police concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, but he’s since been hit with a civil suit over the incident.

In July 2016, Kane was again involved in a physical incident with a woman at a Buffalo bar, with police alleging he “yanked the hair and grabbed the throat of a woman while trying to push her into his car.” A judge promised the charges would be dropped if Kane stayed out of trouble.

In Sept. 2015, Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks was investigated but never charged after a woman accused him of sexual assault in Erie County, N.Y.. There were calls for the NHL and the Blackhawks to suspended Kane during the preseason; neither of them did.

In March 2016, prosecutors dropped a felony revenge porn charge against Chicago Blackhawks prospect Garrett Ross “after investigators determined the incident happened while Ross was in Michigan.” His AHL team waited weeks to suspend him. “What bothered me the most was that it took the Blackhawks 40 days after Ross was booked and charged to suspend him, but less than 10 hours to reinstate him,” said the woman who accused him.

In Sept. 2016, New Jersey Devils draft pick Ben Johnson was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Windsor nightclub in March 2013 when he was 18. Johnson had his contract terminated by the team.

For some fans of these teams, it was difficult to stomach how they reacted to their players’ actions.

Jenn Walsh is a Sabres fan that has volunteered at the St. John’s Status of Women Council/Women’s Centre, which cares for women and victims of domestic violence. She said the Evander Kane incidents were in the forefront of her mind when she saw Geschwind’s call for fans to write letters on sexual assault and domestic violence.

“I know firsthand just how devastating the impact DV/SA can be on women and children. Anything I can do to promote awareness of this issue and call for support is the very least I can do,” she said.

“The League and its teams need to do more to communicate to its players and staff just how real the problem of domestic violence and sexual abuse is right now. I’m aware that most teams have a presentation during training camp or at the beginning of the season. But they need to focus more on the effects of DV/SA on its victims and less on how these men shouldn’t ‘put themselves in a bad spot.’”

The Sabres were the first team to complete the NHL’s mandatory “domestic violence, sexual assault and sexual harassment training” in January 2016. It was a program designed by the NHL and the NHLPA to provide hour-long training sessions for teams, based on the same training that happens at the league’s rookie camps. It was a welcome change for the NHL, which used to have training sessions for players for things like identity theft and fraud, but not sexual assault.

The program is run in part by “A Call To Men,” an organization that’s partnered with other leagues like the NFL. It’s an organization that attempts to relate to the athletes by having former athletes running the session. They talk about the society impact of domestic violence and sexual assault. They talk about the “triggers” that can lead to those incidents. They talk about how to prevent it from happening. And they talk about how they should treat others “like they treat their own family” in regarding their emotions and safety.

“My only real gripe is that ACTM doesn’t get enough time with players and coaches to really drive the message home. I believe at that point the league mandated a one-hour session with each team with no follow-up. ACTM is a great asset that the NHL is underutilizing. But it’s a good start,” said Geschwind.

A Call To Men has earned praise for its efforts, but Katie Hnida believes there needs to be another facet to the education beyond guy talk: There needs to be acknowledgement of the victims. Their voices need to be added to the mix.

“Because this type of violence disproportionately affects women, I also think it’s incredibly important to have a woman’s voice and perspective incorporated into any policymaking, trainings, etc.,” said Hnida, a former D-1 NCAA football player who has become a prominent voice on sexual assault and harassment in sports.

“A survivor’s voice can be incredibly powerful.”

(The NHL declined comment for this story.)

***

It’s all about changing the culture among players, and changing the way teams handle these incidents.

Melisa Bergeson is a Predators fan that was disgusted by the way Mike Ribeiro’s case was handled by the team and the NHL. So she wrote letters for Geschwind’s initiative.

What would she like to see happen as a result of the campaign?

“First, take accusations seriously and suspend players with pay while they’re being investigated. Second, address casual sexism within the NHL by nixing things like ice girls and condescending ‘Hockey and Heels’ nights. Third, in the same vein as the NHL’s You Can Play partnership, publicly partner with charitable groups who address issues of sexism, violence, and sexual assault,” she said.

The partnership with “You Can Play” has been a successful one of the NHL, as the league and teams partnered together in an effort to promote understanding and punish homophobia in hockey. Sometimes it’s as symbolic as rainbow tape around a stick blade, and sometimes it’s something more tangible.

Geschwind doesn’t understand why that progressive partnership couldn’t exist to help eradicate misogyny in hockey. Symbolic gestures and changes in behavior would do wonders for changing attitudes about sexual assault and domestic violence in the League, she said.

“I’d like to see the League approach misogyny with the same outward contempt it now shows homophobia. Obviously the NHL still has a long way to go in that area but the fact that they explicitly denounce homophobia is huge. Use You Can Play as a template and work to eliminate casual misogyny in game ops, commercials, broadcasts and general player/management behavior,” she said.

“The first step to being part of the solution is to stop being part of the problem.”

Beyond a culture change, the petition and the fans’ letters call for something more tangible. Among the requests for teams:

Do not draft, sign, trade for, or re-sign players with a history of sexual assault or domestic violence

Suspend any player under police investigation for committing an act of off-ice violence 

Sever all ties with anyone who is convicted of these crimes

Establish a relationship with local charities and shelters that serve victims of these crimes

Urge the NHL to take a public stance against these crimes, because silence is a statement in itself

She’s met her share of silence since the letter-writing campaign started. As of this week, 16 teams that received letters and follow-ups had yet to respond. They’re listed here. (The Nashville Predators didn’t respond initially, but Nashville recently pledged a donation and released a PSA with their local YWCA for a campaign called “Unsilence the Violence.” The Predators also have a longer-standing relationship with a DV/SA organization locally.)

Among the teams that didn’t respond to Geschwind’s outreach: The Chicago Blackhawks, the Colorado Avalanche and the Los Angeles Kings.

“It’s always easier to do nothing than to do something. I’m sure some of it has to do with the Old Boys’ way of looking at the world, but mostly I suspect this is about teams insulating themselves from responsibility,” said Geschwind. “A lot of PR people in the NHL seem to view it as their job to shield management from the outside world rather than alert the front office to what fans are saying.”

Some teams have been cooperative. The Calgary Flames detailed their charitable contributions to charities that address domestic violence and/or sexual assault. Jarmo Kekalainen, general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, sent Geschwind an email. New Jersey Devils president Hugh Weber called her and, in subsequent conversations, has indicated the team is working towards some sort of SA/DV policy.

But from many of the teams she’s reached out to … silence.

“It would be easiest if we would shut up, but if we won’t then they want to maintain some level of plausible deniability. What they don’t realize is that plausible deniability doesn’t exist here: Even if you never read your fans’ letters you still can’t expect anyone to believe that you don’t know SA/DV is a problem in the league, in hockey, in sports and in society,” said Geschwind.

“The most benign interpretation of their continued silence is that they’re just plain lazy.”

***

Curtis Morrison wrote letters for Geschwind. He’s a Maple Leafs fan who took pride in the way his team answered the call on domestic violence and sexual assault, but feels there needs to be more work done.

“As the largest and most popular professional hockey league in North America, the NHL and its teams have a responsibility to North American hockey in general to fight against sexual violence committed by its players, and to provide progressive and woman-led education about violence against women to players in NHL organizations on a yearly basis,” he told us.

“The end goal of the NHL should be to institute a policy which significantly penalizes players who are accused of violence against women and significantly penalizes teams that do not have strong policies on the same situation.”

Major League Baseball’s policy on domestic violence was made public last year. A player accused of domestic violence, sexual assault or child abuse can be placed on paid “administrative leave” for up to seven days before a decision is rendered by the commissioner. It’s not automatic, but the option is there.

Geschwind and her letter writers believe they’ve simply asked for that kind of common sense from the NHL and the NHLPA, who need to collectively bargain on increased penalties for teams and players, but with a little more immediate action than the MLB policy.

“More than anything, I’d like to see teams stop asking fans to cheer for abusers. Don’t draft Ben Johnson. Don’t sign Mike Ribeiro. And if someone already on the roster is accused, don’t act as his personal PR machine. Take him off the ice and out of the dressing room while he goes through the legal progress, and treat the situation with the gravity it deserves,” she said.

The instant suspension of a player accused of, rather than found guilty of, sexual assault or domestic violence is a polarizing stance. That was never more evident during the Patrick Kane investigation. (Larry Brooks argued against it in the Slava Voynov case, in a column that hasn’t aged well.)

It’s a topic that came up in Geschwind’s sit-down with Bettman. His defense of the League’s policy was that it won’t suspend players unless “the league has specific information that clearly points to a player’s guilt.” (Like the physical evidence in the Voynov case, for example.) Bettman cited legal roadblocks, including labor laws, that would prevent him from suspending accused players.

It was a sentiment shared by Calgary Flames president Brian Burke, at the time of the Patrick Kane investigation:

“If you were accused but not charged of sexual assault, would you be allowed to go work tomorrow? Yes, you would. And if your employer tried to prevent you from doing so, you would win the grievance,” said Burke. “People say they want cookie-cutter justice but it’s not possible. It’s like a shoe store. You don’t walk in and they just hand you a pair of shoes. You have to get measured and talk about style and colour etc. You have to take into account the severity of the crime, the evidence that’s available and any number of issues. The player has the right to due process. Cookie-cutter is impossible.”

Geschwind believes the problem with that approach is that its starting point is inactivity.

“I’d like to see the League start by taking the allegation seriously, which means temporarily suspending the accused. To do otherwise tacitly calls the accuser a liar, which is incredibly harmful both to the person and to the community,” she said.

“Once the league — and law enforcement, if applicable — have investigated, THEN determine what to do on the merits of the individual case. It’s not a perfect solution by any means, but I believe it’s better than what we have now.”

Hnida feels there are significant drawbacks to a “suspend first” policy.

“The zero tolerance policy is a complicated one. It seems like it would be the best choice, but actually can put victims more at risk. If there is a one-and-done policy, chances of homicide go up exponentially with that first 911 call,” she said. “Anytime an abuser loses a job or money, it can agitate the abuser and put the victim more at risk, so it’s a fine line we have to walk very carefully. You never, ever want a victim to feel like they can’t call for help.”

She favors an approach that tries to prevent future behavior. “One other thing about zero-tolerance is that it punishes the abuser, but doesn’t get them help. Being able to get offenders treatment is a better scenario for everyone involved. Otherwise, the violence will usually end up rearing its head again at some point,” said Hnida.

***

Determining the punishment for players involved in sexual assault and domestic violence cases will be a point of much debate. But the debate doesn’t happen if the NHL and its teams don’t see the issue as a front-burner one.

That, ultimately, has been Melissa Geschwind’s crusade: Let the teams know that the status quo isn’t acceptable, and let the teams know that their fans care deeply about changing it.

Any fans interested in working on the NHL domestic violence and sexual assault policy campaign can email hockeypetition@gmail.com. For more about the letters campaign, visit here. Geschwind said she hopes to encourage fans to reach out to their local beat writers and hockey media to “very politely tell him or her that this is an issue that matters to fans.”

To keep the pressure on. To let the NHL and the NHLPA know that it matters.

“My hope is that they are working on something, and taking the time to get it right. It doesn’t make sense for anyone – the league, teams, players, families – not to have something in place regarding this incredibly serious issue,” said Hnida of the NHL. “The more dialogue we have, the more we can move forward.”

—

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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'Barça is More Than a Club'

Alex and Sílvia are good friends. Born in the same year, they have known each other for more than two decades: they went together to the same school in a small town near Barcelona, and they went on to be university classmates in the Catalan capital afterwards.

Alex and Sílvia also share a big passion: they are die-hard FC Barcelona fans.

On the outside they seem really alike, but nothing could be further from the truth. Alex and Sílvia are really different…especially in everything related to politics.

"Estelada" flags, symbols of the independence movement, are usual in balconies in Barcelona.

On Sílvia’s balcony there is a huge Catalan flag with a white star on a blue triangle: it is the "estelada," a symbol which identifies the independence movement in Catalonia.

In the election held on December 21 in this region of Northeastern Spain, Sílvia voted for the center-right secessionist party Junts per Catalunya. In the vote, pro-independence parties won by a narrow margin over unionists.

On Alex’s balcony, however, there are no flags at all. In the elections, he decided to vote for Catalunya en Comú, a left-wing party which preferred to focus their campaign on social issues rather than positioning on independence.

"Caganers"—literally meaning "guy taking a shit"— are an an awkward traditional Catalan figure used in Christimas nativity scenes, wearing Barça jerseys.

Alex and Sílvia’s political ideology, as usual in Catalonia, has an echo in sports. Alex belongs to a sector of blaugrana fans whose motto is ‘only Barça.’ For them, the club is nothing more than a football team that carries no political significance. When he goes to Camp Nou, Alex’s chants simply cheer the players. Nothing else.

“I go to Camp Nou to enjoy football. That’s it,” says Alex. “In my opinion, when you go to the stadium you have to leave politics at home.”

FC Barcelona flags —as well as official shorts from different seasons—at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni, a fanclub located in central Barcelona.

Sílvia, however, believes that Barça is bigger than sports.

“Narcís de Carreres, a former president, described it very well: Barça is more than a club,” Sílvia says, referring to the famous blaugrana motto "més que un club."

Every time Sílvia goes to the stadium, she wears yellow clothes, a reference to jailed pro-independence politicians and activists. She also shouts in favor of independence every game at the 17:14 minute: 1714 was the year Barcelona fell into the hands of Bourbon troops during the War of Spanish Succession.

“Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a famous Catalan writer, described Barça as the unarmed army of Catalonia,” Sílvia adds. “I believe that this sentence defines the club really well.”

Barça fans watch the Clásico between Madrid and Barcelona at the at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

Alex and Sílvia exemplify two visions of a club which has as many faces and interpretations as fans.

Marc Duch is president of Manifest Blaugrana, an association of members whose objective is to build a more democratic and transparent FC Barcelona.

“What is Barça, you say?,” asks Duch. “I would say it depends on the time: for me, it has been a hobby, an untamable passion, an example to imitate, an absolute shame…and much more.”

“This game is just life for me,” says Ángel, a die-hard Barça fan. “We wait for Barça-Madrid all year long: winning at the Bernabéu stadium is the best thing that can happen. The country’s current situation increases this rivalry, which is goes way further than just sport: it comes from many years ago, and now it’s even tougher. Without a Catalan team, the Spanish league would go down the drain.”

“Barça is an institution with the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s why we should demand it to have a proactive role in the social and human improvement of the country,” Duch adds. “That is where, at least partially, the motto ‘more than a club’ comes from.”

"FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

Marc Cornet takes this idea even further. On October 1, the Catalan regional government tried to organize a referendum on independence: the Spanish government considered it illegal and sent the police to repress it…violently. After the referendum, Cornet thought it was absolutely necessary for Barça to get more involved in social matters, and that is why, with other club members, he founded the Barça Republic Defense Committee—CDR, in Catalan.

“This game is much more than just sports,” says Cristian. “It’s a representation of the Catalonia versus Spain clash.”

“Our club has always been a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance,” Cornet explains. “During the twenties, dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera closed our stadium because some fans whistled while the Spanish anthem was played; in 1936, our president Josep Sunyol was killed for being a Republican Catalanist; after the Civil War, the fascists took out the Catalan flag from our crest.”

“We don’t ask Barça to be openly independentist,” Cornet adds. “But we want it to be always on the side of civil rights, and that’s why we founded the CDR: we don’t want any other October the 1st, ever.”

“For us die-hard fans, Barça is our life,” says Jordi, who has followed the blaugrana team for decades. “Beating Madrid is important, but all games are important. Being a Barça fan means being part of something bigger, of some kind of huge family.”

The partisan positions of Duch and Cornet are pretty common among the Catalan culers—that is, Barça fans—but they’re not the only positions. Recently, the fanclub of Elda, near Alicante in Eastern Spain, publicly announced their decoupling from Barça as a reaction to the club’s decisions on October 1 to play their La Liga game behind closed doors as a means to protest against police violence.

An Elda fanclub spokesperson declared to local media that their members had “unanimously” decided to end their relationship with Barça “due to the implication of the club and its leaders in the events that took place in Catalonia.”

“Barça-Madrid is the best game of the season,” says Víctor, barman at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni. “But that’s it. It’s just a football game, nothing more.”

Other public figures such as the former Spanish international Julio Alberto Moreno, who played in FC Barcelona in the eighties, have also shown their disapproval of the club’s management: “The board has been chosen to rule a football club, not a political party,” Moreno said to the Spanish TV channel Antena 3.

“The independence process has destroyed much of the confidence between different social sectors and has caused a clear crack within Catalan society," says Berta Barbet, a political scientist at the University of Barcelona.

“It has also caused a political deadlock in the whole of Spain and has affected many important institutions in Catalonia—including Barça, of course,” Barbet adds.

“Beating Madrid is beating the number 1 enemy,” says David. “Unfortunately, there’s more than football in this game.”

“Still, Barça can still be a key factor in order to fix this division: given its relevance, it could become a positive reference and generate a feeling of union between people who support independence and people who don't,” Barbet suggests.

Jordi Fexas, geographist, historian and writer of several books on the independence movement, disagrees with Barbet’s diagnosis: “The independence process had no negative effects until the Spanish government intervened,” he says.

“Barça is a key part of my life,” says Marta. “It’s not just football. FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

“It’s the Spanish State who created the concept of ‘social crack,’” Fexas adds. Independence activists might be naive sometimes, but they have never been violent. It was the State who tried to build the idea of latent violence in order to justify their intervention. Given this repressive context, Barça might act as a soft power to mediate.”

Alex and Sílvia, like most Catalans, are deeply invested in the political events surrounding the Catalan independence movement. The independence debate has been at the center of Spanish politics for almost a decade. Many people are getting exhausted by it.

“The Clásico against Madrid is emotional. It’s really difficult to explain,” says Juan. “There’s a huge rivalry, and winning it is great, because everybody has some friends who are Madrid fans and whom you can laugh at when you beat them. I know the game may also have a political sense for some people, but for me it’s just sport: my family are from Galicia and Andalusia, and I have many friends in Madrid, so for me it’s just football.”

Barça’s convincing victory over Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabéu was seen by many fans as a pause, a little measure of happiness in tense times. For some hours, all culers agreed on celebrating Suárez, Messi, and Vidal’s goals at the eternal rival’s stadium.

“The Barça anthem says it all: ‘una bandera ens agermana,’—‘a flag unites us all’”—says Sílvia. “That is precisely what Barça is able to do: unite.”

Alex sums it up quickly: “In the end, everything is quite simple: we might think differently in political terms, but our love for Barça is the same,"

Barça fans celebrate a goal against Madrid at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

'Barça is More Than a Club' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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'Barça is More Than a Club'

Alex and Sílvia are good friends. Born in the same year, they have known each other for more than two decades: they went together to the same school in a small town near Barcelona, and they went on to be university classmates in the Catalan capital afterwards.

Alex and Sílvia also share a big passion: they are die-hard FC Barcelona fans.

On the outside they seem really alike, but nothing could be further from the truth. Alex and Sílvia are really different…especially in everything related to politics.

"Estelada" flags, symbols of the independence movement, are usual in balconies in Barcelona.

On Sílvia’s balcony there is a huge Catalan flag with a white star on a blue triangle: it is the "estelada," a symbol which identifies the independence movement in Catalonia.

In the election held on December 21 in this region of Northeastern Spain, Sílvia voted for the center-right secessionist party Junts per Catalunya. In the vote, pro-independence parties won by a narrow margin over unionists.

On Alex’s balcony, however, there are no flags at all. In the elections, he decided to vote for Catalunya en Comú, a left-wing party which preferred to focus their campaign on social issues rather than positioning on independence.

"Caganers"—literally meaning "guy taking a shit"— are an an awkward traditional Catalan figure used in Christimas nativity scenes, wearing Barça jerseys.

Alex and Sílvia’s political ideology, as usual in Catalonia, has an echo in sports. Alex belongs to a sector of blaugrana fans whose motto is ‘only Barça.’ For them, the club is nothing more than a football team that carries no political significance. When he goes to Camp Nou, Alex’s chants simply cheer the players. Nothing else.

“I go to Camp Nou to enjoy football. That’s it,” says Alex. “In my opinion, when you go to the stadium you have to leave politics at home.”

FC Barcelona flags —as well as official shorts from different seasons—at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni, a fanclub located in central Barcelona.

Sílvia, however, believes that Barça is bigger than sports.

“Narcís de Carreres, a former president, described it very well: Barça is more than a club,” Sílvia says, referring to the famous blaugrana motto "més que un club."

Every time Sílvia goes to the stadium, she wears yellow clothes, a reference to jailed pro-independence politicians and activists. She also shouts in favor of independence every game at the 17:14 minute: 1714 was the year Barcelona fell into the hands of Bourbon troops during the War of Spanish Succession.

“Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a famous Catalan writer, described Barça as the unarmed army of Catalonia,” Sílvia adds. “I believe that this sentence defines the club really well.”

Barça fans watch the Clásico between Madrid and Barcelona at the at the Peña Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

Alex and Sílvia exemplify two visions of a club which has as many faces and interpretations as fans.

Marc Duch is president of Manifest Blaugrana, an association of members whose objective is to build a more democratic and transparent FC Barcelona.

“What is Barça, you say?,” asks Duch. “I would say it depends on the time: for me, it has been a hobby, an untamable passion, an example to imitate, an absolute shame…and much more.”

“This game is just life for me,” says Ángel, a die-hard Barça fan. “We wait for Barça-Madrid all year long: winning at the Bernabéu stadium is the best thing that can happen. The country’s current situation increases this rivalry, which is goes way further than just sport: it comes from many years ago, and now it’s even tougher. Without a Catalan team, the Spanish league would go down the drain.”

“Barça is an institution with the ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s why we should demand it to have a proactive role in the social and human improvement of the country,” Duch adds. “That is where, at least partially, the motto ‘more than a club’ comes from.”

"FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

Marc Cornet takes this idea even further. On October 1, the Catalan regional government tried to organize a referendum on independence: the Spanish government considered it illegal and sent the police to repress it…violently. After the referendum, Cornet thought it was absolutely necessary for Barça to get more involved in social matters, and that is why, with other club members, he founded the Barça Republic Defense Committee—CDR, in Catalan.

“This game is much more than just sports,” says Cristian. “It’s a representation of the Catalonia versus Spain clash.”

“Our club has always been a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance,” Cornet explains. “During the twenties, dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera closed our stadium because some fans whistled while the Spanish anthem was played; in 1936, our president Josep Sunyol was killed for being a Republican Catalanist; after the Civil War, the fascists took out the Catalan flag from our crest.”

“We don’t ask Barça to be openly independentist,” Cornet adds. “But we want it to be always on the side of civil rights, and that’s why we founded the CDR: we don’t want any other October the 1st, ever.”

“For us die-hard fans, Barça is our life,” says Jordi, who has followed the blaugrana team for decades. “Beating Madrid is important, but all games are important. Being a Barça fan means being part of something bigger, of some kind of huge family.”

The partisan positions of Duch and Cornet are pretty common among the Catalan culers—that is, Barça fans—but they’re not the only positions. Recently, the fanclub of Elda, near Alicante in Eastern Spain, publicly announced their decoupling from Barça as a reaction to the club’s decisions on October 1 to play their La Liga game behind closed doors as a means to protest against police violence.

An Elda fanclub spokesperson declared to local media that their members had “unanimously” decided to end their relationship with Barça “due to the implication of the club and its leaders in the events that took place in Catalonia.”

“Barça-Madrid is the best game of the season,” says Víctor, barman at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni. “But that’s it. It’s just a football game, nothing more.”

Other public figures such as the former Spanish international Julio Alberto Moreno, who played in FC Barcelona in the eighties, have also shown their disapproval of the club’s management: “The board has been chosen to rule a football club, not a political party,” Moreno said to the Spanish TV channel Antena 3.

“The independence process has destroyed much of the confidence between different social sectors and has caused a clear crack within Catalan society," says Berta Barbet, a political scientist at the University of Barcelona.

“It has also caused a political deadlock in the whole of Spain and has affected many important institutions in Catalonia—including Barça, of course,” Barbet adds.

“Beating Madrid is beating the number 1 enemy,” says David. “Unfortunately, there’s more than football in this game.”

“Still, Barça can still be a key factor in order to fix this division: given its relevance, it could become a positive reference and generate a feeling of union between people who support independence and people who don't,” Barbet suggests.

Jordi Fexas, geographist, historian and writer of several books on the independence movement, disagrees with Barbet’s diagnosis: “The independence process had no negative effects until the Spanish government intervened,” he says.

“Barça is a key part of my life,” says Marta. “It’s not just football. FC Barcelona is the representation of a country, of a feeling.”

“It’s the Spanish State who created the concept of ‘social crack,’” Fexas adds. Independence activists might be naive sometimes, but they have never been violent. It was the State who tried to build the idea of latent violence in order to justify their intervention. Given this repressive context, Barça might act as a soft power to mediate.”

Alex and Sílvia, like most Catalans, are deeply invested in the political events surrounding the Catalan independence movement. The independence debate has been at the center of Spanish politics for almost a decade. Many people are getting exhausted by it.

“The Clásico against Madrid is emotional. It’s really difficult to explain,” says Juan. “There’s a huge rivalry, and winning it is great, because everybody has some friends who are Madrid fans and whom you can laugh at when you beat them. I know the game may also have a political sense for some people, but for me it’s just sport: my family are from Galicia and Andalusia, and I have many friends in Madrid, so for me it’s just football.”

Barça’s convincing victory over Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabéu was seen by many fans as a pause, a little measure of happiness in tense times. For some hours, all culers agreed on celebrating Suárez, Messi, and Vidal’s goals at the eternal rival’s stadium.

“The Barça anthem says it all: ‘una bandera ens agermana,’—‘a flag unites us all’”—says Sílvia. “That is precisely what Barça is able to do: unite.”

Alex sums it up quickly: “In the end, everything is quite simple: we might think differently in political terms, but our love for Barça is the same,"

Barça fans celebrate a goal against Madrid at the Penya Barcelonista Sant Antoni.

'Barça is More Than a Club' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv