This Is “The Center Of The Universe” – A Sound Anomaly Found In Tulsa


Optical illusions tend to get the lion's share when we talk about things that make us question reality, but acoustic anomalies can be equally trippy especially if they were not designed with the intention to confuse and mystify. This is the case for the "Center of the Universe", a peculiar location known as a sound anomaly.

It is located on a pedestrianized bridge in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is marked by a spot on the floor by a concrete circle and surrounded by planters and benches that form a wider circle around it. And when you step in it, your voice is echoed back at you but louder, and noises from outside the circle are distorted.


A video by Youtube user Trueson Daugherty called "Guy discovers the Center of the Universe, Tulsa OK", shows the echo effect from inside the circle (as well as the nearby “Artificial Cloud” statue).

There is no official explanation for how the anomaly formed, but the most likely cause is the planters around it that reflect the sound waves creating the peculiar effect. There are other anomalies in the world such as The Mystery Spot of Lake George. There too a small round stone structure created some acoustic abnormalities.

Such weird sound displays are also found in circular buildings. The dome of St Paul Cathedral in London is known as a whispering gallery, where your hushed tones are delivered across the huge dome thanks to the reverberation of sound waves.

Similar structures are to be found in so many buildings both ancient and modern. From the Mayan city of Chichen Itza to Grand Central Station in New York.

Book Review: Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics by Ihnji Jon


Bouchra Tafrata
January 16th, 2022

In Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics, Ihnji Jon explores how researchers, city planners and the public can develop a bottom-up approach to environmentalism in urban areas, focusing on the cities of Cape Town, Cleveland, Darwin and Tulsa. This book contributes to establishing a new approach to urban research that understands cities as complex environments and stresses the importance of collaboration with communities, finds Bouchra Tafrata.

Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics. Ihnji Jon. Pluto Press. 2021.

Find this book (affiliate link):

In her article ‘The City We Want: Against the Banality of Urban Planning Research’, Ihnji Jon reflects on the current state of academia and how a space of intellectual exercise is being threatened by marketisation, the fear of remaining invisible without publications, h-indexes and an obsession with producing ‘objective’ knowledge. As a young scholar trying to carve a pathway in urban studies, I ruminate on how the current knowledge produced within universities is affecting approached communities. Whose voices are we listening to? Why are institutions and academics trying to maintain the barrier they have constructed between research and activism? If cities are complex, why is academia generating ‘banal’ research? In this regard, Jon evokes Robert W. Lake’s words, calling for a shift ‘from a stance of distanced objectivity to an engaged attitude of solidarity and empathy’ (72).

The current climate situation and the continuous debate between governments and policymakers about the deteriorating state of the planet, in addition to the differences in public opinion, push us to question governments’ approaches to climate issues and to ask why many have failed at implementing climate-related policies. Jon’s book Cities in the Anthropocene is a call for researchers, city planners and the public to reflect on the benefits of a bottom-up approach in environmentalism and to incentivise the public to evaluate its local position within an interdependent global system.

Jon’s scholarship focuses on analysing a ‘new ecology’ that advocates for anti-essentialist environmentalism theory and speaks against political discourse that commands the public to foster a coercive relationship between humans and nature. In her words, ‘‘‘new ecology’’ tried to go beyond the kinds of environmentalism that rely on the fetishised understanding of ‘‘nature’’ or ‘‘the environment’’ that unnecessarily creates the boundaries between our everyday living (human needs) and ecosystem functions (ecological needs)’ (3).

The book starts by addressing the politics of scale and how cities can act as frontiers for climate change mitigation. The notion of ‘scale’ remains contested, especially in environmental governance. The interconnected planetary ecosystem continues to shed light on the limits of tackling climate issues on a national scale, as these issues expand beyond political delimitations.

In addition, turning environmental issues into ‘leftist debates’ impedes climate change mitigation and conceals the sources of these issues. The ideological turn of the climate debate must be dismantled, as it is a global issue that incessantly deteriorates our daily lives that rely on the state of the environment. As Jon articulates, ‘proposing a positive reconfiguration of scale is needed more than ever, especially for the environmental issues that are intrinsically both local and global’ (32).

Jon illustrates the implications of embedding nature and climate change mitigation in planning without making it a case of leftist political engagement through two cities: Darwin, Australia, and Tulsa, USA. The urban policies and strategies deployed in these cities are intended to attract different communities whose political positions do not align. This is a phenomenon that Jon refers to as ‘pragmatic environmentalism’ (34).

Climate-related disasters, notably hazardous weather, have been affecting urban citizens’ lives in Tulsa. The city’s history of flooding has contributed to centring nature in design, which has led to the creation of ‘pragmatic environmentalism’ strategies: for instance, stormwater management systems as well as embedding greenery, walkability and the ‘Instagram-able’ in urban space to attract Millenials, professionals and families.

In the case of Darwin, its tropical climate and weather hazards have encouraged the implementation of different projects that foster what the author refers to as ‘secularising nature’ (38). This pragmatic approach to nature strengthens proximity between urban citizens and the weather hazards that affect their cities. It asks us to reflect on how we can implement pro-nature practices without idealising ‘nature’.

Through contrasting Bruno Latour’s attention to ‘negative feelings that are generated by the individuals’ (40) with Spinozian ethics on how doing good makes us feel good (41), Jon highlights the importance of practices that foster care, instead of feelings of obligation and authority. In fact, pro-environment city-scale projects – such as embedding greenery in the streets, minimising parking areas, low-impact development (LID) initiatives (namely on-site stormwater treatment centres), green energy transition and establishing attractive amenities in different neighbourhoods – can shift the narrative on climate issues. They also invite different communities to participate in the pro-nature ethos, as our quality of life relies on the state of the ecosystem. Jon linked these initiatives to Deweyan philosophy which shows how valuing the public’s experiences can serve to build bridges with the ordinary, instead of only relying on theories and ideologies (71). This approach centres the everyday experiences of people and establishes engagement with different communities.

Another timely topic the author tackles is how we can address climate change, environmental sustainability and urban inequalities through the same prism, without marginalising communities who endure socio-spatial disparities. Jon studies this issue in two different cities: Cleveland, USA, and Cape Town, South Africa. These two cities endure poverty and socio-spatial segregation. Cleveland is one of the rust belt cities that bore the aftermaths of the 2008 financial crash and industrial decline, which engendered housing inequalities and socio-economic instability (77, 86). Cape Town’s apartheid history and policies created a spatial divide between white settlers and non-white citizens and pushed the latter to dwell in informal settlements, without access to clean water, sanitation, energy or socio-economic opportunities (94, 97,102).

Jon highlights the role of environmental justice theory, which studies how a green policy agenda can reinforce socio-economic inequalities (81). Environmentalist institutions and climate change social movements, particularly in the West, demonstrate how whiteness continues to dominate these spaces and how environmentalists and activists should question whose climate justice they are advocating for. Socio-economic precarity and urban segregation are colonial and the history of white supremacy is still visible in post-colonies. Recognising this offers a chance to re-imagine inclusive and equitable development policies.

The last chapter of the book explores how social complexity theory can inspire environmental action. Referring to the work of Manuel DeLanda on the materiality of cities and connecting this to Deleuzian assemblage theory, Jon explains the role of interaction between different individuals, how this generates a group identity and how this affects the members of the group. In Jon’s words: ‘placing interaction effects at the heart of understanding social entities may relieve us from the ontological contradiction between “having a group identity (which is the soul of the whole)” versus “respecting/acknowledging individual agency and heterogeneity”’ (114). Additional elements vital to recognising the complexity of social entities are understanding the history of the interactions that have occurred between individuals and establishing practices that accommodate heterogeneity (116, 117, 119). Planning with/within complexity can push decision-makers to consider the varieties of social entities and to practise inclusion.

Jon asks how cities can ‘inject their pro-environmentalist ideas via an abstract machine, using the powers of imagination, narratives, expressions, or poetic devices that can inspire people rather than forcing them to pursue environmentalism’ (135). Jon draws on various examples that illustrate how creative projects are working to shift dominant narratives, including the New York Times’s ‘Modern Love’ series that depicts the multiple forms of ‘love’. Through these, Jon calls for a shift in planning and narrative in urban studies (143) through the embrace of the ‘habit of tolerance’ (158) and the complexity of narratives in cities.

While I continue to reflect on practices of inclusion and exclusion inside and outside of institutional walls, Jon’s book helps in setting the mood for establishing a new approach to urban research. It connects the philosophy of pragmatism, climate change mitigation and city planning. It defines cities as complex environments where inequalities are reinforced through systemic marginalisation, and where local/global governments can advocate for pro-environmentalism through a bottom-up approach. It encourages us, researchers and practitioners, to examine the utility of theories produced in the academy, collaborate with communities and be attentive to their narratives and needs.

Note: This article first appeared at our sister site, LSE Review of Books. It gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Lucas Alexander on Unsplash


About the author

Bouchra Tafrata is a Researcher and host of In Praise of the Margin Podcast. She completed a Master’s in Public Policy at the Willy Brandt School at the University of Erfurt. Her research dissects international political economy, socio-spatial inequalities and urban governance.

CHURCH DOCTRINE

Robert Jones’ new book roots white supremacy in 500-year-old papal decree

The Doctrine of Discovery shaped the way America’s white, European Christian settlers saw themselves and their mission and gave rise to uncontrollable outbursts of violence.

"The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy And the Path to a Shared American Future" and author Robert P. Jones. 

August 22, 2023
By  Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — Many Americans have long accepted that slavery was America’s original sin.

But what if it wasn’t? What if that original sin stretches back 500 years to the forced removal and, in many cases, extermination of Native Americans by America’s white European settlers?

And what if there’s a religious decree, dating back to the late 15th century, that gave divine sanction to the robbery, enslavement and violent oppression of nonwhites?

That’s the argument pollster Robert P. Jones makes in his new book, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.”

The book, which releases Sept. 5, locates the origin of America’s race problem in the Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery. In that 1493 edict, Pope Alexander VI provided a blueprint for seizing “undiscovered lands” that were “not previously possessed by any Christian owner” and subduing the people on that land.

Jones makes the case that the doctrine’s underlying worldview of divine entitlement shaped the way America’s white, European Christian settlers saw themselves and their mission and justified outbursts of violence, dispossession of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Blacks.

In his book, Jones focuses on three sites where the scars of white supremacy are, as he says, “carved across the land” and where earlier violence begot more violence: the Mississippi Delta, where Choctaw Indians were forcibly removed from the land and where, in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered; Minnesota, site of the mass deportation of the Dakota people and the execution of 38 Dakota men, followed in 1920 by the lynching of three Black circus workers; and finally, Oklahoma, where the Osage people suffered theft and forced assimilation and where the Tulsa race massacre took place in 1921. 

“If we do the hard work of pushing upriver, we find that the same waters that produced the Negro problem also spawned the Indian problem,” Jones writes. “If we dare to go further, at the headwaters is the white Christian problem.”

Religion News Service spoke to Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, about his book and how a 500-year-old church doctrine — recently repudiated by the Vatican — persists in the rise of today’s anti-democratic defense of white Christian nationalism. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

When did you first come across the Doctrine of Discovery?

It wasn’t until I was really digging in and reading Native American scholars who were writing about the origins of the country. People like Vine Deloria Jr., for example, had a piece called “An Open Letter to the Heads of the Christian Churches in America,” that he wrote in the early 1970s, where he talked about the Doctrine of Discovery and the centrality of that doctrine to the way white Christian people treated Indigenous people in this country from its inception. Over the last 50 years it’s been a common theme, particularly among Indigenous authors and authors of color. But, you know, I went to a Southern Baptist seminary, and even in my Ph.D. program at Emory, it just never figured prominently in the history to which I was exposed.

Tell me why you chose the three sites that you did.

For different reasons. I’m from Mississippi. So that was a story close to home. On the ground in Tallahatchie County — where events happened — there were no markers telling the story of Emmett Till prior to 20 years ago. So if you had driven through the Delta in the year 2000, you would have seen literally nothing there. Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been on the national radar because we had just passed the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. I thought there was more of a story to tell there, particularly how it connects with Native American history in Oklahoma. And then, I didn’t want to be accused of cherry-picking stories from red states or the South. I wanted to write also about something in the far north. I had come across the story of this lynching in Duluth, and in my last book, “White Too Long,” I wrote just a couple of pages about it, and I realized it was a much bigger story to tell there. And so I went back to that story again.

You mention The New York Times’ 1619 Project and your own realization of its limitations — that it doesn’t tell Native American history. Was that what led you to this book?

I think the root of it is bigger than that. The 1619 Project has been vitally important for resetting the way we think about American history. But I think we need to push back even further. We have more than a century of European contact with Indigenous people. That history is really important. The 1619 Project expanded the aperture beyond what we see on postage stamps and patriotic paintings of a bunch of white men gathered in Philadelphia around the table with their quill pens. Getting us beyond that picture of the beginnings of America was a herculean effort and vitally important. It’s just that I think we need to kind of keep moving to tell the story on a little bit of a bigger canvas.

So, is the Doctrine of Discovery America’s new origin story?

I want to be careful here not to commit my own sin of overreach — to say this is the date that we should declare as our nation’s beginning point because there are certainly things that led up to that point. But there are these kinds of watershed moments and, among them, 1493 is certainly an important one. Many of us learned that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, as the poem says. But it’s really the year he goes back to Spain and gets this permission and stamp of approval from the sitting pope at the time, Alexander VI, that puts the kind of full imprint of the church on conquering any lands that are possessed by non-Christians. If you were not Christian, then you didn’t have any inherent human rights.

How do you hope to change the conversation with this book?

We’re at a moment where we are arguing over history. We’ve seen Arkansas not counting AP African American history and fights in Florida over the status of AP American history. These are all about our origin stories. We’re caught in this moment because of the changing demographics of the country. What I’m hoping the book does is tell a bigger story.

What we often get — and I say as someone who was educated in Mississippi public schools — are words like “pioneers,” “settlers,” these kind of innocent words that I think don’t do any sort of justice to the violence that was wielded. Facing that history squarely is important if we’re going to be honest with ourselves about how we arrive to the place we’re at.

Frankly, everywhere you go in the country, the place names testify to this history. In the Mississippi Delta, there’s Tallahatchie County, a Native American name. There is DeSoto County right next door, which is named for Hernando de Soto, the Spanish conquistador who comes and claims all of that Mississippi watershed for Spain using the logic of the Doctrine of Discovery. If we’re going to get to a shared American future, we have to have a shared American story. And I think that is vitally important and white Christians have to be more honest about what that history is.

You strike a note of hopefulness about these three places for grappling with the tragedies that took place there. Are you more hopeful about America’s future?

Part of what I did for the book is I interviewed people who have been involved in these very local efforts and not in easy places. The Mississippi Delta is a tough place to do this kind of work. There’s not a lot of resources, it’s rural and fairly poor. And yet here, this intrepid group of citizens got together — white descendants of plantation owners, organizing alongside descendants of enslaved people and sharecroppers. I think that’s a real mending of the fabric at the very local level. Just a few weeks ago, we had President Joe Biden declare a new national monument to Emmett Till to be permanently funded, maintained and part of the National Park system.

You’re a public pollster. What’s the relationship between what you do at PRRI and your books about American history?

These books are written in my name. They’re not PRRI books. But there’s a question that we’ve asked for a couple of years now that really is at the heart of the matter: Are we a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or are we a pluralistic democracy where we are multireligious, multiracial and everybody stands on equal footing as citizens?

We have been struggling between these two questions our entire history and they’ve been fairly unresolved. About 30% of the country will say, for example, the United States was intended by God to be a promised land where European Christians could set an example for the rest of the world. But that means that by a margin of 2-to-1, Americans reject that vision of the country. You would think that might mean, OK, well, debate over. Let’s move on. On the other hand, it’s captured a majority of one of our two political parties. So it means we’re fighting over the way we are.

We are at this hinge point where this question is getting asked in a very forthright way. We’ve been there at other times: Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement. But now the demographics have changed so there’s no longer the supermajority of white Christian people in the country. So now the answer to that question matters in a way it didn’t for past generations. The books add social, historical and cultural context to the kind of things we’re capturing in public opinion polls today. When you understand the longer sweep of history, those things become less mysterious.

(This story was was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)

New from Robert P. Jones:

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future

Taking the story of white supremacy in America back to 1493, and examining contemporary communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma for models of racial repair, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy.

“Through its linking of narratives typically considered separately, the book provides a revelatory view of U.S. history and its guiding assumptions. . . . . A searing, stirring outline of the historical and contemporary significance of white Christian nationalism.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“Arresting and deeply researched, this unique account brings to the fore the deep-rooted sense of ‘divine entitlement, of European chosenness’ that has shaped so much of American history. It’s a rigorous and forceful feat of scholarship.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Blistering, bracing and brave . . . This book couldn’t be more timely in the courageous effort to close the gap between what we as a nation say we are and what we truly have been.”
—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

“In this elegantly crafted book, Robert P. Jones unearths harrowing and long forgotten stories of the racial violence inscribed on our nation’s past. Yet it is not a book without hope, for only by confronting our collective history can we begin to heal our nation’s wounds.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Calvin University; author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“Robert P. Jones is an extraordinary moral force in this country. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy is his latest effort to help the nation imagine itself apart from the distorting effects of racism and the violent genocide of Indigenous people at its root. This book is the latest in his own personal journey as a white southerner from Mississippi, and I am thankful that he has shared it with all of us.”
—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University; author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lesson for Our Own

“An essential journey into the origins of America’s current identity crisis, told through the voices of people working across lines of race to create a truer vision of our shared history, and our future.”
—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

“Finally, a book that addresses white supremacy as more than a Black/white binary. Jones artfully moves from the colonial devastation, murder and displacement of American Indian to the degradation, and murder of African Americans in America after emancipation. White supremacy is rooted both legally and socially in the fifteenth-century canon law of Catholic papal bulls. And he demonstrates that this sentiment continues in the subliminal thinking and acting of Americans yet today.”
—Tink Tinker (wazhazhe/Osage Nation), Professor Emeritus of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions, Iliff School of Theology

“Robert P. Jones has deepened our understanding of how Americans think about religion, justice and oppression. . . . This eloquent volume, by turns personal and analytical, calls us to face up to the past in order to build a more just and democratic future.”
—E. J. Dionne Jr., senior fellow, the Brookings Institution; author of Our Divided Political Heart and co-author of 100% Democracy

“With brilliant research, rediscovery, and writing, Robert P. Jones once again demonstrates that it is time for ‘white’ Americans to uncover the history we have for so long purposefully and shamefully hidden. As Jesus said, and Jones shows, only truth telling can set us free. The work to which Jones calls us—a struggle for the very soul of the nation—will test our commitments to democracy and our faith.”
—Jim Wallis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice, Georgetown University; author of America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to America

STATE CAPITALISM AMERICAN STYLE
Austin area may offer $68 million in tax breaks for potential Tesla plant

Austin competing with Tulsa for site of Cybertruck factory

Published: June 18, 2020 By Associated Press

Tesla has not said when it will announce its decision. BLOOMBERG NEWS

AUSTIN, Texas — An Austin-area school district is considering offering more than $60 million in tax incentives to attract a proposed Tesla “gigafactory” to Central Texas, Tesla TSLA, -0.60% revealed Thursday.

The Del Valle Independent School District proposal was made public in a Tesla tax application filed Thursday with the Texas comptroller’s office. The proposal would offer Tesla $68 million in property tax breaks over 10 years to put its new plant on a 2,100-acre site off Texas 130 just north of the Colorado River on the southeastern outskirts of Austin. Travis County commissioners are considering a separate tax incentive package.

The comptroller’s documents state the real value of the property would average about $600 million per year. Without the Del Valle district incentives package, Tesla would have to pay almost $8 million in property taxes per year.

Austin is competing with Tulsa, Okla., to become the city that hosts the plant that builds the Cybertruck, Tesla’s planned electric pickup truck, and the Tesla Model Y sport utility vehicle. In its application with the Texas comptroller’s officer, Tesla says it is considering the Travis County site and a site or sites in Oklahoma.

The proposed plant would have 4 million to 5 million square feet of space and would be Tesla’s biggest so far. Tesla’s U.S. vehicle assembly factory in Fremont, California, employs 10,000 workers.

In its Thursday filing, Tesla said that if the Del Valle school board approves the incentive package and it proceeds with building on the Travis County site, construction could start in the third quarter of this year and take two to three years to complete.

Tesla has not said when it will announce its decision.

Tesla Asks Texas For Tax Incentives As It Proposes To Start Construction For New Factory By Q3

Neer Varshney , Benzinga Staff Writer June 19, 2020



Tesla Inc. TSLA 0.53% filed an application with an Austin-area school district in Travis County, Texas earlier this month asking for tax incentives to build a new factory, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

What Happened

The automaker said in the application, it has zeroed in on a 2,100 acres site, currently owned by Martin Marietta Materials Inc. Tesla is asking for significant tax incentives for the Texas facility to remain competitive with another site the Palo Alto-based company is considering in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If it goes ahead with the plan to build the factory at the site, Tesla expects to begin construction by the third fiscal quarter this year, investing about $1 billion at the 4 to 5 million square foot assembly facility. The automaker said in the filing that the factory would create 5,000 new jobs.

Why It Matters

Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in March announced that Tesla was scouting for locations to build a new manufacturing facility for its recently-launched Cybertruck.

Tesla has an option to purchase this land, but has not exercised it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2020

Musk said on Thursday the company hasn't yet purchased the Texas land, and Tesla is "considering several options."
Price Action

Tesla shares closed 1.2% higher at $1,003.96 on Thursday. The shares added another 0.8% in the after-hours session at $1,011.99.

© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Neil Young sues Donald Trump's campaign over repeated use of songs

After years complaining over Donald Trump using his songs at political rallies, Neil Young has filed a suit seeking damages. Other musicians to object range from Adele and Rhianna to Mick Jagger and Elton John.


Canadian-American singer, Neil Young, has sued US President Donald Trump's re-election campaign – for using his music.

In the copyright infringement suit, it is stated that the plaintiff (Young) "in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a 'theme song' for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate."

Trump's re-election campaign had played two songs of Young's – Rockin' in the Free World and Devil's Sidwalk at a rally at Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month.

"Imagine what it feels like to hear Rockin' in the Free World after this President speaks, like it is his theme song. I did not write it for that," Young had written in an earlier complaint on July 3 on the "Neil Young Archives" website.

Trump's campaign is yet to respond to Young's lawsuit, which is seeking $150,000 in damages for each infringement.

Young first objected to the use of his tunes in 2015 during Trump's first shot at the presidency. At the time, Trump's campaign ended up inking licensing agreements with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), to use pop songs at events.

Read more: 'Hail to the Thief': Music in political campaigns

You can't always get what you want

Young's lawsuit follows an open letter from the Aritsts Rights Alliance (ARA), asking politicians to obtain permission before using their songs at campaign events. Signatories included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Elton John, Sia, REM's Michael Stipe, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, Sheryl Crow and Lionel Richie.

The open letter argued that the unauthorized use of their songs in political contexts without permission could confuse and disappoint fans and even "undermine an artists' long-term income."

The family of late rock musician Tom Petty has already issued a cease-and-desist order against Trump's campaign after the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song I Won't Back Down was played at the rally in Tulsa.

"Trump was in no way authorized to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind… Tom Petty would never want a song of his to be used in a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together," his family said in a statement.

While still alive, Petty had explicitly objected to Republican George W. Bush using the exact same tune in the 2000 campaign.


MUSIC IN US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS
George Washington: 'God Save Great Washington'
George Washington was the first presidential candidate to use a specific song in his election campaign. "God Save Great Washington" is considered the personal anthem of the first President of the United States. The melody of the British anthem "God Save The King" was given new words without further ado, the president's name replacing the word "king."
MORE PHOTOS 123456

The Rolling Stones have also threatened to sue Trump's re-election campaign after their hit classic You Can't Always Get What You Want was played at the Tulsa rally. "The BMI have notified the Trump campaign on behalf of the Stones that the unauthorized use of their songs will constitute a breach of its licensing agreement", the band said.

Legal experts have in the past questioned whether such objections would be likely to stand up in court, however, arguing that people would not necessarily infer that a musician supported a politician simply because one of their songs was played at a rally.

am/msh (AP, Reuters, AFP)

Researchers studying children’s health related to chemical exposures

Funding from the U.S. EPA will create the Children’s Environmental Health Center in the U.S. Southern Great Plains, which includes Oklahoma and Texas

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

 

IMAGE: 

PHOTO OF AN EDUCATOR READING TO PRE-SCHOOL STUDENTS.

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CREDIT: PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. – OU researchers have received a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to establish a research center to address children’s cumulative health impacts from agricultural and non-chemical exposures. This grant will create the Children’s Environmental Health Center in the U.S. Southern Great Plains, which includes Oklahoma and Texas. The Center will focus on mitigating the chemical and non-chemical stressors that affect school absenteeism caused by gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.

This collaborative center will be under the direction of Changjie Cai, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health in the Hudson College of Public Health on OU’s Health Sciences Center campus; Diane Horm, Ph.D., director of the Early Childhood Education Institute at OU-Tulsa; and Dan Li, Ph.D. from the University of North Texas College of Education.

Research has shown that children in underserved, rural, and agricultural communities face increased health risks due to the combination of agricultural pollutants in the air, water, and soil, as well as non-chemical stressors such as poverty and limited access to health services. This project addresses an urgent need to investigate the cumulative health impacts of chemical and non-chemical exposures for children in these communities to help keep children healthy.

“Our team will investigate the cumulative health impacts of early exposure to pollutants and the added effect of non-chemical stressors among children in these communities across the United States,” Cai said. “The goal of the Center is to reduce the environmental health disparities and promote environmental justice for children living in underserved, rural agricultural communities.”

Through a multidisciplinary approach, the center will use techniques such as low-cost sensors, satellite observations, air quality modeling and more to establish and evaluate impact assessments. Utilizing those results, affordable interventions will be assessed to reduce school absenteeism and address health disparities.

“At the Early Childhood Education Institute, it has always been our goal to advance and support equity for all children through research,” Horm said. “The opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Cai, Dr. Li, and others on this grant to establish the Children’s Health and Social Vulnerability Index (CHS) will allow us to better assess children’s health disparities in rural schools.”

The CHS will be stakeholder-and data-driven and will focus on children’s health disparities in rural school systems and focus on chemical and non-chemical stressors that lead to absenteeism in school due to gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.

This research grant is part of EPA’s larger effort to advance children’s environmental health and environmental justice by effectively reducing early childhood and lifetime health disparities in these communities. 

“This collaboration of OU researchers from various disciplines highlights OU’s commitment to supporting our faculty researchers so that they can deliver science-based recommendations to improve the lives of our youngest learners,” said Darrin Akins, vice president for research at the OU Health Sciences Center. “This research will have a strong focus on chemical and non-chemical environmental stressors that children in the Southern Great Plains face every day.”

Learn more about the Hudson College of Public Health and the Early Childhood Education Institute.

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About the Hudson College of Public Health

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About the University of Oklahoma

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Undercover in Trumplandia: How I found the limits of patriotism when I infiltrated the Tulsa MAGA rally
Published on July 11, 2020 By Danny Sjursen, Tom Dispatch - Commentary


It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country.

We never planned to go inside the cavernous arena where that rally was to be held. I was part of our impromptu reconnaissance team that called an audible at the last moment. We suddenly decided to infiltrate not just the perimeter of that Tulsa rally, but the BOK Center itself. That meant I got a long, close look at the MAGA crowd there in what turned out to be a more than half-empty arena.

Our boots-on-the-ground coalition of two national antiwar veteran organizations — About Face and Veterans for Peace (VFP) — had thrown together a rather risky direct action event in coordination with the local activists who invited us.

We planned to climb the three main flagpoles around that center and replace an Old Glory, an Oklahoma state flag, and a Tulsa one with Black Lives-themed banners. Only on arrival, we found ourselves stymied by an eleventh-hour change in the security picture: new gates and unexpected police deployments. Hopping metal barriers and penetrating a sizable line of cops and National Guardsmen seemed to ensure a fruitless trip to jail, so into the under-attended indoor rally we went, to — successfully it turned out — find a backdoor route to those flagpoles.

Once inside, we had time to kill. While others in the group infiltrated and the flagpole climbers donned their gear, five of us — three white male ex-foot soldiers in America’s forever wars and two Native American women (one a vet herself) — took a breather in the largely empty upper deck of the rally. Nervous joking then ensued about the absurdity of wearing the Trump “camouflage” that had eased our entrance. My favorite disguise: a Hispanic ex-Marine buddy’s red-white-and-blue “BBQ, Beer, Freedom” tank top.

The music irked me instantly. Much to the concern of the rest of the team, I’d brought a notebook along and was already furtively scribbling. At one point, we listened sequentially to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” The Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and Queen’s “We Are The Champions” over the arena’s loudspeakers. I couldn’t help but wonder how that black man of, let’s say, complicated sexual orientation, four outspoken British hippies, and a gay AIDs victim (Freddie Mercury) would feel about the way the Trump campaign had co-oped their songs. We can guess though, since the late Tom Petty’s family quickly denounced the use of his rock song “I Won’t Back Down” at the rally.

I watched an older white woman in a “Joe Biden Sucks, Nancy Pelosi Swallows” T-shirt gleefully dancing to Michael Jackson’s falsetto (“But the kid is not my son!”). Given that “Billie Jean” blatantly describes an out-of-wedlock paternity battle and that odds were this woman was a pro-life proponent of “family values,” there was something obscene about her carefree shimmy.

A Contrast in Patriotism

And then, of course, there was the version of patriotism on display in the arena. I’ve never seen so many representations of the Stars and Stripes in my life, classic flags everywhere and flag designs plastered on all manner of attire. Remember, I went to West Point. No one showed the slightest concern that many of the red-white-and-blue adaptations worn or waved strictly violated the statutes colloquially known as the U.S. Flag Code (United States Code, Title 4, Chapter 1).

That said, going undercover in Trumplandia means entering a universe in which it’s exceedingly clear that one political faction holds the flag hostage. They see it as theirs — and only theirs. They define its meaning, its symbolism, and its proper use, not to speak of whom it represents. The crowd, after all, was vanilla. (There were more people of color serving beers than cheering the president.)By a rough estimate, half of the attendees had some version of the flag on their clothing, Trump banners, or other accessories, signaling more than mere national pride. Frequently sharing space with Old Glory were images of (often military-grade) weaponry, skulls (one wearing an orange toupee), and anti-liberal slogans. Notable shirts included: the old Texas War of Independence challenge “Come And Take It!” above the sort of AK-47 assault rifle long favored by America’s enemies; a riff on a classic Nixonian line, “The Silent Majority Is Coming”; and the slanderous “Go To Your Safe Space, Snowflake!”; not to mention a sprinkling of the purely conspiratorial like “Alex Jones Did Nothing Wrong” (with a small flag design on it, too).

The banners were even more aggressive. “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings” was a fan favorite. Another popular one photo-shopped The Donald’s puffy face onto Sylvester Stallone’s muscle-bound physique, a machine gun at his hip. That image, of course, had been lifted from the Reagan-era, pro-Vietnam War film Rambo: First Blood Part II, a fitting accompaniment to Trump’s classically plagiarized Reaganesque rallying cry “Make America Great Again.” Finally, a black banner with pink lettering read “L G B T.” Above the letters, also in pink, were logos depicting, respectively, the Statue of Liberty, a Gun (an M16 assault rifle), a Beer mug, and a profile bust of Donald Trump. Get it?

For our small group of multi-war/multi-tour combat veterans, it was hard not to wonder whether many of these flag-and-weaponry enthusiasts had ever seen a shot fired in anger or sported Old Glory on a right-shoulder uniform sleeve. Though we were all wearing standard black veteran ball-caps and overtly Trump-friendly shirts, several of us interlopers feared the crowd might somehow guess what we actually were. Yet tellingly, the closest we came to outing ourselves — before later pulling off our disguises to expose black “About Face: Veterans Against The War” shirts — was during the national anthem.

Nothing better exemplified the contrast between what I’ve come to think of as the “pageantry patriotism” of the crowd and the more complex “participatory patriotism” of the dissenting vets than that moment. At its first notes — we were still waiting in the arena’s encircling lobby — our whole team reflexively stood at attention, removed our hats, faced the nearest draped flags, and placed our hands upon our hearts. We were the only ones who did so — until, at mid-anthem, a few embarrassed passersby followed our example. Most of the folks, however, just continued to scamper along, often chomping on soft pretzels, and sometimes casting quizzical glances at us. Trumpian patriotism only goes so far.

Our crew was, in fact, rather diverse, but mostly such vets groups remain disproportionately white and male. In fact, one reason local black and native communities undoubtedly requested our attendance was a vague (and not unreasonable) assumption that maleness, whiteness, and veteran’s status might offer their protests some semblance of protection. Nevertheless, my old boss on West Point’s faculty, retired Colonel Gregory Daddis, summed up the limits of such protection in this phrase: “Patriotic” Veterans Only, Please. And just how accurate that was became violently apparent the moment we “unmasked” at the base of those flagpoles.

Approximately three-dozen combat tours braved between us surely didn’t save our nonviolent team from the instant, distinctly physical rancor of the police — or four members of our group from arrest as the climbers shimmied those flagpoles. Nor did deliberately visible veteran’s gear offer any salvation from the instantly jeering crowd, as the rest of us were being escorted to the nearest exit and tossed out. “Antifa!” one man yelled directly into a Marine vet’s face. Truthfully, America’s “thanks for your service” hyper-adulation culture has never been more than the thinnest of veneers. However much we veterans reputedly fought for “our freedom,” that freedom and the respect for the First Amendment rights of antiwar, anti-Trump vets that should go with it evaporates with remarkable speed in such situations.

Three Strands of Veteran or Military Dissent

Still, the intensity of the MAGA crowd’s vitriol — as suggested by the recent hate mail both About Face and I have received — is partly driven by a suspicion that Team Trump is losing the military’s loyalty. In fact, there’s evidence that something is indeed astir in both the soldier and veteran communities the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the tail end of the Vietnam War, almost half a century ago. Today’s rising doubt and opposition has three main components: retired senior officers, younger combat veterans, and — most disturbingly for national-security elites — rank-and-file serving soldiers and National Guardsmen.

The first crew, those senior officers, have received just about the only media attention, even though they may, in the end, prove the least important of the three. Many of the 89 former defense officials who expressed “alarm” in a Washington Post op-ed over the president’s response to the nationwide George Floyd protests, as well as other retired senior military officers who decried President Trump’s martial threats at the time, had widespread name recognition. They included former Secretary of Defense and retired Marine Corps General Jim (“Mad Dog”) Mattis and that perennial latecomer, former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell. And yes, it’s remarkable that such a who’s-who of former military leaders has spoken as if with one voice against Trump’s abhorrent and inflammatory recent behavior.

Still, a little caution is in order before canonizing a crew that, lest we forget, has neither won nor opposed a generation’s worth of unethical wars that shouldn’t have been fought. Recall, for example, that Saint Mattis resigned his post not over his department’s complicity in the borderline genocide underway in Yemen or pointlessly escalatory drone strikes in Somalia, but in response to a mere presidential suggestion of pulling U.S. troops out of the quicksand of the Syrian conflict.

In fact, for all their chatter about the Constitution, oaths betrayed, and citizen rights violated, anti-Trumpism ultimately glues this star-studded crew together. If Joe Biden ever takes the helm, expect these former flag officers to go mute on this country’s forever wars waged in Baghdad and Baltimore alike.

More significant and unique is the recent wave of defiance from normally conservative low- to mid-level combat veterans, most, though not all, a generation junior to the attention-grabbing ex-Pentagon brass and suits. There were early signs of a shift among those post-9/11 boots-on-the-ground types. In the last year, credible polls showed that two-thirds of veterans believed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria “were not worth fighting,” and 73% supported full withdrawal from the Afghan War in particular. Notably, such rates of antiwar sentiment exceed those of civilians, something for which there may be no precedent.

Furthermore, just before the president’s controversial West Point graduation speech, more than 1,000 military academy alumni signed an open letter addressed to the matriculating class and blatantly critical of Trump’s urge to militarily crack down on the Black Lives Matter protests. Mainly ex-captains and colonels who spanned graduating classes from 1948 to 2019, they briefly grabbed mainstream headlines with their missive. Robin Wright of the New Yorker even interviewed and quoted a few outspoken signatories (myself included). Then there was the powerful visual statement of Marine Corps veteran Todd Winn, twice wounded in Iraq, who stood for hours outside the Utah state capitol in the sweltering heat in full dress uniform with the message “I Can’t Breathe” taped over his mouth.

At the left end of the veterans’ community, the traditional heart of antiwar military dissent, the ranks of the organizations I belong to and with whom I “deployed” to Tulsa have also swelled. Both in that joint operation and in the recent joint Veterans for Peace (largely Vietnam alumni)and About Face decision to launch a “Stand Down for Black Lives” campaign — encouraging and supporting serving soldiers and guardsmen to refuse mobilization orders — the two groups have taken real steps toward encouraging multi-generational opposition to systemic militarism. In fact, more than 700 vets publicly signed their names (as I did) to About Face’s provocative open letter urging just such a refusal. There were even ex-service members among the far greater mass of unaffiliated veterans who joined protesters in the streets of this country’s cities and towns in significant numbers during that month or more of demonstrations.

Which brings us to the final (most fear-inducing) strand of such dissent: those in the serving military itself. Their numbers are, of course, impossible to measure, since such resistance can range from the passive to the overt and the Pentagon is loathe to publicize the slightest hint of its existence. However, About Face quickly received scores of calls from concerned soldiers and Guardsmen, while VFP reported the first mobilization refusals almost immediately. At a minimum, 10 service members are known to have taken “concrete steps” to avoid deployment to the protests and, according to a New York magazine investigation, some troops were “reconsidering their service,” or “ready to quit.”

Finally, there’s my own correspondence. Over the years, I’ve received notes from distraught service members with some regularity. However, in the month-plus since George Floyd’s death, I’ve gotten nearly 100 such messages from serving strangers — as well as from several former West Point students turned lieutenants — more, that is, than in the preceding four years. Last month, one of those former cadets of mine became the first West Point graduate in the last 15 years to be granted conscientious objector status. He will complete his service obligation as a noncombatant in the Medical Service Corps. Within 36 hours of that news spreading, a handful of other former students expressed interest in his case and wondered if I could put them in touch with him.

Intersectional Vets

In a moment of crankiness this January, using a bullhorn pointed at the University of Kansas campus, I decried the pathetic student turnout at a post-Qasem Soleimani assassination rally against a possible war with Iran. And it still remains an open question whether the array of activist groups that About Face and Veterans for Peace have so recently stood in solidarity with will show up for our future antiwar endeavors.

Still, the growth across generations of today’s antiwar veterans’ movement has, I suspect, value in itself — and part of that value lies in our recognition that the problem of American militarism isn’t restricted to the combat zones of this country’s forever wars. By standing up for Black lives, pitching tents at Standing Rock Reservation to fight a community-threatening pipeline, and similar solidarity actions, this generation of antiwar veterans is beginning to set itself apart in its opposition to America’s wars abroad and at home.

As both the Covid-19 crisis and the militarization of the police in the streets of American cities have made clear, the imperial power that we veterans fought for abroad is the same one some of us are now struggling against at home and the two couldn’t be more intimately linked. Our struggle is, at least in part, over who gets to define patriotism.

Should the sudden wave of military and veteran dissent keep rising, it will invariably crash against the pageantry patriots of Chickenhawk America who attended that Tulsa rally and we’ll all face a new and critical theater in this nation’s culture wars. I don’t pretend to know whether such protests will last or military dissent will augur real change of any sort. What I do know is what my favorite rock star, Bruce Springsteen, used to repeat before live renditions of his song “Born to Run”: Remember, in the end nobody wins, unless everybody wins.

Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. His latest book, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War, will be published in September. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill.”

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.Copyright 2020 Danny Sjursen