Thursday, June 18, 2020

Black Trans Sex Workers Want People To Say Their Names — While They’re Alive

"Everybody takes to the streets, and they rally, they protest. But where was that same energy when that lady was alive?"

Otillia SteadmanBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

New York, New York

Posted on June 17, 2020

Stephanie Keith / Reuters

Black trans sex workers’ rights activists say they are fighting for their lives.

In the midst of a generational reckoning over systemic racism that has coincided with a pandemic and Pride Month, the killings of two Black trans women — Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells and Riah Milton — within just 24 hours and the brutal beating of another have fueled protests and demands for action on the specific ways that racism and police violence affect the LGBTQ community.

Black trans people are more likely than their white counterparts to face employment discrimination and housing insecurity, and criminalization for their gender presentation under statues that permit police to profile people they think may be engaging in sex work. A staggering number of Black trans people — nearly half, according to a 2011 study from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — have also been incarcerated.

Those who sell sex face even greater criminalization and the possibility of violence at both the hands of the police and their clients.

With historic protests for Black Trans Lives in Brooklyn and around the country on Sunday and a 6–3 decision from the Supreme Court making employment discrimination against queer and trans people illegal, there is growing momentum for change. But even as recently as Friday, the Trump administration attempted to undo protections for healthcare for trans people, and advocates say that policy progress — like a bill to repeal what’s called the “walking while trans ban” that has moved slowly in the New York state legislature — is still falling short.

Andrea Ritchie, who has written about the way that women and transgender or non-conforming people of color are marginalized even in conversations about racist police violence, has said, “We’re not trying to compete with [George] Floyd’s story, we’re trying to complete the story.”

BuzzFeed News spoke to four Black trans women who are current and former sex workers about what they’re fighting for right now, what they need people to understand, and what they see as the most urgent changes necessary to help their communities.

Milan Nicole Sherry, 28, is a community organizer and former sex worker living with HIV. She is a founding member of BreakOUT, an organizer of the TGNC Peoples COVID Crisis Fund of Louisiana, and is launching a new for-trans-by-trans community organization called House of Tulip.

Sherry organized the Black Trans Lives Matter rallies in New Orleans on May 30 and June 5.

My name is Milan Nicole Sherry, and I would like for you to write it just as that. Milan Nicole Sherry. I think it’s very important that it’s my name, and for people to know it. Oftentimes when you hear the names of Black trans women it’s because we’re murdered. I think it’s very important people hear my name while I’m here.

Why did you become an activist?

As a trans woman, I’m fighting for my very own life, as well as my siblings. So I had no choice. I could no longer sit around and just cry and have these conversations with my girlfriends about what we don’t have. So my activism, yeah, it started in my experience and the things and trauma that came from me engaging in sex work.

But it also started as me saying I am a Black trans woman. I had no choice because I want to live. When you’ve got to constantly look over your shoulder when you leave out your door, and sometimes your own home isn’t safe.

I want to combat the image of this sensationalism and glorification of activism.

As a Black trans woman, I am personally tired. I am no longer interested in fighting for space within LGBTQ agencies, organizations. I am no longer interested in fighting for space in these cis-hetero spaces. I am now focused into building our own, for-us-by-us. I’m tired as a trans woman, giving my power to these cis individuals, these agencies that ultimately don’t care about us. They don’t value us for real. The only thing we good for is when they hire us into positions and now all of a sudden “we’re inclusive.” It’s only because at the end of the day we’re written into those grants that they’re getting funding for. But yet we get entry-level positions, we get outreach worker positions, we get recovery specialist positions. But we are the ones that’s doing the real work.

Have you been participating in the protests?

Yes, I’ve participated. And I’ve definitely been there to talk about police brutality. No one is above accountability. Black lives will never matter if you’re not including Black trans lives. As long as it continues to exclude Black trans and GNC [gender nonconforming] folks, there will always be a divide within the movement. This movement I describe as a chessboard. You have to strategically move your pieces so your king and your queen will be saved, most importantly the queen at all times, most importantly the queen, being Black trans women.

Many people have said the killings of trans people like Tony McDade and Nina Pop don’t get the same attention as cis men like George Floyd. Whose names do you think need to be said and remembered right now?

To be honest, there are so many. It’s one too many. It’s not about just Tony McDade, about just these current individuals who have lost their lives, whether to law enforcement or ignorant peers. This is years of girls and transgender men and women being murdered in the street.

You say Tony McDade’s name. You say Keisha Jenkins’ name. You say Muhlaysia Booker’s name. You say Penny Proud’s name. You say Chyna Gibson’s name. You say all of their names.

’Cause the sad part about just saying their names is that when those individuals were alive — it’s just unfortunate it took those individuals’ death to know how worthy they were. Because when we die, when we’re murdered, when we’re slaughtered in the street...there’s “Black trans lives matter,” there’s “say her name.” Everybody takes to the streets, and they rally, they protest. But where was that same energy when that lady was alive? We could have prevented that death. We could have prevented that situation, but we didn’t.

Is there anything that’s bringing you joy or giving you hope right now?

It’s giving me hope to see a resilience in my community that has always been there. What gives me joy and hope is I know that not every trans woman is going to fall victim to hate. Because we have a lot of talent in our community. A lot. We have trans women who are brilliant, who are intelligent, who are doctors, nurses, lawyers, who are running for office, who are in office. Andrea Jenkins, who is a city councilwoman in Minneapolis. She’s a Black trans woman and she’s a city councilwoman. We have so many of what they consider success stories, but they love to sensationalize the murders and the beatings and the violence that we go through. But they don’t show us in a different light that we are, in fact, like you.

We’re like you. We go to work every day, we put our underwear on one leg at a time, if we’re not disabled. We get dressed, we start our morning routines. And, all we want to do is provide for our families and get home safe to our loved ones just like you.

But many of us don’t make it home. Many of us don’t have a home. Many of us don’t know what home is. And for many of us home isn’t safe.

Tamika Spellman, 53, is a former sex worker and sex workers' rights advocate and policy and advocacy director at HIPS in Washington, DC. She is the lead organizer of the Sex Worker Advocacy Coalition.

What are you fighting for right now?

That’s a lot. That’s a big question. Oh my.

I’m fighting for my very life at this moment. I’m fighting for the lives of Black people. I’m fighting for the lives of transgender women. I’m fighting for the lives of femme, nonbinary, androgynous people of color. I’m fighting for Black males that are being murdered by the police. I’m fighting for those that have mental health problems. I’m fighting for the homeless.

I’m fighting for the marginalized that this country tells this is the land of milk and honey, that this land is free, when it’s not. I’m fighting to change the systemic racism that is inherently built into the very fabric of this nation. I’m fighting for the reparations because my people are owed for building this nation, for building the wealth of the few. It is time for the equality that the Constitution guarantees, that the preamble decreed.

What are the most urgent changes that you’d like to see?

The most urgent change for the world right now, I would say, is to defund all police. Number one, that is something that is urgent.

Secondly, we need sensible legislation coming out of Congress. It is time for them to start putting impact studies on the laws. All of them should automatically come with impact studies to study their effectiveness — if it is actually meeting its objective. If it is not meeting the objective then we need to undo it, change it, alter whatever ill it does. See that’s where we come to the war on drugs. This war has been going on for decades and there is no end in sight, and there is no victory. And that is one law where many people in Congress have been saying how dreadful it is. Not one of them has had the courage to go and undo it or change it for the better. Instead they keep adding dumb shit to it.

When they implemented SESTA and FOSTA [a 2018 law that caused websites to restrict sex-related content], they didn’t think about the wide-ranging implications of what it could do to people who were not trafficking victims. And now we have Ro Khanna [a US House of Representative member from California] sponsoring that bill to have an impact study on that piece of legislation. Because it’s been damaging peoples’ lives and their livelihoods, consenting adults. But you broad-brush the law and don’t think about the impact overall. They broad-brushed laws for the drug war, and did not think about its impact. It devastated the urban communities of color. It’s the evolution of what they did to Black Wall Street. They just didn’t burn it. They put laws in place to keep it from thriving, to keep people from surviving. Because all the jobs left the cities. They moved into the suburbs just like the white people did with white flight. They left the inner cities to die. They did not want us to have anything of our own.

What do you need from people who are not trans or gender nonconforming?

I need everybody, Black and brown, to understand and to support fully their people, no matter what it is, just because I’m asking. And I need my Caucasian counterparts to have some understanding for why I’m asking. These things that we’re asking for are not — it’s not like we’re asking for you to give us the world. We’re asking for our freedom. We’re asking for the ability to thrive and to grow and to live my life unencumbered from barbaric laws. There are some laws that shouldn’t even be put on the books.

I need everyone to think and be rational in their reactions and to push our legislators in the right direction for everybody. This isn’t just for me. What goes on with me is a result of what can be done to you. If they’re willing to take away my rights, what makes you think that they won’t take yours?

Have you been going to the protests?

No. Too many people without masks. Too many people in close quarters. I have a heart condition. I have to be strategic. COVID-19 is still out there, and they don’t have a treatment. And then there is tear gas. I have asthma. And then I’m definitely scared of the police putting handcuffs on me again. It has been a looooong time since I’ve had handcuffs on. And I’m a big sore thumb. I have blond hair, honey, I’m a big girl. They would love to put handcuffs on me. I would love to have been down there if COVID-19 wasn’t out there.

But, as far as I’m concerned, burn it to the damn ground. They didn’t give a flying fuck about how they burnt up Black Wall Street, how they looted and ransacked, how they murdered people, how many times they hung us from trees — when they just go running through the neighborhood and just decide “oh we’ll just go over to this house, put a cross in their yard and set the house on fire.” Did they give a fuck about our stuff that they burnt? Burn that shit down. Until they stop killing us and abolish the police, there is not going to be an end to the unrest. They cannot conceive that this is not fair.

TS Candii, 26, is a sex worker and lead organizer with Decrim NY and the Repeal Walking While Trans Ban coalition, and the founder of Black Trans News.

TS Candii was also a lead organizer for the Justice for Nina Pop and Tony McDade protest at Stonewall Inn on June 2.

Why did you become an activist?

Growing up realizing that at heart I’m a woman and having to make my inner match my outer was a challenge, and be accepted with all of the above was a challenge. The acceptance of who I am as a woman was a challenge, the acceptance from the world. And so I started becoming an activist, the reason I started speaking up and speaking out was because a lot of the community was scared because we didn’t have a voice. So I had to come off the menu and get at the table. So I made my own seat.

A lot of us do not live to see 35. I became a voice for them because we were getting washed away. They silence us. We’re just now starting to be heard.

What are you fighting for right now?

What I’m fighting for right now is our humanity. I’m fighting for our pursuit of happiness, to just be. And to unknot our existence out of the criminal justice system and to reclaim our narrative and to reformulate — I’m trying to find a formula to rewrite the economic systems so it’s free for us all, so that we don’t have to sell sex for survival.

What are the most urgent changes that you’d like to see?

The most urgent changes that need to be made are the economic system first. And the criminal justice system. And the educational system. The economic system needs to be able to fit us all. The economic system is only written for white people. That’s the issue. We live day by day because of the economic system. That system needs to be rewritten. Everything that we do to support us, they criminalize it.

What kind of support do you need?

We need economic support. We need to abolish the jails. We know law enforcement from the beginning of time was always slave catchers.

So right now what we need, we need laws to be made, and for laws to be changed and created by those that have lived the experience. We have individuals that don’t understand because they don’t know, and refuse because they’re uneducated — a lot of people is not educated on certain things, so they automatically judge it and criminalize it and it’s done. Because they don’t know.

So now I gotta sit here and cry and I gotta tell you how the government assistance programs, how they give you pennies. How they give you pennies. And I make more money with my god-given body than they give me yearly. The social programs, you got food stamps, the WIC [a federal food program for women, infants, and children], those pennies. Those are pennies. And then you have to explain — what is WIC? What is that? You know? Some people are like what is EBT [electronic benefit transfer, similar to a debit card for government benefit programs]? What is food stamps? What is Section 8 [a federal rent assistance program]? And they tax the poor and don’t tax the rich. It’s just unfair. It’s unfair.

What do you need from people who are not trans or gender nonconforming?

I need all their money. And they can donate it to Black Trans News LLC. Please and thank you.

I can get everything I need. Just give me the money. That’s all we need. We need the money. If y’all give us the money, we good, trust me.

Ceyenne Doroshow, fiftysomething, is a former sex worker and the founder and executive director of GLITS Inc., which provides housing and crisis services, and helps build sustainability for LGBTQ people in New York City.

Doroshow spoke at the Brooklyn Liberation rally on June 14.

What are you fighting for right now?

Sustainability, the policing laws, defunding police, trans lives, Black trans lives, equity within our community. Housing within our community — sustainable housing. Because often we’re displaced by landlords, if placed at all, but very often we’re displaced without support or recourse to the landlords. Trans folks, and the LGBTQIA community. But mainly trans folks.

What that looks like to me is not a project or a multi-dwelling building where there are other elements of harm. It’s dangerous for some trans people to live in some areas. When you think of housing someone, you think of the area, you think of the level of safety. I know I do when it comes to myself, so why wouldn’t I want that for my community?

This world is based on the who’s who, based on not growing, based on elements of disdain, not really on helping people of color or my community get to a place of comfort. We often have to fight, we often have to do sex work to get a degree to pay rent, and it’s a lot. I want to be the middleperson for this. I want to give people a chance to go to school, to be their best selves. To have the support of housing to get them there. Who knows better than me that these things are needed?

What are the biggest obstacles you’re facing right now?

I’m not usually one to let anything stand in my way, that’s why I’ve got lawyers. There are roadblocks everywhere. For people like me, you’re always facing a roadblock — and making it through. Resilient people!

It’s just overcoming, and always breaking a glass ceiling in one way or another. Society, ignorance, those are obstacles. Phobias, those are the obstacles. Police, those are more obstacles.

I honestly think, in my opinion, as a society we’re attacking the wrong vessel. We should be dismantling the police union. This is how they’re often allowed to do some of the things that they’re allowed to be doing. That’s an obstacle. With the police union being able to back them up, we fail. Without a civilian review board looking at the history and the background, we fail. Police need policing by civilians, not by theirselves.

We also need to be in rooms with politicians and senators and governors to change these bills and laws which are the chokeholds of our lives. We need to be a part of the conversation with politicians so they know that we’re human, to know that we matter.

What are the most urgent changes that you’d like to see?

The WWT bill — the “walking while trans” bill, because it wasn’t passed. The equity that we are trying to obtain for a better tomorrow, less trans deaths. Police reform. Defund police needs to happen immediately, and in my personal opinion, take guns away from police in New York. Give them Tasers the way they do in the UK.

What do you need from people who are not trans or gender nonconforming?

To do the footwork. I need them to be accountable. I need them to do the humane thing. It’s very simple. It’s: What would you want for yourself? Or what would you want for your children?

Is there anything that’s bringing you joy or giving you hope right now?

It gave me joy and it’s giving me hope that many people are donating to the work. It’s bringing me a lot of joy to see the collaboration on mass level being in support of my work last night. Somebody just donated $3K, instead of $1K.

It means they’ll be able to go on and sustain and possibly go to school and have everything they need. It’s not about me having anything. It’s about them having everything. It’s about them having the equity to build equity. Community taking care of community.

I think when [GLITS] hit $300,000 in a day, that was inspiring. I think it’s the work that makes them want to donate. It’s seeing the bigger picture. Because of all of the death, because of George Floyd, because of the degradation and the racism and the simple prejudice we’ve had to endure. But then you add in LGBT, it’s like last on the food chain. Finally people are understanding that it’s time to change. [On Sunday, June 14, Doroshow announced that GLITS reached its target of $1 million to buy housing.]

I’ve been doing this for so long with nothing. I would do it all again with nothing if I had to.

Otillia Steadman is the world news operations manager for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

USA
A Security Guard Filming Riot Police Tackling Protesters In Louisville Was Shot At

He told BuzzFeed News he believes it was a police officer who shot at him.

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on June 17, 2020

Kentucky Kenji / Via Twitter: @kenjiboijoi

A 23-year-old security guard patrolling Louisville's Hall of Justice Monday night was shot at when he began filming a swarm of riot police tackling a man to the ground during a protest.

The video shows smoke, a bang, and a mark on the window.

"Oh shit, they shot at me," he says in the video recording.

KENTUCKY KENJI 🌎🍃@kenjiboijoi
I need the name of the cop who shot at me. I need that fade expeditiously lmao. What the fuck did I do? I'm in a building 😒 #Louisvilleprotests #Louisville #BlackLivesMattters #BreonnaTaylor01:51 AM - 16 Jun 2020
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The Jefferson resident, who asked for anonymity out of concerns for his employment, believes a police officer shot at him. His video shows protesters running away and he said he did not see any of them carrying any weapons.

"It had to be an officer," he said. "It was pretty eye-opening seeing how, in my opinion, how trigger-happy they are."

Protests have erupted in recent weeks in Louisville, Kentucky, where Breonna Taylor, 26, was killed when police officers raided her home as she slept and shot her eight times. Her death helped ignite Black Lives Matter protests around the country.

Louisville authorities have used extreme violence to try and stop protests, including earlier this month when police officers and the Kentucky National Guard shot into a crowd of protesters and killed beloved local barbecue chef David McAtee. Police also shot a reporter with pepper balls, a type of rubber bullet, while she was live on air.

But the security guard, who is Latino, said he had not been involved in any protests and described his politics as "pretty neutral."

He had walked that section of the Hall of Justice a few hours earlier and it was quiet, so when he returned and saw protesters and riot police, he grabbed his phone and began recording.

"I was just curious and wanted to show my friends what was going on downtown," he said. "I had no bad intention or anything."

Kentucky Kenji / Via Twitter: @kenjiboijoi

He said he was glad the window of the government building was strong enough to hold and stopped him from getting injured. It's unclear what type of ammunition was used.

"It just scared me," he said. "All of a sudden you just get shot at."

The security guard said he immediately moved away from the window and stopped filming. "I didn't want it to happen again," he said.

The security guard said he did not contact authorities as he feared retaliation, but posted the video on Twitter, where it has been viewed over 3.3 million times.

The Louisville Police Department did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment. But there's one thing the security guard wants now: "Justice for Breonna Taylor," he said.

Trump Is Proposing Stripping Social Media Sites Of The Discretion To Remove “Objectionable” Content

The president is following through on his threat to "strongly regulate" social media companies.

Paul McLeod BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on June 17, 2020

Alex Wong / Getty Images

The Trump administration is proposing to change liability law to make it harder for social media platforms to censor content that is hateful or objectionable but not specifically illegal.

A Department of Justice proposal released Wednesday is the formal follow-through on the president's threats to “strongly regulate” social media companies over his belief that they censor conservative voices. But the proposed changes, if passed by Congress, could also make it harder for social media sites to crack down on hateful or offensive content.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
....happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!11:11 AM - 27 May 2020
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Currently, internet companies have broad protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from being sued for content posted to their platforms as long as they act in good faith to restrict posts that are obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or “otherwise objectionable.”

It’s that last clause — “otherwise objectionable” — that the Trump administration argues is too broad and can be used to stifle free speech. The DOJ would rewrite the good faith protections to remove broad discretion about objectionable content and replace it with the mandate to moderate content that is believed to be illegal or promotes violence or terrorism.

The Department of Justice released only a description rather than legislative text that spells out their plan precisely. The outline says that without broad immunity, social media sites would need to be clear and explicit in their terms of service as to what can and cannot be posted. This could make it more difficult for sites to remove content that they deem objectionable but is not clearly illegal.

Matthew Feeney, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Emerging Technologies, warned there is a lot of content that is legal speech but that people don’t want to see on their social media.

“There’s a reason why [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg doesn’t want videos of beheadings on his site,” said Feeney. “And there’s a reason why the vast majority of people on social media want an environment where a lot of legal but awful content is prohibited, like pornography or images of people being murdered. Those sorts of things.”

Increasing liability would likely make social media sites more cautious and willing to censor content, which seems to be the opposite of what the Trump administration wants, said Mark Lumley, director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology.

“I think this has the classic problem of content moderation on the net — the government wants you to take down all the bad content and none of the good content,” he said in an email.

“But that's impossible, not only because content moderation is hard and the scale is so immense, but because reasonable people (to say nothing of the Trump administration) can and do disagree on what is good and what is bad.”

The administration cannot amend the Communications Decency Act by itself and its proposals would need to be adopted by Congress, where there is growing momentum on the Republican right to regulate big tech immunity. The unusual coalition ranges from otherwise staunch anti-regulation conservatives to Josh Hawley, the junior Republican senator from Missouri who has made regulating social media companies a key part of his populist pitch.

Hours before the Department of Justice proposal was released, Hawley released a bill to limit Section 230 immunity for tech companies.

A partisan bill is unlikely to pass a split Congress, but the desire to reform Section 230 immunity crosses both parties. The EARN IT Act, which would condition tech company immunity on taking action against child sexual exploitation, is being pushed by both Democratic and Republican senators.

Critics have said the bill is a way to strong-arm tech companies out of providing their users — criminals and law-abiding citizens alike — the ability to send encrypted messages that would not be accessible to federal authorities.

Paul McLeod is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

They Used To Be Strangers. Now They’re Organizing Some Of The Largest Protests In America’s Biggest City.

“I don't believe a peaceful protest is possible, because a protest, by our definition, makes people uncomfortable. It disturbs people,” one organizer said, “but we are adamant about being nonviolent.”

Rosalind Adams BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on June 16, 2020

Aundre Larrow for BuzzFeed News
Members of the Warriors in the Garden group. Top row, from left: Derrick Ingram and Kiara Williams. Bottom row: Olivia Johnson and Chi Ossé.

Just after 3 p.m. on Sunday, the front door of Derrick Ingram Jr.’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen burst open and three more organizers crowded in, all running late for the afternoon’s Black Lives Matter protest.

“Today is a big day,” Chi Ossé said to himself as the 10 or so of them shuffled around the apartment, getting ready. “I’m just worried about numbers.”

It’s three weeks into the protests that started over the death of George Floyd and a week since New York City called off its controversial 8 p.m. curfew. With many out of work and school but a virus still raging, how do you keep the momentum going?

Despite their steady growth and national reach, the BLM protests have no central leadership. They emerge in different ways in different states, without the approval of any coordinating committee. The forms they take are reflections of the young and in some cases first-time activists who come together to lead, learning as they go.

The organizers of the afternoon’s march came together — pretty much spontaneously — just a couple of weeks ago, right as the protests in New York began to take shape. Most of them met in the crowds. Joseph Martinez started up a chat on Signal and named it “Warriors in the Garden,” taken from a Japanese proverb. The name stuck. Then they started asking more people to join them.

Aundre Larrow
Gaya Rajesh, Chi Ossé, and Derrick Ingram at a protest in New York, June 14.

Warriors in the Garden is just one of the groups that have popped up in New York, already garnering thousands of followers to its Instagram posts and drawing large crowds. Donations to the organization have poured in; behind the scenes, the organizers have planned routes, navigated the presence of police officers, maintained momentum, and tried to keep everyone safe.

“We came together and it just kind of just clicked.” explained Martinez. “We’re all the loud friend in the group,” he joked, adding that they seemed to be naturally good at marshaling a crowd.

In the past few weeks, the group has been all over the city — marching outside Barclays Center in Brooklyn and in front of the Trump International Hotel the first night of the curfew, or marching to the United Nations building along the East River. “We try to choose places that have some meaning and give the crowd a sense of direction so they’re not just wandering around,” said Kiara Williams, a 20-year-old college student.

As they grabbed their water and sunscreen, they got ready to leave. “Alright, let’s go take down white supremacy,” Ingram said as they walked out the door.

Olivia Rose Johnson, a 20-year-old student at Sarah Lawrence College who goes by Liv, bounded down the stairs, singing a verse of Rihanna’s “Pon de Replay.” Around each other, in Ingram’s apartment and walking down the street, the group falls into playful humor and affectionate hugs. As someone handed Williams her sunscreen, she jokingly invoked a common protest chant: “This is what democracy looks like.”

Aundre Larrow for BuzzFeed News
Liv Johnson (center) feeds Chi Ossé (left) during a protest in New York.

There was still a last-minute question about the route when they reached Columbus Circle, the day’s starting point. The group usually keeps its plans a surprise. Even rally locations aren’t posted on its social media pages too far in advance, because organizers assume that police are monitoring their movements.

Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” started playing over loudspeakers. Johnson and Williams skipped, ran, and leaped through the crowd to get people dancing. A couple of the others directed the crowd to fill the street and stop traffic.

Williams offered a eulogy for Rayshard Brooks, whom Atlanta police killed on Friday. His death was ruled a homicide. “Another name,” said Williams, pausing. “They shot him in the back.”

“The fact that they’re still doing this when there’s been riots, when we’ve been protesting, shows that they do not care. And we are not done until they care,” she said.

Soon, Ossé was back on his megaphone, imploring people to chant louder as the crowd spilled into the street and started to walk down Broadway. “I need everyone to shout at the top of their fucking lungs,” he said. The message was that people were still there, still marching, still demanding change.

Any anxiety that Ossé showed earlier had faded away; with thousands behind him, he was in his element as the crowd echoed his chants. His calls were booming and urgent, aided by volunteers in the crowd carrying speakers on their backs or on their bicycles.

Even after just a few weeks, the group has evolved into something of a brand, with its own style and its own identifiable look. Ossé wears a black beret at every event. Johnson is always dressed in red and black. On Sunday, she added beads that spelled out “No justice, no peace” and “BLM” woven through her long braids. The group’s protests vibrate with energy.

Johnson, who does a lot to hype up the crowd, said she just wants people to feel and understand what she’s chanting. “This is real. This is actually happening. People are dying,” she said. “Understand what is going on right now.”

By the time the group hit Times Square, police were guarding a line of barricades to keep the crowd from coming through. A group of bicyclists went first to act as a buffer. But as the crowd started to move the police barricades aside, cops began pulling people back. Still, a few managed to slip past.

In an instant, officers were shoving people, hard. A dozen or so officers managed to hold back the protesters for a few minutes, but eventually the crowd overwhelmed them. The officers gave up, waving everyone through.

After weeks of being in the streets, the tense encounter didn’t seem to shake any of the organizers. “It stayed nonviolent,” Johnson said with a shrug.

“I don't believe a peaceful protest is possible, because a protest, by our definition, makes people uncomfortable. It disturbs people. It’s not peaceful to shut down a highway,” he explained, referring to the time he helped block FDR Drive, “but we are adamant about being nonviolent.”

All the organizers have had frightening run-ins with the police in the last few weeks. Ingram was pepper-sprayed on FDR Drive. Williams was threatened with a Taser outside of Barclays Center. Johnson gets daily death threats. Three of them have been arrested so far.

One of them was arrested a few hours before a march was set to begin. (He asked not to be identified in this article because of his pending charges. He said he was held in a police van for several hours and later questioned by the FBI. The arrest made him feel targeted, he said, adding that he’s sure police are aware of their identities as protest organizers.)

“We are afraid, but we still come out because the purpose is bigger than us,” he said.

Aundre Larrow for BuzzFeed News
An activist wears a T-shirt reading "My execution might be televised" before a protest in New York, June 14.
“George Floyd was afraid. Breonna Taylor was afraid. Ahmaud Arbery was afraid. He ran for his life. Fortunately, we have the luxury to be afraid and still go home and sleep and eat at night.”

Martinez was also arrested. He was able to keep his phone with him, and he filmed himself from inside the police van, which he later posted on Instagram. He attributes this better treatment to his skin tone, which is significantly lighter than that of others in the group.

The organizers come from a range of backgrounds and speak candidly about the differences in their privilege. Johnson, who is Irish and Nigerian, explained that she recognized her own privilege as a lighter-skinned Black woman when she saw officers push Kiarah Brown, another member in the group, to the ground while arresting her. That was the first day they met.

“It was very traumatizing for me,” said Brown, a high school senior who moved to New York from Costa Rica when she was 10. “In that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about me. I was thinking of my queer Black brother, about my nephews. Is this what they feel when they’re arrested?”

She had never protested before, she said, but the arrest only made her want to do it more.

As the group made it past Times Square, they headed toward Fifth Avenue and then north in the direction of Trump Tower. The fact that it was Trump’s birthday, along with the heavy police presence and rousing speeches, seemed to make the crowd’s cheers more urgent, more spirited, more passionate.

The organizers say there’s a tension in these events between leading and letting the crowd control things. On one of the nights under the curfew, Williams said, the group she was leading wanted to keep marching. So they did. But in that moment outside Trump Tower, Johnson, Williams, and Ingram were in the lead, dancing and shouting into their megaphones as the crowd gathered around them.

There was anger at the officers who lined the streets, but there was also an exhilaration in the crowd’s unity. “When I’m chanting and I can hear everyone, there is a joy there because I just feel like I’m not alone in this. All these other people are here too.”

The group has larger ambitions. They already have started recruiting “sub-leaders” who help manage the crowds, developing a team that will work on a policy platform, and are thinking hard about how to keep pushing this movement forward.

“It’s nice to have people demonstrating and marching in the streets — but if you don’t get anything done, what’s the point?” said Martinez.

As the day wound down, a woman ran up to Johnson to thank her for putting on the event. She found the Warriors in the Garden on Instagram and has been following them for a few weeks. “I love how you guys do your protests and just include everyone,” she said.

Johnson smiled widely, welcoming her and thanking her in return. “You’re a warrior too.”

Rosalind Adams is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

A 17-Year-Old Who Organized A BLM Protest Had A Burning Cross Placed In His Yard, Cops Said

The FBI and Virginia police are looking for those responsible. Under state law, they could face up to five years in prison.

Ellie Hall BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on June 16, 2020

Courtesy Travon Brown
Travon Brown with his mother, Briggette Thomas,

Virginia police and federal authorities are investigating after a burning cross was placed in the yard of a teenager hours after he organized and marched in his small town's first Black Lives Matter protest.

In a statement, the Marion Police Department said that officers were called to investigate an "intense fire" outside a local home at approximately 12:43 a.m. on Sunday. After extinguishing the fire, police said, they observed wood "that appeared to be in the shape of a cross" leaning against a burnt barrel.

The house where the fire was set is the home of Travon Brown, 17, one of the organizers of a protest against racial injustice and police brutality that was held in Marion on Saturday. He lives with his mother, Briggette Thomas, and his 16-year old sister.

"The Town of Marion Police Department is absolutely committed to ensuring that people of color in our community are safe," Chief of Police John Clair said Monday. "Our department, along with Smyth County Sheriff's Office and federal authorities, will conduct and full and thorough investigation."

Provided to BuzzFeed News
A still image of the burning cross discovered by Marion police.

Burning crosses have been used for more than 100 years to intimidate Black people.

Cross-burning is a class 6 felony in Virginia. It carries a penalty of up to five years in jail and up to a $2,500 fine.

In an interview with WJHL News Channel 11 on Monday, Brown said that he believes that the cross was lit in his yard as a scare tactic.

"It didn't work," he said. "It only made me stronger."

Brown said that he hoped that the act could spark discussions about systemic racism in the Marion community.

In a statement Saturday, Marion police confirmed that counterprotesters showed up to the march in the town, which has a population of just under 6,000 people.

"While the interactions between the two protest groups were mostly peaceful, a counter-protester was detained, however the protester declined to press charges," police said. "One arrest was made that resulted in a public intoxication charge."

Courtesy Travon Brow

Brown told BuzzFeed News Tuesday that he had never attended a protest until his first march in Johnson City on June 1. "I wanted to experience something new for a change and came back a new person. These protests really open your eyes to everything that's happening," he said.

"I don’t want the generation behind us to have to deal with what the generation before us went through and still are going through," he said. "I just want change."

Ellie Hall is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC

Trump's Midnight Twitter Rant Against John Bolton Backfires Spectacularly

Ed Mazza, HuffPost•June 18, 2020

President Donald Trump fired off a late-night attack on John Bolton amid new allegations featured in the former national security advisor’s upcoming book. But given the nature of Trump’s attack, it didn’t go well.

Trump, who famously vowed to hire only “the best and most serious people,” now says that Bolton was a “wacko,” a “dope,” “incompetent” and a “disgruntled boring fool”:

Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

President Bush fired him also. Bolton is incompetent! https://t.co/vVW3rKiwSz
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

Earlier in the evening, Trump made similar comments during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“[Bolton] was a washed-up guy. I gave him a chance,” Trump said.

That had people asking... if Bolton was incompetent and washed-up, why would Trump hire him in the first place?
General Mattis is a "dope"; General Kelly is a "dope"; General McMaster is a "dope"; Secretary Tillerson is a "dope"; AG Sessions is a "dope"; and now John Bolton is a "dope". Notice a pattern here folks? (& who is the next "dope" to fall? General Milley?) https://t.co/ARCVSSZ29y
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 18, 2020

You just gave the worst luck in hiring, don’t you? All your picks turn out to be dopes or overrated or dumb as rocks. What a shame.
— Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) June 18, 2020

Who hired him because they should not have a job in the White House
— Thor Benson (@thor_benson) June 18, 2020

If:@AmbJohnBolton is incompetent AND President Bush fired him,
Why did @realDonaldTrump hire him? https://t.co/tUh6bBIguP
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) June 18, 2020

You hired a National Security Advisor who’d already been fired for incompetence by another president?
Wow. You are bad at your job. https://t.co/WlnVKLm6z4
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 18, 2020

Because YOU HIRED all of these incompetent "fools" and "dopes" that makes YOU a grossly incompetent manager with horrible hiring skills. Makes YOU a fool and a dope... #Trump #Bolton

- Andy Ostroy (@AndyOstroy) June 18, 2020

So why did you hire him? Did you pop too much hydroxychloroquine again?
You’re a sad, pathetic, weak president.
Go back to your bunker, loser. #QuidProTrump
pic.twitter.com/Xk855zkVim
— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) June 18, 2020

It's almost like they have a secret pact & Trump has agreed to help Bolton sell his book. But... https://t.co/X6VC3H5quj
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 18, 2020

Interesting🤔 you always seem to hire bad people who at one point gave you good coverage, after they don't they're always"washed up". "Only the best"🤬🤬 https://t.co/8Wnh3eSwmK
— Lisa Moraitis🇬🇷🇺🇸 (@LisaMoraitis1) June 18, 2020

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

GRIFTER NATION
A Mad Scramble to Stock Millions of Malaria Pills, Likely for Nothing

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times•June 17, 2020

Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speaks at a coronavirus task force briefing with President Donald Trump in March, 19, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration’s abrupt decision this week to revoke an emergency waiver for two malaria drugs promoted by President Donald Trump as potential “game changers” against the coronavirus has left 66 million doses stranded in the federal stockpile — and officials do not yet know what they will do with them.

The FDA’s withdrawal on Monday of its “emergency use authorization” for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine did not go over well at the White House, where top aides to Trump had rushed in March to fill the federal stockpile. That included accepting a donation from pharmaceutical giant Bayer of 3 million tablets from a factory in Pakistan that had not been certified by the FDA as safe.

“This is a Deep State blindside by bureaucrats who hate the administration they work for more than they’re concerned about saving American lives,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, who helped distribute 19 million hydroxychloroquine pills, fumed in an interview Monday night.

Medical experts across the country — including those who are researching hydroxychloroquine — on Tuesday applauded the FDA’s withdrawal of the waiver after it concluded the drugs’ potential benefits did not outweigh their risks.

An FDA spokesman said the White House and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar were made aware of the decision before it was announced. But Navarro’s anger seemed to capture the futility of the administration’s headlong efforts to yield to the president’s wishes and rush the two drugs into use, yet another example of how politics and science have collided in Trump’s Washington.

Besides Navarro, the internal debate over the malaria drugs included a well-known cast of characters: Trump, who took hydroxychloroquine for two weeks and insisted on Monday that it “certainly didn’t hurt me”; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert; Rick Bright, who said he was ousted from his position as head of a federal research agency after complaining that Bayer’s chloroquine was not safe; and various Fox News personalities.

“They had a flimsy basis for the EUA in the first place,” Dr. Peter Lurie, the president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said, using the abbreviation for emergency use authorization. “It’s quite clear they were strong-armed into it by Navarro himself and others — not excluding radio, television talk show hosts, the president’s pals and some doctor in New York. And now they’ve got mud on their faces because they’ve belatedly come to their senses and done the right thing.”

In the end, none of the chloroquine was distributed from the stockpile; doctors preferred hydroxychloroquine, which is newer and has fewer side effects, they say. But its prospects as a treatment for COVID-19 also look dim.

As of Monday, the government has distributed 31 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine to state and local health departments, hospitals and research institutions; 63 million tablets remain, according to Carol Danko, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. Officials are working with the companies that donated the drugs to “determine the available options” for the products.

Bright, writing on Twitter on Monday night, offered his own idea: “The drugs should never have been brought into our country and should be destroyed. It took far too long for HHS to revoke this EUA.”

The frantic effort that led to the FDA’s emergency waiver began in mid-March, just days after Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, according to emails from Bright’s whistleblower complaint, some not previously made public, as well as interviews with people involved.

Patients lay dying on gurneys in hospital corridors in New York, governors pleaded with the federal government to send masks and other supplies, and physicians had no treatments. A French doctor, Didier Raoult, stoked interest in hydroxychloroquine with a video promoting it for COVID-19. Then the drugs attracted the attention of Silicon Valley tech investors and a New York lawyer, who appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham in mid-March.

In New York, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a self-described “simple country doctor,” was giving coronavirus patients a three-drug cocktail that included hydroxychloroquine — and claiming that all had survived without need for hospitalization. (A federal prosecutor recently opened an investigation into Zelenko’s claims.)

With the Republican right, including Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Fox News personalities promoting hydroxychloroquine, Trump chimed in. By March 17, Bayer had offered the White House 3 million doses of chloroquine, which was discovered in the 1930s and is derived from the bark of the quinine tree.

Some versions of chloroquine are approved in the United States. Bayer’s was not. Top officials at Bright’s former agency, known as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, were not enthusiastic about the donation; “in vitro,” or test tube, studies were not promising, they said.

“Not a lot of enthusiasm based on just vitro data,” Robert Johnson, an agency official, wrote in an email to a top aide to Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of health for preparedness and response. “Chloroquine has been shown to have in vitro effects on other microbes, but that has not panned out to clinical benefit.”

Kadlec and his aides, however, were insistent, the emails show. They wanted the chloroquine donation distributed widely as part of a clinical trial that would be sponsored by BARDA, with the National Institutes of Health providing the ethics panel, known as an “institutional review board,” overseeing the trial. At the same time, technology giant Oracle was developing a platform that, the White House hoped, could serve as a vehicle for doctors to enter data about the drug.

On March 23, the FDA’s top lawyer, Stacy Amin, dashed off an urgent email.

“Can we please start moving forward on BARDA sponsoring the chloroquine IND,” she wrote, referring to an “investigational new drug” application, documents that accompany a clinical trial. “The president is announcing this tonight and I believe the W.H. would like it set up by tomorrow with data to flow into the Oracle platform,” she added, referring to the White House.

By that time, other companies had donated tens of millions of tablets of hydroxychloroquine, which is approved in the United States and often used to treat lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, as well as for malaria prevention.

But top FDA officials, as well as Fauci, took a dim view of the clinical trial idea — and especially the Oracle platform, which they viewed as unworkable, according to three people involved in the decision-making. Bright, too, was balking; if the drugs had to be accepted into the national stockpile, he wanted their distribution tightly controlled.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, who heads the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, ultimately decided to issue the emergency use authorization but only for hospitalized patients who could not participate in clinical trials. In a recent interview, Kadlec said there was no pressure from the White House.

“Everything that was done here was trying to do something consistent with the president’s well-established policy of right-to-try and the secretary’s efforts to explore every opportunity to find appropriate measures,” he said. “Contrary to the recent narrative that said we don’t care about science, we do.”

The waiver was issued March 28. Less than a month later, the FDA issued a warning about the drugs, citing “reports of serious heart rhythm problems in patients with COVID-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine.”

In announcing Monday’s withdrawal of the waiver, the FDA said its “continued review of the scientific evidence” led officials to conclude that the two drugs are “unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19” for the uses described in the waiver. That, combined with the concerns about cardiac effects, led to the decision, the agency said.

Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the FDA, expressed support for the decision.

“I trust Dr. Hahn; I think he follows the science,” Walden said, referring to Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, who will testify before his committee next week. “Emergency use is a powerful tool in his toolbox. Without better data, I think it made sense to turn it off.”

The decision does not prevent doctors from prescribing hydroxychloroquine, also available through pharmacies, on their own, although it will probably discourage them from doing so. More than 50 clinical trials — including two large-scale studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health — of hydroxychloroquine are underway in the United States.

Navarro insisted that the FDA would have “blood on its hands” if any of those studies showed hydroxychloroquine was effective. Lurie, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the opposite, calling the agency’s decision a triumph of “sound science” over “base political instincts.”

Dr. Adrian Hernandez, who directs the Clinical Research Institute at Duke University School of Medicine and has enrolled 550 health care workers in a clinical trial to study whether hydroxychloroquine is effective as a prophylactic, agreed. But the controversy over the drug has discouraged participation, he and other researchers have said.

“We should only be using these types of drugs within clinical trials until proven useful,” Hernandez said, adding, “From a policy perspective, the EUA was a complete failure.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

The UK May Ban Tear Gas Sales To The US

A letter signed by 166 members of Parliament calls for the UK to stop selling riot control weapons to US police departments.

Megha Rajagopalan BuzzFeed News ReporterPosted on June 17, 2020

David Ryder / Getty Images
Demonstrators clash with police near the Seattle Police Department's East Precinct shortly after midnight on June 8.

British politicians and arms control advocates are calling for the United Kingdom to stop selling tear gas, rubber bullets, and other riot control equipment to law enforcement in the United States in response to police brutality during Black Lives Matter protests.

More than 160 members of Parliament from across the UK's politics, including from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, signed a letter to British trade secretary Liz Truss asking their government to stop the export of policing and security equipment to the US.

“The brutality now aimed towards protesters and reporters across the country is unacceptable,” the letter read.

According to the Independent, the US is a major customer of UK-made weapons: "Government export license records show that the US is one of the world’s largest buyers of UK arms, with almost £6 billion worth licensed for export since 2010."

I Can't Breathe...Dawn Butler MP @DawnButlerBrent
Today I wrote to @trussliz calling on the Govt to halt all exported tear gas, rubber bullets and other anti-crowd equipment. We must stop exporting all small arms immediately. Thank you to all the 167 other MPs who joined me in signing the letter so far. #BlackLivesMatter06:05 PM - 05 Jun 2020
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Activists said that although it’s unclear how likely it is the measure will be adopted, the letter was an important step toward curbing human rights abuses.

“I think condemning police violence is one thing, but if you are supporting that violence there is a real hypocrisy,” Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade in London told BuzzFeed News. Along with other campaigners, he began calling on the UK government to stop those weapons sales in early June.

“The real value of this is a symbolic political value,” Smith added. “It sends an important message and sets an important precedent.”

Although the UK Parliament has yet to debate the measure, the campaign has had victories. Last week, the Scottish Parliament voted 52 to 0, with 11 abstentions, to “immediately suspend all export licenses for tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear to the US.”

There’s precedent for the move — last June, the UK’s government suspended exports of tear gas and riot control equipment to Hong Kong until concerns over human rights abuses against protesters were addressed.

In 2013, the UK halted export licenses of some weapon parts to Egypt in response to reports that security forces had used excessive force against protesters there.

The movement in the UK, which since the 1980s has rarely used tear gas, coincides with a campaign from Democratic lawmakers in the US to ban the use of tear gas. Although law enforcement in places including the US, Canada, Brazil, and Bahrain have used it during demonstrations, the 1993 International Chemical Weapons Convention bans its use in war. The US has both signed and ratified that treaty, which does not apply to domestic uses.

“It’s a shame that other countries have taken notice of these anti-democratic activities and feel the need to take action.”

“The egregious mistreatment of peaceful protesters by law enforcement in our country has been reprehensible. It’s a shame that other countries have taken notice of these anti-democratic activities and feel the need to take action,” Rep. Mark Takano, who co-sponsored the anti-tear gas bill along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Chuy Garcia, told BuzzFeed News. “I support any efforts to demilitarize our police forces.”

The US has faced increasing international censure over police brutality. Last month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on authorities in the US to take “serious action to stop such killings.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC
Tear gas is a chemical weapon banned in war. It is a deep shame that US leaders chose to tear gas our own people last week. It should never, ever happen again. This week I’m joining @RepMarkTakano & @RepChuyGarcia to introduce a National Ban on Tear Gas: https://t.co/95G7ugsA3804:24 PM - 10 Jun 2020
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Philip McHarris, a doctoral candidate at Yale whose work focuses on race and policing, told BuzzFeed News that since the early 1900s, police departments in the US have adopted not only military equipment, but also tactics and strategies.

“There are pathways through countries like the UK that are facilitating the militarization of the police in the US, and we see what the outcomes are,” McHarris said. “People are being brutalized in the street, even killed in their own homes because this equipment is fueling it.”

Climate crisis: Antarctica’s Weddell Sea lost area of ice twice the size of Spain over last five years

Seals, penguins and seals all depend on ecosystems supported by presence of year-round ice

Harry Cockburn THE INDEPENDENT 6/18/2020

Penguins are among the species dependent on the continued existence of sea ice in Antarctica ( Getty )

The extent of the summer sea ice in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica has decreased by one million square kilometres – roughly twice the size of Spain – in just the last five years, scientists have warned.

The Weddell Sea is a huge bay in the Antarctic continent where explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton famously lost his ship The Endurance to pack ice in 1915, and it is one of the few areas surrounding the continent which usually retains sea ice all year round.

But levels of ice in the bay have begun to fall sharply. The amount of ice in the Weddell Sea was first monitored beginning in the 1970s, but the total area of summer sea ice has now fallen by a third over the last five years.

Scientists are now sounding the alarm as the ice around Antarctica provides vital habitats for many species including penguins and seals, which rely on its continued existence to access food and to breed.

The team studying the alarming recent trends said the loss of the ice in recent years occurred during a series of severe storms in the Antarctic summer of 2016/17, along with the reappearance of an area of open water in the middle of the pack ice (a phenomenon known as a polynya), which had not occurred since the mid-1970s.

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Lead author Professor John Turner, a climate scientist at British Antarctic Survey, said: “Antarctic sea ice continues to surprise us. In contrast to the Arctic, sea ice around the Antarctic had been increasing in extent since the 1970s, but then rapidly decreased to record low levels, with the greatest decline in the Weddell Sea.

“In summer, this area now has a third less sea ice, which will have implications for ocean circulation and the marine wildlife of the region that depend on it for their survival.”

During winter in the southern hemisphere, the ocean around Antarctica freezes to such an extent that it effectively doubles the size of the continent, with the sea ice reaching over 18 million square kilometres (6.9 million square miles) by late September.

Through the spring and summer, the sea ice almost completely melts in most parts of the Antarctic, with only the Weddell Sea retaining a significant amount of sea ice.

There are few storms around the Antarctic in the summer months, but in December 2016, a number of intense and unseasonal storms developed in the Weddell Sea and drew warm air towards the Antarctic, melting a large amount of sea ice. The ice-free ocean absorbed energy from the sun and then created a warm ocean temperature anomaly that still persists today.

The winter of 2016 also saw the development of a polynya in the Weddell Sea, a large area of open water within the sea ice, which also contributed to the overall decline in sea ice extent. This polynya was created by the strong winds associated with the storms and unprecedented warm ocean conditions, The British Antarctic Survey said.

This rapid sea ice loss is having an impact on both the Weddell Sea ecosystem and wider Antarctic wildlife.

Many species, ranging from tiny ice algae and krill, to seabirds, seals and whales, are highly adapted to the presence of sea ice.

The scientists said if the drastic changes observed continue, they will have repercussions throughout the food chain, affecting the availability of nutrients and causing a reduction of essential habitat for breeding and feeding for vast numbers of animals.

Author and ecologist Professor Eugene Murphy from the British Antarctic Survey said: “The dramatic decline in sea ice observed in the Weddell Sea is likely to have significant impacts on the way the entire marine ecosystem functions. Understanding these wider consequences is of paramount importance, especially if the decline in ice extent continues.”

Due to the large year-to-year variability in Antarctic sea ice extent the scientists cannot be sure if the ice in the Weddell Sea will recover in the short-term to the values seen before 2016 or whether they are seeing the start of the expected long-term decline of sea ice.

The research is published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Amy Levy: the queer Jewish writer revered by Oscar Wilde but shunned by Victorian society

Largely unknown and unread, Amy Levy gave a voice to the silenced. Annie Lord reflects on a distant relative who challenged women’s place in society

Making waves: Levy’s work influenced modernists such as Virginia Woolf

In a dramatic monologue written by Victorian Jewish poet Amy Levy, a 17-year-old Xantippe sits at the loom. Newly married to Socrates, she is increasingly embittered at the life she is consigned to. “I spun until, methinks, I spun away/ The soul from out of my body, the high thoughts/ From out of my spirit.” She had thought that when she married Socrates, he might let her into his world of ideas. But he never thought her worthy: “I think, if he had stooped a little, and cared/ I might have risen nearer to his height/ And not lain shattered, neither fit for use/ As goodly household vessel, nor for that/ Finer thing which I had hoped to be.”

These lines, from “Xantippe”, were written in 1880 when Levy was just 20 years old. An ancient heroine taught to be nothing but gentle and quiet is a sad enough story on its own. But it is sadder still to know that 2,000 years after Xanthippe, the woman who gave her a voice suffered a patriarchal dismissal of her own. After receiving much criticism for her work, Levy died by suicide aged 27.

I know of Levy’s existence by chance. One day, at a rest stop on the M62, my granny brought out a copy of her completed works and told me I was very distantly related to her. I remember the car sickness more than I remember the story, but as I got older, I wanted to learn more about the woman with the dense fluffy eyebrows who sits unsmiling and straight-backed on the cover. Reading Levy all these years later – though I don’t believe in ghosts – I thank her for battling to write and to escape marriage. It is thanks to women like her that I get to live in a world where I can do the former, with almost no pressure to do the latter.

Born in London to a middle-class family, Levy was the first Jewish woman to attend Newham College in Cambridge. There she suffered an onslaught of antisemitism and sexism. It got so bad, in fact, that she felt compelled to leave. But she eventually found her people, attending the British Library reading rooms where she cultivated friendships with members of London’s intelligentsia, including Olive Schreiner, Clementina Black and Eleanor Marx.

In her short life, she published three novels and three books of poetry, many of which are still difficult to find in print. Though her writing influenced modernists such as William Butler Yeats and Virginia Woolf, it is only now that Levy is beginning to gain the recognition she deserves. Current critics describe how her work formed part of the “new woman movement” – a precursor to feminism which considered women’s presence in the public sphere. In Levy’s obituary, Oscar Wilde commended the presence of “sincerity, directness, and melancholy” in her work. Of her second novel, Reuben Sachs, he said, “Its uncompromising truths, its depth of feeling, and, above all, its absence of any single superfluous word, make it, in some sort, a classic.” He continued: “To write thus at six-and-twenty is given to very few.”

Not everyone was a fan. The comical, overblown portrayal of many of the Jewish characters in Reuben Sachs led to virulent attacks on Levy from the London Jewish community, who accused her of a spineless attack on her own. This and her ingratiation in radical and feminist organisations such as the Men and Women’s Club meant Levy was often subject to criticisms from all sides. Politically controversial, Levy was largely unknown and unread.
Being a woman in the Victorian era meant being oppressed. In workhouses those who “gossiped” were forced to wear scold’s bridles, iron muzzles which held down the tongue in order to render the wearer mute. Women who read too much or masturbated were deemed “crazy” and risked being chained up in Victorian “insane asylums”. In “Xantippe”, Levy spoke of the “lesson of dumb patience” women were forced to learn, and she continues this critique of women’s role in society through much of her work. In “A Ballad of Religion and Marriage”, Levy described marriage unceremoniously as the “domestic round of boiled and roast” and Christianity’s Father, Son and Holy Ghost sarcastically as “Pale and Defeated, rise and go”.

Another poem, “Magdelen”, is narrated by a “fallen” woman who is dying in a religious penitentiary where she was sent to redeem her former sins. Either a sex worker or a woman who had sex outside of marriage, she laments how strange it is that the lover she left behind is able to hurt her when she cared for him so much. Here, Levy writes of the “bare, blank” sunless rooms, “the parcelled hours; the pallet hard”, the “dreary faces here within” and a number of other punishments levelled against a woman whose only crime was love.

Often taking on a male voice in her writing, Levy addressed many of her poems to women lovers she had. In “Sinfonia Eroica”, a concert musician observes a woman called Sylvia in the audience: “Then back you lean’d your head, and I could note/ The upward outline of your perfect throat.” In a later poem “To Vernon Lee” – the pen name of Violet Paget, an author and scholar who travelled with Levy and who many believe to have been her romantic partner – two people exchange flowers and glances at each other’s bodies. “A snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach/ You broke a branch and gave it to me there/ I found for you a scarlet blossom rare.”

Much of Levy’s love went unrequited. Often in her writing, this draws her towards thoughts of death. “To live – it is my doom – / Lonely as in a tomb,” she writes in “Religion”. Seen through her eyes, the world is grey and tainted, a place of unimaginable pain not worth enduring. “The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes” begins an “Epitaph on a common person who died in bed”. She seems to think he’s better off in the ground: “He will never stretch out his hands in vain/ Groping and groping – never again. Never ask for bread and get a stone instead.”

At age 26, Levy wrote her second novel, Reuben Sachs, a Jane Austen-style romance between the aspiring young lawyer Reuben and his poor cousin Judith. In a particularly telling moment, Reuben’s mother and sister sit “in the growing dusk, amid the plush ottomans, stamped velvet tables, and other Philistine splendours” of their drawing room. He enters the house and asks, “Why do women always invariably sit in the dark?” There’s a dual meaning at play in his words. You hope the gutsy, spirited protagonist Judith might find the light, but she places her happiness in the hands of patriarchal society. Soon after marrying her rich but dull suitor Bertie Harrison-Lee, Judith realises her mistake. It’s already too late. “There is nothing more terrible, more tragic,” writes Levy, ”than this ignorance of a woman of her own nature, her own possibilities, her own passions.”

Levy’s satirical critique of what she perceived as “materialistic values and preoccupations of the middle-class London Jewish community” – as Meri-Jane Rochelson, associate professor of English at Florida International University, put it – angered many of her critics. “[Levy] apparently delights in the task of persuading the general public that her own kith and kin are the most hideous type of vulgarity,” one reviewer wrote in The Jewish World, in 1889. “She revels in misrepresentations of their customs and the modes of thought.” Shunned by the Jewish community for what they perceived as an attack on their culture, and rejected by high society for her controversial views on the role of women, Levy was pushed out of both where she came from and where she had tried to belong.

No one knows why Levy chose to end her life – whether it was the criticisms levelled against her, the constraints placed on women, her unrequited loves, her worsening deafness, her depression, or a toxic combination of them all. In the ending lines of her “Xantippe”, the now elderly heroine challenges her maids: “Why stand ye so in silence?” she asks, commanding them to open the windows so that she can escape her room’s stale air and drink up the sun: “Throw it wide/ The casement, quick, why tarry? – give me air – O fling it wide I say, and give me light!” I wish the world had given Levy light. We suffer the loss of what more she had to bring.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Black Trans Sex Workers Want People To Say Their Names — While They’re Alive

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