‘Lovecraft Country’: A Nightmare on Main Street

YES THAT H.P.LOVECRAFT

HBO’s pulp-inflected new drama is a no-punches-pulled treatise on race in America
By  ALAN SEPINWALL

Courtney B.Vance, Jonathan Majors, and Jurnee Smollett in 'Lovecraft Country.'
Joshua Ade/HBO

Atticus “Tic” Freeman, the young Korean War veteran hero of HBO’s fantastic — in every sense of the word — new drama Lovecraft Country, has a weakness for pulp stories. As he puts it, “I love that the heroes get to go on adventures in other worlds, defy insurmountable odds, defeat the monster, save the day.” But he’s also painfully aware that these tales rarely have room for someone who looks like him. His favorite author, the 1920s horror stylist H.P. Lovecraft, was also a vile bigot who once wrote a poem comparing black men to “beasts” filled with vice. (Lovecraft also used a far less gentle term than “black men,” as Tic’s pulp-hating father Montrose, played by Michael Kenneth Williams, once pointed out to him.)

In this adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel, written primarily by Misha Green, who also produced with Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, Tic gets a chance to live out a plot just like the ones in his beloved sci-fi and fantasy novels. In the process, he battles both monsters from myth and flesh-and-blood ones straight out of Jim Crow’s America — and, on more than one terrifying occasion, members of the second group who have transformed into the first.

It’s 1954, which means Tic has to ride in the back of the bus on a return trip to his native Chicago, where his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) produces a Green Book-like guide that lists safe places for African American travelers to visit across the country. Montrose has gone missing, so Tic, George, and Tic’s old friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) pile into George’s woody wagon to rescue him — little realizing that his predicament will involve demons, shape-shifters, and, oh, yeah, white supremacists who can cast magic spells.

“Seems the KKK isn’t just calling themselves grand wizards anymore,” Tic says dryly as the family sinks deeper into nightmare.

Using supernatural terrors as metaphors for the more down-to-earth kind is a reliable staple of the genre, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Peele’s own Get Out. But Green and her collaborators employ the device with particular deftness, toggling back and forth between racist cops and shoggoths, or burning crosses on lawns and ghosts lurking in sub-basements. The Freemans and Leti are alternately threatened and aided by Christina (Abbey Lee, below) and William (Jordan Patrick Smith), a mysterious duo who look like the whitest, blondest people ever put into existence, much less on television, and the series soon begins to argue that whiteness itself can seem like a superpower when you’re black in a country with so much racism coursing through its veins. In any era, this material would be potent; in the post-George Floyd reckoning, it couldn’t possibly feel timelier, even if the story takes place in the Fifties.


Joshua Ade/HBO

But then, Green has far more on her mind than any one decade, or even genre. It’s not just that the Freemans love pulp and related entertainment (George’s daughter Diana, played by Jada Harris, makes her own comic books, featuring black heroes with names like Panther Man), while Leti and her sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) are passionate about the blues. Lovecraft Country itself is a collage of influences and time periods, traveling backward through America’s history of racial atrocities (Montrose looks at a fire and mutters, “Smells like Tulsa”), then forward to consider the many hopeful moments and disappointments from the decades that follow Tic and Leti’s journey. Sometimes, the soundtrack is era-specific, but get used to the likes of Cardi B or Frank Ocean or The Jeffersons theme accompanying the action — or, in a bold break from cinematic tradition, for some montages to be accompanied not by songs, but by monologues, such as an excerpt from James Baldwin’s famous 1965 debate about racism with conservative pundit William F. Buckley.

More importantly, get used to this high-speed blender working spectacularly well. Each hour seems full to bursting with ideas and incident, as if Green wants to squeeze in as much as she can while she has the chance. (Can you blame her? She’s one of only a handful of black series creators in HBO’s long and otherwise progressive history.) After the road trip in search of Montrose, there’s a crackerjack haunted-house story, and an Indiana Jones-esque hunt for treasure buried underneath a museum. So much is happening, all so stylishly presented, that each episode feels like it could last twice as long and not get dull(*).

(*) It helps that, after the road-trip two-parter that begins the series, the stories are more standalone than is normal for a complicated Peak TV drama like this. There’s a larger threat Tic and Leti are battling, but there are also some menaces introduced and resolved over the course of a single hour. Remember, kids: Episodic storytelling can be your friend!

Jonathan Majors will be the show’s big discovery (that is, if you haven’t seen Da 5 Bloods or The Last Black Man in San Francisco), and he has screen presence to spare in a role that’s at least as much about Tic’s quick and reactive mind as it is about his abundant muscles. Smollett, who worked with Green on the brilliant-but-canceled slavery drama Underground, is pure dynamite as the story’s wild card. There’s a sequence in the third episode where Leti uses a baseball bat to attack a group of cars parked around her home by racists bullies; she plays it equally as a dance number and an action sequence, and it’s as riveting as it is cathartic.

As long as there have been men, there have been monsters. Lovecraft Country lands in a specific time and place for both, but in a way that feels universal as much as it feels scary. It’s one of the best shows HBO has made in a long, long time.

Lovecraft Country premieres August 16th on HBO. I’ve seen the first five episodes.

The Unraveling of America


Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era

By WADE DAVIS  holds the Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. His award-winning books include “Into the Silence” and “The Wayfinders.” His new book, “Magdalena: River of Dreams,” is published by Knopf.

 THE AUTHOR OF THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW

The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic is a 1985 book by anthropologist and researcher Wade Davis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Serpent_and_the_Rainbow_(book)

Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

The COVID crisis has reduced to tatters the idea of American exceptionalism.

Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science.

In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite ten thousand times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.

Our interventions to date have largely focused on mitigating the rate of spread, flattening the curve of morbidity. There is no treatment at hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on the near horizon. The fastest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. It took four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000 Americans in four months. There is some evidence that natural infection may not imply immunity, leaving some to question how effective a vaccine will be, even assuming one can be found. And it must be safe. If the global population is to be immunized, lethal complications in just one person in a thousand would imply the death of millions.




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Pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors. In the 14th century the Black Death killed close to half of Europe’s population. A scarcity of labor led to increased wages. Rising expectations culminated in the Peasants Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that marked the beginning of the end of the feudal order that had dominated medieval Europe for a thousand years.

The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

COVID’s historic significance lies not in what it implies for our daily lives. Change, after all, is the one constant when it comes to culture. All peoples in all places at all times are always dancing with new possibilities for life. As companies eliminate or downsize central offices, employees work from home, restaurants close, shopping malls shutter, streaming brings entertainment and sporting events into the home, and airline travel becomes ever more problematic and miserable, people will adapt, as we’ve always done. Fluidity of memory and a capacity to forget is perhaps the most haunting trait of our species. As history confirms, it allows us to come to terms with any degree of social, moral, or environmental degradation.

To be sure, financial uncertainty will cast a long shadow. Hovering over the global economy for some time will be the sober realization that all the money in the hands of all the nations on Earth will never be enough to offset the losses sustained when an entire world ceases to function, with workers and businesses everywhere facing a choice between economic and biological survival.






Unsettling as these transitions and circumstances will be, short of a complete economic collapse, none stands out as a turning point in history. But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise. Every kingdom is born to die. The 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th to Spain, 17th to the Dutch. France dominated the 18th and Britain the 19th. Bled white and left bankrupt by the Great War, the British maintained a pretense of domination as late as 1935, when the empire reached its greatest geographical extent. By then, of course, the torch had long passed into the hands of America.

In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.

When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis. At its peak, Henry Ford’s Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock. Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich.






In the wake of the war, with Europe and Japan in ashes, the United States with but 6 percent of the world’s population accounted for half of the global economy, including the production of 93 percent of all automobiles. Such economic dominance birthed a vibrant middle class, a trade union movement that allowed a single breadwinner with limited education to own a home and a car, support a family, and send his kids to good schools. It was not by any means a perfect world but affluence allowed for a truce between capital and labor, a reciprocity of opportunity in a time of rapid growth and declining income inequality, marked by high tax rates for the wealthy, who were by no means the only beneficiaries of a golden age of American capitalism.

But freedom and affluence came with a price. The United States, virtually a demilitarized nation on the eve of the Second World War, never stood down in the wake of victory. To this day, American troops are deployed in 150 countries. Since the 1970s, China has not once gone to war; the U.S. has not spent a day at peace. President Jimmy Carter recently noted that in its 242-year history, America has enjoyed only 16 years of peace, making it, as he wrote, “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $6 trillion on military operations and war, money that might have been invested in the infrastructure of home. China, meanwhile, built its nation, pouring more cement every three years than America did in the entire 20th century.

As America policed the world, the violence came home. On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, the Allied death toll was 4,414; in 2019, domestic gun violence had killed that many American men and women by the end of April. By June of that year, guns in the hands of ordinary Americans had caused more casualties than the Allies suffered in Normandy in the first month of a campaign that consumed the military strength of five nations.

More than any other country, the United States in the post-war era lionized the individual at the expense of community and family. It was the sociological equivalent of splitting the atom. What was gained in terms of mobility and personal freedom came at the expense of common purpose. In wide swaths of America, the family as an institution lost its grounding. By the 1960s, 40 percent of marriages were ending in divorce. Only six percent of American homes had grandparents living beneath the same roof as grandchildren; elders were abandoned to retirement homes.






With slogans like “24/7” celebrating complete dedication to the workplace, men and women exhausted themselves in jobs that only reinforced their isolation from their families. The average American father spends less than 20 minutes a day in direct communication with his child. By the time a youth reaches 18, he or she will have spent fully two years watching television or staring at a laptop screen, contributing to an obesity epidemic that the Joint Chiefs have called a national security crisis.


Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio on April 3rd, 1944. When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry.

AP

Only half of Americans report having meaningful, face-to-face social interactions on a daily basis. The nation consumes two-thirds of the world’s production of antidepressant drugs. The collapse of the working-class family has been responsible in part for an opioid crisis that has displaced car accidents as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50.

At the root of this transformation and decline lies an ever-widening chasm between Americans who have and those who have little or nothing. Economic disparities exist in all nations, creating a tension that can be as disruptive as the inequities are unjust. In any number of settings, however, the negative forces tearing apart a society are mitigated or even muted if there are other elements that reinforce social solidarity — religious faith, the strength and comfort of family, the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place.

But when all the old certainties are shown to be lies, when the promise of a good life for a working family is shattered as factories close and corporate leaders, growing wealthier by the day, ship jobs abroad, the social contract is irrevocably broken. For two generations, America has celebrated globalization with iconic intensity, when, as any working man or woman can see, it’s nothing more than capital on the prowl in search of ever cheaper sources of labor.

For many years, those on the conservative right in the United States have invoked a nostalgia for the 1950s, and an America that never was, but has to be presumed to have existed to rationalize their sense of loss and abandonment, their fear of change, their bitter resentments and lingering contempt for the social movements of the 1960s, a time of new aspirations for women, gays, and people of color. In truth, at least in economic terms, the country of the 1950s resembled Denmark as much as the America of today. Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were 90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of their mid-management employees.






Today, the base pay of those at the top is commonly 400 times that of their salaried staff, with many earning orders of magnitude more in stock options and perks. The elite one percent of Americans control $30 trillion of assets, while the bottom half have more debt than assets. The three richest Americans have more money than the poorest 160 million of their countrymen. Fully a fifth of American households have zero or negative net worth, a figure that rises to 37 percent for black families. The median wealth of black households is a tenth that of whites. The vast majority of Americans — white, black, and brown — are two paychecks removed from bankruptcy. Though living in a nation that celebrates itself as the wealthiest in history, most Americans live on a high wire, with no safety net to brace a fall.

With the COVID crisis, 40 million Americans lost their jobs, and 3.3 million businesses shut down, including 41 percent of all black-owned enterprises. Black Americans, who significantly outnumber whites in federal prisons despite being but 13 percent of the population, are suffering shockingly high rates of morbidity and mortality, dying at nearly three times the rate of white Americans. The cardinal rule of American social policy — don’t let any ethnic group get below the blacks, or allow anyone to suffer more indignities — rang true even in a pandemic, as if the virus was taking its cues from American history.

COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.

As a number of countries moved expeditiously to contain the virus, the United States stumbled along in denial, as if willfully blind. With less than four percent of the global population, the U.S. soon accounted for more than a fifth of COVID deaths. The percentage of American victims of the disease who died was six times the global average. Achieving the world’s highest rate of morbidity and mortality provoked not shame, but only further lies, scapegoating, and boasts of miracle cures as dubious as the claims of a carnival barker, a grifter on the make.






As the United States responded to the crisis like a corrupt tin pot dictatorship, the actual tin pot dictators of the world took the opportunity to seize the high ground, relishing a rare sense of moral superiority, especially in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The autocratic leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, chastised America for “maliciously violating ordinary citizens’ rights.” North Korean newspapers objected to “police brutality” in America. Quoted in the Iranian press, Ayatollah Khomeini gloated, “America has begun the process of its own destruction.”

Trump’s performance and America’s crisis deflected attention from China’s own mishandling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, not to mention its move to crush democracy in Hong Kong. When an American official raised the issue of human rights on Twitter, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, invoking the killing of George Floyd, responded with one short phrase, “I can’t breathe.”

These politically motivated remarks may be easy to dismiss. But Americans have not done themselves any favors. Their political process made possible the ascendancy to the highest office in the land a national disgrace, a demagogue as morally and ethically compromised as a person can be. As a British writer quipped, “there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid”.

The American president lives to cultivate resentments, demonize his opponents, validate hatred. His main tool of governance is the lie; as of July 9th, 2020, the documented tally of his distortions and false statements numbered 20,055. If America’s first president, George Washington, famously could not tell a lie, the current one can’t recognize the truth. Inverting the words and sentiments of Abraham Lincoln, this dark troll of a man celebrates malice for all, and charity for none.

Odious as he may be, Trump is less the cause of America’s decline than a product of its descent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country. The republic that defined the free flow of information as the life blood of democracy, today ranks 45th among nations when it comes to press freedom. In a land that once welcomed the huddled masses of the world, more people today favor building a wall along the southern border than supporting health care and protection for the undocumented mothers and children arriving in desperation at its doors. In a complete abandonment of the collective good, U.S. laws define freedom as an individual’s inalienable right to own a personal arsenal of weaponry, a natural entitlement that trumps even the safety of children; in the past decade alone 346 American students and teachers have been shot on school grounds.






The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.

How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for love. Those who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying, as one commentator has noted, the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it. Leading their charge is Donald Trump, a bone spur warrior, a liar and a fraud, a grotesque caricature of a strong man, with the backbone of a bully.

Over the last months, a quip has circulated on the internet suggesting that to live in Canada today is like owning an apartment above a meth lab. Canada is no perfect place, but it has handled the COVID crisis well, notably in British Columbia, where I live. Vancouver is just three hours by road north of Seattle, where the U.S. outbreak began. Half of Vancouver’s population is Asian, and typically dozens of flights arrive each day from China and East Asia. Logically, it should have been hit very hard, but the health care system performed exceedingly well. Throughout the crisis, testing rates across Canada have been consistently five times that of the U.S. On a per capita basis, Canada has suffered half the morbidity and mortality. For every person who has died in British Columbia, 44 have perished in Massachusetts, a state with a comparable population that has reported more COVID cases than all of Canada. As of July 30th, even as rates of COVID infection and death soared across much of the United States, with 59,629 new cases reported on that day alone, hospitals in British Columbia registered a total of just five COVID patients.






When American friends ask for an explanation, I encourage them to reflect on the last time they bought groceries at their neighborhood Safeway. In the U.S. there is almost always a racial, economic, cultural, and educational chasm between the consumer and the check-out staff that is difficult if not impossible to bridge. In Canada, the experience is quite different. One interacts if not as peers, certainly as members of a wider community. The reason for this is very simple. The checkout person may not share your level of affluence, but they know that you know that they are getting a living wage because of the unions. And they know that you know that their kids and yours most probably go to the same neighborhood public school. Third, and most essential, they know that you know that if their children get sick, they will get exactly the same level of medical care not only of your children but of those of the prime minister. These three strands woven together become the fabric of Canadian social democracy.

Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi famously replied, “I think that would be a good idea.” Such a remark may seem cruel, but it accurately reflects the view of America today as seen from the perspective of any modern social democracy. Canada performed well during the COVID crisis because of our social contract, the bonds of community, the trust for each other and our institutions, our health care system in particular, with hospitals that cater to the medical needs of the collective, not the individual, and certainly not the private investor who views every hospital bed as if a rental property. The measure of wealth in a civilized nation is not the currency accumulated by the lucky few, but rather the strength and resonance of social relations and the bonds of reciprocity that connect all people in common purpose.

This has nothing to do with political ideology, and everything to do with the quality of life. Finns live longer and are less likely to die in childhood or in giving birth than Americans. Danes earn roughly the same after-tax income as Americans, while working 20 percent less. They pay in taxes an extra 19 cents for every dollar earned. But in return they get free health care, free education from pre-school through university, and the opportunity to prosper in a thriving free-market economy with dramatically lower levels of poverty, homelessness, crime, and inequality. The average worker is paid better, treated more respectfully, and rewarded with life insurance, pension plans, maternity leave, and six weeks of paid vacation a year. All of these benefits only inspire Danes to work harder, with fully 80 percent of men and women aged 16 to 64 engaged in the labor force, a figure far higher than that of the United States.






American politicians dismiss the Scandinavian model as creeping socialism, communism lite, something that would never work in the United States. In truth, social democracies are successful precisely because they foment dynamic capitalist economies that just happen to benefit every tier of society. That social democracy will never take hold in the United States may well be true, but, if so, it is a stunning indictment, and just what Oscar Wilde had in mind when he quipped that the United States was the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization.

Evidence of such terminal decadence is the choice that so many Americans made in 2016 to prioritize their personal indignations, placing their own resentments above any concerns for the fate of the country and the world, as they rushed to elect a man whose only credential for the job was his willingness to give voice to their hatreds, validate their anger, and target their enemies, real or imagined. One shudders to think of what it will mean to the world if Americans in November, knowing all that they do, elect to keep such a man in political power. But even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward. For better or for worse, America has had its time.

The end of the American era and the passing of the torch to Asia is no occasion for celebration, no time to gloat. In a moment of international peril, when humanity might well have entered a dark age beyond all conceivable horrors, the industrial might of the United States, together with the blood of ordinary Russian soldiers, literally saved the world. American ideals, as celebrated by Madison and Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy, at one time inspired and gave hope to millions.

If and when the Chinese are ascendant, with their concentration camps for the Uighurs, the ruthless reach of their military, their 200 million surveillance cameras watching every move and gesture of their people, we will surely long for the best years of the American century. For the moment, we have only the kleptocracy of Donald Trump. Between praising the Chinese for their treatment of the Uighurs, describing their internment and torture as “exactly the right thing to do,” and his dispensing of medical advice concerning the therapeutic use of chemical disinfectants, Trump blithely remarked, “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” He had in mind, of course, the coronavirus, but, as others have said, he might just as well have been referring to the American dream.













‘High Fidelity’ Canceled After One Season | RS News 8/6/20




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INTERVIEW
HUMAN RIGHTS
“Israeli Settlers Make a Living Out of Our Suffering,” Says Palestinian Activist

Ein al-Hilweh, north of the Jordan Valley. Although Palestinians have been living there since before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel declared this space a military training area in 1993.

MAMOUN WAZWAZ / ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Joshua Tartakovsky, Truthout PUBLISHED August 5, 2020

The Jordan Valley lies on the eastern part of the West Bank, occupied by Israel in 1967, and shares a border with Jordan. The Israeli government, with the blessing of Donald Trump, is hoping to annex the Jordan Valley. This plan has drawn international condemnation, from Germany and France as well as from Israel’s Arab neighbors — Egypt and Jordan — with whom it shares borders and a peace treaty. The Israeli nongovernmental organization B’Tselem states that the Valley, which constitutes roughly 30 percent of the West Bank, is home to 10,000 Israeli settlers and about 65,000 Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians have been protesting against the annexation plan.

The July 1 annexation target date has passed, and according to The Times of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week said that the plan is being held up by the U.S. administration, although annexation is not off the table.

Israel has viewed the Valley as a buffer zone between itself and the broader Middle East for decades; as early as in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Israeli labor minister Yigal Allon devised a plan to annex the Valley in order to provide Israel with a strategic depth against a potential future invasion. Indeed, Israel has insisted many times on keeping its armed forces in the region even if an independent Palestinian state were to be established. Many observers, including supporters of Israel, believe that annexing the Jordan Valley would make a future two-state solution impossible.

A melon vendor operating within a tent in late May 2020. Israel does not allow Palestinians to establish a shop in the area so they built a tent from which to sell instead. The army confiscated all of the melons in the Bardala village in the northern Jordan Valley and they demolished this shelter.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

So far, Israel has no plans to provide citizenship for the Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley if and when it annexes the land. Israel has recently been active demolishing Bedouin tents and solar panels, quite possibly so that they will be forced to relocate. That Israel has carried out these actions prior to its annexation may reveal it has designs for the area in question. Israeli settlers have welcomed the annexation plans; indeed, the Trump peace plan effectively allows Israel to go ahead with annexing the area, even though recently White House officials had some misgivings about the timing. However, a U.S.-Israel committee whose purpose was to decide which areas Israel was to annex has seen its work come to a halt due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The situation in the Jordan Valley is one that resembles apartheid in its most stark condition. Barren land, lack of water, Bedouin tents demolished by the Israel Defense Forces. Water wells are destroyed and trees are cut down by the same armed forces. Freedom of movement of peasants to their agricultural lands is forbidden — but only, of course, if they are Palestinian. Israeli villagers get not only free movement, they also get free land — free because it is stolen, and because of subsidies for agricultural development thanks to the Israeli taxpayer. It pays to be an Israeli in the Jordan Valley. To be Palestinian is to live a life of countless suffering there. No wonder, then, that a slogan developed by the Jordan Valley Solidarity group is “To exist is to resist.”

I knew the Jordan Valley well. I served there in the Israeli armed forces between 2001-2002. We put Palestinians under siege, did not allow them to reach their agricultural lands, stopped and detained people randomly. Physical violence was used against Palestinians at the checkpoints on occasion. Homes and schools were searched. Children’s studies interrupted by soldiers entering in with guns. That was nearly 18 years ago. But now a change to the status quo may be coming.

Sireen Khudairi is a long-time Palestinian activist and teacher who resides in the Jordan Valley. She spoke to Truthout about the upcoming annexation and how the Israeli occupation of the Jordan Valley is a business occupation.It pays to be an Israeli in the Jordan Valley. To be Palestinian is to live a life of countless suffering.

Joshua Tartakovsky: Can you please tell me more about yourself — where were you born, where do you live, what do you do for a living?

Sireen Khudairi: I have been a volunteer with the Jordan Valley Solidarity Campaign since 2005. I led the learning center for youth in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem, a camp that is recognized by [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)]. I worked in the reservation department at a hotel in Bethlehem. Several years ago, I was kidnapped by Israeli forces while I was walking on the street from my university to my home. Subsequently, I was placed in solitary confinement for a period of two months. Following this period, I was told in the Israeli court that I was arrested due to my political activity on Facebook that posed a threat to the security of the State of Israel. While I was born in Nablus, I grew up in the Jordan Valley.Ein al-Hilweh, north of the Jordan Valley, is an empty area. There is a water spring there where Palestinians come to provide water for their flock. The Israeli military stated the area must be used for military training purposes. It is forbidden for sheep and people to enter the area now.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

What do residents expect regarding the upcoming annexation plans? Have they been approached regarding this plan by the Israeli occupation authorities who run the affairs of the Jordan Valley?

The people are expecting that the Bedouin community will be removed, and that the villages in the valley will be isolated, with freedom of movement taken away. This will have an immediate effect on the areas of access to education, health and economic opportunities. Villagers in Fasayil and al Zubeidat have been approached by Israel, who demands that they pay for electricity. Until now, they managed by connecting cables to electric power sources. The electricity is free for settlers in the Jordan Valley and also in other areas such as the South Hebron Hills. [Settlers] are benefiting from living on stolen land and using stolen water and are doing business on the suffering of the people in the Jordan Valley.

I think the occupation of the Jordan Valley is a business occupation. They do business from everything they can. From the land, the stolen water, the projects they do with the settlers, to the demolition of Palestinian homes. Before they demolish a home, the Israeli authorities confiscate things inside that belong to Palestinians, and then tell them that if they want these things back, they have to pay. For each tank of water they confiscate, they ask people to pay $1,160 (in U.S. dollars).Israeli authorities confiscate things inside that belong to Palestinians, and then tell them that if they want these things back, they have to pay.

The Israelis are benefiting economically as long as they are controlling the land and the water of the valley. More than a million palm trees belong to the settlers who have 36 agricultural colonies in the valley. The settlers benefit from the labor of Palestinian workers who work without permits. They are paid 60 percent less of what Israelis would have been paid in the same position. They do not have health insurance and take on dangerous work. Four hundred women and children work in the Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley.

Some people believe that if Israel annexes the Jordan Valley, due to international pressure, it may be compelled to give citizenship to Palestinian residents of the valley over the long run. They argue that the number of Palestinians in the valley are not that big, and that Israel can deal with this from a demographic perspective due to its emphasis on the need to keep a Jewish majority. What is your response?

I think that Israel’s annexation plan evades international law. We don’t want an Israeli nationality. What we want is our rights.

Ein al-Hilweh, north of the Jordan Valley. Although Palestinians have been living there since before the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israeli declared this space a military training area in 1993.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

How do you view the Israeli soldiers occupying you? What have they recently been up to in your area?

The soldiers are inhumane and … they are active in the demolition of homes, cutting down trees, cutting off water pipes, kidnapping and killing people, running over and killing sheep. On July 1, 2020, Israeli soldiers destroyed four homes in the village of Fasayil. Eighty five olive trees were cut down by the Israeli army in the Bardalla village, located in the north of the Jordan Valley, in June 2019. As we like to say, in the Jordan Valley, to exist is to resist.

What is the relationship between Palestinians and Bedouin in the Jordan Valley?

The relationship between the farmers and the Bedouin is good. After all, we are all Palestinians. We are all struggling for the same aim. We all share good memories of living together in the same land.

How do most Palestinians earn their living in the Jordan Valley?

Most of the people living in the valley are shepherds who raise sheep or are farmers who produce dates. That’s how they earn money. In the city of Tubas, which lies west of the Jordan Valley and is under Palestinian security control, there is a yogurt and cheese factory, a food factory and a factory producing soap.

Bardala village in the northern Jordan Valley. This land belonged to Sireen Khudairi’s family. Her father left the area after the water was confiscated by the Civil Administration in the West Bank [Israel] following the 1967 Six-Day War.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

How do Palestinians deal with the water shortage in the valley?

Palestinians deal with the shortage of water by using water only for our main needs, such as watering agriculture. Palestinians mostly plant plants that will grow in the winter season. Each square cubic meter of water costs $7.20 (in U.S. dollars), and … people have to go 12 miles to arrive at a water source that is not controlled and 12 miles to get back. Even getting there, Palestinian residents need to pass by a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers. Three Palestinian communities are locked by a gate manned by Israeli soldiers. Residents cannot go in or out without passing through their careful scrutiny. Palestinian residents in these three communities need to drive through a mountainous road to bypass the Israeli soldiers. If they are caught by Israeli soldiers unexpectedly, they are detained and accused of illegally passing through a military road and a firing zone.Before the occupation of the Jordan Valley by Israel in 1967, 200,000 Palestinians lived here. Now there are just 56,000 people. This is because of Israel’s policy.

The aim of the Israeli occupation authorities is that the Palestinians will leave the area. They are trying to put pressure on the people, so that they will decide on their own to leave the area. They make life hard for the people, so people will not be able to live without electricity, without water, and they have to pay a lot of money as well.

You know, before the occupation of the Jordan Valley by Israel in 1967, 200,000 Palestinians lived here. Imagine if this many people stayed in the Jordan Valley, how many people there would have been living here by now? Now there are just 56,000 people. This is because of Israel’s policy. They put a lot of pressure on people, so that people will leave the area.

Bardala village in the northern Jordan Valley. This land belonged to Sireen Khudairi’s family. Her father left the area after the water was confiscated by the Civil Administration in the West Bank [Israel] following the 1967 Six-Day War.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

Are the Medjool dates from Palestine in Turkey or Germany from Palestinians, or from Israeli colonialists?

Before 1967 my father told me that they used to export the product to Lebanon and Jordan. Nowadays they export but less than before. And it is controlled by two Palestinian companies. And unfortunately, these two companies have their business with Israeli companies as well…. Israel lost $29 million in 2013 because of [the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement]. And after that, [according to] a documentary made by Al Jazeera, one settler from Mehola settlement said that they started to write on their products “Made in Palestine” instead of “[Made] in Israel” because of the boycott movement….

I think that’s why Israel … arrested me at that time. They were crazy about all activists who were active with the boycott movement. And who were writing reports about what was happening in the Jordan Valley. And how Israeli economic projects were affecting the lives of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.

Sireen Khudairi and her husband.SIREEN KHUDAIRI

What happened to you in prison? What did they accuse you of? Did you have a trial or did they detain you without a trial?

What is more important than the situation of being in jail, was after being released, I was so weak. Hopeless. I kept myself in my room.… I worked a lot on my character to move on after this horrible experience. That’s why I joined a theater … In that time, [for] two months, I was not allowed to see a lawyer, not allowed to talk to my family. After a week, they took me to a trial. The judge was giving reasons why they put me in jail. They said it was because [I was] threatening the security of Israel. No details, nothing.

Did they provide any evidence that you were “threatening the security of Israel?”

There are some details, maybe people don’t know about it. For example, when they search the prisoner without clothes, with nothing, it’s horrible. The way they do it is really horrible. They didn’t allow me to change my clothes for two months. After a week, I wanted to see my face. I wanted a mirror. There are small details…. I was allowed to take a shower once every three days and for five minutes.

They did not provide any evidence, nothing. That is why I was released later. They were always telling me to give us information. And they were pressuring me to even invent things. They wanted any information. To give a reason for them to keep me in jail.

How long were you in prison in total?

In total, four months, and another three months home jail. Not allowed to talk to my friend, not allowed to use the telephone. Not allowing anyone to visit me.

They [also] used dogs. And that’s the most horrible thing that has happened to me.… They beat me. They tied my legs and my hands. And the captain who was asking questions … he started to shout at me; he said to me, “You have to respect the state in which you live — Israel, which is the only democracy in the Middle East” … I said to him, yes, it is a democratic state, so your state, they use democracy to vote in the Israeli Knesset, the parliament, to destroy 300 houses in the al Naqab [Negev desert]. So yes, you use your democracy to destroy others’ lives.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Copyright © Truthout

Joshua Tartakovsky is an American-Israeli independent journalist, a graduate of Brown University and the London School of Economics. He carried out his mandatory military service for Israeli citizens as an occupying soldier in the Jordan Valley.

COVID-19 “Microschools” Are Betsy DeVos’s Latest Privatization Scheme

WHY ARE THE ADVOCATES OF HOME SCHOOLING AND OPPOSE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WANT KIDS TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL, CLEARLY HOME SCHOOLING DOES NOT WORK WELL

A teacher with Arizona Educators United writes protest slogans on the windows of a car in advance of a "motor march" demonstration demanding a safe reopening in Mesa, Arizona, on July 15, 2020.

REBECCA GARELLI/ARIZONA EDUCATORS UNITED

BY Candice Bernd, Truthout PUBLISHED August 3, 2020

Working parents grappling with the difficult choices before them this school semester — keeping their children home to learn remotely, or risking COVID-19 transmission by sending them to class — are increasingly turning to a new trend being hailed as a “solution” to the pandemic: privatized “microschools.”

Microschools consist of small groups, or “pods,” of mixed-level students located in homes or local facilities like churches or community centers, who are guided through personalized pedagogies by parents or educators as an alternative to public education. The model blends a private school and homeschool approach, retaining flexibility of homeschooling while relying on paid teachers to facilitate a classroom experience.

Right-wing and libertarian proponents of privatization, including Charles Koch, the Walton Family Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Reason Foundation and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are exploiting the pandemic to push the model.


DeVos tweeted her support several times last week for the School Choice Now Act that would provide $5 billion in tax credits for families opting for homeschooling or private school. At the same time, DeVos and the Trump administration have threatened to withhold federal funds from any school that does not open its classrooms fully in the fall.

Microschools were already gaining interest over the last several years with companies like Prenda piloting the model in Arizona in 2018. Since its launch, Prenda has opened more than 200 “campuses” in the state, according to its CEO, Kelly Smith. The pandemic, however, has strengthened the appeal: Google searches for “microschool” have spiked since major districts began announcing plans to remain online for the fall.

Now, Silicon Valley is jumping on the bandwagon, with several new start-ups hoping to take advantage of what they see as a big market amid the COVID-19 crisis. New online platforms in Seattle and San Francisco are connecting families and educators looking to pool resources and form microschools.“We have no control over what these white people are saying to our children.”

But educators and union activists warn privatized microschools could exacerbate inequality as affluent parents leave public schools for the social and economic benefits of cocooning their children into pods. Predominantly Black and Brown families are likely to be left behind, widening an already dire racial gap in public education.

These educators are fighting back against the impossible choice driving many parents toward private microschools. The Demand Safe Schools Coalition, made up of progressive teachers unions and organizations, is mobilized Monday for increased government resources to ensure safe, equitable and science-based school reopenings for working families.

The Chicago Teachers Union, the United Teachers Los Angeles and National Educators United are among the coalition groups demanding more nurses and counselors, personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies and virus testing services. The coalition is also targeting DeVos’s privatization agenda, demanding a moratorium on new charter and voucher programs.

Meanwhile, teachers across the U.S. are set to revitalize the Red for Ed movement in a strike wave similar to 2018. Monday’s “Day of Resistance” comes as the American Federation of Teachers adopted a resolution last week authorizing last-resort “safety strikes” if school reopening plans fail to meet demands to ensure teachers’ and students’ health and safety amid the pandemic.“It’s white flight but for the schools.”

In Arizona, teachers mobilized Monday in the state’s capitol as part of a motor march “funeral procession” of educators delivering their own signed obituaries to Gov. Doug Ducey. Hundreds of teachers have held similar motor marches in cars painted with slogans like “Red for Ed, Not Dead for Ed,” over the last several weeks.

Governor Ducey announced last week that schools would wait for a green light from public health officials before reopening. His latest order requires schools to open in-person in some capacity starting August 17.

When it comes to privatizers’ proposed solution to the crisis though, Arizona educators say microschools are just another way to siphon public dollars into a charter model.
Mesa Rejects Microschool Pilot

Organizers with Save Our Schools Arizona and the Mesa Education Association successfully beat back a proposed microschool pilot for 100 K-8 students in Arizona’s Mesa Unified School District by flooding school board members with 76 public comments in opposition to the proposal ahead of a special board meeting on July 23.

The district proposed an emergency procurement of $440,000 to partner with Prenda on the program, which would have placed students with unlicensed “guides” teaching company curricula with a Mesa public school teacher overseeing as the “teacher of record.”

During the July 23 public meeting, Prenda CEO Smith told Mesa Public Schools board members that the company’s microschools are about 80 percent white, 8 percent Black and 8 percent Latinx, emphasizing that those figures include many poor rural students. He insisted that the pilot would be representative of demographics of the predominantly Latinx school district, but board members questioned the extent to which Prenda guides determine which students are selected.“So we’ll have a special meeting for children of color and families of color in this model. Absolutely not. I don’t like anything that’s been said.”

“Speaking as a person of color, this just reeks of just separating — ok, so we’ll have a special meeting for children of color and families of color … in this model. Absolutely not. I don’t like anything that’s been said,” said Mesa Governing Board Member Kiana Maria Sears during the meeting. She described the plan as chasing down students who were leaving the district for charters. “This is unconscionable, where we are right now.”

Later Smith cited his participation in a program led by 4.0 Schools, which trains “education entrepreneurs” and has helped launch dozens of start-ups and private schools in New Orleans. The lessons he learned in the program, he said, helped him design Prenda. Board Member Sears was again shocked, saying, “That’s an explosive point for someone who’s originally from New Orleans, who saw … the decline and the privatization of all of Orleans Parish,” where more than 93 percent of students now attend charter schools.

Smith declined to discuss how many other districts in the state are weighing potential partnerships or pilot programs with Prenda, telling Truthout that, “We like [that kind of partnership] a lot. We’re in talks with various people in multiple states about doing more of that as one of our goals to make this model accessible.” Partnerships with school districts, he says, are “the best way” for the company to ensure equity.

According to its website, Prenda is backed by 4.0 Schools, the Walton Family Foundation and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a right-wing think tank funded by Charles Koch, who serves on the organization’s board of directors. Koch also funds 4.0 Schools. In 2018, the Walton Family Foundation gave $325,000 to Prenda, according to the Foundation’s publicly listed grantees.

Moreover, Prenda microschools are partly funded through the state’s voucher-style Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. The company also partners with several charter schools, through which state funding flows to its campuses. In June 2020, Prenda raised $6,149,990 in new equity, according to a news site that tracks venture capital.

Other privatization groups backed by the Kochs and the Waltons, such as Yes. Every Kid. and the American Federation for Children, are already promoting similar voucher programs for microschools as an innovative solution for families in crisis.

“My goal is not to engage in a political struggle,” Smith said when asked about company’s backers. “My goal is to empower kids as learners, and we’re excited to work together with anyone who wants to work with us.” His company’s goal, he says, “is not to replace, it’s not to destroy; it’s to augment and add and innovate together.”

Christina Bustos, an executive board member with the Mesa Education Association, doesn’t see it that way. She told Truthout that Prenda’s failed partnership with Mesa Public Schools was in part due to the company’s desire to extract funds from the district after the May 15 extended deadline for ESA applications. She also argued that new legislation is needed to regulate microschools.

Prenda’s microschools use tax dollars to place children as young as 5 in a private home or facility with an unlicensed and untrained independent contractor. To make matters worse, there is no law in the state regulating this kind of corporate operation. Smith, similarly, has no background in education.“I’m far more confident that there’s checks and balances in public schools.”

Bustos is not just concerned about safety; she’s also worried about the cultural competency of Prenda’s untrained guides. “They have these Black and Brown kids coming into these white people’s homes, and we have no control over what these white people are saying to our children, or how they’re teaching them to think critically or question or not question authority,” Bustos says. “I’m far more confident that there’s checks and balances in public schools.”

That’s if Mesa’s Black and Brown kids are included at all. Teachers and Mesa school board members questioned the model’s ability to include low-income families who live in apartments or those who can’t access broadband internet. The problem is amplified by the fact that communities of color are the ones that have been hardest hit by COVID-19. “It’s white flight but for the schools,” Bustos says.

Research on charters has long confirmed that self-selection ultimately becomes self-segregation, and widens existing gaps in achievement and school funding. Bustos says it’s all part and parcel of DeVos’s plan to dismantle public education by depriving schools of federal support amid a national crisis.

The GOP’s new coronavirus relief package includes $105 billion for education, but two-thirds of the funding is tied to schools reopening for in-person instruction. DeVos outlined the privatization plan on “Fox News Sunday” saying, “American investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren’t going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn’t get the funds. Then give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise.”

Just as privatization proponents exploited Hurricane Katrina to decimate the public school system in New Orleans, DeVos is now exploiting the pandemic to redirect federal relief funds intended for public schools into vouchers for private schools. If the current trend continues, more and more of those federal relief dollars are likely to be funneled into corporate microschools.

“This community was trying to create some kind of a solution to a problem that they think that they have: that people are going to pull their kids out of the school because they want them homeschooled,” Bustos told Truthout. “In my mind, part of the reason they’re having this problem is because Betsy DeVos is pushing this model.”“Part of the reason they’re having this problem is because Betsy DeVos is pushing this model.”

Mesa school board members ultimately agreed that it would be better to replicate a public version of the microschool model, using district teachers and resources instead of outsourcing to a private company. Until a vaccine for COVID-19 is fully developed and distributed, public school districts are finding real merits in the model. Bustos supports the effort, which is already underway.

“We as teachers have been begging for school districts to allow us more freedom to teach children in ways that are more meaningful, bring more joy, inspiration and natural curiosity to our schools,” Bustos submitted to the Mesa school board on July 23. “If you divided up the money [originally allocated for Prenda] with a small cohort of teachers, we would be overjoyed to teach a small group of students in a very similar way.”
Beyond Arizona, Microschools Multiply

Despite the company’s defeat in Mesa, Smith’s microschool model is spreading rapidly across the state and across the U.S. Prenda is building fast-growing Facebook communities for both guides and parents to share tips and resources.

But Arizona isn’t the only state in which parents and educators are scrambling over Facebook to organize themselves into microschools and more informal pods for child care and education. Throughout the nation, parents are increasingly pooling their time and sharing the costs of nannies and tutors. Others are volunteering their living rooms as contemporary one-room schoolhouses.

Tech start-ups are taking advantage, using the forums to advertise and hone their services. School districts are also turning to such online platforms, hoping to formalize the creation of microschools in their own communities.“If all the money going into monetizing microschools would be going toward helping public schools have enough resources to reopen safely, we could solve this crisis.”

A new public-private partnership may already be in the works in Seattle, where Bloomberg reported that the CEO of one such startup, Weekdays, said she has been in contact with administrators at Seattle Public Schools. Last week, San Francisco officials announced plans to open 40 “learning hubs” of low-income students to assist their remote learning needs.

Susan Solomon, president of United Educators of San Francisco, tells Truthout the district hasn’t yet involved the union in its communications regarding the new plan for hubs, but the union is also struggling with the creation of pandemic pods among wealthier families in the Bay Area.

“All of this is taking advantage of a pandemic to do what certain people like Betsy DeVos have wanted to do all along, and that is starve public education to death,” Solomon says. “If all the money and effort that’s going into monetizing microschools and starting private pods would be going toward … helping public schools have enough resources to reopen safely, we could solve this crisis.”

Candice Bernd is senior editor/staff reporter at Truthout. Her work has also appeared in several other publications, including The Nation, In These Times, the Texas Observer, Salon, Rewire.News, Sludge, YES! Magazine and Earth Island Journal. Her work has received awards from the San Francisco Press Club, the Fort Worth chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association, and the Dallas Peace and Justice Center. Follow her on Twitter: @CandiceBernd.

What Has Happened to Police Filmed Hurting Protesters? So Far, Very Little.

Portland police officers pursue a crowd of about 200 protesters after dispersing the group from in front of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office on August. 1, 2020, in Portland, Oregon.

NATHAN HOWARD / GETTY IMAGES

BY Zipporah Osei & Mollie Simon, ProPublica PUBLISHED August 2, 2020

It has been almost two months since a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car accelerated into Brooke Fortson during a protest over police violence. She still doesn’t know the name of the officer who hit her or whether that person is still policing the city’s streets. The officer did not stop after hitting Fortson and instead turned around, nearly hitting other demonstrators in the process, and sped off.

The LAPD almost surely knows who the officer is. The squad car’s number is clearly visible in one of the multiple videos that captured the incident. But the department hasn’t released any information: not the officer’s name, or whether that person has been disciplined. The police say the incident is still under investigation.

As hundreds of videos of police violence during protests have circulated, ProPublica wanted to see what happened to officers in the aftermath.

We set out to see whether the incidents caught on camera were investigated, whether officers were named and what information we could get about any investigations or discipline. We found a widespread lack of transparency that made it difficult to find out even the most basic details about whether and what sort of investigations were taking place.

ProPublica looked through hundreds of viral videos and focused on those that most clearly show an officer using apparently disproportionate force. We ended up with 68 videos involving more than 40 law enforcement agencies across the country, in both large cities and small towns.

We asked each police department a few simple questions: Who were the officers in the video, were they under investigation and have they been disciplined?

The departments mostly declined to give any specific information.

We learned that officers from eight videos have been disciplined so far. Officers from eight others will not be disciplined. And for two videos, police departments still insist they’re unsure of whether the officers involved are their own.

While officers have the right to use force if their own or others’ lives are in danger, the widespread violence against protesters has been unwarranted, said Chris Burbank, the former chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department.

“When you have a peaceful protest, people sitting on the ground, does that justify the use of tear gas or pepper spray on them? It absolutely does not,” said Burbank, who is now the vice president of law enforcement strategy at the Center for Policing Equity. “I see that as a violation of policy, violation of state and city ordinance and as a violation of common decency and what is good about policing.”

The LAPD told us it has moved 10 unnamed officers to non-field duties while it investigates incidents related to the recent protests. The department declined to say whether the officer who struck Fortson is on that list. Fortson has filed a claim for damages with the city and has retained a lawyer instead of filing a complaint with the Police Department.

Here’s what we learned while looking into these videos:
Officers Remain Anonymous — Even When They’re Caught on Camera

Departments have only named officers in 17 of the cases we examined as of publication. A name can allow the public to learn more about the disciplinary history of an officer and to see any patterns in prior allegations. It also could allow us to see if officers appear in multiple videos involving use of force.

Minneapolis has a public database of officers’ complaint histories. Still, the police department declined to identify the officers in videos we compiled, making it impossible to check their records in the database.

As protests have continued across the country, many states are struggling with how far to go in revealing officers’ disciplinary records.

In June, New Jersey’s attorney general directed the state’s law enforcement agencies to name officers who have been cited for serious disciplinary violations. In his directive, he noted that prematurely naming those accused of misconduct can be unfair if allegations are not ultimately proven. But, he argued, the likelihood of officers misbehaving increases when they “believe they can act with impunity; it decreases when officers know that their misconduct will be subject to public scrutiny and not protected.”

In some states, there are union contracts and laws preventing the disclosure of officer names, said Phil Stinson, a former officer and now a professor at Bowling Green State University. In other instances, though, Stinson said, departments may just be “stonewalling” or trying to get rid of problem officers before things become public.

“They just try to ride it out and hope it quiets down,” Stinson said.

In Florida, Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Erin Alfonso at first declined to provide the names of officers from a May 31 incident we examined. The video shows police abruptly arresting a man who was talking to them but not doing anything aggressive before an officer appears to grab him by his shirt. An internal report obtained by ProPublica through a public records request identified the officers as Roberto De la Nuez and Jorge Encinosa. Encinosa declined to comment on the arrest to ProPublica and De la Nuez did not respond to a request for comment. The department’s Professional Compliance Bureau is investigating the case, Alfonso said.

In San Jose, California, anti-bias trainer Derrick Sanderlin was shot in the groin with a rubber bullet after trying to talk to officers with his arms raised.

The incident, which took place May 29 and was reviewed by ProPublica, remains under investigation by the San Jose Police Department. Shivaun Nurre, the Independent Police Auditor for the city, confirmed that her office has received multiple complaints related to the incident. The office does not release the names of officers to complainants. According to a civil rights lawsuit filed by Sanderlin on July 18, three officers fired at him, but as of the initial filing, he had been unable to determine exactly who hit him and he was too far away to have caught badge names. “If someone else who wasn’t a police officer did the same thing, they would be held accountable,” Sanderlin said.

“All allegations, complaints, or concerns of the public will be taken seriously,” the San Jose Police Department said in a statement. The department said all videos provided by ProPublica are “part of an extensive Internal Affairs investigation. As such, this is a personnel investigation and [we] cannot communicate further.”

And in another instance, ProPublica requested the incident report related to a man’s arrest in Kansas City, Missouri. We were told that wouldn’t be possible to obtain because the charges against him and other protesters were dismissed and vacated by a city ordinance, meaning it was “as though it never happened,” a Police Department spokesperson said. The actions of the arresting officer remain under investigation, but without the report ProPublica is unable to obtain the officer’s name or see the rationale for the arrest. “We are not saying we don’t care and it isn’t a big deal,” the spokesperson said.
Investigations — if They Happen at All — Are Far From Transparent

In case after case, departments have cited ongoing investigations for not providing details such as whether officers captured in the videos remain on active duty; they also often can’t say how long the investigations might take. Sometimes, police union contracts prevent police departments from releasing such information.

In Portland, Oregon, the Bureau of Police would only say that all incidents of force were under investigation, including the two identified by ProPublica. Ross Caldwell, the director of the Independent Police Review, a civilian oversight office in the Portland auditor’s office, said that while he could confirm that both incidents were under investigation, he wasn’t “legally allowed to talk about these investigations.”

How long departments legally have to process complaints varies by jurisdiction. In at least 14 states, police officers have a “bills of rights” written into state law that provides special protections during investigations. There’s a one-year statute of limitations in California on police discipline cases. In Florida, investigations of police misconduct must conclude in 180 days. Both states have provisions to pause the clock if there’s a concurrent criminal investigation and California pauses for civil litigation, but otherwise, if a department can’t close out a case in time, officers cannot be disciplined, suspended, demoted or dismissed.

“They have gotten these protections, especially in state laws, through sheer political power and lobbying effort, and that’s a serious problem,” said Samuel Walker, a retired professor of criminal justice who has researched the bills of rights.
Officers Are Unlikely to Be Disciplined — at Least Publicly

Even in cases where victims are able to identify officers, they’re unlikely to see them face discipline.

Because there’s no federal mandate for police agencies to report details about the civilian complaints they receive, the most recent nationwide dataset about how many complaints are fully investigated and “sustained,” meaning the allegations of wrongdoing are confirmed, was published in 1993 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, according to Carol Archbold, a police accountability expert and professor at North Dakota State University.

In New York City, where 10 of the videos we examined took place, the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigates allegations of excessive force against the police. The board investigated more than 3,000 allegations of misuse of force in 2018, but only 73 of them were substantiated. Los Angeles, which handles its complaints internally unless an officer asks for a review by a citizen Board of Rights, had 5% of complaints from the public sustained that same year.

In California, only investigations that result in sustained findings or those involving deadly force, discharge of a firearm or “great bodily injury” become public.

The picture is similar at smaller departments. Of the 206 citizen allegations against Omaha police officers in 2018, only 17% were sustained by the department’s internal review process. In Indianapolis, where a video from the protests captured officers beating a woman, that number was 7%.

When asked about a video showing officers kicking a protester who was backed up to a fence, the Omaha Police Department said all use of force incidents are being reviewed and that officers from other agencies were assisting. The department declined to comment further and said it is “bound by contractual language that prevents us from disclosing the contents of any personnel matter.”
Hundreds of Complaints Are Overwhelming the Oversight Agencies

Departments now face a mountain of work to sift through the events of the protests. There have been more than 750 complaints filed with New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board since protests began in late May, leading to over 200 open investigations. The LAPD has assigned 40 investigators to sift through protest complaints.

The Seattle Office of Police Accountability, an independent oversight body, has been contacted over 18,000 times about police actions at the protests and is aiming to increase transparency.

The agency’s new Demonstration Complaint Dashboard shows 28 ongoing investigations, but the department is continuing to work its way through complaints and plans to continue updating the tracker, said Anne Bettesworth, the deputy director of public affairs for OPA.

It typically takes 180 days for Seattle to investigate civilian allegations against officers, but Bettesworth said the agency is working to complete as many protest-related investigations as possible in under 90 days. It’s an “all hands on deck situation,” she said.

Zipporah Osei
Zipporah is a Scripps Howard Foundation research fellow at ProPublica. She studied journalism at Northeastern University and founded the First Gen newsletter, which covers the first-generation college student experience. Zipporah has interned at the Boston Globe, Chalkbeat, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

If Governments Believe So Much in Nonviolence, They Should Try It

It’s time for governments that extol the virtues of nonviolence to lead by example and stop using armed police as the go-to solution for societal problems.

SELCUK ACAR / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Jakeet Singh, Truthout PUBLISHED July 7, 202

Jakeet Singh is an assistant professor of political theory at York University in Toronto, Canada.

PART OF THE SERIES
The Road to Abolition

There’s something rather baffling about hearing politicians and high-level government officials condemn the usefulness of violence and extol the virtues of nonviolence.

In the recent documentary series about her life and political career, Hillary Clinton discusses the 1968 protest movements during her politically formative years, and claims: “I was never in the camp that thought violence was the answer to violence. I never believed that, and I still to this day don’t believe that.”

What’s striking about this claim is that there’s basically no way it could be true. Anyone, like Clinton, who has spent their career supporting and funding the police and backing numerous wars and military deployments must at some level believe that violence is very much the answer — not only in response to violence but also to many other challenges. As author and professor Alex Vitale said recently on the Rumble podcast, “Police are violence workers.… The tools the police have to manage social problems are tools of violence.” This nket claims from government leaders about the lack of utility of violence ring very hollow.

In response to the recent spate of protests and uprisings against anti-Black racism, we’ve heard condemnations of violence and corresponding valorizations of nonviolence from progressive mayors to conservative federal politicians. Together they sing the praises of nonviolence both for its moral superiority and its greater efficacy, and they reject violence for both its wrongness and its wrongheadedness.

“Violence never works,” proclaimed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“Violence and vandalism is [sic] never the answer, and they have no place in Dallas, Fort Worth, or anywhere in the state of Texas,” denounced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

“You’re not honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement,” rebuked Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.In recent years conservatives have become very adept at cynically weaponizing the moral rhetoric and mystique of nonviolence against protest movements.

While the motif of nonviolence has traditionally been less common on the right, in recent years conservatives have become very adept at cynically weaponizing the moral rhetoric and mystique of nonviolence against protest movements. Liberal and progressive politicians, on the other hand, often come across as more sincere in their praise of nonviolence, especially those who see themselves as having gained access to political power due to the work of nonviolent social movements.

“As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work,” said a newly elected President Obama in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence.” He even quoted King’s own 1964 Nobel lecture, saying, “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

So what allows for these statements to be made by public officials without a hint of irony or concern about flagrant hypocrisy? It is, of course, the longstanding doctrine that the state has “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory,” in the famous words of social theorist Max Weber. In this view, violence is only properly entrusted to and wielded by governments; it is not to be used by social movements and other civil society actors. Violence is never the answer… for them.The strict binary between state and non-state violence is so loaded and taken for granted that it often makes the former not even appear as violence to many.

The strict binary between state and non-state violence is so loaded and taken for granted that it often makes the former not even appear as violence to many. Politicians can make blanket condemnations of violence without sounding hypocritical precisely because of this double standard. It also plays a role in why so many people can be outraged about riots and property destruction and not even mention the immense, highly-militarized violence of police during the recent uprisings, to say nothing about the Black lives lost at the hands of police that have provoked the protests.

Indeed, the necessity and utility of state violence was at the heart of Obama’s (in)famous pivot in his Nobel lecture, which immediately followed his praise and citation of King: “I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naïve in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state, sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.”

Something very interesting is happening, however, in the midst of the current uprisings against anti-Black racism. Where only two legitimate options have conventionally been recognized — state violence and non-state nonviolence — four quadrants are increasingly being taken seriously. The topic of non-state violence has often been so moralized as to not even be entertained, but today many more honest discussions are taking place regarding when and what kinds of non-state violence might actually be necessary, effective, and/or justified under deeply violent and oppressive conditions. Furthermore, an increasing number of questions are being raised about why the principles and techniques of nonviolence that are so often lauded for social movements are not adopted by the state itself.If nonviolence is as powerful and persuasive as government officials keep telling us it is, then why don’t they lead by example and implement it in their own institutions?

The current conversation about defunding and abolishing the police is the clearest example of the erosion of the conventional dualism around state violence and non-state nonviolence. The idea that the state must use force or the threat of force as a routine part of so many of its actions no longer seems so given; in fact, it increasingly appears rather misguided. Why are armed police dispatched to respond to mental health crises? Poverty and homelessness? Drug and alcohol issues? Noise complaints? School safety? Traffic violations?

The common sense around sending “violence workers” to deal with nonviolent offenses and social issues of all kinds, as well as to handle the aftermath of violent incidents when the threat is no longer imminent, is clearly and finally breaking down. The availability and threat of lethal force in these situations regularly generates more problems than it solves. Furthermore, important questions are being raised about w

Jakeet Singh is an assistant professor of political theory at York University in Toronto, Canada.hy the police seem so much less skilled in nonviolent techniques of de-escalation and conflict resolution than the average bartender, ambulance attendant and social worker. If nonviolence is as powerful and persuasive as government officials keep telling us it is, then why don’t they lead by example and implement it in their own institutions?

Politicians love to remind the public that “violence is not the answer.” If they actually believe that at all, and aren’t being entirely disingenuous, they certainly have an ideal opportunity to prove it.

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