Trump wanted to 'swap' Puerto Rico for Greenland: ex-official

#FREEPUERTORICO !VIVA!LA INDEPENDENCIA!

Issued on: 19/08/2020 -

Washington (AFP)

President Donald Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico or swap it for Greenland because he viewed the US territory as dirty and poor, a former senior administration official said Wednesday.

Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, said Trump expressed those views as the government undertook support operations after two massive hurricanes ravaged the Caribbean island in 2017.

Taylor told MSNBC that just before one 2018 trip by officials, Trump, who had regularly talked about acquiring Greenland from Denmark, seriously suggested he could trade away Puerto Rico.
"He told us, not only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico, could we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland, because in his words, Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor," Taylor said.

The former official said he did not take Trump's remarks as a joke.

"These are Americans. We don't talk about our fellow Americans that way," Taylor added.

"And the fact that the president of the United States wanted to take a US territory of Americans and swap it for a foreign country is beyond galling."

Trump has long expressed disdain for the island of some three million people, many of whom live on the US mainland -- especially in Florida and Trump's native New York -- due to the deeply depressed economy at home.

"The president expressed deep animus towards the Puerto Rican people behind the scenes," Taylor, who left DHS in 2019 and came out as a supporter of Democrat Joe Biden this week, told MSNBC.

"He is their president. He should be standing by them, not trying to sell them off to a foreign country."

In 2019 Trump canceled a visit to Denmark after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rejected his proposal to buy Greenland as "absurd," though at the time there was no mention of Puerto Rico as part of the suggested deal.

On Tuesday Trump dismissed Taylor on Twitter as a "former disgruntled employee" who is "said to be a 'real stiff.'"

© 2020 AFP

Beyond batteries: Scientists build methanol-powered beetle bot

BEETLEJUICE! BEETLEJUICE!

BEET.........SAY IT THREE TIMES

YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
Issued on: 19/08/2020

A team at the University of Southern California has built an 88-milligram "RoBeetle" that runs on methanol and uses an artificial muscle system to crawl, climb, and carry loads on its back for up to two hours Xiufeng YANG Xiufeng Yang, University of Southern California/AFP

Washington (AFP)

Scientists have long envisioned building tiny robots capable of navigating environments that are inaccessible or too dangerous for humans -- but finding ways to keep them powered and moving has been impossible to achieve.

A team at the University of Southern California has now made a breakthrough, building an 88-milligram (one three hundredth of an ounce) "RoBeetle" that runs on methanol and uses an artificial muscle system to crawl, climb and carry loads on its back for up to two hours.

It is just 15 millimeters (.6 inches) in length, making it "one of the lightest and smallest autonomous robots ever created," its inventor Xiufeng Yang told AFP.

"We wanted to create a robot that has a weight and size comparable to real insects," added Yang, who was lead author of a paper describing the work in Science Robotics on Wednesday.

The problem is that most robots need motors that are themselves bulky and require electricity, which in turn makes batteries necessary.

The smallest batteries available weigh 10-20 times more than a tiger beetle, a 50 milligram insect the team used as their reference point.

To overcome this, Yang and his colleagues engineered an artificial muscle system based on liquid fuel -- in this case methanol, which stores about 10 times more energy than a battery of the same mass.

The "muscles" are made from nickel-titanium alloy wires -- also known as Nitinol -- which contracts in length when heated, unlike most metals that expand.

The wire was coated in a platinum powder that acts as a catalyst for the combustion of methanol vapor.

As the vapor from RoBeetle's fuel tank burns on the platinum powder, the wire contracts, and an array of microvalves shut to stop more combustion.

The wire then cools and expands, which once more opens the valves, and the process repeats itself until all the fuel is spent.

The expanding and contracting artificial muscles are connected to the RoBeetles' front legs through a transmission mechanism, which allows it to crawl.

The team tested their robot on a variety of flat and inclined surfaces made from materials that were both smooth, like glass, and rough, like mattress pads.

RoBeetle could carry a load of up to 2.6 times its own weight on its back and run for two hours on a full tank, said Yang.

By contrast, "the smallest battery-powered crawling robot weighs one gram and operates about 12 minutes."

In the future, microbots may be used for a variety of applications like infrastructure inspection or search-and-rescue missions after natural disasters.

They might also assist in tasks like artificial pollination or environmental monitoring.

Roboticists Ryan Truby and Shuguang Li, of MIT and Harvard respectively, wrote in an accompanying commentary that RoBeetle was "an exciting microrobotics milestone," but added there were also opportunities for improvement.

For example, the robot is limited to continuous forward motion, and taking electronics out of the equation reduces its capacity to carry out sophisticated tasks.

© 2020 AFP

Thousands evacuated as fast-moving fires spread in California

Issued on: 19/08/2020

A home burns in Vacaville, California -- the fast-moving fires in the Golden State have prompted widespread evacuations JOSH EDELSON AFP

HOME TO VACAVILLE PRISON  ORIGIN OF SLA

SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY (PATTI HEARST)

Los Angeles (AFP)

Thousands of residents fled a city in northern California on Wednesday as a series of fast-moving fires spread overnight, burning dozens of homes and structures.

The fire outside Vacaville, a city of about 100,000 residents located near the state capital Sacramento, is part of a series of blazes that have scorched nearly 50,000 acres (20,200 hectares) in northern California in recent days.

"If you're asked to evacuate, please do so SAFELY," Vacaville police said on Twitter.

"Practically every single first responder unit in town is actively working to safely notify, evacuate and fight the fires, so our residents are safe."

Some residents of Vacaville heeded the evacuation orders dressed only in their pajamas as the flames surged across roadways and gas lines exploded at several residences.

Multiple people suffered burns as they ran for their lives.

Fire officials said the blaze was zero percent contained early Wednesday and threatened some 1,900 structures in the area.

One woman described fleeing the inferno with her husband, who suffered burns in his car and was forced to abandon the vehicle.

"I had all these flames on me and I lost my shoe but I made it," she told the local NBC station. "God saved me."

The group of fires -- known collectively as the LNU Lightning Complex and taking place as the state faces a torrid heat wave -- has so far destroyed dozens of buildings or structures in three counties.

Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency to facilitate the release of emergency funds.

"We are deploying every resource available to keep communities safe as California battles fires across the state during these extreme conditions," Newsom said.

"California and its federal and local partners are working in lockstep to meet the challenge and remain vigilant in the face of continued dangerous weather conditions."

Firefighters said that in total, some 30 fires across the state had torched some 120,000 acres.

- Scorching heat -

The LNU fire -- which was sparked by a lightning storm earlier in the week in the Bay Area -- has affected Sonoma, Lake, Napa and Solano counties, parts of which are still recovering from similar devastating blazes in recent years.

The wildfires are spreading largely uncontrolled and have intensified because of the record-breaking heat.

In the past week, California's Death Valley has been experiencing historic high temperatures, with the mercury rising as high as 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius).

Nearly 45 million people across the western United States were under an excessive heat warning or heat advisory Wednesday.

The scorching temperatures have put a massive strain on the state's power network, with blackouts leaving some 30,000 people without service, according to Power outage.us.

Last week, brush fires near Lake Hughes, just north of Los Angeles, burned more than 10,000 acres and prompted the evacuation of 500 homes.

Wildfires have become more frequent and bigger in California in recent years, in part driven by climate change.

The deadliest fire in the state's history -- the Camp Fire -- took place in northern California in November 2018 and killed 86 people.

Also Wednesday, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency over a series of wildfires.

"Wildfires are threatening the safety and livelihoods of Washingtonians all across the state," Inslee said in a statement.

"And the COVID-19 pandemic has put additional strain on our resources, as some of our usual support is further limited due to international movement restrictions."

© 2020 AFP

Hundreds of Palestinians protest in West Bank against Israel-UAE deal

Issued on: 19/08/2020

Palestinians have denounced a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalise ties with many calling it a "stab in the back" JAAFAR ASHTIYEH AFP
LOOK TO THE LOWER RIGHT THAT'S THE FUTURE

Turmus‘ayya (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

Hundreds of Palestinians on Wednesday held a protest in the occupied West Bank against last week's announcement that Israel was normalising ties with the United Arab Emirates.

Members of rival groups Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the Fatah faction of president Mahmud Abbas' West Bank based Palestinian Authority, took part in the rally in a rare joint initiative, an AFP journalist reported.

"Today we tell the world that we are united against 'the deal of the century', annexation and normalisation," Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh told the rally in the village of Turmus'ayya.

The bombshell announcement last week that Israel and the energy-rich UAE would normalise ties sparked fury among Palestinians, with both Hamas and the PA leadership denouncing the US-brokered agreement.

Under the deal Israel said it would "suspend" its plans to annex Jewish settlements and other territory in the West Bank.

Those annexation plans were outlined in the controversial Middle East peace proposal unveiled in January by US President Donald Trump, which some Palestinians have sardonically dubbed the 'Deal of the Century'.

"Any normalisation legitimises the occupation of Palestinian territories," Shtayyeh said.

"It's a stab in the back," he added. THE IDEOLOGY THAT LED TO WWII
Around 2,000 Palestinians took part in the rally at Turmus'ayya, a village in the north of the West Bank nestled between the cities of Ramallah and Nablus.

They travelled there by bus from other areas of the West Bank and clashes took place between protesters and Israeli forces on the outskirts of the village.

The protesters threw stones at Israeli forces who responded with tear gas. NOT BOTTLED WATER

Earlier on Wednesday, hundreds of Palestinians held a protest in the Gaza Strip to denounce the UAE-Israel deal.

© 2020 AFP

UPDATED
Belarus opposition leader urges EU to support her ‘awakening’ country

AND THEY DO  AFP VIDEO REPORT ADDED AT THE END


Protesters against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stand in front of the Minsk Tractor Factory holding posters supporting workers.
(Dmitri Lovetsky / Associated Press)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUG. 19, 2020

MINSK, Belarus —

The Belarusian opposition leader has called on European leaders not to recognize “fraudulent elections” that extended the rule of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko and sparked unprecedented mass protests in the country.

In a video statement released ahead of EU leaders’ emergency summit on the situation Wednesday, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya urged them to support “the awakening of Belarus.”

“I call on you not to recognize these fraudulent elections. Mr. Lukashenko has lost all the legitimacy in the eyes of our nation and the world,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

Lukashenko, who has been dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” has run the ex-Soviet nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist since 1994, and won a sixth term with 80% of votes in an Aug. 9 election widely seen as rigged. Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher and political novice who united fractured opposition groups and drew tens of thousands to rally in her support, got only 10%.

She dismissed the results as falsified and demanded a recount, but then suddenly left the country for Lithuania in a move her campaign said was made under duress. Thousands of protesters have been arrested by authorities and have alleged beatings and other abuse.

On Wednesday morning, rallies resumed in Minsk, and police once again started detaining protesters. Nearly 50 people were detained in front of the Minsk Tractor Factory, where workers have been on strike since Monday, according to Sergei Dylevsky, leader of the factory’s strike committee.


‘Go away!’ Workers heckle Belarus leader as support collapses around him
Aug. 17, 2020

“People are on strike demanding Lukashenko’s resignation, and authorities respond with batons and riot police,” Dylevsky said. “Lukashenko is not changing.”

Police also blocked all entrances to the Janka Kupala National Theater in Minsk, where the troupe on Tuesday gave notice en masse after its director, Pavel Latushko, was fired for siding with protesters. Actors who arrived at the theater Wednesday morning were not allowed in.

“It’s unprecedented that, in the 21st century, law enforcement is deployed to a cultural institution. The situation speaks for itself,” Latushko said.

It’s not entirely clear what the European Union can do right now, but its leaders appear determined to help maintain the momentum for change in Minsk with a show of political support and to revive a sanctions program on Belarus that was eased four years ago as relations with Lukashenko improved.


Women move to forefront of protests sweeping Belarus over disputed election results
Aug. 13, 2020

In a letter inviting the bloc’s leaders to the video summit, EU Council President Charles Michel said of Lukashenko’s crackdown that “what we have witnessed in Belarus is not acceptable.” He said the “violence against peaceful protesters was shocking and has to be condemned. Those responsible must be held to account.”

Earlier this week, Tsikhanouskaya said she was ready to act as a national leader to facilitate a rerun of the election, and her associates announced the formation of a “coordination council” to help create a platform for a peaceful transition of power.

“I have initiated the national coordination council of Belarus. It will lead the process of a peaceful transition of power via dialogue. It will immediately call for new fair and democratic presidential elections with international supervision,” Tsikhanouskaya said in the latest video statement.

Lukashenko has repeatedly rejected demands to step down and bristled at the idea of talks with the opposition, denouncing the coordination council Tuesday as “an attempt to seize power.” Nevertheless, the council is set to convene for the first time Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of people have protested in Belarus since Aug. 9. The rallies have continued for 10 straight days despite a brutal response from the police, who in the first four days of demonstrations detained almost 7,000 people and injured hundreds with rubber bullets, stun grenades and clubs. At least two protesters died.

This week, workers at several major industrial plants, including a huge factory that accounts for a fifth of the world’s potash fertilizer output, have started a strike demanding Lukashenko’s resignation.

UPDATED
Mudslides and dramatic rescues as China hit by floods

Issued on: 19/08/2020

Text by:FRANCE 24

Video by:Sam BALL  AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE 

From a 1,300 statue under threat of being submerged to houses swept away by mudslides and dramatic rescues of stranded civilians, some of the worst flooding seen in decades has wreaked havoc across the Chinese province of Sichuan following heavy rains.

The toes of the 71-metre Buddha statue in Leshan were submerged in water on Tuesday, August 18, the first time that has happened in 70 years, state media reported.

The threat to the statue, built in 713 AD, is just one example of how the vast floods are threatening lives, infrastructure and heritage.

Heavy rains since the weekend have triggered flooding across China’s Sichuan Province, forcing authorities to activate the highest level of a four-tier flood alert system for the first time on record, while parts of the provincial capital Chengdu have been hit by the worst flooding since 1981, authorities said.

The floods have triggered mudslides that have destroyed homes and property and the rising waters have devastated swathes of farmland.

More than 100,000 people had been evacuated as of Tuesday while emergency services have rescued hundreds of people trapped by the flooding, say authorities.

Rescue efforts have not just been limited to the region's human population. Amateur footage captured the moment firefighters rushed to save a number of dogs from a pet hospital in Chengdu on Friday.

More than 63.4 million have been affected by flooding in regions across China this year, according to authorities, with the country being battered by unusually heavy rains since early June.

A total of 219 people have died or remain missing as of August

Severe flooding affects giant Buddha statue in China  

Beijing, Aug 18 (Prensa Latina) The famous Buddha of Leshan, a giant statue located in the southwestern province of Sichuan, for the first time in 70 years is suffering the floods that are affecting the area today and keeping it on extreme alert.

Although rescue teams erected dikes with sandbags, the waters of nearby rivers reached the feet of the colossus this morning and covered them completely.

The event is a cause for concern and has led to the activation of the highest contingency phase for natural disasters, since an old local belief indicates that when this happens, the entire city will be flooded.

The statue is the largest ancient piece of its kind in the world and also the largest stone representation of the Buddha.

Its construction took 90 years to complete and was the brainchild of a monk named Haitong, who was concerned about the regular whirlwinds and floods that caused the confluence of the Ming, Qingyi and Dadu Rivers, which made the city a major river trade center at the time.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization included it in its list of heritage treasures in 1996. 

ef/abo/tgj/ymr

China evacuates 100,000 as floods threaten heritage site

Floodwater reaches the Leshan Giant Buddha's feet following heavy rainfall, in Leshan, Sichuan province, China August 18, 2020. China Daily via REUTERS

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Floods on the upper reaches of China’s Yangtze river forced authorities to evacuate more than 100,000 people on Tuesday and threatened a 1,200-year-old world heritage site.

Staff, police and volunteers used sandbags to try to protect the 71-metre (233-foot) Leshan Giant Buddha, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southwestern Sichuan province, as muddy flood water rose over its toes for the first time since 1949, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Sichuan, through which the Yangtze river flows, raised its emergency response to the maximum level on Tuesday to cope with a new round of torrential rainfall.

The Yangtze Water Resources Commission, the government body that oversees the river, declared a red alert late on Tuesday, saying water at some monitoring stations was expected to exceed “guaranteed” flood protection levels by over 5 metres.

The Three Gorges Project, a massive hydroelectric facility designed in part to tame floods on the Yangtze, is expected to see water inflows rise to 74,000 cubic metres per second on Wednesday, the highest since it was built, the Ministry of Water Resources said.

The project restricts the amount of water flowing downstream by storing it in its reservoir, which has been over 10 metres higher than its official warning level for more than a month.

The facility was forced to raise water discharge volumes on Tuesday in order to “reduce flood control pressures”, the water ministry said.

Authorities have been at pains to show that the cascade of giant dams and reservoirs built along the Yangtze’s upper reaches have shielded the region from the worst of the floods this year, though critics say they might be making things worse.

VIDEO INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS DAY

UN hails aid workers after record attacks

According to the Aid Worker Security Database major attacks against humanitarians last year surpassed all previous years since records began in 1997.
Issued on: 19/08/2020

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, left, at a Geneva wreath-laying ceremony marking World Humanitarian Day 

Fabrice COFFRINI AFP

Geneva (AFP)

The United Nations paid tribute Wednesday to humanitarian workers now battling the COVID-19 pandemic after a year in which they found themselves under greater attack than ever before.

The UN marked its World Humanitarian Day by remembering the 125 aid workers who were killed in 2019 and the hundreds of others who were wounded or kidnapped.

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the United Nations in Geneva.

"Let's never forget their love for humanity that led them to the ultimate sacrifice: their lives," she said.

According to the Aid Worker Security Database compiled by the Humanitarian Outcomes research group, major attacks against humanitarians last year surpassed all previous years since records began in 1997.

In 277 separate incidents around the world, a total of 483 relief workers were attacked, of whom 125 were killed, 234 wounded and 124 kidnapped.

The figure represents an 18-percent increase in the number of victims compared to 2018.

Most of the attacks occurred in Syria, followed by South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and the Central African Republic.

OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said each attack was a tragedy for those targeted, but also for the thousands of vulnerable people they were trying to assist.

"The UN condemns these attacks, and it calls for accountability for perpetrators and justice for survivors. Relief workers cannot be a target," said OCHA.

- 'Unsung heroes' -

The UN said aid workers and healthcare responders were now going to extraordinary lengths to help people whose lives have been upended by crises -- and now by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

"This year, humanitarian workers are stretched like never before," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

"They are responding to the global crisis of COVID-19, and with it the massive increase in humanitarian needs from the fallout of the pandemic.

"They are the unsung heroes of the pandemic response -- and they all too often risk their own lives to save the lives of others."

On Tuesday, the Red Cross said more than 600 attacks on health workers and patients had been reported in connection with the COVID-19 crisis.

The ceremony in Geneva also remembered seven aid workers with French non-governmental organisation ACTED who were killed at a wildlife haven in Niger on August 9.

Luca Pupulin, who heads IMPACT Initiatives, which is part of the ACTED group, read out the names of the victims.

"We ask for the international community to come together to end impunity and to treat every attack against humanitarians as an attack -- and a crime -- against humanity," he said.

World Humanitarian Day is held on the anniversary of the August 19, 2003 attack on the UN compound in Baghdad which killed 22 people.

Since then, nearly 5,000 humanitarians have been killed, wounded or abducted in attacks around the world.

© 2020 AFP

WHITE SUPREMACY USA

To Be Black In This Country Is To Live A Life Of Trespass

Wandering around the abandoned Pittsburgh of my youth instilled a desire to go wherever I wanted — even as a Black man living in America.

Elwin CotmanBuzzFeed Contributor
Posted on August 18, 2020, at 3:04 p.m. ET

Ross Mantle
The Carrie Furnace in Rankin, Pennsylvania


Every other day, I go running. It helps me stay active while the gyms are closed, and gets me out of the house and away from doomscrolling despair. Go one direction out my front door and the terrain descends into the predominantly Latinx section of East Oakland. In the opposite direction, the land inclines. And inclines. And inclines. Before long, I am in the Oakland Hills with its socially distanced outdoor cafe seating. Here you can walk into a grocery store without waiting in line, though you’ll be paying more. The million-dollar houses are mission-style, Bavarian-style, Japanese-style, pretty much any style the owners wish. I see white people, mostly older women, standing at an intersection with BLM signs. People honk support. Too little, too late. But it’s nice.

Further up, the houses grow even larger. The air is sweeter. The land is greener. The only people of color here are myself and landscapers. I see the faces of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor on signs. A perverse happiness buzzes inside me to see Black life acknowledged in the Hills, where any manner of atrocities could have been committed in pursuit of these Parasite homes. I see a sign for Ahmaud Arbery, who was gunned down by white vigilantes while jogging. Even prior to his killing, committed in daylight and videotaped like the lynching photos of old, I knew to stay careful jogging in a ritzy area. All it takes is one call to the cops. No doubt Ahmaud Arbery knew that too. Still he put his Black body into a world that wished him dead; he saw the invisible “DO NOT ENTER” signs and entered, rather than live in fear.

In Pittsburgh, I learned to love trespass. My earliest memory of going where I wasn’t allowed happened when I was in Catholic school in the suburbs. It was a miserable experience of racist bullying from students and teachers alike. From third grade on, teachers called me lazy in front of the class, and miniature white supremacists physically assaulted me daily while spewing racial slurs.


When I was 11, I joined the speech club. One day, I arrived at a meeting and realized I’d forgotten my speech at home. I shamefacedly informed the adviser.

She looked repulsed. “Then leave.”

Having been a teacher for over a decade, I can’t fathom casting an elementary student out like that — even nowadays with cameras everywhere, and certainly not in the “stranger danger”–obsessed 1990s. But for the first time in life, I found myself unsupervised. I had the school’s campus to myself, and it was gloriously empty.

I walked to the pond and watched the geese drift over water gilded in afternoon sunlight. I crossed to the other side of campus and explored the woods as far as I dared until fairy-tale nightmares started playing on my psyche. But most transgressive of all, I returned to the school building and climbed the steps past the second-floor classrooms to the off-limits third floor. As I’d suspected, all I found were boring, utilitarian dorms for the nuns. The excitement came from trespassing on my own terms.

I grew up in Pittsburgh. I was born in West Penn Hospital. I’ve visited WQED Studios and seen the inside of Allegheny County Jail. When I was 12 years old, I won first and second place in a poetry contest. The judge was August Wilson. The living embodiment of Pittsburgh liked my stuff; that’s how Pittsburgh I am.

Up until the city’s rapid gentrification in the 2010s, Pittsburgh looked postapocalyptic in many places. After the steel left, many residents departed as well, but the buildings remained. Mercifully we weren’t subjected to the doomsday rhetoric that Detroit had to deal with, mainly because Pittsburgh isn’t considered a “Black” town; Pittsburghers got to be “blue-collar” instead of “ghetto,” so the mass media didn’t shame us and bemoan empty houses as some catastrophe.

As an adolescent, I accompanied my dad to the flea market outside Eastland Mall, a dead mall even then. I perused vendors for comic books until, growing bored, I’d venture inside the mall itself, a rectangular cave, dimly lit, with one or two stores still open. Seeing retractable barriers in front of a nonworking escalator, I would step around the stanchions and descend like Link from Zelda to dungeonlike office spaces, a dusty landscape of hanging tarps and sunlight through mildew-worn holes. An abandoned world, freer and more open than the claustrophobic one I’d left behind.

Finding forbidden places was my version of the wardrobe, the rabbit hole, the golden ticket. In college, I discovered urban exploring. I would search for wild and bucolic spots within the corpses of former industrial sites. I felt daring, knowing any journey could end with my death— killed for stepping an inch out of line. The Wilkinsburg neighborhood had many abandoned Victorians, with wood nailed over the doors. I scaled awnings to enter through upper story windows. Often the houses were fully furnished. I would find beds in bedrooms and sofas in living rooms, a vision of domesticity among shards of glass and plaster.

Finding forbidden places was my version of the wardrobe, the rabbit hole, the golden ticket.

By my senior year of college, I decided my skills honed enough to tackle the abandoned hotel downtown on Mount Washington. I mostly traveled alone because companions felt like burdens; I was an introvert, fine with my own thoughts for company. Finding the front door padlocked, I trekked the woods to the wall overlooking the Monongahela River. From there, using every ounce of upper body strength I’d built in my dorm’s weight room, I scaled the wall 15 feet and made it onto a patio. After some exploring the hotel rooms, I scaled the outer wall again and entered a space I could only assume had been a ballroom. From the patio, I had a view of downtown Pittsburgh grander than any I’d seen before — a view the hotel’s owner decided to keep to themselves long after the building itself lost value.

The Carrie Furnace in Rankin is the Sistine Chapel of abandoned Pittsburgh, a sprawling, decaying steel mill on the Monongahela. You needed to devote a whole day because getting there took time, and once you got there, you had to stay awhile. I always went in a group, as getting lost was a possibility, and the expansiveness of the mill called for collective awe. One time I fell in love with someone, so I took her to this place.

Park near the postwar bungalows that cling to the hillside, take a pebble-strewn trail through woods full of litter until you reach a fence. Crawl through the hole in the fence. Walk down a gravel road next to an elevated train track and then through a field of overgrown grass to the chain-link gates, broken and twisted. Nature has taken over; trees grow up through the grates and butterflies rest on moss-grown chains. The titanic chimneys are coated in graffiti. The air teems with history and quietude. I remember my friends and I climbing ladders to the catwalks so we could stare over the valley. We walked back at night and hid under cover of trees until the police helicopters were gone. Nowadays, it’s a tourist attraction.

We were Black anarchists, and my friends took the notion of trespass further than I did. They squatted abandoned buildings. They hopped trains and saw parts of North America inaccessible by car. Lacking the courage to endanger myself like they did, I kept my trespasses local. I would drive to areas marked off-limits in Western Pennsylvania’s unofficial Green Book. If I wanted to see a punk show in Latrobe or visit an anime store in Greensburg, I went. As I saw it, the Klan could try and lynch me, but they’d have to catch me first.

George Jackson, political prisoner and author of The Prison Letters of George Jackson, warned against “protesting with the mouth,” in other words, lamenting the crimes of white people against Black bodies, in the misplaced belief there is justice to be found from airing your grievances. All white institutions are inherently racist and should be opposed, not appealed to.

When I started at Mills College in Oakland to get my MFA in creative writing, I expected some level of discrimination. But I wanted to live in the Bay and continue my studies, so I applied and got in. Attending Mills taught me that you could trespass in plain sight.

Being Black in the academy, I was treated like I was invisible, or worse, like a threat. My accomplishments existed outside of this white privilege space. I published articles and went on multistate book tours; I got yelled at by a computer professor for being in the lab prior to her starting her class. I wrote my second short story collection and a thesis; at the same time, I was eating ramen while watching caterers set up cakes on the lawn for donor parties. At a reading, a year into my studies, a poetry professor told me she’d just figured out I was a student and not somebody’s boyfriend.

Before the pandemic hit, I often returned to campus. The grounds are pretty, and I get to use the gym. During one visit, while checking out fliers in the English Department, one of my old professors approached me with a look of concern.


“May I help you?” she asked.

Metaphorical and literal trespass combined when I went to the University of Louisiana for my PhD. At first, I lived on a horse farm but it was too far from campus, so I moved in with an adjunct but that fell through. I became functionally homeless, moving between couches, guest rooms, hostels, and sleeping in my office for the next two years. Was sleeping in my office even trespassing if the administration admins and several colleagues knew about it?

A week into my predicament, I asked the head of the creative writing department if there was any emergency housing. “Let me look into it,” she said. The next day she gave me a yoga mat and sleeping bag.

Was sleeping in my office even trespassing if the administration admins and several colleagues knew about it?

Every time I looked for housing, the rent far exceeded what I earned, so I continued saving and paying off my loans and making stopgap arrangements. The discrepancy between my professional life and living arrangements grew absurd. Get flown to Omaha for a lit fest. Shower in the gym. Do a reading with Nalo Hopkinson. Stash my luggage above the particleboard ceiling. Teach three classes. Dodge late-night custodians to go to the bathroom. AWP in Boston. Vending machine Pop-Tarts.

Eventually a custodian told the department head where I was living. This upset me deeply; I saw it as working-class betrayal. I remember walking into the office to get my mail and getting told point-blank by the Head of the English Department, “I heard you’re living in your office,” in front of adjuncts, secretaries, and undergrads. I’ll never forget his look of triumph. That he could publicly shame me in this space he thought I was unworthy of.

“No,” I said, which was true. I crashed all over town. Then I picked up the student papers I would spend the next few hours grading.

I used my skill at trespass to enter an ugly place. I felt alone and depressed. Within a year, I was back in Oakland.

It’s easy to look back at my time in the academy with shame. I learned to diminish myself. Stay quiet for fear of being ousted. Speak the language people wanted to hear.

My experiences with the academy were reminders that all Black people in this country are considered trespassers, born enemies of the state. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was famously arrested for entering his own home. Our ethnic enclaves, where we should feel safe, are under perpetual siege by killers in uniform. And there was no level of accomplishment or respectability I could attain that would make me welcome in those spaces.

If property is violence, then the flouting of property is an act of rebellion that should be celebrated. The kids I knew who hopped trains were the same ones setting cop cars on fire, and our anger went deeper than politics. That is why, when we took highways in protest of Mike Brown’s murder, it was a show of strength. Deemed criminals from birth, we embraced that vulnerability and trespassed for a greater cause.

The ruined, abandoned Pittsburgh of my youth instilled in me a desire to go wherever I wanted. And seeing my people in the streets, I know trespass itself as a valiant act. White people deemed us trespassers, so let us do so.


The sun sets. I have gotten in my exercise and so I head downhill from the mansions to the less impressive — but still costly — townhouses, coated in sweat, ready to veg out to Netflix like every interminable night. From the house I am passing, I hear someone make gunshot noises. “Pew pew pew!”

I turn in time to see a chubby white child run inside. Surprised at first, then very much unsurprised, I stand for a moment and listen. I can hear him laugh maniacally.

I continue through the land of the wealthy, vigilant. ●


Elwin Cotman is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Dance on Saturday and two previous collections of short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. In 2011 he was nominated for a Carl Brandon Society Award. He has toured extensively across North America and Europe. He is at work on his first novel.
Contact Elwin Cotman at elwin.cotman@gmail.com.

AOC Nominated Sanders Because Of Procedure — And To Make A Point

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's short nominating speech for Bernie Sanders served a convention function — and pointed to a movement's future.

Ryan Brooks BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on August 18, 2020

Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders stand during his campaign event at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, New Hampshire, Feb. 10, 2020

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seconded the largely symbolic nomination of Sen. Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee during the second night of the Democratic Party’s convention on Tuesday.

Ocasio-Cortez’s short speech was symbolic: Every candidate for president who brings delegates to the party convention is required to be formally nominated by someone, a role Ocasio-Cortez shared with former United Auto Workers union head Bob King. Her nomination came just a day after Sanders himself gave a speech to his supporters at the convention outlining Joe Biden’s healthcare plan and calling on his supporters to rally behind Biden’s campaign.

But Ocasio-Cortez, who is pointed to as one of the progressive movement’s next leaders, used her limited convention time to celebrate the movement Sanders has led. She gave a speech that focused on a vision for progressives that moved past Sanders’ campaign and spoke directly to the movement that progressives created around Sanders’ two presidential campaigns, while highlighting policies like universal healthcare and free higher education. She didn’t mention Sanders until nearly the end of her nomination.

“A movement striving to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny, and homophobia and to propose and build reimagined systems of immigration and foreign policy that turn away from the violence and xenophobia of our past,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“A movement that realizes the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many and who organized a historic grassroots campaign to reclaim our democracy.”

Her speech then led into the roll call process that officially made Joe Biden the Democratic nominee for president. She has said she plans to vote for Biden in November and congratulated him in a tweet after her speech aired.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez@AOC

If you were confused, no worries! Convention rules require roll call & nominations for every candidate that passes the delegate threshold. I was asked to 2nd the nom for Sen. Sanders for roll call. I extend my deepest congratulations to @JoeBiden - let’s go win in November. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/uI92P3UfLn01:57 AM - 19 Aug 2020
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Ryan Brooks is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.