German bishops announce higher payments to Catholic abuse victims STILL NOT ENOUGH

The Catholic bishops conference said the new panel will be comprised of medical and mental health professionals and attorneys. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A conference of German Catholic bishops introduced a new model on Thursday to pay survivors of abuse within the church, which could pay each more than $50,000.

The German Bishops Conference announced the creation of an independent committee to investigate complaints of sexual abuse by priests and other clergy. The panel would also determine compensation.

Conference Chair Georg Batzing detailed the new model Thursday at a meeting in Fulda.

Under the change, survivors are eligible for a onetime payment of up to $58,000. Victims will also be able to request that the church pay for therapy.

The independent committee will be comprised of medical and mental health professionals and attorneys. The proposed model would take effect next year.

While the increase in compensation is a tenfold increase over what survivors in Germany have previously been entitled to ($5,800), it's far less than advocates were hoping for.

Batzing called the improvement a "genuine step forward" in addressing past abuse, but acknowledged that some will find the change "unsatisfactory."

One German victims group had called for an increased payout to $466,000 per victim, arguing the amount would be appropriate for a lifetime of trauma some survivors have experienced.

A 2018 study paid for by the German Bishops Conference found that more than 1,600 clergymen had committed some form of abuse against thousands of minors, mostly boys, between 1946 and 2014. Victims groups believe the actual numbers are higher.

DOJ: 300 charged with committing crimes 'under the guise' of protests

BILL BARR'S BULLY BOY'S

The remains of vehicles are on the lot of Car Source, a pre-owned vehicle dealership, are shown on Aug. 31, after they were torched by protesters during demonstrations against the shooting in the back of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man last week in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Photo by Alex Wroblewski/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The Justice Department announced Thursday that more than 300 people have been charged with committing crimes "under the guise" of peaceful protests that erupted nationwide following the police-involved killing of George Floyd.

In a statement, the department said hundreds were arrested in 29 states and Washington, D.C., since late May with more than 40 of the 94 U.S. Attorneys' Offices filing federal charges, including attempted murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, arson and unlawful possession of a destructive device, among a slew of other federal offenses.

"Violent opportunists have exploited these demonstrations in various ways," the Justice Department said.

Protests erupted nationwide against police brutality and racial inequality after Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by a White police office on Memorial Day in Minneapolis.

The Justice Department said of the hundreds arrested since then, 80 were indicted on arson and explosives charges, 35 were charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer, 30 with civil disorder offenses and 15 were charged with damaging property.

"These individuals are alleged to have set fires to local businesses as well as city and federal property, which will regrettably incur millions of taxpayer dollars to repair damages to the Portland Courthouse, Nashville Courthouse, Minneapolis Police Third Precinct, Seattle Police East Precinct and local high school in Minnesota; and, to replace police cruisers in South Carolina, Washington, Rhode Island, Georgia, Utah and other states," the Justice Department said.

RIGHT WINGERS
In one instance in Virginia Beach, Va., John Malcolm Bareswill, 63, pleaded guilty in August to making a telephone threat in early June to burn down an African American church. In another in Boston, John Boampong, 37, has been accused of firing 11 rounds at a crowd of police officers and civilians.

The Justice Department said several of those charged with civil disorder offenses used social media platforms to incite destruction during the protests and for police officers to be attacked.

In Knoxville, Tenn., Dominic Brown, 18, was charged with inciting a riot after posting messages to his Snapchat account instructing his followers to attack police officers.

In one message, he is accused of writing "we are not each other's enemy only enemy is 12," using a slang term indicating police officers and for his followers to "lace your shoes, wear masks and gloves. Bring hammers bricks whatever you have."

"Several of these charges carry significate maximum prison sentences," the Justice Department said, explaining that both arson and felony assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison.

"Through these acts, these individuals have shown minimal regard to their communities and for the safety of others and themselves," the federal department said.

Chinese citizen journalists remain in detention, reports say

By  Elizabeth Shim  SEPT. 25, 2020 

Chinese auhorities continue to detain journalists who went missing in February. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Chinese citizen journalists arrested in February while reporting on the spread of the coronavirus in Wuhan are on hunger strike and under residential surveillance, according to press reports.

Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist, continues to be detained, The Epoch Times reported Friday. Zhang is being held in Shanghai and is on hunger strike, as she faces charges of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," according to the South China Morning Post.

Chen Qiushi, a journalist and lawyer who made headlines when he disappeared in February, is under government surveillance at home, along with his parents, the BBC reported.

Chen reported from Wuhan in late January before he went missing on Feb. 6.
RELATED FBI director warns Chinese hackers are targeting U.S. COVID-19 research



Xu Xiaodong, a Chinese mixed martial arts fighter and Chen's friend, posted a video to YouTube on Thursday confirming the 35-year-old Chen was in good health and was under "supervised surveillance at a designated residence" in Qingdao, Shandong Province.

"The authorities have investigated his activities on the mainland, Hong Kong and Japan," Xu said.

"They are satisfied that he has no financial links with 'foreign forces,' was not responsible for any subversive activities [and as a result decided] not to prosecute him."

A lawyer who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity said the surveillance is against the law.

"Since the authorities have decided not to prosecute him, it is actually not lawful to continue to keep him in close surveillance," the source said.

Citizen journalists began to roam the streets of Wuhan in January as the Chinese government and local Wuhan authorities declined to provide more information on the coronavirus.

Li Zehua, a journalist who disappeared after a car chase, could also be under residential surveillance, according to The Epoch Times. Fang Bin, another Wuhan-based whistleblower active on YouTube, remains missing, the report says.

EPOCH TIMES IS ANTI COMMUNIST RIGHT WING FAKE NEWS IN SUPPORT OF TRUMP

Poll: Majority of Americans want 2020 winner to pick Ginsburg's replacement

Female legislators look on as the casket of the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is carried Friday. A poll released Friday found that a majority of Americans want the winner of the 2020 election to select her replacement. Pool photo by Jonathan Ernst/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 25 (UPI) -- A majority of Americans believe whoever is elected president in November should be the one to nominate the jurist to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, a poll released Friday found.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 57% of respondents want the Senate to hold hearings for a nominee picked by the winner of the election, while 38% want hearings on President Donald Trump's pick.

Ginsburg died one week ago, less than two months before Election Day. Trump said he plans to nominate a new Supreme Court justice before Nov. 3, but critics said he should wait and let the winner of the election decide.

Democrats are especially eager for the nomination to be delayed pending the results of the election after Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell blocked hearings on President Barack Obama's pick after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia about nine months before the 2016 election.

RELATED Votes cast in November will shape Congress through 2030

McConnell promised to hold a floor vote on Trump's pick, though.

After Scalia's death, a Post/News poll found that 63% of respondents believed the Senate should hold hearings on Obama's pick to replace Scalia, while 32% believed hearings should wait until a new president.

Trump ultimately picked Scalia's replacement -- Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Asked who they'd prefer to pick the next Supreme Court nominee, 50% of respondents said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and 42% said Trump.

The Supreme Court appointment, though, came in sixth on the list of things most important to Americans when it comes to their choice for president. Those issues, in order, are the economy (25%), the coronavirus pandemic (17%), healthcare (15%), race equality (14%), crime and safety (12%) and the Supreme Court (11%).

The Post/News survey questioned 1,008 adults between Sept. 21-24 and had a margin of error of 3.5%.

Another poll published Thursday found that most Americans said the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court before Ginsburg's death was "about right."

Aviation company says it flew aircraft with hydrogen fuel cell



The company said it retrofitted a Piper M-class six-seat airplane with the hydrogen fuel cell. Photo courtesy of ZeroAvia

Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Aviation company ZeroAvia announced it has made the world's first flight of a commercial-grade aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The company said it retrofitted a Piper M-class six-seat airplane with the fuel cell at its research and development facility in Cranfield, Britain. In a test flight Wednesday, the airplane off, completed a full pattern circuit, landed and taxied without the aid of fossil fuel.

"It's hard to put into words what this means to our team, but also for everybody interested in zero-emission flight," Val Miftakhov, CEO of ZeroAvia said in a statement. "While some experimental aircraft have flown using hydrogen fuel cells as a power source, the size of this commercially available aircraft shows that paying passengers could be boarding a truly zero-emission flight very soon."

ZeroAvia said it will attempt to have the airplane make a 250-mile trip to an airfield in Orkney, Scotland, from Britain by the end of 2020. The company said the trip would be equivalent to completing popular short-trip routes like from Los Angeles to San Francisco or London to Edinburgh, Scotland.

"Aviation is a hotbed of innovation and ZeroAvia's fantastic technology takes us all one step closer to a sustainable future for air travel," said British Shipping and Aviation Minister Robert Courts in a statement. "Through our ground-breaking Jet Zero partnership we're working hard with industry to drive innovation in zero-carbon flight, and we look forward to seeing the sector go from strength to strength."

United Kingdom government funding has supported the venture.

Chinese automaker unveils flying electric car

A staff member holds a board reading 'Wear mask and keep distance' at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing, China, Saturday. Photo by Wu Hong/EPA-EFE

Sept. 26 (UPI) -- A Chinese auto maker revealed an electric flying vehicle at the 2020 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition Saturday.

The car, dubbed the Kiwigogo, can carry up to two passengers and is designed to flow at altitudes between 16 and 82 feet, according to Xpeng Motors, the Alibaba-backed manufacturer that produced the car.

It has eight propellers and a small, capsule-like frame.

Xpeng, a startup with $1.7 billion in investment capital that raised another $1.5 billion at its initial public offering in August, is considered an emerging rival to Tesla in the electric vehicle market.

The company said the Kiwigogo is the first in a series of electric flying vehicles it's developing as part of a long-term research and development that includes research into mapping technologies.

"We think in the future not only electric vehicles will have the smart mobility autonomous driving features, but with other technology, enable other devices that can create a multi-dimensional ecosystem, that will be very exciting," said Brian Gu, vice chairman and president of Xpeng. "That's why we are investing in that area, and doing some exploration."

Analysis: Racial discrimination has been major factor in U.S. executions


Tuesday's report notes that of the 57 people presently on federal death row, 34 are persons of color. More than two dozen are Black men and some were convicted by all-White juries. File Photo by Paul Buck/EPA

Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The Death Penalty Information Center said in a new analysis Tuesday that racial discrimination in the United States has played a prominent role in the administration of capital punishment in the past.

The report, titled, "Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty," examines the way that people of color -- particularly Black Americans -- have disproportionately faced executions, lynchings and police killings.

"The death penalty has been used to enforce racial hierarchies throughout United States history, beginning with the colonial period and continuing to this day," said Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC senior director of research and special projects and the report's lead author.

"Its discriminatory presence as the apex punishment in the American legal system legitimizes all other harsh and discriminatory punishments. That is why the death penalty must be part of any discussion of police reform, prosecutorial accountability, reversing mass incarceration and the criminal legal system as a whole."

Tuesday's report notes that of the 57 people presently on federal death row, 34 are persons of color. More than two dozen are Black men and some were convicted by all-White juries.

The analysis specifically cites the cases of Abu-Ali Abdur Rahman, who's argued that a prosecutor unjustly removed two potential Black jurors based on racial stereotypes -- and Julius Jones, who was sentenced to death by an all-White jury for killing a White businessman.

The report said between 1990 and 2010, 20% of inmates scheduled for execution in North Carolina were sentenced by all-White juries, and qualified Black jurors were disqualified at more than twice the rate of their White counterparts in almost 200 capital cases.

A mock jury study of more than 500 Californians six years ago also found that White jurors were more likely to sentence poor Latino defendants to death than poor White defendants, Tuesday's report noted.

Further, it cited an analysis that found killers of Whites were more likely to face capital prosecution than killers of Blacks.

The DPIC report also tied the racial history of capital punishment to ongoing civil unrest over police brutality that followed the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, noting that exonorations of Black Americans are more likely to be linked to some type of official misconduct.

A separate report on Tuesday similarly found that more than half exonerations of innocent victims of all races involved some type of misconduct by prosecutors or police.

"Racial disparities are present at every stage of a capital case and get magnified as a case moves through the legal process," DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham said.

"If you don't understand the history -- that the modern death penalty is the direct descendant of slavery, lynching and Jim Crow-segregation -- you won't understand why."

 

N.C. Supreme Court reduces 3 death row inmates' sentences to life]

Sept. 25 (UPI) -- The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday reduced three death row inmates' sentences to life in prison after they appealed under a now-defunct law that protected against racial bias.

The ruling provided relief for Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin and Christina Walters.

They each sought a new sentence under the Racial Justice Act, which was passed in 2009 but repealed by Republicans in 2013. The law allows death row inmates to appeal their sentences if there's evidence of racial bias.

The state Supreme Court this summer ruled that even though the law was repealed in 2013, it could still be applied retroactively to cases tried before the repeal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the three defendants, hailed the high court's decision.

"Today's decision affirms that the state won't sweep evidence of the racism people experienced in their capital cases under the rug. It's an important move towards rectifying the harm that has been caused," the organization said.

Augustine was convicted of killing a Fayetteville, N.C., police officer in 2001; Golphin of killing a North Carolina Highway Patrol trooper and a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy in 1997; and Walters of two gang-related killings.

Jerry Saltz: How Caravaggio Destroyed (and Saved) Painting

Michelangelo Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600). Photo: Public Domain

Again and again during this pandemic, unable to actually see art in person, I have time-traveled within myself for sustenance — with the help of the internet, of course. Viewing art online flattens the contextual experience: It is just as easy, or just as difficult, to call up a Renaissance masterpiece as a contemporary painting, and each appears on my computer screen in precisely the same way, without any of the trappings of art-historical importance (gilded frames, museum lighting, grand settings) or contemporary novelty (the vacuum-quiet space of a blue-chip gallery, the buzz of hype).

In these sessions of inner priestcraft, I invariably arrive in the past, indeed always the distant past, often the Renaissance. Lately, I’ve been traveling to Rome in 1600, when, at the age of 28, Michelangelo Caravaggio triggered a thermo-nuclear artistic explosion when the first two of his paintings of St. Matthew were installed in a small, newly built chapel in a church. Even then, everyone knew something shocking had happened. Painters were “looking upon his works as miracles,” it was written. Rivals groused that “this monster of genius” had wrought the “end of painting.” Artists had spent the previous 50 years revering Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, so much that ersatz Renaissance paintings had become a cottage industry among worshipful painters and princes wanting to show they had the same taste as popes and potentates — much like current monkey-see-monkey-do collectors of contemporary art. Yet there were brilliant Mannerists like Pontormo and Bronzino, who were estranged from this type of classicizing but found ways around it by wildly exaggerating certain aspects of Renaissance paintings: elongating necks, fingers, and torsos till bodies became paranormal apparitions to express strained emotions in ethereal spaces. In one fell swoop, Caravaggio shattered Renaissance wholeness, clarity, recessional space, and unity, along with Mannerism’s aristocratic affectations, anxious self-consciousness, and abstruse optical effects. (I adore Mannerism for all of this.) Caravaggio’s work seems to unleash new human forces into art; whirling, corkscrewing space; shafts of light and shadow; theatricality; and, above all, a new, colossal unideal naturalism of painting from life. He creates an almost modern psychological interiority that leads directly to geniuses like Rembrandt and Velázquez (who dispense with theatrics for miracles of sensual inwardness), Vermeer and Bernini, and, in English literature, to John Milton’s lines like “Blood, death, and deathful deeds are in that noise, Ruin, destruction at the utmost point.” All this is why Caravaggio’s follower Nicolas Poussin praised him for coming “into the world to destroy painting.”

Caravaggio would be dead within ten years, but he changed art history. He arrived in Rome in his early 20s, destitute and often in trouble, but was soon taken in by a Medici-family associate. Before his life and career were over, the constant brawler was arrested numerous times, imprisoned, convicted of murder, and sentenced to beheading; he escaped south and never returned to Rome. He may have been murdered himself while trying to get back. Nevertheless, he was, in his few years, a pop-culture superstar loved by the people and controversial among the clergy. Caravaggio’s titanic new style is called Baroque, and it transformed painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, fountains, cities, religion — everything. The Baroque feels vital now in the way it refuses to accept a simple world of surfaces, rule-bound theoretical art, and overly thought-out scenes and instead probes deeper into the core of lived experience.


The commission for the Matthew cycle came in July 1599, courtesy of that Medici connection, and paved the way to stardom for the unruly, unconventional painter while allowing this new chapel to take a chance on a new artist. A lot rode on this commission; plus, the pope might even see it. The cycle was painted in a tear — he must have been on fire. The last painting of the story was begun first, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. It is the greatest depiction ever made of what Shakespeare, writing concurrently, in Hamlet, calls “murder most foul.” Two large figures center the painting, one of them a twisting, nearly naked young man with a pointed rapier in his right hand. He is standing over and grimacing in fury at an older man who is sprawled on the ground between his legs. He has murdered the old man, running his heart through with the now-withdrawn sword. Blood spurts from the mortal wound. That man is Matthew; this is his martyrdom; he is already dying. The slayer stands in dominion over Matthew the way Muhammad Ali stood over a knocked-out Sonny Liston. This is the exact second before death, an instant of action, and pain, never before or since rendered this realistically, horrifically, or beautifully. We are stunned, hypnotized, repelled, frightened, fascinated, confused, and stupefied by it all. Caravaggio’s realism is so derived from observation that the scene becomes undeniable.

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599–1600). Photo: Public Domain

According to some tellings, Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia after saying Mass. This is why he wears vestments here and seems to be on the steps of an altar. People in various states of nakedness suggest baptisms. All the dress is contemporary; the executioner appears to have been painted from life and was perhaps a friend of Caravaggio’s. Predator and prey form this riveting, still center of the pandemonium around them. The geometry is a kind of swirling, chambered-nautilus spiral. There may be 13 figures here, but it’s hard to make them all out; it’s like some pictorial deep-sea vent.

Our eyes search for anything anchored — some place of stability among the chaos. There it is: Above Matthew, visible only to him, is a beautiful, winged angel who twists and bends to offer the palm of martyr-dom to the dying disciple. An altar boy in white robes screams and flees. His right arm mimics Matthew’s; his trunk turns the opposite way of the murderer’s. Caravaggio often echoes, opposes, mirrors, and flip-flops poses. Often someone will face forward next to a figure facing away. In the darkness over the swordsman’s right forearm, we see the artist, large boned, brooding, staring, and intense.

As maximal as the Martyrdom is, the Calling of St. Matthew is minimal. This is the scene where Christ calls Matthew as his disciple. The entire top of this picture is almost empty. That’s radical! Whole areas are just blackness. In a dim room, five figures sit around a table. We know Matthew was a Jewish tax collector. He’s the richly dressed patrician with a coin in his hat; his right hand is near the money pile in front of him. Note his elegant belt. Around him are a man apparently paying his taxes, an associate, and two sword-wielding, thuggish young buccaneers, typical types of Caravaggio’s time, when Rome was overrun with crime, unemployed soldiers, mercenaries, gangs, and local Mafia-like warlords.

Jesus and Peter appear on the right. Jesus raises his hand and arm toward the table. This gesture intentionally echoes Michelangelo’s Sistine-ceiling Adam extending his left hand to be touched by God. This makes sense for an artist saying there’s a new game in town; narratively, Christ is also known as the “the new Adam.” (Challenging Michelangelo so directly took amazing guts and risked offending the taste of any patron insulted by this gesture of pictorial gall.) A beam of light from above Jesus dawns across the room. It shines on Matthew, who instinctively raises his left hand as if to wonder, Who, me? In the Bible, Jesus calls Matthew thusly: “ ‘Follow me’ … And Matthew got up and followed him.” Some say Matthew is gesturing at the man to his right, as if saying, “Who, him?” Yet this man has no idea what’s going on around him and still looks down. Now examine Matthew’s legs and feet. They unconsciously turn toward Jesus. This is Matthew in the act of leaving one life and joining another. Talk about being “called.” Caravaggio is mind-blowing this way.

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (1602). Photo: Public Domain

The final painting in the cycle, the Inspiration of St. Matthew, is Matthew writing his Gospel. He has just arrived at a table — there’s an open book on it waiting for him — and dipped his pen into an inkwell. He’s so taken by something that he hasn’t even sat down and turns on one knee while standing. (The stool is about to fall off the ledge it’s on.) I’ve never seen anyone painted this way before or since. I know this pose in my bones, though. I’ve run to my desk in the grip of imagined inspiration like this, possessed. Matthew isn’t looking at the page. He looks above him at the same seraph we see in the Martyrdom. This angel gestures with his fingers as if counting — one, two, three, this, then that, then the next — as if establishing and clarifying the narrative of the life of Jesus that Matthew is attempting to set down. It is patient angelic aid for an author trying to get this right. In effect, the angel is consoling him, saying, “Okay, Matthew, first comes the Sermon on the Mount, then the loaves and the fishes, then his entry into Jerusalem, then the Last Supper.”

I’ve seen these paintings thrice; each time ranks among the best days of my life. In this, my 188th day of quarantine, largely away from galleries and museums and fixated on the chaos around us, something in these paintings called to me. A mystery of some kind beckons; a skeleton key that wants turning. I can’t stop thinking about that angel showing Matthew how to write, the same one who reaches quietly downward, extending the palm as Matthew’s arm rises upward. This way of rising speaks volumes. But what is it telling us? Then, bam, after ten days, I see it. Amid all the action, observation, and dramatics, a paradoxical deep content opens. It is slowness — the slowness of Matthew wondering, not quite knowing what is happening in any of the paintings; a slowness that makes him me, you, all of us. Humanness.

In the painting of him writing, I see an author at a loss for words to suit the subject, trying, failing, hoping a ghost of inspiration might appear. This is a slowness and desperation that all writers and artists know. The Martyrdom is a man looking away from his killer, knowing another presence is here, not knowing what, coming to terms with something, allowing his hand to reach in wonder toward this otherness he feels above him. None of this comes with a lightning bolt of revelation and is more like the gradual, almost glacial, boreal reckonings I have been feeling these days away from the world yet watching the world lurch in starts. Matthew’s hand doesn’t extend in protest or terror. It extends in a gradual, final acceptance of grace, of knowing something new. In these frozen moments of painting, time eases into some cosmic soup of slow knowing. This lets me finally let go, too. I give up on knowing how Caravaggio created this quelling quietude of balm within clamorous space. Instead, I just savor it.

*This article appears in the September 28, 2020, issue of New York Magazine.

Aaron Sorkin’s Annoying Tics Are Actually Good in The Trial of the Chicago 7
By Alison Willmore MOVIE REVIEW SEPT. 25, 2020

The speeches, the grandstanding, the quips — they totally work in the context of this Netflix courtroom drama. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Netflix

The most maddening, irresistible proposition in an Aaron Sorkin production is that a speech can change hearts and minds. Sorkin loves speech, period — motormouthed walk-and-talks where the cleverness of the characters mitigates the fact that they sound awfully similar, quippy exchanges that ping-pong back around to an eventual callback, arguments that rise in a calculated crescendo until one character breaks into a yell and the room abruptly falls silent. He’s a playwright who moved into film and then television and, more recently, started to direct. The Trial of the Chicago 7, about the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the seven participants who were charged by the federal government with crimes like conspiracy and inciting a riot, is Sorkin’s second venture behind the camera, after Molly’s Game in 2017. But he’ll always be a writer first, and you can see it in his certainty that the correct words, delivered with the proper amount of conviction, can win someone over from the other side of the aisle, even if it’s only one instance — cracking a closed mind open with some carefully crafted sentences.

There are a lot of speeches in The Trial of the Chicago 7, but it’s hard to mind, given what it’s about. This film is one of those exhilarating instances when Sorkin finds a context in which all of his well-established impulses that can be so annoying elsewhere — the self-righteousness, the straw men, the great men, the men who aren’t onstage but are nevertheless digging deep in their diaphragms to deliver their lines to the back row — actually work. (It helps that there are almost no women here for Sorkin to mangle.) It’s about a trial, and it’s about activism, two worlds where people spend a lot of time trying to move hearts and minds with instances of grandstanding. The film moves between these innately theatrical spheres with a crackling energy, slipping easily from the courtroom in 1969 to the preparations and protests in 1968. What makes it so rousing is not the floridness of the dialogue but the way it’s used to acknowledge that moral clarity is not an end unto itself. While Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), acting at the behest of the new Nixon administration, tries to create a monolithic bogeyman out of the “radical left,” we’re shown how little agreement there actually is on the side of the seven defendants as to what it means and how to effect change.


There’s so little agreement that there are actually eight defendants when the trial begins. Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) insists on his own representation, despite being forced to fend for himself after his lawyer has a medical emergency. It’s politically expedient for the prosecution to group Bobby in with the others in what they dub “the all-star team,” but he rejects the forced comparison — “Your life, it’s a fuck-you to your father, right? And you can see how that’s different from a rope on a tree?” he asks Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) midway through the movie, after Fred Hampton (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is killed by the FBI. Tom and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) are part of Students for a Democratic Society, and their focus on stopping the war and winning elections doesn’t entirely jibe with the anti-authoritarian Yippies, as represented by Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), who want a cultural revolution as well as a political one. Their readiness to hurl Molotov cocktails in turn contrasts with David Dellinger’s (John Carroll Lynch) committed pacifism. John Froines (Danny Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), more minor players who comment from the sidelines, muse that “this is the Academy Awards of protests, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an honor just to be nominated.”

It’s a sprawling ensemble — capped by Mark Rylance and Ben Shenkman, as the group’s attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, and Michael Keaton in a small but pivotal role — and Cohen and Strong emerge as the standouts. They sometimes feel like a stoner-comedy duo, with Strong doing a voice best described as Tommy Chong by way of Bullwinkle J. Moose. But Cohen emphasizes Abbie’s shrewdness, the intention behind all the jokey irreverence. The Trial of the Chicago 7 plays fast and loose with certain details; when Seale was infamously bound and gagged at the order of Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), who wears his biases openly, it was for days, not for the minutes shown in the movie before his trial is severed from the rest of the defendants’. But as an account of history as filtered through Sorkin’s sensibility, the film takes a thrillingly unexpected, if also understated, turn against civility. When Abbie and Tom have it out over who should be the one among them to take the stand, it’s Abbie whose point is the better one and Abbie who tells the courtroom, “I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things that right now are populated by terrible people.”

Sorkin will always romanticize the idea of the honorable conservative and the promise of polite bipartisanship that accompanies it. At the end of a talk at the San Sebastián Film Festival earlier this week, he offered up his scenario for how he would script the end of Election Night, and it was more unbearable than anything The Newsroom had to offer: Trump refuses to concede, and “for the first time, his Republican enablers march up to the White House and say, ‘Donald, it’s time to go.’” It’s the reason that fantasy of the perfect speech is as nauseating as it is appealing: It’s one based around the idea that there’s a universal understanding of what is right and that everyone wants to act on behalf of it, once enlightened or appropriately shamed. From the first time Gordon-Levitt appears onscreen as Schultz, who is portrayed as an eager up-and-comer disturbed by some of the trial’s developments, it’s obvious that the movie won’t be able to resist giving us some sign that he’s not just a good soldier. It’s an eye-rolling moment but minor compared with the film’s underlying acknowledgement that this trial was about attempting to punish people for refusing to abide by rules and structures that are inherently unfair. The movie ends not with a speech but with a listing of names — a reminder that demands for respectability and good behavior can equal demands for silence, especially when the straightforward speaking of facts counts as rebellion.