San Jose to apologize for 1887 Chinatown destruction

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The city of San Jose was once home to one of the largest Chinatowns in California. In the heart of downtown, it was the center of life for Chinese immigrants who worked on nearby farms and orchards.

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More than a century after arsonists burned it to the ground in 1887, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution to apologize to Chinese immigrants and their descendants for the role the city played in “systemic and institutional racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.”

San Jose, with a population over 1 million, is the largest city in the country to formally apologize to the Chinese community for its treatment of their ancestors. In May, the city of Antioch apologized for its mistreatment of Chinese immigrants, who built tunnels to get home from work because they were banned from walking the streets after sundown.

“It’s important for members of the Chinese American community to know that they are seen and that the difficult conversations around race and historic inequities include the oppression that their ancestors suffered,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.

The apologies come amid a wave of attacks against the Asian community since the pandemic began last year. Other cities, specifically in the Pacific Northwest, have issued apologies in decades past. California, too, apologized in 2009 to Chinese workers and Congress has apologized for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was approved in 1882 and made Chinese residents the targets of the nation’s first law limiting immigration based on race or nationality

The city had five Chinatowns but the largest one was built in 1872. Fifteen years later, the city council declared it a public nuisance and unanimously approved an order to remove it to make way for a new City Hall. Before officials acted, the thriving Chinatown was burned down by arsonists, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and displacing about 1,400 people, according to the resolution.

“An apology for grievous injustices cannot erase the past, but admission of the historic wrongdoings committed can aid us in solving the critical problems of racial discrimination facing America today,” the resolution reads.

The Chinese started coming to California in large numbers during the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. They worked in mines, built the transcontinental railroad, toiled in farms and helped develop the abalone and shrimp industries. By 1870, there were about 63,000 Chinese in the United States, 77% of them residing in California, according to the resolution.

Chinese immigrants faced racism and were forced out of towns. They were denied the right to own property, marry white people and attend public schools. They also were subjected to violence and intimidation and denied equal protection by the courts.

In San Jose, an episcopal church where Chinese immigrants attended Sunday school was burned to the ground, Chinese laundries were condemned based on being housed in wooden buildings and the first state convention of the Anti-Chinese League was held there in 1886, according to the resolution.

Connie Young Yu, a historian and author of “Chinatown, San Jose, USA,” said her grandfather was a teenage refugee from the 1887 fire. Her father was born in the last existing Chinatown built in San Jose. The community was established in a new location with the help of German immigrant John Heinlen, despite threats to his life. But that Chinatown, known as Heninlenville, disappeared after the Chinese population dwindled.

Yu said the official apology gives her an “enormous sense of reconciliation and a sense of peace.”

“This is beyond an apology. It is taking responsibility, which is a beautiful thing to me,” Yu added.

Gerrye Wong, who helped found the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project in San Jose, said she, Yu, and other community members will formally accept the apology at a ceremony Wednesday near the former Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose, which was built where the destroyed Chinatown once existed. In 1987, city officials dedicated a plaque at the site to mark the fire's 100th anniversary.

Wong, a retired teacher, said the apology from the 10th largest city in the country is a teaching moment because this history was not in textbooks or taught in schools.

“As a fourth-generation Chinese American myself, I didn’t know any of this and Chinese people never talked about it,” she said.

“In this anti-Asian hate environment that we see today, it’s a great step forward because it will bring attention to not only our hardships but also what Chinese communities have contributed to this country,” she added.

___

This story was first published on September 28, 2021. It was updated on September 29, 2021, to correct the timing of the largest Chinatown’s destruction to 15 years after it was built, not five.

Olga R. Rodriguez, The Associated Press

NOT JUST ALBERTA

B.C. subsidizes energy drilling on caribou habitat it promised to protect, study says

British Columbia is subsidizing oil and gas well drilling on the same land it has promised to protect for caribou, new research has found

 

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"The B.C. government has made a lot of commitments to caribou habitat restoration and it's not really working," said Adriana DiSilvestro, a University of British Columbia graduate student and lead author on the project.

"The fact there are oil and gas operations being subsidized in areas the federal government has deemed critical habitat is a piece to this puzzle."

DiSilvestro and her colleagues first identified wells in northeastern B.C. and located them on federal maps showing critical habitat for woodland caribou, a threatened species for which the province has promised the federal government to develop a recovery plan.

The team then used government and industry data to determine which of those wells had benefited from a government subsidy. Those subsidies include programs such as the Deep Well Royalty Program, which covers part of the drilling and completion costs for these wells up to $2.8 million per well and can be used to reduce royalties by half.

DiSilvestro said the research shows 3,114 active oil and gas wells within critical caribou habitat in B.C. Of these, 1,678 wells -- just over half -- are run by companies that have received assistance from one of three provincial subsidy programs over the past three years.

Previous research has identified industrial use as a major driver of caribou habitat loss and herd declines. Energy and logging both damage the old-growth forest caribou rely on and create easy pathways for predators to reach formerly safe hideouts.

"We conclude that public funds are subsidizing caribou extinction," the report says.

Of B.C.'s 53 caribou herds, 14 are stable or increasing while 25 herds are either shrinking or have disappeared. No data exists for the rest. Some First Nations have been forced to step in with extreme conservation measures, such as penning up pregnant caribou cows until they can safely calve.

In February 2020, B.C. signed a so-called Section 11 conservation agreement with Ottawa that promised "commitments related to habitat protection and restoration." That agreement, under the Species At Risk Act, was seen as an alternative to the federal government stepping in to impose protections under an emergency protection order.

In an emailed response, Meghan McRae of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation pointed to a series of programs the province funds to remediate old wells, including $27 million from industry to clean up wells for which no owner currently exists.

"The province is working with First Nations, local governments, industry, and stakeholders to identify acceptable outcomes for caribou recovery as well as continued resource development in B.C.," she said.

"We continue to work with the federal government on our efforts of conservation and recovery of caribou herds."

DiSilvestro said the findings suggest that conservation agreements made with one handbe undercut by programs from the other.

"We can say pretty clearly that (Section 11) agreement isn't working. The continued subsidization of industry in these areas is a major factor in (caribou) decline."

Alberta and Saskatchewan also have Section 11 agreements with Ottawa, promising caribou recovery efforts and habitat protection.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development and Environmental Defence has calculated that Alberta spent about $1.6 billion a year in fossil fuel subsidies between 2016 and 2019. Its work does not detail where that money has been spent.

It doesn't have equivalent data for Saskatchewan.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2021.

-- Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Alex Jones: Infowars host is responsible for damages triggered by his false claims on the Sandy Hook shooting, judge rules


Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who hosts the right-wing commentary website Infowars, was found legally responsible in two lawsuits for damages caused by his claims surrounding the 2012 Sandy Hook school mass shooting, according to court documents released Thursday.

© Drew Angerer/Getty Images Alex Jones of InfoWars loses two lawsuits over Sandy Hook shooting claims.

By Aya Elamroussi, CNN 3 hrs ago

Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued default judgments on Monday against Jones and his outlet for not complying with court orders to provide information for the lawsuits brought against him by the parents of two children killed in the shooting.

The rulings, which were first reported by the Huffington Post, effectively mean that Jones lost the cases by default. A jury will convene to ascertain how much he will owe the plaintiffs, the report said.

An attorney for the parents, Mark Bankston, told CNN in a written statement that the rulings offers his clients "the closure they deserve."

He added: "Mr. Jones was given ample opportunity to take these lawsuits seriously and obey the rule of law. He chose not to do so, and now he will face the consequences for that decision."

Jones falsely claimed that the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a "giant hoax" carried out by crisis actors on behalf of people who oppose the Second Amendment.

The shooter killed 26 people at the school -- 20 of whom were young children -- before killing himself.

Several families of the victims sued Jones for defamation in both Texas and Connecticut courts.

The Texas judge essentially ruled that Jones and his parent company, Free Speech Systems, "intentionally disobeyed" court orders when they didn't hand over certain documentations related to lawsuits against him.

"The Court finds that Defendants' failure to comply ... is greatly aggravated by [their] consistent pattern of discovery abuse throughout similar cases pending before this Court," Gamble wrote in one of her rulings. "The Court finds that Defendants' discovery conduct in this case is the result of flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules."

In 2019, Jones acknowledged the shooting was real during a sworn deposition he made as part of a defamation case brought against him by Sandy Hook victims' families.

Jones' attorney, Brad Reeves, declined to comment when reached by CNN on Thursday, but a statement posted on Infowars from attorney Norm Pattis said the court's decisions were "stunning."

"It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases," the statement said. "We are distressed by what we regard as a blatant abuse of discretion by the trial court. We are determined to see that these cases are heard on the merits."

CLASSIC FASCIST AGRUMENT

Reconciliation Day not holiday because Quebec needs more productivity: Legault

Quebec Premier François Legault says the province cannot afford to make the national day honouring victims and survivors of residential schools a statutory holiday

.

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Legault told reporters today the province needs more "productivity," in response to questions about why Quebec has not officially recognized Sept. 30 as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Events are being held across the country — including in Quebec — for the first annual day in honour of lost children and survivors of the country's residential schools, the last of which closed in the mid-1990s.

Provinces such as British Columbia, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have followed the federal government's lead and made the day a statutory holiday, while others, including Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick, have not.

Later in the day, Legault told reporters it would be too expensive to give Quebecers another paid day off work.

He says Quebecers have a duty to remember how residential schools damaged Indigenous communities, but he says there are less costly ways to commemorate the past.

"To have another statutory holiday — regardless of the subject — is very expensive," Legault said. "I don't think it's necessary to have a cost this high to do this commemoration."

He said all provinces face competitiveness and productivity challenges. "In Quebec, if we look at the number of hours worked per year, there is work to do," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2021.

The Canadian Press

THE REVOLUTION IS AGAINST WORK AND PRODUCTIVITY 

FOR PROFIT

THE ARCTIC HAS MELTED

Royal Canadian Navy ship completes Northwest Passage journey for first time since 1954

Mackenzie Scott CBC

© Royal Canadian Navy HMCS Harry DeWolf is the first Canadian navy ship to complete the Northwest Passage since 1954. The vessel began its voyage in Iqaluit on Aug. 7 and is sailing to its final destination in Vancouver, where it's expected to arrive on Friday.

For the first time since 1954, a Royal Canadian Navy ship has completed the journey through the Northwest Passage.

"It was the longest time a Canadian navy ship has operated in the Arctic in consecutive days in more than 50 years," said Cmdr. Corey Gleason, commanding officer of HMCS Harry DeWolf.

The ship began its voyage in Iqaluit on Aug. 7 and is sailing to its final destination in Vancouver, where it's expected to arrive on Friday.

Although navy ships navigate the Arctic, Gleason said they normally spend only a short time there each year — typically between the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September — because they aren't designed for ice.

However, HMCS Harry DeWolf is a new Canadian navy ship designed specifically for Arctic waters.

"It's an Arctic and offshore patrol vessel.... It's every bit capable of operating in very thick ice ... it's designed to operate anywhere in the world," Gleason said.

Icebreakers normally operate only in icy waters, he said, but this vessel has been designed for a range of conditions —from the dead of winter to anywhere south of the equator.

Gleason said there are about 87 sailors aboard HMCS Harry DeWolf, which is the size of a Canadian football field. He said there are plans to have six more ships like it.
Following path of the Franklin Expedition

When the ship began to make its way through the Northwest Passage, Gleason could have taken one of seven routes.

"In this inaugural trip, I decided to take the route of the Franklin Expedition, really out of the interest of having my sailors experience the hardships of sailors of the past, to get the opportunity to walk in their footsteps, as it were, and to see where the Franklin Expedition had wintered over," Gleason said.

He said he also wanted to "talk about Franklin's decision points, where he may have been successful if he had made some different decisions."

© CBC The approximate locations of where the Franklin Expedition crewmen abandoned ship and where the wrecks were eventually found.

The Franklin Expedition was the ill-fated mission led by explorer John Franklin, who took two ships from England to search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.

The ships, along with Franklin and his 128 crew members, disappeared. The vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were only discovered in 2014 and 2016, respectively, thanks to the help of local Inuit.

'Meaningful commitment to the people of the North'

"The real challenge I had was to spend some time teaching my sailors how to operate up in the Arctic in the very high North. And that included small boat activities," Gleason said.

He said they stopped off at several hamlets, including Pond Inlet, Grise Fiord and Arctic Bay, and visited with leadership and community members, inviting them on board for a tour.

Gleason said the journey aboard HMCS Harry DeWolf wasn't just about completing training exercises and sailing through the Northwest Passage, but about strengthening relationships with communities in the Arctic.

"It was very special for everybody on-board," he said. "These relationships, it's not the last time that we're going to visit and see one another. This is meant to be a meaningful commitment to the people of the North."

Gleason said there is hope that through interactions with some of the youth in the communities, the trip could spark their interest in possibly wanting to join the Canadian navy one day.

He said he has an ambitious plan for the Canadian Rangers — part of the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves who work in remote coastal areas of the the North — to expand from operating on land to water.

"They are maritime people. They operate both on land and the sea, and it just makes sense to me that the navy would look to work with the people of the North to learn from them, to work with them and to operate alongside them if they let us," Gleason said.

"And perhaps one day, have a young person from one of the communities up North to even captain one of these ships."

Kenora NDP candidate calls out violent, disturbing incidents on campaign trail

CBC/Radio-Canada 1 day ago

© Supplied by Janine Seymour Janine Seymour is calling for more measures to keep women running for office safe after a number of incidents during the 2021 federal election. Seymour ran for the NDP in the Kenora riding won by the Conservative incumbent.

The NDP candidate for Kenora, Ont., says she experienced a number of disturbing incidents during the last federal campaign, and is now calling for safe spaces for women running for office.

"I really wanted to be respectful and mindful that people were coming out into community settings for the first time," said Janine Seymour, a lawyer who lost her MP bid to Conservative incumbent Eric Melillo in the Sept. 20 vote.

"There was a lot of anxiety, and I did talk to the other candidates early on because I received a lot and I wanted to check in with their experience," she said. "And they also said it was a very violent election."

Seymour said one of the more notable incidents she experienced was when she was groped while canvassing at a public event.

"This was by somebody engaging in conversation with myself, and rubbed himself and touched me," she said.

Seymour also described being "spooked" by a conversation she had with a resident about gun control while she was campaigning with her children. In addition, she said, some of her campaign signs were vandalized.

Seymour said she decided not to involve the police in any of the incidents, a decision that, based on her experience as an Indigenous person and a lawyer, she doesn't regret.

"You need to acknowledge that that's not the first instinct for people, and that was not my first instinct at all, because of ... having experiences where you've turned to police, authorities, and it hasn't gone in the way that you had hoped," she said. "You were almost retraumatized, and I've had that personally here in this town, too.

"It took the people I was canvassing with to call that out because as a native woman, you are subjected to these things where again, it's not OK, but it's almost normalized or accepted, which is not at all where we should be headed to."

Seymour said it's important that women feel safe when running for elected office.

"It is so important that this other perspective, these other voices, other narrative gets heard," she said. "We've had a long history, 150-year history, here of the same narrative, and it's been through one lens."
Abuse against women candidates common, group says

Anne Antenucci, co-chair of Women in Politics — a Thunder Bay-based organization that encourages and trains women who are interested in running for office — said Seymour's experiences are indicative of what other women running in the 2021 election encountered.

"It was a great thing to see so many women, and a record number of women, putting their name forward, especially in this region," Antenucci said. "The flip side of that, however, is those same women and those same people of colour, they received an enormous amount of abuse, both in person and online."

Antenucci said her organization heard from campaign workers who were insulted, or had objects thrown at them, while campaigning door to door. A woman in the Thunder Bay area was reportedly pushed off a doorstep.

"One woman had dogs set on her," Antenucci said. "She was a Black woman."

Others received abusive messages through social media, she said.

And while social media abuse, particularly towards women, has long been a problem, Antenucci said the 2021 election was different.

"This campaign in particular, it seems to have left the computer screen and moved into the general public, and that's where it gets scary," she said. "And as women, sometimes you have to be careful, because you don't want to be labelled as that girl who complains all the time.

"There is that connotation because you have to be tough, and you have to be 10 times better than a man who's running for the same position."
'They need to call it out'

Antenucci said there's no easy answer, but people calling out abuse when they see it is an important step.

"If men see another man doing it, they need to call it out," she said.

"I can't think of any other way to do it. I'm hopeful that perhaps the next generation will be different, but other than that, there isn't really a way that I can can see that this is going to stop."

Antenucci said she's fearful that something tragic will end up happening.

"It might take something like that to shock people."

Antenucci said Women in Politics expects a record number of women to run in the next municipal election, and the organization will be hosting a number of fireside chats about social media leading up to the race.

One of those chats, she said, will focus on social media.

"How to conduct yourself, what to do, how to handle things such as this, the best way that you can," Antenucci said. "We need the electorate to look like a constituents. It's the only way things are going to change."

Beth MacLean, who won human rights case for people with disabilities, dies at age 50

HALIFAX — Beth MacLean, a Nova Scotia woman with intellectual disabilities who won a landmark human rights case forcing the province to provide her with a home in the community, has died.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

An obituary says the 50-year-old died peacefully on Sept. 24 at the Dartmouth General Hospital.

MacLean was one of three people with intellectual disabilities who were required to live in a Halifax hospital ward for years before advocates helped them launch a human rights case to live with the help of support workers in a small home in the community — referred to as a small options home.

In 2019, a human rights board of inquiry determined the three had suffered discrimination individually; however, it rejected arguments that placement in small options homes is broadly applicable to people with disabilities.

Small options homes are defined by the province as homes in residential areas for up to four people with disabilities, where they receive care and other necessary support.

The board of inquiry ruling determined the province violated the rights of MacLean, Joseph Delaney and the late Sheila Livingstone — who died before the hearing ended — because they were held at the Emerald Hall psychiatric unit in Halifax despite opinions from doctors and staff that they could live in the community.

Marty Wexler, the chairman of the Disability Rights Coalition in Nova Scotia, said in an email Wednesday he was saddened to hear of MacLean's death and extended the coalition's condolences to her family, support workers and "all who assisted Beth in her fight for her dream of a life in the community with others."

"After decades of struggle and unnecessary institutionalization in which Beth was forced to fight her own government, she achieved her dream of life in the community," he wrote.

"Her human rights case provides an important precedent for the many hundreds of others who are unnecessarily deprived of the opportunity to live in the community. Her experience, one would hope, will push the provincial government to do the right thing and enable others to live in the community and avoid the struggle and hardship that Beth endured to get the life she wanted."

During the hearing, MacLean's lawyers argued that a 1995 provincial moratorium on the creation of small options homes — which the province later lifted — was a conscious decision by governments to restrict access to services.

In his 2019 ruling, however, board chairman Walter Thompson didn't accept that the province generally discriminated against people with disabilities who reside in hospitals, in large institutions, or who are on a waiting list for placement in small options homes.

The coalition appealed the portion of the board of inquiry decision in which Thompson rejected the claim of systemic discrimination. The province has also appealed the findings of discrimination against MacLean, Delaney and Livingstone.

The various parties are awaiting the Court of Appeal decision.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2021.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

In ‘Nuclear Family,’ filmmaker explores her lesbian moms’ historic lawsuit

Max Gao 

Three decades after she found herself in the middle of a landmark legal battle between a lesbian couple and the gay sperm donor who sued them for paternity and visitation rights, filmmaker Ry Russo-Young has excavated her own family history with the help of old photos, home movies and in-depth interviews in the new HBO docuseries “Nuclear Family.”

© Provided by NBC News

The three-part documentary, which Russo-Young said “is very much my perspective on this story,” re-examines the case that played a crucial role in validating the legal existence of families with same-sex parents. It’s a story that the 39-year-old director — whose other credits include “The Sun Is Also a Star,” “Nobody Walks” and “Before I Fall” — resisted telling at first in the form of a documentary, because she “didn’t want to make a me-and-my-problems doc.”


It wasn’t until she became a mother herself, and felt that she had the necessary tools and skills “to do this story justice,” that she decided it was the right time to revisit her past.

“Becoming a mother, having my own children, made me realize how important a child is in one’s life and how it completely changes your whole world, because the amount of love and concern that you feel for that child is so massive,” Russo-Young told NBC News in a recent phone interview. “I think I understood the stakes of the story for everyone involved in a much deeper way … Eventually, I felt like I needed to tell it for me, and I had to have faith that it would matter to other people, because we could tap into more universal themes of family.”

HBO Cade Russo-Young, Sandy Russo, Ry Russo-Young, and Robin Young in HBO's

The story dates to the late 1970s at a time when sperm banks would not cater to lesbian couples who were looking to start their own families, thereby eliminating the possibility of having an anonymous donor. Instead, Sandy Russo and Robin Young — a lesbian couple living in New York City — were introduced to two gay men living in California who were willing to donate their sperm to help the women start their family.

Young gave birth to Russo-Young in 1981 using sperm donated by one of those men, a prominent civil rights attorney named Tom Steel; Russo had given birth to a daughter named Cade a year earlier using sperm donated by the other man, Jack Cole. Russo and Young said they made their intentions very clear from the outset: Both men would have “no rights, no responsibilities,” as Russo put it in the film, but the women would give the girls a chance to meet their biological fathers at some point.

Steel vacationed occasionally with the family when the girls were growing up. But when those relationships soured, he sued Young in 1991 for visitation rights and to be recognized as Russo-Young’s father, beginning a four-year dispute with a lesbian couple who had no legal protections and, according to Russo-Young, wasn’t recognized as a “legitimate family.”

“I think that biology sort of trumped everything else" at that time, Young said in a recent Television Critics Association panel. “So if a gay man was a donor and in a dispute with a lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, the law recognized that relationship over any other partnership or nonbiological family member. The whole focus of the law was the nuclear, heterosexual family. That was the norm and that was the desired norm. And anything outside of that could be deemed harmful to the child or not in the child’s best interest.”

© HBO Ry Russo-Young and Tom Steel in HBO's

Using many of the same arguments that discriminated against the LGBTQ community to which he belonged, including the belief that “it’s always in the child’s best interests to have a father” or the child would be seen as illegitimate, Steel lost the initial judgment but won an appeal to the State Supreme Court before ultimately dropping the case altogether. He died of complications from AIDS in 1998, at the age of 48.

While she had a dreamy and idyllic childhood with dress-up and imaginary games, Russo-Young said that those painful years “obliterated any kind of warmth that I had felt before” toward Steel, leading her to publicly deny her connection to him in the immediate aftermath of the lawsuit. In her early 20s, shortly after Steel died, Russo-Young received a box of home videos that chronicled their short time together. “I watched about a minute of those tapes and then put them away for many, many years and didn’t look at them,” she recalled.

But as she began to tell coming-of-age stories about people from different walks of life, she began to confront certain themes that led her to ponder her own upbringing: “How does the way that I was raised and the narrative that I grew up with inform who I am today and how I see the world?” It wasn’t until she was in her mid-30s and thinking about making a film about the lawsuit that she decided to take those same tapes — including one where Steel tried to explain his side of the story before he died — out of the closet again.

In an attempt to wrap her mind around the entire experience and “to reconnect to the feelings of warmth and love that we felt prior to the lawsuit,” Russo-Young decided to speak with Steel’s friends and the son of his partner in an attempt to better understand his side of the story.

“They all felt like Tom was doing what he had to do. There was no remorse,” Russo-Young revealed. “There was still anger, I would say, on everybody’s part towards the ‘other side.’ And that was something that was really striking to me, was how, to this day, everyone was convinced that they were very right. I really see the humanity on both sides, and that’s really compelling to me.”

Ry Russo-Young. (HBO)

Through the process of making this film, Russo-Young said that her perception of Steel had changed — even if her mothers’ minds have not — and she has learned to “embrace the nuance of my own feelings toward the lawsuit, toward my sperm donor, in a way that I can now sort of hold all of the feelings at the same time, as contradictory as they may be.”

“I have a lot of empathy for Tom now,” she said. “And sometimes, when I see him on film or think about him or watch those videos, I have a pang of, ‘Oh, I so wish he was still alive so that I could talk to him now and ask him things about the film and get to know him as a person and have him know me now as an adult.'”

But to maintain a certain level of professional distance, Russo-Young worked collaboratively with two editors, Pisie Hochheim and Ben Gold, to review decades of footage and had to “refer to myself in the third person a lot of the time and talk about Ry as a separate character who had to go on a journey in this movie,” she said.

For Dan Cogan, who served as a producer of “Nuclear Family,” Russo-Young’s strong background in scripted storytelling allowed her to strike a perfect balance between being both the guide and participant. “On the one hand, she was bringing herself and her feelings and her experience, and so the film is incredibly, intimately personal. At the same time, she was able to separate from her emotions and see the narrative as a storyteller,” Cogan said.

“To make something great, to craft a story, you have to both feel those emotions and also be able to step back and see it as a story that you are building,” he added, “and I think Ry’s scripted background helped her understand these real people as characters in a story.”

But in doing so, Russo-Young also had to risk hurting her mothers and her older sister, asking them to relive some of the most anxiety-inducing moments of their lives in excruciating detail. (Russo-Young noted that her mothers tried to protect her and her sister “from as much of the case as they could” when it was happening, but they were still subject to regular appointments with a court-appointed psychiatrist or they risked losing the initial case to Steel.)

In a particularly striking scene in the third episode, Russo-Young sits down with her mothers and tries to reconcile her own memories with what they have always told her — and what they say was ultimately done in her best interest. “Filming that scene was terrifying to me, because I didn’t want to hurt them, and they’d already gone so far with me in terms of participating in the film,” Russo-Young recalled.

She continued: “I told my moms prior to the actual shoot when I was in Los Angeles, preparing my questions: ‘I’m going to ask you some really hard questions. Please know that I love you and that I’m not saying you were bad parents. I don’t want this to be an attack — I don’t want you to feel it that way — but I have to ask these questions for myself. … I know you can do this with me, because I love you and we’re a strong family … and that’s what gives me faith that I can ask you these tough questions.’”

While they might now have different opinions about the lawsuit, Russo-Young and her mothers all agreed that a significant amount of progress has been made to advance LGBTQ rights in the last 40 years, especially with the legalization of same-sex marriage and the normalization and stability of gay families in the United States.

 

 Robin Young and Sandy Russo. (HBO)

“There’s still some distance to go, but the difference between when we were starting out as a family and now, it feels like eons,” Young said.

Russo-Young said she believes some of that progress was undoubtedly due to her mothers.

“Even the press that we did after the lawsuit was helpful to normalizing gay families, because seeing a lesbian family on the 6 o’clock news was just something that didn’t happen,” she said. “I remember hearing that it was the first in the nation where a lesbian family was recognized as an autonomous family. … It felt like such a win because the court was such a biology-based, patriarchal system at the time, so that decision really did feel like a miracle and was a complete rarity at the time. And that’s when I realized that maybe we were making change in some way.”

In a 1993 report in The New York Times, Peter Bienstock, the lawyer representing Russo and Young, said their court victory “recognizes, for the first time, the rights of children who are born to lesbian mothers.”

And while she acknowledges that the world has changed in her lifetime, with gay families going from “this hidden, renegade, DIY thing that barely existed to mainstream societal acceptance,” Russo-Young hopes that her documentary series “will also help propel us to continue forging rights for LGBTQ families.”

“I think we still have far to go, because I don’t think we realize how there are still not protections for gay families in all states,” she said.

The first episode of “Nuclear Family” is streaming on HBO Max. The second and third episodes will air on HBO on Oct. 3 and 10, before arriving on HBO Max.

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Haitian migrants get help from Texas group rallying thousands of donations

Tired, anxious and awaiting a new place to call home, almost 30,000 migrants were found camping or attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas, the Department of Homeland Security reported.

The migrants, many of whom are Haitian, have trekked north through Latin America, through dangerous conditions to escape earthquakes, the worsening effects of climate change, and political unrest. Many were left without basic necessities, so the Texan activist group Black Freedom Factory answered their calls for help.

The group put out calls for money, donations and other resources to help ease the burden for migrants seeking asylum. They collected, delivered and distributed tens of thousands of supplies to migrants in the United States and Mexico.

© Julio Cortez/AP Migrants, many from Haiti, wait to board a bus to Houston at a humanitarian center after they were released from United States Border Patrol upon crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in seeking asylum, Sept. 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas.

"We collected over 62,000 units in less than 48 hours last week," Kimiya Factory, executive director of Black Freedom Factory, said. "People started to donate items from all over the country because the biggest question was, 'how can we help if we're not in Texas and we're not near the border?' So we wanted to bridge that gap for people in the U.S. who care about immigrants and know what they contribute to our country."

According to DHS, about 17,400 migrants are awaiting their turn to claim asylum in the U.S. Another 2,000 people were loaded onto planes and deported back to Haiti. And 8,000 more returned south to Mexico.MORE: What is Title 42? Amid backlash, Biden administration defends use of Trump-era order to expel migrants

Factory said the initial ask for donations quickly grew from a statewide initiative to a nationwide movement, as people across the country banded together to get these families what they need.

They made an online shopping wishlist and within days, she said that her team was receiving hundreds of boxes a day.

"We're bringing everything from clothes to baby supplies, hygiene products, menstruation items, food, snacks, nonperishable items -- anything you can think of has been donated," Factory said.

© Black Freedom Factory The Black Freedom Factory has collaborated with groups like Black Voters Matter to ensure that Haitian migrants receive care and necessities.

The group is following the trail of where Haitians have been deported to or where they've been sent in the U.S. to help them get settled into their new lives.


Interacting with the migrants has been tough for Factory and her volunteers. They say the migrants are exhausted, and the children are scared about what is next for them -- will they return to a country they don't remember? But Factory said that the donations, the services and the kind gifts from donors makes the faces of migrants light up with joy and relief.MORE: Why thousands of migrants, many from Haiti, are stuck at Texas-Mexico border

"Haitians are arriving with no clothes, no shower, so it's really nice to see where [donors'] resources are going," Factory said. "Their money and their donations are going to the right place."

Viral photos of Haitian migrants being chased, grabbed and thrown around by Border Patrol agents in the ​​Rio Grande highlighted the unrest at the border, and the Biden administration and the DHS faced backlash for its treatment of the migrants.

Border Patrol has temporarily stopped using agents on horseback against migrants. The agents involved in the incidents have been placed on administrative leave pending the results of a DHS investigation.

© Marco Bello/Reuters 

Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. wait in line to board a bus to Houston from Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition after being released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Del Rio, Texas, Sept. 24, 2021.

"It was horrible to see what you saw -- to see people treated like they did -- horses nearly running over people, being strapped," President Joe Biden said in response to a question from ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott about taking responsibility for the Border Patrol's actions. "It's outrageous, I promise you, those people will pay. There is an investigation underway now, and there will be consequences. There will be consequences. It's an embarrassment, beyond an embarrassment. It's dangerous. It's wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world, sends the wrong message at home."

Biden was also criticized for deporting thousands of people without offering them the right to request asylum in the U.S.

However, Biden defended this action by invoking Title 42, a part of U.S. public health code that "allows the government to prevent the introduction of individuals during certain public health emergencies," like the coronavirus pandemic.

But Factory says that she and her dedicated team of volunteers did what they felt was necessary to do, when they saw Black lives being threatened at the border.

Black Freedom Factory began as a tool for Factory and other activists in the San Antonio area to address the issues of racial inequality hands on in their very own community.

From gerrymandering, to gentrification, to economic inequality -- the Black Freedom Factory collaborates with other local leaders, including public officials and other grassroots movements helping change the culture.MORE: US special envoy for Haiti resigns in protest over migrant removals

"This further proves the anti-Blackness that is rampant in the United States, and that the pictures that we saw [of] Black migrants being whipped is indicative of the conversation about Black lives mattering," Factory said. "Not just on U.S. soil but internationally, and as a Black community, we will not stand for the triggering and grotesque images that we constantly have to encounter with our people being harmed."

© Julio Cortez/AP A child sleeps on the shoulder of a woman as they prepare to board a bus to San Antonio moments after a group of migrants, many from Haiti, were released from custody upon crossing the Texas-Mexico border, Sept. 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas.

Now, the Black Freedom Factory, along with the organizations they parttner with throughout the nation, say they hope that donors and volunteers continue this energy -- as the crisis at the border and the inequality faced by migrants and aslyum seekers continues.

"I hope people do not lose the sense of urgency that they felt when this news broke," Factory said. "I hope that you know we continue to redistribute our wealth and our privileges as American citizens. And I hope that we understand that immigration issues and crises are everybody's issue and crises, and it's our duty to make sure that the democracy functions upon those values."

"This makes you more aware of the privilege that we have as Americans," she added.

SNAKE OIL KICK BACK
Utah's governor highlighted a controversial essential-oil MLM as a way to protect school kids from a COVID-19

insider@insider.com (Áine Cain) 

© Provided by Business Insider Vote Smart listed the Utah governor as receiving over $10,000 from doTerra International in 2020.

 Chad Hurst/Getty Images for Sundance Film Festival and Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox expressed gratitude to multi-level marketing company doTerra on Twitter.

doTerra has offered to give 1 million wipes to Utah schools to prevent COVID-19 transmission.

The company received a reprimand from the FTC over promoting its products as COVID-19 cures.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox took to Twitter to thank doTerra, a controversial direct-sales company, for donating its products to prevent COVID-19 transmission in schools. doTerra is a multi-level marketing company that sells essential oil-based products.

In the 2020 election cycle, doTerra International donated $10,200 to Cox, according to non-partisan research firm Vote Smart.

doTerra has described its On Guard wipes as containing ingredients like "Eucalyptus, Wild Orange, Clove, Cinnamon, and Rosemary essential oils," along with 70% ethyl alcohol. In 2020, Federal Trade Commission ordered doTerra to stop promoting its oils as COVID-19 cures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention generally recommend frequent handwashing, and listed "touching mucous membranes with hands soiled by exhaled respiratory fluids containing virus or from touching inanimate surfaces contaminated with virus" as causing infectious exposure to COVID-19.

"As Gov. Cox mentioned yesterday, we appreciate the willingness of private sector businesses like doTERRA to support our schools," senior advisor of communications Jennifer Napier-Pearce said in a statement sent to Insider.

doTerra did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Before he became governor in 2021, Cox served as the state's lieutenant governor for Gary Herbert starting in 2013. In 2016, Herbert presented at the World Trade Association of Utah, where doTerra was recognized as the International Company of the Year.

Cox's tweet underscores Utah's strong connection to MLMs. In 2016, local station KUTV reported that the state had the most MLMs per capita. MLMs based in Utah include Nu Skin Enterprises, Young Living, USANA Health Sciences, Morinda, Inc., and Younique.

In the world of MLMs, doTerra has attracted controversy since its founding. The direct-sales company first launched in 2008. Founders David Stirling, David Hill, and Emily Wright previously worked as executives at essential oil giant Young Living. Young Living sued doTerra over allegations of corporate espionage. In 2018, a judge ruled that Young Living acted in "bad faith" and ordered it to pay attorney fees amounting to $1.8 million to its competitor, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

But the battle against Young Living doesn't capture the entirety of doTerra's legal history. Insider identified 27 bankruptcy cases naming doTerra as a party. These cases took place between 2008 and 2020, and involved individual doTerra sellers declaring bankruptcy. Financial difficulties or outright ruin are common outcomes for MLM sellers: A 2018 survey from the AARP Foundation finding that 73% of respondents who participated in MLM schemes either lost money or made no money. Of the quarter of respondents who did earn money, 53% made less than $5,000.

doTerra is also an defendant in an ongoing civil case from a Minnesota seller named Ruth Van Horn, who alleged that the company's green tea extracts caused her liver to fail.

The company's philanthropic efforts have also attracted scrutiny. In 2018, the Pacific Standard reported that the company's foundation was accused of pocketing donations intended for the victims of Hurricane Harvey.