LGBTQ candidates make history in US midterm election

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022 
AUTHOR: AFP


LGBTQ candidates are running in all 50 US states and the capital Washington for the first time in this year's midterm election, as the community becomes an increasingly powerful voting constituency.. Among a host of other firsts that the LGBTQ community is eyeing on election night, Vermont House candidate Becca Balint would be the only lesbian ever sent by the state to Congress.

LGBTQ candidates are running in all 50 US states and the capital Washington for the first time in this year's midterm election, as the community becomes an increasingly powerful voting constituency.

The milestone comes amid a surge in gay and transgender voters that analysts expect to redraw the electoral landscape over the next generation, nudging the conservative US heartland in a more liberal direction.

A new report from the LGBTQ Victory Fund found that of the 1,065 LGBTQ hopefuls who ran primary campaigns for November's midterms, a historic 678 made it onto the ballot -- an 18 percent increase over 2020.

"Voters are sick and tired of the relentless attacks lobbed against the LGBTQ community this year," said Annise Parker, a former Houston mayor who heads the LGBTQ Victory Fund.

"Bigots want us to stay home and stay quiet, but their attacks are backfiring and instead have motivated a new wave of LGBTQ leaders to run for office."

Almost 90 percent of the LGBTQ candidates who entered this year's primary races are Democrats like Maura Healey and Tina Kotek, who are vying to become the nation's first lesbian governors in Massachusetts and Oregon.

- 'Relentless attacks' -

Healey is comfortably ahead in her race, but Kotek finds herself just behind in a contest regarded as a toss-up.

Among a host of other firsts that the LGBTQ community is eyeing on election night, Vermont House candidate Becca Balint would be the only lesbian ever sent by the state to Congress.

Mary Louise Adams, an award-winning author and academic who specializes in LGBTQ issues, welcomed progress in the drive to ensure that members of the community "not just present but visible and vocal" in public life.

"As a voter, I would still be more interested in knowing what the candidates' overall platforms are and what strategies they propose to strengthen and support marginalized communities of all kinds," the professor at Queen's University in Canada told AFP.

The candidate statistics were hailed as significant progress during a year in which state lawmakers have proposed a record 340-plus anti-LGBTQ bills, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) -- the country's largest gay rights group.

Much of the legislation seeks to ban transgender children from playing sports in categories that correspond with their stated gender or allowing performances in schools involving drag acts.

"The most anti-transgender state legislative package in history was passed this year in Alabama and the increased focus on attacking youth is truly alarming," said Cathryn Oakley, HRC's state legislative director.

"It also speaks to our opponents' desperation. Public opinion has moved so far in the direction of equality that they are forced to try to make people afraid of children."


- 'A singular moment' -

The legislative crackdown has extended from grassroots politics to the US Congress, where House Republicans are proposing their own bans on public discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Florida's controversial "Don't Say Gay" law outlaws lessons on the topics in kindergarten through third grade.

But the federal bill goes further, curbing such discussion at events and in literature in any government building.

LGBTQ Americans are set to become one of the fastest growing voting blocs, according to HRC, growing at a "scale, scope and speed that will fundamentally reshape the American electoral landscape."

The community accounts for an estimated one in 10 voters but that figure is expected to rise to one in seven by the end of the decade, the lobby group said in a report released in October with Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

"Historic moments like these can be a sign that people have become more comfortable with LGBTQ leaders in political office who are making decisions on behalf of the public," said Julia Himberg, author of "The New Gay for Pay: The Sexual Politics of American Television Production."

"Moments like these can even contribute to broader social and institutional change."

The professor, who teaches film and media studies at Arizona State University, warned against drawing broad conclusions from one election, however.

"Systemic change takes time and intention. So we need to be cautious about big proclamations," she told AFP.

"This election cycle is pivotal but it is also a singular moment that in fact may not go beyond this moment."

ft/sw/st

© Agence France-Presse

These 10 LGBTQ candidates could make political history in November


Matt Lavietes
October 23, 2022

More than 600 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer candidates will be on the ballot Nov. 8 — up from the 432 candidates in the previous midterm elections in 2018 — according to the political action committee LGBTQ Victory Fund.

Dozens of these political hopefuls, including the 10 highlighted below, will have the opportunity to make history.

Becca Balint

Vermont state Sen. Becca Balint, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination to run for Vermont's vacant U.S. House seat, speaks to voters in Colchester on July 24, 2022. (Wilson Ring / AP file)

Running for: U.S. House of Representatives, Vermont's At-Large Congressional District

If elected, would be the first: Woman and LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Vermont

Becca Balint, a former middle school teacher, is no stranger to political firsts for Vermont's women and for the LGBTQ community. In 2020, Balint became the first woman and first openly LGBTQ person to serve as the Vermont Senate president.

But even as an LGBTQ political leader, Balint, who is a lesbian, has faced pushback for her sexuality. In a campaign video, Balint said that when she and her now-wife first moved into their house in Brattleboro, their neighbor had an anti-gay sign.

"I get out of the car, and I'm pregnant, and at that moment, I felt like 'How are we going to make this work?'" she said. "From a wave to a conversation to a borrowed lawn mower, things changed and the sign came down, and we felt the relief that comes when we stop turning away from each other and start meeting each other face to face."

Balint, 54, won her Democratic primary against Lt. Gov. Molly Gray with the backing of progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Vermont icons Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

She is heavily favored to win against her Republican opponent, Iraq War veteran Liam Madden, in November. Vermont has not sent a Republican to Congress since the re-election of former U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords in 2000.

Currently, Vermont is the only state in the country to have never sent a woman to Congress. That could, of course, change if Balint wins.

Robert Garcia

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia in Long Beach, Calif., on Sept. 13, 2021.

 (Brian Feinzimer / Sipa USA via AP file)

Running for: U.S. House of Representatives, California's 42nd Congressional District

If elected, would be the first: LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress

Robert Garcia is an example of how intersectionality can translate into political success. At 36-years-old, Garcia was elected mayor of Long Beach, California, in 2014, becoming the city's youngest, first LGBTQ and first Latino person to assume the office he stills holds today.

Garcia, a Democrat, has also had various political identities over his lifetime. While attending college at California State University, Long Beach, Garcia served as the president of his school's Long Beach Young Republicans club.

He previously told NBC News that his Republican political affiliation was a result of his family's affection for former President Ronald Reagan. Garcia's family members, who are originally from Peru, were among the millions of immigrants who applied for citizenship after Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

“My worldview and politics haven’t changed much. But with immigrants rights and the war, and me being gay, we all realized that we were more progressive,” Garcia said, adding that his family has since switched parties.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner

Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner speaks at a debate with Republican Lori Chavez DeRemer for Oregon's 5th Congressional District in Lake Oswego, Ore., on Oct. 17, 2022. (Steve Dipaola / AP)

Running for: U.S. House of Representatives, Oregon's 5th Congressional District

If elected, would be the first: LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Oregon

In a political upset, Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a small-business owner who had unsuccessfully run for Congress in 2018, defeated seven-term Rep. Kurt Schrader in this year's Democratic primary.

"For far too long, Oregon’s LGBTQ community has not had a voice in Congress," Annise Parker, president of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, said in a statement following McLeod-Skinner's primary win. "With anti-LGBTQ attacks spreading like wildfire and lawmakers in Congress bent on outlawing abortion and reproductive health care, her election could not come at a more critical moment in our nation’s history.”

In her primary, McLeod-Skinner ran mainly as a progressive alternative to Schrader. Schrader voted against the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and helped topple a drug pricing plan in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill. Schrader also referred to former President Donald Trump's second impeachment as a "lynching," which he later apologized for.

In the general election, however, McLeod-Skinner's shift to the left may play to her opponent's advantage. Oregon's 5th Congressional District has not elected a Republican since 1994. The Cook Political Report rates the race a “Toss Up."

Eric Sorensen

Democrat Eric Sorensen. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune via Getty Images file)

Running for: U.S. House of Representatives, Illinois' 17th Congressional District

If elected, would be the first: LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Illinois

Before entering the political arena this year, Eric Sorensen spent 22 years as a weather forecaster in Illinois. His victory would make him the first meteorologist elected to Congress in more than 50 years, at a time when federal lawmakers are increasingly challenged with helping the nation avert the worst effects of climate change.

"There is not a single climate communicator in Congress who matches the communication and climate science backgrounds of Eric," Sorensen's campaign website reads.

Maura Healey

Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey faces Geoff Diehl at their final debate in Needham on Oct. 20, 2022. (Carlin Stiehl / The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

Running for: Governor of Massachusetts

If elected, would be the first: Lesbian governor in the U.S.

Maura Healey has a long history of shattering glass ceilings for the country’s LGBTQ community.

In 2009, Healey, who is now the Massachusetts attorney general, led the nation’s first successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages. And in 2014, she broke barriers again, becoming the nation’s first out lesbian to be elected state attorney general.

“If I can be someone who represents and also gives others the belief that they can be anything they want to be and do anything they want to do, regardless of race, gender, identity, religion, that’s where I want to be,” Healy, 51, recently told NBC News. “That’s something I take seriously, and I think that’s what other LGBTQ+ leaders do as well — recognizing that we’re not just in a vacuum.”

If Healy wins as expected against her Republican opponent, former state representative Geoff Diehl, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, she’ll also become her state’s first elected female governor.

Tina Kotek

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek holds a rally on Oct. 22, 2022, in Portland, Ore. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)

Running for: Governor of Oregon

If elected, would be the first: Lesbian governor in the U.S.

Tina Kotek, like Healey, has also been a breaker of glass ceilings. In 2013, Kotek became the country’s first out lesbian speaker of a state House of Representatives. She made history again by becoming Oregon’s longest-serving House speaker, before stepping down in January to run for governor.

For Kotek, a Democrat, the odds of success in November are less promising than Healey’s. Kotek not only faces Republican Christine Drazan, the former minority leader of the Oregon House, but also a third-party candidate, Betsy Johnson, who recent polling suggests is dividing Democratic voters.

Erick Russell

Running for: Connecticut Treasurer

If elected, would be the first: Black LGBTQ statewide elected official in the U.S.

Erick Russell was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where he currently resides with his husband, Chris. Russell earned both his bachelor's and law degrees in the state, receiving his undergraduate degree in criminal justice from the University of New Haven and his J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

He is currently a partner at a Connecticut law firm, where, according to his campaign website, his practice focuses on "representing municipalities, state agencies and the state in financing critical infrastructure projects, such as schools, affordable housing, child care facilities, and transportation infrastructure, managing debt and restructuring pension obligations."

Celia Israel

State Rep. Celia Israel, D-Austin, listens to fellow lawmakers in the House Chamber in Austin on May 6, 2021. (Eric Gay / AP file)

Running for: Mayor of Austin, Texas

If elected, would be the first: LGBTQ mayor of Austin and the first Latina mayor of a major U.S. city

Celia Israel currently represents District 50 in the Texas House of Representatives. Throughout her roughly eight years as a state representative, Israel, who is a lesbian, helped found the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus, was named a "Champion of Equality" by Equality Texas and was inducted into the Austin Women’s Hall of Fame.
Jennie Armstrong


Running for: Alaska House of Representatives, District 16

Andrew Gray

Posted by Andrew Gray for State House on Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Running for: Alaska House of Representatives, District 20

If elected would be the first: LGBTQ state lawmaker(s) in Alaskan history.

Alaska is one of four states with zero out LGBTQ state lawmakers, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund.

“For far too long, Alaska’s LGBTQ community has lacked representation in the state legislature — and they have the wounds to show for it,” Parker of the LGBTQ Victory Fund said in a statement after endorsing Armstrong and Gray. “It is critical the LGBTQ community and our allies unite behind exceptional LGBTQ leaders like Jennifer and Andrew who have the grit and experience to fight for and defend our freedoms.”

Armstrong, a small business owner who is pansexual, and Gray, a former member of the Alaska National Guard who is gay, are both political newcomers and parents.

This Rubens Painting From 1609 Could Fetch $25 Million at Auction

The work will be offered in January at Sotheby’s.

By ANGELICA VILLA FOR ARTNEWS

Courtesy of Sotheby's


Sotheby’s will sell 10 paintings from the collection of a longtime Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee in January at Sotheby’s.

The group of works, set to hit the auction block in New York during an Old Masters sale on January 26, will be led by a Peter Paul Rubens painting that is expected to fetch an estimated $25 million–$35 million.

The Rubens painting, Salome Presented with the Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist (ca. 1609), last sold at auction after being rediscovered in 1998 for $5.5 million. If it meets its estimate, this will be one of the most expensive works by Rubens ever publicly sold at auction, but it is not likely to break his record. The most expensive painting by Rubens sold to date at public auction is The Massacre of the Innocents (ca. 1609–11), which fetched £49.5 million ($76.5 million) in 2002.

Salome comes from the collection of by Mark Fisch, a retired New Jersey real estate developer who amassed the group of works with his ex-wife, Rachel Davidson, a former judge.

Their collection, valued at an estimated $177 million, has been the subject of a contentious divorce proceeding which began earlier this year. The two were married for more than three decades.

Fisch, who has aided in the Met’s acquisitions of European paintings for its collection, also parted ways with Rembrandt’s Abraham and the Angels at Sotheby’s via a private sale last year. The painting was valued at $20 million, but its final price was never disclosed.

Also headed to sale from his holdings are paintings by Guercino, Bernardo Cavallino, Valentin de Boulogne, and Orazio Gentileschi, several of which have been exhibited at museums in London, Paris and New York.

When long-unseen Old Masters paintings come to auction, they tend to cause a stir. In 2021, when a Sandro Botticelli portrait from Sheldon Solow’s collection hit the block at Sotheby’s, it sold for $92 million, becoming the second-most expensive Old Masters painting ever auctioned.

USE VALUE VS EXCHANGE VALUE

A Rare First Printing of the US Constitution Is Expected to Fetch up to $30 Million at Auction

It is one of only two first-edition copies in private hands.

By RACHEL CORMACK

Sotheby's

It’s been almost a year since a first-edition copy of the US Constitution sold for a record $43.2 million at Sotheby’s and became the most expensive printed text in existence. History could well repeat itself this winter.

The auction house has just announced it is offering another rare first printing of the founding document at a dedicated live sale in New York on December 13. According to Sotheby’s, there are only 13 surviving first editions and only two remain in private hands. This particular copy comes with quite the backstory, too.

It starts on September 17, 1787, when America’s Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and created US democracy as we know it. This was one of 13 copies subsequently produced for the delegates of the Constitutional Convention and for the Continental Congress. Sotheby’s says it is also the first copy to have been recognized by the historical and collecting communities as an “official edition.”

The First Printing of the US Constitution.Sotheby’s

Fast forward to 1894, as the influential text arrived at a Philadelphia auction as part of the collection of lawyer, politician and amateur historian Charles Colcock Jones. It was acquired as a gift for a young Adrian Van Sinderen, who went on to become one of the most prolific book collectors of the mid-20th century.

The Constitution has not been available for purchase for more than a century—until now, that is. For the first time in 128 years, the text will go under the gavel at Sotheby’s New York. The auction house expects it will fetch between $20 million and $30 million, though could well achieve more.

For comparison’s sake, the first edition (offered last year as part of a sale of historic documents belonging to Dorothy Tapper Goldman) was originally expected to realize between $15 million and $20 million but absolutely obliterated that estimate and sold for $43.2 million to Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin. The November sale was also Sotheby’s most-watched auction of all time

“While the lasting importance and relevance of the Constitution is often an anodyne talking point today, the fact remains that it is unequivocally the most significant document in United States history, and one that will continue to influence the future of democratic principles in America and around the world,” Selby Kiffer, Sotheby’s International senior specialist for books and manuscripts, said in a statement.

Why Be Normal?: Disability & Design Now

By Aimi Hamraie
October 17, 2022 
Val H. and Sky Cubacub modeling swimwear for Rebirth Garments.PHOTO COLECTIVO MULTIPOLAR


What is design? Is it a professional pursuit, confined to specialties such as product design, graphic design, user-experience design, or architectural design? Or should we think of it more broadly, as a way to understand and transform our physical surroundings, as an act of world-building and world-changing? In either view, design happens when attention is paid to how things are used, how they look, and how they change some aspect of human experience.

Sins Invalid: Birthing, Dying, Becoming Crip Wisdom, 2016.

PHOTO RICHARD DOWNING, COURTESY SINS INVALID

And each approach carries a different political meaning. The strictest definitions—those focused on professional design—tend to obscure the contributions of marginalized designers, especially those engaged with disability. Disabled people often lack access to design training, and at the same time, professional designers often neglect the access needs of disabled people, routinely assuming standard users. Meanwhile, design school curricula regularly fail to address disability issues.

Where disability and design meet, however, the distinctions between professional design and design-as-world-building begin to unravel. Disability-inclusive designs typically aim to help disabled people adapt to existing environments, allowing people whose bodies or minds diverge from the norm to fit into the prevailing expectations of Western, capitalist societies. Plenty of tools might be designed to enable someone to show up at work at regular times, to produce in the same ways as nondisabled peers, and to sense the surrounding environment in conventional ways (such as by hearing or seeing). The words “disability” and “design” are most often paired in contexts where the desired outcome is a functional product—an assistive technology (such as a cane or wheelchair) or an architectural feature (such as a wheelchair ramp). In many cases, the types of accessibility that laws mandate relate to making a person a better worker and employee: George H.W. Bush signed such legislation into law in large part to help disabled people find employment, so as to keep them off welfare.

Designs that address disability range from straightforward peg legs to highly technological assistive devices like robotic body suits. These implements reflect the political and economic context in which they are produced, and accordingly, often reveal a lot about society’s perceptions of disabled people. In the 20th century, the United States military developed technologies to enable injured soldiers to rejoin the workforce. Designers also addressed the polio epidemic, as survivors sought access to education and employment. A social movement of disabled people—comprising in part these two populations—fought for legal rights for decades, their efforts culminating in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA set some accessible design standards, but it focuses largely on certain types of disabilities. We have come to expect wheelchair ramps, automatic doors, and audiovisual signals because the public is most widely aware of people with sensory or mobility impairments, including wheelchair users, blind people, and Deaf or Hard of Hearing people.

 

Screengrab from Caitrin Lynch and Sara Hendren’s website, Engineering at Home, 

showing adaptations to various household objects that make them more accessible. 

PHOTOS MICHAEL MALONEY/DESIGN BY CASEY GOLLAN

In addition to the types of access mandated by law in public spaces, there is a separate realm of consumer products for purchase and use in private homes, spaces not regulated by the ADA. These products include everything from grab bars used in showers to OXO Good Grips kitchen products designed by Betsey Farber, a woman with arthritis. The consumer-based approach introduces economic barriers to disabled people who are low-income or unable to work. Both legally mandated accessibility and forms of assistive technology available on the market assume that the typical disabled person is able to (and wants to) conform to middle-class working and living norms. Numerous corporate accessibility departments, university research laboratories, and other sites of design development have grown around both the legal and market-based approaches to disability design.

Kinetic Light: Descent, 2020, performance.

A NEW PARADIGM surrounding disability and design has emerged since the 1970s—one that is led by disabled people making life meaningful and accessible on their own terms, celebrating difference rather than encouraging people to conform to ableist norms. In more recent years, alliances have formed among those with chronic illnesses, mental disability, and neurodivergence, creating cross-disability solidarity and acknowledging the impossibility of one-size-fits-all standards. The movement embraces disability justice as a framework. First introduced by disabled people of color, poor disabled people, and queer disabled people, disability justice challenges individualism and instead calls for intersectional and collective understandings of accessibility. It also pushes back against the idea that disabled people must become productive in capitalist terms.

Disability justice has influenced various approaches to design, resulting in what I call “disability culture design.” The term “disability culture” describes the forms of cultural production that emerge when disabled people come together (whether in person or virtually) to socialize, collaborate, and form communities. When this happens, we engage in design—in the broad, world-building sense of the term. Disability culture is both material and practical because navigating worlds that are not built for us prompts disabled people to hack, tinker with, and change our environment. And when we come together in disability communities, we are also often creating microworlds, where we can engage while having our needs met. From these microworlds come new ways of thinking and doing that are often unimaginable within communities that are predominantly nondisabled.

Disability culture design builds on a long tradition of disabled people pushing to broaden the concept of “design” beyond the professionalized realms of architecture, product design, graphic design, and user experience. Until recently, marginalized people have lacked access to training in these fields. But all the while, design has been happening in disabled communities. These practices do not take place in isolation, but with fellow community members or in collaboration with nondisabled allies. Projects such as Raymond Lifchez and Barbara Winslow’s book Design for Independent Living: The Environment and Physically Disabled People (1979), Bruce Bassett’s film A House for Someone Unlike Me (1984),and Caitrin Lynch and Sara Hendren’s online repository of life hacks, Engineering at Home (2016),have documented moments in which nondisabled designers have reflected on how their exposure to disability culture design has challenged their assumptions about who is an expert on the built environment.

The cover of Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan’s PDF Alt-Text as Poetry Workbook.

COURTESY BOJANA COKLYAT AND SHANNON FINNEGAN

IN THE LAST DECADE, disabled artists have led the way in framing disability as a culture. The collective Sins Invalid doesn’t just put on provocative performances about disability, sex, climate change, and other subjects; its members also produce movement-defining documents, such as the primer Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (2016), with a key section called “Principles of Disability Justice.” There, the authors outline principles such as intersectionality, leadership by those most impacted, anti-capitalism, and collective access that have shaped the broader artistic and political movement.

Likewise, Alice Sheppard, a wheelchair dancer and scholar, focuses on the “cultural-aesthetic” dimensions of performances by disabled people. As Sheppard framed it recently in the New York Times, her work is part of a disability cultural community that treats “access as an ethic, as an aesthetic, as a practice, as a promise, as a relationship with the audience.” In 2016 Sheppard founded Kinetic Light, a disability arts ensemble that also includes Laurel Lawson, Michael Maag, and Jerron Herman. For the performance Descent (2017), Sheppard collaborated with Hendren and her students at Olin College of Engineering to design a ramped stage whose effect she described as “sensual, glorious, and inviting … every chair user’s dream, encouraging every ramp desire.” Audiences could watch the performance and/or opt for an audio app that provided multiple description tracks, ranging from literal to poetic. These technologies continue to be part of Kinetic Light’s work, such as the 2022 performance Wired, which includes both in-person and remote performances.

Disability culture design views the lived experience of disability as a design practice, reframing disabled people as design experts. Marta Rose of Divergent Design Studios, for example, puts neurodivergent thinking at the center of her strategies for interior design, landscape design, and other fields. While biomedical specialists say that neurodivergent people have deficiencies of “executive functioning,” such as making plans and completing tasks in the manner of a corporate manager, Rose argues instead that they are designers—people who solve problems in creative ways. Because design values iteration (failure, adaptation, re-invention), this reframing avoids treating neurodivergence as a problem to be solved. Rose’s approach includes support sessions, “body doubling” (coworking for better focus, a concept from ADHD communities), discussion groups, and other opportunities for long-distance connection. This kind of collaboration is a hallmark of disability culture design.

Disabled designers also push back against the prevalent culture of “design thinking.” In their project #CriticalAxis, Alex Haagaard and Liz Jackson examine representations of disability in corporate technology and product advertising for companies such as Samsung and LEGO. Haagaard and Jackson point out the negative stereotypes and tropes that linger even when the messaging appears to support disabled people. For example, they argue that an ad for “adaptive deodorant” from the company Degree prioritizes the representation of disabled people as athletes who “overcome” disabilities with athleticism. The pair also challenge the do-gooder intentions behind technologies that Jackson terms “disability dongles,” such as gloves that offer rudimentry translations of American Sign Language into spoken English or wheelchairs designed to climb stairs, which are “well intended elegant, yet useless solution[s] to a problem we never knew we had.”

DISABILITY CULTURE DESIGN treats design as “more than functional.” In the mainstream, much of disability design focuses on enabling (in the medical, functional, and assistive sense) certain types of “normal” and “productive” behaviors. But disability culture design starts in a different place: it’s about treating disability communities as places where design expertise exists and where accessibility is aesthetic and experiential, not just a tool for conforming to the norm. It centers around interdependence, particularly the ways that disabled people engage in forms of mutual aid, collective access, and “care work.” Disability culture design encourages disabled people to make things easier for one another, rather than relying on nondisabled people exclusively for help.

This participatory approach is evident in Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan’s ongoing project “Alt-Text as Poetry.” Building on methods advocated by blind scholar Georgina Kleege and performance art specialist Scott Wallin, the duo developed tools—workshops, workbooks, a website—for allowing multiple people to write descriptions of online images and videos, making them accessible to people who use screen reader technologies. This offers an opportunity for community participation: in 2020 Coklyat and Finnegan hosted an “Alt-Text Potluck,” where community members met and shared their best image descriptions. The focus of events such as the “Potluck” is less on the functionality of various technologies than on the types of protocols and interactions disability communities uphold as their standard of participation.

Disability culture design tends to emphasize pleasurable, artistic, or leisurely activities, often involving free online material and events with options for remote participation. The Remote Access Dance Party series, which began in 2020, appropriates tools intended for office productivity and uses them to engender joy and celebration. The term “remote access” refers to an accommodation that many disabled people request, whether due to chronic illness or the Covid-19 pandemic. Hosted by the Critical Design Lab, the parties are developed and organized by Kevin Gotkin (also known as DJ Who Girl), a disability arts organizer based in New York. The parties take place on Zoom and other digital platforms, and feature live DJ sets, disability arts showcases, karaoke, and other activities. They always include live captioning and American Sign Language interpretation, and partygoers collaborate to describe the sounds in a participatory and layered way. The production of access becomes a communal activity within the party. The collectives Sins Invalid and CRIP RAVE have hosted similar parties. In the context of the pandemic, these activities have resisted the pull toward “returning to normal” and highlighted the value of creative remote accommodations. They use design to show that disability-led remote and digital projects offer some of the same benefits as in-person activities, as well as additional benefits available only in virtual spaces.

Disability culture design shows and celebrates disability as difference, rather than hiding or trying to correct it. Designer Sky Cubacub’s Rebirth Garments feature clothing for bodies of wide-ranging disabilities, genders, sizes, and shapes. The garments, which can be custom-made to suit any individual, celebrate difference, drawing attention to the bodies they adorn with bright colors and loud, clashing patterns. Usually made of spandex, they accentuate, rather than conceal, body shapes. In fashion shows, Cubacub integrates practices from Gotkin’s Remote Access party, as well as Coklyat and Finnegan’s Alt-Text as Poetry method, where models perform to music with lyrics that incorporate image descriptions.

Finally, disability culture design is always political, in that it challenges the idea that everyone should try to conform to normative expectations of bodies and minds. Graphic designer Jen White-Johnson challenges the iconography typically associated with autism—such as the missing puzzle piece used by the organization Autism Speaks, which could be read as suggesting that something is “missing” from the minds of Autistic people—with alternative symbols that signify the value of Black disabled people like herself; White-Johnson is also the mother of an autistic child. Her Black Disabled Lives Matter logo superimposes an infinity sign on a Black Power fist, symbolizing possibility rather than brokenness. The symbol is a graphic manifestation of White-Johnson’s philosophy that “mothering as an act of Resistance means to redesign ableist visual culture.” Another of her graphics is a pink and silver “Autistic Joy” logo that she prints on shiny hologram stickers in a gesture toward greater visibility. Her work forms a visual language that diverges radically from standard icons such as the international symbol of access (the person-in-a-wheelchair icon used for accessible parking spots and bathrooms) or the puzzle piece. White-Johnson’s work instead roots itself in Black disability culture and activism, and carves space for celebrating and valuing Black disabled lives.

Autistic Joy sticker designed by Jen White-Johnson.

COURTESY JEN WHITE-JOHNSON.

In recent years, schools training professional designers have shown growing interest in design for disability. However, as Black and Chicana feminists have argued, these schools and designers tend to simply “add and stir” disability into a mix of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But disability is not a technical problem to solve, nor is accessibility a simple standard to apply. Instead, we should allow disability culture design to restructure university laboratories and corporate research centers. New collectives of disabled designers and creative producers—Sins Invalid; the Critical Design Lab; the UC Berkeley “RadMad” Disability Lab; the Concordia University Access-in-the-Making Lab; Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life; the Disability Justice and Crip Culture Collaboratory; the Disability Justice Culture Club; Tangled Art + Disability Gallery; the Disability Visibility Project; the CripTech Incubator, and others—are fostering collaborative approaches, rooted in disability justice, that recognize the important role of interdependence in disability communities, and experiment with how it can shape design methods. Disability culture design turns attention to a central question of disability activism since the 1960s: why be normal?

The “Malady” of Impressionism: How Claims of Disability Haunted the Modernist Movement


By Elizabeth Guffey
October 28, 2022
Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, 18¾ by 24¾ inches.COURTESY MARMOTTAN MUSEUM OF MONET, PARIS


In 1914, the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux was driven from Berlin to Paris some 15 times to sit for a portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In the resulting painting, Durieux looks serenely grave, fixing her gaze somewhere outside its shimmer of rose and honeyed tones. Writing years later, she described the severely arthritic artist. As he was wheeled into the room by a nurse, Durieux was “flabbergasted” by Renoir’s hands. His right, she noted, had been frozen by the arthritis in the gesture of holding a paintbrush; the left was contorted in such a way that it perfectly held a palette.

A contemporary photograph confirms her account. Seemingly small and hunched, Renoir sits in his wheelchair, tightly grasping a paint brush in a twisted, clenched fist. The artist’s friend Albert André revealed that visitors watching Renoir paint would insist that his brush was actually attached to his fingers. Renoir’s son Jean, who later became an acclaimed film director, poignantly described, in his 1962 biography, Renoir, My Father, how people reacted when they encountered the elderly artist. Most were confounded. “It isn’t possible!” they would exclaim. “With hands like that, how can he paint those pictures? There’s some mystery somewhere.”

“Monet had cataracts.” “Degas went blind.” “Renoir was paralyzed.” Indeed, the history of Impressionism is often told as a history of impairment hiding in plain sight. But each time such legends are repeated without carefully considering how disability and ableism shaped both Impressionist art and its reception, we miss the opportunity to place Impressionism within a broader critique of the idea of normalcy itself.

PHOTO 12/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The best-known discussion of Impressionist disability comes not from memoirs, analysis of photographs, or accounts of sitters like Durieux, but instead from 19th-century art reviews. In a critique that began some 40 years before Renoir painted Durieux, detractors savaged Monet, Degas, Renoir, and the other artists who sent work to the 1874 Société Anonyme cooperative show, known today as the First Impressionist Exhibition, repeatedly using ableist language to mock or satirize Impressionist painting as the product of impairment. Rather than merely characterizing these paintings as rough, unfinished, or audacious, for example, some of the most influential critics of the time likened the Impressionists’ subversion of social and artistic norms to a form of illness or even madness. Surveying scenes like the sun-drenched boats bobbing on the glittering Seine in Monet’s Pont Argenteuil (1874) at the Second Impressionist Exhibition, in 1876, a writer for the conservative newspaper L’Écho Universel praised “the brilliance of daylight, the purity of atmosphere, and the blue of water and sky.” What a dazzling landscapist Monet might be if only he could be cured of the “sickness of Impressionism.”

Renoir: Tilla Durieux, 1914, oil on canvas, 36¼ by 29 inches.

COURTESY METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

Although art is a nonmedical domain, critics described Impressionism over and over in medical terms. Sometimes this critique included simple exhortations, such as the demand of a writer from L’Événement: “Put on glasses, gentlemen impressionists…!” But more often, discussions of visual acuity also announced an enforced normalcy. Given that Impressionism is a movement now associated with keen visual observation, it is curious to find a critic for L’Univers Illustré insisting that the Impressionists had “strangely made eyes.” A writer for Le Soleil suggested that the Impressionists’ problems lay more within “the domain of medical causality than that of art criticism.” Often enough these critiques included actual diagnoses, ranging from simple “color-blindness” to “myopia” to blinding forms of “ophthalmalgia.”

Paralleling this medicalization of the Impressionists’ vision, their art was often described, as the critic for Paris-Journal put it, as the outward expression of “diseased brains.” At the 1874 exhibition, La Presse identified Edgar Degas’s The Ballet Class (1874) as one of several works on view that showed signs of “mental derangement,” evident in its lack of careful modeling and unconventional use of color, “negating” the most basic rules of drawing and painting. Some reviewers dismissed the Impressionists by calling them “crazies,” “lunatics,” and “Bedlamites.” Others recommended specific asylums or gave referrals to psychologists who treated well-heeled but deluded patients.

Edgar Degas: The Dance Class, 1973–76, oil on canvas, 34¾ by 29½ inches.

COURTESY MUSÉE D’ORSAY, PARIS

Although generally supportive of Impressionist art, the writer and critic Joris-Karl Huysmans took issue, in his 1881 volume Modern Art, with their reliance on the color blue. Known for his subversive wit, Huysmans built on his own genuine concern, suggesting that the overuse of this color might be associated with a form of hysteria then being studied by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Satirically equating colorblindness with other “diseases of the nervous system,” Huysmans associated Impressionist art with a kind of “monomania” of the eye.

While Huysmans ultimately assured readers that the best Impressionist painters had been “cured” of this sickness, other critics suggested that Impressionist painting was not only the product of disability but also disabling. Simply viewing these paintings, they wrote, could cause impairments ranging from simple cases of “seasickness” to “vertigo” and even “seizures” or “strokes.” As if deploying a secret weapon, one 1881 cartoon in the satirical magazine Le Charivari proposed sending batteries of Impressionist paintings to Tunisia to inflict bodily harm on insurgents. Another 1877 Le Charivari cartoon suggested that pregnant women be cautioned against entering an Impressionist exhibition lest they miscarry.

Those insisting that Impressionist art was a form of madness warned that it might be catching. The critic Louis Leroy’s infamous satirical review of the 1874 exhibition, in which he derisively referred to the artists as “Impressionists,” after Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (1872), takes the form of a fictionalized dialogue between the younger critic and an elderly academic artist as they walk through the show. Confronted with the first paintings, the older man is “shocked” by Renoir’s Dancer (1874), finding its color weak and its form insubstantial. As the pair continue through the exhibition, however, the satire becomes darker: Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines (1873) raises the elderly artist’s blood pressure and he fears an impending stroke. By the time he views Cézanne’s House of the Hanged Man (1873), the older painter cries out, then sinks into complete delirium.

A cartoon published in the April 18, 1877, issue of Le Charivari, showing a pregnant woman being discouraged from entering an Impressionist exhibition.

COURTESY GALLICA, BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE

Two years later, a critic for L’Écho Universel went even further, suggesting that “yesterday some sad sack who had just left the exhibition was arrested on Rue Le Peletier for biting passers-by,” as if the paintings had turned him into a rabid dog. The implication was clear: emerging from damaged bodies and minds, Impressionism could in turn weaken or even wreck normal, healthy ones.

AS POPULAR OPINION about Impressionist art shifted, this earlier critique was dismissed as naive and misguided. But the legacy of such ableist criticism presents a point of unresolved tension in our understanding of Impressionist painting. Because the rhetoric of disability and illness was initially used to attack the Impressionist painters, contemporary audiences often assume that it is inherently insulting and misguided to discuss them in such terms today.

Yet at various points in their lives, most of the major Impressionists did work with and through a range of embodiments and forms of ability, a fact that tends to be acknowledged only indirectly, giving their impairments an air of myth or mystery. Instead of recoiling from discussions of Impressionist maladies as imprudent and wrong-headed vestiges of 19th-century critical commentary, the task is to address the role of disability in Impressionist art in a more nuanced way.

Degas’s changing vision, for example, is common knowledge, but the nature of his “blindness” is still little understood. In the 1988 essay “Degas and the Contingency of Vision,” art historian Richard Kendall—among the few scholars to seriously consider Impressionist disability—notes that the artist’s biographers have created “a number of myths and stratagems” to account for the apparent paradox of Degas’s visual impairment. Distorting the evidence, they tend to divide his career into “a healthy, visually unimpaired youth and maturity, followed by a late, chronic phase of blindness” that caused him to give up oil painting in favor of sculpture. In reality, the artist experienced vision impairment throughout much of his adult life, and certainly before he began exhibiting with the Impressionists.

Edgar Degas, date unknown.

UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Degas was consulting eye doctors and using glasses by the early 1870s. In 1874, the very week before the First Impressionist Exhibition opened, Degas complained in a letter that he was too busy to follow the orders of his oculist, who demanded he rest. Indeed, when the diarist and critic Edmond de Goncourt visited Degas’s studio several months earlier, he observed “an original fellow this Degas, inclined to be sickly, neurotic, and ophthalmic to the point … [that he is] concerned with his eyes [and] fears he will lose his eyesight.”

Degas’s disability forces a series of questions, less about his vision than about the ways it has been noted, both in his lifetime and to this day. It asks us to reconcile the visually innovative work of Degas’s earlier career with bodily or mental signs of difference. Salon criticism accusing Degas of “mental derangement” can be easily dismissed. But, arguably, critics simply used the vocabulary of “madness” to express those qualities they considered difficult or amiss, such as the exaggerated perspective and unexpected cropping in works like The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage (ca. 1874) and Carriage at the Races (ca. 1870). Today, Degas and his peers are celebrated for breaking away from the conventions of the academy and the salon, but it is rarely acknowledged that bodily difference might, as critics of the time suggested, have played a role in such breaks from “normalcy.”

While museums and art journals have tended to neglect Impressionist disability, it is the subject of a growing subgenre of medical literature. Cobbling together letters, diaries, and artifacts, all the while applying present-day clinical experience, physicians such as the late eye surgeon and author Patrick Trevor-Roper and ophthalmologist Michael Marmor have often read Impressionist art as a visual record that enables us to make posthumous diagnoses. Marmor even uses computer simulations to demonstrate Degas’s changing visual acuity, effectively inviting us to embody the artist and channel his vision. The aging Degas experienced progressive retinal disease, Marmor tells us, and his works became more blurred and “coarse.” As this happened, “his hazy view smoothed out irregularities so that he would accept work that appears jarring to viewers with normal acuity.”

But, finding that his own sight did not parallel the refined and relatively narrow standards that defined the norms of academic art, might Degas have begun questioning the conventions that dictated his mainstream contemporaries’ work? Indeed, after his studio visit, Goncourt later reflected on this in his journal, positing that the artist’s vision troubles might not be such a burden. Noting Degas’s consternation with his changing eyesight, Goncourt added that difficulties with his vision may have made the artist become “an extraordinarily sensitive person who is aware of the contradictory character of things.”

Changing vision may have similarly allowed Monet to appreciate the visual contradictions in the world around him. Much like Degas, Monet began complaining of vision changes in his mid-20s, almost a decade before he first exhibited with the Impressionists. Reporting a visit to the doctor in 1867, a dismayed Monet told the painter Frédéric Bazille that he had been advised to stop working outdoors. But only when Monet developed cataracts after the turn of the century­—he was officially diagnosed in 1912, following years of significant vision changes­—did his deliberately imprecise art become the stuff of legend.

MONET

UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES

These accounts impact our understanding of the last great work of Monet’s career, the tranquil “Nymphéas” series (Water Lilies, 1897–1926), eight of which were permanently installed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in 1927. While Monet worked intermittently on what he called these grandes décorations, hoping to offer a “meditative asylum at the center of a flowery aquarium,” his critics saw them differently when the Orangerie cycle was publicly unveiled not long after his death. After their installation, even friendly writers like Louis Gillet worried about the work of a “painter without vision” whose eyes were “ruined.” Decades later, in 1957, the critic Lawrence Alloway complained in the BBC’s weekly magazine The Listener that, as Monet’s art was falling out of fashion, contemporaries increasingly treated him as a kind of “Mr. Magoo at Giverny—a flawed eye.”

Contemporary doctors have echoed this appraisal. In his 1970 book The World Through Blunted Sight, Trevor-Roper quickly assessed the blurred and mottled colors of Monet’s water lilies, seeing in them the “characteristic changes” of double or bilateral cataracts. More recently, Marmor went further, noting how Monet’s sense of color shifted for a period after 1914–17, as the artist began incorporating more reds and browns, while also softening the edges of objects. According to Marmor, this changed again after Monet’s cataract surgery in 1923. Medical positivism often envelops these posthumous diagnoses, with the artist’s physical and mental condition discussed as if he were a living patient referred for treatment. Specialists today suggest that Monet’s doctors were out of their league. Having examined Monet’s eyeglasses, ophthalmologist James Ravin suggests that modern intraocular lenses or contacts might have “overcome” Monet’s vision “deficits.”

Monet: Le Pont d’Argenteuil, 1874, oil on canvas, 23¾ by 31½ inches.

COURTESY MUSÉE D’ORSAY

The reductivism of such diagnostic accounts—for instance, the notion that cataracts were the key to Monet’s “blurry style” rather than any other historical, formal, or psychological influences—suggests one reason why art experts are uncomfortable with discussions of Impressionist disability. In their emphasis on “normalcy” and the Impressionists’ departure from it, such medicalized readings recall the early critical accusations of “blindness” or “madness” first levied at these artists more than a century earlier. Indeed, just as Salon critics were on the lookout for deviations from normative academic practice, these posthumous diagnoses are preoccupied with establishing individual artists’ bodily deviance from medical standards, rather than acknowledging the generative role that their disabilities may have played in the development of Impressionist art. The Impressionists not only rejected older styles of art and developed innovative ways of painting, they also responded to their own changing physical circumstances. Monet struggled with the changes that cataracts made in his vision, complaining to his dealer friends the Bernheim brothers in 1922 that “my poor eyesight makes me see everything in a complete fog.” But, he added, “it’s very beautiful all the same, and it’s this which I’d love to have been able to convey.”

This article appears under the title “The ‘Malady’ of Impressionism” in the October 2022 issue, pp. 68–75.

First-of-Its-Kind Ancient Roman Watchtower Unearthed in Morocco

BY FRANCESCA ATON
October 27, 2022

Ruins of Volubilis, Morocco, 2019.

PHOTO FRÉDÉRIC SOLTAN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

A Roman watchtower was uncovered by a team of Polish and Moroccan archaeologists in Morocco earlier this month. Until this discovery, it was unclear whether towers of this kind existed in this area.

The tower was found at the site of El Mellali near the ancient city Volubilis, along the southern border of the ancient Roman province. It was constructed about four miles south of the largest city in this region of Roman Africa, according to a statement from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Morocco.

“On the basis of satellite images, we selected several sites that have a common feature: an oval plan with a rectangle or a square inscribed in it,” Maciej Czapski, an archaeologist and Ph.D. student from the University of Warsaw and a member of the Polish-Moroccan research group, told Heritage Daily. “We chose this particular site because it is located farthest to the south. There could be a place associated with the presence of the Roman army.“

The foundations and walls of the tower were uncovered during the excavations. Within the structure were the remnants of an internal staircase and cobblestone fragments that once surrounded the fortification.

Military artifacts—including javelins, nails from Roman sandals, and belt fragments—were also discovered at the structure. Using them, the archaeologists were able to date the structure to sometime between the 1st century CE and 3rd century CE. They said they believe the structure was in use during the reign of Antoninus Pius, who ruled as Roman Emperor from 138–161 CE.

Altogether, the findings confirm the presence of a Roman army at El Mellali—a breakthrough in the study of defense systems in the valley. While scholars had previously believed that such fortifications existed, this is the first time that such a site has been excavated.

“The foundations of the Roman defense tower are a magnificent testimony to the Roman defense system around Volubilis, thanks to the excellent cooperation between Polish and Moroccan archaeologists,” said Krzysztof Karwowski, the Polish ambassador to Morocco, in a press release.

Under a cooperation agreement between the University of Warsaw and the Institute of Archeology and Cultural Heritage (INSAP) in Rabat, work on the site has been ongoing since 2021 under the direction of Aomar Akerraz and Radoslaw Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski.

The Kingdom of Mauretania, which emerged after the fall of Carthage at the end of the third Punic War in 146 B.C.E., stretched from central present-day Algeria westward to the Atlantic, thereby covering what is currently northern Morocco and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Mauretania ultimately became a client state of the Roman Republic.

Under Juba II, a client-King of Rome, Volubilis developed into a city with Roman-influenced art and architecture. Volubilis became a center of commerce when Emperor Claudius annexed Mauretania and established the Roman provinces of Mauretania, Tingitana, and Mauretania Caesariensis. It exported such commodities as grain, olive oil, and wild animals for public entertainment. By the end of the 2nd century C.E., Volubilis had a population of approximately 20,000.

Ancient Roman Temple Found Under 18th-Century Church in Croatia


BY FRANCESCA ATON
ART NEWS
November 1, 2022 

Ornamented monumental beaming fragment from the Roman temple unearthed in the 1950s in the medieval cemetery near the church in Danilo.

PHOTO F. WELC


The foundations of an ancient temple were discovered under and next to the 18th-century Church of St. Daniel in a Croatian village.

The remains of the structure were discovered in Danilo, near Šibenik, the former Roman city Ridit. The location of the building was previously unknown, though archaeologists had unearthed many architectural elements and decorations from the Roman sacral building.

Using georadar images, the team found the frame of the entrance. The frame is most likely what remains of a colonnade. The ancient temple features large walls, and it once stood 66 feet by 33 feet.

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Fabian Welc, of the Institute of Archaeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, told Science in Poland that the temple was likely once part of a forum. Located at the city center, the forum would have held the most important public buildings, among them courts and municipal offices.

Welc’s institute worked with the Institute of Archaeology in Zagreb and the Šibenik City Museum on the project, which began in 2019.

LIDAR aerial scanning technology enabled a thorough analysis of the terrain, which very faintly detected the outline of former architectural remains along the surface. A nearby cemetery, which was used between the 9th and 15th centuries, was also partially located. Some medieval graves were dug directly into the relics of Roman baths; evidence of a large adjacent building featuring a central courtyard and a portico with numerous rooms was also discovered.

A number of Roman residential and utility buildings were identified around the modern-day cemetery in Danilo using large-scale geophysical surveying and analysis of the ALS model.

Archaeological research has been ongoing in Danilo over the last 70 years. The construction of a water pipeline initially yielded hundreds of Roman inscriptions, including some mentioning the city Municipium Riditarum, which was founded by the local community of the Romanized Ridit trib

'Law and order returned' Hong Kong's US-sanctioned leader says at banking summit

Jerome Taylor and Holmes Chan
Tue, November 1, 2022 


Hong Kong’s US-sanctioned leader insisted Wednesday that political stability and business confidence in the city has been restored following the crushing of democracy protests, as he opened a financial summit attended by global bankers including leading Wall Street executives.

Hong Kong is hosting a week of high-profile events after years of political unrest and pandemic travel curbs tarnished the city's business-friendly reputation, sparked an exodus of talent and battered its economy.

The marquee event at the Four Seasons hotel was heralded by city leader John Lee as proof that the previously shuttered Asian finance hub is back in business.

"We were, we are and we will remain one of the world's leading financial centres. And you can take that to the bank," Lee told delegates.

Lee, a former police officer and security chief who took office this year, is among the Chinese officials sanctioned by Washington for cracking down on rights in Hong Kong after huge democracy protests. These blacklisted individuals are unable to hold accounts with the same banking giants attending the summit.

Most of the city's political opposition are either behind bars or have fled overseas since those protests.

"Social disturbance is clearly in the past, and has given way to stability to growth in business and community confidence in Hong Kong's future," Lee said in his summit speech.

"Law and order has returned. The worst is behind us," he added.

Among those due to speak at the summit are Goldman Sachs head David Solomon, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Blackrock president Rob Kapito and JP Morgan Chase counterpart Daniel Pinto.

But their presence is not without controversy.

Last week, the leaders of the bipartisan US Congressional-Executive Commission on China called on Wall Street executives not to attend, accusing them of "whitewashing human rights violations" and giving political cover to Lee.

The row illustrates the tightrope faced by multinationals in Hong Kong, which is both a lucrative business gateway for China and a flashpoint in increasingly tense relations between Beijing and Western powers.

"Hong Kong's seamless connection with the mainland affords Hong Kong advantages available to no other economy," Lee declared in his speech.

- Unsettled economic waters -

The summit comes at a time of uncertainty over China's economy under President Xi Jinping.

Xi, who secured a norm-breaking third term last month, has overseen regulatory crackdowns clipping the wings of some major Chinese companies and is still sticking to a strict zero-Covid strategy.

Hong Kong's economy saw gross domestic product plunge 4.5 percent in the third quarter of this year, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday.

Its stock exchange is among the world's worst performers, down more than 50 percent this year to levels last seen in 2009.

Lee's opening speech will be followed by recorded interviews with three mainland officials involved in regulation, including Yi Gang, the governor of China's central bank.

That will be followed by a panel titled "Navigating Through Uncertainty" featuring senior executives from Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, UBS, Goldman Sachs and Bank of China president Liu Jin.

Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan is also expected to give a speech after he was cleared by health officials to attend the conference after testing positive for Covid-19 last week during an overseas trip.

Lee's speech made no mention of the labyrinthine pandemic rules maintained by both China and, to a lesser extent, Hong Kong.

While Hong Kong scrapped mandatory quarantine in September -- a key demand of businesses -- it maintains layers of pandemic restrictions long since abandoned by almost everywhere else.

Overseas arrivals must undergo frequent testing and are unable to go to bars and restaurants for their first three days in the city.

Restrictions on various gatherings remain and masks are compulsory, including outdoors.

In Hong Kong, world bankers urged not to ‘bet against’ China

By: Zen Soo, The Associated Press

Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese regulators downplayed China’s real estate slump and slowing economic growth while Hong Kong’s top leader pitched Hong Kong as a unique link to the rest of China at a high-profile investment summit Wednesday.

About 200 global financial executives gathered to network and discuss issues such as global risks and sustainable finance at Hong Kong’s first major conference since the city lifted COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.

Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, urged those attending to visit China to understand what is happening in the country and urged them not to “bet against” China and Hong Kong.

International media “don’t really understand China very well” and have a “short-term focus,” he said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience.

Fang and other Chinese officials addressed the conference in prerecorded interviews — travel to and from mainland China is constrained by strict quarantine requirements.

China’s central bank governor, Yi Gang, said that inflation remains subdued, at under 3% compared with 8% or more in many Western economies, and the country’s economic and reform policies will continue. Such comments appeared to be meant to counter worries that flared following a Communist Party congress last month, where leader Xi Jinping was awarded an unprecedented third five-year term and key reformers were excluded from top ruling party leadership.

“China has a super ‘long’ market, as there is still much room for urbanization and the demand of middle class consumers is still on the rise,” said Yi.

China’s economy grew at a 3.9% annual pace in the last quarter compared to a year earlier, well below an official target of more than 5%, and the vital real estate sector has languished as regulators have sought to curb debt mounting toward unsustainable levels.

Xiao Yuanqi, vice chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, sought to reassure those attending the conference, saying property loans make up just 26% banks’ total lending and 90% of property loans were “good quality.”

The speakers lineup at the Hong Kong conference includes Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and other leading executives from institutions such as Citigroup and Blackstone.

It is designed to highlight the former British colony’s role as an attractive and competitive financial hub.

The city remains the “only place in the world where the global advantage and the China advantage come together in a single city,” Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said in opening the event.

“This unique convergence makes Hong Kong the irreplaceable connection between the mainland and the rest of the world as the center of economic gravity in the world shifts eastward,” he said.

The British handed control of Hong Kong to China in 1997 with the understanding that Beijing would allow the tiny territory autonomy in its legal system and economic policies for at least 50 years. In recent years Beijing has been expanding its influence. Such efforts gained momentum after mass protests in 2019 demanding a more democratic system of leadership, culminating in the implementation of a security law designed to quash dissent.

Combined with strict quarantine controls and a sharp downturn in tourism, that has compounded the economic impact from the pandemic.

Lee said the “worst is behind” Hong Kong. A former security chief, he told the conference “law and order has returned” and social disturbances were in the past.

Organizers pushed ahead with the long-planned conference despite tropical storm warnings that led authorities to close schools.

As tropical storm Nalgae drew closer to the city, the Hong Kong Observatory said that it would raise its T8 signal in the afternoon, which would effectively shut down the city and stop trading on the stock market.

Hong Kong pulled out all the stops for the financial conference, adjusting COVID-19 restrictions to allow participants to dine in at specific restaurants. Most other inbound travelers are banned from doing so for three days after they arrive in the city.

Attendees who test positive for COVID-19 are allowed to leave by chartered flights if they want to, instead of having to be isolated for at least seven days in Hong Kong.

Some U.S. lawmakers have urged American companies not to participate in the meeting given tensions with China over trade and human rights. The U.S. has been vocal about Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent following implementation of the National Security Law.

Marine Scientist Almost Dives into Shark’s Mouth in Viral Video

Anna Kaplan

Tue, November 1, 2022 

Ocean Ramsey, a marine conservationist, says she's been swimming with sharks for so long, it feels like she's grown up with some of them.

So when Queen Nikki, a 16-foot tiger shark, jumped out of the water and bit at Ramsey's fins in a now viral video, the shark scientist laughed and greeted her by saying, "Hi Nikki! Aww..."

"I love that tiger shark," Ramsey told TODAY. "I grew up with that tiger shark, I think we were teenagers at the same time. And so I’ve known her for over 20 years."

Ramsey described the incident that occurred in Hawaii last week in an interview with TODAY, saying she went into the water too fast and Nikki "totally reacted to that."

"I saw her and she was she was close enough, with enough speed, that it looked like she was actually going at maybe my fin tips," Ramsey said. "There (were) a bunch of little schooling fish under, so I could see her speed and I knew that I needed to back off in that moment."

Ramsey waited for a few seconds before diving into the water, as she does nearly every day as part of her work in shark research and conservation. She also takes regular people into the water to help educate them about shark behavior.

"It’s just, like, 'That's Nikki,' you know, Queen Nikki, and she's such a fun and interactive shark," she said. "We were actually really excited for that moment. And I was just so excited to see her."

The shark scientist said she just wants people to know that sharks deserve respect.

"They are wild animals," Ramsey said. "They are apex predators, but they’re not monsters. And that’s what I want to make sure it doesn’t come across."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

A way to get solar energy — no rooftop panels required — is making headway in Illinois: ‘Community solar is about to explode’




Nara Schoenberg, Chicago Tribune
Mon, October 31, 2022 

CHICAGO — There are no shiny black solar panels on the roof of his condo building, but Paul Dickerson is enjoying the benefits of clean energy just the same.

Dickerson, 73, of Oak Park, Illinois, has signed up for what is known in Illinois as community solar — a program in which residents subscribe to nearby solar farms, reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and receiving discounts on their electric bills.

Brandishing charts of their electricity costs during a recent interview, Dickerson and his fellow members of the building’s green committee, Elaine Johnson and Art Spooner, said they’re all paying less with community solar, as is their 28-unit building, which is saving about $40 a month on electricity for its common spaces.

“Try it you’ll like it,” Dickerson said. “You’ll save money and you’ll feel good about saving the planet — at least a little bit.”

Increasingly popular in Illinois, community solar was pioneered on the West Coast in the mid-2000s as a way to bring clean energy to the many American households — almost 50% by some estimates — that don’t have access to solar panels, often because residents can’t afford them, don’t own their homes or don’t get enough sun on their roofs.

The solar energy in community solar doesn’t actually flow into your home, but it flows into your area’s power grid, providing electricity to homes and businesses in your region of the state, and you reap the benefits of government solar incentives in the form of lower electricity bills.

Community solar is gaining ground in states such as New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine and Illinois, which in 2021 had enough community solar to power about 44,000 homes, up from 17,000 homes in 2020.

“Community solar is about to explode in terms of access and truly being able to see it everywhere and in your community,” said Nicole Steele, a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy’s solar technologies office. “It’s just another way to help in the clean energy transition, be part of the clean energy transition, and see the actual benefits.”

Community solar is taking off at a time when many states and the federal government have committed to ambitious plans to move to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with solar (in all its forms) expected to eventually generate up to about 45% of our electricity.

In interviews with the Tribune, some Chicago-area early adopters complained that they receive two electric bills a month under community solar — one from ComEd and one from a solar farm — a system they find cumbersome and difficult to understand.

But those with the time and skills to drill down on the numbers said they were satisfied with what they found, and a watchdog told the Tribune that in all the Illinois cases she knows of but one — an apparent billing error — customers really are seeing financial savings.

“Community solar is one of those things here in Illinois that might sound too good to be true,” said Sarah Moskowitz, deputy director of the Citizens Utility Board, an Illinois consumer advocacy group. “But for once, CUB is here to assure people that you can actually save money, and it’s a great program.”

A longtime environmentalist, Spooner put “installing solar panels on the roof” at the top of his to-do list when he retired from his job as a manufacturing and quality manager in 2016.

Unfortunately, his home at the time had a clay-tile roof.

Seated in the carefully restored lobby of his Greek Revival condo building — a former YMCA with two-story limestone columns — Spooner chuckled at the memory.

“The (solar panel) companies said they never did solar panels on clay tiles before. And it’s like, c’mon, what kind of song and dance are you givin’ me?” he said.

Dickerson smiled. “They certainly have it in California,” the retired electrical engineer said dryly.

Spooner looked for alternatives and found community solar but couldn’t subscribe. The option wasn’t yet widely available in Illinois.

“The more I learned, the more frustrating it got,” he said.

When the village of Oak Park offered a community solar option to residents, he finally got his chance. He and his wife signed up in 2020, as did Johnson, a retired school and children’s librarian, and her husband.

Dickerson and his wife opted to consider the plans available to the general public and went with Nexamp.

Spooner and Dickerson calculate they’re saving about 10% on their total electric bills, when taxes, fees and delivery charges are included.

“You can see here, this is for the condo association and this is for our unit,” said Dickerson, pointing to a graph he had printed out. “I save between $3 and $4 a month, depending on which month it is and which 12-month period I’m averaging, and the condo saves $40 a month.”

Community solar plans benefit Illinois utilities like ComEd, which are required to obtain 40% of their electric power from renewable resources by 2030 and 50% by 2040. To meet those state requirements, utilities purchase certificates that represent the environmental benefits of renewable energy. Community solar farms are one source of those certificates.

Illinois offers particularly strong consumer protections for low- and moderate-income residents who sign up for community solar through the state’s Illinois Solar for All program. Participants in this program, who must meet income eligibility requirements, can’t be charged upfront costs and must get a discount of at least 50% on the portion of their electricity covered by the credit on their ComEd bill. (The credit covers a large portion of the electricity used but generally not quite all of it due to factors such as variations in the amount of energy the customer uses and variations in the total energy produced by the solar farm.)

Higher-income people who sign up for community solar under what is known as Illinois Shines don’t get a guaranteed level of savings. But they do get several other important customer protections, according to Illinois Power Agency consumer protection counsel Rachel Granneman.

Approved vendors, who are listed at the Illinois Shines website, have to meet a range of state requirements, including a standard disclosure form solar farms have to give to consumers. The form allows consumers to make side-by-side comparisons of offers from companies. In addition, contracts have to include relevant information such as prices and fees. And misrepresentations — such as overstating customer savings — are prohibited.

“We have a hotline and an email address and a complaint form on our website,” said Granneman. “If there are issues a customer can’t resolve with their approved vendor we may take disciplinary action.”

The Illinois Power Agency, which administers state programs supporting the development of new solar energy, has the power to suspend community solar farms from its programs, which offer significant financial incentives.

In theory, a solar vendor could offer you a subscription that would cost you more than staying with ComEd, but in practice, Granneman and CUB’s Moskowitz said they aren’t seeing that.

At this point, all of the community solar offers that Granneman is seeing are set up in the same way: Customers get 10% to 20% off the electricity covered by the credit on their utility bill. She isn’t seeing a separate subscriber fee — although there’s nothing to prevent companies from charging that additional fee, as long as they disclose that they are doing so.

Moskowitz said she has only seen one case of a person in Illinois paying more under community solar than they would have otherwise — and that was due to an apparent error in calculating the person’s energy needs.

“So far, so good,” Moskowitz said.

In northern Illinois, community solar customers generally get an initial bill from ComEd, with a credit equal to most of the electricity they have used. You don’t pay for the energy covered by the credit, just for the other portions of your ComEd bill.

Then comes step 2: a bill from your community solar company. At this point, you actually do pay for the electricity covered by the credit on your ComEd bill, but typically at a 10% to 20% discount. The difference between what you would have paid for electricity under ComEd, and what you end up paying under community solar, is your savings.

For instance, you might get a credit for $50 of electricity on your ComEd bill. You wouldn’t pay ComEd for any of that electricity; instead, you’d pay your solar company, but at a discount. So you’d save about 10% to 20% of $50, or $5 to $10.

Find that confusing? You’re not alone.

“It’s not very transparent to me,” said Kay Perry of Oak Park. A beamline scientist who works at Argonne National Laboratory, Perry signed up when Oak Park offered a community solar option to residents.

She said she feels good about supporting clean energy but doesn’t like the two-part billing process and had trouble signing up, in part because her workplace computer is behind a strong firewall. She’d like to see community solar offered the same way wind energy was offered under a previous Oak Park program, with just one easy-to-understand bill showing the discounted electricity rate.

“You have to make it as easy as possible for people if you want them to do it — lower that activation energy,” Perry said.

Laurel Passera, senior director for policy and regulatory affairs at the Coalition for Community Solar Access, acknowledged that Illinois’ community solar model is “rather complex,” but she said it has its advantages, including that it’s less contentious and more acceptable to utilities.

“We spent months and months diving into the details on this to make sure it worked for all the parties,” she said of talks in 2016 and 2021 involving industry, utilities, diversity advocates and advocates for low-income consumers.

Passera added that auto-pay can eliminate the need to deal with two separate bills.

With community solar on the rise in Illinois, there are now credible online sources that can help you compare the various options. CUB, for instance, breaks down Illinois community solar offers on its website.

EnergySage, an online comparison-shopping marketplace that has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, offers customer ratings of local community solar plans.

Moskowitz said she advises those comparing community solar plans to consider the length of the contract, whether there’s an exit fee if you leave early, and how much you’ll save on electricity. The best deals she’s seeing offer 20% off the ComEd rate for electricity.

You may also want to check whether the community solar company accepts checks or electronic payments, and whether automatic billing is required.

“We want people to be cautious, read the contract, and call us if they have any questions and let us know if they have any issues,” said Moskowitz. “We haven’t heard of issues, really, but if there are we want to be on top of them.”

When it comes to protecting the planet, Johnson, Spooner and Dickerson are accustomed to being ahead of the curve.

Dickerson traces his commitment to protecting the natural world back to his days as a Boy Scout, when leaders emphasized that you should “leave no trace” in the forest.

For Spooner, the first Earth Day, in 1970, made an impression.

“I was a senior in college and they said, ‘Think globally, act locally,’ ” recalled Spooner. “I was like ‘Well, I can kind of manage that.’ ”

After experiences such as sorting recyclables in the 1980s (Dickerson), forgoing harmful detergents in the 1960s (Johnson) and volunteering with an interfaith environmental group (Spooner), subscribing to community solar wasn’t a big leap. And even in their larger community at their condo building, the program was a fairly easy sell, Dickerson said.

Residents wanted information, he said, so members of the condo association’s green committee called solar company representatives and made a chart.

The big pushback was on the issue of contracts, which can be as long as 20 years, so the condo association went with a company that allowed them to cancel their contract with no penalty.

Now, the building’s green newsletter, edited by Johnson, is trumpeting community solar savings, and the green committee is moving on to other projects, including electric vehicle chargers and composting.

“As a parent and then a grandparent, it’s kind of like a legacy,” Johnson said of this work. “How could I do something that’s bad for the world in which my grandchildren are going to live?”