Bernie Sanders, powered by diverse liberal coalition, forces a reckoning for Democrats

Robert Costa, Philip Rucker


Bernie Sanders has seized a commanding position in the Democratic presidential race, building a diverse coalition that is driving his liberal movement toward the cusp of a takeover of a major political party.


The senator’s ascendancy, though years in the making, is forcing a sudden reckoning in the Democratic Party’s hierarchy, as centrist politicians and their wealthy benefactors grapple with the upheaval brought by an electorate not only hungry to defeat President Trump, but also clamoring for radical change.

Following Sanders’s resounding victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, and with polls showing him on the rise, Democrats are entering a season of open warfare over whether Sanders (I-Vt.) is equipped to beat Trump in what could be a brutal general election. The senator and his allies insist he could, but his detractors say he is too polarizing to win in November — and could severely cost Democrats in congressional or state races if Republicans use Sanders’s self-description as a democratic socialist to paint all Democrats as extreme.

The Sanders insurgency is the culmination of grievances that have simmered for the past decade among liberals who say Washington has all but ignored the problems of income inequality, health-care access and climate change.

“The party has shifted to the left, and I don’t think many of the more traditional, legacy leaders of the party got it,” said Andrew L. Stern, a longtime former president of the Service Employees International Union. “The good news for Bernie Sanders is, he’s like a broken clock. He’s been in the same place for 35 or 40 years in terms of his positions, and the times have found him.”

A headstrong, 78-year-old senator, Sanders has galvanized his supporters with an unwavering commitment to their shared cause and forceful critiques of the “billionaire class.” They in turn see him, despite his unorthodox persona, as a weapon against a governing class that has failed them.

On the campaign trail, there is an unusual intensity to Sanders’s performances, reminiscent of the energy that built around Trump on the right during his 2016 rise. Sanders has emerged as a movement candidate, with his rallies coast to coast drawing thousands of people who wait for hours to see him.

Sanders’s stump speech is a liberal wish list — passing a Green New Deal to combat climate change; wiping out student debt and paying for it by taxing Wall Street; raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour; reforming immigration laws to protect the undocumented; nominating liberals to the Supreme Court and protecting abortion rights; and, of course, his signature health-care idea, Medicare-for-all, which has become a rallying cry on the left.

“People who have been locked out of power are speaking up about corporate influence over the issues that matter in their lives,” said Abdul El-Sayed, a Sanders ally and liberal organizer who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2018. “What you’re seeing is a necessary and natural readjustment in the Democratic Party.”





 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with his wife Jane, waves to the crowd Saturday at a rally in El Paso.Next Slide4 SLIDES © Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

anders’s emphatic win in Nevada illustrated his potential to expand his coalition far beyond the ceiling of 25 percent or 30 percent that many party-establishment figures and commentators assumed he had. In Nevada, Sanders won with 29 percent of whites, 51 percent of Hispanics and 27 percent of blacks, according to entrance polls of Democratic caucus-goers. He won a staggering 65 percent of caucus-goers under 30 years old, and he carried every other age group except for caucus-goers over 65 years old, which former vice president Joe Biden won.

“In Nevada, we have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is going to not only win in Nevada, it’s going to sweep this country,” Sanders said at his rally in San Antonio on Saturday.

“We are bringing our people together — black and white and Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight,” Sanders added. “We are bringing our people together around an agenda that works for the working people of this country.”

Sanders’s dominance among young people, his supporters say, signals his ability to energize this potentially important demographic in November.

“Disregard electability,” said Isabel Lozoya, 19, a Texas State University student who drove for an hour on Saturday to see Sanders campaign in San Antonio. “It should be about picking somebody you really believe in as opposed to somebody you think other people will believe in.”

The race for the nomination is just getting started and remains fluid, with a half-dozen contenders still running, although Sanders has clear momentum after winning Nevada and the New Hampshire primary, while finishing second in the Iowa caucuses by a tiny margin.

The next primary is on Saturday in South Carolina, where the latest polls show Biden leading and Sanders running close behind. The Super Tuesday contests on March 3 may be decisive, with voters in California, Texas and 12 other states determining approximately one-third of the nearly 4,000 pledged delegates to be awarded by primaries and caucuses.

Some other candidates have stepped up their attacks on Sanders in urgent hopes of blunting his rise. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has been one of the most aggressive, warning in a speech Saturday night that Sanders as the party standard-bearer could be disastrous for other Democrats on the November ballot.

“Before we rush to nominate Senator Sanders in our one shot to take on this president, let us take a sober look at what is at stake for our party, for our values and for those with the most to lose,” said Buttigieg, who ran third in Nevada following a win in Iowa and a second-place finish in New Hampshire.

Sanders is bracing for a harsher assault to come from his Democratic rivals, including at Tuesday night’s CBS News debate in South Carolina.

“To finally be seeing it all start to catch on is powerful, but he knows they’re going to throw the kitchen sink at him. He’s a realist,” said Sanders’s friend Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a Vermont-based liberal activist.

Some Democratic leaders are sounding the alarm about the party’s viability in the November election with Sanders atop the ticket. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Sunday that Sanders could jeopardize the party’s House majority.

“I think it would be a real burden for us in these states or congressional districts that we have to do well in,” Clyburn said on ABC’s “This Week.” “If you look at how well we did the last time [in the 2018 midterm elections] and look at the congressional districts, these were not liberal or what you might call progressive districts. These were basically moderate and conservative districts that we did well in.”







Slide 1- 4 of 39: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders

 addresses his first campaign rally after the Nevada Caucus in El Paso, Texas, 

U.S. February 22, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Still, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the civil rights leader who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 with a message about “economic violence,” said it is clear to him that the party’s liberal wing is asserting control.

“They represent the direction of the party,” said Jackson, who said he has spoken recently with Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “They’re speaking to the pain that people feel. And Democrats are beginning to understand that democratic socialism doesn’t mean Eastern European socialism.”


Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, compared the disruptive mood of Democratic voters this year to the right-wing tea party movement in 2010.

“They want to shake things up. There is a sense that things are broken, and prioritizing working families has to be at the center of the economic system,” said Weingarten, whose union has not endorsed a candidate but last week approved its members to support Sanders, Warren or Biden.

Former Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle said Sanders “definitely has tapped into the kind of youthful enthusiasm and idealism that’s been at the heart of the Democratic Party for a long, long time.”

“Democrats are always best when the race is one in which it’s change versus status quo, and the Democrats are change,” Doyle added. “You go back historically to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Carter, to Clinton, to Obama. That’s how Democrats win.”

Sanders is trying to counter the assumption of many in the so-called Democratic establishment that he is too liberal to win a general election.

“Some of the folks in the corporate media are getting a little bit nervous,” Sanders said at a rally Sunday afternoon in Houston before an enthusiastic crowd of more than 6,200 at the University of Houston. “And they say Bernie can’t beat Trump.”

Sanders then listed the results of a few recent polls that he says show him defeating the president head-to-head nationally as well as in such states as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Steve Rosenthal, a veteran Democratic labor strategist who has been focused on mobilizing working-class white voters in a trio of battleground states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — said it would be foolish to discount Sanders’s appeal there.

“The establishment, which I guess I’m a part of after all these years, seems to know as much about electability as a donkey knows about calculus,” Rosenthal said. “We always get it wrong. . . . The voters are going to tell us who’s electable.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a national co-chair of the Sanders campaign, said it is expanding its outreach to a broader cross-section of voters.

© Callaghan O'hare/Reuters Sanders speaks at a campaign

 rally in Houston on Sunday.

“He wants to build a coalition like Bobby Kennedy or F.D.R. did — one that is racially diverse and reaches out to everyone,” Khanna said. “We’re going to make a very concerted effort over the next few months to bring all the wings of the Democratic Party onboard.”

Working to Sanders’s advantage is the persistence of several more moderate candidates — Biden, Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg — who appear to be competing for many of the same voters and jockeying to survive as the lone alternative to Sanders.

For the proudly liberal and activist wing of the Democratic Party, Sanders’s ascent has been welcomed as a potentially historic development. Robert Reich, the liberal former labor secretary and a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, said this moment can be traced directly back to the 2008 financial crisis, which he called a galvanizing event that led to a surge in anti-establishment fervor.

“This isn’t like 1972,” when liberal Sen. George McGovern (S.D.) won the Democratic nomination and collapsed in the general election against Richard M. Nixon, Reich said. “In 1972, America’s middle class was still growing. What you see here is a middle class responding to not having a raise in 40 years.”

Even if he fails to secure the nomination outright at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, Sanders is unlikely to go away quietly, aides and friends said. They suggested that Sanders’s long run and defiant exit from the 2016 race — doggedly carrying on with his calls for a political revolution until the final primary, weeks after Hillary Clinton had effectively sewn up the nomination — was a revealing glimpse into his character and his desire to move the party to the left.

“He doesn’t quit,” said Sanders confidant and political adviser Jeff Weaver. “He’s campaigning to win.”

Schools should teach black history like history. Because it is.
During Black History Month, students around the state learn about famous African-Americans, and historical facts about black Americans. 

Nancy Kaffer, Detroit Free Press 

© Don Campbell, AP ReUnna Dawson, 9, center, joins students from

 River of Life Christian School, as they play with scarves and drums

 during an African dance Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, at the African 

American History & Literature Gallery in Benton Harbor, Mich. Students 

visited the gallery to learn about African American history as part of 

Black History Month.(Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP) 

THIS IS A RELIGIOUS CHARTER SCHOOL

But that's not enough.

That's something I'm hearing from parents whose children attend suburban schools, and from parents whose kids attend majority African-American city schools.

Michigan Radio reporter Bryce Huffman, host of the podcast "Same Same Different," is hosting panels around the state to talk about black history, what it means for black kids when it's taught as an elective, a nice-to-have, not a need-to-know. I talked to Huffman about why it's important to do better at teaching black history, for all of us.

Huffman will host a panel this Sunday be at Spread Art in Detroit, at 6 p.m.

Nancy Kaffer: You talk about the "book report” model of black history: Students dress up like important historical figures or share history facts. I haven't done a survey, but that seems be the most popular model for schools to check the Black History Month box.

Bryce Huffman: I went to a Catholic school, and every day in homeroom, we would insert black history facts. As a seventh grader, I loved it, because I'm in this predominantly white school where I don't fit in at all, and it just seemed like oh, wow, everyone in the school is hearing these black history facts. By the time I got to 10th grade, I wondered, "Well, why don't we just talk about these things in our U.S. history class? Why don't we just talk about these things in our English class?"

Then you hear horror stories … like the high school teacher who proposed to show movies like "Boyz n the Hood" as part of an African-American history curriculum.

“We're going to show them 'Boys n the Hood' and 'South Central' and we'll call it a day!”

© DON CAMPBELL, AP Aubree Windmon, 8, right and Taylor Washington

, 9, back, play the drums with students from River of Life Christian School 

during an African dance Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, at the African American

 History & Literature Gallery in Benton Harbor, Mich. Students visited the

 gallery to learn about African American history as part of Black History Month.

Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP

So how should schools should be doing this right?

I think the easiest thing schools can do — I want to phrase it that way, because anytime we talk about changes in education, teachers and educators say, "Great, one more thing on this loaded list of things to do" — is to just acknowledge black people's contributions to the lessons you're teaching. Especially if you're in a predominantly black school, whatever lesson you're teaching, whether it's science, math, history or physics, you should be introducing those students to the idea that people who look like you have already done this, so you can do it, too.

And when we don't do that, leaving African-Americans out of the picture . . .

I got this quote from my friend Ebonee West: When you don't teach black kids that black people have contributed to this country, and you don't teach them that people who look like them have done these great, amazing things, you're sending those kids to the potluck empty-handed. My white friends in seventh and eighth grade never had a question about white people's accomplishments in science and technology. … the analogy of coming to this meal empty-handed is the best way to think about it. You're not coming with a sense of pride and who you and your people are.

In my high school, we covered slavery, and we the economy of the south at the time of the Civil War, but there was never a line drawn between them.

There's not that through-line connecting all of the atrocities of slavery to the civil rights movement, and what leaders were fighting for.

We learned about slavery in my predominantly black elementary school in a really raw way. We learned about how terrible it was. What we didn't necessarily learn was that economic trajectory from slavery. I think we kind of had it in the back of our heads that as black kids growing up in Detroit, we could see things around us and make little connections, but we just didn't have that sophisticated understanding that these things are still going on, and still shaping the future of many African Americans and many white Americans, to be quite frank . . .

I was a kid learning about a lot of this stuff thinking, "Wow, these white people were so mean to Dr. King and Rosa Parks all this long time ago," not realizing that was happening in my parents' lifetime. When we put distance between the atrocities of slavery and our current state, we're telling people, it's not that big a deal anymore. We need to help kids understand just how recent some of these things are, and how ongoing a lot of it is.

You've probably noticed that a lot of times white people feel very awkward talking about race. But it seems like the only way to not be awkward is to talk about it a lot more.

What happens in a lot of schools is they put it off until February, so schools are disrupting the flow that the students already have. They're bringing up this often-painful subject that stirs up a lot of different feelings in black people, and it comes off as this forced attempt to have some sort of conversation about racial reconciliation, or racial healing or whatever it might be. And it never really turns into that, because once March 1 rolls around, those conversations end.

If you had it built in from the beginning . . . well, it might still be a little awkward. But if you just have these conversations from the start, and you treat black history as American history, as just as important as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, then you you can avoid a lot of that awkwardness later down the road.

Nancy Kaffer is a Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Schools should teach black history like history. Because it is.

WE ARE ALL BAFFLED

College baffled as to how accused sex trafficker lived in daughter's dorm

Sarah Lawrence sex trafficking victims 'young enough to be his children': U.S. attorney
Peter D. Kramer and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, The Journal News 


The indictment accusing Larry Ray of preying on Sarah Lawrence College students – in a web of manipulation, extortion, sex-trafficking and money-laundering – answered many questions but not THE question.

Sarah Lawrence alumni and even its president have tried to figure out how a dad could move into his daughter's on-campus apartment without the college knowing about it.

They pointed to the private, apartment-style setup of his daughter's Slonim Woods dorm where Ray arrived – straight from prison – in late September 2010 and stayed through the spring semester of 2011.

They said the decentralized layout of the woodsy Yonkers school and the accepting, find-your-way culture at Sarah Lawrence could have helped Ray live under the radar.

Feb. 12: Sarah Lawrence College sex and extortion – inside the federal case against ex-convict

Feb. 11: New York man accused of manipulating daughter's college friends charged with sex trafficking

Prosecutors said Ray's criminal enterprise began on campus in 2010 and spread to New York City and North Carolina over the decade that followed.

According to a New York magazine article last April – "The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence" by Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh – at least one administrator knew about Ray in the spring of 2011.

New York reported that Dean of Students Allen Green met twice with parents who were alarmed by Ray's presence on campus.

The magazine reported that in the spring of 2011, Green received an email from one of Ray's alleged victims, titled "The Truth," that expressed "fears and concerns about Larry Ray being a bad, dangerous, manipulative, and sexually deviant man."

Green's role in the Ray case was cited in a sexual discrimination and retaliation lawsuit last October against the college involving a former student who claimed the college failed to protect her from a fellow student she accused of rape.

© Peter Carr /The Journal News The Slonim Woods 

student housing at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers Feb. 14, 2020.

The plaintiff, listed as Jane Doe to protect her identity, lives in Dallas.

The suit says Green's actions, including brushing aside parents' concerns in two meetings and being aware of "The Truth" email, suggest a history of mishandling accusations that came to the college's attention. Green is among the defendants in that suit.

"The conduct alleged here is outrageous," William Sweeney, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI in New York, said in announcing the case against Ray, 60. "It makes you angry. If you're not angry, you don't have a soul."

Sweeney and U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman laid out a litany of charges against Ray, including:

Psychologically manipulating and physically abusing a half-dozen victims.

Bilking them and their families out of nearly $1 million. 

Holding a knife to the neck of one male victim and to the genitals of another.
Forcing three female victims to do unpaid labor.

Pushing a female victim into prostitution and splitting nearly $500,000 in proceeds with at least two associates.

Ray pleaded not guilty. Assistant Federal Defender Marne Lenox told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that her client might make a bail application at a hearing this month.

"Virtually everybody has got policies that prohibit the student from moving somebody into his or her dorm room, whether it's a relative or not," Dan King, president of the American Association of University Administrators, told The Associated Press.

Enforcing the policies by trying to keep track of everyone staying in every room is a challenge.

"It still doesn't mean somebody can't let them in a door," he said. "That's a perennial problem everywhere. It's unusual to have a family member, but it's not unusual to have a boyfriend or girlfriend."

Sarah Lawrence's 2019-20 student handbook is clear: Guests must register in the Westlands (administration) building.

"Students who have roommates must obtain the permission of the roommate(s) to have an overnight guest," the handbook policy reads. "Guest passes are valid for up to four consecutive days. A guest may not be registered more than twice in a 30-day period, and there must be at least seven days between each pass period."

It is not clear what policy was in place when Ray moved into Slonim Woods, but Mariah Smith, a 2013 Sarah Lawrence graduate who was a resident assistant, wrote on Twitter, "I know a lot about housing/the standards the campus held for visitors. While I was there, the max someone could technically stay was three days."
'Larry's Spell' 

© Stephanie Keith, Getty Images U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman announces the indictment against Lawrence Ray aka "Lawrence Grecco" on Feb. 11.

How Ray was able to outstay his official welcome at Sarah Lawrence is captured in red type on the cover of New York magazine over a black-and-white closeup photo of Ray.

It reads, "Larry's Spell."

The story tells of "therapy sessions" Ray held with his daughter's roommates, of limo rides and "dinners at upscale steakhouses, always paid for with a wad of cash he kept in a backpack that he carried with him at all times."

He went from cooking and cleaning for them to sharing a bedroom before moving into an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for the winter break of 2010-11 where the scheme began to take shape, prosecutors said. He was back on campus in the spring and stayed till students went home for the summer, the article says.

Marcus, co-author of the New York article, was a student at Sarah Lawrence when Ray was on campus and went to school with the alleged victims, though he did not know Ray's daughter and never saw Ray on campus.

“It’s as mind-boggling to me as anyone else that this happened," Marcus said in an interview with The Journal News. “I think a lot of it just had to do with the fact that the people that he was talking to and manipulating were just very vulnerable. And his daughter was kind of his entree into their social group and that, I guessed, greased the wheels for him to just move in.”

Marcus interviewed dozens of sources in reporting the story with Walsh.

“I think there were people living there who felt uncomfortable with it," he said. "I mean, that's in our story, but as to how he was able to stay there for as long as he did, I honestly don't know.”

Ray saw an opening in Slonim Woods, Marcus said.

"They (students) had no reason to be distrustful of a friend’s parent," he said. "If you talk to any of them, you will see very quickly how normal and how smart they are. That’s why this story is so scary. He was able to find their vulnerabilities and exploit them."
A letter to Sarah Lawrence

Sarah Lawrence President Cristle Collins Judd responded to Ray's indictment and arrest the next day in a letter to the campus community.

The letter is the only official response from the college in the wake of the indictment. For more than a week, Brendan O'Callaghan, the college's director of public affairs, has not responded to repeated calls and emails seeking clarification and comment.

In the letter, Judd said she wrestled with how Ray was able to live on campus, “not only as a president, but as a parent" of three daughters of college age.

"How could the college not know this?, has been asked by many, including myself,” Judd wrote. “We are a small college, and while it is not unreasonable to expect that we will know when something is happening on our campus, in fact college officials at the time didn’t know.

"Perhaps because the apartment in question was a small townhouse with its own entrance, students in other housing would not necessarily have been aware of the presence (and have told us they were not) of this student’s father," said Judd, who took her post at the college in 2017.

Anxiety, depression and PTSD: The hidden epidemic of data breaches and cybercrimes

College admissions scandal tracker: Who's pleaded guilty, who's gone to prison and who's still fighting

Judd was adamant that the crimes did not happen at Sarah Lawrence.

"The acts charged in the indictment allegedly started in 2011 – after Ray had stayed with his daughter; they spanned nearly a decade and are not alleged to have taken place on the Sarah Lawrence campus," she wrote.

Judd wrote that the college is different than it was when Ray was on campus. She said one of the college's primary values, "a firm belief in the basic goodness of others," will continue but will need to be tempered "with a clear-eyed and critical assessment of the world around us."
Dads allowed on campus

The magazine reported (and Marcus reiterated) that suspicious parents met with Green in the spring semester of 2011. "The Truth" email was sent just before classes ended for the summer in 2011.

"They met with Allen Green, Sarah Lawrence’s dean of student life," the story says. "Green told them he’d received other complaints about Larry but his hands were tied; a father had a right to visit his daughter on campus, he explained. A second meeting ended similarly."

Repeated efforts to reach Green were unsuccessful. The college did not respond to calls and emails to determine whether Green documented the claims made by the parents and in "The Truth" email.

Green was dean of studies and student life and chief diversity officer from 1999 to 2015, when he was named dean of equity and inclusion and Title IX coordinator, according to his LinkedIn profile. He retired at 65 in May 2019.
'There's no security guard'

The culture of Sarah Lawrence could have abetted Ray, said Kristin Maffei, who graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2008. She grew up in Mahopac and lived in Slonim Woods in her last year there, three years before Ray moved on campus.

"I keep hearing, 'How could the school not have known about this?' I would just say, having lived in those dorms, it's not a normal dorm," Maffei said. "There's no security guard. They're sort of set up like little houses, almost."

The two-story "cooperative living" units of Slonim Woods have four bedrooms downstairs and four upstairs, with two bathrooms, a large common area and a kitchenette, according to the college's website.

"Obviously, I knew what was going on in mine, and I like to think that if somebody's parent had moved in, I definitely would have said something – or you hope that you would say something," Maffei said. "But I can say I had no idea what was going on in any of the other ones around us."

Maffei, assistant director of marketing and communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, said there's a particular mindset at Sarah Lawrence – where one of the slogans is "We’re different, so are you."

"I do think it has something to do with people are happy to let you have your focus, that there's space there to be who you are," Maffei said. "I wonder if that led to things getting missed that absolutely shouldn't have been missed."

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Peter Kramer and Swapna Venugopal on Twitter: @peterkramer and @SwapnaVenugopal

PHOTO ESSAY

A nondescript New York City building hides a secretive Freemason meeting space, complete with fake windows and elaborate architecture. Take a look inside.

Frank Olito

Slide 1-4 of 24: The Grand Lodge of New York is located in the Flatiron neighborhood of New York City and it is the headquarters for all Freemasons in the state. Although the building looks like a normal structure from the outside, inside there are elaborate rooms and lodges that hint at what goes on behind the scenes at this secretive organization. Insider recently took a tour of the building, getting a glimpse at rooms like the Grand Lodge Room, which can seat 1,000 people for state-wide meetings. The building is also filled with smaller "lodges" that are themed, like the Gothic Room and the Colonial Room. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. There are six million Freemasons living in the world right now. With a number that high, it should be easy to find out what exactly a Mason is and what they believe, but the organization has a reputation for keeping tight-lipped about what goes on behind closed doors. Freemasonry can be traced back to the medieval ages, but there are still lodges all over the world that host meetings. In fact, New York City is home to the Grand Lodge of New York, the headquarters for the state. Incredibly, despite being one of the most secretive organizations in the world, they welcome guests into the building every day for tours. Insider took one of these tours and saw firsthand where all their meetings take place. Keep reading to find out what it's like inside.

Mary McLeod Bethune was born the daughter of slaves. She died a retired college president
Tim Walters, Florida Today


Mary McLeod Bethune taught black girls they could be more

To celebrate Black History month, we will be spotlighting key African Americans who had a major impact on Florida.

DAYTONA BEACH — Her solitary grave rests among the serene beauty of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

Yet, the school’s founder — Mary McLeod Bethune — is never alone.

“People walk through here all day,” said Tasha Lucas-Youmans, Dean of the Carl S. Swisher Library on the Bethune-Cookman campus. “Some people just sit on the benches and meditate. Others will even talk to her.”

It's fitting considering the campus wouldn't be here if it weren't for Bethune's dream — and commitment — to making education available to black students.
Growing up in South Carolina

Her journey to found a college for black people seemed near-impossible for the African-American daughter of former slaves at the turn of the 20th century.

“Her parents instilled in her a strong work ethic and they also encouraged her to get an education,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Census records show she was reading by the time she was 4 years old.”

Born in Mayesville, South Carolina, in 1875, Mary McCleod was the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves Sam and Patsy McLeod. She was the first of her siblings to be born into freedom.

Early on, Mary would accompany her mother to the homes of white people where they would deliver laundry. On one occasion, a young Mary picked up a book but as she opened it, a white child took it away from her, saying Mary didn't know how to read.

Mary decided the only difference between white and black people was the ability to read and write. So, she set out to get an education.

Mary had to walk five miles to and from school. Being the only one of her siblings to attend school, she taught her brothers and sisters each day what she had learned.

It was clear then that being an educator would be part of her future.
Mary McLeod Bethune's dream

“Dr. Bethune had a dream that she would be an educator or missionary,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, her initial career plight was to be a missionary in Africa, but she was unable to do that because of colonization. She decided to become an educator.”

Thanks to the help of her teacher, Mary got a scholarship and was able to attend Scotia Seminary, now Barber-Scotia College, in North Carolina, where she graduated in 1893.

In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune and moved to Savannah, Georgia. A year later they moved to Florida where they settled in Palatka and ran a mission school.

“It was there she heard about Henry Flagler building the Florida East Coast Railroad and she knew the railroad workers would need for the children to be educated,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, she came to Daytona Beach in 1904 and founded this campus with only $1.50, five little girls and her faith in God.”

Bethune's school in Daytona Beach

The original school was nothing more than a small rented house where Bethune made benches and desks from discarded crates and acquired other items through charity. It bordered the city dump.

Bethune was quoted as saying: “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."

The school grew immediately. By the end of the first year Bethune was teaching 30 girls.

In 1907, Albertus left Mary and moved to South Carolina. Undeterred, Mary continued to pour her soul into the school and its students.

As the school grew, so did Bethune’s gumption in asking for help.

“She had the audacity to go to beachside and be brazen enough to confront these people, a lot of the wealthy white people that would come here for summer vacation, and talk to them and encourage them to help,” Lucas-Youmans said. “And the fact that they would even listen to this poor little black girl from Mayesville, South Carolina, that said she had a dream that she was going to build a school on a city dump. They did. They believed her.”

In 1914, Thomas White of White Sewing Machine and James Gamble of Proctor and Gamble donated money to buy a Victorian-style two-story house for Bethune, which still stands at the northeast corner of the campus.

The house, open for tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, is listed on the National Register of Historical places. Beside it lies Bethune’s grave, which is surrounded by flowers with white benches on either side. Near the headstone is a large iron bell that she used to round up students in the early days of the school.

Expansion of the school continued throughout the next decade and in 1923 her school merged with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville and became co-ed while also gaining the United Methodist Church affiliation.

In 1925 the combined school’s name was changed to Daytona-Cookman Collegiate Institute.

It wasn’t until 1931 that the school’s name was officially changed to Bethune-Cookman College to reflect the leadership of Bethune.
A school president — who met the president

It was at this time that she became the school’s president, a post she held until 1942, when she retired.

Along the way, she befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who stayed at her home on the Bethune-Cookman campus on three different occasions.

“When the First Lady came, she traveled with Secret Service,” said India Woods, who works for the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation. “The room once had a door but secret service had to take the door down because they had to watch over her as she slept.”

Through their friendship, Bethune met President Franklin Roosevelt and he named her to be chair of the National Youth Administration, a federal agency.

At different points of her life Bethune served as the Florida Chapter president of the National Association of Colored Women, founded the National Council of Negro Women and she co-founded the United Negro College Fund in 1944.

Bethune died of a heart attack in 1955 at age 79.

Her legacy is already cemented in history, but it will be further etched in granite when a statue of her is placed in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol as a representative of Florida.

It will be the first state-commissioned statue of an African American placed in National Statuary Hall.

Her statue will replace that of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith.

“I think her legacy speaks for itself,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Words cannot describe what she has done and I don’t know another woman who was able to do what she did during that time in history, but she did it.”

SEVENTIES GURU CULT REVIVAL IN SILICON VALLEY

MICRODOSING?

'We were kings of the world': WeWork's Adam Neumann fostered a culture of superiority at the troubled coworking startup

Theron Mohamed

© Michael Kovac/Getty Images for WeWork

WeWork's cofounder and ex-CEO Adam Neumann instilled a culture of superiority at the coworking startup, according to the Financial Times.

"Adam was the sun and we all revolved around him," a WeWork employee told the newspaper. "We were kings of the world."

"He wanted everyone to know he was God," a SoftBank executive told the Financial Times.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son goaded Neumann into expanding WeWork faster by comparing it to other businesses.

WeWork's cofounder and former CEO Adam Neumann fostered a culture of superiority at the coworking startup before its IPO collapsed last fall and SoftBank was forced to bail it out, according to the Financial Times.

"Adam was the sun and we all revolved around him," a WeWork employee told the newspaper, which interviewed dozens of WeWork and SoftBank sources for its latest deep dive into the company. "We were kings of the world."

Neumann exemplified that mindset by bringing up his friendship with President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in negotiations with SoftBank, the Financial Times reported.

SoftBank's bosses interpreted Neumann's comments as a threat to sabotage their efforts to win US regulatory approval for the merger of their wireless carrier, Sprint, with rival T-Mobile, the newspaper said.

"He wanted everyone to know he was God," an executive at the Japanese conglomerate told the Financial Times.

Neumann's team denied he was making a threat, the newspaper said. A federal judge ruled in favor of the telecoms megamerger earlier this month, paving the way for it to go through.Poking the bear

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son took advantage of Neumann's sense of superiority to goad him into expanding WeWork faster.

"Your little brother … is really performing faster [and] better than you guys," Son told Neumann in reference to hoteSprihl chain Oyo, another SoftBank holding, the Financial Times reported.

"Masa was poking the bear," a WeWork executive told the newspaper. "Adam would say, 'We're not going fast enough; we're not being bold enough.'"A swift collapse

Neumann and Son's pursuit of global domination culminated in WeWork filing to go public last August. However, investors balked at the startup's mushrooming losses, vulnerable business model, lax governance, and Neumann's controversial behavior.

At risk of not raising enough money to unlock a key bank loan, and running short of cash, WeWork pulled its IPO. Neumann stepped down and WeWork accepted a rescue deal from SoftBank in November that valued the business below $10 billion - a fraction of the $47 billion private valuation it secured in January 2019.

FILE UNDER WHY IS THIS NEWS

Daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes dies in homemade rocket launch

FLATEARTHER FALLS FLAT TO EARTH
Daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes died Saturday when a homemade rocket he was attached to launched but quickly dove to earth in the California desert.

© Matt Hartman Image:

The stunt was apparently part of a forthcoming television show, "Homemade Astronauts," that was scheduled to debut later this year on Discovery Inc.'s Science Channel.

Discovery confirmed the 64-year-old's death in a statement.

"It was always his dream to do this launch, and Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey," the company said.

The mishap was reported at 1:52 p.m. on private property in the Barstow area, San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said by email. She did not identify Hughes.

"A man was pronounced deceased after the rocket crashed in the open desert during a rocket launch event," she said.

Sheriff's aviation investigators were looking into the accident.

In a statement last year, Discovery, Inc. described the forthcoming show as a look at "three self-financed teams with sky-high dreams, in their cosmic quest to explore the final frontier on shoe-string budgets."

Hughes' stunt Saturday was billed as part of a plan to raise money for another project, a planned launch to the border of space on a vehicle described as part rocket, part balloon, Discovery said.

The money-raising launch had a goal of reaching 5,000 feet into the sky aboard a "steam-powered rocket," the broadcaster said.

Hughes is known both for his homemade rockets and for his belief the earth is flat.

His desire to prove the planet is "shaped like a Frisbee" inspired his vertical endeavors, he has said. But Saturday's launch did not appear to be directly tied to Hughes' flat-earth argument.

In 2018, he successfully launched himself about 1,875 feet into the sky above the Mojave desert via a garage-made rocket.

His landing that year was softened when he deployed a parachute. In social media video of Saturday's accident, a parachute-like swath of fabric can be seen flying away from the rocket shortly after blast-off.

"This thing wants to kill you 10 different ways," Hughes said in 2018. "This thing will kill you in a heartbeat."


THE IGNOMINY OF IT ALL 

---30---

UPDATED
A woman's Great Pyrenees helped track down a rare black coyote after they became backyard buds

Every day for a week, the strange, happy visitor would drop to play with her Great Pyrenees. She thought Ruth Bader, the dog, had made a new dog companion. Nope, it was a coyote. And the animal was on the lam.

By Francisco Guzman and Brian Ries, CNN  2 days ago 

© Vanessa Prior

Researchers with the Atlanta Coyote Project told Vanessa Prior, Ruth Bader's human, that they had been trying to track down the rare, black coyote for over a month. It had been spotted around the Smyrna and Vinings, Georgia, areas playing with neighborhood dogs.© Jessica Slater The black coyote went around playing with dogs in Georgia.

"It was very friendly," co-founder of the Atlanta Coyote Project Christopher Mowry told CNN. "It was following people to try to play with their dogs while they were walking them."

The group, which is made up of scientists devoted to learning more about coyotes living in the Atlanta area, first attempted to find the animal when people started to get a little freaked out by it coming too close for comfort.

They figured it was best for everyone -- people, dogs, coyote -- to move the animal to a safer place.


The friendship between a dog and coyote


Prior said she first noticed the new friend last week, when the coyote dropped by her backyard for some playtime.

Since then, "she came every day to play," Prior told CNN. "They would chase each other, play on the pool cover, gently wrestling or nap side by side."

At first she thought it was a wild dog, or maybe a big fox.

But when she posted a photo of the two playing on her Facebook, a friend told her to call a pet rescue center. The group told her the Atlanta Coyote Project had been trying to catch the coyote for months.

So Prior and her friend set up cameras in her backyard to see if the rare animal would come back. Of course it did -- the two animals had become fast friends.

"Because of their friendship and because she kept on coming back to play, they were able to catch her," she said. "They put some traps in the back of my yard and one night she finally got into it."

Prior said she has mixed emotions over her role in the capture.

She's happy the coyote is in a safe place, but feels sad when she sees Ruth Bader looking forlornly for the friend who hasn't returned, she said.

The rescuers took the animal to the Yellow River Wildlife Sanctuary where it will live with another coyote.

"It's not a good situation for a wild animal like a coyote to be interacting with people,'' the Atlanta Coyote Project's Christopher Mowry assured. "They need to maintain a natural awareness to humans and pets and keep to themselves."

Coyote experts will look into the genetics of the friendly animal to try to learn why it was interacting with people. Mowry believes it could have a history with well-meaning humans.

Time will tell how the animal's experiences will translate in its new friendship with another of its kind.

Experts Capture Rare All-Black Coyote On-Video Playing With Great Pyrenees


THE COYOTE WAS OVERLY FRIENDLY TO HUMANS AND DOGS, FOLLOWING DOGWALKERS AND EVEN JUMPING FENCES AND ATTEMPTING TO CRAWL IN THROUGH DOG DOORS. JESSICA SLATER

By Madison Dapcevich 21 FEB 2020

Editor's note: Researchers confirmed that Carmine is a male on February 21.


Wildlife biologists have successfully captured an overly friendly, all-black coyote that had been teasing the greater area of Atlanta, Georgia, for the last two months.

The animal made headlines after a woman captured it playing with her Great Pyrenees in her backyard. Other reports agree that the wild animal was overly comfortable with humans and dogs, seemingly habituated to the presence of humans.

“Wild coyotes are naturally wary, and they typically avoid humans and keep out of sight. This particular coyote's behavior was just the opposite,” Chris Mowry, a biologist with Berry College in Georgia, told IFLScience. He added that the animal was seen jumping fences into backyards, following people while they were walking a dog, and even attempting to enter homes through dog doors.

“This was not a safe situation for the coyote or for local human residents and their pets. The usual protocol of trying to re-instill fear of humans by hazing it did not work. This is what made this situation unique and is why we intervened,” added Mowry.

The unique all-black coloring of the coyote – now named Carmine – is connected to a condition known as melanism, a similar genetic mutation to albinism that instead replaces a lack of pigment with black pigment. Melanism is rare in Canis latrans but the frequency is higher in the southeast part of North America. Previous studies have found at least nine melanistic coyotes over a nine-year period in Georgia, but its cause remains unclear. The same gene also occurs in wolves and could have occurred in coyotes through introgression, a gene jumping from one species to another through hybridization. Dark-colored wolves are more prevalent in forested habitats, which means it could be used as a camouflage strategy, studies suggest.

To begin piecing together the curious case of Carmine, researchers constructed a map to pin down the whereabouts of the black coyote based on reported sightings and locations it likes to frequent. Capturing and relocating coyotes is not generally an option in Georgia as trapped coyotes are required by state law to be euthanized. However, Mowry says that his team was given special permission to relocate the animal by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Led by local no-kill trappers and expert volunteers, the team was able to capture the coyote in the middle of the night in a cage trap, “completely unharmed” and “totally docile” during the entire process of capture and relocation.

The coyote, who was likely just searching for a mate and territory, now has a new home at Yellow River Wildlife Sanctuary (YRWS) in suburban Atlanta. The canine is currently doing well and is slated to get its first exam tomorrow.

“Believe it or not, we still aren’t entirely sure of its sex, but strongly suspect it is female. We should know for sure tomorrow,” said Mowry.

Carmine will have to remain in quarantine for some time before being introduced to Wilee, the resident coyote at YRWS. 

 

The coyote has a rare genetic condition known as melanism, which results in its black coloring. Glenda Elliott

Atlanta Coyote Project

January 28 at 9:14 AM · 

Thanks to everyone who has kept us informed as to the whereabouts of the black coyote in the Smyrna/Vinings area. We have constructed a map based on reported sightings and we are well aware of certain locations that the coyote likes to frequent. This coyote is not acting at all aggressively, but it is a wild animal and should be treated as such. Please DO NOT attempt to pet, feed, or capture it, and try to prevent your dogs from interacting with it, if possible. We are attempting to capture this coyote in a manner that is safe for everyone, including the coyote, and if we are successful it has a home waiting for it at the Yellow River Wildlife Sanctuary in Lilburn. Please understand, however, that this is a very unique situation and relocating coyotes is generally NOT an option. Trapped coyotes are typically euthanized according to state law. If we did not have a home for this particular coyote and permission from the Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources we would not intervene.

Coyotes are very smart animals and they do not willingly allow themselves to be captured. Contrary to what you might think, sedating or tranquilizing animals can be very tricky and must be done under tightly controlled conditions. A safe dose of sedative requires time to take effect, which means the animal has time to wander off and into an unsafe environment or situation. We are doing all that we can using a variety of capture methods and we might not reach a successful outcome, but we are hoping for the best. Our capture efforts are costly and the long-term care of the coyote at Yellow River will require funding, so if you are inclined to eventually donate towards the welfare of this animal we will let you know how you can help. Until then, please keep us informed if you spot the coyote, drive safely around your neighborhood so that the coyote is not hit by a car, and please visit the Atlanta Coyote Project’s website to learn more about coyotes in particular and urban wildlife in general. Thank you again for your support and concern.

Atlanta Coyote Project

About 40 million people get water from the Colorado River. Studies show it's drying up.


Ian James, The Republic | azcentral.com

PHOENIX – Scientists have documented how climate change is sapping the Colorado River, and new research shows the river is so sensitive to warming that it could lose about one-fourth of its flow by 2050 as temperatures continue to climb.

© Mark Henle/The Republic The Colorado River 

March 18, 2019, south of Hoover Dam.

Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey found that the loss of snowpack due to higher temperatures plays a major role in driving the trend of the river’s dwindling flow. They estimated that warmer temperatures were behind about half of the 16% decline in the river’s flow during the stretch of drought years from 2000-2017, a drop that has forced Western states to adopt plans to boost the Colorado’s water-starved reservoirs.


Without changes in precipitation, the researchers said, for each additional 1.8 degrees of warming, the Colorado River’s average flow is likely to drop by about 9%.

The USGS scientists considered two scenarios of climate change. In one, warmer temperatures by 2050 would reduce the amount of water flowing in the river by 14-26%. In the other scenario, warming would take away 19-31% of the river’s flow.

“Either of the scenarios leads to a substantial decrease in flow,” said Chris Milly, a senior research scientist with USGS. “And the scenario with higher greenhouse-gas concentrations decreases the flow more than the scenario with lower greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The findings, which were published Thursday in the journal Science, refine previous estimates and indicate the impacts of warming will likely be on the high end of what other scientists calculated in previous research.

The research has major implications for how water is managed along the Colorado River, which provides water for about 40 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland from Wyoming to Southern California.
Snow provides a 'protective shield'

Looking at trends over the past century, the researchers examined recorded measurements from 1913-2017 and found the average temperature across the Upper Colorado River Basin increased by 2.5 and the river’s flow decreased by about 20%.

They estimated that more than half of this lost flow was attributable to higher temperatures. That equates to a loss of roughly 1.5 million acre-feet of water per year, which is more than half of the annual water allotment for the entire state of Arizona.

In other previous studies, estimates of potential future declines in the river’s flow — leaving aside any variations in precipitation — ranged from 2% to 15% for each 1 degree C of warming.

Milly and fellow USGS scientist Krista Dunne zeroed in on their estimate by pinpointing the reflectivity of snow, known as albedo, as a key element in the river’s sensitivity to warming.

They used measurements of albedo across the Upper Colorado River Basin recorded over decades by instruments called MODIS (short for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), which orbit the Earth aboard two NASA satellites.

Milly and Dunne focused on the role of snow cover as a “protective shield” for water in the river basin.

Milly likened the flowing river to the leftovers of the “meal” of snow and rain that falls across the basin, after evaporation has “eaten” its share.

“The more that's consumed by evaporation, the less that's left for the river and the people downstream,” Milly said.

And the amount consumed by evaporation is driven by how much energy the basin absorbs in the form of sunlight. The snow cover in the Rocky Mountains reflects back to the sky and space a significant fraction of the sunlight.

As the world gets hotter with the burning of fossil fuels, more of the precipitation falls as rain instead of snow. And the snow melts away earlier in the year. As the snow cover in the mountains is progressively lost, the river basin absorbs more energy.

“This drives more evaporation. And that makes for a smaller plate of leftovers for the river and its users,” Milly said.
Research suggests 'the loss is very high'

The researchers also looked at whether possible future increases in precipitation could counteract the trend. They concluded that changes in precipitation might moderate the effects brought on by warmer temperatures, but likely won’t be enough to fully counter the “temperature-induced drying.”

“Increasing risk of severe water shortages is expected,” they said in the study.

Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, said the research confirms the findings of a 2018 study that he co-authored with scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which they also found that about half of the loss in river flow since 2000 has been due to higher temperatures.

“It shows very high temperature sensitivity for the Colorado River — for every 1C rise, you lose almost 10% of flow,” Udall said in an email.

The researchers’ latest estimate of temperature-driven flow losses is at the upper end of what Udall and fellow climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck suggested in a 2017 study, when they estimated declines of 3% to 10% for every degree of warming.

“This new paper suggests the loss is very high,” Udall said. “This has important implications for water users and managers alike.”

In their 2017 study, Udall and Overpeck used climate models to estimate a business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse gas emissions. They projected that without changes in precipitation, warming will likely cause the Colorado River’s flow to decrease by 35% or more this century.

For decades, the Colorado River has been so heavily used that it seldom reaches the sea. Its delta in Mexico has shriveled, leaving only small wetlands in a dusty stretch of desert.

© Mark Henle/The Republic Delmar Butte (left center) in 

Temple Basin, March 18, 2019, near the Arizona/Nevada border.
Difficult talks ahead on long-term plans

The river’s largest reservoirs have dropped dramatically since 2000. Two decades of mostly dry years and overuse have taken a toll, and rising temperatures have added to the strains.

Lake Powell now sits 50% full, and Lake Mead is 43% full.

Arizona, Nevada and Mexico have begun taking less water from the river this year under a set of agreements aimed at reducing the risk of the reservoirs falling to critically low levels.

The two states agreed to leave a portion of their water allotments in Lake Mead under a deal with California called the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan, which the states’ representatives signed at Hoover Dam in May.

California agreed to contribute water at a lower trigger point if reservoir levels continue to fall. And Mexico agreed under a separate accord to take steps to help prop up Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir near Las Vegas.

The drought contingency plans — one for the three Lower Basin states and the other for the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — are designed to help boost the reservoirs’ levels between 2020 and 2026.

Federal officials plan to start a review by the end of this year to examine how the existing rules have worked and how the guidelines for potential shortages could be improved after 2026.

The latest research underscores the growing challenges for water managers and policymakers as they consider how to adjust the rules or change the system to adapt to a river with less water.

Milly and Dunne said in their study that declines in mountain snowpack unleashed by climate change will have far-reaching effects on the availability of water in other regions beyond the Colorado River Basin.

“Many water-stressed regions around the world depend on runoff from seasonally snow-covered mountains,” they wrote, “and more than one-sixth of the global population relies on seasonal snow and glaciers for water supply.”

Follow Ian James on Twitter: @ByIanJames

This article originally appeared on The Republic | azcentral.com: About 40 million people get water from the Colorado River. Studies show it's drying up.