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schraubd · 6 years

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The Problem of "Centering" and the Jews

Note: I wrote this piece quite a few months ago, shopping around to the usual Jewish media outlets. None were interested, and I ended up letting it slide. But it popped back into my mind -- this Sophie Ellman-Golan article helped -- and so I decided to post it here. While I have updated it, some of the references are a bit dated (at least on an internet time scale). Nonetheless, I continue to think a critical look at how the idea of "centering" interacts with and can easily instantiate antisemitic tropes is deeply important. * * * In the early 2000s, Rosa Pegueros, a Salvadoran Jew, was a member of the listserv for contributors to the book This Bridge We Call Home, sequel to the tremendously influential volume This Bridge Called My Back. Another member of the listserv had written to the group with "an almost apologetic post mentioning that she is Jewish, implying that some of the members might not be comfortable with her presence for that reason." She had guessed she was the only Jewish contributor to the volume, so Pegueros wrote back, identifying herself as a Jew as a well and recounting a recent experience she perceived as antisemitic. Almost immediately, Peugeros wrote, another third contributor jumped into the conversation. "I can no longer sit back," she wrote, "and watch this list turn into another place where Jewishness is reduced to a site of oppression and victimization, rather than a complex site of both oppression and privilege—particularly in relationship to POC." Pegueros was stunned. At the time of this reply, there had been a grand total of two messages referencing Jewishness on the entire listserv. And yet, it seemed, that was too much -- it symbolized yet "another place" where discourse about oppression had become "a forum for Jews." This story has always stuck with me. And I thought of it when reading Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's guidebook to understanding antisemitism from a left-wing perspective. Among their final pieces of advice for Jews participating in anti-racism groups was to make antisemitism and Jewish issues "central, but not centered". It's good advice. Jewish issues are an important and indispensable part of anti-racist work. That said, we are not alone, and it is important to recognize that in many circumstances our discrete problems ought not to take center stage. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be heard. It just means they should not be given disproportionate attention such that they prevent other important questions and campaigns from proceeding. Ideally, "central, but not centered" in the anti-racism community means that Jewish issues should neither overwhelm the conversation nor be shunted aside and ignored outright.

Yet it also overlooks an important caveat. Too often, any discussion of Jewish issues is enough to be considered "centering" it. There is virtually no gap between spaces where Jews are silenced and spaces where Jews are accused of "centering". And so the reasonable request not to "center" Jewish issues easily can, and often does, become yet another tool enforcing Jewish silence. Pegueros' account is one striking example. I'll give another: several years ago, I was invited to a Jewish-run feminist blog to host a series of posts on antisemitism. Midway through the series, the blog's editors were challenged on the grounds that it was taking oxygen away from more pressing matters of racism. At the time, the blog had more posts on "racism" than "antisemitism" by an 8:1 margin (and, in my experience, that is uncommonly attentive to antisemitism on a feminist site -- Feministing, for example, has a grand total of two posts with the "anti-Semitism" tag in its entire history). No matter: the fact that Jewish feminists on a Jewish blog were discussing Jewish issues at all was viewed as excessive and self-centered.

Or consider Raphael Magarik's reply to Yishai Schwartz's essay contending that Cornel West has "a Jewish problem".

Schwartz's column takes issue with West's decision to situate his critique of fellow Black intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates by reference to "the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people." Magarik's reply accuses Schwartz of making the West/Coates dispute fundamentally "about the Jews", exhibiting the "the moral narcissism in thinking that everything is about you, in reading arguments between Black intellectuals about the future of the American left and asking: How can I make this about the Jews?" Now, Magarik is surely correct that the Jewish angle of West's critique of Coates is a rather small element that should not become the "center of attention" and thereby obscure "the focus [on] Black struggles for liberation." But there is something quite baffling about his suggestion that a single column that was a drop in the bucket of commentary produced in the wake of the West/Coates exchange could suffice to make it the "center of attention". If Magarik believes Schwartz overreacted to some stray mentions of Jewish issues in an otherwise intramural African-American dispute, surely Magarik equally brought a howitzer to a knife fight by claiming that one article in Ha'aretz single-handedly recentered the conversation about the West/Coates feud onto the Jews.

What's going on here? How is it that the "centering" label -- certainly a valid concern in concept -- seems to routinely and pervasively attach itself to Jews at even the slightest intervention in policy debates?

The answer, as you might have guessed, relates to antisemitism.

As a social phenomenon, antisemitism is very frequently the trafficking in tropes about Jewish hyperpower, the sense that we either have or are on the cusp of taking over anything and everything. Frantz Fanon described antisemitism as follows: "Jews are feared because of their potential to appropriate. ‘They’ are everywhere. The banks, the stock exchanges, and the government are infested with them. They control everything. Soon the country will belong to them.” If we have an abstract understanding of Jews as omnipotent and omnipresent, no wonder that specific instances of Jewish social participation -- no matter how narrow the contribution might be -- are understood as a complete and total colonization of the space. What are the Jews, other than those who are already "everywhere"?

Sadly, the JFREJ pamphlet does not address this issue at all. When "central" crosses into "centering" will often be a matter of judgment, but while the JFREJ has much to say about Jews making "demands for attention" or paying heed to "how much oxygen they can suck out of the room", it does not grapple with how the structure of antisemitism mentalities often renders simply being Jewish (without a concurrent vow of monastic silence) enough to trigger these complaints. It doesn't seem to realize how this entire line of discourse itself can be and often is deeply interlaced with antisemitism. JFREJ's omission is particularly unfortunate since Jews have begun to internalize this sensibility. It's not that Jewish issues should predominate, or always be at the center of every conversation. It's the nagging sense that any discussion of Jewish issues -- no matter how it is prefaced, cabined, or hedged -- is an act of "centering", of taking over, of making it "about us." When the baseline of what counts as "centering" is so low, I know from personal experience that even the simplest asks for inclusion are agonizing. As early as 1982, the radical lesbian feminist Irene Klepfisz identified this propensity as a core part of both internalized and externalized antisemitism. She instructed activists -- Jewish and non-Jewish alike -- to ask themselves a series of questions, including whether they feel that dealing with antisemitism "drain[s] the movement of precious energy", whether they believe antisemitism "has been discussed too much already," and whether Jews "draw too much attention to themselves." Contemporary activists, including many Jews, could do worse than asking Klepfisz's questions. For example, when Jews and non-Jews in the queer community rallied against the effort by some activists to expel Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ organizations from LGBT conference "Creating Change", Mordechai Levovitz fretted that they had "promoted the much more nefarious anti-Semitic trope that Jews wield disproportionate power to get what we want." Levovitz didn't support the expulsion campaign. Still, he fretted that even the most basic demand of inclusion -- don't kick queer Jews out of the room -- was potentially flexing too much Jewish muscle. In this way, the distinction between "central" and "centering" collapses -- indeed, even the most tertiary questions are "centering" if Jews are the ones asking them. This is bad enough in a world where, we are told, oppressions are inextricably connected (you can tell whose perspective is and isn't valued in these communities based on whose attempts to speak are taken to be remedying an oversight and whose are viewed as self-centered derailing). But it verges on Kafka-esque when persons demand Jews "show up" and then get mad that they have a voice in the room; or proactively decide to put Jewish issues on their agenda and yet still demand Jews keep silent about them. Magarik says, for example, that Jews "were not the story" when the Movement for Black Lives included in its platform an accusation that Israel was creating genocide; we shouldn't have made it "about us". He's right, in the sense that this language should not have caused Jews to withdraw from the fight against police violence against communities of color. He's wrong in suggesting that Jews therefore needed to stop "wringing our hands" about how issues that cut deep to the core of our existence as a people were treated in the document. Jews didn't demand that the Movement for Black Lives talk about Jews, but once they elected to do so Jews were not obliged to choose between the right's silence of shunning and the left's silence of acquiescence. To say that Jews ought not "center" ourselves is not to say that there is no place for critical commentary at all. We are legitimate contributors to the discourse over our own lives. I'm not particularly interested in the substantive debate regarding whether Cornel West has a "Jewish problem" -- though Magarik's defense of West (that he "has a good reason for focusing on Palestine" because it "demarcates the difference between liberalism and radicalism") seems like it is worthy of some remark (of all the differences between liberals and "radicals", this is the issue that is the line of demarcation? And that doesn't exhibit some sign of centrality that Jews might have valid grounds to comment on, not the least of which could be wondering how it is a small country half a globe away came to occupy such pride of place?). The larger issue is the metadebate about whether it's valid to even ask the question; or more accurately, whether it is possible -- in any context, with any amount of disclaimers about relative prioritization -- to ask the question without it being read as "centering". The cleverest part of the whole play, after all, is that the very act of challenging this deliberative structure whereby any and all Jewish contributions suffice to center is that the challenge itself easily can become proof of our centrality.

But clever as it is, it can't and shouldn't be a satisfactory retort. There needs to be a lot more introspection about whether and how supposed allies of the Jews are willing to acknowledge the possibility that their instincts about when Jews are "centered" and when we're silenced are out-of-whack, without it becoming yet another basis of resentment for how we're making it all about us. And if we can't do that, then there is an antisemitism problem that really does need to be addressed. When discussing their struggles, members of other marginalized communities need not talk about Jews all the time, or most of the time, or even all that frequently. But what cannot stand is a claimed right to talk about Jews without having to talk with Jews. The idea that even the exploration of potential bias or prejudice lurking within our political movements represents a deliberative party foul is flatly incompatible with everything the left claims to believe about how to talk about matters of oppression. West decided to bring up the Jewish state in his Jeremiad against Coates. It was not a central part of his argument, and so it should not be a central part of the ensuing public discussion. But having put it on the table, it cannot be the case that Jews are forbidden entirely from offering critical commentary. One might say that a column or two in a few Jewish-oriented newspapers, lying at the tertiary edges of the overall debate, is precisely the right amount of attention that should have been given. If that's viewed as too much, then maybe the right question isn't about whether Jews are "centering" the discussion, but rather whether our presence really is a "central" part of anti-racism movements at all.

Drawing the line between "central" and "centering" is difficult, and requires work. There are situations where Jews demand too much attention, and there are times we are too self-effacing. But surely it takes more than a single solitary column to move from the latter to the former. More broadly, we're not going to get an accurate picture of how to mediate between "central" and "centering" unless we're willing to discuss how ingrained patterns of antisemitism condition our evaluations of Jewish political participation across the board.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2MjQd84

#anti-semitism #Jews #leftists

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marymosley · 5 years

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The New Censors: The Call For Banning Political Lies Threatens Free Speech

Below is my column on the call by Democratic members for censorship of political ads by Facebook. The overwhelming support for the call by members like Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez shows the erosion in our values of free speech. Democrats and the media were once the defenders of free speech and critics of censorship. They are now demanding that corporations police political ads and remove ads viewed as false or misleading. It is a standard that many of these members would quickly denounce if applied to some of their own past comments.

Here is the column:

For people fearful of the power of companies like Facebook and Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg is right out of central casting. A Silicon Valley billionaire with an androidish demeanor, he comes across as more machine than man in responding to politicians on Capitol Hill who, at times, appear on the verge of hysterics over the supposed “lies” of their opponents.

With the House Financial Services Committee hearing this past week, Democrats and the media condemned Zuckerberg and his refusal to put a stop to false political ads. As unpopular as it may be, however, Zuckerberg is right that what members are demanding from Facebook is censorship and, if allowed, it would create a dangerous regulation of free speech. Indeed, the scariest thing to come out of the hearing, besides the relative silence of civil liberties and free speech groups, is that Zuckerberg may be one of the last barriers to a system of political censorship in America.

Watching the cable news coverage of the hearing, you sensed the rising revulsion on some networks over his refusal to promise to review and regulate political ads for alleged lies. Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York made regulating political speech sound noble and obvious by demanding, “So you will not take down lies or you will take down lies? I think that is just a pretty simple yes or no.” The answer, if you believe in free speech, is a simple no. Media hosts and writers expressed disbelief that Zuckerburg would allow lies to pervade the 2020 election, and Ocasio Cortez was heralded for “schooling” and “dismantling” him.

I have written for years about the erosion of free speech in Western democracies, particularly in Britain, France, and Germany. Governments now regulate political speech and prosecute those deemed to engage in hate speech or false speech. In the United States, calls for greater speech regulation are growing on college campuses all across the country and in media outlets, both once the bastions of free speech.

On college campuses, conservative or controversial speakers are routinely prevented from participating in discussions. A controversy at the Harvard Crimson newspaper is illustrative of this trend. The student newspaper was completing a story on immigration issues and protests. The reporter did what any responsible journalist would do and asked the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for a response. That request triggered a furious counterprotest. It was not the content of the comment that sparked it, but the mere solicitation of comment from the agency.

University of Pennsylvania students recently prevented a discussion with former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan. Georgetown University students prevented others from discussing immigration policy with Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. No action was taken by the college against the students. Northwestern University students stopped a class from discussing policy with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement representative after the class heard from an undocumented person. Student April Navarro rejected the right of the professor to have a “nice conversation” about the agency. Again, no action was taken by the college against the students.

The House hearing with Zuckerberg revealed what House Democrats want to create, which is a system where companies can block political ads deemed false. Of course, reasonable minds can disagree on what is false in politics. But history shows that once this power is given to regulate speech, the appetite for censorship then becomes insatiable.

An insight can be found in the work of the British Advertising Standards Authority. Established to weed out gender and racial stereotypes and other social ills in advertising, the authority has set about its task with humorless zeal and recently banned commercials for Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Volkswagen. The first showed men so lost in enjoying the cream cheese that they leave their babies on a conveyor belt.

The fact that it was a joke did not matter since, as Ella Smillie of the agency explained, “The use of humor or banter is unlikely to mitigate against the potential for harm.” The commercial was spiked for implicating that women are better at child care. The Volkswagen commercial was taken down for having images of male astronauts and hikers along with a brief shot of a woman with a baby. Clearly, Volkswagen was saying that women cannot be astronauts or hikers.

Americans have long resisted such boards or authorities. Yet Democrats are using Russian internet trolling operations and presidential tweets to make another play for speech regulation. Would Ocasio Cortez feel the same way about Facebook banning an ad featuring her false assertion that the “vast majority” of Americans do not make a “living wage”? Or her false assertion that Walmart and Amazon do not pay minimum wages? Or how about her false assertion that most of “Medicare for All” could be paid for by simply recouping $21 trillion lost due to “Pentagon errors”?

Then there is Representative Adam Schiff using a House hearing to give a false account of the transcript of the call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart. The Washington Post itself found repeated misrepresentations in his speech. While assuring the public that this was the “essence” of the transcript, he proceeded to falsely speak in the voice of Trump as he read, “I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you though. I am going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. Understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.” It clearly was false, designed to enrage.

But where does Facebook stop? Trump offers troubling descriptions of undocumented persons, while Hillary Clinton has hinted at Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii being a “Russian asset.” Then there are contested descriptions of climate change on both sides. One can imagine constant demands from groups to take down ads as factually misleading, a more sophisticated version of the shout downs on college campus.

There is an alternative to the kind of political commissar demanded by Ocasio Cortez and others. It is free speech. Zuckerberg correctly stated that plenty of third parties currently review and contest false political statements. He would leave political speech to politics. Facebook already engages in too much content regulation of sites and postings. Yet that is still not enough for many House members, who want to decide when and how individuals and groups can speak out in the political arena.

The truly insidious aspect of this effort by those on the left is that they are dressing up censorship as the protection of democracy to try to convince citizens to give up core free speech protections. In the silence that would follow, few would be able to object. After all, the censors could merely treat censorship objections as simply more “lies” to take down.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

The New Censors: The Call For Banning Political Lies Threatens Free Speech published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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garoed · 5 years

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Visual Journalism (W1) Why do you think most people after seeing photographs of atrocities, don't take action to try to stop them?

Jeane Vivant:

People were strongly moved by the Aylan Kurdi's corpse (Syrian child lying dead on the beach photographed by Nilüfer Demir). Opinion surveys showed that people changed their mind about Syrian migrants in the few weeks after the photo was published. However, less than 5 months after, things were business as usual.

https://medium.com/@izzytomicoellis/two-years-after-alan-kurdi-died-i-almost-long-for-the-days-of-freezing-children-and-their-a4473177c22a

The artist, Ai Weiwei, paid a tribute to the kid by striking a similar pose, on the Greek beach. But his act was seen as a way to take over the emotional shock of Kurdi's tragic death. Weiwei said his intentions were to maintain public attention on the refugees' plight. His method can be controversial (mocking a kid's death?) but Weiwei unvealed the dichotomy beetween our feelings and our engagements, and would I say, the hypocrisy of people stands for refugees and migrants fleeing the Syrian, Irakian, Afghan wars.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/artist-ai-weiwei-poses-as-aylan-kurdi-for-india-today-magazine-306593-2016-02-01

An emotional picture can be used to draw attention or money for a campaign. However, its effects will be shortlived. Then, the picture will become a testimony for history. A moment in a lapse of time. It takes more political backgrounds to change things than a plain image.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24pubed.html

KEVIN CARTER'S CASE-THE PHOTO OF THE HUNGRY CHILD AND VULTURE

Carina Dourado - jueves, 21 de marzo de 2019, 18: 32Kevin Carter's case - the photo of the hungry child and a vulture

When photographer Kevin Carter took the photo of the hungry child surrounded by a vulture in Sudan in 1993, it is an iconic photo of the "seeing and doing nothing" controversy. Carter committed suicide a year later. He was harshly asked why he did nothing to help the child. But the photo shocked the world. Often, seeing the photo and questioning, being on TVs, newspapers, magazines and, nowadays, in websites and social medias serves as a push for change. I, as a journalist, sometimes feel like a vulture around the child. But the news - and in this case, photography - has the value of shocking, of arousing interest, of questioning. And in times of social networks, the questioning sometimes has repercussions on attitudes.

Garoé Núñez Trujillo - viernes, 29 de marzo de 2019, 13:37

The camera can create a barrier, an emotional one, if you are looking at a photograph but also if you are the one taking the photograph. I don't try to justify this of course, but I believe is something we have to be aware of, because only if you are conscious about this you can do something to fight it and make the barrier disappear. That way the photograph turns out to be more than just an image, and the camera switches from a passive item to an active one.

A CALL TO ACTION

Ann Meyer - sábado, 23 de marzo de 2019, 22:30

People don't necessarily go out of their way to affect change when they view a photograph, particularly if there isn't a call to action included, but I disagree with the premise people don't take action when they see photos of a problem. Photos can be the best way to raise awareness of an issue, for example, urban blight or even littering. The news in Savannah showed before and after photos of the squares downtown where St. Patrick's Day festivities took place last weekend. By showing the litter-strewn parks and then photos of the same parks after the clean up, it helps the viewer understand why it's important to keep the parks clean.

When people see photos of a house destroyed by a fire or tornado and it's within their community, they do reach out to help. Photos from other geographic areas might not have the same effect because people don't know what to do or how to help. If the photos included a call to action, some people would respond. But photos and footage of previous hurricanes shown when another hurricane is forecast can encourage people to take precautions because the images bring home the reality of what could happen.

Garoé Núñez Trujillo - viernes, 29 de marzo de 2019, 13:51:

You make a really good point here. It could be that the problem is not the photograph itself when talking about taking action, but its message and the way it is presented.

There are photographs that even being a terrible atrocity don't give any clue of what could someone do as a response, except just wait or hope that someone more qualified can take action.

On the other hand, some images can reveal in some way how to contribute to solving the problem, this might help people finding an appropriate response.

BECAUSE THE PHOTO IS AN EVOCATIVE BUT PASSIVE MEDIUM

Renata Sago - lunes, 11 de marzo de 2019, 03:18

Photography enables us to be still and moved, at once. The act of viewing one or multiple images is passive. The viewer is at the receiving end of information; generally, far away from the events, subjects, and landscapes of the photos. This distance between the subject and the viewer allows for some comfortable passivity. People are made aware, for one moment, of an issue or two or three; but they only indulge in the discomfort for a short enough period of time so as not to completely be disrupted by day-to-day life. The viewers of these images have grown desensitized, as well. There are so many of these images. Also, these images are prevalent in motion pictures, where art imitates life and the truthful journalistic component of real photographic work becomes understated.

Jeff Ojeda - lunes, 11 de marzo de 2019, 03:10

Hi all!

I believe that today, the constant advancement of technology has created a globalized and digital world, in which every day people get access to a large amount and variety of content from anywhere in the world. I think that technology is important in our lives because it allows us to carry out various activities at the same time, in addition to having information at all times, but we are not always really aware of the information we receive, which makes us less reflective.While it is true, technology in the field of communication, allows people to be connected but not physically, this being a factor that influences the loss of the emotional part of human beings.

The fact of not being sufficiently reflective with the events that occur in the world, makes people not give them the importance they really need, because it becomes a problem for others and we believe that it will not affect us, so we simply ignore this event and we do nothing to stop it. I believe that social networks are the main means by which photographs of all kinds circulate, so if we find photographs of atrocities, the first thing we do is observe them, if they really impact us, and then we continue browsing the social network. I think that here is the main problem that is not giving the necessary importance to the photographs that really require it, for the simple fact that we are not interested in investigating more about the case and then taking actions that help to make known the problem for its possible solution.

Likewise, I believe that people do not try to take any kind of measure about an event or social problem, because we believe that our voice is insignificant in such a globalized world.

Thank you!

Ginés Navarro Palazuelos - lunes, 11 de marzo de 2019, 01:27

Because sometimes the images can cause such an impact that prevents us from taking an action, it can also be that our visual education allows us to take distance, as if what we see is not happening or is happening so far that it does not affect us.

The image (digital or printed) becomes a filter or a veil of reality that moves us away.

Tim Jaques - domingo, 10 de marzo de 2019, 23:02

Some of this may have to do with a perception of remoteness because of the way such photos run in North American media at least.

In North American media you are more likely to see photos of atrocities that have taken place in what seem to be faraway lands. While even these are censored compared to what the media will show in many parts of the world, the average viewer thinks that this is too far from his/her life to care about.

The photos are even more censored if they are closer to home, within North America - you are far more likely to see photos of dead children in Syria or Yemen dead children in Detroit or Toronto. There is a certain hypocrisy, even racism in this, as if privacy must be respected for those close to home than those abroad. That isn't just from the editors at the media outlets, but the general public.

Garoé Núñez Trujillo - viernes, 29 de marzo de 2019, 14:15

I agree with you. It seems as if many of the photographs we see are being filtered in a way they make us unable to take action (i.e. being in faraway lands). In a way that makes us accomplice of the atrocity, helping with our silence one side and not the other.

KNOWLEDGE VS ACTION

Pauline Poudou - lunes, 11 de marzo de 2019, 11:22

Sometimes you see a photograph of atrocities, you had never heard of it before and it overwhelms you. You did not expect it, you were not ready for it. You would like to help but... It happened so far away from where you stand, what can you do? And time flies. You see more and more images of these atrocities you discovered now a month ago and you start to get used to it. Everyone does. And once again, what can you do? You have your own problems to take care of, what can you do about these atrocities happening thousands of kilometers away from you? And atrocities are everywhere, everytime, what can one person do against all this? You feel so small.

So why most people won't take action when they see a photograph of atrocities? There must be a lot of answers but here are a few of mine; some people cannot relate to an event because it happens so far away from where they live, it seems unreal or they may feel it is not their role to be concerned, it is the role of governments, politicians, they are the ones who have the power. People can feel powerless and would think there is nothing they can do. They see more and more images and feel it cannot be stopped.

Sometimes people make choices. People have beliefs, they have causes they defend more than others. Some will prefer to take action for refugees, others for climate. You cannot take action for everything, there are too much atrocities out there for one person to take action for all of them. But it does not mean people do not care and are not moved by an atrocity. It just means they have decided to focus on one or several specific cause(s) they really care about.

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cashcounts · 6 years

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Why Did an NPR Show Lie About YouTuber Abby Vapes?

Like just about every news outlet in the country, Boston public radio program On Point led its April 5 vaping segment with the two biggest vaping news topics: e-liquid flavors, and the supposed epidemic of teenage vaping, driven by use of the JUUL.

And, also like just about every other news outlet, On Point host Jane Clayson got the vaping facts wrong. Very, very wrong.

“We’re turning now to the dangerous trend of teen vaping,” Clayson said in the program’s intro. “Devices like e-cigarettes and the new brand JUUL, with flavors like candy cane and gummy bear, and a lot of nicotine. Teenagers — even middle-schoolers — are getting hooked. Here’s a teen on YouTube, teaching a vaping trick…”

http://vaping360.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/NPR-lies-about-juul-and-abby-vapes.mp3

Clayson then played a 2014 clip from the YouTube show Abby Vapes. Host Abby (who prefers we use her first name only) is a young woman, but clearly not a teenager. On Point is syndicated by Boston University station WBUR and heard on more than 290 National Public Radio stations around the country. Potentially millions of NPR listeners heard Clayson misidentify Abby as a teenager.

Abby wasn’t especially surprised. “Other media outlets have used my videos and images to condemn vaping,” she told Vaping360. “My immediate reaction was anger and worry. I was angry that they chose to classify me incorrectly as a teenager and use my audio in a broadcast.

“I’m also worried that, if this broadcast is not retracted quickly, there will be public backlash from my fans. I do not create content for teenagers, nor are they my peers — which is what WBUR’s broadcast would like you to think.”

But why would WBUR want to make anyone think that vaping is a teen activity?

Why are JUUL and flavors the top targets?

Abby was the only person directly hurt by the On Point broadcast, but she wasn’t the target. The coordinated campaign against JUUL has reached just about every American by now, through newspaper and magazine articles, local and national TV news broadcasts, live seminars offered to parents by local anti-drug groups, and grandstanding speeches by politicians.

The frenzy around the JUUL is being stoked by longtime vaping opponents like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the Truth Initiative, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Their other target, of course, is e-liquid flavors, which are under review by the FDA. The FDA attempted to ban flavors in 2016, and there’s no reason to think they don’t still have that intention.

Those groups are all part of a new lawsuit against the FDA aimed at forcing the agency to reinstate its original August 2018 deadline for vape manufacturers to submit premarket tobacco applications (PMTA’s) for their existing products. They may be hoping the campaign against JUUL will give the FDA an excuse to take action sooner than the scheduled 2022 deadline.

A flavor ban would kill most of the independent American vape industry, leaving only JUUL as an obstacle to eliminating vaping. It’s important that all vapers support JUUL — and likewise for JUUL to show solidarity with the smaller vaping companies. No one in the vaping industry is marketing to kids or selling to them. Rather, the forces lined up against vaping are terrified that vaping might actually now be threatening cigarettes in a real way.

Defensive much? Also, “just ask media”?

That’s a very strange thing to say.

Please show us the data. https://t.co/RFt1CX87U5

— Oliver Kershaw (@ojkershaw) April 14, 2018

The goal for anti-vaping forces is to whip up enough fear, uncertainty and doubt among parents and school staff that they will help pressure the FDA to ban flavors and restrict the sales and marketing of vapes. There are Reefer Madness-like elements to the mania over JUUL, with authority figures like high school principals and pediatricians breathlessly counting down a list of terrible consequences for our children if we can’t stop the awful threat.

The only problem is that there is no actual evidence that teen use of the JUUL is exploding, as they keep insisting it is.

“The media reports of a teenage juuling ‘epidemic’ do not add up with population studies that show regular use of these products by never smokers to be very low,” University of Waterloo (Ontario) sociologist Amelia Howard told Vaping360 in a recent article. “The juuling stories have the classic hallmarks of a moral panic: widespread fear based on exaggerated risk.”

Listening to the On Point show, Abby agreed. “It felt very rushed and didn’t have much solid evidence or content about Juul use in schools,” she says. “They focus on the fact that these pod vaping devices use nicotine salts (they don’t use that term though), which provide a rush or buzz similar to a cigarette and say that’s what gets underage teens addicted.

“However,” she added, “this is also what helps many adults quit smoking cigarettes.”

Is YouTube going to dump vaping?

In the early years of vaping, YouTube reviews were a primary source of information for many vapers and smokers. Excited newbies hooked up webcams and reported on their latest gear and e-liquid purchases. Countless smokers found the information they needed to switch to vaping on YouTube. And manufacturers in China used reviewers’ praise and criticism to learn what vapers wanted from their products.

“I smoked for 11 years and quit with vaping five years ago,” Abby told us. “I’ve been creating vaping-related videos on YouTube for four years. I started my YouTube channel because there wasn’t much information available about vaping. I had a lot of questions about hardware, e-liquid, and coil building! I wanted to document my experience as a beginner and share troubleshooting tips that I found helpful.”

But being a YouTube vape reviewer nowadays is becoming less and less attractive. The Google-owned site recently made it almost impossible for vape-related content providers to monetize their posts. And YouTubers say the company’s algorithms no longer favor their videos.

“I am greatly concerned about YouTube restricting vaping content,” says Abby. “I have seen a significant drop in viewership of my channel over the last six months. I believe YouTube has already taken some steps to ‘hide’ some of this content on their website. Our videos are less likely to show up as recommended or on the front page.”

youtube

Abby has shifted her focus to Twitch, an online gaming site owned by Amazon. Her weekly (Friday, 8:00 p.m. ET) live show gets edited down for her YouTube channel, but like many concerned online vape figures, Abby seems to be preparing for a post-YouTube world. That’s significant, considering that she has more than 112,000 YouTube followers.

And vaping has more than just a YouTube problem. Almost all of the major social media platforms have made moves that affect vaping content. Reddit recently banned all e-liquid commerce. Facebook and Google restrict advertising, with Facebook even preventing advocacy groups from paying to promote their posts. That’s because they follow the FDA’s definition of vapes as tobacco products, they say.

Social media companies are being pressured by the same groups that are fighting to ban e-liquid flavors. A recent study from activist Stanford professor Robert Jackler — famous to vapers as author of an unintentionally hilarious study on unicorn imagery in vape marketing — hammers Facebook for allowing vape businesses to even have pages with links to their websites.

“The good thing is especially with all this stuff going on – the privacy breaches and content issues around hate speech and fake news – this is low-hanging fruit for Facebook, I would think,” Jackler told CNBC. He’s essentially demanding Facebook get rid of vaping content, restricting speech and free association for vaping enthusiasts

What’s next?

If vapers and the vaping industry can’t mount a serious response to the FDA’s planned flavor ban and the ruthless attacks on JUUL, we may soon witness the end of a beautiful moment. For more than a decade, smokers obsessively built their own solution to cigarettes — and now, all the groups and organizations and industries that are threatened by vaping are hitting back hard.

They’re desperate to save the thing that pays them all: cigarette sales. And they don’t care who gets hurt. They want to silence our voices on social media, and take away the things we’ve built for ourselves.

Meanwhile, WBUR has edited their online audio to remove Abby’s voice and the reference to her being a teenager. But the station hasn’t issued a correction, or apologized. “I don’t know yet what kind of effect this will have on me as a content creator in the vaping industry,” Abby says.

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djgblogger-blog · 6 years

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American broadcasting has always been closely intertwined with American politics

http://bit.ly/2q9fWTA

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Louisiana's populist politician Huey Long, giving an address on CBS Radio in 1934 Louisiana State University, CC BY-SA

Local television viewers around the United States were recently alerted to a “troubling trend” that’s “extremely dangerous to democracy.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of America’s dominant television station owners, commanded its anchors to deliver a scripted commentary, warning audiences about “one sided news stories plaguing our country” and media outlets that publish “fake stories … that just aren’t true.”

This might sound like a media literacy lesson, offered in the public interest. But the invocation of “biased and false news” so closely echoes charges from the Trump administration that many observers cried foul.

Sinclair’s record of broadcasting news content favorable to the Trump administration, including mandated program segments such as the “Terrorism Alert Desk,” and “Bottom Line with Boris,” with former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn, provides additional evidence of partisan bias.

So, is it time, as some commentators are suggesting, to restore the Fairness Doctrine, which used to require broadcasters “to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was fair and balanced”? That policy, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, was repealed in 1987. It supposedly sustained responsible political debate on the nation’s airwaves until its disappearance during the Reagan administration.

I would argue that nostalgic calls for the restoration of a golden age of civil political discussion on America’s airwaves mistake what actually happened in those decades.

Airtime for Nazis, socialists, communists

Politics and broadcasting have been consistently intertwined in American history. As I have found in my own research, the commercial broadcasting community (including advertisers) has consistently aligned news content and commentary in ways favorable to the White House.

But such episodes are often conveniently forgotten.

As Mitchell Stephens’ new biography of journalist Lowell Thomas recounts, and as numerous earlier scholars detailed, U.S. broadcast journalism originated more as subjective and biased commentary than as reportage.

The vast majority of 1930s radio “news” was politically slanted analysis by veteran journalists like Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn and Boake Carter. Kaltenborn, for example, was notable for his anti-union commentaries.

The uncertain nature of early broadcast regulation, combined with pressure from organized interest groups and politicians, all made the exact parameters of political speech on American radio ambiguous in the 1930s.

Ninety million listeners tuned in and heard Father Charles Coughlin, known as the ‘Radio Priest’ of the Depression, defend fascists and attack Jews and communists. Library of Congress, CC BY

So the networks lent their microphones to a wide range of views from the quasi-fascists like Father Charles Coughlin (the “Radio Priest”), to homespun socialists like Huey Long and union leaders like the American Federation of Labor’s William Green. As Douglas Craig, David Goodman and numerous other scholars have pointed out, political broadcasting in the 1930s was vibrant, fertile and diverse to an extent unmatched to the present day.

For example: In 1936, both CBS and NBC aired Nazi propaganda from the Berlin Olympic Games. They also broadcast live from the Communist Party of the United States of America nominating convention. Programs like “University of Chicago Roundtable,” and “America’s Town Meeting of the Air” aired provocative political discussion that engaged and educated American audiences by exposing them to diverse viewpoints.

Airwaves rein themselves in

But as war neared, U.S. political broadcasting narrowed its range.

The Roosevelt administration began to carefully police the airwaves. CBS’ highly rated news commentator, Boake Carter, had often criticized President Roosevelt’s policies. But when he applauded the Anschluss, Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, and expressed admiration for Nazi policies, the White House acted.

As media historian David Culbert revealed, Roosevelt’s adviser Stephen T. Early secretly contacted CBS and Carter’s sponsor, General Foods, to silence Carter. Despite high ratings and a popular following, Carter’s CBS contract was not renewed. Within weeks he was gone.

Broadcasting’s self-censorship under government pressure expanded at the start of World War II. Circumscribing critical analysis and channeling commentary to the political center pleased advertisers and politicians.

With the assistance of such broadcasting pioneers as Edward R. Murrow, subjective radio news commentary morphed into the type of observational reporting now identified as broadcast journalism.

The most famous example of this shift occurred in 1943. That year Cecil Brown, CBS’s top-rated news analyst and author of the best-selling “Suez to Singapore,” dared to criticize the war effort he witnessed on the American homefront. Brown was fired, and his dismissal proved a warning to every other broadcast commentator.

Not everyone was happy with the neutering of news and opinion on American airwaves. In response to the Brown firing, FCC Chair James Lawrence Fly criticized what he considered corporate censorship.

“It’s a little strange,” Fly told the press, “to reach the conclusion that all Americans are to enjoy free speech except radio commentators.”

But removing partisan politics from broadcast journalism increased advertising revenue and proved remarkably lucrative for U.S. broadcasters during World War II.

With the lesson learned, and with the support of the advertising community, America’s broadcasters aimed to address only the “vital center” of American politics in the postwar years.

Still, politics persisted

It would, however, be a mistake to believe that the Fairness Doctrine silenced fractious political discourse on the American airwaves.

Throughout the decades that the Fairness Doctrine remained official policy, controversial political broadcasts aired regularly on American television and radio. There was Joe Pyne, whose show at its zenith in the 1960s attracted a reported 10 million viewers. Pyne insulted the hippies, Klansmen and civil rights activists he invited to his studio. Though the show is recalled today more for its outrageousness, it was a political show and Pyne propagated a conservative, law-and-order, patriotic message.

Then there’s Bob Grant, who broadcast a popular radio show in New York City throughout the 1970s. Grant’s “arch disdain for liberals, prominent black people, welfare recipients, feminists, gay people, and anyone who disagreed with him,” wrote The New York Times, “was familiar to his listeners.”

Nationally syndicated programs like “Donohue” offered liberal perspectives, and even the “CBS Evening News” brought back commentary, with veteran journalist Eric Sevareid providing perspective on the daily news each weeknight.

I’m not equating the well-reasoned, often brilliant political commentary offered by Eric Sevareid to Sinclair Broadcast Group’s transparent political advocacy. Sevareid reached a much larger percentage of the American populace than all the Sinclair newscasts combined, and he was therefore far more influential.

But to express surprise that Sinclair now shapes news content and commentary to be more hospitable to political advertising, and more supportive of the current administration, ignores the fact that political commentary has always sold well in the American commercial system.

I believe Sinclair’s management has identified an underutilized segment of the local TV news advertising market – the pro-Trump segment – as the 2018 midterm elections approach. The broadcaster is now shaping its news products to more effectively appeal to the audience for the political advertisements it seeks to sell this fall.

This economic interest closely aligns with Sinclair’s current political and regulatory imperatives. It makes the propagating of biased news content even more effective from Sinclair’s perspective.

Sinclair clearly hopes that the political consultants who purchase campaign ads, and the federal regulators who must approve their planned purchase of Tribune Broadcasting’s 42 stations, will appreciate their recent media literacy efforts.

Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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fughtopia · 7 years

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October 17th, 2017

David P. Hamilton

Opinion — For the most part, “fake news” is a fake concept designed by the corporate news media to discredit those who challenge the official U.S. hegemonic narrative.

The typical MSM fake news accusation starts with some egregious fictionalization and then morphs over to the real targets: the subversives, those who would dispute foundational elements of the official history or its recent approved updates.

These subversive elements are likely to question important myths, such as the necessity of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima or – before the Iraq War – Saddam Hussein possessing WMD, and hence must be silenced.

There are people in this world who write what they know to be fiction and try to pass it off as fact. Many of them work for the CIA and related institutions. Then, there are satirists like The Onion who write fictionalized truth. These professional prevaricators are not what draws the ire of the corporate “news.”

The approved rendition of U.S. history is a composite of lies, euphemisms and dubious rationales taught in schools, public and private, since the nation’s founding. It is continuously updated by the corporate news media. There is an army of PR types and psy-op warriors working constantly on this project; some private sector, some public, who often switch roles and sectors, but work hand-in-glove regardless.

The real fake news is the fake narrative that flows perpetually forth from these functionaries of the MSM to dominate the discourse which the billionaire owners allow voiced via their facilities. In this manner, we are all being played, all the time, and have been since birth.

For the record, the official narrative follows certain principles. Among them are:

The U.S. is never wrong in any conflict with other nations.

If the U.S. ever happens to be wrong, it was a reasonable mistake.

U.S. intentions are always benign and honorable.

U.S. judgment is always objective and fair.

The U.S. is a democracy and always supports democracy.

Americans are a peaceful people.

Americans are a superior people, so American lives matter more.

Americans are always on the high moral ground because God is on our side.

The word of our leaders is sufficient proof of any assertion.

The U.S. is the greatest nation in history.

Private is always better than public.

Individualism is always better than collectivism.

One-Sided ‘News’

In application of these principles, NPR’s “All Things Considered” never considers the Maduro government’s position in Venezuela, nor is Noam Chomsky, often voted the world’s foremost public intellectual, to be heard on this “public” radio. Nor will North Korea’s negotiating position relative to their nuclear weapons program be explained. It requires the U.S. military to refrain from conducting war games on North Korea’s border in exchange for freezing their weapons program; unmentionable because the U.S. militaristic leadership is unwilling to consider the proposal and because it sounds too rational.

You will hear from the world’s greatest exporter of terrorism, that Iran - which hasn’t invaded a neighbor since Darius I in 500 BCE - is the world’s greatest exporter of terrorism. And that apartheid Israel is a democracy. And that the Saudis are jolly guys in silk robes you want to hold hands and dance with.

Are the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, et al, lying knowingly? Not exactly. The news media doesn’t have to invent the lies, only repeat them. They are mainly the stenographers of governmental agencies that provide the raw material to be quoted, invariably substantiating the validity of the official position. The owners of those news outlets likely believe that narrative, but mainly they want you to believe it.

The pundits and talking heads of those news media, the on-camera personalities, must think within the parameters the official narrative or they wouldn’t have been hired to the position of highly paid spokesperson for it. Wolf Blitzer is a Zionist true believer who used to do P.R. for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt heir worth $100 million.

How objective can you be about issues of income inequality when you’ve been the top .0001% for six or seven generations? And if one dare to go off the reservation, the next thing you know you’ll be working for RT for a lot less money like Ed Schultz.

This process of narrative creation is principally a matter of focus, parameters and interpretation. On major U.S. cable news channels, the great bulk of coverage involves domestic politics, mass murders and “natural” disasters. In Europe, the focus is far more on international relationships.

The spectrum of opinion allowed in the U.S. is limited to the point that Hillary Clinton is considered “the left” and the anti-capitalist left might as well not exist. The range of permissible opinion typically stretches from pro-capitalist social liberals to pro-capitalist social conservatives. This is hardly surprising if one considers that billionaire investors own the controlling interest in all major U.S. news media. One outcome is that the U.S. is the only major industrial nation without a significant socialist political party.

The private interests that own the news media don’t have to get together and compare notes because they all have a high level of ruling-class consciousness that includes shared economic fundamentals, e.g., socialize debts and privatize profits. Their message control is described far more clearly by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in Manufacturing Consent, chapter 1 on “the propaganda model”.

Dubious Conformity

It is generally accurate to assume that there is an entirely reasonable interpretation of news events that contradicts what you are being told to believe by the corporate news media. Cases of official duplicity are notorious and legion: the Gulf of Tonkin, WMD in Iraq, the black kid killed by the police had a gun, etc.

Furthermore, that the Soviets would do this despite having achieved their major war aims, a divided and demilitarized Germany and a “sphere of influence” between themselves and Germany, an arrangement agreed upon by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. This Cold War creation myth of Soviet aggressive intent is essentially a U.S. cover story to mask U.S. aggression disguised as defensive.Central among the American myths is that the myth surrounding the origins of the Cold War. This myth would have you believe that the Soviet Union in 1945, despite having lost over 30 million of its citizens during two German invasions in less than 30 years and with a devastated infrastructure, would suddenly decide to invade Western Europe, into the teeth of the world’s sole nuclear-armed military power, the USA, and its various formidable allies.

Like Germans in 1939 believing the Polish horse cavalry was about to attack their tanks, Americans bought this spurious interpretation. These steady U.S. “defensive” efforts have now brought NATO, essentially an agency of U.S. foreign policy, to Russia’s very doorstep in the Baltic states, with Ukraine up next for NATO membership. Who is the aggressor?

Every other late Twentieth Century storyline of official U.S. history had to conform to the basic foundational concept of the U.S. defending freedom against an expansionist Soviet Union/Russia bent on destroying us. And so, today, we have thousands of NATO troops, innumerable missile batteries and nuclear-armed aircraft carrier-led naval battle groups patrolling Russia’s borders and shorelines, including the Black Sea, because “THEY are the aggressor.”

Try to imagine the U.S. reaction to a Russian fleet cruising the Gulf of Mexico, although that might be difficult given that 11 of the world’s 17 aircraft carriers, a uniquely aggressive weapon, belong to the U.S., all with unlimited range, and Russia’s only puny little single carrier rarely leaves Russian territorial waters and doesn’t have enough range to get to the U.S. and back.

The U.S. has an estimated 800 foreign military bases in well over 100 countries while Russia has three in two countries. U.S. military budget is at least ten times that of Russia’s and was just increased by 10 percent while the Russians just reduced theirs by 7 percent. Who is the aggressor?

Top photo | Editorial cartoon by Leon Barritt, circa 1898 shows newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst pushing against opposite sides of a pillar of wooden blocks that spells WAR. This is a satire of the Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers’ role in drumming up USA public opinion to go to war with Spain.

David P. Hamilton is a long-time Austin activist and writer. An archive of his other articles can be found at http://www.theragblog.com/tag/david-p-hamilton/.

Source: Mint News Press

#propaganda #war propaganda #endless war #amerikkka #nation of lawless nazi psychopaths #fake news

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jackblankhsh · 7 years

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Inauguration of a Nightmare -- building the avalanche

JANUARY 20, 2017– the resistance begins

Sirens randomly wailed as emergency vehicles screamed towards grim scenarios. For any city native it’s a common sound, though one is tempted to call it foreshadowing. A palpable dread pollutes the dreamlike atmosphere of this fog shrouded metropolis. Any other night it might feel like the start of adventure and perhaps it still does, though one can’t help feeling what lies ahead is too dark to enjoy. Yet, it’s the perfect time for Chicago to feel ethereal. The last few months have certainly felt unreal.

In that time America elected a new president. By many standards the man is barely human. A mass of congealed hate and rotted dumpster meat wrapped in ruby cheeked Peking duck skin, cloaked in a miasmic aura of narcissism, dishonesty, and the kind of childishness one hopes never to see in a world leader; there are many facets to this wicked pig. Like a matryoshka doll many entities exist within his soul: the Twitter crazed tantrum throwing teenager, world’s most successful conman, the unstoppable pussy grabbing hand rapist, demagogue extraordinaire, and gold plated plutocrat. His obvious flaws caused Olympic grade mental gymnastic in many of his followers, while he fought hard to ultimately lose the popular vote, yet still become president.

So on the night of his inauguration thousands gathered in Chicago. In Washington protesters assembled for the event itself, but they got off on the wrong foot. Violence erupted, and though brief, it tainted the message. The goal of these protests is not to spill blood, or burn the world, it’s to avoid silence. Activists want to show where they stand: against what is coming. This is especially necessary now given Trump’s pathological lying, and routine desire to rewrite history for his benefit. Even after winning the election he found it so implausible that he lost the popular vote he began alleging voter fraud. Not only does he operate under the delusion the country loves him he thinks reality is open to revision, particularly if it doesn’t match the fantasy in his head. That’s why people are gathering in order to leave a mark which cannot be denied.

Walking there, distracted by bleak visions of tomorrow – Vlad and Donnie raping Lady Liberty while dead eyed Stepford wife Melania watches, waiting to be told what to think, and press secretary Spicer prepares alternative facts to explain the grotesquery favorably – I wandered down the wrong street. Instead of joining at the designated assembly point, Wabash and Wacker, I strolled down an empty avenue cordoned off by a smattering of cops. However, police made no move to stop a solitary oddity drifting with the trickle of 9-to-Fivers. I blended in, and got a chance to observe the cops in waiting.

Chicago police have a long history with protests, not all of it good, but in that time they’ve learned a thing or two. Instead of trying to herd the rally they simply fortified the only target of assault. The odds of anyone getting within spitting distance seemed improbable, and because I beat them by chance I will eternally regret not taking the opportunity to hork a wad of phlegm at the building. An officer moved a barricade aside to let me out of the area, complimenting my sideburns as I passed. It made me wonder about their feelings. Some may not have voted for him, but are now ordered to protect his property like dutiful centurions. One can only hope that given a crisis of conscious, a moment that requires humanity not slave devotion to orders, they’ll do the right thing. But for now they simply want the night to pass peacefully. They aren’t alone.

Demonstrators assembled loosely, crowding into a tighter collective by Kupcinet Bridge. There to shout across the river at the name TRUMP glowing in blue tinted lights. Among the masses a throng of musicians calling themselves Sousaphones Against Hate provided an odd soundtrack to the evening’s events. One doesn’t think of sousaphones when picturing a protest, but they added a flavor to the affair more clichéd choices would not. There’s something about a brass band playing “The Imperial March” – it put a smile on the face of a man dressed as a nuclear missile, his costume chillingly implicative, but given the music one could only grin as well.

Homemade signs declared the litany of grievances against President Trump from his failures as a human being and business person to his grotesque, undesirable political agenda. It’s unnerving to watch a young woman hold up a sign in hopes of reminding the world she’s deserves decent treatment because she doesn’t expect it in Trump’s America. After all, she isn’t the right color, or on the right side, literally and figuratively, though it is heartening to witness so many gathered to stand with her.

Amidst the activists at least two different publications vied for attention. Handed for free to any who wanted them, one extolled the virtues of socialism, the other communism, while both asserted this presidency is the fault of capitalism. Some took the papers gladly, though a few accepted them with a roll of the eyes destining them for the trash can unread. Wandering the crowd I picked up discussions as protesters tried to comprehend how this reality came into being. Everyone seemed to subscribe to their own theories which tended to lean toward their personal cause. African Americans asserted racism as a primary factor in Trump’s win, while many women blamed sexism, but it’s important to note no one dismissed anyone else’s idea… except for one young man jabbering a slew of Orwellian weed tangled gibberish. Many politely ignored him. The point being that under a microscope everyone there clearly believed in a different cause, specific to their personal lives, yet those factors go somewhat to the wayside as activists assembled to resist the new president.

A problem with contemporary protests is that everyone wants to come together as one but be heard individually. Of one goal, demonstrators expect to be heard in multiple voices, each distinguishable from the whole. This results in a garbled message. However, that didn’t happen here. Whatever a person’s reasons, everyone came to protest Trump. And that message came across.

That made it sad when the various local news outlets seemed reluctant to record anything. I watched camera operators fiddle with equipment, but not shoot a thing. They swapped idle chit chat waiting for, I can only assume, something unpleasant. Riots are ratings gold after all. I thought maybe they wanted to wait until the crowd reached a more sizable proportion, but honestly, the mass never reached anything critical. Though thousands may’ve come a casual glance could tell the number easily stayed below ten, possibly even five… or dare say two. Friday’s rally didn’t have an astonishing turnout, though Saturday would demonstrate perhaps many merely opted to wait to march in solidarity with the women of America.

Still, this is a new era. Reliance on old media is unnecessary. I saw several in attendance recording, live streaming, photographing and video documenting the event. The regular news may not have covered Friday’s protest in-depth, but the irregular new news, beamed out across social media, spoke volumes.

The night started. Chants kicked up then died down, not enough voices joining in. An organizer shouted into a crackling PA system that occasionally cut out, her voice vanishing before returning midsentence in a cloud of static. Volunteers passed out chant sheets, so anyone in attendance would know what to say. Glancing over one I noticed a preponderance of, “2, 4, 6, 8…” followed by rhymes like, “No more violence, no more hate.” After an hour, though, standing around felt like doing nothing, so I went into Hoyt, a nearby hotel tavern. Also I needed to piss.

Inside I found a pair of bottle blondes taking selfies, giggling over white wine without a care in the world. Most eyes glued to the Hawks game on TV. A few tourists glanced out the windows, and as if for the first time noticed the protesters choking the street. They speculated about what could be happening. It didn’t seem clear despite the “fuck Trump” signs and mass of humanity shouting anti-Trump rhetoric. Then in true tourist fashion they hurried to the windows to snap pics, capturing real world souvenirs.

Then midway through a refreshing Scotch I saw the protesters start marching. I slammed the contents of my glass, and hurried outside.

“This is it!” I thought, “The resistance has begun!”

Rushing to catch up I saw the demonstrators halt at Michigan Avenue. Anticipating the attempt police stood ready to hold the movement back. So for a time the protest seemed destined to merely pinball between two streets until a group of activists turned the flow towards the river walk.

Anxious to storm the Tower, the march poured down the concrete steps. Hurrying to lower Wacker the maneuver seemed naïve. Surely police must’ve anticipated such a move, though in fact they didn’t need to. As already mentioned, barricades stood preventing anyone from getting close enough to piss on the gutters out front. But motion feels like action, so the bulk of protesters surged onward. Signs held aloft elicited honks of support from passing motorists. Cheering, feeling rejuvenated, on the road to success, the march circled like a shark.

It was then I saw a couple pausing from the protest to take a picture. Passing by the infamous Billy Goat Tavern, a boyfriend photographed his girlfriend. She posed to have, not only the landmark, but her sign in the photo as well. The march slowly getting away from them, while they made sure to get the right shot.

Shortly afterward I heard two demonstrators talking:

“Which street do we turn down to get to Trump Tower?”

“The next one?”

This exchange taking place a block after the relevant street. I thought about directing them, but momentum seemed in favor of simply wandering the streets, shouting for attention. When an organizer cried out, “We’re going to Lakeshore Drive!” trying to corral the herd to the Chicago landmark I departed from the march. Gumming up LSD with protesters has become a predictable move in recent years. It felt like the obligatory song of a one hit wonder trying to win back fans drifting to the exit. Make no mistake, the spirit is willing, the flesh is not weak, but the movement is already fatigued.

Every day is a fresh pot of awful drunk choking back vomit. This weekend’s protests are important, but they are more indicative of what’s to come rather than anything expected to effect change. It would take god-sized optimism bordering on lunatic naivety to presume protests alone will unseat this “man.” This is only the beginning.

Now that it’s proven a call to action can assemble the masses it’s time to consider the next move. It isn’t enough to simply get people together. Protests, after all, are more symbolic than effective. Their main accomplishment is proving there is a movement, but they have to have an impact on something other than awareness of said movement.

A friend of mine put it best, and if I may paraphrase: it starts with a snowflake building to an avalanche. We now need the avalanche.

#honestyisnotcontagious #politics #not trump #notmypresident #writing #op-ed #inauguration2017 #political #political commentary #chicago #whyimarch

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