Facing Race 2012, Baltimore MD

Facing Race, the Applied Research Center‘s biannual conference on racial justice, culture, politics, and so many other things, wrapped Saturday night.

I struggled to keep my ears peeled as I photographed—so much knowledge, heart and soul filled the venue, the lovely Baltimore Hilton.

Folks talked honestly and intelligently about race and its intersections with gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, immigration status. Attendees discussed the massive obstacles to dragging these issues into the mainstream but mostly explored how to make progress toward social and racial justice both on that level and among ourselves.

Check out: #facingrace. ARC will be posting some of the sessions online.

Now: photos…

Keynote speaker Junot Diaz, November 16, 2012

Amirah Sackett, Khadijah Sifterlah-Griffin and her sister Iman perform “We’re Muslim, Don’t Panic,” November 17, 2012

Preconference session, November 15, 2012

Hosts comedian W. Kamau Bell and media technologist Deanna Zandt, November 16, 2012

Closing performance by kids in the conference’s childcare program, November 17, 2012

Another Brian Palmer’s Take on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Case

The Brian Palmer who writes for Slate posted a 5/18 piece titled “Punched to Death,” which discusses the Trayvon Martin case in a problematic context: “How easy is it to kill a man with your bare hands?” In the lede, the other BP cites a recent report: “The new information may bolster George Zimmerman’s argument that the two men were locked in combat, and Zimmerman shot the unarmed teenager to protect his own life.”

This is incomplete and misleading information. It’s also bad editorializing. Additional information from the Office of the Medical Examiner, Florida Districts 7 & 24 reveals an as yet unresolved contradiction: The March 15, 2012 report states that the fatal shot was fired from “intermediate range.” USA Today quotes defense attorney and University of Florida law prof Michelle Jacobs: “‘[Zimmerman] may have gotten injuries, but it could have been because it was Trayvon Martin who feared he was at risk of death or serious bodily injury,'” Jacobs said. “‘The injuries themselves do not tell us anything about who initiated the contact. And that’s what the case will hinge on.'” Indeed.

Journalists should report both sides of a story. Period. Also, they should not place such a volatile story in such a context.

I would respond to OBP’s Slate item in the comments section, but the level of debate ranges from sober to racist. Rather not get mixed up in it. Friends and colleagues feel free to mix it up.

Pedro Espada Jr., before the conviction

Espada, former NY state senator from the Bronx, was found guilty “on four counts of stealing from non-profit medical clinics that received federal funding” Monday, according to an FBI release.

Pedro Espada Jr. speaks at a rally in Albany, NY, in support of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, January 12, 2012

NY legislators Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright, state Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, and Espada at the rally, January 12, 2012

Albany watchers of different political persuasions, including Wayne Barrett, then of the Village Voice, accused now state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of being too cozy with Espada, though Schneiderman did call for him to step down later in 2010.

One of his more noble causes was to support the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights along with other legislators. Not sure how much comfort that will give him if he gets the maximum sentence, 10 years on each count, but it’s probably comforting to folks who cozied up to him, with noses held, to get the bill passed.

ACT-UP’s 25th Anniversary in NYC

The group may be a shadow of its 1980s, in-your-face self, but the march and demonstration marking the 25th anniversary of the first major action by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in Lower Manhattan today had some of the energy of the early days of the movement.

NYPD officers cut chains locking an activist from Housing Works to a chair during a direct action in front of NYC's City Hall, April 25, 2012

Hundreds of people gathered in front of City Hall to recognize one of the most powerful and effective activist/advocacy/education organizations of the late 20th century. Stalwarts from the early days like Jim Eigo, Bill Dobbs, and Larry Kramer were there, but younger folks from groups like VOCAL and Housing Works actually ran the show.

VOCAL’s Jaron Benjamin led the march downtown, negotiating all the way with a coolheaded African American NYPD Deputy Inspector and his boss, Assistant Chief Thomas Purtell. Housing Works spearheaded a direct action in front of City Hall Park. Members erected a mock apartment in the middle of Broadway to dramatize what Housing Works says are policies and practices of HASA, New York City’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration, that turn people living with AIDS into homeless people living with AIDS.

VOCAL NY organizer Miguel Adams chants at demonstration marking the 25th anniversary of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, April 25, 2012

There was solidarity and tumult—the usual push and pull between marchers who want to take the street and the cops who want to keep it clear—but there was something lacking that ACT-UP had in spades: focus.

Last month Democracy Now ran a long piece on the AIDS activism documentary How to Survive a Plague with clips of heavy-duty actions against the likes of the Federal Drug Administration and multinational pharma giant Merck (a target of VOCAL not too long ago). In it, ACTers UP like the late Bob Rafsky and Garance Franke-Ruta speak with passion, a sense of urgency, and an absolute command of the issues. They knew what they needed—speeded up trials for specific drugs and lower cost meds—and they communicated it clearly, succinctly, forcefully. They were eloquent. And they fought like their lives and those of their friends depended on their actions, because they did.

Larry Kramer, author/playwright/pioneering AIDS and LGBT activist, before the march and protest, April 25, 2012

Today’s demo reminded me first, how much the original ACT-UP accomplished—its work and that of other AIDS, queer, and lesbian groups made powerful people accountable and saved people’s lives—and second, that today’s activists, Occupiers, and citizens need to learn that history, in all brilliance and messiness.

Newt Bless the Child Who’s Got His/Her Own

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich hands out cash at a DC school, May 16 1995

Candidate Gingrich’s recent suggestion that urban school kids would make swell janitors took me back to a May afternoon in 1995. I was a photographer at US News, blessed with the task of trailing the Speaker to a school in DC that was implementing his “Earning by Learning” program.

The event was as bizarre as it was distasteful — Gingrich bending over to hand cash to black elementary schoolers for reading books as dozens of cameras rolled and snapped.

Gingrich described the program in a speech that Connie Bruck quoted in her brilliant opus Newtus, “The Politics of Perception,” which appeared in the October 9, 1995 issue of the New Yorker. “It’s very simple; no bureaucracy, very voluntaristic. We go into public housing projects, we pay little kids — second and third graders — two dollars for every book they read…. The only money in the program goes to the child, so for a thousand dollars you have five hundred books read.”

Newt’s questionable pedagogy aside, there was another conspicuous problem with his statement: The money didn’t just go to the kiddies. Phil Kuntz of the Wall Street Journal revealed that $30,000 of the program’s $62,000 endowment went to Mel Steely, the nonchild who ran it — and who happened to be Gingrich’s authorized biographer. Gingrich was either lying or using Beltway math.

Gingrich called the article “malicious” in an interview with Bruck, another attack by the liberal media “designed to cause us pain.”

Sound familiar?

Bruck had the Speaker’s number all those years ago:

What is remarkable about Gingrich in the end is not the degree to which he dissembles but the theatricality of his outrage when he is charged with dissembling, and the self-righteous force of his counterattack. He is, of course, not original in this—history offers plentiful examples of leaders who intimidated their critics (especially the press) by charging them with bias, and these precedents are not pretty—but Gingrich is surely one of the most accomplished practitioners of this particular skill. His opponents are chameleons and demagogues, his critics are cynics and liars: it is a feat of projection amazing in its transparency, and yet, probably because it is so daring, it works.

Roughly 17 years later, Gingrich is playing the same game with the national news media, with near impunity.

A useful link from the in-laws-to-be

Jim and Janis in Blaine, WA, sent me this link to an open letter to GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum written by prominent Catholic leaders.

Here’s the letter in full. Click above to see the signatories.

An Open Letter to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum

As Catholic leaders who recognize that the moral scandals of racism and poverty remain a blemish on the American soul, we challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Labeling our nation’s first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of “welfare queens” and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders.

Some presidential candidates now courting “values voters” seem to have forgotten that defending human life and dignity does not stop with protecting the unborn. We remind Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum that Catholic bishops describe racism as an “intrinsic evil” and consistently defend vital government programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits that help struggling Americans. At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting.

As the South Carolina primary approaches, we urge Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and all presidential candidates to reject the politics of racial division, refrain from offensive rhetoric and unite behind an agenda that promotes racial and economic justice.

Can I get an Amen?

I crossed paths with Rachel Maddow today

Really.

I was bursting through the opening doors of an R train as Maddow walked toward the subway car. Like any smart and mindful commuter, she approached at a sharp angle to avoid the stream of agitated New Yorkers exploding from the train, of which, I will say proudly, I was at the head.

I was moving like a man with a double shot of espresso under his belt, which is precisely the man I was, so I didn’t have time to register much, only her furrowed brow, horn rims, and a scarf (tartan or checked?).

I climbed the stairway to Broadway imagining what I might have said to Maddow — not that I would have said anything even if I had been less caffeinated. Chatting up high-wattage celebs, even fellow journos, feels to me like star-slurping, more commonly known as brown-nosing. I’m too proud, and I doubt Maddow would have been especially inclined to spend quality time in conversation with a random subway rider.

But had I found the combination of gumption and humility to bust such a move, I might have hopped back on the train, gently introduced myself to her, and then posed a few polite and sagacious questions — with an eye toward, say, an invitation to appear on the show.

“Ms. Maddow, may I ask whether you’ll be discussing former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s smackdown of Juan Williams, to the cheers of the South Carolinian audience, at last night’s debate?”

That was an absolutely arresting moment, one I’ll point to if someone tells me that the Republican presidential race is not, at least in part (a huge part), about Barack Obama’s race. Williams could have called the former Speaker’s race-card bluff, his claim that Obama is the “food-stamp president” with facts, but he didn’t.

Participation rates in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, the name for the Federal food stamp program since 2008, rose seven out of the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. And, according to the Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, “the large increase in the number of participants was likely attributable to the deterioration of the economy, expansions in SNAP eligibility, and continued outreach efforts.” (Be warned: This SNAP link leads to a PDF.) At the very least, this gives us two food-stamp presidents, the first who hobbled the economy by launching two wars and handing out tax cuts to the one percent, and the second who inherited those wars and has kept one going at full steam.

I might also have asked her whether she’d be tackling Rick Perry’s doubling down on his criticism of President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and others in the administration for condemning the acts depicted in the infamous scout-sniper urinating video.

“When the secretary of defense calls that a despicable act, when he calls that utterly despicable,” Perry charged, “let me tell you what is utterly despicable: cutting Danny Pearl’s head off and showing the video, hanging our contractors from bridges, that’s utterly despicable. For our president, for the secretary of state, for the Department of Defense secretary to make those kinds of statements about those young marines, yes they need to be punished, but when you see this president with that type of disdain for our country, taking a trillion dollars out of our defense budget, a hundred thousand of our military off of our front lines? I lived through a reduction of forces once and I saw the results of it in the sands of Iran in 1979.”

First of all: Daniel Pearl and murdered military contractors? To appropriate these tragedies for his own political point-scoring is a desecration.

Secondly, “disdain for our country?” Slam Obama’s policies, but to attack his loyalty to America is simply cowardly and deceitful. The esteemed journalists on the debate panel could have reality- or morality-checked Perry. But they didn’t. And they didn’t challenge him on the facts, either.

“Adjusting for inflation, the level of funding proposed for the base defense budget in the FY 2012 request is the highest level since World War II, surpassing the Cold War peak of $531 billion (in FY 2012 dollars) reached in FY 1985.” That’s according to CSBA, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. What the administration’s 2012 budget proposes to cut, too timidly and gently in my view, is the growth rate of our alarmingly bloated military spending, which peaked in 2007, and funds spent on war, war, war.

The media inquisitors also might have quoted General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, on the incident behind Perry’s initial smear.

“I have viewed an internet video that depicts Marines desecrating several dead Taliban in Afghanistan. I want to be clear and unambiguous, the behavior depicted in the video is wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history.”

Note the verb the general, the highest-ranking US Marine, uses to characterize the actions.

Amos continues: “Rest assured that the institution of the Marine Corps will not rest until the allegations and the events surrounding them have been resolved. We remain fully committed to upholding the Geneva Convention, the Laws of War, and our own core values.”

High standards and values. The presidential candidates and the journalists ostensibly covering them would benefit from a helping of both.

I’m not sure I would have impressed Maddow, but I would have unburdened myself of this maddening, absurd, and frightening stuff. For the moment, at least.

Organized labor demonstration for jobs and fairness, Union Square, December 1, 2011

Union members—teachers, electricians, building cleaners, and many others—plus supporters, and hangers-on marched from Herald Square at 34th Street down Broadway to Union Square. The New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella group, called for the Occupy Wall Street-inspired rally, “The March for Jobs and Economic Fairness.” The objective: “Fill the street from curb to curb so government and big business get our message: enough is enough,” said the press release. “It’s time to end the unfair economic policies in this country that benefit too few, and leave everyone else behind.”

And fill the streets they did, blocking traffic at one point. From what I saw at Union Square, though, it was a supremely orderly and low-key affair. After marchers flowed into the area around Union Square Park, some waving placards and banners, things kind of went coffee-klatchy, at least from my vantage points. Folks gathered in clusters and chatted. Sporadic, low-volume chanting emanated from the odd clump of people. The ubiquitous drum circle—sigh—did its percussive thing in one corner of the square. I did observe one less-than-low-key moment: a gentleman with unruly gray hair harangued a Fox News TV camera for the network’s anti-union bias. “They’re the worst!” he shouted, among other unkind things. Problem: there was no one behind or in front of the camera, only the lonely high technology device sitting atop a tripod. I assume the man was rehearsing for the arrival of the Foxians.

The rally also offered a boost to members of 32BJ SEIU, which voted today to give a bargaining committee strike authority. The union represents 22,000 office cleaners and commercial building workers who are resisting property owners’ conditions for a new contract. The union is negotiating with the Real Estate Advisory Board on Labor Relations, which represents commercial building owners and big cleaning companies, says 32BJ is asking for unrealistic wage hikes. Follow the links to read both sides of the conflict.

Union members march on Union Square

James, a retired union worker, at the end of the march. Tired.

"Rough on Rats"

Traffic, pedestrians, and union bagpipers

Civilly disobedient citizens, their friends, minders, and arresters, November 17, 2011

Arrest of Felix Rivera-Pitre, VOCAL activist punched by senior NYPD officer on October 4

Occupy Wall Street’s near-eviction and the aftermath

Like several hundred others, I spent the very early hours of Friday morning just a couple of blocks north of Wall Street at Zuccotti Park.

I’d visited the Occupy Wall Street protest twice before, once while photographing the activist group VOCAL, which joined the October 5 rally of support, and a few days later with Erin, my fiancée. On that particular sprint through the encampment, I saw clusters of grungy, crunchy kids lounging and talking, several long-haired and funky lefties closer to my age holding forth, giddy tourists angling for photos, plus thousands of uncategorizables. It was chaotic, body-to-body, animated, and relaxed.

We weren’t there long enough to hear any speeches or witness the formidable “people’s microphone” in which folks amplify a speaker’s voice by repeating what she says to those farther away. But we saw and felt something—optimism, goodwill, even curiosity—among many, occupiers as well as passers-through like us.

On Friday morning, in a soaking rain, the park was no less animated, but less crowded, and more purposeful. When I got there at 1:30, the park beautification process that OWSers hoped might prevent the scheduled 7AM eviction by the New York City Police Department at the behest of the park owner, Brookfield Properties, had been cranking for hours. Teams of occupiers carted trash to drop sites at the park’s corners. Others scrubbed sidewalks with stiff-bristled push brooms and detergent. One girl dashed to get a bucket of clear water to flush a puddle of soap residue pooling in the dirt around a spindly tree. Microwave and satellite trucks from the various media outlets ringed the park. (I didn’t see FOX, so I figured they were incognito and using the services of an independent transmission provider.) Most journalists seemed to be waiting for the minutes before zero-hour to pounce.

An NYPD “SkyWatch” mobile observation tower stood at one corner of the park, a very impressive piece of high-tech surveillance equipment. SkyWatch is made by a division of FLIR, a military contractor with $1.9 billion in revenue, known for its thermal imaging technology. I’ve seen their products at military “force protection” trade shows.

The people’s mic was in full effect in impromptu assemblies. Someone would shout “mic check” and those within earshot would repeat it. If the statements that followed struck listener-amplifiers as relevant, vital, interesting, uplifting, or anything else good, the chorus grew. Discussions occasionally got disputatious and went off track. Gassers-off would mic-check and divert the group from the issue at hand toward their own general fabulousness. But when those around the speaker caught on, that people’s mic would fade out, and another mic-check would get recognized. All of this is maddening for a linear guy like me, but quite beautiful once I felt the power of the process rippling through the kids around me. They might not be bathed in the spotlight themselves, but each could decide whether to cut off the verbal voltage she was providing to a speaker or to keep generating it.

I wandered, soaked to the niblets, through the tiny park and fell into conversations. The first was among a half-dozen people knotted around a collegiate 20ish young white man. The wealthy earn what they have, and they deserve to keep it, was his point. Those gathered around him disagreed in varying degrees. When the agitation level rose, a woman named Deborah, 50ish and white, gently intervened to remind folks it was just a conversation.

Deborah shared her story. “I was such a good legal secretary I was raking it in. I was making like 90 grand at the end—plus overtime.” Life, of course, is what happens to you while you’re making plans to spend all that cash. Breast cancer. Her treatment is covered by the COBRA program, she told us, but only for a few more months. (She now pays $706 a month.) Before COBRA runs out, she must buy an additional insurance policy so that she’ll be able to purchase coverage on top of that when her COBRA finally ends.

“If I’m a multimillionaire, that’s not going to present a problem, but if I’m a regular working stiff, and we don’t have a single-payer health care option, I am fucked.” Respectful silence from all, even the kid formerly at the center of the conversation. Deborah is virtually uninsurable under our present system. That’s why she supports OWS (she visits but doesn’t sleep in).

A kid, 20-something and white, swaddled in a trashbag shuffled over.

“This is a very, very serious—” he paused—“thing. I won’t ask a rhetorical question. In my opinion, nothing is going to change–”

“Uh huh,” Deborah interjected.

“Them—” the boy said.

“Right,” said Deborah, impatiently.

“—is gonna change them unless we change ourselves…. It’s all about us creating a new society where, where we love each other like we love ourselves.”

The boy spoke slowly, perhaps to keep from slurring his words. He was drunk or compromised by something other than booze. The diverse group—young and less-young, white, black, biracial, professional and student, agitator and agitated—listened. I stifled the “shut-the-fuck-up” I was gnawing on.

“I think we need to just focus on loving each other,” he added.

“Okay. That’s nice. I think love is a good idea,” Deborah replied. “My health insurance doesn’t get paid by love.”

Our conversation was over. I waded back into the park.

Sun guns atop TV cameras illuminated another kid belching power-to-the-people platitudes, giving him fleeting legitimacy. It took a few determined mic checks and several minutes of verbal dueling for the young men and women from the Direct Action group to get center stage, but they did. They called a special assembly and gave updates on the impending eviction and the plans in place to deal with it.

A faint “late last night” in a girl’s voice wafted over to me and then got trumpeted sometime after 6AM. “We received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park.” This got repeated three times, of course.

I heard the distant voice say “postponing the cleaning,” and then whoops of joy from the thousands of folks around me. This was the people’s sound system on overload. (Audio to come in next post.)

I followed OWSers as they celebrated by marching through the Financial District.

I watched a horde of still photographers encircle a brown-haired white man, also a 20-something, cigarette dangling from his lips, glaring into the visor of an NYPD riot cop, one of a squad that had been deployed to City Hall’s front gate. The kid was no more than a foot from the cops. Macho, narcissistic, dangerous.

I had seen this before in the dozens of demos I’ve shot in past 20+ years. The violent scumbags were crawling from the cracks. They can’t emerge and don’t figure in the park’s wonderfully messy democratic process. But in the street, they can play their cowardly hit-and-run games—and tarnish the reputation of a movement. A young woman from Direct Action urged the photographers to keep moving with the crowd, otherwise, she pleaded with them, “the cops will beat our heads in.” I agreed with her, complied, and left the provocateur to his star turn. Then I broke off from the march and headed north to teach my undergraduate photo class at Baruch College.

Minutes after I left, a senior NYPD officer, a white shirt, grabbed marcher Felix Rivera-Pitre from behind and punched him in the face.

“I didn’t do anything to provoke him. I was just doing what everyone else was doing in the march,” he said. There’s video shot by Animal New York that’s shows a fragment of the interaction between Felix and the cop here.

I had photographed Felix, a slight man who is HIV-positive, earlier in the week in a series of group portraits of VOCAL. (He’s a member.) VOCAL issued a statement here. A VOCAL member tells me Felix is OK.