Chris Hedges's Blog, page 332

Democratic Party Says No to Possible Ban on Corporate PAC Money

After rejecting a proposal to reinstate a full ban on corporate PAC donations earlier this week, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) decided on Saturday that the party’s Platform Committee would review a possible ban in 2020.

At the DNC’s winter meeting, the DNC failed to pass the anti-corporate PAC resolution proposed by Christine Pelosi, chair of the California Democratic Party women’s caucus and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). But Pelosi applauded the committee’s rejection of a resolution to “study” the effects of corporate PAC donations, instead directing the DNC’s Platform Committee to vote on whether the contributions will be allowed in 2020.

Fired up for reform at the #DNC. Though my corporate PAC ban failed, we managed to nix a “study” and negotiated a path forward to a VOTE by the Platform Committee and 2020 Convention.

We will keep up the fight to put #peopleoverPACs to make the Democratic Party more democratic. pic.twitter.com/GBnDVtDvaW

— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) February 16, 2019

Melissa Byrne, a former organizer on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, tweeted that the resolution should be a “no-brainer” for the committee to pass in 2020.

Considering all decent Dem POTUS candidates are refusing Corporate PAC money, should be a no brainer to pass in 2020. Thank you @sfpelosi. Let’s work to assuage concerns of folks who don’t realize banning corporate pac raises us way more $$$ than corps will ever give. https://t.co/OJu3msvxsb

— melissa byrne (@mcbyrne) February 16, 2019

Pelosi has led the charge in recent months to demand that the DNC stops accepting corporate PAC money in the interest of running “people-powered” campaigns.

“We’re going to have a presidential debate, they’re going to ask what side we’re on,” Pelosi told Vox.com after her resolution to ban corporate PAC money failed. “I just want us all to be ready.”

The DNC declined to pass the ban despite the fact that candidates who reject corporate donations have proven popular in recent years. More than 50 House Democrats now refuse corporate PAC money, including 35 new members who were elected in November. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are among the Democratic presidential candidates who have pledged not to take corporate PAC money.

Former President Barack Obama introduced a ban on corporate PAC money in 2008, but the DNC reversed it in 2016. Despite the fact that reinstating the ban is clearly a winning issue with voters, some Democrats still claim that refusing corporate donations will harm the Party’s chance of defeating President Donald Trump in 2020.

“My number one focus, frankly, is to get rid of Donald Trump,” Charlie King, a DNC member and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, told Vox.com—indicating that offering voters broadly popular ideas is far less important to some members than simply defeating Trump and returning to the corporate-friendly status quo that existed before he was elected.

Larry Cohen, a member who supported Pelosi’s resolution and who serves on the board of Our Revolution, strongly disagreed.

“What are we saying to the people across this country, whose votes we need, not only to eliminate this president but to adopt an agenda for change?” Cohen said.

Abu Dhabi Arms Fair Opens Amid Yemen War Carnage

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates’ yearslong war in Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia bled into the start of a biennial Abu Dhabi arms fair Sunday, which saw the Emirates sign $1.3 billion in weapons deals.

One manufacturer displayed a model of a machine gun on sale that’s now in the hands of Emirati-backed militiamen in Yemen, while the armored personnel carriers and tanks used in the war in the Arab world’s poorest country also could be seen at the show. Even the military show that began the fair included troops raiding a militant hideout equipped with both mobile and land-based ballistic missiles, just like those in the possession of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

While Emirati officials avoided discussing Yemen, allied American officials linked arms smuggling there to what they described as the wider malign activities of Iran across the greater Middle East.

“My assumption is there are still things going into Yemen that I need to stop. There is nothing good happening by arms being illegally shipped into Yemen,” said Vice Adm. James Malloy, the head of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet command that oversees the region. “It is destabilizing. It delays peace there. It exacerbates the disastrous humanitarian crisis that we’re facing in Yemen and delays humanitarian efforts coming in.”

Discussing the Houthis, Malloy added: “We see the world trying to end this thing and one group doing nothing to end it — probably the opposite.”

The UAE entered Yemen’s war in March 2015 alongside Saudi Arabia to back Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which the Houthis had pushed out of the capital, Sanaa. The Emirates largely has handled ground operations in the conflict while the Saudis have bombed from the air.

The war has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine and killed more than 60,000 people since 2016, according to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, which tracks the conflict.

Atrocities have been common in the war.

Saudi airstrikes have hit markets and hospitals, killing civilians. Associated Press investigations have shown how the UAE negotiated secret deals with al-Qaida in Yemen fighters and that coalition forces tortured and sexually abused detainees. Meanwhile, the Houthis have indiscriminately laid land mines, employed child soldiers and tortured political opponents.

The U.S. had backed the Saudi-led coalition with midair refueling and targeting information. American lawmakers, angered by the Oct. 2 assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, have been pushing to withdraw U.S. support.

The Houthis also have fired over 150 ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, some even reaching as far as its capital, Riyadh. The West, United Nations experts and the Saudi-led coalition say Iran has helped supply the Shiite rebels with the missiles, something Iran denies.

That preoccupation with ballistic missiles fueled the opening ceremony of the International Defense Exhibition and Conference. The unnamed militia threatened to launch ballistic missiles, leading to an all-out assault by troops in armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters and jets. The demonstration’s climax saw a fake ballistic missile slowly emerge from an underground silo, only to be destroyed by an airstrike.

That worry also saw the Emirates sign a $355-million deal Sunday with Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Massachusetts, for surface-to-air Patriot missiles to protect against such launches.

Drones and other weaponry have been recovered from the Houthis and appear to be Iranian, experts say. Meanwhile, Western-made arms like those on display Sunday have ended up in the hands of militiamen in Yemen.

Rights group Amnesty International criticized Belgium’s FN Herstal for displaying its 5.56 mm Minimi machine gun at the arms fair as it has been seen in the hands of Emirati-aligned militiamen. FN Herstal officials at the fair declined to comment.

The military buildup in the Emirates and elsewhere in the region has come amid concerns about Iran’s influence after the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers. While Iran continues to abide by its promise to limit its enrichment of uranium, the U.S. under President Donald Trump has pulled out of the accord.

Malloy, the head of the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, didn’t hesitate to describe Iran’s actions in the region as “destabilizing,” citing its renewed threats about cutting off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes.

“The activities and the exercises that they engage in are inherently offensive in nature,” the vice admiral said.

Iran, however, didn’t represent the only ongoing geopolitical challenge seen at the arms fair. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who often attends the arms fair, was a no-show amid the ongoing protests challenging his rule though his country displayed some of its weapons for sale. Bangladesh Prime Minsiter Sheikh Hasina attended the fair’s opening ceremony, as did Guinea’s prime minister and Chechen regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Meanwhile, China displayed weapons for sale ranging from missile launchers to drones. Already, China has sold armed drones to Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Emiratis in particularly had wanted American-made armed drones, but the Obama administration opposed the sales over the Missile Technology Control Regime, a 30-year-old agreement that aims to limit the spread of missile technology. Under Trump, the U.S. has permitted U.S. manufacturers to directly market and sell drones, including armed versions. The government still must approve and license the sales.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, acknowledged those efforts Sunday.

“We do understand that it’s a very competitive world out there and we want to ensure that we’re doing everything in our power to provide us systems the best in the world to our partners,” Hooper said.

Using Marijuana to Quash the Opioid Crisis

In the struggle to address rising levels of opioid misuse and mortality, an unlikely ally has emerged: marijuana.

The relationship between cannabis and opioid use is among of the best-documented aspects of marijuana policy. In short, the science demonstrates that marijuana is a relatively safe and effective pain reliever — and that patients with legal access to it often reduce their use of conventional opiates.

Over 35 controlled clinical trials, involving over 2,000 subjects, have been conducted to assess the safety and usefulness of cannabis or its components for the treatment of chronic pain. Many of these trials specifically evaluate the plant’s ability to target hard-to-treat neuropathic pain.

An exhaustive literature review of over 10,000 scientific abstracts by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined: “There is conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis is effective for the treatment of chronic pain in adults.”

In clinical trial settings, pain patients provided with cannabis as part of their treatment typically reduce their use of opioids.

It’s worth looking at in some detail.

For instance, in one recent study — which assessed cannabis use among the elderly — investigators reported that over 18 percent of the study’s participants “stopped using opioid analgesics or reduced their dose.” They concluded: “Cannabis can decrease the use of other prescription medicines, including opioids.”

Another clinical trial, which looked at cohort of over 1,200 cancer patients over a six-month period, concluded that nearly half of respondents reported either decreasing or eliminating their use of opioids when given access to cannabis during their treatment.

In yet another recent trial, Columbia University scientists documented that using cannabis along with “sub-therapeutic” — that is, lower than usual — doses of opioids resulted in pain relief at a level “comparable to an effective opioid analgesic dose.” These findings point to the “opioid-sparing effects of cannabis,” investigators concluded.

Given this reality, it should hardly come as a surprise that in states where cannabis is legal, rates of opioid-specific abuse, hospitalizations, and mortality fall. One particularly notable study reported a 20 percent decrease in opioid-related deaths one year following the enactment of medical marijuana legislation — and a 33 percent reduction in mortality by year six.

Assessments of pain patient cohorts in medical cannabis access states affirm this observational data. For example, the Minnesota Department of Health in 2017 reported that over 60 percent of state-registered patients using cannabis for chronic pain “were able to reduce or eliminate opioid usage after six months.”

Minnesota’s findings are hardly unique. 2016 data gathered from patients enrolled in Michigan’s cannabis access program reported that marijuana treatment “was associated with a 64 percent decrease in opioid use, decreased number and side effects of medications, and an improved quality of life.”

A 2017 assessment of medical cannabis patients in Illinois revealed that participants in the state-run program frequently reported using marijuana “as an alternative to other medications — most commonly opioids, but also anticonvulsants, anti-inflammatories, and over-the-counter analgesics.”

New Mexico patient data reports: Compared to non-users, medical cannabis enrollees “were more likely either to reduce daily opioid prescription dosages between the beginning and end of the sample period (83.8 percent versus 44.8 percent) or to cease filling opioid prescriptions altogether (40.5 percent versus 3.4 percent).”

The available scientific data to date is consistent and persuasive: For many patients, cannabis offers a viable alternative to opioids.

It’s time for lawmakers and health officials to recognize the well-established power of medical marijuana to treat chronic pain — and to acknowledge its emerging role in combatting the opioid abuse crisis.

Aurora Shooting Victims Ranged From Intern to Plant Manager

CHICAGO — The victims of a disgruntled employee who opened fire at a suburban Chicago industrial warehouse were co-workers ranging from an intern to the plant manager. A look at the victims:

TREVOR WEHNER

The 21-year-old Northern Illinois University student was on his first day as an intern in human resources at Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora and attended the fateful meeting where the gunman was fired and then started shooting.

Jay Wehner said his nephew grew up about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Aurora in Sheridan and was expected to graduate from Northern Illinois University in May with a degree in human resource management. He was on the dean’s list at NIU’s business college.

“He always, always was happy,” Jay Wehner said. “I have no bad words for him. He was a wonderful person. You can’t say anything but nice things about him.”

CLAYTON PARKS

The 32-year-old from Elgin, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Aurora, had just joined Henry Pratt in November 2018 as HR manager responsible for operations in Aurora, Illinois, Hammond, Indiana and Denver, the company said. He also was in the meeting where the gunman was being fired from his job.

Parks was married and had an infant son Axel, according to a Facebook post by his wife Abby.

“Every time I’ve closed my eyes over the last twelve hours, I’ve opened them hoping to wake from a terrible dream, but that’s not the case,” Abby posted. “I’m living my worst nightmare. My husband, my love, my best friend.”

Parks was a 2014 graduate of the Northern Illinois University College of Business.

VICENTE JUAREZ

Neighbors remembered Vicente Juarez as a hard-working grandfather and rock of his tight-knit family.

Juarez was shot outside the meeting where the gunman was being fired from his job. Juarez had been employed at Henry Pratt since 2006 and was a member of the shipping and warehouse team in Aurora. He had held several other jobs previously in the warehouse, the company said.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Juarez lived with his wife, adult daughter and four grandchildren in a subdivision in Oswego, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of Aurora

Relatives declined comment, saying they appreciate the support but are still dealing with the shock. Neighbor Julie Zigman called Juarez “the patriarch of the family” and said “everyone looked to him.”

Neighbor Joven Ang said anytime he was working outside Juarez asked him if he needed help. “That’s the kind of person he was,” Ang said.

JOSH PINKARD

A native of Alabama, Pinkard became plant manager at Henry Pratt in the spring of 2018. He was also in the meeting with the gunman.

The company said Pinkard, 37, joined the parent company 13 years ago at its Albertville, Alabama facility.

The father of three earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree from University of Arkansas, according to his LinkedIn account.

“He loved God, his family and Mississippi State sports,” a cousin wrote in a text to the Chicago Tribune that he said was written on behalf of Pinkard’s wife, Terra.

RUSS BEYER

The company said Beyer was an employee at Henry Pratt for more than 20 years during which time he held most of the different jobs in the plant. He was shot outside the meeting. Beyer had served as union chairman.

How the New York Amazon Deal Fell Apart

NEW YORK—In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange.

Even Governor Andrew Cuomo got in on the action: “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” he joked at the time.

Then Amazon made it official: It chose the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens to build a $2.5 billion campus that could house 25,000 workers, in addition to new offices planned for northern Virginia. Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Democrats who have been political adversaries for years, trumpeted the decision as a major coup after edging out more than 230 other proposals.

But what they didn’t expect was the protests, the hostile public hearings and the disparaging tweets that would come in the next three months, eventually leading to Amazon’s dramatic Valentine’s Day breakup with New York.

Immediately after Amazon’s Nov. 12 announcement, criticism started to pour in. The deal included $1.5 billion in special tax breaks and grants for the company, but a closer look at the total package revealed it to be worth at least $2.8 billion. Some of the same politicians who had signed a letter to woo Amazon were now balking at the tax incentives.

“Offering massive corporate welfare from scarce public resources to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world at a time of great need in our state is just wrong,” said New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris and New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, Democrats who represent the Long Island City area, in a joint statement.

The next day, CEO Jeff Bezos was on the cover of The New York Post in a cartoon-like illustration, hanging out of a helicopter, holding money bags in each hand, with cash billowing above the skyline. “QUEENS RANSOM,” the headline screamed. The New York Times editorial board, meanwhile, called the deal a “bad bargain” for the city: “We won’t know for 10 years whether the promised 25,000 jobs will materialize,” it said.

Anti-Amazon rallies were planned for the next week. Protesters stormed a New York Amazon bookstore on the day after Thanksgiving and then went to a rally on the steps of a courthouse near the site of the new headquarters in the pouring rain. Some held cardboard boxes with Amazon’s smile logo turned upside down.

They had a long list of grievances: the deal was done secretively; Amazon, one of the world’s most valuable companies, didn’t need nearly $3 billion in tax incentives; rising rents could push people out of the neighborhood; and the company was opposed to unionization.

The helipad kept coming up, too: Amazon, in its deal with the city, was promised it could build a spot to land a helicopter on or near the new offices.

At the first public hearing in December, which turned into a hostile, three-hour interrogation of two Amazon executives by city lawmakers, the helipad was mentioned more than a dozen times. The image of high-paid executives buzzing by a nearby low-income housing project became a symbol of corporate greed.

Queens residents soon found postcards from Amazon in their mailboxes, trumpeting the benefits of the project. Gianaris sent his own version, calling the company “Scamazon” and urging people to call Bezos and tell him to stay in Seattle.

At a second city council hearing in January, Amazon’s vice president for public policy, Brian Huseman, subtly suggested that perhaps the company’s decision to come to New York could be reversed.

“We want to invest in a community that wants us,” he said.

Then came a sign that Amazon’s opponents might actually succeed in derailing the deal: In early February, Gianaris was tapped for a seat on a little-known state panel that often has to approve state funding for big economic development projects. That meant if Amazon’s deal went before the board, Gianaris could kill it.

“I’m not looking to negotiate a better deal,” Gianaris said at the time. “I am against the deal that has been proposed.”

Cuomo had the power to block Gianaris’ appointment, but he didn’t indicate whether he would take that step.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s own doubts about the project started to show. On Feb. 8, The Washington Post reported that the company was having second thoughts about the Queens location.

On Wednesday, Cuomo brokered a meeting with four top Amazon executives and the leaders of three unions critical of the deal. The union leaders walked away with the impression that the parties had an agreed upon framework for further negotiations, said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union.

“We had a good conversation. We talked about next steps. We shook hands,” Appelbaum said.

An Amazon representative did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The final blow landed Thursday, when Amazon announced on a blog post that it was backing out, surprising the mayor, who had spoken to an Amazon executive Monday night and received “no indication” that the company would bail.

Amazon still expected the deal to be approved, according to a source familiar with Amazon’s thinking, but that the constant criticism from politicians didn’t make sense for the company to grow there.

“I was flabbergasted,” De Blasio said. “Why on earth after all of the effort we all put in would you simply walk away?”

___

Associated Press Writers Alexandra Olson and Karen Matthews in New York, and David Klepper in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

Catalan Crisis Shakes Spain’s Stability

BARCELONA, Spain—The secession crisis festering in Spain’s northeastern corner of Catalonia has spread to the political heart of the European Union nation.

Twice in less than a year, separatist lawmakers from Catalonia have played the role of king slayer, with their votes in the national Parliament in Madrid proving the decisive push to topple consecutive governments.

Catalan separatists momentarily aligned with their political nemeses this week by joining Spain’s right-wing parties to kill the Socialist government’s spending bill, after talks between the government and the separatists collapsed over the possibility of a referendum on secession.

The failure to pass a national spending bill led Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday to call an early election for April 28.

This latest blow to Spain’s political stability came eight months after the same separatist Catalan lawmakers backed the Socialists in a no-confidence vote to oust the then conservative government of the Popular Party.

“We made Pedro Sanchez prime minister as a result of the no-confidence vote for the exact same reasons that we have had to maintain our position (against) his budget bill,” said Eduard Pujol, a leading member in Catalonia’s regional legislature. “You cannot govern Spain without listening to Catalonia.”

Separatists forces showed their strength on Saturday when tens of thousands rallied in Barcelona to demand a non-guilty verdict for 12 of their leaders, who are on trial in Spain’s Supreme Court for their roles in a failed secession attempt in 2017. Barcelona’s police calculated that 200,000 people joined the march.

The front line of marchers held a long banner saying in Catalan “self-determination is not a crime.”

While they claim that Catalonia has a right to self-determination, Spain’s government says any vote on independence would require the national Parliament to amend the Constitution.

Polls point to a fragmented political spectrum that will leave a future Spanish government in need of cobbling together partners for a coalition government.

That means Catalonia’s separatists could still hold leverage, especially if Sanchez’s Socialists need their votes to stay in power.

“Spain will be ungovernable as long as it doesn’t confront the Catalan problem,” said Catalonia’s regional government spokeswoman, Elsa Artadi.

But forcing a new election is risky. Spain’s conservative and far-right parties — the Popular Party, the center-right Citizens party, and the far-right Vox party — will all focus their campaigns on taking a hard line against the separatists.

The anti-Catalonia formula worked for the right-wing parties in a regional election in December when they managed to end the Socialists’ 36 years in power in Spain’s south.

Currently a little less than 50 percent of the voters in Catalonia support parties whose goal is independence. But few doubt that a crackdown from Madrid would push more Catalans into the separatist camp.

The decision to withdraw their backing from Sanchez, however, was divisive within the separatist bloc. Joan Tarda, a national parliament member and moderate separatist, lamented that Sanchez had called an election instead of trying to maintain talks with the separatists.

“(Sanchez) has decided to take a gamble with a situation that can become even more difficult than it already is,” Tarda said. “If things go our way, what will the scenario be? We will be right back where we were last week with the need to negotiate.”

Students Plan Worldwide Strike to Demand Climate Action

The world may be edging toward “environmental breakdown”—but 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg sees signs for hope.

Pointing to global walkouts planned for March 15, Thunberg—whose “school strikes for climate” helped galvanized similar actions worldwide—said, “I think what we are seeing is the beginning of great changes and that is very hopeful.”

“I think enough people have realized just how absurd the situation is,” she told the Guardian. “We are in the middle of the biggest crisis in human history and basically nothing is being done to prevent it.”

In a sign of that realization, thousands of students from dozens of communities across the United Kingdom skipped class on Friday to join the ranks taking part in the weekly climate actions.

In fact, it’s “incredible” that the movement “has spread so far, so fast,” she told “Good Morning Britain.”

Now this is special. Not every #ClimateStrike action in Belgium happened in Brussels today. In the city of Lier, over 3000 school children formed a human chain.

Lots and lots of love for this Climate Generation.

Frieze L.A. Looks Good for Galleries, but Artists Give Mixed Reviews

As Frieze Los Angeles takes center stage at the Paramount Studios backlot this weekend, the arts community is of two minds about the arrival of one of the world’s most prestigious art fairs. “L.A. has great galleries, both established and young, and fantastic institutions. It has world-class art schools, [it’s] a place that artists choose to live and work. The only thing it doesn’t have is a major art fair, and we’re bringing it with Frieze,” Victoria Siddall, director of Frieze Fairs, told Truthdig.

But the recent past is littered with art fairs that launched in Southern California with great fanfare, only to sputter out. In the same location Frieze inhabits through Sunday, Paris Photo L.A. closed in 2016 after only three years. During the same period, FIAC (Foire International Art Contemporary) scrapped plans to launch an L.A.-based fair, pointing to a lack of interest and buyers. Indie fair Paramount Ranch also closed in 2016 after three years.

Hannah Greely’s “High and Dry” turns a familiar domestic display into art. (Jordan Riefe)

But Frieze L.A. might be charmed. During a biblical deluge Thursday morning, the show blithely carried on, with works going for substantial sums before the preview day was done. Hauser & Wirth sold Mike Kelley’s “Unisex Love Nest” installation for $1,800,000. Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Nets (B-A-Y)” fetched an asking price of $1.6 million. L.A. Louver sold three of five works by Gajin Fujita at $40,000, $45,000 and $250,000. And a 1967 work on paper by Alexander Calder went for $200,000.

“It’s about timing and about money,” said Kori Newkirk, whose “Signal,” a series of sculptures made from TV antennas occupies the New York street on the backlot, along with installations by such blue-chip names as Paul McCarthy, Barbara Kruger and Sarah Cain. “We’ve had so many flashes before. Maybe it will be a big flash at first, but then it becomes sustainable. Maybe this is the right time for this to happen, and maybe because the machine has gotten behind it in a way that something can happen. We’ll see.”

Some 70 exhibitors, including such big names as Gagosian, David Kordansky, David Zwirner, Blum & Poe and L.A. Louver Gallery, are presenting new and recent work by a who’s-who of living artists, including Doug Aitken, Fujita and Judy Chicago.

Sarah Cain’s colorful installation reimagines a living space. (Jordan Riefe)

Legendary L.A. artist Billy-Al Bengston, who is not participating in Frieze, is unfazed by past failures and future prospects for a major fair in L.A. “I don’t even know what the fuck it is. If it’s a fair, that’s for judging horses and things like that,” he quipped. “That’s for the Hollywood celebrities. It’s an industry; you have agents who sell you and so forth. It’s an advanced whorehouse. My stilted feeling is it’s only for the cognoscenti anyway, or the well-informed. If you start selling to everyone, you’re pleading for public. What you should be pleading for is a higher aesthetic ground.”

While the art world has traditionally looked to New York and Western Europe for influences and trends, the 2011 landmark show, “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1940-1980,” featured works by Bengston, Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha and other members of the “cool school” artists who got their start with the city’s famed Ferus Gallery in the 1950s. The show put the art world on notice, highlighting the city’s singular midcentury contributions.

At Jeffrey Deitch’s booth at Frieze Los Angeles, Judy Chicago will be showing early works, from a time when she struggled to be one of the boys at the Ferus Gallery until she decided to focus on what made her different from the others and became a leading figure in feminist art, establishing the nation’s first feminist arts program at California State University, Fresno, in the ’70s. Her most famous piece, an installation called “The Dinner Party,” is a part of Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection.

Paul McCarthy’s “Daddies Tomato Ketchup Inflatable” plays with scale. (Jordan Riefe)

In recent months she’s been having a moment, with a career retrospective at ICA Miami in December and a retrospective of early works at Jeffrey Deitch’s space in Hollywood set for the fall.

“I’m very opposed to the way the art market has taken over the art world,” Chicago said by phone from her home in Belen, N.M. “I had the privilege of making art for five decades without thinking about the market. But now that I’m old—and it’s not possible to be old and poor in America—I’m thinking about the market. John Baldessari said that artists going to art fairs is like watching your parents have sex. It’s not a good thing to do.”

While artists benefit from fairs like Frieze Los Angeles, gallerists are the true beneficiaries. Los Angeles County Museum of Art President Michael Govan thinks many of them have opened an L.A. branch not because buyers are there, but because artists are, and it behooves them to have a presence. Yet a fully developed art market, such as the nation’s largest, in New York City, has done little to stem an exodus of artists seeking reasonable rents and enough space to do their work. In recent years, that city has seen billionaires push millionaires from Manhattan to Brooklyn, while the millionaires pushed the artists to the West Coast. And now the same thing appears to be happening in L.A.

“I don’t know if an art fair will necessarily change that,” Newkirk muses. “That would be great. But the real estate thing, yes, I see it around my studio, which is downtown. I see it around my house, which is downtown. I see it around everywhere, and I worry for myself and everybody else.”

Lifelong L.A. artist Doug Aitken just unveiled “Don’t Forget to Breathe,” a storefront installation in a Hollywood strip mall, timed to coincide with new works he’s showing at 303 Gallery’s booth at the fair. He’s famous for a mixed-media practice that includes “Electric Earth,” a multiscreen experimental short film about the last man on earth, and “Mirage,” a mirrored house in Southern California’s high desert, copies of which he has placed in Detroit and more recently, in Staad, nestled in the Swiss Alps.

“In many ways, the idea of an art market—it’s almost tertiary to the art itself that’s being made, which is really what matters,” Aitken says. “If there’s a market or not, I think the artists are going to continue to push limits and provoke. In some ways the idea of the market is superficial to the art itself.”

While it’s true that no amount of money can snuff out the creative impulse, “they can snuff out my ability to have a sustainable practice, because I can’t afford to work and live here,” Newkirk says, adding that he is considering leaving the area. “Las Vegas, Long Beach, anywhere. I have my next-to-be-gentrified neighborhood picked out. So, if there’s any speculators out there who want to support me in that. …”

The mobile phone is part of the art in Gajin Fujita’s “Phony Disillusion,” on display at Frieze Los Angeles. (Jordan Riefe)

Raised on L.A.’s East Side, Fujita spent his formative years tagging walls with such crews as KGB (Kidz Gone Bad) and KIIS (Kill to Succeed), but has since distinguished himself with large-scale works combining Japanese motifs with L.A. street style. He’s been around long enough to recall what the downtown Arts District used to look like, before real estate prices started to rise.

“When I was going there in the ’80s, it was nothing. It was piece of shit—Al’s Bar across the street and the American Hotel was fucking run down as hell,” Fujita recalled. “I rented a studio with my friend there in ’93, right above Al’s Bar, but it was dingy and grimy. But now—I was there recently. There’s restaurants and bars, and fucking Hauser & Wirth moved in there. Jeez, wow!”

Fujita is represented by gallerist Peter Goulds’ L.A. Louver in Venice, Calif., which also reps David Hockney. Goulds established the gallery in the 1970s. An eyewitness to market convolutions over nearly 50 years, he remains unfazed by hopes and expectations surrounding Frieze Los Angeles.

“These fairs are cyclical. There’s too many today, so they’ll inevitably fail, and will continue,” he observes. “The oldest art fair is barely in existence—that’s the Cologne Art Fair. No one even talks about it. Chicago was the most important fair in the ’80s, no one talks about it. Basel was moribund in the ’80s, now it’s the big deal. Well, it won’t always be.”

Judge: Mississippi Suit to Cover All Who Lost Voting Rights

JACKSON, Miss.—A federal judge says a handful of former Mississippi convicts who are suing to have their voting rights restored can represent everyone who falls into that category.

The ruling this week by U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan certifying the lawsuit as a class action raises the stakes considerably. A victory by the plaintiffs could restore voting rights to tens of thousands of Mississippians, not just the handful who sued.

Jordan ruled that the plaintiffs had met the legal tests for a class action, despite arguments by lawyers for the state that a class-action was unnecessary. Jordan said he might decide later whether the class should only include people who have completed all the terms of their sentence, including payment of fines and restitution, or whether to set different limits.

There’s still a long way to go in the case. Both sides have asked Jordan to rule without a trial, but the judge could choose to hear witnesses.

The Mississippi Constitution strips the ballot from people convicted of 10 felonies, including murder, forgery and bigamy. The attorney general later expanded that list to 22, adding crimes that include timber larceny and carjacking. The plaintiffs argue disenfranchisement violates the U.S. Constitution because it was adopted with the discriminatory intent of keeping African Americans from voting.

Between 1994 and 2017, about 47,000 people in Mississippi were convicted of disenfranchising crimes, Jonathan K. Youngwood, a New York-based attorney in the lawsuit, has said. About 60 percent of them, or nearly 30,000, have completed their sentences but have not regained their voting rights. Some are still serving time.

African-Americans make up about 38 percent of Mississippi’s population and 36.5 percent of the state’s registered voters. Youngwood said 59 percent to 60 percent of people convicted of disenfranchising crimes in the state are black.

Some states automatically restore voting rights once someone gets out of prison, while others automatically restore rights once someone completes parole or probation. But Mississippi requires people to go through the arduous process of getting individual bills passed just for them with two-thirds approval by the Legislature, or getting a pardon from the governor. A 2016 Sentencing Project study found that 335 people achieved one those between 2000 in 2015.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, in his final year in office, hasn’t granted any pardons and has let suffrage restoration bills become law without his signature. Last year, he let four become law without signing them and vetoed a fifth. In a brief veto message April 13, he said restoring the ballot depends on the support of law enforcement “and the person’s ability to show responsibility and honesty after conviction.”

The issue of restoring rights has been gaining traction in historically restrictive states. Florida voters in November overwhelmingly adopted a constitutional amendment that will automatically allow most felons who complete their sentences, about 1.4 million people, to register as voters. This week in Mississippi, the House passed House Bill 637 , which will set up a study committee to examine the issue. If the Senate agrees and Bryant signs it, the committee would issue a report by year’s end.

Vatican Defrocks Former U.S. Cardinal Over Sex Abuse

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis has defrocked former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing confession and of sexual crimes against minors and adults, the Holy See said Saturday.

McCarrick, 88, is the highest-ranking Catholic churchman to be laicized, as the process is called. It means he can no longer celebrate Mass or other sacraments, wear clerical vestments or be addressed by any religious title. He is the first churchman who reached the rank of cardinal to be defrocked in the church’s sex abuse scandals.

The punishment for the once-powerful prelate, who had served as the archbishop of Washington, spent years in New Jersey dioceses and had been an influential fundraiser for the church, was announced five days before Francis leads an extraordinary gathering of bishops from around the world to help the church grapple with the crisis of sex abuse by clergy and the systematic cover-ups by church hierarchy. The decades-long scandals have shaken the faith of many Catholics and threaten Francis’ papacy.

The scandal swirling around McCarrick was particularly damning to the church’s reputation because it apparently was an open secret in some church circles that he slept with adult seminarians. Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.

The Vatican’s press office said the Holy See’s doctrinal watchdog office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, found McCarrick on Jan. 11 guilty of “solicitation in the sacrament of confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” The commandment forbids adultery.

The officials “imposed on him the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.” It considered his appeal on Wednesday and upheld its ruling, telling McCarrick Friday of that decision, the Vatican said.

McCarrick, when he was ordained a priest in his native New York City in 1958, took a vow of celibacy in accordance with church rules on priests.

The pope “has recognized the definitive nature of this decision made in accordance with (church) law, rendering it as ‘res iudicata,’” the Vatican said, using the Latin phrase for admitting no further recourse.

One victim, James Grein, the son of a family friend of McCarrick’s, had testified to church officials that, among other abuses, McCarrick had repeatedly groped him during confession. He said the abuse, which went on for decades, began when he was 11.

“Today I am happy that the pope believed me,” Grein said in a statement issued through his lawyer.

Grein also expressed hope that McCarrick “will no longer be able to use the power of Jesus’ church to manipulate families and sexually abuse children.”

Adding that it’s “time for us to cleanse the church,” Grein said pressure needs to be put on state attorney generals and senators to change the statute of limitations for abuse cases.

“Hundreds of priests, bishops and cardinals are hiding behind man-made law,” he said.

McCarrick’s civil lawyer, Barry Coburn, told The Associated Press that for the time being his client had no comment on the defrocking. Coburn also declined to say if McCarrick was still residing at the Kansas friary where he had moved to when Francis ordered him to live in penance and prayer while the investigation continued.

The archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where McCarrick was posted at the pinnacle of his clerical career, from 2001-2006, said in a statement it hoped that the Vatican decision “serves to help the healing process for survivors of abuse, as well as those who have experienced disappointment or disillusionment because of what former Archbishop McCarrick has done.”

Complaints were also made about McCarrick’s conduct in the New Jersey dioceses of Newark and Metuchen, where he previously served.

Francis’ move marks a remarkable downfall for the globe-trotting powerbroker and influential church fundraiser who mingled with presidents and popes but preferred to be called “Uncle Ted” by the young men he courted.

The Vatican summit, which starts Thursday and runs through Feb. 24, will draw church leaders from around the world to talk about preventing sex abuse. It was called in part to respond to the McCarrick scandal as well as to the explosion of the abuse crisis in Chile and its escalation in the United States last year.

Despite the apparent common knowledge in church circles of his sexual behavior, McCarrick rose to the heights of church power. He even acted as the spokesman for U.S. bishops when they enacted a “zero tolerance” policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

That apparent hypocrisy, coupled with allegations in the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses, outraged many among the rank-and-file faithful who had trusted church leaders to reform how they handled sex abuse after 2002.

The allegation regarding the altar boy was the first known against McCarrick to involve a minor — a far more serious offense than sleeping with adult seminarians.

Francis himself became implicated in the decade-long McCarrick cover-up after a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. accused the pope of rehabilitating the cardinal from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI despite being told of his penchant for young men.

Francis hasn’t responded to those claims. But he has ordered a limited Vatican investigation. The Vatican has acknowledged the outcome may produce evidence that mistakes were made, but said Francis would “follow the path of truth, wherever it may lead.”

An advocate for church accountability in the sex abuse crisis demanded Saturday that Francis “tell the truth about what he knew and when he knew it” about McCarrick. Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org says also demanded that the pope use immediately laicize other abusive bishops.

In a statement, she said of the 101 accused bishops her group has tracked, McCarrick is only the seventh to be laicized. She said the other 94 either still hold the title of bishop or did so until they died.

Vatican watchers have compared the McCarrick cover-up scandal to that of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, perhaps the 20th-century Catholic Church’s most notorious pedophile. Maciel’s sex crimes against children were ignored for decades by a Vatican bureaucracy impressed by his ability to bring in donations and vocations. Among Maciel’s staunchest admirers was Pope John Paul II, who later became a saint.

Like Maciel, McCarrick was a powerful, popular prelate who funneled millions in donations to the Vatican. He apparently got a calculated pass for what many in the church hierarchy would have either discounted as ideological-fueled rumor or brushed off as a mere “moral lapse” in sleeping with adult men.