Chris Hedges's Blog, page 466

Hurricane Florence Blows Open Harsh Realities of American Inequality

Wendy Newton and Nicolette Green didn’t have to die. Chained in the back of a sheriff’s van in rural South Carolina, the two mental health patients in their mid-40s were being transported from one facility to another when their van was flooded following Hurricane Florence. The deputies transporting the women managed to escape, but the two helpless patients, their fates sealed by their shackles, died an unnecessary, agonizing death by drowning.

“We have two hurricanes,” the Rev. William Barber explained on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “The hurricane of poverty and lack of health care and lack of living wages that existed prior to the storm, and then we have the storm, and now everything that was already tough for people has been exacerbated.” Barber is the North Carolina-based pastor who co-founded the renewed Poor People’s Campaign, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 movement of the same name.

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The storm, while downgraded from a Category 4 hurricane to a tropical depression, crept along at just a few miles an hour, drenching the Carolinas in what has been called a “thousand-year storm.” Despite mandatory evacuation orders, many were trapped, too poor to escape. Prisoners remained in their cells, stranded by state and local authorities who refused to relocate them. The destructive deluge was further compounded when coal ash ponds and fetid hog manure lagoons were overwhelmed, sending their toxic contents running with the floodwaters into nearby communities of mostly poor people of color. President Donald Trump made a carefully stage-managed visit to the region on Wednesday, stopping by command centers and aid stations staffed mostly by white people. Predictably, he gave himself and the federal emergency response great grades.

“Trump is coming to visit today, but the negative impact of his policies were visited on the poor and low-wealth long before he came,” the Rev. Barber said. “There are over 4.7 million residents in North Carolina that are poor. There were over a million people in North Carolina, before the storm, that did not have health care. The counties that are being hit the hardest are Tier I and Tier II. Tier I is the most distressed county in terms of housing, health care and poverty, and Tier II is the next level,” he added.

Barber pointed out that “people are looking at what happened on the coast. We actually dodged a bullet on the coast. But if you come inland now, where mostly the poor live, along these rivers, in these rural communities, they are being devastated.” Children aren’t going to school, so they aren’t receiving the daily food they get there. People with hourly wage jobs, living paycheck to paycheck, are not working, so they are not getting paid. “When the governor and others said evacuate, they couldn’t evacuate, because they don’t have the money, they don’t have the cars, they did not have the ability,” Barber stressed. “The president will say he’s going to give federal money. But this state has refused federal money that would have helped the poor prior to the storm, so that they would have buffers against the storm.”

The floodwaters not only drown, but poison and pollute. A complex, toxic brew is unleashed when floods reach and overtop open-air holding ponds that contain either coal ash from coal-fired power plants or manure lagoons at industrial hog farms. Additional toxicity can potentially flow from Superfund sites that dot the Carolinas, and innumerable chemical facilities. Will Hendrick of the Waterkeeper Alliance said, as of late Wednesday, that coal ash breaches had been documented at two of Duke Energy’s North Carolina coal-fired power plants, the Sutton plant near Wilmington and the H.F. Lee plant near Goldsboro, just over 6 miles from the Rev. Barber’s Greenleaf Christian Church. Coal ash contains a slew of heavy metals, which, if consumed, can cause an array of serious health problems, including cancer and birth defects.

Hendrick also reported that at least two hog manure lagoons had been breached, unleashing torrents of pig feces, urine, blood and body parts into the floodwaters and potentially infecting people downstream.

Like President Trump, the Republican majority in the North Carolina Legislature denies climate change, passing a law six years ago prohibiting state and local agencies from making decisions based on the latest climate science about sea level rise. If their deliberations were based on facts and guided by climate justice concerns for the most vulnerable, it’s likely that Wendy Newton, Nicolette Green and a number of other victims of Hurricane Florence would be alive today.

56 Protesters Opposing Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Arrested in D.C.

WASHINGTON — The Latest on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a woman who accuses him of sexually assaulting her decades ago (all times local):

4:45 p.m.

More than 50 protesters opposing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court have been arrested on Capitol Hill.

The protesters on Thursday swarmed a range of Senate offices, including those of Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, a key Republican swing vote.

Kavanaugh is accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford decades ago when the two were in high school. Kavanaugh denies the allegation.

The protesters chanted, in part: “We believe Christine Ford!”

Twenty-three people were arrested Thursday morning for unlawful demonstrations. They were charged with violating the Washington, D.C., law that makes it illegal to obstruct the entrances and passageways of public buildings.

U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki says an additional 33 people were arrested Thursday afternoon on the same charge.

___

3:20 p.m.

A lawyer for a woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sex assault decades ago says she’d be willing to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week if they can agree to terms “that are fair and which ensure her safety.”

The email from an attorney for Christine Blasey Ford to committee aides also says that holding the session on Monday isn’t possible. Panel chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have said Monday would be her chance to testify.

Ford’s lawyers have said she’s received death threats.

Ford has said she wants the FBI to investigate her claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s. He denies it.

Lawyer Debra Katz writes that Ford’s “strong preference” remains a full investigation before she testifies.

___

2:45 p.m.

Groups fighting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court say a Judiciary Committee lawyer’s tweet shows Republicans are biased against Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault.

Mike Davis, the chief counsel for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, tweeted late Wednesday that he had personally interviewed Kavanaugh as part of the committee’s review but was “still waiting” for Ford’s lawyers to get back to him.

He wrote: “Unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh.” The tweets have since been deleted.

The tone was a more forceful admission of the GOP’s push to confirm Kavanaugh with or without Ford’s testimony. Ford has been invited to testify Monday, but it’s uncertain if she’ll appear.

Davis says he deleted the tweets “to avoid any further misinterpretation by left wing media.”

Kavanaugh has denied Ford’s allegation.

___

2:20 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York says Republicans are “bullying” a woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Gillibrand and Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii held a news conference Thursday with alumnae from the Holton-Arms School. That’s the Maryland all-girls school that Christine Blasey Ford attended in the early 1980s, when she says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh. He denies the allegation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a Monday hearing with Ford and Kavanaugh. Ford wants an FBI investigation done before testifying, but President Donald Trump and Republicans have rebuffed her.

Gillibrand says it’s “bullying” for Republicans to say Ford must show up Monday or not at all. She says they want a “he said, she said” scenario because men are usually believed.

___

10:10 a.m.

Demonstrators have congregated in a Senate office building to protest Republicans’ handling of the sexual-assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

A group of roughly 100 people marched to the office of Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday for a sit-in, some with fists raised.

The Iowa Republican senator plans a hearing on Monday for testimony from Kavanaugh and accuser Christine Blasey Ford, if she appears. Ford and Democrats want the FBI to investigate her allegations Kavanaugh assaulted her three decades ago, but Republicans are refusing.

The demonstrators chanted, “We believe Anita Hill! We believe Christine Ford!” Some told Grassley aides they themselves have been victims of harassment.

Hill is the law professor who during the Senate’s 1991 consideration of Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination accused him of sexual harassment.

Thomas and Kavanaugh have denied the accusations against them.

___

12:15 a.m.

Republicans are warning that time is running out for Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser to tell Congress about her claim that he sexually assaulted her when both were teenagers.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley says his panel still plans a Monday morning hearing that Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are invited to attend.

Grassley has told Ford’s attorneys that the panel is giving the California psychology professor until 10 a.m. Friday to submit a biography and prepared statement “if she intends to testify” Monday.

It remains unclear whether Ford will attend or if the hearing will occur without her.

A statement by a Ford attorney, Lisa Banks, says Grassley’s plan to call just two witnesses, Kavanaugh and Ford, “is not a fair or good faith investigation.”

Four Dead, Including Suspect, After Maryland Warehouse Shooting

ABDERDEEN, Md. — An employee at a Rite Aid warehouse opened fire at work Thursday, killing three people before taking her own life, authorities said. Several other people were wounded.

The suspect was a 26-year-old temporary employee at the Rite Aid distribution center in northeastern Maryland, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said at a news conference. The sheriff’s office said in a tweet a short time later that she had been identified as Snochia Moseley of Baltimore County.

It appears only one weapon was used — a 9 mm Glock handgun that was registered in Moseley’s name — and no shots were fired by responding law enforcement officers, Gahler said. He said authorities don’t know her motive. She died at a hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said.

Krystal Watson, 33, said her husband, Eric, works at the facility and told her told her that the suspect had been arguing with somebody else near a time clock after a “Town Hall meeting.”

“And she went off,” she said.

“She didn’t have a particular target. She was just shooting,” Watson said as she drove away from a fire station where relatives tried to reunite with loved ones.

“She didn’t aim. She just shot,” Watson said.

Area hospitals reported receiving five patients from the incident.

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore said it was treating four patients with gunshot wounds. Two were in stable condition and two who were seriously injured.

A spokesman for a health system that includes Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, said one patient was being treated there. Christiana Care Health System spokesman Hiran Ratnayake said the person was in serious condition.

Gahler said the call about shots fired came in at about 9:06 a.m. and deputies and other officers were on the scene in just over five minutes.

He said the suspect had reported for the work day as usual, and around 9 a.m. the shooting began outside the business and continued inside.

The shooter had two or maybe three magazines for the gun. He did not know how many shots were fired.

Mike Carre, an employee of a furniture logistics operation next to the distribution center, said he helped tend to a wounded man.

Carre locked the doors of his workplace after the injured man came hobbling in, bleeding from his leg. He called 911 from a bathroom before helping colleagues wrap the man’s blood-soaked jeans above his injury to cut off blood flow.

Carre said the man told him the shooter “just came in in a bad mood this morning. He said she’s usually nice. But today, I guess it wasn’t her day. She just came in to pick a fight with someone.”

“She pulled out a gun and she just started shooting at her co-workers.”

At a nearby fire station, family members waited for hours to be reunited with loved ones. Police blocked off the road outside but waved in cars driven by people who said they were there to meet up with people who were at the distribution center.

Reggie Rodgriguez’s mother works at the distribution center. His wife had tried calling her numerous times but got no answer.

“I was calling her all morning. It went to voicemail because they keep their phones in lockers,” said Kelly Rodriguez, 40.

When they finally reached his mother Thursday afternoon, Reggie Rodriguez said, “That’s all I wanted to do: Hear her voice.” His mother was uninjured. He said she sounded relieved the crisis was over.

A law enforcement official said authorities worked their way through the distribution center to clear the facility.

The attack came nearly three months after a man armed with a shotgun attacked a newspaper office in Annapolis, Maryland, killing five staff members. Authorities accused Jarrod W. Ramos of attacking The Capital Gazette because of a longstanding grudge against the paper.

Susan Henderson, spokesman for the drugstore chain Rite Aid, described the warehouse as a support facility adjacent to a larger building.

Harford County Executive Barry Glassman said that unfortunately, incidents like this are “becoming a too-often occurrence not only in Harford County but in the country.”

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Michael Kunzelman in Havre de Grace, Maryland, contributed to this report.

Buoyant Stocks Lift U.S. Household Wealth, Mainly for the Affluent

WASHINGTON—A rising stock market lifted U.S. household wealth to a record $106.9 trillion in the April-June quarter, the culmination of a decade of economic recovery but a gain that is concentrated largely among the most affluent.

The value of Americans’ stock and mutual fund portfolios rose $800 billion, while home values increased $600 billion, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. Total household wealth is now 2.1 percent higher than in the first quarter, when it was $104.7 trillion.

Household net worth reflects the value of assets like homes, bank accounts and stocks minus debts like mortgages and credit cards. The data aren’t adjusted for inflation or population growth.

They also don’t reflect the experiences of most U.S. households. Stock market wealth has been flowing disproportionately — and increasingly — to the most affluent households. The richest one-tenth of Americans own about 84 percent of the value of stocks.

In theory, greater household wealth can speed the economy by making consumers feel richer and more likely to spend. But most consumers are spending less of their wealth than they did before the Great Recession began in late 2007, economists have found.

Americans are saving nearly 7 percent of their incomes, according to Commerce Department figures. That figure has remained fairly steady for five years even as the stock market has set new highs and average home prices have increased faster than most people’s wages. That trend suggests that many people remain cautious about cashing in their wealth, economists say, perhaps because they regard it as less stable than in the past.

The rising concentration of wealth among affluent and educated Americans is another factor why the nation’s increased net worth isn’t accelerating the pace of consumer spending. Richer households are less likely to spend their wealth gains than middle- or lower-income households are.

America’s richest 10 percent of households were nearly 120 times wealthier than the lower middle class in 2016, the most recent year for which figures are provided in a separate Fed report. That is up from 112 times in 2013. (The lower middle class was defined as those whose wealth placed them between the 25th and 50th percentiles of net worth.)

The top 10 percent had an average net worth of $5.34 million; for the lower middle class, the figure was $44,700.

Sharp disparities in wealth also cut across racial lines. The median white household has a net worth of $171,000, according to Fed data. That’s about 10 times the typical net worth for a black household of $17,200. For Latinos, it was $20,700. (The median is the point at which half the population has more and half has less.)

The Fed revised its previous quarterly data to show that household wealth was higher earlier this year than previously reported. Household wealth in the first quarter is now about $4 billion higher than was originally reported, mostly because of higher pension reserves than previously estimated.

HHS Diverts Cancer and Education Funding to Pay for Migrant Shelters for Children

Last week, The New York Times reported that 12,800 migrant children were being held in immigration shelters. It is a record number, with record costs. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., notes “it costs about $750 per child per day, or three times the amount of a typical shelter.”

So how is the Department of Health and Human Services paying for it? According to a new report from Yahoo News, it is taking money away from other critical programs, including cancer and AIDS research, as well as the Head Start preschool program for low-income children.

Yahoo News reported Thursday that the “Department of Health and Human Services is diverting millions of dollars in funding from a number of programs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, to pay for housing for the growing population of detained immigrant children.”

The information was revealed in a letter from HHS Secretary Alex Azar to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and obtained by Yahoo. Azar plans to reallocate $266 million from the current fiscal year to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which also is housed within HHS. About $80 million of that money will be taken from other ORR programs, which, as Yahoo points out, have already seen their funds cut. Otherwise, Yahoo notes:

The rest is being taken from other programs, including $16.7 million from Head Start, $5.7 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. Money is also being diverted from programs dedicated to mental and maternal health, women’s shelters and substance abuse.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was not convinced by the HHS letter and told Yahoo the requests for reallocations left too many questions unanswered. Van Hollen said he was questioning “the reasons for the need for additional money and how much of it is because you have more UACs coming across the border and how much is due to the Trump administration’s family separation policy?”

Van Hollen wants multiple agencies, including HHS, to participate in a hearing on the effects of the reallocations on the programs being cut. He added, “The American public is entitled to facts behind the policies here.”

Azar defended his choices in the letter to Murray, saying his agency needs “an increased length of time needed to safely release unaccompanied alien children to sponsors.” He did not appear to offer justification for specifically cutting the disease research and other programs.

Read the entire article here.

Federal Agency Says It Lost Track of 1,488 Migrant Children

Twice in less than a year, the federal government has lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children after placing them in the homes of sponsors across the country, federal officials have acknowledged.

The Health and Human Services Department recently told Senate staffers that case managers could not find 1,488 children after they made follow-up calls to check on their safety from April through June. That number represents about 13 percent of all unaccompanied children the administration moved out of shelters and foster homes during that time.

The agency first disclosed that it had lost track of 1,475 children late last year, as it came under fire at a Senate hearing in April. Lawmakers had asked HHS officials how they had strengthened child protection policies since it came to light that the agency previously had rolled back safeguards meant to keep Central American children from ending up in the hands of human traffickers.

“The fact that HHS, which placed these unaccompanied minors with sponsors, doesn’t know the whereabouts of nearly 1,500 of them is very troubling,” Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the panel’s chair, said Wednesday. “Many of these kids are vulnerable to trafficking and abuse, and to not take responsibility for their safety is unacceptable.”

HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley disputed the notion that the children were “lost.”

“Their sponsors, who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them, simply did not respond or could not be reached when this voluntary call was made,” she said in a statement.

Since October 2014, the federal government has placed more than 150,000 unaccompanied minors with parents or other adult sponsors who are expected to care for the children and help them attend school while they seek legal status in immigration court.

On Tuesday, members of a Senate subcommittee introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at requiring the agency to take responsibility for the care of migrant children, even when they are no longer in its custody.

An Associated Press investigation found in 2016 that more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. At the time, many adult sponsors didn’t undergo thorough background checks, government officials rarely visited homes and in some cases had no idea that sponsors had taken in several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking.

Since then, HHS has boosted outreach to at-risk children deemed to need extra protection, and last year offered post-placement services to about one-third of unaccompanied minors, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

But advocates say it is hard to know how many minors may be in dangerous conditions, in part because some disappear before social workers can follow up with them and never show up in court.

From April to June, HHS called 11,254 children the agency had placed with sponsors, and found 25 of the children had run away, and 1,488 could not be located, according to the data provided to the subcommittee.

Portman began investigating after a case in his home state of Ohio in which eight Guatemalan teens were placed with human traffickers and forced to work on egg farms under threats of death. Six people have been convicted and sentenced to federal prison for their participation in the trafficking scheme that began in 2013.

The legislation comes as the Trump administration faces litigation over its family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexican border, which while it was in effect sent hundreds more children into the HHS system of shelters and foster care. Some of those children since have been reunited with their families, while others have been placed with sponsors.

Oakley did not respond to questions regarding whether any of the children who the agency lost track of had been separated from their families before they were sent to live with sponsors.

The legislation is aimed at ensuring HHS does more to prevent abuse, runs background checks before placing children with sponsors, and notifies state governments before sending children to those states, the bill’s sponsors said.

“The already challenging reality migrant children face is being made even more difficult and, too often, more dangerous,” said the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. “This simply doesn’t have to be the case and, as this legislation demonstrates, the solutions don’t have to be partisan.”

Michael Moore Attempts Another Election Intervention With ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’

Named editor in chief of Mother Jones in 1986, Michael Moore was fired after only four months on the job. The cause, reportedly, was that he had refused to run an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Nicaraguan Sandinista human rights record. But Moore maintains that his termination was for putting a photo of laid-off General Motors worker and Mother Jones employee Ben Hamper on the cover. Moore sued and won a $58,000 settlement that kick-started his career as a filmmaker with his 1989 award-winning documentary, “Roger & Me,” a scathing indictment of GM’s then-CEO, Roger Smith, following massive layoffs at the automaker’s plant.

Moore may have been fired for the reasons he gives, but killing Berman’s article seems the more likely justification. It fits a pattern evident in most of his movies, from “Roger & Me” to his 2004 Palme D’Or-winning “Fahrenheit 9/11.” While he assiduously builds arguments in his films, presenting them with humor and panache, he routinely neglects to address the opposition’s viewpoint, no matter how flimsy it may be. It’s an unfortunate omission that lends credibility to his political adversaries, even when they’re blatantly wrong.

A half-hour into his latest film, “Fahrenheit 11/9,” Donald Trump and Moore sit down with Roseanne Barr over a lunch in the late 1990s for her short-lived talk show, “The Roseanne Show.” Trump tells Moore he admires “Roger & Me” before turning to Barr and adding, “I hope he never does one on me.”

It might sound ironic, but Moore’s new movie isn’t so much about our sitting president as the title would suggest. (The figures 11/9 refer to the date when Trump presidential election victory was announced, Nov. 9, 2016.) Instead, it’s about a number of items that Moore finds vexing—Second Amendment rights, teacher strikes, the failing Democratic Party, young social progressives—as well as Trump. And the most potent sections in “Fahrenheit 11/9” address the water crisis in Flint, Mich.

The new movie opens with a portrait of Trump as the media-made president, with such liberals as CNN CEO Jeff Zucker responding, “Uh-uh …” when asked in 2016 whether the network’s coverage of the Trump campaign is newsworthy or a ratings grab. Moore moves from Zucker to now-disgraced CBS CEO Les Moonves, who is famously quoted during the election as saying, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun. … I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Trump rightly appears in a montage of famous sexual predators such as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer, but Moore unfairly speculates about whether an incestuous relationship exists between Trump and his daughter Ivanka, basing the examination on tone-deaf comments by the president. Yes, in and out of context, the comments are lecherous, and Trump has certainly earned the public’s opprobrium. But the allegations make him look like a victim and make the filmmaker look petty.

In a typically Moore-ish touch, we see Hitler giving a speech in grainy black-and-white footage, with Trump’s voice dubbed over. It’s a puerile ruse, but good for a laugh as Moore proceeds to liken the rise of Hitler to the coming of Trump, a comparison that has become cliché. Trump and Hitler are not the same, though Trump’s admiration for political strongmen is evident in footage of his recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, when the U.S. head of state shamed himself and his country with his deferential treatment of the Russian president.

The narrative then jumps abruptly to what appears to be a separate movie about the water crisis in Moore’s hometown of Flint. Here’s where the new “Fahrenheit” showcases some of Moore’s best work, dispensing with antics and laying out in stark terms how in 2013 Republican Gov. Rick Snyder announced a financial emergency in Detroit and tapped crony Kevyn Orr to be emergency manager. As a result of other appointments that followed, most of the state’s African-American population now lives under selected, rather than elected, government officials.

Privatizing treated water from Lake Huron, Snyder then piped water from the polluted Flint River to Flint’s citizens. High lead levels made the water unpotable, but the governor refused to address the issue, fudging water test results instead. “He’s a murderer,” Moore claims in the movie, making the potent point that “[n]o terrorist has ever figured out how to poison an entire city. It took the Republican Party and Rick Snyder.”

Adding insult to injury, Barack Obama visited Flint in 2016 and blamed the water crisis not on Snyder but on a “culture of neglect,” before declaring filtered Flint water safe enough to drink and pretending to sip from a glass in front a dumbstruck crowd at a high school gymnasium.

The Flint crisis emphasizes one of Moore’s larger points: the erosion of democracy in America, with one subject speaking of American democracy as an aspiration. While Democrats won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, and the majority of voters support background checks for gun buyers and are pro-choice and for affordable health care, none of these positions are under consideration by an increasingly recalcitrant Republican-held government.

Moore lays the blame at the feet of the Democratic Party for pursuing compromise positions rather than fighting to win. Moore’s proverbial crosshairs land on President Bill Clinton, highlighting his 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which included Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a plan that essentially stripped aid from the neediest. The Prison Reform Act of 1994 is blamed by many for exacerbating the incarceration rate, particularly for people of color, and Clinton’s deregulation of Wall Street in 1999 repealed the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, allowing investment banks, insurers and retail banks to merge in a way many believe resulted in the financial crisis of 2008.

While Moore finds the Clintons reprehensible, he is most aggrieved by the party’s support of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 contest against Bernie Sanders, evidenced by moves such as handing states like West Virginia to Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, despite the fact that Sanders had beaten her soundly in that state’s primary.

But help is on the way, as “Fahrenheit 11/9” would have it, in the form of such fresh new candidates as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, social progressives who are part of a rising generation that prefers socialism to capitalism. Meanwhile, 52 percent of Republicans think postponing the 2020 presidential election is a good idea.

Informative and engrossing for the most part, “Fahrenheit 11/9” seems to be composed of various documentaries stitched together to form a single work. Moore makes his points in entertaining and digestible sequences, but the scope of his movie is too broad, hopscotching from Flint to West Virginia to Washington to Nazi Germany and back again.

Moore would no doubt argue these are all segments of a greater whole, but he asks the audience to follow along based mostly on faith and not evidence. When casting a woman like Ocasio-Cortez in angelic hues, he might enhance his credibility by identifying accepted criticism against her and discrediting it. As it is, “Fahrenheit 11/9” fits into his body of work by preaching to the choir. Finding a few people who agree with him doesn’t effectively bolster Moore’s case, even if he ends up on the right side of history.

Alexander Hamilton Worried About a Presidency Like Trump’s

Presidential economic adviser Larry Kudlow suggested to the Economic Club of New York that, after the elections, Republicans will target “spending” on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with “reforms” (cuts) to help pay for the massive deficits created by Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires.

Conservatives have controlled our government for three definable periods in recent history—the Gilded Age of the last three decades of the 1800s (progressives followed from 1901 to 1920), the Roaring 20s (progressives followed from 1933 to 1980), and the Reagan Era that started in 1981 and continues to this day.

Each conservative era has led to terrible suffering among working people, each ended in a wipeout financial disaster, and this one will probably be no different. Republicans have already radically cut long-term unemployment insurance, killed “welfare as we know it” (with the help of Bill Clinton), and cut the budgets of Social Security and Medicare to the point where it’s hard to get anybody on the phone. They’ve deregulated much of the fossil fuel industry, sold off public lands to mining and drilling interests, and slashed away at the EPA.

But this time, there’s a larger concern than the survival of the economy, the environment, and the middle class. This time, democracy itself may well be at stake.

The 2016 takeover of our government by Trump and his billionaire oligarch cronies could be the nightmare that Alexander Hamilton identified, warned us about, and then refused to believe could ever come to pass.

A little history is in order.

In the largest sense, today’s right-wing insanity started with the corporate and wealthy “conservative” backlash to the progressive and trust-busting policies of Teddy Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Woodrow Wilson from 1901 to 1920.

In the spring of 1920, a presidential election year, Republican Warren G. Harding, famously corrupt and horny (he had an out-of-wedlock child the year before the election, and the rumor persists to this day that his wife poisoned the 57-year-old president four years later for refusing to stop his affairs), had secured his party’s nomination for president.

He ran on a platform that sounded populist, although his major goal was to return the oligarchs who financed him to power after they’d taken a hit from three previous progressive administrations. Harding’s main slogan was that era’s more modest version of make America great again: “A Return to Normalcy.”

The other slogan of his campaign, and, indeed, of his presidency, was privatization and deregulation: “More business in government, less government in business” was his personal favorite slogan, used also on the campaign trail.

Harding’s goal was to deregulate business, while outsourcing government functions whenever possible. And he did it, particularly the deregulation part, including “freeing” the bankers and stockbrokers.

Well-informed Americans of the time saw Harding’s policies as a recipe for disaster; we’d been through all this with the takeover of American government in the last 30 years of the 1800s, referred to by then as the Gilded Age, which ended with the “Great Panic” of 1893-1897. The robber barons of that era treated everybody except the morbidly rich as serfs, right down to fomenting murder and police violence to disrupt workers agitating for unions, better pay or decent working hours.

Thus, during the 1920 Harding campaign came H.L. Mencken’s famous quote about the willingness of the American electorate to follow hustlers, con men, and downright demagogues like Harding. On July 26, 1920, Mencken published an essay in the Baltimore Evening Sun that included:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Of President Harding’s rhetoric, as if foreshadowing Trump, Mencken wrote in 1921:

“It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”

And were Harding’s followers similarly like Trump’s, and were his speeches like Trump’s rallies? Mencken wrote:

“When Dr. Harding prepares a speech he does not think of it in terms of an educated reader locked up in jail, but in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand. That is to say, the thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech. More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.

“Such imbeciles do not want ideas—that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention. What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures. … The roll of incomprehensible polysyllables enchants them.”

Mencken and the educated of his day saw great danger in Harding’s simplistic sales pitch that if we only let the very, very wealthy have free reign, they’d make everything right in America.

And Mencken was right. Harding’s election ushered in 12 moronic years of Republican rule, and along with it came massive deficit spending, widespread corruption and cronyism, a declining standard of living for working people, and a stock market fueled by deregulated speculation that was so on fire the era was called “the Roaring 20s.” And then, of course, came the inevitable crash that always follows “conservative” overreach on behalf of the rich.

But as corrupt as Harding was, both personally and politically, he wouldn’t have been bad enough to frighten the people who founded our republic. That distinction has to go to Donald Trump alone.

Alexander Hamilton—himself an advocate for a soft oligarchy in America, and one of the founders who helped write the Constitution—had a nightmare about a group of hyper-wealthy people launching a multigenerational assault on the Enlightenment ideals of America, leading to the election of a wealthy con man as president. And it sure looks like his nightmare is all about Trump and his Fox News followers.

On August 18, 1792, when Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury for George Washington, he wrote a rebuttal to those who were skeptical that an American democratic republic could survive over time, when buffeted by the winds and forces of accumulated wealth and the love of some people for aristocracy.

Titled, “Objections and Answers respecting the Administration of the Government,” Hamilton started out by suggesting that as long as we continued to have regular elections, the oligarchs wouldn’t be able to gain a toehold in government:

“The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this Country, by employing the influence and force of a Government continually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate and that no wise men will believe.

“If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible, it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life of any individual to effect it.”

He then pointed out that in 1792 we had a broad, diverse, and local press all across the nation and the highest literacy rate in the developed world; such well-informed people wouldn’t be vulnerable to despotism, unless there was some sort of serious chaos—what he called “convulsions and disorders” that would be caused or exploited by “popular demagogues.”

“To hope that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical,” Hamilton wrote. “A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country can surely never be brought to it, but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues.”

But if a group could take over the government and turn it against itself, deprive it of its protective function for the people and instead leave citizens to their own devices, Hamilton was somewhat concerned that a despot could take advantage of the ensuing chaos:

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.”

So, Hamilton reasoned, it wasn’t the politicians who may step into the fray with an oligarchic message who were the “true artificers of monarchy”—it was the uber-rich who promoted the destruction of a state devoted to the “general welfare” of “We, the People”:

“Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy…”

These usurpers of the democratic order in America, then, would prepare the way for a true despot to rise to power, even in America. Hamilton may have had some concerns about men from his generation attempting such a thing; his next sentence was, “Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected.”

But it was unlikely anybody in 1789 had that kind of wealth or power; John Hancock, the wealthiest of the founders, had a net worth of only about $700,000 in today’s dollars. The first millionaire in America—in today’s dollars—was a shipping magnate who hit that level in the 1790s.

If such a thing were to actually happen, Hamilton wrote, it would be through somebody like the uber-wealthy, ultra-conservative Cato, who was a “harsh ruler” of his wife and slaves, and deplored the liberal Greek literature and sexuality that was all the rage.

“It has aptly been observed that Cato was the Tory-Cæsar, the whig of his day,” Hamilton wrote.

So, if a Cato-like man or group of people with massive riches were to succeed in taking over most of the levers of power in American government, Hamilton believed, our nation then would, actually, be vulnerable to a despot rising to the presidency.

Because that office of president includes “Commander in Chief,” the man would have to heavily flog his support for the military while, in secret, scoffing at the very idea of the liberty that would otherwise be insured by a truly democratic government.

This wealthy hustler’s main method to seize power would be to bring the government of the United States “under suspicion” while building a base of the “zealots of the day.”

“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate [hugely wealthy] in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Hamilton knew that the uber-wealthy Roman senator Catiline tried twice to overthrow the Roman republic by a broad conspiracy of the rich combined with populist rhetoric, and the wealthiest men of Roman society put together his second conspiracy. Similarly, the later Caesars held power through similar means, splitting the populace against itself in a way that eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Thus, Hamilton’s next paragraph was a simple and stunning warning to those who were entrusted with the “popular Government” of the United States:

“No popular Government was ever without its Catilines & its Cæsars. These are its true enemies.”

The Catilines and Caesars of our era are the morbidly rich billionaires who have set out to seize control of every aspect of the political life of America, just as they tried so disastrously in 1920.

While we’ve always had wealthy people influencing politics to their own benefit, what’s happening today is something altogether new, as documented by Jane Mayer in Dark Money and Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains.

It mostly started back in 1971, when Lewis Powell wrote a call to arms to his friend and neighbor, Eugene Sydnor Jr., who was at the time a director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The “Powell memo” called for wealthy industrialists and companies themselves to fund a giant machine that could capture the U.S. government and turn it away from the protections for citizens and the environment that were being championed by Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader (named in the document) and toward a system that was, essentially, an oligarchy.

A small but incredibly wealthy number of what we’d today call billionaires or oligarchs were energized by Powell’s call to arms; they quickly stepped up and funded an entire right-wing infrastructure to bring this about.

Some started think tanks to influence public discussion and reframe issues of power and wealth along oligarchic Libertarian lines. Others funded a society for lawyers that could be a feeder system for getting reliably oligarch-friendly judges into state and federal courts. Another started a network of billionaires to pool their money to flip elections. And one even kicked off a 24/7 right-wing “news” channel to influence American public opinion in a way that would show up at the ballot box.

Richard Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court in 1972, and Powell then championed the “right” of oligarchs to own politicians in the 1976 Buckley v Valeo Supreme Court decision, blowing up campaign finance limits by ruling that when billionaires want to spend their own money to elect or destroy politicians, that spending of money was protected under the First Amendment as “free speech.” (Citizens United vastly expanded this power in 2010.)

It was a long slog for the oligarchy. In 1980, when billionaire David Koch ran for vice president of the United States on the Libertarian ticket, most Americans looked at his platform and laughed. It said, in part:

“We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.

“We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.

“We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.

“We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.

“We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.

“We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.

“We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.

“We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.

“As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.

“We support repeal of all laws which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.

“We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.

“We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.

“We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We support abolition of the Department of Energy.

“We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.

“We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.

“We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called ‘self-protection’ equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.

“We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.

“We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.

“We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.

“We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.

“We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

“We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”*

David Koch’s Libertarian vision was definitely not how most Americans thought our government should look.

Just a quarter-century earlier, President Dwight Eisenhower had weighed in on these Libertarians and John Birchers (Fred Koch, David’s father, as a big fan of the John Birch Society) and the Koch brothers’ spiritual forbearers, the oil-rich Texan Hunt brothers, in a letter to his ultra-conservative brother, Edgar. He wrote:

“[I]t is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything—even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon ‘moderation’ in government.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

“There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

But this wasn’t an effort of a single generation, as Eisenhower had imagined and as Hamilton figured would always be the case. And it wasn’t modestly financed by a few insider bankers and industrialists like Harding’s campaign. It was, rather, a multigenerational program, funded over the decades with billions of dollars, and with a national presence so large that the Kochs’ vast network now is better funded, is better staffed, and has more offices than either the Republican or Democratic parties.

Most of the original funders of Powell’s plan to turn America into an oligarchy are dead, but their multigenerational plan continues to roll along. And now many of the goals that Powell and the 1980 Libertarians first articulated—and Hamilton had nightmares about—are near completion.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a series of 5-4 decisions, has handed the power to alter elections to a few hundred billionaires and well-funded organizations (including foreign governments), and billionaire oligarch Trump has taken the White House with the help of billionaire oligarch Murdoch, Hamilton’s nightmare is nearly realized.

The question now is whether enough Americans have awakened to this reality to show up in November to defy the wealthy purveyors of fear and discontent who want complete and final control over our nation.

Tag, you’re it.

 

* Notice what’s lacking from Koch’s list: abortion, prayer in schools, the Ten Commandments, Israel, or bans on gay marriage. All of these issues were added, in part at the suggestion of multimillionaire Jerry Falwell and billionaire Pat Robertson, to bring the rubes from the White Evangelical movement into the fold. Adding in guns brought in big money from the NRA. Combining these two factions with the Koch’s billionaire buddies produced the modern Republican coalition.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute .

Can Nike, Too, Sacrifice Something?

Nike’s latest “Just Do It” ad campaign includes a number of A-list athletes: LeBron James, Serena Williams, Odell Beckham Jr. — and most controversially, Colin Kaepernick.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Kaepernick — who played quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers — famously knelt during the national anthem before NFL games to protest police brutality toward African Americans. The blowback from his protest led to him being blackballed from the NFL.

Kaepernick’s activism was audaciously displayed on a larger platform in Nike’s multi-national ad campaign, featuring a video and image of Kaepernick with the tagline: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

Nike’s bold move led to more uproar from Kaepernick’s critics. Some white customers even ceremoniously burned their Nike apparel and called for a boycott of the company. But for Nike’s core customers — millennials and young urban men — this ad sent a strong message of solidarity.

Consumers and celebrities alike are now supporting Nike for giving Kaepernick that platform. In less than 24 hours after announcing Kaepernick as the face of their new marketing campaign, the sportswear company received more than $43 million worth of mostly positive media exposure, one report estimates.

Since then, that total has only grown.

“What can I do that’s meaningful?” asked Blackish star Jenifer Lewis as she donned a Nike sweater on the Emmys red carpet. “I’ll wear Nike. I’ll wear Nike to say thank you. Thank you for leading the resistance! We need more corporate America to stand up also.”

According to Forbes, the company saw a 31 percent increase in sales just a few days after the ad became public. And while Nike’s stock initially dipped following the promotion release, it not only recovered but surpassed all stock records for 2018, trading at an all-time high of $83.90 a share.

This has caused a number of people, including myself, to question Nike’s motives. Guardian writer Arwa Mahdawi accused Nike of the latest capitalistic trend, “woke-washing” — that is, using “progressive values as a marketing ploy, appropriating social activism as a form of advertising.”

This wouldn’t be the first offense by a major corporation.

Not long ago Pepsi pulled a controversial ad they said was meant to “project a global message of unity, peace, and understanding” after it borrowed imagery from Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson. (But unlike Nike, this ad received strong backlash from police brutality protesters who accused the ad of being tone deaf.)

Is it possible for a company to support racial justice without exploiting it for profit? Yes.

Actually, there’s an easy way for Nike to prove that their latest ad isn’t just a form of woke washing: It can give the revenue from their “Kaepernick bump” right back to the cause they’re supposedly taking a stand for. The company can start by matching Colin Kaepernick’s own pledge to donate $1 million to organizations working in oppressed communities.

Let’s applaud Nike for taking this very important stand. But we also need to challenge corporations who use progressive messages in their advertising to put their money where their mouth is.

‘Reversing Roe’ Offers an Intense Look at How Abortion Became Politicized

“We want to end abortion, and we’re going to do it through continuous legislation. We’re going to go back again and again until we win,” Operation Rescue President Troy Newman says at the beginning of the intense, heartbreaking and utterly necessary new documentary, “Reversing Roe.” He stares directly at the camera, his eyes gleaming as he talks of the prospects of restricting women’s rights.

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s “Reversing Roe” is not a history of abortion itself, or a meditation on the morality of the procedure or the people who fight for and against it. Instead, it reveals, through interviews with doctors, lawyers, lawmakers and activists, the story of how a medical procedure became politicized.

That story is not as linear or neat as those of us born after Roe v. Wade might like to believe, and the documentary’s first surprise is how religious figures and Republicans were once in favor of abortion, particularly before it was legal. They included the Rev. Tom Davis, a former college chaplain at Skidmore College (then a women’s college), who unexpectedly found himself counseling countless women through pregnancies they wanted to end but couldn’t tell their parents about. “I learned I wasn’t just a chaplain,” he says, “I learned I was an abortion counselor,” part of a network called the Clergy Consultation Service on Problem Pregnancy. The first legal abortion clinic in America was opened by Protestant clergy in New York City (the Catholic Church was vehemently opposed).

Venerated Republican figures also were once in favor. In 1968, Ronald Reagan, no champion of women’s rights himself, signed a bill allowing abortions under certain circumstances when he was governor of California. Republicans thought outlawing abortion was a form of the government interfering with individual liberty.

Stern and Sundberg smartly allow players on both sides of the abortion debate to simply speak for themselves.

The approach shows viewers how the Republican Party was taken over by evangelicals opposed to abortion and how anti-abortion activists have changed their tactics over time, from protesting (and occasionally bombing) individual clinics, to the less messy but more insidious work of chipping away at abortion rights state by state through legislation to set the course for a national ban.

We hear from Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an OB-GYN based in St. Louis who travels to perform abortions in four states, including the clinic in Kansas where Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in 2009, and Dr. Curtis Boyd, who after decades of performing abortions has now dedicated his life to teaching other doctors how to perform the procedure.

On the other side are pro-life advocates like Newman and John Seago of Texas Right to Life, who explains with all the confidence of a straight-A student why “sonogram technology is one of the best friends of the pro-life movement” and how his organization developed bills requiring that abortion clinics show a sonogram to each woman in an attempt to change their minds.

Stern and Sundberg may themselves have a pro-choice bent, but they give equal time and attention to pro-life activists, who are remarkably candid in explaining their strategies and tactics. On the day of the film’s release, I spoke to the filmmakers about why they made their film, how they chose their subjects and what they hope audiences learn. (This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Ilana Novick: Why did you want to make this film now?

Ricki Stern: We’re interested in looking at how abortion has become such a political wedge issue and so partisan that we had elected a president who very openly said that he would elect pro-life justices, and that they’d be faced with Roe v. Wade and they would overturn it.

We really wanted to ask the question, how have we gotten here? And we wanted to understand those who are passionate on both sides: Those who have strong convictions and have a strategy, in the sense of the pro-life community, strategy to overturn something that they feel passionately about, and, in the pro-choice community, trying to preserve what has been a legal right that has been chipped away at and eroded over many, many years. In the end, I don’t know that it was equal time [that] was as much the driving force, as it was just to say, “We want to understand and be open and we’d love to hear from both sides of this very divisive issue.”

IN: Was there a catalyzing event in the news that inspired you?

Annie Sundberg: When we first started the film, there was a big story that came out in April of 2017 in The New York Times that only seven states in the U.S. had an abortion provider, seven. Kentucky was really on fire because the governor had basically declared war on the last clinic standing, and everybody was wondering, it’s blatantly unconstitutional, because you were completely reducing access within the state and there would be immediate challenges. But, it was a pretty gutsy move to have a governor who was willing to go there and shut down that clinic. It would all of a sudden be the only state in the nation with no abortion clinic.

IN: How did you find your subjects?

RS: We cast this broad net, and we went to the March For Life, we met Jeanne Mancini, we met many people who organized that event, people who were there, we knew that the National Right to Life Committee in D.C. was an important place to stop at and talk to and get their perspective, because they’re in every state. Within the states, we really wanted to understand some of the pro-life perspectives.

We spend time with John Seago, who runs Texas Right to Life. We were really interested in the political strategy of the right-to-life movement. He was very open and honest in talking about the power they wield within Texas, and the relationship with politicians and certain things that the politicians … they have to claim to be pro-life, even if you’re going to be a chief financial officer in the state of Texas.

Troy Newman and Operation Rescue were very open to allowing us to come in and understand their history and their strategy of really closing clinics. They went after a very hands-on, boots-on-ground, closing down clinics [approach]. It’s shifted a little bit now, they’re working with policy and [politicians].

IN: The film’s participants were remarkably candid about both their views on Roe v. Wade and the strategies they use to defend or defeat it. How did you get your subjects to open up to you?

RS: We really try to be open and to allow characters’ voices to come through, to let people tell their stories, to really try to understand what drives people, what motivates people. And as much as possible, and hopefully we’ve succeeded, not editorializing.

Then, [it was] having conversations on the phone before we went in to these cameras, gaining trust within the community. … I think the pro-choice community definitely is [more] cautious, and individuals are cautious, certain clinics are cautious. They feel, as you saw with Planned Parenthood, that they have been exposed, and anything can be used, that it seems, I shouldn’t say anything, but if they’re not careful, things can be used and misrepresented.

IN: Did anything happen either as part of the filming or in the news along the way that surprised you or that made you have to rethink how you were going to make or structure the film?

AS: You could barely keep up with what happens with abortion regulations in these states. It’s almost like, depending on the legislative cycle, bills are getting passed, sometimes bills are buried, abortion bills are buried in other tax bills. It’s not always clear as things are happening. So again, it was really important for us to just land in a few states, Kentucky, Missouri and Texas, and say, “OK, each of these states represents something different that is happening for abortion providers and pro-life activists on the ground. So, we will use these as almost symbols of a broader picture.”

Then of course, when we were finishing the film and we were locked and we were basically about to hand it in, [U.S. Supreme Court] Justice [Anthony] Kennedy retired, and that required us to open up the film again and at least try to make it as contemporary and up to date as possible.

IN: Do you see your film as a form of political intervention?

AS: I don’t know that I would use the term political intervention. I do think that we very much wanted to have a film that felt that it could be both timely and timeless. I think that when we started this film, it was interesting at the top of 2017, when we were at the Women’s March and the March For Life, there were many, many, many young women who were fired up on both sides of the issue. Not a single one of them had ever lived in a world without access to full care and access to legal abortion. It just feels that the political nature of the Supreme Court, and the potential for a fifth vote that could really make things much more restricted for women, it was really the right time.

“Reversing Roe” is now out on Netflix, and in limited theatrical release. Watch the trailer below.