Lily Salter's Blog, page 1018
August 15, 2015
The military governs your diet: From pizza to burritos to new plastic pouches, the Pentagon wields shocking power in grocery aisle
59,422 breakfast sausage patties 98,220 eggs 21,082 packages sliced American cheese 2,451 containers frozen apple juice 13,500 packages julienned French fries 24,159 corn dogs 8,682 frozen burritos To say the U.S. military buys in bulk is an understatement—the above shopping list is from a single prime vendor contract for facilities near Seattle, Washington, and Hermiston, Oregon, in 2002. The weekly grocery needs of the entire armed forces could pick clean whole regions of their number one agricultural products, leave bare-shelved commissaries across the country, and tie up battalions of baked‐goods manufacturers for months. It’s essentially one giant mouth munching the American landscape, and, despite commanding deep discounts on its purchases, with $3.8 billion in annual spending in 2011 alone, it is far and away the nation’s leading institutional grocery buyer. (In the private sector, the annual expenditures of behemoth food distributor Sysco and monster restaurateur McDonald’s exceed those of the Department of Defense.) These dollars, managed by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the military’s purchasing agency, affect the American food industry as might those of any big spender: red carpets and gold‐plated customer care, which means conversations between the agency and industry that probably go something like this: “Hello, Commander, any new contracts on the horizon? The crust was a little pale on the breakfast pastry? We’ll be right on that, sir. You’d like to add some functional ingredients to the processed cheese spread; what would that entail? You were approached by a tofu factory in Oregon about making a soy ginger noodle entrée? Very exciting, but wouldn’t it be easier for you if we just added a soy entrée to our regular line?” These accommodations may orient commercial production to mess halls and combat rations, but it’s not the military’s prodigious purchasing power that’s turned the food industry into G.I. Joe’s brainchild. No, that happens at the Natick Center, which, in pursuing its mission to “actively leverage leading edge technologies to ensure the warfighter is provided the decisive edge in all aspects of combat feeding,” has infiltrated practically every packaged food in the land. Of course, many, if not most, of the lab’s daily tasks are humdrum—approving new items for the Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) ration, arranging for a small run of prototype plastic pouches with tear notches, and evaluating stainless steel serving pans for the navy are all par for the course. But there’s a whole other category of activity—identifying basic and applied science needs, finding and working with partners for these projects, and disseminating the interim and final results—that exerts a disproportionately large influence on the U.S. food system. This exaggerated power comes not from the size of Natick’s research budget, which is relatively small, but from the simple fact of having an overarching goal, a long-term plan and relentless focus—which, come to think of it, may be the three traits in life most important to making things happen. The first step is a whole lot of listening. During the year, the Combat Feeding Program talks with “warfighters,” the official armed forces term for soldiers, about their wants and needs—more sandwiches, pizza, bagels, and wraps; fewer traditional meat and potatoes-type meals. It gets requests from the various services and agencies. For example, the army might complain: Our guys are sweating off fifteen pounds or getting heatstroke in the field kitchens. How about lowering the temps to below inferno level? The navy might implore: Can’t you find a way for us to get equipment onto a submarine other than sawing it up deckside? And it gets general direction from the secretary of defense—decrease the soldier’s physical and cognitive burden, reduce the logistics environmental footprint, enhance operational efficiency—who, in turn, gets his or her marching orders from the Defense Science Board, the military’s quadrennial plans, and presidential science and technology policies. “The Army solicits the entire community in terms of what needs improvement in combat feeding,” explains Gerard “Gerry” Darsch, who was director of the DOD Combat Feeding Directorate from 1994 to 2013. “It could be something very simple. It could be something very complex. And it could be something that requires a lot of high-risk, high-pay-off investment. And not only do we solicit those joint statement of need proposals from each service, Natick’s team also generates potential joint statements of need in terms of where we think an investment in science and technology can bring new capability to the battlefield. You really have to have a vision in terms of looking over that fifth ridge, if you will, in terms of a potential solution that would impact the shelf life, the quality, minimize logistics, make it more lightweight, cost-effective, and also include the nutrition warfighters need—even the food-service equipment because that’s a major part of the program as well.” All of this information is presented twice a year for approval to the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Research and Engineering Board (DOD CFREB), an internal group composed of brass from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and DLA, and chaired by an official from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. At each of these meetings, small adjustments are made. “In some cases, we recommend that programs be terminated; in others, that things be accelerated; and in still others, that dollars be shifted,” says Darsch. “What we do better than anybody else is we develop a ten-year program that specifically maps out the amount of time, what the end state of each research category needs to be, and a specific transition from basic research into technology demonstration and then through what we refer to as the ‘valley of death’— moving to commercialization.” At the end of the process, the Combat Feeding Program spits out a detailed set of research and development plans, complete with objectives, tasks, and timetables, for the year. These projects generally fall into three categories, each of which corresponds to a number in that most shock‐and‐awe‐inspiring of documents, the Defense Budget Justification, the annual tome put together by the armed forces to persuade Congress to continue to fork out its more than half-trillion-dollar allowance. There is 6.1, basic scientific research, which is largely undertaken at universities and in DOD laboratories, of which there are eighty across the country. There is 6.2, applied research, or getting that science to actually do something useful; this happens at universities, DOD labs, nonprofits, and industry partners. And then there is 6.3, figuring out how that something useful can be manufactured; this part of the technology transition process is almost always parceled off to industry. (The Defense Department actually has four more categories, 6.4–6.7, which correspond to manufacturing the item and getting it into the field; these are the favored feeding ground of mammoth military contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.) To carry out all these different kinds of research projects, the army has at its disposal an alphabet soup of joint ventures, some of which receive government funding, and therefore must abide by reporting requirements, and many of which do not—although they receive a host of other supports—and therefore occupy a vast, mysterious landscape about which little is known. These collaborative undertakings are one of the most important mechanisms through which the Natick Center influences the food industry. In fiscal year (FY) 2007, the earliest year for which I was allowed information, there were 275 such partnerships. There are the Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs), in which institutions and firms compete for basic research and development projects closely defined by the Combat Feeding Program; their benefit to the contractor is primarily financial. There are Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards, which fund businesses with fewer than five hundred employees to seek the answer to technological problems in the hope that this will spur the development of new products. In FY 2007, the Combat Feeding Program had eleven SBIR awards. Many of these were for the development of competing versions of solar-powered refrigerated containers, waste-to-energy converters, and individual beverage chillers; although spending on them was low, these projects may very well impact the consumer market of the future. Such straight-up contracts are cursed, however, by the need to comply with government purchasing rules, the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs), which require reports on everything from annual revenues and taxes to executive compensation, all laid out in a breezy 1,887‐page document. So there are looser arrangements: Dual Use Science & Technology (DUST) partnerships in which both parties contribute funds and share the right to use the end product. For example, as Charles Patrick “Pat” Dunne, a retired Natick senior scientist, explains, “Microwave sterilization was really spearheaded by Natick through a dual use science and technology program we initiated with industry and academia. . . . Down the road we’re going to produce that in the military, and it’s going to become big in the commercial sector, too.” And the crown jewels of the Defense Department research program, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and Other Transactions (OTs). All those complaints businesses have about working with the government—burdensome and intrusive administrative regulations, book‐length proposals, demanding socioeconomic requirements, and heavy-handed managerial oversight? Gone. And the rewards? Staff time, services, laboratory facilities, equipment, and materials are theirs for the taking. Still, that doesn’t explain why major food conglomerates such as Campbell Soup Company, ConAgra, Dr Pepper, Snapple Group, Frito‐Lay/PepsiCo, General Mills, Graphic Packaging, Hormel Foods, Kraft Foods Group, Mars Inc., Michael Foods, Procter & Gamble, Rexam PLC, SoPakCo, and Unilever are lining up to enter into cooperative agreements with the Combat Feeding Program. In FY 2007, Natick’s food division was involved in eighteen separate CRADAs, amounting to a finger in every promising new technology from mini vacuum cleaners for pathogens and membrane-based juice concentrators to high‐pressure processing for produce and nutrient‐fortified candy and bakery items; they even had an agreement—resulting in a lawsuit—to commercialize the army’s HooAH! energy bar. Big corporations get involved in CRADAs because they expect something in return: a piece of the vision Natick has for the future of food. As Kathy-Lynn Evangelos, second in charge at the Combat Feeding Directorate, points out, industry research tends to be at science’s margins and focused on consumer appeal rather than at the forefront of innovation. When companies work with the army’s subsistence department, whether they receive an exclusive patent or a head start on a breakthrough processing or packaging technology, they get the chance to dominate the market when new products based on it come shooting out of the pipeline. * According to lawmakers, making sure government‐funded research and development gets used in new commercial products is exactly what federal agencies should be doing. It’s called technology transfer and when it happens, it’s like a Disney movie for grown-ups: businesses pop up like flowers, employees break into song at their desks, bankers drape rainbows across the sky, and tax collectors tap-dance down the street. The policy dates back to just after World War II, when the head of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), Vannevar Bush, persuaded the government to invest in public science, primarily through universities, to maintain U.S. technological superiority for military readiness and as a deterrent to enemy hostilities. These activities were managed by civilian‐controlled laboratories working in close cooperation with the armed forces, and later other branches of the government. The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center is one of these laboratories. (There are about seven hundred more, some big, some small, and each with a different focus.) The federal government finances about one-third of all science and
technology research and development in the United States, which in FY 2007 was about $370 billion (an investment two to three times that of our closest competitor, China). Of that, although expenditures are broken down about evenly among the three categories—basic, applied, and development—it is by far the most important sponsor of basic research at 59 percent, and relatively less important for development at 18 percent. In our sample year, defense spending on research and development was $82 billion, 60 percent of the federal total. The truth is that within the rarified sphere of science and technology, the U.S. economy has a lot more in common with the socialism of the People’s Republic of China than it does with free-market economics. The fact that the government (and, within it, the Defense Department) is pretty much the only game in town—especially when it comes to basic science—means that research projects are put together with it in mind. You can study anything you want, but if you want to make a living at it—and most academics do—then it needs to be something that attracts funding. And that often means working on one of the many areas deemed essential to the armed forces. Then there’s the overwhelming strength of DOD’s own planning apparatus. The yearly priorities set by trade and professional associations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the National Environmental Health Association have about as much teeth as that annual rite of self-flagellation, the New Year’s resolution, when compared with the regular bottom‐up and top‐down information gathering, concerted analysis, extremely long time frames (five, ten, twenty-five years), global perspective, and deep pockets (so forgiving when you make a mistake) of the strategy and goal setting of the U.S. military. From this come the precepts that are used to define a welter of specific science and technology projects, which are dispersed each year into the eagerly waving hands of academia, industry, nonprofits, and other government entities like strings of beads at a Mardi Gras parade. The net effect of all this is that the Defense Department has a disproportionate influence on the direction of many industries, even if basic and applied science is only about a quarter of its research budget. As noted in a 2012 report by the House Committee on Armed Services, “Basic research is especially important in this process of innovation, as it often leads to new areas of knowledge, such as new materials, sensors, nanotechnology, and data extraction, etc., that in turn lead to new areas for development and commercial opportunity. . . . The predominance of basic research for DOD is carried out by the universities.” DOD’s grip on the business sector is just as tight. “Sustaining Critical Sectors of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base,” a 2011 think tank report, poses the question, “Does the DIB [defense industrial base] function like a normal free market in which the forces of supply and demand dictate efficiency, innovation, and pricing?” and answers with a resounding no. The Defense Department sees absolutely nothing wrong with this. Close ties and careful guidance are needed to ensure that it has contractors in the areas it needs, when it needs them. In fact, the goal for the twenty‐first century is to strengthen its puppet master role. According to the House Committee on Armed Services, “[One of the] challenges to ensuring that the industrial base is positioned to support the needs of the nation in the 21st century . . . [is] the lack of a comprehensive DOD strategy for managing and maintaining an industrial base.” So what? you might ask. Who cares as long as the end result is a wellspring of nifty gadgets and cool new products for us consumers? There’s the rub. A now‐venerable 1986 UN report observes: “The development of military technologies has an effect on the direction of technological change that goes beyond the simple diversion of resources from civilian innovation. A set of factors—basic principles, technological preferences, performance requirements, nature of the demand—have a strong effect on the kind of technologies developed by the military, in ways that have reduced efficiency, slowed down civilian applications and distorted the overall direction of technical change.” We do have a national industrial policy, one that has run roughshod over the free market of ideas, force‐feeding federal—largely DOD—research goals into the hungry craws of craven scientists. This model does not let the best science and technology appear and grow organically in response to a multitude of societal factors—in the case of food, the concerns of farmers, consumers, public health officials, and even the food industry itself—but rather they are chosen and directed along a preordained agenda set to achieve military dominance on the world stage. Adapted from "Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shaped the Way You Eat" by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, in agreement with Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, 2015. All rights reserved.
This is how your kid learns: The amazing new neuroscience of “brain plasticity” — and how to make your child smarter
What happens to our child’s brain when we parent? The discovery of the nature and extent of brain plasticity has led to a tremendous advance in our understanding of what happens to the brain during the learning process—and to an explosion of products claiming to trigger and enhance brain plasticity in developing children. Many products tout harnessing brain plasticity as a key benefit, and the notion that parents can build a designer brain smarter than anyone else’s by using these products is certainly appealing. But what is “plasticity” and what should parents actually do to harness this aspect of brain development in their children? Plasticity is the brain’s lifelong capacity to form new synapses, connections between nerve cells, and even new neural pathways, making and strengthening connections so that learning accelerates and the ability to access and apply what has been learned becomes more and more efficient. Developmental studies of plasticity trace the modification of brain architecture and brain wiring when it is exposed to novel situations. In this case, brain “wiring” means axon connections among brain regions and the activities those brain regions carry out. Rather like an architect drawing a wiring diagram for your home, indicating where the wires will go for the stove, refrigerator, air-conditioning, and so on, researchers have been drawing a wiring diagram for the brain. In the process they have established that the brain cortex is not a fixed entity but is being continuously modified by learning. It turns out that the “wires” in the cortex are constantly reconnecting and will continue to do so based on input from the outside world. Let’s take a look at what happens with brain plasticity when a child first learns to read. Initially, no part of the brain is wired specifically for reading. As the child learns to read, more and more brain cells and nerve circuits are recruited to the task as the child becomes a more proficient reader. The brain uses plasticity when a child begins to recognize words and comprehend what he is reading. The spoken word “ball,” which the child already comprehends, now becomes associated with the letters B‑A‑L‑L. In this way, learning to read is a form of neural plasticity. The discovery that a developing brain can be wired to recognize letters and other amazing discoveries about neural plasticity are often translated into commercial products touting enhanced “brain fitness” as a benefit. But just because a scientific experiment shows that a particular activity triggers brain plasticity doesn’t mean that this particular activity—such as seeing letters on a computer screen—is required to achieve the effect, nor does it mean that the activity is the only means of generating plasticity. Computer-based letter recognition drills do indeed activate and train symbol recognition centers in the visual cortex using brain plasticity. But so does sitting down and reading a book with your child. This parent-child interactive approach is called “dialogic reading.” But computer screens and apps only train the brain to recognize the letters (not to understand the meaning of words the letters represent). In contrast, dialogic reading—intuitive and interactive—naturally harnesses neural plasticity to make axon connections between the letter recognition centers to the language and thinking centers in the brain. Professor Paul Yoder at Vanderbilt University and I described how children learn to understand spoken language in a paper published in the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. We showed that typically developing children learn to discriminate speech sounds quite efficiently with or without the benefit of exposure to special speech discrimination exercises or computer games. These speech discrimination games are marketed as specially engaging neural plasticity and were developed by leading neuroscientists. In fact, children whose brains were never exposed to speech discrimination drills or computer games end up with a perfectly organized—and facile—auditory cortex arising from natural speech input from their parents and others. And these children learn to talk, to read, and to think very well indeed. We also argued that unnatural auditory input—in this case, isolated auditory signals—would not result in the proper wiring or integration of that input with other brain regions, such as the language centers, that are necessary to distinguish—and use—speech in the real world.
Never forget that the brain will learn what it is taught
. Brain science over the past decade has yielded a profound insight into neural plasticity: A developing brain will learn what it is taught. If computer software trains the brain to discriminate between little bits of sound, exactly that skill—recognizing bits of sound—is what the brain will learn and become wired to do. But this training will not generalize to the brain’s ability to understand what someone else is saying—or to learn to read, because discriminating sounds is only a small fragment of what the brain has to do to comprehend spoken language—and to read. If you want the brain to become wired for spoken language and for reading, then the input has to be real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading. Breaking the speech signal into its component parts and teaching these via computer simply will not do the trick. And if you want the spoken language to serve as a tool for social communication with other human beings, the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction, which involves even more areas of the brain than the area dedicated to speech discrimination. When a child reaches for a hat lying on the floor, and her dad says “hat,” this parent-child interaction triggers neural plasticity in the baby’s brain. The child’s brain is not only processing the phonic components of the word “hat,” (h-a-t) it is processing the visual image of the hat, the social context (playing with her dad), and the actual meaning of the word—a real hat. When dad intuitively puts the hat first on his head and then on her head, the speech sounds in the word “hat” are then associated (“paired”) with the perceptual properties of the hat as well as its function (covering the head). Later on, the child and her dad may read a book together and see a photograph of a bat (in this case, the flying mammal). Now the child hears her dad say “bat,” which of course is phonetically different than “hat.” But she is perceiving not only a difference in the speech sounds “h” and “b” but also the perceptual features of a bat and a hat, the social context in which the objects are encountered, and the functions of the objects. It is not surprising that simply teaching discrimination between “h” and “b” using flashcards or a computer program cannot possibly convey the information the child will need to comprehend the difference between “hat” and “bat” in the real world. Intuitive parenting automatically teaches all these elements simultaneously; it is automatically a multisensory approach. Touching, seeing, speaking, and listening are all providing context—in a safe, nurturing environment—and multiple brain areas are activated and integrated via neural plasticity. Adapted from "The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child Is You" by Stephen Camarata, PhD with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Stephen Camarata, 2015. What happens to our child’s brain when we parent? The discovery of the nature and extent of brain plasticity has led to a tremendous advance in our understanding of what happens to the brain during the learning process—and to an explosion of products claiming to trigger and enhance brain plasticity in developing children. Many products tout harnessing brain plasticity as a key benefit, and the notion that parents can build a designer brain smarter than anyone else’s by using these products is certainly appealing. But what is “plasticity” and what should parents actually do to harness this aspect of brain development in their children? Plasticity is the brain’s lifelong capacity to form new synapses, connections between nerve cells, and even new neural pathways, making and strengthening connections so that learning accelerates and the ability to access and apply what has been learned becomes more and more efficient. Developmental studies of plasticity trace the modification of brain architecture and brain wiring when it is exposed to novel situations. In this case, brain “wiring” means axon connections among brain regions and the activities those brain regions carry out. Rather like an architect drawing a wiring diagram for your home, indicating where the wires will go for the stove, refrigerator, air-conditioning, and so on, researchers have been drawing a wiring diagram for the brain. In the process they have established that the brain cortex is not a fixed entity but is being continuously modified by learning. It turns out that the “wires” in the cortex are constantly reconnecting and will continue to do so based on input from the outside world. Let’s take a look at what happens with brain plasticity when a child first learns to read. Initially, no part of the brain is wired specifically for reading. As the child learns to read, more and more brain cells and nerve circuits are recruited to the task as the child becomes a more proficient reader. The brain uses plasticity when a child begins to recognize words and comprehend what he is reading. The spoken word “ball,” which the child already comprehends, now becomes associated with the letters B‑A‑L‑L. In this way, learning to read is a form of neural plasticity. The discovery that a developing brain can be wired to recognize letters and other amazing discoveries about neural plasticity are often translated into commercial products touting enhanced “brain fitness” as a benefit. But just because a scientific experiment shows that a particular activity triggers brain plasticity doesn’t mean that this particular activity—such as seeing letters on a computer screen—is required to achieve the effect, nor does it mean that the activity is the only means of generating plasticity. Computer-based letter recognition drills do indeed activate and train symbol recognition centers in the visual cortex using brain plasticity. But so does sitting down and reading a book with your child. This parent-child interactive approach is called “dialogic reading.” But computer screens and apps only train the brain to recognize the letters (not to understand the meaning of words the letters represent). In contrast, dialogic reading—intuitive and interactive—naturally harnesses neural plasticity to make axon connections between the letter recognition centers to the language and thinking centers in the brain. Professor Paul Yoder at Vanderbilt University and I described how children learn to understand spoken language in a paper published in the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. We showed that typically developing children learn to discriminate speech sounds quite efficiently with or without the benefit of exposure to special speech discrimination exercises or computer games. These speech discrimination games are marketed as specially engaging neural plasticity and were developed by leading neuroscientists. In fact, children whose brains were never exposed to speech discrimination drills or computer games end up with a perfectly organized—and facile—auditory cortex arising from natural speech input from their parents and others. And these children learn to talk, to read, and to think very well indeed. We also argued that unnatural auditory input—in this case, isolated auditory signals—would not result in the proper wiring or integration of that input with other brain regions, such as the language centers, that are necessary to distinguish—and use—speech in the real world.
Never forget that the brain will learn what it is taught
. Brain science over the past decade has yielded a profound insight into neural plasticity: A developing brain will learn what it is taught. If computer software trains the brain to discriminate between little bits of sound, exactly that skill—recognizing bits of sound—is what the brain will learn and become wired to do. But this training will not generalize to the brain’s ability to understand what someone else is saying—or to learn to read, because discriminating sounds is only a small fragment of what the brain has to do to comprehend spoken language—and to read. If you want the brain to become wired for spoken language and for reading, then the input has to be real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading. Breaking the speech signal into its component parts and teaching these via computer simply will not do the trick. And if you want the spoken language to serve as a tool for social communication with other human beings, the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction, which involves even more areas of the brain than the area dedicated to speech discrimination. When a child reaches for a hat lying on the floor, and her dad says “hat,” this parent-child interaction triggers neural plasticity in the baby’s brain. The child’s brain is not only processing the phonic components of the word “hat,” (h-a-t) it is processing the visual image of the hat, the social context (playing with her dad), and the actual meaning of the word—a real hat. When dad intuitively puts the hat first on his head and then on her head, the speech sounds in the word “hat” are then associated (“paired”) with the perceptual properties of the hat as well as its function (covering the head). Later on, the child and her dad may read a book together and see a photograph of a bat (in this case, the flying mammal). Now the child hears her dad say “bat,” which of course is phonetically different than “hat.” But she is perceiving not only a difference in the speech sounds “h” and “b” but also the perceptual features of a bat and a hat, the social context in which the objects are encountered, and the functions of the objects. It is not surprising that simply teaching discrimination between “h” and “b” using flashcards or a computer program cannot possibly convey the information the child will need to comprehend the difference between “hat” and “bat” in the real world. Intuitive parenting automatically teaches all these elements simultaneously; it is automatically a multisensory approach. Touching, seeing, speaking, and listening are all providing context—in a safe, nurturing environment—and multiple brain areas are activated and integrated via neural plasticity. Adapted from "The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child Is You" by Stephen Camarata, PhD with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Stephen Camarata, 2015. What happens to our child’s brain when we parent? The discovery of the nature and extent of brain plasticity has led to a tremendous advance in our understanding of what happens to the brain during the learning process—and to an explosion of products claiming to trigger and enhance brain plasticity in developing children. Many products tout harnessing brain plasticity as a key benefit, and the notion that parents can build a designer brain smarter than anyone else’s by using these products is certainly appealing. But what is “plasticity” and what should parents actually do to harness this aspect of brain development in their children? Plasticity is the brain’s lifelong capacity to form new synapses, connections between nerve cells, and even new neural pathways, making and strengthening connections so that learning accelerates and the ability to access and apply what has been learned becomes more and more efficient. Developmental studies of plasticity trace the modification of brain architecture and brain wiring when it is exposed to novel situations. In this case, brain “wiring” means axon connections among brain regions and the activities those brain regions carry out. Rather like an architect drawing a wiring diagram for your home, indicating where the wires will go for the stove, refrigerator, air-conditioning, and so on, researchers have been drawing a wiring diagram for the brain. In the process they have established that the brain cortex is not a fixed entity but is being continuously modified by learning. It turns out that the “wires” in the cortex are constantly reconnecting and will continue to do so based on input from the outside world. Let’s take a look at what happens with brain plasticity when a child first learns to read. Initially, no part of the brain is wired specifically for reading. As the child learns to read, more and more brain cells and nerve circuits are recruited to the task as the child becomes a more proficient reader. The brain uses plasticity when a child begins to recognize words and comprehend what he is reading. The spoken word “ball,” which the child already comprehends, now becomes associated with the letters B‑A‑L‑L. In this way, learning to read is a form of neural plasticity. The discovery that a developing brain can be wired to recognize letters and other amazing discoveries about neural plasticity are often translated into commercial products touting enhanced “brain fitness” as a benefit. But just because a scientific experiment shows that a particular activity triggers brain plasticity doesn’t mean that this particular activity—such as seeing letters on a computer screen—is required to achieve the effect, nor does it mean that the activity is the only means of generating plasticity. Computer-based letter recognition drills do indeed activate and train symbol recognition centers in the visual cortex using brain plasticity. But so does sitting down and reading a book with your child. This parent-child interactive approach is called “dialogic reading.” But computer screens and apps only train the brain to recognize the letters (not to understand the meaning of words the letters represent). In contrast, dialogic reading—intuitive and interactive—naturally harnesses neural plasticity to make axon connections between the letter recognition centers to the language and thinking centers in the brain. Professor Paul Yoder at Vanderbilt University and I described how children learn to understand spoken language in a paper published in the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. We showed that typically developing children learn to discriminate speech sounds quite efficiently with or without the benefit of exposure to special speech discrimination exercises or computer games. These speech discrimination games are marketed as specially engaging neural plasticity and were developed by leading neuroscientists. In fact, children whose brains were never exposed to speech discrimination drills or computer games end up with a perfectly organized—and facile—auditory cortex arising from natural speech input from their parents and others. And these children learn to talk, to read, and to think very well indeed. We also argued that unnatural auditory input—in this case, isolated auditory signals—would not result in the proper wiring or integration of that input with other brain regions, such as the language centers, that are necessary to distinguish—and use—speech in the real world.
Never forget that the brain will learn what it is taught
. Brain science over the past decade has yielded a profound insight into neural plasticity: A developing brain will learn what it is taught. If computer software trains the brain to discriminate between little bits of sound, exactly that skill—recognizing bits of sound—is what the brain will learn and become wired to do. But this training will not generalize to the brain’s ability to understand what someone else is saying—or to learn to read, because discriminating sounds is only a small fragment of what the brain has to do to comprehend spoken language—and to read. If you want the brain to become wired for spoken language and for reading, then the input has to be real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading. Breaking the speech signal into its component parts and teaching these via computer simply will not do the trick. And if you want the spoken language to serve as a tool for social communication with other human beings, the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction, which involves even more areas of the brain than the area dedicated to speech discrimination. When a child reaches for a hat lying on the floor, and her dad says “hat,” this parent-child interaction triggers neural plasticity in the baby’s brain. The child’s brain is not only processing the phonic components of the word “hat,” (h-a-t) it is processing the visual image of the hat, the social context (playing with her dad), and the actual meaning of the word—a real hat. When dad intuitively puts the hat first on his head and then on her head, the speech sounds in the word “hat” are then associated (“paired”) with the perceptual properties of the hat as well as its function (covering the head). Later on, the child and her dad may read a book together and see a photograph of a bat (in this case, the flying mammal). Now the child hears her dad say “bat,” which of course is phonetically different than “hat.” But she is perceiving not only a difference in the speech sounds “h” and “b” but also the perceptual features of a bat and a hat, the social context in which the objects are encountered, and the functions of the objects. It is not surprising that simply teaching discrimination between “h” and “b” using flashcards or a computer program cannot possibly convey the information the child will need to comprehend the difference between “hat” and “bat” in the real world. Intuitive parenting automatically teaches all these elements simultaneously; it is automatically a multisensory approach. Touching, seeing, speaking, and listening are all providing context—in a safe, nurturing environment—and multiple brain areas are activated and integrated via neural plasticity. Adapted from "The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child Is You" by Stephen Camarata, PhD with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Stephen Camarata, 2015.
Britain’s Bernie moment: Is an unlikely left-wing hero about to conquer the Labour Party?
Britain’s Labour Party is going through its own Bernie Sanders moment – except that it’s more like a Bernie Sanders moment on steroids and set to warp drive. Try to imagine this: We’re days away from the Democratic convention and Sanders has somehow accumulated nearly enough delegates to win the nomination, while Hillary Clinton and the party leadership desperately try to stop him through coercion or unscrupulous personal attacks or last-minute rule changes. If that sounds like a wildly implausible scenario or, more precisely, like the kind of insurrection that modern party politics is designed to prevent, so does what’s happening in Britain right now. If we could go backwards in time a mere three months, to the immediate aftermath of Labour’s disheartening defeat in the May general election, and tell the British media and political elite that they were about to get sandbagged by a populist uprising that seemed to come out of nowhere, I suspect the response would involve widespread hilarity along with the phrase “daft bloody Yanks.” Yet instead of veering back toward the blithe neoliberal centrism of the Tony Blair era, as conventional wisdom dictated, the Labour Party is on the verge of being overrun by a left-wing insurgency led by Jeremy Corbyn, a 66-year-old socialist who could teach Bernie Sanders what that word actually means. Michael Meacher, a former government minister and one of the few Labour insiders to embrace the Corbyn insurrection, has called it “the biggest non-revolutionary upturning of the social order in modern British politics.” If there are obvious parallels between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, the former is actually more of a political outsider, whereas Sanders is widely liked and respected by his peers in the Senate. A longtime member of Parliament from North London who appears not to own a tie, Corbyn has spent his entire political career as a rebellious Labour “backbencher” – that is, he has never been part of the party leadership, nor held a government post when Labour had a majority. Until a few weeks ago, Corbyn was widely viewed as a hopeless anachronism within post-Thatcher British politics, a ‘60s throwback with bad clothes, dubious party loyalty and more than a tinge of Cold War red. (Actually, compared to the fashion-hopeless Sanders, Corbyn cuts quite a stylish figure in a distinctively English ascetic mode.) Now, he may be within days of becoming Labour’s parliamentary leader, and its prospective candidate for prime minister in the 2020 national election. Like Sanders, Corbyn has long advocated for a rejection of austerity politics and a return to seemingly outmoded policies of ambitious social spending, government activism and higher taxes on big business and the rich. He has proposed universal childcare and free higher education for all, wants to renationalize Britain’s railroads and utilities, and believes the country should withdraw from NATO, scrap its nuclear missiles and invest most of its military budget in job programs. Hilarious, right? Political suicide! Talk about being out of touch with reality! Well, nobody’s laughing at the old-time lefty crackpot now. What few saw coming – and this happened with Sanders too – is that those old-school social-democratic ideas only sound outmoded to those who have been around long enough to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the Reagan-Thatcher ideology that the era of Big Government was a dreadful failure and that the true path to prosperity involves endless rounds of tax-cutting and “belt-tightening.” To younger generations raised amid the depressing, pseudo-Calvinist piety of permanent austerity and downward mobility, the revolutionary notion that the government might actually help you get an education, find a job, afford a decent place to live and raise your family -- instead of just standing there and scolding -- doesn’t sound old or tired in the slightest. When Corbyn announced his intention to run for the party leadership position as an anti-austerity candidate, Labour’s establishment could quite likely have shot him down. In the British system, internal party elections are private affairs; the parties set their own rules about who gets to run and who gets to vote. Corbyn’s candidacy was approved by a bare minimum of his parliamentary colleagues, more or less as a symbolic gesture to the old-line Labour left. (He needed 35 votes and got 36; you have to wonder how many of them would take back that vote if they could.) From reading the British press, you get the impression that Labor’s phalanxes of pollsters and consultants and strategists were taken totally by surprise when Corbyn’s campaign immediately captured a wave of popular support, and still can’t quite believe it’s happening. Corbyn has faced overwhelming opposition from prominent Labour elected officials and party apparatchiks, along with increasingly critical coverage from the Guardian, which has endorsed Yvette Cooper, one of his moderate opponents. If anything, that has only fueled his momentum. Over the past week or so, the tone of anti-Corbyn intra-Labour hate has grown increasingly strident and hysterical. He has been accused, almost literally, of palling around with terrorists -- of being overly amenable to negotiations with Hezbollah and Hamas, and of vague associations with Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers. (Much of that came in the form of an especially disgraceful Guardian article by centrist Labour blogger James Bloodworth, who has embraced the role of party establishment hitman.) Some Labour officials have actually proposed postponing the leadership election (which is conducted by mail, and will be completed on Sept. 12), presumably to find some pretext to kick Corbyn off the ballot or purge his supporters from the rolls. In the last days of the campaign, Corbyn’s three rivals for the Labour leadership position have formed a united opposition front, even declining to offer the customary assurances that they will support him if he wins. The most right-wing candidate, Liz Kendall, who has trailed badly in the polls, says that choosing Corbyn would amount to “submitting our resignation letter to the British people as a serious party of government.” Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who won three elections with his rebranded “New Labour,” recently waded into the fray, warning that the party could face “annihilation” under Corbyn, who needed to be stopped with a "rugby tackle." (Which is pretty tough talk from the guy who spent the Iraq war polishing George W. Bush’s boots.) If no one finds Corbyn’s politics so amusing anymore, there is an element of comedy in the Armageddon that Labour’s centrist establishment may have called down upon itself. In the interest of greater transparency and democracy, the party opened this year’s leadership election to anyone who registered online as a party supporter and pay a minimal fee – and the apparent result is a whole lot more democracy than they wanted. Ballots started going out this weekend to 610,000 or so Labour members and supporters – more than half of whom signed up during the current campaign and are highly likely to be Corbyn voters. Labour’s leadership underestimated the public appetite for candidates and ideas that lie outside the safe zone of neoliberal consensus politics, and is now likely to reap the whirlwind. It’s a lesson that will not be lost on political leadership castes around the world. It’s quite possible that Tony Blair and the other mainstream critics are correct that old-school socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are too easily demonized by the right, and are not “electable” in conventional political terms. (Opinion polling suggests that Corbyn may now be the most popular politician in Britain, but such things are transitory.) But their emergence testifies to the failures of conventional politics, and whether they can win elections is less important than the worldwide hunger for change they have momentarily captured. Neither of them offers anything close to a political panacea, in my view, but they represent a rising tide of resistance against the global cult of fiscal austerity and corporate capitalism, as do Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and other emerging left-populist movements. (Donald Trump does not belong in that group, but he represents a bizarro-world inversion of the same phenomenon.) Even if the Labour Party establishment can find a way to stop the Corbyn surge – and it’s definitely trying to, by fair means or foul – it runs the risk of burning down Britain’s venerable working-class party in order to save it, or making it look hopelessly out of touch with its own core supporters. Win or lose, the Corbyn rebellion has launched a political chain reaction whose destabilizing effects will extend well beyond Britain. From this side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton’s inner circle of advisers and strategists are watching with increasingly green expressions, telling themselves over and over: It can’t happen here. Britain’s Labour Party is going through its own Bernie Sanders moment – except that it’s more like a Bernie Sanders moment on steroids and set to warp drive. Try to imagine this: We’re days away from the Democratic convention and Sanders has somehow accumulated nearly enough delegates to win the nomination, while Hillary Clinton and the party leadership desperately try to stop him through coercion or unscrupulous personal attacks or last-minute rule changes. If that sounds like a wildly implausible scenario or, more precisely, like the kind of insurrection that modern party politics is designed to prevent, so does what’s happening in Britain right now. If we could go backwards in time a mere three months, to the immediate aftermath of Labour’s disheartening defeat in the May general election, and tell the British media and political elite that they were about to get sandbagged by a populist uprising that seemed to come out of nowhere, I suspect the response would involve widespread hilarity along with the phrase “daft bloody Yanks.” Yet instead of veering back toward the blithe neoliberal centrism of the Tony Blair era, as conventional wisdom dictated, the Labour Party is on the verge of being overrun by a left-wing insurgency led by Jeremy Corbyn, a 66-year-old socialist who could teach Bernie Sanders what that word actually means. Michael Meacher, a former government minister and one of the few Labour insiders to embrace the Corbyn insurrection, has called it “the biggest non-revolutionary upturning of the social order in modern British politics.” If there are obvious parallels between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, the former is actually more of a political outsider, whereas Sanders is widely liked and respected by his peers in the Senate. A longtime member of Parliament from North London who appears not to own a tie, Corbyn has spent his entire political career as a rebellious Labour “backbencher” – that is, he has never been part of the party leadership, nor held a government post when Labour had a majority. Until a few weeks ago, Corbyn was widely viewed as a hopeless anachronism within post-Thatcher British politics, a ‘60s throwback with bad clothes, dubious party loyalty and more than a tinge of Cold War red. (Actually, compared to the fashion-hopeless Sanders, Corbyn cuts quite a stylish figure in a distinctively English ascetic mode.) Now, he may be within days of becoming Labour’s parliamentary leader, and its prospective candidate for prime minister in the 2020 national election. Like Sanders, Corbyn has long advocated for a rejection of austerity politics and a return to seemingly outmoded policies of ambitious social spending, government activism and higher taxes on big business and the rich. He has proposed universal childcare and free higher education for all, wants to renationalize Britain’s railroads and utilities, and believes the country should withdraw from NATO, scrap its nuclear missiles and invest most of its military budget in job programs. Hilarious, right? Political suicide! Talk about being out of touch with reality! Well, nobody’s laughing at the old-time lefty crackpot now. What few saw coming – and this happened with Sanders too – is that those old-school social-democratic ideas only sound outmoded to those who have been around long enough to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the Reagan-Thatcher ideology that the era of Big Government was a dreadful failure and that the true path to prosperity involves endless rounds of tax-cutting and “belt-tightening.” To younger generations raised amid the depressing, pseudo-Calvinist piety of permanent austerity and downward mobility, the revolutionary notion that the government might actually help you get an education, find a job, afford a decent place to live and raise your family -- instead of just standing there and scolding -- doesn’t sound old or tired in the slightest. When Corbyn announced his intention to run for the party leadership position as an anti-austerity candidate, Labour’s establishment could quite likely have shot him down. In the British system, internal party elections are private affairs; the parties set their own rules about who gets to run and who gets to vote. Corbyn’s candidacy was approved by a bare minimum of his parliamentary colleagues, more or less as a symbolic gesture to the old-line Labour left. (He needed 35 votes and got 36; you have to wonder how many of them would take back that vote if they could.) From reading the British press, you get the impression that Labor’s phalanxes of pollsters and consultants and strategists were taken totally by surprise when Corbyn’s campaign immediately captured a wave of popular support, and still can’t quite believe it’s happening. Corbyn has faced overwhelming opposition from prominent Labour elected officials and party apparatchiks, along with increasingly critical coverage from the Guardian, which has endorsed Yvette Cooper, one of his moderate opponents. If anything, that has only fueled his momentum. Over the past week or so, the tone of anti-Corbyn intra-Labour hate has grown increasingly strident and hysterical. He has been accused, almost literally, of palling around with terrorists -- of being overly amenable to negotiations with Hezbollah and Hamas, and of vague associations with Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers. (Much of that came in the form of an especially disgraceful Guardian article by centrist Labour blogger James Bloodworth, who has embraced the role of party establishment hitman.) Some Labour officials have actually proposed postponing the leadership election (which is conducted by mail, and will be completed on Sept. 12), presumably to find some pretext to kick Corbyn off the ballot or purge his supporters from the rolls. In the last days of the campaign, Corbyn’s three rivals for the Labour leadership position have formed a united opposition front, even declining to offer the customary assurances that they will support him if he wins. The most right-wing candidate, Liz Kendall, who has trailed badly in the polls, says that choosing Corbyn would amount to “submitting our resignation letter to the British people as a serious party of government.” Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who won three elections with his rebranded “New Labour,” recently waded into the fray, warning that the party could face “annihilation” under Corbyn, who needed to be stopped with a "rugby tackle." (Which is pretty tough talk from the guy who spent the Iraq war polishing George W. Bush’s boots.) If no one finds Corbyn’s politics so amusing anymore, there is an element of comedy in the Armageddon that Labour’s centrist establishment may have called down upon itself. In the interest of greater transparency and democracy, the party opened this year’s leadership election to anyone who registered online as a party supporter and pay a minimal fee – and the apparent result is a whole lot more democracy than they wanted. Ballots started going out this weekend to 610,000 or so Labour members and supporters – more than half of whom signed up during the current campaign and are highly likely to be Corbyn voters. Labour’s leadership underestimated the public appetite for candidates and ideas that lie outside the safe zone of neoliberal consensus politics, and is now likely to reap the whirlwind. It’s a lesson that will not be lost on political leadership castes around the world. It’s quite possible that Tony Blair and the other mainstream critics are correct that old-school socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are too easily demonized by the right, and are not “electable” in conventional political terms. (Opinion polling suggests that Corbyn may now be the most popular politician in Britain, but such things are transitory.) But their emergence testifies to the failures of conventional politics, and whether they can win elections is less important than the worldwide hunger for change they have momentarily captured. Neither of them offers anything close to a political panacea, in my view, but they represent a rising tide of resistance against the global cult of fiscal austerity and corporate capitalism, as do Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and other emerging left-populist movements. (Donald Trump does not belong in that group, but he represents a bizarro-world inversion of the same phenomenon.) Even if the Labour Party establishment can find a way to stop the Corbyn surge – and it’s definitely trying to, by fair means or foul – it runs the risk of burning down Britain’s venerable working-class party in order to save it, or making it look hopelessly out of touch with its own core supporters. Win or lose, the Corbyn rebellion has launched a political chain reaction whose destabilizing effects will extend well beyond Britain. From this side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton’s inner circle of advisers and strategists are watching with increasingly green expressions, telling themselves over and over: It can’t happen here.
Get ready for Amy Schumer on HBO with these 7 great streaming stand-up specials
While we're all excited for Amy Schumer's upcoming HBO stand-up special, you don't have to wait until October to see great stand-up comedy from the comfort of your laptop. As we approach summer's end, here are seven great recent stand-up specials to tide you over through these last lazy summer days. 1. Jen Kirkman, "I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine),” Netflix In her first Netflix stand-up special, Jen Kirkman — who you might know from her lively online presence or her frequent appearances on "Drunk History" and "Chelsea Lately” — gives a refreshingly intimate, conversational and honest look at life as a woman at 40, from her divorce to her graying pubes to how society views childless women. "I know I could hit my head on the bathtub and no one will know and I'll die," she riffs at one point. "I'll bleed out and three days later a cat will eat my face — I don't have a cat, but when a single woman dies alone, a cat appears." 2. Louis C.K., “
Louis C.K. Live at Madison Square Garden
,” www.louisck.net C.K.’s new special, available on his website for the price of your choosing, comes from his recent string of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. While some of the jokes are slightly less ambitious and high-concept than his previous specials, C.K. displays his usual inventiveness -- not to mention plenty of sound effects -- while weaving through his pet topics like fatherhood, the gender divide and his encroaching mortality. 3. Trevor Noah, “Trevor Noah: African American,” Netflix As we prepare for Noah to take the reins of the “Daily Show,” his 2013 stand-up special gives a good sense of the sort of tone and content we can expect from our new host. In “African American,” Noah talks extensively about his experiences growing up mixed-race in Apartheid South Africa, as well as his culture shock as an outsider coming to terms with the complex lived experience of race in America. 4. Aziz Ansari, "Aziz Ansari Live at Madison Square Garden," Netflix Ansari’s comedy has evolved a lot in recent years, and his sold-out 2015 set at Madison Square Garden represents his most mature work yet, as a vulnerable Ansari speaks candidly about romance, dating and his upbringing in an immigrant family. Through well-paced storytelling and extensive imagined conversations, Ansari skillfully mines humor from the everyday triumphs and tragedies of modern romance. 5. Wyatt Cenac, "
Brooklyn
," Netflix Filmed in the cozy space at Brooklyn’s Union Hall — a far cry from the echoing halls of MSG — Cenac’s intimate 2014 special uses Brooklyn as a springboard for all sorts of topics, from gentrification to racial differences, as well as a moving and personal segment on the death of his father, a New York cab driver who was shot while at work. While discussions of the differences between Crown Heights and Fort Greene or a riff about Prospect Heights’ beloved Empire Mayonnaise shop will hit especially close to home with residents of Kings County, the "Daily Show" alum's incisive, probing observations easily transcend the borough they emerged from. 6. Chelsea Peretti, "One of the Greats," Netflix Peretti probably had the buzziest stand-up special of last year, but if you missed it, it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon. While comedy fans have long known her from her brilliant Twitter account, her role on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and her writing on “Parks and Recreation” and “The Kroll Show,” her special “One of the Greats” established Peretti as one of the most exciting innovators in the medium of stand-up today. The whole set is a meta riff on stand-up conventions, and her quirky, offbeat style mixes grandiose proclamations (“I guess you could say I’m a direct vessel of God”) and goofy voices with more grounded — but never predictable — riffs on sexism, technology and being a woman in the comedy world. 7. Hannibal Buress, "Live From Chicago," Amazon Instant Video While Buress may still be best-known in some circles for the Cosby joke heard 'round the world, his 2014 special demonstrates that Buress is much more than a Cosby scandal footnote. This 2014 set from his hometown of Chicago displays his gifts as a storyteller and a keen-eyed cultural critic who projects a natural ease and charisma onstage. While we're all excited for Amy Schumer's upcoming HBO stand-up special, you don't have to wait until October to see great stand-up comedy from the comfort of your laptop. As we approach summer's end, here are seven great recent stand-up specials to tide you over through these last lazy summer days. 1. Jen Kirkman, "I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine),” Netflix In her first Netflix stand-up special, Jen Kirkman — who you might know from her lively online presence or her frequent appearances on "Drunk History" and "Chelsea Lately” — gives a refreshingly intimate, conversational and honest look at life as a woman at 40, from her divorce to her graying pubes to how society views childless women. "I know I could hit my head on the bathtub and no one will know and I'll die," she riffs at one point. "I'll bleed out and three days later a cat will eat my face — I don't have a cat, but when a single woman dies alone, a cat appears." 2. Louis C.K., “
Louis C.K. Live at Madison Square Garden
,” www.louisck.net C.K.’s new special, available on his website for the price of your choosing, comes from his recent string of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. While some of the jokes are slightly less ambitious and high-concept than his previous specials, C.K. displays his usual inventiveness -- not to mention plenty of sound effects -- while weaving through his pet topics like fatherhood, the gender divide and his encroaching mortality. 3. Trevor Noah, “Trevor Noah: African American,” Netflix As we prepare for Noah to take the reins of the “Daily Show,” his 2013 stand-up special gives a good sense of the sort of tone and content we can expect from our new host. In “African American,” Noah talks extensively about his experiences growing up mixed-race in Apartheid South Africa, as well as his culture shock as an outsider coming to terms with the complex lived experience of race in America. 4. Aziz Ansari, "Aziz Ansari Live at Madison Square Garden," Netflix Ansari’s comedy has evolved a lot in recent years, and his sold-out 2015 set at Madison Square Garden represents his most mature work yet, as a vulnerable Ansari speaks candidly about romance, dating and his upbringing in an immigrant family. Through well-paced storytelling and extensive imagined conversations, Ansari skillfully mines humor from the everyday triumphs and tragedies of modern romance. 5. Wyatt Cenac, "
Brooklyn
," Netflix Filmed in the cozy space at Brooklyn’s Union Hall — a far cry from the echoing halls of MSG — Cenac’s intimate 2014 special uses Brooklyn as a springboard for all sorts of topics, from gentrification to racial differences, as well as a moving and personal segment on the death of his father, a New York cab driver who was shot while at work. While discussions of the differences between Crown Heights and Fort Greene or a riff about Prospect Heights’ beloved Empire Mayonnaise shop will hit especially close to home with residents of Kings County, the "Daily Show" alum's incisive, probing observations easily transcend the borough they emerged from. 6. Chelsea Peretti, "One of the Greats," Netflix Peretti probably had the buzziest stand-up special of last year, but if you missed it, it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon. While comedy fans have long known her from her brilliant Twitter account, her role on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and her writing on “Parks and Recreation” and “The Kroll Show,” her special “One of the Greats” established Peretti as one of the most exciting innovators in the medium of stand-up today. The whole set is a meta riff on stand-up conventions, and her quirky, offbeat style mixes grandiose proclamations (“I guess you could say I’m a direct vessel of God”) and goofy voices with more grounded — but never predictable — riffs on sexism, technology and being a woman in the comedy world. 7. Hannibal Buress, "Live From Chicago," Amazon Instant Video While Buress may still be best-known in some circles for the Cosby joke heard 'round the world, his 2014 special demonstrates that Buress is much more than a Cosby scandal footnote. This 2014 set from his hometown of Chicago displays his gifts as a storyteller and a keen-eyed cultural critic who projects a natural ease and charisma onstage. While we're all excited for Amy Schumer's upcoming HBO stand-up special, you don't have to wait until October to see great stand-up comedy from the comfort of your laptop. As we approach summer's end, here are seven great recent stand-up specials to tide you over through these last lazy summer days. 1. Jen Kirkman, "I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine),” Netflix In her first Netflix stand-up special, Jen Kirkman — who you might know from her lively online presence or her frequent appearances on "Drunk History" and "Chelsea Lately” — gives a refreshingly intimate, conversational and honest look at life as a woman at 40, from her divorce to her graying pubes to how society views childless women. "I know I could hit my head on the bathtub and no one will know and I'll die," she riffs at one point. "I'll bleed out and three days later a cat will eat my face — I don't have a cat, but when a single woman dies alone, a cat appears." 2. Louis C.K., “
Louis C.K. Live at Madison Square Garden
,” www.louisck.net C.K.’s new special, available on his website for the price of your choosing, comes from his recent string of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. While some of the jokes are slightly less ambitious and high-concept than his previous specials, C.K. displays his usual inventiveness -- not to mention plenty of sound effects -- while weaving through his pet topics like fatherhood, the gender divide and his encroaching mortality. 3. Trevor Noah, “Trevor Noah: African American,” Netflix As we prepare for Noah to take the reins of the “Daily Show,” his 2013 stand-up special gives a good sense of the sort of tone and content we can expect from our new host. In “African American,” Noah talks extensively about his experiences growing up mixed-race in Apartheid South Africa, as well as his culture shock as an outsider coming to terms with the complex lived experience of race in America. 4. Aziz Ansari, "Aziz Ansari Live at Madison Square Garden," Netflix Ansari’s comedy has evolved a lot in recent years, and his sold-out 2015 set at Madison Square Garden represents his most mature work yet, as a vulnerable Ansari speaks candidly about romance, dating and his upbringing in an immigrant family. Through well-paced storytelling and extensive imagined conversations, Ansari skillfully mines humor from the everyday triumphs and tragedies of modern romance. 5. Wyatt Cenac, "
Brooklyn
," Netflix Filmed in the cozy space at Brooklyn’s Union Hall — a far cry from the echoing halls of MSG — Cenac’s intimate 2014 special uses Brooklyn as a springboard for all sorts of topics, from gentrification to racial differences, as well as a moving and personal segment on the death of his father, a New York cab driver who was shot while at work. While discussions of the differences between Crown Heights and Fort Greene or a riff about Prospect Heights’ beloved Empire Mayonnaise shop will hit especially close to home with residents of Kings County, the "Daily Show" alum's incisive, probing observations easily transcend the borough they emerged from. 6. Chelsea Peretti, "One of the Greats," Netflix Peretti probably had the buzziest stand-up special of last year, but if you missed it, it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon. While comedy fans have long known her from her brilliant Twitter account, her role on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and her writing on “Parks and Recreation” and “The Kroll Show,” her special “One of the Greats” established Peretti as one of the most exciting innovators in the medium of stand-up today. The whole set is a meta riff on stand-up conventions, and her quirky, offbeat style mixes grandiose proclamations (“I guess you could say I’m a direct vessel of God”) and goofy voices with more grounded — but never predictable — riffs on sexism, technology and being a woman in the comedy world. 7. Hannibal Buress, "Live From Chicago," Amazon Instant Video While Buress may still be best-known in some circles for the Cosby joke heard 'round the world, his 2014 special demonstrates that Buress is much more than a Cosby scandal footnote. This 2014 set from his hometown of Chicago displays his gifts as a storyteller and a keen-eyed cultural critic who projects a natural ease and charisma onstage.
Chris Christie’s budget fiasco: Billions blown on an aborted tunnel
When we wrote in April about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s budget “sins,” one of the biggest was the money shuffle he engineered after his 2010 decision to kill an $8.7 billion commuter rail tunnel from New Jersey to New York City. That decision, which boosted him to national prominence, was a major bragging point for years. But now he’s playing tunnel defense rather than his customary offense amid a torrent of terrible tunnel news: lengthy delays in the century-old rail tunnel commuters are stuck with now; jockeying among New Jersey, New York and Amtrak over how to pay for a new $14 billion tunnel; and warnings of chronic failures and shutdowns if something isn’t done soon to add rail capacity. Had Christie not spiked the so-called ARC tunnel, it would be coming online in about three years. But now, as Christie runs for president on his claim of having been a prudent and competent guardian of New Jersey’s finances, the tunnel problems have inspired a spate of news reports, including one by The Record newspaper in New Jersey’s Bergen County saying the cancellation wasted $1.2 billion that had been spent on engineering. Why did Christie kill the tunnel, and what did he do with the money afterward? As we reported back in April, Christie diverted a total of $3 billion of highway toll increases and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey money originally earmarked for the tunnel to bail out Jersey’s finances – the biggest one-time budget fix of his administration. The upside: Christie was able to keep a campaign pledge and avoid raising taxes, including New Jersey’s gas tax, which at 14.5 cents a gallon is lower than any state but Alaska. The downside: No salvation in sight for the estimated 87,000 New Jersey Transit rail commuters who cross the Hudson River to Manhattan each weekday in tubes dug when Theodore Roosevelt was president. (Read more about the controversial legacy behind Christie’s budget claims.) Since Superstorm Sandy flooded the tunnel with saltwater and caused extensive damage, the need for additional rail capacity has only become more acute. Time is running out before one of the two rail tubes within the tunnel has to be shut down for repairs, Amtrak executive Stephen Gardner warned at a hearing on Monday. That would bring the daily commute to a crawl. “We would be left with having to handle 24 trains’ worth of demand across six slots spread between Amtrak and New Jersey Transit,” Gardner said, noting that Amtrak needs four of the slots, leaving just two for commuter trains. Christie has defended his decision to kill the ARC tunnel, saying New Jersey would have been stuck paying for billions in potential cost overruns. A spokeswoman added that “the completion of ARC would have done nothing to resolve the issues we’re still facing with Amtrak’s tunnels today.” Gardner said at the hearing that Amtrak’s tunnel problems would exist even if the ARC were on schedule, but he also answered yes when asked if the tunnel would have provided a “safe haven” to New Jersey commuters by giving them a backup. There is no consensus about how to pay for Amtrak’s proposed new tunnel project, known as the Gateway Program. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., this week proposed creating a new nonprofit agency to raise money for the effort. Amtrak supports an 80 percent federal, 20 percent local funding split, but its influence in Washington is extremely limited. It’s not clear when, if ever, the Gateway Program, which would cost billions more than the canceled ARC tunnel, will get under way. Christie recently said New York should shoulder a portion of the cost. “The reason I killed the ARC tunnel was the federal government was contributing to it, the state of New Jersey was contributing to it and the state or city of New York was contributing nothing,” he told WABC. Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said money should come from anywhere but his state. “It’s not my tunnel,” Cuomo told reporters. “It is an Amtrak tunnel that is used by Amtrak and by New Jersey Transit.” However, if the federal government steps in to pay for the project, Cuomo suggested he may chip in: “If they’re serious, I’ll come to the table,” he told The New York Times. The ARC tunnel was expected to be completed in 2018. The earliest a Gateway tunnel could open is 2025, Gardner said at the hearing. “Every day that we defer is a day of extending, frankly, our risk,” he said.
When we wrote in April about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s budget “sins,” one of the biggest was the money shuffle he engineered after his 2010 decision to kill an $8.7 billion commuter rail tunnel from New Jersey to New York City. That decision, which boosted him to national prominence, was a major bragging point for years. But now he’s playing tunnel defense rather than his customary offense amid a torrent of terrible tunnel news: lengthy delays in the century-old rail tunnel commuters are stuck with now; jockeying among New Jersey, New York and Amtrak over how to pay for a new $14 billion tunnel; and warnings of chronic failures and shutdowns if something isn’t done soon to add rail capacity. Had Christie not spiked the so-called ARC tunnel, it would be coming online in about three years. But now, as Christie runs for president on his claim of having been a prudent and competent guardian of New Jersey’s finances, the tunnel problems have inspired a spate of news reports, including one by The Record newspaper in New Jersey’s Bergen County saying the cancellation wasted $1.2 billion that had been spent on engineering. Why did Christie kill the tunnel, and what did he do with the money afterward? As we reported back in April, Christie diverted a total of $3 billion of highway toll increases and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey money originally earmarked for the tunnel to bail out Jersey’s finances – the biggest one-time budget fix of his administration. The upside: Christie was able to keep a campaign pledge and avoid raising taxes, including New Jersey’s gas tax, which at 14.5 cents a gallon is lower than any state but Alaska. The downside: No salvation in sight for the estimated 87,000 New Jersey Transit rail commuters who cross the Hudson River to Manhattan each weekday in tubes dug when Theodore Roosevelt was president. (Read more about the controversial legacy behind Christie’s budget claims.) Since Superstorm Sandy flooded the tunnel with saltwater and caused extensive damage, the need for additional rail capacity has only become more acute. Time is running out before one of the two rail tubes within the tunnel has to be shut down for repairs, Amtrak executive Stephen Gardner warned at a hearing on Monday. That would bring the daily commute to a crawl. “We would be left with having to handle 24 trains’ worth of demand across six slots spread between Amtrak and New Jersey Transit,” Gardner said, noting that Amtrak needs four of the slots, leaving just two for commuter trains. Christie has defended his decision to kill the ARC tunnel, saying New Jersey would have been stuck paying for billions in potential cost overruns. A spokeswoman added that “the completion of ARC would have done nothing to resolve the issues we’re still facing with Amtrak’s tunnels today.” Gardner said at the hearing that Amtrak’s tunnel problems would exist even if the ARC were on schedule, but he also answered yes when asked if the tunnel would have provided a “safe haven” to New Jersey commuters by giving them a backup. There is no consensus about how to pay for Amtrak’s proposed new tunnel project, known as the Gateway Program. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., this week proposed creating a new nonprofit agency to raise money for the effort. Amtrak supports an 80 percent federal, 20 percent local funding split, but its influence in Washington is extremely limited. It’s not clear when, if ever, the Gateway Program, which would cost billions more than the canceled ARC tunnel, will get under way. Christie recently said New York should shoulder a portion of the cost. “The reason I killed the ARC tunnel was the federal government was contributing to it, the state of New Jersey was contributing to it and the state or city of New York was contributing nothing,” he told WABC. Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said money should come from anywhere but his state. “It’s not my tunnel,” Cuomo told reporters. “It is an Amtrak tunnel that is used by Amtrak and by New Jersey Transit.” However, if the federal government steps in to pay for the project, Cuomo suggested he may chip in: “If they’re serious, I’ll come to the table,” he told The New York Times. The ARC tunnel was expected to be completed in 2018. The earliest a Gateway tunnel could open is 2025, Gardner said at the hearing. “Every day that we defer is a day of extending, frankly, our risk,” he said.
“This is about money. Who got it, and who don’t”: A Hotlanta housing crisis boils over
Across the Southeast, this summer was among the hottest in recorded history, with several cities shattering heat records. This has been particularly painful for the residents of so-called Friendship Tower, an apartment for senior citizens in downtown Atlanta, which has been without functioning air conditioning for nearly three months. Friendship Tower was built with funding from the Housing and Urban Development department's Section 202 program, which provides subsidies for housing seniors ages 62 and older. Yet it has a private owner: Friendship Baptist Church, Atlanta's “first black Baptist autonomous congregation,” which independently organized itself shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. When the apartment complex's air conditioning abruptly malfunctioned in late April, residents hoped FBC would quickly spring into action to fix the system and protect the senior citizens, many of whom have disabilities such as asthma, from the harsh Georgia summer. A protestor with his family. But three weeks passed and the system remained in disrepair. Temperatures in some apartments reach higher than 90 degrees, according to readings taken by a local news station. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a pro-business Democrat who recently helped FBC sell part of its property to the Atlanta Falcons for its new stadium for $19.5 million, appeared at the site and promised he would do “everything that I can to make sure those good people have air right away.” Weeks passed, and the temporary small air conditioning units Friendship Tower placed into individual apartments did little to cool down residents. Federal officials from HUD inspected the units and deemed they were sufficient for cooling. The residents disagreed. Eventually, residents filed a lawsuit against FBC, leading to a late May ruling by a local judge that the complex was failing to care for the welfare of its citizens, ordering the complex to provide an additional air conditioner for each unit. The judge was likely impacted by the emotional testimony from residents, one of whom described passing out from heat; another outright collapsed. “The residences are in a livable condition; not ideal but livable,” protested attorney Robert Bozeman, hired by FBC to represent its case. Those were odd words coming from a lawyer whose professional webpage boasts about “providing strong and effective representation to those injured as a result of wrong or negligent acts of others.” In mid-June, the tower installed a new comprehensive air conditioning system, but it failed to properly cool the units. Some units still reached a hot 87 degrees. The facility attempted to evict some of the tenants, but was blocked by the courts. By the end of July, tenants took their grievances directly to FBC, marching into one of its Sunday services while singing and praying. Perhaps this direct action finally spurred the church leadership to take a more direct interest; the church's minister visited the complex shortly after the protest. The city of Atlanta moved to allow a group of residents to stay at a hotel while Friendship Tower was still in disrepair; in the first week of August, FBC lawyers told a dozen of these residents that they must vacate their hotel rooms and return to the sweltering heat of their apartments. Residents also began to receive letters demanding rent for the month by August 10, even though the complex had previously told them they would not have to pay rent for July and August. Some of the tenants have filed a motion to recuse the judge presiding over their case, citing communications between the judge and management outside the courtroom. On August 5, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed returned to Friendship Tower. He inspected five different apartments and met with residents, citing improvements. The local news claimed this visit showed the problems were “nearly resolved,” but the residents disagreed. The next day, they held a rally outside the apartment complex, calling attention to FBC's continued refusal either to fix the air conditioning or move all residents to a more humane location. The rally, which I attended, brought together around three dozen people and was organized by Derrick Boazman, a local radio host with roots in the community. Boazman introduced a number of activists and concerned individuals who had come out to support the struggling seniors. Bobby Heard, who is head of the tenants association at Friendship, described the mayor's visit as a sort of whitewashing of the problem. “The mayor came down here and inspected five units,” he explained. “But there's a hundred units.” Another resident, who had temporarily moved out due to the unbearable heat, explained that his thermostat that day read 87 degrees. He is temporarily staying in a hotel, and he said a police officer in the building told him he wasn't even welcome in his own apartment. Another resident, Lynda Brooks, got a reading of 80 degrees on her thermostat. Many of those who attended the rally had heard about the situation in the media over the summer. “I've been hearing about this on the radio too long,” explained one woman, who said she left work after a 10-hour shift to “do something about this.” Many demonstrators carried signs adorned with variations of Black Lives Matter hashtags. One prominent attendee was State Senator Vincent Fort, the Democratic majority whip and a staple of the state's progressive community. Fort has long been an ally of the grassroots left in the state, even going so far as getting arrested in Medicaid protests last year. Fort, as well as numerous other speakers at the event, spoke to the religious commitments of the demonstrators, as opposed to the overt religiosity but poor ethics of FBC. “Anytime you stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves, you're doing God's work,” he said. Boazman, Fort and the others standing with the residents that day plan to escalate their actions. Their next target is Glass Ratner, the property management firm that is in charge of day-to-day operations at Friendship Tower. Fort and others said they are prepared to be arrested on the premises to draw attention to the plight of the senior residents. The senator explained that the fundamental issue goes far beyond air conditioning: “This is not about A/C. You need to know that. This is about money. Who got it, and who don't.” This speaks to the dynamics at play at Friendship Tower. At one point, a speaker affiliated with the Nation of Islam told the audience, “This isn't the Caucasian holdin' us back here today. It's people who look like us.” What's happening at Friendship Tower is what the class war looks like in the 21st century. Race, gender and religious background are not the dividing lines between the senior citizens in this apartment complex and the prominent church that owns their property. The divide is over raw access to money, and the power it brings. As Senator Fort noted, FBC, having just received nearly $20 million to sell its property, is awash in cash. The church has played its role in the South's African American history, but has also hosted the well-to-do of the community, such as its former pastor Reverend William Guy, whose daughter Jasmine Guy is a TV star. There are no television stars or prominent political donors living at Friendship Tower, just low-income seniors, struggling against a political and economic system that doesn't value their lives because they simply don't have the dollars to make them care. As debates over things like race, gender and sexual orientation dominate national media discussion, cases like Friendship Tower are swept under the rug. Talking about raw power among different economic classes is a sort of irreverence you rarely find on cable television or in the major newspapers, but it is a power differential that increasingly defines America's greatest and most persistent form of inequality. Rest assured, the seniors at Friendship Tower won't be the last ones who suffer from it; if we ignore their plight, the rest of us will be next.
The week Fox News got Trumped: Roger Ailes sold out, Megyn Kelly took off & the Donald won very, very big
The past week has been very confusing for anybody trying to figure out what is going on in the saga of Donald Trump and Fox News.
There was the report that had Roger Ailes bowing to Trump after his attacks on Megyn Kelly during and after last week's GOP debate gained unexpected traction with the Fox News audience. (And after Kelly started receiving death threats for the crime of asking Donald Trump about his sexism.) Then there was a different report that portrayed Ailes as "livid" over Trump's behavior, even threatening to go to "war" with him unless the Kelly situation was resolved. Then Kelly went on a long vacation, and there was disagreement about whether she was taking time off in response to the whole mess or not.
All in all, not the easiest thing to decipher, especially when we're talking about a news organization whose secrecy and insularity would make the NSA jealous.
So what are we to make of this welter of conflicting messages, leaks and takes? Well, for one thing, everyone who confidently predicted that Fox News had made headway in its quest to box Trump out of the Republican presidential race—a group that includes yours truly—has to admit how wrong they were.We will likely never know whether Roger Ailes sternly put Trump in his place or whether he prostrated himself before the (sigh) current GOP frontrunner, but it's clear that he has been put on the back foot by everything that happened after Trump began his campaign of harassment against Kelly. In Trump, he has met his match, another master of bombastic right-wing populist rhetoric. Looking back, he should have anticipated that he wouldn't be able to control Trump. After all, Fox News has spent years boosting Trump, especially during his weekly appearances on "Fox and Friends," the rabidly partisan morning talk show that's always been the clearest reflection of Ailes' personal politics. Why was its audience suddenly supposed to turn on him for some pesky thing like rancid misogyny?
Ailes also had to contend with the fact that, unlike a lot of the other people in the GOP field, Trump has the entire rest of the media salivating to book him. They are so desperate to have him, and the ratings he brings, that they let him lazily phone in to their programs instead of turning up in person--a luxury not granted to almost anyone else. (A rare exception to this? "Fox News Sunday.") CNN or "Morning Joe" will literally never stop wanting Donald Trump as a guest, and Trump will never not agree to yammer on TV. Ailes couldn't afford to cede all of that turf to the competition; some solution had to be found.
So it's clear that, on the whole, Ailes lost this round. But we shouldn't expect that this is the end of the story. This is a temporary ceasefire, not a peace treaty. Ailes must be thoroughly pissed off that Trump is still directing traffic even after Fox News tried to kneecap him. Trump never shuts his mouth, so we know that he's still simmering about Kelly's questions. This Sunday, he's giving an on-camera interview to "Meet the Press," not "Fox News Sunday." (Trump does this so rarely that "MTP" had to emphasize the "face to face" nature of the interview.) It's likely that Ailes is now trying to figure out how to land a blow on Trump without inciting the kind of insanity that burst forth after the debate. Nothing has been resolved.
Really, though, the person who should be the most incensed is Megyn Kelly. She did her job, endured the worst kind of thuggish attacks from Trump and his followers, and in return, watched her boss cut a deal with her tormentor. Kelly is certainly tough enough to withstand everything that's been thrown at her, but she might have expected more from Roger Ailes. She can only hope that, when her network's uneasy detente with Trump comes to an end, Ailes will choose her over the Donald.
Black Lives Matter joins a long line of protest movements that have shifted public opinion — most recently, Occupy Wall Street
Throughout American history, advocates for racial justice and economic justice have sometimes been at odds, but they’ve also found common ground. In recent weeks we’ve watched this tension play out in a surprising way, when Black Lives Matters (BLM) activists disrupted Bernie Sanders rallies to demand that the socialist senator from Vermont focus more attention on racial inequities. Since the BLM movement emerged a year ago -- in reaction to the killing of an unarmed teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri – it has stirred controversy, particularly on the right. Many conservative commentators considered the young BLM activists too angry, unruly, confrontational and divisive. But BLM's attack on Sanders split progressives. Many progressive activists cheered the BLM’s protest, but others criticized them for going after Sanders rather than targeting more conservative candidates. In a short period of time, BLM has proved to be amazingly effective and influential. Despite having little funding and relatively few activists, the movement has helped inject the issue of police misconduct and the broader racial bias of our criminal justice system into the political debate. There’s been no sudden upsurge of racial profiling, arrests, beatings and killings of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers. Instead – thanks in part to BLM -- Americans have simply become more aware of the problem. The names of the victims of police abuse – Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and others -- have been seared into the national consciousness. By introducing the phrase “black lives matters” into our culture – primarily through the use of social media but also by engaging in protest and civil disobedience – BLM has shifted public opinion. A new Pew Research Center poll discovered that the number of Americans who believe that changes are needed to give African-Americans equal rights has swelled from 46 percent to 59 percent just in the past year. Among white Americans, the number has increased from 39 percent to 53 percent. Among Republicans, it spiked from 27 percent to 42 percent. This growing awareness has triggered calls for reform of police practices by politicians from President Barack Obama to local mayors. That BLM met with initial skepticism and criticism should come as no surprise. This happens to all protest movements when they first appear. When four black college students organized a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960 to protest Jim Crow racial segregation, even many black and white liberals thought that they were too radical. But their actions galvanized a new wave of civil rights protest. Within a few months, the sit-in movement spread to dozens of cities throughout the South and the activists started a new organization called the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Its growing base of supporters played key roles in the freedom rides, marches and voter registration drives that eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many SNCC activists became key leaders in subsequent battles for social justice, including congressman John Lewis and Marion Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. The same dynamic occurred when feminist groups in the 1960s and 1970s began protesting against male-dominated institutions, when environmental activists sought to shut down nuclear power plants, and when ACT-UP organized “die-ins,” rallies and other disruptions to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. Ideas that were once considered “radical” moved from the margins to the mainstream, changing both the culture and public policy. The most recent counterpart to BLM is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. In September 2011, a handful of activists took over Zuccotti Park in New York City to draw attention to the nation’s widening wealth and income gap. The protests quickly spread to cities and towns around the country and changed our national conversation. At kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in offices and factories, and in newsrooms, Americans began talking about economic inequality, corporate greed, and how America’s super-rich have damaged our economy and our democracy. Occupy Wall Street provided Americans with a language—the “1 percent” and the “99 percent”—to explain the nation’s widening economic divide, the undue political influence of the super-rich, and the damage triggered by Wall Street’s reckless behavior that crashed the economy and caused enormous suffering and hardship. Although many Americans disagreed with its disruptive tactics, the OWS movement nevertheless helped change public opinion. About three-quarters (74 percent) of Americans—including 84 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 62 percent of Republicans—believe that corporations have too much influence on American life and politics today, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. A Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of Americans believe that "the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy." Eighty-four percent of Americans think that money has too much influence in politics. Slightly more Americans (85 percent) want an overhaul of our campaign finance system. Seventy-three percent of Americans favor tougher rules for Wall Street financial companies and 58 percent of Americans support breaking up “big banks like Citigroup.” Sixty-nine percent of Americans—including 90 percent of Democrats, 69 percent of independents, and 45 percent of Republicans—believe that the government should help reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else. Eighty-two percent of Americans—including 94 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents, and 64 percent of Republicans—think the government should help reduce poverty. A recent poll by Hart Research Associates found that 75 percent of Americans (including 53 percent of Republicans) support an increase in the federal minimum wage to $12.50 an hour by 2020. Sixty-three percent support an even greater increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. Even after local officials had pushed Occupy protesters out of parks and public spaces, the movement’s excitement and energy were soon harnessed and co-opted by labor unions and community activists. The past two years have seen an explosion of worker unrest, especially among Wal-Mart employees, workers at fast-food chains, janitors, and hospital workers. In response, a growing number of cities – including Seattle, Kansas City and Los Angeles – have adopted municipal wages significantly above the federal standard of $7.25 an hour. Even Wal-Mart and McDonald's reluctantly agreed to boost their starting pay. Perhaps the most telling sign of OWS’s success is an action taken Aug. 5 by the staid federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Beginning in 2018, the SEC will require publicly traded corporations to disclose the pay gap between their chief executives and their workers. Soon after OWS started, politicians began echoing its concern about widening inequality. President Obama delivered several major speeches on the topic. But nowhere can the impact of the Occupy insurgency be better seen than in the fumbling efforts of some Republicans candidates – in 2012 and this year -- to tap into the national mood without sounding too anti-business and offending their corporate sponsors. No politician has captured the spirit of OWS as well as Bernie Sanders. Indeed, the Sanders surge – inspired by his relentless attacks on the political influence of the “billionaire class” and Wall Street banks, widening inequality, the declining living standards of the middle class, persistent poverty, and the rising cost of higher education -- is the political expression of the OWS movement. He’s called for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, breaking up big banks, providing tuition-free higher education, and nominating Supreme Court justices who will overturn the Citizens United ruling that equates money with free speech. Whether or not he captures the Democratic nomination, his campaign’s growing momentum has already shifted the public debate, pushing other candidates, including Hillary Clinton, to adopt more progressive positions. Sanders’ call for a “grass-roots political revolution” has inspired tens of thousands of Americans, including many young people, to participate in electoral politics, some for the first time. At the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix in July, BLM activists interrupted a town hall meeting with Sanders and Martin O’Malley, another Democratic presidential aspirant, demanding that they present "concrete actions" for addressing racial injustice. "Your 'progressive' is not enough," said Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. "We need more." On Aug. 8, BLM protesters disrupted a Seattle rally defending Social Security to which Sanders had been invited. Seconds after he took the stage, BLM protesters grabbed the microphone from Sanders. Many in the audience booed while one of the protesters addressed the crowd: "My name is Marissa Janae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Seattle. I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me.” Johnson led a four-minute moment of silence in honor of Michael Brown and demanded that Sanders release his plans to reform policing. When it appeared that Johnson would not give back the microphone to Sanders, the organizers decided to shut down the rally. Sanders never got a chance to speak. Sanders was taken aback by the criticism and the tactics. Some of his supporters were angry that the BLMers would attack and embarrass the Democrats’ most progressive candidate, arguing that his economic policy agenda would disproportionately help African-Americans. Why not focus their anger on the Republican candidates or on Hillary Clinton? In effect, the BLM activists were holding Sanders to a higher standard. They expected more of him – and of his liberal and progressive (and mostly white) supporters. They countered that his focus on economic issues was insufficient. They insisted that he specifically address the racism of the criminal justice system and the problem of police abuse in the black community. And they knew that disrupting Sanders rallies would generate lots of media publicity for BLM. BLM’s spat with Sanders reflects the persistent tension between “outsiders” and “insiders” in American politics. Outsiders engage in confrontation in order to get their voices heard and put new issues on the public agenda. Politicians have to decide whether to embrace or vilify the protesters and their issues. In this case, BLM’s protests may have actually strengthened Sanders’ growing movement. Sanders -- who began his activist career in the 1960s civil rights movement when he was arrested for demonstrating against segregated public schools in Chicago, and who, from the start of his campaign, has focused attention on the shockingly high unemployment rate among black youth -- moved quickly to address the BLM’s concerns. A week after BLM disrupted the Phoenix gathering, Sanders spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group founded by Martin Luther King Jr., where he said “black lives matter” and outlined a detailed set of initiatives to deal with racial inequality, which he posted on his campaign website. Then he hired an African-American woman -- Symone Sanders, the national youth chair of the Coalition on Juvenile Justice – as his press secretary. A well-respected activist, Symone Sanders has spoken at recent Sanders rallies and helped the Vermont senator sharpen his message on racial issues. His most recent stump speeches at huge rallies in Portland, Oregon, Oakland, California, and Los Angeles have included specific references to police misconduct, mass incarceration, the GOP’s efforts to suppress voting rights, and “institutional racism.” His comments about racism have gotten some of the loudest and most sustained cheers from the crowd at these rallies. Whether Sanders’ increasing emphasis on racial issues will attract more African-American voters and help him win his party’s nomination isn’t clear, but it was probably no coincidence that BLM did not disrupt Sanders’ rally in Los Angeles Monday night, and that the number of blacks among the 27,000 people in the crowd was considerably larger than in his other large events. On Tuesday, BLM protesters showed up at a Hillary Clinton event in New Hampshire and the following day the group interrupted a Jeb Bush rally in Las Vegas. Because BLM is highly decentralized, people with different political views, using different tactics, can claim to represent the movement, so it isn’t clear if BLM’s turn toward these other candidates is part of a national strategy, but it appears that BLM has made peace with the Sanders campaign. By fusing the concerns of both BLM and OWS, Sanders is echoing Martin Luther King’s concerns with both racial and economic justice. “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter," he asked, "if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?" He believed that America needed a "radical redistribution of economic and political power" as well as a dismantling of America’s racial caste system. It is often forgotten that the August 1963 protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was funded primarily by donations from labor unions. King was committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor movements. Speaking to a meeting of Teamsters union shop stewards in 1967, King said, "Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice." He was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support a strike of African-American sanitation workers. Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter reflect two parallel, overlapping, but distinct branches of progressive politics. Their commonalities are greater than their differences. Like OWS and other major protest movements, Black Lives Matters seemed to come out of nowhere, but was in reality a response to long-simmering concerns. Like OWS, it has attracted significant media coverage and galvanized public opinion. Like OWS, it emerged as a loosely structured, bottom-up movement without much funding, with little mainstream support, and with young and relatively inexperienced leaders. But within a year, Black Lives Matter has helped catalyze a national conversation about racial injustice and cajoled the major Democratic Party candidates for president – and other offices – to focus more attention on these issues. Even if, like OWS, the BLM movement falls by the wayside, its impact, like OWS’s, will endure.Throughout American history, advocates for racial justice and economic justice have sometimes been at odds, but they’ve also found common ground. In recent weeks we’ve watched this tension play out in a surprising way, when Black Lives Matters (BLM) activists disrupted Bernie Sanders rallies to demand that the socialist senator from Vermont focus more attention on racial inequities. Since the BLM movement emerged a year ago -- in reaction to the killing of an unarmed teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri – it has stirred controversy, particularly on the right. Many conservative commentators considered the young BLM activists too angry, unruly, confrontational and divisive. But BLM's attack on Sanders split progressives. Many progressive activists cheered the BLM’s protest, but others criticized them for going after Sanders rather than targeting more conservative candidates. In a short period of time, BLM has proved to be amazingly effective and influential. Despite having little funding and relatively few activists, the movement has helped inject the issue of police misconduct and the broader racial bias of our criminal justice system into the political debate. There’s been no sudden upsurge of racial profiling, arrests, beatings and killings of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers. Instead – thanks in part to BLM -- Americans have simply become more aware of the problem. The names of the victims of police abuse – Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and others -- have been seared into the national consciousness. By introducing the phrase “black lives matters” into our culture – primarily through the use of social media but also by engaging in protest and civil disobedience – BLM has shifted public opinion. A new Pew Research Center poll discovered that the number of Americans who believe that changes are needed to give African-Americans equal rights has swelled from 46 percent to 59 percent just in the past year. Among white Americans, the number has increased from 39 percent to 53 percent. Among Republicans, it spiked from 27 percent to 42 percent. This growing awareness has triggered calls for reform of police practices by politicians from President Barack Obama to local mayors. That BLM met with initial skepticism and criticism should come as no surprise. This happens to all protest movements when they first appear. When four black college students organized a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960 to protest Jim Crow racial segregation, even many black and white liberals thought that they were too radical. But their actions galvanized a new wave of civil rights protest. Within a few months, the sit-in movement spread to dozens of cities throughout the South and the activists started a new organization called the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Its growing base of supporters played key roles in the freedom rides, marches and voter registration drives that eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many SNCC activists became key leaders in subsequent battles for social justice, including congressman John Lewis and Marion Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. The same dynamic occurred when feminist groups in the 1960s and 1970s began protesting against male-dominated institutions, when environmental activists sought to shut down nuclear power plants, and when ACT-UP organized “die-ins,” rallies and other disruptions to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. Ideas that were once considered “radical” moved from the margins to the mainstream, changing both the culture and public policy. The most recent counterpart to BLM is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. In September 2011, a handful of activists took over Zuccotti Park in New York City to draw attention to the nation’s widening wealth and income gap. The protests quickly spread to cities and towns around the country and changed our national conversation. At kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in offices and factories, and in newsrooms, Americans began talking about economic inequality, corporate greed, and how America’s super-rich have damaged our economy and our democracy. Occupy Wall Street provided Americans with a language—the “1 percent” and the “99 percent”—to explain the nation’s widening economic divide, the undue political influence of the super-rich, and the damage triggered by Wall Street’s reckless behavior that crashed the economy and caused enormous suffering and hardship. Although many Americans disagreed with its disruptive tactics, the OWS movement nevertheless helped change public opinion. About three-quarters (74 percent) of Americans—including 84 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 62 percent of Republicans—believe that corporations have too much influence on American life and politics today, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. A Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of Americans believe that "the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy." Eighty-four percent of Americans think that money has too much influence in politics. Slightly more Americans (85 percent) want an overhaul of our campaign finance system. Seventy-three percent of Americans favor tougher rules for Wall Street financial companies and 58 percent of Americans support breaking up “big banks like Citigroup.” Sixty-nine percent of Americans—including 90 percent of Democrats, 69 percent of independents, and 45 percent of Republicans—believe that the government should help reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else. Eighty-two percent of Americans—including 94 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents, and 64 percent of Republicans—think the government should help reduce poverty. A recent poll by Hart Research Associates found that 75 percent of Americans (including 53 percent of Republicans) support an increase in the federal minimum wage to $12.50 an hour by 2020. Sixty-three percent support an even greater increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. Even after local officials had pushed Occupy protesters out of parks and public spaces, the movement’s excitement and energy were soon harnessed and co-opted by labor unions and community activists. The past two years have seen an explosion of worker unrest, especially among Wal-Mart employees, workers at fast-food chains, janitors, and hospital workers. In response, a growing number of cities – including Seattle, Kansas City and Los Angeles – have adopted municipal wages significantly above the federal standard of $7.25 an hour. Even Wal-Mart and McDonald's reluctantly agreed to boost their starting pay. Perhaps the most telling sign of OWS’s success is an action taken Aug. 5 by the staid federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Beginning in 2018, the SEC will require publicly traded corporations to disclose the pay gap between their chief executives and their workers. Soon after OWS started, politicians began echoing its concern about widening inequality. President Obama delivered several major speeches on the topic. But nowhere can the impact of the Occupy insurgency be better seen than in the fumbling efforts of some Republicans candidates – in 2012 and this year -- to tap into the national mood without sounding too anti-business and offending their corporate sponsors. No politician has captured the spirit of OWS as well as Bernie Sanders. Indeed, the Sanders surge – inspired by his relentless attacks on the political influence of the “billionaire class” and Wall Street banks, widening inequality, the declining living standards of the middle class, persistent poverty, and the rising cost of higher education -- is the political expression of the OWS movement. He’s called for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, breaking up big banks, providing tuition-free higher education, and nominating Supreme Court justices who will overturn the Citizens United ruling that equates money with free speech. Whether or not he captures the Democratic nomination, his campaign’s growing momentum has already shifted the public debate, pushing other candidates, including Hillary Clinton, to adopt more progressive positions. Sanders’ call for a “grass-roots political revolution” has inspired tens of thousands of Americans, including many young people, to participate in electoral politics, some for the first time. At the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix in July, BLM activists interrupted a town hall meeting with Sanders and Martin O’Malley, another Democratic presidential aspirant, demanding that they present "concrete actions" for addressing racial injustice. "Your 'progressive' is not enough," said Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. "We need more." On Aug. 8, BLM protesters disrupted a Seattle rally defending Social Security to which Sanders had been invited. Seconds after he took the stage, BLM protesters grabbed the microphone from Sanders. Many in the audience booed while one of the protesters addressed the crowd: "My name is Marissa Janae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Seattle. I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me.” Johnson led a four-minute moment of silence in honor of Michael Brown and demanded that Sanders release his plans to reform policing. When it appeared that Johnson would not give back the microphone to Sanders, the organizers decided to shut down the rally. Sanders never got a chance to speak. Sanders was taken aback by the criticism and the tactics. Some of his supporters were angry that the BLMers would attack and embarrass the Democrats’ most progressive candidate, arguing that his economic policy agenda would disproportionately help African-Americans. Why not focus their anger on the Republican candidates or on Hillary Clinton? In effect, the BLM activists were holding Sanders to a higher standard. They expected more of him – and of his liberal and progressive (and mostly white) supporters. They countered that his focus on economic issues was insufficient. They insisted that he specifically address the racism of the criminal justice system and the problem of police abuse in the black community. And they knew that disrupting Sanders rallies would generate lots of media publicity for BLM. BLM’s spat with Sanders reflects the persistent tension between “outsiders” and “insiders” in American politics. Outsiders engage in confrontation in order to get their voices heard and put new issues on the public agenda. Politicians have to decide whether to embrace or vilify the protesters and their issues. In this case, BLM’s protests may have actually strengthened Sanders’ growing movement. Sanders -- who began his activist career in the 1960s civil rights movement when he was arrested for demonstrating against segregated public schools in Chicago, and who, from the start of his campaign, has focused attention on the shockingly high unemployment rate among black youth -- moved quickly to address the BLM’s concerns. A week after BLM disrupted the Phoenix gathering, Sanders spoke to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group founded by Martin Luther King Jr., where he said “black lives matter” and outlined a detailed set of initiatives to deal with racial inequality, which he posted on his campaign website. Then he hired an African-American woman -- Symone Sanders, the national youth chair of the Coalition on Juvenile Justice – as his press secretary. A well-respected activist, Symone Sanders has spoken at recent Sanders rallies and helped the Vermont senator sharpen his message on racial issues. His most recent stump speeches at huge rallies in Portland, Oregon, Oakland, California, and Los Angeles have included specific references to police misconduct, mass incarceration, the GOP’s efforts to suppress voting rights, and “institutional racism.” His comments about racism have gotten some of the loudest and most sustained cheers from the crowd at these rallies. Whether Sanders’ increasing emphasis on racial issues will attract more African-American voters and help him win his party’s nomination isn’t clear, but it was probably no coincidence that BLM did not disrupt Sanders’ rally in Los Angeles Monday night, and that the number of blacks among the 27,000 people in the crowd was considerably larger than in his other large events. On Tuesday, BLM protesters showed up at a Hillary Clinton event in New Hampshire and the following day the group interrupted a Jeb Bush rally in Las Vegas. Because BLM is highly decentralized, people with different political views, using different tactics, can claim to represent the movement, so it isn’t clear if BLM’s turn toward these other candidates is part of a national strategy, but it appears that BLM has made peace with the Sanders campaign. By fusing the concerns of both BLM and OWS, Sanders is echoing Martin Luther King’s concerns with both racial and economic justice. “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter," he asked, "if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?" He believed that America needed a "radical redistribution of economic and political power" as well as a dismantling of America’s racial caste system. It is often forgotten that the August 1963 protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was funded primarily by donations from labor unions. King was committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor movements. Speaking to a meeting of Teamsters union shop stewards in 1967, King said, "Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice." He was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support a strike of African-American sanitation workers. Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter reflect two parallel, overlapping, but distinct branches of progressive politics. Their commonalities are greater than their differences. Like OWS and other major protest movements, Black Lives Matters seemed to come out of nowhere, but was in reality a response to long-simmering concerns. Like OWS, it has attracted significant media coverage and galvanized public opinion. Like OWS, it emerged as a loosely structured, bottom-up movement without much funding, with little mainstream support, and with young and relatively inexperienced leaders. But within a year, Black Lives Matter has helped catalyze a national conversation about racial injustice and cajoled the major Democratic Party candidates for president – and other offices – to focus more attention on these issues. Even if, like OWS, the BLM movement falls by the wayside, its impact, like OWS’s, will endure.
