Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 195

Trump Administration fires remaining members of HIV/AIDS council

(Credit: AP/Shutterstock/Salon)

The Trump administration fired remaining members of Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), which advises the White House on HIV and AIDS policies, on Dec. 27.  

According to reports in both the Washington Post and Newsweek, the dismissals were unexpected. This event comes nearly six months after several members resigned. At the time, some of the resigning members wrote an open letter in Newsweek, saying that the current administration didn’t “take the on-going epidemic or the needs of people living with HIV seriously.” 

The letter that Trump sent to members of the council on the 27th “thanked me for my past service and said that my appointment was terminated, effective immediately,” Patrick Sullivan, a member who was appointed in May 2016, told the Washington Post.  

Kaye Hayes, Executive Director or PACHA, confirmed the news to Salon.

“On December 27, 2017, the current members of Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) received a letter informing them that the Administration was terminating their appointments,” Hayes said in a statement. “They were also thanked for their leadership, dedication and commitment to the effort.”

The statement goes on to say that this was “a common occurrence during Administration changes.”

“The Obama Administration dismissed the George W. Bush Administration appointees to PACHA in order to bring in new voices. All PACHA members are eligible to apply to serve on the new council that will be convened in 2018,” the statement said.

Scott Schoettes, who was part of the group that quit in June, took to Twitter to voice his concerns about the firings.

Remaining #HIV/AIDS council members booted by @realDonaldTrump. No respect for their service. Dangerous that #Trump and Co. (Pence esp.) are eliminating few remaining people willing to push back against harmful policies, like abstinence-only sex ed. #WeObject #PACHA6 #Resist

— Scott A. Schoettes (@PozAdvocate) December 28, 2017

To Schoettes’ point: What may seem like a procedural firing encompasses a bigger issue: AIDS and HIV doesn’t appear to be a priority and concern to the White House. As Newsweek pointed out, the 2018 fiscal year budget proposed cutting funding to critical health programs– such as the HIV/AIDS one at at the Centers of Disease Control. The proposed cuts rightfully upset many HIV/AIDS activists. 

Trump’s move is yet another slap in the face to those with AIDS and HIV, and everyone fighting to increase awareness. 

Apple half-apologizes for intentionally slowing old phones

(Credit: Shutterstock)

Apple has turned over a new leaf in the final days of 2017. The tech conglomerate, which has famously shied away from admitting fault for design decisions, apologized on Thursday for allegedly intentionally slowing down older iPhones, and announced that it would offer customers $50 off its $79 price to replace old iPhone batteries.

“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making,” the statement says. “First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

While the gesture is friendly, Apple’s statement still denies the throttling allegations, then casts the blame on the battery.

When news first broke that Apple was intentionally slowing down its older iPhones, Apple released a statement to TechCrunch, explaining that unless they slow down performance, older batteries are at a higher risk of abruptly shutting down.

“Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This is a vague and indirect way of saying that they are slowing the performance of their phones intentionally. While their rationale makes some physical sense — some recommend a battery change to fix the problem — some experts remain skeptical. In a conversation with Ed Varga, the owner of an independent San Francisco iPhone repair shop, iPhone Repair SF, he explained that battery replacements might not be the right solution to fixing the speed of an old iPhone.

“Until Apple changes the backend of iOS that is doing the throttling, getting a new battery won’t necessarily help your older iPhone perform faster,” he told Salon. In other words, Apple’s software is what makes the phone slow down under certain conditions. “My understanding of how the current throttling works is that it is throttling based purely on which model iPhone you have. It does not seem to use data on your battery’s actual health that iOS collects and then decides whether to throttle.”

Apple said in its statement that they will be issuing an iOS software update that will give users more visibility into “the health of their iPhone’s battery,” but it’s unclear how they intend to change iOS, the operating system that runs the iPhone.

Varga said since news broke about the iPhone, his shop has experienced an uptick in consumers looking for battery replacements. A second shop Salon spoke to said they’ve experienced the same trend. Now, with the discounted battery replacement issued by Apple, some independent shops, like iPhone Repair SF, are lowering their battery replacement prices to match Apple’s.

Still, the controversy surrounding Apple has never really been about the throttling—it’s been about the lack of transparency that has angered the public.

As Vice’s Motherboard writer Jason Koebler wrote:

“The scandal here is not that Apple throttles your phone. It’s that it doesn’t tell you it throttles, and makes it hard for you to fix the problem (or for you to know about your repair options). The scandal is in the design of the iPhone itself, which requires proprietary tools to open and various components to be removed in order to replace the only part of the phone that is guaranteed to go bad. The scandal is that Apple actively discourages you from trying to fix your own phone, lobbies against legislation that would make it easy for you to restore your phone to peak condition. If you’re mad about this, you’re not crazy—you have every right to be.”

And people are indeed angry. In just one week since the news broke, consumers around the world have filed lawsuits against the company. In one lawsuit that was filed in the Eastern District of New York, the lack of transparency is noted: “Had Plaintiffs been informed by Apple that a simple battery replacement would have improved the performance of their iPhones, Plaintiffs would have chosen to replace their batteries which was clearly a more cost-effective method rather than upgrading to a new iPhone that was extremely costly.”

Apple is also facing lawsuits from consumers in California, New York, New Jersey, France and Israel.

What’s in store for the White House staff in 2018? Good question

Sean Spicer; Anthony Scaramucci (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon/Richard Drew)

As the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency draws to an end, what lies ahead in the next 12 months is anyone’s guess. In large measure, this is because many of the top positions in the Trump White House have seen historic levels of staff turnover.

According to Brookings Institution senior fellow Kathryn Dunn-Tenpas, the administration experienced a 34 percent turnover rate, far higher than past presidencies. In her tally, 21 of the 61 most senior staffers have either been fired, resigned, or been reassigned. By comparison, the White House with the next-highest number of staff departures was Ronald Reagan’s, with a much lower (17) turnover rate at the end of 1981.

The dramatic staff turnover may partly owe itself to the fact that many of Trump’s picks for top positions had no government experience, such as his departed chief strategist Steve Bannon or the very short-serving communications director Anthony Scaramucci. In other cases, such as that of White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Trump’s famously disorganized and impromptu style proved too difficult to deal with. In the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, running afoul of the law seems to have been an issue.

Legal issues may also lead to the exit of one of Trump’s top aides, his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. According to the New York Times, Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly has purportedly discussed the idea of Kushner leaving the White House around New Year’s. Kelly disputed those reports, however.

Yet for all the turmoil, plenty of people at the top of the White House have retained their positions, including senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a true believer in Trump’s populist-style campaign rhetoric which has thus far had almost no policy repercussions. Despite coming at politics from a very different place than the more centrist Kushner or the Christian conservatism of Mike Pence, Miller has managed to hang on as one of the very few top advisers who have stayed with Trump since his campaign days.

Miller’s ability to keep the president’s loyalty may be a big factor in 2018, especially in the early months when Trump’s executive order repealing former president Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows some people who were brought to the country illegally to avoid deportation, goes into full effect. Democrats and pro-immigration Republicans have wanted to reach a deal to enable DACA participants to remain in the country; thus far, Trump, with urging from Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has resisted. Both aides have been pushing Trump to offer a deal where DACA participants get to stay in the country in exchange for Democratic cooperation on the president’s much-ballyhooed border wall.

Trump stuck to that position in a Friday tweet:

The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer will join Republican congressional leaders next Wednesday to discuss DACA and a possible deal to avoid a government shutdown.

“We’re not going to negotiate through the press and look forward to a serious negotiation at Wednesday’s meeting when we come back,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement.

Obama is tweeting out the best “good news” stories of 2017, because he knows what we need right now

(Credit: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

To say 2017 has been a rough year would be the height of understatement.

Hurricanes have destroyed entire countries. A certain supreme leader has threatened the U.S. with nuclear war and our president seems more than game to join in on the fun. Nazism is back in full swing, Tom Petty is dead, our president is looking to undo all of the progress that has been made in the past 60 years and the GOP adopted a hard anti-duckling position. Really, that’s all just the tip of an iceberg made out of irradiated garbage and Blake Shelton CDs.

But 2017 wasn’t all bad. In fact, former President Barack Obama is here to remind us all that some good did happen in the last 12 months.

Obama took to Twitter on Friday morning to send out his list of the best good-news stories of year, highlighting three individuals who used their power and influence to help transform the world around them.

“As we count down to the new year, we get to reflect and prepare for what’s ahead,” Obama tweeted. “For all the bad news that seemed to dominate our collective consciousness, there are countless stories from this year that remind us what’s best about America.”

As we count down to the new year, we get to reflect and prepare for what’s ahead. For all the bad news that seemed to dominate our collective consciousness, there are countless stories from this year that remind us what's best about America.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2017

Obama first highlighted Kat Creech, a Houston wedding planner who transformed a small, canceled wedding party into a Hurricane-relief drive that, to her surprise, amassed hundreds of volunteers. Creech put her planning skills to good use and eventually founded Recovery Houston, which has since grown to over 4,200 volunteers and helped to repair over 250 homes in the greater Houston area.

Kat Creech, a wedding planner in Houston, turned a postponed wedding into a volunteer opportunity for Hurricane Harvey victims. Thirty wedding guests became an organization of hundreds of volunteers. That’s a story from 2017. https://t.co/yxhjwkr5Se

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2017

Obama then moved on to Chris Long, defensive end for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. Long began donating his game checks in order to fund scholarships for children in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia in response to that city’s August riots in which white supremacists marched in the streets and one extremist killed Heather Heyer.

Though Long first intended to only donate the check from his first six games, he eventually pledged to give up his entire 2017 salary in order to further advance equal educational opportunities across Philadelphia, St. Louis and New England. Inspired by his generosity, Long’s fans and fellow teammates began matching his donations.

Chris Long gave his paychecks from the first six games of the NFL season to fund scholarships in Charlottesville, VA. He wanted to do more, so he decided to give away an entire season’s salary. That’s a story from 2017. https://t.co/NL0RoARkan

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2017

“I’ve been lucky. I’ve made a lot of money for playing a game. I’ve been humbled by the opportunity to just be able to continue to play football for a living,” Long said. “While it’s not an Earth-shattering amount of money, it’s more about for me doing what I love for something that’s important to me, than it is the actual number.”

Finally, Obama looked to Jahkil Jackson, a 10-year-old from Chicago dedicated to helping the homeless. Jackson and his family keep “blessing bags” comprised of socks, toiletries and snacks in the back of their car. When they see someone who is homeless on the street, “I yell, ‘Pull over! We have to give them a bag!'” Jackson says.

With the help of family, friends and his Chicago-classmates, Jackson has so far distributed 5,000 bags, helped to start a non-profit to aid in distribution, Project I Am, and won the 2017 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. Jackson has donated the $5,000 that came with the prize to his organization.

“I want to make sure people in need aren’t just unknown,” Jackson told the Chicago Tribune. “I always say, ‘Don’t wait until you are an adult to be great. You can be great now!'”

Ten-year-old Jahkil Jackson is on a mission to help homeless people in Chicago. He created kits full of socks, toiletries, and food for those in need. Just this week, Jahkil reached his goal to give away 5,000 “blessing bags.” That’s a story from 2017. https://t.co/muxPZnEGkd

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2017

January 20th, 2017 could have easily been a well-deserved start to Obama’s permanent vacation, but with his dedication to making the world a better place and inspiring us to be the change we want to see, it’s no wonder Obama edged out our current commander-in-chief to be named America’s most admired man.

While it’s easy to focus on all of the negativity that has dominated this news cycle, Obama hopes these stories will inspire people across America. “Each of us can make a difference, and all of us ought to try,” he wrote. “So go keep changing the world in 2018.”

All across America people chose to get involved, get engaged and stand up. Each of us can make a difference, and all of us ought to try. So go keep changing the world in 2018.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 29, 2017

Thanks, Obama.

The EPA tries to turn a blind eye to carbon emissions

(Credit: AP)

Sheldon Whitehouse is a United States senator from Rhode Island.

In the recent Frontline documentary, “War on the EPA,” the CEO of the Murray Energy Corporation — the largest coal mining company in the United States — brags that he had given the Trump administration a three-page action plan on rolling back environmental regulations. Less than a year into his term, the president and his officials had already completed the first page, Murray Energy Corporation’s Bob Murray says in the film.

Indeed, the administration has gone straight to work undoing environmental safeguards: reevaluating emission standards for cars and trucks, pressing for the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, disbanding science advisory committees, lifting the moratorium on federal coal leasing, trying to expand offshore drilling, and opening national monuments and marine sanctuaries to energy companies. The EPA is working to eliminate rules on the leaking and flaring of methane and has rescinded requirements for reporting methane emissions. It is also stalling on monitoring carbon pollution. And, of course, the president announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

At the top of Murray’s wish list, Frontline reports, is repealing the Clean Power Plan, the 2015 EPA rule to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from American power plants. Many utilities and states support the initiative. But the big polluters do not. So it is in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. But any attempt to unravel Barack Obama’s signature environmental policy will likely have to survive a lengthy legal fight.

The benefits of the Clean Power Plan to public health, the climate, and the economy outweigh the costs of energy sector compliance by $26 billion to $45 billion every year, according to the EPA’s own calculations. In order to rescind the Clean Power Plan, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has to make those benefits disappear.

So he cooked the books, using two tricks:

The first derives from the fact that today’s carbon pollution causes harm and financial losses later — often many years after pollution is emitted. In financial accounting, future costs and benefits are balanced against present costs and benefits using a “discount rate.” The theory stipulates that it’s more valuable to receive a million dollars now than a million dollars, say, 20 years from now.

In 2015, the government set a 3 percent discount rate for the out-year costs of carbon pollution. In other words, a certain amount of carbon emissions costs $100 in harm and losses today, but is worth $97 one year later and roughly $94.26 two years later. Pruitt jacked that rate up to 7 percent, so out-year harm, injuries, and losses appear to cost less. Our children and grandchildren will suffer exactly the same harm, but this adjustment gives present-day polluters a big break on their emissions.

Pruitt’s second trick is to count only the harm from carbon pollution generated and accrued within the United States’ borders. In fact, we suffer from other countries’ emissions, and they suffer from ours. But if each country only counts its own emissions and its own harms, guess what happens? All the cross-border impacts never get counted. They still takes place in real life, but they vanish from the ledger.

As Michael Greenstone, an economist at the University of Chicago who helped develop the government’s estimate of the social cost of carbon, put it: Pruitt’s sleight of hand “was not evidence-based policymaking — this was policy-based evidence-making.”

Luckily, there’s a real obstacle to this fuzzy math becoming the new standard for pricing pollution. As the executive branch and Congress go about trying to blow up environmental regulations, the courts still stand in the way of the Clean Power Plan’s repeal.

They may take notice that these accounting stunts are “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act. They may take notice that Pruitt, who has long depended on campaign donations from the energy industry, has massive conflicts of interest in seeking the plan’s reversal.

They will surely note that the Supreme Court said in 2007 that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA is legally obligated to regulate them. They will surely note the agency issued its so-called “endangerment finding” in 2009, proclaiming that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations — a determination the D.C. Circuit resoundingly upheld in 2012. Hopefully, they will notice Pruitt’s stall tactics in preventing regulation of carbon pollution.

The Trump administration’s determination to carry out industry’s marching orders through bogus accounting or deliberate delay is a dire threat to environmental protection as we know it. But these tactics will face much stricter scrutiny in the truth-based arena of the federal courts.

Computer programs deciding how long people spend in jail

(Credit: Getty/sakhorn38)

The United States jails more of its citizens, by percentage and in raw numbers, than any other country on earth, including those we label dictatorships and criticize as human rights violators. Judge, jury and parole board verdicts are influenced by everything from lived experience to momentary mood to how recently participants have had a food break. Studies consistently show that being black counts against defendants, resulting in far longer, harsher penalties than white offenders get for the same crimes.

So what solution are courts now employing in order to overcome those biases? Let computers make sentencing decisions.

Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS, is perhaps the most widely used risk-assessment algorithm. The program, distributed by Northpointe Inc., uses data to make predictions about the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend. Essentially a digital questionnaire, COMPAS poses 137 queries, then uses the answers to determine, on a scale from 1 to 10, whether a defendant is at a high or low risk of committing more crimes. (No one, save for the manufacturer, knows precisely how COMPAS’ proprietary algorithm works, and Northpointe has repeatedly declined to offer greater transparency.)

Risk scores are supposed to be just one of a constellation of factors that inform sentencing decisions, but research has found those numbers often weigh heavily on sentencing decisions. Essentially, artificial intelligence machines are now the basis of critical life decisions for already vulnerable humans.

As you might guess, the problems with this practice have proven myriad. The most glaring issue relates to the tendency of computer programs to replicate the biases of their designers. That means along with say, the ability to crunch data in the blink of an eye, racism and sexism are also built into our AI machines. A 2016 ProPublica study found that COMPAS is “particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants.” The analysis also determined that white offenders were wrongly given particularly low scores that were poor predictors of their real rates of recidivism. Ellora Thadaney Israni, a former software engineer and current Harvard Law student, notes that without constant corrective upkeep to make AI programs like COMPAS unlearn their bigotry, those biases tend to be further compounded. “The computer isworse than the human,” Israni writes at the New York Times. “It is not simply parroting back to us our own biases, it is exacerbating them.”

Beyond helping an already racist system perpetuate justice inequalities, by reducing a defendant to a series of facts and data points without nuance or human understanding, risk assessments miss mitigating factors that offer a fuller picture. Israni notes that while judges and juries are notoriously prone to human failures in reason, it remains true that a “computer cannot look a defendant in the eye, account for a troubled childhood or disability, and recommend a rehabilitative sentence.” The alternative is true as well. Computers can miss red flags, while traits that look good on paper can outweigh more serious issues, favorably skewing a defendant’s score.

“A guy who has molested a small child every day for a year could still come out as a low risk because he probably has a job,” Mark Boessenecker, a Superior Court judge in California’s Napa County, told ProPublica. “Meanwhile, a drunk guy will look high risk because he’s homeless. These risk factors don’t tell you whether the guy ought to go to prison or not; the risk factors tell you more about what the probation conditions ought to be.”

At the end of the day, the ProPublica investigation found that COMPAS in particular, and risk assessment programs in general, are not very good at their jobs.

Only 20 percent of the people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so. When a full range of crimes were taken into account — including misdemeanors such as driving with an expired license — the algorithm was somewhat more accurate than a coin flip. Of those deemed likely to re-offend, 61 percent were arrested for any subsequent crimes within two years.

Risk assessment tools continue to be used in courtrooms around the country, despite so much troubling evidence and a recent court challenge. A Wisconsin man named Eric Loomis was sentenced to six years in jail for driving a stolen car and fleeing police, with the judge in the case citing Loomis’ high COMPAS score during sentencing. Loomis appealed the ruling up to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. In doing so, the court essentially (though not explicitly) gave its blessing to the program’s use.

In an era in which the Trump Department of Justice has repeatedly promised to push policies that make the justice system fail at even more turns, the use of AI programs in our courts is all the more dangerous. At the very least, courts—which don’t understand how the programs they use make the assessments they consider—should attempt to find more transparent systems and to mandate oversight that makes those systems function at optimal level. But that would actually be a departure from the way the courts have always functioned in this country, and it would require the U.S. to develop a real commitment to justice.

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

Best essays of 2017: Preyed upon by a Hollywood director

(Credit: Getty/Salon)

It happened on a weekday afternoon in early May 1998, as I walked south along Second Avenue. The man appeared as if from nowhere, panting, sweat beading on his balding brow. Bespectacled and potato-shaped, he looked like he was in his fifties — older than my father. I was 20 years old, but with my rosy cheeks that clung to a baby-faced pudginess, a pixie cut of bleached-blond hair, and my outfit that day — baggy jeans, sneakers, a mechanic-style snap-button shirt and no makeup —I looked younger. A dangerous combination of lonely, bored, curious and trusting, I stopped.

“I was eating lunch at that diner on the corner,” he said, pointing up the block with one sausage finger, “when I saw you walking down the street, and I thought, she would be perfect for this role in my new movie, so I had to chase you down.”

The man flipped open his leather satchel and pulled out a magazine, then rifled through it, opening to a dog-eared page that featured a photo of his face with his name printed underneath. Premeditated proof he was who he claimed to be: A Hollywood director.

Sure of his credentials, I went with him to the diner up the street where he had left his unfinished meal. How much trouble could I get into in the middle of the day, in a crowded restaurant? I sat with him for almost half an hour as he spoke of my potential. When we parted ways, he gave me an assignment. I was to go see his movie (starring famous actors) that was out in theaters that night. We would meet the next day to discuss at a coffee shop uptown.

Finally, the words that should have put a stop to the entire plot before it progressed any further: “Don’t tell anyone about any of this. Go to the movie alone.”

The next day, I arrived early to our meeting spot — a chain coffee shop on the Upper West Side where street numbers were higher than any I’d yet set foot on. To kill time before our appointment, I wandered into a magazine store a few blocks away. Flipping through the latest issue of Seventeen, I felt compelled to look up, turn my head. Silhouetted in the doorway of the store was The Director.

What a coincidence! To have never seen someone before, then to run into him twice in two days? To me, it felt fated, which only added to the seduction. He came in to meet me, and we left together for the coffee shop. On our way out, the man behind the counter said something to The Director about having seen him the week before with Madonna and then asked, “Who’s the new girl?”

At the coffee shop, I followed The Director to a table in the back where it was darker. I don’t remember what I drank or what I was wearing that day; I don’t remember what I told him about the movie, which I had gone to see the night before, though not alone. Keeping our rendezvous secret seemed illicit, so I had confessed to the only other person I knew in town — the boyfriend of a girl I had roomed with in Paris two years earlier — and I made him come with me. He was excited, too, that his friend had possibly just been cast in a Hollywood film. Fame by association is just as alluring.

I sat and listened to The Director talk. About his sex life, his sexual exploits, his famous friends with whom he shared outlandish (and sometimes sex-filled) adventures. He dropped names. Some I had heard of. I’m pretty sure there was talk of illegitimate children in there, too, but that could have been just for effect. I tried to keep any emotion from appearing on my face; I tried to remember this was a “business” meeting.

Then the talk turned to me, and, having nothing at all to add to the conversation, I did the only thing I knew how to do: tell the truth. I admitted that I had never had sex.

Had I been more clued in, I’m sure I would have seen The Director’s pupils react to my admission. “Cha-ching!” they would have declared. Isn’t a virgin a coveted big game trophy of sexual predation?

It was decided that the following Saturday, The Director and I would meet again — this time, at his hotel. Though I don’t remember the whole dialogue, I do remember these words coming out of The Director’s mouth: “Don’t worry. No matter what happens, I won’t f**k you.”

Writing about this 20 years later still brings me to a sad and angry and shameful place. Sad for that innocent and foolish girl. Angry that The Director lured me with promises of Hollywood acclaim; angry that I allowed myself to be dazzled by it. The shame of not having any clue as to what was going on. Mostly, the shame that I had allowed this to happen.

Now that I’m older, emboldened, I’ll wish I had stood up in that uptown coffee shop, thrown my lukewarm drink in his face and walked out. Or slapped his cheek and screamed something to the room like, “The Director is a big fat perv. And his movies suck. Big time!” Or, what he most likely deserved: kicked him — hard — in the nuts. Though he probably would have enjoyed that. Feisty one, he would have thought.

Instead, we walked to a nearby pizza joint where, a few minutes after sitting down, he told me his sick mother lived a couple of blocks away and he had to go check in on her. Did I mind waiting there for a few minutes, to keep an eye on his stuff?

He left and I sat there alone at the table, futzing with the shakers of hot pepper flakes and Parmesan as if they were chess pieces, ignorant as to who the real pawn was. The comforting scent of baking pizza hung thick in the air, making my mouth water.

As the sun shone through the front window, shifting then lengthening the shadows, I waited with The Director’s stuff: a white plastic shopping bag filled with I don’t know what — because I never looked — and an umbrella. I don’t know why I just didn’t leave these surely replaceable items at the counter and get myself out of there. But I was still under the impression that if I did everything right, I would be starring in a movie. And then, who knew where my life would lead me?

Why was being in a movie so important? More important than my safety, apparently. More important than my dignity. I don’t know. Because girls from the Canadian suburbs don’t wind up in Hollywood movies? And aren’t we meant to buy into the fantasy of being “discovered” while simply walking down the street?

At the time, I had been modeling full-time since I graduated high school at 17, but the bookings recently had been slow. For the previous three years, I had made myself amenable to an industry that I didn’t realize at the time only cared about me as long as I booked worked. I was a commodity, an object, bargained over, bought and sold. I told myself acting would be different. I envisioned my rise to fame. With a speaking role.

I don’t know how long I waited at the pizza place, but I do know that it was a long time. Too long.

Looking back, after having learned more about other people and myself, after studying psychology from both textbooks and hours of intentional observation, I’ll view this whole thing as a f**ked up set-up. I’ll feel queasy when I admit to myself that there was no ailing mother. What a line. Instead, I’ll create a scenario where The Director scopes out the pizzeria from some third-story window across the street, maybe with binoculars, keeping his eye on the prize, watching to see what it would do. And with this knowledge, The Director would conclude that he had absolute control over me. I mean, I sat and waited for over an hour with a plastic bag and a five-dollar umbrella. (The day was sunny, even, cloudless.) Knowing I was the type of girl who did as I was asked, The Director would know how far he could take things. And, as I would eventually learn from regrettable experiences yet-to-come, when a man says, “I’m not going to have sex with you,” that is in fact exactly what he intends to do.

Eventually The Director did return, grabbed his stuff, and, plans all set for our Saturday afternoon meeting, he handed me a piece of paper. A single page of hotel stationery with his room number and the French phrase, “Ton Avenir,” written across it in an infantile scrawl.

Your Future.

When I first heard about the multiple recent allegations against Harvey Weinstein, my mind immediately retrieved the details from what I experienced with The Director almost two decades ago. I didn’t know who he was back then, but I do now. He’s legit.

Once, when I was 36, a male friend who I thought I respected said to me: “Well, people are always going to try to take advantage of other people. It’s your fault if you allow it to happen.”

(This in response to a news story of a male fashion photographer using his position of power to allegedly manipulate and abuse unknowing models — again.)

My high school basketball coach who commented on my legs as I stepped off the school bus arriving at an away game. A group of construction workers sitting on a sidewalk who serenaded me with a rendition of ZZ Top’s “She got lay-eggs. . . . ” A photographer who peppered his conversation with the words “sexy” and “sensual” — as he spoke about Texas. Another photographer, who grabbed me by the hips, pulling me close, to get me to “loosen up” on set. A nightclub DJ who invited me to join him in his booth only to rub himself against my knees as I sat there, unable to push past him. A modeling agent who told me that I “didn’t want it bad enough,” alluding to girls who did; later, I’ll recognize this as an attempt to get me to ask him what I needed to do to show him just how bad I wanted a modeling career. A date who insisted he never heard the word “no” coming from my mouth. though I had whispered, spoken, then screamed it over and over and over. The Director.

I am no stranger to the varying degrees of sexual harassment and assault that women face. Every day.

Recently, a male fashion photographer said to me he didn’t think female models were taken advantage of sexually as much as male models were.

My response: “It happens more for the girls. They just don’t say anything.”

In the end, I didn’t go to The Director’s hotel as planned. As Saturday neared, I had grown more and more wary. His voice saying “No matter what happens, I won’t f**k you,” played over and over in my mind. No, I didn’t need to see what he meant by No matter what. Maybe I didn’t need to be in a movie that badly after all.

I called him in his room on Saturday morning to tell him I wouldn’t be coming over.

“Who did you talk to?” His words came out harsh, threatening.

“Nobody,” I said. I knew I had made the right decision.

After mumbling something about how I knew how to reach him if I changed my mind, he hung up.

What if I had gone to the hotel? Would I alone have been responsible for what happened next? Would it have been fully my fault if The Director had in fact f**ked me?

He was certainly a pro, I have to hand him that. Now I know: I was not the only girl he tried something like this with. And we know he is not the only man in the film industry to try something like this.

I hate to think I live in a world where there are people out there who will try to take advantage, and if I allow that to happen for whatever reason — moment of weakness, lapse in judgment, too many drinks, just plain curious, being utterly fooled — then it becomes my fault.

It is becoming clearer that this is an unfortunate undercurrent flowing below the surface of, well, everything: picking off the vulnerable from the pack to be preyed upon, coerced into doing things they might not feel comfortable with. Because the promised outcome, the hoped-for reward is attention, recognition, a type of acceptance. Along with, of course, money, the desire for which has a strange way of making people do things. I, too, am guilty.

The comfort I can take from this is that I didn’t follow through to the end, that in this particular situation I emerged physically unscathed. But I do have the memory of the entire episode — this episode responsible for removing any last trace of lofty dreamer I had left inside of me and shattering any remnants of trusting others and their stupid promises — and the accompanying feelings that arise sometimes, whether I give them permission to or not. I grieve the loss of that girl, my former self. But I also feel an intense sadness for the girls who didn’t escape and for those who won’t in the future.

No, it’s not their fault.

The Director is still around, doing his thing. I wonder if he’s still using this same technique to cast his films. I wonder how many other women have similar stories to this one. I wonder how many men use their power and influence to target and silence, as they continue to shroud their behavior with shitty excuses.

Even if I were to name The Director, what good would it do? He would claim this didn’t happen. My story? Attention-seeking and bogus. His word against mine. Who am I to be believed? Simply one of many. A nobody. Forgettable.

As with many things I lived through, I only told my mother part of the story, unable to break her heart. Every now and then, I fake a smile as she asks: “Remember the time you were discovered by that Hollywood director?”

But as Amber Tamblyn recently wrote in an Op-Ed for The New York Times: “We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir. And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.”

This, finally, is my song.

2017’s most memorable TV moments

Kellyanne Conway (Credit: NBC)

We can pull out best episodes of television, best performances within those episodes, or even compile lists of the given year’s top series. When ruminating upon the flaming manure pile that is 2017, it may be helpful to recall our TV experiences in a fashion similar to processing extended periods of stress. That is, we consider them moment by moment.

By definition, the majority of these flashes were fleeting. These ten flared brightly enough to burn a spot in the memory, establishing their significance as cultural signposts, or unique blips in time, by conveying a message with simple brilliance or, in the case of one entry, fabulous cruelty.

Hannah Baker’s suicide in Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why”

When this series debuted at the end of March, it quickly became a social media phenomenon, sparking debate as to whether the graphic depiction of 17-year-old Hannah (Katherine Langford) committing suicide was justifiable or irresponsible. The plot leading up to the scene in question is driven by her posthumous circulation of a series of cassette recordings, in which she provides 13 confessional accounts of the reasons she decided to kill herself.

In addition to inspiring heated arguments as to whether the series glamorizes suicidal ideation, “13 Reasons Why” reignited the age-old discussion about whether schools and parents should ban troubling and possibly irresponsible material or face it head-on. Adults have contended with this in various incarnations even before the dawn of the information age. Now the question becomes whether banning such content is even possible when TV series and movies are available on countless platforms, ensuring such things will be accessible to kids even if their parents and teachers don’t have them in plain sight — or even when they do.

The Oscars upset

“Moonlight” won best picture at the 2017 Academy Awards. If not for a gaffe involving the wrong card being placed in the Best Picture envelope, and a very confused Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in “let’s get on with the show” mode, the show may have paused and prevented “La La Land” from being initially announced as the top prize winner. In the insanity that followed, “Moonlight” received its due after the producers of “La La Land” spewed out their speeches which, unfortunately, left the producers of the actual winner in the awkward position of accepting the award after the runners up had already done so.

The whole event made for strange television and had viewers examining the goof for days afterward, which wasn’t ideal for the Oscars telecast producers or host Jimmy Kimmel, who had a great night until that very confusing moment. It was also an example of an underdog winning for once, and strange as it may seem, that counts as a feel-good story in 2017.

“Angry gets s**t done”: Mr. Nancy, “American Gods”

All told, Orlando Jones didn’t receive a lot of screen time in the first season of Bryan Fuller and Michael Green’s series. But his first appearance as Mr. Nancy, author Neil Gaiman’s version of the trickster god Anansi, left quite an impression by simply speaking the truth to his supplicants, captured men in a slave ship bound for America. One prays to Anansi for salvation; he instead tells them the truth: No matter what they do, he says, they’re f**ked. Not only that, their descendants born into this New World are also f**ked.

This does not please the faithful, but it does activate them to take matters into their own hands and address the pointlessness of any temporary deliverance a god might offer with effective, fiery rage. Like Mr. Nancy says: Angry gets s**t done.

“Alternative facts”: Kellyanne Conway to Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press”

January 22, 2017 was little more than 11 months ago, but if it feels like eons, that’s because it marked the official beginning of the post-truth, post-fact world currently threatening to unravel our democracy and our sanity. Donald Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, coined the term during an interview that wasn’t so much a collection of pivots as it was a marathon of verbal pirouetting, as Conway refused to answer Todd’s question as to why Sean Spicer massively inflated the crowd size for Trump’s inauguration in his first act as press secretary. Conway’s, um, inspired reframing of Spicer’s outright falsehood seemed patently ridiculous at the time. The problem is that Spicer was terrible at selling untruths. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on the other hand, is such an oily pro at dispensing lies that watching White House correspondents question her is about as effective and satisfying as lobbing soft butter at a non-stick pan. Everything slides right off, and the world just keeping on frying.

“This video, it just broke me.” Trevor Noah’s Philando Castile monologues on “The Daily Show”

It took more than a year after his debut for “Daily Show” viewers to fully let go of Jon Stewart and allow Noah to find his own style and voice.  However, it was not until the world witnessed the acquittal of the officer who fatally shot Philando Castile in front of his girlfriend and child that Noah stepped into the late night host’s unspoken role of emotional filter.

Over the course of three nights, Noah directly addressed the shooting of Castile, a black man and a gun owner who, during the stop with police that ended his life, did everything correctly: He revealed to the officer that he was carrying a legally purchased firearm for which he had a permit. First Noah wondered aloud why the N.R.A. had remained silent about Castile’s shooting. On the second night, in a behind-the-scenes moment released online, he noted that in the six years he’s lived in the U.S., police have stopped him somewhere between eight and 10 times.

But it was the dash-cam footage of the traffic stop that cemented the powerful frustration and sorrow Noah and so many others felt about the outcome of the trial. “The Daily Show” played it in full, along with the video posted by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, pointing out that even after witnessing the man she loved being shot dead, Reynolds still has the presence of mind to be deferential to the policeman. “In that moment, the cop has panicked,” Noah observes. “But clearly, black people never forget their training.”

Noah came into his own as a late-night host some time ago. But in those June telecasts, he made a visceral connection with his audience by speaking the truth with passion and authority. The audience did not applaud or laugh. This only confirms that Noah’s monologue hit its target.

“Welcome to Hell”/ “Pervatol” (tie): “Saturday Night Live” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” skits

More than two months after Harvey Weinstein’s outing as a sexual predator enabled by the entertainment industry, we’re still fielding new revelations about men in media, entertainment and politics abusing their power, and the women in their orbit. And in case you were wondering, this weeks-long bombarding with details of various assaults and misdeeds, though necessary, is draining.

Kudos to the women of “Saturday Night Live” and the writers on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” for finding ways to add levity to a situation that is no laughing matter. While the “Late Night” skit parodied a pharmaceutical ad for “the first sleep aid specifically designed for sexual predators,” the “SNL” sketch features Saoirse Ronan, Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones and Melissa Villaseñor as pop singers cluing men in to the fact that life for women has always been Hell. “Oh,” Bryant purrs, “and this ain’t a girl group. We just travel in a pack for safety.”

“This Is Us” and lessons on accepting and letting go, with its “Memphis” episode

“You deserve the beautiful life you made.” These are the parting words William (Ron Cephas Jones), a recovering drug addict and down-and-out musician, bestows upon Randall (Sterling K. Brown), the son he gave up at birth. Every episode of “This Is Us” can be relied upon to deliver at least one or two tearjerker moments. This one is no exception. But “Memphis” also completes the first season’s expertly rendered portrait of redemption through the story of a character type television has historically and lazily treated with an air of dismissal. Instead, its writers transform the William’s story, and the chapters he builds with his son at his life’s end, into an examination of human frailty. The message that culminates in “Memphis” is beautifully simple: None of us is immune to sorrow and beyond making mistakes, and all of us deserve second chances when life places them on our doorstep.

The reunion dance in “Book of Nora,” “The Leftovers”

Everything you just read about “Memphis” applies to the finale of “The Leftovers,” and then some. The HBO series’ last hour reconnects Nora and her long lost lover Kevin two decades after Nora quits him and makes a journey into an alternate reality. There, the departed two percent of the Earth’s population, including her lost husband and children, are happily getting on with their lives. Kevin feigns not knowing who Nora is, but eventually drops the façade, and they are tearfully reunited at a dance in the center of an Australian town, where they don’t know the hosts but are welcomed nevertheless.

“The Leftovers” is nothing if not a quilt of questions about the nature of existence, but that slow dance between Nora and Kevin — first metaphorical, then, by the end of the episode, literal — simplifies the meaning of life down to a couple of concepts. First, the only fate is the one we create. And second, the goal of living is connection: to love someone or something madly enough to travel across time to be with them. There are other points, too, but for now these are the ones we needed to be reminded of.

“Tell Cersei it was me,” Olenna Tyrell’s parting shot on “Game of Thrones”

The Queen of Thorns was honest to a fault. This was her greatest charm and her ultimate undoing.

Cornered in her last moments, she remained regal, drank her death without hesitation and delivered her own coup de grace, revealing her role as the mastermind of Joffrey Baratheon’s death . . . and shattering Jaime Lannister’s heart in the process. In that moment, Jaime realized his part in allowing false accusations against his brother Tyrion to stand, a decision that lead to his father’s killing, Tyrion’s banishment and, as Jaime would soon discover, the arrival of dragons into his lands. The ultimate last word is one for which there is no comeback. Olenna served hers cold.

“No no no no no no” times infinity, on “Better Things”

The past year reads like a horror anthology of the mindlessness women have to contend with, featuring tales ranging from the mildly traumatic to scarring. But it’s also dawned on many people, male and female alike, how common it is for even well-meaning men to make idiotic assumptions about how the women in their lives feel about them.

The “Blackout” episode of “Better Things” sums up this frustration in one very short word, delivered many times in succession when Pamela Adlon’s character Sam reacts to her friend Jeff’s misguided attempt to turn a tender platonic moment to his advantage. But as 2017 closes, I think it’s safe to say that Sam speaks for many of us when she delivers her definitive response, seen in this clip.

No to all of it, 2017. No no no no no. And yes to 2018. Yes. Please.

I’m praying for Erica Garner, activist and truth-teller

Erica Garner (Credit: Getty/Andrew Burton)

Give people their roses while they can still smell them.

Erica Garner — daughter of Eric Garner, a man killed on Staten Island by a police officer in 2014, sparking widespread outrage and protests — suffered a heart attack on Saturday. As of press time, Garner remains in a coma on life support in an intensive care unit at Brooklyn Hospital.

“The Garner/Snipes family wants to thank you all for your prayers and support,” the family said in a statement to the New York Daily News. “At this moment, there are no updates on Erica’s condition. They ask that you take this holiday to enjoy your loved ones and for self care. More updates will come as they are available.”

Garner, 27, dedicated her life to activism after her father died from an illegal choke hold administered by New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo. Though Pantaleo’s chokehold and Eric Garner’s haunting cry of “I can’t breathe!” were caught on tape, a grand jury declined to indict the officer, an action that helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

I met Erica Garner in 2016 at a town hall held by Barack Obama and ABC News in Washington, D.C. We were both upset by some of the remarks made by the then-president, specifically regarding how he spoke about police violence, and I was even more upset that she didn’t get a chance to speak. Her dad’s death had focused international attention on the issue of police brutality against black Americans, and she had traveled all the way from New York to D.C. because she was promised a chance to address the president. Garner stormed out of the room, letting everyone have it, including the Secret Service. Ultimately, she was given the opportunity to speak with Obama and told him how she really felt. She didn’t kiss up to him or beg to take a picture with him because he was the first black president; she gave him the hard facts about what black people were really going through all over the country at the time, and challenged him to do something about her father’s death.

We traveled back to train station together, talking about the town hall, police violence and the problems with modern activism. Erica gets it; she’s extremely intelligent, funny, raw and understands these issues. I’m sorry that the death of her father brought her into activism, but I am blessed to have had the chance to meet her. Many were put off by her actions at the town hall, but I was inspired. She is the type of leader we need in our communities, in government and representing us in the media: A person who bathes in honesty and is not scared to speak truth to power, who will call B.S. when she sees it, even at the highest level.

I recently interviewed Matt Taibbi, author of “I Can’t Breathe,” a book about the killing of Eric Garner. Taibbi spent a lot of time working with Erica on the project.

“I said to her, there’s a lot of different ways I can tell this story,” Taibbi said to me. “I could tell about his good qualities and his bad qualities, or I could just talk about the good side.”

“She said it’s important for people to understand and to see him as a whole human being,” he continued. “And that moment was really important to me.”

And that’s who Erica Garner is — she’s the opposite of phony, and she speaks from the heart. She doesn’t use opportunities like books and interviews to push false narratives; rather, she gives us the real truth in a sobering way that’s key to creating the changes we’d like to see.

I pray that she recovers, and I hope to have the opportunity to join her in the fight to end structural racism.

Threats against Kelly Marie Tran highlight a fear of women who break sexist stereotypes

Kelly Marie Tran (Credit: AP/Jordan Strauss)

Kelly Marie Tran has many reasons to celebrate this new year. After a decade of trying to “make it” in Hollywood, she landed a role in an iconic film as a lead character: Rose Tico in “Stars Wars: The Last Jedi. In her breakout role, she plays a Resistance maintenance worker — talk about life imitating art.

We are all aware of Hollywood’s gender issue, which worsens when it intersects with race. Hence, the Vietnamese-American actress joins the small cohort — 6 percent, as of 2016 — of Asian American actresses who have either been the primary protagonist, a major character, or had a speaking role in a top 100 grossing film. 

Just as Tran overcame the high barrier for Asian-American women in Hollywood, racist trolls had trouble grappling with the fact that an Asian woman starred in a “Star Wars” film. And last week, they emerged from hiding to throw a virtual tantrum: first, on fan-made encyclopedia Fandom, trolls swarmed the entry for Tran’s character Rose Tico, filling it with racist slurs and changing her character’s name to “Ching Chong Wing Tong” and calling the character a “dumbass b*tch.” Clever.

The racist comments were removed, and Fandom replied to the vandalism publicly reminding the public they have a zero-tolerance for that type of behavior.

“FANDOM has a zero tolerance policy for vandalism, inclusive of racism and harassment,” the company told Newsweek. “The wiki admins take this very seriously and took the steps to resolve this situation as quickly as possible, including escalation to our team, and subsequent lockdown. This lockdown will remain for the foreseeable future and we will be closely monitoring activity on this wiki.”

The crusade against Tran wasn’t limited to one fan site, however. Right-wing internet personality Paul Ray Ramsey — whom some commentators such as the New York Times have tied to the alt-right movement, but who personally denies the association — went on to make fun of her body in a tweet, and then made a video about the internet’s response to it.

It’s worth noting that Tran isn’t the only woman of color in the movie. Lupita Nyong’o also stars in it as CGI character Maz Kanata. Fortunately, it appears she hasn’t received the same type of treatment.

But this only leads to a bigger question: does the backlash against Tran have to do exclusively with her race and gender, or is it that white privileged men are afraid of a strong, masculine woman on-screen? Is it also that when a woman isn’t hypersexualized in a Hollywood film — like Tran’s character, who wears her hair pulled back and is modestly clothed, showing no bare skin — her presence becomes suspect to a certain narrow-minded group of people?

I can’t help but wonder: if Tran’s character aligned with the misogynistic and racist stereotype of Asian women as submissive and seductive, would the trolls have still come out? If Tran were eye candy, objectified for a male audience, would she have rankled the same demographic?

Perhaps this is a reflection of a bigger trend in our society, and one that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s election loss. When a woman acts out of gender stereotypes, she is more subjected to abuse and harassment. Studies have actually proved this. As mentioned in this article in The Atlantic, “Fear of a Female President,” Jennifer Berdahl of the University of British Columbia found that women who “deviated from traditional gender roles — by occupying a ‘man’s’ job or having a ‘masculine’ personality” were “disproportionately targeted for sexual harassment.”

And maybe that’s the issue in Tran’s. Yes, she’s an Asian women facing down racist and sexist trolls; but also, her presence in the film was not meant to please men.

Tran has, of course, handled the comments with grace, sharing her words on Instagram: “It makes me happy to know that we made something that’s starting a dialogue. My heart is so full, and my goals are so clear. Let’s tell more stories. Let’s have more conversations. Let’s get to know lives and worlds different from our own. And most of all — let’s open our hearts and accept our differences.”

May the force be with her and all women breaking barriers.