Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 314

The museum of “Enslavement and Mass Incarceration” will open in 2018 – and not a moment too soon

(Credit: Wikimedia)

With the intense debate happening about the removal of the Confederate statues across America, pro-Confederate memorialists, including our president, have been obsessed with invoking the argument that ‘we are tearing down our history.’ It’s an ironic statement given perhaps no country ever has been more bent on silencing its own history than the United States.

As journalist Wesley Lowery tweeted after Charlottesville, “I don’t know anyone who wants Confederate monuments gone who doesn’t also want *more* public education about slavery.”

To combat America’s general reticence when it comes to acknowledging its racial foundation and the way those racial caste systems morphed and evolved, attorney Bryan Stevenson, through his organization, Equal Justice Initiative, will open a new museum, “From enslavement to Mass Incarceration”, in 2018.

The African American history museum emerged from a report EJI published in 2013 titled “Slavery in America.” EJI wrote on their website about the museum’s motivations:

This museum is designed to change the way we think about race in America. The United States has done very little to acknowledge the legacy of genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of black people, lynching, and racial segregation. As a result, racial disparities continue to burden people of color; the criminal justice system is infected with racial bias; and a presumption of dangerousness and guilt has led to mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and police violence against young people of color.

The museum is scheduled to open in April, EJI said, and on the land of a former slave warehouse (where EJI resides) in Montgomery, Alabama. “The museum’s location at the site of an Alabama slave depot gives it a powerful sense of place that visitors will feel when they enter,” EJI explained on their website.

In the last few years, there has been some progress, mostly on the parts of black creatives, to build and create spaces dedicated to addressing the United State’s history of enslavement and racial hierarchy. The National Museum of African American History and Culture that opened to the public in 2016 and filmmaker Ava Duvernay’s “13th,” a documentary that traces the evolution of enslaving black bodies from convict leasing to mass incarceration, are both groundbreaking examples.

“What’s interesting to me is that it’s been only in the last few years that we’ve begun to even talk about slavery in a meaningful way,” Stevenson told artnet News. “That we are only now beginning to see significant cultural institutions emerge to address that legacy is actually revealing about how committed we have been to not talking about this. We’re just getting started, frankly.”

Alabama, where EJI operates, has the highest death-penalty rate per capita in the nation and 51 percent of defendants sentenced to death are black. The state’s legacy of slavery is also substantial, and in Montgomery alone, there are 59 markers and monuments to the Confederacy, Stevenson told artnet News.

After EJI published their “Slavery in America” report, they proposed placing markers at sites of slave warehouses and marketplaces, but local authorities thought it might be “too controversial,” Stevenson told artnet News.

Of the museum’s emergence, “I don’t think there’s any question that after 150 years of silence, it’s going to be provocative to see this legacy made plain,” Stevenson said.

But Stevenson hopes that with the creation of the new museum, America can emulate countries like South Africa, Rwanda and Germany, who all have cultural institutions that address their violent histories. “While I’m grateful to now have the NMAAHC [National Museum of African American History and Culture], and I’m pleased we have the National Civil Rights Museum,” Stevenson said. “We don’t have narrative museums that tell the story of our history in a way that moves you from point A to point B.”

 

Missouri Republican: People who vandalize Confederate statues should be lynched

Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument (Credit: WikiMedia)

Politicians in Missouri are calling for one of their state’s congressional representatives to resign after he publicly called for the lynching of a culprit who vandalized a Confederate statue.

Vandalizing property is wrong, but hoping for people to be hung/lynched over it?? Way over the line!! What is wrong with us #moleg? pic.twitter.com/b0ulohvatQ

— Shamed Dogan (@Dogan4Rep) August 30, 2017

In a Facebook post reacting to a news report about a vandal throwing paint on a Confederate monument in Springfield National Cemetery, State Rep. Warren Love wrote, “I hope they are found & hung from a tall tree with a long rope.”

The chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, Stephen Webber, issued a tweet calling for Love’s resignation on the grounds that “calls for political violence are unacceptable.”

This is a call for lynching by a sitting State Representative. Calls for poltical violence are unacceptable. He needs to resign. #moleg pic.twitter.com/FZCNmsLLY7

— Stephen Webber (@s_webber) August 30, 2017

This sentiment was echoed by House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty of Kansas City, who declared that while she opposes vandalism, “state Rep. Warren Love invoked a form of political violence used throughout the South to keep African-Americans subjugated for generations following the fall of the Confederacy, and for that he must resign,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Even a federal legislator stated that Love had crossed an important line. Sen. Claire McCaskill released a statement on Monday saying, “Representative Love should resign for his unacceptable comments.”

In defending himself, Love told the Post-Dispatch that his comment was “an exaggerated statement that, you know, a lot of times is used in the western world when somebody does a crime or commits theft.” He also insisted that he was motivated not by sympathy for the Confederacy but because “I’d of done the same statement if it’d been him [a Union general] in a national cemetery.”

Love’s claim to being neither racist nor pro-Confederate is somewhat undercut by his assertion that President Abraham Lincoln was the “greatest tyrant and despot in American history.” He also once made a reference to “the black Negro” and defended himself against charges of racism by talking about how he gets along well with “the minorities.”

President Trump told a blatant lie during speech, but MSNBC had the receipts

Donald Trump participates in a tax reform kickoff event (Credit: Getty/Jim Watson)

MSNBC conducted a live fact check during a telecast of a speech President Donald Trump gave in Springfield, MO on Wednesday.



In a speech trumpeting his own proposed tax cuts, President Trump hailed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, a significant tax reform which passed during former President Ronald Reagan’s tenure.

“Our last major tax rewrite was 31 years ago,” he said. “It was really something special… In 1986, Ronald Reagan led the world, cutting our tax base by 34 percent. Under this pro-America system, our economy just went beautifully through the roof.”

But White House speechwriters (rather conveniently) omitted the fact that Trump had long criticized the reform for including a provision which applied the new law to old investments, and gutted the value of rental real estate for the owners who had otherwise anticipated their tax deductions. In 1991, for example, Trump referred to the legislation as a “disaster,” telling Congress, “This tax act was just an absolute catastrophe for the country.”

A conspicuous banner on MSNBC’s airing of the speech fact-checked the President in real time.

http://twitter.com/DearAuntCrabby/sta...

Contrasting images: Trump tax cut speech and rescuers pulling stranded people out of the floodwaters. #HarveyFlood pic.twitter.com/9nwnVzxtRi

— Beth Fouhy (@bfouhy) August 30, 2017

Trump on the 1986 tax law: "It was really something special."
Reminder: He said it was terrible for real estate.

— Richard Rubin (@RichardRubinDC) August 30, 2017

“The Last Word’s” Lawrence O’Donnell observed that Trump, during his speech, appeared to be learning things for the very first time as he read them from the teleprompter: “You can tell that Donald Trump’s teleprompter is filled with things he does not know.”

For example, Trump appeared to be enlightened upon reading the lines fed to him about Springfield “being the birthplace of a great American icon: The legendary route 66. Who would’ve known that?” (Well, the locals in attendance would’ve been privy to that nugget of trivia.)

The President spoke at the Laren Cook Industrial Plant that manufactures fans, and spoke about eliminating some deductions from the tax code which might be harmful to affluent tax filers, including the owner of the plant.

“That is why tax reform must dramatically simplify the tax code, eliminate special interest loop-holes, and I’m speaking against myself when I do this I have to tell you,” said Trump. “And I might be speaking against Mr. Cook, and we’re okay with it, is that right? We’re speaking ‘maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,’ you know? But we’re doing the right thing. It’s true.”

O’Donnell was quick to question the authenticity of Trump’s statement on taxes. “We have no idea whether it affects him or not,” O’Donnell said, given that the American public is left in the dark when it comes to the president’s personal tax returns.

Indeed, many have called on the president to release his tax returns, something he has refused to do, citing an ongoing audit by the IRS. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, audits do not formally prohibit anyone from releasing their returns to the public. (Former President Richard Nixon publicly released his tax returns while under audit in 1973.) Since the days of Nixon and Watergate, Americans have expected that their leaders not hide their finances and personal tax returns. As Politico noted last December, many members of the GOP have wagered that the American public cares little, if at all, for the president’s financial disclosures (or lack thereof), let alone his unwillingness to entirely divest himself from his many businesses.

Aside from the lies and tax cut talk, Trump barely touched on Texans’ suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. His recent trip to Texas was met with criticism after making the visit more about him than the lives that were impacted by the storm. The speechwriters did include some platitudes on the teleprompter for Trump’s Springfield speech.

O’Donnell criticized Trump, expressing that not much more was said about the “mounting, increasing tragedy,” on Wednesday. The focus was more on tax cuts and campaigning against Claire McCaskill, the Democratic Senator from Missouri whose name Trump didn’t seem to know before reading it on the Teleprompter.

“Our president didn’t say another word about Texas today,” O’Donnell said.

While the president has “declared Texas an emergency disaster area and promised to send aid,” as we’ve pointed out recently, the Trump administration has come under fire for slashing roughly $667 million from FEMA state and local grant programs which play key roles in disaster response.” These cuts also “include $90 million from FEMA’s Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program funding to local communities and all $190 million of funding for the National Flood Insurance Program’s Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis Program,” another indicator that the disaster’s magnitude was as preventable as it is unfortunate.

MSNBC provides important context as Trump reads a speech. pic.twitter.com/igP5qy5nbl

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) August 30, 2017

Twitter expressed their disdain for Trump’s speech.

http://twitter.com/LGSSchreiber/statu...

More evidence he is unhinged, and ignorant of any essence of factual reality!!

— John Wilnau (@JohnWilnau) August 30, 2017

@GaleTStrong @realDonaldTrump he has no idea what he is doing or saying at any given moment. #LiarInChief is in over his head

— Mel14 (@MeghanLawton2) August 31, 2017

http://twitter.com/robyn6450/status/9...

Quick… somebody test him on that speech! HE UNDERSTANDS NOTHING THAT HE SAYS!

— Kim Jones (@KimJone34011566) August 30, 2017

I wish they'd put up a flashing LIE!! across his face everytime DT says some outrageous lie.

— Kittie (@k8ryners) August 30, 2017

http://twitter.com/walker_mtaylor/sta...

You can watch Lawrence O’Donnell’s segment of The Last Word below:

Dude, Kid Rock’s rad senate run may be totally illegal

Kid Rock (Credit: Getty/Theo Wargo)

If Kid Rock is serious about running for the United States Senate — which, despite all common sense, he seems to be — he may be breaking the law.

In a complaint addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, watchdog group Common Cause pointed out that Kid Rock (real name Robert James Ritchie) was acting like a Senate candidate despite not officially registering as one and had failed to either publicly disclose his campaign contributions or abide by donation restrictions. If Ritchie is in fact a legitimate Senate candidate, these actions would violate federal election law.

The complaint extends to Warner Bros., which is “accused of violating federal law and commission regulations by facilitating and acting as a conduit for contributions to the Kid Rock campaign.”

As Common Cause’s vice president for policy and litigation Paul S. Ryan wrote, “Regardless of whether Kid Rock says he’s only exploring candidacy, he’s selling ‘Kid Rock for Senate’ merchandise and is a candidate under the law. This is campaign finance law 101.”

Ryan adds, “Given the activities we’ve documented in the complaint, he can’t reasonably claim to be merely testing the waters of candidacy and thus exempt from candidate filing requirements. He is a candidate and is obligated to abide by all the rules and make the same disclosures required of everyone else running for federal office.”

To be fair, Kid Rock’s close friend and fellow right-wing rocker Ted Nugent insisted last month that Robert Ritchie isn’t serious about his professed electoral ambitions.

As Nugent told a local radio host, “He never thought of running. Somebody literally pulled it out of their ass and said, ‘Hey, what about Kid Rock?’ Kid Rock didn’t know anything about it. He’s just having fun with it because it’s so silly.”

Millions consumed potentially unsafe water in the past 10 years

Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority workers try to reach valves that control the flow of water in and out of Highland Park Reservoir No. 1 outside the membrane filtration plant in Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. Tests by the state Department of Environmental Protection showed low levels of chlorine in water at a facility that draws water from the city’s Highland Park reservoirs. (Credit: Rebecca Droke/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)

This report is part of a project on drinking water contamination in the United States produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program.

WOLFFORTH, Texas — As many as 63 million people — nearly a fifth of the country — from rural central California to the boroughs of New York City, were exposed to potentially unsafe water more than once during the past decade, according to a News21 investigation of 680,000 water quality and monitoring violations from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The findings highlight how six decades of industrial dumping, farming pollution, and water plant and distribution pipe deterioration have taken a toll on local water systems. Those found to have problems cleaning their water typically took more than two years to fix these issues, with some only recently resolving decades-old violations of EPA standards and others still delivering tainted water, according to data from the agency’s Safe Drinking Water Information System.

Many local water treatment plants, especially those in small, poor and minority communities, can’t afford the equipment necessary to filter out contaminants. Those can include arsenic found naturally in rock, chemicals from factories and nitrates and fecal matter from farming. In addition, much of the country’s aging distribution pipes delivering the water to millions of people are susceptible to lead contamination, leaks, breaks and bacterial growth.

Experts warn contamination in water can lead to cancer, gastrointestinal diseases and developmental delays in children.

The EPA estimates local water systems will need to invest $384 billion in the coming decades to keep water clean. The cost per person is more than twice as high in small communities as it is in large towns and cities. The EPA and water treatment industry consider the coming years a crucial period for American drinking water safety as pipes and treatment plants built in the mid-20th century reach the end of their useful lives.

“We’re in this really stupid situation where, because of neglect of the infrastructure, we’re spending our scarce resources on putting our fingers in the dike, if you will, taking care of these emergencies, but we’re not doing anything to think about the future in terms of what we should be doing,” said Jeffrey Griffiths, a former member of the Drinking Water Committee at the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.

As water systems age, 63 percent of Americans are now concerned a “great deal” about drinking water pollution, according to a Gallup poll released in March that showed such worries at their highest level since 2001. Drinking water pollution has long been a top environmental concern for Americans — above air pollution and climate change, according to the same poll.

Many of the nation’s largest city systems violated EPA safety standards during the past decade, potentially exposing tens of millions of people to dangerous contaminants. New York City’s system, which serves 8.3 million people, failed standards meant to protect its water from viruses and bacteria two times during that period. The system still hasn’t addressed its most recent violation from February for not building a cover for one of its water reservoirs, according to EPA records.

The problems extend to the country’s large suburbs. Tacoma, Washington’s, system failed to meet a federally mandated timeline for installing a treatment plant meant to kill the parasite cryptosporidium. Chris McMeen, deputy superintendent for the Seattle suburb’s system, which serves 317,600 people, said the pathogen has never been found in dangerous levels in the city’s water. The system was also cited for failing to test for dozens of chemicals during the past decade.

In Waukesha, Wisconsin, 18 miles west of Milwaukee, decades of radium contamination from the city’s underground aquifer prompted officials to draft a proposal to draw water from Lake Michigan for its 71,000 residents. The Great Water Alliance, a $200 million project, is expected to be completed by 2023.

Thousands of rural towns have the most problems because communities often lack the expertise and resources to provide safe drinking water.

In several Southwestern states, 2 million people received groundwater tainted with arsenic, radium or fluoride from their local water systems, with many exposed to these chemicals for years before hundreds of small, low-income communities could afford to filter them out. Some still haven’t cleaned up their water.

Contamination in rural areas from these naturally occurring chemicals, found in the bedrock of aquifers, made Texas, Oklahoma and California the top states for EPA drinking water quality violations during the past decade.

“Sometimes it’s orange, sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s brown,” said Melissa Regeon, a lifelong resident of Brady, Texas, which is trying to secure money for water system upgrades to filter out the radium in its water. “You just never know. It looks horrible.”

Small water systems in California’s San Joaquin Valley have battled both farming pollution and natural contamination from arsenic for years. High levels of nitrate from farm runoff and groundwater rock are linked to low oxygen levels in babies and cancer. Those levels have been found in systems serving 317,000 people during the past decade in the valley, 10,000 square miles of concentrated farming in the state’s center.

The crash of the coal mining industry in southern West Virginia has left hundreds of residents in charge of their own small water systems — some of which date to the Civil War. Residents in the mountains of Wyoming and Fayette counties say they are getting too old to maintain water treatment plants and pipes, and they lack funding to carry out proper treatment on the water, which comes from springs in old coal mines.

“What is pretty clear is that a lot of these small communities, especially in lower-income areas, have a real problem ensuring compliance or even treating the water,” said Erik Olson, director of the health program at the National Resources Defense Council. “A lot of these smaller communities, they don’t even have the wherewithal to apply for available funding.”

Drinking water quality is often dependent on the wealth and racial makeup of communities, according to News21’s analysis. Small, poor communities and neglected urban areas are sometimes left to fend for themselves with little help from state and federal governments.

In recent years, drinking water crises in minority communities, like Flint, Michigan, and East Chicago, Indiana, made national news when old pipes leached lead into the water of thousands for months before state and federal officials responded. In Texas, Corpus Christi’s water system shut down for nearly four days in December because of a chemical spill at an asphalt plant, closing schools and businesses throughout the predominantly Hispanic city.

“These are not isolated incidences, the Flints of the world or the Corpus Christis or the East Chicagos,” said Manuel Teodoro, a researcher at Texas A&M University who co-authored a report on the disproportionate effect of drinking water quality problems on poor minority communities.

“These incidents are getting media attention in a way that they didn’t a few years ago, but the patterns that we see in the data suggest that problems with drinking water quality are not just randomly distributed in the population — that there is a systemic bias out there.”

Many residents of Tallulah, Louisiana, where 77 percent of the population is black and 40 percent lives in poverty, have turned to bottled water as their crumbling utility failed to keep water free of toxic disinfectant byproducts. Systems serving thousands of others in predominantly black communities around the state have struggled to keep these carcinogens out of their taps.

Many Latinos along the U.S.-Mexico border who live in unincorporated low-income rural areas lack the resources to maintain their systems or don’t have access to treated water.

Although the EPA sets minimum drinking water standards, almost all state governments are in charge of testing requirements and operator licensing, creating a maze of regulations and protections that differ from state to state.

A 2011 Government Accountability Office report found the EPA’s database isn’t complete, with some states incorrectly reporting or failing to report many violations. The EPA also hasn’t created a rule for a new contaminant since 2000.

Millions of Americans are also exposed to suspect chemicals the EPA and state agencies don’t regulate. Two of these chemicals, perfluorinated compounds PFOA and PFOS, remain unregulated after decades of use as an ingredient in firefighting foam, Teflon and other consumer products. These perfluorinated compounds have been linked to low birth weights in children, cancer and liver tissue damage, according to the EPA.

“America’s drinking water remains among the safest in the world and protecting drinking water is EPA’s top priority,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to News21. “More than 90 percent of the country’s drinking water systems meet all of EPA’s health-based drinking water standards every day throughout the year.”

The EPA did not make any officials available for an interview.

While most Americans get their water from local utilities, the 15 million homes with private wells, especially in rural areas, are vulnerable to the same contamination issues but are not required to install treatment systems. The limited data available shows wells in many parts of the country draw groundwater containing dangerous levels of toxins from naturally occurring elements and man-made sources.

Small systems, big problems

The majority of local water systems serve fewer than 5,000 people, accounting for a majority of the 97,800 instances when regulators cited water systems for having too many contaminants during the past decade.

For example, Wolfforth and Brady, two small communities in western and central Texas, received the most citations for water quality in the U.S.

Wolfforth, where the tallest structure is a blue and white water tower, racked up 362 violations in 10 years for arsenic and fluoride in its groundwater source. Since arsenic can cause cancer and fluoride can weaken bones, the contaminants required a rapid solution.

The city of 4,400 is rapidly growing like much of suburban Texas, but City Manager Darrell Newsom said it still took time to find funding for the $8.5 million water treatment project.

“There’s a lot of angst about how much money we spent, and there was a tremendous amount of angst about how long it took,” Newsom said. “It was just so long and so much money that we had tied up for so long.”

Even though the system is running, the city will send water notices to residents until the system doesn’t violate the arsenic standard for a full year. Many continue to buy bottled water instead of drinking from the tap.

“We need some more clean water,” said Shreejana Malla, who co-owns a convenience store in Wolfforth with her husband. “So I would want them to, as soon as possible, to get the clean water. I don’t feel comfortable taking a shower, but we’ve got to take a shower.”

The city got a loan and raised water rates about 30 percent to pay for the upgrades, Newsom said.

Generally, systems rely on customers to pay for upgrades, presenting a challenge for small communities who have fewer people to charge for water. Areas without growth are often forced to choose between keeping up with maintenance costs or keeping water payments low. The EPA and state governments provide some grants and low-interest loans, but there isn’t enough money available to meet most needs, and they often require complicated applications.

“The average person looks at (water) like electricity,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. “They just want it to be there, and they want it to be at a fair price.”

For instance, 260 miles southeast of Wolfforth is Brady, a city proudly known as the “Heart of Texas.” The community is trying to secure funding from the state’s Economically Distressed Areas Program for a $22 million water system project to get rid of the underground radium contaminating its drinking water. This fund only has $50 million left, and Brady is not the only city in contention for the money, leaving some concerned about the future of Brady’s water if it doesn’t receive part of the last allocation.

“If we don’t get it this time and the state doesn’t reauthorize that program, I don’t know what we’ll do,” said Amy Greer, a sixth-generation farmer at the locally operated Winters Family Beef. “I really want our state legislators to know how terrible it is that they are not renewing a program that will help small rural communities face and tackle these kind of massive health and safety problems, and I’m just ashamed of them.”

Despite funding uncertainty and mounting pressure from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s drinking water authority, the city is determined to get clean water for its 5,400 residents.

“The answer is solving the water problem because EPA and TCEQ has placed a timeline on us,” Mayor Tony Groves said. “If we don’t do that, there’s always the risk that they could come in and say, ‘OK, you lose your water system, and we’re gonna pay somebody to operate your water system better than you’re operating it and you’re gonna pay for it.’”

What’s in the water?

While many communities with small systems, like Wolfforth and Brady, struggle to address contamination issues, thousands more of these communities aren’t sure if their water is safe because their systems don’t test properly or report the results.

In southern West Virginia coal country, a number of communities failed to test their water hundreds of times after the miners that operated them left when their camps shut down. Many of these systems are now run by the residents.

In Garwood, a 55-person Wyoming County town surrounded by coal mines, the community water system stopped testing in 2014.

“Everybody just up and quit,” said lifelong resident Jessica Griffith, who drank untreated water from an old coal mine for nine months before learning it wasn’t being tested. “There was no warning, no nothing. Nobody handed it over to anybody else.”

The stay-at-home mom and her neighbors say maintenance seems like a full-time job, and they can only afford to patch up leaks and fix busted pipes.

“We’ve just been trying to keep the water flowing because we don’t have the money to treat it,” Griffith said. “We don’t know how to treat it.”

Two hours north, Kanawha Falls Community Water in Fayette County was cited for not testing or reporting more than 2,000 times in 10 years, the most in the country. No one is sure when the system stopped being maintained, but residents say they experience the consequences daily. Joe Underwood, who had skull surgery after a four-wheeler accident, said he showers with a cap after doctors told him the town’s water gave him two infections near his brain.

“The old-style ways of getting water is not healthy,” Underwood said. “And I’m meaning that for people that have serious injuries. I’m meaning that for little babies. I’m meaning that for anybody that has any kind of health problems.”

The unincorporated community relies on volunteers like Bobby Kirby, nominated by his neighbors to be water system treasurer, to pour chlorine into the storage tanks to disinfect the water. After years of not testing and reporting, Kirby says the state threatened to arrest him for failing to turn in paperwork.

“They came here and said they was going to lock me up,” he said. “Well, I told them, ‘You can lock me up if you want to, but I don’t own it. I’m just a property owner that wants water.’”

The West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, the agency responsible for improving infrastructure in the state, announced several projects to link communities like Kanawha Falls and Garwood to surrounding city water systems. Kanawha Falls’ $1.8 million extension is scheduled to be completed by the end of the summer.

While some systems in West Virginia have no operators, other small systems throughout the country don’t have the money to ensure full-time maintenance.

Scotts Mills, a city of 370 tucked away in the tree-lined foothills of northwest Oregon, cannot afford to hire a full-time staff for its water system and relies on local volunteers to step up.

“We rely on a neighbor complaining about an odor or something like that. We really don’t have any staff to drive around and look,” said Dick Bielenberg, the city councilman in charge of water. “If there’s a water leak or something like that we’ll take care of that, sometimes with volunteer labor, sometimes we’ll hire an outside contractor, depends upon how big the project is.”

Resident Jake Ehredt volunteered to be the water commissioner when he moved into community three years ago. However, Ehredt is also a full-time water system operator for the neighboring city of Molalla and said he can only spend an hour or two a day in Scotts Mills for routine checks. While he is away, residents with water problems are directed to call Bielenberg by a sticky note on the city hall door.

“One thing we have out here is contact with our elected officials. We know them,” said Ron Hays, whose family has lived in and around Scotts Mills since 1899. “If the water main breaks, you know who to call.”

Though surveys from the Oregon Health Authority showed the city’s water system hasn’t violated any safety standards, Bielenberg says the city needs a plan for at least the next 20 years should any problems arise.

“There’s not a lot of money so you learn to get by and improvise,” Ehredt said. “We are going to work on updating little small things.”

Replacement era

According to the EPA, most of the $384 billion needed to keep the country’s water systems safe should go toward upgrading pipes buried underground that distribute the water — out of sight and mind to most Americans until one of them bursts.

“The plants are visible. If EPA makes a regulation, and you have to comply with it, then the utility manager can go to the board and say, ‘Hey, I have to do this, EPA is making me do it,’ and then get the money to build the treatment improvements,” said Roberson, of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. “It’s a little harder, then, when you’re talking about the pipes that are buried in the ground because you don’t see the pipes. You don’t know if you have a problem until you get a big leak or a big geyser comes out in the street.”

Even if water service is not disrupted by a pipe break, millions of miles of lead pipes in the U.S. are at risk of leaching the toxic metal into drinking water without proper oversight from system operators. In Milwaukee, about 70,000 homes are connected to the city’s water system with aging lead pipes, many of which run under low-income and African-American communities in the city’s northside neighborhoods. Many residents fear this has contributed to the city’s high rate of lead poisoning among children.

Pipes that leak or break can also introduce bacteria and chemicals from the surrounding soil after the water has already been treated.

Government officials acknowledge the daunting challenges ahead for water utilities. In the final months of the Obama administration, the EPA’s Office of Water published a report highlighting aging infrastructure, unregulated contaminants and financial support for small and poor communities as top concerns for drinking water quality going forward.

“The actions proposed here go far beyond what EPA alone can do; all levels of government, utilities, the private sector and the public each have critical roles to play,” the report said. “Utilities ultimately must take many of the critical actions needed to strengthen drinking water safety, and communities must be actively engaged in supporting these actions.”

Industry groups are sounding the alarm about the bill coming due for water infrastructure as it enters a “replacement era.”

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a “D” grade for the quality of its drinking water systems based on an evaluation of their safety, condition, capacity and other criteria. Of the 25 states with individual grades, none scored higher than a “C+.” Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska all received “D” level grades.

The American Water Works Association estimated water systems will need about $1 trillion in investment during the next 25 years just to maintain and expand water service. This price tag doesn’t include the costs associated with getting rid of lead service lines or upgrading water treatment plants.

“A part of that, not all of it, but a part of it, is a lack of investment when it should have started earlier,” Steve Via, American Water Works Association director of federal relations, said about the upgrades necessary in coming years.

Methodology

News21 analyzed 680,000 violations from a 10-year period starting Jan. 1, 2007, in the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Information System. The database only contains active community water systems in U.S. states and tribal lands because they are the most likely to serve homes. The EPA data also shows how many people were affected by violations. The EPA has acknowledged this database might not reflect all violations that have occurred and some information may be incorrect.

The violations included two types: health-based violations and monitoring/reporting violations. Health-based violations are instances when water was found to be contaminated or not properly treated for contaminants. The story refers to these violations as water quality violations. Monitoring/reporting violations occur when a water system either fails to test for a contaminant or report its test result to the state and customers.

How noncompete clauses clash with US labor laws

(Credit: AP/Tony Dejak)

Most Americans with jobs work “at-will”: Employers owe their employees nothing in the relationship and vice versa. Either party may terminate the arrangement at any time for a good or bad reason or none at all.

In keeping with that no-strings-attached spirit, employees may move on as they see fit — unless they happen to be among the nearly one in five workers bound by a contract that explicitly forbids getting hired by a competitor. These “noncompete clauses” may make sense for CEOs and other top executives who possess trade secrets but seem nonsensical when they are applied to low-wage workers such as draftsmen in the construction industry.

As a scholar of employment law and policy, I have many concerns about noncompete clauses — such as how they tend to make the relationship between workers and bosses too lopsided, suppress wages and discourage labor market mobility. In addition to tracing their legal and legislative history, I have come up with a way to limit this impediment to worker mobility.

How we got here

Courts began to enshrine the at-will doctrine in the 19th century, making exceptions only for employees with fixed-term contracts. In Payne v. Western & Atlantic Railroad Co., the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that a railway foreman in Chattanooga had the right to forbid his workers from buying whiskey from a merchant named L. Payne.

Payne had sued the railroad, claiming it couldn’t threaten to fire employees to discourage them from buying goods from a third party. The court disagreed, arguing that the railroad had a right to terminate employees for any reason — even that one.

The notion of at-will employment and its associated lack of job protections soon rose to the level of constitutional mandate. The 1894 Pullman strike, which disrupted national rail traffic, prompted Congress to pass the Erdman Act four years later. That law guaranteed the right of rail workers to join and form unions and to engage in collective bargaining.

But the Supreme Court struck down that law in 1908. Writing for the majority in Adair v. United States, Justice John Marshall Harlan explained that since employers were free to use their property as they wished, they could impose and enforce their own labor rules. Employees, in turn, were free to quit. Harlan wrote:

“The right of a person to sell his labor upon such terms as he deems proper is, in its essence, the same as the right of the purchaser of labor to prescribe the conditions upon which he will accept such labor from the person offering to sell it.”

That might sound reasonable, but the Adair ruling led to the proliferation of “yellow dog” contracts threatening workers with firing if they joined or organized unions. The term disparaged people who accepted such conditions, but the principle had widespread legal approval.

For three decades, the at-will doctrine stymied legislation that would have protected labor rights. Even when a supervisor told a long-term employee he would be fired unless his wife had sex with the supervisor, courts refused to protect the man from losing his job.

Labor rights and the law

With the passage of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act in 1935, all private sector workers and unions gained the power to collectively bargain with employers. Subsequent labor agreements, such as the one the Steel Workers Organizing Committee negotiated with U.S. Steel in 1937, made employers prove “just cause” before firing anyone.

The Civil Rights acts of 1964 and 1991 added employment protections prohibiting discrimination based on race, gender, religion and national origin.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, which Congress passed in 1990, ensured that persons with disabilities would have access to jobs with or without reasonable accommodation.

Those laws and other measures, including modern exceptions to the at-will rule, offer workers some security. But they provide no protection at the federal level from noncompete clauses.

Push-back

The leeway for employers to impose these provisions varies widely from state to state and is in flux. For example, Alabama and Oregon have sought in recent years to limit their scope, while Georgia and Idaho have made it easier for companies to enforce them. A uniform federal rule could clarify the situation and benefit both employees and employers.

Critics have pointed out the disadvantages of noncompete clauses to unskilled labor. “By locking low-wage workers into their jobs and prohibiting them from seeking better-paying jobs elsewhere (companies) have no reason to increase their wages or benefits,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said when she sued the Jimmy John’s fast-food franchise last year for making its employees sign noncompete clauses.

The chain subsequently agreed to drop its noncompetes, which had also come under fire in New York. The clauses had barred the sandwich maker’s workers from working for other firms earning more than 10 percent of their revenue from “submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita, and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches” for two years after leaving the Jimmy John’s payroll.

A proposal

In 2015, Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation to ban noncompete clauses for low-wage workers. The Minnesota Democrat’s bill failed to gain enough support to become law, and, in light of President Donald Trump’s goal of reducing the number of federal regulations, nothing presently stands in the way of states that want to expand these restrictive labor practices.

I propose a balanced approach between the current free-for-all among the states and outlawing these clauses altogether: Congress could modify the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Passed in 1932, this law banned injunctions against specified union activities by removing federal court jurisdiction over those disputes.

Similarly, Congress could render noncompete clauses unenforceable in federal courts unless employment contracts provide due process protections, such as arbitration, against capricious or unjust discharges of employees. In exchange for job security, a worker might be willing to commit to some curtailment of other employment opportunities.

This approach would balance the rights of workers and management by allowing workers to trade some rights of freely accessing labor markets against better job security.

That is, workers would have a choice of security or mobility. Employers could choose to attract employees with incentives, such as higher salaries or more job stability.

Executive contracts with noncompete clauses typically include lucrative buyout provisions and protections from arbitrary treatment. If employees with lower pay and less prestige aren’t free to get new jobs, their bosses have a corresponding duty to extend to them the rights enjoyed by people atop the corporate ladder.

Raymond Hogler, Professor of Management, Colorado State University

Here’s a quick and easy way you can help the neediest Harvey victims, wherever you live

Flood water surround homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017, in Rockport, Texas. (Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay)

It’s no surprise that those hardest hit by the hurricane that’s ripped across Texas over the past few days are poor, non-white, elderly, sick, and disenfranchised — basically, the people who’ve always needed extra help to get by, but who are now in true peril. Everything from disability to proximity to toxic gases being emitted by flooded oil refineries makes it a far greater challenge for these individuals to cope with the effects of the storm.

While the internet fumes over Joel Osteen’s role or lack thereof in the crisis, the unsung heroes who have had the most impact saving lives during Harvey include the same thankless groups that have always been doing the important work that needs to get done to transform and empower poor communities.

Texas Organizing Project is one such group. The 503c nonprofit organization, which advocates for the poor across the state, just launched the Hurricane Harvey Community Relief Fund to crowdsource donations for those most affected by the storm. Proceeds will go to first response, medical attention, healthcare, housing, and immigration services for the nearly 550,000 people living in poverty in Houston.

“It’s unfortunate, but we know that our most vulnerable communities will be the hardest hit and will not get the resources needed unless we fight for it, unless we organize those communities to demand justice,” the organization posted on Facebook on Monday.

Since 2009, Texas Organizing Project has used grassroots community and electoral organizing to push through reforms that strengthen poor communities, including convincing the state and local government to divert more funds to low-income Houston neighborhoods after Hurricane Ike to boost revitalization. Other past wins include raising voter engagement, persuading city officials in San Antonio to invest more money in safe streets and to clean up a toxic abandoned power plant in Houston, and launching a pilot program to reform school disciplinary programs that have contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline.

If you’re sitting at home safe and dry, wondering how you can help people in Texas right now, consider donating to the Hurricane Harvey Community Relief Fund. Rest assured, you’ll be helping those who need it the most. You can make a contribution here.

Fox News promised British regulators it would do better — then it just gave up

British fans of Fox News Channel — what few there are — were disappointed this week when its parent company 21st Century Fox announced that it would no longer transmit the American news outfit’s signal to subscribers of its Sky television service.

Officially, the reason given for Fox News’ cancellation in the UK was that its ratings were poor. In a statement released to the media on Tuesday, the parent company (which calls itself 21CF for short) said that “only a few thousand viewers” were tuning in.

“21CF has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK,” the statement said. “Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK.  We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.” (Frank Radice, Salon’s London bureau chief, discusses Fox News’ British problems in the video interview attached to this story.)

On background, representatives of the Rupert Murdoch-owned company have stated that Fox News received around 2,000 viewers across the entire daytime schedule. Numbers swelled to around 60,000 for certain shows, according to data collected by the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board (Barb), Britain’s equivalent of Nielsen Media Research. By comparison, 21CF’s Sky News channel has a daily reach of about 1.6 million according to Barb. BBC News reaches about 2.5 million viewers.

While Fox News’ ratings were far from spectacular, 21CF was interested in keeping it on UK television and even agreed to alter the channel’s content at the request of Ofcom, the British regulatory agency analogous to the Federal Communications Commission, but with much broader powers. Under U.S. law, the FCC is essentially not allowed to govern paid subscription television channels. In Britain, all television channels are subject to content oversight, including restrictions on impartiality and accuracy.

During its time on British television, Fox News had run afoul of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code multiple times, creating headaches for Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James (both executives at 21CF), who are currently seeking British government approval to purchase full ownership of Sky. In the past 10 years, Fox News was found in breach of Ofcom regulations 22 separate times, including last year when it discussed the “Brexit” issue while the British public was voting on the matter. In 2015, Ofcom cited a claim by a Fox News guest that the city of Birmingham in northern England was “totally Muslim” and that non-Muslims were unwelcome there as “materially misleading.” (According to the British census, the population of Birmingham is roughly 22 percent Muslim.) Fox News and its parent company profusely apologized for the segment and retracted the claim after it aired.

Fox News and 21CF’s other operations have been under heightened scrutiny from Ofcom as well as from Britain’s culture minister Karen Bradley. Both have been evaluating whether 21CF should be allowed to complete its Sky acquisition. In June, Ofcom ruled that 21CF would be a “fit and proper” owner for Sky, a judgment that was condemned by Murdoch critics, particularly by the left-leaning group Avaaz. Earlier this month, the organization said that it would seek legal means to force Ofcom to reconsider its judgment.

“Ofcom’s made mistake after mistake in deciding to give the Murdochs a clean bill of health to take over more of our media,” Alex Wilks, a campaign director at Avaaz, said in a statement announcing a formal filing. “They need to reopen their investigation to regain credibility.”

Trying to gain favor with British authorities, 21CF has made numerous changes to its operations, particularly in regards to employee relations after a series of sexual harassment scandals which led to the firing of several top Fox News executives and hosts, including longtime host Bill O’Reilly and founding chairman Roger Ailes. The latter was revealed in April as having set up an elaborate network of fake websites which used degrading sexual imagery to promote female correspondents and anchors.

In a May 15 regulatory filing, 21CF told Ofcom that it would agree to place stricter editorial controls on Fox News content in order to better comply with the agency’s Broadcasting Code. The shakeups and changes in editorial practices have begun to grate on some loyal American fans of the channel, many of whom perceive Fox News as having moved toward the political center after the departure of Ailes, a staunchly conservative Republican.

“During the course of our investigation of the proposed transaction, we found that Fox had not put in place adequate procedures to ensure the compliance of Fox News with the Broadcasting Code,” Ofcom wrote in its formal ruling declaring 21CF “fit and proper” to purchase Sky. “We wrote to Fox to express our concerns. Fox has now supplied us with details of new compliance arrangements introduced on 15 May 2017. We consider that the improvements made by Fox to its compliance arrangements and procedures are sufficient to meet the requirements of its license.”

“While we can confirm this is information we hold, it is information provided to Ofcom by a stakeholder as part of us carrying out our regulatory functions, and we are not able to disclose it publicly,” Tony Finnegan, senior communications manager at Ofcom, told Salon in an email when asked about what policies 21CF had agreed to change.

A spokeswoman for 21CF told Salon the company would not comment on the specifics of Fox News Channel’s compliance agreement with British authorities.

Another 21CF representative did not respond when repeatedly asked whether the stricter rules placed on Fox News by British regulators played a role in the parent company’s decision to remove the channel from UK distribution.

In addition to alienating some American fans, recent management and policy changes at Fox News have caused alarm among some of the channel’s more ardently Republican hosts. In April, host Sean Hannity claimed that ousting longtime Fox News executive Bill Shine would be “the total end of the FNC as we know it.” Within days, Shine parted ways with the company.

Earlier this year, Hannity’s editorial standards came under intense scrutiny within 21CF, according to multiple sources. Of particular concern was his zeal for pursuing allegations that Seth Rich, a former staffer for the Democratic National Committee, was murdered for providing stolen emails from party officials to WikiLeaks. Fox News had run a story on its website about the matter which has since been retracted. The channel is facing a private lawsuit as a result of the pulled report.

Since the departure of Ailes and O’Reilly, several other right-wing media organizations have been trying to crowd in on Fox News’ traditional audience, including Newsmax TV and One America News. The Sinclair Broadcast Group, an owner of numerous US-based broadcast television stations, has also been discussed as a potential Fox News competitor. Sinclair has denied that it wants to start a cable news operation.

“BoJack Horseman”: Life’s hilarity and pain, illustrated

BoJack Horseman (Credit: Netflix)

BoJack Horseman’s celebrity lair is a visual metaphor, the sort of hyper-modern ostentatious cube designed to flaunt wealth and status. But at the end of the day, the span of which is covered in the opening credits for Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman,” it’s still a gigantic, fancy box that he wakes up inside of alone, more or less, every morning. And the entire house is precariously set on the side of a cliff supported by nothing but a few load bearing stilts.

All it would take for it to come crashing down is a disaster of sufficient force.

“BoJack Horseman” returns for a fourth season on Sept. 8, and continues its practice of blurring the difference between cartoon and animated series. Semantically speaking these are interchangeable terms, and yet this show demonstrates the difference between the two. Cartoons are generally rubbery, gag-driven diversions not beholden to laws of physics or logic. Anvils drop from the sky to crush devious coyotes or tomcats who emerge alive, if bandaged and on crutches, in the next frame, ready to build better mousetraps.

The world of “BoJack Horseman” is undeniably cartoonish, and this can trick the unsuspecting viewer into getting stuck on this show, unable to pull away. You may think you’re digging into a bowl of frothy sweet, which it is for a few episodes during the first season.

Soon enough the rough grains hiding in the cream grow prominent, as the series integrates unsparing examinations of depression, the weight of history and memory, and the inter-generational impact of family dysfunction into its narrative. The superior “BoJack Horseman” looks and operates like a cartoon, with walking, talking animals living alongside humans, holding jobs, paying taxes and obsessing over the point of it all.

But it’s really an extended exploration of the ways that people, human and otherwise, damage each other, and a hard look at what emerges on the other side of that damage. It’s an animated mixture of comedy and tragedy in which the hero is aware and deeply afraid that his house, is life, is falling off that cliff.

A person doesn’t binge “BoJack Horseman” to escape. Nope, you do it to relate, to find security in the knowledge that everyone wrestles with an inky black shadow self. “BoJack” provides flesh and blood with assurance that all of us internalize our scars. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that the sixth episode of this new season illustrates this truth with agonizing clarity.

Witnessing these tiny disasters play out in the life of a man who, as the end credits theme song goes, is more horse than a man, and  more man than a horse, somehow makes the grimmer stuff more palatable. BoJack, the faded star of the 90s hit sitcom-within-the-show “Horsin’ Around,” is a substance-abusing, womanizing, egocentric, short-tempered ball of self-loathing. Only occasionally is he made to answer for the shoddy way he treats the people in his life, including his friend Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie), his ex-girlfriend, and occasional agent/business manager Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) and his lackey Todd (Aaron Paul).

At this point, his friends consider BoJack to be a fascinating, occasionally aggravating distraction. Diane is figuring out how to develop her writing career and escape the long shadow cast by her eternally upbeat dog husband Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins), who is running for governor. Princess Carolyn is determined to conquer her career and personal life. Todd is still trying to figure out who Todd is, functioning as the show’s closest approximation to pure comic relief.

All of them tolerate BoJack because beneath his bluster lurks an intensely vulnerable soul seeking to find in fame what he didn’t receive from his parents or a string of lovers and partners who believed in him. For the most part BoJack tamps down his immobilizing sense of inadequacy by galloping toward projects that he believes will fill the expanding chasm within him. First it’s a memoir, then a passion project — a theatrical feature based on a life of Secretariat — that sends him on a draining steeple chase through awards season, enabling him to run from his troubles.

In this new season he has no offers waiting for him, and he’s missing in action. But he carries his demons with him, and there’s no outrunning those.  “You should give up on looking for enough,” he advises a similarly flailing character, “because it will never be enough.

“BoJack” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and artist Lisa Hanawalt aren’t expressly aiming for the pain here. Rather, it presents itself as an inevitable result of living, especially in Hollywood, a town divorced enough from reality to sell the illusion that fame and money define a person’s worth, and success requires prioritizing the hunt for the next step upward above all else, including common sense, empathy and humanity.

Just like in Hollywood.

The asinine, artificial nature of the entertainment industry enables Bob-Waksberg to wrap the difficult parts of “BoJack” in enough daftness to keep its energy upbeat, even in fundamentally bleak scenes.  And this season has its share those, specifically delivered in episodes that challenge the viewer’s sense of perspective and shuffle together stories from separate eras and recollections.

The fourth season of “BoJack Horseman” returns to the show’s deep bench of celebrity guest voices while also introducing Felicity Huffman, Zach Braff and Vincent D’Onofrio to the proceedings, allowing them lampoon themselves (D’Onofrio’s appearance is brief but sufficiently bizarre to warrant calling out). Other new characters are voiced by Aparna Nancherla, Matthew Broderick, Sharon Horgan, Andre Braugher and RuPaul.

To be more specific about any of their roles would ruin the surprise of encountering them. I will say that some of these cameos inject a necessary dose of levity in to what is the show’s most mercilessly truthful set of episodes to date, as BoJack confronts his frailties with a plaintive frankness (Fair warning to viewers experiencing a certain type of loss: the penultimate episode of this new season is shattering).

Similarly Diane, Mr. Peanutbutter and Princess Carolyn smash against their limitations in ways that anodyne distractions cannot camouflage, allowing Bob-Waksberg to make them nearly as central to the narrative as BoJack.

Nevertheless, these new “BoJack Horseman” episodes still combine the right proportions of sad booze and happy booze to maintain the show’s equilibrium and keep it solidly within the ranks of worthwhile, viewing. How to characterize it is up to the individual. Wacky cartoon, dramatic, raw illustration, “BoJack Horseman” is a bit for each. Above all it’s a show about life, drawn with honesty.

Twenty years on, Princess Diana’s legacy is felt in Harvey-battered Houston

Diana, Princess of Wales (Credit: Getty/Hulton Archive)

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Last night, her children, Princes William and Harry, visited the Kensington Palace memorial garden to pay tribute to their late mother who, during her short life, was so lauded for her welcoming, open manner with British subjects and her expansive humanitarian efforts and charity work, that press and public alike called her the “people’s princess.”

Despite that legacy, Diana’s philanthropy resonates perhaps less today with younger generations than those who remember her first hand. That’s not because those too young to recall her dismiss such efforts. Rather, it’s now common practice for celebrities of all stripes to engage in charity work and humanitarian outreach in highly visible ways.

But Diana did more than what is now the norm for, and perhaps even expected of, our stars. She laid the blueprint for it.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Diana was in the minority in using the unblinking eye of the press to draw focus to her moments of charity and patronage and the causes they supported. While she followed in the footsteps of persons as diverse as Audrey Hepburn and Eleanor Roosevelt, it was her efforts in particular that set an example and a standard for the way celebrities can, and perhaps ought to, use their platforms for advocacy and change.

The massive response of stars to the devastation of Hurricane Harvey — particular Beyoncé and J. J. Watt — is only the most recent example of the legacy of public works in the public eye Diana helped establish.

This summer, the documentary “Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy” was released on HBO, offering a more intimate and familial perspective on the “people’s princess.” Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams spoke with director Ashley Gething and executive producer Nick Kent on keeping Princess Diana’s legacy of good works alive and the lessons she left to her sons.

Nick Kent on the universality of the film:

Obviously, it’s about Princess Diana and her sons and the royal family, but it’s also about a universal subject, which is how do you keep alive the memory of someone you’ve loved and lost? That’s something that all of us have to face at some point in our lives.

Ashley Gething on the evolution of the film’s thesis:

 We went to meet the princes at Kensington Palace, thinking maybe we were making a film about [Diana’s] work and her legacy in the world. At that point they said to us, “Well, actually, we are happier to make a film that’s more personal.”

The whole process of this year that our film records is this process of recollection, because when we began the interviews with them, they said that actually it was difficult to remember. Part of the whole process of grief and bereavement had been a sort of shutting down of those memories. What the interviews record is that first awakening of memories, some of which are very sad and some of which are very joyous.

Nick Kent on the ways Prince William and Prince Harry honor their late mother:

She really tried to give [her sons] as normal an upbringing as she could under the circumstances. And you can see the way that Prince William and Kate are bringing up their own children, that they’re very much taking on board the lessons that William learned from his upbringing under Diana.

In many ways, they’re keeping alive their mother’s memory by the way they live their own lives.

Watch the video for more with Ashley Gething and Nick Kent.