Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 702

2016 Republicans: A “Know Nothing” party for the 21st Century

Barron Trump, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Karen Pence at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 21, 2016. (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Recently, the Republican Party coalesced on the floor of its national convention in Cleveland to formally support Donald J. Trump.  

Trump’s nomination serves as a tacit endorsement of his nativist, xenophobic and bigoted rhetoric as de facto party platform for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the 2016 Republican Party has reached a point of no return in how it will be publicly defined for the years to come.  

Trump has done a hallmark job of tapping into the overblown fears of the Republican base by vilifying Latino immigrants and lumping all Muslims into a broad category of “terrorist or potential terrorist.”

This fabricated and fear-driven narrative is nothing new; politics in the United States has often fed into national trends of antipathy toward immigration and non-traditional religious practices. American history is fraught with examples of non-white, non-Christian groups being conspicuously excluded from the American promise – simply because enough Americans acquiesced to the politics of fear. Idealists may point out that the social proclivities of the United States have evolved to be more tolerant, compassionate and emotionally intelligent, but the reality is that the nation is bearing witness to a resurgence of these lower-brained mentalities in the 2016 presidential campaign; where an “us vs. them’” binary, oversimplified worldviews and a tendency to negatively stereotype entire religions, nationalities and cultures has proven to be a successful formula for elevating a boorish reality TV star to fully legitimate presidential candidate.  

Today’s Trump-fueled zeitgeist reinvigorates these less sophisticated attitudes that can readily be traced to earlier years in American history, where the familiar refrains of xenophobia and bigotry defined the politics of a generation.

In the year 1850, an organization emerged in American politics that was the byproduct of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that had been simmering throughout the previous decade. The Order of the Star Spangled Banner embraced a platform that fed into the fears of native-born whites across the nation as migrants from Germany and Ireland resettled in the United States. As immigrants crowded into urban tenements across the United States, it didn’t take long for white nativists to passionately lament the creeping changes to the cultural and religious landscape. They were also quick to point out the increase in crime and welfare expenditures – two common factors during periods of heavy immigration that have nothing to do with national origin or culture and more to do with poverty. The rationale behind this resentment is remarkably familiar when examined through the modern lens; their belief was that immigrants were ruining the country and Catholicism was an existential threat to the sanctity of a predominantly Protestant nation.  

The Order of the Star Spangled Banner, with a name so hackneyed in its implied patriotism that it could easily be supplanted onto some modern day conservative super-PAC, found enough public support that it could convert to bona fide political party the year following and change its name to the American Party.  

The American Party would quickly earn a nickname – the Know Nothing Party.  This was due to its members, in the interest of cultivating an air of secrecy about their organization, replying “I know nothing” when asked about the goings on of this new political organization. The “Know Nothing” admonitions for secrecy were superficial at best, and the party platform became abundantly clear as it garnered ever increasing national attention and support.  

They struck a chord with the native-born white population by highlighting a platform that was almost exclusively defined by opposition to what the Know Nothings called the “alien menace” of German and Irish immigration.  This was complemented by the fact that many of these immigrants, especially the Irish, were bringing their Catholic faith across the Atlantic to the shores of the United States.  The fevered imaginations of the Know Nothings and their supporters were burning hot with the paranoid delusion that this was somehow going to lead to the United States becoming some sort of proto-Catholic caliphate that was governed by the Pope from Rome.  

The Know Nothing message was remarkably clear and its strength lay in the simplicity and cohesiveness of its message. The movement saw sustained growth and became a formidable political force by the 1856 presidential election – where they were in a position to seriously appoint a candidate for the presidency. The party held strong to advocating for a complete shutdown on immigration to the United States, with continued focus on keeping Catholicism heavily contained and conspicuously marginalized.  

The singular message of the Know Nothings had such resonance with the fearful and reactionary contingency of the United States that the fledgling Republican Party began to court their demographic by campaigning under principles of anti-Popery and anti-whiskey. The 1856 Republicans called for bans on immigration and proposed high tariffs on foreign manufactured goods. One Pennsylvania Republican summed it up as such: “Let our motto be; protection for everything American, against everything foreign.”

The 1856 Presidential election saw the Republican candidate John C. Fremont, who was able to secure support from many Know Nothing voters, lose to the Democrat James Buchannan by sixty electoral votes. Former president Millard Fillmore ran as the candidate for the Know Nothing/American Party and secured eight electoral votes. Despite the loss, the message of the Know Nothing platform remained embedded into the foundation of American political dialogue and would re-emerge periodically whenever immigration or unfamiliar religious practices are maligned as ominous social specters to be feared and loathed.  

There are stark similarities between the Know Nothing Party of old and 2016 Trump Republicans; as the United States heads full-bore into the 2016 presidential race, we can surmise that the Republican Party in the wake of a Trump nomination has been reborn as a Know Nothing Party for the 21st century.

The new Know Nothing Party will not only carry this moniker due to similarities between Trump politics and 19th century bigotry – its titular distinction will also be based on its constituent’s willful lack of knowledge toward the principles that have contributed to the greatness of our republic. It carries a historical ignorance of the contributions of immigrants to the growth of the United States and the likely fact that their own ancestors were once persecuted as immigrant outsiders. The 2016 Know Nothings exhibit a xenophobic fervor that marginalizes the fastest growing demographic in the United States and supports the comically absurd folly of building a wall across the entire northern border of Mexico. It is a group that would willfully trample on the principles of religious and civil liberty in retaliation to the tragic violence of a very small number of radicals and an irrational belief that said violence is a reflection of 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.  

After the loss of the 1856 election, the Know Nothings faded from the political landscape of the United States; but their ideology remained, albeit in different iterations, throughout American history.  The political attitudes of the 19th century Know Nothing Party are hauntingly familiar to anyone paying attention to the Trump campaign.  Regardless of whether or not Trump wins in November, what we can assume is that even if he loses, the views of the 2016 Know Nothings will likely continue to mar the landscape of American political rhetoric and the resurgent platforms of exclusion, xenophobia, and bigotry will continue to hinder the progress of this great nation.  

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Gig economy workers: Independent contractors or indentured servants?

(Credit: Reuters/Chris Keane)

This article originally appeared on Capital & Main.

What if millions of American workers were being denied health insurance, job security and the most basic legal protections, from overtime pay to workers compensation to the right to join a union? What if tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer revenues — money desperately needed to address everything from crumbling roads to education to health care — were never making it to local, state and federal treasuries? What if thousands of companies were violating the law with impunity?

That is exactly what is happening in the United States today, thanks to a rampant practice known as worker misclassification — illegally labeling workers as independent contractors when in fact they are employees under the law. In some cases it’s occurring in plain sight, in others it’s more hidden — but regardless of the circumstances, it is taking an enormous toll on the country.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), workers misclassified as independent contractors can be found in nearly every industry, and the phenomenon has grown considerably with the rise of the gig economy. Uber, the ride-hailing company, has become the poster child for worker misclassification, with numerous lawsuits alleging that Uber wrongly classifies its drivers as independent contractors. But Uber is hardly alone — examples of worker misclassification can be found in scores of new sectors, from housecleaners to technical workers.

Workers misclassified as independent contractors are also legion in established sectors of the economy, notably residential construction, in-home caregiving and the port trucking industry. Conditions for these workers have been compared to indentured servitude, and for good reason. Misclassification enables employers to get away with widespread wage theft and a range of other illegal practices.

In a 2015 report, EPI described the advantages to employers of misclassifying workers. “Employers who misclassify avoid paying payroll taxes and workers’ compensation insurance, are not responsible for providing health insurance and are able to bypass requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.” If this weren’t enough, the report continues, “misclassified workers are ineligible for unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, minimum wage and overtime, and are forced to pay the full FICA tax and purchase their own health insurance.”

How do employers get away with such violations? The answer is complex, involving anemic labor laws, lax enforcement of the protections that do exist and the savvy exploitation of both by companies in key industries. While some businesses misclassify their workers out of ignorance, others do it very deliberately, and have spent millions of dollars defending the practice.

A case in point is the port trucking industry, which was deregulated in the 1980s, leading to a proliferation of companies whose business model was predicated on the use of independent contractors. That model has resulted in a workforce of close to 75,000 truck drivers at ports across the country laboring in mostly abysmal conditions. Among the indignities endured by drivers are such neo-Dickensian schemes as negative paychecks — an inconceivable but well-documented occurrence in which drivers labor full time or more, yet actually owe money to the trucking companies they work for due to paycheck deductions for everything from truck payments to insurance to repairs.

In the last several years, port truck drivers and their labor, community and political allies have begun to successfully challenge misclassification, winning a series of legal victories, particularly in California. Every government agency that’s conducted an investigation into the practices of the port trucking industry — from the United States Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board to the California Labor Commissioner and Economic Development Department — has determined that port drivers are employees, not independent contractors. The state’s labor commissioner alone has issued more than 300 decisions on misclassification of drivers in Southern California, and drivers have prevailed in every decision, winning over $35 million in back pay.

How can these successes be replicated and enhanced to end misclassification? Three strategies stand out:

Litigation: The successful track record in California has proven that misclassification is vulnerable to sustained litigation. An important factor is whether elected and appointed officials are willing to aggressively pursue or support such litigation — if not, the efforts will yield far less favorable results.

Policy changes: The enactment of policies that clamp down on misclassification, increase penalties and ban law-breaking companies from operating can have significant impact. However, as with litigation, this strategy depends on the presence of lawmakers willing to take on the issue.

Worker organizing: In Los Angeles, port truck drivers frustrated with the exploitative conditions in their industry have waged a multi-year campaign to expose the practice of misclassification. That effort, which has included multiple strikes, has been supported by a broad coalition of community groups — a potent combination that has played a crucial role in challenging the trucking industry’s “independent contractor” business model.

Taking on misclassification is important not just to workers, but to businesses and taxpayers as well. In the current system, law-abiding companies are forced to compete with low-road operators, creating an uneven playing field. Likewise, the cost to taxpayers in lost revenues from employers that illegally misclassify workers as independent contractors is enormous, cheating government out of resources that could and should be used for the common good.

Reining in worker misclassification and the abuse of so-called “independent contractors” is one of the more daunting challenges in taking on economic inequality. But any serious plan to address the nation’s economic divide must include an aggressive strategy to take on this costly epidemic.

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My tiny house reality: When the downsized life is the only life you can afford

(Credit: Liliana Ballen via Shutterstock)

If you go to Amazon and click the Crafts, Hobbies & Home category of books, you’ll notice two trends: 1) decluttering and 2) tiny-house living. The latter may have been jump-started by ‘Tiny House, Big Living’ on HGTV, but it is now a craze — a movement of people downsizing to live in homes no bigger than a child’s tree house. Within this crusade, there are smaller spin-off TV shows, endless self-help resources and even builders who have given up traditional home building to focus on minimalistic construction.

I’m familiar with the trend. A year ago, we bought a 900-square-foot ranch-style home on a slab. It’s one level, void of a second floor, attic, or basement. The Tiny Life blog states, “The typical American home is around 2,600 square feet, whereas the typical small or tiny house is between 100 and 400 square feet.” On the surface, our home is not “tiny” by strict definition. But let’s break it down.

Approximately 250 square feet of the home is a sun room that was added on before the house went up for sale. Our bathroom is the size of a closet. If you’re even slightly overweight, you can barely fit on the toilet, which is crammed between two walls. Only one person can access the fridge, stove, sink and cabinets at any given time, or it becomes a wrestling match. There are RV kitchens bigger than ours. Closet space? Hardly. We store our seasonal clothes, Christmas decor and other items we do not use on a regular basis in several outbuildings — sheds, really. I cross my fingers every day that rodents do not discover our polaroid pictures, drawings from high school, a thousand small mementos I’ve saved in memory of the five children I brought into this world — even a tattered Mickey Mouse doll given to me by my brother in 1975. None of it is worth much in terms of dollars, but these keepsakes are irreplaceable in my heart, and they’re only one burrowed hole away from being ravaged.

Some would say we have it made; we’ve been able to downsize. I beg to differ. Within this small space there are five of us: me, my husband, one teen and two children under the age of 5. Add in a 120-pound dog, two cats and a parrot. Things are tight.

The house was a one-bedroom when we bought it, so we’ve had to get creative. We gave our teen the master bedroom and converted the sun room to our bedroom. The little kids are each in two smaller rooms which can hold a kid’s bed and bureau and not much more. There’s not enough room for all of their toys, so they spill over to the pantry, closets and a corner of our bedroom.

Every inch is utilized. Even the micro-sized hot water tank is stuffed into a small bedroom closet. It provides only enough hot water for a six-minute shower, and takes more than half an hour to regenerate. Someone always bathes in cold water, and that someone is usually me. I take one for the team every other day of the week.

From a financial perspective, I understand why people choose to downsize and opt for less square footage. I once owned a home that was 3,600 square feet and it was overwhelming. Cleaning took days, utilities cost a fortune, and many of the rooms sat empty. What good is a vacant room? It’s the equivalent of throwing money out the window.

But don’t be fooled. A larger home doesn’t always mean a more expensive home. I bought that 19th-century Victorian revival for $37,500 through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In short — a HUD home. I didn’t qualify for a mortgage, so I used my savings and paid cash to buy the property. I drained the ceramic pig and every day thereafter I wished I had waited just a little longer for some other house to come onto the market. Smaller, with less upkeep perhaps? (Definitely not a tiny home. Let’s not go crazy.)

I’ve watched several episodes of “Tiny House, Big Living,” and I’ve also caught the TV show where people opt to live in opulent tree houses. A smaller home doesn’t always mean a less expensive home, obviously. Fancy architectural designs. Exquisite lighting. Imported décor. When did a movement that rallies around anti-consumerism and sustainability become so posh? So upscale and high-end? Scaling back is being exploited to encourage consuming more. It’s trending, among those who can consciously choose to be part of this movement. And for me, that leaves a bitter aftertaste.

I’ve never been an overly indulgent person, which I attribute to my upbringing. I grew up in a farmhouse built in the 1800s and moved by oxen in 1903 to a parcel of land my grandmother and grandfather owned. It provided 2,000 square feet of country living absent of luxury appliances, a stand-up shower and cable TV. We were far from poor, but we were not exactly vacationing at luxury resorts either. We lived within our means, a common declaration of anti-consumerism of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

I had friends, however, who were not so fortunate. Back then, a tiny home was typically the domain of a low-income household or a family forced into smaller living quarters like trailers in order to make ends meet. “Whimsical” did not describe the boxed-up conditions in which they lived.

How many people who are now part of the tiny house movement have ever lived in a tiny place not by choice? Not because it’s fun or trendy, but out of necessity? My choices of where and how I live have always been driven by economics. But if I had to choose, tiny home living is not a choice I would make again. Not willingly. With a family of five, I would’ve preferred a house between 1,500 and 1,800 square feet — roomy, yet manageable. I’d love for the kids to have some freedom. They spend more time at the dining room table and on the living room floor than they do anywhere else in the house. I’m also a small business owner and freelance writer. It would be nice to have an office. Four glass patio doors separate the sun room (our bedroom) from the living room, and the room is enclosed in bare walls, no insulation. We’re not voyeurs, for heaven’s sake, and we do live in Maine. Winters are cold. I’d love a real place to sleep — and stuff.

Many Americans are in the same boat. They’re not choosing minimalism. They’re forced to downsize for economic reasons. According to The Small House Society, for those who choose tiny home living, “it’s not a movement about people claiming to be ‘tinier than thou’ but rather people making their own choices toward simpler and smaller living however they feel best fits their life.” We didn’t have that choice. I lost my job and our household income dwindled. We settled out of necessity and because of financial constraints, not because we are advocates of a cool movement or wanted to live with less.

The median existing single-family home price was $241,000 in May, for a dwelling of approximately 2,100 square feet. Our home-buying budget was $100,000, which doesn’t buy much in the United States — especially in the Northeast. So we had two options: buy a larger home in need of a ton of work or pick a small home in decent shape. We didn’t have an extra dollar for renovations, so we went with small over fixer-upper.

In the year we’ve been here, we’ve learned the meaning of sacrifice and have mastered the art of using our inside voices — because a decibel too loud and all your secrets and sounds become shared experiences. While we’re not technically part of the tiny-house movement, we are still living a tiny home lifestyle. It may not be a long-term settlement, but I’ve come to accept the smallness of our surroundings. After all, a home is what and where you make it.

But, next time, I’d like to choose.

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The Revenge of Monoculture: The Internet gave us more choices, but the mainstream won anyway

(Credit: Xavier Arnau via iStock/AP/Reuters/Salon)

Is it gone? Do we miss it? Do we want it back? Are we glad it’s history? I’m talking about the so-called monoculture, and I’m not sure whether we were supposed to be nostalgic or gleeful about its so-called passing.

The fight over the monoculture is a funny, ambiguous one: Some have argued that having a shared Anglo-American culture gives us a communal sense of belonging together, sharing concerns and values at a time when politics, ethnicity and religion often divide us. Being able to share in the wonder of a groundbreaking new Beatles album, to exalt over the release of “Purple Rain,” to welcome a big summer movie, was a sign of a culture that worked, where people listen to each other and connect through their tastes. Figures as different as Robert Christgau — the Silent Generation journalist who helped invent rock criticism — and Touré — the Gen Xer who writes on a wide range of topics, especially black music — have lamented the loss of this kind of shared experience. Touré wrote about what he calls Massive Musical Moments this way:

In these Moments, an album becomes so ubiquitous it seems to blast through the windows, to chase you down until it’s impossible to ignore it. But you don’t want to ignore it, because the songs are holding up a mirror and telling you who we are at that moment in history.

These sorts of Moments can’t be denied. They leave an indelible imprint on the collective memory; when we look back at the year or the decade or the generation, there’s no arguing that the album had a huge impact on us. It’s pop music not just as private joy, but as a unifier, giving us something to share and bond over.

But cyber-utopians looked at the downside of this kind of cultural unity and offered something else: Instead of the lockstep world of three networks, a handful of radio stations and a limited number of news sources, the Internet would offer a wild range of options. Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail” was only one of the celebratory works that made it sound like an eclectic digital paradise was inevitable and imminent: Every bit of niche culture would find its audience, and the idea of the mainstream — all that obligatory stuff everyone was expected to like — would wither away. Why listen to tired AOR playlists and watch the same old sitcoms when manga, K-pop, Nordic metal, comedy offerings on YouTube and infinite indie everything would be available around the clock, to anyone with an Internet connection? As Anderson wrote:

An analysis of the sales data and trends from these services and others like them shows that the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today’s mass market. If the 20th-century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.

With “diversity” a rallying cry for most on the liberal left, this fit what about half the audience wanted. Since many conservatives were urging a breakdown of the “mainstream media,” there seemed to be something in here for almost everyone. (Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel talked in his speech at the Republican National Convention about the “ossified monoculture” that his hero Donald Trump would help to defeat.) And if you are a Poptimist — the strain of music critic who exalts popular taste over stuffy old critical biases — the disappearance of the monoculture is a good thing, too: It sets taste free. Who can object to freedom?

Looking at the summer of 2016, it’s still hard to determine whether a monoculture is something we want or we don’t. (In agriculture, the issue is similarly vexing.) But one thing that’s becoming clear: While there is plenty of diversity — of opinion, of musical style, of offerings in television and movies — the monoculture is as strong as ever. Whether it’s better or worse is a whole other question, but the mainstream, rather than fragmenting, has reinforced itself in a big way.

So while it’s possible, as it’s always been, to retreat from pop culture and rely entirely, say, on a diet of 18th century Baroque piano music, Japanese anime and “Twilight Zone” reruns, the gravitational pull of the mainstream is strong. Log onto Twitter, and be drawn into sports culture whether you want to or not: Not just from notifications, but from the NFL games that will stream there.

How about movies? Of the 10 highest earning films of 2016, the top nine are either kids movies or comic book properties. The last one — “Central Intelligence” — is a comedy-action movie with blockbuster actor Dwayne Johnson. These are also the movies that get talked about online, in all but the artsiest magazines, in the ads that probably take up more space in your newspaper than the reviews do.

Meanwhile, even the most serious actors — Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey, Jr. — are devoting a lot of their time to superhero films and action movies. We’ve barely had time to recover from Affleck’s appearance in “Batman v. Superman” before we get the chance to see his cameo in “Suicide Squad,” to catch his starring role wielding a gun in “The Accountant” and to see the new trailer for “The Justice League.” Whether or not you like Affleck’s sometimes drowsy and wooden style, this is a guy who made his name with indies by Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith.

What else happened this week? The pop culture news that has broken through the onslaught of the political conventions has mostly involved Comic-Con, which attracted 130,000 people to San Diego this year and which movie studios ignore at their peril.

To be clear, there are all kinds of “culture” coming right now, including a wide variety of music. But the media coverage of music this week — the way most people hear about what’s being released and what matters — was mostly about MTV’s Video Music Awards. The VMAs have nominated, over the years, Herbie Hancock for “Rockit,” Cindi Lauper for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Paul Simon, Talking Heads, the Verve, Beck, D’Angelo… Stylistically, that’s all over the place.

This year, it’s Adele, Beyoncé, Drake, Justin Bieber and Kanye West: Kiddie pop, and superstar R&B. Some of these videos are of high quality — Beyoncé’s “Formation” is the centerpiece of the aesthetically and politically daring “Lemonade” and would be nominated in any year. But the only surprise here is that Taylor Swift didn’t get nominated. And Swift is so huge — and celebrity so dominating a force in both culture and the way we talk about it — that we don’t have to look far to find her. There she is, in the video for Kanye West’s “Famous”… and in the articles about Taylor Swift being snubbed by the VMAs this year. She’s here even when she’s not here.

“Many people have categorized the 2016 presidential election as a referendum on the very soul of America,” Amy Zimmerman wrote in a Daily Beast story about the awards, topped with a picture of Swift. “But I would argue that nothing has illustrated the eternal, nationwide battle between good and evil quite like Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s seven-year beef.” She’s kidding, in part, but plenty of people who aren’t kidding see things this way.

So are we better off than we used to be? That’s hard to say. But if the mainstream used to mean AOR acts like Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles, “uplifting” Oscar movies alongside Spielberg-style action films, and bland network programming, only one medium has broadened drastically in the Internet age. Television is not only more “diverse” — both racially and in terms of style — and smarter, it’s got a discourse around it that debates “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” and “Empire” and everything else. At the Emmys, “Transparent” and “Master of None” and “The Americans” will all be in the mix.

But when it comes to the movies and films that make money and draw attention, the list gets pretty thin. It’s songs by corporate-branded celebrities (at various degrees of quality) and comic-book movies. 

So why did this happen, when it was supposed to go the other way? Like any cultural change, it likely comes from a swirl of economic, technological and sociological factors that we’ll only understand fully in retrospect. History shows that capitalism tends towards monopoly unless some counterforce pushes back, and the internet has not yet found its Teddy Roosevelt. The biggest musicians and actors bombard us with tweets, puffy magazine stories and online marketing until their “brands” are ubiquitous. But part of it may be the Paradox of Choice: If everything is available, all the time, we’re likely to get overwhelmed and just fall back on what we know already (or what’s been the most aggressively marketed to us.) If you’ve ever stared at an enormous, multi-page menu and decided to get the burger or the steak, you know how this works.

The internet’s near-infinite offerings are not the only cause, but it’s worth looking at what’s happened since it arrived. We’ve always had popular and fringe, overexposed and undersung, but the proportion has changed. In 1986, 31 songs hit number one, and came from 29 different bands or artists. By the period from January 2008 to September 2012 — we’re into the first years of digital dominance — half the number one songs are turned out by just six artists. (That’s Katy Perry, Rihanna, Flo Rida, The Black Eyed Peas, Adele and Lady Gaga.) New York magazine calls it “the monopoly at the top.”

And the changes in online media have followed similar contours. “The top 10 web sites accounted for 31 percent of US pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75 percent in 2010,” Michael Wolff wrote in Wired. Now with Facebook increasingly the way most Americans get their news, the faux-consensus will be even tighter.

So we might not all buy the same album anymore. But the whole country was talking about the latest “Star Wars” last winter, and that seems likely to repeat for at least the next few years. Just as television news — whether on the left or the right — has picked up the hectoring tone of Fox News broadcasts, most online media has borrowed the snark of Gawker. It’s pretty clear that Taylor, Kanye, Bieber, the Kardashians and numerous superheroes — most of which present themselves as misunderstood underdogs — will continue to be impossible to escape. We can pretty much bet what kinds of movies will dominate media coverage and the box office next year, and it won’t be hard to guess who will produce the most celebrated videos and best-selling songs of 2017.

It may be an improvement over the Eagles. But if this isn’t monoculture, I don’t know what is.

 

 

 

 

 

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The amazing life of Margaret Sanger, “Our Lady of Birth Control”: “I was intrigued that such a great do-gooder was also quite a bad girl in private”

Margaret Sanger appears before a Senate committee for federal birth-control legislation in Washington, D.C. on March 1, 1934. (Credit: AP)

With Hillary Clinton’s historic Democratic party nomination still fresh in our minds, it’s now more important than ever that we honor and remember those who came before, who fought and worked and organized to make America a better, fairer place for the so-called “fairer sex.” Sure, we’ve come a long way (baby), but Clinton’s clinch is only one glittering milestone in a long and shining legacy of hard-won battles. Before women could dream of sending one of their own to the Oval Office (or of voting at all), they dreamed of controlling their bodies, and reclaiming their own flesh from an endless cycle of pregnancy, birth and, all too often, death.

That war continues to rage, but without the contributions of pioneers like Margaret Sanger, we’d still be stuck in the trenches. Born in 1879 to Irish parents, she was a complicated woman, one who’s best remembered as the tireless birth control advocate who scandalized the country, energized a generation of women and founded the nation’s first birth control clinic, planting the seed for the organization that would eventually become Planned Parenthood. She was also a radical activist, a mother, a wife, a nurse and an extremely savvy media wrangler who excelled at stirring up publicity for her cause (and landed herself in jail a few times as a result). Sanger’s refusal to back down or be silenced is echoed in the steadfast approach of Planned Parenthood itself, even as the problem she labored to correct — American women’s government-sanctioned lack of bodily autonomy — remains ingrained in our supposedly modern society.

In her new graphic novel, “Our Lady of Birth Control” (Soft Skull Press), artist Sabrina Jones pulls back the curtain and beckons readers into the heart of Sanger’s story in an effort to humanize the woman behind the movement. Her bold, stark drawing style accentuates Sanger’s own boldness and brazen, joyous lack of delicacy. Sanger was a force of nature, a driven and determined fighter who changed the world, but, as Jones shows, it was far from easy going. The author deftly interweaves painstakingly researched, lovingly detailed segments of Sanger’s biography with her own narrative as feminist activist who came of age during the sexual revolution of the ’70s and has grappled with her role in the struggle.

Sanger’s own legacy is complicated, too, fraught with accusations of racism and a perceived championing of eugenics. Understanding 19th century viewpoints through a 21st century prism requires a generous amount of perspective, of course, and this story is no exception. That an outspoken, sexually liberated woman on a mission would rack up reams of bad press during (and after) her lifetime is less of a surprise than a given, but Jones does an admirable job of laying out and patiently dismantling the accusations leveled against Sanger and of explaining the contemporary social circumstances that birthed them.

It’s a deeply personal book for both parties, but the desperately human circumstances it describes — love, work, identity, autonomy, perseverance, death — are all too universal. I’d rank “Our Lady of Birth Control” up there with Kate Evans’ Red Rosa as one of 2016’s most crucial politically-charged graphic novels, and I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the women’s rights movement — especially if you’re #WithHer, or more fittingly, #AgainstHim.

I got in touch with Sabrina Jones to find out more about the work that went into “Our Lady of Birth Control,” President Teddy Roosevelt’s surprising reaction to Sanger’s crusade, the current state of birth control access in this country — and how far we still have to go.

In the book, you share a few anecdotes from your personal activities in the women’s rights movement; without giving too much away, can you explain how you became involved in the struggle, and how that led you to Margaret Sanger?

As a teenager in the 1970s, I fully expected to enjoy the fruits of women’s liberation and the sexual revolution that had thrown off the shackles of the repressive post-war era. Even my mother shuddered at the mention of the dreaded 1950s. Imagine my shock when Ronald Reagan was elected on a wave of nostalgia for the bad old days! Born-again Christians mobilized, advancing legislation to repeal Roe v. Wade. My initiation into activism was with a group of pro-choice artists under the banner of Carnival Knowledge. We made interactive games and performances about reproductive rights, which we presented at street fairs, demonstrations, community centers and galleries. It was thrilling for me, barely out of art school, to throw my energies into the fray of the culture wars. But the carnival was cumbersome and labor-intensive, and it faltered as my heroic new mentors began to burn out.

Meanwhile, the editors of this anti-nuclear comic book called World War 3 Illustrated asked me do a comic strip about the battles over abortion. They were branching out to cover broader issues, and had seen Carnival Knowledge. I had never drawn comics, and rarely read any since outgrowing Archie and Veronica, but I thought WW3 shared many of the virtues of the carnival without its disadvantages. The comic book, like a carnival, is a user-friendly popular medium that can be a non-intimidating vehicle for a social message, but it is cheap and much more portable. Besides, I was not a natural performer, so I was much happier at the drawing table.

Years later, working on comics about the radical movements of the early 20th century, I fell under the spell of Margaret Sanger. Of all the radical ferment in Greenwich Village in the teens, Sanger’s fight to legalize birth control may have had the greatest impact on how we live now. She was a working class heroine, a racy bohemian and a tough-as-nails charmer who got results. With her story, I came full circle to the issues of women’s health and sexual liberation that had first motivated me to make political art.

How did you first become interested in creating historical graphic novels? It’s a really interesting niche and perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when one hears the phrase “graphic novel.”

True. The most famous “graphic novels” are actually memoirs: “Maus,” “Persepolis,” “Fun Home” … and some of my personal favorites: “The Amazing True Story of A Teenage Single Mom,” “Pyongyang,” “The Photographer.” Oh, the pressure to have such an interesting life! Or to have the guts to be as honest as Harvey Pekar, Julie Doucet, Aline Kominsky Crumb. When I was asked to contribute to “Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World,” I discovered a wealth of stories and characters, free for the taking, without having to go out and get into trouble or bare the tawdriest corners of my soul. From the comfort of my studio, I could resurrect the historical rebels they didn’t teach us about in school. The down side of immersing myself in the bold exploits of my predecessors is that makes my own life look like the intersection of boring and cowardly.

What was the research process like for this project? How long did it take you to finish the book? It must’ve been quite an undertaking, given the amount of detail you go into and the complexity of the subject matter.

Once Margaret Sanger became the face of the birth control movement, she used her renown to advance the cause, publishing a ghost-written autobiography that lacks all the juicy bits and difficult traits that make her so fascinating to me. A couple of good biographies and a three-volume edition of her papers — letters, diaries, as well as speeches and articles — fleshed out the picture. Due to the skanky image of contraception at the time, Sanger made a strategic decision not to mention her enthusiastic embrace of free love, her multiple affairs and her long-sought divorce. The public Mrs. Sanger was impeccably ladylike, even soft-spoken, and emphasized the desperate need for birth control on behalf of the impoverished wives and mothers she cared for as a nurse. Devoted to giving women control over their own fertility, she was a neglectful mother and a faithless wife. I was intrigued that such a great do-gooder was also quite a bad girl in private.

I collected addresses where Sanger lived or worked in New York, and gazed up at the buildings that still exist on 5th Avenue and 16th Street. The now-replaced storefront where she opened her first outlaw clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, 100 years ago this October 16th, is especially resonant. The neighborhood is still low-income, although African Americans have replaced the East European and Italian immigrants Margaret served. She succeeded in legalizing birth control, but it failed to eradicate poverty as she hoped.

My work took about three years from conception to publication. Since the first three publishers I approached thought it was such a bad idea, I had the leisure of working without a deadline.

You did an excellent job of showing how interconnected the fight for women’s rights was with radical leftist political movements and the larger labor movement during Sanger’s time — a connection that all too often feels reduced to an afterthought in the current wave of pop feminism. How can we as feminists work to reforge that strong connection with our comrades in labor?

We have to be our own comrades, and acknowledge that we are mostly workers, too. As a union member (United Scenic Artists Local 829 — we paint scenery in the entertainment industry), I learned firsthand that unions are among the few places where men and women are paid equally for the same work. Problems arise when entire growing fields are feminized, like home health care, and consequently undervalued.

If, by pop feminism, you mean the idea that sexiness is powerful, then I’m afraid diamonds are still a girl’s best friend. The current reverence for entrepreneurs, the idea that we must all become cutthroat self-starters, is unrealistic about human nature. Where’s the respect for the average person who conscientiously does her job? Other than her entirely self-motivated career as an activist and organization builder, Margaret Sanger made her living in two conventionally female occupations: nursing and marriage. Her second marriage was far more profitable than her first. Even visionaries have to be pragmatic to get ahead.

Teddy Roosevelt’s quote, where he equated birth control to “race suicide” amongst “selfish,””cowardly” women of the “better classes” stood out — Roosevelt has such a cuddly image that most Americans don’t even know about his white supremacist views. Where did you come across that tidbit?

Margaret dropped pointed references to him in her speeches. Our former president, namesake of the Teddy bear, believed that if women had the choice, we would not have enough babies for the survival of the race. This concern for “race suicide” was often couched in general terms that could refer to the human race, but elsewhere it was clear that he was worried that “native born” Americans, who were in his time predominantly Protestants of Northern European heritage, would be outnumbered by more prolific immigrants, who were more often Catholic or Jewish, from Southern and Eastern Europe. Sound familiar?

Here’s [Roosevelt]: “If Americans of the old stock lead lives of celibate selfishness (whether profligate or merely frivolous or objectless matters little), or if the married are afflicted by that base fear of living which… forbids them to have more than one or two children, disaster awaits the nation. It is not well for a nation to import its art and its literature; but it is fatal for a nation to import its babies,” from Metropolitan Magazine, October 1917.

He further derided “birth control propagandists” as “decadent” and “immoral.” After handily rebutting him in the December issue, Margaret delighted in telling audiences that she received plenty of mail requesting birth control information from Roosevelt’s neck of the woods in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Sanger was a polarizing figure, as we especially see in the section about the enduring controversy around her relationship with race and eugenics. It’s never easy to reconcile a revered individual with their mistakes or unenlightened views; how did you approach this section, and what was the main message you sought to convey?

Google “Margaret Sanger and race,” and brace yourself for a horror show of racism, genocide, the KKK and Hitler. Almost none of it is true, and that fraction which is factual is deceptively out of context. At Sanger’s first trial for offering banned contraceptive information to Jewish and Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, she was accused of aiming to eliminate the Jewish race. By the same twisted logic, her efforts to provide access to birth control to women of color in Harlem, North Carolina, and Tennessee are now cited as evidence that she wished to eliminate African Americans.

Sanger fought so that all women, especially those with low incomes, would have the knowledge and ability to make their own decisions about bearing children. Her outreach to the African American community had the support of leaders like W. E. B. Dubois, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Mary McLeod Bethune. It was years later that opponents of abortion spread false accusations of racism, in order to alienate people of color from the pro-choice movement and Planned Parenthood. In fact, Sanger actively discouraged abortion, which she hoped to avoid through birth control, and Planned Parenthood never performed abortion during her lifetime.

Sanger’s association with eugenics is trickier to understand, because we must realize that eugenics in the 1920s appealed to people across the political spectrum, was taught in 75 percent of U. S. colleges, and was considered far more respectable and scientific than contraception. Sanger sought the endorsement of doctors, scientists and academics to validate the birth control movement, which many associated with free love and anarchism.  She wanted the eugenics movement to support birth control because she claimed it would lead to fewer, healthier babies, and reduce poverty, child labor and prostitution. She never supported coercive, race-based methods.

But her overtures were largely rebuffed by the pro-natalist eugenicists who feared, like Theodore Roosevelt, that birth control would end up in the wrong hands. After the horrors of Nazism, it’s hard to convince people that there was once a kinder, gentler interpretation of eugenics, but then Margaret had an equally hard time convincing eugenicists that her decadent, immoral methods would help improve the human race. And if you don’t believe me, Planned Parenthood has an excellent document online called “Opposition Claims Against Margaret Sanger.”

The amount of government opposition to birth control and Sanger’s work was intense during her lifetime, and it’s sad to see how little has changed in a century. Why do you think birth control’s modern opponents are still so afraid of women’s sexuality?

Now we have employers invoking “religious freedom” to deny birth control coverage in employee health plans. Before we even get into the specter of unfettered female sexuality, this issue betrays a profound disrespect for labor. Healthcare is not a gift from our employer. It is a benefit we earn with our work. Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters of the Poor, I agree that it’s none of their business whether their employees use contraception. Skyrocketing healthcare costs and the stranglehold of the insurance companies have empowered these employers to interfere in our private lives. If we had a real national health plan, the fight would probably continue in the halls of Congress. The desire to control women’s bodies is a primal expression of male power, rooted in questions of paternity. A cute baby peers from a billboard in my Brooklyn neighborhood, over the caption, “Does he really have his father’s eyes?” DNA testing. I imagine fathers dropping in on visiting day to make sure they haven’t been suckered into caring for someone else’s kid. But practical considerations aside, sex is powerful, and we play with fire at our own risk. All the more reason to take precautions.

What (or whom) would you consider to be the modern equivalent to Comstock and his repressive “obscenity” law?

[Indiana Gov.] Mike Pence, who I confess I hadn’t heard of before he was picked as Republican vice-presidential candidate, turns out to be a driving force behind the movement to defund Planned Parenthood, sponsoring legislation in congress as far back as 2007. Laws he passed in his home state have shut down clinics across Indiana. He tried to redefine rape as “forcible rape” to limit abortion funding. Restrictive regulations closed down many abortion clinics in Texas before the Supreme Court struck down the law. Since the anti-choice movement failed to repeal Roe v. Wade, they’ve concentrated on chipping away at access to it.  The Supreme Court decision may have been ahead of its time, so we are still struggling to defend it. It’s not enough to change the law. We have to engage the culture to accept women’s right to control our own bodies and lives.

After spending so much time with her story, and now seeing the way that Planned Parenthood is still — still! — under attack, what do you think it’ll take for birth control to finally be accepted and legally protected as a right, a necessity and a choice that should be available to every person?

Even though birth control is infinitely better and more widely available than it was when Sanger started out, we still have many unintended pregnancies. Most of the fire against Planned Parenthood is aimed at abortion, not birth control, but we cannot separate the two. We are not perfect, and neither are all the methods. The attacks, whether they use laws or guns, not only limit access to services, they create a sense of danger and stigma around reproductive care.

When a woman is embarrassed to mention contraception to her partner, we are in danger. When she feels guilty about making plans to protect her body, we have failed. When she is blamed for being the victimized by rape or other sexual aggression, we need to stand up for her.

Shame and denial contribute to women’s lapses in self-care, but we also make mistakes. The ferocious political climate and self-righteous posturing about pregnancy make it hard to admit that we do make mistakes, in using birth control and in choosing our partners. When I was an adolescent, the sexual revolution beckoned us to a pleasure garden that turned out to have its share of thorns, and now young girls are under immense pressure to be “hot” before they can handle it. For this we should be punished? Young people need compassion and support as they navigate a new social landscape.

What do you think are the most effective ways that modern birth control advocates can continue the fight Sanger started?

As an artist, my weapons are the pen and the brush. I hope my stories and images affirm our right to experience sex, love and relationships in whatever form is right for us. Margaret may have buttoned up her libido in public, but her passionate spirit drove her to fight for all of our rights.

I’d like to see our country follow the example of Colorado, where a recent experiment with free, long-acting birth control has had fantastic results. Teen birth and abortion rates have dropped dramatically, and millions of Medicaid dollars were saved.

I am also very impressed by the networks of abortion funds and volunteers who host women who need to travel for healthcare because their local clinics are shut. But better that the clinics remain open and fully funded for all women! Support Planned Parenthood and elect more women and other pro-choice candidates.

Your quote about “the perfect confluence of art, activism and love” really struck me; it’s a beautifully simple but effective way to sum up some of the guiding principles of Sanger’s life’s work, and to wrap up your own journey. Do you view creating this book as a political act, or more of an act of personal fulfillment (or, as I suspect, both)?

Now that I see those words out of their original context, I wish it were used to describe my book! Ironically, that moment of “perfect confluence” soon hit the rocks, and I was once again scrambling for balance. I held back from activism for fear that it would keep me from the studio. Getting up at dawn to defend clinics can take a bite out of your creative energy. Demonstrations weren’t as exciting as I remembered, maybe because the police got so good at fencing us in. Instead of claiming the streets, we’re taken for a walk between barricades. It was the opposite of empowering.  By the time Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter came along, proving the impact of a robust protest movement, I had come to terms with my place at the drawing table. I no longer feel conflicted about skipping a protest to stay home and draw, because making comics about social justice is the best way for me to contribute.

By now you’ve profiled larger-than-life figures like Isadora Duncan, Margaret Sanger, the Wobblies and numerous others—who’s next on the docket for you?

I’m working on a short strip for World War 3 Illustrated, the radical comics magazine that has fostered my comics since the beginning. It’s called “Hear that Whistle Blow.” It’s about the trains full of crude oil that roll through our communities, putting them in the path of potential disaster. The ideas that are calling to me for the next project are still too farfetched and tender to reveal in print. I’ll just say that my next book may be a lot more personal, and combine history, memoir and travelogue.

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America is the No. 1 arms dealer: Yet why do trends in weapon exports remain in relative obscurity?

FILE -- In this Aug. 15, 2012 file photo, three variations of the AR-15 assault rifle are displayed at the California Department of Justice in Sacramento, Calif. While the guns look similar, the bottom version is illegal in California because of its quick reload capabilities. Omar Mateen used an AR-15 that he purchased legally when he killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub over the weekend President Barack Obama and other gun control advocates have repeatedly called for reinstating a federal ban on semi-automatic assault weapons that expired in 2004, but have been thwarted by Republicans in Congress. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli,file) (Credit: AP)

This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.

When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out.

It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example, take note of the impact of U.S. weapons transfers, including cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous dispensation of weaponry to U.S. allies in Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial F-35 combat aircraft. And once in a while, if a foreign leader meets with the president, U.S. arms sales to his or her country might generate an article or two. But the sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much less analyzed in any depth.

So here’s a question that’s puzzled me for years (and I’m something of an arms wonk): Why do other major U.S. exports — from Hollywood movies to Midwestern grain shipments to Boeing airliners — garner regular coverage while trends in weapon exports remain in relative obscurity? Are we ashamed of standing essentially alone as the world’s number one arms dealer, or is our Weapons “R” Us role such a commonplace that we take it for granted, like death or taxes?

The numbers should stagger anyone. According to the latest figures available from the Congressional Research Service, the United States was credited with more than half the value of all global arms transfer agreements in 2014, the most recent year for which full statistics are available. At 14 percent, the world’s second largest supplier, Russia, lagged far behind. Washington’s “leadership” in this field has never truly been challenged. The U.S. share has fluctuated between one-third and one-half of the global market for the past two decades, peaking at an almost monopolistic 70 percent of all weapons sold in 2011. And the gold rush continues. Vice Admiral Joe Rixey, who heads the Pentagon’s arms sales agency, euphemistically known as the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, estimates that arms deals facilitated by the Pentagon topped $46 billion in 2015 and are on track to hit $40 billion in 2016.

To be completely accurate, there is one group of people who pay remarkably close attention to these trends — executives of the defense contractors that are cashing in on this growth market. With the Pentagon and related agencies taking in “only” about $600 billion a year — high by historical standards but tens of billions of dollars less than hoped for by the defense industry — companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics have been looking to global markets as their major source of new revenue.

In a January 2015 investor call, for example, Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson was asked whether the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration and five other powers might reduce tensions in the Middle East, undermining the company’s strategy of increasing its arms exports to the region. She responded that continuing “volatility” in both the Middle East and Asia would make them “growth areas” for the foreseeable future. In other words, no worries. As long as the world stays at war or on the verge of it, Lockheed Martin’s profits won’t suffer — and, of course, its products will help ensure that any such “volatility” will prove lethal indeed.

Under Hewson, Lockheed has set a goal of getting at least 25 percent of its revenues from weapons exports, and Boeing has done that company one better. It’s seeking to make overseas arms sales 30 percent of its business.

Good news from the Middle East (if you’re an arms maker)

Arms deals are a way of life in Washington. From the president on down, significant parts of the government are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. From the president on his trips abroad to visit allied world leaders, to the secretaries of state and defense, to the staffs of U.S. embassies, American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms. And the Pentagon is their enabler. From brokering, facilitating and literally banking the money from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the world’s largest arms dealer.

In a typical sale, the U.S. government is involved every step of the way. The Pentagon often does assessments of an allied nation’s armed forces in order to tell them what they “need” — and, of course, what they always need is billions of dollars in new U.S.-supplied equipment. Then the Pentagon helps negotiate the terms of the deal, notifies Congress of its details and collects the funds from the foreign buyer, which it then gives to the U.S. supplier in the form of a defense contract. In most deals, the Pentagon is also the point of contact for maintenance and spare parts for any U.S.-supplied system. The bureaucracy that helps make all of this happen, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, is funded from a 3.5 percent surcharge on the deals it negotiates. This gives it all the more incentive to sell, sell, sell.

And the pressure for yet more of the same is always intense, in part because the weapons makers are careful to spread their production facilities to as many states and localities as possible. In this way, they ensure that endless support for government promotion of major arms sales becomes part and parcel of domestic politics.

General Dynamics, for instance, has managed to keep its tank plants in Ohio and Michigan running through a combination of add-ons to the Army budget — funds inserted into that budget by Congress even though the Pentagon didn’t request them — and exports to Saudi Arabia. Boeing is banking on a proposed deal to sell 40 F-18s to Kuwait to keep its St. Louis production line open and is currently jousting with the Obama administration to get it to move more quickly on the deal. Not surprisingly, members of Congress and local business leaders in such states become strong supporters of weapons exports.

Though seldom thought of this way, the U.S. political system is also a global arms distribution system of the first order. In this context, the Obama administration has proven itself a good friend to arms exporting firms. During Obama’s first six years in office, Washington entered into agreements to sell more than $190 billion in weaponry worldwide — more, that is, than any U.S. administration since World War II. In addition, Team Obama has loosened restrictions on arms exports, making it possible to send abroad a whole new range of weapons and weapons components — including Black Hawk, Huey helicopters and engines for C-17 transport planes — with far less scrutiny than was previously required.

This has been good news for the industry, which had been pressing for such changes for decades with little success. But the weaker regulations also make it potentially easier for arms smugglers and human rights abusers to get their hands on U.S. arms. For example, 36 U.S. allies — from Argentina and Bulgaria to Romania and Turkey — will no longer need licenses from the State Department to import weapons and weapons parts from the United States. This will make it far easier for smuggling networks to set up front companies in such countries and get U.S. arms and arms components that they can then pass on to third parties like Iran or China. Already a common practice, it will only increase under the new regulations.

The degree to which the Obama administration has been willing to bend over backward to help weapons exporters was underscored at a 2013 hearing on those administration export “reforms.” Tom Kelly, then the deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, caught the spirit of the era when asked whether the administration was doing enough to promote American arms exports. He responded:

“[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through… and that is something we are doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world… and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”

One place where, with a helping hand from the Obama administration and the Pentagon, the arms industry has been doing a lot better of late is the Middle East. Washington has brokered deals for more than $50 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia alone for everything from F-15 fighter aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to combat ships and missile defense systems.

The most damaging deals, if not the most lucrative, have been the sales of bombs and missiles to the Saudis for their brutal war in Yemen, where thousands of civilians have been killed and millions of people are going hungry. Members of Congress like Michigan Representative John Conyers and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy have pressed for legislation that would at least stem the flow of the most deadly of the weaponry being sent for use there, but they have yet to overcome the considerable clout of the Saudis in Washington (and that of the arms industry).

When it comes to the arms business, however, there’s no end to the good news from the Middle East.  Take the administration’s proposed new 10-year aid deal with Israel. If enacted as currently planned, it would boost U.S. military assistance to that country by up to 25 percent — to roughly $4 billion per year. At the same time, it would phase out a provision that had allowed Israel to spend one-quarter of Washington’s aid developing its own defense industry. In other words, all that money — the full $4 billion in taxpayer dollars — will now flow directly into the coffers of companies like Lockheed Martin, which is in the midst of completing a multi-billion-dollar deal to sell the Israelis F-35s.

“Volatility” in Asia and Europe  

As Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson noted, however, the Middle East is hardly the only growth area for that firm or others like it. The dispute between China and its neighbors over the control of the South China Sea (which is in many ways an incipient conflict over whether that country or the United States will control that part of the Pacific Ocean) has opened up new vistas when it comes to the sale of American warships and other military equipment to Washington’s East Asian allies. The recent Hague court decision rejecting Chinese claims to those waters (and the Chinese rejection of it) is only likely to increase the pace of arms buying in the region.

At the same time, in the good-news-never-ends department, growing fears of North Korea’s nuclear program have stoked a demand for U.S.-supplied missile defense systems. The South Koreans have, in fact, just agreed to deploy Lockheed Martin’s THAAD anti-missile system. In addition, the Obama administration’s decision to end the longstanding embargo on U.S. arms sales to Vietnam is likely to open yet another significant market for U.S. firms. In the past two years alone, the United States has offered more than $15 billion worth of weaponry to allies in East Asia, with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea accounting for the bulk of the sales.

In addition, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to build a defense relationship with India, a development guaranteed to benefit U.S. arms exporters. Last year, Washington and New Delhi signed a 10-year defense agreement that included pledges of future joint work on aircraft engines and aircraft carrier designs. In these years, the United States has made significant inroads into the Indian arms market, which had traditionally been dominated by the Soviet Union and then Russia. Recent deals include a $5.8 billion sale of Boeing C-17 transport aircraft and a $1.4 billion agreement to provide support services related to a planned purchase of Apache attack helicopters.

And don’t forget “volatile” Europe. Great Britain’s recent Brexit vote introduced an uncertainty factor into American arms exports to that country. The United Kingdom has been by far the biggest purchaser of U.S. weapons in Europe of late, with more than $6 billion in deals struck over the past two years alone — more, that is, than the United States has sold to all other European countries combined.

The British defense behemoth BAE is Lockheed Martin’s principal foreign partner on the F-35 combat aircraft, which at a projected cost of $1.4 trillion over its lifetime already qualifies as the most expensive weapons program in history. If Brexit-driven austerity were to lead to a delay in, or the cancellation of, the F-35 deal (or any other major weapons shipments), it would be a blow to American arms makers. But count on one thing: were there to be even a hint that this might happen to the F-35, lobbyists for BAE will mobilize to get the deal privileged status and whatever other budget cuts may be in the works.

On the bright side (if you happen to be a weapons maker), any British reductions will certainly be more than offset by opportunities in Eastern and Central Europe, where a new Cold War seems to be gaining traction. Between 2014 and 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, military spending increased by 13 percent in the region in response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The rise in Poland’s outlays, at 22 percent, was particularly steep.

Under the circumstances, it should be obvious that trends in the global arms trade are a major news story and should be dealt with as such in the country most responsible for putting more weapons of a more powerful nature into the hands of those living in “volatile” regions. It’s a monster business (in every sense of the word) and certainly has far more dangerous consequences than licensing a Hollywood blockbuster or selling another Boeing airliner.

Historically, there have been rare occasions of public protest against unbridled arms trafficking, as with the backlash against “the merchants of death” after World War I, or the controversy over who armed Saddam Hussein that followed the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Even now, small numbers of congressional representatives, including John Conyers, Chris Murphy and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, continue to try to halt the sale of cluster munitions, bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia.

There is, however, unlikely to be a genuine public debate about the value of the arms business and Washington’s place in it if it isn’t even considered a subject worthy of more than an occasional media story. In the meantime, the United States continues to hold onto the number one role in the global arms trade, the White House does its part, the Pentagon greases the wheels and the dollars roll in to profit-hungry U.S. weapons contractors.

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Finally, “a bulletproof black man”: The perfect timing of “Luke Cage” and the black nerd renaissance

Mike Colter in "Luke Cage" (Credit: Netflix)

Black nerds have never really had it easy. Even as Marvel has taken over the cinematic universe and increased interest in comics, making it cool to like superheroes, my fellow members of the African diaspora have remained precariously positioned between the closet culture of nerd-dom and the double-edged white supremacist sword that imposes whiteness onto both traditional education and superheroes.

But no more. When I saw the new “Luke Cage” teaser, I felt an excitement I hadn’t felt since I was six years old and watched “Static Shock” on Kids WB – the first time I’d seen a black superhero. But there was something more to the experience than excitement. I felt a strangely strained catharsis watching one of my darker brothers on the screen — a feeling of joy tethered to pain, the kind of tense linkage that makes no distinction between tears mothered by happiness and grief.

The teaser’s conclusion immediately confirmed for me that a kind of Black Nerd Renaissance is occurring across American culture, in which black people are finally getting a chance to contribute poetic, intelligent and positive representations of black people that aren’t instantly undercut by white supremacist depiction. The first hint I had at this renaissance was in the Sundance award-winning sensation “The Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parkers’ depiction of Nat Turner, a man whom I thought I’d only see in a film if I wrote him myself. Another hint came when I learned Roxane Gay would likely be developing superheroes that were black women within the “World of Wakanda.” It’s about damn time.

When you look at the history of racial myth-making in this country, the whole concept of black people fighting crime is borderline revolutionary. I felt that when I watched “Static Shock” as a child, years before I could put it into words and years after of soaking up the idea of my people as thugs. Purposefully thickened with the passage of generations and policies, criminality has been imbued in black people before the dawn of this country. It was only when I tried to understand why Netflix’s upcoming hit meant so much to me that I was rocked once again by the deadly consequence of that association.

More times than I’d like to remember, my eyes have been stained by watching videos of black men, women, trans and non-binary people shot down in the streets by police officers. These government employees always have excuses for why they murdered someone who was neither armed or capable of killing them, excuses that usually come down to fear. Ever since George Zimmerman walked free, I’ve known their fear could mean my death. The Facebook auto-play of extrajudicial killings has become so frequent in my life that my daily reality has followed me into my unconscious and I’ve had nightmares about running from the police. At times, all I’m left with is rage to save me from my socially-induced depression. In the context of this immortalized trauma and death, Luke Cage becomes a vital representation of something we’ve always wanted to be: physically invulnerable to the many slings the world sends our way.

This was on the executive producer and showrunner Cheo Coker’s mind when he worked on the show. As a part of a panel at San Diego’s Comic-Con, Coker said, “The world is ready for a bulletproof black man.” Perhaps this was the same type of sentiment spread across New York during the Harlem Renaissance when the Senate refused to pursue the Dyer anti-lynching law. The historic parallel reminds us that it’s no coincidence that at the same time black people are unjustly shot down in the streets of the United States by police officers, our people are fighting for better art and representation. It is not a coincidence that nearly a year after Sandra Bland was murdered, a study reveals that more black women are enrolled in higher education than any other group in the United States.

We know counter-narratives matter, in the same way more diverse books matter. In this intellectual Juneteenth, we enter into the continuum of resistance that our ancestors started. We’ve been told by the media that we’re violent criminals, that we don’t care about education, that we don’t take care of our families. These narratives still haunt our existence in a way that makes every day as a black person, in a literal sense, death-defying. Crime-fighters like Luke Cage, geniuses like the new Iron Woman, and tenderhearted teens like Miles Morales push back against these centuries-old ideas.

The greatest art, to me, contends with the society and world it was made in. Luke Cage having a story of his own points out we live in a time of contradiction and debatable progress, a time when playing Pokémon Go can potentially get a black person shot and when that same massively-popular app can take a staunch, pro-Black-Lives-Matter stance by memorializing Tamir Rice with no substantial repercussion.

As depressing as it is, when I see black people in starring roles that don’t hurt our people, it says that we’re not all just dying. We’re creating and fighting, both with new social systems and characters that change how people view the world. The fact that these destructive narratives we’ve been fed are the yoke of mass enslavement coupled with the fact that MacArthur Genius grant winner Ta-Nehisi Coates, the writer of the greatest modern argument for reparations, is crafting the Black Panther comic and has influenced its mostly-black film adaption demands that we fundamentally question the world that we’ve been given. It’s the first step to changing it.

So to my black nerds bleeding from isolation, neglect, and constant assault, I see you and we ‘gon be alright. We’re like Saiyans: what doesn’t kill us literally makes us stronger. We’re going to continue to fight in the streets, behind our keyboards and on every screen we can find until there’s an end to the same recycled white supremacist garbage that’s been plaguing us for centuries.

Oh, and if someone isn’t working on a “Static Shock” pilot or something, I’m going to come at DC Comics’ neck.

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Clinton’s DNC was a big win for normal people and normal politics — but in a country gone insane, that might be a problem

Delegates celebrate at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 26, 2016. (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)

PHILADELPHIA — As I was walking across the asphalt desolation of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex — next to which downtown Cleveland is pretty much the Left Bank — after the last night of the Democratic National Convention, I had an epiphany about the contradictory nature of this event. This year’s DNC, culminating in the triumphant coronation of Hillary Clinton on Thursday night and her highly effective acceptance speech, hecklers and all, was a great victory for normal people. Whether or not that’s a good thing, in a country where the normal has become pathological and the pathological normal, is open for debate.

Normal people were all around me on the walk back to the subway station: Polite, practical-minded people with college degrees and good jobs; people who were well-dressed but not ostentatiously dressed. Most but not all were homeowners, most but not all were moms and dads. Most lived in large-ish cities or middle-sized cities or the kinds of inner suburban towns that have actual bookstores and actual coffee shops. Of course I’m guessing about those demographics, but I’m right. They were “diverse,” in the usual Democratic Party check-the-boxes way, in that quite a few were not white and quite a few were not straight and the ratio of female to male was about even. But there was a certain conformity in effect nonetheless — a conformity of spirit, or of vibe — and if you claim not to know what I’m talking about you’re kidding yourself. They were normal. They were pleasant. They were Democrats.

That was the idea, of course. Faced with an opposition party that has visibly gone insane and turned itself into a Gathering of the Juggalos, nominating not just the stupidest and least qualified candidate in political history but pretty nearly the worst person of all time, the Democrats have doubled down on normal. They have defeated or absorbed the defiantly non-normal left-wing opposition, at least for the moment, and driven the renegades out of the tent. Now they are ready to stand together, in nice pants, and save whatever can be saved of the American republic. They have built the last fortress of what Jeb Bush plaintively described last winter as “regular-order democracy,” a Minas Tirith of whole-grain wholesomeness, standing alone against the Dark Lord.

If Hillary Clinton herself has spent too long in the enclaves of power and privilege to qualify as fully normal, she remains normal-ish, a convincing simulacrum of the normal person she used to be. Clinton is not an orator in the Barack Obama class or a master showman like Donald Trump, but her speech on Thursday was well-crafted and well-modulated. She used the gendered perception that she is shrill or harsh or unlikable to her advantage, presenting herself as the unflappable adult administrator — the high school principal, writ large — prepared to make tough decisions while other people yell and lose their minds.

As the onslaught of Dad jokes on Twitter established, a person cannot be more egregiously normal than Tim Kaine, who seems deeply torn at every moment between a desire to take the Cub Scouts camping and a desire to take his wife to brunch. (At someplace, y’know, nice.) Kaine’s primary role on the ticket is to soften and humanize it and lend it a snuggly fleece lining on cool fall evenings, which at the very least is a new role for a male politician to play. I don’t think the full historical force of the moment hit me until I saw Clinton and Kaine on stage together, clasping hands as running mates, and realized that the shorter one in the white pantsuit was at the top of the ticket.

But I have questions about what normal means in 2016, and whether there is any such thing. There’s also the question of whether normal will work as an electoral strategy against the nuttiest political amalgamation of recent history, a Republican Party that has sold itself to a billionaire con man, emptied itself of its so-called core principles and imbibed massive doses of Alex Jones-style paranoia and conspiracy theory.

This is an obvious and unoriginal insight, but looking around me at the crowd of normals streaming toward the SEPTA station, I reflected that they (or, however reluctantly, we) do not know the Trump electorate, cannot understand what they believe or what they want, and have no effective way to communicate with them. While the assumption that “nice and normal” will outnumber and outvote “crazy and delusional” sounds reasonable to me — setting aside any interrogation of those terms for the moment — how the hell would I actually know? Ask Jeb Bush how his “regular-order democracy” is going. Ask David Cameron. Are “we” just playing the role of Charlie Brown, convincing ourselves that this time the collective Lucy of the disgruntled electorate won’t yank the ball away?

Even assuming that Clinton defeats Trump, it does not follow that everything is OK and democracy is saved. Because what we observed inside and around the Wells Fargo Center this week was not entirely normal. It was a political party at war with itself, which is probably healthy, and also a political party suffering episodes of psychosis, which is less so. There were amazing and inspiring moments on Thursday, that suggested the genuine diversity and remarkable potential of the Democratic coalition: Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen Muslim Marine, offering Trump his copy of the Constitution; the Rev. William Barber II, preaching the gospel of “Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew.”

There were also pathological outbreaks of jingoism and flag-waving, promises of endless war against faceless enemies, and a consistent rhetoric of American exceptionalism that would have seemed too extreme for almost any Republican convention of the pre-Reagan years. I understand the strategy, pretty much, and I understand the goal. But Jesus H. Christ. Did we have to go all the way to that screaming general out of “Dr. Strangelove”? If he wasn’t talking about protecting our vital fluids from Communism, it sure sounded like he was. Right around then I had my own little Jill Stein insurrection, inside my mind, before sending in the cops and busting some heads.

I was deeply troubled by the discordant tone of the Philly spectacle, by the haphazard leaps it made from a Bernie Sanders-lite progressive social vision to war fever to a Katy Perry concert. I feel absolutely no doubt that the same insanity virus that destroyed the Republican Party from within has infected the Democrats, and the normals are completely unaware of it. (Case in point: the paranoid desire to believe that Trump is in league with Vladimir Putin to destroy America, rather than just an idiotic, blustering troll.) I’m tempted to issue a heartfelt plea about how we can’t afford the usual left-liberal thing of saying, “Whew, we didn’t elect a monster” and then retreating into our info-consumer bubbles for four years. But who would I be kidding? That’s exactly what will happen. That’s the normal person’s way.

To be clear, I don’t question the urgency of defeating Trump, and from the beginning of this cycle Hillary Clinton has been the only realistic option. I’m not throwing shade on the Democrats for not nominating Sanders, partly because that was never remotely likely to happen and partly because there’s no telling how that would have turned out. A general election pitting Sanders against Trump would have been a completely unpredictable scenario with various horror-movie endings, and President Sanders plus a Republican Congress might have made the Obama years look like an acme of good government.

So here we are with the normal people, in a giant Philadelphia parking lot and the giant parking lot of America. This convention went pretty well, disgruntled Bernie delegates and protesters and all. Hillary gave a good speech and didn’t terrify the white men of America too badly, or any more than they were terrified already. She pointed out that Trump is a bully and a dumbass to people who already knew that, and is headed toward a pretty good post-convention bounce in the polls. So why do I not feel comforted, or normal? Why do I feel like one of the replicants in “Blade Runner,” just before finding out that he’s a replicant?

Right after Hillary’s speech ended but just before the balloons dropped, DNC floor managers hustled through the crowd with giant yellow placards reading “GET READY FOR STUNT #1.” It was a reference to their stupid red, white and blue card display, which didn’t go all that well (in an otherwise skillful production). I read those words with an almost comical sense of despair. OK, I’m ready for Stunt #1. What choice do I have?

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Welcome to the East Side: How Clinton and Kaine can make Youngstown a call for unity

FILE - In this July 23, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, accompanied by her running mate, Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a rally in Miami. The Democratic National Convention speaker’s lineup has highlighted an increasingly diverse country that could soon elect the first female president as successor to its first black chief executive. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File) (Credit: AP)

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

On Monday, the Clinton campaign announced it would kick off its post-convention run to Election Day with a bus tour through the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania and Ohio, including a stop today in Youngstown, Ohio.

Most commentators will read the tour as an effort to reach out to white working-class voters in de-industrialized areas that have suffered as a result of trade policy. They will focus on how Clinton finesses her past support for trade deals and her newfound rejection of the TPP.

They will also note the challenge Clinton faces in a community that has long been a Democratic stronghold. In the Ohio primary, Youngstown gained national attention when more than 6,000 Democrats switched their affiliation and 21,801 voters without party affiliation voted Republican — most of them for Trump.

But reporters and pundits might well miss parts of the Youngstown story, simply because they aren’t familiar with the local landscape.

As in real estate, in politics location matters. That’s why Clinton held a campaign event in March at M7 Technology, a local company that provides technical support to heavy industry, located on the site of the former U.S. Steel Ohio Works, one of the city’s iconic former steel mills. She also had a beer in a downtown bar with local Rep. Tim Ryan, who has worked hard to secure federal funding to support high-tech business development in the region. Clearly, Clinton’s campaign staff recognizes that Youngstown is a poster child for de-industrialization, but they also want to emphasize recent efforts to revitalize and the role of federal government funding in rebuilding a local economy that is still struggling decades after the steel mills closed.

The Clinton campaign could use the setting to remind voters that economic inequality is not a white issue.

But today, Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) will speak at East High School, located in a very different part of town. For Youngstown as a whole, the poverty rate is just over 40 percent, and many of the neighborhoods with the highest rates are on the East Side. That reflects the city’s racial breakdown. While 54 percent of the city’s population is black or Latino, on the East Side, people of color make up 80 percent of the population. Youngstown has major problems with vacant properties and population loss. City planners identified parts of the East Side as “not viable” in the Youngstown 2010 Plan, and they hoped to persuade some long-time residents to move out so that the city could stop providing services in those neighborhoods — an effort that has largely failed. As a whole, Youngstown is battling a host of problems, including long-term economic hardship and racial divisions. And all of that is even more visible and significant in the neighborhood that Clinton and Kaine will visit today.

Does the choice of venue reflect the campaign’s interest in wooing lower-income African-American and Latino voters? Or perhaps it reflects an understanding that Youngstown’s story is not just about de-industrialization or the hope of high-tech saviors? Or maybe East High was simply the best venue available? It’s hard to know. But regardless of the rationale, today’s rally offers Clinton and Kaine opportunities to address two key issues.

First, the Clinton campaign could use the setting to remind voters that economic inequality is not a white issue. De-industrialization in Youngstown hurt its African-American and Latino workers even more than whites. Many minority workers had gained an economic foothold in the mills just a decade or so before the mills began to close — the result of a consent decree that required both steel companies and unions to provide equal opportunities for workers of all races to gain access to better jobs within the mills. Speaking at East High School, Clinton and Kaine could challenge the by-now familiar story of the displacement and resentment of white working-class voters. While the Trump campaign encourages white working-class voters to blame “others” for their woes, the Clinton campaign could remind voters that economic struggle is a shared problem. They could also encourage unity in a community that has long been divided along racial lines.

At the same time, the East Side venue may remind the campaign and some commentators that in order to win in November, the Clinton campaign not only has to persuade economically struggling whites to recognize their common ground with people of color. After all, in 2008 and 2012, the white working-class vote in Ohio went Republican. Ohio went for Obama because of African-American and Latino voters. To win Ohio in 2016, Clinton needs to appeal to those same voters, and East High School is a great place for her to begin that outreach.

Clinton could also use the story of the Youngstown City Schools to challenge the idea that privatization is the answer for public education.

Second, the campaign could draw attention to the way inequality and politics play out in public education. The Youngstown City School District has among the lowest performance ratings for the State of Ohio, and within that struggling district, East High has the lowest ratings, with just 64.3 percent of its students graduating in four years. The school’s performance reflects the poverty and stresses of its community, of course, but its future is being shaped by state politics.

Like many urban school districts, Youngstown City schools were hurt by the Republicans’ focus on cutting taxes rather than on serving the people. Ohio’s austerity measures required the school district to rely on local school taxes, even as the city’s population declined. This amounted to defunding of public education in a community where good schools were more important than ever.

In 2015, Republican Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-dominated legislature took over the city school district under a bill that gave a state-appointed commission the authority to close schools or hand over their management to for-profit companies. The takeover disempowers the local community, and it reflects the Republicans’ faith in private solutions to public problems. Speaking at East High School gives Clinton a great opportunity to talk about the importance of education and the value of community involvement, but she can also use the story of the Youngstown City Schools to challenge the idea that privatization is the answer for public education. She might have point out that most of the existing charter schools in Youngstown earn Ds and Fs on Ohio’s Public School Report Cards, even though they all receive more state funding per pupil than do non-charter schools in the district while often spending less of that funding in the classroom.

No doubt Clinton and Kaine face an unexpected challenge in the Mahoning Valley, a community where Democrats could once count on fairly easy wins. But they can do more with this visit than tout their concern for disaffected white working-class voters. They can draw attention to the shared pain of economic inequality, advocate for education and opportunity, and challenge the idea that business (or a successful business executive) can solve America’s problems.

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“A step in a long staircase toward equal access to freedom”: Supreme Court’s abortion ruling a small victory in a neverending fight

Pro-choice activists celebrate at the Supreme Court, June 27, 2016. (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

There were more protesters than usual in the summer of 2014.

With Texas’ House Bill 2, known more commonly as HB2, having gone into full effect in March, outside the few remaining clinics in Houston, there were more than the usual two or three giant posters of bloody babies, purportedly fetuses. Once, I saw as many as seven. Often, there were as many as 30 people shouting at my car as I pulled into the parking lot. On one visit, I had just driven a woman to the clinic as a volunteer with the Clinic Access Support Network and was entering the clinic to sign in as her ride. As I walked up to the heavy front door — bulletproof, it seemed to me — a woman in a “Jesus Saves” T-shirt shouted at me so loudly that I almost tripped. At the very top of her lungs, she screamed, from about 20 feet away, “Don’t do this. We love you. And we love your baby.” After catching my balance and my breath, before entering the clinic, I turned and gave her the finger.

Inside, I told a very friendly receptionist that I was a volunteer driver, and would be back to pick up the young woman after her procedure. I did return, driving and walking through the gauntlet of protesters once again, to sign in and pick up the young woman, who was still a little drowsy from the sedation. I took her back to her aunt’s house in the suburbs where she was staying. Tomorrow, she told me, she’d be returning to the small town she lives in, where there was no remaining abortion clinic. When I got home later that morning, I turned on the news to hear that earlier that morning, a man had walked into a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs and opened fire, killing 3 people.

* * *

In considering Texas’ law, the Supreme Court had to determine whether the impact of HB2 made it too difficult to obtain an abortion in the state. This test of whether the law posed an “undue burden” on the people of Texas was the crux of the Court’s consideration about whether to let the law stand or strike it down.

HB2 prohibited abortion after 20 weeks gestation, placed increased restrictions on those seeking medical abortions, required all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and mandated that all abortion clinics meet the requirements of ambulatory surgical centers. It was these last two provisions, mandating the need for all clinics to have admitting privileges and function as ambulatory surgical centers, that were challenged before the Court.

In a 5-3 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned both provisions. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the majority opinion and was joined by justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.

Dismissing the claim that HB2 protects women’s health, Justice Breyer wrote in his decision, “We conclude that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access … and each violates the Federal Constitution.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made it plain, writing a 367-word concurrence to drive home the fallacy in the idea that such a law was designed to protect women’s health.

* * *

In the few weeks since the ruling, the question remains: Does such a verdict mean that the reproductive justice movement is gaining momentum? Or is the Court’s decision an outlier, not a bellwether? The answer isn’t exactly straightforward.

The anti-choice movement has succeeded in passing a veritable avalanche of abortion restrictions in the past several years. More were passed and implemented throughout the U.S. between 2011 and 2013 than in the entire previous decade. These are staggering numbers and certainly highlight the momentum and power of the anti-choice movement’s legislative strategy. While the Supreme Court’s recent ruling won’t overturn all of these laws, or even most of them, the ruling clearly sets precedent against posing an undue burden on those seeking abortions, and will have significant impact.

The importance of such precedent must not be understated, say reproductive justice activists around the country. Yamani Hernandez, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, told Salon, “It puts a considerable dent in the anti-choice tactic of making clinics hard to open or sustain. It also sets a precedent about the many burdens to abortion access that exist people ever even make it to an open and operating abortion clinic.”

In fact, immediately after the ruling, several laws known as TRAP laws, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws, were contested or dismissed around the country.

Amanda Williams, executive director of the Lilith Fund in Texas, told Salon that this ruling confirmed what she already knew.

“The Court’s ruling has validated what Lilith Fund has seen on our hotline for years — that these laws are a sham built to destroy access, dismantle resources and opportunities for our clients, who are predominantly low-income people of color, to obtain reproductive autonomy,” Williams said.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, told Salon about what she sees as an important potential shift in momentum for the reproductive justice movement, given the onslaught of abortion restrictions: “…We were constantly on the defense.  This position is a hard one to maintain. It drains your energy and resources. But this decision gives us an opportunity to shift our position to a more proactive stance — thus shifting our momentum. We have a long way to go, but this victory definitely provides a long-awaited jump start.”

One less-noted element of the fight to repeal HB2 is the impact of the reproductive health, rights and justice activist communities coming together and beseeching their lawmakers and the Supreme Court to take notice of its devastating impact.

A total of 45 amicus briefs were filed to encourage the Supreme Court to find the law unconstitutional and dangerous to women’s health. National medical organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Physicians wrote briefs stating the dangers of HB2. Activist organizations like the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the Texas Coalition Against Sexual Assault wrote in support of Whole Women’s Health and the need for safe, accessible reproductive health care in Texas. Additionally, thousands of activists, including me, lent their voices to the amicus briefs, stating the importance of safe and accessible reproductive health care.

Shailey Gupta-Brietzke, an attorney and former president of Texas’ Lilith Fund, contributed to a brief known as “the lawyers’ brief,” containing the stories and signatures of over 110 attorneys who obtained abortions. Gupta-Brietzke told Salon: “This felt like the most significant thing I’ve done as a lawyer … It was an important moment for me to publicly sign on with my name and story that I had an abortion. The win and sharing that intimate part of who I am means that this victory was very important to me.” For a longtime reproductive justice activist like Gupta-Brietzke, merging the personal and the professional to fight against HB2 was especially important. “This brief is the first publication where I acknowledge that I have had an abortion,” she says, “And I believe that was the case for other signers as well.”

Spotlighting so many diverse voices is a notable shift for a movement that has often been seen as one centered around the needs of middle- and upper-class white women. When the fight for reproductive rights came to Texas, a big, often unwieldy and very diverse state, things looked different. Amanda Williams noted the significance of the broad coalition that fought HB2 in Texas and the subsequent Supreme Court victory, saying, “Our resistance is not new, but our movement’s ability to communicate and engage each other around what has been happening since HB2 has truly changed the landscape of activism in Texas, and perhaps across the country as well.” The clinic closures impacted people of all incomes and races, but of course acutely impacted low-income people, rural communities and women of color — all those who were more likely to be left without recourse when clinics closed and it took more time and resources to access an abortion.

* * *

In the past few years, as a volunteer with the Clinic Access Support Network, I’ve driven women from all over Texas who have made their way to Houston for their abortion. Some arrive just in the nick of time, before the procedure is no longer an option in Texas, which bans abortion beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy. Some have arrived too late and have been turned away. Some are nervous and tense, peppering me with questions about the procedure, what to expect and how much it will actually cost. Others have been worried that if they miss this appointment they won’t be able to make it back for another one without having to take more days off from work, potentially jeopardizing their job. Others make jokes or ask me about myself, what I do and why I am taking my Monday afternoon to drive a stranger to her abortion. In this small slice of conversations with women affected by Texas’ House Bill 2, the stories of the women impacted are hardly the same, but the burden imposed on them is consistently present.

Now, Texas’ clinics will slowly begin to re-open, as they re-staff and get their licensing requirements met — not things that can happen overnight. According to the Guttmacher Institute, ten other states have admitting privileges requirements in effect that are similar to the Texas requirement, and there are ongoing challenges to similar laws in Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — all of which will likely be struck down. In fact, just this Friday, Louisiana announced that it won’t be enforcing newly passed restrictions that would extend their waiting period from 24 to 72 hours and ban a common second trimester procedure called “dilation and extraction.”

Notably, in the wake of this victory and the vocal and staunch support of her campaign by the biggest reproductive rights groups in the country like Planned Parenthood and NARAL, Hillary Clinton has chosen Tim Kaine as her pick for vice president. Kaine’s record on abortion access is a bit muddled, as is Clinton’s herself. Supporting laws that restricted access to abortion while governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine supported a ban on dilation and extraction abortions, a parental consent law and abstinence-only sex education. He also supported a law that would subject people seeking an abortion to be forced to have a medically unnecessary ultrasound. In 2007, NARAL Pro-Choice America gave Virginia an “F” in its annual reproductive freedom report, and determined Tim Kaine to be a “mixed choice” governor. Nonetheless, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood have determined Mr. Kaine to have a perfect pro-choice voting record since he became a senator in 2012.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump’s choice for VP is the architect of some of the most regressive and anti-choice legislation seen in recent years. Mike Pence’s Indiana is a veritable case study in all the potential restrictions a state can impose on a person seeking an abortion. So, while the Supreme Court’s ruling may have injected some momentum into the battle to secure reproductive rights, the national political landscape hasn’t reflected as much. In fact, if the VP picks of the major parties can offer any insight at all, it’s that both candidates are hedging their bets on abortion rights, with Sec. Clinton choosing a VP with a lukewarm record on abortion access, and Trump choosing one whose hostility to reproductive rights is relatively unparalleled.

As for the reproductive justice movement, if it’s going to build enough momentum to change the landscape, the Court’s ruling must serve as a spark for all the base-building work that’s yet to be done. Yamani Hernandez is taking the long view, and incorporating other movements and issues in her call to action, saying, “We need to join forces with our allies in economic and racial justice to repeal the Hyde amendment and stop political intrusion into the family planning of people using public insurance. We can leverage this victory by raising a generation that speaks the word abortion as personal healthcare without stigma.

“This is most certainly a win,” Hernandez asserts, and then adds, gesturing to the connection between abortion access and economic justice, “However, it’s a step in a long staircase toward equal access to freedom. Open clinics can’t do anything for people who can’t afford to go to them.”

For now, the protesters remain outside Houston’s abortion clinics, and the job of ensuring that people can get to those clinics safely and afford the care they seek is left to those of us that believe that a right means very little without access.

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