Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 74

On creating a new politics with spiritual and intellectual integrity

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This article originally appeared on Truthout.

It's become a truism, a cliché, to point out something truly remarkable: Human civilization is in the midst of an existential crisis. The ecology of the living Earth — long pushed beyond its sustainable capacities — has issued a near-future-stamped "change-or-face-eviction" notice to humankind. Meanwhile, many other human systems — social, political and cultural — are simultaneously in crisis. Economic inequality is becoming ever more grotesque. And culture wars over injustice, racism, homophobia and sexism are rapidly intensifying. These are the political crises we collectively recognize.

But we rarely publicly acknowledge that we're also in the midst of an existential spiritual crisis. By that I do not mean that fewer of us believe in God or attend church than we did 50 years ago. I use the word "spiritual" here to refer to our sources of higher inspiration — meaning, value, compassion, care, generosity, goodness, truth and beauty — often linked to experiences of higher states and structures of consciousness. Feelings of alienation, loneliness and meaninglessness pervade many lives. Forty years into the neoliberal experiment, we see not only increasing material impoverishment, but also a profound and rising spiritual hunger. Many are finding meaning in a new spiritual renaissance. But for others, spirituality is a coping strategy. Our two — spiritual and political - are deeply interlinked.

Spiritual awakening can be fulfilled only in relationship, in being of benefit to the whole, especially in times when crises are acute. Spirituality naturally expresses itself in active engagement with others, in actual work to restore systemic health and wholeness. In the US, individualism is baked not only into our politics, but into our spirituality as well -- and particularly within alternative paths. In the 1970s, when thousands of mostly white, mostly middle-class young adults created what would eventually be called the "New Age," they embarked on a spirituality whose goal was a change in personal consciousness. This quest was solitary — or, at most, played out within self-contained spiritual communities. Many of these practitioners found ways to make a middle-class living, postponing social transformation while they pursued personal growth. Recognizing that we faced problems that couldn't be solved with the kind of consciousness that created them, they signed an IOU and focused on changing personal consciousness. It may be no coincidence that this happened while many of the social justice movements of the 1960s were stymied amidst right-wing mobilization.

My own life was in some ways paradigmatic of this social trajectory. I grew up in a multiracial, leftist cooperative outside Chicago and came of age in the 1960s. As a teenager, I was active in the antiwar movement, and led campus demonstrations at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. But then I recognized that the revolution had to begin with me — I had to transform my own consciousness. Almost 50 years later, I'm clear that both are true — the inner and outer work are both necessary — but they now must integrate. Our spirituality must become political, and our politics must be grounded in spiritual practice and awakening.

Spirituality that is untethered to creative work for the benefit of others and a just, sustainable and healthy society tends to be self-absorbed. Conversely, politics that isn't grounded in higher inspiration and actual self-transcending practice lacks the "electric" energy that authentic spiritual inspiration can bring, and often leads to burnout and cynicism.

The stakes are high: As climate change threatens our very future, and economic inequality stokes dangerous social polarization, we are literally in a battle for our — one that can only be won in "sage mode" rather than "warrior mode." We now need to show up at our wisest and best. And that only happens when the political and the spiritual are integrated.

When veteran antiwar protester, social justice activist and former FBI most-wanted man Father Daniel Berrigan was interviewed by The Nation in 2008, he said: "The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life. It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base." Like it or not, politics needs spirituality, and spirituality needs politics.

Of course, we have powerful historical examples of activists whose spiritual calling was inseparable from their political struggle. The African American church has long been an incubator of social justice movements, and figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Joanna Macy and others have shown what it means to live lives in which the spiritual and political are braided together and interdependent.

We live amidst a crisis of fragmentation. But, like an immune response, wholeness resurges in the face of fragmentation. It takes the form of countless acts and creative projects that elevate our consciousness, relationships, communities and systems, and reknit our torn social fabric. It can be thought of as a kind of heroic wholeness. As a longtime spiritual teacher, I am seeing a rapidly growing hunger for this kind of wholeness. Increasingly, the diverse spiritual ecosystem in which I've participated for over four decades is now recognizing the limits of an inward-focused spirituality; or, as I like to put it, there's a debt incurred when people opt completely out of politics to focus on the inner work — and the bill is now coming due.

Many organizations now reflect this new integrated consciousness and have as their mission both personal and political transformation. Some are appearing at the leading edge of evolutionary thinking. They include Sister Giant, founded by Marianne Williamson; the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, which was co-founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner, Sister Joan Chittister and Cornel West; and Andrew Harvey's Institute for Sacred Activism. These groups are rousing people from all faiths to change the world and to align their spirituality with their worldly work.

Countless congregations and sanghas (communities) have begun to mobilize. The "religious left" is becoming a force in American politics, and figures like Rev. angel Kyodo williams, a Zen priest and activist, are finding strong resonance with their message that the inner and outer work require each other.

As the Trump presidency becomes a daily reminder of how vulgar materialism, greed and a lack of reverence for human life and the natural world can be weaponized in the service of a dangerous and heartless agenda, a renewed call for politics with both spiritual and intellectual integrity resonates far and wide, and the work has begun throughout the country.

Churches, such as the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, have boldly defied Trump's racist crackdown on immigrants and offered sanctuary to undocumented workers. They are not alone. Churches from North Carolina to Missouri to Texas are opening their doors to impoverished families at risk of deportation and standing firm against the scapegoating of immigrants. According to a January 2018 report produced by the World Church Service, the Sanctuary Movement has exploded in the wake of Trump's victory: "Immediately after the 2016 election, faith communities rapidly joined the Sanctuary Movement. Knowing that President Trump had run his campaign on policies of exclusion and punishment, the numbers drastically spiked from 400 to 800 congregations during several months."

Meanwhile, the Poor People's Campaign, an organization that harkens back to Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement of the same name, is providing both a moral mandate and political analysis for making change. The group has drafted a resolute set of progressive demands, taken a leading role in organizing civil disobedience, and built a library of activist art. They have also created powerful alliances with the Fight for $15 campaign and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the country's most tenacious unions.

In an inspiring show of resistance, the Poor People's Campaign will engage in 40 days of direct action beginning today, Mother's Day, and concluding on June 23. Working with diverse political coalitions from more than 40 states, they will take to the streets to challenge systemic racism and poverty. This bold action is motivated by "The Souls of Poor Folk," a damning audit of poverty in the US in the 50 years after King launched the first Poor People's Campaign.

We are in an era of crises that makes whole-system change necessary. Meanwhile, we yearn for nothing short of total personal and political transformation. Paradoxically, in times of extreme stress, the possibility of this kind of radical change is greatest. Buddhists have used a precious jewel — the "wish-fulfilling gem" — to symbolize this kind of transformation. Such a diamond cannot be formed except under titanic pressure. Sudden, dramatic evolutionary progress often takes place under conditions of extreme tension when dire conditions require rapid and dramatic adaptation. When new conditions disrupt ecological balance, other crucial environmental factors change, which force new faculties and behaviors to emerge.

The twin crises of our time call us to a new politics and spirituality, neither of which can arise in isolation. The true heroes of the age ahead will not be individuals, but communities of practice whose cooperative work will simultaneously mend, uplift and evolve our hearts, our relationships and our world.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted without permission.

 

Missouri man released after wrongful conviction and 18 years in prison

AP Photo/Jim Cole

David Robinson spent nearly 20 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. Though his 2001 conviction collapsed over ten years ago, he was only able to walk free Monday night. Robinson was finally released from the Jefferson City Correctional Center when the Missouri Attorney General recommended that the charges against him be dismissed, 18 years after his original conviction.

Robinson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killing of Sheila Box, who was found dead in her car from a single gun shot wound in 2000. There was no physical evidence connecting Robinson to the crime and just one eyewitness, a paid police informant. Authorities believed Box was shot during a drug deal and pinned it on Robinson, who had some history of drug crimes. Robinson's attorneys exhausted decades of appeals before his release yesterday.

"That bothered me more than anything, to be wrongfully accused of killing a woman," Robinson told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty. "Been a living nightmare. It's been an up-and-down rollercoaster."

More than just scant physical evidence, the police informant eventually recanted — as did a person who posed as Robinson's cellmate, claiming Robinson confessed the crime to him; meanwhile, another person confessed to the Box murder in 2004, on tape.

"I told her to throw the money, throw the money out and I'm gonna throw her the dope," Romanze Mosby said to a defense investigator on August 9, 2004, saying that he was the one who sold drugs to Box. He told the investigator that he saw she had a gun, "And that's when I just shot her, because I'd seen a little flash," Mosby continued. "I was walking up to it and she just raised her arm and that's when I shot her." Five years later, Mosby committed suicide.

According to Robinson's attorney, the inmate who said Robinson confessed to him when they were cellmates never even shared a cell with him. "He was never in the same cell as David Robinson, and the prosecution put him on the stand even though they knew he had never shared the same cell," attorney Charlie Weiss told CBS.

Anthony Baker, the paid police informant said, "I gave false testimony against David Robinson," adding that he had been given $2,500 in cash for his testimony. Sam Gross, law professor at the University of Michigan and founder of the National Registry of Exonerations, said, "On the whole, judges are routinely suspicious of recantations," adding that judges worry about bribery or threats made to the witness, but have a tendency to dismiss the recantation rather than consider its full context.

Through all this and after repeated appeal denials, Robinson remained in prison. Even the victim's daughter, who was a teenager when her mother was murdered, believed in Robinson's innocence. "I believe in my heart that he is innocent and I stand by him," Crystal King told CBS. "I lend my support to him."

After an appeal was finally accepted by the Missouri Supreme Court, it ruled at the beginning of May that the state had a 30-day deadline to either retry Robinson or release him. The Attorney General announced the recommendation of dismissing of Robinson's charges Monday.

There have been 2,215 documented cases of exonerations after wrongful convictions in the U.S., said Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation at the Innocence Project. But that number is a mere fraction. "There are so many more people who are prosecuted, convicted, even executed for crimes they didn’t commit than we are aware of," she said.

And there's no simple answer for why it's so hard to free an innocent person, but there is often a disparity in resources available to someone on death row versus someone sentenced to life in prison. A person sentenced to death can get appointed counsel and sometimes resources for forensic testing or investigation, giving precedence to the high stakes involved in a capital case. But both the death penalty and life in prison are still death sentences in prison, Gross argues. "You can’t take back an execution, but you also can’t take back 30 years somebody's spent in prison."

For Potkin, she believes, "There should be no difference in the ability to prove your innocence in a crime that you are convicted of. While there is some evidence for those wrongfully convicted for serious crimes like rape and murder, there is no sense of those wrongfully convicted for misdemeanors or other low-level offenses.

It is also clear that is extremely difficult for an innocent person to overturn one's conviction for whatever their convicted crime, and "courts in general are not very receptive to claims of innocence," Potkin says, adding that it takes the Innocence Project an average of seven years to litigate a case, not including the time it spends waiting to be evaluated.

There is also an alarming discrepancy when it comes to race. A study by the National Registry of Exonerations found that "innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people." And while African-Americans comprise just 13 percent of the population in the U.S., they make up the majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted and later exonerated, the study says.

Gross charges prosecutors and courts to "take seriously," new evidence that arrives post-conviction. And this doesn't mean exonerate them immediately, he said, or that time won't be spending reviewing cases where the defendant is guilty, "but there are enough cases where people are innocent and spent unnecessary time in prison to seriously consider it."

Uber removes forced arbitration clause, vows to no longer silence accusers

Getty/Mark Ralston

Uber is on an expedition to heal its tarnished public reputation.

Under the helm of its new Chief Executive Officer, Dara Khosrowshahi, the company made an announcement on Tuesday that the company would prioritize sexual harassment and assault cases.

“The last 18 months have exposed a silent epidemic of sexual assault and harassment that haunts every industry and every community,” Uber’s Chief Legal Officer, Tony West, wrote in the announcement. “Uber is not immune to this deeply rooted problem, and we believe that it is up to us to be a big part of the solution. With that in mind, we’re making some important changes today.”

One of the major changes involved the way that the company treats claims of sexual assault or harassment by Uber drivers, riders or employees. The company had previously required forced arbitration for individual claims of sexual assault or harassment — a tactic that critics contend hides bad behavior in an attempt to protect a company's reputation.

Victims of sexual misconduct will also have the option to settle their claims with Uber without a confidentiality provision that would prohibit them from speaking out about the details of the incident.

The final change the company promised is that they would publish a safety transparency report, which would make data on sexual assaults and other incidents that occur on the Uber platform public.

Hours after Uber’s announcement, Lyft also said they will be waiving their arbitration requirement as well.

The changes are indeed a step in the right direction for Uber, who received scrutiny after reports surfaced of a deeply sexist company culture following former engineer Susan Fowler’s public account of her experience. Fowler documented her experience on her blog back in February 2017 — prior to the national reckoning that arrived with the #MeToo movement.

Fowler has publicly commended Uber’s move.

“This is a small step in the right direction, but an important step nonetheless,” she stated on Twitter. “There is still much work to do: this doesn't protect victims of other forms of discrimination, like racial and wage discrimination, and it doesn't allow victims to pursue class actions in open court.”

She added that she urges “every company, every founder, every employee” to “keep fighting to end mandatory arbitration, fight for the pending federal and state legislation, fight for victims of other forms of harassment and discrimination.”

As a legal tactic, arbitration has been known to silence sexual misconduct survivors, and the place of arbitration agreements in society is receiving a much-needed re-evaluation in the #MeToo era.

Andrea Downing, an attorney who practices employment law, told Salon that Uber’s move is a “a step in the right direction.

“While arbitration has some benefits, it should be a joint decision by the parties involved,” Downing said.

The benefit of taking the claims to court also allows individuals to hold Uber accountable.

“But, arbitration, unlike actions filed in state or federal court, is not a matter of public record,” she explained.

However, The Guardian reports that while individual claims can be filed in court, an Uber spokesperson confirmed the company will reportedly continue to force arbitration if a group of women brings forth a class action case together. This scenario was not addressed in Uber’s announcement.

But this doesn't mean Uber is necessarily a woke feminist ally in the fight against sexual violence.

“Time will tell how seriously Uber takes sexual harassment and assault allegations,” Downing said. “If it thoroughly investigates such allegations, and takes decisive corrective action without protracted litigation where the allegations are founded, that will show that Uber is standing strong against sexual harassment and assault.”

 

Ban all trans fats by 2023, World Health Organization says

Getty/nycshooter

The World Health Organization announced on Monday an ambitious campaign to advocate for the elimination of artificially-made trans fats around the globe by 2023. The announcement, which is simply a set of recommendations, calls on international policymakers to combat the epidemic by following steps outlined in “REPLACE" — an acronym for REview, Promote, Legislate, Assess, Create and Enforce.

"WHO calls on governments to use the REPLACE action package to eliminate industrially-produced trans-fatty acids from the food supply," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the official announcement. "Implementing the six strategic actions in the REPLACE package will help achieve the elimination of trans fat, and represent a major victory in the global fight against cardiovascular disease."

Non-communicable diseases, which include heart disease and diabetes, were the cause of 72 percent of deaths in the world in 2016. The WHO estimates the consumption of trans fat causes more than 500,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease a year. Industrial-made trans fat experienced a rise in popularity in the 1950s as vegetable and corn oils became home kitchen staples.

Trans-fatty acids are industrially produced, and are manufactured through partial hydrogenation of vegetable and fish oils. Trans-fatty acids can also be found naturally in meat and dairy products from ruminant animals, but the WHO initiative seeks to eliminate artificial ones only, which are found in baked and fried goods, and pre-packaged snacks and food.

As the WHO explained in its announcement, high-income countries — such as Denmark and the United States — have already taken initiative on trans-fat bans. In 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was taking steps to eliminate artificial trans fat from its food supply, and implemented a three-year compliance period for companies distributing food in the U.S. to remove partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) from their products. Partially hydrogenated oils are the biggest source of trans fat in foods.

New York City, a source of inspiration for the national ban, serves as a case study as to what happens when policymakers ban artificial trans fat. In 2006. Michael Bloomberg introduced the first municipal ban on trans fats while he was mayor.

"New York City eliminated industrially-produced trans fat a decade ago, following Denmark’s lead," Dr. Tom Frieden, New York City’s health commissioner who helped drive the 2006 initiative, says in the WHO bulletin. "Trans fat is an unnecessary toxic chemical that kills, and there’s no reason people around the world should continue to be exposed."

A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Cardiology found that New York's ban likely saved lives.

“There was an additional 6.2 percent decline in hospital admissions for myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke among populations living in counties with vs without trans-fatty acid restrictions,” the authors of the study wrote.

When all is said and done, the WHO is putting public health pressure on countries where such a ban may be the most difficult to achieve.

“Action is needed in low- and middle-income countries, where controls of use of industrially-produced trans fats are often weaker, to ensure that the benefits are felt equally around the world,” the WHO’s announcement said.

Yet Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the New York Times that food companies have not necessarily applied safeguards to impoverished countries in the same manner as they have to rich ones.

“The reality is that global food companies have done an amazing job reducing trans fats in rich countries but they have largely ignored Asia and Africa,” he said.

In 2009, industrial giant Unilever announced it was eliminating partially hydrogenated oils from all of its soft spreads, including I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Unilever in recent years has been selling some of its spread businesses in other countries, such as South Africa.

In India, Vanaspati is a less expensive substitute for ghee and butter, and includes partially hydrogenated vegetable cooking oil in its ingredients. According to 2015 study published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health, Vanaspati producers interviewed cited costs associated with its use as one of their several challenges to reformulating the product and eliminating trans fats.

The study concluded that a “multi-sectoral food chain approach” was needed to reduce trans fat in India, and likely in similar low- and middle-income countries.

“This will require investment in development of competitively priced bakery shortenings and economic incentives for manufacturing foods using healthier oils,” the authors of the study wrote.

While the WHO's announcement doesn't include enforcement, awareness is a positive first step, experts believe.

“Even if the WHO isn’t able to do enforcement, its efforts are taken seriously by governments across the world,” Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the New York Times.

Supreme Court lifts ban on sports betting, opening floodgates for other states

AP

This article originally appeared on publicintegrity.org.



It’s game on for the race to cash in on sports betting.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided Monday with New Jersey in its six-year quest to allow legalized sports betting, breaking up Nevada's near-monopoly in the market and paving the way for other states to break into the billion-dollar business.

In the lead-up to Monday’s decision, five states — Connecticut, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia — along with New Jersey had already passed legislation to allow legalized sports betting, contingent on the Supreme Court’s favorable ruling. Similar bills have also been introduced in 14 other states nationwide since the beginning of 2017, according to a Center for Public Integrity review. The bills either explicitly allow legalized sports gambling or lift any prohibitions against it.

Now, with the green light, more states will likely join in. Gambling Compliance, a trade publication, expects that up to 37 states will eventually legalize sports betting and reap potential tax benefits.

Those efforts, in turn, will attract interest from gambling companies and even the major sports leagues themselves in influencing the nitty gritty details, a tried-and-true playbook that is followed in statehouses around the nation through campaign donations, wining-and-dining by lobbyists and model legislation handed out by special interests.

Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association will likely step up their lobbying efforts — already underway in a number of statehouses across the country — to have a say in how sports betting is legalized. Most notably, the two leagues are looking to get a cut from the profits in the form of “integrity fees” of up to 1 percent of all wagers placed on their games. Such fees, the argument goes, would help the leagues police against efforts to sway the outcomes of games.

Marc Edelman, a law professor at the City University of New York's Baruch College, expects other professional leagues to join in the lobbying efforts.

“If you listen carefully to the language that has come out from the sports commissioners, especially the NBA and Major League Baseball commissioners, it is clear that they are no longer opposed as a matter of public policy to sports gambling as long as they could profit from it,” said Edelman, who specializes in the business side of sports. “So it seems almost inevitable that the pro leagues will step up their efforts to try to lobby for a share of the sports revenues.”

In Monday’s 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a 1992 federal law that banned any state outside of Nevada and a handful of other states to “sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize” sports betting. New Jersey had petitioned the court against the wishes of the NCAA, the NBA, MLB, NHL and the NFL.

At issue was whether Congress had violated the “anti-commandeering” clause of the 10th Amendment that guarantees states’ rights.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito was emphatic: “Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own,” he wrote. “Our job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution. PASPA is not. PASPA ‘regulate[s] state governments’ regulation’ of their citizens. … The Constitution gives Congress no such power.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hailed the decision, declaring that it was “a great day for the rights of states and their people to make their own decisions.”

“New Jersey citizens wanted sports gambling and the federal Gov't had no right to tell them no,” tweeted Christie, a Republican who signed the state’s first sports betting law in 2012. “The Supreme Court agrees with us today. I am proud to have fought for the rights of the people of NJ.”

A great day for the rights of states and their people to make their own decisions. New Jersey citizens wanted sports gambling and the federal Gov't had no right to tell them no. The Supreme Court agrees with us today. I am proud to have fought for the rights of the people of NJ.

— Governor Christie (@GovChristie) May 14, 2018

This story is from The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C. Read more of its investigations on the influence of money in politics or follow it on Twitter.

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History of asylum horrors repeats itself: America still criminalizes poverty and mental illness

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Author Stacy Horn loves New York. Over her 20-year career, she's written about its cold case squad and its famous ghosts. Now, in her newest book, she explores one of its most notorious corners.

It sounds like a contemporary arch conservative's political platform, but it was a reality for 19th century New Yorkers. In a city of vast wealth and opulence, the most marginalized members of the community — the poor, individuals who'd committed even minor crimes, those who couldn't afford their medical bills, the mentally ill or just a little too troublesome — could be shipped off and forgotten.

Off the tiny island of Manhattan, an even tinier piece of land called Blackwell's Island was home to a lunatic asylum, workhouse, alms house, charity hospital and prison. Most of the men, women and children who wound up there endured barbaric conditions, and many never returned. The asylum gained its greatest infamy in 1887, when a 23-year-old journalist who went by the pen name of Nellie Bly published a sensational exposé of her brutal undercover experience there. Yet even a subsequent grand jury investigation did little to move the needle for the inmates there.

In "Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal In 19th-Century New York," Horn delves into the Dickensian conditions that the island's population lived under, explores how Blackwell's got that way in the first place and uncovers the previously untold tales of individuals who found themselves there. It's a stunning examination of bureaucracy gone wrong, and the evolution of the place we now call Roosevelt Island. Salon spoke to Horn recently about the book — and its very modern message.

Nelllie Bly is such a hero. Reading this book and having her inserted in the middle of this story was really fascinating.

She was amazing. She gave one of the few first person accounts from the inside.

What’s surprising is that I didn’t realize how little effect her whistleblowing had.

Yes, exactly. It was sensation, but there was almost no change. They got a little bit more money the next year, but not enough to really change the lives of the women inside. But doesn’t it feel like the exact same thing now?

I was thinking her story was the equivalent of a Twitter storm, where it’s, “Let me tell you all about this thing that happened." And then two days later, basically, nobody cares anymore.

Exactly. It’s so depressing.

Early on in the book, you draw a very clearly articulated parallel between what happened at on this island and what is still happening now — the idea that people who are mentally ill are dangerous and people who are poor are lazy and bad. And in a very real, physical space way, the mentally ill and the poor just belong lumped together.

Yes, with criminals.

The criminalization of poverty and mental illness.

Exactly. I didn’t research how far back this goes, and I’m sure there was always a little bit of that going on. But once they threw them all together on one island, it just completely cemented that association in people’s minds.

The other thing is the way that mental illness was understood, and the way that that the labels of mental illness and also disorderly conduct disproportionately affected women.

Yes, and the black community.

I do want to talk about how you had to address the issue of race in the book, because it is a tricky thing. It’s not like there was no racism in New York City in the 19th century, but because of the classifications of race, it did make the island unique and it did make different populations based on race.

I did address the fact that there were so few African Americans on Blackwell's Island. I think that was because they were so mistreated in the earlier incarnations of the alms house. They pooled their money and created their own institutions, which the Department of Public Charities and Correction supported instead of housing them on Blackwell's Island.

Let's talk about how women were affected, because if you were a lady who was angry at your husband, you could be considered a crazy person. Or if you were postpartum and had depression.

Yes, things like panic attacks. How many people have had panic attacks? That could get you into the asylum.

Then it was basically like a one-way ticket.

Their time there could be a lifetime. For many, it was.

What killed me was when they had a Senate investigation in 1880. One doctor testified that when he first started working there, he started going through everyone’s background in the asylum. He found 60 women who were there without any records, so nobody knew who sent them there or why or what their issues were. And yet they just remained.

You draw that parallel too to the way that the detention system works now for so many people. So many people who get arrested and can’t post bail. The poor population is disproportionately penalized. And, of course, we also see this with immigration as well.

My book about the cold case squad and this book have just made me completely an advocate for criminal justice reform and now welfare reform and mental health, and public health issues reform. We know how there’s a big movement now to close down Rikers [Island].

They had a penitentiary and a workhouse at Bellevue, and they realized that it wasn’t working. They built these state-of-the-art facilities on Blackwell’s Asylum. Then by the end of the 19th century, they said, “OK. It’s not only not working, it’s so horribly bad that we've just got to tear this building down and start from scratch. And so they bought Rikers, and build a new penitentiary and workhouse there. They recreated same exact problems that they had on Blackwell’s Asylum.

When reformers talk about closing down Rikers Island, most of them are actually making some very, very important points so that we don’t just do the same exact thing again. It isn’t just a matter of building state-of the-art facilities. We have to reform how we send people there, so get rid of bail, reduce some prison population.

The only thing I would add — and I got this actually from the wardens of prisons, who've said this themselves — “We can’t help but notice that you never send wealthy people to us, and we know it’s not because the wealthy don’t commit crimes." I would say that whatever facilities you build, we have to investigate, arrest and prosecute white-collar crimes to the same degree that we are prosecuting crimes by the blue-collar population. I’m positive that if prisons were filled with as many businessmen and bankers, they would never become essentially the hellholes that they did.

And the fact that prison then as now is a money-making racket. But I didn’t know the history of how that system operated in New York City around the turn of the century and what was going on there.

We’ve always known. We knew right from the start it was bad.

Obviously, we have come far in terms of our understanding of mental health and we don’t call them "lunatic asylums" anymore. But what has happened instead, is now mental health issues for people who have the financial resources have become, “Yes, there’s no stigma. I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to write my book about my struggle,” and everybody rallies around that. Then what happens to poor people who are mentally ill, is that they just fall off the map completely.

Like when Trump recently called to return and bring back asylums, I screamed, because the point about this and why they are bad is that these asylums are for poor people. The wealthy people are always going to be able to take care of themselves. The only people going to asylums are going to be once again the populations that we'd really prefer to imprison. But we're going to put them in asylums instead, and treat them badly because certainly under this administration, we’re not going to give [the institutions] enough funding to treat them humanely.

Another thing that you also talk about that I really want to get into is this idea that if you’re poor, we can’t help you. Helping you will just make you weak. You described this in a book, where people would say, “Well, don’t give to the beggar women on the street with their babies, because that is just going to encourage more of the same. We don’t want to do that." Why do you think that is such a persistent trope?

Because it sounds reasonable. When I read that Josephine Shaw Lowell made that point that we should have arrested [these beggars], it sounds so cruel. But really, she was more hopeful about the system. She thought, if we arrest her, then she’s going to be diagnosed in what category she belongs, and put in the institution that would provide the care that she needs. But, of course, the system didn’t work that way, which Lowell recognized towards the end of her career.

We’re Americans, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. But as she points out — and I quoted her in the book — for certain people, they are kept down because they don’t have the freedom to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They don’t have the same opportunities. They have stigma attached to them. There are so many closed doors to them.

 The thing that intrigues me about this island is it was just, “Here’s your one-stop shopping experience for marginalized people on one island. New York City, we’re just going to ship everybody off to one place, out of sight, out of mind." That is still considered, in some ways in our culture, what we should just do.

People just don’t believe how bad it is, how unfair it is. Even when they see just endless, endless, endless evidence that the system is unfair. And yet it goes on.

Along with this idea that people fall on hard time through their own weaknesses and through their own fault. What this island was, was just unbelievably clear-cut manifestation of that contempt.

Yes. The people who worked there certainly didn’t think that. They might have when they started, but after working there, they were filled with compassion for the position that so many of these people were put in.

We would see it when people went to the alms house, they were literally judged. They'd mark on their files, things like "hopelessly dependent."

This went on for so long, with people coming forward and talking about it — people who had worked there, people who had been discharged. And there was this incredible indifference, just “We don’t want to hear it.”

Yes. I talked about the Senate investigation in 1889. They didn’t make a single recommendation of how we might fix this. They just published the testimony and that was that.

There was the one case that I wrote about where one inmate in the asylum was murdered by one of her roommates. The nurse had come upon them and she closed the door, basically because she was not in the position to fight down this woman who was committing the murder. She didn’t want that woman running free, murdering others in the asylum.

There were a grand jury investigation that concluded that the doctor was at fault. The woman died because they refused to admit her to the hospital, even though this nurse begged him repeatedly. They just refused. The grand jury said that the doctor was at fault, and the commission was at fault for hiring inexperienced doctors to run the asylum, and hiring convicts from the workhouse as nurses and attendants. This is what the grand jury concluded, and then the only person who got fired was that nurse — the only person who tried to save that woman.

I think, as a reader, why this book feels especially horrifying and especially heartbreaking is that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story that takes place in the past at all. You talk about Nellie Bly’s experience as being that basically, she was water-boarded.

Every time I would read arguments and justifications of why things were, it reads exactly as the things people say today.

It is also interesting to me when I go to Roosevelt Island now and see what it has become. You can go to the Octagon apartment complext, which describes itself as a historic building. The words you don’t see anywhere here are “lunatic asylum.” You don’t see that this is the place Nellie Bly exposed. You’re not going to rent apartments by saying, “This is where women were neglected and abused . . . with river views!" But it does speak to the forgetting.

In the show “The Alienist,” based on the Caleb Carr book, they have a scene that takes place in the lunatic asylum. I watched very, very carefully. It was kind of brilliant. They have a line of women sitting in chairs in restraints, not allowed to move or talk, which is pretty much how it was. I didn’t find anything that said out and out that every woman would been in restraints, but some of them would have. Some of them had no choice but to urinate in their chair because nobody would take them out to go to a bathroom. [On the show,] the scene has a woman who works for the police department walking by this line of women and one woman calls out, “Help me, help me, help me.” I’m thinking it was probably exactly like they pictured.

You let the information speak for itself when you describe the orders that were placed for these restraints and for these goods. They tell the story because we don’t have that many accounts anyway of the people who actually were inside there. And it is also the story about the abuse of children and babies, the way that children and babies fell the wayside. It reminds me so much again in this culture of alleged pro-life and pro-family. It also so much just speaks to the misogyny of it, the way that women and pregnant women were really just thrown off into the wilds.

What you have if you don’t give women the ability to have safe abortion, is you have places like Blackwell’s Island, where poor infants were sent and mortality rates reached almost 100 percent.

It is a very compassionate book and the message parallels to where we are right now are. If you tell the story and then someone can really be open to it with open ears and then open heart, how can they walk away unmoved?

I hope that is the case. That’s my goal.

Why Rikers Island needs to be shut down now
Exploring the uncertain future of New York's notorious jail with Glenn Martin, criminal justice reform advocate

Pauley Perrette implies that “multiple physical assaults” caused her “NCIS” exit after 15 seasons

Robert Voets/CBS

Invoking God, Pauley Perrette initially offered little explanation for her departure from the hit CBS drama "NCIS" after 15 seasons and 16 years. But, according to a new series of tweets from the actress, there could be a lot more to the story – "multiple physical assaults" included.

"I refused to go low, that's why I've never told publicly what happened. But there are tabloid articles out there that are telling total lies about me," Perrette ominously tweeted on Sunday.

I refused to go low, that's why I've never told publicly what happened. But there are tabloid articles out there that are telling total lies about me. If you believe them? Please leave me alone. You clearly don't know me. (Sorry guys, had to be said)

— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) May 13, 2018

As she advanced the discussion, Perrette, 49, described concealing "the truth" from the public by not "spilling the beans." Moreover, the actress alleged a "crime" had taken place, and a rich and powerful "publicity machine" was keeping her silent.

"He did it," Perrette wrote on Twitter. Who the actress is referring to remains a mystery at this time.

Perrette gave her final performance on last week's episode of "NCIS," which saw her fan-favorite character exit after the death of a colleague. The actress, who played beloved  forensic specialist Abby Sciuto since 2003, first announced her departure from the drama back in October. Even then, Perrette expressed frustration with "false rumors as to why" she had reached a decision to call it quits.

So it is true that I am leaving NCIS...
There have been all kinds of false rumors as to why (NO I DON'T HAVE A SKIN CARE LINE... pic.twitter.com/gugM2a2ckT

— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) October 4, 2017

A 2017 tweet from Perrette took aim at accusations of her network CBS and show being unhappy with her, among other rumors. While it remains unclear what false stories the actress was referring to in last year's tweet, there was a story published later in 2017 by Radar Online that claimed Perrette left "NCIS" over her co-star Mark Harmon's pit bull, whose name is Dave. TMZ reported in 2016 that Harmon's dog had attacked a crew member, who was left in need of 16 stitches. Radar Online alleges that Harmon continues to bring his dog on set.

But, on Twitter over the weekend, Perrette alluded to something that could be much more serious. Steve Jaffe, who is Perrette's publicist, has verified that the the four vague tweets came from the actress, according to USA Today. "She said, 'I have no comment other than my tweets,'" he told the outlet. (Perrette also told USA Today earlier this month that her reason for leaving the show was "for me to know.")

In a weekend tweet, Perrette also spoke of feeling a need to protect her crew members at "NCIS," though she questioned her "silence" about what she considers to be a "crime."

"Maybe I'm wrong for not 'spilling the beans' Telling the story, THE TRUTH," she wrote. "I feel I have to protect my crew, jobs and so many people. But at what cost? I.don't know. Just know, I'm trying to do the right thing, but maybe silence isn't the right thing about crime. I'm... Just... ?"

Maybe I'm wrong for not "spilling the beans" Telling the story, THE TRUTH. I feel I have to protect my crew, jobs and so many people. But at what cost? I.don't know. Just know, I'm trying to do the right thing, but maybe silence isn't the right thing about crime. I'm... Just... ?

— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) May 13, 2018

In her follow-up, Perrette claimed that false stories about her were being spun by the aforementioned "publicity machine" – one which has "no obligations to truth."

There is a "machine' keeping me silent, and feeding FALSE stories about me. A very rich, very powerful publicity "machine". No morals, no obligation to truth, and I'm just left here, reading the lies, trying to protect my crew. Trying to remain calm. He did it.

— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) May 13, 2018

Perrette later reached a conclusion about why she has been a long-time advocate of ant-bullying initiatives. "Now I KNOW because it was ME!" she tweeted. "If it's school or work, that you're required to go to? It's horrifying. I left. Multiple Physical Assaults. I REALLY get it now. Stay safe. Nothing is worth your safety. Tell someone."

I've been supporting ant-bullying programs forever. But now I KNOW because it was ME! If it's school or work, that you're required to go to? It's horrifying. I left. Multiple Physical Assaults. I REALLY get it now. Stay safe. Nothing is worth your safety. Tell someone.

— Pauley Perrette (@PauleyP) May 13, 2018

While Perrette has not specifically accused someone at "NCIS" of any wrongdoing, her tweets seem to allude to the possibility that she was a victim of both bullying and physical assault. Such a revelation would differ substantially from what Perrette told TV Guide last month was the reason she had decided to walk away from the hit broadcast series.

"I believe in God and the universe so firmly, and it just suddenly became blindingly apparent that now was the time," she said at the time. "After a lot of thought, I decided to announce it myself on Twitter, because I didn’t want it to be turned into anything 'shocking.' Abby leaving is more than a cheap TV ploy."

Dressing modestly, for feminism and faith

Getty/PeskyMonkey

Excerpted from “The Beauty Suit: How My Year of Religious Modesty Made Me a Better Feminist” by Lauren Shields (Beacon Press, 2018). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

Sex versus Stuff: Which Matters More?

The Bible has traditionally been used to back cultural norms of misogyny, but the texts used to do so are not as black and white as traditionalists would have people believe. So what do these texts tell us, and why are we so loath to change our thinking in response? Let’s look again at the original language:

Also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God.

1 Timothy 2:9–11

Wives, . . . do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.

1 Peter 3:1–4

Look at the words used: “gold,” “expensive,” “fine,” “Do not adorn yourselves outwardly.” What if these texts are not about sex but about conspicuous consumption? What if modesty is actually more about simplicity than lust?

One could confidently interpret these passages this way if there were supporting verses in the Bible, something about how materialism is a hindrance to faith.

Oh wait. There are. A lot.

“You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13b). This whole section is about how the things of the world are obstructions to God, how love of money and love of God are mutually exclusive. This statement is repeated in Matthew 6:24.
“The cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word [the Good News, or words which lead to a spiritual life] and it yields nothing” (Matthew 13:22b).
Consider the story of the rich young man who has kept all the Commandments to whom Jesus says, “‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me’ [meaning, become homeless like me].” When the young man can’t do it, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:21–24).
“And he [ Jesus] said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions’” (Luke 12:15).
“Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33–34).

These are just a few of the sayings attributed to Jesus himself, to say nothing of the New Testament letters in addition to Paul’s. Here are two examples:

“Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have” (Hebrews 13:5a).
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 Timothy 6:10).

James, Acts, and Revelation also mention love of money as an obstruction to God, and the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is full of admonitions to help the poor and forgive debts. If Jesus were all about sexual restraint, then we’d see much more about the evils of lust in his ministry, not three verses about men’s superiority over women written decades after Jesus died by a man who had a powerful conversion experience, a man who admitted to not being terribly sexually inclined. Jesus spoke about divorce and adultery, yes, but he was far more concerned with the allure of excessive wealth. So what’s more likely: that Jesus was obsessed with covering the female body even though he himself is not reputed to have said anything about it, or that we’re twisting the doctrine to support the status quo, the same way people have been doing in every religious tradition since time began?

Considering the realities of the modern world, I think that “modesty” does not refer to bodies. I think it refers to lifestyles.

But We’re Not Hurting Anyone

The U.S. is a free country, it’s said. Why can’t citizens buy our senses of meaning if we want to? We can deal with our mortality when we get old, and retail therapy is pretty consistently effective. If it’s working for Americans, why change?

Because none of us lives in a vacuum. With the rise of globalization, we all affect one another to a greater degree than ever before in history, and whatever each of us believes about what happens to us after we die, there will be generations after us who must live on the planet that we leave behind. The rare metals used to manufacture our cell phones sustain bloody conflicts halfway around the world, and due to the way food is processed, each time we eat a hamburger, the greenhouse gases associated with its production are equivalent to having driven 320 miles in an average American car. The vegetables in our supermarkets are often picked by people who have crossed deserts in the dead of night in order to feed their families, people we’ll probably never meet. We do not make our own clothes, instead buying most of what we own from companies that outsource their manufacturing abroad where labor laws are more lax, where sometimes children as young as five—whom we will also never meet—make our jeans and T-shirts. The same thing goes for where most makeup comes from and the damage it does to the planet, due to both what it is and how it’s made. And Americans’ impact isn’t just on people outside this country: remember the figures cited at the beginning of this chapter. We are both more and less connected than ever before to everyone else on earth, and everything we consume has a price, whether or not we personally pay it.

A new wave of religious scholarship refutes the idea that it’s somehow God’s will that humans use up the planet like it’s ours to plunder. And now is the perfect time for such scholarship to permanently alter the church’s environmental tune: as one scholar wrote, “Ironically, the greatest contribution the world’s religions could make to the sustainability challenge may be to take seriously their own ancient wisdom on materialism.” The church has learned to survive by making itself into a saleable good; what would happen if church members used their influence not to accelerate humanity’s selfishness but to help dismantle the system from within?

For example, in "Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible," Ellen Davis writes that the Bible is not merely a book about spirituality but also about the care of the land as part of the life of faith. Davis debunks older traditional interpretations that the narrative is about humanity’s so-called dominion over the earth, arguing that the biblical Hebrew root word and intent of Genesis overall combine to imply responsibility for the care of creation, not unchecked abuse of it. And humanity’s job is not just passively trying to stay out of the way of nature either; Davis explains that in the covenant God makes with humanity, God has made the people active stewards of the planet. We are supposed to be co-creators and co-sustainers of our ecosystems. In treating the earth as though it were merely an inexhaustible resource put here for our use, humanity is not honoring our end of the bargain made with God when we were put in charge of watching over creation. And this is only the beginning of Davis’s argument. Due in part to the work of Davis and others, churches all over North America are greening their surrounding neighborhoods, heading up sustainability initiatives, and holding vegetarian cooking classes (since meat consumption is responsible for the vast majority of damage to the ecosystem).

Or, directly pertaining to the reasoning behind some traditional modesty debates where “love your neighbor” means “make sure he doesn’t lust after you,” one could easily argue that since the Industrial Revolution, and especially with the invention of the internet, everyone is our neighbor. More conservative denominations have traditionally viewed the definition of “neighbors” in a parochial sense, but such a perspective is becoming less realistic. Are we obeying this commandment, which is repeated throughout the Bible, if we show no concern for those in sweatshops or mineral mines whose lives we affect? What about the way we treat the people in our communities whose cheap labor allows us to eat fast food whenever we like? If we look at the plethora of verses throughout the Bible about how we are to treat “the alien” (perhaps the most pertinent of which here is “The aliens shall be to you as citizens, and also shall be allotted an inheritance” [Ezekiel 47:21–22]), how can we propose deporting them or building a wall to keep them out? Are we loving our neighbor and being modest—that is, humble—when we refuse to share our excess with those who have nothing and meet their need with hostility and fear?

Easy for You to Say . . .

I recognize that my point of view is largely due to my privilege. I am lucky that I have the income to buy organic produce and the time to take sewing classes. But I am talking to the people who are like me: folks who take up a lot of room, who have the resources and the bandwidth to consider how our lifestyles affect the rest of the world, and who are willing to ask themselves whether we’re living an outdated version of what it means to be religious. If the church is going to survive into the twenty-first century, it must be honest with its members about what “modesty” means now, today, in a world where our appetite for ostentation is causing harm to others and the planet with which God has entrusted humanity. What I’m saying is, Christians should be leading the charge against consumerism, not coming up with ways to justify it.

I also recognize that change is slow to come. Global capitalism was not built overnight, and it’s a worldwide system with far-reaching effects, most of which I’m unaware. For most of us, it’s not logical to start a giant garden in our backyards or go campaign for workers’ rights in sub-Saharan Africa or stop using laptops forever (I sure can’t). We still have to live our lives. But what if instead of shopping at Abercrombie, we bought our clothes secondhand as a religious practice? What if one day a week women went without makeup to reduce global demand for it, because we’re not supposed to overly “adorn” ourselves anyway? What if we made do with not-the-latest shoes because we really don’t need them or skipped fast food for a month because it’s bad for people, the planet, and ourselves? We don’t have to change the world, but that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands.

This is not to say material wealth is evil or worthless. Many people over the course of Christian history have disingenuously idealized the disenfranchised, claiming that they (poor folks) are blessed because they have so little. It is usually a way to avoid sharing wealth, and it is not what I am calling for. Money buys housing, clothing, and food; it influences education and subsequent work opportunities, health, and life expectancy. Admonitions against the love of money go directly to the privileged, those who have more than enough and still are not satisfied. They go to those who can’t let go of their old clothes even though they don’t need them, because those clothes are who they are. They go to the average white United States citizen, but most pastors are not willing to say this to their congregations of average white people. When they do, the money dries up and another church closes its doors.

One of my favorite verses of the Bible comes from Luke. For me, it ties gratitude with responsibility. “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48b).

Atlanta, June 2011

I can’t look, I think as I cram four or five pieces of clothing at a time into a drop box. If I look, I’ll keep them.

I’ve been dressing modestly for six months. At the beginning of the Experiment I put clothing that was uncomfortable to wear—too tight, or that forced me to sit or stand funny or suck in my gut to look good—into garbage bags. My plan was to see if I missed not having access to them. They constituted about a third of what I owned. (Yessir, when a third of your wardrobe requires Spanx and intense concentration, everything’s fine.) I filled five 42-gallon contractor bags with these items.

As it turned out, I didn’t miss most of them. The pieces I did miss and that were sufficiently modest for those nine months, I dug out and wore. There were perhaps four of these. The rest I decided to give to Goodwill.

But I get to the drop box, and the damn bags don’t fit. So I have to grab each item and stuff it in.

There’s the Blue Ass Dress, so christened by my friends because it was covered in blue donkeys. I wore it on my eighteenth birthday when I went out swing dancing, and all the best dancers asked me onto the floor that night. I haven’t been able to zip this dress up since I was twenty.

There’s the short, button-up red dress, the one I wore in a student film when I was around twenty-two. I sauntered across the screen, singing, my long, blond hair done by someone else and my eyeliner perfect for once. I used to go swing dancing in this dress too, but the last time I tried it on, the shame I felt was physically oppressive.

So many pairs of jeans that I wore on great dates but now I can’t sit in, so many blouses that I bought overseas or on vacation that now emphasize my tummy, so many skirts that bunch up weirdly around my butt. I realize that these are only pieces of clothing and that a changing body is part of life, and up until this point I’d tell anyone who’d listen (and some people who didn’t want to) that a woman’s body’s natural aging process was nothing to be ashamed of. But now, even though I’ve gained less than fifteen pounds since I was a teenager, I find I can’t forgive myself. I’ve changed. At a size 8, I feel fat.

I take deep breaths and stare at the ground, transferring a third of my wardrobe from the bags and giving it to someone thinner. Younger. More relevant. This is ridiculous, I think. Why is it so hard to give away clothes I know I’ll never wear? I feel a little like crying.

When I’m done, I get back in the car and drive away. To my surprise, I feel . . . lighter. Turns out, the hardest part was physically letting them go.

There are good reasons why consumerism is called a religion—and for that matter, the most prolific religion in history. It provides a system of meaning: the things you buy make up your identity and, like the Prosperity Gospel, the more you have, the better a person you are. In fact, the United States even has a sacred Adam and Eve origin story: that of the Founding Fathers. Their resistance to authority and supposed industry is the mold for the American mythos that if one works hard, one will achieve material success, which forever entwines consumerism with American identity.

Consumption also ritualizes our lives: we structure our time and energy alternately around our careers and buying more stuff. Consumerism as religion isn’t all bad; it’s made the United States the wealthiest and most culturally influential country on the planet.

But it also makes us miserable, overweight, and empty. It’s also hurting the environment, a finite resource that many world religions before the arrival of Christianity viewed as highly sacred. It also provides no comfort as old age and death approach, causing an almost comical aversion to mortality, characterized by endless plastic surgery, marriages broken up for younger and younger partners, and, as anyone who has ever watched a loved one die in a hospital knows, an absurd unwillingness to accept the reality of death. Our “religion,” as we are finding out, is failing us spectacularly.

By dressing modestly, I took myself out of this equation. Knowing that I wasn’t bound to “the Ordnung of Madison Avenue,” I no longer felt like I needed to shop every few weeks to feel hip. Knowing that the newest makeup line I saw on TV was just the deliberate conflation of ultimate meaning with powdery chemicals, I felt silly considering the possibility that it would change who I fundamentally was. I saved more money because I wasn’t hemorrhaging it into hair salons, and paradoxically, I worked out more because I liked myself: the model in the skimpy top no longer reflected my sphere of options, so I could ignore her.

Additionally, not having the option to shop when I was lonely or empty forced me to find meaning and solace elsewhere. I found myself crafting constantly, and while I recognize that this isn’t a good option for everyone, I talked to God and read the Bible more than I ever had before. When I was bored I went out with friends rather than shopping online, and while sometimes we did get coffee or something to eat, because they knew I didn’t want to shop, we often ended up in nourishing discussions about our lives rather than wandering around a mall. Sometimes I went out alone and people would ask me why I was wearing a scarf, and I would tell them. I never met a single person who heard about the Experiment and had nothing to say about religion, feminism, or the church.

Dressing modestly didn’t make me better or holier or smarter; it made me more aware. Like habited nuns or Amish folks, modesty gave me the only ironclad excuse I’ve ever found to say no thanks. To all of it.

Jill Filipovic on a new type of feminism
A Salon Talks conversation with the author of "the H-Spot" about feminism and happiness

The NBA is ready for a woman head coach, and Becky Hammon is ready for the job

AP/Ronda Churchill

What if I told you that some solid NBA teams are in need of new head coaches? They are contenders; however, they just need a leader who can put all of the moving pieces together. There are a few great candidates out there for the positions, but I’d like to focus on one.

Let’s list some of this person’s accolades.

All-American college basketball player
1998-99 Western Athletic Conference (WAC) leading scorer
Winner of the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award
Professional career of honors, including 6 All-Star appearances, assist leader in 2007 and selected to the first team twice
U.S. Olympic Team member
Hired to the coaching staff of the San Antonio Spurs to work under one of the best coaches of all time­­, Greg Popovich, winner of six conference titles and five NBA championships

Sounds amazing, right? Wouldn’t you want this person in the running to lead your favorite team? There’s one thing I forgot to mention­: the candidate I presented is a woman. And even though it's 2018, that's apparently still an issue.

Rebecca “Becky” Hammon has already made NBA history as the first woman hired as a full assistant coach, and now she’ll be the first to land a job interview for an NBA team head coach position, as the Milwaukee Bucks seek to fill their top spot. But will she get a fair shake, or will the boys' club do their usual to push the basic norm­­: only considering men for top jobs?

My stomach turned as I sat in a bar the other day watching the Cavs game and heard Hammon's name come up. Two blue-collar-dressed dudes were talking to each other about how a woman in a head coach job would ruin the NBA. As if women ruined law, medicine, journalism, professional sports and everything else they excel in?

I wondered what those guys did for a living, and if they were even the best at their jobs. Are those dudes good enough at their professions to pass judgment on Hammon, a women who clearly mastered hers and has been rewarded for her achievements on numerous occasions? I wondered if those dudes had trophies and plaques with gold-plated hammers sealed to them awarded on the basis of the advancements they'd made in their fields. Probably not.

When will society wake up and realize that a woman in the workforce can accomplish anything that a man can? It is 2018, right?

"It's going to take somebody who has some guts, some imagination, and is not driven by old standards and old forms," Hammon’s boss Greg Popovich, whom basketball fans swear by, told The New York Daily News. "If somebody is smart, it's actually a pretty good marketing deal — but it's not about that. It's got to be that she's competent, that she's ready."

And if that is not enough, Pau Gasol, a player of Hammon’s, wrote a passionate letter in The Player Tribune about her abilities and  special skill set that will serve her well as a head coach:

So when I see arguments — or even jokes — that we shouldn’t have female head coaches in the NBA because of “locker room” situations or whatever … I guess it just reminds me that, for as much progress as we’ve made as a league over these last few years … we still have a ways to go. Because let’s be real: There are pushes now for increased gender diversity in the workplace of pretty much every industry in the world. It’s what’s expected. More importantly — it’s what’s right. And yet the NBA should get a pass because some fans are willing to take it easy on us … because we’re “sports”?

I really hope not.

I hope the NBA will never feel satisfied with being forward-thinking “for a sports league.” Let’s strive to be forward-thinking for an industry of any kind.

That’s a Hall of Fame coach and an NBA All-Star, both vouching for Hammon, who is also a Hall of Famer and an All-Star. Here's hoping the NBA wakes up and sees Hammon as a strong candidate for the job — not strong for a woman — and decides it's time to make history. We saw what happened when America decided to not make history in November 2017.

Meet the NBA's most political player
Knicks center Enes Kanter remains determined to amplify his voice.

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This article originally appeared on ProPublica.

The 18-year-old, excited by his handiwork at the bloody rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, quickly went online to boast. He used the handle VasillistheGreek.

“Today cracked 3 skulls open with virtually no damage to myself,” the young man wrote on Aug. 12, 2017.

Vasillios Pistolis had come to the now infamous Unite the Right rally eager for such violence. He belonged to a white supremacist group known as Atomwaffen Division, a secretive neo-Nazi organization whose members say they are preparing for a coming race war in the U.S. In online chats leading up to the rally, Pistolis had been encouraged to be vicious with any counterprotestors, maybe even sodomize someone with a knife. He’d responded by saying he was prepared to kill someone “if shit goes down.”

One of Pistolis’ victims that weekend was Emily Gorcenski, a data scientist and trans woman from Charlottesville who had shown up to confront the rally’s hundreds of white supremacists. In an online post, Pistolis delighted in how he had “drop kicked” that “tranny” during a violent nighttime march on the campus of the University of Virginia. He also wrote about a blood-soaked flag he’d kept as a memento.

“Not my blood,” he took care to note.

At the end of the weekend that shocked much of the country, Pistolis returned to his everyday life: serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Of the many white supremacist organizations that have sprung up in the past few years, Atomwaffen is among the more extreme, espousing the overthrow of the U.S. government through acts of political violence and guerrilla warfare.

Journalists with ProPublica and Frontline gained insight into Atomwaffen’s ideology, aims and membership after obtaining seven months of messages from a confidential chat room used by the group’s members. The chat logs, as well as interviews with a former member, reveal Atomwaffen has attracted a mixture of young men — fans of fringe heavy metal music, a private investigator, firearms aficionados — living in more than 20 states.

But a number are current or former members of the U.S. military. ProPublica and Frontline have identified three Atomwaffen members or associates who are currently employed by the Army or Navy. Another three served in the armed forces in the past. Pistolis, who remains an active-duty Marine, left Atomwaffen in a dispute late in 2017 and joined up with another white supremacist group. Reporters made the identifications through dozens of interviews, a range of social media and other online posts, and a review of the 250,000 confidential messages obtained earlier this year.

Joshua Beckett, who trained Atomwaffen members in firearms and hand-to-hand combat last fall, served in the Army from 2011 to 2015, according to service records. Online, Beckett, 26, has said that he worked as a combat engineer while in the army. Combat engineers are the army’s demolitions experts.

In Atomwaffen chats, Beckett, using the handle Johann Donarsson, said he was building assault rifles and would happily construct weapons for his fellow members. “Give me the parts and the receiver and I’ll get it all together for you,” Beckett wrote in August 2017.

Beckett also wrote about suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of combat in Afghanistan, and how his time in uniform caused him to radically revise his political beliefs, prompting him to abandon mainstream conservatism in favor of National Socialism.

In online discussions, Beckett encouraged Atomwaffen members to enlist in the military, so as to become proficient in the use of weaponry, and then turn their expertise against the U.S. government, which he believed to be controlled by a secret cabal of Jews.

“The army itself woke me up to race and the war woke me up to the Jews,” Beckett wrote, adding, “The US military gives great training . . . you learn how to fight, and survive.”

Another Atomwaffen member used the chats to talk about the combat he saw during the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan.

“I was in the infantry in the army in Afghanistan and did a lot of . . . shit,” the member wrote. He said the Army wanted him to become a chemical weapons specialist, but he chose to join the infantry. He spent his time, he wrote, blasting “lead into sand niggers.”

ProPublica and Frontline specifically identified Pistolis and Beckett through interviews with a former Atomwaffen member who knew them, the group's internal records, and the men's digital footprints. In his online activities, Pistolis left many clues to his identity, including pictures of himself he uploaded to private white supremacist chat rooms and photos of himself on his public Facebook page. Beckett’s internet handles and Facebook content also helped us to confirm him as the man who had spent five years in the Army before joining Atomwaffen.

Reporters contacted Beckett via phone and Facebook messages, but did not get a response. Beckett’s Facebook page features an image of Donald Trump driving a white convertible emblazoned with the number 1488, a white supremacist code, and a call for whites to jump in the car.

In a series of phone and email exchanges, Pistolis claimed he did not attend the Charlottesville rally and did not assault Gorcenski or anyone else. His online messages about Gorcenski, he said, were nothing more than jokes. He admitted to harboring “alt right” or white supremacist beliefs, though he claimed he had “infiltrated” Atomwaffen on behalf of another extremist group and was never actually a member.

Pistolis, who indicated to reporters that he is stationed in North Carolina, pulled down his personal Twitter account shortly after being contacted by ProPublica and Frontline. He also took down his account on Gab, a discussion channel favored by white supremacists, many of whom have been banned from Twitter and other social media platforms. His postings indicate that after leaving Atomwaffen last November — other members accused him of risking unwanted attention for the group by showing up with Atomwaffen flag at a rally in Tennessee — he became an active participant in online forums involving the Traditionalist Workers Party,  another neo-Nazi group.

Since May 2017, three people involved with Atomwaffen have been charged with five murders. Devon Arthurs, an early Atomwaffen recruit, is facing trial for allegedly murdering two other members of the group in Florida. A teenager in Virginia stands accused of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, who had tried to keep their daughter away from him; the 17-year-old, who was in the process of joining Atomwaffen, is being tried as a juvenile. Atomwaffen member Samuel Woodward, 20, has pleaded not guilty in the slaying of Blaze Bernstein, a gay, Jewish college student whose body was discovered in a Southern California park early this year. Authorities believe Woodward stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times.

Despite the mounting body count, it is unclear just how aggressive law enforcement — at the federal or local level — has been in investigating the group. None of the men charged in the homicides had a military background.

The FBI had no comment when asked about Atomwaffen.

One Atomwaffen member caught up in a high-profile criminal case has a quite direct link to the armed forces.

Atomwaffen’s founder, Brandon Russell, 22, was arrested last year after investigators discovered a cache of weapons, detonators and volatile chemical compounds in his home, including a cooler full of HMTD, a powerful explosive often used by bomb-makers, and ammonium nitrate, the substance used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City attack. Russell was also in possession of two radioactive isotopes, americium and thorium. In September 2017, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawful possession of explosives and was later sentenced to five years in federal prison.

At the time of his arrest, Russell, 22, had been serving in the 53rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion of Florida’s Army National Guard. A spokesman for the Marine Corps, Major Brian Block, said the corps would be looking into Pistolis and would likely open a formal probe into his activities last summer.

“There is no place for racial hatred or extremism in the Marine Corps,” Block said in a written statement. “Bigotry and racial extremism run contrary to our core values.”

He added, “The guidance to Marines is clear: Participation in supremacist or extremist organizations or activities is a violation of Department of Defense and Marine Corps orders” and can lead to expulsion from the service.

Contacted by ProPublica and Frontline, Carla Gleason, a Department of Defense spokesperson and Air Force major, said the military relies on its commanders to identify problematic activities and respond judiciously.

“What we’re doing is empowering commanders at every level to counsel service members on their conduct, and take disciplinary action where appropriate,” she said.

“We do recognize the right to free speech and thought,” said Gleason. But, she added, the Department of Defense insists that service members observe the military’s policies prohibiting discrimination and extremist behavior.

ProPublica and Frontline documented Pistolis’ role in Charlottesville through an analysis of photos and video footage from the rally and his own online admissions, including a statement Pistolis posted to an Atomwaffen chat room saying he “kicked Emily gorcenski” during the march at the University of Virginia.

ProPublica and Frontline contacted the University of Virginia Police Department to check the accuracy of the material involving Pistolis at the Unite the Right Rally, and to see if there was an investigation underway. Sgt. Casey Acord reviewed the material and later said his agency would investigate Pistolis’ apparent role in the melee that occurred during the torch-lit march on school property.

Reporters also showed pictures, video and chat posts to Gorcenski, the activist attacked in Charlottsville. While she didn’t suffer any significant physical injuries that night, the experience, Gorcenski said, was profoundly traumatizing — and she has faced frequent harassment from fascists and white supremacists since the rally. She said she plans to move out of the country.

Gorcenski quickly identified Pistolis as the man who kicked her.

“He’s telling the truth in these logs about what happened,” she said.

Like many white supremacist groups, Atomwaffen initially coalesced in cyberspace — the founders and early members met each other through a fascist discussion forum called Iron March, which is now defunct. But in the past few years, the organization — it is estimated to have 80 to 100 members — has moved into the real world.

Atomwaffen has conducted weapons and other training exercises in at least four states, according to the chat logs and interviews. Current and former members of the military have found that their skills are highly valued by Atomwaffen and have assumed leadership roles within the group. Drawing on their battlefield experience, Marines and soldiers have helped to shape the group into a loose collection of armed cells, according to the chat logs and people with direct knowledge of the organization.

There has long been a worrisome if not fully understood nexus between the military and the white supremacist movement. Over the past half-century, many of the movement’s key leaders have come from the ranks of the military, including George Lincoln Rockwell, commander of the American Nazi Party, Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam, and Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler.

Pete Simi, co-author of the book “American Swastika” and an associate professor at Chapman University in California, said white supremacists often draw inspiration from the armed forces.

“Extremist culture tends to be paramilitary — the Klan, for instance, is a clearly paramilitary organization, it was started by former military officers,” said Simi. “A lot of traditional neo-Nazi groups tend to emulate military structure … Some skinhead groups do that as well.”

Organizations like Atomwaffen, he said, “need military people who have explosives experience, firearms experience, combat fighting experience” that they can pass on to other members. But there’s also another factor, in Simi’s view. “I think there’s also a credibility aspect to it, in that it gives more credibility to the group to have people who served in the U.S. military. It brings a certain gravitas.”

Last year, nearly 25 percent of active-duty service members surveyed by the Military Times said they’d encountered white nationalists within the ranks. The publication polled more than 1,000 service members.

The results are jarring in a number of ways, not least because each branch of the armed forces has regulations that bar service members from joining white supremacist organizations. Army policy, for example, forbids soldiers from participating in “extremist groups” that foster “racial, gender, or ethnic hatred or intolerance.” The Marine Corps has a similar regulation, Order 1900.16, which mandates swift penalties for Marines caught engaging in “extremist or supremacist activities.”

Air Force directives note that airmen who participate in racist organizations can face court martial for disobedience.

For Simi, a key question is whether the Department of Defense and various military branches are effectively enforcing these policies by screening volunteers as they enter the service and thoroughly investigating reports of extremist activity by service members. If the figures in the Military Times survey “are anywhere close to credible, then there’s clearly a problem that isn’t being addressed,” Simi said.

A former Marine who currently works for a government intelligence agency told ProPublica and Frontline that the military’s seriousness about combating white supremacists in its ranks can vary.

“At the command level — and publicly — the military takes any extremism seriously,” the ex-Marine said. “There is a zero-tolerance policy regarding Nazis. We defeated them in World War II, and they have no business currently serving in the U.S. military.”

“At the unit level, I believe there’s a willful ignorance,” the former Marine added. “‘If neo-Nazis aren’t allowed to enlist in the military, and if nobody I know is a neo-Nazi, there must not be any within my unit’ seems to be the standard. It’s difficult to take seriously that which you don’t believe exists.”

Pistolis appears to have gotten involved in the neo-Nazi movement long before he joined the armed forces. In online conversations with members of Atomwaffen, Pistolis said that he’d started hanging around with the National Socialist Movement “and other skinheads” when he was 16. He listed some of his favorite books: “Mein Kampf” was one; the autobiography of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was another. A third was “The Turner Diaries,” the notorious 1978 novel about race war in America that inspired McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

Pistolis said in the chats he was also a fan of “Siege,” a 563-page tome preaching the virtues of assassination, political terrorism and guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government that has become something of a bible for Atomwaffen members.

After joining Atomwaffen, Pistolis took on a leadership role in the summer of 2017, running the North Carolina cell and vetting new recruits to the group, according to the chat messages as well as a former member.

Before the Unite the Right rally, Pistolis, who is slim with dark close-cropped hair and a distinctive widow’s peak, sketched out designs for two flags he wanted to bring to the event. One was yellow and black and featured a coiled snake poised to strike and the logo of the Golden Dawn, a Greek fascist party linked to murders and violence in that country. On the other flag, he blended the stars-and-bars of the Confederate battle flag with the Sonnenrad, a circular emblem used by the Nazis and adopted by the new generation of white supremacists.

Pistolis paid a company to manufacture the flags and shared a picture of them online in a private chat room for people attending the rally; the chat logs were obtained by Unicorn Riot, a leftist media collective.

Over a span of roughly two months, Pistolis posted at least 82 messages in the chat room, which was hosted by Discord, an online messaging service aimed at video gamers.

His views were quite clear: Charlottesville Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, who is African American, was a “monkey” in a fancy suit. He shared photos of Bellamy and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, who is Jewish, captioned with the words, “Niggers, Jews…Bad News.”

In Charlottesville, Pistolis, wearing a black-and-white Adidas track suit, was among the hundreds of torch-bearing young men who marched onto the campus of the University of Virginia after sunset on Aug. 11 chanting “blood and soil,” a slogan of the Third Reich, and performing straight-arm Nazi salutes. Photos and video from that night show Pistolis participating in the event.

The march ended at a monument to Thomas Jefferson, where the white supremacists were met by a small group of anti-fascist counterprotesters, many of them students, who had gathered at the foot of the statue. There was pushing and punching. Pistolis ran through the crowd and launched a flying kick at Gorcenski.

“He traveled here from out of state with the intent to do violence,” said Gorcenski. “His own statements match up perfectly to what’s happened.

“The military is supposed to protect American civilians and here we see that our soldiers are attacking American civilians — and celebrating it.”

The melee that night immediately intensified, as white supremacists bludgeoned the counterprotesters with lit torches and streams of pepper spray shot in all directions. Dozens of men attacked the anti-fascists.

Pistolis was front and center, according to his post. He told his fellow Atomwaffen members how to spot him in videos of the altercation that were popping up on YouTube. “If you see a guy in a tracksuit that’s me,” Pistolis wrote.

Another Atomwaffen member reminded Pistolis that he could face a court martial if he was arrested for brawling.

“So don’t get caught doing stupid shit,” wrote the Atomwaffen member, an Army soldier.

The day after the torch march, Pistolis was fighting again, this time in the streets surrounding Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. He was carrying one of the flags he’d had specially made for the rally and wearing a black baseball cap, combat boots, and a T-shirt with the stylized skull logo of the Punisher, the comic book vigilante.

At least two photos taken by a Getty Images photographer capture him smashing a counterprotester with the wooden flagpole.

Later, Pistolis shared a photo of the aftermath with his friends in Atomwaffen. The blue and red flag was splattered with blood. He said he’d “cracked a skull” and left “3 mother fuckers bleeding.”

Another member asked if he could share the “bloody flag” picture on Atomwaffen’s Twitter account.

About a month after the rally, Pistolis got into an online conversation with an Atomwaffen member from Virginia. Unite the Right was “so much fun,” the Virginia man wrote.

Pistolis promptly uploaded two photos of himself from that weekend.

“I can confir[m],” he wrote.

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