Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 30

The Plan To Make Community College Free, Ctd

This post is getting a lot of response from the in-tray:

Your skeptical readers perhaps have not read the full proposal from Obama:

Building High-Quality Community Colleges: Community colleges will be expected to offer programs that either (1) are academic programs that fully transfer to local public four-year colleges and universities, giving students a chance to earn half of the credit they need for a four-year degree, or (2) are occupational training programs with high graduation rates and that lead to degrees and certificates that are in demand among employers.

So the proposal appears to include the kind of “vocational and trade school” training your readers prefer. It limits participation to proven programs in high-demand fields, to improve the chances of employment. So when one of your readers writes, “The president ought to be focusing on expanding opportunity for those who either choose not to go to college or cannot afford to do so,” that’s exactly what this program is intended to do.

Another snipes:

You quoted a reader: “Less people should be going to college. I’ve been to college. I have my degree. Want to buy it for $100?” That’s too high a price for a degree from someone who writes “Less people” instead of “Fewer people.” Sorry! Couldn’t resist.

Another refers to that quoted reader as Judge Smails, seen in the above video. Several readers sound off more substantively:

I love Obama’s plan. He is working within the infrastructure that we have but making changes that will help millions. It’s exactly what he did with the ACA and immigration. It’s his MO. God bless him.

My local community colleges are a mix of transfer students and trade students. The transfer students are taking typical freshman and sophomore classes to prepare for transfer to a four-year college. The trade students take some basic freshman classes (writing, math), but they are focused on exactly the type of job training that your reader thinks they should be getting. They are learning auto repair, engine repair, repair and maintenance of HVAC systems, building trades, horticulture, culinary arts, emergency medical technician, early childhood education, paramedic, medical laboratory technician, radiology tech, criminal justice/police skills, nurse assistant, RN nursing, etc. None of these kids are going to get rich doing this stuff, but they are learning skills that can provide them with a middle-class income.

Another adds, “My school (Orange Coast College) also has a helicopter mechanic training program; if I recall correctly, starting salaries for graduates are near $100k.” Another points out:

Many of these jobs were, not too long ago, learned on the job; many were apprenticeship programs, where a master taught apprentices and journeymen while they earned pay for their work. This, sadly, is becoming rare. There has been a shift of training from the employer to employees, and this is particularly true of what’s called the skilled trades.

So the presumption that much of this work is “unskilled” is elitist. If your furnace fails, as mine was, you will hope the person who comes to repair it is highly skilled and proficient at the job. If your car breaks down, you want a skilled mechanic. And if you go out to eat, you’ll probably want the restaurant managed by someone who comprehends how to safely handle food. You want x-ray techs who don’t bombard you with too much radiation.

Your plumber cannot be outsourced; she needs to come to your home or office to do her job. And she needs someplace to learn how to do that job if master plumbers aren’t shouldering the burden of training the next generation of plumbers. That’s where community colleges really matter; and where they offer a wealth of skills for young adults.

Another shifts the debate:

I have no problem with making community college free if we have the resources to spend on educational programs. For one thing, community colleges do provide a lot of the trade and vocational classes that your readers are interested in. My brother dropped out of a four-year liberal arts college and years later has started taking computer classes at a community college that are really beneficial for his job. And it’s much cheaper than traditional college, though it is still expensive for someone who doesn’t make that much to begin with. So making it free would definitely be beneficial for some people, like my brother.

But in a world where educational spending is not unlimited, I just cannot get behind the idea of spending more money on college degrees when we know that early education can make a much bigger difference in a community. I was so much more supportive of the idea of universal pre-K than this. Study after study has demonstrated that getting kids into preschools, even for just a few hours a week, makes serious long-term differences in people’s lives. If we are going to spend money on education, can we at least spend it on programs that we know will make a difference in a big way rather than on programs that might help a few people?

One more reader:

It’s been estimated that it would cost approximately $15-30 billion per year to make ALL public colleges completely free for everyone. Sure, it’s a lot of money, but for some perspective, we spent nearly a trillion dollars to remake a foreign country called Iraq. So for what we paid for that disastrous war (which we’re still fighting), we could have paid for public college for everyone for as many as 66 years!

Will The Paris Attacks Accelerate The Jewish Exodus?

I am Jewish. I am a cartoonist. I am in tears. #JeSuisCharlie #JeSuisJuif http://t.co/9mcMwgRKOq pic.twitter.com/OQhxPyFspJ

— Hug O’ The Day (@hugotheday) January 9, 2015

Jamie Kirchick remembers “an evening last September when I was strolling through the Marais’ windy and narrow streets”:

I came across the Notre Dame de Nazareth synagogue, a grand, 19th century building constructed in the Moorish revival style that serves the city’s Sephardic Jews, those who come from North Africa. The rabbi happened to be walking out of the synagogue with his wife. After dispensing with the facts of my Jewish background and American citizenship, I promptly asked, “What’s the situation?” Our shared patrimony obviated any need for further elaboration; as a European Jew addressing an American one, he knew exactly at what I was aiming. “There is no future for Jews in France,” he said. If the Rabbi is right, and I fear he is, than it means that there is no future for Jews in Europe. For France is home to the continent’s largest Jewish community, numbered at over half a million. But it is declining rapidly.

Josh Marshall also worries about the future of Jews in France:

When these events [last week] began to unfold I immediately thought of this article I saw [last] Monday. Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky (the same 70s and 80s era Soviet refusnik, Anatoly Sharansky) said that in 2014 some 50,000 French Jews asked the Jewish Agency (the primary agency organizing and facilitating Jewish immigration to Israel) for information about immigrating to Israel.

It’s important to note that Jewish immigration into and emigration out of Israel is a highly politicized and emotive issue within Israel – it goes to the essence of the Zionist project. So these numbers should be seen through that prism. But there’s something very real happening. To expand on those numbers, in 2012 about 2000 French Jews left for Israel. In 2013 it was a bit over 3000. 2014 apparently hit over 6000.

Joshua Keating points to a string of anti-semitic attacks in recent years that have motivated that exodus:

Tensions reached a high point during last summer’s war in Gaza, when demonstrations turned violent with pro-Palestinian youths attacking Jewish businesses in a neighborhood known for its large Jewish population. Several synagogues were also firebombed. Demonstrators at some rallies chanted slogans like “death to the Jews” and “slaughter the Jews.” These incidents followed an attack in May on the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, where a French former ISIS fighter killed four people.

These attacks have added to the growing unease of a community still reeling from the 2012 shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, which killed three children and a teacher, as well as the grisly torture and murder of a young Jewish man named Ilan Halimi in 2006. While these dramatic incidents have garnered the most international attention, smaller anti-Semitic crimes have become depressingly commonplace. On New Year’s Day of this year, for instance, a fire was started and a swastika drawn on the wall of a synagogue in a Paris suburb.

The Jewish Agency, which helps Jews make aliyah, was on the scene in Paris this week and seemed to be harnessing French Jews’ fear to advocate for more emigration:

In what now has become a strange coincidence, the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigration Absorption held an Aliyah Fair in central Paris on Sunday that was scheduled before any of the attacks took place. The fair was designed to inform French Jews and returning citizens above the age of 50 on how to start the process of relocating their lives to Israel. The fair had increased its security to make sure families felt safe as they came to the fair to weigh the option of immigrating to Israel.

Chemi Shalev is disheartened to see Israeli leaders, especially on the country’s right wing, pushing “emigration to Israel as a Zionist antidote for the anti-Semitism and atmosphere of fear”:

[T]his instinctive reaction – perhaps Pavlovian is a better word – should give reason for pause and discomfort, even among the most ardent of Zionists. Because whether French Jews answer these calls by emigrating to Israel or whether they simply take the advice in principle and go somewhere else, in some ways this campaign is no more than blatant capitulation to terror. It gives its instigators a prize they could never have dreamed of: a frenzied flight of Jews, at best, or the complete elimination of Jewish presence in France, at worst. … Such a surrender, as Netanyahu regularly lectures the West, can only invigorate the Jihadists and spur them to adopt similar tactics in other European countries.

Likewise, Brent Sasley argues that “the calls by many on the political right for French Jews to return ‘home‘ to Israel indicates a lack of interest in recognizing that the conditions that led to the emergence of Zionism have changed” – i.e., that 2015 is not 1933, and that the challenges Jews in Europe face today do not compare to the existential threats of the past:

At its emergence, Zionism was perceived by its leaders and adherents as a movement of no or little choice. Anti-Semitic persecution required a safe haven. At the same time, the belief that the Jews could never be a normal people so long as they lived among host societies and didn’t have their own state meant that national redemption was a necessary process, not an optional one. An effective conversation about Zionism can only begin if participants recognize that things have changed over time. While the events in France reinforce for some the notion that they haven’t, this is a misunderstanding of world, Jewish, and Israeli history.

Aliza Luft detects a different historical parallel, between the French Jews of the past and French Muslims today:

French protestors in the 1930s blamed Jews for their supposed capitalistic tendencies, for stealing jobs, for forcing French civilians out of the economy. Today, Muslims are stereotyped in France as stealing jobs and welfare, living off state benefits, and bringing down the country’s economy. French citizens who consider Muslims not really French see them as threatening to their material goods; as scapegoats for the country’s current economic woes.

The View From Your Window

Guanajuato, Mexico, 4.06 pm

The Showdown Over Keystone, Ctd

A reader writes:

Bill McKibben’s comments that somehow carbon is staying in the ground if Keystone XL is not constructed is nonsensical. You see, there is this cool invention called “Trains” that have scores of large containers that hold bitumen and oil. Does he think the oil companies have never heard of them? That they would say “aw shucks I guess we’ll just stop producing”? How does he figure the oil is sold and delivered today?

The irony is that trains produce carbon emissions while pipelines do not. Trains are also more at risk to cause spills than a pipeline. Pipelines are the environmentally friendly choice to deliver oil or bitumen. People who oppose the pipelines are therefore either misinformed or are actually simply opposing oil production.

While there may be merits to argue for reduced production, the facts are that in the short to medium term, oil production is a requirement of our society, and as long as it is occurring, it will be delivered to the refineries one way or the other. Believing that stopping XL will benefit the environment is just sticking your head in the oil-sands.

Another reader made a similar case during a previous Dish debate on the subject. But Dave Roberts dismisses such complaints and accuses many commentators of “applying wonk logic to an activist problem“:

All along, at every stage, Very Serious People were absolutely sure that the pipeline was about to be approved. The economy was hurting, the Tea Party had everyone terrified, and the public was mostly pro-pipeline. The hippies just don’t win those kinds of fights. Obama would “trade” Keystone to show that he’s reasonable, that he can compromise, that he’s willing to move to the right to meet in the middle. That’s the script.

So if Keystone is blocked — and that’s still a big if — it will upend conventional wisdom. It will show that people can mobilize around climate with the numbers, intensity, and money necessary to pull the Democratic Party their way. It will show that there’s life in the climate movement.

Lizza wonders whether Obama will negotiate over Keystone:

From the White House’s perspective, the Keystone XL pipeline should be an ideal policy to give away in a trade: it’s a major issue that Republicans care a great deal about but one that Obama seems to view as a sideshow.

But, even if Keystone gets approved, Elan Schor is convinced “the era of easy pipelines” is over:

Before Keystone, there was little public appetite to debate the merits of fossil-fuel infrastructure. Obscure and opaque government agencies would stay within their lanes, largely approving projects so long as the requisite regulatory boxes got checked.

Even under the executive order that environmentalists have leveraged to cripple Keystone, another major Canadian heavy oil pipeline won Obama’s approval to cross the northern border in 2009. In 2014 that same pipeline’s operator had to resort to bureaucratic sleight of hand to push 75,000 extra barrels per day into the United States by building interconnections between existing projects—a literal crude switcheroo.

Recent Dish here on how plummeting oil prices are now changing the debate over the pipeline.

Terror Unites, Divides France

French officials now say 1.3 million at #ParisMarch more than crowd who celebrated liberation in 1944 pic.twitter.com/QKGdyXgpbB

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 11, 2015

France responded to last week’s terrorist rampage with a massive manif in the streets of Paris yesterday, drawing the largest crowds of any demonstration in the country’s post-WWII history. But Robert Zaretsky doesn’t buy the show of unity, arguing that it masks divisions in French society that the terror attacks are ripping open even further:

[O]nlookers this afternoon in Paris saw not just leaders from across the globe joining the march, but nearly all the religious and political leaders in France. With one exception, though: Le Pen marched in the southern town of Beaucaire, a Front National fief. In a brief speech at the town’s city hall, she hailed about 1,000 supporters for “reminding the world of the values of liberty.” It was here, in le pays réel, or real France, and not in the international parade in Paris that such values are rooted.

In spite of Hollande’s declaration after the attacks that “Our best weapon is unity,” French politics—and the French people—appear as divided as ever. The lines are being drawn, and they will not be erased by any number of republican marches. This is where French society in the aftermath of these recent acts of terror is, in some ways, on shakier ground than American society was after the September 11 attacks.

A fair amount of hypocrisy was on at the Paris march as well; Daniel Wickham identifies nearly two dozen countries represented there that have their own ugly records of arresting, intimidating, assaulting, or murdering journalists, including some major offenders like Turkey, Russia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. True to form, the Charlie Hebdo staffers who attended the rally came away wishing they had called out these hypocrites:

They said their biggest regret was that they couldn’t have paraded caricatures from the past pages of Charlie Hebdo of the various heads of state who joined the rally– Benyamin Netanyahu, King Abdallah II of Jordan, of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, of Russian Foreign Minister Sergueï Lavrov, of Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and of all the authoritarian heads of state they had lampooned over the years. (Many of the world leaders in the rally would have at the least jailed the Chralie Hebdo if they had been operating in those countries). Oh, well, said Luz, a cartoonist. You can’t think of everything.

But Tim Murphy attended the rally and was moved by its somber – not angry – tone:

[A]mid the sheer size of the crowds, I was struck, yet again, by how quiet people were overall, in contrast to the steroidal, rah-rah racket of an American rally. There were no drum circles and little chanting; occasionally “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, was sung, but certainly not by everyone; and though the French flag dotted the crowds, it wasn’t ubiquitous in the way that the American flag was post-9/11.

What was ubiquitous was the simple black-and-white “Je Suis Charlie” sign, which emerged today with all sorts of variations: “I am Charlie” plus “I am Jewish,” or “I am Muslim,” or “I am a Journalist,” or “I am a Secularist.” I saw no Islam-baiting signs unless you want to count those that bore some of the Charlie Hebdo images that courted so much controversy in the first place, including one of Mohammed gnashing his teeth over fundamentalists and another of a Muslim man and a male cartoonist making out that reads “Love is Stronger Than Hate.”

Bershidsky previews another wave of marches coming soon to a European city near you – and these won’t be about “unity” either:

Xenophobes elsewhere in Europe will also take this chance to assert themselves. Tonight, in Dresden, Germany, the anti-Islamic group Pegida intends to hold what will probably be its biggest rally yet. Since the Charlie Hebdo shootings, Pegida’s Faceook page has added about 20,000 supporters. German Justice minister Heiko Maas called on Pegida to cancel the gathering, denouncing the group as “hypocrites” who have protested against the “lying press” and are suddenly full of sympathy for its fallen representatives. The Pegida page’s only response has been, “What can one say???”

Marches like Pegida’s are more ideologically consistent than those held in Paris yesterday. They are also, of course, much smaller. But as the Charlie Hebdo massacre showed, it takes only two people to shed blood and frame the agenda as war.

Josh Rogin, meanwhile, wants to know why no major US officials were in attendance:

A senior administration official told me that the security requirements needed if Obama or Biden were to have attended the Paris rally could have interfered with the event itself, and the White House didn’t want the focus to be on the U.S. rather than on the French. The official noted that Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were in Paris for related meetings, although neither attended the rally. But back in Washington, almost no senior administration officials participated in the much smaller rally and march that took place Sunday afternoon only blocks from the White House. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland was the only official representative.

Eugene Volokh shares that puzzlement:

The U.S. was represented by our Ambassador to France, normally a logical choice but rather an odd one, I think, when dozens of world leaders — including leaders of many of our main allies — were present. And this is especially so when the march is about protecting values that are so important to us as Americans, as well as to the French, the English, and others. … Am I missing something here? Is there some particularly good “smart diplomacy” reason why we would be absent when so many others were present?

How Much Humor Can America Handle?

Poniewozik reviews the Golden Globe’s jokes through the lens of Charlie Hebdo. He pays particular attention to outrage over Margaret Cho’s impersonation of a North Korean general and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Cosby jokes:

For all the horror at the shootings and support for the right to expression, Americans get nervous about satire long before it reaches the scathing, vicious tone of Charlie Hebdo‘s cartoons. We’ve had numerous debates over whether a rape joke can ever be good and funny (though I’d say Fey and Poehler’s, aimed at a powerful person accused of assault, are Exhibit A of how one can be). And though Cho herself is Korean, playing a foreign character–and though she already played dictator Kim Jong Il on Fey’s 30 Rock–any lampooning of a heavily accented Asian character on this stage was likely to trip the outrage meter.

As with the Charlie Hebdo cartoons themselves, it was an example of a tension in American melting-pot culture, especially in left-leaning communities like Hollywood: classical liberalism (which emphasizes expression and personal and artistic liberties) bumps up against progressivism (which emphasizes identity politics and power dynamics).

So, nous sommes tous Charlie? Maybe. But more in theory than in practice.

“Take Your Medicine” Taken To An Extreme, Ctd

Teen resisting cancer treatment: “I care about the quality of my life, not just the quantity” http://t.co/nvF9WLwPUT pic.twitter.com/vTBs7KsA54

— Hartford Courant (@hartfordcourant) January 9, 2015

That 17-year-old in Connecticut trying to refuse chemo lost her court battle on Thursday:

The state argued that the teen lacked competency extended to maturity and that they did not believe she understood the severity of her prognosis. Her mother and her mother’s lawyer said they expect to go back to trial court to more fully explore the mature minor argument.

Her words are pretty heartbreaking:

The day of the ruling, Cassandra published a personal essay in the Hartford Courant about her experience. In the article, she describes crying and hiding from the police in her closet, running away from home after two days of chemotherapy, and being strapped to a hospital bed to undergo treatment against her will. She also refutes any claims that her mother was neglectful during her illness. “This experience has been a continuous nightmare,” Cassandra wrote in her essay.

“I want the right to make my medical decisions. It’s disgusting that I’m fighting for a right that I and anyone in my situation should already have. This is my life and my body, not [the Department of Children and Families]’s and not the state’s. I am a human — I should be able to decide if I do or don’t want chemotherapy. Whether I live 17 years or 100 years should not be anyone’s choice but mine.”

The Courant also published an unpersuasive counterpoint from a local man who got the same kind of cancer at 19 and chose to undergo chemotherapy. Key word: chose. But as Brandy Zadrozny notes:

A guard is manning the door [of Cassandra’s hospital room], which is always kept ajar so she can be monitored. Contact with her mother and the outside world—beyond nurses and her temporary guardian appointed by the state’s Department of Children and Families—is limited.

In the words of her public defender, Joshua Michtom:

[17-year-olds] can consent to sex with someone who’s near an age to them. They can get contraception. They can get addiction treatment. They can donate blood. They can be tried as adults for certain crimes. So there’s recognition overall that maturity doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t go to sleep a 17-year-old knucklehead and wake up an 18-year-old sage.

A cancer doctor who goes by the blog name of Orac has “written time and time again about children with cancer who refuse chemotherapy in favor of quackery”:

The difference between Cassandra’s case and these other cases, interestingly, is that, from what I can tell, she refused chemotherapy before having received a single dose. Even odder, her mother backed up her decision. This is very unusual, in my experience, which, fortunately, is limited to small numbers.

But the doctor doesn’t quite know where to come down on this one:

Regular readers should also know that I’ve always said that competent adults should be able to choose whatever treatment they want or no treatment at all, even if it will result in their death. That’s why I’m very much torn about this case. The reason is simple. Cassandra is 17 and will be 18 in September. She is very close to being an adult legally. I have no problem—and never have had a problem—accepting that children are too immature to make such momentous decisions and that parents who refuse to treat children with cancer with appropriate therapy are guilty of medical neglect. Such certainty is easy for 10, 11, 12, 13, and even 14 year olds. Heck it’s easy for 15 and even 16 year olds. But as a child hits 17 and gets closer to being a legal adult, it becomes harder for me to be quite so certain.

“Overlook Their Annoying Talk”

Harris Zafar reminds us that, whether dealing with specific insults or with the freedom of speech more generally, Muhammad’s teachings fly in the face of what modern-day Islamists purport to believe:

Islam does not support people who violently censor free speech. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Qur’an both through direct instruction as well as recalling how Muhammad was insulted to his face and never retaliated. The Qur’an records that he was called crazy, a victim of deception, a liar, and a fraud. Through this all, the Prophet Muhammad never retaliated or called for these people to be attacked, seized, or executed. This is because the Qur’an says to “overlook their annoying talk” and to “bear patiently what they say.” It instructs us to avoid the company of those who continue their derogatory attacks against Islam. There simply is no room in Islam for responding to mockery or blasphemy with violence.

But perhaps most pointedly, the Qur’an tells believers not to be provoked by those who seem to attack Islam, stating very clearly “let not a people’s enmity incite you to act otherwise than with justice.” This is supported by the actions of the Prophet Muhammad himself. When he was once returning from an expedition, an antagonist used insulting words against him. Although a companion suggested that the culprit be killed, the Prophet Muhammad did not permit anyone to do so and, instead, instructed they leave him alone.

Readers on Friday underscored that incident and the same overall point – which can’t be reiterated enough. So where did the practice of not depicting Muhammad come from? Amanda Taub voxplains:

According to [scholar Reza] Aslan, the Koran does not explicitly prohibit depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and there have been images of Mohammed, his family, and other prophets throughout history. “The history of Islam teems with images of the Prophet Mohammed. You see this in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.”

Still, the idea that depictions of Mohammed are disallowed didn’t come out of nowhere. Islam, Aslan explained, like Judaism, is an iconoclastic religion that does not permit God to be anthropomorphized — that is, portrayed as a human being — and prizes textual scripture instead.

Over time, Islamic scholars extended that tradition to cover Mohammed and the other major prophets as well, and discouraged artists from depicting them in images. That has created a strong cultural norm against images of Mohammed, even in the absence of a religious law against them.

Back in 2010, Omid Safi passed along the above image, “one of the classic images of the Prophet Muhammad’s Heavenly Ascension”:

In my recent biography of the Prophet, I have taken care to produce about 20 of the pietistic and sacred images produced by Muslim artists over the centuries. These are as far from the Danish cartoon images as one can get: they are works of devotion, illuminated by faith, and imbued with a deep sense of love. There are other options available to Muslims than either accepting the Danish Cartoonist caricatures of the Prophet or responding in pure anger and hatred. One such answer is a return to the rich pietistic Islamic tradition of depicting the Prophet who was sent, according to the Qur’an, as a mercy to all the Universe.

Quote For The Day II

“You ask yourself the question every time you open a newspaper or switch on the TV or walk the streets… You know the question. It reads: Just what the hell is going on around here?

The world looks worse every day. Is it worse, or does it just look it? The world gets older. The world has seen and done it all. Boy, is it beat. It’s suicidal…the world has done too many things too many times with too many people, done it this way, that way, with him, with him. The world has been to so many parties, been in so many fights, lost its keys, had its handbag stolen, drunk too much. It all adds up. A tab is presented. Our ironic destiny. Look at the modern infamies, the twentieth-century sins. Some are strange, some banal, but they all offend the eye, covered in their newborn vernix. Gratuitous or recreational crimes of violence, the ever-less-tacit totalitarianism of money (money—what is this shit anyway?), the pornographic proliferation, the nuclear collapse of the family (with the breeders all going critical, and now the children running too), the sappings and distortions of a mediated reality, the sexual abuse of the very old and the very young (of the weak, the weak): what is the hidden denominator here, and what could explain it all?

To paraphrase Bujak, as I understood him. We live in a shameful shadowland. Quietly, our idea of human life has changed, thinned out. We can’t help but think less of it now. The human race has declassed itself. It does not live anymore; it just survives, like an animal. We endure the suicide’s shame, the shame of the murderer, the shame of the victim. Death is all we have in common. And what does that do to life?” – Martin Amis, “Bujak and the Strong Force, or God’s Dice” in Einstein’s Monsters.

(Hat tip: John Benjamin)

Face Of The Day

Christopher Occhicone photographed the residents of Tent City in Lakewood, New Jersey:

Tent City … has been home to up to 100 residents for the past 7 years. Local residents have been calling for the closure of the camp since it began. The town succeeded in forcing out most of the residents by August 2014. Some were offered one year of rent-free housing in neighboring towns. Others were given $3,000 in cash to agree to leave town. The remainder were unable to accept either offer because of outstanding arrest warrants.

The aim of my work was to provide an honest look at life inside the camp and thus better inform policy (being decided outside the camp). I wanted to make a document that can be used as a reference for people wanting to address the issue of homelessness.

The project was screened at Visa Pour L’image. See more of Occhicone’s work here.