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route22ny · 4 years

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“The moral crisis of poverty amid vast wealth is inseparable from the injustice of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and our militarized war economy.” by Rev. Dr. William Barber II, March 30, 2020. (complete text below)

***

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet millions of American families have had to set up crowdfunding sites to try to raise money for their loved ones’ medical bills. Millions more can buy unleaded gasoline for their car, but they can’t get unleaded water in their homes. Almost half of America’s workers—whether in Appalachia or Alabama, California or Carolina—work for less than a living wage. And as school buildings in poor communities crumble for lack of investment, America’s billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the poorest half of households.

This moral crisis is coming to a head as the coronavirus pandemic lays bare America’s deep injustices. While the virus itself does not discriminate, it is the poor and disenfranchised who will experience the most suffering and death. They’re the ones who are least likely to have health care or paid sick leave, and the most likely to lose work hours. And though children appear less vulnerable to the virus than adults, America’s nearly forty million poor and low-income children are at serious risk of losing access to food, shelter, education, and housing in the economic fallout from the pandemic.

The underlying disease, in other words, is poverty, which was killing nearly 700 of us every day in the world’s wealthiest country, long before anyone had heard of COVID-19.

The moral crisis of poverty amid vast wealth is inseparable from the injustice of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and our militarized war economy. It is only a minority rule sustained by voter suppression and gerrymandering that subverts the will of the people. To redeem the soul of America—and survive a pandemic—we must have a moral fusion movement that cuts across race, gender, class, and cultural divides.

The United States has always been a nation at odds with its professed aspirations of equality and justice for all—from the genocide of original inhabitants to slavery to military aggression abroad. But there have been periods in our history when courageous social movements have made significant advances. We must learn from those who’ve gone before us as we strive to build a movement that can tackle today’s injustices—and help all of us survive.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, African Americans who had just escaped slavery joined with white allies to form coalitions that won control of nearly every southern legislature. These Reconstruction-era political alliances enacted new constitutions that advanced moral agendas, including, for the first time, the right to public education.

During the Great Depression, farmers, workers, veterans, and others rose up to demand bold government action to ease the pain of the economic crisis on ordinary Americans. This led to New Deal policies, programs, and public works projects that we still benefit from today, such as Social Security and basic labor protections.

Pushed by these movements, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt even called in 1944 for an economic bill of rights, declaring: “We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.”

During what I like to call the “Second Reconstruction” over the following decades, a coalition of blacks and progressive whites began dismantling the racist Jim Crow laws and won key legislative victories, including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act.

With each period of advancement has come a formidable backlash. This is how we find ourselves today, in the year 2020, with levels of economic inequality as severe as during the original Gilded Age a century ago. Since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby decision, Americans have had fewer voting rights protections than we did fifty-five years ago, while thanks to the earlier Citizens United ruling, corporations can invest unlimited sums of money to influence elections.

In response to fair tax reforms, the wealthy have used their economic clout to slash their IRS bills, cutting the top marginal income tax rate from more than 90 percent in the 1950s to 37 percent today. In response to the hard-fought wins of the labor movement, corporate lobbyists have rammed through one anti-worker law after another, slashing the share of U.S. workers protected by unions nearly in half, from 20.1 percent in 1983 to just 10.5 percent in 2018.

Decades after Depression-era reforms, Wall Street fought successfully to deregulate the financial system, paving the way for the 2008 financial crash that caused millions to lose their homes and livelihoods. And the ultra-rich and big corporations have also managed to dominate our campaign finance system, making it easier for them to buy off politicians who commit to rigging the rules against the poor and the environment, and to suppress voting rights, making it harder for the poor to fight back.

Our military budgets continue to rise, now grabbing more than fifty-three cents of every discretionary federal dollar to pay for wars abroad and pushing our ability to pay for health care for all, for a Green New Deal, for jobs and education, and infrastructure, further and further away.

In short, the official measure of poverty doesn’t begin to touch the depth and breadth of economic hardship in the world’s wealthiest nation, where 40 percent of us can’t afford a $400 emergency.

The wars that those military budgets fund continue to escalate. They don’t make us safer, and they’ve led to the deaths of thousands of poor people in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and beyond, as well as the displacement of millions of refugees, the destruction of water sources, and the contamination of the environments of whole countries.

The only ones who benefit are the millionaire CEOs of military companies, who are getting richer every year on the more than $350 billion—half the military budget—that goes directly to their corporations. In the meantime 23,000 low-ranking troops earn so little that they and their families qualify for food stamps.

Key to these rollbacks: controlling the narrative about who is poor in America and the world. It is in the interest of the greedy and the powerful to perpetuate myths of deservedness—that they deserve their wealth and power because they are smarter and work harder, while the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and intellectually inferior.

It’s also in their interest to perpetuate the myth that the poverty problem has largely been solved and so we needn’t worry about the rich getting richer—even while our real social safety net is full of gaping holes. This myth has been reinforced by our deeply flawed official measurements of poverty and economic hardship.

The way the U.S. government counts who is poor and who is not, frankly, is a sixty-year-old mess that doesn’t tell us what we need to know. It’s an inflation-adjusted measure of the cost of a basket of food in 1955 relative to household income, adjusted for family size—and it’s still the way we measure poverty today.

But this measure doesn’t account for the costs of housing, child care, or health care, much less twenty-first-century needs like internet access or cell phone service. It doesn’t even track the impacts of anti- poverty programs like Medicaid or the earned income tax credit, obscuring the role they play in reducing poverty.

In a report with the Institute for Policy Studies, the Poor People’s Campaign found that nearly 140 million Americans were poor or low-income—including more than a third of white people, 40 percent of Asian people, approximately 60 percent each of indigenous people and black people, and 64 percent of Latinx people. LGBTQ people are also disproportionately affected.

Further, the very condition of being poor in the United States has been criminalized through a system of racial profiling, cash bail, the myth of the Reagan-era “Welfare Queen,” arrests for things such as laying one’s head on a park bench, passing out food to unsheltered people, and extraordinary fines and fees for misdemeanors such as failing to use a turn signal, and simply walking while black or trans.

We are a nation crying out for security, equity, and justice. We need racial equity. We need good jobs. We need quality public education. We need a strong social safety net. We need health care to be understood as a human right for all of us. We need security for people living with disabilities. We need to be a nation that opens our hearts and neighborhoods to immigrants. We need safe and healthy environments where our children can thrive instead of struggling to survive.

With the coronavirus pandemic bringing our country’s equally urgent poverty crisis into stark relief, we cannot simply wait for change. It must come now.

America is an imperfect nation, but we have made important advancements against interconnected injustices in the past.

We can do it again, and we know how. Now is the time to fight for the heart and soul of this democracy.

***

Rev. Dr. William Barber II is a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival.

Read more by Rev. Dr. William Barber II

Source: https://progressive.org/magazine/real-epidemic-poverty-barber/

Note: the title of this article, and the purpose of this post, is not meant to diminish the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic in any way.

#poverty in america #rigged economy #covid19 #rev dr william barber II

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imaginethebeautifulworld · 4 years

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Pazienza e Perseveranza

Prima Parte: Veneziano

Everything had been so much simpler in the beginning. When you were young, you saw the world through tinted lenses; everything was dreamy and romantic.

Your ignorance was the epitome of peace and contentment. You never wanted for much else, as there was not much known to you beyond your small bubble. Moments were fleeting, your memories hazed to the point you could no longer discern your longing for the old days from the sanguine reality you knew.

That first love- innocent as a daisy and as pure as the first light shower at the end of a long autumn's day- was nothing more than a fuzzy feeling; you're reminded of a peach- it was sweet, soft, his lips were as gentle as a flower petal- Then your eyes are ripped open; the world is cold and bitter. Your first love marches off to a war he doesn't believe in. Your guardian is a tyrant, holding you captive solely for your resources. Your family is divided, physically kept away from each other as the world is terrified of your retribution. Together, you would be unstoppable, but separated you are weak.

You're a pitiful waste of your grandfather's name- -or so they would like to tell you. Your guardian has been an excellent teacher; there is more than one way to fight, and as inspiring as your eldest brother's passion is to destroy everything in his path until he is free, you have been perfecting the art of patience. When branching off on one's own, one must always be able to maneuver themselves through the complex policies of the modern age.

You know that in order to be successful, you will need to win over some powerful allies before you start setting your plans in motion.

There are several options you consider for your seductions-

There is the figurehead of Enlightenment, still bitter since his latest emperor was condemned to isolation, still teeming with a simmering anger that his conquests on the continent were all but for naught.

There is the seafarer, the Imperialist who has claimed so many as his own, concealing his thirst for power and control under a guise of refinement and industry.

There are others you could consider, former enemies and distant powers. You ponder allies who share the same household, seek out faces sharing your thirst for freedom in dining halls and cafes.

Your search is almost fruitless; very few seem keen on challenging your guardian’s foothold.

But there is hope.

Your guardian does possess one particularly begrudging ally, a soldier who commands one of the most impressive militaries you have beheld, a strategist who bears a mind sharper than a boning blade. He tolerates your guardian, though he continues to habour a bitter resentment for the rich, arrogant aristocrat. It’s not uncommon for the two to find points of contention, disputing constantly over taxes, borders, and composers.

With the right amount of charm and a suggestive push, you’re certain that you will win his favor and, much more importantly, his undying support.

But for now, you will continue to feign obliviousness, ignorant in terms of policy and economy, unskilled in the art of manipulating others to your needs. By the time you're finished, your guardian will be begging you to move out already. But for now, patience. If they continue to underestimate you, they’ll eventually give you everything you want. Pazienza è una virtù.

Seconda Parte: Seborga

The world often forgot you. Your eldest brother, despite the lies he fed himself, would always be the favored child. He was the heir, the real pride and joy of your grandfather's legacy.

You were the youngest, invisible to your parents, your grandparents, to the invaders who called themselves your friends. Gradually, you became more at ease with being overlooked. You were free to do as you wished, free to pursue any interests that struck your fancy.

Very few paid you any mind, letting you wander the empire as you wished, conducting your life in whatever manner you desired. While still required to attend formal events and make appearances at your guardian’s table at least once a fortnight, you were able to slip away seemingly unnoticed, providing you with a supreme advantage.

Reconnaissance soon became your greatest strength.

Rare was it for others to question you intentions, many doting on your seemingly insatiable curiosity. They often forgot you were one-third of a fallen empire, that you were just as valuable a player in this game as your brothers. You were often ignored by the outside world, your guardian swiping you up in the same storm with which he claimed your brothers- only to forget you in the next moment. You were just another mouth to feed, another insignificant face at his table. But those other unnamed faces sympathized with you. They too were often overlooked for their more talented siblings, for their beautiful cousins, for their parents' legacies. You find solidarity in the other unnamed, find allies in those who you had once viewed as enemies.

Often, they spoke of unifying against your common foe, working under a single banner for their freedom, for their own identities.

You could commiserate with the northerners; their culture and language were different than your own, but the rallying cry carried the same spirit as your own people.

Often, you wondered why you were overlooked; surely someone would have paid you more notice after the first insurrection. But for those few brief moments of rebelliousness, you were soon ignored yet again, falling back into obscurity after only a few brief months. Perhaps you need to adopt some of the fiery passion your eldest brother carries, or maybe you should learn how to display the calm compliance your elder brother exhibits.

The simple truth is that you will never understand either of them; neither seems to be making any progress at breaking free of this gilded imprisonment.

Both are pitiful at this game; one is too obvious, getting caught and reprimanded before he has a chance to put any of his plans into action. The other acts as if he is not interested in fighting for their freedom, attending parties and operas with your guardian like some love-struck puppy. Once in a while however, your elder brother catches your eyes and offers a small smile just for you. You don’t fully understand the wink that accompanied his grin, but you find yourself eased at the brilliant clarity in his caramel eyes, comforted by the confidence he shows for that brief instant. The mannerisms are dropped again almost immediately, the persona of a fool once again shrouding your companion. You wonder if you had imagined the whole exchange. Perhaps you are alone in this hell.

But you have your allies now, a legion of the forgotten ready to take back their identities, now indivisible under one flag.

You envy their optimism and passion; you finally accept that your family has abandoned you.

The eldest is a rebellious fool, dragged away to a land of beautiful beaches and pleasant rains. The second is an ignoramus, trailing on the coattails of the monster that had landed you all in this predicament to begin with. You are alone. You are insignificant to the kings, the emperors, the princes that stroll these gilded palace halls. In a landscape of snow and ice, you are no longer intimidated by the smiles that hide equally frozen hearts and intentions. You keep a warm smile on your face, knowing that your invisibility will make escape easier. The world forgets you exist. And that's why, when you receive a coded message from the eldest, with a detailed route to escape and save their home, you can't repress your smile.

The next day, when you see the scarcely repressed glee on your elder brother's face, the subtle nod he offers you, and the knowing glance towards the soldier he has been courting, you feel your breath catch in your understanding.

The world had forgotten you.

But your family? Famiglia non dimentica mai.

Terza Parte: Romano

Nothing in this world ever really changes.

You would never admit to your weaknesses, would never accept the conditions of your circumstances without putting up some kind of fight.

Your guardian's superiors have longed to abandon you for eons now, ready to shed off the cumbersome rebel who refused to fully cooperate with his circumstances. But your guardian is as stubborn as you; he refuses to throw you to the wolves.

You knew he was aware of your intentions.

You knew he was risking his own neck to protect you.

You knew he considered you his own kin.

Your younger brothers had it easier.

While their guardian gave them gilded chambers and elegant galas, he would always ensure that you felt the true weight of his control.

While equal in prestige and power to the aristocrat, there were still things that your former conquistador could not protect you from, your people's suffering a constant presence weighing on your mind.

You found ways to distract yourself, learning to appreciate the contentment that comes in the simplicity of an isolated existence. Most days, it would just be you and your guardian in the fields, spending weeks at a time with only each other as company.

The isolation gives you a crippling disadvantage, any news of the outside world coming only with the envoys sent by his leaders, the gravity of your circumstance hidden in the coded drawings sent by your younger brother.

His messages reveal his plans, speak of his and the youngest’s ongoing search for alliances among the other “guests” at their guardian’s estate. They ask you for any advice, beg to be included in your next rebellion.

Their persistence reminds you once again of the cunning involved in sending you so far abroad, the strategic planning that went into giving you away.

There are few allies to be made in the countryside, your isolation on this God-forsaken peninsula part of a scheme to crush your spirits.

You think his pompous, bespectacled lordliness should have made that clear to the former pirate snoring under a tree; you hadn't been this much at ease since before Nonno had left.

Your carefree caretaker is delighted that you are more focused on your studies, begins discussing strategy and warfare and policy with you late into the evenings. At first, you wonder if he may perhaps be the most oblivious oaf on the continent, but as his explanations grow more detailed and certain, you learn that he is also greatly at odds with your enemy.

He plays a fool incredibly well, feigning ignorance whenever visiting dignitaries make mention of the revolts in a distant territory, laughing off concerns of politicians whenever attending to duties in the capital.

You never fully confide in him; the situation is too precarious to place faith in anyone save for your brothers. But you trust him to have your back, providing whatever distractions you need to conceal your frequent visits back home.

He never explicitly gave you his blessing, but somewhere between the lessons on strategy, the hours spent training you how to overcome your muscle spasms to hold a firearm steady, and the weeks of rigorous analysis of dozens of philosophers and politicians- You know your mentor is unwavering in his loyalty.

You hold fast to the latest letter from your brothers; an unexpected ally wants to meet with you, a northerner who is weary of the empire's hegemony. You have hope; he once helped a rebellious farmer from a distant shore earn his freedom; perhaps he could do the same for you.

You only have your hope, an ancient rifle, and the knowledge that your brothers are both depending on you.

As the eldest, it is your duty to protect them. To free them. To give them the best life possible.

You know the storm ahead will be devastating.

You know you are facing a foe far more fearsome than any you've faced upon the sea.

But you are determined. You are resilient. You will persevere. You are your grandfather's legacy. L'Italia risorgerà di nuovo.

[information for translations and historical context available here]

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dreadhaus-literature · 5 years

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{Story} Cruel

A continuation of Gentle.

This is more than I can stand.

Casa Al Mare was teeming with life, which to some might be a little ironic considering some of the occupants of the illustrious, infamous estate lived without a beating pulse beneath their flesh. The night air was filled with the sound of laughter and music, the scent of rich, exotic foods and as the stars twinkled merrily overhead in the indigo sky death seemed like the furthest thing from any of the attending guests’ minds.

Securing an invitation to a Frenzy event was cause for celebration whether the guest of honor were celebrity, government official, or simply another affluent member of the vampire clan’s golden circle. This event was to welcome the changing seasons, the shortening of days and the lengthening of brisk autumn evenings that promised shadows and the cover of night in which to do...whatever one might be so inclined to get up to. It was no secret, whether citizen or police official, that the Syndicate was not just a criminal organization but the criminal organization but they were also untouchable. Any foolish hand attempting to skim from their deep pockets found itself missing fingers and any nose stupid enough to stick itself in their business was suddenly absent a face. The Frenzy brood were thusly free to do as they pleased and what Monica, Head of the Family, pleased to do was entertain and spend her vast amount of riches on showing the rest of the population how the good life was meant to be lived. Did she enjoy socializing? Not particularly, but she enjoyed the envy and she enjoyed the clamor of the general population constantly attempting to find footing on one of her ultra-exclusive guest lists. Just recently she’d denied a certain blonde celebrity access to a party just to do it and the resulting singer’s decline in the affluent community had left Monica laughing so hard her sides ached. The power she wielded was nothing to scoff at, be it the might of her Syndicate or simply the flash of those fiery emerald eyes, able to stamp out another’s social life like a bug beneath her stunning silver heel.

“Another absolutely beautiful affair you’ve thrown, Miss Frenzy.”

Monica turned and offered a distracted but no less dazzling smile to someone whose name she didn’t care to remember but knew he frequented their guest list as often as was permitted--because this was not the first time he’d all but purred that sentence at her. Beautifully full lashes lifted to allow her to take in his appearance; passable, but she was not interested in decently good-looking. She wasn’t even looking to begin with, but that didn’t stop Mr. What’s-His-Name from trying his luck. Mistaking her eye contact with interest, the dark-haired male donned what Monica assumed he thought was a heart-stopping smile but it simply looked a little drunk, to her--crooked as the line that came spilling out next.

“And just where is your date tonight?” He glanced around as if for dramatic effect, reassuring himself that she was, in fact, alone. He turned back to her, smile still in place; just a little too pleased with his good fortune. “Don’t tell me that it’s my honor to escort the lovely Miss Frenzy around her own party.”

“It isn’t.” Monica punctuated her statement with a smile that knocked the wind out of her annoying party guest. “I can escort myself just fine.”

“Oh but you shouldn’t!” He stepped a little to the side to follow when she would have stepped around and left him standing there gaping like a fish on dry land. “The lady of the house needs a proper escort.”

“I have a proper escort.” Monica bit out curtly.

Another glance around the packed hall didn’t convince her persistent pursuer of anything and he turned back to her, puzzled. “Then where is he?"

None of your goddamn business would have been a decent enough answer, but his question gave Monica enough pause not to snap it between agitated fangs. Her escort was in her suite of rooms, sleeping, resting his love-bitten body because she was developing quite a taste for his candy apple sweet blood. Osamu Furuya had been her Consort a few months previous but now, now they were so much more. Monica had purchased his Consort contract outright and now he served her and her alone--and relished every moment of his ownership. He wore her Family crest, along with a picture of her, in a locket around his neck and he rarely, if ever, left the estate without her. Monica wouldn’t necessarily call him a pet--though she had once during sex and he’d seemed all too eager to latch onto the affectionate nickname--simply because what they shared seemed deeper than just physical intimacy. Osamu was her shadow; he was at her beck and call for more than just to satisfy the ache in her fangs and as time progressed, the older gentleman became more and more in need of her--her touch, her voice, her affections, anything she was willing to give him. He took from her just as greedily as she did from his veins and she was finding she didn’t mind; in fact, she was beginning to suspect he loved her and she...knew if he said it, she would say it back without hesitation. This had not been her intent when she procured him as her Consort but she didn’t mind what it had blossomed into and she knew Osamu had not a single objection.

“Perhaps you’ll meet him later.” Monica finally answered, this time stalking around this insignificant gnat of a guest with the air of finality and grace one would expect from a vampire of such standing.

The little man knew better than to push his luck and could only stare, openly pining, after the object of so many’s desire as she stalked deeper into her gilded party hall.

Up the beautiful, winding staircase and beyond two sets of locked doors, Monica’s pet stirred, relishing in the delicious lethargy that came from her feeding. Osamu was littered with bites and had never felt more contented and happy in his life. Blond lashes swept up, drinking in the dim light and the faintest din of party guests having the time of their lives. It helped clear the cotton candy cobwebs of sleep from his mind as he turned over onto his broad back, the lush sheets drawing slowly down his porcelain torso to expose sinewy muscle and more of Monica’s bruising bites. He specifically asked her never to heal her bites, only close them (after all, his blood was for her to enjoy and he was determined not to waste a single drop) and she obliged, leaving him to enjoy her possessive claim and he flaunted every single bite he had. The collars of his shirts were never buttoned, exposing raw, passionate bites along his throat and his sleeves were often times rolled up to expose his love-bitten wrists. He relished every title that came with her claim; if he was her plaything, her boy-toy (truthfully at his age that made him laugh, but he still didn’t object), her pet--he might be fondest of that one the most. It implied a certain amount of...wanton neediness on his behalf, and that was something he was fine, even proud, to display. If she wanted to collar him and lead him around on a leash he’d go obediently and with his head held high. Monica was a goddess, his Empress, and he was wrapped around her little finger in much the same way she wrapped her petite legs around his waist every night.

“Your party clothes, Mr. Furuya.”

The blond turned his head, dark eyes landing on a servant gesturing to the standing bureau, where a crisp white suit with blue accents was hanging with the utmost care.

“Is my Beloved already there?” Osamu’s deep voice was husky from sleep, but even with the quiet rumble there was a wealth of affection in his nickname for Monica and given it was used so often, the servant didn’t miss a beat.

“Yes, sir.” The servant folded his hands against his middle. “Would you like any assistance dressing?”

“No,” Osamu slowly lifted to a sitting position, the sheets falling to bunch against his lap, giving a shake of his blond head. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”

The servant bowed respectfully and showed himself out, closing the double doors quietly as Osamu rose from the bed he shared with his Beloved. A momentary question swirled around like a lazy fly and he gave it passing thought; why hadn’t Monica woken him for the party? But the moment he questioned, he knew what her answer would be. It was the same every time she fed deeply, leaving him lethargic and with a lovesick smile on his face--

“You need to rest, baby, or I can’t feed again anytime soon.”

The very idea of not feeling her fangs pierce his pale flesh was enough to wipe the satisfied smile right off Osamu’s handsome face and he dismissed the buzzing thought with a slight shake of his head.

Given Osamu was already bare, dressing was blissfully quick; the more he woke up, the more he found himself missing Monica and desiring to be at her side. His suit was perfectly tailored, a specialty order from Monica to her twin no doubt, and Osamu’s smile was almost coy with affection as he straightened the collar of his sapphire button-up. Monica remarked often how much she liked him in white; given how light his features were it played up his angelic appearance but Osamu was always quick to argue Monica was the angel. There was no way she could possibly be real but if she was, then she had to have been crafted by loving, heavenly hands. Monica often tried to laugh off such affectionate words but he meant every single one he said. Even now, as he was admiring himself in the full-length mirror, the only thing he could focus on was what Monica would be wearing. The couple often wore complimentary clothes and if his accents were blue then her outfit must be in the same shade of sapphire and he lost himself to fantasizing, imagining swathes of expensive fabric hugging curves he worshiped day and night.

Long fingers deftly buttoned his sleeves as his eyes stared glassily, relishing the pull of lovebites that would take days to heal--unless Monica bit them back open and he desperately wanted her to. Who would have ever thought he would meet the love of his life Consorting? He certainly didn’t, but here she was, taking over every second of his every day and he had no desire to stop her.

If anything he somehow desired more.

The bedroom doors were opened for him as he approached on long legs and polished dress shoes, and Osamu gave a polite, grateful smile to the servant s he passed. This was the life of luxury, with an Empress on his arm, but Osamu would have lived anywhere with Monica, and he would have done anything necessary to keep her in the life she deserved--it was simply fortune that she was already eating with a silver spoon engraved in her name. His vampire had the world at her beck and call but selfishly he wanted her to think of him first, always. Already he was taking over many of the duties servants had provided for her, doing things like washing and pressing her expensive clothes, polishing her jewelry, brushing her hair--he wanted to be the one to provide for her, to give the world to her as she had done for him. Love does things to a man, changes them but what Osamu hadn’t been prepared for was the devoted way he followed her like he’d had no purpose in life before knowing her name. He was tall, broad shouldered and though lean was graced with muscle that kept him from being lanky; more jaguar than cheetah in his build he knew he could command attention if he wanted it but he never had, before. Consorting hadn’t meant a thing to him because there was no intimacy to it, for him; it was a job, something he was good at but the moment he’d laid eyes on Monica it was as if someone had thrown open the curtains and let the moonlight in. She sucked the air out of his lungs when she looked at him, eyes glittering like precious gemstones, ready to feed from his veins and the exchange of his life for hers was one he made as often as she desired it. She could bleed him dry and he would thank her with his dying breath.

Osamu’s thoughts were so often on Monica it didn’t surprise him that she was still at the forefront when he started to encounter party guests littering the outer halls. Now that he’d left his and Monica’s private suite of rooms there were well-dressed elites sprinkled around like accent pieces, discussing anything from the latest gossip to upcoming movies. Some gave him a passing glance or two as he went by, eyes drifting to the silver locket on display, resting against his chest. With the buttons of his dress shirt undone, the locket was resting against bare flesh and right beside a biting mark. There could be little doubt who Osamu was or who he was here for and the whispers were of awe and jealousy.

“That’s him? The lucky bastard Monica’s interested in?”

“No fucking way, do you have any idea how hard I’ve tried to get her to notice me?! I’ve been to every party she’s thrown the past two years!”

“...I’m so jealous, look at those bites. She’s got beautiful fangs, you can tell.”

“I can tell I’m going to be thinking about her fangs even more than I already was.”

Osamu’s smile lifted a little higher as he rounded the corner, pride straightening his spine all the more. Let them envy him, at least then they’d know to keep a respectful distance--

Osamu’s breath slammed from his lungs the instant he lifted his gaze, his heart turning to ice just to drop to the pit of his stomach. Across the packed hall, looking every inch the vision he knew her to be, was his Beloved--and someone who was entirely too close for comfort. She was in the middle of laughing, the melodious sound reaching him over the din of the party simply because he was always listening for her. Her fangs caught the room light, beckoned and enticed and the man standing next to her was staring so intently at her upturned face Osamu felt his fingers ball into fists. He didn’t consider himself a violent man and before Monica had never been jealous a day in his life but he was finding it was an ugly emotion; rage black as the night outside was welling up like a storm and where there had been ice in his veins now there was only heat, flames licking along his skin like bolts of lightning. He felt the color flood his cheeks, his angled jaw tightening as if on a screw hinge and it was a wonder his teeth didn’t crack from the pressure.

...Who...the hell...was that?

Monica’s laughter quieted, and without taking his eyes off her he knew others around her were straining to chase the beautiful sound as it vanished. Monica was in a group, enchanting creature that she was of course she’d drawn a small crowd of her enamored guests and while that might not necessarily have bothered Osamu (at least, he would have simply walked over and greeted her, establishing his claim on her effortlessly) it was the way that man, that bastard was trying to monopolize her attention. Whether it was because he was a man or because Osamu knew how hard he always worked to keep Monica’s attention he recognized the moves for what they were; the bastard kept slight hold of her elbow to keep her at his side rather than drifting amongst the group, and his body language was open to her, facing her at all times as if to present his full attention.Osamu’s dark brown eyes were murky as the ocean moments before the tsunami lays waste to the beach and as he watched, the would-be suitor leaned in closer just to try and speak to Monica rather than engage the rest of the group. Osamu was a mere human man, he didn’t possess the abilities of his vampire and so the words were lost on him, but what wasn’t was the mere inches between her and him.

Monica could not, would not ever be blamed for who she was--a stunning vision, beauty incarnate, she was an angel among the unworthy and Osamu would never dream of placing blame upon her petite shoulders. No, his jealous rage had a target and that target was narrowing to a finely sharpened knife’s tip the longer this dragged on.

This had to stop.

He would put a stop to this.

She was his, same as he had been hers from the moment she’d laid those breath-taking eyes on him. He couldn’t lose her, not now.

“Unfair, huh?”

Osamu’s head snapped down, gaze landing on an obviously drunk brunette, whose flushed cheeks were more red than pink at this point. The glass in his hand sloshed as the shorter male gestured, obviously in Monica’s direction.

“She’s...fucking perfect, but what are we?” The male brought his hand to his chest, spilling the caramel colored liquid onto his shirt. “Human, that’s what we are. That’s why she wouldn’t give me the time of day earlier. Human. Not like Mr. Fangtastic Fucker over there.”

Osamu’s stormy gaze was riveted to the bastard in question and there they were, plain as day. Two gleaming fangs, a compliment to Monica’s even as the idea roiled Osamu’s stomach. The bastard was smiling as if showing them off, and Osamu wondered for a moment if he’d been foolish to smile at Monica without them. Was this what she wanted? It was what she deserved. She deserved someone powerful and strong, someone to compliment the tall, dark, and handsome that so often accompanied her species and Osamu looked like a ray of sunlight standing beside her. She was everything the night had to offer; her skin held the most delicious kiss of color that enraptured him every time he saw her laid bare. Her hair was dark enough to hold the stars from the sky and the secretive way her lips tilted in a smile when she kissed him reminded him of the same thrill he used to feel as a little boy, running down the darkened hallway for a sneaky midnight treat. She made him feel young and in love, and she made him feel powerful in his own way, that he could tempt her fangs to pierce deep and drink what he freely gave. He didn’t want to lose that, couldn’t lose her.

The very idea sent one single tear spilling over scarcely blinking eyes, splashing unnoticed on the front of Osamu’s sapphire shirt.

This was more than he could stand.

“Kennet, that’s just dumb.” Monica’s incredulous laughter masked the sharp sting of her very truthful statement. She meant every word, but this dim-witted guest just wasn’t getting it.

“Oh I’m very serious, Miss Frenzy.” Kennet replied easily, in a way he thought was incredibly charming. After all, the tone worked on all the other women he used it on.

“Oh I’m sure you are.” Was Monica’s effortlessly sarcastic tone, again sailing over the man’s head as she raised her crystal flute to her lips. The liqueur inside would do, but it just made her fangs ache for--”Osamu?”

The blond materialized as if out of thin air, standing tall and imposing in a way Monica had never seen before. His broad shoulders were squared and as he stepped forward he openly moved Kennet away from her--something she was immediately, immensely grateful for. The vampire made a somewhat startled, almost disgruntled noise but Osamu was not backing down and made no move to concede even politely. Monica knew her man, she knew he was a gentleman who was always extremely mindful of how he presented himself when she was on his arm but he was uncharacteristically stoic and intimidating. There was a hard line to his jaw, his eyes sharp enough to cut as he stared Kennet down. Osamu was taller, impressive for a human over a supernatural, and as Kennet stared back Osamu tilted his head up and stared down his nose at the vampire. There was no denying something was very wrong with Osamu and as he slid his arm around Monica’s waist, his grip was surprisingly tight, his fingers cinching around her hip to pull her beneath the hollow of his shoulder. Slowly, he dragged his gaze from Kennet to lower to her, his lips finding her forehead with affection that was a direct contrast to the anger radiating off his body in waves.

“Hello, Beloved. I’m so very sorry I’m so late.”

Monica cleared her throat, more affected by the rough, husky depth to Osamu’s voice than she wanted to be in front of others, but she leaned into his kiss all the same. “T-That’s all right, you’re here now.”

Osamu straightened up, eyes slashing back to Kennet as he spoke. “Yes. I am.”

Kennet looked between the lovers with a somewhat ill-masked look of disbelief. He’d heard Monica had a human lover but had simply assumed he could take her off the feeble mortal’s arm without much fuss. The way she fit beneath the man’s shoulder, the possessive grip he had on her--Kennet had been elbowed out the door into the cold without realizing he’d never been invited inside.

“...I don’t believe we’ve met.” Kennet’s tone was tight, no longer the easy-going charmer he thought he was. He extended his hand with a cock of his lips, not bothering to hide his disdain. “Kennet.”

Osamu, rather than shake Kennet’s hand, brought Monica’s hand up to the warmth of his mouth, but his eyes were on Kennet all the same. “Thank you for keeping my Beloved company while I was away, Kennet.”

Kennet lowered his hand, bristled but unable to do anything about it. He knew better than to attack the human; anyone causing a disruption at a Frenzy affair was made an example out of and by attacking Monica’s lover? He’d be strung up like tinsel on a Christmas tree. “...Not a problem.”

Monica looked up at Osamu, noting that his jaw was still tense and his posture was rigid. Her brow furrowed in concern and she turned, giving the group a dismissive but polite smile.

“Would you all excuse us?”

There were politely murmured replies but when Monica moved to step away from Osamu, to lead him to the hall, he made a noise deep in his chest and refused to release her. Instead, he took the lead and escorted her through the throngs of guests with his grip still ironclad around her waist.

Only once out in a side hall, quickly cleared of guests, did Osamu allow Monica out of his grasp--and that was only because she insisted, so she could face him and ask--

“What’s wrong?”

Osamu’s gaze was to the side, his posture still tense, poised, and Monica watched his marked throat work to swallow--but he failed to in the end.

“Osamu, what happened? Are you mad at me?”

“No!” Osamu turned to her so quickly it nearly startled her. The honesty on his face put her at ease almost immediately. “No,” he answered again, quieter and more like himself. “Never.”

“Then was it Kennet?” She was on the right path, she could see a vein pulse slightly in his throat at the mention of the other man. “What is it, what did he do?”

“Touch you.”

The quiet admission was not lost on her exceptional hearing but she asked him to repeat it all the same.

“He...touched you.” Osamu reached for her bare elbow, his calloused fingertips soft against the flesh. “He touched you and I...hate him for it.”

Confusion brought Monica’s brow together even as Osamu continued to lightly feather his touch over her skin, his eyes on her arm first, then trailing up to her shoulder, her throat, to her face and then he was moving down the beautiful curves of her body, his face such a mix of emotion she couldn’t read all of them at once.

“You look so beautiful. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that first.”

“That’s not...” Monica floundered, shaking her head. “Thank you, but what are you talking about, with Kennet? It was just a stupid conversation, I barely remember what he said.”

“It isn’t that.” Osamu’s fingers slid up, following the natural, breath-taking lines of her body to curve around her shoulder and then up to cup her throat, his thumb moving to her soft cheek. “I know you. Or, I like to think I do. It isn’t you who needs to apologize to me.”

“You...want Kennet to apologize to you?”

“Yes.” Osamu gripped Monica’s chin in a move so fluid he scarcely seemed the human he was. “I want him to apologize for touching you, when you belong to me.”

Monica, had she a pulse, would have felt her heart stammer at the heavy weight of truth in Osamu’s low tone.

“I won’t stand for him or anyone else putting their hands on you.” Osamu’s grip wasn’t bruising but it was as insistent as his words. “It is my blood that flows in your veins and that makes it my right to touch you. No one else.”

This was a side of Osamu Monica had never seen before. He was always so gentle and soft-spoken, he often reminded her of a house cat. He liked to cuddle, he all but purred under her attention, and she never once saw his teeth bared in aggression. But the man staring at her now was a tiger, all sharp teeth and with horrible, promising intent in his eyes. Monica knew the look in his eyes wasn’t for her, his touch was too gentle, his voice too soft. The look of malice, of raw hatred in his eyes was for Kennet. Osamu meant every word he’d said, and Monica knew then what she was feeling radiating off of him right alongside his rage.

Jealousy.

Monica didn’t trust herself to speak, her body was responding way too much to his actions and words, but the trembling tips of her fingers reached for him and when she cupped his face he let out an almost pained noise, some of the tension seeping out of him almost immediately. It gave her a little more nerve.

“You don’t...need to be jealous of him or anyone else.” Monica watched Osamu turn, pressing kisses to her palm that she felt clear down to her toes.

“I’m yours. Every fiber of my being, every drop of blood in my veins, every beat of this mortal heart belongs to you. I’m yours,” Osamu spoke against her satin skin, his dark eyes on her. “Are you mine?”

Monica nodded, unable to look away from the desperation forming in those glassy eyes.

Osamu ducked his head, brought his forehead to hers as he was quickly losing the battle of how much space he could tolerate between them. “Say it for me, please, Monica. Tell me you’re mine.”

“I-I’m y-yours,” Monica was helpless to do anything else, whether responding to the hitch in his voice, the tremble in his body, or the small, teardrop stain on his shirt right next to her picture in his locket.

Osamu closed the distance between them in an instant, his lips searing in a claiming kiss that sealed her words to him like a promise. It soothed across his frantically beating heart like a balm even as his large hands fell to her hips, curving around the small of her back to lift her petite frame into his. She fit perfectly, as he knew her to do, and he knew this was how it should always be.

Jealousy was a cruel teacher, but Osamu knew the hard lesson learned was that he would not, could not, lose her.

#{story} : cruel #{character} : osamu furuya #{theme} : for monica #{ i was super in the mood to write some jealousy }#{ so i super hope that paid oFF }

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 3 years

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May 16, 2021

My weekly rundown of things I am up to. Topics include density and mass transit, telecommunications and travel, saving San Francisco, and Bill Clinton.

Density and Mass Transit

A basic question: what level of population density is required for mass transit to be viable? Of course, there are many factors other than density that come into play, but density is a good starting point.

This 1994 estimate by Holtzclaw is frequently cited. He finds that municipal buses are economically viable is there are at least 30 people per hectare in the vicinity of the bus line. The thresholds are 35 pa/ha for light rail and 50 pa/ha for metro service. There are quite a few other studies, like this one from the Kinder Institute, Guerra and Cervero, the Twin Cities Metro Council, and a few others. They all give roughly the same results, though some of them, like the Twin Cities on BRT, get close to 100 pa/ha.

By way of comparison, the average population-weighted density in the US (weighting by population is a mathematical operation that basically refers to what most people see, rather than the naive population/area calculation) is about 21 pa/ha, and if single family family homes are built with the median lot size for the US, the overall density is about 14 pa/ha.

The above estimates are not hard and fast figures, but some rules of thumb that are given for transit viability. A lot depends on the precise definition of “viability”, which I am keeping vague for now, and at what range the given population density figures should hold (typically 1/4 miles to a full mile).

But the bottom line is that most of the US is not dense enough for mass transit to be a good investment. Not only are density figures too low, but it is my understanding that the long-term trend has been downward. Either urban populations would have to grow considerably, and/or cities would have to contract, to change the picture. Demographic trends make the former look especially unlikely. Another hope for mass transit is that reforms in the construction process could lower costs and thus the density threshold for viability, which isn’t too outlandish given that construction costs in the US tend to be much higher than the rest of the world.

Transit advocates often attack the problem from the opposite direction. They argue that building transit will cause denser development to occur, so it makes sense to build now even where thresholds are not met. It sounds good in theory, but transit in and of itself doesn’t appear to raise density.

Do telecommunications lead to more travel?

A good question. One could make plausible arguments either way, and indeed there are results that show that telecommunications could be a substitute for travel. But on balance they are complements, meaning that as IT technology advances, we are likely to travel more, not less, as a result. Telecommuting in particular does tend to reduce travel, even though there is a rebound in non-work travel, it is not enough to make up for the decrease in work travel. But for IT in general, more travel is to be expected.

This general topic has been well studied, but I don’t think is as well known among urbanists as it should be. For a reader on the subject, I would recommend this 2009 paper by Patricia Mokhtarian. It is a good survey of how IT and travel relate to each other, with some coverage of more general subjects of the rebound effect. Both theoretical results and on-the-ground facts of the past 12 years have only reinforced the general conclusions.

I don’t see anything on the horizon that is likely to change this basic fact.

Saving San Francisco

The always-good Palladium Magazine has a new article, this one by Lea Degen, on the imperative of building a political movement to solve San Francisco’s problems and how to do so. She argues that SF, as a capitol of the US tech industry, is an important test case of national significance. There is a lot of interest here worth reading. She focuses on two problems in particular: the high cost of living and high crime.

She makes reference to Alexei Yurchak’s concept of hypernormalization in how the city’s problems are perceived, in that is is clear to almost all observers that there are problems, but no one can conceive of a workable alternative. The term was coined to describe the dysfunction of the Brezhnev Era of the Soviet Union and is also the name and theme of a recent Adam Curtis film.

When I lived in San Francisco from 2016-18, I had gotten involved with the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement, whose primary goal is to deregulate zoning rules and improve housing affordability, hoping that it could be the kind of reform movement that Lea advocates. For a variety of reasons, it can’t, and now the YIMBY movement does some marginal good but acts as one of a great many other Democratic interest groups in the Bay Area, a crowded space if there ever was one.

In the 1960s and 70s, there was CHECC (CHoose an Effective City Council) in Seattle. That movement was primarily a youth-driven movement, formed from an alliance of reform-minded Democrats and Republicans to turn out long-time, ineffective incumbents in city hall. It was largely successful. It would be hard to replicate the bipartisan nature of the movement in today’s much more polarized environment. Indeed, in San Francisco and elsewhere, fear of the other party is one of the tricks incumbents use to stay in power. But I do think that an effective reformist movement could not be anchored in Democratic politics, or else it would fall into the same culture war gutters as most other movements do.

It is tempting to see the solution as packing up and leaving. Moving to Austin or Miami seems to be the trendy thing now. From an individual level, I can’t argue with the logic here. I left too, because I was fed up and after getting married had no reason to stay. But the city itself and its problems are not going to go away.

Bill Clinton

I got a book on Bill Clinton recently entitled Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President by Patrick Maney.

The book is not part of the University Press of Kansas’s Presidents series, though it is by the same publisher and seems to be formatted the same way. I’ve read two chapters so far: the first on Clinton’s pre-1992 life, and the second on the cabinet, staff, and work style. It looks like the next seven chapters are about events of the administration, followed by an epilogue on the post-presidency. I’m also a bit confused because the previous link has a date of April 2021, while the book itself is copyrighted 2016.

Anyway, the series is quite good, so I am excited to get a book that is at least closely related to it. There are a bunch of things to say so far, but I’ll keep comments limited.

Shortly before Clinton became head of the Democratic Leadership Council, they did a post-mortem of the 1980, 1984, and 1988 elections. They found three myths that contributed to Democratic failures during that time: the myth of liberal fundamentalism (that victory follows adherence to party orthodoxy), the myth of mobilization (that victory is a matter of getting nonvoters to vote, rather than finding a more appealing message), and the myth of the Congressional bastion (that strength in Congress and other down-ticket races means that the message is sound). The latter point is particular prescient in light of the 1994 midterms.

The DLC may be gone, but the contest between moderates and progressives continues. After Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, there was again some hand-wringing among Democrats about whether they are out of touch. That lasted for about three days before the pussy hats came out. It is not clear which faction is coming out ahead in the Biden administration, but clearly the progressives have momentum now.

I’m enjoying the book and will probably say much more about it later, especially when I’m done. George W. Bush will be available later this year too.

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lorddevourer · 6 years

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Mind if I submit an ask? 12. what is your character’s ideology? what beliefs and values are most important to them and how do they impact their decision making?

Detailed Character analysis questions

The basis for Nero’s ideology is simple, one shared by all black holes in one form or another - might makes right. The strong may do as they wish, and the weak simply have to adapt to a reality that doesn’t cater to them. And while the strong have the right to impose rules on those weaker than them, only the very strongest can truly expect their will to go unchallenged. This is the basic principle of how the cosmos operates and how balance is preserved - a constant state of conflict between the strong, with the ultimate goal to become the strongest.

On that fairly simple basis, Nero has built a complex network of beliefs that shape his personal ideology. The basic principles are deeply rooted in the concept that might makes right, but their logic can be unexpected to an outside observer.

It’s not only the right but the duty of the strong to govern the weak. There are many beings and powers in the cosmos that are far stronger than the majority of its inhabitants. It is the duty of the strong to defend the weak they possess from any such threats.

It’s the right of the weak to rebel if they have both reason and the means to. It is natural for the weak to seek out the protection of another, should they want to separate from the being watching over them. Thus, it’s beneficial to be fair and just toward’s one’s subjects, lest they bring an enemy to your door.

All Things Will End. The undoing of the universe, its return to primordial Darkness and the endless Void, is inevitable. It cannot be struggled against. Anyone doing so is only making their own life shorter and more miserable. However, as the End is inevitable, neither is there any reason to hasten its arrival. It will come when it comes. (In this, many singularities would disagree with Nero, especially ones that lived and fought in the primordial wards before his birth)

Peace is the root of decay. This is proven again and again in cycles, the most recent being the gilded but rotten-to-the-core Age of the Constellans. Conflict between light and darkness is the natural order of things. Thus, the Light seeking to eradicate its counterpart brought on stronger, insidious, impure forms of darkness that spawned from the corrupt societies of Light and fed on them. Symptoms of a sickened firmament.

Conflict breeds progress. Never is a nation or territory more unified than when it wages war. Never does its science advance faster. It doesn’t even require open conflict, but a threat that is more than imaginary. A threat those in power need to take into account in all their decisions. Security takes precedence over decadence. Necessity overshadows luxury. In times of uncertainty, a civilisation is as equal as it will ever be.

Always be prepared. Then, prepare more. When the time comes, one might need to step up to incite conflict, to halt the festering peace. At that time, one’s influence must be far-reaching and one’s power too overwhelming for others to rise to open war. Silence serves this purpose. Favours uncollected in unexpected places. People reluctant to jump to judgment due to aid received in the past. Territory taken over in secret. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Though the time may not come for millions of years yet, that is but a moment to a singularity. Make your influence a fact of life for others, a constant through untold generations. Only then will you be ready to carry the balance of the cosmos on your shoulders.

#headcanon #sylvansoldier #thank you for asking this!#I may have forgotten some things but this is the gist of Nero's ideology and the driving forces behind all his decisions

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lykegenia · 7 years

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Zutara Week Day 6: Soulmates

Only one day left of Zutara Week! Thanks for the amazing response so far on my ZKWeek story A Life, Together, which you can find in its entirety here.

@zutaraweek

ZKWeek Day 6: Soulmates Words: 2779 Summary: Katara and Zuko find themselves needing to get away from a party. After a year apart, they learn to reconnect. Read it on AO3

Yu Dao’s main plaza glittered under moonlight and the paper lanterns that imitated it. Every few heartbeats, the people gathered in the large, open space were gilded by vibrant flashes of colour as fireworks – developed especially from Fire Nation knowledge of gunpowder and Earth Kingdom familiarity with mineral dyes – exploded in bright, dazzling flowers that bloomed and wilted in the same instant. Toph’s metalbending students had constructed hanging sculptures for the occasion, and their abstract forms reflected the shine on the nobles’ jewellery and fine silks, while all around the low buzz of conversation reflected the easy-going nature of the gathering. One year on from the war’s end, and everyone who was anyone wanted to be seen celebrating the peace.

After almost a whole year with little company besides the avatar, however, Katara was finding the press of people a little overwhelming. The food was good, a mixture of cuisines from all over the world, but there were only so many canapes she could stuff into her mouth before it could be considered rude. King Kuei’s rice wine did a better job of relaxing her enough to mingle, but even the warm tingle it sent through her veins grew cold when she turned from a conversation with a handsome young Earth Kingdom noble to find Aang pouting at her over a plate of melon slices carved to resemble flowers.

“Why weren’t you watching me juggle with Bumi?” he asked.

“I thought I saw someone I knew,” she lied. “I wanted to talk to them.”

“You should have waited for me, we could have gone together.” He tried to reach for her hand but she found she needed to adjust one of her hair loopies instead. Truthfully, she had long since grown fed up of standing on the sidelines, watching him pander to his fans.

“I don’t need you to be with me every second, you know,” she told him uneasily. It had felt good to just get lost in the crowd. “And you’re not the only thing I think about.”

A year travelling with him, following while the rest of her friends got on with their lives – it was beginning to wear thin. She had indulged his crush when the world needed him to defeat the Fire Lord, but they had succeeded. That’s what this party was all about, a celebration of the world’s desire and newfound ability to move on, to achieve progress held back by a century of war. True, she had seen some wonderful things since the day Zuko was crowned and they set off pursuing rumours of other airbenders, but she regretted that Aang had mistaken her wanderlust for a desire to be closer to him, as more than friends. Spirits, he was still a child compared to her. Aunt Wu’s prophecy had never said anything about that.

“Katara,” Aang said, “You know you’re my forever girl. Let’s just –”

But the wine had gotten to her temper. “I need to get some air.”

And now she was stood at the edge of the plaza, lurking in the shadows like some would-be assassin, trying to unscramble her thoughts into some semblance of order. Everyone else seemed to have what they wanted – Sokka and Suki were rebuilding; Toph had recognition for her talents as an earthbender, and had even made amends with her parents; Iroh had his teashop. Why couldn’t she have what she wanted?

She huffed. What even did she want?

“Is it bad that I’m happy to find someone else not enjoying themselves?”

“Zuko!”

“Mind if I join you?” he asked. “This particular patch of shadows seems good for getting away from unwanted attention.”

She made room for him against the wall, trying not to stare. Even a year had made a difference to his appearance, filling out his shoulders, adding an inch or two to his height. His face had lost some of its roundness, too, as if the golden crown pinned to his topknot had chiselled it away, and with sudden force she remembered watching him train with Aang on Ember Island, when the sun baked everything so hot they had had to strip off their shirts to stay cool. She wondered if his muscles were still so defined under his layers of silk, or whether a year of politics had softened them away.

The thought made her cheeks burn and she turned away so he couldn’t see, suddenly self-conscious. Aang had said she looked pretty before stepping out tonight, but then, she often got the impression he complimented her because he thought it was what she wanted to hear, rather than because it was his genuine opinion.

She realised neither of them were speaking.

“It’s been a while,” she ventured.

“It has,” he replied.

“How’s Mai?”

“We broke up.”

“Oh.”

“I saw that argument you just had with Aang. How are things between you two?”

“Strained.”

“I see.”

He leaned back against the wall, running so hot she could feel the warmth of his body even across the careful distance that separated them.

“So,” she tried again, “what has you running away from the party?”

Zuko groaned and shot her a wry smirk. “Uncle has decided to play matchmaker on my behalf, and half the Earth Kingdom is indulging him. All that perfume was beginning to give me a headache.”

“You’re definitely safer here, then,” she teased, trying to squash the sudden squirm in her stomach that felt a lot like jealousy.

“Only as long as nobody finds us.” His eyes went wide, his cheeks darkening as a hand anxiously rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t think – I hadn’t realised what this might look like.”

It took her a second to catch on. “Oh!”

“Um… if you’d rather I go, I wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea…”

Aang, she realised – he was talking about what Aang would think catching them alone together, as if they weren’t just two old friends getting reacquainted, as if she wasn’t a free person who could do what she liked.

“I don’t care what people might think,” she growled, giving into the impulse to grasp Zuko’s wrist. She was her own self. She could do what she liked. Anything she liked. The certainty of it bubbled into recklessness beneath her skin. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“What?”

“If we throw on a couple of cloaks nobody will know who we are,” she said. “We could go anywhere.”

“Maybe you can,” he replied, though he had yet to pry himself loose of her grip. “I’m the fire lord. I have dignitaries to meet, and foreign policy to talk about, and –”

“A raging horde of earth Kingdom noblewomen eager to get their claws into you,” she teased. “C’mon. We haven’t had a chance to talk for ages. I’ve… missed you.” She was almost too shy to say, to admit it out loud, but she had, sometimes more than she ever thought possible for the man who at one point had been the face of her enemy.

Zuko seemed just as stunned by her confession. His mouth hung open as if to say something, but when the words wouldn’t come he shook his head and sighed.

In what seemed like no time at all, they were ambling down a cobbled street far away from the glamour of the party, wandering without any particular destination in mind. There were few other people out so late at night, so they were free to talk and laugh about anything that took their fancy, without fear of recognition. Katara was amazed by how easily they slipped back into their old rapport, talking about everything from flying lemurs to the consequences of the Fire Nation’s late rainy season as if the past year hadn’t happened. She found it refreshing to air her opinions on politics and the state of the world’s recovery, and she appreciated the thoughtful way Zuko listened to her stories, the quiet giggle they shared when she told him about the adventure with the sandbender chief’s white poodle-pony.

Rounding a corner, they came upon a teahouse lit with green lanterns to show it was still open for business. Zuko pulled his hood lower over his face when the man standing by the door spotted them and waved them over.

“Perhaps you are looking for some entertainment this evening?” he asked jovially, thrusting a leaflet into Katara’s hands. “It’s going to rain later – better to be inside enjoying hot tea and a good show than to be caught out in the wet!”

Katara chuckled despite herself, knowing a little rain was no problem for a master waterbender, and looked down at the square of paper in her hand.

“Love in the Time of Badgermoles,” she mused. “What’s it about?”

“It is a timeless tale of love, loss, and revenge,” the seller informed her eagerly. “It’s a well-known Earth Kingdom story. Certain to not disappoint. And the tea’s good,” he added, beaming.

Katara turned to Zuko. “Well?”

He gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “We’ve come this far.”

After paying the seller for their entry, they slipped into the teahouse and found a couple of quiet seats at the back. The place had drawn a good crowd, many of them obviously locals, going by how they laughed and joked with the actors, who were putting the final touches to their elaborate makeup. A young woman bustled over to them to take their order (a pot of jasmine tea for Katara, oolong for Zuko, with a plate of sweet rice balls as a side. In the dim warmth of their corner, they were content to remain silent, enjoying the anonymity and the cosy ambience that let them take advantage of it.

The lights in the teahouse dimmed. The actors packed up their makeup cases and mirrors and took their place on the stage. One, dressed in a robe of white and red trimmed with gold to match her beaded headdress, perched on a stool behind a guzheng and plucked a chord with metal-tipped fingers. Whatever conversation was left in the audience stilled immediately.

“The misty bamboo divides two nations at war,” trilled the actress plucking at the strings. “Oh will this war ever end?”

The play was nothing like Fire Nation theatre, with its acrobatics and flashy special effects, but it had an understated elegance that kept the audience enraptured. The narrator playing the guzheng unfolded the story with a masterful combination of words and music, mesmerising to the point where it was easy to forget the stage was so small there was only room for two actors at a time.

“The girl sits and picks flowers on the mountainside,” the narrator sang. Another actress painted white with a pure pink blush across her cheeks danced an imitation of strolling through a meadow. “And then suddenly…”

Somewhere off-stage, someone banged on a wooden block, and a spotlight rose on an actor in youthful garb who appeared from behind a curtain. The two circled each other, talking, accompanied by wary notes on the guzheng, and Katara found a smile growing on her face.

“What is it?” Zuko asked in her ear.

“The Cave of Two Lovers.”

At his blank look, she explained about the cave they had found while running form Azula, and about the tomb she and Aang had found inside. On the stage, the two lovers parted to opposite sides of the room, looking back wistfully. She remembered the glowing crystals lighting the ceiling and couldn’t help but think of another glowing cave, a lifetime ago now, that might have had such a different outcome. Her head tipped against Zuko’s shoulder, succumbing to the soporific effect of the warm, cosy dark of the teahouse. Her heart fluttered when, instead of pulling away, he leaned in as well and settled his cheek against the top of her head with a sigh.

The play went on. Shu’s father forbade him to go to the mountain to see his lover, and Oma’s sister followed her to try and discover her secret.

“It’s becoming too dangerous for us to see one another,” Oma lamented. “I would run away with you but for the duties to our families.”

When the actors found the badgermoles and ‘built’ the cave, something familiar tugged at Katara’s heart. “And now no one will ever part us,” promised Shu.

Zuko’s hand found hers under the table, and gave a comforting squeeze. The rest of the audience was enraptured and didn’t notice, but Katara felt tears prick her eyes because she knew what came next. She squeezed Zuko’s fingers back.

The final act of the play came to an end with a heart-wrenching monologue from the actress playing Oma as she held the ‘dead’ Shu in her arms. In the play, he had refused to attack her village for fear of hurting anyone she loved, and had instead gone to find her. In a fit of rage, his father killed him just as he caught sight of his love.

“I will find you in the next life, my dearest,” Oma promised, rising to her feet, “and we will be free of this awful shadow of war. And until we meet again, I will end the conflict that has taken you from me.” She raised her arms, letting her long white sleeves trail their full length to the floor, and flicked them out in a show of pretend earthbending, while rattles played off-stage and drums banged to an impressive beat. All the other actors shuffled to the floor in front of the stage and pleaded with her to stop the mountains moving.

“Behold, on that mountain I will build a city,” Oma proclaimed, with a sweeping gesture behind her. “Never again will our two people fight each other.”

The stage lighting snuffed out, but none of the audience started to move, so Katara held in her need to stretch and kept watching. A spotlight rose on the narrator, still plucking her guzheng, and what followed was a lengthy epilogue about the bureaucracy of the new city, and Oma’s long years of good leadership being a model for what kingdoms should be.

When it was over, Katara clapped along with the rest of the audience, turning only to find that Zuko had been dozing, and that her movement jolted him awake. She felt her breath catch on the little grunt he made as he shifted into a better seating position, even though he untangled their fingers so he could rub the sleep out of his golden eyes.

“All those Earth Kingdom girls really got to you, huh?” she teased.

“Ugh, don’t,” he groaned, stifling a yawn. “Just thinking of all the apologies I’m going to have to make tomorrow…”

“Was this a mistake?” she asked, her heart clenching. “I should have thought – it was wrong of me to ask you to come.”

“Hey, no.” He laid his hand on her shoulder. It burned through the fabric of her clothes. “I enjoyed this, and I enjoyed the company more, so don’t be sorry. I’m glad you persuaded me to come.”

“I enjoyed it, too,” she replied.

The sound of a cleared throat startled them. The same waitress who had brought them their tea was standing by the door, politely impatient, a sweeping brush in one hand. All the other patrons had already filed out, and the other servers were starting to clean the room. With bashful smiles, Katara and Zuko stood up and gathered their things, though she noticed a dull clink of gold and the outrageous tip he left in the teapot before he followed her out.

It had started to rain.

“It’s a good thing I have you with me,” he joked, taking her arm in a courtly sort of way while she bent the water away from their heads. “Shall we get back to the party?”

“I suppose we should.”

Sokka would be wondering where she was. Aang would be, too. It was ironic, really, that the peace celebration had kept her so on edge, and that leaving it had the opposite effect. As they began to walk away, she chanced one last look at the teahouse, its lanterns now extinguished, its windows dark, and frowned. For a few hours, she had been free of all doubt, free to be herself, and in that time she had felt the most at peace she had since being a very small child. Now though, all the insidious voices in her head came crowding back. Why couldn’t she have what she wanted? Perhaps the better question, she thought as she glanced at Zuko, was why it was so difficult to ask for it.

#zutara #Zutara Week #Zutara Week 2017 #ZKWeek #ZKWeek 2017 #my writing

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how2to18 · 5 years

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THE CRISSCROSSING CURRENTS unleashed by the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era created the modern United States. The processes of industrialization and the mass migration of people from agrarian spaces into combustible cities signified the emergence of epochal change. The anticipation of possibility created within this unfolding social transformation was tempered by the unbridled greed and brutality of “robber barons” that underwrote the economic largesse of this new era of capitalist expansion. The reckless and unrestrained pursuit of profit created brutal working conditions and invited premature death among those who labored for a living. These perilous conditions not only existed in workplaces, but also in neighborhoods, which were also sites of financial extraction: deadly conditions in tenements and other makeshift dwellings used by the urban poor posed a constant threat. It was a period before the presumption that the state was obligated to protect the public’s welfare.

These harsh conditions were buttressed by the mania of white supremacy and its violent outbursts of lynching and rape — brutality hardly bound by an imaginary Mason-Dixon line. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that sanctioned segregation sutured the entire geography of the United States together, sewing racial hatred into a national creed. This era, from the 1890s through the 1920s, became known as the “nadir” of African-American history. It created a paradox: a period defined by dynamic change and possibility, but also the ever-present threat of white terrorism.

Saidiya Hartman’s new book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, is a radical, genre-defying examination of the lives of “ordinary” young Black women in this period — women who escaped to Northern cities, living on the great expectations of the Great Migration. Hartman deploys Black feminism as the framework with which to understand the tremendous shifts in political economy, culture, and resistance in this time, making an extraordinary comment on the centrality of Black women’s history and experience to the history and politics of the United States. By situating them as central agents, Hartman disables the notion that US history thrived on the momentum of progress in the Progressive Era. Instead, the lives of ordinary Black women hold the horrors of the American past as much as they represent the possibility of the future represented in their movement and rebellion.

Hartman tells a story about the interior of these women’s lives that exceeds the abuse and torture enacted on their bodies. She is ultimately interested in the multitude of ways that Black women “made a way out of no way,” whether through flight, migration, work, sex, singing, dancing, screaming, and all of the social and cultural innovation born from pure defiance and a refusal to do what you are told.

Hartman searches for the residue of ordinary Black women’s lives among the avalanche of information and data created during this time. As is redolent of all of Hartman’s work, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments offers a blistering critique of historical archives as the singular or even most authoritative source of credible knowledge. Hartman’s critique extends to official bodies of knowledge that are popularly assumed to be impartial, dispassionate receptacles of facts. Even where this is not assumed, as in the case of the collected letters and ledgers of public officials and private citizens, Hartman implores us to pause and consider who is inside of and outside of the archive; whose voice is heard and whose voice is silenced; whose lives matter and whose lives do not. Hartman’s book is, in part, a critique of the mono-dimensional and flat portrayals of Black women and girls as “social documents and statistical persons, reduced to the human excrescence of social law and slum ecology, pitied as betrayed girl mothers, labeled chance creatures of questionable heredity.” Such depictions are prevalent in the social science, becoming the basis upon which wider bodies of work on Black women and girls are built. Changing that requires seeing Black women, their experiences, and their historical traces, differently.

The women at the center of Hartman’s text are outcasts, castoffs, and official nobodies in the hallowed annals of history, but whose “lives [were] shaped by sexual violence or the threat of it; the challenge was to figure out how to survive it, how to live in the context of overwhelming brutality and thrive in deprivation and poverty. The state of emergency was the norm not the exception.” This is important. Hartman is not trying to romanticize or sanitize these women’s lives by looking at the ubiquitous and, yet, nebulous examples of Black women’s “agency.” Nor is she trying to over-contextualize the conditions under which they made decisions to engage in sex, to perform sex work, to terminate unwanted pregnancies, to more generally live a life on the margins.

While not determinative, the context is important, which is why, for example, Hartman critically dissects the insidious role of the police and their presence in cities as agents of misery and abuse, wholly complicit in the illicit enterprises, which they universally blamed on the presence of Black people. Hartman incisively unravels the duplicity and hypocrisy of social scientists and reformers who stood in judgment of the lives of Black women and at times colluded with the police and the criminal justice system to punish Black women for a failure to conform to their imagined social order and hierarchy of society.

Some Black women’s resistance — either real or imagined — to social norms and hierarchy was claimed as evidence of general disorderliness which was often criminalized, thereby making urban-based Black women vulnerable to imprisonment or other forms of institutional punishment. Black women were often accused of prostitution regardless of whether they were actually engaged in sex work because of the vicious assumptions about their presumed, innate licentiousness. This is a point of exploration for Hartman instead of a reflexive defense against the charge. Black women did perform sex work for a variety of reasons, including the autonomy it leant them in other aspects of life. Sex work could mean relief from the misery of domestic labor, where, beyond physical exhaustion, sexual assault and rape were also hazards of the job. Sex work provided a variation of the “escape subsistence” that thrived on the margins.

The autonomy and, in many cases, the anonymity of urban life, gave Black women the foreign experience of sexual exploration, experimentation, and consenting promiscuity as a point of departure in their own investigation of the possibility and promise of desire, even lust. Hartman is interested in the role of the state as it created boundaries and borders that captured and enclosed upon Black people, but she is especially interested in the creative ways that Black women navigated, and what they produced, within these spaces. Black women were constrained, but their experiences cannot be reduced to those constraints. Instead, Hartman is inviting us to look at the lives of ordinary Black women at the turn of the century on their own terms — even when those terms have to be deduced from objectify historical records — to accept these women as credible, intuitive, and discerning people, a few generations removed from slavery and in an active pursuit of freedom as praxis.

It is important to say that Hartman is not asking her readers to simply or mindlessly celebrate the lives of these women on the margins though that, in and of itself, would be a break from the ways they have been pitied or ignored by historians and so-called reformers. Instead, Hartman is asking us to see, learn from, and attribute to these women what they have demonstrated and taught the broadly conceived public. This, of course, raises the question: what can we learn from the poor, marginalized Black women of history?

The challenge of this question begins with the complexity of creating a composite of ordinary Black womanhood from the fragments of life that Hartman pieces together. This book is not a monographic exploration of a particular black woman from a particular place. Instead, Hartman’s subjects are found in the indices and ledgers on the periphery of archival refuse. There is a name here, an article there, or even a small discarded photograph from which Hartman is able to quilt together a common story for a great majority of Black women in slavery’s aftermath. Hartman is primarily interested in the women who decide to leave the agrarian life in the South, walled in by the smothering brutality of white extralegal and sexual violence. Hartman disabuses readers of any notion that Northern, urban destinations were a “land of hope.” Instead she describes the ways that cities — particularly New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and eventually the “black city-within-a-city” — were dynamic spaces within which “beautiful experiments” disrupted the rhythm of poverty.

Wayward Lives is in harmonious conversation with an array of literatures that explore the simultaneous torques of possibility and peril in the emergent city at the turn of the century. The mythology of “rugged individualism” fed by the isolation of frontier or agrarian life succumbed to the high density, overcrowded, and rhythmic bustle of city life, upending deeply ingrained assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality. The anonymity and expansive possibilities of urban life threatened to subvert everything within the social hierarchy. Most pointedly, Wayward Lives conjures the spirit of George Chauncey’s Gay New York (1994) and Khalil Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness (2010). It also, of course, echoes the dynamic tension distinguishing “the ghetto” and “the Black city” within the 1945 sociological classic Black Metropolis, but Hartman demonstrates how dramatically different these texts would be if Black women were at their center. That does not diminish those works, but it speaks to the specificity and importance of Black women’s history and experience on its own terms.

Hartman is interested in how her subjects navigate abject misogynoir through improvised kinship and friendship networks newly born in the close quarters of tenement and rooming house life. Where Chauncey describes the “overcrowded and imposed sociability” of the crowded quarters of working-class denizens, Hartman is also interested in the “beautiful struggle to survive” evidenced in “alternative modes of life” and “illuminated in the mutual aid and communal wealth of the slum.” Hartman imagines what can be created in the “cramped space” of the ghetto, “beautiful flaws and terrible ornaments.” In this way, Hartman engages in older debates in new ways. She examines the complex delineation between the enclosure of the ghetto and the racial opulence found in the Black metropolis — what Kiese Laymon might refer to as the “Black abundance.” Enclosure is a condition imposed on Black people. There is wretchedness and deprivation but, as Hartman writes:

Negroes are the most beautiful people. The communal luxury of the black metropolis, the wealth of just us, the black city-within-the-city, transforms the imagination of what you might want and who you might be, encouraging you to dream. Shit, it don’t even matter if you’re black and poor, because you are here and you are alive and all these folks surrounding you encourage you and persuade you to believe that you are beautiful too.

One of the more controversial aspects of Hartman’s book is her use of speculative or fictionalized interjections throughout the text to literally imagine how her subjects may have reacted, spoke, experienced life in a particular moment. It’s a method that, though she uses it with restraint, represents a deeper engagement with the emergence of a modern 20th century.

The hallmarks of the modernist turn in American arts reflected the fragmentation, disruption, dislocation, and chaos that distinguished the white imaginary of a prelapsarian world from this supposed new world. Hartman rewrites the multiple sources of disorientation that animate most of the chaotic renderings of industrialization and urbanism — the maturation of capitalism, migration patterns, world wars, and beyond — as a source of inspiration and exploration for African Americans. Perhaps Hartman is offering us a new modernism when she places African Americans at its center. The text itself resembles the height of the modernist form with the debris and fragments of pictures, ephemera, official records, diaries, and newspapers through which she creates a complex montage of representations.

While historians and other social scientists may recoil, Hartman is not just wildly imagining or speculating to create a dialogue or experience, or intervening within the text, for its own sake; she is providing a space for Black women in the history that has systematically left them out. But she is doing more than that. Hartman is also tapping into a much longer history and tradition of storytelling as a method of keeping histories alive. These were the devices of a people for whom, in the majority of their time in this country, it was illegal for them to read or write.

Hartman’s speculative and fictionalized interjections call upon the oral traditions of Black and African storytelling traditions. Hartman “speaks into existence” the experiences of those otherwise rendered invisible or simply disappeared by the gatekeepers of the archives. In doing so, Hartman’s role within the text becomes a part of its greater significance and meaning. She is narrator and interlocutor, fluctuating her own subject position within the text. She moves throughout it, never settling, thereby making herself a kind of beautiful experiment within her pages.

Her experiments with orality and audial text throughout beg for portions of it to be read aloud. Hartman creates sonorous lists at a legato pace that literally give voice to the centrality of movement as the physical expression to be freed. She writes:

Like flight from the plantation, the escape from slavery, the migration from the south, the rush into the city, or the stroll down Lennox Avenue, choreography was an art, a practice of moving even when there was nowhere else to go, no place left to run. It was an arrangement of the body to elude capture, an effort to make the uninhabitable livable, to escape confinement of a four cornered world, a tight, airless room. Tumult, upheaval, flight — it was the articulation of living force, or at the very least trying to, it was the way to insist I am unavailable for servitude. I refuse it.

Freedom, here, is not a specific destination or a single thing that can be gathered by way of a document or a promise. Freedom is self-determination and self-possession. It is the ability to move in the world free of economic, political, social coercion. It is the ability to say, “yes” — or “no” — and mean it; it is relaxation; it is:

[t]he swivel and circle of hips, the nasty elegance of the Shimmy, the changing-same of collective movement, the repetition, the improvisation of escape and subsistence, bodied forth the shared dream of scrub maids, elevator boys, whores, sweet men, stevedores, chorus girls, and tenement dwellers — not to be fixed at the bottom, not to be walled in the ghetto. Each dance was a rehearsal for escape.

Hartman is consumed with the movement, the physical locomotion and literal vibration of Black people as a rejoinder to the stasis and supposed predictability of Black life, especially as rendered by the social sciences that predicted the inevitability of Black extinction in the early 20th century. For Hartman, the range of Black movement from migration to dank dance halls to the chorus line to the palpable sexual energy that courses through the women in the text is life, expectation, hope. It is a different kind of movement, certainly distinguished from the motion required to “strive,” where all is succumbed to the movement up or down an imagined social ladder.

How does this connect with Hartman’s description of Black women as progenitors of the modern? There are two ways to understand this. The first is through the recognition that modernity is a highly contingent and cumulative expression of the previous epoch. In other words, the supposed new world of American Progressivism stood high upon the shoulders of the society it was intended to replace: its prehistory was absolutely central to its 20th-century emergence. If the “rosy dawn” of capitalism, as Marx called it, came dripping into existence with the blood and dirt of slavery and genocide, then its maturation — measured in the innovations of war, imperialism, industrialization, and urbanization — were only possible because of the exploitation and abuse of Black women’s bodies. The resistance to this order could also be read through the violent thrashing of Black women’s bodies against the new order, boundaries and borders that distinguished the supposed modern age. Hartman invokes this paradigm when she describes how social reformers dismissed Black women and girls as “ungovernable” or when she describes the sonic upheaval of young Black women who resisted their imprisonment with relentless screaming and destruction of the prison’s interior.

In 1917 and 1918, Black women and girls, imprisoned for imagined and real transgressions against a social order erected on the mores of white supremacy, rebelled within a New York State prison to protest their conditions and so much more. Part of the ritualistic violence and abuse endured by these women and girls involved torturing them by hanging them from handcuffs so that their feet could barely touch the ground. The point was to get these women and girls to conform to the norms of a brutal social order — exemplified by all parole routes leading to domestic work in the homes of white people in Upstate New York. Black domestic work was considered a normal part of the social hierarchy, and the regime of brutality in the prison was intended to domesticate Black women into accepting the role. The technologies of torture, the prison itself, were markers of modern life even as they were activated in regressive ways against Black women’s bodies marked the bridge between the past and the contemporary. In opposition to this order, these Black women and girls led a multiracial rebellion of “ungovernables” by trying to physically destroy the prison and then settling on a noise strike where their screams were recorded as resistance. It was one of the first political rebellions of the young 20th century and provided a model of resistance that African Americans returned to repeatedly over the remainder of the century.

Hartman finds hope in the qualities that marked ordinary Black women for premature death at the turn of the century — qualities like waywardness and a desire to find freedom in their everyday acts of existence. She is not just writing about the past but also mapping a direction for the inevitable future struggles that must arise from the persistence of white supremacy, misogyny, police abuse and violence, and the ever-radiating violence from the state itself. Hartman insists that engaging these questions requires more than theory or even “good politics.” She calls upon us to look at the lives of those who are on the bottom of the social hierarchy: How do they move, what gives them pleasure and not just pain, and most importantly, what do they want? How do we read resistance from the mundanity and alienation of life under capitalism as an actual desire to be free? Saidiya Hartman would tell us to watch and listen to ordinary Black women. She is not romanticizing the margins, though she suggests that we can find romance — the implacable pursuit of freedom — within the margins’ constraints.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is author of the award-winning book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Haymarket Books) published in 2016. Taylor’s second book, an edited collection, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction. Taylor is assistant professor of African American Studies and the Charles McIlwain Preceptor at Princeton University.

The post Saidiya Hartman’s “Beautiful Experiments” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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charliebroger-blog · 7 years

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America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

Roger Lowenstein

A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established.

For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system. Americans’ mistrust of big government and of big banks—a legacy of the country’s Jeffersonian, small-government traditions—was so widespread that modernizing reform was deemed impossible. Each bank was left to stand on its own, with no central reserve or lender of last resort. The real-world consequences of this chaotic and provincial system were frequent financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and depressions. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it had become plain that the outmoded banking system was ill equipped to finance America’s burgeoning industry. But political will for reform was lacking. It took an economic meltdown, a high-level tour of Europe, and—improbably—a conspiratorial effort by vilified captains of Wall Street to overcome popular resistance. Finally, in 1913, Congress conceived a federalist and quintessentially American solution to the conflict that had divided bankers, farmers, populists, and ordinary Americans, and enacted the landmark Federal Reserve Act.

Roger Lowenstein—acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street—tells the drama-laden story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power. America’s Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest: illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded Age bankers, presidents, and politicians.

Lowenstein focuses on the four men at the heart of the struggle to create the Federal Reserve. These were Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier, recently relocated to New York, who was horrified by the primitive condition of America’s finances; Rhode Island’s Nelson W. Aldrich, the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal Gilded Age legislator; Carter Glass, the ambitious, if then little-known, Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and President Woodrow Wilson, the academician-turned-progressive-politician who forced Glass to reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers and accept the principle (anathema to southern Democrats) of federal control. Weaving together a raucous era in American politics with a storied financial crisis and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington and Wall Street, Lowenstein brings the beginnings of one of the country’s most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable life. Readers of this gripping historical narrative will wonder whether they’re reading about one hundred years ago or the still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and politics today.

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nedsecondline · 7 years

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Trump Damaged Democracy, Silicon Valley Will Finish It Off

When Democrats made their post-election populist “Better Deal” pitch, they took a strong stance against pharmaceutical and financial monopolies. But they conspicuously left out the most profound antitrust challenge of our time—the tech oligarchy.

The information sector, notes The Economist, is now the most consolidated sector of the American economy.

The Silicon Valley and its Puget Sound annex dominated by Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft increasingly resemble the pre-gas crisis Detroit of the Big Three. Tech’s Big Five all enjoy overwhelming market shares—for example Google controls upwards of 80 percent of global search—and the capital to either acquire or crush any newcomers. They are bringing us a hardly gilded age of prosperity but depressed competition, economic stagnation, and, increasingly, a chilling desire to control the national conversation.

Jeff Bezos harrumphs through his chosen megaphone, The Washington Post, about how “democracy dies in the dark.” But if Bezos—the world’s third richest man, who used the Post first to undermine Bernie Sanders and then to wage ceaseless war on the admittedly heinous Donald Trump—really wants to identify the biggest long-term threat to individual and community autonomy, he should turn on the lights and look in the mirror.

Trump’s election and volatile presidency may pose a more immediate menace, but when he is gone, or neutered by lack of support, the oligarchs’ damage to our democracy and culture will continue to metastasize.

Killing the Old Silicon Valley

Americans justifiably take pride in the creative and entrepreneurial genius of Silicon Valley. The tech sector has been, along with culture, agriculture, and energy, one of our most competitive industries, one defined by risk-taking and intense competition between firms in the Valley, and elsewhere.

This old model is fading. All but shielded from antitrust laws, the new Silicon Valley is losing its entrepreneurial yeastiness—which, ironically enough, was in part spawned by government efforts against old-line monopolists such as ATT and IBM. While the industry still promotes the myth of the stalwart tinkerers in their garages seeking to build the next great company, the model now is to get funding so that their company can be acquired by Facebook or one of the other titans. As one recent paper demonstrates, these “super platforms” depress competition, squeeze suppliers and reduce opportunities for potential rivals, much as the monopolists of the late 19th century did (PDF). The rush toward artificial intelligence, requiring vast reservoirs of both money and talent, may accelerate this consolidation. A few firms may join the oligarchy over time, such as Tesla or Uber, but these are all controlled by the same investors on the current Big Five.

This new hierarchy is narrowing the path to riches, or even the middle class. Rather than expand opportunity, the Valley increasingly creates jobs in the “gig economy” that promises not a way to the middle class, much less riches, but into the rising precariat—part-time, conditional workers. This emerging “gig economy” will likely expand with the digitization of retail, which could cost millions of working-class jobs.

For most Americans, the once promising “New Economy,” has meant a descent, as MIT's Peter Temin recently put it, toward a precarious position usually associated with developing nations. Workers in the “gig economy,” unlike the old middle- and working-class, have little chance, for example, of buying a house—once a sure sign of upward mobility, something that is depressingly evident in the Bay Area, along the California coast, and parts of the Northeast.

Certainly the chances of striking out on one’s own have diminished. Sergei Brin, Google’s co-founder, recently suggested that startups would be better off moving from Silicon Valley to areas that are less expensive and highly regulated, and where the competition for talent is not dominated by a few behemoths who can gobble up potential competitors—Instagram, WhatsApp, Skype, LinkedIn, Oculus—or slowly crush them, as may be happening to Snap, a firm that followed the old model and refused to be swallowed by Facebook but went through with its own public offering. Now the Los Angeles-based company is under assault by the social media giant which is using technologies at its Instagram unit, itself an acquisition, that duplicate Snap’s trademark technologies and features.

Snap’s problems are not an isolated case. The result is that the number of high-tech startups is down by almost half from just two years ago; overall National Venture Capital Association reports that the number of deals is now at the lowest level since 2010. Outsiders, the supposed lifeblood of entrepreneurial development, are increasingly irrelevant in an increasingly closed system.

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The New Hierarchy

For all its talk about “disruption,” Silicon Valley is increasingly about three things: money, hierarchy, and conformity. Tech entrepreneurs long have enjoyed financial success, but their dominance in the ranks of the ultra-rich has never been so profound. They now account for three of world’s five richest people—Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—and dominate the list of billionaires under 40.

Unlike their often ruthless and unpleasant 20th century moguls, the Silicon Valley elite has done relatively little for the country’s lagging productivity or to create broad-based opportunity. The information sector has overall been a poor source of new jobs—roughly 70,000 since 2010—with the gains concentrated in just a few places. This as the number of generally more middle-class jobs tied to producing equipment has fallen by half since 1990 and most new employment opportunities have been in low-wage sectors like hospitality, medical care, and food preparation.

The rich, that is, have gotten richer, in part by taking pains to minimize their tax exposure. Now they are talking grandly about having the government provide all the now “excess” humans with a guaranteed minimum income. The titans who have shared or spread so little of their own wealth are increasingly united in the idea that the government—i.e., middle-class taxpayers—should spread more around.

Not at all coincidentally, the Bay Area itself—once a fertile place of grassroots and middle-class opportunity—now boasts an increasingly bifurcated economy. San Francisco, the Valley’s northern annex, regularly clocks in as among the most unequal cities in the country, with both extraordinary wealth and a vast homeless population.

The more suburban Silicon Valley now suffers a poverty rate of near 20 percent, above the national average. It also has its own large homeless population living in what KQED has described as “modern nomadic villages.” In recent years income gains in the region have flowed overwhelmingly to the top quintile of income-earners, who have seen their wages increase by over 25 percent since 1989, while income levels have declined for low-income households.

Despite endless prattling about diversity, African Americans and Hispanics who make up roughly one-third of the valley’s population, have barely 5 percent of jobs in the top Silicon Valley firms. Between 2009 and 2011, earnings dropped 18 percent for blacks in the Valley and by 5 percent for Latinos, according to a 2013 Joint Venture Silicon Valley report (PDF).

Similarly the share of women in the tech industry is barely half of their 47 percent share in the total workforce, and their ranks may even be shrinking. Stanford researcher Vivek Wadhwa describes the Valley still as “a boys’ club that regarded women as less capable than men and subjected them to negative stereotypes and abuse.”

While the industry hasn’t done much to actually employ women or minorities, it’s both self-righteously and opportunistically fed the outrage industry by booting right-wing voices from various platforms and pushing out people like former Google staffer James Damore, and before that Mozilla founder Brendan Eich after he made a small contribution to a 2014 measure banning gay marriage. Skepticism, once the benchmark of technology development, is now increasingly unwelcome in much of the Valley.

This marks a distinct change from the ’80s and ’90s, when the tech companies—then still involved in the manufacturing of physical products in the United States—tended toward libertarian political views. As late as the 1980s, moderate Republicans frequently won elections in places like San Mateo and Santa Clara. Now the area has evolved into one of the most one-sidedly progressive bastions in the nation. Over 70 percent of Bay Area residents are Democrats up from 55 percent in the 1970s. Today, the Calexit backers, many based in the Valley, even think that the country is too dunderheaded, and suggest they represent “different,” and morally superior, values than the rest of the country.

The Danger to Democracy

If these were policies adopted by an ice-cream chain, or a machine-tool maker, they might be annoying. But in the tech giants, with their vast and growing power to shape opinion, represent an existential threat. Mark Zuckerberg whose Facebook is now the largest source of media for younger people, has emerged, in the words of one European journalist (PDF), as “‘the world’s most powerful editor.” In the past they were the primary carriers of “fake news,” and have done as much as any institution to erode the old values (and economics) of journalism.

Both Facebook and Google now offer news “curated” by algorithms. Bans are increasingly used by Facebook and Twitter to keep out unpopular or incendiary views, and especially in the echo chamber of the Bay Area. This is sometimes directed at conservatives, such as Prager University, whose content may be offensive to some, but hardly subversive or “fake.” The real crime now is simply to question dominant ideology of Silicon Valley gentry progressivism.

Even at their most powerful the industrial age moguls could not control what people knew. They might back a newspaper, or later a radio or television station, but never secured absolute control of media. Competing interests still tussled in a highly regionalized and diverse media market. In contrast the digital universe, dominated by a handful of players located in just a few locales, threaten to make a pluralism of opinions a thing of the past. The former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris suggests that “a handful of tech leaders at Google and Facebook have built the most pervasive, centralized systems for steering human attention that has ever existed.”

Ultimately, particularly after the disasters associated with the Trump regime, the oligarchs seem certain to expand their efforts to control the one institution which could challenge their hegemony: government. Once seen as politically marginal, the oligarchs achieved a dominated role in the Democratic Party, in part by financing President Obama and later support for Hillary Clinton. In the Obama years Google operatives were in fact fairly ubiquitous, leading at least one magazine to label it “the Android Administration.” Since then a stream of Obama people have headed to Silicon Valley, working for firms such as Apple, Uber, and Airbnb. Obama himself has even mused about becoming a venture capitalist himself.

Of course with Trump in power, the oligarchs are mostly on the outs, although the twitterer in chief tried to recruit them. Now many of Silicon Valley power players are supporting the “resistance” and lending their expertise to Democratic campaigns. Unlike undocumented immigrants or other victims of Trumpism, they can count on many GOP politicians to watch their flank until the lunatic storm recedes.

In a future Democratic administration, as is already evident in places like California, the tech titans will use their money, savvy, and new dominance over our communications channels to steer and even dictate America’s political and cultural agendas to wield power in ways that even the likes of J.P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller would envy.

What started as a brilliant, and profoundly non-political extension of the information revolution, notes early Google and Facebook investor Robert McNamee, now looms as “a menace,” part of a systematic “brain hacking” on a massive scale. We can choose to confront this reality—as the early 20th century progressives did—or stand aside and let the oligarchs chart our future without imposing any curbs on their seemingly inexorable hegemony.

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