#so why does every staff member without an exemption have to go back
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The bad kids haven't really looked too closely at the Rat Grinders (meta wise I know it's a commentary on different play styles and how shitty xp farming is and how op players/parties can become by doing the bare minimum if they put in the time while everyone else plays the damn game) but I find the split perspective problems absolutely fascinating. I can't wait for the Bad Kids to look at the Rat Grinders with envy and anger that the Rat Grinders got to live a normal highschool life without all this insane danger and experience being a teenager without it being the end of the world for them. Right now they just hate the Rat Grinders energy and are matching it back (which is a very high school thing to do. To have beef with a whole other group of kids and not even know why but you'll die on this hill because they started shit first)
Because to the Rat Grinders, from a purely outside perspective, the Bad Kids are fucking monarchs of the school, right? They skipped classes, ran around town, fought people, got arrested, hung out with a big devil? Every new staff member came at their recommendation? One of them has both her dads working at the school?? The destroyed school property, got teachers killed, straight murdered the coach? These fucking kids run around and are apparently scott-free? because the principal liked their chaos enough to let it go and help them avoid the police? To the Rat Grinders, the Bad Kids are untouchable. They're exempt from the law. They're liars, cheats and need to be humbled. It's unfair. From everyone elses perspective, it really does look like the Bad Kids have been given crazy favourtism.
Meanwhile, all of the Bad Kids have died at least once. They've been irreparably changed and are in a constant state of fight or flight. They assume everything is dangerous and anyone might be an enemy because for two goddamn years that was the exact case! They couldn't trust any adult first year! Literally anyone could have been infected with Kalina second year! who knows what happened with the Night Yord but I fucking bet they had issues with Yorbies pretending to be helpful just to kill them! Everyone, for two years, has been out to get them! They can't even sleep! And now they have to grind so hard or they fail. Adaine has a seemingly full time job after school basically every day because she literally can't afford to live? Fabian has taken on the most physically strenuous classes and sport one dude could and has dreams of also being a social legend because he's fucking lonely in that big house and he just wants to fill it. If anyone in the party fails or dies Riz is shit out of luck and wont ever get into a university? He so desperately wants his friends with him so he's working over time and ignoring his limits to make up for his party members not caring about the future. Fig is going through the strangest arc I've ever seen in my life? she's hard avoidant and taking three classes, so a 250% work load, because she's desperate to fill her time so she can't think about all the other work she has to do that if she ignores too long could crush her under the debt of her band from her label, or how alone she feels without her girlfriend around. Gorgug is so desperate to prove himself that he's doing four years of school work in one, trying to play catch up and also prove himself at the same time, he's taking it all so seriously but also is so fucking tired. And Kristen. Mother fucking Kristen "hey girlie" applebees. Expected to dedicate her life to a god with no direction, with the weight of failure being her gods death, while also being in school and also at your friends insistence needing to run for student body president and getting your priorities so mixed up and being completely left behind by her peers who didn't have to rework their entire world view and understanding of life in the span of a few months every few months.
The Bad Kids are in a terrible place. They're suffering. I want them to just say it out loud, to stop pretending they have it handled and are fine. I want Riz and Adaine to yell at the party to get their shit together. I want Fabian to tell someone how alone and abandoned her feels. I want Kristen to scream at Cassandra that she agrees, that it's not fair, she's just a kid, how could she be enough all on her own with no help? It sucks a god can only rely on a child, for both the god and child! They're both suffering from this arrangement! Neither is happy! I want Gorgug to beat the shit out of Porter with his inventions and rage at the same time, to make the best shit and use it in the most stunning way anyone has ever seen. I want Fig to finally get some freaking help, to have her teachers and parents reach out in a meaningful way and stop telling her to figure it out alone because clearly the pressure is too much for her to handle and she's drowning. I want someone, anyone, to look at the Bad Kids and tell them to stop. To help them. But I know it wont be that easy. I know it'll be the Rat Grinders yelling at how unfair it is the Bad kids get everything while they're on the sidelines that'll get under the Bad Kids skin and they'll yell about how awesome they are and that they didn't ask for any of this shit to happen to them and to fuck off. I know it's gonna get so much worse before it gets better. I know they'll figure it out and that it'll be a painful road there.
#dimension 20#dimension 20 spoilers#dimension 20 fhjy#dimension 20 fantasy high#d20 fantasy high#fantasy high#fantasy high junior year#d20 spoilers#d20 fhjy#d20#kristen applebees#figeroth faeth#riz gukgak#gorgug thistlespring#fabian seacaster#adaine abernant#somebody help these kids man#they're being failed by the system#words
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Back to work irl today 🙃 I don't even have a consistent space to set up because we're sharing a campus with another school (HVAC fire on our campus and we're not allowed back in yet) and I've been assigned to share a room with a counselor, meaning one of us has to leave if there's an appointment because of confidentiality and it's going to most likely be me (even tho she's willing to work outside and be as flexible as I am)
My anxiety is having a field day with this. Not only am I breaking routine and driving somewhere new (ish), I'm not even guaranteed a dedicated space to work! Also, because it's two schools combined into one rn it's going to be loud and I'm probably going to get distracted! But guess what I have at home?! A dedicated work space!!! And quiet!!!! Also a private bathroom!!!!!! AND I'M NOT PACKED IN WITH STRANGERS LIKE A SARDINE AT THE TAIL END OF A PANORAMA
I'm not the only one who feels this way, but admin is set on the decision so here we are
#steph derps#to be fair theyve done their best to space us out#despite the limited space#but also like...#what a logistical failure on the admins part#i get it k-6 had to go back to in person#and the state is demanding that we reopen the school#but we're independent study#the middle school classes are still on zoom#we have study halls#so why does every staff member without an exemption have to go back?????#i should have tried to renew my exemption 💀#i just didnt want to pay 40 bucks for an appointment to be told no#because im fully vaxxed#at least i get to bounce early today because hr demands another covid test#and i scheduled it at 3#because the testing center is halfway between work and home
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The Ghost of Smokey Joe (8)
Here Comes the Boogeyman
FF.net | Ao3
--
Dead ends.
Nothing but dead ends.
She went to the courthouse. They found the blueprints for the Agreste manor, put them on the table and unfurled the paper to pour over it. The building had three stories, of which, the lobby and her office were on the bottom floor.
No basement, nothing close to a basement.
“Can I help you with anything specific?” Asked the woman who had retrieved the plans. Obviously, Marinette’s distress was a little more evident than she wanted as she gnawed on her bottom lip.
“So, I inherited this house,” she explained.
“Yes, you showed me the deed.”
“But I was friends with Adrien, the son of the previous owner. He told me to look in the basement. Other family members said there wasn’t one, and I was hoping that maybe there was, and no one knew about it.”
The attendant gave her a pitiful look. “I’m sorry, Miss Dupain-Cheng, these are the only plans we have on record. In fact, most houses in Paris don’t have a basement.”
So what was Adrien talking about?
The woman seemed thoughtful for a moment. “Although, if Mr. Agreste wanted to, I suppose he could have commissioned the building of a basement later on. He might not have submitted the documents for it, which is illegal, but it is a possibility.”
“There’s a chance?”
“I suppose. Have you checked all over for stairways?”
“Not thoroughly, not yet. I haven’t moved in.”
“Well, if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Marinette smiled at the woman, but ultimately didn’t ask anymore questions. They couldn’t offer her the kind of help she needed. She doubted anyone could.
Children, have you ever met the Boogeyman before?
No, of course you haven't, for you're much too good I'm sure.
Don't you be afraid of him, if he should visit you.
He's a great big coward, so I'll tell you what to do.
Her next lead was the funeral director, Bill Hunkerson. He had been cagey with Marinette, but maybe his guilt would make him open up more to Ladybug. She just had to play it smart.
She strolled into the Funeral home, suited up and ready to interrogate. Of course, she was quiet so as not to upset anyone if a service was in session.
The receptionist spotted her immediately. “Ladybug? Is something the matter?”
Obviously, it wasn’t common for a superhero to be spotted at a funeral home. The question was justified.
“I need to have a word with Bill Hunkerson.”
“Who?”
Oh no.
“This is Armes-Hunt Funeral Home, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And a Bill Hunkerson doesn’t work here? As a director?”
“Oh! My apologies. I’m rather new here. Mr. Hunkerson resigned just as I was starting, about a month ago.”
Ladybug felt her hands growing clammy under the suit. “Are you sure? He was directing Gabriel and Adrien Agreste’s funeral a week ago.”
The receptionist looked at her, wide-eyed. “Really? We weren’t covering that funeral. I would have remembered something that important. Was he maybe doing it freelance? Maybe he was friends with Mr. Agreste and did the funeral with outside resources.”
“The programs had your logo on them. The staff were wearing the logo too.”
Stunned, the receptionist looked around the room. “Just a minute, Ladybug. I’ll get my boss.”
This conspiracy was unraveling in her hands, slowly like a ball of twine.
Hush, hush, hush. Here comes the Bogeyman!
Don't let him come too close to you, he'll catch you if he can.
Just pretend, that you're a crocodile,
And you will find that Bogeyman will run away a mile.
The receptionist was hurrying back to her, with an older man in tow. When he arrived, he gave her a comforting smile and held out a hand. “Hello Ladybug, I’m Johann Armes. Rachel said you had some information about Bill?”
Ladybug rehashed what she had said to the woman, revealing that their funeral home had supposedly taken care of the funeral.
As her tale went on, Mr. Armes went from confused to shocked to angry.
“Rachel didn’t lie,” he clarified. “Bill did resign from here about a month ago. He worked for me for twenty years, and then one day told me the work was too much for him, and quit. This is a hard business to be in, so there is a high turnover rate, so I didn’t even think about it. But with what you told me…I wonder if he was being honest.” He pursed his lips into a thin line as he took out his cell phone. “At any rate, he wrongfully took a job from us. What if something had gone wrong? Our name was all over it! Bill better have some answers for me. If not on the phone, then in court.” He furiously scrolled through the phone until he found the contact and dialed it.
He put it on speaker as it rang.
Once, twice, then click.
“Bill? It’s Johann. I have some questions for you.”
There wasn’t an answer on the other line.
“Bill? You better start talking!”
The phone clicked again, and the call ended.
“The prick hung up on me!” Mr. Armes shouted.
“Where does Bill live?” Ladybug asked. “I’ll go speak to him in person. I really need the information he has.”
“I’ll give you the address.”
Say Shoo, shoo, and stick him with a pin!
Boogeyman will very nearly jump out of his skin.
Say Buzz-Buzz, just like the wasp that stings,
Bogeyman will think you are an elephant with wings!
Only minutes later, thanks to the speed of her yo-yo, Ladybug arrived at the address provided.
Though, the dozens of emergency vehicles outside gave her a sense of dread instead.
As she landed, she was greeted by police and ushered to the front of the house.
A woman in a shock blanket spotted her immediately and ran to her, flinging her arms around her. “Ladybug! Thank Christ you’re here!”
Ladybug gave her a comforting squeeze and pulled back. “Are you Bill’s wife?”
She burst into sobs. “My Bill! My wonderful Bill! Who would do this to him?!”
Ladybug pulled her into a hug and patted her shoulder. “I know, I know it hurts. Can you tell me what happened?”
“It just came in through the window! I only saw it leaving, but it was big and black! Like a huge spider!” She was hysterical, waving her arms around and letting the blanket fall to the ground.
“Ma’am, why don’t you sit back down?” An EMT picked up the blanket and put it on her shoulders. “We can fill in Ladybug from what you’ve said.”
“Bill! Where’s my Bill? Have you seen him!?” She cried as she was steered over to an ambulance.
Big and black like a huge spider…was it an akuma? No akuma has set out to murder anyone before. People had turned into ice cream, glitter, and all sorts of things, but never just straight up murdered.
“Ladybug?” A man in a vest asked. “I’m Detective Joseph Bertony, would you come with me please?”
“Of course.”
He led her into the Hunkerson home, where every room they passed was spotless and not a hair out of place.
“What you are about to see is shocking, if you need any time, please speak up.”
When they arrived in the living room, a huge red bloodstain on the wall caught her attention. Below it, the man she had seen at the funeral was propped against the wall. He had a hole in his forehead, and the back of his skull was missing.
“Oh my god…”
“It’s…pretty horrible, I must say.” Said the detective. “A couple of people have vomited already.”
“I can understand that.” She felt weak in the legs. If she wasn’t transformed, she probably would have collapsed as well.
“According to Mrs. Hunkerson, the assailant was a huge black creature that looked like a large spider. She saw it as it was leaving the house through the window. How exactly it killed Mr. Hunkerson is unknown.”
“Do you think it could be an akuma?”
He gave her a look. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Don’t you and Chat Noir listen to police scanners or something?”
She shook her head. “That’s not it at all. I was coming here to speak to Mr. Hunkerson about something else.”
“Care to share?”
She glanced around the room, taking stock of the investigators and police standing around, and decided to beckon him into another room.
He followed her quietly, concern written all over his face.
“I know I’m not a detective,” she began. “My job is to deal with akumas and Hawkmoth. But I’ve been running an investigation on my own.”
“Concerning what?” His tone was sharp.
Ladybug bit her lip, feeling like a student with late homework standing in front of a strict teacher. She just couldn’t imagine this going well. What should she disclose? Would he tell her to stop and leave it alone?
Detective Bertony noticed her unease immediately, and gave her a minute to collect herself. When she only grew more hesitant, he rested a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s alright.”
It was like talking to Adrien for the briefest moment. That's what this was about, after all. Justice for her Kitty.
“It concerns the Agreste family.”
“Gabriel and Adrien Agreste, right?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t involved in that case, but I heard about it. Murder suicide, open and shut case. Cut and dry. So what about it?”
“I knew Adrien. He wouldn’t have done that.”
“That's what people said about Jeffery Dahmer too. Not that there’s a comparison.”
“Right. People have their vices and demons and Adrien isn’t exempt. But that’s not all.”
He nodded once, indicating that he was listening.
“Both Gabriel and Adrien’s coffins were buried empty.”
He frowned. “Your proof?”
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
“They let you look?”
“Nope. But Ladybug has her ways.”
The detective scratched his chin in thought. “What does this have to do with Hunkerson?”
“He was the director for the funeral. I think he knew that the coffins were empty, and that’s what got him killed.”
“So…Hawkmoth is covering up the truth about the Agreste’s?”
“Up until just now, I didn’t know what to think. But if Mr. Hunkerson was killed by an akuma, that’s what I’m led to believe. I was just at Armes-Hunt funeral home. According to Mr. Armes, Bill Hunkerson resigned a month ago, and yet he directed the funeral a week ago, under their name without permission. Mr. Armes called him and—“ she stopped, remembering a critical detail and pulling up her yo-yo.
“What?”
“Someone picked up.” She glanced at the time stamp on her search for his address. It had been 20 minutes since she left the funeral home. “When was he murdered?”
He glanced at his watch. “Oh, about an hour and a half ago. Why?”
“Someone answered our call 20 minutes ago. They didn’t say anything, but hung up. Did you find his phone?”
“We can check the evidence. I didn’t see it.”
“Would anyone have answered it?”
“No, that would be tampering. But what does that have to do with this? Someone answered the call. If not, would you have sought him out here?”
“I probably would have come here anyways. I really wanted to hear what he had to say about their funeral.”
“Tell you what. Since this has to do with my current case, I’m going to get more details on the Agreste murder. Is there a number I can reach you at?”
“Here’s the number to my yo-yo, if I don’t pick up, just leave a message.”
He put her number into his phone. “Now, if you don’t mind me asking, what made you start investigating this anyway?”
“That’s a superhero secret. Sorry detective.”
“Fair enough. But the more info you give me, the more help I can give you.”
“I understand. I will consider it and give you as much as I can. But if an Akuma is killing people who know about the Agreste’s, I don’t want any part of my identity getting out.”
“You have a point. Best not mention my involvement either.”
“Off the record?”
“For now, until we have solid evidence and the upper hand. We know nothing about Hawkmoth…unless you do?”
“Nothing. It’s been eleven years and we’ve only fought him face to face a handful of times. It doesn’t help that his akuma rate is slowing down too. At this rate, I fear he’ll retire before we catch him.”
“I’m sure he’ll slip up soon.” He twisted up his lip. “Maybe he already did, and that’s why the Agrestes perished.”
“One more detail I can give you: Emilie Agreste, Gabriel’s wife, died about 12 years ago. Her coffin was also empty.”
“You saw it?”
“I…not personally, but I have a….trick that allows something to phase through solid objects. This ‘something’ reported back that the coffin was empty.”
“And would this ‘something’ be willing to testify if we get to that point?”
“Um…probably?” She grimaced. “I’m sorry I’m being so vague, I just…it has to do with the Miraculous, and that’s very sensitive information.”
“Fine. I won’t pry. But thank you for telling me. I’m not sure how these deaths and Emilie’s 12 years ago could be related, but I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Likewise, Detective. I better be off and see if I can spot this Akuma before it strikes again.”
“Good luck Ladybug!”
“I'm going to need it, I’m a little arachnophobic.”
When the shadows of the evening creep across the sky,
And your mommy comes upstairs to sing a lullaby,
Tell her that the Bogeyman no longer frightens you,
Uncle Henry very kindly told you what to do!
Tonight would have been her patrol night anyway. Joint patrol, her and Chat.
The third he had missed, and the second after she found out he was dead.
The last time, she tried to call him. She was on the Agreste’s wall and she called him. He was there, staring right at her the whole time. Hadn’t he cared? Could he not see the frantic desperation on her face?
She scanned the shadowed streets for the spider-like figure the police had described. It was still early in the night, and the streets were plenty full of happy Parisians enjoying the nightlife.
If only they knew what lurked around the corner. If only they had seen what she had. The blood on the wall, the soulless gaze in Bill Hunkerson’s eyes. The absolute devastation of his wife.
It was so messed up. It seemed like everyday since Adrien’s passing, Paris got a little darker. A little more sinister.
Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Bogeyman!
Don't let him come too close to you, he'll catch you if you can.
Just pretend, your teddy bear's a dog!
Then shout out, "fetch him teddy!" and he'll hop off like a frog!
Ladybug paused to take a break at one of their checkpoints. Normally, if they patrolled separately, this is where they would meet up before splitting up again. And she couldn’t help but linger there for a minute or too, even though no one would come.
Or so she thought.
A thump drew her attention to the chimney behind her. It was a black figure, not like a spider, but like a person.
A person with pointy ears on his head.
She gasped. “Chat!”
He whipped his head to look at her, his eyes glowing a solid green in the night.
“Where have you been?! I’ve been worried sick about you!”
As she stepped closer, he backed away, keeping his unblinking eyes drilled on her.
“Chat? What’s wrong? Won’t you come down and talk to me?”
He backed up farther before darting off into the shadows.
She had just found him! She couldn’t lose him now!
She took off after him, listening for the scrambling of his claws on the zinc rooftops.
He was fast. Faster than normal, and it took every bit of strain to keep up with him.
Finally, she had a good shot and she threw her yo-yo out, snagging him with her rope. He wriggled and squirmed, kicking his legs as he fought for freedom.
“Settle down, kitty cat,” she said, with annoyance, but concern. “I just want to talk to you.”
He snapped his alien gaze to her and hissed, spittle drawing lines between his huge canine teeth.
It made her recoil.
“Chat? Kitty?”
He wriggled some more before he got his hand free, then he brandished his claws and cut through her, previously assumed, invincible line.
Then he bolted, scrambling into the night.
After his reaction, she didn’t have the heart to chase him down again.
It was Chat. It was Adrien. It was definitely him. But something was definitely wrong.
At least she had an idea of where the Black Cat ring was.
Just pretend he isn't really there,
You will find that Bogeyman will vanish in thin air.
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When LAUSD’s random searches of students end, what’s next for school safety?
In the early 1990s, five students at Belvedere Middle School in East L.A. were killed, recalled then-Principal Victoria Castro, in incidents off campus during a violent period when there were regular student fights, attacks on teachers and tensions throughout the area fueled by the L.A. riots.
By 1993, when two students were killed in shootings at Fairfax and Reseda high schools, Castro was among those who cheered when L.A. Unified began wanding students with metal detectors and allowing random searches.
In 2011, after a shooting at Gardena High School, the district mandated daily searches at every middle and high school.
Now — 26 years after the wanding policy was introduced and amid years of pressure from advocates and student activists to end the practice — leaders of the nation’s second-largest school district have voted to eliminate the policy by July 2020, directing the superintendent to come up with a different plan to keep students safe.
Even during a time of heightened anxiety spurred by mass shootings such as that at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the stance by the Los Angeles Unified School District on random searches has been unique — of the nation’s 15 largest districts, it’s the only one to require daily random searches, according to a 2018 report by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Many also saw the policy as punitive and a barrier to the social-justice lens that many schools have been adopting.
In a district where the majority of students are nonwhite, critics argued that the search methods aren’t neutral and disproportionately affect black, Latino and Muslim students, potentially embroiling them at an early age in the criminal justice system.
The Los Angeles city attorney recommended last year that the district suspend the searches and conduct an audit to determine whether they are effective and truly random.
The timing of the policy flip is in part a reflection of a changing school board that has faced issues of new leadership, a board member’s money laundering scandal, threats of a financial breakdown, a teachers’ strike, declining enrollment and a constant battle between charter and traditional schools.
It took a while for elimination of random searches to reach the top of the list.
Even former defenders such as Castro came to view the current enforcement as counterproductive and ineffective.
“That’s time away from students, and as noted, students never appreciated it,” said Castro, who became a school board member after leaving Belvedere.
Random searches don’t find guns
A coalition called Students not Suspects, which includes the ACLU of Southern California, United Teachers Los Angeles and Black Lives Matter, has long said L.A. Unified does not enforce the policy equally and cites the district’s own limited data showing the searches yield more confiscations of contraband, such as markers and body sprays, than guns and knives.
A 2017 random search log from Robert Fulton College Preparatory School in Van Nuys Los Angeles Unified School District
There has been incremental movement in the last year — 14 schools were part of a pilot program to reduce the number of searches, and as a part of January’s strike agreement, 16 schools will be exempt from searches this fall.
A Times analysis of logs from the 2016-17 school year showed that the random searches did occasionally yield knives and pepper spray, but no guns. The district is still analyzing data from schools that participated in the limited search pilot program in 2018-19.
Though schools don’t keep track of who is searched, the fact that the only major district to implement such searches is majority non-white and low-income suggests that these students face surveillance more than their white, wealthier counterparts elsewhere, students and activists say.
The policy’s supporters say the low numbers of weapons seized show the searches are effective.
“It’s the scarecrow effect,” L.A. School Police Assn. President Gil Gamez said during the school board’s recent meeting. Though school administrators, and not police, conduct the searches, campus police step in if a weapon is found.
And in fact, students do bring guns onto campuses, and police do find some of them — just not through random searches. In the 2016-17 school year, police confiscated 18 firearms, according to a report obtained from the district. Often, administrators say, those weapons are found because other students report them.
Whatever new policy the district adopts cannot include increased police presence or randomly picking students in any other form.
Some educators remain unsettled about the threat of violence and unsure about the right direction.
At the Communication & Technology School at Diego Rivera Learning Complex in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, there was heated debate over whether to submit an application to be exempt from the searches, said Principal Cynthia Gonzalez.
The searches there yield more banned substances — such as cannabis wax and vape pens — than they do weapons, Gonzalez said. An alternate policy should find a way to make sure teachers and students both feel safe and can address current issues in schools, such as substance use.
“Wanding might not be the answer but then what is the answer?” Gonzalez asked. “How is the district going to be proactive about making sure the schools have resources to address the problems that come up?”
‘Like I was a bad person’
Many students plucked out of classes for searches said they feel as though administrators are treating them like criminals, that their learning is disrupted and they are less likely to trust adults on campus.
Recent Dorsey High School graduate Marshe Doss said she was searched 11 times in the last six years.
The first time, in seventh grade, she said, she didn’t know why administrators went to her classroom or why she was made to pull everything out of her backpack. She’s had hand sanitizer and scissors confiscated. “When I first was getting searched, I always felt like I was doing something wrong. Like I was a bad person if I was getting searched,” Doss said.
Her sister is entering sixth grade in the fall, Doss said. She doesn’t want the two of them to share this memory. “I just don’t want my sister to experience that, and I don’t think any 11-year-old should experience that.”
Nadera Powell, an incoming junior at Venice High School, said she and five other students were pulled out of a seventh-grade lecture on Anne Frank to be searched. She stood with her arms spread in a T shape, while a male administrator ran the wand across her. Though neither he nor the wand touched Nadera, she said she felt uncomfortable.
“It felt like I was being violated, but at the time I didn’t really understand what was happening,” said Nadera, 16. “It seemed like it was the right thing to do, to just stand there and let them do what they needed to do so I could go back to class.”
The searches erode the trust between students and adults at schools and interrupt learning time, Nadera said. “It just changes the atmosphere of school, it doesn’t feel like a loving environment. … It feels like a prison,” she said.
What’s next?
Violence in L.A. has decreased significantly since its peak in the 1990s, but hundreds are still killed every year in the county, and those deaths heavily affect schools and students.
School board support to end the searches wasn’t unanimous. George McKenna, Richard Vladovic and Scott Schmerelson — all former school principals — voted against eliminating the policy.
In meetings, McKenna has talked about his time at Washington High in the 1980s, when a student shot off-campus died in his arms.
Activists, though, have lambasted him for his support of searches and wanding, especially as the only black board member.
Because administrators don’t keep track of the race or gender of the students searched, there’s no way to know whether black students are unfairly targeted, McKenna said. “I will accept the criticism. I know it’s a discomfort, I know it’s a distraction. I know it’s not something you look forward to. But I would rather be safe than sorry.”
Castro, the former Belvedere principal, who is now retired, said there should still be some ability for principals to search students in situations, for example, in which there is a campus rumor about a gun or planned retaliation and when shootings spike in the area.
The most recent school shooting in L.A. Unified — which went unmentioned by board members during their recent discussion on wanding — occurred in February 2018 at Salvador B. Castro Middle School, just west of downtown, when authorities say a gun that a 12-year-old girl had in her bag accidentally discharged during her seventh-grade class, injuring one student in the wrist and another in the head.
The shooting happened in science teacher Sherry Zelsdorf’s classroom. In the aftermath, she said, some students told her they felt safer coming to school knowing there were random searches even though those searches hadn’t kept the gun off campus.
Still, Zelsdorf said, it is shortsighted to sunset a policy without knowing what the new safety measure will be. “I would have liked to see a new plan to vote on,” she said.
L.A. Unified Supt. Austin Beutner did not comment on how he would develop a plan or what might be in it. In a news release, he said: “We must keep our students and employees safe, while promoting a positive school-going climate at every campus.”
Students need better ways to report weapons, such as anonymous texting, and programs to build trust with staff, Zelsdorf said.
In the past decade, said L.A. schools Police Chief Steve Zipperman, the district has tried to shift from a punitive approach and focus on developing relationships with students. Some school police officers are involved in intervention and restorative justice programs, which counsel students how to diffuse conflicts, as early as elementary school, he said.
“I think that part of the school’s responsibility would be to maybe educate kids on how to manage their emotions and how to respond if you have a stressful event without violence,” Zelsdorf said.
Zelsdorf now teaches at Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Pacific Palisades, where monthly homeroom assemblies emphasize the need for students to be kind to each other, and there are support staff on campus to address students’ mental health needs. Kids, she said, feel comfortable telling adults about potential problems between students.
Zelsdorf remembers that the students in her class at Castro Middle School were eerily quiet in the minutes before the shooting. She later found out they had figured out there was a gun in the class, but no one said a word about it.
Times staff writers Iris Lee and Howard Blume contributed to this report.
Reach Sonali Kohli at [email protected] or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lausd-random-metal-detector-search-analysis-20190706-htmlstory.html
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Across the Divide
TITLE: Across The Divide
CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter Seven
AUTHOR: wolfpawn
ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki sneaking out of the palace as a youth to see the city and countryside, while out one day, he accidentally gets in trouble for something, but a young girl deals with the situation, allowing him to be left alone and his true identity be kept secret. She is a poor girl who is only in the city to sell goods with her father, so she does not realise it is Loki, even though she sees his face. They form a friendship as she shows him around the city, and tells him the date she comes to the city every month for a particular market.
RATING: Teen and Up
Loki watched as Thor and his idiot friends sat in a circle, clearly deep in thought. Knowing that there was a significant chance of irritating them, he decided to join them. "Norn's but are you all not the most cheerful group, who urinated in your mead?" he scoffed as he walked over to them.
"Not now, Loki, we are dealing with something," Thor growled.
"If it is which one of you is the greatest pain, that truly is a dilemma," Loki smirked. "What is so difficult for you all?"
"Fandral was accosted by some peasant who apparently knew too much of his personal life, we are trying to figure out is it a member of our staff." Loki stared at his brother with a raised brow and a look of disbelief on his face. "We have established he was not of anyone else's house so we are trying to see if he is of ours."
"And what details of great note did this so called upstart claim to know?" Loki looked at Fandral.
The blonde warrior became somewhat flustered, rubbing the back of his neck and not answering immediately. "He made comment on nicknames and comments that only those within close contact with my family would know."
"You do realise that you cannot possibly scour our staff, their spouses, kin and friends because to do so is quite literally tens of thousands of people. This palace employs two thousand full and part-time staff, of which there are, at last count, five-sixths that are wed, and over two-thirds have children, as well as the fact the average Aesir family size is three children, can you not compute the sheer numbers we are talking here?" he laughed at the sheer idiocy of their futile task. "Honestly, I do not know why you bother."
"Because to speak such a manner…" Fandral rose to his feet in indignation at Loki's blasé attitude.
Loki looked at the other man boredly, "Whatever they said much really have struck a nerve with you Fandral, it begs the question, what did you do to warrant such scathing words as to have you in this humour?" he cocked his head slightly as he acted curious.
"I merely noticed a young beautiful woman and asked her for a drink, hardly something of note," Fandral shrugged.
For a moment, a flicker of anger on his features caused Loki to have to inhale deeply. "And the miscreant came to rescue her from your clutches, I assume?"
"I did not harm her," Fandral stepped forward challengingly to Loki.
"I never stated you did, however, your implying it now makes me wonder if you did? So you go over to a girl, can you even assume she is of age? Did she seem willing, or was she trying to signal someone to help her?"
"What are you implying Loki," Thor growled. "Fandral may be forward, but he is hardly molesting."
"What scares me in all of this is not one of you seem to care as to why someone would act in such a manner to your dear friend, rather than that, you are obsessed with what seems to be a nobody calling him out on more than likely being an ignorant fool," Loki stated angrily. "Honestly, you all need to grow up because contrary to what your limited brain function dictates, being of higher status does not exempt you from basic social construct, you cannot simply assume every female with a pulse is interested in you, if she has a partner already, then surely, since you are hardly planning on bringing her home to that busybody of a mother of yours as your partner, you would leave the poor creature be."
Fandral's lip curled in anger and contempt as Loki referenced his mother, a woman who, as Loki had suggested, was someone overly involved in the affairs of others, often seen sitting among a gaggle of women like her, tittering about supposed social faux pas and rumours. "I should…"
"What, are you actually forgetting your place further Fandral, I am a prince, you the son of a lord, and you think yourself above me? Try something, I dare you, and let us see how you fare, I am no simple country girl or street boy, I can very much take you, and by Norn's do you know it. I am not the little boy you once helped lock into a hound house."
The others in the room swallowed guilty, thinking back to a time, centuries before, where it took four of them to get a kicking and fighting Loki into said kennel because he told his parents that Thor had snuck out with Hogun to skip studies, leaving the younger prince there so long, his knees had sores for days after. "Enough." Thor decided to step in. "Perhaps Loki is right, there are too many to think of, we can only keep an eye out for this boy. It is somewhat disturbing that someone would have that much knowledge on Fandral without him knowing who the peasant is. Now onto less irksome matters."
"Do not let me stop you, I have had my fill of you idiots for one day," Loki growled as he went to leave the room.
"I have always been curious, Loki?" He turned to look at Fandral again. "You wear that friendship ruin around your neck as though given to you by the Norn's themselves, yet I have never witnessed someone near you to even give it to you."
"And?" Loki asked boredly.
"Are you so pathetic as to have given it to yourself?" The blonde scoffed, the others joining in.
"No, I did not give it to myself, I have had it for over a century because I actually got it from someone who knows the true meaning of friendship is to enjoy the company of another, not tolerate them because they know that the day may come in battle that someone will have to fall, and it is handy to have a scapegoat." he threw his gaze over Fandral for a moment, who paled slightly at the idea of such a thing, "Now, if you are finished thinking you can get the better of me, I am going to be off, I have more important things to do, like nothing," Loki left the room determined that come his Name's Day celebrations, Thor and his despicable band of merry fools would suffer.
*
"What do you have to say for yourself?" Odin snarled as he looked at his younger son, who to his credit, had managed to make a convincing duplicate of himself that was not falling over laughing, which was more than what could be said for the true Loki, who was in need of holding onto a pillar to assist him in remaining on his feet.
"They deserved it, they have been doing nothing but trying to make my life a misery ever since I called Fandral out on being an absolute ignoramus and harassing young women."
"Loki, just because your brother and his friends act a certain way does not give you right to have them…"
"What is this of Fandral harassing women?" Frigga interrupted.
"He openly admitted to grabbing a young girl and not taking no for an answer when she did not want to be in his company," Loki explained.
Even Odin silenced at that for a moment. "Well, of course, that is unacceptable, but…"
"How in the realms can there be a 'but' in a sentence regarding one of our son's friends accosting young girls?" Frigga challenged, causing Odin to become startled.
"Well, I was about to say it does not give him right to do what he did, not condone the actions of Fandral, I blame his father, he has the same attitude."
"Really, I had not gathered," Frigga replied sarcastically before looking to her son. "You cannot use your seidr every time your brother and his friends annoy you Loki."
"I do not, for if I did, you would know of it, I would die of exhaustion from using it within a week."
"Loki," Odin warned.
"Look, if I am for my rooms for a moment, then so be it, cease delaying the inevitable and send me."
Odin shook his head, "Just leave." Loki looked at him sceptically, "Go." Not questioning him on the matter, Loki had the clone leave. "I do not know why I try to send him to his rooms," He sighed to his wife.
"It is hardly a deterrent when he effectively resides in them even when he is allowed elsewhere. He turned of age yesterday, and rather than join the other young men in a tavern, I found him in there reading reports on the improvements of the lower class' literacy programme."
"It was his idea after all." Odin shrugged. "Norns, I cannot say I can blame him for his actions, but he cannot seek revenge on Thor and the warrior's, they will have to work as a cohesive unit in the future."
"How can they work together, Loki is nothing like the others, he is very much his own spirit?"
"I am aware, that is half the issue," Odin growled. "I had best deal with the miner's dispute, they wish to have healers present at all times on the surface, yet that seems an unreasonable request to the owners, Norn's if it were not for the fact things had gotten so bad, I wish I never was informed of this mess."
With her husband gone, Frigga started at the heavy curtains at the back of the room for a moment. "A clone, honestly Loki?"
Loki came out from behind the curtains, "I had no choice, I was only going to anger him from laughing."
"You should not have done it."
"I was unaware that Fandral is allergic to Drakenback Oil, in my defence."
"It will take a week for the swelling to go down," Loki snorted again. "Loki," His mother chastised.
"I was not aware, though he deserves it."
"You do not hear your father or I disputing that, but it does not make it right. Now regarding your new found freedoms, have you decided if you are going on the hunt next week?"
"No," Frigga looked at him curiously. "I am not free that day."
"The country market is on, all your tutors are not coming."
"I know, but I am not free, I have to do something.
"Such as?"
Loki swallowed uncomfortably, "Just a potion I am working on, it will be done that day, I was not aware…"
"What is the potion for?" Frigga demanded.
"It is just a hunger potion."
"Hunger potion?"
"Yes, I want to see if I can encourage someone to put on weight that is not getting enough food to eat" he explained.
"I see," Frigga was sceptical.
*
Loki rushed through the streets excitedly in his disguise, he held the thick and magically kept safe piece of cake in his hands as he did so. Finally, he came to their spot and waited for Ariella to give her the confectionary and to regale her of everything that had happened in the month that had passed. She did not arrive.
#loki#other#submission#submitted fic#wolfpawn#chapter 7#palace#sneak#trouble#youth#city#poor#girl#identity#asgard#market#court#token#withdrawn#friendship#hutn#warrior's#thor#ashamed#tavern#follow
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B Michael America’s Partners on Racial Bias at Retail – WWD
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B Michael America has been in business as a luxury made-to-order fashion house for more than 20 years. For most of that time, its founding partners, designer B Michael and chief executive officer Mark-Anthony Edwards, have tried to make inroads at retail with a corresponding luxury ready-to-wear component. It hasn’t worked. Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s all passed at various times. Macy’s carried a collection of bridge dresses, B Michael America Red, for five years beginning in 2012, before that relationship ended. Now the two men plan to launch rtw for fall 2021 via a different model — direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
Michael and Edwards attribute the retail rejections and the finite lifespan of their Macy’s line to one factor: systemic racial bias — “100 percent,” Edwards claimed to WWD. Michael maintained that time and again they encountered “in-store personalities that were very clear to us were racially biased.”
The retailers who passed on B Michael America’s luxury rtw maintain that their decisions were based on standard retail procedure — on the clothes’ strength and appropriateness for their stores. As for Macy’s, Macy’s Inc. chairman and ceo Jeffrey Gennette and former chairman and ceo Terry Lundgren said in separate exchanges that they and the store did all they could to make the line work. “As chief merchant when we brought B Michael into Macy’s in 2012, I was excited about the brand and what B Michael’s vision and product might bring to our dress business,” Gennette said in a statement to WWD. He noted, however, that after five years of trying, the right formula for success proved elusive.
From the retail perspective, choosing new brands is as much art as science or math, as the decision-makers assess which product will speak to their customers with a viewpoint that’s right for their stores while offering something not already available. The math kicks in after a collection gets in the door, when over whatever period of time a brand is given, it either performs or it doesn’t. Retailers vet hundreds and even thousands of hopeful brands each year, accepting some and rejecting many more. Luxury retailers can experiment with tiny buys; for a behemoth like Macy’s, a potential vendor’s ability to scale plays into the store’s decision to purchase or not.
Conversely, each vendor draws conclusions from singular experience. As Michael sees it, if his customers also shop at Bergdorf’s and Saks, and often accessorize his clothes from those stores, then his clothes must be “right” for those customers, and therefore, for those stores. He recalled an in-house joke: that he should be a shoe salesman at Bergdorf’s because when a customer asks for his advice on which shoe to wear with her new B Michael dress, he typically suggests that store. “So if the women are buying shoes at Bergdorf’s or in Saks to go with a dress they want from me, how is it I’m not a brand that they feel is right for their stores? What about it is ‘not right?’” he queried, rhetorically. Given that premise, Michael and Edwards conclude that racial bias within the retail world is the only explanation for their brand’s absence from the selling floor.
The partners named names, mostly stars of traditional retail’s last great golden age: Saks president and chief merchant Ron Frasch; Bloomingdale’s vice chairman and general merchandise manager Frank Doroff, and vice president and divisional merchandise manager Sharon Wax; Bergdorf Goodman’s senior vice president of the fashion office, women’s fashion director and store presentation direction Linda Fargo; Saks Fifth Avenue president and ceo Marc Metrick, and Joe Boitano, both as executive vice president, merchandising at Bergdorf’s and later, as group senior vice president and general merchandise manager at Saks. Several of those retailers have retired or moved elsewhere. Only Fargo and Metrick remain active with the stores listed.
As for Gennette and Lundgren, Michael and Edwards explicitly exempted both from characterization as racially biased — Macy’s is too big for the ceo to engage in the details of merch selection, they said. But not so their staffs and organization. “There are so many tiers within Macy’s [that] it’s very difficult to blame any one specific person because you’re talking about such a massive organization. But our experience was truly what our experience was,” Edwards said.
The partners started finding retail doors closed to them just after the launch of B Michael America. Despite its made-to-order business model, Michael immediately started showing at New York Fashion Week, initially at the Bryant Park Tents, and then at Lincoln Center and other venues. He recalled that right after his debut collection, for fall 1999, Bergdorf’s buyer David Asher requested “the first appointment” for the following season, spring 2000. Asher’s boss for a brief time was Boitano. Initially, Michael said that at Asher’s urging, Boitano saw the spring 2000 collection, shown in September 1999, and deemed it “‘not quite ready for Bergdorf’s,’ and that my point of view wasn’t strong enough, or something to that effect.” However, by that time, Boitano was no longer at Bergdorf’s; he had decamped for Saks in May. Told that, Michael said that while his own timing might be off, “I can tell you emphatically, it was Joe Boitano” who passed on the collection.
In response, Boitano did not speak specifically about the decision to pass on B Michael America at Bergdorf’s and again, several years later, at Saks. He said that he always based his buying decisions on the same distinct criteria. “Any decision on product was made with a customer focus and store needs and design appropriateness,” Boitano said. “Is it something the customer wants? Something the stores need? Is the design something we feel is appropriate for the company? Those were the three important factors in deciding on any collection that was added at Saks or Bergdorf.”
Years later, another attempt with Bergdorf’s fizzled. Edwards said Linda Fargo requested that fall 2013 samples be sent to the store’s fashion office: “After our follow-up, Linda Fargo said the collection was not for them.”
According to Fargo, requesting submissions is standard procedure. “The process we use for reviewing new brands consistently begins with a submission of images and look books,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Based on that, we review with the appropriate buying teams, and either move forward to a product review or showroom appointment. Our gauge for what warrants further exploration is based solely on the strength and alignment of product as part of a total curated edit and whether or not the product fulfills an unoccupied customer need. Designers evolve and grow over time, and we often revisit brands we don’t currently carry. We welcome B Michael to continue to engage with us for future possibilities.”
The brand tried twice with Saks. In March, 2012, Michael requested, and got, an appointment with Ron Frasch, then president and chief merchandising officer, who left the store in 2013. “We were looking for the opportunity to go into ready-to-wear. He gave me an appointment,” Michael recalled. “He said, ‘I will have my team present’…So we go to Saks, and I brought two or three models with me, and we present the collection in a conference room. And heading that team is Joe Boitano. So Ron said, ‘Thank you. We’re going to have a discussion, and we will get back to you.’ Well, the person that got back to me was Joe Boitano, who said, ‘We don’t feel that the collection is for us.’”
While Boitano spoke only generally about his approach to selecting new lines, Frasch was more specific about why Saks passed on B Michael America. “What I remember is that the product was a little flamboyant for us,” he said. “Every store’s got to have a point of view, and that product didn’t fit in with ours [at Saks]. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m right [when] making those decisions. When you’re running a store, that’s what you do. We felt it was just a little flamboyant for us.”
Of Michael’s inference of racial bias, Frasch said, “I don’t know how to defend something that isn’t without validating that it is. I have a career [that indicates], ‘Look, this is how I operate.’ If B Michael thought I was a bad guy, I can’t help that.” Still, Frasch acknowledged, “Does the industry have a lack of Black leadership and Black designers? For sure.”
Michael made one more attempt with Saks after the retailer was acquired by Hudson’s Bay Co. Inc., which installed a different executive team. Following a 2018 introduction to Metrick, who assumed the position of president in 2015, Saks sent someone to look at the collection. Michael characterized that person as “the wrong buyer,” and said his subsequent request for the right buyer went ignored. “We followed up to have the correct buyer for American designer collections,” Edwards said. “No one followed up.”
After numerous requests, a Saks spokesperson sent a succinct statement: “B Michael was referred to Saks through FIT. Saks sent a buyer who went to see the collection, but ultimately did not pick up the line for that season.”
Michael and Edwards approached Bloomingdale’s as well. Prior to the fall 2017 season, they met with Doroff, now retired. To facilitate the process, and hopeful of making other retail inroads, they had hired the consulting firm Marvin Traub Associates — at a hefty monthly rate, according to Edwards. Michael and Edwards expected Doroff to attend the meeting with Sharon Wax and other members of the buying team, but Doroff didn’t attend. According to Michael, Wax told them, “’I don’t think the collection is for us,’” or “‘it’s [not] ready.’”
Wax stands by that assessment now. She recalled that after seeing the collection several times, she’d concluded that “his product just really was not right for us. I had to be highly selective for our designer department,” she said. “Designer at Bloomingdale’s is a small piece of the business. I saw the line a couple of times. [The decision] didn’t have anything to do with B Michael being a Black designer.”
Doroff acknowledged that he wasn’t in that meeting, but said he’d seen some of B Michael’s clothes previously. He pulled no punches in his response. “We really didn’t like his clothes. I don’t know what else to say,” he said. “That was our job, right? To try and evaluate the clothes someone shows you.”
For Michael and Edwards, that meeting felt definitive. “I was sitting off to the side because I wanted to just observe with our team what was transpiring,” said Edwards. “And after seeing Sharon say what she said to Mr. Michael, it was for us clear that we could no longer try to come down these roads.”
B Michael adjusting a full-skirted, silk and cotton dress.
Masato Onoda/WWD
Macy’s was a different story. Luxury isn’t part of Macy’s universe, so B Michael developed B Michael America Red, a collection of social dresses in the bridge arena. During the five years Macy’s carried the line, Michael and Edwards had direct contact with both Lundgren, ceo until March 2017, and Gennette, who then assumed that role. Lundgren remained executive chairman until his retirement in January 2018, when Gennette also became chairman.
Michael and Lundgren got to know each other through a philanthropic organization, Figure Skating in Harlem, with which Lundgren’s wife Tina was involved. Each said he considers the other a friend. Michael stressed that he does not think Lundgren himself, or Gennette, acted based on racial bias in their professional dealings. Not so unnamed members of their team, who, Michael and Edwards claimed, pushed them to participate in Macy’s diversity program, called The Workshop at Macy’s.
The Workshop was instituted on Lundgren’s watch to aid small minority- and women-owned brands in building tools to help them succeed at retail. Alumni businesses include Verona Collection, Mateo New York, Fe Noel, Foot Nanny, and Eleven60.
In his statement to WWD, Gennette summarized the program’s purpose. “At Macy’s, Inc. our business model operates at scale,” he said. “Historically, we have struggled to bring smaller brands into the company profitably. However, we are always exploring new ways to make that possible including The Workshop, our vendor development program for high-potential, diverse-owned businesses. And we are committed to using The Workshop and other programs to help emerging designers, including those of color, break into the business.”
Michael and Edwards didn’t see the benefit of the program for their company. They wanted to prove that the line could be successful at Macy’s via traditional channels, “with both proper financing and a bilateral partnership…our focus and commitment to the partnership was long-term scale distribution and growth,” Edwards said.
He called the diversity program’s requirements “invasive,” and said that it took a too-narrow view of the brand’s identity. He cited as an example that Macy’s planned to focus advertising of the brand “on publications that serviced Black communities, which is not reflective of the brand’s entire consumer base. With our direction and insistence, we specified that all ads must also be placed in The New York Times.”
Whatever the prelude, Macy’s bought the Red collection. According to a store spokesperson, “The easy-to-wear collection ranged in price from $155 to $400, and offered a contemporary spin on the designer’s signature haute couture style.”
It was purchased for 10 major-market doors, where Michael and Edwards maintain it was insufficiently supported in areas including floor placement, public relations and travel. The men claimed as well that they contributed to the cost of soft shops and events. “We did store visits. We traveled around the country, all at our own expense,” Michael said.
Macy’s said that during the month of August 2012, when the line launched, “B Michael made several in-store appearances…including Union Square and South Coast Plaza.” The store spokesperson noted that it is typical for vendors to cover their own travel expenses for in-store appearances.
In his statement to WWD, Gennette stressed Macy’s desire to make the collection work. “B Michael is a talented couture dress designer…,” he said. “We were happy to carry his product in our stores and launched the line in some of our best doors including our flagships at Herald Square, State Street, Lenox Square, and Union Square, and with dedicated soft shops in highly desirable locations. Over the five-year relationship, we worked together with the B Michael team trying different approaches to every aspect of the line — production, stores, content, value, special events. We offered B. Michael support from The Workshop. While the sellthrough was always low and the business was never profitable, we kept working at it because we believed in the brand and in B Michael. After five years of trying, we were unable to find the right formula that would benefit both brands and we parted ways.”
Michael described two meetings with Macy’s. At one, in 2015, Lundgren and Gennette were present. “We will make a success of this brand,” Michael recalled Lundgren saying. Michael placed a later meeting with Gennette and some of his top people in 2018. However, that timing is fuzzy, because Macy’s had stopped carrying B Michael America Red in 2017, the year Gennette took over as ceo.
Edwards said he and Michael requested that second meeting “to have a real conversation about all of the issues we were having.” The partners insisted that they had been 100 percent compliant with everything Macy’s requested of them, from investigating and agreeing to shift some production off-shore to facilitate higher margins (the collection had been produced 100 percent domestically) to joining GS1 US to buy their UPC codes, as suggested by Macy’s. Still, Michael said, they were informed that the store had “decided to go in a different direction, and that [their department] would no longer have soft shops for designers, and that the merchandise would all be merged together — if they saw something that they even felt was within their direction…
“They were disbanding the shops, and [there was] the question of the level of their commitment,” Michael continued. “We’re looking to scale and grow, and they are looking to scale us back.”
Asked how he and Edwards inferred racial bias if the floor’s other soft shops were also being dismantled, Michael said, “They were not getting rid of all the shops. So there was still going to be, for instance, a Ralph Lauren shop.”
That’s when they asked for the meeting with Gennette, after which they concluded that staying at Macy’s “wasn’t in the best interest of our luxury brand,” Michael said.
They don’t blame Gennette personally. “I know Jeff has a lot to deal with,” Edwards said. “It’s a hard thing being the new ceo at a store and in an industry where the conversation is whether or not brick-and-mortar is even relevant anymore when it comes to e-commerce…So I don’t want to say anything negative, truly negative about Jeff.”
Similarly, Michael made it a point to clear Lundgren personally of the bias allegation. Still, Lundgren was surprised to learn of Michael’s assessment of his time at Macy’s. “B is a terrific person and someone I consider a friend,” Lundgren said. “A very, very talented guy. I went to many of his fashion shows. I was really impressed by his talent.”
That said, adapting a luxury made-to-order collection into an entity appropriate for Macy’s proved challenging, especially given that social dressing isn’t a major category for the store. “I was enthusiastic about it working and trying to make it happen,” Lundgren said. Ultimately, it didn’t work. “The consumer decides, at the end of the day,” Lundgren noted. “The customer always makes the decision about what brands we carry and what we don’t. That happens with all kinds of brands, hundreds of brands. You try, and some work for a while and then over time, some don’t. It just depends.”
In terms of the particular issues Michael articulated, Lundgren rejects the notion that the store made extraordinary demands. “I can’t imagine that B was asked to do anything that any other brand wasn’t asked to do,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual or different about him wanting to negotiate for space and location. I don’t think [he was] treated uniquely.”
Lundgren was and remains proud of The Workshop at Macy’s. He said he personally worked hard in support of minority- and women-owned businesses, to ensure that the company was doing “everything we could do to help build their success. I believe that the only way you’re going to be successful, whether it’s in recruiting talent or brands or otherwise, is if you’re looking at the entire population of opportunities as opposed to a limited population of opportunities.”
Seeking out and developing diverse brands is a top priority for Macy’s, according to Gennette. “Bringing more diverse design talent into our assortments and increasing the women- and minority-owned businesses in our supplier base are two components of our diversity and inclusion strategy,” he said.
Michael and Edwards insist that at Macy’s and all across the retail landscape, opportunities remain woefully elusive for Black fashion brands. For the most part, they blame those with oversight of the buying process. “If you control what’s on the floor, it’s the perfect way to hide the fact that you are biased against Black designers,” said Edwards. “If the buyers…never buy from Black designers, then the curated merchandise on the floor will always be what the industry wants it to be.…But if you are a designer of color and you’re not even included in that grouping, or the curation, that’s where the bias comes in. It is a very genius way to do it.”
For their own company, B Michael America, Michael and Edwards are eliminating that layer by launching rtw via their own e-commerce site. For the broader industry, the conversation is just beginning.
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Harry and Meghan’s Big Funding Source Is Private. Sort of.
LONDON — Every six months or so, Alan Davis sets out from his seaside bungalow on a far-flung island off the southwestern coast of England carrying a rent check of 12.5 pounds (about $16) for his landlord.
But this is no ordinary landlord, and no ordinary rent check.
Mr. Davis lives on a tiny corner of the Duchy of Cornwall, the property empire controlled by Prince Charles, the heir to Britain’s throne, who has quietly turned an inheritance of rundown farmland into a billion-pound real estate conglomerate. By a quirk of British law, Mr. Davis has to pay the prince for the privilege of living on his land, piddling as the checks may be.
“It’s a feudal way of carrying on,” Mr. Davis said. “They put their finger in and demand money. They’re a law unto themselves.”
Prince Charles’s fortune, long shielded from scrutiny by parliamentary indifference and obscure accounting, spilled into public view this month when his younger son, Prince Harry, announced that he and his wife, Meghan, were quitting their royal duties. In trying to prove that they would renounce taxpayer money, Harry and Meghan gave Britons a peek at the shadowy world of ostensibly private finance that bankrolls the family and its mansions, gardens and considerable staff.
But what the royals call private contains, by any other measure, a generous mix of public giveaways: medieval landholdings passed from one male heir to the next, sweeping tax relief, indemnity from some laws and exemptions from others, ownership of long stretches of coastline and all the treasure buried in Cornwall.
Those perks have delivered Prince Charles substantial wealth. Income from the duchy has nearly tripled in two decades, to £21.6 million, about $28.3 million, last year. But the uproar over Harry and Meghan’s funding has raised uncomfortable questions for the prince and the royals about whether any of their income can truly be considered private.
Coming on the heels of Prince Charles’s brother Andrew being kicked off the royal front lines for socializing with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, such scrutiny is another dent to the royal mystique.
“Harry has chucked a grenade into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace,” said David McClure, the author of a book about the royal family’s wealth. “It’s weakened the foundations of the royal family and their money, and it’s raised issues that don’t just apply to Harry but have been bubbling under the surface for at least a decade.”
Among the biggest of those is the special treatment afforded Prince Charles’s property empire, an estate that, among other things, pays for the upkeep of his country mansion and furnished £5 million last year for the families of Harry and his older brother, Prince William.
Formed in 1337 to provide the royal heir with an income, the duchy came with fringe benefits: the right to unclaimed shipwrecks on Cornish shores, washed-up whale and sturgeon carcasses, and at least 250 gallons of wine from boats docking at Cornish ports.
Nearly 700 years later, Prince Charles has held onto some anachronistic perks. Into his 20s, the prince is said to have received feudal dues of 100 silver shillings and a pound of peppercorns from the mayor of Launceston in Cornwall.
But with the help of British real estate heavyweights, he has transformed his sleepy holdings into a thriving business covering 200 square miles, turning the focus from rural land to profit-rich urban holdings.
The duchy has a vast footprint, stretching from the rocky shores of Cornwall to south London, and from medieval castles to a granite-walled men’s prison. It recently bought a 400,000-square-foot supermarket warehouse north of London.
A spokeswoman for the duchy said in a statement that Parliament had “confirmed its status as a private estate” and that the Treasury had agreed that its tax status did not confer an unfair advantage. “The prince has always ensured it is run with the interests of its communities as an equal priority,” the statement said.
The duchy’s holdings reflect how the royal family’s wealth has become concentrated in the hands of Prince Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, whose own estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, paid her £21.7 million last year. Together, the two duchies bankroll more than a dozen members of the family, supplementing a taxpayer grant of £82 million last year reserved for official duties and the upkeep of several palaces.
Despite lawmakers once deeming its current income “an accident of history,” the Duchy of Cornwall has mostly avoided harsh questions, in part by playing up its interest in traditional architecture and sustainable practices across its humbler holdings: scores of farms, much of Dartmoor National Park in Devon and rivers throughout Cornwall. But analysts say that obscures fierce commercial instincts.
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, you sort of assume it is a duck,” a Labour lawmaker told duchy officials during a 2013 hearing. “The Duchy of Cornwall looks and behaves like a corporation.”
But the duchy does not pay taxes like a corporation. Instead it sits in a sort of legal limbo, using its royal status to skirt corporation and capital gains taxes even as it argues that, as a private estate, it has no obligation to open its books. The duchy said that its capital gains were all reinvested in the business, obviating the need to tax them, and that only companies paid corporation tax.
Prince Charles pays tax on his duchy income only voluntarily, and after deducting what analysts believe to be about £10 million that he deems official and charitable spending. He has also written off tens of thousands of pounds that he pays for gardening at Highgrove, his country house, on the basis that members of the public were occasionally invited in.
“The Duchy of Cornwall can be whatever it’s convenient for it to be,” said John Kirkhope, who wrote a doctoral thesis about the duchy in 2013. “If you want to inquire into its privileges, you can’t, because it’s supposedly a private estate, in the same way I have a private bank account. But when it’s convenient, it’s also a crown property, so that for example it doesn’t pay the same rate of tax as any similar entity would pay.”
The duchy’s powers go even further.
It inherits the possessions of anyone who dies in Cornwall without a will or next of kin, a power that in some years has yielded hundreds of thousands of pounds. The duchy funnels the money into charities after deducting its own costs.
The duchy owns the right to mine in Cornwall, even under private homes — a right that it registered to extend as recently as eight years ago.
Most extraordinarily in critics’ eyes, the duchy has the right to be consulted on any legislation that affects its interests. Over the years, governments have interpreted that to include bills about hunting, road safety, children’s rights, marine access and wreck removal. A 2008 planning law exempts the duchy from ever committing a planning offense.
A similar carve-out gives Prince Charles unusual power over homeowners on the Isles of Scilly, a picturesque archipelago off the southwestern coast of England, and in Newton St. Loe, a village near Bath.
People like Mr. Davis own their homes there, but the duchy owns the ground on which they are built. Such an arrangement is not uncommon in England, but homeowners would usually have the option to buy the land. Not on some duchy land.
That enables the duchy to charge small ground rents to homeowners grandfathered into long leases, like Mr. Davis. Once those leases lapse, it can also raise rents to thousands of pounds per year, making it difficult for people to sell or mortgage their homes.
In one case, a couple built a house on the Isles of Scilly, only for the duchy to force them to sign a lease bequeathing the property to Prince Charles’s estate upon their death, said Lord Berkeley, a Labour peer in the House of Lords.
“They set up an arrangement where tenants are too frightened to do anything, for fear of losing their property,” said Lord Berkeley, who tried unsuccessfully to push through a bill in 2017 ending the duchy’s special landlord status and removing its tax exemptions. “In what we like to think of as a democratic country, that doesn’t seem fair to me.”
Nor have lawmakers approved of how Prince Charles handles the duchy’s accounting. He pays rent to the duchy for Highgrove, his country house. But because the money goes into the duchy’s revenues, it empties back into Prince Charles’s pocket as income.
The duchy said the prince paid rent, at market value, to avoid the duchy taking on costs it shouldn’t. Still, he is effectively paying it to himself — and allowing himself to take a tax deduction.
“He pays money out from one pocket and receives it back in the other pocket,” Mr. Kirkhope said.
Polls show that the public is dubious of government funding for anyone outside the core line of succession. And Harry and Meghan’s departure has intensified the focus on how and why the public pays for the royals’ lifestyle.
Palace aides have indicated that Prince Charles may dip into his personal investments, rather than the Duchy of Cornwall, to fund Harry and Meghan’s lives in Canada. But that and much else remains unresolved, including how long British taxpayers will pay for the couple’s security.
“It’s the third rail of public discussions about the royal family: royal finances,” said Patrick Jephson, a former private secretary to Diana. “It is royal people and royal advisers’ least favorite topic of conversation.”
Mr. Davis says that among people the Isles of Scilly, around where he lives and pays his rent to the duchy, the mood has hardened against Prince Charles.
“They hate him basically,” Mr. Davis said. “Most people can’t abide him. All the money he gets goes out of the island. And that’s how he can afford to give Harry £2.3 million to live his lifestyle.”
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Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practices
The European Union’s political institutions have reached agreement over new rules designed to boost transparency around online platform businesses and curb unfair practices to support traders and other businesses that rely on digital intermediaries for discovery and sales.
The European Commission proposed a regulation for fairness and transparency in online platform trading last April. And late yesterday the European Parliament, Council of the EU and Commission reached a political deal on regulating the business environment of platforms, announcing the accord in a press release today.
The political agreement paves the way for adoption and publication of the regulation, likely later this year. The rules will apply 12 months after that point.
Online platform intermediaries such as ecommerce marketplaces and search engines are covered by the new rules if they provide services to businesses established in the EU and which offer goods or services to consumers located in the EU.
The Commission estimates there are some 7,000 such platforms and marketplaces which will be covered by the regulation, noting this includes “world giants as well as very small start-ups”.
Under the new rules, sudden and unexpected account suspensions will be banned — with the Commission saying platforms will have to provide “clear reasons” for any termination and also possibilities for appeal.
Terms and conditions must also be “easily available and provided in plain and intelligible language”.
There must also be advance notice of changes — of at least 15 days, with longer notice periods applying for more complex changes.
For search engines the focus is on ranking transparency. And on that front dominant search engine Google has attracted more than its fair share of criticism in Europe from a range of rivals (not all of whom are European).
In 2017, the search giant was also slapped with a $2.7BN antitrust fine related to its price comparison service, Google Shopping. The EC found Google had systematically given prominent placement to its own search comparison service while also demoting rival services in search results. (Google rejects the findings and is appealing.)
Given the history of criticism of Google’s platform business practices, and the multi-year regulatory tug of war over anti-competitive impacts, the new transparency provisions look intended to make it harder for a dominant search player to use its market power against rivals.
Changing the online marketplace
The importance of legislating for platform fairness was flagged by the Commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, last summer — when she handed Google another very large fine ($5BN) for anti-competitive behavior related to its mobile platform Android.
Vestager said then she wasn’t sure breaking Google up would be an effective competition fix, preferring to push for remedies to support “more players to have a real go”, as her Android decision attempts to do. But she also stressed the importance of “legislation that will ensure that you have transparency and fairness in the business to platform relationship”.
If businesses have legal means to find out why, for example, their traffic has stopped and what they can do to get it back that will “change the marketplace, and it will change the way we are protected as consumers but also as businesses”, she argued.
Just such a change is now in sight thanks to EU political accord on the issue.
The regulation represents the first such rules for online platforms in Europe and — commissioners’ contend — anywhere in the world.
“Our target is to outlaw some of the most unfair practices and create a benchmark for transparency, at the same time safeguarding the great advantages of online platforms both for consumers and for businesses,” said Andrus Ansip, VP for the EU’s Digital Single Market initiative in a statement.
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, commissioner for internal market, industry, entrepreneurship, and SMEs, added that the rules are “especially designed with the millions of SMEs in mind”.
“Many of them do not have the bargaining muscle to enter into a dispute with a big platform, but with these new rules they have a new safety net and will no longer worry about being randomly kicked off a platform, or intransparent ranking in search results,” she said in another supporting statement.
In a factsheet about the new rules, the Commission specifies they cover third-party ecommerce market places (e.g. Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Fnac Marketplace, etc.); app stores (e.g. Google Play, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store etc.); social media for business (e.g. Facebook pages, Instagram used by makers/artists etc.); and price comparison tools (e.g. Skyscanner, Google Shopping etc.).
The regulation does not target every online platform. For example, it does not cover online advertising (or b2b ad exchanges), payment services, SEO services or services that do not intermediate direct transactions between businesses and consumers.
The Commission also notes that online retailers that sell their own brand products and/or don’t rely on third party sellers on their own platform are also excluded from the regulation, such as retailers of brands or supermarkets.
Where transparency is concerned, the rules require that regulated marketplaces and search engines disclose the main parameters they use to rank goods and services on their site “to help sellers understand how to optimise their presence” — with the Commission saying the aim is to support sellers without allowing gaming of the ranking system.
Some platform business practices will also require mandatory disclosure — such as for platforms that not only provide a marketplace for sellers but sell on their platform themselves, as does Amazon for example.
The ecommerce giant’s use of merchant data remains under scrutiny in the EU. Vestager revealed a preliminary antitrust probe of Amazon last fall — when she said her department was gathering information to “try to get a full picture”. She said her concern is dual platforms could gain an unfair advantage as a consequence of access to merchants’ data.
And, again, the incoming transparency rules look intended to shrink that risk — requiring what the Commission couches as exhaustive disclosure of “any advantage” a platform may give to their own products over others.
“They must also disclose what data they collect, and how they use it — and in particular how such data is shared with other business partners they have,” it continues, noting also that: “Where personal data is concerned, the rules of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] apply.”
(GDPR of course places further transparency requirements on platforms by, for example, empowering individuals to request any personal data held on them, as well as the reasons why their information is being processed.)
The platform regulation also includes new avenues for dispute resolution by requiring platforms set up an internal complaint-handling system to assist business users.
“Only the smallest platforms in terms of head count or turnover will be exempt from this obligation,” the Commission notes. (The exemption limit is set at fewer than 50 staff and less than €10M revenue.)
It also says: “Platforms will have to provide businesses with more options to resolve a potential problem through mediators. This will help resolve more issues out of court, saving businesses time and money.”
But, at the same time, the new rules allow business associations to take platforms to court to stop any non-compliance — mirroring a provision in the GDPR which also allows for collective enforcement and redress of individual privacy rights (where Member States adopt it).
“This will help overcome fear of retaliation, and lower the cost of court cases for individual businesses, when the new rules are not followed,” the Commission argues.
“In addition, Member States can appoint public authorities with enforcement powers, if they wish, and businesses can turn to those authorities.”
One component of the regulation that appears to be being left up to EU Member States to tackle is penalties for non-compliance — with no clear regime of fines set out (as there is in GDPR). So it’s not clear whether the platform regulation might not have rather more bark than bite, at least initially.
“Member States shall need to take measures that are sufficiently dissuasive to ensure that the online intermediation platforms and search engines comply with the requirements in the Regulation,” the Commission writes in a section of its factsheet dealing with how to make sure platforms respect the new rules.
It also points again to the provision allowing business associations or organisations to take action in national courts on behalf of members — saying this offers a legal route to “stop or prohibit non-compliance with one or more of the requirements of the Regulation”. So, er, expect lawsuits.
The Commission says the rules will be subject to review within 18 months after they come into force — in a bid to ensure the regulation keeps pace with fast-paced tech developments.
A dedicated Online Platform Observatory has been established in the EU for the purpose of “monitoring the evolution of the market and the effective implementation of the rules”, it adds.
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Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practices
The European Union’s political institutions have reached agreement over new rules designed to boost transparency around online platform businesses and curb unfair practices to support traders and other businesses that rely on digital intermediaries for discovery and sales.
The European Commission proposed a regulation for fairness and transparency in online platform trading last April. And late yesterday the European Parliament, Council of the EU and Commission reached a political deal on regulating the business environment of platforms, announcing the accord in a press release today.
The political agreement paves the way for adoption and publication of the regulation, likely later this year. The rules will apply 12 months after that point.
Online platform intermediaries such as ecommerce marketplaces and search engines are covered by the new rules if they provide services to businesses established in the EU and which offer goods or services to consumers located in the EU.
The Commission estimates there are some 7,000 such platforms and marketplaces which will be covered by the regulation, noting this includes “world giants as well as very small start-ups”.
Under the new rules, sudden and unexpected account suspensions will be banned — with the Commission saying platforms will have to provide “clear reasons” for any termination and also possibilities for appeal.
Terms and conditions must also be “easily available and provided in plain and intelligible language”.
There must also be advance notice of changes — of at least 15 days, with longer notice periods applying for more complex changes.
For search engines the focus is on ranking transparency. And on that front dominant search engine Google has attracted more than its fair share of criticism in Europe from a range of rivals (not all of whom are European).
In 2017, the search giant was also slapped with a $2.7BN antitrust fine related to its price comparison service, Google Shopping. The EC found Google had systematically given prominent placement to its own search comparison service while also demoting rival services in search results. (Google rejects the findings and is appealing.)
Given the history of criticism of Google’s platform business practices, and the multi-year regulatory tug of war over anti-competitive impacts, the new transparency provisions look intended to make it harder for a dominant search player to use its market power against rivals.
Changing the online marketplace
The importance of legislating for platform fairness was flagged by the Commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, last summer — when she handed Google another very large fine ($5BN) for anti-competitive behavior related to its mobile platform Android.
Vestager said then she wasn’t sure breaking Google up would be an effective competition fix, preferring to push for remedies to support “more players to have a real go”, as her Android decision attempts to do. But she also stressed the importance of “legislation that will ensure that you have transparency and fairness in the business to platform relationship”.
If businesses have legal means to find out why, for example, their traffic has stopped and what they can do to get it back that will “change the marketplace, and it will change the way we are protected as consumers but also as businesses”, she argued.
Just such a change is now in sight thanks to EU political accord on the issue.
The regulation represents the first such rules for online platforms in Europe and — commissioners’ contend — anywhere in the world.
“Our target is to outlaw some of the most unfair practices and create a benchmark for transparency, at the same time safeguarding the great advantages of online platforms both for consumers and for businesses,” said Andrus Ansip, VP for the EU’s Digital Single Market initiative in a statement.
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, commissioner for internal market, industry, entrepreneurship, and SMEs, added that the rules are “especially designed with the millions of SMEs in mind”.
“Many of them do not have the bargaining muscle to enter into a dispute with a big platform, but with these new rules they have a new safety net and will no longer worry about being randomly kicked off a platform, or intransparent ranking in search results,” she said in another supporting statement.
In a factsheet about the new rules, the Commission specifies they cover third-party ecommerce market places (e.g. Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Fnac Marketplace, etc.); app stores (e.g. Google Play, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store etc.); social media for business (e.g. Facebook pages, Instagram used by makers/artists etc.); and price comparison tools (e.g. Skyscanner, Google Shopping etc.).
The regulation does not target every online platform. For example, it does not cover online advertising (or b2b ad exchanges), payment services, SEO services or services that do not intermediate direct transactions between businesses and consumers.
The Commission also notes that online retailers that sell their own brand products and/or don’t rely on third party sellers on their own platform are also excluded from the regulation, such as retailers of brands or supermarkets.
Where transparency is concerned, the rules require that regulated marketplaces and search engines disclose the main parameters they use to rank goods and services on their site “to help sellers understand how to optimise their presence” — with the Commission saying the aim is to support sellers without allowing gaming of the ranking system.
Some platform business practices will also require mandatory disclosure — such as for platforms that not only provide a marketplace for sellers but sell on their platform themselves, as does Amazon for example.
The ecommerce giant’s use of merchant data remains under scrutiny in the EU. Vestager revealed a preliminary antitrust probe of Amazon last fall — when she said her department was gathering information to “try to get a full picture”. She said her concern is dual platforms could gain an unfair advantage as a consequence of access to merchants’ data.
And, again, the incoming transparency rules look intended to shrink that risk — requiring what the Commission couches as exhaustive disclosure of “any advantage” a platform may give to their own products over others.
“They must also disclose what data they collect, and how they use it — and in particular how such data is shared with other business partners they have,” it continues, noting also that: “Where personal data is concerned, the rules of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] apply.”
(GDPR of course places further transparency requirements on platforms by, for example, empowering individuals to request any personal data held on them, as well as the reasons why their information is being processed.)
The platform regulation also includes new avenues for dispute resolution by requiring platforms set up an internal complaint-handling system to assist business users.
“Only the smallest platforms in terms of head count or turnover will be exempt from this obligation,” the Commission notes. (The exemption limit is set at fewer than 50 staff and less than €10M revenue.)
It also says: “Platforms will have to provide businesses with more options to resolve a potential problem through mediators. This will help resolve more issues out of court, saving businesses time and money.”
But, at the same time, the new rules allow business associations to take platforms to court to stop any non-compliance — mirroring a provision in the GDPR which also allows for collective enforcement and redress of individual privacy rights (where Member States adopt it).
“This will help overcome fear of retaliation, and lower the cost of court cases for individual businesses, when the new rules are not followed,” the Commission argues.
“In addition, Member States can appoint public authorities with enforcement powers, if they wish, and businesses can turn to those authorities.”
One component of the regulation that appears to be being left up to EU Member States to tackle is penalties for non-compliance — with no clear regime of fines set out (as there is in GDPR). So it’s not clear whether the platform regulation might not have rather more bark than bite, at least initially.
“Member States shall need to take measures that are sufficiently dissuasive to ensure that the online intermediation platforms and search engines comply with the requirements in the Regulation,” the Commission writes in a section of its factsheet dealing with how to make sure platforms respect the new rules.
It also points again to the provision allowing business associations or organisations to take action in national courts on behalf of members — saying this offers a legal route to “stop or prohibit non-compliance with one or more of the requirements of the Regulation”. So, er, expect lawsuits.
The Commission says the rules will be subject to review within 18 months after they come into force — in a bid to ensure the regulation keeps pace with fast-paced tech developments.
A dedicated Online Platform Observatory has been established in the EU for the purpose of “monitoring the evolution of the market and the effective implementation of the rules”, it adds.
source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/14/europe-agrees-platform-rules-to-tackle-unfair-business-practices/
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Text
Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practices
The European Union’s political institutions have reached agreement over new rules designed to boost transparency around online platform businesses and curb unfair practices to support traders and other businesses that rely on digital intermediaries for discovery and sales.
The European Commission proposed a regulation for fairness and transparency in online platform trading last April. And late yesterday the European Parliament, Council of the EU and Commission reached a political deal on regulating the business environment of platforms, announcing the accord in a press release today.
The political agreement paves the way for adoption and publication of the regulation, likely later this year. The rules will apply 12 months after that point.
Online platform intermediaries such as ecommerce marketplaces and search engines are covered by the new rules if they provide services to businesses established in the EU and which offer goods or services to consumers located in the EU.
The Commission estimates there are some 7,000 such platforms and marketplaces which will be covered by the regulation, noting this includes “world giants as well as very small start-ups”.
To be clear, the regulation does not target every online platform. For example, it does not cover online advertising (or b2b ad exchanges), payment services, SEO services or services that do not intermediate direct transactions between businesses and consumers.
The Commission also notes that online retailers that sell their own brand products and/or don’t rely on third party sellers on their own platform are also excluded from the regulation, such as retailers of brands or supermarkets.
Under the new rules, sudden and unexpected account suspensions will be banned, with the Commission saying platforms will have to provide “clear reasons” for any termination and also possibilities for appeal.
Terms and conditions must also be “easily available and provided in plain and intelligible language”.
There must also be advance notice of changes — of at least 15 days, with longer notice periods applying for more complex changes.
For search engines the focus is on ranking transparency. And on that front dominant search engine Google has attracted more than its fair share of criticism in Europe from a range of rivals (not all of whom are European).
In 2017, the search giant was also slapped with a $2.7BN antitrust fine related to its price comparison service, Google Shopping. The EC found Google had systematically given prominent placement to its own search comparison service while also demoting rival services in search results. (Google rejects the findings and is appealing.)
Given that history, the new transparency provisions look intended to make it harder for a dominant search player to use its market power against rivals.
Changing the online marketplace
The importance of legislating for platform fairness was also flagged by the Commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, last summer — when she handed Google another very large fine ($5BN) for anti-competitive behavior related to its mobile platform Android.
Vestager said then she wasn’t sure breaking Google up would be an effective competition fix, preferring to push for remedies to support “more players to have a real go”, as her Android decision attempts to do. But she also stressed the importance of “legislation that will ensure that you have transparency and fairness in the business to platform relationship”.
If businesses have legal means to find out why, for example, their traffic has stopped and what they can do to get it back that will “change the marketplace, and it will change the way we are protected as consumers but also as businesses”, she argued.
Just such a change is now in sight thanks to EU political accord on the issue.
The regulation represents the first such rules for online platforms in Europe and — commissioners’ contend — anywhere in the world.
“Our target is to outlaw some of the most unfair practices and create a benchmark for transparency, at the same time safeguarding the great advantages of online platforms both for consumers and for businesses,” said Andrus Ansip, VP for the EU’s Digital Single Market initiative in a statement.
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, commissioner for internal market, industry, entrepreneurship, and SMEs, added that the rules are “especially designed with the millions of SMEs in mind”.
“Many of them do not have the bargaining muscle to enter into a dispute with a big platform, but with these new rules they have a new safety net and will no longer worry about being randomly kicked off a platform, or intransparent ranking in search results,” she said in another supporting statement.
In a factsheet about the new rules, the Commission specifies they cover third-party ecommerce market places (e.g. Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Fnac Marketplace, etc.); app stores (e.g. Google Play, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store etc.); social media for business (e.g. Facebook pages, Instagram used by makers/artists etc.); and price comparison tools (e.g. Skyscanner, Google Shopping etc.).
Where transparency is concerned, the rules require that marketplaces and search engines disclose the main parameters they use to rank goods and services on their site “to help sellers understand how to optimise their presence” — with the Commission saying the regulation aims to strike a balance of supporting sellers without allowing gaming of the ranking system.
Some platform business practices will also require mandatory disclosure — such as for platforms that not only provide a marketplace for sellers but sell on their platform themselves, as does Amazon for example.
The ecommerce giant’s use of merchant data remains under scrutiny in the EU. Vestager revealed a preliminary antitrust probe of Amazon last fall — when she said her department was gathering information to “try to get a full picture”.
She said her concern is dual platforms could gain an unfair advantage as a consequence of access to merchants’ data. And, again, the incoming transparency rules look intended to shrink that risk — requiring what the Commission couches as exhaustive disclosure of “any advantage” a platform may give to their own products over others.
“They must also disclose what data they collect, and how they use it — and in particular how such data is shared with other business partners they have,” it continues, noting also that: “Where personal data is concerned, the rules of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] apply.”
(GDPR of course places further transparency requirements on platforms by, for example, empowering individuals to request any personal data held on them, as well as the reasons why their information is being processed.)
The platform regulation also includes new avenues for dispute resolution by requiring platforms set up an internal complaint-handling system to assist business users.
“Only the smallest platforms in terms of head count or turnover will be exempt from this obligation,” the Commission notes. (The exemption limit is set at fewer than 50 staff and less than €10M revenue.)
It also says: “Platforms will have to provide businesses with more options to resolve a potential problem through mediators. This will help resolve more issues out of court, saving businesses time and money.”
But, at the same time, the new rules allow business associations to take platforms to court to stop any non-compliance — mirroring a provision in the GDPR which also allows for collective enforcement and redress of individual privacy rights (where Member States adopt it).
“This will help overcome fear of retaliation, and lower the cost of court cases for individual businesses, when the new rules are not followed,” the Commission argues.
“In addition, Member States can appoint public authorities with enforcement powers, if they wish, and businesses can turn to those authorities.”
One component of the regulation that appears to be being left up to EU Member States to tackle is penalties for non-compliance — with no clear regime of fines set out (as there is in GDPR). So it’s not clear whether the platform regulation might not have rather more bark than bite, at least initially.
“Member States shall need to take measures that are sufficiently dissuasive to ensure that the online intermediation platforms and search engines comply with the requirements in the Regulation,” the Commission writes in a section of its factsheet dealing with how to make sure platforms respect the new rules.
It also points again to the provision allowing business associations or organisations to take action in national courts on behalf of members — saying this offers a legal route to “stop or prohibit non-compliance with one or more of the requirements of the Regulation”. So, er, expect lawsuits.
The Commission says the rules will be subject to review within 18 months after they come into force — in a bid to ensure the regulation keeps pace with fast-paced tech developments.
A dedicated Online Platform Observatory has been established in the EU for the purpose of “monitoring the evolution of the market and the effective implementation of the rules”, it adds.
Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com
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asking to work from home when it’s really hot out, happy hour hurt feelings, and more
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Can I ask to work from home when it’s really hot outside?
I have a question about asking to work from home in extreme heat. I live in a very pedestrian-friendly city and do not have a car. I have a 15-minute walk to work, which is a huge perk, except during the summer, when the weather in my city is very hot and humid all season long. We are in a particularly hot patch — temperatures in the high 80s/low 90s by 9 a.m., with 70-80% humidity, and a heat index of 100+. I’m not asthmatic, but I find the air hard to breathe. My morning commute is miserable; even if I take the nearby bus, I still have to walk a couple blocks to get to the office, and just those few blocks leave me so drained and in a bad mood. There is virtually no parking near our office, so everyone commutes by public transit or on foot or a combination of both. Taking an Uber or cab every morning would add up to over $200 a month, at a conservative estimate.
Is it fair to ask to work from home on days when the heat index is over 100 degrees? The management team allows everyone to work from home on Fridays in the summer because it’s such a slow season. I made a joke about this to our number two person and she didn’t respond at all — it was like she pretended not to hear me. Was I overstepping the line?
Well, maybe. There are so frequently so many hot days during the summer that in a lot of offices in hot areas, this would be like asking to work from home every time it rains. That said, this kind of thing can be office-dependent. If you’re in an office that’s really flexible about working from home, and if you’re in an area that doesn’t have a ton of days with a 100+ heat index, then maybe. But if you’re somewhere where extreme heat is just a normal thing that happens during summer, then yeah, it’s probably not really a thing you can do very often, lest you look like you’re making too big a deal of relatively normal weather. (That obviously changes if there are health conditions in play.)
2. Avoiding hurt feelings over happy hour
My coworkers and I enjoy getting together for drinks/dinner every now and then, usually once a month. Typically it’s just a small group of the same six or seven people (out of a team of a dozen) and it’s never a formal thing, usually just happens spontaneously like “oh hey it’s payday on Friday, let’s go for beers!” e’ve never excluded anyone from joining us and usually make our plans known to the whole team. However, there’s this one guy, I’ll call him Fergus, who is very difficult to work with but seems totally oblivious to this fact. He spends all day complaining about his boss and his job to anyone who will listen, makes a lot of casually racist comments (one recent example: assuming that a coworker from X ethnicity knew everyone else of X ethnicity in our small city), and is generally not a fun person to be around.
The problem is, he doesn’t seem to get that his behaviour is problematic (despite being told this by nearly everyone at one point or another), and he’s REALLY eager to hang out with the rest of us after work, to the point where he sulked for a couple days after finding out a few of us had gone out for drinks the previous Friday without explicitly inviting him. He’s overly sensitive and gets frustrated easily, so even the most mild criticism or pointing out a minor mistake will send him into a tailspin of cursing under his breath and griping to everyone within earshot. It’s exhausting and makes the rest of us uncomfortable.
I don’t want to be a part of clique-ish behaviour, because I know how much it hurts to be excluded, but at the same time I’m constantly cringing at the stuff Fergus says and does. My coworkers feel the same way, but we don’t want to be jerks because at the end of the day, we still have to work with this guy. Despite how annoying he can be, his work is solid and he’s a key part of our team. We all WANT to get along with Fergus but he makes it very difficult.
We don’t want to exclude Fergus from our after-work socializing, but his presence makes it a lot less enjoyable. Is there a kind, gentle way to approach the guy and explain why we don’t want to hang out with him, or should I just be blunt and honest about his behaviour? Being frank with him has worked for me in the past (he hasn’t gone off and complained about me to others), but this might cause a meltdown if I’m not careful.
You’d be doing him and everyone else a favor if you were blunt with him and said something like, “We don’t want to exclude you but we don’t want to listen to complaints about work the whole time either — and you also need to lay off the weird racial comments.” (I worry that with the last part you’re going to invite debate from him about whether what he’s saying is racist or not, but if that happens, it’s okay to say, “I don’t want to debate this with you. I’m just telling you how it’s coming across. If you don’t want it to come across that way, lay off those comments.”)
Beyond that, a good rule of thumb is that you can hang out with coworkers outside of work without inviting everyone as long as the number of people assembling is smaller than the number of people on your team who aren’t invited. In other words, it’s fine to hang out with people you’re personally close with without inviting everyone. But once it’s open to a majority of team members, it does become cliquish and hurtful to exclude others. At that point, it becomes a situation of “tolerating annoying coworkers is part of the package if you’re doing a work happy hour.” This guy is a little different because of the casual racism, though, which is why I think your best bet is to talk to him.
3. Teased about last name
My wife and I occasionally encounter a problem with our last name. It’s the kind of name that was much longer back in the old country but was shortened in America, and now is identical to a word you would use to describe a certain kind of unpleasant person. Most people are nice enough and don’t say anything, but too often we get comments like “Oh, that doesn’t describe you at all” or “You should change it to something nicer.” Lately, a woman in my wife’s office building has taken to commenting on our name every single time they see each other. How do you tell someone to drop it?
To some extent, this is just people being people — being weird and thoughtless and awkward, often at the exact time that they’re attempting to reach out for human connection! It’s similar to what’s behind the obvious “you’re really tall” comments that tall people get.
So I don’t think you can stamp it out entirely, but certainly when someone won’t let it drop, that’s tiresome and you can say something like, “Hey, it’s time for us to have a new joke” or “okay, I think we need to retire that comment at this point” or “objections registered, let’s move on.”
4. I have IBS and my manager is hassling me about my bathroom use
I have IBS, specifically the kind that makes you have frequent diarrhea. My manager (shift supervisor so there are three tiers above her) today told me if I take another bathroom break, she would send me home and write me up. I’m not comfortable telling people as it’s a rather embarrassing issue. Can I just say I have digestive health problems? Are they even allowed to ask me about my health condition? Are they allowed to discipline me for using the bathroom once an hour when I bust my butt working so hard? I just feel like it’s a little ridiculous for me to have to tell them about it. I maybe go once an hour on bad days, every three or so hours on the good ones. I never go if the rest of the staff needs me, or if we’re busy. I make sure everyone and everything is fine before I go and I never take more than 10 minutes. I just don’t feel like I need to disclose private medical information just to avoid getting in trouble for using the bathroom.
It’s ridiculous that they’re policing your bathroom usage, based on the frequency and duration you’ve described here. But they are legally allowed to tell you that you need to be at your desk more, if they don’t realize that there’s a medical issue involved. Because of that, you’re likely to get the best outcome by explaining that. You don’t need to give details, though; it’s enough to just say, “I have a medical issue that on some days means I need to use the bathroom more frequently. Should I make an official request for formal accommodations?” Actually, you might want to skip that last part and just go ahead and make the official request, since your manager is already taking about sending you home (!) and writing you up, and it’s smart to protect yourself formally.
5. At what point do I ask to be paid for off-the-clock phone calls?
I am a manager at a company I really do love. The job is enjoyable, I like my coworkers, no complaints there. I also would say that I take myself seriously when it comes to doing my job. However, I am non-exempt and I have reached a point in my career where I feel this is interfering with my actual duties and professionalism. Since I’m collecting my pay by the hour, how do I professionally handle all the calls that come my way? I don’t mind answering a few quick off-the-clock calls, but the past few months have had my fires-put-out whilst off-the-clock at several hours a week. There are days here and there where I avoid making plans because I predict I will found myself on the phone. I have made my own personal goals of claiming I’ll avoid my work phone, but the effort never lasts. Is this ever appropriate for a non-exempt worker? If not, at what point do I demand payment, quietly clock in, or even have a discussion about moving to a salary?
The point where you expect payment is whenever you do any work. That’s what the law requires for non-exempt workers, and right now you’re putting your company in legal jeopardy by not logging that time.
Start logging it, immediately (as well as any past time that you can credibly reconstruct). And go talk to your boss and say this: “I’ve realized that I haven’t been logging the time I spent answering calls outside of work, and legally we need to. In the past month, I’ve spent X hours on calls outside of my normal work hours, so I’m adding those to my timesheet and just wanted to flag it for you.” If your boss objects to that, the solution needs to be that people stop calling you outside of your normal hours, not that you work it unpaid.
Also, it’s not necessarily to your advantage to move to salary, since it may just mean working more hours for the same pay (or close to the same point). The big issue here is just getting you and your company in compliance with the law.
You may also like:
ask the readers: should I band together with coworkers to request a different work-from-home policy?
can I ask my manager to tell sick people to stay at home?
should I invite my lonely intern over for dinner?
asking to work from home when it’s really hot out, happy hour hurt feelings, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/2N6n64X
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LSD May Help Reveal What Brings in Songs Meaningful
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New Post has been published on Irene North
New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/05/health-care-benefits-the-rich-takes-from-the-poor/
Health care benefits the rich, takes from the poor
For nearly a decade, Republicans complained the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, had been shoved down their throats. They said it was passed too quickly and no one had time to read the bill. On Thursday, May 4, the Republicans in the House of Representatives did the same thing, throwing the entire health care system into chaos.
The American Health Care Act (AHCA) was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 217-213. It is a $300 billion tax cut for the richest 2 percent of Americans. It is not health care reform.
After the vote, Senator Bernie Sanders said:
“The bill that Republicans passed today is an absolute disaster. It really has nothing to do with health care. It has everything to do with an enormous shift of wealth from working people to the richest Americans. This bill would throw 24 million people off of health insurance – including thousands of Vermonters – cut Medicaid by $880 billion, defund Planned Parenthood and substantially increase premiums on older Americans. Meanwhile, it would provide a $300 billion tax break to the top 2 percent and hundreds of billions more to the big drug and insurance companies that are ripping off the American people. Our job now is to rally millions of Americans against this cruel bill to make sure that it does not pass the Senate. Instead of throwing tens of millions of people off of health insurance, we must guarantee health care as a right to all.”
If you are a Trump and/or Republican supporter, you were conned. You now have a hard, and difficult, lesson to learn. For two years, I’ve been patient when speaking to you. I’m sick and tired of heartless bastards who don’t want to help their fellow man.
You are going to lose your health care because you didn’t want to take the time learn how the ACA works, nor did you appreciate its benefits and protections. Rather than fixing and improving the flawed ACA, Republicans are dismantling it, returning America to a time when medical bankruptcy was common and tens of thousands died each year because they could not afford care. Republicans who still believe this won’t affect them will not receive any sympathy when it happens to them.
You are uneducated. You consistently vote against your own interests. Voting for people who told you they were going to take away your health care is only one drop in the ocean of lies you have believed. They don’t care about you.
To the family with the autistic child who said their child would always be taken care of. I told you so.
To the family with the child with cerebral palsy who said they weren’t racist and Trump was going to make sure their child would have health coverage and special education classes, I told you so.
To the cancer survivors. You now have a pre-existing condition and the ACHA won’t cover you. I told you so.
Political Commentator Robert Reich also commented
“America has the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. Private for-profit health insurers do whatever they can to insure groups of healthy people, because that’s where the profits are. They also make every effort to avoid sick people, because that’s where the costs are.
“The Affordable Care Act puts healthy and sick people into the same insurance pool. But under the Republican bill that just passed the House, healthy people will no longer be subsidizing sick people.
“Healthy people will be in their own insurance pool. Sick people will be grouped with other sick people in their own high-risk pool – which will result in such high premiums, co-payments, and deductibles that many if not most won’t be able to afford the cost.”
Tom Edsall’s column in the New York Times explains why it is unlikely Trump supporters will listen. They don’t respond to evidence. They respond to emotion. Trump and the Republicans know how to manipulate those emotions so the people they harm will still point their fingers and place the blame on the liberals.
Fox News has been quick to jump on that bandwagon, stating that health care for people with pre-existing conditions is a luxury.
According to CBS News, the top 11 states with the highest percentage of people that have pre-existing conditions all voted for President Trump. In Louisiana, 30 percent of people under the age of 65 have a pre-existing condition.
Larry Levitt, of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, says the bill “does not automatically eliminate coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.”
“What this bill would do is unleash debates in 50 state capitals around the country about whether people with pre-existing conditions should really be covered and protected,” he said.
The AHCA also eliminates the 10 essential benefits of Obamacare – outpatient care, emergency room trips, in-hospital care, pregnancy, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services, lab tests, preventive services, and pediatric services.
If you’re a man and you don’t want to pay for pregnancy, maternity and newborn care because you’ll never use it. Yeah, you did. Your children had this care. Your wife had this care. You were once a baby. Your mother made sure you had the best start in life and now you want to wave a big “fuck you” to anyone else who’d like the same thing you had.
Anyone still curious why erectile dysfunction is covered in Trumpcare/AHCA but sexual asslt, rape, C-sections & postpartum depression r not? pic.twitter.com/jlpdDNF0HS
— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) May 5, 2017
The MacArthur Meadows Amendment allows states to opt out of some essential health benefits requirements as well as the requirement that insurers not charge more for people with pre-existing conditions.
The bill’s MacArthur Meadows Amendment would allow states to permit insurance companies to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. Bizarrely, the term “pre-existing condition” applies to sexual assault, postpartum depression, C-sections, and victims of domestic violence…
Ironically, the Amendment itself states, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to discriminate in rates for health insurance coverage by gender.”
Who is going to report a rape or sexual assault if it means you’ll later be denied vital medical care?
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said he is considering opting the state out.
The Upton Amendment, sets $8 billion aside for high risk pools. CNN cited the national average of Americans with pre-existing conditions is 27 percent. There are nearly 325 million Americans. 27 percent * 325 million = 87.75 million. That’s $91.17 or, split over five years as the bill proposes, is $18.23 per year. That’s what the House of Representatives has set aside to help out people with pre-existing conditions.
That’s enough for a bottle of Tylenol to take the edge off the pain of being screwed over by your government and your fellow man who supports this bill.
Defenders of this garbage believe in the philosophy that you failed as a human being by being sick. They say you should live a healthy lifestyle, practice preventative health and save using HSAs while contributing to a catastrophic plan. Again, they place the blame squarely on the sick person.
None of this is going to prevent you from a faulty liver or genetic kidney defect. It’s not going keep you from getting MS, lupus, asthma or a long list of other conditions, many of which can kill you without proper treatment.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said Trump “will own every preventable death.”
“It represents fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and even newborn babies with heart diseases or cancers that are too costly to treat without affordable insurance,” he said.
Perez also slammed the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill for exempting members of Congress and their staffs from losing the healthcare bill’s popular provisions.
“As if this attack on ordinary Americans weren’t reprehensible enough, Republicans in Congress might keep ObamaCare’s best protections for themselves and their staffers, as they rip them away from their own constituents.”
Paul Ryan said in 2009 about how the ACA was passed. The AHCA has held no hearings, there have been no studies, the CBO analysis is not complete and the text of the bill was only circulated 16 hours before voting. So who actually read the bill?
https://youtu.be/3mtZ60AvDQY#t=8m04s
Thomas Garrett, admitted on MSNBC he had not read the bill and his staff in his office read all the parts of the bill. Joe Barton said nobody really knows how much the bill was going to cost.
Is the ACA perfect? No, but it has a 65 percent approval rating and can be improved. The Republicans refused to do that, instead, voting for health care plans that will be unaffordable.
The GOP took health bill that had the approval of 17 percent of the American people, went back to the drawing board, and made it even worse.
— Al Franken (@alfranken) May 5, 2017
Our society is broken. We no longer have empathy for and are not willing to help our fellow man. It is literally killing us. Our life expectancy is decreasing, projected to be on par with Mexico by 2030. We lead shorter, less healthy lives than people in other high-income countries.
I’m still of the belief that no matter how ignorant and hateful you are, I will continue looking out for you and for the betterment of society. The basic necessities should never have to be a choice between food and medication.
That means as a childless American, I pay taxes so others are educated. I pay taxes so I can be assured the police and fire departments are there when/if I need them. I pay taxes for the ACA so people poorer and sicker than me don’t die. I pay taxes so a child doesn’t go hungry. This is my participation in civilized society.
If we continue down this backward path, our nation will crumble. No one can predict what their health is going to be like. We ought to be lifting one another up and making sure everyone is taken care of rather than living by the motto, “I’ve got mine, so screw you.”
Take a good look at the Republicans who voted for this bill. They are the real death panel. Hold them accountable.
If you want to learn more, follow this link to more articles or check out this list of things that weren’t widely reported in the media.
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