Michael DeForge is one of the artists at the forefront of the growing Canadian comics scene borne out of the efforts of publishers like Drawn and Quarterly, Koyama Press, and Conundrum Press. The 29-year-old Ottawa native (and occasional VICE contributor) covers subjects that are often neglected in comics, like identity, sexuality, politics, and race. He renders these issues in his ever-evolving style, which stretches from the delicate cartooning of 2013's Very Casual to the abstract and untethered art of 2015's Dressing. In addition to his books, zines, and gig posters for punk bands like Speedy Ortiz, Bully, and Creep Highway, the prolific DeForge has worked as a writer and designer on the beloved TV series Adventure Time.

This month Drawn and Quarterly releases a hardcover collection of one of DeForge's longest ongoing stories, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero. Initially self-published online in 2013, the strip follows erstwhile Olympian, newspaper columnist, and libertarian Sticks and her trails and tribulations in the Canadian wild, where she's fled after a scandal involving her politician father. There, our independent-minded hero becomes embroiled in the emotionally dramatic lives of an eccentric woodland crew: an anxious, PDA-obsessed geese; a lovelorn grain rabbit; and a lonely moose named after real-life cartoonist (and DeForge's friend) Lisa Hanawalt, who wants nothing more than to assume Sticks's identity as a sweater-wearing woman. I recently caught up with DeForge before his seven-city book tour to talk about his enigmatic new release, Canadian mythology, and Adventure Time.

VICE: Sticks Angelika was the first long-form weekly comic you did after Any Colony. What did you want to do differently with this one?
Michael DeForge: I kind of just wanted to do everything differently. Ant Colony was originally done as 11x17 pages, so I thought with this one I want to make it look more like a traditional strip. I didn't want to do full color anymore. I always knew I wanted it to be like Mark Trail—like those ongoing adventure-y strips that had like facts about nature. It was also influenced by Shrimpy and Paul. I liked how it had that gentle, goofy, Canadian vibe to it.

A lot of the way I conceived Sticks Angelica changed from how it started out to be. I started it thinking I didn't want to expressly do a young adult-comic, but I thought in my head, This could be my funny YA comic. But then as I kept going it transformed into something else and I was like, "Yeah, no regular 15-year-old actually wants to read this." I think it was all age-appropriate, so it could be a young adult book in that respect. But at some point there's like an eel talking about his brother committing suicide… The whole premiss is about a 50-year-old woman retreating to the woods. That's not necessarily teen-friendly material.

How does what you're going though in your own life affect the intentions of the comic when you're writing it on a weekly basis?
Because I don't plot anything out in advance, I try to just go with it. It's a reason why I like the weekly thing. Doing things in small chunks, you're sort of forced to be more open to changes in your life, than if you just had a super-strict script. If I just had like one project that I'd be working on in secret for like a year or two—which I've never really done—I think I'd get bored of it really quickly. Hosting it publicly in small portions—it feels more freeing to me because it can just be whatever it needs to be at any given moment. It also feels like it mimics the rhythms of real life when it's like that.

Were there specific points that you remember feeling a big change in your life and then you saw it appear in the work?
Oh yeah, totally! I feel like when I was starting out there would be more of a delay between something that happened in my life and when I'm clearly sorting that out in my work. It would always be like a year or two after it's published and I'd realize, "Oh, all right. I see what I was clumsily working through." But now I feel like it's a lot more immediate.

You've written yourself into a lot of your previous comics. But in this one, the character of Michael DeForge plays a much more prominent role. What was the motivation for including yourself, or even referencing your friends like fellow cartoonist (and VICE contributor) Lisa Hanawalt?
Well, I put myself in comics a lot, but I don't really have plans to do a straight autobiographical comic. I like writing fictional versions of myself where I'm exaggerating one aspect of myself. I did it in a comic about being biracial, and then I did it in a comic about joining a littering cult.

Lisa Hanawalt was very generous to let me do that character. I knew I wanted to write this moose character, and as I was designing it—I think if I'm just drawing an anthropomorphized moose, it's hard to do without feeling like I'm doing a worse version of a Lisa Hanawalt drawing. So I asked Lisa, "Hey, would you be cool if I just named this character after you, in tribute to you and the influence your work has had on this?" And she was cool with it. In the comic, there's also a Zacchilli forest that I named after Mickey Zacchilli. It's kind of nice to have little Easter eggs in the book.

Image courtesy of Michael DeForge

Your depiction of Canada really plays off of this mythologized idea of the country that people who aren't Canadian have. What gave you the inspiration to depict Canada the way that you have in your work?
I think it's always funny the way Canadians try to define themselves. I think we wrongly think our lack of identity is our identity, or something. I like to think of it as "alternate-universe Canada" with me just playing up the aspect of the nature stuff. The Spotting Deer and Sticks are both about Canadians and our relationship with landscape and nature. But obviously Canadian Royalty was hitting at something different, and The Prime Minister of Canada was hitting at something different, too. I think because I don't have a clear idea of what being Canadian is, the stories are kind of a way of trying to unpack a few of those ideas.

In a lot of your recent work there's this repeating theme of political conspiracies. Where has that come from?
I like writing about a lot of these sort of hidden systems that people find themselves in. So that stuff ended up just naturally figuring it's way into things. People bristling up against these very complex structures that they can only ever see the edges of, and I usually finish the stories without them fully understanding.

With the conspiracy theories, I feel like that's just in the air a lot lately. A lot more than I ever anticipated. I used to listen to a lot of Coast to Coast AM and was just awake all of the time growing up. I wouldn't have been able to predict how mainstream a lot of conspiracy stuff has gotten. It's upsetting. It's just worked its way into my comics.

Photo by Matthew James-Wilson

How do you choose which stories you want put up online for free or save for a book?
I'm at a point now where I know everything I do could eventually be a book. Which sort of sucks. I didn't always have that. It was cool to make a weird zine and just think, This will never exist in a different format, or, This will only be a strip online. But I've been collecting stuff for a while now that, even if a project is initially conceived like that, I can't help but in the back of my head think of how it might be formatted in a bigger collection. But I try not to think of that until the end.

You were also working on Adventure Time the whole time you were making this book. Was it difficult to manage both?
It's always really difficult to balance something that pays and something that doesn't. But I do like doing both. I feel like, especially doing design for animation, it's a very different type of drawing than comics. My comics are all so flattened out, and on Adventure Time, with all of the designs I have to think three-dimensionally. It almost felt just like I was using a different part of my brain. Sometimes working on one is a needed break from working on the other.

With Adventure Time coming to an end now, what are you and the other writers and artists feeling right now?
I think we're all just scrambling. There are other shows staffing up. Because there are so many comics people on the show, I am a little curious as to how many people stick with animation. I have no idea what I'm doing. I hope something works out. I think that's the case with everyone. For some people it's upsetting not to have a plan, and for some people it's fine. For me, I'm constantly swinging between not worrying about it to being worried about nothing else.

It's really sad that it's ending. I might not ever make a living drawing again. I've always tried to be realistic about that. I'm also incredibly grateful that they gave me a shot to begin with. I didn't have formal animation training, so they took a real chance on me. It's been the best job I've ever had.

What are you working on now?
Well, I started a daily strip called Leaving Richard's Valley. I have two ongoing projects that I've been putting out through my Patreon. One of them is called Meat Locker, which is all about personal trainers, and the other is a graphic novel called Brat, which I think when it's done will be the longest steady narrative I've ever done.

Follow Matthew James-Wilson on Instagram.

Sticks Angelina by Michael DeForge will be published on March 21 by Drawn and Quarterly.

A lawyer's pants reportedly caught fire at a Miami courthouse Wednesday while he was about to deliver the closing arguments in an arson case, the Miami Herald reports.

According to the Herald, attorney Stephen Gutierrez was about to make the case that his client, Claudy Charles, didn't set his car on fire intentionally, like he was accused of doing, but instead the car spontaneously combusted, as cars are wont to do.

Gutierrez started fiddling around in his pocket and smoke began rising from pocket, like something out of a Jim Carey movie, and he quickly ran from the courtroom.

The jury was removed, and Gutierrez came back with a singed pocket but no injuries. He told the judge that the fire was the result of a faulty vape pen battery and that it was not a planned demonstration to get an alleged arsonist out of jail. Planned or accident, Charles was convicted of second-degree arson anyway.

Now Gutierrez is the one under investigation. Apparently the police are looking into the fiery episode and have already seized several frayed e-cigarette batteries from Gutierrez as evidence. If there is enough evidence that this was a pre-planned stunt, Gutierrez could be charged with contempt of court and wind up in some seriously hot water.

Before anyone starts thinking that Gutierrez is some inept prankster, it should be noted that e-cigarettes do have a habit of meeting explosive demises. There have been reports of them exploding in one man's face and blowing a hole in another dude's tongue. Just last month, one caused third-degree burns after exploding in another guy's pocket.

A court awarded an LA woman $1.9 million after she sued the manufacturer of a battery that exploded and burned her while she was a passenger in a car, so maybe Gutierrez would fare better bringing a class-action suit against bum vape pen batteries.

For a huge chunk of American history, whites gathered in town squares and other public spaces to murder black people under the auspices of punishing them for crimes they often had not committed. Sometimes, these vigilantes didn't even bother with the pretense of alleged wrongdoing and simply hanged people to terrorize African-Americans in their communities, asserting their dominance in the aftermath of slavery. By one recent and deeply researched estimate, some 4,000 lives were claimed by this extralegal savagery in Southern states alone between 1877 and 1950.

That might seem like ancient history in an era when Barack Obama has just finished serving two terms as president of the of United States. But with hate crimes believed to be on the rise and the Trump administration poised to pull back on programs that benefit the poor and minorities in an alleged attempt to "Make America Great Again," it's an important chapter in the long and brutal story of race in the United States.

In their new documentary An Outrage, which premieres at the Smithsonian's History Film Forum on March 11 as part of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance project, Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren try to show the next generation how bad things once were. The idea is that teachers might lean on the film in an era of renewed white resentment to show their students how far we've come—and why we can never go back.

The 30-minute film was shot at six lynching site in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia with descendants of victims, community activists and historians. VICE recently chatted with the filmmakers about why it's important—now, as much as ever—that Americans reflect on their destructive history, how the story of lynching in particular is useful in understanding racial power dynamics, and what it all means in the Trump era.

Here's what they had to say.

VICE: I imagine some young Americans—especially whites—will struggle to wrap their heads around lynching. Can you talk about what it entailed, what it looked like?
Lance Warren: In the century after a horrific war fought first for union and then to destroy slavery, thousands of women, men, and children—the nation's newest citizens, of a caste despised for centuries—were murdered, because they sought freedom, in the United States of America. Many thousands of African Americans perished at the hands of lynchers in the South over the century after the Civil War. Those killed were young men and old, veterans, newlyweds, children, pregnant women, uncles, aunts. They were brothers and fathers, sisters and best friends. They were human beings, every single one.

Lynching wasn't only hanging, and it wasn't only perpetrated by redneck mobs or the KKK. In town squares and deep in the woods, in secret and on public display, white men, women, and children of all social classes participated in the kidnapping, mutilation, and killing of African Americans said to have committed serious crimes—or minor affronts on white honor. What defines lynching is killing that took place outside of the legal system, and killing that was socially-sanctioned—lynchers weren't punished, and many were applauded, even rewarded. At the height of the lynching epidemic, in the 1890s, one African American was killed somewhere in the South every four days.

So why did you make the film—was it simply about moving forward from the injustices in American history? If so, how do we go about that?
Lance Warren: Bridging that gap won't be easy or without discomfort. After all, as Isabel Wilkerson acknowledges in our film, "Who would want to think about these awful things?" But like her, we know that facing history is both necessary and full of promise. If we seek the strength that would come from a shared vision of the future, it will not reduce us to honestly confront the ugliness of our past. In fact, it will make that future more attainable, because we will no longer be hampered in our pursuit of it by mistrust, doubt, resentment, and fear. By facing the awfulness done by Americans who came before us, identifying the behaviors and biases within us all that perpetuate the pain of those acts, and discussing how to remember and rise above that past, we can do better. We can be better.

Given the widespread practice of lynching—which was not just a Southern thing—how did you decide where, geographically, to film? You could have gone to hundreds or even thousands of locations, right?
Hannah Ayers: The six states we filmed in represent a snapshot of the long and geographically varied history of lynching. One thing we learned early on in our research is that there is no "typical" lynching. The six sites we chose help to illustrate the complexity of lynching, and its pervasiveness. These violent acts occurred in rural areas and town squares, in secret and as public spectacles, in the Delta, Appalachia, and busy cities. When deciding where to film, our focus was on identifying individuals for whom this history has a personal resonance: a descendant of a lynching victim, a descendant of a black newspaper editor who protested lynchings, a community activist working to memorialize this history, a pastor, a volunteer at a genealogy library. Many of these individuals grew up in communities where lynchings took place, and they're working to memorialize this history and remember the victims.

Can you talk at all about lynching's importance given the conversations we've been having about race in America over the past few years?
Lance Warren: If for no other reason, we should know from watching news footage of protests over the last several years that the roots of racial tension run deep. But we may not understand why. Our film tries to answer this question, revealing not only the long-hidden history of lynching, but also the culture of fear, the ambivalence over the value of black lives, and the persistence of violence that has led so many—today, and for generations—to demand an end to the status quo. If your ancestors were tortured, murdered, and then forgotten—and perhaps they were—wouldn't you be angry? Wouldn't you demand redress? Why shouldn't we all?

The history of lynching is disturbing, but we shouldn't see it as controversial: There are no legitimately conflicting points of view about lynching. But we say as much if we find it too troubling to teach, too ugly for polite conversation. We perpetuate forgetfulness when we refuse to remember. "Black lives matter moments have been prevalent in our history," historian Yohuru Williams observes in An Outrage. "And it's our inability to recognize the 'wound crying out' that puts us in this endless cycle of every generation growing up in the shadow of some black brutalized body." He notes, "My parents grew up in the shadow of Emmett Till; I grew up in the shadow of Yusef Hawkins; my son will grow up in the shadow of James Byrd and Trayvon Martin. When does that stop?"

Hannah Ayers: Tragically, it's the perfect time [for this film] because there's finally more awareness that black people are being brutalized and dehumanized—and that this is not a new phenomenon. Black families have endured centuries of violence; this is why Black Lives Matter is a necessary movement. One of the historians we interviewed, Jonathan Holloway, argues that forgetting our history is a luxury that whites can afford, but blacks can't. "And if you have that luxury," he notes, "the problem is that a system can keep repeating itself, because no one remembers to say, 'Wait a second—we're doing the same things all over again.'" It's dangerous to see a video showing the killing of an unarmed black person—and think this is new—and not recognize its echoes throughout American history.

How is modern police violence connected to lynching?
Hannah Ayers: One of the scholars we interview in the film, Isabel Wilkerson, explains it best. She notes that the rate of African Americans being killed today is similar to the rate of African Americans being lynched in the early 20th century. "That is a heartbreaking symmetry of public attack," she says, "on people who had been in the lowest caste from the time of the founding of the country." "Symmetry" is an astute word to use here. Lynchings and shootings of unarmed black men are not the same, of course, but we should grapple with their symmetries. Both involve fears of black men and an assumption that they are violent. Both relate to dangerous power dynamics and a desire for social control. And tragically, both are allowed to persist because of widespread public complacency.

What's the ideal reaction to this film for you—what kind of impact do you reasonably expect given the power dynamics in national and state government and the sort of White-lash that's going on?
Hannah Ayers: We hope our film will serve as a hub for action. We've seen that the best documentaries serve as rallying points for people who care about an issue, want to educate other community members, and then organize for change. And due to the work of the Equal Justice Initiative, as well as historians, authors, faith groups, and activists, more and more communities are slowly becoming aware of lynchings that took place in their town squares and backyards. A big part of our outreach effort will be partnering with groups to make the film available for screenings and give them tools for spurring discussion about how best to recognize the history of racial violence in their community. We also see great potential in changing minds and spurring action through making the film available for use in middle school, high school, and college classrooms.

We're very fortunate that the Southern Poverty Law Center is partnering with us to incorporate the film into their Teaching Tolerance program. Teaching Tolerance offers teachers curricula and educational materials so they can incorporate lessons around equality and justice into their classrooms. An Outrage will be a significant component of a new initiative to empower teachers to teach America's racial history, including slavery and its legacies. Our goal from the outset was to find a partner who could get the film into classrooms—and we specifically wanted to work with Southern Poverty Law Center. Our partnership means that the film and a complementary curriculum will be freely available to nearly 500,000 teachers and the millions of students they teach.

Learn more about An Outrage here.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

Pictured above: Dr. Fostenia Baker is the great niece of Frazier B. Baker, a postmaster in Lake City, South Carolina, who was lynched with his infant daughter, Julia, on February 22, 1898.

Víctor Damián Rozo claims to be the very son of the devil and has built a temple in Colombia dedicated to worshiping Satan. More than ten years ago, Rozo renounced his Catholic religion to give his life to Lucifer, who he considers to be the only true god. Since then, his mission has been to recruit Luciferian parishioners, congregate them in his temple, and link their souls with the devil. 

On this episode of 'VICE INTL,' we traveled to Rozo's temple to be initiated in a bombastic ceremony of satanist purification.

Access the entire world of VICE in our app. Download for iOS here and Android here.

The Rob Ford era in Toronto was a time unlike any other. It all started with an elusive cell phone video of our jolly, rosy-faced mayor smoking crack. And with that, a media frenzy erupted. Suddenly, the entire world had its eyes on Canada's largest city as they watched the Rob Ford story continue to unfold into a slew of increasingly bizarre events.

Ford died last year from a rare form of cancer, ending the strangest Toronto saga of our lifetime. But for those few years before his death, combined with the rising popularity of Drake, Toronto went through some sort of deranged golden age—even Americans were finally starting to pay attention to us. And now, though the years of our crack-smoking mayor are behind us, the definitive crime comedy of Toronto has been captured in the form of a fictional movie.

VICE spoke to Andy King [Editor's note: King previously worked at VICE's Toronto studio as a producer for VICELAND], the director of the new Rob Ford-inspired movie aptly named Filth City, about the strange times of Toronto, getting a "death threat" from Doug Ford, and the everlasting legacy of our late mayor. The film premieres on March 25 at Scotiabank Theatre during Canadian Film Fest.

VICE: Why did you want to take on the task of making a movie about Rob Ford so soon after this happened?
Andy King: I'm a fan of crime comedies in particular... I don't think there's enough, and I wanted to do something that was authentically Canadian. One of my big influences was The Wire, and I love how The Wire taught you about the city you never knew about, Baltimore. You learn about the city through their fiction. I wanted to do a crime story, but not just set some generic city… I wanted to make it authentically Toronto, that's me… The Ford story was on the front page every day. You have the mayor of the city running around like a gangster, acting like Scarface, and it just started to influence the writing, and this is what came out.

What was it like for you personally as someone from Toronto living through the Rob Ford saga?
It was crazy, it was a really insane time. What's interesting about it is that there has really been a breakdown in social norms in society in the last few years. For thousands of years, social norms have kept people in check. There's a set of values that make it so you wouldn't say that, or you wouldn't do that—it would be disqualifying. I think Rob Ford was one of the earlier examples of, across North American culture, that you could violate norms and get away with it if you were likable enough and were a straight shooter. There's a lot of similarities to the Trump thing now that we see that.

I have this theory about it that Toronto is a very cool city—we're the fourth-largest city in North America [by population]. We're a cool city, but we just don't feel like we're cool. I feel like the whole Rob Ford thing was this moment on the international stage where we got to be the bad boy a little bit… I think we kind of appreciated that attention internationally on our city, regardless of the negativity. We just thought this is interesting, it shows a different side to our city, there's a lot going on you don't know about. That helped forge this different identity of Toronto. Back in the 40s and 50s, Toronto was called "Toronto the Good"... This was a whole new era for us… Every day there was a new story that was more outrageous than the last one, and the more I read about it, it was even harder to believe. He was literally hanging out with gangsters and partying with them on a regular basis, and it's highly unusual for a mayor to do that.

Rob Ford himself is a fascinating character. I always respected the fact that he gave his cell phone number out to constituents… He's really kind of approachable, really down to earth. I think that's why people love him. We called him to see if he would make a cameo in the movie. It didn't happen, but when we called and explained what we were doing he was like, "Oh cool, I'll think about it." He was nice about it. He was a charming guy. For all everyone says about him, the moment when he brought the reggae into city council and was dancing more than anyone else, it was wild. There's something about him you can't help but like.

How do you feel about Doug Ford calling you a "scumbag"? Are you expecting more negative response when the movie premieres?
I was shocked. I woke up and saw he called us "scumbags," profiteers, disgusting people… The language was just over the top. Worse was he threatened to run me over with a car. Yesterday at lunch [on CP24], he issued a death threat to me. He said I better not be crossing the street when he is driving, or he'll run me down… I think it's just completely outrageous to say you're going to commit vehicular manslaughter against someone for making an indie film. It's hard enough to make an indie film in Toronto without the mayor's brother all over your ass.

The irony is that this is not a takedown piece on Ford in any way. It's just a fun, exciting action comedy with his character at the centre. The reaction not just from Doug, but from his supporters… You haven't even seen the movie, you don't know what it's about.

The garbage strike is also part of the movie, right? Why did you decide to include that?
I've lived through a couple of garbage strikes. There was one in 09 and one in 02. In 02, there was one that was just crazy. It only lasted something like 16 days, but it was in the middle of the summer. Mel Lastman was the mayor and went through a really vitriol battle with the head of the union responsible for garbage removal. He was calling them irresponsible and morally bankrupt, all of these things for allowing it to happen. It was so surreal because, in one week, it just exposed how filthy the city was, there was garbage and bugs everywhere. Christie Pits [Park] became an impromptu dumping ground at the time, just mountains of garbage next to the kids' playground. It was apocalyptic in a way, it just fascinated me. The mood of the city changed so much… I had the name Filth City, and I thought of the garbage strike, and I thought it would be a nice connection.

At what point were you at with the movie when Rob Ford died?
We had already shot the whole thing. That was a shock. To be honest, people said, "What are you going to do now?" My own feeling was that he couldn't die. He just seemed like the type of personality that could beat anything. It was just a real shock for everyone that he didn't make it, that he was that sick. It was tragic. It really is.

I don't blame Doug for being upset and protective of his brother, but I think it's ridiculous to call us scumbags for making a movie about a public figure. He affected all of our lives in the city, in the country. Those kinds of situations, we connect with each other through public figures and our reactions to them, the cast of characters in our collective lives. There's different rules about public figures than private people when it comes to anything… The reason for that is that they become part of our collective identity. I think for us to make a film that is inspired by that or influenced by it, there's nothing wrong with it.

READ MORE: We Went to Rob Ford's Post-Funeral Party to Hear the Best and Worst Ford Stories

When Rob Ford died, many people were discussing how, looking back at it, this guy had a really serious problem with alcohol and other drugs. Considering that, do you feel bad about making a film about him?
No, not at all. What I've said before too is that if anything, this showcases the dark power of drugs, the disruptiveness of addiction. Truthfully, the character's conflict in the movie is a direct result of his addiction. If he hadn't been addicted and sort of overstepping the line, none of these consequences would have happened to him. At the same time, the character (played by Canadian actor Pat Thorton and named "Tom Hogg" in the movie) is likeable, just like Ford. It's maybe an antihero. It's not in any way a villain; it's just someone who is trying to solve a problem.

As far as addiction goes, I'm a nicotine addict, I understand that mentality in a way. The way I saw it is when you're an addict, the thought processes just keep going. There's not a reflection in the mirror like, Who am I? What am I doing? You see that a lot in movies. But for a lot of addicts' lives, it's just business as usual... The way I saw Ford is he just kept going, just tunnel vision. For him, it's like he worked all the time and he partied all the time, and they got kind of stuck together… And in a satirical way, the film shows that dark side of addiction.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter .

South Korea's corrupt system of business and politics is going on trial—again.

On Thursday a court case dubbed "the trial of the century" began, with the heir apparent to the Samsung empire facing charges of bribery and embezzlement. The case is inextricably linked to that of disgraced President Park Geun-hye, whose own future will be decided this week when an eight judge panel decides whether she should be removed from office.

While the trial of Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong will be closely scrutinized by the hundreds of thousands of people who crowded Seoul's streets late last year to call for the impeachment of their president, experts believe that this is simply history repeating itself.

There may be some short-term impact, including bringing shame on the company and its founding family, but ultimately, business and politics in Korea will continue as normal.

Continue reading on VICE News

Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker are both planning to skip Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day parade after the organizers voted to bar a group of gay veterans from participating, the New York Times reports.

Walsh even issued a statement on Twitter urging residents of America's most Irish city to skip the parade as well. "I will not tolerate discrimination in our city in any form," he wrote Wednesday.

Governor Baker echoed the sentiment on Wednesday, telling reporters, "If veterans' groups aren't allowed to march in that parade for whatever reason, then I'll probably do something else."

The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council—which organizes the annual parade held in the city's traditionally Irish Southie neighborhood—voted nine to four on Tuesday night to bar the group OutVets from participating. OutVets, which represents LGBTQ veterans, had been able to march for the past two years without any objections.

The Allied War Veterans Council's code of conduct doesn't explicitly ban gay groups from participating, but "will not allow the advertisement or display of one's sexual orientation as a topic that should in any way be depicted as a theme of our parade."

OutVets founder Bryan Bishop told the Times that organizers said that the group's logo was in violation of the policy because it includes a rainbow insignia. "They said people felt that rainbows represent the gay community," Bishop said. "I told them if that's the case, then every picture of a rainbow in the parade that leads to a pot of gold needs to be removed."

Aside from Walsh and Baker refusing to attend, Boston city council member Michael Flaherty called those who voted against OutVets "nitwits" and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey said he would also skip the parade unless OutVets is allowed to participate.

Fallout from the vote was immediate. Dan Magoon, executive director of Fallen Heroes, resigned as the parade's marshal after the vote, the supermarket chain Stop & Shop dropped out as a sponsor, and Anheuser-Busch is "reevaluating" its sponsorship of the event. According to the Associate Press, the backlash has caused parade organizers to plan an emergency meeting for Friday to reconsider the controversial vote.

It's hard to live down a role like Bella Swan. The enigmatic lead character of the Twilight "saga" was less a fully fleshed-out human than a series of loosely justified motivations on which to attach one's own desires. For young women, she was everything they were, feeling everything they felt, living out a fantasy. When Kristen Stewart was chosen to play Bella in the film franchise, she'd already had an impressive body of work, having acted in films by David Fincher, Jon Favreau, Sean Penn, David Gordon Green, and more. Her jump to the fore as the central character in the adaptation of a incredibly popular YA novel presented Stewart with a massive public profile: an opportunity, but also a curse.

If Twilight made Kristen Stewart a star, then it was also responsible for a serious underestimation of her talent. Whatever you think of the franchise, it's hard to argue that they were bastions of artistic worth. Frequently overwrought dialogue and an often-troubling gender and sexual dynamic tinged every performance with a degree of bad camp. Outside the realm of the series's young female fans, Stewart became something of a joke in the eyes of most moviegoers. Her stilted delivery of impossible-to-speak lines, her consistent mannerisms—every Kristen Stewart impression begins with pushing one's bangs aside and stammering a little—and her usually dour expression stuck in the public imagination, representing the worst of modern star acting.

Setting aside the sexist undertones of Stewart detractors, what we find is a critical public unwilling to imagine an actress outside the confines of her YA presence. Added to that is an utter inability to grant Stewart some agency in her own acting choices. It's not that she had difficult material and her acting choices failed to overcome that material, but simply that she herself must be a bad actress. But to look at her filmography before, during, and after Twilight is to witness a young star with great talent and an intelligent eye for quality. She's not merely attaching herself to great filmmakers, but defining, throughout her career, a consistent vision of realism in performance.

Stewart's recent work with French director Olivier Assayas in Clouds of Sils Maria and the upcoming Personal Shopper have often been written about as a classic "artist and his muse" partnership. It's a romantic idea of artistic creation, but an antiquated one, and not at all accurate. To watch Stewart in Assayas's films is to watch an actress absolutely command the screen with her presence—every facet of her character's interiority is brought to life in the smallest movements and stutters. She is as much the auteur as he is, completely in control of the reality the audience sees. In Personal Shopper, Stewart often finds herself acting against text messages on her phone, and it's just about the most riveting bit of performance this year.

Of course, Stewart has always been great, going back to her performance opposite Jodie Foster in Panic Room, where she made a huge impression against one of the best American actresses of the past 40 years. The year after Twilight came out, Stewart starred opposite Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland, breathing a depth into her character, Em, which very well might have been lost in the hands of less capable actress. Though she's not exactly the main character of the film, she never allows herself to get sidelined by the film's dude-centric appeal. Her character is, on paper, a nerd's damaged dream girl, but she never plays it that way. Em's tragedies are her own, as are her desires, and Stewart makes sure of that. She will not be defined by her male love interest, but by her own startling, complex sense of self—something that comes through in every glance and every pause.

What Stewart has that so many actors of her generation lack is a perfect sense for naturalism. Last year, Stewart had a supporting role in Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a drama that the director shot in 3D at 120 frames per second. At five times the normal frame rate, Billy Lynn sought to immerse audiences in total realism. At that frame rate the screen practically becomes a window into the scene. But realism has costs. Besides shining a sharp, glaring light on some skimpy production values, Ang Lee's choice did a massive disservice to his actors by making even the smallest moments of unrealistic behavior or dialogue seem like the product of terrible acting. A format geared to absolute realism demands absolute realism, which is hard to deliver. The only performance to come out of Billy Lynn unscathed is Stewart's. Every scene of hers is a wonder of naturalism on the screen, drawing the audience in the way she would in any other format, expressing in those added frames the most subtle expressions of mood and emotion, as though she were a real person sitting right in front of you.

It takes an amazing level of intelligence and self-assuredness to jump into a project like Billy Lynn knowing you can deliver the goods, but Stewart has proven quite adept at finding the projects that bring out her best qualities. In Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, sadly overlooked last year amid all the awards-season clutter, Stewart plays the disarming object of affection for another woman. Her character's self-centeredness does nothing to suppress her obvious allure, made potent by the simplest of acting choices, like the way she wipes her mouth without unwrapping the diner napkin from the cutlery. And in a recent sketch on Saturday Night Live, about Totino's Pizza Rolls of all things, the thrust of the joke comes from Stewart's disarming nature. She brings her distinct realism to bear on a cheesy Super Bowl commercial, transforming the ad into a French, lesbian, art-house drama with the power of her stare.

If it seems like too much to claim Kristen Stewart is one of the best actresses of her generation, it's only because those old associations remain in the mind. Never mind that. By the end of the Twilight series, Stewart's comfort in the role made her easily the most compelling figure on the screen. Reach past that moment in Stewart's career, and you'll find a young actress whose instincts as a performer are unmatched, and whose ability to capture an audience's attention while lifting up everything and everyone around her is a sign of both her strength and generosity. With Personal Shopper coming out, and more great work on the horizon, if Twilight had caused you to dismiss Kristen Stewart, it's time for another look.

Follow Corey Atad on Twitter.

When a TV show is boring, it's like watching paint dry. But when a TV show is as massively popular as Game of Thrones, fans will happily tune in to watch just about anything. Case and point: Thousands of people tuned into HBO's Facebook Live Thursday in anticipation for the show's season seven release date, which will be revealed once a massive block of ice has been melted from a few flame throwers.

The show's Facebook page is asking fans to type "fire" and "dacarys" in the comments section in an attempt to melt the ice block faster. After enough comments, blasts of fire shoot at the ice. And, after enough blasts of fire, the ice will melt, and the date will finally be revealed.

The block isn't as large as the wall, but after half an hour, it had barely melted at all, so there's no knowing how long it could take. Still, the stream—which went up at 2 PM—has already gotten 1.3 million viewers to watch and type "fire" over and over while the theme song plays ominously in the background.

Although it's not clear when the season release date will finally be revealed, Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos Seaworth on the show, said recently that he thought it would be back sometime this July.

Update: Game of Thrones will be premiering on HBO on July 16, 2017. Check out the season seven announcement below.

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Marc and Jodie Emery's weed dispensary empire may be in trouble after the couple was charged with a host of drug trafficking offences following a Toronto police operation called Project Gator.

The Emerys, who own Cannabis Culture, a chain of dispensaries with locations across Canada, were charged Thursday after being arrested at Toronto Pearson airport Wednesday night.

Marc Emery, 59, is facing:

• Conspiracy to Commit an Indictable Offence 
• three counts of Trafficking Schedule II 
• five counts of Possession for the Purpose Schedule II 
• five counts of Possession Proceeds of Crime 
• Fail-to-Comply Recognizance

Jodie Emery, 32, has been charged with:

• Conspiracy to Commit an Indictable Offence 
• Trafficking Schedule II 
• Possession for the Purpose Schedule II 
• two counts of Possession Proceeds of Crime

Fellow Cannabis Culture employees Chris and Erin Goodwin and Britney Anne Guerra are facing possession related charges.

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Through Project Gator, Toronto police executed search warrants at five dispensaries in Toronto, one in Hamilton, and one in Vancouver, and at four private residences—two in Toronto, one in Stoney Creek, one in Vancouver. Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash did not tell VICE why Cannabis Culture was specifically targeted except to say that it would "become clear" in court.

In downtown Vancouver, around a dozen local officers raided Cannabis Culture's headquarters Thursday morning, the Vancouver Sun reported. Rex Mekkem, a manager at the Hamilton location that was raided said cops had taken employees' cellphones as evidence, according to Leafly. 

"They're just taking everybody's names and everybody's phones and kicking us loose, because it has to do with Toronto, they said."

The Emerys own around 20 Cannabis Culture shops across Canada. The first Toronto store opened just after the city-wide Project Claudia raids. They sell weed to anyone who is legal age, no prescription required.

Lawyer and cannabis advocate Kirk Tousaw has been providing updates on the situation on social media. He said there is a bail hearing for all five arrested tomorrow at Toronto's Old City Hall and that the Crown is seeking "large dollar value sureties" in order to have them released.

Tousaw strongly condemned the police's actions.

"Good human beings are being literally locked into cages for cannabis. Canada. 2017. Shameful. History will judge us poorly for this immoral and unjust war on peaceful people and a simple, beneficial plant."

But Pugash said his force will continue to crack down on dispensaries until the laws change.

"The only people who appear to be unhappy are the people who are making a lot of money operating an illegal business."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Bartenders, they see some shit. During any given shift, they may watch people fight or fall in love. They see folks on first dates and longtime couples breaking up. Sometimes, they'll serve a guy celebrating a promotion; other times, they'll pour up for a dude mourning a lost job.

In short: Bartenders are ringmasters to some of the craziest human circuses on Earth. It's no easy task. What for the rest of us is a fun or debaucherous night out on the town for them is a job. Like any professional, they want to be treated with a certain level of respect, despite why you're in their place of employ or how much you've had to drink. We spoke with longtime bartenders to find out what drives them mad and makes them glad. The recipe for a good night out and a pleasant interaction is simple as syrup. (Sorry.)

Don't Be That Guy

Don't be a dick. There's always a guy who stands at a packed bar and snaps his fingers or waves his cash around like a lunatic. He'll call me "sweetheart" or "barmaid" and ask for my number after tipping two bucks on a round of five different types of multi-ingredient cocktails. He's the guy who needs your immediate attention but isn't ready to order once he has it. He acts bewildered that you would need to hold his credit card to start a tab and is offended you would need to see his ID. He might call names or ask to speak to a manager (you're looking at her!) if he doesn't feel properly waited on. Basically, just don't be that guy. Every person working in any profession wants to be treated with respect. Bartenders included.—Caty, 13 years behind the bar

Get Creative

Great bartenders will see you with the eyes in the back of their skulls. But not all bartenders are great. Most want you to wait patiently until eye contact is made. Be friendly but not too familiar. We are all beings on the planet, and we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, but don't you fucking dare say something sexist, racist, or anti-LGBT to or about my guests or my co-workers. If you are going to give me a nickname, be creative: "Sweet Corn Muffin," "My Pop-Topping Thunder Fop," "Whiskey Mcpourspout," and "God" are way better than "Ace," "Chief," "Bruh," or a bitingly stentorian "Hey!" I ain't gonna bore you with the standard "don't be rude" stuff. But good behavior is often rewarded in the bar: Patience and peace will get you better service, not to mention a better parking spot at the great karmic drive-in in the sky.—Brad, 15 years behind the bar

The Bar Is Not Your Personal Phone Charging Dock

Bartenders used to take care of customers in a way they don't anymore. They were your psychologist, your directory, an everyman or woman who could help with most anything while pouring drinks. That's because everyone was at the bar: lawyers, doctors, mechanics. The bartender connected people. Phones do that now, and not a night goes by when we're not asked to charge a few of them behind the bar. That's fine, happy to help. But also don't keep asking us to let you check up on it. People charge their phone for a few minutes, ask to see it, and then wonder why it's only at 10 percent. Just leave it. Aside from that, one small thing would go a long way. People could learn what it is they like to drink and order that. So many kids these days come in and order "an IPA" and then complain when it's bitter or "too hoppy." If you're not sure about what you're ordering, feel free to read about it on your phone.—Nicky, 20 years behind the bar

Illustration by Brandon Celi

Check Your Assumptions at the Door

I've been in the business 20 years, and I know what I'm doing. I'm college educated but think most customers assume I'm not. People look down at the service industry. They think you're working in it means something somewhere didn't go according to plan for you. But this is the profession I chose. Lots of us choose it. Most of the people I work with did—and they have college degrees, too. It is what I want to do, I enjoy doing it, I have fun doing it. But sometimes I definitely feel like people are looking down at me. They ask, "What else do you do? What's your real job?" This. This is my career. This is what I want to do. I have two small children. I can be at home with the kids during the day. It's important to me to be able to spend time with them. I work three nights a week and make enough money. I just wish customers understood that we are smart.—Jen, 20 years behind the bar

Here's a Tip: Tip

Tip us! Bartenders, we don't get a paycheck. We depend on tips, straight up. Even a $1 tip for a beer goes a long way. Especially when we're making sophisticated drinks, cocktails that—between measuring ingredients, shaking, replacing shaken ice with new ice, garnishing—take a couple minutes each. When you get an order of five cocktails—do the math—it's going to take a minute, so don't eye me or give me attitude, or tip a dollar on a big order like that because you thought it took too long. That can be fucking irritating and can put you in a shitty mood for the next customer. It can ruin your night because you're working so hard to please them, and you know you're going home with no money. People aren't obligated to give a tip, but would if they took a bit more time to think about how hard we're working for them.—Machi, 10 years behind the bar

Have a Dash of Common Sense

It's about treating people with decency and respect. I don't care what you do, that's what you want. I have no patience for people who have no manners or don't say please and thank you. Same goes with people who feel entitled and treat you like you're their bitch in that moment because they're tipping you. Just have common sense. Some of the things I've seen... I've seen adult people keep a cooler at their table and pour their own lemon drop martinis into our glasses. I caught them with their shaker pouring out cocktails. Would you bring your own food to a restaurant? Don't do that.—T.S., 25 years behind the bar

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Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. If I wasn't wearing headphones in bed while playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it wouldn't take long for my wife to start punching my arm, as the game's tool for hinting at the location for new shrines starts going off every few minutes. Though useful, I'm torn on whether I should be taking advantage of its many beeps.

Shrines are important to surviving the surprisingly tough Breath of the Wildpossible, as many of them are home to important loot (I recently found a bandana that made it easier to climb!) and upon finishing four of them, you can exchange spirit orbs for health and stamina upgrades. The game has more than 100 of 'em.

And while it's possible to both stumble upon shrines and scout them from lofty locations like mountain tops and towers, some are located in weird spots, or purposely hidden out of view. Given how crucial shrines are (not to mention how fun they are to solve), it's not surprising that Nintendo would give players a way to more easily track them down. But it's an open question on whether this betrays the core ethos of Breath of the Wild, a game about pure exploration.

Continue reading on Waypoint.

Every smart, dorky, nerdy, awkward or otherwise "different" girl these days has great role models to look up to whenever she turns on the television or scrolls through Netflix. But long before Jane the Virgin made being smart cool or New Girl's Jess made being awkward adorable, I was a teen who had no true role models to look up to.

That all changed when I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer at age 16. Instantly, I felt a connection to smart-girl-turned-badass-witch Willow Rosenberg—and it was through this character that I was finally able to embrace my true self and come out as bisexual.

When the show first premiered 20 years ago today, Willow was a nobody. Or at least that's what our title heroine, Buffy, was told by queen bee Cordelia as soon as she arrived at Sunnydale High. That "nobody" was a nerd who loved to read, did well in school, and had even mastered computers long before the rest of us caught up. She was a classic teacher's pet, and the kind of character that most television shows would relegate to the sidelines, constantly the butt of smarty pants jokes. But not Willow.

Willow quickly became a key member of the Scooby Gang—what the slayer and her friends nicknamed themselves—and it wasn't long before her character began to grow and develop in new ways. By the end of high school, she had a solid boyfriend (to whom she lost her virginity) and a growing talent for witchcraft. In fact, if it wasn't for Willow, Angel the vampire (and Buffy's on-again-off-again lover) would have never gotten his soul back at the end of season two.
Even as Willow lay in a hospital bed due to an injury she sustained while Angelus' (Angel's evil half) team kidnapped Giles, she never lost confidence in herself and in her abilities to help her friends—especially being able to restore Angel's soul at this critical moment in "Becoming: Part 2". Although it seemed like a small moment at the time, this confidence very much affected the way I saw not only this character but also how I saw myself.

When I first began to see myself in Willow, it was for the same reasons that "popular" people like Cordelia made fun of her. I was also smart but awkward, loved school but didn't have many friends, and, most of all, I painfully wanted to fit in with the Cordelias in my own life. But ultimately, and importantly, Willow didn't have a desire to fit in at all.

As I saw Willow thrive in her life, I wanted to thrive in mine. And then Willow came out.

It happened so slowly at first that I (as well as much of the audience) didn't realize it. In college, Willow continued to pursue her interest in Wicca. Joining a Wicca group at U.C. Sunnydale seemed natural and I was excited to see her branching out from her old friends and embracing new storylines. I longed to find that kind of freedom in college too—to find like-minded people who would embrace me for all that I am, even if I was still figuring it out.

But it wasn't just Willow coming into her own as a smart girl that made me love her even more, it was her embracing her newfound sexuality—and love for Tara, a friend and eventually girlfriend—that finally gave me the courage to embrace my own coming-of-age story.

Being in high school myself as I watched Willow's sexuality blossom in college, I wondered if I would have to wait until then to become my true self too. I realized somewhere around age 15 that I was a little different than my friends—that I noticed attractive girls around me as much as we all noticed the boys. It wasn't a long and grueling battle, just something that struck me one day when I saw the word "bisexuality" written in an online forum discussing the show. "Oh," I thought, "so that's what I am." Suddenly it all made sense to me. So when Tara first told Willow that she was "hers," my heart jumped. I hoped that a friend of mine, who was also my first female crush, would someday say the same. In Willow's budding relationship, I saw hope.

Shortly after, when Willow came out to her friends, I was scared for her. When Buffy momentarily freaked, I was terrified. When Spike used Willow's insecurities about her new relationship to tear the friends apart, I was mortified. But then things slowly got better for her.

Her friends eventually came to terms with her coming out. And her first on-screen kiss with her girlfriend Tara, during season five's "The Body," was the first time I had seen two women kiss on television. Slowly but surely, seeing their displays of affection—intimate touches, romantic declarations, and even the slightly dirty ending of the musical episode's "Under Your Spell"—helped me to embrace my own sexuality and come out to friends as bisexual at the age of 17. It was much sooner than I ever thought I'd be able to be honest about myself, but my friends embraced me just as fiercely as Buffy and Xander embraced Willow.

Soon enough, I knew other LGBT teens who were out and I had formed a community of my own, with the constant support of the friends who were there for me since day one. We had an inclusive group connected by many things, including a shared love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a show that I know still connects us and the many other bisexual, lesbian, and queer women who also embraced Willow as one of our own.

Seeing people that I could actually relate to on television helped me to find myself and to accept the things that made me different. It would be many years before I would see a character who, like me, was Latina and not a stereotype, or a character who had some of my awkward quirks and interests—such as my love of planning everything to the last detail or wearing bright-colored dresses with funny-looking prints. Willow Rosenberg was the first character who helped me see who I truly was—nerdy, bisexual and (eventually) proud of it all.

It's no surprise that her character has remained with me through all these years, as I know she remains with many others. Her anger at the world when losing a loved one helped me to come to terms with death when it hit close to home. And, most of all, her persevering despite everything helped me to understand the role of solid friendships and inner strength in my own life. You could even say that Willow's red hair has influenced my own love for dying my dark brown hair a vibrant shade of copper just as she had through all seven seasons of BTVS.

Whatever the reason, there's one thing I know for sure: No other character or person has meant more to me than Willow Rosenberg.

Follow Irina Gonzalez on Twitter.

This story was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

Jeanette Popp's daughter Nancy DePriest was murdered in 1988 in Austin, Texas, while working at a Pizza Hut. Weeks later, police arrested Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger. Ochoa confessed during an interrogation, and pleaded to a life sentence for murder, while Danziger was convicted of rape.

More than a decade later, Popp learned that both men were innocent, and she decided to meet the man who was actually responsible.

I felt suicidal when my daughter died. I had a gun and tried to work the courage up, but then one day my sister slapped me and said, "Do you want to put our mother through what you're going through?"

I couldn't do that to her.

It was a high-profile case, and the public wanted results. Our family wanted results. I remember how at the trial, Richard Danziger would just stare at me; he was so adamant about his innocence. But why should I have believed him? I had no reason to doubt the police, the detectives, the district attorney. It never occurred to me to doubt the entire judicial system.

Twelve years later, I was at work when my brother-in-law called and told me to turn on the TV. There was the district attorney, announcing that they'd got the wrong people. It was such a shock that I just collapsed in a chair, thinking, Oh my God. I was absolutely livid that I had not been told this before it was on television. What the hell are they doing? I thought. The guy confessed. They got the right guys.

I argued over the phone with an assistant district attorney, and then I called the lawyers for Ochoa and Danziger. I think they expected me to give them hell, but I just wanted the truth.

I felt horrible, like I should have known all along that something wasn't right. When there's a wrongful conviction, the family of the victim is victimized again, because you're going to go through the release and then another trial, and then you're going to wonder: How could this happen?

I reached out to Ochoa, who was still in prison. I didn't know what to say to him, except that I was sorry this had happened, and how bad I felt about his mother's suffering, knowing—because mothers know—that he wasn't capable of murder.

On the day of Ochoa's release, I sat with his mother, holding her hand. When the judge released him, I stood up and stepped aside so she could get to her son. We all went out to dinner together. He had a great big T-bone steak that covered the whole plate. It was heartwarming to see him free and eating that food; you could tell he hadn't had good food in a while. Eventually, I pulled him aside and I asked him why he confessed. He said that after so many hours in an interrogation room, with no water and no food, he broke.

Danziger was exonerated and released, too, but he had been beaten by other prisoners and suffered brain damage. I never met him. He now needs constant care, and therefore is still serving his life sentence, in a way.

Watch the VICE News Tonight segment on the advance of the Iraqi military on the key city of Mosul and what it means for civilians.

The actual murderer was a man named Achim Marino. He had undergone a religious awakening while in prison for a different crime and confessed to killing my daughter. Because I'd lost faith in the judicial system, I knew that this man was the only person who could tell me the real truth of what happened.

I traveled to the prison where he was housed, and we sat across a table from each other. He was kind of scary looking, with tattoos all over, and his eyes could tear through you. I asked him why he killed my daughter, and he said that the voices in his head told him that if he made a human sacrifice, the headaches and voices would go away.

I asked if they went away, and he said no. I asked if she had said anything, and he replied that she said only, "Please don't hurt me." I asked if she fought, and he said no. He added that she didn't see he was going to shoot her.

Then he looked in my eyes and said he was sorry. Do I believe that? I'm not sure.

He said he'd rather be executed than spend his life in a Texas prison. But I couldn't support that. You have to understand: Mr. Marino has a mother. She's not responsible for what he did, and taking her son away—what good is that? I told reporters, "I will not stain my daughter's memory with that man's blood." To be honest, part of why I tried to spare him was selfishness; I can't personally be a party to the taking of human life.

I went on the court steps and told the public to call the district attorney on my behalf and ask them not to seek the death penalty. A week later, it was off the table. "I'm sorry," I told Marino. "I'll do everything I can to save your life."

Achim Marino received a life sentence in 2002—one of four he is serving simultaneously—for the 1988 murder of Nancy DePriest. He is incarcerated at the Robertson Unit, in Abilene, Texas.

A significant amount of responsibility comes with being the first and only museum in the world dedicated to LGBTQ art. Just ask New York's Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

With the public conception of "queerness" constantly evolving, the museum has to keep up, reflecting these shifting boundaries in their expansive permanent collection. Founded over 50 years ago by partners Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman, the collection spans centuries, today totaling over 30,000 objects. And it's still growing. Today, after an expansion into the adjacent storefront in their SoHo location, the museum reopens with a new exhibition called Expanded Visions: 50 Years of Collecting.

The show presents a sweeping history of queer art through a combination of famous and lesser-known artists. Rather than strictly chronological, Expanded Visions is organized thematically, revealing one of the collection's biggest strengths: the opportunity to trace trends throughout centuries of LGBTQ creativity. Those thematic sections include self-portraiture, the relationship between the police and LGBTQ people of color, responses to the AIDS pandemic, and surrealism and the construction of queer-friendly alternate realms. More than the art itself, the show acts as a reminder of the history of the contemporary LGBTQ rights movement—its highs and lows, and the surprising revelations that can be gained from taking in decades of queerness all at once.

VICE spoke to Gonzalo Casals, the museum's new director, about the history of Leslie-Lohman's permanent collection, its future and the importance of queer art in society.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

Trans-Sissi by Oree Holban, 2015

VICE: Leslie-Lohman's permanent collection has a compelling history that, in many ways, intersects with the modern LGBTQ rights movement. How did the collection start?
Gonzalo Casals: The history of the collection is very tied to the history of the museum—Fritz [Lohman] and Charles [Leslie]'s interests, as well as the recent history of the LGBTQ community. Soon after Stonewall, Charles and Fritz started showing works by LGBT artists in their loft in SoHo, but it went beyond just showing work—it was about supporting artists and building community in that moment in history. There weren't a lot of places where you could just get together and be yourself. I think they understood in a very intuitive way that art could be a tool to bring people together. Then they began to collect work.

Without getting too personal, Charles told me that when they met, one of the things they realized they had in common was that they slowly but surely collected work. It was one of the things that connected them as a couple. It starts from a very personal, meaningful understanding of the power of art.

How did the collection take on increased significance during the HIV/AIDS pandemic?
As our former director Hunter O'Hanian put it, there were different reactions to the AIDS pandemic—you had GMHC [the Gay Men's Health Crisis, an HIV/AIDS activism organization,] who saw the need for social and medical services, ACT-UP, [another HIV/AIDS activist organization,] which embodied the political response, and then you have Leslie-Lohman, who saw a whole generation of artists dying. Their art and visual culture was very explicitly going to disappear with them. Families of artists who died would clean their apartment and throw their work on the street. Part of our collection is work that had been discarded by others.

Soon after, in 1987, Charles and Fritz began to formalize the work they had been doing to turn their collection into a foundation and museum. It took them four or five years to get the recognition from the IRS as a foundation, because the word gay was in the title. As they become a more public space, they were harassed by the police and complaints by neighbors, but they continued to press forward and continue to create that space for LGBT artists.

Untitled, by Jason Keeling, 2007

The new exhibition, Expanded Visions, allows viewers to both see a wide swath of the current state of the collection but also reflect on how it might grow. How do you see the collection shifting in the future?
Today, we're looking at how we can expand on Charles and Fritz's vision. It's important and dear to me and timely for us, as a museum, to explore the idea of intersectionality–not only looking at how sexuality and gender affects the creation of images, but also ethnicity, race and class. It's an important conversation that the museum can help contribute towards.

In many ways, this is a personal goal for me. I just came to the United States from Argentina 16 years ago. I became a minority—I was a queer immigrant. For some reason, even though I was out, I connected more with my Latino identity. But there were moments where my queerness would come out. Only recently did I start thinking about intersectionality and what it means to be a queer Latino immigrant. And then this job opportunity came up.

Beyond intergenerational dialogue, censorship looms large in the exhibition, revealing the consistent policing of same-sex desire and queer bodies.
To me, that's really interesting. In particular, there's a whole tradition of the male nude in the Western art canon from the Greeks onward. And then, in the 1940s and 50s in the United States, male nudes became political, a reason for an artist to be sent to jail. It speaks a lot to the recent history of our country and it also helps start conversations about what's happening now.

Afro Muse, by Mickalene Thomas, 2006/2014

I'm glad you mention opening conversation– Expanded Visions makes the case for the significance of queer art-making both socially and politically. What do you think is the place of queer art in society and what role do you see the museum taking?
The museum and its collection is a platform. It creates a physical and intellectual space for LGBTQ people to see themselves mirrored in society. There's an empowerment that comes with that. They can come to a place and meet likeminded people to see they're not the only one.

If a visitor isn't an LGBTQ person, these works and the institution could be a window into the other. If they have a relative they don't quite understand, a friend or even, if they don't know anyone in the community but are curious, there's nothing better than art to help make sense of things. Seeing a show like Expanded Visions, with its diversities and history, offers the possibility to open up a conversation. It's about dialogue.

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South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been removed from office after the Constitutional Court on Friday upheld a decision by the National Assembly to impeach her on charges of corruption and dereliction of duty. The decision meant Park became the first democratically elected leader of South Korea to be stripped of office.

The ruling from the eight judge panel sparked violent clashes outside the courtroom in Seoul between Park's supporters and the protesters seeking her removal. The Yonhap news agency reports that two people have died as a result of the clashes.

The scandal has rocked South Korea—and not just because it involves the president. Samsung, the country's largest and most powerful chaebol (family-run business) has also been caught up in the affair. In what is being called "the trial of the century," the heir to the Samsung empire went on trial Thursday alleged to have made payments of up to $38 million to Park and her adviser Choi Soon-sil.

Park's removal from office has sparked a snap presidential election, which is expected to take place as soon as May.

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There's an unofficial but widely diagnosed syndrome in my hometown of New Orleans known as the post-Mardi Gras blues. A week of merrymaking in the streets, feasts in backyards, and happy hours turned happy days culminates in a citywide block party and a day off work when everywhere else it's just another Tuesday. The day after that, though, is, just another Wednesday. Carnival's very literal carnal celebration, in the Catholic tradition, gives way to the sober, metaphysical reflection of Lent. Even the secular can feel the shift.

The tourists leave, the streets are cleaned, and but for the parade beads hanging like colorful moss from the centuries-old oaks, a stranger might be forgiven for thinking it was a regular week. In the sudden return to routine, the comedown after Fat Tuesday rivals that of any drug. Though now an expatriate, I was born and raised in the Big Easy; I know the drain well.

But this year, exactly a week after Mardi Gras, in swept the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals with a ruling that refueled a high for many: an affirmation of the city's ability to remove Confederate monuments from public lands after a legal challenge from three conservative-leaning historic preservation societies and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Black Twitter rejoiced. Bout time was the general sentiment I gathered from local residents. Although the plaintiffs are considering a rehearing, the city's been given clearance to take down three monuments honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and PGT Beauregard.

The statues, among others which were not subject to this order, were erected during Reconstruction after local sovereignty was restored to what had been the Confederacy's largest city. The most striking: a 90-foot Tennessee marble pillar topped with a bronze statue of General Robert E. Lee, dedicated during the 1884 Carnival season. Facing north, arms pridefully crossed, Lee stands over a public garden and traffic circle in the Central Business District, where the city's transit arteries meet.

The goal of Lee Circle and other memorials strewn across the South was to glorify the rebel leaders and to establish a counter-narrative in which they were true patriots. "We cannot ignore the fact that the secession has been stigmatized as treason and that the purest and bravest men in the South have been denounced as guilty of shameful crime," the Daily Picayune wrote at the time.

But to the people of color who at times made up two-thirds of the city's Antebellum population these men were not heroic but villainous. Genteel barbarians who predicated their lives, lined their pockets, and staked their honor upon the right to own other humans; to breed them like cattle, sell them like stocks, rape and beat and kill them at will. This, and much worse, was the nature of slavery.

I grew up passing PGT Beauregard's City Park memorial on the way to school every day. Every so often, I'd glance up at the majestic man atop his horse, then remember, no matter how casually or briefly, that he fought to keep people who looked like me enslaved, and still towered above me. The knowledge that my community thought this was OK hovered over my consciousness, looming larger than any monument.

On the eve of the town's tricentennial, and in light of the spike in hate crimes around the country, the removal of treasonous racists from the pedestal of city centers seemed common decency as well as common sense. And yet, a cadre of traditionalists resisted.

To remove these symbols, they say, amounts to sweeping history under the rug. This sleight of logic conflates remembering with memorializing. The debate is even more grating for blacks and their allies when the people delivering this deflection are not simply the caricatured rednecks of the liberal imagination, but commentators who can dress their arguments up in polite language.

Richard Marksbury of Tulane University, a staunch opponent of the removal effort, called it "cultural cannibalism." The absurd irony of this coinage, representative of the larger anti-removal attitude, is compounded by his invoking the animalistic trait of cannibalism to the actions of blacks trying to end the glorification of people who were actually barbaric.

It's ironic too because white Americans have long consumed, commodified, and cannibalized New Orleans culture particularly, and Southern culture generally. There's a gap between who created the popular customs and who profited from them.

Watch the VICE documentary on Brooklyn's "Dirty Masquerade":

It was chiefly people of color who mixed European horns with African flow and rhythm and brought the world jazz, funk, and blues; who applied the same creole concoction to develop the foundation for one of the most exquisite culinary milieus in the world. New Orleans is uninhibited in its casual camaraderie and hospitality towards all, no matter how voyeuristic their interest—a legacy, no doubt, of the impossibly strong, gracious women of color who raised generations of families, black and white alike, infusing good humored inner beauty into us all.

The enrichment was not reciprocal. The fruits of this culture were not equally shared, the people of this culture not equally valued. My mother, a freckled woman lighter than many whites, faced adults picketing her grade school screaming 'TWO-FOUR-SIX-EIGHT we don't wanna integrate!" because of an illogical phobia of the rounded tip of her nose, which gave away her blackness. My grandfather, a transplant from Mississippi, grew up in a town where there was no high school for him to attend.

This suffering is not so far removed from the present day. And its direct cause was the continuing echo of the Confederate creed these statued men espoused. As a child, I didn't dedicate too much emotion to the ignominy that is Lee Circle, or Jeff Davis Boulevard. Neither did my grandmother, or her grandmother before her. These figures were so deeply embedded into the landscape and geographical vernacular that spending one's time fretting about their presence seemed a waste.

Even in the 90s, it was hard to imagine a world in which black people's preferences, not just their basic rights, would be respected in public spaces. "They're dead—and most black people here have less philosophical worries. How to pay the rent, the gas bill," my barber once told me.

Certainly New Orleanians face problems more immediate and tangible than Confederate symbols. In 2014, the City That Care Forgot ranked second worst in the country for income inequality. (This puts the city's disparity roughly on par with Zambia when it comes to inequality, according to the CIA's World Factbook.) There are six times as many black households living in poverty than white households.

Back in 2015, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu first recommended the removal, I talked to the politically outspoken actor Wendell Pierce, a homegrown talent known best for his role as Bunk in The Wire. He supported the removal, while making it clear he thought it was not enough.

"We need to declare them for who they were," he said firmly. "The reason their monuments stand today is because of that very conciliatory momentum [of Reconstruction]. But while we take the Confederates down, let's not allow that to become a distraction. Because policy, not symbols, are the thing that really have an effect on people. Policy."

Removing the statues will not remove the racial gaps in wealth, health, and education which plague the region today and which stem from the very institution of human bondage those men atop the monuments fought to preserve.

But it will demote these figureheads, who symbolize the material harm the Confederate ideology inflicted on so many citizens of the South, to the museums in which they belong. They will no longer be shrines haunting the city from on high.

Follow Talmon Joseph Smith on Twitter.

Joey Bada$$'s career has been pretty wild thus far. As a rapper, his music has garnered him both critical acclaim and many loyal fans—including the one-and-only Malia Obama. As an actor, he became one of the most intriguing characters in Mr. Robot history. So naturally the Brooklyn native has quite a few stories to tell.

During Thursday night's episode of VICELAND's Desus & Mero, Joey Bada$$ stopped by to discuss Brooklyn's gentrification, having the secret service on his tail, being a "thespian," and more. Check out the full interview below.

You can check out every episode of this week's Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to watch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

You've likely seen the videos. Lively bhangra dances at Peggy's Cove, or on Citadel Hill in Halifax, or even out shovelling snow. The videos are charming and joyful, and, for this part of Canada anyway, incredibly novel. Just under a million people live in Nova Scotia, with 95 percent of them identifying as white. So naturally, the brightly coloured turbans and pulsing music of the bhangra videos are a big hit with viewers. But it's the guy behind the camera who is the most interesting figure in the whole group.

At just 26-years-old, Hasmeet Singh Chandok is one of the busiest people I've ever met. Chandok studies Computer Science at Dalhousie University, and is in his final year. He keeps a GPA of 4.0 while working two jobs and organizes the Maritime Bhangra Group. He's committed to not only dancing across the Maritimes, but travelling to schools and youth groups, giving people a taste of Sikh culture.

Although it's often overlooked, the purpose of Chandok's videos is actually to raise money for organizations like the ALS Society of Canada and MS Society of Canada. After they published the snow shovel bhangra video, the ALS Society of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia received $5000 in less than a week, with donations coming in from across the world.

I met up with Chandok at the Dalhousie Library to talk about dancing, YouTube, and saving the planet.

VICE: Did you expect this reaction, when you started putting videos on Facebook?
Hasmeet Singh Chandok: No, and we still say we don't do anything that special. There are dance groups who do much, much, 100 times better job than what we do in Canada. So we are not very good dancers, but it comes out that people are liking it.

You've gotten a lot of feedback. People want to meet you, people want to dance with you. How hard is that to deal with?
I mean, especially for international student, who has to work, who has to go (to) a job… And everything is on a volunteer basis, we don't earn anything from this dance group. Anything which comes out goes to charity. So we are not even registered to accept the money.

So you donate everything?
We don't even become a middle man. If I'm doing something for your organization, I tell you to do a direct donation and show me a receipt. That's it.

That's pretty impressive.
My dad was a social worker, and he always used to say, if everybody starts living for themselves and their family, there'd be no one living for people. So there has to be someone who steps forward and lives for people, and he lived his life for people. I lost him 2012, so I took that on me, and I said, you know, I'm going to live for people.

For the dance group, what's next?
Most of the friends who are in the dance group are working full time. So, if we don't have time to practice, while they have a break on work, we all get together there and practice on the street while playing (the song) on my phone. We practice in Point Pleasant Park, sometimes we practice in a gym. So Maritime Bhangra Group is an example of having no resources and the impact you have.

We go (to dance at) different high schools, especially to the ones who don't have enough money and they're in rural areas. So, we go to schools and we talk about bullying, we talk about racism. We don't actually run this as just a dance group, we do activism with our videos, if there is a cause we need to take care of. We'll put it out at the end of the video and start a discussion about it.

If you go and tour around to schools, you meet people, you talk to people, you might be the first person they've ever met who is wearing a turban, who is from India. That might be their very first interaction.
I've gone through that.

What is that like?
I've always felt that people are more welcoming in the Maritimes. And in terms of that first experiences, which we get, I think it's always more of 'ok, what do you guys do and why do you guys do this?' I have answered this question at least 1000 times by now, but I never feel bored when they ask me that. Every place you go to, the way they ask, and the kind of feeling they are looking for in your answer, it's different. It's different for every different human being you meet.

People are very curious.
I think that's a positive sign for us, as well as being a visible minority community, you go to these people and you meet them. It's creating a positive impression. I'm pretty sure that Sikhs who have come before me have done most of the work. But the Maritimes was one unexplored area.

Now we have a community of 40,000 people on our social media, and they have just named the country, there are 160 something countries where people watch our videos. And some videos surpass the population of Canada in views. So we've danced with ministers, we danced with the premier recently. So when we dance, and people share that video, they are not sharing the dance. They are sharing that social responsibility of helping each other in the community. It's the feeling of one-ness that they get.

I think people are also very drawn to things like that because the video starts, there's lively music, everyone's smiling, you guys hare having a good time, and then you draw their attention to a worthy cause, and then people are much more receptive to that when it happens in that way. What's been your most popular (video)?
We did one for ALS, it was called the snowshovel bhanga. It got more than 50 million views in four days, and after that we stopped counting.

That must be really fun.
Yeah, one side of it is fun, and the other side of it is the pressure you get, because now you have done a fundraiser. Like, who would expect a 60-second video to get $5000 to the ALS Society of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? And the donations are coming from Japan, Saudi Arabia…parts of the world where we have never heard. We are getting emails from the countries I don't know the names of, like 'Facebook doesn't work here, please put it up on YouTube.'

That's a lot of pressure.
When I'm writing the concept and the guys are dancing, or I'm dancing, the thing which goes into your mind 'is can we produce another something which goes more than 50 million in a few days?'

And as I always say to people, it's not just this one dance. The way people see, is something that's changing. Changing the social engagements. Changing the conversations, we are having. Changing the way we used to think about the world, and now the circumstances…When I see this, it just makes me feel that things could be better. I mean, it will change. And I think people see this as a hope.

You could do all of it without ever knowing how much it impacts people. But because of the nature of social media, when you put up a video, people want to respond. They want to share these things with you.
The more and more groups you get it, you feel that responsibility for working for each of them, for their betterment. When we are planning, there are at least 100 causes we can give our videos to, but then it's very hard to make a decision on which disease or which organization you choose. And people say, 'ok, you dance and you dedicate the video.' No, it doesn't work like that.

You have to go through the numbers of the public reports which are there. You look at the work they are doing. You look at if there is any controversy about that organization. You look at if there is any political motivation. And all of these things have to be looked at before you decide, ok this thing gets our video. And it's the same with the patients. If you get 100 requests, you have to go visit one or two because of the time limitations. All of the decisions, it includes a lot of intellectual stuff, it's not just dance and go. When it comes to activism, there's a lot of limitation we have as international students. We don't want to mess up with anyone. We do want to do the real work. So every decision at every step needs lots of thinking and lots of work, lots of reading.

I'm tired just talking to you.
I know!

*This interview has been condensed for clarity.