On Sunday, video surfaced of what was perhaps one of the most Texas things to have ever happened at a Walmart: Two guys decided to ride their horses through a local Houston store, leaving shoppers and security guards awestruck in the aisles.
In the video, which was posted on Facebook by Woody Fields, he and his cohort repeat the phrases "we is in Wally World" and "low prices, baby" over and over again as their horses trot through the aisles. Children cry out in glee, while other, more fragile humans get kind of freaked out and run away. Once outside, Fields and his friend meet another guy on horseback.
The incident made the local news, and Fields was soon inundated with a horde of interview requests. He told local outlet KPRC Houston that he and his pals were simply looking for a good time.
"I wasn't trying to hurt nobody, or do anything destructive," Fields said. "It was just, like, you only live once, you know? That's all."
Walmart, however, was very uncool about the incident and released a statement condemning the "reckless stunt" as potentially dangerous, though the company doesn't have a policy in place to prevent it. The Houston Humane Society also got a line in, saying that "at minimum, riding a horse inside a store is incredibly irresponsible" and that Fields probably stressed the animal out.
Fields's stunt follows a similar incident back in June 2016, when a mysterious stud on horseback lassoed a bike thief in—of all places—a Walmart parking lot. Two months later, a Texan by the name of Lathan Crump rode his horse inside a Taco Bell after finishing a tie-down calf-roping competition. Unlike Fields, though, those other urban cowboys didn't manage to capture a first-person video of their escapades.
"Just call me the renegade," Fields said in another Facebook video. "Walmart renegade, baby."
President Donald Trump's travel ban was bound to come up during the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
But when Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, tried to take Gorsuch's temperature on the pending judicial fight, Gorsuch got testy.
Courts have blocked two separate executive orders that sought to limit travel to the US from several Muslim-majority countries and temporarily halt all refugee resettlement. The Supreme Court, which has been split 4-4 between conservative and liberal justices since Antonin Scalia's death last year, may hear the Trump administration's appeal.
Gorsuch admitted as much during the hearing, and Leahy wanted to know which way the nominated judge might rule. "Does the First Amendment allow the use of a religious litmus test for entry into the United States?" the Vermont senator asked.
You know who Chuck Berry is. Even before his death at the age of 90 on March 18, you knew his name, knew his guitar playing, or felt his legacy. His hits were innumerable. Songs like "Maybellene" and "Johnny B. Goode" are pillars bearing the weight of the genre he helped create. Let's repeat that—he helped create an entire genre of music. "Rock and roll" now seems like an outdated, white bread category in the very cross-pollinated 2017 (see: Drake's More Life). However, it was born from black musicians and the genres they had already created, like jazz and rhythm and blues. Yet even though he pioneered arguably the most influential genre of music the world has ever seen, Berry's historical status as both an American and black hero has always been complicated due to his own faults.
Berry's gross and confusing treatment of women should have equal billing with his music, but in most profiles it'll be missing. There's that eternal question: Can you separate the artist from the art they created? Berry's transgressions make him comparable to people like Bill Cosby and Mel Gibson. The difference between Cosby and Gibson is that the former is a black icon to a community with few of them, and the latter is enjoying an alarming redemption tour at the time of this writing. The cliché line of "never meet your heroes" can be repurposed for Berry: "Never find out absolutely everything about your heroes."
Chuck Berry was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a middle class family that afforded him time for the arts. Music called him from an early age, and he was performing by high school. Berry's first brush with the law also happened when he was a student at Sumner High School in 1944—he was arrested for armed robbery. After due time at a detention facility, he married, worked a variety of odd jobs including stints as a factory worker at automobile plants, and kept playing music. By the early 1950s, Berry had moved from playing with local St. Louis bands to playing with Johnnie Johnson, a jazz and blues pianist who would eventually be his long-time collaborator.
Jenise Britt sees her husband at Sing Sing, one of New York's 17 maximum-security prisons, at least twice a week. From her job in Bryant Park, it's only a short walk to Grand Central and the 7:19 train to Ossining. She tries to visit on weekdays to avoid the more crowded weekends, when the noise and nearby bodies make intimate conversations nearly impossible. The twice-weekly visits help the couple remain close despite her husband's 18-to-life sentence and the fact that his first parole hearing isn't until 2024.
But New York governor Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget means that Britt—and other family members—will have no choice but to contend with crowds, longer waits and the possibility of shorter visits to see their incarcerated loved ones. Buried in the governor's budget is a proposal to reduce the number of visiting days in maximum-security prisons from seven to just Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, a move that he told Democrats would save the state $2.6 million by eliminating 39 staff positions. Family members and advocates say the cuts will discourage visiting with more crowded visiting rooms, longer waits, and shorter visits, impacting relationships already strained by lengthy prison sentences.
"I don't think that's fair," said 16-year-old Margarita, whose father has been incarcerated since she was three or four years old. "If we have a vacation during the week, we want to see our parents." She recalls going to visit her father two days before her 15th birthday. "Usually, if we talk on the phone, it's like, 'Happy birthday. Have fun,'" she recalled. But that day, they spent several hours together talking, walking around the outside visiting area and playing Monopoly. "Kids—they want to see their parents more," she added. "[These cuts] are just taking away time from our parents."
For the past couple days Donald Trump and his allies have been attempting to twist the arms of Republicans in Congress to vote for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a piece of legislation that would water down the Obama-era Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The AHCA is widely hated—Democrats dislike it because it would weaken the ACA, and many conservatives don't think it goes far enough to repeal the current law. So Trump has been using a combination of charm and threats to sell the AHCA right-wing House members who might not like the bill, but like opposing Trump even less. It's a tough sales pitch even for a master persuader—if 22 Republicans are against the bill it will go down, and as of Wednesday afternoon it looked like it was going down big league thanks to conservative opposition:
That tweet is from a spokesperson for the Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline right-wingers who have achieved an outsized amount of power because the Republican leadership needs their votes to pass anything. (They were behind the push that ousted former Speaker John Boehner.)
If Trump and current Speaker Paul Ryan can't win enough votes in the next day or so—it's nut-cutting time—the AHCA may either be withdrawn to go through more revisions, or it may be defeated on the floor of the House on Thursday, when the vote is scheduled.
Even if the AHCA passes the House it faces a tougher path in the Senate. But if it couldn't even get out of the House, it will be a huge embarrassment for Ryan, who is guiding his first piece of major legislation through the sausage machine of DC. It would also be a sign that Trump—who has put his full support behind the bill—is going to have a harder time bossing around Republican members of Congress than cast members on The Apprentice.
Each week for the past six months, VICE has run a column by rock star/motivational speaker/party philosopher/positive life force Andrew W.K. It is called "Andrew W.K. on." Or, I should say, was. This week, "Andrew W.K. on" comes to an end. It was never meant to last forever. In fact, the task at hand seemed so daunting we weren't sure it would even last this long.
The idea from the beginning was pretty clear cut. Each column featured Andrew writing in-depth on a singular topic, distilling it down to its essence, flipping it on its head, holding it up to the light, and examining it in total. We've covered a ton of ground.
In the first half of our lives, we reinforce and advertise this version of who we are to the world and to ourselves. It takes an extraordinary amount of energy and dedication to maintain it and keep it all congruent and held together. It can be a full-time job, just shoring up of this flimsy superficial construction of identity. And all along, deep down inside, we fear that all of this has very little to do with who we really are.
When the "fall" happens, we're forced by tragedy or a failure so deep—smashing into the rock bottom of the chasm in our soul—that our container is shattered and all the parts of who we thought we were show themselves to merely be a thin shell.
Sometimes we begrudgingly abandon this identity, sometimes we abandon it and rejoice. But being forced through a humbling coming-to-terms encounter with the puzzle of our true inner self will never allow us to reassemble the Humpty Dumpty pieces of our old identity again. We have seen who we are, for better and worse, and this instills humility, compassion, and freedom. The freedom to just be, instead of having to always be "me." The world opens up. There is more clarity and also more confusion. Possibilities that once appeared binary reveal themselves to be infinite. Questions that were once black-and-white now appear prismatic. There is less certainty and more openness. The self remains a magnificent mystery, but it's now finally free to be that mystery fully, no longer squeezed into the container of identity. (January 4)
On Psychedelics
Words, of course, are going to fail me here. But there was an undeniable sense that I was experiencing the world as it actually was. The other drug experiences I'd had before this didn't expose reality to me in this way. Through them I always had a sense of self, a point of observation that I understood to be "me." In those experiences, I was still seeing the world as I had always understood it to be, just with an additional type of enhancement or distortion. This particular time, the experience had no relationship to anything previous. One marked difference was that there was no empty space. Everything was solid, as though I could see every molecule filling the air between me and the surrounding walls. Everything melted away into nothingness, but into a nothingness that contained within it all. (January 11)
On Pressure
We are here to grow. We are here to expand. The fruits of our labor are not meant to free us from labor, but to allow us to earn the right to pursue more noble and refined types of labor—to improve the nature of labor we devote ourselves to, and increase our ability to take on ever more challenging pursuits, to engage in greater and greater work. What I understand now about my piano recitals that I hated so much was that they weren't supposed to be easy or pleasurable, but they had a goodness hidden inside them that made even the unpleasant parts meaningful. They were evidence of a process. They were proof of something becoming something more, or something becoming someone, a person becoming a human being. (September 28)
On Meditation
Meditation is simply a type of thoughtfulness, an active inactivity that seeks to simultaneously free us from the need to concentrate. It's a sort of nothingness that reveals an everythingness. These paradoxes define the texture of meditation, but in the spirit of contradiction, the point of meditation is that there is no point. Even this is also not the point. And though thinking about it hard enough (while not thinking at all) is enough to make your mind explode, I choose to rejoice in the absurdity of the entire pursuit. (October 13)
On Autumn
Autumn brings previews of the cold bleakness of the months ahead, and with it, time to work on one's inner life. Spring may be the season of rebirth, at least in terms of the non-human realm of the natural world, but for the human self, autumn seems to encourage inner rejuvenation. As a chill sets into the air, I feel a natural inclination to withdraw into myself, and enjoy rebuilding the indoors of my mind and surroundings. (October 26)
On Life's Ups and Downs
Every part of life's rich experience counts, and we are robbing ourselves when we don't seek to extract something valuable from the full spectrum of our experiences, even those that don't register as feeling great. We are often told that many natural shades of emotion—sadness, anxiety, melancholy—are "not good" by the abstract pressures of society, that we're meant to be happy-go-lucky 24 hours a day. We are often encouraged to overcome our darker feelings, or conquer them, or escape them, or vanquish them like we would a horrible monster.
But more and more, it occurs to me that maybe these emotional sensations are not there to be overcome, eliminated, or numbed out, but appreciated. (I should note here that I'm not talking about pure suffering, deep depression, terrible atrocities, or debilitating trauma, but the everyday doubts that holds us back.) I've tried to harness them or use them as fuel. We can reinterpret these "bad" feelings and use our imagination to find some value in them, let them teach us about ourselves and the world. (December 14)
On Encouragement
In matters of the heart, matters of creativity, I don't think it ever helps to rain on someone's parade. No one who is devoting themselves to something they truly love has ever been swayed by a friend or parent or acquaintance telling them they are bad at it. It just hurts their feelings or fills them with resentment. (December 21)
On Growth
But carrying those kinds of feelings—a soul heavy with dread—can take its toll. So over the years, I've made more and more of a rigorous effort to try and sublimate this inner despair that has colored so many of my experiences and perspectives. I do this by finding tiny moments of unquestionable joy and holding on to them tight. Things like music and laughter and inspiring encounters with culture were undeniably uplifting, so I surrounded myself with these things to find small bits of relief and motivation, some pin pricks of light in a vast sea of darkness. These experiences were often fleeting and short-lived, but the impressions they left on me were long-lasting. If I could feel this radiant joy even for a moment, maybe there was a way to hold onto it for longer. Maybe even forever? (December 29)
On Finding (and Following) Your Passion
This has led me to believe your passion is thrust on you whether you particularly like it or not. This is a disorienting and challenging experience—finding out that what you're meant to do with your life is different than what you feel like doing. It then becomes a matter of whether you have the fortitude to withstand the demands this passion will put on you. Do you have what it takes to follow it? It's almost as if your passion is also passionate about you. Your destiny is trying to pep you up so that you can go and do the stuff that you're meant to do. For me that was a huge breakthrough: that what you are born to do might not even be something you completely enjoy doing in the typical personal sense, but are compelled to do nevertheless. You love it and hate it. "The only thing worse than writing," author Richard Price once said, "is not writing." (February 22)
On Working Out
Over the past ten years, especially, I've noticed exercise has given me a direct outlet to channel anger and rage, and can turn a bad day around. There is something undeniably magical about taking a negative feeling and literally pushing it out of yourself and into a weight, and having that action result in a positive development for your body and overall health. That is true alchemy: taking the lead of negative emotions and transmuting them into golden energy. (March 8)
On Loving Your Enemy
Love and hope for all humanity is not a naïve fantasy. As always, love remains the only answer. And we need it now more than ever. (November 18)
Follow Andrew W.K. on Twitter. All illustrations for "Andrew on" were done by Tallulah Fontaine.
The New York Police Department on Wednesday announced that an unabashed white supremacist was behind the stabbing death of a black man in Midtown Manhattan earlier this week.
Twenty-eight-year-old James Harris Jackson has confessed to driving from Baltimore, Maryland, on a mission to kill black people, police said. The suspect apparently admitted to fatally stabbing 66-year-old Timothy Caughman in the chest and back after an argument late Monday, and was about to attack an interracial couple before turning himself in just after midnight Wednesday.
"You need to arrest me," he reportedly told cops at the Times Square NYPD substation. "I have the knife in my pocket."
According to the Daily News, Jackson, a US Army veteran, is part of a hate group in Maryland and the author of a racist manifesto, and had it out for black men linked romantically to white women. At a Wednesday press conference, the NYPD seemed to confirm at least part of that narrative, suggesting the crime was "clearly racially motivated" and that the Jackson was "specifically intending to single out" black men for assault.
"He picked New York because it's the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement," Chief of Detectives William Aubrey told reporters.
Although the NYPD did not immediately provide more details on Jackson's ideology, the Southern Poverty Law Center says that 18 out of the country's 917 hate groups are located in Maryland. And while data is scant for 2017 so far, hate crimes were up by an average of 23 percent in nine major US metro areas last year.
Dr. Lonnie Hammmargren is a man of a bygone era. Like Teddy Roosevelt in both disposition and appearance, Hammargren might seem weary of the world, were his sprawling property—half-art house, half hoarder's nest—not a tell that he finds it endlessly fascinating. Bouncing from service in the Vietnam War to NASA flight doctor to Vegas boxing surgeon to lieutenant governor of Nevada, Hammargren's life story may be the only thing more varied and compelling than the treasures in his home.
Hammargren has been collecting all manner of memorabilia and tchotchkes in his Las Vegas three-house compound, dubbed "Castillo del Sol," since he bought his first place on the property in 1972. On a recent episode of A&E's Hoarders, he revealed his impulse to collect has cost him upward of $10 million over the decades, and now, 79 and feeling the sting of debt, he and his wife, Linda, are looking to downgrade from their cluttered castle to the smallest house on his property. Usually only opening his home to the public on Nevada Day, Dr. Hammargren agreed to give me a private tour of Castillo del Sol before they "simplify a bit," as he puts it.
Lonnie at a piano that previously belonged to Liberace
We started off at the house's main entrance and I got my first taste of the duality of Dr. Hammargren. Within the space of a few minutes, Hammargren yelled at someone on his cell phone, described an old colleague as "a prick, there's just no other way to put it," then played "The Johnson Rag" for me on Liberace's old piano.
Words can hardly describe just how jam-packed full of stuff every nook and cranny of the Hammargren home is. The rooms and shelves, teeming with knick-knacks, make the jumbled scenes from those old Scholastic I Spy books look downright minimalist. Hammargren is a man who clearly hasn't read Marie Kondo. While your average hoarder might have old newspapers or clothing piles stacked floor to ceiling, Dr. Hammargren has filled his property with movie props, landmark models, and spacecraft.
A pre-9/11 NYC skyline
Dr. Hammargren lead me around towering structures, up and down stairs, and across gangplanks and catwalks, all of which he'd built himself. The entire place was a testament to that "if you want something done, do it yourself" ethos. Indeed, Hammargren's entire life story seems to have been the product of a series of goals that he simply set his mind toward accomplishing.
I quickly picked up on Hammargren's political sense of humor as we meandered about. He owns dozens (if not hundreds) of latex masks, and they were arranged with mannequins and dummies in all sorts of displays that mocked (mostly Democrat) politicians. The scenes he'd constructed had the toothless satirical bite of circa 1950s Mad Magazine, when the periodical still emulated the comic book format.
Comparative Catholic and Mormon historical timelines in front of a Taj Mahal model
Hammargren's political leanings may be right of center, but they are rooted in science and policy, not faith, and he makes no bones about that. He showed me the chapel his home contains, despite the fact that he doesn't "believe in Christianity or any religion" as "all are just about equally phony." He did, however, acknowledge that Buddhism is pretty chill.
Hammargren's love for science shines most bright when the topic of space is broached. On top of his work with NASA, he's befriended cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, built a model of a space shuttle that he once convinced Buzz Aldrin to sit in, and the jewel of his entire collection is a legitimate Saturn rocket capsule. For some reason, he's filled this historical treasure with a bunch of old CRT TVs.
Only second to Dr. Hammargren's love for the cosmos is his love for Nevada and Las Vegas. Signs from Vegas' mobster heyday pepper the house. A roller coaster car train, plucked from the ride no longer atop the Stratosphere sits on his roof, full of dummies, collecting desert dust. He doesn't care for this new billionaire-owned Vegas. He'd rather talk about Evel Kneivel jumping the fountain at Caesar's Palace and his ongoing friendship with Evel's son Robbie.
I asked him how he acquires all of these items without breaking the bank. "At this point, they usually come to me offering," he said. And if he wants something that isn't immediately offered up? "I tell them it's costing them money to store the junk so they might as well just give it to me."
Every item in the Hammargren home is so pregnant with back story it makes your head spin. I could have easily spent the rest of the year poring over every scrap of paper, bauble, and looming statue in Castillo del Sol, cataloging the origin of each. I'd taken enough of Dr. Hammargren's time, however, and maybe it was better to view the collection as the beautifully messy forest this man's unique life had created, rather than focus too much on temptingly bizarre trees.
Before I left, I asked Dr. Hammargren if his impending move means he's done collecting. "I told my wife I'd stop collecting," he said. "But, then again, I also lie."
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that America's largest public school system will prohibit federal immigration agents from entering their buildings without a warrant signed by a judge. While there have been no reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounding up kids at school, de Blasio was echoing similar shows of support for immigrant children made over the past several months by mayors and school officials across the United States.
In November, Pew Research Center reported that about 3.9 million kindergarten through 12th grade students in US public and private schools were children of undocumented immigrants, and 725,000 K-12 students were undocumented themselves. Even before President Trump took office, the feds were known to apprehend some of these students and their parents on their way to school. And now, under a White House that has already begun to dramatically reshape immigration policy, undocumented people and their advocates say the simple act of taking a kid to school has become a terrifying ordeal.
"Parents are fearful of dropping their kids off at school, and kids are concerned while they are at school that they'll come home and their parents might not be there," said Laura Vazquez, the program manager with the National Council of La Raza's Immigration Initiatives.
In 2011, then-President Obama's Department of Homeland Security issued a memo instructing ICE agents to generally avoid enforcing federal immigration policy in so-called "sensitive locations" such as schools and churches. While President Trump has abandoned many of Obama's policies restricting immigration enforcement, he has, so far, kept the rule about schools and churches in place. But that's been little consolation for the millions of families who have witnessed immigration raids in their communities, as well as the political empowerment of conservatives who take a hardline on deportation. And given Trump's repeated condemnations of so-called sanctuary cities, how long the president will be willing to tolerate the quasi-sanctuary status of schools remains a serious question.
Schools have been proactive in hopes of alleviating the anxiety of immigrant children, emphasizing that they remain open to everyone. For example, Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest school district, released a memo in December affirming that it would remain a "safe and welcoming" environment for all students and staff. And in February, CPS announced guidelines for principals should agents arrive on school grounds.
Even in districts that aren't taking pains to make immigrants feel safe, US law already provides a fair number of protections for undocumented students. In addition to the DHS memo still on the books, in 1982 the US Supreme Court ruled in Plyer v. Doe that no public school could deny children access to an education based on their immigration status. Subsequent court decisions reaffirmed this principle, barring schools from enacting policies that could significantly interfere with student enrollment. For example, in 2012, a federal appeals court unanimously struck down an Alabama law requiring public schools to check the immigration and citizenship status of new students.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law preventing schools from sharing confidential student information, also serves as a bulwark for undocumented students. While schools can share confidential information under limited circumstances, sharing with ICE agents is not considered such an exception. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act also creates obligations for schools to prevent discrimination based on race or immigration status. And the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, requires ICE agents to obtain judicial warrants to enter schools, not just the administrative warrants they generally use to make public arrests.
In light of the precedents favoring their cause, the National Immigration Law Center has been pushing school districts nationwide to adopt "Campus Safe Zone" policies, which mostly affirm existing policies while expressing strong support for undocumented students. (A Department of Education spokesperson told VICE that the agency has not released any statements or new guidance for schools concerning the president's immigration policies.)
Watch the VICE News Tonight segment on displaced Syrian families:
For his part, Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, told me that school leaders speaking up about undocumented students "are intentionally lying in order to gin up panic and opposition," adding that "it's a ridiculous idea" that an ICE agent would ever go into a school.
But even if schools may be safe spaces right now, getting there remains a real challenge—immigration experts say there are few legal options available to protect undocumented students and parents who are en route to "sensitive locations" like school or church. For example, in Los Angeles in late February, ICE agents arrested Rómulo Avelica-González, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, right after he dropped off one of his daughters at school. Avelica-González, a father of four who has lived in the US for nearly a quarter century, was apprehended a block away from the school. The ICE agents were in unmarked cars, and wore jackets that said "police."
Such arrests don't technically violate federal policy, even if they come right up to the line. And it's important to bear in mind that raids targeting people en route to school were reported last year, after the Obama administration ordered agents to arrest, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants from Central America. Most of these arrests involved entering homes and picking people up off the streets, but some students were also detained by immigration officials on their way to school. Public school teachers at the time said the ramped-up enforcement had a chilling effect on other students, leading to increased absences and general classroom stress.
David Hausman, a Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, says it's more important than ever to inform students that protections remain in place for them—that even if getting there is a heavy lift, some places really are safe. "Although we've seen disturbing incidents near schools, we have not at least yet seen any enforcement actions within schools themselves," he said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on possible changes to ICE protocol Wednesday afternoon, but that agency did confirm the 2011 policy on avoiding sensitive locations remains active. Meanwhile, conservatives like Krikorian insist it's "not a legitimate concern" for schools to talk to parents about possibly facing arrest when picking up their children.
"You don't get a free pass to break the law just because you have children," he said.
When the racket of whistle and applause wanes, Andy Wilkinson sets the ukulele at his feet, spreads a notebook across the lectern and—as he gazes into a 900-seat auditorium—launches headlong into the prologue of his keynote address at the 33rd annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. "Listen my kith, and listen my kin. Listen tribeswomen, and listen tribesmen…"
Wilkinson is a western savant in worn denim and a Patagonia vest: a poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, literary editor, music professor, and artist-in-residence at the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University. For the past two decades, he's been studying the creative process, steeping himself in French philosophy, quantum mechanics, poetry, and astrophysics—from Rukeyser to Costa de Beauregard, T. S. Eliot to Jacques Maritain. He also reads the news.
North Dakota cowboy poet Jarle Kvale recites a poem on the stage while fellow cowboy poet R.P. Smith of Nebraska looks on at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.
Barely two weeks have passed since Donald J. Trump pledged himself to the world's highest office, and yet for most, his presidency has already been dragging on, dogged by a partisan divide that grows deeper and darker with every passing day. Though he would not have wished for it, Wilkinson's thesis crawled out of the abstract after Election Day and now simmers palpably in the streets, manifest for his audience at the gathering, which is itself a microcosm—despite assumptions of a red-meat monolith—of a crazy-quilt democracy.
Relaying his rabbit-hole discoveries, Wilkinson repeats Rukeyser, that the universe is made of stories, not of atoms, that time is measured by story, that time is story, that stories create us and in turn we create stories, and that—here's the crescendo—we "owe the world a sacred duty" to keep the universe in motion by telling our very own. For the first time in Elko history, Wilkinson performs his 40-minute lecture in verse, referencing everyone from Longfellow to Langston Hughes, Dickinson to Dylan Thomas; from Bruce Kiskaddon and Badger Clark—the patron saints of cowboy poetry—to Paul Zarzyski and Amy Auker and a handful more of notable contemporaries. The performance is heady and intellectual, interrupted only by a ukulele refrain that ends: Time is our bloodline / bloodline, storyline.
After a final amen, amen, amen, Wilkinson tilts the instrument toward the crowd and leaves the stage. The audience lifts to its feet in unison, everyone attuned—however briefly, however different—to the fundamental power of story and its unique ability to accomplish what so often escapes us: "the art of reconciliation."
On March 7, 2011, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, then Democratic majority leader, took to the floor of the Senate in a black suit and gold tie to oppose H.R. 1, a "mean-spirited" budget bill that proposed eliminating—among a slew of other programs—both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
"These programs create jobs," he argued. "The National Endowment for the Humanities is the reason we have, in northern Nevada every January, the Cowboy Poetry Festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."
Never mind that Reid grossly exaggerated the Gathering's attendance—at the time, the annual event was luring roughly 6,000 to 8,000 people—or that federal grants represented less than three percent of the operating budget for the Western Folklife Center, the parent organization. The very idea of a cowboy poetry gathering was shark bait for a hungry shiver of Tea Party republicans. Like the notorious and brutally misinterpreted "shrimp on a treadmill" study, the notion of subsidizing a rendezvous of rhyming cowboys perfectly showcased their claims of frivolous federal spending. That Reid defended the event in lockstep with Pell grants and Homeland Security investments likely didn't help. For months to follow, Republicans frenzied on the chum.
Cowboy poet Vess Quinlan of Florence, Colorado, takes the approaches the mic during a session titled "Neighbors, Characters, and Heroes" during the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
"We have the majority leader down here complaining that he might not get money for his cowboy poetry festival in Nevada. Give me a break," said Jeff Sessions, then senator of Alabama. "This country is headed on the path of great danger and we need to turn around."
Congresswoman Candice Miller of Michigan addressed the House armed with a dose of Reid's own medicine, a poem titled "How to Cut Taxes" by Yvonne Hollenbeck of South Dakota, a regular performer at the national gathering:
So, I think if I was the President of this home of the free and the brave, I'd close up all those departments and think of the money I'd save.
Today, federal funding for the arts and humanities seems poised once again for the chopping block. Last month, the White House Budget Office included both the NEA and NEH—in addition to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—on its "hit list" to curtail domestic spending, despite accounting for less than 0.02 percent of the federal budget. Progressives will undoubtedly push back, but one can bet they won't again be citing the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in riposte.
But what if Reid—despite undeniably poor timing and a stunning tone-deafness—had a point? What if the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and the hundreds of other gatherings like it all across the country are exactly what we need? When the Senate designated the Elko gathering the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in October 2000, the resolution acknowledged the Gathering's keen ability to serve "as a bridge between urban and rural people by creating a forum for the presentation of art and for the discussion of cultural issues in a humane and non-political manner."
Today, with the number of hate groups on the rise and the chasm between left and right, urban and rural spreading further all the time, what could be more appropriate?
A few weeks after Trump carried Election Night, I sent a quick email to poet Paul Zarzyski, a former bronc rider and dyed-in-the-wool liberal who has been performing at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering since 1987. I'd been corresponding with Zarzyski for several months, hoping to scratch beneath the surface of a genre so easily dismissed as doggerel, and so often laughed away. He'd made no attempt to conceal his politics, and knowing he considered Donald Trump synonymous with "egomaniacal sanctimonious evil," I was anxious to hear from him in the aftermath.
"The dilemma for me, at 65, Carson, is that I need to find a way to get a fuck-of-a-lot tougher—emotionally, physically, philosophically—at a time in my life when I'd hoped maybe I could relax a little," he wrote back.
Beaten by the news into seclusion at his home in Great Falls, Montana, the old stomping grounds of cowboy artist Charles M. Russell, Zarzyski questioned the very notion of reconciliation in an era of invective social media and the conscious proliferation of alternative facts.
Rodeo poet Paul Zarzyski of Great Falls, Montana, performs for a packed crowd at the Western Folklife Center during a 90-minute solo set, "The Universe According to Paul Zarzyski," at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
"I used to place some faith in such interaction potential, on the most human level, between the two extremely polarized sides, but not anymore. What I'm experiencing since the election is veritable explosions of free-floating cyberspace words expressing the million and one liberal sensibilities that stick oh-so-lovingly to hearts and minds and souls that are in the least need of attracting and assimilating them," he wrote. "Several links to New York Times articles come my way daily from fellow-traveler friends, many of whom I've asked to take me off their CC lists. My neck vertebrae—what's left of them after a dozen years of riding rodeo broncs—can not take the wear-n-tear of nodding my head up-n-down with approval to analyses that likely lock tighter, rather than open slightly, the channels of communication between us and them. Never before has that old adage, 'Actions speak louder than words,' resounded louder.
"Can the spirit of events like the Elko Gathering help to change this deadlock? I don't know—I truly do not know."
Zarzyski's question stuck with me as I traveled to Elko. I flew into Salt Lake City, the nearest major airport, and caught a bus full of other journalists for the remaining 230 miles west. Travel writers, mostly. An editor for Western Horsemen. Another for Lonely Planet. A freelancer pushing 70 in snow bibs. All of us enemies of the American people, according to the president. Interstate 80 cuts directly through the Bonneville Salt Flats. In the summer, the flats are cracked like a tortoise shell, but in the winter, lying below an inch of water, it's a colossal mirror reflecting the sky and everything passing through it. Where the salt pan crested above the water, overzealous Trump supporters had spelled out their leader's name in rocks and other debris. The same portion of interstate also roughly follows the Hastings Cutoff, a precarious shortcut for emigrants on the California Trail, the same cutoff followed by the ill-fated Donner Party in 1847. I imagined the pioneers snowbound in the Sierras, cooking the flesh of their dead; pondered how desperate a group must become before it consumes itself.
"Yes, there's a lot of division everywhere, about everything. But these kinds of gatherings—they bring us together. And maybe it's just because we're being nice, but maybe not. Maybe our stories… can make a bridge between these horrible divides."
For three days, I attended various sessions at the 33rd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, listening to poetry and song; panels with titles like "The Lingo of Our Calling" and "All Creatures Great and Small." I talked to cowboys and poets and cowboy poets. I talked to urbanites dressed like ranchers and ranchers dressed for Sunday mass, retired miners and concessionaires and bored millennials ditching Reno for the weekend. I watched my own cousin, a conservative rancher and cowboy poet from central Nebraska, rap a poem onstage while Dom Flemons, a Grammy Award-winning folk artist and founding member of the black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, accompanied him on the bones. People spilled into the hallways of the convention center after each performance, hugging and smiling and shaking hands, some strangers, some lifelong friends. Many wore cowboy hats and more than a few slicked back thick chevron mustaches. I overheard conversations running the gamut, from cattle chutes to Leonoard Cohen—but not once did I hear the name Donald Trump.
Unless, of course, I asked for it—and god knows I tried. One after the other, I interviewed performers about their experience here, whether or not they've seen the country's partisan divide reflected in the Gathering. In near uniform fashion, their body language—previously upright and giddy—withered, their smiles shot and their shoulders slumped. Merely asking the question felt inappropriate, antithetical, as if I'd proposed a toast at the AA meeting.
"Yes, there's a lot of division everywhere, about everything," said Amy Hale Auker, author of the WILLA Award-winning essay collection Rightful Place, in addition to several novels. Auker trumpets a strong female voice, both in her written work and here at the Gathering, staking her rightful claim in what is still a male-dominated event. "But these kinds of gatherings—they bring us together. And maybe it's just because we're being nice, but maybe not. Maybe our stories… can make a bridge between these horrible divides."
Eyes welling with tears, she swallowed hard before continuing, the complicated cacophony or her own political fervor, and the fervor of all of those with whom she disagrees, rising again to the surface. She hasn't asked, but she knows many of her closest friends here at the national gathering voted for Trump. For the first time, she grew apprehensive about making the annual pilgrimage to Elko.
"But this isn't a festival, this is a true gathering. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to gather. We have to gather."
For the last 30 years, they've been gathering in Alpine, Texas, too. Though it's a direct descendant of the national gathering, many of the veteran performers in Elko say it's now the more "authentic" event, less focused on sponsors and ticket sales than real cowboys. As Don Cadden, president of the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering steering committee, wrote for its 30th anniversary, "We'll invite a working cowboy…with a song or poem to share, over a flashy group with smile-pocket shirts and big hats any day." Star power be damned.
The sun rises over Poet's Grove in Alpine, Texas, where attendees of the 31st Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering have swarmed for an early-morning chuckwagon breakfast
Several weeks later, following their recommendation, I flew to Alpine for the 31st Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, hosted on the campus of Sul Ross State University. In many ways they were right, though sometimes accompanying that authenticity were hints of the partisan aggression happily absent in Elko. During a Saturday afternoon show at the university's Marshall Auditorium, singer/songwriter Dan Roberts performed an original song called "Viva La Cowboy." The first time he recorded it, he explained, he took his wife's advice and edited a few lines to keep it politically correct. But when it came time to record it again for his "Best Of" album, he reverted to the original lines.
but the government's harassin' the ranchers and PETA's givin' rodeo heck I think they're all a bunch of limp-wristed wackos Who couldn't make a pimple on a tough man's neck
Despite the nearly incoherent last line, the crowd erupted in applause. Roberts knew it would, grinning victorious beneath the brim of his hat. Later the same day, an older man standing behind me in the concession line claimed college students vote for liberals because they don't know what hard work means anymore. And a few hours after that, Russell and Roxanne Boothe, a middle-aged couple killing a few hours at the bar before the evening show, lectured me on the many ills of the inner city.
"A cowboy way of looking at stuff is all what nature and god give you. There's nobody to blame the drought on. There's nobody to blame the weather conditions on. The problem with the inner city," Russell tells me, "is they want to blame somebody for their problem. So they're sitting here, 'Well, we're living in poverty.' Hey! You don't have to stay there. You can get out!"
Cowboy poet Randy Rieman of southwestern Montana shares the stage at the 31st Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering with several other close friends and poets
These moments notwithstanding, I often felt the same creeping sense of reconciliation in West Texas I felt in Elko, no matter how temporary it may prove to be. As Lubbock singer-songwriter Andy Hedges, a shy conservative, told me, "You know, if you tell a story, there's nothing to disagree with. It's just what happened. If you sing a protest song that's got a political agenda, then you're just kind of singing to the choir. People disagree, bow up, and feel uncomfortable. If you tell a story it just helps people understand, and I think that's what can really change things and change people and change their perspective."
On the last day of the National Gathering, Zarzyski shares the stage at the Western Folklife Center with three other poets—Levi Romero, Olivia Romo and Ofelia Zepeda, each of them drawing from their Hispanic heritage—for a morning session called, simply, "Western Poetry." Afterward, the two of us wander upstairs in search of an empty room for a quiet interview. I'm eager to know if the Gathering pulled him out of his funk, if "the spirit of events" here offered even a modicum of hope. But first I ask about the show.
"I tried not to think about it on stage very much," he says, "but I got up there and I wanted to remind the audience that we're here because of their vaquero ancestors, the first cowboys, the lingo and skills of whom we celebrate in poetry and song. The session should've been titled, 'Spanish is the loving tongue,' the opening line to Charles Badger Clark's poem, 'A Border Affair.' I stopped just short of losing it and saying, 'So fuck Donald Trump and his fucking wall.'"
For a moment, the room is uncomfortably quiet.
"Did it work?" I ask. "Did the Gathering provide any relief?"
"It was especially tough this year… I've been in places lately where I've felt so alone that by comparison I could've made J. D. Salinger and Howard Hughes appear gregarious," he says. "But I'll go back home and maybe, because of the glimpse of hope I have been graced with here, step a little bit away from that seclusion."
Following a full-day of poetry and song at the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, a group of western musicians gathers in the lobby of The Holland Hotel in downtown Alpine for an impromptu jam session
The atmosphere of the Gathering—that palpable sense of belonging—colored me, too. Flying home, I felt the come down, what several performers called the "post-Elko blues," knowing that what awaited me back home, what awaited all of us, weren't the open arms of community, but the ugly alternative; not the earnest handshake of potential friends, but the questioning of strangers. I'd seen what community looks like, and doubted I'd find it again soon.
I wasn't wrong. My optimism waned quickly upon my return. Too much news. The worries of the world too many. But a few weeks later, flying high above west Texas, I opened Zarzyski's 2003 collection Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat to a poem called "Face-to-Face" and was reminded, however briefly, of what it takes to find beauty, to reconcile, and of what it took to fall in love with the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in the first place.
Face-To-Face
Out of nowhere, you find yourself placed daily before the fortress, rustic logs throbbing something from within you vaguely recognize as music—so primal, so otherworldly in its purpose, you are at once drawn closer, cautioned back. Succumb to ugly logic, to mean-spirited reason, or religion, and you, believing you shun merely the unknown, will flee unwittingly from beauty. Trust the blood, however, waltzing to four-part harmony within the heart, and you will be moved to witness, through the chinking's thin fissures, the shadows of the enchanted. Then, and only then, might you choose to follow a force you'll lovingly call your soul through huge swinging doors thrown open to the glorious commotion of it all.
Carson Vaughan is a freelance writer living in Nebraska. Follow him on Twitter.
In late 1984, 59-year-old Dallas resident Ward McDonald fell off a roof he was working on, suffering a compound fracture in his hand and breaking his ankle so badly that his foot was almost severed. He was taken to the nearest hospital, Charter Suburban, a private facility. The ER intake staff's first question was whether he had insurance.
He didn't—he'd lost it two years earlier when he was laid off. So the hospital refused him service, sending him 30 miles away to Parkland Memorial, the nearest public hospital. The bill ended up being $18,000. McDonald, of course, couldn't pay. Parkland Memorial and taxpayers absorbed the cost, as is the case whenever medical bills go unpaid at a public hospital.
Cases like that one, documented in a March 1985 60 Minutes segment, led 20 states to pass laws that year requiring that hospitals treat patients with emergency conditions. The next year, after mounting public pressure, President Ronald Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which made that requirement national.
Since then, this reality has undergirded all debates about healthcare in America: If people are uninsured, they're still able to get treated at emergency rooms. But when they do, they face massive bills that they often can't pay—a situation that sends patients into debt and often forces taxpayers and the insured to eventually pick up the tab.
Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law in 2010, Republicans have argued that the government shouldn't force people to buy insurance. That mirrors what Trump voters say—a series of Kaiser Family Foundation focus groups with them found that most view the individual mandate as "un-American." But they were also not sure what specific reforms they would support. "What they want are pragmatic solutions to their insurance problems," wrote the KFF.
Watch this video on how to treat impaled object wounds:
The American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Republican replacement to the ACA backed by Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, would wipe out the individual mandate as part of a stated effort to bring more freedom, choice, and capitalism into the healthcare system, which conservatives believes has been taken over by socialism.
"There are two ways of fixing healthcare," Ryan said in a speech. "Have the government run it, and ration it, and put price controls. That's what Obamacare does, that's what the left wants… Or do what conservatives have been arguing for, for years. Have a vibrant free market where people get to do what they want, they buy what they want."
But that argument doesn't address whether it's fair to force hospitals to treat people who either can't afford or choose not to buy health insurance, and for taxpayers to subsidize those costs. Not even libertarians like Rand Paul or the right-wing House Freedom Caucus have proposed going back to the days when hospitals could withhold emergency treatment from those who can't pay. Ed Gaines, a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians' reimbursement committee, told me he's glad that Congress passed the EMTALA. "But it's the largest unfunded mandate in health care," he added.
Most unpaid emergency room treatment bills are covered by taxpayers. In 2013, the year before the ACA fully kicked in, Kaiser crunched the numbers and determined that the total cost of unpaid ER bills that year came to about $85 billion. Sixty percent of that cost was absorbed by hospitals, and most of the rest was paid for community providers like clinics and health centers, and individual doctors.
Taxpayer money reimbursed a huge chunk of this cost—about $33 billion from the federal government and $20 billion from state governments. The federal share alone is 33 times higher than the cost of the Corporation for National and Community Service, 74 times that of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and 220 times the National Endowment for the Arts funding level. (All of those programs are slated for elimination under the Trump administration's proposed budget.)
The ACA lowered those bills—by the end of 2014, the cost of uncompensated care to the federal government had dropped by 21 percent. Two-thirds of those savings came in states that expanded Medicaid coverage, as allowed under the ACA. (Unpaid ER bills, including those resulting from "surprise" charges patients face after not realizing their insurance didn't cover some treatments, remain a problem.)
If Ryan's AHCA passes, however, unpaid medical bills likely will balloon. The Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million fewer people will have insurance by 2018, a number that will rise to 24 million by 2026, if the AHCA becomes law. The CBO didn't calculate how much that would increase the free-care burden. But a study by the Urban Institute in January estimated that if 30 million people lost insurance under a Republican plan, it would almost triple the amount of uncompensated care.
Even under the CBO's smaller uninsured number, the cost of uncompensated care is sure to rise by a lot, study co-author Matthew Buettgens told me. And federal and state governments won't pick up much of those additional losses, he added.
Instead, they'll be absorbed by hospitals, community health centers, and individual doctors. More than 70 percent of US private hospitals are nonprofits, and each additional uninsured person costs them $900 a year, according to a 2015 study by Craig Garthwaite, who helps direct a health enterprise management program at Northwestern University's business school. A Bloomberg Intelligence analysis calculated that hospitals' earnings would drop as much as 6 percent under the Republican law.
That will create another set of problems, according to experts. More financial losses by health providers means lower-quality healthcare for everyone, particularly in lower-income areas. Unpaid bills could mean hospitals invest less in facilities, staff, and equipment, said Kaiser's Rachel Garfield.
Maybe more worryingly, some hospitals won't survive, period—many hospital emergency departments are hanging on by a thread, said Gaines. Among the ERs that do make it, more will be staffed with physicians' assistants and nurse practitioners (called "advanced-practice providers") and fewer ER doctors to save money, he said.
"People should care because hospital emergency departments are the safety net for the entire country," Gaines told me. "And that safety net is very vulnerable to even modest changes in reimbursement."
Those realities are what have long made healthcare impossible to reconcile with a true free market—as Garthwaite has pointed out, grocery stores aren't required to give free food to people who need it, though the government does help people buy basic needs via food stamps. Hospitals are often trapped between the legal (and moral) requirement to save lives by providing treatment, and their need to make enough money to survive. The Republican reform doesn't solve that problem—it makes it worse.
Steven Yoder writes about criminal justice and domestic policy issues. His work has appeared in Salon, Al Jazeera America, The American Prospect, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter.
On Tuesday, a Texas grand jury handed down an indictment for assault with a deadly weapon. The weapon in question: a GIF. This is because journalist, commentator, and relentlessly prolific anti-Trump Twitter dude Kurt Eichenwald, who has photosensitive epilepsy, claims that a hostile @ mention from a #MAGA Twitter guy named John Rayne Rivello gave him a seizure.
We can all chuckle at the idea of a GIF being considered a lethal weapon, but the grand jury's decision does pass a basic logic test: the GIF was allegedly designed intentionally and effectively to trigger a seizure, and epileptic seizures can be fatal.
But the legal logic is less than water-tight according to Jeffrey Fagan, professor of law at Columbia Law School. "My guess is that the GIF opinion will get overturned," he told me in an email. Laws about weapon deadliness vary from state to state, he pointed out, but more generally, without the excitement of a murder trial, courts "aren't willing to take on the idea of an ever-expanding definition of a weapon."
In fact, people get charged with—but not necessarily convicted of—assault with a deadly weapon for preposterous-sounding weapons all the time. Some of the stories are legitimately funny, while ones like Eichenwald's sound scary, painful, or both. These stories fit into a few categories: "obviously deadly, but a little weird," "Obviously deadly, and totally bananas," and "Probably not deadly."
1. Obviously deadly, but a little weird
Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Andrewlister
In 1902, the Mississippi Supreme Court heard a case in which an assault with a deadly weapon conviction had been overturned because the weapon was a brick, which wasn't explicitly mentioned on the state's list of deadly weapons. The court overturned the appeal, and the conviction stuck. "If the instrument, whatever it be, kills, it carries strong evidence of its being deadly," the court's opinion said. Moreover, the justices wrote, "it is for the jury to decide."
The most illuminating of these stories is probably the one in which a weightlifting coach was allegedly attacked with a kettlebell by one of his students' dads. This is crazy because A) a kettlebell? Those are so awkward, and B) The alleged assailant was Diddy, as in: P. Diddy. In the end, charges were never filed, which should serve as a helpful reminder that an allegation of assault with a deadly weapon doesn't mean there's ever a formal charge, let alone a conviction.
2. Obviously deadly, and totally bananas
Meanwhile, some crazy weapons defy definition as "deadly," not simply because the deadliness is in question, but because it's almost impossible to imagine anyone but a cartoon character using one in an assault. Consequently, reporters have maybe a little too much fun with the story ledes when they write about them.
For instance, in 1999, when a man was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly hit his girlfriend with a fish, a Reuters reporter started a wire article thusly: "Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life. Give Nicholas Vitalich a fish and he will hit his girlfriend with it, police here said Tuesday." The fish was a frozen tuna, and the woman was knocked to the ground, suffering cuts to her face and legs.
Similarly, imagine being the victim of an assault with a crucifix, and having to explain that to the doctor who treats you at the hospital for cuts to your face. Imagine being the Wendy's employee who nearly got chomped by a three-and-a-half foot alligator because some lunatic allegedly chucked it through the drive-thru window. How would you feel if the mother of your children yanked off your prosthetic leg and started hitting you with it? Probably not great.
3. Probably not deadly
Photo via Flickr user Aoife
It took an FBI investigation, and a grand jury before Rivello got slapped with an assault with a deadly weapon charge over the GIF. Authorities have doled out charges of assault with a deadly weapon much more recklessly in the past, and the results have sometimes been ugly.
For instance, assault with a deadly weapon convictions in which the weapon was HIV make sense, but laws deeming HIV a deadly weapon are sometimes poorly-written, resulting in charges for HIV-infected people when they spit on someone, even though the saliva of an HIV-infected person is not infectious.
In 2015 West Palm Beach, Florida Sheriff's deputies charged a man with assault with a deadly weapon because he dumped piss on them. According to the Palm Beach Post the argument for the charge was that piss "can cause respiratory infection or permanent bodily harm." OK, sure, there's a little bit of bacteria in piss, but there's also bacteria in bottled water. In fact, many people enjoy having piss on them and inside their mouths, and they can be very reckless about where they put it without risk of death.
In other legally murky cases, weapons that are clearly non-lethal have gotten used in an arguably lethal way, like when a cheese grater was used in combination with a knife in a painful-sounding 2016 attack in Austin, Texas.
In an example more reminiscent of the Eichenwald case earlier this month, non-lethal pepper spray was deemed by a panel of judges to have been used in a way that made it deadly. The perpetrator in that case allegedly sprayed the victim with pepper spray in order to more easily deliver a potentially lethal beat-down, ergo, the pepper spray was a deadly weapon during the beating. It sort of makes sense, but as Fagan pointed out, it's so weird that it might be hard to make the charges stick.
Still, Fagan told me, the precise definition of a deadly weapon, "changes over time, and [is] always expanding." So if you want to completely avoid getting arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, here's a rule of thumb I just made up: don't attack another person with a heavy or sharp object, or a computer file—even if it's silly—if the thing you're using could ever possibly kill that person.
Another day, another report about a Trump administration employee with some, uhhhhhhh, odd beliefs. This time, it's the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary for health technology at the Department of Health and Human Services, former Louisiana House Republican representative John Fleming. He has some questionable ideas about what causes substance abuse. In 2006, Fleming (who is also a physician) wrote a book called Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction, where he suggests that there's a correlation between tattoos and substance abuse, though he concedes that "not all Goths are drug addicts." BuzzFeed looked into this book and published a list of excerpts. Among the gems:
Why opiates are proof of God's existence: "Were it not for these drugs, many common and miraculous surgeries would be impossible to either undergo or perform. In my opinion this is no coincidence at all. Only a higher power and intellect could have created a world in which substances like opiates grow naturally."
How pornography can lead to fear of dick: "Another recent example I can cite is that of an adult woman who was allowed to see a pornographic movie as a child. As an adult, she has suffered from a phobia to male genitalia."
On the correlation between tattoos and substance abuse: "Body art comes into play in drug addiction as well, although obviously, not all who have a tattoo are addicts. A sailer who gets a single tattoo on his arm or an adult woman who has a small butterfly tattooed on her lower abdomen are not necessarily drug addicts or even rebellious — just dumb, at least temporarily!"
On whether Goths are predisposed to drug addiction: "Goths usually smoke cigarettes and many practice an odd sort of devil worship, although kids in the 'punk' culture may not have any interest in these non-mainstream beliefs. Not all Goths are drug addicts, but a high percentage experiment with all types of drugs, including hallucinogens... When you see that your child has become interested in body art or has a fascination with the Goth or other subculture, then be on alert, because your child is likely headed into rebellion and possible drug experimentation."
Before being appointed to Trump's cabinet of horrors, Fleming was known for believing an Onion story about Planned Parenthood building an $8 billion "abortionplex" was real, and propagating phony information he read on Breitbart on the House floor. BuzzFeed also pointed out that in an interview, Fleming recounts making his 16-year-old son take a breathalyzer test every time he came home after he caught him drinking. "Believe it or not, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have come out against the use of home breathalyzer and drug testing," Fleming said, but then called his parenting techniques "necessary in today's environment."
In 2015, more than a million refugees crossed into Europe, in what marked the peak year of the refugee crisis. The Syrian civil war, the volatile situation in Afghanistan, and the promise of protection and benefits in countries like Germany morphed the refugee crisis into a windfall for profiteers. Those desperate to leave their homes turned to smugglers, often advertised on social media and messaging platforms like WhatsApp as catering to the needs of dislocated people in war-torn areas of the East.
Out of the seven migratory routes into Europe by sea and land—the Central Mediterranean, Western Mediterranean, Western African, Apulia and Calabria, Eastern Borders, Eastern Mediterranean, and Western Balkan routes—the last two experienced something of a smuggling spree over the last few years.
Confronted with the explosion of arrivals through the Eastern Med and Western Balkan routes, the EU signed a deal with Turkey last March. The deal allowed Greece to return to Turkey "all new irregular migrants" arriving after March 20. In return, Turkey would get €6 billion ($6.4 billion) until the end of 2018, early visa-free travel, and advancement in its EU membership negotiations. Under the weight of the new deal, arrivals in Europe plummeted—from 885,400 arrivals through the Eastern Med route in 2015 to 182,534 in 2016.
Yet, even if smugglers capitalizing off of human desperation took a decisive blow in late-March, 2016, the dust of the refugee crisis has hardly settled. The UN Agency for Refugees estimates that there were 1,464 new arrivals in Greece last month alone.
"It is not possible to make any predictions about the future of smuggling, as there are many variables attached to it," Izabella Cooper, spokesperson for FRONTEX, told me, citing "a mix of push-and-pull factors, the political and economic situation in the source countries, [and] the offer of smuggling services. Border control itself is not a panacea, but rather one piece of a bigger puzzle."
By all intents and purposes, the puzzle of the criminal syndicates of smuggling appears loosely connected, yet grossing between $3 and $6 billion yearly and spanning nationalities from more than 100 countries, according to Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency. It might take more than the EU-Turkey deal to force it to buckle under. In the meantime, loosely dispersed Greek hot spots of stranded people have created the perfect breeding ground for new smuggling ecosystems.
"All you need is money. Then, you find a fixer. He'll tell you the most economical travel package for your case," said Masood Qahar, a 39-year old Afghan escapee of the Taliban and resident of a Southern Athens detention camp. "[It's] a piece of cake. Fixers are everywhere."
A smuggler, or "tour guide," with a group of migrants. Photo courtesy of the author
The EU-Turkey deal has seemingly created a paradox: Some people trapped in Greece's detention camps have started working at the bottom of the barrel of the smuggling networks, as low-level fixers. Some are also forming small consortiums to develop their own smuggling routes through parts of the Balkans. The deal has also benefited modes of transport not limited to land and water.
"If you have €4,000 ($4,300) you can easily travel by plane," Qahar told me. "The fixer will send you to Victoria square [in the heart of Athens]. You'll find an organizer there. The organizer will invite you to see the real smuggler, who usually owns a night club or a mobile phones shop or a mini market in the vicinity."
Qahar told me about one such virtual smuggling business disguised as a mini market in Arabic letters, in the same ghettoized region of Athens. The "real smuggler," the leader in smuggling ring, will match your passport size photo to a doppelgänger—often a drug addict or otherwise destitute person who rents their passport-size photo to smugglers for a short period of time. The enterprise is so neatly set up that they can even arrange for you to have a smuggler of the opposite sex escort you to the airport and pretend to be your spouse on the flight to your destination country to dispel suspicions, according to Qahar.
The increase in smuggling by air may as well stem from the loopholes of the EU-Turkey deal. By May 2016, two months after the agreement was put in force, the Greek authorities had declined 30 percent of the asylum claims they had processed. Furthermore, the deal extended only to the Aegean Sea crossing, not to other routes out of Turkey. Thus, smuggling networks switched their sights on the costlier full-package solution: travel by air with European passports, like the ones Qahar describes, or Syrian passports. This would bypass the obstacle of the closed borders.
Amin, a 34-year-old Afghan man now living in a camp in Serbia, told me he paid a smuggler $215 for a "guided trip" to Eidomeni in Northern Greece. From Eidomeni, he paid a taxi driver $160 to reach the Greece-FYROM borders and then a third smuggler helped him cross the borders on foot, for a fee of $2,150. "It's a jungle of police and smugglers out there, but the latter can deliver," he said. Europol itself acknowledges that bottlenecks and informal camps have emerged to assist the crossing of the shutdown borders.
A last, more adrenaline-inducing way smugglers have come up with to transfer human beings across Europe after the prohibitive deal involves trucks. According to Arash, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee, refugees are advised to wait at Patras port in Western Peloponnese, where many Italy-bound ferries set off. For $540, a smuggler will give them the green light to hide under the wheels of a truck, if the driver is not in the know. If he is, the tariff can soar to $4,300, but the traveler can enjoy more convenient body positions.
From Patras to Bari, Arash told me he spent 16 hours of his life in the fetal position, consuming only a bottle of water and a couple of date fruits. From Bari he moved to Milan, then to Genoa, then to Ventimiglia. For $500, a second smuggler shoved him into a car alongside three more men. They crossed the Italian-French borders and arrived in Nice.
"Every day he brings more than 20 people like this," he told me. "Lots of money, lots of money."
But for Arash, it was all worth it: He's now living in a Parisienne refugee camp, waiting for his first asylum interview.
"If Arash had had more money and patience, he would have been spared the first part of his journey, the trickier one," Qahar says from the detention camps.
As of March 2017, fixers have been approaching Qahar, telling him that for $4,300 they can send him to Italy by ship without hide-and-seek games with the truck drivers. "Smugglers have made alliances with shipowners, who first supply refugees and migrants with work uniforms, and then 'recruit' them for various positions on the ship, for as long as the voyage lasts," he disclosed. This is the new subterfuge of the smuggling networks, whose plasticity has far outshone brittle intercontinental deals.
As students left the Indianapolis Jewish Community Center on what staff members were calling an "adventure" to undisclosed locations nearby, a bomb unit rushed in through another door. Similar evacuations took place across America that day, February 27, as 31 bomb threats were leveled against JCCs and Jewish day schools in 16 states.
In Indiana, the disturbing incident coincided with what many in the Jewish community experienced as another blow: A bill intended to establish harsher sentencing for bias-motivated crimes died on the floor of the state senate.
The Hoosier State is one of only five in America without a hate crime law. The bill proposed in Indiana would have allowed bias against a person's race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, disability, national origin, ancestry, or sexual orientation to be considered as an "aggravating circumstance" that could merit tougher sentencing, as is the case with federal hate crime laws. While the FBI can help investigate and prosecute hate crimes across the country, it rarely takes them on because most cases fall under the purview of state law.
As you might expect, Indiana has one of the worst track records of passing hate crime information on to federal agencies. A 2016 Associated Press investigation found that more than half of the state's police agencies neglected to report hate crimes to the FBI between 2009 and 2014. The following year, hate crimes spiked nationally. And while there's no official tally yet, anecdotal evidence suggests a fresh wave of bias-motivated crimes in recent months. From swastika graffiti along a hiking trail to white supremacist fliers on a college campus, Indiana saw at least ten hateful incidents in the week after the election alone, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Then came the bomb threats, with at least two targeting the Indianapolis JCC in the last month alone.
Jamie Rich, whose three-year-old son is a preschool student at the JCC, says she can barely allow herself to consider the possibility that the next threat might more than a scare tactic. "I can't think of anything worse," she told me in an empty meeting room before picking up her son from down the hall. "There's a reason why this is happening, and I do believe that there should be a stronger punishment and the ability to enforce that if someone is carrying out a premeditated attack in order to discriminate [against] and alienate a group of people of any kind."
In cooperation with the FBI, local law enforcement arrested an 18-year-old in Israel on Thursday, accusing him of being responsible for many of the recent threats against JCCs both in the US and abroad. Another suspect in some of the prank calls, a disgraced former journalist, was arrested in Missouri early this month.
Jamie Rich. Photos by the author
State representative Gregory Porter is among the leading advocates of a hate crime law in Indianapolis. A hate crime doesn't just impact the individual targeted, the longtime Democratic lawmaker said as he settled into a bench outside the state house's legislative chambers earlier this week. "It's a hit to the whole community," he explained. "People don't understand that."
Porter has been trying to get the message across—and to pass some version of a hate crime law—for the last 15 years.
What's standing in the way? Porter hedged when asked directly if a legacy of racism is at play, adjusting his tie so minutely that the change was almost indiscernible. A hundred years ago, after all, the Ku Klux Klan's local grand dragon held tremendous sway over Indiana cops and lawmakers.
"Indiana," Porter said finally, "is a very conservative state, and you have people in key positions who can continue to suppress and oppress individuals." It's a powerful minority, he added, who have been instrumental in keeping bills on hate crimes from getting a vote, which Porter believes would add up in favor of the legislation.
Vice President Mike Pence was among the most vocal opponents of hate crime legislation during his time as Indiana governor and congressman. In 2009, he railed against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded hate crime legislation to include those targeted because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability by (falsely) claiming that such laws "quell religious expression."
"Individual pastors who may wish to preach... about what the Bible teaches about homosexual behavior," Pence said, "could be charged or subject to intimidation for simply expressing a biblical moral view on the issue of homosexual behavior."
These days, Indiana legislators opposed to a hate crime law use a different tack. Some claim such laws are unnecessary since Indiana's criminal code provides a list of "aggravating circumstances" (things like the victim's age and mental fitness) that could merit harsher sentencing. The code includes a sort of "catch-all clause" which states that the criteria listed "do not limit the matters that the court may consider in determining the sentence."
"With such a broad sentencing law and precedent, narrowing the law to reflect only a few characteristics seems unnecessary," Republican state representative Thomas Washburne said in an email. "There is a risk, though hard to quantify, that by limiting Indiana's currently broad law it may well be viewed by the courts as an intent by the legislature to only include the characteristics that would then be listed to the exclusion of others."
He has previously elaborated on this point.
"To me, it's very difficult to say something is more or less a crime based on somebody's motivation," Washburne told the Indy Star last year. "So when you separate it and you try to create a special crime for it, what you're saying is that if somebody's on a street corner and they get beat up because somebody hates tall people and they happen to not be in any protected status, that's less of a crime than if they beat you up because of your national origin."
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Proponents of hate crime legislation say the specter of hate crimes motivated by characteristics like height is, well, absurd.
"If we're more worried about making this bill work for the tall guy than we are in protecting people who have long, demonstrated histories of violence and discrimination against them, [then those people won't] feel welcome at the table," said Jamie Rich, the mother of a preschooler at the Indianapolis JCC.
Rich is also a board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council, an Indianapolis-based advocacy group. Its director of government affairs, David Sklar, has spearheaded a coalition of more than 40 organizations advocating for hate crimes legislation. Sklar thinks the measure is more important than ever amid a possible surge in hate crimes—and the possibility that federal dollars to investigate them could be reallocated.
"It's certainly easy to think that the attention of the Department of Justice and the FBI may be focused on other things," under President Trump, he said. "It's important for states to have their own hate crime statutes, so they can address local level crimes on their own and not have to rely on that very limited capacity of federal agencies."
The FBI did launch an investigation after a trio of vandals spray-painted slurs on the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) headquarters in Plainfield, Indiana, last February. Blurry surveillance footage offered no clear leads.
But the incident rattled Faryal Khatri, who works in ISNA's communications department. These days, fearful that attackers might be hiding amid the cornfields that flank the building, she parks in a different lot than most all of her colleagues and double-checks who's at the doors—which were left unlocked prior to the vandalism—before answering them.
"I think about hate crime legislation all the time," she said before showing me the residue of white paint on the building's brick walls. "What if someone comes here and shoots me? There's no law [in Indiana] to say that was a hate crime, and that's very disturbing."
In a move that baffled school officials, Perry—an A&M alum—essentially said the student government election was rigged. Robert McIntosh, the son of a prominent Republican fundraiser, originally won the election by popular vote, but ended up getting disqualified. The election then went to Bobby Brooks, a 21-year-old openly gay junior.
"When I first read that our student body had elected an openly gay man, Bobby Brooks, for president of the student body, I viewed it as a testament to the Aggie character," Perry wrote. "I was proud of our students because the election appeared to demonstrate a commitment to treating every student equally, judging on character rather than on personal characteristics."
Perry added, "Unfortunately a closer review appears to prove the opposite; and the Aggie administration and SGA owe us answers."
Front-runner McIntosh lost the election after his campaign was first accused of voter intimidation. He then failed to disclose financial information about—this part is so college—glow sticks that were used in his campaign video.
After the school's judicial court determined McIntosh should be disqualified, Brooks was then announced the winner. But Perry apparently took issue with that decision. According to our new energy secretary, Brooks only won because the university wanted to put the diversity and inclusivity of its student body on display.
"What if McIntosh had been a minority student instead of a white male?" Perry wrote. "What if Brooks had been the candidate disqualified? Would the administration and the student body have allowed the first gay student body president to be voided for using charity glow sticks?"
The fact that Perry decided to get involved in a dispute between college kids at a university 1,400 miles from DC caught McIntosh off guard, and he told the school paper that he was ultimately "humbled" to have Perry's support. The school administration, however, said it "respectfully disagree[s] with his assessment."
"He's always been a great proponent for Texas A&M. I'm surprised that he's weighing in. I'm surprised he would have the time to do that," A&M communications officer, Amy B. Smith, told the Dallas Morning News. "There's rules here. Somebody lost and somebody won, and that's always tough, but it was just a surprise to see this."
In the spring of 2015, my life seemed bleak. Shuttered in at home, I spent most of my time in bed, eating delivery and watching Penguins of Madagascar, a Nickelodeon children's cartoon about a team of James Bond-like penguins who run the Central Park Zoo. Watching it provided a momentary distraction from my depression. While discussing that period of darkness with my now-partner, I admitted that I often watch cartoons meant for children as a method of self-care. He confessed that he still watches Tom & Jerry in times of turmoil.
The coincidence struck me. Undoubtedly, I needed therapy during that period of my life, but instead I self-medicated with cartoons, as did my partner. Could there actually be some medical benefit to this coping mechanism?
"Is it a go to strategy? No. But I'm open to it," Dr. David Rosmarin, founder and director of the Center for Anxiety in New York City, told me. "We would use it primarily to treat depression. I also could see it being helpful for people who have chronic worry because that co-occurs with depression."
Dr. Rosmarin uses "behavioral activation," to treat these types of mood disorders. The method entails not talking with patients about their inner demons, childhood traumas, not even their job stress, but rather encouraging them to increase their pleasure activities.
"TV could be a pleasure activity. Watching something funny, that could be a lift," Rosmarin said. "I don't think that it has to be specific to cartoons or kid's television. You could go to a comedy show, or watch rom-coms, or The Office."
There are some benefits to watching cartoons specifically, though. The penguins'—Skipper, Kowalski, Private, and Rico—adventures were my antidote to the complexities of adult life. In the zoo there were no worries about money, no heart-wrenching relationships to leave one feeling worthless. Watching the animals navigate their flattened version of basic human issues—frustration, conflict, loneliness—made it easier to cope with my own much more nuanced reality. In the world of the penguins, the human emotions that I had such trouble processing—sadness, especially—were easily resolved as long you had the moxie to express them to your friends. They could comfort you, remind you of the bright side of life.
"Kids' cartoons can be a support treatment because they incorporate themes like community order, friendship, family, teamwork, that good always wins over evil, and that the sun will always come out tomorrow," Dr. Laurel Steinberg, a New York-based psychotherapist, told me. "They can help restore optimism, and give someone a break from worrying or feeling sad, all of which can elevate [your] mood."
Effective children's television is supposed to be educational as well. Some shows teach kids to count or say the alphabet; others try to convey abstract emotional concepts, preparing their young audiences for an adulthood in which they may apply these lessons to their interpersonal relationships and interactions.
"Cartoons model higher frustration tolerance and activate a person's problem solving abilities," said Steinberg. She believes that building up these basic problem-solving skills can, in the long run, improve life circumstances and "further reduce anxiety and depression."
Live-action television could probably achieve the same ends, but I'll watch Nickelodeon over The Office every time I'm feeling depressed, even though the NBC sitcom is funnier and provides the same benefits that Steinberg outlined. So, what might make a depressed person turn to a cartoon instead?
"I don't think it's as simple as wanting to watch cute animals over people, but [instead] wanting to see an unreal character tackle real problems," Tony Celano, a professional animator and comedian, told me. "Animation lightens the load of a normally rough subject. If a character in live action runs into a wall, we wince. If a cartoon does it, we laugh at the slapstick humor."
Though cartoons might relieve symptoms of depression in the short-term, Rosmarin stresses it's just one part of a "larger context of actions you can take." In fact, there's an actual medical term for taking part in any activity that distracts you from feeling "stressed, anxious, angry, or sad": opposite action.
"You engage in an action that is exactly the opposite of the way you feel in order to regulate your emotions. If you're feeling really anxious, then to do something very bold. If you're feeling socially anxious, get dressed up and go to a party," Rosmarin explained.
In the case of a depressed or anxious person, the answer might be to just watch something that makes you laugh.
"Laughter can be very therapeutic," Dr. Julia Sampton, a psychiatrist who specializes in treating mood disorders, explained. "Freud conceptualized defense mechanisms, a mental process that is used to avoid anxiety or conflict. Mature defense mechanisms are used by healthier people and humor is categorized in that way."
In fact, the Mayo Clinic recommends laughter as a form of stress relief, explaining that not only can it soothe tension, but even improve your immune system. A study from the University of Maryland Medical Center showed that laughter may help prevent heart attacks. Of course, a cartoon won't magically cure depression, but if it makes you laugh? Then it's done its job.
A teenager in Israel suspected of phoning in dozens of bomb threats to Jewish community centers across the United States was arrested Thursday, as the Guardian reports.
Israeli police apprehended the teen, a dual citizen of the US and Israel, in cooperation with the FBI. Authorities were prohibited from releasing his name, and there are conflicting reports about his age—though he appears to be either 18 or 19. The suspect is said to have used robust technology to disguise his voice and conceal the source of the threats.
In addition to threatening American JCCs, the teen is accused of threats in Israel, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. On one occasion, the JTA reports, he allegedly called Delta and threatened to kill Jews onboard a flight near New York's JFK airport, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
Authorities still haven't pinpointed the suspect's motives. His attorney says he's suffered from a brain tumor that "may have had an effect on his cognitive functions," as the New York Times reports.
Jewish community centers in the US and Canada have received more than 150 bomb threats this year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. It remains unclear how many of those acts may have been carried out by this new suspect. But coupled with a spate of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries, the threats have stoked fear that anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. Earlier this month, disgraced former journalist Juan Thompson was charged with making at least eight bomb threats to Jewish sites across the country, allegedly in a twisted attempt to get back at an ex-girlfriend.
In February, President Trump responded to repeated requests from Jewish leaders to speak out against a culture of anti-Semitism they described as "alive and kicking" in America.
"Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it's going to stop, and it has to stop," he said, before calling out threats against Jews again in his first speech before Congress.
Filmed over the course of three years, All This Panic documents the real lives of seven New York City girls as they navigate the turbulent road to maturity.
Each facing different hurdles in their lives, the film – by photographers Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton – offers intimate access to the private worlds of these young women. By the film's end we've witnessed them laugh, cry and savour their first tastes of adulthood. And with a lean running time of just 79 minutes, All This Panic flickers by fast, the seasons measurable by the girls' changing hairstyles and evolving attitudes.
Distinct personalities shine through: Lena's calm resilience in the face of family chaos; Sage's whipsmart observations on feminism and race; Olivia's tentative – then bold – coming out; and Ginger's shedding of the naivety that's been holding her back.
The usual teen topics of sex and drugs are explored, but the film is never salacious. Instead, it's a vibrant and candid group portrait that offers up a refreshing, dynamic image of modern girlhood. Ginger's dad tells her part-way through the film that "the whole point of growing older is that you eventually find out what's fake about you and what's real, and hopefully move on with more of the real". Just like its subjects, All this Panic is a film that strives for authenticity, and finds it. I spoke to Jenny Gage about the experience of making it.
Ginger in 'All This Panic'
VICE: So how did the project begin and what drew you to those girls in particular? Jenny Gage: I've always – in any sort of art form that I've been doing – been interested in that period in a girl's life. It's a time when they're thinking about things very deeply; thinking about who they are, who they want to become. Right when I'd had my daughter, Ginger and Dusty, the two main girls in the film, moved down the street from us. So I would see them walking to school and I'd be thinking, 'What's different now from when I was a teenage girl, and from when my daughter will be a teenage girl?' I knew their parents, so I asked if Tom and I could follow them around with a camera. Really, we didn't have any idea what it would turn into. I was just interested in what the girls thought about, what they talked about and what they were experiencing.
Did it reveal to you any preconceived notions you had about teenagers? One thing that was interesting was how similar, actually, being a teenager is. There are all the same issues. The first day I met them they said, "Meet us at the steps of Columbus Circle, we're going to the mall." So I met them at the shops at the Time Warner Building and they did all the same stuff; gathering their money so they could buy one muffin to split six ways, trying all the free products at Sephora and then getting kicked out because they'd spent too much time there. I was like, 'Oh, I did all this stuff.' Obviously they have social media, which is so different now, and they spent a lot of time on their phones, but do they really spend more time on their phones than grown-ups do? They use it differently, but I think people would be surprised, because it's still about personal connection. They absolutely use social media, but they weren't obsessed with it.
Sage in 'All This Panic'
How did you develop trust with the girls? We first started filming Ginger and Dusty, and we really did follow their circle of friends, so once you're accepted by one family it's easier for the next family to join in. But it took a while – we were with them for three years. Also, it was a very small crew. It was myself and Tom. That was it; there was never anyone else in the room with them.
I'd imagine it would be very scary to open up to a whole crew of people. I think it would feel more like you were making a film. For us, it needed to feel diaristic, and I think that helped them feel comfortable exposing themselves. Sage, when she was asked during a Q&A about the relationship between us, was like, "I just saw them as my weird white aunt and uncle." I think it's really nice for teenagers to have somebody like that – that you can open up to and not judge you.
Yeah, you're less scared that they're gonna tell you off, like a parent might. You must have had to be very reactive and spontaneous. Was there anything you set out to do, or were you just going with the flow? We definitely had to be reactive. Tom and I laugh that basically we spent three years running behind New York City kids – like, literally: they walk so fast! My thesis was to listen to these girls – really listen to what they have to say, and give them the platform to say it. What surprised me was that their stories had an arc, because of the time that we were following them. They changed, stories ended, stories began and so one thing we were trying to figure out was when we should stop filming. Tom went out with Lena – it's the last scene in the movie – and Lena is about to embark on a cross-country trip. It was 3AM and she did this amazing monologue on the way to the bus station about what it's like to grow up, reflecting back on her younger self. When he came home and we looked at the footage we were like. "Woah, she just ended this period of her life."
Ginger and Lena in 'All This Panic'
Were you ever leading conversations in a certain direction? For the most part, no, but there were certain things that we wanted to hear their thoughts on. With Delia and Dusty, the two younger ones, I was asking them a lot about sex. There were things that I was curious about that I would ask them, sometimes repeatedly over time, to see if things had changed. But I really took a cue from them and what they were concerned with. Following a group of seven friends, you imagine that there would be a lot of infighting, and they were very adamant about that not being the case. If they were going through a fight or something they might bring it up, but they were very girl-positive and supportive of each other, and that was amazing. I don't know if my circle of friends back when I was that age were as evolved as that.
How did you develop the film's visual style? That was definitely Tom. He had the idea that he wanted to use one camera and one lens, which is really tricky. It was a 50mm lens, so when these girls were talking he was sitting three feet away. I think it was really important that it be intimate and not be zooming in on girls, especially being the only man in the room. I think he felt that responsibility. It needed to be diaristic but not voyeuristic. He also wanted it to have a beautiful dreamlike quality that he thought would be the way the girls might imagine a film about them to look.
Can we talk about the title? It comes from something Delia says about going back to school after the summer, and how there's "all this panic" about what to wear on your first day back. I think that phrase speaks to a lot of things. It's about grown-ups looking at teenagers and being frightened of them. But really I think that, even though these girls are not dealing with the biggest issues in the world, it's what they're dealing with right now. There's a lot of intensity to that. It's what they're going through and it shouldn't be dismissed. It's not dismissed by them and it shouldn't be dismissed by other people either.
'All This Panic' is out in cinemas on Friday the 24th of March.
