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In Louisiana, the Poor Face the Death Penalty Without a Lawyer

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This story was published in partnership with the Marshall Project.

It has become an annual ritual in Louisiana: Nearly every winter, the state’s public defenders run out of money. Last year, 33 of the state’s 42 local indigent defense offices cut staff or placed thousands of poor defendants on a wait list. The New Orleans public defender’s office began refusing clients, leaving hundreds to sit in jail without representation.

This year, there is another wait list. At least 11 Louisiana defendants facing the death penalty—including five who have already been indicted—have no defense team and may not have one until new money becomes available in July. The list is likely to grow. In Louisiana, all first-degree murder defendants face execution unless a prosecutor explicitly decides otherwise.

The latest crunch in Louisiana emerged from a law passed last year to try to patch up the system. The legislation, signed by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards in June 2016, required Louisiana’s state-level indigent defense agency to spend more on the overloaded local defenders—the ones who handle regular felony and misdemeanor cases—by spending less on lawyers in death penalty cases. The law successfully delivered about $5 million in additional cash to indigent defense offices around the state, including a $1.5 million boost for New Orleans, which has since ended its hiring freeze and reduced its wait list to essentially zero.

But funding for capital defenders was cut to $5.5 million from $8.5 million in just a year.



“They robbed Peter to pay Paul,” said Jay Dixon, chief defender for the Louisiana Public Defender Board, which is scheduled to hold a statewide meeting Thursday to discuss the waitlisted capital defendants. “We’re still in crisis; it’s just a different crisis. And now they can’t shift any more money around, so we could be facing an even greater crisis next year.”

Louisiana is the only state in the nation whose public defenders are funded primarily by traffic tickets, supplemented by a modest state contribution. In part because of changes in police practices, ticket revenue has declined since 2010, causing the annual budget gap.

The state’s public defender board does not employ its own capital defense teams but farms out the work to a handful of private law firms, nonprofits and individual attorneys. Those firms now say they are at capacity and ethically constrained from taking on any more work, according to Dixon and the attorneys.

“Imagine a conveyer belt of [murder cases], and we’re grabbing them off as they come. But with the funding cuts, they essentially pulled some of us away from the line, and now the cases are piling up and crashing to the floor,” said Ben Cohen, an attorney for The Promise of Justice Initiative, the advocacy wing of one of the capital defense firms.

The waitlisted murder defendants may still get a temporary lawyer who can argue that the case should not go to trial until there is money for a defense. But they won’t get a full legal team, even though lawyers argue the first months of a capital murder case can be crucial. Evidence can be lost or destroyed if too much time passes. An attorney armed with evidence can also convince the state not to seek the death penalty at all. Of approximately 150 first-degree murder defendants indicted in Louisiana since April 2016, prosecutors have ultimately declined to pursue execution in at least 100.

The complaints ring hollow to prosecutors, who came out in force at the state Capitol last year to support the bill resolving the defender crisis. They point out that even though less than 1 percent of all criminal cases in Louisiana are capital murders, about a fifth of the state’s indigent defense budget still goes to the attorneys who handle them.

Louisiana had 73 people on death row as of May, but the state has executed only one person in the past 15 years. Like many states, Louisiana cannot secure the drugs needed to administer the penalty.

“The defense that the state of Louisiana provides people charged with capital crimes, Donald Trump would have trouble affording,” Hugo Holland, a longtime death penalty prosecutor who is now a chief lobbyist for the state district attorneys’ association, said in an interview. “The bottom line is this simple: you guys over there at your boutique law firms, do your fucking job and provide anyone represented by you with constitutional representation… Stop intentionally thwarting the administration of justice.”

Holland and other supporters of last year’s shift in funding believe the capital defenders have unreasonable standards. They could, for example, devote fewer resources to every defendant, rather than an expensive team of two lawyers, an investigator and a mitigation specialist. They could also take more than five cases a year, which is an American Bar Association standard adopted by the state Public Defender Board in 2007.

Defenders argue the stakes are too high to return to a time when one capital defender could have as many as 30 cases at once. Louisiana has consistently led the nation in wrongful convictions per capita. Since 2000, more than 96 percent of Louisiana death sentences have been reversed by higher courts, the Advocate in Baton Rouge reported last year.

“It’s an awful moral conundrum,” Cohen said. “Like a doctor who has to perform 12 heart surgeries in a day, but then his staff gets cut in half. He can either do a crappier job on these life-or-death procedures, or he can take fewer of them and make the others wait.”

The question now is whether the newest wait list will trigger further action by the legislature.

If not, the capital defense offices are considering suing under Louisiana case law that says if there is not funding for the defense, the courts may simply halt prosecutions. Alternatively, judges may begin appointing private counsel to the backlogged defendants, as they did last year to mixed results.

Either way, say attorneys for the poor, Louisiana must ultimately commit more total funding to the legal defense of the impoverished. “The fact is, capital defense is very costly; that's just the nature of the beast,” said Nick Trenticosta, a capital defense attorney in New Orleans. “If you want to have the death penalty, you’re gonna have to pay for it. You can’t try to put a man to death on the cheap.”

A version of this article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.


Convicted Thieves Talk About the Stuff They’ve Had Stolen in Prison

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When you go to prison, all you take inside are the shoes on your feet. And if you happen to enter with something like rare Nikes that aren’t on the canteen buy-up list, chances are you’ll attract unwanted attention. You might even get robbed, which is ironic for anyone who gets locked up for robbing.

Second century Roman poet Juvenal asked the question: “But who will guard the guards?” This is a question that has been discussed by the likes of Plato, as they consider the actions of people in power. Prisoners often form their own unspoken hierarchies, acquiring authority by preying on new inmates—and gaining them power. I wanted to invert Juvenal’s proposition, in the context of prison life and ask: “But who steals from the thieves?”

So I called some people who had spent time in prison for charges relating to theft, and asked them to detail the first time they were stood-over.

Flickr user Bart Everson.
Flickr user Bart Everson.

Dean, 27
Sentenced for Aggravated Home Invasion

I remember throwing a glass and hitting someone in the face at a strip club in Dandenong. Then I bolted out of there, ended up downing some Xannies, and woke up in some random’s house. The cops weren’t too happy about the whole situation. So I was put in lock-up with a guy coming down hard off the shard. He was wearing a stained Everlast t-shirt that looked older than me. He started getting suss on me, saying shit like, “The cops put you in here to work me out ay. I’m not a cooked cunt. You think I am but I’ve been in the system before.” I started getting really bad anxiety and the doctors knew because it was on my file. So I told the screw I needed my meds. But the guy overheard me.

I wasn’t even thinking and all of a sudden his eyes lit up and he became my best mate. “Sorry mate, I get all worked up. You know what it’s like, everyone's a fucking dog these days, what are you here for? You look like a good bloke, here let me get you some water or make you a cuppa blah blah blah.” This cunt wouldn’t shut up.

A day or so later I get my meds and I could feel his eyes on me. An hour passed and he didn’t say a word and then suddenly he was like, “You alright? You get your medication sorted?” I just nodded and acted like I was busy reading. There was a part of me that wanted to just give him two so it wouldn’t be awkward but I knew he would just keep hassling me so I thought I’d bite the bullet and just have him pissed off at me and get over it. Then it hit around 8 PM and I could feel the tension in the cell. I was trying to move cells but I couldn’t because I was on the next bus to the remand centre.

When the screw locked us in and the guy got up immediately. “Right so you’re a piece of shit after all? I thought we’d be mates. I tried to do the righty but you’re a fucking snake like the rest of them.” So I asked him if it was about my meds and he just smashed me in the eye. I don’t even remember the punch. I just remember him scrunching up his face and then he was standing over me yelling—“Where are they? Was it worth it? You did this, I tried helping you, I wanted to be mates!” He literally downed half the packet in one go and went back to bed as if nothing happened. Then I buzzed out of there and got put in a protection unit.

Flickr user Valerie Hinojosa.

Ali, 22
Aggravated Burglary

I had been locked up in Adelaide but Melbourne was different. The boob heads here are just more treacherous cunts so I played dumb like it was my first time. I minded my business and kept my head down. I could’ve kicked it with the Muslims but I just didn’t want to get in trouble so I stayed away and just did my own thing. I like to be good with everyone.

But then about a month in, my buy ups start going missing. Just things I knew I bought from the canteen slowly disappeared. We only get about $180 a month so we know how to spend it. We don’t have a lot in jail so what we do have is worked out to a tee. The final straw was when they started ripping me for my Sucuk, which is a kind of Middle Eastern sausage. And yes, you can get Sucuk in Melbourne jails. So when they racked it, I played it smart. I didn’t mention it to the boys or anything. I just acted dumb, but really I was scheming.

So for the next buy up, I just stuck around all my shit at all times. I watched my cell like a hawk and asked the most religious Muslim there for a chat. I asked him to sneak into my room the next day because I wanted to go into the yard, hang around for a bit. But I told the brother that whoever came into my cell, he would be trying to get me. So then I waited around in the yard until I heard some commotion. As soon as I heard yelling I ran into my cell and saw the mutt there. I pressed him about what he had done and then I took all his shit.

Flickr user KOMUnews.

CJ, 24
Sentenced for Robbery

I arrived in the Melbourne Remand Centre after I got caught in Bacchus Marsh with a stolen car. I’d been losing myself to drug addiction and I was literally blowing all my Centrelink at the pokies. When you go into remand they let you keep the shoes you got arrested in and I had a fresh pair of black and white Air Max. I was a bit nervous on the first day. I thought it would be grim like in Chopper, cunts getting stabbed in the eye and shit. But it was different. People were friendly and quiet. Maybe because they were all as nervous as each other.

There was this Islander with a long ratty walking around the yard taking the piss out of everyone. I was trying not to make eye contact but I caught it for like half a second and he came walking over. But he was walking in a real excessive way like I knew he was about to take the piss. Then he planted his foot next to mine and goes, “Shot.” I had no idea what the fuck he was on about. He goes, “Shot bro.” I laughed it off and walked away and he just started swearing and yelling. He definitely wasn’t taking the piss.

Later that night I was cooking up some Mi Goreng in the unit to take back to my cell before the footy started. But I saw the guy walk past again and as I walked into my room he quickly rushed in behind me while his mate stood at the door. He started yelling “Kick em over ya dog,” so I started taking my shoes off. But I wasn’t thinking because then I suddenly threw my hot Mi Goreng at his face. I don’t know why I did it and he went ballistic. He started punching and kicking me. I just covered my head the best I could. His mate was stomping on me and then they stole my pillows. It’s weird how everyone else acts after something like that happens. They just talk to you like nothing has happened. And now the Islander guy just walks around in my shoes all the time. And everyone knows. But it’s just another day in the office.

Follow Mahmood on Instagram

Why I Risked My Life Making a Movie in Afghanistan

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Having left Afghanistan as a refugee in 1983, Tarique Qayumi worked on a secret project when he returned to Kabul from 2011 to 2015. While working for a TV station there, he and his wife Tajana Prka collaborated on the feature film Black Kite, a family drama about a kite maker who risks everything to follow his passion and share it with his young daughter, even after the Taliban bans kite flying under penalty of death. The fate of the film was even left in the air after a Taliban bombing nearly claimed the life of one of its stars, Leena Alam.

The Taliban were bombing every day. They said they were going to do this. A show of force. Working in Afghanistan, I learned that there's no problems, only solutions. Because there will constantly be problems. That's just the way it is.

When that attack happened, and Leena was sitting across from us, telling the story, that was a moment when I definitely thought oh shit, this is it.

I thought maybe this is the point. This is a signal. That's it. Stop. It was basically up to her. Of course it would have been easy to give up at that point. We were physically and mentally tired. But it just gave us a burst of energy.

The return to Afghanistan in 2011 was exciting. I felt like I really wanted to reconnect with my roots. I'd grown up there, and I'd come to Canada as a refugee when I was a kid. I had these ideas of what it meant to be Afghan, and I was attracted to it. There were some pieces of my puzzle missing, and I felt like going back there was going to solve this for me. There was a yearning inside me.

I had just finished my masters. I studied filmmaking, and I got a job offer from this TV station, Tolo TV. It was a docudrama series called Truth Unveiled, Afghanistan's first docudrama series. There are a lot of Turkish shows and, believe it or not, Korean shows that are dubbed there to the local language.

Then my contract got extended. My wife, Tajana, who produced Black Kite, was also there with me. We made a kids talk show, and then they gave me Sesame Street, for Afghanistan, called Baghch-e-Simsim , which was one of the coolest things I've ever worked on. We'd go to a playground, and we'd be like, "we're shooting Sesame Street" in a country where you're not really in touch with women, and these mothers would come and grab us and they'd be like "I want my kid on that show!" I felt like a rockstar. I'll probably never work on something that popular again. It's quite a rush.

At the end of 2014, I felt like there was a lot happening. As soon as I arrived in that country, I started working. The creative mind needs time to reflect. Everything was happening too fast, and while I was there, I felt like: what part of me is Afghan? What part of me is Canadian? And I felt like this Canadian part was calling to me. I felt like there's certain things that I can't reconcile in Afghanistan. There's certain things that have to do with religion, that have to do with certain social elements of living there, that can't be reconciled.

I would love to have a foot in both countries, but because of the ongoing war and the worsening situation, it wasn't possible at the time. Once you're there, there's all this paranoia, and there's all these attacks. I wish I could go there easily and come back. It's a life changing thing to go there.

We decided that this is it. We're going to leave, as much as we love it here. It's going to be hard to leave, but we're going to leave, and then come back in the future and do stuff, but Tajana was like, "look, we're in the thick of it. You're in the eye of the storm. Are you sure that you're going to be able to come back to shoot something? The country's changing rapidly. You shot all of this stuff for the TV station, but we really don't have anything for ourselves."

Tarique Qayumi, shooting on location in Kabul. Photos courtesy of Aquatinter Films Ltd.

Because we work in Afghanistan, we know a lot of people, and we also know how things are done in Kabul. You kind of cobble stuff together. It's not like here, where you go into projects prepared, and you have things lined up. Things just happen in Afghanistan, and you just put it all together. Actors are late, your camera will break, you never have good sound. We knew these things, so we just went for it.

We improvised about 80 percent of our dialogue, because a lot of Afghans can't read or write.

We kept the crew really small. Police would always crack down. They'd be like "you can't shoot in the streets.” Because I did the docudrama, I did get a letter saying that I could shoot anywhere, which was awesome. We would just show this letter to people. Afghans are really hospitable. If you approach them, friendly and nice, they'll let you shoot in their houses or wherever.

But we really had to keep a low profile in terms of the stuff going on around us. To shoot something on the street, I would set up a zoom lens, and I would shoot from across the street, or somewhere else, through the car or something. I would shoot for a couple minutes, and then I’d be out of there.

In the morning, we would pack everything in the back of a local taxi. One thing I learned was that you're better off in a private taxi. Kabul taxi is something that's trusted. I always felt safe with them. Super low profile.

We shot with a DSLR—there were no big rigs or anything like that. It looked like we were shooting photographs. If they didn't like us, we would just move. I don't think that anyone really knew that we were shooting anything.

While we were there, there were several attacks. Tolo TV has been targeted. They hit one of their buses. There was a constant threat to artists, to people working in the media industry, and foreigners.

One morning an explosion occurs. Being crazy filmmakers, we just went back to shooting, and then it just went on. There was another attack the next day one street down or two streets downs. We could hear gunfire and things. It's random, so you try to keep safe. But there are people out there; they see you with a camera, and they know. They're out for opportunities. So you try to decrease those opportunities.

One example really hit home, because one of our actors nearly died. We were all invited to this stage play they had done at the French Cultural Centre, and the French Cultural Centre has terrific security, and they put on really good shows. It was about suicide bombing. We didn't go, because we were so busy. One of our leads, Leena, went. She's really well-known in Afghanistan. In the middle the the performance, an explosion went off. There was this kid. He snuck it in, and sat down, and it was chaos.

Leena was like, "the attack last night was on us. They want us to stop. Fuck them! We're going to shoot this film."

The hardest part was that people are worried when you work on a project that mentions "Taliban" anywhere. It's about flying kites—everyone loves that. And then the Taliban bans kites! It's a fear machine, that's the problem. That was hard. For a lot of actors, it had to be "this part has nothing to do with the Taliban." And it was a matter of finding people who are defiant, finding people who wouldn't care. Or you allow people to cover their face, wear a mask or a beard. It was difficult. That was one of the hardest parts.

It's a political film without being political, I like to think. We had this one communist guy who watched the film who was like "it all went to hell when the Russians left, didn't it?" And I was like, "you can see it that way." I think as a filmmaker, I've done my job really well if I don't pick sides—if a pro-communist guy watches it and sees that, and then an anti-communist guy who also saw the film says "those Russians fucked everything up."

Eighty percent of the population is under 25. And all of these people grew up during the time of the Taliban, and guess what, the Taliban did a really good job of burning all of those books. So there is a general memory-loss of history, and therefore Afghan identity. And I think that's one reason to be specific about the history.

At some point, I'd like to show the movie in Afghanistan. It's one of those things you have to do. And it's one of the things I'm looking forward to. To see the reaction. When I made the second season of Truth Unveiled, we screened it first to advertisers, and this guy came up to me and gave me this soft threat. He was like "you're not going to have long to live."

I was so scared for a while. Always watching over my shoulder. You just don't know. It could go either way. I would love to go back and screen my work, and there are more stories. I think stories are a good way of healing this nation that's been through so much.

But if they want to kill someone, of course they can kill anyone they choose. Random attacks happen. But they specifically targeted so many people. They can get to anybody if they want to.

Follow Frederick Blichert on Twitter.

Matty Matheson Tells Desus and Mero About Cooking for Your Loved Ones

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Matty Matheson is passionate about his food. If you haven't learned that from his VICELAND series DEAD SET ON LIFE, then you're about to find out on his new VICELAND cooking show, IT'S SUPPERTIME!.

On Wednesday's Desus & Mero, the chef talked about the new show, his love of food, and why it's so important to actually cook—especially for those you love.

"You know what's cooler than taking a chick out to a fancy restaurant and spending a lot of money and acting like you're a boss and you order a stupid wine and you look like a fucking loser? Make her something at home," he said. "Then fuck."

You can watch Wednesday night’s Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

Teens Capture Our Chaotic Times with Stunning Photos

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Teenagers can offer refreshing and illuminating perspectives on the world—especially when it is going to shit thanks to the mistakes of older generations. Unfortunately, young people and their ideas are usually ignored. Earlier this year, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City tried to change that. They asked American high school students to submit photographs illustrating their perspectives on the state of the country. The resulting exhibition, 2017 America, includes at least one piece from every entrant. There are 2,000 photographs by students from 30 states on view at the SVA Gramercy Gallery through December 2.

Via email, Stephen Frailey, curator of the show and Chair of the BFA Photo and Video Department, explained to me that the exhibition seeks “to amplify the voices of the newest members of the visual arts community, 2017 America showcases a wide range of perspectives, from works that are overtly political and issue-oriented to those that express a more personal position.” The broad narrative of the exhibition is both angry and optimistic, capturing the spirit of our tumultuous times in a dazzling display of young voices.

Here's more of what Frailey had to say about these diverse and revelatory photos taken by young people.

Alex Martin, Resting Wonders, 2017, Pine Bush Central School, NY

VICE: Why was this open call directed at high school students?
Stephen Frailey: I’ve been spending time visiting high schools these past two years, and I wanted to offer the students a bridge from what might feel like an isolated experience to them, and express that there is a community that supports their endeavors and would like to engage them in a conversation through their work. And I was also quite curious about how they are responding to and surviving this toxic moment in American life.

What were some trends you saw in the submissions?
The theme prompted much usage of the American flag, of course. Simple freedom of speech and identity was immediately apparent. I was intrigued by the amount of writing and language on the body. I wonder if it corresponds to the ubiquity of tattooing. The body seems to have turned from a sexualized space to a politicized one, and there is much self-portraiture. Gender fluidity is a given.

Rachel King A World of Devices, 2017 Lake Travis High School, TX

Do you feel like the tone of the exhibition is hopeful?
There is a palpable sense of apprehension in the work as a whole, although there is a lot of work that also depicts ordinary moments of daily life and its pleasure and joy. There seems to be a clear sense of this as a watershed moment in American life.

Do you feel like you have a better understanding of how young people use photography to engage with politicized topics?
I think there is some remarkable work, full of curiosity and confidence and visual acuity. I am impressed at how some of the students are able to braid complex social and political observations into their own lives—the politics of the personal. But I think that the sense of rage that often accompanies high school life now has a much more narrow focus.

Katelyn Alderson, 2017, Arbor View High School, NV.jpg

Do you feel like the pervasiveness of imagery in social media has hindered or helped this expression?
The impulse to pictorialize daily life—to obsessively frame and then share observations that social media encourages—has created a monumental escalation in the awareness of visual communication per se. It has also, perhaps, authorized more young people to more quickly realize visual skill and an affinity for photography.

Do you see a big difference in this open call versus what you see at the college level?
There is a strong relationship between the high school work and the freshman [year] work in its sense of experimentation, inquiry, and skill. From the freshman year onwards, the students will investigate themes and instincts with more depth.

Do you think that the younger generation is still excited to pursue photography as a medium, despite its ubiquity in our society?
I suspect that, with the awareness of the staggering multitude of images being generated every moment, that there is an equal recognition of the challenge of originality—the difficulty of finding one’s own voice amongst the babble of information and the seeming impulse to document everything.

Madeleine Milner, Torn, 2017, Gilbert High School, AZ.
Samuel Sturznickel, American House Wife, A. W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, FL
Sofia Mariana Campanelle, District of Columbia, 2017, A.E. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, FL
Cameron Barnes Love, 2017 Arbor View High School, NV
David Olutoyin, Untitled 02, 2017, Banneker High School, GA

Follow Elizabeth Renstrom on Instagram.

The Liberals Need to End the Suffering of Bill Morneau

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I can’t believe the government that legalized euthanasia as a compassionate end to a life of misery and pain continues to let Finance Minister Bill Morneau get brutalized out there amid his stock sell-off scandal. The man is blistered, burned, whipped, crucified and ruthlessly wedgied every day for months—often by his very own hand—and the Liberals are just shrugging it off.

It was one thing when the guy was picking a fight with the doctors’ lobby or tragically rediscovering his undisclosed mansions in France. But letting the guy get dunked on by Pierre “residential school survivors need to work harder” Poilievre because he is unable to deny whether he used his cabinet post to game his personal stock portfolio is cruel and inhuman. Morneau’s condition—affluenza, being too rich to understand how the world works—is clearly terminal, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refuses to put him out of his misery.

There is little dignity in a resignation under opposition pressure amidst an ethics investigation, but there is less in watching the finance minister build and light his own brass bull. This is the first Liberal government re-elected since the Gomery Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal wrapped up, and the last thing they need is a corruption scandal halfway through their first term. Especially if that corruption scandal also undercuts whatever credibility they had as the voice of the allegedly voiceless Canadian Middle Class, And Those Working Hard To Join It™.

It’s not like they’d be losing out on some kind of preternaturally talented fiscal wizard. Morneau is very clearly good at managing his own money, but I think we have enough examples—both at home and abroad—to finally conclude that being good at getting rich does not necessarily translate into being good at politics.

And that’s OK! Like the old PSA used to remind us: nobody’s good at everything, but everybody’s good at something, and Morneau would probably be the first to admit that he’s better at lounging in a courtyard along the French Riviera than he is at facing down a federal firing squad every weekday afternoon in Ottawa. The Trudeau government too, God forbid, might even get its agenda back on track once it drops the dead weight from its highest-profile cabinet portfolio.

But there are other reasons why giving Morneau his walking papers may not be so easy. Chief among them is that Justin Trudeau has spent so much of this fall defending his increasingly indefensible right-hand man. (One suspects the prime minister may also suffer from Morneau’s debilitating condition of “being too rich to connect with the plebs.”)

There is little to be gained from Trudeau clinging to Morneau as he courts being put through a second, substantially more serious, ethics investigation is as many months. The costs of doing so, however, could be quite high. The idea that the Laurentian bourgeois in the Liberal party were going to descend from the stratosphere and guide the middle class to prosperity was always a hard sell at best, but this could cost them the plot for good. And good luck disciplining your caucus while you let Daddy Warbucks take the party for a ride! The boys at the Financial Post might let it slide but your backbenchers from the sticks might be a little less forgiving.

A successful career in politics can be boiled down to knowing which hill to die on. “Finance Minister Bill Morneau” is—emphatically—not it. Consider it like chess, my dude: the king doesn’t take a bullet for the bishop, especially if he’s cruising around the board taking out your own pawns.

Or the prime minister could also just keep him around. The spectacular collapse of William Morneau is a truly fruitful vein of content and we are all happy to continue mining it forever.

Either option works for me, if not necessarily for Canada or Team Trudeau.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Roy Moore Calls Allegations Against Him a LGBTQ 'Conspiracy'
The GOP Alabama Senate candidate told an audience at a Baptist church Wednesday night that there was a “conspiracy” behind the wave of allegations of sexual misconduct made against him. Moore said “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender who want to change our culture” were behind the “false and malicious” claims, along with “socialists who want to change our way of life.”—BuzzFeed News

Matt Lauer Hit with More Sexual Misconduct Claims, Apologizes
The former Today show host, fired Wednesday by NBC after a female colleague credibly accused him of sexual harassment, has been accused of serial sexual misconduct at the network. Lauer allegedly bought a female colleague a sex toy as a gift and exposed himself to another in his office. One former NBC staffer alleged Lauer sexually assaulted her after summoning her there and locking the door. On Thursday, Lauer issued his first apology—VICE News/The New York Times/VICE News

Nikki Haley Threatens North Korea with Destruction
The US ambassador to the UN said North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch “brings us closer to war.” Haley added at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that the US did not seek conflict, but if war were to break out, “the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.” - AP

Mueller Questions Jared Kushner
President Trump’s son-in-law met members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team earlier this month to answer questions about former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. An anonymous source said the inquiry was principally aimed at establishing whether Kushner had information that cleared Flynn of wrongdoing.—CNN

International News

Election Count Becomes a Crisis in Honduras
With ballots still being counted several days after the presidential vote, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla has backtracked on a promise to respect the outcome, suggesting fraud has taken place. President Juan Orlando Hernández has a narrow lead with about 89 percent of votes counted. Nasralla urged his supporters to protest and said “there are no reliable institutions in Honduras to defend us.”—BBC News

Egyptian Presidential Candidate Says He Is Barred from Leaving UAE
Ahmed Shafiq, Egypt’s former prime minister, has claimed he is being “prevented” from leaving the United Arab Emirates after he announced his candidacy for Egypt’s 2018 presidential election. Shafiq has lived in the UAE since 2012. He said he had “a constitutional right and a holy mission” to stand against President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.—Al Jazeera

Australia Launches Major Banking Investigation
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a royal commission will examine wrongdoing in Australia’s financial industry. The country has seen several scandals involving the the financial sector in recent years. Turnbull pledged the inquiry “will not put capitalism on trial.”—AP

Bali Residents Refuse to Leave Volcano Danger Zone
Tens of thousands of people living near erupting Mount Agung volcano on Bali have declined to heed government requests to evacuate. “We cannot force them—but we will be held responsible, so we need to convince them,” the head of Bali’s emergency agency said.—Reuters

Everything Else

Garrison Keillor Fired over Sexual Misconduct Claims
The writer and broadcaster was dismissed by Minnesota Public Radio Wednesday after he was accused of of “inappropriate behavior” by a colleague at the station. Kellior said he had put his hand on a female coworker's bare back.—VICE News

Meek Mill Drops New Video from Behind Bars
The Philadelphia rapper, currently in prison for violating the terms of his probation, released a video for the Wins & Losses track “Fall Thru.” It closes with the hashtag “#JUSTICE4MEEK,”used by fans and supporters to call for his release.—Rolling Stone

JAY-Z Reveals Collaboration with Beyoncé
The rapper said the couple had worked in the studio together “almost like a therapy session.” Although Beyoncé ditched a joint album to work on Lemonade instead, JAY-Z said they “still have a lot of that music.”—The New York Times

N.E.R.D. Drops New Song Featuring Future
The group released “1000” Wednesday, the third single from their upcoming album No_One Ever Really Dies. The uptempo song features Future singing in a different key.—Noisey

Lil Peep’s Family Announce Beach Memorial
In an Instagram post shared by the late artist’s mom, fans were invited to a memorial service to celebrate the life of Gustav Åhr, or Lil Peep, who died earlier this month at the age of 21. The beach gathering takes place on Long Island on Saturday.—i-D

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we uncover why everybody seems to hate Jill Stein.

10 Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask Someone Who's Been in a Coma

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Imagine one day, completely out of the blue, you suddenly start feeling out of sorts. Nothing too intense at first, but just enough to be concerned. Then, over the next few days, this illness doesn’t shake, before getting noticeably worse, until eventually you find yourself lying in a hospital bed with a doctor telling you they need to indefinitely put you into an induced coma for you to have any chance of staying alive.

It sounds like a fever dream, but was the real-life experience of Lauren Banton Williams, 28, who – roughly this time last year – was suddenly taken ill with a heart condition called fulminant Myocarditis, which is essentially an inflammation of the heart, most often caused by viral infections and autoimmune disorders. Lauren was put into an induced coma for under three weeks as a result, during which she suffered a cardiac arrest that essentially stopped her heart beating for 30 minutes straight. Against all the odds – and I mean the odds of her surviving this were literally 0.1 percent – she is still alive today.

I spoke to her to find out what it was like to be in a coma and come so close to death.

Lauren

VICE: Do you remember what it was like to fall into the coma?
Lauren Banton Williams: The last thing I remember before I became unconscious was being told I was going to be put into a coma, but that they weren’t sure for how long. They estimated around two weeks. I was really unhappy about it as it was just a few days before my birthday and I had plans! When I realised I was definitely going to miss my birthday I started to fret about whether I would definitely be awake for Christmas. The doctors told me they weren’t sure of anything, but that going into a coma was my only chance of survival. I began explaining frantically that I would very much like to stay alive. One of the last things I did before falling unconscious was to look down at my chest and say, "Come on, little heart, you can do it." I knew at this point that there was a chance I may never wake up, but I had to believe there was some hope I would pull through.

Were you in any way conscious of your time being in a coma?
My time in the coma was pretty much like being asleep for weeks – I have no recollection of being aware of anything that happened while I was unconscious, or any of the things people said to me. However, I have been told that at one point, when I lifted up my hand to put it to my mouth, where my ventilation tube was, my consultant instructed me to put my hand back down to my side and I did, so maybe something was getting through.

So you don't ever have any dreams or subconscious memories of your time in the coma?
I have memories, but when I say "memories" I'm not sure whether they were dreams or what. The most memorable dream was that I'd been put back together and different body parts had been made of wood. I was waiting in some sort of mechanism with lots of other bodies for my turn to leave, and the exit was through a mechanical claw that periodically opened slightly, and bodies were pushed through and fell into a muddy field…it was bizarre.

Were you ever conscious of being close to death?
When I had my cardiac arrest it was just under an hour after I was made unconscious, and my mum was the first person to notice I'd gone cold all over, as she was holding my hand. She alerted the nurse seconds before all the machines went off. I had absolutely no idea it was happening.

What did it feel like when you finally woke up?
My first memory comes a couple of days after being woken up, and it's of seeing my brothers and putting out my hands to hold theirs, but I wasn’t able to talk as I had no voice, because the ventilation tube had done quite a lot of damage. I remember feeling a motion, like we were on the deck of a boat. I had absolutely no idea what had happened to me or why I was in hospital, but I do remember feeling relieved to see faces of people I loved – and I remember it bringing tears to my eyes.

"I didn’t make contact with my friends, or even want to look at my phone, for week or two after waking up, because I found that I coped better with my situation if I didn’t see it in the context of my life previously."

What was it like catching up with everything you’d missed?
I remember being very surprised when I asked what the date was. I didn’t make contact with my friends, or even want to look at my phone, for week or two after waking up, because I found that I coped better with my situation if I didn’t see it in the context of my life previously; knowing that I had all these friends who were living their lives like normal only made me feel like my situation was even more awful.

What do you think was the biggest misconception you had about comas that you now know to be untrue or wildly different from the reality?
I guess the most common misconception would be that someone in a coma can hear or feel what is going on around them. I think that maybe subconsciously they can sense certain things, but on the whole I think they are completely disconnected. I also think an important point that people might not understand is that it's actually quite difficult for doctors to bring someone out of their coma when they feel the time is right; it often takes lots of tries, and the process can last a long time and be distressing for everyone involved.

Have you had to change your behaviour drastically as a result of being in the coma?
More as a result of having something go so drastically wrong with my heart rather than as a result of being in a coma, but yes, I have changed my behaviour in some ways. I cannot say whether I definitely have had to or whether it's what comes from facing your mortality head-on, but I have a desire to take better care of myself – a realisation that life is precious and I want to hold on to it tighter. Basically, I don’t party as much as I used to! I like early bedtimes and early mornings, and the "fuck it" attitude has disappeared.

How has being in a coma changed your view on life and death?
I think about life and death now a lot more than I used to. I know that sounds bleak, but I can’t help it: death is a part of life, and coming so close to it has made me realise that. I feel like I've gained more respect for life. I had to fight really hard to keep mine, and a lot of the time I was in a ridiculous amount of pain or feeling the awful effects of being on and off such high doses of opiates. It was a very scary and lonely experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Have your life priorities changed since you've fully recovered?
Since the experience my values and priorities have become a lot clearer. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I know more than ever what matters to me. My family have always been important to me, but now in a different way – I put them before anything else. I also feel that they, more than anyone else, have some idea of what the experience was like for me. They felt the effects really firsthand, so in a way I feel like it’s easier to relate to them than anyone else. I guess all I want is to be surrounded by people who I care about and, vice versa, be happy and healthy. It's the same stuff I’ve always wanted, except now I don’t need all the extra bits.

Thanks, Lauren.

@williamwasteman

More 10 Questions you always wanted to ask:

A Multimillionaire

A Festival Security Guard

A Drug Dealer


Don't Worry, Kellyanne Conway's Handling the Opioid Crisis in America

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Kellyanne Conway has made a name for herself over at the White House for developing new theories about microwave surveillance, coining the term "alternative facts," and even trying to sell some of Ivanka Trump's merchandise. Now, after not having ever worked in public health, Trump has tapped Conway to tackle a new job helming the administration's response to the opioid epidemic.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday that Conway would "coordinate and lead the effort from the White House" to combat one of the deadliest drug crises in American history, BuzzFeed News reports. Now Conway will be tasked with figuring out how to curb a public health epidemic that claimed more lives than any other drug among the more than 64,000 overdose deaths last year.

Since declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency back in August, Trump has promised the problem is a top priority for his administration but hasn't really come up with a plan to fight it. According to BuzzFeed, the national public health emergency fund has dwindled down to $66,000, and Trump hasn't asked Congress to help fill it back up.

Now, apparently, Conway will be making the issue her primary concern, though it's not exactly clear how she plans to tackle it. Some think the solution lies in putting someone in charge of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), who could better coordinate the country's response. That spot has remained empty since Republican representative Tom Marino was forced to withdraw his name from consideration in October.

"Stemming overdose deaths will take a broad interagency approach led by someone with a singular focus and extensive knowledge of the drivers of—and solutions to—the epidemic," former ONDCP official Regina LaBelle told BuzzFeed News. "Therefore, a Senate-confirmed Director of National Drug Control Policy should lead this effort."

Instead, Trump has apparently decided to just move an existing adviser into the role, despite her not having any experience in public health whatsoever. For his part, Sessions did say he would put $12 million toward drug enforcement at a state and local level—money that, until Wednesday, was supposed to be used for for police reform.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Shady Ottawa Dispensaries Close Shop Following VICE Investigation

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Several Ottawa weed dispensaries have shut down after their shady practices were exposed in a recent VICE investigation.

The VICE story focused on a national chain of dispensaries that go by the names Green Tree, WeeMedical, CannaGreen, Herbal Leaf, and WeeCare Med. They are all believed to be owned by the same group of people—a man named Robert Clarke, and a BC-based mother and son May Joan Liu and Justin Liu.

Former employees told VICE management recruited young workers, assuring them that they weren’t likely to be arrested in raids and that if they were arrested the company would pay for their legal fees. That was a lie, according to four former workers who were arrested and say they were never provided with legal help. The dispensaries are also accused of selling moldy weed, and forcing employees to work long hours with no breaks and in some cases no heating. One employee said she was robbed five times while working for the chain, but was forbidden from calling the police.

According to VICE’s sources, the cluster of Ottawa stores were the most profitable, with each raking in $1,000-$15,000 a day—and at least $750,000 a month total. May Joan Liu’s home is $6.2 million West Vancouver mansion, while former Ottawa workers said Clarke favoured a Rolex watch, diamond chains, and luxury cars. One of the shops in Clarke’s other dispensary chain, Limelife, was busted by Vancouver police for allegedly being tied to the Hells Angels.

VICE visited seven Ottawa stores Wednesday. Six of them were closed, though two appear to have closed prior to the VICE investigation, which was published November 16.

Green Tree’s head office phone number was disconnected after VICE reached out for comment during the investigation. An email request for comment sent out Thursday did not receive a response.

The Green Tree locations on Preston Street and Montreal Road both shut down very recently, according to people living in the area. A WeeMedical on Rideau Street also shut down about two weeks ago, a neighbour said.

All exterior signs were removed from the Preston Street location, which former employees say was one of the most profitable shops, along with the WeeMedical on Rideau. The Preston Street space was rented out by Clarke. When Clarke finally returned VICE’s request for comment, he flew into a tirade, shouting “Don’t call the fucking landlord, don’t call anyone, you fucking clown. You’re a fucking idiot. Fuck off, go report on something that matters.”

The WeeMedical on St. Laurent Boulevard was also closed Wednesday, with exterior signs removed and a shattered window. Furniture remained inside.

One Bank Street location, formerly a Herbal Leaf, was open Wednesday. It is now called Green Oasis. An employee in the store, who refused to give VICE his name, said Green Oasis is not associated with Clarke or any of his dispensaries. He also said he had heard about the VICE investigation, but wasn’t concerned about closing anytime in the near future.

Former employees told VICE the shops worked like a game of whack-a-mole, shutting down or getting raided and re-opening with a different name.

—with files from Matt Gergyek

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Human Rights Commission Will Investigate Racial Profiling by Toronto Police

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The Ontario Human Rights Commission says it has launched an “unprecedented” public interest inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination by the Toronto Police Service.

“Despite the immense pain it has caused, racial discrimination has been allowed to continue for decades,” said Chief Commissioner Renu Mandhane in a press conference.

For some Torontonians, the announcement may sound like a promise to ask questions black people already know the answers to. In 2013, the Toronto Star released a three-part investigation that found black people were disproportionately stopped and questioned, with their interactions documented by police, or “carded.”

The Ontario government introduced new rules for police stops in 2016, but problems with profiling persist, criminal and human rights lawyer Shane Martinez told VICE.

“Racism within the Toronto Police Services has existed long before carding and it’s going to exist long after carding,” he says. “The examples are countless—racially profiling people on the street, racially profiling people while they are driving, we’ve had instances where people have been detained for offenses they haven’t committed.”

He says he’s seen examples as ridiculous as an officer telling the court that one of his clients, one of two young black men, had been pulled over while driving because their “car was exceptionally clean.”

Mandhane says the goal behind the inquiry isn’t to find out whether racial profiling exists. Rather, the commission wants to analyze data and find out which specific interactions between cops and civilians that most commonly involve discrimination, so that it can “propose targeted solutions.”

The commission has called on the police department to release a wide range of data from January 2010 to June 2017, which the commission plans to analyze for disparities. But cops and the commission appear to be at odds over what the release of that data should look like.

“While the police will say they are co-operating, we have no data,” said Mandhane at a press conference. To VICE , she adds that the commission asked the department, the police board and Special Investigations Unit for data five months ago because “it isn't an adversarial process and it doesn't need to be… we wanted to give the service ample opportunity to cooperate and to begin the process of providing us with the data.”

While the board and the SIU have agreed to share their information, the police department has not, she says.

Toronto Police Services, however, said in a statement that they “welcome” the inquiry but “the Commission’s characterization of our efforts to date is incorrect.”

The service said that some of the data requested isn’t “readily available.” Also, finding the data and making it usable would cost millions of dollars—money that isn’t in their budget.

“We understand the Commission is equally challenged by budgetary pressures and, as a result, we have offered (more than once) to provide office space and full access to the raw data and documents for a dedicated team of Commission staff to conduct their review. The Commission has not responded.”

The announcement comes at a time when the Toronto Police Services have been in the spotlight. Earlier this month the Toronto District School Board voted to end a program that puts armed cops in schools. And on Thursday, Yatim’s killer Constable James Forcillo had his bail revoked for breaching conditions, after being convicted for shooting Yatim to death on a Toronto streetcar in 2013. He will now be sent to prison. (He was on bail while he appealed the decision.)

So what happens after compiling all this data? The OHRC could make recommendations to the police based on what they find. After such a large inquiry, they might also be well-positioned to file litigation before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal against the police department if police don’t put those recommendations into practice.

“It sounds as though the scope of this inquiry is going to be quite broad,” says Martinez, so any litigation may require honing in “on a specific sub issue.” (The OHRC has intervened on cases that Martinez filed in the past.)

The Toronto Police Association did not respond to a request to comment by press time.

Follow Katie Toth on Twitter.

The Definitive Ranking of the Photos in That 'Sexy' Justin Trudeau Calendar

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The world has already done quite well enough on its own fetishizing Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau. But behold, now a “Canadian boyfriend” calendar of him exists in order to further facilitate this unnecessary obsession. And despite the oddly recurring behaviours of Trudeau being photographed “organically” in random places with his shirt off, the Prime Minister’s Office has denied involvement with the calendar. Sure.

As VICE Canada's resident American, I have watched with equal parts admiration and horror as the world has become unhealthily thirsty about the current prime minister. (No matter your opinion on him, you have to admit he is at least better than whatever the fuck is going on south of the Canadian border.) Today, in a troubling turn, I have ranked all the photos in the “Justin Trudeau, My Canadian Boyfriend 2018 Wall Calendar” ($12.98 on Amazon.com, and way more on Amazon Canada of course; it’s being sold at Urban Outfitters as well, surprising no one) from bad hair JT to Daddy Canada.

Mr. May. All photos via “Justin Trudeau, My Canadian Boyfriend 2018 Wall Calendar”

12. This hairstyle: keep it.

For some reason, this photo of Justin in a cowboy hat was chosen for the month of December. How festive!

11. This man is never going to look natural in a cowboy hat, especially after forgetting Alberta in his Canada Day speech.

Mr. April

10. Daddy foreman (also notably unnatural).

For October: One of many Trudeau running pics

9. Just wondering how many photos of Trudeau running we actually need to see. We get by now that he likes cardio. Please stop and let the man exercise.

Photo via Reuters

8. Can someone tell us why, out of all the photos of Trudeau that exist—including the one of him cuddling pandas—that this is the choice for the month of August?


7. You might recognize this as Trudeau's Pride Toronto portrait. Virtue signaling can be kinda hot.

Photo via Twitter

6. If Trudeau had a Tinder, this dog photo (designated for the month of November) would be on his profile.

5. The January page of the calendar bears this average portrait of Trudeau, plus a troubling quote: “I have a new boyfriend. You haven’t met him. His job keeps him super busy.” More importantly than the photo itself, whom is responsible for this cringe copy?

This calendar again delivers with the cringe copy.

4. An accurate representation of how Trudeau is most organically captured: shirtless.

3. For June: an unquestionably casual, natural shot of JT having a stroll through a lush neighbourhood.

Mr. March

2. Dad?

Photo via Reuters

1. Finally, in September: Daddy Canada in true form.

'Mindhunter' and That Creepy-Ass ADT Guy Are Coming Back for Another Season

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Netflix has picked up the superb crime drama Mindhunter for a second season, the streaming service announced Thursday.

The news doesn't exactly come as a surprise, since the show was met with rave reviews when it first dropped in October, and Netflix was rumored to have signed on for season two before the show even debuted. But now, Netflix has made the news official with a short video announcement on the show's official Twitter and Instagram.

"We need to talk to more subjects," the post reads, though it doesn't make any promises about when we can expect another dose of Ed Kemper. The announcement is also frustratingly void of details about the new season, but we do have some vague ideas of what's to come.

Mindhunter executive producer David Fincher told Billboard last month that the second season would center on "the Atlanta child murders," which took place between 1979 and 1981. It's also likely that we'll get more information on that mysterious ADT guy in Kansas who made periodic appearances throughout season one.

According to Vulture, he is likely real-life serial killer Dennis Rader—the "BTK Killer" named for his habit of binding, torturing, and then killing his victims. If it is Rader, he may also be the answer to Ada Jeffries's unsolved murder all the way back in the pilot episode, since she was tied up and tortured in a similar way.

Rader evaded capture all the way until the 2000s, so it's unlikely we'll see him and Holden in a room together in season two. But if Rader winds up becoming the show's season-spanning villain, his eventual arrest could be the big fifth-season ending that Fincher hinted at during an interview back in October. Plus, the guy who wrote the book Mindhunter is based on also wrote about his decade-spanning hunt for the BTK Killer, so it would make sense that Rader would be a narrative through-line for the series.

If nothing else, hopefully next season will give us an answer to Mindhunter's biggest mystery so far: Is there actually a cat in Carr's basement, or what?

Intimate Photos of My Relationship with My Best Friend's Mother

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This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Belgian photographer Alexander Deprez is married to Natalie Nijs, who is 24 years his senior and the mother of his best friend. His project NN is a series of analog photos of their daily lives together. I spoke to Alexander about love, taboos and honesty.

VICE: When did you meet Natalie?
Alexander Deprez: About three years ago, I spent a whole summer with my best friend Niels in Ghent. Me and my ex had just broken up and I felt like a prisoner in Kuurne, the place where I lived at the time. Ghent was much more fun. Natalie is Niels’ mum, so we where living under the same roof and I remember we would sit on the balcony together a lot – just talking and smoking.

From the moment we met, there was no denying we shared a connection but we didn’t do anything about it for a while. She was the mother of my friend and we were very conscious of the age difference too. That is until we ended up sleeping together after her birthday party that year.

All photos by Alexander Deprez. Follow him on Instagram and Tumblr.

How did your best friend react to your relationship?
There were lots of people in the room when we started kissing – the party was still going. Some people were quite shocked and you could hear the "whoops" and "Wows" in the room, but everybody also laughed about it. Niels as well. We were all quite drunk.

He did seem to have a tough time, once me and his mother started dating officially. At times, he felt like he was the third wheeling – I was the guy interfering in his family. But in the end, it all worked out and I believe we are okay now.

Do you get a lot of judgemental reactions when people see you two together?
Not that much. There are some comments here and there, but they always come from people we don’t know that well. It happens that some girls my age totally ignore Natalie when she’s around. And there are guys her age who act competitive around me. They seem to feel the urge to brag about what they did when they were younger or about how many women they could have had.

I do feel that a lot of people don’t take this relationship seriously. I guess they think that, sooner or later, I’ll want to be with somebody my own age. But we don’t care about what everyone else thinks. Natalie and I prefer to laugh about it, instead of getting frustrated. Actually, I quite enjoy seeing those confused faces when we kiss in public.

You’ve been taking photos of Natalie from the moment you were together but why did you decide to publish them? Does that have anything to do with breaking taboos?
I think we’re already breaking taboos by being together. With this series I want to address something else, something that’s very common in Flanders, maybe specifically in West-Flanders. People here care way too much about what other people think. We’re too used to wearing masks. When you’re in trouble or something’s wrong, you’re not allowed to show it. Everyone knows each other’s problems, but they don’t talk about any of it. Naturally, that can lead to breakdowns when people just can't take all this pressure by themselves. I think it’s a very oppressive culture.

In these pictures I’m very honest about myself, my life and the environment I live in because I think that the world would be a much easier place to exist in if we were all a little more open. Sometimes people think that I only do this to shock, but that’s not true. It’s just that I’m not afraid to show who I am even though my life involves things that are considered taboos – like sex, parties and drugs.

What do you love most about Natalie?
I really like how confident she is. That brings a lot of stability and trust in our relationship. Young people are often too busy trying to claim their own space, in relationships as well as in society, and that can cause jealousy and suspicion.

She allows me to photograph her even in the most unflattering situations. She pretty much agrees with almost everything. Some people are very strict about the way they want to be portrayed, but she doesn’t care that much. She knows who she is and that's enough. Being with her, has really helped me develop my own style. It's not that she determines it for me, more that she teaches me to really be myself.

Scroll down for more photos by Alexander Deprez.

It's Time for Nancy Pelosi to Go

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On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was once the highest-ranking woman in government in American history, appeared on Meet the Press and was asked about the sexual harassment allegations against Michigan congressman John Conyers. She blew it.

“We are strengthened by due process,” the House minority leader told Chuck Todd days after Conyers himself confirmed that his office had paid a settlement in response to a 2105 sexual harassment complaint. “Just because someone is accused, and was it one accusation? Is it two? I think there has to be—John Conyers is an icon in our country.” After an uproar and Conyers’s resignation from the House Ethics Committee, she quickly backtracked, issuing a statement that said, “No matter how great an individual’s legacy, it is not a license for harassment.” On Tuesday, the Detroit News reported that another former Conyers staffer had come forward to allege harassment by the longtime congressman, and on Thursday Pelosi said Conyers should resign.

Still, Pelosi’s fumble is just the latest example of why she’s no longer the best person to lead House Democrats. The Democrats have many problems, but they can’t solve them with an aging leadership that has led to them being stuck in the minority for four House election cycles. Republicans have no problem switching leaders even when they’re in power—a hard-right caucus forced House Speaker John Boehner to step down in 2015—but Democrats have stuck with Pelosi since 2003. That’s too long.



When Pelosi came to lead the House Democrats back then, after Minority Leader Dick Gephardt stepped down to run for president, the party was at a low point. It had lost seats in the 2002 midterms, just the third time since the 1930s that the party controlling the White House had picked up seats in the House during a midterm. A year later, President George W. Bush won reelection and picked up seats in the Senate and House along with it.

But surfing on an anti-war, anti-Bush wave in 2006, Democrats snatched 31 House spots and Pelosi became Speaker, the first woman to ever reach that height. In 2008, Democrats rode the coattails of Barack Obama to pick up even more seats, before the Tea Party backlash knocked them out of the majority in the House.

In those two years when Democrats had a unified government, Pelosi shepherded several pieces of landmark legislation through the House, including the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and Dodd-Frank financial industry reform, despite presiding over a chamber full of conservative Democrats. She also helped get the Affordable Care Act passed, first with a public option and then, after right-leaning Senate Democrats blocked that version, in its final form.

The six years since have not been as kind. After her term as Speaker ended when Republicans stormed to a House majority in 2010, Pelosi stayed on as minority leader, even though losing a majority is usually seen as a failure for which the leader should be held accountable. Before Pelosi, the last former Speaker to take the minority leader seat after losing a majority was Joseph William Martin Jr. of Massachusetts, who was the Republican House leader from 1939 to 1959 and served two nonconsecutive terms as Speaker. (In the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid stayed on as Minority Leader for two years following the 2014 elections, but announced his retirement early in 2015.)

Pelosi and the rest of the aging House leadership have made it impossible for younger members of the party to take over, which has no doubt contributed to the perception that the party is out of touch. Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina are all in their late 70s, but more importantly have all been in the leadership for at least a decade.

There are two reasons why Pelosi has held on for so long. One is that though some Democrats oppose her, they can’t put together a credible challenge. When Democrats lost the majority in 2010, North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback, won just 43 votes in his bid to replace her. (Shuler retired from Congress a few years later.) After the top-to-bottom failure of the 2016 election, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan ran against her on a quasi-populist platform. Ryan, who voted for an anti-abortion amendment during the 2009 debate over the Affordable Care Act, implied that the party focused too much on social issues. He got a bigger share of votes than Shuler did, but Pelosi won the election handily after finally promising positions of power be handed to more junior Democrats.

The second reason, which also partially answers why no prominent House Democrat has ever stepped up to take on Pelosi, is that she’s a very good fundraiser. Pelosi has raised almost $600 million since 2002, and has raised more than $25 million alone this year, most of which she gave to the House Democrats’ campaign arm.

“She is a great fundraiser, but if the money we’re raising through her leadership is not helping us win elections, then we have to have this conversation now,” Democratic Congresswoman Kathleen Rice of New York said in a June interview. (On Wednesday, Rice sharply criticized Pelosi for her handling of the Conyers’s harassment scandal, saying Pelosi’s comments on Sunday “set women back and—quite frankly, our party back—decades.”)

What’s more is that there’s now a roadmap for making huge fundraising gains that doesn’t run through the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, running explicitly against the idea of super PACs, broke fundraising records for numbers of contributions on the back of small dollar donations. “If the party can honestly and authentically change its message and actions, Democratic activists would embrace it with incredible enthusiasm,” former Sanders fundraising manager Michael Whitney wrote in a Politico op-ed in August. “Grass-roots donors would jump to help tilt the balance of financial power and to shape the party's vision for future elections.”

Pelosi, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to anger the Democrats’ grassroots over and over again, from her too-slow response to the Conyers allegations to her skepticism of a young socialist’s question about the party’s undying embrace of capitalism to her willingness to bring pro-lifers back into the mainstream of the party. If Pelosi’s political instincts served her well in the mid-2000s, they seem to be failing her now that the base of the party is pissed off and shifting to the left.

This is not an endorsement of Tim Ryan, who has the same bad electoral strategy as Pelosi. Democrats’ success won’t be found in making the party more appealing to moderates. It’ll be found in making the party more appealing to marginalized voters by forcefully fighting for criminal justice reform and abortion rights, to working-class voters, and to left-leaning independent voters who are frustrated that our two choices are both parties of capital. It’ll be found in making itself the clearest possible departure from the Republican Party. If the Democrats are serious about change—and they should be, given their last few years of losses—they need to start at the top.

Paul Blest is a contributing writer for the Outline and Facing South. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.


Being a Member of Congress Is a Sexual Predator's Dream Job

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Paige Wagers was nervous. After all, it wasn't typical for the mail clerk working on Capitol Hill to be summoned directly into a United States senator's office. But that's what happened one day in 1975, when her intercom buzzed, and Bob Packwood was on other line. The moment the 21-year-old went to see what the veteran Ohio lawmaker wanted, her trepidation turned to terror. According to testimony later provided to the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics, Packwood closed the door of his office, shoved her up against a wall, and forcibly kissed her with tongue. She returned to her desk shaking and crying.

"I lost all confidence in myself," she said. "I was afraid to be around men. Emotionally, financially, and intellectually, I remained frozen in time."



In September 1995, the committee submitted what amounted to an indictment concluding she—along with more than a dozen other women who came forward about Packwood—was telling the truth. According to their testimony, the Oregon Republican kissed supporters, former staffers, National Abortion Rights Action League workers, hotel desk clerks, elevator operators, and women applying to be his speech writer; he also chased another staffer around a desk, grabbed a dining-room hostess by the crotch, and touched the leg of another senator's staffer who had offered to babysit his kids. In 1981, when Wagers was working for the Department of Labor, Packwood forcibly kissed her again, she said. Ultimately, the Senate found he had acted inappropriately with at least 17 women and unanimously recommended Packwood's expulsion. Instead of being forced out, he resigned in disgrace.

This kind of behavior—and the astonishingly long gap between the misconduct and anything resembling accountability—is a now-familiar narrative to anyone who's been following the news in America lately. But despite the proximity of literally hundreds of people responsible for crafting the country's laws, matters haven't improved much for women working on the Hill since Packwood's behavior led to the passage of the unfortunately named Congressional Accountability Act in 1995. In fact, as a recent BuzzFeed exposé on Democratic representative John Conyers's repeated sexual advances toward staff members showed, accusers often get funneled through a byzantine process that ultimately leads to private settlements reminiscent of the ones that kept Harvey Weinstein's victims in the dark for decades. That system, coupled with the fact that elected officials in DC are often sleeping on cots away from their families, interacting with much younger staffers, and working in an environment that lacks a true Human Resources department and revolves around cocktail hours, together make for a perfect storm of enablement for would-be predators.

DC might sound like the worst summer camp ever, but it's actually not that different from industries like the media, which has its own gender imbalances and alcohol-fueled culture. The key difference seems to be that, as America just saw with the ouster of NBC's erstwhile star Matt Lauer, bad male journalists don't tend to last very long once they're publicly outed as predators. Al Franken, on the other hand, still has his job almost two weeks after the first of several women came forward to accuse him of groping and other sexual misconduct. Other media stars like Garrison Keillor and Charlie Rose were also quickly fired after their behavior came under public scrutiny.

"The structure is different," Marianne Cooper, a Stanford sociologist who was the lead researcher for Lean In, told me of the difference between the media world and the one in Washington. "The CEO of a company can decide to terminate someone in a top-talent role. There's no one like that in Congress."

"[The Hill] is also weird because it's essentially a large entity that functions like a bunch of small businesses," added Emily Martin, the vice president for workplace justice at the National Women's Law Center. "You get the worst side of a close, informal office where there's no one whose job it is to help you negotiate something like sexual harassment."

Melanie Sloan made her name as an ethics watchdog in DC, but more recently she's emerged as another prominent critic of the HR disaster that is the United States Congress—with her own experience to boot. When she got a job on the Hill working for Congressman John Conyers in 1995, she'd heard there was a lot of sexual harassment taking place there, she recalled. Still, given that she was a respected lawyer at the time—and joining his staff as a minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee—she thought it would be fine.

She was wrong. Although Sloan does not think she was sexually harassed, she said her three years at that job were characterized by verbal abuse and punctuated with bizarre incidents, like one in which she walked into her boss's office and found him in his underwear. Without an HR department, she struggled to figure out what she was supposed to do.

"I did everything I could," she told me. "I talked to my supervisor. I talked to [then] Minority Leader [Richard] Gephardt. Externally, I talked to a women's group and a reporter. I told the reporter what happened, and he called a woman colleague of mine to check my story. She told him I was mentally unstable, and even though I'd worked with this reporter before, he told me, 'Well, maybe you are mentally unstable.'"

Reporters' attitudes are obviously changing; on November 22, Sloan was the first person to go on the record with the Washington Post about Conyers's alleged misconduct toward staffers, which she said included verbal abuse in her case but appears to have centered on unwanted touching and requests for sexual acts in others. So are societal attitudes: Sloan said she recently heard from friends of her's from the 90s—one who worked on the Hill and another in a big DC law firm—who shared stories of harassment for the first time. But it might take members of Congress longer to get it together than the average person who watches the Today show. The average age of congresspeople is 57; in the Senate specifically, it is 61.

"I think that when you've been serving in a bubble with no accountability for 20 to 30 years, you're out of step not just with the times but with reality," said Morra Aarons-Mele, a podcaster and activist for women in politics. "I think that's why the system is set up to protect harassers—these people have been at the highest level of power for so long. They don't even drive."

Take Nancy Pelosi, who is now in favor of Conyers's resignation, but initially made a cringe-worthy appearance on Meet the Press in which she defended the congressman as a civil rights icon. There's also James Clyburn, the legendary House Democrat who bizarrely suggested the standards of behavior for elected officials were more lenient than for other people—and that Conyers's accusers were racist, before finally getting it right by joining Pelosi in calling for his resignation Thursday.

On the other hand, two Democrats, Representative Jackie Speier of California and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced legislation earlier this month intended to reform how sexual harassment complaints are filed and dealt with for Capitol Hill employees. The ME TOO Congress Act, which was in the works before the BuzzFeed story about Conyers even came out, would eliminate waiting periods for accusers who want to file complaints and provide legal resources to victims, as well as make defendants pay their legal fees out of pocket (instead of taxpayers, as is the case now, somehow). Perhaps most crucially, it would let the public know when settlements had been paid out. That bill still has to make it through the legislative process, but a good sign came when the both houses passed a resolution requiring all members and their staffs to go through sexual harassment training.

Aarons-Mele doesn't think the resolution will do enough, however, and will remain skeptical until a law forcing transparency is actually in effect. She mentioned Today co-host Matt Lauer's rapid-fire termination as an example of how, when high-profile men are finally publicly held accountable, the culture is forced into motion. And although changing attitudes can take a generation, the infrastructure needed to provide transparency about sexual misconduct in Congress can be assembled pretty quickly.

"If training was gonna solve anything, we would have 75 percent less sexual harassment in the workplace than we do," she told me. "I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. As long as Congress remains a closed system, where there's no incentive for change, there will be none."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes Are Rebranding as Free-Speech Defenders

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When right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro's speech at UC Berkeley drew hundreds of angry protesters this September, he wasn’t left to fend for himself. According to Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Arizona-based Minuteman Project, in addition to campus police and other official personnel, agents allied with his own group’s cause were on hand to quietly assess the scene. Dressing like students and wearing hidden body cameras, they set out to “record any violent thugs as they commit felonies,” Gilchrist told me.

“My wise suggestion to the ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter gangs: Look to your comrade on your left and on your right,” the militia leader wrote in a warning apparently distributed to Berkeley student groups before the rally (and shared with VICE). “Possibly one of them is a Minuteman or Minutewoman just waiting to document your criminal activity.”

The Minutemen and other Arizona-based, militia-style groups are perhaps best known for roving the border region with guns, camouflage uniforms, and hiking boots to stalk people they suspect might be undocumented. But since Donald Trump took office, at least some of these activists have taken on a new crusade: shielding white nationalists in the name of free speech, which the militia members believe is more critical than ever. A healthy number of militias appeared at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville this August, while others—like the Minutemen—find plenty to keep them busy closer to home.

With an administration that has expressed tacit support for white supremacy in Washington, some of the militia movement’s right-wing ire for the government seems to be have shifted from the federal to local level, where alleged threats are easy to come by.



“Right now, the arrow for the Minutemen Project is to infiltrate hostile operations for the purpose of eliminating people who are viciously hostile to freedom of speech,” Gilchrist, a retired certified public accountant, told me, adding that his members in Berkeley sought to photograph protesters who might commit arson or other crimes. “We’re trying to stop the insult and hijacking of freedom of speech and civil rights.”

The original Minuteman Project largely disintegrated after one of its offshoot groups' leaders, Shawna Forde, was convicted of killing a nine-year-old girl and her father in a 2009 Arizona home invasion. Forde, who was sentenced to death in 2011, plotted the murders in order to steal money from the family to finance Minuteman-style border operations.

But according to Gilchrist and other activists I canvassed, these groups are increasingly focused on espionage activities at liberal rallies. Last month, Gilchrist said, one Minuteman member was on hand to ensure no violence broke out at a news conference about California becoming a “sanctuary state” to protect undocumented immigrants. This ostensibly "free speech” focused project is broadly consistent with concerns laid out by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month in a diatribe about the excesses of political correctness on college campuses.

“In every rally we have someone there, sometimes it’s a dozen and sometimes just one or two,” added Gilchrist, who claimed his group was evenly balanced between men and women, but that most of his “spies” were men. When pressed for more details on the precise nature of his alleged espionage, Gilchrist said he could not risk jeopardizing their tactics.

The tactical shift is consistent with one being undertaken by other, less immigration-focused militia groups, many of which which don’t have the same image problems that come with a prominent (if disavowed) figure being convicted of double-murder.

Gerald Rhoades, president of the Arizona state chapter of Oath Keepers, a far-right organization associated with the patriot and militia movements, told me earlier this fall he'd begun receiving requests for protection from groups holding pro-Trump events.

“Certain organizations are worried about being pepper sprayed by people like Antifa,” said Rhoades, 52, who works as an avionics technician in Phoenix when he's not running his chapter. “They ask us to help keep the peace.”

The Oath Keepers in Arizona, at least, always conduct their work armed, according to Rhoades, because the state has permit-less carry, allowing anyone who can legally possess a handgun to display one without any type of permit.

“Is it necessary? You never know,” Rhoades said of carrying a gun. “It’s like insurance you hope you never use it but you might have to.”

Oath Keepers, who last year claimed 35,000 members nationally, describe their group as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders” who pledge “to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Members marched at the infamous rally in Charlottesville, ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate statue—though Rhoades insisted the Oath Keepers were there to protect the First Amendment, not because they shared specific political views.

Historically, Arizona's border-focused militias have stayed away from the white nationalist movement, according to Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. But since President Trump took office, some groups have found a new cause that further muddies the waters between far-right activists, to say the least.

“The militia movement began showing up at events in 2017 alongside the alt-right and other white supremacists particularly in order to be a buffer or to confront the threat they view from ANTIFA,” Segal said. “They try to keep their distance at times from white supremacists by positioning themselves as security.”

Since most militias have traditionally positioned themselves as anti-government, and President Trump has come in as an unconventional outsider figure, impassioned members now find themselves with a new “Trump dilemma,” as Segal put it.

“They need to find other ways to gain attention and have a purpose,” he added.

Still, there are ideological cleavages both within the militia movement and between these groups and the white supremacists they are increasingly appearing alongside.

“Most anti-immigrant groups—and also anti-government groups—aren’t the kind saying America should be a white ethno-state,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told me.

Occasionally, militia groups and white supremacists clash at the rallies they attend together. In June, white supremacists and Oath Keepers actually got into a fight at a Texas rally after an Oath Keeper denounced a neo-Nazi and his group was deemed insufficiently racist in response.

“We are opposed to any kind of racism or anti-American activities,” Rhoades told me, determined to walk this ideological tightrope.

But Beirich said militias with a legacy of vigilante-style activity gaining proximity—even if they claim differences—to white supremacist groups had dangerous implications going ahead.

“Seeing militias showing up in places like Charlottesville side by side with white nationalists is a bit of disturbing development,” she said. “They’re working with some of the most extreme [people] in the [far-right] movement.”

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

Yet Another Woman Has Accused Al Franken of Sexual Misconduct

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On Thursday, a New England woman came forward to accuse Senator Al Franken of trying to forcibly kiss her when she was serving as an elected official, bringing the total number of allegations against the Minnesota Democrat to six.

The latest allegation followed Army veteran Stephanie Kemplin's accusation that Franken groped her breast during a USO tour photo op. Minutes after CNN published Keplin's account, Jezebel reported Franken allegedly tried to give an unnamed former elected official a "wet, open-mouthed kiss" during an event in 2006. Franken, a host on radio station Air America at the time, reportedly invited the official to a live taping of his show in front of an audience at a large theater. Franken allegedly tried to kiss her in front of the audience after the interview.

“I reached out my hand to shake his. He took it and leaned toward me with his mouth open. I turned my head away from him and he landed a wet, open-mouthed kiss awkwardly on my cheek," she told Jezebel. "It was onstage in front of a full theater... It was insidious. It was in plain sight and yet nobody saw it."

The woman told Jezebel she was left "stunned and incredulous" at what went down, and felt "demeaned" and "put in my place." Franken hasn't publicly addressed the allegation.

The latest accusation echoes similar behavior five other women claim they've witnessed from the former comedian over the years. Franken has been accused of groping multiple women during photo ops and trying to kiss radio host Leeann Tweeden without her permission. Although he apologized to Tweeden for the 2006 incident, he said he didn't remember forcibly kissing her, and his apologies to the additional accusers have grown increasingly lukewarm since. He's gone on to ask for an ethics investigation into his own alleged sexual impropriety.

On Monday, Franken returned to the Senate after a brief leave, saying he has "been trying to take responsibility by apologizing" to his accusers. According to NPR, Franken said he's not considering to step down from congress, despite calls for his resignation by President Trump and a prominent member of his own party.

The announcement came as pressure mounts from within Congress for Democratic representative John Conyers to resign over allegations he sexually harassed several of his staffers. Meanwhile, Republican representative Joe Barton just announced he'd be retiring following reports that he sent nude photos to women, and Republican lawmakers have threatened to oust Alabama Republican Roy Moore from the Senate if he's elected in December. Moore, who's currently leading in the polls, has been accused of molesting a 14-year-old and preying on several other teenage girls.

The recent allegations follow CNN's report of a congressional "creep list" that women who work on the Hill have compiled of men who are known for inappropriate sexual behavior, adding further proof that becoming a top lawmaker seems like a sexual predator's dream job.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

The Best Movies of 1997 Were Hella Emotional

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The fall of 1997 was, simply put, one of the most remarkable movie-going seasons of our time: Boogie Nights. Jackie Brown. The Sweet Hereafter. Wag The Dog. Eve's Bayou. Good Will Hunting. The Ice Storm. Amistad. As Good as It Gets. Gattaca. And so many more, culminating with what became the highest-grossing movie of all time: the long-delayed, oft-trashed, yet eventually unstoppable Titanic . Each week yielded another remarkable motion picture—sometimes two or more, taking bold risks, telling powerful stories, introducing formidable new talents, and reaffirming the gifts of master filmmakers. This series looks back at those movies, examining not only the particular merits of each, but what they told us about where movies were that fall 20 years ago, and about where movies were going.

“You here about the accident?” Wendell asks him. Mitchell Stevens nods: Yes, he’s here about the accident. That’s how everyone in the town refers to him—Mitchell Stevens, full name—and that’s what everyone calls the reason he’s there, “the accident.” No one knows the lawyer’s name, but everyone knows what happened out on the lake that day—that is, except the viewer. Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter operates under a non-linear, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later structure, which asks (nay, requires) the viewer to piece the events together themselves.

In that way, we’re not unlike Mitchell Stevens. He’s a lawyer, not literally an ambulance chaser, but close; he’s arrived in the small Canadian town as it’s still nursing an open wound from the horrible day when an icy road sent a school bus into a highway guard rail, which quickly crumpled and sent most of the town’s schoolchildren onto the thin ice. There were a few survivors, but not many.

Mitchell Stevens’ face is solemn and his voice is flat and matter-of-fact. But he can be calculating, choosing his plaintiffs carefully (“That’s good, judges like adopted Indian boys”) and putting on the anger and emotion when the time comes for a hard sell. But The Sweet Hereafter, based on Russell Banks’s novel, is not just about the accident or its aftermath—which is clear early on via the key image of a couple and baby asleep together, a visual first revealed without explanation before being given weighty context.

“I remember the summer we almost lost her,” Stevens says of the baby who's now a grown woman, in a monologue staggering in its emotional depth and complexity. He tells the story years later, on a plane where he finds himself seated next to a barely remembered acquaintance; he talks and talks, offloading all his pain and grief—and she listens, but it’s such an unburdening for him that her attentiveness and her very presence almost doesn’t matter. (Stevens is played by Ian Holm, in a performance that’s all the more astonishing when put next to his appearance in one of the biggest movies of 1997: The Fifth Element.)

Egoyan’s screenplay snakes through time, gracefully juggling four frames: the accident, the days just before it, the days just after it, and that plane ride years later. It’s not just narrative gimmickry, however; he ends up capturing the way the time around a tragedy can become a blur, a hazy smear in which everything runs together, both for those who survived and those who lost.

One of the survivors is the bus driver, Dolores (Gabrielle Rose), who lives in a state of perpetual sorrow and anguish, even though it’s clear it really was an accident. There’s an incredible moment early on when she’s telling Mitchell Stevens about one of the kids, where she escapes from the crushing overwhelmingness of this event, if only briefly. You see in her eyes as that momentary flight away from her reality is brought to a crashing halt, and in that moment Egoyan and his actor capture the way a tragedy can overwhelm an entire existence.

That’s what it does for Dolores—and for Billy (Bruce Greenwood), the father who was driving behind the bus and saw it all, and for Nicole (Sarah Polley), who was on board and survived. All of them have that trauma bearing down on them, and they have to find ways to manage it—none of them productive.

“We’re all citizens of a different town now,” Nicole says in the film’s final voice-over, and that’s the true power of Egoyan’s film; how in shuffling the chronological deck, we see what once was in this town, both in its light and its darkness, and how none of it will ever be the same, no matter what Mitchell Stevens says.

Good Will Hunting was released two weeks after The Sweet Hereafter, and it's a far more mainstream drama with its own potent story of overcoming the traumas of the past. It sneaks up on you, to some extent; director Gus Van Sant gives it the crisp, autumnal photography of the prestige picture it would become, but he throws in flourishes of experimentation and stylization. I’m thinking particularly of Will and his crew’s ugly, slow-motion street brawl (scored, with admirable incongruity, to Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”). But our protagonist isn’t just some hood; a few scenes later, hard on the heels of that street fight, he proves equally adept (and no less brutal) at an intellectual bar fight.

Yes, Will Hunting—as everyone must know by now—is a working-class genius, and Good Will Hunting (I’ll yield little to the film’s many detractors, but will admit that Good Will Hunting is a terrible title) is the story of how this janitor-cum-Southie prodigy is saved from a life of grunt work when he casually decodes an “unsolvable” proof on a hallway chalkboard at MIT. The man who put the proof up is Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), who gets Will out of an assault charge by putting him to work in the math department and putting him into therapy. It turns out the only therapist who can handle him is Lambeau’s old friend Sean (Robin Williams).

“It’s a poker game with this kid,” Lambeau warns him, but their inaugural session is more like a street corner encounter between two barely-leashed dogs: sniffing and circling each other, until Will growls, and Sean bites. There’s this little light in Will’s eyes when he sees that he pushed one of Sean’s buttons—he loves doing that—but to his shock, Sean doesn’t give up. In their next session, he takes him to a park bench and explains to him, in terms he hasn’t quite considered, that he may be a genius but he doesn’t know shit, and that he doesn’t know anything he hasn’t read about in a book.

Good Will Hunting was, famously, the breakthrough film for Damon and co-star Ben Affleck, who struggled as actors for years and figured they’d write it mainly to create work for themselves (a la Stallone and Rocky). And Damon is tremendous in the role—watch the lack of affect in his acting in the park bench scene; he’s barely “doing” anything there, just listening. But it’s riveting.

Of course, Damon also wrote himself a few showcase scenes. He falls in love with a brilliant Harvard girl (Minnie Driver), and it’s so intense that within a few weeks, she’s asking Will to come with her to graduate school in California; in a bleary-eyed, early morning argument, he pushes her away. It escalates from modesty and fear to pure confession, as he tells her about the stabs and cigarette burns on his body before pulling back: “YOU DON’T WANNA HEAR THAT SHIT, SKYLAR!” When she challenges him with a daring, “I wanna hear you say that you don’t love me,” he gives her what she’s asking for, because that’s easier. (Minnie Driver was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work here, and deserved it; watch the way she crumples after he leaves, or how she barely keeps it together when he calls her a few days later.)

Hunting also finds Affleck in his best kind of role—the big lug with a good heart. His Big Scene comes at the end of a work day over smokes and beers, in which he lays out exactly why he won’t accept Will’s plan to be another grinder. “Fuck you, you don’t owe it to yourself,” he tells his friend. “You owe it to me.” There’s a self-awareness to that monologue that’s sort of heartbreaking—a knowledge that Will is going places and he’s not, underscored by his (still!) goosebump-raising description of “the best part of my day.” This is some of the best acting Affleck’s done—both when he makes that confession and when it crosses his face in the film’s closing moments that his wish has finally come true.

Williams won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work here (dodgy Boston accent notwithstanding), and it is a supporting role; he doesn’t show up until 30 minutes in. At first, it seems like nothing special, since we glimpse him doing his usual stand-up-lite schtick in the classroom—but watch how he immediately loses his bravado when his old pal “Gerry” appears at his door. One of the keener qualities of Damon and Affleck’s script is how it parallels the dynamics between its two key friendships, underscored by how closely Affleck’s tender speech is followed by Sean’s explosion. It's a moment of shared sentiments, packaged differently. “You think I’m a failure!” he tells his friend, but he isn’t: “I know who I am, I take pride in what I do.”

And perhaps it’s only because Sean feels so vulnerable at that moment (“A lot of that stuff goes back a long way between me and him,” he confesses to Will) that he feels ready to take his patient where he needs to go. Perhaps the film’s best-remembered scene, it's a therapeutic breakthrough that may be too clean, but lands like an emotional haymaker nonetheless. Everybody quotes his incantation to Will, “It’s not your fault,” but no one remembers the line that comes after it: “Look at me, son.” That last word, the tenderness implicit in it, “son,” is hair-raising, and watching Will break is genuinely shattering; this is their version of the kitchen scene in Boogie Nights, a moment in which a tough kid lets the “tough” part fall away.

That’s all of a piece with the emotional urgency of Good Will Hunting, a film in which a young person’s future genuinely matters, to many, many people. It’s a movie that captures – in a way that perhaps an older, jaded screenwriter could not convey – the limitless possibilities of youth, a movie in which a character can tell another, without cynicism, “You could do anything you want. You are bound by nothing.”

That may be why Good Will Hunting maintains its sway over this viewer, as the bloom seems to have gone off its rose for many others; I was 22 when it came out, about to graduate from college, and certain that it was speaking to me, offering counsel and inspiration. And in all fairness, its negative reputation as a calculated tearjerker strikes me as disingenuous. It’s a film where it always feels like real relationships are bleeding in—not just in the hang-out scenes between friends, but the flashes of blossoming romance (Driver and Damon began dating during the production, and there are moments between them where the freshness and authenticity betray their real spark.) I’d imagine that for those involved, watching it now is like watching old home movies. And it’s like that for much of its original audience as well.

The Gay Porn Industry is Still Super Racist

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Adult film star Hugh Hunter was having a good week.

On November 22, nominations for the GayVN awards, a prominent gay erotica industry honour, were announced after a seven year hiatus. Hunter was nominated in three major categories, a highlight after another busy year in the competitive world of gay porn.

But the next day, Hunter publicly turned down his nominations and denounced the awards show on Twitter, due to the inclusion of a “Best Ethnic Scene” category, made up exclusively of minority performers. A handful of actors of colour were nominated in other categories, but sparingly so. He used his public statement to ask a barrage of incisive questions, both of the GayVN Awards and the industry more widely, continuing an ongoing conversation about the gay porn industry’s often-blatant racism.

He said he had been warned before that such concerns “fall on deaf ears in this industry.” Fortunately, this time, he was wrong. His message provoked media coverage and debate, leading to other performers declining their nominations in turn. In response, the GayVN awards removed the category completely, explained it was intended to “provide a platform for smaller producers to receive more attention,” merged the listed nominees with Best Duo Scene, and issued an apology from their parent company, Adult Video News.

Whether Hunter’s impact will spark broader change within the industry remains to be seen, but it's a promising sign from a business long plagued with issues when handling race. VICE spoke with Hunter about GayVN's response, the murky nature of gay porn categorization, and the most surprising reactions he's seen to his letter.

VICE: When did you find out about the nominations? And what did you think when you read everything, including your own name?
Hugh Hunter: I saw the nominations the day after they were posted. I knew that the GayVN awards were coming back, but I'd be lying if I said I paid a lot of attention to award shows. I kind of perused them and wasn't even looking for my name, just at what the categories were.

I ran across that particular category and it really made me feel ill at ease. I just couldn't fathom why, in 2017, they would even think to have this.

I had to do a little research to see—is this an old category that maybe just got carried over from prior AVN award shows? I found out that it was a new category, one GAYVN admitted they had just created.

I wanted to decline my nomination because I don't want my name associated with racial bias, and maybe I can start a conversation if I present something articulate and thoughtful.

No Best Actor or Supporting Actor was a person of colour, and only three of the Performers of the Year, out of 15, were men of colour. Yet they found some 20 scenes to nominate for Best Ethnic Scene. Why couldn't they have just nominated everybody in Best Scene? It doesn't make a difference. If they're good enough to be nominated, they're good enough to be nominated.

What is your opinion of how they've handled all of this since?
I appreciate the removal of the category, and maintaining all of those nominees. And I do appreciate that they apologized.

However, my issue is that they provided reasoning for why this category was created. And the methodology used in creating that category still smacks of a racial bias. They never seemed to apologize for this and that doesn't sit well with me, but I don't know that's a fight that I can take up again.

Now I want people to take it up and run with it back to their studios and directors and casting directors and distributors and really try to make some changes at that level. I, as one white performer, can only make so much noise before it feels like I’m being the token white guy outraged over inequality. Unfortunately, a few people have already tried to say that. That was not my intent. I'm not trying to be the angry white man for the men of colour, I'm not trying to represent them. I don't understand the prejudices that they've experienced. I don't know their stories.

The proverbial white knight.
And truthfully, I never thought of it that way. My thought process was, people will pay attention because I was going after AVN. Not because I was a white person talking about race. That was never on my radar.

You've mentioned there has been positive reinforcement from your colleagues and people in the industry. Have you had any negative reactions from friends?
There have been a few defensive statements. I reached out to a personal friend who has a lot of clout, and when I have asked for help in getting this message up, I was told that they couldn't. They thought it was commendable and that they were well aware of the problem, but they couldn't help because they had to think of their clients, and it would be bad for their business.

I also had another veteran director, two or three decades in the industry, tell me that I should not tag them in anything I post, because they don't want to be dragged into this on social media and they considered what I was doing unnecessary drama in an already drama-filled business.

Another very well-known performer who has transitioned to somewhat of a content-side mogul said that all of this fighting is nonsense, that studios are making more films than ever and people should just be happy they're working.

There were a number of people who supported what I did. However, I’ve yet to see a studio, director, casting director, producer or a major VOD site say a word about it. And those are who really need to be part of the conversation, because they influence how people are represented in films and can bring on more diversity and inclusion.

Do you plan to keep this going?
I'm always willing to lend my input, but I can't share experiences that people of colour can share. And not being on the other side of the camera, I can't influence the casting people. I'd be happy to sit at the table. I do want to be an ally and an advocate for a more inclusive environment.

Do you think the way porn is classified by genre now—with divisions between “fetish” or “daddies,” where actors are often white, versus separate genres with performers of certain ethnicities—is necessarily evil?
Yes, unfortunately. The debate of preference versus prejudice isn’t going to be solved any time soon. Have I ever shopped for porn and looked up “black” or “Latino”? Yes, I have. But it's such a muddy gray area.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Follow Reneysh Vittal on Twitter.

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