Netflix surprised basically no one Friday with the announcement that Stranger Things—its flagship show about kids, 80s nostalgia, and the horrors of the Department of Energy—will be coming back for a third season.
Stranger Things quickly became one of the streaming service's most beloved shows after the first season dropped in 2016, and the success of season two proved that the show's initial popularity wasn't a fluke. Plus, the second season's whole "there are more superkids out there" arc all but promised another season. Now, it's official.
The tweet didn't contain any details about when the new season will go into production, but we likely won't see any new episodes until at least the latter half of 2018, since Netflix will have to squeeze in filming in-between the young cast's other gigs as musicians and hosts of teen driving PSAs.
Netflix also didn't reveal anything about the new season's plot or how the Mind Flayer will creatively torture Will Byers this time around, but it looks like there will be another gap in time between the season two finale and the events of season three.
"Our kids are aging. We can only write and produce the show so fast. They're going to be almost a year older by the time we start shooting season three," the show's co-creator Matt Duffer told Hollywood Reporter recently. "It provides certain challenges. You can't start right after season two ended. It forces you to do a time jump."
If season three makes another year-long leap forward, it'll take place in 1985—so get ready to see Eleven wash down her Eggos with a New Coke or whatever.
When visiting a Holocaust memorial site, there are a few activities that people should know to avoid, like for instance, taking selfies or playing Pokémon Go. Now, Jewish groups are wondering how an artist managed to make a short film inside a gas chamber at the former Stutthof concentration camp in Poland, BBC reports.
Artur Żmijewski shot The Game of Tag back in 1999, showing a roomful of naked men and women playing tag, laughing, and slapping each other's asses in a small, stone-walled room. The work drew criticism when it was featured in the Krakow Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAK) in 2015—but it wasn't until this year that Jewish groups realized the short film was actually shot inside a former concentration camp where 65,000 people were put to death.
On Wednesday, the Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel and the Simon Wiesenthal Center penned a letter to Polish president Andrzej Duda, saying that "no comment or word of critique was heard from Polish official sources regarding the video," the BBC reports. They also want to know if Żmijewski had permission to shoot at Stutthof, and asked Poland's president to "clearly, properly condemn this so-called artwork."
Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which investigates Nazi war criminals, called the video "the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time" when it was displayed in 2015, the Times of Israel reports. He told the BBC it was banned in Germany and Estonia, but—for some reason—had never faced opposition in Poland.
"It's really outrageous," Zuroff told the BBC. "I hope the Polish president will put in place regulations to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen again."
It's not the first time a group of people have stripped naked at a Holocaust memorial site. In March, a band of men and women in their 20s reportedly slaughtered a sheep at Auschwitz, took off all their clothes, and chained themselves to its iconic Arbeit macht frei (or "work makes you free") gate. Jewish groups and museum officials were outraged by the bizarre display, and police couldn't figure out why it went down in the first place. Just like Żmijewski, the culprits apparently recorded the ritual.
The museum in Krakow has defended Żmijewski's film under freedom of expression, and it's still hosted on the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art's website. In 2015, MOCAK's then-museum director Maria Potocka told Radio Poland Żmijewski aimed to "show the highest respect for the memory of the Holocaust."
"To read this film as an insult to the victims of the concentration camps we feel is to misinterpret it," she said.
Żmijewski has treaded into controversial territory before, representing Poland at the Venice Biennale with a film reimagining the Stanford Prison Experiment. In his own words, he described The Game of Tag as being "all about the visual reconstruction of a situation."
"This work is full of cruel fun, sadism, nudity and childish carelessness at the same time," he's said of the film. "Just as it was back then: naked people in a gas chamber. But instead of horror, we have giggles, toys, erotic games, innocent frolics. What a relief!"
Friday was a busy day in Washington, DC. The Senate was preparing to vote on a major tax bill that was still being negotiated at the same time former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was pleading guilty to lying to federal agents as part of a deal to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign. And looming over all of this is yet another potential crisis: On December 8, the federal government will run out of money unless Congress acts fast.
The bad news is that legislators have yet to rally around even the outline of a plan to keep the government going past next Friday. There’s a good chance, the experts I’ve spoken to agree, that we’ll still manage to avoid a shutdown—but the country could be looking at weeks of short-term fixes, brinksmanship, and stress.
The government was initially set to run out of funding on September 30. But at the start of that month, Donald Trump struck a surprise deal with Democratic leaders in Congress to fund the government through December 8. The plan at the time was ostensibly to free up time to work on tax reform, handle any other pressing issues, and gradually work out a deal to fund the government through September 2018. Then Republicans wasted September on a futile attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and tax reform got complicated real fast.
“The more that you add to it, the bigger these bills get,” said Georgetown University budget politics expert Mark Harkins, “and the harder it’ll be to get an agreement.”
Despite this pileup, until a few days ago observers were optimistic about the funding process. Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans, who need at least eight Democratic votes to pass funding legislation in the Senate, were moving along. Some involved in the process hoped the two parties would agree this week on top-line spending numbers, always a point of contention since Democrats demand parity in funding increases for defense and nondefense spending. They might not have a final deal by December 8. But they could pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that would fund the government at the same levels and maybe knocking out one or two other priorities, like disaster relief. They could use those weeks to work hash out deals on the remaining issues and have a full funding bill for 2018 passed before leaving for the holidays.
That seemed to fall apart on Tuesday morning. Just before a major negotiation session between Trump and congressional leaders from both parties, the president fired off a brash tweet saying that he didn’t see any possible deal and insulting the Democrats. The Democrats pulled out of the meeting, and now even progress towards an agreement on top-line spending numbers has stalled out.
“There’s still a chance that senior staff can do what they have to behind the scenes, just get the numbers they need,” said Harkins. Then they could pull together legislation within a few days and let party leaders sign off on it quietly. “But I don’t know if that’s what’s going to occur.”
Instead, Republican leaders now seem to accept that they’ll need a longer CR, pushing off a full funding deal into mid-January or even early February. Republican leaders weren’t jazzed about this, as ending the year on a band-aid solution doesn’t speak well to their governing skills. But others in their party like this solution. It freed up bandwidth to keep focusing on taxes through Christmas and gave them more time to strike deals with the Democrats.
But pushing a final funding bill into 2018 just increased pressure to tackle controversial issues by December 8. Many Democrats and some Republicans are unwilling to end 2017 without fixes for CHIP, protections for Dreamers, and disaster relief. They do not trust Trump or Republican leaders to make good on any promises to handle those issues without the pressure of a CR to attach it to.
Republican leaders seemed willing to play hardball with Democrats, especially when it comes to protections for Dreamers, which they do not want to wrap into a funding bill. The Democrats, meanwhile, are openly worried if they threaten a shutdown, they could be blamed for it. Threats might also help rally the GOP around a hardline conservative funding bill in January. But their fears are likely misplaced, says Steve Bell, a longtime budget Senate staffer and now an economic policy wonk at the Bipartisan Policy Center. With Republicans controlling all three branches of government, the public is likely to blame then. Then again, GOP approval ratings haven’t suffered too much from previous shutdowns.
Harkins suspects one side will eventually back down, because “you don’t cut off paychecks to millions” of federal employees “just before Christmas.” For all the rhetoric about forcing a Dreamers fix by year’s end, he points out, the real deadline to fix the program before all Dreamer protections go up in smoke isn’t until early March.
Bell told me the Democrats might be the ones willing to stand firm and shut down the government on Friday over Dreamer protections as well as CHIP reauthorization and a few other issues. Acting on multiple issues, he thinks, would blunt criticisms that they were just being obstructionist or jeopardizing the government for the sake of a few undocumented youths.
A further wrinkle: As of Thursday, Republicans have realized that defense hawks in their own party might not be willing to wait until January to tackle funding because it’d leave the military planners too uncertain going into 2018. So now there’s another plan on the table: Passing one CR to fund the government until December 22, at which point they can finalize at least military funding figures and knock out a few other issues. Then passing a second CR delaying a final funding bill until mid-January.
That would relieve some of the pressure, at least temporarily. Legislators would still have to tackle CHIP and disaster relief, as well as a few program reauthorizations, in their December 8 CR, said Harkins, as these issues can’t be delayed to the end of the month. But these are easier issues to hash out than Dreamer protections. Even if deals on these priorities can’t be struck, legislators may be willing to let them slide for a few weeks, as they’ve long been willing to convince themselves that CHIP in particular isn’t in as much danger as the experts say.
“If Congress is not able to take care of those two priorities by next Friday,” though, said Harkins, “the ability for Congress to legislate truly has come to an end.”
This would only delay a standoff over protections for Dreamers by a few weeks. Furthermore, kicking the can down the road won’t solve the fundamental problems facing a funding agreement, and could add one more: By mid-January, the Treasury Department will likely be out of tricks to keep the country from hitting the debt ceiling again. So that debate will become a part of funding negotiations, along with any priorities that don’t get resolved in December. And whatever happens with the Republican tax plan, the Alabama Senate race, or any number of other factors could change the strength of either side’s negotiating positions. “We don’t know all of the issues we’re going to be facing in the middle of January,” said Harkins.
Nothing about the upcoming funding slog is certain. Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees we will only get a decent idea of what deal will be on the table for next Friday by Monday. Or maybe not until Wednesday. If then.
The only thing we know for sure is that the coming weeks will be a rollercoaster of uncertainty. “Anyway you cut it,” said Harkins of the coming funding negotiations, “it’s a mess.”
Men have been harassing and preying on women since the beginning of time. But as a wave of accusations against shitty men and subsequent firings have rocked industries from Hollywood to gaming journalism, it appears we've finally entered a new era. In this post-Weinstein world, bad behavior that's been swept under the rug for years is being forced out into the light. And Capitol Hill seems to be one of the many places while the hideous, toxic behavior of powerful men has been concealed for a long time.
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.
Here is a list of representatives and senators who have been accused of sexual misconduct. It will be updated as more allegations surface:
Ruben Kihuen (Democrat from Nevada)
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The accusation: On December 1, BuzzFeed reported that during Kihuen's campaign, his finance director quit after he allegedly repeatedly sexually harassed her. The finance director—who asked BuzzFeed to refer to her by only her first name, Samantha—told BuzzFeed that Kihuen "propositioned her for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections. On two occasions, she says he touched her thighs without consent."
Samantha claims that Kihuen followed her to her car after a fundraiser on February 6, 2016, and said, "You look really good, I'd like to take you out if you didn’t work for me." She claims that she told him she had a boyfriend and drove off, but his advances supposedly only became more aggressive. He allegedly continued to remind her that he would take her out if she didn't work for him, and asked her if she had ever “cheated on her boyfriend.”
Samantha claims that before Kihuen met with a congressman at a Las Vegas hotel in February 2016, he told her, “We should get a hotel room here.” When she declined he allegedly laughed at her. "It was humiliating," she told BuzzFeed.
The response: Kihuen's congressional office sent BuzzFeed the following statement:
The staff member in question was a valued member of my team. I sincerely apologize for anything that I may have said or done that made her feel uncomfortable. I take this matter seriously as it is not indicative of who I am. I was raised in a strong family that taught me to treat women with the utmost dignity and respect. I have spent my fifteen years in public service fighting for women’s equality, and I will continue to do so.
The congressman's former campaign manager, Dave Chase, said, "I believe Samantha and wish I had known her specific allegations when I confronted Ruben after she left the campaign or in time to stop what took place."
DCCC chairman Ben Ray Luján wants Kihuen to resign. "Members and candidates must be held to the highest standard. If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, they should not hold elected office," he said Friday. "Congressman Kihuen should resign."
Blake Farenthold (Republican from Texas)
Photo by Bill Clark/Roll Call/Pool
The accusation: On December 1, Politico reported that Representative Blake Farenthold used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim made by Lauren Greene, his former communications director. In December 2014, Greene filed a lawsuit against the congressman for alleged "gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment," according to Politico.
In the lawsuit, Greene claimed that Farenthold told her he had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about her, and that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”
“Farenthold regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘red head patrol to keep him out of trouble,’” Greene alleged in the lawsuit. "On one occasion, prior to February 2014, during a staff meeting at which [Greene] was in attendance, Farenthold disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for a ‘threesome.’”
The case was dropped after both parties agreed to a settlement.
The response: In a statement, Farenthold told Politico, "While I 100% support more transparency with respect to claims against members of Congress, I can neither confirm nor deny that settlement involved my office as the Congressional Accountability Act prohibits me from answering that question."
Representative John Conyers (Democrat from Michigan)
Photo by Gary Malerba/Bloomberg via Getty
The accusations: In November, BuzzFeed published a story about the (now former) ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee secretly settling a complaint in 2015 in which a former aide alleged her employment was terminated after she refused “succumb to [his] sexual advances.” (That staffer, Marion Brown, later revealed her identity on Today.) From BuzzFeed:
She alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands. She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company... [She also] alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to “just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go.”
Three other Conyers staffers sent affidavits to the congressional Office of Compliance, which, BuzzFeed reported, "outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around."
After BuzzFeed published its story, Deanna Maher, who worked for the congressman from 1997 to 2005, spoke about Conyers sexually harassing her to the Detroit News. Allegedly, after a Congressional Black Caucus event in 1997 "she rejected [Conyer's] offer to share his room at the Grand Hyatt in Washington and have sex... The other incidents with the now 88-year-old Conyers involved unwanted touching in a car in 1998 and another unwanted touching of her legs under her dress in 1999."
Ethics attorney Melanie Sloan, who worked for Conyers in 1990s, told the Washington Post that she "witnessed and experienced behavior by Conyers similar to episodes described in claims against him that on Tuesday prompted the House Ethics Committee to open an investigation."
Sloan claimed that "Conyers routinely yelled at and berated her, often criticizing her appearance. On one occasion, she said, he summoned her to his Rayburn Building office, where she found him in his underwear."
The response: Conyers has denied all wrongdoing, but stepped down from his post on the House Judiciary Committee, at least temporarily. Arnold E. Reed, his lawyer, told the New York Times, “He wants an opportunity to exonerate himself." On Thursday, he was hospitalized for what Reed "would assume... is related to stress."
Though House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi delivered a bizarre defense on Conyers on Sunday's Meet the Press, where she called him "an icon," she later changed her tune. “The allegations against Mr. Conyers, as we have learned more since Sunday, are serious, disappointing and very credible,” she told reporters Thursday. “It is very sad. The brave women who came forward are owed justice... Congressman Conyers should resign." In a rare bipartisan moment, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan agreed the congressman should step down.
Senator Al Franken (Democrat from Minnesota)
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty
The accusations: Six women have accused Franken of sexual misconduct. In November, news radio host Leeann Tweeden accused the comedian turned senator of kissing and groping her without her consent in 2006 on a USO tour. She wrote in a blog post that Franken, who was performing "comedy" for the troops, wrote a sketch that required the former model to kiss him. After pressuring her into "rehearsing" the kiss, Tweeden wrote, "We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth... I felt disgusted and violated."
She also published a photo from the tour where Franken is "jokingly" groping her chest while she was asleep.
Since then, five other women have accused Franken of sexual harassment. Lindsay Menz, a 33-year-old woman who now lives in Texas, said Franken "totally grabbed my butt" when she posed for a photo with him at the Minnesota State Fair. Two women spoke anonymously to HuffPost about their experiences with Franken. “My story is eerily similar to Lindsay Menz’s story,” one woman said. “He grabbed my buttocks during a photo op.”
The other woman said Franken "cupped my butt" at a 2008 Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis, and suggested they go to the bathroom together. “My immediate reaction was disgust,” she told HuffPost. “But my secondary reaction was disappointment. I was excited to be there and to meet him. And so to have that happen really deflated me. It felt like: ‘Is this really the person who is going to be in a position of power to represent our community?’”
“I can categorically say that I did not proposition anyone to join me in any bathroom,” Franken told HuffPost.
On November 30, Army veteran Stephanie Kemplin said Franken "groped my right breast" during the photo op on his 2003 USO tour. Shortly after, Jezebel published an account from a former New England elected official who said Franken tried to give her "a wet, open-mouthed kiss" when she appeared as a guest on Air America when he was a host on the short-lived progressive radio station. “It was onstage in front of a full theater... It was insidious. It was in plain sight and yet nobody saw it," the woman said.
The response: After Tweeden came forward with her accusation, Franken released a statement apologizing and inviting the Senate ethics committee to investigate him:
I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed... While I don't remember the rehearsal for the skit as Leeann does, I understand why we need to listen to and believe women’s experiences. I am asking that an ethics investigation be undertaken, and I will gladly cooperate.
Amid the growing number of allegations against Franken, his spokesperson released this statement:
When asked whether Franken should resign, Senate Democrats have largely stuck to the same response: It's up to the ethics committee to investigate. On Thursday, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand told a reporter, "It's his decision," when asked whether Franken should resign.
Three House Democrats—Ohio's Tim Ryan and New York's Kathleen Rice and Joseph Crowley have called on Franken (and Conyers) to resign.
A Quebec judge on Friday temporarily suspended part of the province’s new religious neutrality law that prohibits anyone who covers their face from accessing or providing basic public services such as health care, public transit, and social assistance.
Earlier this month, civil rights groups and women who wear the niqab, filed a constitutional challenge against Bill 62 that was passed by the French-speaking province this fall. They argued the burqa ban — the first of its kind in North America — violated religious freedoms and promoted Islamophobia and intolerance.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Babak Barin ruled that the face-covering portion of the law must be put on hold until the government creates specific guidelines on how the face-covering restrictions would be implemented.
Welcome back to Can't Handle the Truth, our Saturday column looking at the past seven days of fake news and hoaxes that have spread thanks to the internet.
The situation is dark for Democrats right now. Early Saturday morning, the Senate passed a rushed-through tax bill that disproportionately benefits the wealthy and corporations, the first major legislative achievement for Donald Trump and the Republicans. This bill will have to be reconciled with a House version of tax reform before it becomes law, but thanks to GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress, Democrats are utterly powerless in these negotiations. What's a liberal to do in the face of such adversity?
Laugh, apparently.
The good news for the anti-Trump camp came Friday, when it was announced that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was being formally charged with lying to the FBI as part of a deal to cooperate with Robert Mueller's investigation. It quickly became clear that he was planning to implicate members of the Trump transition team, who apparently told him to make his controversial contact with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office. (Those conversations, when revealed in February, led to his abrupt resignation.) This may eventually result in to charges against White House officials, possibly including Trump, and more possibly including Trump's preppy son-in-law Jared Kushner. This brings Democrats a baby step closer to their dream of impeaching the president, and liberals like Joy Behar popped the champagne and yukked it up:
While Trump clearly has fresh reasons to worry, and Democrats clearly have new reasons to be optimistic, that optimism should be tempered. Early reports saying Flynn was directed to contact the Russians "as a candidate," were apparently off base. ABC News later amended (or, arguably, retracted) that story, clarifying that Flynn says Trump directed him to chat with Russia during the transition—when the election was over and done with. That's a far cry from the smoking gun of collusion during the campaign that Democrats so crave.
But never mind all that if you're a committed member of the #Resistance. In all likelihood, I lost your attention somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph, because the idea of Trump's personally being a pawn of Russia is too tantalizing to pay attention to fine-grained details. That's a problem on the left—though there are plenty of serious critiques of Trump and the GOP, there's also a lot of very silly nonsense out there spread by people who will believe anything as long as its unflattering to Trump or his subordinates.
Here are a few more examples of liberals jumping the gun:
Melania wishes you a scary Christmas
There's a real news item here, and don't get me wrong, it's funny. The first lady's communications director did tweet about Melania Trump's Christmas decorations, and there was an extremely grim photo attached.
So for a while, Twitter acted like the first lady had revealed herself to be Queen Bavmorda, and all was levity and mirth. There were also goofs about a video posted around the same time of the first lady imperiously taking in a ballerina performance. It was weird but true, and a good time was had by all. Then the humorous troll account Pixelated Boat tried a more subtle brand of satire, later calling it "a fake tweet that a depressing number of people think is real."
It's not clear that everyone passing this notion off as true actually believes it, but some certainly do—or at least didn't think too much about it.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to pass off a stock photo of a pie as her own
Just as there are plenty of real reasons to denounce the first family, there are real criticisms to be made of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who turned the Thanksgiving press briefing into an angry, dysfunctional family dinner. She also made what appears to have been an exquisite chocolate pecan pie for her family.
The pie photo was taken against a white backdrop, and the pie itself was lovely, so yes it did look a little like a stock photo. No one could find the photo in any stock photo databases, so it's safe to say the simplest explanation is that Sanders is a capable baker.
That didn't stop her detractors from filling the reply thread on her tweet about the pie with stock photos—the implication being that Sanders's pie was fake. Many of the responses went semi-viral.
Consequently, it might be considered a little intrusive of April Ryan of Urban Radio Networks to press Sanders to demand evidence that the pie was real while Sanders was probably in the middle of serving it to her children or something. The White House falsely accuses the press of lying all the time, even though quite often it's the administration (especially the president) creating and spreading hoaxes. But in this case, the pie seems real, and those getting hysterical about it look unhinged.
The pee tape has been found
This transparently fake tweet about "the Trump Pee Tape" was an experiment, according to its creator, the mysterious lefty troll known as Respectable Lawyer. The whole saga is fascinating, and worth your time, but I'll try and sum it up:
In an effort to ask, "Are nominally information literate centrists any better than pizzagaters at the end of the day?" Respectable Lawyer (RL) lifted a clip from Kanye West's "Famous" music video (that's the one with the fake, naked celebrities in a giant bed). Then, in a long tweetstorm written in the style of left-leaning twitter conspiracy theorists—the crew VICE contributor Paul Blest once called "The Infowars of the left"—RL tried to sell the clip as a section of Trump's infamous Russian blackmail tape, which supposedly includes Trump paying prostitutes to pee on a Russian hotel bed.
It was retweeted hundreds of times, and while I'd love to say no one believed it, it's my sad duty to inform you that there are extremely gullible people on Twitter:
To be clear, RL didn't make much of an effort to pass this pathetic fakery off as the truth, and just about everyone who responded got the joke. But when something is this fake, it's discouraging when anyone shows so much as a hint of credulity, and RL got much more than a hint. It was discouraging when many people seemed ready to believe it, but had doubts. It was also discouraging when others, including left-Twitter conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch, responded in ways that saw through the video itself, but hinted that it the joke tweets were part of some larger conspiracy theory.
In short, it was a good snapshot of a desperate, tragic crowd that's hungry for hope. Some of them will eat fake hope, and depressingly, some will even eat bullshit with the word "hope" written on it.
The Burning of Kingston is a biennial reenactment of the destruction of New York state's first capital city. During the Revolutionary War on October 13, 1777, the attack left more than 300 buildings destroyed in a matter of hours. Local militias were engaged in battles elsewhere, so the city was vulnerable to the advance of British troops. But some colonists stayed in Kingston to protect important documents and fight against the Redcoats. After the attack, citizens returned to their homes and rebuilt their town from the ground up.
I'm a photographer living and working in the Hudson Valley. I was born and raised in Catskill, a small town 30 miles north of Kingston, but I wasn't aware of the celebration until I moved to Kingston this past year. I decided to check it out for myself.
The weekend festivities I attended included passionate lectures on colonial life, in-character debates on the threat of British troops, mock battles, and a Grand Ball replete with live historical music and dancing. During the downtime, many people camped out at Forsyth Park and embraced colonial life by sleeping in tents and cooking their meals over an open flame. The weekend culminated with a tactical demonstration of the battle between British and American troops, which filled the town with musket smoke and the deafening sounds of cannons.
HIV isn’t supposed to be a death sentence—not anymore, at least. It’s now a manageable chronic disease. So how is it that there were 6,465 deaths in the United States attributed directly to HIV in 2015? That number far outstrips other industrialized nations. In 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, Canada saw a total of 303 deaths; the UK in 2015 saw 594. Per capita, the US sees over twice as many deaths as either. The reasons why are complicated, and reflect a potent, hard-to-dismantle mix of HIV-related stigma and barriers to treatment here in the US.
What makes those figures all the more troubling is that, in most cases, HIV-positive Americans won’t be denied access to treatment or care regardless of their financial or healthcare situation. Those who aren’t eligible for Medicaid or don’t have private coverage can still access HIV treatment through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (named after an Indiana teenager who acquired HIV through a blood transfusion in 1984 and became a public icon for HIV education). But it’s facile to think that such access will lead people to actually start, and stay on, treatment.
“I think we have to remember that stigma is probably the most vicious impediment for people knowing their status,” said Jesse Milan, the president and CEO of the nonprofit AIDS United. According to Milan, too few Americans are being tested early and often, and too many HIV diagnoses come late in the disease’s progression to AIDS. Milan noted that this is especially true for African American men, the racial group most-afflicted by HIV.
Fear and stigma, too, prevent those who are diagnosed from seeking out adequate care and treatment. Alex Smith, the executive director of Equality Alabama, tells a story of a friend in Atlanta who had been open about having HIV when he was first diagnosed. His family, Smith said, was accepting—but their church wasn’t. “They spread the news quickly and told the family that his diagnosis was the result of wrongdoing, a righteous punishment,” Smith said. His friend soon denied that he was living with HIV altogether, claiming it was cancer instead.
“He ended up passing away a few weeks ago because he was not retaining care,” Smith said. He added that this is still a too-common fate for HIV-positive Americans, particularly among young African American men. 3,591 African Americans died of HIV-related illness in 2014, making up 53 percent of total deaths recorded that year.
“There are layers of stigma around HIV and masculinity in the black community,” Smith continued, “and I think that has an enormous effect on when people are tested, if they’re tested at all, and whether they are linked to and retained in care.”
Other factors compound and complicate the state of living with HIV in America today, like lack of education, HIV criminalization and physical treatment access for those living in rural or remote areas. Even with the Ryan White Care Act, one must seek out a designated Ryan White care clinic for treatment. If, for instance, you live in Demopolis, Alabama, the closest Ryan White clinic is about 48.5 miles away. That’s a near-impossible distance to traverse without a car.
“If you look at who is being diagnosed and who is dying, and who is most affected within the United States, it looks no different in other countries,” said Solange Baptiste, executive director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, an HIV treatment advocate network. “It goes back to stigma, and, in a sense, lack of education about HIV, that some people still do not believe HIV is a problem.”
Watch VICE profile ACT UP and the fight against AIDS:
“I would say that HIV is inherently a political issue, because it is moralized,” Baptiste continued. “If we are honest, we know that governments will not prioritize those most affected by HIV—those who are often criminalized and most vulnerable. And that has everything to do with class, poverty, education, etcetera. Expanding insurance coverage—in the case of the US, with Medicaid—is a way to ensure that more people are being reached, assuming that you have adequately tackled issues of affordability and accessibility.”
It’s true. Access to care isn’t merely a social problem—it’s a political one. Many states, including most in the south, have been excluded from the expansion of Medicaid, a problem for HIV-positive people because Medicaid provides more robust healthcare options.
The result is that 72.5 percent of Americans diagnosed with HIV are in care, but only 55 percent are virally suppressed, meaning the virus has been reduced below levels where it can be detected in blood tests. “The American viral suppression rate could and should be higher in comparison to other similarly situated countries,” Milan says.
Despite the barriers, there’s lots being done to link more people to care. New York and San Francisco have become prototype cities, allowing for treatment on demand, meaning patients can access treatment upon diagnosis. Smith is enthusiastic about the advancements of telemedicine, which allows people with HIV to access care remotely through their computer or smartphone. This method addresses transportation issues, increases privacy and reduces internal or external HIV stigma one might experience by going to a clinic. Stigma can also be fought by training medical providers, educating people about the benefits of testing and treatment, or even working with faith communities to normalize people living with HIV.
“The public education around HIV is just not where it needs to be,” Smith says. “It’s still kind of stuck in 1992, and very much centers around Ryan White. We shouldn’t forget that and forget the impact that Ryan White had, and how Ryan White changed the face of HIV—but Ryan White is not the face of HIV anymore. I think getting public education to a point where it is in line with how HIV looks and is today is going to be one of the best things we can do.”
“I do not think we’re going in the right direction, but I do believe that maybe it’s time for the US to learn from the outside,” Baptiste said. “I think the US can learn from many of the other countries where HIV was a truly major issue and they’ve made some really strong strides to reduce the number of people living with HIV, the number of new incidents, interventions for young people, with gay men.”
Baptiste isn’t talking about Canada or the UK, but instead referring to places like South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, and Thailand, where HIV was once and is no longer a public health emergency—places where the virus still rages on, as it does here, but much has been done to address it. Rather than asking why America sees so many HIV-related deaths, the question should be what can be done to fix it.
Anti-racism activist and former teacher Jane Elliott is the subject of a feature in the fifth edition of SUITED, a biannual fashion and art mag dedicated to showcasing "those who have found what they are well-suited for." We're big fans of the independent publication, so we're showcasing Christelle de Castro's interview with and photos of Elliott, along with words from Mariana Nannarone.
Jane Elliott was teaching elementary school in Riceville, Iowa, in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. In thinking about how to convey the enormity of what happened and why to her all-white class of third graders, she put together a lesson that would help students understand the killing—and the virulent and systemic racism behind it—on a personal level.
That exercise, which came to be known as “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes,” earned Elliott worldwide attention as she traveled the globe to train others in her methods, but at home, she and her family were ostracized. Other teachers refused to talk to her, and her children were harassed—even assaulted. Yet these reactions only reinforced Elliott’s belief that she was in a position of privilege: as a white person in America, she faced exclusion because of the work she did, not because of who she was.
Photographer and activist Christelle de Castro met with Elliott at her Iowa home to capture a woman who would not be silenced, who refused to stop questioning, and who has dedicated her life to educating those who condemned her. Nearly 50 years after Dr. King’s death and that first lesson in what it means to be powerless, Elliott reflects on a life’s work that is needed now more than ever.
Christelle de Castro: What catapulted you to want to create the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise? Jane Elliott: I didn’t want to create it, and I didn’t create it. I knew that one of the ways they decided who went into the gas chamber during what has come to be called the Holocaust, was eye colour. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, I had no way to explain that killing to my students. At that point, we were studying the Sioux Prayer that says, “Oh great spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.” I decided that the next morning when I went to school, if my kids didn’t understand what we were talking about, we would talk about that killing. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been one of our heroes of the month for February, and he was assassinated in April. I decided that I would separate the students according to the colour of their eyes and let some of them walk in the shoes of a child of colour in this country for a day, and then I would reverse the exercise on Monday. I didn’t know how this would work. If I had known how it would work, I wouldn’t have done it.
When I visited you in Iowa, it hit me like a ton of bricks like, Wow, this is in the middle of nowhere, there’s absolutely no diversity, and here you have this woman who’s doing this fearless work trying to dismantle racism, which is hard to grasp. Number one, number one, you don’t have a woman who’s doing fearless work. Black women do fearless work all day, every day. Native American women do fearless work all day, every day. Asian women in this country, particularly during the Second World War, do fearless work all day, every day, just trying to stay alive. Black women just try to keep their children alive. I didn’t have any of those cares because I didn’t realize how ugly racism was. I wasn’t fearless. I just figured: I’m an educator, these kids are ignorant. I’ve got to lead them on pigment so they won’t talk when they’re 50 years old and 30 years old the way their fathers are talking. It has nothing to do with being brave. It has to do with being foolish. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
It was bravery with me later on when people threatened me and when they had to take me out of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, at midnight because the teachers I put through the exercise had called the superintendent and said, “If you don’t get that bitch out of town, we’re going to shoot her.” That took some courageousness to get in that car. I didn’t know what was going on. The next morning, I had to get up in a motel alone and look out and realize that behind one of those second-story windows could be the person who was sent there to shoot me. That took some courage, but then I figured, Well, you asked for this. You put yourself out there. Now put your head above the parapet and somebody is bound to try to shoot it off.
I don’t think a lot of people really know this aspect of your work, how people got violent and threatening. I mean you’ve gotten some scary backlash sometimes. Well, yeah, I had some scary backlash, but what was funny about it was these are grown adults, so-called “superior” white males… All they have to do is shut up and listen.
When a woman says to them, “Well, obviously you can’t know much, you’ve got the wrong colour eyes, that’s the reason you act the way you do,” they immediately become what they have accused women and people of colour of being: angry, defensive, uncontrolled, violent. I’ve been hit by white males during this exercise. I’ve had a knife pulled on me. This guy pulled out his little pocketknife and I said, “I’m not going to touch you, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. Take your little stabbers and go to the back of the room and stay there.” He looked at me like, Who are you? I thought, Go for it, buddy, because like I’ve said, I’m not going to put up with this.
What were the views of your parents? My mother’s view was: go along to get along. My dad’s view was: by God, do the right thing.
Were your parents racist themselves? Well, of course they were. Of course they were. They had been raised in or around Riceville, Iowa, where white was right and everybody else was wrong, it’s as simple as that. There was no question about the fact that white people were “superior.” Yet my dad would say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” He’d say, “Don’t put a stone in another man’s path.” He’d say, “Until you’ve lived his life, by God, you don’t know what he goes through. You better not judge him. Judge not that ye be not judged,” and he didn’t judge people.
Do you think you’ll ever retire? I won’t retire as long as Trump is alive.
So you’re going to keep going? It’d be kind of silly at this point for me to say, “Well, I’ve worked long enough now,” and just sit down and rest for the rest of my life.
You’re always working. When I was over at your house, you were taking calls and counseling people. I don’t think people know that about Jane Elliott. You’re always either traveling, teaching classes, or you’re on the phone with sometimes complete strangers trying to help them out. Well, they’re not complete when they call me, but when they get done with me, they’re closer to complete than they were. I put a piece in their heads that hasn’t been there before. As far as I’m concerned, if enough of us do that to enough people, we can change the world.
That’s absolutely right. If that’s all I accomplish in my life, that’s quite a bit. I think I’m very, very lucky. I don’t think people make the times, I think times make the people. I think I was born at just the right time. During the Depression, before the Second World War, lived through the Second World War and then the Korean War, and then all the ridiculousness that has come after that. Learned and read a whole lot about the Holocaust and enough that now when I see what’s happening in this country today, what we are doing is very, very similar to what the Nazis did before the Second World War in Germany and in Europe. Anybody who hears that or sees that is going to say, “She’s a nutcase,” because they are not aware of what happened then and what is happening now.
Right. Everybody needs to read, everybody who has the ability to think and to read more than two-syllable words has to read the book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. You will never forget it when you read it and you will never allow what is happening in this country to go on any longer. You will stand up. I said to these kids, these people I see, “Every one of you can make a difference, and you can do it now. Start Indivisible groups in this community now. Get on Facebook”—and I don’t like Facebook—”Get on Facebook and get the daily actions that will come to you from this group and start making a difference. Do not go gently into this good night, because we are in dangerous times.”
There were other books that you had mentioned that you were reading right now that you highly recommended. Everybody should read The Myth of Race by Robert Wald Sussman. Everybody should read Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization by Anthony T. Browder. Everybody should read Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus. Oh my God, it is just fantastic. Everybody should read The Colour of Man by Robert Cohen. I’m reading Noam Chomsky’s Who Rules the World?, which is really scary. I read regularly The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and try to live by them, but it’s very difficult for me. I make assumptions all the time, and I should know better than that but I still do it.
Ruiz also wrote something about love. See, I don’t believe in love.
You don’t believe in love? I don’t believe that love is the answer to all our problems. If you read what bell hooks writes about love and justice, you will never say, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” No, what the world needs now is people who treat one another justly and then we’ll have love, sweet love, but you won’t get love until we start providing justice. We will not have a loving society until we have a just one. I think she’s absolutely right.
I think we have overused the word love to the extent that it no longer has any meaning. In the Bible it says, “And now abideth these three: faith, hope, and charity.” It doesn’t say faith, hope, and love, but we white folks have altered that just like we alter everything else to fit our needs. Faith, hope, and charity. And charity is selfless giving. That’s what love is, and you don’t find selfless giving in the people who say, “I just love you.” They also say they love my potato salad, you know what I mean?
I completely agree with you. I hate seeing those people who have the “Free Hugs” signs. They’ll do it as an art project, as a social experiment. As though a video of a black guy and a white guy meeting for the first time and hugging means we’ve cured racism. It’s shallow work. That doesn’t help a damn thing. That means the black person has to tolerate you putting their hands on them. And that black person wouldn’t dare put his or her hands on you without your invitation. That’s the reason I have a hard time with tolerance. People with power can tolerate. People without power have to agree to be tolerated. We tolerate ugly things that are going to go away. We do not tolerate people that we love. We have misused the word tolerance to such an extent.
I couldn’t agree more. I hate that word. Tolerance. Tolerate. I shouldn’t have to be “tolerated” for my differences. According to the dictionary, tolerance means acceptance, appreciation and valuing. With us, we say, “Well, I can tolerate.” I will never forget the vice president, W.’s vice president, Dick Cheney. He has a daughter who is a lesbian and a reporter said to him, “How do you feel about having a daughter who’s a lesbian?” He said, “I can tolerate homosexuals.”
I went berserk. I do not want anybody to tolerate me because that means they can put up with me. If they really knew the meaning of the word tolerate, they wouldn’t use it, because they don’t want to recognize, accept, and appreciate me, they don’t want to put up with me. When somebody says, “I’m a very tolerant person,” I think, And you don’t see colour, do you?
Right! Oh Lord, eight-year-old football players are kneeling during the National Anthem! It’s on television right now. I just think that’s priceless. Protests go beyond St. Louis. Good for them. Good for them! Start them young! This book that I’m reading, On Tyranny, says you must protest. You must question and you must protest. Do not go along to get along.
The photographer Thomas Pratt was originally in Santiago de Cuba to document the activity of a small recording studio. He ended up spending his days jumping around the island nation's second-largest city, attending concerts, barbecues, street congas, and rehearsals. It's a place where USB sticks containing the latest in dancehall, hip-hop, and reggaeton are passed around the same rooms in which Santería and Yoruba rituals take place. And the jewelry and gold teeth worn by locals reference American rap culture as much as they reference the virgin goddess Oshun, Patroness of Cuba.
Set against a backdrop of Soviet-era concrete blocks and Spanish colonial churches, Pratt's new book, Música en Santiago de Cuba, is an ethnographic study of the city's rich culture, taking an inside look at the passionate and conflicted relationship between Cuban musicians and their homeland. See a selection of images from the book below.
Música en Santiago de Cuba is published by Spaghetti Press. You buy it here.
Thomas Pratt is a photographer based in London. You can follow his work here.
Ignore it and it'll go away – the approach many of us take to medical symptoms, nascent ailments and the strange dotty rashes we find all over our extremities. Fairly obviously, this is not a good approach to take. If you think something's wrong, get it checked out – it could be the difference between a speedy recovery and something much worse. Of course, this is one of the reasons lots of use choose to do nothing: denial is easier than acceptance.
"To have to endure the symptoms [while also not knowing what illness] they may have definitely can come under 'ignorance is bliss'," explains Dr Julie Scheiner, a psychologist who specialises in behavioural therapy. "People are frightened of the things they don't understand, so ignoring symptoms may be easier to deal with than potentially having to grieve for something that may be worse to come. It’s a defence mechanism."
I spoke to four people who did exactly that, before being diagnosed with serious illnesses.
Christine Coppa, Research Editor, Thyroid Cancer
I had a few symptoms, if I'm being honest with you, but it was when my voice became hoarse in the spring of 2014 – and the accompanying cough – that I took a bit more notice. There wasn’t actually any pain with either, so I put it down to allergies, the seasonal type. I was always at the little league field with my son, or at the park, because Jack is one active kid. I truly did believe it was because of the environmental elements that I was coming down with something.
Initially it was the shock that took the wind out of me, when my doctor told me she felt a lump in my neck. And then, after all the tests, the prodding and X-rays, when I heard the C-word it felt surreal, like it wasn’t reality. How could it be? Everything happened so fast I didn’t have time to process it – but as always, my son was on my mind. I felt guilty about being away from my five-year-old boy. But thanks to my family, who were so supportive, Jack was well taken care of as I went full steam ahead with my treatment plan.
The grieving came after my first round of radiation, when I was taking Synthroid, a drug I’ll have to take for the rest of my life. I grieved for my old life. The life I was accustomed to. And then I was flooded with anger. Angry that my weight was fluctuating, that I was always tired; one minute I was hot, and the next cold. That my moods were high and then low – and that this was affecting those closest to me. Thyroid cancer is not fun. And it's not OK that it's branded the best cancer to get, or "good cancer". My entire life changed.
I didn't go to my doctor because I was ill; I went for my yearly physical. If I'd gone in when the hoarseness and cough persisted, the tumour wouldn't have grown to over centimetres. It covered the entire right side of my thyroid gland. I feel like if it was caught earlier, at least half of my thyroid could have been spared and maybe I wouldn't have needed radiation treatment or be left with a lifetime of meds. You can't think about 'what if', though; I'm just so thankful I’m alive.
My advice: just go to the doctor. I also encourage women to check their necks routinely. If I had, I would have most certainly felt the lump. It felt like a hard purple grape. If I'd looked in the mirror when I was talking or swallowing I would have seen the bulge in my neck moving – but who does that?
Nicole Greene, Deputy Director for the US Office on Women's Health (OWH), Lyme disease
I remember it was the Easter Sunday morning of 2007. I woke up and I couldn't move. Nothing would shift from the neck down. What might sound strange is that I wasn’t scared at the time – I just thought I was getting the flu. I'd slowly been getting more sickly, but I didn’t think it was anything as serious as it actually was. Finally, I went to see my doctor. I got tested for lupus, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell disease and other things. All were negative, bar the test for Lyme disease. I’d never even heard of the illness. I told myself and my doctor that there was no way I had it. "I'm not an outdoor person," I said. The initial denial was potent, until I remembered how, six years prior, a friend of mine had pulled a tick out of my head and flushed it down the toilet. I didn’t even see the thing – that’s how inconsequential it was at the time.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection. It develops from the bite of an infected tick. More serious symptoms can develop several weeks, months or even years later if Lyme disease isn’t caught early, and that’s what happened with me. Symptoms such as severe headaches, arthritis and severe joint pain, dizziness, nerve pain and memory issues are just a few the ones sufferers can face. After my diagnosis I felt empty and was told I had depression. It made sense – the world was grey in my eyes.
I was immediately placed on antibiotics. The meds depleted my energy; some days I couldn’t make it to work. Errands left me so fatigued. For nearly a year I missed out on so much. Time with family and friends, birthdays, celebrations and saying goodbye to those who passed away. That year was hell. It was when, however, I was trying for my second child that I discovered Lyme disease can affect fertility. I had two ectopic pregnancies along the way. It’s with the help of my support system that I have pushed through. I’ve had to drastically change my diet and my energy levels are not what they once were, but when I feel good, I feel good.
I know there are people out there who are suffering and don't know why. If you know something's not right, don't give up. Research, research, research, and then go and see your doctor. Get a second opinion if you must, or a third. Don't let you pain and anguish be dismissed. I know it’s hard to keep being optimistic – trust me, I’ve been there – but please try. And it’s critical you have a strong network, whether it be family and friends or support groups.
WATCH: The Experimental Ketamine Cure for Depression
Max Tuck, author of 'Fatigue Solution', chronic fatigue syndrome and Epstein Barr virus
'Why oh why did I ignore my grinding exhaustion?' I used to ask myself often. That’s what you do when you get diagnosed with an illness that alters life as you know it. For me, it was because I was busy. Busy running the rat race. There wasn’t time to be tired. So I kept going, even though my body was saying otherwise.
When my doctor finally told me that I had chronic fatigue syndrome and Epstein Barr virus, I decided I wasn’t going to bury my head in the sand – I was going to fight it head on. I pushed the initial fear and shock that engulfed my body away and I threw myself into getting better. In my case, it's hard to say whether or not, if I went to get checked out earlier, the prognosis would’ve been different, because it took a while for my muscle wastage to become apparent and for the changes occurring in my white blood cell count to appear. But if I did find out sooner, about the EBV, I would have thrown myself into working on improving my immune system. I'm just grateful I found out when I did.
The Epstein Barr virus kills: glandular fever and several types of cancers have been linked with it. I was told the virus was incurable. Hearing that felt like a knife to the chest. As I sat down in the doctor’s office and those life-changing words, "Unfortunately you have very few white blood cells remaining and you need to realise that most people never fully recover from this," left his lips, my head went into a spin. I’d heard of the increasing debility experienced by people diagnosed with the condition; many of whom end up in a wheelchair. But that wasn’t going to be me, I promised myself.
If you have a symptom – any symptom – get it checked out. And do so quickly. Time is of the essence. But never believe that nothing can be done about it, even if the doctor tells you that. The body is an incredible machine.
Charis, Endometriosis
Endometriosis is when cells, like the ones in the uterus, are found in other parts of the body. Every month these cells act in the same way as the ones in the womb do – building up and then breaking down and bleeding. Unlike the cells in the womb that leave the body as a period, the blood has nowhere to go. Not everyone experiences chronic pain or infertility, though – from what I've read, anyway.
I had the worst period pains. It seems pretty obvious that I should have gone to get checked out, right? But I just thought it was normal – a normal, painful part of womanhood. Thing is, I never experienced period pains in my teens, but I just chalked it down to life, you know? However, every month, the pains got stronger and longer. They were so debilitating that I started to take a lot of time off work. It took about three years of pestering my doctors to perform a diagnostic laparoscopy.
I know they say to never check your symptoms on the internet, but I did my own research anyway and concluded I had endometriosis. I was right. Deep down, we know our bodies, we know when something is wrong. Three years of badgering seems like a very long time, but on average women [in the UK] can wait seven to eight years. I went through all the stages of grieving. There was denial, the anger – everything. I've basically lost my old life. The last couple years have been hell for me, but I'm just trying to accept it now and focus on feeling better.
An earlier diagnosis may have helped, but as great as the NHS is, I don’t think I would’ve been referred for the laparoscopy until my symptoms had worsened anyway. With endo, the longer it’s left undiagnosed, the higher the risk of infertility and the worse the pain is. Had the prognosis been any later, my ovaries could have been seriously damaged, as could any other parts of the body where the tissue was behaving abnormally and growing.
Guys, no matter how mundane the symptom, get it seen to and pester your GP. If you really think something is wrong, don't let them dismiss your symptoms. If they do, make appointments to see the other GPs in the surgery. It's time consuming and very frustrating, but it needs to be done. Your health – your life – is important.
Crowdfunding is a game changer for anyone who’s big on ideas and low on cash. Got a great board game concept? Crowdfund it. Want to publish a comic book? No problem, just crowdfund it. Trying to open a juice bar? Sure, you can crowdfund that. Living in your car with no job or employment prospects? Hey, crowdfunding can get you back on track. Wait. What?
Maybe you’ve heard of Beam, a crowdfunding platform that launched earlier this year and allows former rough sleepers to run fundraising campaigns to pay for employment training. In its first ten weeks it’s raised more than $30,000 from more than 500 supporters. It’s helped people like Tony, who’s been homeless for nearly ten years and is now training to become an electrician. Beam is working with several charities and is supported by the Mayor of London (while supporters also pay one pound in every 11 towards the company’s running costs). It has been receiving overwhelmingly positive media coverage. A typical headline, from Reuters, reads, "Crowdfunding helps UK homeless off streets, into work."
In one sense, this is a heartwarming story about the kindness of strangers. In another, it’s a libertarian nightmare made real that shows us society has failed.
WATCH:
Crowdfunding makes all kinds of things possible by bringing large numbers of people together to achieve a common goal. But this kind of collective action didn’t begin with the tech revolution. The welfare state was created around 40 years before the internet was even invented. It was based on a simple premise: that no one in society would be left behind.
That vision now seems a distant memory. Years of austerity have stripped away the safeguards meant to protect society’s most vulnerable. Local authority budgets have been slashed, homeless hostels have closed and the benefits cap has plunged thousands into poverty and precarious housing situations. According to Shelter, more than 300,000 people are now homeless in the UK. Since 2010, the number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled.
Now, crowdfunding is put forward as part of the solution. The state has failed and the people most savagely affected are invited to post the tragic details of their personal histories online, in an attempt to secure the help to which they should be entitled. Is this the future we want? A future where state support is non-existent and homeless people must compete for assistance like X-Factor contestants?
Beam, to its credit, discourages any sense of competition between its crowdfunders. Supporters are invited to make "split donations", which are spread out evenly across all live campaigns (the company says 44 percent of donations to date have been made in this way). And there’s no doubting the platform was created with good intentions. Founder Alex Stephany says he was compelled to launch the platform after getting to know a homeless man at the tube station near his home. Stephany, a tech entrepreneur, had raised over five million for a previous company using crowdfunding. "I began thinking, 'Could I take this very powerful model and use it to actually serve some of the most vulnerable people in society?'" he says.
This isn’t the first time someone has tried to use crowdfunding in this way. Back in 2014, Jenny Baker met Michael, a 64-year-old homeless man, while on a night out in Dalston. Michael told Baker he had come to the UK many years ago with his mother, who had since passed away, and that he just wanted to return to Jamaica. The next day, Baker launched a "Get Michael Home" crowdfunding campaign. In just a few days she’d raised more than £10,000. But when she tried to find Michael to give him the good news, it turned out he no longer wanted her help. Posting on the crowdfunding page a few months down the line, Baker wrote: "Michael's circumstances are a lot more complicated than first appeared."
They usually are. The factors that lead someone to end up on the streets are almost always complex and rarely come down to a simple lack of cash. Homelessness can be the result of a wide range of problems, including mental health issues, drug and alcohol addictions, and lack of a stable support network. To put it another way: fixing homelessness is not the same as publishing a board game or opening a juice bar.
Beam says it recognises this. The company works with people who are recommended by homelessness charities and who are "committed and able to train and work". It says individuals suffering from drug and alcohol addiction, or severe mental or physical health problems, will be encouraged to seek specialist help elsewhere before crowdfunding is an option. For those people, Stephany says: "One of the things that’s already happening is that the success stories of people coming through the platform is giving hope and motivation to people who are at an earlier stage."
Hope can be powerful, and offering someone motivation to turn their life around is a good thing. But this shows that crowdfunding will only be an option for people who are well on the way out of homelessness already – those who are "committed" and "determined" enough to make it onto the platform. In this way, however unintentionally, using crowdfunding to tackle homelessness risks creating a divide between people who are deemed worthy and unworthy of help, it risks turning Beam into a charity that turns away the most vulnerable.
For a small number of people, crowdfunding might offer the final leg-up needed to get a life back on track. But most people need more than financial support – and that’s increasingly unavailable. One in every 200 people now find themselves in unstable accommodation or worse. Around 4,500 people are sleeping on the streets. If Beam shows us one thing it’s that there are real people behind these statistics, with real stories. Some of those stories sit perfectly on a crowdfunding platform. What about everyone else?
Having a shitty Monday? Hey, at least you haven't been attacked by a bear, made a lucky escape from that bear, and then once again been attacked by that same bear.
Just over a year ago, that's exactly what happened to outdoorsman Todd Orr in Montana's Gallatin National Forest. Despite suffering a shopping list of injuries, he lived to tell the tale, so I spoke to him what it's like to survive a bear trying to tear your face off.
WARNING: This article contains graphic photos of Todd's injuries.
WATCH: Desus & Mero On the Bears That Invaded a Romanian Town
VICE: Hey Todd. Tell me who you are and what it is that you do. Todd Orr: I'm an outdoor enthusiast. I’ve been employed by the Gallatin National Forest for 28 years now, and I also run Skyblade Knives, a company selling handcrafted knives to hunters and collectors. On the 1st of October, 2016 I was attacked by a grizzly bear. Thanks to quick thinking, bear spray, training and the will to live, I survived, after hiking three miles out of the mountains with a broken arm, severed tendons, dozens of puncture wounds and a severely lacerated scalp. I drove myself to the hospital.
Let’s go back to the day of the attack. Where did the attack take place and what were you doing? I'd decided to scout for elk prior to the upcoming hunting season. It was about a 90-minute early morning drive to the trailhead, and a one-hour hike in the dark for three miles to the location where I was attacked. I love exploring the backcountry of southwest Montana and, as usual, I was doing so alone. Rarely do I find someone willing to take on a 20-mile hike up to 10,000 feet with a 4AM start.
Yeah, I'd pass. So that morning, just after daylight, I stepped out of the trees into an open meadow. Immediately, I noticed a sow grizzly bear with cubs at the fork in the trail. Then she and the cubs ran a short distance up the other trail, out of sight, over the ridge. I waited about 30 seconds before deciding she had left the area and I could continue. I took a few steps out into the tall grass of the opening, when the sound of a branch snapping over my left shoulder caught my attention. Turning, I saw the sow grizzly bear breaking over the low ridge, straight in my direction.
Todd in Gallatin National Forest
Oh wow. She was going about 40 miles per hour. I pulled my bear spray from its chest holster and yelled out so the bear knew I was human, in the hope she would turn back. No such luck. Within seconds, she was on me. I smashed the trigger down hard on the bear spray and gave her a blast in the face. Her momentum carried her through the pepper mist and onto me. I wrapped my arms around the back of my neck, locking my hands for protection. I expected her to run over the top of me and be gone. Again, no such luck. She was on top of me, repeatedly biting me. I could hear the tearing of the muscle as her teeth buried deep into my right arm with each bite. Then she disappeared.
That’s an utterly terrifying thing that happened to you… And we’re not done. After about eight minutes hiking down the trail toward my vehicle I heard a noise from behind, only to find the grizzly was back. Again, it happened so quickly, I had no time to use the bear spray again or my pistol. I dropped to the ground to protect myself, like I had done before. I couldn't believe this was happening a second time! I was actually asking myself what I’d done to deserve this. Again, I protected the back and sides of my neck, head and face with my arms wrapped tightly around them. I kept tight against the ground to protect my face and eyes. She slammed down on top of me and ferociously bit my shoulder and arms over and over, but with much more aggression than before.
Forgive me asking a voyeuristic question, but what does that feel like? Well, the force of each bite was kinda like a sledge hammer with teeth. One bite on my left forearm went through to the bone. I heard a crunch. My hand went numb and my fingers were unusable. The sudden flash of pain made me gasp. That slight sound triggered a frenzy of bites to my shoulder and upper back. I knew I needed to play dead, or the bear was going to tear me apart. I huddled there, hunched in a ball, trying to play dead. Another half dozen bites and a swipe from her paw to my head opened a 5-inch gash above my right ear, nearly scalping me. The flap of flesh flopped over the side of my head and the blood gushed into my eyes. I couldn’t see. I still didn't move. Adrenaline had blocked out the pain, but my other senses were heightened. I could feel and hear the tearing of each bite as her teeth tore into my muscles. She would lift me up and slam me back down, biting, over and over. I thought it was the end.
And then? Then the bear suddenly stopped her attack and just stood on top of me. I will never forget that. Dead silence except for the sound of her breathing and sniffing. And the smell! I could feel and hear her breath on the back of my head and neck, inches away from my spine. There she stood, motionless, pinning me to the ground. I was helpless. But I remained quiet and still. And then she just… left.
Some of Todd's injuries, before after they were cleaned up
Being attacked twice by a bear is very rare, no? Extremely rare. It was just very bad luck. I headed down the trail toward the truck after the first attack, and she decided to follow the top of the ridge heading away from the site as well. We basically left in the same direction! The ridge she followed and the canyon and trail I followed eventually came together 500 yards down the mountain. I believe she saw me below her on the trail and attacked a second time.
Tell me about the injuries you sustained. After driving myself to the hospital and receiving X-rays, two doctors worked about seven hours to clean and stitch up all the puncture wounds. I had a broken left arm with large bite wounds that had shredded the forearm muscle, damaged nerves and torn two tendons away from the muscle. My right arm and shoulder received approximately 25 deep puncture wounds and tears as well. There was the gash on the side of my scalp, just above the ear, and a bite to my right side just above the waistline, leaving four puncture wounds. My lower back received deep puncture wounds from her claws digging into my back as she stood on top of me. The following day I had to visit an orthopaedic surgeon to assess the damage in my left arm. Exploratory surgery was needed to re-open all the wounds, cleanse them, determine the damage and repair the torn muscles, then re-attach the severed tendons. My left arm looked a lot like shredded hamburger.
And how do you feel now? Fortunately, after three months of physical therapy, I was able to regain about 90 percent of movement and strength back in my left arm. It continues to slowly improve with time and weight training. I will never be 100 percent, but I’m doing almost everything I want to do with my left arm now. You wouldn’t notice except for the scars.
And how do you now feel about bears? I don’t hate them. I don’t want revenge. I don’t feel the bear that attacked me should be put down. She just felt I was a threat and was protecting her young. I learned a lesson. When I’m in the woods now, I’m far more alert than I ever was – I was too fearless before – and there are still some places I’d rather not go alone.
Ian Campeau, formerly the most outspoken member of Indigenous electronic trio A Tribe Called Red, is now the most outspoken former member. Despite Tribe’s outsize success—or rather because of it, given their exhausting tour schedule—the Nippising Anishinaabe artist also known as DJ NDN left the award-winning group to focus more on changing minds than moving bodies.
Not that he wasn’t already one of Canada’s highest-profile social-justice activists, online and off. Campeau weaponized his Twitter feed against racists, misogynists and other hatemongers long before we had a name for the alt-right. He got the Nepean Redskins, a suburban Ottawa youth football club, to change their name to the Nepean Eagles by filing a human rights complaint in 2013. And he made his presence felt during the Canada 150 “re-occupation” protest on Parliament Hill, calling it a “mausoleum” and asking a Mountie if he was proud to be Canadian. (“No comment.”)
Now Campeau’s stepping up his fight. He’s using his celebrity platform to advocate directly to politicians and policymakers and launched a public speaking career on topics like toxic masculinity and how to be an ally. (“Step One: Be Quiet.”) After discovering medical marijuana light during his wife’s breast cancer battle, he’s become an ambassador for cannabis site Leafly to influence legalization legislation. He still occasionally DJs but to fundraiser for women’s shelters. And when not trying to save the world, he’s busy chopping wood to heat his home and farming to feed his family.
VICE: What’s it been like since you got off the road? Ian Campeau: It’s been so nice to focus on something other than managing my depression and anxiety of traveling and mega-FOMO about having a baby and having a garden. I didn’t have it in me to continue the facade. I had to go onstage and pretend to be happy [but] now I am so happy to be around this baby—and my wife is so happy that I’m there. Living on the farm we have different priorities.
Do you miss performing? No. I got cripplingly nervous before performing. That’s why I used to wear a mask. Now my performing is speaking engagements and the people I’m talking to have potential to actually change policy. I’m speaking to big corporate people about wealth redistribution, work harassment and assessing your privileges. I’m saying these things to banks! If I was trying to get this message to them through Tribe alone, I’d have to hope their kids liked our music and might’ve read an article where it was mentioned. Now I have direct access.
Your talks are so calm while your online persona is... aggressive. I’m being aggressive to aggressive ideas. Like these Nazi ideologies that are being thrown around. We don’t even need to be talking about this. There was a whole war about it. And why do people want to emulate historic losers? The Nazis lost. The South lost. These were ideologies that were stomped into the ground. It’s beyond my comprehension.
Do you ever feel like you’re screaming into the abyss? I feel like I’m having a concrete impact in the world when I see actual change, and who is listening. Like with VICE and talking to Justin Trudeau about cannabis legalization and how that's going to impact me and my wife. It’s my anxiety medication and my wife’s pain medication, she’s off all of her opiates and only using cannabis for nerve damage pain after her mastectomy. It’s her cancer meds. My follow-up question was: ‘As an Indigenous person, how can you expect me to believe you?’ That was the most therapeutic thing I’ve ever done in my life.
What’s Trudeau doing right on marijuana legalization? I wouldn't say anything to be perfectly honest. It’s not legalization, it’s monopolization if they’re just making it legal for them to sell it and making it extra illegal for everyone else to sell it. It’s policies being made by people who haven’t smoked weed. They see it as a narcotic and I see it as something that sits between coffee and wine. Also, it’s medicinal no matter how you use it. If you use it after work to calm down, that’s medicinal. If you’re using it to help you sleep, it’s medicinal.
How do you feel about marijuana as an Indigenous economic driver? I talked to my chief about it and he wasn't really receptive to the idea. There’s a stigma behind it still. There are opioid problems in my community and also alcoholism. The generation that are in power right now see [marijuana] as another narcotic, and that bringing in more would be bad for the community. It’s hard to convince him that it will curb all of that.
I’d love to have a discussion about it as an economic opportunity for Indigenous people to exercise sovereignty. In an ideal world, I’d hope that cannabis residuals would be used to help with infrastructure in their communities so they wouldn't have to rely on the government and would have their own sustainability.
Should the Indian Act be amended or gotten rid of? Abolished because it’s legislating the hierarchy of race, it’s dictating who can be a part of our nationhood—which means it’s not recognizing us as sovereign nations. [The Indian Act uses] blood quantum, a colonial system to make the equation zero. They’re trying to breed us out.
What should replace it? The treaties. I always wondered why Canada didn’t just obliterate the treaties but a lawyer friend pointed out that it's what legitimizes Canada. They need to prove they have title, that they’re allowed to be here. If you get rid of the treaties, you don’t have Canada.
Jody Wilson-Raybould is Canada’s first Indigenous Justice Minister. How do you think she’s done? She’s an agent of the government. If you work for the government, then you’re working for an oppressive system. That’s how I feel about Jody Wilson-Raybould, and Wab Kinew, in politics. The government’s not meant for us.
What’s the relationship between Indigenous people and the police? We need to understand the history of police in Canada before we can address that relationship. The RCMP was created to displace and starve Indigenous people—to oppress Indigenous people—and all police in Canada are modeled after the RCMP. This is why we have missing and murdered Indigenous women at the rates that we do. Police don't seem to want to help in a real way. I’m sure there are decent human beings who are concerned with what’s going on but they’re not doing any real work to change it. The relationship between police and Indigenous people is bad when tactics have name like starlight tours. There's a long history of these things.
How do you foresee Indigenous and Non-Indigenous relations rolling out? You know how I act on Twitter, right? My tactic is to hold people accountable to what they're saying, these trolls who say racist, homophobic, Islamophobic things. When you take away their arguments, and prove their ideologies false, they’re painted into a corner and lash out with the ad hominem attacks to hurt my feelings. That's when they start calling me a drunken Indian, or go live in a tipi. Overt racism is a societal reaction to running out of arguments. We need to confront this in a real way. It's going to be hard but I see this as one of the last fights before everyone finally gets it and realizes how inefficient racism and misogyny is for a society.
What do you think about what’s been going on with sexual harassment and abuse? The last month has been incredible. It's been revolutionary. Us men are finally being held accountable and being taught how to act. We’ve had this entitlement perpetuated through media—fucking Say Anything tells you to go harass women while they’re sleeping and she'll fall in love with you. Belt out some Peter Gabriel, bro, and you’ll be fine. This is what we were taught!
There’s so much happening on so many fronts. What’s it feel like to be in this political moment? It’s really empowering to see what’s going on. What a time to be alive! My job is to explain the power dynamics, the reasons why things are the way they are. We are literally shattering people’s realities—they see the world in a certain way, and we're trying to tell them it's not that way. So I’m targeting specific problems or knots within this web of fucked-upness. In Tribe I didn't feel I was doing the political work I could be doing.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
Trump Lawyer Explains the Flynn Firing, Makes Situation Even Worse Donald Trump's lawyer John Dowd said the president was told within days of the inauguration that Michael Flynn said the same thing to the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence, falsely claiming he did not talk about sanctions with the Russian ambassador. Trump was apparently informed about Flynn's false claims a couple of weeks before he spoke to FBI director James Comey, allegedly asking him about "letting Flynn go." The fuller explanation was made necessary by Trump's tweet on Saturday about these events, which Dowd claimed he was responsible for sending out—and regretted. Experts said the whole thing (including Dowd's explanation) might just further expose the president.—The Washington Post
FBI Agents' Group Hits Back at 'False' Trump Claim The professional group representing FBI agents responded to the president's tweet that the agency's reputation was "in tatters." Thomas O’Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said: "FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false." Former director James Comey also defended the agency, tweeting his own past remark: "The FBI is, and always will be, independent."—CNN
Jared Kushner Still 'Optimistic' on Middle East Peace Deal President Trump's son-in-law said he remains “optimistic that there is a lot of hope” for real negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. His claim came amid warnings about the possible US recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, with Trump reportedly getting close to announcing whether he backs the policy change. Jordan's foreign minister said Sunday he told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the move might have "dangerous consequences."—The New York Times / The Hill
California Teenager Confesses to Molesting Dozens of Children Joseph Hayden Boston, 18, was charged with "oral copulation" of two minors after telling his mother he molested an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old boy at a motel. Upon questioning by investigating officers, Boston allegedly described molesting "upwards of 50 children" in various locations across southern California. —CBS News
International News
Home of Former Yemeni President Is Bombed Militants have reportedly destroyed the home of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's authoritarian president until 2012, in a bomb attack in the capital of Sana. Saleh is believed to have died in the attack. The Houthi rebels have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition allied with Saleh and his General People's Congress party in the city, and the ex-president had recently appeared to flip his allegiance away from the insurgency.—The New York Times
US and South Korea Launch New Drills On Monday, the allies began a series of military exercises in the Korean peninsula with stealth fighter aircraft maneuvers. Around 12,000 personnel from the US Armed Forces will join their South Korea counterparts for annual exercises this week. North Korean state news warned that the drills were "driving the tension… to the brink of a nuclear war."—VICE News
Venezuelan Leader Announces New Digital Currency President Nicolas Maduro said his government would create a "Petro" cryptocurrency to help "overcome the financial blockade" imposed by US sanctions. Giving few details, Maduro said the Petro would be backed by oil and other assets. Opposition politician Angel Alvarado said the concept was "Maduro being a clown."—VICE News
Former Egyptian Prime Minister No Longer Missing Ahmed Shafik has shown up safe on Egyptian TV after family members said they believed he had been kidnapped by the country's authorities upon returning to Egypt. Shafik, who had been living in exile in the United Arab Emirates before being deported Saturday, told Dream TV he was still weighing a possible run for the Egyptian presidency next year.—Al Jazeera
Everything Else
Billy Bush Says 'Of Course' Trump Made Infamous Remarks The former Access Hollywood host said reports the president has been denying the authenticity of the infamous "grab them by the pussy" remark made in his presence "hit a raw nerve in me." Bush wrote: "He said it… Of course he said it."—The New York Times
'Coco' Grosses More Than $100 Million The Pixar-Disney animation remained atop the North American office after taking $26.1 million during its second weekend, pushing its domestic haul to $108.7 million. Disney’s Thor: Ragnorak has now taken $816.4 million around the world.—The Hollywood Reporter
'Call Me By Your Name' Wins Critics' Awards The Los Angeles Film Critics Association picked the coming-of-age love story as the best movie of the year. Its Italian director Luca Guadagnino shared the best director award with Guillermo del Toro, who was also selected for The Shape of Water.—Deadline
Met Opera Conductor Suspended Following Abuse Allegations The Metropolitan Opera announced James Levine would not be conducting this season and promised multiple claims of sexual abuse would be investigated. Three men have accused Levine of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers.—Sky News
Zoë Kravitz’s Band Drops New Single Lolawolf, Kravitz's R&B-electro-pop project with Jimmy Giannopoulos, has released new track "Baby I’m Dying" from an upcoming album. The Max Basch-directed video features Kravitz in New York City's Chinatown.— i-D
Cheese Is Good for You, Say Chinese Scientists Researchers at Soochow University in Suzhou concluded that eating 40 grams of cheese per day can cut your chances of developing heart disease by 14 percent. The team looked at 15 cheese-focused studies from around the world.—VICE
It's difficult to imagine how the future could possibly get scarierthan2017, but apparently the folks behind Netflix's hit anthology series Black Mirror have dreamt up enough terrifying dystopian realities to continue to unnerve us for another season. So far, we've gotten to see trailers for the fourth season's memory-deleting episode "Crocodile," one about future Tinder called "Hang the DJ," and "Arkangel," director Jodie Foster's take on a parent's worst nightmare, among others. But Sunday's new trailer for "Metalhead" might be the most bone-chilling yet.
In the black and white-shot episode—which was written by show creator Charlie Brooker and directed by American Gods's David Slade—a woman is being hunted by what looks to be some kind of bloodthirsty, android hound.
"We found a dog in the warehouse," the woman says into her phone, before all hell breaks loose.
The trailer doesn't make it clear why the woman (Maxine Peake) is being chased by a nightmare version of MIT's robot cheetah, but she definitely doesn't want to find out what happens if it catches up to her.
At the end of the 30-second teaser trailer, Peake's character is run off the road by a big car, which means that dog might have been built with opposable thumbs, or it's not the only thing in pursuit of the woman.
There's still no word on when season four will hit Netflix, but judging by the rate that these teasers are dropping, an announcement is likely coming soon. Until then, give the "Metalhead" trailer a watch above.
A BC funeral home is being called out for a “controversial” campaign that includes bringing hearses and caskets to schools to scare kids from using fentanyl.
Alternatives Funeral and Cremation Services says it created its fentanyl prevention program in response to BC’s devastating fentanyl crisis. There were 914 illicit drug overdose deaths in the province that involved fentanyl from January to September 2017.
The Alternatives program, first announced in October, includes a 45-minute presentation for kids and teens that includes showing the audience a hearse and casket “reinforcing the fact that a decision to use drugs can, and frequently does, lead to death,” according to the company’s website. Another segment consists of reading aloud a letter from the father of a child who overdosed and died “pointing out that the decision to use drugs doesn’t hurt only the user; it hurts the entire family, especially should that decision lead to a death from drug overdose.”
An advertisement for the campaign depicts a funeral with the tagline “will fentanyl be the reason for your next family get-together?”
Alternatives owner Tyrel Burton said in a news release the initiative is about “harm prevention.”
“Our funeral home alone serves four to five families a month who have had a loved one die due to a drug overdose. Frequently that drug is fentanyl. We felt that we had to do something to reach teens and young adults before they become addicted,” Burton said. “We greatly admire the many committed health professionals and emergency paramedical staff who deal daily with those addicted to drugs—most of which are laced with fentanyl. But where the emphasis in those cases is on harm reduction, our focus is on harm prevention.”
However, an op-ed penned by BC’s chief coroner Lisa Lapointe over the weekend said the campaign and others like it often do more harm than good.
“They tend to increase the stigma surrounding drug use and actually discourage people from seeking help—an obsolete approach that has led to the loss of countless lives,” Lapointe wrote, noting the BC Coroners Service does not endorse the program.
Lapointe said anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E and “Just Say No” have been massive, costly failures. What's needed, she wrote, is evidence-based approaches, which is why BC has taken to releasing detailed stats on illicit drug overdoses and deaths.
When it comes to ads, Lapointe said depictions of drug paraphernalia can be triggering and prompt the desire to use.
Lapointe also brought the message back to harm reduction, and the reality that some people may not necessarily be ready to stop using, but those people still deserve help.
“In the long run, compassion and support, including prescribed medical treatment where appropriate, will be much more effective in turning this crisis around than fear and shame.”
Toronto and Ottawa have recently been following Vancouver’s lead in opening up safe drug consumption sites, with the idea of preventing overdose deaths. Many overdose deaths occur when people are using alone.
Alternatives has not yet responded to VICE’s request for comment. But the company isn't alone in offering a fear-based anti-drug campaign. Recently, a licensed cannabis producer called Beleave launched an anti-stoned driving campaign, using three made up “consequence strains” of weed: Kourtroom Kush, White Whiplash, and Slammer Time to deter people from driving high.
Experts told VICE the campaign seemed thin on actual evidence and likely won't be effective.
Poutine, as you know, is a Quebec-invented dish consisting of fries, gravy, and cheese curds. It’s one of my all-time favourite foods. When I go to restaurants, no matter what kind place or how fancy, if there’s poutine on the menu, I almost always order it. When I was a kid and found out poutine was a Canadian invention, It was the first time I felt real national pride. Healthcare and handsome prime ministers be damned: If there’s one thing Canadians are allowed to be smug about, it’s our ability to smother fried potatoes with cheese and gravy.
Something weird has been happening with poutine over the years. The dish has been wrenched from its place as the modest comfort food found in trucker’s diners and into the realm of Things Millennials Fucked Up. It started simple enough. Things like perogie poutine and philly cheese steak poutine started appearing at carnival food stands and eventually, poutine plus “whatever,” turned into the business model for an hugely successful international poutine chain. Then of course, New York heard about poutine and made it fancy AF.
But it got me thinking, if poutine has no limits, why should I? That question brought me to take poutine making to the next level over the course of a week. I decided to make everything in my life into poutine to see if there’s any room left for poutine to evolve. Over seven days, I put poutine on everything from pasta to salad, rating the tastiness on a scale of one to ten. I ate it, drank it, introduced it into international politics and shot it at my body with a gun. I became poutine.
Day 1: Good Morning Poutine
My wife, Jill, is a great cook. She usually has a menu for the week, and I asked her not to alter any of her meal plans to cater to my poutine lifestyle. She planned the meals as if she normally would, and I simply added poutine. I bought catering-sized bags of poutine ingredients to be prepared every night for each following day.
Jill made zucchini loaf for breakfast for the week. Surprisingly, savoury gravy, cheese and fries paired well with the sweet dried fruits, chocolate, and pistachio-stuffed bread. My first meal of poutine week seemed like a success. Then I poured myself a cup of coffee and spooned in a pile of gravy, curds and fries.
The poutine coffee sludge onto my tongue like a beef stew-flavoured slug. The saltiness of the gravy highlighted the bitterness of the Brazilian blend, and the rubbery finish of the curds with the soggy fries made for a gag-inducing swallow. The rest of the day’s meals were good—cabbage soup poutine and mushroom bacon spaghetti poutine—but I knew I would be traumatized by poutine coffee for as long as I lived. I told myself Day Two would be better.
Day 2 was not better. I choked down more coffee poutine. The first sip is slightly salty, a pungent warning that intensifies the deeper you dive. The bottom layer is like chewing on the damp corner of a Motel 6 mattress. I couldn’t let poutine coffee beat me. Throughout day two, my body craved something fresh to counter the salt raging through my veins. Any type of vegetable or fruit would do, but sticking to the rules of my cleanse, I would have to poutinify it. I stared at a bowl of apples as if they were a faroff oasis beyond the walls of my cheese prison.
As if sensing my struggle, Jill surprised me with poutine pizza for supper. Poutine pizza is incredible. The homemade thin crust with gravy sauce, curds and sliced potato was made with the lowest quality grocery items legally possible, but also love. Jill pulled me from my despair. I could do this challenge knowing I wasn’t alone.
Given my new confidence, I wanted to push the limits of poutine by creating a pile of sugary gravy and cheese slop hereby known as dessert poutine. This delicacy consists of poutine garnished with chocolate bars, candy canes and a slice of Dairy Queen Skor-flavoured Treatzza Pizza, and finally slathered in gravy. I ate it alone. The brown meat juice and red food dye from the candy canes mixed together to become the colour of raw organs. The goo was a minty accent to the hot cheese and melted ice cream. Dessert poutine is something a depressed Oompa Loompa might eat before drowning himself in the chocolate river. For supper, I kept things light and had a salad topped with poutine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s name in French is Vladimir “Poutine.” I discovered this because I wanted to research poutine culture in Quebec, but every time I searched for “poutine” on French language websites, I kept getting stories about the current leader of the Russian Federation. I may have stumbled onto a bombshell revelation here: Is there a connection between Putin and the Québécois food? I decided to host a Putin Poutine-themed party to assemble a crack team and unlock the Putin/poutine conspiracy, or at the very least introduce poutine into international politics.
I invited some friends over and decorated the house with Russian flags, photos of the Kremlin, and Ivan Drago from Rocky—Russian stuff. I made my guests wear Putin masks while we ate poutine and discussed foreign affairs. I went around the table to ask everyone’s opinions on the connection between Putin and poutine, and the following conclusions were made:
“I would go bear hunting with Putin. Other than that, I don’t think there is a connection.”
“Didn’t he invent poutine?”
“If I were Vladimir Putin, I would make poutine the national food of Russia.”
My friends and I do not often talk about international politics.
Later, I found out the whole Putin/poutine thing is due to a translation issue that arises when putting Cyrillic letters into the Roman-based alphabet and is probably not an international conspiracy. I had a lot of time to think about this while sitting on the toilet. My intestines had become a tangled cheese slinky.
After a day of high stakes, politically-charged eating, I needed to unwind. I drew myself a gravy and cheese footbath, lathered on a gravy facial mask, lit some candles and put on the soothing sounds of a deep fryer. I also created a relaxation poutine smoothie. The recipe calls for poutine, beats, green leaf vegetables, homogenized milk blended with ice to finish. The result is a luscious chewy pink glop with a briny bite. I call it The Salty Gwyneth Paltrow. As I sat in meditation with gravy seeping into my pores, I realized poutine is the highest form of self care.
Is poutine worth dying for? Absolutely. Sometimes drastic measures are needed to defend what’s right and good. Others share my passion to protect the sanctity of poutine. A man from Montreal named Nicolas Fabien-Ouellet recently made headlines for his idea that calling poutine a Canadian dish rather than Quebecois counts as cultural appropriation. Indeed, there will be those who believe my important research on poutine here is offensive. I disagree. I love poutine. I would take a bullet for poutine.
That’s why I invented the tactical poutine. To make a tactical poutine, you put on a protective vest made of French fries. Next, you get some hollow 0.68 caliber paintball rounds and fill them with gravy and cheese. The final step is to combine the French fry flak jacket and gravy balls by having someone shoot you. This is a convenient way to prove a point and make poutine on the battlefield. I recruited my friend Chad to pull the trigger. He shot me three times with the gravy balls, with one direct hit on the fries and two delicious stray bullets slamming into my torso.
Despite the occasional crunch of shell casing and bloody lacerations on my gut, the tactical poutine tasted like heroism.
I slurped down my final cup of poutine coffee. It still tasted like going mouth to ass on a stroke risk factor. But I’d done it. I made everything in my life into poutine for a week. The only thing left was to combine poutine and yoga. Yoga pairs with everything if you’re bold and white enough. I did about 20 minutes of poses while occasionally shoveling poutine in my mouth. Sun salutations, upward facing dog, and anything that required engaging my stomach hurt a lot due to the previous day’s tactical poutine. It was tough, but I had to dig deep. A healthy body means exercise; poutine yoga would make me strong, probably.
I finished my final day off with some good, old-fashioned poutine. This poutine was free from politics, the stresses of life, and social demands. It was neither a metaphor for anything grand, nor a religious experience. It was fries, gravy and cheese curds. I ate it with a fork sitting on the couch with my family. We watched TV and that was all. The poutine was OK, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it.
On Friday, the town of Sea Grit, New Jersey, was forced to enjoy its annual tree-lighting ceremony plagued with the knowledge that an anonymous Grinch lurked within its midst. Earlier that week, the local cops had discovered that a mysterious vandal had made deliberate cuts in the string of lights adorning the town Christmas display, nearly sabotaging the yearly holiday event.
Sea Girt Police Captain Justin Macko was astonished by the wire-cutting, calling it "probably the first vandalism [the town's] had in ten years."
"There's several cuts throughout everything if we lay them all out," Macko told NBC 4 on Thursday. "It tells me they definitely wanted to do it and they want to accomplish their goal of making sure the lights don't work."
Some town residents told NBC 4 that they figured a few dastardly youths were sneaking around and snipping the strands to get their jollies off or whatever—but now, thanks to a photo snapped Saturday morning, the truth has emerged.
In the incriminating photo, a bushy-tailed Scrooge can be seen caught in the act of gnawing on a row of Christmas lights, either in hopes of dashing the town's desire for holiday cheer or just because its tiny squirrel brain mistook the bulbs for a delicious, acorn-shaped snack.
The squirrel is still at large, but NBC 4 promises that the area is now "under constant surveillance," just in case the rodent comes back for another gnaw.
Broken lights or no, Sea Girt should count itself lucky that the squirrel is only interested in wiring, since things can go pretty bad once squirrels get a taste for blood.
Angèle Regnier, a Catholic woman from Ottawa, is travelling across Canada with a 500-year-old severed arm.
To be more specific, it’s the almost 500-year-old detached right forearm of Saint Francis Xavier. Fingers and all.
Saint Francis Xavier is one of the more popular saints in Catholicism (he’s not like those other saints, he’s a cool saint). His body is classified as “incorrupt” which means it hasn’t decomposed like regular flesh. The church says it’s a miracle.
“When you can come closer you can see, oh my goodness there is meat on those bones, this is, this is an arm,” said Regnier in a CBC interview. She’s going to be boarding flights across Canada so people in 14 cities can also experience the bony, dead arm.
Flying with a dead arm, as goth as it sounds, is a bit of a logistical nightmare. Regnier has to book the arm its own seat on the plane because it’s blessed a bunch of people or something. So it’s too “sacred” for her to toss in the overhead compartment.
“It’s his right arm, so it’s the arm that he would have baptized and healed and done all the amazing things with,” Regnier told CBC. “The Archbishop [of Ottawa] had friends who worked with Air Canada that could connect us to another person – so they were people of faith that weren’t completely weirded out by what we were saying.”
But anyways, back to the important question of why the fuck does the Catholic Church have a sacred, severed arm to give away?
This is where stuff gets more metal. The church actually has Xavier’s entire body preserved and they’ve pretty much just been casually cutting off parts to send to different places that need it. His right arm was detached from his body in 1614 to send to Rome because they wanted physical evidence that the body hadn’t decayed. Japan has a hand. Some countries have lamer parts, like his intestines. There isn’t really a system to decide which part goes where, it’s kind of a free for all. Though sending one country his intestines while another gets the arm that has “baptized tens of thousands of people” seems like a good way of telling an entire nation to fuck off.
Regnier herself only got the arm when she got the Archbishop of Ottawa, Terrence Prendergast, to make the request to Rome on her behalf. The church agreed but she had to go pick it up from Rome herself.
She didn’t mind.
“It’s like doing a road trip with a friend,” she told CBC. (This is a ridiculous comparison but could also be the premise to a buddy road trip film that I would definitely watch.)
The arm, of course, has special casing to protect it from the elements and peoples’ gross hands. Rome also gave Regnier a special duffle bag lined with foam and Plexiglas to travel with. But perhaps most importantly, she has special paperwork from Vatican to show authorities when they ask her why the fuck she’s travelling with a 465-year-old severed right arm.
Regnier and the arm will be touring Canada from January 3 to February 2. Then it heads back to Rome to rest, presumably in peace.
