MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good work by emerging photographers. Each issue features the work of one artist, and I shoot a portrait of him or her for the issue's cover. As photo editor of VICE, I'm excited to share my discoveries with a wider audience. 

Issue 23 of MATTE magazine represents a great leap forward in terms of the series as a whole. Featuring a rich new body of work by Rachel Stern, the issue is more than 50 pages long—making it by far the biggest issue of the magazine to date. Inside, you'll find a foreword by Nathaniel M. Stein, who is currently the Horace W. Goldsmith Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You'll also find an introductory poem by Paul Legault, and infographics designed by Joseph Kaplan. This is all in support of Stern's new pictures, which have been produced over the last year.

Often collaborating closely with performance artist James Lyman, Stern creates a vibrant world out of cardboard and plastic in her studio. Sourcing materials for her sets from Oriental Trading Co, and the kind of catalogues that sell supplies for high school proms, Stern transforms the disposable plastic crap of our daily lives into exotic wonderlands. A self-described "art history fan girl," Stern freely mixes references to classical Greek and Roman mythologies, reality TV, contemporary drag culture, and her own personal narratives. As Stein says in the issue's foreword, "all motifs, symbols, and traditions are subject to extravagant pastiche. Only, check your irony at the door. Authenticity has a new vocabulary these days."

Infographic by Paul Legault, design by Joseph Kaplan

Perhaps the most enticing thing I could say about these pictures is that they don't look like anyone else's. And that's true—so mixed and so varied are Stern's references, it's difficult to pinpoint an exact lineage in photographic history that leads up to this work. In the end one thing is abundantly clear: Stern is having a lot of fun making these pictures. 

Portrait of James Lyman and Rachel Stern by Matthew Leifheit, inspired by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks

This issue also features the first in what will become a series of video interviews with the photographers featured in MATTE. In the past, VICE has published text interviews with the subjects of MATTE magazine. But Cameron Cuchulainn, a talented producer and photographer based in NYC, thought it would be interesting to meet the artists in a more personal way. Thanks to Cameron for urging me to take that step and producing the interview you see here. Thanks to Annelise Jeske for editing the video. 

Purchase Issue 23 of MATTE magazine, featuring Rachel Stern, here.

Follow MATTE magazine on Twitter.

Blake Griffin takes a lot of shit. Besides the fact that he’s on a team that wasn’t exactly universally beloved even before its owner revealed himself as fuckwit bigot, Griffin is one of those players whose sheer determination draws consternation from most non-Clippers fans, which he uses as fuel in competition. He dunks harder because you don’t want him to dunk. He smiles maniacally when called with obnoxious fouls. There’s some kind of will held inside him that not only has become part of the fuel that’s got him making huge strides as a player but has turned him, in my mind, from someone I kind of didn’t like to someone I kind of like precisely because I don’t really like him—like a smell you keep breathing in precisely because it’s fetid. It’s a commodity you can’t but respect.

All of this is particularly confusing, given Griffin’s frequent appearances in the rotation of commercials currently running during this year’s NBA post-season.

Sometimes I’m surprised he has time to play professional basketball. In just about every other ad through every break, there he is, dressed up in a red suit trying to sell you a car made by a company whose name sounds like it should be selling fruit instead.

But in the grand scheme of NBA stars turned actors, Griffin isn’t one of the worst; you can tell he’s been working with a coach, practicing in the mirror. He likes to take his time, smile, provide some nuance to the obviously obnoxious script. In the same way that he shoots free throws like he’s trying to put a stuffed animal on the top bunk of a huge bed, he’s both somehow childlike and bad-ass-bro’d-out, though his haircut does make me think he’s watched a lot of porn. Softcore, probably—just enough to make him blush.

“Blake Griffin and Jack McBrayer Drop In to Say Thank You”

Scene: A woman gets out of her car, stops and looks up, and there’s Blake Griffin in his red jumpsuit, tied to a black rope in the sky. What’s he doing there? Oh, just dropping by to say you have a cool car. The woman seems impressed, even happy. She thanks him for having taken the time to show up and tell her she has good taste, instead of, like, maybe getting out her mace? So we must assume that she, as we do, knows that Blake Griffin is cool and chill and didn’t come to do anything weird besides surprise you. It’s that nonthreatening aura the makes Blake Griffin a perfect car salesman; he’s large and curly enough to make you want to trust him, and he can dunk.

Of course, then the fucking 30 Rock guy falls out of the sky and hits the pavement like a meteor of shit. It’s meant as comic relief, I guess. Blake Griffin’s look into the camera says more than it might mean to, like he’s suddenly forced to face the fact that everyone alive is not an athlete, capable of extreme fortitude, but that’s OK. The white boy is his friend, and though the Kia is not exactly “hard as fuck,” it is still there in the street; it will continue to exist, and so will you. “You will continue to exist” is kind of what this commercial seems to tell you; “so if you’re going to buy a car, why not this car?”

After all, unlike more transparent commercials advertising automobiles, there is little information offered about why the Kia is actually a worthwhile thing to buy, other than that if you get one, an NBA guy might swoop down out of the street outside your house and half-mockingly thank you for buying from the company who paid him for use of his face.

I’ve always wondered why famous athletes and actors, who already make millions doing what they do, sacrifice their time and talent to play dummies in these ads. I can’t help wishing that every time they come back to the game from another round of commercials, the other team will get to shoot two free throws for a technical foul. But if it’s between this guy and losers like the pale dork KFC hired to say “pot pie” over and over again, I’ll take Blake Griffin every time. Because at least at the end of this spot, as he is pulled off screen into the heavens of not-on-camera, he flaps his massive hands out at his side, as if to remind himself and us that these 30 seconds are now over and we can go back to life.

"Punching Dummy"

This one opens with the same mini-jingle of a bro singing “GRIF-FIN FOOOORCE!” in a way that reminds me of Mortal Kombat played by stuffed animals. It’s weird how I don’t often think about Blake Griffin’s last name being shared with a mythical creature that mixes a lion with an eagle. Out of the jump, we see an old bro going ham on a punching bag, viewed through binoculars by the 30 Rock dork again, like a guy spying on his own future, lame aging into older lame. Though this kind of lame has veracity, Kia insists. The old guy can still throw punches, wield his intent, if only against a plastic model, alone, and for no other reason than to stay fit to serve as purposeless superheroes charged with the task of reminding people who bought a Kia that Kia isn’t lame. Protect yourself from being an old guy who can’t still kick ass and fuck by investing now in a car green-lit by a premier athlete who so far each year of his life has upped his game.

We see Blake lying back on the top bunk here, closer to heaven, only to find the mattress is fat and yellow and kind of oddly matches his hair in weird light. Here Blake offers actual information about the car, noting that the old fuck banging away at the mannequin isn’t as fast as the car, which has a 274-horsepower engine. Annoying White Guy scoffs at Blake, saying he already knew that.

“That’s why you’re my bunkmate,” Griffin responds, halfway grunt-exhaling after another flourish of his delivery, allowing his line to carve its way into the head, creating another instance of what in repetition will be both the thing that irks me most about this fucking commercial and what I wait each time to hear. It’s the same instinct that makes me refuse to unfriend people on Facebook, because reading their annoying updates awakens something furious inside me, like a sort of mental S&M.

Of course, Blake Griffin doesn’t care about any of that, which is what makes him kind of a hero in my mind, because once this shit is over he’ll appear there on the court playing his heart out, paid as fuck, probably never seeing the commercial ever again because when they come on, he’s at work. It’s the corporate employees who write this shit, and choose to funnel it back into the world over and over, who should be the punching bag.

And of course, from all of this there’s no way out. Part of the TV experience is knowing how to tune out enough during the commercials so that you don’t end up putting a dent in your forehead. And before you know it, the crush is over, and the game is on again, and the rules are still the same. Because, after all, each game is just another iteration in its own system of repetition, variations on a series of possibilities, each as possible as the next, beautiful where ads are ugly. Each game ends, and the next begins. There is a winner and a loser. Some guys get paid while others sit at home and bitch. Eventually, we all end up asleep again, and we wake up and buy more shit and watch another game and ten dozen more ads and remember less and less of it the older we get until we can’t remember anything.

Follow Blake on Twitter.

The Adroit Controller. All photos via the author.
What’s required to play the average video game? Not in terms of tech, television resolution, or optimal viewing angle; but how about the functions of your body? Well, to start, the common controller needs your index and middle fingers for those shoulder buttons. Your thumbs need to be pretty dextrous, manning the joysticks, buttons, and directional-pad in harmony. Then either your ring or pinky need keep that controller hoisted while your other fingers whip about. And that’s all assuming you can draw two hands close enough together to fit into gaming’s mould.

If, for a large variety of reasons, you simply are not capable of this, what can you do?

“Games are great stress relievers, pain relievers,” says Mark Barlet, founder of AbleGamer “There are so many different things science is proving that video games do for the greater population, so why shouldn’t people with disabilities benefit?”

When Barlet started AbleGamers ten years ago, he was investigating options for his friend and co-founder, who had developed MS. This enquiry became a blog, which then expanded into a non-profit that has opened labs in Brooklyn, Washington DC, and most recently Toronto. In late April, AbleGamers and U of T’s Semaphore Labs, which will be permanently hosting AbleGamers, held an arcade to show some of their peripherals. I stopped in to see their solution to a greatly overlooked problem.

The arcade was on the main floor of Robarts Library in a small and sometimes really packed room. The first surprise is that AbleGamers’ focus is far flung from making new games, or exploratory titles designed explicitly for the disabled. While they do advocate for more closed captioning and colour blindness modes in software (looking at you, red-gridded real time strategy games), their overwhelming goal is to find general methods of allowing any game to be played by anybody. The second surprise was that no one seemed to take any of the free juice available.

“They want to play Grand Theft Auto, they want to play Halo,” says Sara Grimes, Semaphore’s associate director. “They want to play the games that everyone is talking about. What disabled players want to play is what everyone else is playing.”

The solution AbleGamers pursues is in the controller mapping, or the dismantling of it. One of the stations, playing the puzzle game Hexic, was outfitted with two long crane-arms. One at the end of a joystick box and the other attached to a large green touch-pad. The arms could be manoeuvred and locked, hypothetically letting the user position button functions wherever they’d be most comfortable. Later on, Hexic was swapped out for Portal, and a tall dudely visitor decided to twist the arms around to play with his knees—just for fun.



Mark Barlet, middle, holding court.
This contraption was put together using the Adroit Controller, a box that lets you completely customize the configuration of an Xbox 360 controller as needed. Oddly enough, the generous device was created by a company called Evil Controllers.“I always thought it was pretty funny since they’ve partnered with us,” says Barlet. “One of their slogans is ‘Evil Controllers, when evil goes good.’”

“See, there’s the game, there’s the system it plays on, there’s an interface, and there’s you. The interface most of us use is a keyboard or mouse, controller, and then there’s the game. We’re just interrupting that middleware, taking the interface, blowing it apart and making different modes of operation for it than the lockbox controller.”

They weren’t in use, but around the room were mammoth game pads, similar looking to the type Street Fighter pros use, but built to withstand any damage that may come to them. They can also be mounted on most surfaces. Barlet said he once sent one to Malaysia in nothing more than a manila envelope. “It was probably holding up cargo on the airplane,” says Barlet.

One of the most ambitious items in the arcade is the Ergodex DX1. A tablet that lets you place buttons anywhere on the surface, and each button memorizes their function, allowing you move and paste the buttons wherever they need to be. Barlet says it was originally created with flight sim fanatics in mind, but it’s proven to be far more useful than that niche. A lot of these devices have overlapping functions for non-disabled players; Barlet happily quoted a Microsoft run study that suggests 83% of people use assistive features in Windows without even realizing it.

“A lot of controller layouts are quite tricky,” says Grimes, “and the number of people that feel excluded just from the traditional controller layout far exceeds what we envision as the disabled community. Even if you have a small issue with your hand, or a fatigue issue or spasticity as a result of cerebral palsy or MS, that can affect you quite a bit. These small controllers and all the buttons they require in that particular configuration is quite exclusive. These look complicated but we’re really just remapping controllers, to make devices that are easier to manipulate.”



The Ergodex DX1.
Barlet hopes that one day his foundation won’t be needed, his exit strategy being a general awareness that the standard concept of a controller isn’t universally inclusive, and that the alternatives will be easily accessible for those who need them. He also isn’t fazed by Kinect or motion control, since we’re over half a decade in and Dance Central and Wii Sports have remained the few highlights for those platforms.

While the kid-friendly Peggle and Hexic were in play most of the time, a stack to the side built of Fallout 3, Bioshock Infinite, and friends shows this isn’t some precious operation, investing in experimental programs or the dreaded edutainment. This is about concretely creating alternatives so that if someone can only use some of their fingers, or no fingers, or fingers in unique configurations, they won’t have to sit out while everyone dismembers organs with the next Mortal Kombat. It’s just about including everyone in a recreation most schlubs take for granted.

The Toronto lab is permanent, and the public can visit, but for those interested an appointment must be made ahead of time. Contact information is available on Semaphore's site.


@KingFranknstein

All photos by Sara Maria Salamone

The first thing I noticed when I walked into Torah Animal World was the giant moose head on the front of the building. This is just one of the many strange and incongruous things I saw at this "spiritual taxidermy center" in the orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn.

This zombified version of Noah's Ark was built by Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch. It's housed inside his massive brownstone apartment, a three-building-wide, 11-floor-high gonzo natural history museum holds over 350 taxidermied fish, mammals, birds, and reptiles.

Torah Animal World probably the only Hassid-run taxidermy museum in America, a menagerie of stuffed animals from the Bible, like rams and goats.

Strangely, there are also many animals that are definitely not in the bible, like the mother kangaroo with child that sits in the front bay window of the building.

As Deutsch explained to me, “The kangaroo is an example of an animal that's not mentioned in the Torah, but it's fascinating for kids to see the kangaroo with her baby in the pouch… so we'll expand it if it has an educational value.”

The site, initially created in 2003 to house rare religious artifacts, was transformed in 2008 into the Brooklyn outpost of Torah Animal World, an educational taxidermy trifecta that also includes branches in the Catskills and Lakewood, NJ.

Meant to bring the stories of the Torah to life through an immersive real-life diorama, the museum presents a highly idiosyncratic vision of the natural world. Otters hang out with giraffes, foxes mingle with VCRs, and you’ll have a chance to touch a 3,500 year deerskin Torah from Aleppo, Syria.

The artifact center, also known as the Living Torah Museum, holds some of the “rarest treasures in history,” some older than similar counterparts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There's an ancient make-up container supposedly used by the Queen of Egypt, 6th century throwing daggers, 2,300-year-old Greek dreidels, the “best preserved gladiator trident in the world,” and ancient ostrich eggs you’re encouraged to punch for durability. 

Rabbi Deutsch believes that touching religious and cultural artifacts is the best way to learn about ancient history. As he frequently stated on his "non-Yiddish speaking tour," “I believe if you touch history, history touches you.”

None of the actual killing and or stuffing of animals is done on premise. Most of the goods on display at Torah Animal World come from private donations, scattered across the globe. When an owner of a large taxidermy collection dies, his or her children, usually unable to find a use for, say, a statue of an American black bear attacking a deer, will often sell it to larger collectors or institutions.

For pieces like the giant African elephant head on display in the climate-controlled basement, which Rabbi Deutsch calls a "5D panoramic theater," costs can sometimes reach over $40,000.

While the Rabbi doesn’t personally condone killing for sport, he’s generally OK with the outcome. “We don't believe in killing animals, but I think we should use the skins of the animals for educational purposes. Every kid who goes to school, every adult who learns references of the animals [in the bible] gets to see what they're really like, how wild some of them really are. For example, an elephant is really hairy. You can't [learn] that at the Bronx Zoo.” 

This may or may not be true, but I've never felt history truly come alive until I spent an afternoon in a basement filled with Hasidic men petting a giant elephant head.

Torah Animal World attracts 35,000 visitors per year. Though they encourage visitors of all religions, most of the visitors are large traveling Amish and Christian bible groups. According to Rabbi Deutsch, National Geographic has a program in the works.

Though the museum attracts an unexpectedly steady stream of guests, it's still in danger of closing. Rabbi Deutsch was recently forced to put the building on the market and, unless he can raise the necessary $1,000,000 to keep it open, he may have to relocate much of his fantastically bonkers collection to the museum's other branches. 

In short, if you live in New York City, have a Metro Card and some free time, I strongly recommend spending a day in this bizarro alternate universe before it closes and they throw all these animals in the dumpster.

Follow Laura Feinstein on Twitter.

Illustration by Sam Taylor

I can’t remember the first time I got called a slut—probably around the time I started cocking my leg up in alleyways and acting like one. But I never had a problem with that, about being a slut or announcing myself as such. The problem I've always had is other people thinking that being a slut is a bad thing. Because it's not; being a slut is glorious.

This debate about promiscuity is about judging and shaming people—thinking that you know what’s best for them. Well, sluts don’t need your disapproval or advice on how we should live our lives. We’re quite capable of making our own, terrible drunken decisions. What I can deal with, though, is your disapproval. It’s hot. I don’t know why, just like I don't know why other people’s boyfriends taste better—they just do. And there are more and more people like me these days—come and find us on Tinder, Grindr, and all those other hook-up sites that, like, EVERYONE (even your mom) is on. We’re all sluts now.

I prefer the term "fun" to "promiscuity," because I’m a fan of good, clear English. I can only speak from my own (admittedly vast) sexual experience, but if I get into a car with a strange man, for example, and I’m pouting and he’s looking at my legs and tits and stuff, he doesn’t drive me off for a "bit of promiscuity"—he drives me off for a "bit of fun." I even looked up how the Oxford Dictionary defines promiscuity, and it says, “The fact or state of being promiscuous; immorality.”

The word is defined as "having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships." Of course, it doesn’t tell us how many is many, because—like so much of this debate—the exact amount of people you need to sleep with to qualify as promiscuous is an arbitrary judgment imposed by other people.

Also, where does time fit into all this? Let’s say an 80-year-old has had ten sexual partners over the course of her life. Is she promiscuous? Would we consider her to be a promiscuous person? Probably not. But what if she had slept with all ten of those people in the same week—back in the summer of '69—and then never had sex again for the rest of her life? Would that "equal it out"? And if so, why? What does the gap do? Why does spacing your booty calls out lend to respectability?

None of it makes sense because it’s just an idea, and a shitty one at that. Promiscuity doesn’t exist. It’s just a word people came up with to describe and judge certain human behaviors. It’s about as real as doorism. Never heard of doorism? That's because I just made it up. It describes a tendency to open doors. I opened the bathroom door this morning to take a pee, and I also opened several doors to get me from my bed to my breakfast table. And when I finish writing this article I’ll open lots more because I’m a dirty, door-opening doorist, and I’m pretty sure that you are too.

We don’t apply any particular significance to how many times someone opens a door on a given day, but we do tend to have an opinion on how many times someone her their legs. I don’t see why. Unless you’re the lucky dude I’m opening my doors, legs, and heart to, what has it got to do with you? And all this shame is almost always directed at women. This is an ancient point, I know, but it's time to point out yet again that when a guy fucks around he’s considered a stud, but when a woman does the same she’s a slut and a whore.

Do you remember when you were very small and learning to read? I do. I love to read. Reading is what I did before I discovered fucking. Like fucking, though, reading is something you have to "work on" until you "get there." Getting there means when you can read a book like an adult and it doesn’t feel like a chore anymore. That it comes naturally. I was always pleased, as a kid, when my reading age improved, but I remember—when I was about 13 or 14—noticing that some people in my school just gave up. They never made it to the place where you read for the joy of it, and that made me sad. It still makes me sad today when I meet people who say they haven’t read a book since their school days. I feel like they’re missing out on something that’s been such a profound and pleasurable part of my life. And I feel exactly the same way about fucking around.

I was invited to speak at the Oxford Union last night, debating the notion that promiscuity is a virtue, not a vice. I was "for" the notion, obviously. I was going to come up with lots of clever reasons to back up my position, but the truth is that there aren’t any. Promiscuity is neither a good thing nor a bad thing… It’s just a thing. Some people aren't promiscuous and are fine. Some people are promiscuous and are fine. Some people are promiscuous and have horrible lives. Some people aren’t promiscuous and have horrible lives. Whatever.

A few years ago I walked into a nightclub. It was a kink night with a freaky crowd. I asked a guy if he wanted to come back with me. He did. I asked him if he minded extra company. He didn’t. I invited his friend to join us. And another. And another. We got a cab. I invited the cab driver to join in too, but he was too scared (he did take my number, though, and we did the dirty at a later date). If two’s company and three’s a party, five’s definitely an orgy.

It turned me on, standing in the hotel reception with four hot guys, aware that the chap at reception knew that we were booking into one suite and what we were clearly planning to do inside—me, in a word. It must have been obvious that they were all going to fuck me. I wonder if he fantasized about that. I’ve fantasized about him fantasizing about it. It was good, dirty fun. One of them was inside me. One of them was working on me. One of them gave me something to shut me up. One of them gave me something to keep my hands busy. It worked because I was the center of sexual attention. I wanted it. I was in control. I was shameful but not ashamed. I was wanton, almost a caricature, a porno fantasy, a make-believe slut. I came with their hands all over me, their eyes watching me, their dicks prodding me. I was drunk. I was high. It was fantastic—fantasy made flesh. Like my genitals were eating a pot of honey. 

And that’s why I’m so passionate about people’s right to be promiscuous. If that’s what floats your boat, stiffens your penis, creams your vagina, go for it. Wouldn’t you rather be on a beach somewhere right now, with beautiful people, coming? Coming is brilliant. Why shouldn’t we strive to do it as often as possible and with as many people as possible? So much of our lives are spent taking the bin bags out, brushing our teeth, waiting for the microwave to end, wondering when we can take our shoes off because our feet ache.

Life isn’t fun or glamorous. It’s dull and tedious and savage and cruel, and you have to go to work and feed your kids and send people birthday cards—all that old shit. Those moments of pure release, though—that hedonistic abandon—they’re the bits that make life worth living. Sure, you can have special moments with the person you love, but don’t look down on those of us who like to rub genitals with anyone and everyone. Like you, we just want to feel alive.

Life is like a cock. You have to grab it with both hands.

Follow Paris and Sam on Twitter.

Previously: I Love the Naked McDonald's Rampage Woman

Sean J Patrick Carney is a concrete comedian, visual artist, and writer based in Brooklyn. He is the founder and director of Social Malpractice Publishing and, since 2012, has been a member of GWC Investigators, a collaborative paranormal research team. Carney has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, the Virginia Commonwealth University, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, and New York University. Follow him on Twitter, here.

Photo via WikiMedia Commons.
First Nation people in northwestern Ontario are living on the bulk of what the province deems 'high-priority' contaminated sites. Everything from petroleum to what is commonly referred as ‘BTEX’—a group of compounds known to cause severe human health effects have contaminated land in Canada’s most populated province. According to the Treasury Board’s federal contaminated site inventory, of the 148 sites rated as high-priority for action in the province, 134 are in northwestern Ontario.

All sites are in First Nation communities or ‘reserves’ as defined by the Indian Act. Almost all sites are the responsibility of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Some of the contaminated sites are as large as 4,500 cubic meters or can even be measured in the tonnes. An additional 27 sites are currently being tested, but the list could grow as 55 more sites are suspected to have contaminants.  

Chiefs of Ontario, a political organization representing 133 First Nations in the province, say most of the contamination is old industrial waste: "In the north, we experience significant contamination mainly from forestry, pulp and paper, mining, and also radar sites in the far north,” says Ontario Regional Chief Stan Beardy. But analysts from the Chiefs of Ontario’s environment sector warn of new contamination sites in the future, given the region is facing an unprecedented wave of development.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat maintains the federal contaminated sites inventory. In the inventory, sites are categorized by classification (high, medium to low risk) and include information about the type of contaminant, amount, and last step taken. The government uses a 10-step process to address contaminated sites; step one is the testing phase, step 10 is usually long-term monitoring after the site has been cleaned up.

One of the most contaminated sites listed in the inventory is the Marten Falls First Nation, located 300 km northeast of Thunder Bay. The community's lands have five sites that are listed as high-priority, with contaminated soil estimated to be in the tonnes. The contaminated sites are an old school, sawmill, former general store, defunct diesel power generating station and the current Ministry of Transportation grounds.

Petroleum hydrocarbons (in this case old diesel) and BTEX’s are most commonly listed contaminants; all of these sites are located within a 50-kilometre radius of residents.The sites in Marten Falls are at 'stage 7,' meaning the government has begun cleaning it up, a process that could take years.

The community with the second highest level of contamination is the Sachigo Lake First Nation. Located 425 km north of Sioux Lookout, the community also has tons of contaminated soil—most of it caused by an old mine. 

First Nation communities with over 10,000 and up to 50,000 cubic meters of contaminants are: Sandy Lake, Attawapiskat, North Caribou Lake, and Bearskin Lake First Nation. Only 10 First Nation communities in the north of the 134 reached stage 10 (optional, long-term monitoring). 

“It (the contamination) falls to the ground it goes to the water, fish eat it and other animals,” says Chief Beardy. "The concerns have to do with the health of our people.”

But there are also sites in the inventory that are categorized as high priority, yet have no information about the amount of contaminants present. There are currently 25 such sites in the north that are the responsibility of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

One of those 25 sites is on the Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (formerly Grassy Narrows), the home of activist Judy Da Silva, 52. Although the exact level of contamination is not listed in the inventory, Da Silva knows first hand the effects it's had. Since the 1960s her community has lived with the impacts of methyl mercury caused by the logging industry.

Mercury poisoning caused by the contamination has left some community members stricken with an extremely rare neurological condition known as Minamata Disease. “The forest was our economic base and because of the mercury pollution, it knocked the legs off our way of living,” says Da Silva.

The mercury poisoning leeched into the waterways, causing the closure of the commercial fishery and tourism industry that was the livelihood of First Nations there. “People will (still) go down the river," Da Silva says, but only out of desperation for food. 

Da Silva's own father passed away last fall. "He had high levels of mercury, he was a commercial fisherman when he was a young man," she says. Da Silva says her father suffered from speech and hearing impairments and had difficulty walking and maintaining balance. Da Silva is experiencing a few of these symptoms now. She said she's been eating the local fish most of her life. Like her dad, she is now receiving benefits from the Mercury Disability Board. It's a compensation scheme resulting from the community's mercury settlement in 1986.

To be approved for benefits, applicants must have a neurological assessment done, coordinated by the board. But Da Silva says many First Nation members are being denied benefits. Since its inception, only 127 community members have received disability benefits. According to the board, 352 applicants did not have symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning therefore were denied benefits.

Margaret Wanlin, chairperson of the board says some members' health may be compromised in ways that have nothing to do with mercury. Despite living with an array of symptoms, the payout is quite low. Compensation rates are decided by the board but have remained unchanged since the board was formed in 1986.

As a means to address environmental and human health issues of Asubpeeschoseewagong, a working group was created in early 2013. A bulk of its members is government representatives, with few members from the community. But Da Silva says nothing is happening because the board isn't taking the issue seriously, yet she believes the problem of contamination can be fixed.

In an email statement, Aboriginal Affairs said they are working to address sites that pose the greatest risks to human health and the environment. The department has plans to clean up 38 priority sites in the province this year. 

This past week, Google decided to pull misleading ads from pregnancy crisis centres that claimed to offer abortions, but were really just tricking women so they’d come in to the centre and be talked out of having one.

Then there’s the loveliest video I saw this week, which was a discussion amongst queer Black women about identity and self-representation. Watching it, I felt very much like I was an interloper in someone else’s space, which I was. But I’ve passed it on so readers who belong to that space can experience their messages, and because the women who speak in it are visionaries whose words should be heard.

People Continue to Think it’s Okay to Ask Trans* Strangers About Their Genitals

This week, Janet Mock gave the best example possible of transsexism in interviews. She asked Fusion’s Alicia Menendez whether or not she had a vagina.

“What’s so amazing is that if I were to look at you, I would never have known that you weren’t trans,” she said, asking whether she felt “her cisness held her back.”

Menendez said she hadn’t realized how painful it is to be on the other side of those kinds of questions. Mock responded that even in the good interviews she does, people expect her to give up deeply personal information and answer ignorant questions.

The result was another teachable moment. Genius.



Screenshot via YouTube.
Queer Women Of Colour on Posing Nude and Autonomy of Self

And in other Janet Mock news, here is a beautiful video of five Black, queer women thinkers and activists discussing being true to themselves, honouring their communities, posing nude, and owning their own bodies.

Mock, Elixher editor Kimberley McLeod, and storytellers and artists Kim Katrin Crosby, Mia McKenzie, and Tiona McClodden are talking about the new issue of Elixher—in which they all pose—called “Baring Our Truths: Reclaiming Our Bodies + Narratives.” From Crosby, as she talks about her taking care of her health and coping with a recent illness:

“Going through this whole new relationship-building with my body has been something that I think is really denied to black women, and women of colour, and queer women. And a relationship that feels like an autonomous one over our body, I think, is a complex one to keep trying to claim…

“When I go to speaking engagements, I’m very femme. I’m into bright colours and lots of boobs and short skirts, and I think it’s really important for me to challenge what people think intelligence looks like, and power looks like, and radicalness looks like.”

These five women are true teachers in this world, creating important safe spaces and discussions. Check out the video, or pre-order the mag.



Screenshot via NARAL.
Google Kills Misleading Anti-Choice Ads

In a win for women this week, shaming from pro-life nutters was reduced a teeny bit—on the internet, at least. Google took down several misleading ads that pretended to offer abortion services in order to lure women in, only to lecture them about why abortions are super evil.

Google’s decision to ban the ads was prompted by an investigation conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice America, which campaigns for a woman’s right to choose. That investigation found that no fewer than 79 percent of phony abortion clinics that advertised with Google claimed to offer a full range of family planning services, but in reality only offer alternatives to abortion and counseling services.

Google made it clear that they didn’t ban all crisis pregnancy centres that don’t offer abortions, only the deceptive ones. While the more limited options tend to shame women (and not be as useful), at least Google took action on the misleading nature of their ads. It makes knowing that they own every tidbit of information about me slightly palatable.



Screenshot via VICE News.

Um, Why Is No One Talking About These Kidnapped Nigerian Girls?

I generally write what I know, and that’s mostly limited to North American culture. But I had to include this deeply frightening, shocking story: Over 200 girls and young women, from ages 12 to 17, were captured from their school in Nigeria, and are being sold into marriage for $12 to Boko Haram militants. They were abducted two weeks ago, and you can read more about it on VICE News. It’s suspected that the girls have been taken across the border, to Cameroon and Chad, but those reports have not been verified.

How about those governments take up the cause and verify them?

Reportedly, it’s going to take international assistance to retrieve the stolen women and girls, according to a federal senator for Borno, in northeastern Nigeria. Okay, fine, but when? Is it going to be before they’ve all been married off to and impregnated by their captors? Like Canada’s failure to conduct a proper inquiry into its missing and murdered Indigenous women, this is an absolutely shameful situation, and the parents of those who are missing are duly outraged. In the words of one father to Agence France-Presse:“May God curse every one of those who has failed to free our girls.”

Mainstream media outlets need to spend less time trying to crawl up Kim Kardashian’s ass and more on reporting—and helping to end—dreadful stories like these.

@sarratch

This week was at least ten times weirder than last week. Maybe even 15. Let’s GIF about it.

GIFs by Daniel Stuckey

How in the fucking hell is this beef ball still the mayor of Toronto? The authorities set up a sting to catch Marion Barry smoking crack with a hooker. This guy smokes it with his sister in her basement, like they’re eating a Meals on Wheels Thanksgiving, while beating up his former bagman and shouting the N-word in Jamaican patois.

A terrible man named Donald Sterling, whose face looks like the neck of lizard, happens to own the Los Angeles Clippers. He also happened to be banned for life from the NBA on Tuesday, following the release of a covertly recorded argument with his girlfriend in which he told her not to bring black people to his basketball games, ESPECIALLY not Magic Johnson. It also seems he didn't realize that his girlfriend was half black. Can’t wait until this asshole dies of asshole cancer.

Unlike Donald Sterling, South Korean Prime Minister Jung Hong-won, knew when to call it quits. He resigned earlier this week among the controversy surrounding his government’s handling of the Sewol shipwreck, which resulted in almost 300 deaths. But don’t blame it on their “we do everything the boss says” mentality, because that’s not only untrue—it’s racist. Don’t make us start calling you Donald Sterling, please. 

Some other fucking asshole that we’re pretty sure isn't Donald Sterling hacked into a family’s baby monitor and began shouting obscenities at the poor newborn. If anyone happens to know who this person is, email his or her contact information to editor@vice.com. We will kidnap him and force him to wear one of the baby’s shitty diapers as a mask for a month.

Yet another train carrying millions of gallons of crude oil derailed and caused a massive explosion, this time in Lynchburg, Virginia, on April 30. According to Bloomberg Business Week, we are now shipping 900 percent more crude oil via rail than in 2008. This is because it comes from a fairly remote region in North Dakota where they rape the earth to ensure that there are at least 300 gas stations within a five-mile radius at all times. Man, the apocalypse can be fun when you prepare for it so far ahead. 

Stalwart believers in capital punishment got a wake-up call this week, when a prisoner convulsed in severe pain for almost 45 minutes after being administered a lethal-injection cocktail that, putting it politely, “malfunctioned.” This is because Europe, where we used to get our murder drugs, will no longer sell them to the US. This has caused a re-examination as to whether it really is cheaper to keep an inmate behind bars than to execute him. 

The peace talks transpiring between Israel and Palestine failed to meet their deadline. So we interviewed God about it to get his take.    

The movie Mean Girls turned ten. Lindsay Lohan’s liver turned 83. 

Also, we were very thankful for the safe return of VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky. Go here to learn all about what happened while he was in the hands of the dingus pro-Russia Ukrainians who kidnapped him.

A Canadian town is living in fear that a nearby dead whale will explode any second. Not much more to say other than we wrote an article about exactly what they should do once it’s time to bury it. Now, go get drunk please.

Here's last week in GIFs.

Follow Rocco Castoro and Daniel Stuckey on Twitter.

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of one to RACIST, with “one” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

–Take away a man's pride, his reputation, $2.5 million, and his basketball team (and give him cancer), but for the love of God, don't take away his prostitutes! Unfortunately for wealthy bigot Donald Sterling, that's exactly what happened to him this week. The NBA banned him for life, fined him the maximum amount possible, and began the process of forcing him to sell the Los Angeles Clippers. As of Wednesday, he is now also banned from the Bunny Ranch, a world-famous legal brothel near Carson City, Nevada. To Donald Sterling, I say...

Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof told the Huffington Post, "At any given time, 20 to 23 percent of the prostitutes here are African American. And they're smoking hot. Some of them were crying this morning, so we're doing this for them as well. We don't need racists or bigots at the Bunny Ranch." Say what you want about basketball players, Donald Sterling, but don't let me catch you making hot chocolate princesses cry! I will fuck you up, man! Hof recently banned the cast of Duck Dynasty as well, due to their stance on marriage equality. He also banned quarterback Michael Vick, just so you know that he's not just banning white people. When it comes to banning people from his brothel, Dennis Hof doesn't see color. 

Let me just note here that in his statement to the Huffington Post, Hof not only forcefully declared himself to be a tireless fighter for equality but also slyly snuck in that he has a stable full of sexy black ladies at his "disposal." You'd almost think that he was using this controversy to promote his business. I'll give this particular story a 2, since this isn't "This Week in Clever Marketing Schemes."

–Donald Sterling and a few black sex workers are not the only ones to suffer from the existence of Donald Sterling. The head of the LA chapter of the NAACP, Leon Jenkins, resigned from his position due to his questionable connection to Sterling. The LA NAACP had already given him an award in 2009, and was about to give him yet another one until it was revealed that he probably smears poop on his trophy and scribbled "Coon" on the door of their office's bathroom stall. Part of me thinks that Leon Jenkins just kept Donald Sterling around so that he could proudly state that he has "a white friend" at cocktail parties, but that's just idle speculation. 5

–The LA NAACP's relationship with Donald Sterling was also troubling for an entirely different reason, according to Utah State Representative David Lifferth, who tweeted the above.

Lifferth clarified his tweet, by saying, "Yes, any group that tries to advance specific people based on their race is by definition racist, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Not only is that a pretty wide generalization that could apply to groups as varied as the Ku Klux Klan and the Scottish Scholarship Fund of New Hampshire, but it's also not the first time Lifferth has said something questionable.

The Tribune also reported that in the past, Lifferth has referred to gay rights activists as the "Gaystapo." After he realized there was no way he could spin NAACP statement without coming off like the Grand Marshall of the 2015 White Man March, Lifferth backed off, apologized, and said his tweet was a "joke," which he deleted. "The NCAAP [sic] is not a racist organization." He gets one letter wrong in that sentence, and it makes his apology funnier than the joke he was apologizing for.

Probably should proofread your apologies from now on, David. I'm sure you'll be making many more in the future. 7

The Five Best Donald Sterling Tweets That Feature the Word "Nigger":

Donald Sterling is a nigger. Since a "nigger" is someone who is ignorant, right.?

— Fresco Mills (@frescomills) April 26, 2014

Donald Sterling can call me a nigger all he wants if he paying me 8 million a year.

— (@iPOSTBADTWEETS) April 27, 2014

Breaking news: Donald Sterling really fired Vinny Del Negro because he hated his last name and called him Del Nigger when upset...

— E.F.Cuttin™ (@EFCuttin) April 27, 2014

They banned Donald Sterling for life for being Racist... Can they ban all the white kids on xbox that call me a nigger for life too?

— ㅤㅤㅤㅤ (@EcksOhh) April 29, 2014

I'll go Donald Sterling on that nigger if he gets close to my gf again!

— Dillon Anthony (@14Dillon) April 30, 2014

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On May 1, International Workers' Day, pro-Russian protesters marched through central Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, calling for a referendum on the region's future. Some were calling for the area to join Russia, while others favored becoming a federal republic inside Ukraine—but all wanted to separate from the interim government installed after the Euromaidan revolution.

About 3,000 protesters gathered in Lenin Square before marching on to lay flowers at a First World War memorial. The protesters chanted in support of the referendum planned for May 11 and denounced the government in Kiev as a "fascist junta" while waving Stalin flags. The crowd wasn't entirely friendly: One journalist was accused of being a "provocateur" and bundled into a car and driven away by protesters wearing body armor, his destination unknown.

The march moved on to a police station, where they were able to negotiate installing the flag of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk, before speakers called on the protesters to take over the nearby prosecutor's office.

Outside the office, around 60 cops in riot gear stood together to protect the entrance. The protesters called for the prosecutor to come and meet them, but after five minutes everyone started shoving one another and things escalated. Stones were thrown, and the police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Eventually the police were forced back by the onslaught, and there was a brief lull while the wounded were removed from the scene and captured police were set free.

The crowd then moved to the back of the building, where about 100 cops were gathered. The protesters hopped the fences and broke the gate down, surrounding the police and eventually forcing them to surrender. The cops handed over their shields, helmets, and batons before being led out through the crowds, getting kicked and spat on as they went.

The day before, acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov said his government were "helpless" in dealing with the security situation in Eastern Ukraine. As I watched what happened in Donetsk, it was hard to disagree. The police clearly had little fight in them, and they're probably feeling pretty embarrassed after being overpowered. Today, the Ukrainian government launched an operation to take the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk, and two of their army helicopters were shot down by pro-Russian separatists. The Kiev government's hold on the east of the country is getting more and more tenuous.

Follow Henry Langston on Twitter.

In what must be the greatest punchline to the end of a four-year joke, Jón Gnarr's satirical and controversial reign as as the mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland, has been marked with excellence, success, and even empathy. 

In 2010, Gnarr—a cross-dressing poet, punk rocker, comedian, and self-described anarchist—became mayor of Reykjavik, a city of 120,000 people (in a country of only 320,000) that was on the verge of bankruptcy. He led his satirical political party, the "Best Party,” to 34.7 percent of the vote and control of the city council. They had no idea what they were doing. 

The victory signaled a strong critique of the incumbent officials after the 2008 financial crisis. Their platform promised free towels in all swimming pools and a polar bear for the Reykjavik Zoo. He even declared that he wouldn't work with anyone that hadn't watched the entire series of HBO's The Wire.

I sat down with the boundlessly creative and extremely compassionate Gnarr 47 days before the end of his term to reflect on why getting in over your head can be good, the relevance of "me" in political service, politics as a medium of satire, The Matrix, Bruce Lee, and the coincidental inevitability of Texas. 

VICE: What is it you're looking to do now that you've chosen not to run for a second term?
Jón Gnarr: People say that they don't believe in coincidence. I do believe in coincidence. I don't believe in God. So I have this thing with coincidences; I'm fascinated by them. I'm not really sure if I have a free will, and I don't know if my brain has made any decision about what he's going to be making me do next. But I have this strange hunch—which is very weird—that he's taking me to Texas. I've never been there. Texas, in my mind, is a bit like Mordor or something. [Laughs]

You were quoted in a 2010 New York Times profile as feeling like you were a character in a Samuel Beckett play, having an "intense moral obligation towards something you don't understand.” Do you feel any of those impulses towards Texas?
No, I don't know. It's just a series of coincidences. I'm a writer, and my books are getting translated. I have a publisher in the States, in Texas, and I have a very good friend who's a professor at Rice University. One thing that surprised me at the start of the Best Party was the international attention it caught.

So I started expressing myself in English on Facebook. And one of the first people who started following me was an attorney in Texas. It seemed so absurd that this attorney in Texas was following my story. I noticed him. I noticed his comments. And sometimes I replied because his comments were insightful and intelligent.

Then, two years ago, I was on an official trip to the Faroe Islands. I had never been there before. Suddenly, somebody called "Mayor Gnarr!" or [funny Texan accent] "Gnnnnaaarrrrrr.” "Mayor Gnarr!" It's this guy! And he didn't know I was in the Faroe Islands, and he's never been to Iceland. He said, "We have to get you to Texas. When you come to Texas we'll have to buy you a cowboy hat.”

So it's like all roads lead to Texas? Really?

A Jón Gnarr doll, leaning on wisdom

Has living intuitively by being an anarchist and getting into office offered you a more well-rounded perspective that other people may not have had?
Yes, absolutely. People assume, and people have their opinions.  To me, no man is my enemy. I have no enemies, but I have many people who see me as an enemy, or a threat. It was kind of like in the scene [in The Matrix] with Neo and Morpheus with the pills. Its was kind of like I took the red pill, and I have sometimes thought I should have taken the blue pill. Because I had to get out of my comfort zone. I like to think of myself as this wanderer and a hobo, kind of. I just wander. When I get tired or bored, I just leave. But here I was kind of stuck. It came with all this responsibility, and the financial situation of the city was so serious. We said in the beginning before the elections that if it sucks, [the Best Party] will just leave. But then we realized, we can't leave.

Sarah Palin left Alaska.
[Laughs] Sarah Palin left. No, but I mean, it was just too much responsibility. I wouldn't have a care in the world if I didn't have children. Children bring responsibility, and they fuck everything up. You're a dedicated anarchist, anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist Noam Chomsky type, and now you're in Toys"R"Us all the time. You know, "Can we go to McDonald's? Can we please go to McDonald's?" So you go there.

You saw that sort of seriousness, that obligation you get from having a child in this situation?
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I'm not sure if I believe in free will. To the greatest extent, I see myself as more or less a biological machine mostly following instincts and desires. On the other hand there is some kind of collective responsibility—like being part of a community.

I was born in Iceland, and I speak the language. I know my way around the city, and by definition I'm Icelandic. In my opinion this country—for most of my life—has rejected me as a person with any value. But still I felt an obligation and a responsibility towards the city. I was a pawn, or maybe more than a pawn—like a knight on a chessboard and I had to finish the game. We had to finish it. We cannot just leave.

I demanded that I wouldn't work with anyone who hadn't watched all episodes of The Wire. And it was just like, “Will they take that seriously? Will they watch it, and prepare themselves for Q and A?”

Just the idea of empathy, morality, and fun playing an essential role in politics just as notions alone seem to me to be satirical when bringing them into politics. Just the idea of being earnestly and candidly empathetic, moral, and fun is enough.

I don't think I can explain it. I don't think I have and explanation. Other than I just do what I do. It's kind of like an intervention into a dysfunctional situation. In a way, I wanted to help sort everything out. So I've really tried hard to teach non-violent communication. And I have used many of the things I have done for human right from my own fulfillment and amusement. And it has not been difficult for me. It's been more of a release.

So, do you think that approach is enough?
For me?

Yeah.
Yes. The thing is, I like people. I just really like them. [Laughs] People are a bit like computers. Like a computer geek loves computers, I really love people. If there's something wrong with people and they're threatening me, there's probably something wrong with the hardware in them, or they have a virus or something.

It was an experiment to me. Can you step into a hostile environment? I'm really inspired by Bruce Lee. I love the man, his story, and how he became. He stepped into a very hostile environment as an Asian in America at the time—not just [with white people] but also in the Chinese community. They accused him of teaching kung fu to the non-Chinese, and he was looked down on in many ways. But he managed to prove himself, and he became a superstar.

His honor, the mayor, with Yoko Ono

It's almost like the measure of the challenge dictates the amount of success that can be achieved.
Yeah, maybe. I've mostly been around people who agree with me most of my life. We usually agree on everything. We have similar values and everything. For me, it was a challenge to step into a completely different world where I knew I'd be met with hostility. I didn't know how much hostility. I underestimated it. I didn't realize they could be so brutal.

It's easy being a pacifist in Iceland. [Laughs] It's very easy being an anarchist. Someone said an anarchist is someone who criticizes society from the security of his own home. And my view is, Why can't we all just get along?

How do you reconcile that when in the political sphere there are people whose entire philosophy is to be in conflict? Is that conflict the way to resolution? How do you approach a person like that?
I've used humor a lot and played down my intelligence because it’s easy to convince people that you are stupider and less informed than they are in some matters. So I've used humor a lot. When I'm really frustrated and confused I play out my confusion, and that has been very interesting, because the whole theory of politics and political debate is logical, so when you manage to manipulate the logic it becomes illogical. And it doesn't need much—just a twist and suddenly logic is illogical because people think they are logical but they're not.

Sometimes I get really angry at people because they're rude or just violent towards me or somebody else. And I have thoughts like, Who the fuck do you think you are? You're nothing but a used car salesman judging me. I have these thoughts, but I know that if I put them into words, it will lead in a direction I don't want to go. So I experiment with something else. I experiment with empathy and humility. It's part of trying to understand humans and myself in relation to other humans.

I've learned a lot about language and how to use it, because so much depends on language. Like, for instance, we had one of the city council minority members, one of the conservatives who are quite liberal here but also strict on Christian values— one of the representatives mentioned me in a speech, saying that I was doing a bad job as a mayor and that the city had a clown for a mayor and that we should all be ashamed of ourselves.

Of course, I was angry, so I went up and I said, "Yeah, yeah, very interesting ideas that you expressed, and especially your ideas about me. What I found most interesting was what you said about me. Mostly because I am me. I didn't hear much of the other things you mentioned. But I must say, I don't agree with you. I think I'm a great mayor. I don't think we should be ashamed. I think we should be proud. I think we should be proud of me. I am proud of me."

So it's abstract. And like saying that to his face. "I like me. There are not many of me. There is only one of me. And I'm stuck with me. So I have to like me. If you don't like me there isn't much I can do about it. If you don't like me is there something you'd like me to change about me?" I asked directly, "Do you want me to change me? And if so can I do the same to you? Would you be willing, for this experiment that we're doing, to change yourself into something I would come up with?" But now we're actually discussing self. And I have unlimited time [laughs], and I can talk for hours and hours. So they have learned to avoid mentioning me [laughs].

Gnarr with the author

I don't think you could be an American politician.
[Laughs] No, no, no but the financial situation of Reykjavik when we got elected was equivalent to Detroit's. Reykjavik could have easily gone into bankruptcy. In this microcommunity, there's one [major] city, so we can't afford to have our only city…

Be Detroit.
Exactly. We cannot afford it. That's where responsibility kicked in. I try to make the debate philosophical, because what people believe is logical is oftentimes not. I'll hear stuff like, "We will never…" So what is never? It is eternity. We're here in the city council, and we're discussing eternity. So what is eternity? For many people, it's a place or situation with endless time. To others, it’s a state where time does not exist. Now we're talking time. We're almost talking Einstein here. This is how I keep myself alive in the city council debates [Laughs].

There really is a level of absurdity to the way people frame these debates.
“It's never gonna happen.” Yeah, wow, that's amazing. How do you know that? It's not that complicated. Some of it has value, and some of it is just bullshit. I consider myself to be an atheist. But I have nothing against religion, unless it gets out of hand. Like if you compare religion to sex. Sex is probably one the few reasons we are alive. It's actually the main reason why we are alive.

It’s certainly why we're alive.
But that doesn't mean I approve of rape.

Right. Religion can be its own thing, but when it crosses a line, and becomes abhorrent or makes something abhorrent, is when you'd have a problem with it.
For instance, there's a heated debate now on religion because the first mosque is being built. I noticed it's mostly fundamentalist Christian people who are opposed to the mosque. They have a certain image of Islam, but some of them can't distinguish between Muhammad and Allah.

It's easy to be confused about something when you know nothing about it.
That's actually the best way to confuse things. So I had this thought yesterday: What am I gonna do once I'm out of office? Will I stay here? Do I have an obligation? Should I travel the world? I have an eight-year-old son who loves to travel. He's obsessed with amphibians and lizards. They're banned here because it's an island. I have no idea what I'm gonna do.

But that brings us back to the woman in the bathroom and when you had no idea what you were going to do four years ago.
Yeah. You know I'm libertarian.

You're sounding like a Texan.
Yeah, I'm going to be riding a horse in Southfork. That's something I think is very important.

James Shaughnessy is a Los Angeles–based commercial and documentary filmmaker. His last feature, Technopolis Now—a look at the internet, the Singularity, and the rise of hactivist culture—was released in 2012.

Photos by Jake Lewis, viideo by John Lubbock

Yesterday was May Day, and some London students had planned to celebrate by holding a march on their campus for tons of people whose lives are miserable thanks to the government. It was advertised as "a carnival for everyone: the precarious, the low-paid, the zero-houred, the part-time, the temporary, the interned, the unemployed, the workfared, the sacked, the redundant, the indebted."

One person who wasn't welcome, however, was David Willetts, the universities minister. (Don't these students understand what "everyone" means? Education standards are slipping.) In what must surely go down as an act of sabotage by his secretary, Willets, who raised tuition fees to £9,000 ($13,500), had been booked to give a speech at the university during a massive left-wing march.

That said, being made to feel unwelcome has become something of an occupational hazard for Willetts, who seems to spend his days touring the country giving talks to people who hate him, like a sad, hairless Jesus.

Sure enough, some students had turned up before the main march to picket Willetts's speech. I guess you could argue that it’s not very scholarly to try to disrupt a lecture. But then the talk was titled, “New Opportunities for Science Capital,” which sounds both amazingly sinister and unbearably boring.

When they got bored of singing nasty songs, some students decided they'd try to force their way into the building. Which resulted in the situation you can see above.

One of the security guards, in between all the shoving, grimacing, and pleading with people to "just chill," tried to level with the protesters, saying, “I’m going to be a student in September. You’re definitely right in what you’re doing. But I need to stand here because that’s my job.”

After a while, the security guards pushed everybody out. We later heard that some police showed up with some Tasers, but by that point we'd already reached the main march, where this samba band was laying down some pretty riotous beats.

Not all that many people were showing up, perhaps because rain and samba is a shitty combination. But I did see David Graeber, the anthropologist, anarchist, author, and activist. I asked him about the carnival's stated aim of building links between students and more traditionally working-class people who'd also been buggered by austerity.

"There seems to be a major change in class alliances," he said. "Partly because both the working poor and students are being caught in debt. Also, the line between workers and students is getting thinner and thinner, because students work. People get caught in a sort of trap where they’re part-time workers and part-time students for a very long time."

As if to prove his point, the next guy I talked to was a part-time philosophy student named Joe, who "never really leaves work" because, when he's not working on his dissertation, he's working his part-time job. "In these low-paid jobs you’re not just expected to turn up; you’re expected to enjoy it and to care thoroughly about the customer experience, the philosophy of the business. It’s not just a job; your job is your life," he told me.

"In many ways, I don’t have any prospects," he said, staring balefully into the rain. It was pretty miserable, and I could see his point, though I did wonder if coffee shops should employ philosophy students if they're going to analyze the meaning of saying "please" and "thank you" to customers quite so much.

Just when I thought the wet day was getting kind of dry, someone came running around the corner, screaming, "Willetts's car! They've got Willetts's car!"

I followed as he ran off again and sure enough, a group of students had positioned themselves in front of the universities minister's Jaguar, refusing to let it budge without running them over. Willetts had presumably thought that his annoying day of getting heckled by students was over, but the worst was yet to come.

Students blocked the car, singing, “Fuck off, Willetts! Fuck off, Willetts!” even though fucking off was precisely what he was trying to do, and exactly what the students were preventing him from doing.

Willetts sat tight, pretending to read some documents, as if you can genuinely concentrate on documents when dozens of people are surrounding your car, shouting at you that you're a dick.

I tried to grab Willetts for an interview, to ask him how it felt to be surrounded by people who hate him, or maybe shoot the shit about new opportunities for science capital, but for some reason he didn't fancy a chat. I whipped out my press card like I was in the FBI, but the security guards were having none of it.

More breathless students ran around the corner to join in with the car-kettling, but just after they did, this happened: 

And then everything got very chaotic.

Tons of riot vans showed up, spilling cops into the street. As you'd expect, they weren't too happy about the situation and attempted to clear the road.

Each time the police tried to push the students back, they'd simply retreat for a while before rejoining the mass. The police were basically herding cats, and the fact that many of these cats were anarchists probably didn't make their jobs any easier.

Meanwhile, the samba band was still there, providing a disorientating soundtrack to the shoving match.

The heavens opened. By now, the police were managing to clear enough room for Willetts to momentarily make headway, but at no point were they able to clear the road ahead for long enough that he could speed off home for several bottles of wine, some dinner, and a couple of sleeping pills.

What resulted was a bizarre, slow-moving convoy of riot vans, samba drummers, and people violently shoving one another over in the road. The protesters had got the carnival they wanted, but with the added bonus that David Willetts's car was the centrepiece of it: a despised float at the heart of the Mardi Gras.

Eventually, though, the police cleared enough room for Willetts to escape.

It wasn't quite the May Day riot party I'd hoped for, probably because the weather was crappy and it's exam season.

Still, I definitely had more fun than David Willetts.

Follow Simon Childs and Jake Lewis on Twitter.

The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week Ukraine reinstates military conscription and expels Russia's military attaché on suspicion of spying, the Danish government suspends adoptions from Nigeria, hundreds of Africans trying to rush the Spanish border clash with border police, and Dutch police arrest Greenpeace activists trying to stop delivery of the world's first shipment of Arctic oil.

All photos via the author.
What’s a city to do when it turns out the crown jewel of a beautiful waterfront park is lying on top of a toxic mess that’s bubbling up from underground to menace locals and visitors alike?

That’s the question dogging Sarnia’s city council as it prepares to decide on Monday how to restore sections of Centennial Park, the city’s waterfront promenade along the St. Clair River, which was featured in the VICE documentary about the Chemical Valley last year. Centennial Park has been closed to the public for the last year due to the discovery of toxic chemicals—a legacy left from decades of indiscriminate dumping.             

City workers first knew they had trouble on their hands when a “black, bubbling goo” was found oozing up in the park in June 2012, city engineer Andre Morin told about 50 people at a public information meeting earlier this month. No, they hadn’t found an oil well; “black gold” or “Texas tea” (attention fans of silly ‘60s sitcoms!). It was a nasty brew of materials dating from those same 1960s, or even earlier.  Some of the mess could even date back to the Depression era.                       

It took a fair bit of historical detective work to find the sources of the sludge, Morin says. It turns out just about the entire park is land reclaimed from the river thanks to the dumping of “fill” material by nearby industries, possibly including a 19th century coal gas plant, an insulation maker and a pesticide plant.   While the industry that boomed during those years in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley may not have made everyone here a millionaire like Old Jed in the Beverly Hillbillies, it was the foundation of the city’s prosperity. Now the nasty underside of the boom years is returning to bite the city where it counts—its public spaces.

Canadians, both in industry and in their homes, were not exactly particular about where they got rid of their problems in earlier times, as seen by the results of “test holes” dug throughout the park. Not only did material from the holes reveal toxics from industrial sources, including asbestos, lead, a number of carcinogenic hydrocarbons and metals, but it even found evidence of household garbage, Morin explained. “It looks like everybody contributed to this,” he added.

What sealed the deal was the asbestos. As soon as the tests turned up traces of the deadly fibres—presto—fences went up almost overnight in May 2013, blocking off the fields that have hosted the wildly popular Bayfest that’s drawn thousands of rock fans to Sarnia each July. A popular childrens’ playground is also cut off. The fences still loom over dog-walkers, stroller-pushing parents, joggers, and cyclists on the scenic path around Sarnia Bay.

Council will have trouble trying to reconcile differing opinions among its citizens about how to deal with the problem. Opinions voiced at the recent open meeting ranged from wanting to do nothing and re-open the park, to those questioning if even the most complicated measures being considered would be enough for public protection.

Sarnians really want council to save money and leave the park the way it is, says retired lawyer Paul Beaudet. While the report prepared for Sarnia council by Golder Assoc. outlines a number of remediation measures, after spending over 10 hours reading the report, Beaudet feels the experts are  really telling Council they can just conduct “risk assessment“ rather than cover areas of the park with new soiI. The consultant can’t say that directly, as it would “expose them to very considerable liability,” but the idea is there between the lines, he said during the meeting. He points to the fact tests found only trace amounts of asbestos in the soil, and no air sampling was done to find out if the asbestos is breaking loose. “I’ve not found a single person who thinks anything should be done,” Beaudet told this VICE reporter.



The waterfront.
In spite of his reading and research, Beaudet  hasn’t found a sympathetic ear with city engineer Morin. “Trace asbestos is not safe. It’s a risk (to citizens) and a liability (to the city government),” he told Beaudet, as the mayor and several councilors listened from the audience. The area’s chief medical official and Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment also agree something must be done, he said.

Asbestos may be a touchy word for most folk in the developed world, but it has particular poignancy in Sarnia. Just ask Margaret Buist and her friends who filled up part of a row at the public meeting. All four lost their husbands to either lung cancer or mesothelioma, a cancer of the tissues around the lungs that has long been linked to asbestos exposure. The material was used in the Chemical Valley until the early 1980s as an insulator. A few years later, occupational health advocates started noticing this especially ugly cancer was killing off industrial retirees in the area at an alarming rate; a rate tabulated at between 4 and 6 times the provincial average. Some victims would endure dozens of radiation treatments, lose their teeth, and suffer tumours on their faces before the inevitable. Over 600 cases turned up in this city of 74,000 between 1999 and 2007, an epidemic delayed until later in their lives due to the long latency period of the disease.

Sarnia’s asbestos didn’t just stay inside the walls of local industry either. The fibres have been known to stick to workers’ clothing making their family members sick at home, and the lighter-than-feathers strands may have blown around Sarnia in years past coming to rest in Centennial Park. Paul Beaudet remembers a business known as Holmes Insulation was once operating next to the park, making an asbestos-based product that was heated for drying, forcing the air from drying ovens up stacks and into the open air. Are you wincing yet? This reporter’s children, growing up in Sarnia, still remember the man down the street “with no nose.”

Some families of mesothelioma victims started a support group called “Victims of Chemical Valley,” the group that Margaret and her friends belong to. She remembers the group holding their annual memorial service for workers who died on, or because of, their work a year ago by their memorial in Centennial Park, and the following day the fences went up around the area. The women felt “pretty awful” that the city workers let them in the area when they knew it was to be cordoned off as unsafe. The land under and by the memorial is one of the most contaminated zones, she told VICE at the meeting. “Is that ironic?” she asks, needing no answer.

Plans for fixing the park don’t include excavating contaminated areas, says Mayor Mike Bradley, a possibility some residents worry would have asbestos wafting around the city. “The plans call for capping areas with soil or a hard (concrete) cap,” he explains. It will probably take 2-3 years more before the park is re-opened, Bradley tells VICE.   

Yet the capping plans may be a source of controversy even without digging. Environmental activist Zak Nicholls, quietly attending the public meeting, wondered if the city’s plans are adequate to reassure the public. The city, provincial environment ministry, and the consultant have all agreed to use 0.5 m of soil to cover affected areas instead of the original recommendation for a full metre. “Will these materials re-emerge in 10 years?” he questions. “When this is all said and done, and millions of dollars are spent, are people going to trust the remediation?  Are people actually going to use this park?” asks Nicholls.

The remedial work could cost up to $8 million, a cost that helps convince City Councillor David Boushy to side with Sarnians who want to do as little, and spend as little, as possible. “We just need to cover the most important spots, he says, explaining the city doesn’t have the 8 million for what he calls “the Cadillac plan.”

For Mayor Bradley, the middle way is best. “We’ve had 20,000 people a night through this area,” during Bayfest before, and taking the chance those 40,000 feet could trample the earth enough to put toxic materials into the air is “too big a risk to take,” he says.

The hundred-year mark keeps cropping up around this issue like the long grass and weeds that have flourished in the fenced off areas. While the park opened for Canada’s centennial in 1967, this year marks Sarnia’s own Centennial. In 1914, on the eve of World War I, the oil town on the periphery of southern Ontario was first declared a city. 

Plans for a Centennial legacy project, a multi-purpose centre right in the middle of the park, have been put on hold because of the contamination. Covering dangerous spots in the park are only part of the plans. If Council approves the full plan, new pathways, lighting, and an artificial turf sports field, along with the new building, will sprout instead of weeds and black goo.   

Some even dare to imagine Sarnia could eventually boast a world-class waterfront. A local architect proposed at the recent public meeting that city council hold a competition for architects from around the globe to re-design the area and the legacy project. 

Who would have thought it? Sarnia, the city that’s spawned one bad-news pollution story after another, could end up with a sparkling jewel of a waterfront; a creature rising, phoenix-like, from the toxic ashes and cinders, burned and buried long ago, in a new, bolder, and brighter plumage. Wouldn’t that be great?