A team of local eccentrics have decided to take it upon themselves to help the citizens of Montreal, all the while donning the capes and cowls of superhero culture. Brigitte Noël spends the night with the spandex-laden crusaders as they roam the streets and heal the homeless.
VICE, QC, is our newest series—a look at the most underreported, unexpected, and strange stories coming out of the wonderful land of Quebec.
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Photo via Flickr user DiddyOh
It starts off with what seems like a simple crime, if you can even call these things "crimes" with a straight face. Riding a bike on the sidewalk. Jumping a turnstile to avoid paying a subway fare. Putting a sticker on a scaffold. Even jaywalking. The idea behind broken windows policing is to crack down on these small offenses—hand out summonses, or handcuff the criminals—and, by doing so, prevent the larger crimes. Fix the broken window in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood will know disorder is not tolerated.
Makes sense, right?
This theory of law enforcement has infiltrated police departments across the country. It is the heart of policing in America, and depending on who you talk to, broken windows has either led to a nationwide decline in crime or seriously skewed consequences.
But when you see broken windows actually applied in real life, it's even worse.
In a 24-page report entitled "That's How They Get You: New Yorkers' Encounters With 'Broken Windows' Policing," released by the Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) on Thursday, detailed vignettes—117 in total—flesh out what police reform advocates have described as a failed system. It's a system that ensnares blacks and Latinos drastically more than whites, and, as PROP founder Bob Gangi describes it, "verges on becoming a black comedy."
These are arrests that you'd expect to find watching reruns of Reno 911!, not the streets of New York City.
Take, for example, the African-American man who was arrested because he used his unlimited MetroCard to swipe in himself and his wife together. Or the black woman who was ticketed for being in a Brooklyn park past dusk, even though it was 8:49 PM and the park closes at nine (the cop allegedly stalled her for 11 minutes). Even more bizarre is the African-American man, who, after returning to his childhood home at a project housing unit in the Bronx, was arrested for trespassing in front of his own relatives. He even had the address of the building tattooed onto his forearm, but that didn't matter—he spent the night in jail.
Related: Watch our documentary "The War on Kids"
Throughout my reporting on policing practices and criminal justice, I've come across subjects of broken windows policing all too often. During the notorious NYPD slowdown, when broken windows was essentially put on hold for a couple weeks, I met individuals who were accustomed to getting summonses for loitering and selling loose cigarettes—the offenses Eric Garner's death is now synonymous with. Along with subway panhandlers and homeless men, these folks enjoyed the vacation from aggressive policing.
When I spent 16 hours in Manhattan Criminal Court, I met kids who were stuck in arraignment chambers underground for hours on end because they were stopped, frisked, and found with a small amount of weed on them. All of that time and effort, just to end up paying a $75 ticket.
On Motherboard: The New Sound of Crowd Control.
Of course, race is the most blatant thread that ties these stories together. A broad majority of the subjects I've spoken with, and most of those in the PROP report, were either African American or Latino. During the slowdown, a black writer for the New Republicwondered, "Maybe this is a small taste of what it feels like to be white." As one reporter pointed out to me in Manhattan Criminal Court, "Did you know you can get arrested for being black now?"
In a number of the cases, the charges were immediately dismissed later in court, leaving the accused with just a few hours of jail time. But according to the PROP report, others were not as lucky. There are undocumented workers who were deported from the country because of an open container charge, and others who missed work or lost money as a result. Loss of child custody, physical abuse, parole—this is brutal stuff.
"We had one young Latina girl who started to cry when describing her arrest," Gangi, the author of the report, told me. "It shows how upset they are—how unjust they see this as." He added that, on days of petitioning, PROP volunteers would ask individuals why they were given a summonses, and they responded with one word: "Latino."
In New York, it would appear as if broken windows is here to stay. The police commissioner, William J. Bratton, was one of its Founding Fathers, and the mayor, Bill de Blasio, has made it clear that he believes it's the best method for fighting crime. For his support, the mayor has earned criticism from his progressive allies, particularly City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
In recent weeks, though, the needle has begun to shift a bit.
Facing demands for decriminalization from the City Council, led by Mark-Viverito, Bratton seems open to refining his longtime theory, and has already agreed to a softer stance on pot. Although he still staunchly defends low-level arrests, Bratton has hinted at a compromise: Rather than lessening the punishment for, say, public urination or riding a bike on the sidewalk, a police officer could issue a written warning to an individual committing that kind of offense, if it's only their first one. (Unfortunately, many New Yorkers have already been caught up in this mess, which is how they end up in probationary purgatory.)
"None of this means we can't explore alternatives to misdemeanor arrests," Bratton said recently, after connecting his theory to New York's precipitous crime drop in recent decades. "We can and we are doing so. We can be more considered and more considerate. We can be more respectful and more respected—and we will be."
Still, Mark-Viverito has stressed the need for summons reforms, and, as of now, the Commissioner and the Council remain in the thick of negotiation. However, by the looks of it, reforming broken windows is not only worth it to end these countless stories of senseless arrests, but also, to mend a serious credibility gap between the cops and thousands of New Yorkers.
While interviewing people, Gangi said the reactions his group received "ranged from bemused to really angry"; some individuals shrugged off their offenses as trivial commonalities, while others remained hopeless that policing would ever change, "They had no belief that cops could serve a benign or useful purpose," he told me.
"We talked to a group of high school kids, all black and Latino, and each one of them had a story," Gangi continued. "Either it was a summons for them, or a friend of theirs. They are keenly aware that this is a reality of their everyday life. A common, universal experience."
Follow John Surico on Twitter.
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An artist's impression of the author trying to work out how to land a plane
In movies, normal people are often put in situations where they have to land a plane. Maybe the pilot gets shot, has a heart attack, or is thrown overboard by terrorists who are eventually subdued, but not before they incapacitate everyone with aviation experience. But what if that all happens in real life? What happens next?
Pilots are generally sturdy men and women who are capable of handling a complex machine and have an understanding of physics. I am none of those things, but I was interested to see if the movies were overstating my abilities to step up in a crisis.
I called up a Broome-based pilot who captains charter flights over some of Australia's most remote areas. If you ever did find yourself jumping blindly into an unfamiliar cockpit, it'd likely be in a small, six-seater plane like his, as anything bigger generally has automatic controls and, even better, a second pilot.
(My pilot friend asked to remain anonymous, as he didn't want to be held responsible if someone actually ran with the following advice—we're just talking about a hypothetical situation for purely entertainment purposes.)
VICE: In movies, there are often situations
where people need to land a plane. Without knowing much about me, do you think
I could do it? Full disclosure: I can't drive a car.
My pilot friend: Well, it depends where you're going. If
you're coming into somewhere like Broome you'd have the support of air traffic
control and they can always get someone on the radio who's competent with an
aircraft.
OK, so they'd talk me through it. Have you
ever heard of this happening?
People have felt a ill, but no one has been
incapacitated. Although people have been in the situation where they felt they
couldn't proceed so they've returned and we've swapped pilots.
The medical processes are pretty strenuous—they investigate anything that's wrong with you. If you told them you were having fainting spells they'd put a restriction on your license.
Say everyone gets food poisoning except me,
what general skills would help me not kill everyone?
Probably being good with multitasking
skills, being able to interpret systems, hand-eye coordination, maths helps
too, and some physics so you can understand how things are working. Problem-solving and judgement skills too.
If you're pulling a normal
person into this they won't tick all those boxes.
How about critical thinking? You need to be
able to weigh up the solutions like, "OK, the weather is really bad here,
where am I going to go?"
I could manage that. So I find myself in
the pilot seat—what do I do next? Radio someone?
Yes, get on that and see if you can get
someone. Let them know what your situation is and get them to help you out.
What would I say?
Just say, "Our pilot has been
incapacitated, this is our situation." They can give you advice from there.
Would I say "mayday" or something?
I'd probably issue a mayday because the pilot is incapacitated. We reserve that
for immediate danger, and if the pilot's incapacitated there's a danger.
What if the radio is broken?
Well, you're not completely stuffed. If
you're close to the airstrip you can certainly make a go for it. Arrive
overhead and start descending. This is the time you really want to start
looking around. Find the windsock at the airport and see which way the wind is
blowing, you want to land the plane into wind to get a safer touchdown speed.
That's way too much independence for
me—could I use my mobile and ring you? Or wait, mobile phones in planes are a
no-no, right?
No, you could make a call, that's not a
problem. It's just you'd have to be on a decent service provider if you want
any sort of coverage. If you're not, you're struggling.
Tell me about the controls, could I sort of
work them out as I go?
It's quite confronting. There're knobs everywhere, all sorts of switches.
What's the most important one?
There are six important ones. An altimeter,
an airspeed indicator, an artificial horizon, directional indicator, turn
coordinator, and the vertical speed indicator. That covers most of your flying
and lets you know what the aircraft is doing in terms of its profile, speed,
and what you're doing with height.
What's the worst thing I could do?
Push the nose of the plane down and get
low. It's like going down the hill in a car and slamming your foot on the
accelerator. Being in that panic to get down is bad, before you think about
getting down just try contacting people first. Don't be in any sort of rush.
People rush and that's when they make mistakes.
So I'm not supposed to slam the nose down,
how do I land?
You want to arrive at an airstrip and put
yourself in a downward spiral, with the wind. As you pass the threshold—the
markings at the end of the landing strip—bring the first stage of the flap out.
That's the extension of the rear of the wing. That will increase the surface
area of the wing.
Then you push the nose down and bring the power back. Then keep flying along the edge of the rectangle and aim a third of the way along.
A trick is to put three fingers above of the dash and have your aiming point above those three fingers. As you cross the threshold, start bringing the nose back up a bit and it'll slow the aircraft down. Then the aircraft will touch down.
You say all that like it's really
straightforward. How important is a perfect landing?
Safety is always the big one, you have to
make sure it's completely safe first. And I think a good landing is also quite
important because a lot of passengers judge the whole flight by the landing. If
it's a bad one they go, "Well, that guy's not very skilled."
Dude, the pilot is dead. I'm a hero however
I get this bird down. So when am I out of danger?
Once you've touched down you've still got
to bring the aircraft to a complete stop. Keep the plane straight with the
pedals and bring it to a stop. The breaks are above the pedals so push those.
Then shut it down, turn off the keys, and you're safe to jump out and kiss the
ground. There'll probably be firefighters on standby to make sure everything is OK.
Do you think I could do it?
I think you could, if you get the right
assistance. If the pilot's completely gone, try to get on the radio or make a
phone call if you can and try to get any support you can. It sounds pretty easy
the way I explain it but there are so many terms and until you actually fly
it's hard to understand.
I'm not overly convinced.
A lot of the flying stuff is like patting
yourself on the head while rubbing your stomach—you have to be pretty good at
multitasking to accomplish it.
Follow Hannah on Twitter.
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Still from 'The Connection.'
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.
A couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting outside a bar in Marseille's Panier district, the old town, waiting for the daughter of the man who I'd been told was the city's "last Godfather." Before he died in his cell in Baumettes Prison in 1984, Gaëtan Zampa was so feared and respected in the south of France that even some of the police who pursued him were reluctant to actually catch him. "You don't like to put a lion in a cage," they'd say.
The subject of a new fast-paced French-Belgian crime thriller directed by Cédric Jimenez called The Connection, Zampa was the heir of his family business, which was, yep, you guessed it, the notorious heroin smuggling operation known as the French Connection.
The French Connection began life in the 1930s, when the Corsican gangsters Paul Carbone and François Spirito were looking for a way to connect the opium fields of Turkey and Lebanon with the hungry veins of America's junkies. Marseille, a busy port, provided the perfect staging ground. They would ship in morphine base, hire French chemists to process it for a couple of weeks at temporary labs in the suburbs, and then smuggle it back onboard ships bound for America.
As World War II took hold in Europe, Italian fascists began to stamp out the trade. It soon recovered, and there are those—like Noam Chomsky—who believe the CIA was involved in supporting the Corsican mafia to restart their business in exchange for breaking up French strikes and helping Allied troops.
After the war, the Corsicans were joined by gangs from Armenia and Algeria, as well as Chinese-Vietnamese networks. They were all moving heroin and various other forms of contraband across the Atlantic to New York, Montreal, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. The Armenian gangs proved themselves particularly adept at negotiating with the major wholesalers of opium and morphine base who were located in Istanbul and Gaziantep.
As Dr. Ryan Gingeras, author of Sultans of Smack: Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey, tells me over email: "To think of a French Connection as a singular network dating back to the 30s is somewhat misleading. The milieu was not a centralized group."
Related: Our documentary on heroin use in Wales, 'Swansea Love Story'
Still, business was booming for the various gangs. During the 50s, the largest gang was controlled by the Corsican Antoine Guerin, and combined the various groups were moving an average of 600 pounds of heroin each month to the United States. The Connection became famed for the purity of their product, thanks in part to the French chemist Joseph Cesari. Cesari was nicknamed "Mr. 98 percent" for his almost-pure product, a remarkable feat when his competitors rarely exceeded 70 percent.
Trade increased so much during the 60s that by the end of the decade the French Connection was moving between 40 and 44 tons per year to the States, some 80 percent of America's total heroin consumption. If you were Lou Reed, waiting for the man in New York in 1967, the dope he was about to sell you had almost certainly summered in the south of France.
The operation moved from outlaw infamy to unwanted Hollywood fame in 1971 with the release of the film The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Adapted from journalist Robin Moore's book, it tells a lightly fictionalized version of the painstaking surveillance operation carried out by two New York police officers in the lead up to the arrest of French television personality Jacques Angelvin, who had arrived in America with a 1960 Buick Invicta that had 112 pounds of heroin secreted inside it. The mastermind Jean Jehan, who had helped talk Angelvin into it, escaped unscathed—a fact that The French Connection director William Friedkin attributed to the French police's reluctance to arrest a man who had been a hero of the wartime resistance.
The increased notoriety of the French Connection brought with it new problems. In 1970, the French government introduced a new act of parliament which heavily cracked down on the trafficking of illegal drugs. Thierry Colombié, an expert on organized crime in France, tells me in an email: "The 1970 Act was a gun blow against heroin production in Marseille. The French state had been left with no choice: an American report had highlighted that there were 40 teams of traffickers operating, mainly from Marseille. Nixon put his fist down, and it was a warning that paid off."
In Marseille, a young magistrate named Pierre Michel was leading a reinvigorated attempt to stamp out the trade. Over a period of 14 months, starting in February 1972, six major labs were found and dismantled in the suburbs of Marseille. Jimenez's The Connection tells the story of Michel, played by The Artist's Jean Dujardin, locked in battle with Zampa, who was by this point controlling much of the heroin traffic out of the city.
[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/tkfcx-9iQf8' width='500' height='281']When Pierre Michel was assassinated, on October 21, 1981, the police immediately assumed Zampa had been behind it. In fact, the murder had been carried out by a hitman named François Checchi, employed by a rival gang headed by François Girard and Homer Filippi. As Zampa's empire, already undermined by in-fighting, began to crumble, the former kingpin went on the run.
His daughter, Celine, was just a child when Michel died. When she arrives to meet me for a drink in the Panier district she's chic and charming. In the years since her father died she's turned down many offers from the French press to speak about him, but with the release of
The Connection she's decided she wants to tell her side of the story. Her inside account shows Zampa in a different light—as a devoted family man, even while running one of the planet's biggest drug trafficking organizations.
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She remembers exactly where she was when they heard about Michel's assassination. "Our family were all together," she says. "As soon as he found out he knew it was over, because he knew that the finger of blame would be pointed at him and that he would be found guilty. My father was the highest within the hierarchy, so it had a big ripple effect on everything else. It wasn't just the police who wanted to get my father. There were a lot of people with dirty hands."
Zampa spent almost three years on the run. Before he was caught, in October 1983, they arrested his wife Christiane, Celine's mother. There's a story the Marseille police still tell about how they built a special exercise yard for her with a roof, because they were so convinced that Zampa, in his omnipotence, would otherwise swoop down in a helicopter to rescue her.
Celine tells me about visiting both her parents in prison, and I ask whether she ever wished her father had made different choices in life. "No, I don't," she says. "That was the life he was born into. He was the best at what he did. He had to do it. He didn't want it for us, but that was his lot. He was a man with honor and good values within his profession. He couldn't have done anything differently."
Once, Celine and her brother watched The Godfather. They knew exactly what their father did, but they struggled to square the images of Brando and Pacino with the doting dad they knew. "I couldn't really see him in The Godfather," she says, "but if I think about it, there are similarities. The emotion, the sentiment: there was an undercurrent that I recognized. The sense of family, the sense of honor, the sense of values, the hierarchy: all that I recognize. There's a triangle of respect between the professional side, and the family side. The family side is just as important."
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The author with Celine Zampa in Marseille. Photo by Vincent Lucas.
Celine believes her father was always something of a reluctant gangster. Even if the French Connection had not begun to crumble, she knows he would never have allowed his own children to follow in his footsteps. "It was out of the question," she says. "We always respected that. He instilled us with the great values and good morals that he hoped we would take to follow a different path. He knew he led a very dangerous life and he protected us from that. He was a business man, but at the same time he knew there was a lifespan involved in what he was doing. He wanted to equip his children to keep us away from that."
Despite his keenness to keep her out of the business, Celine actually laments the end of that era. She believes that in some ways Marseille misses the order that comes when crime is an organized, family-run business. "He was really well-liked and respected, and he brought something to the city," she says. "He brought a sense of order to the heart of the city. In fact, he brought a sense of rules and regulations which are missing now. At the end of the day, he was a man who reigned through respect. As long as you operated within that, you knew that you were looked after."
Finally, I ask her what she thinks of when she remembers her father, Gaëtan Zampa, the French Connection's last Godfather?
"L'Amore," she says.
The Connection is currently playing in select theaters.
Follow Kevin on Twitter.
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Illustrations by Pierre Thyss
This article originally appeared on VICE France.
Our school nurse, Mrs. Alleau, was a rather loud woman with short hair and thick glasses. It was to her office that I would run to every time my period pains had me crouched over in agony—a fact that I found highly embarrassing and was scared to death of boys finding out. Mrs. Alleau certainly didn't see the embarrassment in it, though.
"You have your period, scream it loud and proud," she'd tell me.
I was mortified. Of course she was right, but her brand of feminism was lost on the 15-year-old me.
More than a decade later, not much has changed in the world of menstruation. All my friends still feel dirty, undesirable, and completely wrecked for that one week each month. And, to this day, men still don't understand the trials of crippling stomach cramps or the fact that our breasts feel as if they're on the verge of imploding. The intricacies of the female body are still complete gibberish to them.
But you can't really blame them. They aren't particularly well informed. One friend of mine spent the best part of his teenage years under the impression that menstrual blood was blue, because of some ad he saw.
That doesn't mean every guy is completely lost when it comes to periods though – some folks are actually really into them. I'm not talking about the guys who are OKwith having sex while a girl's on her period. No—I'm talking about the kind of fella who's so keen on Aunt Flow he buys used tampons off the internet.
In fact, there's quite a market for this sort of thing. This NSFW French website is a good example of a space dedicated to the buying and selling of bloodstained underwear and used tampons. Their customer service forum is a testament to just how broad this interest has become—it boasts queries about things like "odor intensity" and "soakage factor."
After posting on a sex health forum saying that I was interested in talking to a member of the Red Brigade, I received a message from a man I'll call Eric, who currently works as a manager in retail and agreed to hop on the phone and have a chat about his rather particular interest.
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VICE: So, how does one find out they're into menstrual blood?
Eric:
I first heard about periods through a sanitary towel ad when I was really young. When I hit puberty is when I became really interested in the matter. I'd rummage through the toilet bin at home to try to find my mother and sister's towels. Honestly, I was hooked immediately. There was just something so exclusively feminine and intimate about it all.
I didn't say a word to anyone. Not because I thought it was dirty or anything but I could tell that it wouldn't be perceived as being a "good thing," so to speak.
How about your first girlfriend—did she know?
My first girlfriend—who I was together with for just over seven years—was completely aware of my fetish. Our relationship was the most intense relationship I've ever had. Even more so than the relationship I currently have with my wife. We were young when we met and both virgins at the time so we basically became each other's sex education. We were constantly pushing our own boundaries. Thankfully, she was actually quite comfortable with her period so menstrual blood quickly became a real aphrodisiac for us.
After her, I had a fling of sorts but I only told her that I didn't mind having sex while she was on her period. She never knew.
You said you are married now. What does your wife have to say about it?
I broached the subject pretty gradually with her. I started dropping jokes about being a bloodthirsty vampire, just to gauge her reaction. Actually, one day I found a good opening to lay it all out there, so I did.
She was constantly getting these vaginal infections and having to go to the gynecologist all the time. She was really tired of it, so I sat her down and told her that she should stop using tampons, that they were probably the cause of it. She was curious as to why I would know about that sort of thing so I just said it straight out: I was into menstruation. She didn't seem bothered at all—more surprised. I think she really liked the fact that I felt comfortable enough with her to open up completely.
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Is this something you talk to your mates about?
No, I've never spoken to another guy about it—not even my best friend. Despite what you'd think, guys tend to be a lot less descriptive of their sex lives than girls. Luckily, I've met plenty of likeminded people on the internet and been able to chat about it without all that social prejudice.
Why do you reckon people think it's a bit strange?
It's hard to say because there's no debate about the matter. If you brought it up in conversation, people would think you were a complete freak. It irritates me that people don't see where the fascination comes from: the complexity of the female body, the fact that menstruation is a sign of good health and a cornerstone of life. A period is the very essence of femininity.
So how do you indulge your fetish? Have you ever purchased used tampons?
I love sniffing used towels—that's my drug. I still haven't gotten around to buying any online, but maybe one day. I'm sure that business like that disgusts some people but I can't see the problem with it. Everyone involved benefits in one way or another.
Related: "Why Is the British Government Taxing Periods?"
What about when your wife starts going through menopause? Have you thought about that?
It's crossed my mind but I've actually thought a lot more about when she gets pregnant. When we discuss having kids, I can't help but think about the fact that she won't have her period for nine whole months. But at the end of the day, I know it'll come back. When she stops having her period altogether, I guess we will lose one of the key elements of our sex life but I'm sure we'll find ways to adapt to the situation.
How does your sex actually play out? Sounds like it could get a bit gory.
We lay towels over the sheets to protect the bed. Sometimes she can bleed through but cleaning is part of the ritual for me. I find going down on her really exciting—she's still a bit uncomfortable about it but it's heaven for me. My wife often ends things by masturbating me with a used towel. Believe it or not, I have preferences when it comes to towel brands.
You don't say.
Yeah. I have a real soft spot for both
Nana and Vania night towels. They're a bit larger, you know? I can't stand Always—they stink of perfume.
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Illustrations by Joel Benjamin
Does the truth really set you free, or does it only fuck you up? This is what I'm wondering as my psychiatrist and I continue to adjust my meds, looking for the right combination to keep an existential doom from eclipsing me. Simultaneously, I'm working with a cognitive behavioral therapist on the "meaning" that I assign these feelings. She's trying to help me be less afraid of them.
I'm still afraid. But I've begun to think that these feelings are trying to tell me something pure and true—a message from my soul about the way I live my life and the nature of life itself. Primarily, they are telling me that the way I've been living is no longer working.
It is said that what we resist persists, and I have been trying to suppress these feelings my whole life. But only recently have I begun to really look at what they are—all of the layers that comprise what the Norwegian metaphysician, Peter Wessel Zapffe, describes as 'cosmic panic.' Now it seems that I can no longer ignore what part of me has always known, which is that life is absurd and terrifying. Perhaps we should be afraid of the truth?
In his 1933 essay, " The Last Messiah," Zapffe describes depression as the over-evolution of the mind. He compares the mind of the anxious or depressed person to a particular type of deer from paleontological times, who were thought to have died off after acquiring overly-heavy horns.
"In depressive states," he writes, "the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendor pinning its bearer to the ground."
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He also conveys the idea that the mind of the anxious or depressed person may be more awake, or connected to a deeper truth, than that of other people.
"Depression, 'fear of life,' refusal of nourishment and so on are invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated thereafter," he writes. "Often, however, such phenomena are messages from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced— correctly— as a betrayal of ego's highest potential."
So why isn't everyone suffering from depression? What is this "protection" that I, like most people, have been able to cobble together throughout much of my life. And what is it that makes a person suddenly, and scarily, see through it?
This protection, as Wessel describes it, is comprised of four defense mechanisms: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation.
Isolation, according to Wessel, is not the solitary confinement of the self (though I do a lot of that). Rather, it is the banishing of scary thoughts about the nature of existence, meaninglessness, personal freedom, and death, into the periphery of the mind. I used to be better at this maybe? Or I used to be able to fake it better, especially when it came to what Wessel calls the general code of "mutual silence" in which we don't bring up scary thoughts in our daily, superficial interactions with other people.
As a poet, I've been able to relegate my exploration of these thoughts and feelings to the realm of my art. But lately, it's been harder and harder for me to keep my social mask on in mundane interactions. It physically hurts me now to interact at this level; to have a "pleasant" yet superficial conversation with another person, because I wonder: Why aren't you consumed by these thoughts and feelings? Are you not devoured by fear? If not, then what is wrong with me? And if so, then why are we both denying the existence of this fear and talking about bullshit? I feel like we should all be hugging and crying, or something.
The second defense mechanism, anchoring, is to identify oneself with various social constructs: one's family role, job, religion, morality, position in society, physicality, goals. When we anchor ourselves to these external identities, we are able to construct "walls around the liquid fray of consciousness." The potential for existential crisis then occurs either when these ideas of who we are become opposed to one another, or, when we lose them entirely: a job, a loved one, or another external element that helped us to define who we are.
One loss that I've experienced recently is the desire to impress certain people, or seduce them with my achievements. One might think this is a good thing. But it's left me with a feeling of meaninglessness.
I've achieved a lot lately in terms of creative goals. But now I'm eluded as to why it should even matter. I feel like, well, if this person I had a crush on is now blocked on Facebook, he can no longer see what I've achieved. So what's really the point of achieving it?
Is it possible for me to be happy for myself in my creative accomplishments? I'm ashamed to say that the answer, for now, still looks to be no. The accomplishments feel hollow and pointless. In the face of death, perhaps they are. Even the work I do to help others—the girls I mentor and the dog I rescued—I seem to deconstruct. My new obsession is that the girls and the dog all eat animals. So while I am helping them with their suffering, they are causing suffering for other beings. Thus, I am only enabling more suffering. Also, I eat McDonald's sometimes too.
I'm finding the same lack of refuge in distractions that once protected me from feelings of doom. There are ways I've compulsively busied myself so I didn't have to think about deeper questions. I obsessed about my physical appearance, love, achievements. I waxed body parts, fucked with my eating, and waited for texts. I've never been good at watching TV, but now I feel like I'm suffocating the moment I even turn it on. It seems like a lot of these tactics are being stripped away by some unseen force.
Perhaps this is what they mean on the depression questionnaire when they say, "Have you lost interest in activities you once enjoyed?" They say it like losing interest is a bad thing. But what if the truth is that those activities were always stupid, meaningless, and destructive? What if I am getting closer to a higher truth?
One thing that does keep me going is sublimation: the channeling of these experiences into this column. The act of writing provides a meaning and a framework to scary thoughts and feelings. It makes them feel less bottomless. But what if bottomlessness is the truth? Why am I so quick to be afraid of what is real?
Something inside of me says I should I be running as fast as I can from an awareness of meaninglessness, death, endless questioning. Another part of me says no: you should follow the destruction of what you think you know. There will be something higher on the other side.
If you are concerned about your mental health or that of someone you know, visit the Mental Health America website.
So Sad Today is a never-ending existential crisis played out in 140 characters or less. Its author has struggled with consciousness since long before the creation of the Twitter feed in 2012, and has finally decided the time has come to project her anxieties on a larger screen, in the form of a biweekly column on this website.
Ricky Eat Acid is the ambient project of Sam Ray, a musician who continues to do a pretty astounding job at riding that careful line between cult popularity and commercial viability. His music is remarkably introspective but won't alienate you—it's the type of thing you put on when you want to zone out in bed and remember emotions you haven't felt in a while.
Ray's new album, Mixtape, is—according to the man himself—all about smoking weed. It's the followup to Three Love Songs, which came out earlier this year. Smoke a blunt in your car at night and listen responsibly.
This post originally appeared on VICE UK.
Let's face it: flying abroad isn't getting any easier for Brits. Our shoes are coming off, our Fanta is going in the bin, and a large man with eczema is searching up our anus for napalm. We need to remember that's there's a country right here to explore, that places in the UK are exciting in their own, different way. This series is a look into the heart of the British day out—the queerness and quietness of our strange, strange land.
Diggerland is a theme park based around JCB excavators. Almost every ride is digger-related, includes a digger in it, looks like a digger, or is just the deep, mustard yellow of a brand new industrial excavators. It seems like something that could only exist in the hungover fever dreams of a construction worker, before everything starts to melt and attack him.
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There are four Diggerlands in the UK, with a fifth in Worcestershire on the way. There's also a branch in New Jersey, USA, which opened this year. They are all the brainchildren of Hugh Edeleanu, a man who looks like the archetypal sad dad in a Mike Leigh film and owns H. E. Services, the biggest supplier of diggers and other industrial equipment in Europe. Apparently, he regularly drops into the park in his helicopter—who is this Ground Force Gatsby? This Howard Hughes of hydraulic excavators? This Tonka Wonka? Basically, he's got a lot of diggers, and he's really, really into them. He even comes up with the ideas for all of the rides.
The first park was opened in Strood, Kent, 14 years ago. It was this inaugural soil-thumping paradise that I recently went to visit.
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It was a typical day in Southeast England: bleak, grey, chilly. From the train window, the rain in the distance made the clouds look as if they were being scraped down from the sky, like a painter does with a palette knife. It was nice to get a glimpse of the green pastoral country, but also made me think: 'I'm going to a place which facilitates the destruction of this natural land, of all natural land. I am going to sit in machines of arable doom, machines that help demolish ecosystems in the rain forests, crushing the tiny skulls of poor exotic birds.' The smiley yellow Diggerland logo suddenly seemed a lot more sinister.
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My train crept under a bridge, and the Eurostar whipped overhead, filled with people bound for Paris and Brussels. They were going on continental adventures, to eat foods without gravy, to experience the excitement of hearing a language that's incomprehensible and doesn't have "cunt" as every other word. Basically what I'm getting at is they weren't going to Diggerland and I felt sorry for them.
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It's not that I have a white-hot fetish for sticking parts of myself onto diggers or digging equipment, more that I'm in love with the idea of Diggerland itself. It's an idea that I feel could not have been dreamt up anywhere but the UK. It's taken the banality and sciatica of ground work and turned it into a friendly space for kids to play in. It's magnificently peculiar, yet totally po-faced. There are no sideways glances to the camera at Diggerland, no one here taking snide selfies with the tractors and hashtagging them "AMAZE."
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It was spitting rain on arrival but walking in, even the shit weather couldn't ruin the magic. Diggerland was—is—beautiful. In front of me was a giant JCB with a huge bucket on a mound. The bucket was filled with seats and the operator had raised it in the air and was spinning people around in it. This ride is called the "Spindizzy." To my right was a greasy spoon-type restaurant called The Dig Inn. It had a large sign in the window saying: "We now sell BEER and WINE." It was as if this place had been specially built for me without my knowledge.
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I went inside and ordered a fry-up and a bottle of Stella from a friendly woman called Ozlam. I went to get some cutlery and condiments and what did they have? Fucking Encona West Indian hot pepper sauce. The choice of pepper sauce for every Caribbean and non-Caribbean I've met, apart from those Tropical Sun traitors. What the fuck was it doing at The Dig Inn? I poured it on my beans and wondered how a place so perfect could exist in Strood.
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It was time to sample what Diggerland had to offer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see two strange figures, unmoving. It was the park mascots, Dougie and Dottie. I thought it odd that they would have two mascot-scarecrows, until one of them waved at me and it made me jump, even from about 50 feet away.
I left the Spindizzy for the time being, as the mirepoix of beer, fry up, and hot sauce sitting in my stomach wasn't ready for the G-force. There was a row of smaller, child-friendly yet still industrial JCBs set up for parlour games—use JCB arm to hook ducks, use JCB arm to knock over skittles, etc. These were presided over by some pretty but sad-looking girls. They'd lost their chirp in the drizzle, only smiling slightly at the scurrying children around their feet.
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I went to the back of the park and decided to work my way forward. I drove a digger slowly around a small track while a guy who works there bemoaned how shit the go-karts were. "I keep telling them," he said, "they need to get petrol go-karts, but they don't listen." The go-karts and the dodgems were the only non-digger-themed attractions at the park, not including the indoor playground. Unsurprisingly, they were also the worst bits. The go-karts moved at snail's pace, one child letting go of the wheel and coasting as he rested his hands on his knees in boredom.
[vine src='//vine.co/v/eqnL3eIJKJw/embed/simple' width='600' height='598']To be honest, the kids almost felt superfluous at Diggerland. Of course it was built for them, and its infrastructure relies on their existence, but there's something too mindless about the enjoyment they were having. They couldn't quite grasp how truly ludicrous it is to have a whole theme park predicated on the entertainment value of industrial machinery. They scurried around, shouting and dribbling and tripping over things, but they weren't reading the signs above the ride entrances that tell you how much each machine costs, or what they weigh, or any of the other intriguing stats. You could see the dads sat in the diggers with their children on their laps, enjoying the quality time with their offspring, sure, but also secretly wanting their offspring to hit the road so they could be left alone to enjoy lifting piles of mud around with a giant mechanical scoop.
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And what fun it is. I tried one of the smaller diggers, only marginally smaller but smaller nonetheless, after I'd got bored of the driving. A young man instructed me on how to dig, so I dug. I cannot overstate how satisfying it is. Pushing the dirty metal teeth of the bucket into the earth and lifting it up to obscure the sun, you feel like God in a hi-vis jacket. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously exhilarating and centring; the excitement of moving dirt, coupled with the steady repetition. You feel like you're learning something, like you can feel the foundations of a thousand buildings being laid, like you're part of the earth. I went over to the slightly larger diggers and obviously they were even better; the larger the amount of soil you're moving the more gratifying it is. I felt as if I would never be sated, unless I was in control of a gigantic, monolithic colossus of a digger, my very own black and yellow leviathan that could move worlds. I want to rearrange the stars to spell out my name in my interstellar JCB.
Related: An Amsterdam Artist Is Digging Tunnels to Escape the Modern World
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I wandered back to The Dig Inn to get another drink. Ozlam was there. "Another Stella?" she said, without me having to utter a word. "That'd be lovely," I replied. I briefly entertained the thought of marrying Ozlam, and living out the rest of my life at Diggerland, dividing my time between serving beers and poor quality fish butties at The Dig', and showing people which joystick does what in the mud pits.
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Diggerland is incredibly simple. Most of the attractions don't go faster than about 10 miles per hour. But it isn't about the speed. It's about sitting in a mini tractor going round in circles after a couple of bottles of cheap-ish beer. It's about looking into a young father's eyes as he silently guides his son's hand to dump a load of dirt onto another pile of dirt, and seeing him realize it'll be a while before his kid really understands what it means. And that's what makes it so English: it's about the quiet appreciation of what you have. The zealous excitement of an American family unit is not to be found under the rain here in Kent, rather the loving sternness of a parent who wishes to show their sprogs as much of the world as they can, and the world starts with a bucket of mud and a diesel-pumping JCB.
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Oh yeah, I went on the Spindizzy in the end. It was fucking great.
[vine src='//vine.co/v/eqvLLxu2wed/embed/simple' width='600' height='598']Follow Joe on Twitter.
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Photo by Jamie Clifton
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.
Female friendships are so weird and brilliant and perversely intense. A close ~female bond~ feels a bit like you're emotionally skinny-dipping all the time, like you never have to worry about that flake of skin dancing in your nostril or anyone spotting the faint outline of your vulva because there's always someone there—your own personal sentient confessional booth—to quietly let you know.
When your heart has been ripped from your chest, a good friend is around to pick it up for you and help you get the tiny bits of gravel out of it. A good friend is someone who will get the right vibe at the right time and arrive unprompted at your door with the entire M&S mini-bites range. A good friend is someone to whom you can say unthinkably lame things, like, "Be honest, do you think people think I'm trendy?" into the 2 AM darkness without fear of recrimination.
Here's how to be one of those kind of mates.
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Photo by Bruno Bayley
You're standing outside a club. You're freaking out about everyone noticing that sweat under your boobs now the sun's coming up. The sound of sparrows waking up and screaming at each other is making you feel really disappointed in yourself. You look at your friend and she's doing her big eyes.
"Tom's got loads of booze back at his," she says, pleadingly, whimperingly. Your flat is so close, but for some reason she really fancies this guy with weird friends and very obviously wants to have sex with him. Problem is, she doesn't want to go to his on her own, because stranger danger and also all those weird friends.
That's how you end up in a new-build flat at 5 AM watching a guy in pointy shoes do lines off a Hangover 2 DVD case. KISS TV is on in the background and Weird Friend Craig is taking that new Trey Songz tune as a cue to start touching your back. So you peel yourself off the brown leather sofa and head to the loo, where you find yourself unfolding the instructions on a packet of Night Nurse and absent-mindedly cleaning the taps with a flannel for anywhere up to 45 minutes. You hear a giggle from the hall, followed by a sharp intake of breath as bangles and butt cheeks hit the partition wall.
Tomorrow, as repayment for this, you will make her tell you why the sex will forever haunt her right after she's gone and bought you a Rubicon mango from the shop.
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Photo by Olivia Percy
If it was just you and your proper best friends—the friends who've seen all your moles and remember the time you did a shit on a towel in Zante—all you'd need is five bottles of Casillero Diablo, a packet of Party Rings, and a really offensive homemade birthday card. The ones who know you best have the lowest expectations, meaning you can dance sincerely to Paris Hilton songs and hold hands while they tell you that you're the best and that you have the nicest collarbone out of all your friends.
However, involve those from outside your core crew and birthdays can hit rash-inducing levels of stress. Ellen, your birthday girl's friend from work, has read about a five-stage marathon of rip-offs in Stylist, and now you have to spend your lunch breaks participating in a WhatsApp group to make sure it all comes together. Because of the stream of aggressively passive-aggressive messages in this group, you agree to kicking in $60 for a polka dot teapot from Oliver Bonas.
The next stage—the actual party—will be so elaborate and multifaceted that you may wonder if she's actually just terminally ill and this is her bucket list and nobody's told you yet. It will inevitably involve knocking on a "secret door," or learning how to make Cosmos, or—the absolute fucking worst—having to wear a Kigu. And then comes the meal, at which you're dropped next to school friend Vicky and talked at about netball and how her giant house rabbit's been quite ill lately. You've just paid $180 to have the worst night since your mom told you she was divorcing your dad.
But buckle up, because you're in for a lifetime of attending this kind of stuff. No doubt you've already heard the foreboding tales from your elder stateswomen: rumors of $450 hen-dos in Bath, wedding lists where all the gifts are from White Company. In a few years even your closest friends will be asking you to fork out $300 on purple satin bridesmaid shoes, so suck it up and be grateful for the dry run. On that note:
As much as splitting the bill at these kind of things makes you want to jump up, hurl a plate at a stranger, and scream, "I DIDN'T ORDER THE NUTS AND OLIVES," you must keep your decorum and take the hit. Pay your way, because not doing so is technically stealing from your friends. Do not be the "Hey guys, why don't we get some extra dough balls?" person who's all Beyonce when you're ordering and suddenly all Annie when the bill comes.
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Photo by Jamie Clifton
You'll need to abandon all forms of rational thought when your friend needs an ally. "Kelly's such a bitch," she's saying. "She told me my hair looks 'pouffy.' Like, who the fuck says that?" she's going, properly enraged. "Oh my God," you're saying, mock-outraged, freezing all cerebral activity. "What a dick."
Phrases like, "My boss is such an idiot," "My flatmate never feeds the fish," and, "I think my brother's girlfriend's been stealing my hair ties," can all be answered successfully with that same stock response. The other option is to simply rephrase their original statement and repeat it back to them in an ascending pitch so the final word is only audible to bats. "What? Katie never feeds the fish and whatshername has been stealing your hair ties??"
With the pitch technique, you don't even really need to take any sides, you're just validating your friend's feelings by talking like an idiot.
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By now you already know not to make friends with girls who post lots of inspirational quotes on Instagram and sing Mariah Carey harmonies softly under their breath. Or someone who identifies as either a chocaholic or a shopaholic, or says they "really hate drama" when it's clear as all hell that they really bloody love drama.
Since you left school you've probably worked out that these girls are all the ones you used to think were cool. Your grown woman friends are better than this. They have quick wits and loud laughs and understand the news and you've never once had a conversation about nail varnish. That said, every girl has at least one bitchy friend who she technically kind of hates. A girl overflowing with terrible opinions who smells of Coco Mademoiselle and buttery leather and who doesn't feel embarrassed talking sincerely about pilates on public transport. She is someone hot and scary who you would simultaneously like to be and punch. But also someone who speaks so fluently to your year 10 insecurities that you can't bring yourself to resist her brunch invitations.
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It will have been a big night out where she first snared you with her unique brand of forceful overfamiliarity. This wide-eyed, come-to-the-toilet-with-me friend took your wrist with her icy grip and conspiratorially led you away from your male friends into the toilet corridor. "OMG love your dress—it's ah-mazing," she's shouting at your face. "I can't believe we haven't always been friends! Okay, I'll be totally honest; I think it's because I was intimidated by you. Hey, this is so random, but does Jerome ever talk about me?" she says, snaking her arm through yours. Just because you showed each other your tits in the bogs and she told you that really harrowing story about that thing that happened at her first school disco, it doesn't mean you are BFFs. It means you took a lot of drugs.
At this late stage in life, this is not the kind of friend you really need to be making, especially when you've already got a sturdy set of best friends to keep up with. Yes, I know she's asked you to pose for her fashion blog "Milly Loves," and that is exhilarating. But remember: Milly doesn't love you like your real friends do because Milly is not capable of love.
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Photo by Bruno Bayley
You are duty-bound to keeping your friend's weird crush a semi-secret (by semi, I mean it's fine to blabber once you're halfway up Blossom Hill and into, "Remember that time you did that super embarrassing thing?" territory). I'm not talking the kind of crushes that become acceptable when they start trending on Twitter, like #Milibae. I'm talking about crushes on Kevin McCloud, Nick Nolte, or the new accounts manager who furiously sniffs his fingers every time he comes out of the staff toilets.
You will never be able to understand—nor rationalize—the allure of this type of inexplicable crush, no matter how much you mull it over. But you must accept them, because you too will one day be attracted to someone who simultaneously makes your heart sigh and your stomach acid rise rapidly into your throat.
A snack shared between friends is a beautiful thing. A Milky Way Crispy Roll or, at a push, a lone Smint covered in furry handbag lint will grease the wheels of any friendship, like a squirt of WD40 on a child's slide. Even an old clementine that's been hanging around in your bag for a fortnight will suffice if you've got a friend who's on the verge of getting critically hangry. Or one of those friends who's never not hungry, like my friend Bryony from Leeds who responds to any food-related query with, "I'll 'ave it."
Bryony once ate a bowlful of green bullet chillies and a spoonful of lime pickle as a bet, then spent the whole afternoon throwing up. Before dinner, I said, "Do you want this Curly Wurly?" She said, "I'll 'ave it." She was never not hungry.
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Photo by Sam Hiscox.
Girls might be all about coordinated periods and pissing in front of each other, but for its night-ruining properties, vomit is by far the greatest acid test in a friendship. When the going gets tough, the tough feels rough and then pukes into your handbag.
Ask any group of girls and they can tell you about at least one night they've ended early because they were cleaning up sick, or looking at sick, or getting it out of their mate's hair. If you're the puker, get ready to feel unwanted and unloved. "My phone ran out of battery," your friends say. "I couldn't find you," they lie, even after you've seen them step over you in the entrance to the portapotty. On the other end, spot a puker staggering across the horizon and your impulse to run in the opposite direction is overwhelming.
But it's up to you to climb out of the trenches, because what's the use in having mates if they can't be there to put you in the recovery position? Of course nobody wanted to spend Dave's legendary New Year's Eve party crouched over a toilet bowl clutching a fistful of their prosecco-drenched hair, but this is it. This is true life friendship shit.
Follow Lucy Hancock, Roisin Kiberd, and Javaria Akbar on Twitter.
On Thursday, former New York Governor George Pataki officially launched his 2016 presidential campaign, becoming the 1,000th Republican to decide that this might be a good year to try to get elected as leader of the free world. If you're wondering who the hell this guy is, that makes sense. The last time Pataki held public office was when he finished his third term as governor in 2006, the same year Hannah Montana, starring Miley Cyrus, debuted on the Disney Channel.
Since then, Pataki has spent most of his time thinking about running for president. He threatened to do it in 2000, and then again in 2008 and 2012. This time, though, it looks like he's finally taking the plunge.
From the looks of his campaign launch video, released this morning in advance of an official kickoff rally in New Hampshire, Pataki's campaign is based around the rather unoriginal pitch that he's a blue-state Republican who happened to be in office during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He says as much in the voiceover, narrating shots of himself standing in the dark on what appears to be the Freedom Tower, and also palling around with his wife in the bathroom, talking to white people in bars, and, inexplicably, reading the newspaper in a car.
"If we are to flourish as a people," Pataki concludes, "we have to fall in love with America again."
And who better a matchmaker than a taller, more translucent version of Rudy Guiliani? Of course, Giuliani quickly figured out in 2008 that there's not really an electoral market for New York moderates in a GOP primary, even if they did pull New York out of the rubble of a terrorist attack. Pataki also has the misfortune of supporting renewable energy and gay marriage, which means that today's Republican voters would eat him alive, if it wasn't so easy to just ignore him.
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Weed is legal in Washington state, but it's still not an acceptable tender in trade for burgers and fries at a fast-food restaurant. Last April, internet weed fanboy Jonah Tacoma offered a hit of hash oil in trade for his meal to employees at a Tacoma, Washington, drive-through called Frugals. They went for the deal, lining up to hit Jonah Tacoma's bubbler and allegedly giving him his food for free. Jonah filmed the thing and posted it online, where the video promptly went viral. The fine people in Frugals management were not particularly pleased, and fired both employees shown leaning out of the drive-through window to rip a bowl.
"We were going through the drive-through and when we were done ordering, I offered to pay with a dab instead of cash," Tacoma explained to KOMO News yesterday. "She said, 'Yeah, sure.' We started filming when we pulled up ... It was kind of just a funny thing that happened."
Frugals's big-wigs didn't find it all that funny. In a statement to KOMO News, the company's financial manager wrote that "Frugals has a zero tolerance drug policy in the workplace, and we in no way condone the type of conduct captured ... The isolated actions of the two terminated employees do not in any way reflect the Frugals crew as a whole."
The real lesson here is that if you're going to smoke weed at your shitty restaurant job, stick to one-hitters in the walk-in freezer like your parents used to do. And keep the camera phones off.
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Serial, last year's hit crime podcast from This American Life producer Sarah Koenig, followed the story of Adnan Syed—a Baltimore inmate serving time for the murder of his teenage girlfriend. Koenig and the Serial staff felt like there were some holes in the state's conviction against Syed, so they started combing through the 1999 murder case to see if there was any evidence to back up Syed's assertion of innocence. The podcast didn't wrap up anywhere near as tidily as HBO's true crime miniseries The Jinx, but it did help get new eyes on Syed's case, which now may be reopened in court.
The first season of Serial wrapped in December. We haven't heard much about future plans for the show other than vague promises of a second season until now. Bustle reports that Koenig sent out an email to Serial fans yesterday announcing a projected fall launch for season two, as well as a third season for spring 2016.
According to the email, the new seasons will not be a continuation of Adnan Syed's story but instead focus on two different cases:
We are hard at work reporting not one, but two distinct new stories. This means we're planning on a third season of Serial. And we hope it means we can reduce the amount of time between the end of Season Two and the beginning of Season Three. As it stands, we intend to launch Season Two this fall and Season Three next spring. Sorry - we can't tell you details about the new stories yet. What we can say is that they're very different from Season One, but no less interesting to us.
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Last week, the Los Angeles City Council committed to a five-year wage hike that is almost universally viewed as a favorable to the city's low-wage earners, ramping up to $15 an hour in 2020. So it's a little puzzling, with last-minute negotiations still unfolding, one of LA's top labor activist has released a statement pushing for an exception in the minimum wage ordinance for union workers.
The minimum wage law itself remains contentious, with fiscal conservatives predicting an unemployment disaster. LA's move from $9 toward a $15 was hard-fought, involving political marches, and months of public debate. The law also marks an abrupt shift toward a new and somewhat experimental wage bracket for the city's low-skilled labor, signaling the biggest victory yet for a national $15 minimum wage movement that's been opposed by businesses leaders around the country.
Now, Rusty Hicks, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and one of city's top labor activists who fought for the wage hike is asking the city to install a back door that would give employers with unionized workplaces a way to get out of paying the new, higher wages.
In an email to VICE, Hicks pointed out that his request has historical precedent. "For every local wage ordinance it has ever adopted, the Los Angeles City Council has respected agreements that businesses and employees have mutually reached," he wrote.
Hicks' move was met with immediate derision from both supporters and opponents of the wage hike. Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, a staunch fiscal conservative, called it hypocrisy, and "sheer naked chutzpah." On the left, Salon columnist David Dayen directed a tweet at Hicks's union, saying it "undermine[s] your entire profile as a supporter for workers." Tom Blumer of Newsbusters, the blog of the conservative Media Research Center distilled the argument, writing that "[unions] want to preserve workplace arrangements for their members which they consider totally unacceptable for everyone else."
Critics note that the union was adamantly opposed to making any concessions to businesses during the debate over the wage hike, but are now requesting one for themselves. Conservatives also that the push to raise the minimum wage is driven not by the desire to improve living standards, but to increase union membership, which has flagged in recent decades.
For more on unions and wages, check out our documentary on underage miners:
In his email to VICE, Hicks argued that for all the the opt-out for union workplaces is merely a "standard clause to protect basic worker rights," and that "LA should continue to do what other cities in California have done when raising its minimum wage."
Such clauses do indeed show up in minimum wage and living wage laws elsewhere, such as in Berkeley's minimum wage code, which states that any or all of it "may be waived in a bona fide collective bargaining agreement, provided that such waiver is explicitly set forth in such agreement in clear and unambiguous terms." Similar language shows up in other wage laws throughout California, like those of San Francisco and Sunnyvale.
Outside of the United States, this isn't a novel way to think about wages. The Nordic Labour Journal wrote in February that the European countries where minimum wages necessary are often just the ones where the unions are weak. By contrast, "in the Nordic countries, where trade union membership is still high, there is strong opposition to minimum wages," they wrote, adding that "a statutory minimum wage often lies considerably below the average or median wage for a trade."
Still, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which has stood in opposition to the wage hike, is taking the opportunity to get downright nasty. "The soaring rhetoric of helping the working poor is just a cover for city government acting as a tool of organized labor," Ruben Gonzalez of the Chamber of Commerce told The Los Angeles Times.
In his email to VICE, Hicks responded to the Chamber's criticism, saying, "Big business tries to use every trick in the book to undermine collective bargaining."
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told the Times that the proposal "deserves study," but that the city is moving forward with a version of the law that doesn't include this exception.
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