How Laura Kipnis' 'Sexual Paranoia' Essay Caused A Frenzy At Northwestern University

Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis was cleared in a Title IX investigation by the university on Friday, following graduate student complaints over an essay she published in February in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article, titled "Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe," discussed university policies governing sexual misconduct, student-faculty relationships and speech on campuses. It described lawsuits between a Northwestern philosophy professor and two students who accused him of sexual assault.

Students took issue with the piece, saying Kipnis was describing a real-life case and that her facts were off. They accused Kipnis of retaliatory behavior and creating a hostile environment, and the school opened an investigation into the case.

Complainants in the case told The Huffington Post that they reached out to Kipnis about their concerns, and she did not offer to correct her piece. They then turned to the Chronicle and asked for specific corrections. One sticking point was Kipnis' original assertion that the unnamed professor and the graduate student were dating. In the actual case on campus, the student in question has said she was not dating the professor. The Chronicle has since changed its wording to say that "according to his complaint," the professor and student had previously dated.

On Friday, Northwestern told the parties they reached a conclusion of "no findings," meaning they could not specifically state whether Kipnis was "responsible" or "not responsible" in the case. The complainants told HuffPost that university investigators declined to provide them a copy of the full investigation report.

The investigation became public prior to its conclusion thanks to another Kipnis essay published Friday in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In that piece, Kipnis described the reaction to her first piece and the charges brought against her.

Some in the academic community worried that Kipnis' critique of university policies around sexual misconduct could result in a Title IX investigation that could have put her status as a tenured professor in jeopardy. Title IX is a requirement that colleges address and prevent discrimination and harassment on campus, as well as sexual assault involving students.

However, the students who made the complaints about the February essay said they were mainly concerned with alleged errors in Kipnis' essay. They're also upset about a tweet from Kipnis suggesting dating was being redefined as rape.

Students thought the tweet was directed at a specific student on campus who has accused a philosophy professor of sexual assault. Kipnis told The Huffington Post that it wasn't about anyone in particular.

"[The complaint] was just about the factual inaccuracies," one of the graduate students who filed the complaints told The Huffington Post. "The basis of our complaint was that she said things that were false and she refused to correct them. I'm not even sure I support the ban on faculty-student relationships."

The Chronicle added some corrections to the original piece after students contacted the publication.

Both experts and Kipnis have pointed out that had she not been an employee of Northwestern, she would not have been responsible for answering to the students' complaints.

In her latest essay, Kipnis questioned "why a professor can’t write about a legal case that’s been nationally reported, precisely because she’s employed by the university where the events took place." Such a block would suggest that "academic freedom doesn't extend to academics discussing matters involving their own workplace," Kipnis said.

"It doesn't serve the institutions and the entire academic community if they feel like they have to talk about the issue on eggshells," said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the civil liberties group the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Cohn argued that there should have been a mechanism where Northwestern could have quickly dismissed the complaints against Kipnis prior to the investigation -- similar to how a court can dismiss a lawsuit.

"Administrators who receive complaints should always read them to see if there is something to this, but when a complaint falls so far out of what is appropriate, [administrators] should as quickly as possible say so," he said.

"I think what people don't really realize with this Title IX apparatus, and what's coming out in this case, is that it makes faculty more vulnerable to [censorship], really, because these cases are possible," Kipnis told HuffPost.

Kipnis said she decided to write a second essay because she got the sense from other faculty members that they were afraid to voice concerns about criticizing Title IX issues, and because she believes the investigation process for student complaints should be more transparent.

She said she had not been deeply reviewing everything about campus sexual assault and Title IX, and didn't until recently know of groups like Know Your IX and FIRE, which are active in the debate over campus sexual assault and harassment. Suddenly, she said, she found herself put on trial by Northwestern under this law.

Kipnis also said that investigators from the school approached her about mediation. According to Kipnis, they told her the complainants were willing to drop the case if she would apologize and promise to never write about the issue again.

The complainants say they never made such an offer to investigators or anyone else.

"That never happened," the graduate student told HuffPost. "We never offered to withdraw our complaints, we never asked her to apologize, we never asked that she never write about this again."

One of the other complainants also wrote to the investigators about the mediation offer after Kipnis' second essay was published: "I would like to make unequivocally clear that is is absolutely false," she said in an email shared with HuffPost. The complainants said they have not heard a response from the investigators.

The complainants said they side with Kipnis on a number of issues she raised about the Title IX procedure in her essay. For example, they don't understand why Kipnis had to jump through hoops to find out the charges against her and couldn't get them in writing, or why it took two weeks to inform her of the complaint. They were similarly upset that the investigators prohibited recording interviews.

"I don't get why they're so insistent on that, it adds protection for everybody," the graduate student said, noting she also found errors in the notes taken by investigators.

Kipnis offered a more succinct remark about the control against transparency by investigators: "Secrecy invites abuses."

"Northwestern University is firmly committed both to academic freedom and to free speech, but it is also required to investigate and respond to allegations made by complainants that particular actions or statements might violate Title IX," Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said in a statement. "Northwestern is confident that its policies and procedures comport with the law and that they were followed here."

As for grad students' concerns that Kipnis' alleged errors in her first essay would have a "chilling" effect, preventing other students from reporting assaults to Northwestern, neither side seems to find common ground.

Kipnis and Cohn questioned what would establish a preponderance of evidence that students have really been dissuaded from coming forward with future complaints.

Asked the grad student in response, "What reasonable person would want to report their assault if it meant a professor of their own university would take to the Chronicle of Higher Education to publicly misrepresent some of the most traumatizing events in your life?"

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1GPbTiO
via IFTTT

Contador clinches 2nd Giro title, Keisse wins final stage

1 down, 1 to go: Alberto Contador clinches Giro d'Italia title, sets sights on Tour de France

      

 

 

from USATODAY - Cycling Top Stories http://ift.tt/1AD0u4M
via IFTTT

Contador suffers but remains on course for Giro win

Contador suffers on grueling climb but remains on course for Giro title; Aru wins 20th stage

      

 

 

from USATODAY - Cycling Top Stories http://ift.tt/1d5OaPm
via IFTTT

Our Promise to Hadiya: Why Chicago and the Nation Are Wearing Orange on June 2

There isn't much like summer in Chicago. It's a time when we forget about the bitter cold, come out of hibernation and enjoy this beautiful city in all its glory.

It's also an important time for some awareness and remembering. Summer is a time that the violence in our city seems inevitably seems to escalate. June is Gun Violence Prevention Awareness Month, and the next 30 days are dedicated to spreading the message that gun deaths and injuries are preventable.

Most of us have been affected by gun violence or know someone who has. This June we are honoring the victims of this epidemic by wearing orange on June 2 and by redoubling our commitment to the solutions that will result in a safer Chicago for everyone.

Here are some ways everyone can participate in Gun Violence Prevention Awareness Month and make a real difference:

· Wear orange on June 2, and join us at the Wear Orange Party for Peace in Chicago's Harold Washington Park! The party starts at 3:30 p.m. Central and ends at 8:00 p.m. Don't forget to tweet and post your pics and tag @Bradybuzz and #WearingOrange.

· Join hundreds at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 6, right outside Chicago, in Riverdale, IL to protest Chuck's Gun Shop, a "bad apple" gun dealer responsible for flooding our streets and communities with crime guns. Just by stopping bad apples like Chuck's we can have a big impact on crime and violence in Chicago and cities around the country.

· Celebrate National ASK Day on June 21, the first day of summer by bringing attention to the risks of kids having unsafe access to guns in the home and by pledging to ask whether there is an unlocked gun in the homes where your children play. Families across the country will be participating in "America's Largest Playdate." Learn how you can be a part of it, by visiting AskingSavesKids.org and downloading the Asking Saves Kids Toolkit.

June 2 would have been Hadiya's 18th birthday, but because of a shooting on January 29, 2013, her young life ended. She loved this city and she had dreams: dreams of going to college and of becoming a journalist--dreams of traveling the world. Her death was not just our loss--it was Chicago's loss. It was this world's loss. Let her legacy be one of inspiring us to make the impact on the world that she dreamed of making when she was alive.

Participate in Gun Violence Awareness Month and remember to wear your orange on June 2. Together, we can end the epidemic of gun deaths in our nation and help to fulfill Hadiya's Promise.

Dan Gross is the president of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, united with the Million Mom March. Nathaniel Pendleton is the father of Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot and killed on Chicago's South Side in January 2013. Gun violence prevention advocates nationwide are celebrating her June 2 birthday by wearing orange in her honor.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1Fgjod7
via IFTTT

The Recent IRS Breach and How We Can Act to Secure Personal Data

I am very concerned about the recent IRS announcement that hackers gained access to past tax returns of more than 100,000 people. For information about the breach and how you can protect yourself, please visit the official IRS website.

While the investigation is ongoing, signs suggest that these records were breached using data stolen during previous hacks of private sector and government databases.

Over the past decade, almost one billion records with personal information have been compromised -- things like Social Security numbers, birth dates, address and even tax filing status. In many cases, those breaches were not highly sophisticated, and in some cases, consumers were never made aware that their information was compromised. As the IRS hack reminds us, those data breaches have very real consequences.

Americans have a right to the security of their personal information, and the entities that hold personal information have a responsibility to protect it.

The Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee -- where I serve as the top Democrat -- has been considering legislation regarding data breach. As I have consistently stated, that legislation must require entities holding sensitive data to adequately protect it, and to notify users or customers in the event of a breach. Had both of those requirements been in place, the IRS breach might not have been as effective or wide-ranging as it was. I will continue to work to enact legislation that prioritizes data security.

In the coming weeks, the IRS will also analyze what enhanced security measures would make it more difficult for criminals to access tax records with stolen data. I look forward to learning where the agency will go from here to better protect personal information and avoid errors in payment.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1HXZLef
via IFTTT

7 Pop Culture Documentaries To Stream On Netflix

After you've finished our true crime and best of Netflix round-ups, we've got seven more documentaries to stream.

"Beyond Clueless"
"Beyond Clueless" is the kind of educational content you forget is intellectually stimulating halfway through. The seductively calming voice of narrator Fairuza Balk walks through clips of all the major teen movies of the turn of the century, zooming in on the turmoil of adolescence through the narratives of fictional high-schools from "Mean Girls" to "The Craft." For a teen movie junkie, "Beyond Clueless" is eye-opening to an almost startling degree. Director Charlie Lyne has managed to compress more than a decade's worth of the genre into 89 minutes, unpacking his examples both individually and holistically for a commentary on not just film's representation of our teen years but the cultural reality of adolescence.



"No No: A Dockumentary "
There's no need to be a sports fan or to have heard of Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter on LSD back in June of 1970 to enjoy "No No" (and, before you send in a correction notice, that title is a pun on its subject). Director Jeff Radice outlines Ellis' career, but his focus is on the cultural implications Ellis had for not just baseball players of color but the black community as a whole. Through a mix of complex acts of rebellion -- like wearing curlers with his uniform -- and his challenging, flippant presence on and off field, Ellis changed the shape of the game. He's best remembered for those LSD-endowed innings, though Ellis' impact is infinitely more far reaching than a funny story about mixing drugs and baseball.



"Paris Is Burning"
This classic takes on even more vibrancy and meaning with the rise of drag in the mainstream. It plays like a deep look at what you might imagine to be the heart and soul of "RuPaul's Drag Race." An empathetic yet unflinching look at the marginalization faced by the black members of the LGBT community, "Paris Is Burning" peels back to focus not only on the community that is its subject, but the beautiful power of being yourself in spite of all obstacles.



"Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon"
Mike Myers' directorial debut does not even pretend to be fair and balanced. His look at Shep Gordon takes on a tone so sunnily positive that it feels more like a tribute montage than a documentary. Still, there are some very interesting stories peppered into the mix of A-listers that Myers has gathered to reminisce about their pal. Gorgon is a public relations genius, so it only makes sense that he'd emerge from a biographical documentary looking so damn wonderful. The most compelling part of "Supermensch" lies underneath the surface, in the fleeting glimpses at the machinations of the Hollywood PR machine, how it shapes our perceptions and, of course, consumerism.



"Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap"
Ice-T uses "Something From Nothing" to focus on the craft of rap. He goes to its roots, the way rapping rose up as a means to make music without instruments or costly production accessories. This is a carefully painted portrait which tears down the extravagant misconceptions that cling to the modern state of the genre (the mainstream idea that it is rooted in money, sex and violence). There is a mix of poetry and rebellion at the core of rap. "Something For Nothing" is a powerful and necessary reminder that it is truly an art form.



"Madonna: Truth or Dare"
No shade, but, like, if Katy Perry thought "Part of Me" was a tell-all, she has probably never seen "Madonna: Truth or Dare." Alek Keshishian's black-and-white look at the superstar doesn't play like a vanity piece or extended tour promotion, as pop stars' docs are wont to do. Instead, "Truth or Dare" is a revelatory peek at a woman who is not a different person on stage, but rather only truly herself in the public eye. As Warren Beaty tells Madonna's doctor when he asks if she'd like to move their conversation off-screen: "She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk ... Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is there existing?"



"Bill Cunningham New York"
If you have a heart, Bill Cunningham will steal it within the first 20 minutes of Richard Press' documentary. The most charming part about the man behind The New York Times' style section is that he has no idea how very charming he is. Cunningham is crucial to the charting of trends and understanding the practicality of fashion, almost more of an unofficial anthropologist than a photographer. He is a staple of life in New York, who has managed to stay humble, kind and motivated only by a genuine love of his work. What's almost more interesting than his cultural influence is the beautiful soul of the man behind the blue smock. He has a perspective on life that most inhabitants of NYC could only hope to learn.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1FIQVjJ
via IFTTT

Yes! Acquiring 'Perfect' Pitch Is Possible For Some Adults, Scientists Say

It turns out that some people can be trained to be the next Mariah Carey.

A team of psychologists recently revealed that they were able to successfully teach adults the prized musical skill of so-called absolute pitch, widely known as "perfect" pitch. The ability helps you to identify a note without using a reference pitch.

An elusive skill. Scientists previously thought that perfect pitch was either something you were born with, or something that could only be learned during childhood. The ability is considered remarkably rare -- only around one in 10,000 individuals has perfect pitch.

“This is the first significant demonstration that the ability to identify notes by hearing them may well be something that individuals can be trained to do,” Dr. Howard Nusbaum, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and part of the research team, said in a written statement. “It’s an ability that is teachable, and it appears to depend on a general cognitive ability of holding sounds in one’s mind.”

Practice makes perfect? For the research, 47 men and women at the university -- with varying musical experience -- listened to musical notes through headphones and were asked to recreate the note that they heard. They also were asked to identify notes by name, such as middle-C or F-sharp.

After the tests, the men and women participated in a training program, during which they listened to and identified piano notes, receiving feedback on whether they named the correct notes or not. The researchers retested the men and women after the training and found that the participants retained most of what they learned, showing improvements in identifying notes.

"We demonstrate three important findings in this paper," Nusbaum said in the statement. "First, in contrast to previous studies, we are able to establish significant absolute pitch training in adults without drugs. Second, we show that this ability is predicted by auditory working memory. Third, we show that this training lasts for months."

Vetting the pitches. The researchers noted that more experiments are needed to determine whether this adult-acquired perfect pitch is comparable to the abilities of someone who has had perfect pitch for most of their life.

Indeed, this isn't the first time that scientists have taken a close look at adults' abilities to acquire absolute pitch. In 2014, researchers posed that a drug known as valproate, or valproic acid, could help adults learn how to produce perfect pitch since it enhances the brain's "neuroplasticity." And a 2012 study suggests that your genes play a large role in your ability to obtain perfect pitch.

The new research was published online in the journal Cognition on April 20, 2015.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1RvLN7E
via IFTTT

School May Be The Best Place To Address PTSD In Young People, But Resources Are Spread Thin

For far too many students attending urban schools in the U.S., learning takes a back seat to what’s going on outside the classroom -- namely, violence at home and in the community -- and few schools are equipped to help students cope.

That could start to change in the near future. A federal class-action lawsuit filed last week alleges that California's Compton Unified School District has failed to properly address its students' experiences of trauma. School districts, the lawsuit argues, are obligated under federal disability law to offer support for students who have experienced trauma. If the court sides with the plaintiffs in the case, Compton schools would be required to hire counselors and train employees to better understand students who have been exposed to traumatic life events.

Lawyers in the case say they hope the case will help spur change on a national level.

In the meantime, some mental health professionals are doing what they can with the limited resources available to them to help students exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by witnessing or otherwise experiencing a terrifying event, and is exhibited through symptoms such as severe anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Though more commonly associated with veterans returning from combat situations, young people -- particularly those living in urban centers plagued by high levels of violence and poverty -- can exhibit PTSD symptoms as well.

In fact, at least half of the students in an ongoing survey of sixth- and ninth-graders in Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest school district in California, show signs of mild to severe PTSD. Students reported experiencing an average of five and eight stressful or traumatic events over the course of their young lifetimes, said Pia Escudero, the director of the LAUSD’s School Mental Health program.

"This is a very prevalent reality," Escudero said.

Marleen Wong, an associate dean and clinical professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work who was consulted by attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the Compton lawsuit, said the suit has the potential to be a serious game-changer for how trauma is addressed in schools nationwide. She described the need to better address the issue as "a matter of social justice."

"If you read the lawsuit and read the plaintiffs’ stories, this is chronic and repeated exposure to violence in the community, and sometimes at home, that is life-threatening danger," Wong told The Huffington Post. "That has not just a psychological, not just an emotional effect. This is not about character and not about weakness, it’s about how the body functions and releases these hormones that interfere with their day-to-day life that we all expect and want for ourselves and our children."

Even before this potentially groundbreaking lawsuit, California has been home to several pioneering programs aimed at addressing students' mental health.

In response to a 1984 sniper shooting at an elementary school, Wong, who was a psychiatric social worker for the LAUSD at the time, helped develop a districtwide system of crisis-response teams -- the first of its kind in the country. In 1997, she became a co-creator of the Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools program, which became the national model for how to conduct group therapy for students who had been exposed to trauma, including community violence.

CBITS teaches relaxation and problem-solving techniques to help students cope with stressors in their lives -- and it appears to be working. A randomized, controlled study cited by the district reported that the program significantly reduced students’ symptoms of PTSD and depression, even six months after treatment.

The program is used in conjunction with the aforementioned mental health-screening survey, which Escudero said helps the district handle their case loads and helps schools know what their students are experiencing.

“We ask them about very specific life events and at the same time we ask if they’re worried about that event or if it keeps them from sleeping well and doing well in school,” she explained to HuffPost. “You ask, and you find these situations that are very difficult.”

The district also has a social worker in each of its schools and aims to teach all adults involved with the students -- including teachers, administrators and parents -- how to best respond when students who may have been exposed to traumatic experiences act out.

Escudero argues that schools are the ideal place to intervene, and says it is no fluke that these initiatives have been met with some success.

"Our children come to school every day regardless of what happened," she said. "They may have had an incident the night before in the community or at home, but they come to school the next day because it’s associated with their success personally and academically. They want to succeed and their families work hard so their children can graduate."

Districts don't always have the resources to launch -- or sustain -- these kinds of programs, however.

The Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools program, for example, has experienced significant cuts to public and private funding sources.

The program, which was implemented in the San Francisco Unified School District in 2008, provides trainings and on-site consultations for school social workers, teachers and other staff members. The goal is to create a fully trauma-sensitive school environment that helps students succeed. Until the 2014-15 school year, HEARTS was present in 17 schools, three days a week.

It's had a notable effect. El Dorado Elementary School, a high-needs school, saw a 93 percent drop-off in referrals to the principal and an 89 percent decrease in suspensions during the five years the program was used there, the ACES Too High blog reports.

But due to budget constraints, the program's on-the-ground aspect has been cut back, though HEARTS still trains staff members throughout the district. This training is set to expand to the Oakland Unified School District next year. HEARTS is also working with a trauma center in Washington state to develop and implement a more sustainable, less expensive program model.

Jeff Duncan-Andrade, an education administration professor at San Francisco State University and high school teacher in East Oakland, said even school districts currently doing the best work on trauma are still only "scratching the surface of the conversation."

He pointed to response from Columbine High School after a mass shooting on campus shook the school in 1999 as an example of the sort of "longitudinal, long-term response" that would be most effective

As detailed in a 2003 report by the Public Entity Risk Institute and the American School Counselor Association, the Colorado school brought in six counselors from an outside mental health provider -- in addition to the six who were already on staff -- who remained at the school through the end of the year. In the following couple of years, additional mental health professionals were hired in order to help address lingering effects of the tragedy.

The high school also established a community center for grieving students to gather and counselors were even available for students, families and staff during the summer months.

Duncan-Andrade said he doubts that the same scale of investment would be made for poor, urban youth -- overwhelmingly youth of color -- and questioned why the response to trauma is so different in a place like gun violence-impacted Compton than it was in a wealthy Colorado suburb.

"In the aggregate, the level of investment we would need to make in case workers and mental health counselors is much more significant than just staffing up one position per school," he said. "We know what to do and have clear evidence of what to do, but we don’t see it in the communities where we need it the most."

Taking action on students’ experiences of traumatic events like witnessing violence, advocates agree, is not only important for those children’s immediate and long-term mental health, but also an asset to the community.

"If we don’t focus on this early on, that’s where pathology can be embedded in their lives through maladaptive behavior and significant health costs, maybe a life on a juvenile justice trajectory or a shorter life span," Escudero said. "The cost to society of not looking at these issues early on is very high."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1d40gbK
via IFTTT

Nuclear Realism

There's a category of political intellectuals who proudly proclaim themselves "realists," then proceed to defend and advance a deeply faith-based agenda that centers on the ongoing necessity to prepare for war, including nuclear war.

These intellectuals, as they defend the military-industrial status quo (which often supports them financially), have made themselves the spokespersons for a deep human cancer: a soul cancer. When we prepare for war, we honor a profoundly embedded death wish; indeed, we assume we can exploit it for our own advantage. We can't, of course. War and hatred link all of us; we can't dehumanize, then proceed to murder, "the enemy" without doing the same, ultimately, to ourselves.

That isn't to say there's an easy way out of the mess we find ourselves in, here in the 21st century. Indeed, I see only one way out: a critical mass of humanity coming to its senses and groping for a way to create a peace that that has more resonance than war. We don't have much political leadership around this, especially among the planet's dominant -- and nuclear-armed -- nation states. But there is some.

Finding it and connecting with it, however, seems almost beyond the realm of possibility. Robert Dodge of Physicians for Social Responsibility wrote recently, for instance, that the U.N.'s recent, month-long Review Conference on the 45-year-old Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons "was officially a failure due to the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to present or even support real steps toward disarmament."

They displayed, he wrote, "an unwillingness to recognize the peril that the planet faces at the end of their nuclear gun and (are) continuing to gamble on the future of humanity." But to conceal this, they are "presenting a charade of concern, blaming each other and bogging down in discussions over a glossary of terms while the hand of the nuclear Armageddon clock continues to move ever forward."

The "realists" attempt to scale back the intensity of such anti-nuclear outrage by balancing these fears with the certainty that greater dangers exist, at least for Western civilization, in a world without nuclear weapons.

Keith B. Payne, president of the National Institute for Public Policy, defending the nuke realism perspective this week in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, ended his essay by quoting that iconic realist Winston Churchill: "Be careful above all things not to let go of the atomic weapons until you are sure, and more than sure, that other means of preserving peace are in your hands."

Payne adds: "The emergence of a new, benign world order at this point is nowhere in sight, and the prospects for the cooperative move to nuclear zero appear to be zero. Realists do not pretend otherwise."

Humanity has now been officially poised at nuclear standoff for 70 years. This isn't just an academic debate about the nature of geopolitical dangers. What the self-proclaimed realists have on their side is something that looks an awful lot like reality: that is to say, a convergence of economic, political and social forces locked into the continued existence of nuclear "deterrence." This locked-in determination to maintain the nuclear status quo continues to make the anti-nuclear viewpoint appear both idealistic (unreal, impossible) and naïve (ignorant of the real dangers our enemies, nuclear-armed and otherwise, pose to us).

There are multiple flaws in this sort of "realism," however. Here are two:

First, while Churchill's advice may (or may not) have been temporarily sound when he uttered it at the dawn of the Cold War, it's not immortal; nor is it consequence-free. "Not letting go of the atomic weapons" has meant, 70 years later: an expenditure of unfathomable trillions of dollars by the world's Nuclear 9; the radioactive contamination of testing sites around the world; the ongoing possibility of nuclear accident and unintentional nuclear war; and the empowering of military obsessives, who keep looking for excuses to develop "tactical" nukes, which can actually be employed in battle (because, come on, what fun is a weapon you never get to use?).

Furthermore, the enormous profit to be had in nuclear preparedness has created the rise of the military-industrial complex, which has a financial -- and emotional -- stranglehold on Congress and the mainstream media, pretty much guaranteeing that government policy will continue to be chained to the concepts of military dominance and nuclear deterrence. This means continued development of nuclear technology and the wasting of further trillions of dollars that might otherwise be spent for the good of humanity.

Second, Payne laments that "the emergence of a new, benign world order at this point is nowhere in sight." This is the destructive cynicism of faux-realism, dismissing the possible future with a shrug -- as though peace either arrives hand-delivered as a gift from God or it doesn't arrive at all.

What he's really saying is that a benign world order is nowhere in sight and we're not going to help create it, because our vested interest is in the nuclear status quo, precarious and toxic though it may be. We're living on the brink of human annihilation; what could possibly go wrong?

Countering this vested-interest realism is a global movement demanding the creation of a nuke-free world order and the transcendence of war. At last December's Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, the state of Austria made a pledge to devote itself to the elimination of nuclear weapons on Planet Earth. More than 90 nations have so far endorsed the pledge, which is now called the Humanitarian Pledge. It includes such wording as:

"Emphasizing that the consequences of a nuclear weapon explosion and the risks associated with nuclear weapons concern the security of all humanity and that all states share the responsibility to prevent any use of nuclear weapons...

"Affirming that it is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances..."

I don't know. I have my doubts that such a movement will succeed before a nuclear accident -- or something else -- shatters the political and economic power of the vested-interest nuclear "realists," but I reach out to it in solidarity. "All states share the responsibility..."

Maybe this is how a new sort of world, with foundations planted in human solidarity and connectedness, will come into being. Maybe this is the true value of nuclear weapons: to scare us into learning how to get along.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

© 2015 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1dBTL0R
via IFTTT

Educators Are Concerned About Students Going Hungry This Summer. Here's Who's Helping

While most kids are counting down the days to summer, low-income children are dreading the sound of the final bell, which signals hunger season is setting in.

Across the U.S., 83 percent of 1,100 educators who were recently surveyed said they’re worried that their students won’t have enough to eat over summer break, according to No Kid Hungry. But it’s hardly a new concern.

During the 2012-2013 school year, 21.5 million students received free or reduced-priced lunch, according to the Food Research and Action Center. While the need remains the same when school’s out, the resources aren’t as readily available because of the bureaucracy involved in starting a food program and because struggling parents often can’t access the sites that do serve meals.

“Too many of my students do not get regular meals when school is out of session,” Yolanda Stanislaus, a middle school principal, told No Kid Hungry. You can see a real learning gap at the start of the school year between the students who had enough to eat over the break and the ones who struggled.

Experts say that these kids are also more likely to experience developmental issues and ongoing health problems.

One of the obstacles well-meaning individuals face is an impossible amount of red tape that can keep them from getting their meal programs off the ground.

Back in 2012, Angela Prattis, a Philadelphia native, turned her driveway into a free feeding station for about 60 local kids a day, NBC reported. But the city demanded she shut down her operation or face a $600 fine because she hadn’t coughed up the $1,000 required to apply for a permit to serve food outdoors.

Even when authorized food programs are available, families in rural areas may not have a means of transportation to get their kids there or a lack of communication may mean they don’t even know such programs exist, according to No Kid Hungry.

To ensure kids have enough to eat, No Kid Hungry is calling on organizations to develop programs that deliver food, similar to Meals on Wheels, and that on-site initiatives allow kids to take packaged meals home with them.

To bridge the communication gap, the United States Department of Agriculture operates a hotline that enables families to learn where they can access emergency food providers and nutritional assistance programs, among other services.

Some groups have taken innovative, and fun, approaches to getting food to underserved kids, so that the process is efficient and inclusive.

Throughout the summer, Federal Way Public Schools dispenses three lime green FRED busses, which stands for Fun, Read, Eat and Dream, throughout low-income neighborhoods in Seattle. The buses are equipped with games, books, WiFi access and, of course, nutritious food and is supported both by private donations and a federal government grant, according to the Associated Press.

"I think it's fantastic," Jeanette Borchers, a mother of two, told the AP in 2013. "It really is a good community thing."

To take action on pressing poverty issues, check out the Global Citizen's widget below.

Like Us On Facebook
Follow Us On Twitter

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1KtAgS8
via IFTTT

The Hottest Mexican Restaurants Across the U.S.

The country's Mexican food scene is hotter than ever, with more and more real-deal taquerias, Tex-Mex joints and even some upscale alternatives popping up from coast to coast.

El Camino in Washington, DC
Why it's hot: This newish hot spot in hipster-heavy Bloomingdale delivers its popular tacos, brunch dishes and fish-of-the-day specials on mismatched vintage china or in skillets with a backdrop of a retro-cool Chicano-Mexican space.
Must-order: Scallop ceviche; chorizo tacos; the cucumber margarita
108 Rhode Island Ave. NW; 202-847-0419

Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar in Boston
Why it's hot: The team behind South Boston's buzzy Lincoln Tavern opened this inventive eatery across the street, featuring fresh flavors, funky ideas (like oysters topped with flavored ice) and culinary finesse under chef Nick Dixon. It's been packing in young professionals nightly, thanks to a cool vibe and 41-variety-deep tequila and mezcal menu.
Must-order: The menu takes a Baja-influenced direction emphasizing the light and bright flavors exemplified by this scallops escabeche ($15). The Nantucket scallops swim overnight in a marinade of fresh orange juice, ginger and garlic. Then they're seared and served with a salad of strawberry, poppy seed, basil and mint tossed in a tequila-lime marinade.
412 W. Broadway, South Boston; 617-917-5626

Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami
Why it's hot: Inspired by food trucks, this funky joint specializes in modern street-food fare like Midnight Frita made with scrambled eggs, potato sticks and chorizo, accompanied by a selection of craft tequila cocktails.
Must-order: Flame-broiled steak tacos
1220 16th St.; 305-704-2145

Licha's Cantina in Austin
Why it's hot: This relative newcomer in East Austin serves up an eclectic menu with dishes you won't find almost anywhere else in the city. The hip, refurbished house and big patio make it perfect for a trendy brunch.
Must-order: Lengua sopecitos, a corn cup with beef tongue, escabeche, avocado salsa and queso fresco
1306 E. Sixth St.; 512-480-5960

City Tacos in San Diego
Why it's hot: A newcomer to the taco arena, this North Park taqueria broke through this year's Best Of lists in several categories: Mexican, Tacos and Cheap Eats among others. And those who have tried the unique combinations like grilled chicken with arugula, golden raisins, sliced almonds and tamarind aïoli agree that the flavors are off-the-chart delicious.
Must-order: Take a gander at the chile relleno taco featuring a guero chile stuffed with Oaxaca and Cotija cheese -- it'll skyrocket to your hall-of-fame favorites. (Photo by Darlene Horn)
3028 University Ave.; 619-296-2303

BS Taqueria in Los Angeles
Why it's hot: The "BS" doesn't stand for what you think it does. It's shorthand for Broken Spanish, chef Ray Garcia's forthcoming Mexican restaurant, soon to open Downtown. For his taqueria, the menu is a mix of family recipes, his time in kitchens like Fig at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica and personal tastes as a hungry, roving Angeleno.
Must-order: Highlights include traditional fillings like chorizo and papas, chicken or carne asada tacos, but also housemade bologna, lengua and the clam and lardo taco. The latter takes the flavors you're used to with steamed clams -- here, cooked with lime, chilies and butter and deshelled -- with garlic-scented whipped lardo and garlic chips in a soft, fresh tortilla, made with the same organic masa as Petty Cash. Delicious, and that's no b.s. (Photo by Lesley Balla)
514 W. Seventh St.; 213-622-3744

Find out about more hot Mexican restaurants by reading the full story on Zagat!

More from Zagat:

America's Next Hot Food Cities

The 10 Best New Burgers Around the U.S.

America's Most Iconic New Dishes

Follow Zagat on Twitter
Like Zagat on Facebook

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1HALb9K
via IFTTT

Positive Messages In Public Health Campaigns Could Be More Effective Than Negative Ones

For most people, hearing about the benefits of eating healthy food is a more effective push to change their behavior than hearing why they shouldn’t be eating junk, a new study claims.

This is according to an analysis from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab of 43 published studies examining nutrition messages of public health campaigns.

The review found that negative messages — like “Eat healthy foods or lose years off your life!” — are effective for some audiences, particularly experts like physicians or nutritionists who are already knowledgeable in the field. However, positive messages pertaining to what someone should be eating and why it is good for them — such as “By eating healthfully, people can gain positive body image or energy” — tend to work better for a general audience that is less knowledgeable about nutrition.

“If you’re a parent, it’s better to focus on the benefits of broccoli and not the harms of hamburgers,” said Cornell marketing and nutritional science professor Bryan Wansink, who co-authored the report with University of Vermont nutrition and dietetics professor Lizzy Pope, in a release announcing the study.

Extending the research into the area of anti-smoking campaigns, the report argues that a positive message, like “If you quit smoking using this help line, you can save almost $2,000 a year,” would likely be more motivating to its audience than the negative message “Smoking kills you” that is more commonly used.

Recent research on education has also come to a similar conclusion. A 2014 study from the American Psychological Association reported that students who felt threatened by their teachers’ fear-based appeals performed worse on tests because the scare tactics made the students less motivated to succeed.

The Cornell study seems to indicate a shift away from the more attention-grabbing public health campaigns of recent years, such as New York’s “Don’t Drink Yourself Fat” anti-soda campaign and France’s “Smoking Means Being a Slave to Tobacco” anti-smoking ads.

Still, there are caveats. The study’s authors advise public health officials to focus their message on its intended audience, so depending the particular characteristics of that particular audience -- such as how detail-oriented or risk-averse it is --a negative public health campaign could still be effective. For example, the provocative "Tips from Former Smokers" ad campaign from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was credited with helping about 100,000 people permanently quit smoking in 2013.

The report was published earlier this year in the Nutrition Reviews journal and will also be presented at the Society of Nutrition Education and Behavior annual conference in Pittsburgh in July. The research was partially funded by the Produce for Better Health Foundation, a consumer education nonprofit.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1RvdDks
via IFTTT

Contador has 38 seconds sliced off Giro lead; Aru wins stage

Contador has 38 seconds sliced off Giro lead but remains on course for title; Aru wins stage

      

 

 

from USATODAY - Cycling Top Stories http://ift.tt/1HS9m97
via IFTTT

Dennis Hastert Received A Strange Call While On C-SPAN

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) received a strange call from a man in Yorkville, Ill., while on C-SPAN in 2014, which is making the rounds in light of the Justice Department's indictment Thursday.

“Hello, Denny,” said the man, who went by the name "Bruce." “Do you remember me from Yorkville?”

Bruce then laughed and hung up.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced Hastert's indictment surrounding his $3.5 million in payments to keep an unnamed individual quiet about his “prior misconduct.” The nature of that misconduct is not detailed.

The indictment indicated that the person whom Hastert paid has been a Yorkville resident and known Hastert most of his or her life. It also prominently noted that Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach before serving in Congress.

There's no indication that the C-SPAN call is related to the new allegations.

Hastert resigned from Congress after the 2006 elections, where Republicans were dogged by their handling of then-Rep. Mark Foley's (R-Fla.) sexually explicit instant messages and emails that he sent to male congressional pages.

Watch the video above.

Have a tip or story idea to share with us? Email us at scoops@huffingtonpost.com. We'll keep your identity private unless you tell us otherwise.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1FIacl7
via IFTTT

Father's Return to German Hometown Leads to Youth Prize

Three years ago this week our family returned to Germany with my father Edward Lowenstein to his hometown in the Essen-Steele area.

It was the first time he had set foot there in 73 years.

In early 1939, Dad had been placed by his parents on the Kindertransport, a British government-sponsored program that gave sanctuary to about 10,000 Jewish children from Central Europe.

He was nearly 5 years old.

Grandma Hilde and Grandpa Max sent Dad and our Uncle Ralph away to save them, not knowing if they would ever see them again.

Dad left several weeks after Uncle Ralph because he needed an emergency appendectomy.

A World War I veteran, my grandfather had taken his ailing son throughout the town where our family had lived for more than a century.

All refused to operate on a Jewish child.

Eventually, my great-grandfather and namesake Joseph Lowenstein found a non-Jewish colleague to perform the surgery.

He did so on the kitchen table on the first floor.

After a brief recovery, Dad went to England. He lived there with Uncle Ralph for about 18 months before being reunited with my grandparents, who had escaped through Genoa, Italy.

From there the family moved to Cincinnati, where Dad grew up and Uncle Ralph has remained since.

We had talked for years, decades really, about taking a trip back to the country.

We had even started to set dates for the trip.

But somehow Dad felt it had nothing to do with his life.

That changed close to four years ago.

Gabriele Thimm, a remarkable German teacher, contacted us and invited us to attend a memorial observation she was having for the town's Jewish community.

One of the stops would be at my great-grandfather Joseph's house, the home where Dad had had his appendix removed.

When we received the invitation to go to Essen from Gabriele in the fall of 2011, we could not go.

But we sent a statement lauding the community for their actions and courage and expressed our desire that we would meet them in person soon.

In May, during the course of a near magical week, we did just that.

During the trip we met the non-Jewish family that had held our family bible for years, visited Dad's old apartments, and went to a surprise birthday party held in his honor.

Gabriele and the students also organized ceremonies at the former Great Synagogue and the school where she teachers. Full of songs, readings, photos and documents, the ceremonies talked about the history of the Jewish people, the Jews in Essen and our family before explaining what happened when Hitler came to power in 1933.

At the end of the ceremony, Dad stood and answered children's questions.

Why did he return to Germany? What did he think about the country?

Germany is one of the countries in the world that has seen some of the worst atrocities in human history, he said in slow, clear tones.

But it's also a nation that has done more to atone for those actions than nearly any other country on the planet.

Dad also announced that rather than accept the honorarium he had been offered by the community, we had spoken as a family and decided to create the Lowenstein Family Award for Tolerance and Justice.

This award would honor young people whose actions and writing revealed a belief in those ideals.

In 2013 we went back for the first granting of the prizes.

This week will mark the third time.

Gabriele and I continue to speak monthly.

Over the past year she has described the rise in antisemtism, a toxic brew that exists throughout Europe made up of right wing extremism and Muslim fundamentalism.

Many of the Jewish students are the school are afraid to openly identify themselves as belonging to the religion, she said.

Gabriele and I have agreed that this moment makes our project mehr wichtig wie immer.

More important than ever.

We are seeking an external partner to expand the range and scope of the prize. Although have had some nibbles, no one has bitten yet.

This week we will celebrate Dad's 81st birthday. His continued survival is a source of joy for those of us in the family and all whose lives he has touched as well as a reminder of the ultimate failure of Hitler's genocidal regime.

We will also feel gratitude for a remarkable and brave teacher with a clear-eyed view of the challenges we confront and the need for continuous and sustained action to meet them.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1eDjvKi
via IFTTT

Who Is Dennis Hastert?

Live, From Brooklyn

Value typically parallels price. High-quality food tends to be expensive. Ditto for clothes, airline seats -- even medical treatment.

The rule does not hold for live comedy. In New York City, global mecca for stand-up, discerning comedy nerds know the best stuff costs between $8 and free. Not that there aren’t alternatives. Caroline’s on Broadway is a comedic Cheesecake Factory, churning out jokes designed to satisfy if not edify, at a market-high price (hovering at the high end around $100 a ticket, plus a two-drink minimum). Around the country, comedy clubs have franchised the venerable Manhattan institution’s model, attracting audiences so trained to expect reliable fare that “you could just have a chair on stage with a mic next to it and that chair will sell the 9:30 show,” the comic Hannibal Buress told me recently, recalling a large club he frequented during his early stand-up years in Chicago.

Buress is one of a new class of comics making Brooklyn the anti-Caroline’s. The experimental scene that colonized subterranean East Village bars in the 1990s has shifted as ballooning Manhattan rents have shut down major comedy hubs. Today, rising stars hone their bits in low-priced sets across the water, either in various pockets of Williamsburg or along a strip of venues stretching in the southern part of the borough, from Park Slope to Gowanus.

Hari Kondabolu dissects the charm of the Brooklyn comedy show he occasionally hosts, "Night Train."

Call it artisanal comedy, unique from the genre known as alternative or alt-comedy due to new realities of time and place. At Brooklyn shows, the borough shapes the product, just as soil and sunlight flavor a wine. The craftspeople -- in this case, comics -- are as fêted as the work they create. Free from the tyranny of the big club's joke churn, they act out. Individuation is the new normal; any comic with big dreams must know herself. Where making it once foreordained an ensemble cast (see: "The Cosby Show," "Seinfeld"), TV hits now orbit tightly around the universe of a single person ("Inside Amy Schumer"), a like-minded duo ("Key & Peele"), or even the phenomenon of Brooklyn itself ("Girls").

Like a top-notch MFA program, Brooklyn is enabling this industry shift. Take the happenings at "Night Train," a weekly comedy show held at a multiuse venue in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Gowanus. Not even a decade ago, the strip that houses the show's venue, Littlefield, held mostly mechanic shops and small manufacturers of items you might see at Home Depot.

That past is a faint shadow today. Fans of the Comedy Central show “Broad City” know Gowanus as the Oz that Abbi Abrams stumbles upon in an early episode this past season, dazzled. Granted, her character was compromised at the time, tripping on an accidental cocktail of painkillers and super-strong weed. But that narrative twist only amps up the high even a sober keeper of the past might feel in the neighborhood these days, what with all the kids licking small-batch ice cream scoops, and passersby carrying bows and arrows, heading to or from the archery range down the block. In this setting, the Gowanus Canal, the epically filthy regional waterway Jonathan Lethem once called “Brooklyn’s armpit,” is almost a comfort: incapable of putting on airs.

Abbi indulges her high at the already trippy Whole Foods in Gowanus.

Imagine a cross between a college campus and a cruise ship, with the intellectual sensibility of the former and the manic entertainment value of the latter. Within less than a mile radius of Littlefield lies the archery place, a shuffleboard club, several print shops, a fencing center (swords, not gates), Ample Hills Creamery (where summer weekends mean kid traffic from multiple birthday parties), and a rollicking new Whole Foods, the latter of which prompted one of Abbi’s hallucinations -- a talking tooth -- to intone bleakly about “a whole new Gowanus.”

"Night Train" slots in as yet another luxury tailor-made for the clientele: premiere live comedy, priced at a rate acceptable to the kind of person who knows what’s available for free on YouTube. The stereotype of Brooklyn transplants that has conquered popular opinion holds here. "Night Train" audiences tend to look like a bunch of extras on "Girls": mostly white, all young, skinny jeans galore.

That description hardly fits the comics on tap. On a typical night, the lineup at "Night Train" might hit a dozen boxes on a census survey: black, queer, Asian, immigrant, first-generation, native New Yorker or West Coast visitor. Up-and-comers on the comedy circuit intermingle with the occasional drop-in star or grizzled veteran. The mix reflects a sea change in comedy itself, an industry Joan Rivers once called “an angry white man’s game.” At Littlefield, on stage at least, that demographic is the minority.

Wyatt Cenac, the "Daily Show" alum who started "Night Train" in 2012 and acted as its first host, says the show’s outward face was a conscious choice from the beginning. When approached by Marianne Ways -- a veteran East Village booker now decamped to Gowanus -- "one of the things that we had talked about was trying to have the lineup be as diverse as possible," Cenac said.

A recent "SNL" sketch skewered -- and kinda loved on -- Brooklyn gentrification.

Despite this, new Brooklyn looms large. This writer heard more stroller jokes during a year of "Night Train" attendance than actual strollers she could recall seeing in the neighborhood. For that matter, any domestic comedy has its place. A recent set by a trio of former roommates -- Kenny DeForest, Clark Jones and Will Miles -- redefined the borough’s neighborhoods by way of the movements that lead to stroller-ing: a move to Gowanus from East Williamsburg being the first step toward marriage.

Critique of and affiliation to Brooklyn -- a balance underlying this year's standout niche "Saturday Night Live" sketch, in which three black Bushwick "corner boys" wax poetic on artisanal mayonnaise -- reflects the borough’s status as comedy’s new epicenter. Buress partly credits his years hosting a weekly show at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg for the momentum that ushered him through the pivotal threshold from stage to screen: he’s now a "Broad City" regular. (He’s since abdicated his Knitting Factory duties to DeForest, Jones and Miles, the "Night Train" drop-ins who mapped Brooklyn neighborhoods according to relationship stages).

Beyond the hosting gig’s intellectual demands -- “X amount of stage time each week, no matter what,” Buress said -- the initial appeal was as simple as the reason a person might choose a laundromat: location, location, location. The Knitting Factory sits two blocks from his Williamsburg apartment. “I could be in the shower at 8:45 and out the door and on stage by 9,” he said. Given that the virtue of hosting is the regulated draw on a comic’s generative abilities, the stability of proximity helps.

As the scene has formalized, farther-flung comics have joined. Aparna Nancherla, a D.C. transplant now living in Astoria, Queens, uses the stage at Littlefield as a workshop space, refining jokes meant to eventually enter the world in what she calls a “crystallized” form, rendered for posterity on an album or major tour.

She contrasts the “cozy” feel of Brooklyn shows with the atmosphere at "The Meltdown," an influential comedy show run out of a comic book store in West Hollywood. Brooklyn venues offer the same double-edged intimacy as New York City apartments. They're “cramped, with not a lot of room to move,” Nancherla said, hypothesizing that city density and spontaneous walk-in traffic make that so. The result, Nancherla finds, is an atmosphere conducive to experimentation.

Contrast that traffic flow with the movements of a driving populace more inclined to plan out an evening ahead of time. “It’s not necessarily about which famous people are on the bill, which sometimes feels more like the thing in LA,” she said.

Because of the skewed economics that come from living where the comics do, Brooklyn showgoers pay less and subsequently demand less than their counterparts across the country. This is a counterintuitive boon to comics. Setups can be long and experimental. Wandery not-quite-jokes are often rehashed over many months. Nancherla unveiled a bit she’d polished in front of several "Night Train" audiences last fall, while opening for the eastern leg of Tig Notaro’s highly publicized “Boyish Girl Interrupted” tour. In it, Nancherla compares living in New York to a hypothetical reality show that tests a contestant’s breaking point. One flourish came to her while on stage at Littlefield. “Is it gonna be the pigeon with the lazy eye?” The audience’s laughter convinced Nancherla to "crystallize" the line. “It’s become a part of the joke,” she said.

Hosts exercise new muscles too, says Hari Kondabolu, a comic who occasionally subs in for Cenac at "Night Train."

Along with his brother and co-host, former Das Racist rapper Ashok Kondabolu, Hari sees his job as an order of magnitude beyond what Dave Chappelle once quipped as the opener’s sole duty, that is, getting “the audience used to looking at the stage.” At shows where hosts carry selling power, “the point is to set the tone, that we’re going to be playing around here,” Kondabolu said. “You don’t know what we’re going to do, and you don’t know what everyone else is going to do. They’re going to be trying some stuff and also -- you paid five dollars. What are you complaining about? You’re in New York; there’s nothing to complain about. And maybe Aziz Ansari will show up, who knows?”




If Brooklyn shows are essentially MFA workshops for comics, feedback comes from the audience. Playing Littlefield can’t compare to performing on a late show in terms of compensation or visibility. “It’s not the place that you’re expecting scouts to go to,” Kondabolu said. “But I am expecting that I’m going to have a smart audience and that they’re going to be nice and not heckle.”

Like Nancherla, Kondabolu is Indian American. His highest profile work often tackles nuanced concerns of the Indian community, shattering the standby comedy model of catering to one's own ethnic group. Performing on the "Late Show with David Letterman," he spoke of a woman who slid into the backseat of his father's car, presuming it was a cab. (The punch line: "Apparently she's so racist, she looks at the color of the driver before looking at the color of the car.") On "Conan," he started as a schoolteacher might, defining the theme of his set as "colonialism." Creative freedom starts in venues like Littlefield, where audiences expect only to be challenged.

That desire is driven in part by economics, Kondabolu pointed out. A “20-something with five to eight dollars” is spared the typical clubgoer’s calculation: “'I just had to get a babysitter for my kids, I made this my night out. I just had to get a ton of drinks. I’m exhausted from the week and this person is up here talking about police brutality.'” "Night Train" operates on self-selection. “When you’re talking about a gentrifying class going to a show in Brooklyn, and who watch 'The Daily Show,' and who might know Wyatt from that,” Kondabolu said, “it’s going to reflect what you can say.”

Arbitration by young, white liberals has precedent in comedy lore. In the early 1970s, Richard Pryor defected to Berkeley after a string of high-profile but unfulfilling coups in Los Angeles: national appearances on Johnny Carson's and Ed Sullivan's shows in which Pryor delivered jokes “like placards” to the nation, as the writer Hilton Als would describe them nearly three decades later. It was as if each bit arrived with a heading, wrote Als, in a 1999 New Yorker profile tracking the comedian’s evolution, “that read ‘Joke’: When I was young, I used to think my people didn’t like me. Because they used to send me to the store for bread and then they’d move. Badam cha."

Als writes of “show-business luminaries” advising Pryor to follow the model of Bill Cosby. He quotes Pryor’s recollection of a conversation with a white writer called Murray Roman. “Don’t mention the fact that you’re a n----r. Don’t go into such bad taste,” Pryor said in a Rolling Stone interview. “They were gonna try to help me be nothin’ as best they could.”

One of the earliest beneficiaries of an alternative comedy scene, Richard Pryor fled the racism of 1970s Hollywood for the freedom of the college town up north.

In Berkeley, Pryor found a voice rooted in his past. In a new memoir titled Pryor Lives!, Cecil Brown, a journalist who began a 30-year friendship with Pryor after seeing the comedian perform in Berkeley, writes of the “white youth who lined up to see Richard” perform his strange new acts, in which he might pronounce a single word in different ways, or impersonate the winos of his childhood memories.

These were hippies and students eager for brutal honesty -- "the core of the counterculture," Brown called them -- "lied to by the leaders of the nation, by the leaders of their local towns, by the Oakland Police, and by the Berkeley Police.” Swap out the geographical terms and his description of Pryorheads this could apply to Brooklyn-based activists arrested during Occupy Wall Street, or the thousands who demonstrated near the borough’s largest train hub this winter, protesting police action in Ferguson, Missouri.




That power dynamic lingers today. Byron Bowers, a wiry LA-based comic, says he regulates his comedy based on setting. During a "Night Train" set last fall, he riffed at length about his love of hallucinatory mushrooms, a typically “white-kid” obsession that he predicts might throw a club audience if he were to make the same claim there (Bowers is black).

He likens the comedy world to his high-school experience as an athlete who took honors classes. The clubs correlate to the people he hung out with after school: rowdy “athletes and cheerleaders” looking for an unambiguous good time. Audiences at indie shows -- like the kids he took classes with -- let him explore nuance. “The subject matter I can talk about [with them] is much more deep.”

The unusual economics of the comedy world help make this liberation possible. In the tradition of the East Village bar circuit, the choicest Brooklyn comedy happens in venues that aren’t devoted to it. Littlefield is an event space, the Knitting Factory a concert hall. Union Hall -- a Park Slope institution whose lived-in basement served as the setting for the stand-up scenes in comic Mike Birbiglia’s hit indie movie “Sleepwalk with Me” -- is a bar.

As opposed to venues with other sources of income, comedy clubs are tasked with luring in audiences every night of the week. That desperation results in a necessary evil of the comedy world, Cenac said. “Themed nights, whether it’s the Black Night or the Latino Night.” He recalls a club in Los Angeles with “Refried Fridays” and “Chopstick Comedy.”

“People still do whatever to get butts in the seats," he said "The challenge of live comedy is that we live in an age where, if someone wants a laugh, they can just go onto their laptop and pull up a YouTube video.”

In Gowanus, you may as well just walk down the street.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1Kt3jp5
via IFTTT

Patriot Act That Dennis Hastert Passed Led To His Indictment

On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.

Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.

Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later.

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced Hastert's indictment for agreeing to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep someone quiet about his “prior misconduct.” The indictment accuses Hastert of structuring bank withdrawals to avoid bank reporting requirements, and lying to the FBI about the nature of the withdrawals. It does not reveal the “misconduct” that Hastert was trying to conceal. The recipient of the money was a resident of Yorkville, Illinois, where Hastert taught high school and coached wrestling from 1965 to 1981.

The indictment suggests that law enforcement officials relied on the Patriot Act’s expansion of bank reporting requirements to snare Hastert. As the IRS notes, “the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 increased the scope” of cash reporting laws “to help trace funds used for terrorism.” The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which was amended by the Patriot Act, had already required banks to report suspicious transactions.

The banks that Hastert frequented, the indictment states, were required to “prepare and file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network a Currency Transaction Report (Form 104) for any transaction or series of transactions involving currency of more than $10,000.” From 2010 to 2012, Hastert made 15 withdrawals of $50,000 from multiple bank accounts in order to make the hush money payments, according to the indictment. One or more of the banks flagged the transactions as suspicious. In April 2012, “pursuant to bank policy and federal regulations,” bank representatives questioned Hastert about the transactions, according to the indictment.

After that, according to the indictment, Hastert began withdrawing cash in increments smaller than $10,000 to avoid detection. When the FBI questioned Hastert about the purpose of the withdrawals, the indictment alleges, Hastert lied and told them he was keeping the cash for himself.

If the Patriot Act is ultimately Hastert's undoing, it will not be the first time the law has been used to prosecute a politician’s criminal activity. In 2008, Newsweek reported that the Patriot Act’s expanded banking disclosure requirements put the FBI on the trail of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer (D). Investigators identified payments made in connection with Spitzer’s solicitation of prostitutes.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1ECezu2
via IFTTT

The Scandal That Ended Dennis Hastert's Control Of The House

A federal grand jury in Chicago on Thursday indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) on charges of bank fraud and lying to the FBI. He also was accused of paying an unknown person $3.5 million in hush money to keep “prior misconduct” a secret.

After leaving the House, Hastert joined the Washington lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro as a senior adviser. The firm confirmed late Thursday, after removing Hastert's biography from its website, that he had resigned.

Hastert was the longest-serving House speaker in history when he retired after the 2006 elections. That year, he and other Republicans were embroiled in a major congressional scandal. Then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned in September 2006 after it was revealed he sent sexually explicit instant messages and emails to male congressional pages.

The Republican leadership’s handling of the scandal, with Hastert at the helm, played a key role in that year’s midterm elections, when the GOP sustained a major shellacking and was forced to hand over control of the House to Democrats, after dominating it since 1994.

To be sure, the GOP was also dogged by an unpopular president waging a deeply controversial war. But Hastert and other GOP congressional leaders were implicated in the Foley scandal when it was revealed that they knew about the emails in late 2005, months before the scandal made headlines in September 2006. Additionally, they allowed Foley to serve as chair of a congressional caucus on missing and exploited children, right up until he resigned from Congress. Foley had also been a major proponent of anti-gay legislation.

Hastert’s office initially claimed that he first heard about the scandal when former congressional pages leaked the emails to ABC News and The Washington Post, breaking the story wide open. Shortly after that, he backtracked, releasing a statement admitting that he had known about Foley’s inappropriate behavior since that spring and that several congressional leaders had alerted him and his staff to the emails.

The revelations pointed to a potential cover-up. Subsequent reporting found that Republican top brass warned Foley of the consequences of his behavior and tried to intervene in the months leading up to his resignation.

It began with Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), who learned of the emails because Foley had been corresponding with one of Alexander’s pages. Alexander reported the correspondence to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, as well as then-House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). They quickly informed Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who oversaw the House page program. Shimkus confronted Foley and ordered him to stop all communication with the pages.

Boehner and Reynolds then warned several of Hastert’s aides, including Hastert’s floor assistant, deputy chief of staff, and in-house counsel. Both congressmen also claimed they spoke directly to Hastert about the situation, with Boehner saying that Hastert responded that it “had been taken care of.” Hastert denied the conversations.

A House Ethics Committee investigation ultimately concluded that Hastert was "willfully ignorant" in handling the revelations, and the Foley scandal cast a dark cloud over his final days in office.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1HzmBWO
via IFTTT

Why Courts Keep Defending Workers' Retirement Security

The economic inequality gap in America is widening, and more and more of our aging parents and neighbors are retiring into poverty. For most Americans, Social Security stands between them and living out their retirement in poverty. For public workers, many of whom do not receive Social Security benefits, their pension is what allows them to live in dignity in later years.

In recent months, courts in California, Oregon and Illinois have ruled on the side of workers when failed politicians tried to gut pensions. Like the courts, the public has sided with retirees in recent years. In recent years, voters in cities from Cincinnati to Phoenix have voted overwhelmingly defended the pensions of public workers.

The Illinois Supreme Court's decision earlier this month to strike down changes to the state's pension laws echoes what the courts and voters around the country have long held true: The state cannot deny hundreds of thousands of workers their hard-earned retirement security to alleviate budget woes created by politicians.

The decision by the state high court, which unanimously found unconstitutional new rules to stave off future cost-of-living adjustments and increase in retirement age for workers, is in line with recent judicial and public thinking on the issue. And it is also in line with a court ruling that is now being reviewed by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

When it comes to ill-conceived efforts to gut retirement benefits for teachers, nurses and firefighters, the courts and public opinion overwhelmingly side with workers. That was the case in Oregon, where the state Supreme Court ruled last month that state legislators could not retroactively lower cost-of-living adjustments on retirement benefits. It was also the case in Phoenix, where voters shot down a dark-money-backed proposition that would have ended the city's traditional pension system.

The Illinois Supreme Court is the latest to confirm that retirement security is an essential part of our social fabric, and one that merits constitutional protection. When people work hard and spend their entire professional lives paying into a system that guarantees them financial security in retirement, we can't pull back on that promise.

For years, public pension funds were depleted by politicians who chose to use workers' hard-earned retirement money to offset budget shortfalls. Now that there is increased public scrutiny, many states have proven that when politicians hold up their part, pension systems are healthily funded and offer the best return on workers' investment in retirement security.

Nevada's Public Employees' Retirement System, for example, took a hard hit after the Great Recession but is now one of the strongest and most efficient pension systems in the country. The program today is funded at 71 percent -- and will be 100-percent funded by 2050.

If we're going to talk about cuts in spending, we should be looking at the true offenders: corporate entities and the wealthy. While working families around the country have struggled to recover from the recession, corporations and Wall Street bankers have turned record profits and have rigged the system so that they receive unfair and costly tax breaks.

The decisions by the Illinois Supreme Court and others should serve as a warning to states that are considering making changes that unfairly cut retirement benefits for workers who have paid into their retirement security from Day 1 on the job. States will unnecessarily spend time and resources to defend proposals that will never be enacted. Lawmakers must choose between standing with Wall Street or standing with the courts and the public for the sake of retirement security.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Chicago - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1LMIuWF
via IFTTT