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Speculating on what a post-coronavirus world looks like seems impossible at the moment. This not-knowing is generating personal and economic anxiety around the world. We must grapple with the fact that a one-to-two month timeline is not feasible and prepare ourselves for what a year or longer looks like.

Being in the middle of a crisis can be fertile ground for preparing what comes afteror, perhaps more pertinent to this discussion, what comes now. Reaching an existential crossroads is an ideal time for self-reflection. It forces you to confront the solitude we usually avoid by endlessly gazing at our phones. As has long been known, boredom is a powerful teacher that should not be overlooked, during this moment, or ever.

As I wrote about last week, transience is part of life. This is the first time the entire planet is collectively experiencing a crisis in my 44-year lifetime. Sure, we've confronted Black Lives Matter, #metoo, the AIDS epidemic. There were plenty of people that felt inoculated from those moments. It's easy to ignore or decry movements that don't personally involve you. This moment is different.

There are dozens if not hundreds of changes we can speculate on. Below are five currently on my mind.

For years, I've done this: When in line and the person in front of me stares at or talks on their phone the entire time the cashier rings them up, I always ask upon reaching my turn, "How does it make you feel when a person ignores you to look at their phone?" Never onceand my anecdotal study has many dozens if not a hundred responses thus farhas someone replied, "I feel great." Answers range from "I'm used to it by now" to "It's like I'm not even a human being."

Grocery store (among other) workers aren't having a moment right now because they're heroes. The dictates of capitalism demand that they risk getting sick or don't get paid. We shouldn't appreciate service workers now; we should always appreciate them. The grief that retail workers usually receive is a sad reflection of a twisted social hierarchy. And to think, just weeks ago we endured gripes regarding the impossibility of a $15/hour minimum wage. As a society we need to seriously question the value we place on work, and make that value available to everyone. It starts by valuing those that care for you, regardless of your financial or career position.

With eyes turned on toilet paper and hand sanitizer, as well as the sales surge in pretzels, popcorn, Oreos, and other processed foods, there is good news on the food front: loads of people are baking their own bread. I picked up this skill over a decade ago while living in Brooklyn and fell in love with the patience and dilligence the process requires. Sure, the fact that flour and yeast are hard to procure is unfortunate. At the same time, it signals an important return to the kitchen. Americans outsource their cooking and food preparation too much as it is.

In the past week, my wife has experimented with Polish peasant food, pungent Isan soup, and scrumptious butter cookies. We both cook regularly, but given our normally hectic lives, that's usually limited to weekends. Yesterday, she made cultured butter from scratch, which then went into pancakes. (Fortunately, I'm live-streaming classes to keep moving after all this home cooking.) I'll return to bread when I can secure flour, but in the meantime I'll be reopening my Hungarian cookbooks to revisit the dishes my grandmother made.

With Amazon taking up to a month to ship books and local bookstores and libraries closed, there are still plenty of opportunities for reading. (You probably binged "Tiger King" anyway.) Fortunately, ebooks are instantly downloadable. If you're in a financial squeeze, the National Emergency Library has made over 1.4 million books available for free while Open Culture is one of the best resources around for discovering open-source and public domain reading materials.

Reading bestows numerous benefits, including increasing your intelligence and levels of empathy. This pandemic has thrown many off-guard. Yet disease has long been part of our biological heritage. Humans have endured pandemics with much less up-to-date information. That said, this is the perfect time to study the history of medicine and evolutionary biology. A grasp of the past empowers you with the understanding of how to move through an uncomfortable present. Take advantage of this time to fill you brain with knowledge.

A man reads his book on his window after partial curfew declaration within precautions against coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Tunisia's old city Al Madina al-Kadima on March 27, 2020.

Photo by Yassine Gaidi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

"Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do," writes Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: A History of Walking. "It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking."

Not that walking is nothing. In a sense, it's everything to us bipeds. Still, Solnit make an important point. The most startling revelation of this pandemic is seeing more people casually walking around on sidewalks than on the roadsand one of my cross streets is the perpetually-crowded Venice Blvd. Even the ubiquitous scooters are nowhere in sight.

We can't expect these practices to sustain at the current level when self-isolation is over. But maybe, just perhaps, more of us will remember the pleasure of walking. As Solnit implies, it is also a wonderful opportunity to work through those thousands of thoughts in your head. Time and space give you perspective.

I had, admittedly ignorantly, assumed that a pandemic was one issue that would cut through political polarization. Wow, was I wrong. As mentioned above, this virus transcends race, gender, and class. Yes, it's particularly dangerous for immunodeficient patients, of which there is a class component (due to food availability and exercises opportunities). Overall, no one wants this virus, and everyone can sufferif not you personally, then a relative or loved one.

We need to unite and rally around levelheaded science. The growing number of conspiracy theories (5G; bioweapon manufacturing; Advil) potentially hurt others as well. This crisis is often compared to 9/11, a day I remember well. Over the following months there was fear around New York City, but there was also an overwhelming sense of community. Though I am mostly inside these days, when I do go out for walks, I notice that same sense of "we're in this together." Subtle and simple: people making eye contact and saying hello. That is not the usual exchange in LA.

Reading, walking, cooking, appreciating the person ringing up your groceries, all practices that slow us down and bring us back to fundamentals. Humans are social animals, making this an especially difficult period, as we can't touch one another. But we can still effect each other, even if through these screens. On the other side of your posts human eyes stare back. Keep that in mind the next time you sit down to write or share. People all over the world are suffering right now. We can all play a role in alleviating each other's distress.

--

Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His next book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."

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5 lessons we can all learn from this crisis - Big Think

Ahead of Novembers election, American intelligence officials and others are on high alert for mischief from Russias Internet Research Agency.

Remember it?

The Kremlin-backed group was identified by American authorities as having interfered in the 2016 election. At the time, Russians working for the group stole the identities of American citizens and spread incendiary messages on Facebook and other social media platforms to stoke discord on race, religion and other issues that were aimed at influencing voters.

To avoid detection, the group has since evolved its tactics. Here are five ways its methods have shifted.

When Congress released examples of Facebook ads that the Russian troll farm bought several years ago, many of the ads had misspellings and grammatical errors. Some captions in the ads omitted or misused a or the because indefinite articles arent used in Russian.

Now Russian operators are trying to avoid detection by copying and pasting chunks of texts from other sources directly into their posts. When Facebook took down 50 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency in October, many of the posts featured text copied from Wikipedia, as well as from The Atlantic and other outlets, said Ben Nimmo, a researcher at Graphika who investigates disinformation.

Before

Computer programs are getting better at processing vast amounts of text a task called natural language processing which means they are better at ferreting out telltale social media manipulation signals such as semantic errors and common hashtags.

As a result, the troll farm is now using less text in posts and fewer hashtags. In October, when Facebook removed the accounts with ties to the Russian group, researchers pointed out the groups posts had minimal text of block letters overlaid on top of images.

Instead of writing its own text, the troll farm now also posts screenshots of tweets created by real Americans. Computer programs typically do not scan images for text.

Before

From 2014 to 2017, the troll farm ran Facebook accounts with overt pro-American, pro-black and pro-Southern culture themes. The names of the accounts mimicked brands.

Their reach was vast. One Facebook page that the group operated, Blacktivist, which focused on black activism, collected over 360,000 followers by September 2017. This surpassed the followers on the verified Black Lives Matter Facebook account, which at the time had just over 301,000.

Now, themed accounts with politically divisive content and lots of followers are considered suspicious. So the Russians appear to be working harder at hiding, using accounts that have fewer followers.

When Facebook took down some Instagram accounts that showed links to the Russian troll farm last year, more than half had fewer than 5,000 followers. One account that was removed, @progressive.voice, had just over 2,000 followers. The one with the most followers had about 20,000.

Before

One common trait among troll farm posts in the past was that its images were stamped with watermarks a logo, text or pattern superimposed onto another image as a way for the group to build followers for its Facebook pages.

More recently, the group has used the same images but removed the logo or blurred it out, and sometimes it changed the captions by using different typefaces. That helped to disguise that it was behind the posts, said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute.

Now that many of the known Russian pages have been identified, using watermarks is a double-edged sword, since it can also help content moderators track and shut down larger networks of disinformation, she said.

Before

Now

The troll group previously created accounts directly on Facebook to influence Americans. Now it appears to be hiring local people to open social media accounts, a practice known as franchising that adds a layer of camouflage.

The method came to light last year when Facebook removed a disinformation operation linked to people affiliated with the troll farm that tried to sway people in Africa. In that campaign, the Russians appeared to hire individuals or local media organizations in African countries to post propaganda and false content on the social network on its behalf. In March, Facebook revealed another campaign that appeared to use the same franchising method.

Alex Stamos, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said these campaigns had implications for the 2020 presidential election and that Russians were likely to work with Americans to get them to post politically inflammatory content on Facebook.

Read the original:
How Russias Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election - The New York Times

Newswise Facebook users flipping through their feeds in the fall of 2016 faced a minefield of targeted advertisements pitting blacks against police, southern whites against immigrants, gun owners against Obama supporters and the LGBTQ community against the conservative right.

Placed by distant Russian trolls, they didnt aim to prop up one candidate or cause, but to turn Americans against one another.

The ads were cheaply made and full of threatening, vulgar language.

And, according to a sweeping new analysis of more than 2,500 of the ads, they were remarkably effective, eliciting clickthrough rates as much as nine times higher than what is typical in digital advertising.

We found that fear and anger appeals work really well in getting people to engage, said lead author Chris Vargo, an assistant professor of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design at University of Colorado Boulder.

The study, published this week in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, is the first to take a comprehensive look at ads placed by the infamous Russian propaganda machine known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and ask: How effective were they? And what makes people click on them?

While focused on ads running in 2016, the studys findings resonate in the age of COVID-19 and the run-up to the 2020 election, the authors say.

As consumers continue to see ads that contain false claims and are intentionally designed to use their emotions to manipulate them, its important for them to have cool heads and understand the motives behind them, said Vargo.

How the study worked

For the study, Vargo and assistant professor of advertising Toby Hopp scoured 2,517 Facebook and Instagram ads downloaded from the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence website. The committee made the ads publicly available in 2018 after concluding that the IRA had been creating fake U.S. personas, setting up fake social media pages, and using targeted paid advertising to sow discord among U.S. residents.

Using computational tools and manual coding, Vargo and Hopp analyzed every ad, looking for the inflammatory, obscene or threatening words and language hostile to a particular groups ethnic, religious or sexual identity. They also looked at which groups each ad targeted, how many clicks the ad got, and how much the IRA paid.

Collectively, the IRA spent about $75,000 to generate about 40.5 million impressions with about 3.7 million users clicking on them a clickthrough rate of 9.2%.

That compares to between .9% and 1.8% for a typical digital ad.

While ads using blatantly racist language didnt do well, those using cuss words and inflammatory words (like sissy, idiot, psychopath and terrorist) or posing a potential threat did. Ads that evoked fear and anger did the best.

One IRA advertisement targeting users with an interest in the Black Lives Matter movement stated: They killed an unarmed guy again! We MUST make the cops stop thinking that they are above the law! Another shouted: White supremacists are planning to raise the racist flag again! Meanwhile, ads targeting people who sympathized with white conservative groups read Take care of our vets; not illegals or joked If you voted for Obama: We dont want your business because you are too stupid to own a firearm.

Only 110 out of 2,000 mentioned Donald Trump.

This wasnt about electing one candidate or another, said Vargo. It was essentially a make-Americans-hate-each-other campaign.

The ads were often unsophisticated, with spelling or grammatical errors and poorly photoshopped images. Yet at only a few cents to distribute, the IRA got an impressive rate of return.

I was shocked at how effective these appeals were, said Vargo.

COVID-19 a new opportunity for trolls

The authors warn that they have no doubt such troll farms are still at it.

According to some news reports, Russian trolls are already engaged in disinformation campaigns around COVID-19.

I think with any major story, you are going to see this kind of disinformation circulated, said Hopp. There are bad actors out there who have goals that are counter to the aspirational goals of American democracy, and there are plenty of opportunities for them to take advantage of the current structure of social media.

Ultimately, the authors believe better monitoring, via both machine algorithms and human reviewers, could help stem the tide of disinformation.

We as a society need to start seriously talking about what role the platforms and government should play in times like the 2020 election or during COVID-19 when we have a compelling need for high-quality, accurate information to be distributed, said Hopp.

Read the original:
In politics and pandemics, Russian trolls use fear, anger to drive clicks - Newswise

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It hasnt even been a week since the county ordered us all to stay at home, and surely you flew through Tiger King in the first day and are now just streaming through old favorites youve already seen. The best way I know to take a break from TV is to read a good book. Its been my favorite pastime since I was a kid, but since Ive been writing about local arts and local news for the last 10 years, Ive had a great opportunity to come across countless local authors and their work, be it fiction or nonfiction. Below Ive compiled a list of some of my personal favorites from authors in Charlotte and around the state that you may want to check out now that youve got all this free time at home. As is the case with anyone who writes about books, I can never get to them all, and thats why I ask that you leave your favorites in the comments below and we can make this an ongoing list together. Keep in mind that if youd like to support local, Park Road Books carries many of these titles and will either ship directly to you or offer curbside service. Also, check out the Charlotte Readers Podcast for more ideas, or interviews with a few of the folks listed below.

Southern gothic novelist Caron McCullers didnt live much of her life in Charlotte, just the first few months of her short-lived marriage to Reeves McCullers, beginning in September 1937. However, it was during this time that she wrote much of her debut novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, while living first in the Mayer House in Dilworth, now home to Copper Modern Indian Cuisine, and then a since-demolished house on Central Avenue. She was far from a one-hit wonder, but Lonely Hunter remains her most acclaimed work. Find it here (eBook).

Born and raised in Detroit, Sophia moved to Charlotte to escape the cold after graduating from Central Michigan University, and has spent her time here churning out quality romance novels covering a range of different themes. Take her latest duet, Saints & Sinners, the respective titles of two books released last fall that are described as Russian mafia sports romance books. The Saints synopsis begins, Moscow 1989 The food shelves are empty. The streets are lawless and we can relate to at least half of that already. Find it here.

When I was just a wide-eyed intern at the local alt weekly in 2008, Cheris sat on the other side of the cubicle divider from me, and I was amazed at how consistently she could churn out well-reported news pieces and blog posts analyzing the stories of the day. Since then, shes moved on to become a successful romance novelist, and Im equally amazed at how consistent she has remained with that, putting out more than 30 books. Her latest takes place in Charlotte and Charleston. When I asked her about it, she said, I will not take responsibility for any babies that this book inspires, so you know its hot and heavy. Find it here.

Charlottes go-to historian Tom Hanchett takes a look at the racial history of our city and how those themes played into its development and spatial evolution from the end of Reconstruction through the century that followed. Though published in 1999, so much of it remains relevant today. Even better, this month he released the second edition, with a new preface that brings us up to date on issues like gentrification and resegregation. Find it here (eBook).

Charlotte author Kimmery Martin released The Antidote for Everything on Feb. 18, a follow-up to her best-selling debut novel, The Queen of Hearts, which she released two years prior in February 2018. The former ER doctor stuck with the medical profession for the new books plotline, in which two doctors travel a surprising path when they must choose between treating their patients and keeping their jobs. Were thinking of all of Kimmerys former co-workers during this time, and wondering if it will spur the inspiration for her third release. Find it here.

If Hanchetts new preface isnt enough, Greg Jarrells A Riff of Love is the perfect follow-up to Sorting Out the New South City, as it tells the story of present day Enderly Park from the ground level, and how all the history told in Hanchetts book has played out in the day-to-day life of residents there. Jarrell runs Q.C. Family Tree with his wife Helms from his house in the neighborhood, and this book tells how that experience has shaped him as a person and a musician (he plays a mean sax, that I can tell you with certainty). Find it here.

When Pam Kelley, then a reporter with the Charlotte Observer, first met Belton Platt, aka Money Rock, at Central Prison in Raleigh in May 1986, he had recently been convicted for his role in a shootout in the Piedmont Courts housing project in Charlottes Belmont neighborhood. Kelley tracked Platt down again 25 years later, and their ensuing conversations followed by lots of reporting, research and corroboration turned into a series of Observer stories in 2013, then an MFA thesis, then her book, Money Rock: A Familys Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South, released on Sept. 25. Its a harrowing story of how a man who was once Charlottes biggest cocaine kingpin turned his life around and now runs Rock Ministries, with locations in Charlotte and South Carolina, but also tells deeper stories about family, systemic oppression and redemption. Find it here.

In 1998, when Pamela Grundy set out to write a book about West Charlotte High School, it was supposed to have a happy ending. For decades, the school had served as a shining example of the success of integration; of why busing works. Within a couple years, that all started to fall apart. Capacchione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools would eventually lead to the end of mandatory busing in Charlotte and wipe away much of the progress that had made Charlotte a precedent for integration. On September 5, 2017, 20 years to the day that William Capacchione filed a lawsuit claiming his white daughter, Cristina, was wrongfully denied admission to a magnet school due to racial quotas, Grundys new book, Color & Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality, hit shelves. The book covers the schools history, from the day it opened on September 6, 1938, through integration, to the end of busing and resegregation of West Charlotte and many other local schools. Find it here.

I met Dr. Shannon Sullivan, chair of UNC Charlottes Philosophy Department, in 2015 shortly after being in a crowd of about 400 people who showed up to hear her speak about her book Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism. The book had gained popularity as movements like Black Lives Matter and Concerned Student 1950 dominated headlines and brought the discussion of racial inequality in America to the forefront. The crowd was the largest Sullivan had spoken to since releasing the book in June 2014. The talk, like the book, covered topics that make both black and white people cringe, such as claiming and embracing her own Southern white heritage and shedding white guilt to confront white privilege. However, theyre topics that we all need to hear. Find it here.

Charlottean Omar Tyree won the 2001 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction in recognition of his great novels, sometimes written under the pseudonym The Urban Griot, and in the two decades since then hes continued to put out books while also making films, giving speeches and serving as an advocate for urban literacy. His 1993 hit Flyy Girl, regarded as the genesis of modern urban fiction, or street lit as its sometimes called, was supposed to be made into a movie directed by Dear White People director Effie Brown and starring Sanaa Lathan, but there have been no updates since 2015, so just read the book. Find it here.

Gopos parents moved from Jamaica to Anchorage, Alaska, which had to be one severe case of culture shock on top of the temperature change, and thats where they raised Patrice. She has since escaped the cold to Charlotte, and we should all be thankful to have her representing our city. Her latest, All the Colors We Will See, is a collection of essays that touch on her favorite themes of race, immigration and belonging. Considering that she grew up as a Jamaican-American in Alaska, its safe to say she has unique and valuable insight on those topics. Find it here.

After narrowly surviving whats been described as an extremely taxing childbirth that nearly killed him and his mother, Price grew up in the rural towns of Macon, Henderson, Warrenton, Roxboro and Asheboro during the Great Depression. In 1984, doctors found a 10-inch cancerous tumor braided into the core of his spinal cord, which was removed but left him a parapalegic and suffering from much pain through the rest of his life. He passed away in 2011, but left behind myriad novels, poems and essays. The Promise of Rest is Reynolds conclusion to A Great Circle: The Mayfield Trilogy, but its fully independent and stands as his best work. If youre up for it, though, feel free to check out all three. Find it here.

After my sister introduced David Joys meth-addled mountain novel The Weight of This World to her book club, she brought fried chicken and PBR to the meeting rather than the usual prosecco and charcuterie board, and that in itself is good context for all of Joys novels. However, his writing goes deeper than the Hillbilly Elegy stereotypes that unfamiliar writers bestow upon the western North Carolina mountains that Joy still calls home. His newest novel will drop in August, but while we wait, its a good idea to catch up on his three earlier novels. Find it here.

There were two points in the very first short story in Ron Rashs collection Something Rich and Strange in which I audibly gasped but even that wouldnt suffice as a verb; I yelled. And thats how I knew I was reading an author who exists on a different plane. The stories range in time from the antebellum to modern day, but they all share a setting in the western North Carolina mountains and an anxiety-inducing knowledge that things might go bad at any moment. Hes reminiscent of Flannery OConnor in that way. Rash is best known for his novel Serena, so if youre looking for something a little longer, check that out. Need something shorter? Hes a great poet, too. But the short stories are a great place to start. Find it here.

Gastonia native and UNC Asheville graduate Wiley Cash has the similar Southern gothic style that Joy and Rash pull off so well, but takes things down the mountains and into the foothills, though he told Bill Poteat of the Gaston Gazette in 2018 that he considers Gastonia a part of Appalachia. His latest historical fiction novel, The Last Ballad, tells the story of Ella Mae Wiggins, a labor leader from Belmont who was murdered in Gastonia during the 1929 Loray Mill Strike after trying to integrate the unions. His debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, and his sophomore effort, This Dark Road to Mercy, are both top-notch literature, and its honestly hard to make one recommendation over another, but the intrigue I feel for Ella Maes story is what drives me to say The Last Ballad is worth your quarantine time. Find it here.

People will sometimes name Thomas Wolfe as the most renowned writer out of North Carolina, and that may be true if youre talking birthplace, but folks tend to forget that the incomparable poet and memoirist Maya Angelou called Winston-Salem home for more than 30 years, and thats plenty long enough for the state to claim her. She wrote seven autobiographies in her life and was working on an eighth when she passed away in 2014. They were more than memoirs, though, and served as beautifully written defenses of black culture. From her best-known work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to her voluminous collection of poetry, she left behind a trail of classic work that will never be matched. Find it here (eBook).

Asheville native Charles Fraziers debut novel Cold Mountain won him the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction and was adapted into one of my favorite movies, then nine years later he followed that up with Thirteen Moons, which tells the story of the removal of the Cherokee people from their land by the U.S. government. His third book, Nightwoods, takes place in the 20th century before he returned to Civil War times for his fourth novel, Varina. He tells nuanced stories of love, partnership and struggle in some of the countrys toughest times. Find it here (eBook).

A difficult but important read, Beads shares Raleigh author Rachael Brooks terrifying yet hopeful journey from rape victim to resilient survivor. She speaks to the challenges that sexual assault victims face and the range of emotions they experience throughout the recovery process. Her story describes the many injustices she experienced within the justice system. Find it here.

Prominent educator John Hope Franklin was born in Oklahoma in 1915, the son of renowned civil rights lawyer Buck Franklin, who defended African-American survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riot at what was known as Black Wall Street. After being turned down for clerical service during WWII due to his skin color, John spent those years teaching at St. Augustines College, now St. Augustines University; and North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University. He published his autobiography Mirror to America in 2005 at the age of 90, and his published lecture series Racial Equality in America acts as a true mirror, striking a contrast between how Americans held true to certain racial beliefs compared to the actual realities of those issues based on historical texts and documents. Find it here (eBook).

William Faulkner called him the greatest writer of his generation, and Faulkner was part of that generation. Theres not much more you need to know than that. Asheville-native Thomas Wolfes debut novel, Look Homeward, Angel, remains his most acclaimed work, though he published three more lengthy novels before his untimely death at only 37 years old. Margaret Wallace calling it as interesting and powerful a book as has ever been made out of the drab circumstances of provincial American life, in a sneeringly condescending New York Times Book Review. She meant it as a stab at the South, but I think thats what makes many of the authors in this list interesting, and Wolfe did it best. Find it here (eBook).

Excerpt from:
Recommended Quarantine Reading: 20 NC Books to Hunker Down With - qcnerve.com

Black Lightis a weekly column by Governor General Award-winning writer Amanda Parris that spotlights, champions and challenges art and popular culture that is created by Black people and/or centres Black people.

When I initially requested an interview with Rodney Diverlus, Syrus Marcus Ware and Ravyn Wngz three members of Black Lives Matter Toronto malls were open, award shows were still scheduled and no one was fighting in grocery aisles for toilet paper. The world has drastically changed since then, and when I spoke with them over Google Hangouts, it was inevitable that our conversation would cover more than their new anthology of essays. The new reality of COVID-19 has fundamentally altered all of our lives, but the book is still worthy of attention.

Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada explores the emergence, significance and ongoing resonance of the Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) movement. Although their various actions and protests have been widely documented and debated by mainstream media, as the editors (Diverlus, Ware and Sandy Hudson) note in the intro, the book is their attempt to finally articulate and frame their own history.

What particularly sparked my attention was a section of essays on arts in activism. Ware and Wngz discuss the topic in one piece. And Diverlus, who is a dance artist, explores choreography and performance in the art of protest.

The three of us spoke about the book for more than an hour, talking about the waves of Black activism that have happened over the years in Toronto ("I think November 2014 gave my generation, folks that heard about the Yonge Street Riots, possibility to ask for more, to demand more, to push for a Blackened Canada," Diverlus said at one point). We discussed the Black cultural renaissance they believe is happening right now (said Ware: "It's a magical time to be Black, to be an artist, to be involved in this movement"). We also talked about Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, a space that BLMTO opened last fall whichfunctions as a gallery, dance space, meeting space, event space and co-working space for communities ("Wildseed is a part of activism around rejuvenation and connecting to community outside of chaos and violence and police officers," Wngzexplained).

And of course, we talked about the lockdown the city is currently under, and the Black Emergency Support Fund that BLMTO created to support communities in response.

I couldn't include everything, so what follows is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

Rodney, I was so fascinated by the discussion in your essay about Black Lives Matter Toronto's protest as an act of political choreography. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?

Rodney Diverlus: Because we have a team that's composed of choreographers, of dancers, of visual artists of artistswhose work imagines the visual effects of people, of things, I think that as each action was developed, we realized the importance of the look of the action, the feel of the action, the sound of the action. Black bodies in space, how that space can be blackened by our voice, by sound, by visual elements by art.

The Black Panthers had coordinated looks about them. There was a message that was delivered by fabric, by costume, by props. Even our Pride action, as an examplethe ways that that action unfolded was sequential. The first thing that happened was this coloured smoke to bring eyes in. And then our Indigenous folks led with the drumming. And then we had the samba squad come in to create that sort of sonic alarm that something was about to go down. And then the bodies flanked on the side and hand by hand. We created the barricade from which a single person came with a microphone and the megaphone to let everyone know what was happening.

We feel that art is a great conduit to bring people into our work. If you're not hearing the words, if you're not hearing the chants, if you're not understanding the demands, see our bodies, see our tone, see the music, see the Blackening of the space as a way of letting you know what we need or what we want.

Ravyn, as a dancer and choreographer, how has your artistic practice shifted as a result ofyour experiences with activism?

Ravyn Wngz: Almost completely. I didn't feel like I was allowed to represent Black. So a lot of what I was creating was about representing queerness and trans-ness outside of my actual colour because I was raised to believe that I shouldn't be in the front of any march or I shouldn't be the visual sort of thing to look up to.

I'm supposed to be what people are afraid of. So for me, I always took it that my part in the global Black movement was to just be excellent, and I'm just gonna be excellent over here, doing my thing and advocating for queer and trans folks and that somehow Black folks will see themselves with me on the stage. That's sort of what I thought was the limit of what I could do or be.

Then when Black Lives Matter approached me to do the flashmob, it really got me thinking about purpose, what I'm here to do and why I started dancing in the first place. So when we were performing at Spadina and Queen that area isn't actually safe for queer and trans folks, especially me it was this miraculous thing where all my worlds collided, where I felt like a place that I feel completely unsafe, I am shifting and changing and using this art that I fought for to make people feel alive and seen and heard and for us to embody what power looks like.

When we moved into tent city action, I felt like what I could offer was harm reduction so movement practices that would allow folks to release the trauma that I could visually see in people's bodies. People have to stretch, people have to move this violence out of their body. My art and movement practice changed completely. It [feels] like every time I get on stage I have a responsibility to share and to teach and to represent and that I'm now allowed to represent.

Syrus, I was really moved by your description of your work in the book, and how important sustainability for activists is to your work and your practice. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to make that core and central to your work and how you are able to take the lessons that you've learned over time, into the work that you're doing with Black Lives Matter Toronto?

Syrus Marcus Ware: I started doing this project of writing love letters to activists and getting people to write love letters to these unknown activists and develop these networks of care that spanned across the world. I've ended up mailing thousands of letters across the world at this point. And then I got more interested in wanting to get to know who these activists were a little bit better. So that's when I started drawing them really large and using my drawing practice as a way of trying to celebrate and honour these people.

There's an intimacy to drawing, especially just graphite on paper. It's very accessible and it draws you into these people, and it makes you want to know who they are. It makes you care about them, even if it's just for that moment while you're staring at their eyes and they're staring back at you. So I've been very interested in how art can make an emotional reaction happen that might transform into an interest in participating in mutual aid and shared care.

As an activist, I've seen what happens when burnout burns through our community. It is something that sometimes we don't survive. So I have basically dedicated my artistic practice to doing projects that foster love and compassion and engagement and a desire to connect across difference, like Audre Lorde encourages us to do.

There's this Toni Cade Bambara quote where she says that the goal of the oppressed artist or an artist from an oppressed community is to make revolution irresistible. And I was like, "Oh, now I understand my entire purpose of my practice." The entire thing that I've been trying to do is to make revolution irresistible.

I'm interested in doing this for the long haul because we need to win. So we just need everybody to be able to make it, every warm living body. So I'm interested in making sure that we all cross the finish line together and that we all get to thrive.

What do you think the impact of this lockdown will be on Black cultural creators and artists right now?

SW: I think we're going to see a proliferation of creative practice because one of the things that I often hear from artists is that they don't have enough time to do the projects that they've always wanted to do. Necessity is the mother of invention; the more bored we get, the more we're going to start coming up with ideas to entertain ourselves. Humans in times of crisis often turn to creativity as a way to understand the world and understand what's happening.

RD: I think my glass half empty side fears that we're also going to see a great amount of loss in terms of Black working artists in this country, and in this world really.

I feel like there's a good number of us that have been talking about the ways that these economic systems are not helping us. We have to constantly defend the works of arts and culture; we have to constantly defend the economic impact of us as people, of our need of existence.

I'm excited at the groundswell of activity and frustration and agitation that will come out of this. I also fear, though, for those who were already chronically underemployed, already at ends meet for those who were already considering changing their career choices to something more "practical," for those who have to go back to their parents for support, for those who have to take on an additional loan in addition to the student loan that they're paying. I'm really afraid for our people in that aspect.

[I'm] excited for the art, not excited for the lack of working artists that are going to be left at the end of this.

RW: This ableist, disabling, capitalist system forces us as artists to feel like we're not ever enough, doing enough, important enough. And then when times like this come up, we are the ones who are looked at. We are the ones who are all over Instagram and all over the place sharing our thoughts, sharing our videos, sharing things to keep people entertained throughout the day.And so I'm looking forward to the end of the coronavirus and the beginning of something different.

Black Lives Matter Toronto has relied very heavily and very successfully on physical mobilization: the blockades, the occupations, the marches, the die-ins, the surprise actions. So what does Black Lives Matter Toronto look like as a mobilizing and advocacy force in the era of social isolation, when you can't rely on those traditional arsenals?

RD: The beginning of our strategy has been to create stop gaps, create opportunities for people to not be evicted, to be able to make their ends meet this month and uplift others who are doing it. I think that the only way we'll be able to agitate is to [first] address the reality, which is that for most of us in our communities, we're still in a dissociative stage right now. I still feel like a lot of my conversation with Black folks is, "I can't believe we're here." It's reimagining what their plans were for the year. At this current stage we have to make sure we can weather it, then let's go fight this.

SW: We are a very agile movement. We are an intergenerational movement. We're a movement that is made up of folks who are probably the most marginalized: Black, mad and disabled people, queer and trans people. And as a result, we've had to adapt so we're very agile.

When you look at an arts institution like the Art Gallery of Ontario, their ability to turn on a dime is gonna be very very different than us young upstarts. So I think that our movement is responsive. It's always been responsive to the moment and to the needs of the moment.

So the moment and the needright now requires us to be doing organizing online and requires us to be doing organizing from our homes and with our families and our babies hanging off our shoulders, and we will adapt to that because we can. That feels really good to me.

CBC Arts understands that this is an incredibly difficult time for artists and arts organizations across this country. We will do our best to provide valuable information, share inspiring stories of communities rising up and make us all feel as (virtually) connected as possible as we get through this together. If there's something you think we should be talking about, let us know by emailing us at cbcarts@cbc.ca.

The rest is here:
What is COVID-19's impact on Black culture and activism in Toronto? - CBC.ca