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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

by Kevin Rashid Johnson

Id like to put to the test the moral commitment of every Amerikan who jumped on and rode the all lives matter bandwagon.

After enduring an unbroken history of violent abuse and indifference and systemic summary killings at the hands of cops and cop wannabes, many Blacks in Amerika united around the protest slogan Black lives matter. Instead of recognizing the social privilege that insulates much of white society from such outrages and uniting with Blacks to help protect their lives, many whites joined in a counter-slogan all lives matter, pretending to interpret Black lives matter as meaning only Black lives were meaningful.

Now if Amerikans genuinely believe all lives matter, then they must join in demanding that sanctions by their government against Iran and other less developed countries be lifted in the face of the growing coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. sanctions against Iran and its leading role in the war between the West and the Islamic world have nothing to do with curbing terrorism; they are a struggle by the West to instill capitalism in the Asian countries that are dominated by Islamic theocracies that reflect pre-capitalist, semi-feudal political economies.

But furthermore, its a struggle to dominate natural gas and oil reserves such as in the Caspian Sea region, Iraq, Iran etc.

Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern industrial capitalist economies. Whoever rules the worlds oil and gas supplies, rules the worlds fuel market, rules the entire world economy.

Thats why the U.S. invaded Iraq. Iraq has the worlds second-largest supply of untapped oil deposits next to Saudi Arabia, with whom the U.S. is already in bed.

But Saudi Arabia has had the power to manipulate Amerika and often does because it has veto power over its oil. It can create artificial shortages that can shock the world oil market and drive already astronomical prices through the roof, as OLPEC (Organization of Large Petroleum Exporting Countries) did in the 1970s.

The U.S. went into Afghanistan in 2001 because it was after the untapped natural gas supplies in the Caspian Sea, the worlds largest natural gas deposit. They wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan and other Asian countries, straight through to the European market.

On Feb. 12, 1998, John J. Marescas, UNOCALs vice president, made a bid before a subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations to build that pipeline and called for the removal of the Taliban and the establishment of an internationally recognized Afghanistan government to be set up in its place.

U.S. sanctions directly impact Irans ability to access resources needed to test, treat and arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus and generate artificial famine, disease and poverty.

Iran and its grip on the Middle East has been the U.S.s main impediment to controlling the region. They actually wanted to target Iran from the outset and wanted to take Iraq and Afghanistan to set up staging areas on Irans borders to invade Iran from two fronts. But their plans and predictions that Iraq was going to fall to U.S. designs with no resistance fell through.

Amerika has remained active in efforts to destabilize Iran and isolate it by stirring up internal dissent and increasing sanctions against trade with other countries. And its fear of Iran developing nuclear capabilities is not based on fear of an Iranian nuclear attack, but rather of Iran being able to defend itself from an Amerikan attack.

U.S. sanctions directly impact Irans ability to access resources needed to test, treat and arrest the spread of the novel coronavirus and generate artificial famine, disease and poverty. A growing protest movement is already underway, with marches in solidarity with Iran.

The outcome of such fascistic sanctions is known by U.S. officials and deliberate. Weve seen it before, and weve seen U.S. officials gloat at the deadly effects on innocents on innocent children no less.

Recall the 1991 Gulf War where Amerika deliberately destroyed Iraqs infrastructure, bombing its sanitation and water treatment facilities, hospitals, etc. blatant war crimes. Then set up militarily imposed embargoes that prevented Iraq from receiving food, medicine and other basic supplies its people needed to survive in the face ofa shattered infrastructure.

The U.N. documented that over a half million Iraqi children, average age 12, died as a result of these sanctions by just 1996. On 60 Minutes, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright acknowledged this carnage and smugly stated it was worth the price of imposing U.S. domination over Iraq.

Where were all those all lives matter Amerikans when their leaders were killing all these innocent Iraqi children (by any reckoning, 500,000 Iraqi children killed is genocide rivaling the Jewish Holocaust)? Where indeed are they now as Iran suffers under similar sanctions as COVID-19 spreads?

Lets put these proclamations to the test and demand that U.S. sanctions against Iran be lifted.

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

Send our brother some love and light: Kevin Rashid Johnson, 264847, Pendleton Correctional Facility, G-20-2C, 4490 W. Reformatory Road, Pendleton, IN 46064.

Excerpt from:
If all lives matter, lift US sanctions against Iran to curb the spread of coronavirus - San Francisco Bay View

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Im munching nervously on this hotels gourmet gummy bears, and I keep wondering when shes going to do it. This is embarrassing. I dont know how to ask, and now things are weird. Im treading water, struggling with what to say next to Chani Nicholas, the sort-of-famous astrologer, whose impressively high cheekbones suggest that if the stars had aligned differently, she might have been an actress or a model. Instead, on this Friday in late January, she is posted across the table from me in a midtown Manhattan hotel lobby, talking to me about the zodiac.

Its a very different vibe from Monday, when Chani (it rhymes with Annie) held the packed audience of the 92ndStreet Y in rapt attention. I dont think I looked at my phone for a full hour. But now Chani is the talentand also the subject. Gone is her control from Monday night, the popular high school art teacher vibes. In oversized black reading glasses she sat on stage in an oversized beige chair with a small stack of papers spilling across her lap, her shoulder-length brown curls bouncing excitedly as she shook her head in recognition, reading the astrological chart of her friend, the filmmaker and Womens March co-founder Paola Mendoza.

Shes swapped Mondays black satin jumper and strappy black flats for a red-and-black plaid shirt and some chunky black boots. Shes wearing hoop earrings with her hair pulled tightly back, giving off a faint chola vibe, minus her blue-and-green socks spotted with what look vaguely like vaginas. They are definitely queer socks, she later laughs.

In the lobby, shes predictably warm as she answers my questions about the book tour she just started for You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance. We do a stilted whos-who guessing game of mutual friends, the small, overlapping worlds of queer Bay Area and Brooklyn. (Though shes based in Los Angeles, she, like me, spent a chunk of her young adulthood in San Francisco.)

Chani Nicholas reads the chart of filmmaker Paola Mendoza in January.

Courtesy 92Y

I had been struck on Monday night by how intimate the conversation was about Mendozas life, based on how the stars were aligned at the moment she took her first breath. Her life story, according to her chart, existed almost before she did. The two asteroids in her first house presaged the mother-daughter relationship that would be the focus of her first film; her sun being in Sagittarius and ruled by Jupiter helps explain the work shes done collecting migrant womens horror stories on the border. Her moon being in Leo and the fourth house means that she likely has had a hard time receiving attention and praise. And, wouldnt you know it, she studied acting in undergrad before finding a more comfortable spot behind the camera.

Id found myself nodding along. She was using the stars to describe the alignments of a personality. It turns out theres something about hearing about someones past that makes you more willing to show up for the collective present.

I share with Chani an observation that all of her public appearances to date have been astrological readings. Maybe its strategic? A way to change up the power dynamic between interviewer and subject?

She seems taken aback for a moment and then insists its her way of democratizing astrology for people, particularly those who may think of astrology as something just short of whitewashed witchcraft. Im hoping to use astrology as the context for the interview, she says, to see what story comes out when they get that prompt, because really our chart is a whole series of prompts.

I think about how her publicist actually promised my own astrological reading, and Im surprised at how embarrassed I am to admit that I really want it. Would it be too much of an imposition to ask for it? I wonder. Would it make me any less of a journalist? Why am I so desperate? Do I believe any of this? Why am I so scared? I already know Im a Leo, and I know all the tropes; Ive even jokingly deployed the Zora Neale Hurston quotehow can any deprive themselves the pleasure of my companyin conversation. But I (perhaps like Chani) actively avoid being the subject. And while I dont always prefer it, Im inclined to be somewhat solitary, at home with my animals (including my dog named, obviously, Zora).

Thats when our podcast producer, Molly, whos there with me, says with a smile: We thought you were gonna read Jamilahs chart. And then Chani responds like Ive asked her for a stick of gum. Oh! Why didnt you say anything? she laughs. Thats easy, let me get my phone.

She starts and matter-of-factly reads my chart. It takes only a few minutes before she breathes in and tells me my Leo is in a house associated with grief. And now Im like, Shit, did she Google me?

You probably live in one of two worlds: In one, youve literally never heard of Chani Nicholas. In the other, youve seen her everywhere over the past few months. In the New York Times, Vogue, Glamour. On Twitter, where she maintains a lively, favorite-aunt presence. On Spotify, for the legions who listen to her popular astrological playlists every month. With her first bookpart self-help workbook, part astrology 101 explainerout in January. Maybe you saw an Instagram post of hers, like the one earlier this month, put up the day after the coronavirus was deemed a pandemic, that gently implored people to Listen to and learn from folx that have lived with disability and chronic illness, and to Stay in touch with your loved ones, stay as relaxed as possible, stay in joy whenever and for however long you can, and to Wash your hands.

In this world, Chani is officially having her moment.

Of course, so is astrology. In the United States, astrology has gone through waves of popularity, most recently in the 1970s. It then receded a bit, as with most other things considered New Age, though astrology has come back in a serious way in the past decade. Still, with only a few well-known exceptions like Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado, reading the stars has often been more closely confined to with witchy white women with decidedly apolitical stances.

Chani Nicholas is not that type of witchy white woman.

The day before we meet, she sat on a stage at the Brooklyn Museum with a filmmaker and queer activist named Tourmaline and read the charts of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two pioneering transgender activists whose contributions Tourmaline has helped unearth. Its just its so poetically potent in terms of the work that [Tourmaline] does, Chani tells me about doing those readings. Because it really is about working with folks that are left out of the system or incarcerated or criminalized because of who they are. And it has so much to do with that sense of being a different kind of woman or gender or representation or what have you.

This is the type of thing that makes me cringe a bit. It sounds nice, its certainly the right thing to say, but it also feels sopredictable. In fact, everything around astrology makes me roll my eyes sometimes; at a certain point it feels like a game of logical propositions (if this is true then this and this). But I have to say, it feels different with Chani. And maybe thats by designshe appeals to a very specific crowd. Its a crowd thats populated by coastal queer activist-types who likely saw one of her motivational quotes while scrolling through Instagram. They are optimistic but endlessly critical people, the kind who avoid saying Trumps name out loud like hes Voldemort (45 is fine) but are quick to point out that President Obama deported a record amount of people, too. They talk endlessly about the importance of chosen family, are in a constant negotiation with their historical trauma, and would rather you not use assigned gender markers with their children. Everything is a constructrace, class, genderand if you challenge this, they will probably instruct you to read Toni Morrisons Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. In fact, they might even offer to loan you the worn copy that sits dusty but centrally located on their bookshelf. The current state of our countrys divisive and polarized and toxic political climate isnt an anomaly, they argue, but merely a predictable next chapter for a nation that has relied too heavily too often on piecemeal change. Yes, We Canbut if youre not asking why, youre not really doing any meaningful work.

If you cant already tell, I know these people well. They might just be me.

So I admit, after hearing about Chani and her socially conscious strain of star reading, I wanted to know more not just about her but about the brand shes built into something of a juggernautone that has apparently filled some unaddressed need, bringing together a notoriously fickle audience of activists and organizers and social justiceminded folks who agree on absolutely nothing, except, apparently, her. Her followers include Chase Strangio, the ACLU attorney who famously represented Chelsea Manning, along with Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and MacArthur genius award winner Ai-jen Poo, who affectionately called her Chan-Chan on their new podcast. They also include plenty of frontline organizers Ive met over the years reporting on racial justice. Chanis rise represents the extent to which a generation raised on Obama-era platitudes has gone to reimagine hope. Its angry but actionable. And in an era when we cant stop talking about the importance of self-care but do very little beyond follow some (mostly white, affluent) influencers, Chanis work is now anchoring the hope, the motivations, and the work of (mostly young, progressive, Black and Brown) people who are reaching for something a little extra to get through the Trump presidency and all the ugliness and division, even on the left, thats come with it.

When I first connected with Chani, Id wanted to talk to her about these people, about how theyd found in her astrology a language for addressing their thwarted hope. A few months later, a pandemic gripped the world, and the questions at the heart of her work became more urgent, not just for the activist set but for everyone. How do you heal yourself without losing sight of all the things in the world that need healing?

I dont think theres an astrologer out there that didnt look at this year and swear under their breath a little bit, Chani tells me, because it is a year that is just stacked with one challenging astrological setup after another. Its Monday, and Chani is explaining just what in the possible hell this moment is that were living in.

One of the main themes of the year is Mars. The first part of the year and then the second half of the year, Mars is very highlighted in the astrology in a very challenging way. And Mars does things like create aggravation, is the god of war, is related to heat and inflammation and fears and things that get damaged from excessive temperatures. And so right now, whats happening is Mars is about to make a conjunction with Saturn. And Saturn is the opposite of that. Saturn is cold and withholding, and Saturn creates boundaries and barriers and structures and quarantines and isolation.

It feels eerie to be living at a moment that is about those two very things and those planets are making a conjunction on March 31, and so that seems to be us moving towards the most difficult point. Im not saying thats it, because Mars also makes really difficult aspects come September and October and Novemberhahaso I thought it was going to be much more about the election, which it still probably will be, but I didnt expect it to be this challenging up front.

Shes calm as she lays all this out for me, and in a weird way theres something hopeful about it. The story of our fates is plotted. The action will rise and then fall. Even if so many things arent in our control right now, in her telling there is at least a structure being obeyed.

From the start Chani was driven by a need to see something bigger than her immediate circumstance. She has said her father has one of those hillbilly stories and her mother was from the Bronx. Her childhood was a chaotic blur of addiction and sporadic violence, moving around a lot before landing in British Columbia. She was often alone and terrified. But a couple of chance encounters with astrologersarent they always by chance?showed her there were larger forces at play. But while she dreamed about the stars, that instability made her want to do something practical with her life.

Nothing quite fit. Not the domestic violence counseling she tried in San Francisco, or the waitressing and acting she did in LA. She dropped out of three masters programs, taught yoga. She balked at being part of what she calls in her book the Yoga Industrial Complexthink Lululemon-clad white women bowing and saying namaste atop hundred-dollar slip-proof yoga mats. That was around 2013, when she decided to give professional astrology a shot after fighting it for years. She offered paid readings and wrote horoscopes on her personal blog. It started small.

But these werent the horoscopes you might remember from Seventeen magazine back in the day. The key was connecting attributes of a persons chart to what was happening in the world politically. For instance, part of my chart, she tells me, is similar to that of Frida Kahlo, who used personal tragedy to shift peoples political perceptions through art. Its these types of models, and the stories she writes about them, that have drawn people in.

Around this time, she also fell in love with a woman named Sonya Passi, whom she met and married within the span of two months. Passi, a feminist activist who now runs an anti-domestic violence organization called FreeFrom, is a pragmatist with an eye for detail. Before long, the two began building out a business, with Passi editing every horoscope and Instagram caption. They created a series of guided online workshops. An early workshop, one in late October 2016, was called, Awaken Your Witch: Rituals for the New Moon in Scorpio.

Days after the workshop began, Donald Trump was elected president. That event caused nothing short of a generational stampede into a world that is alternately called wellness or Just Trying to Figure This Shit Out. Its hard to quantify exactly how many people have turned to astrology for solace in recent years, but apps like Co-Star and Sanctuary are part of a billion dollar investment in what venture capitalists call the mystical services market.

It also created a boom in business for Chani. In 2017, the Los Angeles Times estimated her annual income as well into the six-figure range; its almost certainly grown since then. Shes moved on from posting horoscopes on Blogspot. Now they go on her sleek personal website, which, she has said, has over 1 million regular readers. Last year, she teamed up with Spotify to create monthly astrological playlists and host a series of live events; at one she gave Lizzo a reading. Chanis typical Instagram posts have also became more streamlined: clean white backgrounds with inspirational quotes, easy to screenshot and share widely. They often have meanings that could work in both personal and collective contexts. Take this, from mid-January:

Then there was her first horoscope for 2020: Jupiter and Saturn will come together for the first time in 20 years, and since the 1800s this convergence has happened in earth signs. Thanks to the institutionalization of white-supremacist, patriarchal, colonialist capitalism that set the stage for this age, excessive waste has been celebrated up until now, Chani wrote. Though shes now become a brand, Chani considers herself first and foremost a writer, and thats how she still spends the bulk of her days: writing horoscopes and pondering.

This all resonated with Candace Kita, the cultural strategy director at the Asian Pacific Islander Network of Oregon. Kita was originally skeptical of astrology, but she reconsidered it after the political upheaval of 2016. Chani offered a new way to look at the internal narrative that I had fashioned around who I was, what my role was in the world and how I should be, she tells me. That really helped build a community for me, not only in terms of people, but also with folks who shared my values.

I hadnt seen anyone else pair astrology with social justice, she adds. The apolitical nature of astrology didnt appeal to me.

Kita got so into Chanis work and astrology more broadly that she has actually became a professional astrologer. She now runs Astroradicals, a business that offers astrological readings that cultivate liberation, empowerment, and radical possibility.

Jasmine Brock also started following Chani shortly after Trumps election. At the time she was a second-year law student. Today, as a public defender in Brooklyns family court system, her work often involves parents who are fighting for custody of their children. I get really wrapped up into things, she says, but [astrology] reminds me to take care of myself because the truth is that if Im not in a good place, theres no way that I can help any parent that Im working with.

Lizzo and Chani Nicholas speak onstage during the Spotify Cosmic Playlist launch event in January 2019 in Los Angeles

Frazer Harrison; Getty

Chanis book tour for You Were Born For This drives home how significant a player she has become in the market of astrology-curious or -devoted activists: Not long after the event with Tourmaline in Brooklyn, she was in Oakland, co-hosting a reading slash book event with Fania Davis, a well-respected restorative justice activist who is also Angela Davis sister. She knows her crowd.

Now, in this moment, Chani is doing her best to channel this knowledge into serving her audience in a new way: walking the line between what might be helpful in this age of fresh uncertainties, and what might just add to everyones peaking anxieties.

Sometimes when we frame things astrologically, were also framing them in a time frame, Chani tells me. A beginning, middle, and end. So to remember that this is just a moment, and we will get through it, and we will be changed by it, but it wont be forever.

I press Kita to understand what about Chanis work and the larger field of astrology really, deep-down appealed to her. It started to make sense to me, she says, that astrology was a way that I would rewrite and re-examine the story Id been telling about myself.

And thats when something clicked for me.

What I want isnt the Chani story, but my own. Thats what I was so embarrassed about before Molly stepped in. Of course, selfishness is always at play somewhere in our work, but wemillennials, journalists, queer people of color who dabbled in community organizingare not conditioned to acknowledge it. Instead, we look at the collective. The team. The community. What of my story can be of service to others?

But selfishness and self-awareness are two different things. Sometimes its okay to want a space thats all our own.

Right now medical professionals and, increasingly, local governments are telling people to stay home in order to stay safe. Even if youre not showing symptoms, the fact that you could pass along the virus to someone else for whom it could prove deadly is a wake-up call unlike any weve seen in modern history. Now, taking care of yourself, creating your own space, isnt just a social luxury. Its a matter of public safety.

While we can be so focused on the world outside ourselves, Chani provides the opportunity to look in, and at each other, and realize were not alone. And while theres much we cant change, its how we respond to the worldwhether its a healthy one, an infected one, an uncertain onethat matters.

I of course do not realize any of this on that January Friday in the lobby, when Chani finally takes out her phone and pulls up my chart on her website. She tells me Im a Capricorn rising with a sun in Leo, which means, in short, that I work hard and want to be acknowledged for it. I nod. I find great satisfaction in making lists. Its what makes me feel seen. I make them before bed and when I wake up. When Im on the train to work and once I get to the office. Its a small thing that Id never paid all that much attention to until recently.

Then Chani takes that pause and she tells me that my Leo is in a house associated with loss, grief, and anguish. And I dont just feel seen. I feel exposed.

I laugh, because thats what I do when Im uncomfortable. Its true that in one decade nearly half of my family died. A shooting, a fire. A bad heart. A bad breast. Ive often carried the cumulative grief of those losses like an overstuffed bag on the beach of life. Everyones running around in the sand, weightless. And then theres me, lugging around all my dead. I can trace my desire to be a writer back to high school, when my mother was featured on the front page of my hometown newspaper, urging witnesses to come forward with information in a family members murder. That was part of the story, I thought then. But there was a different story to tell, too, of people who were always the subjects but never protagonists.

Chani tells me that societies once dealt better with death, but weve since sanitized it. Your chart speaks to remembering or knowing it in a way, she says. And so something about your work brings that knowledge through and is so necessary and needed.

Im not sure if thats what I wanted to hear, but I did feel a helluva lot less alone listening to it.

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Chani Rising or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Astrology - Mother Jones

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In the sweeping progressive movement to elect district attorneys to reform the criminal justice system, theres perhaps no greater prize than Los Angeles. Its home to the biggest district attorneys office in the country by far, and to the biggest jail system. Weeks after the March 3 primary, the final ballots are still being counted, but enough are in to know the next step, and progressives are cheering: Candidate George Gascn, running on a platform of lowering the prison population, clinched just enough votes to proceed to a runoff in November against the more moderate incumbent, Jackie Lacey.

In Los Angeles, the top two candidates in a primary qualify for a runoff unless one wins more than half the total vote. As of last Friday, Lacey, the first African American and first woman to serve as district attorney in Los Angeles, had received 48.7 percent of the vote. Gascon, the former district attorney in San Francisco, had 28.2 percent, and public defender Rachel Rossi had 23.1 percent. There were still about 20,100 ballots left to count as of late last week, but even if Lacey won them all, it would not be enough for her to meet the threshold to avoid the runoff.

Thank you, LA. I hope to earn your vote this November, Gascn tweeted Friday.

The district attorneys race in Los Angeles has been described by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors as the single most important DA race in the country. Its important not only because of the citys size, but also because Los Angeles sees so many police shootingsmore than almost anywhere else in the countryand because prosecutors at the district attorneys office decide whether to press charges against cops who kill. Lacey has faced protests for years from Black Lives Matter activists because her office has only filed charges against one of more than 500 officers who fatally shot people since she took office in 2012. Cullors endorsed both Gascn and Rossi, who each made police accountability a centerpiece of their campaigns. Jackie Lacey promised reform but has continuedfueling mass incarceration and destroying black and brown communities in Los Angeles, Cullors tweeted ahead of the primary.

Around the country, its rare for district attorneys to prosecute police, since the law is heavily weighted in favor of law enforcement. But district attorneys in other cities have lost reelection in recent years after police shootings of unarmed Black teens like Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald. It could be a real liability for her, Rachel Barkow, a law professor at NYU who writes about efforts to reform district attorneys offices, told me recently when I asked about Laceys campaign.

Gascns background is not what you might expect from someone championing himself as a reformist: He worked for decades as a police officer and chief before becoming San Franciscos district attorney in 2011. And like Lacey, he struggled with police accountability during his tenure. In fact, he did not charge any officers accused of fatal shootings. But in other ways, he proved to be a leader in the progressive prosecutor movement: He co-authored a ballot measure that reduced penalties for certain drug offenses, to keep more people out of prison. (Lacey opposed the measure.) In 2019, he supported state legislation that would make it easier for district attorneys to prosecute police. And unlike Lacey, hehas pledged to create a do not call list of disreputable officers, to avoid relying on their testimony in court proceedings.

Thetop candidatesalso diverge in other ways. While Lacey has sent 22 people to death row, all of them people of color, Gascn promises not to seek the death penalty. And though Lacey supports bail reform, she does not go as far as Gascn, who wants to abolish cash bail. Lacey has criticized Gascn for being soft on crime, citing rising car break-ins in San Francisco.

Before the runoff, Lacey will look to capitalize on her strong support from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and the local union that represents police officers. In a sign of how much is at stake for law enforcement in November, the union representing the LAPD has donated $1 million to an anti-Gascn super-PAC. Lacey, meanwhile, is benefiting from police donations: Almost all of the $2.2 million in contributions to outside committees supporting her have come from law enforcement unions.

Link:
The Single Most Important DA Race in the Country Is Headed to a Runoff - Mother Jones

After Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders was no longer the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Within four days of Sanderss Nevada victory, the Democratic establishment roused itself in a move publicly initiated by South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, privately managed by still unknown hidden actors, and culminating in the decisions by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out. Then, even more remarkably, the Democratic primary electorates in most of 14 states did their part eagerly and obediently: voting, in sum, to put Joe Biden in the lead. In the primaries since that point, Biden has moved further ahead. So far, the Democrats have produced a feat of coordination rarely seen, requiring mutual understanding among the principal actors and the sacrifice, or lowering, of ambitious hopes by the dropouts from the campaignall spurred by their ferocious dislike of President Donald Trump. The disdain is sharpened by the bitter pain for the party of government of writhing in the role of frustrated opposition for a joyless three years. Democrats rallied together just when everyone had said that party loyalty was killed by the primaries. Never Sanderswithout the sloganseems to have put Never Trump to shame.

Some Democrats wanted to deny Sanders the nomination because he would lose the election; others because he might win it. This desperate, combined fear of losing or spoiling an opportunity has brought stunning success for Biden, at least for the present. It is not difficult to see, nor partisan to say, that he is not a strong candidate, but if he can keep his calm, he may be the charm that defeats Trump. He is the lucky beneficiary of the united desire of most Democrats not to have Sanders as their candidate. African-American voters led the move on Bidens behalfa display of strategic prudence in a group that tends to vote together, usually regardless of what strategy might dictate.

Yet after Sanderss rise and probable fall, the question remains of how he got so far and why his socialist policies have been so persuasive. He remains in the game, having come a very long way from irrelevance and isolation as a senator ignored by colleagues, the single representative of a fringe party, and a socialist in the land of never socialism. He is very American in his refusal to be discouraged, and should he win, his persistence would be another chapter in the very American story of success against the odds due to persistence. As it now stands, he will not be the Democratic nominee, but his policies will be the Democratic platformdiluted, no doubt, but not opposed.

How to explain this rise among the young and those wishing to be young? Theres nothing new about Sanders except his sudden prominence. After all, he has been around for a long time, saying the same things about greedy corporations, the selfish rich, and war-mongering policies that he calls out now. Though experienced and shrewd in debate, in declaiming, he lacks style, wit, geniality, and foresight. His gestures consist of waving and pointing; his tone is grim, heavy, and accusingneither elevating nor ingratiating. He prefers anger to empathy, and his smiles are rare because, candidly, he finds nothing to smile at. Somehow, though, students like him as if he were a grouchy grandpa blessed by the fountain of truth. So, setting aside his personal character, let us look at the truth he presents to his followers and to the rest of the country.

Sanders stands by the truth that what we need is political revolution against the 1 percent and the establishment. He does not mention the well-offthe middle class, elsewhere called the bourgeoisiewho, as defenders of private property (rather than extreme wealth), are the usual enemies of socialism. It is hard to suppose that a country as large as the United States could be run democratically by the 1 percent without the connivance or enthusiastic support of a large fraction of the 99 percent. So, Sanders mostly aims his fire at the establishment that is defined more by stodgy self-interest than by extreme wealth. In fact, a good part of the establishment has been in the Democratic Party, and so unwelcoming to Sanders that he has kept out of it. The vagueness of the establishment contrasts with the exactness of the 1 percent, but at the same time, conjures up a network by which the 1 percent does its dirty work against the hapless 99 percent.

Sanders resembles Trump in his relentless attacks on the establishment. Trump challenged the Republican establishment, yet in his policies has been mostly a Republicanif with some rude adjustments in trade, alliances, and immigration that appeal to some, if not all, Republicans. These are not necessarily minor moves, but they are within the compass of innovation that any new Republican president might attempt. Trump has some accomplishments as well, though they always come lathered in the glaze of his self-praise. His particular criticisms of the Republican establishment come in the context of his more general violations of norms of civility and propriety that sustain both parties and set limits to their partisanship: this is the establishment implied and, in practice, taught by the Constitution. Whether Trump, with the formidable political skills he has shown, can weather more general disgust at these violations will be tested in the 2020 election.

Sanders will not face criticism for a challenge to manners, but he offers substantive policies much farther than Trumps from the thoughts of ordinary Democrats, represented so staunchly by African-American voters. Wedded in a lifelong marriage to these policies, Sanders is less of an egoist and opportunist than Trump, which saves him from shameless self-promotion but also allows him less room for maneuver. His attack on the Establishment is truly a revolution against the inequalities of private property and shows disregard, even denial, of the prosperity that they have produced. He is content with electioneering as opposed to violent coercion, and he avoids the language of Marxism as well as its claim to be science. He talks like the demagogues in the collegiate style of the late 1960s, though without violent language. He is not a Democrat, but having won so much support from Democrats in his domestic program, he shows where the party isand where it might be. In foreign policy, what is perhaps the true, hidden Bernie is revealed in his consistent partiality to Marxist regimes.

Democrats, let me suggest, are, have been, and will be the party of inclusion, the party of all as understood by the majoritythe peoples party. It is thus the party of the whole, of the community, emphasizing what is common to all. Since early in the twentieth century, Democrats have been in the grip of progressives not satisfied with the degree and extent of equality within and espoused by their party. With the help of (unequal) experts of many kinds in social science, progressives have sought to equalize every inequality that appears to stand in the way of true and lasting community. They have advanced their cause since the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, always on the attack, using legislation to enlist the government in their fight. The New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s are the high points of progressive achievement. But in 2010, with the government takeover of supervision of the nations health in Obamacare, that advance reached a pointof what, exactly?

Not a point of success, from which to look back on with satisfaction. The era of Big Government is over, proclaimed Bill Clinton in 1996, a little early. Health care then remained on the agenda. But now, the era of sizable advance seems over, and all that remains are incremental gains to already-established programs like the ones Hillary Clinton proposed in her 2016 campaign. Of course, the debt, deficits, and bureaucracy from Big Government are not over. The debt and deficits have been further entrenched by the successful Republican strategy of tax cuts; these have not starved the welfare state as intended, but their success inhibits Democrats and has hindered them in advocating new taxes since Walter Mondale tried and failed in his 1984 presidential campaign. The bureaucracy of Big Governmentthe deep state or the swampremains a target for Trump. And a reasonable accommodation between the desire for equality and the necessity of inequalitieseven inequalities necessary to produce the experts of Progressivismis left unexamined and unsought.

Thus, the drama or melodrama of Big Government is over, and only the costly fact remains. It is in good part popular, just as Democrats hoped and Republicans fearedtoo popular in its benefits even to touch. But to pay for it and to live with its irritating inefficiencies are not so popular. Republicans cannot dismantle Big Government and Democrats cannot take much pride in it; so, the two parties share and exchange victories in what seems to both a stalemate, and in which each party thinks the other has the advantage. In this situation of common dissatisfaction, the Democrats might have abandoned progressivism, declaring victory, but now wary of wonks and professors with their plans and programs. They could have returned to being the popular party they used to be, the party of the people as they are, not as they might be if instructed by the wisdom of experts to think differently and abandon both their prejudices and their common sense.

But the Democrats have not done that. Instead, they have raised their bet on progressivism and tried to revive it from its doldrums by increasing its ambition and changing its character. Never mind the burden of debt and the sludge of bureaucracy that accompany the welfare state. Its failures are not as disappointing as its successes. Ambitious persons, progressives or not, do not rest content with security; they want excess. Their youthful desire is fed with the promise of modern idealism to seek what is impossible and to glory in its unattainable perfection: a society without inequalities of wealth, without sexual harassment, without foreign enemies, and without Republicans, who stand for all the obstacles to perfection. So, the Democrats narrowed their focus to the richest of the rich, the 1 percentand they turned toward the foolhardy socialism of Bernie Sanders. In a time of peace and stable prosperity, lacking any excuse, they went left. They did this well before Trump appeared to goad them on.

Democrats have tried to stimulate their partisans by demanding higher taxes on the rich, the 1 percent. In this they are joined by those among the 1 percent who finance their party because they are actually very rich billionaire Democratsa phenomenon of our time. This new fact suggests that the Democrats might actually treat the rich as the goose that laid golden eggs, prudently exploiting them, contrary to the foolish practice of the owner of the goose in Aesops fable, who greedily opened it up and killed it. With a bow to this ancient moral lesson, Democrats should keep billionaires fat and happy by preserving and increasing their wealth, taxing it moderatelyas is done nowrather than taking it away. It is inconsistent to set a policy to exploit wealth and then take it away. Why not accept the rich as donors, as Sanderss campaign rivals have done? One should be honoring them in gratitude, rather than insulting them as predators. One could construct a House of Lords for the 1 percent to keep them proud and content.

This is, of course, an argumentum ad absurdum, refuting by exaggerating to the absurd. But that is just what Sanders is doing to the welfare state of the progressives. He has set goals for free benefits as if he were mocking the seriousness of the welfare state, upping the penny ante of its comparatively modest benefits that are already unaffordable. Some supporters speak sententiously of the ills of late capitalism, which is really hugely successful capitalism that has enriched allespecially the rich. Does it make sense to bankrupt it and replace it with late socialism? Late socialism lives its imaginary life off the riches of late capitalism but gets its moral support by criticizing the motives of its financiers. These are the very motives that it wants to plant in the minds of the poorto become effortlessly rich by living off others.

The exaggeration of the campaign to finance progressive big government out of the pockets of the 1 percent supplies a hint for understanding the sudden adoption of Sanderss socialism by so many progressive partisans, plus the surge toward the left by Democrats unable to swallow the whole pill but wanting its effect. Something new is wanted to enliven the progressive cause. At its time of high tide, it lacks the excitement that it could raise at its inception and at its peaks. One possible solution has been to veer off economics into identity politics. But identity politics, like the welfare state, seems to be at a state of repletion. The movement to gain civil rights for black citizenscivil rights in America, hence colorblindhas degenerated into Black Lives Matter, based on color and no longer devotedly American. Then identity politics spread to women and to gays, and recently has come to the struggling transgender people. To validate these claims on behalf of the vulnerable, experts in expressive categorization arose, their jargon replacing the equations of the progressive economists that gave advice to the welfare state.

Identity politics addresses speech, especially pronouns, rather than wealth, and it rules through political correctness. Yet, as with the welfare state, the identity state has gone about as far as it can go, and it lacks the popular touch of an appeal to the poor. Sanders and his late socialism dance with it, but only for a turn. After all, the main policy of identity politics, affirmative action, suffers badly from the moral taint of bourgeois careerism. It is inconsistent to attack the establishment and to claim places in it at the same time.

Another rival for socialism is the politics of climate change, combined with it in the Green New Deal. Progressives welcome hostile climate change because it emphasizes vulnerability, rather than strength, and extends universally to the human race rather than being confined to one country, like Sanderss socialism. Climate change requires scientistsanother set of expertsto monitor its advance and especially to defend its existence and its menace. In this task, as with progressive economics, bad news is good and joyful work. At the same time, climate change is said to be humanly causedthat is, by technologyand thus in the larger sense a consequence of science. Climate change is truly a postmodern concern about science, and the scientists who describe it are warning us against science, like the climate-change deniers. Sanders raises the specter of a bad climate, as he uses identity politics, only as additions to his economic case for socialism. He mentions neither the drawbacks of science nor Marxs praise of the exploitative marvels of capitalism.

In the same way, Sanders attacks Americas political system and yet asks for votes within it. Is not the establishment in that system mainly composed of those who have won elections in the past or have supported those winners? A more impartial view might suggest that the American system profits greatly from its supply of leaders in both parties with political experience, ready to argue in public and persuade in private. This supply, one could say, is our informal Senate outside the formal Senate, consisting of intelligent, and, to be sure, less-than-intelligent has-beens. These figures work with the media, another informal institutionan establishment against the establishmentcheering and damning with unending worry, whether partisan or not.

While in a reflective mood, one can look more deeply at Sanders and the Democrats. Anyone who thought socialism was gone for good, its reputation blackened by association with the murder of Communism and by the failures of its democratic variety in the welfare state, was wrong. Socialism has a permanent basis in our political nature, particularly in the nature of our liberalismthe generic liberalism of the great seventeenth-century philosophers Locke and Montesquieuthat proposes a society of individual rights and is held today in different versions by both liberals and conservatives. This liberal philosophy is always open to the criticism that individuals need to be made more equal so that they can form a true community. This is the path to the Left.

Yet there is also a permanent objection from the Right, that individuals must be treated differently according to their differing talents, virtues, and contributions. This is the path to the Right, to conservatism and, to the extremes beyond, to dictatorship. In our society, these two paths, though perhaps compatible in theory, will always lead in opposite directions, toward opposing communities of greater equality and greater nobility, each with its moderate and extreme versions. Our parties want progress, but toward different ends and with different means. To decide which is correct takes an exercise of prudence in the circumstances of the moment and with a view to what is lost as well as what is gained. Let us admit that Sanders has a point in the dissatisfaction he gives voice to but does not understand. He and his partisans need to get used to the continuing existence of the Right. On the right, there is or should be a resigned acceptance, under our common belief, of the unending challenge from its friends on the left. American self-government consists in continuing partisanship between parties understandably dissatisfied with it.

Harvey Mansfield is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Sanders's Revolution May Have Stalled, But His Platform Survives - City Journal