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Now that we're in the 20th year of the new millennium, Dance Magazine decided it was time to take stock. What are the new dance classics that have been created since the year 2000? We polled contributors from around the country to put together a very subjective and not at all comprehensive list of 20 top works that we love for all kinds of reasons. These are dances that delighted us, that entertained us, that moved us and that made us think and feel more deeply. Put simply, they're dances that made us fall in love with this art form all over again.

It was so honest, so relevant, so real, so uncomfortable. A year before the official founding of the Black Lives Matter movement, Kyle Abraham's Pavement used the familiar setting of a basketball court to expose the reality of living under the constant threat of violence. The repeated motion of dancers being guided to the floor with their hands behind their backs, as though being arrested, hauntingly captured a sense of helplessness. Vignettes of deliciously juicy movement showcased toughness, camaraderie, vulnerabilityand how quickly each one of those things can morph into another. Jennifer Stahl

A.I.M in Pavement

Carrie Schneider, Courtesy A.I.M

The German language has a word for so many circumstances, words like "betroffenheit," which conveys a state of shock and bewilderment. But even German has its limits, and when a word falls short in any language, sometimes movement succeeds. Crystal Pite's Betroffenheit, which debuted in 2015 and has since been presented at 39 tour stops in 15 countries, explores the sparkling highs and humiliating lows of substance abuse. The collaboration between her own troupe, Kidd Pivot, and Vancouver's Electric Company Theatre set a new standard for dance theater with its better-than-Broadway lighting, sound and visual effects. Actor Jonathon Young starred as the wretchedly watchable addict, surrounded by dancers sucking him into "the show," a shiny world of break dance, tap and contorted modern movement. What we see onstage is an epic breakdown. Pite took the ugliest of human experiences and made it beautiful, without ever aggrandizing her subject matter. Until there's a word for exactly that accomplishment, there's Betroffenheit. Rebecca J. Ritzel

Kidd Pivot and Jonathon Young in Betroffenheit

Michael Slobodian, Courtesy Kidd Pivot

Replete with streamers, karaoke, candy and drinks, Monica Bill Barnes & Company's Happy Hour looks like your typical office party. Created by Barnes, Anna Bass and Robbie Saenz de Viteri, this show brilliantly distills the vulnerability behind performed machismo. Barnes' signature comedic style shines through in characters whose wonderful earnestness and awkwardness is deeplyalbeit sometimes painfullyrelatable. Performed in small spaces to small crowds, Happy Hour is uniquely intimate, incorporating audience interaction in a way that pushes the boundaries of concert dance. Chava Lansky

Anna Bass and Monica Bill Barnes in Happy Hour

Grant Halverson, Courtesy MBB & CO

Its premiere just 33 days into Y2K wasn't the only way One Flat Thing, reproduced marked a pivotal moment. The work's original venue, a former tram depot almost exactly a century old, and its 20 metal tables forecast William Forsythe's growing interest in site-specific choreography around obstaclesboth physical and intangible. Then 15 years into his collaboration with electronic-music composer Thom Willems, Forsythe maximized the dynamic range of the short piece, wild enough in some sections to make your seat shake, and quiet enough in others to hear a pin drop. In 2009, One Flat Thing, reproduced became the basis for the still-impressive interactive website Synchronous Objects. Zachary Whittenburg

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in One Flat Thing, reproduced

Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy Hubbard Street

Chunky Move's GLOW premiered in 2006 (basically eons ago in terms of media technology), but it remains the best overall deployment of projection mapping for live dance. The piece used an array of sensors that followed where and how a soloist moved, and seamlessly composed stage lighting responsive to the performer. This digital wizardry revealed the mechanism of the dancer's body, with lighting effects fundamentally indistinguishable from magic. Sydney Skybetter

Chunky Move's Kristy Ayre in Glow

Rom Anthonis, Courtesy Chunky Move

Justin Peck's choreography has become so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget just how unexpected Year of the Rabbit was. Only his second work for New York City Ballet, the piece contained the seeds of everything he's done since. Complex architectural structures were crafted and then deconstructed piecemeal before our eyes. The corps stopped halfway through an exit to lie on their backs, halfway in the wings, as a pas de deux unfolded upstage. The composition was serious, its execution playful (except when it needed to be poignant), and the musican orchestration of Sufjan Stevens' "Enjoy Your Rabbit"marked the beginning of one of the coolest collaborations of the decade. Rabbit proved that ballet, despite reports to the contrary, was alive and well, and reminded us that it could be fresh, surprising and, yes, fun. Courtney Escoyne

NYCB in Year of the Rabbit

Paul Kolnik, Courtesy NYCB

One decade before his death, Paul Taylor made a masterpiecehis last, as it turned out. Beloved Renegade, set to Francis Poulenc's Gloria and inspired by the life of Walt Whitman, had an elegiac tone. A man in white, danced at the premiere by the Apollonian Michael Trusnovec, seemed to conjure up images from his past: men and women entwined in ecstatic love; young men falling to the ground, as if injured in war; children frolicking. And then an angelic figure prepared the man for death and led him into the unknown. It felt very much as if Taylor, then 78, was somehow taking stock of his own life and perhaps preparing us for his future absence. The tears flowed. Marina Harss

Michael Trusnovec and Laura Halzack in Beloved Renegade

Paul B. Goode, Courtesy PTDC

If the MO of Hamilton's main character was not throwing away his shot, the same rang true for Tony-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. Upping the ante for dance in musical theater, he crafted drastically different tracks for each dancer with a vocabulary that pulled from hip hop, contemporary, Fosse and stepping. Working with Lin-Manuel Miranda's complex rhythms to accentuate prominent lyrics, the choreography puts this retelling of early American history further into hyperdrive. There's the emotional nuance of "Satisfied," as the cast retraces choreography from the previous scene, but in reverse. The Battle of Yorktown unfolds with soldiers executing tightly synchronized phrases in shape-shifting formations. Even the bullet that kills Hamilton is embodied through dance. Madeline Schrock

Daveed Diggs and the ensemble of Hamilton

Joan Marcus, Courtesy Hamilton

As the audience trickled into Bronx Gothic, Okwui Okpokwasili was already deep inside the work, violently shaking as sweat pooled on her body. It was an accurate introduction to what would come: a powerful magnum opus that fearlessly investigated what it means to have a black body in America today. What was remarkable, though, was that as Okpokwasili trekked further into the complexities of her own identity, she simultaneously drew the audience (which, during her national tour captured in a documentary of the same name, was largely white) closer, forcing them to confront uncomfortable realities while also offering them points of access. Lauren Wingenroth

Okwui Okpokwasili in Bronx Gothic

Ian Douglas, Courtesy Okpokwasili

The Odissi company Nrityagram is known for the highly innovative and well-crafted choreography of artistic director Surupa Sen. And for the extraordinary dancing of Sen and her star dancer Bijayini Satpathy. The duets Sen has created for the two of them have taken the art of Odissi to a pinnacle of the form. In "Vibhakta," which the two performed as part of an unforgettable evening of duets in front of the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you weren't always sure what you were seeing: one dancer or two, man or woman, moving sculpture or simply music in physical form. It was dance as transformation and deep emotional and spiritual connection. Marina Harss

Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy in "Vibhakta"

Nan Melville, Courtesy Met Museum

In 2011, Royal Ballet audiences might have known of Edward Watson's uncommonly hypermobile facility, and they might have known of his penchant for portraying dark, neurotic characters. But there was a peculiar alchemy at work in The Metamorphosis, Arthur Pita's dance-theater reimagining of the Kafka novella in which a man is transformed overnight into an insect. It marked the first time Watson utilized the fullest extent of his incredible physicality in service of his unnerving dramatic ability, forging a singular, riveting vehicle from the many facets of his talent. Surreal, strange and startling, Watson's unceasing movement stuck in the mind long after leaving the theater. Courtney Escoyne

Nina Goldmand and Edward Watson in Metamorphosis

Tristram Kenton, Courtesy ROH

While many of Michelle Dorrance's works aim to move tap into the future, The Blues Project, co-choreographed with Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, pays a beautiful homage to the past. The piece was created in collaboration with musician Toshi Reagon, who performs live with her band, BIGLovely; the sublime conversation between music and dance could convert any nonbeliever into a tap fan. While the ensemble numbers are an ode to the form's social dance lineage, improvisatory solos by the three creators reveal their deep understanding of tap's complex history, proving them to be true visionaries in the field. Chava Lansky

Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and Derick K. Grant in The Blues Project

Christopher Duggan, Courtesy Dorrance Dance

In 2003, Alexei Ratmansky was still a dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, albeit one with a burgeoning choreographic career. Then he made The Bright Stream for the Bolshoi Ballet. This tongue-in-cheek remake of an early Soviet work, set on a collective farm, to a score by Shostakovich, was an instant sensation in Russia. In 2005 the Bolshoi brought it to the U.S.; people were surprised by the vividness of the characterizations, the fluency and playfulness of the storytelling, and the musicality of the choreography. After years of plotless ballets, we were reminded that it was okay to tell stories, even light ones, and that it could be done with sophistication and ease. Marina Harss

American Ballet Theatre in The Bright Stream

Rosalie O'Connor, Courtesy ABT

A startling amplification of his choreographic voice, Polyphonia was Christopher Wheeldon's first major collaboration with Wendy Whelan, a seminal partnership that showcased her sleek, musical style. The ballet opens and closes with eight dancers boldly etching out machine-efficient phrases, a sort of neo-Futuristic ceremony. But the choreography dynamically journeys forward with an achingly lyrical duet and a touching solo, among its 10 sections danced to the hauntingly dissonant piano music of Gyrgy Ligeti. In a Royal Ballet rehearsal shared on YouTube, Wheeldon said, "We hear disorder but what we actually see is order." Polyphonia is a grandchild of Balanchine's Agon. Wheeldon expanded on that neoclassical lineage for a new era. Joseph Carman

NYCB in Polyphonia

Paul Kolnik, Courtesy NYCB

Centuries after Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Rennie Harris translated the timeless tale for a new generation by bringing the streets to the stage with his evening-length Rome & Jewels.Rodney Mason, as Rome, calls out, "Yo, Rome, thou art a villain, so what's up?" to begin Harris' "hip-hopera" blending Ebonics with Elizabethan text, DJs, an MC and star-crossed homeys vying for street cred though dance battles. With Rome & Jewels, hip hop gained respect, and its raw and ruthless stance was amplified. "Thou art more lovely than a summer's dayWord," says Rome to his imaginary Jewels. Who does that? Harris does. Charmaine Patricia Warren

Rennie Harris Puremovement in Rome & Jewels

Courtesy Rennie Harris American Street Dance Theater

With DESH, Akram Khan delivered just about everything you could ask for from a work of dance: It inspired awe, it made you laugh, it transported you to another side of the world, it made you question the big stufflike the very idea of "home." And somehow, Khan accomplished this all as the sole performer, playing himself as a teenager, bringing to life an invisible niece, brilliantly using the top of his bald head to transform into his father. The shape-shifting eloquence of his crisp, specific body language was the ultimate storytelling tool. Jennifer Stahl

Akram Khan in DESH

Richard Haughton, Courtesy Akram Khan Company

Donald Byrd's Petruchska offered little reliefanything slow and sweet was merely a prelude to more abuse in this vision of horrors. Although Byrd's singularly bold ballet was melodramatic and unsettling, he did not glorify violence but rather exposed it, calling out all of us who would be complicit. Petruchska followed much the same story as the earlier Fokine. Yet Byrd revealed in it the hate-mongering of an all-too-brutal society like few others can. Gigi Berardi

Spectrum Dance Theater in Petruchska

Chris Bennion

Did you know that Arthur Mitchell and others hypothesized that George Balanchine's Agon choreography was influenced by observing black staff members rehab patients at the whites-only polio facility where Balanchine's then-wife Tanaquil Le Clercq was treated? This is just one of many arresting insights illuminated in Netta Yerushalmy's ambitious Paramodernities. The four-hour interdisciplinary show, equal parts dance and scholarship, surveyed works by six canonical choreographersBalanchine's Agon; Vaslav Nijinsky's Le Sacre du printemps; Martha Graham's Night Journey; Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity; Merce Cunningham's Rainforest, Sounddance, Points In Space, Beach Birds and Ocean; and Alvin Ailey's Revelationsusing movement and words to deconstruct, rebuild and interpret the pieces. The distinguished group of dancers and scholar-performers revealed new ways to see some of our foundational dances. Caroline Shadle

Paramodernities

Paula Lobo, Courtesy Yerushalmy

With Pina Bausch's choreography literally popping off the screen in 3-D, director Wim Wenders brought us right inside her surreal (and sometimes all-too-real) dances. The Tanztheater Wuppertal dancers were shot performing her iconic phrases everywhere from the stage to the sidewalk; an epic sequence dancing up into the mountains effectively made an anthem out of her Nelken line. Although Pina initially began with Bausch as a collaborator, it was completed after her unexpected death, and ended up as a masterful love letter to her work. Jennifer Stahl

Leave it to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to create a dance inspired by the longtime MIT linguist and cultural critic Noam Chomsky. Using dancers of different lineages established the stage space as a global meeting place where physical language was amplified and reframed. Cherkaoui mixed his own movement with that of French circus dancer Dimitri Jourde, American Lindy hopper Johnny Lloyd, Spanish dancer Fabian Thom Duten and hip-hop dancer Patrick Williams Seebacher. The democratically shifting boundaries between bodies and movement not only made for a timely statement of shared power, but the use of gesture, multiples and sequence packed one potent kinetic cocktail. Nancy Wozny

Fractus V.

Christopher Duggan, Courtesy Jacob's Pillow

Read the rest here:
20 Top Works of the Last 20 Years - Dance Magazine

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders once admitted that his 2016 campaign was too white. But despite his attempts to build a diverse coalition of supporters in 2020, it was clear on Tuesday that he hasnt been able to bring black voters, a core constituency for the Democratic party, into the fold.

Former Vice President Joe Biden won big with black voters in Michigan, the state with the largest delegate trove on Tuesday, and in Missouri and Mississippi, according to CNN exit polls. Black voters supported Biden at rates of 66 percent in Michigan and 72 percent in Missouri states where he reaped double-digit victories over Sanders. And in Mississippi, where black voters made up 69 percent of the electorate, they backed Biden over Sanders nearly 9 to 1.

Sanders has relied on young voters and Latinos of all age groups for his strong performances in states like Nevada and California. And on Wednesday afternoon, he announced he was staying in the race.

But the South Carolina primary on February 29 served as a wake-up call that Sanderss outreach to the black community was failing: Biden won 61 percent of black Democratic primary voters there, who made up more than half of the state electorate, propelling his unexpected comeback. And on Super Tuesday, Biden won eight states where black voters made up a large share of the electorate.

The Sanders campaign has since scrambled to make a last-minute push among black voters. He began airing TV ads touting instances in which former President Barack Obama praised the senator and paid for spots on radio stations primarily catering to black communities in states that were set to vote on Tuesday. He also picked up an endorsement from the civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson.

But his campaign openly admitted that he wasnt performing as well as he needed to among black voters.

We need to redouble our outreach effort, Rep. Ro Khanna, co-chair of the campaign, told Politico. We need to sit down with as many Congressional Black Caucus members as we can, whether they endorsed us or not. We need to be sitting down with the NAACP, with civil rights organizations.

Its not clear whether the Sanders campaign actually went through with that plan. (A spokesperson for the campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) He was slated to deliver a speech in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday that would have made the case to black voters on why they should elect him over Biden, but he changed course at the last minute and just delivered a stump speech. The New York Times reported that his surrogates, many of whom are people of color, determined that it would be better for them to address the black community instead.

Given Sanderss performance among black voters on Tuesday night, its clear that strategy didnt work. And given that no Democrat has won the nomination without the support of a majority of black voters in three decades, this lack of support could well have cost him the election for the second time.

Sanders also struggled to connect with black voters in 2016. He lost South Carolina that year, as well, when 86 percent of black voters chose Hillary Clinton over him. He consistently came under fire from black activists, in particular from Black Lives Matter, who criticized his lack of attention to criminal justice and racial issues. Even internally in his campaign, black staffers told Fusion at the time they werent prioritized.

Sanders has made efforts to hire more people of color this time around and integrate them across the campaign, beyond the community outreach typically seen in Democratic campaigns. He has, for example, brought in Nina Turner, a former state senator from Ohio, as a campaign co-chair, and she has proved a powerful surrogate for Sanders among black voters.

Some in his campaign have attributed Sanderss lack of support among black voters overall to his difficulty connecting with older voters more generally. Its true that Sanders narrowly won black voters under 30 in 2016, but they just didnt vote in the kinds of large numbers he needed.

The same trend has held true this election cycle as young, black voters have again backed him overwhelmingly. But it appears that just wasnt enough to insulate him from Bidens sweeping wins on Tuesday.

Read more:
Bernie Sanderss failure to win over black voters on Tuesday could doom his campaign - Vox.com

Im writing this because I feel like I have to. I think this needs to be heard. I think more people need to hear others personal stories. Constantly feeling misunderstood, misrepresented, unappreciated, and having to explain myself and why I fight for social justice is something I am tired of doing.

I am a person of color (POC). I always have been and will be. Being a POC has been an identity that I have struggled with my whole life. I grew up with a white family, always pretending that I could be a white person. I didnt know it, but I was ashamed of who I was, where I was from, and the color of my skin.

I thought that being seen as white was better than embracing who I was. Its not that I was explicitly told that white was better, but what I later found out is that society was and is already set up to embrace the white agenda. What I mean by this is that the system, yes the system think as broadly as you can about the society and the government and set social rules that exist was created to benefit people with white skin or present as white.

Im not saying its the present-day white peoples fault, but it is white peoples responsibility to be aware of this. I mean really aware of this. It has only been more recently since I was able to identify the concept of systemic oppression. Id heard of privilege and white privilege and knew what oppression was, but I was never aware or taught how ingrained the oppression is in our formal and informal society.

A formal example being that the death penalty was created by the government as a legal way to murder African Americans. Once lynching became more looked down upon, the government came up with a way (a system) to push certain people in the direction of the death penalty which truly was made to be the legal excuse for executing African Americans. We can also look at the statistics. Lets talk about the demographics of prisons. Lets compare sentences for crimes of POC vs. white presenting folx for committing the same crime.

What about less formal examples of systemic oppression? I think of things like pipeline schools, colorism, and racial profiling. I recently had a friend of mine, who is and identifies as white, tell me that they speed going home from college all the time. Once they passed a cop and were lucky enough to not get caught. It immediately reminded me of other stories Id heard from other college students who identified as black males.

They shared multiple experiences of themselves and friends being pulled over and even taken into a station for the same or similar small crimes. You may think; well, they were breaking the law, but so was my white friend. But my white friend doesnt have to worry about getting not just caught, but PICKED because of the color of their skin. Its not just a problem that its happening; the bigger problem is that people arent even aware that this is some peoples everyday lives. Can you imagine living in fear every day because of the color of your skin?

Another thing I like to mention when I try to express the importance of social justice is the topic of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Blue Lives Matter. The biggest thing I want to be taken away is that being a cop and putting on that uniform is a choice. Being a POC is not a choice. Not only is the uniform a choice, but the uniform can also be taken off. Your skin color cannot be taken off. You dont get to choose when youll be judged by what is presented on the outside. It is an identity that follows you every second of your life.

In my opinion, the problem is two things. Most importantly, the police force was built off of an oppressive system. Period. That cant be changed, the past cant be changed, but it can be acknowledged. People arent inherently bad, I dont believe, but we were all born into a human societal system built to support some and hold back others. Going off that point that people arent inherently bad, I do not and believe, and I think other folx would back me up on this, that all cops are bad, and that is not the message that is trying to be portrayed when people feel upset about BLM being confronted with Blue Lives Matter.

I think the last message I want to address is one of the biggest reasons Im writing this. It ties into a lot of what I have already said. But listen here I think most people would agree with me that most people believe we should live in an equitable world or at least, thats what people will say they believe in. I commend the folx who have these conversations. It is super important.

But, it is also important to know that after recognition, talking about social justice is just the beginning. Simply put, there is a difference between not being racist/oppressive and being anti-racist/anti-oppressive. Just because you have the conversation from time to time, doesnt mean youre helping solve the issues, especially if these conversations only exist in spaces created specifically for social justice conversations.

The frustrating part for myself and from what Ive heard from other people that identify as POC is that while this conversation exists in a designated space, once the conversation is over, white folx can go back to their normal lives that are inherently built and systemically supported for white presenting folx.

POC have to take that conversation out of the room with them and live it 24/7. POC dont get to choose when these conversations happen and when they are important because one, its important all the time, and two, it affects them all the time. This is my biggest critique to folx who think they are doing good Social Justice work. Its not that its not good, its just not enough.

I also want to note that there are a lot of minority and/or marginalized identities that I did not include in my thoughts here. As far as the multiple marginalized identities that I, myself, hold, I believe that this message applies to those identities as well. I hope this helps anyone to better understand why I think social justice is such an important topic to think about.

There is one last thing I want to address. Ive spent a lot of my life thinking about how I can help others before I realized that being an educator is about supporting students to be able to help themselves. I think helping is great, but the questions are what causes are you helping and are you really helping. If you truly believe in change, then we need to attack systemic oppression.

I see the steps as recognizing systemic oppression, vocalizing, not perpetuating it, and fighting it at its root. My go-to example of this is some cities solutions to homelessness. There has been something created that is recognized as anti-homelessness architecture. What this really means is creating spaces where homeless people cannot stay, like spikes under sheltered areas and benches with divides or other manners of preventing sleeping on them.

The problem with this is that it may prevent homeless people from staying in that location, but it drives homeless people elsewhere and more importantly, doesnt help to eradicate the problem of homelessness. So to connect these ideas, one can donate clothes/items to the less fortunate or participate in volunteer activities, but if youre not helping to break and change the system, youre only helping to deal with the consequences of systemic oppression, not the root of these problems. This means that systemic oppression will persist and continue on. So I leave you with a few quotes that resonate deeply with me.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -MLK

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and no nothing. -Albert Einstein

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

Last and certainly not least, thank you to everyone in my life that has helped me to be able to understand myself more, dive into the work, and supported me through my lifelong journey.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Letters to the Editor do not reflect the beliefs or values of The Racquet Press. The author of this letter chose to remain anonymous.

See the original post here:
Letter to the Editor: Why social justice is important to me - The Racquet

Kim Foxxs office has reduced incarceration rates by nearly 20% and taken major steps toward reform. Now, shes under attack.

To criminal justice advocates, the Smollett controversy has been an overblown distraction.

CHICAGOWith the Illinois primary set for Tuesday, one of the most heated races of the cycle is for Cook County states attorney. Progressive prosecutor Kim Foxx sits in a vulnerable position as the incumbent, as she faces a challenge from Bill Conwaya billionaire-backed candidateas well as continuing blowback from her handling of the controversial Jussie Smollett case.

The Cook County states attorneys office is the second-largest of its kind in the United States, employing more than 800 prosecutors who handle upwards of 30,000 felony cases and several times more misdemeanor cases per year. Meanwhile, Chicagowhich makes up much of Cook Countyhas the unsavory reputation of being the false confession capital. Between 1972 and 1991, police commander Jon Burge tortured more than 100 people, mostly African American, into giving false confessions, and it was only in 2011 that Burge was finally sentenced to prison. Chicago is also where African-American teenager Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by white police officer Jason Van Dyke, who was convicted of murder in 2018 in a rare win for criminal justice advocates.

It was this same case that, in large part, led to the ousting of former states attorney Anita Alvarez, who had waited 13 months to prosecute Van Dyke. Hastened by the activist-organized campaign called #ByeAnita, Alvarez lost the 2016 election to Foxx, a former assistant states attorney who became the first Black woman to hold the office. Since then, Foxxs office has reduced Cook County incarceration rates by 19%, released over six years of felony criminal case data on the Cook County Open Data Portal, and has started expunging the records of the tens of thousands of people with low-level cannabis charges.

You cannot overstate the impact of reducing frivolous prosecutions, says Jobi Cates, founder of Restore Justice Illinois, citing minor nonviolent crimes like shoplifting. When you're looking at a system that's so overwhelmed it can barely function on a good day to provide fair hearings for people, [then] removing that pressure on the system is going to allow every case to get more attention.

Foxx is not without criticism. Most of the five organizers interviewed for this piece were largely supportive of Foxx, but dont think shes gone as far as she could to protect Black and poor Chicagoans, citing her slow movement on some issues such as over-prosecuting some gun possession cases, not practicing restorative justice enough over punitive measures, and further criminalizing survivors of domestic violence who are up for clemency.

As a prison abolitionist, Westside Justice Center organizer Monica Cosby believes that the power of a progressive prosecutor is inherently limited. I don't believe that the criminal justice system can be reformed at all. . The most that [they] can do is harm reduction and stop sending as many people to jail, but as long as that mechanism exists to incarcerate people that is what's going to happen.

Theres also the issue of Jussie Smollett. In February 2019, the Empire actor was accused of staging a racist and homophobic hate crime against himself, and weeks later, Foxxs office dropped the 16 counts of disorderly conduct against him. Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the case a whitewash of justice, while Foxx maintains that it's part of her greater strategy of decarceration. Having this type of diversion is something we offer to people who do not have his money or his fame, she told the Chicago Tribune.

To criminal justice advocates, the Smollett controversy has been an overblown distraction. Emmanuel Andre, executive director of Northside Transformative Law Center, says, Even if Kim Foxx had gone through the whole process of putting Jussie Smollett on trial, then we have to ask, what is it that we as a society want to achieve?

Nonetheless, the case has become a rallying cry foropposition from Foxxs challengers: Bill Conway, former assistant states attorney; Donna More, a 2016 candidate for states attorney who now represents casinos in private practice; and Bob Fioretti, former alderman and perennial candidate. Conway, considered the frontrunner among the challengers, says the case exemplifies the States Attorney [showing] that the politically connected get better deals than other people, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

However, even as these organizers have some misgivings about Foxx, none are ready to abandon her. Cates thinks that the other candidates see this race as an opportunity to appease law-and-order Democrats [and] the Fraternal Order of Police community, Cates says. They walk the line of sounding progressive while maintaining the status quo.

Writer and organizer Kelly Hayes offered the same assessment of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which helped cover up Burges reign of terror. The police saw the removal of Foxx's predecessor as a condemnation of the department, which it was, Hayes says. [They now] have less control over people's fates, and that's what they want back. The local FOP has endorsed Fioretti in the race.

Though Conway has come out in support of reducing prosecutions of low-level crimes, community organizer Tanya Watkins is not convinced of his progressive bonafides. I'm honestly offended by some of the things that he says. He has co-opted the message of organizers and activists who he has had no relationship with, Watkins says. He's basically saying that he is going to do all the things that Kim Foxx is already doing.

As a result of this sentiment, local racial justice organizers have mounted a #CancelConway campaign, cut from the same cloth as #ByeAnita. Backed by a progressive electoral group called Vote Liberation, the campaign is highlighting Conways campaign ties to figures such as Anita Alvarez, as well as the FOP. One digital ad on the groups website accuses the Carlyle Groupthe private-equity firm run by Conways billionaire father, and his main campaign contributorof war profiteering and owning part of the company that manufactured the tear gas used by police against Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri.

Mark Clements, a Burge torture survivor whose conviction was overturned after he spent 28 years in prison and who now works at the Chicago Torture Justice Center says that while he doesnt believe the criminal justice system has significantly improved under Foxxs tenure, she still deserves a second opportunity. Clements says, I'm thankful for her being transparent in her handling of police torture cases, because most Cook County state's attorneys will not open the door to individuals that were once locked up inside of prisons.

This has been the most expensive race for Cook County states attorney to date. The four candidates have raised nearly $16.3 million in the race, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Elections. Conways campaign war chest exceeds $11.4 million, nearly all of it from his father.

The infusion of big money into the racea 180% increase from the 2016 electionhas upended the playing field for Foxx, who has relied on donations from labor unions and special-interest groups. But organizers who back the incumbent are undeterred by this flood of cash into the race.

As Watkins says, They are buying our criminal justice system, and its not for sale.

Original post:
In Chicago, a Billionaire-Backed Candidate and Police Are Trying To Oust a Progressive Prosecutor - In These Times

Pessimism runs deep in the Jewish psyche, with, tragically, good cause. Anti-Semitism goes back to the very beginnings of Jews as a people. Since biblical days, Jews have been seen as the other, outsiders, victims of conspiracy theories and myths that have no rational source. The pages of Jewish history are bloodstained from countless persecutions and pogroms. Jews have been accused of being too wealthy and too poor, too powerful and too weak, communists and financiers.

Anti-Semitism drove Jews to the New World, and it followed them there. In 1654, Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of the colony of New Amsterdam, sought to expel Jews as deceitful, very repugnant, and hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ. The Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna points out that Stuyvesant also railed against the Lutherans and the papists, noting that in America, the fate of Jews and the fate of other persecuted minority groups were, from the very beginning, entwined.

Even as Jews gained greater acceptance in American society, anti-Semitism persisted. During the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant moved to expel Jews, as a class, from the war zone he commanded. Leo Frank, an innocent man, was accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta in 1913. Two years later, when his death sentence was commuted, he was taken from jail by an angry mob and lynched.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford wrote a series of articles in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, accusing Jews of being part of a worldwide conspiracy based on an anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In the 1930s, Father Charles Edward Coughlin, a Detroit-based precursor to todays talk-radio shock jocks, drew up to 30 million listeners to his weekly program, on which he spewed pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic vitriol, until the show was canceled in 1939.

During World War II, an estimated half million American Jews served in the armed forces, and many encountered anti-Semitic verbal attacks from fellow soldiers questioning their loyalty to the U.S. After the war, anti-Semitism was often more subtle but still present, with quotas on Jews in universities still in practice, and Jews restricted from many neighborhoods and professions.

In recent years, as overt anti-Semitism has declined, criticism of Israels policies from the left has often morphed from anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism from the right has been more direct, and violent; both of the men charged with the fatal synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway claimed that Jews are a threat to the white race.

Jews are contending with a growing effort on university campuses to demonize Israel as a racist, illegitimate state, and thus define Jewish students who support Israel as untouchable. As a result, such students are frequently excluded from liberal groups that support causes such as Black Lives Matter, gay rights, and combatting climate change. To distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and racism, the Soviet refusenik turned Israeli politician Natan Sharansky applies the three Ds: delegitimization, demonization, and subjecting Israel to a double standard. Among many on the left, Israel, once admired for boxing far above its weight in a chaotic region, is viewed now as a pariah state.

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Is It Still Safe to Be a Jew in America? - The Atlantic