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Black Lives Matter activists in Mississauga, Canada, protest the death of Abdirahman Abdi, killed by Ottawa police on August 25, 2016. Image credit: arindambanerjee / Shutterstock

The late political theorist Cedric Robinson once wrote that, as it concerns the historical premises and practices of Black struggle, the most important issue is conceptualization: how are we to conceptualize what we were, what we are, what we are becoming? The essay in question is titled Coming to Terms. It is a fitting formulation for considering the accomplishments of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) through the lens of Robinsons query, on the one hand, and on the other, the conceptual rendering of the movement offered by Deva Woodly in her beautifully crafted new book, Reckoning.

In essence, I want to come to terms with M4BL as it has evolved, and also with one of Woodlys key tools of interpretation: what she describes as the canonical thinkers in political theory. The hope is to arrive at a provisional and necessarily incomplete answer to the question that concludes Woodlys text: What shall we do?, a path forward based on what we were, what we are, and what we are becoming.

The we in this context has, I think, a three-fold meaning. It refers, first and foremost, to Black people freedom dreaming on the front lines of struggle, past and present, be that through organized movement spaces or otherwise. In a second sense, it refers to Black academics, and the Negro intellectual, as Harold Cruse once put ittwo groups that include both Woodly and myselfand how we have collectively (and historically) engaged with Black rebellion as a political phenomenon. Finally, this we refers to all of us, Black and non-Black alikea totalizing weand not just people living in the United States, but around the world.

In Emergence, the first chapter of her study on Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, Woodly notes the movement was born twice, first as a hashtag online (#BlackLivesMatter). It was then reborn as a post-Ferguson organizational matrix (M4BL) emanating from a 2015 convening of allied organizers and groups in Cleveland. The two-births thesis, as Ill call it, is a useful starting point, a way of marking where we were.

And if we take the flux of this temporal framing seriously, if we think the movement was really born twiceas we shouldthen the unprecedented global uprisings of 2020 might best be understood as the zenith of the second phase, evidence that the decade to come has the potential to be a moment for reconstruction, just as Woodly hopes.

At the same time, last years Black-led rebellion might also be conceived as the beginning of the end of this second phase, which is where Id suggest we are, marching toward a yet to be determined third phase, which I think represents we are becoming. For the time being and for lack of a better name, Ill assign this third phase the label post-#BlackLivesMatter.

The suggestion we are moving towards a period that could be persuasively described as post- #BlackLivesMatter may seem contradictory. Perhaps it is. The scope of the 2020 uprisings in many ways undermines such a statement. But the destructive and jubilant dynamism seen in the streets, coupled with how the organizational infrastructure of M4BL was able to harness that dynamism and mobilize it further, papers over fractures that, to my mind, inform what post- #BlackLivesMatter might mean and what the praxis of a post-#BlackLivesMatter world might look like.

Put somewhat differently, in noting the ways M4BL has innovatively intervened in American political life through the re-politicization of the public sphere, and the possibilities this opens for the future, as Woodly does in her book, we must also take stock of why 2020 ended up being a watershed moment for a different kind of reckoning. This reckoning, a series of ruptures years in the making, saw organizers in the M4BL ecosystem, along with those observing from beyond, conclude that the movement, as represented by the M4BL constellation of leaders and groups, had lost its way.

Perhaps the most public example of this came in late November of 2020, when a group of chapters affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) publicly broke with the organization. The chapters (dubbed BLM10 and later the BLM10Plus) charged that the BLMGN, as shepherded by Patrisse Cullors, had long suffered from a lack of transparency, principled accountability, and democratic decision making, which was undermining the movement. As the group later described, their concerns were less about individual leaders and more about the ways liberalism and capitalism have manifested in BLMGN and the current iteration of the Black liberation movement as a whole, co-opting and deradicalizing this critical historic moment of revolutionary possibility.

Similar critiques were raised by members of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), the national, chapter-based organization I was an active participant in, and with which I am still nominally affiliated. But the dissenters in BYP100 also decried the organizations sharpened focus on electoral politics, and what they saw as its structural submergence in the nonprofit industrial complex, allowing for the reproduction of hierarchies and the slow creep of harmful liberal-capitalist logics. Some also critiqued the outsized role the M4BL umbrella organization played in directing strategy, often without the buy-in of grassroots BYP100 members. Consequently, several chapters chose to sunset their involvement with BYP100, concluding that it could no longer act as their political home.

When coupled with recurring attacks on celebrity movement activists and lawyersa group that includes Cullers, Shaun King, Tamika Mallory, and Benjamin Crumpfor what their critics, among them mothers of the dead, have taken to be a crass and disingenuous penchant for profiting off Black pain, a clear but complex picture of where we are emerges.

From the perspective of M4BLs detractors, its original radical promise has been hopelessly compromised. The social forces and material conditions that galvanized the movement in its first phase remain largely unchanged. The organizational matrix, fortified over the course of the second phase, has become well-resourced, and to a degree, politically influential. M4BL has set its sights on winning influence in more establishment venues, while waging digital campaigns to educate, organize, and bring more people into its fold.

But that approachto set ones sights on mainstream poweralthough sensible and pragmatic, doesnt fly if you want the establishment to burn. It doesnt cohere if you believe liberation depends on the end of the world and the creativity that arrives with destruction.

In other words, a number of activists who have defected from the M4BL ecosystem believe that the war against anti-Blackness and its attendant ills cannot be waged and won on the oppressors terms, using the oppressors tools. And if this is the anchor of your analysis, then regardless of shifts in political discourse and public opinion, policy wins, or the salience of slogans like defund the police, youre likely to conclude that #BlackLivesMatter, along with allied groups such as BLMGN and BYP100, have been captured.

Whether or not you consider capture to be the appropriate term to describe what has happened in M4BLs second phase, aspects of the movement have unquestionably become institutionalized. This has happened in a manner that not only more directly engages the state, especially on the federal level, but also helps to normalize the movements presence withinrather than stridently againstAmerican liberal institutions. In some respects, an argument can be made that the M4BL umbrella organization has become like an oppositional tendency adjacent to the Democratic Party, gunning for a seat at the table. And it is precisely this kind of strategy, and the kinds of practices and tactics it produced, that caused a rupture in the shadows of the 2020 rebellion.

Its possible that some sort of schism was inevitable. I certainly could see the seeds of it being planted as far back as 2016, and the fact is, channeling the benefits of nonprofit status, and effectively changing public policy, were always among the explicit goals of organizers in the M4BL ecosystem. Its also the case that the radical energy that inspires the creation of radical movements comes and goes, as do movement organizations more generally.

When organizations survive, they often moderate their strategies, if not their objectives, in accordance with whatever their current leadership thinks the moment requires. From this we might say that theres a dialectical relationship between what we are becoming and the question what shall we do? Our understanding of the former impacts how we respond to the latter, and vice versa.

Which brings me back to the issue of conceptualization.

If were headed towards a yet-to-be-determined third phase, a post #BlackLivesMatter world, it wont be one where the current constellation of movement organizations simply disappear or become ineffective in their attempts to bring Black people closer to liberation. Instead, it will be a world where movement ideas and principles are taken up anew and materialize in novel forms designed to resist the pitfalls of institutionalization. After all, the objections raised by M4BLs critics were never about political beliefs. The dissent was about how those beliefs were put into practice, driven by a desire to ensureas the critics in BLM10Plus put itthat capitalism and liberalism would be unable to co-opt or blunt this critical historic moment of revolutionary possibility.

So, if this is one possibility of what we might become, then how are we to conceptualize and make sense of the political horizons of a post #BlackLivesMatter world? Will the key organizers in that world build on the radical spirit of the protesters who burned the Minneapolis Third Precinct to the ground at the onset of uprisings in 2020? What are the interpretive tools we should use, and importantly, how should we wield them?

These questions are especially urgent for Black academics and intellectuals committed to Black struggle.

Woodlys answer to the question of what conceptual tools we need is radical Black feminist pragmatism, a political philosophy through which one can view all of the forces that inhibit Black peoples ability to live and thrive. Guided by a carefully considered encounter with the words and lived experiences of movement leaders, her extended theoretical engagement with M4BL through the prism of radical Black feminist pragmatism is a testament to the love she has for Black people.

It also shows her deep admiration for the movements approach to what she terms the art of organizingthough she is equally clear that M4BL is a work in progressand her well founded intuition that the ideas present in this movement are offering the substance, the matter, that can help us to craft a new era . . . that has not yet been named.

A similar sensethat a new era of possibilities had dawnedwas indeed one of the reasons critics of M4BL concluded that the movements institutionalization was evidence it had lost its way.

But Woodlys text has another stated objective: to demonstrate M4BLs usefulness to canonical political and social thought, and in doing so, disrupt, challenge, and revolutionize canonical thinking. This goal partially explains why, throughout the book, many of her theoretical interlocutors come from the white western canon of political theory rather than the trove of Black thinkers who might be equallyif not betterpositioned to conceptualize our historical moment.

For example, Woodly draws on John Deweys notion of social intelligence, which she says the movement uses, in part, to press foundational American ideals into service to salve and correct the structural conditions that enable domination and oppression in present day.

Deploying the term social intelligence to describe M4BLs approach to problem solving is one thing. But its hard not to see her framing as rephrasing a redemption narrative that is all too familiar, whereby the ideas and innovations of Black movements, born out of the pain of Black struggle, are placed in the service of correcting, but ultimately upholding the American project.

We must reject this narrative: neither America, nor any other nation-state, can be redeemed.

Furthermore, the idea of pragmatism itself has its own genealogy in Black feminist thought, one that, like Woodlys interpretation of M4BL, is grounded in pragmatic activism, as Stanlie James put it, and that similarly understands that the future is something to be pondered and set as a goal for today in our theories and in our practices, to borrow from V. Denise James. In this genealogy, the use of the term pragmatism, as a way of naming the nature of the work, emerged independent of any explicit engagement with Dewey, even if scholars like V. Denise James later sought to explore how Dewey might supplement Black feminist theorizing.

The point is this: relying on the canon to help interpret Black movements, and explain their contribution to mainstream political theory, does more to reify the canon than it does to disrupt, let alone revolutionize it. This is a version of being on the oppressors terms and using the oppressors tools, all for the sake of legibility to a canon that has never really concerned itself with Black life.

Reification is obviously not Woodlys intent, and her desire to champion the movement is clear. She is also not alone in explicitly adapting Deweys pragmatism and applying it to an analysis of Black life. Cornel West laid out the argument decades ago, and more recently, Eddie Glaude Jr. comes to mind.

But what we are and what were becoming might require something different from us now, something more. Perhaps thats among the things we need to come to terms with, as the uprisings and internal ruptures usher in a new, post #BlackLivesMatter phase, in Black struggle.

Click here to read an excerpt from Reckoning, courtesy of Deva Woodly and Oxford University Press.

Christopher Paul Harris is an assistant professor of Global and International Studies at University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in politics and historical studies from The New School for Social Research.

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On Coming to Terms - publicseminar.org

Martin Luther King Jr., a reverend who charted a colorblind approach to racial injustice, was a man of honor. Read his famous speeches and you will be in absolute awe.

Oh, how we need a King now. Hed set race-baiters everywhere straight. Hed tell them to love their fellow, flawed human beings as individuals, not attack them as irredeemables.

Today, Black Lives Matter the group, not the concept should review MLKs approach to civil rights. The organizers and adherents have chosen a different approach to racial reconciliation: belittlement, division and wholesale condemnation.

King was a modern saint, a modern Moses, leading his people out of separate-but-equal bondage and into a land of equal opportunity where skin color and background was secondary to content of character and ambition.

He was all about love real love which is intentional, reality-based and long-suffering with a pinch of forgiveness thrown in for good measure. Listen to King describe his main motivating idea of pacifism as the only way to win hearts and minds:

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, Love your enemies. It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. Thats love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. Theres something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

This is the King-led civil rights movementin one paragraph. It defeated its enemies by loving them. Blacks were separated, ostracized, threatened, beaten, killed, shot with fire hoses and all other kinds of evil, but they persevered because they were led by King, who believed love was the answer, not revenge, hate and violence.

If King wanted, he probably could have led Civil War II, with the likes of Malcolm X and other clench-fisted Black Power haters leading followers into armed confrontation. He did not, thankfully. And, in hindsight, he didnt have to. The patient, pacifist approach earned respect from the multitudes who were confronted by white supremacy and rejected it in its raw, hateful form.

Those who need proof BLM is taking a completely different tactic from King need only look up clips from rioting in major cities everywhere in the summer of 2020. Watch as demonstrators in these oft-touted peaceful protests took over whole city blocks and fought against police officers, burned businesses, carried bullhorns during early-morning parades threatening and mocking residents who just wanted a peaceful nights sleep and went on network news shows threatening to come for all white people when they got done destroying cities.

The whole experience was surreal, as if we were watching the Bolshevik Revolution scene in Dr. Zhivago when hordes of communists overran a familys home during dinnertime. But this was America in 2020. It was scarier than any novel coronavirus could ever be.

And BLMs message has gotten more divisive as the years pass. They reject the nuclear family. They align themselves with Democrats and progressives and are hostile toward Republicans and conservatives at every turn. They reject capitalism. They sow distrust of Americas venerate institutions. They tell us to beware and defund the police. The groups website requests readers to report any suspicious disinformation regarding BLM, as if were in Stalinist Russia.

After the recent Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty jury verdict, an official BLM tweet responded to Rittenhouses magnanimous, turn-the-other-cheek support of the BLM movement by simply stating, (Expletive) you. Would King ever use that hateful expression? Of course not. He wasnt that crude, unforgiving or ungracious.

We were lucky to have King in the 1960s. We need similar wise leadership now, and its not too late for BLM to start forming bridges, rather than creating further division. If it did, it, too, might still be relevant 50 years from now, just as King is.

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Here's Something: BLM should learn to be more like MLK - pressherald.com

Nick Saban (r.), with Joe ManchinPhoto: Getty Images

There is no shortage of examples of athletes using their public platforms to elevate social justice causes, from the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics to the Black Lives Matter marches led by collegiate athletes in the summer of 2020, and the countless moments in between. Multiple athletes in American history have chosen to place their careers on the line to make a statement in the last half century, these protests have often taken place in the name of combating racial injustice, specifically against Black Americans. And far too often, the athletes are left alone and abandoned, sometimes ostracized, from their sport for having the courage to speak out after theyve succeeded in getting to a national or international stage.

Im not sure whats worse being left out to dry, as the NFL did to Colin Kaepernick, or whatever the leagues are doing in order to seem like theyre trying these days. Players arent punished for peaceful protests anymore, but in 2020, Rob Manfred tried to pull off a protest publicity stunt during an MLB game. He then proceeded to defend the racism behind the Braves name and traditions in 2021. The NFL plastered End Racism in end zones throughout the country in 2020 while still essentially refusing to hire or retain Black coaches in 2022 (do I need to remind you that 70 percent of the players are Black?). The public efforts of major sports leagues have often rung distinctively false and seemed as though theyre just attempting to cling onto some sort of trendy concept of racial justice.

And in the middle of the athletes and the organizations lie the coaches and executives a group that signed a letter to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin this week urging him to support the Freedom to Vote Act, which aims to restore several original aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Alabama coach Nick Saban, who grew up in West Virginia and walked alongside his players in a Black Lives Matter march, is one of the signers of the letter, along with former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and NBA executive and former player and coach Jerry West, a favorite son of the Mountain State.

The letter reads, in part: So we are united now in urging Congress to exercise its Constitutional responsibility to enact laws that set national standards for the conduct of Federal elections and for decisions that determine election outcomes. Former WVU and NFL athletes Oliver Luck (father of Andrew) and Darryl Talley were the other two signers.

Does this read as a genuine effort or as an empty, for-show gesture? Of course, racial justice matters are at the root of voting rights bills like this one, as Black Americans are the most frequent victims of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. Figures like Saban have very different platforms available to them than the athletes themselves while the athletes are able to make public statements and amplify their messages on social media, higher-level coaches and executives often have direct ties to the people in power. Saban and Manchin, for instance, have been friends since their childhood in the 1950s. Saban is also the Messiah of the religion of Southern football, giving him a real modicum of power in the region.

Is the letter strongly worded? No, not particularly. It doesnt read as an urgent demand for justice, by any means, and no ones career is getting laid on the line because of it. Perhaps the most condemning paragraph says that states have enacted dozens of laws that restrict voting access that seek to secure partisan advantage by eliminating reliable practices with proven safeguards and substituting practices ripe for manipulation.

But we never know perhaps hearing from one of his most publicly influential friends will change Manchins mind on giving Americans voting rights, but without a financial incentive, it seems highly unlikely that hell shift his views (though maybe Im just being a cynic). So this letter isnt exactly groundbreaking stuff, but its also not a meaningless front in place of real effort, either. Saban, Tagliabue, and the other signers directly address one specific legal issue in the broader ongoing fight for racial justice, and Saban in particular, risks antagonizing a chunk of his fan base not that theres really a huge risk there. Hell keep coaching, theyll keep coming to games, nothing will really change. He doesnt face the same scrutiny that protesting athletes and particularly the Black athletes who speak out against injustice have to face in the aftermath of their dissent.

Its something real, at least, more concrete than the empty platitudes that professional and collegiate athletes have been hearing from the higher-ups for decades. Sabans not one to be a phony, and while his letter included a footnote saying that he in particular did not support getting rid of the filibuster, its an unexpected public move. Whether it will actually change anything remains to be seen, of course, but its a good example for more coaches and execs in the business to remember that they can use their public platforms for a legitimate cause, beholden not only to the people who sign their paychecks, but to the athletes who have played for and with them throughout their careers.

Link:
Nick Saban speaks up for the right to vote (kinda) - Deadspin

On 30 May 2020, photographer Philip Montgomery captured a police charge during protests in Minneapolis against the killing of George Floyd. The cops look like giant metal insects, every human part of them hidden. You cant see faces through the glinting visors, or flesh under their robotic armour as they approach with guns blazing through a pale mist of teargas smoke.

Blown up to the size of a painting, Montgomerys spooky monochrome news photo looks like a premonition of the future in the Saatchi Gallerys engrossing, unsettling exhibition America in Crisis. These sci-fi American stormtroopers mirror the warnings, a year on from the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, that the worlds most powerful democracy is heading for a second civil war. Yet America in Crisis is not only about the future. Its about how the present may be understood by the past.

For this show juxtaposes photographs of the USs current troubles with images of a divided country more than half a century ago. It takes its title from a project organised by the Magnum photographers agency in 1969. America in Crisis involved such renowned snappers as Bruce Davidson and Elliott Erwitt in an exhibition and book reporting the protests, assassinations and inequalities of the 1960s a decade that seems in glowing retrospect almost incomparably more hopeful and joyous than todays bitter times.

Yet the 60s dont look so optimistic in Erwitts devastating photograph of Jackie Kennedy at her husbands funeral in 1963. Today the most famous images of her black-clad mourning are Andy Warhols silkscreen pantings but where they are ashen icons, Erwitt takes us closer, through her veil, to see every twitch of her breaking face. Where she takes the tragedy of a nation on herself, Paul Fuscos colour pictures of the train that carried Bobby Kennedys coffin from New York to Washington in 1968, met by grieving crowds along the way, portray a great community of pain. Black and white Americans squeeze together along a platform to salute the passing train, from which Fusco was watching with his camera.

In 2020 it was not the slaying of a famous politician that got people on the streets but the murder of a citizen, Floyd, during his arrest by Minneapolis police that united one half of America in tears of rage. One of the most convincing continuities in this exhibition is between images of the 60s civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter. Davidsons photographs of the Selma freedom march in 1965 pick individuals out of the crowd whose faces make you wonder where they are now, what their later lives were like: a young Black marcher gazes at us over the American flag hes carrying, asking a question America still hasnt answered. Kris Gravess picture of Robert E Lees equestrian statue in Richmond, Virginia in 2020, its colossal plinth completely covered with graffiti, points right past the 1960s to the never-healed wounds of slavery. The most startling images here from the original America in Crisis collection are portraits of Black sharecroppers in South Carolina in 1966. They seem still to be living in the Great Depression.

Perhaps America is timeless in its wrongs, its founding sin, the hypocrisy of a nation based on the declaration that all people are created equal when southern states based their way of life on slavery, so endemic in its history that it cannot go on like this. Yet as you explore America in Crisis, the parallels between past and present fade. Things are clearly getting worse.

There was hope and joy in 1969, after all. Protest, 60s style, seems innocent and childlike now. In Marc Ribouds definitive image of the era, a young woman called Jane Rose Kasmir holds up a flower to the guns of National Guardsmen during an anti-war march in 1967. LOVE says the banner behind two protesters at the Democratic convention in 1968.

The keyword now is HATE. One photograph says it all: the silhouette of Donald Trump at a rally. There was no one like Trump in 1969. A picture of Richard Nixon is offered by comparison but any similarities are superficial: yes, Nixon showed how Republicans could benefit from culture wars by marshalling a silent majority of middle Americans horrified by the perceived excesses of the flower children, but when Watergate was exposed he went quietly. Trump refused to accept the result of a fair election, a lie his supporters still believe, and so took the US into completely uncharted territory.

You see this leap into chaos in photographs of the attack on the Capitol last January. Balasz Gardi photographed a man in 18th-century revolutionary garb waving the US flag with a gang of masked putschists on the Capitol steps. This character dressed for a far-right version of the musical Hamilton is claiming the heritage of the founding fathers for an act that spat on the democracy they created. At times of violent change, wrote Karl Marx, when people are creating something previously non-existent, at just such epochs of crisis they anxiously summon up the spirits of the past to their aid. The Capitol rioters in their weird costumes from a half-forgotten American history opened a new age that nothing from the past can help us to understand. This absorbing exhibition leaves you stupefied by the crisis thats beginning.

Go here to see the original:
America in Crisis review photographs of a country on the brink of civil war - The Guardian

What do you do? is often the first question asked in D.C., where the federal government workers turn over like its, well, their job.

Consultant, lobbyist, policy researcher, strategist, legislative staffer. Yawn. Theyre a dime a dozen in this town.

But as any good native Washingtonian or longtime resident knows, theres another side of work that keeps the city going. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted fields that we absolutely cannot do without: medical care, emergency services, education, food production, infrastructure, transportation, and, ahem, journalism to name a few.

But there are also the less obvious jobs that are equally important to the function and character of the District.

The following profiles are stories of odd, ordinary, and otherwise un-thought-of local jobs, and the people who do them. Mitch Ryals

Nadine Seiler had no idea when she showed up at the Womens March in 2017 that four years later she would be a lead guardian, and ultimately the preserver, of artifacts on what would become the BLM Memorial Fence.

Seiler wasnt a member of any activist group then, but she felt in each bone of her 5-foot, 5-inch frame every anti-Black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant restriction and rant under President Donald Trumps leadership. She felt she had to do something. So Seiler started going to the White House holding a regular rotation of provocative signs.

Her favorite activities included shouting obscenities at Trump supporters who got in her face and educating elementary school kids who chanted Make America great again! about the history behind their statements. Make America great again to when? she would ask. When they were lynching Black people? Her Trinidadian accent both offended and riled up such visitors.

Seiler joined the 2017 and 2018 global womens protests and most daily Kremlin Annex protests that started after Trumps 2018 Helsinki visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A shy activist she mentored at the Kremlin Annex rallies called her Warrior Goddess for the Resistance, an alias that still motivates her. Seiler had started protesting at Lafayette Square by herself when a White police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. She joined the ensuing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in front of the White House. When law enforcement put up the first fence, amid the rattling of steel bars, Seiler glimpsed the beauty of Black Lives Matter signs, art, and photos left behind.

During the pandemic, Seiler lost her odd day jobs as a personal concierge specializing in helping local residents organize their homes. (IF the clutter makes you shudder, get you a Nadine, the tagline on her LinkedIn profile says.) Soon Seiler started leaving her Waldorf home at night to stay by the fence typically from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and do what she does best: organize and protect the things that had shown up.

During one of these shifts, word got around to Seiler that the fence was coming down. Seiler andother night-shifters acted on preservation instinct, taking photos and signs off the fence and sorting the items into categories based on material type and size. The processing made for an easier transfer to institutes such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was notified about the collection and came to collect items on June 9, 2020.

While Lafayette Park reopened to the public the next day, law enforcement soon fenced off the area again after some protesters sought to topple the Andrew Jackson statue. This second structure became the BLM Memorial Fence, which Seiler and a few others guarded for the next seven months. But as stunning as the stories and protest artwork posted there were, they werent properly secured to the fence, so they made for a messy second home. The home organizer in Seiler couldnt stand it.

It just looked bad, she says. I didnt want to be part of the [messiness]. So I just started picking up the stuff and putting them back on the fence as best as I could. Others also helped secure the items with zip ties and duct tape. The reorganization effort just grew and grew and grew and then [the fence] became a focus of Trump supporters, says Seiler. They were coming in mad they wanted to see White House and all this stuff that was negative against [Trump] is on the fence, blocking them.

In the months that followed, conflicts arose between the fence guardians and anti-BLM activists on a mission to tear down protest art. But the fence was also a site of community and allyship with volunteers and unhoused residents. In late January 2021, Seiler and others organized the memorabilia into more permanent resting places. They couldnt keep watch over the fence forever. The work didnt pay the bills.

Seiler and fellow activist Karen Irwin had reached out to museums to see if any institutions were interested in taking the mementos. They received lukewarm responses until a Howard University alum finally connected Seiler to a Howard employee who took 75 pieces for the school. The Library of Congress took 36 fence items, including two pieces Seiler created. Then Jodi Hoover, a digital resources specialist at Enoch Pratt Free Library, exceeded Seiler and Irwins expectations. Enoch Pratt would scan the items in batches through its high-tech scanner, which has the ability to keep every piece of debris intact on 3D items. The D.C. Public Library, Enoch Pratts partner in the project, would then create metadata to display the items in online archives.

The Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Poster collection is a project spanning libraries and departments throughout the District. After training in metadata, volunteers spend most of their downtime creating titles, descriptions, and subject headings for collection items. The project will culminate in an archives launch in fall 2022. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is hosting a Black Lives Matter Describe-A-Thon on Feb. 9 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. where the public can help create descriptions for fence materials.

Enoch Pratt specializes in archival projects, and most of its collections are historical, so documenting contemporary history such as the BLM protests is rare. For Laura Farley, digital curation librarian at DCPL, the ingenuity of activists and allies takes us back to the moment when it began.

If you remember back to early, early in the pandemic, when people first started to contribute these posters and all kinds of items people were using whatever they could find at home, Farley says. Because nobody was going to the stores, nobody could get supplies. So the creativity of what people used that they had on hand to get their message through its pretty amazing.

Pro-Trump and other political items arent part of the preservation efforts and remain in storage; no organization has shown any interest in them, according to Seiler. These pieces might get scanned after BLM-related items are scanned at Enoch Pratt and if theres any funding left, but not as a part of the BLM Memorial Fence Collection.

Nowadays Seilers daily uniform incorporates souvenirs from the first and last movements she joined. On a recent Wednesday evening, she wears a pussy hat with black ears and a hoodie that says The Black Guy Did It during an impromptu video call. Behind her is a poster with her animated likeness photographed at the fence. Both the hoodie and the poster image are for sale in her Tee Public store, Subversive-Ware, which she created to help with the monthly storage fees she pays to keep mementos from the BLM Memorial Fence.

Seiler keeps a running list of institutions and individuals interested in taking items. She says its vital that folks value every mementoboth the more pristine items as well as those battered by wind and sleet and debrisas a story in their own right and as part of a mosaic of the moment.

Some of them are torn, and I know why when the circumstances under which it got torn, Seiler says. Everything has a story.

The work of preserving the fence mementos, and memories born there, hasnt ended for Seiler. Shes planning to form a diverse committee of D.C.-area residents in late spring to decide how to parcel out the remaining mementos.

The fence was a concerted effort, it wasnt [just] me. It was this community effort of goodwill and it was magical. Ambar Castillo

Imagine you are a young person. Old enough to drive but not old enough for much else. You possess all the ignorance that comes with that age and, while driving through New Jersey, you stop for gas. A man approaches your car, saying he will pump it for you. You decline his offer. He insists; its his job, he says. And you, who should know better but dont, respond, This isnt a job!

But it is a job. All over New Jersey, in portions of Oregon, and at one Exxon at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 4th Street SE on Capitol Hill.

A man who goes by Woody watches a tow truck navigate the gas stations narrow curb cut as a dog barks from inside the small office space. He started in 1994 as a mechanic and now manages this place, its two pumps and adjoining garage. Operating for more than half a century, its the last full-service gas station in D.C.

Some customers, he says, come here specifically because its full service. They dont want to get out of the car or cant pump their own gas. These are the people who have been coming here for decades. The ones he and his fellow workers know by name. This is their station. Were the neighborhood shop, he says. Others stumble upon it and some dont want full service or understand how it works. They think they have to pay the attendant and dont want to. Or they think theyre getting robbed. To preempt that, the attendants wear uniforms.

Woody says the station will stay full service as long as they can find people to do the job. Which isnt easy, he says. Its cold in the winter, its hot in the summer. Its demanding. Youve got to deal with the public, and theyre not always very nice. Nevertheless, as cars pull up to the pumps, an attendant arrives without fail, ready to provide whatever services the driver needs. One of those attendants is Mr. Reed.

William Reed, 74, stands tall and his gray uniform bears his last name. He has worked at this gas station for too long, which equals roughly 37 years. He used to work days for DC Public Schools and nights here before retiring from DCPS. But hes still pumping gas. Its something to do, he says. Most people, when they retire, they die. I work and keep the body going. When his kids ask him when hell retire, he says, What am I gonna do? Stay home and die?

The key to being an excellent attendant, according to Mr. Reed: Wait on the people and see what they want. Some people dont want you to use their credit card, he explains. Sometimes you have to let people pump their own gas, even though its your job and theyre paying you to do it. It doesnt hurt to know something about cars, too. Woody makes sure to note that youll learn about cars on the job.

What person at his age can do what he does, Mr. Reed asks rhetorically. Its a good question, and pumping gas is not all he does. Here theyll put air in your tires and check your oil too, if you want it. (In New Jersey, they just pump your gas, Reed is quick to point out.) You pay a premium on the gas here, but you get a service for it.

Which is fortunate, because young people, you will remember, are ignorant. Most young kids nowadays dont know nothin, Reed says. Nothing useful, anyway. They dont know how to check oil, put air in the tires. The only thing they know is smokin weed. Will Warren

In a scene in the musical A Strange Loop, Usher, the storys protagonist, has sex with an older White man. The graphic scene involves anal foreplay. Its an intense scene for the characters and an incredible moment of physical intimacy for the actors.

Enter Chelsea Pace. As the shows intimacy choreographera relatively new role in live theater productionsshe works with actors to tell the story authentically while respecting their personal boundaries.

Theater is super uncomfortable, she says. Thats what makes it worth making a play out of.

For the scene from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Companys production of the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Pace worked with Jaquel Spivey, who plays Usher, on where hes open to being touched and where his counterpart, Antwayn Hopper, is open to touching. She coached them on specific movements and gestures, showing Hopper how to move his hand and arm to simulate digital penetration without actually moving his fingers.

Pace is currently the resident intimacy choreographer at D.C.s Studio Theatre and Arlingtons Signature Theatre and is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her journey to intimacy choreography started with a six-week streak of wearing good underwear.

As an undergraduate at Binghamton University, she was cast in a farcical play as a character who spent a lot of time running around in their undies. She came prepared to rehearsal for more than a month because she never knew when she would be asked to perform without clothes.

As a young actor, she didnt want to ask the director when shed be able to rehearse without clothes for fear of appearing overeager or ignorant. She notes that she had a good relationship with the director, who was also her professor, and says her reluctance to ask the question was due to her own nerves.

But it also speaks to the power imbalance that can exist between directors and actors, who are often told theyre replaceable, Pace says. Those who ask questions, make demands, or speak up in defense of their personal boundaries can be labeled as difficult, which could cost them work.

Its that dynamic that Pace seeks to address.

Actors are always in a position of Yes. Yes, well do that, says Tatiana Williams, an actor working with Pace on Studio Theatres production of White Noise. You finally got the job, beat out the other people, and you want to make it work, but sometimes you may not have the language or feel comfortable to say, Hey thats a trigger spot for me or Im going to get there, but I need more time.

After college, Pace pursued an MFA in theater performance at Arizona State University, and she remained curious about consent, boundaries, and power dynamics. Friends in the theater came to her for informal advice with intimate scenes they were working on.

Eventually her curiosity became part of her research, and a few years after she graduated, she co-founded a company called Theatrical Intimacy Education with her colleague Laura Rikard. The company offers workshops, choreography, and consultations for students and professionals. Pace has also written a book on the topic: Staging Sex: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques for Theatrical Intimacy.

Intimacy choreography involves sex scenes, sure, but theres a spectrum. At one end are moments where characters appear as if theyre in love but never actually touch.

There are physical ways to make people look like theyre in love with each other without them having to actually fall in love with each other, Pace says. Which is better for everybody, including those individuals and their respective relationships.

Williams says thats one major way intimacy coaches have helped her.

You might come out of a scene, and you cant shake off what youve done, Williams says. So how do you separate yourself from that moment? Theyre not your therapist, but they do have a good way of checking in in a different way: Are you comfortable with what we just blocked? Do you feel comfortable in your costume? Its just another voice in the room thats championing the actors.

At the other end of the spectrum are scenes of graphic or hyper-realistic physical and sexual intimacy.

Before Pace begins working with actors on individual scenes, she instructs them on how to speak up for their boundaries. It typically includes introducing a self-care cue, which acts like a safe word. Its a tool for an actor to stop the scene and ask for what they need: a hand to be placed a little higher, for example, or less pressure in an embrace.

Then she has them do a show, guide, tell exercise. Each person physically shows a partner where theyre open to being touched, then guides their partners hand on their own bodies, and finally reinforces those boundaries verbally.

When rehearsals begin, actors walk through that same exercise before a scene.

Id be working with them to make a touch here, or make that touch just a little bit longer because it will help us understand that [the characters] have been together a long time, Pace says.

When its time to try a kiss for the first time, Pace first has the actors stage it with a high five in place of locking lips. That allows them to talk through the movements that make the moment feel authentic.

Who closed the distance? What was the duration of the kiss? What was the depth of touch on the kiss? Whats the destination of your hands on your partners back? What was the power shift there when you pushed him down? Pace says. We craft all of that, but theyre finding it through palm to palm.

The work also extends beyond sex and romance. Onstage intimacy also includes scenes where actors are asked to draw from their personal experiences to tell a story. That could be experience related to race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or other aspects of their identities that can come with vulnerability.

That vulnerability has been really poorly managed, Pace says. We put actors in these ridiculous and impossible situations without acknowledging that were asking them to do something impossible by being both a sponge and having the worlds richest inner life and having absolutely no qualms about bringing any and all of yourself into the room. But please dont bring yourself into the room if youre having a bad day.

When Pace first started this work more than a decade ago, she says most professionals were defensive. Directors were resistant to the idea of ceding control and insisted that they could create a trusting relationship where actors could say no. She noticed a shift leading into 2017 that accelerated around October of that year, shortly after the story broke about movie producer and serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein.

These days, Pace works on about 20 productions a year spanning film, television, and live theater. Her job is part of a cultural shift thats giving more attention to actors boundaries.

Im not the sex police, she says. Im just here to support. Mitch Ryals

If you ask Robert Shaut what his favorite tree is, he doesnt hesitate. The question, which is perhaps too easy, elicits not just a reply, but a memory. He remembers one tree that stood out to him when he was younger. When he reminisces about the platanus occidentalis, or the American sycamore, it brings back memories of the tree that grew outside his childhood home in Glen Echo. He remembers the way the trees grew along the bank of the Potomac River, thriving along the edges. He would climb the trees and swing into the river water, he says. The giant sycamore inspired Shaut to build a life and career around trees.

Since February of 2018, Shaut has worked as the director of tree operations at Casey Trees, a D.C.-based nonprofit committed to restoring, enhancing, and protecting D.C.s tree canopy. His role often entails tons of prep work and logistics, while facilitating leads to plant new trees, and ensuring that the field crews have nice, smooth days of planting, pruning, maintaining, felling trees or whatever the job calls for that day. His staff plants trees whenever the weather is reasonable, and despite the recent snow, the winters have been more and more plantable, he says. Shaut notes that hes the one who has to consider which trees will still be here in 20 years, or even in 100 years. To determine this, Shaut and his team research and study tree species climate adaptivity and resiliency regarding temperature and precipitation variance. Certain trees that have more Northern nativity are maybe starting to fade out of the District, says Shaut, while trees that have more Southern nativity are starting to phase in.

Casey Trees was established in 2001 and works with several organizations including the National Park Service, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, and DC Public Schools, as well as cemeteries and places of worship. Shaut says that many clients want crape myrtles, dogwoods, or cherry trees. But when it makes sense, he may sway them to larger, environmentally impactful trees.

Theres a right place for every tree, Shaut says, but if the situation calls for a larger treecan allow for a larger treethats absolutely what were pushing to put in.

Part of this push is the organizational and citywide goal to cover 40 percent of the District in tree canopy by 2032. At one point, D.C. had the moniker the City of Trees thanks to its diverse array of native flora, with about half of the city covered by trees in the early 1950s, according to the Washington Post. By 2001, the tree canopy fell to just over 35 percent, WAMU reports. As of January 2022, Shaut tells City Paper that the most recent satellite imagery shows the current tree canopy in D.C. is now at 38 percent, a growth of 424 acres of tree canopy since 2006. In 2021 alone, Casey Trees planted 4,543 trees throughout the region. While Casey Trees may be close to its goal, Shaut notes that 1 percent of the Districts tree canopy is on the National Mall, which is substantial.

To meet this goal, Shaut has been allocating a lot of the organizations efforts to lower-canopy areas. He says that 75 percent of the tree plantings in 2021 were in wards 5, 7, and 8, areas that are also susceptible to the urban heat island effect. Planting trees in these and other similar areas can help reduce stormwater runoff and carbon footprint, improve air quality, add wildlife habitats, help reduce energy bills, and increase property values, according to the District of Columbia Urban Tree Canopy Plan, published by the D.C. government in January 2013.

Since Shaut took the reins as Casey Trees director of tree operations approximately four years ago, his vision hasnt changed. His goal has always been to be as impactful as we can, to really just make as much positive impact on local communities and to our environment, and I think weve been able to grow.

When he started, Casey Trees was planting 2,500 trees per year, but the organizations target for this year is 5,000 trees.

I think that every tree offers something, says Shaut. Michelle Goldchain

Getting from the visiting NBA teams locker room to the bus entrance inside Capital One Arena requires a lengthy walk, so Chase Rieder hops into a utility cart and drives it to meet the first of three buses carrying Philadelphia 76ers players, the teams staff, and their luggage. He loads the cart with three layers of suitcases from the bus, then navigates back through the arena corridor, past the Washington Wizards dancers practicing their routines, and parks it in front of the locker room. Rieder and his colleague Royce Reed then unload the cart and line the various equipment bags and personal belongings along the hallway before repeating the trip two more times.

Its 10:53 a.m. on Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the Wizards are facing the 76ers in a 2 p.m. tip-off game. Rieder has been at the arena since 10 a.m. For the past 15 years, this has been a regular routine for the 30-year-old from North Bethesda. Rieder is a Wizards team attendant and contributes to the vast game-day production that largely takes place out of public view and away from cameras.

As Rieder prepares for the next bus to arrive, he goes on a quick walk-through of the visiting teams locker room. Headshots of Rieder and Reed adorn a wall near the entrance below the words TEAM ATTENDANTS. Popcorn, fruit, coffee, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches await the players. The bathroom is stocked with mouthwash and deodorant, and towels and heat packs are piled nearby. Shirts, pants, and jerseys hang on each individual locker. Rieder describes this part of the job as similar to a hotel concierge service. When they come in, I want them feeling like theyre in their home locker room at their city, he says.

Being a team attendant isnt always glamorous. The Wizards have about 10 to 12 part-time staffers who work under Brandon Mango, the teams recently hired director of equipment and logistics, and the job involves long hours on your feet, whether its rebounding for players during warm-ups or mopping the floor during time-outs. Team attendants are essentially on call throughout their entire eight-hour game-day shift. But for die-hard NBA fans such as Rieder, it can be a dream job. Rieder, who is a special education teacher at North Bethesda Middle School and the boys varsity basketball head coach at Northwest High School in Germantown, started as a Wizards team attendant when he was 16. (Applicants now must be at least 18.) He worked all 41 home games of the 2007-08 NBA season during his junior year at Walter Johnson High School, forgoing the opportunity to play varsity basketball to be a Wizards team attendant.

Rieder served as a home team attendant for his first seven seasons with the Wizards, and has been working in the visiting teams locker room for the past eight seasons. The biggest misconception about the job, both Rieder and Mango believe, can be derived from the sometimes dismissive names that team attendants are called: ball boys and ball girls, court moppers, water boys.

Some people think were just there to watch, Rieder says. But we feel like a lot of the games wouldnt run if there werent any team attendants.

Mango agrees: Without my locker room and team attendants, the show does not go on at Capital One Arena. I can be honest with that.

Its 2:11 p.m. when the game tips off, and Rieder takes his position on the court next to the 76ers bench. The coolers behind the players are packed with water and Gatorade bottles. A hydrocollator is stocked and ready for whoever needs a heat pad.

The 76ers, including 7-footer Joel Embiid, tower over Rieder, who isnt exactly short at 6-foot-1. As each player checks into the game, Rieder picks up their warm-up gear and neatly folds it into a stack. When the players return to the bench, he has a towel and their clothes ready. The players shirts and pants are all labeled with their jersey numbers. Rieder is no longer on mopping duty due to his senior status, but his current role calls for constant vigilance and a familiarity with the sport. He bounces back and forth between his seat on the court and the scorers table, and is so close to the action that he can hear players trash talking and the conversations between coaches and players during time-outs. Its one of Rieders favorite perks of the job. Team attendants may go unnoticed to the general viewer or fan, but for an NBA player accustomed to routine, having a team attendant nearby allows them to focus on the task at hand. Visiting NBA teams tip team attendants after each game, and Rieder has befriended several players over the years.

As the final buzzer goes off, marking the Wizards 117-98 victory, Rieder heads back to the visiting teams locker room, where he will stay until the last player leaves. He packs their bags and transports their luggage back to the bus with the utility truck. Around the same time, Wizards acting head coach Joseph Blair is speaking to media members in a postgame press conference. Blair was thrust into the position for the first time because head coach Wes Unseld Jr. and assistant coach Pat Delany are both out due to health and safety protocols.

After the game, inside the home teams locker room, Wizards forward-center Montrezl Harrell doused Blair with a bucket of ice cold water in celebration. The coach needed a new shirt, quickly, and so he turned to the person he knew would come through. Blair thinks about that moment while answering a reporters question. My back is pretty soaked right now. Big ups to Brandon Mango for getting me another shirt to put on, he says with a laugh.

The show, as Mango and his team attendants made sure, went on. Kelyn Soong

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