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A decade ago, in March 2012, a group of writers, artists, educators, and activists banded together to combat the deplorable actions of Arizonas state legislature. The states lawmakers had recently passed a bill making the teaching of Ethnic Studies illegal, along with banning courses that promote resentment toward a race or class of people and are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. The bill also created a list of banned books. Of the more than 80 books that were eventually added to the list, many of the authors were Black and Latinx.

The Arizona law was so restrictive that it made news here in Texas, where we created the Librotraficante Movement in order to highlight the attack on books, educators, and education by conservative politicians. Librotraficante means book smuggler, and thats what we did: collect books in Texas and smuggle them to Arizona, where those same titles had been abruptly banned. We used all of our book nerd talents to create an old-school freedom ride, collecting 35 bus riders and caravanning to six cities: Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Mesilla, Albuquerque, and Tucson. We collected more than 1,000 copies of Arizonas banned books and disseminated them to community libraries through book bundles to Arizona high school students. The Librotraficante Movement has been crucial in giving a voice to students of color across the nation.

A decade later, that work stays with you. Now the attacks are happening right here in the Lone Star State.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, which banned the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. Governor Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans have also called for bans of school library books that might make students uncomfortable. State Representative Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, has named 850 books hed like to see removed from libraries. Like in Arizona, the lists seem to target non-white and LGBTQ authors. This much is clear: The Republican Party intends to deny children access to books, authors and an education that would spur their intellectual growth. And in an effort to satisfy their base, Republicans in Texas are pushing away the one population that needs their attention the most: youthand more pointedlyyouth of color.

State Republicans run on libraries and classrooms comes as the states demographics continue to shift. In the 20192020 academic school year, Hispanic students accounted for the largest percentage of the states student enrollment with roughly 53 percent. White students made up only 27 percent of the student body; Black students represented 13 percent, and Asian students represented 5 percent. Each year Texas schools get more diverse, but the same cant be said for the state legislature.

Its worth noting that at the same time the Legislature was cooking up Senate Bill 3, the body quietly shot down another bill that could have created a whole new set of possibilities for youth in Texas. House Bill 1504, filed by state Representative Christina Morales (D-Houston), would have allowed school districts to create an Ethnic Studies course as an alternative to World Geography and World History courses. The bill made no mandates but would have granted the thousands of school districts across the state the ability to adapt coursework to their specific student bodies. It was a beautifully fair bill that gained both Republican and Democratic sponsors.

The bill couldnt survive the states intensifying culture wars, however. It was placed on the Senates intent calendar in May before dying.

That brings us to the present. For a playbook of how to combat the troubling new actions in Texas, I think back to the last days of the Librotraficante caravan. As we arrived in Tucson, where the school district had shut down a Mexican American Studies course, a few of us were assigned the task of sorting the more than 1,000 books amassed during the caravan. It was early morning7:30 or sowhen we noticed that a tiny group of teens had come by. They quietly approached to see the books and grabbed some, retreating without a word. Later, a young lady grabbed a book and took it away to the corner to read it.

As the day went on, the young lady returned, saying, Thank you for giving me this moment. I was just about to finish this book on the day the district personnel came to forcibly take the books away from us. Wise beyond her years, she left us with some parting advice: I want you to have this book back. Give it to somebody else. I hope somebody can learn from this book.

As an educator and a writer, those words were especially powerful. If you can get a kid to pick up a book that they havent seen in three months, then read it like its a sacred texthell, you have witnessed all that is good in education.

Now, 10 years later, Im still a Librotraficante. And Im ready to do it all over again.

Originally posted here:
Poet Laureate Lupe Mendez on Banned Books and Librotraficante - The Texas Observer

Screenshot: Microsoft 365/YouTube

In case youd missed it, Microsoft Office has a wokeness editor that will flag your writing if it contains insensitive phrases. Welcome to the dumb culture wars, Office settings.

The software suite will call out your writing for being non-inclusive or containing offensive language. In the same way a spellchecker looks for typos and grammar mistakes, this inclusivity editor, available to Microsoft 365 subscribers, scans your work for inappropriate terms.

The feature goes beyond flagging ethnic slurs and will highlight when youve used words or phrases containing age bias, cultural bias, sexual orientation bias, gender bias, racial bias, as well as gender-specific language.

Some examples include changing blacklist and whitelist to accepted or allowed list, or swapping the gender-specific postman with postal worker. Similarly, humanity or humankind is recommended over mankind, and expert is suggested when the software flags master, a term linked with slavery. (In 2020, Microsoft-owned Github removed master and slave from its website.)

Microsoft says the goal isnt to correct all of societys issues but to make people consider more inclusive ways of writing. The company hired native speakers and linguistic experts in 20 languages to determine which inclusiveness critiques would be unwelcome in certain markets.

We verified that the feature is already available to Microsoft 365 customers but is turned off by default. And rather confusingly, Microsoft gives you the ability to turn off some inclusivity features while leaving others off, so you can have it check for gender bias but ignore ethnic slurs. When enabled, inappropriate terms are underlined in purple and an inclusive alternative is presented.

Microsoft told Daily Mail that the spellchecker might not be suitable for all scenarios and emphasized that it could be turned off if needed. While there are surely scenarios where people dont want a nudge toward political correctness (say, if you were referencing a quote like One giant leap for mankind), you can also just ignore the purple underline.

Microsoft understands that not every Editor suggestion may be suitable for all users and all scenarios, the company told Daily Mail. Thats why we let users be in control of their final output. Editor is a completely optional tool that users can turn on or turn off at any point. Editor does not make any autocorrections. The user has control over which suggestions they choose to use, if any. They will be able to turn on and off each one of them individually.

It seems like Microsoft is tip-toeing, afraid to potentially anger folks who consider wokeness to be toxic, or whatever. If Microsoft wants people to know how woke it is, the company should stick to its convictions and make this a default feature that can be turned off when needed, instead of hiding the tool deep in the settings.

For now, to enable the feature, you have to go to the Editor tab in the top ribbon and select Settings near the button. From there, choose Proofing and Settings... then Grammar and Refinement from the drop-down. Here, you can select which categories of inclusivity youd like the editor to include.

The spellcheck tool is available in the latest version of Microsoft Word in Microsoft 365, the companys productivity cloud subscription service. Unfortunately, those who use the free browser-based version or the standalone one-payment Office 2019 will not be able to access the editor.

Update on Jan 14 at 2:20pm E.T.: Microsoft told Gizmodo that Editor was first made available in March 2020. A previous version of this article suggested the feature was new. Weve updated the piece accordingly.

Here is the original post:
Microsoft Offices Woke Spellchecker Is Perfectly Fine and Will Cause Nobody to Freak Out - Gizmodo

Late Wednesday evening, Jan. 5, dozens of art world insiders received a fund-raising message from Nancy Pelosi. Im in disbelief, the text began. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the violent, deadly insurrection on our nations capitol, and several reports show Republicans surging in the run-up to the midterms. We need to send a strong message that our democracy is sacred.

The message was typical enough of the calls to arms blasted by progressive campaigns and organizers like ActBlue and MoveOn. But then, the kicker: Thats why I need you to show up at the opening of artist Paul Chans new exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery, tomorrow

Pelosi then recited the news release for Chans new show.

It turns out the text was a joke. But the subtext was not. The storming of the Capitol Building was too dire to ignore, with half a dozen lives lost, traumatized police and hundreds of rioters facing criminal charges. Chan, an artist, activist and satirist, and a winner of the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize (as the Pelosi text emphasized), is not alone among those compelled to face Jan. 6 through their artwork: The anniversary had a handful of other memorial openings.

Was Chans toonish but grave exhibition, which runs through Jan. 22, a worthwhile response? Where Trumps followers chose violence, the artist offered A drawing as a recording of an insurrection. The show features a single double-sided drawing done in brushed black ink, suspended diagonally across the gallery in a plexiglass frame. One side depicts tumbling, churning masses of protesters urged on by a blustering, Trump-like cloud. The so-called QAnon Shaman is there, centered in the banner-size composition, unmistakable with his buffalo headdress and bare nipples (Jacob Chansley his real name was sentenced to 41 months for his role). Flanking the Capitol dome, which swarms with rampaging stick-figures, the sun and crescent moon shed tears.

Beneath the zany, energetic portrayal of the MAGA throng, Chan includes the cartoon faces of stricken Capitol Police Officers, given Xs for eyes. The other side takes us inside the House chamber, where more stick figures run amok around the compositions border, hanging upside down and sideways. They stare into laptops and film one another with their blocky, brushy phones.

The exhibition seems founded in the heartfelt belief asserted by many artists in the last year that some response to the events of Jan. 6 was necessary. And how else can an artist respond, if not with art?

But the exhibition also concedes that maybe art isnt enough: the news release states that Greene Naftali will hold a voter-registration drive for the duration of Chans exhibition; those who sign up will receive an original drawing Chan made as a gesture of appreciation for affirming the basic and inalienable right to vote in America.

Lets set aside the likelihood that visitors to Chans show in Chelsea will already be seasoned voters. Its not clear that voting is enough, either, given that the exact event at issue was a rejection of due process, an attempt to void inalienable votes cast in Georgia, Arizona, and elsewhere.

Indeed, crying moon and all, the shows very earnestness can seem like a joke. According to the news release, Chan painted the Capitol picture with his left, non-dominant hand in an attempt to reduce the authority of the artists voice, and as an exercise in letting go. This deliberate de-skilling, a faux-naf embrace of pure, even childish expression, puts the work squarely in conversation with so-called outsider art, the bloody revolt of Henry Dargers Vivian Girls in particular.

Chan, of course, is very much an insider: He has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, and is the subject of a retrospective at the Walker Art Center later this year. His response to Jan. 6 figures in a dense web of meditations on individual liberty, violence, and society, such as his major video animation, Sade for Sades Sake (exhibited at both the Venice Biennale and Greene Naftali in 2009), a jittering orgy of silhouetted figures, or his staging of Waiting for Godot in the flood-ruined Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. And stylistically, the Capitol drawing follows a series of illustrations Chan made to accompany a new English translation of a childrens book by the terse philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this context, at least, the overt silliness of the work has an intellectual basis.

But the activist tone of A drawing as a recording of an insurrection should be seen in the company of other artists efforts to grapple with Jan. 6 and the prevailing political winds. At Doomscrolling, an exhibition uptown at Petzel Gallery, Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston presented a suite of large woodblock prints made since the start of the pandemic, comprising anxious images from their newsfeeds carved into the very sheets of plywood that protected Manhattan businesses during that summers uprisings. The wild ocher- and icy-hued January 6 joins their scenes depicting protests after George Floyds murder; the Kyle Rittenhouse killings; and the time a fly rested on Mike Pences head, among other vignettes from a divided, livestreamed nation.

The artist Andre Serrano marked the day by debuting Insurrection, a full-length documentary about Jan. 6, in Washington, D.C. The film continues Serranos treatment of Americas darkest political id which includes a series about torture, and portraits of Ku Klux Klansmen by presenting a video of the riot in the style of D.W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation. (He is also no stranger to the culture wars: Serranos photograph Piss Christ has the distinction of having been denounced on the Senate floor in 1989.)

In the past year, Robert Longo, a member of the Pictures Generation, has added an image of Jan. 6 to his catalog of iconic photos of American unrest since 2016, rendered as exactingly detailed, mural-scale charcoal drawings. And the current Prospect.5 triennial in New Orleans includes a fiery history painting of the Capitol attack by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, titled Dont You See That I Am Burning, based on a line from Freuds dream book.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. The Republican representatives of Pennsylvaniaand Ohioare among a group of G.O.P. congressmenwho were deeply involved in efforts to overturn the election. Both Mr. Perryand Mr. Jordanhaverefused to cooperatewith the panel.

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trumps former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuitto block the panels subpoenas.

Phil Waldron. The retired Army colonelhas been under scrutiny since a 38-page PowerPoint documenthe circulated on Capitol Hill was turned over to the panel by Mr. Meadows. The document contained extreme plans to overturn the election.

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutinysince writing a memothat laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotelthat has becomea prime focus of the panel.

Each of these artists has chosen an essentially realistic, more or less heightened rendition of the chaos and rage as it unfurled on our many screens, as if, through scale or repetition or insistence, a review of the awful facts could emphasize the seriousness of that clash, if not change the world.

But Chans approach seems confused. Politically, the work is intensely earnest. Yet the drawings waves of sketchy minions are laughable, executed like a throwaway gag. Making and exhibiting the work may have satisfied Chans sense of virtue, but the result does little for his audiences understanding of the attack. And the show as a whole, with its news release and voter drive, is an ambivalent gesture, as if the artist himself isnt sure how serious hes being.

For a counterpoint to liberal arts, from a messenger who is nothing if not certain of his mission, see Jon McNaughtons recent painting, Solitary Confinement, posted on the artists website in October.

A painter of blunt conservative allegories and a Republican darling (the Fox host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity is a collector), McNaughton first gained notoriety for a portrait of President Obama burning the Constitution. McNaughtons contribution to the Jan. 6 canon is unexpectedly subtle, and unmistakable: Solitary Confinement shows a man huddled and shackled in a cold stone cell, the heavenly light from the barred windows gracing his red MAGA cap and khaki jumpsuit.

Above his shoulder, etched into the prison wall, are several dates: 1/06/2021, of course, but also 11/08/2022 and 11/05/2024the next two federal elections.

Travis Diehl, a critic, is the online editor at X-TRA, the Los Angeles-based arts journal.

Read this article:
Artists Respond to Jan. 6 With Brushes and Ballots - The New York Times

When the defence urged the jury to be on the right side of history, he won the admiration of historian David Olusoga and Labour MP Clive Lewis. But I wonder how many other members of the public think it is okay for Britains legal representatives to allow their function to be so dramatically changed on the basis of claims of perceived hurt and hate? You would hope that historian Olusoga would be sensitive to the fact that in the past, when people claim to be on the right side of history, things have not always ended well.

Egged on and flattered by a culture where feelings trump reason, and victimhood is the preferred currency for social status and material gains, Jake Skuse, Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford and Sage Willoughby might well feel like they are heroes in some fantasy liberation struggle.

But the verdict shows that acts, which if committed by others at different times, or different others today, would be recognised and condemned as criminal, are now resoundingly praised by the law itself.

Whether you think this is progress or regress, it shows that todays self-styled warriors have little in common with genuinely inspiring radicals and freedom fighters of the past. The likes of Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mandela or, more recently, people of Syria, faced violent oppression and repression in real life.

If statues were toppled it was part of a broader political struggle where the stakes were higher than hurt feelings.

Symbolic gestures can be important, but not when they are substitutes for politics itself. People who disagree with their politics can still find them admirable.

I doubt the same could be said for the Colston Four.

Parents often see a budding Picasso in their toddlers drawings, this is understandable, if mildly irritating.

Now lawyers are joining the queue of adults who encourage the young to see adolescent rage as political radicalism - and they are doing no-one any favours.

They only fuel a validation of victimhood and feelings over reasoned politics.

This is not a good basis for forging the kind of democratic politics and humane culture we need today.

It also encourages an extension of adolescence, witness the ages of the Colston Four (33, 30, 26 and 22 respectively).

Patrick Vernon conceded that while the toppling of Colstons statue was essentially performative, it opens an important national debate.

His view was that had the Colston Four been black, the verdict would have been very different.

This may have been likely 20 or 30 years ago, but today, his conclusion misses an important change in the meaning and function of anti-racism.

In the past, anti-racism was largely part of a struggle of people across lines of colour, united as equal citizens working out how to ensure the democratic ideals of equality and freedom were fulfilled.

It appealed to peoples sense of universal justice and encouraged social solidarity.

An accepted tenet of older anti-racism was that individuals are moral equals, even if our social status and political views differ.

Today, anti-racisms meaning and function is very different.

It is now an ideological weapon of choice for corporate HR departments and the elites who have power in our public social, cultural and academic institutions to render majority beliefs and opinions morally invalid: tainted by their association with a one-sided representation of Britains past.

Today anti-racism sees Britains history and cultural tradition as gravestones dead and silent whose only influence can be moral putrefaction.

This is deeply disempowering because without recourse to cultural and intellectual inheritances, it is harder to get our bearings, and make better judgements about the world we have in common today.

When QC Liam Walker confidently claimed that the continuing existence of Colstons statue amounted to continued veneration of his dastardly deeds, and the defendants claimed it was a hate crime, the tacit message is that if you dont hate the statue in the way we do, you can only be racist.

Who are the haters here?

Most people I know are capable of a wider range of responses, not to mention self-control, than the learned QC or the passionate faux radicals credit them with.

When Skuse claimed I knew I was in the right...everyone wanted the same thing, it suggested he cannot imagine an opinion different to his own.

Like Christina Jordan, a former South West MEP and first generation immigrant from Malaysia, for example, who said: I dont need the Sages and Milos of our country toppling a 127-year-old statue because they think they should protect me from hurt feelings.

Protection and patronage are not freedom and equality.

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is Head of Education atDon't Divide Us. They describe themselves as "people who are taking a stand against the divisive obsession with peoples racial identity".

Continued here:
Brilliant expos of the moral wasteland of Britain's culture wars is a must read COMMENT - Express

Over the weekend, Washington Post business editor Lori Montgomery tweeted, then deleted, criticism of a column that called Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback BenRoethlisberger a real jackass. The only interesting thing about Drew Magarys article, Montgomery, a native of Butler County, Pennsylvania (north of Pittsburgh), tweeted, was how easily disproven and completely FOS [full of shit] it is.

The column addressed, among other incidents, accusations of sexual assault that women have made against Roethlisberger. And with her Friday night tweet, Montgomery kicked a hornets nest that has grown inside the Posts internal culture for some time now.

A little more than an hour after Montgomery tweeted her defense of Roethlisberger, Post national political reporter Felicia Sonmez screenshotted it and noted that Magarys column referenced facts the Post reported as well.

And here is where things get complex. After Kobe Bryant died in January 2020, Sonmez tweeted a link to a Daily Beast article about Bryant settling a sexual-assault lawsuit. She faced intense backlash online and was suspended by the Postformer Executive Editor Marty Baron told her she was hurting the publication. Staffers and the Post Guild protested the suspension, and the paper, whose social media policies date to 2011, soon reinstated her.

Sonmez wasnt the only staffer to run afoul of the Posts unclear rules about social media. Former Post reporter Wesley Lowery was chastised by managementfor criticizing an article by New York Times journalist Jeremy Peters, a rule he said in a response was broken daily, by many members of the newsroom. He has since left the Post.

Both of these events evince a simmering culture war in many newsrooms: Broadly speaking, some journalists chafe at newspapers traditionally top-down cultures, while others can be aghast at what they view as attention-seeking antics. (These schisms frequently break along generational lines: I reported last year that as he searched for Barons replacement, Post Publisher Fred Ryan asked candidates about how theyd keep the newsroom under control.)

At the Post, Sonmezs suspension raised furtherquestions not only about her career but also about whether the Post is a workplace where people who have survived traumaticexperiences like sexual assault can continue to do their jobs and feel safe and supported. Unlike Lowery, Sonmez stayed at the Post, and last July she sued her employer, saying that after she revealed to higher ups that she had been the victim of sexual assault, they had banned her from any coverage that touched on the subject. Among the Post brass Sonmez named as defendants in the suit: Lori Montgomery.

The suit says Montgomery told Ms. Sonmez that she was always taught that a woman should just say no if a man tries to assault her. Montgomery was at the time the Posts deputy national editor; Sally Buzbee, who replaced Baron as executive editor last year, named Montgomery editor of the business desk in late July. The Post has moved to dismiss Sonmezs case.

Others named in Sonmezs lawsuit have been since been promoted as well, including Cameron Barr, who was one of the Posts managing editors and in October wasnamed Buzbees second-in-command. Barr and Steven Ginsberg, who was national editor and Sonmezs boss, both applied for the executive editor gig but lost out to Buzbee. Last week the Post named Ginsberg one of its managing editors. Tracy Grant, the managing editor for standards who was also named in Sonmezs suit, requested a return to writing, Buzbee wrote in a memo this past October.

So! Given this significant volume of backstory, why on earth would Montgomery stir the pot with, of all things, a tweet that criticized a non-Post journalists article, which involved allegations of sexual assault? Montgomery apparently thought better of her original post the next day; she wrote at lunchtime Saturday that shed deleted the tweet and did not intend to question the validity of the accusations against Roethlisberger. Montgomery wrote that she has been sexually assaulted myself and deeply regret my poorly-framed tweet. (Montgomery has since locked her account.)

In an email, Post spokesperson Kristine Coratti Kelly writes that Montgomerys tweet was inappropriate, and the issue has been addressed internally. The papers social media policy will be updated once the Post hires a new standards editor, she writes, and will be done with staff input.Sonmez declined to comment to Washingtonian, but she posted thisthread over the weekend:

On Monday the Posts Guild sent a note to members that called Montgomerys tweet unacceptable, irresponsible and harmful and said the unions leadership has asked the masthead to address this incident with staff and take concrete steps to make sure survivors feel safe and not silenced. The note also encourages Post employees to ask Buzbee about the incident.

As it happens, in a separate memo sent to staffers Monday, Buzbee announced three town halls to be held on Zoom on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week to discuss news goals for 2022, ambitions for the future, how we hope to keep staff/team communication strong in the continued pandemic, and anything else you want to discuss. There will be time for questions during the meetings, Buzbee writes. It seems likely that Montgomerys tweet may come up.

This article has been updated.

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Continued here:
A Washington Post Editor's "Inappropriate" Tweet Is Fanning the Culture Wars Inside the Paper - Washingtonian