Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into a vicious blood sport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise. As McKay Coppins reported in November, the former speaker of the House is now reveling in his achievements.
I couldn’t help noticing that the lessons Newt Gingrich takes from nature are only those that reinforce his particular worldview. Thus the usual nods are made to survival of the fittest, and women are expected to bow down before the obvious superior strength of dominant males, but no mention is made of the nurturing behaviors of countless animals or instinctual traits that help ensure the survival of groups. The ecology of our planet is so much more complicated than Gingrich’s filtered view, and while I don’t know whether we necessarily ought to be basing our political decisions on any examples from nature, what I see is just one more wealthy white man using any means to justify a position of power. What a pity that he was able to influence our country.
David Ohannesian
Seattle, Wash.
There’s no question that Newt Gingrich was an important figure, but he was an inevitable important figure. If Gingrich hadn’t ended Democratic dominance of the House, someone else would have. There were tensions in the Democratic coalition that could not be avoided. The Democratic hammerlock on the House was out of step with the composition of the American electorate. The tidal forces of cultural conflicts launched decades before were going to tear apart Congress in the same way they’d torn apart campuses and caused conflict at kitchen tables.
So, no, Gingrich didn’t break American politics. But he did help break a progressive monopoly on the House, which the GOP has controlled 20 of the 24 years since. And given the aggression and incivility they overlook on their own side, it’s clear that for many commentators on the left, ending Democratic dominance is Gingrich’s truly enduring sin.
David French
Excerpt from an article on nationalreview.com
People who think Newt Gingrich “turned politics into a vicious blood sport” clearly don’t know enough about Lyndon B. Johnson. He wantonly destroyed reputable people for the benefit of the oilmen who bankrolled him. Power-hungry politicians of both stripes have done plenty to destroy civility.
Paulette Arnold
Evanston, Ill.
What are we to make of the deathbed confession of the political operative Lee Atwater, newly revealed, that he staged the events that brought down the Democratic candidate in 1987? In November, James Fallows asked this question.
The saddest part of this story: Lee Atwater, confronted by his own looming death, realized that his brand of campaigning by lies, innuendo, and distraction was harmful to American democracy. But his repentance was too little, too late. In the years since, these techniques have become the stock-in-trade of political operatives.
The poisonous, dangerously fractured political landscape we now have to deal with has been manufactured by Atwater’s disciples.
Howard Schmitt
Green Tree, Pa.
It would also be interesting to ponder what would have happened without a Lee Atwater. Probably because of my age, I tend to think of Atwater as the original gremlin. I once naively thought that his deathbed show of conscience and regret would be impactful. But we’re now besieged with evil gremlins copying and amplifying his dirty deeds. One dies, and 10 more pop up.
Are we capable of hitting the reset button? Or are we stuck with this political savagery until the planet explodes?
Tanya Hilgendorf
Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Bible teacher Beth Moore gained her following by teaching scripture to women—and being deferential to men. Now her outspokenness on sexism could cost her everything, Emma Green wrote in October.
I heard Beth Moore speak in 2017 in Orlando, Florida. I was blown away by her sincerity and truthfulness. This article perfectly captures what I saw and heard that day, and much more.
I am one of those Christians who feels sort of stuck between the cracks of the current atmosphere—not at all in agreement with my fellow Christians who seem blind to the character flaws blatantly displayed in both the White House and the Church, but also understanding their cry for some feeling of control over the flow of secular liberalism, which now dominates American culture. I think their hope is sadly misplaced in the present administration.
This article has let me know that I am truly not alone in my feelings and thoughts. Sometimes a voice in the wilderness is all the Lord God needs to change the world. Go, Beth Moore, go!
Pastor Ron Barnes
Word Place of Northern California
Sacramento, Calif.
Until 2016, I considered my foundational belief system to be in line with the evangelical movement. I, too, voted for a third-party candidate and no longer identify with evangelicals because of the very same attitudes Beth Moore is describing. I now call myself a “Christ follower.” I am 58, a woman, working, white, with a master’s degree. I still have strong Christian core values but cannot tolerate the “good old boy” system apparently tolerated by evangelical Christians.
Terri Simpson
Little Rock, Ark.
This is a well-written identification of a significant shift that is largely going unnoticed. For so long, the conservative platform has taken its Christian voters for granted, much as the Church has often taken for granted the reticence of its women.
I’m so thankful for Beth Moore’s intelligent and humble fearlessness—a powerful voice for an often unheard and underled population.
Angela Hougas
Delavan, Wis.
Thank you for writing about Beth Moore. She spoke at my church’s women’s conference, and I had the pleasure of hosting her. You find out a lot about a person behind the scenes. She is the real deal: a kind, compassionate Jesus lover.
Emma Green writes, “Christians of color have expressed rage over what they see as abandonment by their brothers and sisters in the faith; many have even left their congregations.”
The problem is much larger than you state, and it’s not just people of color who are leaving the Church. People of all races who proudly call themselves “exvangelicals” have left the Church not only because of its tolerance for sexism but also because of its silence on matters related to racial discrimination.
As a person of color, I wouldn’t say the Church has newly abandoned me. Instead, I would say that the Church has persisted (since slavery) in its dismissal or denial of matters of importance to people of color. Throughout the years, people learned to grin and bear it and just “focus on Jesus,” which supports the concept of Christian business as usual. That is changing as we acknowledge that real unity and fellowship extend far beyond Bible study and into care for the lives of the people you say are your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Jocelyn Williams
Sacramento, Calif.
“Newt Gingrich Says You’re Welcome” (November) misstated Callista Gingrich’s age at the time she began her relationship with Newt Gingrich. She was not 23; she was 23 years younger than Newt.
To contribute to The Conversation, please email letters@theatlantic.com. Include your full name, city, and state.
Hanna BarczykThe Archer’s Paradox is a curiosity of physics according to which an arrow, if it flew straight, would miss its target. The path from bow to bull’s-eye twists and curves, imperceptibly but inevitably. Archery is the source of a great many metaphors in Hark, Sam Lipsyte’s new novel. (The word metaphor is the source of a self-conscious groaner of a pun—What’s a metaphor? It’s for cows to graze in—that is repeatedly invoked.) The title character, a self-help guru and putative messiah named Hark Morner, preaches a life-transforming practice called “mental archery,” whose vaguely described techniques, including thought exercises and physical poses, promise improved focus for distracted modern souls. “Focus on focus” is one of Hark’s mantras.
The Archer’s Paradox isn’t mentioned in the book, but a version of the rule surely applies. The novel’s tone and premise point toward satire, a mode that depends on accurate aim and swift, sharp impact. Lipsyte has a full quiver and a range of targets that include cosmopolitan culinary trends, urban-parenting dogmas, digital-workplace dynamics, and the arrogance of the technocratic ruling class. But satire is especially hard to pull off right now, its objects at once too obvious and too obtuse for effective puncturing. The dystopian imagination, looking for intimations of disaster that might be exaggerated for cautionary or corrective ends, finds itself beggared by reality on a daily basis.
Lipsyte, casting his eye toward a semi-plausible near future, has an astute ear for corporate and therapeutic idioms and how they echo each other. He knows the habits and attitudes of world-beaters and slackers alike. The universe of Hark looks pretty familiar, although politics, the bane and boon of most contemporary satirists, receives little more than a lazy, glancing shot:
He’s not an evil man, this president, nor a good one. He was elected to undo the catastrophic policies of his predecessor, who was herself elected to undo the apocalyptic agenda of the man before her, but it all seems too late for that these days, mostly because it’s always been too late, though now, pundits agree, this moment is steeped in a radical and irrevocable lateness, a tardy totality heretofore unseen.
An update flashes: president has not ruled out ground forces in bulgaria.
That’s enough of that, just so we’re clear on what and whom Hark is not about.
It’s only partly about Hark Morner himself. A guileless young man who survived an abusive childhood and dreamed of a career in stand-up comedy, he got his start in the business-seminar business as a ringer. “For a semi-ample fee,” the narrator explains, “Hark would attend a corporate gathering, a shareholders meeting or sales conference or tropical team retreat. The bosses would bill him as an expert in some esoteric practice—knife yoga, reverse hypnosis.” But in the midst of his presentation, “Hark would shepherd the sermon weirdward,” startling the captive audience. In would barge a top executive, staging an instant morale boost for the team. “You don’t need some loser to yammer on about stress and productivity,” the boss would declare as Hark was ushered off the premises with a discreetly proffered check. “You’re the most productive fucking stress cases in the country! You win!”
At a certain point, the impostor began to believe his own spiel. The grifter and the mark became one. “The joke drained away and Hark retired his jester’s bells, his craven prance, shed his fool’s skin, slithered out, translucent, sincere,” and became the evangelist of mental archery. After a while, other people started believing too, and it’s the inner circle of those believers—the apostles and disciples, the handlers and enablers—whose conflicts and ambitions supply the vectors of Lipsyte’s busy plot.
Principal among them is Fraz Penzig, Hark’s advance man, adviser, and occasional big-brother figure. Fraz is a familiar type of guy for anyone who has read Lipsyte’s three previous novels or lived in proximity to overeducated, underachieving North American heterosexual white men in the past 20 or 30 years. Lipsyte is a bard of male malaise, an anatomist (sometimes literally) of mostly non- or semi-toxic dudes who are disappointed in themselves and the cause of disappointment in others. His first novel, The Subject Steve (2001), was about a caption-writer in his 30s suffering from a mysterious, possibly metaphorical disease.
That book was followed by Home Land (2004), Lipsyte’s breakthrough, a scabrously funny indictment of both aspirational bourgeois mores and the resistance to them, composed in the form of updates to a high-school alumni bulletin from a loser named Lewis. Steve and Lewis were followed in the Lipsytean pantheon of almost-lovable nonwinners by Milo Burke in The Ask (2010), a Gen X man-child approaching middle age and struggling with monogamy, parenthood, and career discontent in the shadow of generational obsolescence.
As someone who has been there—who’s still there, thickening and graying as the Millennials and the Gen Z kids dethrone my idols and refuse to laugh at my jokes—I regard The Ask as one of the most unbearable and hilarious books I’ve ever read. Accordingly, I had great hopes for Hark, which might have been a mistake, given that the cumulative lesson of all of Lipsyte’s fiction (two books of stories, Venus Drive and The Fun Parts, in addition to the novels) is that low expectations are the only reasonable kind.
They can also lead to a dead end, to a state of auto-fatigue that Fraz acknowledges early and that he hopes might be cured by mental archery:
He’s lived too long in exile from himself, faking his freedom, refusing even to wear a tie, even to family funerals, even a clip-on, extolling the virtues of porn to his wife, hiding out in the gym, stuffing himself with fried pickles and an experimental mix of mint and mango ice cream. He’s weary of his contrarian pose, tired of his schemes, the funny T-shirts, the penny stocks, the fantasy bandy … But it’s different now. Fraz feels called. To mental archery, and what may lie beyond, and definitely to Hark, or the idea of Hark, or the radial heat of Hark.This can be read as the novel’s thesis statement, its artistic wager. Hark, while starting from the familiar place of self-numbing irony and self-pitying privilege, wants to strike out in a new direction and, like Hark himself, trade foolishness for sincerity, cynicism for authenticity, navel-gazing for heroic discipline.
Simon & SchusterFor Fraz, at 47, the old habits are hard to break. And Lipsyte often seems trapped in a voice and sensibility that he no longer entirely believes in. Focus, the attribute Hark champions above all else, is what Hark lacks. Its attention splinters among half a dozen characters, none of whose dramas quite commands the reader’s full engagement. Fraz’s stalled marriage to Tovah (whose tech job supports the family) occupies a fair amount of space. The parents of precocious 8-year-old twins named David and Lisa, they have drifted into a state of low-level irritation, at least on Tovah’s part. Tougher and generally more competent than her husband, Tovah is a quintessential cool girl, outfitted with sufficient sass and brass to armor her creator against any implication of misogyny. But she’s hard to distinguish from the other women in the novel: Teal Baker-Cassini and Kate Rumpler, who work alongside Fraz in Hark’s world (though Teal dabbles in marriage counseling and Kate’s main thing is pro bono organ trafficking), and Meg Kenny, a late and decisive convert to the mental-archery cause.
The women aren’t the only characters who blur. Though Hark has a distinctive way of talking—in koans and riddles and great confessional gusts—everyone else sounds pretty much the same, including David and Lisa:
“Lisa, David, how’s school?”
“Daddy, I’m glad you asked,” Lisa says. “It’s a fucking shitshow.”
“Lisa, can you be more specific.”
“Okay, Daddy. School’s like a factory where they make these little cell phone accessories called people.”
“It’s more like a tool and die factory,” David says. “They turn us into tools and then we die.”
“I like that,” Tovah says. “You’re both very creative.”
That last maternal pat on the head is one of many instances of ventriloquized self-praise on Lipsyte’s part. Reading Hark can feel like being trapped in the writers’ room of a sitcom two seasons past its prime, except that the staff members desperately trying to top one another and laughing at their own jokes are all the same guy.
Lipsyte will often introduce a comic detail that registers just how zany his fictional world is—and also how knowing his inventions are—and then induce his characters to riff on it. For example, at one point Tovah and Fraz schedule a date at a restaurant described as “a new Thai-Irish fusion sensation,” the existence of which is not all that amusing to begin with. (What’s with all these crazy restaurants, amirite?) Lipsyte has fun with the dishes such a place might have, like Thai-basil corned beef and County Cork Curry Delight, before allowing the characters to deliver the punch line. “Maybe we should order some wine.” “Irish or Thai?” “See, you’re so witty. Total package.”
Once you notice this tic, it can drive you a little nuts, as can Lipsyte’s tendency to stack up verbs with commas (“Fraz orders a sexy new stout from Vermont, peers up at the TV. Ball game graphics zoom, burst.”) and his habit of treating a character’s consciousness as a basement comedy club:
Kate looks to the driver. He seems oblivious behind his bulletproof plastic. The hack license affixed to the separator says the driver’s name is Ali Islam. Is that like somebody named Marjorie Judaism or Larry Christianity? She wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t know how to know.But somebody might. Most of all, the gestures toward Major Novel status in Hark—Pynchony, Lethem-esque names like Hark Morner and Fraz Penzig, Dieter Delgado and Teal Baker-Cassini; Infinite Jesticles in the form of wacky brand names and inscrutable terrorist organizations; intimations of apocalypse that accelerate in the book’s final pages—have an air of desperation. The impulse to make big thematic statements is accompanied, and perhaps defeated, by a joke-making reflex, as if attempted seriousness has triggered a kind of autoimmune response:
To say it once more, history hides. It hides inside every new interpretation of an interpretation. It hides, in fact, like a gem stuck up the ass of the flabby young man called history at the outset of this tale. History is both the hidden gem and the man in whom the gem has been noiselessly, perhaps greasily, inserted. “Intelligence” may be defined as the ability to behold both of these word pictures at once, in the way you never could with a pair of nipples.In this and other ways, Lipsyte’s writing has a habit of disappearing up its own … never mind. And yet solipsism is the very tendency Hark tries hardest to fight. It’s also the hardest thing for contemporary novels, especially by men working in self-conscious relation to the traditions of postmodernism, to avoid. The imperial sweep of the old masters has become suspect, and the false modesty of auto-fiction (at least as practiced by some of Lipsyte’s peers) can be a drag. Surely some new route can be found, some stance that will allow the bowman to pierce the fog of the self and strike the hide of history.
Or maybe not. I have nothing but sympathy for the predicament out of which this book arises, and nothing but impatience with its way of addressing that predicament.
Capitalism isn’t going anywhere. Capitalism’s not natural, but at this point, neither is nature. You have to dance with the one you came with, Fraz has heard, even if it’s hard to picture escorting a global economic system to a line-dancing barn or a strobe-stabby club. Maybe it’s more like Fraz’s high school prom, where you pick up capitalism at its house, pin a corsage to its gown, and later have drunk sex in a Lysol-tangy motel room down the shore.
Or should Fraz, in fact, wear the corsage?
A metaphor may be a place for cows to graze, but this is bullshit.
This article appears in the January/February 2019 print edition with the headline “The Bard of Male Malaise.”
Earlier this month, Julianna Goldman described the many structural challenges facing mothers who work as TV-news correspondents. “Retaining moms in TV news matters not just for the moms, but for audiences, too,” she wrote. “The more women there are in TV news—from the top on down—the better and more diverse stories there are for the public to consume.”
While I’m certain Ms. Goldman’s story is accurate, the headline is not. It should be changed to “It’s Almost Impossible to Be a Mom in National Television News.” Without the enormous burden of world travel, many mothers have successful careers in local television news, which is still the No. 1 source for news in the United States, according to recent Knight Foundation research.
As a local-TV-news director for the past 30 years, my experience until I left the business this year was that the number of on-air women was growing, and in many newsrooms, they are the majority of anchors and reporters. Women were the majority of on-air journalists at my most recent station in Cleveland when I left, and on the assignment desk. The majority of these women were mothers. This is good for local TV news because mothers are a key part of the audience. They watch, in part, according to local-news research I’ve seen, to get information to keep themselves and their families safe.
The most recent Radio Television Digital News Association survey showed a new record high for women working in local TV newsrooms, 44.4 percent. This is still behind the national full-time U.S. workforce, of which women make up 47 percent. The survey also showed a new record for female news directors, the managers who do the hiring, at 34.3 percent. The highest percentage of these women were in the top-25 TV markets.
While all newsrooms—and workplaces—in our country still have a long way to go to support working mothers and fathers, local TV news certainly seems to be a better option right now than the national networks.
Fred D’Ambrosi
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
As a mom of three years and a local TV-news anchor and reporter of 15 years, I cannot express my gratitude to Julianna Goldman enough for shedding light on these truths so many TV moms have quietly experienced. For me, this article was an eloquent affirmation of all the ideas I’ve wanted to express in explaining my “choice” to stay home with my babies.
Name Withheld Upon Request
The article “It’s Almost Impossible to Be a Mom in Television News” resonated with me so much. Though I am not a mother, I quickly found the world of broadcast news to be particularly taxing for women. I started out as a reporter and evening anchor in northern Michigan, then landed a job as an evening reporter at a news station in South Bend, Indiana. One of the greatest challenges was balancing all of the responsibilities that came with reporting one-man-band style. It wasn’t enough to simply get the story. You had to manage the equipment, stay on track with your deadline, be actively posting to social media while reporting, and do all of this in flawless makeup, perfectly coiffed hair, a skintight dress, and heels. Even when I was promoted to morning anchor two months into my reporting role, there was still enormous pressure on my physical appearance, and the job consumed every aspect of my life.
By the time my contract was up, I was suffering from health issues related to sleep deprivation and had zero personal life. Although the career was exciting and I was proud of my work and my quick promotion, I knew it wasn’t sustainable, especially if I wanted to have a family in the future. I felt like I had to choose between having a seemingly glamorous but all-consuming career and having an ordinary career but fulfilling personal life. I decided the latter was for me.
Allison Preston
South Bend, Ind.
I could have written Ms. Goldman’s piece myself, as at the same 15-year mark I also hung up my microphone.
I’d worked in four TV markets as an anchor and as a news reporter, settling in Portland, Oregon. But everything changed when I had two daughters. Television news requires a nanny, family living nearby, or another parent at home. At any time, I would be called—“Can you get in here right away?”—and I’d scramble to go in. I’d give it my all, and would work until the wee hours of the night or until the crack of dawn when I had to. But of course, no matter what shift I worked, I still had two preschoolers who needed my full attention the next day. I dozed off more than once at the children’s museum.
I was very fortunate: I was allowed to work out a part-time schedule the last five years of my career. I figured I’d go back to work when the girls got to elementary school. As a result, I tried to go in whenever I was needed.
It didn’t matter in the end. When an anchor job came up that I really wanted, it was filled by a younger woman before I was given my token audition. My news director told me, “Stay here as long as you want, we love having you here ‘on the bench.’” I’d been mommy-tracked. I felt humiliated, and quit the next day.
I agree, having more women as news directors and station managers may be the answer for some women who can make it work. I’m not sure it will ever be a family-friendly career. Perhaps that is the better message. I’m glad to hear younger reporters have already planned their exit.
Teresa Luce Spangler
Lake Oswego, Ore.
Julianna Goldman’s story about her experience as a mother and television-news correspondent rang a familiar bell for me. My mother was the great journalist (and great mom) Marlene Sanders, who was a pioneering correspondent for ABC and CBS News starting in the 1960s. In one respect, she had it easier than her successors today because the technology did not allow for the current, incessant pressure for live shots. But in most respects, things were worse—because she was nearly alone as a working mother and correspondent in those days and because the world was an even more sexist place. (When Sam Donaldson, who was a colleague of my mother’s, and later mine, at ABC News, found out I was her son, the first thing he said to me was, “Boy, we really discriminated against women in those days!”) I don’t have a great answer for the dilemmas posed by Goldman’s piece; I’m “talent” in the industry, not management. I just wanted to offer a word of solidarity and support for Goldman and my colleagues who are struggling with the same issues.
Jeffrey Toobin
New York, N.Y.
At the outset, I want to thank everyone who responded to this piece by sharing stories of their own. I had my second child the day before the piece was published (talk about timing!) and I have been overwhelmed by the feedback from other industry moms. A number of you told me that you realized you were not alone and that you felt like your feelings were validated as I laid out the institutional and structural challenges of balancing motherhood and a career in TV news. I too felt validated hearing from all of you. I also really appreciated stories from moms who described how they’ve found ways to pursue their dream job in the industry and raise a family.
The feedback also highlighted challenges faced by others across the industry, including producers, fathers, same-sex couples, single parents, and mothers in local news. There are definitely follow-up pieces to be done! As Fred points out, my focus was based on my own experience working in national news, and I’m heartened to see that there is an upswing in female local-news directors, especially because, as he noted, local news is still the dominant source of news in the United States. At the same time, as Allison and Teresa point out, local news presents a unique set of challenges for working moms—unpredictability, odd hours, slim budgets, and reporting in one-man-band style.
I certainly never intended to say that being a mom in TV news is impossible. It certainly is not, and I am in awe of the mothers I know and heard from in the industry who are producing and reporting stories of critical importance. While I agree that TV news will always be uniquely challenging for moms, I also believe that management can do more to help make it easier. As Jeff shared, Sam Donaldson had the self-awareness to acknowledge the industry’s history of discrimination against women, and hopefully other powerful figures in TV news will continue working on making the environment better for women as well as mothers.
The average American farmer, according to the most recent United States Department of Agriculture data, is white, male, and 58 years old. Just 8 percent of America’s 2.1 million farmers identify as anything other than non-Hispanic white; only 14 percent are women. And as the average age of American farmers has risen over the past 30 years, the federal government has taken small steps to address a situation that if left unaddressed, would almost certainly prove to be a crisis for American agriculture and the American food supply.
The new farm bill, which passed through both houses of Congress last week and is waiting on Donald Trump’s signature, nearly triples funding for the only two programs specifically designed to support beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers; in other words, farmers outside the current dominant—and aging—demographic. The two grant programs—the Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Program, often known as the 2501 Program after its original section number, and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program—will exist within one new initiative, called the Farmer Opportunity Training and Outreach (FOTO) Program.
[Read: The art of the farm-bill deal]
While the two programs will remain distinct, putting them under the umbrella of the FOTO Program will allow them to better coordinate with each other. The programs have different target populations and slightly different goals. Both grants are designed for programs that help people who might feel isolated from the dominant American-farming demographic. They also endeavor to bring into farming people who might otherwise be left behind by the often complicated regulations and bureaucracy of the USDA. “Now more than ever we need to build the bench for the future of farming,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, the ranking member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, who was one of the primary proponents of the FOTO Program.
The FOTO Program will receive $435 million in funding over the next 10 years, small peas relative to the total cost of the farm bill, which the Congressional Budget Office predicts will be $867 billion over the same period. But for organizations working with farmers of color, veteran farmers, and new farmers, it’s a big deal.
“You typically think of agriculture subsidies as price supports going to the large commodity producers,” said Nicole Milne, whose organization, the Kohala Center in Hawaii, receives funding from both the 2501 Program and the beginning-farmers program. The FOTO Program provides another form of subsidies: grants for programs offering outreach, training, and technical assistance that “are an important form of support that small-scale producers are able to access,” she said.
[Read: The farm bill’s threat to food security]
Both existing programs fund others within organizations such as nonprofits, universities, and community organizations that serve under-resourced farmers. Their grants help farmers in radically different climates and in areas with radically different histories, guiding them through the complex world of regulations, loans, training programs, and other assistance offered by the USDA.
“That was a huge lift, to get all of these programs permanent authority and permanent funding. That’s going to be a game changer for folks that are working with the next generation of farmers,” said Juli Obudzinski, the deputy policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The bill gives permanent funding to the program, which means that going forward, both programs will be protected from a drastic loss of funding like that which the 2501 Program suffered in 2013, and they will be at least partially insulated from the whims of an ever polarized Congress. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition expects that the beginning-farmers program will take a small cut in funding in the first few years of the FOTO Program in order to shore up 2501’s funding, which was slashed in half as part of the last farm bill, in 2014.
Though racial disparities in American farming have always existed, especially when it comes to who owns the biggest and most profitable farms, the gap wasn’t always this wide. In 1920, for example, there were 925,000 black farmers, about 14 percent of the nation’s total. Now that number is around 45,000, a little more than 2 percent of all American farmers.That’s not by chance: In a 1998 settlement, the USDA admitted to systemic discrimination against black farmers. In 2010, it acknowledged similar actions against Native Americans. In recent years, Hispanic farmers have also alleged discrimination by the federal agriculture agency.
[Read: A Republican plan could worsen rural America’s food crisis]
To help rebuild trust between the USDA and the farmers it’s supposed to serve, 2501 provides grants to community-based organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits that do outreach and training for what the agency calls “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers. That’s a group that has included black, indigenous, Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander farmers since the program’s inception. In 2012, the grants were expanded to also target veteran farmers. Each demographic the grant program targets has a different history requiring a different solution—many black farmers in the South need assistance getting titles for their land so they can apply for USDA programs, for example, and Native American communities in Oklahoma typically benefit from guidance in navigating the complex legal landscape that comes with farming tribal land.
Henry English, who heads the Small Farm Program at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, an 1890s land-grant university in southern Arkansas, credits the 2501 grants with his program’s ability to connect the region’s black farmers to technical assistance for loan applications. “Before this grant, we wouldn’t say anything about the farm-loans program. We would only talk about production,” how farmers maximize their output, he told me. “With [2501], not only do we talk about the program, the money that’s available, we also help them put together the USDA loan applications.”
English and his staff help local black farmers get loans from the local USDA office, which they had viewed warily, given its history of discrimination in the region. English estimates that his staff works with about 200 farmers every grant cycle. “We have a long history of working with them, so they feel really comfortable coming” to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, he said.
But the 2501 Program has struggled to maintain consistent levels of funding, and has been shifted around between a number of USDA offices. When Congress couldn’t agree on a farm bill the last time it expired, in 2012, 2501 lost funding for an entire year. When a new bill finally passed, in 2014, the program still lost half of its allocated funding, going from $20 million a year to $10 million a year. In the four years since, Obudzinski says, that’s had a major effect.
“Obviously, you expand the pool of applicants and the pool of communities that are trying to be served by a program, and you cut the funding in half—we’ve seen a number of impacts,” she told me this fall. “Some of them have had to cut their programming, some of them have had to lay off staff.” (Even with a set amount in “mandatory” annual funding, both the 2501 Program’s and the beginning-farmers program’s funding still fluctuates year to year, depending on what’s allocated in appropriations bills).
Many programs, such as the Kohala Center on the main island of Hawaii, receive funding from both 2501 and the beginning-farmers program. Milne, Kohala’s director of food and agriculture, told me that for nonprofits like Kohala, the funding allows their programs greater reach and more depth of service, especially given the relatively recent collapse of Hawaiis plantation-style agricultural economy.
“There is a lack of experienced agricultural producers and extremely limited access to capital necessary to reinvent those lands,” she said. By matching new farmers with retiring farmers, she told me, land can be kept in use and the financial burden on farmers just starting out can be greatly reduced. In addition to that, older farmers often serve as mentors for younger ones just starting out and can help close the knowledge gap between generations. Kohala has graduated nearly 200 people from its Beginning Farmer-Rancher Development Program, funded by a beginning-farmers grant, and 150 high-school students have completed its high-school AgriCULTURE program, which was funded in part by 2501.
The beginning-farmers grant program is a much more recent addition to the farm bill than 2501. It was created in 2008 and targets young farmers who are new to agriculture and need guidance in building and operating a successful farm or ranch. The program is a direct response to the upward-creeping age of America’s farmers, and works to train, educate, and mentor new farmers and connect them with other USDA programs that can help them get a farm operation off the ground.
Like 2501 grants, beginning-farmers grants are used for a variety of purposes: While one program in San Francisco trains young farmers in best practices for successful, profitable small farms in an urban market, another in northeast Georgia is focused on connecting current landowners with the resources they need to begin farming on their property. The flexibility of the grants allows for programs in different regions, with different needs, to run programs specific to their communities. And like 2501, most of the farmers served by beginning-farmers grants are small- and mid-size farmers—a rare benefit in a farm bill whose subsidies overwhelmingly go to massive producers.
But even with the farm bill’s permanent funding and a guarantee that the grants won’t be interrupted by congressional inability to pass a new bill, the FOTO program still isn’t perfect. The two grant programs will remain housed in separate branches of the USDA. In the past, that’s meant they’re administered differently, with varying levels of efficiency. A common complaint is 2501’s one-year grant cycle, set not by the farm bill but by an administrative rule-making process that happens after the legislation is passed. These short cycles can be prohibitively difficult for small nonprofits that don’t have the staffing capacity to apply for new grants every year.
“One year is very, very hard for a new program,” said English, of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Showing a measurable impact in the first year, especially if the grant cycle doesn’t align with the growing season, can be very hard for new, small organizations, he said. This is, in part, why universities make up a significant portion of the program’s grantees—many of them have dedicated grant-writing staff who can put together a polished application for 2501 or beginning-farmers funding from the USDA.
Still, despite the bureaucratic hiccups, the farmers who currently benefit from organizations funded by 2501 and the beginning-farmers program can now be sure that the training and technical assistance they rely on will continue, at least for the foreseeable future. And with mandatory funding for both programs expected to hit $25 million in the next few years, more organizations—serving more communities—will have a chance to build programs on the back of FOTO dollars.
A series of explosive Department of Justice filings—outside the special counsel’s probe—makes clear that Russia is a rogue state in cyberspace. Now the United States needs a credible system to take action, and to sanction Russia for its misdeeds.
Consider what we learned from last month’s criminal charges filed by the Department of Justice against the “chief accountant” for Russia’s so-called troll factory, the online-information influence operations conducted by the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. The indictment showed how Russia, rather than being chastened by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s detailed February indictment laying out its criminal activities, continued to spread online propaganda about that very indictment, tweeting and posting about Mueller’s charges both positively and negatively—to spread and exacerbate America’s political discord. Defense Secretary James Mattis later told the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, that Vladimir Putin “tried again to muck around in our elections this last month, and we are seeing a continued effort along those lines.”
In October, a 37-page criminal complaint filed against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, who is alleged to have participated in “Project Lakhta,” a Russian-oligarch-funded effort to deploy online memes and postings to stoke political controversy, came along with a similar warning, from the director of national intelligence. Those charges came in the wake of coordinated charges filed this fall by U.K., Dutch, and U.S. officials against Russia and its intelligence officers for a criminal scheme to target anti-doping agencies, officials, and even clean athletes around the world in retaliation for Russia’s doping scandal and in an apparent effort to intimidate those charged with holding Russia to a level playing field. There’s also new evidence that Russia has been interfering in other foreign issues, such as a recent referendum in Macedonia aimed at easing that country’s acceptance into Europe.
[Read: How to run a Russian hacking ring]
At times, it’s seemed like every week this year has brought fresh news of Putin acting as the skunk at the global internet party. This fall also saw a new report from the security firm FireEye that concluded that the code used to attack a Saudi petrochemical plant came from a state-owned institute in Moscow.
Moreover, it’s also become more clear that the “global cybercrime problem” is actually primarily a “Russia problem,” as Putin’s corrupt government and intelligence services give cover and protection to the world’s largest transnational organized crimes, cybercriminals, schemes, and frauds that cost the West’s consumers millions of dollars. Earlier this year, the Justice Department broke up one cybercrime ring based in Russia whose literal motto was “In fraud we trust.” The Justice Department charged 36 individuals, many of whom live in Russia beyond the law’s reach, and outlined a scheme by which they stole more than a half-billion dollars. It’s hardly the only example from this year; last week, the FBI announced that it had dismantled two other cybercrime rings and charged eight people—seven of them Russian—with running a multimillion-dollar ad-fraud scheme. (Three of those charged were able to be caught overseas in friendly countries that respect the rule of law: Malaysia, Bulgaria, and Estonia.)
Ferreting out cybercriminal and intelligence operations and making them public are two prongs of a three-part strategy to change behavior. In recent years, we’ve gotten really good at the first two parts. In fact, while for years these cases were hidden away inside the government, we now release them routinely. This fall, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the Justice Department was changing its approach to election-meddling cases, with the default now to make such cases public as quickly as possible. The change coincided with the criminal complaint against Khusyaynova, detailing that the attacks on our elections are a problem of right now, not just a theoretical issue.
[Read: What Putin really wants]
As Rosenstein said earlier this year, “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them.” Making public such charges helps us be more resilient and more savvy consumers of online content—Russia’s attacks in 2016 succeeded in part because we weren’t expecting them and because people weren’t skeptical enough about consuming information online. Today, of course, we understand all too well that photos, images, and posts online could be the work of foreign trolls and bots.
While defaulting to public action is a good first step, it is not sufficient. The elusive third part of the strategy is what is most needed: making Russia pay a cost that deters the activity. The United States should move toward automatic retaliatory action, ensuring that in today’s fast-moving information environment a response doesn’t get bogged down in partisan politics or bureaucracy.
It was reported just before the November elections that U.S. Cyber Command was privately notifying Russian hackers that it’s on to them—warning them that the United States is watching and that if their actions continue, they’re likely to face personal retaliation, such as U.S. criminal charges or sanctions. While sanctions and criminal charges on operatives make it nearly impossible for targets to travel overseas and participate in global banking or commerce, and limit prospects, we can do more.
[Read: The coincidence at the heart of the Russian hacking scandal]
We should consider building more “dead man’s switches” into our counter-foreign-influence work—such as automatic triggers that, when foreign efforts are detected and charged, would put in place new sanctions authority and even boost our own government’s spending on democracy-building efforts that counter Russia’s influence campaigns. Russia might think twice about the value of investing the approximately $30 million allegedly spent on Project Lahkta if doing so would presumptively trigger tough new sanctions as well as a fivefold or tenfold American investment in democracy-building NGOs or institutions such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe that beam free and independent news in the Russian language.
Too often, the responses to these incidents get caught up in political debates and bureaucratic stalemates. The dead man’s switch would cut through the inertia by setting up our response in advance—putting Putin on notice that if our intelligence community concludes that a country has targeted our elections, either through online influence operations or direct attacks on the voting systems, that assessment would trigger automatic sanctions against the head of state personally as well as against senior government, intelligence, or foreign-business figures. One credible way to make Putin reassess the cost-benefit analysis of attacking our democracy would be to announce in advance that we’d target his personal wealth for sanctions or that his most powerful oligarch allies would have a harder time vacationing on their super-yachts in the Mediterranean.
After all, the greatest leverage we have is that as much as Putin seeks to undermine the West, his oligarchs, business associates, and even his country’s economy all rely on the West to live their life. If the world responds in concert, we can raise the costs and make it safer for everyone.
There are moments when it is wise to look back from whence we have come. Donald Trump’s recent tantrum in the Oval Office, his symphony of tweets, and his penchant for personal attacks and questionable alliances—all echoed in the media, on Capitol Hill, and across the nation—suggest that it is worth revisiting the first president’s “firm opinion” that those who follow him are bound by duty to behave at all times in a civilized and decent manner.
As a young man, George Washington copied down Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, a list of 110 precepts compiled by Jesuits in the 16th century, for the training of young gentlemen. The intent of these rules was to shape the inner character of those who observed them by perfecting their outer behavior.
Washington was a slave owner, he sometimes broke his own rules, and much of what he prescribed and proscribed 275 years ago is as crucial to civilized behavior today as fish forks and butter knives. Nevertheless, some of the rules that Washington copied down as a youth seem more pertinent than ever:
1st: Every Action done in Company ought to be done with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.
2nd: When in Company, put not your Hands to any part of the body, not usually Discovered.
6th: Sleep not when others Speak. Sit not when others stand. Speak not when you Should hold your Peace, walk not when others Stop.
22nd: Show not yourself glad at the Misfortune of another though he were your enemy.
35th: Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.
40th: Strive not with your Superiors in argument, but always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.
41st: Undertake not to Teach your equal in the art himself Professes; it Savours of arrogance.
44th: When a man does all he can though it Succeeds not well, blame not him who did it.
50th: Be not hasty to believe flying Reports to the Disparagement of any.
56th: Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for ‘is better to be alone than in bad Company.
58th: Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy, for ‘is a sign of a Tractable and Commendable Nature; and that in all Causes of Passion admit Reason to Govern.
60th: Be not immodest in urging your Friends to Discover a Secret.
73rd: Think before you Speak pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your Words too hastily but orderly and distinctly.
79th: Be not apt to relate News if you know not the truth thereof. In Discoursing of things you Have heard Name not your Author Always a Secret Discover not.
82nd: Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.
89th: Speak not Evil of the absent for it is unjust.
110th: Labor to keep in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
Brian Tyree Henry moves as if he’s been here before. His character on Atlanta, the Donald Glover–led FX dramedy, is a reservoir of slow-unfolding gestures, resigned shrugs, and hauntingly empty expressions. As Alfred, the despondent cousin of Earn, Glover’s ineffectual protagonist, Henry pays extraordinary attention to physicality. His maneuvers are deliberate: When Alfred finds a tenuous sort of fame as the rapper Paper Boi, you can see how celebrity wears him down. Henry’s investment in the character grants Alfred a gravity that serves as the show’s emotional core.
“I knew that Alfred was the Atlanta part. He is the one that’s born and raised there. Where people could come in and leave, he couldn’t,” Henry said when we spoke in New York City recently. “We all know this dude: We know what kinda Swisher he likes, we all know which grape drink he likes, we know which condiments he doesn’t like, we know what specials he likes, we know what fights he’s gonna watch, we know him. We think we know him, and it causes us to put a judgment on him.”
Henry’s Alfred—whom the 36-year-old actor never refers to as “Paper Boi”—straddles the conflicting worlds that many black men inhabit with fatigued equanimity. He balances career strife, familial expectations, systemic discrimination, and social ostracism. He does so knowing that neither the white music-industry gatekeepers he encounters—nor the majority of the black people around him—have much faith in his ability to succeed. Henry imbues Alfred with a kind of bone-deep weariness that belies the character’s years. The performance is at once unnerving and familiar.
Earlier this year, the actor’s work on the series earned him an Emmy nomination. It also caught the attention of Barry Jenkins, the director of the 2017 Best Picture winner, Moonlight. “It was clear that he was an actor who could basically traverse the entire spectrum of emotions—and that he could [do] it within scenes themselves, not necessarily over the course of a two-hour narrative,” Jenkins told me. “There was just something very deep and vulnerable about Brian’s performance.”
Jenkins’s latest film, an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, features Henry as the character Daniel Carty. As the formerly incarcerated friend of one of Beale Street’s protagonists, Henry is on-screen for less than 15 minutes, but his artful performance anchors the film. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice Henry nearly everywhere now: The Steve McQueen–directed heist film Widows sees him deploying an ominous determination in the role of Jamal Manning, a Chicagoan running for alderman against the legacy politician Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell). Henry also voices the titular character’s detective father in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, lending a warmly authoritative figure to the animated superhero story. In these films, as in Atlanta, his performances tie scenes together: He can be agile and profound, menacing and open, composed and undone. Put more plainly, Brian Tyree Henry has the range.
Henry—and particularly his voice, a warm and solemn instrument—has bolstered several disparate choruses in recent years. He’s sung on Broadway as part of the original cast of The Book of Mormon and in the explosive new HBO series Room 104 (as Arnold, a character who wakes with no memory of the prior evening); invoked Southern colloquialisms on the animated Netflix series BoJack Horseman (he voices two characters in one of Season 5’s most poignant episodes); and debated difficult truths in his Tony-nominated performance as William, an embattled security guard in the Kenneth Lonergan play Lobby Hero.
It isn’t quite accurate to say that the actor is having a moment. No uncanny miracle is behind his rise, just slow, agonizing, all-consuming work. And so he is, in a word, tired—physically, yes, but emotionally as well. After all, his chosen roles don’t leave him when filming ends. Henry told me that he carries them everywhere. “I was just telling somebody, I need to let these characters go. I need to get a storage unit for these motherfuckers,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Because I take ’em home with me and I don’t know how to shake ’em … I don’t ever want them to be forgotten.”
As a young black boy in Fayetteville, North Carolina (and later in Washington, D.C.), Henry never envisioned that acting would be a viable career path. Early on, he noticed the entertainment industry’s lack of attention to the kinds of people whose interiority he knew best. “When I turned my television on, I didn’t see anybody like me. I definitely didn’t see anybody that was telling the stories that I was living in my own way,” he said of his childhood. “It didn’t make sense to me that [acting professionally] would be an option, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t have fun.” And so he did.
The son of a veteran and an educator, Henry is the youngest of five children. By the time he was born, all his sisters were teenagers. Henry soon discovered his knack for capturing the contours of his family members’ personalities, and acting out stories became both a pastime and an escape. “I started imitating the people I saw around me, the environment I saw around me, because I didn’t know any better. It was a safety, it was fun to tell these stories and go out there and watch how it could change somebody’s day,” he said. “I remember being that kid—you know how at Thanksgiving it’s like, Go ’head, baby, tell that story the way you told it,” he added with a laugh, genially mimicking the tone many a black auntie has taken with her family’s most performance-inclined child.
Being the baby of the family also meant that Henry was often too young to consume the same cultural touchstones that the rest of his household did. The moments when he could catch up to the adults’ knowledge became some of his most formative experiences. “I remember seeing The Color Purple for the first time. I was born in ’82, so it had already been out, people had already received it, drank it, all that. I was just crying the entire time, and I couldn’t understand why it was hitting me that way,” he said.
The Color Purple, with Alice Walker’s intense emotional pulls and Oprah Winfrey’s iconic performance, left Henry feeling both devastated and newly aware of just how much he’d been missing. He recalled questioning his older family members incredulously about the film and realizing that everyone else already knew of its monumental power: “I was like, Oh, y’all already saw Color Purple? You knew that Celie and her gon’ do this, had this patty cakin’, and Mister was gonna do that?!” The effect that the film had—on him, but also on the people around him—resonated with Henry long after that initial viewing.
The actor counts that revelation among his Where were you when … ? moments, those inspirations that crackle in his brain long after the screen has faded to black. “I think that’s part of why I do what I do, because I like being at the front line of watching something unfold that could completely shift the way that people see things in the world,” he said. “And that’s kinda how I feel about Atlanta, that’s how I feel about me being a part of Book of Mormon, that’s how I feel about me working with Steve McQueen. I’ve been able to have that feeling of, I was there when this came together.”
As a student at Morehouse College and then the Yale School of Drama, Henry witnessed—and catalyzed—a number of auspicious pairings that brought black stories to life. During his undergraduate years, he played the lead role in a production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the celebrated playwright August Wilson’s story about the lives of newly freed enslaved people. At Yale, Henry met the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, who would go on to write In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, the play on which Moonlight was based. “It was kinda just understood that he was the best person at the drama school at that time. Black or anything. Like, the best,” the Yale alumna and performer Melay Araya, a friend of mine, said of Henry recently. “But it was him and Tarell who were the standouts, one with acting and one with playwriting.”
More than a decade later, Henry’s work is once again concerned with both the threats that haunt black people and the bonds that hold them together. If Beale Street Could Talk, the Jenkins adaptation of Baldwin’s novel, is grounded in the story of Tish and Fonny’s love, and it traces the anguish the couple endures after Fonny is falsely accused of rape and imprisoned. As Daniel Carty, an old friend of Fonny’s, Henry appears only twice in the film. Still, Carty haunts the tale. “His story could easily be my story someday,” Henry said of his character, who warns Fonny about the horrors of the criminal-justice system after the two run into each other on the street. “Daniels are made every minute.”
In the film, Carty is at once joyful and anguished: He laughs with his whole body, he eats unreservedly, and he projects a vulnerability that impresses upon Fonny the burden of the injustice both men face. In the gutting final moments of the scene the two share, Henry’s performance pulses with the kind of rawness Baldwin’s work held so tenderly. “It takes a special kind of actor to have the impact that Brian had in this film,” Stephan James, who plays Fonny, said in an email. “He captured the feeling of an experience all too familiar for so many young black men in America.”
Stephan James, left, and Brian Tyree Henry, right, in If Beale Street Could Talk. (Annapurna Pictures / Katie Martin / The Atlantic)It is a peculiar weight, the phantom menace of racism. It robs people of their rights while simultaneously insisting that their concerns are unfounded. “This shit is hard,” Henry said when we spoke, clapping on the table to punctuate. “Waking up every day as a black person in this country is hard. It is really hard to do. And sometimes you want to vent. And sometimes you need to know that someone is going to listen.”
Henry, who keeps a copy of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time in his backpack, spoke with a pained appreciation about discovering the clarity and comfort in Baldwin’s work earlier in life. “I was so grateful,” he said, “but at the same time really saddened by the fact that here we are—I’m an ’80s baby, ’90s kid—and these same trials and tribulations that he was talking about then are still making me angry now. What’s his famous quote? ‘To be black and conscious in this country is to be angry all the time.’”
Daniel Carty is indeed angry, but beneath his righteous indignation lies fear and tremendous pain. For Jenkins, having an actor with Henry’s emotional range play the pivotal character was key to the film’s narrative success. “The scene with Daniel, with Brian Tyree Henry, falls almost exactly at the midpoint of the film,” the Beale Street director told me. “It’s one thing to intellectually describe what might be awaiting Fonny if his fate goes a certain way, but it’s another to have a character just completely embody what that fate could look like.”
Still, the scene Henry shares with James is remarkably warm. Even as the threat of incarceration hovers above them both, the men embrace each other—and Tish. It’s a gorgeous tableau, all the more wrenching for its vacillation between the friends’ affection for one another and a mutual, slow-building terror. “There’s a dichotomy, a duality that we all, especially people of color, have to walk within this world,” Henry said of what he’s learned from his Beale Street character. “And sometimes when you let your guard down for just that minute, it can be to your detriment, but at the same time we should all know what it’s like to let our guard down at least once.”
If Beale Street’s Daniel Carty and Atlanta’s Alfred Miles respond to the onslaught of white supremacy with tormented resignation, then Jamal Manning of Widows is intent on striking back. In the film, Henry channels the political hopeful’s existential fear about the conditions of his life and his community—what Henry sums up as a mentality of, How are we gonna get out of this alive?—with terrifying panache. The role is a rare one for the actor, whose prior characters often sublimated anger, collective or otherwise, into agitated silence.
In one of the film’s most electric scenes, the would-be alderman pays a visit to Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis), the widow of a con man who disappeared with $2 million of Manning’s campaign money. The starkly lit moment, in which Manning threatens her while gripping her fluffy white dog, is deliciously evil. In his escalating intimidation, Henry matches Davis’s intensity without veering into cartoonish villainy. “It’s all or nothing with Brian,” the film’s director, Steve McQueen, told me. “When you’re up against Viola Davis, you gotta bring your A game, and it was beautiful to look at how these two artists made that scene.”
Daniel Kaluuya, left, and Brian Tyree Henry, right, in Widows. (Twentieth Century Fox / Katie Martin / The Atlantic)Henry’s level of dedicated camaraderie on the set of Widows buoyed his fellow actors’ performances. His commitment to his collaborators is indicative of what could be described as Henry’s broader project: contributing to a landscape in which all actors have the freedom—and encouragement—to inhabit their characters as deeply as he does. “He was so prepared, I was as prepared as I could be, and I really felt like the two of us were just dancing,” Colin Farrell, who plays Manning’s political foe, Jack Mulligan, told me. “I don’t think Brian was just concerned with his own idea of how the scene should be.”
“I didn’t get one sniff of actorly self-interest off him,” he added. “For me, the most beautiful experiences to have are experiences where, yes, each actor is serving their character, but they’re serving their character as [part of] a greater whole. And I got that sense from Brian Tyree.”
This sentiment is shared by members of the Atlanta cast. The comedian Robert S. Powell III, who plays the hilariously erratic barber Bibby in the second season’s fifth episode, spoke of Henry’s patient partner work with near-reverence. “That was my first and only time ever acting!” Powell told me. “When I researched and found out that everybody on the set was classically trained and here I am, brand new, I didn’t know what to do. But [Henry] made me feel very comfortable.”
Brian Tyree Henry and Robert S. Powell III in an episode of Atlanta. (Guy D’Alema / FX / Katie Martin / The Atlantic)“He knew every comma, every word. He was very, very on it … I didn’t know that the entire episode was going to be about me,” the comedian continued. “And then when I found out it was, I was kinda crammin’. So a lot of the ad libs that I did I had to do ’cause I had no idea what I was supposed to be saying at that time. My unpreparedness forced him to have to ad lib.”
For the actress Zazie Beetz, who plays Van, Earn’s sometime girlfriend and the mother of his child, Henry has been like a big brother throughout the show’s run. “He chooses to be on your team and on your side, sort of like a ride or die,” Beetz told me, recounting a time when the actor let her crash at his place for weeks after her Airbnb booking went horribly awry. “He was just like, We’re together in this.”
Henry’s capacity for empathy was evident during the shooting of the show’s second season, which follows Alfred as he grapples with numerous losses, including the death of his mother. Henry had recently lost his mother as well; while filming, he found himself wondering how to care not just for the people around him, but also for the character and for himself. “Alfred doesn’t have anybody to protect him. Everybody sees that he’s a bigger guy, that yeah, he’s got guns, yeah, he sells weed, so he must be inviting that stuff, right?” he said. “But there’s nobody there to really protect Alfred because everybody thinks he’s okay.”
“I really wanted this season [to] show my confrontation with my mental health and his confrontation [with his], which were one and the same. Because, life happens, right?” he continued. “For Alfred … I wanted him to know that somebody cared.”
The actor is still learning how to show himself that same compassion. It’s been a dizzying year of filming, publicity, and travel. There have been awards shows, premieres, and Broadway runs. The past several months have seen Henry filming five movies: Superintelligence, an action-comedy film with Melissa McCarthy; The Woman in the Window, a thriller also starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman; The Outside Story, an indie feature about a workaholic editor; Godzilla vs. Kong, a monster film at the nexus of two massive franchises; and a reboot of the 1988 thriller Child’s Play alongside Aubrey Plaza. (Of his chaotic work life, he observed: “We like to torture ourselves as human beings, don’t we?”)
The punishing schedule has helped bring about the notable boost in his profile, but it’s also worn him down. “I haven’t had a chance to sit down and actually give myself praise for what I’ve accomplished and what I’ve done. I always feel like, Well, I still gotta do this, and I still have to get over here, and I still have to do that, which is something that we do all the time, especially people of color,” he noted. “Because you spend a lot of time being told what you can’t do, what you can’t have, how you should present yourself, and then when those moments of actual success come along, you’re already tryna figure out how to top that.”
For now, though, Henry is content to make himself at home in the work, to let the characters he inhabits burrow into him and offer guidance. “It’s given me a place to lay my heart out,” he said of the year’s challenging repertoire. “And not just to lay it out, but to receive things into it as well.”
“If I learned anything about doing If Beale Street Could Talk, it’s like—dammit, joy. Like, show the joy of us. Show the love of us. Show that it is obtainable. Show that we can thrive, show that we can feel something, dammit. Feel something.”
Desespero. Essa é a principal sensação de quem bate à porta de Débora Anhaia de Campos. Médica de família, ela ficou conhecida por ajudar mulheres que desejam interromper a gravidez. Primeiro, as pacientes querem tirar dúvidas básicas: “Estou mesmo grávida? De quanto tempo?”. Depois, muitas fazem logo a pergunta que as levou ao consultório: “Como posso abortar?”. Outras, com medo de uma denúncia, guardam o questionamento para si. Foi pensando nelas que Campos decidiu criar um vídeo-manual de redução de danos de abortos.
A médica ainda estava na faculdade quando sua irmã interrompeu uma gravidez e foi deixada sangrando por profissionais de saúde. A experiência em casa e a falta de informações sobre o assunto no curso de medicina, onde, diz ela, o aborto ainda é tabu, a levaram a mergulhar no tema. Quanto mais vulnerável a mulher, diz Campos, maior a chance de recorrer a “métodos inseguros”. Cabides, arames, agulhas de crochê e até soluções de água com soda cáustica ou sabão são usados por mulheres em tentativas de aborto, enumera. Em maio deste ano, Ingriane Barbosa tentou interromper uma gravidez colocando um talo de mamona no útero – a mamona é uma planta com propriedades tóxicas, comumente encontrada em jardins. A mulher de 30 anos morreu e deixou órfãos seus três filhos, ainda crianças.
Foto: Reprodução/Facebook
São esses riscos desnecessários à saúde de quem já está decidida a interromper a gravidez que Campos quer ajudar a evitar. Seja num posto de saúde de Londrina, Paraná, ou em seu canal de YouTube, ela faz questão de deixar claro: aborto ainda é crime. Mas, ciente de que isso não impede que meio milhão de brasileiras recorram à prática, a médica fala abertamente sobre o assunto – que, feita de forma insegura pelas mais pobres, negras, adolescentes e periféricas, pode levar à morte.
Na Argentina, as leis restritivas sobre aborto são semelhantes às nossas, mas prestar informações sobre o tema é permitido. Lá, existe até uma rede de voluntárias que ajuda as mulheres a completar um aborto com segurança. Já a legislação brasileira não é clara quanto à divulgação dessas informações – o que levou Campos a sofrer perseguição. Em 2017, Filipe Barros, vereador de Londrina do PRB, denunciou a médica ao Ministério Público do Paraná, ao Ministério Público Federal, ao Conselho Regional de Medicina e à corregedoria do município de Londrina por “apologia ao crime de aborto”. O MPPR, o CRM e a corregedoria arquivaram os processos, mas o do MPF continua em andamento. Ela também sofre ataques pelas redes sociais e conta ser menosprezada por colegas de profissão pelo jeito como atua.
Em uma conversa por telefone, Campos falou sobre o manual, o tratamento que as mulheres que abortam recebem nos serviços de saúde e o que cada mulher pode fazer para evitar complicações.
Vale lembrar: Uma ação que pretende descriminalizar o aborto no Brasil até a 12ª semana de gestação está sendo discutida no Supremo Tribunal Federal. Mas, atualmente, só é permitido por lei o aborto em caso de estupro, risco de vida da mulher ou anencefalia do feto. Ou seja, no Brasil, interromper uma gravidez ainda é crime – que pode ser punido com prisão de um a três anos. Quem facilita um aborto também pode ser condenado à mesma pena.
Você é médica de família há mais de três anos. Já viu casos de mulheres que tiveram problemas de saúde ou morreram por abortos inseguros?
A minha irmã passou por uma situação assim e foi muito maltratada no hospital em que procurou atendimento. Foi feita uma curetagem e não deram a ela medicação para dor. Deixaram ela sangrando e depois mandaram para casa sem encaminhamento para exames, sem pedido de retorno. Eu já estava na graduação nessa época, no sexto ano. Ainda não tinha pensado em fazer Ginecologia e Obstetrícia, que agora quero fazer. Isso mexeu muito comigo. Aí passei a estudar isso. Vi muitas mulheres ao meu redor abortando. Só de você ser médica e feminista, as meninas já vêm pedir ajuda. Eu vi o quanto elas estavam abandonadas à própria sorte. Eu fui estudando e decidi fazer o manual porque já há manuais para sexo seguro e uso de substâncias, porque são assuntos que atingem homens. Na época em que minha irmã passou por isso, não havia acesso a nenhuma informação real e que fosse segura, mesmo buscando muito na internet. O que havia deixava ela ainda mais desorientada. Não havia acesso a documentos do Ministério da Saúde, por exemplo. Na época, minha irmã estava com cerca de 22 anos. Ela ficou bem, mas demorou bastante tempo. Logo depois da curetagem, ela teve hemorragia por 15 dias e não procurou um serviço de saúde por medo de ser maltratada de novo. Psicologicamente ela ficou muito abalada, não tanto pelo aborto, mas mais pela tortura que ela sofreu. Ela fazia psicologia e largou a faculdade. A vida dela acabou. Quando ela foi no serviço de saúde pela primeira vez ela falou que tinha usado remédio para abortar. Depois ela começou a ser xingada, maltratada, falaram que “se sua irmã soubesse ela não deixaria você fazer”. Nem chamaram o médico que estava de plantão. Não pediram exames de sangue, ultrassom. Você tem que encaminhar pelo menos para o posto de saúde para fazer acompanhamento, passar um método contraceptivo. Ela usava método contraceptivo e falhou. Ela engravidou, terminou o relacionamento, o cara comprou o remédio e deixou ela sozinha. Até hoje nunca falei com ela sobre isso. A gente nunca sentou para falar sobre isso. Ela foi muito humilhada.
Você percebe um recorte social dos casos que acompanhou?
As mulheres mais pobres não vão usar o misoprostol [medicação que induz o aborto, recomendada pela Organização Mundial de Saúde], que é o único método seguro. Então, é grande a chance que ocorram complicações, até morte. Nesses casos, são sempre mulheres pobres, negras, adolescentes, periféricas. Quanto mais vulnerável a mulher, maior a chance de usar um método inseguro, como introdução de objetos, substâncias tóxicas.
Você já viu profissionais tratando mal mulheres que chegam ao serviço de saúde com complicações de aborto? Como os profissionais deveriam agir diante desses casos?
Felizmente nunca vi na minha frente. Não conheço nenhuma que tenha procurado atendimento espontaneamente depois de abortar. Elas têm medo de serem presas. Isso só acontece quando o quadro fica muito grave, e aí outra pessoa leva. Os dois casos mais graves que já vi foram assim. Eram negras, pobres, muito jovens. Uma já tinha outro filho, não tinha parceiro, tinha sido abandonada. Fizeram aborto em gestação avançada, de quatro, cinco meses. Uma delas chegou com uma hemorragia muito grave, entrou em choque e quase morreu. A outra foi de Samu [ambulância da prefeitura] pro hospital e não sei o que aconteceu. Nesses casos, eu suspeitei que tinha sido aborto provocado por causa da gravidade do quadro delas. Mas não perguntei, porque pra gente [profissionais de saúde] não importa. Tem que ver o estado da paciente: se ela está com hemorragia, já é muito grave. Caso ela tenha introduzido um objeto ou substância tóxica, pode ter lesionado outros órgãos. Por isso é tão grave. O único jeito de abortar sem provocar infecção interna é com o misoprostol. Nos outros casos, o aborto sempre é causado por causa de uma infecção. Então, é uma roleta russa.
Há algum tipo de treinamento dos profissionais de saúde para lidarem com essas questões?
Não. Durante toda a graduação eu não tive nenhum treinamento sobre como atender mulheres em situação de aborto inseguro. Nos cursos de urgência e emergência nunca vi ninguém abordar essa questão. É um tabu tão grande que ninguém fala sobre isso. Quando acontece, as pessoas simplesmente não sabem o que fazer. Por isso tem gente que chama a polícia. No caso de uma tentativa de suicídio, ninguém pensa em chamar a polícia. Mas numa tentativa de aborto, sim.
No posto de saúde, as mulheres te perguntam sobre formas de abortar ou há medo? Como é essa aproximação?
Muitas perguntam. Já atendi mulheres que estavam com gestação indesejada, manifestando sofrimento. Uma delas disse que não ia prosseguir com a gestação, então tive uma conversa com ela explicando que era crime, mas que, caso realmente decidisse fazer, o único método seguro é o misoprostol. Indico o vídeo que fiz com o manual de redução de danos, digo: “pense bem, não coloque a sua vida em risco”. Tento saber se alguém está pressionando ela a abortar. De qualquer jeito, elas têm muito medo, muitas não perguntam. A maternidade não é incrível para todas as mulheres.
Você disse em entrevista à revista AzMina que, desde que se formou, tem procura diária de mulheres querendo saber sobre aborto. Algum caso te marcou mais?
São tantos casos. Todos me marcaram de alguma forma. Algumas desistiram do aborto. Outras disseram que só queriam falar com alguém sobre isso porque estavam com muito medo. Teve uma menina que o pai a obrigou a abortar. Eu evito ter informações sobre elas, apenas oriento para que elas não coloquem a vida em risco. Como médica, é o que posso fazer.
Conhece outras médicas que atuam assim?
Sim, muitas ativistas, feministas. Principalmente que fazem acompanhamento. Desde só ouvir a mulher que pensa em abortar até acompanhar o processo para ela não ficar sozinha, não correr o risco de passar mal. É um momento muito solitário, e, se a mulher passa mal, ela não consegue pedir ajuda.
Desde a publicação do vídeo, a procura aumentou? Quais as dúvidas mais comuns?
O principal ponto é o desespero. Elas chegam sem saber nada sobre [como abortar]. Digo para assistirem ao manual e respondo se a pessoa ainda tiver alguma dúvida. São dúvidas básicas, como a idade gestacional, se de fato está grávida ou não, ou, se ela já tem o remédio, qual a dose, como usar… Essas coisas. No manual, respondo tudo, não são informações proibidas. O protocolo do misoprostol, do Ministério da Saúde, é público.
Muitas mulheres têm medo de falar sobre o aborto com um profissional de saúde e serem denunciadas. Como é a questão do sigilo médico?
Nós, como médicos, só temos que ouvir e orientar para que não haja um novo abortamento. Para mulheres que já abortaram, há um grande risco de haver outro por falha de método contraceptivo, por exemplo. Mas, sim, tem profissionais que denunciam. Muitos acham que podem ser considerados omissos ou coniventes se não denunciarem, mas não é assim. A gente tem que respeitar a autonomia da mulher sobre o corpo.
Se o profissional denunciar a mulher que abortou, ela ainda tem alguma garantia legal com relação a quebra do sigilo médico?
Ela vai ter que denunciar o profissional no conselho da categoria e entrar com processo contra ele. Mas nunca vi isso acontecer.
Como é a ação do misoprostol no organismo?
A mulher pode ter reações de vômito, diarreia e calafrios dentro da primeira hora. Também vai ter cólica, pode ter sangramento, na hora ou depois de alguns dias. São os efeitos relatados mais comuns. Em algumas horas, os resquícios do remédio são eliminados do corpo.
Como saber quando algo deu errado e é hora de procurar um serviço de saúde?
Se tiver sangramento muito intenso (que encha mais de quatro absorventes em duas horas) e começar a sentir tontura, fraqueza, sensação de desmaio. Se desmaiar ou se tiver febre 24 horas depois de ter usado. Também é importante reparar se há sangramento ou secreção com cor ou cheiro diferentes dos do sangue da menstruação, como cheiro de podre, alguns dias depois. Por fim, se tiver dor que não passe com ibuprofeno.
Na clínica, a mulher é obrigada a responder que fez um aborto?
Não, o paciente nunca é obrigado a falar nada. Ela pode falar só o que está sentindo, por exemplo, dizer que estava grávida e agora está sangrando, com dor e febre. Se houver infecção no útero, nós [os profissionais de saúde] já vamos pensar que talvez ela tenha feito um aborto. Mas o tratamento independe da mulher falar. O médico pode suspeitar, mas isso não quer dizer nada. Não é para fazer diferença no tratamento e na orientação sobre opções de contraceptivos.
O Ministério da Saúde tem uma portaria que regula ações de redução de danos resultantes do uso de drogas. Você acha que o ministério deveria criar ações desse tipo relacionadas ao aborto?
Com certeza. Só não existe redução de danos do aborto porque há o recorte de gênero, se trata de mulheres, e na nossa sociedade não há autonomia da mulher sobre o próprio corpo. Como falar sobre algo que as pessoas tomam como inconcebível? Muitas pessoas acham que a pena da mulher que aborta é a pena de morte. As instituições têm que mudar a cultura dos serviços de saúde e da sociedade sobre as mulheres, entendendo que elas são pessoas de direito.
Como o Brasil poderia reduzir a mortalidade de mulheres causada por procedimentos clandestinos?
Descriminalizando e legalizando o aborto até 12 semanas de gestação. Em alguns países, como a França, é até as 14 semanas. E também colocando essa temática na grade curricular dos cursos de saúde, ou seja, o atendimento humanizado a mulheres em situação de abortamento. Mesmo as que sofrem aborto espontâneo são maltratadas. Já ouvi relatos de pacientes e é sempre do mesmo jeito: se pressupõe que a culpa por perder o bebê é da mulher, mesmo que ela não tenha provocado. Ela tem que ser punida e as pessoas se sentem nesse direito em vez de acolher. Teve uma paciente que perdeu o bebê e não conseguia voltar a trabalhar, estava num processo de luto intenso. Nenhum médico queria dar atestado para ela ficar em repouso. Pela lei, ela tem duas semanas de atestado. Os médicos minimizam, como se não fosse nada, sendo que muitas mulheres que têm o vínculo com a gravidez sofrem como se fosse a morte de um filho já nascido.
A pesquisadora Débora Diniz e a pastora Lusmarina Campos vêm sofrendo uma perseguição dura por conta da defesa da descriminalização do aborto durante a audiência pública, em Brasília, na metade do ano. Você contou à Folha de Londrina que já sofreu ameaças de morte por defender a criação do Dia Municipal de Luta contra a Violência LGBTfóbica. A perseguição e as ameaças se intensificaram depois do vídeo?
Não sei dizer se intensificaram porque a gente acaba se blindando. Mas eu sempre sofro algum tipo de ameaça, xingamento. Em uma audiência pública na Câmara de Londrina me chamaram de assassina de bebês. O vereador que me processou até hoje não tirou do ar os posts que fez contra mim, mesmo sendo processado. Em maio, eu fui seguida e multada, me senti ameaçada porque o policial fez um sinal com a mão que não entendi direito. Ele me seguiu numa situação esquisita, tirou fotos do meu carro. Eu fiquei assustada, denunciei o policial, e o caso está na corregedoria da polícia. De modo geral, eu não sou uma pessoa benquista por pessoas conservadoras. Elas me veem como uma ameaça porque questiono as coisas como estão, a medicina como é feita, os preconceitos perpetuados pela prática médica. Muita gente me odeia por causa disso. Até da minha categoria. Mas também tem muita gente que admira o trabalho e apoia, mesmo que escondido. As pessoas têm medo até de dizer que apoiam. Mas nunca deixei de fazer nada por medo.
Você viu casos de mulheres que desistiram de abortar?
A ONG Safe2Choose recebe cerca de 10 mil pedidos de brasileiras por mês. É um número muito absurdo. São mulheres que não têm com quem contar. Várias já desistiram de abortar depois de a gente conversar, mostrar outras possibilidades. Às vezes elas só precisam de uma conversa honesta, sincera, sem julgamento. Uma delas desistiu de abortar e depois me mandou foto do bebê, disse que estava feliz, que só estava passando por um momento de desespero. Quando se pode falar, se organiza melhor as ideias.
The post Dá para diminuir os perigos de um aborto? Essa médica arriscou a carreira para dizer que sim. appeared first on The Intercept.
Há algumas semanas, eu escrevi o roteiro de um quadrinho desenhado pelo Estevão Ribeiro e o mundo caiu sobre minha cabeça. A personagem do Estevão, a Rê Tinta, conduziu uma conversa sobre a incineração de documentos relativos à escravidão brasileira. Sob as ordens do então ministro da Fazenda, Rui Barbosa, fogueiras foram acesas pelo menos no Rio de Janeiro e na Bahia para queimar e destruir milhares de papéis sobre importação de escravos. E, com eles, nossa história.
E por que apanhamos de parte da audiência do Intercept e também das redes sociais? Porque dissemos que a queima promovida por Barbosa foi para negar a história da escravidão brasileira. A tese corrente e mais aceita pela história nacional é outra. “A explicação oficial é que Rui Barbosa teria queimado as notas fiscais de compra e venda dos escravos para que evitar que a justiça concedesse indenização aos ex-senhores de escravos”, disse o leitor Ari Silveira dos Santos Filho. “Caros, essa é uma das fake news históricas mais disseminadas e já desmentidas. Rui Barbosa era abolicionista. A versão hoje aceita pelos historiadores diz que ele queimou documentos fazendários — especificamente esses, e não todos os documentos da escravidão — para evitar que senhores escravocratas pleiteassem indenização do Estado”, reiterou o Maurício.
Não tínhamos ideia de que essa polêmica ganharia tamanha dimensão. O dano que as fogueiras causaram a pessoas como eu, que tiveram dificultada ou impossibilitada a pesquisa sobre a origem da própria família – sequer conheço meu sobrenome original –, ou pela possibilidade de eu, e não quem era dono de meus antepassados, pedir indenização ao estado é conhecido e debatido no movimento negro há muito tempo. Não é uma tese nova e muito menos descabida. Então eu decidi escrever mais profundamente sobre isso.
Rui Barbosa é um dos nomes mais aclamados da história moderna brasileira. E não era racista. Antes disso: ele foi abolicionista, como nós dissemos em nosso quadrinho.
Mas o que estava em discussão não era toda a história de Barbosa em relação aos negros, mas sua atitude pontual de mandar queimar os documentos. Então vamos começar pelo começo.
Não há nenhum registro histórico que prove que a motivação de Rui Barbosa para queimar os arquivos tenha sido evitar que os donos de escravos pedissem indenização. Não há uma fala, um artigo, uma entrevista de Barbosa citando esse motivo. Mas eu vou falar disso logo abaixo. Antes, quero recuperar o principal registro, o oficial, sobre a motivação da queima. Aqui está o texto, na íntegra, do decreto assinado por Rui Barbosa para incinerar os papéis.
O motivo, registrado no despacho do então ministro, está ali:
“(…) destruir esses vestígios por honra da pátria e em homenagem aos deveres de fraternidade e solidariedade para com a grande massa de cidadãos que a abolição do elemento servil entraram na comunhão brasileira.”
A queima se procedeu para “honrar a pátria” e para recomeçar uma nova história em comunhão entre escravos libertos e brancos. Ou seja: vamos apagar o passado e pensar daqui para frente. Ou, como notou o jornalista Luiz Garcia no jornal O Globo em 2004, “Rui achava que a destruição dos registros salvaria a honra nacional. Em alguns anos, ninguém teria vergonha da vergonha que foi a escravidão – por ignorar que ela teria existido.” Uma legítima queima de arquivo para negar o passado. Esse é o motivo oficial e documentado.
Um dos textos mais famosos na internet sobre o assunto é do professor Arnaldo Godoy, que constrói sua narrativa a partir da biografia de Rui Barbosa. Segundo sua linha de raciocínio, um grupo de escravocratas teria pressionado a República para conseguir ressarcimento pelo fim de sua propriedade (os pretos), o que é verdade. Existiam, à época, fortes pressões para que o Brasil pagasse aos senhores de escravos pelas perdas financeiras da abolição. Assim, Rui Barbosa teria livrado o governo dessa pressão com o extermínio dos arquivos. Como não há provas documentais para sustentar a tese – e por isso Godoy usa corretamente a construção “teria como objetivo”, e não “teve como objetivo” – ele se apoia no trabalho extenso do autor Américo Jacobina Lacombe, o maior especialista brasileiro sobre Barbosa.
Lacombe defende a ideia baseado em um episódio acontecido dois anos depois da abolição, no qual Rui Barbosa negou pedido de indenização a um grupo de escravocratas que queriam do governo a criação de um banco encarregado de indenizar ex-proprietários de escravos e seus herdeiros “dos prejuízos causados pela lei de 13 de maio de 1888”. A resposta de Rui poderia ser considerada, hoje, uma verdadeira lacração: “Mais justo seria e melhor se consultaria o sentimento nacional se se pudesse descobrir meio de indenizar os ex-escravos não onerando o tesouro”.
Lacombe, que foi o histórico diretor da Casa Rui Barbosa, no entanto, não poupa o ex-ministro, e chama a queima dos arquivos de “desvario”, “espantoso ato de vandalismo” e “malefício”, em seu livro Rui Barbosa e a queima dos arquivos.
O ato, portanto, não pode, à luz de tudo o que se viu até aqui, ser lido como “abolicionista” e sim, no máximo, em defesa dos cofres públicos, já que sua intenção segundo essa linha de raciocínio seria não pagar indenizações. Mas em que isso beneficiaria os escravos? Pelo contrário: e se fossem os próprios escravos a requererem indenizações, como aconteceu nos EUA? De fato, já houve uma tentativa de indenização por parte de escravos no Brasil. Ela foi barrada.
Além disso, os senhores de escravos que faziam o forte movimento indenizatório naqueles anos tinham seus próprios documentos guardados em casa e não precisavam do estado para pedir indenizações. Já os escravizados negros, que eram objetos comprados e vendidos, esses sim dependiam dos documentos que não existem mais.
Não se pode afirmar de modo categórico, portanto, que a atitude de Barbosa tenha sido a de conter as indenizações. O que se pode afirmar é que, na prática, parte fundamental da história das famílias negras no Brasil foi incendiada. Escravos, filhos, netos e bisnetos não foram somente privados de indenizações por conta das fogueiras, mas também de sua história familiar. Foram destruídos inclusive registros de filhos nascidos livres, como está escrito no próprio decreto assinado por Rui Barbosa. Ou seja: foi negado o direito à história de quem nunca havia sido escravo.
Hoje, não conseguimos descobrir de onde as pessoas vieram e nem seus sobrenomes. São dados que estavam nos documentos e quase que exclusivamente neles, já que eram alfandegários, de registros de imóveis e de pagamentos de impostos – informações sobre uma mercadoria, que era infelizmente o que os negros eram no Brasil daquele tempo.
Um documento de penhor de escravos. Nesses registros havia informações que poderiam ajudar às famílias negras de hoje a saberem quem são e de onde vieram.
Registros históricos de vários jornais da época, no entanto, nos ajudam a lançar uma nova luz nessa acalorada discussão, abrindo espaço para uma interpretação diferente da mais aceita atualmente.
A 13º sessão ordinária do Congresso Nacional, ocorrida no dia 20 de dezembro de 1890, foi notícia na edição do dia seguinte do “Diário de Notícias” do Rio de Janeiro.
A publicação descreve uma moção apresentada para aclamar a decisão de queimar os arquivos da escravidão dizendo: “O Congresso Nacional congratula-se com o governo provisório por ter mandado fazer eliminar os últimos vestígios da escravidão no Brasil”.
Em outro trecho, a moção diz: “Saúdo em nome dos abolicionistas paulistas a Rui Barbosa, por ter ordenado a destruição do arquivo negro da escravidão”.
A queima da documentação já havia começado na manhã de sexta-feira, segundo outra publicação do jornal, assistida por uma comissão nomeada pelo então ministro da Fazenda.
A edição do dia 22 de dezembro, uma segunda-feira, volta a aplaudir a ação e traz um elemento novo que é importante para entendermos a motivação do ato, o negacionismo, em um artigo intitulado “Bello Exemplo”, que descreve os arquivos como “inúteis e infames”.
Segundo o texto, a resolução estaria livrando as futuras gerações de “todas as vergonhas que poderiam ocorrer, humilhações e insultos que surgiriam sobre algum afro-descendente”. Seria realmente uma tentativa de apagar da memória do país a escravidão para que os descendentes dos negros não ficassem marcados como descendentes de escravos. Uma atitude de negar o passado, mesmo com as melhores intenções.
Em outro trecho do mesmo texto, um cidadão se contenta com o fato de que “seus irmãos” não seriam mais difamados. Note que nesses primeiros relatos jornalísticos sobre o fato, não surge, em nenhum momento, a teoria de que a queima se daria para evitar as indenizações de escravocratas.
Logo, os chefes abolicionista de estados como Ceará, Pernambuco, São Paulo e Bahia receberam telegrama de João Fernandes Clapp, representante dos abolicionistas presente no episódio: “Salve o glorioso ministro da fazenda.”
Em 1871, a Lei do Ventre Livre surgiu como um projeto gradual de abolição. Na época ela determinava que escravos podiam utilizar seus pecúlios (o valor que o próprio negro tinha como propriedade) para a compra da alforria. Para isso foi instituído um Fundo de Emancipação cujas receitas seriam provenientes de “impostos, doações, loterias e multas impostas pela infração da própria lei”, como descreve Martha Abreu no Dicionário do Brasil Imperial.
Mas esse fundo não alterou em quase nada a realidade da escravidão brasileira. A Lei do Ventre Livre foi, na verdade, um tipo de apaziguamento para os ânimos dos abolicionistas e escravocratas. Mesmo recebendo o valor de cada escravo nascido livre, muitos fazendeiros mantiveram suas propriedades (os recém nascidos) até que eles pudessem alcançar a idade necessária para servir. Muitas crianças nascidas sobre a lei do ventre livre se tornaram escravas.
Enquanto isso, a visão de muitos no governo era a de que os escravos eram de extrema importância para a riqueza do país. Em 1887 é possível encontrar, na edição do dia 6 de abril do jornal O Paiz, um artigo que acusa instituições de crédito e o próprio Banco do Brasil de conspirar contra a causa abolicionista. Segundo o texto, os bancos impediram os fazendeiros que tinham empréstimos de libertarem seus escravos.
Mesmo entre os abolicionistas, havia uma leve divisão que considerava alguns nomes como extremistas e outros como moderados. Essa divisão se dava exatamente na visão de que os ex-escravos deveriam receber alguma compensação pela sua condição passada. Vários cálculos de quanto deveria ser essa reparação surgiram à época.
Nem todos os abolicionistas colocavam os desejos e a vida dos negros no primeiro plano da discussão. Várias personalidades estavam interessados em evitar uma catástrofe econômica – os negros tinham valor monetário, abrir mão desse valor poderia causar um colapso econômico, por isso esse grupo defendia a abolição gradual. Eram, portanto, abolicionistas moderados, que, além de evitar traumas para as bases financeiras do país, também nutriam um medo de um colapso social da sociedade branca como aconteceu na revolução do Haiti no final do século XVIII, quando os negros se revoltaram e tomaram o poder do país.
Um dos maiores abolicionistas brasileiros, Joaquim Nabuco, era considerado abolicionista moderado, tentava sempre equilibrar a questão humanitária com a questão financeira do país, conforme relato do Jornal do Comércio em 1885. Nabuco era muito preocupado com a integração dos negros na sociedade – enquanto deputado, chegou a colocar em votação um projeto de lei que previa a abolição da escravidão até 1890, com a fundação de colônias para os libertos.
Do lado radical ou extremista da abolição tínhamos nomes como José do Patrocínio e Luís Gama, que exigiam um final imediato de todos os cativos. Alguns de seus planos considerava um imposto sobre fazendas improdutivas e distribuição das terras.
Esses nomes que defendiam a abolição de forma mais intensa e com maior integração dos negros à sociedade brasileira não conseguiram a reeleição para um segundo mandato e, com isso, seus planos para recompensar os negros fracassaram. Só os “abolicionistas moderados”, que mantinham certa convivência com os ideais escravocratas, compreensíveis à época, sobraram no governo.
Nesse mesmo ano, uma nova versão do Hino da Proclamação da República deixava claro o sentimento dominante na época. Seus versos afirmavam: “nós nem cremos que escravos outrora, Tenha havido em tão nobre país…”. Como se a queima dos documentos apagasse a vergonha e a memória popular da escravidão.
Obviamente todo o peso desse projeto de apagamento histórico não foi causado, exclusivamente, por Rui Barbosa. Mas, apesar de ser amigo de muitos abolicionistas e ter defendido projetos para a evolução da causa no país, a determinação da queima dos registros da escravidão trabalhou para favorecer o negacionismo.
Até 1940, ainda era possível encontrar em jornais brasileiros o apagamento da escravidão como principal motivação das fogueiras. O Correio da Manhã daquele ano apresenta um texto que reforça essa visão. O jornal defende que a intenção era “que não se dissesse jamais ter havido, em algum tempo, no paiz, a mácula do captiveiro”, chamando a queima de “romântica ou ingênua”.
A versão em que aparecem os escravocratas exigindo indenizações como motivador principal do ministro Rui Barbosa para mandar queimar os documentos da escravidão só aparece em citações a partir da década de 1970. Mais precisamente no Anuário do Museu Imperial em 1976.
Entre outras hipóteses levantadas nesse anuário, argumenta-se a necessidade de uma pesquisa para saber se a queima foi executada mesmo em todas repartições públicas.
É impossível saber o que se passava na mente de Rui Barbosa, tampouco dizer que ele foi o responsável pelo tratamento que a escravidão teve no imaginário popular brasileiro depois das fogueiras. Mas me parece bem possível defender a tese de que suas ações fizeram parte de um plano da República, e que respondeu a um anseio de uma das sociedades mais escravocratas do mundo depois da Roma Antiga, para causar uma amnésia coletiva sobre a escravidão no país, e negar nossa história e nosso passado.
The post Escrevi um quadrinho sobre racismo e Rui Barbosa e o mundo caiu na minha cabeça appeared first on The Intercept.
Illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept
The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine founded in 1995 by William Kristol and Fred Barnes with Rupert Murdoch’s money, has expired. Its final issue will be published on Monday.
Most famous for making the case for the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, the magazine was born just one year before Murdoch created Fox News. Both outlets were extremely effective at achieving the same goals via different tactics. Fox was chum for the rubes; the Weekly Standard was chum for Ivy League rubes. Fox pushed mindless belligerence, conspiracism and a deep hatred for reality; the Weekly Standard did the same thing, but with less cleavage and more quotes from Cicero. (In 2009 Murdoch sold it to Philip Anschutz, a fellow billionaire who if anything is more conservative than Murdoch.)
Put another way, Fox was the conservative movement’s amygdala, while the Weekly Standard was its cerebrum, both driving it forward until Trump’s election proved it no longer needed any higher brain functions. But together they played a powerful role in pushing the GOP to where it stands today.
Nonetheless, the Weekly Standard’s death has brought murmurs of ambivalent grief from more reputable corners of the media. The Atlantic says “‘The Weekly Standard’ Is Ending on a High Note.” According to Slate, “The Weekly Standard’s Dismantling Is Terrible News for Conservatism and Journalism.”
But ignore this. Anyone rational will dance joyously on the Weekly Standard’s grave. Yes, in this media climate it’s distressing to see any journalistic institution collapse, even ones that got Iraq completely wrong. Fortunately, the Weekly Standard was not a journalistic institution. To understand this, look at this list of all the huge stories broken by its intrepid reporters:
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And while it’s true that the Weekly Standard provided a perch for some #NeverTrumpers, there’s no reason to believe that if it had survived it would have somehow generated a rebirth of non-Trump conservativism. This is because, in the three years since Trump burst into American politics like an infected cyst, #NeverTrumpers have accomplished exactly nothing in this area.
More importantly, as demonstrated by the ten atrocious articles below from the Weekly Standard’s 23 years, no one should want the magazine’s vicious ideology within a million miles of American politics. If the only paths forward for conservatism are Trump’s and the Weekly Standard’s, then Americans need to smother conservatism as quickly as possible.
So RIP Weekly Standard, 1995-2018. As difficult as this moment must be for all who cared about it, they can take solace in the fact that many publications have been repeatedly wrong, and even humiliatingly ridiculous — but almost no other magazine can be as certain that they truly affected the world by making it far, far worse.
1. “The Collapse of the Dream Palaces” by David Brooks, 2003The top four places on this list rightfully belong to the Weekly Standard’s voluble case for, and defense of, the Iraq War. And this David Brooks article is unquestionably the most horrifying of them all.
From the Weekly Standard’s April 28, 2003 issue — that is, a month after the U.S. invasion of Iraq — this may simultaneously be the worst, funniest, and most terrifying writing ever published in the English language. For instance, its opening paragraph includes the phrase, “Now that the war in Iraq is over.” You must read it for yourself; it cannot be explained, only experienced.
What you may find is that it makes you feel as though a sweaty, middle-aged man is pointing a gun at you and fervently explaining that people like you who wear red shirts are human scum and you, all of you, are about to get what’s coming to you, at last. Then you look down and notice you are not wearing a red shirt, but the man with the gun is.
When you’re finished reading the piece, remember that this was published just five months before the New York Times hired David Brooks as an op-ed writer. In other words, the Times saw this gibbering, so disconnected from reality it is functionally insane, and thought: This is exactly who we want explaining the world to our readers.
2. “What to Do About Iraq” by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, 2002“The Iraqi threat is enormous,” Robert Kagan and William Kristol wrote at the beginning of 2002. “It gets bigger with every day that passes. … If too many months go by without a decision to move against Saddam, the risks to the United States may increase exponentially.” Say what you will with your 20/20 hindsight, you can’t deny they totally called this.
“We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question. If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced.” Ha ha, those wimps!
“We know … that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September 11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center. … There is no debate about the facts.” Once again, they were 100 percent right.
As the writer John Lingan observed on Friday, “The war in Iraq outlasted the Weekly Standard.”
3. “Case Closed” by Stephen F. Hayes, 2004Stephen Hayes, the Weekly Standard’s second and final editor after William Kristol, is uncannily similar to the reporter character W.W. Beauchamp in the Clint Eastwood movie “Unforgiven.” Like Beauchamp, Hayes is deeply interested in men with guns, and loves to follow them around and carefully write down what they tell him.
Hayes spent years trying to prove that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were collaborators. “Case Closed” is a perfect example of his work, in that Hayes successfully demonstrates two things: (1) Iraq had fewer ties to al Qaeda than any other Gulf state, and (2) he is the world’s most gullible human being. Here Hayes faithfully scribbled down the pensées of Douglas J. Feith, then Undersecretary of Defense, and known at the Pentagon as “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”
4. “The Bumpy Road to Democracy in Iraq” by Fred Barnes, 2004“Operation Iraqi Freedom has gained impressive momentum,” Barnes told us when he ventured to Baghdad a year after the Iraq War began. But like so many of history’s pith-helmeted white people, Barnes was concerned by the recalcitrance of the dusky natives.
Iraqis, wrote Barnes, “need an attitude adjustment … Iraqis are difficult to deal with. They’re sullen and suspicious and conspiracy-minded. … Papers obsess on the subject of brutal treatment of innocent Iraqis by American soldiers.” But Barnes knew Iraqis were being treated well by U.S. troops, because the troops were super-nice to him.
Barnes concluded by saying that he wanted to see Iraqis demonstrate “an outbreak of gratitude for the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.” Although Barnes didn’t mention it, it was impressive that we’d broken the record America set during the Vietnam War, which, as the editor of U.S. News & World Report put it in 1966, was “the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witnessed in our times.”
5. “Breaking the Climate Spell” by Rupert Darwell, 2017The Weekly Standard has published dozens upon dozens of articles ridiculing anyone who believes climate change is real and a serious problem. But perhaps their best work on the subject is this piece by Rupert Darwell, author of the book “Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex.” I haven’t read this tome, but I think we can be sure it reveals that the Nazis were actually socialists. It’s right there in their name!
In any case, this particular Darwell article is about how smart Trump was to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change accord. “Trump is breaking the spell of inevitability of the transition to renewable energy,” Darwell writes excitedly. “The impression of irresistible momentum has been one of the most potent tools in enforcing compliance with the climate catechism. Like socialism, the clean-energy transition will fail because it doesn’t work.” Don’t get mad, snowflakes, that’s just science.
6. “Campus Disrupter” by Naomi Schaefer Riley, 2018It’s hard to remember in the age of Trump, but conservatives used to be fixated on the fear that American universities were no longer teaching the classics of Western civilization. This article is one of several of this type published by the Weekly Standard.
Whatever the merits of the Western classics, read this from Book II, Chapter XXXI of Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy.” Then think about the Iraq War and ask yourself whether William Kristol, who has a Harvard Ph.D. in government, has ever actually read these old books:
“It ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country … such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yourself … A Prince, therefore, ought to go slowly in undertaking an enterprise upon the representations of an exile, for most of the times he will be left either with shame or very grave injury.”
7. “Are Syria’s Chemical Weapons Iraq’s Missing WMD? Obama’s Director of Intelligence Thought So” by Mark Hemingway, 2017It was inevitable that someone on the right would be stupid enough to write this, and the Weekly Standard would be the magazine stupid enough to publish it.
First Mark Hemingway notes that in 2003 James Clapper, who later became Director of National Intelligence under Obama, bloviated about how we weren’t finding any chemical weapons in Iraq because they’d probably been moved to Syria. But Iraq wouldn’t have had any incentive to do this. Even if they’d been hiding chemical weapons, they’re easy to make, and it would have been far simpler to just dump them and then manufacture more when the coast was clear. And Syria had no incentive to do this since it already had huge quantities of its own chemical weapons, and taking in Iraq’s would have invited its own destruction. Most importantly, the CIA spent $1 billion investigating Iraq’s WMD programs, and found no evidence this happened. In fact, the CIA determined, “Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.” [Emphasis in original.] Thus what Clapper’s words indicate is not that Iraqi chemical weapons were moved to Syria, but that Clapper had no idea what he was talking about.
Then Hemingway learnedly explained that while “it was largely downplayed by the media, American troops in Iraq also stumbled across caches of chemical weapons.” Doesn’t this suggest that Bush was right and some of them might have ended up in Syria? No. What Hemingway doesn’t mention is the other people who downplay this: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. That is because his theory is so, so stupid. (Anyone curious can read about the whole dumb issue here.)
8. “The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage,” by Sam Schulman, 2009Here Sam Schulman first expresses amazement at the rapidity with “which gays have attained the right to hold jobs — even as teachers and members of the clergy,” and explains “all these rights … have made gays not just ‘free’ but our neighbors.” (In the past all LGBT Americans were apparently sequestered away in underground caverns.) Also, the only reason for marriage is “protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex.”
Then Schulman frets that gay marriage will obviously lead to brothers marrying brothers and fathers marrying sons. But on the other hand, he’s concerned that unmarried gay sex won’t face greater social sanction than married gay sex, and plaintively asks “without social disapproval of unmarried sex — what kind of madman would seek marriage?” The upshot is that after the initial excitement of gay incest marriage, all the gay Americans will realize marriage is pointless and will stop getting married; this will cause marriage of all genres to collapse (?); and human society will evaporate.
9. “He Was Honest, Eventually” by the Scrapbook, 2018On its surface this is simply a banal unsigned post on a Weekly Standard blog about Barack Obama and Medicare for All. But it deserves recognition because it was published just as it was revealed that Facebook had chosen the Weekly Standard as one of five U.S. publications to which it would outsource factchecking. Hence the magazine showed real moxie here by managing to make three glaring factual errors in two sentences.
First, Medicare would not entail “the full-on nationalization of the health-care industry.” Rather, it would entail nationalization of much of the healthcare insurance industry. Anyone who doesn’t understand the difference doesn’t understand this issue at all.
Second, Medicare is not “America’s most expensive and worst-run health-care program.” Medicare is by no means expensive. The Weekly Standard knows this because, when it’s found it useful, it’s argued that Medicare isn’t expensive enough – i.e., that Medicare for All wouldn’t work because Medicare’s reimbursement rates are too low. Also, people covered by Medicare like it more than those with private insurance.
Third, if Medicare for All were to cost “$32 trillion” over the next ten years, that wouldn’t make it “a plan that’s not remotely affordable for a nation with the budgetary obligations of the United States.” In fact, at $32 trillion, Medicare for All would lower total U.S. healthcare spending. So if you’re worried about America’s “budgetary obligations,” Medicare for All is the way to go.
Presumably the Weekly Standard notified Facebook of the inaccuracies in this article so that Facebook can cut off all traffic to it.
10. “Going Soft on Iran” by Reuel Marc Gerecht, 2004The Weekly Standard quickly became the most strident voice for neoconservatism in the U.S. And as we know, there’s nothing neoconservatives care about more than democracy. In this article, former CIA case officer Reuel Marc Gerecht writes of his yearning for Iranians to experience it. If you want to read more about how much the Weekly Standard supports democracy in Iran, well, there’s a lot there for you.
Some people ask why the neoconservatives who care so much about democracy in Iran don’t seem to get upset about attacks on democracy here in America, things they could do something about, like voter suppression. Or why the Bush administration’s neoconservatives tried to stage a coup to overturn the results of a democratic Palestinian election. Or why the neoconservatives in the Reagan administration supported death squads in Central America. Or why the proto-neoconservatives in the 1950s cared so much about democracy in China yet didn’t care at all about the civil rights movement in the U.S.
Ignore these cynics and the “evidence” they cite about the “actions” of the neoconservatives. The Weekly Standard expressed their love for democracy not with boring old actions but with what truly matters: words. That settles that.
Honorable Mention. Self-Flattering Quote by Anonymous Weekly Standard Minion, 2018This isn’t an article, but deserves to be included here due to its timeless, crystalline beauty: According to a nameless Weekly Standard staffer, the magazine’s original masthead constituted “one of the greatest collections of writerly talent ever put together outside the New Yorker.”
What makes this so perfect is that it shows the Weekly Standard training its keen power of observation upon itself. Just as Iraq was transformed in the magazine’s imagination from a ruined shell of a nation into a mighty, terrifying threat to all humanity, Tucker Carlson, John Podhoretz and Charles Krauthammer somehow become James Thurber, Dorothy Parker and E.B. White. No matter the subject, the Weekly Standard assessed it with the exact same hubris, blindness, and lunatic hyperbole.
The post The 10 Most Appalling Articles in the Weekly Standard’s Short and Dreadful Life appeared first on The Intercept.
Eric and his wife, Oneida, took turns pushing a stroller and carrying or walking next to their two sons for nearly 2,500 miles, from southern Mexico to Tijuana. The Honduran couple and their boys, 9-year-old Kelvin and 18-month-old Julian, arrived in mid-November, shortly before winter rainstorms soaked the camps of thousands of people who have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of refugee caravans in the last few months.
After sewage-infested flooding left an earlier camp uninhabitable, Eric and his family roughed it for 10 days in a small cluster of tents under a damp concrete overpass between two busy streets, a spot that also occasionally flooded. I found them just a couple hundred yards from the El Chaparral port of entry, one of the cross-border bridges that leads to the United States. Safety and a new chance at life seemed tantalizingly close, even as despondency and the damp Tijuana winter seeped into their tent.
Throughout the city, there are now an estimated 28 shelters housing approximately 4,000 members of the caravans, who are enduring hunger, unsanitary conditions, and anxiety about their fates as the Trump administration slashes options for asylum-seekers. Without easy access to bathrooms, water bottles filled with urine are stashed against walls and behind tents. Islands of trash swirl in puddles; sopping blankets and water-pulped cardboard pile up in corners. The refugees work to sweep up and clean, but struggle against the constant flux, the rains, and the cold. One day as I spoke with Eric, a driver passed by and yelled, “Go back to your country, faggots!” The insult was typical. A strip club sat about a dozen yards from the family’s tent, and on nights when it was open, the patrons sometimes mocked and cursed at them.
Each day around 7 a.m., a couple hundred people idle near the bridge, awaiting the morning call of the now infamous “notebook” — a makeshift response to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s practice of “metering,” in which they let only a few dozen people each day into the U.S. port of entry to request asylum. A committee of refugees manages the list, overseen by Mexican immigration officials who are informed each morning by CBP how many asylum-seekers may present their claims. Eric’s number was in the 1,500s, and he estimated that he’d have to wait at least another month before his number might be called. On November 29, a group of mothers began a hunger strike, demanding that CBP permit at least 300 people a day to stake their claims. Eric and Oneida joined the strikers two days later (to protect their security and privacy, The Intercept is using pseudonyms for the family.)
As we sat at a folding table set up in the street, which served as the hunger strikers’ headquarters, I asked Eric why he had left his home in Honduras, about his experience with the caravan, and why he’d joined the strike.
Photo: Tracie Williams for The Intercept
“I worked in Danlí selling fruit, bags of strawberries, grapes, watermelon,” Eric began. “I cut it up and sold it. I had a cart and I would walk from neighborhood to neighborhood. But because of the crime, the gangs, I had to leave my business. They wanted taxes. If you enter into a neighborhood, you have to pay. I had to pay 25 lempiras [about a dollar] to enter into a neighborhood, but in some neighborhoods, there were three different competing gangs, and I had to pay 75 lempiras. I’d make about 200 lempiras a day, so almost half went to them.
It’s pretty dangerous, you can’t avoid paying. All you can do is stop negotiating and stop working. But if you stop working, you can’t eat, and you can’t raise your kids. And with the 200, maybe 300 [lempiras], I had to take care of my family. I had to buy shoes for my kid. My son was going to school. So maybe I could eat, but how am I going to buy clothes, buy shoes for my sons? My kids need medicine. If one of them gets sick …”
The family decided to move, selling much of what they owned — the fruit cart, some furniture, their pig — and relocating to a neighboring state, where Eric found work clearing land for coffee growers. Oneida sold French fries at local fairs. One night, Oneida was kidnapped as she was leaving work, taken to the home of a local narco, and raped. When she didn’t come home, Eric called the police, suspecting the worst. The next morning, the police located Oneida (her kidnapper had been harassing her and was the first person Eric had suspected) and she was able to escape. “It changes you forever,” Oneida said. “There are scars you have inside. You try to live with it and try not to remember, so you can be at peace.” After her testimony led to a conviction, gang members began hounding the family, pressuring Oneida to retract her statement. It got bad enough that they soon had to flee again, this time to the capital, Tegucigalpa. But that didn’t prove far enough, Eric said.
“We never felt good in Mexico where we were. We never felt safe. So I told my wife, the caravan is coming, it’s time to go.”“They found us. They started calling again to get us to retract the charges. They were going to give us 60,000 lempiras. They started talking to us, and then they started calling my dad, who was living with us in Tegucigalpa. My dad told them, ‘You can’t buy someone’s dignity with money. It’s with respect.’ And that’s when they said, ‘OK, this is when we stop playing nice, and we start playing mean.’ That’s when they started threatening us, telling us they had found us. They knew where our family lived. And where we were from. And if they didn’t get us, they were going to get our brothers and sisters, our parents. So we decided to flee to Mexico. We moved to Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas. The situation there is pretty difficult because the Guatemalan gangs are there, and so are the narcos.”
Photo: Tracie Williams for The Intercept
The narcos who had been harassing them back in Honduras originally showed up at Eric’s mother-in-law’s house: “They came in a truck, the same ones who kidnapped her [Oneida]. They have contacts everywhere. They were asking where we were. And they were asking our neighbors, wanting to pay them off. And so, this is like six months ago. … I was working in an egg warehouse, where you inspect and sell eggs wholesale. So we thought to move again, maybe outside the city. So we moved to La Libertad, another part of Ciudad Hidalgo. And then we saw that the caravan was coming, and I said to my wife, ‘Look, we have an opportunity now to go further north where they can’t find us.’ And it’s safer to go with the caravan, because we all know that in Mexico, it’s hard for Central Americans to go further north than Tapachula [in Chiapas]. We never felt good in Mexico where we were. We never felt safe. So I told my wife, the caravan is coming, it’s time to go.”
Traveling with the caravan, Eric said, “some people were generous and offered us rides. I’d say we walked about halfway and rode halfway. Some days, we walked all day. Some men came by themselves, without kids or wives, and when a car would stop, they would get on and there wouldn’t be enough space for me and my kids. There were times when they left everyone but us. We wanted to follow the caravan, but sometimes they left us behind. They’d jump on the trucks, and there wasn’t room for us, and we would be by ourselves. Night would come on and we’d look for a spot in the woods where nobody could find us, because there are always bad people. There were some really long walks, and so we’d hide in the mountains, by ourselves. Because we couldn’t keep walking at night, we were scared we’d get kidnapped. We didn’t have a tent or anything, just some blankets.”
Photo: Tracie Williams for The Intercept
Eric had first heard about the caravan on TV while the family was in Chiapas.
“I would work from six in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. They paid me 1,000 pesos a week [a little under $50] to work seven days a week. So at night, I’d watch this secondhand TV we had. We didn’t have cable, but we had a little antenna and watched Guatemalan TV, and I said, ‘Look, the Honduran caravan is coming, it’s time to get out of here. Time to go.’ We left because of our kids, we really love them. I don’t want something to happen to me and for our kids to be abandoned. So let’s go, I said. So the caravan passed through Tecún Uman [on the border between Guatemala and Chiapas] and that’s where we joined. We sometimes put both our kids in that stroller or my wife would carry the littlest one, and that’s how we did it. It was pretty difficult because we didn’t have any money.
I went to my boss, before we left, who was the municipal president, and I said, ‘Boss, honestly …,’ OK, I lied to her, I said that I was sick, because otherwise she wasn’t going to pay me. So she paid me just for the days that I worked that week. She gave me 492 pesos. I bought a bag of dried milk that cost 72 pesos, and we bought some diapers for 30 pesos, and we packed the milk and some sugar, and we had about 200 pesos left.
In the morning, we’d get up and start walking again. I remember when we got to Juchitán [in Oaxaca], we started asking for money, with my wife and kids, and we got about 400 pesos. The Mexicans were nice to us. Then a truck trailer passed and offered us a ride for 500 pesos each, and I said, OK, but I don’t have it. I told him we had 452 pesos. And finally he did take us, he gave us a ride to Puebla, outside of Mexico City, and then we got to Mexico City at like 11 at night, and it was so cold. … It was freezing, we were sleeping outside in the city. I couldn’t sleep at night, because of my wife and kids with me. I was always looking over them, but during the day, sometimes I could sleep a little. It was a lot of suffering, but sometimes we laughed.”
Photo: Tracie Williams for The Intercept
When Eric joined the hunger strike, there were about 25 people involved. The strike, he said, was “to pressure the U.S. to start hearing asylum claims more quickly.”
“We need asylum,” he continued. “We don’t want to be sent back to our country. We need it. We don’t want them to kill us. In Honduras, you never forget. Revenge is revenge. They’d just disappear us. That’s what happens if you have an enemy. We’re just working people. I’ve sold bread, I’ve cleared land, I’ve taken care of animals, and sometimes I wonder, why did this happen to us? If I’m in Honduras, if I can earn enough for my eggs, my tortilla, my rice, I’m happy. But why did this happen to us? Sometimes I ask my wife, Why us? I’m happy living in a small hut, selling fruit. But like they say, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Horrible things happen — it’s the law of life.
“We’re not criminals, we’re not gangsters or thieves. No, we want to cross the bridge and we want them to hear our claims.”It’s bad luck. I think we’ve had bad luck. Because like I say, poverty doesn’t exist for me. As long as you can earn your rice and beans, you can be happy. But then the injustice, the danger, people want to kill you — that’s bad luck. Maybe we’ll never even see our family again. My aunts and uncles, my grandmother is very old and you know. My brothers. My mother, my father, we’ve all been affected.
We’re not criminals, we’re not gangsters or thieves. No, we want to cross the bridge and we want them to hear our claims. If I were a criminal, if my wife was a criminal, if we were all criminals here, we’d be trying to do something else, but we just want them to listen to us. We want to come in legally, so they can hear our claims. I think it’s possible. With the help of God, I think it’s possible.”
When we spoke, Eric had already been fasting for three days. “Just electrolytes and water. I feel bad. I get tired. The hunger is … you have to bear it. You get used to it. Some people haven’t eaten in five days.”
It started raining again during the strike. Outside of one camp, an old baseball stadium called Benito Juárez, men and women dashed to scavenge for whatever scraps of plastic or waterproof material they could find. Parents hugged their children, trying to shelter them from the pounding rain and rising puddles. UNICEF came to deliver supplies, but their truck was full of toys and hula-hoops.
After five days, Eric decided to eat. He wasn’t feeling well and was worried about losing strength for his family. Oneida had stopped the strike the night before. Others continued, and the strikers planned to go forward in shifts of five days without food. Conditions in the camp were rough — the night that Eric broke his fast, a rat bit his youngest son’s hand as the family slept in their tent.
“We made a little lean-to, but it was freezing, and then the storm came and everything flooded, everything was wet, our clothes, we were so cold.”“Before, we were in the Benito Juárez stadium. At first it was nice, but then the storms came, and the water, and everything flooded. We didn’t have a tent. Then some man came and gave us a tent. He saw us outside, we had wet blankets, and we made a little lean-to, but it was freezing, and then the storm came and everything flooded, everything was wet, our clothes, we were so cold. We didn’t have anything else to put on. The water was up to our knees, the camp was evacuated, and they wanted to take us to the Barretal [another refugee camp]. It’s further, but we heard about the strike, and we didn’t want to go farther away from the border.
So we’re here, we’ve been here 15 days, and I’ve been trying to get a work permit, but they’re not giving it to me. And, honestly, I’ve been looking for work anyway, but they ask for my papers. I heard that there was a job fair, and I went, and they said they were going to give out permits, and we kept going and going, but we never got the permit, and I got tired of going for nothing. And at all the construction sites, they always ask for your papers. I say, ‘I’m looking for work, I need something to support my wife and kids, and I don’t want to be in the street, I want to rent a room.’ ‘Do you have papers?’ they ask me.”
Tracie Williams for The Intercept
After nearly two weeks, the hunger strikers’ situation seemed increasingly precarious. Rumors circulated that the police were going take down the strikers’ camp, and they began to realize that their demands were being wholly ignored. Eric and Oneida decided to stop, and the strike ended two days later, on December 11, with a march to the U.S. Consulate. The family lugged their belongings and pushed the stroller across the city to a small hotel; they had been gifted a room for two nights. About a week later, I got a call from Oneida. Like many others, the family had run out of patience and jumped the border fence to turn themselves in and ask for asylum. Oneida and the children were being held in detention in San Diego; Eric had been separated from them.
As nonprofit groups have mobilized on both sides of the wall to provide legal and other basic services to families like Eric’s, the sheer number of people and variety of needs seems overwhelming. Yet, when the clouds break, the mood in the camps is often cheerful: kids playing, folks kicking around soccer balls, people repairing their tents, and ubiquitous huddles of three, four, or five migrants in which rumors, plans, fears, and hopes run together like water.
At one point, while the family was still camped out under the bridge, Eric and Oneida’s 9-year-old son pointed to the buildings visible on the U.S. side of the border and said that he had never imagined he would be there, so close to the U.S. I asked him why he thought some people could cross and others couldn’t. “I think it’s bad,” he said, “because God made a world without borders and they put up bars.”
The post A Family Braves Floods, Rats, and Hunger in Tijuana as They Wait for a Chance to Ask for Asylum appeared first on The Intercept.
A pro-Israel activist group is quietly pushing lawmakers on Capitol Hill and key officials in the White House to embrace a plan that would entail paying Palestinian residents in the West Bank to move abroad. The plan is a bid to reshape the ethnic and religious population of territories controlled by Israel, according to the head of the group, called the Alliance for Israel Advocacy.
If all goes according to the group’s plan, legislation will be released in January, when the new Congress convenes, that will redirect U.S. funds once dedicated to the United Nations for Palestinian humanitarian assistance into a voucher program administered by the Israeli government. A draft summary of the proposal states that the money will help finance the permanent relocation of Palestinians from the West Bank to countries such as Turkey, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, or the United States.
The effort is being championed by the Alliance for Israel Advocacy, a lobbying group formed by the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, a nonprofit that represents Jews who have converted to Christianity but who still practice some Jewish customs. The so-called Messianic Jews broadly share many spiritual beliefs of modern born-again evangelicals.
The Intercept was unable to confirm the Alliance for Israel Advocacy’s accounts of its meetings with Congress and the White House, and the lawmakers whom the group said were considering sponsorship of its legislative effort declined to comment on this story. But Paul Liberman, the executive director of the Alliance for Israel Advocacy, explained the policy plan — and his account of the lobbying push — in an extensive interview with The Intercept.
“If there are any Palestinian residents who wish to leave, we will provide funds for you to leave, with the hopes that over 10 years to change the demography of the West Bank towards an eventual annexation.”“Our organization advocates, and it’s in our proposed legislation, we say, let’s offer sponsorship if there are any Palestinian residents who wish to leave and go to other countries, we will provide funds for you to leave,” said Liberman. “The only rights the Palestinians have are squatter’s rights,” Liberman continued. “If there are any Palestinian residents who wish to leave, we will provide funds for you to leave, with the hopes that over 10 years to change the demography of the West Bank towards an eventual annexation.”
Liberman said he was inspired by the Bible to build a single Jewish state in what is often called Greater Israel. His organization believes that most Palestinians must leave the country and that those who remain should “live under the doctrine of the sojourner,” according to Liberman, meaning they would not have the ability to vote and could “not participate in the sovereignty of the land.”
The Alliance for Israel Advocacy has avoided the spotlight while quietly soliciting backing from high-level officials, including conservative Republicans, evangelical leaders, and Israeli officials. When Liberman spoke to The Intercept, he was pitching the plan at the Council for National Policy, a gathering of high-powered donors and activists of the religious right. The closely guarded private event featured Nikki Haley, then the United Nations ambassador.
In the 2018 book “Trump Aftershock: The President’s Seismic Impact on Culture and Faith in America,” the Christian right author Stephen Strang, who chronicled the relationship between Trump and evangelicals, said Liberman has presented the Alliance for Israel Advocacy proposal at the White House. Strang wrote, “Liberman has been invited to three meetings at the White House to discuss their bold and viable plan.”
A summary of the legislation proposed by Liberman has been floated to several congressional offices, according to his account. The bill will propose that the money the U.S. typically budgets for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency fund — the agency that distributes aid to Palestinian refugees, the Palestinian Authority, relief nonprofits, and families living in the West Bank — would instead go into a fund designated to resettle Palestinians in countries all over the world. In 2017, the U.S. provided $364 million to UNWRA, though the funding ended in August of this year when President Donald Trump abruptly stopped the payments.
Human rights organizations were surprised to hear of the Alliance for Israel Advocacy’s proposal and quickly condemned the effort.
“Any reallocation of US funding from aid given to the UN for humanitarian work towards a voucher system set up to encourage Palestinians to leave their homes would represent support by the U.S. for ethnic cleansing,” Mike Merryman-Lotze, the Middle East Program Director for the American Friends Service Committee, wrote in an email in response to a summary of the Alliance for Israel Advocacy proposal.
“Any reallocation of US funding from aid given to the UN for humanitarian work towards a voucher system set up to encourage Palestinians to leave their homes would represent support by the U.S. for ethnic cleansing.”Debra Shushan, the director of policy at the group Americans for Peace Now, said that under normal circumstances, any such proposal would never gain traction and would be viewed as comically extreme. But in the Trump era, once unthinkable demands have quickly become policy on Israel and Palestine, leaving Shushan concerned that the Alliance for Israel Advocacy proposal might be more than just a fringe idea.
“A plan to redirect U.S. foreign aid from supporting Palestinian refugees through UNRWA to paying Palestinians to leave the West Bank so that Israel’s own radical religious right can annex the occupied territory is morally outrageous and destined to fail,” said Shusan, adding that her organization would oppose the effort.
The Alliance for Israel Advocacy may appear obscure, but the group boasts high-level contacts throughout the Trump administration. Liberman said he has met with key administration figures, including Tom Rose, a close adviser to Vice President Mike Pence; Jason Greenblatt, the president’s chief adviser on issues pertaining to Israel; and Victoria Coates, an official with the National Security Council, among others. (The White House did not respond to requests for comment on whether any administration officials met with Liberman or his group.)
Behind the scenes, Lieberman told The Intercept, the Alliance for Israel Advocacy has nudged the administration in the direction of the overall plan for reshaping U.S. aid to Palestinians. Liberman said his group was instrumental in passing the Taylor Force Act, signed in March of this year. Critics say the law, which conditions American aid to the Palestinian Authority on ending the practice of providing financial assistance to the families of individuals who commit acts of terrorism, could be used to punish any dissent to the occupation. The Alliance for Israel Advocacy also lobbied on Trump’s recent decision to end UNWRA funding.
Public records show that the Alliance for Israel Advocacy retained the services of Fidelis Government Relations, a lobbying firm that employs Bill Smith, one of Pence’s closest former aides and his former chief of staff. The disclosures state that the firm was hired by the Alliance for Israel Advocacy in order to build relationships with the White House, including with the vice president’s office.
Originally, according to Liberman, the Alliance for Israel Advocacy had worked closely with former Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a committed Christian conservative and founding member of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, to sponsor the voucher legislation. But Franks resigned late last year, immediately following the revelation that he had urged one of his congressional staffers to serve as a surrogate mother to bear children for him. The next potential sponsor, according to Liberman’s account, was Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., who lost in November to Democrat Kendra Horn in one of the biggest surprise upsets of the midterm elections.
Liberman recently visited Capitol Hill in search of a new sponsor for his bill. In an update for Alliance for Israel Advocacy members, Liberman noted that he met repeatedly with Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, who is open to sponsoring the legislation, though he will first “confer with his counterpart in the Knesset called the ‘Israel Victory Caucus.'” Other potential sponsors include Reps. Ted Budd, R-N.C.; John Moolenaar, R-Mich.; Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.; John Curtis, R-Utah; Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo.; and Daniel Webster, R-Fla.
The Trump administration has maintained unusually strong ties to figures in the Messianic Jewish movement. Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney, converted from Reform Judaism to Christianity while attending Atlanta Baptist College, and later built a career as a fiery defender of Jews for Jesus and other likeminded Christian organizations. In October, Loren Jacobs, the leader of a Messianic Jewish congregation, gave the opening prayer at a rally in Michigan headlined by Pence. During his remarks, Jacobs prayed for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, sparking a minor controversy given the contentious relationship between the American Jewish community and the Messianic Jewish movement.
Adherents of Messianic Judaism are often viewed skeptically across the spectrum of more established strains of Judaism — and by the Israeli government, which views Messianic Jews as Christians, not Jews, for the purposes of Jewish immigration rights in Israel. The Alliance for Israel Advocacy’s religious status, however, has not prevented the group from making some inroads with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Liberman said he has met with several leaders in the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, including Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior figure in the Likud Party. (Strang also reported the meeting between Hanegbi and Liberman.) Hanegbi directed Lieberman to meet with Naftali Bennett, the chair of the hard-right party Israel Home, a partner in Likud’s coalition. Bennett, said Liberman, encouraged him to meet with Israel Home Knesset Member Moti Yogev, the chair of the Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria, which oversees the occupied West Bank. Liberman said he secured explicit support from Yogev for the Alliance for Israel Advocacy’s voucher plan.
Yogev made headlines in recent months for demanding that Palestinian Israeli lawmakers leave Israel. “Even Ramallah will be part of Israel. Go to Paris, go to Britain, go to your anti-Semitic friends, go to whomever you want. Your place is in the departure lounge,” Yogev thundered during a confrontation that occurred at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in September. The Knesset member has previously sponsored bills to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including the city of Ariel, Gush Etzion, and others. (Yogev did not respond to a request for comment about his work with the Alliance for Israel Advocacy.)
During the interview with The Intercept, Liberman recounted his own religious awakening. Once a committed Orthodox Jew working in the Nixon administration as an agency liaison to Capitol Hill, Liberman said he had an encounter with an individual on a bus who urged him to explore Christian spirituality. That experience led him to re-examine the Torah and eventually view Jesus Christ as a messiah figure consistent with prophecies in his own faith.
Liberman founded a Messianic Jewish congregation in the Washington, D.C., area and today leads a congregation located in Palm Springs, California. He has long agitated for the Messianic Jewish cause, building relationships with major Jewish organizations and evangelicals.
With the unorthodox dynamics influencing Trump, Liberman believes a more low-key approach can get results on his plan.That lobbying experience has helped him craft the voucher proposal. “The usual approach is to create a public relations campaign and influence the public,” said Liberman. But with this idea and the unorthodox dynamics influencing Trump, he believes a more low-key approach can get better results. Once there is public support from either the administration or the Israeli government for the voucher plan, Lieberman said, major Jewish advocacy groups will support the effort.
One Alliance for Israel Advocacy memo on its lobbying effort states that the group’s “Biblical orientation has always received a warmer reception among Republican Members.” The Alliance for Israel, however, has floated the idea that Democrats may be amenable to their approach. In the memo to supporters, the group noted that Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., proposed the UNRWA Accountability Act, a bill designed to give the administration more authority to shape how UNRWA funds are spent. Though bill was a far cry from Liberman’s proposal, he appeared to take solace in Democratic action on UNWRA spending. “Democrats love Israel, too,” Liberman told The Intercept.
Liberman dismissed the traditional funding of UNRWA as support for terrorism and said that his proposal will be popular among Palestinians. To that end, he cited support from a poll his organization conducted.
The Alliance for Israel Advocacy commissioned the poll last year among 650 Palestinians in the West Bank to gauge support for the relocation proposal. The poll found nearly one third of youth living without full employment, and about half have already discussed moving abroad in search of economic opportunity. The survey suggests respondents would be open to resettlement abroad in exchange for $1,000 to $100,000, with the median amount at approximately $5,040.
“Over time, there could be many families interested in a fresh start with $50,000 capital for a new life,” a memo published by the Alliance for Israel Advocacy declares.
The fact that Israel is already divided into separate territories, with Gaza and the West Bank under nominal Palestinian rule, is “inconsistent with the Bible,” said Liberman, citing scripture.
“The Bible’s always been true, and anything it predicts has come true or will come true,” he said confidently. God, continued Liberman, intended for Israel to have “the borders from the River Jordan to the Great Sea, the Mediterranean Sea.”
The post Messianic Jewish Lobbying Group Builds Support for U.S.-Funded Ethnic Cleansing Plan in Palestine appeared first on The Intercept.
Ao fim do primeiro turno, Bolsonaro fez um pronunciamento ao vivo no seu Facebook — a chamada “live” — comentando o resultado. Ao lado de Paulo Guedes, o então candidato afirmou que já teria faturado a eleição se as urnas não tivessem sido fraudadas. Não houve nada que sustentasse essa suspeita, a não ser vídeos fakes compartilhados por seus filhos, que passaram a eleição espalhando notícias falsas sobre fraudes nas urnas. Bolsonaro mentiu deliberadamente. E como já ficou claro desde que foi eleito, a mentira não é utilizada apenas como arma eleitoral, mas como um método da extrema-direita que se prepara para assumir o poder.
Na última quarta-feira, Bolsonaro anunciou que passará a fazer “lives” semanais para prestar contas ao povo brasileiro. Tudo indica que elas serão a principal forma de comunicação do presidente. Sem jornalistas para incomodá-lo, Bolsonaro fica mais à vontade para prestar contas com o seu jeitinho peculiar: distorcendo e fabricando fatos.
Vestindo uma camiseta da Nike como se fosse um youtuber patrocinado, Bolsonaro mostrou poder de síntese ao enfileirar um sem número de mentiras em pouco mais de 15 minutos. Vejamos quais foram as principais lorotas e insanidades que Jair resolveu dividir com o povo nessa primeira live de prestação de contas.
O presidente começou o vídeo falando sobre a “indústria da multa” do Ibama. Contou a história de um pobre pescador que entrou com seu barquinho em uma área proibida para pesca e foi multado em R$ 170 mil. Uma história difícil de engolir, ainda mais vinda de alguém que nutre rancor pelo Ibama desde que foi multado justamente por pescar em área irregular.
O assunto, aliás, parece ser uma obsessão antiga de Jair. Depois que foi autuado pelo órgão em 2012, o então deputado federal entrou com um mandado de segurança na justiça para que pudesse pescar em uma área em Angra dos Reis onde é proibida qualquer tipo de intervenção humana. À época, os pobres pescadores da região também foram usados como pretexto. Bolsonaro alegou que entrou na justiça para garantir o direito deles, o que é mentira. O mandado de segurança é um instrumento jurídico de interesse particular. Somente ele se beneficiaria, enquanto os pobres pescadores continuariam sem permissão.
A verdade é que o presidente despreza todo o trabalho feito em defesa do meio ambiente no Brasil. Quando soube que entidades ambientais criticaram a escolha de Ricardo Salles para o ministério do Meio Ambiente, falou para Onyx: “acho que acertamos”. O futuro ministro, aliás, afirmou que Bolsonaro não foi multado porque pescava em área irregular, mas porque foi flagrado com uma vara de pesca na mão em área irregular. Segundo Salles, a aplicação da multa seria uma prova de que a “questão ideológica permeia a atuação do Ibama”. A visão do ministro sobre meio ambiente é essencialmente ideológica, como fica claro nesse tweet recente do Endireita Brasil, movimento do qual ele é o presidente.
Todo discursinho politicamente correto, incluindo o ambientalista globalista, termina na mesma velha proposta dos políticos: aumento da carga tributária, assalto ao bolso do trabalhador. Olha aí o resultado. https://t.co/XeAjpKNzHb
— Endireita Brasil (@endireitabrasil) 3 de dezembro de 2018
Voltemos para a prestação de contas do presidente. O próximo assunto abordado no vídeo foi o Acordo de Paris, do qual ele é um profundo desconhecedor.
“Olha, as informações que eu tenho, logicamente não são todas ainda, podem estar um pouco imprecisas, mas, entre as exigências do Acordo de Paris, se exige que o Brasil faça um reflorestamento de uma área enorme, algumas vezes o estado do Rio de Janeiro. Nós não temos como cumprir uma exigência dessa. Se assina, porque é bonito, até porque essa exigência é para cumprir em 2030 — então quem for presidente em 2030 que se vire — mas as sanções vêm aí. Em um primeiro momento, sanção política; em um segundo segundo momento, sanção econômica; em um terceiro momento, sanção de força. Nós não podemos colocar em risco a nossa soberania nacional, parte do nosso território”
As informações fornecidas estão longe de serem “imprecisas”. São falsas mesmo. O Acordo de Paris não impõe exigência nenhuma aos países signatários, o que mostra que o presidente não faz a mínima ideia do que ele representa. A ignorância sobre o tema ficou clara no começo do mês, quando reclamou do compromisso do Brasil com o chamado “Corredor Triplo A”, algo que simplesmente não tem nenhuma relação com o Acordo de Paris.
Cada país estabelece suas próprias metas de acordo com suas condições sociais e econômicas. Elas não são definidas nem impostas por ninguém. Em 2016, o Brasil enviou documento a ONU apresentando metas propostas pelo governo que foram aprovadas pelo Congresso Nacional — inclusive por unanimidade na Câmara, da qual Bolsonaro fazia parte.
Se o novo governo considera as metas inatingíveis, não há problema nenhum em fazer uma revisão e ajustá-las. Mas o presidente afirma que, se não forem atingidas, poderá ser “danoso à nossa soberania”. Disse ainda que o Brasil poderá sofrer sanções políticas, econômicas e — é até difícil de acreditar que ele mandou essa! — de força. Tudo mentira. O acordo não prevê punições de qualquer ordem caso as metas não sejam cumpridas. Um possível descumprimento não fará a ONU enviar tropas para Brasília, podemos ficar tranquilos. Como já comentamos aqui outras vezes, o Brasil só tem a perder com essa birra ideológica sem sentido. Se Jair fosse sincero, diria que renega o Acordo de Paris porque não acredita no aquecimento global e porque bajular Donald Trump é o seu principal fetiche do momento
O assunto seguinte foi o dos imigrantes. Sobre o Pacto Global da Migração, que ele confessou nem saber em qual país foi assinado, também se mostrou um exímio ignorante.
“Não podemos escancarar as portas para quem quiser vir pra cá numa boa. Vem inclusive com uma cultura diferente da nossa. Não podemos admitir que chegue gente de uma determinada cultura e querer se casar com nossas filhas e netas de 10, 11, 12 anos de idade, porque isso é cultura deles. (…) Não podemos admitir certo tipo de gente que vem para o Brasil desrespeitando religiões. Sou contra essa história de cota migratória para o Brasil.”
O acordo de migração não é um tratado formal. Não estabelece metas nem faz exigências, mas apenas define princípios internacionais de cooperação internacional. É um documento formulado em conjunto por 164 nações que estabelece diretrizes para melhorar as condições estruturais dos países e diminuir a fuga de pessoas de seus territórios. Ou seja, um dos seus principais objetivos é justamente retrair o fluxo migratório. Assim como o Acordo de Paris, o pacto não prevê nenhuma sanção aos países signatários e não representa nenhuma ameaça à soberania nacional — ao contrário do que afirmam Bolsonaro e o seu futuro chanceler. A decisão de retirar o Brasil do acordo é de cunho puramente ideológico. O país nada tem a ganhar com isso. O único intuito é o de balançar o rabinho para os EUA de Donald Trump, que se recusou a assinar o documento.
Bolsonaro disse ser “contra essa história de cota migratória para o Brasil”, algo que nunca sequer foi cogitado pelo pacto. Além das mentiras, Bolsonaro aproveitou para atiçar a xenofobia ao dizer que não é admissível que “certo tipo de gente” venha para “querer se casar” com nossas crianças — uma paranoia que não faz o menor sentido, até porque o casamento com menores é proibido por lei, mas que tem a eficácia de manter a chama do medo acesa.
Aí chegou a hora dos povos indígenas de Roraima serem alvo dos devaneios de Jair.
“Roraima é o pedaço de terra mais rico do Brasil. Se eu fosse rei de Roraima — e com tecnologia — em 20 anos o estado teria uma economia semelhante à do Japão. Lá tem tudo. Por isso, a pressão internacional para demarcar cada vez mais terras indígenas”
“Eu quero que o índio seja integrado à sociedade (…) Têm índios que falam nossa língua muito bem, que têm nossos costumes. Isso que queremos, não queremos que atrapalhem o desenvolvimento da nação”
O estado de Roraima tem proporcionalmente a maior população indígena do país. Há tribos isoladas na Amazônia que nunca tiveram contato — e nem querem ter — com o homem branco ou outras tribos indígenas. O presidente alega que um solo rico como o de Roraima não pode deixar de ser explorado em nome da proteção dos indígenas.
Bolsonaro ainda sonha com um mundo hipotético, em que seria o Rei de Roraima e ordenaria a exploração das terras indígenas para garantir a abundância financeira do reino. A visão colonialista do presidente sobre a questão indígena não é novidade. No ano passado, perguntou aos jornalistas: “O que seria do Brasil sem os bandeirantes que exploraram os diamantes?” A pergunta pretendia exaltar os garimpeiros — ele próprio foi um —, que muitas vezes invadem reservas e entram em conflitos com indígenas. A comparação não poderia ser mais absurda. Bandeirantes tinham como objetivo não apenas a busca por pedras e metais preciosos, mas também a destruição de quilombos e o aprisionamento e assassinato de indígenas.
Depois de tantos absurdos, o presidente reservou apenas dois minutos para prestar contas sobre o tema mais importante da semana: o escândalo de corrupção que envolve ele e sua família. Afinal de contas, como ele mesmo tem dito, “a questão ideológica é pior que corrupção”. Mas Bolsonaro não explicou nada. Só enrolou. Não há muito o que falar quando se tem um largo histórico em distribuir tetas no serviço público para amigos e parentes. Mas teve um trecho bastante simbólico:
“Se algo estiver errado, que seja comigo, com meu filho, com o Queiroz, que paguemos a conta desse erro, que nós não podemos comungar com o erro de ninguém. (…) Dói no coração da gente? Dói. O que temos de mais firme é o combate à corrupção.”
Perceba que, além de chamar desvio de dinheiro público de “erro”, o presidente coloca sua honestidade na condicional. Jair parece não ter certeza da sua inocência e vai aguardar o fim das investigações. Fosse Rei de Roraima, certamente não precisaria passar por essa dor no coração.
The post Bolsonaro fez sua primeira prestação de contas, e o resultado é deprimente appeared first on The Intercept.
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