"Now What?" But Good

On Saturday, at 11:30 AM, I heard the distinctive clang of metal pots begin their wild pulse which echoed down 1st Avenue and across the city. Honks sounded from the sea of cars that drove by, crying out, in their own individual rhythms, to those around them to join in. A man pulled his van over to a parking space, got out of it, and began to dance, holding his phone to the sky, wandering into the street to receive honks and waves of solidarity. A woman, taking note of the melodious cacophony, glanced at her phone before kneeling next to her young child, snugly strapped into a stroller, to speak to her. This all happened in the span of a minute because networks said the magic words: Joe Biden is the winner of the 2020 election.

For many people who had been following the election returns, the call itself wasn’t a surprise. After all, the coverage of the massive counting endeavor had, for a few days now, turned into a prolonged dance by reporters and analysts around the inevitable conclusion that Biden had won. And yet, whether you had been following this inexorable march since Tuesday or made a point of avoiding anything but a winning call, the announcement had the effect of making the moment real. No longer was the Trump presidency an existential nightmare without an end in sight. Suddenly there was a countdown clock at the end of which he would no longer be our president, and it didn’t matter whether he wanted to stay or not.

Exactly four years ago I asked the question “Now what?” when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. The only solution I could come up with then was to feel our sorrow and rage and to recognize that each one of us has a life with meaning. Today we stand here, having routed America’s most egocentric president, who could not bother to be concerned about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, who has sowed distrust and discord, and hearts are filled with joy. For some that joy is because Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. For some it’s because Kamala Harris will be the next Vice President of the United States. For others still it is that Donald Trump will no longer be President. But the question remains: Now what? What do you do when you get what you wanted, or at least some facsimile of it?

The most immediately important thing is to take the time to celebrate. It is no exaggeration to say that over the past two days millions have danced, sung, chanted, and partied in the streets. Jubilations, we can hear a grateful nation’s cheers, indeed; this is a moment worth celebrating. People have worked hard to oust Donald Trump from the White House. It is acceptable drown out the pounding of your cynicism and your fear with the harmonies of triumph and joy. And you don’t have to like Biden, Harris, or their platform to take a moment for yourself to exhale, knowing that whatever comes next it’ll at least be better than what we’ve had. At the very least, harm has been mitigated, and that, too, is good. Whether you are the small sigh type of person, the two-day joy-bender, or you sit somewhere in between, celebrate. That joy, that relief, is what is going to sustain you going forward.

Yet we cannot only celebrate. If our actions stop there, victory means nothing. There is still so much work to do. With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, there will be a great desire for many of us to lay down our arms and claim that our fight is finished. Do not listen to the siren song of complacency. That is the song that allows places like Flint to be ignored despite its water crisis. It is the melody that allows Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others to be killed. If we simply give up so that we can live comfortable lives, then we are saying we accept the reality that the poor are incarcerated for being poor while the rich get off scot-free; that the right to vote is not a right, but a never-ending struggle to be heard in the face of wave upon wave of obstacles; that our society is both systemically and overtly racist; that women are undervalued and mistreated; that LGBTQ folks still fight daily for the things like the right to have a family; that so our speech and actions default to treating the disabled community as jokes and less-than; and so much more.

There has perhaps never been such a broad group so energized, numerous, and prepared to organize as there has been over the past four years. People who never marched before marched. People who never protested before protested. Millions of people who have never voted before voted. People sought out ways they could help others through mutual aid, rally planning, electoral organizing, donating, and more. We cannot let that energy slip away. The fights will be many, but when the stakes are so high, we must not look at our brothers, sisters, siblings, and children and say that we aren’t willing to fight for them. Not when we’ve never been more prepared than this moment.

So when I ask “Now what?” this time, the answer is clear. Let the rage, sorrow, and loss of the last four years be transformed into hope and determination to build a better future. Our jubilation from this weekend will be the overture to a symphony we begin to write now. A symphony that, in its bright tones, complicated harmonies, and fascinating rhythms, says that we vow to not just be better than the last four years, but the last twenty, fifty, two-hundred years. And while not all of us need to be the conductor or the first violin, all of us have to take part. If all you’ve got is a metal pot to clang or the hope and joy in your soul to dance, bring it, because we must not, cannot, and will not stop until we make this world better.

Being Black in America

     It has taken a while for me to figure out what to write. When stuff gets bad, I like to be able to write out my feelings. It’s a way of channeling my rage and my sorrow into something that might be productive. But I really didn’t know what to do this time. Had no idea, and no will to do it. Even now, as I begin pushing the keys on my keyboard, I’m not sure what will come out. But I know that writing is the only way I can begin to process this.

     The whole past week has been incredibly difficult, but Friday was especially hard for me. I started my day desperately trying not to cry into my oatmeal before I got on a Zoom call for an internship I had only just started two days ago. The night before I watched the results of peaceful protests, protests in which people demanded justice for a man callously killed over nothing, and for every person who had been slain by police because of the color of their skin, devolve into law enforcement firing canister after canister of tear gas, and shoving and hitting protesters. And I couldn’t handle it.

     Being Black in America is an exceedingly particular experience. It is spending every day knowing that your country does not care about you and becoming acclimated to that thought until it is second nature, but refusing to accept it. Accepting it would mean rejecting your own humanity, and now one can take that from you, not even you. And if you ever think that you’re making progress, that maybe the grip of the system is weakening, that the heel of the boot is off your neck leaving only the toes of oppression, there is always a reminder that it’s not.

     Have you ever stopped to really think about what that’s like? One day you read news that some skinny kid, dresses pretty similarly to you, only a couple years younger, is dead because I guess he cut through the wrong part of town and, well, if he only hadn’t run into an overzealous wannabe cop. Or another time, some lady gets stopped in her car, she looks like you, is only a little bit older, gets arrested, and then she’s found hanging dead in her cell. Or another day, some guy gets stopped in his car, looks like you, older than you but not by much, and he gives every possible warning about what he legally has in his car and that he will have reach towards that area, and he still ends up dead. Or a different day, a kid, looks like you did when you were a kid, playing with a toy, gets killed by an officer because the officer thinks he might be a threat. Or that one time a guy who looks like you, standing in his backyard, was holding his cellphone, but his cellphone might be a gun, so an officer kills him. Or another day, a woman, looks like you, your age, is asleep in her bed in her home and, oh, guess she got killed by a police officer. Or another day, man, looks like you, older, and someone thinks he might have used a fake $20.00 bill, so, you know, I mean, that’s twenty whole dollars, so I guess he’s gotta go, right? Or another day, a man, looks like you, has big nerdy energy like you, has the cops called on him because he asked someone else to obey the law.

     That’s a lot of examples, right? A lot and it barely covers the big national stories from 2012 to now, and nowhere near all those, let alone the things that didn’t make national news. Now imagine that happening to you all the time, and every single time the response seems to be centered around the fact that policing is hard, not that someone who looks like you is dead. Or that the dead person was no angel because, once, when they were five, they stole their brother’s Tonka truck revealing their true colors as a vicious thief and dreg of society. Now imagine what it’s like every time you walk by a police officer, especially one that’s heavily armed as they so often are now.

     A lot of being a Black person in America is that. It’s being asked to relive that trauma over and over and over and over and over and over again, and then being expected to just roll with it. It’s to know in your heart you’re worth every bit as much as everyone else but that your country isn’t really sure that’s true. Actually, it’s pretty sure you’re not worth as much as anybody else. So sometimes you try to tell it that it’s wrong and every time you’re told “All Lives Matter,” or “Blue Lives Matter,” or you’re called a “son of a bitch,” or you’re asked about “Black on Black crime,” or you’re told to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, or you’re told to vote. That is exhausting. I’m not sure I can truly impress upon you how psychically exhausting that is without you living it. That isn’t to say there isn’t joy in the American Black experience, because there is, but every day is a constant reminder that you have to fight to be considered worth enough to be heard, and your very act of living is an act of rebellion.

     That is what was going on in my head on Friday morning as I silently cried in my cereal. That is what was going on in my head throughout the day whenever I would close my eyes and I’d see George Floyd, or I’d see cops hitting people with batons. That is what I was thinking about the next day when I read about a friend’s harrowing experience of being at a protest and being sprayed and hit by the police. Because for me, and for so many people like me, this isn’t just about the fact that it’s morally right that we be treated with the same dignity and humanity as everyone else, it is literally about our survival. It is about our ability to walk down the street and not die at random because some cop got nervous, or some lady or man got anxious, or someone didn’t like the tone you took with them.

     If you’re non-Black, and especially if you’re white, please, please, if you do nothing else, just check in on a Black friend of yours. I cannot overstate how much that means. And it means more than your Facebook post that racism is bad, or your fire tweet, or Insta share. Yes, do that too, but the actual allyship is felt when you reach out. And don’t expect that you’re friend is going to respond right away, or ever, because now is a lot, but literally just the act of you doing that means you are acknowledging their humanity and their pain so much of this moment is centered around the fact that our pain never seems to matter. I also really want emphasize how important this is to my male friends who want to be allies, because generally women understand the costs and effects of emotional labor better than us guys and are much more willing to do it when they know it’s needed, and in this moment you cannot let your female friends do all the check-ins for you. It’s not fair. Don’t do that. This is literally the least you can do, so please do it.

     I also want to express that it is so painful to see radio silence. Everyone’s hearts are just shattered to pieces and they don’t know what’s going on, and if you have made no indication at all that you have acknowledged this pain, it makes it so much worse. No one is asking you to be Malcolm or Martin or James, but we are asking you to do a little bit.

     Also, simply saying “vote” is not the answer. Voting is foundational to our country. Despite how messed up our system is, despite the barrier after barrier that has been put up, I still believe in it with all my heart. People have died so I could vote. But all that being said, voting is not the answer to this problem. This problem is so much more than voting. Making Trump go away doesn’t fix this problem. Making a lot of federal level officials go away doesn’t fix this problem. Making a lot of local officials go away doesn’t fix this problem. All of that helps, but we are talking about such an entrenched system and such complete reversal of people’s consciously and subconsciously held beliefs that simply saying “vote” is to ignore not only the enormity of the situation, but the humanity of it, and to reduce it to red vs. blue. Neither side knows what they’re doing when it comes dealing with police brutality and the humanity of Black folks. Yes, one is better, but better is not good, it’s just better. So don’t forget that voting is important, but start thinking about what else you can offer that is more substantial than tepid cries to vote in an election that isn’t for just under six months from now.

     If you’re looking for some other concrete things you can do, I suggest, if you have ability, and I know that considering the global pandemic a lot of you might not, donating to some bail funds. In particular, I suggest Minnesota Freedom Fund and the Free Them All Fund to help out demonstrators in Minneapolis and NYC, or you can find a whole list on the National Bail Fund’s website. An option you can do that costs you no money is putting pressure on your local and state elected representatives to defund police departments and to hold officers who abuse their power to account (which is to say excessively spray, beat, and run over protesters, all of which are things officers have done over the past three days). Remember, just like in the federal government, most local governments have the mayor or manager propose a budget that a city council will either yea or nay, and a lot of them are going through that process right now.

     I know some of you are protesting and some of you are wondering if you should or shouldn’t. I honestly can’t tell you one way or the other, because I know how important it is that there are people in the streets right now demanding justice and humanity, but I also know that I don’t want any of you getting sick or getting your loved ones sick. Your decision is going to be based on evaluating what kind of protest you’re going to (on foot or in car), how long you’ll be there, who you live with, if you’re going to run into a lot of people during your daily life afterward, and so much more. I can’t do that analysis for you, but I can tell you to really think about it, because I don’t want you risking your loved one’s life for mine, that’s not right.

     I have centered the Black experience here because I am Black and this moment is about the continued devaluation of Black lives. But I also recognized that my freedom is dependent on the freedom of my brothers and sisters, and I know that there are other marginalized peoples that can identify with the cocktail of rage, anguish, sorrow, helplessness, and determination I feel right now because your people are devalued like mine are. I see you. I thank you for fighting for me. And I promise to fight for you.

     Finally, to every Black person, to every person who shares my skin and my history, who carries their trauma in their veins and continues to wake up every day determined to simply live another day in defiance of a world that demands you put out your light: I love you and I am thankful to be counted among you.

The Court Sucks

     Alright, let’s talk about the Supreme Court decision that came out yesterday regarding the Wisconsin spring election. It. Is. Trash. Utter garbage. In a long line of terrible decisions made by the Supreme Court, this is, absolutely, one of the worst ones ever. And, shocking no one, this is a per curiam decision. Now, for my friends who don’t know what a per curiam decision is, it’s when no one judge in an opinion signs their name onto an opinion. Normally, when an opinion is written, one judge writes it and other judges join it. Whoever pens the opinion gets to set the reasoning for the decision, which is what will drive future cases on the issue, while the other judges who join may not 100% agree with the reasoning, but they agree enough that it’s not an obstacle to them saying the author is right. But a per curiam opinion remains comparatively anonymous. Who wrote it? We don’t know. We just know that all of these judges are of one mind, which, guess what, we would have known if it wasn’t a per curiam opinion. So with this case we know that it’s the five conservatives who voted for this decision, but I guess we can’t pin the blame on any one of them. In essence they protect each other by making no one stick out their neck to draw the line of fire. Which is hilarious given that NONE OF THEM CAN BE FIRED.

     But what about the opinion itself? Well, in four very well formatted pages that have ridiculous margins, our good old conservative justices have essentially told the Wisconsin voting public that they can go die. No, really, that’s what they’re saying. You see, the Court is not concerned with the wellbeing of Wisconsinites, but, rather, whether the “nature of the election” will be fundamentally altered. Their decision seems to be premised largely on two things: (1) that the District Court should not have allowed for absentee ballots to be mailed after the April 7, 2020 even if they would only count if they were received by the already agreed upon April 13, 2020 deadline, and (2) that the plaintiffs (the DNC) didn’t explicitly ask to allow absentee ballots with postmark dates after April 7, 2020 to count.

     To both points, the Court, and I say the Court because I cannot say it was Roberts, or Kavanaugh, or Thomas, or Alito, or Gorsuch because they’re all big cowards in this opinion, says that “changing the election rules so close to the election date” and granting “relief that the plaintiffs themselves did not ask for” means the District Court made a mistake and violated the Court’s precedent set in Purcell v. Gonzalez, Frank v. Walker, and Veasey v. Perry. Their reasoning being that, well, “courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election” and that the District Court’s order has an “unusual nature.” News flash: Pandemics that will kill thousands are not “ordinary.” In fact, they are quite “unusual.” A District Court faced with ensuring that an election can take place safely is probably going to have issue orders of an “unusual nature.”

     Now the Court, worried about suppression in the context of voting for the first time in its history, also mentions that the District Court’s order that tied the postmark extension to enjoining the release of any election results before April 13 likely won’t work. They don’t say why it won’t, just that it won’t, and that the release of that information while people are still mailing in their ballots could have a negative effect on the election’s integrity. You know what, I agree, releasing that information would have a negative effect on the election’s integrity. You know what might have more of one, though? People trying to decide whether to vote, get sick, maybe die, maybe severely jeopardize their loved ones. But, I don’t know, maybe that’s all small potatoes. I mean, Grandma would happily sacrifice herself to keep the economy going, so why wouldn’t she happily sacrifice herself for the election, right?

     Our most wizened old white men (and one Black dude, because you don’t have to be white to uphold white supremacy) also really want you know that the plaintiffs didn’t ask for this. If they didn’t ask for it, the Court just simply can’t grant it. That would be utter chaos. Of course, the Court is ignoring the fact that courts can affect equitable remedies as justice requires. That is to say, if a suit is before a court, and a court can not only solve the issue but also apply a fix that it deems equitable to all parties given the circumstances. I don’t know about you, but ensuring people don’t die to fill in some bubbles and press some buttons seems like a pretty basic issue requiring equitable justice.

     And our favorite decision-making boyband wrap up their masterwork, handed down to us from on high, with this: “The Court’s decision on the narrow question before the Court should not be viewed as expressing an opinion on the broader question of whether to hold the election, or whether other reforms or modifications in election procedures in light of COVID-19 are appropriate.” Yes, because writing a per curiam opinion was not enough, Robert, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh (or, as I like to call them, GRAKT, not to be confused with their chief rival, Japanese pop legend GACKT) had to point out that their opinion was very narrow and that they might, like Susan Collins is about everything, be concerned about elections amidst COVID-19. Of course, if you’ve ever read a Supreme Court opinion, you would know that not a single justice is scared to write reasoning, leave hints, or just blatantly tell you what they want to happen instead even if they feel constrained by Supreme Court precedent. That’s not present here. They’re not concerned. They are actually quite pleased with what they’ve done. Not a one of them could be bothered with suggesting a path to an alternative in this opinion because they do not care since they are sticking it to the liberals and preserving conservative power.

     If you ever thought the Supreme Court was a hallowed hall of the country’s wisest people making difficult decisions regarding questions of great import, time to disabuse yourself of that notion. It is no more than a bunch of people, hiding behind their pomp, their black robes, and their alleged non-partisanship, doing whatever it takes for their side to win. Some of them will play the long game, some will wear their beliefs on their sleeve, but they all play for a side, and that side is never regular people. Roberts likes to say he’s an umpire calling balls and strikes. Well, if that’s true, then this is a case of the umpire taking the ball and just hurling it into the face of the closest fan and then grabbing a bat and beating them with it. This is not a technical point ‘and whatever can the Supreme Court do to alleviate the suffering that people will endure today, April 7, 2020,’ this is just cruelty designed to keep one group of people in power.

Yesterday Was Terrible

               Yesterday was terrible. Some of us are having flashbacks to November 8, 2016, when this country elected a man who had already proven himself to be an egotistical, racist, misogynist, and who was accused of multiple sexual assaults, to its highest office. For some yesterday was worse. Because yesterday a majority of senators representing a minority of people elevated a man to the Supreme Court who has shown himself to be a ruthless, dissembling partisan and who is credibly accused of sexual assault and sexual misconduct. A president we have for eight years; a Supreme Court justice we have for the rest of their lives. Brett Kavanaugh is not an old man. He could very easily sit on that court for thirty years.

               Judge, soon to be Justice, Kavanaugh represents the worst parts of this country. He represents a willingness to ignore facts to pursue an end goal. He represents the ability to construct and maintain a deeply ingrained image indistinguishable from self-delusion. Most importantly, he represents a complete disregard for women and anyone who has been touched by sexual violence. A man whose ascendancy to the Supreme Court at the expense of a woman he seems to have sexually violated and emotionally wounded, and at the expense of the millions of people, predominantly women, who have been sexually assaulted, is no Justice. He is the embodiment of might makes right, toxic masculinity, white privilege, and the very essence of injustice itself.

               A Supreme Court with both a Justice Kavanaugh and a Justice Thomas sitting on it is not simply a Supreme Court that stands against progressive ideas, but is one that has jeopardized its legitimacy. For how can any progressive, liberal, or Democrat expect fair treatment from Kavanaugh when he openly, publicly, and on television railed against liberals as attempting to take him down as some kind of long-form revenge on behalf of the Clintons, yelling "What goes around comes around!"? How can any woman believe that any case involving them or their autonomy will be fairly heard by this Court when both Thomas and Kavanaugh have been accused of violence against women and their defenses were equal parts 'she's crazy and mistaken' and 'how dare you accuse me, I am the most attacked person on the Earth, a man, and all of my women friends agree'? And in Kavanaugh's case, having been confirmed by fifty senators against the wishes of the majority of the country, every decision that he takes part in, every opinion he writes, will have an asterisk next to it reminding us that he is a liar, a partisan, and quite possibly a sexual violator that we didn't want but was foisted upon us anyway.

               This is a betrayal of the highest order. Our systems have failed us. For while no left-leaning person wanted Kavanaugh on the Court because of his extreme conservatism, the argument against him has been centered around his intemperance, his partisan hostility, his entitlement, his lying, and sexual assault allegations. Any one of those is disqualifying for being considered one of the nine wisest, fairest people this country has to offer who must grapple with the most intense, complex, and consequential issues we can imagine. Yet, instead of replacing him, he was defended as if he was on trial for a murder that not only did he not commit, but was committed by his mustache-twirling accuser. He became a stand in for all men everywhere, as if some woman would one day, at great physical and reputational risk to herself and her family, come forward and accuse us of some chilling sin and forever thwart our wildest dreams. Because if a man like Brett Kavanaugh, who I may remind you not only went to Yale but also knows some women, could be brought down by such an accusation, then what hope is there for the rest of us? But this of course means that we have an Executive Branch that couldn't be bothered to fully vet this man, a Senate that couldn't be bothered treat his nomination and the charges against him as more than a political football, and a culture that cares so deeply about a man's second, third, and fifteenth chance, that if a woman's first is ruined it doesn't care.

               There's a lot of pain right now. And it's deep pain. The kind that's not just in your bones, but in your soul. That pain is real. And it's not real because I feel it, too. It's real because you feel it. It eats away at you, like termites gnawing at wood. Incessant. Constant. Total. And it doesn't stop. There are tears of sorrow and howls of anguish. There are the scowls of hurt, and glares of disgust. And then there is the silence. The silence that comes from being told your pain is not my concern nor is your experience. The silence that comes from being told your government exists for me to consolidate my power and to take away yours.

               It feels hopeless right now. These are the darkest times most of us have ever seen. But though it feels hopeless, there is hope. Not because there is some unseen hope well from which we can draw hope. Not because of some nonsense about how it can't possibly get worse or that it's not so bad. There is hope precisely because you feel pain right now. That pain is proof that you care about your family, your friends, your country, and yourself.

               So in this meditation on the state of our home, and in this realization of all this hurt, I humbly, selfishly, and perhaps out of turn, ask you this: will you please not forget your pain? Will you please not forget your sorrow and your rage? Will you please let it burn so that it lights up the sky for everyone to see? For out of pain there is power. It is your incandescent rage that is the light of our future. That is the fuel that will drive you to seek change, whether through community service, protesting, volunteering, running for office, or just being the best goddamn friend you can be. The fear, pain, and hopelessness each of us feels right now, if we remember it and we use it, is the hope for a better, brighter future.

               Take your time. Drink all the alcohol you need to. Watch all the TV you need to. Sleep as much as you need to. Mourn. But when you're done, please don't give up on America. Please remember your pain. Please remember your hope.

Charlottesville

               I've been struggling with what to say about Charlottesville. Usually when this happens it's because something is more complicated than we want to believe it is. That's not the case here. White nationalists held a rally to protect a monument to a man who fought for the right to own Black bodies. The police took an inordinate amount of time to act when these White nationalists and counter-protestors came to blows. Repeatedly. These White nationalists had brazenly and openly, without hood or cowl, marched through UVA with TIKI torches and Nazi iconography, unashamed of their hate. A White nationalist drove a truck into a crowd of people, killing one, injuring others, and seemingly imitating one of the more popular forms of terrorist attacks in recent months. This is really simple. This is, at best, repugnantly deplorable, and at worst, sub-humanly monstrous. Either way, it's vomit-inducing.

               But my difficulty doesn't come from how clearly and quickly we all denounced these acts as wrong, evil, hateful, and acrimonious in speeches espousing love and goodness. That's good. That's right. That's what we should do. But it's how quick we are to collectively distance ourselves from these people as if we have not, as a society, contributed to and facilitated their growth, resurgence, genesis, or whichever term you prefer. These are American men that we've somehow lost, and I don't mean in the way the Democrats are trying to figure out how they lost the rustbelt. These are lost souls.

               These twenty- and thirty-somethings are White nationalists, White supremacists, and American Neo-Nazis. Let that sink in for a moment. This is not the proverbial drunk uncle or drunk grandfather. This is the guy you went to high school with. This is the guy you might have swiped right on Tinder. This is the guy who just graduated from college two months ago.

               We all want to say it's entirely Trump's fault. We want to say that the election of Donald Trump, who, when he was being subtle, dog-whistled, and otherwise was flagrantly and openly racist during his campaign, has emboldened this small band of men to be vocal, but otherwise the main people who espouse these views will eventually pass away and everything will be better for it. That's not true. Not entirely, anyway. While Trump's existence has emboldened these people, they were there, have always been there, and have been growing.

               So we've failed. America, we have failed. We have let these people grow in power, grow in sway, strengthen their rhetoric, and continuously reach out to new minds to corrupt. Because we, as a nation, cannot and will not reckon with our past. Somehow, because we have to believe that America is largely infallible, we have failed to reach these men before they've joined this cancer we've ignored for years. What else was going to happen when we continue to say that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings is one of the greatest love stories of early America, despite the power differential between a master and slave? What else was going to happen when we still teach people that the Civil War was simply a war over States' Rights? What else was going to happen when things like Japanese Internment are just a bad episode in the long running series that is America? When the best of us believe these things, we have abdicated our right to be shocked when we find that White supremacy is still active in American society.

               It's high time we really grappled with our history. The bright spots and the dark spots. If we want to stop domestic terrorism and we want to stop White nationalism, it's time we do more than put gold leaf on America's incredibly complex and fascinating past. The United States is an amazing country. It formed because a bunch of disparate farmers and workers banded together, believing in the necessity of representation, and defeated the strongest power in the Western World. It has grown to be the dominant power in the world. But it has also built itself on the systemic oppression of the other, whether that other is Black, Asian, female, queer, non-Christian, or the myriad others who suffer.

               This history needs to be taught. It needs to be taught in our schools at all levels. If we want to fight bigotry, then we need to do it with our brains, not just our hearts. We need to understand why it exists, and we need to make sure our children understand it. Our teachers need to be given the tools to accurately teach our history, the good and the bad, and they need to be in positions where their students can ask questions that don't have simple answers. We need textbooks that tackle how Reconstruction failed and how much of what we deal with today is a direct continuation of the failure of Reconstruction and the evolution of Jim Crow laws. It needs to be clear that pride as a southerner is important but doesn't have to be explicitly conflated with pride in the Confederacy. We need to address the attempted genocide of Amerindians as something other than "a thing that happened." This is just the start, but if we begin to really educate ourselves about these facets of our history and not just the great parts, then we can be better.

               We can no longer look at tragedies like Charlottesville and simply say "This is not us" and wash our hands of those "damn dirty Nazis." We can't just condemn them and punish them and feel like we've done our part. If our actions stop there, if we do not address the root causes of these problems, America will continue to fail. This is part of our history. This is us. If we accept that, then we have no recourse but to act.

Now What?

     "Now what?" are the words that have been going through my head for the past three hours. My assumption, as was that of most forms of media and analysis, was that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be elected president of the United States of America, becoming the first woman to achieve this honor. But that did not happen. Instead, Donald Trump, perhaps the greatest presidential underdog ever, won the presidency.

     I started following the coverage from the glow of my smartphone, stealing looks at breaks during rehearsal in Astoria. I didn't think Donald Trump's early lead meant much, as those were states that tend to lean red regardless. Undoubtedly Hillary Clinton would catch up later in the night. But the night continued, and she didn't.

     I left rehearsal and headed to Brooklyn for what was supposed to be an election night party. We had hoped to celebrate the election of our first female president. CNN was running on two screens, and I was still on my phone checking Senate and House races. Long before the presidential election was called, I knew it was over. I didn't want to believe it, but I knew it. The math wasn't there. Eventually, our party had turned more into a somber lamentation of the state of our unperfect union, and in the dark hours of the early morning as we dispersed devoid of joy, I headed home.

     I climbed the stairs to my apartment and looked at my phone only to see that, in the time it took for me to travel from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Donald Trump had won 276 electoral votes. Though I had already realized this would be the outcome, the reality still hit me like a truck. I opened the door, walked through the kitchen, the office, and the living room to get into the bedroom, and I hugged my girlfriend without words.

     And then I wept.

     I wept because this was not what was supposed to happen. I wept because I was filled with fear beyond my ken. I simply could not understand. I muttered those words over and over again. It had never left my mind that Donald Trump could pull off an upset and win the election in a nail-biter race, but I never thought he would take the lead from the start and run away with it. I never thought that so much of the country had decided that the content of a person's character could probably be judged by the darkness of their skin. Or that women meant so little to us as a nation.

     There is a moment when innocence can die. It is a moment when all feels lost, and there's nothing but questions. It is the moment when you ask "Now what?" and you are met with silence. Cold, unadulterated silence. Sitting in a dark room at 2:45 in the morning, holding onto my girlfriend, sobbing into my hand was that moment for me.

     While so many of us celebrate, so many of us cry out "Now what?" The man we've elected has built his campaign on isolationism, xenophobia, racism, and sexism. His campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," jumps right to the heart of those ideas, and very intentionally harkens back to an era that never truly existed but was dominated by white males. And by electing Donald Trump we have stated that we are somehow okay with the creation or perpetuation of a white race utopia as opposed to the melting pot we have always been.

     So now what? Do we sit here and hope it goes away? Do we protest? Do create new parties with new platforms? I don't know. What I do know is that we just had an election that actively told us that Arab-American lives don't matter, that Latino lives don't matter, that Asian lives don't matter, that Amerindian lives don't matter, that Black lives don't matter, that LGBT lives don't matter, and that, almost above all else, female lives do not matter. Because there is no world, no just world, where an accomplished public servant who is intelligent, prepared, has thirty years of experience, twelve of which were related to the White House and the presidency not to mention her eight years in the senate, loses to a man who has pending trials for rape and fraud, gleefully and openly rates women on their attractiveness, uses dogwhistle politics to condemn Muslims and Latinos, promotes a paternalistic view of African Americans, and has failed businesses galore and no actual political experience besides a failed run for president without telling me that female lives don't matter. Hillary Clinton didn't lose because of emails, she didn't lose because of the deplorable things her husband has done, she didn't lose because of her own moral failings, she lost because she has baggage, but not the political baggage of dozens of campaigns against her, but 69 years of baggage called two X chromosomes. And that was her great sin.

     Before I said I didn't know what to do, but really there's only one thing can do right now. We can, and we must, feel our sadness. We must feel our fear. Our terror. Our rage. Our disappointment. Our pain. We must feel it all, and realize that this is real. This is the rebirth of America, and we must learn to navigate through it. We may have been told that our lives don't matter, but let us never forget our lives do, and that just as we feel terror and sadness, so did those who said we don't matter and that's how we'll start to heal.

You'll Get Urinetown

               Today is a pretty weird day, and I mean that in the best possible way. It's weird because today is the opening of the off-Broadway revival of Urinetown, The Musical, which I happen to have been cast in. It's being produced by a new company (Fracture Theatre Co.) with a non-Equity cast in the very theater that Urinetown was first done off-Broadway (the American Theatre of Actors, or ATA for short) under the umbrella of the company that originally produced Urinetown on and off-Broadway (that would be the Araca Group). Even weirder is that the Chernuchin, the specific theater housed in the ATA that we'll be performing in, is being renamed tonight in honor of John Cullum. If you don't know who that is, well, a short answer is he originated the role of Caldwell B. Cladwell in Urinetown. A slightly longer answer is he is a two-time Tony Award winner with a heap of other awards and nominations and a long career in theatre and television. Basically, he's a pretty cool guy.

               However, the weirdest thing about all of this is that Urinetown was the first musical I did in college. Not quite the first show, for that honor belongs to The Mikado, but it was the first American musical I did in my freshman year at MIT. I did it with Next Act, the theatre company housed in my dorm. We'd put on a show every year during Campus Preview Weekend (CPW) for the MIT community and incoming pre-freshman, or pre-frosh as we all called them, transforming our large Tastefully Furnished Lounge space into a small theater with a stage, lights, and a house seating as many as around 183 people. Every Next Act production was a labor of love for everyone involved when we'd stop p-setting to rehearse, prepare, and do a musical. Urinetown was my first show with Next Act.

               Next Act was one of the driving forces in me becoming an actor. It was with Next Act that I learned a sense of community and truly became obsessed with theatre, often determining to work on my role or my choreo or my directing rather than worrying about the problem set due at 10:00 AM the next morning. Fellow members of the cast and crew would repeatedly have to force me to go to bed, otherwise I'd sit there with them and help build the set (despite my lack of skills with a tools, power or otherwise), or sew costumes (despite my lack of sewing knowledge), or whatever else needed to get done until the Sun would rise. Getting sick or losing my voice wouldn't stop me from doing whatever I could because I had never cared about something so much in my life. I remember trying to give choreography notes, but being unable to talk, so I wrote them all down, gave them to one of my friends to read aloud, and then flailed wildly while I tried to physically emulate not just the dance steps but the emotion I was going for (I'm not a dancer, by the way, so it was a pretty hilarious sight). Eventually I learned to balance my insatiable drive with my health in such a way that I was highly productive instead of mildly productive while being half-dead yet enthusiastic, and it was Next Act that was the lab for me to figure this out for myself.

               Finally, Next Act was the first time I was admired by people I didn't know for my acting. I remember the Dean of Students, who coincidentally was our housemaster at Next House, telling me his kids had been stomping around the apartment imitating me after seeing our production of The Scarlet Pimpernel, singing about falcons and scurrilous phantoms and other such things. Of course I didn't know how to respond besides smiling and being thankful, and, to be honest, I still don't know how to respond to that other than being gracious, but it was when I first learned that I could affect other people. That stuff that I, Johari Menelik Frasier, did could do something to other people for more than a passing moment.

               My senior year of college I recall walking back to my dorm with a friend of mine after what I can only guess was a cast party. The night had progressed to early morning, perhaps around 3:00 AM, and before we parted ways we had gotten into one of those deep conversations that twenty-somethings tend to do when the hour gets late. Both of us being involved in the arts at MIT, the subject fell to acting, as it so often does between actors, and he brought up Urinetown. Specifically, he brought up Next Act's production of Urinetown. This friend of mine was one year below me, so Urinetown was the show he saw during his CPW. He talked about how amazing the show was, and how he specifically remembered my performance as Officer Lockstock. He remembered thinking that he wanted the opportunity to work with me and to gain the same skills that I had. I was dumbfounded. This was a person I had considered a far superior actor to myself, yet the idea that he had formed such a high opinion of me before he even knew me shocked me. The idea that somehow I touched some part of his humanity enough for him to have clear memories of things I did, things I wasn't even sure I remembered, was perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life. One could argue something about fishes in small ponds since no one outside of MIT seems to be aware it has a theatre program, but that doesn't make the moment any less important to the life of this fish.

               I sit here, knowing that tonight I'm going to make my off-Broadway debut in a fantastic musical in front of the original producers and one of the original cast members, and I can only feel that things have, in some sense, come full circle. I basically started my college acting career and serious consideration of acting with Urinetown, and now I'm literally about to debut off-Broadway in the very same show. So I'm grateful for many things. I'm grateful that the director of the 2010 Next Act production decided to produce one of the greatest musicals in the last twenty years and that she decided to take a chance on a freshman who had no idea what he was doing, and whether she knew it or not, helped start me on the path that I'm following now. And I'm grateful that Fracture was willing to take this kid straight out of conservatory and put him in their first production ever. And I'm grateful to be part of this extremely talented cast who I watch do their work and actively wonder how they do half the things they do with a mixture of envy and pride of being one of them.

               Finally, I'm grateful that I'm living out a dream. If six years ago someone told me that the show I had been listening to obsessively and was going to do in my dorm lounge was going to be the show I made my off-Broadway debut in, I'd tell them they were nuts. And yet it's happening tonight, and all I can do is smile and say I guess I got Urinetown.

Theatre Thursday: Here Comes Claudio

                It must be that time of year again. "What time of year?" you ask. Why, NYMF time, of course. On Tuesday I had the pleasure of seeing my first NYMF show of the season, Claudio Quest, with book, music, and lyrics by Drew Fornarola and Marshall Pailet. Before I even looked up the Festival's offerings this year, Facebook, in its all knowing capacity (re: cookie reading), had a Claudio Quest ad mentioning heroes and video games and 8-bit deliciousness. Needless to say, I immediately decided that I had to see it, which is to say I turned to my girlfriend, Sarah, and said, "I have to see this. We have to see this. It's IMPORTANT." Bonus points for being by Drew Fornarola, a composer I had the pleasure of meeting at an installment of the Songwriters' Salon and whose music I admire. Unfortunately, we could not score free tickets as we did last year, as I don't think Space.com has an 8-bit beat, but that, of course, was not going to stop us.

                What can I say about Claudio Quest? That it has arrived: the video game musical that you NEED and DESERVE. What Pailet and Fornarola have crafted is a thinly veiled send up of Super Mario Bros, and it is a truly glorious thing. You have the two brothers, the two princesses (yeah, we got a [really awesome] Daisy expy, I was excited), a strange fire-breathing monster arch-nemesis, plant people, and turtles all in a delicious 8-bit package. Or, well, as 8-bit as living, breathing people can be on stage. Yet, despite having a direct analogue to almost every character present in Mario's 8- and 16-bit days, Claudio Quest stands on its own as most everyone is quite different from the "source" material.

                Let's look at the Claudio Bros, Claudio, the Mario, and Luis, the Luigi. While Claudio is the ace, much like Mario, he longs for something different and new, but is set in his own ways. Not to mention he is tall, youthful, and generally dashing, unlike his mustachioed red and blue clad plumber counterpart. Luis, much like Luigi, loves his older brother, but suffers from being the screw-up with aspirations to greatness. While Luigi's fear comes from, well, generally just being scared of things, Luis' comes from an inability to grasp what happens if they don't follow rules and every path they've been down hundreds of times. You begin to realize that while the Mario Bros are loved for their simplicity and clarity of expression, what makes the Claudio Bros so wonderful, and so different, is that you can find yourself in each of them very easily, whether it's Claudio's fear of doing things differently or Luis' desire to make something of himself. And all of the characters manage this level of complexity while remaining true to extreme cartoonish exaggerations of their video game counterparts (except Princess Poinsettia, because Princess Peach is about two degrees from Poinsettia, making Poinsettia a minor exaggeration instead of a major one).  

                The book is brilliant. I say this because it is basically a fan's wet dream while remaining accessible to a person who has somehow avoided all things Mario in their life. If you don't know Mario, or any video games at all, it becomes a tightly knit, madcap story about finding yourself and climbing out of your sibling's shadow set against a backdrop of eggplants and block breaking. The zany moments, such as watching a certain someone talk to his psychiatrist, or the breakdown of a poor eggplant, become completely acceptable and logical in the world they've created.

                If you DO know a little bit about Mario, you will laugh your way through the entire performance as reference after reference greets you, and yet never detracts from the story. Perhaps one of the best moments of the night was a scene entirely devoted to referencing how turtles with green shells can only go in one direction while ones with red shells can turn as they please. Not to mention "The Princess is in Another Castle" bits.

                Speaking of references, the score, which is just as fantastic as the book, is packed with references to the original score of Super Mario Bros (written by Koji Kondo, one of the game industry's greatest and most beloved composers). If you know me, then you know that I am a big fan of highly melodic music, and this is a very melodic score. For example, "Poor Me," sung by Poinsettia and Bruiser, takes from the Underwater Theme in Super Mario. From the familiar beginning of the melody of that song, Fornarola and Pailet have constructed an entirely new song, immediately recognizable, and yet different enough to serve the purpose they need, which of course was to emphasize longing. Not to mention that it also kind of ends up serving as Poinsettia's motif throughout the show. Or the Act I finale, "A or B," in which all the characters seem to be faced with a mutually exclusive choice. Why is it choice A or choice B? Well it's not arbitrary at all, but rather, because the controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the console used to play Super Mario Bros, only had an A button and a B button along with a d-pad. Here A was jump, and B was run, which were mirrored in Luis' lyrics in "A or B."

                Another strength of the show was how, even after a major event occurred at the end of the first act, Claudio Quest manages to let everyone go through trials and tribulations without a drastic tone change. This is a balancing act that so many musicals fail to succeed at. Many musicals have a stellar first act and the second act occurs and one is left wondering why it feels less tight or cohesive? Alternatively, the first act may be slow, possibly even plodding, and then the second act happens and it feels like a whole new piece of concentrated awesome. Claudio Quest never suffers from either affliction. The characters are consistent, but are still alive and able to grow as people, the gems of the score are across both acts (largely because every piece is a gem), and just because something shocking happens doesn't mean we've suddenly begun watching Next to Normal when we thought we were watching Seussical.

                Adding to the ambiance of the evening were the wonderful chiptune covers of pop music that played during the pre-show and intermission. I can honestly say that you haven't lived until you've heard chiptune covers of "Billy Jean" or "You Spin Me 'Round." In fact, chiptunes make most everything better as far as I'm concerned, and it was a perfect way of putting you in the mindset of watching something based on the games of your childhood.

                I could say more about Claudio Quest. I could say much, much more. But I think you probably get the gist by now, so it may be more prudent for me to stop. That being said, this musical was amazing. I have been waiting for something like this forever (or, you know, since I was sixteen and realized I loved musical theatre, whichever you prefer), and now that it's finally here, I can only imagine that I'll be seeing more material like this in the future, and that is truly exciting. And as far as Claudio Quest is concerned, I wish it the brightest future possible, with theaters nationwide rushing to perform it, because, to quote the opening song: "Here comes Claudio [Quest]! [It] is the greatest!"

Theatre Thursday: WikiMusical the RPG

 Oh, hi guys. I guess it's time for [apparently] my yearly blog post or something. So, here it goes:

     I went to my first New York Musical Theatre Festival show on Tuesday: WikiMusical. Unfortunately, it's likely to be the only one that I'll make it to this year because... well, frankly, I didn't realize when NYMF started and thus didn't buy any tickets. Anyway, one of my girlfriend's classmates is an acquaintance of one the show's librettists and was able to get us some tickets. Rather, to be more specific, he got some tickets and convinced the librettist to give my girlfriend tickets in order to write a review about it. I just want to point out that my girlfriend is a science writer interning at IEEE Spectrum, an engineering and tech magazine, right now, so we were both a bit confused. Her boss liked the idea of there being some kind of coverage about it on the website, though (you can find it here).

     Tickets in hand, we arrived at the Pearl Theatre Company's performance space not entirely sure what to expect. The lights went out, the show began, and there was a narrator's voice. I'm personally a sucker for third person narrators, omniscient or otherwise, so the show was already starting strong as far as I was concerned. I prepared myself for a late afternoon of enjoyment.

     Now, I don't want to spoil the show, nor do I want to give an in depth review of it, so I'm just going to give a few of my reflections. WikiMusical basically has a hero's journey structure to it. The protagonist, Peter, and his brother, Kurt, go on a quest to get back home, gaining new party members along the way. But, at its heart, WikiMusical is about these brothers mending a relationship that has gone from simple sibling rivalry to... let's just say Peter isn't Kurt's biggest fan and leave it at that. It's definitely the kind of story I can get behind, and by God did I enjoy the whole setup: I mean, it was basically an RPG (role-playing game, in case you were wondering).

     Perhaps the most fun was the shear amount references in it. Blake Harris, the librettist and lyricist (he shares these credits with Frank Ceruzzi), recently wrote the book Console Wars, and a lot of his research for that book appears in WikiMusical. One of the first things we see the brothers do, as children, is argue over whether Santa should give them a Genesis or a SNES (the correct answer is a Genesis, by the way, and anyone who says otherwise is bad and should feel bad). Later on, when the party accidentally solves a puzzle (seriously, the musical is basically an RPG), the Legend of Zelda secret sound plays, and it becomes a subtle plot point when it doesn't play. I was apparently the only person in the audience who both got and loved that judging by my lonely laughter (the gamer/theatre nerd overlap is bigger than you would think, but smaller than you would hope). Yet another example was the villain referring to an 8-bit dungeon. Unfortunately, despite Mr. Harris' hopes (which he mentioned to me in the brief amount of time I got to talk to him at intermission), the 8-bit dungeon was decidedly not 8-bit. In fact, every projected screen was blatantly 64-bit and from an N64 game, except for the lone 16-bit projection. You win some, you lose some, I guess. Honestly, that's just me scratching the surface of the references and jokes that were often relevant and managed to not take away from the story, which is pretty impressive. And I'm not even mentioning the non-video games ones, like Wikipedia's constant desire for donations in recent years.

     The music was really rather catchy. I once read a quote that basically boiled down to 'if  you leave the theater and you're not humming a tune, the musical's failed.' I would properly attribute my awful paraphrase if I could remember who said it, but, alas, I cannot, much to my shame. But it's Thursday, two days after I saw the show, and I'm still humming Search Engine Crash, the song that basically starts their quest. It was perhaps my favorite song of the night. It was generally easy to follow melodically and had some pretty nice harmonies in it, and, much like narration, I'm a sucker for harmonies. Very close to it in my esteem was The Blogger's Ballad, which, despite being the obligatory act II dramatic female aria that can often feel tacked on and/or boring if the character singing it is not the primary lead, was probably the highlight of that act. It was also the only true solo of the show. Just a woman and pit. No chorus, no second or third person singing under her. Just her and the pit. It had a very welcome different feel from the rest of the score while still feeling like it was part of WikiMusical.

     Despite the score's catchiness, there were a few lyrics that didn't quite sit with me. This was generally because it sometimes felt like someone started saying something in a song slightly before that character wanted to. However, there was one lyric that upset me, and I feel obligated to point it out. I certainly don't think the lyric was at all meant to be malicious, nor was it meant to be the inception of anything insidious, but it felt like the repercussions of the word choice weren't fully thought out. I'm going to paraphrase it because, well, lyrics (specifically, the memory of them) aren't my strong suit: "You're the one who taught me how to trick girls into giving me head."

     I totally get what they were going for. Bigger brother passes down knowledge to little brother about how to be a more winsome and attractive person to the opposite sex. Friends and siblings do that for each other. It shows closeness, and it shows the level of faith the knowledge-less has in the knowledgeable. However, the use of the word "trick" leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. It seems very unsavory and underhanded, which is not how we should look at sex. It makes it sound like sex is about winning, which seems rather unhealthy to me. Not to mention, at its extreme (which the lyric was NOT going for at all) it does enter slightly rapey territory.

     Now that I've said that, let me repeat that clearly was not the intention of the lyricist duo. Let me also add that I can be somewhat sensitive around such subjects, which is why I picked up on it when they probably didn't. Did the lyric take me out of the moment? Admittedly, yes. Did it ruin the show, or even the song? No, because the intended subtext was really clear. Still, I think this was the first time it became abundantly clear to me how important every single word in a lyric is. "Trick" was bad because of its definition and connotation. Sure, the subtext was "You taught me how to present myself as a sexually desirable human being which proves that you're awesome and I need you," but the word was just the wrong choice.

     Okay, off my soap box. I'm getting kind of rambly. Let me just say that despite that one moment of awkward "that's... not... okay..." I really, really, really enjoyed myself. The score was fun, the jokes appealed to my nerdiness, and you could basically imagine the whole thing as an 16-bit RPG complete with a five-man band. I would really love to see more shows that do some of the things WikiMusical does. There's a whole untapped (okay, just not fully tapped) audience of video game and computer nerds that would seriously eat stuff like this up. Not everything has to be a joke about how expensive Broadway is or being Jewish, after all.

State of Florida v. George Zimmerman

               The State of Florida v. George Zimmerman case has been on the nation's mind for quite a while now. Emotions have only intensified since Zimmerman was acquitted on Saturday. You can't go anywhere without encountering it somehow. It's all over facebook and various news-sites, and honestly probably every form of media, social or otherwise, at this point. People have called it a travesty of justice because he was acquitted, others have said that the travesty would have been if he wasn't.

               I've been thinking about this case a lot, just like most of my fellow Americans. I've been struggling to make sense of all of this in my own head and my own life. That of course meant that I had to write about it, since it is through writing that I often sort through my thoughts and feelings. I cannot give you an account of what actually happened on 26 February 2012, because I wasn't there. Likewise, I cannot say what for certain should have happened in court, because I do not have all the facts nor can do I know either man's mindset. But I what I can say is what it all means to me.

               This past Saturday I was in the apartment I'm subletting with my girlfriend. Her cousin had come to Boston for business and opted to come a couple days early to visit, and thus we had spent the evening and some of the night watching a few episodes of Better Off Ted and Once Upon a Time. Afterwards I got on laptop and decided to catch up on the Evolution World Championships that had started on Friday and would continue through Sunday night. It was late, probably 11:00 or so, and I took a break from watching recordings of Persona 4 Arena to check facebook. My newsfeed was filled with cries of injustice that clearly all pointed to the outcome of the Zimmerman trial, and I decided to go read a Guardian article on the outcome. I read through the article and learned that Mr. Zimmerman had been acquitted. No murder of the second degree. No manslaughter.

               Now, reading that (or, rather, allusions to it) on facebook had very little effect on me other than to pique my curiosity. After all, everyone on facebook (and I suspect this is true of most forms of social media) espouses extreme views on any issue that falls in or against their beliefs, so I had grown accustomed to exaggeration which I typically would ignore and make a footnote to myself to learn about the issue later. However, reading a news article that very matter-of-factly told me the outcome of the case, something happened to me that I wasn't expecting at all. My demeanor instantly soured, and I felt my stomach suddenly churn. It was the most visceral reaction I have ever had to reading a news story, and quite possibly to reading anything. I tried to return to watching Persona 4 Arena to take my mind off of it, but that didn't work. Soon I found myself reading the same story on other news sites. I read CNN, I read the BBC, I read Huffington Post, and NBC, and Fox. And they all said the same thing: Zimmerman was acquitted, O'Mara warned his client of riots, Martin's parents were considering a civil suit, and the NAACP was outraged.

               I felt stifled in the little studio apartment with two other people, so I locked myself in the bathroom and stared in the mirror in hopes of finding clarity as to what the hell I was feeling. Of course that didn't work, so I left the bathroom and said I was going out for a bit. I exited the building and sat on the stoop to complex. I stared at the building across the street, and I watched the drunk twenty-somethings exit Pour House and Whiskeys attempting to hail taxis. I sat there for hours. Thinking. Why was I so angry? What was it about this that made me feel crushed by rage and despair all at once?

               It was this: At that moment, with my understanding of that decision, my country had deemed that I was a second class citizen. That as black male, I'm inherently more dangerous than the vast majority of people I know. That I cannot be trusted to walk down a street without looking suspicious. That, like family and friends have always told me, directly or indirectly, I must prove that I am not a threat and deserving of the same kind of respect and opportunities as my white counterparts. I am not as good, nor will I ever be. Those were the thoughts that were swirling in my head.

               I had spent my entire life believing that while, of course, there was still a ways to go before we as a nation (and as a world) reached racial equality (and further still before equality of sex, gender, sexual orientation, and a whole host of other things I'm failing to list) that these things I had been told about how life would always be harder for me because I was a black male was the reaction of people from a different time. When people had to struggle for the right to attend the same schools and have the same jobs. But for the first time in my life I was slapped with the reality that we really weren't as equal as I thought. That's not something one just shakes off. That's not something one just accepts. But then, what is there to do? I didn't know. All I knew was that I was angry, confused, and depressed.

               I woke up the next day and decided the best thing for myself was to just not think about it until I could think about it more coolly. I do not enjoy being so gut wrenchingly controlled by my emotions; not when I simultaneously feel like I don't have the whole story. So I postponed my soul searching for the sake of fun and competition by watching the end of the EVO championship I had started. But as the day stretched on I began to attempt to understand what I knew about the case and how this played into my own feelings. It turned out that I understood very, very little. I knew very little of the facts. I had no idea what evidenced was introduced or what was testified. In fact, I only had a vague inkling that the prosecution had a fairly weak presentation.

               So I began reading. At first, I made the foolish mistake of reading comments to articles just to see what other people were thinking. This of course proved that, we humans, when we're impassioned about something, have a very high tendency to blatantly ignore discourse and instead resort to mudslinging, which is perhaps increased by the ability to be an "internet tough guy." So I read more articles instead, but that felt like reading more of the same. I began searching for some coverage of the court proceedings, which I had missed. There were some summations of witness testimonies and some descriptions of evidence that I located and I read them.

               Though I am by no means an authority on this case, or the legal system, after doing some research on the trial, it is absolutely no surprise to me that Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted. Often times the witnesses the State called to the stand gave very useful testimonies for the defense either via cross, or even occasionally during direct. Since the burden of proof lies with the prosecution and the defense need only show that the prosecution has not proved anything beyond reasonable doubt, this posed an issue when many of testimonies that did bolster the State's case did not bolster it much. One example was calling Capt. Alexis Carter Jr. to prove that Zimmerman knew about the "stand-your-ground" law, and thus imply he was a liar. While this tactic seemed to have worked, during cross, Capt. Carter stated that one need not wait until almost dead, nor need s/he wait until attacked. The person invoking the law could very well be the aggressor and need only perceive that their opponent will render them great bodily harm. Facts such as this combined with testimonies from other such as John Good, who provided a seemingly eye witness account of Trayvon Martin on top of Zimmerman, really meant that there was no way the State could prove beyond reasonable doubt that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin with ill intent. In fact, in the face of something like the Stand-Your-Ground law, which I only have a very rudimentary understanding of, without damning evidence reaching the level of Zimmerman declaring in fiendish manner that he was going hunting for black criminals in his neighborhood, there was very little the prosecution could do. There was little actual hope for an outcome other than full acquittal with the way the prosecution handled the case, which, regardless of their efforts, was poor.

               Does that mean that I've had a massive change of heart and condone Mr. Zimmerman's actions? No, of course not. Despite what the defense would have you believe, you cannot arm yourself with the sidewalk just as you can't arm yourself with a house, and thus he shot an unarmed man. A man who was likely in similar physical condition (one being an athlete and the other practice MMA for at least six months). Did Zimmerman want to be a cop at some point in time? Evidence suggests yes. Did he say some nasty things while on the phone with the police? Evidence again suggests yes. Should he have gotten out of the car in the first place? Probably not. Was race truly an issue in this case? I would say yes, considering the fact that Zimmerman followed Martin, that he seemed spitefully agitated when on the phone, and the alleged things said by both parties.

               Though it is very hard to believe that a fairly young man killed another, younger man, and get's off scot free, it did happen. Zimmerman's injuries suggest that he was not yet in mortal danger, though if Martin, aggressor or not, stated what Zimmerman alleges he did ("... you are going to die tonight..."), then it Zimmerman's heightened sense of fear while in the struggle seems like it could be grounds to invoke Stand-Your-Ground.

               Despite what side one falls on in the debate of whether this is a travesty of justice or not, the fact is that where this happened, when this happened, and the ambiguity of the actual events of that night, meant that there was only one possible outcome. This doesn't suddenly neglect the fact that it came to stand for race equality, or rather, the lack thereof, in the United States. The assumptions that there would be riots, or that radicals would attempt to harm Zimmerman if things did not go their way was ludicrous. The hopes of a successful civil suit are likely slim. So we are left with the facts of the case and how each of us feels in the aftermath.

               If I compare myself now to Saturday, which wasn't that long ago, I can most certainly say that I'm calmer. I can say that I'm not immediately plagued by anger and despair. But I can also say this, though legally correct, was this finding correct morally? In a case that represents everything that's wrong with race relations in the US, or at the very least between whites and blacks in the US, did it really boil down to something as disconcertingly black and white as find him guilty or follow Florida state law? I would like to believe that this isn't the case. I would like to believe that Justice, while possibly blind, isn't as simple as that. I would like to believe that we, as a nation, can pull past that and work to never let something like this happen again. But as idealistic as I would like to be, there is now that seed of doubt in the back of my mind that wonders if that's completely impossible and if I am forever doomed to be judged guilty until proven innocent because my skin is dark and I have a Y chromosome.

Theater Thursday: Prince Ali On A Whole New Stage

It's Theater Thursday!

Today seems like a good day to talk about Disney's Aladdin. But that's a movie, why would I talk about that? Well, because it seems that it may very well be going to Broadway. If Aladdin heads to Broadway it will join the ranks of its older Disney-movies-turned-into-Broadway-stage-musicals siblings: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, My Son Pinocchio, and more. Most recently Disney has seen fabulous success with Newsies on Broadway, bringing in many new fans with the ecstatic revamped music, and perhaps creating a bit of tension between the diehard movie nuts and the newer musical-heads. Newsies, like Aladdin, originally came out in 1992 and both shows, assuming Aladdin does make the move to the Great White Way, will have experienced a huge resurgence in popularity.

This production of Aladdin, with its lofty (though certain if desired, considering Disney is bankrolling it) expectations, was  in tryouts at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle in July of last year. With a book by Chad Beguelin, most famous for his work on The Wedding Singer, direction by Casey Nicholaw of The Book of Mormon, music by Alan Menken (who managed to have two of his shows go against each other for best musical, but not best score in this year's Tony Awards), and lyrics by Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, and Beguelin the show is certain to make a big splash. Then again, the Seattle Times does point out that the show was flawed, with an Act I that tries too hard to be the movie we all know and love. However, it also says that the second act was good and that it was still enjoyable to watch.

The Seattle Aladdin uses many of the cut songs from the movie as well as new songs composed by Menken and lyricized by Beguelin. Menken and Beguelin decided to go back to Menken and Ashford's original concept of a fast paced show modeled after the seven "Road to..." movies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. This series is known for its zany antics and gags, where the jokes, bits, one-liners take precedence over the plot. This style likely lends itself to reinstating such songs as "Call Me a Princess" during which Jasmine becomes a shrill voiced rich girl to shoo away suitors, "Why Me?" in which Jafar comically laments his past as he searches for the Diamond in the Rough, and "Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kasim" in which Aladdin and his four friends (conflated into Abu in the movie version) perform to earn some spare change. What purpose these songs serve in the show is hard to tell out of context, but I'm all for more singing Jafar.

This is not the first time that Disney has made a stage musical version of Aladdin. There's the forty-five minute California Adventure show Disney's Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular. First opened in 2003, it more or less condenses the whole movie into that tiny time frame because who wants to go to an amusement park and watch a two hour and ten minute show (well, I would, but that's unimportant)? There are also Aladdin Jr. and Aladdin Kids, the middle school and lower school versions of Aladdin respectively. As to why there needs to be one especially geared to middle schoolers AND lower schoolers, I don't really know. But with such wonderful casting directions as "Jafar is our villain. In order to portray this through casting, consider a taller boy with a changed voice," and "The Tiger God is an all powerful presence yet a tad bit sassy to keep it interesting," one can't help but wonder what on Earth they're trying to do with these shows.

Regardless, Disney's latest foray into turning a tried and true property into a huge Broadway smash could prove successful. If the rumors are true, anyway. Perhaps we'll see a reworked version of the Seattle show in the near future. Will it become the next Lion King, and be everyone's favorite Broadway show, with people remembering spectacular sequences years down the line from when they first saw it? Or will it be Tarzan, and no one will even know it existed because it was, apparently, that bad? Who knows. All I want to know is where are my Hunchback and Mulan Broadway shows? I want Hellfire and Make a Man Out of You live. Let's get down to business, Disney.

Science Sunday: And God Said, "Let There Be Mass!"

It's Science Sunday, everyone! Woohoo!

I'd like to say a few words about what is likely one of the biggest scientific finds this century. That is the particle that is consistent with the Higgs boson. On 4 July of this year, ATLAS and CMS (two teams doing research at CERN), using data gathered by the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), independently confirmed finding a particle that is consistent with the Higgs boson. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means that this particle behaves like a Higgs, decays like a Higgs, quacks like a Higgs, but hasn't been tested enough so we can't actually say it is a Higgs. For most of us out there that boils down to this: They found the Higgs boson. While that's not necessarily true, it's what most people, both those who are and who aren't scientists, believe.

So what exactly IS a Higgs boson? Well, I'm going to be one hundred percent honest with you: I haven't done any formal studying of it myself, and the mechanism behind it is a bit complex so I can only go so far in an explanation. That being said, I've done a little reading on the subject of the Higgs, so here's what I seem to understand in a qualitative, possibly handwavey, manner.

The Higgs boson is an excitation of a field that is present everywhere in the universe at all times. It's a whosawhat in the wheresawhen now? Let's think about it another way. Imagine that there's a medium all around you, let's say it's jell-o. Let's say that you were born in this jell-o and for as long as you can remember the jell-o has always been there no matter where you go and what you do. Everyone and everything exists in this jell-o. Considering the fact that you were born in the jell-o and have grown in it, you can easily move through it and it doesn't impair anything in your life. In fact, you don't really notice it's there at all because it's always been there.  Well, the jell-o is kinda like the Higgs field. It's there, but we're not really aware of it, so we don't really experience it as anything. So we can imagine doing things in this jell-o, and though it don't ostensibly impair our actions, it certainly affects them.

Now imagine shaking the jell-o so that different ripples appear. Shake it a little bit and small ripples are created. Shake it more and bigger ripples. These ripples eventually dissipate back into the jell-o's original shape. This is kinda like exciting a field. The metaphor is by no means perfect, but I hope it sheds a little light on the situation.

 So then, to say a Higgs boson is an excitation of an ever pervasive field is sorta like saying that it's the result of that field rippling. Okay, great, so what does the Higgs boson DO exactly? It gives things mass. Mass to me and you? Well, yes and no. Yes, the Higgs is theoretically responsible for the mass of certain particles, but it contributes so little to the mass of a human that it's basically negligible in everyday life. Most of our mass is the result of what's called the strong nuclear force. Nevertheless, it is the Higgs that gives mass to the W± and Z bosons, explaining why they have mass and why a photon doesn't.

What are these other particles I just mentioned? Well, these are particles that serve as force transporters in a sense. W± and Z bosons are the transporters of the weak nuclear force, which means that they in some sense carry this kind of force. Without them, there wouldn't really be a weak nuclear force, which is the force that dominates radioactivity. Photons are the transporters of the electromagnetic force. Without them everything would be dark because there'd be no light since there'd be nothing "carrying" it. These three types of bosons (W+, W-, and Z) along with photons should be massless due to a kind of symmetry in one of our leading models of physics (the Standard Model), but the bosons have mass. This is because the Higgs boson, via the Higgs Mechanism, makes it more energetically favorable for the W± and Z bosons to have mass, "breaking" the symmetry between them and the photon. To understand this energetic favorability, let's say that the W± and Z bosons and the photons are on a hill that's too small for them all and they're balancing precariously. The Higgs boson kicks the other three bosons off the hill and, now on the ground below, the bosons have much more space and are free to go where they want. It's kind of like that.

So, by finding our particle consistent with the Higgs boson, we've basically determined how certain particles develop mass. Not only that, but, by finding this particle we end up confirming the correctness of our Standard Model. This will lead to more elegant models that sum up how our universe works more and more succinctly. Also, it proves that we, as a race, are pretty awesome when we feel like it, and whether you care about the science or not you can at least care about that.

Anyway, if you have questions feel free ask by leaving a comment. I'll do my best to answer them, but considering I don't particularly understand the math behind this and only kind of understand it qualitatively, no promises. I highly suggest you go read about it yourself if you're so inclined, or ask someone at your friendly neighborhood college physics department. If I've made any egregious errors, please let me know. I'd rather not spread misinformation. And if you just want to say a couple random things, that's great too. Lastly, tune in Thursday for another fun filled blogisode of Theater Thursdays!

See you shortly!

Theater Thursday: Two Girls, a Guy, and a Puppet

Happy Theater Thursday, true believers!

I'd like to say a few words about a certain show that has taken over my entire summer. It's a short, rather amusing show, running at an average of approximately eighty seven minutes. What is  that show? That show is Car Talk!!! The Musical.

Car Talk!!! is my first foray into the world of professional theater. My involvement is pretty straightforward. I'm the assistant stage manager intern. It's a nice, shiny way of saying I'm a member of run crew, since we have an actual ASM who I think is quite good at what she does. Being part of run crew means I get to do normal crew-y things. I sweep and mop the deck before every show, and the deck's not that big so this doesn't take very long. I preset a large number of the props so that our talented bunch of actors (or I, when necessary) can grab them swiftly and easily before running on stage. And then, during the show, I do a couple scene changes, get my fifteen seconds of spotlight, and, most importantly operate the mouth of a giant car puppet.

The puppet. Ohhhhhhh, the puppet. If I've learned anything during my time in Car Talk!!!, it's that puppetry is hard and I don't think it's something I'm going to pursue. The puppet, which I shall simply refer to as the puppet to avoid SPOILERS, is a monstrosity of metal and foam and lights and wheels and wires and probably something else I'm forgetting. It's quite tall, easily obscuring the three crew members operating it. Four of us had to work together to lift it on the deck, for it is a heavy beast. Due to its weight, every time I get behind it, shortly before I push it out for its grand unveiling in each show to a mix of giggles and quizzical looks, I am momentarily petrified that it will defy all laws of physics and simply tilt backwards. And if it tilted backwards, well, let's just say I love pancakes, but not when I am them.

The puppet has a moving mouth, eyes that look to its sides, eyebrows that go up, down, and spin all around, a hand spun pinwheel, and light up... everything. That seems like a lot of things, and it is, but then you remember you have to keep it alive with those things, and, well, suddenly the task seems daunting. There's one crew person on the left eyebrow and the pinwheel, the ASM is on the right eyebrow and the eyes, and I'm on the mouth. The lights are controlled from the light board in the booth in the back of the theater. So, the three of us behind the puppet control every facial feature, and all it has are facial features. Clearly the most expressive part of the puppet is its eyes, and so we've (and by we've I mean not me since I don't touch the eyes or eyebrows during the show) made it rather sarcastic, with cocked eyebrows and sideways glances galore. That definitely goes a long way, because otherwise we'd be relying on a foam mouth. A foam mouth that REALLY only goes up and down and sometimes can squish in a little bit. Try as I might, the puppet doesn't do much with his mouth other than lip flap. It reminds me of all the anime I used to watch religiously and learning that the main reason that everyone in dubbed anime has a very distinct speaking pattern isn't just because of the unnecessarily (but often humorously) dramatic dialogue, but because of preexisting lip flap that the voice actors have to match. It's a little different here, since I'm the lip flap and I'm matching preexisting recordings, but it's the same kind of problem. There's not much wiggle room for different lip movements or inflections. There's also not much wiggle room because you've got a grown man and two grown women behind a puppet, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless, we try to keep it alive. And, you know, I think it's working.

Well, I just said a crapton more about that puppet than I meant to... Whatever! More importantly, I've gotten to work on this production from the rehearsal process through now, and, well, it's been a very different beast than what I'm used to. The show started rehearsing during finals week at MIT, which was a barrel of laughs for me. I remember sitting in music rehearsals while the actors learned their parts with a binder open to my notes on quantum mechanics reading and rereading pages and scribbling sparse calculations on an extra sheet of paper next to me. All the while I marveled at their voices and the general ease at which they learned pieces. And then I had my final that Wednesday, came out terrified, but passed the class and everything was okay.

Scene rehearsals involved a real dialogue between the actors and the director. The director would try something, and the actors would do it and if it didn't feel right they'd say so. And then everyone involved in the rehearsal would work out an alternative that served the storytelling better and suited everyone's needs. It was fascinating to watch. What I'm used to is the director says do A, and the actor does A, and that's what gets done in the show regardless of whether it actually works or not. It was great to see people really work together to do the best they could.

Rehearsals must have been roughly every day for a month, and then we opened on 18 June. We're still running. The longest run I had ever done until now was six shows spread over two weeks. Here we are on month three. At this point, everything that I have to do during the show, which I am being intentionally vague about in hopes that you'll come see for yourself, feels like slipping on a glove. And not one of those impossible to pull on latex lab gloves that are either too small or too big for your hand, either; ones that actually fit. There are no surprises in what I'm doing because now I know exactly how long it takes to do X, or when it's easiest to get Y, or how long before Z occurs. I still worry about placing a couple of things simply because knocking any of it over adds time, time that I don't have, to that scene change, but in general I'm very relaxed. What I do is easy, which is nice.

                       

Of course, with all this relaxation going on, it gives me more time to hear the little changes and additions the actors make to keep the show fresh. Or the adlibs as a result of a slightly flubbed line. And it gives me all the time in the world to be healthily envious of all of them, singing, dancing, and bringing a strange, somewhat whimsical story to life. I've told many of them this before, but what I wouldn't give to REALLY be up there with them. To embody a role in the world they're creating when they first step on that stage and a certain familiar tune starts up. I hope they realize how truly lucky they are. I'm sure they do, but sometimes it helps to know that there are those like me who look at them and just feel desire and motivation to do what they're doing.

We recently extended to 16 September, which means we've extended into the first two weeks of the school year. While I'm glad we're able to extended this wild ride another two weeks, I'm also not looking forward to having to balance psets, grading, classes, and a library job with that for that time frame. But it should ultimately be fun. If you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, and you haven't seen Car Talk!!! yet, or even if you have, I highly recommend you come to Central Square Theater on Mass Ave and see it and see some talented actors, hear some great music, and have a good time. Besides, the Globe loved it.

Tune in Sunday for the first Science Sunday in which I shall talk about... IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYONE!