Daily Archives: February 20, 2021

At this point, 2020 needs no introduction. In a single year, the Covid-19 pandemic claimed millions of lives around the world and wiped out trillions of dollars from the global economy. It changed the way most people work and live, and has left a lasting imprint on virtually every industryincluding the asset management firms that collectively oversee about $29 trillion in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

If ever there was a year for active managers to prove their mettle, it was last year. Granted, investors who rode it out in an index fund would have done just fine: The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (ticker: VOO) returned 18% in 2020. But it was a wild year for many active fundsespecially the more than two dozen stock funds that returned at least 100% in what is almost certainly a first in the history of the industry.

Record-setting returns helped propel many of the top-ranked fund families up the leaderboard in this years Barrons Fund Family Ranking, based on data from Refinitiv Lipper. But that wasnt the case for every company. In fact, the No. 1-ranked fund family, Manning & Napier, credits its strong performance to asset allocation. The runner-up, Guggenheim Investments, took its spot thanks to a bold call on the bond market.

The next two firms, No. 3-ranked Vanguard and Fidelity Investments at No. 4, are both massive fund complexes but quite different when it comes to their actively managed stock funds: Vanguard relies primarily on outside advisors, while Fidelity has one of the largest in-house research teams in the business.

Rounding out the top five, No. 5-ranked Morgan Stanley Investment Managementwhich debuted on our ranking in 2019 at No. 47made its mark in 2020 thanks largely to its Counterpoint Global team, which ushered five different funds to returns exceeding 100% for the year.

See previous years rankings:

As has been the case for the past two decades, Barrons Fund Family Ranking looks at the one-year relative performance of fund firms that offer a diversified lineup of actively managed mutual funds and ETFs. The ranking eliminates index funds, so results are based on firms skill in active management. The ranking itself is purely quantitative, yet behind the fund tickers and track records are individuals. They all have their own stories of relocating to home offices and contending with different strokes of personal disruptionduring the worst market selloff in history and one of the fastest recoveries on record.

To qualify for this ranking, firms must offer at least three active mutual funds or actively run ETFs in Lippers general U.S. stock category; one in world equity; and one mixed-asset, such as a balanced or allocation fund. They also need to offer at least two taxable bond funds and one national tax-exempt bond fund. All funds must have a track record of at least one year. While the ranking excludes index funds, it does include actively managed ETFs and smart beta ETFs, which are run passively but built on active investment strategies.

All told, just 53 asset managers out of the 822 in Lippers database met our criteria for 2020. The list varies from year to year, as firms merge, get acquired, or add or drop funds. After liquidating its mixed-asset funds, Aberdeen Standard Management dropped off this years ranking. Legg Mason is another notable firm thats no longer on the list; Franklin Templeton acquired the firm in 2020. Many other large fund managers are consistently absent because they dont check all of the boxes in the categories we consider. Notable names in this category include Janus Henderson, Dodge & Cox, and Charles Schwab Investment Management.

Active investing comes in many forms, but human decision-making is always part of the process, whether it entails picking individual stocks and bonds, creating and improving factor-based models, or making big-picture calls that affect multiple portfolios.

The first thing that went right for us was asset allocation, says Ebrahim Busheri, director of investments at Manning & Napier. The 50-year-old Rochester, N.Y., firm was an early adopter of asset-allocation funds and began offering life-cycle strategies in 1988, decades before the industry embraced them. Heading into the March selloff, the firms multi-asset portfoliosincluding four Pro-Blend fundsunderweighted equities, not because Busheri and his colleagues predicted the pandemic, but because they thought it was the late stages of the economic cycle and that valuations had gotten ahead of themselves.

When markets plummeted 34% in late February and March, the managers quickly changed course. We are truly an active manager, and when theres volatility, theres the potential to benefit. says Busheri.

The firms largest allocation fund, the $695 million Manning & Napier Pro-Blend Extended Term (MNBAX), went from a 46% allocation to stocks in February to 59% by the end of March. The fund returned 17.6% in 2020, better than 96% of its Lipper peers, and with less risk than the market. The funds maximum drawdown during the selloff last spring was 19%.

While allocation decisions set the tone, performance was also a function of security-specific decisions. We tend to grow our own talent, says Busheri, who joined the firm after getting his M.B.A. at the University of Rochester. Its easier to implement a specific strategy when you train analysts to think that way from day one.

On the equity side, the firm categorizes holdings into three main buckets: profile companies are growth stocks with sustainable competitive advantages; hurdle rate companies are out-of-favor cyclical companies; and bankable deals are companies whose parts are greater than their market value. During the selloff last spring, Manning & Napier managers focused primarily on buying or adding to their positions in profile companies such as Amazon.com (AMZN), PayPal Holdings (PYPL), and ServiceNow (NOW).

See Barrons Best Fund Families of 2020 rankings below. Scroll down to read the rest of the article.

*Total assets reflect the funds included in the survey. **Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately. (To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.)

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

To view all the columns in the table, please use the scroll bar located at the bottom of the table.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

Though stocks dominated the headlines, some of the biggest dislocations last March were in the bond market. Heading into 2020, Anne Walsh, chief investment officer of fixed income at No. 2-ranked Guggenheim Investments, and her colleagues battened down the hatches, thinking that most bonds were priced to perfection. Then came the coronavirus, and things pivoted almost overnight, she says, recounting how redemptions in riskier corporate bonds exacerbated losses for managers who were forced to sell. Meanwhile, companies issued new bondswith significantly higher yields than a couple of months priorto raise capital to weather the crisis. This opened the door for Guggenheim to go shopping.

After lagging behind its benchmark in 2019, the $25 billion Guggenheim Total Return Bond fund (GIBIX) returned more than 15% in 2020, and beat nearly all of its Lipper peers. Likewise, the $6 billion Guggenheim Macro Opportunities fund (GIOIX) returned 11.6% to rank at the top of its peer group.

Guggenheim offers a diverse lineup of funds, but most of its $246 billion in assets under management are in fixed income. Guggenheim is adept at turning market dislocations in its favor. It cleaned up after the 2008-09 financial crisis, and in 2014, following the taper tantrum, the Total Return Bond fund returned 8.3%outpacing most of its peers.

Still, last year was its own story, namely because things snapped back so quickly, says Walsh. The company tries to minimize behavioral biases that often lead to second-guessing through its organizational structure. Guggenheims 214 fixed-income investment professionals, who are based primarily in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York, work in four groups, each focused on macroeconomics, portfolio construction, security analysis, and portfolio management.

The market has bounced back, but Walsh and her colleagues say there is still room for yields on riskier bonds to move closer to their risk-free equivalents. Nothing moves in a straight line, but generally speaking, the trend is toward tighter spreads, she says.

This years No. 3 spot goes to Vanguard. The $7.1 trillion manager is best known as a powerhouse in index investing, but its $1.7 trillion in actively managed fundssplit evenly between equity and fixed incomemakes it one of the largest active investors in the world. Vanguard doesnt do much stock-picking in-house; most of the firms active equity funds are managed by outside advisors, as has been the case since John Bogle founded Vanguard to handle the administrative functions of his previous employer, Wellington Management.

Working with subadvisors allows Vanguard to seek out the best talent in any given area and keep costs low, says Kaitlyn Caughlin, who is a principal and head of Vanguards Portfolio Review Department, charged with developing and maintaining funds managed in-house and by roughly two dozen outside firms.

In the case of the $71 billion Vanguard International Growth fund (VWILX), subadvisors Schroder Investment Management and Baillie Gifford delivered a nearly 60% return in 2020, thanks to long-term positions in top performers like Alibaba Group Holding (BABA), Tencent Holdings (TCEHY), and Tesla (TSLA).

Wellington Managements Don Kilbride has run the $45 billion Vanguard Dividend Growth fund (VDIGX) since 2006 with a philosophy that rising dividends are both a byproduct and harbinger of high-quality companies that can compound returns, even in tough environments. Top holdings such as UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Nike (NKE), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) contributed to the funds 12% return last year, better than 85% of its Lipper peers.

The $48 billion Vanguard Windsor II fund (VWNAX) also helped Vanguards overall standing. It returned 14.5% in 2020 to edge out most of its large-value peersthough some of its larger holdings, such Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL), arent prototypical value stocks. Its considered a value manager, but certainly not in the way we think of value, says Daniel Wiener, chairman of Adviser Investments and senior editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors.

Last year, 83% of the firms active fixed-income fundsmost of which are managed in-houseoutperformed their respective benchmarks. That includes the $74 billion Vanguard Short-Term Investment-Grade (VFSUX) and $37 billion Vanguard Intermediate-Term Investment-Grade (VFIDX) funds, which were up more than 5% and 10%, respectively, in 2020, putting them in the top decile of their Lipper peers. Smart investment decisions drive performance, but low feesas in an average asset-weighted expense ratio for Vanguard actively managed bond funds of 0.11%are part of the equation. In a low-yield fixed-income environment, ultralow expenses win the day, Wiener says.

Whereas Vanguard outsources most of its fundamental equity research, No. 4-ranked Fidelity has one of the largest in-house research departments in the businesshundreds of equity and credit analysts collectively calling the shots on most of its $2.5 trillion in actively managed assets. In a typical year, Fidelitys research team has more than 13,000 face-to-face meetings with companiesa process that went virtual in a matter of days last spring.

Tim Cohen, co-head of equity, says that he and his colleagues look forward to the time when they can kick the tires in real life. For now, there are positives. As active managers, we benefit from change, Cohen says, noting that collectively, Fidelitys equity funds outperformed their benchmarks by 8.9 percentage points.

Meanwhile, the virtual world makes it possible to defy physics. For all its downside, there was at least one upside in 2020: I was able to be in a few places at one time, says Sonu Kalra, manager of the $40 billion Fidelity Blue Chip Growth (FBGRX). For example, I could attend health care, tech, and consumer conferencesvirtuallyall on the same day. Thats not possible if you have to travel to California, New York, and Florida.

Because Barrons rankings are asset-weighted, a firm tends to rank high when its larger funds post strong relative performance. That was the case for Kalras fund, which returned 62% in 2020, better than 98% of its peers. The same was true of the $45 billion Fidelity Growth Company (FDGRX) which returned 68%. Though it returned more than 32% last year, Fidelitys $132 billion Contrafund (FCNTX) landed in the bottom third of its peer group, detracting from the firms overall score. Contrafunds 2020 problem, in short, according to manager Will Danoffs letter to shareholders: too much Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) and not enough Apple.

On the fixed-income side, many of Fidelitys bigger contributors are part of Fidelitys Strategic Advisers series. The funds arent available directly to retail investors or through financial advisors, but they are included in the ranking because they are the basis of a growing segment of separately managed accounts, which are available primarily through individual and workplace retirement plans.

Finally, No. 5-ranked Morgan Stanley Investment Management made its first appearance in the ranking in 2019 and climbed the ranksin a big wayin 2020. The asset management arm of Morgan Stanley has no central investment research office or chief investment officer calling the shots. Rather, more than 20 autonomous teams specializing in a wide range of public and private markets manage $781 billion in assets.

In 2020, Morgan Stanley announced that it would acquire Eaton Vance (No. 48) in a deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. Given that there is little overlap in focus areas Eaton Vance brings deep expertise in municipal bonds and owns Calvert Research & Management, a leader in sustainable investingit isnt expected to dramatically change how Morgan Stanley teams manage money.

We have a lot of diverse views, and typically, smaller decision-making groups tend to succeed, says Dennis Lynch, head of the Counterpoint Global team, which manages about $150 billion in 19 growth-oriented strategies. And talk about succeeding: Five of the mutual funds managed by Lynchs team returned more than 100% in 2020. Relative underperformance in 2019 (Morgan Stanley ranked 47th last year) helped to slingshot results in 2020. Many of our companies were underappreciated coming into 2020, Lynch says. And many benefited from quicker [Covid spurred] adoption of secular trends already in their favor.

The $20 billion Morgan Stanley Institutional Growth (MSEQX) returned 115%. Like many top performers in 2020, it was an early investor in companies that benefited from the sudden shift to all things digital. Zoom Video Communications (ZM) and Shopify (SHOP) were two outsize contributors last year. Similar themes played out in the teams other funds, including Morgan Stanley Insight (CPOAX) and Morgan Stanley Discovery (MPEGX), which were up 116% and 142%, respectively, as well as small-cap growth fund Morgan Stanley Inception (MFLLX) and world stock fund Morgan Stanley Global Endurance (MSJSX).

Lynch says that Counterpoint Global doesnt invest in themes, but the team does spend a lot of time thinking about the impacts of secular trends. Five members of the team are in charge of researching disruptive changeareas that range from, say, artificial intelligence to gene editing. The team has long had a book club, and now that Zoom is ubiquitous, it has started inviting authors to join the online discussions. Recent guests include David Epstein, author of Range, and Abigail Marsh, author of The Fear Factor.

Carving out time to think about big ideas is important for long-term returns, says Lynch, but so is making sure that everyone is on the same page.

*Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

*Victory Capital acquired USAA in July of 2019, but the fund families are ranked separately.

Source: Refinitiv Lipper

All mutual and exchange-traded funds are required to report their returns (to regulators as well as in advertising and marketing material) after fees are deducted, to better reflect what investors would actually experience. But our aim is to measure manager skill, independent of expenses beyond annual management fees. Thats why we calculate returns before any 12b-1 fees are deducted. Similarly, fund loads, or sales charges, arent included in our calculation of returns.

Each funds performance is measured against all of the other funds in its Refinitiv Lipper category, with a percentile ranking of 100 being the highest and one the lowest. This result is then weighted by asset size, relative to the fund familys other assets in its general classification. If a familys biggest funds do well, that boosts its overall ranking; poor performance in its biggest funds hurts a firms ranking.

To be included in the ranking, a firm must have at least three funds in the general equity category, one world equity, one mixed equity (such as a balanced or target-date fund), two taxable bond funds, and one national tax-exempt bond fund.

Single-sector and country equity funds are factored into the rankings as general equity. We exclude all passive index funds, including pure index, enhanced index, and index-based, but include actively managed ETFs and so-called smart-beta ETFs, which are passively managed but created from active strategies.

Finally, the score is multiplied by the weighting of its general classification, as determined by the entire Lipper universe of funds. The category weightings for the one-year results in 2020 were general equity, 35.6%; mixed asset, 20.7%; world equity, 17.3%; taxable bond, 21.9%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The category weightings for the five-year results were general equity, 36.2%; mixed asset, 20.9%; world equity, 16.9%; taxable bond, 21.6%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.4%. For the 10-year list, they were general equity, 37.5%; mixed asset, 19.5%; world equity, 17.3; taxable bond, 20.8%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The scoring: Say a fund in the general U.S. equity category has $500 million in assets, accounting for half of the firms assets in that category, and its performance lands it in the 75th percentile for the category. The first calculation would be 75 times 0.5, which comes to 37.5. That score is then multiplied by 35.6%, general equitys overall weighting in Lippers universe. So it would be 37.5 times 0.356, which equals 13.35. Similar calculations are done for each fund in our study. Then the numbers are added for each category and overall. The shop with the highest total score wins. The same process is repeated to determine the five- and 10-year rankings.

Email: editors@barrons.com

Read the rest here:

Barrons Best Fund Families of 2020 - Barron's

Eighteen months ago, Malcolm was at the vanguard of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

Full of bravado and often clad in black, the 21-year-old oversaw a group of 60 combative front-liners who embraced confrontational tactics against the police while demanding greater democracy in the former British colony.

Today, he is applying for asylum in the United Kingdom, and separated from his family in Hong Kong where he feels he can longer visit. Malcom believes if he returns to the Chinese city he could be arrested under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong last June, which scaled up penalties against dissent to include punishments as severe as life imprisonment.

Since then, nearly 100 activists have been arrested under the new law. When Hong Kong police apprehended a protester friend of Malcolm's in October, he booked a red-eye flight to London. Malcolm asked CNN not to use his real name, for fear that his family -- who remain in Hong Kong -- could face repercussions.

The British government has called the security law a clear violation of the "one country, two systems" policy meant to ensure Hong Kong's autonomy from Beijing until 2047. In its wake, the UK has opened a six-year pathway to British citizenship for holders of British National (Overseas) passports (BN(O)), a special visa category created for Hong Kong nationals before the 1997 transfer of power.

The visa does not account for the most vulnerable Hong Kongers: young pro-democracy protesters, like Malcolm, who were born after 1997 and are therefore not eligible. But it is nonetheless remarkable in its scope -- in a city of 7.5 million people, 5.2 million Hong Kongers and their dependents are eligible for it.

It's also remarkable for another reason: it has been pioneered by the same British politicians who engineered the UK's break from the European Union, in part, to curb immigration.

It sets a markedly different tone for the Conservative government, and its cheerleaders in the British press, who have spent the past decade pushing anti-immigrant policies. And critics say it is predicated on a flawed idea of Hong Kongers as a "model minority" who will need no support to settle into a new life in the UK.

The UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016 following a campaign dominated by anti-immigration rhetoric -- much of it emanating from the same politicians who are now running the government.

In one campaign missive, pro-Brexit lawmakers Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, and Michael Gove stoked fears that rising numbers of southern European immigrants would "put further strain on schools and hospitals," and that "class sizes will rise and waiting lists will lengthen if we don't tackle free movement."

Yet last June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the visa pathway for millions of Hong Kongers, describing the offer as being "one of the biggest changes in our visa system in history." The same politicians and media houses that warned darkly of an influx of foreigners during the Brexit campaign raised few objections this time around.

Last month, Priti Patel, now the Home Secretary, said she looked forward to welcoming Hong Kongers "to our great country." Yet in 2016, Patel campaigned against what she described as "uncontrolled migration" from the EU, and last year she is reported to have considered plans to send those seeking asylum in the UK to two Atlantic islands more than 4,000 miles away.

Welcoming Hong Kongers has become one of the few issues in British politics that commands bipartisan support, uniting opposition Labour, Green Party and Scottish National Party members with the hawkish, anti-China wing of the Conservative party.

The British government's shift in attitude could echo a change in public opinion -- migration concerns in the UK appear to have softened considerably in recent years. The jury is out as to why public attitudes have shifted, but it has coincided with immigration dropping off the agenda as a political issue in the past few years.

There is also a feeling of colonial "indebtedness" to the people of Hong Kong, says Jonathan Portes, a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King's College London.

Some of Brexit's biggest backers are championing the scheme "in a pretty explicit break with the approach of [Margaret] Thatcher in the run up to 1997," Portes said, explaining that the late UK Prime Minister "wanted to limit, as much as possible, the number of Hong Kong Chinese who came here, because of her wider anti-immigration views."

Defending Hong Kong against the creep of authoritarianism has also become a moral issue in the UK, which has hardened its attitude towards China in the past year. The UK has barred Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from playing a part in the country's 5G network, and has been vocal in its criticism of Beijing for human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Hong Kong visa scheme has been so lauded is that its recipients are also being sold to the British public by hardline Brexiteers as a caricatured model minority, say critics.

Hong Kong nationals "wouldn't cost our taxpayers a penny... [they] would bring their own wealth," Conservative peer Daniel Hannan wrote in the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper. "And once they arrived, they would generate economic activity for the surrounding region, just as they did in their home city."

The Home Office estimates that up to 153,700 BN(O) holders will arrive in the country this year -- and estimates they could bring 2.9 billion ($4.1 bn) into the economy over five years.

Yet the reality might not be so clear cut.

Hong Kong has one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world, but it is also one of the most economically unequal places on the planet, where one in five people are estimated to be living in poverty.

A family of two adults and two children will have to pay as much as 12,000 ($16,600) in immigration-related fees and have more than 3,100 in the bank in savings, according to the UK Home Office, and that doesn't include flights.

The language barrier (forms will need to be completed in English), and having to demonstrate the ability to accommodate and support themselves for at least six months, are also likely to put some off.

"60% of the people in Hong Kong live in public housing estates and they would find it harder [compared to Hong Kong's white-collar workers] to settle in a foreign country," Chan added.

Nor is it straightforward for those who are able to scrape the funds together, campaigners say. A study by civil society group Hong Kongers in Britain found that the majority of people planning to take up the visa are highly educated and financially able to support themselves through the move. Yet their main concerns about the move are finding accommodation, living costs, finding a job, and integrating into British society. More than a quarter of those surveyed worried about having trouble communicating in English.

Another challenge is the support that awaits them when they arrive in the UK.

The UK does not have a formal national integration program for immigrants. And there is no nationwide integration plan for the Hong Kongers who emigrate under the new scheme, according to Fred Wong, who works with Hong Kong ARC, a civil society group which offers Hong Kongers legal and mental health support. Wong asked CNN not to use his real name because he still has family in Hong Kong and fears for their safety.

Some of the 40 Hong Kongers who Wong is currently helping in the UK have yet to finish university or high school, while around half have never held down a job before and are struggling to get on the ladder in the UK. The UK government has no provisions to help them find jobs, set up bank accounts, or access mental health support, Wong said.

"Most of them suffer from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], which could be a reason or excuse [to why] they are not progressing," Wong said. His group has been organizing free psychological consultations and talks on how to overcome insomnia, nightmares and stress, as many of the Hong Kongers Fred helps have had trouble sleeping since fleeing the territory.

The model minority narrative means that the UK government is "unprepared, and maybe a bit oblivious to the amount of support that's needed," Wong said.

"The UK government is working alongside civil society groups, local authorities and others to support the effective integration of BN(O) status holders and their families who choose to make our United Kingdom their home," UKs Minister for Future Borders and Immigration, Kevin Foster, told CNN in a statement.

Polls show that the majority of British voters support the BN(O) scheme, but attitudes could shift as an estimated 300,000 BN(O) holders arrive in the next five years, Tanja Bueltmann, a professor of migration and diaspora at the University of Strathclyde, told CNN.

"The [ BN(O) scheme] is genuinely well meaning, but the provision around it is not very good," she explained -- something that raises questions over how many Hong Kongers will make the move in the end.

The other worry is Hong Kongers will face racially aggravated violence at a time of increasing xenophobia against people of East Asian appearance in the UK. Figures from London's Metropolitan Police showed that people who self-identified as Chinese, and whose ethnic appearance was recorded as "Oriental," experienced a five-fold increase in racist crimes between January 2020 and March 2020. Polling done in June found that three quarters of people of Chinese ethnicity in the UK had experienced being called a racial slur.

During an October debate on racism against the Chinese and East Asian community in Parliament, Scottish National Party lawmaker David Linden said some of his constituents "described the attacks against them, with restaurants and take-outs being vandalized and boycotted and victims being punched, spat at and coughed on in the street and even verbally abused and blamed for the coronavirus pandemic."

London-based Hong Kong Watch and 10 other civil society groups wrote to the government in January expressing concern about the lack of a "meaningful plan in place to ensure that the new arrivals properly integrate ... local authorities do not have specific policies, strategies or the creative bandwidth to welcome and integrate Hong Kong arrivals into their communities."

"The government must learn the lessons from past failures and take pre-emptive action now," their letter read.

In the meantime, up to 350 Hong Kong dissidents between the ages of 18 and 24 are believed to be currently "stuck in limbo" in the UK, according to Wong from Hong Kong ARC. Being born after 1997, they are not eligible for the BN(O) scheme.

Some are in the country on tourist visas, biding their time until the UK government creates a policy that considers them, or until Canada begins its planned work-visa pathway for young Hong Kong dissidents. Australia has offered a pathway for permanent residency for Hong Kong students and skilled workers currently in the country.

But pandemic-related travel restrictions, as well as a lack of funds, mean many have had to rely on the generosity of civil society groups for a stipend, food and even accommodation.

Others, like Malcolm, have already applied for political asylum in the UK. The process can take more than a year. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work or open a bank account while their claim is being processed; they will be charged higher international fees if they attend a UK university.

And campaigners say there is no guarantee that pleas for asylum will be granted. According to the Refugee Council, in the year to September 2020, only 49% of initial decisions by the Home Office resulted in a grant of asylum or other form of protection.

Many asylum-seekers instead have to rely on asylum appeals through the courts to provide them with refugee status.

"The pro-democracy protests would not have existed without them [young activists], and without the protests there would not have been the BN(O) scheme -- but they're the ones who are being left behind," said Chan.

Malcolm says he is luckier than most, having a sizeable inheritance to survive on, and a network of contacts that helped find him accommodation outside London. He hopes to apply for college once he gains asylum, but in the meantime has started to financially support around 20 dissidents in the UK and Hong Kong. He says that the British government has not done enough to help his generation.

Hong Konger Sze, who asked CNN not to use her full name because her family still lives in Hong Kong, quit her job as a high school geography teacher and came to the UK in October on holiday to visit some friends.

At the end of her two-week trip, Sze decided to stay. She told CNN she plans to apply for BN(O) visa at the end of this month and is living off her savings in a flat she rents with a friend in North London in the meantime. Sze has been looking into roles as a geography teaching assistant or tutor as her Hong Kong teaching qualifications are recognized in the UK. When asked if her halting English will be a liability, Sze says "practice makes perfect."

The 28-year-old said China's incursion into everyday life in Hong Kong had influenced her decision to stay, as had the fact that being in the UK means she has the "freedom to do what I want and even protest every week," without fear of political retribution.

It would be intolerable to live in Hong Kong now, especially since teachers have been compelled to "teach students about the [national] security law," she said.

Sze has settled into London life: She already has strong opinions on the snail's pace of London buses and is counting the days to when lockdown ends and she can go shopping on Oxford Street.

While it can be hard to find the authentic Cantonese cuisine she grew up eating in Hong Kong, Sze marvels at how much cheaper food is at British supermarkets.

"The food quality is better, the price is cheaper and the rent is cheaper," she told CNN.

Sze cannot get a job until her BN(O) visa is approved, but she is optimistic that the UK's coronavirus-induced economic slump will not get in the way of her finding work. "I am open to any [job] option -- it really depends on how much savings I have," she said.

But her biggest concern is the fate of fellow dissidents going through the asylum process, and whether her compatriots who move to the UK will give up the fight for independence back home.

"Hong Kongers should never give up, no matter if they've left Hong Kong or not," she said.

More here:

Why Britain's anti-immigration politicians are opening the doors to thousands of Hong Kongers - KCTV Kansas City

Is Xi Jinping more Hitlerian or Stalinist in his view of Chinese socialism? The answer to that question is important because it bears on the policy choices Chinas adversaries will need to make.

George Kennan, the godfather of Americas policy of containment of the Soviet Union, made clear in his 1946 long telegram that Adolf Hitlers vision of national socialist modernity wasnt a force that could be contained; the reason was that Hitler had a timetable according to which the Third Reich was to achieve global domination and his strategy could be thwarted only by annihilating Nazism by means of total war. The Soviet Union, in contrast, could be contained through Western domestic resilience and a resolve to counter territorial revanchism. That was because Joseph Stalin had in mind no specific time by which the world would need to reach the communist phase of development.

Precisely where Xi Jinping sits on the spectrum of totalitarianism is a matter of dispute. Elements of Xis ideology are notably Hitlerian. His ambition to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation introduces a nationalist character to the Chinese Communist Partys understanding of socialism. Unifying China and Taiwan is one revanchist mission driving Xis great rejuvenation, but revanchism is only one part of the nationalism Xi has begun to emphasise in CCP ideologymilitarism and capitalism are the others. Writing in the CCPs premier theoretical journal, Seeking Truth (), staff from Chinas National Defense University argue that a rich nation and a strong military are two cornerstones of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Chinese socialism seems not to be driven by the Marxian desire to secure a path to communism, but by the militarist ambition for armed strength and the capitalist will for material prosperity. Xis new era for Chinese socialism undermines traditional Marxism-Leninism, which views those nationalist forces with contempt.

Does it matter whether Chinese socialism becomes more nationalist than Marxist under Xi? According to Hitler, the distinction between national socialism and Marxian socialism was of paramount importance. Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning, Hitler declared in a 1923 interview with George Sylvester Viereck. To Hitler, Marxisms rejection of both the legitimacy of the nation-state and the capitalist forces of production was a fundamental error. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic, Hitler said. His embrace of nationalism and of capitalism had important implications for the Third Reich. Our socialism is national, he argued. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one.

Hitlers distinction between national and Marxian socialism has important implications for the CCP under Xi. The party has allowed China to undergo capitalist industrialisation since Deng Xiaoping, having repudiated Maoist collectivisation, but remained committed to a strong supervisory state. The political economy Xi has inherited is thus similar to the economic structure Hitler presided over in the Third Reich. The problem for the CCP, however, is that Chinas state-supervised yet market-oriented economy necessarily repudiates any notion of socialism being driven by Marxism. To a political party that supposedly follows traditional Marxism-Leninism, that contradiction constitutes an existential threat. The way to negate it, for Xi, is to unify state and race by integrating nationalist notions of Chinas great rejuvenation into CCP ideology. Chinas economic model has forced Xi to take a leaf out of Hitlers book.

The CCP can never disclose the national socialist forces behind Xis vision for China. Leninism remains crucial to the partys identity as a revolutionary agent for historical change, while Stalinism remains critical to the CCPs organisation as a vanguard party securing a path to communism. As Xi said to the partys 18th National Congress in 2012, To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and undermines the [CCPs] organisations on all levels. Xi cant acknowledge the national socialist character that his ideology has taken on, lest he be accused of undermining the legacies of Lenin and Stalin.

Nor can he repudiate the legacies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Many commentators note that Xis response to his family being sent to labour camps during the Cultural Revolution was to become redder than red. That experience drilled into Xi a deep respect for Mao as the inheritor of Stalins legacy and as the father of the CCP. But the unique position Deng occupies in CCP historiography is also relevant. As the cadre who introduced market-oriented reforms at the Third Plenum of 1978, Deng kicked China out of agrarian feudalism and pushed the country closer to the communist phase of development. Xi can repudiate neither Mao nor Deng, lest he be accused of the very historical nihilism he says he abhors.

How might Xi interpret his own place in CCP history? Lenin and Stalin may have been the worlds first true socialists, but the early leaders of the CCP believed that socialism had to be indigenised in China. Mao and Deng, being true Marxist-Leninists, saw that process of indigenisation as a necessary by-product of Chinas relative lack of social development. For Mao, the nationalisation of socialism was a necessary part of winning a revolution in Chinas largely agrarian society. For Deng, nationalising socialism was but the petit bourgeois result of capitalist industrialisation. Xi, however, views leadership in terms of a sacred bloodline and believes nationalism to be essentially ethnic. He probably sees the nationalisation of socialism as his personal mission on behalf of the Chinese nation.

National socialist images of a sacred bloodline have now become a feature of CCP ideology. Su Jingzhuang (), from the Central Party School, recently wrote an article on Xi Jinping thought in the Study Times (), arguing: Red genes are a genetic factor that has taken root in the body of our party and flows through the blood vessels of CCP cadres; they [form] the spiritual lineage of the Chinese races coexistence and co-prosperity, and [they are] a core political advantage in realising the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The national socialist mission of unifying race, party, nation and state seems to have taken on singular import for the CCP, while its Leninist role of securing a path to communism has been subordinated. Nationalism is no longer a necessary step on the road to communism, but the driving force behind Chinese socialism.

Under Xi, the CCP has proven all too willing to incorporate aspects of Hitlerian national socialism into its mode of governance. Carl Schmitt, known as the crown jurist of national socialism, has been cited by legal advisers to Chinas leadership to rationalise the CCPs imposition of a new national security law on Hong Kong last year. Schmitts central argument was that the sovereign, as someone who decides on exceptions to rules, has a necessary power to suspend civil liberties. That the CCP is now incorporating Schmitts fascist jurisprudence into its legal regime indicates that Chinas ruling elite has been influenced not only by the ideological elements of national socialism but also by Nazisms governmental aspects.

How long Chinese socialism will continue to nationalise under Xi remains an open question. But one thing has become clear: the CCPs role in securing Chinas path to communism is being subordinated to Xis vision for Chinas nationalist resurgence. The likeliest result of this phenomenon is a less patient, more erratic and risk-hungry foreign policy. Indeed, the prominence of Beijings wolf warrior diplomats and the CCPs track record of economic coercion are good indicators that Chinese foreign policy is already taking on that distinctly Hitlerian quality. Yet, the CCP itself remains steeped in Marxism-Leninism and retains a deep respect for Joseph Stalin. Ironically, it may be those Stalinist traditions that could save the world from a Xi Jinping who has started to flirt with the Hitlerian ideas that drove Nazi Germany.

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Xi Jinping's conception of socialism | The Strategist - The Strategist

People wish to be settled, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. This tension between stability and uprooting, between the illusory consolations of home and the risky lure of the open road, lies at the heart of Nomadland, Chlo Zhaos expansive and intimate third feature.

Based on Jessica Bruders lively, thoroughly reported book of the same name, Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a fictional former resident of a formerly real place. The movie begins with the end of Empire, Nev., a company town that officially went out of existence in late 2010, after the local gypsum mine and the Sheetrock factory shut down. Fern, a widow, takes to the highway in a white van that she christens with the name Vanguard and customizes with a sleeping alcove, a cooking area and a storage space for the few keepsakes from her previous life. Fern and Vanguard join a rolling, dispersed tribe a subculture and a literal movement of itinerant Americans and their vehicles, an unsettled nation within the boundaries of the U.S.A.

Bruders book, unfolding in the wake of the Great Recession, emphasizes the economic upheaval and social dislocation that drive people like Fern middle-aged and older; middle-class, more or less out onto the road. Reeling from unemployment, broken marriages, lost pensions and collapsing home values, they work long hours in Amazon warehouses during the winter holidays and poorly paid stints at national parks in the summer months. They are footloose but also desperate, squeezed by rising inequality and a frayed safety net.

Zhao smooths away some of this social criticism, focusing on the practical particulars of vagabond life and the personal qualities resilience, solidarity, thrift of its adherents. Except for McDormand and a few others, nearly all of the people in Nomadland are playing versions of themselves, having made the slightly magical transition from nonfiction page to nondocumentary screen. They include Bob Wells, the magnificently bearded mentor to legions of van dwellers, who summons them to an annual conclave part cultural festival, part self-help seminar in Quartzsite, Ariz.; Swankie, an intrepid kayaker, problem solver and nature lover; and Linda May, a central figure in Bruders book who nearly steals the movie as Ferns best friend.

Friendship and solitude are the poles between which Zhaos film oscillates. It has a loose, episodic structure, and a mood of understated toughness that matches the ethos it explores. Zhao, who edited Nomadland in addition to writing and directing, sometimes lingers over majestic Western landscapes and sometimes cuts quickly from one detail to the next. As in The Rider, her 2018 film about a rodeo cowboy in South Dakota, shes attentive to the interplay between human emotion and geography, to the way space, light and wind reveal character.

She captures the busyness and the tedium of Ferns days long hours behind the wheel or at a job; disruptions caused by weather, interpersonal conflict or vehicle trouble without rushing or dragging. Nomadland is patient, compassionate and open, motivated by an impulse to wander and observe rather than to judge or explain.

Fern, we eventually discover, has a sister (Melissa Smith), who helps her out of a jam and praises her as the bravest and most honest member of their family. We believe those words because they also apply to McDormand, whose grit, empathy and discipline have never been so powerfully evident. I dont mean to suggest that this is an awards-soliciting display of acting technique, a movie stars bravura impersonation of an ordinary person. Quite the opposite. A lot of what McDormand does is listen, giving moral and emotional support to the nonprofessional actors as they tell their stories. Her skill and sensitivity help persuade you that what you are seeing isnt just realistic, but true.

Which brings me, somewhat reluctantly, to David Strathairn, who plays a fellow wanderer named Dave. Hes a soft-spoken, silver-haired fellow who catches Ferns eye and gently tries to win her affection. His attempts to be helpful are clumsy and not always well judged he offers her a bag of licorice sticks when what she wants is a pack of cigarettes and although Fern likes him pretty well, her feelings are decidedly mixed.

Mine too. Straitharn is a wonderful actor and an intriguing, nontoxic masculine presence, but the fact that you know that as soon as you see him is a bit of a problem. Our first glimpse of Dave, coming into focus behind a box of can openers at an impromptu swap meet, is close to a spoiler. The vast horizon of Ferns story suddenly threatens to contract into a plot. He promises or threatens that a familiar narrative will overtake both Fern and the movie.

To some degree, Nomadland wishes to be settled wants not necessarily to domesticate its heroine, but at least to bend her journey into a more-or-less predictable arc. At the same time, and in a fine Emersonian spirit, the movie rebels against its own conventional impulses, gravitating toward an idea of experience that is more complicated, more open-ended, more contradictory than what most American movies are willing to permit.

Zhaos vision of the West includes breathtaking rock formations, ancient forests and wide desert vistas and also iced-over parking lots, litter-strewn campsites and cavernous, soulless workplaces. Against the backdrop of the Badlands or an Amazon fulfillment center, an individual can shrink down to almost nothing. The nomad existence is at once an acknowledgment of human impermanence and a protest against it.

Fern and her friends are united as much by the experience of loss as by the spirit of adventure. So many of the stories they share are tinged with grief. Its hard to describe the mixture of sadness, wonder and gratitude that you feel in their company in Ferns company, and through her eyes and ears. Its like discovering a new country, one you may want to visit more than once.

NomadlandRated R. Living rough, and talking that way too. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters and on Hulu. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

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Nomadland Review: The Unsettled Americans - The New York Times

Some Democrats in Washington are seizing on the recent frenetic trading in GameStop Corp. to push the financial transaction tax long favored by progressives, setting up a battle with Wall Street firms that bitterly oppose the idea.

After a House hearing Thursday to examine the GameStop issue, Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, said she is considering such a tax, which came up several times during testimony.

Investment firms and stock exchanges are lining up lobbyists and public-relations firms in hopes of stopping the tax, which could decrease trading activity and lower earnings. They see it as harmful to the average American trying to save for retirement.

Maxine Waters

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Robinhood Markets Inc., whose popular, commission-free trading app helped ignite the stock frenzy, this month registered its first in-house lobbyists and said the proposed tax is one of the issues they will tackle. At Thursdays Financial Services Committee hearing, Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said the tax would be a bad idea but wasnt given a chance to explain why.

Exacting a tiny sum from every securities trade is a concept that liberal Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have pushed for years. They see it as a way to curb the kind of speculative betting that led to last months chaotic swings in the market and to fund Democratic priorities such as increased public-works spending.

A financial transaction tax hasnt garnered support from some top Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has been wary to back an idea targeting a key industry in his state. To become law, bills that include a financial transaction tax would likely need united support from Democratic lawmakers, making the effort an uphill climb.

The tax failed to gain steam a decade ago because of uncertainty over how it would affect the returns of retail investors and markets recovering from the financial crisis.

Wall Street lobbyists and Republican lawmakers also opposed the idea, often pointing out that some European countries that imposed transaction taxes later withdrew them. The tax mostly failed to raise the amounts proponents promised; it also drove securities trading and jobs to other countries.

Chuck Schumer

Photographer: Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner/Bloomberg

Efforts to adopt an EU-wide levy also foundered, though some European Union member countries are again floating the tax as a way to raise funds to bolster economies hit by the pandemic.

One measure now gaining traction, by Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio, proposes a levy on trading firms of 10 cents for every $100 of securities traded, though other proposals have gone as low as 5 cents and as high as 50 cents.

In January, South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, threw his support behind the tax. Clyburn noted that the DeFazio proposal was projected to raise $777 billion over 10 years, money that could be used to fund spending on job-creation initiatives and health care.

The speculation that weve seen in the market, not just around GameStop but in all of the casino that is Wall Street, has raised the attention, said Susan Harley, a lobbyist and managing director of the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy organization. Those dollars are very attractive.

Waters said she hadnt come to a conclusion on whether to support a transactions tax. Im very interested and I do think it portends possibilities for revenue that may be desperately needed, she said.

A smaller financial transaction tax, such as one targeted to certain securities or with an extended phase-in period, is a very real possibility, said Compass Point Research & Trading analyst Isaac Boltansky, noting that it could generate revenue to pay for Democrats policy priorities.

As a candidate in 2019, President Joe Biden expressed support for the tax but he never released a detailed proposal. The White House didnt respond to a request for comment.

Peter DeFazio

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

During Thursdays hearing, Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib sparred with Citadel founder Ken Griffin over the tax, which she framed as a way to address inequality. She called it one way to ensure that this enormous wealth generated on Wall Street actually reaches the real economy. Griffin argued that it will injure Americans hoping to save for retirement.

A financial transaction tax would eat into the returns of Griffins Citadel businesses -- a hedge fund and a market maker -- that would be dinged every time they make a trade. Investment funds and firms that trade the most, such as high-frequency traders, could face the highest costs.

Public Citizen and other groups are circulating a letter in support of DeFazios bill. The levy is an important step toward having Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes, says the letter, whose signatories so far include the liberal Economic Policy Institute and unions such as the AFL-CIO and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

In addition to efforts in Congress, lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and Illinois have proposed local taxes on financial transactions. In response, exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and market makers including Virtu Financial Inc. have threatened to move operations out of those states to avoid the tax. A national tax would undercut those threats.

Wall Street firms are girding for battle. Investment giants and trade groups including Vanguard Group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Investment Company Institute said theyre lobbying on the issue.

Financial transaction taxes at the federal or state level unfairly target Americas mom-and-pop investors and working families saving for retirement, said Chris Iacovella, chief executive of the American Securities Association, a trade association for regional financial services firms.

Rashida Tlaib

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

The U.S. had a stock transactions tax between 1914 and 1965. Today, a small fee is still levied against stock transactions to help fund oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A group of nonprofits in the U.K. in 2010 organized to support a financial transaction tax, even dubbing it the Robin Hood tax, with the idea that it would take from the rich to help the less fortunate. It caught on in the U.S. as Democratic lawmakers proposed their own bills, which never moved forward once Republicans regained control of the House in 2010.

A financial transaction tax also took the stage during the 2020 Democratic primaries. As a candidate, Vermont Senator Sanders, who now helms the Senate Budget Committee, proposed a levy on all trades as a way to finance his plan for tuition-free college.

Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, also offered aversion during his presidential primary effort.

At the time, lobbyists circulated research by Vanguard that claimed a measure similar to DeFazios would reduce investor returns by more than one percentage point per year. Vanguard came under fire for its assumptions, such as basing its calculation on the high turnover rate of an actively managed small-cap stock fund. The company later released estimates for more typical types of mutual funds and said in many cases the tax would hurt returns by less than 0.3 percentage point.

Vanguard spokesman Charles Kurtz said a broad financial transaction tax would do unintended damage to everyday families saving for retirement or higher education.

One advocacy group, the Partnership to Protect Our Retirement Future, planted paid consultants at candidates town hall-style meetings to frame the tax concept as an affront to retirees, the public relations firm that formed the group acknowledged to Reuters. Locust Street Group, the PR firm, didnt respond to a request for comment.

North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry, the lead Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, in October introduced his own bill, the Protecting Retirement Savers and Everyday Investors Act. It would prohibit states from imposing taxes on transactions.

(Updates with analyst quote in 14th paragraph)

--With assistance from Laura Davison, Ben Bain, Saleha Mohsin and Sam Mamudi.

To contact the reporter on this story:Joe Light in Washington at jlight8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Paula Dwyer

2021 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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Wall Street Transaction Tax Wins Backers on GameStop Furor (1) - Bloomberg Tax

The CEA also calls on state lawmakers to confront the shortage using three strategies. Colorado has struggled for more than a decade to fund public schools at the level of the national average. The union is asking state lawmakers to pay down some of the billion-dollar school budget shortfalls, called the budget stabilization factor. It is a legislative maneuver that allowed lawmakers to dip into school funding in order to balance the state budget. All told, schools have missed out on more than $10 billion dollars since 2008.

The union also wants health safety equipment and vaccines for teachers and students, as well as to postpone high-stakes exams.

The growing dissatisfaction among existing educators, however, isnt deterring hundreds of students across the nation from considering a career in education in the Centennial State.

The University of Northern Colorado, the states largest producer of teachers, hopes to inspire hundreds of students to enter the profession. High school and community college students from as far away as Arkansas, Pakistan and the Philippines attended the colleges most recent annual Future Teacher Conference.

Keynote speaker Gov. Jared Polis told attendees one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has forced leaders to take a critical look at how education systems operate. He said districts are thinking creatively about how to develop new and more effective learning environments.

You will be on the vanguard of making sure that opportunity reaches every child in the state no matter where they live, their race, their gender, their geography, their income, he said. I am so thrilled that you are interested in becoming teachers. You're needed now more than ever."

Founded as a teachers college in 1889, UNC produces about 40 percent of Colorados teachers. The state as a whole only produces half of the 4,000 teachers it needs annually.

Were an importer of teachers, said Charles Warren, an administrator in the universitys Office of Professional Licensure who meets monthly with school human resource directors from across the state. These HR directors are going to job fairs to find teachers all over the country, to beat the bushes and find these new teachers.

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As Colorado Teachers Consider Leaving Their Jobs, UNC Fights To Keep The Ranks Full - Colorado Public Radio

The somber procession of ashes was led by a new generation of the Black Panther Party movement, a final farewell fit for a Panther from a different era.

In black berets, they raised clenched fists in the air, saluting the velvet-encased urn topped with a matching beret.

Trunnell Levett Price was among the last of San Diegos original Black Panthers. He was memorialized Saturday not only for the fight he embarked on some 50 years earlier, but for mentoring a crop of young activists who are carrying on the iconic movements legacy today.

Price died Jan. 26 at the age of 71 after a long battle with lung disease.

He was proud of his place in history as part of a complicated movement that often suffers from oversimplification in its retelling.

The Black power movement marked in pop-culture by its militant edge and Marxist-tinged philosophy called for self-defense against police abuse and the uplifting of marginalized communities. It defined his life in many ways.

He was very concerned for the community, for poor people in general, especially Black people, Pastor Buddy Hauser, who served in the Panthers with Price as a youth, told mourners at the Spring Valley memorial service. He stood for us when a lot of people werent even thinking about us.

Price rode waves of vilification and lionization as a member beginning at the age of 17, finding a sense of purpose for providing for Black people what White society wouldnt, while at times facing the consequences of crossing lines to accomplish that goal. Like many Panthers of the era, he also bounced in and out of the criminal justice system.

His death comes at a time of renewed public interest in the Panthers. In 2016, the party celebrated its 50th anniversary and sparked an urgency to preserve the histories of original members. Two recently released films Judas and The Messiah, a biopic of Panther leader Fred Hampton showing on HBO Max, and Netflixs The Trial of the Chicago 7" offer Hollywood-style retrospectives of the extremes government went to to neutralize the movement.

A Black Panther beret tops the vessel holding the ashes of Trunnell Price during Saturdays memorial service.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Even late in life, Price saw a roadmap in the Panther ideology that he believed could be used to fight todays social and racial injustices. He helped reactivate the movement with a new group, the Black Panther Party of San Diego, which puts the original tenant of community service into practice with programs that include homeless outreach, food assistance and resume-writing classes.

Im really excited about this generation coming up, Price said in 2017 in an oral history recorded at San Diego State University. Theyre the ones who are going to decide whether we continue to suffer for the next 10 or 15 years ... to do what it is thats in their hearts. They know the difference between right and wrong.

I give them 20 years. Thats a lot. A lot can happen in 20 years.

The fourth of nine children, Price was born in Coronado, where his father worked for the Navy. The family lived in modest housing for blue-collar military workers.

As a child, he learned about systemic and institutionalized racism by seeing White landlords demand sex for rent from women of color, he said in an interview with The Activated Podcast last summer.

His family later moved to Stockton, one of several southeastern San Diego neighborhoods settled in the 1950s and 60s by Black residents who faced worse housing discrimination in other parts of the city.

There, police abuse was rampant, according to residents. From humiliating traffic stops to beatings at a downtown lumberyard, Black youth have recalled how officers doled out their own version of justice to exert dominance and extract street intelligence.

They were sending a signal to the neighborhood: They were in control, Henry Lee Wallace, who served in the Black Panther Party as a teen with Price, recalled of the police. They were the slave masters and they were keeping us in line.

It was 1967 when Price heard that the founding chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, born a year earlier in Oakland, was going to be in San Diego. Local universities and colleges had been resisting some Black students trying to enroll, and the Panthers wanted to advocate for greater access to higher education.

Price attended the Panther protest on the campus of San Diego State College, meeting party co-founder Bobby Seale and leader David Hilliard.

Kenny Denmon, left, and Eldridge Cleaver, center, during Cleavers visit to San Diego in 1968. Denmon was the founder of the San Diego chapter of the Black Panthers. He died in 2018. He was 78.

(San Diego History Center )

I was convinced that their program, which included education, was something I thought I could get involved with and would help uplift oppressed people and people of color, Price said in his interview with SDSU.

Price was soon recruited into the newly formed San Diego chapter of the Panthers by its first chairman, SDSU student Kenny Denmon. He died in 2018 at the age of 78.

The young Price was intent on soaking up the lessons the Panthers had to offer everything from Black history to the 10-Point Plan that defined the partys agenda to social capitalist ideology.

The education the Black Panthers offered to young recruits was different from the education we were getting at school, said Wallace, who was also brought into the party by Denmon, his brother-in-law. All we saw was George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We didnt see anything representing Blacks in history books.

Price was soon given the role of deputy minister of education and was put in charge of running classes for members, teaching social and economic survival.

He was very studious, he didnt show the militancy part of it, Wallace said.

But as Price later recalled in interviews, the partys focus on self-defense from abusive police was also a major draw for him.

Wearing the groups signature leather jackets, members openly carried guns, which was legal at the time, and saw themselves as protectors of their community. They often patrolled neighborhood streets for police activity, stopping nearby with their weapons visible to monitor for civil rights abuses.

Their interactions with police were guided by one rule: We wont instigate anything, but we will certainly defend ourselves, Price said in an interview.

The anti-police stance took on more radical undertones, with cartoons in the national Panther Party newspaper that depicted officers as pigs including one that read: The only good pig is a dead pig fueling the partys image as violent and criminal. A former party newspaper editor later testified before Congress that the cartoon was political satire.

The militant persona was softened with a number of social programs the Black Panthers brought into communities, from food and clothing distributions to medical clinics to providing children regular free breakfasts before school.

In 1969, a Black Panther in San Diego serves children as part of the partys free breakfast program, one of many social programs aimed at serving and uplifting the Black community.

(San Diego History Center/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

In San Diego, the breakfast program operated out of Christ the King church, then a small Catholic parish just blocks from Prices family home.

The specter of armed Black revolutionaries put the Panthers in the crosshairs of J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime FBI director who used the agencys clout to investigate and intimidate those he viewed as politically radical. But it was the breakfast program that he viewed as especially dangerous. He saw the goodwill the Panthers were eliciting from the community as a tool of indoctrination.

In 1969, Hoover declared to Congress, the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country.

The FBIs weapon of choice against the Black Panthers was COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program that had already been in use for several years against other groups. The goal, according to FBI records later made public, was to neutralize Black militant groups to prevent the rise of a messiah-type leader, to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence and to widely discredit the movement.

To do that, the FBI infiltrated the party, sowed distrust among its members and used local police to harass and arrest members. The FBI also instigated deadly rivalries with Organization US, another Black nationalist militant group, by planting fake threats and insults. The disinformation sparked tit-for-tat violence in San Diego, with two Panthers dying in shootings in 1969.

The agency hoped the Panthers would rip themselves apart.

Price was at the forefront of that war as member of the Vanguard, the unit assigned to protect Panther leadership and sniff out opposition throughout the state.

On Nov. 22, 1968, students at UC San Diego protest a ruling against a UC Berkeley course taught by Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. The ruling was issued by California Gov. Ronald Reagan and the University of California Regents. At left, activist Angela Davis, then a graduate student, is seated on a barrier.

(U-T file photo)

In an interview with The Activated Podcast, he described one Thanksgiving night in San Francisco being on bodyguard duty for Eldridge Cleaver, the party spokesman who had skipped bail and was wanted by law enforcement for provoking an ambush that wounded two Oakland police officers.

On Saturday, friends from the old neighborhood recalled the greatest escape, when law enforcement in San Diego tracked Price to a friends home and he walked away under their noses disguised as a woman.

Jail was a familiar place to most Panthers, whether the charges were legitimate, cooked-up, or both. Price was no exception.

In 1969 he was charged in a sniping incident in which a bullet fired at a San Diego police car narrowly missed two officers inside, according to reports in the San Diego Union. The charges apparently didnt stick. Wallace recalled the incident and said Price had possibly been with the shooter in a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In 1971, Price was convicted by an all-White federal jury for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery of the downtown postal office. Price testified that the men had flagged him down randomly for a ride and that he didnt know they had robbed the office.

Price made headlines for his theatrics during the trial and sentencing hearing, including trying to leave the courtroom at one point while still in the custody of U.S. Marshals Service and later proclaiming: Im not an American citizen. Im a slave. My slave name is Trunnell Price. We are the revolutionaries and you will have your day in court.

Prices 25-year sentence was later reduced to 15 years after a federal appeals court found issues with the trial. At the resentencing hearing, Prices mother, attorney and minister argued that hed reformed during his time at the Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas.

Price was apparently released early, although he would rack up other federal and state charges over the years, including a six-month stint in federal prison for misdemeanor drug possession in 1979.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982, although it had lost much of its influence long before that.

Its original members were left disillusioned with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and criminal records as they saw the status quo return in many ways, said Renee Walton, who came to know Price as a member of the revitalized party. They were left feeling, like, What was that all about?

The era was populated with its share of White left-wing radicals, too, many of whom went to prison. But many of those adherents were able to shed the stigma and offered the resources to move forward, unlike their Black counterparts.

We got jailed, shot, beat up, and now I have a criminal record, Walton said, putting voice to the Panthers angst. What about employment?

A lot of members turned to drugs and alcohol, which resulted in more arrests.

Theres a lot of glory associated with the party, but you know, what those guys went through, Walton said. Their accomplishments were huge, but they didnt feel like it. They ended up not really with anything tangible.

Some original members from the San Diego chapter of the Black Panther Party have made an effort to record oral histories of the era. Left to right, Ben Waddell and Henry Wallace, members since they was 15 years old, and Patrick J. Germany, who joined when he was only 10.

(NelvinC. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Black Panther Party has since been recognized as one of the more influential albeit controversial political and civil rights movements in modern history, helping to lay a foundation for todays Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2016, Alfred Olongo, a Black man suffering from a psychiatric episode, was fatally shot by an El Cajon police officer after he pointed a device at the officer that turned out to be a vaping pen. The shooting opened familiar wounds in the community and thrust San Diego once again into the national debate over use of force.

That same year, some of San Diegos original members including Price, Wallace and Hauser reconnected to share their oral histories.

They had the attention of a new generation of activists who saw an opportunity to build on the Panther legacy.

The Black Panther Party of San Diego was born. Price, who had gone on to have a career in transportation and construction, easily slipped back into his role as educator and historian, along with a new one: mentor.

Price served as chairman of the new group for a few years until his lung condition worsened in 2018.

He taught that youth need to make sure they are more than just protesting, that they are completely educating themselves on the political process, said current chairman Robert War Williams. Its not about the protest lifestyle, its about the lifestyle of empowerment.

The groups 10-Point Program closely follows the original, but is updated for the current times. It still demands equal access to land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Robert War Williams, chairman for the Black Panther Party of San Diego, a new iteration of younger activists carrying on the Panther legacy, honors mentor Trunnell Price at his memorial service.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The literal paramilitary image of the 60s has also been swapped for a more figurative paramilitary-like discipline necessary to defend a cause.

Youre not going to see us carrying AK-47s and marching. We dont agree with that, Walton said. Our approach today is trying to reach people and encourage and empower them.

The group is among several autonomous organizations flying the Panther banner around the country; an official national umbrella no longer exists. Wallace reactivated his own version, the San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment, a nonprofit focused on distribution and education programs. The Panther name also has also been used by at least one group to espouse racist and anti-Semitic views, which are denounced by both original and modern Panthers, including those in San Diego.

The Black Panthers of the 60s are what the 60s needed, Walton said. We are the Black Panthers of 2020, and we want to be whats needed now, or at least be part of it.

Price is survived by mother, Ruby Vryes-Price; wife, Michele Geiger; son, Leonard Price; and stepdaughter, Nicole Ventura, as well as two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Excerpt from:

An original Black Panther departs having bridged San Diego's eras of racial struggle - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Eric Webb|Austin 360

I cant stop thinking about Fern in the snow.

Played by Frances McDormand in Chlo Zhaosstunning Nomadland, the character is living out of her van, travelingthecountryafter both an economic bust in her industrialcommunity and her husbands death have left her adrift.In a scene that stuck in my head even before Austin was blanketed in white and its worn-out residents were left to freeze, Fern finds herself somewhere out in empty America, the vistas searing, blank and frigid. A woman approachesthe van and tries to get Fern to seek shelter at a Baptist church from an oncoming blizzard.

Fern says shell be fine.

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Shes taking care of herself, but whether shes really fine in a world of loss and loneliness is one of the quiet questions nestled insideNomadland. After a few screenings last year it made Austin360s Top 25 Movies of 2020 its officially in theaters and on Hulu on Friday.

If youre reading this in Texas,you might have to wait a little longer to watch, what with our own winter storm andthe catastrophic failure of our infrastructure. (As of this writing, and after a night spent watching my breath bloom intovapor inside a tent in my apartment, my powers been out for about 65 hours, and Im living out of the American-Statesman newsroom.)But when you do get the chance to watch this film at the heart of which beats the thrum of a humanity that capitalism can bruise,but not destroy I hope youre able to see it with a new empathy.

Nomadland introduces us to Fern as she takes a few things out of a storage locker some dishes, a mans coat she holds like its aliveand hits the open road.She sings What Child Is This? to herself in the van (named Vanguard) around Christmas; she checks into an RV park and looks like shes afraid of a blow;she takes abarely litNew Years Eve meal by herself, party hat and all.Through conversations with people Fern meets along the way, we gather she and her husband lived in a company-run Nevada town, before the jobs dried up and her husband passed away.Now, she goes where she can to get any fleeting foothold.

In one moving scene, she runs intosome familiar faceswho offer to let them stay with her. Bing Crosby sings about the holidays over a store PA system. A young girl whom Fern used to tutor asks if shes homeless. Fern replies, Im not homeless, Im just houseless. Not the same thing, right?

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Thats really Nomadland in a nutshell, a movie that's all scenic route and also all destination. Zhaoembeds us ina loose-knit community of wandererswhose home is wherever they find a fire to sit around and a gig to keep things going.The film was inspired by Jessica Bruders post-recession nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, and the cast includes several real-life nomads, playing fictionalized versions of themselves.Two viewings in,Imstill not sure exactly what to make ofthe films use of real lives in the service of entertainment.Is it condescending? Anthropological? I think Ifeelrespect come off the screen, witha romantic tint.

But if youre thinking about it after, its probably worth watching, and all credit due to Zhao for this lyrical journey.Sometimes Nomadland feels documentary, as when Fern and two nomad friends, Swankie and Linda May (real nomads playing versions of themselves), take in the thrills of an RV show.Its almost voyeurism, as whenwe peer at Fernfloating naked in a stream, driving through an impossibly tight canyon, surveying an abandoned building in her nightdress, shouting on a mountain, holding a baby she doesnt know what to do with. For allthe miles on this road trip, every exit feels worth the stop.

McDormand, who can knock any ball out of the park even if Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a roadside car fire, she was great is Nomadland, though. The camera is rarely far from her. Among ancient rock formations in a national park, she strikes an imposing figure. Mending a broken dish, shes heartbreaking. This isone of thoseits all in the face performances for which it would be hard to begrudge her another Oscar.

Most movies have suffered for being released in the past year, fragmented across drive-ins, limitedpandemictheatrical runs, VOD drops and streaming exile. A few, though, are the better for it, andthats whereNomadlandstands. It is quiet; weve grown to knowquieta little bettersince March.Were apart, and were together, and so are the nomads in the film.Zhaos storyhangs dignity on the shoulders of Americans gutted by profit-thirsty systems, whereweveoftenbeen taught to see shame.Loss of love, loss of job, loss of place you, like Fern, are more than these things, Nomadland tells us softly.

Especiallynow, when weve been sotreacherouslyleft in the cold bythe systems we were supposed to trust, its only the people we travel with who give us shelter.And sometimes, even for just a little bit, youve got to travel alone.

Grade: A-

Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Swankie

Director:Chlo Zhao

Rated: R for some nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Watch: In theaters and available on Hulu on Friday

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Review: 'Nomadland' is a film for all of us left out in the cold - austin360