Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

(Credit: The Nails / Far Out)

When a cultural zeitgeist really gets swinging it subsumes folks who would be inclined to contribute like artistic quicksand. That much was for certain with the punk explosion in the second half of the 1970s in New York.

As Edmund White wrote inCity Boy: I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of coffee shops as they were defined in New Yorkcheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.

One of those young penniless artists dragged into a cultural movement that shaped the world was Patti Smith. As she toldMojo Magazine, I was young, but I felt our cultural voice was in jeopardy and needed an infusion of new people and ideas. I didnt feel like I was the one. I didnt consider myself a musician in any way, but I was a poet and performer, and I did feel that I understood where we were at, what wed been given and where we should go, and if I could voice it, perhaps it could inspire the next generation.

The magnet that pulled her towards this viewpoint was being held by Television. In 1974, they found themselves on stage at the and a young performance poet, artist and full-time journalist in the form of Patti Smith sat in the audience. She had trundled along to some little-known clubslowly gaining traction called CBGB. As a signifier of the arty intent of the band, a wall of televisions would be stacked behind them, each displaying different channels, except for one, tastefully off-centre that showed something akin to David Lynch-esque CCTV footage of the CBGB itself. Patti Smiths piece would be titled: Television: Escapees from Heaven.

The punk heralding piece forThe Soho Weeklybegins: Somewhere in the fifties Billy Lee Riley was slicking brill creme and boys all over the U.S.A. were resting Les Pauls on their hip and scrubbing them like sex. It eats thru the Chez Vous Ballroom,13 Floor Elevator, Love, Velvet Underground and the Yardbirds Live in Persia. It permeates backseats, waterfronts, the local poolhall, traintracks, just anywhere that rains adolescents. And for the past six weeks it peaked after midnight every Sunday on the bowerie in a dark little soho bar called C.B.G.B. Lousy P.A., long nervous dogs running, random women smoking French cigarettes and mostly boys on the prowl hanging by a thread waiting for Television to tune up.

The opening stanza is a punk encapsulation that captures it from the ground floor. This unadorned view is as close as you can get to the spirit of the sweety, stinking CBGB without wristband access to a time machine. And thereafter, she etches one of the most proto-punk statements within the piece reads: Confused sexual energy makes young guys so desirable; their careless way of dressing; their strange way of walking; filled with so much longing. Just relentlessly adolescent. Bearing in mind this at a time when they only had the New York Dolls and the Ramones for company, this youthful spirit was pretty much the Promethean punk force.

Less than a year later, that young journalist who was once fired for asking Eric Clapton What are your six favourite colours? was on stage with Television blazing through a rendition of their definitive anthem.I remember when I first heard that is a rare sentence in music, but the showering half notes of Marquee Moon is a celestial sonic rain you are unlikely to forget.This scratchy matchup is a perfect insight to what the brimming scene was all about.

Follow Far Out Magazine across our social channels, onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

Most popular

Read the original here:

Hear rare audio of Television and Patti Smith performing 'Marquee Moon' in 1975 - Far Out Magazine

Nicholas Quah. Podcast Critic, Vulture. Writes the 1.5x Speed newsletter. Creator, Hot Pod. Contributor, Fresh Air. Member, Peabody Awards Board of Jurors.

Photo: Kirsten Gollhoffer

The air is thick with cultiness these days. Its seemingly everywhere. Theres all the stuff with Trumpism, Qanon, and other such prominent political ideologies that trend toward extremism. But beyond the overtly serious material, its in the culture as well: Its there in the YouTube and TikTok stars I follow, in the twinkles in their eyes and the persona-driven followings they cultivate. Its even present in the Substacks I subscribe to, some of them tight, ideologically bounded groups in and of themselves. And then theres the television Ive been watching lately: WeCrashed, featuring Jared Letos impression of Adam Neumanns pseudo-Jesus energy; Severance, with its thematic emphasis on corporate religiosity; Under the Banner of Heaven, for obvious reasons. It also doesnt help that I live in Idaho.

But Im not the only one who has picked up on this these feelings are bottled up in the great Sounds Like a Cult, a newish podcast published by All Things Comedy. Described as a comedy cult podcast, each episode takes a different phenomenon in the culture and, using a certain framework of characteristics, determines its level of cultiness. Each installment ends with a question: Is this subculture a Live Your Life cult, a Watch Your Back cult, or a Get the Fuck Out cult? Past topics include obvious targets like LuLaRoe, Tony Robbins, and multilevel marketing schemes, but the show is at its most interesting when unpacking more unexpected subjects: toxic relationships (the cult of one), academia, and, uh, feet. The result is a thoroughly interesting yet breezy take on what can often be a heavy subject, and in the podcasts lightness and slight absurdity, it gets at something fundamental about modern society: No matter where you are, youre never too far from the brink of cultishness.

The show is hosted by Amanda Montell, an author, and Isabela Medina, a documentary filmmaker and stand-up comedian. The former recently published a book called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, which examines how language is central to the cultivation of cultlike dynamics and how that manipulation of language has trickled down to replicate those dynamics in seemingly mundane areas of our culture like the corporate world.

When the three of us spoke recently, Montell talked about how the podcast is technically an extension of her book, arising out of her figuring out what to do with the many groups she analyzed that were left out of the final draft. Joining Montell on the project, Medina brings production acumen, along with a more cult-curious sensibility. We asked ourselves, How are we making an actual productive contribution to this stuff? I spoke to them about their own relationship to the subject matter, the resonance of cultlike dynamics in modern society, and the methods they use to assess cultiness.

Cults seem to be generally top-of-mind in the culture, but what specifically draws the both of you toward them as subject matter?

Montell: Well, I grew up with a cult survivor in the family. My dad spent his teenage years in a pretty notorious cult called Synanon. It didnt end up becoming as famous as Jonestown and Heavens Gate because there wasnt mass suicide or homicide, thankfully, but it was a very high-control group headquartered on a remote commune in the Bay Area. Its heyday was in the 60s and 70s, starting out as an alternative drug-rehabilitation center that later grew to accommodate people who wanted to join the blossoming countercultural movement of the era. My dads father a card-carrying communist and pseudo-intellectual beatnik wanted in on this experiment, and so he moved with my dad onto the compound. My dad was immediately very skeptical.

I grew up on the stories of the rituals, conformity, and everything that went on there. And as I came of age, I started to notice cultish influence in all kinds of pockets of culture: start-up culture, SoulCycle, theater programs. (We just did an episode on the cult of theater kids.) For my book, I explored it through a language angle because I studied linguistics and creative writing in college and that felt like the most natural way to do it for me.

Medina: For me, it was more of a bit where I feel like Im the kind of person who tries out every cult. I was in a sorority in college. I do stand-up. We did our pilot episode on SoulCycle while I was going to outdoor SoulCycle classes every week during the pandemic.

I think that comes from feeling like I never really fit in anywhere. Im Latina, Im queer, Im bisexual, Im an immigrant. Its that third culture kid thing. So theres always a sense of balancing between worlds. I also dont like to be put in boxes, so I like to try everything. In that sense, I tend to bring a perspective where Im like, Well, its not that bad, while Amandas analyzing it and being more, You should watch your back.

Ive seen Sounds Like a Cult pop up in a bunch of different circles of late, so its been my impression that the show is resonating with people. What do you think your listeners are drawn to?

Medina: Part of it is probably just the times. Weve been coming out of a period thats frankly pretty dark: Its a pandemic, people are struggling. Cults can be very dark, so the idea of a light-hearted take on a serious thing feels refreshing to people who just wanted something to listen to on their commute that isnt a hard dive into news.

Montell: I think its also that awareness of cultishness within our culture has really spiked. Cults tend to thrive during times of sociopolitical tumult, right? Thats what we saw in the 60s and 70s when the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Kennedy assassination made people feel existentially unmoored. There was a loss of trust in the systems that were supposed to provide a sense of community and connection and identity, and thats why we saw the emergence of so many groups, from Scientology to Jews for Jesus, during the era. Were in a similar time period now, and the pandemic has certainly drawn us away from our traditional sources of community and ritual. So people are turning to these alternative, often-online cultish communities in order to fill the voids. I think were all noticing that.

And as Isa said, its so easy to talk about these things in apocalyptic tones, but thats just not who we are. As skeptical as we can be, were also fundamentally optimistic. Sometimes people just want us to purely shit on whatever were talking about that week, but thats antithetical to how we think about things.

Medina: Thats why we have those categories at the end of each episode: Live Your Life, Watch Your Back, or Get the Fuck Out. We often end up sitting between categories, and we remind our listeners that these are just our opinions. You can feel however you want to feel.

Montell: Also, the definition of a cult is so subjective. Its so loaded with judgment. Every scholar Ive spoken to for my book has a slightly different take on the criteria that separates a cult from a religion or another ideologically bound group. Its important to acknowledge that subjectivity.

Well, lets talk about that, because the shows rhythm chiefly involves running various Zeitgeist-y groups through the lens of figuring out their closeness to cultlike dynamics. How would you describe the framework you use?

Montell: Yeah, so, that was the challenge when we started putting this show together. Everything can be cultish, so how do we get more defined and nuanced about it? At first we had a list of nine different qualities, and if two or three of them were checked off, then its a Watch Your Back. If only one was present, its more of a Live Your Life sorta phenomenon. But that just felt too cumbersome. This isnt supposed to be a formal classification system for people to use in their everyday lives to tell whether something has a dangerous culture or not, but we felt that it was a good way to start the conversation.

Still, theres a rubric in the back of our minds. Is there an us versus them mentality? An ends justify the means philosophy? Is there one unifying charismatic leader? Are there supernatural beliefs? Are we talking about financial exploitation? Whats the worst-case scenario here?

Medina: Sometimes we have different opinions on the cultishness of particular subjects, but we typically agree wholeheartedly on the Get the Fuck Out stuff.

Montell: A lot of it has to do with unchecked power. We have an episode on Elon Musk coming out soon, and we have a lot of views on him. But intuition is not always enough when assessing a group. We come with our own biases. Some of the trouble when talking about this subject matter is that the words cult and brainwashed get thrown around willy-nilly especially now, when there are such ideological schisms to a point where everybodys looking at each other and thinking the other ones in a cult. So we want to call attention to the idea that there are different takes on this stuff. But unchecked power abuse? Thats the No. 1 red flag.

Our point is not to create a sense of sensationalism or alarmism. Its more that cultiness is something that shows up in places you might not otherwise think to look. Its so easy to dehumanize members of groups like NXIVM to see them as these brainwashed suckers but theyre not that abnormal as people. Our podcast may sound like a show about cults, but really its a show about human behavior, and how we find our sense of belonging in an age of information overload and ideological schisms.

Im still thinking about your comment earlier about cultiness becoming more prominent during tumultuous periods. That strikes me as true, but its also interesting to me to think about how, to take a specific example, peak start-up culture/tech-founder-worship culture really took off during the Obama era, which wasnt exactly a tumultuous age.

Montell: Heres the thing: Another myth people tend to believe about cult followers is that theyre really desperate. But talking to cult survivors for my book, the common denominator I found was actually an overabundance of idealism. It was the idea that solutions to the worlds most urgent problems can be found, and by affiliating with this company or this CEO, you could be a part of that change.

So that makes sense about the Obama era. Sure, our culture is becoming more secular. Were moving away from the organized religions we all grew up on. But were not becoming less spiritual or community-focused. Now its more, Okay, Im not going to church every Sunday, but now my start-up is the church.

Medina: You could maybe also add the fact that the Obama era was all about: Were going to change everything. Were going to change the world and do it together.

It occurs to me that theres a lot about the digital media life building followings, parasociality, being an influencer, the financial relationship, and so on that maps somewhat well to at least some of the dynamics of a cult. Could your podcast itself be a cult?

Medina: [Laughs.] Its possible. We made that joke the other day on the podcast. We were like, Who would ever follow someone around willingly and pay for their friendship?

Montell: I think if we start saying that were not cult leaders, were probably a cult. [Laughs.] Yeah, no, again, it goes back to the idea that were living in a time of information overload. A lot of us feel so pressured to have a succinct, confident, well-informed argument on every topic under the sun, so of course were going to want to default to people who speak confidently about anything in public. Its like that monologue in Fleabag: I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning.

I was literally thinking about that scene throughout this entire conversation.

Montell: Thats so it, right? Its the choosers paradox. When someone who you feel like you can see yourself in is telling you this is what it is, it can be really easy to agree. But we emphasize constantly that this is just our opinion.

Medina: Also, if we were to be a cult and we were the cult leaders were still cult leaders who read the comments and respond to our listeners. We ask for their advice on what episodes to do, and we include their calls. Theres transparency between us and our listeners. So I guess that makes us a Live Your Life cult.

See the original post here:

Are You in a Cult? This Podcast Can Tell You - Vulture

This is the second in a two-part series. In our first installment, read about how the aftermath of the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade revealed extensive connections between the white nationalist "groyper" movement and the far-right Catholic network around the controversial outlet Church Militant.

The activist wing of Church Militant is called the Resistance network. As of 2020 the outlet said it boasted more than 5,000 members, and claimed to have launched groups in almost every diocese in the U.S. Last June, the group claimed that its protest of a church vaccine drive in Southern California forced the drive to end three hours early. The same month, members of the Resistance network hosted an "affidavit-signing drive at Church Militant headquarters" outside Detroit, joining with other right-wing Michigan groups in demanding a forensic audit of the 2020 election and holding a protest rally on the state capitol steps.

More recently, as Resistance leader Joe Gallagher outlined at a Church Militant rally last November, the group has picketed local bishops; brought "ex-gay" conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos to the Penn State campus to advocate "praying the gay away"; and protested at a Dallas memorial for George Floyd to "bear witness to a real racial injustice: the mass slaughter of the unborn, which disproportionately affects minorities."

Now the Resistance network is looking to recruit directly from the groypers, the largely young far-right followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes. On May 2, Gallagher interviewed Dalton Clodfelter the same groyper leader who celebrated the Catholic counter-protester at New York's Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral last weekend introducing Resistance viewers to Fuentes' website, CozyTV, as a "new streaming platform for a lot of awesome younger conservatives." Gallagher hyped the reported 1,200 attendees at Fuentes' AFPAC III gathering, saying that "obviously [America First] is booming, you guys have gotten hugeYou guys go for the jugular every single time." He continued, "[You go for] the truth, you're not afraid to hide it at all, and that's one of the most respectable aspects of America First, is you guys don't really care. And that's cool."

RELATED:White nationalists get religion: On the far-right fringe, Catholics and racists forge a movement

Clodfelter, who told Gallagher it was Yiannopoulos who first introduced him to Church Militant, pitched America First in a language that his new audience was likely eager to hear. "It's not like it's the alt-right, because that is not even cool anymore, even if you wanted it to be. And it's also not like normie neocon conservatism. it's Christian nationalist." He went on, "The message of America First is tied directly to the word of God and spreading Christianity through our nation where it's lacking everything we do is [a spiritual battle], we're fighting demons, we're fighting Satan." Clodfelter emphasized the need to "grow the viewer base" of CozyTV, explaining that "a majority of white young Zoomer men would just love CozyTV the problem is, they don't know where to go to get it."

America First is not like the alt-right, said one groyper, "because that's not even cool anymore. And it's not like normie neocon conservatism. ... It's tied directly to the word of God ... We're fighting demons, we're fighting Satan."

Clodfelter went on to draw a particular connection between the groyper movement and Catholicism, saying he'd never considered joining the church before getting involved with America First. "I met people who are truly devout, truly living by the word and they weren't hypocrites," he said. "They were representing Catholicism so well for me I was like, wow, the least I could do is go to Mass and do some research." Now, he said, he's studying for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults the formal process by which unbaptized adults become Catholics and says he understands why Fuentes says of the groypers, "This is sort of a Catholic movement."

Since then, Resistance has continued to brand itself to appeal to groypers. One advertisement for Resistance posted on Gab last week featured the America First and CozyTV logos as well as a style of sunglasses popularized by Fuentes as part of last year's "White Boy Summer" groyper branding campaign. Meanwhile, as reported in part 1 of this series, Clodfelter attempted to mobilize groypers to attend Resistance counterprotests of pro-choice demonstrations planned for weekend in cities across the country.As of Friday, theevents appear to have been removed from Resistance'swebsite, while on Telegram Clodfelter noted late Wednesday night that most of the counterprotests had been postponed,writing, "Working with Church Militant on this to make sure we are doing this in the most organized and safe way." Clodfelter still claims the groypers will rally in Nashville.

A Resistance advertisement features the America First and CozyTV logos as well as groypers' favorite sunglasses. "Based" is movement parlance for someone who holds far-right views, while "Zoomer" refers to a member of Gen-Z.

Not every Church Militant staffer appears thrilled with the growing crossover, however. In July 2021, Church Militant executive producer Christine Niles remarked on Twitter that "the America First movement, which has great things to say, is ill-served" by Fuentes' open antisemitism. "This unfortunate obsession with the Jews will sink the America First movement, and that's truly a shame." Some audience members have pushed back as well. "Was a supporter of CM, but no more," commented one viewer in February 2020, after Voris ran an interview with Fuentes ally Michelle Malkin. "I'm all for borders. I'm all for preserving Western culture but I'm not down with Holocaust denial."

In emailed comments on Wednesday, Voris told Salon, "Church Militant might partner with anyone in a particular effort to achieve a limited and shared goal. In this particular case (Roe), yes. [Church Militant] will link arms with almost anyone who decries the horror of babies being hacked to death in their mothers' wombs. Isn't 'linking arms' the very thing Antifa and BLM and the Democrats do?"

Voris noted that Church Militant did not attend the America First conference in February, "and has no first hand knowledge of what was said or presented." However, he continued, "it should not be surprising that two (or more) organizations that hold GENERAL views of the current cultural crisis would experience SOME crossover of ideas. Every organization on earth shares SOME things in common with other groups. That said Church Militant doesn't align itself with any specific group in a formal way including groups that are expressly Catholic."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

"Where we enjoy shared ideas, we may cooperate," he continued. "To the degree [Church Militant] 'values' INDIVIDUAL members of any group (not the group as a whole), it is because of shared religious values, namely Catholicism and what the Church teaches on ALL matters."

"Groypers are everywhere" including on Church Militant's staff

It is counterintuitive, to say the least, that an ostensibly faith-based organization is embracing a movement so explicitly bigoted as the groypers. Fuentes has engaged in elaborate jokes denying the Holocaust, praised Hitler and told viewers on one livestream show that "frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of world Jewry running the show," to name just several examples of his virulent antisemitism. Fuentes has disparaged African-American voter outreach as attempts to "flood the zone with n****r votes," called for "total Aryan victory," rejected "race-mixing" because "people should stick with their own kind," bragged that he "made misogyny cool again," celebrated domestic violence against women and much more.

On his Thursday night livestream show, Fuentes responded to the claims made in part 1 of Salon's investigation. "You're damn right the groypers are forming an alliance with the Catholics," he exclaimed, "and you're right we have a plan, and we are gonna take the Republican Party and we are going to drag it against its will back through the doors of the church and to the altar, and we are going to baptize it." Clodfelter, meanwhile, extolled his audience to "show our love and support for Church Militant. These guys are strong, these guys are determinedyes, we're collaborating in this effort to combat Satanism in America, we are. Groypers are everywhere."

Groyper guru Nick Fuentes has praised Hitler, called for "total Aryan victory," complained about "world Jewry running the show" and bragged he "made misogyny cool again."

While Niles appeared ambivalent about America First, or at least its leader, her colleague, 27-year old Joseph Enders, is a full-fledged groyper. Variously named as a reporter, senior producer and associate producer at Church Militant, Enders is a fixture on Church Militant Evening News and a regular contributor to churchmilitant.com.

Enders didn't always support white nationalism. In 2018, he self-identified as an "Augustinian nationalist," claimed affiliation with the Proud Boys and uploaded interviews to YouTube where he argued with white nationalist leaders like Richard Spencer and James Allsup. "The philosophy of the right," he told Spencer in June 2018, should be animated by "a people that focus[es] inward on preserving the traditions of Western culture [but] race should not be a consideration in this. I think we should only judge people based on how they exercise their will."

By late 2019, however, when the groypers entered the national spotlight with a series of public stunts challenging conservative leaders on college campuses, Enders had changed his tune. "I don't think anybody is saying we're preserving our race because our race is better," he explained when he called in to the streaming show of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes on McInnes' Censored.TV platform. Defending the groypers' emphasis on white demographic "replacement" the conspiracy theory that white Americans are being "replaced" by nonwhite immigration Enders told McInnes, "You're into fashion, so you'll understand this analogy: When we look at a country, there are people that wear the country the best, and that's usually the founding stock of the country."

Since joining Church Militant's staff in 2020, Enders' embrace of the groypers has continued apace. "Nick is a Mass-attending Catholic, unheard of at his age," Enders posted on Facebook in April 2021. "I can't help but like Nick the Right needs more of [his] trollish humor to root out the grifters. It's supremely entertaining." A year later, his support was even more pronounced. "I hear this Nick Fuentes dude is pretty based," he tweeted on April 30, 2022. "I have to say I support his efforts to put America First."

Church Militant reporter and producer Joseph Enders wearing the groypers' America First hat and sunglasses, in a summer 2021 Instagram photo.

On Gab, Telegram and other social media platforms, Enders regularly celebrates America First and its political ambitions; shares content from groyper leaders like Fuentes, Vince James and Anthime Gionet, (aka "Baked Alaska," who on Wednesday undermined his own Jan. 6 plea deal, potentially sending his case to trial); uploads photos of himself sporting the blue "America First" hat and other movement paraphernalia; and participates in debates on movement strategy. Like others in the groyper orbit, he regularly traffics in antisemitism, including using the(((echo))) symbol, a meme created by white nationalists to target Jewish people and organizations. In the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Enders quoted, with seeming approval, a statement by Vladimir Putin decrying European countries' supposed abandonment of "Christian values" and shared an article arguing that Putin was seeking to "rebuild Christendom."

White nationalist themes carry over into Enders' work with Church Militant, as well. On Church Militant's website, articles written by Enders quote Fuentes, name the Jewish identity of political opponents and claim that critical race theory "rejects the ethnic identity of White Americans." On the outlet's nightly news program, Enders has championed white nationalist slogans like "it's ok to be white," claimed that "the Left's essential policy when dealing with race is 'is it going to hurt white people?'...more dead white people is the policy of the Democrats," and protested the decision by the flagship Conservative Political Action Conference to bar Fuentes from attendance.

When news broke last week that the Supreme Court was moving to overturn Roe v. Wade, Enders' message was direct and disturbing. "Get ready witches," he posted on May 3 on Gab and Twitter, "we're coming for your birth control next."

As mentioned in our first installment, this is all part of a broader pattern of overlap between the far-right, including the white nationalist right, with right-wing Catholicism. In 2017, groyper leader Milo Yiannapoulos was drummed out of many right-wing movements for statements he made minimizing child sex abuse, and subsequently used his return to Catholicism as an opportunity to rebrand. This March heheadlined an anti-abortion convention in Ohio that was blessed by the local Catholic bishop, and in June he will be a featured speaker at a Church Militant Resistancebootcamp. Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, who was disgraced after appearing on the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, likewise touted her return to the church as part of her rehabilitation. "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander found his way to a new audience at the end of 2020 with a highly public conversion to Catholicism, as did "Kent State gun girl" Kaitlin Bennett in late 2021. They joined a core group of far-right activists who have deployed their Catholic identity in service of their movements, including Pizzagate provocateur-turned conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Fuentes himself.

As the alt-right was planning its 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the most popular places where activists did their planning was a Discord chat forum called the "Nick Fuentes forum," dedicated to exploring connections between "Unite the Right" and the Catholic Church. Within it, hundreds of posters discussed traditionalist Catholicism and posted memes alternating, or combining, Crusades-era imagery with neo-Nazi and antisemitic content.

As journalist Eric Martinreported at the liberal Christian magazine Sojourners, some posters identified themselves as "Charles Coughlin Roman Catholics," for the 1930s pro-fascist priest and broadcaster who helped pioneer the demagogic media style that is fracturing our democracy today. Fuentes himself haswaxed nostalgic about fascist and monarchist regimes in Europe and Latin America that were grounded in Catholic teaching, and in 2018 declared on a livestream that, "in an ideal world," there would be "a global Catholic theocracy" and that "the state should enforce morality that is informed by Catholic teaching."

More broadly online, far-right activists online began adopting phrases like "Viva Cristo Rey" (Christ the King) or "Deus Vult" (God wills it) in their posts and tweets, and Catholic symbolism like medieval crosses and Crusader imagery.

Some conservative Catholics have welcomed this development. In a 2019 article published by the Catholic right magazine Crisis, "Kids in defense of the culture," American Greatness editor Pedro Gonzalezpraised Fuentes' groypers. "They have chosen to be guided by a Christianity hammered free of the dross of the modern world," Gonzalez wrote. "In an age of compromise and petty principles, groypers have chosen to stand for something, armed with little more than digital slingshots. That alone is reason enough to hear them out."

Some conservative Catholics have embraced the groypers, arguing that they "have chosen to be guided by a Christianity hammered free of the dross of the modern world."

But moderate and liberal Catholics were appalled. "It's such a horrifying appropriation of Catholicism," noted writer and researcher D.W. Lafferty in a 2020podcast episode produced by Where Peter Is, a moderate Catholic website that tracks the Catholic right. Lafferty described the new far-right aesthetic as "Pepe Catholicism," while Georgetown University theologian Adam Rasmussen called it "Catholic LARPing": a way for the alt-right to pretend they were "Knights Templar fighting the forces of darkness in the deep state."

As Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb, author of the papal biography "The Outsider: Pope Francis and His Battle to Reform the Church," explained during the 2020 presidential campaign, the far right's adoption of Catholic symbolism was a means for the movement to infuse itself with deeper spiritual meaning. "The populists and nationalists were looking for some kind of soul for their politics. And they found it in some symbols of the faith," Lamb said. "And they're powerful symbols. Quite often they make the whole case that the past has been lost."

"In a sense, you empty the content of the religious," Lamb noted earlier this year, "and use the externals the rosary beads, the crucifix, some words, perhaps some prayers but you use it as an identity marker to give your movement a sense that it has a soul or deeper intensity at a moral level."

But that influence goes both ways, and as Lamb noted in 2020, as more and more right-wing Catholics identified themselves with Trump's re-election campaign, "Trumpism," in turn, "got into the church."

As Lafferty said at the time, "What's happening on the right, I think, is unprecedented," except for the historical examples of ultranationalist fascist groups before World War II, such as Action Franaise in France or the Falangist movement in Spain. "But fascism isn't new and the Catholic Church was often complicit in fascism," he added. "So it's not totally shocking that people can come in and do this."

The revelation that some highly enthusiastic and visible elements of the Catholic right are now partnering with a group whose reputation is based on snarky displays of over-the-top bigotry just marks an escalation of that trend.

"This is a continuation of a pattern that's been happening for years," said Lafferty, "and it's only going to become more intense now that we're looking at the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned." As a faithful Catholic, he agrees with the Church's stance against abortion, he said, but he also sees the imminent SCOTUS reversal as one more "pillar of what we call 'normal' falling."

"I worry whenever you see anti-abortion rhetoric mixed with anti-immigrant rhetoric or isolationist foreign policy," said Lafferty. "It feeds into this spreading panic that Western culture is disappearing and immigration is killing Christianity and white hegemony. Ordinary Catholics who may have good intentions need to wake up to this the bishops included. Because if we look at what's happened in the Republican Party, a fringe populist element eventually took over. We could see the same thing in the church."

Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University and author of "Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States," observed that "almost anyone with an internet connection and an attitude can start a Catholic blog or website" these days. And that means "there are forces, movements, energies in this underworld that don't appear officially in the Catholic handbooks or registers, but are there. They have a following that is still small, but no longer as marginal as it used to be."

"The 'America First' Catholics have momentum," Faggioli said, as well as a powerfully motivating narrative: That "this is a time for war." That, he said, is what makes the growing alliance between groups like the groypers and Church Militant dangerous. "It's bigger than just the number of those who are physically involved in these movements. We know how influential they are with young priests, with the seminarians. Their voice is magnified because, in the church as in many other organizations, it's not how many there are but where they are. What is their position? What are the assets they can mobilize?"

The "biggest capital" such groups possess, Faggioli said, "is the sign of our times, our zeitgeist. There are clouds on the horizon, a bad moon rising domestically, internationally. And religion plays an important part."

Read more on religion and the far right in America:

Read more:

"Traditional" Catholics and white nationalist "groypers" forge a new far-right youth movement - Salon

It was an idea hatched decades ago in the early hours of the morning.

Disillusioned with the state of the nation's political direction, a few of us decided to form our very own political movement, one that would capture the mood of the population.

Just a few years earlier, there had been mass demonstrations, marches through the streets and, for a while, it seemed as though a new generation realised it even had the power to force nations to stop a war. But then, in the aftermath, nothing.

And so was born the Australian Apathy Party. We even came up with a catchy slogan. "Who Gives a ****?"

LIVE UPDATES: Read our blog for the latest news on the 2022 Australian federal election

Unfortunately, it never went any further. No-one could be bothered doing anything more about it, which neatly captured the Zeitgeist and more than fulfilled the project's meagre ambitions.

A similar mood seems to be descending across the nation.

With less than a week to go before the nation heads to the polls, the two main parties are locked in a battle over pretty much nothing. There are no great ideological differences, apart from last week's scrap over minimum pay, and the campaigns have been remarkable for their almost complete lack of policy.

Nobody even seems to have noticed. Which all seems a little odd. For despite a simmering discontent between the generations the battle between Gens X, Y and Z and Boomers nowhere is there any co-ordinated plan to redress the economic bias against our youth. Nor is there even a debate.

It's not merely a question of inequality. There's also the issue of sound long term economic and budgetary management. The entire artifice is unsustainable.

The only inter-generational issue in the headlines is housing. If we didn't already know, it's almost entirely unaffordable for a large portion of the younger generations. Apart from a couple of gimmicky solutions, however, there is no plan to provide a real fix.

But what about the overly generous tax concessions that benefit older and wealthier Australians, the cost of which escalates each year, that have helped create the structural deficit destined to punch a hole in the nation's finance for decades to come? This isn't even on the radar.

As for climate, which usually registers as one of the key issues for younger Australians, there's largely been radio silence.

There's an old maxim that says oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them. And if the 2019 election taught our pollies anything, it was that oppositions should avoid policy at all costs and let the government simply fall over.

Having lost what was considered an unlosable election in 2019 with a plan to wind back the tax breaks on housing, the ALP under Anthony Albanese has walked back on it.

At some stage, however, regardless of which party is in power, tax reform around housing will become unavoidable. The main tax breaks negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount have two effects. They push up housing prices and denude our tax take.

Combined, the two tax breaks cost the federal budget around $28 billion a year in foregone revenue. And, as the blue line on the graph below shows, investors are surging back into the market with record levels of borrowing. As interest rates rise, the losses investors incur on rental properties will increase. That will result in even more tax revenue foregone.

Despite claims during the last election campaign that Australia's two million property investors were "ordinary" Australians, data released this month by the Parliamentary Budget Office show the overwhelming bulk of tax benefits accrue to those in the top 10 per cent income bracket. Negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks go to top income earners and men.

Defenders of the schemes argue that removing the tax breaks would see a shortage of rental properties.

They may be right. Because if investors only bought properties they could rent for a profit, there would be a lot less investors in the market, which would take the pressure off prices and allow renters to put a roof over their head.

As a nation, we're getting older. Proportionately, that is. At the moment, about 16.5 per cent of Australians are at retirement age. Within the next 40 years, that is expected to climb to 22.8 per cent.

No matter who wins the federal election, older Australians will benefit from tax and super policies that make their lives easier, while young people struggle with cost of living.Why does it seem like baby boomers are getting such a good deal?

So what, you say? What it means is that the burden will fall on a smaller proportion of working age Australians to pay for those in retirement. And with the number of those over 85 expected to triple, to 1.9 million, the cost of aged care will soar.

Look at it another way. Back in 1981, there were 6.6 working age people for every retiree. That's now dropped to 4 working age people. And within 40 years, according to Treasury analysis, there will be just 2.7 working age people to pay for those who've permanent clocked off.

Thank heavens for compulsory superannuation, hey! Well, yes, it was a great idea. But over the decades, our superannuation scheme has morphed into a tax haven for wealthy, older Australians.

You get a tax break for making contributions to super. And the more income you earn, the bigger the tax break. Not only that, the earnings from your super fund are tax free, on a fund with up to $1.7 million. Beyond that, you pay tax but at a concessional rate.

Essentially, if you're retired, and you earn 5 per cent on your $1.7 million fund, you take home $85,000 without having to pay a cent in tax.

But a young worker, who probably can't afford a home, earning $85,000 a year slogging it out on the tools every day, forks out just shy of $20,000 in tax.

How fair is that?

And it doesn't come cheap. According to the latest Treasury estimates, the tax concessions on contributions and earnings now cost the federal budget around $43 billion a year and, without reforms, those costs will overtake the cost of the aged pension within 18 years.

In a hugely unpopular move, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 wound back some of the more excessive concessions around superannuation.

Since then, however, older, richer Australians have enjoyed something of a reprieve.

During the pandemic, when most young and newly unemployed workers were desperate for cash, they were given the option of cashing out $20,000 from their super funds. All up, around $35 billion was withdrawn, most at the bottom of the market and shortly before one of the biggest market recoveries in history.

For many, it will be a personal disaster.

Retirees on the other hand were allowed to do the opposite. Until the pandemic, those living off super were required to withdraw 5 per cent of their super each year. Beyond 74, and you have to liquidate even larger slabs. It was a measure designed to limit the extent to which retirees use super as a tax shelter.

So, while younger Australians were encouraged to sell down, retirees were allowed to halve the amount they were forced to sell so as not to be disadvantaged by the market crash.

That was in 2020. Oddly, in the following federal budget, the measure was extended even as global stock markets were heading into orbit. And in March this year, shortly before the election was called, the measure again was extended in recognition "of the valuable contribution self-funded retirees make to the Australian economy".

As we've learned from bitter experience, unwinding a tax rort is nigh on impossible. It usually is portrayed by the opposing side as a tax slug. And that rapidly growing older cohort is likely to desperately hang on to all their entitlements.

At some point, however, given we have deficits extending to the horizon, someone will have to pay for all this largesse. When it finally dawns on the new crop of voters that it will be down to them, things could get ugly.

Could it be apathy? Maybe.

Or perhaps that lack of debate and action on key issues is one of the corrosive elements eating away at the base of our major political parties and fuelling the rise of independents.

Loading form...

Posted7h ago7 hours agoSun 15 May 2022 at 6:34pm, updated51m ago51 minutes agoMon 16 May 2022 at 1:35am

Read more:

The missing election ingredient: nothing here for the next generation - ABC News

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

Editors note:This article is from the Spring 2022 issue of theNonprofit Quarterly, Going Pro-Black: What Would a Pro-Black Sector Sound, Look, Taste, and Feel Like?

This conversation with Cyndi Suarez, the Nonprofit Quarterlys president and editor in chief, and CompassPoints Liz Derias and Kad Smith delves into the details of the organizations journey from white leadership to its current codirectorship model that centers pro-Blackness.

Liz Derias: We thank you and NPQ for asking us to write an article about building for pro-Blackness. Thats been one of our labors of love for the last two years at CompassPoint. And getting the opportunity to write the article after we had completed one of our cohorts focusing on this very issueand Kad and I getting to rock and roll togetherfelt right on time. It feels good to have gone through the process of bringing our thoughts and additional research together to this point.

Kad Smith: Its definitely been a labor of love. Liz was the architect and the genius behind this writing. One of the things Ive appreciated about Lizs leadership at CompassPointand I think its so important that this shine throughis that its informed by a political analysis that doesnt just track with somebodys professional rsum. So, what do I mean by that? Im talking about when somebody has a politic that informs the way they navigate the world and that emerges naturally in how they show up in terms of their professional accountabilities and responsibilities. I think that gives an organization an opportunity to understand the authenticity of why you, and why you leading at this moment. And if CompassPoint is talking about celebrating Black leadership, I think Liz has been as well-positioned as anybody could be to speak to what it looks like to come into an organizational environment and be pro-Black in ones orientation and have a politic thats informed by a radical Black tradition.

So, I think the piece that we wrote is a taste of that, and Im excited to have this conversation to build on it. We are in community with leaders every day who are coming up with questions and answers around: What would it look like to truly honor the experiences of Black folks, with no asterisk? Thats the multibillion-dollarperhaps invaluablequestion. As in, no conditions attached to the question of what kind of Blackness is palatable and what kind isnt.

Cyndi Suarez: How did CompassPoint start doing this work? Was it a question from the field that prompted it? When did the switch from critiquing white supremacist culture to a pro-Black stance happen? And how did it happen?

LD: I think Kad can speak to this in terms of the work that CompassPoint staff engaged with in 2015, 2016before I came in as a staff member. But some of it was precipitated by what was going on contextually in the world, right? One of our principles at CompassPoint is to live in symbiosis with our community. So, as things are moving in the fieldas things are being challenged and changed among movement organizationswe take that in and respond to that through training, curricula, content, internal development. We really try to live into one of our core strategies, which is to live liberation from the inside out and the outside in.

Our staff at that time were really moved by all the work that had been happening with Black liberation forces on the ground and all the continued responses to police violence and subsequent organizing. And they saw that as an opportunity to organize CompassPoint and not just be a center for nonprofits. We got to this place from the labor of folks who came before us over our forty-seven-year history, but it was time for a pivotit was time to respond to our community and build alongside our community as a movement-building institution.

CS: So, I hear you saying it was both: it was coming from the community and it was coming internally, from staff.

LD: Yep.

KS: Yeah. I would add a little piece of honoring. Liz has already articulated what happened in response to the zeitgeist of the last few years and to whats going on in the larger community and movement work in general. But I also think its important to acknowledge that there has been strong Black leadership at CompassPoint, even if it wasnt formally recognized. So, Spring Opara, Jasmine Hallthese are some folks who are still full-time staff members whove been truth tellers for the longest time, before it was chic, and before it was like, Oh, can you tell the truth about whats really going on? Can you really tell people about how folks are showing up, and be honest, and show up in integrity? Spring and Jasmine were folks who exuded that naturally, not as a means of, I think Im going to be received well by my colleagues, but, This is whats important for me to feel like I belong here.

And so I dont think that can be overstated. I also dont think that we can gloss over the fact that CompassPoint went through a shared leadership transformation, and Black folks were extremely empowered by that. Like, Oh, my gosh, we can question hierarchies, we can question the way in which decision making is happening from a traditionally white-led organization? The organization eventually pivoted away from that, and Black folks werent happy about it. Im just gonna speak plainly: There was a sense of a commitment to holacracy and shared leadership, and the Black folks on staff were doing some of the implementation and evaluation of that work, and it increased their responsibility and created visibility around their leadershipmy own included. And when the organization committed to moving away from that, that was one of the few instances that I would say CompassPoint unintentionally perpetuated anti-Blackness.

CS: Can you say more about that? What did you pivot to from this transitional codirectorship?

KS: We pivoted to a governing system with a codirectorship thats a little more loosely defined. And Ill let Liz speak to that. But essentially, we made a decision whose key momentum was coming from everybody but Black folks. We didnt pause and notice that Black folks were saying, No, this is really important for us, or consider the impact on the Black folks on staff when we made that decision. It took several years for us to even say that out loud. So, I say that because, now, when were talking about centering Black leadership, its also teaching us how not to replicate the mistakes of the past. And, you know, sometimes folks hear this, and they say, Well, what about such and such groups, such and such racial identity, such and such place? But lets start with what has happened to the Black folks on staff at this particular moment, and honor that if we had been more diligent and more principled in the way that we moved forward, we might have prevented a significant organizational change from having negative consequences. And lets honor our collective desire to practice shared leadership and to have leadership understood as something thats kind of fluid across the organization.

I say all that because its not lost on me that the leaders whove been at CompassPoint before Liz came in were leading in ways that I was notparticularly regarding the ways in which Black men and women are often asked to show up in terms of emotional labor. Im acutely aware that thats not a leadership style that I provided. Those leaders paved the way for us to see now what it means to talk about building a pro-Black organization. We cant lose sight of that. I think that Spring and Jasmine, in particular, as well as Byron Johnson, who is now at East Bay Community Foundation, and Fela Thomas, whos at the San Francisco Foundationa lot of these folks came in and, at a critical moment, helped piece together what pro-Black leadership and a pro-Black organization could look like, right when CompassPoint needed to have this more tangible form.

CS: Okay, lets get into thisbecause I want to get into what these things mean in more detail. I want to back up a bit and ask: What does being pro-Black mean to you? Before we get to organizations, or what a sector would look like, what does pro-Blackas a concept in and of itselfmean to you, as an individual?

LD: What pro-Black means to me, individually, and then also organizationally, and then more broadly in terms of the sector and the movement, is: striving to consistently build power for Black people. That is the crux for me: To be pro- Black is to build pro-Black power. And when we talk about building power at CompassPoint, we define it as building our capacity to influence or shape the outcome of our circumstances. And for usand for me in particularbuilding pro- Black power is part of a longer spectrum and continuum of Black liberation movement work that preceded me and even preceded slavery and genocide and white settler colonialism.

Building pro-Black power, I think, is taking a look at the ways in which powerformally and informally recognized positional powerexisted, unrecognized, in our communities before systems of oppression. Looking at this not with the intent that everything needs to be carried over, not with an essentialist eye, but with an eye to ways that we have moved in the pastour traditions, our norms, our mores, or ways of beingthat can inform the ways that we move now. And had it not been necessarily interrupted, for lack of a better word, by white settler colonialism, then our communities and our nations may have looked very different.

Building Black power, building pro-Black organizations, and building a pro-Black movement requires us to take a look back at the ways that power has existed for us in our communities before systems of oppression, in an effort to bring it into the current contextnot only to challenge the systems of oppression but also to carry forward what has been intrinsic to our communities.

CS: Im almost hearing you saying, What does power mean to Black people?

LD: What does power mean to Black people? If we are not fundamentally talking about power, Cyndi, were not building pro-Blackness. And thats a crux for us at CompassPoint. Weve been spending the last few months really interrogating and using your book, as a matter of fact, as one of our toolswhat building power means for us. Because were not interested in a cosmetic approach to building pro-Blackness. Were interested in building up the capacity for all staffwith Black people at the centerto shape and influence the outcome of what happens at CompassPoint.

CS: Thank you. What about you, Kad?

KS: I think in terms of what comes to mind with pro-Blackness, Liz said all the important things. The thing that I would continue to lift up is celebrating Black traditions and celebrating Black folks across the diaspora. Anywhere you go in the world, there are Black folks. And they all have such rich histories and ancestors whose shoulders they stand on, and descendants whose circumstances theyre trying to change. Theres such an abundance, and its such a large umbrella of an identity, and theres so much to celebrate there.

One of the things weve talked about is why not just focus on anti-Blackness? But when you focus on anti-Blackness, you tend to wind up with an in-group, out-group thing that perpetuates anti-Blackness. And there are ways in which we internalize our own racism as Black folks. What I love about the pro-Black approach is that it encourages and motivates us to look at whats already so clear to many of us who have been entrenched in this work: that there is more than enough inspiration to let you know that Black folks and Black peoples across the diaspora have a unique offering for this particular moment in time as we come to understanding what racial reckoning and atonement for a racialized caste system in the United States looks like. But perhaps more broadly, when we start to talk about how imperialism and capitalism have wreaked havoc across the world, what Black folks across the world can teach us about no longer continuing to sit idly by and accept that as the status quo.

So, it really is about celebrating the rich tradition of Black folks across the diaspora, and doing so with pridewhereby you feel it in your belly and you feel it in your heart and you even start to get a little shaken, because you know that theres something greater than you. Its something similar to what I get from a faith-based practice. When you understand that there are people who are connected to you because of a struggle, but also because of a rich history of how you want to be in community, how you want to celebrate one anotherit can be really magnetic.

LD: I have to say, its so nice to hear you talk about this, Kad. And this is an example of the work weve been doing the last few years to build pro-Blackness at the organization. Kad is exemplifying being able to say things like capitalism, imperialism, building pro-Blackness, building on our traditions and our norms. I dont know that that was the yesteryear of CompassPoint. This is an example of your leadership and your ability to articulate all this and create space, not just for the Black staff but all staff, to bring that analysis and those experiences in.

KS: One interesting point is that when we asked our twenty-seven cohort participants, What does a pro-Black organization look like to you?, we got twenty-seven different responses.

CS: So, lets get into itbecause thats the second question. What did you hear?

KS: Each one of those responses was, I would say, uniquely deserving of celebration, of recognition, and of acknowledgment regarding where it was coming from. Although we asked, What does a pro-Black organization look like to you?, not, What is pro-Blackness?, we heard: Pro-Blackness just looks like being comfortable in my skin; Pro-Blackness looks like fighting for power, for justice. But I think for me, knowing that there were twenty-seven folks who all said something differentthat there wasnt some prescriptive definition that we all landed on that made it sound neatwas powerful. It felt like a space to be creative and say, This is what it feels like for me, and receive affirmation and resonance from folks who might not have framed it that wayto hear or be able to say, I totally get what youre saying, what youre getting at, by lifting that up. That was so powerful for me.

CS: Were there themes?

KS: A theme that jumped out is that Black leaders would feel supported. Another one that came up was people being able to speak truth to power. So, an honesty aspect. Oftentimes, were met with a certain level of resistance when we speak about Black-specific issues. So, that is anti-Blackness rearing its head in a very petulant and kind of gross way when Black folks talk about things that are particular to Black people and are met with resistance. A lot of what was coming up in articulating the pro-Black organization is the eradication of that dynamic. So, I can speak to what it means to be a Black person even if Im the only one. Or even if Im one of four. Im not going to be met with, Wait, wait, wait. Were not anti- Black. Were not racist. Were going to say, Oh, lets go further there. Lets understand whats coming up for you. I feel like that would be in lockstep with other movements toward progress.

LD: Something that comes back a little to your question, Cyndi, about how we got to pro-Blackness at CompassPoint, is what we discovered from engaging with and launching our pro-Black cohort. We tried on a governance model called holacracy that Kad was offering, and then we moved into a vote on whether we were going to keep holacracy or not. And the Black staff voted for it, because it gave them the opportunity to step into their power without punishment. But that got voted down, resulting in a bit of a vacuum of What do we do next? And at that time we were hiring, so we had a plurality of Black staff for the first time in CompassPoints forty-seven years. Kad has already mentioned some of our staffIll add that we also had Maisha Quint, Simone Thelemaque. So many came in and provided a plurality.

This is important to note, because what we found as we engaged with the cohort is that its really hard to build pro- Blackness when you are the sole Black person at the organization. I mean, its like moving a mountain. And so that plurality provided an opportunity for the Black staff to get together and really interrogate pro-Blackness internally. And as we did that, we really built unitywe built across our values. And thats when we decided that it was really important for us to resource our Black programmatic work.

So, we already had Self-Care for Black Women in Leadership, which ran four cohorts at the time, and which is primarily a program for Black women in leadership to discuss these kinds of issues. What did pro-Blackness mean to them? How do they heal? How do they build their leadership? And then we pivoted to resourcing our B.L.A.C.K. Equity Intensive, which is the program were talking about. So, when we asked folks, What does it mean to build a pro-Black organization?, we had lots of different responses. Responses that varied depending on if folks were feeling like they actually have support in their organization to build pro-Blackness versus if they didnt feel like they had support, if they were the sole Black person.

And a theme that came up that helped feed our own understanding of pro-Blackness was how to build an organization where punitive action was not at the crux of everything you do as a Black person. That valuebeing punitive, being dominant, having power overis a relic, a continued relic of white supremacy, of white settler colonial culture. And so we are telling ourselves that we are undoing and challenging white settler colonial culture. That means that we are intrinsically challenging punitive action. And Black folks reality is punitive action in this world, right? We talk a lot at CompassPoint about power and policy, and how important it is for us to understand the rules that govern our lives. It is very important as Black people building a pro-Black organization to know the policies and the rules that govern our lives. Because historically, if we didnt know the rules, we could be incarcerated, we could be hanged for that. And so for us, knowing the policies that govern our lives enables us to make a choice: We can decide to follow these rules, to break these rules, to create new ruleswhich is all that organizing really is, right?

So, as we were talking with our participants, it was really important for us to challenge the punitive value thats embedded in our society and in our organizations. When people are afraid, when they dont feel psychological safety, when they arent able to speak truth to powerwhat undergirds that is a fear of punishment. And to build a pro-Black organization, you have to understand power, and you have to really be committed to removing punishment as a consequence of action.

CS: What Im hearing you say in essence is that you have to have more than one Black person.

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

KS: Most certainly.

LD: Yeah. But something that I really love about the B.L.A.C.K. Equity Intensive program is that it pulled in and recognized positional power. So, you can have a Black person whos on staff with you but whos still moving in ways that endorse or promote white supremacy habits. Whats more important is the commitment, the willingness, the politic that person holds and that the other people in the organization hold. So, as we were building this intensive program, it was important for us to draw in the commitment from those who have positional power, administrative power, executive power to support the staff. That itself is a shift, as well. Its not just having a Black person advocate pro-Blackness or challenge anti-Blacknessits shifting your whole governance, your whole structure, to make space for that person. And so we require executives and administrators who are supporting their staff members to be part of this intensive to really be supporting their staff members to be part of this intensive. CS: How did you know?

KS: Degrees of success. I think thats 2.0 learning. With some organizations, that principle just shone through clearly, and they were kind of a North Star in terms of how they were rocking with one another. And there were other organizations that had more of a challenge coming to terms with that.

CS: The people who came into the program came from organizations where they may or may not be one of the very few Black people?

KS: Yeah, one of very few. Everyone had at least some positional leader. Liz brought up the Self-Care for Black Women program. I dont think we can overstate how important that was for CompassPoints programming purposes in terms of centering Black people. I was in my mid-twenties when for the first time I saw CompassPoints training room filled with only Black folks. And that was one of the most telling moments for mebecause I thought, Oh, Im gonna stay at this organization. Now, Im a millennial. Most of my peers jump from organization to organization every eighteen months or so. Sometimes, even if the organization is doing right by them, theyre like, I just want something different.

At CompassPoint, I could have very easily fallen into that predicament as a millennial, but when I saw the Self-Care for Black Women programming going on, I thought, Wow, theres a there there. I dont mean to sound corny, but there is potential here for us to use this vehicle, or vessel, for transformation in a really profound way. That Self-Care for Black Women program that Spring, Jas, Simone, and Liz have led and helped to steward was the cutting edgethe edge leadership part of CompassPoint, so to speak. It gave us the legitimacy to say we can hold space for Black folks by Black folks, and nobody thats not Black is going to be able to call into question why were doing it. They dont have the right.

CS: Say that again?

KS: They dont have the right! As non-Black folks, you cannot say, Why would you make this space for Black folks? One, we see the vital need for it across the world. But in particular, we see via testimony, via experiential reflections, how valuable that space is. I wont go into the details of that, because its not a program I worked on, but if there is some potential opportunity for NPQ to harvest lessons from other folkstheres a lot to learn there. And we wouldnt be where we are now if we hadnt done Self-Care for Black Women. Its important to acknowledge that as the tradition that were building on directly at CompassPoint.

CS: Before we move on, can you give a quick example of what is a punitive systemand what that would look like for an individual in an organizationand what would be the opposite of that?

LD: Ill give you an example at CompassPoint. At the core for us as we were building a pro-Black organization was experimenting with a new governance model. Holacracy was useful, but it didnt meet our needsso, were developing a new kind of governance model. Theres nothing really new under the sunbut what it does is push us to center our values, which is something that comes beautifully from bell hookss centermargin framework. When we think about those most marginalized and what they value, and we make changes to bring them into the center or to expand the center, then we can have more of a liberatory organization. So, not doing that can be punitive. It can be really punitive by default, right? So, when I came into the organization, I observed that the majority of people who worked at the organization were women, and all the Black women at the organization were mothers.

CS: What role did you come in as?

LD: I came in as what we used to call a program or project director. Now I serve as a codirector. And so when I came in, we took a look at what it is that Black mothers value. They value the health of their children. They value time with their children. They value psychological safety for themselves, and not to have to be here and worry about their children. These are intrinsic values that are at the center for Black women. And the organization didnt offer 100 percent dependent coverage. So we had mothers, and sometimes single Black mothers, working at CompassPoint and then working at other jobs just to provide healthcare for their children.

So, in an attempt to build a pro-Black organization, we decided to flip that policy on its head. We wanted to figure out how to prioritize putting money into supporting our staff, which at the core would mean supporting Black mothers. And this year we passed a policy of 100 percent dependent coverage for all our parents. Centering Black women wound up expanding the center, because now all of our staffour white staff, our IPOC staffcan get care for their children. That policy is now institutionalized. It was a really beautiful practice.

This is targeted universalism, right? You take a look at who is at the center and who is the most marginalized, and you bring the most marginalized into the center, and you do that through policy change. Im really proud of us for doing that. Because, again, consequentially, whether it was purposefully punitive or not, we were smacking mothers on the handit was causing punitive action for them. They couldnt navigate through their lives as freely because they were worrying about caring for their children.

So, this is why we reject the concept of anti-Blackness, and reject diversity, equity, and inclusion. These arent frames that we use. We love all the DEI officers and practitioners and theory that have come through CompassPoints doors, but we reject DEI, because pro-Blackness is not about trainings or tolerance or building peoples understanding of pro-Blacknesswhich is the crux, I think, of DEI. It actually is going beyond just challenging structures, and embedding the core values of Black people and making them central.

Building pro-Blackness and building power require much more than just defending ourselves against anti-Blackness, and much more than just asking white folks in the organization to take a training. Its really about moving the needle with respect to looking at Black people as the folks who develop our governance, as the folks who, by virtue of our values, lead the development of the systems, policies, practices, and procedures at the organization. And that challenges the punitive naturewhen we center Black people, we challenge the punitive nature of organizations.

KS: In terms of themes that came up, a couple of folks from the cohort mentioned safety. Safety from discrimination, from undeserved consequences, from systems of oppression. Theres also the self-determination piece. If we talk about self-determination in terms of, for example, that flavor of the day, shared leadership, were hearing conversations around this in many pockets of folks across all different identities. What does it look like to have autonomy and agency in an organization that intrinsically depends on collaboration? What does it look like to find that balance? And theres something about Black folks consistently pushing the needle on self-determination for a group of people and for individuals, and trying to find what balance looks like there.

Also, in terms of the punitive piece, I want to speak quite frankly about that. What were seeing right now is a mass wave of organizationseither woefully underprepared, or who think theyre prepared but arent, or who are prepared but havent quite thought through the ways in which theyre going to brace for what seismic shift does to a systemwho are inviting Black folks into conversations around racial justice and racial equity and then are not happy when theyre met with answers they hadnt expected. So, when I think about the punitive aspect, the question for me is: How do we invite authentic engagement around change and transition within our organizations, around the ways in which we develop leaders, that will not be met with retribution or some recourse that is basically backdooring folks who thought that they were participating in good faith toward the advancement of an organization?

So, if a bunch of Black folks get together and say, Well, it is kind of racist that weve never had a Black executive director here. And then its, Were not racist. Oh, no, we do racial justice work in community. No. It can be racist and you can be good people; you can be anti-Black and you can still be great individuals. Or, We dont listen to our recipients of services. And Ive noticed an overwhelming trend that the Black folks who walk through our door in XYZ housing agency or XYZ gender-based violence organization are met with contempt and frustration. If people are upset by the fact that folks are naming that fact, then thats a form of punitive action that either encourages people to be a little less vocal, or conditions them to think that theyre not calling out what needs to be tended totheyre not focusing on the right thing.

And that endures, right? Ive experienced it, and Im sure that many if not all of us who are Black folks have experienced it in some way. And I think its crucial to be able to create the space for folks to say, No, that cant continue. If were actually going to do transformative work with a politic around justice, its not fair, nor is it impartial, to say that one set of things that we focus on is okay but another set is not. And theres a unique pattern around what it means to be Black folks calling out the ways in which Black folks are silenced, are ridiculed, are delegitimized that, if it continues, wont enable us to step into this work wholeheartedly and toward full effect. And thats what I think getting away from the punitive impact looks likeits being able to say, Nah, we will meet that in its authenticityand we will act on it.

CS: Well, thank you so much for explaining. That really puts a fine point on it. My last question is, What would a pro- Black sector sound, look, taste, and feel like?

LD: Thats a great question, and there are so many folks experimenting around thisI feel really thankful to be in the field, in the sector, right now, when were seeing organizations flip the dynamic of white people in power on its head. Part of what Im seeing in the sector thats growing this collective vision of building pro-Black organizations is white people who are executive directors, administrators, who hold senior positions, leaving their organizations and making space for Black leadership.

And I really love what you were saying, Kad. Theres this nuance of collective action when Black folks say, We need this level of safety. Were going to challenge the ways that we havent experienced pro-Blackness. Were not going to yield our power, were going to organize our power. And part of that is also Black people taking the power themselvesas executive directors, as senior managersassuming that your organization is hierarchical and/or that you have positional titles, which we do at CompassPoint.

And there are organizations that are experimenting with more distributed leadership, with flat structures, and all of that is also part of building pro-Blacknessbecause I think an intrinsic value for us as Black people across the diaspora and the continent is this idea of communalism, that were constantly working together. Its not just the individual, its working for the whole. But there are many organizations that come through our doors at CompassPoint, and that we see in the sector, that are still hierarchical, right? Thats not a bad thing in and of itself. But building a pro-Black organization means that some white folks got to go. Thats important for the sector.

Whats also really important, though, is that our philanthropic partners are resourcing our work to do this. Its really important that we not be beholden to projects or initiatives that have concrete, predetermined outcomes driven by our foundation folksthat this building of pro-Blackness is actually endeavors of building capacity. So, what would it look like if our philanthropic partners resourced our sector through unrestricted funding, through general operating support, which would allow us to do the work like weve been doing at CompassPoint? Allow us to do the work of building the capacity of staff to play with this vision of pro-Blackness, to experiment with it internally, to experiment with it externally. Thats really important for our sector. And we think about our philanthropic partners as part of the sector.

I think whats really important for the sector is more space for organizations to learn from one another. Over the last couple of years, weve started to see large organizations placing Black women at the helm. Greenpeace just hired their first Black codirector. Change Elemental moved into greater shared leadership, and has a four-person hub structure that includes two Black women. Tides Advocacy hired a Black woman CEO. So, were starting to see theres a shift, and I would attribute that to the work of the last few yearsthe work of people being out in the street, of Black Lives Matter, of folks who are really trying to support the resourcing of the field.

And now that we have Black people who are taking up positional power, its really important to support them. I think what would strengthen the sector is giving time and space for Black people in positional power to learn skills, to network, to vent, to pool resources. And thats something thats been really important for us at CompassPoint. Were starting to explore hosting one of our next iterations of Black programming, which is our Black Women Executive Directorship 101, and creating space for us to really build pro-Blackness among those who are brought in and who can promote the changeand not just have our staff, who are coordinators, associate directors, directors with no positional power, trying to move the needle around pro-Blackness. We need that buy-in from those who hold positional power.

So, weve been playing and experimenting with Black female executive directorships to really account for whats happening in the field, as there appears to be money coming into the field to support pro-Black organizations, and we need to be set up to succeed. I say appears to beits early days. But theres a beautiful report that was released a few months ago about the level of philanthropic support thats been committed, and what actually is being funded.1

KS: Something that comes up for meand I always sit with this when were gearing up for some programmingis that Black folks are not a monolithic people. Theres such a range and diversity of thought among Black folks. And I dont mean to be simplistic in terms of thinking about a future where our sector has the capacity to really leverage being pro-Black or putting Black folks in positions to succeed. What I mean by that is, even if we think about the rich tradition of what it means to be a Black person navigating this country throughout the Civil Rights era, there were different schools of thought. We think about it as early as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washingtonthere are different approaches. We think about folks who are integrationist versus Pan-Africanist. Theres such a beauty to what it means to be Black folks, which needs to be understood to best position us for a way forward. None of it is less-than or better-than, in my opinion. But thats just where I sit.

All that is to say, regarding pro-Blackness for the sector at this particular moment in time, that in the next decade or two I would love to see nonprofit organizations that dont just provide Band-Aid solutions but actually have a root-cause analysis and a radical approach. Angela Davis says it so poignantly: Radical simply means grasping things at the root. Our organizations, by design, have not been created to get at the root of problems. In fact, were beholden to government funding and philanthropic funding, by which they oftentimes steer us away from root causes and root-problem solutions.

So, if pro-Blackness is really going to take root in this particular sector, it means well see more nonprofit organizations that are actually positioned to solve the problems we set our sights on. And I see some powerful grassroots organizers and some folks doing mutual aid efforts who are starting to show that its doable. How do we bring that to scale and get them the same resources that folks who have been at 501(c)3s and (c)4s for twenty, thirty, forty years have access to? Thats the real, powerful question for me. And I think that at the end of the day, someones got to take the risk and say, This is a bunch of bullshit, yall. We got folks that are positioned to do this work at a high level who are already doing it very meaningfully, who are changing peoples material conditions and giving them better chances of survival and for thriving. And theyre not 501(c)3s, theyre not 501(c)4s, they dont fit the traditional nonprofit model.

So, when we think about a pro-Black sector, for me it means those organizations are going to be able to address those root causes. And as somebody whos light-skinned and has the undergraduate degree background, I shouldnt be taken more seriously than somebody who lives in the streets of Oakland and who says, Yo, this is what I go through being a houseless person. Thats a bunch of fuckery. (Im gonna use this sharp language, here.) I dont know anything about housing. I dont know what its like to be houseless. I can go get a degree tomorrow in public benefits or nonprofit governance or public administration, and then I would be positioned as some expert to solve these problems. But we position folks who are going through it in real time as if theyre less-than or their ideas arent as legitimate. And I just dont think that that is a radical way forward.

So, pro-Black, to me, means that the Black folks who are in the streets, the Black folks who are in prisons, the Black folks who have directly experienced some of the most brutal forces of oppressionthat those folks leadership will also be celebrated by everyone. And not just Black folkswhite folks, IPOC folks. That well start to understand the value of that. I think thats the ambitious goal weve set our sights on. And if it happens in our lifetime, well be lucky. If it doesnt, then our descendants get to keep on picking up the torch.

That, to me is a pro-Black sector. I want to see more houseless organizations run by people whove been houseless. I want to see more organizations doing transformative justice by people whove been in prisons, by folks whove been impacted directly by incarceration. Thats what I want to see. When we start to see that stuff, then Ill say, Okay, yeah, were really getting it. Were really starting to put our money where our mouth is.

LD: Kad pushed us to really think about and embed this in our program: Challenging our dependence on expertise. We are not experts because we have all these things, right? And we challenge that internally at CompassPoint. Were teachers and learners, and were colearners among our participants and our staff. And I feel really proud that were embodying that and to hear you share it, Kadextending more broadly vis--vis the sector this principle of not being so dependent on expertise but centering those folks who are most impacted, for lack of better words, and who can design and facilitate their own liberation alongside us.

CS: Well, thank you. I really appreciate this.

LD: Were really thankful to have this space. I think it gives us more opportunity to work with our participants and our partners when were able to be in dialogue with NPQ to shift the paradigm.

Note

More:

Moving the Mountain: A Conversation about Pro-Blackness with Cyndi Suarez, Liz Derias, and Kad Smith - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly

On the Shelf

'Companion Piece'

By Ali SmithPantheon: 240 pages, $28

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

It is remarkable to be alive at the same time as Scottish writer Ali Smith. No one else, I would argue, captures our ongoing contemporary nightmare in a manner that is both expansively imaginative and the perfect mirror of its abrupt absurdity. After five years of writing and publishing her seasonal quartet an experiment in real-time fiction, both news-driven and profoundly thoughtful Smith could be forgiven for taking a pause.

And yet, only two years after the quartets concluding volume, Summer, here is Companion Piece, a new novel equally focused on present-day anxieties. Smith recently told the BBC that while writing the series, I knew there was a wild book at the back of it waiting, which was connected but not connected.

Given Smiths propensity for wordplay, it is safe to assume that Companions title is more than just a wink at the quartet. As much as its possible to read this stand-alone novel as the series coda, companion, like many of her touchstone words, carries multiple meanings.

Distilling the movement of Smiths books into a neat summary is not only a challenge but somewhat beside the point. In her 12 novels, plot is often secondary to perspective and the cumulative impact of emotional, social and cultural entanglement. Nonetheless, Ill try: Sandy Gray, a single queer painter in her mid-50s, usually lives alone in an inland region of the United Kingdom, though she is currently caring for her fathers dog while he is hospitalized with heart trouble. Each is all the other has of family in the world; Sandys mother left them when Sandy was a girl. Their devotion survives despite their differences, of which there are many.

Although her father sacrificed to send Sandy to university, he thinks little of her art: all that learning, and all youve done with it is make a lifes work of for Christ sake painting words on top of one another so nobody can even read them. Father and daughter do not share the same notion of success. The life you couldve had, he says. But no. Part time work. To fund your nonsense. Visual representations. Her fathers condition is serious but not critical, though given his advanced age and the looming threat of COVID-19, this could change at any moment.

Masked and gloved herself as the medical staff is wearing bin bags for lack of proper PPE, Sandy visits her father, who lies in a kind of hiatus between conscious and un, so tired he was still partly elsewhere. Tasked by his nurse, Viola, to speak with him, Sandy pauses to think, He was some place I couldnt get into, its windows all dark to me. Or maybe it was me who was in the dark place and he was in a bright elsewhere.

Sandys occupation is a familiar one for Smith. Her seasonal quartet shined a spotlight on several actual women artists, but in Companion Piece, its our central fictional heroine who creates. Sandy likes her chosen life, her discipline, as she tries to make her father understand. Her art grants her a purpose she doesnt find in the companionship of others. Yet her fathers illness destabilizes that sense of self-sufficiency and separateness particularly during a season of pandemic isolation.

Its during this fragile moment that a tenuous connection resurfaces. Martina Gelf, a college classmate whom Sandy hadnt spoken with since college, calls out of the blue. The two were never friends, having shared but one conversation about a poem by e.e. cummings. Remembering it, Martina reaches out to Sandy, calling on her nimble mind to unravel a mystery.

She couldnt have made up a story more likely to hook me, thinks Sandy. Now an assistant to the curator at a national museum, Martina was detained at border control on her return from abroad because the passport she offered wasnt the one shed used on departing. Is one country not enough for you? an agent snapped. Then the agents checked her baggage and found the Boothby Lock, a cumbersome and menacing 16th century English lock and key. Assuming it was a weapon, they took Martina to an interview room, detaining her in isolation for seven and a half hours.

This all sounds more or less straightforward until now. While left alone for hours, Martina began to hear a voice stating: Curlew or curfew, then, You choose. Now Martina and Sandy, reunited acquaintances, begin to parse the words meanings. Sandy considers the connection in a riff thats Dan Brown by way of Judith Butler:

[If] we think for a minute, I said, about the short span but the apparent freedom in the life of a bird, juxtaposed with the notion that what we do with our allotted time can be, or arguably always is, dictated or controlled one way or another not by nature alone but by outside forces like economics, history, social constraint, social convention, personal psychology and political and cultural zeitgeist. And if we think about the proffered choice, curlew or curfew, between nature and an authoritarian shaping of time, which is a human invention, or between the environment and our control of harmful and expedient use of the environment " at which point Martina interrupts with laughter and says, You havent changed a bit.

Smiths books often force one to think along such streams of consciousness before breaking the wave with a swell of emotion. Leaping from deep investigations of words and ideas to cultural references as lofty as Keats and as basic as Paul McCartneys Wings (specifically, the song Let em In, if you must know), Smith is intellectually rigorous yet democratic, warm and crucially playful.

What follows Sandys critical analysis is a family squabble involving Martinas intense and hilarious twin young adult children; a history lesson in blacksmiths, the bubonic plague and the curlew bird; the story of a 14th century woman branded and expelled by her community; the acceptance of a lack of closure; and the discovery of the surprising resilience of tenuous bonds.

Throughout the novel, Smith returns to the power of stories and simple gestures that heal or unlock the damaged world weve inherited. She riffs, for instance, on the word hello how it holds its story ready, waiting. Thats pretty much all the story there is. And, recognizing the capacity of any person or thing to become ones companion, she draws from her well of wit and empathy to assemble a novel both enigmatic and inviting, begging to be read and reread.

With its sweeping and incisive vision, its proof that you can trap lightning in a bottle, Companion Piece shares the best qualities with the quartet to which it plays companion, offering a clever, erudite and humane portrait of our intense contemporary moment. Leaping from mythology to etymology, history to literature, she also makes the granular elements of daily movement the stuff of life-sustaining art. She shows, again, what exceptional fiction can do in troubled times that nothing else can.

LeBlanc is a book columnist for Observer. She lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.

See the article here:

Review: Ali Smith's 'Companion Piece' to her timely quartet - Los Angeles Times

In the iconic surrealist sitcom, The Mighty Boosh, Noel Fieldings character Vince Noir claims, Its not about music, its about what you look like, while jokingly devaluing jazz music while conversing with his jazz-obsessed friend, Howard Moon (Julian Barratt). Today, Im exploring the validity of this comment. Is the image more important than the music?

Of course, you will now be thinking its a bit of both. Indeed, it is a little like saying whats more important, the eyes or the ears? Musical purists among us will be tutting and saying, Its all about the sound! Its music after all, isnt it? In saying this, you would be entirely correct. Why should I care what David Gilmour looks like? All I need is to hear some of his jaw-dropping lead-guitar voicings, and Ill be on my way.

While image isnt fundamentally important for music, it is vitally important in cultural and historical significance. With this in mind, its very easy to see why bands and musicians before the 1960s wore the same old suits and had not one iconic haircut between them. If we flash forward to the 1960s, we suddenly had hippies dressed in all kinds of weird and wonderful technicolour clothes. In the early 1970s, we had the birth of glam rock, where David Bowie and Co. popularised the heavy use of makeup and hair dye. Shortly thereafter, we entered the punk era, perhaps the moment in music most dominated by image over music.

So looking at the 1960s and beyond, what changed? The answer lies in an increasing link between music and fashion and also in the popularisation of music as a key element of the Western countercultural movement. After the end of World War II, the baby boomers carried a newfound optimism and drove the capitalist machine, introducing new technological and societal ideas to shake the bones of their stubborn parents.

Advancements in technology allowed music to develop at an extraordinary rate in the 1960s, allowing creative minds to realise their potential. With an increased means of record production and distribution, managers and record labels began to realise the power of marketing and the importance of standing out from the crowd. An artist was to have a strange abstract design on their album cover to draw the listener away from competitors and into their grasp.

This same sentiment would gradually enter all aspects of the music business by the 1970s. The most successful groups couldnt grab the audiences attention with four handsome mop-top lads from Liverpool anymore. The business now required Elton John in ludicrous glasses, Bowie in a glittery intergalactic bodysuit and Bryan ferry in leopard-print jackets.

The importance of image in popular music grew concurrently with the developing ideas in fashion, and either one would catalyse the other incrementally over time. Looking back on the past 60 years, its generally very easy to tell what decade an artist was from and what style of music they might have been making based solely on their fashion choices and demeanour. For some bands, their image was virtually all they had, and the music was very much a secondary factor in their prevailing popularity.

Below, we list five artists whose image was more vital to their cultural significance than their music.

For this selection, Im sure Ill get my fair share of hecklers, but allow me first to assert that I am a big fan of The Stooges music and much of Iggy Pops subsequent solo work. But their sustained position in history was more pivotally influenced by their countercultural image of hedonistic proto-punk hell-raising.

For those who werent aware, The Stooges liked to make a bold statement and so it wouldnt be a surprise to see band members dressed in Nazi officer uniforms, Iggy Pop throwing objects at the audience, acts of indecent exposure and even bloody acts self-mutilation. These stunts were partially attributable to the groups over-indulgence in drugs, but they were hardly going to make much of a statement if they turned up in suit and tie and thanked everyone for a pleasant evening on exit from the stage. The Stooges knew what rock n roll meant and knew what it represented in society at the time this was the key to their historical relevance.

After mentioning The Stooges, I feel its now a good time to mention possibly the most deserving of a spot on this list. The Sex Pistols didnt create punk music, but by golly did they embody the movement. Again, their music, albeit crude, rough-edged and lacking in talent, was important in its frequent anarchist statements and alienating stances on political matters and, of course, the English monarchy. However, their public image was arguably the more important factor at play, historically speaking.

The Sex Pistols had very little musical ability between them in comparison to, say, Pink Floyd as a contemporary example. But the group represented an angry youth, a counterculture that looked to scare parents across the country. They named themselves just like they dressed. Skinny reprobates clad in chains and scruffy leathers with greasy spiked-up hair opted for demonic nicknames like Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. None of this was a fortunate mistake; the band knew the importance of image, as did their recently deceased friend, the punk fashion pioneer Pamela Rooke.

The New York Dolls made some fantastic music and made a little bit of history with their eponymous 1973 debut album. Their unique style that merged a primitive form of punk rock with heavy metal was an important influence on a wealth of subsequent heavy rock acts, but what lingers in mind is their striking on-stage image.

As depicted perfectly on the artwork for the bands debut album, the group were known for their propensity to cross-dress. This was by all accounts a bid to jump on the glam-rock zeitgeist, but the Dolls took it to the next level with high heels, heavy makeup, spandex, dresses and eccentric headwear. The striking look certainly added to the bands appeal at the time and has since helped to earn them an immortal notch on the bedpost of 1970s cultural history.

This selection will be divisive among readers. Prince was in part successful because of his talent as a musician and singer. His rise to worldwide popularity was already well underway when he released his most notable work, Purple Rain, in 1984. But this release will help to illustrate my point that the pop stars career was bolstered by his eye for marketing.

Purple Rain was famously accompanied by a feature film for the visual aspect of the recording, something that Prince considered invaluable. His time in the limelight throughout the 1980s was also aided by the rise of MTV during this period. The music channel popularised Princes big hits by showing his accompanying music videos, where he had yet another off-stage opportunity to express the visual element of his performance. Finally, in a more obvious marketing strategy, the pop icon decided that he would change his name to an unpronounceable symbol, the same flamboyant symbol the singer used to shape his purple custom made guitars.

The German electro-pioneers Kraftwerk are about as iconic as it gets in the realm of synthesised pop music. After a stint as an experimental krautrock group in the early 1970s, they dropped all traditional instruments for a wholly electronic sound using drum machines, synthesisers and vocoders. Their body of work was undeniably important in influencing modern electronic music via the synth-pop craze of the 1980s, but this likely wouldnt have been achieved on such a grand scale had they not had such a striking image.

They presented themselves as eccentric robotic humanoids hot off the production line of a German factory whose function was to produce music to please the people of planet Earth. In most peoples minds eye, Kraftwerk will be lined up in front of their equipment on stage wearing the Man Machine era red shirt and black trousers and tie combination, but they expanded their fashion scope to all manner of other eccentric outfits over the course of their illustrious career. This vivid demeanour and visual image directly influenced countless subsequent synthpop icons, especially the likes of Gary Numan, Visage, OMD, Ultravox, and The Human League.

Most popular

Here is the original post:

Five artists whose image was more important than the music - Far Out Magazine

New Release Wall

Encanto succeeded with the notion of no villain, except generational trauma, and Disney keeps that idea going with the delightful Turning Red (Walt Disney Home Entertainment), a young womans coming-of-age story thats a metaphor for any number of growing-up issues, including that moment when the model child begins to chafe at parental domination. Its charming and adorable, and the boy-band songs by Billie Eilish and Finneas have already made their way into the latters stage act.

Also available:

The Batman (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) Does a three-hour superhero saga have deleted scenes? You bet your bat-hook, and theyre on the 4K/Blu-ray/DVD release alongside other extras.

Blacklight (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) Liam Neeson in the first of two (to date) 2022 thrillers that suggest that maybe its time for him to put down the gun.

Cyrano (MGM/Universal) Peter Dinklage gives his all to a mixed-bag musical reinterpretation of the classic Edmond Rostand tale.

Dog (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) Veteran soldier Channing Tatum and a volatile, retired service dog hit the road for a soldiers funeral and bond as two survivors of war trying to figure out what comes next.

Infinite (Paramount Home Entertainment) Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in Antoine Fuquas perplexing time-travel action thriller.

Licorice Pizza (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) Paul Thomas Andersons latest bout of 1970s San Fernando Valley nostalgia was one of 2021s more divisive films, but still my favorite of the year.

Umma (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Just in time for Mothers Day comes this horror tale starring Sandra Oh as a terrifying mom with her own mother issues.

Uncharted (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Tom Holland managed to score another hit on the heels of Spider-Man: No Way Home in that least reliable of movie genres, the video-game adaptation.

New Indie

Its easy to feel true-crimed out with all the podcasts and cable docs and whatnot, but Sharlto Copleys performance as the Unabomber makes Ted K. (Decal/Super) stand out in a crowded field. The District 9 star chillingly gets under the skin of the infamous domestic terrorist; TheWraps Elizabeth Weitzman wrote that writer-director Tony Stone brings us right to the edge of Teds mind as he documents the brilliant passion curdling into narcissistic madness.

Also available:

Agent Game (Lionsgate) Dermot Mulroney, Jason Isaacs, Barkhad Abdi and Mel Gibson star in this spy thriller.

Clean (RLJE Films) Garbageman Adrien Brody (who also co-wrote the script) tries to put his criminal past behind him only to find himself haunted by it anew in a drama co-starring Glenn Flshler, Mykelti Williamson, RZA and Michelle Wilson.

Strawberry Mansion (Music Box Films Home Entertainment) This very trippy indie stars Kentucker Audley as a bureaucrat in a future society where even dreams are subject to taxation.

New Foreign

In a French housing development named for a Soviet cosmonaut, the young impoverished residents band together to rescue their home before its demolished. Gagarine (Cohen Media Group), filmed at the Cit Gagarine housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine, casts the real-life, working-class inhabitants in a film that embraces hope and idealism while also asking tough questions about French governmental policy toward its most vulnerable citizens.

Also available:

Belle (GKIDS) The latest anime effort from director Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars) retells Beauty and the Beast through the filter of virtual reality and online avatars.

Bloody Oranges (Dark Star) In this dark comedy from France, seemingly everyday people and their everyday lives take some very bleak twists.

The Burning Sea (Magnolia Home Entertainment) This Norwegian disaster saga contemplates dire circumstances caused by offshore oil drilling.

Indemnity (Magnolia Home Entertainment) A retired South African firefighter must fight for his own survival when he is accused of murdering his wife.

The Islands of Yann Gonzalez (Altered Innocence/Strand) This compilation Blu-ray features early short films and the first feature from the director behind Knife + Heart.

Lovecut (Omnibus Entertainment) Three young couples in Vienna grapple with identity and sexuality in a world where all human experience is filtered through digital experiences online.

Mascarpone (Dark Star) The end of Antonios marriage to another man is the beginning of his spiritual rebirth in this gay coming-of-middle-age romantic comedy from Italy.

Playground (Film Movement) This Belgian Oscar entry takes a grim, childs-eye-view look at power dynamics among grammar-school kids.

Poupelle of Chimney Town (Shout Factory) Based on a beloved picture book, this anime about hope, friendship and perseverance comes with a separate English-language soundtrack featuring Tony Hale, Stephen Root and Hasan Minhaj.

Presagio (IndiePix Films) This Argentine festival hit examines a traumatized young writer, struggling with reality (and with finishing his novel) following the death of his family.

Sundown (Decal/Bleecker Street) Tim Roth stars as a man whose seemingly blas response to a family tragedy sets off an unexpected chain of events in this new drama from Michel Franco (New Order).

New Doc

You might expect the documentary Viva Maestro! (Greenwich Entertainment) simply to celebrate the achievements of L.A. Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel and it certainly does that but the films look at the global classical-music star is filtered through the prism of turmoil in Dudamels native Venezuela and how political crackdowns there drove out artists and musicians, making the musicians attempts to work with young, up-and-coming talents all but impossible. The results are somewhat unfocused but nonetheless capture a singular presence on the music scene and the struggles faced by creative people under totalitarian regimes.

Also available:

a-ha: The Movie (Lightyear Entertainment) American listeners might think of the legendary band behind Take on Me as one-hit wonders, but this Norwegian trio has had multiple hits in Europe over the decades; this documentary examines their success (and their prickly internal relationships) that continues to this day.

Beauty Day (Circle Collective) Before there was Jackass, Canada had the early-90s cable-access cult hit The Capn Video Show. This documentary follows Ralph Zavadil as he brings the Capn back for one last go-round.

Flee (Decal/Neon) Nominated for International, Animated and Documentary Oscars, this moving non-fiction film tracks the arduous path of a young gay Afghan refugee making his way to shelter.

How They Got Over (First Run Features) This stirring music doc connects the dots between gospel acts of the early 20th century and the rock acts that would later be inspired by them.

A Life Among Whales (IndiePix Films) A look at the life of conservationist Roger Payne, whose life work was dedicated to educating the public about the plight (and intelligence) of whales.

Of Animals and Men (Strand Releasing Home Entertainment) Examines the real-life Polish couple who rescued 300 Jews during World War II and inspired The Zookeepers Wife.

Other Music (Factory 25) Tragically, theres a whole documentary sub-genre now about the death of independent retail and public spaces this film looks back at the influential New York record store.

The Revolution Generation (Greenwich Entertainment) Can young people save the world? This documentary introduces us to a new generation of leaders hoping to address environmental issues alongside social, cultural, and racial injustices.

The Sanctity of Space (Greenwich Entertainment) Three climbers tackle one of Alaskas more foreboding peaks in this breathtaking nature doc.

Straight to VHS (IndiePix Films) A filmmaker tries to track down the creator of Uruguays most notorious cult film (Act of Violence in a Young Journalist, also included on this DVD) in this look at the countrys analog moviemaking revolution of the 1980s.

Sunken Roads: Three Generations After D-Day (First Run Features) A 20-year-old filmmaker travels to France for a 70th-anniversary celebration of D-Day in the hopes of capturing stories from the survivors who are still alive.

A Taste of Whale (Greenwich Entertainment) This film asks questions of both whalers and environmentalists, as it places the hunting of whales for food in the context of global meat consumption.

The Unmaking of a College (Zeitgeist) The longest higher-education sit-in in US history happened not in the 1960s but in 2019 at Hampshire College; this film looks into the protests and the larger issues at stake.

Why Is We Americans? (Corinth Films) Newarks legendary Baraka family (including poet Amiri and queer activist Shani) is the focal point in this look at the Black experience in America, executive-produced by Ms. Lauryn Hill and Oren Moverman.

The Wobblies (Kino Classics) This 4K restoration of the 1979 documentary about the history of organized labor feels more timely and vital than ever.

Workhorse Queen (Breaking Glass) RuPauls Drag Race alum Mrs. Kasha Davis works hard for the money (and for the community) in this new documentary.

New Grindhouse

Ti West pens a valentine to exploitation cinema and its hardy creators with X (Lionsgate), a 1979-set horror film about the cast and crew of a porno movie that picks the worst location for their movie an isolated farm whose sexually-repressed owners keep their the pitchforks sharpened. West assembles a terrific ensemble (including Mia Goth, Scott Kid Cudi Mescudi and Brittany Snow), and while his trademark slow burn remains in place, once the carnage starts, it just keeps escalating.

Also available:

Cursed (Scream Factory) One of the more appropriately-titled films ever, this much-anticipated reunion of Scream director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson (on a werewolf picture, no less) devolved into a nightmare of reshoots and edits dictated by the Weinstein brothers; this new edition features the directors final R-rated cut, as well as the even more chopped-up PG-13 theatrical release version.

A Dangerous Man (Liberation Hall) The Steven Seagal is title tradition returns for this 2009 effort.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (VCI Entertainment) A 2022 sequel to the 1981 cult-classic made-for-TV movie.

Death Valley (Shudder/RLJE) Psycho Goreman star Matthew Ninaber writes and directs this creature feature about mercenaries and a bioengineer defending themselves from the onslaught of a nasty beast.

Dinosaur World (Shout Factory) Competitors come together for a deadly game in a virtual world ruled by dinosaurs in a film that is in no way meant to make you think of any other successful franchise.

The Mob (Canadian International Pictures) A drug dealer under fire for killing a gangster starts calling a radio show to spill the secrets of organized crime in this 1975 Quebecois cult classic.

One-Armed Boxer (Arrow Video) Legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest had one of its early hits with this action epic starring and written and directed by Jimmy Wang Yu. (The first pressing of this new Blu-ray includes an essay by TheWraps Simon Abrams.)

Row 19 (Well Go USA Entertainment) Some unseen force is killing passengers on an airplane in gruesome ways in this Russian thriller; this new release features an English dub.

Son of Samson (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Also known as Maciste in the Valley of the Kings, this one belongs in the collection of any fan of Italian swords-and-sandals-and-musclemen movies.

Sunnyside (Code Red) Joey Travolta stars as a gang leader in Queens caught between turf war and finding a better life for his family.

They Look Like People (Yellow Veil Pictures) Two estranged friends team up to save themselves from what appear to be shape-shifters or are they?

Treasure of the Four Crowns (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Between the 1950s and Avatar, various filmmakers tried to bring 3-D back among those notable attempts were Tony Anthonys low-budget films in the 1980s. The Blu-ray comes with both the polarized and anaglyphic (red/cyan) versions and glasses too.

Violent City (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Lina Wertmller wrote and Ennio Morricone scored this crime saga starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Telly Savalas. (An alternate cut was released in the US in 1973 under the title The Family; both versions appear on this new Blu-ray.)

Wicked World (AGFA/Bleeding Skull) Canadian splatter-meister Barry J. Gillis 1991 slasher epic returns in a Blu-ray collection that includes the original theatrical version, a 2019 directors cut, and the feature documentary Reality: The Making of Wicked World.

Without Warning (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Directed by Greydon Clark (Angels Brigade) and with an ensemble that includes Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Sue Ann Langdon, Larry Storch and Darby Hinton, plus an alien creature played by Kevin Peter Hall (Predator), this ones about as cult as cult gets.

Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century (Code Red) Gianfranco Parolini, the director of the Sabata spaghetti Westerns, cranked out this campy King Kong ripoff in 1977.

New Classic

One of the Missing Movies to return to circulation in a big way is Mira Nairs Mississippi Masala (The Criterion Collection), making its Blu-ray debut after a 4K restoration and theatrical re-release. This 1991 romantic comedy sees Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington each at the beginning of their brilliant careers as two people of color finding each other, even though they come from very different backgrounds. (Shes the daughter of an Indian family that emigrated from Uganda, which makes both of them fit the definition of African American.) Its a charming, provocative film, and its resurgence is a reminder of how movies can disappear from our consciousness when theyre not readily available on physical media.

Also available:

Almost Summer (Scorpion Releasing) Long missing from circulation, this 1978 high-school comedy in many ways, a precursor to Election is finally available on Blu-ray.

The Carey Treatment (Warner Archive Collection) While director Blake Edwards is most known for comic farces, his eclectic career spanned many genres. This 1972 medical thriller starring James Coburn and written by Michael Crichton deals with the once-again-timely issue of illegal abortion.

Chan Is Missing (The Criterion Collection) Indie legend Wayne Wang made this breakthrough feature with this 1982 neo-noir set in San Franciscos Chinatown.

The Coca-Cola Kid (Fun City Editions) Eric Roberts gets a rare romantic lead role as an American soda executive who travels to Australia and winds up falling for Greta Scacchi in a comedy from Dusan Makavejev, known for much wilder films like WR: Mysteries of the Organism.

De Sade (Scorpion Releasing) The notoriously mild Keir Dullea plays one of historys most infamous sexual paradigm-shifters in this 1969 biopic.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Warner Archive Collection) This 1941 adaptation with Spencer Tracy in the lead role is perhaps most notable for letting Ingrid Bergman play the sexy woman of the world while Lana Turner got to be the fancy lady, a reversal of the roles they usually played.

Double Indemnity (The Criterion Collection) One of the great noir films of all time Billy Wilder directs Barbara Stanwyck as a femme fatale who ensnares insurance salesman Fred MacMurray into a scheme to bump off her husband gets the Criterion treatment.

Femme Fatale (Shout Factory) A twisty and sexy thriller one of my very favorite Brian De Palma movies featuring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas and the Cannes Film Festival.

A Fistful of Dollars & For a Few Dollars More (both Kino Lorber Studio Classics) New 4K releases of the films that put Clint Eastwood, director Sergio Leone and the spaghetti-Western genre on the map.

Flower Drum Song (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) The Rodgers & Hammerstein musical about the Chinese-American experience is both delightful and problematic, but its never looked as good on home media as this new Blu-ray release.

Forbidden Letters / Passing Strangers (Altered Innocence) A new restoration of two gay adult features from filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr., whose singular career covered documentaries, features (Buddies was the first narrative film about AIDS) and pornography.

Francis the Talking Mule: 7 Film Collection (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) Before Babe, before Mr. Ed, there was Francis, the leading mule of a series of hit Universal comedies where he starred opposite Donald OConnor (and, for the last one, Mickey Rooney). This complete box set comes packed with new commentaries for all seven films.

The Funeral (The Criterion Collection) Juzo Itamis hilarious follow-up to Tampopo is another look at culture and ritual through an activity that everyone, eventually, has to participate in and while this is a physical-media column, I would be remiss not to mention that The Criterion Collection is running a series of Itami films this month, including the very funny Supermarket Woman and several other titles still unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray in North America.

Jude (Scorpion Releasing) Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet star as the doomed lovers of Thomas Hardys Jude the Obscure in an adaptation directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Julietta (Icarus Films Home Video) Jean Marais, Jeanne Moreau and Dany Robin star in this farcical love triangle.

Lady Chatterleys Lover (Icarus Films Home Video) Once banned in New York, this controversial adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel stars the luminous Danielle Darrieux.

Mamba (Kino Classics) Legendary gay actor Jean Hersholt (the guy they named the honorary Oscar after) stars in this early Technicolor tale of an uprising against white colonizers in East Africa.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Paramount Presents) James Stewart, John Wayne and Lee Marvin star in this essential John Ford Western (now in 4K), which features the immortal line, When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Mr. Klein (The Criterion Collection) Alain Delon (whose entire filmography seems to be getting remastered lately) stars in Joseph Loseys blistering, Kafka-esque portrayal of Vichy collaboration during WWII.

Outside the Law (Cohen Media Group) In this 2010 drama, a trio of Algerian brothers reunites in 1950s Paris and get involved in the fight for Algerian independence.

Pushing Hands (Film Movement Classics) Ang Lee made his feature debut with this intimate comedy about a Bejing tai chi master adjusting to life in New York City with his Americanized relatives.

Sacco & Vanzetti (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) This 1971 drama examines one of the 20th centurys most controversial court cases, and this Blu-ray features a new commentary track from Repo Man director Alex Cox.

Times Square (Kino Lorber Studio Classics) One of those early-80s cult classics consigned to video limbo because of extensive music-rights issues, this beloved tale of two girls from different backgrounds breaking through in punk-era New York finally makes it to Blu-ray.

Top Secret! (Paramount Home Entertainment) After taking on the disaster genre with Airplane!, Zucker-Abrams-Zucker went after spy films and Elvis movies simultaneously with this outrageous romp, featuring a breakthrough performance from a thoroughly game Val Kilmer.

Two Men in Town (Cohen Media Group) Forest Whitaker plays an ex-con trying to go straight, only to face pressure from his former colleagues as well as from the local sheriff (Harvey Keitel) whose deputy he killed. Also stars Brenda Blethyn and Luis Guzmn.

Wild Things (Arrow Video) John McNaughtons wonderfully trashy and erotic neo-noir featuring the unforgettable foursome of Neve Campbell, Matt Dillon, Denise Richards and Kevin Bacon gets a 4K release with plenty of new extras.

Year of the Jellyfish (Cohen Media Group) After the porno-chic boom of the early 1970s and the VCR revolution of the early 1980s, we had softcore European arthouse films where international stars like Laura Antonelli or Sylvia Kristel took their tops off a lot. This ones among the best of the genre, starring Valerie Kaprisky, best known for her role opposite Richard Gere in the Breathless remake.

New TV

Originally posted here:

What's New on DVD/Blu-ray in May: 'Turning Red,' 'X,' 'Mississippi Masala' and More - TheWrap

Hellobeautiful Featured Video

CLOSE

Source: JD Barnes / for HelloBeautiful

Every season is a winning season for June Ambrose. With an iconic career as a celebrity stylist that spans over two decades and an enduring influence on revolving fashion trends, June Ambrose is your favorite stylists favorite stylist.

After 25+ years of dressing her roster of high-end clientele (Jay Z, Missy Elliott, and Diddy, just to name a few), Ambrose has added Creative Director to her resume as the designer behind Pumas first-ever womens basketball collection, High Court. Still, while her collaboration with the sports fashion house is her baby; motherhood might be her greatest role.

When I catch up with Ambrose for our cover story interview, she greets me with a simple, but charming, Hello Beautiful. She looks relaxed and cozy in a PANGAIA Hoodie, her straight hair with a middle part, accentuating her high cheekbones. Ever the multi-tasker, as we chat, she is perusing through fragrances with a voice off-screen. This tiny, intimate moment of her sniffing the fragrances, feeling them by hand, and figuring out which one to pick, offers me a glimpse of what her time as a Creative Director at Puma typically looks like.

Source: JD Barnes / for HelloBeautiful

The wardrobe wizard has always been at the forefront of fashion. Her reputation as a fearless connoisseur of clothing is the reason why so many women, especially Black women like myself, connect with her on a deeper level. It is also what Ambrose hopes to convey in her High Court Collection.

Im hoping that it will connect with a woman who is not just an athlete, but looks at life as a sport, that she can see herself as bold and brazen and fearless, Ambrose shared. You know, this collection is to celebrate female basketball players but, when you think about it, even women off the court have the same extraordinary abilities; she just might have to identify what her superpower is.

Women do all that naturallywe play defense, we play hard, we play to win, Ambrose continued. Im hoping that that woman can see herself wanting to you know, wanting to just not blend in, but kind of be really iconic and take some risk.

That multi-tasking, modern-day renaissance woman, whom she both embodies and designs for, is full of skill, determination, focus, and the know-how to balance the ebbs and flows of life. June is no stranger to experiencing burnout, but she has found that her work truly thrives when she takes the time to protect her energy. It takes focus and sometimes being a bit more reclusive, she explained. Its the incubation period. Youll have to compromise and show restraint, but its like a meal. You know youll get the dessert at the end so theres something to look forward to. For me, every social moment is a celebration and I look forward to socializing when the work is done and Ive created something new.

Source: JD Barnes / for HelloBeautiful

Ambrose also wants the High Court Collection to help women and binary non-conforming people open up and find their own voices during difficult conversations. Im hoping that women can see [themselves] wanting to just not blend in, but be really iconic and take some risks. I think theres something about that. As a collective, if we encourage each other to say, this is a movement, I think thats what I want women to take away from this. Its okay to have your own voice, its okay to walk your walk and talk your own talk.

Risk has always been a central factor in June Ambroses life. Leaving her stable job in finance after college to explore the unpredictable world of costume design and fashion styling wouldve never occurred without some risk. But without her fearlessness, the world wouldve missed out on her involvement with rebranding Jay Z from a city-slick rapper to a dashing fashion icon, the cinematic magic she created when she teamed up with Hype Williams on Belly, as well as the transcendent music video style collaborations with the Bad Boy crew and Missy Elliott, which cemented her name in hip-hip history

Source: JD Barnes / for HelloBeautiful

June has seen a reemergence of Y2K streetwear trends on social media with the Gen-Z generation exploring the culture-shifting styles of that decade a style that Ambrose pioneered throughout her career. From the music videos to my current projects, its always been about merging high fashion and streetwear sport couture. The shiny suits are also a staple, Ambrose said, referring to her impact in the fashion world. For Ambrose, seeing the younger generation revisiting and reimagining streetwear is rewarding. It shows that I was able to create something timeless that made an impact, she says with pride. Thats part of making history I drew references from things and people before me. I used what my ancestors gave me. Im intentional about wanting to impact time and culture and it was natural to create things to be passed on to the next generation.

Keeping up with future generations can be a challenging feat for some, especially since social media has become central to our modern cultural zeitgeist. However, the daunting landscape of these platforms doesnt intimidate her. She finds a lot of inspiration through social media now and navigates the rapidly evolving internet with confidence. Well, theres an entire alternate universe, Ambrose says with confidence. People can sell merchandise and receive immediate gratification, thats changed the landscape of how consumers engage with retail tremendously. This is the future of how you consume content; I can look at something, love it, and get it. Even though the consumption of content is at an all-time high, so is the infringement and imitation of original content with little-to-no credit. Ambrose wants to see less relinquishment of original ideas and more sustainability by building out within the fashion community, instead of up.

Ownership. I want to see the foundation of fashion houses evolve and be able to sustain with more than just institutional money, Ambrose shares. A lot of people ask for permission and help from these specific entities but Id love for us to come together and build on our own, to infiltrate the industry with each other.

As many seasoned vets in the game of life know, with risk, comes the promise of reward, and June is seeing many positive rewards from her collection with Puma. Ive seen that this collection is speaking to multi-generational type [of] consumers, Ambrose said, satisfaction on her face and in her voice. The fact that we can be on the backs of a 16-year-old to a 55-year-old is quite extraordinary. I think its a testament to how the world is seeing each other now.

The multi-generational conversation is a little bit more prevalent now than ever, June continued. For me, it is exciting because I have a 17-year-old and 20-year-old, its amazing being able to unapologetically hang out with them and look just like them. Ambrose isnt the only style maven in her family, she also notes that her children, Chance (20) and Summer (17), are coming into their own sense of style as well. Its fun to see them play with sportswear, they take it and make it appropriate in so many different settings. Summer rocks the PUMA sneakers with dresses and Chance is bringing motorsport sneakers into street style with oversized denim. They do cool things with both scale and fit.

June Ambroses relationship with her children morphs and evolves every day something she is unabashedly proud of. I have two disruptors that Ive raised and Ive watched them find their own way, my kids Chance and Summer. They dont feel pressure to be in fashion or do what others have done, they have conviction and have found their own voice, she said. Summer is so creative and does her own thing, you can tell she doesnt adhere to the societal pressure a lot of young women face. Chance has found a balance between finance and art, which I think is great and something many people dont know how to combine, the modern matriarch added. When youre raising kids, you really focus on them. I do also see that young people have a lot more access to info these days and that makes a big difference, theyre smarter. Not only does June take note of her childrens strong sense of autonomy, she feels inspired by them as well.

Source: JD Barnes / for HelloBeautiful

They inspire me every day, June proudly exclaimed. I love that they are well-rounded humans who are thoughtful and have great creative expression. Its inspiring that they understand they can articulate so much by what they wear, how they speak, and how they treat others.

One thing that Ambrose hopes that her children take away from her lifes work is to appreciate that feeling of impacting at least one person with their talents. I want them to be able to share their art and creativity and know that theyll be remembered for the feeling people get when they experience it. I always try to sprinkle a little June joy in everything that I touch.

Indeed, its that June joy that serves as an inspirational mood board for all Black women who just need that little push to take their leap of faith. Even Ambrose finds herself still feeling inspired while reminiscing on her past, and feeling proud seeing her contributions across different mediums come to life. Becoming an author was a really proud moment for me. I still consider it a classic in the sense that youre able to still draw references from it that are important to developing ones style. That was important in creating my own legacy, on a commercial level, Ambrose said. Theres also the costume designs that I created that are now inducted to places like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and places like that. Overall, the fact that Im still able to contribute to celebratory and iconic moments Ill always be proud of that.

More From Our Mothers Day Issue:

10 Iconic Styling Moments From June Ambrose That Shifted The Culture

5 Black Mommy Bloggers Who Juggle Motherhood And Dream-Chasing Seamlessly

The Last-Minute Mothers Day Gift Guide For The Mama In Your Life

Excerpt from:

June Ambrose On Style, Motherhood And Building Her Legacy - HelloBeautiful

Over the last decade, sex clubs and parties have shifted from the stuff of underground lore to an almost ho-hum fixture of modern American life. Not just tabloids, but mainstream lifestyle and culture magazines regularly publish in-depth profiles of prominent clubs and events like those hosted by Snctm, the notorious high-end society thats offered the rich (and supposedly famous) venues to enjoy kinky performances and public sex since 2013. Whats more, they print guides on how to find sex clubs, how to act while attending parties and even how people can stay safe if and when they return to the scene after years of lockdown, in the tail end of a pandemic.

Its tempting to view the recent explosion in visibility of these erotic events and spaces as a uniquely modern phenomenon, to argue that these trendy sex clubs and parties are the novel byproduct of rapidly evolving social conversations around and attitudes towards things like kink, non-monogamy, and open, public displays of sex and sexuality. And its true that most of todays best-known venues for public sexual exploration have only opened their doors in recent years.

But in truth, America has had a sex club and party scene for decades. Older spaces and events may not have looked quite like the ones we have today. And they never got much play in mainstream press or history books thanks to taboos around talking about sex, and especially non-traditional sexual practices. However, theyve clearly influenced the shape of the modern scene, as have other, even older venues for semi-public and non-normative sexual play. Below, InsideHook peels back the layers of history, one era at a time, to dig into this often neglected sexual history.

Perhaps the best-known precedents for modern spaces and venues, swingers clubs and parties take their name from the swinger lifestyle that emerged in the United States around the end of World War II. Swinging is often associated with key parties and wife swapping, by now tired tropes used to paint nostalgic or critical pictures of the supposedly free-wheeling sexual revolution that swept across (parts) of America in the 60s and 70s. But the lifestyle actually encompasses a grab bag of non-monogamous arrangements, some of which resemble what we now think of as polyamorous relationship dynamics, as well as relatively open group sex.

Early swinging mostly took place at private meetups in couples homes. But in the 60s, a few resorts and retreats where swingers could let it all hang out opened across the nation. Journalist Gay Taleses 1981 expos of postwar American sexuality, Thy Neighbors Wife, briefly thrust one of these venues, the 15-acre Sandstone Resort in Californias Topanga Canyon, into the public eye. Opened in 1968 by an area couple, the resort reportedly had a utopian vibe, built around the belief that monogamy, among other social and political conventions, was ultimately harmful.

Most swinger spaces were ostensibly members-only venues, primarily serving people partaking in the lifestyle in their immediate area. But a few venues, like New Yorks Platos Retreat, which opened in 1977, were visible and open to members of the wider public, if they came in as guests. Platos actually ran ads on public access television, and got some attention in New York magazine.

The most prominent swingers clubs closed down after only a few years, often thanks to zoning or financial issues. Many smaller venues shut down in the 80s as well, in the face of the AIDS pandemic, and a wave of social conservative backlash against the mid-20th century sexual liberation. Most retreats that survived this culling, and their successors, now keep a low-profile.

Pop culture now typically portrays 60s and 70s swingers spaces as dingy, covered in plush and kitsch aesthetics, and ultimately vanilla, heteronormative and perhaps even exploitative. Platos notoriously laid out strict no gay sex, no threesomes rules for its patrons and took pains to make sure there were always plenty of young, conventionally pretty women around. Modern swingers are often portrayed as old and dated. (Many modern swinging spaces do skew a bit old, and a few actually dissuade young people from joining, urging them to seriously consider whether they want to be swingers first.) So perhaps its understandable that some modern sex clubs and parties take pains to distance themselves from swingers and their spaces adding to the sense that these new venues and events are something wholly new. But you dont have to dig far to see the purely organizational and conceptual precedents that open parties at swinger spaces ultimately set.

Although they garnered less mainstream attention thanks to concerns about privacy and legality, early fetish clubs and dungeons popped up in discreet locations across the U.S. in the mid-20th century. Then as now, they offered communal spaces for people to meet others into kink, education events and forums for discussion about how to explore things like BDSM play safely, and shows to watch or parties for people to participate in non-normative sexual practices.

Although most of these early communities were ephemeral and have been lost to history, a few are still influential players in the kink space. Notably, The Eulenspiegel Society, often stylized as TES, which hosts regular BDSM classes and get-togethers across the U.S. to this day, started out in the early 70s as a regular apartment meetup of like-minded masochists who connected via personal ads placed in underground magazines in New York. But as more and more people in the fetish space learned about the community, it expanded to public venues and opened up to people with other kinks. (TES was oddly public with its largely educational social activities because its founders took a strong activist bent, attempting to break down the stigmas around fetishes and the people who practiced them that forced other groups into the shadows.)

Mainstream culture really started taking notice of Americas kinky sub-currents in the 80s and 90s, with fetish gear and dungeons increasingly showing up, albeit usually in a reductive form in pop culture. (This is around the same time TES and other public groups started hosting big conventions.) Its clear that modern sex clubs and parties have taken either direct or indirect notes from these increasingly well-known and public spaces. Notably, high-end sex parties often bring in kink professionals for either educational events, or to perform erotic tableaus. However, despite this overlap, kink spaces ultimately remain discrete from, and far more specialized than, the sorts of general-interest sex parties and venues thatve come into the public eye of late.

Throughout the 20th century, bars and clubs opened, mostly in major American cities, to serve the queer community. Randolph Trumbach, a historian of queer social spaces, says that these nightlife spots were primarily a vital venue for people to openly express their sexuality, to meet others and to find joy in safety in an otherwise hostile, dangerous world. However, by the 60s and 70s many of these spaces had developed back rooms that people could duck off to in order to have semi-public sex however they pleased without leaving safe venues.

The anthropologist Gayle Rubin points out that there was often overlap between queer and kink spaces in the 60s and 70s, pointing specifically to Manhattans leather clubs and one particular gay male fist-fucking establishment in San Francisco she observed early in her academic life.

Although early queer bars and clubs emerged in response to a radically different social setting than sex venues in the modern zeitgeist, their particular blend of conventional nightlife activities with the semi-public exploration of non-normative sex and sexuality set clear, potent precedents.

American nudism emerged in the early 20th century, and Brian Hoffman, a historian of nudism in America, notes that from at least the 30s onwards the leaders of the nudist movement took pains to paint it as an entirely non-sexual practice. They framed nudism as a wholesome and healthy back-to-nature lifestyle, wholly in line with the sexual and social norms of the era. But this was mostly, Hoffman argues, a bid to avoid legal scrutiny, and to foster a sense of broad respectability in an era when even a whiff of sex in public could get you broadly blacklisted.

In practice, Hoffman has found plenty of evidence of nudist communities that, as early as the 40s, embraced sexual liberation and free love exploration on their campuses. Elysium Fields, a nudist camp that operated in Topanga Canyon in the 60s, was notorious for alleged free-wheeling public sexual exploration which may have had an influence on the areas swinger scene.

I believe there are camps where things go on at night, Hoffman says, coyly. Back in 2015, Playboy profiled a slightly fringe nudist community that still engaged in what sounds like far more traditionally swinger-style sexual exploration. But mainstream nudists dont like to acknowledge anything sexual as a part of, or inspired by, their chaste, healthful lifestyle.

From the turn of the 20th century onwards, gay men in American cities also turned to bathhouses as a venue for semi-public sex. (No ones entirely sure when this usage developed. New Yorks first clearly documented anti-sodomy raid on a bathhouse dates to 1903 at the Ariston Hotel Bath, but local facilities had a reputation as bastions of queer sex dating to at least the 1880s.) By the 50s, some newly founded bathhouses were explicitly and almost exclusively queer venues.

Dennis Holding of the North American Bathhouse Association explains that the general protocol in these spaces has been consistent for decades: Men use whatever facilities a bathhouse has, like a pool or sauna, then sit partially or fully exposed in a room with the door ajar. They make eye contact with people who walk by and either wave or nod them in, or to keep on moving. Then, whatever happens in the room happens. Like club spaces, this was another vital venue for queer sexual safety and exploration. But Holding notes this is a far cry from the vibe of either mid-20th century or modern sex clubs and parties, so he doubts bathhouses had any influence on them.

No modern sex clubs or events are clamoring to claim a connection to bathhouse sex, either, as theyve taken on a reputation as old and outdated venues as well. Many closed down in the face of the AIDS pandemic, the sexual panics and declining business that followed. (Holding and others are trying to keep them alive and relevant for future generations, though, and some young gay men do still use them for sex.) But Platos Retreat notably opened on the site of a recently closed prominent gay bathhouse, and featured plenty of water fixtures and themes, suggesting some awareness of and reference to bathhouse culture. A few scattered accounts also suggest a broad awareness among people involved in mid-century heterosexual sexual liberation movements, like swinging, of bathhouses as a model for exuberant sexual exploration.

Taking a leap across the Atlantic, and far back in time, Trumbach has documented the existence of dozens of Molly Houses in England, France and the Netherlands, from at least the early 1700s to the mid-1800s. These were alehouses or cafes known for serving people wed now broadly call queer men, offering venues for dancing and general merriment, and opening up back rooms for patrons to engage in either private or public sex, however they liked. (The houses take their name for the slang term of the era for an effeminate male prostitute. However Trumbach notes that as far as he can tell much of the sex that took place in these houses was non-transactional.)

The most famous Molly House, Mother Claps of London, allegedly hosted up to 40 guests in its back rooms every night in the mid-19th century, and kept security at the doors to ensure the safety and privacy of all who frequented the premises, which sounds a lot like the venues that came a century later.

No one InsideHook consulted for this article has seen any evidence of Molly Houses in America in that era. But Tom Foster, historian of U.S. sexuality, says that American newspapers regularly reported on Londons Molly Houses, so we know some people heard about them at least.

Molly Houses vanished in the wake of a series of intense police crackdowns in the mid-19th century. These raids and legal cases were part of a widespread, if inconsistent, push to enforce increasingly codified and legally-backed sexual norms in the public sphere. That broad anti-queer and anti-public sex environment may explain why there is a long gap in the historical record between the disappearance of these venues, and the emergence of 20th century spaces. Anything that existed in the era was likely deep underground, off any notable radar.

However, around the same time Molly Houses disappeared, nations across Europe and North America started to build public restrooms also out of a concern for public morality and propriety. (Prior to this era, Trumbach explains, men urinated in public streets by just turning to face a wall and letting er rip. This was deemed too shocking for respectable women to see.) These early public restrooms were often self-contained cottages or entirely closed off lines of stalls. So, gay men especially took to picking people up in bars, then retreating to public toilets to have semi-public sex. Trumbach notes that, for several decades, the slang term for public sex, and especially queer public sex, in England at least was cottaging, after self-contained toilets.

Authorities shut down public toilets around the mid-20th century, he adds, in no small part because concerns about public sex and drug use transformed these public morality solutions into a newfound source of moral panic. No ones sure if the timing is related, but it is somewhat conspicuous that sexual club and party spaces grew increasingly visible in the historical record right around the same time that public toilets faded out of the sexual orbit. Its also worth noting that, even at nightlife venues that dont explicitly or tacitly condone onsite sex, plenty of people still get busy in bathroom stalls, because even if theyre not as private as 19th century cottages, theyre still one of the only semi-private places folks can slink off to.

No one InsideHook spoke to for this article is aware of any specific venue for public sex in the historical record before Molly Houses. But Trumbach suggests this is just because they werent needed. For most of human history, if you wanted to have any type of sex, you either did it in the privacy of a home, or out in nature or a park if you didnt have enough privacy at home.

Trumbach adds that, even as dedicated spaces for public sex emerged in the mid-20th century, he and others observed many hookups or orgies in parks and woods. (Not to be too revealing, he says, but when I was a younger man living in Chicago there were spots in the parks where, even in the middle of winter, group sex took place regularly.) And parks remain a hotspot for public sex to this day as many teens desperate for a space to explore sex away from adult eyes know.

Ultimately, Molly Houses, queer clubs, bathhouses and every other venue for public or semi-public sex emerges as a response to a specific need. Whether its the need to create a safe space for a form of sexual expression experiencing a brutal crackdown at the hands of a bigoted legal system, the need to build a space for community around a niche or inherently public sexual proclivity, like forms of kinky or group sex, or the need for a venue for pure, open, general sexual exuberance and exploration, every space, whether explicitly or implicitly, draws lessons from those that came before it, or developed parallel to it. Nothing is new under the sun. But they are all windows onto unique chapters in the ever-evolving history of human sexuality.

This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.

More here:

A Brief History of Sex Clubs, And Their Clandestine Predecessors - InsideHook