Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Hello, and welcome to Protocol Entertainment, your guide to the business of the gaming and media industries. This Tuesday, were examining the effects of rampant virtual real estate speculation on metaverse platforms, whether Wordle has gotten more difficult, and the fatigue caused by an overcrowded game release calendar.

Virtual land is drawing in large sums of very real money, and its causing division in the burgeoning new metaverse movement brewing in the corners of the tech and gaming industries.

While Big Tech has proclaimed the metaverse as the next big shift for the internet, there are already a number of companies that have a multiyear head start. Theyre now fast becoming hotspots of virtual real estate speculation as they open their doors to third-party investors, land developers and crypto enthusiasts.

The virtual land gold rush is concentrated among four companies all making what are best described as successors to influential life sim platform Second Life.

Its not all about the money for crypto enthusiasts. Somnium CEO and founder Artur Sychov told Protocol he was inspired to build the platform in 2017 after playing games like Ultima Online, which helped pioneer concepts like virtual avatars and land ownership in video games.

Many of the firms investing in virtual land have grandiose ideas about how pivotal the metaverse might be in the future, if only because it means that getting in on the ground floor will make them fabulously rich.

But who is this really for, and why is it so valuable? Many of these companies pouring money into virtual real estate seem to be at odds with the actual platforms providing the technology and infrastructure to support it. And of course, these platforms are happy to take their money if it helps fund their vision for a decentralized future. Sychov told me Somnium takes a 7.5% cut of aftermarket NFT sales on the marketplace.

But how valuable is an Adidas-themed virtual shoe shop in Metajuku if the only other users in Decentraland arent actually playing the game and instead simply checking the value of their NFT villa on OpenSea so they can flip it for a profit? Virtual land is just a small piece, Sychov told me. It will stay in the spotlight and be relevant for a certain period of time, but I dont think well see the hype because virtual land costs something only if it's useful to people.

Nick Statt

A version of this story also appeared on Protocol.com. Read it here.

When people get stressed out and burned out, you cant really treat it. They need to take a big chunk of time off, and even then, they come back frazzled. Were looking at how we can prevent this in an ongoing way. Rob Cunningham, the CEO of midsized game studio Blackbird, discussed the companys move to a four-day workweek with The Washington Post. He said the move saved the company following a shift to remote work.

I think theres going to be a lot of mutual respect there and I think Activision will be able to continue doing what they do best. Thats also whats most important to us at the end of the day, whatever form that takes for us and our company. So I would not turn anything down, as long as our freedom was still respected. PlatinumGames CEO Atsushi Inaba spoke to VGC about Microsofts Activision Blizzard deal and the prospect of getting acquired during an era of intense consolidation in the game industry.

As we move into a world after COVID-19, the biopharma industry must understand how to maintain this incredible pace of innovation without forfeiting precision or quality. Smart manufacturing otherwise known as Industry 4.0 converges IoT, software-defined infrastructure, advanced analytics and AI to create more flexible and interoperable digital manufacturing platforms.

Learn more

Horizon Zero Dawn joins an exclusive club. Guerrilla Games adventure title has joined the rare ranks of PlayStation exclusives to pass 20 million units sold, Sony announced last week. The sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, is getting rave reviews and releases on Friday.

Dutch regulators continue fining Apple. The iPhone-maker has now been hit with a total of 20 million in fines over the past month for failing to abide by app store regulations in the Netherlands. Apple outlined new rules for dating app-makers, but regulators say the terms are unreasonable.

Wordle is not actually getting harder. The daily viral guessing game is using the same bank of potential words, even after getting acquired by The New York Times, The Verge reported. Perhaps you, like us, have just had some bad days.

India bans Garena Free Fire. The popular battle royale shooter is among more than 50 apps banned by the Indian government over links to China. India is Garena Free Fires biggest market, and the ban could pose serious complications to its business.

VFX veterans form a new game studio. The crossover between gaming and Hollywood continues with Blinkmoon, a new developer formed by VFX artists Mohsen Mousavi and Hugh Behroozy and game developer Troy Dunniway.

CNNs streaming strategy is in shambles. CNN+ was supposed to be the networks path to a streaming future. Then Jeff Zucker got ousted, and things went sideways.

Some NBC shows may disappear from Hulu. Comcast is reportedly nearing a deal to boost its own Peacock streaming service.

The Foo Fighters Super Bowl VR show didnt go as planned. The lobby crashed, leaving many fans stranded, and the whole experience wasnt nearly as immersive as it could have been, according to Kent Bye.

The new-game release calendar has been jam-packed since last fall, and some of the biggest releases this year are slated to come in the next two weeks. This is partly by accident; COVID-19 delays inadvertently created an unusual swell of big product drops concentrated in the first few months of 2022. But its creating a very real sense of fatigue among players (me included) who struggle to devote enough time to new releases before the next big thing takes over the gaming zeitgeist.

This week, Sony is releasing Horizon Forbidden West, and a few days later FromSoftware will drop Elden Ring. Both games were delayed and are now going head-to-head against Destiny 2s The Witch Queen expansion next week and competing with Sloclaps Sifu, Techlands Dying Light 2 and three new Pokmon games released since November.

As Polygon reported earlier this month, these effects might go beyond the pandemic, with game developers less concerned about releasing products into traditional summer and holiday release windows as more and more of the industry turns to digital distribution. One easy way to cope: Wait on new games and finish what you start. Im currently playing Sifu, as well as the excellent indie card game Inscryption and Acid Nerves Deaths Door. Ill get around to the new stuff when I can.

Nick Statt

Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to entertainment@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you on Thursday.

Read the original:

Is VR real estate speculation spoiling the promise of the metaverse? - Protocol

If youre a pro football fanatic who lives in a northern Kentucky town like Covington with its sweeping hillside view of the Cincinnati skyline then this weekend is something youd anticipated for a long time: your Bengals playing for their first-ever Super Bowl victory. So it seems a perfect metaphor for Americas twisted 2020s that Kentuckys junior senator isnt rooting for quarterbacking phenom Joe Burrow but rather that a large convoy of smoke-belching, horn-honking semis will grind the L.A. freeways and, thus, the Big Game itself, to a halt.

Im all for it, Sen. Rand Paul told a conservative news outlet last week when they asked him about talk that the so-called Freedom Convoy movement a band of truckers and their allies whove occupied the Canadian capital of Ottawa and shut down key U.S. border crossings, including the massive Ambassador Bridge into Detroit might come to the Super Bowl host city or other U.S. communities. Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights to you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.

Never mind the rank hypocrisy that Paul and his GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill were apoplectic less than two years ago when a multiracial coalition of Black Lives Matter protesters seeking the civil right of not being killed by the police decided to clog things up in American cities. Or that sweeping vaccine mandates havent been imposed on Americans to the extent of peer countries like Canada or most of Europe. This notion of big men in their big rigs and their loud if nebulous cries for freedom grinding the worlds democracies to a halt has captivated the American right wing and their grievance-laden cousins around the globe.

The seeming endless stalemates in the streets of Ottawa where Ontario Nice officers issue vague ultimatums and stand around, in stark contrast to the riot gear-clad, tear gas-happy response youd surely see on the American side has created time and momentum to inspire elements of the pandemic-weary resentful working classes around the globe. (Police in Windsor did make some arrests and clear the Ambassador Bridge literally as I was writing this.)

In France this weekend, a police force more battle-hardened by a couple years of skirmishes with yellow vests clashed with a Convoi de la Libert that sought to descend on Paris, while on the other side of the globe even New Zealand considered a global model for avoiding the worst of the COVID-19 crisis saw a showdown between cops and protesters inspired by the siege of Ottawa that resulted in some 120 arrests.

Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy!, as the country singer C.W. McCall famously sang in the winter of 1976 en route to a No. 1 Billboard hit. To listen to Convoy some 46 years later where the casus belli isnt a vaccine but a 55-mph speed limit (although high gas prices as the mothers milk of middle-class angst loomed large then, as now) is a reminder that blue-collar rage against the bureaucratic machine is nothing new. (Even if the 11 long-hair friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus are no longer around).

But its much scarier now. These sort of global cries in the dark seem to truly capture the zeitgeist of a world gone mad as we mark the two-year anniversary of the pandemic that upended life as we knew it, in a world that was already angrier and more paranoid and resentful than usual. In a weird way, the protests seem of a piece with the much more serious situation now unfolding on the border between Russia and Ukraine, where also irrationally Vladimir Putins troop buildup threatens Europes worst war since 1945. Its not surprising that the virus of social breakdown thats produced clownish strongmen like Putin or Donald Trump is now infecting international relations, all part of a great unraveling.

Still, the Freedom Convoy is inexplicable in a way that makes it hard to even write about. For all the chaos that this uprising is provoking, its hardly a popular movement, in a nation where not only does a majority support vaccine mandates but an estimated 85-90% of truckers have received the jab. Like other right-wing uprisings, the rallying cry is freedom who could oppose that? even when its beyond vague exactly what liberties are under assault. We came to Canada to be free not slaves, a trucker named Ivan whod immigrated to Canada from irony of ironies Ukraine told a sympathetic journalist named Rupa Subramanya. We lived under communism, and, in Canada, were now fighting for our freedom.

READ MORE: Is France showing us what Americas next civil war will look like? | Will Bunch

Subramanya who said he interviewed 100 protesters stated the somewhat obvious when he wrote the convoys arent really about vaccine mandates but about something else. Or many things: a sense that things will never go back to normal, a sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma.

The vagueness of the demands makes it easy to both ridicule the protests and the protesters, and to also point attention at the many bad actors eager to mobilize the ennui and growing paranoia of a two-year pandemic for their own nefarious causes including the usual suspects of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers and Confederate flag wavers and whatnot. Thats on top of the exploiters of political gain (cough, cough, Rand Paul) and profit, like the ratings-mad hosts at Fox News. But you cant exploit resentment unless there is resentment to exploit.

But in 2022 the roots of that resentment have grown quite tangled. How much of the anxiety of the mostly white working class thats gravitated toward these increasingly confrontational movements evolving from the Tea Party to Trump to the mess on display in Ottawa is sparked by the economics of outsourcing and crushing blue-collar work in North America, or the culture of a rigged meritocracy looking down on folks without fancy degrees? And how much is it the sour resentment that multicultural democracy is thankfully tearing down the foundations of white supremacy and patriarchy that once conferred a social status that didnt require wealth or diplomas?

The Freedom Convoy may not have come to America yet but weve seen its offshoots in anger over mask mandates or, increasingly, any pandemic restrictions. If youre a college-educated, trust-in-science, progressive-minded person, its almost unfathomable to understand the growing vitriol toward President Joe Bidens science adviser, Anthony Fauci a genial, learned man spouting the latest science on the coronavirus. But calm, knowing expertise is exactly what they hate. In the mindset of this Canadian convoy, Freedom is just another word for smart people with diplomas on the wall not telling them how to live. And if youre trying to make sense of what the truckers want, then youre missing the point altogether.

But while anti-elitism certainly contains elements of class rage, its also, arguably, a natural reaction to the basket of policies known as neoliberalism that were fashioned by elites and which have been broadly harmful to the middle class, and not just white trucker dudes. It was just a decade ago that the left erupted in a protest movement of its own called Occupy Wall Street that was also panned by the establishment for its lack of demands. Arguably, the truckers and the Zuccotti Park campers were fighting opposite sides of the same coin. In 2011, that establishment responded with repression, and a similar response is likely in 2022, at least if the trucker protests come to the American side. Maybe its time for a different approach.

It only takes a few hours to arrest people, tow some trucks and clear a street but at this stage that only seems to guarantee that the next protest is going to be even worse than Ottawa or, heaven forbid, Jan. 6. It will take years to undo the assault on the middle class so theres no reason not to start today. The key steps in an era of growing misinformation begin with an equitable system of education that offers debt-free opportunity to everyone both to gain skills but also the knowledge to become better citizens. This might even jump-start a new paradigm where our essential workers get the same respect as self-appointed gurus of the knowledge economy. And our leaders can look for civic endeavors the universal 18-year-old gap year of civilian service is the best idea Ive seen that reminds folks of what we share in common. I know its counterintuitive for some, but a more equitable world might even smell like dare I say it freedom.

READ MORE: SIGN UP: The Will Bunch Newsletter

Originally posted here:

Freedom Convoys arent supposed to make sense. The world cant ignore them | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Innovation is critical for business growth. Companies have to innovate to remain competitive in a world where start-ups are increasingly eating their lunch with seeming ease. In the first half of last year, new businesses were registered at the staggering rate of nearly 80 per hour in the UK, according to Companies House the really successful ones creating solutions to problems that established players had completely missed.

While most companies are aware of the need to innovate, many struggle to find clear pathways to success. Taking a broader perspective that goes beyond existing products to focus on the critical needs of the world can shine a light on the right pathway. This is fundamentally about having a purpose.

By helping to solve problems faced by people and planet, companies not only find opportunities for growth, but can also develop a culture that breeds new and more meaningful output. For businesses that get purpose right, it can be as powerful a weapon for innovation as it is in marketing.

And to be clear, purpose is a mechanism for driving profit - purposeful businesses outperform the stock market by 133%, according to Deloitte. And 63.4% of business leaders think that having a purpose helps them to be more innovative (EIU). Purpose is never going to be a panacea, but it is an underused lever in innovation, enabling businesses to change their standpoint to one of bigger impact outside of their familiar world.

For companies looking to use purpose to boost innovation, Revolt advises three key areas of focus:

Assessing market opportunity through a purposeful lens is a compelling companion to capability analysis and interrogation of market data. There is real lasting impact to be made in solving the worlds most critical problems, and crucially you will also find the biggest commercial gains.

With a purposeful lens, you can identify long term trends that throw the spotlight on real problem solving, not just what happens to be in the zeitgeist. For example, while a pet care brand might feel the pressure to embrace the trend for natural ingredients, a purposeful lens could provide a disruptive solution to the high carbon footprint of domestic dogs, unlocking a new audience of pet owners.

Using a purposeful lens also helps companies to better understand their environments so they think and act differently. A vitamin brand that believes in equality will predominantly look first at the issues of inequality in healthcare, rather than reacting to the trend of people eating more gummy vitamin formats.

And a purposeful lens is an effective way to identify new and distinctive white spaces, by stepping back and looking at the bigger picture concerns of your audience and where they overlap with your brand and product offer. It can also help shape distinctiveness within a white space.

The way you do business can be as impactful as what you sell to savvy consumers these days, leading to competitive outcomes. In recent years, weve seen a raft of direct-to-consumer (DTC) start-ups, shunning traditional business models and grabbing market share online. Many established businesses are also now looking to emulate the early growth success of these disruptive start-ups. But the DTC playbook is tiring and markets are becoming saturated with like-for-like blands with increasingly samey founder stories.

Purpose within your business model can provide standout here. For example, Revolt's client Reel, a subscription paper brand, is not only sustainable but also actively supporting a sanitation ecosystem for people in developing countries without access to sanitation. While a multitude of DTC toilet paper brands have launched recently, Reel has become the fastest growing brand in the category on both Amazon and Target.

Whether its a movement of passionate advocates and influencers who are fighting for the same cause, or people and organizations who bring focus and credibility to your impact, building a purposeful community around you is key.

Purpose can be a great vehicle for community building and content development. Theres a wonderful intersection between content, community and commerce, and purpose fuels this. For health food brand The Gut Stuff, Revolt built a brand around a conversation and a social movement around empowering and democratizing gut health. And we did this without any product. The community following came from a clear purpose and a sparked interest in the role of gut health in their lives. When The Gut Stuff introduced the product, the audience was already there. Beliefs and cause were aligned, making buying the product a natural fit and fix, as it delivers on the purpose they believe in.

Used effectively, purpose can be a key tool for guiding and unlocking the untapped potential of innovation. But it does require real commitment and bravery. Purpose should create a culture that supports and fuels innovation, with all areas of the organization working to a common belief and goals.

Businesses that embrace purpose as a lever to drive innovation should see it as a long-term strategy not a short-term fix. It means staying focused on your belief, but being agile enough to adapt and learn from your failures. And all the while being honest with your audience.

Purpose is not a magic pill for business success, but used properly it can be a very effective tool for unlocking innovation. It can help to make innovation truly distinctive. And it can be used to land innovation with a passionate and receptive audience.

Revolt's Innovation Studio is working with the likes of Reckitt's Access, Mars' Launchpad and Green Park Brands to develop new purpose-led commercial breakthroughs.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

Read more:

3 top ways that businesses can use purpose to drive innovation - The Drum

In 1960 dubbed the "Year of Africa" 17 African nations declared their independence from the colonial West. It was a year of liberation. A time of jubilee, cultural advancement, and optimism for a new start and brighter future cross the continent.

In the Belgian colony of Congo, a pair of bold and charismatic leaders fanned the flames of hope and freedom until they caught fire. But by the following year, that hope had been dashed by outside forces in a series of political events with lasting consequences.

In this episode, writerBrenton Zolatransports us to a turning point in Congo's journey to independence, reveals what happened to the country's hope, and remembers the future that almost was.

Producer's Note: "Africa's Lost Year of Hope" is a different kind of a story, one that calls on a traditional style of griot storytelling from Central and West Africa. Brenton Zola, who has deep Congolese roots, plays the role of the griot a figure who acts as a bridge between your world and the world of story, bringing listeners into a world of narrative, music and myth.In this oral tradition, a griot is often accompanied by a chorus, and this episode features chants, songs and vocal accompaniment that help bring the story to life.

Episode producers: Brenton Zola and Nora Saks

Host: Nora Saks

Story editor: Nick White

Mixing and sound design: Matt Reed

Original music: Brenton Zola and the Storytellers, Brodie Kinder

Executive producer: Ben Brock Johnson

Web producer: Meera Raman

Additional production: Amory Sivertson, Dean Russell, Paul Vaitkus, Quincy Walters, Kristin Torres

Show notes:

Further reading:

Thanks to Eve Blouin, Adam Hochschild, Steve Colwell, Paul Colwell,Mermans Mosengo, Jason Tamba and Stuart Reid for sharing their time and knowledge.

Special thanks to the Storytellers Jerome, Gibran, Alejandro, Devin and Keanu for lending their voices. And to Gio Bard Zero, Brodie Kinder, Meredith Turk and Vince Duneman Ferg for their sonic contributions.

Thanks also to The Source Marrakech and to Denver Arts and Venues for their support for this project.

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

[CONGO JAZZ MUSIC]

Nora Saks: Sit back. Close your eyes. Imagine a big city on a river overflowing with life.

Brenton Zola: A place where people are dancing, where music is just swirling through the air in the forms of Congo jazz and trumpets. Where you have art lining the streets. It's just a place that was ready to emerge from a dark history.

Nora: This is Brenton Zola - a writer, thinker and creator with deep Congolese roots. The place hes describing is no figment of the imagination. Its Leopoldville - and in 1960 - it was the capital of the Belgian colony of Congo. That year was a turning point for the entire continent. A year of liberation.

Story continues below

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Brenton: The year 1960 was known as the Year of Africa, and that is because 17 African nations actually all declared their independence in one single year.

Nora: Brenton was that before you were born?

Brenton: Ha! Oh Lord. Yes, that is significantly before I was born.

Nora: Nevertheless, Brentons fascination has led him to begin working on a book about this chapter of Congos history. And he says back then, Leopoldville was bubbling with life and hope that Congo could soon become one of Africas free Democratic republics. Now, it usually takes some kind of spark for those embers of hope to catch fire. Sometimes that can be one bold individual. But at that time, Congo had two. Patrice Lumumba and Andre Blouin. A dynamic pair that would transform the entire nation - and inspire people for generations to come.

Brenton: I've always been fascinated by - first of all, people who are able to stir the emotions of, and sort of capture the imagination, the zeitgeist of their time, and that in the case of Lumumba and Blouin specifically, that they could take on these really large responsibilities, knowing like how dangerous it was, knowing how many large forces were against them and still have the willingness and drive to follow through on their visions for a better future.

Nora: Now imagine that hope dashed, on purpose, by an outside actor.

Brenton: You know, when we look at the problems of Congo now, from exploitation in the mining industry to animal conservation to violence in the eastern part of the Congo with rebel militias, a lot of these are a fallout of what happened in 1960. And I think when we look at our world right now, the problem or challenge that societies have is that you oftentimes don't see the fallout from large political events until many decades later. And so by the time you start really feeling that fallout, people have forgotten.

Nora: Eventually, Brenton says, that era of hope and freedom disappeared from our collective memory. And was replaced with a much simpler notion: one of suffering.

Brenton: And so I want to bring this story to people because I want to show them that not only could the future have been different, but it was on the path of being different. And we basically thwarted that path. And so that the future that we have or the present that we have now is in no way inevitable and that there's always a new story that can be written if we understand how we got here to begin with.

[MUSIC]

Nora: Welcome to Last Seen - a show about people, places and things that have gone missing, and whether or not they can or even should be found. From WBUR - Bostons NPR station, Im Nora Saks.

Today, youre going to hear a different kind of a story - more of a lyrical essay - using a traditional style of storytelling from Central and West Africa. Brenton will be playing the role of the griot - a figure who acts as a bridge between your world and the world of story, bringing you into a world of narrative, music and myth.

In this form, a griot is often accompanied by a chorus. So you will hear chants, song and vocal accompaniment with the story.

Today, Brenton Zola transports us to Africas Lost Year of Hope. This is Episode 4.

Brenton: It was the Summer of 1884. A man with a long, silver beard sat at a clawfoot table. His name was Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Other European kings took seats around him. He looked around the table and locked eyes with each king. He declared that he wanted to control a new land his men had explored. It was called Congo. He wanted it for himself. As a private citizen.

Nobody knew what lay in Africas heart. Many still dont. Leopold was the only king with access to Central Africa. The other kings didnt understand what he was asking for. They were focused on grabbing other parts of the continent. He was desperate to join their ranks. Earn their respect. He needed Congo.

His fellow kings spoke. They told him that they were willing to give him this Congo. On one condition. He needed to help its people prosper. Leopold gave a broad smile and agreed. The statesmen applauded with self-satisfaction. Congo was now his. A land so large it could fit half of western Europe.

Adam Hochschild: He wanted some part of the world where he could reign supreme and where he could make a lot of money.

Thats Adam Hochschild, historian and modern Congo expert.

Adam: He bamboozled first the United States, and then all the major nations of Europe into recognizing this vast territory as his personal possession.

Brenton: Leopold II ruled Congo as a personal colony for over two decades. He focused on a search for prosperity. And he found it.

[JUNGLE SOUNDS]

Brenton: Off in the Congo jungle, a Congolese woman in a floral waist wrap sat in the bush. She was chained to someone next to her. In her left hand, she held a large green vine that snaked along the ground. In her right, she had a large knife. She swung the knife and sliced the vine open. A milky substance erupted. It brought her to her knees. It covered her head, arms and chest. Then, it hardened. Belgian soldiers came and scraped the hardened substance off of her. They took some of her hair and skin with it. She became delirious. Fell to the ground. At that point, the soldiers took her away. What did they scrape off? Latex. It would be turned into rubber, a new material the world couldnt get enough of.

Adam: There was a huge demand for rubber in industry and much of the world was industrializing at that point, and you need rubber for belts and machinery and factories and so forth. But when you plant a bunch of rubber trees it can take 15 years or so before they grow to maturity. And youre able to harvest the rubber from them. So the people who could really make a killing were those who owned territory where rubber grew wild.

Brenton: And no one had more of that than King Leopold in the great Congolese rainforest. So Leopold imposed a rubber quota on all Congolese. If they didnt harvest enough, soldiers would take them away. Just like the woman in the floral waist wrap. They brought her to a tree stump and laid out her right arm. A soldier lifted his knife and it dropped down on her wrist. Her hand fell into a woven basket. It joined many others. And things carried on like this. For days. Months. Years.

This was the rubber trade that made Leopold a billionaire in todays dollars. That powered automobiles on 5th avenue. That kept the unknowing world moving.

The global media eventually exposed Leopolds atrocities. The likes of Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle lambasted him. The International Community even coined a term for his actions: Crimes Against Humanity. But the damage was done.

Adam: It was an extremely brutal system that produced a holocaust-sized death toll. The best estimates are that the population of this territory shrank by about 50% or about 10 million people between around 1880 and around 1920.

Brenton: 10 million people. From famine, disease, separation and violence. The world wanted justice. But just a year after he was exposed, Leopold died of a stroke in his glittering palace. From that moment of applause at the clawfoot table up until his very last day, everyone gave him a hand. Nearly two decades after Leopold died, the Belgian government still exploited Congo. Few Congolese had hope of improving their lives. Except one boy.

[MUSIC]

Brenton: No one knows why Elias was given his particular name. Some say his tribe was inferior. Others say that someone saw a shooting star at his birth. A bad omen. However it originated, Elias OkitAsombos name meant the heir of the cursed. But Elias believed in the power to change his destiny. The Earth gave him a bellowing voice that carried through space. It gave him a sharp mind that gathered knowledge like a glittering nebula. Every night, he stood in the middle of his small village. He recounted tales of Congos dazzling past. And in spite of themselves, the Congolese around him started to dream. He wanted these dreams for all Congolese. So as a teenager, he hopped on a train to the city. He was born Elias OkitAsombo. But he gave himself a new name. The first meant noble; the last, the crowd. His name was Patrice Lumumba.

On the other side of the Congo river, there was a 17 year-old girl. She was climbing a high stone wall. It was the middle of the night. The gothic architecture of her Catholic orphanage lay behind her. As she reached the top, she cut herself on the glass shards that lay on the wall. Her blood dripped down the wall. She looked to her right and she saw two friends she was supposed to meet. They trembled. She shouted: This is the hour of our liberation.

Twenty feet down, more jagged shards awaited them at the base of the wall. Her companions whimpered. But she shoved them into the night.

Andre was this girls name. She had no idea of the future for the mtisse girls she pushed to freedom. Mtisse meant mixed. Half-breed. A child of sin. Andre Blouin was born to a 14-year-old African mother and a 41-year-old European father. She wasnt an orphan. She was ripped from the arms of her mother and thrown into a so-called orphanage to be with her own kind.

But she was done hiding. She took a long breath and plunged into the abyss after her friends. Three pairs of bloody footprints walked into the night.

[MUSIC]

Brenton: Patrice Lumumba, the heir of the cursed, grew up in a rapidly changing world. This world was hungry for gold, diamonds, copper and more, which Congo had. If Congos mineral riches were measured in the lifespan of our universe, it would take thousands to capture its bounty. Its estimated that to this day, Congo has 26 trillion (with a T) US dollars worth of untapped minerals.

On the heels of World War II, the Congolese mining industry exploded. Most of its cities became mining cities. There was new opportunity for people like Patrice Lumumba. But the Belgians ensured that there wasnt too much.

Like most Congolese, Patrice Lumumba only made it through 4th grade. There was no university in the nation. So the idea that someone could intellectually match Europeans was preposterous. But Lumumba believed it. By day, he was a mailman. By night, a student. After his classes, hed walk around the slums trying to solve problems. Everyone called him the knowledge magician. But Lumumbas drive also got him in trouble. He felt underpaid. So to cover his learning expenses, he embezzled some money. He intended to pay it back, but his debts caught up with him. He earned a ticket to jail.

His time in jail was the match that lit the bonfire of revolution. He saw the brutal treatment of his fellow inmates. How they ate nothing but dry chikwanga bread. How guards stuffed them in tiny cells. This incensed him. He wanted to do something. A couple years later, he got out. It was then that he committed himself to changing Congos future.

For the mtisse orphan Andre Blouin, tragedy was the match that lit her fire. After escaping the orphanage, she started a family. Her life was coming together. But one day in 1944, her toddler got malaria.

Eve Blouin: So one day he was taken to hospital and doctors saw that his case was very serious.

Brenton: Thats Eve Blouin, one of Andres daughters. Eve wasnt yet born at the time, but she knows the story well. Andre brought her son to a French colonial hospital. His condition continued to decline.

Eve: So she completely freaked out, as you can imagine, and tried to find the quinine that was the only cure to what her son had. Apparently, you could only have access to this drug if you had a card and it was not given to anyone with African blood.

Brenton: Andre pleaded that her son was 3/4 European. Doctors still refused. Her son died. She was never the same. After his death, Andre moved to Paris. In Paris, she saw the Black Renaissance.

Writers like James Baldwin lit up French cafs late into the night. Black luminaries discussed African independence. Andre thought about her young son. She decided to join the fight.

She remade herself into a revolutionary. She wanted to build an Africa where all races were equal. Where children didnt die based on the blood that flowed through them. Where women had rights. She became a woman of fire; bold, indefatigable. In the 50s, she moved to Guinea, where her husband worked. Andre believed that she could help lead Guinea to independence from the French. To her, the key was galvanizing rural Africans.

She organized a caravan of trucks to drive to the remote parts of Guinea. Theyd play music through loudspeakers. Theyd gather people in a clearing to hear her message. Now, this may seem a bit ordinary today. But for rural villagers, this was shocking.

Eve: Of course, it's hard for you to imagine the way it was, but imagine people living in the bush, no electricity, no telephone, no nothing. And suddenly they see a caravan of trucks.

Brenton: The trucks carried their own supply of electricity and waded through all manner of terrain.

Eve: Crossing those jungles, those rivers, just to reach the little village that was hiding under a baobab tree or God knows what. It was unbelievable. But she did it.

Brenton: Thousands of men gathered in awe. But Andre was particularly keen on womens empowerment. She wanted the women of the village to hear her speech.

Eve: She would ask all these men to bring along with them, their wives, their daughters, their mothers, whoever.

Brenton: She would speak about education, healthcare and equal voting rights.

Eve: People could not believe that this woman, half white, half black, she did such an impression on all these women that it was like a tidal wave, literally.

Brenton: Guinea went on to become the first African nation to gain independence. Andre was at the heart of the movement.

Eve: She rallied so many women in Guinea electoral campaign that they wanted her to do the same in Congo.

Brenton: Andree took all of her lessons to the heart of Africa.

Thats after this.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Brenton: Leopoldville was Congos capital. And in the 1950s, it was a bustling metropolis. There were trendy fashion boutiques and swanky jazz bars. There were Humphrey Bogart films. It even boasted the worlds first electric bus. But behind all the glitz, a revolutionary fervor was brewing. Lumumba was sparking that fervor.

He went door-to-door to talk to Congolese about possibilities for the nation. He spoke to them in bars. In restaurants. Anywhere he could catch an ear, he did. He founded Congo's fastest growing and most diverse political party. And his efforts got him on to the airwaves. Like Andre Blouin, he was a gifted speaker. And with radio, everyone could hear his message.

But while Lumumbas voice boomed through the airwaves, a cold world loomed behind him. Nothing would have a greater impact on 1950s Congo than the Cold War.

Congos natural resources once again played a pivotal role. Heres more from our trusty historian Adam Hochschild.

Adam: No longer were ivory and rubber the chief sources of wealth, but palm oil, uranium, the uranium for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs came from there. And, you know, the Americans and Belgians wanted this stuff for themselves for their corporations. They thought of Africa as sort of their possession.

Brenton: The US army couldnt have built atomic bombs without Congos uniquely rich Uranium. They couldn't afford to lose control of Congos resources.

Adam: They didn't want the Soviets to get any part of it.

Brenton: They created the Central Intelligence Agency. Its founding purpose was to monitor governments and pursue American interests. But trying to protect American interests while thwarting the Soviets led to extreme actions. The CIA spent the 1950s engaging in propaganda, paramilitary action, and even assassination.

But neither the cursed boy, now man, nor the orphan girl, now woman, let the Cold War stop their work. Just as in Guinea, Andre Blouin formed a coalition of tens of thousands women to advocate for independence. And by 1959, the roar of freedom was deafening.

It was at that point that Lumumba and Blouin met at a dinner party. Lumumbas body still bore scars from his time in prison. But he welcomed Andre with his warm smile and tireless laugh. In Andres own words, Lumumba was brave and sincere.

Eve: Lumumba was like her little brother. She would spend a lot of time with Lumumba.

Brenton: The heir of the cursed and mtisse former orphan decided to combine their flames.

Eve: He would only trust her to the point that the media had a nickname for this collaboration

Brenton: Team "Lumum-Blouin. They had Blouins strategy and Lumumbas charisma. They inspired Congolese to lead strikes and demonstrations throughout Leopoldville. They worried the Belgians. The momentum came to a head. In late 1959, the governor of Leopoldville tried to prevent a large demonstration at a YMCA sports field. The demonstrators became frustrated. And then, enraged. A massive riot broke out. Congolese attacked Belgian soldiers. Belgian soldiers opened fire in response. Dozens of Congolese lost their lives. The nation was spiraling out of control fast.

The reigning King of Belgium saw the writing on the wall. He was a young, quiet man named Baudouin. Leopolds great-grandnephew. King Baudouin got on the radio. He announced that there would be independence. Most people thought it would take a few years, maybe more, to actually materialize. But that is not how the history goes. In January 1960, just two months later, he organized a Belgian-Congo roundtable conference.

All of the top political actors from both nations flew to Brussels. There, Lumumba sat at a large table staring at Belgiums leaders. Congos too. Hundreds of aides sat around the room. Journalists in stadium seats waited with bated breath. Perhaps the heir of the cursed felt Leopolds ghost. He leaned forward into the microphone in front him. Then, he made a bold move.

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How Congo's freedom was won and hope was lost in the 'Year of Africa' - WBUR

By Sara Sonsini and Ava Berger

Critical Race Theory is the language of love, Janet Bell, panelist and social justice advocate, said during Boston University Senior Diversity Offices Critical Race Theory panel on Feb. 10.

Between January and September of 2021, 24 states introduced or passed legislation banning CRT from schools. Amid the national debate, BU SDO, in collaboration with the Dean of Students Office, BU School of Law, Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and BU School of Public Health, held a panel on CRT in the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground.

In addition to Bell, the event featured panelists Craig Andrade, associate dean of practice at the School of Public Health, and Laura Jimnez, associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at Wheelock.

We are told to love our neighbor as ourselves, and how can you do that if you dont respect that persons history, that persons past, that persons struggles? Bell said.

Senior Diversity Officer, Andrea Taylor, introduced the event as a multidisciplinary panel which would provide context, clarity and resources to students.

Moderator and dean of BU School of Law Angela Onwuachi-Willig emphasized the event was not a partisan panel.

Were not trying to inform you what side you should take, Onwuachi-Willig said. As an educational institution its really important that we have a responsibility to educate everybody on one of the most prominent debates thats occurring in our country right now.

Onwuachi-Willig started the event by defining CRT and racism. She said CRT does not contend that a person is inherently racist.

It is a movement by activists, by scholars who are interested in studying and transforming the relationship between race, racism, power and the law, Onwuachi-Willig said. Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is systemically embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities.

With regards to the law, she said CRT is a necessary alternative to the currently accepted legal doctrine of colorblindness which reifies racism.Critical race theory is an analytical frame that stresses that racism goes beyond individual explicit prejudice and implicit bias, Onwuachi-Willig said. In that sense, critical race theory primarily focuses on structural racism.

Expanding on this definition, Jimnez challenged the common understanding that CRT focuses solely on blackness.

Critical Race Theory is really about white power structures, Jimnez said. Thats where racism lies.

Bell emphasized that CRT allows for black progress which can lead to progress for everyone. Yet Jimnez and Andrade both said CRT is often seen as a boogeyman in their respective fields.

In education, its become a boogeyman, Jimnez said. Its become this thing to fear and to malign and to literally burn down.

Andrade said this fear associated with CRT allows those in power to maintain power. He spoke about why it is critical to discuss CRT.

In the midst of this reaction we have to make sure that we dont allow our own communities to be bamboozled in a way that they have in the past, that we tell what Critical Race Theory is, what the history that usually isnt told is, and how that relates to this moment in time, Andrade said.

Bell added that by banning CRT those in power are keeping knowledge away from their own people.

I always tell young people Claim your space and Claim your future, Bell said. Dont let anyone deny you the opportunity to be the beneficiary of the great knowledge thats out there.

In discussing how we can talk about CRT with those in opposition to the theory, Bell said language matters.

Instead of saying inherent racism, structural racism is a less volatile term, even though its volatile, but I think thats one way of getting into a conversation because it depersonalizes it, Bell said.

Event attendee and graduate student in the College of Engineering, Santiago Gomez, said CRT has become a lightning rod in the public zeitgeist.

Even as educated individuals we can also get lost in this meta conversation about what it is but we dont really know how to define it, Gomez said.

Jali Griesbach, another panel attendee and senior pursuing a dual degree in the College of Communication and the College of Arts and Sciences, described the event as incredible.

I feel really empowered to just go out and continue expanding on this knowledge, Griesbach said. And hopefully just utilize it in conversations with people I know who feel really closed off to this kind of idea.

Andrade said the future of the movement will continue to reject binary frames.

There are people that are taking that information from traditional feminist literature, to queer literature, to liberation theory in all kinds of ways and making it their own, Andrade said. And thats the future of where were going.

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Senior Diversity Office hosts panel to educate students on Critical Race Theory The Daily Free Press - Daily Free Press

Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just cant get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Doja Cat elevates what could have been a forgettable Super Bowl team-up and makes it a must-hear cover.

Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, Doja Cat has *checks notes* teamed up with Taco Bell for a cover of Celebrity Skin by Hole. No, its not an edition of pop culture Mad Libs its somehow a really great cover, and boasts some reworked lyrics in partnership with Courtney Love herself.

The thing is, if anyone knows how to Live Ms, its Doja Cat. Lets not forget that her first breakthrough into the zeitgeist was Moo, a completely unhinged introduction to her music, social media presence, and comedic timing. Doja Cat truly turns up the dial to eleven with whatever shes doing, be it her genuinely astonishing movement background or her commitment to the bit.

Doja Cat is undeniably one of the biggest forces in pop music right now. Shes ubiquitous on TikTok, constantly trending with samples of her songs or clips of her magnetic presence onstage. Her recent trajectory adds a layer to the song choice of Celebrity Skin.

Just in case the initial team-up of Doja Cat and Taco Bell isnt enough to catch the eye, the ad airing this weekend during the Super Bowl promises a plot line escaping clown college but bells and whistles aside, this cover makes sense for Doja Cat. She cant quite be put in a box and isnt afraid to explore unexpected avenues. Sunday will undoubtedly bring a slew of celebrity-brand crossovers that land as head-scratchers; this isnt one of them.

Mary SirokyContributing Editor

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Song of the Week: Doja Cat Manages to Make a Taco Bell Collaboration Genuinely Great with a Hole Cover - Consequence

In 2020, Bill McKibben left the climate advocacy group hed helped found over a dozen years earlier. It was shortly before he turned 60.

It was time to start building the kind of world that not only limits the rise in temperature, but also cushions the blow from that which is no longer avoidable, the Middlebury College professor said in his July 2020 resignation letter to 350.org colleagues. Id like to have more time to help think through that part of the problem.

In September, McKibben announced a potential solution: Third Act, a progressive group for baby boomers and their predecessors.

Third Act is now revving up its advocacy efforts, protesting banks that underwrite fossil fuel development and campaigning against a wave of new voter suppression laws.

What really should scare the corporate and political bad actors is the prospect of old and young people connecting, because there is real power if we work across generations, McKibben and Akaya Windwood, Third Acts lead adviser, wrote earlier this week in a New York Times essay.

Surrounded by posters from his 350 days and haphazard stacks of books, McKibben spoke virtually with E&E News on Wednesday from his attic office on the edge of Vermonts Green Mountain National Forest about the power of storytelling, his rejection of a job at The New York Times and interviewing Ronald Reagan.

How did you and Vanessa Arcara, Third Acts president and co-founder, come up with the idea for the group?

I was thinking that young people were doing their job, but I dont think its fair to take the most difficult problems in the world and just hand them off to, you know, college sophomores. So we better figure out how to mobilize people who are older.

The main thing we did was just talked to dozens and dozens of people over the course of a year or two. And happily, we knew all kinds of people, because of the work weve been doing for years.

Like who?

One of the people we talked to was a guy Id gone to high school with, Brian Collins. Many years ago, he helped come up with the logo that we used at 350. He said: Lets go through a kind of design process. Well come up with a logo if you need one, but it also just will help you think about this. It was quite fascinating to try and non-verbalize the idea for a while.

They were showing a bunch of typefaces. One of them was named for Bayard Rustin. He was one of my heroes in the world, the guy who really organized the March on Washington in 1963. He wasnt out in public much because he was gay. And in those days, that would not have been helpful to the movement.

But it really tripped something for me to see that typeface we now use, which was derived from the signs at the March on Washington, and to just feel that organic connection to the story of what were trying to help. That was a moment of real serendipity for me and one of the things that convinced me we were on a useful path.

How big is the budget of Third Act, and whos paying for it?

I dont even know how much money weve raised or spent. But Id hesitate to say it because I dont want Exxon, et al., to think were not going to be any problem for them just because we dont have a lot of money. We can still be a problem.

I think that theres been a couple of foundation grants, and hopefully more coming. Weve also made some money by selling merchandise. Apparently we keep running out and have to get more, because it really looks sharp.

Who are you trying to organize?

Our target audience is anyone over the age of 60. Theres a lot of people who have taken different paths in their lives but are beginning to understand where those converge.

I think of someone like [James Gustave] Gus Speth, a guy who helped form [the Natural Resources Defense Council] after the first Earth Day and then was chair of the presidents Council on Environmental Quality. He came down to get arrested at the beginning of that fight over the Keystone pipeline. He was the one of us who actually managed to get a message out to reporters when we were in jail. His message said, Ive held a lot of important positions in this town, but none of them seem as important as the one Im in now.

At the beginning of the Keystone protests, I had said I did not think that young people should have to be the cannon fodder, on the theory that if youre 19, an arrest record might be a real handicap going forward. So people came to D.C. and we didnt ask them, How old are you? We did ask everybody who got arrested, Who was president when you were born? And the biggest cohorts were from the [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and [Harry] Truman administrations.

That really stuck with me. That was 10 years ago, almost exactly now. But these are people who are ready to do stuff.

How does Third Act plan to reach older Americans who arent as politically active, like a retired, blue-collar grandmother, for instance?

I think you do it in part by appealing to the things that she assumed as givens. That she would hand on to her kids and grandkids a planet that had winter and looked like the one that she and everybody whod come before her had taken for granted, and a country that had a functioning democracy. I dont think it ever occurred to anyone 30 years or 40 years ago, wed be at a point where people were trying to take over the U.S. Capitol and kill policemen.

One of the things that set apart 350.org, which was named after what some scientists estimated would be the maximum safe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, was its focus on climate change. Why is Third Act taking a broader approach to advocacy?

Its partly because our sense is none of these things are achievable without progress on all of them. I dont think theres a way that were going to be able to address climate change without a much more robust democracy than weve got. And I think the key to that is trying to figure out how to end voter suppression.

Its in the same way that people whove been working on civil rights are now working hard on environmental stuff too, understanding that these are in many ways deeply linked. Thats why the work that [the Sunrise Movement] did around the Green New Deal is so important. It helped people really understand some of those linkages in a deep way.

One of the things that theyre all about is power and who holds it. So one of the first big campaigns were doing at Third Act is to go up against what may be the most powerful players in the whole world, the four biggest banks in the U.S. It might be foolhardy to take them on, but it seems necessary.

Why do you think that this group could do more to fight climate change than simply getting more older Americans to work with the Sierra Club, Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion?

One reason for Third Act is just to bring this generational lens to bear. Activism, especially around these very large issues, strikes me as a process of really trying to reshape the zeitgeist and peoples sense of whats normal and natural around us.

And so, weve been told one set of stories about the world. We need to replace them with a different set. One of those sets of stories is that people get conservative and greedy as they age. Thats the kind of bumper sticker on the back of the RV that says, Im spending my kids inheritance. I think we can overturn that.

Having people tell their own stories is so powerful for them and for the rest of us. Its important to have people say we stand for voting rights or whatever. But when people say, I was around when the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, I remember getting to vote for the first time that seems powerful.

Speaking of storytelling, youve been working on a memoir called The Flag, the Cross and the Station Wagon, in which a graying American looks back at his suburban boyhood and wonders what the hell happened. To what extent is that related to Third Act?

Im sure writing it was one of the things that really had me thinking along these lines.

I grew up in Lexington, Mass. My summer job for years, I would wear a tri-cornered hat and give tours on the battleground, the birthplace of American liberty. The year I graduated from high school, 1978, was the year when what [some] economists call the Great Leveling ended. Its been going exactly the opposite ever since to the cartoonish, grotesque degree where six or seven guys now have as much money as the bottom half of the population.

So part of its a meditation on American history. Part of its a meditation on Christianity and the dominant role that once had in our national life and no longer does. And part of it is a meditation on prosperity in the suburbs and how that translated, among other things, into carbon in the air.

We went very wrong as a society right about the point we began on a course of hyper-individualism. The watershed for that was the [presidential] election in 1980, an election I covered for the [Harvard Crimson] newspaper. So one of the things I hold very strongly is the idea that we better figure out some lessons about human solidarity soon. Because thats whats going to be required to deal with the messes that were in.

How did you cover a presidential campaign as an undergrad?

I basically blew off sophomore year to be on the road. I spent a couple of months in New Hampshire. I was just sleeping on couches and stuff. It wasnt like we had money exactly. But theres a lot of stuff you can do in the world without much money. And we had our own printing press. So you know, why not?

I dont know why we thought it was appropriate for a college newspaper to just be thinking the election is something that it should cover. But thats how we were thinking. It was fascinating.

I got to sit down and interview [future President Ronald] Reagan. I sensed what a fateful election it might turn out to be, at least by the end.

When do you think you changed from a journalist to a climate activist?

Im still very much a journalist. I mean, I go report things and write about them all the time. And thats how I think of myself, as a journalist and as a writer.

I began this work thinking, like I think many writers or academics do, that were engaged in an argument. Pile up enough data and evidence, you win the argument, and the people in power will do what needs to be done. Why wouldnt they?

It took me a while too long to figure out that we had won the argument, but we were losing the fight. Because the fight wasnt about evidence. The fight was about money and power, which is what fights are usually about.

So then do you consider yourself an advocacy journalist? Or is climate action like freedom of speech and transparency something journalists can and should support in general?

I mean, I do not want the planet to overheat. Thats been true since I was writing The End of Nature. And I think I realized [then] that I wasnt exactly fit to do the kind of newspaper work that I imagined. In fact, a couple years later, the [New York] Times offered me a job and I just remember thinking, I dont think this will work out so well. Im probably better off at this point being a freelancer.

At first, climate change was not journalisms finest hour. It got snookered by the PR push that the fossil fuel industry put out. And so for a very long time it was covering it in that he said, she said kind of fashion.

But thats shifted in the last four or five years, at least in some places. And its been very impressive to watch, say, the Times or the [Washington] Post build out their climate coverage. Its very clear from reading that they take it as a given that it would be a good thing to arrest the rise in the planets temperature, that its not a question open for debate.

So if you were offered that Times job again, would you take it?

Im afraid at this point, Ive spent too long doing my own thing to be a very useful staff member almost anywhere. But I wouldnt discourage someone from taking it. Because I think theyre doing remarkable work right now. And its true across a wide swath of places.

Ive been very, very, very impressed over the last few years by the level of climate journalism. And it makes me feel very happy, because it was quite a lonely profession for a long time. There was a period of many years through the 90s when, if there was a major article on climate change in English-speaking media, there was an altogether too large chance that Id written it. Thats not a good situation.

In a 2011 profile, you described yourself as a professional bummer outer and said: My job as a writer and journalist is to tell the truth and not to write it so as to make people feel better than we should about this. I think the course we are on is not working. Do you still agree with those assessments?

Well, clearly the course were on is not working. But happily theres lots of other people now joining in the work of bumming people out. So I dont feel as obligated to spend as much time on it.

And there are things that have changed very much for the better. In the 10 years since that interview, the price of solar and wind power and the batteries to store them has dropped something like 90 percent.

Its a very different world. Theres no longer a profound technological or economic obstacle to making the changes we need to make. We still have inertia and vested interests in the way, but thats different.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Continued here:

Bill McKibben Q&A: Fighting banks, surfing sofas and booming - E&E News

Last year, the pioneering Black Lives in Music survey offered up an alarming insight into the racist reality of the music industry, or at least for those of us who havent had to suffer through it. The cold hard data displaying the uncomfortable truth that 73% of all Black music professionals have experienced racism in the industry and their earnings were lower on average (1964 per month vs 2459 for white professionals) among a string of other startling facts elucidated a glaring reality: The music industry has a racism problem.

While the same truth can be said for society in general, musics potential as a unifying force should enable it to be a trailblazer for meaningful change not a paradigm of the current problems. Roger Wilson, the Director of Operations at Black Lives in Music (BLiM), knows this racist reality all too well, and he is steadfast in his aim to help remedy the situation.

Growing up in a challenging part of London where role models were few and crime and unemployment was high, Wilson knew first-hand the issues that austerity and urban decay were causing. These issues were furthered still by the ever-present plague of racism. Music, by rights, shouldve offered up sanctity, and in some ways it did, but barriers, backlash and bigotry would soon become apparent.

My salvation was music, Wilson hopefully begins. I was a child of an era where music education was free. Growing up in a single-parent family, we couldnt afford music lessons. I was given a clarinet and sheet music by the school I attended, and I enjoyed free lessons it was the opportunity I needed!

For years, Wilson relished making music and was the benefactor of all the skills that came along with it. However, as soon as he went to put his talent to a practical use, he encountered discrimination. I wanted to join the army as a musician the area I grew up in had a world-renowned military band. However, when I went to the open day, I decided against the idea after receiving some pretty heavy racial abuse while on the base.

I decided to try for music college, and I was successful. Although I was keen to be an orchestral musician, I changed direction as I didnt think it was the right environment for someone who looked like me and had my background, he continues. This, in itself, highlights the issue of diversity and representation. The problem remains to this day as even the perception of predominantly white orchestras creates an aesthetic barrier from the get-go for aspiring musicians. This is reflected in the fact that the survey found that 71% of Black music professionals felt that there was no traditional career path available for them in the industry.

Thanks to the trailblazing community figures of Gary Crosby OBE and Kevin Robinson, Wilson was able to get a footing in the industry as a member of the Jazz Warriors in London. It was great to work with them, it was the first time in the profession that I felt I fitted in and belonged, he explains. Wilson has been trying to open doors for people in a similar way ever since.

However, the problem of racism in society permeated the industry. At music college, I was certainly the subject of some unwholesome comments by faculty staff, Wilson recalls. Racism doesnt just stop because you work in a different industry. It was perhaps a little more sophisticated you might have overheard someone saying, what are you doing here?, implying that you were not of the right standard to be joining them on a studio session. I certainly got that question asked of me directly a few times in the early days.

This systemic idea is directly impactful on the hiring of musicians as inherent notions persist. As Wilson explains: Studios are tricky environments, there is a direct correlation between money and time. You must get tracks down within the three-hour session that youre booked for, or money is wasted booking you. Your reading has to be first-rate. For some reason, theres always been a myth that Black musicians play on feel and cant read music, let alone read complicated music.

This discriminatory perception still creates a barrier to this day, with inherent biases meaning that Black musicians are less likely to be hired for sessions. This is reflected in the fact that only 38% of Black music professionals earn 100% of their income from music, compared with 69% for their white counterparts. And even when that barrier is overcome,more than half (56%) of Black music creators felt their contributions to the music industry were not adequately recognised.

Understanding this is vital moving forward as the often underrecognized issue of systemic racism is overlooked by an attitude of Well, Im not a racist and the problem is reduced to something that happens on an individual level alone.Structural racism is about mechanisms and processes. Individuals may be racist but its the structures and mechanisms that perpetuate hard racism, Wilson opines. These structures and mechanisms exist outside the sector.

As the Gil Scott-Heron collaborator and legendary musician Brian Jackson, who was part of the civil rights music frontier, told us when recently discussing the same problem, quoting Gene McDaniels: Still nobody knows who the enemy is cause he never goes in hiding. Id say thats a fair observation of how things work in music.

After all, Black people are 9 times more likely to be stopped by the police and there is an undisputed discrepancy in the numbers of Black people incarcerated in UK prisons. Wilson adds: There are without doubt wider societal issues and influences that affect the sector. Industry sectors more generally reflect the values and norms of the society they represent.

Thankfully, this data itself represents a means to remedy the industry, but when Wilson was coming through, things were far different. As for platforms to tackle racism, erm, not so much there was nothing, he recalls. I finished college just around the time of the racially aggravated murder of Stephen Lawrence. Institutional racism was everywhere, there was no awareness or natural instinct to tackle it anywhere in society.

In recent times that has changed. There is no doubt that the Black Lives Matter movement was a key agent in precipitating the zeitgeist of awareness of social justice, Wilson states. Im convinced that a lot of things came together at the same time. More than anything, it was the right time. Nothing happens if it is not the right time but certainly the comprehensive approach of the movement played a substantial role in escalating the discussion.

However, discussion is one thing, but when I asked Wilson whether these external cultural opinion-based changes reflect in the hard data and measurable implemented action, he responded with a resounding Frankly, No! Continuing: Just because the industry might wish to make a change it doesnt mean that we will see the diversity equivalent of the January sales on Oxford Street, with people queuing up to get through the door of inclusion.

Adding: There is a considerable hearts and minds job to do. Trust has to be earned and meaningful actions will play a part in this but not exclusively so. Sadly, owing to the fact that no vehicles to change existed when Wilson was making his way in the industry, the remedy is hindered by history. In terms of data, we simply have not collected enough data historicallydata is truth, truth is hard to face up to, for all of us. Black Lives in Music will continue to gather information through its surveys, and it will continue to collate the data and present a real understanding of what change in the industry looks like through its reporting. It will be up to the industry to act or ignore, my view is positive, change is coming, it takes time.

And time is of the essence. This Black History Month at Far Out, we have poured over race relations in the arts and it would seem that not only is racism a veritable reality in culture, but the same messages of change were extolled on the music side of the civil rights movement 60 years ago. Modern music, from its very origins on the abhorrent plantations of old, speaks of empowered unity. It etched itself as gilded poetry written in the margins of one of the darkest pages in history and gave triumphant voice to people bloodied but unbowed.

As Nina Simone once said, Its all out of slavery times, out of depression, this transfigured product of hardship should be able to illuminate the way forward to create a more equal and loving society for everyone. The hopeful actions of Wilson and the Black Lives in Music team represent a huge step in that direction and that is a cause for celebration for all of us. When we bring you the second half of our discussion with Roger Wilson, well be looking at how we practically engage and fix the problem.

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Far Out Meets: Roger Wilson of Black Lives in Music - Addressing the racist realities of the music industry - Far Out Magazine

Shayne Oliver at the new HBAAnonymous Club headquarters on the Bowery. Photo: Zhi Wei

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On a frigid January afternoon, Shayne Oliver was sitting in his new studio on the Bowery. Despite the buildings grim faade and the absence of a name on the buzzer, the room was spacious and well organized. Best known for Hood By Air, the exceptionally creative label that scrambled different fashion genres as freely as it did notions of sexuality, Oliver has not put on a show in a while. In 2017, seemingly at the height of Hood By Airs success, he halted the brand and later partnered with a Los Angeles investor. I had come to Olivers studio to see new work as one of the great runway impresarios prepared to return to Fashion Week. And he was as fearless as ever.

This week, he plans to stage not one show but a three-night event at the Sheds Griffin Theater in Hudson Yards. Its literally a music festival, and Im dressing my favorite people, he told me. Actually, the first night will be a tribute to his past, including designs he collaborated on with his friend Virgil Abloh; the second will launch his new Shayne Oliver ready-to-wear line for men and women; and the last will be a musical performance. But given Olivers long-standing interest in music years ago, he was heavily involved in a roving party called GHE20GOTH1K, and he recently released new sounds on Telfar TV, the open-access channel started by the designer Telfar Clemens the whole event promises to be a festival studded with extraordinary-looking people. No one wants sedate from Oliver. Im a show queen, he said.

Oliver, who is 33, is tautly built and baby-faced. An intent listener, he often spiked our conversation with totally and then came up with another thought or reference. Several times, he mentioned Abloh, who died in November. He was more of a people person, Oliver said. Not that Im antisocial, but Im definitely more introverted. I like to be cozy so that I can be more extroverted in my designs. Virgil gave confidence by being more personable by spreading a web and connecting people. Oliver had on a white sweatshirt with the logo ofone of his new ventures, Anonymous Club, and a pair of jeans spliced up the legs with zippers. Behind him was a rack of toiles, or mock-ups, for his new collection, and on a wall were sketches of clothes and accessories.

Toiles from the Shayne Oliver 2022 debut collection, modeled by Eman Deng. Photo: Zhi Wei.

Toiles from the Shayne Oliver 2022 debut collection, modeled by Eman Deng. Photo: Zhi Wei.

Formally announced a year ago, Olivers return and its meaning for fashion hasnt been shrouded in secrecy so much as in obfuscating hype and fanboy lingo. According to various media sites, Hood By Air has a cultlike following, is Pan-racial, and is a movement that came to embody the mid-2000s Zeitgeist. Although Hood By Air is being revived, its future direction is complicated. For one thing, the brand will now be a streetwear business with capsule collections, rather than a line that revolves around fashion shows. Shows were integral to HBAs design process, which was conducted by a collective of friends and staff. HBA was renowned for its family, which included Olivers business partner at the time, the filmmaker Leilah Weinraub, who had joined by 2012 and wore the CEO cap. What happens, Oliver wondered aloud, when there isnt a collective to spar and shape ideas? Then too, he added, our ideas may not be the freshest ideas for the Hood of today. He readily admits that Hood may have too many ghosts and cobwebs. In any case, he and his business partner, Edison Chen, have decided to focus on Hoods streetwear legacy, which is considerable, aiming it at the voracious global youth market.

For all those reasons, Oliver decided to create two new entities in addition to Hood By Air Shayne Oliver, billed as a high-concept luxury brand, and Anonymous Club, which functions as a production studio not only for fashion but for music, visual art, and performance art that Oliver might want to host. Thats the setup for the music festival during Fashion Week.

And the clothes?

Im doing a lot of ball gowns, which are for the people that Im highlighting during these performances, Oliver said. And while thats happening, Im going to introduce some more wardrobe shapes. One idea of tailoring, one idea of casual. Because the clothes and shoes were still in Italian factories, I could only view sketches and sketches dont give a full picture of a garment. Besides, styling and models will transform clothes on a runway. Still, the belled shapes on the wall were intriguing and indicated a new direction for Oliver, who hasnt done this kind of glamour before. As he told me, Hood was definitely about ripping it apart, and Shayne is more harmonious, about being an adult. There were also sketches of footwear stiletto boots with bandage-style strips that recall a classic Hood look, though now with circular openings; formal-looking tennis shoes; and a perfectly seamless pair of platform shoes that seemed decidedly, though not horribly, corrective.

Studying the wall, he said, Its this idea of creating strong silhouettes without much definition that Im focusing on. Just so people understand the kind of strength that Im into. He later said, Theres something really fresh about the way Americans do fake glamour that is even more glamorous than the way Europeans do glamour. Which is also why Vetements was so cool for that moment. Rich kids wanted to look urban. I want to look chill.

Clockwise from top right: Justin Bieber wearing a Hood By Air logo tee in 2015; boots from Olivers spring 2017 runway show at NYFW; on the runway of Olivers fall 2016 Hood By Air collection at New York Fashion Week. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Dylan Robinson/Newspix via Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

Clockwise from top right: Justin Bieber wearing a Hood By Air logo tee in 2015; boots from Olivers spring 2017 runway show at NYFW; on the runway of ... more Clockwise from top right: Justin Bieber wearing a Hood By Air logo tee in 2015; boots from Olivers spring 2017 runway show at NYFW; on the runway of Olivers fall 2016 Hood By Air collection at New York Fashion Week. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Dylan Robinson/Newspix via Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

American designers are rarely considered disrupters. True, Marc Jacobs shocked with his 1992 grunge collection and went on to create original work, but his shows dont make you feel anxious or uncomfortable. Thierry Muglers designs in the late 70s and early 80s, with their embrace of gay glamour, had that power, but, of course, he was French. For me, only one New York designer has ever raised those kinds of feelings, and thats Oliver. Partly, it was his models, who looked charismatic and sexually open, and they were always diverse Black, brown, queer, trans. And partly it was the clothes, which werent harsh or crude, exactly, but, in their cut-up, chaotic styling and dark tones, aggressively disdained prettiness.

What is striking, when one looks back at the shows of that period, is the marked change in references after the fall of 2015. The difference is sexual. That season, the clothes were substantially chopped up and appeared to be falling off the body. The impression they made, as I later wrote, was like a fist to the face. The next two collections also expressed sexuality, albeit a harsher kind. Hustler leather. An oversize coat in a black protective material with matching pants and waders that weirdly suggested firefighting gear. Gel smeared over the models hair and faces. Pornhub sponsored that particular show, and one of the models, casually wearing an open black coat, shorts, and waders, was the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, whose work has long explored sexual freedom.

When I asked Akeem Smith, who was the stylist for most of Hoods shows, what he thought Olivers strength was as a designer, he replied, Honoring his references without being disrespectful to the reference. I would say hes very tapped into his own sexuality.

Sexuality is fashions main expressive motor, as the costume historian Anne Hollander has put it. Oliver, in contrast to other contemporary designers, doesnt present sexuality as a trend: Oh, heres a bit of bondage this season. He presents it as a lived experience based on his personal knowledge of friends or a community. Thats the respect, and its also the source of his singular power.

In 2016, when The New Yorker profiled Oliver when Barneys put his clothes on six custom-made mannequins in its windows Hood By Air was carried in some 250 retail outlets. Business had doubled year over year since 2013, and the products were being made in Italy with short-term sales and distribution help from an Italian luxury group. Yet for all the free-flowing creativity, there were profound flaws in the organization, according to Oliver and several others to whom I spoke. We had grown the business exponentially and then we came back to America and we didnt know how to do any of this ourselves, Oliver said. We had no structure. This is not bad-talking Leilah at all, but a lot of the roles we had were performative. Was Leilah a CEO? No. We all knew each other personally.

He went on: The thing that kept me there and created HBA was the hope that everybody knew what they were doing. And I think when that hope went out the door, I stopped believing that she was the CEO, and she stopped believing that my creative direction was viable. Oliver laughed. I could be talking out of my ass. Ive tried to understand it.

Beau Wollens was director of operations at HBA for two and a half years and left in 2015. I asked Wollens why, in his view, HBA had closed. At the time, it seemed so complicated, he said, but its really simple. It was a bunch of inexperienced kids striking success against all odds and then dealing with nine-month lead times and manufacturing across the globe and department-store delivery schedules and also trying to navigate fame through that whole process.

Another individual with close ties to the brand confirmed that account. What happened was an absence of structure and an excess of idealism, this person said. Leilah is a creative person and so is Shayne, and she got swamped in the CEO role. All the shit was being delegated to her, and she was like, I wanted to make films. Weinraub left to finish her 2018 documentary Shakedown, about an underground lesbian strip club in L.A.

Weinraub herself traces the problems to fractures within the thing that was vital to Hoods creative energy: the collective. In the beginning, I was advocating for a collective because I believed in collective ownership, she told me over Zoom. We were really experimental! Remember our shows and how long the credit sheet would be? It was really, like, We did this together. Both Weinraub and Oliver spoke about a lack of communication. By 2016, our success was growing, Weinraub said, but our relationships within the company were completely falling apart. There were constant arguments about money and credit. I asked if she has regrets, given everything Hood By Air represented. Yes, absolutely, she said. We all came from similar families. I wanted us to have stability. I wanted our shows to be a performance of chaos and not for us to live in that. So yes, I think it was a mistake not to resolve it. It was basically a tragedy and a missed opportunity.

Wollens told me, I think that everyone there was just trying to help and had some skills, but not all of the skills to effectively run a business that was doing millions of dollars in revenue almost overnight. He added, It would be silly to assign blame for something that was a complete creative project for ten years with your friends.

The industry moves much faster now than it did five years ago, and looming over the new show is the question of whether Oliver can connect again with audiences. Many of the stores that carried Hood By Air Barneys, Opening Ceremony, Colette have closed. Streetwear and prep classics seem entrenched, limiting the space for risk-taking concept fashion. And not least, new stars have taken flight, like his friend Telfar.

Oliver, who is self-funding his new Shayne label from money made through collaborations with brands like Diesel, doesnt seem concerned. The old HBA energy will still be there, he said, smiling. The vibe is the vibe. Im not getting all, like, Yohji. Its not getting quiet.

Certainly, those who know him well say not to underestimate him. Smith said it matters to Oliver to see a ripple effect from his work: Its the ego part, whether thats a good thing or bad. And Wollens said, I feel that he does a great job of keeping his world interesting. He added, That feeling for whats next you just cant teach that.

Speaking of whats next, I asked Oliver who he thought would replace Abloh at Vuitton. Our conversation had entered its third hour and was flowing freely. Later, though, his comments would strike me as telling, then oddly electrifying. He mentioned some names people were saying: Samuel Ross, Kerby Jean-Raymond, Martine Rose. Suddenly, he put in, Listen, if Vuitton came around and knocked on the door, I would definitely do it. He said of the brand, It needs a double dose of chic. Thats for sure. Again, all the people weve mentioned are not fashion monsters. It takes a certain headspace. You can tell that the people weve mentioned have an attention to detail and that theyre speaking to a demographic and that in itself is intriguing for their own brands. But you have to be a fashion beast and actually want to be chic. In menswear, thats been missing for a very long time. What if you actually wanted a Vuitton suit? Apropos of his own project Shayne Oliver he said, Im ready to make new shapes. Im ready to have a conversation that no one is having. Not the Black conversation, not the streetwear conversation.

Thats all anyone in fashion ever wants to change the conversation. One thing that the creativity of Demna at Balenciaga has made clear is that the most contemporary of visions can not only find a home in an established house but thrive provided theres a structure and like-minded executives. I hope that Shayne surrounds himself with the right people that he trusts to see his vision through, Wollens told me. Because I know that if he can do that, then its going to be really good. Oliver said that is also his hope: to find the right partner for his new brand. He brought it up several times. But for now, he has his mind on the creative work and, of course, the return to the stage. Im not scared, but its a weird feeling, he said, inhaling. Wow, I havent done this for a while. But I am super-positive about fashion.

Toile from the Shayne Oliver 2022 debut collection, modeled by Eman Deng. Photo: Zhi Wei

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Shayne Oliver Is Back - The Cut

From Greek tragedy through Shakespeare and the Jacobeans to Victorian melodrama, soap opera and Hollywood thrillers, revenge has been a staple theme of popular drama for centuries. Now here's Carey Crim's Never Not Once, a meaty modern treatment of the subject that feels timely, particularly in the light of the #MeToo movement. First seen on the USA's West Coast pre-pandemic, it's now receiving a UK premiere at the Park, in a strong but sensitive production by Katharine Farmer.

Crim sets the scene carefully, painting an affectionate portrait of a bi-racial lesbian couple, urban professionals in early middle age, about to make love but having their evening disrupted by the unexpected arrival of their daughter with her new college boyfriend. These people are highly agreeable company, likeable, relatable, humorous and with integrity. This matters because what follows threatens to rip this loving family unit apart, and it proves difficult not to become emotionally invested.

Eleanor (imbued with an irresistible warmth and energy by Meaghan Martin) has always known Nadine and Allison (Amanda Bright and Flora Montgomery, both tremendous) as her parents but now feels it's time to discover her biological father, a subject on which her birth mother Allison is uncharacteristically muted. It turns out that the circumstances of Eleanor's conception were neither loving nor consensual as far as Allison was concerned, and protecting her daughter has been at the forefront of most of her decisions.

When Eleanor discovers the truth, in a tumultuously well acted and written scene, the title of the play - Never Not Once - becomes clear as she asks Allison if she ever regretted keeping her as a baby. This follows on from a potent exchange between Allison and her daughter's father Doug, in which Montgomery charts the woman's fury with a magnificent, white-hot intensity.

In such a powerfully female-driven piece, the men could come in for very short shrift, but Crim is too accomplished and humane for that. Rob, the boyfriend, in an utterly winning performance from Gilbert Kyem Jnr, is a real gem, a young jock who doesn't always make the right choices but proves a true ally to the women and especially his beloved Eleanor. The deeply flawed father figure, a recovering alcoholic, unable to accept first that he even has a daughter and then refuting the accusation of rape, is more complex, and therefore less satisfactory, although that is a weakness in the writing, and not in Adrian Grove's courageous performance. It feels implausible that he would turn up at the women's home after that coruscating earlier encounter with Allison, but Grove inhabits the moment with complete conviction.

In its latter stages, the play lurches uncomfortably close to actual melodrama, which is a shame as up to that point it seldom puts a foot wrong. Then again, these are big, knotty themes accompanied by big, tempestuous emotions, but they would probably play better in a larger house. Despite these reservations, this is still a finely acted piece of theatre, impassioned, angry but kind, and inextricably attached to the zeitgeist.

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Never Not Once at the Park Theatre review - WhatsOnStage.com