Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Few things are as satisfying in the life of a Catholic journalist as to be on the receiving end of the kindness of scholars and clergy who help us in the media get to the bottom of something. There is, if you will, a fraternity of people who work with words the way others work with their hands. This fraternity is especially strong when the people involved are grouped around a shared love of someone or something. On top of all that, it allows me to say, with Blanche DuBois, that I've always relied on the kindness of strangers!

In March, the chairman of the board of directors of NCR, Jim Purcell, sent me an email asking if I would be interested in seeing a monograph he discovered. It was written by my great mentor Msgr. John Tracy Ellis. I said "Of course!" and Purcell put it in the mail. The essay ran to 20 pages, with an additional two pages of endnotes. It was not dated, but it identified Ellis as a professor at the University of San Francisco, so it was written before 1976 when he returned to Washington, D.C. but after the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965.

The title "On the Selection of Bishops for the United States" did not indicate if this was a lecture or the draft of a magazine article. I asked Purcell if he knew to what purpose the monograph had been put, and he checked with a priest in San Francisco who instructed me to reach out to Fr. Tom Shelley, a priest of the New York Archdiocese, who is working on a biography of Ellis. I did so, and Shelley let me know that Ellis had published two articles on the subject, one for Commonweal and the other for The Critic. I took a photograph of the first page and sent it to Shelley. He replied that the monograph was identical to the opening of the article in the July, 1969 issue of The Critic.

The mystery of the mongraph's origin was solved. What of the essay's content?

First, the monsignor begins with the tale of Antonio Rosmini's 1847 book Concerning the Five Wounds of the Holy Church, which strongly criticized the pressure placed on the church through the role of secular governments in the selection of bishops, and that the Vatican placed the volume on the Index of Forbidden Books at the request of the Austrian government. Rosmini reminded his readers that for the first thousand years of the church's history, both laity and clergy had been involved in selecting their bishops.

By the end of Ellis' first few paragraph, you are reminded of his elegant writing style, straightforward but willing to take a slight detour for literary reasons or to introduce an analogy. For example, after detailing contemporary resistance to the idea of widening the consultation process in selecting bishops, he writes:

In that regard it should first be stated with absolute clarity that no right thinking Catholic, clerical or lay, entertains any disposition to wrest from the hands of the sovereign pontiff his centuries-old right to name in the final reckoning the successors of the apostles. It is rather that this movement, if movement it can be called, is only one more manifestation of the Zeitgeist of the 1960s in the Catholic community of the world and of the United States.

No one writes like that anymore, and it is a shame.

Ellis then traced the history of how bishops were selected over the years, starting with the patristic era and through the Middle Ages with its nepotism and, later, the politically devised solution of granting the right to nominate bishops to particular sovereigns. He comes to the founding of the American episcopate and records the well-known fact that, in a nod to local sensibilities, the Holy See allowed the clergy of the young United States to gather and select one of their own to be the first bishop. On May 18, 1789, the clergy gathered in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart at White Marsh, which can still be visited in Bowie, Maryland. They selected John Carroll, and by year's end, Rome had confirmed the selection. Over the next 40-odd years, until the Second Provincial Council in Baltimore in 1833, six methods for choosing bishops emerged in different situations.

From 1833 until the meeting of the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852, the metropolitan and each of his suffragans drew up a list of three names, a terna, for each vacant see, and the ternas were sent to both the metropolitan and the Propaganda Fide office in Rome, as the United States was still considered mission territory. The bishops included their reasons for the names given, but the ternas were only recommendations, and the final terna to be brought to the pope was drawn up by the cardinal members of Propaganda Fide.

Things remained in flux for several decades. At the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, held in 1866, the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Martin Spalding, wanted legislation that would give a role to the consultors of a diocese in the drawing up of ternas, but no legislation was adopted on this point until the Third Plenary Council in 1884. Finally, diocesan consultors and irremovable rectors were given the right to draw up a terna for a vacancy in their diocese, which was then supplemented by a terna from the bishops of the province. In the case of a vacant metropolitan see, the other metropolitan archbishops would add a third terna of their own, drawn up at their now annual meetings.

Two other developments affected the selection of bishops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The most significant was that in January 1893, Pope Leo XIII named an apostolic delegate to the United States, mostly to resolve conflicts between clergy and their bishops, but the delegate's influence in relating the situation on the ground to Rome gave him enormous influence in the process. Secondly, in 1859, the North American College opened in Rome.

Between 1884 and 1916, when the right of priests to draw up a terna was abrogated, 22% of the new bishops had received some or all of their training in Rome. From 1916 until 1966 when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops was formally commenced, 40% of new bishops had Roman training. Seventy percent of all cardinals had Roman training.

Ellis documented some post-conciliar efforts in other countries to increase the role of the clergy, religious and laity in the selection of episcopal candidates. He notes that the bishops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially his beloved Cardinal James Gibbons, were more keen to better conform the church to the democratic tenor of the country. He notes the words of Bishop Richard Gilmour of Cleveland and Bishop John Moore of St. Augustine, Florida, in a memorandum to the Propaganda Fide cardinals in 1885:

Owing to the democratic form of government in the United States, the people must be taken into consideration, and their good will cultivated. Without their hearty and constant cooperation, neither Church nor Schools nor Institutions can exist or be created

Ellis writes of the efforts of Bishop Ernest Primeau of Manchester, New Hampshire, to introduce greater consultation with his clergy in the selection of names he, in turn, shared with his brother bishops at their annual provincial meeting. But only a minority of the priests even bothered to respond to Primeau's request for names to be put forward for nomination as bishops. Ellis does not mince words in rendering his verdict, writing:

The Manchester experience should not, I think, be passed over without attention being drawn to the disappointment occasioned by the priests' failure to take their new responsibility seriously, formutatis mutandithere is not a diocese in this country that has not undergone similar frustrations by reason of the priests' refusing to open their minds to new ideas and to manifest the courage to face up to the need for change in this revolutionary age. In all too many cases they have displayed a paranoid reaction which, even where it was strenuously opposed by some of their number, was strong enough to paralyze the general clerical body and nullify the talent that is latent in so many priests.

Ellis records other examples of attempts to include priests in the consultation process, even noting the rudeness of the apostolic delegate in failing to respond to a group of priests in Albany and a resulting editorial in NCR on the subject! (See "Washington double-talk," National Catholic Reporter, Vol. 5, No. 22.)

Ellis finishes his essay with some lovely quotes from John Henry Newman. I remember as if it was yesterday when he told our class that after the Lord Jesus and his mother, no person had had a greater influence on his life and ideas than Cardinal Newman. I remember sitting in that room thinking: How cultured must be the mind that can say such a thing, identifying with a person he had never met but whose writings had made such a profound impression

The two great churchmen were cut from the same cloth I came to realize. Brilliant, erudite, liberal in the best sense of the word.

I also recall the day when the monsignor spoke to a rally called to protest the removal of Fr. Charles Curran from the theology faculty at Catholic University. Monsignor, whose age required him to hold up his own eyebrows, made his way to the microphone and, looking at Fr. Curran, said something like: "Father, I disagree with you on every point of moral teaching on which you diverge from the teaching of the magisterium, but I strongly defend your right to teach your ideas at a modern Catholic university, free from ecclesiastical interference." Monsignor's sojourn in San Francisco had been occasioned by a similar interference.

I wonder if Ellis would still hold to the ideas he held then. So much has changed. Democracy has lost some of its luster in the age of Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbn. The polarization in the church was emerging when he wrote this article, but even when he died in 1992, the full extent of that polarization was not evident. It is a fool's errand to predict how someone who died almost 30 years ago would view the same issue today.

His knowledge of church history, however, would prevent him from becoming despondent about the situation of the church in 2021. The collapse of Christianity in revolutionary France was followed by the flowering of spirituality and then theology in that country throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries. The long suppression of Catholicism in England was part of the cultural inheritance that produced Ellis' hero John Henry Newman as well as a host of other great Catholic thinkers and writers.

He would often quote the words of the Master to Nicodemus at John 3:8, to us, his students: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

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Msgr. John Tracy Ellis on selecting bishops in the US - National Catholic Reporter

The recent murderous attack against Asian-owned businesses in Georgia, the deaths of six women of Asian descent, and the dramatic increase in assaults on Asian Americans in communities across the country once again shine a harsh light on the historical breadth of bigotry in America.

According to the initiative Stop AAPI Hate, between March 2020 and February 2021, there were 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents in the United States, incidents that included being spat upon and verbally and physically attacked. The report noted that with the onset of the pandemic, Asian Americans have increasingly become targets of xenophobic attacks, much like Muslims after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Make no mistake: Americas earliest history is crowded with the subjugation of one nationality after another. The indigenous people whose land we stole, then settled; the Africans we bought to support an economic system that depended upon their enslavement; the demonization of Asians who fled wars and famine and on whose backs we built our railroads and revolutionized the fishing industry: all have been and continue to be human collateral in the development of a country that prides itself on the high ideals of freedom, liberty and equality.

Midway through my undergraduate history-degree-seeking career, I had an opportunity to take a few courses in Asian American history. At the time, I was living at the edge of Monterey Bay, a section of California with a long and storied history of Asian migration. The classes were an eye-opener.

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 drew thousands of Chinese emigres to the U.S. fleeing their own country that was wracked by war and famine. By the 1850s, nearly 25,000 Chinese immigrants were making their way in the West. They helped build the transcontinental railroad, contributed to the growth of agriculture and commercialized abalone and calamari fishing along Monterey Bay.

Xenophobia, however, was on the rise. Chinese men were demonized as lazy and listless opium smokers; Chinese women as exotic and promiscuous. To protect Americans from these influences, Congress passed the Page Exclusion Act of 1875, the first restrictive piece of immigration legislation that prohibited recruitment to the United States of unfree laborers, and women for immoral purposes, but was enforced primarily against Chinese. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that ended Chinese immigration for a decade and prohibited them from becoming naturalized citizens.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelts Executive Order 9066 authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed to be a national threat. This included 112,000 persons of Japanese descent, many American citizens, and their subsequent detention at internment camps further inland.

Bigotry of all forms has woven itself into the fabric of Old Glory. Violence aimed at people of color remains a basic tenet of the American zeitgeist and continues unabated. No matter what laws are passed, who is in the White House, or how loudly we tout our freedoms, the relentless acts of violence against Americas own citizens based solely on the color of their skin, their national origins or religious beliefs, must stop.

Years ago in graduate school, I had the amazing good fortune of taking a class from Professor Raymond Arsenault, an impressive historian of Americas South and author of Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The class focused on the racial injustices highlighted by Jim Crow South, and the Civil Rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King. Once, after a particularly spirited discussion, I asked Dr. Arsenault if he thought the country would ever recover from our countrys Civil War. He could not say.

The hard truth is this: Its probably time the bandages came off exposing the festering racism that has been held in the hearts of too many Americans, a hatred that has, apparently, been given nascent approval to exist.

Addiction counselors and mental health professionals tell us consistently that the only way one ever recovers from self-destructive behavior is by admitting they have a problem. And boy-howdy, does America have a problem.

According to a February 2021 report by Statista, 55% of Americans feel white nationalist groups pose a serious threat to the U.S. This is 2021, and were still dealing with issues of equality that Americans died for 160 years ago. History is filled with civilizations that have held so much promise of bettering the human condition, but missed the opportunity because they stumbled on ignorance. Pettiness, jealousy, a sense of entitlement have doomed even the most powerful.

What do we need to do to facilitate the change so desperately needed in our country?

The time is ripe for a national discussion on some form of truth and reconciliation hearings, the kind that enabled South Africa to heal and aided Canada in giving voice to its indigenous population. Im not at all sure how we make that happen, but I do believe, like many others, that unless we face our biased and intolerant past, we have little hope of healing our countrys wounds.

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Now is the time | Reporters... - Journal of the San Juan Islands

This week Im mulling over Northern Lives, a local group exhibition showcasing contributions from artists of the Peace River Chapter of the Federation of Canadian Artists, as well as works by renowned printmakers Charlie and Mary Parslow, realist painter Gary Lowe, and landscape painters Mimi Zhang-Mackie and Payge Fortier, among several others.

Having covered local artists and events for a while now, I am beginning to connect a network of threads between many artists in the region, the most prominent similarity being an emphasis on and celebration of the land on which we reside and work. Whether it be Barbara Swails Bank Series, kit fasts earthworks, Kristy Augers floral prints, Miep Burgerjons use of natural materials, Garry Okers outdoor art exhibits, or Sandy Troudts loving portraits of the Peace River a considerable number of established artists in this area engage with the land in their work.

The Peace Rivers hypnotizing poplar forests, open skies, and local fauna have long been staples of the art scene here. While each artists approach and art practice is unique, this homogeny of motif and subject is significant and worth acknowledging. It goes without saying that everyone has a relationship with the land, whether they realize it or not. The difference lies in the level of importance that relationship holds in that individuals life and community. As evidenced by their work, artists of the Peace hold that relationship in high regard.

Every artist and their work is a product of their place and time, and the same is true for our regional artists. It figures that our artists fascination with the local landscape stems from our proximity to nature, ease of access to wilderness, and the central role activities on the land, such as berry-picking, hunting, fishing, and camping, hold in our culture. This, in turn, may connect to the relatively delayed colonization of this area, and the rise of the pioneer lifestyle, portrayed in the works of Gary Lowe, Karl Musgrove, and Suzanne Sandboe, which many living artists have personally experienced.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the oil and gas industry and other resource-extraction-based activities. While individual artists have different opinions on the subject, its constant presence and transformation of the landscape continually brings the issue front of mind in the zeitgeist of the area, resulting in a plethora of land-related artworks.

Worth considering too is the influence of the Federation of Canadian Artists itself, through which many artists seek legitimacy. The FCAs comparatively conservative ideals of what classifies as art put an emphasis on representational painting that is evident in the Northern Lives exhibition. Combined with the factors above is the geographic isolation of our region, which leaves us disconnected from trends, topical issues, and movements taking place in urban centres or other regions.

All these influences, as well as many more, are largely indirect and reinterpreted in a myriad of ways. However, the result is an overall commonality and unique art movement that has been brewing in the Peace region for decades. I believe this movement is our contribution to the arts and cultural landscape of B.C. and Canada. It is a voice that speaks to our issues, history and values. It is something to celebrate, cultivate and push forward with the innovation and support of our many gifted artists.

You can catch Northern Lives until April 3at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery, or experience the show virtually on the PRFCAwebsite.

P.S. - Dont forget to register for this years Regional Juried Art Exhibition. The deadline is April 26. You can find the registration page at the Peace Liard Regional Arts Councils website.

Do you have an artistic endeavour you would like to promote? Is there a topic you would like me to discuss? I would love to hear from you! Please email me at programs@dcartgallery.ca.

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A reflection on our northern lives - Alaska Highway News

(JTA) They hid revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear. They learned how to make lethal Molotov cocktails and fling them at German supply trains. The girls with Aryan features who could pass as non-Jews flirted with Nazis plying them with wine, whiskey and pastry before shooting them dead.

When the Nazis occupied their native Poland, Jewish women, some barely into their teens, joined the resistance and risked their young lives to sabotage the regime.

That crucial but often overlooked story of defiance and resistance is told by Judy Batalion in her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos (William Morrow). Its the result of her 12-year odyssey digging through archives and interviewing descendants of the women. The research skills she honed while earning a doctorate in the history of art from the University of London helped her navigate the daunting challenges of crafting a cohesive, factually accurate narrative out of history shrouded in myth and neglect.

The book and a companion edition targeting 10- to 14-year-olds are both due out on April 6 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Director Steven Spielberg has optioned the book for a motion picture and signed Batalion to co-write the screenplay.

I was slow with this book because it was so challenging emotionally, intellectually and practically. I had to deal with reading incredibly difficult memoirs and testimonies on my own, she said in a phone interview from her New York City home.

Batalion, who spent her mid-20s in London working as an art historian by day and stand-up comedian at night, is not a Holocaust scholar accustomed to reading graphic primary sources. She felt weighed down by the womens accounts of being sexually assaulted by Nazis, of soldiers stomping on Jewish babies and of mass murder committed before their eyes.

Their stories seeped into my system. I worked on it in dribs and drabs when I could, Batalion said of her years of off-again, on-again research and writing.

Niuta Teitelbaum as a schoolgirl in od, 1936. During the war, she became known as Little Wanda with the Braids. (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters House Museum Photo Archive)

Donald Trumps election as president, with the misogyny and anti-Semitism that she saw churned up in its wake, pushed Batalion to go all in and craft the ghetto girls stories into a work of narrative nonfiction.

I felt a shift in the zeitgeist. The importance of telling honest stories about women in the Holocaust and womens empowerment felt urgent, she said. I dashed off a book proposal and committed to diving into two years of intensive, focused research.

At the heart of the project is an obscure Yiddish book published in 1946 titled Freuen in di Ghettos (Women in the Ghettos) chronicling these young womens tales of resistance and derring-do. Batalion discovered the dusty tome by chance in Londons British Library while researching strong Jewish women. Why, despite her years of education at a Montreal Jewish day school, where she learned Yiddish and Hebrew, and as the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, had she never heard of these ghetto girls?

My research was very complex and strangely time consuming. I had to work in multiple languages, she said. The womens names and the place names had so many confusing iterations Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, English.

Her research missions took her to Poland for two weeks and Israel for 10 days. She visited the places that her heroines wrote and spoke about.

I wanted to understand what the ride from Krakow to Warsaw looked like from the train window and experience a taste of what they did, she said.

Batalion hit the research jackpot at Warsaws new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where an archivist directed her to thousands of pages of information about Jewish resistance fighters. She snapped photos of the documents to share with a Polish translator in New York.

Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman)

The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. As a 15-year-old, Renia saw her parents deported from the Bdzin ghetto to Auschwitz. Fueled by outrage, she and her older sister, Sarah, joined the ghettos resistance movement.

Renias youthful charm, fluent Polish and soft features made her an ideal courier. The Jewish underground obtained expensive fake papers that established Renias identity as a Catholic Pole. She successfully ran multiple missions, smuggling weapons, correspondence and money from Bdzin to Warsaw until the Gestapo discovered her papers were forged and threw her into prison. Despite repeated beatings that left her bloodied and unconscious, she clung to her cover story and never revealed her Jewish identity.

Sarah and her underground comrades bribed a guard with whiskey and cigarettes to rescue her from prison. Weak and feverish from starvation and physical abuse, Renia mustered the strength to run through forests and over snow-capped mountains. She survived a tortuous journey through hidden bunkers in Slovakia, then on to Hungary, Turkey and the ultimate destination Palestine.

Against terrifying, oppressive odds, Renia lived to tell her story in a memoir she began writing at 19. When Batalion read Renias memoir she felt as if shed discovered a kindred spirit a thoughtful writer processing her experiences.

Batalions favorite research and writing involved the surviving ghetto girls postwar lives.

I wanted to know how they reconstructed their lives after going through everything they did. I so wanted to talk to their children and find out who these women became, she said.

She achieved this level of intimacy with her subjects on her trip to Israel, when she met with their descendants. Batalion was overjoyed to meet Renias adult children, who described their mothers zest for family, fashion and world travel.

This brought home on such a personal level that I was writing about real people, she said.

Judy Batalion: I was slow with this book because it was so challenging emotionally, intellectually and practically. (Beowulf Sheehan)

Batalion hopes the stories of female heroism she resurrected serve to inspire future generations of all faiths, especially her own two daughters, both in elementary school.

These were women who saw and acknowledged the truth, had the courage to act on their convictions and fought with their lives for what was fair and right, she said.

She feels a deep sense of connection to the ghetto girls who died fighting and believes they sacrificed themselves for the future dignity of the Jewish people. Their stories serve as a timeless call to action to women to empower themselves to resist all forms of oppression.

During this difficult COVID year, Batalion drew personal inspiration from her subjects life stories.

Thinking back to their stories of courage and bravery really helped me, she said. I thought if they could get through the horrific challenges they faced, I can definitely get through this.

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'Their stories seeped into my system': How Judy Batalion found the stories of overlooked female Polish WWII resistance fighters - JTA News - Jewish...

The NAACP rose to the occasion allowing their combined creativity to shine. When we are tossed lemons we create lemonade so sweet, it sparks the cultural zeitgeist.

In that spirit, the non-televised awards program included a pre-awards show hosted by Entertainment Tonights Nischelle Turner and celebrity presenters Nicole Beharie, the cast of BETs Bigger, Tamar Braxton, Damson Idris, Daymond John, Leslie Jones, Javicia Leslie, Madalen Mills, MAJOR., Method Man, Retta & Reno Wilson (from Good Girls), Marcus Scribner, J.B. Smoove, Terrence Terrell, Susan Kelechi Watson, and CeCe Winans. Award shows are about fashion, glitz, glamour, and style, and to that end, the virtual red carpet was hosted by Tanika Ray.

Keeping issues in the forefront was a priority and a conversation and panel series with the NAACP Hollywood Bureau featuring Miles Brown and President Derrick Johnson included the Our Stories series A Conversation With presented by Ford Motor Company which paid homage to Essential Workers as well as a web series called Fashion Pull-Up hosted by celebrity wardrobe stylists, GooGoo Atkins and Apuje Kalu which explored the most-notable fashion moments from the NAACP Image Awards red carpet.

The NAACP Theatre featured past Image Awards performances and speeches, and this content aired in the Virtual Experience during a week of celebration, made available on-demand the next day in the theatre.

They even set up a virtual photo booth and selfie station, where fans took photos with their devices and posted them on their social media platforms.

The gala parties thrown by the NAACP are legendary and they didnt let COVID-19 stop the party, the post-gala Afterparty immediately followed the live broadcast on BET which featured classic cuts by DJ Questlove, current cuts by DJ Kiss, and a Jazz Lounge performance by Robert Glasper and Lalah Hathaway.

Before the ceremony honors were bestowed to NAACP Image Awards Co-Founder, Toni Vaz, winning the Founders Award to spotlight her work at creating the nations preeminent multicultural award show. Toni Vaz co-founded the NAACP Image Awards in 1967 as a way to change the perception of Black people in Hollywood.

MARCH 27: In this screengrab, Eddie Murphy accepts the Hall of Fame Award during the 52nd NAACP Image Awards on March 27, 2021. (Photo by NAACP via Getty Images)

Civil Rights Movement icon Rev. James Lawson receivedthe prestigious NAACP Chairmans Award. Past honorees of the Chairmans Award include Tyler Perry, then-Senator Barack Obama, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Former Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Ruby Dee, The Neville Brothers, Bono, Danny Glover, and last years recipient the late U.S. Congressman John Lewis.

The NAACP inducted legendary entertainer, film icon, and two-time Image Award recipient Eddie Murphy into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. The award was presented by Murphys collaborator and long-time friend Arsenio Hall.

Presenters for the LIVE show included Alicia Keys, Andra Day, Arsenio Hall, Cynthia Erivo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michelle Obama, Misty Copeland, Regina King, Samuel L. Jackson, the cast of Tyler Perrys Sistas, Swizz Beatz, and Tracy Morgan.

The non-televised award categories presenters included the cast of BETs Bigger (Tanisha Long, Angell Conwell, Rasheda Crockett, Tristen J. Winger, and Chase Anthony,) CeCe Winans, Damson Idris, Daymond John, Javicia Leslie, JB Smoove, Leslie Jones, Madalen Mills, MAJOR., Marcus Scribner, Method Man, Nicole Beharie, Retta, Reno Wilson, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tamar Braxton, and Terrence Terrell.

Reg-Jean Page(Getty Images for NAACP Image Awards)

The 52nd NAACP Image Awards is presented by Wells Fargo, and sponsored by AT&T, FedEx, Nike, Bank of America, Alaska Airlines. The NAACP Image Awards honors the accomplishments of people of color in the fields of television, music, literature, and film and also recognizes individuals or groups who promote social justice through creative endeavors.

The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to the ongoing violence against Black people around the country, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is the largest and most pre-eminent civil rights organization in the nation. We have over 2,200 units and branches across the nation, along with well over 2M activists. Our mission is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.

The 52nd NAACP Image Awards is presented by Wells Fargo, and sponsored by AT&T, FedEx, Nike, Bank of America, American Airlines, Airbnb, Ford, and Alaska Airlines.

The NAACP Image Awards honors the accomplishments of people of color in the fields of television, music, literature, and film and also recognizes individuals or groups who promote social justice through creative endeavors.

MARCH 27: In this screengrab, Regina King presents the Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture Award during the 52nd NAACP Image Awards on March 27, 2021. (Photo by NAACP via Getty Images)

The full list of winners from the show can be found below:

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series

Michaela Coel I May Destroy You Ep. 112 Ego Death

Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series

Attica Locke Little Fires Everywhere Ep. 104 The Spider Web

Outstanding Writing in a Television Movie or Special

Geri Cole The Power of We: A Sesame Street Special

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture

Radha Blank The Forty-Year-Old Version

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series

Anya Adams black-ish Ep. 611 Hair Day

Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series

Hanelle Culpepper Star Trek: Picard Ep. 101 Remembrance

Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie or Special

Eugene Ashe Sylvies Love

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture

Gina Prince-Bythewood The Old Guard

Outstanding Short Form Series Comedy or Drama

#FreeRayshawn

Outstanding Performance in a Short Form

Laurence Fishburne #FreeRayshawn

Outstanding Short Form Series Reality/Nonfiction

Between The Scenes The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Outstanding Short-Film (Live Action)

Black Boy Joy

Outstanding Short-Film (Animated)

Canvas

Special Award Spingarn Medal

Misty Copeland

For all information and the latest news, please follow NAACP Image Awards on Instagram @NAACPImageAwards.

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NAACP ROSE TO THE OCCASSION VIRTUALLY WITH THE 2021 NAACP IMAGE AWARDS - Lasentinel

As Violent Femmes celebrate their 40th year together, Craft Recordings is pleased to honor the band's enduring catalog of cult classics with the long out-of-print vinyl reissue of Add It Up (1981-1993). In stores May 21st and available for pre-order today, the popular 1993 collection will also make its return to digital and streaming platforms, while fans can listen to the instant grat track "Add It Up (Live)" now (listen here).

The 23-track compilation features Violent Femmes' biggest hits, including "Blister in the Sun," "American Music," and "Gone Daddy Gone," plus live recordings of favorites like "Add It Up," and "Kiss Off," alongside a trove of demos, B-sides, interstitial voice recordings, and rarities. Housed in a gatefold jacket, the 2-LP set was pressed at Memphis Records Pressing, with lacquers cut by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. In addition to the standard black 2-LP, a special "Blister Red Marble" edition will be available exclusively via the Violent Femmes and Craft Recordings webstores (limited 500 worldwide). Meanwhile, Indie Retailers will offer an exclusive "Aqua" pressing, and Urban Outfitters will offer a "Violet" variant.

Formed in 1981 by Gordon Gano (vocals, guitar), Brian Ritchie (bass), and Victor DeLorenzo (percussion), Violent Femmes caught the ears of America's underground with their special blend of teenage angst, jittery folk-rock, and punk sensibilities. The Milwaukee group had their first big break later that year while busking outside of the city's Oriental Theatre, where new wave stars The Pretenders were set to play that evening. The latter band's guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, took a liking to the young group and invited them on stage. A year later, New York Times music critic Robert Palmer wrote a glowing review of the band's live show, comparing Gano to Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Jonathan Richman. Amid the growing buzz, Violent Femmes signed to legendary punk label Slash Records (home to The Germs, X, and The Blasters) and, in 1983, released their self-titled debut.

Primarily written while Gano was still in high school, Violent Femmes would become the band's most iconic album, with Gen X anthems like "Blister in the Sun," "Please Do Not Go," "Gone Daddy Gone," and the urgent "Add It Up." Although Violent Femmes failed to chart upon its release, it was a steady seller, eventually becoming the group's most successful and critically lauded title. Nearly a decade later, it hit the Billboard 200 (landing at No.171 in 1991) and was certified Platinum by the RIAA.

The band followed with 1984's Hallowed Ground. While most material on Hallowed Ground is contemporaneous with the first album songs-all recorded by the Milwaukee-based producer and composer Mark Van Hecke-the tone of these songs was vastly different from their pop-forward predecessors. Instead, Hallowed Ground took an experimental turn and found Gano particularly inspired by his Christian upbringing. The band also incorporated country and American roots influences into songs like "Jesus Walking on the Water" and the unnerving "Country Death Song," and added unexpected instrumentation into such tracks as "Black Girls," which featured the avant-garde saxophonist, John Zorn. Although the album initially divided fans and critics, Hallowed Ground has since been recognized by a variety of outlets, including the Phoenix New Times, which declared the record to be "the Femmes finest musical effort, and Gano's definitive moment as a lyricist" in 2014.

1986's The Blind Leading the Naked found the band taking yet another sharp turn-this time towards both mainstream pop and avant garde. Produced by the Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison, the album featured a variety of high-profile guests, including guitarist Leo Kottke, the Stooges' Steve Mackay, and the acclaimed experimental artist, Fred Frith. Featuring the breakneck protest song "Old Mother Reagan" and the lively "I Held Her in My Arms," The Blind Leading the Naked brought Violent Femmes wider commercial success-both at home (where it peaked at No.84 on the Billboard 200) and abroad (landing at No.81 in the UK and No.31 in Australia).

Following a brief hiatus, the trio reunited in 1989, returning to their stripped-down roots with the acoustic 3, which featured such jaunty tracks as "Lies" and "Nightmares." Meanwhile, 1991's Why Do Birds Sing?, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, marked the Femmes' final album with DeLorenzo. Co-produced with Michael Beinhorn (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hole, Soundgarden), the LP included one of the group's most commercially successful singles, "American Music," which hit No.2 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart.

Add It Up (1981-1993) draws from these first five albums-documenting the trailblazing band's stylistic development as they rose to become one of alt-rock's most commercially-successful acts. Offering fans more than just a compilation of hits, Add It Up also spotlights Violent Femmes' energetic live performances-captured at the height of their career. Additionally, nearly half of the collection is devoted to rarities, including demos, B-sides, and imports that were previously unavailable in the US, at the time of Add It Up's release. These include "I Hate the TV," "Gimme The Car," and "Dance, M.F., Dance!"

For the remainder of the '90s, Violent Femmes continued to record new material, while their earliest songs remained in the zeitgeist, thanks to popular shows and films like My So-Called Life, Reality Bites, and Grosse Pointe Blank. After taking an extended hiatus in the late aughts, the band's original members briefly reunited for a handful of live appearances, including a highly anticipated set at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This led to extensive touring and one of the Femmes' most productive recording eras, which yielded EP Happy New Year, full LP We Can Do Anything, and radical live double LP 2 Mics and the Truth (recorded at radio station sessions and in-store performances). Most recently, Gano, Ritchie, and newcomers John Sparrow and Blaise Garza released Violent Femmes' tenth studio album, Hotel Last Resort, in 2019.

40 years on, Violent Femmes' legacy remains strong, while their influence can be heard across multiple genres-from the anti-folk movement of the early 2000s to the chart-topping hits of Barenaked Ladies, and the indie-pop of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. In 2014, Popmatters declared that the folk-punk pioneers "may have very quietly been one of the most important rock bands of the 1980s, if not the past quarter-century...[They] celebrated the simplicity of pop music from the fringes, attacking convention with a mix of humor and violence." Pitchfork argued that "The Femmes don't signify an era so much as a time of life," adding that "for young people growing up in the internet age" their music "is part of a shared language."

Click here to pre-order/pre-save Add It Up (1981-1993) now.

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Violent Femmes Celebrate 40th Anniversary With Reissue for 'Add It Up' - Broadway World

SPIEGEL: Mr. Heine, you will be 80 years old on Easter Sunday, how are you?

Heine: thanks good. We have a nice day in late summer and we were just swimming.

Gisela von Radwitz: 23 locusts.

Heine: Yes, its 23 degrees here.

SPIEGEL Ah, your wife is here too?

Radwitz: Yes, I am in charge of the Internet.

SPIEGEL: Are you looking back or only looking forward?

Heine: I tend to look forward, but of course I am a little back too. And I think I lived a very interesting life. Basically because we lived in Africa for more than twelve years, then in Ireland and Japan. But we have been living here for the longest time.

picture:

Photo by Stefan Gorlich / Imago

Heine helmetsBorn April 4, 1941 in Berlin, he studied business administration, worked and traveled before becoming a childrens book author. He had accomplished his accomplishments in 1982 with the picture book Friends and in 1983 he developed the Dragon Character for Peter Mafais musical Tabaluga. He lived in South Africa for more than ten years, also for a few years in Ireland and Japan, and since 1990 in New Zealand. He also writes novels for adults with his wife, Gisela von Radwitz. To this day, Helm Heine writes and illustrates comic books and is active in various artistic fields.

SPIEGEL: How do you celebrate your birthday?

Radwitz: Everyone is invited.

Heine: Yes, we celebrate a few hours in the park with about 30 Russell friends. Theres a little finger food, champagne, and some speeches made.

SPIEGEL: What lows and highs do you see when you look back?

Heine: They were all in Africa. Because there I mutated from a business economist to an artist. In 1965, she emigrated to South Africa. I worked for an advertising agency, met friends there and discovered my artistic side through them.

SPIEGEL: Was this transformation the most prominent thing in your life?

Heine: Yes and at the same time the poorest time. I was robbed eight times and of course there was hate. I bought a gun and said Im going to shoot the next robber. I almost shot the milkman.

SPIEGEL: Was this the low point?

Heine: Yeah. But there wasnt as much laughter and dancing there as in the poorest neighborhoods and in Africa in general. This made me strong. I was poor too, and I came up with nothing. How to gain power through positive thinking is what impressed me about Africans.

SPIEGEL: There are many countries where the sun shines. Why did you go to South Africa of all places, a country with an apartheid system?

Heine: I wanted to see for myself how it is there. It was also easy to migrate to South Africa. Going to the US or Canada was complicated, and in the US you risked enlisting in the Vietnam War with a green card. Immigration to Africa then cost 100 marks by ship from Trieste via Venice via the Suez Canal to Africa.

picture:

Peter Stephen / Dr.

Helm Heine: Picture Book Career

14 photos

SPIEGEL: Was it not known how the Boers ruled in Germany at that time?

Heine: Yes, thats why we set out and tried to change things. I founded a political-literary cabaret. We were the only ones in South Africa to deal with apartheid.

SPIEGEL: Were blacks in the group, too?

Heine: It was impossible. But we played Jane Genets maids, for example. If you see the maids in the play, everyone knows what is meant by it. It was a balancing act. We have received calls from the German embassy saying: Heine, please take it slow. Not only were we living there and using it positively, but we also tried to think about this country politically.

SPIEGEL: How do you deal with apartheid in everyday life?

Heine: Treat black people like everyone else in the world.

SPIEGEL: Did you pay them better?

Heine: Sure, they lived better for more food, as much as I could in my humble circumstances. Trust me, we havent made it easy for us.

SPIEGEL: Its best known for the picture book Friends since 1982. To this day, people think about it primarily when they hear your name.

Heine: Yes, thats a classic.

SPIEGEL: Rooster, mouse and pig take on harmless adventures in the countryside, and theres a call to cohesion.

Heine: Well not quite. My books differ from most picture books because they contain an initial story. I wonder: What is friendship? how many people are there? Theyd be normal friends, so Ill have three because I want the problem, too. Then I write to children who cannot read. It is not enough to say that the three are friends. I have to clarify that. This is how I came up with the bike, which only three of them can ride as a tricycle. It is about friendship, not friends.

SPIEGEL: Want to convey a message and not tell an interesting story much?

Heine: both of them.

SPIEGEL: The characters operate in isolation from the outside world, the three move into a sterile universe.

HeineWell, one can present more difficulties. However, only one page of text and twelve double pages of images are available.

SPIEGEL: What is a good childrens book for you?

Heine: It is not a story in the childish language of bla-bla-bla, but more like film than literature. It should also be of interest to adults. Otherwise it is not a good picture book.

SPIEGEL: Have you ever thought about making storyboards?

Heine: No, this is too poor for me. I have never liked reading comics. I think Peanuts are good, they have a philosophy.

SPIEGEL: Ive written so many friends and other animal books that it sounds like a scam.

HeineI have written many books with people, but books with animals are more successful. On The Wonderful Journey Through the Night I thought about how to film jazz. Or Saturday in Heaven: I tried to tell the story of evolution.

SPIEGEL: Friends fit the zeitgeist of the 1980s at the time of the peace movement. Will it still be such a success today?

Heine: Im still selling well today. In my first book, The Elephant Once, it was said that kids wouldnt understand it was a success. Then when you wake up someone says again Oh, so cute, but its over. I do not believe that. Elementary stories always find their readers. In Germany it may be one at a time.

SPIEGEL: Janusz wrote similar books.

Heine: Oh, How Beautiful is Panama is one of the few books that stands out because it contains an initial story. Lots of other things were just too skinny for me. And Im sorry that I love Janusz in his own way. Then marketing! There have been over 1000 articles, you spoil yourself with that. I always avoided that.

SPIEGEL: But they also promote on your website.

Heine: Yes, but much less.

SPIEGELWhy write for children?

Heine: For me, it is not about the target group, it is about my own creativity. What fascinates me is the staging images. It is a myth that you have to keep a child awake to write to children. For me, this is the biggest nonsense. Great childrens book author Beatrix Potter hated the kids so much that she would move across the street when they approached her. She also interviews authors who say: I would like to write a novel, but first and foremost I will write for children. I can hardly see red.

SPIEGEL: Author Enid Blyton once said coldly of Verrisse: Im not interested in criticism from people over the age of twelve.

Heine: The child is a ruthless critic. If the book is not impressive, it gets up and goes. To become a great childrens book author you have to be a writer and illustrator. The two are fire and water. The author thinks about the words and takes time to develop something. A painter who lives in the present time. We think a picture on the spot. If the author describes this, he will need ten pages.

SPIEGEL: Did you intend to make the world a better place with childrens books?

Heine: No, no one can make the world a better place. I did this myself.

SPIEGEL: Do you have life-long friends?

Heine: Yeah. I have few friends, but theyve always been this way. If we met earlier, everyone should have brought a story and told. I learned that in Africa, there is a wonderful tradition of storytelling there. My wife and I write a letter to all of our friends every Sunday. Sure, the contact is missing. But here I have a great garden and twelve months of great light. This is very important for a painter.

SPIEGEL: What repeatedly drove you to move away from Germany?

Heine: I will not let anything come from Germany. Its a wonderful country but so narrow, everything needs to be planned down to the smallest detail. In particular, I like the Germans more than the herd.

SPIEGEL: Together with singer Peter Maffai, you invented the little green kite tabalog. This musical figure is now terribly nervous for many people. Have you already experienced such reactions?

Heine: No, I didnt notice that. It disappeared behind this dragon. He died to death a little. I have mine there Participate I got, but I dont want to mention.

SPIEGEL: Are you good at participating?

Heine: Yes, very good. My wife always says Im so reckless. I find money only interesting when I can share it with friends. Im also very good at getting rid of it. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation contacted me because they were interested in my property. What made me so happy was that the kids dont have to throw it away.

SPIEGEL: Is it okay to talk about your death?

Heine: Not bad at all. How are you supposed to be 80 and not think about death? Everyone in my family died a wonderful death. My father died while walking in the woods. My mother slept and never woke up.

SPIEGEL: Are you really close to Heinrich Heine?

Heine: Unfortunately no. I love his poems and I just memorized a great one from him:

Happiness is an easy whoreHe does not like to be in the same place;Hold your hair by your foreheadAnd he kisses you quickly and flaps away.On the contrary, Frau Misfortune has itBring you close to the heart.She says she is in no hurryIt sits beside your bed and knits.

Excerpt from:

Helmy Heine is 80 years old: "I almost shot milk" - theinformant.co.nz

This story was originally published in Undarkand is reproduced here as part of theClimate Deskcollaboration.

Todays conservationistsare taxed with protecting the living embodiments of tens of millions of years of natures creation, and they face unprecedented challenges for doing so from climate change and habitat destruction to pollution and unsustainable wildlife trade. Given that extinction is the price for failure, theres little forgiveness for error. Success requires balancing not just the complexities of species and habitats, but also of people and politics. With an estimated 1 million species now threatened with extinction, conservationists need all the help they can get.

Yet the past a key repository of lessons hard learned through trial and error is all too often forgotten or overlooked by conservation practitioners today. In Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, journalist Michelle Nijhuis shows that history can help contextualize and guide modern conservation. Indeed, arguably its only in the last 200 years or so that a few scattered individuals began thinking seriously about the need to save species and its only in the last 50 that conservation biology even emerged as a distinct field.

Beloved Beasts reads as a whos who and greatest-moments survey of these developmental decades. Through the eyes and actions of individuals, it portrays the evolution of the surprisingly young field from a pursuit almost solely of the privileged Western elite to a movement that is shaped by many people, many places, and many species.

Its in the gray area of the personal, though, that the book is most fascinating. Even the most celebrated and successful conservationists had human flaws, and Nijhuis does not shy away from these details. As she writes, The story of modern species conservation is full of people who did the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons.

In one chapter, for example, Nijhuis tells the story of William Temple Hornaday, an American taxidermist who served as the first director of what is now the Bronx Zoo, and who is credited with saving the American bison from extinction. By the late 19th century, evidence clearly pointed to the fact that bison, a species that once numbered tens of million, were set to disappear due to wanton overhunting. Yet at the time, most people assumed that species were static and enduring, Nijhuis writes, and those who did catch wind of the fall of the American buffalo mostly responded with a shrug.

Strangely for his time, Hornaday became obsessed with the animals plight. He decided that the only way to preserve the species from extinction was to establish a captive herd to, as he wrote, atone for the national disgrace that attaches to the heartless and senseless extermination of the species in the wild state. With Theodore Roosevelts backing, Hornaday established a small bison herd in the Bronx in 1905, one whose urban descendants became founders of some of the 500,000 bison that survive today. More than just save a species, Hornadays work helped bring public recognition of extinction as a needless tragedy rather than an inevitable cost of expansion, Nijhuis writes.

Yet despite all the good he did for the natural world, Nijhuis points out that Hornadays successes like many conservation gains of the 19th and 20th centuries were built on a foundation of nationalism, sexism and racism. For Hornaday and his allies, the rescue of the bison had nothing to do with the people who had depended on the species and a great deal to do with their own illusions about themselves, Nijhuis writes.

A group of school children in 1899 viewing the first bison at the National Zoological Park.

Bison were slaughtered en masse in the 1800s, not just for their hides but also as a convenient way to control Native Americans who depended on the animals for food, Nijhuis writes. At the same time, white men like Hornaday and Roosevelt began appropriating bison as a symbol of rugged Caucasian masculinity, both for the animals association with a strenuous life and as the target of choice for of wealthy white male hunters. Despite evidence to the contrary, Hornaday placed partial blame for the bisons demise on Native Americans, and his Bronx-raised bison, Nijhuis points out, were released on land seized from the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa. Protecting bison, therefore, meant protecting a perniciously exclusive version of natural progress, Nijhuis writes.

With each subsequent generation, though, the conservation field has gradually improved in terms of its scope and ethics. In his older age, Hornaday, for example, supported and encouraged the activism and ecological education of Rosalie Edge. A bird-loving New York socialite, Edge helped to reform the Audubon Society, which, at the time, supported the eradication of raptors and opposed tightening of hunting restrictions.

A year before the term ecosystem was coined in 1934, Edge discussed with Hornaday a groundbreaking realization she had come to: that species should be protected not only because they are of interest to humans as had motivated Hornaday and the men of his time but because each forms a vital link in a living chain. A decade after Edge and Hornadays conversation, the centrality and fragility of ecological connections would become all the more apparent when Rachel Carson pondered the impacts of the pesticide DDT on raptors at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, a protected area Edge founded.

Ideas and connections continued to build. Around the same time Edge was campaigning for birds, Aldo Leopold popularized the idea that ecosystems, not just species, need to be protected, and that game is a public trust that should be managed by science-based law. This zeitgeist shift resulted in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Leopold believed it was possible to love other species and use them wisely, too, Nijhuis writes.

The conservation movement gained momentum in the wake of World War II, Nijhuis writes, when the word global came into wider use, and the interconnectedness of the world both ecological and human became glaringly apparent. Data compiled by the newly established International Union for Conservation of Nature also revealed just how many species faced extinction, and shifted the movements focus to emergency relief. But as conservation spread to other continents, especially Africa, it continued to work through various growing pains, including racist views about independent Africas inability to manage its own natural resources. Many foreign conservationists saw the African landscape as John Muir had seen Yosemite as an extraordinary place meant to be visited, not lived in, Nijhuis writes.

This so-called fortress conservation approach perpetuated in the 1950s and 1960s a top-down enterprise in which global authorities ultimately inform national and local agendas has since come under fire and has been increasingly replaced by a version of conservation that acknowledges that humans are an inextricable part of the landscape. Additionally, time and time again, conservationists have learned (oftentimes the hard way) that protection of wild places can never succeed without buy-in from the people who live there. To protect biodiversity to provide other species with the resources they needed to adapt, survive, and thrive conservationists, including conservation biologists, had to persuade some of their fellow humans to make some sacrifices, at least in the short term, Nijhuis writes.

The problem, isnt inattention to human needs, but inattention to human complexity.

The problem, Nijhuis continues, isnt inattention to human needs, but inattention to human complexity. Conservationists too often view humanity the same way they would a population of species that fits into a single ecological niche with set relationships and dependencies, Nijhuis argues, rather than as thinking and technologically endowed beings aware of our place among other species and each other. Nor are we passive players. As the future perfect turns into the present perfect, we can apply ourselves to creating a tolerable present and future for ourselves and for the rest of life, Nijhuis writes.

The decisions we make are often unpredictable, though, informed by a vast array of social, cultural, and individual factors. Conservation biology, in other words, cant be left only to the biologists, Nijhuis writes. Its for this reason that the field has begun to draw upon other realms of expertise outside of pure ecology, including economics, politics, social science, and more. This need for diversity not only in nature but also within human endeavors to protect it is something that Leopold and others recognized decades ago, but has only just started to come to fruition in any practical way.

History is an integral part of that complexity, too. Just as we cannot protect something that we do not know exists, past failures and successes likewise cannot be taken advantage of for future gains if history is forgotten. Beloved Beasts is therefore compelling and necessary reading for anyone interested in the field of conservation. As Nijhuis writes, We can move forward by understanding the story of struggle and survival we already have and seeing the possibilities in what remains to be written.

Rachel Love Nuwer is a science journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, BBC Future, and elsewhere. She is the author of Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking.EmailHigh Country Newsat[emailprotected]or submit aletter to the editor.

See the original post here:

Threatened species and how we might save them - High Country News

Masters of Atlantis, the Charles Portis novel first published in 1985 and now a cult favorite beloved by writers, comedians and roughly every other intellectual ironist on Twitter, tells the story of Lamar Jimmerson, a veteran of World War I (serving first with the A.E.F. Balloon Section and then as a telephone switchboard operator) who, while in France, gets hip to a larger truth.

Like many stumbling through history after the traumas of the Great War, Jimmerson falls into a belief system that makes as much sense as anything else. While others drifted or dove head first into Communism, Fascism, Dadaism, Catholicism, flapperism and/or a happy hodgepodge of them all (give or take pretty much any other worldview lying around), Jimmerson is drawn to theosophism: the gnostic pursuit (and finding!) of esoteric knowledge.

Upon his return to the States, he continues the work of revelation in as prosaic a manner as is humanly imaginable. While his protagonists organization is ostensibly concerned with piercing the veil between what is known and what can be revealed, Portis tells the story in his characteristically bone-dry comedic style, laying bare the humdrum realities of Jimmersons life. As with the post-war theosophical organizations that Portis is parodying (?), Jimmersons Gnomon Temples are lousy with infighting, intra-cult maneuvering and the constant threat of encroachment from competing secret societies. Jimmerson may aspire to be Aldous Huxley or a transcendental influencer in the Freemason mold, but hes essentially a door-to-door salesman.

And not a particularly successful one at that.

*****

When I set out to write about contemporary Mens Groups, the seeming zeitgeist of men worldwide being drawn to transformational societies with names like Man Tribe, ManKind Project, EVRYMAN and Sacred Sons, I thought the Portis-derived framing of these organizations as scammy cult-lites for the lost and credulous would be incisive. But as I talked to founders and members of these groups, and others whod been in mens groups since the 90s or were currently in less codified mens groups (e.g., AA), I thought the framing was less accurate, but still cute. Eventually I came to realize that using Masters of Atlantis as a framing device might still be useful, but that I was, in fact, Jimmerson: a dull-souled door-to-door spiritual nudge, consigned to knocking at the door to revelation without the capacity to ever cross the threshold. Or, worse, endowed with the capacity for busting down the doors of perception and just not really wanting to.

Mens groups as we know them not to be confused with the odious Mens Rights Activism (MRA) and all its crybaby antics had their genesis in the feminist awakenings of the 60s and 70s. These female-exclusive gatherings aimed at self-discovery flourished within the larger framework of the equal rights movement and a broad societal appetite for inward journeying that came into fashion following the perceived failures of the outward-focused body politic: Watergate, Altamont, Vietnam, all the other massive bum-outs that are now conveyed with montage and blarings of Fortunate Son. In response to women getting their shit together and everything else falling apart, male therapists and mystics alike drew from the back-to-land movements, First Peoples traditions and a healthy(ish) dose of Erhard Seminars Training to start laying the groundwork half a century before the term would come into vogue as a cipher for male-only assemblies that practice what is best described as non-toxic masculinity.

While there were Mens Groups throughout the 70s and 80s, it wasnt until the poet and essayist Robert Bly published Iron John: A Book About Men in 1990 that the movement gained real visibility. Bly was born in 1926 and grew up on the family farm in Minnesota. He served in the Navy until 1946, then studied under Archibald MacLeish at Harvard and published his first book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Field, in 1962.

Concurrent with a career of writing evocatively symbolist, Lorca-indebted but accessible Deep Image poetry (and taking the occasional potshot at T.S. Elliot, Pound and the like) and activism against the Vietnam War, Bly, in the 1970s, started to alchemize his worldview with fairytales, mythology, Jungian psychology and how these threads tied into masculinity. While his 1975 book of criticism, Leaping Poetry, is not explicitly about manhood, its rejection of confessional poetry and its call for poets to make associative leaps and return to the (as he called it in an essay from 1969) obscure psychic woods of poets like Blake is indicative of Blys larger dissatisfaction with societys walls closing in. In 1979 he divorced his wife. While its tempting to read some (Jungian? Freudian? xoJane-ian?) unconscious motives in the timing, Bly described his uncoupling thusly: Ruth Counsell entered my life in 1972. Carol Bly and I agreed to divorce in 1979, and Ruth Counsell and I were married the next year. Regardless, it was soon after the divorce that Bly fully branched out into mens work activism.

The vision for this activism was a more progressive version of masculinity based on Jungian archetypes, Grimms fairy tales and the idea that men had lost their way, but not irredeemably so. Seeing untenable circumstances where men were forced to compete unnaturally by market forces and alienated from both fathers and fatherhood by societal warpings of manhood, Iron John argued for Blys mythopoetic (the term for mens activism on the New Age spectrum coined by the professor Shepherd Bliss) solutions to the malaise in which so many men were trapped. If science and technology and an All Mod Con society couldnt (or wouldnt) address it, then Bly in line with his views on poetry argued for a return to a more primal, innate kind of knowledge. Hence the drums, and the hugging. Easy to sneer at, but if chanting has no transformative value, Evangelicals and cheerleaders would be out of a job.

Haters of the time dismissed Iron John as new-age claptrap and loincloth solipsism. But even if the value of the prescription is still debatable, and the question of just what manhood means has gotten foggier, it can be argued that the years have borne out much of Blys diagnoses of (cisgendered) men in crisis. And if Blys mythopoetic framing along with Joseph Campbells concurrent exploration of folklore has seemingly resulted in a nation state of man-children who justify their (and my!) adoration for raunch-coms by calling their buffed-out, neon protagonists our modern myths, thats not really Blys fault.

After its release, Iron John was a NYT bestseller for over a year. At the outset of a deeply cynical decade, one where wallowing in defeat was an aesthetic virtue and blaming others a presidential bo-hunk pastime, Bly put out a call for earnest self-improvement completely at odds with the ironic evasions taking root all around him. As late as 2000, in an interview with Paris Review, Bly said, the most powerful enemies of mens openness are the corporate men. Three or four years ago there were hundreds of posters in New York one spring saying, You dont need to beat a drum or hug a tree to be a man. At the bottom: Dewars Whiskey. The corporate world dares to say to young men, knowing how much young men want to be men, that the only requirement for manhood is to become an alcoholic. Bly correctly saw the enemy not as feminism but instead other men who willfully misunderstood him.

Even if the underpinning of mens groups, then, with all its wolf howls and Jungian hobbitry, was dippy, it wasnt more so than any other organized rowing towards God. In 1989, I was in the YMCA Young Christian Leaders Club. Even though I was Jewish, I ran through the woods, collected beads for swimming across Lake George, praised Jesus out of one side of my mouth and cried when we all sang Sweet Caroline at the end of the week. It made being a 14-year-old boy bearable. As Ben Weasel sang in The Science of Myth, his 1991 song examining these same topics, if it works then it gets the job done. The early 90s truly were a heady time for men with a capacity to disappoint built into their DNA.

While mens groups largely fell off the cultural radar after the mid-90s, the confusion of forces that inspired them did not. The old century ended with the grunting but fatalistic rap-rock misogyny of nu metal spilling into the new. The current transitioned into a mass salivation for firemen that necessarily bordered on necrophilia, and opened wide like an old-fashioned pit of hell with an opioid epidemic that turned all previously held myths of (white male) self-reliance and stoicism on its head. To even touch on video games and online pornography would require a book and then a library.

Suffice to say that, for boys and men and boyish men, the last couple decades were no less complicated than the ones that came before. In the last few years, Manhood in Crisis has been forced to add both incel violence (both online and off, with the very term proudly stolen from an academic exploration of female and non-binary pain) and the seismic reverberations of the Me Too movement to its chart. Because of the old challenges, the new challenges and the old challenges with new names, some men, not content to inhabit their worst instincts, have attempted to rise to them.

Mens groups are abundant. They are worldwide. From the early adopter of Bly and Robert Moores theories (ManKind Project, formed as New Warrior Training in 1984) to Jordan Rahmes Evolved Masculine (which had its first retreat in October of 2019), there is growing consciousness about mens roles in society, their inner lives (or lack thereof) and the lives of their loved ones. Every few months, theres a new article, with GQ and The Guardian (and GQ again) being notable examples. A websearch for mens groups brings up dozens of organizations (and notably few MRA groups). (And, at the risk of engaging in unhealthy male oneupmanship, I will note that this piece was assigned a couple months before that last GQ essay, which interviews some of the same people, appeared. Just, in a wolfen growl, saying.)

Over the last couple months, I spoke to various mens group founders: Adam Jackson of Sacred Sons, Lucas Krump and Owen Marcus of EVRYMAN, Jordan Rahme of Evolved Masculine, Alexander Hill of Man Tribe. I spoke to members of ManKind Project and EVRYMAN who have run their own offshoots for the last couple years. And I spoke to a friend of my mom who has been in mens groups, all untitled, since the early 90s.

There were conspicuous differences between the men with whom I spoke. The friend of my mom, despite having been in groups since the movements initial heyday, was the most anomalous, essentially seeing his groups as an escape from country-life isolation and an alternative to going to a bar. But among the other men, their differences were ones contained within the larger mission of mens work, a wide range of body types, classes, backgrounds and specific early traumas. Adam Jackson was notably the only Black man among them (diversity of membership is an issue that mens groups have historically struggled with). But the common threads in history were notable as well. Krump and Jackson both came out of a Midwest hardcore/straight-edge scene, with Jackson having been the singer of Twelve Tribes, who put out a number of reasonably hella sick metalcore albums on Eulogy Recodings and Ferret Music in the late 90s/early aughts. At least half the men came from deeply Christian families. Most either had or previously had careers in the professional class: tutoring, finance, medicine, real estate. Most had been, by societys standards, successful in both their careers and sex life (if, also notably, not their love lives). And all had events in their lives that revealed just how unhappy they had been, and that set them on a different path.

Where the groups diverge is dependent on what parts of the original mens movement societies they favor: the talking circle or the drum circle.

Michael Eugene Burdick

These pivotal events ranged from those that built over time failed relationships or addiction to events that happened at once, like the losing of a major client, a divorce or, in Alexander Hills case, a literal cardiac event. At 27, working in real estate and generally cruising along in life, he had an arterial fibrillation. I blacked out in the middle of a workout at Equinox Grand Central and came out of my body, he told me. Had an experience of direct spirituality, separating the body and the spirit. And then a couple of minutes later, I came back and then I started to understand a lot of things about life that I was completely blocked from before.

While not all of the men had their severance of spirit and body illustrated so dramatically, they all shared a realization of something vital being grievously absent. In Lucas Krumps case, he had an anxious breakdown in Singapore a month after his father died, close enough to a cardiac event that he also needed to be hospitalized. As opposed to Hills immediate pursuit of gnosis, Krump, while acknowledging the attack as a sign of a disconnect between the head and the heart, continued his unhappy wanderings until I had this epiphany at 37, where I like broke up with my girlfriend after like doing lots of drugs in Montauk. Which led him from therapy to a 12-step to EVRYMAN. Some roads to Damascus are longer than others.

As with the men, the groups theyre part of bear resemblances. They all believe in certain root causes: that, as Krump succinctly puts it, When we moved out of the fields and into the factories, when this industrial complex was created, put men in the workforce, created a hierarchy, motivated us, not necessarily to collaborate, but to achieve. And the result of that is we sort of disregarded our natural tendency to have connection and community. And then we started doing alone, and dude, guys arent good on their own. They all believe that the answer to mans existential disconnect lies among other things in a rigorous honesty, the importance of men holding each other up but also holding each other in account. They believe in spaces where men can speak freely about their pain and anxiety, and cry and hug and scream without shame. They all share the goal of saving men, both from themselves and the expectations society puts on them. They all believe that what is absent in a man is part and parcel of what is absent in culture. They all derive these beliefs from both Robert Blys ideas and their own lived experiences. As would be expected from men whose lived experiences often at least overlapped with business and tech, theyre all really big on keynote speakers.

Where the groups diverge, the previously alluded to among other things, is dependent on what parts of the original mens movement societies they favor: the talking circle or the drum circle (with the important caveat that there are elements of both in all mens groups). On one end of the spectrum is EVRYMAN, focused more on a pragmatic physiological healing, via a form of talk therapy, albeit one no less arduous for its absence of sweatlodges. On the other end is Sacred Sons, which as the name strongly implies, takes Robert Blys drawing from indigenous ceremony to its logical (with no ironic usage of the word intended) conclusion. When I (delicately) asked Adam Jackson about Sacred Sons more LARP-ish aspects the ponchos, the staffs, etc. he took it in stride. When were in the desert we wear ponchos, because it gets cold and we have really cool looking ponchos, he says, laughing. Sometimes those photos look the most epic because were in the desert and we have a professional photographer. We put that forward also as an invitation. Because theres a lot of men who dont want to go sit in some tiled-room office space and sit in a circle and then Does that evoke you to share your deepest fears? To sit in a fucking office building with guys in button-ups? Ill just tell you: it doesnt. But when theres a guy called Bear Heart, who has a big red beard and who looks like Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones and hes holding a staff and he tells you, I got you this weekend and youre with me? You really fucking believe it.

All the founders talked of membership expanding at wildfire rates, and the members spoke of individual lives either transformed or healthily maintained through the groups they were part of. I was privy to a Man Tribe group zoom call where easily a dozen men called in from lockdowns all over, ranging from dimly lit basements in England to beach-swelled backyards in California to men in the Midwest existing within that manliest of geographies: their cars on the open road (or if not open, at least in the spacial drift of running errands). All the men were hungry for connection, and it was a need palpably different from mere loneliness (though loneliness sure as shit came up). As one man, who I wont describe but to say that I no longer subscribe to that easy contempt for men whose avi is them driving in sunglasses, said; It feels like its me against the world. And the world is really strong.

Obviously the crushing weight of existence is not a situation exclusive to those who identify as boys. (From what Ive read, the hassle is fairly universal.) But acknowledging the universality of suffering, individual men with certain shared characteristics (identifying as men) shouldnt be blamed for seeking other men with whom to share, and in sharing, hopefully render diffuse a suffering that either is, or even just feels specific to their make and model. As Man Tribe sells itself: The days of the lone wolf are over.

While watching these recorded Zoom conferences, I felt (besides like a voyeuristic creep) an empathy that shifted between recognition and alienation. Ive been in therapy for a couple years, and should have gone sooner. I wont say why I go to therapy because its not interesting. Hence the empathy. My issues are, I imagine, shared by anyone with parents, a history or a landlord. And its these universal, everyday issues being a decent partner and son, making friends on the schoolyard that are as much the focus of mens group work as dealing with larger societal crises. So these mens discomfort in their own skin and in the world touched a chord. And I appreciated their bravery and self-awareness that attends seeking outside help.

Now, the idea of men as a pack of wolves doesnt exactly allay fears of toxic masculinity. But I know what Man Tribe means: less a pack of wolves that hunt and tear apart their prey, and more a pack of wolves that communally howl and then go home to their loved ones a somewhat less self-loathing, non communicative prick.

As to any alienation I may have felt watching men striving to better themselves, there lies a question. What, exactly, is my fucking problem? Is it fear? Snobbery? Laziness? The same solipsistic borderline libertarianism that makes me roll my eyes at talks of community in punk spaces? An innate misandry akin to being a pick-me girl in reverse? The most likely answer and thus bearing repeating: Fear? Of embarrassment? Or weakness? Or of just being exposed as a phony, an emotional dilettante who uses the language of trauma to seem more interesting? All good guesses, and who knows! Seems like something Id want to figure out. And look at that; half my open tabs are men willing and talk it out. A buffet of offered help. While all the men I spoke to took pains to make clear that they were not therapists, my inbox has been lousy with therapeutic opportunities. All I had/have to do is be open to them. And pay the membership fees, ranging from the low to high hundreds. But I have government COVID cheese saved up and Im harding spending money in bars. Alexander Hill even floated an offer of bartering membership for a little copy work. I had and have no excuse.

While the question of taking part in these call-ins was wrestled with, the virus lockdown spared me the journalistic imperative of taking part in person. Well, I shouldnt say spared. The aspect of joining intrigued me more than just talking. Other writers, after taking their own agonized pains to make clear that this wasnt their kind of thing gamely went to the desert with Sacred Sons or the struggle-session circle with EVRYMAN and emerged transformed, or at least bound to a tried-and-true narrative arc (mens groups are not the only biz invested in archetypes). While admittedly I would be as terrified of embarrassment in person as I was online (outside of a hardcore show, physical proximity to strangers is not high on my list of favorites and even at hardcore shows, Im usually standing in the back with my arms crossed), I did and do like the idea of joining public-but-with-many-of-the-trappings-of-a-secret society. Which, even if the framing is in many ways inaccurate or unkind, brings us back to the theosophists.

The question of spiritualism in mens groups is complicated. Groups like EVRYMAN are adamantly agnostic and groups like Sacred Son unashamedly (if also with a dash of humor) count self-described wizards amongst their leadership. But regardless of the actual religiosity of the individual organization, the jargon (holding place for each other, speaking intention into reality) is ritualistic, and no less mystical for its origins in therapeutic language. The measure between the therapeutic and the quasi-mystical varied. While EVRYMANs founders accentuate the differences between them and the stereotype of men running around with staffs, Sacred Sons visibly embrace the staffs (while insisting on their practical use), and Man Tribe kind of splits the difference: a fair amount of juju, but no more than believing bottled vitamins work. The fact that all the founders I spoke to held mens works shamanistic origins in a baseline regard helps the movement appear (to me) as an admirably spiritual project (full disclosure: While I dont believe in astrology or Tarot, I do believe in God and am open to the existence of spirits, jinn, etc.). Maybe less than the gnostic sects of the turn of the 20th Century, but at least as much as AA or your average black metal concert.

The men I spoke withs varying degrees of respect for the somewhat Hyborian tendencies of Robert Bly et al. gives the movement an amiably schismatic vibe. (Though, to be clear, the differences expressed to me were far from being as schismatic as the lawsuit that heavy-splintered the original Theosophical Society in the wake of Helena Blavaskys death.) When any of the founders, briefly and with a fair amount of prodding on my end, spoke candidly about other groups methods at all, they were careful to praise in general and not criticize in particular and then do a variation of You know I love her shes one of my best friends. But All of which is understandable. These are men who care deeply about saving other men, and they believe their truth has a chance of doing that. Between that reasoning and my being eager to feel the reverberations of esoteric history, I found what little shit talk I could conjure extremely endearing. To be honest, if the founders of organizations attempting to break patterns of violence and despair that have been dominant for generations upon generations thought all solutions were equal and didnt think their methods were the best, Id find their whole project suspect. Without at least a smidgen of religion, this could all just be fantasy football with more crying. (Or less. Ive never actually played fantasy football.)

While making comparisons to transcendental temples of yore, and accepting that most dont see those temples with the same affection that I do, I need to make clear that none of the men I spoke to seemed like scammers. I liked each and every one of them, found their pricing far less exorbitant than a spa getaway, and perhaps most importantly, didnt feel as though any of the men were overselling what their organizations might offer. Whether out of honesty or liability, they made clear that mens work was not a substitute for therapy or medication (though opinions on those things varied, too), easily copped to and engaged with concerns of cultishness, and uniformly talked of their work as a calling to serve. Like nurses in wartime. In a longish life of discerning phonies from real ones, I am currently batting .500, which makes me a major league level judge of character. For whatever it might be worth, all seemed on the up-and-up. (Bearing in mind that I have not touched a baseball bat, in a sports capacity, in over three decades.)

Conversely, the comparison between the mens movement and societies dedicated to improvement through metaphysics is, when made without malice or mockery, apt. I dont subscribe to any new age/climate denialist/Trumpian flattening of belief, where postmodern relativism is weaponized by evangelicals and flakes to the point where one can say with a straight face, science is just a religion. But I do subscribe to the en vogue idea that speaking an intention into existence is as good a definition of magic as any. More academically, Radcliffe G. Edmonds, in Drawing Down the Moon, defines magic, in part, as a discourse pertaining to non-normative ritualized activity. There are few things less normative in our culture than trying to break free from internalized misogyny and self-destructive patterns of masculinity. Basically, if youre going to engage in alchemical transmutations of the male psyche a series of rituals and repeated phrases (like holding space) with the specific goal of holistic transformation of body and soul while constantly pointing out that not everyone on staff is a licensed therapist, I can be forgiven for calling you a wizard. And if a stultifying and deadly pandemic has rendered nearly everything in a shade of two-decades-late millennialist epoch, a kind of latent, Atlantean Y2K panic, so much the better for a grand awakening.

Whether the men-seeking-self-transformation numbers are exactly there (which is difficult to determine, since the only searchable numbers come from the websites of the mens groups or articles quoting them) or instead writers at GQ and The Guardian are simply eager to provide a counter-narrative to incel spotlight-hogging, its clear that something real is going on. While nearly every man I spoke to talked of the Me Too movement as both a necessary reckoning and a catalyst, they all also made clear that the catalysts were manifold, as much personal as societal, and that what is important is less the naming of the zeitgeist and its exact causes than the fact that a zeitgeist is occurring.

Unlike other reporters who came to mens work with cynical veneers bespoke-built to crumble in the face of revelation and narrative satisfaction, I came to the zeitgeist with an open heart. I love a good zeitgeist, was raised to be openly affectionate with my fellow man (my dad loves his fellow man so much that he married one), am open to therapy and wizardry in equal measure, and, as with all these men, emotionally speaking, I have a lot on my plate. Im worried about work. Im worried about growing old and weak. Im worried about being weak now. Im worried about my social standing. Im worried about starting a family of my own. I am grieving my mothers death, and worrying about how I am or am not processing it. I have some fucked bad material from my past that I absolutely have not dealt with.

And, with all this, I have all these kind and thoughtful men, all of whom I liked immensely, offering to help. Without shame. Without judgment. In this day and age, when selfishness is held as high virtue and the facile is worshiped by leaders and servants alike, there are men offering, blessedly devoid of macho bullying or ironic posturing, comradery and communion. And the only response that I can give meant truly, though not without misgivings, from the bottom of my soul is that I dont think I really feel like it.

I have not a single bad thing to say about mens groups. Well, OK, I think a lot of them kind of idolize the notion of embracing the feminine to a point that, even setting aside questions of gender essentialism, borders on fetishization. But besides that, Im on board. All this ambitious striving towards improvement, this searching for self-awareness, this brave attempting to breach broken tradition and recapture fire from the mountain: I dig it. I also think guys should have lives independent from work and bars. Even the prosaic aspects of mens group goals appeal. I think its noble.

But, end of day, I dont want to be exposed. I like my shell. It protects me from the world. I believe that life is inherently painful and that I deserve to suffer as much as anyone. Not a lot, but a little. Just enough to keep me honest. Or at least a likeable enough liar that writing remains viable while the bars are still closed. Like Lamar Jimmerson, I remain irrevocably bound to a life that stops short of the veil. (Also, while were here, I read Masters of Atlantis twice, just to see what everyone else finds so funny, and I just dont get it.) Point being: I strongly suggest that, if youre a self-identifying man in crisis, you check these mens societies out. Theres so much to be said for, metaphorically or literally, wrestling with manhood. Positive, raw possibility can and should be embraced. The benefits from said grappling might be incalculable. I both hope that anyone who takes part in the project finds transcendence or at least a kind of peace, and, hedging my bets, I do hope the invitation to transcendence and/or peace remains open. But for now, for myself, whether its with the everyday stress caused by everyday hassles, memories of a bad sexual experience inflicted upon me by a couple truckers outside Chicago when I was 19, or with a beefcake sorcerer in waist-length dreads in the desert, at this transformative epochal juncture of these transformative epochal times, I aint wrestling with shit.

Read this article:

Are Men's-Only Support Groups the Antidote to Toxic Masculinity? - InsideHook

If you want proof of how decisively the climate zeitgeist has begun to shift, you could look to Washington and the transition between the Trump and Biden eras.

But you could also look further west, to Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, which routinely tops the rankings of Americas best public universities. Its a massive institution whose faculty and graduates have collected scores of Nobel, Pulitzer and MacArthur prizes; somewhere on the surface of the moon theres a plaque marking its first extraterrestrial alumni chapter, because all the astronauts on Apollo 15 had studied there. It couldnt be more middle-American, with deep ties to, among other things, the states world-leading automotive industry.

And so, in 2015, it came as no great shock when the universitys president, Mark Schlissel, rejected student calls for divestment from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuels enable us to operate the university, to conduct research and to provide patient care, he said. At this moment, there is no viable alternative to fossil fuels at the necessary scale. In addition, most of the same companies that extract or use fossil fuels are also investing heavily in a transition to natural gas or renewables, in response to market forces and regulatory activity. I do not believe that a persuasive argument has been made that divestment by the U-M will speed up the necessary transition from coal to renewable or less polluting sources of energy.

His statement was so strong that the Independent Petroleum Producers of America have featured it ever since on the front page of their anti-divestment website.

But students never gave up pushing for change, and to the universitys great credit it kept lines of dialogue open (including with me; I offered my take earlier this year in a meeting with university officials). And this week it announced that it was divesting from fossil fuels not only that, but its committed to achieving net-zero emissions across our entire endowment by 2050; and shifting our natural resources investment focus toward renewable energy investments with an attractive risk-adjusted return profile. The universitys regents voted on Thursday afternoon in favor of $140m in innovative new investments we have been working on related to renewable energy and sustainable energy infrastructure. Taken together, university officials say, we believe these steps are unprecedented among American higher education institutions.

Its not that they brought in new officials at UMichigan; its that the world shifted. Heres how that same Mark Schlissel, still the universitys president, explained it to me: Whats changed for me is my growing appreciation of the long-term financial risks to the university, including our investment portfolio, of the inevitable and necessary transition to a low-carbon economy.

Hes watched as flood after firestorm has racked the country; hes watched as the Biden administration has come to power promising swift climate action; hes watched as the youth climate movement has grown to the point where this is the issue that his potential students care about more than any other; hes watched as the states most important company, General Motors, announced a move to end the internal combustion engine by 2035. Hes watched as his peers at the University of California the other candidate for Americas greatest public higher education system divested, not to mention Oxford, Cambridge, and so many others. And it all sunk in.

And of course, above all, student campaigners never wavered. They werent discouraged by the initial no they redoubled efforts, to the point where 10 were arrested during a 2019 sit-in.

Fossil fuel assets will diminish in value, he told me on Thursday, perhaps more quickly than many realize. In addition, to prevent further degradation in our environment, not just fossil fuel companies, but at some point all businesses will be subject to regulations that limit their direct and indirect release of greenhouse gases. Companies that have good plans in place to become carbon neutral will be less risky investments during the energy transition.

The only perspective that matters now is long-term the future of the planet is at stake and so the only actions that matter are short-term

Bottom line: We have to take a long-term perspective on behalf of the university.

Happily, student campaigners are not fully satisfied with the universitys announcement and will fight on: We celebrate this as a hard-won victory, as a crucial step toward toppling the fossil fuel industry, putting to action the kind of urgent harm reduction necessary to protect ourselves from the worst impacts of the climate crisis and move towards climate justice, they said in a press release on Thursday. However, this announcement must serve as a catapult for U-M and other institutions to do more to not only divest from fossil fuels more completely, but divest from all unethical industries and reinvest in a rapid, just transition and community resilience.

And theyre right, of course theyre really taking the long-term perspective, really focusing on the true bottom line. The same bottom line that we need corporate chieftains, bank presidents and politicians taking. The only perspective that matters now is long-term the future of the planet is at stake and so the only actions that matter are short-term. In this case, that means immediate divestment, in an effort to break the power of the fossil fuel industry that still fights for delay. Michigan has made a courageous call it did what wise people are supposed to do, and re-evaluated as new facts presented themselves. The world is changing, and so must we all.

See the article here:

The University of Michigan divesting from fossil fuels shows that change is here - The Guardian