Filmmaker Jon M. Chu has been instrumental in bringing not one, but two bundles of joy this month.

The first got here on November ninth, when the Palo Alto-born filmmaker and his wife Kristin Hodge welcomed daughter Stevie Sky to their enchanted kingdom; They now have 4 children.

The completely satisfied event coincided with the glittering Los Angeles premiere of certainly one of the most important movies of 2024, Chu's recent theatrical version of the beloved Broadway maroon “Wicked.”

When asked if welcoming a brand new daughter and directing certainly one of the most important Christmas movies means he's not getting much sleep in the meanwhile, the affable Chu jokes.

“I haven’t slept in about three years,” he said. “My wife is an angel. So life is full now and my heart is full. So they’re just blessings.”

Chu's Part 1 of “Wicked” (Part II is scheduled for release in November 2025) lasts so long as your complete stage production, but doesn't feel prefer it, and includes a diverse forged that features Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the Outcasts, The Wicked Witch of the West is within the making, and pop star Ariana Grande is playing good Glinda (or Ga-linda, as she's quick to indicate). The two annoy one another as unlikely roommates at Shiz University's women's college, Cage Hall. The management lies with the headmistress Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). “Bridgerton” heartthrob Jonathan Bailey also plays the dashing Prince Fiyero Tigelaar, who captivates each of them.

Chu directed the phenomenally successful “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018 and later the swinging musical “In the Heights.” The latter, which was released in cinemas after the COVID-19 crisis, failed to attain the hoped-for box office success. “Wicked” experienced turbulence by itself flight to the large screen when the writers' strike halted production just before filming of the breathtaking number “Defying Gravity” that closes this film. Erivo sat on that song for six months after which belted it out, Chu said.

Chu all the time loved musicals and fell in love on the 2003 world premiere of “Wicked” on the Curran Theater in San Francisco. The 45-year-old fondly remembers coming to San Francisco together with his family to see ballet, opera and various musical productions. Chu's parents are beloved South Bay icons: Lawrence and Ruth Chu and run the famous Los Altos restaurant Chef Chu's.

Chu was keen about “Wicked” from the beginning.

“I feel very fortunate to have the purest patient-zero experience,” he recalls. “I didn't know what I was going to see, but I still remember being blown away by being mesmerized by the bubble, the little reference to the movie (The Wizard of Oz) really touching me has. ”

That's why it's somewhat mind-boggling for Chu, who also directed two “Step Up” dance movies, “GI Joe: Retaliation,” “Jem and the Holograms” and more, that he's been directing some film versions in 20 years , after seeing the musical with the family.

“It feels like fate,” he says.

His love of musicals was fostered while attending school within the South Bay.

“Our school (Pinewood in Los Altos) was very interested in theater,” he said. “I played Oliver. I was obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera. I had the pop-up book. I had the beach towel. I had the porcelain mask. I loved Joseph and the Fantastic Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

Chu's interest in filmmaking emerged within the mid-to-late Nineties with the appearance of digital video. A 13-14 yr old child found it most difficult to access the equipment.

The generosity of the regulars at his parents' restaurant got here to the rescue.

“People would come into the restaurant and give my dad equipment for me because they knew I was into video,” he remembers. “I was in the right place at the right moment and at the right time in a restaurant that is essentially a house of stories because everyone tells stories at all times.”

Having the camera in your hand proved to be a game-changer.

“I was the youngest of five, people kind of ignore you,” he said. “But with a camera in my hands, everyone was paying attention. They let me sit with them. Or they wanted to see what I was photographing. And looking into that lens was like putting on a mask. And the way they look at you is different. Maybe I've become addicted to it. … It took me a while to understand the power behind it.”

Chu remembers his immigrant parents singing songs from the 1939 original “The Wizard of Oz” in the home. The American dream “was very real in our household,” he said.

But when he left the Bay Area and started college, he found he “awakened to a different reality.” The stage musical “Wicked” brought his feelings to the forefront.

“Suddenly I walk into a store and people treat me differently,” he remembers. “I kind of grappled with the question: Is this how the world is? And this musical turned that idea of ​​the fairy tale on its head and said…in a very serious way, who decided what a villain should look like, who decided what a hero should look like.”

This stayed with him throughout the entire process of making the film. One of the most difficult aspects was casting the two female leads.

Erivo wowed her with her performance even when she walked in wearing jeans for the first time.

However, Chu was reluctant when he heard Grande was interested.

“I was like no way. Ariana Grande can't do that. No way.” But he agreed to see her.

“She comes in and is the most interesting person in the room,” he recalls. But he still wasn't entirely convinced she was right for the role. When he called back, he asked if she could “take off the Ariana Grande stuff.”

“She completely changed and was ready to go there,” he said. After a 3rd audition, she got the role.

“Wicked” Part II will probably be released on November 21, 2025, but Chu isn’t relaxing until then. He is developing a movie version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and is working on an animated musical by Dr. Seuss' “Oh, the Places You'll Go!” And then there's the musical “Crazy Rich Asians,” a possible sequel in development to this huge box office hit. And, oops, he was also hired to direct Britney Spears' memoir.

It could thoroughly turn into much more entertainment fun, and Chu is happy about it.

“Just no more kids,” he said, laughing.

Originally published: November 21, 2024 at 11:02 am PST

One of the more surprising developments in recent American politics has been the backlash against free trade.

Just a decade ago Democrats and Republicans alike In general he supported free trade. But with the 2024 presidential election just days away, each are Republicans Donald Trump and democrat Kamala Harris rely heavily on protectionism. The Trump campaign specifically is promoting tariffs that may be difficult to assume got here from a Republican presidential candidate only a decade ago.

This recent post-neoliberal moment could appear confusing. But it harkens back to the economic policies – and political parties – of the nation's founding and offers clues to our divided present.

Back within the late 18th century, founding father Alexander Hamilton helped introduce a series of policies aimed toward boosting U.S. industry and inspiring economic development and innovation.

This agreement, which laid the inspiration for what was referred to as “American system“was created partly as a counterweight to British ideas about free trade. And the American system quickly became a recognized economic policy as young America developed its industrial strength.

Hamilton's economic nationalism

In the early years of the republic, the USA didn’t pursue any major trade policy in any respect.

When the United States officially gained independence in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the Articles of Confederation — the country's first structure — severely limited the federal government's powers, including its ability to manage foreign trade.

These restrictions reflected the truth of 13 very different states, more united against the British – and their trade controls – than supporting a standard vision of economic development.

Economic conditions inside this loosely connected nation quickly deteriorated. A worsening economic crisisSoon there was rising debt, inflation, low cost British manufactured goods and increasing bankruptcy. These modified framework conditions led to demands for a brand new national economic policy.

This economic burden was a significant factor that led to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1789. The structure gave the federal government the chance to manage trade with foreign countries and to levy taxes for the primary time. Both were privileges once reserved exclusively for sovereign American states.

The “Second American Revolution”

A strengthened American Congress made the passage of a national tariff law one among its first tasks. When it was Ratified in 1789a national import tax replaced the tariffs previously imposed by the states. Proponents called it “the Second American Revolution,” which passed in its current form on July 4, 1789, perhaps illustrating the magnitude of this alteration. In fact, it helped create a brand new concept of the American political and financial system with a much stronger role for the state in economic affairs.

Tariffs were imposed on 30 goods, including hemp and textiles. Perhaps the tariff law can also be a harbinger of trade policy in a future era Tasks set of 12.5% ​​on goods imported from China and India.

The essential architect of this recent industrial policy was Hamilton, who published his seminal work on economic policy. Report on manufacturersin 1791. Hamilton's ideas were based on transforming a predominantly agricultural nation into one characterised, at the very least partially, by growing and diversified industry.

Although often missed, Hamilton's Report on Manufactures also contained a bigger vision – it sought to encourage the event of American ingenuity and ingenuity as a type of economic policy and advocated for development “The Genius of the People” in order that “the prosperity of a nation can be promoted”.

To foster this spirit of national enterprise, Hamilton called for encouraging technological progress, subsidizing research, attracting migrants, supporting a brand new economic system, and establishing a patent system to encourage inventions. Such policies were in some ways an extension of previous policies enshrined in Section 8 the structure.

Tariffs and their dissatisfaction

As tariffs continued to be imposed within the a long time following Hamilton's plan, policymakers became increasingly protectionist with the intention to more directly support American industry. They imposed tariffs to insulate growing American industries from foreign competition, particularly from Britain

At the start of the nineteenth century, this growing protectionist movement coalesced the powerful Kentucky legislator Henry Clay and his Whig Party. Clay, who mentioned the American system by name for the primary timeand his allies were instrumental in raising average national tariff rates to twenty% in 1816.

When a crisis occurred in the course of the crisis Panic of 1819What followed was a collapse in cotton prices, tightening lending, widespread foreclosures and rising unemployment. In response, Clay and his allies raised tariffs again. to 50% in 1828.

The increasing use of tariffs sparked strong reactions from some members of the country's agrarian and slave-owning classes, who opposed the perceived dominance of the North and a robust federal government. A distinguished Southern critic of the time described the 1828 tariff as “Tariff of abominations.”

In fact, resistance to elements of the American system was one among the important thing political goals of early Democratic politicians like Andrew Jackson, and struggles over the system presaged later sub-struggles that led to the Civil War.

As an industrial revolution took hold of American society within the a long time that followed, tariffs remained a cornerstone of U.S. economic policy. By the late 1850s, tariffs had been integrated into the policies of the newly formed Republican Party and had turn into a crucial a part of Abraham Lincoln's economic platform.

Towards the top of the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party was changing, increasingly supported by a robust agrarian populist movement. still largely against the tariff systemon the grounds that it advantages powerful industrialists on the expense of the working class while offering little to combat the economic crisis.

The collapse of the American system – and why it matters today

Between 1861 and 1933, tariffs were an ordinary tool of U.S. economic policy. During this era, tariffs on dutiable goods often averaged 40 to 50%, particularly within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Until the deepening of the Great Depression within the Thirties, US politicians didn’t seriously query tariffs as a form of business policy.

After the Second World War, the USA decidedly turned away from tariffs. The The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was widely blamed for deepening the Great Depression and contributing to the international conflicts of the Thirties and Forties, effectively ending the protectionist era of U.S. industrial history.

The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 gave policymakers a novel tool—monetary policy—to take care of economic downturns. The Keynesian Revolution represented one other policy response that governments should consider in times of economic crisis: spending as a fiscal stimulus to create jobs and income.

Finally, as postwar American policy favored open global trade, American economic policy pursued more direct mechanisms to advertise national innovation and entrepreneurship—effectively dismantling policies that had once trusted activist trade interventions. The abolition of tariffs marked one among America's great periods of economic growth and innovation.

In 2024, the Republican platform has in some ways returned to its roots by offering tariffs as a central economic strategy. Likewise, the Democratic platform, with its skepticism of concentrated corporate power, coupled with a renewed concentrate on financial support for small business and entrepreneurship, reflects its own previous generation.

As Americans go to the polls, it's value asking how current economic proposals, deeply rooted within the old American system, might help shape economic policy of the longer term.

Just because the uproar broke out over the summer over Donald Trump calling his potential rival.Fucking terrible” And “Cackling co-pilot Kamala Harris” was obviously beginning to wear off latest round of attacks The opinions of Trump and other Republicans became clear after their first US presidential debate.

The goal was – once more – to make Kamala Harris laugh.

Three days after the controversy, for instance Bruce Zuchowskian Ohio sheriff, posted on his Facebook account that Harris was a “laughing hyena.” Zuchowski was subsequently prohibited from providing election security during in-person voting.

Conservative media commentators also expressed their displeasure, calling Harris' laugh “contemptuous“”exaggerated” And “inappropriate.”

This isn't surprising, considering Harris' laugh was clearly on display throughout much of the nationally televised debate — and, worse, Trump was clearly the article of her relentless mockery.

Lots has already been written about it Sexism and racism behind Trump's disdain for Harris' laugh.

But in a single little known, essay from 1985 called “An extravaganza of laughter“, celebrated American author Ralph Ellison provided a pointy evaluation of the subversive power of black laughter in Thirties America.

Ellison's essay, published within the 1986 collection “Going to the Territory,” still provides useful historical racial context to clarify Trump's hostility toward Harris. Among the stories Ellison tells is that this: Black people once needed to stick their heads in a barrel to laugh because their laughter unsettled white Southerners.

The dangers of black laughter

He is best known for his 1952 novel “Invisible man“Ellison was one in every of America's foremost social critics, tackling racism and white supremacy by telling stories of the alienation of on a regular basis Black people trying to find identity in a nation that viewed them as inferior.

In “An Extravagance of Laughter,” Ellison began with an anecdote about attending a theatrical adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's novel “Tobacco Street” in New York City in 1936. The popular play detailed the lives of destitute white sharecroppers through the Great Depression. Among other things, sharecroppers feared that they might lose their social status in the event that they fell below the lower rung reserved for blacks in America.

While laughing uncontrollably In a comical scene within the play, concerning the antics of poor white Georgia farmers, Ellison realized the stir he was causing amongst a predominantly white audience.

For many white Americans, black laughter was “a special type of insanity suffered exclusively by Negroes who, given their social status and former situation of servitude, were assumed to have had absolutely nothing of their day by day experience that would possibly encourage rational laughter “Ellison explains.

From Ellison's perspective, his laughter through the play was interpreted as confirmation of the black buffoon stereotype.

As he described it, the white spectators “caught fire and began to howl and cheer at the shameful loss of control exhibited by a black man.”

Later within the essay, Ellison mocks the usage of “laughter barrels” in Southern cities, which he described as “huge whitewashed barrels marked FOR COLORED” and into which any Negro who felt amusing was forced to stay his loud head inside . ”

The intent to suppress black laughter was pro bono publico, or for the common good, Ellison explained.

Stories about using barrels for blocking insulting black laughter were from the general public well studied by scientists they usually are believed to be the origin of the expression “Barrel full of snickers.”

While the thought of ​​barrels could appear completely ridiculous, Ellison understood it as an absurd technique to curb a not-so-absurd fear in post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow white America, when segregation was legal.

Black individuals who laugh “have turned the world upside down and upside down,” he explained.

And in doing so, Ellison wrote, “black laughter inverted (and undermined) tradition, and so the preordained and cherished pattern of race relations in the South was torn apart.”

In a 1983 letter to mark Caldwell's birthday, Ellison wrote thanked the creator – “By artistically sanctioning a source of comedy that I had to deny for self-protective reasons, you freed me from three tumultuous years of self-restraint.”

Flip the script on who gets to laugh

The first time Trump became the topic of black laughter was through the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011, at which he made a public and public appearance roasted mercilessly from a glad Barack Obama. The experience appeared to humiliate and infuriate Trump, and is widely seen as doing so by political pundits Trigger for Trump's entry into the 2016 presidential election.

It is due to this fact not surprising that his election campaign is resurgent Rhetoric that many consider racist to undermine public confidence in Harris' suitability for office.

During the Trump debate accused multiple times Harris accuses him of “destroying the fabric of our country” together with his “crazy” policies. Trump had previously “silly as a stone“ and “a radical leftist lunatic.”

These are a reminder of the long and shameful history of racist characterization of black Americans as a threat to society. These include depictions of unruly, newly emancipated black men holding public office in DW Griffith's film “1915.”The Birth of a Nation“ about Trump’s public call for the death penalty for the so-called black and Hispanic teenagers Central Park Five in a full-page New York Times ad in 1989.

In this case, the teenagers were falsely accused of brutally attacking a white New York jogger. They spent years in prison before being exonerated by DNA and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer.

America's New Race and Gender Norms

Trump's mockery of Harris' laugh has not neutralized her popularity.

Harris is widely regarded hailed by political commentators because the winner of the controversy, and the lasting impression is of a scowling Trump who continually fails to place an end to Harris' cheerful expressions of incredulity.

Nearly a century has passed since Ellison's disturbing laugh took place in a New York theater in 1936. During this time, each Obama and Harris have reordered traditional gender and racial norms by deploying black laughter within the very public theater of US presidential politics.

I’m wondering what my father, a butcher and die-hard trade unionist, would think concerning the political situation in our country. Is it “Morning in America“, as Ronald Reagan exclaimed? “American Carnage“, as Donald Trump announced? Or “we have nothing to fear except fear itself”, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it?

Unions in the car, steel, rubber and other industries played a serious role in FDR's re-election in 1936. According to a poster made during his term: Roosevelt said“If I worked in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union.” Whether he was serious or not, Labour historian I even have long observed that the Democratic Party and unions stuck together at the moment How Peanut butter and jelly.

The unions gave their preferred political party their Votes, time and cash – by volunteering to carry up signs on Election Day, go door-to-door for candidates, and man telephone switchboards to call potential voters. And Democrats pushed for measures supported by unions, similar to the introduction of a minimum wage, the creation of the Social security system and introduction of Federal supervision of union elections.

“That is the job of the unions”

My father, Albert Forrant Jr., benefited from this coalition and took part in it. He planted trees within the Civilian Conservation Corpsa New Deal program for young those who offered jobs and a small wage within the late Nineteen Thirties. After my father returned from World War II, he and my mother bought the family home I grew up in with a Mortgage secured by the federal governmentHe then worked for 40 years as a butcher for a big grocery chain.

Dad often took me to union meetings of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America and sometimes talked in the course of the automobile ride concerning the importance of sticking together.

“That’s the job of the unions,” he explained to me. “We help each other.”

Both sides took this marriage as a right until Southern Democrats, fearing that unions would organize black employees throughout the South, joined their pro-business Republican colleagues in Congress and opposed employee-friendly lawsThis led to the Passing of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The law cut union spending on elections, limited the effectiveness of strikes, and tightened organizing rules.

Ultimately, Union membership declinedwhich further soured relations. Fewer unionized households meant less influence, especially in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which were once the centers of powerful unions. Today, just one in ten U.S. employees is a member of a union.

Confusion in politics

I missed out on practical political instruction in my youth.

Later in life, I worked in a metal factory in western Massachusetts and it was there that I had a light-weight bulb moment. I began as a machinist after which became a sales representative for my union. Many of the 1,000 employees within the factory jogged my memory of my father: They worked hard, focused on supporting their families, were scrupulously fair and lived on their paychecks to make ends meet. Their lives exemplified the quiet dignity that comes with exertions.

If my father were alive today, I don't think he would give you the chance to grasp that in some professions nearly half of the union members supported Republican presidential candidates. within the last elections. Unions are a crucial voting bloc that doesn’t necessarily vote based solely on economic self-interest, nor do they simply vote the way in which union leadership tells them to. In other words, anyone who takes employees' votes as a right has failed.

So why are the political beliefs of many employees so confused?

I take into consideration this query rather a lot, especially as Americans prepare for a crucial election.

Predicting Trump’s victory in 2016

Every week before the 2016 presidential election, I told students in my labor history class that I used to be fairly certain Trump would win that presidential election, and I gave them two reasons.

First, a former student of mine in Michigan was doing preparatory work for Hillary Clinton. She contacted me to Concerns concerning the low level of effort within the Midwest to arrange union households to vote for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate on this key swing state.

Second, every week before the election, I led a discussion in Greenfield, Massachusetts – a metalworking town in a once a robust metal processing regionWith me were three former machinists, and so they were offended and abandoned. Having not had a good job in over 20 years, they were hungry for nearly any type of change and seemed willing to bet on Trump.

I consider this fear is a serious reason why working-class neighborhoods across the Great Lakes and other parts of the country became breeding grounds for Republican victory within the 2016 presidential election. The Republicans’ near-victory in 2020 and Trump's possible second election in 2024.

Fear on the dinner table

As the U.S. economy modified within the late twentieth century, thousands and thousands of producing jobs disappeared. Still, for my part, the Democratic Party did more good for working families than Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Bush, or Trump.

But the bond between Democrats and the working class was frayed, partly because by the early Nineties most Democratic leaders appeared to have forgotten the party's historic ties to unions.

President Bill Clinton was in office when the downsizing of the commercial heartland met many union members.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, which he promoted and signed at the tip of 1993, caused turmoil within the labor markets. Economists disagree about what number of jobs were lost. Congressional Research Service closed that fewer jobs were created and fewer jobs lost than predicted by supporters and opponents of the measure. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that greater than 4 million jobs within the US manufacturing sector were lost total because the entry into force of NAFTA and similar free trade agreements until 2010.

The variety of these jobs is has since recovered barely.

Economists and other scientists disagree concerning the role of automation and other sorts of technologies have played a task in these job losses.

Biden's legacy: union halls activated

Too often, Democrats spoke rhetorically concerning the middle class constructing America. Pipefitters, construction equipment operators, hotel clerks, auto employees, and steelworkers didn’t see themselves in that picture. People like my father and the metal employees I worked with built the country and drove the economy that created the middle-class prosperity for generations that many Americans still enjoy today.

The program of the Democratic Partysomewhat clumsily formulated for my money, now states: “The Democrats know that Wall Street did not build America. America was built by the middle class – and the unions built the middle class.”

Joe Biden is the primary president to take part in a picket line, but for this union historian and lots of others, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal stays the gold standard for promoting the labor movement.

But it's clear that the Biden administration has fought for laws that give everyone the best to arrange for higher wages, advantages, and dealing conditions, strengthen public sector employees' collective bargaining rights, and guarantee domestic employees, farmworkers, and other unprotected employees the best to arrange. And now the Harris-Walz team will proceed to fight for that agenda.

The Republican Party dedicates its political program for 2024 “To the forgotten men and women of America.” However, this document provides little or no concrete support for employees’ right to arrange.

In a show of strength, Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO – the biggest US trade union federation – and 6 other of the country’s most significant unions influential union leaders spoke on the Democratic Party Convention To its opening night.

For comparison: Only Sean O'Brien, Chairman of the Teamsters Unionspoke on the Republican National Convention, where Trump was nominated for the third time.

One thing seems certain: Unlike in 2016, Democrats in 2024 are aware that they’ll need to make many stops at union halls on their solution to victory.

OAKLAND — Even though the green and gold A's banners are not any longer visible within the concrete stadium of the Oakland Coliseum, live sporting events will still happen in 2025.

The deal, which has been promised for months and only made official on Monday, brings the favored soccer franchise back to Oakland after two seasons at Cal State East Bay in Hayward. The Roots abruptly declared the team's home in 2023 resulting from a problem with the bogus turf at Laney College in Oakland.

This will give the Roots and their women's team Soul more time to construct a short lived, modular stadium on the triangular Malibu Lot of the Coliseum complex, which has up to now been used primarily as an overflow car parking zone.

The football teams are working to secure a lease for the brand new 10,000-seat stadium that can begin in 2026 for a 10-year period before moving again to a bigger, everlasting stadium elsewhere in Oakland. The Soul will proceed to play at Merritt College while the temporary stadium is built.

Roots officials were expected to formally announce the news Monday morning at a press conference within the Treehouse, a recreation area within the Coliseum's baseball stadium.

Oakland residents have quickly turn out to be accustomed to the town's skilled soccer teams, despite the fact that neither team plays within the country's major men's or women's leagues.

The black-colored Roots merchandise will be seen everywhere in the city. When the French men's national team lost to Spain within the Olympic gold medal game last week, a fan wearing more colourful Roots gear was caught on television cameras in Paris.

“Long term, I think our potential is unlimited,” Roots President Lindsay Barenz said in an interview before Monday's announcement. “We see how much the sport is loved around the world.”

The aging concrete stadium had been quieter lately as frustrated A's fans decided the departing baseball team was now not price their money – although last yr a series of “reverse boycotts” saw a surge in attendance on certain days.

It could also be unrealistic that the Roots, who’ve averaged 4,000 fans at their games in Hayward, will fill the large 60,000-seat stadium, but team officials said they’re confident 1000’s more will attend games once they return to Oakland.

The entire complex of 60 hectares, including stadium, arena and interspace, will soon fully within the possession of the the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, or AASEG, an area development company that wishes to rework the location right into a latest nightlife center. Last month, AASEG agreed to the terms Both the town and the A's are purchasing all the property for a complete of about $230 million.

So far, the event group has lost out to San Francisco in its bid to land a future WNBA franchise, and a brand new National Women's Soccer League team, Bay FC, has been awarded to San Jose moderately than Oakland.

Ray Bobbitt, founding father of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, said that “Roots and Soul” will dominate the ability's sports offerings for now while the group finalizes its redevelopment plans over the subsequent few years.

When construction begins in earnest, the Malibu lot will likely must be cleared to offer enough public access and exit routes to the larger complex. For her part, Barenz said the triangular lot simply isn't large enough to accommodate the team's long-term ambitions.

“The entire Coliseum complex is really an incredibly good entertainment destination and has some sort of in-and-out capacity,” Bobbitt said, referring to the property's proximity to Interstate 880 and direct access to a BART station.

The Roots were founded in 2019 and two years later joined the USL Championship – a type of second division in US skilled soccer that’s less a minor league and more a rival to the MLS, which still has more teams and attracts the very best international talent.

U.S. women's soccer remains to be in its early stages and should someday merge its skilled leagues, allowing the Soul, which began play last yr, to expand its presence in the game.

“The scope for the development of the sport is truly unlimited,” said Barenz.

Originally published: August 12, 2024 at 8:58 am

Fueled by the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling banning affirmative motion in higher education, conservative legislators across the country pushed forward their very own state bans on diversity initiatives, particularly those who might make students feel ashamed or guilty concerning the suffering inflicted on people of color prior to now.

These efforts also extend to medical schools.

Despite clear and chronic gaps between white and black doctors – and up to date efforts to Racial differences throughout the medical occupation – legislators have attempted to push for policies to discourage diversity initiatives in medicine.

U.S. Representative Greg Murphy from North Carolina has submitted such a bill to limit diversity initiatives. “American medical schools are no place for discrimination,” Murphy, a Republican, said in March 2024. “Diversity strengthens medicine, but not when it is achieved through exclusionary practices … of prejudice and divisive ideology.”

But the Gaps in racial representation in medicine transcend an expert numbers game. Modern research shows that the dearth of black doctors explains why about 70% of black don’t trust their doctors and why black are likely to die younger than their white peers.

The evidence is obvious: America needs more black doctors.

To this end, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg promised on August 6, 2024, Donate $600 million to 4 historically African-American medical schools. The donations to Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science are amongst the most important donations to a historically African-American college or university. Xavier University in Louisiana may also receive a $5 million grant to support its latest medical school.

“This donation will empower new generations of black physicians to create a healthier and more equitable future for our country,” Bloomberg said in an announcement before the annual meeting of the National Medical Association, a company that advocates for black doctors.

A limited landscape

According to a survey by Association of American Medical Schools63.9% said they were white, and only 5.7% were black or African-American. But in response to estimates by the U.S. Census BureauBlacks make up 13.6% of the population, while whites represent 58.9%.

This modern inequalities have deep roots in medicine. Professor of Public HealthI’m at all times curious how today's racial health inequalities was founded in the primary place. A window into this history are the official physician directories published by the American Medical Association.

Since 1906, the AMA has published directories of all licensed physicians within the United States. These directories were created as comprehensive records that excluded quacks and unqualified graduates of fraudulent medical schools.

Each doctor's file contained quite a few details, including his or her practice location and the date and place of medical training.

Between 1906 and 1940, the AMA also insisted on publishing the race of black physicians. every entry the term “col.” for “colored” appeared.

Based on this information, I even have created a digitized dataset of the 1906 directory and detailed Geographic and demographic patterns related to the place where black doctors trained and practiced. 41,828 doctors In the 1906 address book there have been only 746 black people – or 1.8%.

Most black doctors within the South were trained at a handful of southern medical schools that were established to coach African Americans. Over half—57%—of black doctors within the South attended Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, or Howard University School of Medicine in Washington, DC – schools that also exist.

But nearly a 3rd – 29% – of black doctors within the South attended schools that could be closed a couple of years after the publication of the 1906 directory. In 1910, educator Abraham Flexner published a report on the behest of the AMA after examining the standards of medical schools within the United States and Canada.

The results of the Flexner Report was devastating for the variety of black doctors. Citing low admission standards and poor quality of coaching, Flexner beneficial Completion of 5 of the seven Historically, black medical schools have trained the overwhelming majority of black physicians.

By 1912, three black medical schools had been closed. By 1924, only two remained in operation—Meharry and Howard.

The consequences of this extremely limited educational landscape for aspiring black doctors are reflected in the info. In most southern states, the gap between medical school and practice location was significantly greater for black doctors than for his or her white colleagues even before the closures.

The deep roots of inequalities

To higher interpret where black physicians opened their practices within the South, I also linked directory data with other historical sources, including the U.S. Census.

I discovered that places with higher black populations were more prone to have black doctors, as were places that were closer to a black medical school.

Many contemporary scholars and activists want to the past to higher understand the historical role that race has played within the health of black people in America.

For example, Dr. Uche Blackstocka black doctor, describes in her latest book “Legacy: A black doctor takes a stand against racism in medicine” and shows their lasting impact about how black patients are treated and the standard of medical care they receive.

For example, she was one among the primary to Health authorities warn concerning the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. As she wrote in 2020, Black Americans have been at greater risk through the pandemic “due to multiple manifestations of structural racism, including lack of access to testing, a higher burden of chronic disease, and racial bias in health care settings.”

Without a proof of how racial disparities in medicine arose, it’s rather more difficult to find out what progressive measures are needed to treatment them.

Future analyses will help uncover these racial differences in additional detail. But for now, each academic researchers and the general public can our dates to look at the importance of historically black medical schools and the lives of black physicians through the Jim Crow era.

I imagine her legacy deserves to be a greater known a part of the history of American medicine.

This article updates an earlier version published on June 6, 2024.

On the morning of August 3, 2014, the terrorist militia Islamic State a ruthless and rapid campaign in Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq. The goal was Yazidis: a monotheistic religious group whose members have long been persecuted.

As forces affiliated with the regional Kurdish government fled in disarray, captured and enslaved An estimated 6,800 Yazidis, mostly women and kids. About 1,500 Yazidis were executed. An identical number lost their lives as a consequence of excessive heat, thirst or hunger while trapped on Mount Sinjar before the US Air strikes Just a few days later, this enabled them to flee to the relative safety of the Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq.

The entire Yazidi population of Sinjar, about 250,000 peoplehave lost their homes: Around half all Yazidis around the globein my estimation.

Ten years later, it is straightforward to see the massacres because the work of extremist militants. But IS in Iraq recruited massively from local Sunni Muslims from northwest Iraq. People who lived with the Yazidis for a few years became their tormentorsRapists, looters and murderers.

What explains the wildness of this Genocide campaign? As a scientist who studies political violence and Middle East politicsI argue that two major aspects led to the atrocities against the Yazidis.

First, Muslim authorities have historically stigmatized Yazidis and denied their existence as a non secular group – certainly one of the focuses of my 2024 book “Border minorities.” Second, the changes that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq fueled resentment amongst extremists against this marginalized religious group.

A world pattern

The Yazidi experience reflects a world pattern: a type of marginalization and discrimination against religious groups that I call “liminal minorities.”

Border minorities have two core propertiesFirst, they lack theological recognition within the eyes of the region's dominant religion. In other words, more powerful religious groups don’t recognize the legitimacy of their religion and denigrate the minority's beliefs and rituals.

Second, liminal minorities face widespread stigma that’s passed down through generations. They are sometimes perceived as a threat to the moral order and are sometimes accused of engaging in sexually deviant practices. These patterns of stigmatization Create discrimination.

The liminal minorities include the Yazidis Alevis in TurkeyBaha'i in Iran and Ahmadis in Indonesia and Pakistan. Religious liminality is just not limited to the Muslim world: Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, are energetic in quite a few countries and Falun Gong There are also marginal minorities in China.

Centuries of prejudice

The marginal status of the Yazidis is nothing latest. In the Ottoman Empire, Christian and Jewish communities were offered a limited degree of protection and autonomy in return for paying a special tax – often called the millet systemThese groups were recognized as “People of the Book”: monotheists whose religious beliefs were recognized by the Muslim authorities. The Yazidis, nonetheless, lacked this status.

Even today, Yazidis are sometimes insulted as “devil worshippers.” According to Yazidi belief, God entrusted the world to his chief angel Tawûsî Melek, which “Peacock Angel.” However, some Muslim religious authorities confuse this angel with Iblisthe private name of the devil in Islam.

This false identification found widespread acceptance amongst Muslim clergy within the sixteenth century. Among Ottoman rulers and Kurdish tribal leaders, the claim was used to justify extreme types of violence against Yazidis, including Mass enslavement and mass murder.

Political discontent after Saddam

The stigmatization of Yazidis remained widespread in Iraq within the late twentieth century. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, there have been no large-scale religiously motivated massacres of Yazidis. Nevertheless, many driven out of their mountain villages as a part of his party's Arabization campaigns: forced deportations with the aim of weakening the non-Arab minorities within the north of the country.

Iraq is home to people of each major Islamic denominations – Sunnis and Shiites – in addition to Minority religions similar to Yazidis, Christians and Sabean-Mandaeans, who follow an ancient monotheistic religion. The country can be home to many alternative ethnic groupswith a big Arab majority and significant minorities of Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians.

The Sunni Arabs, who make up a minority of the population, formed the backbone of the Saddam regime, while the Shiite Arabs and the Sunni Kurds predominantly excluded from powerAfter the US invasion, nonetheless, the Shiite majority was capable of dominate electoral politics, and plenty of Sunni Arabs complained about exclusion.

The Kurdish region has now consolidated its autonomy. The Yazidis’ votes are getting used to support the Kurdish claims to additional area – encourage more Sunni resentment against the Yazidis.

boiling point

My field research, including extensive interviews between 2017 and 2019, suggests that the Islamic State’s goal of ethnic cleansing used these feelings of resentment and aimed to undermine Kurdish territorial claims.

Hundreds of Yazidis were Victims of violent attacks long before 2014. As the Islamic State group gained power, it further reinforced anti-Yazidi stigmas. The group instructed fighters that extreme types of violence, including systematic rape, justified by their faith.

The combination of historical hatred, political resentment and the denial of the legitimacy of the Yazidi faith contributed to the violence that devastated the Yazidi community in Iraq in 2014.

Striving for recognition and security

After the genocide by IS, the Yazidis received unprecedented international attention as a persecuted religious group, and a number of other countries, like Germanycreated resettlement programs for Yazidi refugees. Yazidis within the diaspora were more visible and arrangedcalls for justice and goals to mobilize public attention.

However, their situation stays dire. The Yazidis cannot return to Sinjar, which remains to be unsafe zone between rival forces. Many remain in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, an uncertain future.

Others have sought refuge abroad, and a few have benefited from specialized humanitarian Asylum programs like Germany. The country has been home to a part of the Yazidi diaspora because the early Seventies and have become a vital destination for Yazidis fleeing Iraq after 2014. Today about 200,000 Yazidis It is estimated that live there.

But the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe has made the situation of the Yazidis much like that of many other migrants and refugees. As public attention to the genocide progressively fades, these latest arrivals face an increasingly inhospitable political climate.

Given the existential insecurity of their homeland and the legal uncertainty within the diaspora, the Yazidi limbo stays.

The challenge of growth

When Pope Francis spoke to a gaggle of top international comedians on June 14, 2024, He called them “artists“ and emphasized the worth of their talents.

For many Catholics, this meeting got here as a surprise. Traditionally, the themes of detachment, sacrifice, humility and repentance appear way more often in religious writings and sermons than the spiritual advantages of a great laugh.

But when Specialist in medieval Christian historyI’m aware that since precedent days many theologians, preachers, monks and other Christians have adopted the role of humor as a invaluable a part of Christian spirituality. Some have even develop into popular often called the patron saint of comedians or laugh.

Comedy is natural

Many Catholic saints considered laughter to be an integral a part of nature itself. For example, the Twelfth-century German nun Hildegard of Bingen, a mystical poet and musician, wrote in a poem in regards to the power of God:

I’m the rain that comes from the dew
This makes the grasses laugh with joy.

In the thirteenth century, Saint Francis of Assisi called himself “Jongleur de Dieu” – Troubadour or Court Jester of God – due to his ministry. He probably used a French reference because his mother was from France and spoke French at home. Francis and his followers went from town to town, singing God’s praises and preaching joyfully within the streets. People laughed when he preached to the birds within the treesand once he needed to politely ask a big flock to stop chirping first.

The sixteenth century nun and mystic Teresa of Avila wrote in a poem: in allusion to the voice of Jesus Christ as love:

Love once said to me:
“I know a song, would you like to hear it?”
And laughter got here from every brick on the road
And from every pore of the sky.

Humor and play are a vital a part of human nature. They provide opportunities for leisure and relief and offer a option to take care of the challenges of human life.

In the thirteenth century, the Dominican scholastic Thomas Aquinas wrote an in depth summary of theology that became some of the necessary sources of the Catholic tradition: the Theological SummaryIn it he argued that humor and other types of joyful recreation offer mind and soul the identical type of rest that the body needs.

However, Thomas Aquinas warned that such words or actions might be hurtful or indecent.

Comedy can heal

Laughing together can break down barriers between cultures and produce people together.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founding father of the Jesuits within the sixteenth century, is alleged to danced a jig To lift the spirits of a despondent man in retreat; he also praised a Jesuit novice for his healthy laugh.

In the identical century, Saint Philip Neri called patron saint of humor and joywas considered a mystic and visionary. To calm others, he made pranks and jokesonce at a gathering with shaved off half of his beard.

Some famous Catholic saints even faced death with a smile, just like the second century deacon St. Lawrence, certainly one of the the patron saints of comedians. Legend has it that when he was executed by being roasted alive on a gridiron over a hot fire, he joked along with his executioners and said: “Turn me over… I’m finished on this side!” This legend has been handed down within the official history of his life.

The Carmelite Therese of Lisieux also led a life marked by humour within the nineteenth century. Even when she died of tuberculosis on the age of 24, she is alleged to have joked with the opposite nuns and her doctor. When a priest was called to manage the last rites to her, he reportedly refused because she looked too healthy. She replied that she would attempt to look sicker the subsequent time he was called.

Popes and humor

Francis is in no way the one pope to emphasise the worth of humor in Catholic and Christian life. Pope John XXIII, who was convened the Second Vatican Counciland calls on all Catholic bishops worldwide to Series of formal meetings within the Vatican desired to modernize Catholicism, was known for his humor. When he was once asked how many individuals worked within the Vatican, he replied: “About half.”

The next Pope, Saint Paul VI – elected in 1963 – was an completed administrator known for his witOne of his papal documents handled the meaning of “Christian joy.” John Paul I, who had reigned for less than a month in 1978 and was now on his option to sainthood as a “Blessed,” was called “the smiling Pope“ due to his cheerfulness.

Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in almost 500 yearswas only 58 years old when he was elected in 1978, and he was known for his humorousness.

The German cardinal who succeeded him in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, also appreciated the role of humor in a balanced Christian life: “Humor is indeed essential to the joy of creating.”

And in front of this audience of comedians in 2024, Francis discussed the subject of humor in additional detail in his Apostolic Letter 2018In this necessary document addressed to the whole Catholic Church, the Pope declared that holiness is inside the reach of each believer and is achieved through a lifetime of joy. The exhortation devotes a special section to humor.

At the audience with comedians on June 14, Francis, who took his name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, the troubadour of God, publicly affirmed that humor is a vital a part of a lifetime of faith for Catholics.

The meeting even ended with certainly one of the Pope's favorite prayers, for good humor, attributed to Saint Thomas More, the English Chancellor under King Henry VIII – fitting given More's legendary humorousness. When More was executed for treason in 1535, he is alleged to have asked the constable of the Tower of London to assist him up the steps of the scaffold, cracking certainly one of his last jokes: “For my descent I can adjust myself.”

The prayer asks God, amongst other things, for “a good sense of humor … to share with others.”