Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

ALEC Doesn't Want Your Kind Here

The American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group profiled by our September Sidney Award Winners at the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation, really doesn’t like unembedded journalists. Beau Hodai, a reporter for In These Times got kicked out of the hotel bar where ALEC was holding its conference, by uniformed police officers, even though he had registered as a guest:

At around 10:30 on the evening of December 1, I was sitting in the Waltz & Weiser Saloon, a high-end sports bar tucked into a cove below the sub-lobby of the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz.

I had been swapping newspaper stories with Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star on one of the saloon’s overstuffed leather couches as the bar filled with attendees of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) 2011 States and Nation Policy Summit (SNPS).

ALEC had repeatedly refused to grant me media credentials. Nevertheless, I was a paying guest at the resort and thought I’d catch some liquor-loose-lipped lawmakers and lobbyists at the bar.

I was about to turn in for the night when I saw Phil Black, director of Kierland’s security team, talking with a group of Phoenix police officers outside the entrance to the bar. The cops–moonlighting (in uniform) for ALEC–had arrived close to an hour prior, glanced in at Ward and me, and stationed themselves just to the side of the door.

Black entered the bar and came up to me. “Would you mind coming with me, sir?”

Outside Waltz & Weiser, we were joined by the cops.

What’s this all about?” I asked.

The ALEC people don’t want you here,” said Black, “and we understand that your reservations were made under false pretenses.”

I asked Black, given the fact that I had not been accused of any crime, why I was surrounded by armed, uniformed cops. False pretenses? I had given the front desk my valid photo driver’s license and my credit card.

Black said that he and the police officers would escort me to my room and help me pack. I was told if I returned, or refused to leave, I would be arrested and charged with criminal trespassing.

Hodai’s story is a collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy.

[Photo credit: r3v || cis, Creative Commons.]

John Branch Wins Sidney Award for "Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer"

New York Times sports reporter John Branch wins the January Sidney Award for his outstanding three-part series on the life and death of Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard, who died last spring of a drug overdose at age 28 after a two-year struggle with congitive decline, depression, and addiction. At autopsy, his brain was found to be riddled with the signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease similar to Alzheimer’s, caused by repeated blows to the head.

Branch’s series has ignited a fierce debate over the role of enforcers, professional fighters, in the National Hockey League. Officially, fighting is against the rules, but since the only consequence is a 5-minute penalty for combattants, fighting isn’t effectively banned at all. Like many enforcers, Boogaard could barely skate or pass, so taking him off the ice for 5 minutes wasn’t much of a deterrent.

In fact, fighting provides a “back door” into the NHL for big kids who are willing to take a lot of punishment, but who lack the skills to play pro hockey. As Branch reveals, these players can pay a terrible price for their shot at “The Show,” as the NHL is known.

Read my Backstory interview with Branch here.

[Matthew D. Britt, Creative Commons.]

The Red and the Black: Liquorice Workers on Strike

Workers at American Liquorice Company, the makers of those beloved strips of Americana known as Red Vines, have been out on strike for a month over health care and pension benefits, Rose Arrieta reports for In These Times.

[Photo credit: 2moose-mac, Creative Commons.]

Will Indiana be the Next "Right To Work" State?

Indiana is poised to become the next front on the Republican war on organized labor, reports Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times:

INDIANAPOLIS — Nearly a year after legislatures in Wisconsin and several other Republican-dominated states curbed the power of public sector unions, lawmakers are now turning their sights toward private sector unions, setting up what is sure to be another political storm.

The thunderclouds are gathering first here in Indiana. The leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say that when the legislative session opens on Wednesday, their No. 1 priority will be to push through a business-friendly piece of legislation known as a right-to-work law.

If Indiana enacts such a law — and its sponsors say they have the votes — it will give new momentum to those who have previously pushed such legislation in Maine, Michigan, Missouri and other states. New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled Legislature was the last to pass a right-to-work bill in 2011, but it narrowly failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto by the Democratic governor; an Indiana law would re-energize that effort.

Right-to-work laws prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to the union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees.

Unions have vowed to fight the plan to turn Indiana into what they call the “Mississippi of the Midwest,” that is, a sparsely unionized, low wage economy.

Crushing unions would also help ensure permanent Republican dominance in state politics. Unions are not only advocates for their members, they are major political players who usually align themselves with Democrats.

[Image credit: Cuksis, Creative Commons.]

Sidney's Picks: Highlights of 2011

Our 2011 Sidney Award Winners, of course. But that would make for a pretty anticlimactic list, wouldn’t it? You already know we think the world of them.

  • Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer, by John Branch in the New York Times. A heartbreaking and painstakingly reported multimedia package about the life and death of 28-year-old NHL player Derek Boogaard, an “enforcer” whose history of head trauma probably contributed to his untimely death from a drug overdose.
  • Birthright: What’s Next for Planned Parenthood by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. How did Planned Parenthood become synonymous with abortion? The answer may surprise you. This essay uses early controversies over birth control as a lens to understand the modern anti-abortion movement. 
  • The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers by Scott Carney, published by William Morrow. An anthropologist-turned-investigative journalist travels the world to document the  commodification of the human body and its functions. 
  • A Vicious Cycle in the Used Car Business, by Ken Bensinger in the LA Times. This meticulous investigation details how national chains of self-financing used car dealerships exploit the poor and repackage their bad loans as subprime securities.
  • The High Price of Looking like Woman by Laura Rena Murray in the New York Times. Local reporting at its best. Murray delves into the underworld of unlicensed silicone injectors who prey on transgender women in New York seeking feminine curves on the cheap. This story is especially powerful because it illustrates how transphobia and discrimination push vulnerable women into this potentially lethal black market.
  • Deep Intellect: Inside the Minds of Octopuses, by Sy Montgomery in Orion Magazine. The author seeks understand how octopuses can be so smart, yet so different from humans–physically and evolutionarily. His search brings him to embrace an octopus. He also interviews octopus scientists, a scuba diving philosophy professor, and an aquarium volunteer who found his post-retirement calling as an octopus whisperer.
  • The Luckiest Woman in the World: Three Ways to Win the Lottery by Nathaniel Rich in Harper’s. Wannabe grifters take note.
  • Is The SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?, by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. Ditto.

 

HBO's "Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags", Now Available On DVD

Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, HBO’s critically acclaimed documentary is now available on DVD:

“Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags” brings to life the vibrant, unexpected history of the Garment District, which for many years was the heart and soul of Midtown Manhattan, but is now in danger of disappearing. For thousands of immigrants the garment industry was a path to their American Dream, but today most of those jobs are gone. A microcosm of the economic and social forces transforming our nation over the past one hundred years, “Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags” tells the story of this vanishing industry through the voices of the people who have experienced its highs and lows.

Manhattan’s Garment District was a birthplace of organized labor, an engine of New York’s fashion industry, and a source of jobs since the 19th century. Filmmakers Mark Levinson and Daphne Pinkerson describe how automation, deregulation, and outsourcing have sapped the economic health of the Garment District and the U.S. clothing manufacturing sector at large.

[Photo credit: Laughing Squid, Creative Commons. Sculpture of a garment worker in New York’s Garment District.]

The Drone Zone: Obama's Secret War

What if the president had a secret network of killer drones he used to bump off American citizens overseas without trial and nobody cared. Well, he does.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post reports on Obama’s expanding global network of killer drones:

The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

The president has ordered the extrajudicial drone killings of U.S. citizens overseas. Disturbingly, he exercises this power without Congressional oversight, and without apparent concern from other members of his party.

[Art: guerric, Creative Commons.]

 

 

What Can Pro-Choicers Learn From the Gay Rights Movement?

2011 has been a banner year for the gay rights movement, and a lackluster one for the pro-choice movement. The confrontational tactics of marriage equality activists and opponents of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell have paid off while conciliatory pro-choicers have gotten the cold shoulder from their Democratic allies, including a humiliating snub by the Obama administration on Plan B OTC.

Sidney Award-winner Irin Carmon asks what reproductive rights advocates can learn from the LGBT liberation movement.

[Photo: The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village that became a crucible for the modern gay rights movement after patrons stood their ground after a 1969 police raid. The Stonewall is now a National Historic Landmark. By Skinnylawyer, Creative Commons.]

Love and Asperger Syndrome

Amy Harmon has a great feature in the New York Times about two college students with Asperger syndrome negotiating romance.

Asperger’s is a condition on the autism spectrum that confers distinctive abilities (passionate interests, intense focus) and deficits (difficulty reading emotions and interpreting social cues).

People on the autism spectrum are often unfairly stereotyped as indifferent to intimacy. As Harmon explains, Asperger’s doesn’t extinguish the need for interpersonal connection, but it does make the search for love more difficult:

Jack, Kirsten noticed, bit his lips, a habit he told her came from not knowing how he was supposed to arrange his face to show his emotions. Kirsten, Jack noticed, cracked her knuckles, which she later told him was her public version of the hand-flapping she reserved for when she was alone, a common autistic behavior thought to ease stress.

Their difficulty discerning unspoken cues might have made it harder to know if the attraction was mutual. Kirsten stalked Jack on Facebook, she later told him, but he rarely posted. In one phone conversation, Jack wondered, “Is she flirting with me?” But he could not be sure.

[Photo credit: rosipaw, Creative Commons.]

#Sidney's Picks: The Best of the Week's News

  • Developmentally disabled New Yorkers are being dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs with minimal medical supervision, Danny Hakim reports. [NYT]
  • Peter Goodman continues his coverage of Cape Coral, Florida, one of the foreclosure capitals of America, home to rising suburban poverty. [HuffPo]
  • Fairy shrimp under threat, public spirited British eccentrics dig ponds to protect beloved invertebrates. [BBC]
  • Dave Weigel takes Politifact to task for the “fact-checking” site’s bizarre claim that Democrats lied when they said that “Republicans voted to end Medicare” by eliminating the popular single-payer health insurance program and replacing it with vouchers for private insurance. [Slate]

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

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