Fort Worth Weekly // December 8-14, 2021

December 8-14, 2021 FREE fwweekly.com

METROPOLIS As gerrymandering seeks to upend democracy, the DOJ intervenes in Texas.

BY EDWARD BROWN

Project Censored 2021 Prescription drug costs, wildcat strikes, Google’s union-busting, and racism in forced sterilization — Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show old patterns alive and well.

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EATS In the Foundry District, Fort Brewery specializes in excellent pizza and beer.

BY EDWARD BROWN

SCREEN Spielberg’s West Side Story is the update we need.

BY KRISTIAN LIN

MUSIC Though hamstrung by the pandemic, Ryan Hamilton’s star still shines bright.

BY PAT R I C K H I G G I N S

“A roaring, wondrous whirlpool of a show”

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

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– The Guardian

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October 17, 2021–February 6, 2022 This exhibition is organized by Tate Britain in association with the Kimbell Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities and by the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District.

Promotional support provided by

D ecember 8-1 4, 2021

It may not be intentional, but the mainstream media machine still self-censors a bunch of stories every year — at least 10.

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By Paul Rosenberg

ATE DAY8 A WEEK Cotton-Headed Ninny Muggins beer from Fort Worth? Sign us up!

By Jennifer Bovee

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Scenes from a Strip Mall

With punk, art, and a community fridge, Central Arts is reviving DIY.

By Steve Steward

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Edward Brown

Censorship’s Spell

Brewing the Fort This new Foundry District gastropub hits all the right (pizza-y, beer-y) notes.

By Edward Brown

Ryan Burger, Art Director Jim Erickson, Circulation Director CONTRIBUTORS

Edward Brown, Staff Writer

Megan Ables, Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Sue Chefington, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Bo Jacksboro, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Vishal Malhotra, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Linda Blackwell Simmons, Madison Simmons, Teri Webster, Ken WheatcroftPardue, Cole Williams

Emmy Smith, Proofreader Michael Newquist, Regional Sales Director Jennifer Bovee, Marketing Director Stacey Hammons, Senior Account Executive Julie Strehl, Account Executive Tony Diaz, Account Executive Wyatt Newquist, Digital Coordinator Clintastic, Brand Ambassador

BOARD

Emmy Smith

COPYRIGHT The entire contents of Fort Worth Weekly are Copyright 2020 by Ft. Worth Weekly, LP.

No portion may be reproduced in whole or in

part by any means, including electronic retrieval

systems, without the express written permission of the publisher. Please call the Fort Worth Weekly office for back-issue information.

In the true spirit of the holidays, United Way of Tarrant County is working to bring a bit of cheer and happiness to those in need.

25% of Tarrant County residents* are struggling to make ends meet, and they are often just one crisis away from joining the almost 12% of those in our community who live in poverty. The ongoing impact of the pandemic and the financial burdens of Winter Storm Uri only exacerbated their struggles.

Your holiday gift will make a huge difference and help us ensure struggling families have food and support for rent, utilities and other critical needs so they can experience the joy of the season. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift by the end of the year to our Community Fund.

MAKE A GIFT TODAY AT:

WWW.UNITEDWAYTARRANT.ORG/DONATE *United Way ALICE Report

Bob Niehoff, General Manager

Anthony Mariani, Edward Brown,

Cover illustration by Anson Stevens-Bollen DISTRIBUTION Fort Worth Weekly is available free of charge in the Metroplex, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of Fort Worth Weekly may be purchased for $1.00 each, payable at the Fort Worth Weekly office in advance. Fort Worth Weekly may be distributed only by Fort Worth Weekly’s authorized independent contractors or Fort Worth Weekly’s authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Fort Worth Weekly, take more than one copy of any Fort Worth Weekly issue. If you’re interested in being a distribution point for Fort Worth Weekly, please contact Will Turner at 817-321-9788.

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EDITORIAL

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Anthony Mariani, Editor

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INSIDE

STAFF

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

Number 36

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Vo lum e 17

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Steven Spielberg’s update to West Side Story does justice to the musical theater classic.

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I’m not a fan of the 1961 film of West Side Story. Sure, the dancing was fantastic, but the lead performances by Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood were bad, and her not being Puerto Rican was only part of the problem. The story needed an update for a changing world, too. There was room for improvement on that Best Picture Oscarwinning film, and Steven Spielberg’s new version is that improvement, more relevant to modern audiences while remaining a thrilling piece of cinema.

If you’ve seen any previous edition of this musical Romeo and Juliet story, Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner have made something quite different. Everything takes place in a neighborhood that looks like a war zone because the city is knocking down the cheap apartments in midtown Manhattan to build Lincoln Center. The Europeans feel like the Puerto Ricans are

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Ariana DeBose and David Alvarez dance through the streets of Manhattan in West Side Story.

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DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

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DEC 2-24

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

West Side Story

him with inspired bits of kicking them out, but Starring Ansel Elgort and staging everywhere: That the Latins are about to Rachel Zegler. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by fatal rumble takes place be ejected themselves Tony Kushner, based on in a warehouse amid giant to make room for the Arthur Laurents’ musical piles of salt, while Tony performing arts complex, book. Rated PG-13. and Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Lt. Schrank (Corey Stoll) taunts the white kids that at least the sing “One Hand, One Heart” in the Puerto Ricans will still have jobs working Cloisters at the Metropolitan Art Museum, security for the rich people who will move where the song fits the church-like setting.

Elgort is a bit wobbly on Tony’s top into the neighborhood. When he orders the Sharks out of an empty lot, Bernardo notes, but he’s here for his dancing skills.

(David Alvarez) defies the police by singing If you saw him in Baby Driver, you know the pride anthem “La Borinqueña” and how well he moves, and his physical grace getting his neighbors to join in, a move convinces us that Tony is a special guy in that gives the character greater stature and this burned-out neighborhood. The heavy also corrects for the fact that Bernardo has singing load is carried by Zegler, making so little singing to do in the show’s original her acting debut and displaying operatic version. The film does not translate the range on “Tonight” and “I Have a Love.” considerable amount of Spanish dialogue, Nearly stealing the film outright is Ariana though working out what’s said shouldn’t DeBose as Anita, who is the best dancer in this cast (no mean feat) and collapses in grief be too hard for those of us in Texas.

Spielberg’s direction has been when she learns of her boyfriend’s murder. ponderous at times, but the propulsive This script makes richer stuff out of the force of Leonard Bernstein’s music supporting roles, too — Chino (Josh Andrés — conducted by no less than Gustavo Rivera) is a nerdy accounting student who Dudamel, who makes the score sound wants no part of the gang war until he sees better than it ever has — forces him to his friend killed, while Anybodys (Iris move here. The director does great with Menas) is a haunting presence lurking in the opening sequence, where the camera the background before viciously beating a follows the Jets through the streets, dancing fellow Jet while saying, “I’m not a girl!”

Back in 1992, Spielberg tried to insert a and gathering numbers as they go. The same goes for the dance at the school gym, musical number into Hook, and, like much which showcases the spectacular moves of the rest of that movie, it was a disaster. by the dancers while also highlighting Three decades later, he has picked up the the Jets and the Sharks vying for territory knack for incorporating music and dance on the dance floor. Ballet superstar Justin into storytelling. More than that, he’s taken Peck takes charge of the dances, and while this cornerstone of the musical theater he uses a good chunk of Jerome Robbins’ repertoire and made it come vibrantly original choreography, he makes “Cool” alive for our sensibilities. The lifeblood of into a bit where Tony (Ansel Elgort) tries culture is innovating while staying in touch to keep a gun away from Riff (Mike Faist) with traditions. In his West Side Story, he and the other Jets. Spielberg matches has managed that trick beautifully. l

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IN SUNDANCE PLAZA

As We Celebrate Our 74th Anniversary History of the Fort Worth Christmas Tree

The Fort Worth Christmas Tree tradition was started by Amon G. Carter in 1947. The project was adopted by the Fort Worth Jaycees in 1956. In 2004, the Jaycees asked Sundance Square to host and manage the project. The 2021 Christmas tree is a majestic 55’ Norway Spruce. It was harvested in NW Michigan (less than 200 miles from the Canadian border) and traveled 1,250 miles to Fort Worth. Best we know, it’s the tallest live Christmas tree in Texas this season.

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Special Thanks to the 2021 Fort Worth Christmas Tree Sponsors:

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Amon G. Carter Foundation Amazon Visit Fort Worth Wildcat Crane Fort Worth Promotion Fund, Inc.

Tarrant County Special Events Foundation Sid W. Richardson Foundation Dee J. Kelly Foundation North Texas Community Foundation

Fort Worth Chamber Foundation Hillwood Luther King Capital Management Jenner Block Law Firm Green Mountain Energy

Fort Worth Chamber The Eppstein Group Sundance Square Security Sundance Square Management Sasha & Ed Bass

Also, special thanks to all of the Fort Worth’s local artists who handprinted ornaments for this year’s tree!

FREE PARKING WEEKNIGHTS & All WEEKEND LONG in Downtown Fort Worth • Sundance Square Garage #3 (345 W. 3rd Street) • City Center Garage #2 (400 Calhoun Street) • The Tower Garage (400 Taylor Street) • 777 Main Parking Garage (601 Commerce Street) Sundance Square is proud to co-host this project and salutes our community leaders, sponsors and many volunteers who are helping bring “Good Cheer” to all this holiday season.

SUNDANCESQUARE.COM

News Roundup

Tarrant County gerrymandering, a DOJ lawsuit against Texas, delayed city redistricting, improved traffic safety, and more are happening now.

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Voter suppression laws are often passed under the guise of “voter integrity” measures that aim to prevent voter fraud even though documented cases of illegally cast ballots are infinitesimally rare — accounting for around .0003% of ballots cast nationwide, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. When voting irregularities are found, they are often the unintentional result of voter errors or administrative mistakes.

In October, Texas lawmakers adopted a new statewide district map that was de-

METROPOLIS signed to keep Republicans in power for the next 10 years. Ethnic minorities accounted for 95% of the Lone Star State’s population growth over the past decade, yet two new congressional districts were drawn to represent white Texans, who are far more likely to vote Republican.

That same kind of gerrymandering may be playing out in Tarrant County. On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit in federal court that challenges Texas’ redrawn congressional and state legislative districts. The DOJ alleges that the maps are intended to dilute the voting power of Blacks and Hispanics. Indicted State Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a tweet that the accusations are “absurd.”

The Real Voter Frauds?

A recently filed lawsuit alleges that Tarrant County’s three Republican commissioners colluded with five Republican justices of the peace when adopting a JP precinct map that eliminates political opponents for two incumbent Republican JPs and allegedly diminishes the voting power of ethnic minorities in the county.

Over the course of 90 minutes on Nov. 9, the five white Republican JPs presented to the commissioners a plan for an eight-

precinct map that redrew the boundaries that define where the county’s eight JPs and eight constables could run for office and serve. The JPs showed the map to the county’s three ethnic minority JPs only the day before the commissioners’ meeting. It quickly drew objections from the snubbed elected officials, who allege the map is a ploy to dilute the voting power of minorities and eliminate political challengers for two Republican JPs ahead of next year’s county elections.

The final 3-1 vote by the five commissioners — Devon Allen, one of two Black commissioners, abstained — to adopt the map will now be the subject of at least two lawsuits filed by local attorney Steve Maxwell, a board-certified trial lawyer who has successfully mediated more than 500 cases and litigated more than 100 jury trials that involved medical malpractice and deceptive trade practices.

“Frankly, it is shameful that the Republican commissioners and JPs schemed to put a boundary-change map together without following the protocol used in the past, whereby all of the affected parties could evaluate those changes and make proposals based on community input,” Maxwell told us.

In the coming weeks, Maxwell and his team will file a federal lawsuit to determine the constitutionality of the new JP/ constables map.

“We will be filing a federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit under Section 2,” he said, referring to the section that protects minority representation during redistricting.

Blue Zones Project Donation Aims to Improve Traffic Safety

Road fatalities are on the rise in Texas. Nearly 4,000 Texans were killed in automobile crashes last year, up from 3,623 deaths the year before. To address traffic accidents in underserved communities, Fort Worth City Council recently accepted $100,000 from North Texas Healthy Communities and Blue Zones Project Fort Worth to fund a pilot project that will install “traffic safety countermeasures” in majority-minority areas that are disproportionately impacted by traffic crashes.

Recent reporting by the Washington Post found that Black drivers are 25% more likely to die in traffic accidents than white drivers. Black neighborhoods tend to have more dangerous roads and fewer safety precautions, the reporting found. continued on page 8

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Metro

The local effort to shore up those inequities will include the addition of pavement markings, signage, roundabouts, sidewalks, and curb extensions, according to a city press release.

In the coming months, city staffers will hold community meetings to listen to residents’ concerns and to identify projects that can address those concerns.

the plan. Their primary concern was a reduction in size of the pool.

Under the new plan, the city will rebuild the aging pool beginning in October 2022 with a project end date of early 2024.

The timeline will allow the community gathering space to remain open for the 2022 swim season, a city spokesperson told us. The demolishing and reconstructing of the pool, along with replacing the bathhouse and adding parking, will cost taxpayers $11.9 million.

Lawsuit Against Fort Worth Police Moves Forward

City Redistricting on One-Month Pause

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In June, we reported on legal actions filed

by Lorenzo Thomas, a formerly unhoused Black man who alleges that Fort Worth police officers harassed him and placed his life in peril (“Targeted for Being Homeless?”

June 9). Thomas believes he was targeted because he was living on the streets in an area of downtown that Fort Worth’s movers and shakers want free of homeless people.

According to documents filed as part of the lawsuit, three officers restrained Thomas inside a police car in mid-2019 with the stated intention of driving him to Arkansas, where he had an outstanding warrant.

The idea that police officers would take an entire day away from their normal duties to drive him across state lines for a marijuana possession charge struck Thomas as bogus and a possible ruse to do bodily harm to him. Thomas resisted, and, according to the ongoing lawsuit, one or more officers pepper-sprayed him, which led to asphyxiation and subsequent hospitalization.

Thomas said in a recent email that a Tarrant County court is moving forward with the lawsuit. The defendants have been served, he said, meaning that they may soon be testifying in court. Whether through mediation or a civil court trial, Thomas said he hopes there will be a quick resolution to the litigation.

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Republican Candidate Enters DA Race

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DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

Judge Phil Sorrells of Tarrant County’s 10th Criminal Court has filed to run for district attorney next November. The filing makes Sorrells the first Republican to enter the race that has two Democratic contenders: Tiffany Burks and Albert Roberts. Tarrant’s Republican DA Sharen Wilson announced last month that she will not seek reelection next year. The decision to step down after eight years in office came as her administration failed to convince voters to pass a $160 million county bond that would have provided funds for facilities, building upgrades, and new equipment.

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or text CH to 41444 benefiting

PO Box 471277, FW, TX 76147 817-334-0727

Forest Park Pool Construction to Begin Late Next Year

City officials recently reversed course on a plan to replace the nearly 100-yearold Forest Park Pool with a smaller pool.

Concerns over the high cost of repairing and maintaining the pool that is located just southeast of the Fort Worth Zoo had prompted city staff to make the recommendation. In September, around 150 concerned area residents voiced opposition to

Fort Worth’s redistricting efforts are on a one-month pause following a disagreement between city councilmembers and the city’s redistricting task force, the 11-member group that city council appointed to review voting map proposals from citizens, councilmembers, civic groups like Citizens for Independent Redistricting, and city staffers. A total of 19 maps that will add two new districts to the current eight were submitted for consideration to the task force even though some mapmaking groups complained that the city’s mapping software was onerous to use.

Assistant city manager Fernando Costa told us that the majority of city councilmembers recently expressed concern about competing with city staff during the competitive selection process that was scheduled to wrap up this month. Under the new timeline, city council will likely vote to adopt a final map in March.

Councilmembers “requested that we amend the redistricting procedures to delete a requirement for staff to produce a map that would be considered by the task force,” he told us, referring to a directive that aimed to eliminate the perceived conflict of interest caused by city staffers submitting maps that competed with entries by city councilmembers.

Three of the four maps ranked highly by the task force were drafted by city staff, which led to a tussle over whether eliminating city staff entries simply to appease councilmembers was really a smart move.

Fort Worth’s city council has the entire month of December to decide whether the city staff maps will be valid or not.

Bruce Miller with Citizens for Independent Redistricting said city staffers should reopen the submission process to the general public since there is now a onemonth pause in the process.

“Since the software was challenging to implement, even for city staff members, that would provide an opportunity for mapmakers to refine their final submissions,” he said.

Miller said that the timeline for submitting has been a moving target that has caused confusion among civic-minded locals who wish to participate in the mapdrawing process.

“It’s important to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to produce the best district map for the citizens of Fort Worth for the coming decade,” he continued. “The actual identity of the map creator should not play a role in the outcome. All contributions need to be considered equally on their merits.” l

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FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

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NIGHT&DAY

Dinner with the Modern Lights

this national touring troupe includes contestants from reality TV, including Alyssa Edwards, Heidi N Closet, Kylie Sonique Love, Shea Couleé (pictured), Brooke Lynn Hytes, Crystal Methyd, and more. Tickets are $36-$155 at Ticketmaster. com. For more information about the tour, visit DragFans.com.

Cour tesy Shea Couleé

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See A Drag Queen Christmas Sat.

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At 5pm, head to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (3501 Camp Thursday Bowie Blvd, 817-7381933) for its monthly interactive event Second Thursday at the Carter: Local & Legendary, where you can “connect with art through cocktails, conversations, and creativity.” At this month’s event, you will learn about Fort Worth siblings Scott and Stuart Gentling, whose retrospective Imagined Realism is on display thru Sun, Jan 9. After enjoying drinks and live music, you will be creating your own watercolor painting and then learning about the Gentlings’ art. This event is free to attend, but you’ll need to RSVP at CarterMuseum.org.

Fridays through February 4 from 5 to 8:30 pm Executive Chef Jett Mora welcomes you with warm hospitality, creative cuisine, and a seasonal menu rooted in Texas ingredients.

Create your own holiday memories on Friday nights at Café Modern.

Seating is available from 5 to 8:30 pm. For reservations, call 817.840.2157.

The Modern trees will be illuminated with an array of festive lights in celebration of the holiday season. The museum galleries are open for FREE until 8 pm on Fridays.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 3200 Darnell Street Fort Worth, Texas 76107 817.738.9215

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Did you know that Fort Worth now has a professional lacrosse Friday team? You’re welcome.

Join the newly founded Panther City Lacrosse Club (@PantherCityLAX, 833467-2529) for its inaugural home opener against the Vancouver Warriors at 7:30pm at Dickies Arena (1911 Montgomery St, 817-402-9000). Tickets are $40, and $5 from each ticket will be donated to Denton Lacrosse (@DentonLacrosse, 469-9648696), a nonprofit club supporting adult and youth teams and clinics in Denton County. For tickets and more info, visit PantherCityLAX.com.

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At 8pm, A Drag Queen Christmas: The Naughty Tour will be at the Music Saturday Hall at Fair Park (909 1st Av, Dallas, 214-565-1116). Hosted by Trinity the Tuck and Monet X Change,

Putting on productions of Handel’s Messiah — and standing up during Sunday the “Hallelujah” number — has been a long-standing Christmas tradition at churches of all denominations throughout the years. At 7pm, the Chancel Choir & Orchestra continues the spirit at Arlington Heights United Methodist Church (4200 Camp Bowie Blvd, 817737-3161). More than 80 musicians will be participating. This event is free to attend. For updates, follow Facebook.com/ AHUMC.

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Today thru 9am-5pm Thu, Dec 16; 9am-9pm Fri-Sat, Dec 17-18; and Monday 1pm-9pm Sun, Dec 19, support local artists by doing some holiday shopping at Art Shop for the Holidays at Arts Fort Worth (1300 Gendy St, 817738-1938). Unique items, including art, artisan jewelry, handcrafted gifts, prints, and more, are restocked daily so that each shopping trip will be an artistic adventure!

For more information, visit Facebook. com/ArtsFortWorth.

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The Reid Cabaret Theatre at Casa Manana (3101 W Lancaster Av, 817-332Tuesday 2272) has been doing a Nashville Christmas this holiday season, featuring the music of country legends like Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, and more — performed by Texas’ Black Burrow and actress/singer Mary Matison — interwoven with Christmas tales and more. The final performances are tonight thru 7:30pm Thu, Dec 18; 9:30pm Fri, Dec 17; and 7:30pm Sat, Dec 18. Tickets start at $75 at CasaManana.org.

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At 5pm, treat yourself to a five-course meal at the Wednesday Sam Adams Beer Dinner at the Social House (840 Currie St, 817-820-1510). Each course will be paired with a different beer. Tickets are $60 per person. Call for reservations.

By Jennifer Bovee

Project Censored 2021

Anson Stevens-Bollen

1.) Prescription Drug Costs Set to Become a Leading Cause of Death for Elderly Americans “Soaring prescription drug costs have been widely reported by corporate news outlets,” Project Censored notes, but they’ve utterly ignored the staggering resulting cost in human lives.

More than 1.1 million seniors enrolled in Medicare programs could die prematurely in the next decade due to

2.) Journalists Investigating Financial Crimes Threatened by Global Elites Financial crimes of global elites, involving the flow of dirty money through some of the world’s most powerful banks, have made major headlines in recent years, most notably with the Panama Papers in 2016 and the FinSen Files in 2020, but we’d know a great deal more if not for the flood of threats faced by journalists doing this work — a major story that hasn’t been told in America’s corporate media, despite a detailed report from Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), “Unsafe for Scrutiny,” released in November 2020.

The report was based on a survey of 63 investigative journalists from 41 countries, which found that 71% had experienced threats and/or harassment while doing their investigations, with a large portion of those (73%) experiencing legal threats as well. Its findings were described by Spencer Woodman in an article for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

“The report found that legal threats are chief among the types of harassment facing journalists conducting financial investigations and often seek to exploit a skewed balance of power between

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Project Censored co-directors Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth title their introduction to this year’s edition of State of the Free Press “A Return to News Normalcy?,” drawing a direct parallel between our world today and that of post-WWI America, “when the United States faced another raging pandemic and economic recession,” with other sources of tumult as well: “The United States then had experienced a crackdown on civil liberties and free speech in the form of Espionage and Sedition Acts; racial tensions flared during the Red Summer of 1919 as violence erupted from Chicago to Tulsa; Prohibition was the law of the land; and the first wave of U.S. feminism ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment.” At the time, they noted, “People yearned for a return to ‘normalcy,’ as then–presidential hopeful Warren G. Harding proclaimed.”

But it was not to be. “The desire for simpler times, however, was more a phantom than a reality, as millions of Americans ultimately had to adjust to an ever- and fast-changing world,” including a rapidly changing media landscape — most notably the explosion of radio. And we should expect much the same. Every major change in the media landscape has brought with it the promise of expanded horizons and democratic possibility — the potential for a broader, more inclusive public conversation — only to see many of the old patterns of division, exclusion, and demonization recur in new ways as well as old, as recent revelations about Facebook vividly remind us.

Project Censored isn’t alone in drawing parallels to a century ago, of course. The pandemic above all has expanded journalistic horizons as a matter of necessity. To a lesser extent, the threat to American democracy —

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

R O S E N B E R G

unaffordable prescription drugs, according to a November 2020 study reported on by Kenny Stancil for Common Dreams.

“As medicines become increasingly expensive, patients skip doses, ration prescriptions, or quit treatment altogether,” Project Censored explained, a phenomenon known as “cost-related nonadherence,” which will become “a leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, and kidney disease” by 2030, according to the study by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Xcenda, the research arm of Amerisource-Bergen, a drug distributor.

“Even with Medicare insurance, what seniors pay is linked to a drug’s price,” the study explained, which allowed the researchers “to model how cost-related nonadherence would change under policies that would reduce drug prices, such as Medicare negotiation.”

The study focused on five medical conditions that “significantly affect seniors and for which effective pharmaceutical treatments are available,” including three types of heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and type B diabetes.

“The good news is that policy changes can curb the power of Big Pharma, resulting in far fewer avoidable deaths,” Stancil reported.

As one of its key findings, the study stated, “Medicare negotiation is projected to reduce drug prices and seniors’ costsharing, which could prevent nearly 94,000 seniors’ deaths annually and save $475.9 billion.”

As a model for policymakers, the study pointed specifically to the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (HR 3), which passed the House in December 2019 but died in the Senate, Project Censored noted. It’s been reintroduced after Joe Biden “declined to include Medicare negotiation in his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan proposal,” they explained.

A May 2021 op-ed in The Hill, co-authored by Rep. Peter Welch

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part of a worldwide trend of democratic backsliding — has done so as well, but while some have expanded their horizons, many more continue as if little or nothing has fundamentally changed. Day-to-day news stories perpetuate the fantasy that normal has already returned. And in one sense, they’re right. The normal patterns of exclusion and suppression that Project Censored has been tracking for over 40 years continue to dominate, with even the latest wrinkles fitting into wellestablished, if evolving, broad patterns that are depressingly familiar.

These patterns are reflected in Project Censored’s Top 10 list, with two stories each about labor struggles, racism, and threats to health, the environment, and free speech. Yes, that’s 12 stories, not 10, because some stories fit into more than one pattern — and some readers will surely find more patterns as well.

The point of Project Censored has never been just to expose significant stories that have been ignored but rather to expose them as portals to a wider landscape of understanding and action. In that spirit, here is our summary of this year’s Top 10 censored stories.

But this op-ed was a rare exception. “The public’s understanding of the debate surrounding HR 3 and other proposed legislation designed to control inflation in prescription drug prices ought to be informed by accurate information about the grim repercussions of continuing the status quo,” Project Censored noted. “Sadly, the corporate media have failed to provide the public with such information for far too long, and the consequences could turn out to be deadly for millions of seniors.”

Anson Stevens-Bollen

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• HR 3 would limit the annual out-ofpocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries to no more than $2,000 and would establish a top negotiated price for drugs at no more than 120% of the average of six other wealthy nations.

• HR 3 would support and protect innovation and new drug development by investing some of the expected savings into the world-class research funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Anson Stevens-Bollen

Prescription drug costs, wildcat strikes, Google’s unionbusting, and racism in forced sterilization — Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show old patterns alive and well.

(D-Vermont), cited the study’s figures on preventable deaths and explained its basic framework as such.

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Feature

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often-underfunded reporting enterprises and the legal might of attorneys hired by the world’s wealthiest people and corporations,” Woodman wrote. “Focusing on frivolous cases known as ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation,’ or SLAPPs, the report asserts that such actions ‘can create a similar chilling effect on media freedom to more overt violence or attack.’ ” Legal threats are often communicated via private letters, “and, if successful in achieving their aim, the public will never know,” the report said.

s ' t I <

Physical threats and online harassment were also a grave concern, but they were geographically uneven.

“While no journalists surveyed in North America reported physical threats, 60% of respondents working in sub-Saharan Africa and 50% of respondents from North Africa and the Middle East region reported threats of physical attack,” Woodman noted.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb in Malta in October 2017, but, he added, “The report asserts that an assassination is often not a starting point for those seeking to silence reporters but instead a crime committed after a pattern of escalating threats, noting

that Caruana Galizia had faced numerous legal threats and actions and that her family is still fighting 25 lawsuits over her reporting.”

Project Censored noted Galizia’s murder along with that of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, adding that “According to FPC’s report, an additional 30 reporters from Brazil, Russia, India, Ukraine, Mexico, and other countries who were researching financial corruption have been murdered since 2017.”

As for legal threats, “Unlike Canada, Australia, and certain U.S. states, the United Kingdom has not passed antiSLAPP legislation, making its courts an attractive venue for elites seeking to use

ton Camera> g n i l r A t a s a m t s i Chr

the law to bully journalists into silence,” Project Censored noted, citing a May 8 Guardian column by Nick Cohen which described the U.K.’s court system as “the censorship capital of the democratic world.” Cohen in turn cited the case of financial reporter Catherine Belton, author of the 2020 book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West. As Cohen explained, Project Censored observed, “in response, a host of Putin’s super-wealthy associates are now bombarding Belton with one lawsuit after another.”

The silence about this silencing has been deafening, Project Censored noted. There has been some coverage overseas, but “to date, however, no major commercial newspaper or broadcast outlet in the United States has so much as mentioned the FPC’s report.”

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3.) Historic Wave of Wildcat Strikes for Workers’ Rights After millions of people were designated “essential workers” when the country went into lockdown in March 2020, thousands of wildcat strikes erupted to challenge dangerous working conditions and chronic low wages, exacerbated by companies’ refusal to protect workers against COVID-19 and cutting or sharply increasing the cost of medical insurance for those who had it. A further strike surge was driven by “Black and Brown workers using digital technologies to organize collective actions as a way to press some of the demands for racial justice raised

by Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protestors,” Project Censored noted.

The nation’s fourth busiest port, Charleston, South Carolina, shut down during Floyd’s funeral on June 9, for example.

At the labor news website Payday Report, Mike Elk created a continuously updated COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map, which had identified “1,100 wildcat strikes as of March 24, 2021, many of which the corporate media have chosen to ignore,” according to Project Censored, including “more than 600 strikes or work stoppages by workers in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement,” in June 2020 alone, according to Elk’s data.

Project Censored said, “While local and regional newspapers and broadcast news outlets have reported on particular local actions, corporate news coverage has failed to report the strike wave as a continued on page 13

Furthermore, Elk noted that identifying roughly 600 strikes in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement “is likely a severe underestimation as many nonunion Black and Brown workers are now calling out en masse to attend Black Lives Matter protests without it ever being reported in the press or on social media.”

Elk also noted that “many Black workers interviewed by Payday Report say that, once again, white labor leaders are failing to understand nontraditional organizing that has developed from viral social media movements. … Instagram automation and similar automation on Facebook and Twitter help to build a huge

continued on page 14

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• In Santa Rosa, California, 700 health-care workers went on strike because their hospital lacked sufficient personal protective equipment to keep employees safe and management warned them that their insurance fees would be doubled if they wanted continued coverage for their families.

• In St. Joseph, Missouri, 120 sheet metal workers went on strike due to management’s repeated attempts to cut their health-care benefits during the pandemic.

• In May 2020, workers at 50 McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks, and other fast-food establishments throughout Florida staged a daylong strike for higher pay and better protective equipment.

• In April 2021, employees at Chicagoarea Peet’s Coffee & Tea locations staged a coordinated work stoppage along with the Fight for $15 campaign to demand workplace protections and quarantine pay.

4.) “Climate Debtor” Nations Have “Colonized” the Atmosphere The United States and other developed countries in the global north are responsible for 92% of all the excess carbon dioxide emissions driving global warming, according to a study in the September

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wave, at no time connecting the dots of all the individual, seemingly isolated work stoppages and walkouts to create a picture of the overarching trend.”

The sole exception where there was national coverage was in August 2020 when highly paid baseball and basketball pro athletes walked out in violation of their contracts to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by Wisconsin police. The coverage ended quickly once they returned a few days later.

Wildcat strikes occur when workers simply stop working, often in response to a specific incident, such as employer actions putting lives at risk by skimping on protective gear or attempting to cut workers’ health care. The situation was exacerbated by the Donald Trump administration’s failure to issue mandates requiring specific safety measures, as reported by Michael Sainato at The Guardian.

Examples covered by Elk that Project Censored cited include:

issue of The Lancet Planetary Health. The United States alone was responsible for 40%, followed by Russia and Germany (8% each), the United Kingdom (7%), and Japan (5%).

The study’s author, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, told Sarah Lazare of In These Times that his research began from the premises that “the atmosphere is a common resource” and that “all people should have equal access” to a fair share of it. He calculated each nation’s fair share of a sustainable global carbon budget, based on population, along with an analysis of “territorial emissions from 1850 to 1969 and consumption-based

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following for grassroots movements, so something that had no following a month ago can suddenly go viral and reach millions of people within hours or even minutes.”

That threat empowers even solitary individual workers, Tulsa-based Black filmmaker and activist Marq Lewis told Elk. He says he personally knows of multiple examples of Black workers in Tulsa approaching their bosses without the support of a union and winning changes in their workplace. Lewis said, “A lot of people may say, ‘This is not a strike.’ Well, you tell that to these workers now who are getting their grievances heard.”

That’s the censored story within the story within the story.

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emissions from 1970 to 2015.” In turn, this was used to calculate “the extent to which each country has overshot or undershot its fair share,” according to the study.

Thus, the above list of the largest climate debtors.

The results, he told In These Times, show that “the countries of the Global North have ‘stolen’ a big chunk of the atmospheric fair shares of poorer countries and on top of that are responsible for the vast majority of excess emissions. …

They have effectively colonized the global atmospheric commons for the sake of their own industrial growth.”

In contrast, the study found that “most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).” The leading climate creditors to date are India (34% of global “undershoots”), China (11%), Bangladesh and Indonesia (5% each), and Nigeria (4%).

“High-income countries must not only reduce emissions to zero more quickly than other countries, but they must also pay down their climate debts,” the study said. “Just as many of these countries have relied on the appropriation of labor and resources from the Global South for their own economic growth, they have also relied on the appropriation

of global atmospheric commons, with consequences that harm the Global South disproportionately.”

Other studies and analyses, Lazare noted, “have pointed to the disproportionate responsibility of the Global North, and wealthy countries, for driving the climate crisis.”

Most dramatically, she reported, a 2015 study by Oxfam International “found that the poorest half of the world’s population — roughly 3.5 billion people — are to blame for just 10% of ‘total global emissions attributed to individual consumption,’ yet they ‘live overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change.’ In contrast, the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for roughly 50% of global emissions.”

Project Censored said, “Corporate news outlets appear to have entirely ignored the findings of Jason Hickel’s Lancet study.”

Although it may be imperative to act “quickly and together” to reduce carbon emissions, as Vice President Kamala Harris asserted at the April 2021 climate summit, corporate media have failed to cover Hickel’s cutting-edge research, which demonstrates that the United States and other would-be leaders in addressing climate change are, in fact — as the world’s worst climate debtors — disproportionately responsible for climate breakdown.”

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Feature

5.) Microplastics and Toxic Chemicals Increasingly Prevalent in World’s Oceans According to a pair of scientific studies published in the summer of 2020, microplastic particles and a family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS have become more widespread in the world’s oceans than previously realized and have begun to contaminate the global seafood supply. The two problems are related because PFAS — a family of highly stable “forever chemicals” with more than 4,700 known members — can occur as microplastics, they can stick to microplastic particles in water, and are involved in the production of plastics.

In July 2020, a German-American study published in the scholarly journal Environmental Science & Technology revealed that PFAS — which are used in a range of products, including carpets, furniture, clothing, food packaging, and nonstick coatings — have now been found in the Arctic Ocean.

“This discovery worries scientists,” Project Censored explained, “because it means that PFAS can reach any body of water anywhere in the world and that such

chemicals are likely present in our water supply.”

This is concerning because, as Daniel Ross reported for Truthout, there are “known human health impacts ... including certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid problems, and increased risk of asthma. As endocrine [disruptors], these chemicals have been linked to increased risk of severe COVID-19.”

Ross cited a number of other studies as well, noting that “emerging research suggests that one important pathway [for PFAS spreading] is through the air and in rainwater” and that they had been widely detected in China, the United States, and elsewhere.

“PFASs are probably detectable in ‘all major water supplies’ in the U.S.,” according to a study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Ross reported.

“What’s more, over 200 million Americans could be drinking water containing PFAS above a level EWG scientists believe is safe, according to the organization’s most recent findings.”

The second study, in August 2020, also published in Environmental Science & Technology, came from researchers at the QUEX Institute, a partnership between the University of Exeter and the University of Queensland. They looked for and found microplastics (pieces of plastic, less than five millimeters in length — about the size continued on page 15

6.) Canary Mission Blacklists ProPalestinian Activists, Chilling Free Speech Rights Before the moral panic over Critical Race Theory fueled a nationwide uprising to censor discussions of race in education, there was an opposite moral panic decrying “cancel culture” stifling certain people — especially in education — but even at the peak of the “cancel culture” panic, perhaps the most canceled people anywhere in America — pro-Palestinian activists and sympathizers — received

7.) Google’s Union-Busting Methods Revealed In 2018, Google dropped its long-time slogan, “Don’t be evil” from its code of conduct. In 2019, Google hired IRI Consultants, a union avoidance firm,

“amid a wave of unprecedented worker organizing at the company,” as Vice’s Motherboard put it in January 2021, while reporting on leaked files from IRI provided a disturbing picture of how far Google may have strayed in its willingness to sabotage its workers’ rights.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal for companies to spy on employees and guarantees workers the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining. “Nevertheless,” Project Censored noted, “companies like Google attempt to circumvent the law by hiring union avoidance firms like IRI Consultants as independent contractors to engage in surveillance and intimidation on their behalf.”

As Lauren Kaori Gurley reported for Motherboard, “Employers in the United States spend roughly $340 million on union avoidance consultants each year,” but their practices are apparently so disreputable that IRI doesn’t identify its clients on its website “beyond saying the firm has been hired by universities, renewable energy companies, automakers, ‘the nation’s largest food manufacturers,’ and ‘several Top 10 worldwide retailers,’ ” she reported.

John Logan, a professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State, told Gurley, “Consultants specialize in operating in the gray areas of the law.

They’re not quite illegal, but they’re sort of bending the law if they’re not breaking it.”

Project Censored noted, “The [leaked] documents show that the firm collected incredibly detailed information on 83 Seattle hospital employees, including their ‘personality, temperament, motivations, ethnicity, family background, spouses’ employment, finances, health issues, work ethic, job performance, disciplinary history, and involvement in union activity’ in the lead-up to a union election, including descriptions of workers as ‘lazy,’ ‘impressionable,’ ‘money oriented,’ and ‘a single mother.’ ” The documents Motherboard reported on didn’t come from Google but from two Seattle-based hospitals owned by Conifer Health Solutions, who hired IRI on the sly — a common practice.

“Tracking the union avoidance firms behind anti-union campaigns is intentionally made difficult by firms that subcontract out work to other firms that hire independent contractors to avoid federal reporting requirements laid out by the Department of Labor and shield themselves from public scrutiny,” Motherboard explained, adding that the union organizing the workers had no idea of IRI’s involvement.

Project Censored noted, “Google is not the only Big Tech company to enlist union-avoidance consultants in recent years. In fall 2020 and spring 2021, employees at Amazon’s massive fulfillment

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that comes up when you google my name, the claim that I’m a terrorist supporter and an extremist,’ one former activist on Palestinian issues told The Intercept.

“Beyond Canary Mission,” Projected Censored continued, “a variety of proIsrael organizations that seek to suppress pro-Palestinian activism have pursued litigation against chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine,” as reported in The Nation by Lexi McMenamin. A highlighted example at UCLA demanded the release of the names of speakers at a national conference, whose identities had been protected “in order to prevent them from being put on no-fly lists, potentially denied entry to other countries, or contacted by the FBI over their organizing work.”

In March 2021, a California judge rejected that demand, noting that disclosure of their names “would violate their rights to freedom of association, anonymous speech, and privacy.”

Project Censored also cited a May 2021 federal court ruling that the state of Georgia cannot compel groups or individuals who contract with public entities to disavow support for the BDS movement against Israel, finding that the state’s law “places an unconstitutional incidental burden on speech.”

Georgia is one of 35 states with similar anti-BDS laws or executive orders.

“Heightened violence in Israel/ Palestine in May 2021 has focused attention on powerful pro-Israel media biases in U.S. news coverage, but Canary Mission and legal efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian activism have nonetheless received minimal corporate news coverage,” Project Censored summarized, citing a handful of exceptions, op-eds in The New York Times and Washington Post, plus two New York Times articles “dating back to 2018 [that] made passing mention of Canary Mission as a ‘shadowy organization,’ ” but, as Project Censored concluded, “aside from this coverage, major establishment news outlets have provided no substantive reports on the role played by Canary Mission and other pro-Israel organizations in stifling the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian activists.”

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Anson Stevens-Bollen

of a sesame seed) in five seafood products sold in Australian markets: crabs, oysters, prawns, squid, and sardines, the last with the highest concentration.

According to the study’s lead author, as reported by Robby Berman in Medical News Today, a seafood eater with an average serving “could be exposed to … up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines,” about as much as a grain of rice.

Another co-author said, “We do not fully understand the risks to human health of ingesting plastic, but this new method [they used for detecting selected plastics] will make it easier for us to find out.”

Berman noted that “roughly 17% of the protein humans consume worldwide is seafood. The findings, therefore, suggest people who regularly eat seafood are also regularly eating plastic.”

Aside from The Guardian, “no major news outlet has paid attention to the topic of microplastics in seafood,” Project Censored noted, referring to an October 2020 story by Graham Readfearn, reporting on a new Australian study indicating that at least 14 million tons of microplastics are likely sitting on the ocean floor — “more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface.”

However, the study’s co-author, Dr. Denise Hardesty, “said the amount of plastic on the ocean floor was relatively small compared to all the plastics being released, suggesting the deep-sea sediments were not currently a major resting place for plastics,” Readfearn reported. “Leaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge in September to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050,” but major countries, including the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India, and Australia, had not signed on.

virtually no attention. Even though a well-funded, secretly run blacklist website known as Canary Mission explicitly targeted thousands of individuals — overwhelmingly students — with dossiers expressly intended to ruin their careers before they even began and which “have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials,” according to The Forward, a Jewish publication, they’ve also been used by the FBI, as reported by The Intercept.

The website, established in 2015, “seeks to publicly discredit critics of Israel as ‘terrorists’ and ‘anti-Semites,’ ” Project Censored noted, but its careless style of accusation has caused a backlash, even among pro-Israeli Jews. The Forward reported, “While some of those listed on the site are prominent activists, others are students who attended a single event or even student government representatives suspected of voting for resolutions that are critical of Israel.”

More than that, The Forward reported three examples when Canary Mission was apparently retaliating against critics, including Jews, but, by far, its main targets are Palestinians, particularly activists involved with the global BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) that works to peacefully pressure Israel — similarly to South Africa in the 1980s — to obey international law and respect Palestinians’ human rights. As The Intercept reported in 2018, “While Canary Mission promotes itself as a group working against anti-Semitism, the blacklist’s effective goal is to clamp down on growing support for Palestine in the United States by intimidating and tarnishing Palestinian rights advocates with the brush of bigotry.”

While the FBI told The Intercept that it “only investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security,” this didn’t match up with its actions.

“If the FBI was concerned about criminal activity among the student activists, its agents made no indication of that in the interviews,” The Intercept reported. “They did, however, ask questions that echoed far-right propaganda about unproven links between pro-Palestine activist groups and militant groups.”

The list itself has had a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, another Intercept story reported. “A survey of over 60 people profiled on Canary Mission, conducted by the group Against Canary Mission, found that 43% of respondents said they toned down their activism because of the blacklist, while 42% said they suffered acute anxiety from being placed on the website.”

Some have even received death threats.

“For many otherwise unknown activists, a Canary Mission profile is their most visible online presence,” Project Censored reported. “ ‘It’s the first thing

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center in Bessemer, Alabama, launched a much-publicized unionization effort. As John Logan detailed in a lengthy article for LaborOnline, Amazon responded to the Bessemer drive by spending at least $3,200 per day on anti-union consultants Russ Brown and Rebecca Smith and by bringing in a second union-busting consulting firm,” as well as hiring “one of the largest law firms in the country specializing in union avoidance.”

Employees voted more than 2-1 against joining the union, but the election was overturned for a set of eight labor law violations after Project Censored’s book went to the publisher — a decision that Amazon is appealing.

“There has been some establishment press coverage of large corporations hiring union-avoidance firms to undermine workplace organizing, mostly focusing on tech giants like Google and Amazon,” Project Censored noted, including late 2019 stories in The New York Times and Washington Post reporting that Google had hired IRI, and a Feb. 23, 2020, New York Times Magazine cover story entitled “the Great Google Revolt,” which “mentioned in passing” the use of antiunion consultants by Google and others in Silicon Valley.

“However, there has been no corporate news coverage whatsoever of the sensational leaks that Motherboard released in January, and there has been very little in-depth corporate media reporting on the use of union-busting consultants in general,” Project Censored summed up, concluding, “The documents leaked to Motherboard confirm and greatly elaborate upon what labor organizers and educators have suspected of the specific tactics the union-busting firms employ.”

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Feature

8.) Pfizer Bullies South American Governments over COVID-19 Vaccine “Pfizer has essentially held Latin American governments to ransom for access to its lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine,” Project Censored reported, the latest example of how it has exerted undue influence to enrich itself at the expense of low- and middle-income nations going back to the 1980s, when it helped shape the intellectual property rules it’s now taking advantage of.

“Pfizer has been accused of ‘bullying’ Latin American governments in COVID

vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases,” according to reporters at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ).

In one case, it resulted in a threemonth delay in reaching a deal.

“For Argentina and Brazil, no national deals were agreed at all,” BIJ reported.

“Any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines means more people contracting COVID-19 and potentially dying.”

It’s normal for governments to provide some indemnity, but “Pfizer asked for additional indemnity from civil cases, meaning that the company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud, or malice,” BIJ reported. “This includes those linked to company practices — say, if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing.”

The director of the Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at the World Health Organization (WHO), Lawrence Gostin, told BIJ, “Some liability protection is warranted but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, [or] failure to follow good manufacturing practices. Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things.”

During negotiations, which began in June 2020, “the Argentinian government

believed that, at the least, Pfizer ought to be accountable for acts of negligence on its part in the delivery and distribution of the vaccine, but instead of offering any compromise, Pfizer ‘demanded more and more,’ according to one government negotiator,” Project Censored summarized. “That was when Pfizer called for Argentina to put up sovereign assets as collateral. Argentina broke off negotiations with Pfizer, leaving the nation’s leaders at that time without a vaccine supply for its people,” in December.

An Argentine official told BIJ, “It was an extreme demand that I had only heard when the foreign debt had to be negotiated, but both in that case and in this one, we rejected it immediately.”

That same month, just after the United States approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, In These Times’ Sarah Lazare filed a detailed report on the history of the pharmaceutical giant’s opposition to expanding vaccine access to poor countries, beginning in the mid-1980s during the negotiations that eventually resulted in the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995.

“Both globally and domestically,” she explained, “Pfizer played an important role in promoting the idea that international trade should be contingent on strong intellectual property rules while casting countries that do not follow U.S. continued on page 17

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9.) Police Use Dogs as Instruments of Violence, Targeting People of Color The use of vicious dogs to control Black people dates back to slavery, but it’s not ancient history, according to an investigative series of 13 linked reports titled Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons, coordinated by the Marshall Project in partnership with AL.com, IndyStar, and the Invisible Institute. They found evidence that the pattern continues to this day, with disproportionate use of police dogs against people of color, often resulting in serious injury, with little or no justification. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a majority-Black city of 220,000, is the

• “Though our data shows dog bites in nearly every state, some cities use biting dogs far more often than others.”

This ranged from just one incident in Chicago from 2017 to 2019 to more than 200 in Los Angeles and more than 220 in Indianapolis.

• “Most bite victims are men, and studies suggest that in some places, they have been disproportionately Black.”

This includes the Ferguson, Missouri, police department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, where it’s been found that “dogs bit non-White people almost exclusively.”

• “Bites can cause life-altering injuries, even death. Dogs used in arrests are bred and trained to have a bite strong enough to punch through sheet metal.”

• “Many people bitten were unarmed, accused of nonviolent crimes or weren’t suspects at all.”

• “Some dogs won’t stop biting and must be pulled off by a handler, worsening injuries.”

• “There’s little accountability or compensation for many bite victims,” for a wide range of reasons. “Even when victims can bring cases, lawyers say they struggle because jurors tend to love police dogs,” what’s known as the Lassie Effect.

Though the Black Lives Matter movement has significantly raised public awareness of police using disproportionate force against people of color, police “K-9 violence has received strikingly little attention from corporate news media.”

There were exceptions. In October 2020, USA Today and the Marshall Project published a Marshall Project story simultaneously, and in November 2020, the Washington Post ran a front-page story citing the Marshall Project’s reporting. In addition, NBC News covered Salt Lake City’s suspension of its K-9 program “after

10.) Activists Call Out Legacy of Racism and Sexism in Forced Sterilization Forced sterilization was deemed constitutional in the 1927 Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell, after which forced sterilizations increased dramatically, to at least 60,000 in some 32 states during the 20th Century, predominantly targeting women of color. And while state laws have been changed, forced sterilization is still constitutional and still going on today — with at least five cases of women in custody

by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Georgia in 2019 — while thousands of victims await restitution, as reports from The Conversation and YES! Magazine have documented.

“Organizations such as Project South, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab are actively working to document the extent of this underreported problem — and to bring an end to it,” Project Censored noted, but their work is even more underreported than the problem itself.

“During the height of this wave of eugenics by means of sterilization in the U.S., forced hysterectomies were so common in the Deep South that activist Fannie Lou Hamer coined the term ‘Mississippi Appendectomy’ to describe them,” Ray Levy Uyeda wrote in the YES! Magazine article “How Organizers Are Fighting an American Legacy of Forced Sterilization,” which begins with the story of Kelli Dillon. A California prison inmate, she underwent a procedure in 2001 to remove a potentially cancerous growth — and the surgeon simultaneously performed an unauthorized hysterectomy, one of 148 forced sterilizations that year in California prisons and one of 1,400 carried out between 1997 and 2010.

Dillon began organizing inside the women’s prison gathering testimonials from other victimized prisoners “and provided the personal accounts to staff at Justice Now that was laying the groundwork to petition for legislation that would ban the procedures in prisons,” Uyeda reported.

She eventually sued the state of California for damages and helped to shape legislation to compensate victims (finally

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Anson Stevens-Bollen

intellectual property rules as engaging in ‘piracy,’ ” a view they promoted to multiple business networks, shielded from wider public debate. “It was not a given, at the time, that intellectual property would be included in trade negotiations.

Many Third World countries resisted such inclusion, on the grounds that stronger intellectual property rules would protect the monopoly power of corporations and undermine domestic price controls.

“It is difficult to think of a clearer case for suspending intellectual property laws than a global pandemic,” she continued, and “a swath of global activists, mainstream human rights groups, and UN human rights experts have added their voices to the demand for a suspension of patent laws,” but Pfizer was joined in its opposition by pharmaceutical trade groups and individual companies, such as Moderna, another COVID-19 vaccine maker.

As a result, “One could make a map of global poverty, lay it over a map of vaccine access, and it would be a virtual one-to-one match,” she wrote. “Once again, majority Black and brown countries, by and large, are left to suffer and die.”

Project Censored noted, “Pfizer’s dealings in South America are not exactly secret, but as of May 2021, there has been no corporate media coverage of Pfizer’s actual dealings in South America or how the pharmaceutical giant helped establish the global intellectual property standards it now invokes to protect its control over access to the vaccine.”

Nor is this anything new, it concluded: “Big Pharma has a long, underreported track record of leaving developing nations’ medical needs unfulfilled, as Project Censored has previously documented.”

passed this year), a story told in the 2020 documentary film Belly of the Beast.

In The Conversation, Alexandra Minna Stern wrote, “All forced sterilization campaigns, regardless of their time or place, have one thing in common: They involve dehumanizing a particular subset of the population deemed less worthy of reproduction and family formation.”

Stern directs the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, where “our interdisciplinary team explores the history of eugenics and sterilization in the U.S. using data and stories” — 35,000 of them so far captured from “historical records from North Carolina, California, Iowa, and Michigan.”

The history is more complicated than one might expect, Stern explains. “At first, sterilization programs targeted white men, expanding by the 1920s to affect the same number of women as men. The laws used broad and ever-changing disability labels like ‘feeblemindedness’ and ‘mental defective.’ Over time, though, women and people of color increasingly became the target, as eugenics amplified sexism and racism. It is no coincidence that sterilization rates for Black women rose as desegregation got underway.”

Uyeda wrote, “California Latinas for Reproductive Justice is working to secure legislative change for victims of the state’s sterilization efforts between 1909 and 1979.”

It was signed into law after Project Censored’s book went to print, making California the third state with such legislation, following the lead of North Carolina and Virginia, in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

“The history of eugenics has been thoroughly researched and criticized by scholars and human rights activists, but coverage by the corporate media of the U.S. practice of forced sterilization throughout the 20th century and into the 21st has tended to be limited and narrowly focused,” Project Censored noted.

There was some corporate news coverage after the ICE forced sterilization stories emerged but generally without “any mention of the activists resisting the practice. … Some establishment press articles on the topic of forced sterilization include comments from members of these organizations to provide context on the issue, but few spotlight the groups’ tireless organizing and record of accomplishments.”

Two exceptions cited were articles from Marie Claire and Refinery29, a website for young women. This only began to change in July 2021, as Project Censored’s book was going to print, “with the Associated Press and other establishment news outlets reporting that California is preparing to approve reparations of up to $25,000 per person to women who had been sterilized without consent.” l

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a video circulated of a police dog biting a Black man who was kneeling on the ground with his hands held up.” But aside from these examples, “coverage appears to have been limited to local news outlets,” Project Censored concluded.

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

dog-bite capital of America, with a bite rate more than double the next-ranked city, Indianapolis. According to Bryn Stole and Grace Toohey’s February 2021 report, between 2017 and 2019, Baton Rouge police dogs bit at least 146 people, records show. Of those, 53 were 17 years old or younger. The youngest were just 13.

Almost all of the people bitten were Black, and most were unarmed and suspected by police of nonviolent crimes like driving a stolen vehicle or burglary.

But Baton Rouge is hardly alone.

Approximately 3,600 Americans annually are sent to the emergency room for severe bite injuries resulting from police dog attacks. These bites “can be more like shark attacks than nips from a family pet, according to experts and medical researchers,” a team of five reporters wrote in October 2020, as part of a summary of the main finding of their research. Other highlights from the series include:

Anson Stevens-Bollen

Feature

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FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

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EATS & drinks

Brewed Up

For new restaurants, brewing beer on-site may have lost its novelty, but Fort Brewery shows that brewpub openings can still make a big splash.

FORT WORTH ARLINGTON

BEST RAMEN WINNER - Fort Worth Weekly Best Of 2021

K I N T A R O R A M E N . C O M

the ire of progressive Near Southsiders, who generally look down on celebrations of wealth disparity. Fortunately, there aren’t many distracting signs of opulence at Fort Worth’s newest brewery, which is also owned by the twins. Only damn good pizza and beer.

I grabbed a seat on the patio on a recent evening as a band began setting up onstage. Between each table were large heaters waiting to combat the inevitable winter weather.

Four brews came served on a Texas-shaped paddle with a card that read “North, South, East, and West.” Next to

the four cardinal directions was the scribbled name of each beer.

The wheat beer, Grey Eagle, is an easy crowd-pleaser. The brew had a pleasant banana-tinged aroma, and it was mildly bitter with light hints of clove that are characteristic of traditional hefeweizens.

Zeppelin is the perfect beer to pair with wintery weather. The märzen was a lovely blend of bitter and toasty with hints of dark candy. Each sip wasn’t too heavy and had a sturdy malt profile.

Hopheads should spring for the Ocho, a bold IPA that won’t leave your continued on page 21

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Brewery openings are tamer affairs these days. When Rahr & Sons opened in 2004, the selling point was clear: beer, beer, beer.

The most recent wave of brewpub openings has navigated a more nuanced blend of selling points that include food, cocktails, and music. Bankhead Brewing Co., for example, spotlights chef-driven noshes on its social media posts. The same goes for Second Rodeo, the Stockyards’ lone brewery destination.

When Fort Brewery recently reopened near the Foundry District after its initial iteration on Magnolia had closed, the draw wasn’t just beer. The menu boasts an impressive mix of pizzas, appetizers, sammies, burgers, brats, and wings, among others, but that’s not the only thing that sets Fort Brewery apart.

The vast majority of Fort Worth breweries are owned by former homebrewers who risked it all by throwing their life savings into their dream jobs. Fort Brewery is owned by the twin developers who infamously packed luxury cars inside a building on Magnolia and subsequently drew

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

S T O R Y A N D P H O T O S B Y E D W A R D B R O W N

The beers were on point during a recent visit.

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Fort Brewery, 2737 Tiller St, FW. 817-923-8000.

10am-10pm Sun, 11am-2pm Mon-Tue, 11am11pm Wed-Thu, 11am-12am Fri, 10am-12am Sat. All major credit cards accepted.

19

FIRST BLUE ZONES

– FW Weekly Critics Choice 2015, 2017 & 2019 4630 SW Loop 820 | Fort Worth• 817-731-0455 order online for pickup Thaiselectrestaurant.com

SPICE

“Best Thai Food”

– FW Weekly Critics Choice Thai Kitchen & Bar 2016 – FW Weekly 411 W. Magnolia Ave readers Choice Fort Worth • 817-984-1800 2017, 2019, order online for pickup at Spicedfw.com 2020 & 2021

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FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

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FORT WORTH’S NEWEST FAMILY STYLE ITALIAN RESTAURANT opening early 2022

www.tremogli.com / @Tremogli_ftw / 401 s. main st.

lips puckering. In true West Coast style, the hopped-up ale boasts a plethora of flavors that includes citrus, grapefruit, and resiny hops. Warning: This beer is dank AF. Named after the year of Fort Worth’s founding, the 1849 is a clean Irish red ale.

Imagine a bready beer that has the profile of toffee without being sweet. The first sip reminded me of George Killian’s Irish Red, a macro beer that remains nostalgically tethered to my college days.

Two appetizers didn’t disappoint. The chicken wings were carved to look like meaty lollipops. The dry rub consisted of a light blend of cumin, sugar, black pepper, and chili powder that left a tinge of heat with each bite. The Heim BBQ wings were coated in a sweet barbecue sauce. The sparse coating put the juicy bird front and center.

The Panther Bones are basically extralarge breadsticks. There wasn’t anything special about the bread, but the infusion of garlic butter and herbs kept me greedily reaching for another bite. The accompanying marinara hit the textural sweet spot between chunky and soupy.

The brewpub appears to take its pizza game seriously. Every slice of the Meat

Fort Brewery Beer flight .................................................. $8 Meat Coma ................................................ $20 Baked wings .............................................. $14 Fort Burger ................................................ $16 Panther Bones (single) ............................. $6

Coma nearly buckled under the weight of generous mounds of sausage, Calabrese, candied bacon, and pepperoni. The meatcentric pie was mildly spicy, and the lightly charred crust was tough enough to hold the ensemble together yet chewy enough to add a complementary texture to the proteins.

The brewpub offers four creative burgers — all served with Wagyu beef patties.

Every bite of the Fort Burger was hefty and dense. The two quarter-pound patties were flavorful like a juicy ribeye but with a ground beef texture. Whipped feta added a rich and creamy mouthfeel while fermented jalapenos offered occasional bursts of fiery heat. The homemade focaccia bun was dense yet soft. The overall effect was addictively delicious. The baked spiral-cut fries on the side were thick and generously, delightfully seasoned with black pepper.

Fort Brewery has legitimate ties to the shuttered Magnolia brewpub of the same name which inherited the legacy of predecessors Chimera Brewing and Zio Carlo.

In the eyes of many Near Southsiders, the twin owners of Fort Brewery hastened gentrification along West Magnolia Avenue and South Main Street by buying a slew of buildings around 2016 and bringing in popular restaurants. Rent has increased significantly in the area over the past several years, and many of the neighborhood’s service workers are finding it harder to afford to live close to their jobs. Now that the owners of the original Fort Brewery location on Magnolia have set up shop near the Foundry district, there may be a chance to reboot their public image with a new focus on serving great pizza and beer. l

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

continued from page 19

817-349-9387 WWW.EAGLESPOINTSAGINAW.COM Coming from 820, exit Saginaw- Main exit towards Saginaw.

About 2 miles down we are located in a shopping center on the left.

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Eats & Drinks

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Lightly charred crust and generous toppings made the Meat Lovers a belt-busting delight.

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PTSD

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(No Physical Exam Needed - Qualifies Even If Previously Undiagnosed) Facts about How Common PTSD Is (from VA.GOV)

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FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

The following statistics are based on the U.S. population:

22

About 6 out of every 100 people (or 6% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives.

About 15 million adults have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.

About 8 of every 100 women (or 8%) develop PTSD sometime in their lives compared with about 4 of every 100 men (or 4%).

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3.) For interesting stocking stuffers for the pickle lover in your life, head to the Best Maid Pickle Emporium (829 W Vickery Blvd, 682-351-8286). Along with actual pickles, barbecue sauces, Bloody Mary mix, and pickle beer, there are unique finds like Dill Pickle Roasted Crickets. Yes, crickets. The half-ounce packages of them are $8 and are available in-store only. The emporium’s regular hours are 11am-6pm Tue-Sat, but they are also open on Sundays through the holidays. Many other items can be purchased at BestMaidPickles.com/ Emporium.

4.) If you’re looking to ship a sweet, healthy gift, hand-picked Florida fruits might be the perfect thing. Hale Groves (HaleGroves.com/H2YF70, 844-94335060) has its Fruit Favorites Gift Box (item 296X) on sale for $23.99 (reg. $37.99), plus $5.99 shipping/handling. The gift box includes two apples, grove navel oranges, petite golden navels, petite red navels, pears, and honey-sweet tangerines, plus one ruby-red grapefruit.

5.) For those obsessed with the movie Elf and weird beer, Martin House (220 S Sylvania Av, Ste 209, 817-222-0177)

just launched a new beer called Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins. This 8% stout is brewed with spaghetti in the grain bill, plus chocolate, lactose, maple syrup, marshmallows, and M&Ms. It’s on draft for $4, and the six-packs to-go for gifting are $16.

6.) Chips and salsa are a way of life in North Texas. Hometown salsa manufacturer Mrs. Renfro’s (@MrsRenfros, 817-336-3849) gets that. Whether it’s for out-of-town recipients or for you to stay home and be lazy, take advantage of the free shipping and order gift packs directly. Two-jar packs are $20, and four-jar packs are $35 at RenfroFoods.com. From mild ChowChow to Ghost Pepper, there are 30 salsa flavors from which to choose.

7.) While nationally known delivered-toyour-door steak purveyors Omaha Steaks has two physical locations in North Texas (10854 Person Rd, Dallas, and 2208 Dallas Pkwy, Ste 325-B, Plano, 214-368-7597), you can still order the popular Delight gift package for $99.99 the old-fashioned way by calling 1-888-279-0389 or by visiting OmahaSteaks.com/TheGift1166.

Along with four each of top sirloins, chicken breasts, filet mignon burgers, jumbo franks, scalloped potato dishes, and caramel apple tartlets, it comes with a jar of signature seasonings. There is also a $50 upgrade that includes four steak burgers and pork chops, a package of all-beef meatballs, and free shipping. To receive eight additional filet mignon burgers for free, mention code 65658NSR. 8.) If you’re looking for affordable goodies for food and booze gift basket making, don’t forget about the deep-discount supermarket Town Talk Foods in Fort Worth (121 N Beach St, 817-831-6136), Arlington (2320 S Collins St, 817-4352300), and Weatherford (106 College Park Dr, Ste 200, 817-438-8099). This week, for example, they have six-packs of Rahr & Sons’ Oktoberfest for $3.99 and Austin Eastciders’ Lemon Ginger and Texas Ale Project’s Cotton Candy Pilsner for $4.99 each (while supplies last).

By Jennifer Bovee

fwweekly.com

2.) Not unlike Acre Distilling, Bendt Distilling Co. (225 S Charles St, Lewisville, 214-814-0545) has the usual booze-oriented items for sale and tours to take. For the two weeks leading up to Christmas, you can also preorder a Bendt Whiskey Cake for $38 that yields up to 16 slices. Place your order at BendtDistillingCo.com/TourBooking.

Have a beer, you cotton-headed ninny muggins!

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

1.) If you’re looking for a small, boozy gift, check out the Mini Bottle Gift Boxes at Acre Distilling (1309 Calhoun St, 817632-7722). It includes your choice of two fun-sized spirits in a custom box for $20.

For a few more bucks, tours, tastings, and big ol’ bottles of alcohol would also make excellent gifts. For more information, visit AcreDistilling.com.

Check for availability 817-367-9792

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

If you’re looking for arty gifts for your family and friends, check out our Gift Guide in Holidays 2021 at FWWeekly.com.

This week and next, I’ll be featuring some edible gift-giving ideas for the foodies out there. Here are the first eight. Enjoy!

Cour tesy Facebook

Eat, Drink, & Be Merry

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MUSIC

ELVIS’ CHRISTMAS FRI 12/31 METALFEST Powering THU 12/9

U LC H SAT 3/19 G & MORE

FRI 12/10 SAT 12/18 THU 12/30 FRI 1/7 SAT 1/8 FRI 1/14

Central Arts Bedford isn’t just hosting punk and metal shows. It’s fueling a minor rebirth of sorts.

REVILED, NECROSIS & MORE CHRISTMAS w/ YA’ KINFOLK CREEPING DEATH & MORE GIRLS NIGHT OUT TOPLINE ADDICTS & MORE DANK, MANY MORE

B Y

S T E V E

S T E W A R D

About a month ago, I had this conversation with a longtime Area Band Dude about the state of live music in a post-pandemic Fort Worth. Specifically, I was curious about where one went to see bands if one was not old enough to go to bars, seeing as how the last place that offered all-ages shows, 1919 Hemphill, was years gone

continued on page 25

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Steve Steward

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

fwweekly.com

FRI 12/10 HAVE NEAR & MANY MORE FRI 12/17 CRIMSON SKYLINES, MORE FRI 12/31 FABULOUS FREAK BROTHERS

before 2020. He told me about “this place in Bedford. It’s kind of the epicenter of the local hardcore scene.” Following this lead, initially through creeping the Instagram account of a local band called Ozone, I found what he was talking about, a place called Central Arts of Bedford. On the Central Arts account, seeing the photos of bands tearing it up on what appeared to be an ancient disco floor was kind of thrilling, like I had found a stack of old Thrashers and was reliving some moment in Bay Area metal history.

But hosting hardcore shows isn’t Central Arts’ only function. It’s a 501(c)3 nonprofit, meaning it is funded and crewed by donors and volunteers. To sum up its mission statement, Central Arts exists to create spaces where art can flourish and offers creative opportunities to the community through art-related events, education, and community outreach. On some nights, those spaces feature death-

Santillan: “What we realized is that art is an economic driver. It drives everything — community, culture — and this whole shopping mall, except for a few spots, was empty, ugly, nobody rented it out.”

Music

continued from page 24

metal bands, and on other evenings, there are Paint-and-Pot Nights, in which attendees paint terra cotta pots and plant succulents in them. Two Sundays ago, there was a show headlined by Oakland, California’s Twompsax — the punk rock vehicle of pro skateboarder Cher Strauberry — which made an amusing contrast with what I saw when Cedric Santillan gave me a tour: some sweet old ladies browsing a gallery of paintings from the artists of the Trinity Arts Guild.

Santillan is an Area Band Dude himself, who grew up in Bedford, spending his teenage years riding around on a skateboard and listening to punk. He got into booking shows as a teenager, first

at his high school, then at 1919 Hemphill, and he played bass in a punk band called Pulled Under. I met up with him at Central Arts of Bedford, the art space/community outreach center that he and his father, Joshua Santillan, operate. Found in a strip mall off Central and Harwood in Bedford, Central Arts of Bedford is housed in a space that used to be a tae kwon do studio.

It is neighbors with Bedford Pharmacy, Lone Star Yarn, and Planned Parenthood, and it’s a couple of doors down from Danny’s Celtic Pub. Santillan said most of the tenants leasing the strip mall’s spaces weren’t there prior to Central Arts.

“Around five, six years ago, we would do these pop-up art galleries inside these empty strip malls,” Santillan said. “That’s what we started out as. And what we realized is that art is an economic driver.

It drives everything — community, culture

— and this whole shopping mall, except for a few spots, was empty, ugly, nobody rented it out.”

His dad had done some foam installation work for the mall’s owner, and they worked out a deal to show art in some of the spaces. And, gradually, the tenants started leasing again.

“We turned it from 10% to 90% occupancy,” Santillan said.

He started booking shows in one of the last spots to be rented, now occupied

by Lone Star Yarn.

For the moment, the ladies and their landscape paintings will coexist with the sturm und drang of punk and metal shows, but when another location is fully operational, this one in Hurst, Santillan will have two spaces for live music.

“Right now, the Bedford space is kind of more of an adult area, while the

Hurst space is more geared for children,” Santillan said.

And to his point, the Hurst location has more arcade games, and it also has boxes and boxes of arts and crafts supplies, and stacks of kids’ art, much of which came from last summer’s art class attendees. But next to that space is the former grocery store that Santillan and his dad are in the process of repurposing. The erstwhile Just Ripe Produce will eventually house a thrift store, pantry, library, and art studios, as well as a live performance space that’s about the size of Lola’s Saloon. It’s an ambitious endeavor, but the impact it will have on the neighborhood is inspiring.

And in the meantime, Central Arts of Bedford will continue to be a spot for allages shows. Hopefully, some local version of Thrasher exists to capture the venue’s moment in time. l

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Ryan Hamilton’s 1221

After the pandemic stalled his rising stardom overseas, the Americana singer-songwriter recouped his losses by releasing a new single every month in 2021, now gathered together on his latest LP.

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

DECEMBER 8-14, 2021

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B Y

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P A T R I C K

H I G G I N S

A year and a half ago, Ryan Hamilton — along with his backing band, the U.K.based Harlequin Ghosts — had achieved a newfound level of success. His latest album, Nowhere to Go but Everywhere, found itself charting in the United Kingdom — not “charting” in the sense of often misleading online stream counts but in the legitimate rankings of the Official Charts Company, England’s equivalent to Billboard, nestled between the likes of Taylor Swift and Neil Young. Though the career momentum the Fort Worth Americana stylist sought here stateside was still lagging, the boon overseas was encouraging. Enjoying selling out midsize theaters in London was sure to lead to a similar reaction at home, he felt. Then, of course, COVID-19 changed everything.

“It was really hard, and it continues to be hard,” Hamilton said of the sudden shutdown that wiped out almost instantly the achievements he’d been building toward for years. “It was like, ‘Boom! This is all happening, and it’s happening in England, which is cool.’ It looked like bigger tours, bigger festivals — the dominoes were really starting to fall in my favor finally. And then, it all went away. I had this thing happen that I had been waiting for for so long, and now it’s like it’s been forgotten.”

Though the pandemic in essence took away the means for musicians to make a living, Hamilton wasn’t content to sit idle and wait for it to be over. Part as an attempt to continue the progress begun on Nowhere but just as much to simply keep busy, he had the crazy notion that he would release a new song on the 12th of every month for the entire year and then combine the tracks into what would be his fifth album, appropriately titled 1221.

“A lot of it was tied to sitting at home with nothing to do,” he said with a laugh, “but it was really trying to keep some sort of momentum from this thing I feel I have this

Tr e n t o n J o h n s o n

MUSIC

Hamilton: “I needed to do something to stay sane, to stay relevant, to stay successful.”

god-given ability to do and which I’m very thankful for. I thought, What could I do? I needed to do something to stay sane, to stay relevant, to stay successful.”

Working with his producer, Dave Draper (Paul Terry, Cellarscape), Hamilton actually accomplished the feat. With Draper located in the U.K., he and Hamilton would collaborate remotely, sharing files through the cloud or via “Zoom recording sessions.” With standout tracks like “Do the Damage” and “Deja Vu I Love You,” Hamilton offers hook-riddled, blues-tinged pop-rock with the up-tempo frivolity of the Old 97’s and the earworm-y singalong melodies of Matthew Sweet.

When a particular month seemed daunting or Hamilton wasn’t pleased with the song he was working on, he enlisted help from other songwriters like Bob Schneider (The Ugly Americans) and Chuck Prophet (Alejandro Escovedo, Green on Red) or even turned to a few covers like January’s contribution, the Spin Doctors’ 1991 hit “How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me)?,” or Catherine Wheel’s “Satellite.”

1221 was released as a whole the day after Thanksgiving.

Hamilton has nothing but praise for his label, the Little Steven Van Zandt-founded Wicked Cool Records (Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, Steve Conte, Jesse Malin), saying they were “so awesome — you could imagine they may be like, ‘Wait, you want us to promote a new song every month? And then release all the songs everyone’s already heard as an album?’ But once we got the ball rolling, they were fully on board and encouraging.”

Despite a lost year, response to the singles and the album so far has seemed to pick up right where Hamilton left off almost two years ago. So far, in little more than a week, 1221 has been streamed in its entirety more than 125,000 times.

Though he won’t perform live in front of an audience again until he plays New York after the New Year, Hamilton is offering a pay-per-view livestream of his annual Holiday Hoedown at 3 p.m. Thursday. Traditionally taking place in London every year, this year’s version will be at the Historic Church in Stephenville. Tickets to view the multi-camera solo-acoustic concert are $12.21 and will include a downloadable copy of the album in the form of Live & Acoustic in Stephenville, Texas.

After a U.K. run in February, Hamilton will be back for a tour in the states to support 1221 in May. l

CLASSIFIEDS

bulletin board / employment / public notices

Product Support Engineer/Order Processing Service

Reinhausen Manufacturing, a world leader the Electrical Power Engineering industry has an opening for a Product Support Engineer/Order Processing Service professional. Reinhausen has been writing success stories for over 150 years. As “The Power behind Power”, they are using highest-performance actuators, sensors, software and services to make transformers intelligent and controllable, thereby ensuring an optimal power supply from the power plant to the outlet.

Reinhausen provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Reinhausen complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every lo-cation in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.Reinhausen expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

Reinhausen complies with an extensive Substance Abuse Policy and the Substance Abuse Policies of our clients. Extensive background investigations will be conducted for certain clients.

Reinhausen has a very competitive total rewards package including a generous 410k plan, PTO, a PPO medical plan with a generous Health Savings Account, Health Reimbursement Account, Dental, Vision and Life.

Please DO NOT include photo, birthday, age or any other personal information which may violate discrimination laws when applying!

Please send your resume to j.vega@us.reinhausen.com. or go to our website www. reinhausen.com apply. No Phone Calls please.

Attendant Needed Cowtown Canines is seeking reliable Dog Day Care Attendants to provide excellent care to dogs staying with us. Established in 2004 Cowtown Canines is one of Fort Worth’s oldest DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES · Monitor and manage play groups and most reputable dog daycare and boarding · Handle bathing and grooming tasks facilities. Our ideal candidate is someone who · Clean and maintain kennels and play areas, keeping loves animals and can provide high-quality pet them free of waste, fur/hair, and other unsanitary or care for our customers while their dogs stay hazardous materials with us. We expect you to provide a fun, safe, · Interact with clients about their pets stay with us and clean environment for dogs and put cus· Dedicate time to train dogs (as requested by owner) tomers at ease, assuring them that their pets · Perform light receptionist duties, such as answering will be safe. You will also inform customers of phones and emails the various services we provide. Having previ· Cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. ous experience in a pet care environment or Requirements and Qualifications kennel management is a plus, but we will pro· High school diploma or GED certificate if of age vide training to the right candidate. · At least 16 years old with a driver’s license · Familiarity with various dog breeds · Passion for taking care of animals Call 817-732-3647 or email · Teamwork and communication skills ccanines@yahoo.com to apply · Physical stamina for the job. Must be able to lift 65lbs

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Essential Functions: • Qualification of OP team based on the qualification matrix regarding product and process knowledge with focus on the service activities • Implementation of new processes in the Sales Teams (e.g. transfer of order processing for RM service, roll-out of new service process, etc.)

• Follow up on (order fulfillment) service related KPIs and define necessary measures together with OP manager and leaders • Provide support for the annual GOP International meeting • Escalate delivery times / manufacturing slots as needed in cooperation with OP manager and leaders • Introduction of new products / services (SOD1 >>> SOD2) • Collecting / evaluating requirements of the market in close cooperation with the Business Units • Qualification of Area Sales Managers based on T-Profile matrix • Supporting special projects and clarification of requirements in ETO (Engineer to Order) projects • Supporting sales targets and daily business if necessary (backup) and collecting feedback from the market.

• Support Sales team regarding customer and operator and advise about technical inquiries relating to MR products.

• Collaborate with the Order Processing Product (OPP) team on any technical configuration issues to ensure all service orders are completed correctly in a timely manner.

• Analyze customer complaints (Yes We Care) and any Global Incident in a timely manner to ensure the Complaint Management team can provide quality support to address the complaints.

• Must be able to travel Internationally to Germany to receive updated training and domestically for training or to support service technicians.

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THE RIDGLEA is three great venues within one historic Fort Worth landmark. RIDGLEA THEATER has been restored to its authentic allure, recovering unique Spanish-Mediterranean elements. It is ideal for large audiences and special events. RIDGLEA ROOM and RIDGLEA LOUNGE have been making some of their own history, as connected adjuncts to RIDGLEA THEATER, or hosting their own smaller shows and gatherings. More at theRidglea.com

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