SGN September 10, 2021

ISSUE 37

C E L E B R AT I N G

VOLUME 49

47 YEARS

F R I D AY

IN

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TURMOIL AT HRC

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer The HRC board fired its president, Alphonso David, on September 6 after an official report revealed he’d helped former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo handle sexual harassment charges.

According to the New York Times, the HRC’s board met jointly with the board of its affiliated educational foundation in an emergency session on the night of September 6. The vote to fire David was reported to be unanimous, apart from two abstentions.

Board fires HRC president

Alphonso David booted for helping Andrew Cuomo

see HRC page 20

Photo by John Amis / AP for HRC

Seattle BIPOC Organic: PrideFest Capitol Hill New approach comes back in a big way to fighting hunger 22,000 attendees and 100 vendors sprouts in South Seattle Over take part in two-day festival Photo by Caitlyn Gaurano / Seattle BIPOC Organic

by Kylin Brown SGN Contributing Writer Can a good meal change the world? This question lingers in my mind weeks after meeting John Wesley Sargent, independent artist and founder of Seattle BIPOC Organic, a food bank and grocery.

The power of “a good meal” During the early pandemic, Sargent began to notice the effects of what he was eating on his mental health. He found himself more than physically satiated after indulging in the foods he wanted — he found himself inspired.

see BIPOC ORGANIC page 7

Photo by Nate Gowdy

By Renee Raketty SGN Contributing Writer After a hiatus in 2020 due to COVID19 restrictions, PrideFest Capitol Hill was back this Labor Day weekend in a big way.

Over 22,000 people took part in the two-day event, held along five blocks of Broadway.

One hundred vendors and sponsors were also on-site for the festivities.

“Honestly, being able to spend time with my community again face-to-face — it’s been a very long time,” Oliver Webb, the Alliance of the Puget Sound’s board chairperson, told the SGN on Saturday from his booth.

see PRIDEFEST page 5

GREEN CARDS • VISAS • ASYLUM • CITIZENSHIP 1836 Westlake Ave N, Suite 302 Seattle, WA 98109

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In this Issue

LOCAL NEWS 4 A&E • THEATER • FILM • BOOKS 8 OP-ED 17 NATIONAL NEWS 20 INTERNATIONAL NEWS 20

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Photos by Nate Gowdy

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PRIDE FEST continued from cover

“We’ve missed two full Pride seasons at this point — a time when queer individuals around the world can take a second to celebrate who we are and to stand together as one,” he added. “As someone who has participated and volunteered for PrideFest for many years, it was absolutely a different experience than years past, but the heart of the festival was still there. PrideFest worked to keep us as safe as possible while still working to give us Pride.”

Historically, PrideFest Capitol Hill and PrideFest Seattle Center have been held in June. However, the City of Seattle’s Special Events Committee did not approve a preliminary permit for an in-person event in September until June 25, leaving organizers just a little over two months to produce it.

“In my 15 years doing this, I can’t remember a harder process. We had two months to create an event that normally takes nine months,” said Seattle PrideFest Executive Director Egan Orion. “We’d been pushing to create this event since last February, but because of COVID didn’t get approval until late June. When you are doing something as expensive and complicated as a festival is, working from a place of uncertainty is far from ideal, and so it was for our performers, sponsors, vendors, and community partners alike. The Delta variant added more doubt into the planning process.”

Orion added that it was “challenging” to promote the festival on a “shoestring promotional budget.” “That was the part I worried most about in the weeks before the event. We knew we’d created a great event, we just didn’t know if people would show up for it,” he said.

“I was thrilled just to see people gathering in person, connecting with the commu-

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Historically, PrideFest Capitol Hill and PrideFest Seattle Center have been held in June. However, the City of Seattle’s Special Events Committee did not approve a preliminary permit for an in-person event in September until June 25. nity in such a meaningful way. I loved seeing people taking photos with the rainbow PRIDE letters at the entrance, and watching them imitate the inflatable dancers brought me joy. These are such simple things, but as an event producer, I haven’t played a part in creating space for that sort of joy for over two years.”

Diverse co-directors PrideFest is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has been putting on the Seattle Pride Festival since 2007. The organization recently changed its logo to reflect its intention to be inclusive of Black and Trans people in Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ community.

This year PrideFest had nine festival co-directors, which it said was “a distributed model creating more opportunity for Queer, Trans, gender-expansive, and BIPOC artist curators and the communities they represent, for a more inclusive representation at all of PrideFest’s stages.”

“I’m glad that for us curators, we were able to book our times the way we wanted to,” Adra Boo, festival co-director for the #BlackHotSunday showcase on the main stage, wrote in an email to the SGN this week. “It was also nice to return to [Capitol] Hill… and hopefully, Black and Indigenous representation remains prevalent: folx of color seeing themselves in every way. I think it went really well. I know the caliber

of talent [of] the artists I showcased, and they all did what needed to be done. Each performer brought something different, and the blackity-blackness was everything.

“There’s still some folx I wished to have seen more of [at PrideFest], but it was still good in my opinion. I know I enjoyed myself and was happy to see the showcases I caught.”

Orion said each co-director put an “incredible amount of energy and talent into creating individual shows.” In addition to Boo, he credited the following co-directors for the event’s success: Anita Spritzer/ KDJE, Hailey Tayathy, Jack Mozie/Ruth Soto, BeautyBoiz, Eric Blu, Aleksa Manila, Tinashea Monét, and the Dyke March Organizers.

Dyke March Rally The Dyke March Rally closed the programming on the main stage on Saturday. In addition to speeches, the showcase included Haley Graves, Grae Violett, and a string of first-name performers such as Jayden and Delphine. In the past, the Seattle Dyke March has held its stand-alone march and rally in June.

The Dyke March organizers, which included seven people, provided a statement to the SGN: “The Dyke March pivoted to meet the moment and had more of a showcase than

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our traditional rally. The showcase and ability to highlight the incredible talent in our community felt like the embodiment of a love letter to our community,” the organizers wrote, including Co-Chairs Jill Mullins and Katie Kephart. “We were energized by the creativity and passion of the performers we had on our stage and inspired by the longtime work and words of our speaker. And we definitely want to give a huge shout-out to the organizers of PrideFest, specifically Egan Orion, who invited us to take over the stage and all [the] efforts to help the entire show go so smoothly.

“The Seattle Dyke March was so thrilled to be at PrideFest this year. Community is so important to us, and now more than ever, when we’ve needed to prioritize safety over togetherness for so long, there was this feeling all weekend of being grateful to be together for Pride. We were also very happy to see the many masked, vaxxed, and socially distanced attendees who wanted to experience Pride while maintaining the safety of our community.”

Pandemic precautions Notably different from past PrideFest events was the presence of face masks.

Likewise, the beer gardens required attendees to show proof of vaccination for entry.

However, mask enforcement appeared to be lax on Saturday and again on Sunday. Most vendors were wearing them, and about half of the attendees donned them as well.

Masks could also be seen dangling from one ear or poking out of purses or pockets.

“If people want to gather again like we did in the before-times, they have to get vaccinated and mask up where necessary,” said Orion. “We have all the tools to end this pandemic and protect each other. Do that, and Pride 2022 will be beyond anything people have experienced before.”

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Local News

WA schools reopen for in-person learning How will they handle COVID-19 safety and prevention?

by Hannah Saunders SGN Contributing Writer When COVID-19 reached Washington in the spring of last year, Gov. Inslee had no choice but to cancel in-person learning for the remainder of that school year. While he was attempting to lead the state out of the pandemic in the quickest and most sciencebased way possible, K-12 students were negatively affected.

However resilient they may be, schoolchildren the pandemic has taken a toll on them. They could no longer see their friends or classmates, they had to adapt to learning full-time via a screen (if they were lucky enough to have access to a laptop or computer at home, that is), and they lost the opportunity to engage in sports and activity groups.

LGBTQ+ students in particular lost inclusive and gender-affirming spaces from the get-go The well-being of children living through the pandemic has been an area of high priority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Washington state’s Department of Health (DOH) since the start. For the past year and a half, officials have been taking every precautionary measure — including virtual learning — in order to protect students from contracting and spreading the virus.

Things are looking up for this new 2021–22 school year, though, which has only just begun.

In May of 2021 — near the end of the previous school year — Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was authorized in adolescents as young as 12 years old. This move by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was a major stepping stone in allowing students to resume in-person learning. However, students younger than 12 years old are unable to receive the most effective form of protection against the virus, which is why the DOH has come up with a game plan (more specifically, requirements and courses of action) relating to COVID-19 safety and prevention in schools.

A quick look at the facts Vaccines save lives. Those who choose to become fully vaccinated against the coronavirus are significantly less likely to develop severe COVID-19-related health outcomes, such as hospitalization and death. Over 90% of all new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the state over the past several months occurred in those who were not fully vaccinated.

As of September 1, 2021, the DOH reported that 41.5% of 12–15-year-olds in the state are fully vaccinated while 48.7% of 16–17-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is still only available for those ages 12 and above, and although the pharmaceutical company has been conducting clinical trials in those ages 6 months to 11 years, Pfizer doesn’t expect a vaccine to become available for younger age groups (5 to 11 years old) until at least this winter.

Moderna’s vaccine is currently available for those ages 18 and above, and clinical trials in younger age groups remain ongoing. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is still only available for those ages 18 and above.

School Safety 101 First and foremost, all schools must be able to provide full-time in-person learning for all students who are interested and must follow the DOH’s COVID safety measures.

One thing the DOH emphasizes in its back-to-school requirements is that all school staff, students, and visitors must wear face masks indoors — the second most important tool when it comes to stopping the spread of the virus — regardless of their vaccination status. It is important to note that vaccinations are not required to participate in in-person learning; however,

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Photo by Michael Conroy / AP

schools must promote vaccines for unvaccinated students who are eligible.

Going into the year, schools will begin verifying the vaccination status of their staff members and students. Vaccination verification includes the CDC-issued vaccination card containing the recipient’s personal information and documentation of the vaccination from a healthcare provider.

Students and staff should also stay home if feeling unwell.

Masks Again, if you take a single step into the building, you are required to wear a face mask, even if you’re fully vaccinated. The mask requirement extends to public transportation, such as school buses. Masks are not required if the individual is under 2 years of age or has a medical condition that prevents them from wearing one. Furthermore, 2–4-year-olds must be supervised when wearing face masks.

Cloth and surgical masks are recommended by the DOH for all school attendees. Teachers who are verified to be fully vaccinated may remove their masks indoors when no children are present or expected to be present, however.

Luckily, COVID transmission outdoors remains low, so both fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people are allowed to remove their masks outside; however, the wearing of masks outdoors should still be encouraged. It is strongly advised that unvaccinated people wear masks outdoors when in tightly crowded areas.

before preparing or eating food, and after petting animals.

If handwashing is not possible, hand sanitizer should be used as an alternative — just not in poorly ventilated spaces. Students and staff are also encouraged to practice basic coughing and sneezing etiquette, such as covering up and immediately handwashing after.

Cleaning Frequently touched surfaces don’t need to be cleaned after each use, but they need to be disinfected after all the students leave for the day or if someone in the room is ill.

Physical distancing and ventilation Students are required to maintain at least three feet of physical distance (or as much as possible) from others in classrooms. Teachers and students must also work to limit interactions when in large groups. Teachers are encouraged to open windows when class is in session and to spend more time learning outdoors.

Sports Masks are required by all trainers, coaches, and athletic staff when in K-12 indoor facilities, regardless of vaccination status. Masks are not required for any outdoor sports, but they are recommended when near others, such as in the dugout or on the sidelines. Athletes engaging in lowto-moderate-contact indoor sports, regardless of vaccination status, are not required to wear a mask when actively competing.

Masks are not required for fully vaccinated athletes actively competing in high-contact indoor sports, such as basketball and wrestling, and they are not required for unvaccinated athletes who participate in screening testing.

Screening testing is required for unvaccinated athletes to participate in high-contact indoor sports. Screening testing must take place twice per week, with the first test taking place within 24 hours of a competition and the second 3–4 days following (or prior to) a competition. Unvaccinated athletes participating in low-to-moderatecontact indoor sports are not required to undergo screening tests, although it is recommended. Positive test results will lead to elimination and removal from the competition and will be reported to the local health jurisdiction.

Handwashing The job of a teacher doesn’t start and stop with the textbook. Particularly when it comes to younger age groups, teachers tend to take on a sort of parenting role, which includes educating youngsters on when and how to adequately wash their hands.

Teachers should reinforce handwashing for 20 seconds with soap after students use the restroom, come in from outdoor playtime,

Performing arts Three-layer medical face masks are required for students and staff in performing arts classes and activities. Masks are required for everyone in music class when singing, and teachers should provide students with medical masks to replace their cloth ones. During speech and debate, singing, band, and theatre, students are required to wear masks while performing; students

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who play woodwind and brass instruments are allowed to remove their masks while performing but must pull them up immediately after. The DOH also advises reducing the use of shared equipment as much as possible for these activities.

Reporting COVID-19 cases and outbreaks If a person develops COVID-19 symptoms while at school, they must immediately be isolated and sent home with a referral for diagnostic testing. If a person visited the school while contagious (48 hours before symptom onset or 48 hours prior to a positive test result), close contacts must be identified and isolated if needed.

Close contacts are those who were within six feet of the COVID-positive person for at least 15 consecutive minutes during the contagious period. Close contacts exclude students who kept a three-foot distance from the COVID-positive person when both were wearing masks; this does not apply to teachers or staff.

If an outbreak occurs, the school’s COVID-19 coordinator must immediately inform the school and local health jurisdiction while obtaining information on those who may be close contacts. An outbreak is defined as follows: • Two or more COVID cases among students or staff • Cases with a symptomatic onset or positive test result within 14 days of each other • Epidemiologically linked cases • Cases not sharing a household • Cases not identified as close contacts of each other in another setting Testing/quarantining If a test result is positive, that person may return to school once symptoms have improved, 24 hours after a fever resolves without the use of fever-reducing medication, and 10 days since the symptoms began or since a positive test result. This applies to unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people.

Close contacts who are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic aren’t required to quarantine but should get tested. However, if symptoms develop, they should quarantine. Close contacts should quarantine for at least 10 days but can cease the quarantine at day 7 if they develop no symptoms and receive a negative test result.

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Photos by Caitlyn Gaurano / Seattle BIPOC Organic

BIPOC ORGANIC continued from cover

“When you’re full and you’re happy, that’s when you can find the energy and the power to come up with solutions for your own life,” said Sargent.

This realization spurred thoughts of those without secure access to healthy foods. “Feeding people should be a number one priority in communities. We can’t actually change the world without feeding people,” he said.

Hunger and food sovereignty in Seattle World hunger has only been exacerbated during the pandemic. Surveys by the University of Washington and Washington State University King County have demonstrated an increase locally in food insecurity and reliance on aid since the beginning of the pandemic. Thirty-six percent of households in the county have experienced food insecurity in the last 18 months, and of these, most were people of color.

Such circumstances can be devastating to those who already live on the periphery.

In the LGBTQ community, a wide array of health disparities already exist. Statistics regarding food insecurity and reliance on

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“Feeding people should be a number one priority in communities. We can’t actually change the world without feeding people.” government aid programs have remained higher than those for the heterosexual population over recent decades, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. (Before this, the data left uncollected would probably suggest the same.)

Sargent’s idea of launching a BIPOC organic food-distribution project sprang into reality within weeks of his first pitch. He called the momentum “organic” in itself.

Planning led to outreach, and outreach led to hands on deck. By June 2020, Sargent had developed a network of friends, community members, and farmers to begin operating community-level food redistribution as the Seattle BIPOC Organic food bank.

Shortly thereafter, an open plot of land in the Rainier Vista p-patch was offered to the nonprofit, and dozens of volunteers and mentors joined Sargent in cultivating the land. The food bank would then begin producing its own organics, right in the heart of South Seattle.

“What we are doing here now is a quali-

tative approach to food sovereignty,” said Sargent.

By utilizing mentorship, Sargent and his initial assembly of volunteers shared their knowledge to create a sustainable, organic, urban farm. The garden’s current yield is bursting with leafy greens and the sprouts of root vegetables, due to this mixed-method approach of Afro and Indigenous techniques.

A new model for food banks Food banks exist to fight one of the world’s greatest long-standing problems: hunger. Nutritional needs, however, are often unaccounted for in this fight.

According to a January 2021 study from the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, health disparities are exacerbated by “unhealthy food environments.” For example, obesity is most prevalent in food-insecure communities reliant on aid. Food banks are falling short in providing people in need with truly healthful foods.

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According to Sargent, Seattle BIPOC Organic was never a traditional food bank.

While most operate on a “hub-and-spoke” model, acting primarily as mass storage facilities for salvaged nonperishables, Sargent offers a fresh approach based in community.

According to his model, food banks should be able to offer inspiring and uplifting foods, by and for the community.

Because of this, he is unafraid to continue asking for help in the development of Seattle BIPOC Organic, which has recently acquired a new 18-acre plot of farmland just beyond city limits.

With this new land, the organization aims to open a pay-what-you-can co-op, likely in South Seattle. To do this, they will need more volunteers and money. According to Sargent, a balance of energy in a Black and Indigenous space is crucial, but those of other backgrounds who wish to advance the mission of the food bank are welcome to invest their time or money in the land.

Those who are interested in volunteering or donating can contact John Wesley Sargent on Instagram @36jewels or via email at 33gigs@gmail.com.

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Appeals court blocks Seattle Charter Amendment 29 Measure might have required city to sweep homeless encampments

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer The Washington State Court of Appeals ruled that Seattle Charter Amendment 29 (CA29) should not appear on the November ballot. CA29 — the so-called “Compassion Seattle” initiative — would have changed City policy towards homeless encampments.

The September 3 ruling upheld a previous decision by a King County Superior Court.

Compassion Seattle is a coalition of real estate developers, business people, and local business-friendly politicians assembled to promote the change in policy.

Homeless advocates charged that CA29 would obligate the City to keep public spaces clear of encampments without providing reasonable alternatives for homeless residents.

A group of activist organizations, including the Transit Riders Union, Real Change, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, the ACLU, and Be:Seattle, sued to keep the measure off the ballot.

King County Superior Court Judge Catherine Shaffer agreed with their lawsuit, ruling that CA29 would change the city charter in illegal ways that supersede state, regional, and municipal laws. Judge Shaffer found that the initiative was legally “problematic.” She agreed with the plaintiffs that the measure didn’t fit within the state’s legal guidelines for setting homelessness policy and took away legal powers given to the Seattle City Council.

After initially saying they wouldn’t appeal, Compassion Seattle leaders asked the Washington Court of Appeals to allow Seattle residents to vote on the initiative while its legality was decided.

The Court of Appeals tossed their petition without comment.

Knoll Lowney, lawyer for the coalition that sued to get the measure off the ballot, said Compassion Seattle could appeal further in the future, but they likely won’t, because they know it’s “illegal.”

“They could try, but it’s really throwing good money after bad at some point.

Because they’re not going to succeed in an appeal,” Lowney said. “They would be better off actually devoting their million dollars toward housing the homeless.”

Compassion Seattle confirmed in a statement that it would not pursue the case further. The campaign is “deeply disappointed” in the ruling, they said, adding that decisive action on homelessness can only be obtained by changing leadership at City Hall.

“Our work has elevated this issue — undoubtedly the most consequential one facing Seattleites — to the forefront of this election for both candidates and voters,” the statement said.

“We cannot afford further inaction and the City’s continued failed approach to this emergency. Seattle voters. You have the power to make a difference this November in who you elect as mayor, as city attorney, and to the City Council.”

Photo by Ted S. Warren / AP

Arts & Entertainment

Seattle Queer Film Festival returns virtually and in-person next month

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Contributing Writer Three Dollar Bill Cinema Managing Director Billy Ray Brewton has announced that the annual Seattle Queer Film Festival (SQFF) will be returning to both online and in-person screenings for its 26th year, with ten days of workshops, panel discussions, filmmaker Q&As, and film screenings, October 14–24.

“Our goal,” Brewton said, “is to create a supportive and inclusive environment for all members of our community.”

The in-person participating venues include the SIFF Egyptian, the Museum of Pop Culture, and Ark Lodge Cinemas (in Columbia City).

Brewton’s statement made it clear that pandemic safety is a top priority. In-person attendees will require proof of vaccination, and masks will be mandatory. Yet accessibility is still as important as ever. Brewton added that every in-person film screening and panel discussion would be available online as well, with some additional online-only panels.

The screenings announced so far include Potato Dreams of America, the festival’s opening film by Seattle’s own Wes Hurley; Fanny: The Right to Rock, a true story about “one of the most important (and, sadly, forgotten) all-women rock bands in music history”; and Being BeBe: The BeBe Zahara Benet Documentary, which recounts Benet’s journey from a challenging childhood in Cameroon to winning season 1 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The only panel discussion confirmed when Brewton spoke with the SGN was

the ever-popular presentation “How to Be an Effective Ally.” The rest of the panels, Brewton said, would be “solidified in the next week or so.”

Three Dollar Bill Cinema has been run-

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Potato Dreams of America – Photo courtesy of Dark Star Pictures

ning SQFF for over two and a half decades, and has added other events throughout the year, such as the Trans film festival Translations and the short-film workshop Real Queer Youth.

Early-bird tickets for SQFF this year are on sale now, at $99 for virtual passes and $150 for hybrid passes. Go to threedollarbillcinema.org/seattle-queerfilm-festival for more information.

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Theater

Women triumph in San Francisco Opera’s Tosca

San Francisco Opera production of Tosca – Photo by Cory Weaver

by Sharon Cumberland SGN Contributing Writer TOSCA GIACOMO PUCCINI SAN FRANCISCO OPERA WAR MEMORIAL OPERA HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO AUGUST 29, 2021 The big news about San Francisco Opera’s production of Tosca is not that the singing is marvelous (it is) or that the opera house has been refurbished and the seats are much more comfortable (it’s great!). It isn’t that the cast is young, formidable, and pitch-perfect (which they are) or that the costumes and set design succeed in transporting the audience to Rome in 1800 as Italy struggles to resist Napoleon’s invasion. All these things are true, and they made for an unforgettable night at the opera.

The really big news about this production of Tosca is Eun Sun Kim, the SFO’s new music director — one of only a handful of female conductors in the world in charge of an orchestra. Go to Wikipedia and type in “women conductors” and you’ll get a list of maestros who have been invited to conduct an opera here and an opera there, but no one who’s running the show.

Seattle Opera’s own Christina Scheppelmann is a world-class arts administrator who makes sure great conductors come our way, and it’s hard as heck to get her job — she’s only one of two female arts administrators to run a major opera company worldwide (the other is Francesca Zambello, of Washington National Opera and Glimmerglass Opera).

But Scheppelmann and Zambello are not conductors — a job that’s even harder to get. I don’t know what combination of vision and zeitgeist brought Kim to the music directorship in San Francisco, but it’s clear her that her scintillating talent qualifies her for any podium in the world.

Kim is young (just 40 years old) and

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slight of build, with a long ponytail and arms that alternately slice the air like sabers and paint the air like Berthe Morisot (a female impressionist — another neglected group of women artists). Kim’s job at the podium is to inspire the orchestra to create a clear, dynamic, and compelling account of a complex score, and to direct the singers onstage who are both supported by the musicians in the pit and partners with them in the larger sound creation that is the opera itself.

Fortunately for the singers, the orchestra pit in the War Memorial Opera House is much higher than normal, so that the singers can look straight ahead to see the conductor rather than having to peer down or look at monitors.

On August 29, as the lights went down and Kim entered and took her place at the podium, the audience gave her a huge ovation, which she acknowledged gracefully before taking command of the evening, bringing the orchestra and the audience to deadly silence before giving the downbeat.

At the first formidable notes of the “Scarpia” theme that opens Tosca, the audience knew it was going to be a great evening.

Scarpia is the chief of police in 1800 Rome and the evil force in the story, feared by men and women alike. By using his theme to open the opera — only three chords: Bb, Ab, E — Puccini rejected the tradition of an expansive overture that focuses the audience’s attention while establishing a range of ideas that preview the story. Instead, he hurls the audience into the heart of the matter with three forceful chords that begin with the deep growl of a horn. It’s as if a devil rose from beneath the orchestra pit and uttered a moan so profound that it rattles the chandeliers. Instantly we know that “something evil this way comes.”

In the hands of a lesser conductor, this sequence of notes goes by so quickly that it barely registers before the agitated music that raises the curtain on a busy deacon and a political escapee who’s seeking refuge in the church. In the hands of Eun Sun Kim, those

opening notes — going from a loud bleat to a threatening pianissimo in a flash — sent a chill down the audience’s collective spine.

As the curtain goes up, we find ourselves in the church of Sant’ Andrea delle Valle, with its pews, candles, and icons. Cavaradossi, the young painter (sung with great charm by tenor Michael Fabiano) is in love with Floria Tosca, the diva sung by soprano Ailyn Perez. Cavaradossi has received a commission to paint an image of Mary Magdelene for the church and models it after a young aristocratic woman with blue eyes he sees praying there. This catapults Tosca, who has dark eyes, into a frenzy of jealousy.

How he handles her feelings is critical to their love story and whether they can survive Scarpia’s plot to condemn Cavaradossi for assisting the political prisoner and then to take Tosca for his sex object.

Director Shawna Lacey, along with stage designer Robert Innes Hopkins, brought the set to life, along with gorgeous costumes for the diva that were inspired by the period portrait paintings of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun — a welcome departure from the traditionally lavish costumes modeled after Maria Callas’ iconic look from the 1950s.

In most versions of Tosca, we never see the “unknown beauty” who inspires the painting, but this is where the SFO’s production, led by women, is more thoughtful about the plight of women in a male-dominated culture. First, we see the lovely young lady with blue eyes praying in the church, and then we see her mingle in the crowd that comes to mass. But quite unexpectedly, we see her again in at the opening of Act 2, sitting disheveled and distressed in Scarpia’s office in the Castel Sant’ Angelo.

Clearly the powerful and brutal Scarpia saw her portrait when he came to the church for mass, and ordered her to see him later in his office. We can see her shame and fear as the act begins, and then we see Scarpia’s henchmen drag her to the door and throw her out of his office.

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This shocking little pantomime, worked seamlessly into the act, is a directorial interpolation, but it brings a strong dose of clarity to Tosca’s dilemma. In Act 2 she has to try to save Cavadossi’s life by agreeing to have sex with Scarpia, who promises to let the two of them go afterward. But the plight of the woman with blue eyes foreshadows the fact that Tosca will fail in the face of Scarpia’s ruthlessness.

Alfred Walker, as Scarpia, was a refreshing change from the classic interpretation of a man in a baroque white wig, whose cold dignity strikes terror into everyone who crosses his path. This Scarpia is younger, a person of color, and a man who is feared and rejected at the same time. Walker’s powerful voice matched the calculated menace of the character and brought an intimidating coldness to the role.

As the lovers, Fabbiano and Perez made a beautiful couple. This Tosca is younger than the somewhat daunting and controlling woman traditionally presented in this role, and her jealousy is clearly a matter for lovers’ quarrels that are quickly made up.

This slightly less diva-like behavior makes it all the more plausible that she will despair and become desperate when confronted with Scarpia’s cold-hearted evil. Perez has a lovely and powerful voice, and she is an excellent actor. I’ve never seen a Tosca look so frightened of Scarpia, instead of acting haughty and scornful. By abandoning the conventional interpretation and embracing the idea that vulnerable women are frightened, no matter how famous they may be, we are haunted by the modern ghosts of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein.

As opera houses around the country and the world begin to open their doors again, many opera lovers are eagerly coming back to their beloved auditoriums. Though the chance to see San Francisco Opera’s Tosca is past, Mozart’s hilarious Cosi fan tutte and Beethoven’s majestic Fidelio are coming right up for remote viewing at the end of the month, so check out the website: sfopera.com.

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Film

Delightful, wholesome Everybody’s Talking About Jamie worth singing about

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE Theaters / Amazon Prime Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is inspired by the 2011 documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at Sixteen and adapted from the popular 2017 London musical. It reunites the stage production’s original creators: director Jonathan Butterell, writer and lyricist Tom MacRae, and composer Dan Gillespie Sells, and features newcomer Max Harwood in the lead role of 16-yearold Sheffield teenager and wannabe drag queen Jamie New. It’s also pretty dang delightful.

When sitting down to watch this, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I knew precious little of the true story the filmmakers had based their hit musical on.

Additionally, the over-the-top, cartoonishly flamboyant trailer made my skin crawl and had me questioning if I should even take a look at it in the first place.

But this is why I attempt to give every motion picture a fair shake, with as few preconceptions as possible. Not only is Everybody’s Talking About Jamie entertaining, it’s so wholesomely kind that it couldn’t help but make me feel terrific in ways I didn’t know I needed until after it had concluded.

It’s that good, and given the pleasure the finished product brought me, I’m incredibly thankful I took the time to give it a chance.

After unexpectedly receiving a pair of expensive red high heels from his mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire) for his birthday, Jamie New is on cloud nine. He’d been obsessively saving up to buy the footwear on his own for months, and even though Margaret doesn’t understand her boy’s fascination with the shoes, seeing the look of bliss wash over her son’s face as he nimbly struts around the yard is all that matters.

Jamie feels invincible now that he has the heels. Though out at school, he’s still been content to stay somewhat in the shadows and not make many waves. Not anymore. Revealing to his best friend and confidant Pritti (Lauren Patel) that he aspires to become a famous drag queen, Jamie doubles down, stating that he’s thinking of attending the school prom in a dress, an act of defiance so brazen it’s certain to cause something of an uproar.

It would have been easy for Butterell, MacRae, and Sells to craft a “jukebox musical” when they first started outlining this project. They could have utilized any number of pop favorites from the past four decades, many of which would have fit this tale splendidly.

But that would have been the case in less creative hands, and this trio had no interest in going that route. Instead, they’ve composed a bevy of toe-tapping original songs for Jamie and the rest of the cast to enthusiastically belt out as events progress.

Even better, all of them are character and plot driven, and like the best musicals, they give the narrative additional complexity that might not have existed otherwise.

This also allows them to plant moments of exquisitely subtle seriousness in unexpected places. Case in point: Jamie needs a mentor in his quest to attain drag success. He finds that in the form of Sheffield shopkeeper Hugo Battersby, otherwise known as the formerly famous — or in some circles infamous — Loco Channelle (Richard E. Grant).

There’s an excellent montage during this first interaction between the pair, where forty years of British LGBTQ history is showcased in the span of four or five minutes via a VHS home movie. It’s a marvelous moment. Not only is the song

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Everybody's Talking About Jamie – Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

“This Is Me” heartbreakingly sublime, the video footage of Loco, her partner, and her friends during their younger years is nothing short of perfect. It is a story beat that helps Jamie look beyond his own desires and see in a new light the historical significance of the path he’s determined to walk upon, past, present, and future all colliding in one single breathtaking sequence.

Some other elements work better than others. While I applaud that Butterell and company don’t attempt to sugarcoat or put a saccharinely sweet bow on the relationship between Jamie and his estranged father

Wayne (Ralph Ineson), I still can’t say I had much of an emotional investment in what was happening between the two of them.

This doesn’t matter near as much as I would have anticipated. Harwood makes an immediate, lasting impression; the youngster delivers a strong, surprisingly nuanced performance that’s easy to love. Lancashire and Patel are equally wonderful, while veteran Sharon Horgan does a superb job of making the most out of her role as the school’s prickly career advisor, Miss Hedge. As for Grant, he steals the show, and even though he’s only in a handful of

scenes, outside of Jamie, his Hugo/Loco is easily the film’s most memorable character.

I adored Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Its innate jubilant goodness won me over. While the musical numbers are impressively shot and staged — props to cinematographer Christopher Ross (Black Sea) and editor Mark Everson (Paddington 2) on that front — and as great as Harwood and especially Grant’s performances are, it is that overwhelming spirit of kindness and acceptance that filled my heart with joy. I’ll be singing this film’s praises for some time to come.

Finding joy

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie director Jonathan Butterell on bringing the West End musical sensation to the big screen

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer

Jonathan Butterell – Photo courtesy of Broadway World

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Inspired by the true story outlined in the 2011 documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, the musical sensation Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has made the leap from London’s West End stage to the big screen with energetically wholesome aplomb. Overflowing in empathetic kindness, this shockingly great motion picture took me by complete surprise. I enjoyed almost every second of it, and from its toe-tapping first number to its tearfully sublime show-stopping climax, director Jonathan Butterell’s adaptation euphorically hits all the right notes.

The story follows 16-year-old Jamie New (newcomer Max Harwood). After being given a present of an expensive pair of red high heels for his birthday by his loving, if often perplexed, mother Margaret (Sarah Lancashire), the flamboyantly gay youngster reveals to his best friend and confidant Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel) that he wants to be a drag queen. What’s more, he also wants to attend the prom in a dress.

With the dual support of Margaret and Pritti, Jamie seeks guidance from aging drag legend Hugo Battersby, aka Loco Chanelle (Richard E. Grant). He also hopes to earn the affection of his father, Wayne (Ralph Ineson), whom he seldom sees, as his parents divorced when he was a youngster. Through it all, Jamie learns what it means to take charge of your life and stand up for what you believe in without destroying or selfishly belittling others in the process.

I sat down with Butterell over Zoom to chat about his new film. The following are some edited transcripts from our lengthy conversation:

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Sara Michelle Fetters: What is it about this story and its kind of crazy wholesomeness that attracted you and made you want to go from the musical production into crafting a feature-length film?

Jonathan Butterell: This story started with me seeing the documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16. I saw this young kid get off a bus, a 16-year-old boy, get off a bus in a working-class community, a community I knew and which was very similar to the community I grew up in myself, and say directly to camera, “My name’s Jamie.

I want to be a drag queen.” Then the camera pans down to him wearing this fabulous pair of heels.

I was hooked. I watched his mom support and love him and hold him. I watched the community around [Jamie] make a safe space in which he could be himself. I knew I needed to tell this story. I could feel it.

You said “wholesomeness,” and I like that word. I can go even further than that.

This story is about finding the center of this particular someone’s joy. I find putting your joy out to be an act of defiance in some ways. It’s going, “This is who I am. This is where I find my joy. I need a place in which to express it.”

But joy shouldn’t be an act of defiance.

It should be a very natural act that we all have, and I found Jamie to have such courage in doing this. It was inspirational, and I wanted this story to be out in the world.

Particularly now. With all that we’ve been through with regards to all being locked away from any sense of community, but also because we’ve lived in an entrenched world for such a long time, I just wanted the world to celebrate each and everybody’s individual joy.

SMF: This might be what makes the film so remarkable. It’s just so kind. We don’t see a lot of that right now, especially with everything that we’ve been through. It almost feels revolutionary watching this story in the context of a musical. What do you think?

JB: Yes. That was the intent from day one between Dan Gillespie Sells, Tom McCray, and myself. I grew up a long time ago in an Irish Catholic working-class community.

Contrary to all belief, I experienced kindness around me. I know that’s unusual. I know not everybody experiences that. But I knew the power of this, and I knew it was revolutionary.

It’s such an easy word: kindness. It’s such a simple thing. It’s a very simple act to find that kindness in your heart. I like “kindness” better than the word “love” in many ways, because “love” is such a complicated word. It means so many things to so many people. But a simple act of kindness? We understand it in a very clean way.

I’m enjoying your response to it being kind of revolutionary, because that was the intent. We never wanted to flagwave, because if we’re flag-waving, that entrenches us in some ways. I never want Jamie to be a victim.

I wanted this not to be a coming-out

Max Harwood in Everybody's Talking About Jamie – Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

story for the simple fact that there’s been a million coming-out stories, some of which have been beautifully done, but this wasn’t that because Jamie’s authentic and fully himself right from the beginning.

For any 16-year-old, the major struggle is, “Who am I?” and “Where’s my place in the world?” That’s normal. I wanted that for Jamie. He can’t represent his whole community, because our community is so diverse. He can only be one voice of a million diverse voices within that community.

But in this one voice, I also wanted him to say, “I can represent everyone.”

Look, straight white men get to do this in stories often. They get to represent the “everyperson” or the “everyman.” I wanted Jamie, effeminate queer hero, to be able to go, “I can speak for us all. I can speak for the young and the old and the black and the white and the queer and whatever gender you identify as. I can represent everybody in that respect.” Because we all know what it is to step out into the world and try to find our joy. That’s part of being human.

SMF: I think the two primary relationships in the film are one of the keys to what you’re talking about. That’s the relationship between Jamie and his mother Margaret, and then the one between Jamie and Pritti. Those relationships are far more complex than I think they initially appear. There’s a lot going on. You guys pack a multitude of emotional nuances into those journeys.

Was there any trepidation that you were almost making these relationships too multifaceted? I hate to ask, because I don’t think that’s necessarily possible, but when you’re dealing with audiences, it is unfortunately something that has to be considered.

JB: I’m going to be diplomatic. Sometimes you have to fight to maintain what I would just call complex reality. We’re all a mess. We’re just a mess. Being a mother is a mess of a thing. Being a dad is a mess of a thing. It’s all complicated.

I can’t imagine what it must be like for a mother who doesn’t fully get it. Margaret’s trying to learn along the way. She gives him the shoes, not knowing what they mean. She gives him a pair of shoes to walk in that may end up making a very rocky path for him, but she still gives them to him because, even though he may stumble in these shoes, he’s going to have to stumble in order to learn.

She’s also saying, “I’ve got to let him be even if everything in my body’s wanting to protect him and stop him from falling.”

Those are two contradictory emotions. But Jamie needs to be free. Even if being free means he’s going to get hurt. That’s rough for a parent.

I think the same with Pritti. Pritti does not understand Jamie. Never mind her cultural background — her personality is just different. But again, she tries. All she puts forward is her love of Jamie. She’s there for him. She says to herself, “I’m his friend, even if that means pulling him up to say you’re going too far in this one moment in time.” She’s a true friend in that way.

SMF: When you’re translating a true story into a cohesive, audience-friendly story for a West End musical, how do you balance all of those varying aspects of Jamie’s tale?

JB: I suppose the answer to the question is the music. What a musical does is it brings another version of storytelling into the equation. I wanted to make sure that the music was pop. I wanted it to be stuff people listen to on their radios. Pop can be

highly, highly sophisticated, and it felt right for this production. I didn’t want it to feel oversophisticated of for audiences to feel like they just didn’t get it.

Then, because it’s Jamie and he’s 16, that pop world allowed his imagination to fly. It allowed my imagination to fly. Particularly with this film, I could go all over the place. I could take Jamie into the pop video land. I could take him into this most fabulous club with 500 amazing creatures or down this great fashion catwalk. I could transform his canteen at school into an amazing ballroom, because his imagination flies to that place.

Balancing fact and fiction, we created Jamie New as opposed to Jamie Campbell specifically for that reason. We wanted to allow Jamie Campbell the freedom to distance himself from our story if he wanted to. He could say, “That’s not me. That’s Jamie New.” He didn’t feel the need to do this, but we felt it was important to give him that option.

I remember when they saw it for the first time, the theater piece, Margaret tapped me on the shoulder and said, “How did you know? How did you know we’ve had those conversations in those kitchens? You weren’t there.”

We just used our imaginations. We all have moms. We’ve all been in that place, Dan, Tom, and I. We have similar backgrounds. We used our own stories and our own imaginations. There’s something universal in Jamie and Margaret’s story. It’s universal.

SMF: Talk to me about Max Harwood.

When did you know he was Jamie? What was that like seeing him come alive as you were shooting the film?

JB: Finding Jamie was a big task. You’re trying to find a young person who can play 16 and unashamedly tap into their effeminacy. It was important to me to have an effeminate hero, because I feel like you never see that. They’re always the sidekick.

The fun person. Or worse, the person who gets beat up and is left in the corner. Having someone who was comfortable and at ease with regard to their feminine side, who could sing, dance and had the full range of acting emotions, that’s tough to find.

We put out an ask on social media for anybody across the whole of Britain to audition. Max sent in a little one-minute video of himself in his bedroom in which he spoke candidly about his life and his love of Drag Race. He loved playing around with makeup. He felt he really understood this story. He used to dress up as his sister when he was little and get her to play Kenickie to his Rizzo.

I just thought he was charming. I thought Max had a glint and a charm and a slight magic from that video, so we asked him in. He was one of about five young men who auditioned. They were all good, but

Max Harwood and Sarah Lancashire in Everybody's Talking About Jamie – Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

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see BUTTERELL page 15

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C E L E B R AT I N G 4 7 Y E A R S!

Film

New Cinderella is a disharmonious, musical fairy tale mixtape

by Sara Michelle Fetters SGN Staff Writer CINDERELLA Theaters / Amazon Prime If one were going to set out to make a somewhat modernized, newfangled musical adaptation of Cinderella that exists outside either the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein version or the animated Disney classic, Kay Cannon does seem to be the right person for the job on paper. As the primary voice behind the Pitch Perfect trilogy and the director of the fabulous 2018 comedy Blockers, she has a distinctive style that makes her uniquely suited to pull something like that off.

Granted, if what’s on paper always translated into success, then the 2001 Seattle Mariners would have been World Series champions and the Brooklyn Nets would have faced the Los Angeles Lakers in last season’s NBA Finals. No, this Cinderella — even with the combined star power of Idina Menzel, Billy Porter, Pierce Brosnan, and Minnie Driver in key supporting roles, and with captivating pop singer Camila Cabello in the lead role — is still something of a disaster. It gave me a headache, and that might be the nicest thing I have to say on the matter.

Not that I’m angry at this new revisionist presentation. Cannon’s jukebox musical has energy, and I appreciate that the filmmaker went out of her way to compose a rah-rah, you-go-girl anthem for younger audiences, who need a little more than the usual fairy tale pabulum. There is something to be said about wanting to empower the viewer to think beyond concepts of “love at first sight” and instead to challenge society’s conventions and reach beyond the

Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Cabello in Cinderella – Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

status quo. These are good things I wholeheartedly applaud.

But this film is a mess. The songs, ranging from “Rhythm Nation” and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” to “Seven Nation Army” to “Material Girl” to “Let’s Get Loud,” are a discombobulated mixtape even the Barden Bellas would refuse to perform at one of their many a cappella competitions. The main original song, the Cabello-penned “Million to One,” is a solid pop tune in and of itself, yet it becomes an insufferable slog here.

The bigger problem is that Cannon appears to consider a variety of character traits more than enough to manufacture a full-blown character. But “quirky” is not a

person. Neither is “snarky.” Or “pithy.” Or “insecure.” Or “disillusioned.” Or so many more colorful adjectives I could come up with to describe someone. The naked truth is that there are no three-dimensional people populating this story; each character is presented with a sitcom-like simplicity that’s frustrating.

While Cannon does shake things up, the basic plot remains relatively faithful to the fairy tale everyone already knows by heart.

Only, instead of just pining for a marriage and better life after being forced to work as a scullery maid by her wicked stepmother (Menzel), Ella (Cabello) has aspirations to become a famous fashion designer. As for Prince Robert (Nicholas Galitzine), he only

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continued from page 11 Max had all the skills. Although he’d never done any professional acting at all before.

Nothing. We got him straight out of school.

But he still had all the skills.

When you ask what makes somebody special? It’s ephemeral. You can’t put your name on it. To watch Max grow throughout the whole process, to have a young man who’d never been on set before suddenly be acting with Richard E. Grant on his first day, with an Oscar nominee, that very first day, that was beautiful to watch.

Actually, what was happening off-screen was happening on-screen. This elder mentor was looking after somebody who is aspiring to be what they were. Or in this case, what they still are. Richard looked after Max so beautifully, in the most unpatronizing and beautiful way. It was wonderful to watch.

I think that was captured that in the film. It’s there. The essence of it is there.

SMF: I have to ask, what would you do if Richard suddenly found himself a twotime Oscar nominee because of this film?

JB: Oh my! [laughs] Wouldn’t that be something? I can’t think like that. I can’t!

I’m just a boy from Sheffield. It’s weird that we’re here in the first place.

I loved telling this story. I think all the actors brought so much of themselves that they deserve whatever accolades may come their way. I wish it for all of them. But in the case of Richard, to be in this conversation, it just feels very weird to me. People keep bringing it up and it feels very weird.

I’d love him to take that up on that stage and pick up that trophy. But I know for Richard, that’s not what it’s about. From the onset, he wanted to be involved in telling this story. He’d never put on drag before or done anything like this. He felt it was a stretch.

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Max Harwood and Richard E. Grant in Everybody's Talking About Jamie – Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

I didn’t think it was too much of a stretch at all. I thought Richard had it in him all the time, and I think he’s wonderful in the film.

So I would love it. But I can’t think about that.

SMF: There is that moment in the shop where Jamie sees the video. That might be one of the more extraordinarily subtle bits of storytelling I’ve seen all year. We

get Hugo/Loco Chanelle’s entire story in the context of a two, three-minute VHS video. It’s devastating.

JB: It was vitally important to Dan, Tom, and me to get that moment into the film. Vitally important. We were on those marches. In fact, one of the scenes was the Section 28 march (Section 28 was a law

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wants to rule because it would make his father King Rowan (Brosnan) proud, when in actuality, it’s his sister, Princess Gwen (Tallulah Greive), who is more suited to wear the crown.

Porter shows up as Ella’s Fabulous Godmother (Fab G for short) and also narrates. As for Driver, she’s Queen Beatrice, and while her being a silent afterthought — sitting in the corner, and whose opinion King Rowan far too often refuses to listen to — is the point, to say the talented actress is wasted is an obvious understatement. Still, she does have a couple of nice little moments, not the least of which is one where she almost wordlessly expresses her profound disappointment when her husband finally takes things a few steps too far.

Menzel comes out of all of this looking the best, and I can’t say that’s surprising. Cabello gives it her all, but she’s not up to her co-star’s level. It’s sometimes difficult to know if she’s wilting into the background because that’s what the character is supposed to do, or if instead she’s just that intimated to be sharing a scene with the Tony-winning titan. It also doesn’t help that Cabello shares zero chemistry with Galitzine, and while he’s certainly pretty to look at, I wouldn’t say the actor’s performance did much for me.

Cinderella means well. Cannon has something to say, and I do think there’s value in the messages she’s working overtime to impart. But the various pieces of this musical never join together in harmony. Instead, they’re all singing different songs in disparate keys, with no rhyme and even less reason as to how they should all fit together once the chorus reaches its crescendo. The record might not be broken, but it’s certainly scratched, all of which makes trying to play it virtually impossible. passed by Margaret Thatcher that banned the promotion of homosexuality). We went on those marches.

I felt it vital that we tell this story. It’s a story of generations. I wanted to make sure we passed that down. But how to do it? For me, it’s kind of told by Hugo’s lover, who’s not chronicling necessarily the politics of the time, but instead what he and his partner are doing together as a couple. I think that makes it personal as opposed to polemic.

But it is political. We were political at that time. We were radical at the time. We were out there trying to change the world.

SMF: With all of that in mind and with everything that we’ve talked about, what do you want audiences to take away from the film? What do you hope that they’re talking about? Not just talking about Jamie, but talking about themselves and their lives and everything going on in the world. What is the conversation?

JB: If I was to describe it as a feeling, I’d like them to take away that joy we talked about earlier. I’d like them to look at what that joy has done to them and for them. Joy opens your heart, and when your heart gets expanded, even a little bit, it allows that little bit of fear to get pushed out. To know that we’re all capable of experiencing that joy. Who are we? Where do we find our joy? These are big questions we too seldom think about.

But I never went into crafting the musical or making this movie with the intention of exploring any of that. It’s a consequence of the story. It’s a consequence of Jamie Campbell’s courage. That’s what inspired me, and I hope it’s what inspires others. I just wanted to tell that story. I didn’t go into any of this to preach. So if audiences relate or respond to any of Jamie’s story the same way I did, if they take some of that joy away with them, that would be amazing.

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Books

The Charm Offensive: A reality-show Prince Charming tale with a predictable plot

by Terri Schlichenmeyer Special to the SGN THE CHARM OFFENSIVE: A NOVEL ALISON COCHRUN © 2021 Atria $17.00 / $23.00 Canada 368 pages Dev Deshpande was good at his job. He knew it, his colleagues knew it — it was a fact. He might personally be terrible at love (case in point: he was still smarting from a break-up with his boyfriend, Ryan, three months back), but Dev was a pro at his job as producer for the reality TV show Ever After. In fact, he’d been in charge of making dreams happen for six years’ worth of beautiful Ever After contestants. It helped that he believed in fairy tales.

Maybe one day, he’d find his own Prince Charming.

Just not this season.

This season, his lead director made him handle the “prince” instead of the usual “princesses,” and that was a challenge.

Charles Winshaw was 28, devastatingly handsome, extremely wealthy, and a nervous, introverted nerd who rarely dated. Geeky, awkward, and prone to panic attacks, he sincerely had no clue how to be romantic. Truth was, he was only there because his best friend and agent put him on Ever After to counter his reputation for being weird.

Still, Charlie was weird, and it was up to Dev to make him fit in the show better.

Trying to shore up Charlie’s confidence

Image courtesy of Atria

with pep talks wasn’t working. He couldn’t seem to just perform without freaking out, and it was becoming obvious. By the time Dev’s assistant suggested Dev and Charlie go on few practice dates, Dev was willing to try anything.

He took Charlie to dinner. He spent time doing jigsaw puzzles with him, and he got Charlie to relax a little. If sparks flew, well, it was one-sided: Charlie was completely straight.

Wasn’t he?

Alison Cochrun – Photo by Hayley Downing-Fairless

You know what’s going to happen in the end, don’t you? Of course you do. You know it by page 30, step by step, with virtually no surprises, which leaves a long way to the final sentence of The Charm Offensive.

Now, it’s true that this novel is cute. It has its lightly humorous moments, and author Alison Cochrun gives it a good cast, from contestant to show creator. It doesn’t lack details; in fact, reality dating show– watchers will feel right at home here. It

even has the ubiquitous panoply of exotic locales for the contestants’ “challenges.”

At issue is the length of this book.

There’s too much of it: too many shirts that creep up, too many mentions of vomit, too much needless drama, too many will-hewon’t-hes, when we know full well he will.

These extras don’t ratchet up the tension; they slow things down.

And so: cute story, familiar scenes, good characters. But if taut is what you want in a rom-com, leave this book and bow out.

THIS AD SPACE HAS BEEN GENEROUSLY DONATED BY KRISTIN COSTELLO IN MEMORY OF SGN PUBLISHER GEORGE BAKAN 16

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Op-Ed

Will justice for Elijah McClain lead to justice for the Black community?

by Janice Athill SGN Contributing Writer Phrases like “driving while Black” and “walking while Black” have been used to describe the racial profiling of motorists and pedestrians, respectively. These expressions became popularized in the ’90s, when it became clear police officers were intentionally targeting racial minorities in an effort to stop drug trafficking.

Police training memos from New Jersey that have been released instruct officers to make racial judgments such as “occupant identifiers for a possible drug courier.”

While many like to pretend racism and prejudice ended many years ago and that we as Americans have overcome so many racial hurdles, violence and murder at the hands of racist cops has been a persistent problem.

Moreover, those responsible for the violence against and injuries and murders of these innocents have not been held accountable.

While the lack of value the American justice system places on Black lives has been made clear by centuries of injustice, a precedent was set much more recently.

On December 31, 2008, Robbie Tolan (son of MLB player Bobby Tolan) was shot and seriously injured in the driveway of his own home by police sergeant Jeffrey Cotton.

Cotton was investigating a stolen vehicle, but the vehicle he arrived with questions about belonged to Tolan. Unfortunately, that fact wasn’t enough, and that night Tolan still ended up in a hospital with a bullet in his liver.

Cotton was found not guilty, and the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed the ruling in Tolan v. Cotton, because Cotton was not “objectively unreasonable in using deadly force against Tolan.”

A similar case is that of Elijah McClain.

On August 24, 2019, McClain was “walking while Black” from a convenience store Aurora, Colorado, when someone called 911 (another problematic issue in our society), saying he “looked sketchy” and was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.

Upon arrival, the police placed the 23-yearold massage therapist into a carotid hold (which has since been banned), which restricts blood to the brain and renders the person unconscious.

The body camera footage shows officers “put him out” with the carotid hold twice.

When paramedics arrived, they gave him a

Photo by Kevin Mohatt / Reuters

“therapeutic” dose of ketamine that the camera footage shows made his body go limp.

An autopsy report by the Adams County coroner said that the cause of death was “undetermined,” and that it could have been a result of natural causes. Despite the evidence proving otherwise, Adams County District Attorney Dave Young wouldn’t bring criminal charges because “prosecutors lacked evidence to prove the officers caused McClain’s death or that their force was unjustified” — a frighteningly familiar statement.

Since Tolan v. Cotton, countless Black men, women, and children have been murdered by racist cops and civilians: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others. None of them received justice... until this year.

On April 20, 2021, in a historic and beautiful turn of events, Derek Chauvin, one the cops primarily responsible for George Floyd’s death, was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter.

Then on June 25, he was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.

While many like to pretend racism and prejudice ended many years ago and that we as Americans have overcome so many racial hurdles, violence and murder at the hands of racist cops has been a persistent problem. Moreover, those responsible for the violence against and injuries and murders of these innocents have not been held accountable.

The horrid circumstances behind George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor’s murders brought Elijah McClain’s case back to the limelight and prompted Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to reexamine the case last year. Atty.

Gen. Phil Weiser was appointed as special prosecutor and opened a grand jury investigation. In his report, he stated that “at the time of the ketamine injection, Mr. McClain had not moved or made any sounds for about one minute… In addition, EMS administered a ketamine dosage based on a grossly inaccurate and inflated estimate of Mr. McClain’s size.”

Now, two years after his death, a Colorado grand jury has indicted three police officers and two paramedics on charges including manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. While we wait to see if the verdict and sentencing will reflect the grave injustice suffered by this young Black man and his family, we also hope it will have a lasting impression on how future injustices of “driving while Black” or “walking while Black” are handled.

Photo by Kevin Mohatt / Reuters

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Op-Ed

Texas’ new abortion law is a new-age witch hunt

Photo courtesy of Planned Parenthood

by Lindsey Anderson SGN Contributing Writer

According to the new Texas law, nearly all abortions after six weeks are illegal.

This means that by the time most unforeseen pregnancies are detected, it is already too late.

On Wednesday, September 1, Texas’ new abortion law went into effect, now making it a felony for anyone to receive or perform an abortion after just six weeks of gestation.

The law appears to violate the 1973 Roe v.

Wade Supreme Court ruling, which legalized the right to an abortion under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The current Supreme Court refused to even listen to challenges against the new law.

How could this happen?

In the final 2016 debate against his Democratic opponent Hilary Clinton, candidate Donald Trump remarked, “I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges. I would think that [abortion] would go back to the individual states.” Although he is now out of office, Trump’s decision to appoint judges who would reverse Roe v. Wade having lasting effects on the nation.

After the tragic passing of a legendary feminist icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg one year ago this month, Republican leaders in the Senate pushed to hastily confirm President Trump’s nominee to the court, Amy Coney Barrett.

Barrett has spoken openly about her Catholic beliefs and pro-life stance, leaving many to fear that their reproductive rights might be on the chopping block. Barrett joined two other Trump nominees, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, pushing the court heavily to the right.

The push to confirm Barrett was controversial, as it came just weeks before the presidential election. This was a stark contrast with 2016, when Republicans blocked President Obama’s nomination on the grounds that it should wait until the voters spoke in the next election, which at that time was many months away.

If Ginsburg still had been on the high court instead of Barrett, surely the legality of the new Texas law would have been examined. Ginsburg was a champion of women’s rights, never passing up an opportunity to voice her opinion for gender equality.

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With the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority, many fear that more laws like the Texas “Heartbeat Bill” may soon be passed. Conservatives have argued that abortion rights should be determined by individual states, but when a state like Texas declares abortions after the sixth week to be a felony, it challenges federal rulings on abortion, such as Roe, incredibly complicating the issue.

What are the repercussions?

According to the new Texas law, nearly all abortions after six weeks are illegal. This means that by the time most unforeseen pregnancies are detected, it is already too late.

The law also cracks down on those willing to help women receive the procedure. Doctors who perform illegal abortions in Texas can be sued, jailed, and lose their licenses. Even friends and family who are aware of a woman’s plan to leave the state for the procedure, or help by giving a ride, money, or loaning a vehicle, can be accused of conspiracy and charged. Abortion patients themselves, however, cannot be sued.

The law has also created a witch-hunt mentality, empowering “any private citizen to sue Texas abortion providers who violate the law, as well as anyone who ‘aids or abets’ a woman getting the procedure,” according to the AP, rewarding snitches with up to $10,000 if they successfully sue anyone involved in an illegal abortion.

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The ramifications of this law are monumental. Low-income Texans who do not have the means to leave the largest continental state for an abortion will be required to carry a pregnancy to term. The medical bills related to such an experience alone can be life-shattering.

For those who can afford to travel for the procedure, abortion clinics in neighboring states are already starting to fill up, leaving poor families in other states with fewer opportunities to receive an abortion.

Low-income mothers aren’t the only ones whose lives are affected by this new law. Trans men and nonbinary people may sometimes seek abortions, especially as the experience of undergoing a full-term pregnancy is incredibly difficult for a Trans person’s mental health and gender identity.

Doctors often gatekeep female sterilization procedures, meaning that those with female reproductive anatomy may continue to run the risk of an unintended pregnancy even if they don’t identify as a woman.

Rape victims have also been affected by this harsh new law, even though Texas Gov. Greg Abbott denies these arguments, claiming the Heartbeat Bill will actually help prevent rapes. With abortions now harder to access, victims of rape are now forced to carry a resultant pregnancy to term in Texas.

For a victim who does seek an abortion, the attacker has a right to sue, possibly receiving the $10,000 bounty or legal custody rights to the product of their crime.

The penalty for abortion is now harsher than what many rapists face across the country. With this law, women will become no more than incubators, carrying the children of men who now have equal say in their reproductive decisions.

Pro-life or anti-women?

Texas’ new law has been disguised by conservatives, who claim it is a way to sanction and protect life. However, as the law functions, it is actually a way to punish women for their sexuality — with no consequences for male sexuality. The new abortion law is not pro-life; it is anti-women.

The sentence pregnant women in Texas face is like none other. It is a nine-month sentence for anyone with a female reproductive system who finds herself unintentionally pregnant. A person imprisoned by their own body is in a jail cell they can never truly escape.

The policies surrounding Texas’ family planning laws reinforce what women across the country already know: these laws were never about life. They are merely a way to control female bodies. The law rewards Texans for hunting down and accusing women of receiving abortions, providing more legal rights to an unborn child than to the woman carrying it.

Over 40 unlicensed border facilities remain open in Texas, where migrant children are routinely taken from their parents and forced into appalling conditions. The “pro-life” argument goes silent when immigrants die in such facilities, when Black people die at the hands of the police, and when low-income families starve. If the Texas government really cared about the sanctity of life, it would enact more laws to help the children that have already been born and continue to struggle under the harsh realities of racial injustice and poverty.

The fact that the federal government has not yet intervened against such an oppressive law reflects what our post-Trump America looks like: a country where women’s rights will continue to be under attack.

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9/11/2021: A lifetime in the aftermath of tragedy

Photo by Amy Sancetta / AP

by A.V. Eichenbaum SGN Managing Editor I was six years old when the Twin Towers fell.

It was a formative memory for me.

Watched it on TV. People jumping out of a flaming building on the other side of the country. I saw fear and confusion tighten their grasp on the adults around me.

I remember a classmate, Lauren something, in tears the next day. When someone asked her what was wrong, she just said, “The terrorists ruined my birthday.”

We didn’t know.

We were kids.

We were kids when the Patriot Act was passed and our small-town police forces started to militarize themselves “just in case.”

Kids when the INS gained more power and xenophobia grew in spades, warping the messages in our media so that they encouraged us to mock and belittle the “other.” Kids fed on a 24-hour news cycle at the dawn of the Information Age, watching the world grow hostile and hateful as it splintered into fractured online communities. Over two decades, the importance of those online communities blended with the real until there was almost no difference, changing politics and interpersonal communication forever.

We learned to accept it. Some of us didn’t notice the changes.

I grew up watching my right-wing father lose faith in the Republican Party as it veered further and further away from the blue-collar, down-to-earth message he’d been raised with. I watched as my progressive, feminist mother bought into the hypercorporatization of the Democrats.

The president we elected who ran on Hope was just as militaristic as any before him.

And then the president we elected who ran on Hate brought the country to the brink

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of civil war by promising to make us great again, to bring us back to the good old days.

I don’t remember any “good old days” in the United States. We’ve been at war my whole life. Our schools taught us that we should be proud of that.

I got into journalism because I wanted the truth. When I realized that was the wrong avenue — that the distance between “truth” and “fact” is about the size and scope of the Grand Canyon — I switched over to philosophy.

Now here I am back in journalism to share some of what I’ve observed.

Our brains don’t function well under the constant stress of the 24-hour access to media that came about in the post-9/11 world.

We don’t sleep right, and we don’t think straight. This perpetuates itself, triggering the chemicals in our brain so that we want to feel miserable. We want to know more.

I’m a proud participant in this system, chugging down energy drinks that call themselves “THERMOGENIC FUEL” and doing late-night rabbit-hole runs into the darkest corners of the internet to see what information I can find.

It’s a terrible, dystopian habit. An endless, toxically therapeutic doomscroll into the void.

It started as a way to get away from cable news in my early teens, and now I’m an addict. An information junkie with an anxiety disorder. And there are millions of us in the US. Tech natives who have adapted to living in a world where every terrible thing is just a tap away. The entirety of human knowledge and present-day human stupidity is blended seamlessly into easily digestible, terrifyingly damaging bursts of information that short-circuit our dopamine receptors and inevitably cause burnout and depression. I know people who spend time in online hate groups just to get angry about

Our brains don’t function well under the constant stress of the 24-hour access to media that came about in the post-9/11 world. We don’t sleep right, and we don’t think straight. This perpetuates itself, triggering the chemicals in our brain so that we want to feel miserable. We want to know more. what’s going on. Just to feel something.

There was no pre-9/11 for us. It’s always been this way: hatred amplified via echo chambers and technology speeding up every day, with no off switch.

This isn’t a pity party, though. I feel worse for the millions who had to adjust to this. The early millennials, the Gen Xers, and boomers. Sure, life’s always been hard.

But this?

Watching as your country uses one tragic event over and over to increase the control it has over you and feed you fear? Having to defend your patriotism at the office or to your neighbor so you don’t seem unsympathetic. Watching as corporations tried to “out-America” each other, plastering flags on everything and selling patriotism back to you with a side of fries. And then having to adjust to the tech boom during two “oncein-a-lifetime” economic recessions. Where would you even find time to process all the information being shoved in your face?

Human beings did not evolve to be 45-hour-a-week work drones, let alone drones being constantly bombarded with new information. We’re large mammals.

Large mammals rest for extended periods of time and eat and hang out. Instead, we intentionally watch newscasters who make us angry. We spend what little nonindustrial-

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ized time we have left in our day to argue on Facebook over an article we were too tired to read. This is the world 20 years after 9/11.

The seeds were sewn by opportunists who saw they could make money by exploiting tragedy two decades ago, and all of us just live here in the aftermath, too exhausted to think. Now, with click-based, interaction-led ad revenue, companies profit directly off of our collective distress.

Our protests are stamped out by the militarized local police and forgotten by the apathetic slacktivists who’ve already moved on to the latest trend. Our progressive politicians are, to the rest of the world, center-left at most, moderate-right at least.

And we continue to live in fear and confusion, inviting it into our lives every time we open our phones.

There is no call to action at the end of all of this. No message. After a lifetime of this, every day, I’m tired. We’re all tired. The bombing of the World Trade Center has been used over and over again to further corporate and political agendas, to exploit the average American, and to spread hate and fear of our neighbors since 2001. And they tell us “Never forget.”

So, I guess I’ll end this with a question.

Why shouldn’t we forget? And who benefits from that?

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National & International News

National news highlights

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Contributing Writer New York City: Gay man attacked on train during overall rise in violence LGBTQ Nation reported September 3 on the beating of a Gay man on a New York City subway train.

The assailant reportedly said that he wasn’t “with that gay shit” before punching the other passenger in the head and slinging anti-Gay slurs. The publication put the incident in the context of increased violence among riders of the New York City transit system, several of which involved anti-Gay statements. Revenue and ridership are down, and citizens are calling on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeg and other leaders to better ensure the safety of passengers.

Photo courtesy of Curtis Galloway

Kentucky and Texas: Survivors of conversion therapy versus lack of state bans NBC News reported September 4 on the “new weapons” survivors of conversion therapy are using in states without laws banning the practice.

Curtis Galloway, founder of the Conversion Therapy Dropout Network and a survivor himself, is has filed a complaint against the Kentucky social worker who used pseudoscience, gaslighting, and a clinical license to do him “serious and lasting harm.” The organizations Born Perfect and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have been going through similar channels, using Texas licensing boards to target conversion therapists’ “violations of professional and ethical rules.” Although several state legislatures will be ruling on new conversion therapy bans soon, Galloway says that they won’t be enough, since they only cover licensed therapists. He has encouraged other survivors to file their own complaints in the meantime.

HRC

continued from cover The firing was announced by the cochairs of HRC’s board, Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, in a statement that said that his actions in assisting Cuomo’s teams had violated the organization’s mission.

It also accused David of making statements that included “significant untruths” about the investigation and his role in the organization.

David’s conduct had violated the HRC’s “conflict of interest” policy, the statement said, and resulted in “material damage” to the reputations of David and the organization.

A report by New York State Attorney General Letitia James detailed the allegations of sexual harassment by Cuomo, and efforts by his aides to retaliate against the former governor’s accusers.

David was identified in the report as involved in efforts to discredit Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan.

Before joining the HRC, David worked

International news highlights

by Daniel Lindsley SGN Contributing Writer

Photo courtesy of Cai Xukun / Weibo

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Photo by Hans Pennink / AP

Before joining the HRC, David worked as Cuomo’s chief counsel from 2015 to 2019.

David reportedly had a memo in his possession containing confidential information about Boylan’s employment history. as Cuomo’s chief counsel from 2015 to 2019. David reportedly had a memo in his possession containing confidential information about Boylan’s employment history.

David responded to his firing with a statement saying the group’s board had “unjustly” provided notice of termination, and according to MSNBC, he vowed to bring a legal challenge.

“As a Black, Gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” he said.

In a separate statement, David said the group’s co-chairs had asked him to resign

but “didn’t offer a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing on my part when I asked repeatedly.” Referring to the document he helped draft, he said in a statement Sunday that he had a “legal obligation” to provide it to Cuomo but then spoke out against it.

Cuomo resigned as governor in August after a state investigation concluded that he sexually harassed multiple women who worked for him. He said it was “unfair” that he had to resign. He at times expressed regret for making young women uncomfortable but denied criminal wrongdoing.

China: Fearing K-Pop influence, government bans “sissy men” on television LGBTQ Nation reported on September 3 that China has banned “sissy men” from television, as part of a broader effort by President Xi Jin-ping to foster a “cultural rejuvenation.” K-Pop musicians are of special concern to China’s leaders for their “abnormal esthetics” and traditionally feminine features.

Meanwhile, China’s largest social media platform has started to delete high-profile LGBTQ-related accounts, without any specific explanation as to why. The deleted accounts were all nongovernmental or student led.

Bangladesh: Six anti-Gay militants sentenced to death for 2016 murders Reuters reported on August 31 that Bangladesh has sentenced six Islamist miltants to death for killing two Gay rights activists five years ago. The activists were Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Bangladesh’s first LGBTQ magazine, and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, 25, an actor.

They were killed in Mannan’s apartment in Dhaka in April 2016, as part of a spate of attacks on secular groups and religious minorities. Homosexual relationships are still illegal in Bangladesh, but the government there is determined to maintain its identity as a “moderate Muslim” nation.

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Former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Former HRC President Alphonso David – Photo by Mike Groll / AP

Photo courtesy of HRC

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BI-WEEKLY! FIND US WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS!

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