Category: Social Justice

Today is the day that I get full value out of my New York Times subscription: “What Happened When Homeless Men Moved Into a Liberal Neighborhood”.

(Note the use of “homeless” rather than “unhoused”:

The label of “homeless” has derogatory connotations. It implies that one is “less than”, and it undermines self-esteem and progressive change.

The use of the term “Unhoused”, instead, has a profound personal impact upon those in insecure housing situations. It implies that there is a moral and social assumption that everyone should be housed in the first place.

Who can disagree with this?)

From the NYT piece:

When New York City moved shelter residents into tourist hotels on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the neighborhood’s values were tested.

The guests arrived at the Lucerne Hotel, two blocks from Central Park, carrying their belongings, stepping off buses and filling the hotel’s empty rooms, which typically cost more than $200 a night.

They were not tourists nor business travelers but residents of homeless shelters whom the city sent to the Lucerne to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the crowded shelter system. Over three days, 283 men moved into the hotel.

Their arrival has become a flash point and a test of values for the Upper West Side — a neighborhood with a reputation as one of the most liberal enclaves in New York and in the entire country.

One day after the men began moving into the Lucerne, on West 79th Street, a private Facebook group — Upper West Siders for Safer Streets — was created by residents who were up in arms. The group has more than 8,700 members.

Many commenters said the men menaced pedestrians, urinated and defecated on the street and used and sold drugs in the open.

In interviews, some longtime residents said the hotel’s conversion into a shelter had dimmed the quality of life and evoked memories of an era when the neighborhood was filled with single room occupancy hotels that helped fuel crime.

“People are generally concerned to go outside now,’’ he added. “The fear is palpable.’’

If only there could be an article like this every day in the NYT!

Related:

• “NYC IS DEAD FOREVER… HERE’S WHY” (James Altucher)
• unlimited immigrants for parts of the U.S. that want to fund the long-term welfare costs

“How Bruins Plan to Support Black Lives Matter During National Anthems” (NBC Boston):

The Bruins plan to lock arms during the playing of the Canadian and U.S. national anthems prior to games in the restarted 2020 NHL season, the team announced Tuesday.

The gesture will be “a sign of solidarity with the Black community,” per the team, and is “solely intended to be a positive sign of support for the Black community, and a way for us to use our platform to help end racism.”

Is this the ultimate proof that BLM is actually a movement by and for white people? (click on the photo below, the result of typing “Boston Bruins fans” into Google image search, and let me know if you see any people of color!)

In May I wondered “What happens to classical musicians in the Age of Corona?”:

The audience for live classical music and opera is perilously close to the 82-year-old average age of a Covid-19 victim in Massachusetts (source). Concert venues are shut down by orders of the governor, First Amendment right to assemble notwithstanding. Even if it were legal to host a concert, would the core of elderly patrons show up?

The New York Times has an answer: the musicians become more diverse, at least in terms of skin color (but if, for coronasafety, there is a limit of one audience member at a time, there can’t be too much skin color diversity in the audience!). “To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions”:

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

Related:

• “A Famous Study Found That Blind Auditions Reduced Sexism in the Orchestra. Or Did It?” (Reason) : In May, Columbia University statistician Andrew Gelman took a deep dive into the study. He described them as “not very impressive at all,” and had great difficulty trying to locate the 50 percent statistic within the modest findings. “You shouldn’t be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large,” he wrote. “I don’t hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem.”
• Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (starring Will Ferrell, on Netflix, in case you are tired of old recordings of older music)

Top of the front page of Audible.com, July 12:

Does this mean that “Trans and Nonbinary” are only half as victimized as “Black”? (Also, why couldn’t a non-Queer author write a book that would qualify to be featured in the “Trans and Nonbinary” category?)