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In the preface to the 2004 edition of Barack Obamas best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father, the future President wrote that every Americaninner-city mothers and corn and bean farmers, immigrant day laborers alongside suburban investment bankershas a longing for her own story to be told. This week, The New Yorker published an exclusive excerpt from Obamas new memoir, A Promised Land, which will be released on November 17th. In the piece, Obama writes about the arduous legislative campaign to pass the Affordable Care Act, which has provided health care to tens of millions of Americans. Its a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the heavy lifting required to bring about health-care reform. (The excerpt is especially timely now, as deaths from the coronavirus surge again.) Part of what makes the piece so captivating is Obamas intimate and clear-eyed assessment of the ever-shifting obstacles to progress. His facility for granular but illuminating storytelling is a quality that hes carried with him since his early days as a community organizer in Chicago.

The New Yorker has published countless stories about Obama over the years, beginning even before he gained widespread national attention. The first major piece was a profile, written by William Finnegan, in 2004, and it ran two months before its subject, then a state senator in Illinois, delivered his electrifying keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. As Finnegan accompanies Obama on his daily routine, he notices the diversity of those eager to share their stories with the young politician. (The people who stopped to shake his hand were black and white, old and young, professors and car mechanics.) Obama, Finnegan observes, still has his hair cut at the same Black barbershop in Hyde Park that he wandered into upon first arriving in the city, twenty years earlier.

In The Conciliator, published three years later, Larissa MacFarquhar profiles Obama during his first Presidential campaign. Now a U.S. senator, Obama has staked his candidacy, she writes, on a concept that, in our current political climate, seems antiquatedthe prospect of national unity and bringing together the two halves of America that are profoundly divided. Many people, MacFarquhar notes, have described Obamas political style as professorial, yet she finds his manner less professorial than medicallike that of a doctor, who, by listening to a patients story without emotional reaction, reassures the patient that the symptoms are familiar to him.

In 2008, one week after the Presidential election, David Remnick published The Joshua Generation, a sweeping report on race and Obama's campaign. Obama hadnt predicated his bid for the White House on identity, Remnick writes, but he was able to make his ancestry a metaphor for his ambition to create a broad coalition of support, to rally Americans behind a narrative of moral and political progress. Obama understood the profound significance (and political potency) of his backgroundand he recognized the meaningful impact that earlier generations sacrifices had made on his own life. A couple of months later, in 2009, Mariana Cook published A Couple in Chicago, an interview with the Obamas about their relationship that she had conducted in the mid-nineties, accompanied by a photo portfolio. In a candid moment, Barack Obama divulges that it is the tension between familiarity and mysterythe ability to retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other personthat makes their marriage work.

In 2016, shortly after Hillary Clintons surprise defeat, Remnick published a piece about how Obama was reconciling his legacy with the ascendency of Donald Trump. The 2016 Presidential campaign was personal for Obama, Remnick observed. The day after the election, Obama told staffers in the Oval Office, For some of you, all youve ever known is winning. But the older people here, we have known loss. And this stings. This hurts. Remnick offers a compelling look at Obamas appraisal of his successor and his thoughts on what the election means for the country.

In addition to our coverage of Obama and his Administration, the magazine has also published multiple pieces on the origins of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) and the long road to health-care reform. Were bringing you several of these stories today, including Ezra Kleins piece on shifting political positions on individual mandates and Malcolm Gladwells review of a comprehensive history of the A.C.A. We hope that you enjoy the excerpt from Obamas memoir in this weeks issue, and that youll take some time to delve into our additional coverage of his groundbreaking Presidency and its impact.

The story behind the Obama Administrations most enduringand most contestedlegacy: reforming American health care.

Speaking at a church in Selma, Obama was not a patriarch and not a prophet but the prophesied. Im here because you all sacrificed for me, he said.

In 1996, Barack and Michelle Obama took part in a photography project on couples in America.

How the son of a Kenyan economist became an Illinois everyman.

Obama calls Americas founding a grand compromise: compromise, for him, is not an eroding of principle for the sake of getting something done but a principle in itselfthe certainty of uncertainty, the fundament of union.

Inside a stunned White House, the President considers his legacy and Americas future.

How Republicans turned against the individual mandate after supporting it for two decades.

The battle over whether to repeal, replace, or repair the Affordable Care Act continues to rage on.

How health-care reform went wrong.

Read more from the original source:
Barack Obama in The New Yorker - The New Yorker

NEW YORK (AP) Black Lives Matter has been a lot of things in its brief, fiery life.

It has been a slogan, a rallying point. A movement that led protests coast to coast, calling for America to get serious about preventing Black deaths at the hands of law enforcement. A heaven-sent resource for people like Helen Jones, desperate for justice after her son died in a Los Angeles County jail.

Black Lives Matter saved us, because we had nobody, said Jones.

Now, BLMs influence faces a test, as voters in Tuesdays election consider candidates who endorsed or denounced the BLM movement amid a national reckoning on race.

Were a very young organization with a whole lot of visibility in a really short amount of time, Patrisse Cullors, one of three BLM co-founders, told The Associated Press. It would be false, she said, for anyone to put it on us solely around what happens in this election cycle.

And in fact, many Republican and Democratic candidates vying for federal, state and local office have moved vociferously toward the political center or further to the right, making it clear that they back the blue or do not support calls for defunding the police. Neither President Donald Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden would reduce police budgets in local communities.

Still, there are reasons for BLM supporters to feel optimistic, some activists say. The group is flush with cash, which it is using in the hopes of playing a significant role in the election. There is a growing roster of candidates whove been nurtured, inspired or supported by the movement: For example, St. Louis area residents are all but certain to elect Cori Bush, a Ferguson protester who is running for Congress.

For the first time, people can hear and consider candidates who will come out and acknowledge the fact that police commit harms against Black and brown folks, said Tiffany Cabn, a national political organizer for the Working Families Party who helped the party recruit progressive-minded prosecutors.

___

In the blink of an eye, BLM has gone from social media hashtag to an immensely influential movement and an organization with millions of dollars at its disposal to push messaging around defunding police departments as a way of addressing systemic racism.

It began just seven years ago, with the emergence of the movement amid its organizers outrage over the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

A year later, BLM marched onto the global stage after an uprising in the wake of Michael Browns death at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

The three women who founded BLM were already activist powerhouses. Cullors had established her own social justice organization in Los Angeles, Power and Dignity Now. Opal Tometi had been executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, advocating for social and economic prosperity of Black immigrants to the U.S. Alicia Garza, had been a special projects director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, fighting for the rights of professional nannies and other caregivers.

They saw the need to make BLM more than a slogan, Garza said.

We were getting people who were wanting to start chapters, and they were from all over the place, she said. We would be asking them, Well, what else do you have in your community? And they would say, Nothing. We were in the middle of a literal storm and needing to fly a plane as youre building it.

BLM formed a network of chapters in 2015, building infrastructure and an organization that drew funding from celebrities like Beyonc, Jay-Z and Prince.

Its first-ever Los Angeles chapter came to the aid of Helen Jones. She believes her 22-year-old son, John Thomas Horton III, was murdered in 2009 through neglect of sheriffs deputies who stuck him in a closet-sized, windowless cell and left him in solitary confinement for weeks. Though officials determined that Horton hanged himself, Jones said injuries on his body suggest that he was brutally beaten.

She needed a champion to keep her sons case in the spotlight. Enter Black Lives Matter. She worked with local movement organizers and other victims families to demand stronger civilian oversight of the county jails via a 2020 ballot initiative. Voters approved the measure in March, granting a sheriff oversight commission subpoena powers to investigate civilian complaints.

BLMs profile increased quickly. In 2017, the founders were awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.

In 2018, Cullors appeared on stage at the Academy Awards ceremony with prominent voices in the #MeToo and transgender rights movements. Across social media platforms, the Black Lives Matter movement boasts a following of millions.

I think over the past seven or eight years, so many people within Black Lives Matter have been asking what started out as questions that were only ever asked in academia questions like, What can we do about police brutality? and What to do when we feel we cant call the police, said Janaya Khan, the networks international ambassador and co-founder of its Canadian branch.

So now in this time of pandemic, when so many people are experiencing a kind of precarity, one that so many Black people already know intimately, there are questions that theyre asking and we have some answers that we can offer, Khan said.

Since the wave of protests sparked by George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May, BLM has undergone a somewhat quiet transformation. As the words Black lives matter began appearing in city-sanctioned street murals coast to coast, the BLM network banked millions of dollars from a surge of donations so much that Cullors established a grant fund of more than $12 million.

While Garza and Tometi stepped away from day-to-day stewardship of BLM years ago, Cullors remains executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Its existing chapters, including those in Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, are now autonomous entities that are eligible to receive funding from the network, Cullors said.

Broad visibility and influence have come at a high personal cost for prominent BLM voices. Black Lives Matter, as a slogan, elicited All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter responses from foes. It also meant Cullors, Garza, Tometi and many others associated with the BLM movement have faced threats, as well as surveillance by local and federal law enforcement, Cullors said.

Days before the election, Cullors released a video announcing she and Garza had been contacted by the FBI after their names were found on a list of activists a white supremacist allegedly intended to harm.

No threats against me or my movement will stop this revolution, Cullors said in the video. And we will be here. We will show up to the polls and we will organize.

___

BLM has launched a political action committee to support candidates, campaigns and legislation. And as the voting wraps up, the organization is hosting pandemic-safe drive-in rallies, text-banking voters and leveraging its millions to run ads focused on increasing the Black vote.

One aim is to press sweeping federal legislation known as the BREATHE Act, a bill drafted by the policy table of the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition formed in 2014 that now includes more than 150 affiliate organizations that make up the broad Black liberation struggle.

The act, not yet introduced in Congress, would divest federal resources from incarceration and policing, including the elimination of a Department of Defense program that allows local law enforcement agencies to obtain excess military equipment equipment that has been used against BLM protests.

At the state and local level, the Working Families Party, a coalition member, said it expects a stellar Election Day performance from its slate of progressive district attorney candidates in Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Colorado and Florida. The candidates, some of them incumbents, have pledged to take up or continue policies such as declining to prosecute low-level drug offenses, not seeking cash bail, and holding police accountable for brutality.

There is some concern that the results of the presidential election might be misinterpreted as either an endorsement or a rejection of BLM.

I do worry that people will see a Biden victory and say that it shows Black Lives Matter was supported, said Justin Hansford, a Ferguson protester and law professor who now serves as director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University. Thats sort of like the most twisted thing you can think, because he has adamantly stated that he will increase police budgets.

Biden has supported providing more funding to law enforcement so that they can hire and train officers to better deal with calls involving emotionally distressed or mentally ill citizens. Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from cities that vote to decrease police department funding.

If theres going to be any sort of success for Black Lives Matter on a political platform, Hansford said, its going to be traction at the local level, in cities and states across the country.

___

Morrison is a member of the APs Race and Ethnicity team. Follow Morrison on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

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Black Lives Matter faces test of its influence in election - The Associated Press

The Poynter Institutes Politifact claimed it was mostly true that an anti-Black Lives Matter Flag replaced the American flag behind President Trump at a recent rally but the flag that was referenced was the pro-police thin blue line flag.

The thin blue line is a symbol that represents the police officers who separate order from chaos, according to Thin Blue Line USA, a company that sells merchandise featuring the flag supporting law enforcement, veterans and first responders.

TUCKER CARLSON'S EXPLOSIVE BOBULINSKI INTERVIEW DRAWS 7.6M VIEWERS AS MAINSTREAM MEDIA IGNORES IT

The thin blue line flag is flown to show support for our heroes in law enforcement and serves as a consoling reminder they will always be there to protect us, the Thin Blue Line USA website notes. For those who walk it, the thin blue line is a reflection of courage, a pledge of brotherhood and a tribute to those who have fallen in the line of duty.

However, Politifact claimed a Facebook post that labeled the flag an anti-Black Lives Matter flag is mostly true.

Free Beacon executive editor Brent Scher noticed the article and was in disbelief, writing WTF?

The flag was flown behind Trump during a campaign event in Wisconsin earlier this month, prompting a college professor to declare it was intended to reject Black Lives Matter.

LAPDOG PRESS BLACKS OUT EXPLOSIVE TONY BOBULINSKI CLAIMS AS CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WAPO SKIP STORY

"Tonight in Wisconsin. First the anti-Black Lives Matter flag flew outside his rallies, then beside the American flag. Now it has replaced the American flag. Thats significant, a Dartmouth College professor claimed.

Politifact explored the claim, noting that Thin Blue Line USA began marketing the flag in 2014, shortly after the Black Live Matter movement picked up steam. Politifact even cited a Marshall Project story about the origins of the flag.

The flag has no association with racism, hatred, bigotry, Thin Blue Line USA president Andrew Jacob told the publication. Its a flag to show support for law enforcementno politics involved."

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Jacobs told Marshall Project that the flag was not a direct reaction to the first Black Lives Matter protests, but admitted he mayhave first noticed the image during widespread pro-police response to the protests.

Politifacts takeaway is that the Thin Blue Line flag has become a prominent part of the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement -- which arose to counter the Black Lives Matter movement.

That said, while it is possible to support both, Trump has made clear he opposes the Black Lives Matter protests -- and made that opposition, and a strong law-and-order message, a prominent part of his re-election campaign. So, those attending the rally or seeing the images could easily see the flag as an anti Black Lives Matter flag, Politifact wrote. We rate the claim Mostly True.

Fox News Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

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Politifact: 'Mostly true that pro-police thin blue line flag is anti-Black Lives Matter' - Fox News

(JTA) An episode in which three visibly Jewish men were harassed with slurs during the aftermath of a racial justice protest in Philadelphia this week was instigated by an adherent of a fringe extremist movement connected to an anti-Semitic shooting last year.

The incident, which was captured in a video circulated widely on social media, happened late Tuesday night, after demonstrations erupted across the city protesting the killing one day earlier by police of Walter Wallace, an African American man.

Amalek, Amalek, what are yall doing down here? a man off camera says, referencing a biblical tribe traditionally seen as the eternal enemy of the Jews. Yall know that were the real Jews, right?

A handful of people then advance on the three Jews, urging them to leave. At one point, someone pushes one of the three Jews, who later moves behind a line of police officers. One man appears to try to shield the Jews from the man holding the camera, who later calls the Jews synagogue of Satan.

That term is used by extremist sectors of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement (which is different from Jews of color) and offered one clue about what had taken place. But the video left some questions unanswered: What happened before it began? Who was doing the shouting? Was one of the Jews wearing a t-shirt with a white power symbol?

Interviews with two of the Jewish men and a longer video of the same incident provided answers. They paint a picture of an unprovoked verbal assault on a group of people who said they were there out of curiosity.

At least one of the Jewish men has shared content from far-right activists and returned home believing, as he had previously, that the Black Lives Matter movement is anti-Semitic even though the verbal abuse he received reflected the rhetoric of a separate movement.

Parts of the Black Hebrew Israelites constitute a fringe group that operates independently of racial justice activists, and long predates and is unconnected to Black Lives Matter. The extremist segments of the movement see Jews as impostors and believe themselves to be the true representatives of Judaism, making anti-Jewish rhetoric a regular part of their activity.

That movement, according to Brian Levin, a professor who studies hate crimes, also has a tendency to kind of glom onto any kind of event or controversy, and frequently aims to instigate conflict. The shooters in the attack on a Jersey City kosher supermarket last year were also Black Hebrew Israelites.

Around election times and particularly when there are conspiracy theories and discussions of elites, the first stop is always the Jews, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. But the Black Hebrew Israelites are anti-Semitic no matter where you run into them.

For the Jewish men in the videos, two of whom were wearing yarmulkes, the encounter came as they stood at an intersection in West Philadelphia when they were approached, unprompted, by a man yelling the anti-Semitic slurs. The man had previously been taunting a row of police standing with shields at the intersection.

In another video shot that night at the same intersection, a voice can be heard saying, Get your Jewish ass on.

The Philadelphia Police Department told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency it has no further information on the incident.

The man who appears to have shot the extended video and uploaded it to Instagram has the handle @hoi_philly. HOI, or the House of Israel, is a subgroup of Black Hebrew Israelites that also took part in a widely publicized altercation at the March for Life in 2019.

The owner of the Instagram account has posted other content disparaging Jews. This week, he posted a meme juxtaposing a photo of an Orthodox man wearing a yarmulke with a photo of a Black man. The caption reads Jew-ish below the Orthodox man and Jew below the Black man.

While extremist Black Hebrew Israelite activity hasnt changed recently, it now exists in the context of a rising tide of polarization and extremism nationally surrounding Election Day. But the groups extremist activists do not fit neatly onto the countrys polarized political divide, and are not progressive. Some members are known to shout misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic epithets on the street.

In such a fraught environment, extremists of all kinds are starting to take to the streets, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. Weve already been in a period of heightened street activity. Were also going to see more street activity in the days to come and this is emblematic of the things that are happening.

Two of the Jewish men in the video spoke with JTA, though both asked that their names not be printed and denied knowing each other before meeting that night, shortly before the video was taken. One of the Jews, a student at a yeshiva in New Jersey, said he and a friend had come to Philadelphia to visit acquaintances and later came to the protest to see firsthand what they had seen in the news and pay tribute to Wallaces life.

We went down there to pay our respects and assess the situation, he said. When people began saying anti-Semitic things to him, he said, We didnt think that it would escalate. We were nodding in approval and listening and understanding their hurt. There was a life lost. I didnt read too much into the details.

Another Jewish man in the video has publicly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and came to the protest wearing a shirt bearing the OK hand gesture, which in the shirts context is a white supremacist symbol, in addition to dogs seemingly making Nazi salutes. (The shirt was created by a far-right activist who first gained notoriety after he was prosecuted for teaching his girlfriends dog to make a Nazi salute.)

The Jewish mans recent Twitter feed is a stream of almost exclusively pro-Trump and anti-left-wing posts, including retweets of a few people associated with the far right. He has written and retweeted tweets that call the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist organization as well as anti-Semitic. After first telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had come to the protests just to observe, he later acknowledged that he had prior opinions about it and wanted to see if he would experience anti-Semitism.

I did have a preconceived opinion, he said. I came there because I wanted to get my own first person perspective and see, whats this all about? Are they actually going to say anti-Semitic things to me? Its hard to believe until it actually happens to you. I didnt think they were actually going to and I was shocked out of my mind when they did.

He said that police officers also shoved him as he was leaving the protest.

That mans takeaway from the incident is what Graie Hagans, a Jew of color who lives in West Philadelphia and has participated in this weeks racial justice protests, said he was concerned about this week. Hagans says he is deeply heartbroken because of Wallaces death and police abuse hes seen, and he is concerned that the video will reinforce the mistaken idea, among some Jews, that crowds of Black people are inherently dangerous.

Its what gets reaffirmed for us as Jewish people when the story and the setup continue to be the danger posed by gathered Black folks, said Hagans, the vision praxis director for Bend The Arc, a progressive Jewish organization. Me and three other Black folks gathered has a very different story and feel to it than four white folks gathered.

The entire incident comes against a context in which a vocal minority of American Jews are deeply skeptical of or opposed to Black Lives Matter, accusing it of anti-Semitism. They have pointed to instances where synagogues were vandalized amid protests and to anti-Israel rhetoric from parts of the movements loose network.

But the majority of the Jewish community does not appear to share those feelings. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish organizations have pledged their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and Jewish leaders have taken part in the racial justice protests that swept the country earlier this year, including this week in Philadelphia.

Earlier Tuesday night, a group of rabbis joined an interfaith clergy contingent in Philadelphias racial justice protests. Rabbi Annie Lewis, co-president of the Board of Rabbis of Philadelphia, said the alliance between Jewish and African-American clergy in the city is more representative of the Jewish role in the protests than an anti-Semitic act by a member of a fringe group.

Everywhere in the world, theres anti-Semitism and racism, but the stories that need to be told in Philadelphia are of Black clergy working in partnership with White Jewish clergy, all of us, to call out for justice and work against all kinds of hate. Were trying to lift up, together, ways we can work together peacefully.

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A widely circulated video showed Jews being harassed at Black Lives Matter protest. The attacker is part of a fringe group. - JTA News - Jewish...

Though masked killer Michael Myers is sitting out this years Halloween much like the rest of the world, fear not: The next entry in the Halloween franchise, Halloween Kills, has a new teaser trailer.

Directed by David Gordon Green, this is the 10th installment in the series originated by John Carpenter and serves as a direct sequel to his 2018 Halloween. Written by Green, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems, Halloween Kills launches October 15, 2021 from Universal Pictures. Watch the trailer below.

During a recent interview with SiriusXMs Jess Cagle and co-host Julia Cunningham (via Collider), returning star Jamie Lee Curtis talked about her role as survivor Laurie Strode and teased the movies timely resonance with the current moment.

What we were seeing around the country of the power, of the rage of voices, big groups of people coming together enraged at the set of circumstances, thats what the movie is, she said. The movie is about a mob. And so its very interesting because it takes on what happens when trauma infects an entire community. And were seeing it everywhere with the Black Lives Matter movement. Were seeing it in action and Halloween Kills weirdly enough, dovetailed onto that, proceeded it, it was written before that occurred, but then of course, so when you see it, its a seething group of people moving through the story as a big angry group, its really, really, really intense. Its a masterpiece.

Also starring in Halloween Kills are Judy Greer, Anthony Michael Hall, and Kyle Richards. Green and screenwriter Danny McBrides Halloween co-written by Jeff Fradley brought Michael Myers back into the good graces of both critics and audiences in 2018, earning positive reviews and racking in a scary-good $255 million globally off a $10 million budget. The 2018 version served as a direct sequel to John Carpenters 1978 classic, ignoring the many sequels and remakes in between.

Halloween Kills will be followed up in October 2021 with Halloween Ends, David Gordon Greens last effort in the franchise. Series maestro John Carpenterrecently saidthat these upcoming Halloween films probably wont be the last, even if they do finally put an end to the Laurie Strode/Michael Myers story.

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Halloween Kills Teaser: Jamie Lee Curtis Says Its a Masterpiece That Ties to Black Lives Matter - IndieWire