Calling for Change

Adam Isler2 Comments

Last Saturday we joined a larger, longer march from 135th Street and St Nicholas Avenue across 135th Street and down Malcolm X Blvd, twisting a little bit to wind up at Frederick Douglass Circle. At the opening rally we heard spine-chilling stories from a couple of mothers of their experiences: one had called for help for her sick son only to see the responding police kill him; another was the mother of one of the Central Park Five who was incarcerated at 15 for 7 years for the rape of the Central Park jogger and was released as a registered sex offender. The horrors her family endured for decades before the actual perpetrator came forward are unimaginable. (Click any image to see them all enlarged.)

Mothers’ address
W 135th Street
The police consider…
… and protect the station
Sergio Larrain moment?
MLK Jr Blvd
West 110th Street
Frederick Douglass Circle

Hurray for Essential Workers

Adam Isler5 Comments
Upper West Side, New York

At 7 pm New Yorkers have been going to their windows and balconies to make noise and cheer all the essential workers, medical experts and personnel, grocers, delivery-people, etc, who make life under Covid bearable, possible, even. Most evenings I can’t see where all the noise is coming from (my wife and I joke that it’s applause for our cooking as we’re usually sitting down to dinner when it happens). From my rooftop eyrie a week and a half ago I got to see it from a whole new perspective.

Click any image to see them all enlarged.

Converso

Adam Isler1 Comment
Verso Books, Brooklyn, New York

My high school classmate, Richard Lachmann, at Verso Books on Feb 12th, expounding on his new book, First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship, a sweeping analysis of imperialism and hegemony in the capitalist age and the inexorable decline of American hegemony as our oligarchs extract what they can. I love the infinite regress of the screen behind them showing itself. Is this a metaphor for something?