Metro Times 12/20/2023

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Vol. 44 | No. 9 | DECEMBER 20-26 , 2023

EDITORIAL

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NEWS & VIEWS Feedback We received comments in response to Steve Neavling’s cover story about how a labor shortage is putting pressure on Michigan police departments to hire “wandering cops,” or officers who jump from department to department after engaging in misconduct. Metro Times has teamed up with the nonprofit Invisible Institute to sue Michigan State Police to release the identities of all certified and decertified officers with the goal to create a national database of “wandering cops.”

Holy copganda Batman! There is no shortage this is utter bullshit. We do not need more cops. We already spend more on cops than any other nation. HALF of

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every city, county and state budget while schools crumble, fire trucks breaking down, no transit.

—@MisterianZajac, X Well, Detroit is one of the lowest paying agencies. From what I heard from a cop friend, most will transfer out to novi, or anywhere west, where they pay more, and there’s less crime. Ain’t nobody bout to risk their life for 50k a year, that’s silly. I’m no business master, but the logical approach would be to cut the hiring number in half, and offer 100k for seasoned cops, and/or returning vets, but who am I? —@brandon_terrell424 , Instagram Comments may be edited for clarity. Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com.

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NEWS & VIEWS

Detroit firefighter Walter Harris was killed in a Nov. 15, 2008 blaze.

COURTESY PHOTO

Dove tales

Fire wall: The case of Mario Willis (part III)

By Eddie B. Allen Jr. Last year, we covered the case of Mario Willis, who supporters say was wrongfully sentenced for up to 30 years behind bars following a 2008 blaze that resulted in the death of a Detroit firefighter. This week, our investigation continues.

Apart from pain lingering

among firefighter Walter Harris’s loved ones and colleagues, one thing hasn’t changed in the 15 years since his death, several familiar with the case say: Darian Dove is still a liar.

Dove, 54, is serving a second-degree murder sentence at Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson, after setting the Nov. 15, 2008 blaze that left Harris dead in an east-side Detroit house. Advocates for Mario Willis, who Dove implicated in Harris’s killing, say that a recording by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, recently

obtained by Metro Times, further proves Willis was wrongfully convicted and should be freed from prison after 14 years.

“The bottom line is, when it comes to Darian Dove, you can’t believe anything he says,” says Craig A. Daly, Willis’s appellate lawyer.

Recorded during the summer of 2023, Dove’s interview with Valerie Newman, director of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Conviction Integrity Unit, adds to a growing litany of contradictions about how Willis, who once owned 7418 East Kirby and used it as rental property, allegedly convinced Dove to burn the home to collect insurance profits. But what Daly and others who support Willis’s innocence say is the only accurate version of how Harris was killed lies in what Dove titled “Truth Statement” — a handwritten 2010 letter in which Dove explains that he accidentally set the

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fire while trying to heat the interior of 7418 East Kirby. Dove, who worked as a maintenance contractor for Willis, admits in the letter that he used keys to enter the house without Willis’s knowledge, so he could entertain a woman identified only as “Felisha.”

In a later affidavit, dated March 26, 2014, Dove reiterates, “Mario Willis had nothing to do with the fire.”

“During their interrogations,” he adds, “the police insisted that I was paid by Mario to set the fire and they told me I could be forgiven for the fire if Mario paid me to set it. They made the idea seem very appealing and they pushed very hard for me to adopt their story.”

But during the recorded interview with Newman, Dove claims no memory of the sworn statement. In fact, he tells Newman and investigator Tracy Weinert, who also participates in the conversation, that Willis is “try-

ing to play innocent” by asking that the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) review his case.

“Now the tables are turned,” Dove says.

Newman later declined to recommend Willis’s exoneration, telling him that her findings weren’t strongly enough in his favor. Newman did not respond to a request to speak with Metro Times.

“They are supposed to uphold justice, and to hear this man give different stories than what he testified to on the stand, it’s disheartening,” Willis, 42, says in a telephone call from Saginaw Correctional Facility.

Dove’s latest contradictions, which Willis and supporters call outright lies, range from disparaging to nearcomical, such as when he claims to have entered 7418 East Kirby holding a pistol and flashlight “just like a officer would do.” Dove tells Newman he wanted to be sure no one was at the vacant rental property before setting the fire, never explaining why he’d need Willis’s firearm for potential vagrants.

“Never,” Willis says when asked if he gave Dove the gun Willis was licensed to carry.

“When you take the class [to carry a concealed weapon] they tell you that no one is to ever be in possession of your pistol except for you,” he says.

Willis further insists that he would never put Dove, also known as “Gino,” who Willis and his parents treated as family, in a position to compromise his own freedom.

“It’s not like Gino was some horrible person, but I knew he had a criminal record. Let’s just say that,” adds Willis.

“He was trying to turn his life around and I was trying to assist him in that way.”

While Dove’s multiple stories — one even claiming that Willis grew impatient from waiting outside, then joined Dove in the house and set the blaze himself — mention only a $20 payment, Dove tells Newman and Weinert that Willis promised him $5,000 of anticipated insurance proceeds. His only mention of $20 in roughly an hour of dialogue is when he newly alleges that Willis threw a bill from the window of Willis’s SUV because Dove was calling 911 from a pay phone after the blaze ignited, so Willis ordered Dove to take the cash and find a way home, Dove claims.

It’s not lost on Bill Proctor, private investigator of the Willis conviction and a former WXYZ television reporter, that Dove had never mentioned details like the $5,000 bounty, in or out of a courtroom.

“It’s not true. He’s a hateful, vindic-

tive liar,” Proctor says. “It’s just unfortunate that he turned on the family that adopted him.”

Proctor’s “vindictive” label stems from Dove’s repeated references in the CIU interview to the amount of money Willis paid Dove for maintenance work. While acknowledging that Willis let him and his girlfriend live rent-free in one of Willis’s properties, Dove tells Newman, no fewer than five times within the first 20 minutes of the recording, that he was underpaid.

Later, for nearly 10 minutes after Newman and Weinert try to end the phone call, Dove chatters away, expressing concern that he doesn’t receive more prison time; during this part of the interview Proctor notes that Dove places himself and Felisha at 7418 East Kirby. While Dove doesn’t tell Newman the story he originally told police about accidentally setting the fire, he admits to having taken Felisha to the home — which is consistent with his “Truth Statement” and other written statements from two men who say Dove gave them matching accounts of an accidental blaze.

Although Newman reportedly told Willis and Daly the CIU is willing to revisit the case if new evidence becomes available, Willis says he would only be encouraged if Detroit Fire Department Commissioner Chuck Simms speaks up. Simms, who was the arson investigator in Harris’s death, is recorded on video discussing Willis’s alibi for the night of the fire, but has declined numerous media and personal requests, including a letter from Willis’s mother, to verify the conversation; prosecutors at Willis’s trial argued that Willis never told investigators he’d spent the night of the fire with his future wife, Megan.

“An officer like Simms, his testimony is held to a higher standard,” Willis says. “We know you’re not going to lie…

There’s a lifestyle behind that. There’s everything the oath stands for.”

Meanwhile, Daly says Dove’s “fabrication” still provides Willis with information that can be included in supplemental pleadings to the motion for relief from judgment he’ll file on Willis’s behalf next year, but Daly is disappointed by what he calls a cursory approach to topics about which they knew Dove lied.

“They were not doing an objective investigation,” adds Daly. “They were engaged in confirmation bias to reach a conclusion that Mario was convicted and was going to stay in prison.”

Willis says the CIU findings add to his disappointment with local agencies that helped convict him.

“I rock with my city!” he says. “Everything I owned was in the city — and this is what it is?”

R.I.P. Amp Fiddler, dead at 65 Amp Fiddler — an influ-

ential Detroit musician and producer who has worked with many artists in the Motor City and beyond — died Sunday, according to those close to him. He was 65.

Born Joseph Anthony Fiddler, the artist had been recovering from a surgery in recent months. In Detroit, numerous fundraiser events have been organized to help the performer pay off medical bills, and a GoFundMe campaign launched last year raised more than $75,000 “to support his continued healing as he journeys back to the stage.”

After taking piano lessons as a child, Fiddler scored a gig playing keyboard for George Clinton and ParliamentFunkadelic from 1985 to 1996. A resident of Detroit’s Conant Gardens neighborhood, Fiddler is also credited with teaching his neighbor, the late J Dilla, how to use the Akai MPC sampling machine. Other artists Amp Fiddler has worked with over the years include Moodymann, Jamiroquai, and Prince, among others; his keyboard playing also appears on Seal’s 1994 hit “Kiss from a Rose.” In 1990 he released his first solo album With Respect under the alias Mr. Fiddler, followed by 2004’s Waltz of a Ghetto Fly and most recently 2017’s Amp Dog Knights.

On Sunday and Monday, Fiddler’s

Amp Fiddler in 2008.

ADAM SLINGER, FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

many fans posted tributes on social media.

“Rest in eternal musical excellence Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Joseph Anthony ‘Amp’ Fiddler (May 17th, 1958-December 17th, 2023),” ParliamentFunkadelic wrote on Facebook. “Fly on Amp! We love you dearly!”

“Was never gonna be ready for this,” radio host Chris Campbell wrote on Facebook. “The Mayor of Conant Gardens. My hood. My heart. My history.

My music. My culture. My Mentor. My brother. Never faked the funk. Never to be forgotten. Iconoclast. Legend. Rest in musical peace and rhythm Joseph Fiddler Amp Fiddler………. This hurts more than words can describe. I have to circle back to this when I have the vocabulary.”

“Rest easy brother Amp,” the Roots

drummer Questlove wrote on Facebook.

“For all those talks during the Pfunk tour. For all the music. Especially of course mentoring the one who mentored us (Dilla) — thank you brother #AmpFiddler.”

“RIP Amp. Absolutely shattering loss,” wrote the DJ the Blessed Madonna.

“Peace to Detroit especially. Amp Fiddler was the best of the best. The glue in so much important music and the center of a lot really special musical lives. Nothing but respect for his time here with us.”

“Thank you for EVERYTHING you did for so many of us via your mentorship, collaboration, and brotherhood,” local artist Bryce Detroit wrote. “Am grateful for you, your support, your impact, and your legacy.”

—Lee DeVito

🙏

Hamtramck City Council votes to rename street in support of Palestine As a symbolic gesture and demonstration of solidarity with the people in Gaza, Hamtramck’s allMuslim City Council has decided to rename a stretch of Holbrook Street to “Palestine Avenue,” between Buffalo Street and Saint Aubin Street.

A resolution posted online before the council meeting on Dec. 12 says that Mayor Amer Ghalib and Hamtramck’s City Council “acknowledge the profound impact of the recent and ongoing events in Gaza resulting in the loss of almost 20,000 people since October 7, 2023, comprising mostly of completely innocent women and children,” referring to Israel’s military campaign there.

The renaming will not have any impact on official postal addresses or other legal designations and is solely a show of “solidarity, remembrance,

and compassion for the lives lost in Gaza.”

Council members approved the resolution 4-3.

One council member who voted “no” said he was against the resolution because of Hamtramck’s controversial “neutrality flag resolution,” which banned LGBTQ+ pride flags from being flown on city property.

The policy also prohibits the display of religious, ethnic, racial, and political flags and states that the city won’t provide “special treatment to any group,” though critics say the resolution, which was voted on unanimously, was mainly rooted in homophobia.

“It’s not anything against Palestinians. I just want to stand on the same point when we decided no other flag would fly,” council member Muhith Mahmood said. While Hamtramck’s

resolution allows the flying of “nations’ flags that represent the international character of our City,” Palestine is not recognized as a state by the U.S. Others expressed the same concern, including a Reddit post that asked: “Is this casual political gesture any different than the gay pride flag?”

The new resolution was almost removed from the council meeting’s agenda due to a vote by four members, according to an article by the Detroit Free Press. However, it was brought back following complaints from the public as well as Mayor Ghalib, who didn’t want to disappoint residents.

There is no timeline yet for when the new name will be implemented, but signs to mark Palestine Avenue are reportedly currently being made.

—Layla McMurtrie

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Transit officials seem to forget taxpayers wanted nothing to do with the QLine Metro Detroit taxpayers could soon be on the hook for

operating the underperforming QLine streetcars in Detroit.

The Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan (RTA) is considering taking over the QLine from the nonprofit M-1 Rail, which has controlled the streetcars since they debuted in 2017.

The hope is that the QLine won’t cost the RTA additional money, but it’s no guarantee.

Part of the idea is to integrate the streetcars with other modes of public transportation.

“It is the role of the RTA to ensure the ongoing viability of regional transit services,” Dave Massaron, chairman of the RTA Board of Directors, said in a statement. “This transition will help ensure the QLINE remains as a transit option for the community and the city of Detroit long into the future.”

But past efforts to hand over the QLine to the RTA have failed, in large part because suburban taxpayers don’t want to finance a 3.3-mile rail system that serves a relatively small population miles away in Detroit. Six months before the QLine launched, voters in Oakland and Macomb Counties rejected a tax increase to fund the RTA; no surprise considering Oakland County executive L. Brooks Patterson and Macomb County executive Mark Hackel refused to support the RTA millage in part because of the proposal to transfer oversight of the streetcars to it.

Since its debut,the QLine has been beset by problems, including service delays, infrequent stops, low ridership, mechanical failures, and a ballooning budget.

To boost ridership, the QLine has stopped charging a fee to use. Fares previously ranged range from $1.50 for three hours to $3 a day.

Ridership increased 62% from January to August of this year, compared to the same period in 2022, according to the QLine’s annual report. The system averaged 2,629 riders in the first eight months of this year.

“QLINE is an asset that was always envisioned as one piece of a larger, connected regional transit system,” M-1 RAIL President Lisa Nuszkowski said in

The Regional Transit Authority is considering taking over Detroit’s beleaguered streetcar system.

a statement. “Now is the time to make this transition. Performance has never been better. Ridership is approaching 1 million for the year, and the system’s finances are sustainable over the longterm.”

Despite the increase, ridership is still far below the 5,000 to 8,000 daily riders that were projected when the system was being built. The QLine also had more daily riders in 2017 and 2018.

As a result of the low ridership and lack of fares, the streetcar system is far more costly than previously envisioned.

In December 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation to subsidize the QLine with $85 million through 2039. That amounts to $5 million a year — or more than half of the streetcar’s annual operating budget of roughly $10 million, which has nearly doubled over the past six years.

The streetcar, which has served as more of an economic development engine for downtown than a transportation solution in a city where a quarter of residents don’t have a car, wasn’t supposed to heavily rely on tax dollars to operate. When the QLine launched in 2017, boosters insisted that a vast majority of the operations would be paid for by fares and private funding.

To get the QLine up and running, the U.S. Department of Transportation dished out $37.2 million, and another $41 million in public money came from the state of Michigan, Wayne County, Wayne State University, and the Detroit Downtown Development Authority. In total, 42% of the QLine’s startup costs, including building the rails and buying the streetcars, came from public and quasi-public money.

Meanwhile, Detroit’s bus system,

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which many residents rely on for everyday transportation, is plagued with delays and remains a constant source of complaints. Many public transportation advocates question why so much money has been spent on a relatively small track that is nowhere close to where most Detroiters live.

It’s too early to say whether the streetcars will cost taxpayers more money. RTA officials insist they will only take over operations if the burden isn’t shifted to taxpayers.

It’s also unclear whether fares would

The People Mover will be free to ride in 2024 In anticipation of events like the NFL Draft coming to Detroit, the People Mover will be offering free rides for the next year.

The move is part of a new Zero Fare pilot program that aims to boost ridership and begins on Jan. 2. The hope is that paid sponsorships will offset the unpaid fares.

In a press release, Detroit Transportation Corporation (DTC) officials said the Zero Fare program is more cost effective than fixing the People Mover’s outdated fare system, which doesn’t accept any electronic payment methods.

Currently, the fare is $0.75 per trip.

“Based on passenger feedback and our analysis, the current fare system is one of the leading barriers for convenient use. The equipment is all original to the People Mover with no electronic

STEVE NEAVLING

be reinstated.

If the past is any indication, projecting the costs of the QLine is no easy feat.

“We are still in the due diligence phase, and we are studying how this transition will work from a legal, financial, technical, and administrative perspective,” RTA Executive Director Ben Stupka said in a statement. “We will continue to discuss the plan at future Board meetings, with a goal of understanding the impact of this transfer with a targeted decision in early 2024.”

—Steve Neavling

options — accepting only coins, tokens or magnetic-striped passes purchased in advance,” DTC general manager Robert Cramer said in a press release. “Maintaining and finding parts for fare gate repairs is a growing challenge as well.”

According to the press release, replacing the fare collection system would cost around $5 million.

While People Mover ridership has nearly doubled from 2022, it’s still only 42% of pre-pandemic levels at 672,000 users.

“With the number of major downtown activities next year, including the NFL Draft, the Zero Fare Pilot will provide Detroit residents, workers and visitors with more access to these events, as well as to services and connecting transit trips — all at no cost,” Cramer said.

The elevated automatic transit system launched in 1987 and runs in a nearly three-mile loop in the heart of downtown.

—Randiah Camille Green

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NEWS & VIEWS

Lafayette Park’s Mies Van der Rohe Townhouses, where Samantha Woll was killed.

FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS, NATHAN BISHOP

Lapointe

In the Samantha Woll murder case, city uneasy despite arrest

By Joe Lapointe

Let’s just hope Detroit cops caught the right guy last week for the murder of synagogue president Samantha Woll. An arrest with charges is not necessarily the same thing as a conviction.

And even a conviction can sometimes prove false if authorities are pressured by the press and the public to solve a sensational crime. Donald Trump himself taught us that (unintentionally) more than a quarter-century ago in the case of the Central Park Five.

First, the current, local backdrop.

Woll’s stabbing death on Oct. 21 in Lafayette Park might have been metro Detroit’s most horrifying crime of 2023, in part because she was both a faith leader and a political activist amid a religion-based foreign war and domestic political strife.

Even the capture of her alleged killer leaves the living with that queasy, uneasy feeling.

To wit: If such a thing can happen to an important and well-liked local figure in an upscale and well-policed neighborhood near downtown, how safe is anybody, anywhere, in this sprawling metropolis that some external critics still think of as the “Murder City?”

Further, are we sure a sketchy ex-con-

vict with a rap sheet is not a convenient scapegoat taking false blame for someone else’s crime? As you might expect, the lawyer for the accused Michael Manuel Jackson-Bolanos, 28, suggests that very thing.

“This evidence is very circumstantial,” attorney Brian Brown told the Detroit News, adding that his client might have been in “the wrong place at the wrong time” to be wrongly charged.

Last Wednesday, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office charged JacksonBolanos with first-degree felony murder and home invasion, among other things. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment without parole.

Despite the Oct. 7 attack against Israel that triggered Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza and the bile of the current Trump presidential campaign, police have insisted from the beginning that Woll’s death was not a hate crime or a political crime.

Now, they call it one of opportunity against a random victim by a prowler who had been breaking into cars nearby. Police found blood in her living room and in a trail that led to her body on a nearby lawn. She suffered eight stab wounds.

The prosecutor’s office said Woll’s

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blood also was found on a jacket owned by the accused at the home of his girlfriend. They also say they have electronic surveillance evidence of his whereabouts in the vicinity around the time of the crime.

Investigators discovered him only recently in a burglary investigation.

“What all that evidence tells us is that the defendant stabbed Samantha Woll to death during a home invasion during a crime of opportunity late at night,” said assistant prosecutor Ryan Elsey, according to the report in the News. “He was creeping around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, stealing things out of cars and she unfortunately left her front door open that night.”

After officials debunked speculation that her death had religious or political motives, some citizens nevertheless wondered whether this homicide might have been a crime of passion committed by someone known to the victim.

But law enforcement authorities also dismissed this theory and found no prior connection between the accused and the victim.

According to the News, JacksonBolanos displays on his right forearm a tattoo that says “God Forgives I Don’t.”

The report also said he served four years in the Michigan prison system for concealing stolen property. Behind bars, he recorded 40 violations, some for assaults.

Come what may, history teaches that it is sometimes dangerous to jump to conclusions in high-profile crime cases, especially those with extra edge when the victim is female and the deed includes a racial component.

For instance: In New York City, in April of 1989, a young, white, female investment banker went for a run in Central Park and was raped, beaten, and left for dead. Police soon charged five Harlem teenagers of color with the crime and the media reacted with animal imagery.

“WOLFPACK’S Prey,” screamed a headline in the New York Daily News.

“Female jogger near death after savage attack by roving gangs.” (She lived, but couldn’t recall the attack.)

In reaction, Trump — then a local real-estate wheeler-dealer — reacted by buying full-page ads in all the local newspapers that implied that guys like these should be executed.

“Bring back the death penalty,” Trump said in the headline of the ad.

“Bring back our police!”

After conviction, the five men served sentences of 6-13 years in prison before they were exonerated in 2002 after a different convict confessed to the solo crime when he was linked to it by DNA evidence. The five men unfairly convicted sued the city and shared $41 million.

Had Trump’s wishes been obeyed in the passion of that moment, the unfairly accused young men might have been put to death by the state or lynched by a mob.

When asked years later to apologize while he was President, Trump refused.

“They admitted their guilt,” Trump said. “You have people on both sides of that.”

Of course, it is best to avoid rash judgment or false equivalence in any case. Certainly, the evidence in the Lafayette Park case seems stronger now than that of Central Park then. But, come to think of it, the New York case seemed solid, too, back then, until, at long last, it fell apart. I remember it vividly. I moved there that year.

In this case from Detroit’s near east side, let’s hope for a speedy, fair trial, with full presentation of all relevant facts and evidence followed by a dispassionate decision as to guilt or innocence.

In the meantime, in a city hoping for a residential revival in the downtown area, Detroiters will lock our doors and our windows while we wonder just who might be out there, loose in the night.

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CORPORATE ABUSE and

ENVIRONMENTAL HARM dominate the

TOP 10 STORIES of 2023

By PAUL ROSENBERG, Project Censored senior editor

“We have made the planet inhospitable to human life.”

That’s what the lead researcher in Project Censored’s number one story this year said.

He wasn’t talking about the climate catastrophe. He was talking about so-called “forever chemicals,” per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), linked to prostate, kidney, and testicular cancer and additional health risks, and the study he led found unsafe levels in rainwater worldwide.

Even though this story received some corporate media attention — in USA Today and the Discovery Channel — the starkly shocking bottom line clearly didn’t come through to the general public. Have you heard it before? Has it been the subject of any conversation you’ve had? No? Well, that, my friend, is the very essence of what Project Censored’s signature “top ten” list is all about exposing the suppression (active or passive) of vitally important information from the public, which renders the public unable to act in the way that a healthy democratic public is supposed to.

They’ve been doing it since Carl Jensen began it with a single college class in 1976, inspired in part by the way the Watergate story got this same sort of treatment until well after the election cycle it was part of.

But there’s a second story intertwined with the “forever chemicals” pervasive presence: the revelation that companies responsible for them have known about their dangers for decades, but kept those dangers hidden — just like fossil fuel companies and climate catastrophe. The intersection of environmental/public health and corporate criminality is typical of how certain long-standing patterns of censored news weave together across the years, even decades, and how the spotlight Project Censored shines on them helps to make sense of much more than the individual stories it highlights, as vitally important as they are in themselves.

In previous years, I’ve highlighted the multiplicity of patterns of censorship that can be seen. In their introduction to the larger 25-story list in their annual book, The State of the Free Press, Andy Lee

Roth and Steve Macek describe these patterns at two levels. First, invoking the metaphor that “exemplary reporting is praised for ‘shining light’ on a subject or ‘bringing to light’ crucial facts and original perspectives,” they say: The news reports featured in this chapter are rays of light shining through a heavily slatted window.

Each of these independent news reports highlights a social issue that has otherwise been dimly lit or altogether obscured by corporate news outlets. The shading slats are built from the corporate media’s concentrated ownership, reliance on advertising, relationship to political power, and narrow definitions of who and what count as “newsworthy.”

Censorship, whether overt or subtle, establishes the angle of the slats, admitting more or less light from outside.

But in addition, they say, it’s important to see the “list as the latest installment in an ongoing effort to identify systemic gaps in so-called ‘mainstream’ (i.e., corporate) news coverage.” They go on to say, “Examining public issues that independent journalists and outlets have reported but which fall outside the scope of corporate news coverage makes it possible to document in specific detail how corporate news media leave the public in the dark by marginalizing or blockading crucial issues, limiting political debate, and promoting corporate views and interests.”

On the one hand, all that is as true as it’s ever been. But on the other hand, the two-story themes in the number one story — environmental harm and corporate abuse — so dominate the top ten story list

that they send another message as well, a message about the fundamental mismatch between our needs as a species living on a finite planet and a rapacious economic system conceived in ignorance of that fact.

The climate catastrophe is just the most extreme symptom of this mismatch — but it’s far from the only one. Corporate abuse figures into every story in the list — though sometimes deep in the background, as with their decades-long efforts to destroy unions in story number six. Environmental harms “only” show up in seven of the 10 stories.

There are still other patterns here, to be sure — and I encourage you to look for them yourself because seeing those patterns enriches your understanding of the world as it is, and as it’s being hidden from you. But this dominant pattern touches us all. The evidence is right there, in the stories themselves.

“Forever chemicals” in rainwater a global threat to human health Rainwater is “no longer safe to drink anywhere on Earth,” Morgan McFall-Johnsen reported in Insider in August 2022, summing up the results of a global study of so-called “forever chemicals,” polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers from Stockholm University and the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics at ETH Zurich concluded that “in many areas inhabited by humans,” PFAS contamination levels in rainwater, surface water, and soil “often greatly exceed” the strictest international guidelines for acceptable levels of perfluoroalkyl acids.

They’re called “forever chemicals” because they take so long to break down, “allowing them to build up in people, animals, and environments,” Insider reported. Project Censored notes, “Prior research has linked these chemicals to prostate, kidney, and testicular cancer and additional health risks, including developmental delays in children, decreased fertility

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN

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in women and men, reduced vaccine efficacy, and high cholesterol.”

“PFAS were now ‘so persistent’ and ubiquitous that they will never disappear from the planet,” Lead researcher Ian Cousins told Agence France-Presse.

“We have made the planet inhospitable to human life by irreversibly contaminating it now so that nothing is clean anymore. And to the point that it’s not clean enough to be safe,” he said, adding that “We have crossed a planetary boundary,” a paradigm for evaluating Earth’s capacity to absorb harmful impacts of human activity.

The “good news” is that PFAS levels aren’t increasing in the environment. “What’s changed is the guidelines,” he said. “They’ve gone down millions of times since the early 2000s, because we’ve learned more about the toxicity of these substances.”

All the more reason the second strand of this story is important: “The same month,” Project Censored writes, “researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, published a study in the Annals of Global Health using internal industry documents to show that the companies responsible for ‘forever chemicals’ have known for decades that these substances pose significant threats to human health and the environment.”

There’s been limited corporate media coverage that rainwater isn’t safe to drink — specifically from USA Today, the Discovery Channel and Medical News Today. But the general public clearly hasn’t heard the news. However, there’s been more coverage of the series of lawsuits developing in response to PFAS. But the big-picture story surrounding them remains shockingly missing.

Hiring of former CIA employees and ex-Israeli agents “blurs line” between Big Tech and Big Brother “Google — one of the largest and most influential organizations in the modern world — is filled with ex-CIA agents,” Alan MacLeod reported for MintPress News in July 2022. “An inordinate number of these recruits work in highly politically sensitive fields, wielding considerable control over how its products work and what the world sees on its screens and in its search results.”

“Chief amongst these is the trust and safety department, whose staff, in the words of the Google trust and safety vice president Kristie Canegallo, ‘[d]ecide what content is allowed on our platform’ — in other words, setting the rules of the internet, determining what billions see and what they do not see.”

And more broadly, “a former CIA employee is working in almost every department at Google,” Project Censored noted.

But Google isn’t alone. Nor is the CIA. “Former employees of U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies now hold senior positions at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other tech giants,” Project Censored wrote. A second report focused on employees from Israel’s Unit 8200, its equivalent of the CIA, which is “infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population,” MacLeod wrote. Using LinkedIn, he identified hundreds of such individuals from both agencies, providing specific information about dozens of them.

“The problem with former CIA agents becoming the arbiters of what is true and what is false and what should be promoted and what should be deleted is that they cut their teeth at a notorious organization whose job it was to inject lies and false information into the public discourse to further the goals of the national security state,” MacLeod wrote, citing the 1983 testimony of former CIA task force head John Stockwell, author of In Search of Enemies, in which he described the dissemination of propaganda as a “major function” of the agency.

“I had propagandists all over the world,” Stockwell wrote, adding: “We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country … We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”

“None of this means that all or even any of the individuals are moles — or even anything but model employees today,” MacLeod noted later. But the sheer number of them “certainly causes concern.”

Reinforcing that concern is big tech’s history. “As journalist Nafeez Ahmed’s investigation found, the CIA and the NSA were bankrolling Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin’s research — work that would later produce Google,” MacLeod wrote. “Not only that but, in Ahmed’s words, ‘senior U.S. intelligence representatives, including a CIA official, oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.’”

This fits neatly within the larger framework of Silicon Valley’s origin as a supplier of defense department technology.

“A May 2022 review found no major newspaper coverage of Big Tech companies hiring former U.S. or Israeli intelligence officers as employees,” Project Censored noted. “The most prominent U.S. newspapers have not covered Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies hiring former U.S. and Israeli intelligence officers.” Individual cases may make the news. But the overall systemic pattern remains a story censored by mainstream silence.

Toxic chemicals continue to go unregulated in the United States The United States is “a global laggard in chemical regulation,” ProPublica reported in December 2022, a result of chemical industry influence and acquiescence by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a period of decades, according to reporters Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner, and Kathleen McGrory. A headline example: asbestos, one of the most widely-recognized toxic substances, is still legal in the U.S., more than 30 years after the EPA tried to have it banned.

“Through interviews with environmental experts and analysis of a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases, and regulatory records, ProPublica uncovered the longstanding institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals,” Project Censored

reported. ProPublica identified five main reasons for failure: 1. The chemical industry helped write the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). A top EPA official “joked the law was ‘written by industry’ and should have been named after the DuPont executive who went over the text line by line,” ProPublica reported.

The law “allowed more than 60,000 chemicals to stay on the market without a review of their health risks” and required the EPA to always choose the “least burdensome” regulations. “These two words would doom American chemical regulation for decades.”

2. Following early failures, the EPA lost its resolve.

In 1989, after 10 years of work, the EPA was banning asbestos. But companies that used asbestos sued and won in 1991, based on a court ruling they’d failed to prove it was the “least burdensome” option. However, “the judge did provide a road map for future bans, which would require the agency to do an analysis of other regulatory options … to prove they wouldn’t be adequate,” but rather than follow through, the EPA simply gave up.

3. Chemicals are considered innocent until proven guilty. For decades, the U.S. and EU used a “riskbased” approach to regulation, requiring the government to prove a chemical poses unreasonable health risks before restricting it — which can take years. In 2007, the EU switched to a “hazard-based” approach, putting the burden on companies when there’s evidence of significant harm. As a result, ProPublica explained, “the EU has successfully banned or restricted more than a thousand chemicals.” A similar approach was proposed in the U.S in 2005 by New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, but it was soundly defeated.

4. The EPA mostly regulates chemicals one by one.

In 2016, a new law amended the TSCA to cut the “least burdensome” language, and created a schedule “where a small list of high-priority chemicals would be reviewed every few years; in 2016, the first 10 were selected, including asbestos,” ProPublica reported.

“The EPA would then have about three years to assess the chemicals and another two years to finalize regulations on them.” But six years later, “the agency is behind on all such rules. So far, it has only proposed one ban, on asbestos, and the agency told ProPublica it would still be almost a year before that is finalized.”

Industry fights the process at every step. “Meanwhile, the EU has authored a new plan to regulate chemicals even faster by targeting large groups of dangerous substances,” which “would lead to bans of another 5,000 chemicals by 2030.”

5. The EPA employs industry-friendly scientists as regulators. “The EPA has a long history of hiring scientists and top officials from the companies they are supposed to regulate, allowing industry to sway the agency’s science from the inside,” ProPublica wrote. A prime example is Todd Stedeford. “A lawyer and toxicologist, Stedeford has been hired by the EPA on three separate occasions,” ProPublica noted.

“During his two most recent periods of employment at the agency — from 2011 to 2017 and from 2019 to 2021 — he was hired by corporate employers who use or manufacture chemicals the EPA regulates.”

“A handful of corporate outlets have reported on the EPA’s slowness to regulate certain toxic chemicals,” Project Censored noted, citing stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times. “However, none have highlighted the systemic failures wrought by the EPA and the chemical industry.”

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Stalkerware could be used to incriminate people violating abortion bans Stalkerware — consisting of up to 200 surveillance apps and services that provide secret access to people’s phones for a monthly fee — “could become a significant legal threat to people seeking abortions, according to a pair of articles published in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion,” Project Censored reports.

“Abortion medication is safe. But now that Roe is overturned, your data isn’t,” Rae Hodge wrote for the tech news site CNET just two days after the Dobbs decision. “Already, the digital trails of abortion seekers can become criminal evidence against them in some states where abortion[s] were previously prosecuted. And the legal dangers may extend to abortion seekers in even more states.” The next month, writing for Slate, University of Virginia law professor Danielle Keats Citron warned that “surveillance accomplished by individual privacy invaders will be a gold mine for prosecutors targeting both medical workers and pregnant people seeking abortions.”

Invaders only need a few minutes to access phones and passwords. “Once installed, cyberstalking apps silently record and upload phones’ activities to their servers,” Citron explained. “They enable privacy invaders to see our photos, videos, texts, calls, voice mails, searches, social media activities, locations — nothing is out of reach. From anywhere, individuals can activate a phone’s mic to listen to conversations within 15 feet of the phone,” even “conversations that pregnant people have with their health care providers — nurses, doctors, and insurance company employees,” she warned. As a result, Hodge cautioned, “Those who aid abortion seekers could be charged as accomplices in some cases,” under some state laws.

It’s not just abortion, she explained, “Your phone’s data, your social media accounts, your browsing and geolocation history, and your ISP’s detailed records of your internet activity may all be used as evidence if you face state criminal or civil charges for a miscarriage.”

“Often marketed as a tool to monitor children’s online safety or as device trackers, stalkerware is technically illegal to sell for the purpose of monitoring adults,” Project Censored noted, but that’s hardly a deterrent. “Stalkerware and other forms of electronic surveillance have been closely associated with domestic violence and sexual assault, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence,” Citron noted.

In addition, Hodge explained, “third-party data brokers sell sensitive geolocation data — culled through a vast web of personal tracking tech found in apps, browsers, and devices — to law enforcement without oversight.” And “abortion bounty hunter” provisions adopted by states like Texas and Oklahoma, add a financial incentive. “Given the inexpensive cost of readily available stores of personal data and how easily they can be de-anonymized, savvy informants could use the information to identify abortion seekers and turn a profit,” she noted.

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“The law’s response to intimate privacy violations is inadequate, lacking a clear conception of what intimate privacy is, why its violation is wrongful, and how it inflicts serious harm upon individuals, groups, and society,” Citron explained. “Until federal regulations and legislation establish a set of digital privacy laws, abortion seekers are caught in the position of having to create their own patchwork of digital defenses, from often complicated and expensive privacy tools,” Hodge warned. While the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act is still “slowly inching through Congress” it “is widely thought toothless,” she wrote.

The Joe Biden administration has proposed a new rule protecting “certain health data from being used to prosecute both clinicians and patients,” STAT reported in May 2023, but the current draft only applies “in states where abortion is legal.”

“Corporate news outlets have paid some attention to the use of digital data in abortion-related prosecutions,” Project Censored reports. While there have been stories about post-Roe digital privacy, “none have focused specifically on how stalkerware could potentially be used in criminal investigations of suspected abortions.”

Certified rainforest carbon offsets mostly “worthless”

“The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci, and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation,” the Guardian reported on Jan. 23, as part of joint nine month reporting project with SourceMaterial, and Die Zeit. “The analysis raises questions over the credits bought by a number of internationally renowned companies — some of them have labeled their products ‘carbon neutral,’ or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes, or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.”

“About 90% of rainforest carbon offsets certified

by Verra, the world’s largest offset certifier, do not reflect real reductions in emissions,” Project Censored summed up. Verra “has issued more than one billion metric tons worth of carbon offsets, certifies threefourths of all voluntary carbon offsets.” While “Verra claimed to have certified 94.9 million credits” the actual benefits “amounted to a much more modest 5.5 million credits.” This was based on an analysis of “the only three scientific studies to use robust, scientifically sound methods to assess the impact of carbon offsets on deforestation,” Project Censored explained.

“The journalists also consulted with indigenous communities, industry insiders, and scientists.”

“The studies used different methods and time periods, looked at different ranges of projects, and the researchers said no modeling approach is ever perfect,” the Guardian wrote. “However, the data showed broad agreement on the lack of effectiveness of the projects compared with the Verra-approved predictions.”

Specifically, “The investigation of twenty-nine Verra rainforest offset projects found that twenty-one had

no climate benefit, seven had significantly less climate benefit than claimed (by margins of 52 to 98% less benefit than claimed), while one project yielded 80% more climate benefit than claimed. Overall, the study concluded that 94% of the credits approved by these projects were ‘worthless’ and never should have been approved.”

“Another study conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge found that in thirtytwo of the forty forest offset projects investigated, the claims concerning forest protection and emission reductions were overstated by an average of 400%,” Project Censored reported. “Despite claims that these thirty-two projects together protected an area of rainforest the size of Italy, they only protected an area the size of Venice.”

While Verra criticized the studies’ methods and conclusions, an outside expert, Oxford ecoscience professor Yadvinder Singh Malhi, had two PhD students check for errors, and they found none. “I wish it were otherwise, but this report is pretty compelling,” he told the Guardian.

“Rainforest protection credits are the most common type on the market at the moment. And it’s exploding, so these findings really matter,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, who’s researched carbon credits for 20 years.

“But these problems are not just limited to this credit type. These problems exist with nearly every kind of credit,” she told the Guardian. “We need an alternative process. The offset market is broken.”

“There is simply nobody in the market who has a genuine interest to say when something goes wrong,” Lambert Schneider, a researcher at the Öko-Institut in Berlin told SourceMaterial.

“The investigations by the Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial appear to have made a difference. In March 2023, Verra announced that it would phase out its flawed rainforest offset program by mid-2025,” Project Censored reported. But they could only find one brief mention of the joint investigation in major U.S. newspapers, a Chicago Tribune op-ed.

Unions won more than 70% of their elections in 2022, and their victories are being driven by workers of color Unions won more than 70% of their certification elections in 2022, according to reporting by NPR and The Conversation, and workers of color were responsible for 100% of union growth, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute reported by Payday Report and the New Republic. More than 2,500 petitions for union representation were filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021-Sept. 30, 2022), up 53% from FY 2021, and 1,249 certification elections were held, with 72% voting to certify a union as their collective bargaining agent. “The entire increase in unionization in 2022 was among workers of color — workers of color saw an increase of 231,000, while white workers saw a decrease of 31,000,” EPI wrote in a Feb. 2023 press release.

EPI also noted that “Survey data show that nearly half of nonunion workers (48%) would vote to unionize their workplace if they could. That means

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that more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union, but couldn’t. The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act provide crucial reforms that would strengthen workers’ rights to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.” It passed the House in 2020 and 2021 but died in the Senate, where it needed 60 votes to pass because of the filibuster.

“71% of Americans now support unions according to Gallup — a level of support not seen since 1965,” Project Censored noted. “Dismantling existing barriers to union organizing and collective bargaining is crucial to generating a more prosperous, equitable economy,” EPI concluded.

More than a quarter of 2022 union elections, 354, were held at Starbucks, Marick Masters explained in his January 2023 article for The Conversation.

“Workers at Starbucks prevailed in four out of every five elections. Workers at Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and Apple unionized for the first time, while workers at Microsoft and Wells Fargo also had wins,” Project Censored reported.

Union activity spikes during times of social unrest, Masters reported. Unionization rose from 7.6% to 19.2% from 1934 to 1939, during the Great Depression, and from 20% to 27% between 1941 and 1945, during World War II. “Masters described the current wave of union activity as driven by record levels of economic inequality and continued mobilization of workers in ‘essential industries,’ such as healthcare, food, and public safety, who were thrust into harm’s way during the global pandemic,” Project Censored noted.

“Whereas Republican and Democratic politicians often separate concerns over working conditions and pay from issues of identity, these data demonstrate how identity and workers’ rights are closely connected,” Project Censored added. “Unionization and labor struggles are direct mechanisms to better accomplish racial and social equality; the ability for people to afford to live happy and dignified lives is inherently tied to their ability to enjoy fundamental social and civil rights within those lives, too,” Prem Thakker noted at the New Republic.

Despite these gains, “the power of organized labor is nowhere close to what it once was,” Project Censored wrote. “As Masters pointed out, more than a third of workers were unionized in the 1950s, whereas only a tenth were in 2021. Before the 1980s, there were typically more than 5,000 union elections in any given year, and as recently as 1980, there were 200 major work stoppages [over 1,000 workers],” compared to just 20 in 2022, which was still 25% above the average over the past 16 years.

“Corporate media coverage of the labor resurgence of 2022 was highly selective and, in some ways, misleading,” Project Censored reported. There’ve been hundreds of articles on union organizing at Starbucks and Amazon and among graduate students, and “Yahoo republished Masters’s The Conversation article about union success in elections, and Vox, Bloomberg Law, and the Washington Post all remarked on organized labor’s recent string of certification vote victories,” they noted. “Yet corporate coverage of current labor organizing often fails to address the outsized role played by workers of color in union growth.” Nor has it placed recent union successes in the historical context of prolonged decline, largely due to private employers’ heavy-handed efforts to undermine organizing campaigns and labor laws that strongly favor employers.

Fossil fuel investors sue governments to block climate regulations “Litigation terrorism.” That’s what Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called the practice of fossil fuel companies and investors suing governments in secretive private tribunals to thwart climate change policies. Litigants claim climate change laws undermine their profits, and thus they must be compensated under what’s known as “investor-state dispute settlement” [ISDS] legal actions, Rishika Pardikar reported for The Lever in June 2022, following a paper in Science by lead author Kyla Tienhaara the month before. It found that “Global action on climate change could generate upward of $340 billion in legal claims from oil and gas investors,” which, “is more than the total level of public climate finance globally in 2020 ($321 billion).”

A good portion threatens the global south. “The five countries with the greatest potential losses from ISDS are Mozambique ($7-31 billion), Guyana ($5-21 billion), Venezuela ($3-21 billion), Russia ($2-16 billion), and the United Kingdom ($3-14 billion),” Tienhaara reported. What’s more, “If countries decide to also cancel oil and gas projects that are currently under development, this could introduce substantial additional financial losses from ISDS claims.”

“Such [litigation] moves could have a chilling effect on countries’ ability to take climate action because of the fear and uncertainty they cause,” Pardikar noted. “New Zealand, for example, recently said that it could not join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international consortium of governments working to phase out fossil fuels, because doing so ‘would have run afoul of investor-state settlements,’” Lois Parshley reported for Grist in January 2023.

Project Censored also cited Lea Di Salvatore’s December 2021 report that fossil fuel “investors succeeded in 72% of all cases,” winning an average over $600 million, “almost five times the amount awarded in non-fossil fuel cases.” In addition, secrecy is the rule.

“54% of the concluded fossil fuel cases are confidential — while their existence is known, no case-related documents, such as awards or decisions, have been made public.”

Although the tribunals may sound like courts, they aren’t. “Because ISDS systems are written into thousands of different treaties, each with different wording, there’s also no system of precedence,” Parshley wrote, after noting the practice of “double batting,” in which one individual may act as arbitrator, legal counsel, expert witness, and tribunal secretary, either sequentially or even concurrently. Most come from “an elite group of approximately 50 arbitrators who are regularly appointed” to most cases, researcher Silvia Steininger told Pardikar. Conflicts of interest “are viewed as commonplace in international investment arbitration and considered an inherent part of the system,” the Law Review article Parshley references said. What’s more, “Just because arbitrators decide something in one case doesn’t mean that logic has to be applied to another. Proceedings can be kept confidential, and there is no way to appeal a tribunal’s decision,” Parshley noted.

Tienhaara’s paper ended with a section “An Abo-

litionist Approach,” where she warned, “Reformist approaches would be time-consuming and likely ineffectual, based on the experience of previous efforts.”

Abolitionist examples include “Terminating all bilateral investment treaties” in order to “prevent existing leaseholders from accessing ISDS,” as South Africa and others have done “without any resulting reductions in foreign investment.” Negotiating the “removal of ISDS clauses from trade agreements, as the United States did with Canada in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” is also possible. “Another option is for states to withdraw consent to ISDS in cases involving fossil fuel investments, emulating the approach taken

by Singapore and others to remove the threat of ISDS claims from the tobacco industry.”

But abolitionists face two problems: “sunset clauses” that extend treaty protections “for 10 to 20 years for investments commenced prior to termination,” though they can be nullified, and resistance “from states with powerful fossil fuel lobbies.” Parshley noted that the Energy Charter Treaty, “ratified by over 50 primarily European countries,” is the largest international agreement protecting fossil fuel companies.

After six countries announced their withdrawal and a modification effort failed, “the European Parliament called for a coordinated European Union departure from the treaty altogether,” but they still face sunset clause threats.

While the Independent also reported on ISDS lawsuits “it only briefly touched on the concern that these lawsuits could prevent climate action,” Project Censored noted. “Beyond this handful of reports, the topic has received little coverage from major news outlets.”

Proximity to oil and gas extraction sites linked to maternal health risks and childhood leukemia “Two epidemiological studies, from 2021 and 2022, provide new evidence that living near oil and gas extraction sites is hazardous to human health,” Project Censored reports, “especially for pregnant mothers and children, as reported by Nick Cunningham for DeSmog and Tom Perkins for the Guardian.”

Based on 1996-2009 data for more than 2.8 million pregnant women in Texas, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) found that “for those pregnant women within one kilometer of drilling there’s about a 5% increase in odds of gestational hypertension, and 26% increase odds of eclampsia,” researcher Mary Willis told DeSmog. “So, it’s this really close range where we are seeing a potential impact right on women’s health.” Eclampsia is a rare but serious condition where high blood pressure results in seizures during pregnancy.

“Notably, the data in the OSU study predate the widespread development of ‘fracking,’ or hydraulic fracturing, the process of extracting gas and oil from shale beds by injecting fluids at high pressure,” Project Censored pointed out, going to note “previous coverage by Project Censored, including Rayne Madison et al., “Fracking Our Food Supply,” story #18, and Lyndsey Casey and Peter Phillips, “Pennsylvania Law Gags Doctors to Protect Big Oil’s ‘Proprietary

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Secrets,’” story #22, from 2012-2013; and Carolina de Mello et al., “Oil Industry Illegally Dumps Fracking Wastewater,” story #2 from 2014-2015.”

The second study, from Yale, did study fracking.

It found that “Young children living near fracking wells at birth [less than two kilometers (approximately 1.2 miles)] are up to three times more likely to later develop leukemia,” according to an August 2022 Guardian story. “Hundreds of chemicals linked to cancer and other health issues may be used in the [fracking] process, including heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, benzene and radioactive material,” they explained.

The study, based on 2009-2017 data from Pennsylvania, compared 405 children aged 2-7 diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia with an additional 2,080 children, matched on birth year, who didn’t have leukemia.

The findings aligned with others, as DeSmog discussed. “One consistent takeaway from so many health studies related to fracking is that proximity is key,” they reported. “The allowable setback in Pennsylvania, where our study was conducted, is 500 feet,” Yale researcher Cassandra Clark told them. “Our findings … in conjunction with evidence from numerous other studies, suggest that existing setback distances are insufficiently protective of children’s health.”

State and local governments have tried to create health buffer zones, but “The oil industry has consistently fought hard to block setback distance requirements,” DeSmog reported. For example, “In 2018, the oil industry spent upwards of $40 million to defeat a Colorado ballot measure that would have imposed 2,500-foot setback requirements for drillers.”

Regulations are so weak that “In Texas, drilling sites can be as close as 45 meters from residences,” Willis told them.

“Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced new proposed rules that would require 3,200-foot setbacks on new oil and gas drilling, which would be the strongest in the nation and aligns with the distance where Willis’s studies find the most serious risks for pregnancies,” DeSmog reported. “But those rules would not affect existing wells.”

No major U.S. newspapers appear to have covered either the OSU or the Yale study at the time of Project Censored’s publication, although “Smithsonian magazine, The Hill, and WHYY, an NPR affiliate serving the Philadelphia region, covered the fracking study.”

Deadly decade for environmental activists

At least 1,733 environmental activists were murdered between 2012 and 2021 — nearly one every two days across ten years — according to the Global Witness study, Decade of Defiance, “killed by hitmen, organized crime groups and their own governments,” Patrick Greenfield reported for the Guardian, “with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico, and Honduras the deadliest countries,” with half the attacks taking place in the first three countries, each reporting around 300 killings.

“This has been going on for decades,” scientist, activist, and author Vandana Shiva wrote in a foreword to the report.

“The report shows Brazil has been the deadliest

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country for environmental defenders with 342 lethal attacks reported since 2012 with over 85% of killings within the Brazilian Amazon,” Stuti Mishra reported for the Independent. “Mexico and Honduras witnessed over 100 killings while Guatemala and India saw 80 and 79 respectively, remaining one of the most dangerous countries. The report also reports 12 mass killings, including three in India and four in Mexico.”

“The killing of environmental activists has been concentrated in the Global South,” and “Indigenous land defenders are disproportionately impacted,” Project Censored warned. “The Guardian reported that 39% of those killed were from Indigenous communities, despite that group constituting only 5% of the global population.”

“This is about land inequality, in that defenders are fighting for their land, and in this increasing race to get more land to acquire and exploit resources, the victims are indigenous communities, local communities, whose voices are being suppressed,” the BBC summed up.

“Threats to environmental activists are not limited to killing,” Project Censored noted. “Environmental activists also face beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) brought by companies, sexual violence, and surveillance. A separate April 2022 report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, as reported by Grist, documented more than 3,800 attacks on human rights defenders — including not only killings and death threats but also beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, and lawsuits — between January 2015 and March 2021.”

But, “campaigners are hopeful that progress is being made,” the BBC reported, citing the sentencing of a former energy executive to 22 years in prison in Honduras for the murder of world-renowned activist Berta Cáceres in 2016, as well as promising international agreements. The Escazú agreement, the first environmental and human rights treaty for Latin America and the Caribbean “commits countries to prevent and investigate attacks on environmental defenders,” and went into force in 2021. Mexico has ratified it, but “others including Brazil and Colombia have not” so far, the BBC said. There are also plans by the European Union to pass laws making companies responsible for human rights abuses in their supply chains.

“These are game-changing decisions that could make a real positive impact for environmental defenders,” Shruti Suresh told the BBC. “We should be optimistic. But it is going to be a difficult and challenging road ahead.”

There’s been scattered coverage of Global Witness’ report. A September 2022 New York Times article reporting how Mexico was deemed the deadliest country for environmental activists, a short piece the next month in the New York Times’s climate newsletter “Climate Forward’” about why Latin America is so dangerous for environmental activists, and Feb. 26, 2023, a Los Angeles Times op-ed about attacks on Mexican Indigenous communities fighting climate change all referenced Global Witness’ findings, but “Otherwise, the corporate media have largely ignored the Global Witness study about the deadly wave of assaults on environmentalists during the past decade,” Project Censored noted, adding that it had previously covered the 2014 edition of Global Witness’s report “which was also significantly under-reported by establishment news outlets in the United States.”

Corporate profits hit record high as top 0.1% earnings and Wall Street bonuses skyrocket

“Corporate profits in the U.S. surged to an all-time record of $2 trillion in the second quarter of 2022 as companies continued jacking up prices, pushing inflation to a 40-year high to the detriment of workers and consumers,” Jake Johnson reported for Common Dreams in August 2022. “Astronomical corporate profits confirm what corporate executives have been telling us on earning calls over and over again: They’re making a lot of money by charging people more, and they don’t plan on bringing prices down anytime soon,” the Groundwork Collaborative’s chief economist Rakeen Mabud said.

This followed Johnson’s reporting in March that the average bonus for Wall Street employees rose an astounding 1,743% between 1985 and 2021, according to an analysis by Inequality.org of New York State Comptroller data. Then, in December 2022, he reported that “earnings inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the past four decades and continues to accelerate, with the top 0.1% seeing wage growth of 465% between 1979 and 2021 while the bottom 90% experienced just 29% growth during that same period,” according to research by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). As a result, the average incomes of the top 0.1% rose from 20 times that of the bottom 90% in 1979 to more than 90 times as much in 2021.

“The fossil fuel industry has enjoyed especially lavish profits,” Project Censored notes, citing Jessica Corbett’s July 2022 reporting for Common Dreams that the eight largest oil companies’ profits spiked a whopping 235% from the second quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, for a combined $52 billion profit, according to an analysis by Accountable.US. “Make no mistake; these profits mark a large transfer of wealth from working- and middle-class people to wealthy oil executives and shareholders,” Jordan Schreiber of Accountable.US told Corbett. “While many consumers were feeling the heavy burden of a life necessity suddenly doubling in price, oil executives were keeping prices high to maximize their profits.”

“ExxonMobil profited $17.85 billion; Chevron, $11.62 billion; and Shell, $11.47 billion,” Project Censored notes. “Notably, in 2021-2022, the oil and gas industry spent more than $200 million lobbying Congress to oppose climate action.”

Coverage of all this was scant. “The establishment media have reported intermittently on record corporate profits, but this coverage has tended to downplay corporate use of inflation as a pretext for hiking prices,” Project Censored sums up, citing examples from Bloomberg, ABC News and New York Times where the role of greedflation was debated. “The Times quoted experts from EPI and Groundwork Collaborative but refused to draw any firm conclusions,” they note.

In addition, “The EPI study on the accelerating incomes of the ultrarich was virtually ignored” while the massive Wall Street bonuses got some coverage, they report: “Reuters ran a story on it, as did the New York Post. CNN Business noted that ‘high bonuses are also good news for Gotham’s tax coffers.’”

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 27

WHAT’S GOING ON Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check venue website before events for latest information.

Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes.com/AddEvent.

MUSIC Wednesday, Dec. 20 Holiday Concert Series 6:30 p.m.; The Community House, 380 S. Bates, Birmingham; $40.

Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong & more 6-8 & 8:30-10:30 p.m.; The Detroit Masonic Temple, 500 Temple St., Detroit; $31.

I See Stars Presents Holidaze 8 p.m.; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $15.

Mega 80s Ugly Sweater and Speedo Party 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

Thursday, Dec. 21

The Reefermen, DJ Tony Drake 9 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.

Candlelight: The Best of Hans Zimmer & 8:30-10:30 p.m.; The Detroit Masonic Temple, 500 Temple St., Detroit; $27.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - The Ghosts Of Christmas Eve 3 & 7:30 p.m.; Little Caesars Arena, 2645 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $39-$119.75.

Queen: From Mercury with Love 8-9 p.m.; Longway Planetarium, 1310 Kearsley St., Flint; $8.

Sunday, Dec. 24

Taylor Swift Holiday Party 7 p.m.; The Bull & Barrel Urban Saloon, 670 Ouellette Ave., Windsor; $6.40-$44.20.

Sky Covington’s Sunday Night Jam Sessions every Sunday with band Club Crescendo 8 p.m.-midnight; Woodbridge Pub, 5169 Trumbull St., Detroit; suggested donation.

Friday, Dec. 22

Monday, Dec. 25

Queen: From Mercury with Love 8-9 p.m.; Longway Planetarium, 1310 Kearsley St., Flint; $8.

Adult Skate Night 8:30-11 p.m.; Lexus Velodrome, 601 Mack Ave., Detroit; $5.

An Evening With Gregory Porter 8 p.m.; The Skydeck, 1526 Broadway, Detroit; $49-$129.

The Gasoline Gypsies 7 p.m.; Aretha’s Jazz Cafe, 350 Madison St., Detroit; $50-$125.

Music Mavens of Michigan Unite for Concert Fundraiser Supporting Girls Rock Detroit 6:30 p.m.; Tin Roof, 47 E. Adams Ave., Detroit MI 48226; pay what you can, recommended $20.

One More Time: A Daft Punk Tribute Party 8 p.m.; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $25.

Prude Boys, CC Nobody, DJ Chadwick 9 p.m.-midnight; Bowlero Lanes & Lounge, 4209 Coolidge Hwy., Royal Oak; no cover.

The Best of Billy Joel & Elton John Tribute 7:30 p.m.; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $20$40.

The S’Aints 8 p.m.; Caesars Palace Windsor - Augustus Ballroom, 377 E. Riverside Dr., Windsor; $30.

Saturday, Dec. 23 Queen: From Mercury with Love 8-9 p.m.; Longway Planetarium, 1310 Kearsley St., Flint; $8.

Candlelight: Holiday Jazz ft. Ella

Tuesday, Dec. 26 B.Y.O.R Bring Your Own Records Night 9 p.m.-midnight; The Old Miami, 3930 Cass Ave., Detroit; no cover.

THEATER

Performance

AXIS Lounge Dueling Pianos: An Interactive Entertainment Experience The AXIS Lounge at MGM Grand Detroit features ‘Dueling Pianos’ interactive performances, taking center-stage every Thursday night from 8 p.m. to midnight.

With its combination of audience participation and top-class entertainers at the keyboards, the Dueling Pianos experience is never the same show twice, and audiences are encouraged to bring their suggestions to the floor to make each evening’s playlist the centerpiece of a unique entertainment experience. There is no admission fee for performances and events at AXIS Lounge, all attendees must be 21 and over and will be required to provide identification. Thursdays, 8 p.m.-midnight.

Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle Melanie Hearn with Johanna Medranda and Kevin Johnson Melanie Hearn is one of the most unique voices in stand up comedy. From her unabashed style to her infectious energy she always leaves audiences and fans wanting more. She began her career in Detroit and quickly became

28 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

a favorite at Mark Ridley‘s comedy castle.

Since then, she has opened up for Maria Bamford, Mark Curry, and preacher Lawson to name a few. She has been privilege to perform at such world, famous venues, as, the Hollywood Improv, the world famous comedy store. She can also be seen as a contributing voice on live in the D on channel 4. $20.Thursday, 7:30-9 p.m., Friday, 7:15-8:45 & 9:45-11:15 p.m. and Saturday, 7-8:30 & 9:30-11 p.m.

Meadow Brook Theatre A Christmas Carol. $45. Wednesday, 7 p.m., Thursday, 7 p.m., Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 2 & 6:30 p.m., and Sunday, 2 p.m.

The Whiting A Charlie Brown Christmas: Live on Stage. A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Emmy and Peabody award-winning story by Charles M. Schulz, has warmed the hearts of millions of fans since it first aired on television over fifty-years ago. Now the classic animated television special comes to life in this faithful stage adaptation that celebrates the timeless television classic so the whole family can join Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts characters in their journey to uncover the true meaning of Christmas. $15-$65. Wednesday, 7:30-9 p.m.

Musical Ain’t Too Proud - The Life and Times of The Temptations (Touring) Wednesday, 1 & 7:30 p.m., Thursday, 1 & 7:30 p.m., Friday, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, 2 & 7:30 p.m.; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit; $39-$129.

The Year Without a Panto Claus Bring your whole family to this boisterous holiday musical! Santa’s been watching too much depressing cable news again.

When he decides to take the year off, elves Jingle and Jangle search the globe to find him and bring back Christmas cheer. From the brilliant minds that brought you An Almost British Christmas and Sugar Plum Panto. Directed by Carla Milarch, with music direction by Brian Buckner, featuring Monica Spencer, Roxy Carlin, Aya Jackson, Kori Fay, and Leah Fox. The production team includes Monica Spencer (scenic), Jeff Alder (lighting), Genevieve Compton (costume), Becky Fox (props), and Briana O’Neal (stage management). Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30-8:45 p.m., Saturdays, 3-4:15 p.m. and Sundays, 2-3:15 p.m.; Theatre NOVA, 410 W. Huron St., Ann Arbor; $30 for adults, $12 for kids 16 years and under.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater

Go Comedy! All-Star Showdown. The All-Star Showdown is a highly interactive improvised game show. With suggestions from the audience, our two teams will battle for your laughs. The Showdown is like Whose Line is it Anyway, featuring a series of short improv games, challenges, and more. $20. Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.

Stand-up Blind Pig Blind Pig Comedy. Mondays, 8 p.m. No cover.

The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant Tonight vs Everybody: Thursday Open Mic at The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant. A late night, heckle encouraged, show up, go up stand-up open mic featuring both local amateurs and touring professionals.

Sign up starts at 10:30 p.m. and the show begins at 11 p.m. $5 suggested donation.

COMEDY

Art Exhibition Berkley Public Library ARTICIPATE Studio Portrait Show Through Dec. 31.

Blackbird Gallery at Centric Place Solo show by abstract artist Dawn Stringer, “Hangin’ on a String.” These works offer bold colors, depth, layers and texture. Through an intuitive creative process this collection depicts Dawn’s relationship with GOD, family, relationships, healing and trauma, pop culture as well as other visual responses to the current climate of the world. Dawn’s work includes vibrant color pallets, powerful strokes, layers of curiosities and strong texture. Her signature pulling and scraping techniques allows the opportunity for viewers to develop their own interpretations of what they see and feel based upon their personal experiences, imagination anderception. Free through Jan. 12, 2024, 5-8 p.m.

College for Creative Studies William House: A Creative Journey. Frederick William (Bill) House (1928-2015) was an integral part of the history of the College for Creative Studies and a gifted artist. An alum of the original Society of the Arts and Crafts (1942), House went on to serve as a professor at CCS for 18 years, and was awarded Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 2000. This thoughtful retrospective exhibition will showcase House as the renaissance man he was, including his earlier architectural design work, and a wide breadth of his oil paintings and sculptures. Free MondaysSundays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

College for Creative Studies, A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education Suraj Bhamra: “A Figure Creeping up the Embankment.” In “A Figure Creeping up the Embankment

Exhibition,” photographer Suraj Bhamra reflects on a decade of photographs made in Hamtramck. These photographs serve not only as a document tied to an epoch in time, colorized by a national miasma that leaves us wondering who we are and what will become of us, but also as a diary that allows Bhamra to narrate his personal life in the form of vignettes existing in a larger body of work. Free, Mondays-Sundays.

Cranbrook Art Museum Constellations & Affinities: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection. This series of original exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum this fall and winter examines the importance of legacy within the artistic community of Detroit. By showcasing artists of the city’s past, present, and future, these exhibitions identify the threads that connect them across generations. The museum will also highlight the career of a former Artist-in-Residence of Cranbrook Academy of Art, whose work and teaching inspired hundreds of students over his decades-long tenure.

On view: “Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit” “LeRoy Foster: Solo Show” “Carl Toth: Reordering Fictions” “Ash Arder: Flesh Tones” Museum Admission, Free on Thursdays Thursdays, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. and Wednesdays, Fridays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m..; “Constellations and Affinities: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection” is now open at Cranbrook Art Museum! Sampling from the Cranbrook Collection, this ongoing exhibition gathers a broad and eclectic sampling of objects made by artists, architects, and designers associated with Cranbrook Academy of Art. Arranged like a contemporary curiosity cabinet, the works on view span numerous media and represent a broad range of practices taught at the Academy. Works have been arranged in various constellations to compare and contrast certain affinities in materials, processes, and approaches among the artists while acknowledging the singular artistic vision of each maker. Museum Admission, free on Thursdays. Wednesdays-Sundays, 11 am-5 p.m.

Flint Institute of Arts American Realism: Visions of America. Drawing primarily from the collections of the Flint Institute of Arts, Muskegon Museum of Art, and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, American Realism highlights paintings, works on paper, and sculpture from 1900–1950 that capture the evolving experience of 20th century America. Through Dec. 30.

Library Street Collective Akea Brionne: Trying to Remember. Library Street Collective is pleased to present a solo exhibition with Akea Brionne, titled Trying to Remember. Brionne is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist whose practice explores the relationship

between history and contemporary society. Working in lens-based media and textiles, her work analyzes the impact of colonial systems on cultural storytelling, memory, assimilation and the African Diaspora primarily with American and Caribbean society. Through Jan. 6, 2024.

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) Intimacy: The Artistic Community of PASC MOCAD is partnering with Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC) to produce Intimacy: The Artistic Community of PASC, an exhibition surveying the past three years of PASC’s growth in fostering artists with developmental disabilities and mental health differences. This exhibition delves into the interior worlds of over 30 PASC artists, representing personal imagery, art historical and cultural referents, and states of emotional intensity.

Intimacy: The Artistic Community of PASC celebrates the uniqueness of this artistic workshop model, which gives rise to unconventional artistic styles and a powerful, supportive community of artists and allies. Presented through Mike Kelley’s Space for Public Good, a series of exhibitions and programs dedicated to community engagement and care, this exhibition highlights the need for cultural institutions to claim spaces for artists with disabilities, who influence the style and subject matter of contemporary art yet are frequently omitted from the artistic canon. Launched in 2021, PASC is the first progressive art and design studio and exhibition program in Detroit and Wayne County dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities and mental health differences to advance artistic practices and build individual careers in the art and design fields. PASC runs three studios in Detroit, Westland, and Southgate and works with over 170 artists across Wayne County. PASC is a program of Services to Enhance Potential (STEP), a non-profit service organization founded in 1972 that provides services and supports for more than 1,400 individuals with disabilities and mental health differences across Southeastern Michigan. Participating artists: Darmeka Bailey, Manual Bart, Ruben Bates, Stanley Brown, Sherri Bryant, Shawna Campbell, Sereal Crawford, Santina Dionisi, Julieann Dombrowski, Chantell Donwell, Robert Duncombe, Zainab Elhasan, Lewis Foster, Eric Green, Ronald Griggs, DeRon Hudson, Lonnie Lowrey, Joseph Lucas, Richard Marshall, Ryan McDonaugh, Keisha Miller, Alsendoe Owens, John Peterson, Justin Pollard, Deanna Poppenger, Angie Rhodes, Jocelyn Rice, Dale Roberts, Marquise Rucker, Rodney Stevens, Jeremy Taylor, Donald Thomas, Roger Toliver, Detroit Angel Tweety, Chris Wansac, Lauren Williams, and Alexis Young. Through Jan. 14, 2024.

Cyrus Tetteh.

COURTESY PHOTO

Critics’ picks Macho City MUSIC: Fifteen years ago DJ Mike Trombley launched a disco party dubbed Macho City in Philadelphia, where he was living at the time. As an indie rock kid, Trombley said he started digging into dance culture due to his interest in the New York label DFA in the early 2000s, which was heavily inspired by the sound.

When his partner moved to the Detroit area, he brought the event here and teamed up with DJ Scott Zacharias; the event took off as a monthly party, hitting gay clubs like the former R&R Saloon and Menjo’s billed not just as an LGBTQ+ event but a night for appreciators of dance music history. Now Macho City has settled into an annual holiday celebration, with Trombley and Zacharias playing a mix of disco classics, Chicago house, techno, nu-disco, and beyond. That’s one way to stay warm out there.

—Lee DeVito From 11 p.m.-5 a.m., Friday, Dec. 22; The Eagle, 950 W. McNichols Rd., Detroit.

Tickets are $10. Ages 21+.

Girls Rock Detroit MUSIC: Some of Detroit’s hottest femme singer-songwriters will perform at the Tin Roof for the first-ever “Music Mavens of Michigan,” a concert fundraiser benefiting Girls Rock Detroit.

The local lineup includes Audra Kubat, Julianna Ankley, Maggie Cocco, Coko Buttafli, Fay Burns, Gwenyth Hayes, Julia Rose, Jacki Daniels, and more.

These musicians combined hold over 45 awards and performance credits with artists such as Patti Smith and Greta Van Fleet. Girls Rock Detroit is a nonprofit organization with the goal of “fostering creative expression, positive self-esteem, and community awareness for girls, women, gender expansive, and

transgender youth and adults through music education, arts activism, and performance.” The group provides free and low-cost programming including a rock summer camp, book clubs, workshops, and more. The event will also offer a raffle, gifts, and merchandise. Attendees are invited to join the Music Mavens for a jam session after the show.

—Layla McMurtrie Doors at 6 p.m., Friday, Dec. 22; Tin Roof, 47 E. Adams St., Detroit; tinroofdetroit.com. Tickets are pay what you can, with a recommended donation of $20.

Only in Detroit book signing ART: Only in Detroit will you see a police chapman wearing a pair of Cartier buffs at an award ceremony. Moments like these — along with Aretha Franklin’s funeral and Big Sean getting the key to the city — were captured by local photographer Cyrus Tetteh and compiled in his Only in Detroit book.

Tetteh will be hosting a book signing on Saturday at The Detroit Shoppe inside the Somerset Collection. The 96-page photobook also features shots of Mary Wilson of the Supremes at the Brewster Projects where she grew up, and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s visits to Detroit.

Tetteh is an official photographer for the City of Detroit and worked with the city’s chief storyteller on The Neighborhoods, which highlighted everyday Detroiters doing extraordinary things in their neighborhoods. The role gave him access to these exclusive moments, which he photographs to share a more positive narrative of the city. Copies of the book will be available at the signing in various sizes starting at $50.

—Randiah Camille Green From 1-3 p.m. Saturday, December 23; The Detroit Shoppe, Somerset Collection, 2800 W. Big Beaver Rd., Troy.

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 29

MUSIC OLD MIAMI T-SHIRTS, HOODIES & TOTE BAGS IN STOCK FOR THE HOLIDAYS! ALL YOUR TEAMS PLAYING ON OUR BIG SCREENS ALL YEAR!

Fri 12/22

Cocktail Shake/Brandon Z. Smith (rock ‘n’ roll/pop/soul) Doors@9p/$5cover

JIM BEAM RED STAG PROMO! Sat 12/23

DETROIT SANTARCHY Detroit Party Marching Band/ Summer Like The Season/Lung

(naughty santas/instrumental/ indie/art punk) Doors@9p/$5cover facebook.com/detroitsantarchy

Happy Birthday, Dave & Jackson Krieger!

Sun 12/24

OPEN CHRISTMAS EVE NOON-12AM Mon 12/25

MERRY CHRISTMAS! OPEN NOON-2AM FREE POOL ALL DAY Tues 12/26

B. Y. O. R. Bring Your Own Records (weekly)

Open Decks@8PM NO COVER IG: @byor_tuesdays_old_miami

Coming Up: 12/29 Joel Douglas Gray/ Brion Riborn/Boy Blue 12/30 Vendors/ The Wrenfields/Hung Up 12/31 NYE BASH w/ BANGERZ & JAMZ ‘til 4am OPEN NEW YEAR’S DAY 12P-2AM 01/05 SUEDEBRAIN/Cherry Drop/ Snakehandler Church 01/06 Detroit Blues w/ Howard Glazier (Dan & Julie attending) 01/12 Jens Apartment/ Fremont Pike/Junior Smith 01/19 3148s/Escape Plan/Sean Anthony Sullivan 01/20 Lausten Found/ Libby De Camp /Sancho Book Your Holiday Parties at The Old Miami email us: theoldmiamibarevents @gmail.com

Ectomorph.

Local Buzz

By Broccoli and Joe Zimmer Got a Detroit music tip? Send it to music@metrotimes.com.

Gather with Family at TV Lounge this holiday season: There isn’t much physical evidence of the legendary ’90s Detroit rave scene left, with warehouses torn down and venues closed. The popular Instagram account @DetroitRaveFlyers — now with a printed zine — serves as a great time capsule of the scene’s visual style, but what did it truly sound like? It might sound like FAMILY, a party which is celebrating its 27th anniversary at TV Lounge (2548 Grand River Ave., Detroit) this Saturday, Dec. 22. FAMILY is hosted by Adriel Fantastique, who started the first edition of the dance party at the Tom Philips Post on Gratiot back in 1996. Over the years, it’s hosted nearly every local techno legend, including Derek Plaslaiko, Rob Hood, Eddie Fowlkes, Paperclip People (Carl Craig), Jason Kendig, Carlos Souffront, Lauren Flax, and the list goes on. This year’s lineup includes more legends with Ectomorph and Brian Kage, plus some sparkle from legend-in-the-making Auntie Chanel. Tickets available via Resident Advisor. —Joe Annual Boxing Day rock show at Jumbo’s: To our neighbors across the river in Windsor, Dec. 26 marks a con-

30 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

BANDCAMP

tinuation of Christmas celebrations in the form of Boxing Day. To certain Detroiters, it marks the annual punk rock gathering that’s been hosted at Jumbo’s Bar (3736 3rd Ave., Detroit) for a number of years now. It’s an annual tradition of sorts, put together by Joe Casey (better known as the lead singer in Protomartyr), that gives friends who are home for the holidays a meeting point to grab a few beers and see some of the latest local bands. This year’s show is happening on Tuesday, Dec. 26, and the lineup includes Day Residue, Time Creep, Core Values, and 100s Of Vultures and as always, admission is free. If you want an idea of what to expect, Tyvek released a live recording from when they played the gig in 2018 — you can listen to Boxing Day Fête via their Bandcamp page. As Jumbo’s owner Cindy Furkovich says, “there’s only one rule: you can’t be an asshole.” —Joe THRG is kicking off NYE weekend with Peach at Marble Bar: New Year’s Eve is always a tough holiday to plan for.

Everyone wants to be at a different place, and no one can decide whether they want to be at a club or cozy in someone’s home when the clock strikes midnight.

If you’re looking to avoid the calamity of trying to herd your entire friend group into the same room for the big night, you could always go out the night before instead! Local collective THRG is throwing a show at Marble Bar (1501 Holden St., Detroit) on Friday, Dec. 30th, with London-via-Toronto artist Peach on headlining duties and Detroit’s own

Beige and RIRKIN providing local support. If you haven’t already checked out Peach’s mix series on NTS Radio, you definitely should; this is a no-frills, straightforward lineup of great dance music to start off your weekend right.

And hey, if you end up staying cozy in your house for New Year’s Eve itself, at least you got a taste of the dance floor before saying goodbye to 2023. Tickets are available via Resident Advisor. — Broccoli Playboy After Dark party at Northern Lights Lounge on New Year’s Eve: If you’re looking to get a little frisky on New Year’s Eve, but less in a super-fancy way and more in a “let’s dress up and drink beer and get rowdy” type of way, then Northern Lights Lounge (660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit) is the place for you. I can’t remember the last time I saw a rock show happen there (I’m more used to the jazz/blues/DJ nights that they throw regularly in the summertime), so when I saw this show pop up organized

by Old Soul Vintage I was intrigued to say the least. The lineup is pretty stacked, with Shadow Show, The Stools, Toeheads, and Sugar Tradition all contributing sets, and the evening will also be MC’d by Austin Ahmad, DJ’d by Johnny Athey, and there will even be a go-go performance

by Charo. This promises to be a unique show at a classic Detroit watering hole, so be sure to grab your tickets via the Old Soul Vintage website before they’re gone! —Broccoli

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 31

FOOD

Sacrebleu! Le Suprême’s escargot sure is garlicky.

COURTESY PHOTO

The French fix

By Tom Perkins

French food has long been hard to come by in Detroit or southeast Michigan. The reputable Standard Bistro and Larder in Ann Arbor blessed us for a few brief years before closing in 2020, and there was little else to speak of until Bar Pigalle opened in Detroit’s Brush Park last year.

And yet Detroit still calls itself the “Paris of the Midwest.”

Into that hole stepped Le Suprême, modeled off of French brasseries, which offer traditional fare in a relaxed but slightly upscale setting. The menu is full of plates like foie gras torchon and steak frites, and the vibe is chill, even at the higher price point.

The restaurant opened in August on the ground floor of the freshly renovated Book Tower, a Dan Gilbert project. Many of those dining and milling about the bar on our visit looked like the type of young folks who may work in Gilbert’s downtown fiefdom. His team also noticed the lack of French cuisine, and the partnership with Method Co. took off, said Scott Sadoff, director of operations for Method.

The restaurant’s interior is impressive — oxblood leather banquettes, and lovely tilework on the walls. A co-diner and I tried to discern whether the in-

tricate, mosaic tiled flooring was the building’s original. It was not, a server told us, though it was given a distressed look and laid with some imperfections to make it appear as if it had been there for 100 years. Overall, guests could feel comfortable eating here in jeans or a tuxedo, Sadoff said.

Chef Brinn Sinnott, a veteran of French restaurants like Le Diplomate in Washington, D.C., developed a menu around classic recipes, and said he focuses on the technique that is essential to proper French cuisine. We started with the French onion soup, an admittedly basic order, and it did the job. A better starter is the country pate, pate de campagne, a soft mix of chicken liver, foie gras, and pork, with shallots, parsley, pistachio, thyme, and other spices. The small cube arrives with vibrant, house pickled cornichons and a salad of pickled vegetables that imparts strong blasts of fennel. The pate did not particularly stand on its own — we found it just a tad bland — but the accountraments did the heavy lifting and we enjoyed it.

Le Suprême’s escargot was garlicky, and I mean garlicky, with little pods of button mushrooms poached in white wine that are then submerged with the snails in melted garlic butter that holds

32 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

hints of nutmeg and brandy. The pool is rendered electric green from a parsley puree, and adorned with breadcrumbs to provide a pleasant textural contrast.

Perhaps the best plate was the mushroom tart, its pastry deeply laminated with shatter crisp layers. It holds a mix of beech, wild trumpet and maitake mushrooms that were gently cooked with shallots and thyme, and put on top of a leek fondue made with an alpine cheese that Sinnott described as not unlike parmesan. That’s further enhanced with a truffle puree — excellent.

Le Suprême’s mussels, moules mariniere, is a recipe from the north coast of France that includes white wine, shallots, thyme, and bay leaves, and the mix is finished with butter. It didn’t quite pop but we weren’t sure what was missing — we speculated that it could’ve used more wine.

The bourguignon was a bit of a headscratcher. The flavor was mostly there, but the meat was not as tender as one would expect it should be. Though the service throughout our meal was fairly solid, our server informed us about an hour after we had ordered that the kitchen had already made the last of its bourguignon.

A moment later the server returned

Le Suprême 1265 Washington Blvd., Detroit 313-597-7734 lesupremedetroit.com Hors d’oeuvres $10-$24, large plates $18-$49 with a plate of bourguignon and apologized for the mix up. But the sauce had congealed a bit, it was not hot, and the plate seemed like it had been sitting out for a minute. Maybe under different circumstances the dish would have made the cut and I would not recommend against ordering it, but something went wrong on the delivery this time.

Le Suprême serves its meals with awesome bread baked in house and butter coated with Maldon salt, and on weekends it now offers brunch. Each of our cocktails were excellent, especially the mon cheri with vodka, rose, lemon juice, rhubarb, absinthe, sparkling rosé, and the wine list is deep. Our order was hefty — more than two people would normally eat — but the $300 bill would have been more worth it had the few rough edges been addressed. But, regardless, Le Suprême is worth a visit for a French fix.

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 33

FOOD Chowhound

The big box with my name on it

By Robert Stempkowski Chowhound is a weekly column about what’s trending in Detroit food culture.

Tips: eat@metrotimes.com.

Any gift given has some thought behind it. Choosing one for someone is part expression of how we see ourselves in the relationship. That’s the trick when it comes to presents: finding the right ones to communicate connection. No wonder we get so wrapped up in them come Christmas.

The Aunt Mary I’ve written bits and pieces about these past four weeks is soon to celebrate her 101st birthday.

For nearly 62 of those years, she’s been there for me: a mother figure for sure who’s more than filled-in, seeing me through and teaching a thing or two while demonstrating how she saw her role in my life. Taking countless occasions to let me know where things stood in my upbringing, she never gave me a gift that wasn’t practical by intent.

There were stacks of books she and Uncle Harry bought me: encyclopedias, dictionaries, world history, geography, and such. Some stayed at their house, where I often did. Then they bought me a desk for my room at Aunt Helen’s house, where I’d sit and sift through a world of words and pictures. After that came a tool box — Craftsman, from Sears — which they steadily filled with things they said I’d need when the time came for a young man to make some of his own repairs and adjustments in life. By the time I left for college, Aunt Mary — now widowed and working in housekeeping at the local country club — had added an alarm clock radio and a late ’70s model panini press to further furnish me with what I’d need to get out of bed and stay fed at Ferris State. Along every step and misstep of my way through boyhood and beyond, her gifts were intended to get and keep me going in the right direction. For the record, most — the grilled cheese sandwich maker, certainly — were put to good use. As to that alarm clock, not so much.

Above and beyond all else, though, was that big box which came to me on Christmas Eve when I was ten. The

The best gifts communicate connection.

second it arrived tagged with my name, I started imagining something special inside. Crazy curious to glean some weight-and-rattle clues to its contents, I instantly offered to carry it off into the corner by the tree.

“Uncle Harry can set it down there,” Aunt Mary chuckled at my just-tryingto-be-helpful ruse. From that moment and for the two maddening hours that ensued, it was all I could do to maintain some kid-at-Christmas composure as wild what-ifs about my gift drove me to the brink of impatient, present-opening insanity. During dinner, I stared at the box. While personally considering a German Shepard pup as the most perfectly practical gift of companionship anyone could have presented me then, a lack of air holes punched in the packaging seemed to preclude that possibility. Leaving my chair after dessert, I took the long way out from around the table, creating a chance to brush the box with my leg and gauge its resistance. Most of the best things I could think of were made with hard metal and plastic parts: 1,000-piece erector sets, catcher’s equipment, bikes in need of assembly, and such. When the box moved easily and soundlessly over after I applied the slightest and slyest pressure against it, it left me only

34 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

SHUTTERSTOCK

more confused. There was no way it weighed or was noisy enough to be any of those things. My mind boggled.

Finally getting the go-ahead to play Santa and pass out presents, I felt fairly frantic.

“Here you go, Grandma,” I dispensed with everyone else’s particulars posthaste. “And this one’s for you, cousin.

And you. And you.”

Then it was me time. I ran to my pile of presents, ripping open all the others — none of which I now remember — while my mother stood by, ever-ready to remind me to say thank you. At last, only the big box remained. I tore in.

Stopping the second I saw what lay inside, I couldn’t hide my utter disappointment. I dropped next to the box — its contents untouched — and cried.

It was a big, red, white, and blue crocheted blanket.

In hindsight, I see how my Aunt Mary’s feelings might well have been sorely hurt by my reaction. If they were, she didn’t show it. Instead, she walked calmly over, lifted me to my feet, held me close, and explained things.

“Listen, Bobby. Maybe you were expecting something different. Maybe a toy would have made you happier for a week or month until it breaks or you get tired of it. But this you’ll have

for a long time. May it keep you warm, your children, and maybe even their children one day.”

Now, if you’ll allow me a word and one wish: To my Aunt Mary — happy 101st birthday. As you know, your words proved prophetic. That blanket’s traveled with me all this time.

When I packed it up to take it Out West, I wondered if I’d need it in the Arizona desert. But true to its construct, it was a comfort wherever and whenever I felt out in the cold over the course of more than four decades. And you were right: my two children have reveled in its warmth as well over those years, as do two grandsons of mine these days, who’ve fallen asleep tucked under it as I’ve sat babysitting them moved and utterly amazed by a loving gift that’s continued to give me and mine so much.

Just know, you taught me thoughtful gift-giving, among so many other things.

In recent years, I’ve had two Afghans made for my kids and their children.

May they speak as enduringly of my love for them as yours has to me. I love you beyond words and too few opportunities I’ve taken to tell you that.

And to all of you, Merry Christmas.

Whenever and whatever you give, give with heart. Those are the real goods.

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 35

CULTURE Artist of the week

The Book of Melba celebrates Melba Joyce Boyd’s dedication to the Black Arts Movement

By Randiah Camille Green

Poet Melba Joyce Boyd joined

the ranks of Kresge Eminent Artists this year.

The distinguished title is given each year as a “lifetime achievement award” of sorts to Detroit artists who have changed the fabric of the city’s art community. They are recognized not only for the merit of their work, but their connection to driving the city’s creative force forward.

Each artist gets a monograph dedicated to their work produced by the Kresge Foundation, and this year’s The Book of Melba provides a detailed survey of Boyd’s work including interviews with fellow writers, artists, and family members who speak to her legacy. The project was spearheaded by creative director and lead writer Nichole Christian and also features selections of Boyd’s poems and essay excerpts, along with her reflections on the Black Arts Movement and the racial injustice protests that appear in so much of her work.

More than a poet, Boyd is an essayist, professor, historian, editor, and documentary filmmaker, among a long list of other titles. Above all, she’s a storyteller.

She has nine published books of poetry including Death Dance of a Butterfly, which was recognized by the Library of Michigan as a Notable Book in 2013. In total, she has published 13 books, and her documentation of Dudley Randall’s work is among her most fascinating.

Randall was the founder of Detroit’s pioneering Black-owned publishing outfit Broadside Press and Boyd was once his assistant editor. Broadside Press was a literary haven for some of the most prolific Black poets in modern history including Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Naomi

Melba Joyce Boyd.

Long Madgett, and Gloria House.

Melba authored several books on Randall and Broadside Press including Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall, which received the 2010 Independent Publishers Award, was recognized by the Library of Michigan as a Notable Book in 2010, and was a finalist for both the 2009 ForeWord Book of the Year for poetry and 2010 NAACP Image Award. Yes, all of those accolades are for one book.

In the Kresge monograph, she writes about the significance of Broadside Press in the 1970s. “The expansion of Black literature as a genre, and the rapid growth of poetry publishing during that time were occuring in Detroit,” she writes. “New York was still the center of mainstream publishing, and a few, select writers were making it into print with those houses. Most of the Black poetry presses at that time would maybe put out one or two books a

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ERIN KIRKLAND, COURTESY OF THE KRESGE FOUNDATION

year. Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press started out with a four-books-per-year plan, but by the time I became his assistant editor, he was releasing ten to twelve books a year; it was definitely a production line.”

She also wrote Randall’s 2003 biography, Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press. In The Book of Melba, we learn that Randall named Boyd his official biographer in his will before passing away in 2000.

Rather than writing much about herself, Melba’s work often focused on documenting others’ stories, particularly within the Black Arts Movement.

“I’m doing what you’re supposed to do as an artist; I didn’t come up with it,” she writes in an artist statement at the start of the monograph. “Since the beginning of time, poets, writers, even songwriters, have been documenting what has happened, trying to connect it to something that carries deeper mean-

ing than necessarily the moments or incidents. You’re trying to help people reconcile. It’s an ongoing story. I’m just part of it.”

Boyd joins an esteemed list of Kresge Eminent Artists including Charles McGee, Marcus Belgrave, Bill Harris, Naomi Long Madgett, David DiChiera, Bill Rauhauser, Ruth Adler Schnee, Leni Sinclair, Patricia TerryRoss, Wendell Harrison, Gloria House, Mari Woo, Shirley Woodson, and Olayami Dabls.

While The Book of Melba is about Boyd’s life and work, it’s chock-full of so many gems that give the reader a history lesson on Black literature and liberation movements. Digital copies are available for free online at kresge. org. You can also request a complimentary hardcopy by filling out an online form. So, whoever is trying to sell The Book of Melba on eBay for $500 should be ashamed of themselves!

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 37

CULTURE

After being brought back to life, Emma Stone’s Bella is ready to explore.

ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA © 2023 SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Film

Sexy times and social commentary

By Craig D. Lindsey

Poor Things Rated: R Run-time: 141 minutes

Poor Things is a movie about a woman who receives a second chance to get to know her vagina.

That’s what happens to Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a formerly dead lady who is found and brought back to life by a deformed mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), whom she refers to only as God. The doctor attempts to keep Bella holed up in his manor, where he and his assistant (Ramy Youssef) watch this young Frankenstein’s monster and document her progress. But once she discovers her lady parts, all hell breaks loose.

Things marks the second collaboration between director Yorgos Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara, who teamed up for 2018’s The Favourite.

They give us another extravagant period piece (filmed using several lenses, from wide-angle to fisheye) where women defiantly flaunt their agency

and sexual independence while also behaving very badly. By adapting Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, Lanthimos and McNamara found some choice material to again delve into vulgar shenanigans while also pulling off a visually dazzling costume drama.

(I’m quite certain Poor Things will snap up the Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.)

Bella predictably longs to see what’s outside her door, opting to go on a globe-trotting getaway with a caddish lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) that has her engaging in some torrid sex. (It’s almost like Lanthimos remembered the wildass sex scenes Ruffalo had with Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right and decided no one can blow an Oscar winner’s back out on screen but him.)

Ruffalo mostly brings foul-mouthed comic relief with his character, a socalled stud who predictably catches feelings for the beguiling Baxter, virtually oblivious that he’s sprung over a woman-child who’s still learning about this thing called the world. She gets a crash course on how this planet can be

38 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

a beautiful but cruel place, filled with delicious pastries and sick, destitute souls. (Youssef’s pal and frequent collaborator Jerrod Carmichael shows up midway as a sharp-dressed cynic who briefly serves as her pessimistic tour guide.) It’s a journey that has her working at a Paris brothel in the third act, discovering how much men are willing to pay just to get it on with her.

Things is basically a Victorian steampunk version of Candy, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s 1958 novel that was a dirty-book takeoff on Voltaire’s satirical novel Candide. (It was also adapted into a disastrous sex farce 10 years later starring Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, and Ringo Starr.) Just like that work, Poor Things has a female protagonist exploring her sexuality while dealing with guys who instantly fall in love with this free spirit. Stone, showing a whole lot more than she has in previous movies, plays her frighteningly pale protagonist like an awkward sexaholic on the autism spectrum, often coming to pragmatic conclusions in her quest to achieve success (and orgasms) on her own terms.

The film is obviously about how women have to fight to live their own damn lives and how men do everything they can to contain and control them.

The doctor and his assistant (whom the doctor encouraged to be Bella’s fiancé) miss Bella to the point where they go and “create” another girl in her absence.

(She’s surprisingly played by a rising, well-known young actress — I won’t spoil it — which almost seems like a built-in commentary on how quickly It Girl ingenues are discarded in Hollywood.) The story is enjoyably randy in its first half, establishing itself as a raunchy sex comedy wrapped up in sophisticated surroundings. In the second half, once Bella finds out how cold and unforgiving the world can be, it bounces back and forth between being silly and being serious. But just when you think the movie’s over and done with, it throws in a twist that not only stretches the movie to an additional, dead horsebeating 20 minutes. It also reminds you that, oh yeah, Bella was a whole other person before all this happened.

Those 20 minutes practically kill two birds with one stone, again reiterating how men are determined to keep women down and also reviving The Favourite’s bitter message: Quite simply, powerful people ain’t shit. Lanthimos and McNamara throw in a hell of a lot in Poor Things. Thankfully, it’s a horny, gorgeous hell of a lot.

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 39

CULTURE Savage Love Quickies

By Dan Savage

Q: What’s with all the caging in gay porn?

A: The appeal of male chastity devices

seems obvious to me: a cock cage instantly turns the most important thing about a male porn performer into the least important thing. Paradoxically, male chastity devices pull visual focus toward a performer’s dick — they draw the eye — while shifting the focus of the action away from the performer’s dick. Gay guys into dirty talk enjoy saying things like, “I’m just a hole, Sir!”, but gay guys who wear male chastity devices really commit to the bit. Also, quality male chastity devices — like the ones made by the evil geniuses at Steelwerks (steelwerksextreme.com) — aren’t cheap, so conspicuous consumption, consumer culture, and late-stage capitalism all factor in.

Q: I’ve been having more sex ever since

interested in her romantically and sexually. And when she found out I wasn’t interested in her — when she learned I was leveraging her perfectly reasonable assumption (he’s into women) to get some other thing I wanted (her Netflix password) — she would have every right to be furious with me.

So, just as the overwhelming majority of men who date women are straight, the overwhelming majority of people seeking romantic partners are sexual.

By failing to disclose your acute asexuality in advance (lifelong celibacy is a big ask), you’re weaponizing the reasonable assumptions others might make based on your actions to get what you want.

And not only shouldn’t you do that, I don’t understand why you need to. The internet exists and sex-repulsed asexuals can find other sex-repulsed asexuals online. If getting on a dating app for asexuals doesn’t appeal to you, get on Twitter or BlueSky or Threads and look for people complaining about sex scenes in movies and ask one of them out.

Q: Is it safe to put numbing cream on

your partner’s dick as part of D/s pleasure denial?

A: Number creams are safe to use on

dicks — as are more torturous creams, like Ice Hot or BENGAY — but they’re not safe to use on holes, as a numb hole is an easily injured hole. So, if you put numbing cream on your sub’s dick, be sure to roll a condom over it before you slide that zombie dick into your ass or pussy.

lube, took it slow, etc., you and your booty will be less anxious, less fearful, and more relaxed when that big dick comes at you again. It’s less about muscle memory and more associating anal stimulation/penetration with pleasure.

It’s the good times a booty remembers, not certain sizes.

person should wash the dishes. If one of you is the kind of controlling OCD freak who gets off on meticulously folding laundry for hours, that person should do the laundry (like my husband). Also, get my book Savage Love From A to Z and read the chapter on the “Price of Admission” aloud to each other in bed.

Q:

Q: Can fecal matter from anilingus

A: Fast Company recently wrote up

A: Yes, it can — but eating a clean ass

What’s the best way to dispose of old sex toys? I feel bad putting something with batteries in the trash.

the movement to keep trash out of landfills by tasking manufacturers, not consumers, with the safe disposal of consumer goods: “Swedish academic Thomas Lindhqvist framed this idea in 1990 as a strategy to decrease products environmental impacts by making manufacturers responsible for the goods’ entire life cycles — especially for takeback, recycling, and final disposal.”

If we can make that work for computers, phones, and video game consoles, it should work for vibrating remote controlled butt plugs — but since these systems aren’t up and running yet, you’ll have to put those old sex toys in a box and shove them in the back of your closet for the time being.

A:

A: You can only impress upon him

Is low T common or am I just getting constant ads for it because I’m forty and gay?

A: If I asked a woman out on a date

and spent months wining and dining her, that woman would make the perfectly reasonable assumption that I was

Q: Does the booty remember how to

take certain sizes of dick? Is there muscle memory?

A: If you’ve taken larger dicks and

your big-dicked partners provided you with lots of anal foreplay, used lots of

40 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

A: At the start of a relationship, you’re

A: I have an autistic acquaintance

Q:

Q:

term relationship. What’s your best tip for getting out of the inevitable sexual rut?

Can I still be a lesbian even if I don’t like receiving oral sex? I like giving and other activities.

rules” for texting? I forget people exist after two days with no response.

I love getting facials — the cum kind — but my partner won’t come on my face. How to convince them?

I am a sex-repulsed asexual. I would like to have a committed romantic relationship that does not involve sex.

Committing to me means forgoing sex entirely, as the idea of my partner being sexual with others is repulsive to me. Am I obligated to disclose my asexuality?

When I disclose these facts in advance, I am refused dates. When I wait until I have been dating someone for some months to disclose these facts, I face angry accusations of deceit.

Q: Woman, age 38, in a loving, long-

Q: Autistic here. What are the “general

who set a twice weekly “text alarm” on his phone. When it goes off, he scrolls through his recent text messages. He responds to people he didn’t get back to when they texted him, and politely checks in with people who haven’t responded to texts. Maybe that would work for you?

that facials are something you enjoy — maybe he’ll come around (and come on your face), maybe he won’t. If he thinks they’re degrading and doesn’t wanna degrade you, explain to him that desired degradation play is affirming, not degrading. If he’s worried you’ll wanna kiss him with his load all over your face, promise you’ll go wash up immediately after. If it’s just not something he enjoys for reasons he can’t fully articulate, take no for an answer.

is less dangerous than eating at a buffet, IMO, where people who haven’t washed their hands regularly get fecal matter all over the tongs.

the adventure they’re on, they’re the adventure you’re on — it’s a combo that makes for effortlessly adventurous sex. If you want to get that adventurous feeling back after five or ten years, you have to go on adventures together, e.g., go to sex clubs, have sex somewhere you might get caught, book a joint session with an erotic body worker, etc.

opening up my relationship. I had an experience with one of my hookups where I wasn’t able to stay hard and ever since then it keeps on happening. I feel like now I get so in my head worrying about if I’m hard or if I’m going to get hard that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do you have any advice on how to get out of my head and stop worrying about being hard?

Taking ED meds — temporarily — can help boost your confidence and get you out of your head.

sicken you with something other than STIs?

Q:

A:

It’s relatively common — but no one ever went broke playing on the insecurities of gay men in their forties and fifties. The benefits are real (improved sexual function, retention of muscle mass, improved mood) but there are real risks (moobs, clots, cancer), so best to talk to your doctor before getting on testosterone supplements.

Q: Tips for moving in together besides lots of communication and giving each other enough space?

A: Equal division of household labor

does not mean equal division of each and every task. So, if one of you doesn’t mind washing the dishes and is, in fact, totally excellent at it (like me), that

Q:

A: I will allow it.

P.S. There are gay men who don’t like anal (they’re called “sides”) and straight men who prefer eating pussy to fucking pussy (no catchy name). Masc lesbians who liked to give oral sex but didn’t like to receive it were once known as “stone butch dykes,” so lesbians like you — assuming you’re butch — have a catchy name and a storied history. Your pillow princess is out there.

Q:

I came out while in a manic episode.

Am I still queer?

A: If you came out as intersex and

you’re actually intersex, you’re still queer. If you came out as gay or lesbian but post-mania you’re no longer attracted to members of your sex, you’re not queer. If you came out as bi and postmania you’re still attracted to people of both and/or all sexes and/or both and/ or all genders, you’re queer. If you came out as sapiosexual or fictosexual or objectumsexual or pomosexual, you were never queer — just annoying.

Send your question to mailbox@savage. love. Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love.

metrotimes.com | December 20-26, 2023 41

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

By Rob Brezsny ARIES: March 21 – April 19 Aries educator Booker T. Washington advised us, “Do the common thing in an uncommon way.” That’s a useful motto for you in the coming months. If you carry out ordinary activities with flair, you will generate good fortune and attract excellent help. As you attend to details with conscientious enthusiasm, you will access your finest inner resources and exert constructive influences on the world around you. Be thorough and unique, persistent and imaginative, attentive and innovative. Adore your chores in 2024!

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20 Taurus philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was among the smartest people who ever lived. As is often the case with geniuses, he believed in the supreme value of liberty for all. He was a feminist long before that word existed. Like another

Merry Christmas to all and to all don’t get too tight. Yes, your favorite bar will be closed on the 25th. but that’s a good thing.

You can spend some time with friends and family or perhaps some time alone for contemplation. (It’s a Wonderful Life., Miracle on 34th St., Home Alone 1-2, Elf., A Christmas Story., Die Hard. and Nobody’s Fool if you have time.) Cheers!!

OPEN CHRISTMAS EVE

UNTIL 10 ISH

CLOSED CHRISTMAS DAY

genius, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, he thought that “individuality realized is the supreme attainment of the human soul, the master-master’s work of art. Individuality is sacred.” I nominate Mill to be a role model for you in 2024, Taurus. This could be a time when you reach unprecedented new heights and depths of unique self-expression and liberation. P.S.: Here’s a quote from Mill: “Eccentricity has always abounded where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.”

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20 Emotionally and spiritually, you will ripen at a robust rate in 2024. Your intelligence will mature into wisdom in surprising and gratifying ways.

Harvesting rich lessons from longsmoldering confusions and long-simmering mysteries will be your specialty. P.S.: Some of you Geminis joke around and say you never want to grow up. But I hope you minimize that attitude in the coming months.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22 Indigenous people study the intelligence of animals and incorporate it into their own lives. If you’re game to do that in 2024, I suggest you choose elephants as a source of teaching and inspiration. Have fun studying and meditating on their ways! Here are a few facts to get you started. Problemsolving is one of their strengths. They are experts at learning how to get what they need and passing that knowledge on to their offspring. They seldom suffer from sickness, but if they do, they often self-medicate with plants in their environment. Elder females are the knowledge keepers, retaining inner maps of where food, drink, and other resources are located.

LEO: July 23 – August 22 Writer Janet Champ speaks about the joy of locating “the big wow, the big yesyesyes.” It happens when you find something or someone you regard as “better, greater, cuter, wiser, more wonderful than anything you have ever known.” I’ll be lavish and predict you will encounter a big wow and yesyesyes like this in 2024. Will you know what to do with it? Will you be able to keep it? Those possibilities are less certain, but I have high hopes for you. For best results, cultivate a

42 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com

vivid vision of how the big wow and big yesyesyes will benefit others as well as you.

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22 In 1916, most women in the world could not vote. Many men considered women to be inferior — lacking in courage and initiative. It was the Dark Ages! That summer, two sisters named Augusta and Adeline Van Buren rebelled against the stereotypes by riding their motorcycles across America.

Roads were poor, rains were frequent, and police arrested them frequently for wearing men’s clothes. Male-dominated media derided them, with one newspaper criticizing their escape from “their proper roles as housewives.” I nominate them to be your role models in 2024, no matter what gender you are.

It will be a favorable time to transcend conventional wisdom, override decaying traditions, and be a cheerful rebel.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22 For hundreds of years, European nations stole land and resources from Indigenous people all over the world.

Among the thefts were art, ritual objects, cultural treasures, and human skeletons. Museums in the West are still full of such plunder. But in recent years, some museums have begun to return the loot. Germany sent back hundreds of artifacts to Nigerian museums. France restored many objects to the African country of Benin. Let’s apply this scenario as a useful metaphor for you in 2024, Libra. Is there a part of your past that was hijacked? Your memories appropriated or denied? Your rightful belongings poached, or your authentic feelings infringed upon? It’s time for corrections and healing.

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21: I suggest we choose the brilliant Scorpio physicist and chemist Marie Curie (1867–1934) as your role model in 2024. She is the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different fields. She managed to pursue a rigorous scientific career while raising two children and having a fulfilling marriage. Being of service to humanity was a central life goal. She grew up in poverty and sometimes suffered from depression, but worked hard to become the genius she aspired to be. May the spirit of Marie Curie inspire you, dear Scorpio, as you make dramatic progress in expressing your unique soul’s code.

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21 In my fairy tale about your year ahead, I see you searching for treasure.

It’s not a wild and wandering exploration, but a diligent, disciplined quest.

You are well-organized about it, carefully gathering research and asking

incisive questions. You ruminate on the possibilities with both your logical and intuitive faculties. You meditate on how you might make adjustments in yourself so as to become fully available for the riches you seek. Your gradual, incremental approach gives you strength.

You draw inspiration from your sheer persistence and relentless inquiry.

And it all pays off by the second half of 2024.

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19 “All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening,” quipped Capricorn author Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943). Since he was never arrested, I conclude he didn’t get to enjoy some of the activities he relished. Was he immoral? Not exactly, though he could be caustic.

Offering his opinion about a famous pianist, he said, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle couldn’t fix.” The good news for you, Capricorn, is that 2024 will be mostly free of the problems Woollcott experienced. You will be offered an abundance of perfectly legal and moral enjoyments. They may sometimes be fattening, but so what?

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18 Author Augusten Burroughs is a devoted urban dweller. He says, “When I get a craving for nature, I turn on TV’s Discovery Channel and watch bear-attack survivors recount their horror.” Martial arts master Morihei Ueshiba had a different perspective.

“Mountains, rivers, plants, and trees should be your teachers,” he advised.

“Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks.” I recommend Ueshiba’s approach to you in 2024, Aquarius — not Burroughs’s. Here are my predictions: 1. You will have no dangerous encounters with nature. 2. You will learn more than ever from the wild world. 3. To the degree that you wander in the outdoors, your spiritual life will thrive.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20 A study done at Union College in New York found that being fraternity members raised students’ future income by 36%, but lowered their grade point average by 0.25 points. Would you make a similar trade-off, Pisces?

Would you pursue a path that made you more successful in one way but less successful in another? I suspect you will encounter unusual decisions like this in 2024. My job is not to advise you what to do, but to make you alert for the provocative riddles.

Homework: What activity do you enjoy but rarely engage in? Resolve to do it more in 2024.

EMPLOYMENT

SERVICES

ADULT

Therapy Management, Inc. is currently recruiting full-time Speech Language Pathologists to provide services in Detroit, MI. Must possess a State of Michigan speech-language pathology license. 12 months of ventilator experience required. To apply, please e-mail your resume to Dennis Jakubik at dennis@ therapy-management.com

MASSAGE

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EMPLOYMENT Ally Bank seeking Manager - Accounting in Detroit, MI. Lead coordination w/ groups to review prep’n of quarterly/ yrend 10-K. Oversee coordination w/ external auditors. Review fin’l statements & related footnotes. Ensure analytical acctg support to internal business partners. May Telecommute. Reqs: Bach’s deg, or foreign equiv, in Acctg or closely related. 3 yrs postbaccalaureate progressive acctg exp in automotive lending industry. 3 yrs exp w/ the following (may have been gained concurrently): Analyzing & applying U.S. GAAP as it pertains to nontraditional Automotive lending relationships such as Forward Flow agreements & Directto-Consumer. Acctg systems dedicated to the life cycle of these portfolios incl: CASL; Alfa; & SAP. Salary Range: $112,250 - $150,000. Email resume w/ ref. no. J-L-564269 to recruitment@ally.com. Equal Opportunity Employer.

SERVICES WINDOWS

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CABLE

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MEDICAL

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CABLE

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SERVICES WANTED

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MEDICAL

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AUTOMOTIVE

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INTERNET

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44 December 20-26, 2023 | metrotimes.com