SDM Magazine 2021 Spring Issue #27

SWAGGA DIGITAL MAGAZINE

LOOK GREAT ❇ DRESS SHARP ❇ LIVE WELL

S P R I N G

I S S U E 2021

BLACK ENTERTAINMENT THE CULTURE, MUSIC, FILMS, NOW STREAMING INTRODUCING AARON MANN ACTOR, POET, MODEL

NEVER BEEN A GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST DC STATEHOOD

Spring Forward

Training it’s a state of mind

THE INTERNET’S MEMORY OF BREONNA TAYLOR

HARRIET TUBMAN DOLLAR BILLS AS HISTORY BOOKS

❋ FASHION MAY — JULY 2021

Culture

LIFESTYLES

Music&Art

AVANT GARDE FASHION COLORS OF SPRINGTIME

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It’s all about the content

Inside this issue. . . . . .

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ON THE COVER

On the Cover

Malik Hardcastle

ON THE COVER

Styled by Pharaoh Brand

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FACTS WWW.CDC.GOV

Everything you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine

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HARRIET TUBMAN: DOLLAR BILLS AS HISTORY BOOKS In the United States, a redesign of the 20-dollar bill has been accompanied by a year’s long political row. President Joe Biden wants the African American and abolitionist Harriet Tubman to appear on the banknote.

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WHERE REPUBLICANS HAVE MADE IT HARDER TO VOTE Georgia’s new voting restrictions dominated headlines in March, for numerous reasons: It was one of the closest states in last year’s presidential election and the focus of former President Donald Trump’s pressure.

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HEALTHY EATING: 13 SALMON BENEFITS ACCORDING TO NUTRITIONISTS Integrating more seafood into your diet can be tricky, but it's probably worth the effort.

THE INTERNETS MEMORY OF BREONNA TAYLOR When Breonna Taylor went to bed one night in March of 2020, she did not know it would be for the last time. Just after midnight on March 13, the 26-year-old EMT was murdered in her own home by Louisville police officers, who fired 32 bullets into her house after breaking down the door with a battering ram. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, witnessed the whole scene.

lifestyle

Entertainment BLACK CINEMA

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LIFESTYLE: INSIDE JAY-Z’S WEED LAB Jay-Z’s weed factory is a hulking 100,000-square-foot facility on a busy intersection in San Jose, California, so mammoth it dwarfs even the Walmart down the street. A steady procession of customers shuffles patiently in line at the front-room dispensary, oblivious to the whirring machinations behind closed doors. Only with an employee access card do those doors swing open to the inner labyrinth, where 11,000 pounds of cannabis are produced each year.

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music

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Fashion

culture

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DEREK CHAUVIN’S Avenue to winning an appeal . . . .

EDITORIAL

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COLORS OF SPRING

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BEHIND THE LENS

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URBAN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY introducing Conrad McKinney

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ART BY: RENALDO OSHEA OsheaArt

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FASHION SPRING FORWARD: AVANT GARDE COLORS OF SPRINGTIME We are featuring some garments from Ladue Lane/Elizabeth Palmer.

She creates unisex jackets, hats and scarfs. Stylist & Jewelry: Desi Arnaz Hyter Photography: Zedneram Imagery (Desi Arnaz Hyter) www.zedneram.com

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‘AARON MANN ACTOR . POET .

ENTERTAINER .

MODEL’ Aaron Mann is an entertainer at heart. He loves connecting with people via YouTube, their emotions and endeavors to inspire people. He pushes daily towards his art to ultimately connect to humanity and bring people together.

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ON THE COVER . . .

SPRING TRAINING IS A STATE OF MIND: VICTOR MADRID “I will soon be twenty five (25) and living in Merced, California I couldn’t be more thankful for the life I have.

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THERE’S NEVER BEEN A GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST D.C. STATEHOOD Republicans (and some Democrats) say D.C. shouldn’t become the 51st state. Here’s why each reason they cite is bad. By Travis Waldron and Paul Blumenthal Josh Burch remembers the exact moment he realized how absurd it is that Washington, D.C., isn’t a state.

Art culture

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EDITOR’S NOTE This publication is dedicated to my mom whose courage, strength, tenacity and love has been a rock for me in the production of this magazine. There are so many people who are instrumental in the production of this publication, and I could not possibly name them all in this writing but I just want to thank all of you and you know who you are for assisting me with this issue. Many thanks to all of the wonderful and talented models, photographers, MUA’s, and Hair Stylists.

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ON OUR RADAR

Harriet Tubman: Dollar bills as history books

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arriet Tubman: Dollar bills as history books.

In the United States, a redesign of the 20-dollar bill has been accompanied by a year’s long political row. President Joe Biden wants the African American and abolitionist Harriet Tubman to appear on the banknote. Ernestine Wyatt sure looks relieved. The 66-yearold is certain: "Harriet Tubman being on a 20-dollar bill — that was something that was a done deal," she told DW. The great-great-great-grandniece of Harriet Tubman hasn't tired of pointing out the importance of the Black civil rights campaigner, nor of fighting for her recognition.Slaveholders on dollar bills Tubman is a legend in the US, but in Europe the freedom fighter who was born as a slave in 1822 is hardly known. In the middle of the 19th century, Tubman was a driving force behind the Underground Railroad, a network of helpers organizing secret hideouts and exchanging encrypted news. It assisted slaves on the run to make it to safer federal states. Now her portrait is to be perpetuated on a new 20-dollar bill in line with a decision by Joe Biden. So far, you mainly see the portraits of white presidents on US dollar bills, or the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. While the latter represent the nation's economic upswing, they also stand for slavery. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and more — 12 out of 18 presidents between 1789 and 1877 were slaveholders. Patriot and abolitionist "What better person to have on them than a former enslaved person that overcame, but not just overcame, but was an American patriot, that fought for the rights of not just herself, but other people, fought for the rights for this to help this country to preserve the Union," said Ernestine Wyatt. In 2016, the Obama administration wanted to put Tubman on the 20dollar bill in place of the controversial former US president and slaveholder Andrew Jackson, who's been on the banknote since 1928. "When we announced that we are going to be putting a woman on our currency, for the first time in over 100 years, I said it's been too long and the time for that changed. And I think the response we got showed how deeply people feel about this," said Obama's treasury

secretary, Jack Lew, at the time. Pure political correctness?

The very thought of it energized the African American community in the US. But Obama's successor government nipped those plans in the bud and halted the campaign that had seen the support of millions of online voters. Donald Trump denounced the Tubman project as "pure political correctness," pandering to racist attitudes held by parts of his electorate , civil rights campaigners and some Democrats charged at the time. Joe Biden for his part had already supported the Tubman initiative as vice president under Obama. "It's important that our money reflects the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman's image facing the new 20-dollar note would certainly reflect that," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said shortly after Biden's inauguration. Playing the role of a legacy administrator, In a twist of irony, former slaveholder Andrew Jackson will be on the back side of the bill, while Tubman will decorate the front. According to Wyatt, Harriet Tubman achieved so much more than helping to liberate the slaves. Living in Washington D.C., Wyatt looks after Tubman's legacy and organizes commemorative events and livestreams. She also regularly answers questions about Tubman from historians and museum staff.

Wyatt said she originally thought the African American community just needed Obama as president to advance things, only to later realize it was not enough. She mentioned the disadvantages that African Americans were confronted with in the US health system. In times marked by the Black Lives Matter movement, justice was key, she said, as well as due respect for each other. "Is it the job of the police to snap out the life of another person? We need to think about that." Dollar bills as a history book Historian Frank Noll told DW that the people shown on the bills could be read, in hindsight, like a history book. So far, only two women have made it onto US dollar bills: the wife of the first president of the US, Martha Washington, and the noted native American Pocahontas. But neither bill has been printed for more than 100 years. "The notes reflect the society in which they are created. So you would expect

CULTURE

change to occur," Noll said. Commemorating her 200th birthday? Tubman liberated captives and, as a nurse, treated wounded soldiers. Shortly before her death in 1913, she received a monthly veterans' pension of $20.

Ernestine Wyatt says that today the US has a real chance to catch up with a neglected chapter of the nation's history. So far, it's unclear when exactly the new bill will be issued.

Many hopes it could be as early as next year — 200 years after Tubman's birth.

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In the Spotlight ON THE COVER

“I will soon be twenty five (25) and living in Merced, California I couldn’t be more thankful for the life I have. Sure there’s been those times where I’ve been doubtful of my myself and my abilities, like we all do in our lives. . but despite the constant bouts with that little voice in my head trying to hinder my every move, I make sure the best me wins every round. Strong Heart Strong MIND.”

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13 Salmon Benefits, According to Nutritionists

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ere's why you should start incorporating more into your diet. Integrating more seafood into your diet can be tricky, but it's probably worth the effort every now and then: The American Heart Association recommends eating fish at least twice a week for a reason. Salmon, in particular, is a good dish if you're trying to be conscious of your heart health. Below, you'll find 11 health benefits of salmon, according to registered dietitians. It's rich in omega 3 fatty acids Salmon is a wonderful source of omega 3 fatty acids, Keri Gans, a New York-based RDN, tells Health. According to the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), a division of the National Institutes of Health, research has proven that omega 3s offer a variety of health benefits, including relieving symptoms of dry eye disease, helping manage symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, and improving cognitive function. Salmon is a great source of protein. According to the USDA, 100 grams of salmon provides nearly 20 grams of protein. (FYI: Females 14 and older need 46 grams of protein a day.) Protein is essential in helping your body thrive, and not getting enough can lead to muscle loss.

It can help your body regulate your sleep.

Salmon also includes an amino acid called tryptophan, Gans says. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, according to the US National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus website. This means you have to get it from your diet as your body won't produce it. Tryptophan helps the body make melatonin and serotonin, per MedlinePlus—meaning it plays a part in some pretty important bodily functions, such as mood regulation and the sleep-wake cycle. It has vitamin A, which supports eye health. If you're low on vitamin A, you should definitely consider adding salmon to your routine. Gans says salmon is rich in vitamin A, which is an immuneboosting nutrient. Per the ODS, vitamin A is important not only for immune function but also reproduction and vision. RELATED: 7 Potential Benefits of Fish Oil, According to a Nutritionist The vitamin D in salmon supports your immune system. Salmon is a good source of vitamin D, Gans says.

Vitamin D can be obtained via sunlight and foods, according to the ODS, which points out that it helps your body absorb calcium. Gans adds that vitamin D is also an immune-boosting nutrient. It has vitamin B12, which keeps you from getting tired. Another nutrient salmon contains is vitamin B12, Maxine

Smith, a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic's Center for Human Nutrition, tells Health. Getting enough B12 is important, the ODS says, because a deficiency can cause weakness, tiredness, constipation, and loss of appetite. Salmon is a good source of B3 (niacin), Vitamin B3 (also known as niacin) can be found in salmon as well, Smith says, and its job is to transform the food you eat into the energy your body needs, the ODS states. Also worth noting: Vitamin B3 plays a role in keeping your cells functioning.

HEALTH & WELFARE

RELATED: 7 Things You Should Know About Shrimp: It can help regulate your thyroid hormones. Selenium is yet another immune-boosting nutrient found in salmon, Gans says. Foods with selenium provide a number of health benefits, as the nutrient plays a role in thyroid hormone metabolism, reproduction, DNA synthesis, and more, per the ODS. Salmon has zinc, which you should eat every day. You should be consuming zinc, found in salmon, daily, according to the ODS, which states the essential mineral "is required to maintain a steady state because the body has no specialized zinc storage system" and that it supports immune function. Salmon is rich in glutamine.

Glutamine, too, is found in salmon, Gans says. This amino acid (a building block of protein) assists in energy production, per the ODS. The iron in salmon helps keep your tissues alive, Smith adds that salmon is a good source of iron, which is crucial for many bodily processes. Iron helps with the transfer of oxygen from your lungs to other tissues, and it also supports muscle metabolism, according to the ODS. It contains an antioxidant. Lastly, an antioxidant called astaxanthin can also be found in wild-caught salmon.

Antioxidants also support cell functioning, and they can protect your body against disease, per the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a branch of the NIH. Eating salmon is good for the environment. Salmon is a great choice for the environmentally conscious eater, since eating salmon can do more than boost your own health. "Alaska Salmon is both wild and sustainable, good for the environment and good for us," Gans says.

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The Internet’s Memory of Breonna Taylor

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By Mary Re a

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hen Breonna Taylor went to bed one night in March of 2020, she did not know it would be for the last time. Just after midnight on March 13, the 26-year-old EMT was murdered in her own home by Louisville police officers, who fired 32 bullets into her house after breaking down the door with a battering ram. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, witnessed the whole scene. Though Breonna was one of nearly 250 Black women who have been killed in police shootings since 2015, her story struck a particular chord with the public. In the past year since her death, Taylor’s image has been revered, warped, and put back together again — often by strangers on the internet. In the immediate aftermath of her death, Breonna Taylor’s family, friends, and supporters attempted to garner attention by posting to social media, fundraising, and starting a petition to fire the officers who killed her. But the world was consumed by the pandemic, and for the most part, Breonna Taylor’s murder did not receive mainstream attention until the Black Lives Matter uprisings started in full force in June of 2020, after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Around this time, several major publications including Time magazine and the Guardian picked up the story.

In June, the journalist Cate Young held a virtual memorial to honor what would have been Taylor’s 27th birthday; the memorial included ten action items that attendees could take to honor Taylor, including flooding social media with Taylor’s story and sending a birthday card to her family. Taylor began to be memorialized in offline spaces as well: People attended protests, held vigils, and painted murals. The preservation and curation of Breonna Taylor’s memory on the internet in the past year is part of a much larger tradition of Black communities using social media to preserve the legacies of Black people who were killed or abused by the state, even as the mainstream media and the general population refused or neglected to pay attention. Movements like Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and Me Too, all started by Black women, began as social-media campaigns that kept a record of the abuse or murder of Black people in the United States, with full knowledge that at

BLACK LIVES MATTER death. The phrase “Justice for Breonna Taylor” moved from Twitter to picket signs, and was screamed in the faces of lawmakers and police officers. A year after her death, we are stuck with a question: What would justice for Breonna Taylor actually look like? In June, Breonna’s Law was passed by the Louisville Metro Council, banning the use of no-knock warrants by LMPD, and in January, the LMPD announced that two officers involved would be fired from the force. While some activists see this as a start toward keeping Black people safer from police, many are dissatisfied with this measure, and see Breonna’s Law as a symbolic change, rather than an actual commitment to the protection of Black folks in Louisville. How many people — including Eric Garner — have died at the hands of police even after choke holds or noknock warrants were technically banned?

Real justice, for Breonna Taylor, and for Black people across America and the globe, is bigger than one law, one firing, or any measure that our current justice system is capable of delivering.When we say “Don’t Forget Breonna Taylor,” what we are really saying is: Let’s build a world where Black people are not memories, where Black lives are valued, where Black folks feel safe. Making a semi-political meme, or other lukewarm online participation, does not honor or respect Breonna Taylor’s legacy. The fight to remember and honor Breonna Taylor requires fighting for things that have to happen offline, like stripping police departments of money and redistributing those resources to the community.

It means not only firing the police officers who shot her, but radically restructuring the systems of public safety in this country so that all Black people can feel safe walking down the street, going to school, or, like Breonna Taylor, sleeping in their own homes.

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the time, nobody else was keeping score.

But one thing stands out about Breonna Taylor’s internet legacy: the outpouring of memes. Throughout much of the summer and fall, memes put Taylor’s name into cutesy catchphrases — one user tweeted, “My Name is Junie B Jones And The B Stands For Breonna Taylor Killers Need To Be Locked The Fuck Up” — or placed the struggle for her justice in random, inappropriate places, including, in one image, on the ass of a scantily clad Rihanna. Some used a “bait and switch” meme format by putting Breonna Taylor’s name into unrelated images or well-known phrases, like this viral tweet, “Spaghetti Carbonara is the easiest pasta dish you will ever make with just 4 ingredients in 15 min!!!

INGREDIENTS: * Arrest * The Cops * Who Killed * Breonna Taylor.” Over the last year, the phrase “Don’t Forget About Breonna Taylor” has been thrown around liberally both in online spaces and in mainstream news: Last June, the New York Times ran an article titled, “Why Aren’t We All Talking About Breonna Taylor?,” and the same mantra lights up Twitter every few months. The phrase is both critical and empty: Of course we should not forget Breonna Taylor, but it is not a coincidence that the people we are expected to forget — Breonna Taylor, Oluwatoyin Saalu, Tony McDade — are not straight, cisgender men. In September, Breonna Taylor was on the cover of Oprah Magazine, the first time in 20 years that Oprah herself did not star on the cover. In the same month, Vanity Fair published an in-depth interview with Breonna’s mother, Tamika Palmer, that filled in much of the nuance of Breonna’s personhood that the internet had missed. “I think about how I had to tell Breonna how to make chili a hundred times, and she would still call me when she would go to the store,” Palmer said. “I would say, ‘Breonna, can you write this down, because I don’t understand why I got to tell you this all the time.’ And she would say, ‘I don’t need to write it down, I can just call my mama.’” In the same month, thousands took to the streets in Louisville to protest the grand jury’s decision to not charge most of the officers involved in Breonna’s

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'Judas And The Black Messiah': Congressman Reintroduces Bill To Remove J. Edgar Hoover's Name From FBI Building

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ailed by many as one of the year's strongest films Shaka King's Judas and The Black Messiah has earned rave reviews for its depiction of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, informant William O'Neal, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Now, a Tennessee congressman is taking steps to course-correct Hoover's place in American history.

After seeing the film, U.S. House Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced a bill to strip J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI building in Washington, DC, according to Deadline. In Judas and The Black Messiah, Hoover, as played

by Martin Sheen, is shown coordinating surveillance on Black Panther and civil rights leaders, even going as far to express that he wants Hampton "neutralized." As stated by Cohen, "The movie is a clear depiction of [Hoover’s] efforts to impeded the civil rights movement." Cohen also said Hoover "doesn’t deserve the honor and recognition of having the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency headquarters named for him. The civil rights we enjoy today are in spite of J. Edgar Hoover, not because of him.”

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‘Shaka: King Of The Zulu Nation’ Ordered to Series At Showtime

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SETH LONDON NYC

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howtime has announced a series order for the upcoming drama series, Shaka: King of the Zulu Nation. It is executive produced and directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). The project is from CBS Studios, Propagate and Fuqua Films and created and written by Olu Odebunmi and Tolu Awosika. They exec produce Ben Silverman and Rodney Ferrell of Propagate.

The description: Rooted in actual events, SHAKA: KING OF THE ZULU NATION tells the story of the Zulu Empire chief Shaka and his unlikely rise to power, uniting multiple tribes across vast stretches of Africa in the early 19th century to transform his power into legend, on par with history’s most seminal figures. In ferocious battles that test the body and soul, in alliances that test the bonds of love and friendship, a complex sociological system plays out that renders the human cost front and center, for the victors as well as the vanquished, all in an effort to carve out a semblance of identity, fulfillment and ultimately, survival.

“Olu and Tolu have written such an exciting and emotional origin story of an African warrior hero and Antoine’s passion for this project, coupled with his formidable talent, promises an epic series unlike any other on television,” said Gary Levine, President of Entertainment, Showtime Networks Inc. “This project offers a gateway to our past that is so critical to our global history and yet so often marginalized,” said Fuqua. “Through SHAKA: KING OF THE ZULU NATION, we hope to bring this saga to life, all the tears, sweat and blood, all the joy and sorrow, all the intimacy and intensity and humanity. In short, we’re going to rock the world with this one.”

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'All The Queen's Men': Teaser: Tyler Perry's BET+ Exotic Dancer Drama Stars Eva Marcille, Michael ‘Bolo’ Bolwaire And More

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hough the formal announcement only came a few weeks ago, Tyler Perry's BET+ exotic dancer drama series, All The Queen's Men, already has a teaser, a time frame for release and announced cast members. This summer, the series will drop on BET+. It is based on the book Christian Keyes' book Ladies Night, he created the series and also serves as a writer for the series. As described by BET, "the drama centers around the life of “Marilyn ‘Madam’ DeVille,” played

by Eva Marcille. Madam is a fierce businesswoman who is at the top of her game in the nightclub industry and surrounded by a band of trusted employees who are down to make sure that she is successful. But Madam, a self-proclaimed boss, soon discovers that more money and more power means more problems. Will Madam retain reign as she navigates this dangerous and sexy society?

Will the sensuous world of exotic dancing cost Madam her queendom and potentially her life?" This project is one of the first shows from Tyler Perry Studios’ scripted development arm, Pitch Black Development LLC, which is helmed by the studio’s President of Production & Development, Michelle Sneed. Alongside Marcille, the series also stars Keyes, Skyh Alvester Black, Candace Maxwell, Michael "Bolo' Bolwaire, Keith "Fatal Attraction" Swift, Dion Rome and Jeremy "Masterpiece" Williams The series is executive produced by Michelle Sneed and Christian Keyes. Elon D. Johnson serves as co-executive producer for Tyler Perry Studios. Kim Fields Morgan directed the first four episodes of the series and also serves as consulting producer.

'The Real World' Star Heather B. Gardner On Helping Birth An Era of Reality TV

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ack in 1992, reality TV phenomenon MTV's The Real World hit the smallscreen to showcase the lives of seven total strangers – Becky Blasband, Andre Comeau, Heather B. Gardner, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi, Eric Nies and Kevin Powell – living together in a New York City loft. Almost 30 years later, the show is recognized as the foundation for what reality TV has grown to be. In the spirit of TV show revivals, MTV has resurrected the staple unscripted-franchise to help kick off the launch of Paramount+ – ViacomCBS’ rebranded streaming service that's home to its library of content from networks such as CBS, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central.The brand-new series – The Real World Homecoming: New York – picks up the show with the first season's original cast 29 years after it initially premiered to revisit iconic moments and real issues that helped the show make history. The multi-episode docuseries – in similar fashion to the show's original format – takes these seven veterans back to where it all started to, per its famous tagline, find out "what happens when they stop being polite… and start getting real."Shadow and Act spoke with series vet Heather B. Gardner ahead of the show's revival as she touched on The Real World's legacy, how it birthed the genre we consider to be reality TV, and how her role as one of the first Black reality TV stars paved the way for others to flourish in this space. "I think it's awesome that we were able to do something like this without knowing what would come from it," she said of The Real World's impact, "but at the same time it's still pretty fasci-

By: Njera Perkins

nating to wrap your head around this style of television that's only been out 30 years." Keep in mind, when The Real World first premiered there was no social media or even a place for a reality TV show of this format to exist. For Gardner, it's been mind-blowing to see how much has changed in the TV landscape in such a short timespan. She shared with us how the vetting process used for many reality TV shows today, didn't exist when The Real World was described as nothing more than a documentary with a few artists at the time it aired. On top of that, MTV dared to go where TV had not gone before to gather people of different races and backgrounds to speak candidly on issues we still grapple with today. "You go back and watch the first season and see some of the conversations we were having and how we handled it – that was 1992. Fast forward to 2021 and you think about the very raw and organic conversations we were still having," she told shadow and Act. She revealed that sometimes, "some of [the episodes], for a lack of better words, were about nothing. Stuff that people wouldn't dare put on television right now because of money, production value, and time spent. All of those things were happening for us back in 1992 because the same way we didn't know what was happening or what to expect, neither did [MTV]. They took risks with unknown people and put them on television."

Those risks paid off for the network and gave life to a beloved TV franchise that has made way for other inspired shows such as The Challenge, Are You the One? and more to join The Real World TV family. However, those risks weren't without some pushback when the show first premiered as Gard-

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ner shared how some people had a distaste for what the show was doing. "We kind of got shunned for it," she said. "People weren't kind when this show first came out, people weren't as open, but at the same time it was a guilty pleasure for a lot of people." That guilty pleasure being that viewers couldn't resist tuning into an organic source of entertainment that didn't shy away from issues we've only recently begun to get comfortable with addressing so openly. Through the show, viewers were able to connect with all kinds of cast members that joined the series and that's where people started forming connections that made The Real World this larger than life spectacle.

"From The Real World sparked all these different kind of reality formats," Gardner shared with us.

"They were all birthed from this kind of a show."The Real World reviving the franchise in the form of this special reunion brought back a lot of fun memories for the cast, but stepping back into that Manhattan loft wasn't a walk in the park. It transported right back to those scenes where they had no choice but to face the music. "It wasn't comfortable going back and doing this reunion," Gardner revealed. "It was like this big mirror staring all of us in the face going back and doing this reunion show, looking at how we responded to things then versus now with ironically some of the same topics. Some of the same conversations just different names – back then it was Rodney King and today it's [insert name]."

The show was infamous for pushing the envelope with issues such as race, sexuality, mental health, and more, but it offered these ordinary people a platform to be vulnerable and change their lives in the process. For Gardner, it took her good friend Sway Calloway – a renowned radio personality and staple in MTV's News team – recalling her how influential she was in helping build the

legacy of reality TV to realize her impact. "Sway was really one of the first people to remind me of that. He said, 'do you realize you're the first Black female to ever do reality television?'" She continued saying, "I never looked at it like that. Other than music videos, they didn't show Black women on MTV."As a founding member of today's most popular TV genre, Gardner ushered in generation of Black women reality stars who have been able to flip the system and make it a profitable venture to build up their own brands and businesses.

"These opportunities were not available for us at the time, but that's still not a reason not support the women out here doing it," she told Shadow and Act. Gardner credits people like The Real World vet Tami Roman, Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss, and Love & Hip Hop alum Cardi B has a part of this legacy of women in reality TV. "I think it's amazing what so many women have been able to do when they sign on to do reality TV. Not everybody is throwing drinks and fighting, so I'm glad they were able to take a reality show platform and build from there. I can't help but to be happy for them."To have gone from entering the TV world as a signed artist at Boogie Down Productions to now running three full-time radio shows at Sirius XM, Gardner has blazed a trail of her own that's made it possible for others to use it reality TV as a launching pad for their careers as well.

Her hope for the franchise's revival to continue highlighting these hard conversations and encourage people to listen to one another so we can start making real change.

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Inside Jay-Z’s Weed Lab

ake a tour of the massive facility where the buds that go into Monogram, the rap mogul's new luxury marijuana brand, are grown. Jay-Z’s weed factory is a hulking 100,000-square-foot facility on a busy intersection in San Jose, California, so mammoth it dwarfs even the Walmart down the street. A steady procession of customers shuffles patiently in line at the front-room dispensary, oblivious to the whirring machinations behind closed doors. Only with an employee access card do those doors swing open to the inner labyrinth, where 11,000 pounds of cannabis are produced each year. Behold the weed industrial complex in its terrifying glory: an endless maze of tropical nurseries filled with hundreds of cannabis plants, science labs where chemists extract terpenes from glass beakers to make vape juice, and glass jars of nugs whizz down conveyor belts.

Workers in lab coats and hair nets scuttle around hallways lit in eerie hues of burnt orange or blue; some are even wearing gas masks, adding to the sterile, post-apocalyptic vibe. Under the skunky floral perfume, the air smells like money.

My tour guide is DeAndre ‘De’ Watson, the Culture & Cultivation Ambassador for Monogram. De flies to San Jose from Los Angeles once a week to do quality control and act as Jay’s man on the ground.

His energy is a playful simmer, reddened eyes crinkling up into a grin as he punctuates his sentences with a drawn-out, raspy “riiiiiiight?” “I come in to look at the girls everyday,” he tells me, referring to the flowering female cannabis plants. “A computer never sold weed before, and the plant never grows the same. The tree might go left, and we have to be here to identify it.” De tells me he smokes seven grams of bud a day, an ungodly amount (the average stoner might take a couple days to smoke 3.5 grams). Rather than using scientific metrics or corporate spreadsheets, he goes by feel and experience—and insists that the $50 weed cigars, known as the OG Handroll, that are Monogram’s signature product are indeed rolled by hand, even if this can be a costly

By Michelle Lhooq

production nightmare at scale. “I want to feel the earth. If my fingers get black [from the resin], manicure here I come,” he tells me with a twinkle in his eye. The factory technically belongs to The Parent Company (TPCO), a publicly traded company —Wall Street’s current fashionable fund-raising vehicle—created with the intention of “rolling up” the California cannabis market, which Jay-Z and Roc Nation joined last year. TPCO consolidates the California cannabis giant Caliva—which processed 1.5 million legal weed transactions in California in 2020— with 17 other weed brands, including Carlos Santana’s Mirayo and Bob Marley’s Marley Natural. TPCO is also vertically integrated, which means it controls the means of production from start to finish—from the plant grow rooms to the package manufacturing to the final sales at the dispensary.

The location is strategic, perched in the heart of Silicon Valley with the Emerald Triangle, epicenter of America’s cannabis farmlands, a few hours drive north.

Unlike many other celebrity weed purveyors, Hov hasn’t built an image for himself as a stoner—you’re more likely to catch him smoking a cigar than a blunt in a music video.

So Monogram’s slickly-produced promo videos feature the likes of Jadakiss, Tinashe and N.O.R.E. sharing wild stories about their love for weed. Its latest ad campaign, shot by Hype Williams, is a flashy revision of Slim Aaron’s photography of white socialites recast with today’s Black glitterati which positions cannabis as an intrinsic part of Black excellence and “the good life.” Rihanna, Meek Mill, Yo Gotti, and DJ Khaled are all investors. Jay-Z’s brand, of course, is all business: the elder statesman mogul. Or, as Michael Eric Dyson writes in Jay-Z: Made in America: “He doesn’t simply hustle, but hustles the story of hustling, and thereby engages in a kind of meta-hustling. Jay tells a story that celebrates its own narrative as the manifestation of hustling.”

More than 10,000 businesses have launched since California legalized weed in 2016, and the California pot industry is projected to be worth $4 billion by 2025. New York will be even bigger, projected at $7 billion for that same year. As we enter this golden age of legal cannabiz, it’s hardly surprising that Jay-Z wants a piece of it. Given all that, it

weed to his friends in South Central, Los Angeles. Cannabis was just a vehicle, he says, that allowed him to send his kids to college and start multiple businesses (he owns a smoke shop, and is about to open an acai bowl restaurant in LA). Now, they both want to not just beat the game, but redefine it. De insists that Jay-Z enjoys toking behind closed doors and understands its culture, explaining that their vision for Monogram was to take cannabis back to its street origins—but make it luxury. “Jay wanted a good call-back to the days of nickel bags, when you bought weed in manila envelopes,” De says, leaning forward intently. “You know, when Redman and Method Man were rapping about the ‘triangle bags’ sold by [legendary ex-weed dealer] Branson in New York.” Triangle bags? “You know, those baggies shaped and stamped with a triangle—that was Branson’s signature,” he explains, as if this should be obvious. De has been previously arrested for selling weed—he says he was put on parole but never had to serve time. The experience pushed him towards the legal industry. “Going from the culture to corporate, it’s like a different language,” he says. “It’s so hard to make it over here. I had to empty my whole cup—it’s like I’m a baby all over again.” I ask if it pisses him off to see so many people of color still sitting behind bars for selling or using cannabis—a War on Drugs failure that New York is hoping to correct by expunging criminal records. “Angry?” He shakes his head. “Nah, we knew what we were doing. You’ve just got to evolve with the times. It’s a more lucrative, better life on this side. You don’t have to worry about the police. You can spread your wings.” Monogram nods to these tensions in ad campaigns with taglines like: “Weed is a federal crime, even in the states where sex with farm animals isn’t.”

Flashy social justice campaigns can often be indiscernible from corporate stunts, but TPCO, the parent company of Monogram, also plans to invest $10 million in Black-owned cannabis businesses later this year.

On the one hand, Monogram is the flagship of a high-finance, celebrity-driven cannabis conglomerate that could steamroll smaller producers; on the other, it represents Jay-Z’s belief that capitalism can be a vehicle for Black liberation. “The way I approach the illicit world is how Jay approaches life,” says De as we walk out of the factory into the blinking daylight, past a growing line of customers picking up online orders in time for 4/20.

“Everybody scores.”

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makes sense that Monogram’s marketing emphasizes its luxury, just as Ace of Spades, Jay-Z’s champagne brand which was recently purchased

by LVMH, sells at astronomical prices. Along with the $50 “OG Handroll"–a hefty joint stuffed with 1.5 grams of top-shelf cannabis– the brand also carries packs of pre-rolls and jars of flowers, all packaged in minimalist black boxes embossed with Monogram’s name in relief. While other weed brands often label their jars with the names of strains and THC percentages, Monogram’s products don’t even say if they are an indica, sativa, or hybrid. Instead, they’re labeled as “Light,” “Medium” or “Heavy,” while strains are identified with numbers as if they were perfumes—No. 88 is sweet and spicy, while No. 03 has notes of grape, diesel, and mint. This simplified system has led to weed media sniffing that Monogram isn’t for “true players” but rather “mainstream Grammywatchers,” while acknowledging that its strains do “earn the throne.” My tour finally ends in a room where two young women are sitting at a long table, rolling the weed cigars by hand while a radio next to them plays pop tunes. In contrast to all the sterile factory machinery we’ve just walked past, it’s a far more intimate and cheerful scene. Yet, this is the part where I have to confess that, when I was first given the OG Handroll to try out at home, the joint looked lumpy and kept going out on its own—I couldn’t get it to stay burning for more than a few seconds. When I tell De about this, his eyes light up. “That’s the point!” he thunders. The OG Handroll, he explains, has been engineered to behave differently than the standard factory-produced, cone-shaped joints. Instead, the rolling papers are individually crinkled by hand so that they burn evenly—which he says is an old stoner trick—then rolled with quality buds the size of mini-pearls instead of ground into powder form. This allows the OG Handroll to be a drawn out, unhurried experience as you burn it, let it go out, then pick it up and light it again. “It’s not a cigarette. You gotta get the vibe and let it sit,” he explains. “You can even put it back in the tube and go to the club.” I realized that what I assumed was a defect in fact exemplified Monogram’s vision of turning underground stoner culture into an upmarket luxury. A persistent quandary facing the weed industry revolves around whether its racist history will be corrected—or perpetuated—by legalization. Less than 5% of cannabis businesses are Black-owned, a 2017 survey found, and equity programs have sometimes yielded the opposite effect, hurting communities of color. Jay-Z, who came of age during the crack epidemic and War on Drugs, is a drug-dealer-turned-mogul whose hustle towards the American Dream beat the system designed against him. Similarly, De’s grandparents were cannabis farmers in the Emerald Triangle, and he grew up selling

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Aaron Mann actor poet entertainer model

rt. a e th a r ine le via daily a t ter peop shes o n e an ith He pu ect t s w i nn . nn cting tion. o a c ely ether ir n M conne spira t o a r Aa oves nd in ultim le tog o the e t t l p He tions a art to g peo tap in ve sta . n o e o is emo rds h nd bri yone t their l led lif a l a tow anity g ever p into y, fulfi a n hum uragi s. To t , happ o t u Enc r geni ir bes e e inn live th and

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SPRING TRAINING IS A STATE OF MIND

ON THE COVER VICTOR MADRID

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hen I was around ten years old I remember my mom working tirelessly and selflessly to provide a life for myself and my three siblings, all the while taking care of my grandma. The fact that she made it all possible for us as a single parent is part of that driving force that snaps me out of a "I'm not feeling it today,”type of mood. At 19 my cousin offered me an opportunity to live with her near Yosemite. Without hesitation I took it! Having my life out there was freeing! I gained so much perspective by reaching within myself to learn about who I am. Now fast forward to just last year at 23. I thought I had it all.

The wife, the car, a place to stay, even a beautiful german shepard named Scarlet. Then once COVID hit I watched as my world came crumbling down on me. I lost my job, went negative in my bank account.. even the wife walked out. Then my life became still...became quiet. I allowed that situation to consume me and it was at that point when I had hit rock bottom, but just because I was at what seemed like my lowest, doesn't mean it was the end. Little did I know a higher power had different plans for me. November was when I decided to pick myself up off the floor and chase a career in fashion and promotional modeling. Then this year I had tested positive for COVID and had to quarantine.

The virus tore me up both physically and mentally. I felt as if the world and everyone in it kept going while life became at stand still for me. I had to dive even further within myself this time, pulling out all of my pain, all of my ugliness and frustrations from the past. Despite what was happening in my life at that time, I was thankful to have found a healthy outlet to release. Music creates a space for me to pour out all unwanted energy. I know everyone has their fair share of BS in their life and we're all dealing with something, but the simple fact that we get up in the morning and get to be here should be more than enough for us to go fulfill our goals.

I've learned a lot in such a short period of time. I know that I'm at fault when it comes to my life, my thoughts, my actions and reactions. Therefore I've changed the way I look at things and by doing so I've changed my life. Heart on my sleeves is how I choose to live.

Wherever I go. I carry with me God, Love, and Compassion. Now that I'm back in Merced, it feels like I've lived a lifetime. All I can do is share my experiences, perspectives, and this new found love within myself with all of you beautiful souls. I hope whoever is reading this, it helps you realize that you are in charge, and that you have power over life's greatest challenges.

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There’s Never Been A Good Argument Against D.C. Statehood

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epublicans (and some Democrats) say D.C. shouldn’t become the 51st state. Here’s why each reason they cite is bad. By Travis Waldron and Paul Blumenthal Josh Burch remembers the exact moment he realized how absurd it is that Washington, D.C., isn’t a state. In 2011, during a tense round of negotiations over federal spending, then-President Barack Obama gave in to Republican demands and agreed to ban the city government from funding abortions in the nation’s capital. “John, I’ll give you D.C. abortion,” Obama reportedly told then-House Speaker John Boehner in a move that incensed the city’s political leadership and residents like Burch. More than 90% of the District voted for Obama, and residents overwhelmingly supported abortion rights. Now their rights were being traded away, and they didn’t even have a representative in Congress who could try to stop it. “It felt like a betrayal,” said Burch, a statehood activist with the local group Neighbors United for D.C. Statehood.

“That put me over the edge.”Over the last decade, Burch and a litany of local activists have reinvigorated the decadeslong movement to win statehood for D.C. His group and others have taken the fight from the streets of D.C. to Congress, while newer groups of activists have launched a nationwide movement to increase awareness of the District’s plight and ramped up pressure on lawmakers to do something about it. The District is now closer to statehood than it ever has been before. In April, for just the second time in history, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would make D.C. the 51st state. Unlike the previous effort, which was dead on arrival in a GOP-controlled Senate, this one at least has a fighting chance in an upper chamber controlled by a slim Democratic majority. Although the odds are still long, President Joe Biden has backed the push, throwing the weight of the White House behind statehood for the first time ever. In response, opponents of D.C. statehood have recycled the same old arguments against it and come up with new ones. Congressional Republicans argued during House hearings this year that D.C. is not worthy of statehood because the founders didn’t intend for the capital to be a state; because the District does not have landfills, car dealerships or an airport; or because it is too small to warrant full representation in our government. Many of these arguments are easy to refute: The founders have all been dead for two centuries, and many things about the United States, including the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women and Black people, are different from what they initially enshrined in the Constitution. The current bill would carve out a federal district that includes the Capitol, White House and National Mall to meet constitutional requirements. D.C. has landfills and car dealerships. And its 700,000-person population is larger than Wyoming’s or Vermont’s. “They have no good argument against D.C. statehood,” Burch said recently. “Period.” But those and other arguments persist, even as they fail the most basic test: None of them address why D.C. residents, nearly half of whom are Black, are undeserving of statehood and the full rights to representation that it brings. ‘It’s Just A Political Ploy For Democrats To Gain Senate Seats’ Jamal Holtz also remembers when he reached the tipping point. A D.C. native, he watched the fight over the Affordable Care Act play out in Congress more than a decade ago, hoping the bill would pass so his uninsured mother would have easier access to health care. But as Democrats and Obama urged Americans to push their representatives to vote for the controversial bill, Holtz realized that his family didn’t have anyone to call. “My advocacy ended at the mayor’s office,” Holtz, an organizer with the 51 for 51 campaign for D.C. statehood, said. (51 for 51, a coalition of D.C. and national voting rights groups, advocates for changes to Senate rules that would allow D.C. to gain statehood through a simple majority vote, bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold that would currently block it.) “I was disenfranchised from our democracy, from having a voice in the Senate, and a voice in the government that’s supposed to represent me,” he said. Were D.C. to become a state, its residents would almost certainly elect two Democratic senators and a Democratic representative (D.C. currently has one nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat and one of the District’s fiercest statehood advocates). For that reason, Republicans have cast the statehood push as a purely partisan ploy meant to bolster Democratic majorities in Congress. Even if it were such a scheme, the Constitution does not say that only one political party’s voters are worthy of representation. Other states were also created for purely partisan reasons. And Republican

By Travis Waldron, Paul Blumenthal

opposition to D.C. statehood is just as partisan, if not more so, than Democrats’ support for it. But the worst part about that argument is that it ignores the real underpinnings of the statehood movement. D.C. residents do not support statehood because of whom they’d elect. They support statehood because they want the right to elect someone, period. They want full political representation in the democracy in which they live and the basic rights that come along with it. “Statehood is truly, at its core, a racial justice and voting rights issue,” Holtz said. “You have American citizens in a country that preaches democracy but doesn’t practice democracy.”Roughly 46% of D.C.’s residents are Black.

Another 11% are Hispanic or Latino, meaning that the District’s second-class status disenfranchises a majority-minority population. The arguments Republicans have made against statehood, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the House vote, boil down to “bigotry, bigotry, bigotry.” It’s for this reason that advocates like Holtz and 51 for 51 want the Senate to reform filibuster rules, which have historically been used to thwart civil rights legislation, at least to exempt a statehood bill from its 60-vote threshold. D.C. residents are currently excluded from the political fights that take place in Congress, whether they’re over health care, gun laws, affordable housing or any number of issues that affect the District as much as they do the rest of the nation. But the disenfranchisement runs even deeper than a lack of representation in Congress or the District’s routine use as a convenient bargaining chip, as it was for Obama and Boehner. In 1973, D.C. wrestled some control away from Congress through the Home Rule Act, which allowed for the formation of a city council and the election of a mayor. Still, the elected representatives Washingtonians do have lack full governing authority, since the Home Rule Act also gives Congress the ability to block any law the District’s government passes. In 2014, for instance, D.C. residents voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana possession and use, but Congress blocked its full implementation, leaving D.C. in an odd purgatory marijuana is legal to possess, but not to sell at dispensaries or otherwise solely because Republicans exercised the sort of control over D.C. that they cannot in states that have passed similar laws. The view that statehood is all about Senate control also obscures the work D.C. activists like Burch and Holtz have done simply to make Democrats care about statehood. The party that had filibuster-proof control of the Senate and a huge House majority under Obama barely put any effort into getting D.C. congressional representation, much less statehood. And a decade ago, when an outraged Burch began pushing statehood in meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, he couldn’t find a single Senate Democrat willing to put his or her name on a bill. In 2012, former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) agreed to introduce legislation that would allow D.C. residents to approve the creation of a new state via ballot referendum. But it was a largely symbolic gesture ¨ Lieberman introduced it two weeks before the end of the congressional session and his subsequent retirement. Just three Senate Democrats joined him as co-sponsors. While Burch’s group and other statehood advocates were busy trying to boost support among lawmakers in Washington, Holtz and 51 for 51 took the movement onto the campaign trail. During the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, 51 for 51 held events in early primary states to bolster support for statehood not just among Democratic candidates but among rank-and-file voters, too. The strategy was simple: If they could get ordinary Democratic voters to support statehood, they could push it to the top of the party’s agenda.

The dueling pressure campaigns worked. Nearly every major Democratic presidential candidate, including Biden, supported statehood during the 2020 primary, and when Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) introduced legislation to make D.C. a state this year, 44 other Democrats eventually signed on as co-sponsors. (51 for 51 has also organized campaigns targeting some of the five Democratic holdouts in their home states.) In the process, the activists also attracted a new coalition of supporters, including local and national voting rights groups that have taken up the cause. D.C. statehood, they have argued to lawmakers, voters and anyone else, is part and parcel of Democrats’ broader effort to protect and expand voting rights, a fundamental aspect of improving and protecting American democracy ¨ especially for the Black and brown voters most vulnerable to Republican efforts to curtail voting rights nationwide. “The rea-

a manner that would prevent Black power. “Retrocession equals suppression,” Holtz said. “It’s just an opportunity to avoid truly giving D.C. residents the representation they deserve. Retrocession is only furthering the more than 200 years of erasure of the 700,000 mostly Black and brown D.C. residents who have their own culture and heir own history. It would be whitewashing us.” ‘D.C. Statehood Requires A Constitutional Amendment’ Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the few Republicans whom statehood advocates believe could be sympathetic to their cause, has not taken a position on the current effort. But in the past, she has backed a separate plan: Rather than granting D.C. full statehood, Murkowski previously proposed a constitutional amendment that would give it a voting member of the House of Representatives.

That was a popular strategy in 2009 when Murkowski first introduced such an amendment. That year, the Senate passed « and Obama, congressional Democrats and many D.C. lawmakers backed « legislation that would have given the District congressional representation. The bill never received a vote in the House because the coalition supporting it fell apart, thanks to an amendment to the Senate legislation restricting D.C.’s ability to limit gun possession and ownership in the District.

This is the dynamic D.C. faces: Even when it comes close to gaining new rights, others are curtailed. Representation without statehood isn’t as popular an idea anymore, but it’s a lens into other problems with other anti-statehood arguments: Much like retrocession, granting D.C. a congressional representative was seen as a compromise meant to address some of the potential pitfalls of statehood that opponents have dreamt up, like the possibility that D.C. would exert undue influence on the federal government. And as with Murkowski’s original push, arguments persist today that statehood requires a constitutional amendment rather than simple congressional legislation. Following the amendment process, the theory goes, would bulletproof statehood efforts against any legal problems, including those Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) cited in coming out against the current push. But constitutional amendments weren’t required to form other states, including those whose founding like Manchin’s West Virginia were legally and constitutionally dubious. “All 37 new states were admitted by Congress, and there has never been a successful constitutional challenge to the admission of a state,” Holmes Norton, D.C.’s delegate to Congress, noted in an April statement that also deals with the other constitutional issue in question: what to do with the 23rd Amendment, which grants Electoral College votes to the Federal District. (It could easily be repealed or its votes awarded to the overall election winner, Holmes Norton said, while adding that some scholars believe statehood itself would nullify the amendment.) Forcing D.C. to navigate the amendment process, which has produced just one new addition to the Constitution in the last half-century, is just another way for statehood opponents to derail the effort. The idea that D.C. might exert improper influence on the federal government, meanwhile, falls apart for many reasons, not least of which is that Maryland surrounds the Federal District on three sides and has never faced similar accusations. But more importantly, the current statehood movement received a shot in the arm last year for precisely the opposite reason: In multiple instances, a lack of statehood made it far easier for the federal government and President Donald Trump to exert the sort of influence on Washington, D.C., that it cannot in the 50 states. On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement officers acting at Trump’s behest tear-gassed Black Lives Matter protesters so he could stage a photo-op near the White House. Seven months later, on Jan. 6, the riotous insurrection at the U.S. Capitol lasted longer than it should have because the federal government refused to mobilize the National Guard. Unlike governors in the 50 states, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser does not control the way National Guard troops are used in her jurisdiction. During the racial justice protests, this led to overzealous crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators solely so a racist president could score political points. And for nearly a week, D.C. essentially became occupied territory, a military police state in which its residents and lawmakers had no say. In January, it meant Bowser lacked the authority to deploy the National Guard ahead of or during the attack on the Capitol. In both cases, D.C. residents bore the brunt of the response, or the lack of one. The tear gas burned the eyes of protesters with no voice in the federal government; the ensuing occupation was the act of government almost entirely unaccountable to the people who were occupied. The Capitol riot laid siege not just to a symbol of American democracy, but to the city surrounding it. It was D.C. law enforcement officers who responded to bolster the Capitol Police response.

It was D.C. residents who were placed under curfew. It was D.C. residents who lost out on wages and work because the city shut down.These are the “real Americans” who don’t exist in the common view that D.C. is a “swamp” populated solely by corrupt political elites: the bank tellers and bus drivers, waiters and waitresses, dentists and doctors, house cleaners and homemakers, and, yes, the political activists, lobbyists, journalists and congressional staffers who call the nation’s capital home. The Senate may not give them what they have clearly demanded, especially not if Manchin, whose support is necessary for the 51-vote strategy to work, maintains his opposition.

Even if the bill fails in the Senate this year, the D.C. statehood movement has made this issue one the Democratic Party cannot ignore. If the party wins a larger Senate majority, it could obviate Manchin’s opposition. District residents, however, will still be forced into the subaltern position they have held for D.C.’s entire existence.

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son why the Democrats are pushing it now is because people in D.C. have organized and demanded it,” Burch said. “The movement is what’s created this opportunity, not the national Democratic Party.”‘Just Give D.C. Back To Maryland’ An increasingly popular “compromise” among Republicans is for the residential neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. to simply join Maryland. The retrocession of D.C. to Maryland has been promoted by the likes of Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the libertarian activist group FreedomWorks and a number of GOP congressmen, including Maryland’s lone Congressional Republican, Andy Harris. The argument here is that retrocession of residential D.C. would fulfill the goal of providing its residents with the congressional representation that they are currently denied.

D.C. citizens would become Maryland citizens and, therefore, gain the representation of Maryland’s two senators and, based on the size of the city, their own congressman.

Retrocession proponents tout this solution as a natural return of the land Maryland gave up to create the Federal District. They argue that it is no different than when Congress passed a law to retrocede one-third of the District’s land to Virginia in 1846. But the comparison to the 19th-century retrocession of Alexandria to Virginia only serves to highlight the differences between the two situations and the one similarity in both calls for retrocession. What is different from the Virginia retrocession is that this time, D.C. doesn’t want to become a part of Maryland, nor does Maryland want D.C. to join it. D.C. residents have voted twice, in 1980 and 2016, in support of referenda to join the union as its 51st state. One 2016 poll found just 28% of Marylanders supported D.C. joining the state. “[D.C. residents] don’t particularly want to do that, and Maryland doesn’t particularly want to do that. It’s not what they want. They want their own autonomy, which they are entitled to, and Maryland ... doesn’t want to impose itself,” Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat, told the Washington Examiner in January. Established in 1790, Washington, D.C., has existed and built its own unique culture for longer than many of the states represented by those who seek its retrocession into Maryland. Collins’ home state of Maine was a part of Massachusetts for 30 years after the District was founded. Romney’s Utah did not enter the union until 1896 and was part of Mexico when the District came to be. “The last time D.C. was a part of Maryland, Florida belonged to Spain,” Burch said. Beyond respecting the wishes of District residents, the vast majority of Maryland’s politicians do not want D.C. to join the state as it would transform the state’s politics, which are dominated by the suburbs that surround D.C. and Baltimore. The admission of D.C. would introduce a second major city to the state and tilt the state’s politics away from the suburbs and toward D.C. and Baltimore, the latter of which is often in conflict with state politicians from both parties who direct resources toward rural, suburban and exurban areas. Most recently, the Baltimore Sun accused Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of waging a “War on Baltimore” as he attempted to redirect funds away from the city’s planned new public transit project and toward highways.

This is the opposite of what happened when Congress retroceded the city of Alexandria from the District back to Virginia. That only happened after the Alexandria Common Council voted for retrocession in 1840 and the Virginia legislature voted unanimously to readmit the parcel of land previously ceded to the District in 1846.

This was a mutually accepted agreement, not an edict from the federal government.

Well, sort of. The city of Washington voted against retroceding its land on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. And, most importantly, free Black residents throughout the District, in any of its three cities of Alexandria, Georgetown or Washington, were not allowed to vote. At the time, the District was a Southern slave city with increasingly strict Black codes, which placed apartheid restrictions on free Black residents, open slave markets and a police force that frequently arrested Black people, free or enslaved, and sold them into slavery. But in the 1830s, a movement of freed Blacks and white abolitionists, including some members of Congress, began a campaign to end slavery in the District. It was this abolitionist effort that led Alexandria’s white population to seek retrocession back to Virginia so they could preserve slaveholding there. The abolitionist alliance’s efforts were eventually quashed when Congress banned the acceptance of any abolitionist pamphlet or letter from the public and forbade any member of Congress from freely speaking such positions on the floor of the House or Senate. Nonetheless, the white residents of Alexandria saw that their power to enslave could be threatened in the District and they did not want to take any chances of losing what they believed to be their right to own human beings.

Alexandria’s Black residents, who were not allowed a say in the matter, understood the grim situation of retrocession best. “We expect that our school will all be broken up [and] our [privileges] which we have enjoyed for so [many] years will all be taken away,” Moses Hepburn, a free Black businessman, wrote at the time.

Hepburn was right. The Black schools in Alexandria closed within a year of the city’s retrocession. “In-migration of free black people essentially stopped, and many longtime residents left the city,” historians Chris Myers Asch and George David Musgrove write in “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital,” adding that “by 1850, Alexandria’s free black population had dropped by almost 30% from its 1840 high.” Where Alexandria’s retrocession to Virginia aimed to protect white power by escaping the growing movement to end slavery, efforts to retrocede the District to Maryland today, against both of their wills, would deny the creation of the only Black plurality state in the country. One action sought to protect white power by allowing Alexandria to leave the District; the other abolishes the District in

Where Republicans Have Made It Harder To Vote

G

eorgia’s new voting restrictions dominated headlines in March, for numerous reasons: It was one of the closest states in last year’s presidential election and the focus of former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to get Republicans to overturn the results; the legislation was written in such a way as to have a disproportionate impact on voters of color; and the law inspired an unusual amount of backlash from corporate America, even spurring Major League Baseball to move its All-Star Game out of the state. But Georgia is hardly the only state that’s made it harder to vote this year. Republican law-

latest data from the Brennan Center for Justice and our own research, at least 404 voting-restriction bills have now been introduced in 48 state legislatures.1 What’s more, nearly 90 percent of them were sponsored primarily or entirely by Republicans. Of course, not all of those bills will pass. Of those 404 bills, we count 179 that are already dead — either because they were voted down or weren’t passed before a key deadline. Another 137 bills have not yet progressed beyond the committee stage, and at this point, that inaction bodes poorly for their chances of passage. On the other hand, 63 bills are still worth watching, having passed at least one step of the legislative process (with those that have passed two chambers closer to passage than those that have just

makers have now enacted new voting restrictions in a total of 11 states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. As we wrote in March, Republican state legislators — inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud — have introduced hundreds of bills this year that would make it harder to vote. Based on the

passed committee). That leaves 25 bills that are already law (back in March, this number was only six); four states have even enacted multiple such laws. The highest-profile voting restriction that has been enacted since Georgia’s is Senate Bill 90 in Florida. Among other things, the law requires proof of identity for absentee voting, restricts ballot drop

boxes to early-voting sites or election offices (where they can only be used if a staff member is physically present), limits how many absentee ballots a person can deliver for non-family members, and makes absentee-ballot requests good for only one election cycle (previously, they were good for two cycles). Critics also fear that the law could allow Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to stack local election boards with political cronies and intimidate campaigns from giving food and water to voters within 150 feet of a polling place (based on the law’s expanded definition of vote solicitation). DeSantis also signed the bill last Thursday at a signing ceremony that was closed to all members of the press except Fox News, contributing to the partisan acrimony over the legislation. Of course, as in Georgia, it’s not clear whether Florida’s new law will actually boost Republicans’ chances of winning elections in the perennially competitive state.

By making it less easy to vote absentee, the law discourages a voting method that was used overwhelmingly by Democrats in 2020 but was also a source of Republican strength in elections before that. Other new voting restrictions haven’t gotten as much attention as Florida and Georgia, but they could still affect voting for millions of people and underscore just how widespread Republicans’ push to tighten voting laws has been. From April 15 to April 30, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law no fewer than seven bills containing new voting restrictions. One prohibits people from going within 100 feet of a polling place except with the intention of entering or exiting it — which could effectively ban giving food and water to voters waiting in line. Another requires absentee ballots to be received by the Friday before Election Day, making Arkansas one of two states where absentee ballots that arrive on Election Day do not count.2 The other five laws take power out of the hands of local election officials (for example, one bans them from mailing out unsolicited absentee-ballot applications), a trend we’ve written about previously. Similarly, Montana has enacted five new restrictions on voting this year. Among them: The governor can no longer change election laws in an emergency (as Democrat Steve Bullock did during the pandemic last year) without first getting legislative approval; people with certain types of IDs (namely student IDs) have to present a second, supplementary ID in order to vote; and, crucially, people can no longer register to vote on Election Day itself. These last two restrictions could help Republicans at the ballot box: Research has found that

Election Day voter registration adds a significant number of disproportionately young) voters to the electorate, and young voters and students lean Democratic. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill to require people to present ID in order to vote in person, leaving just one reliably Republican state (Nebraska) without a voter-ID law. Republicans in the Kansas Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of two bills that bar the executive and judicial branches from changing election laws, prohibit the secretary of state from extending absentee-voting deadlines and impose strict rules on people who return other people’s absentee ballots. Idaho now requires that a voter’s signature on her absentee ballot match the signature from her voter registration. Indiana has a new law that standardizes election procedures, in part by restricting drop boxes to the “physical control and supervision of the county election board.” (There are pro-voting-rights provisions too, such as notifying voters whose absentee ballots are rejected and giving them a chance to fix, or “cure,” the problem.) A major election-law overhaul in Kentucky that mostly expands voting access (by allowing early voting, implementing an absentee-ballot curing process, establishing online voter registration and more) also contains one voting restriction: Kentuckians are not allowed to deliver another person’s absentee ballot unless they are the voter’s family member, roommate or caregiver (or work for the U.S. Postal Service or elections office). In less than five months, 25 new voting restrictions have already been enacted in 2021. That’s a notable uptick from recent years: The Brennan Center tracked only 14 voting restrictions that became law in 2019 and 2020 combined. It’s likely, too, that that number will continue to grow. Republicans are expected to add even more laws restricting voting access to the books in the coming months — with an omnibus bill in Texas likely to be the next voting restriction to experience the glare of the national spotlight. Stay tuned as we continue to track these bills and explore their implications.

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Derek Chauvin’s Avenue to a Winning Appeal Likely to Be Narrow

By Laura Kusisto and Jacob Gershman

D

erek Chauvin faces long odds persuading an appeals court to overturn his murder conviction in the death of George Floyd, according to criminal-law practitioners, who say judges are generally loath to secondguess decisions by juries, especially when the prosecution’s evidence is as strong as it was in this case. Mr. Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, didn’t respond to a request for comment and hasn’t said whether his client plans to appeal his case. But he laid the groundwork for such a maneuver by raising objections throughout the trial on a range of issues. If Mr. Chauvin does appeal, it could be based on the high-profile nature of the case, which took place against a backdrop of local civil unrest, national debates about policing and a global pandemic. “I think the likelihood of success on appeal is small,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.

If an appeals court agreed with Mr. Chauvin that he was deprived of a fair trial, it could remand the case for retrial or dismiss the case entirely.

What are Mr. Chauvin’s best options for appeal?

Mr. Chauvin’s best case for appeal may rest on whether it was possible for him to receive a fair trial in Minneapolis. His lawyers could argue there was pressure on the jury to convict Mr. Chauvin, both from members of the local community and from politicians such as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and California Rep. Maxine Waters. Judge Peter Cahill decided not to sequester jurors until they began deliberations after three weeks of testimony and arguments. Mr. Chauvin’s defense team could use that timeline to argue the jury’s decision may have been influenced by the adverse publicity. For instance, Ms. Waters told reporters: “We’re looking for a guilty verdict.”

The judge told the court that Ms. Waters’s comments could create grounds for appeal. “I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function,” he said.

But arguing only that the jury could have been influenced by all the publicity is unlikely to persuade appeals judges, Prof. Osler said. The defense’s case for appeal may be stronger if jurors say they felt pressured to convict.

Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer laid the groundwork throughout the trial for a challenge based on the venue, Minneapolis. Mr. Nelson asked to

have the trial moved outside the city, arguing that the jury pool would be tainted by the announcement during jury selection of a $27 million settlement between the city and Mr. Floyd’s family. The judge declined, saying intense publicity about the case spanned the nation. Other than very high-profile cases, such as the 1992 trial of Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney King and the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, it is unusual for judges to grant a request to move the venue of a criminal trial.

A jury is meant to be composed of one's peers; moving a trial often makes such a jury harder to assemble.

How common is it for criminal convictions to be overturned on appeal?

Criminal defense attorneys typically face a high bar getting a conviction overturned on appeal. In this case, the strength of the evidence that the prosecution presented could provide another hurdle for the defense to overcome, experts said. Mr. Chauvin’s attorneys would have to show not only that the judge made mistakes in his rulings on procedural issues but that they were severe enough to change the outcome of the case.

The Chauvin case was one of the first murder trials to take place in the country under Covid 19 protocols, which complicated jury selection and the decision not to try Mr. Chauvin with three fellow ex-police officers.

Mr. Nelson also complained that the prosecution belittled his defense during its closing arguments, making comments that implied his arguments amounted to “nonsense” or “a story.” Experts said that is a plausible grounds for appeal in the state, where locals sometimes refer to an informal principle known as “Minnesota Nice.”

“That’s such a Minnesotan thing to appeal on,” Prof. Osler said.

"If this gets tipped, I'll eat rat poison,” said Joseph Friedberg, a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis.

Appeals can succeed, however, especially in extraordinarily publicized cases. Last year, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev while ordering a new penalty trial, finding that the trial judge hadn’t properly screened jurors to ensure they could ignore the publicity surrounding the case.

What might be Mr. Chauvin’s other grounds for appeal?

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